Episode Podcast Transcriptions 6 of The Markcast® podcast talking about the CFL, XFL, USFL and other “alt-football” news, stories, insights, commentary and more!!!

Episode transcriptions 6 of The Markcast®. The Markcast® is a sports-centric podcast, covering the CFL, XFL, USFL and other alternative football leagues. Tune in for the latest CFL, XFL, USFL and alt-football news. Episodes are listed in the order they were recorded. *Please excuse any spelling or typographical errors.

USFL 2023 Championship Results, 2023 USFL Championship Review! What Did We Learn From USFL 2023?

Well, happy Monday morning everyone here holiday weekend, whether you're in Canada or in the US here getting ready for, we have big C F L game tonight here, Monday Night Football with the Argonauts taking on BC Lions, America's C F L team. But we are here today talking U S F L. No days off here, no weeks off. I think officially safe to say the highest view U S F L championship game. A pre-game show. It's kind of like the election cycle. You kind of got to wait for all the numbers to come in, but it looks like maintain that you most watched U S F L kickoff show most watch S F L championship game show. So people, if you're with the league, if you're we're around here, we're kind of doing our thing, but we're always here a couple guests today you want to talk about the hard work of this live from a rest stop. Unable to make it home but could not be on the show today. We have Pat Rafino. First off Pat, how are you doing? His has his phone immediately troughs out. Okay, well we'll get Pat on here. Pat is working over the weekend but I have here special guest standing by. Is that the professor's music? Andy Murray. How are you doing sir? It is. I am coming off the top rope. It's been a while hasn't it? It's been a while. I think we might do something this week too. I'm thinking, I'm trying to, I'm workshopping ideas here, but Andy live, he was in com or anime Con right in LA here on vacation and you wanted to come on top of the championship game. How are you doing sir? Yeah, I've just been away for about a weekend with my friend at a little convention here in Los Angeles. The weather's been great but I guess I wanted to get off my sabbatical for a moment to come and talk about this because I know I'm a little bit out of my element. I don't have my normal attire, but I wanted to come and talk about this since where we've already gotten to the end of the season already. It just flew by, I don't know about you, but it felt like this U S L season went by much faster than the last one and even faster than maybe the X F L season maybe I'm just imagining that, but to me I couldn't believe, I felt like I was just watching your preview show with Rick Santella and everybody just, it almost feels like two weeks, not two and a half months or three months. It's weird and I'll bring Pat in here. I think Pat's just having connection issues we'll get him on, but it's, it's been hard and I think this is what everyone wanted, right? We've talked about this for years and the dream and year-round football and I mean this is 1% of the challenges the players go through and the coaches and the staff and the workers and everyone else but it, it's a lot and I think that the overhang with the X F L kind of helped make that U S F L season feel shorter also. It took really till week four or five to kind of like, okay, now we're just doing this on our own. We don't have to, we're not pat, you're on or pat, we're kind of trying to juggle all these multiple leagues and all of that. I don't know. And also to me, and this is just maybe my Twitters and stuff, U S F L still feels like it exists a little bit more in the vacuum. I still feel like I see more X F L and again that could just be because I'm following the Matt Berrys of the world and thankfully a lot of the X F L people kind of survived the cuts with ESPN last week. I know that Jason Fitz wasn't so lucky, but I don't know, for whatever reason it kind of felt like we were midseason with the U S F L and honestly if you missed the games, if you blink and you missed, they're kind of gone. I know Pat does a really great job, obviously we talk to games every week, but if you miss it over the weekend, I feel like it doesn't exist. You're following coming into Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, if that makes sense. Yeah, Andy, you're muted. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean both of them are, it seems like you get to accept one of them into your lives and then displace the other. And I suppose it's the same way with the CFL too now we hear obviously at the mark ask don't discriminate. We get ourselves involved in all of them. So for me and and all of us, most of us, I think it's not really that different because it all overlaps together and it's all sort of this part of this just giant amalgamated calendar. But for most people, yeah, I mean it can just be over in a flash and that's it. That's their season and that's all they were looking forward to. So for me it's just been really interesting to see now with all these colliding calendars together, just sort of this continuous flow of grid iron action. I mean it's just so funny seeing all these N F L reports and camps coming out and being like, oh well training camp starts. We'll be without football for so and so days. And it's like we've been living this for how many months now? I mean since February on and it's not really gone away and it's not going to go away for the C F L obviously it's going to be here until November. So for us, I mean our off periods don't really exist as far as if you are exclusively a football watcher. If you indulge in all leagues, there is no time off now if this is going to be a continuing trend. But as far as an alt leaguer goes, I mean still there are people who have their alliances and sort of choose which one do they decide to put their and time them and money and investments in obviously. So it's interesting just seeing how kind of people measure out their schedules in that way. But for me, I mean it's just been rolling the entire time. There we go. I was trying to add the banner back on the deleting the banner that we have on the banner going again here. Let's bring Pat in as well here. I said no really no days off. Pat's literally live from the truck stop here. I couldn't make it home with his work schedule. Pat, how are you doing sir? Doing well, apologies. Apologies for the connection issues. I'm somewhat very right now, so not really. No, not really. No issue. No, no issues at all. We appreciate it. Pat, what have you made of this? We've done it. We've been here every week, no weeks off here. What do you make? We finally, we've crown the champion stallion's back to back. What do you make of all this As far as with the season? I think it was a good season. A lot of games. I think we've talked about it with a little bit of football fatigue and honestly as people who cover these leagues, we just have to, I don't want to sound too simple here, but man up and do it. There are days I don't really want to watch for football games back to back back because I'd like to go outside or even better take a nap. But I mean this is a commitment that we've made to these players, to these leagues and I mean I'm glad that they completed a second season with the intention of coming back for a third. That's three years of opportunities for guys In terms of the game itself. And we'll get Andy, I celebrated the Mariners, decided to go somehow get two miraculous wins here against the Tampa Bay Rays after losing 15 to four on Friday. Imagine Andy, imagine my life. I'm sitting there, I'm like, I got really good seats to these next two games here. Mariners just gave up 15 unanswered runs, won both games celebrated and then I went back, I watched every Snap with the US L championship game last night. Don't at me on that. So we'll go first Pat and then Andy Pat the game itself. I thought it was not nearly as exciting as last year. I don't want to be too critical. What did you make of the game? I mean when you start off last year, the way that Stars game and then you add the parody of the injuries, you set the bar really high, you know what I mean? Regardless of the four and six teams, we saw a good four and six team a couple weeks back, but with how good last year's game was, a lot of things had to align. But I mean I think it went pretty level to the season that we saw from both these teams. Alex Magoo made a lot of plays, he scrambled a lot through, he did what Ben Ucci thinks Ben Deci can do with way less interceptions. And then the Mueller's defense, or excuse me, the Mueller's relied on defense. Troy Williams running and Chris blew its leg and we saw throughout the season they had a lot of issues finishing and how many times did they get inside the 20? I think two or three and they couldn't score so it fell in line with the script to keep it a lack of a better turn and they made it competitive because I think it was nothing going into the middle of the second quarter and the Mallers were winning and that touchdown that Isaac sa Saco Polo, when he handed off the ball forward, that kind of changed the game a lot. Granted, I don't think he was going to score, but he would've probably been within the 25. But I mean no real surprise. I I'm sure there was a lot of people who thought the Muellers were going to win, but I mean I wasn't surprised by this outcome. I think I said they were going to win 14 to 27 or something like that. The stallions Pretty close there. Yeah, I have some notes. Well Andy, what did you make of this? I mean it was the Alex Magoo show and it has been the entire season. He was outstanding for the most part in the entire playoff run you have an accounted for nine total touchdowns and two playoff games that's saying something. He just was putting his improvisational skills on display constantly throughout the entire run. Now it almost got him into trouble during the game. He almost had that just hideous fumble against the Maers and where Boogie Roberts had the handoff and it almost led up to a score. And honestly for Boogie, you got to know to lateral that ballman, you can't just hand that off. You get that's like football 1 0 1. You can't hand that off forward man. And if you had scored there, that shifts the momentum completely for the Maers. Instead you're holding them into a field goal and you don't really get a chance to get that momentum back. So for the stallions, I mean Magoo just was outstanding this entire season. He really stepped up. He was different quarterback last year. I honestly was saying during the, not the championship game, the inaugural game that we went to, I was like, I don't want this guy playing. Yeah, I don't think he can throw and I wanted JM r Smith out there and JM r Smith was the right quarterback to go with the entire season. This season, we'll never know because JM r Smith got hurt, but clearly McGoo got to go through leaps and bounds of development and with his staff and with his offense, which again did not have its full arsenal. I mean there was no Bo Scarborough and there was no who, I'm trying to remember the other receiver, Marlin Williams. There was no Marlin Williams, there was no full arsenal for him to deal with. And that was kind of thing I thought about doing the championship game, especially in the second half was man, it would be really nice if they had a running back to really grind out the clock here and kind of eat up time. And CJ Maribel's good. I like CJ Maribel, but Bo Scarborough would've been perfect for that situation for ku. So kudos to Scarborough for just being sorry for McGoo for being on top of his game, being able to hit his spots, just being able to improvise running out of the pocket. He was outstanding the entire game. So I can't say that the Marler's really had an answer the Entire time. I don't want to get Pat's thoughts on this because I, Pat's obviously, hi, I'm agu and he gets the MVP and he's getting, he got going to get the game MVP and all this kind of stuff. To me it felt, and it might be if this is my quarterback, maybe I feel different, right? I am not a Stallion's fan so I'm like, oh I'm maybe I'm jealous of this guy or he is got these big flowing locks and he's kind of running around, but it felt like he was getting a little high on his own supply at the end during this game scrambling when he didn't even need to. He's out running around and then you're like, okay, you didn't even need to, it felt like he was trying to do a lot. I know there was one where Skip called the timeout. Alex was like, no, I was able to, I be able to get it off. I knew what I was doing and then they came out and ran right into a wall and it's like, well maybe you should have listened to Skip maybe. I don't know. I felt like he's obviously still learning. I don't know where he goes from here. They pointed out obviously the four touchdowns championship game record, beat it over case cookies last year. What did you make of Magoo hear Pat in that and just in terms of him feeling like he was trying to do too much and I don't know if that was necessary. I don't know. It felt like he kind of got to a weird spot. I Think it comes down the film and not just for Magoo but for all these guys. When you have the luxury of these alt football leagues, we, and we saw it as every game means so much to these guys that every game is going to be another one of these guys putting their best foot forward, giving their best effort, especially when this isn't your end goal. I'm sure there's some players who are just doing this because they love playing football and they got other businesses. In fact, I know a couple of these players have things going on, but for Alex, every snap is I need to show what I can do so I can get back to the N F L. It doesn't at this point for me. What does Alex have to prove in the U S F L? Last year he was a starter, but he put together some pretty good highlights. Last year, obviously Smith's played better, but then he came back in the championship, he, excuse me, he led the team back to a victory and this year he puts together probably one of the best se if not the best season in alt football history of I think he had 25 or 25 total touchdowns, fifth or sixth in the league. And rushing, like Andy said, this playoff run, you threw nine, you accounted for nine touchdowns in two games. That's uber impressive. And then they go back to back. I mean at this point Alex has most likely one goal and that's to get back to the nfl. And I mean every snap for him is in probably his mind, crucial. Every snap is a high highlight reel or attempting to be put on a highlight reel would be a better verbiage for it. But it's tough because we're seeing that, we saw that with the X F L as well. How do you balance that? How do you go out there where we saw AJ McCarran felt to be more calm during the season. Just, okay, this is where I'm at right now, I'm accepted that where you got that with Ben De Ucci, like you said, every single play, I got to go out here, I got to win every single game on my back and you end up getting different performances and I don't know if you got the Scooby rights last year and where he's like, I don't even know if I want to do this football thing anymore. You feel a little bit more free where you get, it just feels like a lot heavier weight on some of these guys. Andy, does that make any sense? No, it does. And that's the thing, you have to set your own expectations and goals going into these leagues. You can't just be aloof. You need to know, okay, am I going into the league or do I want to stay here and be comfortable? And I guess for some players maybe that is trying to rekindle their love of the game and maybe trying to find out if they really want to be there. Again, I go back, I've used him as an example again, but TJ Barnes, the defensive tackle for the Arlington Renegades was pretty sure he was not going to play again and then they gave him a call, he comes back, he plays really well, he won the championship ring and now he's like, alright, I'm good. I don't need to do that anymore. Sometimes, sometimes just having that answer for a player really kind of gives them some sort of closure and solitude so that they don't have to continue asking that question the rest of their lives. Cause a lot of players don't get that chance. They just say, well I guess I'm not sure I could have done this. I could have, every player doesn't really want to become Uncle Rico. I could throw one ball over the mountains and you don't really want to have that for every player I think. Not saying every player does, but I'm sure there's some sort of mental gymnastics you have to work through. And it's interesting you bring up Scooby Wright. I do wonder maybe was this his last rodeo because now he's won back Toback championships, he's been on a great team. Will it ever get this good again? Will ever be better than this? I mean, as a stallion fan, you are spoiled. You've lost three games in two years as a football team at any level, I don't care what level it is. That's impressive. That's hard to do. And for players that are on that team with the staff there on the team, you have to think about is this my chance to jump? Is this my chance to go on to something else? Because that is some excellent resume work, but at some point the train does have to stop unless other U S F L teams did improve this year. I mean the north was a mess, but Michigan technically did improve, the Mallers did improve the south. I mean I thought the breakers were formidable, they just didn't have anything go their way and they got absolutely shellacked in the south division championship game, but I mean Houston improved. Memphis was better. There will be teams that will make moves and these teams are always shifting their rosters. The coaches are changing, somebody's going to step up next year. So for Birmingham, I guess for the players and the coaches, you have to ask yourself, all right, is this the end goal or is there something greater? But I don't think, I wouldn't try to go into it thinking, well, I'll hang around another off season and we'll think we'll just be shooting on all cylinders again next year. I mean, I don't think that's the case. Yeah, we talked with John Vogel kind of on our championship game pregame show. I don't know. To me the year two, the three jump is going to be interesting, fun if you're on a crappy team, if maybe you're on the fence and you don't know if you want to go back or if you're, you're not sure. Some comments here. And then I got a couple notes, Denzel checking in, what's up guys? Muellers had bad game plan talking to the Mueller's offensive line as well. Jacob sent me an email. Jacob's cataloged every X F L and U S L TV rating here coming up. I think we'll do something with this week. So had only six drives and the mallers didn't do anything when they had the ball made it kind of boring. Mike checking in game was to let down, especially when one team can't even score a TVD and thought they could be the sand kicking field goals. That's kind of my question here and we have some things like Magoo or PJ Walker maybe we can get to at the end, but the biggest story to me was just like kind of Ray Horton meltdown with the referees kind of going into the halftime and then into the second half. I know there was the movement on the end zone, the TD one that the stallions that Ray was yelling at, I thought they had a time clock violation as well. I know there's always that weird what's got to hit zero and then the ref looks, but then Pat Ray Horton really kind of had this meltdown going in where they had the pump formation and there wasn't enough guys and then even the broadcasters were noting it seems like he's overwhelmed with this in the second half and not really even paying attention to the game. Pat, what did you make of the downfall here of the Pittsburgh head coach? I mean I wouldn't call it a downfall. He is a first time head coach, so dealing with that, it's a different beast when you're the guy. When you're at your position coach, it's kind of easier to be just focus on us. But when you say have that mantra as the head coach focusing on us as all 22 guys and gal guys on the field and whatnot, I mean I understand that because when I was rewatching the game, I was kind of confused myself and usually I keep the games on silent, so I had to go back and speed it all up. I mean, I hope that's a growing pain. I would like to believe he handled it probably way better than Kirby Wilson would've personally. But in the end, I mean we could talk about formations and we could talk about questionable calls and stuff like that, but I mean you still got to put the ball in the end zone and that was the biggest bug of Andy. What do you make of this? I think Pat's, like I said, a connection issue, sir. Yeah, I think the offensive game plan was just not good enough for the mallers obviously. I know they haven't had a lot going for 'em as far as that go-to guy. I think it was interesting talking about one of the people on your show, the preview show was talking about Bailey Gaither and how his snap percentage was really low and he wasn't being utilized at all despite him being a viable weapon last year. I don't really get some of the offensive distribution for some of their playmakers. Troy Williams is trying his damnedest. I mean he's running as far as life out there and he had a couple of really good scrambles, but I just think that the game plan of saying, well, we'll chip away here and there by kicking field goals, that's not going to work. You just saw this team put up 40 plus points in the south championship game. You think they're going to just be able to hold the field goals the entire game, you're out of your mind. I don't really like that they settled so much and to try and trust your kicker to make all of his fuel goals. I mean, you missed one in the second half that would've given them, put him up to 15 points and instead they're sitting at 12 still. It's just at some point you just got to put your foot on the gas pedal and just say, look, we got to go for it and we need to start doing something because this is not going to be sustainable for Ray Horton. I mean, I think his job this year was to calm the locker room after last year's just complete debacle with Kirby Wilson and he did that Acco I think, I'm not sure if his is his personal goal, but I think he accomplished that goal in that he was able to stabilize everything after just the chaos that they went through last year. So in that regard he did. But yeah, in terms of his management, his clock management in terms of his ability to kind of game manage in the second half, he got schooled by Skip Holts. Holtz has been there, done that and to me, I mean he's kind of the class of the league at this point. I mean he's really shown himself to just be able to push all the right buttons. He's dealt with injuries, he's dealt with egos, he's dealt with extenuating circumstances in different games. They haven't been invincible themselves, but they always seem to have the right answer to these problems that arise in these games. Last year's championship game, j r Smith gets hurt, bring in Magoo, you're dealing with all these random quarterbacks from the stars now you have to keep adjusting to them. And this year, I mean he's playing against an outstanding defense and that's honestly, like I said, Magoo just did his magic again. He played against an outstanding defensive unit. That's the thing that's shouldn't be lost on people. The Muellers defense is legit, man, that that was not an easy performance. So for the Muellers, it is disappointing, but I think it's just more of their offensive script scripting and then just not really being able to be aggressive enough. I think they went in with the wrong game plan in my opinion. I just don't get a couple things I don't get. Yeah, you're going in against this. Sound's like we see this a lot in the NFL as well, whoever's playing the chiefs, and we're just going to kind of get some field goals here. It's like you're never going to beat when Mag Goose throwing four touchdowns. You're never going to, and I hate the drean field goals for touchdowns or whatever, but very true. I wonder a world that exists where Skip with Birmingham and the U S F L and I don't know if it's Skip is the greatest coach in the world. They just assembled the best team or the headquarters and he's got more of a cushy gig there and they're, it's their home thing and I don't know all of that, but it is really worked out well because I do think as kind of tiresome as it is to have this dynasty of what RJ young call it here with two seasons in, but you need to have some factor kind of carry over there. Let's bring Pat back in here. Pat was talking about the offense and Ray Hort and being able to unable to capitalize. Oh, okay. Andy, go for it. Oh, there we go. Pat, are you there? No. All right. Andy, thoughts on on Skip and Birmingham? I don't know. Pat's having connection issues. Yeah, pat Pat's getting wooed by the rest stop. Amenities might. She's thinking about all the great things in the store, but no. Well, I wanted to ask, I would ask earlier young, I'd say, well tell you what you go ask the Winnipeg Blue Bombers fans if you think they're in the middle of a dynasty or CFL fans, if you think the Winnipeg blue bombers are in a dynasty, because all I heard about before the great pickup cup last year was, oh, the threepeat could happen and this will be the dynasty, not the repeat, the three feet that they were about to embark on. That would be considered the actual start of the dynasty. Back to, in my estimation, in any time that I've watched football in any way, shape or form or any sport, back to back does not mean dynasty. And so I don't really understand where that terminology's coming from for just back to back champs, they win three in a row. Great. Awesome. Okay, I get it. But it has to be multiple years of winning championships and not just two in order to consider yourself a dynasty. I mean that's back and back to special. They could be wrong. That's amazing. That's a great accomplishment. That's very difficult to do in any sport for any reason whatsoever, but you have to be able to accumulate, okay, look at the chiefs. I mean the chiefs I think are not considered to be in a dynasty right now. They've been to three Super Bowls and they've won two now they've been to a bunch of ASC championship games, but I haven't heard anyone tossed around the word dynasty yet until they win three. That's the golden rule. So I find RJs terminology to be humorous considering that I've never heard that for any other sport at any point. Yeah, a couple other notes here about the game and then I have some more, the actual championship kind of whatever we talked about that fumble recovery of the long handing the ball off forward because again, you're like Pittsburgh cannot score, they cannot score a touchdown, so you finally, you're like, oh my God, okay, okay, let's defense scoring. Defense scoring. Then obviously it was called back to the 25 or I think it was the 30. Okay, then they don't score again here. We still kick a field goal, that kind of thing. It feel like they kept talking, giving jar a lot of praise for being aggressive here on third and long and really sending a lot of pressure. It felt like McGoo, like I said, kind of at the top little bit playing with kids toys out here and so I like to see him struggle a little bit. I don't like anyone where it felt like he was kind of a level above a lot of the players just in terms of seeing the game or existing Last night we had the mist. Oh yeah, then Gaither had the big drop with seven and a half minutes left. A big miss on that where he wasn't looking. I really felt like it was over at that point and was, I mean they knelt down and I mean it was going two and a half and they got the first down and then you're, I mean this went to battle. Were you surprised? I Jack at one point was like, well now remember in the U S F L, we can still go for one, two or three points and this is still, I haven't seen more than three teams go for two points the entire season, but it felt like the game wasn't a game after about eight minutes left. I mean, I'm glad that Jackie keeps bringing up the rules because it think it's easy to forget about because nobody does them. I nobody goes for those conversion points because they don't have to. You see, I think that's so, in my opinion, so intriguing about the X F L rules because you can actually be forced into doing it. You force the teams to go for a one, two or three point conversion and then you start playing with analytics. If you're giving teams the choice to just get P A T, they're going to do it every single time and you're not really changing the game at that point. You're just giving people the same tried and true traditions and you're not going to really do anything different. So yeah, I think that's funny that would the mall, are there mallers really a team that would go for two or three willingly? Is that really the team, even Birmingham, Birmingham doesn't do it and they score all the time and they say no, they're going to take the extra we're point. That's it. Every team is going to do the same thing. I find it extra hilarious because listen, I like the place kickers this year were much better than last year. The place kicking across the board was just a million times better. There was no controversy with chips in the football or trotting punters out there trying to kick a field goal m Jeff Fisher and there's no any of that going on. It was much better across board still there were a fair number of PTs that were missed from teams. So it's still funny to me that the, that's the default option, even though they're playing from as far back as they would be in the nfl, which means you're going to have some missed pats and so I wish there was more incentive for these teams to go for two and three. They're not going to do it unless they're absolutely forced to. So I do find that interesting. But yeah, other point that you brought up about Bailey Gaither dropping that pass, is that not eerily reminiscent to Chris Blair dropping that pass for the DC Defenders in the championship game for X F L with the same and it had that same feeling of like, oh, this is over. As soon as he dropped it, the air got sucked out of the building and that was it. It's, it's remarkable how similar that was. Well, and it was like Gaither wasn't like, he wasn't even expecting it. He barely, there's like, well he didn't even see it. I mean he kind of looked like he saw it turned over his shoulder there at the end, but it was kind of weird. The thing with these two and three point conversions, like you said, where if you don't give them the default of kicking with it is look at the Muellers. We can barely score touchdowns. So to go for that, it was the Elks here this last week when they were playing, I think it was the Red Blacks game on Thursday, but it doesn't feel like it was that long ago where they finally got a TD and then Chris Jones is like, we're going for two. I'm like, you guys scored three touchdowns the entire season. We're really going for the two point convert here. I would take the points and move on, but again, you're rewarding, it's not being lazy, but you're rewarding like okay, you're going to kick it. The idea with the X F L and you have to, you're going for it. Whether it's one, two or three is you're still going for that play, right? Yeah. It has to be a mentality thing. I mean I go back to when I was in college and I'd watch Chip Kelly and his offense operate with Oregon. The gimmick with Oregon was that they'd always score a touchdown and then they'd go for two on the first touchdown and more often than not, they would get it on the, we call it the swinging gate. So it'd be kind of a quarterback R P O or a punter doing a sort of run sweep option and they would go up eight, nothing and it was kind of sending a message to the other team, you better score touchdowns today and keep up with us, otherwise we're going to run away with this game. And they more often than not would score 40 50 points and go on the dominate. So it, it's almost like a mentality thing that they did it from that standpoint. I mean for a team like Seattle, the Seattle Sea Dragons, I mean June Jones is the mad band and just says, I want to go for three because that's what analytics says and he probably thinks he can get three every single time. Again, it's your mantra, it's your mentality as an offensive play caller with us L teams, they don't think that way, not their gig for lack of a better term, more conservative when it comes to that approach and they just want to be able to get any sort of points whatsoever. But that level of aggression is not something that I think permeates in any of the teams. The only thing that it might work with is maybe the stars. The stars are the only team I would think that would try and take the advantage of that with Bart Andrews' offense and the air raid. But other than that, I don't see that being the case for a lot of these teams And Gene Jones here running into trouble over the weekend. So I don't know. I, the report had come out that he had been on some Hawaiian radio saying that he was angling for the X F L Las Vegas Vipers head coaching job and then obviously getting suspected D U I arrest and posting bail Friday night. So we'll see. I don't know what that means for June Jones. I know that when you're a position, you're in sports, here's one of the head coaching positions. I don't know how leagues look at that. We'll kind of see how the XL wants to handle that. Yeah, June might be out. The thing with that June going for three was, yeah, I'm sure the analytics are telling him go for three, but your team is not good enough to go, this is an X F L team. No offense like this isn't, we're not running Mahomes and Kelsey out there. We're running to JI and whatever. Couple other things and then we have some questions, we have a lot of stuff to get to Six Sacks by Birmingham. I thought that was great. Good to see Willie Yarberry with the stallions, kind of get the game ceiling fumble recovery there. I tracked Willie all the way back. I was he with the generals back in the spring league and I remember, I think it was the first game we're sitting there watching the San Antonio and I'm, he had a crazy, I can't remember if it was a block. I think it was a blocked path. I mean this was three years ago, but good to see what kind of Willy is still, I don't know. He is someone I've always tracked on here. The other interesting things to me was crowd, what do we make of the crowd? Andy, I'm told that it was a pro Muller's crowd. I suppose based on the audio that was coming through my TV speakers that would indicate that was the case. I don't know if that means that there's going to be more Muellers fans in support and the can market. I don't know what that means, but I mean it didn't seem like there were nearly as many stallions fans or as many fans period as there were last year for the championship games. So for me, I mean the crowd was, I think it was just candid fatigue at that point. I mean you've gone to what, 12 straight weeks of going to games in that market? That's a lot. I mean last year the novelty of having it be the championship game in the playoffs was nice because it was a field that you didn't see very often except for preseason the hall of Fame game and all of a sudden here you are and you're trying to play all throughout the season and trying to encourage your market that you have two teams in there and not really getting much support for either. And even though one of them is in the championship game, you still don't really draw that much support from the Pittsburgh market. I mean just the energy I, I'm sorry, but I had to go back and watch the highlights for the X F L championship game and the energy was just different. It was different for both games. Just a lot more louder, a lot more electric. I know it was the Alamo Dome, so it was obviously encapsulated sound, but they just sounded more fans are sounded more engaged in the X NFL championship game than it did in the U S F L game and that just stood out to me. As far as the tdb product went, if it was in Birmingham, I think it would've been fine. That would've been fine. But as far as the can market, I think it was just fatigue from overall just having so many weeks straight of football in that stadium I think too, right? It was raining before it was supposed to be like thunderstorm, round kickoff. Those forecast, I mean definitely down. I didn't see any attendance figures being touted or a lot of, some of the normals kind of posting about that. I thought it was really beautiful. You had the sunset going. I think it was when the stallions were driving over the one corner, I thought, man, this is great. They reused a lot of, obviously the championship game last year highlights and I mean anytime the stars and stalls played, right, we heard a million times, did you know these teams played in the championship game last year, but they used that footage a lot. This to me looked beautiful and I would see that, but I certainly wish that there would've been more crowd. I think people were invested in it though, like you said, it felt like, to me it felt like the energy was there. But what was interesting to me was, so Brock Huard a friend of the show here and he's been on, we've been trying to work him coming on this season and he did the kickoff and he took a bunch of weeks off and I know we've got Mariners and Seahawks kind of here, training camps and kind of everything. But I was under the presumption that he was going to be at the championship game because he had told me earlier in the season like, Hey, I'm not going to be doing this for, I'm taking some weeks off. Then I'll be back. We'll do the playoffs and championship. He was traveling the week before, couldn't do that. And I expect mean they had no sideline reporter. They had the woman, it was a weird name zoa, it wasn't zoa, but they had the lady, they had a lady doing sideline reporting that was just a voiceover that was basically just they, they'd show her face kind of lower bug, but I thought that that was odd that for the Fox championship game, I mean it was on, it was on nbc. I watched on Fu Bow, it was On nbc. It was on nbc, yeah, that's the thing. It was the NBC broadcasters. Okay, so then you wouldn't have Brock on. So I didn't know. I thought it was weird that you wouldn't have anyone on that. I don't know if it was weird to me then, so I'm answering my own question with why Brock wasn't there, but I don't know why there wasn't an actual sideline reporter there. Well, I just think that setup overall is just so interesting. The fact that it wasn't on Fox, the company that owns the league itself, it's not on the championship game. I find that to be really interesting because I wonder if they're trying to do this kind of dual network showcase like they do with the Superbowl where they put it on CBS or they put it on Fox or they put it on NBC in a rotation. Are they trying to do that too? I don't know what, I'm not really sure what the get of that was. And look, I like the NBC broadcasters just fine. J Garrett's fine. Jack Collinsworth is fine, but I don't know if that's necessarily what you want for your championship game material. No offense. I mean Kurt Menefee and Joel CLA I think are the guys that you'd probably you'd want to have in that position just like last year. Those are your A team in a lot of ways. And so I'm a, I'm just kind of not sure what Fox is trying to get done here in terms of just putting it on NBC and as we've seen also sometimes with the ratings, somehow NBC ends up drawing better than Fox a lot of the time, which is really the most ironic part. They get more of the viewership that way. So maybe it's trying to get a ratings boost that way. I'm not sure. The whole relationship with NBC is really interesting going forward because they're going to have to figure out, obviously it's going to continue afterwards or what kind of shares that NBC has on this league if they have any. Because again, it's owned by Fox and what their plan is as far as distributing all these games outside of other networks like FS one or USA Network, all those kinds of things. I'm not sure if I really understand what NBC's involvement is here besides just besides getting a rating sps, because I would think that Fox would try to prioritize having those biggest games on their network again Or I don't know why. Maybe you try to do a simulcast there. I'd have to look back and see what Fox was airing there Saturday night. But yeah, it's weird where you get N B C draws. The higher ratings has the weaker. I don't love Jack and I know you, it's a lot of, I didn't know Chris Collinsworth was calling this game, but it's a weird, it's someone doing a Chris Collinsworth impression. It's a really weird, I don't know. And it seems I natural like his voice coming out of his body, it's just an octave too high. I don't love it. Well, that's the thing. I think Jack doesn't have his voice yet, in my opinion. I don't think he knows exactly what his niche is or what his shtick or what his entire mantra is supposed to be on a broadcast. Chris is one of one and who he is, he is very much in his own category. His father has done this for decades and knows what to expect of him himself and what to do and during a game, Jack is still figuring this out. I still think he was better off as a sideline reporter for N B C doing his pre-game action and leading up into the games on Sunday night football. As far as broadcasting goes, I mean he, he's still green. He needs more experience and so I don't think that putting him in that role as the championship game play Byplay is necessarily the best move for Fox and the U S F L. I would have preferred to have Efee and Joel Clat because I believe that they are most equipped for that overall. They are, again, as I mentioned, they are the A team. They are the ones that have the most experience or even Kevin Coler. Kevin Coler would've been great too. I mean he's obviously had a lot of experience as well. Done multiple games for Fox. I maybe they just weren't available. I don't know what the scheduling was like you said maybe Brock Huard wasn't available and they decided to go switch. Just say, you know what? None of the Fox guys are available. Let's just go to NBC instead. We'll never know. But that that's to me just seemed an odd fitting for that sort of a game that didn't seem to have almost like it just for some reason at the end of the game when they were all running on and shaking hands, it didn't feel as important as it should have. Does that make sense? It didn't feel like there was as much gravitas between what was happening on the field and what was their presentation. There wasn't that immediacy or that kind of, this is really important that we finished our second season. It just kind of like, oh yeah, we got through a second season. Awesome. Well anyways, we'll see you next year. I guess maybe they expect that, but to me, if you're a casual viewer, you want to be given a reason. Again, why is this important? We have some comments here. I'm trying to think. Was it, oh, James says Fox was airing baseball because I was trying to look back. I'm like, what the heck was going on? Mike says, yeah, Fox aired the regional mlb. Other networks here reruns US F L, and NBC was lowest rated out of all the networks Saturday night. I was going to say that as well. So pre-amps have come out obviously with the 4th of July and everything. We will probably get final ratings on Wednesday. It was a 1.04 million, so the top of the million kind of whatever the prelims are going to be that they generally go up. So I would imagine 1.2, I think I could kind of predicted 1 2 13 X F L Drew one four back with all of that. The other one was, oh, Gregory here was saying, I said, yeah, because they want to alternate at some point. They said, I guess this was part of the plan to get what caused that plan. We don't know. Andy, did you have a comment on that? I mean, okay, if it's buy it, that's great for me, again, it's just in terms of the ownership of having that product in your backyard and continuing to promote that product yourself. I get that they're trying to do the rotation of the championship game again with the Superbowl, but who knows? I mean, is N B C going to continue to be involved going forward? We don't know. There's that sort of term limit with them in terms of their buy-in with the broadcast rights and I don't know how much longer they're going to keep going on after that and say for example, if they just think, you know what, this isn't really worth our time. Well then what is Fox going to do after that? Are they going to just try and put all their games on their network and USA Network and FS one or do they find another broadcast partner? NBC is so interesting in terms of what their involvement is because again, they're more niche. They're more niche in terms of what products they put on. They don't have baseball, they don't have basketball, they don't have hockey anymore. They only have N F L football as far as the big ones. They have Premier League, which is getting more popular. They have on Peacock, but they don't really have the MLS deals through Apple tv. So NBC has always been kind of more in terms of addressing the niche audience as opposed to addressing the wider audience, even though they get better numbers on their network. So I'm not sure what their plan in their sporting department really is going forward. Again, they're handing out contracts left and right to people in the football crew and giving money to everybody else while ESPN just keeps cutting bait. So that is really the biggest question in my mind, is also the shifting landscape of the sports personalities and where are they all going in these networks because we're seeing that it's drastically altering just in the past few months alone where all these people are, some of these people going to Fox because they were cut by ESPN or going to NBC because they were let go by ESPN and abc. So it, it's going to be very interesting to see where all of the talent flows to going forward and what is priority is given to all these leagues and where they want to be present presented going forward. So N B C, I'm not going to say they're a linchpin in this whole thing, but they are an important component to this moving forward as far as who's product they're presenting and how they're presenting it. Yeah. Dang here I was thinking this as well, nbc, there had been a rumor I saw over the weekend too. Yeah, NBC wanting to do Sunday night basketball as well, kind of starting to do that. So maybe try to dip their toes. It's weird with these layoffs, and I know it's not all connected, but seeing it was whatever the basketball player just signed the five year, 200 million deal or whatever, Saturday night and we're laying off these guys and you're like, there, there's clearly enough money in this space. I mean I know it's different forms how it all flows, but it is hard to have Matt Hasselback getting let go from espn, but yet Deshaun Watson's getting, and I know it's all different. It's not all the money is coming from the same pot, but it is interesting there. I have a couple comments here. A Foosball fan, they had flyers for $24, $24 down payment on next season. Next year season tickets. I guess they're committed to season three. That's interesting because we had moose on the, was it the Media day when we were kind of doing our stream talking and we're doing the hubs, but we don't really know yet and they, they're selling the Canton tickets, but we don't really know yet. What do you make, and I think we might have a longer discussion this week about the future, but while we're on here today, it's kind of weird. Where are you going to figure this out now? Well, obviously they are baffled by their ratings drop, which a lot of people would take umbrage with you on terms of that wording, but that is something they have to address moving forward. Where are the ratings going to come from and who is going to indulge in this product? And it's just so weird to have them try to get people to buy into some of these ticket packages when we have no idea where they're going to play next year. Let's be fair. We have no idea who's going to play where and and when. I know it seems like the Memphis market is there. The Detroit market is there, the Birmingham market is there. One is just kind of a mystery. We don't know who's going to play there. They could change the names of the teams and the cities tomorrow. They could just say, you know what? We're done with the New Jersey generals. We're just going to make them the Nova Scotia Pirates or something. I don't know. They're going to just change their name and their city completely and or a country and just say, forget it. We're done with this. I joke, of course, but they really seem to treat these properties as just sort of interchangeable parts. Same thing happened with the Bandits, right? Tampa Bay just got transformed into Memphis overnight. That was it. End of story. They could do the same thing to the generals. I don't think they're going to do it to the Mallers now because they just went on a championship run. So I think they're probably just going to have to go all in on Pittsburgh, and I think the generals are your next team that are probably eligible to be changed, which again is so weird because that brand was there in the T S L. It's one of the most recognized brands in the S F L in the old regime. So I don't really see a lot of benefit to changing it. But also, I don't know if the New Jersey demographics are engaged in it either. That's the thing. And we've talked about that with Mike Mitchell too. I, is that market really involved with this team? I couldn't tell you, but it doesn't seem like there's an overwhelming demand from people I've talked to. So it's just weird. I don't really think that there's a lot of answers and we're not going to get any answers until last minute again, we did last year and I don't think we'll know. Not even this calendar year. I think we really literally won't know until we turn into 2024 and that's just going to be another weird off season of mystery speculation and n no notes from the league until then. It's so weird, and we've talked about this a lot on the X F L stuff, and I'm curious what media reception Danny and DJ and everyone was expecting with the X F L going into the season and then kind of seeing what they got. Right. Okay. Who's covering us? Okay. I saw Danny was very complimentary to the media at the championship game. I really appreciate you guys being with us all season. It, it's hard. It was hard for the New York guardians to get media coverage in 2020 playing in New York. I think the New Jersey Generals playing in Canton, Ohio. The resonance of that in the greater was that the greater tri-state, whatever they call it, that media market, I think is close to zero. And so it is weird to think you're going to get rid of the most recognizable and Trump and all of that, but I don't know. I don't know. I don't Who's heard about that? Who's getting their feelings or, it's so weird and I remember having, when we had on Ray, what was it? The Ray from the al.com, what was his name? Ray, Oh my god, I'm forgetting his name, but our Birmingham or Roy? Roy, whatever his name was, and we're talking like, Hey, I think the Birmingham Stallings could get 15 to 17,000 a game and I think the other teams could probably get seven to eight thou, whatever the numbers were. And then the non Birmingham teams are playing and it's like a hundred fans. I don't think anyone anticipated not calling the team, the ex team Canton. You could go enjoy these games all the time, but just because one of the teams isn't called the Canton would ever why I don't have any interest now. It's so weird to me, but I guess that's human nature. I watch Washington Commander's football every Sunday and I don't live in DC and have never been to a commander's game lie. But I think I am maybe the outlier here where I think people for whatever reason get a connection that I think that maybe U S F L overestimated that or underestimated how big of a deal that was. I think so too. And just again, if you have any confidence in what the pageantry or the camaraderie of these leagues or these teams identities are going to be, then you have to think that you're going to get as much mileage out of that as possible just on the branding alone. Well, we've seen the limit with that. We've seen the limit with how far that can really take you as far as your media exposure, as far as your exposure to other markets. Look, again, I think it just boils down to people who actually, who chooses to willingly engage themselves in this product because they actually believe in it. And let's be frank, a lot of people don't because they see it as another league that's going to go away or they see it as lesser football or they see it as some product that's just very either Bush League or is mediocre in a lot of ways. And I don't necessarily agree with all of that, but I do think that you have to be able to convince people that this is going to be something that's worth their time and investment in. Because otherwise, as I said maybe just an hour ago, I said it, I think in our group chat, I was like, people are going to sit on their Ivory Thrones and tell they're Meet the fools and they know that they're going to think that they know better and that this is not going to last or this is not really worth their time. You have to convince people that's that not the case and that's going to be hard work for all of these leaks. It's convincing people that this is a viable product that's worth investing in and you can't just rest on your laurels and say, well we're here so people are going to engage in it. Well, some people are, there's a base level line, but again, are you more concerned with the floor as far as how many people you're going to get or are you more concerned about the ceiling? Can you get more people involved? And how many people, more people can you get involved in this? Otherwise, I mean you're going to have the same results as you did and maybe even slightly declining numbers like the S F L did this past season if you just continue to have the status quo. Well that's the thing is, and we have a couple comments here about the moose being baffled and kind of all that stuff. Yeah, Greg said it's Roy S. Johnson, I put that up, but yeah, Roy Johnson, I was like, I've had a lot of guests on this show in the last three years. I appreciate Roy, but I if are, I thought when Greg Parks was on, we did our post X F L championship game, the recap, the kind of the TV ratings and all of that. And Greg had all the numbers. I thought it was really interesting and this is not trying to be a home or whatever. If you are in the X F L next year, I think there's very easy, these are really easy things that we can do at pay more the market, right? Better TV slots, better TV windows, more consistent. These are things that we can do if you're the U S F L right now, save for, okay, we're going to add a hub. It's like we were Saturday and Sunday every year we had 26 network broadcast games. We had more consistent time slots. We really marketed, we ran a lot of ads, we tried to be more invested in the communities and we had guys in Birmingham doing stuff in Memphis doing stuff in Michigan besides, and that's what they always say, okay, well they're going to add city, add city whatever, but just having better time slots this year eight with the X F L on network TV compared to 26 with the U S F L pretty equal ratings. And that shouldn't be the case if you're on a third of the broadcast windows on network TV that the X F L was in the U S F L, you should not have equal ratings and the X F, I think the U S F L massively underperformed this year. Like you said, we had the comment, the moose baffling Mike here says if moose was miffed by the X F L beating the U S F L raid for the regular season, he's really going to be miffed when he sees us L championship lawsuit, the X F L championship. I think that it's not surprising to me and that's what I posted on Friday. Anybody that's listened or read anything that you and Evan and Pat and Mike Mitchell and Sam and Matt Lyons and E everyone said you should not be surprised that US F L TV ratings are down this year. But what do you make Andy? I mean, again, I think part of it is fatigue. People that have just said, you know what? I'm good on football for a while. I'm not going to engage in this until the actual season starts. The N F L season starts, I should say. So that's part of it. And the other part of it is last year, I mean the U S F L was the only game in town. That was it. And same with the X F L in 2020. That was the only game in town. Same with the A AAF in 2019. I have to keep bringing that up, but that's something that was standing alone by itself, a rest in peace. But I think that that's part of, that's the whole part of this thing. This is uncharted territory, this is unchartered waters. There was no dual leaks. It's really been interesting for me kind of doing this Scott Hansen thing where like N F L network, red Zone channel thing where I'm watching multiple games at the same time of multiple leagues. I'm watching a C F L game and a US L game at the same time. That is unfathomable just not too long ago. And yet it seems this is where we're headed as far as just having oodles of content for people to dive into. But at some point you're going to have a threshold of people who are just checked out and saying, I'm good. I don't need any more of this. I'm going to wait until I need a break. I need to have summer off. I need to have the season off. I can't keep doing this. So I mean that's the nature of the beast and that's going to happen. And again, can you give people a reason to indulge in that product and can you give them a viable way to invest in it because otherwise it's just going to be the same thing over and over again and it's going to be monotonous for a lot of people. So for the ratings, I mean Fox did all, they could put it all in the network games. They promoted, they had a Super Bowl ad they did as much as they could to try and promote it. And it didn't seem to work in terms of the TV ratings, maybe in terms of having a few more people show up, obviously being in home markets helped that, but even then there's just so much more work to be done and trying to get people to buy in. But it can't just be based on nostalgia and it can't be just be based on, well this worked last year and this worked in the past. It should work again. The market's changed and after going through the pandemic like we did, it's clearly changed a lot and that needs to be taken into account, Say what you want about these leagues and C F L or kind of how they interact with their fan base. You have the X F L here from the beginning and I remember the first interview Danny did with God, who was it? It was right when they bought the league and she goes, I want to make this league be accessible to everybody. I want women to be able to do this. A lot of females that watch sports, it's only because my dad watched it or my husband or whatever. I want people to be able to buy in. You have the rock and okay, it's player 54 and I know that gets old and we're kind of doing this thing and this is our league and this is all the promo, everything. This is ours and we're kind of in this and whatever U S F L all through this season, real football comes back. We're real football every week I get the emails, real football for real fans, real pros. Every week I would get the email preview in the games and coming up and you have all this stuff. And like I've said before, it's, it's the b d e, we're Fox and we don't need anybody. And then you come out and you're like, well we can't figure out why our ratings are down because I think you're pretty standoffish all year. And you're like, we don't need any anybody. And God dang it, this is kind of what we're doing. And it's like, well, we can't figure out why no one wants to watch our sport. Why no one wants to watch game. It's like maybe because you've been really standoffish and you have alienated anybody that maybe wasn't only an X F L fan. I was like, oh, I'll go check this out. Well real football for real fans. Well I was watching, so what does that make me like? Am I an idiot? Am I a dummy? It's a weird energy to, and I know it's marketing ploy and I know it's kind of all that stuff, but it's this weird energy to roll that all year and then that moose come out like, oh, I just can't figure out. I know what I don't know. I was very entertained by that headline on Friday, not because I want the US F L to fail, but I want there to be some sense of humility there. And I think that the X F L went through a learning process this year. We're coming in, our expectations are here, and maybe it's a little bit more here that we're going to build up. And I think the U S F L right now is like, oh, we don't know. What are we going to do? I mean, what do we do? What's our next ploy? Do we rebrand? We had a comment here from Mike saying, you know, rebrand another team, you know, get rid of Tampa and now, okay, we get rid of it, we get rid of the general. I don't think Moose said on there, we're not expanding until we have eight teams in eight markets. So what does that mean? It means you're going to, you got to rebrand or bust. I mean, no, I don't know what their next step is. Well, I mean how quickly do they expect to do that? And do people have patience for that? Does Fox the network have patience for that? I know again, they own the league and it's up to them, but at some point you have to be able to make sound financial decisions and you have to say to yourself, is this going to really work in the long run and are we going to be able to get it out into all these markets? Is this viable? At some point you have to put your money where your mouth is and you have to be able to do it. And just again, expecting people to show up because there's football going on doesn't always work as a product. It clearly hasn't been the case in some of these markets where just another team that's not from that place, that home market doesn't really draw the same amount of attention. And why would they? I would be kind of confused if two N F L, I guess, I mean I know it's a bigger product, but if two random N F L or ML B teams were playing in one of my stadiums in my town, I'd be like, that's cool. Why? It would be a little strange to me unless there's like championship game or something of that matter, which again, didn't even seem to matter for the can market that much for the playoffs. So again, you have to get buy-in, regional buy-in from these markets, work with that first, and then you can start to work on, alright, let's care about other teams, let's care about other entities in the market. And then you can start moving it out and pushing it forward. But until then you have to be able to buy in. And I, Fox just hasn't done that yet. Or I don't know what the hangup is as far as getting all these teams out to their markets or I know they're doing a slow build and I know that's their mantra and all that, but how much longer or how much more time can you afford to that? And also how many more markets are you going to move until that actually becomes to fruition? And also if you get to a market, it doesn't go up to standard or if you don't like the crowd, are you just going to move it? What if at some point you just say, you know what, actually we don't like the Detroit market, there's not enough people, we're just going to move you. Then what does that tell your fans at some point, if you're going to keep doing that over and over again. I get that sometimes the movement is necessary, but there's only so many times before people will actually want to sustain themselves or be able to buy into it. Otherwise they're just going to see it as a rug pole. Well, I thought Memphis was a great example of that. I thought Memphis grew over the season and I thought they did a really good job there and I heard that they were doing a lot more work in the area there and I know having one of the hubs here and stuff like that, to me, Memphis was a success story of the year. I know that Michigan didn't have as much success at home and the Showboats were a little bit sexier of a team with being kind of the new franchise. But I mean that to me proved we can build here. I don't know if that stadium is the best, but I don't know if they have any other options there. But you know, position it the right way and you kind of chart. But I thought that looked good and I thought Memphis was one of the, not few, but one of the good success stories of the year. I think Detroit needs to work on that. But I think then you deal with the same stuff Spring leagues did. I mean I read the Bill Shaves of the world and everyone going to the Detroit games. Ah, this isn't the N F L. Like, like, yeah, no, no kidding, but it's something to cover this time of year and I don't know, I'm seeing these layoffs across media and I mean Bill Shaa lot got laid off from the athletic this year. I would be happy to have any sports to cover at this point if people are going to, and I don't want Ill will of anyone and Bill Shaa is a friend of the show, but you get that mentality, people hating on us or us having critical opinions. We are bought in at this point. We are invested in wanting this, you know, get these fly by nighters coming in and the Mike Florio's of the world that don't, Ivy, I've emailed and corresponded with Mike probably half a dozen times trying to get 'em to come on the show. He's nice and he writes me back and we've had Discord about it and it's like you only want to cover this when the ratings are down and you want to post your article and you want to move on, you don't, there's no investment here besides, oh, I'll get a few thousand clicks here because the X ratings were down or the X F L last 60 million or the U F L ratings are down or whatever. That's, that's my problem is we are not the issue here. It's the people that kind of fly in, poo poo on it and then move on. They had that, was it the Anthony, the guy from, he's one of the guys with the sports business journal whatever as well where he was he poo-pooing on that as well and I'm like, I don't like this that you come in and kind of, what the heck was his name? I'll figure it out anyway. And Andy, any thoughts? I mean that's the thing, it's always going to be a fly by night situation with these smaller leagues and entities because they don't cover it day by day. And then when there's something that's controversial, you want clicks and you want exposure or notoriety on your channel, so you're going to cover it for that day and that's going to be it and you're going to be out of there in a moment just covering the negative points. That's kind of how news cycles work. Such just sports, that's how it works in news too where say, oh, well look at this strategy over here. It's like, well what's going on with this community? We never covered this before. What's the story behind this? And no one really wants to put in the work or the effort to actually do that because that would require work and effort. So for me, I think it's a really big deal with the football leagues. I mean it's the same thing with the National Arena League and the whole Albany Empire debacle with Antonio Brown owning the team and that story blew up on a whole so many different channels. Pat McAfee talks about it, all these different Twitter accounts are talking about it and it was just so funny to me and watching our colleague Sam just got put out fires. Sam is in this every single day and has been first of all talking about the story the entire time. So you've been following him, you would've known the lead up to this entire situation. Yeah, there's no surprise if you're following. Yeah, Right. We're like, yeah, we knew this was going to happen, but to everyone else it was shocking. And then secondly, it was the league itself and where it's going and what they're planning to do moving forward with all the Arena Football league and all this. And so it was just kind of funny, but that's an example. That's just one thing to be picked up because it's so shocking and it's got this one figure that everyone knows that it's going to get picked up and be passed around, but all those people are going to go away and not actually care about the National Arena League because that's, that's not their beat. So it goes across for all leagues that don't have regular viewership or regular fans involved or at least the number of fans that you need in order to have that constant exposure. We try our best. Obviously us in our group tried as best to get that information out about all these leagues, but people are like that. They're just going to be touch and go, they're going to be here for a minute and then they're out and tell the next big thing happens. We'll start winding up here pretty soon. I got nothing to do today. Dorothy's out at the lake. I have a wedding tomorrow, but I'm sure Andy wants to go do other things today on his vacation. But good viewership here. I appreciate if anyone else has any questions, we'll probably start wrapping this up here. Get out. Hope Pat makes it home safe. Like I said, I know he was having connection issues, I appreciate him and kind of worked out here and Andy being able to have time and otherwise I'd probably be sitting here talking to myself for an hour. So I appreciate that Andy making the time and like I said, I know Pat doing his best. You're trying to get back from his crazy crazy work schedule. I know that Pat's kind of had his, well recently, I will say if you want football tonight, four o'clock Pacific, seven Eastern free for anybody because I wanted to check and see here when the game's on. But CFL plus tonight, if you go to cfl.com/or cfl.ca/plus, I just Google CFL on the plus sign, but BC at the Argos tonight think it's going to be a really exciting game BC really hot right now, Vernon and all of that. So just that's my little plug if you want football today, if you have nothing going on, if you're holiday in or if you're here in the States and it's kind of weird. Some people are working today. I think we have good viewership right now. I think some people just have the day off, but today for Pacific I think that's going to be a good one. So it's completely free. They don't even show ads on there because I don't think they have the rights on that. So just Google CFL Plus. But it's going to be on today. Argo's BC alliance at Argo's going to be exciting there. Anyone else has any questions? Andy, anything else from you? Because we could talk all day, we can figure out something for this week with what we want to do for the show, but I just don't want to belabor anything today. Yeah, just two things actually in different leagues. So first of all, I agree with you. Tonight's matchup for the CFL's going to be great. I love that Argos, bc, just first of all, the color scheme that orange and blue, the Cambridge blue and the bright orange, I love that contrast. Potential gray cup preview depending on what happens. I love the idea of Vernon Adams Jr going against Chad Kelly. Two really up outstanding quarterbacks for two leagues. I think you and Mike need to start getting some rolling bets going on during the season because you guys are going to match up multiple times and I think you need to continue this trend of jabbing at each other during the season. But this is really wonderful to see this matchup early on an undefeated matchup. BC's defense is awesome. They're playing on the road third time out of four games. So I wonder if at some point does fatigue set in with them being on the road so much or are they just going to continue rolling? They were in Winnipeg for Arlington I or Arlington the Argonauts. I think it's weird that they are not favored at home. I find that really intriguing. Again, I think getting the plus three at home is really interesting because they were not favored against Hamilton and they actually shellacked them and so that trend continues. But I think this is a great matchup. Maybe one of the best early season matchups of the season. I look forward to you and Jason talking about it on the channel again, you guys have been doing a great job talking about C F L content every week with that. So I'm looking forward to that game tonight. My last thing before I go is just, Oh, I lied. Yeah, it's not, dang it, it's not. Someone just said cold post it. It's because I it's not so if you're out of the us, if you're in the US it's got to be on here. It's on CBS Sports Network. So I completely li because I'm like oh it's showing here. Then of course once I click the link, if you're in the us get on your YouTube or your fubu, it's going to be on CBS Sports Network. Man, I totally bought that one. Okay, well that's good because then it records for me so that's better. That's that's much better. But yeah, so C F L content's going to be great. I mean that's the thing, it's that there's no off season for us. It continues here but as far as the U S F O goes, my last point is just be more accepting or if you're going to rebrand, just be more real with yourselves and really understand that there are other people that need to be involved so you don't treat yourselves as some special entity that is separate from the rest of the ecosystem and doesn't deserve to have other people involved because they don't get it. That's not the right messaging. I didn't like that messaging from day one about real football real fans. I think it's conceited and I think it's completely out of line with what the ethos of people's attitudes towards bringing football and alt football is. I think it's ridiculous. They need to get out of that mindset and they need to move away from that branding cause I think it really hurt them this season. They need to really look at themselves in the mirror and be realistic about their expectations next year until they start making some tangible changes with their markets, their team branding and where they're going as far as their talent accumulation as far as to competing with the X F L and the C F L for players. You need to be able to account for that. This is a different ballgame. There's people involved here, you need to step up your game or else who knows. If we're coming up on year three, it's really again another big year for them and to see where Fox goes with it going forward. But I want to see some tangible changes because quite frankly it just felt like more of the same this year and they need to really step it up next year. Gregory here has a question, football question before we get out of here. He wants see the rate the following stallions players, Jay Sternberg, Davion Davis, Dion Kane, Michael Petway, I, Dion Kane based on the title game was insane. I mean that the one catch he had in there was like three Moler guys draped on him there and he threw that down. Any thoughts on this that Gregory wants to talk about football before we get out of here? Well Kane was outstanding as far as the specialties player as far as a wide receiver goes. I think he was an excellent signing before the season. I loved him being added to this team and quite frankly it was is very crucial considering the people that they lost along the way. Micheel Petway was great too. I think they receiving court chase, I always thought he was going to stick in the NFL and he just never did. He just could not get the consistency that he needed to have. Especially when he got drafted by Green Bay. He was, he's, I think he's kind of still in that south cane role where it's like you're a good target, you're big, you have decent hands, but I'm not sure if you're going to be able to elevate yourself up to the next level. He may just be a spring football lifer for the rest of his career, but he's good. I think he fits well in this Birmingham offense. But as far as all the people on that list goes, I'd say Deon Kane is probably the most important as far as game breaking. He's going to offer you speed. He is going to offer you versatility and his routes. I think he's somebody that you want to keep around if you can, but who knows, he might get another call from N F L team. But that receiving core is pretty good overall. Again, considering all the injuries they had and the people they lost. I think Birmingham has to be pretty pleased with what they did, especially collecting this personnel Well and I think didn't Deion have three touchdowns in the game? He had that one. It was like the one corner grab and they went back to review it. It was funny because he gave the ball off to the fan in the stands. I'm like, this is going to be pretty embarrassing if this guy, it's like we went and saw years ago, I don't know if you know the band Sugar Colt, they had stuck in America and on Bounced off the walls again. They were in the Band Wilder movie. They had their song in there, but they were a punk band and they got it hit. They got, and they were playing at the Showbox here in Seattle and they play their thing, whatever they do their little set and they throw off all their drumsticks and everything and they walk off the stage and we're all chanting Encore, Encore, Encore. And they come back out and they go, so we've, we've never actually done an encore before. We, we've never headlined our own show so we're going to need you guys to throw back those drumsticks so we can keep playing. And so then my buddy Nate ended up catching it, then they threw him out again and he caught it the second time to end the show and that would've been like Dion Kane handing the football back and then being like, I actually know that that play. I thought that was funny. I go, that's pretty ballsy. You better better be pretty sure you got that in and yeah, inbounds there to hand that ball off to the stands. Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean you might want to ta tag a receipt to that football next time you hand it out. That was like when Brady handed off or someone handed, was it Brady's 500 someone handed off and then they had to get it from the fans stand? Well no was they tried to auction off. It was like they also had an auction where it was like, oh the handoff. Well it was the handoff but also they had I think his last touchdown pass or his last in that playoff game against the Rams. They thought it was going to be his last touchdown pass ever. And someone was trying to auction it off and then the value obviously after it was sold it was decreased significantly because he ended up renouncing, he was coming back. So that was a whole, whole ordeal. Yeah, I need, needed to get in on that sand market when they were auction auctioning off the sand from the beach where he retired. That would've been the move. Oh my god. Yeah, until that doesn't work either. Well here we go. I appreciate it. Like I said, Jason and I will be back tomorrow same time 9:00 AM we'll be doing our C F L recap big game tonight. We'll figure out this week. It's just weird because of the fourth and holidays and all that. I have weddings Saturday, Sunday or Friday, Saturday. So we will kind of figure out what the show looks like on Friday. But appreciate everyone, I appreciate Andy. I hope Pat makes it home safe. Thank you guys. Like I said, like and subscribe here and that. Where is my stuff here? We'll get out of here. Thanks so much.

Episode 151 - LIVE USFL 2023 Championship Pre-Game Show!!!

Well welcome everybody to the markcast here Happy. This is our normally airing time on Friday here ahead of the U S F L championship game this weekend. We've done our audio checks, we know everything can sound good. Look good here. Cavalcade of guests stopping by today. We got John Vogel here in the bullpen. I know Pat Rafino is going to be coming out. I have a really funny story I think is they're going to make Pat laugh. Evan Wills Moore Coach Craig Sports joining as well here. We'll probably go for an hour or so here. I know the U S F L Media Day is going on, if you can hear any of that, that's happening. But yeah, I'm sure they'll send out some press releases here. Hopefully kind of the tail end of this will work out, but that way you can enjoy the episode today. Your normal mark has Friday all the way through championship game tomorrow. Tomorrow is my birthday. I'll also Canada Day a day. So important in Canada that they decided to name make a holiday after it. So I will be balancing. I'll watch the game. I I'm going to go, we have tickets to the Mariner game too. My wife's taking me out, but we will, I'll watch be, I'll be watching the US F L game. We'll be excited about that. John Vogel standing by John, how are you doing Great dude. Thank you again for having me on and let's get into some of this ball stuff dude, because there's some good stuff to talk about. Yeah, so John was with us here. We did, what was the last thing we did? We did the rookie draft here for the X F L and now we're talking us F L as well. Interesting here. We'll talk the game. I kind of want to talk the US F L season. There's a whole here and kind of everything else. And I know Pat's going to have some thoughts. First things first, this just came across the desk this week. I thought this was interesting out of W B T M news in Birmingham. We are coming back US is the third season. This was like, I think Tuesday I think this came out and basically the quote from Darryl Johns was, yeah, we're coming back. We're already taking season ticket orders for next year. That was enough to prompt the U S F L announcing the third season. I said, they're already selling tickets in Michigan. They're already selling tickets in Canton. I didn't think that this was breaking news. This strikes me as Ryan Hennessy decided to pay attention to the U S F L here for the last week as the championship game is happening. Did you see that? I just, because all of our C F L outlets, like everybody picked up on this and I was like, this is funny. Yeah, so the first I saw it too, I think I saw the headlines coming through when this dropped Tuesday or whenever it was. I think it was Tuesday when it dropped. And my first reaction was, I think that's a little bit premature. So obviously this show is noted for being a U S F L hating and apparently if I'd go to my Twitter dms right now and the stuff that I haven't officially accepted, I could pull up some nice spicy stuff about how much I hate this league too. But I try to look at things as a realist and I think that that's, anybody who knows me, anybody who's followed my stuff for a long time knows that I'm going to be critical when I have to be critical. I'm going to be fair when I have to be fair and I'm really doing the best I can to be fair here. But the reality is you've got a TV deal that's going into a third year, the third and final year with nbc, that NBC has an opportunity to opt out of if they don't want to do it again. So the ratings this year are all being skewed by streaming services. So you really don't have a great idea of exactly how many people are exactly watching, which is ironic to me because you know, have access right now to see how many people are streaming and watching this, if I were to put something up on Facebook or YouTube or Twitter or stream it simultaneously, I could track how many viewers I have and I don't understand why this has been such a difficult thing for television audiences to figure out how many streamers are they actually pulling. It seems like it's one of those data points that they don't really want to release on anything right now because of the undigestible inconsistent numbers that come with that. But you do have this deal with N B C, they do have an opportunity to opt out of it and if they opt out of it, then you're losing a good chunk of the revenue that's kept this thing going for a long time. So that's kind of my question at this point is what is the plan to put together for, is NBC going to continue? The other part that you have to look at is why would this be favorable for nbc? Nbc? This has been great for them over the last couple of years in terms of developing broadcasters, especially with this big giant big 10 mega contract deal coming in. They're going to have a primetime game every week on N B C, whether it's Notre Dame, whether it's Big 10, they still have to cover all the Notre Dame games and then they're going to have another game on Peacock. So to me it's almost worth keeping the U S F L in the rotation for one more year, even if you take a loss on it from a financial standpoint, just because now you get to develop these broadcasters with real live game stuff and you, you've got a whole season to do it, 10, 11 games that you're going to be broadcasting. So that's perfect for them to set up as they get into the college football season. So that was my initial concern when I saw this was maybe it's a little too premature. We got to see what NBC wants to do before Fox because is Fox going to run this without them? Are they capable? Are they ready to do that? Do they feel comfortable doing that? What is the balance sheet look like at the moment? And that's kind of where I'm thinking it's probably not looking great. Oh, it's interesting. I mean NBC is the one that they draw the higher ratings of the two if you want to talk about it that way. And we even had the playoff game coming out of last week with the less sexy mallers against the Panthers here. I said that game's going to Outra, there's no question about it because it's the NBC slot that's going to outra the breaker STAs. And even though that was a blowout game and ended up being the blow game, I mean it was at least close in the first quarter there, but it wasn't even particularly close in terms of the ratings. And it's interesting the money that they're getting and the time slots of that, I don't know mean we just saw this morning we woke up and I think ESPN's laying off 20 people, high profile talent there. I know a lot of our friends in the C F L, a lot of those radio stations have been shuttered here and guys like Jason Gregor are losing their jobs. So I don't know what the feature kind of holds, but I think there's a lot of moving factors right now kind of in the sports media landscape anyway besides just spring football on the N F L or NBC and Fox. Yeah, absolutely. And that's the other part of it is that's a great point to bring up with the layups or the layoffs. The layoffs are really hitting this industry and I really think that a huge part of that has been now that the covid relief is really starting to fade from packages, these companies were getting giant payouts and covid relief that really helped them keep people on. Now as everything starts to open, everything's opened back up. We're kind of somewhat back to normal. I think at this point you're not pulling in this revenue now, you don't have that extra audience at 10, 20% that you were pulling just because everybody was stuck in their homes and had nothing better to do than turn the TV on. You don't have all of that at this point. So it is really interesting. I am interested to see what the decisions are going to end up looking. I think, like I said, I really like the NBC thing just because you get to develop these guys and that's invaluable for a network that's expanding their football coverage in college. You know, can't just go into the street and pick up guys that, oh, they might sound okay, whatever they, they have some experience playing football. You got to develop these guys. They have to develop that TV persona, that voice what's relevant to say you don't want to piss the colleges or the league off when you're calling the games like Tony Romo was infamous for doing so. There's a whole lot of different aspects to calling a game on television than most people actually realize. Oh, it's interesting here we I'll bring in, we have coach critic sports saying by I wasn't sure where, we never know where we're going to get into here. I didn't know if this was going to be the death penalty of the US L and NBC to start out, but that's good. I appreciate it here I think, but I don't know. I pride this show on asking the hard questions and fruitful, but at least having an analytical eye and not kind of throwing a parade party here going every second of the day. Coach Craig, how are you doing, sir? Doing pretty well. What do you make of this? We're talking, this started off here with the presumptive here on W V T M. We are coming back. You will announce the third season, which I joked and I said, well, I mean we're selling Canton tickets, we don't know what teams are going to be in Canton. We're going to have that hub exist next year here. Then John's kind of going on, what do you make of all this? It's kind of interesting at this point in time. I know think part of it was because the X F L already announced the second season, so you get the knee jerk too. I mean it's always been, I know you guys were talking a lot about the nbc, but I know Fox has always kind of been the main backbone of the support financially at least early on and for the guaranteed money at least. So don't hard to tell at this point in time, but it's good to see that both are supposed to be coming back at least at the very least next year for the players, for the coaches, for everything else, developing that ways. But then even when you're talking about some of these sports personalities being laid off and you're talking about NBC kind of developing newer guys, where's that clash going to come? Are you going to stick with some of the newer people that you're developing or this other person that people know gets fired somewhere else or you're going to throw them in all of a sudden too? So Yeah, it was interesting. A lot got made of the X F L losing the 60 million in the Forbes article and all that. I mean that's still getting dms about all that and Fox and U S F L is under a unique opportunity where you can write off a lot of that money without actually losing it. And I think a lot of the Fox stuff, and I know they brought in some more outside media people this year to run some of the hubs and all of that, some of the hub comms and everything, but you're able to offset a lot of those expenses where if I'm going to go, this podcast for example is subsidized by best made videos. I'm not paying out of pocket to kind of do this, but it's part of the business I do for everything else where if you're X F L starting this up from scratch versus Fox and U S F L here, but then obviously the money coming in from N B C. A couple comments here, we'll get into the game and then we see Pat here, see if he's doing all right. I'll let him get logged in here. Jacob's saying the stalls will dedicate their championship to you. I appreciate that US F L day is taking place on Reid's birthday this year. Dylan agreeing with John. That's what he's saying. Someone has to have the streaming numbers. I agree with that. Jacob checking in. I watch on U S F L on streaming and then Mike has a question, he knows it's U US F L day. He wants John's opinion on the new rookie quarterback, the guardians to science. Oh Todd, I can't even eo. Yeah, yeah, Todd eo. Okay, so Todd, I actually got a really good look at him. He was down at the tropical bowl in Orlando this year, got in, I think his dad I think as well contacted me through social media about some different stuff and we were back in, we were talking about some stuff, met his agent as well. Todd's probably one of the dudes that I'm probably more tied into in this draft class than a lot of the quarterbacks, but he's interesting. Six foot 180 5, 1 90 range, I think little bit more mobile. He started out at Temple, ended up in a quarterback competition with Anthony Russo, who, if you remember San San Antonio, they were both at Temple together. EO transfers to Colorado State. He's there for a year or two and then ends up going to James Madison and helps them put together one of the best year, the best years we've ever seen someone come up from the ffc S to the fbs. They end up making a, they would've been bull eligible because it's their first year they couldn't go to one, but I mean it was a 10 and two season I think. And he's a dual threat guy at this level. I think he's very capable at the, he looked all right at the tropical bowl. I think that there were some stronger arms than he has, but in terms of the athletic ability that he brings, he's definitely a great athlete. He only played a couple series in the actual game and then pulled out what ended up going to the N F L P A bowl as well. Got the call up to that game. So I think that this is a guy that I don't know if you're going to bring him in to a just straight up train, compete with the quarterbacks that are already there, especially with Dormy and some of the performances that he had. But Eos a guy that definitely bolsters a quarterback room and at the very least provide some real suitable competition when you're going through camp and he'll continue to push and whoever is at starting quarterback, if he's not as a backup, We'll bring on Pat here. Craig, any thoughts on Todd before we bring on Pat? I think it was a great sign too, and a guy like him a little bit undersized. So that's kind of like the biggest knock on him. He does. He's just kind of like the fighter and everything, but I think it's going to be a decent scheme for him to go into and quality backup at the very least too. I think he's an upgrade over Deandre Francois who everybody seems to keep giving chance after chance for, but if he can't come in and compete, at least with Doormat, at least be a quality backup for them. So here we're going to bring on Pat. Here's a funny story. So I watched, there was no C F L anything on last night, so I watched that Dune movie, the one with the kid and all that. What's it? Timothy Almet. And so I'm sitting there and talking with Dorothy about it after I'm like, yeah, it's crazy and there's sand worms and stuff and I go, Jason Mamoa is in the movie and he's kind of weird because he doesn't have all the Aquaman like his goatee and everything, but Jason was, and Dorothy goes, who reminds me of Jason Momoa? Pat Rapino? She said, pat Rapino Is her. She said that, pat, I said, that is a huge compliment. I said I would die of anyone to recognize me as Jason MoMA. Pat, what do you think about that? Don't steal my wife from me. Yeah, no, my wife would be watching this, so I can't comment on, I appreciate, I mean I think Julie and Helen, the tight end from the tight end from the gamblers who left, I think he looked like Jason Mamo way more than me. So I think he's a good looking guy. So usually I get Ben Affleck when I'm trimmed up more, so I don't know. I appreciate it. I'm a little bit taken back guys. Yeah, had to drop you on the hair. So here we got the good question to kind of spin this off because we will talk actual football in here coming up I promise, and we're going to preview the game. But yeah, we got time on here today. It's one game this weekend. Harrison, a longtime friend says, I think the Mahler's are going to end. They're going to match up really well with the Birmingham seeing the interviews with Darryl Johnson doing. I assume we were going to get a team rebrand in Ohio. Pat and I talked about that. We'll get his expanded thoughts today. John, what do you make of that here? I'm not saying Pittsburgh's going to win, but if they do win, it's a really weird look to be like you're going away or we're tearing to what do you handle that kind of whether or not, because you have a playoff team now in Pittsburgh? Well, so yeah, no, it's going to look really weird because that puts 'em at what, six and six on the year and now you got two spring leagues that pro produced sub 500 record champions. That's definitely interesting. But if we're going to talk about some of the matchups and different things like that later on, that's really where we can get into where they match up well and all that. But to me, I don't think, I don't see it as well as much, let's put it that way. I think that Birmingham's pretty stout across the board though the offense that they can provide, the different areas of the field that they can attack. They have a quarterback that's playing just as well as anyone in the league in really both of the spring leagues at this point. I haven't seen a lot of CFLs, so I can't compare to them yet, but that's kind of, I think that, yeah, no, I'm not entirely selling that now in the sense of Pittsburgh. I don't think the Pittsburgh would be the team that rebrands to Ohio. I think that maybe you're going to get, that's a tough one. Even maybe New Jersey. New Jersey would probably be the most likely school a team to rebrand. I know, but that's what I would think as well and especially the their lack of success overall this year. But that's the most recognizable team. I mean whether or not you want to deal with the Trump of it all or anything else. The generals is I think the most recognizable of any of the original US L am I wrong in that? Is that my kind of being younger? No, I don't think so. I mean, you could take the Trump can take the Trump effect out of it and go down the list. It's Herschel Walker and I, he's a politician. Politician now too. Friend of Pat, by the way. Lo low key flex there. I mean, okay, take Herschel Walker out who's next? Doug Flute. You know what I mean? There's a couple and I'm missing people. And not only that, Mike Mitchell used to watch New Jersey General Games, so in the eighties, but I, I've been very critical of anything. New York, New York, New Jersey, because I don't know, we've seen it. We do have a little bit of substance with the Guardians in 2020. They had the Brooklyn Black Tips in 20 14, 20 15. Brian Woods's first go around. And then when I actually went to one of these games they played at Hofs show was the Hartford Colonials and those guys didn't draw very well either. I don't remember what the hitman did. I was a little young. I didn't go to any of those games. But I mean there's recent data there that would to me show that it doesn't really work out as well as we wanted to. But then you can go to DC and granted it's a couple hours away, but DC football's different in Virginia, Maryland, like the DMV area, they have, I mean Audi Fields's the perfect stadium too. I think we can all agree that 18,000, you show up 18,000 in that 18,000 stadium, it looks wild. You show up 18,000 in a 60,000 person stadium. No one cares about that. So I, I think they have to go to New Jersey just so they can try it and then it not work. If it doesn't work, if it works then hey man, I'll take that. This clip of Pat Rafino said football and football doesn't work. I'm good with that. Prove me wrong. But I think New Jersey is, because I think New Orleans would do pretty, and I think Houston would do pretty good too at some point, but keep that can legends in the back pocket. Can I say blow your load? Don't show your card on that too early. Well, it's hard because I think the Canton thing proved this year, and obviously we had the two pseudo teens, but it didn't work particularly well, at least compared to at least Memphis and how they showed up there. Coach Craig, what would you like to see them do? Because I think they're in this conundrum. We are officially selling tickets. We're selling tickets for the hub, but we will announce teams later. What do you make of that? What would you do? Yeah, it's just interesting because you're selling something for what you don't really know is going to be there for sure at this point in time, and I know you guys talked about the generals, but even if you look at the stars, it's kind of hard to move them because of the success they've had in the league over time. This is the only year they haven't had real success or as much success we should say. But so it's just very tricky situation to see how it all pans out, especially moving forward. But it'll be interesting to see what happens, honestly. Yeah, we'll get to the game here. I remember when they announced the teams last year, and I know Pat was part of that and all of our lead up into the US F L season one and because there was a lot of questions about that. Okay, we had a team in Houston and the XLS going to be in Houston and we have these New Orleans or what's going on and it's all kind of on the east coast. And I remember the quotes were, and I think it was Johnston and whoever else was, I don't think Woods had a lot of the quotes, but it was like, well, these are the trademarks that we had available and that's why we wanted these resonated. And we had basically, these were the ones that were popular in the eighties and we thought that we wanted to capitalize on that. I'm like, yeah, but that doesn't speak to the demographics or landscape to exist in 2022 and 2023. And I think it's, sure it was tremendously difficult back in the eighties to get market traction in New York, New Jersey. Anyway, that's very, very difficult now. Mean as in New York guardians, I mean they couldn't get anyone to cover their games at all up there back in 2020 except like you said, kind of Mike Mitchell go in there. So it is weird to me that it's always been like we're relying on this nostalgia, but it's transplanting it in this new world and not making any adjustments on that. John, do you have any other thoughts? And then we'll get to the game, we'll do some more talk, but I want to get to some game matchups. No, I think all the points that you guys just brought up are great with new, especially with New York, that whole area. I mean, they love sports, but they don't want to go support smaller school, smaller teams and the colleges up there don't get a lot of support as, and that's why I think that you see schools like Syracuse, they'll have a good year here and there, but for the most part they don't. And especially in football, they're not powerhouse or anything. A lot of the top schools there in the division one level are fcs and they're in the Ivy Leagues or whatever. That's kind of the top football stuff there. I mean if you look at the names by themselves, Cornell Big Red, the big green, okay, wow. Very original. These are supposed to be really smart people that don't understand marketing, I guess. So it's just when you compare those conferences just from a college standpoint to other conferences, there's no real market value. It's just, oh, we've just been doing this since the 1890s and that's, that dies up there. And so we've seen that happen before and that's kind of what I'm looking at. That's kind of what I'm, look I'm comparing it to is you've got New York, it just doesn't work unless you are top tier N F L N B A and then they just live in this perpetual suffering of being a New York sports fan because New York sports for the most part really kind of stinks. So Let's get in here. We'll talk some more about all this stuff. The game coming up. Mike is saying here, scattered thunderstorms in the forecast for Ohio tomorrow. If it's that bad, it really helps to all our chances. John, what do you make of this? Not the matchup I think anyone really expected. I prefer this over a star Birmingham Redux here just because it's something new. What do you make of this matchup? The first thing was from last week. If you can look at the four teams that made it, three of the four teams were all new head coaches in this league. And I think when we did the U S F L preview show and we were talking with Rick and all those guys that were on that show, one of the things that we were talking about was when I was making the point, well, we have these new coaches, I don't know how well they're going to mix in. So I can't put a lot of stock into, well obviously they mixed in very well. There were three out of the four teams that made it. And so I thought when I watched Pittsburgh, I watched the entire Pittsburgh, Michigan game. It was a great game. It was back and forth most of the time and every time it looked like Michigan was about to put it away, Pittsburgh stormed back in pit, obviously most deserving team to go face Birmingham. They did a really solid job. This team has played really well together. Boogie Roberts has done a great job on the inside all year, gotten the recognition for that, being able to rely on Troy Williams kind of when you were trying to figure out the quarterback situation and able to run with him. That Al also helped as well. To me, I think that, yeah, the weather is going to have to be a big thing. And the other thing that they're going to have to do is they're going to have to find some way to neutralize Alex McGoo and really win in the trenches to have a chance at this thing. Craig, do you think that the Mahler's defense here enough because Birmingham, by and far best offense in the league, is this enough? Are they able to, can they score enough? I mean, in terms of a matchup, what do you make of the Mueller year against stallions? Yeah, honestly, they're going to have to create some turnovers if they're going to have a chance because the off the Mueller's offense, yeah, it's better this year than it was last year obviously, but when you still look at some of the advanced statistics and when they get down in the red zone and stuff, they're still not scoring enough. They got a really good kicker and Chris blew it this year, but they just don't have that extra punch on offense and they got really creative and I give Tomlinson a lot of credit for what he's done with the offense and being able to adapt to what the playmakers they have. I think honestly a big factor is going to be too, because the last two weeks, Bailey Gaithers played like 42% and less of snaps. I think I'm the only one that tracks snap counts for U S L anymore at this point in time. But he was coming off that ankle injury a couple weeks back where he missed the game. So I don't know if they've just been having him on a pitch count or what because he's still gotten targets. He's still been involved in the run game a little bit. He's got to carry in both games. So it's like you think if it was bothering them that much, they wouldn't try to use them that way. So I it's kind of, has it been the matchup? Has it been the personnel? It's just been very interesting how they use some of these wide receivers this year, just in general. We'll bring Pat here again. Pat again doing work here and bouncing back and forth. Pat, you took off your sunglasses. Can you put your sunglasses on for just a second? Can you say that one more time Please? I said Pat, put your sunglasses on for one more second. You took your sunglasses off? Yeah, no, that because of my opinion. Oh my Goodness. There you go. Was and then he logged off and I'm like, I'm ready to go. Ready for It? Yeah. Oh, what's that? I hear That's his badge with a picture. That definitely fits that even better. Yeah, that's good. He put sunglasses on that. Picture it. It's freaking Jason Mamoa. Good lord. All right, pat, let's get your thoughts on this. We talked, pat and I, we did our Monday, we've done our Monday recaps and all this stuff. What are you making of this now that this game is actually here and we're coming here at Mueller Stallions? I mean, I've been pretty vocal about this. It's like why not the Muellers? I don't think they're going to win, but I mean I didn't think Arlington was going to win. So take that opinion. For what it's worth, the something that does strike me is that they did activate another running back this week. So maybe they're going to lean on this. I think his name's Dwayne, Dwayne, Gary or Dwayne Gray. I know they deactivated a gray or a Gary and then activated a gray or a Gary. So Gray was deactivated and Gary is the running back that was activated. So you're spot on. Yeah, So for those who are dyslexic, apologies on that, but I mean it's getting everyone, but I mean you just see what Magoo does and everything like that. I just don't think it's a firepower thing. I mean coach tapped on it pretty easy. It's like, yeah, they might make these defensive stops and whatnot, but are they going to be able to put up 28 points, 30 points against the stallion's defense and kind of seems like everyone's going to be going full send on this, you know, got one guy Harper who's questionable with, he's sick, but is he actually sick or he is got a stomach bug. You know what I mean? The illness thing is always a mystery to me. But I mean they're pretty deep at receiver. I think they just signed a, last week they signed Johnson back to the team and whatnot. They signed back Ryan Pope last week just in case. So they added more depth on the offensive line. But Michael Petway is probably the most frustrating pass pass catcher. I won't call him a tight end, I won't call him a receiver. He kind of just does his own thing. But he's probably most frustrating pass catcher in alt football because he has a potential to dominate these leagues and put on Hakeem Butler like games, but always just kind of makes a boneheaded decision, stops running his route, something like that. So I mean, I just don't know about the firepower that defense is good, but I mean, you see what Magoo does. He's back there running, he's doing some Mahomes esque like versions of buying time. I don't care how good your defense is, eventually someone finds a soft spot and you know, get a 19 yard game. John, what do you make of this here and just in terms of, I don't know, we saw such a blowout here with Birmingham and New Orleans and here when New Orleans thought to be one of the best teams, and I think they were four and oh five and oh, and then Macau came on the show and then they lost three games in a row and then he shaved his beard and it was a lot of, it was really weird season for The Breakers here so that if Birmingham man handles New Orleans like that, I'm a little afraid of this. And I see Evan Sandy by here. We'll get Evan on in a minute. Yeah, so remind me when DC played, go back to the X F O when DC played Arlington in the regular season. Didn't DC dominate that game? Yeah, the second time they went to the right, that was the one that the overtime at the end, right? Arlington, I think the second time at home, I think DC won the first and then Arlington took him to overtime. So I guess it should have been a little bit more kind of eye-opening, right? Well, no, no. Cause it would've played once they were in separate conferences Or separate divisions, then it was right. Am I remembering this in the Arlington took dc I can't remember what the score was, but I remember DC for some reason dominating that game against ar against Darlington the first time, not before, not talking about the championship game, talking about the regular season game when they played. I think that adjustments, that's a huge part of when you go back and you look at the tape and you see what you did wrong, you can come into a game with a great game plan and when you have a team that is that much better than you and you, they're going to expect you to come in and make a couple changes. But for the most part they're like, we've already seen you, we know what we're going to do. Okay, so it was a close game. It went into overtime. That's what, yeah, that I'm seeing. Okay. All right. So close game. That just totally negates my point. I thought the DC dominated that game for some Reason. Does I do? I thought I remember that for sure. I'm like, I swear to God, I Remember. Did Arlington come back into this thing? Does anybody remember? Yeah, yeah. No, no, no, no. They came back and that was the whole thing. They had the challenge and it was wonky there at the end. But yeah, they came and got it close and then DC was like, who we're still the best. Yeah, okay. DC dominated the recovery pe. That must be, I'm remembering. Yeah, You're first time, you're half correct. I just am glad I remembered part of this. No, no, no. So I must have, because the XFL season, I had a lot of different stuff that's right before the draft had a lot of different stuff on. You're fine, you're fine. I definitely, definitely probably watched the first half and turned it off because I had better things to do. So no offense. No offense anyway, but no, no, no. So I think that when you have a close game against somebody, like a game like that where you see someone being dominated, it gives you an advantage coming into play them the second time because they're going to expect you to do a lot of the same things they think they got you figured out. You come out, you make a certain adjustments and you do something totally different that gives you an advantage going into something. So obviously I think that the second half probably played a lot into what they were able to do in the championship with that game. But in this one we've got a close game. These two played in the regular season, correct? Pittsburgh and Birmingham, it was a very tight game. Pittsburgh was very competitive with them, which means Birmingham's not coming into this thing thinking that they know exactly how they're going to handle them. I think that in this case, Pittsburgh is the team that's coming in kind of thinking we know exactly how we're going to handle them because they were very close last time. And with a team that is that much better than you when you can be that competitive with them the first time that you play, it's almost an adva a disadvantage when you're coming in the second time because you're thinking that you're on the same tier with them. You were last time you played and that's a dangerous school of thought. You kind of saw New Orleans get into that New Orleans beat Birmingham outright early on in the season the first time that they played and it was bad if I remember correctly. So that's my point is you've got a team right here that can do that, that's not close in terms of talent and at skilled positions at different places like that, they're close in the trenches. So what you're kind of hoping for is you dominate the trenches, you get the weather advantage and then make things happen. And we'll bring on Evan here. I know I here, you know also have to remember this closer game, 24 20, Pittsburgh was on the upswing here, one and three started out slow and then they really kind of flipped the entire schedule or they're kind of entire season. So you got to kind of look at the momentum coming in there. Let's bring on Evan here, Evan Willmore. Evan has joined us on some of our C F L recaps here and talking everything else. We were on the rookie droughts as well. Evan, how are you doing? Yeah, doing well. Excited to talk about some U S F L football. I've been a while since I've done that. Well it's good. What's your thoughts here? And then I want to kind of do season, let's get a little bit more on the game and then we'll make this a little more evergreen and do some season thoughts. Evan, what do you make of the mallers as stallions here coming in? Yeah, I think it's going to be an interesting game. Had we not had the X F L championship before this, where there was a similar matchup between records, I would probably think this was going to be a blowout. But after seeing what the Renegades did in the X F L, I'm looking at the mallers here, we can't count anybody out and that's kind of where I'm at now. I do think the stallions will still win. Personal opinion, I just think talent wise, I mean I just look at the roster top to bottom and I can't find anything close to that even across the entire league. I mean maybe New Orleans came close and that's not saying that Pittsburgh doesn't have pieces that I don't like, but it's, there's so much talent on that stallions team and they've just been clicking so much. I can't say it's going to be a blowout because I went on record before that X F L championship game saying, oh, Arlington shouldn't be there, blah blah, DC's going to beat the brakes off. It'll be a 30 point deficit. And that didn't happen. So I'm a bit more reserved now, but I'm still taking the stallions here. Let's talk here through some of these awards and I think we have the MVP stuff coming out today as well. I know the media day is still going on here. Thoughts on the Mark Thompson of it all? I know that he was upset. We'll get John's thoughts and we'll go down the line. I know he was upset. I saw tweets, I wish I was playing quarterback. I mean we presume LA Go was going to get that right, but what did you make of Mark Thompson and then Frank gida here as a defensive player of the year? Yeah, mark obviously had a really solid year. Every time I turned on a Houston game, he was keeping them in a game. And I think that says a lot about what they were able to do with him, the improvement that they showed up in the trenches, because that was a team that was absolutely dominated last year. And I get Mark, I get that he's all upset about it and thinks that you should be the MVP and whatever, blah, blah blah. But here's the fact of the matter is running back is a position that is really, really dependent on your offensive line. If you don't have an offensive line, you're not going to be a factor. And that's what we've seen in these leagues is we've had really solid running backs going to teams, not getting the offensive line help that they needed and just absolutely not playing up to what up to standard. I mean Darius Victor's a great example this year. That team is not as strong as they were last year in the trenches and he ends up not looking as strong. Granted, he still had a good year, especially when they figured things out toward the end of the year, people came back healthy, but he wasn't the same player that he was last year. And that's not because Victor is, he's gotten worse. He's still right there in the prime of his age. It's just that he didn't have the support that he needed as much. So I always don't, I personally I don't like, and I've come from a running back wide receiver background, so I don't like guys that want to, oh well I should be this and da da da. No dude, you're a running back that's on the offensive line to protect you and give you the space that you need. So obviously great year 14 rushing touchdowns is an awesome accomplishment in 10 games or 11 games or whatever that was. But no, when you look at what a, we're assuming Alex Magoo was the MVP well deserved, that's a guy that's really done a lot of different great stuff all year. Coach Craig, same question to you and then I want to talk general share follow up here in a minute, but what do you make of these offensive defensive? Yeah, so I'm just going to say too, Mark Thompson played eight games. He missed the first two. So there's 10 games season. Oh sweet. 14 and eight games is what he had, which with bar by far and away a record. But at the same time, you have to keep in check that Alex McGoo had one of the best spring football seasons of all time too. And he's a quarterback and he's on the best team record wise and all that. So you had that all up. He's going to get the mvp. I think it's kind of interesting though, just when you look at the U S F L, the two years, how the offensive player of the year and the MVP have been different people and assuming that's going to be the case once again this year, I think everybody probably expected getting it to be the defensive player of the year too after he is won four straight weeks. Some of those weeks I'd argue he probably shouldn't have won, but that's, he's got the big fanfare behind him too. So there's a lot of good defenders in this league though, Just to me. And I remember here it seems like every year N F L media kind of when we're talking to MVP and like, oh, could it be Jonathan Taylor? Oh, could it be Cooper or Cooper Cup or whatever. I would, maybe they could take a stand here and be like, Hey, it's the US F L, we could have a running back B R M V P. I get those. A good thing about that. Evan Thoughts? Yeah, I mean look, Mark Thompson, I think he deserved offensive player of the year M V P. Yeah, I think you still give that to a quarterback. I think a lot of the frustration on his end probably comes from the fact that the gamblers didn't make the playoffs especially, and that's two years in a row now that he's been on the team and they didn't make the playoffs. Personally, I thought he was really underrated last year. I didn't think many people were talking about him. And then he kind of, I guess exploded onto the scene this year and everyone was like, oh, who's this Mark Thompson guy? I'm like, oh, well I remember watching him last year. I always had an eye on him. Same goes for Frank nda. He was someone who I watched a lot last year and I was like, you know what, this guy's a lot of potential. And he kind of stuck through with it on the Panthers. And again, fortunately his team made the playoffs, they're not making it to the championship game, but he's another one that I feel like both of those are correct. There's a couple other candidates I would've thrown in there. Again, I didn't watch every U S F L game, so I'm not going to be the one to talk about that. But yeah, overall I think good picks. And especially with Mark Thompson, again, I think a lot of that frustration just comes from the fact that he's probably looking at a team like the stallions where they're in the championship back to back years and it's kind of the why not me mentality. And I would point out too that Ruben Foster had a phenomenal year with Pittsburgh. I mean every time you put on the game, he was making a big play. Boogie Roberts had a great year, the generals had another, had an interior guy, can't pulling his name up so I can make sure I got it right. Johnson. Yeah, Toby Johnson, absolutely dominant all year. There were a lot of guys that were in the candidacy for defensive player of the year. So John, are you surprised the genital said such a fall off this year? No, no. We talked about that during the U S F L championship game. I mean not, sorry, the U S F L preseason and I talked about, I said the first thing was my very first note on Mike Riley from the very first game that I watched, which the generals was the opening game generals lost to Birmingham was Mike Riley is not in any mental condition to be running a football team. And then they proceeded to win nine games back, straight games after that and going end up getting knocked out by Philadelphia in the championship, in the sub championship game, whatever. And I was like, well, I was obviously wrong about that, but I, looking at the roster, there wasn't a lot that they did this year to improve it, you know what I'm saying? Whereas all these other teams were going out making moves, bringing in people you didn't see that. It was like the generals kind of came back into this year thinking that we're going to be able to do the exact same thing we did last year and it's going to work and it didn't. So I think also you kind of saw the age and the lack, I don't want to say lack of energy, but that's really the best way to put it, that Riley is just an older guy, doesn't have that energy that can be captured by some of these younger coaches that were more successful. Even Ray Horton, he's an older guy, but he still has the right energy. So I think that was the big thing is you know, kind of got an older guy running a team trying to run off of last year's success. You can't do that in a professional football league. It's a whole nother beast. And that's kind of what happened in New Jersey this year, Craig, in terms of, yeah, Ray coming in, obviously getting his team to the championship game here could have let age whoever really seemed invested the whole time kind of felt like he bought in. Especially where we had that. We talked to Matt King Kirby Wilson and everything last year and kind of how it was kind of a mess. I mean he was walking into another great mean. Obviously you're going to rate good here. We may do the championship game, but what do you make of his performance here through the year? Because I think it really could have gone the other way easily. Yeah, it easily could have. And I mean you go into the year, you kind of have this whole quarterback situation. Everybody thought it was going to be James Morgan because he is the fourth round draft picker in the NFL a couple years ago and he comes out, he doesn't play good and you're going back and forth at quarterback and he comes off to the slow start. You could have easily lost the team in two seconds like Kirby Wilson did last year. But Ray Horne, he has this good solid foundation. He's been around the league, he knows what he is talking about, people respect him, he's in there, he is having a blast with it, coaching with alongside his son and all this too. And just bringing everything together. And one of the things that he kind of did too is he kind of let his coordinators do their job and he developed the whole team and just looked over everything, which I think is really underrated for a lot of coaches. Cause a lot of coaches, I'm an offensive coach, so I want to coach the offense or I'm a defensive coach and I want to coach the defense. And a lot of times when you're a first time head coach, you miss a lot of things because of that too. So I think anytime at any level, a first time head coach should not try to take on both responsibilities at the same time just because it's so hard to do and har so hard to juggle. And we've seen that time and time again at various different levels too. And even going back to Mike Riley too, talking about the age, but I remember last year they make a big deal too when he was talking about how he had to help take care of his wife and whatever because she's got early dementia and all that stuff too. So you take the ad football and it all on together, it's going to take a wear and tear on anybody, especially someone that's his age. Evan, who have you been most pleasantly surprised by this year in terms of performance? Could be team or coach or what excited you coming out of the season? Definitely the breakers. I would say living up to that expectation. Now I understand they got blown out last week to the stallions, but I think ultimately there was a lot of hype going into that team prior to the season, especially acquiring OD Bethel Thompson from Toronto. And yeah, I think they lived up to all those expectations. Obviously it was more than just him. They had several other players on both sides of the ball. But I feel like that was a team where it was like, it's very rare in my opinion to see teams live up to such high expectations because there was a lot of people talking about the Breakers. Even last year I feel like that team was hyped up and they didn't perform well last year, but this year they at least made strides in the right direction. And personally I love Coach John DeFillipo. I think that was a great addition for them and someone who should be there for many more years to come. So I would say that team and then specifically their coach, I was pleasantly surprised by John. What do you think McLeod does next year? It was so interesting to me. It was last Sunday, the playoff game and I'm watching Chad Kelly lead the Argos and just absolutely kicked the snot out of the Elks. And then when I'm watching McLeod and wasn't a great game and Chad is getting, I feel like they're wanting him to be a little bit of the Nathan Rourke this year, even though he's significantly older and has a different history of this is our guy now. And Dave Naer is writing articles. Kelly the most important player playing in the C F L right now and kind of all that stuff. You see Mc McLeod here and I don't know if it's tired or just the team or whatever, and obviously not having your great end of the season. What do you think he does now? I think that at this point when you, you've left Canada, you're not going back, especially when you've got the family issues that that was the reason that you came down. Not bad family issues, but just the issue that you want to be with the family more. You don't want to be up in another country 20 weeks out of the year, 22, 23 I guess with all the training and everything else that goes with it and giving them something that's more still, I guess, right, stable in the sense of consistent consistently being there. And as a dad, I can understand and respect that 1000%. I think that anybody that is a parent, they understand what it's like to sacrifice that kind of time. You're watching your kids get older and you're just, you're ready to, I can't miss all this time. I got to make sure that I'm here, that I'm invested in, interested in what they want to do. And so I think that's kind of where he is at. Whether he comes back, I think that there's a good chance he comes back for another year, but really I think it depends on John d de Depo. Does he come back or does he get an opportunity to go coach somewhere else? Obviously he's not going to get it this year in the N F L, but this was a very hot coaching candidate a couple years ago. We were talking about him and as the offensive coordinator of Minnesota being a head coaching candidate in the N F L. So I'm sure that those opportunities are going to open themselves at the end of the year. And so I think that will have a lot to do with his decision as well on whether he comes back and plays football or if he's going to go ahead and say, you know what, I've had a long good career, it's time to hang out the cleats and just move on. I think it's interesting, and I think Pat and I talked about it here a couple weeks ago, we're going into potentially here, John and I talked off the top here about going into year three or whatever, but I think you get a lot of it. And obviously DeFillipo was new going into this year, but you get a lot of these guys that have been on the teams for two years, or you have the Mike Ry that's been on and you're like, okay, we're going to, okay, let's run it back, let's do whatever. And I think it's really challenging to run it back that third time, whether you're a player or coach, staff coach. Greg, in terms of us L off season here, are you expecting a lot of movement? What do you think in terms of players and coaches? I think it's going to be kind of interesting too because we saw a lot of guys, especially from the player, and try to get back up to the NFL last year. We only saw a handful even get on active rosters at one point last year too, with mainly Turpen, God, the safety. That was with the Mallers. I played with the Packers a little bit last year. Was it Mike Abernathy? I think. Yeah. I mean you had the injury, right? The guy that was with the guy, the Morgan, was it with the Cardinals. One of the guys got injured there as well and kind of missed the beginning of the season. Oh, I'm trying to remember. But I know Abernathy, his safety got up for a couple games with Packers last year. He is on with Atlanta for this year. So it'd be interesting to see how many of those guys tried to make that jump up too because a lot of 'em came back down this year too. It'll also be interesting to see when a guy like Alex, does he try to go back up to the N F L, try to get a backup job somewhere or does he try to stay and stick with the league? I know the first time the X F L was around, they were talking about a guy like Josh Johnson that who's a veteran, he's been around with a million and a half teams. Would you rather go back and fight for a backup job or would you rather go be the face of the X F L at that time? So maybe Magoo just does that and tries to negotiate some type of pay raise with the U S F L in there or he tries to make that step up because, well he's got in that awkward age where he's still young enough where he can go back up to the N F NFL pretty easily because I think he's what, 27, 28 at this point in time. Or he could just stay down there and be like, I'm going to ride out my prime for the next five years down here assuming that everything works out or go jump up to the C F L at that point in time if the US F l goes under or something like that. But we don't know exactly all that. I think the coaching end is where it gets where a lot of job guys seem to take more jobs. They're not as committed to these jobs whether or not is the head coaching job or not. But I think we'll probably see a good handful of them come back next year once again. So I think Michigan's situation would be kind of interesting with Mike Nolan if he decides he wants to coach another year. Mike Riley obviously with the age and his wife and all that, but I think Ray Horton's going to be back. I think Skip Holts will be back unless, oh, unless somebody really wants to offer him a college job again. Maybe he'll consider that at that point in time. Curtis Johnson I think will be back and I think he actually did a pretty underrated job too with Houston, kind of what the mess that he walked into too. And when he was at Tulane he started to build that program back up and then, oh God, I can't remember the GA guy's name. He's been there for five years now. Took and ran within, they've kind of had their ups and downs since then too, but talked to a lot of Tulane players and they really spoke highly of him. But I think for a lot of it will have a lot of the same coaches. Whether or not Todd Haley comes back might be another question too at that point. So there's just a lot of factors but I think for the most part we'll probably see I'd guess like five or six head coaches coming back. Once again, that's probably what you're going to see with most of these leagues on a yearly basis though Is I think it was Skip was it was the UAB there or whatever was trying to hire him. I think it was in the off season last year. He was in the runnings for that, which would've been funny to have him stand Birmingham. But I was thinking to Chris owe them with the Browns and he was the one that he got placed on the iris Season. Oh yeah, he tour his ACL I think right in early training camp. Yeah. Evan, we talked about this and we did our whole X F L, the U S F L kind or X F L, the F L kind of wishlist here about a month or so ago. And the players you wanted, it's crowded here and we've seen this and obviously we've seen the X F L signings slow down as well and now we have all these gambling bus and everything with the N F NFL and everything else. But in terms of the U S F L players getting into the N F L rosters right now, what are you making of that just in terms of player talent level but then also just the amount of space there is right now for players? Well, to be honest, I think it's going to be difficult and I don't mean that from a talent perspective because to be honest, in my personal opinion, I think this version of the league compared to last season was more talented. We can debate that. We can sit here, go through all the lost rosters, make comparisons. I'm not going to do that but that's my personal opinion. Now with that being said, there was a time where I thought by now at the end of June or whatever from the X F L, there would be 50 or 60 guys signed and it's been hard to push 30. So there was something last year, I forget who said it but it might have been Darryl Johnston or one of the people, but they were talking about how the US F L is actually set up better for coming into the N F L even though they finished their season long after the U D F A process much closer to when teams are reporting the training camp and everything like that. Now I wrote that off pretty quickly. I was like nah, you want to get it done earlier. But it could be interesting now, I mean I'm still very limited spots and like I was saying before, there's still in terms of the X F L numbers, they're not nearly what I thought they would be and I'll admit that any day. But I think the interesting conversation to be had is maybe the U S F L does match that number even though they're finishing later and then you really do have to open that discussion back up because I feel like I'm not the only one who thought that was silly thinking that the U S F L finishing their season in July if you make the championship would be better to make the N F L even though you're only a month and a bit out from the f l preseason at that point. But you never know. Now I'm starting to rethink that, just given again how slow the XFL signings have been and like I said earlier, just how much the talent has improved in my opinion, whether it's a minuscule increase or a big increase. Again we can debate that. But yeah, it's definitely an interesting conversation to be had on that front. Excuse me. It's interesting because we saw players already this year with the X F L, like the defenders that were in the championship game almost feeling like that extra couple weeks hindered them from getting signed right away. We saw players immediately duch and all that already doing tryouts the basically the week after the season was done and already feeling like that was a handicap. It's interesting now, like you said it, you're making the championship game. I mean it's 4th of July weekend here. I mean we're going in and all that kind of stuff. Rick was on the show last week, Rick, now with the I F A and all that talking, he does believe X F L has a better timeline. I think I've can unequivocally say now I kind of agree with that as well. I thought that the April thing was going to work good and I kind of bought into a lot of that hype last year and that we've kind of lived through this calendar cycle now. John, what do you make of that in terms of the now getting out of this, trying to get these U S F L guys in? So first off, I think that the alt leagues are in a really weird spot right now with trying to get guys to moved up. And the reason that is is because of the additional covid year that a lot of college prospects have right now. So great example is these talent pools that have been in the NFL draft over the last two, three, well really last two years have been incredibly deep across almost any position. The reason that is is because you have all these extra guys getting an extra year that they wouldn't normally have coming out of college, which gives them another year of prep, another year of development playing substantial snaps and football. So it's almost limited the alt football league effect from that standpoint and everybody's signings went down. I mean the C F L used to always put out 10, 20 guys every year and they put out four or five this last year into the N F L. So that's not to say that the talent is less in the alt leagues right now, it's just that the demand is when you're building a roster, you want younger guys, you want guys that you can develop if you're bringing them for a training camp, you want a guy that potentially is going to double his ability and if you want to look at it from a video game standpoint, he's going to improve that much over the course of a training camp that okay, well now he's actually competing for a roster spot. Whereas some of these guys, they're getting this development and a lot of them aren't there yet compared to what these guys coming out of college have the upside to hit. So the alt leagues have to be patient, the players that are playing and the alt leagues have to be patient because what's going to end up happening is here we got one more year where the covid year is really going to impact the draft pool. 24 is really the last year that it's going that we're going to have that at least to the effect that we already have still looking at a lot of six year seniors. There's not a lot of fifth year juniors left. Everybody's kind of cycled itself out. Once you get through that, once you get to the 2025 season and you're looking forward, I don't know how many of these leagues remain, I don't know who remains, I don't know who's left standing, but that's when you're going to start to see these 50 60 numbers coming out of these leagues, the 10 20 coming out of the C F L that we've seen consistently prior to the covid years. John, I don't know if I'm still standing in 2025 here. I mean I have to get on that listening to you and I think that this is, that's why you're on here is to give insights and stuff and I think that that's great and it just makes me think, and I've kind of said all along this tracking is tremendous and that they put the feather in the cap and okay, we got X number of players on, but that's why I firmly believe these leagues have to find other metrics to be able to champion that they are proud of during the season of just U S F L. Last year was we got 50, I think it was 51 guys signed that we are a success and now this year it's not going to be that and so is anyone going to look and be like, well hey you only got a fifth of that sign now or a 10th of that signed and your ratings were down to that. That's why you need to find other ME metrics to champion there because you're never going to hit, especially now X F L's never going to hit with U S F L and they're never going to hit and it's going to spiral down. Craig comments on that and then we'll go to Evan. Well I was even going to say too with what John was saying because you got all those covid year guys too, it's a blessing and a curse for these leagues too because you're not getting as many guys that you already have going up, but you're getting all the guys that don't latch on everywhere else. So you're getting that young depth of town pool and then when you go two years down the road when there's not as much supply coming out essentially, then you have all these guys that are still relatively young that have been playing a bunch in your leagues that have been developing instead of sitting on practice squads and stuff like that, being able to actually make the jump and some of these guys, that's all they need is that extra time to play at the same time and just to prove and put that additional tape out there too, especially some of the smaller school guys too. So it's just once that point happens, as long as these leagues can stick around, that's when you're really going to be able to shine out. But this year, next year might still be a little bit rougher in terms of guys going from X F L U S L going to the N F L making an impact or least staying on rosters at that point. It's just weird. And I know this wasn't all, I mean the X F L got killed because of Covid and all this stuff, but going through the time that we've done the podcast and Evan's been a part of everything and we've kind of all been doing this, we saw that Spring league in 2020 have McLeod, Bethel Thompson and Brian Scott and kind of all these guys of okay, what do we do, where are we going? And it's been a really weird because of Covid really has dictated the course of a lot of these leagues and the things we've covered on the podcast. I mean Evan, what do you make of that? Just in terms of carrying on the conversation here and I'm kind of keeping an eye on, cause I want to see when this us F l I'm getting emails here, I want to see if we're announcing stuff. So what do you got Evan? Yeah, well I said it when we did the X F L, the N F L show. It's interesting timing because when the X F L was around in 2020, that was a time of expansion in the N F L you were opening up practice squads, the talent pool wasn't as great because John said all that COVID eligibility stuff hadn't really come into play yet. So the X F L was actually able to take advantage of their season getting cut short and they sent guys to the N NFL right away within, it was late March, early April. Guys like PJ Walker, Dietrich Nichols were already on NFL rosters. Now it's a completely different world. It's flipped 180 again, like John said with all the eligibility stuff, it's just now you're at a point where the NFL, and I've said this before too, favors a certain type of player and that's going to be the younger player fresh out of college. They don't quite favor these leagues yet. I don't know if they ever will. It's probably going to be a couple years. They kind of have to settle in, develop over time, whatever. But I just think it's such a complex thing and I really want, I'm really interested, excuse me, to see many guys from the U S F L get signed here because again we just talked about before, is this sort of later end of the season, is that a good thing or not? And I think the number of signings that might prove it here because with the X F L it's already showing this is not the same world it was three years ago. It's so harsh to get guys in. Even good players mean the one thing that I noticed, especially with the X F L signings is some of those guys didn't even play a lot for their respective teams in the X F L. They were just younger. You know, look at guys like a Trent Harris who I covered extensively last season. I'm sitting there, he's 27, 28, why isn't he on a roster? He went to Bronco's mini camp. But the reality is unless you're like 24 25, you're already pushing it at 26 unless you kind of fall into that range. It's just so difficult And it's honestly, it's a shame because these leagues have a lot of talent talented players and I was just talking about earlier how I think the overall talent pool and the U S F L has increased. I think the X F L talent pool compared to 2020 I, I'd say it's about the same but ultimately you have more players in more leagues and the fact that those guys just don't have the same type of opportunity to get a shot in the nfl, it's unfortunate but there's not a lot that can be done about it until you know, just have to give it time. It's one of those situations until we at least a year but probably more like two years, we're not going to get those pre covid or covid numbers that we saw. Cause even the AAF had a decent number of guys signed and that was well before covid a year before. And again their season was cut short too at the end of April. So they had some time. I want to get johnsson this and I got a couple other things here we'll get out at some point. I was kind of keeping an eye on the US F L chat or Zoom here, they're just getting to the stallions and I was kind of hoping that it would curtail the end of our show and Darryl coming on and announcing that stuff, we'll see. But I think the Mahler must have gone because stallions were supposed to start like a half hour ago so they must be running late, which is fine. I mean they're doing the media day. I don't have a lot of questions for that kind of stuff. John. So we've talked this promoting how do you deal with this spring leagues all that? What would you like to see these leagues do besides just hanging your hat on? We've signed 37 players to N F NFL rosters. Oh well if we could get into not just that aspect of it, but developing personnel, developing coaches, developing all those other aspects of a team. And I'm going to use a great point here today as the Senior Bowl just had their third scout signed this year from their staff onto an NFL team and they run a full scouting department as if it's an actual N F NFL team. They run the same type of grading systems, they use all the same different stuff. So it's developing scouts to move up into the NFL This year they didn't have the teams coming in coaching, they had individual coaches basically getting a promotion compared to what they normally work. And a lot of them came out of the Senior bowl with promotions with other teams or within their own team. They did a good job of the week and people got a chance to work with them and see them and they liked them. So I think that's, that's the next avenue that you really have to find a way into. And that's tough to do, right? Because there's not always going to have the money or the resources to send a lot of these guys and do what the senior role does, right? With they running an actual department like that. The XFL doesn't have a department. I've talked to Doug Whaley about that myself. So they don't have a department where they break down stuff. It's really all on the general managers, the eight guys and sending tape down to coaches and seeing if the coaches want the guy. So I think that's kind of where you're at is you got to find other avenues to develop people. So it's not just players, it's every other aspect. Front office, communications, coaching, personnel, all of that. Well it's also, it's just not sexy. It's not sexy to have that be a calling card of the league mean they want these and you've seen the Rock and how many Million press conferences did he say I was player 54 and kind of all that stuff. I remember and I love Coach Beck to when we went down to the Arizona showcase last year and he said my goal following the season would be I want every single one of my players signed to an NFL roster. And you're like, how do you sell that at all the Battle Hawks fans of invest in this team, invest in what we're doing and then we're going to move on to all these guys at the end of the season. I think they have to figure out some other way and whether it's developing things, but I don't know, how do you sell that to people to watch your league? Like here watch is people cut their teeth in broadcasting or we develop the players, they got to figure out some way to market these versus just we've signed X number of players. You know what I'm saying John? Yeah, no and that's a very solid point too because it, it's the whole reason why do you have this but it it's in the same way how do basketball teams do it? Minor league basketball, how does minor league baseball do it? How do the hockey leagues in Canada it it's all about finding that right balance of okay well this is a an area that needs and wants to support something like this. And that's what I think the XFL did better than the U S F L for the most part. US L did a great job picking Memphis, they got a lot of support from Canton, Ohio cause there's not a lot of professional stuff that's going on there anyways. So those are two really good places. But going out and going to St. Louis, that was a great job by the X F L going to Orlando, getting some support there. Didn't have a great season but you got some support. You got some people that are interested in that there. And so what you really have to do is you have to sell the community stuff. You got to sell, Hey we're invested here, we're invested in the community. Yes, we're trying to put players in the nfl. Yes we're trying to move them up but there's a lot of it's about hey come see these guys before they're in the nfl. That's really what people are trying to sell. And if you can do that in a, instead of targeting big television markets and this and that, on no offense, Seattle's not a great market either for one of these but you know what I'm saying. You got to get Target those specific, target those specific, why is the word escaping me at the moment? You got to those areas, you got to go get those markets. Those ones that they haven't have it, they don't have professional football and they want it and they're not going to ever get it. But give this to them. Let's go to Evan here. Rule. I know you got to hop off pretty soon and I don't think we're going to stay on tremendously longer, but let's go to Evan to kind of add on to the conversation. Yeah, well this conversation about the personnel departments here in any of these leagues, it's fascinating especially with the U S F L because they have a program that and something I could appreciate. They have a lot of younger people coming through and kind of exploring new opportunities. There was a very good article that went up on Fox by Reid's best friend RJ Young talking about the GM of the stallion. Zach Potter who's 21 years old, not even, he's like me, he's a college student and he wa was like the director of player personnel last season and kind of worked his way up into the role this year and talking about signing guys like Deon Kane and Thaddeus Moss, all their new editions that have put them in a position to win the championship. And that's a very fascinating story. You don't hear that very often. That opportunity wouldn't really be presented anywhere else. But at the same time, as much as that's a great story and good for Zach and I hope everything goes well for him and he can win another championship, the reality is the personnel departments are still deep and they're not talked about very much. I'm bringing this up cause that's one of the first articles I've actually seen about A U S F L front office or an X F L front office. I know in the X F L, like John pointed out, talking to Doug Whaley besides the director of player personnels for each team, whether it's Mark Lilybridge or Randy Mueller or whoever it be Von Hutchins, there's no one, they're the ones that are putting the roster together. There is no assistance there. And that's a really daunting task, especially given that the X ffl just expanded their off season roster size to 90. You have to individually sign 90 foot, that's a huge task. And not only sign them, but you got to scout them and work with the agents and it becomes a huge thing. I can't imagine how large their databases and pools must be. I'm sure it's in the thousands, but that is the part of the league that I want to see developed most both the X F L and the U S F L because I really feel like they could use that and it'll just, it'll make things better. I mean I'm not saying that these leagues haven't or they have done a bad job of developing rosters so far. I think they've been great. People put a lot of time and effort into this but it just makes it so much easier and it's a process where it allows for expansion. You're given more people jobs and opportunities and I understand there's some people saying well the X F L maybe employed too many people this year because there were a lot of layoffs after the season, especially in their marketing and communications departments. But besides the point, my general thing here is the more personnel people you bring in, the easier it is to find talent. Again, I'm not saying anyone's done a bad job, but we're at a point now where there's just so many players and through this year and next year especially, I mean if they don't start getting those people in as early as this off season and especially again with the X F L, they're doing their showcases and everything, they've got a lot going on. It's so much to manage and especially for one person on each team having to handle roster construction, things like that. Again in the U S F I know it's a bit different. They've got a couple more personnel positions but even then, is it enough to really build, how many guys do you have building the roster because we know in the N F L it's a huge number. There are so many different components to that and as someone who is studying sports business and will go into that after college, I would hope that there's jobs like that waiting for me and as if these leagues expand then I have a better chance of getting in somewhere and then it all works out. So I don't know, maybe that's more personal than anything but it's definitely, again, it's something that doesn't get talked about enough and I think part of that is because like Reed said, it's not really a sexy element. You know, don't want to hear the casual fan doesn't want to hear about your assistant director of player personnel going to some all-star game. I mean great to us that's cool. But to everyone else it's like who half those people probably don't even know what the Senior Bowl is. So that's kind of my take on it. Well Evan, that's because they know it as the Reese's Bowl. Evan, before you get out of here, the hub stuff this week kind of coming out and obviously they had their relationship with U S F L. Anything on that before we get out of here or before you get out of here, we'll take a couple more questions on here, but anything else from that hub kind of ceasing there? I don't even know what the proper wording is. Ceasing operation? Yeah, I would say seizing operations. I put an article up and Mark put an article up on both new sub sites and we kind of talked about what happened and the partnership with the U S F L most likely won't be continuing. Now does that mean that the next version of the hub camp, the grid camp run by Todd Tom good. That's not saying they won't send players to the U S F L cause I'm sure they will but it's just a changing time and there was a vision there at Hub that unfortunately didn't pan out in the form of a Senior Bowl type game. There were just some things that they couldn't get worked out and that was ultimately the end goal I think of that program. Not to say that the camps weren't successful and I talked about all that in my article but long story short Hub is no more. All those were in Southern California now it's grid camps run by Tom Hines who was the senior vice president at Hub and he also worked in the Arena football league for a while. He's going to kind of take over with his own camp and I'm sure it'll be a bit different. Yeah, I don't know all the details yet, I'll have to talk to him about that. But the general idea is there's still going to be a free agent camp and it will expand to more locations across the country, which I think is a good thing cause a lot of these camps were pretty strict to Southern California. They were going to have one out in Florida that didn't materialize because of hurricane in but this first grid camp is in Pennsylvania. I heard there might be one in Utah at one point as well and just other parts of the country in general. So I think it'll be good for that to expand and I definitely trust Tom with that venture. I know he'll do a great job because he was so closely tied in with everyone there at the hub thing. So yeah, that's what it is. I mean it's it's business and it ran its course and I think they had 15 camps over the course of three years going back to the first one was maybe August or September of 2020. So they were very successful and it was a good run but upon word and upward as I like to say. Well Evan, I appreciate it all your work people can track you over all the hubs and everything else that you can get out of here if you need to. We'll do we'll run through a couple more. I had a funny one here. We'll go to Craig because he hasn't got the chat for a minute. This from newbie editor who random and I've, I've seen this a couple times coming in here. Who would win defenders or stallions? And this one's kind of interesting too. This would be the last one I got before I got to go too, but it's really interesting. I think there's a chance the stallions win. This one, I kind of like the quarterback situation a little bit better with Alex. Running backs are both very talented on both ends. I actually like both those running backs really good between Abram Smith and CJ Maribel, they're both two guys I liked quite a bit coming out of college, obviously CJ's a little bit better pass catcher and can do other aspects in that regard. Marlon Williams was healthy, the wide receiver edge would go to Birmingham pretty clearly I think, but it's probably a lot closer there. Lucky Jackson had an obviously a great year and everything too. Dion came coming along really s came on really slowly this year. He had a couple kickoff touchdown returns early on then he had the weird illness for a while but towards the end of the year he's really come on a lot. So that was great to see. And then Sternberger coming back on to, I think they definitely have advantage at tight end and as long as Scooby Wright's healthy on defense, I think they probably have a slightly better advantage on defense too. So you can go with stallions. Well there you go. Well coach Craig, appreciate it here. We'll let you hop off and then John and I'll kind of wind this show down here soon. I appreciate it. Thank you so much Craig, on kind of everything he's got on the socials and we'll hide all that. Thank you. John, what do you make of that? Who would win defenders or stall? So the problem here is I, I'm too personally tied to this because I know Greg a little bit and he's a great guy and I really like his mentality on defense and I know that it's super aggressive and I know that he would, he'd send the house against Magoo to try to slow him down and then you got Temu and running the double offense with, I mean the two quarterback system with him and getting D King involved. I mean it'd be a close game, it'd be really close. Those would be two really, really fun teams to watch. I think it'd be exciting. I've had that a bunch on here and just in terms of kind of, hey what do you think about all that Before we get out of here, just overall looking back here, we're going to end the season, we're going to crown the champion here over the weekend Pat and I'll be back on Monday. We're going to do our post recap show and kind of put the U S L season to bed. Success not success. What do you make of the season? Absolutely success. It was a success. Okay, anytime you can get to a championship game in these alt leagues and play it, that's a success. And I think we said that at the end of last year, but it becomes even more of a success when you have back to back years. Were you able to pull it off? These leagues have pulled, they, it's been an entertaining product. It really has. I think that moving the kickoff back allowed offenses to have better field position, which allowed more scoring, that helped as well. The rules and stuff. We won't see any impact on that I don't think at the next level. The N F L, they're not going to take anything from this. But overall, like I said, you get through a year, you get this, you you're successful. That's positive. That's a great year. And they got through all the games and none were canceled and no teams bailed out and no teams fell out. And we have stars that are merging out of this league. We'll see. We'll how many get signed afterwards? I don't see more than 10 or 15 really being signed at all. Just even with space, there's not a lot of space, there's not a lot of space left in the league for these guys unless we have a whole lot more suspensions coming down the line from this gambling stuff. You're going to have your injuries, but there's a whole line of guys still in line for that. I mean I can see 10, 15 these guys getting signed. So It's crazy. I, because I saw this was it last week now where they had kind of the Carson we of it all and he kind of had this snafu on social media posting like his hunting photo that was very odd. But he was brought up that hey Carson, we is still obviously unsigned after being go from the commanders, which I don't want to see anyone lose their job. But I wasn't sad to see, I co-signed that with Ron hit me up and I said, yeah that's good we let Carson go. But they put the list out of these are all the guys that are so unsigned, current N F L, we're seeing all that, let alone now all of these other guys coming in. I mean that's the thing that's crazy is the N F NFL already has this surplus here of these are all these talented individuals and now you want to add all these other guys to the mix. And that's where we talked earlier about this two to three year jump, which I do think is going to be interesting to see. And do you find a lot of guys that just say, all right, I'm moving on. I mean I gave up my shot and we did this and maybe I've been grinding since 2020 and Covid kind of threw me for a loop and now I'm kind of in this and you get to the point where you're kind of moving on, I'll be curious to see what happens here in the next calendar year. Personally I don't think you're going to see that many dropout for that reason. And the reason is because these guys in the U S F L right now are getting paid $40,000 for on average to play 10 weeks. Think about that for a second there Reid, 10 weeks you're going to make 40 K and then you get to go somewhere else and go, you know, stay in shape but you can go take a job, your wife's working a job most likely your girlfriend or whoever is that significant other that you're doing stuff with and you're building this family, you're building this life. How many jobs would you turn down if you're going to make 40 K in 10 weeks? Is there Yeah, I get it. I know that's a good gig. And then you can come back and you know can do some other stuff on the side and you can work your side hustles and side projects. Maybe you got a job where you can go work somewhere with a friend that's doing something trucking or he knows all these guys have lives outside of football that allow them that they stay in shape, they keep working and stuff. But yeah, you make 40 k, that's a great investment for the rest of your year. And so I think that we, we've designed these leagues well to help the players so that they're making something substantial. It's not a waste of an investment for them of their time and at the same time it's not putting all of the stress of trying to keep up with these guys and pay 'em and stuff on the leagues as heavy as it could be. So you have your 10 week commitment, you get your 11 maybe 12 weeks. Yeah the injury, you got a chance that maybe you got hurt. That's obviously something you got to take in into account. But when you're at this level a lot of guys are playing because they love this game. That's why I'm doing, I do what I do Reid is because I got to a point in my life where I realized if I'm not doing something with football, I'm miserable with my life. So that's where a lot of these guys are. So that's what that I think that you're not going to see as many walk away because they're content playing in this league and understanding that their opportunities going forward is probably not very limited if any at all. And they're playing because they love this game. It's a good gig for them to work over the summer and then go back into whatever they're doing back home and support their family support and keep this dream alive. It's crazy to me and I kind of wear two different hats on here when I do my C F L interviews and stuff because you don't like, I respect all of them and everything they do and I love the C F L and the all the access they've given us. But it is hard when you sit there and you look like, man, if these things go another couple years, you know kind of know, okay this is going to last, we're going to have U US F L season 4, 5, 6 and like you said, if I can go live in Birmingham and make 40, 45,000 maybe we win the championship game and the U S F L, I think they do the championship game and not the playoff wins or however they do that. But if I'm going to make that or I could go up to Winnipeg live for play 21 weeks live up there even longer, have to maintain a second household up there, deal with the Canadian pay rate and the tax exchange and all that. It's a really tough sell. And then they'll say, oh well our average salary might be a hundred thousand or 120,000 Canadian The you're getting there if you're kind of past that initial hump. But I, I've interviewed players on the show, I got a Vernon Adams, I got a house in Montreal and then they traded me and I had a place in bc, I've still got my place in Tacoma. I'm paying all the exchange rates and all that. It's a really hard sell and I don't want to say that as a haha neer neer because we got a lot of hate when all this X F L stuff started. But if you have competitive spring leagues that even if they're not, you're matching 80%. But just knowing the certainty that I can go play that next year, I think it'll be interesting. I think it's a fascinating time. If these leagues, again, we started the show saying like is he Bel coming back next year? We don't know. But if they do it does, it makes you a lot more thought process where I think it was Darren Gill was on our show and he was an agent, he's one of the C F L agents and he says, yeah I don't have as many C F L teams calling down and saying who's available because a lot of my guys are tied up or it adds another wrinkle to that. And by the way Reid, we have officially managed to stall long enough. We have an mvp. Oh do we? I don't have the email yet. Oh there we go. Okay. It was just announced on Twitter. Alex Mago Mugo is the US F l most valuable player. I'll pull it up here. Well this is so exciting. Thank you. I'm glad I was going to Figure because Darryl Johnson was going to come on and I said, well normally what they do is they send out the presser as he comes on the stage when I've covered some of the XL stuff and the second Danny comes out it's like Danny Garcia said x, y, Z and then you're listening to her and she's saying it because it's all on the teleprompter. That's incredible that they knew what she was going to say. So what do you think Alex Magoo here? I mean we kind of expected it, but what do you think? So the first thing is I was watching Birmingham, I think they were playing Michigan this year. It was up at Detroit, it was at Ford Field. It was a two minute drill right before they're going to halftime. It was on Fox. So the mic access was amazing. He comes over the sideline, he talks with Skip and they start talking about what they want to run this play and the concept that they're discussing. I know exactly what he's doing, right? It's three, you're going to run three vertical routes, you're going to try to attack their two high look that they've been giving you all day two high safeties. And that's the whole I idea the attack because we're going to hit 'em here, right? Jay Sternberger was going to be the target, blah blah blah. And I'm listening to this conversation from my couch and I'm just geeking out now because I'm like, oh my goodness, I was thinking the exact same thing. This is what you could hit. This is what they've been showing all time, all day. But what ends up happening is Michigan ends up rolling late a third safety back. So they end up playing three deep, it's third and long need a touchdown before the end of the half and Magoo sees it right away. He can't hit Jace, he wanted Jace to stop. So he scrambles around a little bit, pulls off some crazy, throw it almost across his body into the end zone touchdown ends up improvising the thing. Or I think maybe it was underneath the Mar Maribel. Maribel took it in. But I just remember thinking, I knew exactly what they, I knew exactly what they were thinking. I knew exactly what they wanted to accomplish. I heard the whole coach's conversation with him. I knew what he was trying to do and he improvised that to the best possible way that he possibly could have. And I'm bringing that up because he did that all year. Every time you turned on Birmingham, this guy's making some crazy play and pulling off something insane. And then the other thing to take away from this is he wasn't even the starting quarterback entering the year. Jamar Smith was the quarterback and Smith had an unfortunate injury, ended up missing this year and this guy stepped up, which is very similar to what happened last year, which he was supposed to be the guy last year. And he ends up taking a backup role to Smith. So you want to talk about, first off resiliency. Magoo has it staying with it, not quitting, not giving up, doing exactly what the team needed to do him to do. He is more of a receiver last year. Yeah, absolutely. He's got it. And then coming out and taking advantage when your moment when to shine, taking advantage of that McGoo did that and I think that's outstanding. You can't find a story in Profe. Well you can look at Jalen Hertz, but it's a very similar story to Hertz at Alabama and waiting his termed but accepted this time. It's much higher level. He got the whole year. It's an incredible story. I don't know if this does anything. Let's see here. USL just tweeted from the presser the moment they told him, he went, let's see if this place or at all. I think we got a few more. Oh is that, Yeah, we got it. We got it. Play out. Yeah. Hey party. Hey, what are we doing in here? So I think there's one more question that ask. We're going to, we're going to let Daryl go ahead and ask the question. Yeah, it's boy wait. Yeah it, it's been fun for us to watch the development of the relationship and we got to see a little bit of it here in the press conference. So whether it's time learning the offense, understanding the why or time together to develop that respect, is time the number one reason that you became the US NFL's MVP this season? Yes sir. Mvp. There you go. That's cute. Some of us let the video play here. There you go. Alex McGoo. That's cool. They posted it on their, yeah, I was like, do I try to hack the Zoom and play it onto the thing today? I think we had enough on our hands. I think we had enough people coming on and off. But anyway, any other thoughts on Magoo? I know they're doing the Sportsman award but God knows when that's going to be. But any other thoughts on McGoo? Yeah, I think Pat and I have talked about this before, just talking and having conversations like this is probably the most likely quarterback that we see make a jump out of both the leagues this year. And that's already considering Ucci, right? Obviously Al McCarran had a great year in this X F L. He's not really interested I don't think, in going to the nfl. He wants to stay and play in the X F L where his kids can watch him play and he gets to play and he has that opportunity and has a great gig for him. But with Alex, I think that this is the quarterback that you're looking at that has the best shot and jumping up because the big knock on Ucci was the turnovers, right? Too many turnovers with Seattle and it was almost surprising that he was signed as quickly as he was after the season considering the quarterback talent that was in that league. So Temu was probably a recipient of that having to wait and play the championship game and they went and got to Nucci instead. But Magoo is a guy, if you got some sort of issue in training camp, you got to move a guy, an injury. This is a dude that, this is probably the top of the list right now that I'm calling as a personnel director going, I need a guy in my camp that can do a lot of different things. And this is guy can do that. He come up here. No, I totally agree. And barring any injuries here in the championship game, cause obviously we saw a case last year and I think Case would've been called and I still can't as a wedding videographer, I saw the photos of case's wedding and him wheeling down the aisle and I had a groom, it was like a week or two before the wedding. He was a motocross racer and broke his leg and was in the walking boot and did his first dance in the walking boot. And I said that is a very smart there with his wife. Cause I'm sure she wasn't happy that he was doing that. But no, I think it'll be good. I think it's exciting. We'll look forward to this. Anything else? We're an hour and a half. I feel good about this. I appreciate you sticking on starting to finish here, but always moving part except for these live shows, so I appreciate anything else. No man. I appreciate you having me on again and I'm excited to watch this game tomorrow if I, who's going to win? Reid, who do you think wins? What's your prediction? You get to keep, you listen to all these opinions, you take it all. What's your pick? Yeah, in my head says it's the stallions, my heart's the maers. Obviously I got my manel over there and my boy. But like you said talking, I watched that New Orleans game and he's running into the end zone doing finger rolls with the football. I think he's playing on a different level right now and that was why the question earlier was who would win Thesal or the defenders? I don't know because to me it looks right now the stallions are playing with kid toys a little bit. I'm the adult playing with the children here where I don't know if that speaks to how good the stallions are or speaks to maybe how not so good. Some of the other teams are like, I don't know where that level of delineation is. Where the defenders looked really good. I don't know where are the bottom four XL teams better than the bottom four U S F L teams. That's a debate for another day. But I do feel like the salaries are kind of on a different level right now and I thoroughly expect them to walk in there and kick ass. But hey, I mean we saw it with the renegades. I mean anything can happen then. That's like Pat said, why not the Muellers, if they're defense and Jaren the assistant coach of the year and kind of continues to keep those guys up. I think they're going to go and really motivated. I think that they have a lot of chalk, more material. The Muellers do. Yeah, I think that I want to see Pittsburgh win the trenches and I think that they have the personnel to do that on both sides of the ball. It's just when you get the pressure on McGoo, you got to find a way to neutralize him. And that's where, that was my point is why he's the mvp. That's a guy that he's gets outside the pocket and he gets an opportunity to improvise and he's insane. He's incredible. He's just made, he's done nothing but make plays all year. Doesn't matter as a runner, as a passer, it doesn't matter. He's done it. He's been extremely successful. Like you said, the adult playing with the toys he, they've been definitely a grown ass, grown ass team. And that's I'm, I'm right there with Chris, Felicia, the bear, Luis Luis that you pulled up. I saw, I read the article you pulled up earlier. I'm right there with him. I'm taking the seven and I'm going Birmingham probably winning by two touchdowns. Yeah, I do. Last thing here, we did stall long enough. Congratulations to Ethan. Ethan Westbrooks for The oh yeah. Of the year award. So I think that's probably a, what is that? An office boat? Is that a fan vote? Is that a, I don't know how that kind of all came about, but congrats in with the Panthers. Any thoughts on that? Well that's two Panther defenders now that received awards for being great players and on off the field now. I think that that speaks a lot to what Michigan's doing with bringing in people, good people, people that work with the community well and Michigan's done a great job with that all year. So shout out to everybody on the Michigan staff, including the players that win and the people that pick them. They've all done a great job. Well thank you everyone. If by some reason you've made an hour and a half in here and you haven't liked and liked and subscribe on here, appreciate it. Pat will be back with me on Monday. We're flip flopping this week. We'll be doing the U S F L follow up on Monday and then Jason Hussie will be joining us big BC Lions Toronto game if you want your football fix after the weekend. Big BC at Toronto here Monday for the cfl, I think game of the season thus far after bc Absolutely trounce. The Winnipeg Blue Bombers last week. Two time Gray Cup champions there. Lost last year to the Argo. So should be exciting. John, please plug all your stuff. I know you have your new podcast and everything else you're working on because I really do appreciate you being on here. Start to Finish. Yeah, of course. So yeah, the Sikh podcast network, I joined them and we have the Sik pod, draft ogle, which is it. It's basically more discussion about scouting than it is the actual draft. So you hear a lot of podcasts where you talk about the prospects and we talk about this and that and all those different things. And this is more how do we find those guys? What are we looking for? So we get into some nitty gritty. We're going to have some really solid guests that are going to start circling through once we've established our baseline. I think got a done great job with my co-host. He's done an awesome job, Matt Ick. I don't always, it's a very German name and I start to pronounce it German. I have to stop myself every episode in introducing him, but it's great job. He's a great guy, really knows his stuff. And then, yeah, my draft guide for 24 is available. It's a basically live updated every day. It's a OneNote document, OneNote notebook, basically that you're going to get comes with your office subscription if you've got one of those. Or just really any computer is you can access this thing $40 access for the entire year. And it's 3000 plus prospects. I mean some insane deep stuff. It's been great read because it's not just been fans that have bought it. I've had personnel directors at Al at Alt Leagues buy it. I've had agents buy it. I've had other people in the media buy it. It's been really nice to see the wide variety of people that have purchased it and gotten the access to it, which I think speaks volumes to what I've been trying to accomplish with it. It's exactly what I wanted to do with it. Make it something for everybody that everybody can get some digestible data out of it. So I appreciate you letting me plug all that stuff and having me on here and yeah, I'm glad I can make it from start to finish. It's been a fun year for alt league football. We got the C Ffl still left to go and hopefully and now we got this I F A starting up. I mean there's going to be a whole lot of different stuff. Yeah, Rick was on last week talking I ffa. That'll be interesting. Another football league here and like I said, yeah, no days off with the C F L stuff. Like I said, a tremendous week on the Monday game, but BC is just on fire right now with Vernon and everything else. Very excited as America's C F L team I call them. But no, John, what I like about just you doing all that obviously brings some knowledge on here and you're so great at what you do and if anyone doesn't listen to this and oh yeah, I could see why John is a great podcaster and knowledgeable person and guests and all that stuff. But I like with this guide and all that because it is, I like these maybe more alt leagues and some of these other guys. Let's crowdsource a little more. We have all of this and we're not these multi-billion dollar, we got all this and who cares? And we're kind of in our ivory tower. Like, no, let's embrace the people that are doing this for the love of it and kind of lean on them and maybe where we have certain weaknesses and like you said, all these guys that have to be scouted and Evan was talking all the guys in the rookie draft and everyone else, it takes kind of a village here. So I appreciate that. I think that'll be it. We'll get out of here right at the hour 40 mark. Appreciate that. Appreciate John, everything. Anything else? No, sir. Thank you. Much appreciate y'all listening. Awesome. Yeah, enjoy the game. Should be a good one. Go. I, I'll say go Maulers. Go Maulers on that. But I think Buck em, I think they have it. So we'll see you guys next time.

USFL 2023 Playoffs Results, USFL 2023 Championship Preview! Winners and Losers of the USFL Playoffs!

Well good morning, happy Tuesday. Welcome everyone to the markcast here, USFL Live playoff recaps, and then we'll also be doing the championship preview game note. Our Friday show this week is going to be a live show. I've got John Vogel coming, I think Pat Evan and Coach Craig Sports. We're trying to figure out the time, but that will be on the YouTube channel Live Friday, full preview for the U S F L championship weekend. We'll be doing that in place of the normal Friday show on that. Checking in today with Pat here. Pat, there's a lot of nonsense going on in the world right now. How are you doing? Oh man, nonstop. Unfortunately in my industry I got to deal with about less than a 10th of it and it's a little bit too much for me. So Lots of things going on. We're going to do a quick note here. Normally we get a lot of questions about the U S F L TV ratings. Quick, we're going to pour one out for our dead homies today on here. Chabas Daily, just posting this morning. Mitch over there that they're shutting the site down, kind of noting you can read the article but noting just kind of the minutiae that goes into basically things are so switched to streaming now. There's so many different ways to consume this content and everything that the minutia of a 0.23 versus a 0.25 or whatever on some of these TV shows and things and just he doesn't feel like it's important enough to keep tracking this and he's not providing any data if you want to take it once the site goes down. So kind of a sad little post here, but I think Mike Mitchell should still be able to get us the TV rating stuff. He said that he was talking, we were in the group chat this morning, he was talking, but I know some of the Twitter reporters, their sources are immediately gone. So Pat, are you sad Chabas daily going away here? Yeah, I mean I don't do the TV ratings. It's kind of out of my wheelhouse to be honest with you. So I mean my life doesn't really change. I feel like Mike and I are pretty in good faith with each other that I got my insider source right there. So I think the main thing is as long as someone has it where I have no problem, I mean it sucks because it's independent journalism and whatnot. Yes, that's, I care about it more from just, I think we talked about it, we don't really agree or have some of the best relationships with other outlets, but there's very few people that if I saw their platform to thrown or taken away, it's like I don't wish that on any of these people. What I mean, some of them obviously do it for free, some of them make a little bit of money, but it's just all these different outlets, even if we're not the most friends with 'em, they all put their heart in soul into it, you know what I mean? I just know there's a lot of people that take very highly on being able to post these TV ratings every week. So it's just interesting. Hey man, I'm pretty high about finding UFL stats and talking about how good Brooks Bollinger was for the Florida Florida over 10 years ago now. So Yeah, I just tweeted this out. I said this the sound of silence, Thanos sitting here with a peaceful world here overlooking and overlooking his. I will say I did see the prelims before everything went down. I want to say it was like 750,000 give or take for both the games. I know that obviously the overtime game on Saturday went late. If I'm wrong, if I remember there was the seven in front of all the numbers. I'm sure Max will let me know if that was incorrect, but I do believe what I saw it was that 10 at times. So anyway, anything else with anything else with the ratings show buzz? We'll get into the games here, we'll talk playoffs and then we'll do a preview here and then obviously we'll do the big preview on Friday as well. Not really on my front. It is what it is. It's sad, sad for the ratings people and whatnot, but I mean regardless, ratings or not, if you watch it, great, if you didn't watch it kind of sucks for you because overall, despite the lack of sexiness, from the competitiveness of the breakers and stallions game, we did see a lot of good football, at least from the stallions and that Muller's Panthers game was pretty on point as well. So let's get into that here. To me, we had one game that was very unappealing here in the north with the Panthers and then this was, everyone was expecting, okay, this is the big championship game, one really delivered one. I watched every snap of the Sunday game. Saturday was kind of in and out. We had a birthday dinner caught enough and the overtime first overtime and U S F L comms had a weird tweet where it was the first overtime since the last and Mallers were involved in that back in 19. I don't know, I couldn't really track what they were trying to say with that. But let's get into it. First here, uhms worst of first year north division champions. Pat, what did you make of this? I mean we all knew it was a gaggle gaggle of this north division and what we saw that was different from the other four and 16 previously was at least the roughnecks were the established favorite. This was a toss up. How's Troy Williams going to do? How is this defensive line going to do the Mueller's offensive line? Not the best in the game. We all knew the answers about the Muellers on defense, but it's like, okay, are they going to do enough to manipulate this game for victory? And it's like, okay, granted the Panthers, they had a nice little spark with EJ Perry and I guess you could say he delivered another spark. I think he played as well as he could with the condition and whatnot and of that he's under only being with the team for four weeks. But overall, I mean the first half was a little slow and we kind of took our time, but once that second half came, you know, go from that Xbox meme of casually sitting back to sitting to the edge of the seat, you're like, oh, okay, this game means a little these, let's go a little bit. Well you wanted to feel like it matters here at this point. I know last week when we were talking week 10, it felt like some of these teams were playing either not to lose, you're like, God, I mean these are for playoff spots here. So it's good to see some motivation there on that. In terms of the Muller, I think it's a good storyline. I mean wasn't a big fan of them being in it, but it is a, it's a compelling storyline now, especially now into the championship game. Yeah, I mean I talked about a couple weeks ago I think I said, why not them at this point? Why not? I think we got a little bit of parody obviously with the evenly matched ness of the North division, everyone being all under 500 and someone was going to limp in there, but you know, obviously have all the nonsense from 2022. And then you have the story of Jar Horton, his dad, obviously the coach changing that culture like Boo Boogie Roberts, we talk about him a lot, but for good reason. One, he's a good football player and two, he's a pseudo face of the league in my opinion. It's a little different for us because we cover these leagues so much so it's, I knew Boogie Roberts played on the Rams and 2020 and then that was it until he came into the league last year and then he was highlighted a lot going, finishing his degree at San Jose State and then you know, saw him on in the Birmingham. That was the coolest thing about the Birmingham hub in my opinion, was these players would go interact with the fans when they weren't playing and whatnot. So you saw a lot of that, so you began to form a lot of love with that. He's doing the radio show in Ohio. There's so much that not there. There's so much to about these guys. You have Ruben Foster there, second Chance, Tino, awesome, Marcus, sorry, not Marcus Gilbert, Mike, Mark Gilbert, the cornerback. You keep going down that list and it's just underdog after underdog. And then you go on the offensive side of the ball ball, you have Terry Pool who is a castoff, a plethora of receivers that probably don't get enough respect. Troy Williams was the backup, supposed to be the James Morgan show and thank God we moved on from that. And then you keep throwing all these, you look at each position group and it's like, oh man, that's kind of cool. Madre London, a European guy, Garrett Ack, never really, I feel like I'm like Jason Kel from the Super Bowl. You remember when he was dressed up as a genie and he's like, Howie Rose Lane, Johnson Can't stay off the, that's how I feel when I'm talking about this team, man. And it's like when you start and break it down person by person and player by player, it's like it is kind of cool man. Do I think they beat Birmingham? No, but I mean at this point, why not, right? Pat? You need to be careful here. You're almost coming to cloud across too Glowingly talking about the U S F L. You need to be careful. Yeah, I mean I know maybe I got too many zen in, so my dopamine and endorphins are all high up, but I mean I think EJ Perry got a job this weekend that was pretty cool. His story's cool too. In terms of the Mallers here, I saw a lot of the crediting Ray Horton coming in and you said changing the culture. Do you think that because I always with these spring leagues and I don't know how much culture there is in the rough next year depending on who comes back and there's true number, I mean, do you think there was enough duty culture with the mallers here that we needed to flip it? Yeah, and I think that goes for any Spring league team. You establish the culture when you show up way it establishes the culture. So I don't know the percentage of players they had from year one to year two, but it's a pretty decent amount. Granted, the quarterback's room was completely changed. They got rid of vastly Roland Rivers, Kyle Lala and Josh Love and I mean that changes it. So it's like, oh, the quarterback, the guys they drafted the first two picks from last year. Granted that was a Kirby move, but then Ray gets brought in and I think he got brought in later after Roland and VAD were VAD released, but Jaren was still there and everyone talked about how up and coming Jaren was and you saw the enthusiasm and then you bring in a guy like Ruben Foster who's like, you guys want to go to the N F L. I was there and I talked to Joey Ivy about that on my show about when these N F L guys came in, him being one of them, you guys want to taste this, this is what you have to do. And I talked to a lot of coaches about that as well, about you're not doing enough or you're not doing it and this is what we need to do and everyone thinks we're a joke and this and that. And I don't think James Morgan played outstanding well, but he's still a guy who's been in N F L QB rooms and been around N F L players and it's like Grohe played with Jonathan Taylor. So you bring that Terry Pool's been around all these alt football leagues, you bring in that. So it's like you keep going down this list of guys with experience to be like, Hey man, this is what you have to do to be successful not only on the field but get to the next level. And that translate into, in my opinion, character being a good man as far as character building. And because in the end a lot of these guys are going to do other things in the off season, in the off season. So we continue to not only build these people as football players but as young men and whatnot. And I mean think it does matter way more than people give it credit for and I think it matters even more because the seasons are shorter. So you have to be like, Hey, B, hammer down or get out. And it sounds like you with Jar getting kind of that as was it assistant coach of the year and them not doing that last year, I thought that was kind of a cool honor as well for that. Didn't you think? Yeah, no, and maybe that was a part of the plan the whole year, you know what I mean? But in the end, the assistant coaches coordinators are usually the unsung heroes of this. So I mean the See Jar get recognized for all the work he did and that defense was great. We had questions about Troy and I think Troy's a little bit better than a guy like Deandre Johnson and these other more mobile guys and whatnot. But I mean he came into the season as a QB two and obviously turned that team around once he became the starter. Well that's the thing too. Even if that wasn't the plan, I think that that's a really easy pivot to do where you see Jared, that's the thing I wish and I go back and forth because I didn't like last year kind of the tank bowl and adding, okay, we're going to add the picture or whatever, but I do the mobility of some of these spring leagues be able to, yeah, let's do this. Let's honor, let's kind of make this be a thing here because it is something guys take pride in and it is something that I know the team probably really appreciated him getting recognized as well. And not only that, just for Jaren, he's coached at UConn, I think he coached at another school before this was his air quote, big break. And he is doing what he is supposed to be doing. He is taking advantage of the opportunity, alt football, spring football, all this stuff. If your goal is to get to the N F L, you might not have the most linear path depending on your background or this or that. So it's none of these guys in my A guy James Morgan can't look in the mirror anymore and say, I never got a fair shot. Jaren Jaren, if he doted it out, obviously coaching's a little bit different because it does come down to the players schemes could be good. But you look at Jar and it's like, hey man, I did everything I needed to do to put myself in to give myself the best position to one, put the team to succeed, get him into a championship and then two do what I needed to do. And he took advantage of the opportunity and sometimes it's kind of a double-edged sword because you play so well then you're gone. But in the end, he needed to do what he needed to do and I know that's a very simplistic way of looking at it and he took full advantage of the situation and now he's going to be competing for a championship with his defense. Does he come back next year? I don't know. And I think that comes down to him. Does he want to go be a DB coach or a D line coach or a linebackers coach or is he money talks? Obviously I don't know what the coaches make, but the money talks. So if the financials line up in addition to if the financials line up in addition to the just, I don't want to say is the juice worth the squeeze then I think it comes down to that. I was looking on here, we had a comment I can't find, I was trying to find the tweet. Dylan has a comment just while we're talking about the mallers here, are they talking about doing the hub style and all that stuff? They had the tweet out that they're selling season tickets for can't next year now, but it is like T B D, what the teams are going to be or whatever. I thought that was kind of weird. I think that's a tough sell to get fans to buy into that. I mean here if the modelers win or not, I don't What do you make of that? I mean I know we're kind of sick to that talking about the hubs and all of that, but here we're selling season tickets for next year, but we don't know the teams that are going to be there. I mean I think we talked, I mean I think comms USL coms put it out. Was that who it was? Lemme try to find that. I don't know if they put it out, but I think, I know they SubT tweeted an announcement about the teams is going to come out. I mean eventually you got to get everyone into their home markets, you know, have to do that. So I know they have a plan. I mean I don't want to go chill here and just do trust the process, but in the end, all this speculation we're doing is not like, oh, are the breakers going to be there or is this team going to be there? Okay, so was comms that did it? Yeah, I'm not ready to sing the praises or go against that state, that situation until I know what the teams are and everything like that. I want them all to be in their own cities and I think to an extent everyone else does as well, got people covering New Orleans who haven't been to a game and we'll see what happens. I just like who doesn't want them to not be in their hub or into in their home city? Well the thing too is, and I've seen a lot of people like, oh well if Pittsburgh wins, they should absolutely be moving to the city. It's like, well, I think would've had Canton was the fallback plan last year mean they would've been there Jersey and Philly if they have era of Pittsburgh, if they would've had somewhere to go. I mean just winning a title doesn't necessarily make a stadium available or make it better financially for you to move into a market. I mean I think that it would certainly incentivize, I don't know the residents that the Pittsburgh Muellers have in the city of Pittsburgh right now. I can't imagine it's particularly high, but I mean I'm sure it's a non-zero number, right? Yeah, I mean I'm definitely one of those people that I think you can championship that into their own market. Like I said, I don't know if that's the air quote move and whatnot or excuse me, the right move, the right train of thought. But regardless, I think it'd be nice for the people of Pittsburgh that have this obviously, and I don't think many people would disagree with me and you could kind of sell it. I've been very vocal about that cannon, that Cannon stadium kind of being the transitionary one, you know, got to think about in Memphis and with the gamblers and in New Orleans with the breakers and the stars up in Michigan, it's in my opinion, you got to look like what team did the worst as far as attendance wise and let's like push them into a new market if we can't get 'em into the home market to just kind of freshen it up a little bit. Because I do think part of why I think geographically it makes sense to me that that Pittsburgh and New Jersey were there, but I also, part of me and I don't know any of this for a fact, that maybe you have them there because you knew that you had something in the back room type thing. And I've been vocal about this too. I do think it's cool that people in Ohio got a casual taste of this, whether it was one person or 1 million people, I just thought it was kind of like, oh, we're going to the football Hall of fame. Was it always successful? Absolutely not. But in the same sense it's like, well I'm from Iowa and I went to the football hall of fame. I'm going to care about this a little bit more. You know what I mean? I don't know how much dividends that's paying in the long run, but I mean it is expanding the market, whether it be by a minimal movement or more than we know. The interesting thing to me here, Dylan talking too, like C F L has 19, I don't want to add a nine team, nine teams doesn't work in the cfo. It needs to be even numbers. Otherwise you yeah, the CFL bi-week, but just my quick note, if Pittsburgh, well I guess now I would say either way, now that Pittsburgh is the, because there's been a lot of talk, do we do the Canton Gold or do we do the Canton, whatever, what do we do? We make an Ohio team. You can't rebrand Pittsburgh now, right? I mean I think you could have last year where they were due the, and you're like, but we did the colors. We want to make 'em more like that. But you have to keep Pittsburgh now. So do you lose New Jersey? I mean from a wins and losses record, probably not, but from a nostalgia of the U S F L, I think you have to keep the New Jersey generals there. So what do you do at that point? How do you lose that team? Yeah, I get all the teams into their markets before I get rid of any of the teams. If they go to New Orleans and negative four people are there, then you go to a Canton Legends and I'm pretty big on Canton Legends being the name. I think that was a Mavin name at some point. But yeah, I mean you have to give it the old college try. You have to, I think it's an injustice If New Jersey blows, I'm not big on these teams going to the East coast. I don't, I mean saw it with the U F L, with the New York sentinels. Mike Mitchell I know went to a couple guardians games in New York. I'm not big on it. I am from there, believe it or not. I know my accent doesn't sound like it anymore, thank God, but I am pretty big on staying away from the East coast on that front in the northeast rather, because I think Florida, you can put a JV team there and I think people show up. I think it helps when they have the win loss thing, but I think the Apollo showed up and have to look at the guardians. But granted they were kind of a kitchen fire when we looked at that, the Orlando guardians. But I think the Vipers had decent crowd crowds. I know the Orlando rage did pretty well, but I think that was because everyone liked Jeff Brahm, not the X F L and mi. Yeah, it's just weird. I don't know I what they do. I'll be curious to see here because it is kind of a pickle. Like I said, you could have gotten rid of Pittsburgh or whatever going into the season, but now you're certainly not anything else. I mean obviously we'll talk the S championship game and all of that here. Anything else at Michigan picked up steam here Towards the end it wasn't enough and we got the two, four and six here. We made the jokes and stuff about that last week. But anything else about the Panthers? I mean they put together a great effort. EJ pushed the ball downfield a lot more. He was a lot more aggressive, still relying on his athletic abilities, still having some mental mishaps and whatnot as well. He threw that interception, the Cole Tini fumble. I mean just sometimes things happen. He got hit and as he was putting the ball trying to readjust the ball, it slipped out. It's sweaty, sweaty and probably humid in Canton. There was a mishandled on the handle, the excuse exchange to him and I think Stevie Scott, Stevie Scott fumbling at the one yard line rewatched the game last night. I mean perrera wrong by the rules, they got the call right? It's just either, you know what I mean? That's not Ken Stabler, I think it was. Who was kicking the ball down the field in the seventies when that rule was like, okay, fourth quarter under two minutes. I just kind of feel like, yes, the call is right, but that might be an adjustment in the rule book because it was a clean fumble. I agree it was a fumble. He didn't have control of it when he crossed the plane, but Trey Clinton had a clean recovery on that, you know what I mean? To me it made no sense. You know what I mean? Because now you're saying if there's a botch snap and he scores a touchdown and that's a fumble, the play's dead. I don't know, I think Perra is kind of the guy Dean does it too. Perra kind of doubles down on that where it's like, no, we're we're done. We're remove. I think that they're trying to establish their, oh this is the rules law. Both of them do it. It's, I know we, we've touched on it before where Mike gets way more heat than he deserves because he is not as good looking. But I mean these theses younger Italian guys with their facial hair man and you know what I mean? You know, throw Somero gain on Mike and give him a good five o'clock shadow beard. We might be like, oh Mike, it's Mike. I mean it's my uncle Mikey, Do you remember this? Do when he was in this list here going on, this is why people don't, Mike cutting a break and he's like, what is he doing here? I mean Mike gets a lot of heat. I think he deserves it sometimes Something. Dude, I think both of these guys are memes in their own, you know what I mean? I remember Dean did something and then they panned over to him and he was like, yeah, we got that wrong. And I was just like, dude, no bueno. You can never admit to he. So Pan Panthers here, do they have enough going into next year? Do they have enough to build on here? I mean, do They end with enough momentum here even though they lost? Yeah, I think they do, man. But the problem is it's spring league. So we talked about this, right? There's like 26 open roster spots right now, probably more because I saw some guys get released over the weekend and it's like why aren't teams signing those guys? You know what I mean? They're looking at the U S F L, they're looking because at this point the X F L, the hot girl and the hot new girl at school is like, alright man, she's been around for a year, she ain't that hot. You know what I mean? And I know that might be a little bit edgy to say, but they had their big boost. So you have 25 open roster spots. Teams already have had plenty of looks at free agents, undrafted free agents. There's definitely guys who are waiting on injuries that might have been offered contracts and whatnot. But who, who's going next? You know, I mean who's the next girl transferring into San Dimas High School? I hope you guys got that reference by the way. San Dimas High School Football rules. So who is the next group of incoming players and it's got to be U S F L guys. It makes sense and excuse me, I live, I work by a trade. Ok, so it's you have guys, Breland speaks, I don't want to say all he had to do, but if he played effectively he's going to get an opportunity. We have Magoo. Magoo is just tearing this league up right now. It's not even fair to watch at this point. So you got Magoo, he's doing a lot of great stuff. CJ Maribel was great. Derek Dillon did a lot of stuff on special teams and whatnot. Go down this list of the guys. LaVonte Taylor had a great season, had a couple pass breakups and whatnot as well. Frank Endo, we can't talk enough about him. Levi Bell, shorter guy. But despite his putting up Elvis Domville pressure and whatnot and playing a lot, Patrick Rashard, a fullback and whatnot that used to play defensive line, I mean it makes sense that it comes down and you got to give the stallion so much credit because of it was a reload. Now the rebuild, who is our team next year and then when those guys get signed, how if they get released, how many of them come back so it's so much. You know what I mean? And that's a podcast in itself. So in my opinion, I think a lot of these Panthers players, if they can keep some of this core in there, yeah of course they're going to be a competitive team. They're going to be a good team and whatnot, but I mean I can't tell you any of that about any of these teams until February and then you have all these guys who were drafted, they're going to get cut from the ones who went to the NFL could, those guys could get cut, you know what I mean? Then they have another rights draft coming in, so now that they know their formula of the draft, what's going on? Where are we at with this? So it's February I think when those rosters and I think they're going to go to 60 or something like that in the off season again, but whatever it is when those rosters get close to solidified, because obviously we had PR cup was the late signing to Carson Strong and I'm sure there were other guys that her escaping Willis came in from the X F L, but until February March comes around, I can't tell you. Yeah, the stallions, they're going to be in the championship again or the Panthers are going to build from the seasoning onward and upward because you can't tell me EJ Perry isn't going to get some workouts because he was already a cusp guy, just got released by the Texans and then in playing in these games performing well and showcasing more rushing ability than he did in the preseason. You can't tell me that he's not going to get a phone call or two Especially. I'm going to interrupt you here Pat, we have some breaking news here. We'll get back. I want to talk to timelines, all that stuff as well. We do have Mike Mitchell, we do have the US L ratings here for the weekend, so never fear show us dailies that Mike Mitchell here we have Saturday night game, Michigan Panthers North Division, which I called in. I said that would be the higher rating game, 957,000 Sunday New Orleans breakers, Birmingham stallions 852, neither hit a million but I did, if you remember last week, predict that the NBC game, even with the duty north and the losing record and all that stuff that would win. So any thoughts on this 9 57 and 8 52 And you got to think that with all the streaming numbers you probably kissed a million, you know what I mean? I'm pretty good with that. I think all things considered you want to hit that mill sexy number, but I mean two games, it's just two games. Heat of summer. Saturday night you had 950,000 people watching and I had to, had a friend of mine, he went out in the lake of the Ozarks and he changed a couple of these games onto nbc, you know what I mean? I I'm pretty good with that. I just think so there, especially where I'm out in the Midwest, we know some of what the battle hawks are, but we don't know what the U S F L is so it's like come on do, granted it's not a local market so it's a little bit different, but it's like let's get these games on at the Buffalo Wild Wings or something like that, you know what I mean? I'm just sending it tweet out here. I will say, I think you said I think nine 50 is a tremendous number for that with everything going on right now, I would feel good about that. I'm sure they wanted to hit a million, but like I said, it proves network and time slot has nothing to do with it has nothing to do with the teams that are playing or anything else. You got the two losing teams, worst records, all this kind of stuff. It doesn't matter in terms of the championship game. We'll kind of do predictions for that coming up, but any other thoughts on that? I mean the Fox eight 50 Sunday, I don't know quite the competition that was going on this weekend more than just the life happening. I know obviously they went up back to back with the C F L game, but I can't imagine the C F L game was drawing that much. So something I want to talk about and I think we have in spurts but not consistently is like what does that spot do in 2021? You know? I mean what are these spots doing in 2021? So if they're getting 500,000 in 2021 mid-June from a baseball game or something like that are, if that's the number and obviously arbitrary number and it's something we can look up and I'm not going to be straight up about it, but are we seeing improvements from the time slots? Because that's something I used to say about the USA and FX and it's like if you're getting more than a normal FX game or U S A program or whatnot, it's kind of a win. It's kind of an improvement. So I'm more curious to see what they're getting without the U S F L and whatnot from previous years to, if they're getting 500,000 and now they just had 450 tune in, you would imagine that the executives at Fox are pretty pumped about that. Mike has a question here. Will the championship game hit a million? That's a big question. I think a hundred percent. I mean think if you're getting nine 50 for the playoff game, I think I I'd say 1.213, I mean we'll do the predictions on Friday, but that would be where I would be at. What Did he get last year? I know it was I feel like two or One. No, it was like 1.1, whatever. Let me look it up here. Yeah, because I feel like if it hit two, I say 1.7, if it hit 1.7, I say 1.5, I say 1.52, 1.52 million last Year. Oh yeah, I would say that 1.2, the 1.3 but I mean prove me wrong. Hopefully they prove me wrong, you know what I mean? I have no problem being proven wrong on this. No, I mean would be yeah, max is comment here. I would be happy. I would be happy if I was them with the kiss him the million here for the weekend with a lot of competition going on And the streaming, you know what I mean? I know it's not solid in stone, but I mean do they count The re-watch is on the streaming because I re-watched it on Peacock. I rewatched both games on Peacock Fox Sports, does that matter? I don't. You know what I mean? And I'd say the same thing for ESPN plus, I watched a lot of stuff on re-watched a lot of stuff on the ESPN plus because if I went to a Battle Hawks game, there's a game at four then that's seven. I'm not in front of my TV by seven o'clock when the game ends so Well, and I think a lot of the questions here, like we talked about at the top with show bus daily stepping down, I think there is this per proliferation now of kind of ways you can watch a lot of this stuff and I think that we get caught up in the minutiae of all this week to week and oh they won and we won all this kind of stuff, but there there's a million different metrics. Who's watching online? What are the impressions on the tweets that they have out or video views on the YouTube? I know X F L was kind of the championship champion that as well. I Have to go. I have an emergency. Pat has an emergency. All right, we're going to get Pat off here. Thank you Pat. Well here we go. We'll kind of wind down here in a minute talking through this. If anyone wants to call in, we need to go through the Birmingham and the New Orleans game here. So I will open up the chat lines here if anyone wants to talk through that or else I can run through. I saw enough of the Birmingham and the New Orleans one, but I did post the link here if anyone wants to call in. I know Jared's always hanging around. We'll see if anyone wants to do that. Let me pull up the New Orleans and Birmingham. Max is commenting all the people watching. Definitely watch USO online, just follow these low. We're still talking to demographics of the viewership and all of that. Mike saying, I don't think there's a ton of sports competition this Saturday. Off the top of my head. Well it is. We're a million different things, so let's go here. This was the other big game of the weekend. I was kind of surprised. I thought this was going to be, we had, pat and I had talked this was going to be more of the championship preview game, a little lackluster, a little bit of a blowout, didn't feel close here, breakers kind of making the late run here at the end, but Birmingham, 47 to 22 on this. It was interesting to me with McLeod, Beto Thompson obviously playing in this game and then the Argo's playing opposite that with Chad Kelly now in the C F l. Argo's had a much better night than Mr. Mcl Bethel Thompson did here, but I thought he was good. I'm curious like what is McLeod's takeaway from all of this here at the end of this came in, made it to the, made it to the playoffs, losing here, kind of an embarrassing fashion here, 26 of 50, not a tremendous performance from him, but I think the Breakers should be happy here. Seven and three with Coach Flip and all that for the year. I'll be kind of curious to see what they end up doing here going into next year. I don't know, I don't if I see McLeod kind of going through here for another season, obviously with his kids kid and wife and everything working there in Atlanta. I think that worked out for him this year, but I'll just be kind of curious to see if he decides to go forward that again next year. Let's say here Gregory checking in as a stallions fan. The only thing I can say is it was the magical night in the Magic city. The crowd and the game was fantastic. I know I saw we had comments here off the top when kind of Pat and I were setting up the show talking Pip saying kind of embarrassing crowd attendants for the playoff games. I thought the Birmingham game looked good. I thought the home side looked really good. Yeah, Jacob is kind of contesting that here, not Birmingham. The Canton has always kind of had a little bit of an issue, but I did think Mike corroborating here as well. I thought Birmingham had good attendance, a good attendance compared to the other games. Birmingham not compared to last year. The game at CAN was just terrible. I don't know. I think they need to figure out what they want to do there. I don't know if we've kind of talked on here of calling the team the Canton, if that does anything, if that incentivizes anybody to go that way here. Dylan checking in Birmingham looked like a fun time. You can't defend the Mallers attendance zone, not for a division championship in it. It's back and forth here. Jacob saying you can't expect people to drive three plus hours to watch four and six teams. I know interesting though with the TV, radio and all that, but McLeod looked good. Kind of Mag Goose on a different level here. Pat, we've talked about that before. Is he going to get a shot here? Moving on just really looks lights out compared to everyone else in the U S F L at this point. He's doing finger rolls and in the end zone and all of that. They U S F L posted him kicking the drone camera or whatever act my age co commentators were all about predicting the mvt would be done after this game. Seemed a little preemptive to me at the time. I don't know it. I think it's a lot. I think McLeod is really old. I think McLeod has played in this and played in everything and I don't know, I don't know. Do you put your life on hold with other things you want to do here for another year to come back to the U S F L? I don't know. I mean that's the McLeod question and kind of thing he's going to have to ponder. I know we had him on the show here, was it? It was when they were doing their kind of the undefeated streak and all of that and I thought that was interesting. He seems like in a very happy spot. His wife and kid, they could come visit. He was going to go watch the movies and all of that stuff in Birmingham. I think he was go watch the, what was it, the Birmingham, the AAA or whatever baseball team there, the bananas or whatever that is. Jared, we know Birmingham is fine for fan support. It's all the other teams that concerned me. Yeah, Memphis. Memphis picked up steam kind of towards the end. That was one that I thought was came out the gate hot, a little lackluster but I think that they've built a good loyal fan base there. I think Memphis is going to be good. It's really just a Canton issue. It's surprising still. Like we said with the Canton Go, the Canton season tickets and all of that going on. Magoo looked good here. I don't know, this really just kind of felt like a victory lap for Birmingham kind of sitting there watching. I really felt bad, really felt bad for Coach Flip and all of that stuff. Gregory says, heading to the ship. Good. I don't know, I want to hear your guys' predictions going in. I would like to see for my own amusement, the mallers kind of put a beat down on this, but Birmingham, eight and three losses over the last two seasons. RJ Young I saw this morning who was calling them a dynasty. I don't know if I would go that far with two seasons of spring football calling anything a dynasty, but certainly glad to see RJ Young at least pretending to kind of be involved with the US F L here. Let me see if I could find that tweet here. Mike's still talking about the US F l Radian. Where is that? Here we go. Yeah, RJ Young here, the US stallions have averaged 37 points in the playoffs over the last two years. Alex McGoo was the first player, the pass for 300 yards in rushed for 75 in the last two seasons. Stallions are about to become 20 and three over two years, a win on Saturday and we're talking Dynasty. Well there you go. If RJ Young says that it has to be true. Keep in mind the U S F L championship taking place on my birthday this year. Excited for that. Excited to, I'll be at the Mariner game but I'll be watching the U S F L game on delay. I got Sunday set aside for that as well as the C F L stuff, so that should be exciting in terms of, like I said, I watched every snap of this game. Just not a lot to say. It felt like Breakers ran out of steam. They kind of eek their way in last week and I said, okay, is this, you get these teams that kind of barely get into the playoffs and then they're going to get picked off right away. I don't know, I don't have a lot to say on this. I don't know if anyone else has any other questions about the playoff game, a talking championship, but I would like to hear your predictions here if you have the mallers or the stallions here for the championship game. Oh, Pat's okay, pat having to drop off here for an emergency, so I hope everything's okay with Pat. I'm sure he'll text me later with the game being on NBC this year. Expect ratings to be higher for that. Obviously. Interesting as well. They talked about how they switch where it's like now Canton is the neutral site, so I think that the Muellers are still technically at home. I saw there was some weird wording about that that came out. One of the tweets talking about the championship game where, because it's the neutral site but I believe it is Birmingham at Mahler here going in, so the Mallers will be wearing their white uniforms going in. So excited to hear about that. We have the fan of the play of the year. I know they were going to announce also the player, individual player honors here on Friday going in on the 30th. I know maybe those will come out in time that we can talk about that on the live stream we have coming up on Friday here. Pat's going to be joining us back and I think obviously John Vogel and everyone else will be there. That should be exciting. Yeah, Dylan checking in hoping for the underdog story. That's kind of where I would be at for this. I don't know, I think the stallions have done just fine. I think don't think that anyone in Birmingham has anything to be disappointed about Hussie huddle. Checking in here. Hussie is my guy over on the C F L recaps here. Roll on the solo. Pat had to jump off here so if you wanted to watch the mark cast talk solo about the U S F L here for a few more minutes, you are going to get that today. There's this, I mean I'm glad, I'm glad I did watch the playoff games this weekend. Pat's carried the heavy load here for some of the games coming in, but I am glad I did watch the Breakers game at this very moment. Did watch every snap of that. How he says you think Magoo gets an NFL shot? I do. I think Magoos looked good. The question that Pat and I have talked about for weeks here and obviously Mike Mitchell and everything else, spots are running out, you know still have X F L 2020 guys, they're on N F NFL teams now and now we have X F teams and I know we're cutting players here end of the summer and obviously we've had a lot of the gambling things and then there's other injuries going on with the N F NFL guys getting cut. I just don't know how many spots there are. I saw they had the controversy this week with Carson LZ hunting a bear, a tremendously bad look, posting a photo of him and people were cancel, cancel culture and Carson went and I'm sitting there, he was the commander's quarterback last year. I mean he's not playing. No one seems interested in him. So the point is, I think there's still a surplus of talent out there. I don't know, I hope McGoo gets a shot. I just don't know where that would be at this point. Obviously we've talked about this through last year and this year really hard getting out in July and getting these teams to want to pick you up at this point. Getting even in McGoo is coming in as a third string quarterback or kind of a camp body here. A lot of wear and tear here over the last 11, 12 weeks and then coming in and spots are tight. DeMarcus here says all the s f fanboys laughed at their ending, the gates being four and seven. What are y'all saying now? I know I had my good tweets last week. I said that the U S F L saw the X F L have a one losing team in the playoffs and said hold my beer. I obviously with the two in there, but it's good. I feel good. Four of the mallers I'm very excited for about manal friend of the show getting to see him. I know that when he got cut last year from the stars and he went back into the C F L and a lot of struggles with that. I know we had talked and he had, what do I want to do? Do I want to do the X F L? Do I want to do the U S F L? And I think he's got to be pretty at peace right now and knowing that he's done everything he can to get himself in the position here to succeed on Sunday. Excited to see that. Max, you're talking over under prediction. If the U S F L title game has more than 1.287 million viewers, U S F L has the higher season average than the X F L. If the X F L, if it has less, the X F L has more. So I think that would bump up the S F L I do. I think the U S F L title game has more than 1.287 million viewers. I I think the US F L will pull in 1.3 to 1.4 million on the championship game like we talked about here earlier last year, 1.52. I don't know if they have the same juice going into this. So I think that that's, that's your ceiling here. So do you take, I don't, don't know if they do over 1.5. Don't call me a hater here. I see 1.3, 1.4, let me know what you think. Yeah, max excellence, know what's, say you re, let's see here, what else is going on here? Chris talking and this is about the Magoo Magoo quarterback one material J Jacob says, how would you change the plan for next year X F L and U S F L? We've talked about this Andy and I a lot on the X F L one. When we were going through all that with the renegades, when we kind of could see this coming right, we saw, hey, what's going to happen here? And we've obviously predicted this with the US develop heading in, I think you take the division winners and then the next top two records. So if that comes from the, you know, have whatever, three north teams in the south or whatever, but I think you would take, if you win the division, I think you get in and then if you get the next highest, your next highest whatever win loss record after that, that would be what I would do. Also looks like the X F L is kind of eliminating their bi-week next year, so that would be exciting about that. I know there was some nonsense. Yeah, Mike says here, I know there was some nonsense about here. I didn't even have time to tweet about it this morning and that's already been debunked. There was a rampant report out talking about St. Louis hosting the dome. I know YouTube videos were already made and tweets were already made and then I was sent to me here during the show, let me see if I can get it pulled up here per source. Val's locked in dates for six games across all other venues. AVL hasn't decided on where the 2024 championship game will be played yet. So glad that that was cleaned up already and I don't have to do that. I appreciate my, I don't always appreciate everything Mark does, but I appreciate Mark doing the work there and we can kind of move on from that because I did see people already getting, I'm not saying that St. Louis is not going to be or would not be a good decision for that, but I think that, I guarantee you on Tuesday, June 27th, the X F L has not decided where they want to have their championship game next year. Chris here is talking Birmingham 20, Pittsburgh 19 sees them edging it out that way. Let me get back over here to that. Dylan has a question. Would Wence ever take a snap in the X F L? I don't think so. I mean Wence has made a tremendous amount of money from the Eagles and the commanders that carried or was it Eagles and then the Colts carried part of that and then the commanders picked up on that. I don't see him doing that. Gregory, check it. Here's something to consider. U S F L games are on everywhere you go in bars, restaurants, top golf everywhere. Heck, I've watched replays, lots of things are on, lots of things are on TVs. That's kind of what we were talking off the top of the show Buzz deciding no longer worthwhile to kind of track a lot of this stuff. So many different avenues and ways to capture that. So I know what you're saying. I know, I get it. The same argument could be said for declining N H L ratings or X F L ratings or MLB ratings, kind of any of that stuff. Yeah. Jared saying here, Wence has made enough money. Do not see him going to the, do not see him going to the X F L. Chris Chris making a joke. Edmonton Elk should sign, I assume. Carson Wentz. Yeah, Elks, if you were tracking our C F L here, we had our week three recap yesterday. Edmonton Elks definitely in the struggle and we are seeing now, they have already released Kai Loxley who I guess was disgruntled after missing the snap and sitting on the sidelines. Hopefully Trey Ford season is going to be there. Jared wishing they got rid, I don't know. I think you, I said you didn't need divisions when they were talking and we had, because when the X F L was getting ready, we said we don't know how these divisions are going to work. Is it going to be east west? Is it going to be north south? Obviously they ended up with kind of the Texas scrum and everything going on with that. But I think you need to have divisions at some point. But I, because I was poo-pooed very heavily when I said that we could go division list, I was had a lot of people being upset about that. Coach Craig. Yeah, 1.3. Phil's fair. That's where I'm at. I coach Craig is going to join us I think for the Friday show on here. I got to figure out the timing with that, but I think that should be exciting. I've already got the event page set up so you can like and subscribe on that and get ready for that. Jared, I guess we're still on this be HOK fans. I've been hyping the championship game for St. Louis during our time in San Antonio. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. But I'm glad that, I just very glad that that was already cleaned up this morning. Makes my life very easy. Appreciate that Mark. I think they will stick with the same playoff format. They seem to want to market a division championship game. Yeah, I, I agree Andy, I think that that's good feedback. It, it's hard. I think you, in a world that we live in now and it's kind of spring football and we got fan control football not coming back or whatever, but kind all this hodgepodge of everything, I think you could probably get away without having the division with the playoffs and that. But I do I think that we can market it. We have the Saturday game, we got the Sunday game, we got the T-shirts, making the graphics and kind of all of that stuff. Yeah, we're talking. Yeah, we're still talking. Heineke went. I miss Heineke. Yeah, I'm kind of stuck with the Washington commanders here now. That is my team. I can't switch allegiances again. So obviously we had, I followed Heineke to the commanders. I can't follow him to the Falcons so we will be happy to see Heineke do that. If you guys have any other questions here, I'll round it out at the top of the hour. I appreciate everyone helping me here with some comments getting through. I'm not good. Some of these YouTube like Mark can talk for five hours by himself, not normally on here. Used to talking solo here. Like I said, hope Pat is okay jumping off. But I think we did okay here. We viewer ship remained. All right and I think I had enough dumb football takes to see here. The other interesting news note I had saved on here before we get out of here, we know that this week Dakota PR Cop, he was released by the generals already picked back up by the Winnipeg Blue Bomber. So he will be able to kind of double dip here with that in terms of it works out if the schedule works out that we have a lot of questions and can CFO guys jump down or what's going on and back and forth. But the generals releasing Dakota, he was able to go back up to Winnipeg. He's kind of their shorty yardage solution up there. So I think that that's good. Winnipeg getting the snot kicked out of them here by America's C F L team, the Beast Alliance here on Thursday. Very exciting for that. Couple last comments here, we'll get out Jared. I hope Andre and London performs in the championship game. I know he's never kind of gotten back up to his elf, his European league of football kind of heights there. I think he was the MVP or the lead offensive whatever his award accolade that he got over there never really has performed up to that here. But we like to see him go off. Max Division championships are important for booking playoff venues at least for now because usually there's going to be a clear top regular season team in each division so the venues get booked earlier. Yeah, well that's good but again it's good to know that the XL is not booking venues right now for the US F L or for the XL championship game. Yeah, yeah we've talked in BC alliances beat the snot out of the boo bombers so that'll do it for me I think. Leave your ratings predictions here for the U S F L championship game. We'll be back on Friday for a full breakdown with people a lot smarter than me talking football. Like I said, appreciate you guys all riding and out with me on here but I don't know, I thought Birmingham I think has this by a mile. We'll see Mahler's defense if they can hold them in check but I just don't know if the Mueller's have enough firepower here. I mean I just thought Birmingham looked really, really, really, really good on Sunday here. Really didn't seem close. I mean I think I turned the game off here part of the fourth quarter. It kind of felt like a losing thing. Yeah. But yeah, max is saying here comment crazy. Go 1.2. I think it's higher than 1.2. I think it's higher than 1.2. Leave your predictions on here and we will get out of here. Yeah, act my age. Madre London so much better than his competition but the players are better in the US Valley. Still good player but he is going against good players now. Oh that's good. Good feedback on that. I appreciate that. But yeah, like and subscribe, check back in here. We'll get out of here today. I appreciate everyone's time. Like I said, riding with me. Hope Pat's okay, I will check in with him. We got the US L ratings, we'll have to see. I'm sure Twitter is just fine right now. I'm sure I haven't missed anything being on here, but we'll be curious to see how that goes. We'll see you guys next time, like and subscribe. Thanks you all, like I said for writing this out with me and we'll see you next time. Thanks.

CFL 2023 Week 3 Results: Winners and Losers of CFL Week 3, What Did We Learn?

Well, happy Monday morning everyone. Reed here with the mark cast. A couple of programming notes. I'll bring in Jason Hussey standing by trying to go live here, multiple platforms today. Normally I try to protect the YouTube views, but we're trying this now direct to the Facebook page direct on Twitter, so if you're seeing this, maybe we'll get some more viewers, maybe we won't, but like it subscribe if you make your way over to the YouTube channel. Also next week we will be flipped. Jason and I will be doing the Tuesday recap show following the Monday night at BC at Toronto game and then Pat and I will be on Monday doing the US event recap game, so American holidays next week. I don't know how Canadians kind of handle the 4th of July, but I have no days off here and we will be doing that but Jason and I'll be Tuesday next week, game of the week. We'll preview that with BC and all of that, but we'll bring in, raise your hand if you're O and three here and in week three of the C F L. Jason, this was a tremendous weekend. This was a tremendous weekend. We don't have Evan here today. You and I think we can handle this. What did you make of the, just the games overall and then I have lots of notes. I'm very excited. Well unfortunately the first thing I wanted to bring up is just the amount of injuries we saw in that Calgary Saskatchewan game. Both teams just, it seemed like every other play somebody was going down and it was unfortunate because that was an excellent game and the best game we've seen so far this season. Yeah, this injury bug is not going well Calgary. I have a couple tweets here, people out, we still don't know when Oli is coming back. Kind of what's going on with that. We still don't have a timetable. The other interesting note I had kind of going into all of this, so we've talked the stats lines and all of that. I think I know that what we're talking about now, so at some point I hope the C F L game gets finished here. If you're looking on the c l plus Saskatchewan and Calgary still going in overtime here as we record this on Monday morning. I thought it was interesting enough that I don't know if he's a friend of the show yet, we're working on it. Justin dunk and I guess they were talking to Randy or he was doing a presser before the Winnipeg game and I did love that friend of the show. Gary Stern checked in here and said, because the quote is this is not a failure. Randy's trying to explain the statistical issue and Gary said, no, I love the c l and there's a failure, no excuses. So we're still dealing with that. Any other thoughts on that? I just thought that was funny that Gary took the time to he he's vocal again now. Yeah, I guess he is not restrained from, not that he was ever restrained but by the being a C F L owner. But yeah, the statistical issue just has to be fixed as soon as possible. It just inexcusable in my opinion. Yeah. So where do you want to start here today? Four game slate. Next week we'll be back to three, four games here. Do you want to start at the beginning or the end? I think we should start with the big statement win of the week Thursday night. I like that. So this was probably one of the greatest nights I've ever had watching the C F L here kept. It was close at the beginning I had kind of my thoughts going. I'm like, I don't know because Winni or BC always looks good. You okay? We can beat the crap out of Calgary's kind of having the off year we can beat Edmonton, but then you get your true test here and this was like you said the statement. What were your early thoughts on this one? Just that the execution that BC showed was just remarkable. The lack of execution that the bombers showed, it was just the fact that this game was such a bloat was just such a shock to me. It was in Winnipeg, it like the last team to beat Winnipeg on the road by more than 10 points was the Tigercat back in 2019 and that was quite the juggernaut of a regular season team. So I mean it just shows you how rare this is and BC just has so many Playmakers, man they had so many guys out. Dominic Bri's out. Who else was out for them but what Keon still hasn't played. Yeah, Keon. Yeah, Keon Hatcher is not in the lineup still, but even beyond those guys, they have so many Playmakers. Alexander Hollins looks excellent, breakout receiver of the year and the C F L looks like Lucky Whitehead had some good moments in this game. So that's really what stood out to me. Just the amount of sheer playmaking ability and the execution from BC from a game planning standpoint and they just really wanted this one. I think if we're ever going to get Vernon set up for success, this is it, right? You're playing your defenses lights out, you don't have to worry about going out and scoring. I mean we've got 30 points here, but you don't have to do that. You can win with a 22 game against the Alex. I just feel like he's someone that gets maybe a little flustered in that, okay, I got to go out and score, I got to go out. We can kick some fields, we can do this. Wasn't a problem here. Running up and down the field. I loved Ryan Phillips or DC we're already seeing here. Mike Mitchell was talking in our chat, he's going to get hired for head coach. Did you know I filmed Ryan Phillips wedding? Were you aware of that? Did you know the bacca lore of Ryan Phillips in the mark cast? No, but that's awesome. I never heard of that. Yeah, spent New Year's Eve with Ryan. I remember it because this was obviously, this was six, seven years ago. This was pre anything with the CFO and I remember they're like, oh, he was like this because I was talking with this groomsman and because he had this big gold suit on and spike shoes and just all to the nines dancing down the coming down the aisle and I remember talking with his groomsman like, oh, he's like a huge star in the C F L. I was like, what is that? Like who is cares about that? But yeah, then I remember it was the first were, it was the first season we're covering the games I watched. I go, oh my god, that's Ryan Phillips. I know him. So congrats to him. Certainly would probably see him on these short list here. C F L head coaches moving forward. Do you know that Think Yeah, absolutely. And I think both of their coordinators, offense and defense, I think Jordan Maxim has a very good chance, especially with the offensive play calling around the league. But yeah, definitely Ryan Phillips has been incredibly impressive. What is it? 21 points allowed through three weeks that really speaks for itself and with two quality wins versus Cal and Winnipeg too. It's crazy. Zel still looking great. One of the leading rushers right now. I thought even Oliveira, there was all this going into the game. Oh, is he going to be what's going? He seemed fine. Yeah, I don't really know if that was kind of cloak and dagger here that we don't want to want play calling but seemed, I mean it seemed like he was fine. Did you notice anything from Oliveira? No, I think Brady looked great, honestly. I think that he's really impressed me this year with how he's looked early on kind of a guy that I underrated coming into this year, but I think in terms of the injury and the health going into this game, he looked fine. I thought it was funny too. Bets was getting Claro sack seven times here and someone was saying that we needed to get a nickname for the bets guy for Sad Claros. I said, oh, that's Mr. Claros, that's his father here. I think that he's taking care of him. Were you surprised? It just seemed like they couldn't protect, I never know what to attribute that was it weak line, we can't protect Claros or just BC's. Defense is just playing on a different level right now. I think BC throws a lot of different looks at you. A lot of exotic blitz packages. They got great linebackers as well, but I think Bets has just taken a massive leap so far this season. I think he's honestly the leading candidate to be most out 10 and Canadian very early in the season here. Funny too, we had Derek Taylor who was on the show last week watching, we had the Sean White Dink field goal because at the beginning of the game I'm like, God, points are really going to be a pre, but that's like, I don't really know what's going on. He hit the field. This was the 18th time that Sean White has hit the upper air crossbar in his career most in the C F L. Remarkable. Yeah, he's had an incredible career, but that's an interesting stat for sure. Let me get back over here. Otherwise it didn't seem like you, Claros 1526 looked really pedestrian, had the one interception. Is this an off week for bc? Is this an ill-prepared or is this BC is really kind of on a different level? I just think BC came in there with a different motivation and kind of surprised them. Got to remember that Winnipeg has beaten the crap out of BC over the last couple of years, even though BC's been a pretty good team over that time and I think that BC it was just their turn to really return the favor and make a statement of their own. It seemed like that it really was kind of taking over everyone. We had Hodge here talking. That's the first time I've seen Winnipeg get out, played at home like this in a long time. Too many penalties, too many defensive breakdowns, not enough protection. Kudos to bc. It did seem like you had a lot of, okay, I was sleeping on bc. I didn't really realize that. How have you felt with your kind of circle here with the C F L kind of perceptions being changed over the weekend About BC or Winnipeg? Yeah, just about, well I guess both. I guess both. Okay. So I think Winnipeg, I think the biggest thing for me is that we think of them as this great defense, but I think this defense looks very vulnerable early in the season. I don't know where they'd rank statistically, but I imagine that they ranked towards the bottom of the league in terms of passing yards allowed. The secondary is getting chewed up through three weeks of this season. So I think that the perception of their defense being this juggernaut that it used to be, I think that is there's from reality is a little bit different and I think that for bc, I think that people didn't really give credit towards the potential that Vernon Adams had. I think that Vernon has such an incredibly high ceiling, it's all about him hitting that consistently, but I think that people didn't really believe that he could do that on a consistent level. You'd think he'd have one stinker of a game by now because that's kind of the trend of his career. But at this point of the season, so far so good. Yeah, pulled here. I had it marked around the four minute mark we got, let's get him out of here, let's go readdress. We had a Dan Evans sighting we're out of the game. Good seeing him on that. I thought McGinnis looked good again, it felt like kind of like a safety blanket for Vernon. We kind, we've seen that with the Dolphins with Tuo where it's like f it tyreek's down there somewhere, just kind of hucks the ball. I noticed that a little bit with Vernon, but obviously that guy's huge that Justin McGinnis, I, he's like six four, whatever. Just a massive guy. Seems like hes really stepped up because we haven't had the full suite with Keon and like you said at the top, Dominique, it kind of being off as well. So we still haven't seen I guess the full potential of what BC has. Yeah, absolutely. And Giovan Katoi as well. They just have a really good combination of skillset sets in that receiving core Katoi is kind of like that tight end type body that is good for check down routes and I think that Hollins is an excellent route runner, bit of a burner himself. Lucky Whitehead obviously one of the fastest players in the league, if not the fastest player. So they just have so many Playmakers and it's made Vernon Adams job a lot easier, I'll tell you that. Do you Vernon the storyline here of him running the water out to the offensive lineman and the brakes? I think that that shows, Vernon kind of knows that. Think Vernon's all in right now on all facets of this. I think it's the perfect fit for his career. He's bounced around to many different spots. He was here in Hamilton when we had Johnny. He was there in Montreal, obviously Saskatchewan even So he is bounced around the league for a while. I believe he's been in the league since 2015, but this is the first time in his career that I believe he's truly felt comfortable. Obviously he's a west coast guy so that's probably playing the factor for him. So I think doing little things like that you could show, tell he's just really all in on this season and the results are speaking for themselves. Anytime I can throw a little shade at front of me of the show, Daniel Austen here, I have to do it. Dan Danny says I could not have been more off with my little pre-season expectations of the Lions. Yeah, Every receipt I do like this. I guess you should fall the CFO more hockey season ticket more of your time, more people could care. The Lions had a good season. I dunno. I think it's good. I think it's good. I remember we, I was going back because it was this time last year and I was kind of, something popped up in my Facebook memories or whatever the episodes and BC they were coming off the big homeland and then they had the bi week and then it was kind of screwy there and obviously Nathan work ended up like taking over the world, but I feel like BC is carrying this momentum right now and we have the big Monday night game with Toronto. The defending champions here could be Mike Mitchell's call. That could be the great cup preview. So it feels like they got a lot of momentum going their way right now, which is exciting to see. Yeah, absolutely. I am so excited for that matchup next week to see this BC offense go against this Toronto defense who I'm very highly on as well. And then the other side of the ball, I think Chad Kelly's really going to get his first big test in terms of great C F L defense. He's going up against, I had this too. I did all these say where my thing go stats game stats would make them sad. Exactly. But I mean even you look, your time of possession wasn't crazy different. I mean obviously the stacks and takeaways, but I mean Winnipeg held the ball a lot. It felt, yeah, like I said at the beginning, I'm kind of holding my breath cause Oliveira's going through and getting four or five yards every time. I mean it felt like at least for the first few minutes it felt a little closer than it ultimately ended up being. Yeah, I think the sacks were just killer for Winnipeg in this game. I think like said, I think they gave up seven of them. I think anytime you do that sacks are drive killers in the cfl. I mean they can be in the NFL as well, but in the CFL in particular, three down league sacks or killer negative plays are killer and I think that one thing to note with Winnipeg is that they're very old in the trenches. So I think that is where you could see the biggest decline for them and you saw their tackles get beat up in this game by guys like Matthew Bets. So something to note going forward for Winnipeg. Moving on here, we'll wrap this game up here in a second. Moving on. Are you higher on bc? Are you lower on Winnipeg? I don't think I've lived in the world where BC or where Winnipeg wasn't ranked first in the west here and I've seen a lot of power rankings but BC obviously above them now do just the status quo kind of here of the C F L West. I don't think I'm necessarily lower on Winnipeg. I think it's kind of good that they got that first loss out of the way early on this season as opposed to going 10 and oh last year. I think that took a lot out of them. So I think this is a good wake up call for them. So I'm not necessarily super concerned with them, but I'm definitely higher on BC after seeing what they did to Winnipeg. Anytime you can go into a place that is as hard to win as Winnipeg, that's incredibly impressive and they're definitely a top two team minimal in the West division at this point going forward. And I had them third in my season predictions but obviously Calgary's kind of going by the wayside here. Yeah, we had a lot of sad Winnipeg fan crowd shots, kind of like a Ms Girl back in the wwe. A lot of crying fans, people leaving early. I didn't like that. I saw I had a tweet saved where they're like, oh if you're a win Winnipeg fan after the last three years that you should never walk out early on any of these games. Yeah, after how well your teams performed. Any thoughts on that? I mean you were at the TCATs game, did you leave early? I did, but mostly just because honestly every, everybody in the stadium, that stadium was empty with five minutes left to go in the fourth quarter it was, but I mean I think it's a little bit different of a situation. Obviously that was their first home loss in forever for in a peg or one of their rare home losses, whereas Hamilton has just started so poorly to this season, get to them the next game we'll talk about here. A couple last things. Did you enjoy and he was on the Sunday one too. Do you enjoy Paola Police on the round table here? Was it Naer? I was like, who is that? Because I'm kind of like watching on my phone here, Paula never. I'm like, who the hell? I'm like, oh that's Paola police here. Oh yeah, that's what he's doing now. Yeah, I think he's actually the best one on there. I think he provides the best insight personally because obviously he's a guy that's coached in the league recently. He was on the T S N panel before and then he went back into coaching offensive coordinator with Winnipeg and then that's how he got the job with Ottawa. So he does have experience in that T S N role and I think it's valuable to have him on the panel. And then we had Kate with the, the hair, Kate wanted to be bald too. I don't know where they got a bald cap there if that was a pre-planned gimmick, but it was always good to see nailer on there. We have a couple just comments here, we'll move on. Cole says, congrats to the lions. Got my winners won in a crazy game and then Sandusky said the question was was it Nathan or was it BC's wide receiver cord that made him that good, makes Vernon and Adams better than they are? What do you make of that? Was it the receiving core? Was it Nathan? I think it was probably a little bit of both. I definitely think it's both. I think that I was super high on this BC wide receiver core when they had Mike Riley, so I think that they've always had very good receivers. Obviously Brian Burnham there for a number of years retiring this year, but I mean you just see how deep they are this year and I think that Vernon, they may not have as big of a ceiling with Vernon as they do with Nathan Rourke and I think you've seen that. I don't think you're going to see those, what was it, 56, 14 or whatever that first game last year with Edmonton. But I think that you just see this team is playing such great complimentary football on both sides and I think their defense is even better than this year. So honestly, I think it's a bit of both like you said. All right, let's get on here. The next game, you're a heartbreaker, you were here for this. I'll let you give the opening thoughts on the 38 to 12 Montreal against Hamilton. All right, so I did an instant reactions video on this one on my channel. I think that the main story is this one is that when you look at the yards, it looks pretty even for both teams, but the ultimate story is Montreal scored touchdowns. Hamilton scored field goals, especially in that first half. Hamilton was up six, nothing early settled for two short field goals in the first quarter. If they had scored one touchdown there, I think it's a completely different game. They allow a pun return touchdown at the end of the first quarter. That was a killer and Montreal just never relinquished the lead. So the execution was just so much better from the ettes in this game. I think that the coaching Orlando Steinhower kind of got taken to school by Jason Moss, who is a very underrated offensive mind, I will say in the C F L for all the flack that he does get. And I think Cody Jido played an extremely clean game. Once again, zero turnovers in two games. I do believe he has been sacked a bunch, but at the end of the day he keeps moving the offense along and not turning the ball over, which is super important for this team going forward. I don't know how, if you're Hamilton, if we have James Butler who's one of the leading rushers in the league and we have Shilts throw in for 47 and Butler carrying it four times or five times here. I just think that's remarkable that you would do the work to bring in and I mean I don't know if these stats are, I mean I watched the game, but I don't know if these stats are accurate on here, but that seems to me that I would be utilizing that a little bit more on that. I so happy for Cody. I'm just going to tweet out. But it was like I was so torn because we have you and obviously the Thai cats and you're wanting that and you're there. I love Cody. I'm so glad that he's kind of getting, I think the proper, just being treated like a normal human being and not the scum of the earth because you're not undefeated than Saskatchewan. I think it's a better spot for him. HeadWise stand back looked really good as well. I think it felt like they used him a little bit more rushy and then he had a couple receiving. They're kind of moving him around more on there it seems like. Yeah, absolutely. It's great to get stand back going because he has not looked good dating back to when he came back from that injury last year. So it's good to finally get him going. That's one thing that's very different about Hamilton this year is their run defense. I believe it's last in the C F L. That was a hallmark of this defense for years. So that's one thing that's kind of raising alarm bells for me as a Tigercat fan. It looked, I mean they looked good early on mean we had that first IT drive and Shilts had that bomb. I mean we have our group chat, we changed the names of it kind of as the winds blow here, but we had it shilts season going into the game because we were all excited, okay, Matthew Schultz is going to get this now we've renamed it on Cody Fudo here, the recognition of Cody's good work. But yeah, it seemed like you said settling for these field goals. I really came back to buy them there where they were moving the field early on. I mean they were getting Yarded Hamilton was, Yeah, absolutely. They were moving the ball between the twenties, just could not punch it in. I thought Duke Williams, Tim White both had excellent games in this one, but at the end of the day they missed some open receivers in the end zone. Really cost them the game, honestly. So I think that it's just such a disappointing start for the Tigercat this season and I having trouble deciding what they should do going forward. I think it honestly could be a coaching thing. I think that at a certain point a lot of coaches in professional sports just get figured out they have success early on. Orlando Steinhower a great first year with Hamilton, but I think that they're starting to be figured out on both sides of the ball. The tricks that they used to use there's are not working anymore. And like I said, I think they're just getting figured out. So I think it might just be a coaching thing. I also had my saved thing here, I can't find it, but the, there's the meme where it's the security guard not patting down in anyone as they walk into the stadium, but that felt like the tie cats as well. The T tie cats could not tackle at all, could not pull anybody down at all. No, I felt mean This is kind of stuff where, I don't know if that's a coachable thing or if that's a player thing, but let, let's go here mean these are things that are only making your mouthers worse. Yeah, don't get me wrong, the execution in terms of the tackling just terrible. Like I said, that run defense is not looking good so far this season. I think a lot of that has to do with discipline and tackling obviously. So honestly, at the end of the day I'm just very disappointed with the way this season has started for the Tigercat and like I said, I don't know what to do, what they should do going forward. Yeah, because that's the thing. So B'S out now he's on the sixth game. That doesn't necessarily mean he's going to miss six games. I don't know if he comes back. Yeah, I don't know how you reboot this year. I mean this was supposed to be, I mean we talked about this in our pre-kickoff everything. I mean this is great Cup bust they're hosting this year. They're paying bo half a million dollars, like you say, a weird calculated error here to think that you had enough other pieces. I don't know. I mean looking back now, do you think that they should have seen this coming or did we see this coming? How do you view this now looking back? I think there was always a risk. You should have always known there was a risk that bold Levi Mitchell was not going to get back to or even close to that level that we saw back in 2018 when he was m o P of the C F L because we haven't seen anything in recent memory to tell us anything differently. So I mean I always had that in my back of my mind, but I thought that maybe Matthew Shilts could step in if both falters. I still think he put up really good yardage in this game. It's all about finishing drives, but I worry about the time it takes to do that. I'm just more frustrated with how slow this team starts. I bet this team's still going to finish with seven or eight wins because this team is always a second half of the season type of team. But they dig themselves holes year after year and it's just incredibly frustrating. It's like the first month of the year. It's like a preseason. It was funny, we had, I believe Cliffy was there with Montreal Outlets Flight Deck podcast. He was at the stadium. I heard some air horns going. Some of the Montreal Tim Capper was in Hawaii, so I know it wasn't him. I was thinking I want to figure out some way that we can get the Thai Katzer humming song, but just with the air horns playing if that, there's a way that we can get that cover of that because I do love that song. But I loved hearing and especially where you're in, it's in Hamilton, so you know have just two or three guys in the stand. I'm like, that's ballsy. You're ballsy. You're going to get your ass beat. You're trying to do that in the hammer. Yeah, maybe we could work something out for the Great Cup of Montreal. Makes it there. Yeah. And then I had a couple of other notes here. Who is it? Austin Mack looked really good. I mean it just seems like Cody's got a lot of tools there. Julian Grant looking good as well. I just, it's, it's like he's a new man. It's like Cody, Cody Ferro getting his screw back. I want to talk the shove here at the end, the shove felt around the world. What did you make of that? Cause I'm going to pull up the tweet Absolutely inexcusable in any professional sport, even any amateur sport, to do that to an opponent, you got to have some level of respect play between the lines whistle to whistle. But at the end of the day, I mean that's just ridiculous. I, I think it was Steegle that said it on the Ts n panel. It's like if you want to fight the guy, if someone said something to you, fight the guy, ask him to fight after the game. But I mean you don't do that. That's just a very, very bad look for the team and just the reaction from Orlando Steinhower as well, who doesn't show a lot of emotion like that. Yeah, look at him right there. It's crazy. So I was very disgusted as a Tigercat fan and a fan of the C F L. Yeah, my tweet was when someone tells me they don't like the C F L, I thought that was funny. I just go up there, I just punk fake I'm and show up. Yeah, I had the quote here from Steinhower talking, I think Dunk had the story here where it was talking. Yeah, that's not who we are. It calls Chris Edward Edwards, fa, handshake, shovel, onac, inexcusable. Not good. I mean, I don't know, you get that in hockey a lot. You get when you're beating Arizona, you're up for one or something and they started getting chippy. You just don't see that. Football obviously moderates and handles that very differently than hockey, but that's certainly not something you can do and it just hasn't set the tone good for the season here especially. But I mean, excuse me, Montreal came in and kind of slapped you around at home, so Yep. Looking any other notes here? We had Emory Hunt was checking out the game. That was good. Shilts, I had taken a lot of hits as well. It just felt like he was running, getting beat up and they had, he's the one scramble where he, and they got tripped up and couldn't get through, but it felt, I don't know, just felt kind like a shacking overall here. Anything else from this game or you wanted to move forward in your heart? Yeah, so I think one thing with Shilts is I was noticing a lot of batted passes at the line, so I don't know if that's just a him thing or it's just that Montreal line with a lot of length up front. Jamal Davis is a guy that's kind of compared to Willie Jefferson up there. So I think that maybe that's something to watch going forward with him. Something that I noticed a lot in this game. But yeah, I think that's just about it for me with this game. I think that, just looking at my notes here, one thing I wanted to mention is Ante Evans, another former Tigercat coming back to burn them here with, I believe it was pick six, I don't know which one went for pick. There was two interceptions. One of them went back for a touchdown, one of them went back for a long return. But yeah, de Evans got one of them against his former team, met the Tigercat coming back to bite them, Oh, I had this as well here on here. And then you didn't even get your drone show, you didn't even the big drone show they had planned weather and all that mean, of course, I guess you said the stadium of was empty anyway, so they don't want to do that. But does that do anything for CFL fans? Like, oh we get the drone show coming about the home opener? Well, I will stay for the next game to see it because I'm very interested as to what it would look like, but I don't think I, it's going to be a huge draw in my opinion. But they do a family's on the field kind of thing and they even canceled that and they were like, all right, everybody just get out of here. Everybody's leaving. Anyway, it was pouring rain when everybody was leaving the building. The rain held off most of the evening was kind of a light trickle, but at the end of the game it was kind of a symbolic, oh, everybody's leaving the stadium and the rain just started pouring. So Yeah, when we went to the gray cup there, we gambled poorly and we tried to get out because we had a flight early the next day and we ended up getting, and we walked through industrial area for about a good hour there trying to get back to our Airbnb. So yeah, sometimes you probably know, obviously you can navigate better than I can, but certainly it kind of issues with that. All right, let's get here. This was an interesting game. Slow to start. What was it like six to six to three at the half or six to nine, what was it? Yeah, six to three at the half Calgary, Saskatchewan at Calgary here. Danny Austin said that there was a lot of Saskatchewan Ruff Ryder fans there. He said he normally doesn't know that. What did you make of this one Calgary here dropping another? Well, I mean in terms of, it's weird how bad the first half was, but I think this was the best game so far this season that really picked up in the second half. Both quarterbacks made some nice plays and some not so nice plays, but at the end of the day I think it was a very entertaining classic C F L comeback at the end of the fourth quarter when you thought Calgary was out of it. They came back from 10 points with six minutes left. So honestly I was very entertained with this one. I was pretty impressed with how the quarterbacks played in the second half with the exception of a couple of really, really boneheaded throws from Jake Mayer who will we'll talk about more in a minute here. Yeah, starting off. Yeah, this was the first overtime game of the season if I'm not mistaken. One the U US F L game on Saturday. Went to overtime weekend of overtime games here with the Pittsburgh Mahler's kind of inching it out there. Harris looks good. Heavy interception. Yeah mayor, I had him or my note said early on, mayor just looks off. I mean I don't know, we talked last week. If it's the pressure now we don't have Bo here. I kind of got to do it all my own. What do you attribute Mayor's kind of accuracy issues too? Issues. I just think he's kind of overthinking it. I think, like I said in the group chat the other day, I think he looks like Dane Evans did last year. He kind of looks like a deer in the headlights. He's kind of succumbing to the pressure of being the number one guy for that team and especially when you look at Cal Calgary's history of great quarterbacks, he has a lot to live up to. And on top of that, all his receivers are getting injured as well. Very thin wide receiver group even going into this season. But now Malik Henry's on the shelf, Reggie ton's on the sixth game, so I mean it does not look good for Calgary unless they can get some really young players to step up here. A lot of their Canadian receivers are going to have to play really well for them. So I think Jake's just looked a really off in terms of the accuracy, which I thought was his biggest calling card going into this year. I thought that was the biggest reason why he would succeed in the C F L. Not really a guy that's going to push the ball down field the ton, but I thought he was going to be a guy that executed with rhythm in the pass a game and could deliver a ball on target when he needed to. But just a lot of passes sailing high through the first three weeks of the season. He has lots of time to turn it around and I think Calgary's going to give him the full 18 games to do it, but at the end of the day it just does not look good so far this season for him and for me personally as a guy that was super high on him going into the season, I'm personally out on him now just based on what I've seen. I just don't think he's totally regressed from what I've seen previously, the past couple of seasons It really felt like they were set up. I have this tweeter pulled up, Ryan's one of our Calgary fans there was wide open there right at the beginning of the game. May kind of overthrow. Yeah, it feels overthinking the Dane last year, Dane was so in his head and it was like he even, he could never get out of it, couldn't get out of the funk just, yeah, you're Calgary now, you really felt like we're set up for the next 5, 6, 7 years here. We don't have to worry. And now obviously Thai cat's got to figure out what they're doing but it's like neither team's better off now. It feels like both of these teams with Hamilton and Calgary, I just don't know how you can regress so far so quickly. It just feels like the floor has fallen out right, fallen out right now. Yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of it also falls back on the offensive coaching. Dave Dickinson, obviously he took over the GM responsibilities this off season and they had some controversial departures from this roster even before training camp. The release of Derek Dennis. I think that was potentially huge for this team. I think that the screen passes really drive me insane and how often they're called with within this offense. There's just nothing that's attempted more than 10 yards down the field and it drives me nuts how many times we see a second and eight and they throw a five yard crosser and it's tackled short of the stick. So I mean I think a lot of it falls back on coaching from Calgary and we saw a lot of that last year when mayor took over as the starter as well. And even someone like Derek Dennis and I know that he's a little bit older and kind of injury, obviously had the injuries last year, that's someone that could be a locker room leader kind of guy and I just think that that's underserved, especially in the CFO or but the salary account was so low and we can't deal with any of this stuff. I think having someone like him there kind of picking this up because right Calgary beat the Red Blacks, which isn't really an accomplishment I think at this point and we can talk about them in the previous. So Calgary has not looked good even in winning. I mean that game was a really ugly game we had here. The Malik Henry tweeting out ruptured his Achilles. It's going to be a long process. I know God wouldn't put me through anything I couldn't handle. Thank you for all the prayers. I mean truly just devastating. I know we talked the injuries off the top as well for across the board on this team. Yeah, absolutely. This is just a killer injury for the Stampeders. I think that Molly Canery one of the only true guys that could stretch the field for this team. A guy that could take a screen pass and go the distance with it. We saw him take a slant route, go the distance with in this game. And honestly I think not having him going forward is going to be such a detriment to this Calgary offense. I mean they have been the epitome, I think Paul Oli said this on the Postgame show that they've been the epitome of next man up in the C F L for years. But at a certain point how much longer can you create players at a nothing? And that's what they've been able to do for so many years. And I think another thing with you say losing a veteran player like Derek Dennis and other leaders that they had on this team, this off season, I think they're starting to lose that winning culture that they've had over the years. It's a long established winning culture there in Calgary, but they're slowly starting to lose those veteran pieces that were part of that 2018, their last great cup winning team. So something to keep in mind here with Calgary as they go forward and the slow start to the season. Yeah, mark here, Mark Stevens and I think they had a cool tweet out where they were. I think now the longest tenured kind of duo him and I can't remember the other gentleman that calls with Mark, but with Lee Henry out here at St. Peter's at a jam beton middle, most on six Phil pot uncertain to return. I just, yeah, what do you do here at this point? Are you signing, are you making trades? It feels like the C F L season is so long they have this many injuries right now, right? Because you kind of got to factor that attrition in across the 21 weeks. I don't really know what they're looking at going forward. I mean maybe they bring back Kamar Jordan, a veteran guy that's still out there on the market, don't know what he's up to, but I think that they're probably going to look for the answers from within. I think Trey ems, Dukes is going to be a guy that gets a lot more targets than that offense already was playing a pretty big role, but I think he might be their number one target receiver going forward. Luther Knu a guy they're going to lean on a little bit more has shown a lot of potential over the past couple years. So they're going to need guys to step up, play bigger roles in this receiving car at least until Beton gets back because I still believe is a true number one receiver in the C F L and I think he was showing that through the first couple of games, which is unfortunate why he got injured. And then did you have any hot takes on? I was watching a lot of this. The second half of the, oh there we go. Sorry, my thing froze there. We had a weird, the guy caught, there was a fumble but there the interception. Did you track any of this with the weird rules where the one guy had it and fumbled it out? The interception thing? Are we talking about the kickoff here or the kickoff That was batted out of bounds but the guy came down out of bounds so they ruled it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cow bug. Yeah. Honestly I tweeted out, I was like, sometimes there's just rules in this league that are just very, very hard to explain to people and I think that was what Dave Naer was saying on our pre-game show, kickoff show to the season. And I think that is so true with the cfl, they just need to dumb the rule book a little bit. I had no idea what some of these rules even are because some of these bizarre circumstances, what that was even a rule. I rarely ever have that happen when I'm watching an N F L game or a college football game or whatever. So I think that just another example of, I think by the rule, they actually got that call I believe, but at the end of the day I think it's just very confusing and I didn't know that was a rule. Last notes I had here, they had like a fan event before the game. I saw the Great Cup trophy was there, they had it on the base, which is my name is actually on the base. I don't know if you were aware of that with the Great Cup fan base. Awesome. In retrospect, I wanted to put Rash Madonna's name on it but they wouldn't let me. I had already sent it in and then, oh God, that would've been such a funny joke to do, but I couldn't like it was past the point of return at that point, but I thought that that was good. The base was there because it doesn't always travel with the base but kind sad where you had the event here in Edmonton with the Damon Allen kind of giving him the kudos, Edmonton losing and then obviously Calgary here losing as well, kind of having their fan event. They can't time these, right? Yeah, unfortunately they can't all do it. BC's done it the last couple years with those great home openers. So let's get over here. Last game, the game last night. This was exciting. I watched every snap of this one as well here going in opposite. I had my dual screen because we were watching, we had the U S F L, Southern Southern Division playoffs going up against Toronto Argos at Edmonton. What did you make of this one? I have a lot think we have a lot to talk about. I think the Argo has just looked like the defending champs. They look really, really good out there. I think they have balance on the offensive side. I think Chad Kelly shows exactly what you would want to see from him. He's not perfect at this point, had a couple picks in this one, but he made a lot of big plays, used his legs to extend plays, which is very valuable thing in the C F L when you can send more players than your offensive line can block. I think very crucial to be able to get out of those situations. So I'm very impressed with Calgary Toronto. So start to the season here and I think AJ Willette looks like the breakout running back of the C F L this season just looks like an absolute beast would not want to meet that guy in a back alley. And I think that defensively they look as advertised. I mean they're going against Edmonton and they played against Hamilton's anemic offense last week, so we'll see what they do after their second bi week next week. But at the end of the day I think that or no that no, they're, no, they're working playing on Monday, but at the end of the day I think that Toronto's looked very good is what I'm saying. Yeah, I tweeted this out. I said AJ L is my spirit animal here. This gentleman we did the last week, we had the wrestling, the whatever he was doing, the spear on the guy with the helmet. This guy is a freak of nature. Went for the hat trick here, three rushing touchdowns. And what was crazy to me is because they talk about how powerful he is, right? Oh, he's this big guy guy, he's walking into the end zone untouched. It doesn't even seem like a challenge. I'm like, how are you guys, how is Edmonton so bad here in terms of stopping this? Just not even a challenge, but I like this gentleman, he retweeted this, we're excited. But yeah, this is a pro AJ Owlette podcast here, but I mean this guy is a superstar I think between Chad Kelly and him, I like having some of these notable faces here. We can have a discussion about that at some point. We had the Dave Naer tweet this week, his article about is Chad Kelly the most important C F L player right now? What did you make of that? And I'm sure you saw Dave's article because it went everywhere. Well I think in terms of potentially growing the Argonaut's presence and footprint, I think he is absolutely the most important player in the C F O right now. If he hits which it looks like he's going to hit, I think that would be huge for that team because the Argos, despite their really strong history winning the most great cups and whatnot, they haven't really had a great franchise quarterback that's been there for a long time. So I think that they've had guys that have played there for a handful of years. Ricky Ray most recently won two great cups there, but he's more known I think for his time in Edmonton and a lot of the guys are like that. Damon Allen himself known for more playing at other spots in the league. So I think Toronto needs that superstar franchise quarterback to be able to grow the fan base, be that marketing player for them, and if he doesn't get a shot in the nfl, that would be huge for them going forward if he's able to stay long term and continue to play like he is right now. Yeah, because my, here's my issue with Chad Kelly and I did forget, I had this funny one that pulled up with the AJ l Justin commented, AJ says, I don't shave so I can conserve energy for touchdowns. I thought that was good with that. The thing with Chad is I don't think Chad say, I mean same with Nathan, but I think Nathan to me kind of had the heel turn after the season where he in his little and it was wasn't meant to be, but then his postgame after he got signed over in Jacksonville, never really wanted to be in the C F L. It was kind of an unwanted detour and I'm kind of glad I'm in the nfl. That's what I've always wanted to do. To me that was always kind of a Nathan War heel turn with this. I don't think Chad, I think Chad openly is like, I don't want to be in the nfl. That's where I want to be. And I don't know if you have Chad for the long term, even if Chad doesn't have prospects in the nfl. I think Chad thinks that he has prospects in the nfl, so I don't know, and I know he's pretty fresh, I think in the Naer article they're talking with injuries and him walking off teams and stuff. He doesn't have a lot of wear and tear on his body at his age, but I just don't, Chad doesn't strike me as I'm going to be a lifer in the C F L. Yeah, no, I mean that's definitely a fair point, but I think he also mentioned that he's playing on a bleep contract, so I think that if he keeps playing like this, he's going to get $500,000 a year, which is good, pretty good money. I think you see guys come up here and stay long in the C F L. So I mean maybe not, doesn't stay long term in Toronto, but I think that at the end of the day, just getting the exposure of having a guy with his name attached to the Toronto organized franchise to create a little bit of buzz around the team. It's just so funny to me because there was rumors that they wanted to get Chad to go to the U S F L last year, obviously with his uncle and everyone, Jim Kelly playing in that. And I don't think they offered enough, right? The U S F L doesn't, X F L will pay up a little bit for some quarterbacks, but I think even this year it was like 200,000 was kind of the top for one of the guys in the X F L. And so to have Chad now what could have been here year different or whatever, if they've, the U F L had ponied up and I think they really, how they've leaned into their lineage this year, the second year, now that they're out of the trademark lawsuit stuff, I really think they could have led on Chad to kind of be a face of that franchise. And obviously they don't have that option now because he's with Toronto. So just interesting. Yeah, it would be interesting to see if he does, when he has an opportunity to be a free agent if the NFL doesn't work out, if he does join one of those leagues down south. It's funny to me, talking to Edmonton side here, if there was 32,000 people there last week for the home or two, whatever it was for the home opener, I think there was 32 people last night. I know there were reported attendance was 20,000, whatever seats sold was, I was surprised like drastic dropoff compared to the home opener. Honestly, I wasn't totally shocked with it. I mean just the way they lost that home opener after trying to rebuild some goodwill within the fan base over the season. I mean at the end of the day, just win a damn game. That is the reality of this situation. They need to win games to get this fan base back. I mean even if they do do that mean, is it even beyond getting fans back? I think they need to have significant success probably for them to do that, but at the end of the day, not totally shocked with the poor attendance in Edmonton yesterday. Looks like there was nobody there, like you said. Yeah, I could say U S F L definitely had more fans yesterday. I know there's always the jokes with the US F L attendance. Yeah, Damon Allen in attendance. A bad night for that. We talked to the Jack Kelly being the most important. It was so funny to me because they're doing the pregame Cornelius and the Elks and they really got to get going here and what is this do or die for? Cornelius comes out immediately, throws in the interception, gets sacked, and it's like that's the end of the drive. It can't get going there. CJ Sims was good. I mean that seemed really like the only spark of life they had for the Elks. With any return games. I don't know. I don't what to make here. I guess we can tie the Cornelius Kai Loxley coming in, getting one snap and then we move on from him and then we have this Derek. Derek. How do you say that? Doggie Dogie? I, I have no idea. I have no idea. I'll have to hear it said more times. Well, the good news is he is actually a friend of the Maras. I didn't realize this. I was going on to tweet this. I was last night, I go, I got to go. I was going catching up on everything. I go, it's no wonder this guy's a baller, but he finally comes in at the end. We finally get Cornelius out. Do you feel like Cornelius, his time, we're on Jarret season now? I think it's been beyond time to move on from Taylor Cornelius. I think, what is he like four and 20 as a starter in the C f l zero home wins. At a certain point you have to move on, especially when he hasn't shown any progression. It was a better game from him in this one. And it's worth noting that this game was close at halftime 1817. But the real killer that I think the turning point of the game first drive for Toronto. Toronto has an, or Edmonton has an opportunity to stop them. They get a sack, Jake Sona, but he gets flagged for, I think it was a face mask penalty. Toronto goes down and scores the touchdown, makes it a two possession game. And it was really it from that point and it was a blow up from there. And honestly, this kind of reminds me of the Winnipeg Hamilton game from the first game of the season where it's, it looks much closer than it actually was. The Sarza thing. No, I remember that. And he came on the show last year. I think they were honoring his family or they, Edmonton was doing something. He came on the show. He's a great guy. And they said it wasn't even like, yeah, it was a face mask or a horse collar, but they said it's more that Chad is such a big guy trying to pull him down. He wasn't trying to go for any penalty. Yeah, Chad Kelly is a massive human being. I'm trying to pull him down and just kind of, oh, max here says it's daggy, daggy. But yeah, just that any momentum they have, like you said was gone there and then Toronto goes up again it felt like, and you're the end of the game. I tweeted out because it was like that last drive, okay, Edmonton's going to come in, they're going to get one more touchdown. The guy fumbles it into the end zone, Argo's running back and then they're turning it again and then Toronto gets it back. I tweeted, I said, God must hate the Edmonton Elks. I can't figure out any other way about it. It seems like can't unfathomable to hear how poor this team is. Honestly, I'm not one to believe in curses or I'm not an overly spiritual guy or anything like that. But at this point it's getting very hard to deny that this is a curse team. They haven't won a game in three years, four years at this point. Just, I mean a home game that is, but just, it's hard to explain how bad they are in the most crucial moments of games. I feel like they fumble at the worst times. They give up big chunk runs at the worst time. This team just cannot stop the run whatsoever. And we saw that in this game again. Yeah, I'm sure. So that was like, God, I'm going to say the evident Elks. I did think it was funny though. This tweet did make me laugh. C l Super late News tailgating the last time the Elks won the home game and it's the disciples here with Jesus. I thought that was, but I mean I want to be honest here because I did tweet, this was kind of my real, Hey, I want to do all this. We had the Edmonton Elks flag hangs in the back here. This is my summer season. I do everything outside, but in the studio show, Edmonton Elks flag hangs there. I it's too important of a franchise. I saw Bob Irving tweet out as well. A lot of people here Edmonton, we can't lose Edmonton here in the C F L. It's too, it's important. What do you make of this just in terms of the legacy that Edmond's had even before I even breathed the C F L anything and now what they've come to? It's really sad because I think it's happened over a relatively short amount of time because I think in 2019 they really weren't that bad. They were in the East Final, they were a crossover team and they lost to the Tigercat in the East final. But I just could not have imagined how bad they were coming back from the canceled 2020 season. And I think that, I mean it's not good for any team in the C F L for any of the teams to be bad for a continuous period of time because usually attendance suffers and I think a lot of the attendance is based on team performance for a lot of the teams around the league. I mean sure you have some great fan base. Is Hamilton usually supported the team pretty good when the team was bad from 2003 to 2008 I believe was that era. And I was saying that in the group chat that the Elks are starting to remind me of that era of the Tigercat just a hopeless organization and I just really feel for the fans out there that they just need to win soon and I just don't see it happening this year. Honestly. Even that where they had, where Cam Phillips had caught the long ball and then thought he was to down and dropped the, got the ball knocked out, but then he ended up recovering it was Edmonton because that could have been a huge thing. Oh, Edmonton saves the touchdown here, we're going back the other way. Yeah, he literally just let go of the ball and was able to recover his own. It just felt like they could get absolutely nothing going. What I don't get is in the Kyle Oxley, I think they said that maybe he got injured on that fumbled snap and then that's why he wasn't put back in. Trey Ford wasn't dressed right. That's why they went to gie. I can't figure out for the life of me why they don't like Trey Ford. Yeah, it really kind of pissed me off how they handled this situation and honestly to his credit, Dey looked pretty good in that. The action that he did see besides that one pick six, but at the end of the day he kind of jumped the line, didn't really, you know, got guys like Kai Loxley, Trey Ford that have worked their way up. They've paid their dues. Trey Ford is dressed as a wide receiver. Kai Loxley is dressed as a wide receiver for this team. They've worked hard for that opportunity and to be passed up in that moment. For a guy that's never taken a C F L regular season snap before mean it's very understandable why Kai Loxley was upset and I don't know why Trey Ford's not even dressed. I mean you'd think just having a Canadian backup quarterback wouldn't hurt the ratio or anything like that. So I mean it's really hard to explain for me and their management of the short yardage situation. They always have these tiny quarterbacks running that. I think Cornelius should be the one running that for the Elks just naturally. But at the end of the day, I think Chris Jones has really, really mismanaged this quarterback situation in Edmonton. I think that's going to be as undoing. Yeah, I can't imagine you sitting here and being happy with this moving on and I think you are going to get disgruntled in this, like you said with the quarterbacks, we had Trey on preseason because I'm like, if Cornelius goes down, Trey's got to be the guy. I mean he played good last year. I know he got hurt, he won in the preseason this year and that's why I and all credit Jared Degi here. I mean I'm glad that he's getting the opportunity. I just don't understand that. Yeah, I don't get how the, I was Gina Lewis, right, they had the fumble in the end zone there with that. Any other thoughts? We had the, like I talked Sims getting the kick returns, they said Edmonton hasn't had one return for a touchdown since 2015. Did I hear that correctly? I didn't hear that Sta but that's pretty crazy if it's true honestly. But Edmonton has had a very, they're very much lacking in terms of the return game over the past couple years and there's specialties in general is another thing that's been very poor for that team. Well let's get out of here at the hour. Any other thoughts on this game? Do you have any other notes? Maybe we can do just a super quick preview before we go on. No, I think that's good for this game. I think we've beaten the Elks up enough. I tell you, I mean I love Dave and Morley, Scott and Victor and everyone over there. This is a conundrum right now. They need to figure out coming up here Edmonton potentially maybe a bounce back game going in Ottawa. Ottawa isn't necessarily great at home. I had the tweet, we still don't know what's going on with Mazzoli so I don't know. What do you make of, what is Otto's game plan here? I'm trying to pull up this tweet. Well I just saw before we went on here that Tyree Adams is going to be starting for Ottawa on Friday, so that's worth noting. So it's going to be probably Tyree Adams versus Jared Doogie or Daggy daggy. So I'm going to get it down, but I think that that's going to be an interesting quarterback matchup. The Edmonton Ottawa games have been very dreadful to watch over the past couple of years, so hopefully it's a somewhat entertaining game. At least it's a little bit fresh with the quarterback matchup there, but obviously looking forward to the other games a lot more. Yeah, here we have coming up Saturday day I'll have Saturday is my birthday Canada Day, happy Canada Day, everyone on there. Awesome. It's all I'll, I'll have to watch this on delay on Sunday because I'll be, we're going to the Mariner game and I got U S F L championship. There's a lot of football I got to watch here but yeah. Yeah, Winnipeg going into Montreal. This game is exciting now because Montreal actually looks good. I mean I think if you had told me at the beginning of the season I'm like oh Winnipeg's going to come in. Winnipeg coming off. Obviously they're embarrassing home loss, what do you make of this one? I think this is actually intriguing. Yeah, I'm really excited to see how Winnipeg bounces back. I think that Montreal has looked very good against two backup quarterbacks to begin the year. So I'm interested to see how that plays out. Montreal's defense has looked really good to begin the year. I think that a lot of those guys were on the team last year that went into Winnipeg and upset them. Obviously offense looks a lot different so that'll be interesting to see how they match up against Winnipeg's defense. But as I mentioned before, Winnipeg's defense not looking like the same unit that we've seen the past couple of years. Yeah, weird here. I dunno if they factor in the American holidays here. Just a weird three day, three day whatever. No Sunday game here. It's kind of weird. So I think because Canada Day lands on the weekend. The holidays actually a Monday for here in Canada. Yeah, There you go. Those will work that And then this is the game of the week. Game of the week. You said you were going to try to get to this one BC at Toronto. Mike Mitchell said could be the Great Cup preview. Very excited for this one. Oh yeah, I'm really excited. I think that the matchups on both sides of the ball as I talked about earlier should be very interesting. I think a guy that doesn't get enough credit for Toronto is Ryan. I think he is actually a very, very good coach. I think a lot of people kind of underrate him because they've seen some scuffles on the sideline over his past couple years and he is kind of a younger guy so people don't give him the credit. But I think in terms of offensive game planning, the Argonauts have been one of the most consistent offenses in the C F L over the past couple years And for BC I think that Rick Campbell's really steady the ship and I think he's had a couple of his best coaching seasons here in BC over when you look at his C F L coaching career in general. I think he's looked very good over the past couple of years. So I think the coaches are something to note with this game and I'm really excited for this matchup. Yeah, we had him on kind of the C F L media day stuff here at the end of the last season. I thought he was great. I never, obviously I don't interview a lot of the head coaches so it is kind of cool getting to sit down and chat with him and yeah, Rick Rick's such a funny guy because he's very quiet in interviews, very not whatever, but then I see all these and Matt Baker and Nick are post and all these postgame celebrating in the locker room and Rick's screaming they're running around. So I like that. I like seeing kind of one of the boys there and Rick strikes me as a tiny man as well here running around in the locker room. So Rick's from over here in Spokane so I certainly know all that with Eastern and all of that. Jason, we appreciate it. This will be on Jason's channel as well if you liked, I don't know if there's anyone even watched us on any of the other stuff but trying to stream across kind of all the platforms today. Let me know if you like that Pat, and I'll be back tomorrow to do the US L playoffs recap and then obviously next week I said at the top flopping Jason and I will be on the fourth the talking C F L and then Pat and I will be on the Monday show. Jason, anything else from you before we get out? No, much for me. I think pretty good week and the C F L the best one yet in my opinion. And I'm excited for week four. Yeah, check. And then Jason does kind of like his week previews, check that out. And then I do like your instant reaction kind of stuff as well. I think that that's good. Kind of Hamilton, Rome is burning here, what's going on? So we appreciate that. I appreciate Jason, everyone watching. We'll see you guys next time. Thanks.

Episode 150 - XFL vs. USFL: Talent "Arms Race"!

Coming up this week on the Markcast. Well here we are post XFL 2023 season. The XFL just held its rookie draft. They're signing undrafted free agents in the off season trying to scoop up all of the unsigned talent they can before the USFL completes its season. In the words of a semi-famous punk band from the Chicago suburbs. This and the scene, it's a arms race exciting show this week. Your friend in mind, Rick Sara coming back on the program. Big news from Rick in his own football career here, but also we are grading and analyzing the XFL team picks here in the off season. Rick has grades for all of the teams, rookie drafts as well as the undrafted free agents they've signed and we are spotlighting players. You should keep an eye out for heading into X F L next year. Well I think it's an arms race, right? Pockets are deep enough to last for the long haul and as much as I want to see both leagues be sustainable and survive, I don't know if that's going to be the case Reid, and hopefully it's not the case. But I think that the X L is really not paying attention to what the U S F L is going to do. They're going to go about their business and I do believe X F L has secured the greater level of talent. And so therefore I believe that the demand or the desire for the street free agent, at least their preference is going to remain the X F L. At least that's my understanding from the community and individuals I've spoken to. And then don't change the dial, you are here on the correct YouTube channel here at the somewhat known as the U S F L Hating podcast. We are back Pat Rafino off of our Monday and Tuesday U S F L recaps here on the main show this week we are doing our official, the Mark cast all U S F L 2023 team awards handing them out. Pat has done a ton of homework you don't want to miss at That point I feel like it's more of a fan bias than an actual analytical perspective of like, oh Boogie didn't make it or this guy did make it. And it's like, I mean they all played really well throughout the whole year and at some point the line of demarcation gets set. I put Boogie as my defensive tackle And then we are barreling through the CFL season already on week three. The BC Lions will have hopefully America's team here hopefully have beaten the Winnipeg Blue Bombers here at Thursday night. Before you listening to this, been a big slate of games this weekend, we're bringing back Derek Taylor, the voice of the Winnipeg Blue bombers to talk through everything C F L week three. How bad are the Elks I guess right now? Right now, really bad. Apart from the Gino Lewis 102 yard reception and week one, what do they have? 200 yards passing at 50% rate and the run game, which I think a lot of us thought was going to be really good because Kevin Brown looks like he can really hammer dudes and run that ball. Hasn't, hasn't picked up. The should be a good one to help you enjoy. Hey guys, welcome to the read here recording things a little out order this week. Busy work week for me. So hopefully this all comes out correctly here. Busy week here. We've had the undrafted signings here with the X F L posting all that, coming off the rookie draft last week. I know John Bogle, Evan Willmore, coach Craig Sports, we all kind of did the live breaking analysis of all of the that as the draft picks came down last Friday. If you missed that, that was a good time. We have about an hour or so kind of knee jerk reaction on that. But I was talking with Rick Sarat, he said, I want to come back. I want to do a full breakdown. I got grades and everything for all the teams, how the DPPs and everyone, the coaches, what Rick thought of all that. And also just really cool kind of backstory tidbits on a lot of the players Rick has been tracking here. So something, it's not like the sexiest thing in the world here with these players and do we know them? Does the casual viewer, all of that? I think Rick does a good job kind of fleshing that out. But the conundrum right now is XL signing all this talent U S F L and they did their, what was it, the college draft and all of that. How is that all going to pan out in the arms race for the talent? I hope that was a good reference this week. The Fallout Boy song came out in oh seven if you want to feel old about that here in the year 2023. But was going back and forth with smog from the desolation of what the Hobbit movies, whatever, hoarding the treasure and decided to go with the arms race of the follow up boy. So I hope you enjoy that. Rick also has some news to break today, some announcements from Rick Cella here coming up in his role with the I F A, the International Football Alliance. Really excited and honored that Rick would take the time and feel the desire to come on our show to share some of that hoping that we can be helpful to them and everything in their endeavor is coming down in the future. So really appreciate Rick taking the time to come on to share that news. Like I said that Pat Rafino coming back. Pat and I do our weekly live recaps following the U S F L games over the weekend, but Pat is back. He said I want to do, I have Pat write articles for the website throughout the year and Pat said I want to do an all U S F L team awards. So we did that. Pat came on really exciting. Like I said, I talk with Pat every week but getting him on the main episode. So I hope you enjoy. And then like I said, Derek Taylor, a voice of the Winnipeg Blue bombers who is either going to be happy or sad today with the BC Lions hopefully having beaten them at home. That's quite the conundrum there. BC traveling to Winnipeg to do that but hopefully they win that. Lots of C F L stuff to talk about. I love catching up with Derek. We've had him on the last two C F L seasons so certainly a delighted as well. That's going to do it for me today. We will be doing our U S F L recap show on Tuesday. I believe next week Jason Hussie will be joining me as well for our Monday recaps. Hope you guys are enjoying those. For the C F L I think we're going to do probably a live kick kickoff to the championship game here with the U S F L, if that's the words I'm looking for next week for Friday. So look for information from that. I'll reach out to everyone kind of now figure out if we want to do something pre-recorded their live. But keep a look out on the Twitters and Facebooks. I'll keep you guys updated for that, but should have a live show next week at getting ready for the big U S F L championship game, which happens to fall on my birthday. So kind for the US F L to do that. Also Canada today a day. So infamous in Canada. The mark has birthday that Canada decided to make that a national holiday. So hope you guys enjoyed the episode. We'll see you at the end. Take care. Well we tried to get this gentleman on for the rookie draft busy guy here, but I said this is almost better because we kind of do the knee jerk reaction stuff and I do like a little bit more Rick's prepared here. We have grades and a little bit more formal on this. So we're talking all the X F L, the hoarding talent here, all the X F L off season signing stuff. How are you doing Rick? I'm doing great, Reid. Happy to be here and excited for all the new players getting an opportunity in the X F L. Great opportunity for these young men on the outside, maybe not in a training camp or futures contract. Hey, there's plenty of opportunities in the XFL and I'm pumped up to shed some insight. Yeah, so when the U s Ffl did their college draft, it was in February, it was kind of pre the F nfl, do you like the timing of how the X F L here, where it's okay it's mid-June, giving players a sense of direction here. Do you how they're looking at it? Is it better or worse? Well, I think that I do like that the season ended and there's something to talk about right now. I do wonder like, hey, a player gets his rights taken by the X F L. Well there's going to be probably another nine months or so here until we report to training camp. So what happens when they get approached by other leagues or they get signed and picked up? So I think there was a significant strategy involved because you're trying to identify guys that you believe will still be available to you nine months down the road. So you want to draft talent, but you might not want to draft a guy who's too good because chances are he might get picked up. So it was fascinating to me to see the individual team approaches in terms of strategy and how they selected the players and we can dive into some of that. Perfect. So we'll go here. I've got both tabs up. I guess we'll start with the rookie draft kind of since that was the first thing. Kind of get your thoughts on all of that as we go through. Okay, So what do we got here? Do you want to just start with Arlington and Godad? You said you've identified some key players of each. How do you want to tackle this? Yeah, so I mean starting with the draft, I don't really think that players should worry too much where they were taken, what round they were taken. I think the bottom line is here you're going to have an opportunity to compete and if you were drafted as opposed to being an undrafted free agent, well chances are the team probably likes you a little bit more than some of those other guys. But I think what's great about the xfl, they don't care where you come from. Fbs fcs, they don't care about the helmet sticker. So once you get into training camp, anybody has a shot and side. Barnett out of Davenport, man, I wrote about this young man leading up to the N F L draft. He led the team in receiving, he led the team in punting. Oh by the way he's the field goal kicker as well. Handles kickoffs. This guy what can't Sy Davenport Barnett do out of Davenport? I think he's going to bring a lot of excitement to the X F L, almost like a Jacknife. And I know special teams has been talked about a lot in the alternate football universe, but how exciting is it A guy who could come in, make a 60 yard touchdown, catch, stay in the game, kick the extra point, kick the kick, kick off. Oh by the way, we can pun too. So I like that. Connor Degenhart at New Haven. I really liked this young kid. I thought he was one of the top 20 or 25 quarterback prospects in the 2023 N F L draft. Now Reid, there's a big hole in the scouting community in the N F L because there's this big group think box and because Connor Degenhart who actually led the fcs, I think in passing the two years he was at Holy Cross. But then I kept asking all my Northeast Scout friends, Hey, did you see the New Haven kid? What do you think of that New Haven kid? Hey that New Haven kid's a player. But because he wasn't on the blasto or the national teams didn't go in, they didn't give him a look, they didn't even take him seriously. This kid is a dual threat, six foot 6, 235 pound cannon arm quarterback, four year starter, remember that name? I think he could be a star in the X F L. And then Merlin Robertson out of Arizona State, one of these super super seniors who at one point was being talked about as a potential next level prospect, didn't really take his game to the next level, had success early on in his son devil's career, but then kind of plateaued. So now he's going to have an opportunity to show off some of that past rushing prowess for the Arlington renegades. In terms of Arlington and I think in the whatever ones they claimed yesterday, I think there was another quarterback here, but with the renegades taking Connor, taking the quarterback and obviously we did Luis and kind of all that stuff. Does that tell you anything about how they're looking or approaching that or just stockpiling 'em right now as they can? Well I think the quarterback position, and I don't care what league you are, you can never have enough of them look at the Memphis for example. So to me, and look at the N F L, you're only one snap away from your backup quarterback and look at the situation that Arlington ran into last year at the quarterback position. And then you see the success that Luis Perez has enjoyed. Well, if I'm an NFL team, I would love to have him as a camp arm as a 90 man roster camp invite. And then again, you know, come in and you're a thrower, you start impressing and say, hey, maybe we should sign this guy to the practice squad. So I think Arlington kind of saw the writing on the wall. Hey, we might lose Louis Perez. This is a good looking player, let's draft him and I can dive into the free agents or we can keep that separate, however you want to work it. Yeah, why don't we do that. We can do the Arlington free agents here as well. Let's do That. Yeah, so Noah Henderson out of ecu, again a multiple year starter offensive lineman. I kind of projected him as a guard at the NFL level. He may get a chance to stick at tackle for the X F L. So I think he's going to come in, compete for a starting job. Noah Taylor out of North Carolina. Linebacker started off at Virginia. Very good physical specimen, probably a strong side linebacker can get after the quarterback, set the edge against Iran and even drops back and pass coverage for a big man a little bit. So Noah Henderson out of E C U, Noah Taylor out of North Carolina. Bob Stoops tapping into his college resources there. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, he's probably got some of these guys, but Bob's Bob and his staff. Maybe a leg up on that just in terms of relationships and things. I don't know you have if that makes any difference at all or not. Yeah, anything else from the renegades? Yeah, so you have Connor Blum, Rick as well, a quarterback out of Virginia Tech. So yeah, definitely kind of picking up as many as they can right now, kind of wanting to figure out what they're going to do coming into the camp. Yeah, I mean overall, I mean I did letter grades, initial reaction, I gave the Arlington renegades an A minus. I actually thought they had the second best overall draft slash free agent signings. Well it's interesting too because, and we were talking on the whatever the draft show we did last week, you know have some of these teams, we've had issues anyway we need to figure out, we need to work on our defense or whatever. But then some of these teams, like the defenders, we have a bunch of these guys signed to the N nfl, then you just got to make up for the holes that you have. So you're kind of getting holes in two different directions here whether hey, we were so good, now we have players that are getting taken or we really need to shore up whatever issue of our team. And I think also the common denominator amongst all the teams is offensive lineman, whether they drafted him or signed, every team is looking to add depth and competition at the offensive line position. Yeah, I remember we had Eric Alco on here, God two years, year and a half ago now talking about that, that he said come with all these leagues competing quarterbacks and line. And he said back with X of L 2020, they had a list of unsigned offensive linemen that they could bring in if there was injuries. And he said when covid shut that league down, he said there were very few names on that list so that people that they could still call up and that was only five weeks into the season. So absolute, absolutely. So a minus for Arlington here. I guess we'll go back DC defenders here starting off on the rookie draft. Yeah, DC defenders now I remember when we recapped their initial draft before the season, we talked about man, they're going to run and gun and look to run some spread formations. Look at all the wide receivers and again, they had success with their wide receiver unit. I think Bon Hutchins kind of doubled down here with two big Playmakers, Ty, Scott, Adam, Missouri State, again an F Cs under the radar prospect who quite frankly had some concerns amongst the scouting community in terms of whether he could separate, okay, coming from that small school competition caliber of talent. Well guess what now he'll get to prove in the X F L that he can be a big time playmaker at the next level. And CJ Johnson, again, ECU very productive, can make a lot of plays over the middle, can play outside, inside. I think Vaughn saw an opportunity that hey, we might lose some wide receivers. To your point Reid, let's double down. And then again Jack Plum out of Iowa, a polished offensive lineman. The Hawkeyes do one thing, they take two and three star recruits, they coach 'em up and by the time they depart they have a fundamental baseline that can really serve as a low baseline. So the ceiling might not be as high for a jack plum, but you know what you're getting very fundamentally sound a polished player. And then Alex Jensen out of South Dakota, a multiple year starter. And those two guys, again, whether they come in and compete for a starting job or provide depth, I think it's going to serve them well. I gave the DC defenders a B and I did have Josh FAO at A U S C, A tight end as one of the undrafted free agent signings. He caught my eye at one point for the Trojans. He was a bonafide pass catching target and he did run into some injuries, struggles there throughout his collegiate career. So if Josh Faoh can kind of get back on track, I think that's another, again, passing target for the DC defenders, quarterbacks in the passing attack. Yeah, I'd be curious to see where they go. I don't know, we're still kind of waiting to, does Temu get picked up somewhere and he kind of bounced around last year, so I'll be curious kind of if they really need to reevaluate what their core identity is or if they can run it back. They bring Derek King Ride is kind of the primary guy here moving forward. Absolutely correct. So move. So be moving on here. What do we got? Houston Roughnecks coming up. The Houston Roughnecks. Yes, and I will say that Bob Morris was locked in all week at the N F L P A Collegiate Bowl. He was there for the duration and he was looking for talent and he took a number of our guys from the N F L P A collegiate bowl, some of them that I was shocked quite frankly that they're still available. Let's start off with Lindsey Scott out of Incar Ward coached by GJ Kinney and I'll tell you what, five 10, but if you look at the frame read, he is very similar to a Kyler Murray. The arm strength is not much less than a Kyler Murray. The scrambling ability is arguably just as good. And if you remember Charlie Ward back in the day, he was probably about 30 years too early for the N F L, but Lindsey Scott to me is the reincarnation of Charlie Ward. I think this guy along with Connor Degenhart who we talked about with Arlington, I think Lindsey Scott is a guy who could take the league by storm. I really do Another dual threat, seven year, seventh year senior read. He's got a lot. I think he accounted for 70 touchdowns passing and rushing this past season. And then Michael Ayers out of Ashland, I am stunned that they were able to acquire this young man. He is an NFL talent. He came out of high school unranked, a defensive back 185 pounds soaking wet, bulked up 40, 50 pounds during his time in college, became a linebacker. Very good coverage skills, flies to the football, great lateral coverage, A true athlete. This Michael Ayers man, this is what the X F L is all about. Developmental prospects and Michael Ayers is a great one as is Jason Adamah out of Notre Dame Tweener, right? Lacks the arm length, lacks the prototypical height, but man he started several years there for the fighting. Irish showed glimpses. I think he can be productive in spurts. I'm curious to see how they're going to use him on the inside outside. Is he a kind of versatile defensive lineman that they move up and down the line? I think he's going to make an impact for the Houston roughnecks and that's why I gave them an a. I thought Bob Morris had the best draft and I like Brayden Johnson, the undrafted free agent out of Oklahoma State. Whether he plays wide receiver or tight end, I think that'll be a nice pest catching target for their offense. The interesting thing too about Lindsay Scott is he was obviously a couple of the players picked up by both the U S F L and the X ffl. So they'll be curious kind of, we've talked a lot about how these drafts are kind of like the Canadian NA list where if you come in but you know might never step foot in there, be curious to see, do you the X ffl and then you get cut or it doesn't work out. I don't think the US Ffl is going to say no at that point. I mean do you find it interesting that both these leagues are kind of taking competing idea of philosophies here in terms of getting these rights taken up for teams? Well I think it's an arms race whose pockets are deep enough to last for the long haul. And as much as I want to see both leagues be sustainable and survive, I don't know if that's going to be the case read and hopefully it's not the case. But I think that the XFL is really not paying attention to what the u s Ffl is going to do. They're going to go about their business and I do believe f l has secured the greater level of talent and so therefore I believe that the demand or the desire for the street free agent, at least their preference is going to remain the X F L. At least that's my understanding from the community and individuals I've spoken to. Interesting. Is that, do you attribute that to better scouting, better director of player personnel kind of doing there? I mean what do you attribute that to? I think in the 2023 landscape read the industry that we're in, the players that we're targeting, a lot of it is about the pizazz. The rock brings sex appeal, they just have a more significant presence. And when you look on the TV channel, there's more than a hundred people in the stands that counts for something. Post covid Shots fired here. No, I'm not. I'm not taking firing shots. I'm just being honest that when I turn on the TV and there's 87 people on the stands, I say that that's an issue. That's all it. I mean I think it's valid. Anything else from roughnecks? You said you gave that, what'd you say? Great, did we get a great for the roughnecks? Well hey the roughnecks I gave an a Bob Morris hats off to you. Yeah. All right, let's go here back. We got Ricky Draft here, we're flying through this. This is good. Orlando. Orlando guardians. Okay, so Brock Martin out of Oklahoma State, he's another guy. Highly productive inside outside. What I like about Brock Martin Reed is he can bring pass rush from the interior. That's a rare skillset set. A lot of times you get opportunities at the NFL level when you can do that. But I think Brock Martin, again he is got those alligator arms, he's going to scare off NFL decision makers. And so he'll get an opportunity to come in and make his presence known. Darius Joiner out of Duke, another P five pedigree can play safety, can play corner. We'll see kind of where he settles in on the defensive side. And then on the offensive side, I thought Jared Horst from Michigan State, the Spartans are another program. They have a long history of putting undrafted free agent offensive linemen in the league and that's again, because of their ability to cross train players and then teach them the fundamental fundamentals. So Jared Horst out of Michigan State was the guy that caught my attention on the offensive side. They also signed a fighting Irish Bo Bauer, the linebacker, an undrafted free agent. Orlando to me, I felt like had one of the more disappointing rookie drafts just in terms of impact. I think Brock Martin will make an impact, but I guess from the skill positions, I felt like Orlando needed to build on the skill positions. I did not see them achieve that, so I gave them a c plus. It's interesting too, yeah, we've had on Buckley kind of postseason and then he was on our pregame show for the championship game itself. Admittedly they did not do a great job team building last year. I think you would have him say first and foremost he had never done this and trying to bring in Larry Lee and kind of figure all this kind of stuff out. Interesting that you feel like they haven't taken that next step here. Even with a year and knowing like, okay, these are the things we need to focus on. It's hard when you've never done it before. There's an adjustment period. And I think, you know, see some of the titles, some of these Bob Morris worked in the nfl, right? Bon Hutchins I always go back to has been scouting these guys for the last several years. When you're not living that life and then you come in and try to play catch up, you're competing against others who have 3, 4, 5, 10 year headstart. It's not, it's, it's easy for us to sit here in our chairs and say, oh that was great. Oh man, they blew that opportunity. Listen there, there's more than just talent. It's about scheme, it's about fit, it's about D n A, right? It's about a person's attitude, right? Because again, we see this with the C F L, the biggest lesson to be learned. A guy like Brock Martin, I never met him personally, I'm just going to use him as an example. Oklahoma State, big time player, all conference, someone like that, they might have an ego, they go up to the C F L, they get their ass kicked, right? Because they think I got it like that. But that's not the case. There's a high level of talent in the C F L, the X F L, especially with the starting teams where you see the bigger separation of quality is the depth, the twos and the threes. But in terms of the starters, the X F L, the C F L, I think they're both very formidable. And that's why you've got to kind of meet these men. You've got to sit down, you've got to talk with them, you got to understand where their head is at. You want to pick their brain and know why are you here and why do you want to participate in this league? Because there are a lot of players, Reid, who feel like they're too good. And there are a lot of players, and I'm not knocking this, either it's N F L or nothing and they have a clear vision and I respect that. Okay, everybody is a case by case basis. The hardest thing to measure heart and head, I say it all the time and that's why there's a need for scouts. That's why there's a need for general managers and that's why you know, bat 300, you're doing great Well there. And like you said, there needs to be, even if you're only buying into the X F L for that one season or U S F L to get to that, there has to be a level of buy-in and kind of like why are you here and what's your why? And whether you're going to be here for three, four years, you're going to be here for a year. You at least got to be committed while you're here and kind of go for it. Absolutely. So C for them, I love Terrell Buckley. I wish if they performed on the field, they do with everything else. I love Them coming out of Syracuse too. I remember he was a good player Coming up here. San Antonio, Brahmas, a Heinz War and company. Yeah, the bras. So I'll start off jal. Billingsley out of Texas, okay, came over from Alabama, lost the starting job to Latu, followed Sarkisian over to Texas, left the program just this past season. So there was a lot of questions about his commitment to the game of, we just talked about this, the love for the game, the passion for the game. And so he was another player we had at the N F L P A collegiate bowl at one point was thought to be a top 100 overall N F NFL prospect. So here he is now, very athletic, very limber. And now I heard he did very well in his team interviews at the N F L P A collegiate bowl, apparently not well enough because here he is now, he's going to have to go prove him himself. And again, teams want to see that level of commitment. Does he come in, does he work his ass off? Does he earn a starting job? Does he dominate the level of competition? If Jalil Billingsley checks off all those boxes, he'll be playing in the National Football League in two years, right? That's the journey. Okay, I love the pick. By the way, Chris Smith out of Louisiana Lafayette, he was probably the best looking running back down at the tropical ball this past season. And the tropical ball pulled some good players, Chris Smith, very good between the tackles runner capable hands out of the backfield. I like his ability to fit into the kind of rotation and add a little bit of variety to that San Antonio backfield on the defensive side, Lorenzo McCaskill, the linebacker was the guy who stood out to me who I think could come in and make some noise. And then you've got the undrafted free agents, Luke Ford out of Illinois. I saw them list him as a wide receiver. I believe he was a tight end for the Illini. So I don't know if that was a typo or they want to try him at wide receiver. I would imagine his natural fit though is at tight end. And then Naze, right? I got to give a shout out to my guy out of William Patterson. And that's the things that get me excited is that whereas the nfl, you do have teams, scouts, decision makers who's going to stand on the table for a guy from William Patterson? Not too many individuals. And that's what I love to see. Guys like Naser or Wright get a bonafide legitimate opportunity. And so I gave the Brahmas a solid B, I appreciate the insights here and the stories I think, and this is why you're a good person for this kind of fit to come in because I, it's, it's really hard to sell. This is exciting. A lot of this kind of, we're talking here off season, but I think for casual fans or people like me, I don't know any of these players. And so getting the insights from you, I think it's incredibly helpful and kind of rounding out people's thoughts about this. So I really appreciate that. I think it's very helpful. That's why I enjoy being here Reid. So Rams, okay, so anything else on them? We'll move here. What do we got? Seed dragons here. Mueller and Company. This is obviously team close, near and dear to my heart. So how do we do? Well, You'll be happy to know I gave them a b plus. So they had the third best draft in my book and that's because Tituss Swen from Wyoming, whoa buckle up. This young man made a very strong case to be the NFL P Bowl mvp. If you go back and watch this year's edition, he towed the rock I think close to 20 times and he really broke a lot of tackles, busted off big runs. You talk about yards after contact. You better wrap up Titus Swim out of Wyoming. I thought he made a strong ca case for mvp. That game. Colby Reer out of Iowa State, this is an instant impact guy for the cyclones. You might remember his brother Troy Reer, they played together at Delaware. Colby Reer now is 27 years old, another one of these seventh year seniors had a lot of injuries along the way. But when you talk about 41 inch vert, 4 5 40 prototypical modern day linebacker size does an excellent job setting the edge against the run. Now I think he's the prototypical weak side linebacker. Now will Kobe reader want to participate at 27 years old? Is he about that journey trying to get to the NFL because he will have to play another season and then he'll be a 28 or 29 year old trying to break into the nfl. That's the fascinating backstory. Everybody loves the story of an underdog. I'll tell you what, Kobe reader's story is fascinating. And then how about Sam Burt and Malcolm Lee and that Kansas Jayhawk program, the turnaround that they enjoyed. And that's because of these two young men on the defensive side and so they tapped into some of that Jayhawk success. Hopefully that breeds off on the rest of the team. And then in terms of the free agent, that is going to be intriguing. How about the Koi Perry at of Florida Atlantic? He's just a big bodied quarterback, can sling it around very consistent, but there was enough flashes there that shows the tantalizing upside. And so I don't think Koi Perry is a guy that's going to come in and replace Ben, but I do think he's a guy that you want to have around because the right coach might say, Hey, I can work with that. Give me a year to just groom him, teach him the verbiage of the offense, tweak some of those mechanics, get the upper body and sync with the lower body and then suddenly you might have a player here. And that's where the quarterbacks, like in NAI Perry who have enjoyed success at the collegiate level, they need those reps. I say it all the time, nothing replaces in game bullets. You cannot teach experience. And so yeah, I thought there was a great balance by the way, on both stacking the offense and defensive side of the ball for the Seattle Sea Dragons. Well the other thing you said with bringing in this Koi Perry, I don't know how long Ben Andi's leash is here with the Broncos and if that is going to pan out for everything he wants. I don't know if deci is about that life of coming back and doing the X F L again. I think this is like mean. We did this and it was fun and now I don't see him making a second return here. So I don't know if Montez is the I Siri, I think the Harrison Frost as well. So no one else really saw. I think Montez got one snap or something in the game. So we certainly need to figure out something there with slo without deci going here. What do we got? St. Louis next? Yeah, the battle hawks. So we got a couple guys here that stuck out to me. I am fascinated that this Nico Bolden out of Kent State did not get picked up by the N F L. Now he was dealing with a hand injury. We had him out at the N F L PA Collegiate bowl as well. But talking to Nico, looking up at this man, six four, right? 220 pounds, kind of that cam chancellor esque type of safety. Okay, go look at the production through the roof. Dangerous with the ball in his hands. Now I do think the medical did not check out well, which is why he was still available. But man, this might arguably be the best player chosen in the draft overall. Nico Bolden out of Kent State. Matthew Jester, I got to show love. You guys may or may not know I'm based here in New Jersey, but again out of Princeton, something tells me, Reid, that maybe that Princeton degree could be put to better use and earn more money than in the X F L. But again, where's his head at? Does he just love the game so much that he wants to play? So that'll be a storyline that we pay attention to. And then they drafted a tight end, they signed a tight end and I liked both of them for their on-field talents, at least Kor Gamble out of U C F kind of had a streak career. And then he was drafted, Kaari Averitt was signed. And I think this was probably the most controversial signing or selection because if you don't know the story of Kaari Averitt out of Bethune Cookman, former P five pedigree off the field incident has been well documented. I'm not going to discuss it here, it can very easily be found. I'm going to stick to his on-field talent. Maurice Jones. Drew told me that he might be the best player in at attendance at the N F L P A bowl. Maurice Jones, drew loved this man. We sat back, watched him make plays all week long, big time pass catcher 6 5, 240 pounds, runs like a deer. The man obviously has some talent. Anthony Beck took a chance. Anthony Beck rolled the dice and so I'm going to be fascinated to see what comes of it. And then Dom Peterson out of Nevada, another free agent signing I want to mention lacks the true size maybe to play in the nfl, six foot, 300 pounder. Maybe doesn't check off the boxes from a measurable standpoint, but again, got after the quarterback there, made a bunch of plays. And that is somebody where if he wants to have a professional football career in an alternate league, Don Peterson, that's the kind of guy that maybe it hangs around for a couple seasons unlike a Ben Ucci who you mentioned. But overall, I liked what St. Louis did. I gave the battle hawks again a solid beat. Oh, it's good. Like you said with some of these kaari, the IT league of opportunities here if they want to do that. And we've seen other players, kante Turpen and people get kind of work through and get their way in. And Sean Oakman was another good example. And the cfo. Yeah, La. So see, so last one here. Go back to the draft. We got the vipers here. Obviously with Woodson being gone, I think Joey kind of did a lot of the whatever for them right now kind of in the interim. So what did you make? Because they're a little bit of a different situation here with without the head coach. Yeah, Joey, Clint Kales, I respect greatly. Again, this is just one man's opinion. I gave them a D as in dog, I gave them the worst grade. It's okay. Beauty's in the eye of the beholder. I just didn't see a lot of players that stood out to me personally. And it doesn't mean that they didn't draft quality caliber players. It means that we talked about this in the beginning of the segment. Every organization has different strategies and maybe they tried to find guys that said, Hey, I don't think they're going to be in the nfl, but they fit in our system pretty well. And I think that's kind of the approach they took. Now Robert Mitchell out of NC Central is a good looking offensive lineman from the H B C U ranks. And I like that pick. I think he's a guy that's going to come in and compete for a starting job. A lot of the other players they chose, I had to go back and do some research on them and I'm still learning and finding out about them. So either they did a tremendous job or a very poor job. And that's to be determined on the young drafted free agent side, the B Y U defensive lineman Lorenzo, he comes from a football family. So again, guys that loved the game, guys that came up with that football pedigree. And so those were the two guys that really stood out for me on the Vegas Vipers in terms of impact. I don't see it, but I hope I'm wrong. And so they graded out with the worst draft. But hey, everybody has an opinion and we know what we make of those. Reid. Well that's good. I appreciate it. Vegas has a lot of heavy lifting both on the field and off the field. They're coming into the season, so you would certainly like to see them. Not handicapped, but too much. That was good. Dee, any other thoughts on this? And I know we have some other Rick news here we're going to talk about, but anything else from the draft or the signings? No, I just wish that there was more. I do believe that there is a thirst for live coverage. I give much props to you and the mark cast for hosting a live show or as close to live coverage that you guys could possibly provide. But I just have taking my industry related hat off and just from a fan of the league, because I am a big fan of the league, I expect and want more. That's me speaking as a fan. There's a draft sign me up, I want want to know about it. I want to know what's going down. I want to hear about these players. I think that your statement of saying, man, I love the backstories. That's how you create a following. That's how you relate the fans to the players. And I think that the fact that we didn't have the backstories or we didn't have the reaction from the coaches or we didn't have live player interviews talking about how they felt about the whole experience. I go back to the wood analogy that did the tree really fall because nobody was there to see it. And so to me, I want to see more. I get it. It's not something they're set up for, but a phone call to the kid over here, we could have made it happen. Come on, buckle up. But overall, listen, I like what the XFL is doing and I just hope that they are able to sustain. We saw them burn through 500 million in a matter of months. The fact that they only lost 60 million. I thought it was a job well done, call me crazy. But I did not expect them to make money this year. No, I mean that, well, that whole story has just been frustrating with all that coming out. But no, I know. I think that it just, there's an expectation when you call it a draft that there is something that's going to be done where I, I said if they were just going to drop the names like they did with this, I wouldn't call it that or I wouldn't promote, they're promoting it. Hey, we're signing all these players today and all the teams are tweeting out this all last week. Why would they just done what you did this week? And just drop the list and go here we got these guys. If you're not going to make a deal about it, when I talk with the league and they just say, we know we need know, we're next time, next time. And it's the next time until there's not a next time. And if you don't have enough interest in a lot of this stuff, my thing is at some point I want U U S F L I. If you could combine both of them, not merging, but just the philosophies of things where U S F L made a really big deal of their college draft and I don't think it really was a big deal, but they live tweeting the way they had all this kind of stuff. And if you a bigger deal, yeah, if you could marry that with the X ffl and I, yeah, I have issues with that, but that's for another day. So you have other exciting stuff here. What do we have going on? I saw when I was trying to find you to talk about the draft, I said, what the heck is Rick's Twitter handle? What do we have going on? We're changing things around here, so what's going on? Yeah, so Reid, it's an exciting time for me personally coming on board, going to make this announcement here. I haven't stated anything publicly, but I appreciate the platform. I do believe the mark cast is really the authoritative voice for alternate football. So I appreciate the fandom and the following. And we're going to make a little bit of news here and just get it out there that I am joining the International Football Alliance as their executive vice president and director of international relations. What the heck does that mean, Rick? Let me explain before I do, I want to be clear because I know a lot of well-respected individuals in the football community and industry that have already told me that I'm crazy. I hear you. I understand and I get it. So with that being said, I want the listening audience at home to understand that this is not just the launch of a new football league. It is the growth of American pro football internationally around the globe and the league mission. And my personal mission is going to be to grow professional American football around the world. And we are based in Mexico. We're a Mexican based league with American pro football rules. We'll have three teams in Texas, three teams in Mexico. In fact, we just announced a team, the first ever team relocating from Mexico to Dallas, the pioneers. And we have independent ownerships, but we're not coming in and saying, Hey, we're bringing American pro football to the Mexican fan base. No, we are going to grow and develop the game from a youth level. We're going to develop youth programs in every city we're in. We're going to establish flag football leagues, women leagues, and it's to grow the game, not just the league, the game of football in internationally. And that's our hope, that's our expectations. If you look at the logistics of where each team is strategically placed, they can all be shuttled on buses. And so that will be the first season. We will have independent ownerships. We will be based in each cities. There will be no hub. We want to connect with the community and establish ourselves in the markets. We're going to kick off in June, 2024. And there's more, we'll have a rookie draft in December. There's going to be eight combines before then. The first one will be held July 29th in San Diego. There will be several in Mexico. We're coming to the northeast, the southeast, the Midwest, the west coast. And we're going to find the talent and they're going to be eligible for our draft and they're not going to be just eligible for the International Football Alliance. We are working with strategic partnerships and relationships with other international leagues around the globe. There is a broadcast deal in place. I can't announce that yet, but I've been very impressed and blown away with the leadership and ownership groups and I'm excited. Well now you get to, got to put your money where your mouth is here, where it's been. We sit here and we are critiquing whatever. Now you're getting diving head into this. What inspired this or brought this on for you to get involved? Well, they called me and pursued me aggressively. I feel like that the past 20 plus years I've been kind of grooming for this job, for this role because here at the NFL draft Bible, I've been boots on the ground read for the last two decades of living this life and providing players with opportunities. And now I get a chance to do it for the entire world. I feel like the future of American pro football is in my hands. That's how I look at it and that's what I'm excited to do. I feel like this is the next challenge for me. I was so excited to learn that American pro football is now the second most watched sport in Mexico behind soccer. It has surpassed baseball. So there's a thirst for this in North America and there is a huge thirst around the world and we are going to empower other countries to be sustainable, educate and teach them how to develop their leagues. And we're going to work with other leagues. We're not in competition. We're going to work in association. And the salaries I know is going to be the first question. It's going to be very comparable to what you're seeing in these alternate spring leagues. Well this is exciting. I'm glad that we can kind of help be a part of this. You know, have a home here anytime you want to say anything or do anything. So I appreciate it. Anything else about this or anything else before we get out of here today? I do have a couple things. ic@iffa.football for any inquiries, couple housekeeping notes. So in order to be eligible for the December inaugural draft, you have to compete in one of the eight combines. We will immediately have a supplemental draft held in January and then the free agency signing will happen in February leading up to the June kickoff. There is some confusion there amongst a John Jenkins combine that players were told they were going to be in the I FFA draft pool. The league office is currently in investigating the whole situation and any player who participated in that event, we will be reaching out to you to clarify your status, but you will have the opportunity to be eligible for the I FFA draft. And if you choose to come and compete in one of these other I F A affiliated camps or combines, if you did participate in the John Jenkins camp, we will waive your fee so that you can come and work out in front of the I F A decision makers such as Hal Mummy, such as Mark Lozano, such as Noel Mazzoni and individuals such as that magnitude. So we're looking forward to it. Stay on the lookout. Yes, my Twitter handle will now serve as everything iffa buckle up. The floodgates are about to open and I appreciate you Reid providing the platform right here on the mark cast to get that news out there. Well Rick, I appreciate it. Like I said, the wealth of knowledge here, so you know, whatever you're involved in and I certainly appreciate it and we'll get you back on. But thank you so much. Like I said, for doing the time and prep and kind of having all this ready to go, it means a lot. So thank you. Sounds great. Well normally we go live every week. It's very rare now that we actually pre-record this, but I'm sure we'll still get into the same shenanigans today. We have Pat Rafino here. Pat, how are you doing? I'm doing well man. I just got done practicing my long snapping, tried to do about 20 reps a day just in case I someone calls. So Be ready. Yeah, be ready for the call. Well we've had, so Pat and I have been doing our Monday recaps or Tuesday recaps, U S F L now, the U S F L haters that we are have assembled our own all U S F L team here for the mark cast. Pat has the article up, I will publish it on Friday with the article or with the video here. And then we're going to take umbrage with the U S F L list as well. So any preface stuff before we get into this? Not Really. I saw a couple, obviously Mike did his own article. Luke Miller from Newsroom did an article, a meme was made by the network guys. So I mean, I appreciate anyone who takes the time to physically write all this stuff down rather than whatever. And I'm not trying to throw shade, but regardless, there are a lot of people who are putting out, so their stuff on Twitter and their platforms as well. So I think it's pretty cool that a lot of people are in the community. I think there was only one other person I saw outside of News Hub to do an all X Ffl article, all League X F L. And I apologized to those watching that I didn't do one because we were kind of rolling pretty hard in the US F L season. And believe it or not, I do have a real job, but yeah, I felt like we needed to do it. I have a little bit of time so I have no problem doing it. Well and the cool thing about the all U S F L team kind of thing is you're able to, I mean Magoo and stuff, I mean some guys are going to get accolades regardless, but it's good to put a spotlight on some of the positions that maybe don't get as much pizazz or some of the players aren't kind of going the whole way down picking quarterback positions all the way down special teams and all of that stuff. So first off, usfl, what is now the usfl.com. I never remember their actual thing. This was different than RJ Young I think had his standout halfway through the season with no offensive lineman or whatever. This is a little bit more full fledge here. I don't know who exactly with the USS of L put this together, but what stands out to you about the all us F L, The offensive lineman and I believe Kyrie Woods was not on it. Offensive line is the hardest position to evaluate, right? And I'm pulling it up on my computer right now. So there were two guys that stood out to me. Marquis Lucas and I believe Kirk Kelly, both of them did not get all U S F L honors. They were the highest. Some Ben Cooper and Mark, excuse me, Mike made a very good thing about this is like Ben Cooper did 90% of the work for a lot of guys. You know what I mean? Obviously there's some football pizz in there that you need to figure out, but in the end, the grade is the grade for a reason and 90% of the time it is accurate and whatnot. And it does coincide with how air quote the popular vote of a lot of this comes down to see, see, excuse me, Kirk Kelly and Mark Lucas not get any recognition was a little bit disappointing to me, addition to Kyrie Woods as well. So I don't think he was selected either at the safety position. I think he was the highest graded player in during pff. And I'm not saying that's end all, be all. I think that'd be extremely irresponsible, but that's my opinion. I'm really glad I felt like this gentleman, Adam Rodriguez got snubbed last year. I think he was second in the league in Saks, seeing him get the award this year pretty solid in my case or in my opinion, we'll kind of deviate off some of this a little bit, but I went with Ryan Navarro for my long snapper and I know who cares about long snapping right outside of me, but there is a cult-like community that does, and the way I did it was as many snaps as you could have the punting thing, you know, could take the statistics how you want inside the twenties, hang time, this that longest plant yardage for me with the special teams physician, it always comes down to volume. So if you went 93 for a hundred, obviously that's an even number, 93%. But when you obviously up the volume you're you're going to shine yourself for more missed kicks or okay, you had seven misses but they were all from 55 and out. That's kind of like Sebastian. They would try field goals with him from 60 plus and it's like he had five missed field goals and in a year and it's like, yeah, they're all over 50 though. Versus a guy who kind of took the cheap route and was hitting 40, 40, 40, 40. Any other big sign I saw Boo Boogie wasn't on here. Any other kind of big notable snubs that you saw kind of outcry today from the Twitter spheres? Yeah, I mean you really couldn't go wrong in my opinion with John Atkins, Toby Johnson, boogie Roberts, there's only two spots, so it's kind of just like who's your guy type thing, you know what I mean? And it's like who did you the most? It kind of goes, I would flip coins on all three of those guys and that's pretty much what I did, including the Pittsburgh Mueller's defensive tackle, Isaac, I can't say his last name, it starts with an S, but I mean he was another guy that was up there as well. I mean, in my opinion it kind of gets a little goofy, goofy with that sometimes just it's too close. You kind of wonder what was the deciding factor And that intrigues me more because if as long as any of four of those guys were like, they're all going to feel stubbed, obviously the ones who didn't make it. But regardless, at that point I feel like it's more of a fan bias than an actual analytical perspective of, oh Boogie didn't make it or this guy did make it. And it's like, I mean they all played really well throughout the whole year. At some point the line of demarcation gets set. I put Boogie as my defensive tackle, but I felt like he meant more to the team than Toby and other people could call me wrong and Toby would call me wrong and that's fine, but it is an opinion based rating for some of these less sexy positions. No, Matt man as well, friend of the show on here. I mean I guess no surprise, right? I mean like Magoo and everything, some of these running back Mark, Mark Thompson, west Hills, I mean some of 'em I think are a little bit more cut and dry who you're going to have on there. What was the issues with Mark Thompson tweeting that he wished he played quarterback so he could get the mvp because they haven't, U S L hasn't, right? Announced their MVP yet, but it's presumably Magoo. But is Mark Thompson trying to make the position the case that he should be M V P? I mean he had an opportunity to, and I mean CTE Turpen won it last year through playing in multiple facets of the game, whether it rushing the ball, catching the ball and returning kicks in punts. So it's like we're not in that NFL sphere where essentially the MVP is the best quarterback right now. And we've talked about this a couple times where when Andrew Luck played, he was the most valuable player because of what they did without him. So it's like do TJ pleasure to me devalues Mark Thompson as the MVP a little bit because of how great TJ was. The first two weeks when Mark was out, Alex McGoo came in and granted he put up some great stats and everything like that. He put up some great stats, it was really impressive and whatnot. But he came in as the backup and to see what he did to that team, like the drop off between him and Jamar Smith non-existence and if anything they accelerated on that accelerated a little bit. So then you take, and I might be talking in circles here, that same logic with TJ pleasure to Mark Thompson. If Mark Thompson's gone, they have another running back in there, they might be doing the same thing. Whereas as far as Magoos gone, it's not happening with Jaylen Mor and we've, we've seen Kyle Slaughter, I think he improves a little bit because I think this team is better than the Breakers from last year. But regardless, soldiers, solar's been bang, was banged up in the X F L, he was banged up all last year. We kind of know who he is at this point. Anything else from this? We'll get to your list over on the mark cast. Anything else from the o l list? I mean Justin Hall, I get it. I don't really like the only two receivers, but I mean I only put one running back in mine, so I mean pick and choose. I did give a full back shout out on mine. It's a position and the n f does it, so why not us? It's my opinion. I can't fault any of these guys, man. We don't know what the actual analytics of the voting committee committee are. So until we do know then we're kind of in that rock and hard place as far as who's who and whatnot, if that makes sense. So we have this up on here in draft mode right now, the mark cast through all U S F L team. Hopefully I have this formatted correctly, but we can edit anything we need do here and publish when we go live. What do you have? Where do you want to start here? I mean we'll go if not Magoo, then who? I'm willing to hear the argument. I don't hear anything. You know what I mean? I feel like everyone's pretty on board with that. Mark Thompson's a pretty easy pick for me. West Hills kind of fell off a lot and there was more offensive weapons around him. When we talk about value at the position, Thompson was the most valuable running back, you know what I mean? And he is, I believe he is the second place in the MVP case. And then I mean throw in whoever you want for position for hell, EJ Perry for all I care. But then you go into, I gave Mason Stockey the fullback. He was my next was one. A lot of teams obviously don't use the traditional fullback. He did a lot of receptions out of the back field working as an hvac. The only person close to him is friend of my show, Clint Sig, who when he was out there he was lining up in the backfield a lot. You saw some JJ Wilson and Daniel Helm did some stuff, but in reality it was Mason Stockey was the most traditional true fullback and I do think that deserves a lot of accolades and recognition. So if Mason's watching this, just let people know people care about your existence. You know what I mean? And that we see you doing the hard work. So I felt that was nice. Receiving Core Devin Gray, big shout out to him over 500 yards, kind of got a little bit unshadowed with Cory Coleman there. Unanimous pick. Cory Coleman I feel like is everyone's guy. Joe Walker had a really good season for the Panthers through very versatile guy, played on some special teams and whatnot. Over 500 yards. Led that Michigan team and receiving the next one, Davion de Davis really with the absence of Victor Bolden and Marlon Williams getting hurt really came the over there, became him and Magoo outside of Sternberger. Those guys combined for over a thousand yards and I think 12 of Magoos touchdowns. I don't think enough people talked about him and after his, I don't don't know if the word struggles is appropriate from the roughnecks of the X F L. Really great to see him become a top five receiver in this league. I didn't do honorable mentions because there's so many guys you can give credit to, but the Breakers, receivers, Trey Quinn, all those guys, those third and four spots can be start becoming your favorite, favorite bite. Who's your favorite guy? Thing is about Devin Gray that I wanted to throw in there is that he was their holder as well for the majority of the season. So the fact that he kind of did a double duty and with the injuries that they had and then essentially Terry Wright coming on little bit later, that guy did a lot of great work and worked really hard to be able to, in a position to help this team almost make a playoff run. Moving down the tight end, I put Jay Sternberger set all the new modern record for receiving touchdowns. Real cute there, but also the fact that it was really him and Davion Davis put like a random guy doing some good stuff or CJ Maribel having a good game. Sternberger had his drops and whatnot, but we didn't see as much of a tail off as we did with Sage Surat who just burst out of the gate offensive line. Real fun position for me. Got a little lazy with it. I went with P F F for Kirk Kelly and Marcus Lucas as, and excuse me, Arius Gilmore were some of the top rated offensive linemen per pff that makes the job a little bit easier. And then when I start looking at his right, some of the things I didn't agree with, so that's when I decided to put Terry Poole in there because Terry Poole, you really saw that Mueller's offense stabilize and get consistent and when you do these PFF scores, if you give up a sack, it's the player that you are blocking. So with Troy Williams, with him running around and whatnot and doing all this goofy stuff, you might have your defensive player GI give up the sack. Well guy's been running around the backfield for nine seconds. Someone's going to get lucky and tripped this guy up. Terry Pool older guy was released from the generals playing the X xfl, the aaf I, I know he's with NFL teams but I don't know if he's played an NFL game regardless. He's like 31, 32 years old. Really loved what he did throughout the whole U S F L season. And then there's a leadership presence as well. Noah Johnson, big thing about I liked about him was how terrible that Michigan Panther's offensive line last year was. And while they weren't great, once again, the stabilizing force he brought to this team was outstanding and really MA was essentially what kind of helped them get to the playoffs and then the leadership he showed along with Ryan Nelson and Derius Ham in that final game with a rookie quarterback is something that you don't always get on the stat sheet. That's good. A lot of good work here. Going through any, I guess surprises in terms of the number of players from teams, I mean it looks like it's pretty well distributed. It's always funny you have a team, the mallers that ends up getting a bunch of hey, they're in the playoffs. Yeah, I mean last year they sent the most guys to the NFL I believe. I think they hit seven or eight or nine. It was, yeah, it was them and the gamblers both seven of the worst teams ended up having most of the guys. It's always weird how that just doesn't equate, I dunno if you blame coaching or whatever at that point of why they couldn't figure it out. Yeah, I mean at that point it's just, I mean the gambler's defense last year, we've talked about a lot like studs upon studs upon studs. Moving down to defense here, what do you got? I've got into my defense. Breland speaks pretty easy choice boogie. John Atkins. John Atkins, I felt I was really glad he got the air quote official all U S F L ranking. He's been a consistent disruptor. I've talked about him on the show a bunch of times. He had the player of the week nominee, but something about Boogie Roberts' game this year, while he's been such a face of this league, he came into the season way leaner, way stronger, firing off the ball and to see his fundamentals is didn't look like last year. He was kind of just clogging holes this year he was moving people actually using more technique and a lot of people don't realize, I don't want to say he had a year off from football but wasn't actively on the waiver wires and everything like that from 21 to 22. So now you see him come back and probably was training a little bit harder this time. So we're getting there to the point where it's like this guy really took, not that he didn't take it seriously before, but he stepped it up a bit. And then you saw the overall success of Tino and Ruben Foster and that those are stats you don't always see with a defensive. A lineman is clogging taking two blocks so your linebackers can make all those tackles. Adam Rodriguez, underrated player last year. He got snubbed this year from both of many, many sources. He was honored and in Hercules Fafa talked about it a lot. I felt like every time I was watching him, he was making a play in the backfield or something like that. Or disrupting player disrupting plays in the backfield and it was really great to see, especially on that stars game where he was moved from the right side to the left side and got the game winning sack. Moving on down here. What do we got Frank and everyone else here with the linebackers? I mean I don't think many people are going to argue with Frank and Tino. Pretty easy. Pretty easy picks. Top two tackle Tino. Top two tacklers in the league. Tino had a lot of interceptions turnovers, game changing plays, getting to one defensive player of the year or of the week tw or four times this year. Diggs Playmaking type guy really came on late in the season, really liked a lot what he did and he had a great last two weeks, which is really kind of what gave me a little bit of a recency bias for the guy as well. Moving on down here, Easy choice for me. LaVonte Taylor, while sometimes he kind of played, I don't want to use the word lackadaisical, but sometimes coverage kind of lax and he got really the benefit of the doubt from a bad ball or nothing overall. I don't think he gave up any touchdowns throughout the year. Sometimes it seemed like they didn't even look to his side of the field and whatnot. Really just overall solid, solid player played, made a lot of great pass flexions. I think he was saying they were missing six passive flexions from him as well though he didn't get any interceptions. He definitely felt like sometimes half the field was taken away. Brian Allen overall pros, pro solid, solid person up in the run, another leader on that team. I felt that he was an additional stabilizing force and an underrated signing. I think last year he played with the Saints for a little bit after leaving the stallions in 22. Real great player in my opinion. Older guy, I think he's out of Utah. Utah and just a great stabilizing force. Long body, taller corner. Real athletic dude. While his statute might not always be the most appealing, every time I saw that guy, it looked like he had when they're running, I felt like a lot of times when I saw a big play and Brian Allen was on the field, he was taking away his option and that's something that stood out for me. Mark Gilbert, four interceptions, another great asset to that Mueller's team. And then kind of a little bit easy on the free safety port. Kyrie Woods highest grade player on PFF made my job a little bit easy to go into that selection and then show him Lei playing that center field coming up in the box. I think in my opinion on the Panthers, Kai Nacua played a similar role and I think he did better than him. However, NACUA have as many reps, so I had to give it to Lei for the second year in a row. Well there you go. Looking here, moving down special teams. I know we got Mango on here, glad to see Lisa Aguilar on here. Some of these are a little bit more obvious. Derek Dillon as well with the Showboats thoughts here on special teams. I mean we talked about a little bit. Navarro I think led the league in reps for most snaps between the punts field goals and extra points. I think he led it by six. I did the math for all of it, so it took me, that took a minute to do it so that I kind of gave him that because I don't think I saw a bad snapper. Him, granted they had a block, but sometimes blocks aren't the snapper's fault. Mangel a lot of reps. I think he had the second most punts in the leagues real up there in yardage. Friend of the show as well. A little bit of a bias towards that and a lot of these. Okay. Yeah, I and Miller were my two guys and I flipped the point I had to go with. I had to go and I'm doing a little shilling as well. I'm hoping to have him on my show at some point. Aguilar, I was going to put Kessman, Billy it or not because of the 21 made field goals, but something about putting the team on. He put the team on his back for about three weeks. They didn't score any touchdowns for three weeks and 90, oh, I think he had 95 points, which was the most for the kickers one and then two was second in the league. It didn't get much easier for that. Not much I could say about Derek Dillon. I feel like he was personally robbed, led the league in all purpose yards, two big return touchdowns split time at returner as well and still managed to have almost 700 or over 700 return yards I believe. But they opted to go who they go with. Excuse me, I I Got it here. They went with Josh Simmons. Yeah, I mean I didn't go punt returner, I just kind of went general return specialist. Isaiah I think personally was a good choice if you're going to break it down to two, but Josh Simmons had some great returns, but I felt like Deon Kane was above Josh Simmons in my opinion. But he also was out for a couple games and whatnot as well. I believe so. I mean someone's always getting robbed. And then they went with a specialist. Vinny Papa saw Papa make a lot of special teams tackles on kickoffs. They said a couple times after he scored a touchdown, he'd be making the tackle on kickoff. Good for him. He's invincible. Maybe it was a thing for his father. Oh, that's crazy. I know it. It's crazy. The thing to turn around about when some of these players are doing do a double duty out there is pretty crazy. And we talk about that in nauseum. I don't need Vinny Papa to put up 600 yards in the US F L to prove to me he is an N F NFL player. I need Vinny Pali to do average seven yards of return, well probably a little bit higher, 12 yards of return and make tackles on, for example, a guy like Joshua Cribs who's not in the NFL anymore obviously. But a guy like that. That's what I mean. Well I think you've done good work here. We'll talk about the playoffs here before we get out of here, anything else from your list, USLS list? Anything else on this? Not really. And I hope And who are we? We're just a couple of jabs doing this, but I mean hope, just hope some of these guys don't get caught up in these awards. Tyler Huntley went to the Pro Bowl last year over some other quarterbacks like two touchdowns, you know what I mean? Taylor Hein will different division or conference, but you get what I mean, hopefully. And I've seen some people tweet out the other outlets and while we might not always be as friendly every day, it is good to be recognized. And I'm glad that there's so many different facets, facets to this and whatnot that someone out there can feel that someone who has no allegiance to them in a way was recognized and that makes people feel good. And I mean, you got a pretty decent following on Twitter and whatnot and depending on the day, my tweets get retweeted by Mike Florio. So I mean, yeah, just part it's less about us and putting the content out there believe it about not that, and I don't want to come off as a participation trophy guy, but more for these guys to know that people care that they're putting their body in the lives on the line to entertain us and have them reach their goal. So I'm glad I could do that and that my list was different than the FLS because I did this before they came out. Well, I think it's good. I think it's valuable. I think we joke every Monday or Tuesday in here, we get a lot of grief for all of the US LS stuff and hate in the league or loving the league, whatever. Having gone through and watched all the games you have and broken down and analyzed all of 'em that we have every Monday or Tuesday, it's good. I think it's a good stamp. I think it's a good kind of showcase of your work and this kind of attention the entire season and be able to put a bow on it and say, these are people that stood out to you and this is why. And I think it's good. Like I said, I see a lot of people talk online that they don't produce content at all. So whether it's you or the newsroom guys or whoever putting out the content, actually putting the work out I think speaks volumes versus like, oh, I tweeted something funny. Isn't that neat? Yeah, I mean the goal is, yeah, we might make one or two guys days feel better and that makes, yeah. So just before we get out of here, we did our playoff kind of preview a little bit on the Tuesdays thing. Any updated thoughts on either the South division with the Breakers and the stalls or with the Muellers and the, what was it, Muellers and Panthers in the north? Not right now. I mean we're still waiting on more information. I mean don't have depth charts. I know the stallions brought in Ryan Pope was the most recent signing and whatnot. Injury reports haven't come out, so it's a little bit hard to be like, oh, because how many times do you feel like X player is doing X thing and then yeah, this guy had a great game and you're, you find out on Monday, he had a torn, a torn hamstring. Well homie ain't playing anymore. You know what I mean? So a little bit hard for me to deviate off my path of where we've had a lot of this stuff going on originally, if that makes sense. Yeah, it's just weird. I was thinking about this too because we've obviously lamented the communications and everything and certain hubs being better than others and providing players and whatnot. Half the teams are gone now that aren't in the playoffs and then this all move on. It's just weird. I mean we saw the ratings this week down. We can I guess touch on that, but we have, we've said the similar things every week on here with the declining ratings, but it does feel like this kind of just a wet fart then evaporated into the distance here. I mean, we'll see what the weekend ratings are, but I don't know, I just felt like going through the X F L season, having the league continually helping all the different content creators with interviews and content, and this is what we're doing, the U S F L, it feels like it exists such on its own island. I know they give Stefan and them players from time to time. We've certainly had guys on earlier in the season when I was a little bit more motivated to keep following up. But I don't know, it feels like they then they're just going to kind of move on here. It doesn't feel like we've lived through this the same way we do with the X F L and that's probably my homer and me. But it does feel like we were a little bit more invested all together in that kind of moving on here. And I'm sure some people are doing it, some of the local outlets, I've seen some stuff, but I covered the battle halls weekly zooms, you know what I mean? And maybe that's the trajectory for next year. Something that I'm not trying to, there might be one person wearing a lot of hats. I mean know there's one, he's doing a lot of different things. So sometimes things just kind of are like, okay, I need to knock out my big checklist and whatnot. So I feel like sometimes things are just a lot's going on and I don't want to say I PPO us or any media outlet or even air quote more established ones. It's just like there's a lot going on and I got to move all this stuff around and we have to do this and we have to do that. And it's like we don't have time to do zooms with everyone once a week and whatnot. And I, and it's kind of hard. It's not hard, it's not easy, but I feel like at some point you become in a routine once the season starts and whatnot. I know Memphis did a good job with open media practices and whatnot, but I'm not in Memphis. You're not in Memphis. So it's a little hard to do stuff like that. So I give that Memphis Sullivan branding out there a lot of credit. Cause I was getting those emails all the time and they were doing a lot of stuff. Detroit had that transition of who was doing their stuff as well. I mean, Heather's done a lot of good stuff as well, but I think right now I would not be surprised in the future if we went from zero to 60 because I feel like people are hearing what we're saying and not, when I say we, I mean everyone, you know what I mean? And I feel like how these leagues, they all work, air court work together, but how they take bits and pieces and whatnot, everyone's going to probably see what works for them, what doesn't work for them and whatnot. And I think from there we could see a lot of growth and I'm hoping for us, we're a little bit more involved next year and whatnot, but both you and I are not in those markets. So that kind of is where I'm just kind of like, well, would it be different if I was in Birmingham if I was in Canton because Paul Woods was downing, they gave Paul Woods and Paul Woods is way different than you or I, but they gave Paul Woods pretty much free reign from what I saw when he was doing his McLeod stuff, but that might be just because of the history between him and McLeod. You know what I mean? It might have been a clause in the contract and whatnot. Well I yeah mean too, it was because that was a little bit more preseason, right? I not in any, we weren't in Arlington, but I was provided people from the X F L all the time that we're in Arlington. My thing is it's the X F L goes, it is all of these CFLs better because they have more hands dealing with a lot of this with their teams, but it's this whole, okay, we're out of season, we're not worried about this or we don't have time for this. It's out of season and then once it's in season it's like we're so busy we don't have time for this, so when are you going to have time for this? Because you don't have time preseason and you don't have time in season U S F L. I think once the season, I think those first couple, those training camps, that's when I got on Brandon Aubrey and I had, oh, that's when I had case cooks on and stuff that was all preseason. It's once the season starts it's like, well we don't have time for this anymore. You're like, no, that's when people want to do this. That's when people are interested in this. Yeah, I mean I have no idea to be down in Memphis next year a little bit more and depending on where I'm at with my businesses and whatnot because I offered to go to Detroit and do my own stuff and out of pocket just things in line up and it is what it is just again, back may. Everyone's busy. I get it. So I'm curious to see, I only think it Memphis, I use as a perfect example because they were doing the open practices for media. I'm really curious to see if I go down to Memphis and I spend a good month there, excuse me, what's spending my own money, my own time, my own resources, excuse me, and seeing what happens down there, how, not that I'm going to be a trendsetter or anything, but could that lead to more openness and whatnot? I mean you've seen my studio, you know what I mean in St. Louis and if I bring that down to them and I'm doing all my stuff and it's like could they get people who are way bigger than me that are way more notable than me and whether in my opinion, you're one a guy that doesn't get talked about enough is Josh Butler on the Panthers dude's a social media superstar. You know what I mean? Julian Allen social media superstar, they kind of did it with Chase de more. He's not very good at all. He's kind of a meme, but that's something that I thought they could've used those platforms a little bit to kind of push things out and it's kind like what the X F L did with destroying that. I don't know if you knew he had 5 million subscribers on YouTube and it just seemed like he was just doing it to do it. And I saw him, I saw him in St. Louis on the sideline and he was just kind of being there. It seemed like he was more disinterested when the camera wasn't on him. So I'm very curious to see, I feel like if you get one or two of these dudes who actually cares about football and not the way destroying does and whatnot, and you get them to put them on a podcast or something like that, what does that do for a lot of this stuff? And that's one of my goals is obviously get big enough so I can spotlight some of these guys, whether it be the US Prayer or Expo and get more people into this and whatnot. And I don't know, I feel like it's going to come working with the league. Hopefully we get to that point and then more people reach out or reach in and I was a little disappointed. I don't follow Josh Butler on these tos or anything like that, but it would've been cool to see some of that. Yeah. Well I think we'll continue this. We'll have post here on next week following the playoffs and then we'll obviously talk post championship game as well. So more time for this, but I think today this is a good stopping point. I appreciate the work for the All U S F L team. Like I said, we'll have that on the website and the links and all that stuff and obviously all the work all season covering this and doing the recaps and stuff, so it's very much appreciated, pat. Yeah, no, and Reid, I'm honored to do it. I was on someone else's show last night and no, well this has been what, 20 almost. This will be I think week 19 going in the week 20. And if you don't count the preseason and whatnot, and while it's been exhausting and a lot of guys like us who do both leagues are on fumes and whatnot, it it's been an amazing experience and I'm really glad that I've been able to be in your community and so many other people's community, both on the mainstream and in the freelance. In the freelance as well. Yeah, I like these. The X F L only podcasts that take the, okay season finale, we're coming back next year. I go, oh, okay, that's interesting. So no, none of that here. Every, we'll be back here every week. Power pheno. Thanks so much again. Well, this is a gentleman we've had on before and then I think it's a Twitter thing. I think once you respond to someone's tweet then I've seen all your tweets. Last week I said we need to get Derek Taylor back on here. It's been a couple times that, how are you doing, sir? Everything is pretty good when the team you're calling games for wins games, you contribute nothing to them, but they win. You just the warm glow envelops you and everybody's happy to talk to you. It makes my job pretty easy. Yeah, so we're friendly now because obviously BC's playing Winnipeg, this will air after that. So right now we're friends because BC that's America's C F L team as I call it. But general thoughts on Winnipeg, I mean, we'll kind of do a rundown here, but I mean feels like they haven't lost a step. They just kicked the snot out of the Saskatchewan Rough riders. Michael Ball was like, well, it's still, we can still feel okay about this. Can we really? I mean they look really good this year. Yeah, they offense is as advertised. I thought it would be the best offense in the league. To me it's certainly the best receiving core in the C F L and it comes with the best quarterback in the C F L. I don't know that I expected 40 plus points in each of the first two games. Like they're at practice talking about, yeah, we could be better, blah blah, blah. And I just do the math and think if you keep putting up 40 burgers, you're going to set the season record for points, right? Sure. It's early, but if you think you can get better and you start hanging fifties on the board that the record I think for points is 698. They're going to blow past that. So it's been pretty great. Two guys have two touchdowns, everybody else has one. They're spreading it around what I thought it might be at its peak, but it's happening in weeks one and two, which is very unusual Because was didn't last year. I felt like Winnipeg started slower there just, it seemed to be more concern last year going in versus, and then obviously it didn't really, they went all the way anyway, but it seemed like it we're coming here hot. Yeah. Oh yeah. Last year it was two slogs against Ottawa. It was a low scoring game in week one and then some weather was a factor in week two, but that was low scoring as well. And honestly it was a lot of the same personnel. There was Greg Ellingson and we didn't necessarily know what Dalton shown was at that time because he was just starting his career. The offensive line was virtually the same, the quarterback was the same, but yeah, they are a mile ahead of where they were to start. We to start the 2022 season. Should Ruff Ryder fans feel good in their loss here? It was like what, 27 45? I watched that game and I know Trevor Harris looked good. It really didn't feel close to me. I know the score was closer and then they didn't go for it and settled for the field goal and kind of all that stuff. Should Saskatchewan Ruff Ryder fans feel good? I think they should. If Jane and Grant doesn't make the return of a lifetime, that's a three point game and Winnipeg has the ball on its own 20 yard line and I think if you're Saskatchewan, you would feel pretty good about that. Hey, our defense Winnipeg's offense is doing well against our defense, but our defense can show up. Their offense was roughly 2.7 times better than I thought it was going to be because they don't have their three best receivers. There's no key and Schaffer Baker, there's no Braden, no Darrell Walker, and all of a sudden, oh, here's Samuel Emli. Okay, here's three touchdowns from Samuel and Harris threw one of the, it's going to be one of the top 10 passes from a quarterback in the C F L this season. He dropped one just over top of Dietrich Nichol's shoulder too. I got to go back and see who the receiver was, but we were in the booth going, how does that ball get there? Because it gets this far over top of Dietrich Nichol's shoulder who hadn't turned yet and I thought Harris is on and if he is on, he's the second best quarterback in the C F L and that's a great place to start for an offense that I was super impressed with. Offense and coordinator Kelly Jeffrey, I don't really know much about him. He wasn't their first choice, but oh, he had it going. Is he, is Harris that big of an upgrade over Cody or is it just that maybe we've gotten a better team around him because Cody and I were kind of feuded and now we're friends and Cody and I, he's a friend of the podcast so I want to support my boy here in Montreal. Yeah, I feel like I'm one of the few people who's still on Team Fajardo. I still think Cody is an accurate passer. I think what he can do with his legs is a real added dimension to his game. I'm still on Team Fajardo. I think it's an upgrade in a way. I think they absolutely need it of Harris can just command everything and the ball can be up fast if he needs it to be right. That was his and parts of his career was, oh, balls out, balls out, balls out. You can't get to me, we have a 2% sack rate because you can't get to me in time. I think he just adds something different. And Fado was injured last year. Let's not pretend that Fado didn't have some injuries he was dealing with last year. I'm still on team. I just think that a change just had to happen, but while it's Harris, it's also Jason Moss is out and Kelly Jeffrey is in right offensive coordinator changes as well and they'd hope to add some offensive line things. A lot has changed apart from Podo as well. Was that the greatest top three? I think John Hodge called it top three kickoff return them all time or pun return whether kick return. I struggle to think of there are ones that are more important so we kind of have to take the context of the game out of it because Janeen returned one in the West final and he returned one for a touchdown in the gray cup. Those are bigger, right? Because it's in the gray cup and oh my gosh, they now lead the Toronto Argos. But I mean if you just take all the context of the game out of it skill for skill, it's got to be top three all time and I don't know what would be ahead of it because he makes the first guy miss and then he goes, well I got to cut back now and just when you watch it again there, they're special teams. Coach Paul Boudreaux said that's as close to a guy doing it by himself as maybe I've ever seen you go. Yeah, because when he cuts back people can't hold their blocks or they're going to get called for a penalty so you got to let him go and then he stiff arms this guy and then he stiff arms that guy and then he stiff arms, he turned the corner and cut back and it was incredible. When I listened back to the call I made at the time, I was impressed with making the first guy miss and then oh, he cuts back, okay, this could go really bad or this might be something, but then just the nonstop guys falling off, I'm like Bo Jackson and Techo Bull back in the day, right? That's just falling off him. It was incredible. And to add in the challenge element and essentially to me it almost ended that game. That play stood because all of a sudden it's a 10 point game and you've just been decimated by one of the greatest plays that we'll see, probably the greatest player we're going to see all year that even though there's still 19 weeks to go, Oh yeah, like you said, it was cool that they went and they go, no, we've reviewed, we've gone through and we've checked all of this and it all. It is such a game changing play at that point that they kind of got to go back through in terms of like I said, we Winnipeg BC playing. I think the original tweet I saw that got us on this was the horrendous Elks performance here at bc. Shut out. I was very happy to see that. Right, and I want, so a couple things. First off, how bad are the Elks I guess right now? Right now really bad. Apart from the Gino Lewis 102 yard reception in week one. What do they have? 200 yards passing at 50% rate and the run game, which I think a lot of us thought was going to be really good because Kevin Brown looks like he can really hammer dudes and run that ball. Hasn't, hasn't picked up the slack. There was a point late in that game where T S N flashed the graphic where Gina Lewis had one target and one catch for something like nine yards, only 320 grand and you throwing the ball one time. Yee, yikes. And it's not a Taylor Cornelius guy, haven't been for a long time. I think he's just got a fundamental flaw that's just unrecoverable at this point, but there's so much else around him and Steven McAdoo for all the flack he takes has had success in the Canadian Football League. His offense might not be super intricate and super complicated and full of fakes, cool pre snap motions and stuff, but they can get it done and Steven McAdoo offense, so it's less than, it's much less than I expected even though I don't think Taylor Cornelius is particularly good. I really did expect more and being shut out, being shut out for the first time in 46, 47 years is interesting. I put a lot of that on Chris Jones and who he's picked to be his kicker because if you can't, there are at least two if not three circumstances where every other team in the C F L would be trying a 50 51 52 yard field goal and he runs out Jake Julian to punt because I'm guessing he doesn't trust faithful as his kicker. You can't do that. You absolutely can't do that. You can't play field position and hope that Julian can maneuver every punt perfectly or else you're going to turn, we drove to their 45 and we punted for a single and now it's at the 40 you you're not going to win that way. So just get some points if you have to go to get Mark Legeo and if Hamilton releases him, get a kicker. Get a kicker and put your global somewhere else. Well there was a couple tweets of the one Taylor Cornelius, we've seen like 26 or whatever games now. We've seen enough of this. We kind of know. I just don't, Chris Jones, we're obviously newer to covering the C F L brought in and everyone says, oh, it takes some time and give him a couple. At what point is he on the hot seat or is he more, should be more under scrutiny here? Yeah, it's got to be coming because it was interesting to watch certain folks believe in Taylor Cornelius or believe that Cornelius can get another shot and they've kind of moved the goalposts on, well, it's not year two where a guy develops. It's year three. Well, and usually it's year two that we talk about this stuff, but I can understand because I know smart football people who are huge Cornelius fans, still huge Cornelius fans because he has this incredible ability for his size to run and navigate the pocket and scramble and his arm is incredibly strong. I mean it's probably the strongest arm in the Canadian football League, just not real accurate, which is kind of an important part of that. And then it comes back to Chris Jones committed all this money to Cornelius for next year as well, if I'm not mistaken. And I, I've been working from this premise that I don't know that I think Chris Jones is a great general manager. He's obviously able to coach guys up and get his guys and guys fall in love with him for whatever reasons are of what he is behind the scenes. But I just look at moves that he made when he was the GM in Sask and the head coach. I never got the impression that he cared much about his offense. He had Zack, Lars and I never got the impression he cared too much about his offense and I thought that might be changing when they go and get Gino Lewis and Steven Dunbar and Kyron Moore to add to Manny Arsenal and their Canadian talent. But then they'll, they'll have done weird things that I don't understand like Dylan Mitchell popped last season. Well, Dylan Mitchell's already been reigned. Dylan Mitchell was on the first year of a rookie contract already resigned. You're not taking the two plus one that you have with him. You could get him on a minimum salary for a time and you decide to resign 'em already. Kevin Brown didn't start till late this season. He's already been reigned and I don't understand if they were afraid those guys were going to leave for the U S F L or the X F L, which would be their only concerns because the N F L is always an option for everybody at the end of the season. So I, I'm to, I don't know if, I think Chris Jones is great at this whole GM thing and maybe someone else should take that over because there's just a lot of decisions that maybe it's my own ignorance, I just don't get Well it, no, I think it was, I can't remember if it was Hodge, someone was on here talking that that was why Cornelius got that big contract when he did is I guess there were calls from the X F L or whatever which cause obviously he was with the vibrance, but I'm like, because last year when they signed Cornelius and then he came out and threw it, it was like the end zone interception there that the Elks lost to get at home the week that he signed the contracts. You're like, yeah, can we get that money back? It seems weird to focus so much money around Cornelius and not really have a quarterback there. They could do, but that was kind of what they did last year. It was like, I mean, I don't know, it feels like sometimes in the C F L, like, well we can pay a lot for this receiver that'll elevate the quarterback. And I don't know if that really is how it works out. Well, they had so many weapons when we were contemplating, well how does it look as we're forecasting the season, say in March or April? You look at this Elk's receiving corps, it's it contends with the bombers for what's the best one. Like Gina Lewis is a stud. Stephen Dunbar, you have to move his position, but he's a stud right there. Dylan Mitchell absolutely popped last year and he was in a lot of guys top 50 lists as we voted for the C F L top 50 and Kyron Moore is a guy who can be a weapon in multiple ways. Manny Arsen knows that reliable veteran. There's so much love for Gavin Cobb from the University of Manitoba who was injured last season. They're not without Canadian talent in Forbes, BLO and Danny Vandervoort who had a couple of touchdowns in a game I called and caught me totally off guard. They are not without talent in this receiving core and they've got Canadian offensive lineman that teams would like. They probably would probably like Mark Cordy, maybe not the price they pay him, but they would like Mark Cordy to be one of their interior offensive linemen. It's just, yeah, when everything they've done makes sense for if you believe Cornelius can be great, right? Everything absolutely makes sense. If you're working for the basis that Cornelius can be a great quarterback, signing to that deal makes great sense because pretend he was top level, you'd be saving 150, 200 grand over what a top level quarterback should get paid. I just don't get it because I've never thought, I'm at the point where I don't think Cornelius is salvageable in the Canadian Football League because of the problems that I've discussed in a bunch of places. I see all the things that is proponent see, but I don't see the thing I need to see, which is the consistent ability to hit receivers who are even fractionally open in the right spot to get them touchdowns. Gina Lewis week one open in the end zone it, but just put a foot in front of him, but it's a foot behind him into the fender and then they don't get run second and down and they have to kick a field goal and you just can't leave that on the table at this level. In terms of quarterbacks, Vernon here, my boy in bc and I thought the first week he felt good. They said he, oh, he played good here last week. I wasn't as impressed, right? I mean 22 0 was in the miraculous score. I mean, I think that Vernon was very happy to get that one touchdown. I saw him kind of thanking God for that. But I obviously Winnipeg defense and all that's going to be a tough struggle this week. But overall, how has he done this year? Now that it's his house, it's his team. I think he's been okay, to your point 22, nothing like that's five field goals, right? Five field goals. I feel like every time the offense comes off the field and the field goal team comes on, they're like, this is a loss. We should be getting seven, but we're having to settle for three. That's just me putting words in their mouths. They want to be scoring touchdowns and in games against better opponents, you're going to have to score touchdowns. I was thinking about the matchup they had wi with the bombers on it. Well, the bombers are putting up 40 a game that's going to be roughly 14 field goals. You'll need to get the 40 and beat them. 42, 41. It's so hard to get there with field goals. You've got to be able to put it in the end zone. Their week one opponent was Calgary. Calgary did not look anything like Calgary that we've been used to for 15 years, 10 years, whatever it is. So it was fine. The game against Edmonton was okay, the numbers are 300 yards. I get it. I'm not overwhelmed with Vernon so far. And the funny thing, tell me if this strikes you as funny, people are talking about Vernon's going to break out. I have this feeling like Vernon is always the breakout guy and then I think he's 30 and I saw him play in the old Taylor Field in Saskatchewan, which was 2014. He's been around a long time. He is what he is and it's certainly workable. But to think he's going to take a Josh Allen year two to year three leap from the Buffalo Bills, the guy's, he's 30, he, he's been around a long time. When you've thrown more than a thousand passes, we get it. We kind of should understand what you are. Well, and my problem is, even if BC sits at two all season here in the west, you're still going back to Winnipeg here and getting your ass kicked like you did last year. I mean, well, we kind of know what this Is. Anything can happen. I mean, I kind of hate anything can happen, but the first week game, they gave up three touchdowns on a blocked punt, essentially a Lars fumble that ends up in the end zone and a fumble on a return that essentially ends up in the end zone though it took one extra offensive play. If you get to that game in a good spot, and I mean Winnipeg's offense is flying. Winnipeg's defense is not in my mind, flying. And it was a spot we looked at ooh, in the off season and went every year, another team just chips away a piece of this Winnipeg defense. Steven Richardson went to BC after 21 and Casey Sales got very nice money to go to Hamilton in 22. And you, okay, well, those are two big presences in that defensive interior. Okay, well now this is, they're going to run out a young defensive backfield. The back six is quite young though. It has some very strong spots. It's quite young. And the salary cap nature of the sport, you're paying all this money for Lars and Kenny Lawler and these guys. It takes you, if you're going to pay big money in some spots, you have to go thinner in some other spots. And I think we're at the point where the Winnipeg defense of 2021, not your 2023 defense by any stretch, those guys were world beaters and now it's are, they're going to have to outscore the offense, is going to have to outscore some performances by their defense. In my mind, In terms of, I'm kind of looking here at the schedule in terms of the other teams, Hamilton, right now, it seems to be kind of in a free fall ride in Bo, and we didn't look good. And I had said, I think Bo's maybe passed his prime and I didn't live through all the, everything I've known about the C F L is like he's competing with Jake Mayer and then Jake Mayer takes over. But how big of a deal is it? Bo's out, Matthew Shields is playing and then just in general, he didn't look good with Bo. Yeah, they weren't in some spots, they weren't too far from looking good in the game against Winnipeg in week number one. They had receivers, Chris Godwin or Godwin and Tim White running in behind Winnipeg defensive backs and Bo would just miss them. And you go, that's close. And then if you're on Hamilton side, you go, ah, why can't you, it would've been so right. It's one of those things that happens. I think I'm perhaps most excited for Hamilton because what we've seen of Matthew Schultz, the guy who will take over this week, he's exciting and he has some promise, right? I think I've personally been foiled by guys who have kind of a Matthew Shield skillset in past years, but Shils to me throws the ball better than anybody I can think of. He's be, he's the scrambler, he was the second quarterback in some plays last season and they'd throw him a swing pass and he'd try to get Upfield, stuff like that. But I think he's a better passer than some of the guys that I can think of running quarterbacks from America who would come up here. So I, I'm really excited to see how it works with Shilts and then how it works with Shilts once defensive coordinators get a look at him and what Hamilton does with him, because it's a different skillset than Bo does. So it'll take Tommy Condell, he'll have to change some stuff up. But I, I'm really, honestly, I, I'm holding out a lot of hope for Matthew Shilts because I think there's something there and it could be harnessed. So this could be for as long as bows out, this could be a positive move for the Hamilton Tigercat. Well that's the thing is what if Matthew Shilts comes in and just lights the world on fire and then you're like, oh, I was looking when they said the three down had the injury report, Bo's getting a ton of money. I mean, it's just crazy to think you have all this tied up in him and to not still be performing well coming in how it's been the first couple weeks. Yeah, I think of him as the perennial bounce back guy or give him credit for Bounce back because Bo hasn't been BO since 2018. So 19 there. I think the broken leg was in 19 shoulder, 21, 22. I went into this season thinking, oh, Hamilton's going to be pretty good because there's a chance that Bo gets back to it and then whatever's going on, if it's the shoulder, if it's something else. It hasn't been there through two games so far and it's going to be a while now with the injury, but I just feel like he's, when guys who have hit those heights, right, m o p level, great cup, MVP level, I always feel like, okay, they can get back there. Barring something having changed dramatically when Kariss was at his lowest point, I in my heart knew Callis could be bankrupt again because I'd seen him in 15 be phenomenal. Phenomenal. So I always believed in that and part of me is still stuck with that with Bo, but then you go there's, there's some injury things that are affecting him. I feel like whether it hurts at the moment, it just looks like it's really, it's affecting the way he's able to play. How impressive was Chad Kelly here with the Argonaut sway? Kelly is now everyone gets to call him. I think he was fine that first quarter I thought was, oh okay, well look at this happened and he scores three touchdowns, but two were quarterback sneaks, so I kind of don't care about those. The scramble was fantastic. Where was it? Ger Davis, he kind of faked out and gets into the end zone. I went, okay, this looks fine. The numbers look fine from week number one and they want at home. So I really want Chad Kelly to be good because we're not overwhelmed with great quarterbacks and the C F L right now. So I would love it if he was 80% of Nathan Roarke. That'd be phenomenal for the c f at week one was fine. I think I'm, I'm going to want to see more go on when the receiving course is fully healthy. We'll get a chance to see more, but yeah, to me was I just know what I've seen and I'm like, yeah, okay, let's good, let's build from there. And Toronto may have something but I can't be a hundred percent sure. Is that the easiest money in the world in Bo bet Toronto over Edmonton this weekend? I just Edmonton's got figure something out, right? Yeah. Got to be for, well the line must be like seven or seven and a half, but pushing out Edmonton's got to find some points because somebody, someone's getting fired, losing their job and if they don't start writing this thing right, they're back at home where they haven't won since 1856 I think is the actual, I don't know, it's been a while, but I really would like Edmonton to be good because the league's more fun if Chris Jones led teams are good and if Gina Lewis is clowning defensive backs and if there'd be a lot of swag in that defense, if they were up 15 late in the game and Che Puro got a pass knockdown, there'd be a lot of swag in that and to me that makes the game a lot more fun. Last couple of questions here, we'll get you out of here. I appreciate your time the way, got the bye week and Moli. I guess when he comes back, they've looked terrible with I, I don't know if Oli comes in there and kind of rebounds that. What have you made of Ottawa here? I'm surprised that it has gone this way through two games and Oli cures a lot of problems when they come back. Here's your defined number one quarterback and let's go. We can do some stuff. I think in the current ecosystem or the current grouping of Canadian quarterbacks, I end up ranking Maoli quite high, but then to me he's a guy with a high ceiling and a low floor because he can take the 21 Gray Cup come into that game in relief when Dane Evans gets hurt and take Winnipeg to overtime that the last drive to force overtime into the wind in that game. Incredible. Maoli was awesome in that game and he'd been pulled in the east final the game before you go. So high ceiling and low floor as well. But I mean I had preseason wagers that he was going to leave the league in passing. I think he's in that offense is going to fire up some numbers when it gets going. I'm surprised because I remember Nick Arbuckle's first start was a game Calgary against Sask in my first year there and Arbuckle looked fantastic. So for him to transition from that, it's been a long road from 19 to 2023 with a lot of stops along the way. It just hasn't come for him the way honestly I thought it would that if they want to go to Tyree Adams, I get it. I totally understand. But yeah, you have to believe that Masoli can cure a lot of what ails them, but they're not without problems in other spots as well. Yeah, Arbuckle I, he's kind of duty at this point. I mean I feel bad and he really is trying to play his hard out there trying to moves, but it's just not working out like that because the last team I want to want to hit on Calgary, they're win here. Not an impressive game. The Calgary Ottawa Thursday Night Fest. Was it last weekend or last week? So Calgary with mayor and all of that. Are they rebounding here? What do you make of them? I am. There's quarterbacks in on and I'll be in on forever. There's quarterbacks we've talked about. I'm out on and I'll be out on forever. Jake, I don't know, it's kind of Jake Mayer on that offense. I'm kind of sliding toward out on because I find Calgary really at least it's painful to watch. Okay, a five yard stick route. Let's bubble screen out to this side stick route, the hitch screen. Oh, somebody throw the ball down the field to Malik Henry. Someone fire some balls down that trail of Dukes. Looks like he's tall. Hammer something downfield, get some deep crossers, give something to grab onto instead of, okay, over here it is, it's watching in just a chess match. But not that an entertaining queen's gambit type chess, but an actual chess match where it's 30 minutes between moves and pasky. Just go it. I find it really rough to watch. It's the shortest passing offense in the C F L. I don't know. And this is part of what I don't know is Bo loved to move the ball down the field in Calgary and Jake does, when he first came in was this, we kind of felt like he was this gunslinger, right? Oh, he got picked off, he doesn't care. He's hammering it down field. Deep middle again, let's go gunslinger. And this is just the opposite of gunslinger. This is Trevor Harris on like four downers before the game, right? Let's, okay, we're controlled and we're getting it out super slow. So I don't know how that's all going to play out and I don't know if they do that because they believe it's the best way to go or they believe that's what Jake Mayer can offer them. So I'm on the continuum. I'm leaning towards out on mayor, but he is still accurate with the high completion percentage, which is about too expected. So yeah, I don't know. And Calgary Calgary's off season was weird in that 20 something players got away, not 30 year olds, but 20 somethings who were super valuable, got away in free agency. So what's happening behind that? I have a lot of questions about Calgary and yeah, one and one and they were not super impressive to me in either game. So I'm waiting to see week three and maybe through week six we'll have a better idea. At least I will. Well yeah, that's like BC here and two and oh but stamps didn't look good week one. And then Alex, we've talked about the nauseum, so we'll see. But yeah, I like mayor. I don't know if it's too much pressure now and the safety blanket's gone with Bo and it's kind of all your thing. He seemed, was it against, was it Farhan? Was he interviewing him on the sidelines? Like halftime? He was very rude to Farhan. He's like, well we got to figure this out. Don't, don't be rude far on there. So Derek, I appreciate it. I wish you bad luck. Win the blue armors tomorrow against the BC Lions, but otherwise I really appreciate it and your busy schedule and everything, so it means a lot. You taking the time to come on. No, I Appreciate you having me. I love talking about the c l, so I appreciate that, that you do too. Awesome. Thanks again. Huge special thanks to all of our guests for coming on this week. Like I said, Derek Taylor, voice of the blue bombers taking time out, busy week, getting ready to call that game. I really appreciate him making the time in his schedule. Pat Rafino coming on early in the week to accommodate my work schedule. Certainly appreciate all the work that Pat has done all season with his U S F L recaps and doing art show and doing the stuff for Mark over at the Hub and everything else and then putting together the all U S F L list. I thought that was really cool that Pat, that we felt inspired to do that and I think that that's great to give a spotlight to a lot of these players that maybe wouldn't get the recognition otherwise in the huge special thanks to Rick Sara coming on big football news with Rick, with the iffa and everything going on with that. I told Rick offline I am a welcome vessel for anything that Rick wants to talk about in that way. I appreciate him being a friend of the show and the connections and knowledge that he has. So good luck to Rick and everyone over with the international football lines. Should be exciting. That will do it for me today. Hope you guys enjoy the episode I like and subscribe. Like I said, get us up to 3,500 subscribers and I hope you guys all have a good and safe weekend. Take care.

USFL 2023 Week 10 Results: Winners and Losers of USFL Week 10, What Did We Learn?

Well, happy Tuesday morning here. Welcome to the Markcast. Reid here inside today, June Gloom here in Seattle. So we're staying inside staying dry. R i p fan control football here. Just found out breaking news today coming out via friend of the show, Ben Fisher over at the Sports Business Journal. Maybe we could talk about that as well. Also have some TV tidbits. We can talk about ratings not out in full because of Juneteenth but Mike Mitchell just sent over some stuff so we can talk about that. We have Pat Rapino here, pat, just putting on a phenomenal shirt. I really like that. How are you doing sir? I'm doing well. I think if you've seen my interviews I usually try to go flamboyant for my guests when they come on so I think I got this one going and then we'll see what's next and I really want to show off my tattoos. It's good. Well I think you got to, if you got kind of flaunt it here, I think no one's going to you beat you up or say anything about you wearing the flamboyant shirts. I think as long as you can rock it, I think that's what you need to do. It's got owls with NV GS on them. That's good. I don't know what that means but that's good. Interesting stuff. First off, just not us f l news here. We're going to do obviously the recaps and we have our big playoff talk we're going to talk about, but Ville football taking the year off at least trying to sell franchises, all that stuff. Do you have any quick takes on that? I don't want to derail too much of the show, but I mean I'm a little disappointed. The league itself was very gimmicky and kind of weird compared to the traditional arena game, but I mean I don't think anyone can deny that there was talent and I know everyone talks about Turpen was in there and whatnot, but they did send two other guys to the N F nfl. They sent a bunch of people to the X F L. They sent a decent amount of people to the C F L. I mean in the end it was a cool way in my opinion that okay, maybe you're not going to go to the F NFL or the XPO or U S F L, but you are going to build your brand because the amount of AmeriCorps celebrity that was in it. So I mean it's a little disappointing for that. They did a pretty good job in my opinion, of boosting these people's like infamy, see all guys boost up their following their follower accounts on all of their accounts and whatnot. So football isn't for anyone but having 12,000 followers on the social media platform is never a bad thing for some of these guys. Yeah, I thought they were kind of finally figuring out their niche where we're not, we're really not competing and I know they said but we're really not competing with U S F L or X F L. We're getting maybe a lot more off the street kind of guys that want an opportunity and want to play and maybe from some of those we can cultivate on. I always agreed with Mike, I thought the field needed to be bigger. I thought it was too tight. The other take thing on here was we had, so Rob on here, worst photo ever of this, I dunno if so Rob got arrested in the previous site. Yeah, we have as mugshot on here but I've gone back and forth back when Paul was on the show, Paul and Paul and I had no love loss for a lot of the fan control football guys but I certainly appreciate what they do and what they did. Patrick Deese has been on the show and I mean I think they're hardworking guys but I do think biting off a little bit more than they can chew here trying to do basketball and kind of everything else this year as well. Yeah, I mean I don't think it's the word I'm looking for. I don't think it's any different than when people are talking about expansion in the X F O or the US F o, it's like hey man, you're talking about benching three 15 when you can't put up 2 25. You know what I mean? Let's keep repping the 2 25 before we put that extra plate on. Maybe a little bit of a silly analogy but I feel like sometimes there's overly competitive with with stuff so it's kind of like hey man, let's make sure that our house is in order before we do anything crazy. And that's kind of how I felt with it. It's interesting. I guess they're going to try to sell off. They have Jerry Kurt's here who helped with the former, he was the former Arena football league commissioner helping kind of sell some of these franchises. They said go for the high six figures, low seven figures. I don't don't know mean they have the celebrity, we could do a whole show about this. They have the celebrity owners, they have all that. I don't want to deep dive but I don't know, I think there might be a little bit more value there. You get, I don't know, I think those fan bases are maybe a little bit more locked in if you're trying to get, hey we're selling the US F L and the X L franchise but they had the last goal here given the capital markets currently, quite frankly, no one's going to tell you it's not capital intensive to run the sports league. We thought maybe the better idea in this environment is to focus on the technology so they're going to license off. It sounds like a lot of their tech try to get money that way and they maybe spin this up later. I don't see anyone low sevens purchasing a fan control football franchise. No, and apologies for the train, but I mean I wouldn't pay a million dollars for a fan control football league or team. I mean I can do the quick math. I think there's what, 15 players on the roster or something like that. Their offensive line plays three games a day or something like that. I mean I feel like they play six games. I feel like I could drop two 50 on that, two 50 K on that and still be able to pay people pretty decently. I don't know. I'd have to do the math on a spreadsheet and I know the F C F we can review right now. Yeah and it's interesting. I just thought get off the show here, at least talk about this while it's fresh. It is. Well The real victim is always who the players, right? Yeah. We're seeing those guys go to different leagues and make plays and be able to make more money and it's like, you know, have these guys from non-traditional backgrounds in college, you know, just go to a tryout in Atlanta and then next thing you know like B Bryce and Alene, Andrew Jamil. I know a lot of people talk about Turpen but we all know the reason why Turpen wasn't in the nfl. Like granted he made his way, he did his tour for the last two years before getting to the Cowboys. But a guy that doesn't get talked about a lot is Travis Ian, I think that's his name. He's on the Brahmas now but he spent about a year in change with some NFL teams and He was with the Seahawks for a hot second. I remember him getting signed up Seahawks, the Giants, the Vikings, the guys probably made like 300 grand in the NFL between all his pit stops and it's like that guy was in, sorry that was in always getting blown up on this show. I'm very popular man. It's probably what Trey and calling me to make fun of me but I mean that that's who the victims are when it comes down to this and any time a air quote league fails. Yeah, so interesting stuff. So today we're going to run through all the playoffs stuff. Mike Mitchell sent over some numbers. So because of Juneteenth, the US F L ratings are off a day prelims for the Sunday night, 631,000. That was for the big clenching it all Michigan stars kind of all that stuff. Interesting. Mike sent these over and just for us to kind of ponder here for the season, the US F l, after nine weeks, his average 622,641 viewers per game, the NBC games have averaged 900,000. That includes the derby lead and 904,000 on average. Fox's average 687,375. So just kind of interesting to put that in perspective when you balance out the Fox and N B C for the US F l Mike has done the math here, six 22,000 season average for over the air broadcast games. F X Ffl had seven ABC games and those average 622,000 also. So literally the exact same number on average for the U S F L 24 Fox and NBC averaged over and then the XFL with the seven to 40 for that Kind of interesting. Yeah, I mean what are we, what's the saying? It's like numbers, number, anything could be a statistic that goes in your favor. You're going to have X F L guys who are going to take that number and spin it around to their favor. You're going to have U S F L guys spin it around to their favor. I mean until we see the finances of these leagues, I don't know what's good because I don't know what they expect to be good. So if they were only expecting 300 K per thing, well they crushed it. If they were expecting 700, they were missing their mark. So that's kind of something that I always try to think about. It's like Pat's got to go on do not disturb here. That's all that was but sorry, lost my train of thought. Everyone's freaking calling me today. Long story short, but it comes down to their finances and what their goals are. So I mean that's something that can be talked about and I think got hinted on with this 60 million loss of the X X F L is like what are you okay with? You know what I mean? I thought the 60 million loss thing is since then. All right, moving on here. I had as promised, I had a couple tweets ready here following the U S F L playoff clenching scenarios here. I said the entire North division playoffs, are you kidding me? Playoffs we're seeing crazy here and then I was proud of this one U S F L saw the X F L with 1 4 16 in this playoffs and says hold my beer. I was pretty impressed with that. Pat, what do we make here? Playoffs south a little bit more interesting with this North division. What do you make of this? I mean I don't even know. I was thinking about it yesterday. I think it's really bad. I just, sorry, I think it's really bad that I don't know. The Muellers are not a good team. I don't think that I See I I'll do a hard stop there. I disagree. I think they also, so the Muellers put out James Morgan, which I get it. He was, I don't want to say a sexy name but like an F I U guy, division one player drafted by the jets fourth round pick, they go o and two with him at him at the helm they put bring in Troy Williams and something I talk about with Troy all the time is obviously his athletic rushing ability, but the similarity to him and Cole Kelly is that when Troy is playing, when Troy is playing, he's avoiding Sacks because he is able to run around. Cole avoids sacks because he's 6 7 250 pounds or something like that and when you hit him low he's going to throw the ball away and whatnot. Troy does the same thing, but that defense has been an amazing defense this whole year. I mean Mark Gilbert's a stud. You got Tino. I mean that's could easily be, and we're talking minimal movement here, but that could have easily been a six and four team if they went with Troy Williams. Now what's the reality of it? They didn't. So they ended up four and six but I think the Muellers and we talked about last week is like why not them? You know what I mean? They're pretty goofy team. They could make some plays and whatnot as well. I mean that's my opinion. I'm not trying to show for the Muellers, but at the same time you have to recognize the talent. They have two stud interior defensive linemen. The linebackers are running all over the place. They got pretty decent secondary and then they have some good role players in the secondary who aren't stars or anything but they do their job and every play in football works if everyone just does their job and that's what they're doing man. And then it's more kudos to that coaching staff than anything else. We got a couple comments here. Lewis sars are the best team in the north. Can't believe they aren't in the playoffs. Joe says Pittsburgh was won this field goal in week nine away from going five and five. Best defense in the league are absolutely a playoff worthy I guess I said and that this is probably the Homer and me ride and to me, I didn't feel like I was as bothered with the renegades because it felt like they were kind of on an upward swing that if they had had Luis Preez season, you're saying the same thing with Trey Williams, but to me it just felt like they had kind of pushed their way in and earned it in versus the stars really just crapping themselves out. The contention here is how I look at it, And we talked about this a couple times on the show, is the stars, their biggest bugaboo was their offensive line case. Cocus is probably in an ice bath right now and they didn't improve their offensive line that much. They had a pretty decent guard and Gilmore, one guy, CJ Perez was a liability at center. Aaron surveys, they bumped him between tackle and guard. He was a liability. In week six they pick up this guy Drew Himmelman who was a commander for five minutes and was with the Broncos last year and he changed that whole dynamic of the offensive line once he started starting and whatnot. So it continued to just progress and whatnot from there. A lack of run game. They went into the season with only two running backs. Dexter Williams and Colburn Colburn gets hurt. They pick up this Jamis Jamis Williams guy. They had injuries at tight end. It just kind of felt like on that offensive side of the ball where they were so dynamic they did not improve, especially on the offensive line and they reaped what they sowed. Yeah, I happy for obviously Matt Mangel friend of the show and he got a little roughed up in that game as well. He's fine. I had to tweet that out, but I don't know. It feels weird. We'll get into the games here, but I just, it's all funny until it's, this was the big joke with the X F L and we had a lot of things to say about it and now it's going to happen in an 18 league with 10 games and yeah, I do think Andy Murray had, I need to pull up his tweet he sent over that we need to, in both of these leagues here, let me pull this up here just while I'm talking about it. We need to improve both as says here, U S L and X F L have to change their playoff formats under 500 teams. Winning the division is one thing, but the lack of a wildcard system exposes the flaws that undermine teams that deserve it. The battle hawks and gamblers were disserviced. Same discussion we had before. Any other thoughts on that? I mean Andy and I kind of beat our, beat the table out that during the X F L season. Yeah, I mean think there's no qualms about the two teams that got into the south division and I think really the only way this doesn't change for both these leagues is if the Mallers or the Panthers win the win win the championship. I mean Birmingham's so good. We're essentially watching the South Division playoffs right now or the South championship possibly this weekend between them and the Breakers. But at the same time, I mean I said the same thing about, well the northern division, the northern division is the actual true championship because Houston's going to beat whoever they play and obviously I was pulled, proved wrong and I think I have a lot of love for the Renegades. I feel like I, I've talked to a decent amount of those players and I don't like saying I'm a fan of any team because I'm more of a fan of the players and whatnot. So to see Arlington win that game was obviously kind of awesome in a weird way. But at the same time it's like I totally understand everyone's discourse and the gamblers players are all going home now and they probably feel a little bit slighted but at the same time if they won, things are a little different. The battle hawks, I don't want to say all they had to do, but if the Battle Hawk beat Seattle, no one's shill for six and four is a lot different than seven and three, if that makes sense. I just feel bad. I know Anthony Miller was really looking forward to covering the gamblers all the way through the US L championship games. So I think that that's probably the biggest disservice here if we don't get Anthony Miller said journalistic takes here, but maybe he can stomach it and watch the North Division and kind of give us some recaps that way. Yeah, I mean he, he's doing W N B A right now, so I'm sure that's very thrilling for, So let's get into this here. So I did watch this game here. Like I said, Matt Mangel kind of getting beat up in all this Pittsburgh over the generals, not even closer 26 to six, like I said, Matt being able to walk off afterward, really happy about that. What did you make of the game? I mean I think it just kind of showed, I mean you have good deandre and bad deandre. I mean even coming up to this game, there was a lot of nonsense on the tweeter about Trey Williams leaving the team and then coming back and then, I mean a lot of people got caught up in the whole, well, he technically didn't leave and it's like this still doesn't eliminate the problem of something is going on there. And then after the game he called out the offensive coordinator and whatnot and I talked to a couple people about this in the dms. I was not players, just people who are generals fans. I was like, do you think if they won the game, went to the playoffs, he'd be released on Monday? I Trey, I think he's a shifty back, but I mean you're a 30 year old running back dude, the opportunity start dwindling. You know what I mean? Mean he's had a nice career over the alt league, played in the NFL a little bit. So at this point it's kind of like maybe he kind of knows he's got something lined up to what he can do, but at the same time it's like man, I wouldn't be trying to make so many enemies and whatnot and that's just a life thing more than anything else. I know I had them wrong, I had copied over our U S F L or C F L week two there have, we were talking U S F L week two, we were in a time machine there now we're talking U US F L week 10. Yeah, I saw a lot of that and I didn't feel like I knew enough to get involved in that, but you guys obviously sent over in the private, I think Mike Mitchell had reported and the prevailing theory is Mike doesn't care about the U S F L or know about the U S F L and I just saw a lot of media accounts. I had been shared my way of discrediting or talking receipts and stuff and then he played, I don't know, I didn't enough about it. It seemed really messy with the Muellers there. Yeah, I mean in the end we could talk about the exterior part of this, but the Muellers were the better team regardless. Troy Williams talked about it a little bit earlier in the show, able to do the little things, not get hit as much. Move around, take those, and I talk about this all the time, the ability to just go from a second and a second and 10 compared to a second and 17, that's where you make your money because not only are you obviously in a better position for a first round, but now you're not punting seven yards back and all that goofy stuff. So it's like you did get sacked three times, but I know two of them were on third down, so that's your, I'm going to hold onto the ball a little bit more and see if something happens. And so third down sacks, some coaches don't really care about that because you're trying to make a play versus a first down sack. So it depends on field position as well. If I'm at the, I don't remember where down the distance, but if I'm at the five yard line, it's 35 and I'm trying to make a play rolling out and I get S stacked for a five yard loss, these guys are professional kickers. I'm not going to be losing my mind that my 22 yard field goal went to a 27 yard field goal. You know what I mean? I want my quarterback to move around a little bit more and make a play here and there and all that goofy stuff. What's next for Deandre Johnson here? I made a joke. The Edmonton Elks and the C F L had a really horrendous game against the BC Lions shutout, which is incredibly hard to get to do in the C F L to get shut out. And Derek Taylor tweeted out, who can play quarterback for the Elks? I said, I'd call off Dr. Johnson, say, Hey, you want to come north here? But I'll joke in side and we'll kind of do our U S F L. We'll we'll obviously do a recap for the championship. Pat's going to be on the regular show Friday, we got to figure it out, but we're going to do an all U S F L team and kind of preview the playoffs on the normal Friday show. But what's next for deandre here? Just kind of a knee jerk reaction. I, I don't know man, I think he's kind of hit that tipping point as a passer right now. Last year he was kind of, I don't want to use the word cobbled because he definitely wasn't, but last year he was able to use his skillset of running the read options and whatnot and because then they could just throw Luis Perez as a pocket passer type guy this year had the the brunt of the ball of the pocket passing and whatnot and at times look great at other times look terrible. I mean next year I think it comes back to the generals, you know what I mean? Third year in the system with Mike Riley, but Eric Barer man, he was picked up on waivers. If any of these guys are going to go to the cfo, I think it's Dakota personally just because of familiarity with the system and everything like that. But Eric Bariers been a pretty undervalued prospect. Har, I think he was a Harlan Hill winner or no, Walter Payton award winner at Eastern Washington was with the Panthers last year and the majority of this year guys pretty athletic, A little bit undersized in that five 11 comes from that kind of like Mike g Lech air raid offense. But I'm definitely intrigued to see if they transition to him because he does have a stronger arm, but he's still decently athletic, not plays a lot faster on film than he does on his 40. I think he runs four eight on his 40. But overall I'd like to see Barrie get a shot and with them claiming him off waivers, maybe that's kind of the game plan as far as like, okay, now he's on their roster for 2024. Throw these two guys at the dart board and see what happens. Because they had some skill players at receiver. I think Randy Satterfield was on that team for a little bit. He got hurt. Alonzo Moore, ageless Wonder was their best receiver, get a little bit younger there. Moine Peterson L was supposed to be a big play playmaker for them. He got hurt, didn't utilize Cam ecs Looper as much as I thought they could have. But overall he had a decent season. I would like to see them get a more dynamic playmaker at tight end. I saw a lot of drop passes from Woody Bradham and Brandon Bowman a lot this year and that was in the U S F L. I made a tweet a couple weeks ago. Seven of the eight teams had guys at tight end. So to me, if they can improve on that position, I think that team becomes obviously way more competitive. But I mean that's not really anything profound. You get better players, you're more competitive. As profound as that may sound. I threw some fancy words in there, but that's the reality of the situation for New Jersey. In terms of the playoffs here, and correct me if I'm wrong, the Canton was always going to host the north one. There wasn't any chance of doing it at Ford Field. So Muller's here get Homefield advantage here against the Panthers And I talked to a couple people from the Michigan area and how many they are, but they did say that when they talked to people in Michigan at Ford Field that they were going to come down to Ohio. It's not the craziest drive, it's not the closest drive, but I mean that's good. I I'm expecting to see a pretty decent crowd in Canton. I mean it gets warmer too. Summer break, Hey, let's go to the football Hall of Fame and then watch this football game. I don't happy to be proven wrong. Would love to be proven wrong. I don't know. I think the championship game, it is a tough sell. I mean Mahler's exactly drawn the house in Canton already, right? I we have, I know mean it's the playoffs and all that. This to me is a really unappealing, we've talked unappealing playoff game. So I just don't know. I do think Protective is going to do pretty well. I mean they've always showed out for the stallions. I know there were some couple games here and there where it wasn't as air quote sexy, but I mean whenever we've talked about the U S F L games and their crowds and whatnot, I mean Birmingham this year wasn't, it wasn't really anything too crazy in my opinion or not too, when I say too crazy, too crazy in a negative way. I feel like they've always had a decent showing 90, 90% of their games and Memphis, it seemed like every other week when the Showboats played, I felt like some weeks it looked good, some weeks it didn't, but definitely, and they're doing some advertising I've seen on the ai al.com and Birmingham Sports and Luke Miller has been sharing stuff on the radio stations that they've been kind of pushing it a little bit more, which is good. I think I'm really excited to see what the Birmingham crowd looks like. Honestly, I will say though, bookmark this, the NBC game will still draw more for all era for TV atten, TV viewership. I guarantee you the the NBC game out draws the Fox one here, five o'clock Pacific versus four just the NBC has on by far average higher than in. Like I said, I think it was a week ago, we were talking Radiance. I said, it doesn't matter, the matchups don't matter. It's the time slots and that works. And NBC's proven to be, I don't obviously know what else is on that day, but watch that for all the, whenever we poo poo this north division game, it'll still draw more on tv probably. Yeah, I mean it's NBC Saturday night type thing. You're going to get people at the bar watching it. You're going to get people, it's going to be on at the bars and whatnot. So I mean they're like, I go down to the Ozarks in Missouri all the time and the games are always on at night even without me changing it. I was going to say you're, yeah, you're going through and changing all that. It's like when you go to the Apple store and subscribe to your YouTube channel on all the phones, Man I need to bump me up to almost 700. But yeah, man, I, it's not the sexiest matchup, but I'm more bought into this the stallions game, man, let's kind of weird. I got a lot of love for Magoo, a lot of love for M B T and to see either one of those guys win the championship, especially M B T obviously because I know we had C F L love and whatnot, but either one of those guys, especially a guy like Magoo who was a starter last year and then gets cut or not gets cut, gets hurt. M B T coming from Canada, winning the gray cup, but he's got doubters. Did he actually win the gray Cup? And it's like, I mean that's the matchup man. I think a lot of people are intrigued for, but the Mueller's winning this kind of would be kind of cool just because of how ridiculous their team was last year and essentially a doormat and whatnot. To see them rise from the ashes would be a pretty cool thing That they, I think U S F L reposted like Boogie Roberts worst of first or whatever, talking through all that, hope he's okay to you. He was kind of banged up. He had to leave the game Birmingham here over Memphis. The Saturday night, 27 20 at Memphis, kind of the streak ran out here, could, didn't have enough. You've talked a lot of Birmingham already. Any other thoughts on this particular matchup? I mean, I think Cole Kelly's like a year away. I really, he's one of the guys I want to see come back next year because of how big his body was, whatnot. I could see him getting N F L workouts, but he does need a little bit more development as a passer sometimes when I watch him and I forgot my football today, but I see him throwing the ball kind of come up like that sometimes. And it messes up his timing a little bit because you're seeing papa catching the ball like this and he also keeps obviously behind him, but he's also keeping the ball up a little bit more. And you saw a couple plays though, Cyrus Mitchell, well Mitchell had two hands on the ball and yes, he should have caught the football, but he's leaping up and he's getting dealing with a lot more contested catches where if he brings it down a little bit and wasn't a quarterback. I studied these mechanics a lot, but I'm trying to think, is that just because of how tall he is and what whatnot is he not? Is he not driving with his feet? And when you really break it down, I think Cole Kelly needs to work on his mechanics a little bit because some of these passes that he overthrew were you're kind of like man, or even his completions, you're like, man, if he threw it on the numbers and said behind the guy, Papa's still running for another 15 yards. A guy I really wanted to highlight on the Showboats and he didn't have the craziest game, but a guy named John Atkins interior defensive lineman for them. He played that Georgia, that guy had a way better season than a lot of people give him credit for. He did win the Player of the Week award this year, but I mean he had a really good season and someone I just wanted to give a quick shout out for, I don't know if he's watching this or whatnot, but I mean some guys do, but overall, I mean coming from this Brady White, it's kind of like fetch. We're not going to be a thing. Gretchen coming from this Brady White debacle, another guy that they kind of forced on us to see them be a five and five team from a four and six team last year improvement fun team to watch Cole Kelly was fun to watch when he was on. So guy I want to see come back. But they had some nice players this year. Kyrie Woods kind of came out of nowhere, became one of the highest rated P players in the U S F L from P F F. I mean Vinny Papa really was a guy last year who's kind of an afterthought. Rashad Davis gets hurt. They picked up Cyrus Mitchell, who I think he was with the XFL for five minutes. I know he was back and forth on some practice squads last year to see him and kind of take that role after Rashad Davis got hurt over Cyrus Mitchell, Derek Dylan, I think so what if I being a special teams player of the year so mean they got pieces a little bit more improvement on the offensive line and whatnot. But I mean they were a fun team to watch at times, especially once they went to Kelly over the Brady White experiment. Yeah, that's good. It's exciting to hear stallions. Like I said, I don't know there was ever too much in doubt here, but obviously a two going into that. Anything else on this one? I want to talk the Sunday games. So anything else on the Birmingham here? No, and once again, the Magoo thing is always going to be just the stallions in general have dealt with so many injuries. And then gentle, another gentleman who stepped up for Birmingham this weekend was a Brady Buck. I think he had 12 tackles, nine tackles or something like that. He or Brody Northwest division two guy, I think Northwest Missouri State. Quinton polling stepped away from the team. Scooby Wright was hurt. So it was nice to see that guy who was cut earlier in the season, the cutback and play a pretty decent game and get a nomination for Defensive player of the week. This is interesting here. I was sitting there this father's day we're getting ready to go to over our in-laws for Father's Day dinner. I was watching, I go, oh goody goody, I'm going to get here. I get to watch the whole New Orleans breakers, Houston gamblers game. I'm sitting there editing my dancer side of the whole videos. I was filming watching this. I tweeted out, I said, for any fathers watching this game right now, I publicly apologize if you're sitting there with your kids watching this game. This was the worst first half of football I think I've ever seen in my entire life. And I mean there was some clock management, the gamblers have had that all year. I felt like the breakers were kind of toying around with the gamblers for a little bit, but when MBT needed to make plays, he did. And then they kind of slowed it down. Someone we've talked about in nauseam in on the Breakers is West Hills. I mean I think you average two yards a carrier or something like that. I mean sometimes the stat line for running backs is a lot different than it really tells the whole story, if that makes sense. So a lot of tough yards, but Hills Hills is a pretty underrated player because one, he almost had a thousand yards all purpose and he didn't return kicks. So that was an impressive feat in my opinion. And two, just kind of grinding out 10 games healthy for the majority of them that receiving core we talk about all the time too. Dee Anderson, Johnny Dixon, Jonathan Adams and Sage Surat really rounded out those guys made plays when they needed to aided by some bad blunders by the gamblers and whatnot. I don't know why Curtis Johnson didn't go for it in fourth on fourth down, I think they were under two minutes. And then you even saw John DFA Lippo calling asking why is he not calling a timeout? Because, and I don't know if it was Clat that was the pa play play, but he made a good point. It's like it's third and nine, you might get them thinking about throwing the football and then it's incomplete pass again and now you have a decent amount of time, obviously a blunder on that field goal. The miscommunication between Hunter, nice long wander and the long snapper. But the biggest thing I got a little confused about is they went with Monte Cozak for a little bit. He threw two passes, one pick Devonte Diggs, but when he threw the, he rolled out, he just kind of dumped it off. He didn't throw it out of the bounds or whatnot. He was out of the pocket and everything and he didn't actually throw it out of the bounds. He kind of just dumped it and Diggs made a good play to pick off the ball and whatnot. Nice little tiptoe pat interception on the sideline, but at the same time it's kind of like, why aren't you just throwing that away out in the stands? So I don't know if that's an experience thing. Co kza Art's been in the U S F L for two years, played a decent amount in Canada. I believe he had a cup of tea in the f l in a training camp if I can't remember. But regardless, the guy played a decent amount of football. He knows better. It just was weird. And I thought the announcers too. I think it was really hard on Chris Johnson too talking, he doesn't know what he's doing and we're like, really? Oh, you're getting this from first year whatever kind of, it just the whole thing was a mess and not going and using the timeout. I don't know. It felt, and I had messages set my way of these games should be better in week 10. It we're kind of at the point I get the first couple weeks we're week 10 here going into the playoffs. Yeah, I mean Curtis Johnson definitely dropped the ball on some coaching and timeouts and clock management and whatnot. I mean that's my opinion on it. Call me wrong, but I think if you're a gamblers fan, you won't disagree overall. Once again, it is week 10, but John Dbo did a good job managing the game and whatnot. He's got a lot of experience and everything like that. But you are absolutely correct. It was extremely disappointing to see what happened with the gamblers and do I think New Orleans wins that game? Because do I think Lippo opens it up a little bit and kind of presses on and does what he needs to do to win the game? Yeah, 100%. But at the same time it's make it a little bit harder for Lippo and the Breakers. So here's the thing here looking, so now we have this, we have the seven to three New Orleans Southern division here going up. I just don't even feel like if this is the New Orleans team that comes out next week, I just don't even think they have a chance. I mean, it's what it is so frustrating with these end of season poor games. This is, we are like, we're trying to get to the playoffs and it always kills me where it's like, oh yeah, we barely got in and we're barely, it's like, yeah, now you're going to the playoffs. You need to have some sort of momentum. I mean, I get that in the NFL all the time. Like, oh, this team, they lost six in a row, but then if they just win here, they're going to get it. You're like, yeah, and then what you're going to lose next week. I mean, I get, okay, your paychecks, whatever kind of, I just don't see New Orleans having any shot here at all. I mean maybe we could seem like a little bit more of a closed playbook as well in this game once they realized where they were at and managing the game to win it. I do think that he's going to open the whole playbook up because, not to sound tacky, but it is win or go home. So hopefully we see that because D Phillip's, a good coach, talked about it all the time. They got some players on that offensive side of the ball that are Fringe N NFL guys, let this quarterback rip. Let's see, good M B T, let's see, bad M B T let, ID rather him go out there and throw four picks, really pushing the ball down the field, making some risky throws and put up a cute stat line of 15 of 23 for 180 yards in one touchdown and they lose 14 to 27 because the stat line will look good, but we'll see what's going on. It was funny, they had the graphic where they were talking, I like the wind streak or loss streak of the breakers. I'm like, okay, it's a 10 week season, it's hardly streaky. We won whatever. But they had won and undefeated and they lost it. I love they had the shirtless McLeod with this beard at the beach. I was like, mean it was hot. I was like, I want to get a copy of that for my wallpaper here. Can I get that? I mean, I'm sure go back to the app and screenshot it if you got, I want to do that. Anything else here on Breaker? It was just bad. I mean, I'll be curious what the radius are. I'm sure it'll be good because it was on, what was this one? No, this was, of course you don't have the TV anymore. I think this was not on the normal. I can't remember when I watch it on fubu, it's like it's just on, I don't have to pay attention to what it is. But any other thoughts on the gamblers breakers? I mean, no, I'm really hoping. I talked about the opens it up and kind of lets out all the stops and they've had success running jet sweeps and whatnot as well. We didn't really see much of that this game. So maybe we'll see some of that with Eli Stove. He's had some success doing that. So the biggest thing that they do that I love is when they put Sage shiat in motion and then have him run the drag route underneath, but he's going behind the offensive line. That's opened up a lot of play for them over the season. So you know, throw Sage, Shiat, six receptions, 70 plus yards. I think this game, I do think Birmingham wins. I do think it is going to be a good game, but at the same time it's like, and I hope I'm wrong because I was wrong in the X F L playoffs, but I do think our true U S F L championship is coming from the south this Sunday And we're going to do obviously our preview here coming up at the end of the week. But to me to memers kind kind of coming in as the underdogs against the stallions, that to me seems if we have to make chicken salad here out of this for the championship game, that's what I would like to see. Obviously McLeod and kind of the guys over there, ideally, what would you prefer to see on the championship game? Man, I do like this and we'll talk about this game. I do like this Michigan. Michigan versus stallions matchup, if that would be pretty ridiculous in my eyes because of EJ Perry just out of nowhere getting the start and then not knowing the playbook and having missed cues and just making chicken salad out of chicken feces and whatnot. I mean some of these plays that EJ Perry had success on was amazing to see. It was just a kid out there, just it very, I don't want to use Johnny Manzel as an example because it wasn't like Johnny, but very just backyard football. All right, we're going to figure this out guys, let's do it type thing. He'd provide that spark for the Panthers against the Stars team that I think we all agree was better. And Corbin didn't do much 24 yards and I think he had 13 carries or something like that. 14 carries. Scott was kind of limited using more in the blocking back and whatnot. So I would love to see EJ Perry and what he can do his capabilities with another week or two in the offense and open it up a little bit more. Yeah, I thought they were coming for you there. I heard the sirens, I thought they were coming. I thought this was the end of this. So here, the big final I stars are my team. They were my team back from Brian Scott back in the day and all this kind of stuff for your case has been on the show. What happened here? Collapse of the stars here. Michigan finally got a home win, right? What did we make of this? I mean, the Stars offense on paper didn't give up any sacks, but sometimes those pressures, which they don't always record mean a lot more because Case was running around surprised he was wincing every time he got hit. Breland speaks that right Tackle on the Stars was the first guy's name was Burn Burden. And then the second guy, Toth Toth was a division three guy from I think Overland University who was with the Bears for five minutes, was signed this week. He's thrown in there going against Levi Bell holding on almost every play. It was, I mean, once Himmelman got out, they shook, they shook, shook up the offensive line a little bit. It just did not look good. I mean, I've been on this Himmelman train for three weeks now and how crucial he was, especially going up against Breland Speaks and at the end of the game you saw him in his arm sling it looked like. I mean, case is a great quarterback, the grit way more athletic than we probably give him credit for. The lack of running game and how he was able to make up for it. I mean, there's not enough good things to say about Case Kka. I saw some people get giddy about the fake punt, but kind Kuah made a great play and he's been such an asset for the Panthers that he made. I mean, I don't know how many other defensive backs make that play. He literally jumped over this guy and swatted the ball away and it was a clean play and it was just uber impressive to see that happen. Especially Thompson did a decent job on that fake punt. The backup quarterback was a personal protector and rolls out, threw the ball in a decent spot and Nku had just made a decent play on it. And that changes the game a little bit. Granted, they missed a field goal as well, but that's going to happen. The Panthers I think missed the field goal as well. So Etrade points for there, but this Panthers special teams unit man was just on point with that block kick, or excuse me, that block punt. And then Marcus Sims changing the field because even if you're not scoring now you're putting the ball in their back half of the field and whatnot. So that changes a lot of things. Comment here. Rock, rock and roll. Alien Case Cook should ask for his walking papers. Top non N F L landing spots, sea Dragons or Roughnecks Man, I don't think he goes to, if he went to the X F L, I don't think he'd go to Houston. I think AJ is pretty set with his guys as far as the ride or die there. I mean, I think June would like them in Seattle. I just don't know what the Stars do here because it's one of those, we were there last year and then severely regressed this year. I don't know if I see Bart doing a whole off season. Hi, him gearing up to do this again in this point in his life. Do you get what I mean? Do you see the stars really overhauling in the off season to make another go with Case or whoever? I mean, they need to figure out this offensive line that was their biggest bugaboo the whole year. I think he got sacked, what, 15 times in the first three weeks and then Himmelman comes in and it improved a decent amount. I mean that's really the reality of this. That's what he needs to do is kind of overhaul that whole offensive line and then, you know, could put me back there at the quarterback, I got five seconds to throw, I'm going to hit my drag routes and they had dynamic group of Playmakers. It's kind of sad to not see 'em progress. I don't know, I don't who's the next, I don't know what their team looks like next year because they did have so many great receivers and whatnot. And even a guy who's a late season pickup, cyro Grayson athletic guy and whatnot, could he be a rental type thing? Because he could be. He's probably on NFL short list. Corey Coleman put together a great season. I mean Matt Colbert got hurt, but Dexter Williams put together some decent tape and whatnot. What do we see from this team in year three of the Bard Andrews area? I don't know. Just because to me, you get to that point with some of these guys and I think the X have felt, you know, get through the novelty of year one. Okay, now we're okay going into year two, let's figure this out. And then you're kind of getting to the point that, alright, what are we doing here? Am I really into this? Have I really bought in I think year three and we'll see next year with the XM obviously. But I think it's just a weird timing thing of like, okay, we've kind of seen what we're I do, do I love doing this, do I not? I'll just be curious to see what a lot of these seems the Mike Riley like, is he still doing this right? I know his wife has health concerns and things like that. Is he back again, bar some of these guys I'll be curious to keep an eye on. I think Riley comes back because of, and I don't know how much he cares about milestones, but he's only four or five wins away from 200 as a head coach throughout his coaching tenure. So maybe that could bring him in. Bob Stoops did an interview where they were like, you're at 1 99, you coming back. And he is like, hell yeah, I get that 200. And also the thing is about Riley too is he has his kids and whatnot or his grandkids that always accompany him. And those are memories that you'll, you'll never give up. So it's, as long as it works out for him, I could definitely see him. I could definitely see him being a part of this machine for another season, especially with those two factors. But in the end, like you said, family is more important to everyone in these leagues that a lot of these coaches take these jobs in these leagues because of the family flexibility. So we'll see what happens on that front. I mean, I'd like to see Riley come back and get that 200. I think Bart's kind of a fun mentor, a leader of men that I think he's really crucial for younger players and developing players and whatnot to not only teach 'em how to be football players, but also decent human beings. And he talked about it last year in United of Football. He's a teacher by trade. So I think that's kind of what keeps him going. But it is easier to say that when you're coming off a championship game, win or lose versus a four and six season, which I think everyone believes that they underperformed. Are you surprised they didn't do the United By Football this season? I mean, I know we has, it wasn't a barn burner success, but were you surprised just to develop more of these storylines? I mean, I liked it, but I mean my opinion doesn't really matter. I'm just one guy type thing. So I could really, I don't know what their ratings were. I don't know how much it costs. I don't know how worth it was to them. So I mean, if I could have less united by football, but it guarantees this league the succeed for 10 years. I'm willing for that trade off of not knowing that Ben Holmes doesn't know who Aaron Rogers is. I guess wrapping up. But yeah, I mean obviously started the show talking with fan control football and all of that. It is very capital intensive and I'll be curious to see, I know talking with Mike and Mike's been on our show and the chat and stuff us develop underperformed this year versus what I think league executives wanted and expected both TV and in attendance on here. So I'll be curious to kind of see what their game plan is because we'll do the whole deep dive after the season. But just when we had Greg Parks on when we were talking the X F L kind of season overall ratings, just putting these U S F L games on more networks, better time slots didn't necessarily equate to more ratings. So I mean, does the U S F L, does Fox go head in here in the next season? Are we ramping up even more marketing? I don't know what costs they're willing to take for this kind of filler content, for lack of a better word. I mean it's not filler content to the players and coaches, but I think overall to the TV network, that's kind of what they view it as. Yeah, man, I have no idea. I'm not trying to fence it on this at all, but we don't what their analytics are. We don't know what they're okay with and what we're not okay with. I mean, it's the same thing when you talk about this 60 million loss. If I'm projected to lose 80 and I lose 60, finance guys will tell you that is a win. I mean, any startup, there's going to be losses, especially when you have investors and whatnot. So I mean, I'm just more curious to see about what the expectations are. And obviously I don't think know that's information we're never going to be privy, privy, privy to, but I mean we'll find out in a couple of years if this is still going or they're, or if it's not, it doesn't get much simpler than that. Eventually there's a red line where they hit either one of these leagues that they're just like, yeah, we're good type thing. But in the end, who's the real victims? It's always going to be the players and the coaches and whatnot. Like hell, even the referees, 11 of these U S F L referees are in the N F L now. I think I've mentioned it on the show last year. U S F L players collectively made almost 9 million being on rosters. 800 jobs are connected to this league, and we're not even getting into the background characters of Fox interns who have to do this in order to succeed here and then go to the next thing wherever Fox puts at them. So because of all that factors, in my opinion, I think the league is here for a long time because of all the underlying benefits that Fox can get out of this from their crews to their technicians, to all that stuff where they're doing all this exterior and extracurricular activities and essentially doing tryouts of their own for their people before they go on Fox on Sundays or whatever, NFL on Fox. So I don't think that gets talked about a lot. Well, even, yeah, you had Mike Robinson here and I've seen him feature a lot more this season last year. He did. It didn't seem like he was really all in invested, I felt like this year, and he's been on with Joel sometimes and stuff. I thought it's been a good look. A couple last questions, comments here. Mike wants to know our case Cook is and the other two year players officially free agents cases would be on a different deal because he was released and then signed back on. I think all the players are on two year now regardless. Do you know any different? I knew we had a lot more and Mike Mitchell's going to have to clear a lot of this up and I'm sure he will because we had these two waves of contracts last year where half of them were on two year deals and then half of them were on the 1231 out. But if you joined the nfl, you were, were free to do what you pleased and whatnot. I, I mean don't know what case's deal is literally Because he would be different because he was in that initial wave but then him going to the Rams that he would avoided or ended his whatever and then I believe he has resigned I believe case says. Well and it's also like case talked about this as well. I think Case is staying in the USS F L because one, it's just the continuity for him as well and he's proven that he can get an N F L opportunity from the U S F L and I think this year he proved his stock a little bit more as well, especially his grittiness and toughness. His ability as a rusher was really showcased. I know he had the 70 yard rush last year against the Panthers, but I mean this year he was consist, I think he totaled over 300 rushing yards as well and a lot of these weren't option plays. It was him kind of doing some improv improv plays. He had 2 78 rushing yards which was good for 11th in the league. I mean a lot of that was just his natural ability to figure things out. So he showed off the athletic ability, he showed off toughness, he showed off that his ankle slash leg is still good to go. I mean why not? He's got a good thing going, you know what I mean? He's definitely a face of this league. He, he's proven he can get to the NFL from this league if I like Case is one of those guys that I don't think the timeframe of the league benefits him or discredits him in any way. It's like if a team is going after Case Cookes, they're going after Case Cookes because they know who he is and his film is already proven who he is. So him playing in February versus him playing in April doesn't matter much. It, I hope he gets more looks because obviously coming off last year and the injury and then he had a wedding and stuff, he got married. I hope that, do you, last question for me because I know you have a hard out yet. Do you think he's played well enough this year to even with them losing here and not making the playoffs, that case has played well enough? Yeah, no, I, I'm, I'm 100% I think he played even better this year. I think he played even better this year just considering some of the things he had to go through. I mean Cory Coleman makes your life a little bit easier but that running, that rushing attack last year was a little bit more solid than they had better offensive line last year. Two guys I've always talked about is Gunnar Vogel and Alex Aing Bloo is on an NFL active roster right now. He didn't play last year but he was signed to an N F NFL active roster for the commanders. So it's like you lose guys like that who are fringe F NFL guys, what do you expect? And then you saw what happened when they picked up Himmelman who was a forensic NFL guy and you saw the vast improvement that he put out his product and whatnot. Not just Himmelman but cus as well. So I mean case is definitely he's going to be hitting the workout wire. Some of these teams have already begun cutting their ufas. I mean there's definitely a short list of guys, you've seen some guys get cut in the NFL right now and the timeline kind of adds up like U S F L season is ending. Maybe there's a guy like John Che Kirkland from the roughnecks who was hurt, he's getting healthy, but teams are like, okay, we're going to make this push for Corey Coleman. And that was something I know Rex and Herra became the 30th X F L player to get signed, but Mike talked about what there was 24 roster spots available. Injuries haven't happened yet, one, but some of those 24 roster spots, there's plenty of free agents right now, younger player free agents that they could have assign just to fill the roster spot with the U S F L winding down. In my mind that means like okay, there's at least 10 to 20 guys already, sorry about the screen. Okay, That NFL teams are already like, okay, what day is today? June 20th when they're eligible on June 27th. That's a guy we're signing. We'll we'll get you out of here today. Pat's got it out, we appreciate it. Everyone's stopping by. Like I said, we did C F L preview or recap yesterday with Hussie over there with Evan Willmar. Thought that was a lot of fun. And then obviously today winding this down Pat will be on the normal Friday show this week. I have Rick Ella coming by talking in kind of rookie draft for the X F L. Kind of recap that how the teams kind of bolster it up. I know we did our initial chats with John Vogel and Coach Craig Sport and that over there and then I think Derek Taylor, C F l, voice of the Blue Bombers who's going to be coming on as well to talk about that. So should be good winding down here. Anything else from you Pat? We'll get out of here. Not really pretty the usual, just pushing my own stuff tomorrow. I have one interview confirmed with a college coach local to St. Louis and then I'm still waiting to hear back for a player as well. And then once again, it's been a little bit of a grind. I think we're all hitting some fatigue right now as far as with football. My workload has increased for my full-time gig, so it's definitely becoming a little bit more of football fatigue. But in the end to the casual viewer who doesn't have to report about every game and all that stuff, I definitely think this is the golden age for football. And the biggest thing is I'm really excited to see if my theory checks out with a lot of these N F NFL teams like spying, like U S F L guys because like I said, if you have 20 every roster spot is so crucial for an N F L team, especially in camp with injuries and keeping guys fresh and whatnot. In my opinion, I think we're going to see 10 to 15 and possibly 20 guys get some quick looks once the u s ffl season is over we saw with the X F L with the workouts. But I mean it makes sense, right? I'm not saying anything too crazy about that. Right. Well I know know one person in particular who'll be very excited about the U S F L signings here. Your boy will be very excited to get these signings going. Yeah, and I mean I definitely think like NFL teams are probably calling Fox right now. Hey, so your season's over John Smith played pretty well. I think he'd look good. And New York Jet Green, what are we doing here, Che? Well it'll be exciting. We'll be tracking all that. I'm sure Pat was well. Appreciated everyone, like I said, check back Friday should be a good show and I hope you guys have a good rest of the week. Take care. Thanks guys.

CFL 2023 Week 2 Results: Winners and Losers of CFL Week 2, What Did We Learn?

Well happy Monday everyone. Welcome to the Markcast here your CFL Week two recap. Happy Juneteenth if you have the day off. I know my wife Dorothy is off some of the schools like we're still in session. Others are, but we are here today, no days off. We'll be doing our U S F L week 10 recap tomorrow with Pat Rafino. Very excited to talk USFL playoffs there with 2, 2, 4 and six teams making the USFL playoffs from the same division even. But today we're talking CFL I actually I have a lot to say today so this will be good cause I actually did my homework this weekend. We have Jason Hussie here and Evan Willmore. Jason, how are you doing? Doing great Reid. How are you? We're good. Evan. Evan, my west coast, you know compatriot here getting up a few minutes. Go to do this with me. How are you doing? Yeah, not bad. Definitely a bit of an early start but got another good slate of games to talk about so I'm looking forward to it. I'm very excited here. J we Jay Thompson, are you confident? Hey, what's up? So I decided after however many weeks in doing this with Andy Pat and everything, I decided I need to start taking notes for the weekend. So I actually did, I have notes for all the games so actually I was opposed to just flying off the seat here. We have all that lots to talk about today. Kind of overall thoughts and then we'll go kind of game by game here. Jason, what did you make of this? I enjoy seeing the blank here with the zero score for the Elks, what did you make just overall the weekend? I think that in general it was better in terms of the quality of play from week one, which is to be expected. But I think that in general the quarterbacks played well in exception of a couple of cases. We'll get to Eva. What'd you make of everything? Yeah, I would agree. I'd say overall play quality increased but unfortunately the teams who still had struggles in week one that seemed to roll over into week two with Ottawa, Edmonton and Hamilton in particular. Saskatchewan, they played a good game against Winnipeg but didn't end up scoring enough to make it count in the end because Winnipeg put up 45. So we'll get into more of that later. But yeah, overall I thought it was a bit bit of a better slate than last week. Evan froze a second. Yeah, I know I have a lot to talk about Saskatchewan too because I saw a lot of tweets of, there's a lot to look forward to here. We just got our ass absolutely handed to us by Winnipeg, but there's like a lot. I got saw ballsy talking about it and Hodge and everyone else like Saskatchewan. So we'll talk about that. Hang your heads high there. Pretty poor game the Thursday night one the Ottawa, a lot to say about without Marshall Ferguson friend of me of the show Poo-pooing on X F L week one and two and I said, Hey Marshall, how's it feel here? We have some of these things going on, but overall I thought it was fun when I posted, hey, our preview yesterday, hey, we're going to be talking about this morning. The couple notes that came up to me was one the bad referee I had or Bad officiated. I had a lot of comments about that. Jason, have you noticed continuing bad play, whatever you want to call it here, going into week two, Not especially from the referees so far this season, not more than normal. I think that the natural thing about the C F L game is that there's going to be a lot of flags. There's more flags I believe on average than an N F L game. So I mean I'm just kind of used to it with the amount of penalties that are called, but maybe there's some specific cases that people would point to, but none that really pop into my mind. And then it was like we had some roughing, the passers and things. I just was curious to, if it's one person we just have three, four people commenting on that. I thought it was least something that stood out to you as more egregious than others having the you alive. Well me, sorry. No, if we're going to talk about the refereeing, I think it's in all these leagues I've heard complaints, especially in the X F L in the U S F L because those are newer products. Obviously the CFL's been around for longer, but I haven't noticed anything that stood out too much. I mean every now and then you're going to get a bad call. It's just maybe not right. And there were definitely some things in that BC Edmonton game that you know could maybe, I don't know if the referees maybe in that one had the best grasp, but they still figured things out in the end and I thought it worked out all right. So I don't know. I wouldn't sit here and complain about the refs. I mean given just football in general nowadays there's a lot of blame on the refs in any league like I was saying earlier, but I don't know, this to me just seems like classic, oh your team lost, so let's try and find a excuse to make it seem a bit better. Yeah. The other thing too, I continuing to see people harp on the live stats being updated. Now obviously we're here today kind of going through the box score. Am I missing, is this, is it real time? It's not going on there. I've seen Hodge complain about that as well. Jason, are you tracking the stats? Is it this thing? Am I missing where the problem is? Yeah, so if you were to check during the game, there would be no stats available on anything. T S N, Google, SportsNet, whatever, you usually find C ffl stats. So they don't have any live tracking on and a lot of the times a while after the game they don't have it posted. So that's a major problem I think for any professional sports league to have. Okay, yeah, obviously here on this, I don't do a lot of live either. I guess if I was out watching Evan, has that affected your life at all? I mean I know I've just seen a lot of people talk about this with the sports betting and fantasy and all that. I haven't had too many problems with it for me. I know I've been able to check during most of the games and it's been all right. There was a game last week, I think it was Winnipeg Hamilton where it just kind of froze after halftime and it didn't really get going again until the fourth quarter or the end of the third or something like that. I don't quite remember, but I don't know, to me it hasn't been terrible. I think the greater conversation we should be having here is why the C F L doesn't have an app yet with all this stuff in it. I keep having to go on my web browser safari or whatever, typing in cfl.ca and then clicking on the game tracker. It's just a bit more work than I'd like to have to put in with the X F L. I could just go over to ESPN and that would all be there with the U S F L, you could just use the Fox Sports app. So it's a bit surprising that the CFL is kind of lacking in that category. Well, just with a thought now we're two years into this genius sports thing and all of that. I see it a lot of times people make fun of that. Oh this is the thing, genius sports. But yeah, certainly something here if the X F L and I think even their app I'm not living in by any of these leagues apps, but even the X L one sending out the notifications and hey the game's coming up and this is the touchdowns and you can kind of track it along. I just think it's helpful. It makes it feel more, I know last year the U S F L, they weren't piped into whatever app I used to live track my stuff and it felt like these games were existing in the vacuum. We're a little more this year you you're getting to know notifications. Hey, hey, there's a touchdown. Okay, if third quarter's starting, I think that's helpful. You're like, oh yeah, that game is going on. I should go watch it. Versus oh this game happened, I kind of missed that. So Jason, any other thoughts on that? We'll get to the games, Not really anything more to add. I think that it would provide another engagement tool. I do agree about the app. I just think that's a basic thing to have in today's world and I think the C F L in general really struggles in terms of the digital space. They're really trying to improve that with this whole genius sports thing. And I think that the inexcusable thing about the stats thing is that they had a system before that worked fine for doing live stats during the game. Why did they launch the take that down before launching the other one? Why didn't they just keep the old one up until the other, the new one was ready to go. So that's what I can't wrap my head around with that. Well I think it's interesting and obviously I think change is coming in general for the C F L. I remember last year we had Danny Austen and a lot of the guys that normally would come to Great Cup didn't come. And now this year we saw all the layoffs last week with the TSN 1260 and I got with Dustin over there and Jason Gregor and kind of longtime friends to the show and trying to figure out, I'm just curious what all this becomes now where if you're the C F L and we're losing some of these traditional outlets that are covering us anyway and whether they are choosing to or not. I mean in the case of if you're getting laid off or whatnot, I'd be curious to see how the CFL kind of rides this out where it's already kind of this niche fringe thing and trying to attract what I'm saying. Evan, are you trying to get some of these people now? I'll be curious who if you do decide to come to Gray Cup this year with us who is still there this year that is doing the daily stuff? Yeah, I mean it's interesting. There's definitely a lot of people in this space. I think it's similar to the league where maybe there's been a lot of things that have been the same for a long time and now you're starting to see some changes, especially after the pandemic. I mean the C F L missed an entire season in 2020 and I do think that plays a role into some of the sort of, I wouldn't say lack of interest because they're are longtime fans that have stayed loyal. But I think it's just harder now to attract new people into this market. Especially people like me who are younger, really difficult. Cause like you said, it's a niche product and now we have so many leagues like this just in the United States between the X F L and the U S F L. I think people would rather spend their time with that because it's more local as opposed to doing something with the C F L, which is technically an international product. But yeah, no I definitely agree. There has been me a lot of turnover and it will be interesting to see yeah, how is this going to go in the future? Not just from all the stuff we talk about on the football side and the operations side, but the media side as well. Jason, anything else to add? Not really, but yeah, I do agree that it's incredibly hard to attract the younger fans in this day and age. And I think that the biggest problem is, like I was saying about the digitalized content, it's really important for this today's day and age for companies and businesses to really reach the consumer on the platforms that they're currently on. I don't think the CFL does a very good job of doing that. So that's definitely something that they need to look to improve in the future if they want to survive. Alright, let's go here. I guess we'll start at the end and work back. This was the game I saw the least amount of, but I certainly caught up on the highlights and kind of everything else. Suede Kelly making his big debut here, Chad for the Argonauts thrashing, the Hamilton TCAs we call, I called on the show, was it our pre-game show? I said, well Levi Mitchell's going to be duty this year, has played poorly in two games. We'll start with Jason here. What did you make of the Thai cats? 14 to 32 loss? Well I was in attendance at BM O field for this one. Great seats, but unfortunately for me as a Tigercat fan it was just more of the same from week one. I think that maybe they played in general better than they did in week one, which is funny because they lost by more points. But I think that a couple key things are the key red zone interceptions in the first half. Those took really points off the board for the Tigercat. Even if you get three points there, I think it would've been completely different game from that aspect. Just really bad interceptions from Be Levi Mitchell. I think that the play calling for Hamilton was very predictable, run on first down into the line for two yards and then you're stuck in second and long. So I think there was a lot of those situations. So I'm not impressed with the Tigercat offense through two weeks. My panic level is probably about two a five with this team right now because of what we've seen the first couple of weeks. But we have yet to see this team play at home. They've arguably played the two best teams in the league the first two weeks, so I'm kind of holding back a little bit of my concern for that reason. But at the end of the day, pretty disappointing start the season for the Tiger Kat's perspective. Evan have an initial thoughts on this one. So from the Hamilton side, I definitely agree the play call needed to improve Levi Mitchell, I said last week it's going to take a couple games for me to really decide whether or not he's just progressing in his career at this age or whether it's a situational thing and maybe he's going to get better after falling out in Calgary the past couple years. But to be honest, after last night, I'm already starting to draw the conclusion that maybe this is just age and it's just not a great fit. Matt Schultz came in the middle of the fourth start of the fourth kind of, and honestly played better I think than Bo Levi did pretty much the entire game. And Matt, someone I know personally, I interviewed him about a year ago, good friend James Butler played well. He was of course the big free agent edition for them over from BC and then Duke Williams who came over from Saskatchewan and had a nice game. But outside of that, I don't know, there wasn't a lot to write home about for Hamilton, unfortunately. That one never really felt, I mean by halftime even it was 22 to six and I was kind of sitting there, do I even keep watching? And to be honest, the rest of the game just kind of went about as I expected. But for Toronto it was a great way to start their next season after the Great Cup, especially with Chad Kelly quarterback. He had three rushing touchdowns in that game and had, he was pretty efficient passing too. I mean, what is that? 213 yards on 14 completions. So he was impressive. And then, yeah, I I would say the best part and then also what's his name, Qantas stickers. Give him a special shout out. He played defensive back in fan controlled football, didn't play college football at all. So that was definitely a good story to follow. And he had an interception in that GA game. Excuse me. And then, yeah, I think overall that went about as I expected. I mean Toronto to me was going to win that game, especially given that it was at home. They're raising the Great Cup, banner, everything like that. It felt like a Toronto win. I just again maybe expected Hamilton to put up of a fight. It was similar to last week. Obviously Winnipeg is a tough opponent. Hamilton's definitely had two really tough opponents. You're playing both the teams that were in the Great Cup in the first two weeks of the season and you're playing. Yeah, you're doing that. So that's pretty difficult. And ultimately, yeah, I mean they didn't put up the effort that I thought they could, but hopefully that will improve in the games to come. Although right now I'm not so optimistic I guess you'd say. Yeah, Evan with EZ, wasn't it? I was reading that Dunnigan was trying to talk about fan drill football or they were trying to talk about it on the broadcast. Is that accurate? He said all he said was a league where the fans called the plays, but he did not actually say fan controlled football. I did pick up on that. I was kind of waiting for him to say like F C F or fan controlled football or something along those lines. But it didn't happen. So Somewhere Patrick Ds is shaking his fist. It is funny though, the way they'll go about talking to these players outside of when they ever, they ever talk about Macon Bothel Thompson a lot in the US Ls when he played up north or he played in a different land or he played in a different, you're like, just say that C F L I. Jason I was reading on here, how was Hamilton favored coming into this match? I think it was around a two and a half point spread in favor of Hamilton, believe it or not, which was kind of shocking. I did actually on my channel took, I did take Hamilton to win the game by one point, but I just had a really tough time picking this game this week. I really should have seen the effort for the Argos coming out of the gate. I really should have seen that coming. So I'm kind of disappointed that I didn't take the Argos in this one. But yeah, the Tigercat were surprising favorites going into this game, This AJ Owlette thing where he went viral with, it wasn't like, I don't even know what wrestling promotion it was. It wasn't AAW or whatever. He was spearing the guy this week and then that was very classic. I thought. Putting the Hamilton Tie Cats thing on. Have you guys, Evan, did you track any of that or is that outside of your purview? I mean I saw a bit of it around on Twitter. I mean I know that he's been doing wrestling stuff. I mean know, I don't know how long he's been with the Argos now, but he's been there for a decent amount of time. He had a good game. I don't know if I mentioned that earlier, but he was someone who definitely carried the rock and whenever they couldn't passing it, they were definitely running it with him effectively. Him and Andrew Harris had a couple of carries and he scored as well. So yeah, that was good to follow, but I didn't really, I don't know, I wasn't, I don't know. Yeah, exactly what wrestling like league he was competing for, how any of that works. That is above my pay grade I will say. Jason, did you track any of that? Because I thought that was a pretty good, I want to pull it up. I thought that was a pretty good viral thing for the US or for the CFL to have. I didn't actually see the video of it, but I did hear that he was, I believe it some wrestling thing in Toronto. I'm getting, but AJ will Let cut Greek town cancel us here. Damn. AJ will let do, holy crap. I mean this is classic wrestling. He's giving Jock the ring, Giving him the gray cup ring here. No, This is not true. This is going to be a championship right hand by Jock Sampson. Don't violate a piece of championship memorabilia like this. Not in this ring. Oh, Gibson is out. I mean that's just classic on there. Does that do anything for you Jason, as a I'm a wrestling fan. I get excited watching that. Yeah, I love that kind of thing. Anything to get the logo of the team or the association with the league out there to more eyes, especially for a niche product like the C F L. I think that's important. I'm not a huge wrestling hand myself. I never really grew up watching the wwe, but a lot of my friends did and my brother, my brother was a big fan of it growing up. In fact, we were actually talking about it on the Go train back last night. Yeah, see this is here. I won't play the audio again. But obviously they took it and they superimposed the TCATs logo here on the Poor Gentleman and so I thought that was funny. I mean that probably makes you cry a little bit there Jason, but I thought that was funny. They did that. The other thing with this Chad living up to, I think the expectations, Evan I know obviously coming off of last year and he helped win the Gray Cup. McLeod was in there and then him going there was just, it never really felt like they had any doubt with Chad. I know Brian Scott's up there and everyone else but Evan, are you just surprised how good Chad looked coming out the gate here? No, I mean there was a lot of hype about him in the off season and I think he's definitely, I think he worked a lot behind the scenes last year even when MBT was starting. So I don't think this is a fluke or anything like that. I will say, I think it was John Hodge put up yesterday, he says, do you think Zach or do you think Chad Kelly kind of fits in behind, I think it was Zach Claros and someone else's like the third best quarterback in the C F L. And I said, well just given the instability at the position across the league right now. Cause there's been a lot of turnover, a lot of guys are getting older. There's a lot that needs to be proven. Yeah, there it is. I said yeah, because again, just because of the uncertainty, I think that he definitely has the highest ceiling. It is a bit of a knee jerk reaction to call him the third best quarterback in the C F L after one good game where he had three rushing touchdowns. But I'm going to stand by my word and see how that goes through the rest of the season. I really do hope that this is Chad's year and that maybe Toronto gets back to the Great Cup with him having started the full season as opposed to just playing the one half of game or whatever it was. I mean I don't really think this is that. I mean I know John is known to be a little hyperbolic sometimes, but I don't think that this is that crazy. I think besides Claros, I wouldn't put Vernon in that category right now. I certainly wouldn't put Ko dog. I wouldn't put R Buckle, I wouldn't put Cody really. Trevor Harris, I mean Jason, do you think that's that outlandish that Chad's a top three quarterback right now and I think that's a good thing. I mean getting a new guy in there to do that, what do you make of this? Well, I can't really disagree. Based on what we saw in week one, obviously Tigercat didn't have any tape on him. That always plays a little bit of a factor, but I think from a physical standpoint, the athleticism that he has brings to the table, I think that was very impressive. And honestly, like you said, given the situations around the league, nobody's really shown to have other than Calis and maybe Trevor Harris to have that kind of consistent of a floor. I think that I'm very interested to see how Kelly does in the next couple of weeks, but I don't think it's landish to have em in the top three quarterbacks just based on that week one performance. We had a thing here, oh, Evan was in our group chat with say, what's the over under on the TCATs win this year? Evans saying seven. Evan, do you stand by that? What do you making the Thai cats here going out the rest of the way? I definitely, I said this last week, I think they're in a bit of a rebuilding process. I wouldn't be surprised after this year if there was some turnover on the coaching staff. I think they'll keep some of the core pieces around still. I know they have a couple guys that were left from the Gray Cup runs, but I don't know, I'm looking at this thing and I'm not seeing a team that is really going to be competing and maybe I'm proven wrong. I would hope so, but right now there's just a lot that seems very not, I don't want to say scripted, but it's like there's just certain teams where you look at them and you're like, if this person is here by the end of the season or if they're not doing this by this certain point, the outlook doesn't look great. And Hamilton I will say had a very impressive run. I mean they made two great cups technically back to back between 19 and 21 since there was no 2020 season. Unfortunately they weren't able to capitalize on that. And that was definitely a bit sad, especially because I used to cover the Tigercat for a bit and it was fun to see 'em go all the way. But I think right now, especially again on the coaching side, I mean we talk about the players a lot here, but I think there's a lot within that organization at the higher levels that could be potentially looked at in a different way at some point. And that's not trying to discredit anybody. I think Coach Steinhower has done a good job there, right over the course of a couple years. But it just kind of gets to a point where you're being figured out I think is what I'm ultimately trying to get at here. My sort of lead is like they've, they've had their run, but now it's like you've switched quarterbacks. There's a lot of things that are different for 'em already in this short period of time. And again, I just don't see this as a great year for them unfortunately. Jason, last thing on this and I haven't pulled up here with obviously missing leaving the game, Shilts coming in this lower body, is this cause for concern or are we just getting him out of there for the week? Mean is with Bo being an injury prone and everything, Well I think it's worth noting that they have a buy after this next week. So I think that maybe they start Shilts this week and then because they have a short week, they play on Friday at home against Montreal, so maybe they sit bow for that one, let 'em to sit on the bench for a little bit for a couple weeks and then give it back for week five. I think they play Ottawa that week. So I think that's an option for them. And potentially what we could see, I think shilts mean from what we saw, I mean given that it was garbage time, you've got to take it with a grain of salt. But I think that he played better than Beau in this one. So I think that having that familiarity with the offense, you have a little bit of comfortability with Schultz, but at the end of the day, I think if Beau is missing the whole season or is easy out for a significant amount of time, he obviously has a history with injury. So I think that's concerning going forward for the Tigercat. But I will say in terms of projecting over under win or loss record for this team going forward, I still think they're going to win in eight games this year. Look back last year, oh and four to start the season. Traditionally this team is a slow starter other than the 2019 season where they went 15 and three. So I'm not too concerned. I think they'll probably figure it out, get a three or four game winning streak somewhere in there. But at the end of the day it's disappointing to have another slow start for this team. And I do agree that there could be some changes on the coaching staff. I think that Orlando Steinhower has kind of lived off the success of June Jones, who was the previous head coach, an offensive guru who turned Brandon Banks into a receiver into a great receiver that is other players and transitioned them into this great powerful offense and you've seen a decline every year in terms of their offensive production. So I think that's super concerning considering that just that Steinhower is a defensive head coach that doesn't really bring too much to the table in terms of offense. I think that Tommy Conde's been there for a long time, so I mean maybe it's getting a little bit stale. So I do agree with Evan that there could be some changes coming by the end of the year if this continues. Yeah, Bo Bo's making 500,000. I mean, so that was big swing on that. Big swing on that. Yeah, coming up here. All right, so now this was my crowning life. I have my BC Lions hat on here, not quite as electrifying as the Nathan work, like five touchdown, whatever the heck it was game last year. That was the greatest that we had one Republican kind of all that stuff. I did laugh first off the game Evan. And then I have a couple jokes here to make. Yeah, I mean this game, well unfortunately, I mean I expected beast suit to win and they did. But again, I'm probably going to focus more on the team who struggled here and that was Edmonton being shut out for, I think it was the first time in 50 years or something, close to 50 years since the seventies. Anyway. And ultimately this is just not acceptable by any means. And I know again, well I'll get the BC in a minute, but I think we need to talk about the urgency here for Edmonton. And I said last week I said this is a team, the leash really isn't that long for a lot of players and coaches here cause of their struggles in previous seasons and so far it almost just looks like they're regressing even more. I mean scoring zero points in a game, even if BC turns out to be a 10 plus win team this year, which I think they will be, that's just quite frankly unacceptable. I mean 91 passing yards, one turnover for Cornelius. I mean you have to ask that question of when does someone like a Trey Ford come in or Kai Loxley who did complete a pass in this game, when does one of those guys get a starting opportunity? I know Chris Jones has talked that nausea about how Cornelius has developed and he's been with Cornelius now for three seasons. But it gets to a point where it's like, man, I mean come on, if it's not going to work, it's not going to work. And again, I don't want to sit here in week two saying that Taylor Cornelius can't do anything for this team because there's still 16 games left. But so far, I mean he's had one long touchdown pass to Gina Lewis and outside of that, I mean there was not really much to work with there. He's a good scrambler he can run when he is needed, but that's not going to win you the game ultimately. I get that that's a great part of his game, his build, his mobility, but I don't know, I'm really not sold on that at all. And then for BC I thought they had a decent game, could they have done a bit better? Maybe there was a lot of weird sort of turnovers that happened early on where it was the ball just kind of seemed to be flying around between the teams and there was a bunch of flags that overturned those turnovers. I think one of them ended up counting. But yeah, Vernon had 300 passing yards, which I thought was pretty good. Did have a turnover, but I won't fault him for that. I mean he completed 25 out of 35 of his passes, so I'd call it a good day for him. Taquan Misel, the running back, I think that's how you pronounce his name. Yeah, definitely was impressive. At least that's what I gathered from this game. Especially because he had such big holes to fill with James Butler leaving big shoes I should say, not big holes. Anyway, yeah, he was impressive at least to me. And then just going down the list, Justin McGinniss had a really good game, was good to see that after he had the big catch in week one against Calgary. Dominic Rimes again, another impressive, I mean just look at this whole receiving court down here and how sort of balanced everyone's got four or five catches. It speaks to Vernon's ability to really spread the ball around. And I talked about that last week. I said they have so many good players in that receiving core, but at the end of the season there might not be that much difference between their top receiver and their fourth leading receiver just saying. But then yeah, I'd say for BC again, could they have done a bit better? I mean obviously they shut out the opponent, which is great. I mean maybe you could have scored a bit more than 22 in that situation, but ultimately a good game for them. They're on the right track. Edmonton unfortunately not so much. Yeah, I, I'm going to hit a baker yesterday because of Father's Day, but I want to get Justin McGinnis on the podcast here. I think that's our new kind of fresh with missing, lucky and missing Keon and everything else. I want to get kind of in his head here because he is really come on strong. Jason, what did you make of this? Just kind of slaughter of the Elks? So I did an initial reactions video on my channel that got a lot of traction saying how the Elks are off to a disastrous start and it really has been a disastrous start for the Elks. I think that a lot of things are just inexcusable with how much talent I think is around this roster or how much talent they brought in the past couple of off seasons. I think that you look at how Taylor Cornelius has played, I think that it's really inexcusable because you have guys around him that have been productive receivers at other spots in the C F L. So what's the common denominator? It's the quarterback position. So I think that sometimes, or maybe they're just better off going forward, going with Trey, forward running some kind of run heavy option offense, something like that just to get the ball moving because Trey forward, we saw him play a bit last year. I saw him play start his first game in Hamilton and I saw him really make a difference with his legs. I think that really puts a lot of pressure on defense and could add another element that we're currently not seeing because yet we say that Taylor Cornelius does have some of that scrambling ability, but if you're going to just say that's his biggest strength, that's straight forward's biggest strength and that's even a bigger strength for him. So I think that going forward that might be the play that they do or go with Kai Loxley, but something has to change with its Edmonton Elks offense because zero points in a C F L game, I forget who said it, I think it was Carrie Joseph who said this about 15 years ago. He is like, but getting shut out in a C F L game, that's an unacceptable. So I think that at the end of the day, just so disappointing for Edmonton, but I do believe Chris Jones deserves a lot of heat as well going into a season with a field goal kicker that can attempt a 50 51 yard field goal that is unacceptable. They had a couple of chances to take a lead early in this game, could have changed the entire tide of the game. Even with the field goal, they passed up 50 yard, 49 yard field goal attempts for a punt, the punt goes out of bounds and then they basically get no net yards on the punt. So I think that at the end of the day, just a really disappointing performance all around from the Elks. Anytime you score zero points, it's just unacceptable. So that's what I think about them. They just really need to do some soul searching and figure this out really quickly because jobs are going to start being on the line here. And then for BC I think that it's just a matter of scoring more touchdowns. I think that defensively they've looked excellent obviously against Edmonton this game, take that with a grain of salt, but you look back last week only allowing 15 points to Calgary. So 15 points allowed in two games, hard to do better than that. And then I think just like I said, finishing scoring touchdowns is really the only complaint I have offensively. I thought they moved the ball very well. Yeah, it was. So a couple things here I have this tweet saved, I thought this was good. Goodbye Brock. Sorry, Elks fans. Cornelius ain't that guy. 26 games is enough of a sample size to figure it out. I agree with that. And I know that we have Darryl, I think that you used to write for C F L News hub and he's still, he's an Elks fan and he's always been going on about, oh it's Cornelius and all that stuff. What's weird to me, there was the quote at the end of the game and I was trying to find the tweet I had where it was Chris Jones saying, Hey, we have our quarterback we're set that I said, I don't know if you have your coach at this point, if you're that invested in. And I was filming the children's dance recital and I had my phone on my, so I'm watching the game in silent the whole second half. I watched the first half watching the game mute the second half. I'm like, I'm seeing Kai Loxley warm up on the sidelines. I'm like, why the hell are they? I'm like, oh they're clearly they're going to put in Kai here at the end of the game and get Cornelius out here. He finished the game. I mean Cornelius finished the game. I thought that was weird. And then the BC thing, when Vernon finally had the touchdown pass, I saw kind of a look of relief because I do think that Vernon was afraid that they were going to go TD list the entire game. Like you guys said, kind of completing drives, but to not score any points like you guys said in the C F L game. I was trying to explain to Dorothy how challenging that is with the rouge and kicking it. That's very, very hard to get. I think Dave Naer said it was 1970 was the last time that the Elks had been shut out. Evan, in terms of Vernon, they called it Good Vernon kind of at the CFL on the TSM panel at halftime. Was it Good Vernon or Bad Vernon this week? No, it was definitely good. I mean again, was it perfect? No. Could he be better? Yes, but ultimately the only thing that I would really fault him for is not finding the end zone that much, but that doesn't all go on his shoulders. I mean as long as they can keep scoring and they can just keep at this steady pace, I mean they're going to be just fine. They're going to be right behind Winnipeg there in the west and they're not going to have a problem. So The other question I had was Elk Ed ney being out too. It looks like he's going to be out. That's going to be a big loss for Edmonton as well. Jason, any other thoughts? Just, I don't know what the Elks do at this point. I think last year it was the struggles at home and that was kind of the joke and now it feels like it's struggles no matter where they are. I what would you like to see them do? Honestly, I think I would go with the quarterback switch. I think like you said, 26 games is enough of a sample size and I think the big thing is we haven't seen any progression from Taylor Cornelius at all. So I think if he showed some signs of getting better, stringing some good stretches of play together, I think you could justify having the position that Chris Jones has and saying that he's our starter going forward. But at the end of the day, we haven't seen any kind of consistency from him or any kind of progression from him. So I think I would look to the quarterback position because like I said, you're wasting the talent of all these great receivers around you. I think Dylan Mitchell has negative five yards in two games. That's pretty rough because he was expected to be a breakout star in the CFL this season. I had him on my top 50 players list. So at the end of the day, I think when it's hurting the players around you and you really have seen the players around him like succeed in other spots in the C F L, it really shows you that the problem is the quarterback position and also the offensive line hasn't looked ideal either. They're really not confident in those short yarded situations. Probably the worst team in the league as we saw in week one against Saskatchewan. So that's a concern for them going forward. They kind of have a little bit of a flawed team building philosophy in my opinion, whereas they built from the outside the perimeter and not really built in the trenches. So I think the Elks have a lot of soul searching to do and they just kind of have to go back to the drawing board. I think. Yeah, like you said, I thought Elle was good, but running back, kind of filling in for bc, I know that there was obviously the concern there with Butler going. The other thing I thought, it seemed to me at least that Vernon was moving a lot more in the second half. It seemed like in the first half he was trying to be a little bit too much of a pocket passer and I don't know if they just got more pressure on him and this like that, but just it felt like where he's scrambling more, he's a little bit better in that way. Kind of trying to make up things and be a little bit of an orchestrator on the field and that way be, I just have written here corn dog equals duty. I'm just looking through my notes and then it felt like they were finally trying to get rhymes going that they had a couple drop passes and he was missing that. Evan, any other thoughts on the receiving core? I know you were talking about them kind of getting balanced workload there and a couple of the big stars being outright now for bc. Yeah, I mean the receiving core, I talked about 'em enough last week. I mean, they're doing a great job. Someone's always going to step up and even if they don't have the one guy that necessarily explodes onto the scene again, it's always going to be pretty even. You saw how many guys on that list that had three, four, or five catches. It's very, very diverse but very balanced at the same time. And I will say too, just talking about Vernon Adams again for a second, I think BC, and someone said this in our chat too, at some point BC was extremely smart for getting Vernon Adams last year before Nathan Rourke left. Well, I mean obviously Nathan Rourke was injured and that prompted them to bring VA in. But now you look at again, the sort of state of the quarterback in the C F L. Yeah, it looks like a steal to get a guy like VA who again maybe isn't exactly in his prime. You could argue that va, I guess I think might've been like 2019 in Montreal was at his peak. But even then, he's still one of the top guys. I mean, you could put him, to be honest, I would feel comfortable at this point maybe putting him right behind Zach Ros. We were talking about just top three guys earlier. You could maybe put Trevor Harrison there right now, especially after his game against Winnipeg, which we'll get into in a minute. And then Chad Kelly obviously like we talked about, but I don't know at this point. I think if Vernon can take this team to the playoffs and they can have another run and at least challenge Winnipeg again, I'd say that's a win. I mean, at that point, I know Rourke was extremely flashy and I was very fortunate to see him play against the Elks last year where he had, I mean, just in a phenomenal game, best game I've ever seen in person by any quarterback, I think at any level, even though they had Rourke Vernon, I think can carry the same type of weight. Maybe that's a bold statement. Again, I understand how good Nathan Rourke was. I know his season was cut short. I get it, trust me. But I really think that Vernon, there's nothing like with his receivers, I mean, who's stopping that at this point? They're, they're going to have to face a couple difficult teams. I'm sure once they get to the Torontos and the Winnipegs, like I said, maybe even Montreal it could become a bit more difficult. But right now I think Vernon is on pace for a great season and I think he could really return to that form that he was in maybe three or four years ago. Keep in mind that Lyons also have Dan Evans here where you're talking about having the quarterback and our backup is probably better than I would say, certainly Cornelius and certainly whatever at this point. Derek Taylor had tweeted out, and I think Derek said to come on the show this week, who can play quarterback for the Elks right now? And I said, yeah, I'd call up Deandre Johnson or someone in the U S F L like, Hey, you missed the playoffs, let's get you up here and kind of do that. Half joking, but I mean they could kind of figure that out. Last couple notes for me. We had the big LL Cool J concert. I thought this was a funny tweet by Jacques, I dunno if you guys follow him much Twitter said it's a real statement, c l fan demographics and LL Cool J Concert, this praise for appealing to younger crowd. I thought that was good, but looked good. I I appreciated the sweet shots of a bar hanging out with LL in whatever in the owner's suite or whatever that was. I thought that was cool. And then especially I saw the tweets that I know that Edmonton did the Christian Salisbury kind of tribute last week and I thought that was nice that BC kind of had that going at the beginning of the game as well for him. Obviously passed away too soon and with the Edmonton and we've tracked him through all the other stuff. Jason, any other thoughts? We'll kind of double time through these last couple games here. We're going long, but this has been good. Yeah, I think I agree with you what you guys said about Vernon. I think he has a chance to really rejuvenate his career here and you're starting to see the signs of it. He played really well at the end of last season, so I'm glad he's in a situation that's very conducive to the way he plays. And they may not be as explosive on offense as they were last year, but I think this defense could be even better than they were last year as we've seen the first couple of weeks. So I think that we're going to have to see how they play this Thursday against Winnipeg. That's going to be a big test for them. But I'm excited about the BC Lions going forward. So we had the game here. This was the game I saw the least of. Like I said, Winnipeg really just kind of smacking around the Saskatchewan at home. I think they said that Winnipeg hasn't lost a game in Saskatchewan since 2019 or whatever. Evan, I know you didn't see much of this game either. This was the late Saturday game. But like I said at the top of the show, there was a lot of apologizing for Saskatchewan looking good, even in losing 27 to 45. To me it never felt that incredibly close. Do you have any thoughts and we'll toss to Jason. I mean, yeah, you said Reid, I didn't get a chance to watch much of this game, if any. I went back and I looked at the highlights. Saskatchewan mean they had a great day passing the ball. I mean we can start with that. I know we already talked a ton about BC and their receiving core, but the Ruff riders had two guys, Sean Jr. And Kevin Jones went over a hundred yards. And then I heard a lot of praise about Samuel too. There's a lot of people welcome to the C F L type of thing. So that was good to see. And then on the defensive side, I know again, we haven't talked much defense yet and I fault myself for that, but Larry Dean had a great game and that's obviously a familiar name to me and many others. Roland Milliken, who I talked about on the show last week also had a pretty good game I thought with three tackles for loss and then for Winnipeg. I mean it was just, I mean they've scored I think over because they had 42 last week against Hamilton, so they haven't even had a game yet this season where they've scored below 40 points, which is staggering. I mean that's just unbelievable to me. I want to talk about a strong way to start a season. That's how you do it mean this is just the polar opposite of Edmonton. And I hate to rain on the Elks parade there if there is any parade, but I just feel like, I mean there's such a contrast going from that game to this one where you're looking at such a diverse group of players and there's so many, what's the word I'm for? There's just so many different outlets and options and whatever. I mean if you look here, I mean Zach Ros is posting a similar stat line, close to 300 yards every game, two touchdowns. He's just kind of automatic with that at this point. And then receiving wise, yeah, Dalton shown, who obviously came on the scene last year, eight catches 145 yards. I mean, your day doesn't get better than that. You tack on a touchdown too. Extremely impressive stuff from him. And then on defense, they, I mean a couple guys that I'd say stood out, Celeste Haba, who's a rookie, I want to say from Texas a and m Commerce, he had a nice game. And then Malik Clements had five tackles for loss, which was also impressive. Same with Brandon Alexander the cornerback. So again, good to see all those guys kind of really putting things together. Again, I was going into the season, I really wanted to see how Winnipeg would start, especially just coming off the great cup loss. It's like how do you tackle that momentum? Is it going to shift? You know, because there's a lot of moving pieces there, you've good for so long. But to be honest, they retained a lot of their core players. And obviously I think, I remember when Andrew Harris left to Toronto and that seemed to be a big departure, but Andrew Harris is getting older now and I always knew Brady Alora was going to carry the weight and he's done that so far. So things like that, they've just done a fantastic job sort of replacing the few players that they've lost. And I think that's why they're in this position where they can score 40 plus points per game. Jason, thoughts on this, and I have a couple follow up questions. So I actually, believe it or not, despite the 18 point deficit at the end of the game, I thought this was the most entertaining game so far this season. There was a point in this game where Saskatchewan was matching Winnipeg punched for punch. Trevor Harris looked incredible in this game, especially considering who they had out in the receiving corps. Obviously Keon, Shafer Baker's yet to join the team this season. He's out with an injury. You have Darrell Walker who's out with injury. So I think that Saskatchewan looked great considering the guys that they had in there. And I think this game really changed on the Genian grant punt return because I think that made it a 10 point game and then Winnipeg just kind of took it home from there. But Winnipeg just such a well-oiled machine in terms of their offense. I think that their defense showed a little bit of holes, I think the first couple of weeks of the season, they may not be as good as they were the previous couple of years, but I think this offense is better than they've ever been. And I think that's going to lead them to a lot of victories. If they're going to score 40 points every week, I think there's nobody that's going to stop them this year. Yeah. Was this the best, best putt return that I saw this, at least top three. I think Ben Grant was saying that as well. Top three pun return he's ever seen Jason. Yeah, it was absolutely incredible. I mean, just count the broken tackles and how far he went laterally the field making guys miss before he turned it up. So I mean, generic grant's an all-time pun returner, I think for what he's shown the past couple of years in the C F L. The other thing I had, oh, it was end of the game late game when I finally got the game on and Saskatchewan deciding not to go for it. We had seen Ottawa go for it on third down there at the kind of end zone goal line, whatever in the Thursday game. And I liked kind of that aggressiveness because I was going back and forth with Christine, the constable, and I said, if you're Ottawa at this point, what do you have to lose? I would go for it. What are we trying to save here? And I felt the same for Saskatchewan. Like Winnipeg, you, they always say that you can't match touchdowns with field goals and especially Winnipeg, they had the opportunity there to at least give it a shot. And I felt like not going for it and settling for the three and the Winnipeg comes immediately back, drives the field and gets another touchdown. It's like, well now you're down. I dunno, I just feel like you have to be aggressive there and I feel like you have to play a perfect game to beat Winnipeg and there was just too many issues there with Saskatchewan. Anything else from this one? I want to make sure we get through the Ottawa game. Jason, any other thoughts on the Winnipeg? Saskatchewan? Well, I'm glad you brought that decision up because I believe they were down by 14 points inside the 10 yard line. About seven minutes left in the fourth quarter, so plenty of time left if they get the touchdown there to come back potentially in that game. But they decide to kick the field goal and I'm just like, I'm a big proponent of always going for it if you're inside the 10 yard line on third in down in the C F L, because if you turn it over. You're giving them a long field, whereas if you kick the field goal, you're giving them the ball at the 40 yard line only gives good offenses. You can get a couple first downs. They get that field goal right back. So the field goal doesn't help you in that situation. So I really don't understand that decision. Like you mentioned Ottawa's decision on the Thursday night game. I think I really did agree with that one despite it not working out. So I mean, again, I'm big proponent of going for it. Third and goal in those situations. The other thing too, you were saying Trevor Harris played good. I said he played good despite I was being told he wasn't going to play the game. Rod Peterson came out and said he's not playing. Trevor Harris is there. I know Andrew Murray was crying about that. I had anything else here should write. People say Trevor Harris, whatever. And then the last thing, the pizza feud, what was going on with this pizza feud? The Winnipeg, Saskatchewan. Did I miss something with that? Is this a Canadian thing? I couldn't tell you. There was something with Regina Pizza being be in duty or something like that. Okay. So anyway, we end up with that. All right, last game here. And this brought a little bit of joy to my heart because early on in the X F L season, there was a couple poor games as you would expect from a startup league. And the first couple of weeks of gameplay, Marshall Ferguson felt the need to chirp off on Twitter about the poor gameplay. And I was very happy to have Marshall Ferguson on the call for quite possibly the worst C F L game of the week, certainly of the season thus far with the Calgary St. Peters beating the Ottawa Red Blacks. Evan initial thoughts on this game? This one was rough. Definitely a rough way to start the week. I remember putting this game on and I was like, oh geez man. Immediately it just kind of stood out as a sore thumb and I don't want to, I, I heard some talk on Twitter about how sometimes when Calgary and Ottawa play each other it ends up being like this, but I don't know, I was watching that game and it was al, it's just one of those games where it's like, what are we doing? What is going on? I don't want to say I can do a better job than anybody that was in these sort of positions, but I mean, you look at it and you're just, I mean there's just so many things that could have been done differently. I will say the one thing that I was pleased about was Tyree Adams getting some action in a quarterback for Ottawa, the Nick Arbuckle thing. He started the game but still turning the ball over, still not finding the end. So all those problems are still there. So I think again, the Red Blacks are, they've already started maybe, I don't want to say making that transition, but would it be surprising if Tyrie Adams played again? No, I mean he did okay. He still had a turnover as well, but a tiny bit more efficient in the past game and had more passing yards. So I'll give that one to him. Just the whole game really felt sloppy, I think is the word for it. And I'm glad that the game right after that, I think it was Winnipeg. Saskatchewan was the game after that. The Next day. Yeah, After. Yeah. So I'm glad that there was kind of that turnaround, but man, I, I'll just say it's, with all that in mind, I'm glad that Calgary was able to pull through cause I do feel like they were the better team here. Was it a perfect day for them by any means? Not really. They did all right on offense. Jake Mayer, 270 yards, Deedrick Mills was someone I had my eye on really the whole game. He was being talked a lot is again, he had some shoes to fill there. And then Reggie, he, he's been with Calgary now for a while. I know, I remember back when I first started doing C F L coverage he had signed with the Packers or something and then now he's come back and still with Calgary doing his thing all these years later, it seems like so good for him on that front. But ultimately, yeah, I mean this game was just kind of one where you're like, you're glad it's over and you move on. And I think the teams maybe thought that too. I could be wrong, but that's what I just gathered from watching on my tv. Jason thoughts, I had a quote here. Bob dies after the game. We have to look seriously look inept at everything we're doing as a coaching staff. We have firm belief, we just have to correct the errors because only comes back. This isn't a different team. I don't feel like, what did you make of this really pitiful performance by Ottawa? Well, one stat tells the whole story of the first two games for the Ottawa Red Blacks zero offensive touchdowns. That's inexcusable. And honestly Edmonton would be right or wrong with them if not for that 102 yard touchdown by Eugene Lewis in the first game. So Ottawa, I feel for them because they've been stuck in the mud for the last several years here. I mean this was a team that just in 2018 they were in the Great Cup and just the last several years here, we just have not seen them get anything together, especially on the offensive side of the ball. I think that the first half of this game was very hard to watch. I think that once Tyree Adams came to the game, it was a lot more watchable. Calgary also played better offensively in the second half. I think both offenses played terrible in the first half. I think really the only touchdowns that Calgary got were off turnover, so I think that was a really sloppy game from that perspective. But in the second half, I think Calgary got some things going good to get Reggie Beton going. He had a very disappointing year in my opinion last year. I think he was my number one receiver going into the league last season, so it was good to see him get going. Lee Henry had a big reception at the end there, but overall I think that this game was won basically by one really strong drive in the third quarter by Calgary to get a touchdown. But other than that, I think that Ottawa really just didn't get anything going again, not getting it in the end zone and it's hard to win games like that. Jason, do you think that mayor has fallen off here not living up or how do you grade his performance thus far? Well, first of all, I actually wanted to say that I believe these statistics are wrong. I believe think he actually passed for over 300 yards in this one. So I mean that's another thing with the statistical system, they're having errors all over the place, but I think he was better in this one. I think it was acceptable. Still not the level of play I'd like to see from him, but I think that I didn't really have any problems with his performance. The one turnover he had, I think it was off his receiver's hand, so I'm not going to really fault him for that. So I think he was much better from week than week one. So I think that given the bar for a quarterback playing the C F L right now, I still think he is one of the better quarterbacks in the league and I think that if he could just play like this going forward, even if he doesn't play any better than this, I think that Calgary doesn't really have too many things to be concerned about going forward because the rest of their team is just very strong. They're always going to be able to run the ball and that was a big difference from week one for them because against BC they could not get that running game going whatsoever in this game. Derick Mills had a huge game, so I think getting the running game going, allowing him to lean on play action a little bit more is a big thing for Mirror going forward. The other, because Kadeem was out too, right? Is he on the sixth game? Kadeem Carey right now? Is he on? Yeah, sixth game injured list. Yeah, so certainly not good there. We'll start to wrap this up. Look ahead here. I had a comment here. I might have to on the stream yard. I can put users in timeout if they have inappropriate comments. We have just remind you the defending Gray Cup champions are America's C F L team. I don't appreciate that Mac and I do not appreciate that. Yeah, Chris knows. I thought the BC lion are America's looking forward here, I have the schedule, Evan, thoughts BC here with the early game kicking off Thursday we'll have our show regular on Friday again this week in our regular weekend show here BC going on Thursday and then we have Montreal at Hamilton, Saskatchewan at Calgary, and then Toronto at Edmonton. That could be a scary one there. Evan, thoughts of the game you're looking most forward to heading into the weekend? Well I definitely think BC at Winnipeg is the headliner. That's going to be the real test for the lines. They've come out pretty hot. A couple things they could have done differently, but ultimately they're two and oh, both them in Winnipeg are two and oh at top of the west, so that'll be interesting to see. I mean BC's playing at their house so that makes it a bit more difficult. That's definitely the matchup I'm most excited for. The other one that I'll talk about here is Saskatchewan at Calgary. I feel like that'll kind of be one of those teams mean right now it seems like BC and Winnipeg are going to be the two Western teams, but Saskatchewan and Calgary, I feel like it's sort of who slots in at number three there and I think that that'll be interesting. I feel like that game could determine a lot about just how the rest of the season goes, especially just through the entire Western division, even though it's only week three. Yeah. Jason, in terms of do you think Hamilton gets a bounce back here? I reluctantly say they do. I think they generally play much better at home year to year and I think if Matthew Shilts is playing, I oddly have more confidence that they'll win this game. But Montreal is coming off a bi week, which is the crats kind of got screwed a little bit by the schedule makers at the beginning of this season. Obviously Toronto having the bi week two, they have to travel to Winnipeg week one and then Montreal off of by again here. So I think that's something to keep in mind. But I think Hamilton coming back home generally plays with a lot more energy there, so I think defensively they'll play a lot better. Maybe get Cody Fajardo to throw a couple interceptions here or there. So I think Hamilton, I'm pretty confident in that bounce back for them. Uhm the knife here, you can win tickets to the X F L next year or the U S F L 22 3 championship game, which has not taken place yet. So if we could still add 800 subscribers here before July 1st, so watch it there. And then Chris here are lots of emojis. I don't know if this is appropriate but we'll put it on here. I think Cornelius got a lot of poop emojis here and we're going to go beat the Argos that way. Should be exciting here. Evan, anything else from you before we get out of here? I don't think so. Like I said, I mean I really want to see some of these teams that are struggling turn around. I mean that everyone says that, but I really mean it because especially teams like Ottawa who have been in the basement for a while and same with Edmonton, especially those two. It's just I really hope here that at least in the first month of the season that they're able to get a win and turn things around because right now it looks pretty grim for some of those teams. Fortunately, teams like BC have continued to be strong even though they've lost some key pieces. The Argos, they still had a couple questions even coming off the great couple win, clearly not a problem yesterday against Hamilton. Hopefully they continue that. So teams like that, I mean everyone is in a different position right now I feel, and I mean that in some good ways and I mean that in some bad ways. There's some teams that have a lot of work to do and there's some teams that have really none to do. If you're Winnipeg, I don't see what you could really change to make things better, but that's usually how it goes about every year. I'm just a bit surprised to some extent that some of these teams have shown no improvement whatsoever at all. Again, I get it, it's week two, knee-jerk reaction, whatever. We're not going to not, I don't know. Anyway, yeah, I'll stop. I'll stop rambling now. That's good. Jason, we're here week two of this. You're now ingratiated in the writers group Twitter, don't you Don't sell our secrets to the Canadians here. Anything else from you here as we work our way through the season? No, I'm just excited for week three. I think that we're learning more and more about these teams. I think once we get past the third, fourth week of the season, then we get a much better idea of where these teams are at. I think once everybody's had their home openers and everything like that. So I'm excited to see what we have in store going forward. I will say if you're still on the fence here, I did tweet. If you're still on the fence and you're like, God, I don't really care about this C F L U S F L ending here, and I did have this tweet yesterday, I was really proud of the Breakers gamblers game. First half is one of the worst house of football I've ever seen. I said I publicly apologize to any fathers out there watching this game with their children. If you're still on the fence about the C F L, it can't be any worse than that half of football yesterday. So join us Pat and I'll be back tomorrow. We'll be doing US F L week 10 preview and then I think Pat is doing an all U S F L team that we're going to be doing here on the podcast this week. I think Derek Taylor, like I said's coming on and I believe Rick Cella as well. We're going to be talking the X F L rookie draft and the teams kind of rounding out. I appreciate everyone like and subscribe, get your U S F L 2023 championship tickets or X L next year. I appreciate it. We'll get out of here and thank you guys so much.

XFL 2023 Rookie Draft LIVE Results and Analysis!!!

Well here we are. Welcome to the mark cast. The X F L 2023 rookie draft is live. The professor Andrew Murray and I had a conversation last week on the show talking about off season content the X F L could do here, building excitement. I think this would grade is a needs improvement. I think the professor here for doing end of the year grades, but we have the full rookie draft year. I have John Vogel standing by and I know Evan Smore is hopping on. We have co coach Craig Sports as well. John, it's finally here. 1 0 3, we made it. We did not. I saw one of the channels but live this morning like it 8:00 AM which is crazy, but how are you doing? Pretty good man and happy to be on this with you as always. I feel like it's been too long since I've got to see your beautiful face, but that's okay. That's good. So we're standing by here. Like I said, Evan's going to hop on, we're going to get everyone else, but John and I like being first here. First to market with all this list just came out. I'm still getting email notifications literally as we go on. What are you making of everything you're seeing so far? Just first blush and then we'll kind of go team by team. So I think I said it right before we went live. I was like, how are I kept? I was like, this guy in the NFL, isn't he? And you're like, no, they all can't be. Oh I don't know how some of these guys aren't in the N F L. I think that's kind of what popped at me first. And secondly, it looks like wasn't a lot of, what's the word I'm looking for? There wasn't a lot of consideration for the U S F L because there's a few guys in there that got drafted by the U S F L that the X F L went ahead and drafted too. So I think we got a quarterback in there that was drafted by the U S F L. But a lot of these guys I got hit, I got to see down at the tropical bowl, which I did see some X F L personnel there sporting their X F L T-shirts and stuff back in January. And so it's really good to see some of these guys getting onto teams, getting an opportunity to compete next year. I'm excited. So just to kind of run down here, the rules of this, and I'm kind of scrolling the list here. If you're listening to this, I'll post the audio later. The rule is you had to have been 2023 N F L draft eligible and you can't be under a team contract right now. Now there's going to be another fall draft if you were maybe someone that you wanted to do the showcase this summer or you're still and you got cut or you weren't in the 2023 draft. So there will be an additional one coming up here later. This is just kind of the first blush of this Craig standing by. I'll bring him on in just a second. John, do you like the idea of this draft of, I watched I rush Gilio and Doug Whaley talk about this on the Neil Stratton inside the league agent call and they said we want to give these guys kind of direction for the summer here. If you're sitting there, you're not quite sure what's going on, let's get you on here. We're expanding the rosters from 51 to 90. What do you make of just the concept of this rookie draft? So first off, I like the concept and it's because if we compare it to the U S F L draft, that was this past what more February. The problem with it was a lot of guys that weren't going to make any impact whatsoever on the L. It was a lot like the C FFL draft where you draft a lot of guys for rights. So unless the u s FFLs going to do what the C FFL does on neg list, there's no real point in having that draft I think. And it's just really just a lot of spectacle and it has no real impact on the league. Whereas this right here that we're looking at, I mean this is going to have a pure, these are impact guys next year in the league and I think that Doug's completely right when he says that these guys need a little bit of direction. A lot of dms that I had just on Twitter from different players in the last couple weeks hitting me up, asking me details, Hey, do you know anything about this? What's going on? Because they're trying to make their plans, they're trying to figure out do I continue trying to pursue this dream at this point? What are my options and what do I need to do to continue? And this gives answers to 80 different guys and I think that's commendable. So it was 10 rounds today, started at 8:00 AM Pacific, 11 Easter and then I've kind of been going back and forth and the list is coming, kind of all that stuff. Let's bring in Coach Craig here. I know Evan's getting stuff going as well here. Craig, what do you make of this today? I'm kind of scrolling the list here. We'll go back to the top and then we'll go team by team. Yeah, I was just seeing some of the names now. The guy at the top of the list actually the one that was interesting to me in side Barnett because I know he did sign with the Saints at one point in time. He must have got cut recently. He's a guy that I actually interviewed on my channel not too long ago and then he's a really good guy. Really interesting guy too. But I like the concept of this obviously giving these guys a little bit extra chance and some of these guys I'm surprised haven't even just signed on to N F L contracts just, well like Chris Smith right here and stuff. Chris Smith with San Antonio was a free agent addition to Seattle. So he must have already been cut because that's a guy that I had spotlighted in my rookie, my fantasy rookie guy this year. I know Marvin Pier is another one too that got cut recently by the Cardinals. So it's good. I mean this is interesting. Like I said, we kind of have some tangible offseason stuff here. Let's go through, I know Evan's getting his rough neck stuff going here. Arlington Renegade starting out. We'll just go Alphabet here side Barnett Connor de de Hagar. I'm never going to get all these names. I mean yeah Degenhart guy. John, why don't you start here and we'll kind of go play by play. I know I didn't know Connor a little bit. I got to know him obviously through quarterbacks. There were several quarterbacks that hit me up this year. Connor was one of them just trying to figure out what games they needed to go to get through the process and stuff. And he's a strong armed quarterback. Kind of reminds me, I'm not saying that he is him, so don't I'm just reminds me, same playing style of Justin Herbert where he is got the arm to throw, he is got some mobility. He's a big tall guy, is with the issues that Arlington had with being able to push the ball down the field, Connor is clearly a guy that they're trying to get to bring in to answer those questions, those concerns. So I like that. I like that for them a lot and I like that for Connor. I had a question on here. Arlington went with the core B Christians asking Arlington went with the quarterback. Whether that means they don't think Perez is retrained, is this way too early to tell? What do you buy into that? Oh yeah, no, it's way too early And when we talk with some of these personnel guys and we're asking them questions like Hey what do you think about this guy? What do you think about that guy? Cause it's doing some gauging, we're trying to get some guys pushed onto some teams that may have been overlooked or things fell through when they were trying to get signed it post N F L draft and pretty much the answers have all been pretty much the same, which is hey, we don't even know who our coaches are going to be this year so we can't even begin talking players, quarterback scheme, any of that because there's just too many variables at this point. So when you have Arlington who it looks like, I would say Coach Stoops is coming back for another year, you know, win a championship, you probably come back Connor. I think that that makes sense. Taking a quarterback. There's only two quarterbacks on this list and they're both on teams that probably have coaches returning this year. So I think that has a lot to do with it. Yeah, currently. Right. Rob Woodson, mutually departing ways. That's how Rod posted a couple things thanking the league and the players and stuff this week. We'll get to that. I think their D P P was kind of handling this draft for that because obviously Rob got let go here. Craig, any thoughts on Arlington here? Like I said, one of the two quarterbacks, lots of O line. I'm seeing linebackers on here as well. Yeah, they had a lot of defense that they addressed. I know James Jackson's guy South Alabama. I don't remember N F NFL P A bowl I think he was at. He's the guy that posted up some interesting stuff. I think he's got center guard versatility too. The main one for me, like I said was s he's a guy that I interviewed personally myself. He's a really interesting guy too. Cause he tested out last year's draft process at Pro Day. He kind of got some feelers around, didn't get too much interest, ultimately tried to trans, he was in the process of transferring to Sanford and this is all just from what he told me to get to more like a air raid offense down there. Some things fell through. He went Davenport after that, posted up pretty good year, posted up really good day after trying to get into a bunch. But there's a lot of places that didn't want 'em back in as kind of a smaller school guy because he already had tested the year before. So he ultimately went to, I believe Saginaw Valleys and Sub four guy. So he's kind of that deep threat they could be licking for. He's a guy that has pun and kicking experience as well. Oh John, what do you think thought process goes in here when you're trying to assemble this if you're stoops and obviously it's a pretty low impact, right? Okay, we're going to bring these guys in and they're, we kind of have their rights right now. It's not like we're signing them to contracts today, but what's the thought process going into kind of putting together this list? Honestly, it's probably number one is you're going to come in with your list of guys that you want to take. I know that Jimmy Johnson used to always do this. A lot of people kind of follow this, which is you have three guys on a list and that's how you draft for each pick. You got three guys that you're going to take right there. If one's gone, you take two. If two's gone, you take three. If they're all three are gone, then well you trade the pick, you get rid of it. I think that that's that. Maybe you don't trade the pick here, but one of the things too that you got to think about is when we go through the NFL draft, we have a huge process where everybody's talking to each other, everybody's trading information, everybody's kind of getting, Hey, what do you think of this guy? What do you think of that guy? They're getting a feel for everybody else's boards and it puts value on certain guys, right? So great example is Jamir Gibbs drafts Draft Scouts freaked out when he goes 12th overall to Detroit. They're like, why Detroit taking him there? Well, because everybody was talking and Jamir was about to go in the next three five picks. So Detroit had to take 'em there. It created the value because of those conversations. You don't have the time nor the type lengthy conversations to put value on certain guys in this. So I think you come in with a bunch of targets and you say we need to address this position, we need to address that position here was something that we were weak. Here's a guy that fits up mold, let's go with it. Merlin Robbins, Robertson, a linebacker at Arizona State. That guy made some serious plays when he was at Arizona State. I think at one point I thought that he was going to be a borderline day two guy in the NFL draft. And it was because back in the covid season, PAC 12 played of a shortened season. He made a couple plays that year that just popped on tape with some of his movement ability, coverage skill. Merlin Roberts, Roberts, Robertson just didn't take the next step over the next couple years. That's why he's, he's down here right now. I think there was a guy below Robertson that was on that list. Oh, let get that over here. Sorry, I'm looking. Yeah, yeah, no, you're good. Jordan Wright. Okay. Jordan Wright outside. He's like a rush edge. Okay. Out of Kentucky. Interesting prospect, if I'm remembering correctly, I'm pulling up my scouting report on him. I might have had him, I might have accidentally put him into the next year. No, here he is. Cool. Tough physical player. Fits the mold that he, so he replaced Josh Allen who was drafted in the first round by the Jacksonville Jaguars, not the Buffalo Bills quarterback. He's on the Senior Bowl watch list last year. 6 4, 2 31. Good zone coverage player, good wrap-up tackler. So you're kind of getting a guy that you want to put on the outside you can use as a pass rusher. He's got some really solid ability to rush after the passer. Good hand work dips well. So you're what you're going to use him for at. That's probably, that was probably honestly was their first pick out of this list was Jordan Wright. If I had to make a guess, he could be a real impact guy next season immediately. I want to just ask real quick before we get off of the Arlington thing here. This came out this morning. We have this trade coming down that before we're trading the rookie draft here, Arlington receiving the 46, it's our skipper and then Seattle receiving George Moore and the 40th overall selection. Do you make anything about that or is he personnel, hey we want this guy over on our side. I don't even understand that. No. So with Seattle specifically, back in December, Randy Mueller had was asking me if I knew any offensive lineman Randy Mueller would, being the director of player personnel in Seattle. If I knew any offensive lineman, I sent him two. One guy was still in college and was contemplating coming out. The other guy was, he'd been out for a year. The guy coming out of college decided not to come out, decided to stay in, he was going to play at Oklahoma State this year. But this, he took the guy that we suggested Barry Wesley who was out of Colorado State and he was very concerned about the offensive line all year. So I think that this was more of a, hey, you got somebody that I really want. Is there any way that I can get this guy? The two personnel guys are probably sitting in the same room talking about it and they come up with the trade and they just send it over. Randy's just trying to beef up his offensive line. He feels like that was the weak point of his team last year. And then Arlington, I mean we just saw 'em take three linebackers, right? And here they are trading for another one. So they obviously feel like linebacker is the big hole on that roster. Oh, I see Evan here standing by. Sorry, Evan's High blood. Craig, any other thoughts on this? We'll bring in Evan as well. Evan was hiding below the fold here of the streamline Hopefully. Hopefully he wasn't sitting there for too long. Sorry Craig. Any other thoughts? We'll bring Evan in. Not too much on the trade. I mean it's just kind of a preference and then a pick swap in there too. Couple places. So I mean with Seattle, what John said always makes sense bringing in another offensive line because they did have games last year that their offensive really did struggle. So getting another guy in at this point, you're just trying to get as many bodies in and trying to pick the best of the bunch and get, especially with offense line, get the best five guys out there that you can. All right, let's bring Evan in here, Evan. So hiding, like I said, hiding below the fold here we got Evan. Evan and I were about ready to walk off this. We said if this doesn't come in here at one o'clock, we're done. Evan, we've made it. What are you making of this? We're going through Arlington and then we'll keep going now. But what are you making overall? Yes, it's been a mad scramble. I'm trying to put faces to names and figure out where people were and what they were doing. And it's all kind of coming together now. But overall, from what I've seen just in the past couple minutes since this went out, I think it's a pretty solid draft. I'm seeing a lot of guys, it's a very diverse mix of talent. You've got a lot of small scores in there, which I like to see personally, especially division two level. So I'm very happy about that. But yeah, overall just seems like a great poll. Some guys that I'm familiar with, some that I'm not but enough to where I can talk about it and that's important right now. So yeah. Do we have any other thoughts on Arlington? I know we talked a little bit before Evan Hunt that. Anything else with that? We'll kind of keep going down here to the defenders. I know Mike got that list out quick. I'll give Mike Mitchell credit for that kind. Leaking that before everything else. Anything else here guys before we move on? I'll just add to Coach Craig. Nailed it. James Jackson was at the N F L P A bowl. So astonishing memory. Well, Jared says you just spinner versatility too. What? If I remember correctly, He says, just thinking if you took the day off to have worked to watch the XL rookie draft. Well we're having fun now here. You're getting off work here. Cracking beer open. We're doing all this stuff. All right. DC coming up here. We've taken a punter with them. One of the punters gone off the board here I guess said Mike got this list out. We'll go first to John. Any thoughts on the defenders? I think I said it in the group chat before we ever got on this thing. I really like Trey Swapshire. I know that Evan wants to talk about him, so I'm going to let Evan do that. I really like Alex Jensen who is a very tall, raw offensive lineman out of to South Dakota and I think he was a multi-sport athlete in high school. If I'm remembering correctly, Jensen has a lot of, he's, he was undersized. He moves from tight end I believe to offensive linemen. And that's a guy right there that if he just gets some more repetition comes out, puts on a little bit more weight. Cause I think he was at two 80. That's a guy that's in an N F L dude and I think that's probably why he is not in the league right now. It's just the raw needs more time, needs more polish. That's a guy that you could be seeing next year, get signed somewhere then Mohammed. So NoGo, really awesome linebacker. Very instinctive, good rangey. He's a little bit undersized but then that's why he's here. But that's, he's going to be a fun guy. DC loves athletic ability. Vaughn Hutchinson's done a great job putting the roster together and I like what he did with this draft overall. Evan thoughts and then we'll go to Craig and then you got the player you wanted to talk about. That's right. Really there's two players here that I want to talk about. So the first one, like John said, is Trey Schroer, Schwabs Shire, however you want to say it. I had an opportunity to watch him in person last year when UAB came to play. LSU didn't really have the best game. I was looking more at Dwayne McBride during that game, but he was someone, I think at some point he led the nation in yards per catch. Kind of a big deep ball threat. So again, someone I just want to point out really because I'm surprised that he's not in the NFL right now. I think he went to a mini camp but he didn't get signed and that was a bit surprising. I'm not necessarily surprised that he was undrafted, but I am surprised that he's not competing for preseason reps in an NFL camp right now. And then the other guy I want talk about is the playwright B above that Ty Scott, the wide receiver from Missouri State. I don't remember too much about him other than that. He had a really good game against UT Martin where I think he had three touchdowns. I remember watching the tape on that game and he had a good connection with Jason, Jason Shelley, excuse me, the quarterback there at Missouri State. And they were pretty good in the FCS this year. I remember they nearly, I think, beat Arkansas at one point last season. So had my eyes on that game as well. Craig, what about you? Initial thoughts on this list? Yeah, so I think the grab, the three wide receivers makes sense for them too when you're talking about Chris Blair, Brandon Smith, lucky Jackson, I'm not sure if, did Hammond go anywhere? Evan, you probably know better than I would. Yeah, ner Johnson, that's One I dunno about, but I think so. But it is worth pointing out that they have had three receivers go to the nfl. That's a big hit to their core. CJ Johnson's one. That's kind of interesting too for me, just Carolina, a lot of his problems have been off the field, but when he is been on the field, he is been really good and I believe he was a combine invite too for the NFL combine. And so it's kind of surprising that he hasn't latched on anywhere. And then Matt Kerick, actually I know a little bit about him from side Barnett when I was talking to him, they were carpooling together because they trained together and he said Kerick was always going on about how he graded out really well. Pff real early in his career at Michigan State then apparently had some type of knee injury and then obviously didn't test out too great after that. But a guy that has a decent amount of starting experience probably could be pretty good in this league though. The interesting thing here is obviously you got to kind of balance the, like we were, Craig was saying, losing certain guys to the N F L and then obviously just the needs that each of these teams had back in here last season. John, I mean DC a pretty complete team. Where did you see they needed the work most besides obviously the N F L guys getting signed up Really, I mean if you look at what costs them at the end of the year, it was a Greg Williams, as much as I love Greg, he could get so aggressive sometimes and throw the kitchen sink and everything at an offense and if one guy misses an assignment on that type of style, it's gone. And I think that's kind of what happened is that game got out of hand and they got just more aggressive trying to make up for it. They were, they were the best team in the X F L and they just happened to lose the championship game. But I don't see a lot, obviously like you said, the talent that goes to the NFL is what you replace. But I think honestly when you're drafting and you're going up against the other seven teams, if you're DC at least I'm just kind of going, okay, who's good? Who's the best guy right here that I can take? And that's how I'm taking the approach with the draft. I'm not really focused on positions or anything. I'm just looking for pure talent guys that I know that'll come in and compete and they got that really well. I do think they did a great job. We're going to kind of do, this is initial kind of whatever kind of thoughts today, everything else on that. I think Rick Sara's going to join me here for the show next week kind of. We'll do maybe a deep dive more into this. I know Rick wanted to come on today as well. So I think it's fun. We'll kind of do freak out here, initial reactions and then we'll get Rick trying to put together the show for next week. Craig and Evan, any other thoughts on the defenders? I know Evan's going to a lot to going to have a lot to say about the roughnecks, but anything else on the defenders? Yeah, not too much about defenders. I like at the end of the day I said I like the receivers they brought in. I think it's going to replace some of the guys. They potentially lost pretty well. Evan, anything else? Not really. I mean Alex Jensen would maybe be another guy to look at. Just someone that I've watched. Again, offensive line that kind of goes under the radar and obviously DC had probably the best offensive line and the X ffl is here and I don't think they've lost a ton of their guys to the NFL in that department yet. So we'll see what happens. But definitely a good depth piece. Let's go down here. Well I'll give Evan kind of first crack on this. This is his team. He follows that. Evan, thoughts on the roughnecks and who they picked up? Yeah, so again, I mean I was talking about small school talent earlier and the roughnecks Mark Lilly Bridge definitely picked some under the radar guys, you could put it that way. Two of the ones that really stood out to me were Quintin Barrow from Grand Valley State. I remember him early in the draft process last year. I want to say he was with the Chiefs at this draft cycle briefly, I'd have to check the PR email because that has a ton of info in it. And then Austin Jakey, I think that's how you pronounce his name from U N L V, the linebacker. He was at the Hula Bowl, which I do stuff for and I think he was at the Shrine Bowl too if I'm not mistaken. So he was definitely attracting some talent. I know he was with the Panthers at one point, but again, I haven't really done a deep dive into this hall yet. Like you said, it's initial reactions, but I like it so far. It's going to be fun going through these guys because a lot of the names don't initially jump out on paper, but this is sort of more of a hidden type of class to me and I really like that. John, we'll toss to you hear thoughts on the roughnecks. Jason On Analia, I'm probably slaughtering that right now. Notre Dame up there at the top, he and his brother played at Notre Dame. Very talented duo back at when they were there. I was really surprised he's not in the nfl. That's a really solid pickup for the defensive line. I really like. I'm glad that Evan talked about Barrow because Barrow is another one of these raw tall body types. Was on the Senior Bowl watch list last year as well. Did the Shrine Bowl and then Marcus Miner is an interesting offensive lineman. I'm surprised he's not in the league. He's a guard. Could play a little bit of center and a pinch if you need him to. Craig, do you know anything about Lindsey Scott Jr. Just a little bit. Which was he NFL P able? Yes, I think so. Yeah, he got hurt at the end of it. Yep, I was, if you want to talk about 'em, I'll save him for you. So No, you can go ahead with him, but I think it's an interesting fit with Houston. He is going to fit their offense pretty well. Yeah, he's a smaller quarterback, more mobile gets around, he's got a decent arm. Could push the ball pretty well. Hehe was also drafted by the U S F L, which is very intriguing here. I think Pittsburgh drafted him. So a little bit of competition. I know the C F L was interested in bringing him up there too and I think he was just waiting to see what his NFL opportunities would look like. So the world is wide open for Lindsey Scott. He can go to whatever league that he absolutely wants right now. Yeah, we have a couple comments. Yeah, max Lindsey Scott to the ref Nest. He's excited next to pj. Mark my words. And then we have T as well calling him a hi gem so people really, hi, I'm Lindsey. Scott Jr. Obviously us fellow as well. There off to see what he does. Yeah, I was, go ahead, sorry. No, go ahead. You got you Craig, you I was Going to say I think he went to a couple mini camps too but didn't end up being signed. No, I'm trying to just The injury related still. Yeah, just look at any other comments here We have Mike, just while I have everyone, the other thing Mike, Mike believes in Von Hutchins and then Max is also talking Arlington badly needed a backup quarterback. So maybe they can get that going there with that. Alright, let's go back up here. Any other thoughts on the rough next year before we move on? I was just going to Or you can go Craig. Yeah, I was just going to mention Marvin Pierre real quickly too. He was out of Kent State. He was a guy that kind of bounced around. I was trying to get an interview but time slots didn't all work out for between the two of us. So he had a pretty interesting career. Started off at a community college. He went to Murray State after that. Super athletic but still pretty raw. But I think he's a guy that maybe ends up being like a three four ed dresser for them. Evan John, anything else on here? We'll keep scrolling. Yeah, I was just going to add a bit about Lindsey Scott Jr. Since obviously that's another exciting pick. Not one that I mentioned earlier, but someone John and Craig have already talked about. I believe he was with the Jets in their mini camp for a bit. Definitely an intriguing prospect. I watched a lot of Lindsey Scott last year at Incarnate Ward and he was I think one of three incarnate Ward players drafted here in this rookie draft. Cause they had a really good season last year in the sds. But for those who maybe aren't familiar with the Lindsey Scott kind of backstory, super old at this point. I think he's 25, which well by I guess sort of rookie standards is old being 25, came out of the ffc S had been to a ton of schools, was in community college at one point. Started off at L S U way back when, eventually ended up at Nichols State I think, and then finally got on his feet at Incarnate Ward and had a phenomenal season last year. I mean one of the best seasons you could ask as a quarterback. Now I do agree, I do think he fits this offense really well, but do I think that he is immediate starter? Don't, I'm not quite sure about that. I think right now he kind of slots in, I mean we'll see what happens. Obviously with the quarterback room between Brandon Silvers, Cole McDonald and Caleb Elby, I would expect either maybe McDonald or Eleby to leave, which would put Lindsey Scott possibly in the quarterback too job. So I would hope, again, like John said, he was drafted by the U S F L, the CFL's interested in him. He has a lot of options here. So this is not saying that he's going to be with the rough next year, but assuming that he an XFL stream, I would really like to see him get some reps at some point. Again, not saying he's going to start from day one, he still is a bit raw in some areas coming out of the fcs, but he does have a lot of experience. I think he was in college for six or seven years or something ridiculous with the Covid eligibility. So it'll be fun to see what happens to him for sure. Curious, I don't know. Is Brandon Silvers, is he back as QB one? I mean I love Brandon friend of the show, I mean longtime friend. But we have an interesting here, Sam brings up talking with Lindsay because obviously him being with us, do you go to the X ffl just by default and then if you get cut then you go, because certainly the U S F L's not sitting there. It's like the C Ffl necklace, right? If you ever come in with that. But I What do you guys make of that? Because this is kind of the first little brush of this. I imagine we'll keep seeing this maybe in the future, but what do you guys think about this? John? I like this Shady sports network. Who? Who's Behind Shady? Sam Jest. Sam Jest. I, I'd have to see his face. I'm a face guy. Go give Sam, go give Sam a follow. But anyway, yeah, what do you make of this, John? Okay, so I love this idea because, and this is not something I thought of yet because of the way that the calendar's set up. So you have the nfl, obviously you're probably, if you're not signed to a futures and they let you go at the end of the year that you're looking at January, which is right when the X F L is starting. If you don't make it with the X F L, yeah, just get released. They're going to 90 man rosters like you mentioned this year. It means they're going to cut it down to whatever that they end up cutting it down 54, whatever it is. That's a lot of guys that are going to be looking for another job. So yeah, go up there, get the coaching, see if you can't make it, then if you don't make it, the U S F L will pick you up because it's just anything that to take away from the X F L at this point. Oh, I thought you were going to say anything that moves like, oh, you hear, Come on, Come On in. No, anything that take like, oh, okay, you could, the X F L couldn't use you. Okay, we'll use you. That's kind of like that's the battle that's going on between these two leagues right now. It's entertaining. It's like, I can't remember his name, John Fromm or whatever at the end. The X F L. Oh, I'm like, do I have a pulse and do I still play football? Yes I do. Let's go play. That's the L'S motto. You're like, do you have a pulse? Can you throw the football? Come on down here, coach Craig, anything, any thoughts on this? The faction from between the X F L and the U F L? I'm just going to say it's going to be interesting to see how this all plays out over the next couple years and just between the two leagues, but it is also a great thing at the same time because more of these guys are going to get opportunities. Evan, anything for you or else we'll go to the Guardians? Yeah, I mean this whole X F L U S F L player debate, the U S F L took an interesting approach having their sort of college rights draft or whatever you want to call it before the actual NFL draft and the X FFLs doing it in June when guys are being filtered out, whether or not you're invited to a MINICAMP and then you sign the U D F A deal or some guys have already been cut from the U D F A deals. So I think that gives the X F L a bit more leverage and it makes it seem more like the X F L I guess it makes it seem like a better opportunity for the player because a lot of these players that were drafted into the U S F L college thing or whatever you want to call it, the pool, they weren't really aware. There was a clip of Malik Cunningham talking about he didn't really know what the Birmingham stallions were and now he's with the Patriots working out at receivers. Some was the most recent update. So it's an interesting dilemma. I definitely think these leagues will kind of make it harder for a player to go to another jumping Cause before, I mean the X F L was pretty strict on we will allow guys to go to the N F nfl, but there's no kind of out clause or whatever for say the U S F L or the C F L or one of these leagues that's playing at the same time because they know guys want to find opportunities. But at the same time you kind of have to show commitment and that's going to be something we didn't see a ton of it this year. I mean there were a couple guys, Davion Davis is someone I've talked about who was on the roughnecks and then went to the stallions to get more playing time, more film. And he left the X F L pretty early after two weeks. So worked out for him. But I think it could become more controversial in the future where guys maybe don't realize like, Hey, I can't just jump from one league to another. Maybe that wasn't made clear to me. So definitely something that will be worth following, not just, it sounds kind of funny and pointless when we're sitting here talking about it and we're not even really talking about too many specific players that are connected to that. But I think in the future it could really sort of push this X F L and U S F L war even further. All right, let's get here. Back to this John Guardians. We had Coach Buck on our pre, what was it? The pregame kickoff show and everything else. Admitted maybe kind of first year blenders and trying to develop all this. How did Coach Buck do in the Guardian staff here and kind of ramping up over the summer? So the first thing about, I got the chance to talk to him too, I did the draft, I think it was a day three draft show. I did it with Jeff Barnes and his group Draft Central and we had Coach Buck come on for a half an hour and he was a great conversation. He's a great guy, awesome to talk to. The first thing that I think that they needed to address was you got to get guys that want to be there. I think he said that halfway through the year where there was a lot of issues with guys that just didn't want to be there, just didn't put in the effort that he wanted. He's a little bit more of an old school guy in the approach too. It is a little bit harder to get away with that now to get away with the old school coaching approach. But all of these guys that they picked up right here, I mean I could go on a spiel about every single one of these guys. I'm just going to pick a few. Darius Joyner, good defensive back out of Duke. Really surprised he's not in the N F L. Joiner is a corner. He is a little bit undersized. That's probably why he's not somewhere right now. But he's fast, he's good, he's got good agility. Quick Jaquez Jones, awesome linebacker. Kinsler out of Alcorn State is prob was probably one of the better talents at that level in that division this past year. And then Brock, Martin, rock Martin, I was a fan. I watched him against Notre Dame in the bowl game 20 2021 maybe New Year's 2021. And he was dominant against some N F L talent in that game. He just didn't replicate it everywhere else. And so lots of potential here, lots of talent and guys that show the passion, the drive, the desire to be on the field at every turn. That's what I kind of see on this list. Craig. Craig, what do you make of this? Yeah, so I think addressing the trenches was kind of a big part here for them. It seems like. I know Sharp was a guy that you didn't talk about there out of Mississippi State. I think he's another guy that's got center guard versatility. I think he's another N F L P bull guy. James Jackson was earlier. But just getting, getting that offensive line, that defensive line kind of straightened up is going to be kind of a big thing for them. And I think they did a pretty good job with that overall. And then Horst was another guy that was drafted by the U S F L, so it'd be interesting to see the battle for him. Oh, Dr. Hors. There you go. Got line in the trenches there. Evan, what do you make of the Guardian? Did he name stand up? Yeah, I would say Jared Horst. He was a hula Bowl guy. Again, Craig just pointed out he was also drafted into the U S F L. I believe Trey Sch rupture was too, one of the players we talked about earlier for DC He was Memphis. Yeah. Yeah. So again, there's going to be a couple of these battles, but he's an interesting guy. Again, him and La Winston Sharp, both that guardian's offensive line. We talked about a nauseum during the season, how much they struggled earlier. I was saying DC had the best offensive line in the league. So whatever they're going to draft there is for depth. But for Orlando, I feel like there's some more immediate pieces that they may need at those positions, really, whether it's tackle guard or anything. And then the other one that I'll talk about here is from Alcor State. I had an opportunity to scout him in person. Again, wasn't really a player that I had my eyes on during the game. He wasn't really on my list, but he kind of stood out. I had some people telling me like, oh you should take a look at him. And I was like, oh, okay, we'll see what he's about. And as it turns out, he definitely impressed. And like John said, at that level, probably one of the better defensive backs that you could ask for. So guardians get a good pickup there. And most importantly too, continuing that sort of H B C U trend that the X ffl has been pushing because they're going to have another H B C showcase in Atlanta this year at Clark Atlanta University. And then, yeah, I thought that was a good pick. Again, not just for the player but for sort of the culture and the image as a whole. Just throwing it out here. They do. And that kind of reminded me of that. We do have two showcases this weekend as well. We're doing the H B C U, like Evan said, and then we have one in the lancets. So this isn't the end of the road if you're one of these rookies that didn't get picked up in this. And I thought Russ, and like I said, the top of the stream, Russ and Doug did a great job talking about the purpose of this draft and then the one they're going to do in the fall and then the supplemental of one as well. So still opportunities here during this summer. If you're a player watching this to get your name in there, do one of these showcases and then get into the combine that way. We just wanted to throw that out there. Lots of talent here. I mean John, what do you make of this kind of a explosion of riches here? We've got this draft now we've got six more showcases coming up. I know they announced the Nick Novak specialist showcase as well. What do you make of how they're approaching the summer? I like it. And again, it goes back to what we were talking about with guys still trying to figure out what their career looks like. Is this something that I do that I need to continue pursuing? Is this something that I've hit the end of the road, it's time to move on and find something and find something new to do with my life or find another way to get into football. That's kind of where a lot of these guys get to at this point in the year. I don't want to oust people cause I don't want to say names, but it's like I've been having a lot of these conversations with just trying to help them. Hey, is it real? Is it realistic to continue? So these showcases, it gives 'em another opportunity to go out there. I think at the very least you need to take that opportunity as a player and go to these showcases and just see where you stand against everyone else. The other thing too is players need to be objective. And that's a very difficult thing to ask a player to do, but they need to have people that are objective around them to tell them how they compared to everyone else. Because I heard from every single rookie that was at N F L mini camp this year or it was let in, oh, I was the best guy there. I bet you were buddy. Right? But that's why they let you go. I'm not trying to be talk you down or anything man, but here's just the, it's the reality of the situation, which is you need to have the subjective people around you and these showcases. While it is an opportunity without those subjective people there that are going to be supportive but at the same time realistic, it's really not worth your time. Craig, any thoughts on this? I mean just at the end of the day it's anything in life, whether it's sports or anything, you're always trying to get better. So I don't even know how to word this right now, honestly. That's okay. Evan, anything else here? We have a comment just real quick from Mike saying the guardians basically drafting all defense out of the align their offense, wasn the issue last year once they got going. Evan, any other thoughts on guardians? Any of this stuff? We'll go onto the brass. I mean if we want to talk about sort of the league's position and this specific draft in general, it's really nice to see the X F L sort of getting off to an early start. I was kind of surprised when they announced this rookie draft happening. So soon, a month after the championship game just goes to show that this really is a year-round operation and they're jumping into these summer showcases. Again, there's no real slowing down because once all these showcases are done, then you're going to get into the regular draft and then the supplemental after that. So the off season in this league, even though the actual season only spans a couple months, 10 games, whatever, outside of playoffs, there's a lot of work going in outside of that that I really hope gets recognized. And it's good to see the league again continuing to do that after year one and not just showing it off the first time and being like, oh this is our model or whatever. And then it just turns out to be a gimmick. They're very serious about this and you can tell and that's very good to see. Again, them going back to the HBCUs, expanding it to a different school for their showcase and then just having those showcases again in general in other parts of the country. Really good to see is the bottom line. And I hope that continues for many years to come. Hey, to build off what you said there, Evan too, because it, not only are they showing it with these types of events, but they're doing this despite all the reports that just recently came out about the rock losing 60 million this year and they're still conducting business. It's normal and obviously it's not normal to lose 60 million in a season, but they are understanding what is going to happen. The it's going to take time for this to develop and they're willing to be patient with it. So that speaks volumes about how serious they're taking it too. It is probably a good thing that we have this actual football to talk about this week. I don't think you want to have a read unscripted episode talking about everything that's gone on this week. So purely just, I don't know, I would take an L and move on. Some of the people that are involved in a lot of this has been interesting that way. I will say Andy and I have had lots of talks in the last couple weeks, kind of what do we want the X L off season to look like? And this is good. As someone that did, I think it was 135 weeks of podcasting without an X F L ball being snapped. I like having some of this coming. I would've liked to have been able to do this real time today. I don't think that would've been that unmanageable to kind of figure out. But I do appreciate this. Now this is good to have all this. Let's go here. Let's go to the go to Evan first. Evan, anyone stand out here from the Brahmas? Let's take a look. There were a couple, I mean Ju Billingsley right off the bat from Texas. Someone a bigger name maybe from a bigger school. That one stands out. Just going down the list. Yeah, Darius Gaines was the one that I really wanted to talk about. Okay, so Darius Gaines was someone I nearly interviewed last year from Western Colorado. Again, a division two school. Going back to that whole small school narrative, he was someone I nearly interviewed, didn't really get the chance to, but Western Colorado has always been a school at least on my radar ever since Austin Eckler came out of there a couple years ago. And look what he's done in the N F L since then, however many years it's been. But he's definitely a good player and he was signed, I believe by the Broncos, which are sort of the hometown team for him. But then was quickly cut, replaced with someone else. Might have been another one of the X F L guys if I'm not mistaken because I know Denver brought in Ben Deci. Jock was Patrick, who isn't there anymore obviously. And then I know Trent Harris was there for mini camp and then yeah, outside of that, yeah, Chris Smith from Louisiana. Lafayette, another guy that I got to see in person last year and that I've interacted with. It's actually kind of surprising to see how many players I know personally on this list or that I've watched in person. But yeah, no, Chris Smith, I believe he was with the Seahawks in their mini camp again when I was out there at U L L doing scouting stuff. One of these names where it wasn't really on my radar going in, but I kind of left the game like hey, this is maybe someone that is going to go to the nfl. Cause at the time my attention was on Andre Jones who was drafted by the commanders in the seventh round and they had a couple other guys too. I think it was Michael Jefferson, their receiver, who was unfortunately injured in a car accident and likely won't play this year, but that's getting a bit off topic there unfortunately. But anyway, yeah, Chris Smith definitely a talented running back. Glad to see him on this list. And I think that's probably it on my end for Brahmas players. Evan's so funny. He's like, oh, it's funny how many people I've got to interact with here in network, Evan. It's almost like you're good at what you're doing here and you're going out and you're seeing everybody. Maybe that's what it's, that's is telling me that it's doing the right thing. I think so I think if you look at the list here and you can talk about half the guys on it. Have you met personally? I think you're probably doing okay. John, what do you make of any of the Brahmas standouts here? I mean he already mentioned Billingsley who was at Alabama before he transferred to Texas and got into some trouble at Alabama, which is part of the reason why he transferred. He has an on team suspension, but went to Texas, also dealt with some on Team SU issues. So he only played three games year. But this is a guy that's immensely talented. If he can get on the field, he's going to absolutely kill it if he gets a shot. He's a very vertical threat, very solid receiver, not a great blocker, more so a receiver. So you're probably going to see him sort of in a role like St. Louis used Hakeem Butler, but Billingsley is not quite that big, but that's very similar to how you use him. The other guy that kind of popped at me not to that wasn't talked about yet was Dylan O'Quinn coming out of Cincinnati. That guy's huge. And I know because I had to sit next to him on the bus at the tropical bowl on the way back to the hotel. I had a great conversation with him. But that guy, I was like that he took up the whole seat. It was a two man seat and he was two men. So I was unfortunately on the inside of that seat and we had a really good conversation. Just talked about being in Cincinnati, some of the things that he's working on. He is huge. I don't think he's bigger than that. 6 4, 3 0 5, they're saying, dude, Yeah, no, he looks like a big puppy here. That's why. But now I like it. I like it. I think that again, you got to come in here looking at talent and you're just trying to get guys that can come in and compete and strengthen the roster as a whole. And I think they did that. Coach Craig, any thoughts on the bras? Yeah, so I know a couple of these guys here, RJ Hubbert out of Utah. He's a guy that tested out really well. He's a guy I was trying to get on for an interview, but you can't really find any way to get ahold of him. Oddly enough, the one guy I saw that was talking about was his uncle or something like that. But it should be an interesting guy. Maybe a, he's almost kind of like a multiple piece of clay. See what he ends up being there. Dylan Thomas out of Missouri State's, another one talked with a couple people he trained with. They said he is all a really good dude. One of 'em stayed with him. They had nothing but good things to say about him. So just kind of playing at the smaller school, trying to make that next jump up should be kind of interesting there. I know the central Michigan wide receiver, Carlos Curie, he's like six five but like 2 0 5 or whatever. But oddly enough only did four reps on the bench, so that was kind of a fun fact. Just we got a couple comments here. Draft guy, Jimmy Billings would be be the nfl. He didn't have the on-field issues. Denzel uncle, Denzel guy checking in late to the stream. But Kaka Denzel owner of, I think it was like the Spring League, general Jersey, I think Denzel one, if you want to know how our giveaways kind of going here. And then the act, my age agent would freaking out there for the 60 million losses. Seemed to forget the AAF loss. Yeah, I've never seen more people contribute. Nothing to conversations except just noise. And I'm like all you got Evan, all these guys writing stuff every week and John's putting out content and Coach Craig hears, but I've never seen more people just like talking and having nothing to contribute at all to any sort of conversation. Anything else on the Braas here? We'll go to the Seed Dragons. I know Hailey, the our social girl over at the Sea Dragons really hyped for our picks. Anything else before I pull up that roster? We good? Okay. I think so. All right. Who wants to start here? Let's go coach Craig, any thoughts on the Sea Dragons got a lot of defenses and we got a lot of defense and no line on here. What do you got? Yeah, so I think probably one of the bigger ones, here's going to be tight as one out of Wyoming. He had a solid year, kind of left the team on bad terms. So that's going to be the big question with him. So kind of proven it there. I think he was a Shrine Bull, correct. Is he Shrine Bull or N F L P Bowl NFL P I do believe. I'm going to double check that for you. I know it was one of the two, I was mix some of those guys up between those two. So there's some disagreement with the coaching staff at Wyoming and off the field issues stuff. So that's kind of why he's not. Yeah, It looks like on here. Yeah, I just was Googling him but said why was Tywin dismissed from the team? So obviously it's something that's kind of following him right now but hey, maybe you can use this to get another shot And then I'm trying to look through here too. I think town's in tested well but I'm trying to look that back up too. Out of Texas Tech. But I think Andre was a guy that is one of those older guys that I stated if I remember correctly too, their whole defense was old as heck. It seemed like. Evan, any name standing out for you on here? Let me take a look. I know Colby Reeder was at the Hula Bowl, so that's one. Chad Townsend I'm familiar with the name from Texas Tech, didn't really get to watch a lot of him. I don't. I'm going to save my talking for the Battle Hawks because the Battle hawks took a lot of play. So We'll get into that. John, any thoughts on I got you got to talk about Seed Dragons here. I need someone to can give me some faith here. Losing Ucci and everything else. What do you make of the Sea Dragons? Yeah. Okay, so first off, okay, is Bolden on the Sea Dragons or is he next team? No he's not. Oh he is. Next team. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm not trying to jump ahead. All right, so let's start with Malcolm Lee coming out of Kansas. Intriguing defensive lineman. Definitely watched him a little bit last year. Didn't get a lot of comprehensive notes but I am surprised to see him not competing in the nfl. Colby Reer you guys mentioned, I think his brother plays in the nfl if I'm not mistaken. I believe it was Troy Reer is his brother who is with the Rams and I think he still is. So that's his younger brother. You guys mentioned Tiger Swing. He signed somewhere else this off season, I don't remember where. Okay, Viking Troy Reader, it might have been Troy Reeder was kind of like that mix of defensive end and outside linebacker and they would move him between the two. Colby is more of a traditional linebacker, somebody that you want in the box to kind of play downhill. He's pretty good. Dustin Talbert is a very underrated name that just popped up out of North Dakota State. Talbert's a guy I've been watching the last couple years really popped in the spring season and I'm, that's another guy. I'm exci, I'm, I'm really surprised as not in the NFL right now. Also, last guy I'll talk about Peyton at B by U is a legit linebacker. He, Andre are going to help strengthen that unit a lot. I think they're going to both come in and compete. And Wilger, he's a little bit undersized in the sense that at least for the NFL level, he is just under six one, I want to say 230 pounds maybe 2 25. But he's, he's legit man. He, he's a vicious tackler, pretty darn instinctive. I think his one knock as he doesn't play as well in coverage. Yeah, draft guy. Jimmy's talking Tal Brady. Good job at his pro day. He's a good press corner. So good. Seems like you got some shared setting but there you guys, anything else on the Seed Dragons? We'll keep scrolling on. Anybody else have any comments? I'm just going to say Townsend two, I had listed down at running back initially, but he ran a four forty five, ten nine broad jumps, so that was pretty good there. Change of direction was kind of what hurt him there, but it'd be interesting to see kind of his role in that offense since they do have him listed at wide receiver. Maybe it ends up being kind of like a TJ Hammonds. Interesting. I appreciate that. Good feedback. All right, let's go here. Evan's got a lot to talk about the battle hawks and then we have a lot of kaka in the chat as well. What do you make of the battle hawks your Evan? Yeah, so I think there's four players here that I'm going to talk about and the first one is Johnny Buchanan, the linebacker from Delaware. Believe he was the FCS leading Tackler. He reached out to me before the draft. He was really pushing his name. So good to see that Anthony Beckton company have given him an opportunity because I really do think he's earned one. He went to too many camps between the Eagles and the Steelers and didn't latch on with either team. Again, linebacker seems to be one of those positions where teams carry a lot of 'em but it's going to be hard to get playing time, especially on teams like the Eagles and Steelers. I mean I'm not going to go through and look at the Eagles and Steelers line backing rooms right now, but you get the idea. The next one, Darion Chaffin from Incarnate Ward. This guy to me flew under the radar a bit. One of the targets last year I believe for Lindsey Scott Jr. Who we talked about earlier. Taylor Grimes was the guy that got talked a lot about coming out of U I W and Darion. Chaffin to me was not the better receiver but definitely someone who you couldn't throw under the bus and again, good to see him get picked up here. Going down the list. We've got Kaur Gamble, the tight end from Central Florida. Another player that I've scouted in person got to see him live. He was at the Hula Bowl again, I don't know a ton about Kor Gamble. Jimmy's in our chat so he can probably give you a bit more info on that. And then the last guy here is probably JD Adrian Taylor who I interviewed last year from Texas El Paso. He was just in camp with the Winnipeg Blue bombers and he's been pushing his name around a lot too. So it's good to see him on that list. I do think that he was again worthy of a shot like this. I don't think he went to an N F L mini camp. I think he kind of just jumped right in with the C F L early, got the headstart on that and then now he's going to try for the X F L. Wouldn't be surprised if he was one of the guys who signed and did play in the league next year. Same with Buchanan like I mentioned earlier cause those guys showed interest. But I think that's probably it for the Battle hawks guys on my end. John, we'll go to you. Any thoughts Nico? Bolden, very fun cornerback. I'm pulling up his notes here real quick just before I get onto Bolden, I'm going to back up what Evan said about Ca Gamble. He is a possession receiver, not a great athlete. I think that's why he was initially at Florida, transferred down to UCF and I think that's probably why he's, he's down to here. His hands are a little bit iffy but he's capable and he's not a great blocker. So he is really like an hvac I think it is probably what the way that you want to use him. I think he's a little undersized as well. Gambles he's, yeah, six two and six eights and 2 42 43 is what he weighed in at. So you got a guy that's a little bit smaller and isn't a great blocker. That's an HVAC that you're going to try to use in the slot essentially like a big slot. James Bostick is an interesting receiver I watched, I saw him, I know that he's listed Ohio. He had some ties to Vanderbilt, did this pro day there and that's where I saw him. I got eyes on him live, he looked pretty good and he was throwing with some U S C quarterback that had never played I think was the quarterback working out there that day. But he was ran decently, ran well. I think he had the fastest 40 out of anybody there. And then Jacob Gaul went to the tropical bowl. He's interesting now the problem with Gaul was he gets down the tropical bowl and his pads aren't there cause they have to ship their pads to these all-star games to perform in them and they never got there. So he was a healthy scratch for the tropical bowl because he had no pads. But he was a good guy, good to talk to. Definitely has a smart good head on his shoulder. So those are the names outside of the ones that Evan mentioned already that popped at me a little bit. Craig, any thoughts? Yeah, I can't say too much more. I think Buchanan will take over at their linebacker position where they kind of got a hole at. Now at this point in time, like John said, I'm just at on with Bolton too. He was a guy that tested extremely well for his si like six foot 3 2 0 8 4 4 40, 41 inch vertical, ten seven broad. There's a good chance that he ends up being sum for the battle haws if he gets on the field for them. Let me see here. I got a couple comments I'm pulling up. I just had a wedding named Query come in here I got to respond to real quick. We have a couple comments in the chat. Richard Pomp, this is great. Now XL 2024 we're going to have offense. Defense of the year. Denzel, of course. Ball Hawk's loaded again, he's all excited. Draft guy Jimmy Gilmore Gamble is a good athlete, just not the biggest guy. Extra points checking in. Townsend also Texas, that primary kickoff returner as well as splitting time at wide receiver, running back gamble put 21 reps, his pro day idiot Swing Max's point now I hadn't even paid attention the draft picture list. Alphabetical order. Guess we'll never know the order. John, are you going to be able to sleep at night not knowing the order in which the ex rookie draft picks were selected? Yes. Okay. All right. Well I mean Max might not so I got to ask. I check on that I guys, any other thoughts on this? We'll get the vipers and then we'll try to do some final thoughts. Nope, we're good. All right, let's get here. Vegas Vipers here coming off. We fired our, we've not fired but we've mutually parted ways with our head coach. Rob Woodson all this out. Let's start with Coach Craig, any thoughts on the Vegas vipers here? Like I said, I think D P P over there, Joey is kind of taking care of the picks right now. Let me see here. I was trying to look up Darius Nash because I feel like his name was familiar. There's a couple Utah Tech guys that tested really well. I know it was him and I think I want to say Colby Williams but I'm still looking for some stuff here. Evan, did you want to go to somebody else? You can Avid. Any names you want to pop on? Yeah, there's probably, let's see, maybe two guys I can talk about here. The first being Stacy, I'm not trying, going to try not to butcher that last name. Stacy ch Wizi from, yeah, Northern Arizona. Another guy that I was close to interviewing didn't end up happening due to time reasons, but we've been in touch and he was invited to Giants mini camp. He was someone that had an injury in college and I think that hindered a bit of his production kind of took a toll. But from what I remember he had pretty good measurables and I knew the N F L was going to take notice of him even if he again kind of slowed down on the stat sheet. I don't know how he performed last season cause I was going off sophomore and junior year stats when I first talked to him. But yeah, Stacy Wiley would be a good weapon. And then the other guy here is Robert Mitchell from North Carolina Central. Not too familiar with the player himself, but again, North Carolina central H B C U school. I know DiUS Richard was a really good quarterback at NC Central last year and he was helping block him. So it seems like a good pickup to me. John la toss to you. Any other thoughts on this? So Robert Mitchell did the H P C U Legacy Bowl this year came in. He was definitely one of the guys that I was kind of watching. I thought he had some heavy feet overall, at least in the combine notes that I took. But measured in good 6 2, 3 0 4, 33 and a half inch arms, which is great for, he is probably a guard at the next level. So yeah, keeping the H B C U pipeline going. Jamari Edwards out of James Madison. That's another guy that I really like. It's a defensive line prospect. I'm pulling up my notes cause I've been guys you got to understand I've been so into Yeah, you're good. This next draft class that I'm having to pull this stuff up to remember. Yeah, so I saw Jamari at the tropical bowl but I was tracking him before he got down there. He's a transfer from Marshall, he played his last year. James Madison showed some decent handwork and was jokingly kind of told by a teammate. Oh he's not the smartest fella but that was the little note that I got. He's fun, he's a fun guy. He's a little bit, a bit of a goofball but it's fun dude to be around and I think he's got a really good shot at making an impact in a rotation the in the X F L. Craig, any other thoughts on that? You got your notes up? Yeah, so Nash I went back to on Utah Tech, he was a pretty decent player there. He did come down to safety when I was listening to him. I was trying to remember between him and Kobe Williams. I thought one was the corner, one was the safety, but apparently they both fisted his safety here. So he's kind of an interesting prospect. His is pretty slightly above average I'd call it. But if he gets a chance he could be somebody that's a little bit interested in. Evan already talked about Stacy, I was going back and at some of his stats too. So it looks like this year he only had 15 receptions but he is still coming back from that injury from last year is what it looks like. So he's the guy that really just needs a chance and if he can prove that he is healthy then he might get a bigger shot at some point in time too. Let me get here, let's get out of this. We got a couple last comments here. We need to get draft id. We just like on the stream sometime here talking. It's very Edward, it's interesting personality that the defensive manager tackle good length 33 and a half arm, 87 eighth wing, N F L P invite X extra points as well. TJ Green runs a 4 3 4 40. Well there you go. We've gone through all eight teams here and I think pretty good pace. This didn't need to be a six hour episode here, but any other thoughts before we get out of here? I guess we'll go Evan, we'll go around here. I'll do some kind of closing notes. Yeah, well again, like I said at the top of the stream, pretty solid list, very well-rounded, pleased with the selections and most importantly I think a lot of these guys can play in the X F L and they're not just going to be guys that end up in the NFL and never touch the league again. It would be great if all these guys get an NFL opportunity, but we've talked before about how this is a numbers game rosters Phillip quickly, not everyone's going to make it. So with that in mind, I think these picks were very well thought out and yeah, overall I'm impressed. There was plenty to talk about here and it'll be interesting to see who kind of lasts into the X F L regular season. Again assuming a majority of these guys do join the teams because keep in mind the off season rosters are expanding from 70 to 90. That's a big difference. That's 20 more players. So it will be interesting to go back and see how many picks out of these 80 actually do make X F L regular season rosters after cuts and everything like that. Coach Greg, anything else from you? Yeah, I think even what Evan was saying there too, just the transition of these teams in general as we go forward because obviously they're going to have another draft after more f l cuts are done and everything else like that and then see the directions that these teams take. And I think between the first year and the second year of the X ffl, it feels like there's going to be a lot more turnover than say the first year and the second year of the U S F L. When I go back through it when I start doing some of my research with that because you'll see a lot of the same names in the U S F L feels like the X ffl might be a little bit more turnover. And Ill also be very interested to see what quarterbacks end up going to some of these teams too. Because there's ultimately going to be quarterbacks that are either cut from N F L camps because more teams are holding onto those extra camp arms, especially for training camp pre-season, everything else like that. Which ones of those guys end up down in F NFL and kind of who else gets a shot since you only saw a couple quarterbacks sitting in this actual photo draft. Bless you there John. Yeah, it's hard. It's one thing and I learned this very quickly when we, we did not did our coverage last year, I wasn't able to do the U S F L draft and I think we did the supplemental draft and even from the normal draft to the supplemental draft, the number of players, the casual fan knows is quite low if any. And so obviously that's why we rely on you guys. So it's always hard on here, I dunno how they market these things. I know Rick's been on before and we said, you know, kind of do something like this and maybe we haven't have a list of guys ahead of time so we can kind of prep a little bit more, right? And kind of know where this is the scattershot of, okay, who do we know on here? Or if you and guys have been given the list of here's the top one 20 guys being looked at, you could probably sit there and scratch a couple notes for each one of them. So I don't know really what the best way is to handle this. I know it's hard to generate excitement following the initial one, but it was, I don't know what people were expecting today, but kind of in line with what I was looking at. John, anything else from you? Yeah, it's really hard to put a list of 120 to the top guys that they're looking at together because everybody's looking for different things. And this is something that we were just talking about this past week on the Sikh podcast that we just launched. That's going to be N F L. That's N F NFL draft focused. The big thing about it is you've got in the N F L, you've got 32 different philosophies and it goes back to what I said all in the opening, which is in the N F L you have all these guys talking to each other for months as they're going to these different events and they're looking at these different guys and taking in all this information, looking at their testing, doing days, doing all-star games, the combine, et cetera, so on. And you get to build this sort of consensus idea of where a guy is valued based on those conversations that you're having. Whereas something like this, you don't have that and it's just because you've got eight guys, they don't have traditional scouting departments in the X F L, so you've got eight guys that are making the decisions and they don't sit there and talk to each other all year. They're not spending months talking to each other. So that's kind of the thing that you've got right now is eight different people putting together their own separate lists of what fits what they're looking for on their team. With all of the uncertainty at the coaches right now, who's going to stay? Who's going to go? Seattle doesn't know if they're keeping their coach Vegas already let theirs go. There's a couple others that could potentially be leaving and it might not even be for bad reasons. It might be because they get another job opportunity somewhere else that's a better opportunity for them. So you don't know what your schemes look like. And so when you're trying to put a roster together for that, the approach, the best approach is all right, who's talented, who's really good, who's good at what they do and I'm going to pick that and we're going to see if we can't use that moving forward. I think that's good feedback. Do I have to worry about, well I don't know if I'm worried or not about Coach Haslett leaving. I have heard that they don't know who the coach will be, so I don't know if that's Haslett considering taking time away, just feeling like he's a little bit too old. I don't know what that is. That's just what I've heard. They don't know who the head coach will be at next year. I don't know if that bothers me. I didn't know if it would or not. Reid, I'm just telling you, it's what I heard and I got thrown out of the DC beer snake section cause I was wearing my seed dragon stuff so I I'm a seed dragon sample. John, do you not know this story? I don't think I heard. Was this the original X F L beer? No, no. I went to the playoff game. I went to the Sea Dragons playoff game. Oh my goodness. I was forcibly removed by security from the VC beer snake suit Because you were wearing Seattle gear. Yeah, no, yeah, they said for your own safety we need to have you. Oh my god, Evan. Evan lived through this with me on the recap. I don't think I Did. I did. I remember that. Oh yes. Oh I remember it. It was yesterday. Evan was like not Evan was not amus that I had my ticket stuff and everything else. Anyway, I think we did good work today. Like I said, I think the plan is Rick who's been on a lot of these. I think Rick and I might do a little bit more focused like thing next week on the show. I do like both sides of this kind of the knee jerk stuff and then I'm working on some US F L seven and everything else. Jason Hussie and I will be back on Monday. We're doing our C F L week two recap and then I'll be back with Pat, what did we say publicly? Hey, it privately idolized Pat Rafino and myself here. We'll be doing our U US F L week 10 recap and then and subscribe. We'll have our regular show next week if you're new here. And this was kind of the weird one today, late all that. Evan, anything you want to plug before you get out of here? I know you're working on your rough next thing and everything else. Yep. Expect a couple articles for me out on Newshub shortly related to the draft and there was a couple of free agent signings as well that I'm going to touch on there for Houston. So expect that coming up hopefully by tomorrow. But yeah, other than that I'm be interesting to see again the progression. Like I said before, the showcases over the summer and we only get to do so many of these drafts, so now I'm already itching for the one in September, October whenever they're going to do it. Yeah, I think we have two more of these I think. Yeah, I think there's like the fall one or the fall one and the supplemental one. Coach Craig, anything else from you? Nothing too much. You can follow me on Twitter, coach Craig's Sport. You can follow my YouTube page at Coach Craig's Sports. U S F L DFS video went up for today for week number 10. Got some B D F S going up on the daily as well. So if people want to check that out, feel free to do so. John, anything from you? I know you have your new big project that you've mentioned it briefly, but anything else about that before we get out of here? Yeah, it's just going to be, if you want to learn about scouting, it's going to be huge for you. So I do, I will announce I haven't made this public yet, so I'll tell you guys know Mark Sack, former Steeler Scouts. Coming on next week, we're going to sit down, we're going to talk about a lot of really deep scouting type stuff. Really excited for that, really excited for that vision. And yeah, keep up with all the stuff that I do on at draft. Vogel is the best way to do it because there's just too many avenues that I have right now to sit here and list them all and at the end of this live stream. So John's killing it. I appreciate everyone, I appreciate everyone's patience on here. I had a lot of hurry up with the stream. What do you want me to do? We got off. We were on I think about two minutes after the list was live. I appreciate that John. Everything else. We'll see you guys next time. Everyone have a good weekend. Take care.

USFL 2023 Week 9 Results: Winners and Losers of USFL Week 9, What Did We Learn?

Well here we are. Welcome everyone to the markcast. As I switch the microphone there, that should be the correct microphone set up outside. It's starting to rain a little bit so hopefully it won't be okay. For those that watched our C F L stream yesterday with Jason Huie, I am injured here, injured myself filming the wedding over the weekend, so I'm lounging back here. I've got my leg up and the compression sock on. So we're podcasting through, we're getting through it today. Nothing like getting older here. Almost the same age as Trevor Harris here in the CFL. So we have Pat Rifino here standing by Pat. How are you doing today? Way better than you, man. It's good. I was texting Pat today. I said I went down. I'm limping here. I'm limping at my wedding. Pat, who has given himself a new promotion here. Founder of Creative Arts. Yeah, I mean Max has his own title here. So I just felt edgy today. Well I said you were my constant. So I said because Andy Murray is the professor. You can be the founder if you want to be the founder of Creative Arts, but I had said there for the weekend that Pat is my concert. I wasn't trying to, cause I think Andy sometimes I don't want, there's no offense given to Andy anyway. I like giving nicknames to everybody. So Pat is the founder. We have producer Max. Andrew Murray is the professor. Mike's the insider. We're working through. Matt's like the fire head, ginger, whatever. We want to call Matt Lyons. But anyway, we all have nicknames. Yeah, I mean I definitely think it makes the show lively and I don't know, it throws a wrinkle into creativity. People at the publicly hated privately. I idolized. Yeah, number one then I never forget, currently the number one rated us all podcast on YouTube. So never forget that. Here. Oh, here we go. Got Chris checking in. Let's goo. Yeah, you need to put on an Eastern European accent number one US L L podcast in all of social media. It feels that way sometimes. Yeah. What'd you say? Publicly? Publicly. Hated privately idolized. I appreciate that. So we're talking here U S F L week nine going into all that. We did this Tuesday because we have all the C F L stuff. So we do have ratings to talk through here. First and foremost, Mike over at New Sub Good ratings for the U S F L this weekend, 700,000. We had all the weather delays and all that, which honestly all things considered I think was tremendous ratings for that. Surprised Zach. I'm surprised Mike would post these ratings cause they were so good for the us, but no, I'm kidding. Mike here. We had almost a million for the Nike 900, 3000. What do you think? I mean I thought these were good. What do you make of the ratings? I mean this is, I think the most impressive ones got to be the rain delay, right? Because it dropped down a couple less than a hundred GR a hundred people it went from, or maybe 130 or something like that. I mean it was a three hour rain delay and then how many people, and I don't know if we'll ever get this data, but I feel like that number's kind of deflated a little bit. So I started watching the game on N N NBC and then I had to work. So I didn't watch the game until I got back to Peacock and I feel like I'm not in the minority with that. I feel like a lot of people probably did the same thing as far as like, well I have to go do something, so let me watch this on Peacock. So I think when the chips kind of settle and if we do get that info, I wouldn't be surprised if that's the highest rated peacock game when they count the streams and everything like that. That wouldn't surprise me at all. Well it got to the point because I was sitting there Sunday and I was watching the cfl, the Ottawa Montreal game and I'm like, I don't even know how to get into Peacock right now to watch this gambler game before it gets moved over. So I think it kind of cost people a little ruckus that way. But no, it was good. Six 17 dropped obviously the CN B C portion for the delay had 47,000 mic checking in here. 900,000 good. They're going to get destroyed by other networks area reruns. I don't know, I feel like 900 thousand's got to be pretty good for that. I don't know. I mean know we haven't had the elusive million rating since the Preakness or Kentucky Derby, whatever that was going into it, but I think this is good. I would feel pretty good if I was a US L going in here. Obviously all four games on network. I mean I know the rain delay and all that, but they were certainly planned and poised to go to kind of peak here at the end. Similar, the X F L did a little bit. We're going to kind of dip in the middle maybe weeks 4, 5, 6 we're going to be more cable and then go back to more network windows at the end. Well I think you have to do that, right? Because there's always the sexiness and for both weeks there's the sexiness weeks one through three and then whether people fall in love with it or they're just like, okay, this isn't something I want to watch. These leagues are silly, you'll lose a couple casuals who just aren't as invested in it. And then when you put 'em on that big networks at the end of the year, it kind of like you get those views by osmosis of we want to watch this because it's on NBC type stuff. So that's my take on it personally. I mean like that both leagues do. That kind of boosted up even out the average averages throughout the year, especially with those mid-season drops. But with the northern division being kind of terrible, especially that Stars Generals game that when you did it in the pre-season, it looked way more sexier than the two and six team versus a four and four team and whatnot. Obviously it was the best game in my opinion this weekend. But those matchups sit a casual viewer who just is looking at records, it's not an attractive watch for people who are just casuals. When you invest in the league and you watch all these games and these players, you're like, yo case cook, Deandre Johnson coming back after being out two games. This is a good game type thing, but it's a farmer bill who just harvest that crop a little bit earlier that day. Who wants to watch 'em football? He doesn't care about that. Yeah, they have here 721,000, two 50 overall average. I think that's good. Obviously they had dropped down, I think it was three 70 something there with some of the cable games. I will say, just to slightly disagree and not to be antagonistic, but we see these ratings come out every week and I comments on Mike's thing mostly from muted the counts, but like, oh, I can't believe this game or that, I don't know. I if the matchups matter as much, I really think it's the Windows primetime on Fox whatever is always going to do better than cable on. I think it's not a non-zero number, but it's not 50% of the audience is looking at the rankings of, okay, this team, this still has in playoff contention or whatever. I think, oh, this is on right now when my TV is on and I'm going to watch it. That's my take. And I could be wrong. I mean it's not an outrageous take. I can't disagree with you because how many, if you look at U S F L, the amount of people watching this, 900,000 people watching this game, shouldn't that be trending? Because if 900,000, because they're very socially media heavy to an extent, shouldn't at least a hundred thousand of those 900,000 be on Twitter talking about, oh man, case cook is battling through injury. Shouldn't that be trending? All the hardcores are on Twitter. If that makes sense. Yeah. But the U US F L I think is a very casual F viewership. I mean I think for the most part, I think most U S F L viewers, the demo age is higher. I think obviously we've seen from the streaming and Peacock and everything else last year, they're not savvy to do that. I think the X F L for whatever reason has more. It has a larger hardcore group that is part of it where I do think the US L is like this is on tv. M I T V happened to be on this channel. I'm going to watch it. Well, I mean the X Ffl is a Hollywood league. So I mean you're, how many viewers by osmosis just came in because they followed Dwayne Johnson? Well, I say, I was saying with Andy Murray on our show Friday, I think we need to get messy involved in all this. I don't care about the Rockman anymore. I want messy to come in and tweet about the Oh, Do messy. I don't know. I know you also said Macklemore, I think you're a couple years late to that. Maybe Seattle will get a boost if he does a concert prior during halftime. But I mean, I don't know. It's kind of anything messy. Touches. Touches seems to spark some stuff. I don't know. Bobby Wagner wants to get involved. I don't know. I Didn't see that. Bobby's still playing for the Seahawk though. Yeah, I wanted Diddy to get involved, especially with all that ruse. He Ruey came up with the Panthers, Carolina Panthers years ago where he was like, oh, I'm going to make this team a true image of culture. And I'm like, Hey man, you have 16 teams that would love for Diddy to own. Where are we at? Where at bro, you can stop if he bought into any of these leagues, any team in these leagues. Which if it's about changing a culture and all that stuff, it shouldn't matter what league you're in. I got a question here and I did want to bring this up as well. So I'm glad Justin brought this up and then we'll go into the actual game breakdowns here. Can we talk about how damn annoying the drone is? The casual, I will say, and I, pat has been doing a heavier load of watching a lot of these games start to finish during the season and this time of year, my work schedule it, it's very challenging for me. I'm watching the C F L games on delay. I was going to post online. What's more annoying? The Montreal awes, the air, the horns that they have for the AZ games or the drunk, because I watched this game, the Mallers game, when I was driving up on this because this was the Saturday game. I watched this, the Michigan Mallers game. I watched it the entire way driving up to my wedding. That is the most God awful thing I've ever heard in my entire life. Is it always that bad? This was the first time in a couple weeks I actually noticed it. Cause I watched all the games, I rewatched, rewatched, showboats game, just probably like everyone else. And then the stallions game versus the gamblers, I kind of watched, I watched it in full and then I sped through it again because it was competitive. But I had some lulls just because the gamblers, I felt like were not doing anything anytime a goos on the field. I'm really tuned into that. But that Mueller's game was, I know I noticed it. I noticed it more than I do did and now it kind of messes you up because you're like, yo, has it been this bad? I know last year it had some moments, but it kind of jerk me around a little bit. Oh, I thought it was insane. I I'm saying I'm, I couldn't imagine being at the game trying to watch the game or the players. If you're the players and you're trying to do play calling and things, and I know we've got comms and all that. I just couldn't imagine from, if it's that bad on tv, it has to be horrendous there in person. Because during Memorial Day weekend I was with a client and we were in a pretty crowded venue and it's a lake environment, so people are flying drones off their boats and one of them just did a fly by it. I was like, it was only a hundred feet above the air and I was just kind of like, that's loud. It reminded me of the US F l drone. But then I was like, yeah, well, and Not like we went and did drone shots last week. I had one of my guys come, we were doing this construction thing and I'm filming and he's doing drone. He's got just the little maverick pro, whatever. I mean these are the broadcast. I mean this is the heavy duty drone. Big camera mean these are the big boys. It's just loud. I just, it's low. It's in the stadium there. I just couldn't imagine that. I mean, God bless whoever pilots that for not killing anyone, but that is pretty crazy. Yeah, no, I'm not. I mean, I don't know man. Maybe some of these guys used to be in Vegas dropping, dropping bombs in the Middle East. That's how good they are because the actual mechanics of the drone flying, it is impressive. Like you said, not hitting anyone. It's some pro-level stuff. So maybe, I don't know. Yeah, Jacob. Jacob dropping the truth, man. All right, let's get to the games here. It's get to all this stuff. Week nine, I watched this Muellers over the Panthers. This was not a pretty game. We had a lot of modelers defense, I think we had a kick return and we had the interceptions and all of that. What did you make of the Michigan Panthers here? So I wrote a specific note for this. So at the end of halftime, and this was so disappointing because I've been on this guy's coattails the whole time. Joel Clat for whatever reason was like, and I want the comments to chime in on this. If you guys can was so you can't run a play. It's third down. What are you going to do when you call a timeout? And there was 17 seconds left, they're at the 30. I'm like, man, I just run the QB sneak at three yards. Call a time out with three seconds left. That's waited more than enough time. And then it seemed like they kind of regretted it. Like what he said. It was such a gaff from CLT that it stuck out with me obviously. So I don't know if you remember that it was right before halftime. It was weird. I mean because Joel's wildly considered, I mean I think he's probably the most popular of any of the broadcasters right now. It is. It's a weird over criticalness. I think they have for the officiating, I think they have for the coaches across the board in the US F L I think the E, for whatever reason, the ESPN crew with X F L feels like they're a little bit more like, oh these guys are whatever. Trying to figure out. It does feel like it's very critical in the US F L I don't know if anyone else gets that, But his criticalness wasn't right. That was the thing. And then he did it on SAT or Sunday night as well because I was watching that on Fox Sports app. So I'm delayed. So Bart Andrews has his offense going out there. I'm like, yo, you need to kick this field goal. It's going to be a fourth and 12 versus a fourth and 15. And clt, they had that all qb, all QB broadcast, which I loved by the way. But CLT was like, I don't understand what he's doing here. And I'm like, yo, it's fourth and 12 versus fourth and 15. The best you can do is score a touchdown here and tie, or not tie, but do the 2.1 point. You kick the field goal, you get the ball the fourth and 15 or fourth and 12. This is actual brilliance by bar ands. And even that, he was confused about that as well. So I mean maybe he's just tired maybe when you're not there because he wasn't not in Canton doing this game if I'm correct, right? Yeah. I don't think they're flying out a lot of these guys. So maybe when you don't have to feel and you're doing everything. It was. But even then, but the Muellers kind of jacked up the play call too because they did a jet sweep and then Isaiah Henney took more seconds off the clock and it worked out. Obviously the mallers won, blew it, hit the field goal and everything like that. But it was just kind of as someone who considers himself a student of the game and all that hot jazz and whatnot, I was kind of like, what is going on here man? I was thoroughly confused by what this thing, but overall the game, I mean Josh, they were love hurts. That was my thing. Or love is not enough, Not is enough. And that's that. If I could shill, if any, that's the title of my week. Nine QB rankings was Johnson, the Johnson is strong, love is not Enough, Magoo is mcg. Great. So as many innuendos as I can fall in there, director of creative art Founder, founder of Creative Arts. But I love, he threw a tip ball at the line to, but then two of them, his interceptions were right two. Right two the defenders and then one was in Cov like double coverage, which you're like, dude, they're baiting. They were baiting him all day because he's been so successful hitting the seams that they took away the seams. That Pass Rush was dominant enough for the Muellers led by Boogie Roberts, who by the way took the final snap on the qb. Neil not getting talked about enough, just shows who's watching and who's not. Yeah, boogie Roberts played quarterback this game. Did they record that in his stat line by the way? Can you go down? Did I don't think so? Yes they did. Oh did they did. Yeah. One temp negative one rushing yards. Oh yeah, I see it. There you go. Yeah, they didn't have it two days ago. But I mean you have all that good stuff going on that Pat, you should pat tweet that out so that the US L comms can take it and then tweet it this wrong. Yeah, I mean it's clear that the US L comms hates me, but they also use all my stuff. But it's not clout chasing if they do or if I do it, it's cool if they do it, it's a problem when I do it. But the Panthers obviously they, they've had this continuity thing on offense so many times that it just doesn't work. It's not, not clicking on all cylinders. They'll have two good games, one bad game, two bad games. And it's a shame because that defense is so good in that LeVonte Taylor has been an awesome addition. He's kind of been one of the less talked about defensive backs this year. I don't think he's given up a touchdown this season. They don't really throw his way. Everything deep ball goes towards Josh Butler, the other cornerback and whatnot. And it's led by Frank Ina and Breland speaks. But someone that doesn't get talked about enough is Levi Bell, who was their fifth round draft pick in the U S F L ironically played with the Ravens for all of, I think about 70 hours. He was on their team on their roster and got cut, came to the U S F L and he's got four and a half sacks right now. And a lot of that could be attributed to speaks demanding so much attention because Bell is on the other side. So it's ironic because he played with the Ravens and my player comp to him is Patrick Rashard, their fullback who plays defensive line as well. And they have very similar body types, very similar games. So it's kind of funny they both played on that team, which I'm working on a Bell article about why he should play fullback as well in the nfl. But it's just a shame to see how good that defense is and the effort they put in and they gave up one touchdown, which they started at the 26th or something like that from a Josh Simmons's kick return. So I mean you kind of hard to combat that. But you know, held this team to field goals, especially with a block punt for the inceptions 19 points. I mean Troy Williams kind of game managed this thing, avoided some sacks with his legs to throw the ball away. But in the end, I mean the Mallers were the better team. This maybe not the better defense because if I threw four interceptions to you, there was one of them, two of them were great plays pass ball deep, a batted ball at the line and whatnot. But it wasn't a crazy, it was just good defensive game planning by Coach Horton. Really? And they couldn't adapt once they took away the seams, they were done. Yeah, I mean four interceptions here, Ryan might with love like this. Not a great game. Not a great game. But they got rid of Barrer so it's like what do you do? Pat died for a second there. No. Yeah. So what do you very sought after man over here? But what do you do? You know have to ride with love like Brian Leki, former C Dragon Great over there. He's got limited experience in NFL pre-season and the Spring league only played in five minutes. They opted to go to Harrison Frost who has never played in the N F nfl, played at a D D FCS college, then keep Brian Luki on the C Dragons And Steven. And Steven Montez was not back yet when training camps started. Remember Montez was still with the Lions. So that meant Erky was getting those team two snaps, which is obviously more. And they opted this go with Harrison Frost. So that tells you a lot about Brian Erky. Have a couple comments here. One question I had, I thought Mangle had a good game. Mangle one of his punts. I saw that this barely was almost clocked down at the one yard line went out of bounds. I saw Matt because he had had a killer punt earlier and then I was so bad I looked back and you see him looking, he's like damn. Almost had that. I don't know if Matt, is it good for Matt to be on the team that can't really produce all the offense because you are punching a lot. That has to be a good spot for Matt Mangle here of any team. You want someone that we can't score. I'm punt out here. I'm out here every drive. Yeah, I mean it's good too because they do kick a lot of field goals. So his holding skills are also getting put on display. I think for punters the the best thing they can do is obviously punt. But if I'm a punt like Matt who has a lot of life strength, I also want to get onto being the kickoff guy as well. So I mean it's another facet to my game because in the NFL they do have one, they have kickoff specialists and two they also have the punter sometimes off. I have a couple comments here. Strange. I don't have a problem with the bones. Drones too. Bunch of pany, you're a pany Pat, you're a pany that you have an opinion that it is annoying for you to listen to. Gregory here says he has not heard any of the players hanging complaining about the drone. Also love the s I don't know what that is. Love. Maybe the shots maybe we was going to say like love the shots. So again, cause we had a couple people talking about that. And then Creepo freak, we can talk here more at the end. I don't know how long the US can continue without hardly any fans. We haven't talked a lot of attendance on here. I will say Memphis is looking good. Some of these things, I think it's going, I get it's working mean. Obviously we had the thing this week, the X ffl losing 60 million, which there there's a limit of like, okay, we spent money and then we, it's they just burned the money. I mean they spent the money doing things. I mean they just didn't make as much as they spent. So they lost, I mean U S F L has lost money as well. It's profitable for NBC because they're only paying whatever they're paying to get the right some air. Those games, I mean obviously Fox is losing money with the U S F L. So Yeah, I mean it comes down to a, I mean, I mean I got to look at their books man. I mean both you and I run businesses, so I need to actually look at their books to care, not don't want to say care, but freak out about the U S F L or the X F L. I mean I just wonder how, I mean I don't know. I feel like the U S F L is losing less money because there's less expenses. So Correct. You know what I mean? But what is the statement? You always do Numbers don't lie or figures don't lie. Buyers figure. You know what I mean? Some I don't use that, but I like that. Yeah, I mean I could take statistics and I mean politicians do this all the time. When I could take any statistic and make it in my favor if I'm smarter than you really it, I don't know how many people on the internet. The Internet's such a weird place where only one person puts actual thought into the things and then people regurgitate their points. And I mean to an extent we do that. But I don't know. When it comes to business, I usually try to actually know, I probably talk less about business and whatnot of these leagues because I'm not in those rooms just as I don't want to talk about your business. And I wouldn't because I don't know, I've never ran a football team before, but I do know income in income out what margins are and gross profit and some things about taxes and whatnot. And I mean some of these dudes with neck beards that we see on the internet, I don't, just because you make 130 K a year doesn't mean you're in act anything about business. It means you're good at being told what to do. If I like to talk here, let's get into the I now let me know, I don't know if it's this week, if it's next week, I want to know when am I allowed to tweet out about a sub 500 team making the playoffs? Just let me know whenever we can do that. So if it's this week, next week you say read fire the tweet off because I want to know here, because there was so much grief given to the X F L, the renegades here, what is happening in the north here, pat, A lot of cannibalization, a lot of figuring it out like man, so look at all these teams. Well three out of these four teams, the stars are obviously the best team in the north by their record. We could talk schematics later, but they just led for almost seven weeks. Case cookies, the things that were done to this man on the football field. If this is done to someone in a parking 4, 4, 400 feet away, the people that what they've done to this man would be considered assault. And the people who assaulted him would be in jail. This man has been destroyed. And then they get a little, I feel like getting into my Mets fandom here the way I'm talking. And then this team gets a little bit of hope. They get a little bit of hope. They get there. Jacob Deron, they're Matt Harvey and Drew Himmelman a left tackle with NFL experience and then he gets hurt and they put this ponytailed goofball named Aaron surveys in that left tackle. And Hercules ma Fafa just takes this young man and completely disregards him and proceeds to just hurt Case cook us more. And this dude was playing left tackle and left guard for the whole earlier part of the season. And they got this Drew Himmelman guy who's a fringe NFL offensive lineman. And then he gets hurt and then it just falls off. And I'm just like, bro, and I've talked about it time and time again they lost Gunner Vogel and Alex A. King Blu and they were like, yo, this dude Aaron Ceres who crosses his feet when he goes in the pass protection that stands too high when he is in the run block. And I'm half drunk watching these games sometimes or sleep deprived watching these games sometimes. And I could see that and you're like, yo, this is our guy. We're going to, we have an all U S F L quarterback, a guy who could be an all U S L quarterback. This is our guy. Some freaking dude, some ponytailed dude that can literally just want to freaking do that man, come on dude, be better. This poor guy Case cook is, they didn't talk about this during the game. He definitely broke some ribs. Dude, well we'll get To the stars, we'll get to the Stars game. And then you have Deandre Johnson who, I mean he missed three games this year. So if he played three games, they probably go two in one because especially the law leather games or this scrub of a human being. Brandon, I've never played quarterback in the nfl, but obviously I'm qualified to talk about this dude cannot get it together. So they had three games throughout their qb. One the Mallers went with F iu, great James Morgan. So they dropped two games early, they could be a better team. So I mean it's, there's a lot of nonsense going on with this northern division. The Panthers have had the only consistency at quarterback and even then they had Carson Strong who was delayed the coming to the team. Granted he's got a plethora of knee injuries, but because he wanted to throw at the NFL combine, and if we remember he was working out with the XFL that got signed by the Arizona Cardinals for a couple weeks and he kind of got delayed from joining a team. So maybe of Carson Strong's healthy for nine weeks, eight weeks maybe. That record's a little bit better. Got some more. It's wild. It's wild. I'm ready for this. I'm ready for all that here. Well, it'll be fun. It'll be fun Next week, let's talk. Here it is, Todd Haley, have the wheels finally fallen off the Showboats bus here. So I'm watching this game and it just seemed like Cole Kelly was throwing the ball like Tim Tebow with his release like that. And I guess maybe with bigger quarterbacks that's a little bit kind of apropo or whatnot, but it just seemed like even when he was hitting Vinny Papa on some of these out routes, Papay was reaching back a lot and their timing was messed up. And then obviously he threw three interceptions, but the Breaker's defense was playing extremely fast. Monte Diggs had a real good game. He was real athletic, sideline and sideline. Jared Fernandez had a real good game and then like M B T really didn't have to do much and they were hoed and it seemed like that the Showboats just kept shooting themselves in the foot. Yeah, just while here. Yeah. Cause nine is 16 here, one to the, I mean yeah, like you said, didn't really ask for him to do a lot here. Seems like I don't know I what to make of either of these teams really at this point. I mean the thing is you have, they won five games in a row. Eventually the ship ship runs out of steam and that's what happened. And Kelly was doing a lot of what Kelly was doing and I talked about on the show is that Kelly was very successful in avoiding sex and not because of his athletic ability, but because he is six seven and he could throw the ball away, wasn't really doing much of that. And he had some issues and he felt a little bit more rush and it looked like they were tackling him high. So when they tackled him low, he was still up because he is this giant person of a man. He could throw the ball away or check it down to the running back to when they tackled him high, even if they're not getting the sack, they're disrupting his throwing and everything like that. So he couldn't push the ball out. And I saw that probably about three or four times and I got a defensive tackle on that team and his name escapes me, but it just seemed like he was constantly getting pressure. And then Jordan, Jordan McCray, former Birmingham Stallion, played with the Brahmas. He's played with three x two X Ffl teams this year. N F L A X Ffl 2.0 If Jordan McCray is, you're watching the show, man, you're messing out. But he's 31 years old and it doesn't look like he's in the best shape and he got hurt after that at one point. So it could just seemed, there was a little bit of issue when him out with the game and I saw it was Cyrus Mitchell, I think it was dropped two easy passes that hit 'em in the hand. And I mean when you're off, you're not playing well. Those little mistakes they add up, they add up for sure. So I mean, what do you make of this here? I mean moving forward, go back to the standings here. I mean the sounds certainly looking a little bit more manageable here, but I mean Showboats, it's all just this weird cluster here. It is a weird cluster, but I think, and this is nothing against Todd Haley. I mean I think this team played above their record. I think this team kind of shot themselves in the foot starting Brady White for the first two weeks. I don't think they beat the beat, they beat the stallions. They lost like 45 to three in week two. But I do think it's a little bit more competitive in the, it's more reps to call Kelly in a pro setting because now he's at his sixth professional start, seven professional start. And I know he started a lot at Arkansas and southeast Louisiana, but it's different because essentially you're taking a college team is the best of a region, let's say now you're going to even the US of color or the X ffl and it's like, okay, you're left tackle who at Arkansas isn't here because he's not good enough because it raises the tiers of competition. So despite your collegiate success, you're still playing against a lot of fringe N F NFL guys or guys who were fringe NFL guys and whatnot. So Kelly's going to continue to develop and learn. I do think a guy like that, because of his body type and size, may get some N F NFL workouts, kind of like how Jack cone's getting workouts right now. But I really want to see Kelly come back next year, whether it's with Haley or not, because I've been told that Haley is not even running the full playbook right now. They were going to ride In what regard? Just because he doesn't trust him or I think he's so raw. I think that he look at who Haley had in what, what's that place called Pittsburgh? He had Big Ben. Kelly's a big guy. It could be a similar thing where they're trying to do some stuff like that. I also think in maybe he wants to find in the off season more of a dynamic running back kind of Levon to where he could throw that guy what West Hills is doing with the amount of receptions Hills has had. Maybe if he could find that one for the Showboats because I mean there's improvement. They went four and six last year, they're five, they're going to be a minimum of five and five this year. So you're seeing growth and whatnot. Especially last year you had teu, it was such a downgrade to the quarterback room this year and no TEU play as great as he did in 2020 or 2023 still statistically was in that top tier of quarterbacks. All right, let's get here. We have a comment Mark saying that he's disagreeing with you about Cook, just getting obliterated. And I know if kids can go back to Philly next year, we'd love to see him go to Vegas. Vegas. That's the conversation for another day here. And then Lisa says, I agree with Pat Cook had the hell beat out of him after breaking this leg last year. And the assault isn't during this year. He gets off with the animal contract to back up. He should take it. Yeah, I mean case it's been kind of the tale all season. Well, case had an X Ffl offer because of Jaim. Elizondo in, is Jaime in San Antonio or Antonio? Yeah, He had an NFL or X Ffl offer and he chose not to take it, which I mean they had a lot of offensive tackle issues too. So you know, got the devil you do know versus the devil you don't know type thing. And I mean I think that was the right move for Case. I think he would've rose to the cream of the crop there. But also, I don't know what they were doing because I think Reed Sonnet was a better quarterback than Jack Cohen, but maybe because cone's a Notre Dame guy and younger, he's sexier or so. I mean you definitely saw that in both these leagues that certain guys had a little bit longer of a leash than other guys and whatnot. They wanted Deandre Francois to work in Orlando and even Paxton Lynch a little bit. And then I feel like because of Lynch was signed later in Orlando that they were like, okay, this is not going to work with Deandre. Let's get here. We got stallions here. This was kind of the delayed. They moved it and it was on Peacock and stuff. Gamblers here. I know Anthony Miller was glued to his TV watching all this stuff. What did you make of Birmingham against Houston? I mean the Birmingham has established themselves as the top team in this league and if anyone disagrees, I don't think they're watching enough football or they're just trolling at this point to see what Magu does week in and week out. I think he was the leading rusher this week. You have CJ Maribel, who's returning kicks first guy in the U S F L to go over Wink all purpose this year, which is my favorite stat in these leagues because it shows the versatility of these guys through a pick kind of trying to do too much type thing. Had some drops by Sternberger. Deon Kane I think had a bad drop as well. So that kind of deflates the stat line a little bit. But the biggest thing about Magoo is like he's able to keep his eyes down field and not take off for the run and they constantly bring that up during the broadcast, which I love. I mean the defense pretty solid. Scooby Wright coming back for week 10, so hopefully he gets reps, he's maybe on a pitch count just to kind of be in game shape and whatnot, but really show up or shut up for Mark Thompson. And he didn't do, do either one. I think Jojo Tillery was like, yeah, he didn't even shake our hand after the game. He went straight to the locker room and I think everyone agreed that Mark Thompson was the next guy up for the mvp. And not that it really matters 2%, but I think character matters in the mvp, not the offensive, offensive or defensive player of the year awards. I think those awards should be based on stats. But when we talk about most valuable player, in my opinion, it's not really who is the best player in the league, it's more about who brings the most value, which is why, and I've said it multiple times, Andrew Luck when he played should have always been the MVP because he was the most valuable player to his team and whatnot. That's interesting. So he wasn't shaking this hand what was going on with this? If you look up jojo Tillery I, I'll pull it up right now, but jojo Tillery on Twitter, I think that's what Oh, I saw something go out about this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wrote something along the lines of he just went back to the locker room or something like that right now. Did okay. Which it's cool because he was screenshotting ace from the U S F L network who blocked me and because he blocked me, I couldn't get in their group chat for this alt fantasy football draft, which means I couldn't know. They changed the time, but because Ace who blocked me, I got to play him in week eight in the fantasy championship or fantasy to get into the playoffs and I beat him to go to the playoffs. I lost my two points, Mike, I think in the play in the championship. But yeah, no Uber cool that that kid who throw a little bit info about out him out there. Thank you for your service ACE in the Army National Guard or whatever the hell you in R O T C. Coward. Yeah, no, it's cool that he did that. So maybe stick the building, maybe stick the building houses, not doing fantasy football. You clown What? What's going on here? Stallions are stallions taking the chip again. I mean what are we looking at here in the south? I think we go with that dude, I don't think that's a an outrageous thing. I was like prove me wrong until you prove me wrong. I mean the Mallers could do it too, man. They're pretty dynamic. You know, Think the mallers are going to go to the title game. Why not? It could be the Mallers or the Generals. Why not? You know what I mean? I think the stallions match up better but better than the break. They'll match up better than the Breakers unless McLeod does McLeod's stuff. Or maybe he breaks his hand and then David's cheek comes in and wills them to a victory. But why not at this point? I think the Norton division, the way it's been so much fluidity and whatnot, so much fluidity and everything like that. Why would it not happen at this point? So we had a couple questions here talking about the playoff stuff. So I pulled this up. This is on the US F L not anymore. We was talking about the north one playing this out too and all that kind of stuff. Week 10 scenarios, north Philadelphia, Michigan losers eliminated the Philadelphia wins stars clench north division. That makes sense. The Michigan wins. Panthers clench playoff Earth, New Jersey, Pittsburgh winner will clinch playoff by and winner also clenches North division a Philadelphia loses New Jersey. Pittsburgh Loser is eliminated. Walk on. Yeah, That's a Panther's shadow. I know Jake, Jake has thrown some shade and whatnot at the mark. Oh, we lost Pat again here. Pat's blowing up. Let's look here. There. Yeah, there we got Pat back. He went real simple with it. Made a nice graphic. Yeah, he did a decent job of doing some playoff scenarios, but I mean I don't know if he updated it, but he did a good job for week nine. So I assume he'll do it for week 10. But he did a good job of really Barney styling this. Okay, well he likes his graphics so that would make sense that he would do that. I mean that was a good job you guys. But anyway, we got time breakers south here a little bit more Birmingham. So they, they've clenched Birmingham will, but they'll clench the title. They're in the playoffs, but they'll clench the title with a win or a New Orleans lost. New Orleans will out division with the win and the Birmingham loss. New Orleans will clench playoff spot and win. If Houston beats New Orleans and Memphis beats Birmingham, three teams will finish six and four and three and three, well they will go to the Tiebreakers and we have those pretty similar head-to-head best win loss percentage games play within the division, strength of victory, net points and all games, net touchdowns and all games. And then the coin toss. I mean we've seen this game before. I think Daryl Johnston should arm wrestle Mike Perra and I think that should be the deciding factor of all this. They have. I think Mike Perra should have to fight 108 year olds each with a teen on their chest and whoever beats him wins the championship. I think. Pat, are you day today? I think Skip Hols should have to fight Todd Haley for my entertainment. That would be good. All right, let's get to the last game here and then we can vamp here at the end. But let's at least get to the game so that we can go through all this stuff. This was weird. This was kind of the big high rated one. Sunday night, Philadelphia falling. Did New Jersey finally get their act together here? What did you make of this? Because they've kind of looked like do all season. They had the prodigal son of Deandre Johnson and they let him cook as the kids say. But no, overall he did a great job, extremely, extremely mobile. Sometimes the stat line doesn't reflect how mobile these guys are because whether they're avoiding sacks, whether they're just moving around creating a little bit more time and dumping it off for a three yard gain. Now we're looking at obviously instead of second, and this is the most redundant thing I say we're looking at instead of second and 10, we're looking at second and seven, then you can give the ball to Darius Victor instead of throwing the ball trying to get five to seven yards and whatnot. Darius Victor gets four yards because that's what he does. And they pulled out all it was any given Sunday type thing, no tomorrow, all that goofy stuff. Victor threw one of the greatest touchdown passes I've ever seen. But it's kind of awesome because towards the end of the game he was kind of one upped by case Cook who did that read option, which I'm watching the game and I'm like, yo cook is going to pull it. And then that defensive end made such a great play. He crashed down and then he crashed down and then he continued, proceeded to trail Cook. And you look at those two receivers on the side, I don't think they knew that that was a passing plan and they just kind of figured it out. And at that point, what do you have the loose case? So it was just such a great effort by both teams. Like I said, cook definitely had a rib injury going on. Looked like he was having trouble breathing and he couldn't extend his arm as much as he did at some points and whatnot. And I know they highlighted his ankle injury, but man, this dude kept getting beat the hell up and he has been the whole season, had a couple lulls and whatnot. But I think Sam put out the number as he's been sacked 40 times in his 15 games he started or something like that. I want to ask about this cause we talked about it a little bit off the top. Did you like this QBs only special? Seth was texting you about this listener, Seth. This seems to me we couldn't find someone else to do the booth and so we're going to call it this and do it that way. What did you make of this? The three man and it with the teams providing analysts from a player's perspective without following the traditional style of the game broadcast? I mean CLTs CLT is awesome. I know we kind of talked about his mishap, but I mean he is probably doing all these games. He's probably a little tired how we get doing it. And this guy knows way more about football than either one of us. He is forgotten more football than when we know and I liked it a lot. I think Devin Gardner has improved a lot from last year to this year. So I think it's cool that he's got doing the sideline. Brock is always pretty solid as well. Both Devin and Brock on the sidelines are always fun to watch in my opinion because they're both players and that's the biggest thing is it's like the Heer name from Washington and whatnot, who Devin is from his time at Michigan. And to me, I think obviously having the players on the sideline, they kind of read the room a little bit better than sometimes not players who are clearly, so they're just like a player knows not to go up to a certain guy after a certain type of interception. You can throw a pick if it hits off the hands, you'd be like, okay, that was like I could soften your ego a little bit. That was a good read. Obviously it didn't work out, but what are we doing to shake it off? And you're talking in a quarterback rather than the receiver who dropped the ball, dropped the ball and came to an interception. And I think we get that a lot from both the USS F L X F L and whatnot. They have a 90% of the people there can read the room as far as how to talk to these guys, which is a credit because I don't know how much workup they have to, especially in the X ffl, they kind of got messed up with the ice storm. We don't know their workup as far as how they talk to these players and coaches. Well I feel like too, I mean I love Brock. I listen to him every day here on Seattle Sports Radio with sa. It's fun if you live in Seattle. I mean they really is just kind of the fun the guy live through. You feel like Brock, right? Really personal. But to me X F L 2023 US F l, everyone's trying to do what Brock did back in X F L 2020. So I'm glad he's at least here kind of doing that because it does feel like every other one is kind of an impersonation of what Brock did. So I'm glad that he's back doing this now. I know I had talked with him earlier in the season about coming on the show at that point he had done the kickoff game and then he was taking weeks off and that looks like he's ramping up for the playoffs. So we'll have to, I think this week we're doing the rookie draft show for the X F L, but I want to get Brock back on now that he's back on these USS f l broadcasts. Yeah, I mean I think we've talked about it where Fox is putting our prime guys out where ESPN is kind of using guys to the up and up well, but Fox has also done a good job as well. They had Colt McCoy on I, I'd like to see more Colt McCoy maybe next year because I think he's got a two year contract right now. Obviously getting up there in age a little bit, but if I could get five games from Cult McCoy next year, that would be pretty awesome in my opinion. But Tell me it's a chance that they just couldn't find the fourth guy for the booth. Yeah, no, maybe I yeah, mean if that came up it wouldn't surprise me. Oh yeah, Coming back here. Oh yeah, go ahead. Or maybe they had the fourth dude and they were just all like, nah, nah, I'm done. But anyway, so general sheer, like you said, Deandre stars now falling four and five. I mean they're still obviously top of the division, but what do the stars need to do here to finish this up Mean? They obviously need to win, take care of business first. Michigan, they lost to them earlier in a really messy, rainy, rainy game where both quarterbacks, you saw them double clutch in the football a lot when they were throwing it to regroup before. So that kind of messed up their timing and looked like. But in the end, I think a lot of this comes down to the stars offensive line because Cook is obviously hurt and if he is dealing with rib injuries, with ankle injuries, he led the team in rushing this week. Again, I think he's done it three times this year. So if we're dealing with all that star or that Panther's defensive line and that second level is way better. So you have that, they have this guy named Kaku in the safety. He's an NFL level guy. Really, they're only going to have, what they're going to have to do is they're going to have to really focus on Corey Coleman versus Josh Butler, which is great. And I do think Corey Coleman is way better than Josh Butler. However, with that being said, Cory Coleman's best stretching the field down and whatnot, or even going over the middle. Those panthers linebackers like Frank Indo looks way more athletic this year than he did last year is coverage has improved. What are we going to do to match? What are we going to do to beat the Panthers this week? Because even though cookies is the better quarterback, Panthers on paper could be the better team, if that makes sense. Especially with that defensive line. Well here. So it's looking forward here. And generals, what do we got stars here that'll round it out. I mean that'll really be kind of for all the same way with the xl, all these games meaningful going into week 10, obviously way different and better than last season with the US F L where a lot of this was wrapped up already. Yeah, I mean Stars, Panthers kind of set the tone for that, especially for Philadelphia Mallers Generals. That's a win in their end type scenario right there for both of those teams. Birmingham, I think Showboats need the gamblers, the win, and that's how they get in, if I'm not mistaken. So I mean, yeah, that would make sense. They need the win and the gamblers need the win. And then obviously it appears that the gamblers need the win and the showboats lose. So flip flopping right there Mean Yeah, but yeah, I just pull it back up the eliminations here. So I mean, all these games mean something and I guess that's what we want. I think one or two of the South division games didn't mean anything in the X ffl, I believe because you know, had ar Houston and San Antonio or Houston and Houston and Arlington played that game didn't matter. So the San Antonio game didn't matter and I think, Well San Antonio it didn't matter because it was the order of 'em, right? But the Arlington one that they, I, it wasn't as poo poo as I think you're remembering that. I think there were still stakes involved in all that. Yeah, Because I know the Orlando St. Louis game, obviously Mathed in the Vegas, Seattle game, mathed a lot. Matt Sexton almost ruining that for Oh, I mean really. But yeah, because they ended up scoring anyway when Sexton friend of the show had the ball up that that was kind of funny. Yeah. Oh no, no, I remember that. I was like, he needed to hold onto that Dude. I saw him doing that and I was like, he's going to get caught. He was not as far ahead as that dude as we thought he was. But I mean, yeah, I probably am looking at it, which is weird because of how much, I obviously hate the U usfl. I'd probably be saying how much more the X ffl does matter with their final week. But yeah, I mean shouldn't that be the MO though, with an 18 division in 10 weeks in the nfl? Like most of the games still matter in week 10. So I mean, it kind of makes sense if we really get simple about it. Yeah, max here, of course. Yeah. Yeah. San Antonio imagined if they won, Arlington would've had to beat Houston to get in. So that mattered and then they lost. So was You are right then that it mattered. It mattered because of San Antonio lost before, right? This accident? Correct. Okay. And then because they didn't then it was a nothing game Because I remember that they had the third string running back went off and Cole McDonald had a pretty Greek game as well. So Justin's asking here, who gets the number one pick? Well, we kind of did that retrofit last year where they said, oh, we don't want the tape ball. But obviously they don't need to worry about that right now. But I don't know. I mean I'm sure they'll figure that. I'm sure Moose will come out and say whatever at some point they'll figure out who gets the Yeah, I mean they need their college draft pick. Yeah. I mean, no one wants the number one pick right now, so I think that's a good thing. I think that little wrinkle in it kind of made it worthwhile because obviously last year they had wind bonuses, but what's even cooler than wind bonuses is film. And we always, all these players want film, so they're hopefully playing hard to the very end as well. Because every game matters. Every stat matters for them and they're just building their resumes. So I think that's, at least now, the number one pick's going to be a little bit more complicated because I'm sure they'll have to go off wind percentages and stuff like that. Well, and also, I don't know, I mean we're going to live through the rookie draft this weekend here with the X F L. I don't know if the U S F L college draft, do we care about the number one pick? I don't know. Yeah, I mean that the Panthers had the number one pick. They picked up Jared Horst and I know he was an undrafted free agent. He was an undrafted free agent in Miami. I think he got cut, but I think he's with the Packers or something like that now. And I mean the top three picks, I think Lindsey Scott was one of them. I, I'd have to remember, but I know Chase Bryce, he had a workout couple N F NFL workouts and then he's up with BC right now he's at Appalachian State, Clemson and I play a deer. Well, here we go. We're winding down here. Anything else from you and other takeaways from the week? Anything else on your mind? Not really. I mean overall I really loved the Stars game. The Stars General's game was one of my favorites. Anytime you watch Alex McGoo play, regardless of how bad the gamblers looked, it's just a privilege to watch that guy play. He had some ups and downs, was supposed to be QB one last year, got hurt, had a spot start, won that. And then after Jamar got hurt to will them back to the championship, like the Magoo story's great. 23 total touchdowns right now. It could possibly pass AJ McCarran for the most in a 10 game span. So McCarran had 25. He's tied with DeNucci right now, which is pretty cool. I don't know if us f l comms will tweet that out after I wrote that, but I mean whatever it Last thing here, Luis, is asking what are we doing schedule this week? What I believe is we are doing our X L rookie draft show sometime Friday during the day. I know they're going to announce the details of that tomorrow. I've been talking with exl, trying to figure that out just for planning purposes. But I imagine we'll be doing a Friday stream with that if Pat wants to come on. I know Evan's excited about that and John Vogel and everyone else. So we will figure that out for Friday. I believe Hussy and I will be back on Monday. I don't think we're going to be doing a C F L preview show, but we'll do the recap show. And then I imagine, pat, if it works out, we'll do this again Tuesday if it works. Stay agree wise that way. But I think Friday, Monday, Tuesday, I don't think we'll be doing any preview shows this week. Yeah, I mean we should be okay on for Monday or Tuesday for me. I mean, it's a grind man, like we've talked about. And you're going hard into the C ffl season. So I mean, what are you looking at? 36 weeks, 38 weeks of football. It's a lot. I know at least the CFL's new and fresh. I do like that. I think the storylines are fun. I think it's good going into that hussy and I have a good thing if you haven't checked that out, but I would encourage that if you want your football fix here, if you have Fuo YouTube tv, you have the CBS B Sports network and then obviously everything else with the C F L plus, everything's streaming. But it's really honestly really easy to get the C F L games right now. So once we get done with the U S F L, you got, it's a 21 week season, 18 games a team for the C F L. So if you are wanting more football, I think it's going to be a fun ride going into the fall. The games have been exciting so far. I mean, I know it's sloppy week one, but it has been a good C ffl season. So Yeah, I mean it's the same thing. I'm sure. I'm sure practices got jerked around with the wildfire stuff as well. I'm sure things, they kind of probably went in hotels or whatever. Overall though, I mean, CFO's great. I know there's some naysayers on the cfl. I just think we're uneducated on this. There's a lot of naysayers about it. Yeah, well, I mean there's definitely gatekeeping by them, but the overall CFO game is great, so get much better. Well, pat, I appreciate it. We'll be back next week talking the week 10 on here, a founder of Creative Arts. We appreciate you finding time to come on today, so I really appreciate it. As always, Pat's doing a lot of work and crime behind the scenes, so thank you very much. Always, man. Thank you. Awesome. We'll see everyone next time. I can subscribe. Take care.

CFL 2023 Week 1 Results: Winners and Losers of CFL Week 1, What Did We Learn?

Oh, good morning everyone. Happy Monday. Welcome to the Mark Cast here, Reid here. A little different angle. Today we saw Trevor Harris take a hit at the end of the game last night. I'm a little bit on the IR as well right now. Was filming a wedding on Saturday, felt a pop in the back of my right leg and it li being got my leg elevated here. So I appreciate everyone working through Less than Ideal here. I got my mother's compression sock on and we're working through it. Welcome. We have been doing these every Monday through the X ffl season with Andy Murray, pat Rapino here through the US F L and now we have Jason Hussie joining today as well as special guest Evan Willmore. Appreciate this kind of the knee jerk reaction Monday morning, what did we learn from whatever league of choice over the weekend, pat Rapino and I will be back tomorrow. Same time we'll be doing the U S F L recaps analysis and then obviously the ratings that should be coming out for that as well. Bring in my co-host for today. We have Jason Hussie here. First off Jason, how are you Doing great, Reid. How are you? I'm good. We're we're working through and then we have Evan Smore here. Evan said I got a lot to talk about for the C F L as well. James, checking in anytime we have, raise your hand if your team is undefeated right now in the C F L action. Got a lot to talk about with Jason as well. Everything else, but first off Evan, how are you doing? I'm doing good man. Excited to talk about some C F L football start of a 21 week season in full. So yeah, lots to cover just in week one already. Yeah, so we'll go. Jason was with me for our pregame kickoff show with Nailer and Farhan and everyone else. That's good. If you want to go back and check that out, Chris checking it as well. Hey Hussie. First off Jason, we're back C F L. I'll pull up kind of all four games here, but what did you make of just a weekend overall and then obviously we'll go week by week or game by game? Well first of all I just love that C F L football is back. I think most importantly that's the biggest thing, but I think in terms of the games themselves, little bit sloppy to be expected C F L short preseason. So I mean it didn't really surprise me but I thought the quarterback play wasn't very great this weekend, but again, to be expected. Evan, what about you? We're back, we've lived through X F L and U S F L here. What did you make it back to the Canadian game? Yeah, I thought it was okay. Like Jason said, it's week one, you got to shake off a bit of rust outside of the Winnipeg and Hamilton game. There wasn't a ton of scoring and yeah, the quarterback play was kind of iffy. We'll get into more of that later kind of about just the general quarterback situation in Canada right now. But overall I thought it was good. I liked that there was at least a lot of close games. Not everything was a blowout again except maybe the Winnipeg game. They really blew the breaks off Hamilton there in the first half. But yeah, other than that, a decent way I think to start the C Ffl season, It was good. It was exciting. I watched three, the Saskatchewan was tough I will say for people in the States. I thought, and Jason and I talked about this on the pregame, I thought the CBS B S Sports Network worked great, able to go on. I could do go on FBO kind of pre-record all of those, but the C FFL plus ones, I wish there was a way they could get the games back on afterward. I understand maybe we can't do live rewinding or anything on the T S M broadcast, but if we could embed those somewhere after that would be phenomenal because I was able to go back and watch the Ottawa game in full was not able to do that as much with the Saskatchewan one just because of the broadcast windows run. Evan, did you have a problem watching any of the games? I know there were some issues as well with the box scores updating on the website over the weekend. Yeah, the scores were definitely a bit of a problem on the CFL website. It seems that they've got that figured out now that all the games are over, but viewership wise, the stream on CFL plus worked fine for me. I kind of had to bounce back and forth between that. And then CBS Sports Network, which I have through YouTube tv, it's kind of a weird system. Again, I expected going into this season I would just be able to use ESPN plus. That's what I subscribe to ESPN plus four, but obviously that partnership is no longer in place and it's now moved over to CBS Sports Network. So it was a bit weird, but again, one of those week one things I'm sure I'll get used to it is the season goes on figuring out which game is on C F L plus and what's on cbs. So it was all right. There wasn't a problem at least with the quality of it. What did you make kind of having everything back? I like the Rod Smith and everything else. I kind of Gideon the familiar voices of all that. Did you enjoy the broadcast of the games? Yeah, I always enjoyed the broadcast that T SN puts out there. I mean besides the TSN panel, they're just so not funny in my opinion. But other than that, I always do enjoy the broadcast themselves. I think the play-by-play guys do a great job and no problems from my end up here in Canada. Yeah, You're living the dream up there. I don't understand the hate the panel gets. Obviously I've been trying now I've been trying to get can on the podcast for three years. I've had melt on. I've had Davis Sanchez on, I've had dunigan on, I've had you nailer obviously, but Evan, what do you make of the round table? Because I do get this a lot that people don't seem to like it. Yeah, I mean I don't get to see as much of it, right, because on CFL plus you're not really Oh, That's true. Yeah, They got the kind of little ad breaks where they don't show you anything. So unless you're watching on I think CBS BS Sports Network, you don't really see much of that. I mean going back to when the games used to be on e ESPN or ESPN two, ESPN plus whatever, I thought they were decent. To me it's just more exciting that those guys, some of them had great careers in the C F L and that they can still invest time into that all these years later. Especially with some might argue that the state of the C F L game might not be at its peak right now, so I don't think their job is easy, which might mean sometimes the product isn't as great, but overall I think they're doing a good job and I mean, yeah, they might not be the best group of people, but at least they have some experience and they know what they're talking about because again, to people especially who are watching in America, the C F L is a very niche product. We have a question here we'll bring up how the watch I will say yeah, tuning into the CFL plus, they just have that slate at the beginning and obviously not, they're not showing all the outbreaks and I did tweet out, I said this will be a great, and I'm not trying to sell promote, but if give Marshall Ferguson there's someone in there, do a little YouTube thing leading into it, I just think that we can't show the ads and we okay, we're pan the broadcast window, get someone that you trust in there, get a Marshall, get someone like, Hey, I'm sitting here with my webcam. Welcome to the show. We got this coming up. I think that's a really easy way if you're not going to be able to show the pre-game of the TSN game to be able to do that. Yeah, Jersey King says love it. Yeah, we're getting a lot of our American people trying to watch the games. It's basically 50 50 because half the ones this weekend you watch on the FBO and some of 'em are on the streaming if it's right. Is there kind of a method to that madness? I just would look on there and see if it was on fubu, otherwise I knew it was on cfl.ca. Evan, did you make any heads or tails of how to figure out which ones were which? Yeah, I found something on the CFL website and I wasn't able to find it again, but they kind of had a little brochure or a PDF or something like that that would tell you where each game was, whether it was CFL plus or CS Sports network and then obviously if you're in Canada, that's not a problem. But for us, yeah, I mean I referenced that a bit, but again, yeah, I had a similar situation to you Reid. It was more like if it's not on my TV guide on CBSs Sports Network, I know I'm going to have to stream it off my laptop on the C F L website with C F L plus Across upon says Riders one, oh, that's all that matters. So we'll get into the games here. Exciting. Steph, how do we get this back up? There we go. So first off, we did our big pre-game start at the beginning BC Lions here. Obviously my game of the weekend, we can get anyone's thoughts on that. Vernon looking and San on there. I'll pull in here. But Jason, overall thoughts, was this your top game and what did you initial thoughts? Well, I think that this game was kind of surprising to me. I thought it was going to be a lot closer. I thought it was going to be a little bit higher scoring. I thought that Calgary kind of struggled really all the way up until midway through the fourth quarter and then they started starting to turn it on a little bit. They got a couple drives together, but overall just a very disappointing performance from them. Jake Mayer, it's starting to stand out to me that he's struggling in these matches against BC dating back to last season and I think that's interesting because you look at how he's played against Winnipeg in the starts he's had against them and it's a drastic difference. Winnipeg he's actually played very well against. So that BC defense is no joke. I've been saying it for a while now on my channel that they have a chance to be the best defense in the CFL this year and they showed it week one. Yeah, I know, and I get into this kind of the knee jerk and the C Ffl seasons a marathon, not a sprint, but Vernon Adams really did look like the greatest quarterback in the league. It was really eight for eight going down and then I think it was nine with the conversion on that. Evan, I know we're big fans of va, everything in our group and everything else. What did you make of Vernon performance? Yeah, I thought it was great. Outside of the turnover, I thought that was probably the best game he could have had and like Jason said, maybe you hope for a bit more scoring, especially on the Calgary end. But Vernon came in and he exceeded my expectation for a week one game, especially because this is a pretty new environment for him. He's got big shoes to fill and I put that out on Twitter. I said Lions fans were blessed last season with the presence of Nathan Rourke up until his injury, you know, bring in Vernon Adams who had a pretty good career there in Montreal, but it's a different environment for him. So to see him flourish and again, he had some pretty good weapons like Dominic Grimes picked up where he left off from last season being one of the top receivers in the C F L. But yeah, I was very impressed with Vernon as the bottom line and if he continues at that general pace, I'm sure he'll have a couple games where things might drop off or whatever, but this is a really good start and he should definitely be happy about that. I think Vernon's the kind of guy that lives and dies just in every moment and I think he ride that emotion with him. I saw him after the game, he's looking up, he's thanking God breathing on the sidelines. You can just read that emotion and if he's playing good and he's feeling it right, he's going to kind of going to be king of the world. But if it's the other way, if they start getting too much pressure, whatever, he does seem like someone that kind of gets faltered that way. It's crazy though here with the receivers, lucky Whitehead kind of in and out wasn't even really a part of it. It just seemed like he has so many different tools there. This new Justin McInnis, I said when he got the game ceiling, a reception there on the side of something, that's my guy, I want to buy his jerseys. He had that. He was a good pickup. What did you make adjacent of just the tools Vernon had? I think it's a great receiving core that the Lions have and I think especially you saw that connection with Dominic Grimes Rhymes. I rated a little bit too low. I actually already regret where I placed him on. I did a top 50 players countdown over on my channel. I had him at 28th I believe, and honestly if I have to do it over again already I probably would've had him in the top 20. He had an excellent season last year. I just didn't think he was going to follow it up. But you saw in week one already producing two touchdowns, having a great connection with Vernon Adams and then the other guys, I think they have a lot of height in this receiving corps. You look at a guy like McKinnis that they bring in, he was a former first round pick in Saskatchewan, so it's good to see him producing a little bit. Whitehead like you said, didn't get much out of him so you don't expect that to continue going forward. You think he's going to have some bigger games so things look good for the BC Lion receiving corps. Well and even Keon Hatcher was he is injured, what's his deal right now? Because obviously that's another huge tool. I think he's on the sixth game injured list I believe. Okay. Yeah. But here that was what was insane to me. Lucky Whitehead, I mean three receptions here. Even the guys that you would think that he would go to, obviously Dominic Rhymes is one of the elite guys on that, but he didn't even have his full slate or was even working with his full slate last night. Yeah, exactly. Sorry Evan. Oh Evan, any thoughts? Any thoughts on Keon mentioning Keon missing? Lucky obviously Al, but still kind of finding everything. I mean yeah, for a long time BC had Brian Burnham that was the guy that they could always go to and now you have to replace that. Obviously Dominic Rhimes had a very good season last year. I think he had 1400 yards was second in the C F L behind Bolton shown and Winnipeg, I mean think it speaks to his sort of veteran presence and it's not about, not always about the guy, the top guy you can have that receiving course is very deep and you can see how many receivers they were able to catch passes. So I think that was just Vernon's ability to find players and spread out the field and it worked out really well for them. Clearly I think it was Nailer tweeted out, I haven't seen the BC quarterback have as great of a week one since, well Nathan worked last year. I mean obviously I high expectations, but I don't know. To me there's a lot of pressure on Vernon. Like I said, I love him as a man. I want him to exceed as good as a leader in this recorder back as he is as a human being. I'm glad he saw that. In terms of Calgary, I thought it was interesting, I think it was going into half the sideline interview and Jake Farhan was, I thought Jake was actually kind of Kurt with Farhan where Farhan was like, yo, what do you make when Jake's like, I don't like we need to do better. I thought he was almost kind of rude that way. I surprised that Jake hears someone that really stepped up with Levi and all of that. Jason, what did you make of Jake Mayer's kind of struggles here through the game 20th 36? Well I alluded to a few minutes ago that he is looking to really struggle in these matches against bc. Looking back to the playoff game last year, a couple of the matchups during the regular season last year, he struggled against BC so this is becoming a trend for him, but I'm not going to be too worried about mayor until he struggles next week at Ottawa. I think that's a perfect bounce back opportunity for him. But at the end of the day, what I saw from him in this game is that he's pretty hesitant out there. He just kind of hesitated to make some throws and I really saw that as the strength of his game guy that can get the ball out quick. Not going to be a guy that pushes the ball down the field a ton, but he's a guy that can make quick decisions and keep your offense on track and that's something that we just simply didn't see in week one. E Evan, are you worried if you're a Calgary fan, are we worried right now or is this too soon to tell? Yeah, I think it's too soon to tell people who know me or at least that are in my circle will know that I'm a big Jake Mayer fan. I've been following him since he was a rookie in Calgary and I always kind of knew that he was going to take the throne to Bolo VI Mitchell or at least, yeah, take over. It was a bit of a slow day for him. Again, week one, is this an accurate representation of who he is as a quarterback? No, he's going into year three now, so I would hope that over the course of the season that we do see a lot of development. I know last night one of the broadcasters mentioned that, but when they were talking about Taylor, Cornelius and Edmonton, it was the same thing. Chris Jones is hoping to get more out of him in year three and it's kind of those first two years, especially at the quarterback position in the CFL where you have some things to iron out. It takes a while to develop, but we'll get to Edmonton later. I mean, just talking about Jake Mayer, I still think he's going to have some moments like this season where what we saw against BC where he has some slower games, but like Jason said, you know, play OT in next week, that's a perfect bounceback opportunity. That's the time where you can go out and maybe have a 300 yard, two touchdown, no turnover type of game. And if he does that then that's great, then there's no need to be worried about it at all. And even if he doesn't do as much as that, I'm still not going to be worried. It's only if he replicates that kind of thing that we saw in BC where yeah, if I was a Calgary fan I'd be like, okay, maybe he's a bit further behind than we would like at this point in his career. Chris checking in here says love the stamps mayor, tough loss. We have friend of the show Tim Capper over with a mantra Let's Fight Deck podcast and VA has on the other season like 2019, BC's going to be tough to be, I don't know. I mean it felt like, I don't know, people down to BC going into last year we had Nathan kind of all of that here, Vernon coming up, like I said, it's doing that over 18 games or whatever and that's where I worry a little bit about that. Jason, any other thoughts on BC or Calgary? We'll move on to your Thai cats. Anything else from the first game? Well one guy I wanted to shout out is Matthew Becks defensive end for the BC Lions. He's a guy that I kind of wrote off. He was a first round pick, I believe he was second overall by the Edmonton Elks a few years ago. I believe it was 2019 and then in 2021 the year after the canceled 2020 season, he comes in and didn't really do much, gave got a lot of starts at that defensive end position for Edmonton, then moved on to bc, got a big contract from them before really producing anything. Has a really good year last year and had an excellent game in week one. So I think he's a guy that's really living up to his potential. Perfect. Evan, anything else? We'll move on. No, I don't think so. Okay, well here we go. So this was to me my game kind of to watch, keep an eye on here. I tweeted out going in, I watched part of the game and then I had to take my wife out to dinner and I kind of watched the rest driving home. I tweeted out, is this the Bo Levi Mitchell experiment over and I had autocorrected it to Bill, so I had my is the Bill Levi Mitchell era over and I had a lot of people saying, well he certainly is playing like Bill Levi right now. Jason, this was your guy kind of watching coming in here. What did you make of your tie cast losing here at the Winnipeg 31 to 42? Well interesting. Interestingly enough, I was going to say when we were talking in the livestream, I said what I was looking for were the passes for Bo Levi or were they going to come up short? Is it going to be a lack of arm strength from them? And honestly I did not see that it wasn't a physical problem from him, it was mostly him overthrowing passes in this one missed a ton of deep open receivers in this game. So I think if he can improve that, take a little bit of heat off those passes, get more chemistry with receivers, I think he could play significantly better going forward. I didn't see anything from a physical standpoint that could limit him going forward. So he looks healthy, he just needs to play with more consistency, more accuracy and we'll see if he can do that going forward. But honestly I don't have that many concerns given how poorly he looked in the first half against Winnipeg. Evan, thoughts on that Bo Levi? Yeah, it's an interesting conundrum. Bo Levi I think has definitely been on a bit of a downward turn in the past couple years and whether that's age or situation and it's kind of hard to tell. I was hoping maybe he'd have more of a bounce back in week one. Here again, Winnipeg is an incredibly different difficult opponent, excuse me, to be going up against to start your season, but even then I was watching him and I just didn't really, again, it's week one, let's not overreact. These are all knee jerk reactions like we keep saying, but I'm a bit worried I think because it's a big period of change for Hamilton, they're definitely going through a bit of a rebuild. Jeremiah Maso is gone, Dan Evans is gone. Bo Levi's kind of the guy. I mean you've got my guy Matt Hiltz behind Mitchell who I think could still be a decent starter in the C F L, but it's a lot more. Hamilton kind of went from having two of what were once viewed as the top quarterbacks in the C F L really because even when Dan Evans wasn't starting, he was viewed as a very good passer. But now you have an older Levi Mitchell and then a career backup in Matt s Schultz. It's just kind of like this is one of those more interesting situations in my opinion to see how that kind of plays out throughout the season and if Bo Levi really can bounce back or if he really is in that period of his career where it's just going to be more gradual decline. And that's nothing against Bo Levi, he's a great, I mean he's played in the C F L for, I mean longer than I can remember because I'm a young guy and I, I've watched him for many, many years but it kind of have to ask yourself mean he gets a fresh start here and I think it's going to take a couple weeks before I can really again get a solid opinion on that. But right now I'm not sold on B L M. Yeah, I don't know. I mean it's one of those things this week one it's a new offense, all that Butler alerts really good. That was obviously kind of the big loss coming from BC over there. Jason, what did you make of Yeah, Butler, Tim, white looking good, kind of the rest of everyone that kind of under Levi. Well I think that you were mostly getting open and Bo was just missing them a lot of the time. I mentioned a couple of those deep passes. Butler did cough up a key fumble in this one, so that's something you don't like to see. But I think Butler overall looked very good and could give something to this running game that they haven't had for a few seasons. Hamilton not known traditionally as a team that runs the ball lot so it's good to see them commit to the running game a little bit more in this game. So we'll see what Butler does going forward, but I think that they have enough, they're on the offense that I have confidence in them going forward, but we just need to see it and see them gel more together. I did see, I got an email I think like Gray Cup presale was going on today I think they were already doing, which it feels so early to me, but I think they want to tie Cats fans here, buy in right now, get into the Gray cup kind of before Bo kind of craps the bed here. Evan, what did you make? Winnipeg looking good. Cals as always Brady Olive so good. Phil, obviously you had the Andrew Harris and all that for years now, Brady there, everything else, what did you make of Winnipeg? Fantastic, that's the one word I'll say to describe Winnipeg. I mean they have been the top of the top at the C F L now for a couple years and it doesn't look like it's going to stop. I mean Cals had probably one of the best first halfs I've ever seen by a quarterback, at least during my time watching the C F L and that was in week one. He had 189 yards just in the first quarter and he had damn near 300 by the time it was halftime. So yeah, it was extremely impressive. And then you know, look at the supporting cast, Brady Olvera, Nick Demsky, even Rashid Bailey got in there a bit. Winnipeg hasn't lost a step clearly they are still I think setting a standard in the C F L and that's good to see. Might be annoying for some, especially someone like Jason if you support Hamilton and how many times Winnipeg has hurt you in the past, but at the end of the day they are playing some of the best football that you can ask for and that's really good just for the league as a whole. Jason, thoughts on Winnipeg here? Just continuing to look just in the league of their own. Well this is just an all time team at the top of their game. There's not much really more you can say Zach Claris is clearly the number one quarterback in the C F L all due respect to how Vernon Adams played in week one. But Zach is clearly still the top dog. They have just such a compliment of receivers. Kenny Lawler didn't even play in this game. He's dealing with some kind of passport kind of problem, but he's expected back later in the season, so that's going to add another element to that offense. I mean I think all their Canadian guys played very well on offense. And then on the defensive side, Willie Jefferson is just one of the most freak like defenders I've ever seen play in the CF A as these long alligator arms and just, well maybe not alligator arms, they're not exactly the longest arms, but he has these long freak like arms can knock down passes at a rate that I've never seen. Just such a dynamic player and they just have so many playmakers throughout this roster. They played so many big games together, just so much trust in that team going forward. In term, if I'm a BC lion, I am a BC Lion fan, Evan is, well how are we feeling with the west year? Is it still going to be owned by Winnipeg here Jason? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think maybe we see BC Calgary round into form throughout the season, but I think if Winnipeg gets that first place in the west, gets the West final in their home building again, I think that no one's really going to stop them on their way to the Great Cup this year. Chris here talking about you Claro getting recover, Evan here talking about Claros getting snatched by the nfl. Why is that? Why did work and all the accolades here we're immediately going work to the nfl? Like what about claros here? I mean Claris has been lightening it up for years. Any thoughts Jason? I think it's mostly just due to an age thing. I think that Rourke was pretty damn young. I think he didn't really have too many stops in the N F L. I think he was just in one rookie mini camp before he came to the C F L, so I think he's like 23, 24 years old. So he's still a guy that the N F L covets whereas we've seen year in year out in the C f historically, the older quarterbacks don't really get that chance. Anthony Cal, Henry Burris, those guys that were great later in their career in the C F L, they just didn't get a chance because the N F NFL doesn't view them as having that potential to grow. In terms of anything else from this, Evan Jason, are we, Jason as a tie Cats fan, how do you feel coming out of this performance? Because obviously we can be analytical about it, but how do you feel as a fan? Well, I expected it because I'll give you guys a stat. The Tigercat are two and 15 in their last 17 week one games. So I mean I just expect the week one loss at this point, especially given a really tough matchup. So I'm not too concerned. I'll be very concerned if next week when I go to Toronto to go see them play if they lay a similar performance, but as of right now, I'm not too concerned given the opponent and that it's week one. Evan, anything else from Win Peg Hamilton? I mean just going back to that Zach Cols thing for a minute, why he wouldn't be in the N nfl? I mean at this point mean yeah, certainly like Jason said, age is the number one reason. I mean, roar is in a completely different position in his career, was only in the CFL for two seasons. But you know, look at a guy like Calis, I mean if I'm in his position it's like why would you leave not going to go and start in the N F L. I mean, yeah, you're very good, but at this point, you know, can stay in Canada, you're making good enough money, you're playing well, you're competing for a great cup every year. They're still going to do it again this year, which is the fourth year in a row, which is ridiculous or at least that's what it looks like. I don't think anyone would really argue with that. So yeah, I mean for Cals at this point I think it's just ride it out in Canada and have a great time. And there's been many quarterbacks like that in the past. Henry Burris, Anthony Kel, everyone Jason said, those guys just kind of wrote it out in Canada and I think they ended up being a lot more successful there than they would've been just hanging around in a couple of NFL camps. J Thompson says, I feel like we're entering a golden age with all the leagues and very exciting. We're rolling through here, we're rolling through X Ffl, U S L, all that. Chris here, he is a Hiltz fan, number one on that and we had, was it the Jersey and King guy? He's excited about the C F L. We're getting a lot of our alt football guys here learning about the C F L coming in here. So exciting there going through. I was excited to watch this game. I did watch this game in full yesterday, kind of on demand on fbo Red Black she against Al Wetz. This was a really weird game. Jason, what did you make of just the thesis of this game from the beginning? I just think it was sloppy overall from both teams, honestly. I think that Cody Fu Jaro played well enough in his Montreal Awes debut. He played a relatively clean game, but again, you saw him take a lot of sacks, a continuing trend from his time in Saskatchewan. Nick Arbuckle on the other side, I just don't think he's it. I don't think you could win games with him in the C F L and it's been proven over the last couple years here in multiple different stops. And I think if Jeremiah Mazzoli isn't back soon and healthy and playing at a hundred percent, I don't think this team is going anywhere this year. Yeah, I I'm trying to find my tweet here. I had a really funny, Evan, give your thoughts, I'll pull up my funny tweet I had from the game. Yeah, well I mean I definitely agree with the Ruckle take. I mean this is fortunately for Ottawa fans, this should just be a sort of fill in for a couple weeks before Miss Soley comes back. This isn't what you have to ride with for the whole season. But that game, I think Ottawa, the fact that they were in that much of a striking distance one touchdown, I think that was a big credit to their defense. Having the reigning defensive player of the year, Lorenzo Malden, he was still doing his thing, but at the end of the day their quarterback play kind of hurt them. And on the Montreal side, I was really impressed with Austin Mack, the receiver. I know obviously Montreal's down a couple receivers right now and he was someone that was kind of asked to step into a larger role, especially with this being his first year in the C F L. But he was fantastic Kion Julian Grant is someone I'm really hoping we'll have a breakout season this year. I've had my eyes on him throughout the entire off season and then yeah, you want to talk about Cody Fuo here again? I thought he was all right, a bit above average. It wasn't anything to blow your socks off. I mean he had the, again, big throw to Austin Mack to start the game and that kind of put Montreal in a pretty positive position really for the rest of the game. But yeah, I mean there's still a couple things that he could have done a bit better. Didn't have a passing touchdown in that game, was kind of more of a manager than everything. Stand back. Being back in there I think helped a bit. And again, sort of the receivers stepping up. And then on the defensive side, I know we haven't talked too much defense on the show, but Montreal having CTE Evans back really proved to be key in that game. Him coming over from Hamilton, I mean he was in Montreal before in 2019 I believe. But it was nice to have him back and he definitely made it known that he wanted to be back and that was a good spot for him. He was very successful. From what I remember with Montreal the last time around Peter, I had our owner Pierre, they're saying this when Cody got sacked from what felt like the 87th time, they were saying, oh Pierre really is enjoying what he is watching right now. He does not look like he's enjoying what he is watching at all. He looks like he's watching the star quarterback. I didn't get the thing with Cody because Cody came out hot and it seems like you always get that, especially in the C F L that Hot First Drive we're go, he had, yeah, huge bond to Austin Mack, okay, here we go, we're going. And then it felt like the rest of the game they go, we got to get the run game going, we got to get stand back going, we got to get stand back going. I didn't get that Jason, why didn't they give Cody? Was it he didn't have enough time to throw the ball? Why didn't we go back to trying to get Cody to pass him? I think he was 14 of 21. I think it comes down to all of their injuries that they have at Receiver and obviously the loss of Eugene Lewis this off season. Jake Winneke also left out the door, but a guy named Reggie White was their second leading receiver last year. He's on the sixth game injured list to begin this season. So it was really important for guys like Austin Mack, like Evan said, to step up. So I think that's a good sign for them going forward. But I think as for why they didn't lean on the passing game more, I think that they saw that their offensive line was struggling as well. But also the lack of receivers I think is the biggest thing for Montreal and why they didn't attempt to throw the ball bar in week one. Yeah, Evan, it felt like I was trying to figure out the right meme for this Cody, he had no protection, nothing in Saskatchewan. It's like, okay, I'm going to go here, I'm going to go here the Montreal and kind of have the exact same issue and just absolutely get my ass beat. Like Evan, what did you make just of Cody? It just felt like he didn't have any time. I mean time and again, the weapons for me are the big thing. I mean Montreal took a huge hit in the off season losing Gino Lewis, who I personally think is the best receiver in the C F L and we'll get to more of his performance with Edmonton last night in a minute. But then Jake Winky too, who's now in Saskatchewan. I mean it was a really rough loss having those two guys. I mean the one guy I'm really interested to see when he comes back, it's not Reggie White, but it's Greg Ellingson because I think Montreal would definitely benefit having that veteran presence. And I feel like even though Ellington is older now, he might not be exactly playing it at all-star level. Having a guy like that where Fuo can just kind of, I think lean on him because right now it's like Austin, Matt K on Julian Grant saw these sort of unproven younger guys, you're not sure what they're going to do with the ball. So I think that definitely played a role as to why Cody maybe didn't have the best night that he could have If yeah, Julian Grant looked good, Austin Mack had a couple of really good grabs and I don't know if, okay, now we have more trust in this receiving corps. We didn't really know and it was a lot of unknown, but it felt like when they went to it and Austin came up clutch when he needed to a couple different times. I don't know. Do you see them adjusting that philosophy going forward, Jason? In terms of throwing the ball more you think? Well, Yeah, yeah, just in terms of okay, now maybe we kind of have a little bit of an idea of what we can do. Yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of it will probably be match matchup based. I think Ottawa going against the reigning most of saying defensive player Lorenzo Malden. So I think they got a lot of pressure on Montreal that maybe other teams. So I think that's a factor. And I think if they get healthier in the receiving core, I think that will be an influence on whether or not they passed the ball more going forward. We have here insights at Tim Capper, go back and watch the sack stand back, missing the blocks with the cause of many of them. He admitted as much to me Postgame. Appreciate that. Appreciate that. Evan, any comments on Tim's comments here? I mean, yeah, stand back. I said earlier mean he definitely helped but it was also a bit forced and he did not have his best game, especially by William stand back standards because people forget, I believe he was hurt last year, but prior to that, I mean he was one of the top running backs in the C F L. No one was stopping that guy a hundred yards every game. I mean I think last year you could probably argue that James Butler was maybe the top back now in Hamilton and helping out their run game. But I've always been a big will stand back fan and I hope that he can take some of that pressure off as the season goes on. I hope that they can get him back in the groove after not having him there for as long and to just, again, because some of these guys like that are on the six game injur list, they're not going to be coming back right around the corner. That's a decent chunk of the season that they could be missing. So I hope again, stand back and get back in there. And I think again, Montreal's offense wasn't disappointing by any means. They did a lot with sort of the situation that they were presented with. Again, Austin Mack blew me away. That was phenomenal. I think I was talking to Emery Hunt and he was saying, yeah, this guy should still be in the C, the N F L, excuse me. It's a shame that he isn't because he was kind of stuck on couple practice squads between I think it was Giants, 49ers and Titans, something like that. But yeah, I mean bottom line again, get stand back more involved maybe that boosts things. I do feel like Emory watches every single game of football that's ever played. I love Emory friend of the show Emory and he works for CBS Sports Network, but he's watching the lf, he's watching us l he is watching all this stuff. The thing with stand back it, yeah, it did feel like he finally got one big run at the end. But yeah, we're 16, we're 16 of 42 here. You know what 2.6 average it felt like okay we're finally we're going, we're we're go to hit the detriment and then they finally got a little bit at the end, but I don't know if it was worth sacrificing that much of the game philosophy. Jason, any other thoughts on that and then we'll get to Ottawa. Well I think it's interesting because stand back finished the season when he came back from the injury last year, it was kind of unexpected but he ended up coming back and playing about the last month of the season and he didn't look too good and that carried over to this one. So hopefully he can take it, pick it up going forward, get back to that guy that was averaging five, six yards per carry in 2022, sorry, 2021 that is. And I think that he can get back to that level, but they also have other running backs. They can use an, we had a really good season for them last year. Walter Fletcher is a guy I really like. So they have options in that back field. Maybe they should get these guys more involved in the passing game with all those wide receiver injuries that they've had. So I, I think that's a consideration for them going forward. But I'm kind of concerned about backs poor performance carrying over to this season. I agree here. Speaking of poor performances, Ottawa, Nick Arbuckle, I don't believe is it? I don't think he's the answer to any question ever here maybe except who I don't want as my quarterback. Evan, what did you make of Nick Arbuckle's performance here for the red flag? Yeah, well I was saying it earlier. Fortunately for Ottawa fans, this isn't the long-term thing. You're hoping Maly comes back. And again, I know Mali's Aging, I know he's more injury prone and he's coming off a pretty big one. The fact that this injury of his is lingering into the following season, this is a bit concerning, but it is expected at his age with Nick Arbuckle. Yeah, I mean at this point he's kind of a journeyman backup, sort of like the Ryan Fitzpatrick that you'd have in the nfl. Been with a lot of CFL teams. It hasn't necessarily been a full-time starter in a while from my understanding. But yeah, this to me, I mean I don't know, I would've hoped for a bit more out of him, especially because this game for Ottawa did still feel like winnable again. It was a really weird kind of matchup. The fact Ottawa was really in it all was a bit interesting considering our buckle through three interceptions. But Ottawa, I mean I really hope, and we'll get to it with Edmonton too, but I really hope this is the year Ottawa turns things around because it just feels like for the longest time last year they were building a lot of hype around getting guys like Jeremiah, Mali and Jaylen and trying to build the culture there. But so far it just hasn't really worked out. Last year Mali got hurt and then from there things just kind of fell apart and fortunately they still have a pretty good defense again headlined by Lorenzo Malden, who we've already talked about. But yeah, I mean the bottom is right now Ottawa is still in a hole and they still need to pull themselves out of that hole. Sorry, I'm just laughing here. Chris says stand back, maybe he should maybe stand back and block his ass. We're talking about the mis assignments for the blocking. Jason, what did you make of Nick Arbuckle And then we'll get into the rest of kind of Ottawa, but just this guy be his last stop here As the starter, as a guy that's been given the chance to start, I definitely think it's the last chance. Cause he's been in what, three or four spots now? Back up to Oli by Mitchell in Calgary 2021 with Toronto then Edmonton to begin last year. So yeah, this is his fourth opportunity to have good amount of games to start here and honestly he just hasn't made the most of it. I think that the turnovers really piled up for him in this one. You saw that last year with him where he had just a brutal, I think it was two to 11 touchdown interception ratio last year. You can't have that. And I think that when you look at this game, the box score, that's what really stands out. Cody Fuo, no turn turnovers in this game. Nick Arbuckle with three. So I mean I think that's a really crucial thing in this game. He forced it into double coverage a couple of times, which was pretty disappointing and I just don't think he has it from a physical standpoint, from a mental standpoint. I think he can be a backup in this league still, but I don't think anybody should view him as a starter or even a stop gap option at this point. Well, and Jason, they weren't even good interceptions, like you said, it's like we're throwing in and it's double, it wasn't even close. I mean sometimes you get these fluky, whatever, okay, bounce off whatever. The guy scoops it up. It wasn't even close. It really felt like it was poor decision making at that point. Yeah, absolutely. They were clean And I, so it was just such a weird game because it didn't, the Red Blacks like miss a couple field goals too. It was a horrible day for special teams. A friend of the show, Richie Leone had the mist and the fumbled he's trying to pond and then he had the bad kickoff and all that. But was, it was so close, it felt like Ottawa really could have won this. Am I misremembering that, that Ottawa had a couple of missed field goals? I don't think Ottawa missed any field goals. I don't actually Kote. Okay. I'm not too sure. I know Calgary, Renee EZ missed, missed a couple of field golf in that opening game. But no, the difference is I think Ottawa just didn't score any touchdowns and that's really the end of the day a problem for them that's been dating back a couple of years now with this offense. Evan, thoughts on the rest of Ottawa's hands? Nick Arbuckle, I mean, yeah, Ottawa on the special teams front, I think the one thing that really did them in was there was a couple plays that they had to redo because of flags that would've been good for Montreal. And then the one that actually counted, from what I remember, it was like a fumbled snap on third down and it pretty much set up Montreal with an automatic first in goal. And it's just those little things like that. Again, I mean special teams, it's something that's overlooked in all aspects of football, doesn't really matter which league, you could even go down to the arena level. It's one of these things where it's like, to me that is sort of the difference in the game. I think the major thing here is, yeah, FUO turn the ball over once and Arbuckle was throwing interceptions left and I think that's what it ultimately came down to there. But yeah, special teams definitely I think hurt Ottawa more than it helped them in this one, even if they didn't necessarily miss out on direct points. I do like that. W was it when Rlo Richie kind of fumbled the ball? Okay, we sat tackled him, it was the five yard line or something, then we come back for break and Montreal was penalized back and was that the whole thing last year? Okay, we got to get rid of Kaari like my Montreal. There's no discipline. And remember at the end of the year and they had the field going and all that, it was all down, but they had to redo the kick. We still have Montreal. I like that ongoing storyline. The Montreal is still just undisciplined. They can't figure that out. Jason, any other thoughts on this one? Well, it's funny you say that because Kaari Jones is now the offensive coordinator in Ottawa as well. So I mean he's involved with this on all angles. So yeah, not much more from me. Well, I guess before we get off this, if we're fans of these teams like Evan, how do you leave as a Montreal fan? How do you leave? Are we feeling good, bad? How do you feel about this? I feel confident in the fact that the offense was still able to produce even if it wasn't perfect, knowing that you're down a couple of your top options. And then I also leave knowing that your defense also stepped up, which again, should give you again, more confidence from the Ottawa perspective. I don't know if you're an Ottawa fan, I think you're just waiting for Miss solely. I don't think anything really counts up until he comes back and the offense actually has a decent option. Again, their defense, in my opinion, still one of the top in the league, but that's not going to matter if you still have a zero in the win column for the next couple weeks. So again, that's where I stand on that. Same question for you. If you're both of these teams, kind of your thoughts, how do we leave week one? Well, the good news is it's a long season, so they have lots of time to work out the kinks. You don't necessarily have to have this juggernaut record to make the playoffs, especially in the East division. So I mean that's a good thing for these teams, but I think it's a huge win for Montreal because this could ultimately go down to a tiebreaker at the end of the season between these two teams to get into the playoffs and getting that early east win. That's another thing about the C F L that I don't think I brushed on in the live pre-game show was that the CFLs put a lot more of these in conference games, like early on in the season last year, we didn't see that too much. We usually see east versus West games all the way up until the first five, six weeks of the season. So the fact that we're getting a lot of these rivalry games early in the season means that we're getting more consequential games for the standings early in the year. So learning more about these teams each week. And was that a conscious choice? I mean, why did they decide to go that route? I'm honestly not completely sure why they decided to do that. Maybe it was that fans were complaining that certain teams were playing each other too many times back to back in the middle of the season or towards the end of the season. We saw Toronto and Hamilton play four times in six weeks last year, which was kind of ridiculous. So I'm glad they're kind of spreading it out more and I kind of like it better this way. Yeah, I had didn't do, I think we did a deep dive analysis of the schedule when it came out there. Certainly been long enough, but yeah, I mean even next week Edmont tend to bc Winnipeg at Saskatchewan, Hamilton, Toronto. Yeah, I mean it definitely seems like we're trying to line up some of these consequential, we have one, so then we get into these fun three game weeks and all of that stuff in here. I love the C F L schedule and that in terms of last game going on here, we had the big 32,000, we're getting Victor Queen kind of packing the packing the commonwealth there. Evan, what did you make of this? Edmonton still cannot win at home here going down 1713 against Saskatchewan. I really thought Edmonton was going to pull through on this one. It looked like for most of that game that they had a fighting chance. And I'm still waiting for the day where Edmonton can win at home because I don't know the, I think the last time Edmonton won at home, Michael Reilly was starting for the BC Lions, so it's been a long time, which is, I feel really bad for their fans especially because they had such a huge crowd at that game and it really did kind of come right down to the wire there at the end of the fourth quarter. But ultimately, yeah, I thought this was a pretty entertaining game from early on. Saskatchewan, from what I remember came out pretty hot and then Gino Lewis had 102 yard touchdown that really got Edmonton kind of back in the fold. And then from there it kind of slowed down until the end, you know, kind of had a slow second and third quarter from what I remember. A couple of field goals. But yeah, ultimately I think for both of these teams for Edmonton, I'm not sure if it's a step in the right direction because you didn't get your home win that you've been looking for almost four years now, I guess three and a half years. But for Saskatchewan, you know, want to know. And considering you only had six wins last year, even if it wasn't pretty and you're beating a team by four points that hasn't been that great in recent seasons. It's a step in the right direction. Again, especially with the new quarterback and there was a lot of new people on that side of the Saskatchewan ball. The team almost didn't look recognizable to me. I was looking, I'm like, who are all these guys outside of maybe Jamal Morrow? There wasn't very many there that I could really put my finger on, I guess you would say. Jason, what did you make of it? Just, I still can't believe coming out and I wanted to get into the goal line stand. It's kind of its own thing here at the end, but just overall Elk's still not coming through. Yeah, I was heartbroken for them. I was cheering for them hard in this game, but ultimately I thought it was a pretty sloppy game, but I was more entertained by this game than I was the Ottawa Montreal game on Saturday night. I think there was more big plays in this one. I mean I think that with these new look offenses, it's pretty interesting to see how they work out. I think Trevor Harris threw a really, really poor interception that led to that goal line stand, that goal line opportunity for Edmonton that we'll talk about in a few minutes. But I mean at the end of the day, I think just really feel for the Edmonton fans and how they didn't get a win here and I mean I'll be cheering for them going forward, but it really feels like what a missed opportunity for this team, especially with the big crowd they had there. Yeah. Do you think they'll be able to replicate that again Jason? Because it's, it seemed like, and I know BC does the big concerts and all that stuff, but to be able to get so many fans in there, have 'em be so close heartbroken, do you think they get them back next time? Because I think it's week after next, right? Yeah, I think having the guaranteed win tickets helps, definitely having free tickets to some of these, the fans that, I don't believe it was all the tickets, but I think a certain percentage of them were guaranteed win tickets, so that will certainly help encourage some of the fans to come back, but at the end of the day, if this losing just keeps persisting the struggles of the team, I mean I think that they'll probably have something in the 20 thousands for next game better than what they were having last year, but I think at the end of the day they're probably not going to see that same 32,000 I think it was for this home opener, given what we saw in week one. Yeah, I think it was a select number. Kate was saying on the thing, oh, there's still nine of these special tickets left. I'm like, they have been pushing this for months. How are there's still nine? How do you have 32,000 people and it's not criticizing the crowd. It was a great crowd. How do you have 32,000 people there? We still have nine of these special. Evan, what do you, do you like the golden ticket thing or were you a fan of that? I actually haven't heard much about that, so I'm kind of interested to dive deeper into that. I wasn't really familiar with it. You, there's a certain section, if you buy a ticket there, you buy week one and then you are able to sit in that seat every week for free until they win a game. Oh yeah, that's an interesting one. Maybe. Well, for those fans, maybe it's a good thing that Elks didn't win yesterday, but from the just general football perspective, outside of Golden Tickets, I mean we talk about week one games being sort of, they're got a knee jerk reaction, you're still a bit rusty, but for Edmonton it's like you kind of have to start shaking off the rust a bit quicker than the rest of the teams because at this point, and I think even Chris Jones and Resta Edmonton staff know the excuses have kind of run out, you know, had your chances to develop players and bring in guys and whatever, and they're doing that. I like what Giro Simon and all them are doing, building the team. I think they definitely have some interesting players, but it gets to a point where it's like, but you have to win games. That's what football is. It's a winning business. You need to win in order to keep your job and to be successful and to compete for great cups and Edmonton hasn't been doing a lot of that in a long time, so I hope the best for them. I'm really hoping I, I'm kind of itching to watch every Edmonton home game in full this season until they win that home game. I really want to see that happen. That's kind of at the top of my list from the analyst slash fan perspective, but we'll see what happens. I genuinely thought it was going to happen yesterday and unfortunately I was wrong, so we'll have to wait another, I don't know when their next home game is, but I'm sure you can probably check That. Is it, was it the, it's Toronto, right? I was looking on here. Toronto's coming in whatever week after next. I think it was funny, I thought a friend of the show, John Hodge tweet like Edmonton, I think it was him that said Edmonton, they wanted raise up kind of a mediocre quarterback. We're going to surround him by a elite receivers and it's kind of the other way around where he's almost Reagan them down. I mean that was the same thing last year when they paid that for Kenny Lawler, right? We're going to make him be the highest paid receiver. I'm like, who the hell for Nick ar, it's buying the Ferrari for your brother. Who are you? What are we doing with this Jason, in terms of this goal line stand? I think it was Milt Steegle kind of was talking at the end of the game. I was watching to me exemplified everything about this right here. You have three opportunities to go in, get the score. What did you make of this in Saskatchewan holding them off? Incredibly disappointing. I think that you really couldn't ask for a better opportunity to take the lead in that situation first and goal from the one yard line, and I think your offensive line just has to win in those situations. There's really no excuse, no, there's a one yard neutral zone in the C F L. You should be able to win those situations at least if you have three cracks in it. So that's very disappointing. I think that I have questions about Kai Lockley being the shorty yardage quarterback for Edmonton because usually you want a bigger guy running that just to have a little bit more power to get a bit more of a push forward. I don't think he gives you that. He's pretty much a pretty small guy, so very, very disappointing and I think to go back to Cornelius, I think that in general, if you take away that 102 yard play, he played pretty awful in this game overall and honestly I think going forward we need to see that consistency, get that completion percentage, the efficiency of this offense up. I think that's the problem. They're just not gaining first downs consistently enough and that's a problem that's been persisting for a few years in Edmonton. Do we see Trey Ford here? What is the deal with that? Do we see him come in Jason and then we'll go to Evan? Well that's what I'm wondering. I think how long until they make that decision to either go to Trey Ford or go to Kai Lockley potentially who's been around for a couple of years now with the team. So I think that obviously I think they give it a couple of more weeks, but I think if that doesn't happen, I think then that's when you start to consider going to another option because Chris Jones has to win some games like you guys were saying. Yeah. Evan, thoughts on Cornelius? I know we're fans of him and track him kind of anything else with Edmonton here? Well, this whole quarterback room I really want to talk about for a minute because I'm a big Kai Loxley fan, but as Jason said, he said it perfectly. I don't know if he's exactly a short yardage quarterback as you typically see in the C F L. I would like to see him on certain package plays where maybe they run, I don't know, it doesn't necessarily have to be a run, but I'd like to see him throw the ball a bit more. And I know he can play a bit of receiver too, so maybe something in that realm it would be really interesting for them to kind of shake it up. Nothing really hurts at this point given the position they're in. Yeah, Trey Ford for me is the one that I would really love to see him get a couple starts in the season, especially given that he's a homegrown Canadian talent. A lot of the talk last night was surrounding Taylor Cornelius and Chris Jones talking about, oh, you're going to see it this year, it's year three. We've been working on this for a while, but if you don't win games, like Jason said, outside of that 102 yard play to Gino Lewis, I mean Taylor Cornelius essentially did nothing. I mean I liked Cornelius. I thought he had a high ceiling when he was in the X ffl in 2020 with Tampa. I was really excited to see where his career would go and eventually he landed in Canada and he's been there since 2021 now, but at this point I'm really pulling for Trey Ford to just come in at some point. Again, I'm not saying Cornelius should lose his job because again, it's only week one, right? You're going to give it a couple weeks, you're going to see how it is. But if I'm coaching at Edmonton or I'm doing personnel stuff or whatever, I think that leash is pretty short because even last year, I mean Cornelius's all time win lost record is like four and 16 or something. It's atrocious. And I don't know what his touchdown to turnover ratio is, but I can't imagine that it's much better because last night outside of that, again the big play of Geno Lewis, he had two turnovers, probably like a hundred passing yards. That's just not acceptable for a team that's trying to win. And I feel like it would be such a great story, and again, this is very hypothetical, but imagine if you had Canadian quarterback Trey Ford start a home game for the Elks and that happens to be their first home win and again, three and a half, four years, whatever. I think that would really help build the culture there in Edmonton and kind of get fans back in the stands and then maybe you maintain that number within the 20 thousands. Jason, any other thoughts on that or I do want to touch down on just Saskatchewan kind of as a whole before we get out of here at the hour, anything else you want to hit on? Well, I think with this whole quarterback situation, I think that Taylor Cornelius, I think one of the strengths of his game right now is running and scrambling around and I think that's what Trey Ford would give you. So I think that when you look at it like that, I think that maybe Trey Ford would be the better option to go to if these struggles continue to see another couple of games like this from Cornelius. Jason, any thoughts here on Trevor Harris? How'd our boy look here coming in the new look at Montreal outlets a little bit? Well, I'm not the biggest fan of this move to Saskatchewan as people that have watched my channel. No, I'm called Trevor Harris, an east division quarterback, but at the end of the day, I think that there were some good things from Harris in this game, some good timing routes. He is going to do his thing, he does what he does well, but you all obviously know his limitations and he can make some real stupid throws. Sometime that second interception was inexcusable for a veteran quarterback of over 10 years in the C F L could have gave Edmonton the win there if Edmonton could just convert one play at the one yard line. So I think Trevor played okay at times, but overall I think that they're looking for more from him. Evan, any other thoughts from you before we get out of here? Yeah, I mean to just touch on Trevor Harris for a minute, I mean I thought he did okay. Again, he might be entering this sort of phase of his career. I kind of view him and Bo Levi Mitchell in a similar circle. It's like, all right, are we going to bounce back with the new team? Not necessarily saying that Trevor Harris was bad in Montreal, but it's like are you going to have another career year or are you just going to keep going on the decline? By the way, I know I was talking about it. Do you read? But I cannot believe Trevor Harris is 37 years old. That blew my mind. I, because I think Bo Levi is like 34. I thought him and Trevor Harris were the same age and when they were saying that he was 37, I was like, that can't be right. That seems really, I know he is been around for a long time. Like Jason said, he is been the C F L now for a decade, but it just never really crossed my mind that he was that old. That was shockingly old to me. Yeah, he's older than I am And now Jerman is always like 36, so it's like, yeah, some of these guys are older than we think and I think Bo Levi Mitchell, I know if McCloud Thompson returned to Toronto, Bo Levi Mitchell actually would've been the youngest quarterback in the East division this year That Believe it or not. Well this has been fun. I appreciate it. Jason and I will be here on Mondays doing this. Evans, welcome back. As always, I kind of said in our group stream like anyone's welcome, I just like to spread the bird. Now we've had Andy doing the X Ffl and Pat doing the US F l I want never want it to be an obligation here, but welcome anyone. Anything else from Jason or Evan before we get out? Because I know Jason's got to go get some stuff done. Not much for me, I think Good overall week one. Excited for week two. Evan, anything else from me? What are you going to be looking forward to here this week? Yep. I would say the thing, I hope that as the weeks go on some of these teams where there's a lot of questions, we're able to figure things out and you know, say that every season and I hope that the teams that are doing well continue to do well. You look at Winnipeg and BC teams like that again, hoping for continued success and hoping that the teams below that can rise up Well. Perfect. Now hopefully we converted some fans. Like I said, I can subscribe. Pat and I will be back here tomorrow. And then we're still trying to figure out, I got an email at Jeffrey over at exe l figuring out what is the rookie draft schedule for Friday, because I think we're going to try to go live to talk about that. So lots of excitement here. I appreciate you guys. Let me get this outro stuff here and we'll see you next time. Thanks.

Episode 148 - Plotting XFL 2024’s Course

Well here we are. Welcome back to the Mark Casts here, special live Friday edition. I do prefer to do these, although I have learned from our C F L pregame show last night that a hard scheduling that sometimes, so obviously Andy can do it here today. We can get on that, but I do prefer the live show. We can take some comments and all of that stuff back in the office today. Raining in Seattle. A little different. I Seth the listener, Seth has helped me have this whole new standing dust situation, so it looks a little different but we're back here. I'm going to pull up all my notes and everything, but I'll bring in my co-host here. I have my BC Lions hat on. Raise your hand if you are an undefeated team and the C F O right now. Huge win over the Calgary of St. Peters last night. Andy, how are you doing today? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on last night and yeah, a resounding victory for the BC Lions and just an outstanding performance for Vernon Adams Jr. I mean he was really on fire from the get-go. He was really crisp, his passes were accurate. They moved the offense with these two out of the first three drives. He had a big touchdown run in the second half and they looked really solid. I think that was a great solid win for them on the road at Calgary. I'm curious to see how it goes going forward with him and obviously see if he could keep that consistency going into the remaining games. But yeah, really, really great sign so far for him. The CFL season is a marathon, not a sprint. So I mean I got all excited last year. I'm like, Hey, we're going to the Great Cup. Let me go buy light seeds and then Nathan Rok and all of that. We all know what happened, but here we are today. Max is checking in JK here, no news retaining. We want to retain quarterbacks. We are plotting the X Ffl 2020 fours course today. So I was really proud. I have my little roadmap. If you know this on the roadmap it leads to St. Louis, which is where the exit L championship game should be next year. So that was a little East Easter egg in that, but we are applauding the X F L 2020 fours course today. I have our dissertation of notes from Max and everything else coming off. Andy and I were here last week talking that we had the layoffs and the Janet Duke Dukes of the world and all that. What do you have any fallout from that before we get into our exercise today? Not much since we discussed it last. I mean again, it's a new band for the league. It's their ideas going forward. Again, I haven't really seen much activity from the social media pages. I think there was that one from the Arlington Rades that the Disney themed little post that they made and I don't think there hasn't really been much activity other than that. That's been worth of note. So for them, I'm sure there's a lot of backdoor planning and trying to assess where their staff is and what they're going to do as far as who is going to be in what role going into the off season. I'm not sure when we're going to see any sort of results from those moves. Maybe perhaps after the draft, maybe in July. It's really not accurate as to what timeline there is now for the social media staff, although we are going to talk about the timeline in general today. Yeah, I feel better now. I don't know. I think that we've talked expectations and what did we want going into. I've asked Mike Mitchell was X F L was the memory of X ffl 2020, was that too heavy on this? And people, and I had told people for years now really like, hey, this could be their own thing, but yet we're still holding them to these expectations now I do think, okay, and Danny, Danny Garcia's words, we've gotten the monkey off our back here. We're moving forward. Kind of all of that stuff. I will say on the rookie draft, so scheduled for next Friday, I would really like to know when that's going to be. I have to work in the evening, so I heard afternoon to evening for that. We would like to do a show, so if we could get the information on that. Not a lot of information from the rookie draft maybe I was hoping that would come down today here, a week out from that. But figuring that out, I think that's a good place. I think that having a couple 10 pole events and we're going to talk kind of local marketing events, but couple 10 pole national like okay, we can post about this, get a little bit of the rookie draft and then the supplemental drafts and all of that. Anything else like high range social media, but anything else you would like to see the XL working on right now? Right now besides recruiting players again is just trying to get more efforts into local markets and trying to be able to maybe get back on the horse of getting people into the loop of renewing season tickets for next year. I know we've seen that in a couple efforts. Say for example Orlando, I know it was one market we looked at. I think Seattle, I'm not sure if we've seen Seattle do that, but I want to see that from all the teams in the league. I don't want to just see it from individuals who happen to be on the ball and really know what they're doing as far as their strategy and getting people involved and trying to get people renewed for season tickets. There needs to be a league-wide effort and that can't just be something you can wait until fall to do. Yeah, we got John Lewis here checking and got to fix that Vegas stadium Wolf and then we have Louis here. I really think Orlando benefit benefited with benefit from leaving or leaving Camping World, going to next rodeo. Soccer stadium seats 25,000. I know we got to get this situation figured out here, especially with the Vegas of it all. We'll see where that ends up. I mean we're taking season ticket deposits for that. It certainly seems like that, but then we've also laid off a good portion of the Vegas marketing sales staff, so not quite sure about that. Max has put together this incredible dissertation for us today kind of going through it, talking about everything, all this stuff. First and foremost, and I really like this, so he has this broken down at national marketing. We need to come up with a stronger identity than just opportunity. People don't buy into sports just because they exist. They buy it because the passion of the players and the coaches. I know the player 54 thing and obviously that was an easy kind of kicking off point for the rock and what did we bring the rock in and he's going to talk and he's kind of got his bullet points and now he's off doing fast 87 or whatever and the Moana equals, but I think we need to figure out what the X F L is now than just it. It's a stepping stone to get somewhere else. What do you make of that? I agree in a sense, I understand why most of the people are here. Okay. I'm not a stranger to the idea of most of these players and coaches going on to the next level because quite frankly that's kind of how they pitch this league and I'm not opposed to it. I do think there is a space for people who want to come back and play and maybe become in a term spring football lifers. Now, this isn't something that's really been around for that long and obviously some players I think prefer to play in the upper level because there's more financial stability, there's a lot more consistency. Obviously having a league that exists beyond three years is a novel concept that we're still working on right now. Even the US L players feel that way too, I'm sure. So there's not this ideal of say with the C F L where that's going to stay around. The brand is there, the tradition is there, the history is there. You can stay there at least feel comfortable if you're resigned to the fact that you're not going to be playing in the nfl. So I guess in a way it depends on if Danny and the Rock and I suppose Russ Braddon want to start pushing it that way where they say, Hey, this is actually a long-term proposition for our players and coaches if they want to be able to stick around. But to be honest, I don't know if financially they can say that with the utmost confidence. It's not that they don't want to, but they just have to be careful about where they're treading and what they're promising along the way, right. So I think in that sense, yes, I would like them to maybe change their messaging slightly in saying that this is something that people can latch onto and stay around for a long time if they wish to, but I don't expect that messaging to change at least for the next couple of seasons. I've said this a couple of times and just on here as well, just as we're doing all of this today, I don't want to be redundant, but talking with Greg Parks a couple weeks ago, I think the WWE NXT model of what that used to be, they kind of, when Vince came back and he had left the company then came back, they kind of, it's different now. It's like NXT 2.0 and it's like this tie dye multicolor back when NXT started, N X T was the developmental brand that was in Orlando that the WWE E would train their talent and get them to go up and it was like Ohio Valley wrestling and then it became NX T. They decided, hey, let's film this, right? Let's get the guys used to this, whatever. Then they realized, hey, this could actually be a really viable TV product. Maybe we'll get a hundred thousand people, 200,000 people to watch this show. And what they did a phenomenal job of doing was balancing, we're going to have storylines here that you want to see every week. We're going to pay a little bit more. We're not going crazy, we're going to pay a little bit more. Hey, you can be here, you can live in Orlando, whatever, we'll spotlight you. Other people want to go beyond the main roster, get their big paycheck and do all that, but they balanced having compelling storylines and people wanted to see Weeken and week out while also knowing that a good portion of those people weren't going to be there come nine months later or six months later or a year later. And I think that with the Rock and what they know with w b, you need to look at that as a model of we have to create the X F L has to be compelling on its own. Someone in the chat with the YouTube comment two weeks ago said, if the I don't, the X F L would not exist it seems if it weren't for the N F NFL because it really seems like the X F L's only purpose is we want to get players to the N F L. We're at least U S F L seems to exist a little bit more of like we are our own minor league and we've got people in Birmingham or Memphis we're coming out and hanging out. It seems like if there was no N F L there would be no X F L and it shouldn't be that way. The X ffl should be able to stand on its own, especially as we found out there is no N F Alumni Academy discussion anymore. I know we have some vague partnerships with testing rules and all of that, but I think the X L needs to figure out how can we be compelling on their own. Well, and maybe that begins with maybe not mentioning the N F L as much in the broadcast, but that's something that they have to talk to ESPN about and be able to communicate that with their broadcast partners as far as what they want to be known for it. Now again, ESPN's going to do what they want. Obviously they're going to just say and kind of present it the way that they want to, but there at least has to be some sort of cohesiveness or understanding that goes between them and the X F L. But you're right, the U S F L at least seems to be in a holding pattern of, well, okay, it's cool if you go over to the nfl, but we are establishing ourselves as a viable league and an entity. I feel that way for several leagues. I don't like you don't see this messaging in, for example, the I F L. I don't really see that so much. I don't see that in FFC F Certainly that's not the, that they're not saying, Hey, we want, we're trying to send you this other league. I think for the xfl I get why in terms of, again, the whole idea of you need to present an opportunity or a chance, a step ladder being able to ascend as a player and a coach or as a personnel member that can get greater opportunities, that's fine, but maybe if there's a way to show that rather than say that right, instead of it being you're messaging it just being implied saying like, Hey look, we know you're probably going to move on, but we're not trying to push you out the door. If you want to devote more of your resources to certain people in covering their stories because say for example Ben Ucci who we all knew was trying to go back to the N F L, if you don't want to put as much resources into that, that's fine, right? That's okay. You just don't have to make it obvious because the players are already telling you that in their own way. So it's the same thing last year with the CFL with Nathan Ro. I'm sure if every Canadian would've loved to just have him around forever and ever and ever, I certainly wouldn't have minded. He's, he was phenomenal to watch last year, but we all do what his intentions were before he even put out his statement at the end of his tenure with the VBC lions. So yeah, it's a tough line to straddle, but you have to know when and where to put your resources as what you're trying to promote because you have to, it's hard to just say, yeah, we know you're going and we're going to tell everyone else we know that you're going that. I could see where that maybe is a little bit in a way discrediting your product in your league. Yeah, max sells maybe if you are going to focus on the opportunity, maybe have a little bit more last chance you or something like this is their last opportunity. I don't like that because I would like to think these players, we can thrive in the X F L. This isn't a do or die situation making it back to the N F nfl. But I get that. In terms of social media, it seems to me at least some the teams have been active here and maybe it's just my Twitter timeline. How would you rate the last two, two and a half weeks following the X F L championship game? How has the X F L social media's been? I mean it's pretty quiet aside from the announcements that came out I think a week afterwards with the draft. I haven't really seen a whole lot. I mean the showcases as well, like I said, they announced the showcases, but as far as consistent activity, the only other thing I notice a lot is YouTube keeps posting highlight videos, which is good. That's what I asked for I think about a week ago or two weeks ago. I said, please continue to post highlight videos and maybe even post extended plays of games, I guess you could say classic games, which is hilarious because it's only been around for so not for so long, but maybe something of that nature where you could really attest to certain great moments during the season. Keep pushing out content like that. I think we had a highlight video of one of the players the other day. I can't remember which one, but we've had a few we've that have come out Max, I was watching the Max Borge tape and re-looking at some of his best runs of the season, Jalen McLendon who didn't get a lot of play, but maybe you start to put out players who maybe are going to come back or that's the thing which highlight videos do you try to highlight more? The people that for sure have moved on are the ones that you think might be coming back though. That's also another strategy you have to consider. But yeah, these highlight videos have been good. That's on their YouTube page. I like that they've been pushing those out. It's just more of the Twitter sphere that I haven't seen as much on, so that's one thing to consider. But as far as YouTube goes, I actually have been pleased, at least in the last I'd say month and a half of them really starting to actually use to push out that content because that's one thing I wasn't crazy about in 2020 was their YouTube page. I didn't think it was very organized and I don't think they properly utilized it. I know they're getting the, yeah, remember when we had the promo video, whatever with the new and it was leaked on YouTube or was it Seth or whatever posted about that? I do laugh when the X F L because it does seem like they're getting more consistent in their posting when the first ever, when they did their coaches round table, they posted it right at the same time on Friday that we post our episodes and remember Max texted me, he's like, this is the end of the mar. You're going to have to, you can't go live at seven, you know, can't do it seven. I said, let's just see here. I think the thing ran three episodes or I think they did a north in the south and who is it? Woodson didn't even show up. It wasn't even on there, but I did their getting more consistent because here's the deal, you have a lot of that stuff anyway, so repurposing that, I mean do pay some interns sitting there 50 K a year and hey edit, edit one of these every day. I have many a kid that would intern for me that would do that probably for free, but let alone for a salary. But yeah, you just pay somebody to do that. He hasn't here yet managing, getting more people higher. I don't like, we talked about this last week and I have a couple shorts to share as well. I've been busy this week with work, but the off season on season hiring the of the X F L, that can't permeate to social. I think you need to have social people there. I have a feeling if you track the way some of the capitalizations of social media tweets, I have a feeling there's a little bit of double dipping right now, which I don't like. I would like to see eight dedicated people. I understand finances and if we have to move people around or whatever. Have you noticed that? Am I the only one that's noticed? It seems like the Arlington Renegade social media person now is like DC defenders are kind of doing that or Houston, have you noticed that? Yeah, just a little bit. I think there was enough background commentary that might have led to that change, but I just wish that there was more, I hate to use the creativity because that's such a vague term, but there just doesn't seem to be the same level of understanding or at least intune this to the community that there was with the social media accounts in 2020 there's with Bay, Yeah, the content was just, it was really fun. It was really electric in a lot of ways. I really liked how they presented certain ideas or certain things, but I'll be honest, Reid, the same thing happens in the N F L. I could tell you a slew of counts that just are just really bland, boring mayonnaise, vanilla pay sandwich that just don't have a lot going with them as far as their presentation or their content or just seem to be a little tone deaf. But the counts that are great, and I know I've sang their praises before a hundred million times, but the charger, social media account gets it. They also put resources and they devote themselves into having real planning into what they do. So with eight teams, I think it's more obvious because there's so few options. You notice it much more with the nfl, you don't see it because it's like, well, I don't follow 16 of the teams in the league so I don't care. But with the X ffl that is more important because you are seeing every individual team more often, so you have to, for lack of a better term, just devote more resources to each one if you're going to really make sure all their content at least has a certain baseline of quality to them. Yeah, I couldn't tell you. Yeah. What do the Patriots tweet do? The Patriots tweet like Bill, bill Belichick there not happy. Not good, not good. It is funny though, yeah, we, we've been joking a lot online that whoever seems to be writing the Arlington account has a said lack of non capitalizing anything in a sense, and I'm like, that's nearly impossible on the phone. You almost have to go back. It auto corrects it to capitalize, so you almost have to go back and no, I'm negating that. It's a very purposeful choice for that. I will say, we talked about this before, the time to maximize the social media is right now where you have all eight teams under one roof that if you know God willing the f l franchise in 2030. Here we're talking about who, I don't even know who about Malcolm Morris by it. He's got the Seattle Sea Dragons, Malcolm Morris, part of the owner of the Kraken. We've got Ryan here, Ben Higgin, Boger, right? Isn't that his name? Ben, whatever. Anyway, we got Malcolm Moore owning the Seattle Sea Dragons. Then hey, maybe he wants to devote a lot more money to the social media and maybe we have the Vegas team has been relocated and they don't want to pay any money anymore like that. Then you're going to have disparity. But right now where you have all the teams and this really is there, there should not be an excuse for any subpar social media across the board I don't think. Well also they say they were going to do more content in-house in Arlington. That was their whole shift that they were going through before the season started. So I didn't really see that level of consistency across the board because they've been operating out of the hub for most of the season. They come back and they do their practices and everything, so I don't really get why there wasn't more. Maybe there just wasn't enough time for their mediation. They weren't able to get everyone in the same room and talk about this on a consistent basis. I'm not sure. And again, what's going to be interesting is finding out if we can, in hindsight, how much time was really spent on each thing. Are there things that had, how often were there mediations for this versus this or did they think about this before they thought about this? And I know that's been a conversation we've had a lot of times about what are they trying to make sure works first before what works best and sometimes there's things that with the play on the field that's the most important. I understand that getting the players, the coaches, people bought into the league, that's the most important first and also paid. Everybody gets paid because that's, that's been a very missing key component in the past with the leagues. But in this case still there's just all these little peripheral things where I wonder if they could reassess how they spend their time or what they do with their time in terms of maybe getting everybody on the same page because that seemed like it was just, it was all over the map in some ways. And that goes the same with the broadcast too. Sometimes on U S P N, some I think were just more prepared than others to be honest. And some had better resourcing. Some people had better ways of collecting information, some had better scripts as far as how they were going to present each game. So that level, again, that level of consistency is something that they need to really evaluate in the off season. I love all of the ESPN people. I love everyone that came on the show. I love the XLS partnership with e s. Yeah, you get a feeling sometimes I'm like I could just talk by myself right now and probably get a little bit more access on that. Haley check it in here from the CJ and Ben Hagerty, she would gladly work for Ben. So good to know if when Ryan wore, I think he's coming to Climate pledge too. We also, spoiler, this is side tangent, we are getting the Pit bull Enrique and Glacia Ricky Martin tour coming here, the Seattle Climate Pledge, it's called the Trilogy. We did not get four seats for this that I looked at $750. See Enrique we're upstairs. We are paying 180. We're front row, but we're upstairs. But I just said seven 50 for that. But anyway, beg with that you were talking Yeah, the Dallas thing, the content house and all that. I remember even when I was there with Danny in Arlington, she goes, we have all the resources here. We're going to kind of use all this. I know that's separate. Then there was the actual physical content house that didn't seem to be worked about too much, but it did feel like, and I know that we went through turnover with some of the teams and things this year, but did feel like sometimes I would talk with the team's com person and he would be like, oh yeah, I can get this person. No two seconds, no problem at all. And then other times you would talk with a different team and they're like, I don't know where this person is. I thought the whole point of being in the hub was everybody and I get it. I think people did a tremendous job this year, but working on that, what did you make of the content house? I know people said it was a TikTok thing or they went live on Instagram. What was the content house? A couple of times but again, not enough to catch my attention. I know there was some TikTok videos posted separately from different team accounts, but again, I don't, didn't really see any sort of cohesive across the board consistency with all those platforms. I didn't really see it and that's why I was a little bit confused about it. Especially on Twitter. Like I said, Twitter, I think that the main account posted fairly often the X ffl account, but again, the individual team accounts I did not see as much as the posting from inside the content house. We get a video about an introduction of all the social media managers, Which I love at the beginning of the year, but that was, I think Leah posted that. I love that. I mean that was one of the best things and the rock retweeted it, but that was, are you saying you wish the league would do more of that? I would like that because that was, I think Leah posted that and then everyone shared that with Jay and Hay and everyone else. Yeah, I enjoyed that because especially in Twitter you have a lot of, I have an avatar. I'm yelling at you. I seeing the people behind the social media. This is the person you're yelling at. Could you please pretend like this person? It's like we come on here every week and people are crap talking. I come on here every week and put my dumb face on here. At least, yes, I like that, but that was not the league that did that. I think more of that and also maybe just a little bit more banter back and forth. I don't know if you need to do trash talking. I know the U S F L tried to do that with their accounts and it always just seemed cute to me because I don't think they really had much to go with on that that and sometimes I almost feel like it was the same or two teams that felt like they were tweeting at each other with the same person with the same handle. It was just kind of a manufactured argument. I saw a little bit of that with the X F L team accounts. Sometimes it'd be a little bit of back and forth and banter on certain things, especially when during the season once there were teams there actually play each other and the results that were being had. But I want to see maybe more of that or just again, more transparency as far as who are these people, what are they doing and also what's going on in the content house because that seemed to almost set up a reality TV kind of esque scenario in a way Days of our lives, what's going on here? What's happening in the XFL hub? And you don't have to wait for player 54 to come out week and a half after every single result. Maybe can we have more up to date kind of timeline stuff and you're really able to see it as it's happening. So maybe more of that would've been perhaps a little bit more connected for the fans. Again, if you're talking about connecting to the fans, there's one way to do it Like to where the exl, it seems like a conscious, I think Mike Mitchell at least reported this to us. I don't know if he reported it. EXL may made a more conscious effort. We're going to retweet fan tweets here. If you're could be Mike's tweet or it could be, I know Evan, whatever, but we find random fans whatever tweet and they're like Emory Hunt would be at the game and tweeting. I like seeing that, seeing the league account do that. I don't know if they could do more of that. If you know did have someone like Haley or Leah or Jay or someone like, Hey, I'm posting the social media stuff here. Highlighting more of that as well. But I like that. I like feeling like the N F NFL is a very hard, we our it's the shield and we are the N F L. We don't need you. I seeing the ex of like, hey, it's more of a party on here. Come on here, we're going to share your stuff. We're going to interact with that. I like that. I think you could benefit from having 2, 3, 4 people running that main X F L account on any given day. I know game days and stuff like that go crazy. Yeah, see this would be cool, Hailey, live tweeting practices, that would be cool. Do a little twi. Is Periscope still a thing? Can we do remember par was that like didn't Twitter by Periscope or Periscope was Twitter's thing. But yeah, I like that because it was the conscious effort from the X F L for that Last thing on Twitter, we got a couple more things here, but we need to figure out what is the long-term plan for the X F L'S Twitter handle. We cannot have it be X FFL 2023 anymore. I believe at xfl Twitter is available and this is a major issue when you have, even DJ himself has done it tweeting the wrong handle. We're tweeting Xavier F lap and getting him involved in this. I don't know if we can buy that, but it's a major issue because when you have people tweeted out and it's not going, do you like XL Twitter? Would you have a better idea? Well first of all, I'd like them to get back to the original handle that they lost to LA Paz or whoever that gentleman is that apparently just holds it over their heads and keeps, but He must have gotten it first because Twitter didn't exist when Vince's X Ffl came. So I technically, I think LaPage gets, I mean he has first dibs on the X Ffl Twitter Handle. He does, but let's, let's be real here. Is he really going to use it? No. So let's go working on that one or that's my first mandate. Second of all, I think there 2023, I mean you're going to keep changing the year and as long as you don't do anything like X ffl season two, three we talked about, we don't want that to happen. But I don't know, xfl Twitter just doesn't really vibe with me as far as you're just posting the same platform that you're already on anyways. I mean I guess you could, but it doesn't, to me that's not something that other companies do or a lot of other places are in line with. I would rather that you just either have this year or again trying to find that old handle if you can be able to commandeer and get that back. Those are my only two options. Other than that, there's not really much else I could think of that you could change the name or make it more appealing. I liked what I tweeted that out a couple weeks ago like, Hey Elon, while you're fixing Twitter, could, could we kind of nudge a LaPage here? And I think people, the U S F L stands of the world like, oh, you're trying to take away his civil rights Reid. I just the suggestion it would be fun. Max, has your offer more in-depth coverage of incoming players in off-season events with Lewin or others? Why should fans have to wait till January to get to know the new rookies? I like that and I think once we have the draft next week, we're going to have a slew of that. I had a couple players reach out to me already like, Hey, can I come on or I'm in the rookie draft, can I get involved? I said, well, we're kind of doing all the C F L stuff right now and then we're going live. Maybe we can work with the league once you're brought in. But I don't know if we're bringing it back in Josh for that. I don't know what his schedule's like, but yeah, could we bundle together five, 10 minute player interviews a couple weeks or pick do two teams each podcast, so you do four podcasts and a couple players, what would you like to see following the rookie draft? In terms of social content, Yes, I would like to see more profiles done and I would like to see them being done on each prospect or at least somebody who's picked and has a great potential to be part of the league and maybe using some of their college tape or using some of the, just some background information on who they are as well. And I really want to see that kind of attention done from multiple people in the league. Maybe if you get Josh Lu in, like you said, if you can come in and maybe they have him do his one-on-one interviews via Zoom or Skype or whatever technology he uses and try to get people to, to try and be more involved that way. I think if you have maybe more posting on YouTube, again, you really utilize those YouTube highlights. That's another thing, making sure that you have those little short snippets on the N NFL graphic designs. I want to see if they have some nice graphic layouts for all of these players when as they're being drafted during the actual draft itself. But yeah, maybe if you can get an interview or maybe sort of more just again, a presentation on their profiles after the fact that would really help people start to get to know them and understand where they're from and why they're doing this and maybe why they could be a potentially good fit for the league that I think that's not a bad idea at all and maybe do that for a couple or three weeks out after the draft has concluded. I also know that Rick Stel has been on here before we did our Thanksgiving, I think it was the post draft of grading of the teams, I can't remember. And then Rick's obviously been on for the kickoffs and all that, but I don't know what the Brooky drafts are going to look like next week. Like I said, we're going to be ho god willing. I have this wonderful lady that books me a year out to do these. Hey Reid, I got and it, it's paid, it's a good gig, but it's always the worst days. There's always Dorothy's friends get married or we like, Hey, do you want to go to Barbados? It's like, oh no, I got this dance performance I got to go do, but it's that Friday. So I hope that we can figure that out. But when it comes to that, I've talked with Rick and Rick goes, it would be so great as opposed to just, and I know this takes a lot more time, but as opposed to just posting on Twitter, Hey, we signed this guy, get together a couple people they can talk about and I don't know any of these people and I'm the dummy. I just make the platform her bring on Andy and all these smart people. But when you bring on Evan, we bring on John Vogel, bring on Rick Cella, you can come on and we could build and there would be enough of you guys that would know all of these players. I could not believe when Evan was on two weeks ago, we were doing our X F L players that still deserve a shot to the N F L. The amount of knowledge that Evan knows about all these players and this guy and he played at this college and he was this for a cup of coffee and then he went here and he went here and you could get as opposed to just posting the roughneck sign round two whatever, and I'm not volunteering, you know what I mean? I'm volunteering but have there there's ways to do it where you just get a couple of guys that have tracked these players for the last four or five years. They could talk about how exciting that is. I know that's a step above all this, but I think it could help give what I think is already going to get some good juice just because it's a draft in June and I don't think that the draft, what are you doing that it's a pretty dead time for the nfl, but I think you could get more juice out of the rookie draft if you were able to get some people together that know about all this stuff. You have designated people who do their homework and you've had people who do their homework on this show For free. For free. For free. Yeah, exactly. And I know you scream from a mountaintop about this, about saying, I'm here, I'll do this for free all day long. I get it. I understand it. There are so many people on in this network who really do so much fantastic work and do their homework on these players, these coaches, these leagues, the sport, everything. There's people who really put in dedication, they need to go get people like that Again, maybe there's orders from high Mr. Redford Capital. I get it, I Get it. Get it. I get it, I Get it, I get it too. But they've got to have, you have to have that kind of coverage and I know they've been around forever and they have the capital to do and I understand, but the N NFL has this down to a science. They have all the people who do this and listen, is it media members who maybe do it on their own volition and don't employed by the league? Yes, but those are also people who have jobs that are with other media outlets that allow them to do that. We don't have that, right? There are not designated media outlets who are giving opportunities and work to people who do this. This is all done by pure passion for people who really just care about these leagues. So when you don't have that from an outlet standpoint, when aren't other people who are being paid to do this, I think it's your job to then bring those kinds of people in because otherwise you're not going to get as much exposure as you would normally otherwise until you start to convince people, Hey, this is a viable thing that you could do for maybe not a living, but at least in a sense of being recognized and compensated for your hard work instead of it just being on your own free time. Because that's essentially what it is right now for all most of these leagues. What I don't get, and I haven't gotten this whole year with this and there's certainly no love loss between Mark Perry and I over at newa, but we hear this reported right X F L and the marketing budget and we were so low. We're really trying to conserve and it's a startup and all this stuff. I would be not every, right, sometimes Mark Wright like salacious articles, but in the article, your guys's the team breakdowns and the roster previews and the looking forward to the weekend and the game recaps and the power ranking is I would be retweeting every one of those one those you have people that are working that, like I said, don't not talking me here, this is because I know we come on here and we talk the X F L failing and all that. I'm talking real media websites. I'm not, this isn't Reid trying to plug get the mark cast mark. If Stefan's got the good one, if James, whoever over there, if they're writing good stuff, be retweeted all that stuff. Because what I don't get is I'll see, oh, the Seattle Times they win and wrote the story about ucci or whatever, that'll get a share. But Mount Lyons is team breakdown. Whatever the light the Sea dragons won't get, and I don't get that delineation there of why can we retweet? Is it because it's the Seattle Times? Because I feel like the journalistic credibility at least of new sub, and I know you got to kind of vet and you got to figure out all your different stuff, but why you can't be utilizing some of this, I mean all of the amount of free content that is created about these leagues is astounding and especially just good journalistic content, not even I take the commentary out of it, Mike Mitchell, this is the DC defender's preview coming up. They're taking on the roughnecks, here's the depth charts, here's the injury reports, this is what we know, all that stuff, retweet that out. I just don't understand that I get, okay, we don't want to tweet out is the X F L bankrupt? They're laying off every, I get that, but I think that there's a line there and I would just utilize more of that free content that we have Or just I guess in a way with News Hub also maybe one of the things, the advantages that the NFL has is the network, right? NFL network, a thing that has all these people and these personnel that kind of talk about all these things on a regular, they have just content that's being generated all the time just by this one entity, right? The N F L account could just retweet like, oh, this is Adam ranks. Yeah, I don't know. Player rankings. And it's, It's not, we're not Endor. This is not, yes, but you can retweet that out and be like, this is not necessarily what do do people put on there? Retweets do not equate endorsements or whatever and it's like it's okay to share stuff that other people are creating that as long as it's not FBOs and stuff Exactly mean. Yeah, you curate as far as like, okay, let's see what is this all right, is this going to be in line with, is it just going to get people talking but not talking in the way that we don't want 'em to talk about? That's the kind of thing that you have to be careful about, but you're right, that content is just being generated all the time. I mean, Mike Mitchell's putting out his power ranking, he's left and I mean he's doing it for multiple leagues and that's another thing like the C F L doesn't do that as much either, which also just drives me crazy because it's like there's people all over the place who are making this stuff constantly and they're not even taking advantage of that and they've been around much longer. So you have to be able to have, be able to gravitate to that stuff because this stuff is being done for you for free. Take advantage of it. And like I said, I get that there. There's the, well, and we have media because I've talked a little bit about the cfl, like Darren Bowman came on and Darren does his Winnipeg sports show and he has talked to me about this and he is like, because there's, they have media partners, the cfl. I'm like, okay, they don't want to do, I'm like, I get that, but it's also it, it's Twitter. I think Mike puts out five articles a week during the X ffl season talking through the preview and the breakdown and the recap and the power rankings, pat stuff. I just don't get, we have Josh and Josh does his stuff and I think that that's a tremendous product. They had another rider that was kind of doing some recaps or a press release kind of stuff, but I don't know think you need to have someone on salary for all of that if we're trying to cut costs, we have it here. I now seen the TV schedule earlier selling tickets earlier. I think that's great. I don't want to go too early because we now in the C F L have a world where they announced the C F L schedule last the second, the gray cup was over there. Here's our schedule. And then we had all this free agency movement in the off season and now you look at the schedule and not all of the teams are playing like got quarterbacks have traded and they're not playing their old team or they're moved cities and they're not going back to their old city. So I think there's a point to do that. Max wants to see it kind of maybe around combine time end of July. When would you like to see the travel schedule? Oh man. Yeah. You guys brought that up on or TV schedule not, yeah, TV schedule. You guys brought that up on the stream last night and it really got me to thinking I would at least like to see it again sometime in the fall. That would be nice. Maybe September. That would be preferable if you could get that organized. I mean at least try to plan a look. These venues all are going to make plans and you have to start scheduling this out. It really depends on how long you've been in that venue and obviously you're foothold as far as what kind of priority do you get with those events Now since none of those venues are obviously owned by the league or by the individual teams, they don't have as much positioning or power case in point. So what, earlier this year or last week I saw that, so my team, the Oregon Ducks are actually playing in the super regional this weekend in the NCAA baseball. Well, they share the stadium with a minor league baseball team. I hope that's X F L calling you for riding job. I think they are. I'm on the hotline right now actually asking for my ideas. I know I That's fine. But no, so one of the things that I noticed with their scheduling those because, so they got a super regional hosting this weekend, which is great. That never happens. That's happened twice and since they came back out of not existing. But the problem is is that the minor league baseball team that they share the stadium with now has nowhere to play because they get priority for their series. The Oregon baseball team, because they own the stadium, the university owns the stadium. So the other team, the Mind league team has to go play in Washington now because they have no other stadium to play in the state of Oregon. There's no other place to go for them to go play. They had to go all the way to Washington to play their series. So when you don't have that priority, it's hard to make the schedule. I get that being said, the X ffl has to be able to at least get in line with these venues and say like, Hey look, this is what we're looking at. Let us know what are these dates way far in advance because they're going to schedule concerts, they're going to schedule a ceremony events, they're going to schedule other sports, they're going to do all those kinds of things. You have to be able to get out and out in front of this because they're just going to fill up the schedule. Well, you really have to be on the ball about that. So yes, I would prefer if we could get maybe the schedule out in September, that'd be awesome. But maybe that's just wishful thinking. We're talking here TV schedule or TV schedules and network slots and all of that stuff. I want to talk about your idea of either a rolling by week, kind of around March madness or kind of the mid-season by, but before we get to that, really Max is talking here. We need to get better time slots, better networks. Obviously we want that. What really struck me and we, we've done all this and we get caught into minutiae every week of these US F L ratings and all this stuff and here you, we've pounded all season. If you're an X F L fan, we want better. We want better. We need to be on a abc, we need to be on better time slots and kind of all that stuff. U S F L this year did that, right? Last year they were, Hey, we're Friday on Peacock and we're Sunday night on whatever it was, FS one or all that stuff. They're on far more network windows this year and their ratings are actually down, I mean compared to last year, but also compared on game average to the X ffl, I believe it's not even close. Don't, I'm sure Mike, I can pull up the numbers here. That's not the debate today, but the point is simply getting on better networks isn't like, oh, this is a golden bullet. If we just get on a B ABC every night at eight o'clock, like it's going to be better. Yeah, that's going to help. What do you want to see in terms of the actual realistic positionings? Because the X F L, we're not going to be a B, C eight o'clock every Saturday Sunday night, so what would you like to see for that now? Do you want to talk about the bi-week? They need to increase the number of ABC games for sure. What would they last past season seven. That was the number eight. Seven. Seven. Make it 13. If you can maybe double that 14. Can you get that number up? That would be great. There are going to be a lot of games on espn. I understand that. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. Get as many games off of ESPN two as you can. Just try to get it on the main network as much as possible. The FX thing, it's cool, but I don't think it's going to be the long term answer. Maybe have one or two games on FX but don't have so many like U S A network with U S F L. You need to get those games off that and you need to be able to have in consistent time slots, again with the scheduling with P in the spring, just try to finagle it around other events, but keep it at least to a point where I think if you have Saturday, Saturday afternoon, Saturday evening, and then Sunday morning and Sunday early afternoon, I think that's really ideal. I think those are the best time slots and those are the ones that seem to draw out the most attention and are maybe the most accountable for people as well as far as their schedules goes because it's the weekend. You don't have to worry about traveling during game day or some of that nature. Now, I did travel on a Sunday for the Arlington game, the Arlington and San Antonio game I went to. That was on a Sunday afternoon and I flew back that night, but it wasn't so bad. I was fine with that. So I think you have to be cognizant of these people's lives and what's going on in their lives now. If you get the local market involved, you get the people and the kids involved and the families involved. That's great. And again, I think those time slots, those earlier time slots are great. Just you can't have the seven o'clock West Coast times. That's just cannot happen. That's that's killer. That's like PAC 12 football. Just you cannot have those. The What's civil, regional then? Yeah, you're not hitting the national market at that point. Your dragons have to not be basically the doormat for the scheduling this time because they got absolutely hosed this past season. They cannot have that happen again because it was very inconsistent and it was all of the map and it was just poor times, honestly. It was just really, really poor times. I mean, that Thursday night against Houston, that should have been a big deal, but it was during March Madness. It was March Madness and it was a late start and it was like, no one's going to watch this. I'm sorry. This is really just horrendous timing on this. The March schedule, like I said, this goes back to what I was saying about hopefully putting in the bi week, which I'll get into in a minute if it's going to transition there. But that would actually help you try to create a schedule around March, because March Madness is going to be there prevalently no matter what. So maybe just focus more of your programming in late February and April. If you can get the little bit of bi-week action going in March maybe that way, then you don't have to worry about as many games and where they go and their time slots. Something interesting as well, and Luis brought this up and we'll get to the bi-week and Max and I have talked about this, this writer's strike right now is really interesting. And obviously I am in full support of the writers with someone that's grown up in arts and brought content creation and all of that, and them wanting to get paid more and them wanting to get, we don't want AI people not even so much. I think it gets missing, not even so much writing scripts, obviously we're not going to have AI, at least right now, write an episode of Parks or Record or whatever. But even just doing translated close captioning or dub overs for TV shows and movies and stuff, that's a job that now, oh, the AI can just spit that out there used to. There's people that sit there and do the overdubs or do the translations, all that stuff, protecting all that stuff, but not having writers now means, and I remember the time back in, I think it was oh nine after the last rider strike when we had lot of sports and we had a lot of really bad TV shows. We had opposite worlds where two different sets of people, one lived in cavemen times and one lived in future times, and they were separated by a glass wall. I dunno if you remember that. And then there was a whodunit that was a murder mystery, and we had this guy named Giles that was the host that would scream at the people when they would get killed and it was very fascinating, but I think that sports in reality is going to be big time here coming into the fall, going into the winter depending on how long this lasts because the machine has to catch up. What are your thoughts on the rider's strike affecting X ffl next year? Can I give you conspiracy theory? Yeah. I think it's a methodology from Hollywood to not have to get into the business of green lighting, different ideas and they want to cut that from their time budget schedule, so I think that's really what it's about. They just don't want to deal with, okay, well I have to argue about this idea and this thing and this, so it's like, no, I'm just going to give it to AI and I'm just going to approve it and I don't have to think about I to negotiate creative differences with an AI bot. Something that I'm sure a lot of those execs were like, whoa, this just saves me a lot of time. Why not just do this and money? Of course. That's what it always comes down to, right? Cut cutting corners. So yeah, but it is a good point and it's something that people have to stand for and be able to say, Hey, no, I'm not willing to put up with this sucks. I don't want to get in this content because it's, it's a lot of words that, I can't say it here on air, but it's a lot of things to it that don't very inhuman and it's inhumane in a lot of ways because it's not something that appreciates what people have done before this and what people are doing now in terms of creating content. It entertains us and is that something that really, especially our country is all about is being entertained, is just being involved with people's lives and being involved in content that really engages us. I think it's a mistake to try and think that that could just be immediately replaced by AI technology Right now it's not sufficient enough and I don't know if it ever will be because there doesn't have that human element to it. Can you simulate humanity? That's the thing I wonder about. I know that's really deep logistical stuff that doesn't really mesh with our audience, but that's just kind of stuff I think about with the Writer's Guild stuff, but in terms of creating content for the xfl, if you're going to tie it back to that, yeah. Do you want an AI bot to write player 54? You tell me. Send that in the chat. Make that a voting poll. That has a good comment here. George R. Martin has been another writer's tracks since 2011. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. That was good. That was good. We have a comment here. Act my age. I'll pull it up at the end. I'm saving viewer comments, throw up all that stuff. So I got yours there in terms of, yeah, I do think sports high profile here, max pointed out the actors are on strike and they're like all in support. We're all in support of all that stuff. The rolling by, so I want, we're either team just midweek hard or mid-season hard stop or team mid-season rolling by, so I don't think unless we're going to do a real media week, which we did not do the week by between the championship and the playoff game. I understand we want to accommodate people traveling. I don't think that's beneficial. Andy is the team. Team, Hey, you take those first three weeks of March, take two teams off. They get rolling by one each week. That way there's only three games we have to schedule, so I guess it would be four weeks. We do four weeks. We are rolling by all through March. I say just at least hard stop the first week of March, take it off mid winter break and then we come back and we do it. Give your pitch here for the mid-season. Rolling Break. Rolling by. Well again, I think it's not only integral for rest for the players because I know it's get, spring is not a long season, but it's still long enough that it, there's still attrition involved with these players in these teams and you want to have time to be able to count for different things that happened. Again, can you have a week 4, 5, 6, 7 where two teams take a by every once every week and then that way they have time to kind of reevaluate, maybe do some player signings as well, maybe go out and get some player signings, get people more integrated Again, what happened if Arlington made that trade for Luis earlier in the season and then they said, Hey, we're going to do it before our bye week. We get 'em in here. We start accommodating ourselves and then maybe their season actually turns around even faster than it did last year. Or you get a team, maybe just get Orlando to kind of settle down and be like, okay, what is going on here? What's happening with Dormy? What's happening with our quarterbacks? What's happening? Terrell, Buckley is not trying to run around with his hair on fire for one week and he is trying to figure out what's going on. Maybe just that way you sort of calm the waters a little bit for your team and again, it's integral rest. It's kind of reevaluating. It's sort of stepping back and seeing, well, what's working, what's not. That to me, from a strategy standpoint and from a player safety standpoint, I think makes a lot of sense. But again, for the TV schedule, it also makes sense because again, if you do it in that month of March now it's like okay, we just have to worry about scheduling three games around March Madness. We don't have to worry about this. And again, March Madness, I mean there's two weekends that are four days. The first two weeks are Thursday through Sunday, so if you want, maybe you can experiment with having a Thursday game again, but not during those first two weeks. Maybe the third week, maybe at the very end of March when there's only, I think it's the elite not or the final four. The final four itself, which actually kind of goes more into April, but my point being is that now if you want to put a game on Thursday, it's not a detriment to your ratings. It was with Houston in Seattle. So that's my pitch for it. So it's player safety, it's strategy and it's TV ratings. Those are the three reasons why I would want to have that adjusted schedule and the bi-week, the rolling bi weeks, You have a lot of people on here that want the rolling My idea and I am just thought about this, I kind of chuckled here. Sometimes if you watch, you can just see me start to crile. I think of dumb stuff to talk about. What if we do, we take kind of the best element of fan trail football, so we we're drafting the every week. What if we do, I'm a survivor fan. What if we do the mid-season bi week and we do a tribe swap and do No, no, I'm just Kidding. What do you mean by tribe swap? We do a team. We rera the teens. No, I'm kidding. I'm good. I'm kidding. That was just a reshow. Just Do you want to flip the field too? You want to do that? Flip the field. We get a fifth down. We got all that stuff out here. I have looked at this. We are in that. We're very off paced to get done with this in reasonable time. We'll do our best. Andy and I petitioned about two hours here, so I think we'll try to hit at least that, but this is a lot of stuff here. Last thing on this and then we're going to get to local marketing because this is all kind of national stuff. Connect with local sports media everywhere, even without XL teams. Try to get either O on the radio, on tv, connect with people because I know people in Seattle that don't know the xv, L C Dragons exist, so I we're going to get to that, but how do we get the national, get that national spotlight more Again? I mean it's not just TV times. I mean the TV schedule does help because I know people started to warm up to it once they started and games on tv. But I see Hailey's not, Haley doesn't much, Not with Survivor. She doesn't watch Survivor I guess or she's watched too much Survivor. I'll tell you the tribes watch a Radi thing. You go, Hey actually found they're coming in here. We got the we're Hey, FCF did it every week. It was, and then the second season you could save certain players so you could be like, well we're not, but they would just change O lines. They would just go, this O Lions is set and we're just, we're going to send it to the Glacier Boys and then there are D Lions going to come. It was it. I mean it was at least an event every week. I'm sorry, FCF Season one was top notch. Yeah. I wonder, does do the C Ffl fans know that FCFs exists? Because I want to know what they would, would they faint if they knew that there was a league that had five downs? If they think straight of four is a radical idea, wait till they get a load of them. But I just, yeah, so as far as getting more exposure though for the games, yeah, I mean again, there's not that overall presence of what's going on even in the markets themselves. So I wrote down a couple of things. First of all, you need to have more community events. You need to be able to get people out and be able to do more meet and grease more maybe raffles or little events of hey, we're having this thing going on. Here's an offer, a package you could win for winning in this game. Do more local promoting, I know it's super old school, but radio or tv, local marketing. I see ad I saw ads for the San Diego I F L team last year. The San Diego fleet and or sorry, the fleet. Oh my God, wow. The Strike Force. Wow, that's how much I care about the strike force. That shows you No, but I look my fleet love dies hard. It really does. But for the Strikeforce, they got all of this local marketing and they have TV ads. I've seen post-game shows and pre-game shows for them and I just didn't really see that with the X F L markets. Again, I wasn't in those specific markets, but from what I was seeing from the periphery of all of you being involved in those markets, I didn't see that as much. So more community events. That's one that I wrote down. Another thing I wanted to see more banners, another thing, can you get more billboards? Let me tell you, since the M l s team got announced down here, I'm seeing banners left and for that thing I'm seeing billboard announcements, I it's gotten around town. The word that website was posted, checking in information. They already had a fan event for the team. I want to say a day after it was announced that the team was coming in and so you need more stuff like that. You need to say, hey look, especially then, especially the X ffl has to take advantage of this. They're actually in the cities, they have to take advantage of that because otherwise people, if people don't know you're there or aren't made aware of that, they're not going to show up and they have to put more emphasis on that. So just more banners, more community events and more meet and greets and local TV spots are the things that I really look at. Yeah, well, so we will do that as well. Local stuff, I'd talking like if I'm living in Boise, Idaho and the C F L has, they've championed this as well. Hey, now we're on C B S Sports network. It's like they're going to promote more of this and it really is like Jim Nance talked about it during the masters or whatever the golf thing was and then they've had some little local banners and stuff. I just don't know. We have to convert more of those fans unless you're living in those markets. I will say, can we get, I know we've talked, we've long championed Dwayne the Rock Johnson social media prowess on here. Could we get messy to tweet about since he went to the Miami team? I've read this that now that Miami inner FC team has more Instagram followers than any like M L B N H L N F L, any M L s they have, I mean can we get messy kind of tweet about this? Can we get him talking about, I don't care about the rock tweet. I want messy doing that. Also, in terms of Armour, I think there were things this year in supply chain stuff. We got to get that because the most frustrating thing is seeing coaches and people wear cool Under Armour stuff on the sidelines and not being able to purchase that. I think there were issues with that, but obviously we need to work on that. Oh, the jerseys. Oh, I have a, Oh no, just quarter zips, nice sweatshirts, kind of all that stuff. Yeah, I mean I like the idea of designs, but as far as the execution, I think it left much to be desired and there's a lot more wear that could have been presented and also again, just getting it sold in the stadiums didn't seem to be very consistent and trying to find it was also difficult at the championship game. I mean I saw jerseys for sale, but they were kind of tucked away in a corner somewhere in one end of the stadium that you had to find specifically if you wanted to go buy one. And Arlington, I don't really remember seeing much gear around. Maybe I didn't look hard enough, but I walked around the stadium on the lower concourse level and I didn't see much there either. So they need to be able to present that a little bit more forwardly and be because you're not going to have a team store, you're not going to have that at this point, but at least try to find a way to get that gear out of that merch out in a more present fashion and be able to have it right there. Because I mean there's lower level leagues or at least leagues, other leagues I've been to that I don't have as much camaraderie or as much fanfare that do a better job of getting their products out or at least presenting their gear. There's a way there, I've been to places where I'm like, oh, there's selling a scarf or they're selling this jersey or they're selling this shirt or they're selling the, there's always something that I'll see where somebody's presenting their products more forwardly than some of these bigger leagues. The XFL for example, they need to just put it out there more Is this shirt, I didn't even mean to put this, oh I just put this on cause I need something to wear today. Is this shirt better than any of the generic X F L? I think generic X F L 2020 is still better than generic X F L 2023 in terms of just the Seattle with the whatever the X, the two arrows. Yeah, I think as far as athletic years goes, I actually, my sweatshirt, my X L sweatshirt, I actually trained it sometimes like that. But see here's the thing though, they need to be careful about what market are you appealing to? Are you appealing to the people who are the athletic market where people are training all the time? Are you feeling to the fans and I feel like sometimes it's more the people who are going to the gym as opposed to not the thing that our fans don't go to the gym, but saying people who are gym lifers and people who are only focus on their fitness as opposed to people who are engaged in the product and engaged in the lifestyle and talking about the sport. I feel like there's less of that. The XFL 2020 was very much about that. That was all they cared about. This one's kind of more a little bit more app trying to appeal to both markets and I think it's more of appealing to one size than as the other. So that in my opinion, the Seattle one that you're wearing for example, is just, again, it pops, it's more vibrant, noticeable, especially that logo is going to be hard for them to erase from people's minds because I think it really was in a lot of ways iconic and it was colorful and it stood for a lot of things. Not saying that theirs doesn't right now, but it stands for something different than what people had from their vision three years ago. Anything else? I want to talk here at local kind of getting some of these events we want to see in the fall, tangible stuff here. Anything else attracting, because I still don't think we've cracked this code of if you don't live at one of the eight because we were going to stop down here if you live in San Antonio, but if I live in Nebraska, what are we doing to reach me? Is it just because I do feel like I, I've complimented many times. I think XE l Twitter for what they've had this year, I think they've done a tremendous job and then they've been getting on a TikTok and Instagram and everything else. But if I'm not on Twitter following X F L or the Rock, I don't know how I learned about this. So how do we get Joe in Nebraska to figure out about the league this year Besides TV exposure? I think you have to appeal to maybe certain players that are from that area and I know now as far as those players playing in the actual markets, I don't think that really does a lot of things. Last I checked Brady White came from Memphis and he plays from the Memphis. Okay, cool. That's not really something that appeals to me, but as far as maybe taking players from other places and then them coming into your league, maybe you appeal more into that, right? What if someone speaking of Nebraska or if someone like Taylor Martinez showed up in the league and somebody who Nebraska fans are very familiar with, maybe then you can start to appeal to them, Hey, you remember this guy, he's going to start playing for this team. I remember yesterday I was watching the BC game, I saw an Oregon duck jersey or a sweatshirt in the crowd in Calgary crowd. It's very vibrant. It's a bright green in the sea of red, so it's like it's the easiest thing to notice, but I'm pretty certain that's because Vernon Adams plays for bc, right? He is a duck alumni and Eastern Washington alumni of course, but the duck fans, including me, remember him very fondly. So that's something that you can appeal to say saying, Hey, do you remember this guy? He was pretty, you know, can really start to appeal to players that came from certain colleges. Maybe that's something that you could talk about or players that are from that maybe a really renowned high school area, maybe in Texas for example. I think that's something that they have to appeal to as well. Other than that, I mean if you don't have a team, I mean it's the same thing you ask yourself with the nfl. It's like, well the NFL has fans everywhere even if there's states that don't have fans. So how do you get them to maybe choose a team Do you think the US and I don't know if they are or not, do you think the U S F L is doing a better job attracting a national market or because I don't know, I don't if that Fox, it just feels more familiar, right? Oh, what is this? Oh it's football. I don't know. And maybe just the way their product looks and kind of sounds, because it does feel like I go back and forth. How much can the casual viewer really tell the difference between the X F L and the US F L? But when you watch a Fox, especially the Fox ones, when you watch the Fox broadcast exactly what this feels like. I mean there is a level of familiarity with it, certainly with the broadcast presentation, but as far as the teams, I mean they clearly are cornering the market on the Midwest and the upper East coast. That's their strategy. So for me, I mean there's kind of disassociation with that as far as there's no West coast teams, so that does add into it. But as far as the presentation goes, yeah, I mean it's something that a fan could immediately recognize or the N NBC broadcast too. It's something that most casual N F L fans could immediately recognize. It's just a matter of, well I don't really know these markets very well or Memphis or some of these other markets that people are not as in tune with, but also, again, not seeing the play in their markets too. Because then people are starting to wonder, wait, where are they right now? Okay, they're the hub. But then we had an interaction we witnessed from a person that was trying to watch the New Orleans breakers from New Orleans and let's just say his curiosity was not met with the kindest gestures because he was trying to figure out why is there a New Orleans team that's not playing in New Orleans? You're going to have those questions from people. I'm sorry, you're going to have to deal with that. Why the teams are not playing in their home markets. You're going to hear it over and over again. It's a weird US F L and I. You can please correct me and I don't want to be the X F L like Stan here. There's a level, certainly the CFL has its level of gatekeeping. We've been around forever. We feel like the NFL's little brother in Canada and I say having spoken to Canadians is recently is two weeks ago with John Hodge. They have an inferiority complex. I mean that is John Hodge's words when it comes to this. We feel very protective of that. The US L has a similar, where it's like, yeah, we know we're in the hub, believe us alone. It's a similar thing and it's really where I don't, I've never and send me tweet at me, I've never seen an XFL fan. Well you're just a big idiot. You don't realize, and maybe there are, and I know some people get a little passionate, it feels like it's a different level of gatekeeping on there, at least with the US F L and the X L. Cause it is in the, I firmly believe it's in the US L inferior inferiority complex. A lot of the interactions they have both with ex f L and with other fans. I think it's just a little level of hostility that is really unnecessary and I see it from just a little bit it, look, you get it. Here's the deal. Every league is going to have things that they are not going to be able to do and things that they want to do better and I think it's still a channeling from fans if I'm going to be honest for if you're talking about inferiority complexes of what maybe the higher ups are not understanding it's, it's so funny how tribal people can be with their likes and dislikes and yet I think in some ways maybe it's already channeling some of their own frustrations from what's not happening at the higher levels of, okay, well I've complained about this a lot of times, but they don't get it, so that's never going to change and maybe it's that, but you can't just attack people who are like, don't know about this because that's not how it works. I've been learning this the C F L game the last three years and now I finally get to a point where I'm feeling comfortable talking about it and really starting to understand it a little bit better because at least you've done a good job of getting people involved that understand, But you have to do work. You shouldn't have to do work. I shouldn't have to do work to watch. I'm a Washington commander fan. I've never been to the Washington Commander's football game ever about. I don't have anyone on there. Well why are you tweeting about I I'm a fan of the team I enjoy. You shouldn't have to do homework to be a fan of. I should be able to enjoy if I like It. I mean listen, I had to start somewhere too. Should I have been spending seven hours a day watching N F L Network when I was 14? Probably not, but I did that because that was on my own volition and I was curious. I wanted to know something. There wasn't some, but there wasn't some like N F L fan coming after me being like, oh, why are you wanting to be a Chargers fan? Or why do you want to learn about our league? No one did that. That wasn't a thing, right? There's no gatekeeping there. Maybe there would be in certain message boards, but that doesn't a thing in my life. I just became part of the league and that was it. No problem. The transaction's done. That's just what baffles me about these leagues, especially players or people who I feel like they have this thing that they really care about, but it's almost like they don't want it to change sometimes, but they don't want it to be different because then if other people get involved, then too many cooks in the kitchen. I get it. But at the same time it's like if you want your league or your thing to survive, you need to be able to adapt and change and you need to understand that and that's what we talk about all day long on this show every day. I remember back when the Ataris, they were a kind of SoCal, right? SoCal punk band. Then they had so long a story, it came out and then they were the sellouts. Everyone wanted to know about him and then they were at Warp Tour and people were chanting he was sold out. The guy literally exposed himself on the stage. It was quite the scene. It was quite the scene of the Warp tour. But yeah, no, you hold this precious, I remember that even when fan show football was coming out, I think Paul and I felt like we really had that market kind of covered. We had Patrick D's on the show and stuff and then they started going and they're ramping up through a promotion. They, you get a lot more people kind of involved in it and it is just weird. Well how do we balance this thing that maybe we believe in? But I don't know, I think XIV L fans just kind of wanted to succeed. I think in general they do. I think it's more of just they want it to grow and they want it to get better and they're more open to change because it is, it's kind of like a startup in a lot of ways. It feels more like a startup U US L doesn't feel like a startup. It just feels like resting on its laurels and it has kind of an old brand that it sort of keeps itself in line with. But as far as the X F L goes, I think there's more responses and opens to change with the rules or with moving teams around and with being in different markets and different social media presence, I think there's more willingness to change because ultimately the ultimate goal is survival because they know that survival has not been a thing for a lot of these leagues and it has not gone well in that regard. Whereas the C F L, I mean they know they've survived, they've been around forever and it change is scary because it might mean their survival is cut short. But I personally think that there are things that they can work on that aren't going to completely cripple their entire fan base. I do think there are adjustments that could be made along the way. Last comment here and then I got a little bullet points. So to get through, Jonathan Lewis was talking, I put this up before, I want to make sure we stop down this. He trains in his Excel for sure as well. Perfect for the 12 ounce curls if you know what he's talking about. Drinking beer. When I studied abroad in Italy, I did a monthlong video project over there and this guy named Seven Mountain of a man owned the local bar of town. I think he was seven because he was like the seventh child or whatever, but he was like Italian for seven, we call him seven. He was this mountain of a man and we're like seven, what's the deal? He goes, well, I used to be a weightlifter and I would weight, I would lift weights every day. He goes, and I bought bar and now I drink beers every day. So similar vibes with John Lewis and seven on there. We're talking local marketing. Max has here fa fall draft parties in the local markets, engage EXE L staff more closely in local and local media and sports media, get out to as many high school and college football games as possible, give out t-shirts and kind of all that stuff, especially Texas. And for I would also say on that, I know they were doing that with the Kraken last year. We have kind of year round sports now in Seattle, but get out to that to the Seahawk games. I think we'll see more of that now that we have some people and staff again. That's why I don't want to see too much ramp up or ramp down. My last point and to obviously toss you, when I did the Seattle event show, this would've been in 2019, I was there showcasing, hey videographer, we do what weddings and events and kind of all that stuff, even things like that. The XFL had the presence out in terms of do you want to find out about season tickets? You want to find out this stuff? Like anywhere we're like, Hey, a bunch of people are coming to this, Hey, the Home and garden show or we got these trade shows. Anything that's an expense, I mean you're paying to be involved in that, but I think even standing outside in front of the Kraken game, try trying to do that but figure out Kraken starts in preseason since September. I mean you got a long roll up there And tabling events too. Just being able to go to tabling events and be able to get your name out there has to be a way that they can find avenues where they can appeal or push out more of their content and more of their stuff. I mean I've gone to events where people are trying to get just to get their name out or get the word out. I remember when the fleet existed, they had a partnership with some of the players. There's a fitness center, it's called Orange Theory and they have a bunch of at different places across different regions and there's a lot in San Diego County and they had some sort of partnership with some of the players from the fleet for them to come and hey, you can come in and train for free and come in and hang out at Orange Theory and there's like, oh, there's like a football player here. Wait, you do what for a living? Oh, you play for this team? Oh, we have a team now. So I like That. I Like that. That was cool. That was cool. I was like, oh that's nice. I mean got a promotion through, actually my mom got a promotion through for them to get sideline tickets, like sideline access to one of the games. It was against Birmingham iron, it was against Luis Perez and we got to see the sideline action. I watched Terrell Thomas and a couple other players practicing before the game. So yeah, again, this other league that quite frankly was very poor on promoting its own product until the last minute and had all of its priorities maybe in the wrong spots, still had a level of notoriety and that got people involved even with how mediocre the presentation was sometimes and got people to go to the game. So yes, the X F L can do this. They just have to be willing to do it and put into the certain right spots that, like you said, where the people are or where there's people that would be engaged in that product because people will care if you show that you care. A couple of notes here and we'll get thoughts on this talking, giving out the T-shirts and all that. It's hard because we're ramping up, ramping down, so you need to have enough, keep one or two people. Each of these markets selling stuff can educate people. All that stuff. He says any significant local event where there's an opportunity to market be at it and every market have some sort of a fan event at least every three weeks during the fall season. It's really tough. U S F L benefits one of, I think their rare benefits of the later start time is we have some breathing room after the N F L N F L is all encompassing there. The last thing here is find ways to make players and coaches more accessible to fans during the off-season and during camp. If BOGO mini camps are happening, make fans aware of it and make it accessible to them. I will say anything if I could channel Danny Red Bird, anybody here anything that you think people don't care about this, they absolutely do. These showcases you have coming up and I understand the Arizona one, we went, it was in the bubble dome kind of thing in Arizona, so that might not be conducive to doing that, but just put up a barrier, 50 yards out, let people stand there and take anything you think that they don't the combine, we got to staff deal with all that stuff. But fans, absolutely, you are in the most diehard of anything fan bases here of people that are watching this stupid spring football here talking battle hawks or whatever. Anything that you're doing, people absolutely want to be there for it. It's the same with their rookie draft next week. I kind of thought we would get an email today at some point about this is happening next week, this is how you could watch or follow along or this, what's going on. Any thoughts on any of those points? No fans absolutely do care. I a hundred percent agree. I mean, again, there was a fan of it for the MLS team that was announced here and we don't even know what the team colors of the team name is. We don't know the players, we don't coach, we don't know anything. All we know is where they're playing and we know the owner, that's it. And yet people already showed up and they're showing you this event and they're running around, they're throwing their hands up and all that and it's like that shows that people care and I think that you can get that engagement if you are willing to put in the work to do it and just putting out anything for people to gravitate towards put, I don't know, up a cut cardboard cut out of Dwayne in front of the stadium. I don't care. Just something that get people, I mean people lost their minds when Dwayne showed up at the championship game. People are flipping out because he is doing the flex scam and people thought that was great. Anything to appeal to the fan, the people care about that stuff you have and you have to understand that I think yes, you want to build your fan base and you want to be able to build it and cultivate it, but you have to also recognize that there're already, again, there are people like us who are here from the beginning. There are people who were there before that started and really got themselves involved in this from the outset that really care about the success of the league, the success of the players and the coaches. Build on that, focus on that. You have to understand that and hopefully that messaging comes across a little bit better in the next season and the seasons going forward. This is interesting to hear. We're talking about Danny Garcia. I think this is a good note. I will say that Danny posted her, I can't do this job from an office. I'm going to be on the field, which I've always a tremendous Instagram video and it was like the real, and she broke through the wall and then her husband's sitting there. I thought that was great. Every single shot of her in the championship game, I'm barely out of frame because I was there. We did the media scr and all that. They're showing all these kind. I'm like, I was right. I was so close to being, I would've died if I would've had half my face in that. But it says here, communicate with fans and local residents better. Offering clear and obvious voice for the league and each team that speaks consistently with no distractions. Danny is great but Danny doesn't have time to do what Oliver Luck did for the PR and back in 2020 without this's. Difficult for people to keep up with. What if they aren't dedicated? We don't have presidents of team operations anymore. Riot. We don't have the Ryan Gustus sins of the world that are doing our Seattle. I thought Russ, Brandon was going to kind of be this role. I'm talking, I like Russ a lot. He did it, but maybe his schedule, whatever, but do you agree with that? We need to have, I love Danny as the owner and the visionary, but we got to have someone Danny Light that's doing stuff every day. I agree a hundred percent. It needs to have somebody who's your cheerleader. I mean, well the rock is a cheerleader but he's not going to be able to do all the promoting and all the, you know, got to get people on radio row. You need to get luck at least was showing up on shows left and showed up on Coward. He shows up on all these different outlets of explaining why what they're doing and what the purpose is. And I think maybe you can be, get somebody who's a little bit more nuanced in terms of not just using the same bullet points that Danny and Dwayne use on every single time and maybe have a little bit more fluidity to how you present that message. It's not going to be Russ Brandon. I think Russ Brandon likes to be a little bit more behind the scenes and so can you get somebody else who can communicate that who's at least in a high position of power if Danny and the Rock and Russ are not going to do it or do it in a way that's more consistent, get somebody else to do it. You need that because that way then people are more exposed to it. And again, seeing Oliver luck drinking with the beer snake in 2020 was great because people had already seen this, this man present the league and be involved in the league and really be involved with it with the fans and that was something that people could really connect to. You need to have more of that and I think if you're going to do that, then at least get somebody who's going to be able to put in the work and presenting that idea and that product. I mean I know someone like in ufc, Dana White say what you want about him. He gets out there and he rents his product all the time. He is very vocal about it all the time, constantly. He's everywhere. And you need people like that if you're going to try and build up your entity and your product. And it's not that I don't want Danny and the Rock to do it. I understand that we have 1800 different things we're trying to operate. It does the rock. I'm off doing Hobbs now and I'm off. I've got Moana and we're doing the X Ffl, we've talked about this. It can't be a seasonal business and you can't the Rock. Okay, I'm April, whatever, I'm off now and I'll see you in December. We'll be back on the clock. And I know he had his tweet this week about the health and safety and promoting that and kind of all the good work that they did. But you have to, I don't know what that is. It needs to be someone high profile enough that if you book him on Fallon or whatever, it's a big deal. I don't know, I think the U US F L could have benefited from let's, can we bring Doug flute in on the retainer? Can we send him out? Can he do some late night shows? I don't know. You know, need someone, you guys, we need to get a B list. Someone that can be on this or someone. Dan is the spokesperson now. He was the one that had the quote last week when all the layoffs happened. I don't think that's the right idea, but we need to have someone that can do some more public facing stuff. I agree. Somebody who has enough clout who can be able to talk about it. And even if the Rock showed up on one of these talk shows, I don't think he's going to talk about the X F L if I'm going to be honest. I think he's going to talk about other things that a wider audience cares about if I'm just going to be honest. So with that said, then yeah, maybe you have to find either either one, Danny has to drop all of her stuff or you have to get somebody else involved that has enough clout and maybe bring in another part owner of the league. I'm not sure who that would be exactly, but just there's got to be some more synergy here as far as what person comes in and is able to present the product in a more consistent fashion and is able to tell people about what's going on and maybe before the season starts or get more appearances on espn. Again, ESPN programming is going to be moving along like clockwork and going on in the next thing. So can you get people to keep him evolved to be like, hey, remember we have this league by the way that we promote and that we're broadcasting every spring. So just letting you know this is the person that's going to talk about it. You got to have more stuff like that too. And we talked about that as well. You promoting mean they're done a good job with the signings and stuff, but can we get some interviews with even those guys, Josh on there with Darius Shepherd and I understand and I don't know what contracts like that once he go under contract with I where Darius assign the, was he with the Chargers? Was he the one that went to the Chargers? Yes, Darius Shepherd with assigned with the Chargers. So I don't know then do okay, can we not do that? Cause we got to deal with Chargers PR and stuff. I don't know how that works, but it would be great if there was a way, can Josh or whoever, can we get five minutes to just talk and what does this opportunity mean? Just things like that. It says here, the collective voice of external fans and local residents are quite smart, even if many of them have bad takes. Take a page out of what was done with Redbirds, other stops at tlu where there was a disconnection between ownership of the community just like there is here and get to know what external fans want and continue to, is there just a couple, oh, do you agree with that? Do you agree that there seems to be a little bit of a disconnect between X F L ownership and what the X L fans, what the X F L ownership thinks fans want and what the fans want? Slightly, I think it's more of, again, just not devoting the resources that the fans expected from the first time around. But I think there was a lot more listening than there was intera interactivity between the two sides this season. And I think there was a lot more the XL trying to accumulate information and trying to understand what exactly it is that the fans are trying to gravitate towards and what they're looking at media members, what they're trying to do, broadcasting crews, what they're trying to do, trying to just get as much information as possible without trying to overstep their boundary. So yes, there was a bit of disconnect in terms of that, a level of familiarity, but I think in a way, a weird analogy, I feel like it was kind of dating the league was trying to redate its fans and think, okay, is this a long term proposition? Is they the kind of people that we want to have around for a long time and what do they want? What's this? Their expectations kind of felt like that a little bit. And so I wouldn't say it's an intentional disconnect. I think it was just more of feeling each other out in a way. The parties were trying to figure out, okay, what are you about doing? What's your goal? What's your set? And if they can figure that out and come to an agreement on that in the future, then that's great. I think that's more of what it was about rather than an intentional or just very uncohesive relationship between the two. I think so too. I agree with you. I think there's a slight disconnect. I think I would love to give truth serum to the eight, Danny and the Rock and Russ, and to get the eight. What really were your expectations coming into this year? Because I have a feeling that although like all okay, we succeeded metrics and all that, I don't don't think this is a failure. I mean, I think we've done a tremendous job. I've given them compliments. I think even if you take XL 2020 away, this is tremendous in the first year league and successes across the board. But I think they probably thought we're going to get a little bit more exposure outside in more mainstream or more traditional things than maybe we got. And when the Rock has Zah come out and everything picks it up and it's in Vanity Fair and it's in vogue and it's in whatever, all these different things and the EXE is a really niche, really, really niche. It's really niche. We we're building that. We're working towards that. But I, I'm curious what the expectations were for that and if we're going to reevaluate that. I don't think, like you said, it wasn't that they weren't listening. I think they were listening a lot. I think we're working through that now and trying to figure out what works and what didn't work. But I don't think the disconnect was intentional. I think it was more just maybe we we're not going to be a top four or five sport, but we're going to be top five and a half and I think it's a window. No, it's like top 12 or whatever right now. You got to work your way up here. Yeah, no, I agree. And it is interesting to think about what the original expectations were from the outset of the buying of the league. And again, that was such a different era. We didn't know, I mean, we didn't know if we were going to have fans ever again at that point when they bought the league. So at that point it was such experimentation as far as what's going to happen going forward, what are sports going to look like going forward? What's our relationship with the C F L going to be? There's so much nebulous uncertainty with so many things, but now kind of looking at it, it's obvious to be that there wasn't maybe as much homework done on maybe the previous league. And as far as what fans wanted, again, the beer snake, there wasn't really much familiarity with that on their end. And some of the traditions, and I know there weren't very long traditions, but there were traditions nonetheless that were being established by those fan bases from those eight teams before. So maybe there wasn't as much homework or much diligence that was done in that respect was more about the financial aspects of owning the league and what was going to be done with it. And I understand that part. Again, this is coming from a very business minded aspect with Danny and the rock and redbird capital. And if you're going to survive for a long term, that's what it's going to have to be. But you got to balance it with research and with understanding of what exactly the people want. Because if you understand what they want and you give them what they want, that's going to help you a lot more in terms of your sustainability, not just trying to generate revenue. Because fans are the lifeblood of any league and of any entity. And if you don't have them on your side, you're not going anywhere. John says, be thankful. Thankful John. We're thankful. But this is the exercise today. This is, we're doing our homework. We're doing our exercise here. I will say, Andy, when you're talking about the potentially EXL ownership, not knowing about the beer snake, you wouldn't be gatekeeping would you? We're not doing any gatekeeping over here. I mean, I could be if I really wanted to. I could. No, I could. I could really. No, no, no, because no, but we don't have as long of a history as the CFL here, but the X L L does have some history. Last thing on this and we have some action points moving forward. I think we'll be good time here with the two. Furthermore, discuss with fans what they want to hear from a broadcast. We've talked a little bit about the broadcast. Stop making the broadcast based on what on an ownership vision and start making it based on what fans watching these games actually want to hear. So they don't want to hear about x Y player trying to make it to the N F L. They want to hear about play schemes and storylines of the game. Max would also look, and I would agree, some of the broadcasting duos maybe did a little bit more homework than others. Like I said, I'm friends with every single person I've had with ESPN has been great on this show. But anything else from the broadcast narrative or the booth before we move on? No, I agree. There needs to be more emphasis on the individuals stories. I mean, you never hear about that at all in the US L or the C F L. You hear only about the storylines of the players, where they came from, why they do this and how they got here sometimes, and maybe what their skillset is and really focusing more on that than just talking about like, oh, well here's where they're going to go next. No one really talks about that. I don't even think the C F L broadcast ever mentioned that once with Rourke, even in the middle of his renaissance last year, that wasn't something they ever brought up. They weren't like, oh, can't wait to see him play third string for the Oakland Raiders or somebody next year, hopefully. And then they never talked about, sorry, the Las Vegas Raiders, that's never going to die. But they are never going to bring that up out of their own volition. Whereas the X F L left and was just talking about, we have their example on our notes here, but I already vividly remember it, is Luke Barco that quarterback for the Braas, they kept just going over and over and over again saying like, oh, if he defends Josh Gordon, he's going back to the nfl. Okay, we get it. We understand again, what was I was saying earlier in this broadcast, you could do things but maybe not have to say them all the time. You can show it without having to speak it. Right. And your audience can understand that. You understand MLS fans aren't going on about, boy, it would really suck if we lost some of these players to another club for a little more money. They know if somebody improves enough, they're going to move on somewhere else like that. In soccer, that happens all the time. That's not something that people flip out about and be like trying to say, you don't have to pound that message into people's heads. So you don't have to do the same thing here either. I think maybe, I think esp, one thing I'll say last is PN maybe takes a little bit too much from the college. Yes, we know the college players are going to move on. That's obvious. They still say, they're like, yo, we're going to see this guy play on Sundays. Okay, fine, that's fine presenting it that way. But with the Exfil, there doesn't need to be that same messaging. I agree with that. And as someone that lived through the Nathan Rourke experiment, so a few people don't follow the C F L. Neither work Canadian player came back, started for the BC Lions played the greatest, probably one of the greatest single seasons ever in the history of the C F L guy injured. Now he's with the Jaguar is probably going to be the third string quarterback there. It was I think week two. Oh my God. Oh my God. And that was the media landscape the rest of the season. It's until Nathan got hurt with, he's going to go to the f l and can't you believe this? And people care about the C F L now because they Nathan and didn't like it got so tir. I'm like, can we just watch the games? Can we just enjoy the games while they're here? It's such a distraction trying to watch the game and knowing like, yeah, Ben Ucci probably isn't going to be the Seattle C Dragons quarterback next year. I understand that, but I don't need to know that every single second that I'm watching these games. Oh yeah, Ben. And when he gets there, I think there's a balance. I think that, again, this was the talking points this year. I think we need to develop the talking points further with the XL outside of the player 54. All right, we have our action items here and then we're going to get out of here then. We did good. We did good. This wasn't as scar as I thought it was going to be, so I appreciate everyone sticking around here. This is particular changes for next season and beyond. Number one, we need to do a better job with sports betting and fantasy communications. We've talked about this transparency, do a better job sharing the hard information about football on leagues, social and publicly archiving on the leagues, websites, inactive lists, injury reports, dev charts, et cetera. Get a real fantasy football partner. Why not espn? We've talked about transparency, all of that. I mean, I'm happy to gain followers sharing out dev charts and stuff like that at U US F L now they'll tweet them out from their main one, C F L. The teams do it. What do you want to see the X ffl do? Yeah, that is bizarre. Thats ESPN N does not do fantasy on their own app considering that they broadcast the league. That is a little strange, isn't it? Especially if they're getting all this information. Anyways, and as far as sharing reports, one of the things I have to give the S F L credit for is that they post those reports, those inactive reports consistently on their Twitter page. And the player movement too. People who are put on the suspend the inactive list. That needs to be more consistent, and that has to be something the Exel absolutely needs to do more of. If people need to have that information, if they're going to make lineup changes, or if they're going to understand, all right, well this guy's probably not going to play. He hasn't practiced all week. I'm not going to risk it. You know, make those kind of educated decisions like you do with your NFL rosters. So for this case, yeah, I want to see maybe a partnership with DraftKings or somebody who can have more fan, a FanDuel or somebody who at least you can say, Hey, we'll give you the proper information so you're not left in the dark and then here's the information that's going to be put out to our fans and they can make their educated guesses as far as what's going to happen or what they think is going to happen and then you can go from there. That needs to be done more and that engagement is going to be so much more crucial for people who really want to be involved than people might want to watch the games. So because people start to go on and because people always want to bet people are going to bet all the time and if you start to have things that you realize, oh, I have this player or this team maybe I'm betting on, okay, well I want to check out some of their games, that's great. Awesome. Then you can really work on that. And so that's kind of what I agree with too. I agree with the ESPN point and I agree with making a partnership with a betting book. It's when I feel like in the US of L two with these spring leagues, when they talk about fantasy sports betting and all this stuff, and I know nothing about any of this, but I had brought on Eric ER and Justin Freeman and get to run the Sims guys, all this. It feels like when I used to work in news and famously I was verified on Twitter before Elon came in and ruined the world, but when I word to Q 13, they go, all right, you're getting everybody here iPhones, you have to install Twitter and you need to go out and you need to tweet when you're out covering news. And so we go out, I got to do this. They say it, we say, we got, what the hell are, okay, we go out, okay, car accident, whatever we have to do this feels like with same with XL and US Belt. They know in their head, okay, we have to talk about this. This is such a big thing, but we don't know and I don't understand why you don't get any of these guys. Mark Drum Heller that works for Yahoo Sports. This is okay. This isn't like if you don't want to deal with run the Sims or one of these, I think they're all legit, but if don't, you're the X F L. We don't have a partner. Mark works for Yahoo Sports. Mark, can you come in here? Can you do a six minute, I know Stormy does it a little bit. I think Stormy's better doing the interviews and all that. Can you actually talk about the fantasy lineups here and what's going on? Can you actually talk about the Betty odds again? Keep Stormy Stormy's great. Utilize that different, bring in someone. That's all they do is do this and figure out what the hell we're supposed to talk about. Because I'm tired of Ian Fitzsimmons standing on the sidelines at Katherine Field holding his over under ticket and cheering that the team missed the field goal because it preserved his under. I don't know of it. People that really care about sports betting aren't really giving an S about the over under. They're vo, they're betting, they're playing fantasy and they have our lineups and all that stuff. That's the most basic thing and I almost think it's insulting the people that really want to pay fantasy that to play fantasy when you have people like Ian, oh got my under here so that that's level one of a thousand in sports betting you're catering to, you're almost dumbing down to the people that actually want to pay your play with your product at that point. Yeah, it feels so vaudeville in a way. This really old style of go with the horse races would be like, I bet on the horse name Lucky Shoe. I don't know, something Like that. Sounds good. I like that. Yeah, That's exactly what it sounds like. So I agree with you. I don't understand why there's not a designated person that comes in, just talks about betting lines. They have networks are getting that all the time. Fox has that with the, like the S F L Fox is getting that with the U S F L. They're doing, there was a guy, I can't remember his name, but they presented it last week where he gave like, oh, here's the overrun I'm looking at, this is why. Here's the spread I'm looking at for this reason he gives us fix and he is out. That's cool. That was a one minute spot. You don't need really much emphasis on those kinds of things like all the time, but you at least get people involved in terms of having a guy who knows about this stuff and is able to explain it to the audience. A little bit of fantasy here, a little bit of fantasy there. Get more of that involved because if you don't talk about that, people aren't going to be engaged in that part of your product and that disengages them from it overall. So you need to get somebody who can talk about that on these shows. I mean the X F L preview show that you've highlighted, they need to do more of that on there too or somewhere anywhere than they can get somebody that more involved and be able to explain those things. Also currently, and again because this is things we can build to, I think we need to generate more sports betting and gambling and fantasy. I bet you right now there are far fewer people actually doing this than the X F L. Thanks, because I'll talk with, who is it? It was the guy from Run the Sims on two weeks ago. Oh, the Furby guy Furby. And I'm like, how's this going? He goes, well, week one it was pretty hot and the pot free, we were talking usl, the pot was like a hundred thousand. You could go on and win your part pot of a hundred thousand if you're playing whatever DFS or whatever on this site last week or whatever. It was like a thousand dollars because there just wasn't enough to like, well we're you can't give that many. We got to figure out how to do this. If you're going to do fantasy, really do it. But otherwise, talking to ad nauseum about all of the over and unders, there are not that many people doing it currently and I don't think that they realize that. I think there's either a disconnect. We either need to ignore it because no one's doing it or we need to build into it and do a better job not insulting the people that are doing it. I think they need to build into it. I really do think there are people that are engaged with it and want to be engaged with it. Again, trying to do it rogue is just really tough. I, I love that Mike Mitchell has his team and he talks about, he comes out and he goes like, oh, I'm really glad that alonza doing really well and I'm happy for him. I'm glad that he's getting those points, but Mike can't be the only one doing that. It can't just be this inner circle of people who are doing this. You need to capitalize on this interest of people who can actually get involved in the product. C F L needs to keep doing a better job of that too, by the way. They need, they need to push their chips in more on the table on that because you have the infrastructure to do it. You have the players. You need to be able to give people reasons to put more in into that. And I know it's kind of a slower build for them with the Genius sports and PF F and getting more information out there, but they have to be able to push that button too because again, people want to do that. There are people who want to do that all the time. Who there are people whose lifestyles revolve around that. Scott Dickerson, if I can't remember, it was earlier in the chat, he said, the XL needs to work with Genius Sports. I go, no, no, no, no, that's move. That's cfl. Cfl. They're working with Genius Sports. We got all this going on here. We have a lot of stuff about Vegas here. I don't want to dive too deep into that because I mean obviously people are unhappy with that, but I think moving forward, I think the X F L and Max has here, they need to do far more research about what markets and stadiums will work for spring football going into Vegas, not necessarily having a plan there. The Orlando thing we've talked about, I don't know, camping world, but then they can't play at the m ML S stadium there or whatever in terms of market research, and this is a conversation, I'm sure we'll talk X F L expansion here for years to come, but any other thoughts on picky markets? I mean, again, I don't know if there's going to really be any shifting of markets at this juncture because they're still just trying to establish themselves in the markets that they're already in. And as far as Vegas goes, look, I mean there's a lot to be talked about here, especially with the fact that obviously the entire sales team is gone now you've only had 60, the 6,000 people really on average come into your games and the location's not great. You're not getting a new stadium now because you're not getting an MLS team and so you're not going to have that venue to really work off of. So what's your alternative strategy? My thing is I would really try to appeal to people who, one, I think you need to fix up the field a little bit. That goes without saying, but two, appeal to people who can spend money on a product that's good and that it's not Extortionist price. Let me tell you something, Reid. I just got tickets last night. I have a bachelor party that I'm going to with my friend to Vegas because he is a huge Raiders fan. He wants to go to a game. We decided we're going to a pre-season game, just a pre-season game in August. How much the ticket costs for me, just me alone to go to a pre-season game in Vegas, the Raiders, it costs $171 for a pre-season game that's price. And I can't believe that the X ffl doesn't appeal to that market. More of being like, look how affordable we are for this product compared to everybody else college, there's colleges that spend more money on tickets than the X F L and the N F NFL obviously just has flowing out of the pocket books. You have to be able to appeal to that crowd and just be able to do that. But you can't also do this thing. I don't think the S F L strategy really works either of the like, oh, we got $1 Deer, $1 soda and $1 corn dogs. That's devalue too much. That is So you got to be able to at least keep it at a fair price, but at least a reasonable enough to say, Hey look, this is the combinable for people. Because here's the thing, here's the psychology for people. If you spend money on something that's really not, that's can be a sunk cost where it's just not that much. If you don't end up going to the game and it's not worth it, then you've kind of lost the interest. You need to at least give it to a fair amount of price where it's like, okay, I've spent a decent amount of money on this, I'm not going to just skip out on this. Whereas if you devalue it too much, then it's just like, well, I only spent $10 and I don't really feel like going today because I don't know, I got some shopping to do. That's just the psychology of people. Sometimes that just happens, you know, have to be careful about how much something is really worth to somebody. But again, at least point to something and say like, Hey look, you don't have to spend this much money on this thing. Look, let's be real that game. I'm going to that preseason game. I'm probably going to see a bunch of all football league players playing in that game. Obviously maybe a C F L player trying to make the roster or an X NFL player or USS L player. It's going to be kind of funny. Actually, ironic in hindsight, you've seen that people that I would've seen just months earlier for a much cheaper price. So maybe appeal to that too. I've saying so for nine more dollars you could come see the trilogy with Enrique Ggl, Ricky Martin and Pit Bull there here at climbing points. No, I get what you're saying. And it's the US develops at that point now where it and the C F L, the C F L two things, the CFL is at the point where their season tickets are not. It is that sun cost. Well last night of the Calgary game, I think they had like 17,000, whatever it was, the record, low lowest ever since the turn of the century for a C long game. Because you get these people that, yeah, I'm just not going to go to the game. It's a Thursday, I ate too much, I'm full, I'm tired, whatever, I don't want to go. Us develop is the same way too. Come get a dollar hotdog, get the thing, tell me no one is coming to your game more like please. But yet we don't care about attendance, but yet all we do every week is promote, please come please. We don't care about the, we don't want you to come, but please care about this US develops at that point where I think they have devalued, I think they've devalued even in just two seasons. I think they devalued the worth of going to an actual U S F L game. I don't want to see the X F L do that because remember with both the X F L and the US F l, we spend all this time maximizing the on-air broadcast, right? Oh, we can see Dean and we can hear all this. We've got the play calling all that. So why do people want to come out to your stadium? You need to figure out, you need to make that worthwhile. You need to figure out, well, because we're going to be doing in stadium stuff and maybe we have a, what was it US f l had Kenny Chesney play, whoever it was come play or was that Tim McGraw play between we need to do things because you've almost made your, you're on their broadcast too good now that you need to incentivize people to come back out because it's way easier to sit on the couch. Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. And that's always a tough balance between being there in person and just watching it on tv. It's kind of a tough balance to keep. And I mean for the X F L, I think there's enough from the on-field product and you spell that there's enough on the on-field product that can engage people, but there has to be other things that go on. There's other bells and whistles that maybe you need to have that will actually keep people engaged as far as being able to show up and have some sort of experience, a fan experience. A couple last things here. I was just looking on here. Anyone thinks that Max, who helped prepare the notes today, if anyone thinks that Max is like the U S F L stand, I'm reading here about XL failing on a lot of things. So just keep in mind, max is critical about all this stuff too, as much as he wants to do it. Last couple notes. Furthermore, they need to stop assuming that fans will follow a league or anything just because they exist. This isn't a major league sport, you know, have to build a fan base, you need people deeply attached and this is always the usls thing, and you ask, I think it was Danny and Jerry when they were on it, was that the TED talkie thing that they had last year where they came like, Hey, they're asking Jerry, Jerry, so why they want to get involved in football? And it's like, well, people like football we would, its more football. People want football, we want to air. And when you even ask like C F L people, John Hodge was on, Hey John, so what's the deal with the American TV deal? What it's like, well, we know Americans like football, so C F L you, the C F L needs to market itself in America very differently than the X F L does. But neither one can just be like, well, because it's football, people like football, the U S F L is showing, I mean I think demonstrably showing just putting football on, you're going to attract somewhere between 600,000, 800,000 US develop has not topped a million this year. Save for the Kentucky Derby or Preakness game or whatever where they did the 2 million. But you need to do more than just football on field. That is the Brian Woods model that we saw that in the Spring league for years. I just think there's a ceiling. There Is certainly a ceiling, at least from a broadcast standpoint. Again, we don't know what the streaming numbers are. Well that's always the curiosity factor here, but that audience has its limits. There are people who will watch football no matter what, but there are also a lot of periphery people who don't watch football. Putting it this way, it's kind of funny. I always put it in context of, oh wow, this many people watch this, many people watch the Super Bowl. Well there are millions and millions of other people who do not watch sports at all in this country who just do not care. And so you have to account for that factor as well. And as far as when you start getting into these niche sections, you're not going to just pull over all the people from the N F L or pull over these casual people who happen to watch an N F game and then they're not going to suddenly just be interested in the C F L or the US L or the X F L. You have to work to get people involved in those products is how Many times have you heard and Hodge said it, and I don't want to, this isn't pooping on John Hodge, but this is the mindset X number of million people watch this. If we just got 5% of those, if we just got 2% of those, if we just got 10%, it's like that's a failing strategy. You need to, what makes you stand out? And like we said at the top, if the comment I had that really struck with me, the X F L feels like if the N F NFL was not here, the X ffl would not have a place, right? Because we put people in the N F nfl. If you ask someone on the street, what is X Ffl ME messaging telling you right now, what's telling me people play here to go to the other place? Well what if there was no N F L? Well, I don't know. That is what, so you need to figure out how, if that makes sense. But I hate this. Well, if we just got a sliver of that large percentage, we would be, I don't know. I live in the wedding industry here. Oh, 30,000 people in King County get married every year if you just got fi. Yeah, but I need to, why do people want to hire me than anyone else? You can't just say, oh, because I exist, that's enough. Yeah, no, I think that's feeding off table scraps and that's not the mentality you need to have with attracting people. You need to be able to build your own interest, not just because, oh well it's kind of peripherally interested from this other entity. You need to actually build upon, generate your own interest. I think that's an argument that doesn't really work with building out any sort of general interest in your product. I agree with you in that regard. So I think another thing that can be done as far as attracting other people and other numbers again, is presenting it as maybe something new, something innovating, not just football as people know it, but something beyond that and maybe a more entertaining product. I mean, I don't understand why. And that's the thing with the C F L, that's what kind of makes me laugh is just like, well, if we just got this percentage of people from the N F nfl, it doesn't work that way. It doesn't go the other way because look, no one's familiar with the game down here. I'm sorry it took years for me to jump on the train and I've been watching football most of my life and people, most people don't engage with it because there's not really a method or a reason to engage with it. And that is a big deal. You have to almost go a different way. Take a different route instead of just the football audience. Think about other audiences and I know, look, I'm sure there's some marketing exec who's probably typing in the chat right now that's telling me how wrong I am. But look, there's got to be an alternative strategy to approaching this besides just saying, oh, person watches football. They would watch this too. I don't know, would they For anyone, and I love the C F L I love the C F L. I watched every snap at the game last night for any of this, the c f people that, so ESPN is winning into this deal with Disney and b, ABC and all this. We're doing the Xta L thing because Fox is different because they own the US L outright, right? It's a totally different scenario. We're going to invest in this. If the C Ffl, and I love the c l, if there was such a hot property here, why wouldn't e s ESPN just go, this is already produced for, we'll give that money. Come here. We don't need to deal. They're already, why would we go into bed with, and obviously it's because it's American football and Danny and the Rock, and I understand the X F L is bringing a lot more, but ESPN couldn't find anyone to market half their games to this year. That's why they're giving them away for free on TV on streaming and that's great. And the CBS BS sports network deal is great for the summer games, but C F L was only able to find a suitable home for half of their games in the United States because half their season airs opposite the N F L in college. But it is interesting with the c l fans, it's like, yeah, but yet ESPN N decided to go with the X ffl when they were airing your games last year. Okay, tell me And that that's a hot product right now in America and I love the C F L. Yeah, I and they never promoted the C F L ever. They never promoted it. It was just their, its like, oh, it's on ESPN N news today. Okay, cool. No, there was zero promotion about it ever. And any sense, whereas CBS has at least done a little bit more, we've seen them send ad promos and the promoted it, there's at least a little more effort on that end because maybe there's more skin in the game for them to actually promote it as opposed to ESPN who may have just been kind of a toss away rights fee of just filling programming for that day. So there's maybe a little bit more skin in the game for c Bs to do it. Last point here in the we're, this is good, I appreciate that, but they need to actually, Val needs to approach every person from the top down. Who is running the business side. Has Russ Brandon, what connections is he pulling in now from the business side? They have the former Browns president, Alec Sh Sheer, right? One of the breadboard partners in the firm. Has he been involved? If we're doing these layoffs, restructuring, moving people around, are we further utilizing enough to the like is Russ Brandon utilizing the maximum that he can? Are all these people from top to bottom now that we've shed the dead weight? I hate seeing people get go and all the layoffs, but are we utilizing all these execs to the highest quality? I don't think so. And I think Russ, Russ, Brandon could be utilized a little bit better, but again, he's doing a lot of behind the scenes work, so I want him to get out there more. I want to see him more presented, but it's just not happening. And there's more emphasis on Danny and Duane when they're available. But again, keyword being there when they're available, not when it's convenient for everybody else. And so if you're going to do that, you have to get some of these higher up execs or like we were saying just a few moments ago, just getting another person involved that can actually present all of this and has the time and the dedication to present all of it instead of it somebody just flying in last minute to just give it a formal announcement. The last thing on here, and this is I think probably if you want to devolve everything we've said in the last two hours here to this and then we'll get out of here, we'll do final thoughts. More TV marketing in itself will not be the answer. More national TV slots in itself will not be the answer. Better scheduling in of itself is not the answer. The deep problem has to do with the lack of connection to the product, not the product itself. Awareness is not enough. That's kind of Max's final thoughts. I feel concurrence with that. What do you make? I mean I think that they still should do more of it. I know it's not the Only, yes, there Needs to be more of it, but I think the connection to the product, I don't know what Max is really getting on about here as far as connection to the product because I think the product itself connects itself to the fans. I don't think that's the problem. I think the problem is there's not as much bridge building between the product and the fans by the league itself, but the product is not insufficient in a way that I think it doesn't Connect with people. Yes, you're aware. Yeah, that's okay. So in that regard, I mean I don't know what the answer would be then besides, I gave my suggestions, as I said, get the banners out there, get the social media more involved, get better scheduling, get local TV marketing better promoted, get more of that. Get people to involve themselves more and care about the players, the profiles. I think we've covered all of this in my opinion. See, I disagree. I think people have been convinced that just haven't convinced enough people. I disagree fullheartedly with that statement. People have enough reason to when you get involved. I think they are involved. It's just reaching out to people and literally just telling people that it exists. I think that's literally what the issue is here and not that are not feeling involved. It's good. Max just put, if you're listening on the podcast, max is commenting on the chat. People haven't been convinced that they need to watch the product. I think it's both sides. I think like we've said, and I've always said we'll get out of here. I think X ffl I is far more C F L than it is. I think U S F L kind of pretends to do the, okay, we've got the mascots and we're kind of like Bandit peed and we're out and I know they're doing community stuff. I just don't know Fox always, I always get b, d E with them and it just never feels the same. I want one of these leagues to not realize, but I think at least for the short term, except like the C F L, we send people out, we're in the communities, we're in the schools, we're building in the local things. It's more that than N F L of. We just put it on and people watch. I think you need to, I think it's like we've said, combination in person on TV and the marketing and all of that, but it's far more A C F L. Like we're drumming up grassroots support right now than it is f l puts a draft on and the 18 million people watch or whatever. Yeah, no, I mean it's not just going to, people aren't just going to flock to it immediately. You have to be able to push and be able to advertise it better. But once people do, I do believe that they'll be engaged with what's actually being presented. And in some ways I feel that way still about other leagues like the C F L in a way because I think there's, there's more that could be said there that could be done and presented and yet isn't being done. And for the X F L, I think that they have to be able to push that out a little bit further. Well, there we go. I think we did it today. We'll get final thoughts from Andy, but I'll set the stage before we go. Appreciate everyone's sticking around. Don't forget Monday, if you watched our C F L pre-game show last night, Jason Hussie will join me again. We're going to recap and analyze we C F L week one, pat Rapino not to be left out in the cold. Pat will be with me on Tuesday. We'll talk through the C US F L week nine ratings, all the games, kind of all that stuff. Andy highest viewed us L podcast right now. Wild, wild. Pat and I are doing that and Andy's been a part of that as well. I attribute Andy did that. But wild to think that the US L Haiti Mark highest viewed us L podcast right now on YouTube, but that is what it is. But e exciting stuff there. We're trying to figure out, oh, both those will be at 9:00 AM Pacific and then we're trying to figure out the XL rookie draft. We'll be doing coverage for that no matter what that looks like. Whether I got to go be in the parking lot somewhere and do it before I got to go in and do the show or whatever. We'll figure it out. I want to be a part of that. John Lewis says, awesome guy. John Lewis stayed with us the entire time of all the work. Appreciate the time and never both of you put into covering these leagues. John Lewis and I appreciate that, John, a friend of the podcast. Everything else. Andy, anything else from you before we get out of here? Two hours. I mean, it probably could have gone three more, but I appreciate all the work done by you and I appreciate all the people tuning in. My last thought is, listen, I say all of this in the past two hours with respect and admiration for the league, and I want them to do better because I believe in what they have to offer. And I think it's just more of the overall sense of what are they doing and how can they present this better? Because I feel very similarly about people from other leagues who present their product and really feel as passionately about it. They just want it to be pushed out more and be able to be presented in a more transparent fashion. And I feel the same way about this. So this all comes from admiration and respect for the league, but it, there's always things that could be done better and I think everybody, every fan base and every league could always feel that way no matter what. I am a firm believer and nothing was ever improved by sitting around and saying, this is fine. I have, like you said, tremendous respect for all this. I will say there are same with the U S F L fan podcast out there. Then sit every week and go, this is the greatest thing. That's great, that's great. I enjoy the product. I wanted it to give me get better. Until we have years of success in this, there's always need to be concerns and we want to do everything we can. I don't like unforced errors. Don't want unforced errors. Want to do everything we can. Appreciate everyone. I'll get this out of here. I like it. Subscribe. I'm sure anyone that's two hours into this is subscribed at this point, but if you're not, I appreciate that. We'll see you next time.

LIVE CFL 2023 Kickoff + Week 1 Pre-Game Show! BC Lions at Calgary Stampeders CFL Week 1 Pre-Show!!!

Well here we are. Happy CFL 2023. Kickoff day read here with the mark decked out in my BC Lions gear. Tremendously excited. I have my co-host for this adventure standing by before I get to it, a little bit of programming on here. Excited. We have our big CFL pre-game show tonight, right? Big guest list. Dan Naer, Dan Ralph, we got Darrell Darrell Davis coming on. Everyone else tomorrow morning if you want our X F L coverages normal. Andy Murray and I will be back. The professor who might be stopping by here near the end of the program, but Andy and I are going live tomorrow morning, 9:00 AM Pacific, 12 Eastern. We're doing our X F L plotting the course for XFL 2024. So if you're here for the CFL content, welcome. I have my zah here. We have been enjoying football content since February, but if you're back for the CFL welcome today we're going to be doing you weekly previews, recaps. Jason's going to be joining us you weekly, Monday recaps as normal, but we will have our X L content this Friday, so enough rambling for me. I'm going to bring in Jason here. Jason Hussie. Jason, how are you doing? Welcome to the show. I'm doing great. Thanks for inviting me. Honestly, it's such an honor to be a part of such a great show. Well, I'm serious. I was sitting here, we've been doing the X F L stuff and just all the guys and Andy and Evan and Pat, everyone has been so great. Mount Lyons, everyone else, Anthony Miller and I said I got to get just someone that can do, if they want to pop in, that's fine. The professor, I'm sure I'll do flybys and stuff, but if we need to have someone dedicated you, we've been interacting online for years. You have your own great YouTube channel as well, so I appreciate Jason coming on. Why don't you tell everyone just quickly what you do and we'll get into everything today. All right, so I run the YouTube channel hussey's huddle and basically what I do is I upload about a couple of videos a week. I do a preview video, a recap video during the season and then little other videos every so often as well throughout the season. But I also do extensive off-season content. My idea is trying to make my channel the most consistent C F L content out there on YouTube and I've been running for about three years now and I've been pretty proud of what I've accomplished over there. So if you want some great C F L content, go check it out. Yeah, Jason's great. We're going to be doing, like I said, Monday recaps that's been really successful with the X ffl going through and even the U S F L as well. So doing live, I don't see a lot of that in the space and being able to take comments and all that stuff and we have people checking in Max already. Happy to see Hussie here on in the spotlight. Max is already excited for that. So we're going to bring in, Daryl's going to be popping in here in a few minutes. I have a lot of stuff to talk with Daryl about. Like I said, we have Dave Naer, Sarah's coming on Farha, we have Marty York as well, blaster in the past Marty, but I want to make sure we talk enough about the game here because we might spiral all this today and everything else, BC Alliance at Calgary, Stan Peters here. We got to do one of these in Vancouver so I can get there, but what are you looking forward to? I think I'm really looking at the quarterbacks tonight. Honestly. I think going into the season, obviously the big story is Nathan Rourke leaving the BC Lion's off season and Vernon Adams taking hold of a starter's job yet again. And then behind them you have Dane Evans and I think they've kind of, obviously they're not the similar in terms of style of quarterback, but you look at in terms of the inconsistencies they've shown throughout their career, they've both had flashes of brilliance, but I think maybe them together, this is a very much a great cup contending team, so I'm interested to see how it works out this year for the Lions and then for Calgary, obviously. Moving on from Bo Levi Mitchell, how does Jake Maer do, excuse me, how does Jake Mayer do in his first season as a c f starter? I think we saw that with Dane Evans last year looked great when he had another guy there in Jeremiah Mazzoli, but I think going forward, can he really do it without being the number one guy in the spotlight? I'm really interested to see how Jake Mayer does for Calgary. I'm excited, I love Jake. We had him on pre-season last year, even with Bo was there. I said, I want to get my wagon into this guy early. Kind of one of the faces of the franchise, amazing Calgary stumbles into doesn't Snu but gets Bo Levi franchise quarterback there and now Bo Moose on the Hamilton and now we have another great quarterback waiting in the wings. I love Vernon Adams as a person. He's been on the show multiple times. I love him on Arrow Up produced by Nick and Matt Baker and everyone over there. I just don't know if I love him as my starting quarterback for the entire season. What do you make of just of Vernon as the player to separate him from the locker room leader and do you think Vernon will still be the BC lion starting quarterback here midway through the season? I think it's bound to be a situation where Vernon has a couple of really bad games and then Dane will take hold for a couple games and then he'll struggle and then I think they'll go back and forth maybe a couple of times this season 18 game schedule a long year in this C F L and I'm interested to see because like I said, they've both been pretty inconsistent players. I think Vernon, the main problem with him has been the sporadic accuracy I think over the past few years. Sometimes he's in the low fifties in terms of completion percentage, which really stands out when you look at the C F L game and some of these other numbers that other guys are putting up around the league. So I'm looking at that. He was very accurate when he came over from Montreal light late last season, so I'm interested to how Vernon does as a full-time starter again. Yeah, I don't know if I love Dan this well, I mean this is nothing against the people, but it's almost like can both of them combine? Can we get a starting quarterback there, right, because I, Vernon scares me and he's running and doing back flips or front flips and trying to scramble and Dane didn't really, it never really seemed to kind of bounce back after the great cup loss and all of that. I just don't know what I make of that. I love the BC Lions, obviously that's America's CFL team is I call them. I would like to see them be competitive. Do you think between the two there's enough to keep BC competitive throughout the season? Well I think it helps that they have a great supporting cast. I think their defense looks excellent. I think it has the chance I was saying in my season preview for them, they have the chance to be the best defense in the C F L this year. Great secondary, very deep front seven. So I think that's going to keep them in a lot of games, which really helps. I think the receiving core is going to make their job easier. One question I have is their offensive line, the left tackle position, they lose Joel Figueroa to the Hamilton Tigercat in free agency. That was a problem for them for years before last year, so we'll see how they do replacing that position yet again. But I think that if they can get the B best out of each other, I think they do have a chance to be one of the leaders for Great Cup intention in 2023. Tim caper, Che checking in here. Montreal Alz Flight Deck podcast. I had Tim and Cliff on last year for the season kickoff. The only way I could talk that was getting 18 guests or however many we have today. So kudos to Tim and Cliffy over there doing all their work with the Montreal. Speaking of movement to Hamilton, obviously James Butler here, a big loss for the Lions. I had Steve Milton on last week kind of talking about that with the tie cats. What do you make of BC's run game here because it was horrible and the Butler at least had some semblance of obviously had a great season. What do you make of them moving forward now? Well I think a lot of it comes down to the offensive line and I think the offensive lines actually improved a lot over the past couple years, especially in terms of their Canadian guys on the interior. I think that should help the new, starting back to Kwan Mazzella, I believe his name is, that's starting the game tonight, have some success, but at the end of the day, I think a lot of it comes down to their game plan. They're usually not usually a team before the Ed James Ball that leaned on the running game that much and that was really to their detriment. I think last year you saw when they had balance they had a lot more success. So I'm very interested to see how they do. You can't really tell with some of these rookies, some of these guys end up being some of the best players in the league right away in the C F L benefit of guys coming in at an older age and they're not just like 22 years old coming off the street as a N F L rookie. These guys are 26, 27 years old, have played in professional games before and some of these guys can really hit the ground running. So we'll have to see if Mazel does that. Tonight We have our first guest standing by here. I'll bring him on in a minute. I'll ask the question to you first and then we'll toss the deer. You're standing by a lot's been made and I want to talk with Daryl about his article. The Canadianness of the C F l John Hodge had this article out last night with that nation recent friend of the show. Now John and I kind of working to bury the hatchet there. This whole, it's a mockery now and the rosters and the, you're we're starting the designated nationals and kind of all that stuff. What do you make of this new? It was the C B A and no one knew how it was going to work, but now coming in we, it's like we're breaking the fourth wall and people don't seem happy. Well yeah, it just seems like the teams have kind of manipulated the rule to not be what it was intended to be. Like you said, I think this was intended for American players that not necessarily were going to be starters anymore, but had been in the league for a number of years, a bit wait for them to kind of continue their career. Kind of like Sean Lemon, maybe a guy that fits that bill, maybe not a guy that you know, see how much he's moved around the league. Not a guy that teams really trust to be their number one starter on a consistent basis. So rotational guys like that. That was the intention of the rule, but at the end of the day, I don't think it's really done when you're actually seeing it in practice here. I mean I didn't really think it was going to be this confusing. I don't really how know how they screwed it up as much as they did. But yeah, it's kind of disappointing to see it kind of make a mockery of the game a little bit. I kind of do agree with John Hodge a bit. Darrell, if you're ready, give me a thumbs up, we'll bring you on here. I see Daryl's adjust. He's got big thumbs up here. Darrell Davis here was my tour guide back in Regina for the gray cup. We have Darryl back here. Darryl Davis, how are you? Hi Reid. There's not much tour in Regina though, is there? Well, no. So you, Daryl famously was our closing act from our first ever C F Grey Cup show back in Hamilton. Now leading off tonight, Darryl, how did you make it all the way to the top of the lineup? I don't know, attrition, I guess Reid or everybody else is busy. Is that it? No, it's good. It worked out. There is a reason why I pre-record a lot of these interviews because then I can get people on obviously Omar Doman. I try work to get him on schedules. Didn't allow it today. I know we'll bring him on during the season. Darryl, I want to talk with you and then we'll get Jason's continued thoughts. This the canadianness of the C F L. You had your article I had pinned to bring you on a couple weeks ago and just ran out of time. What do you make of all this roster shenanigans? Oh my goodness. As you guys have been talking about it, it seems silly now, right? They started out, it was supposed to be 49% of the plays the nationalized American could play. Now it's 23 plays. It just seems like it's changing. Don't, they're not sure what they're doing and the toughest part is they don't know how to enforce it. They're going to try to keep track and then tell the benches that with five plays left or three plays left or once snap left, the player has to come out. It's just silly. Let's just go back to make it simple. I'm always in favor of more Canadians than the cfl. Not that I hate Americans playing in the Canadian Football League. Obviously they had a lot to the CFL over the years. They're the best players. Of course they are. But let's give Canadian players that great opportunity all the time to play Canadian in the Canadian Football League and make sure, because it's tougher to get Americans. There's the X ffl, there's the U S F L, there's arena football, N F L rosters are expanding all the time. So there are fewer top quality American players available. Let's give more roster space to Canadians and throw out all these stupid designated international, global whatever they are players that they're making up. Jason, what do you make of that? We had on, when they were doing the CBAs last year, and I had Jim Molan on and I think Darl was on as well, talking all this in. We were messing with the ratio and stuff. Now what do you make of the canadianness of the game? Well, I think it, it's, I'm kind of split on it. I've always been kind of split on it because obviously I think it kind of hurts the perception of the league a lot. I think especially with when you're trying to recruit more American fans and stuff that are like, oh, what the hell is this ratio thing? So I do think there is a negative connotation with it, but I don't think if you take that away, if you took LA ratio completely away, I think that it would destroy a lot of the connections that Canadians have to the game. And I think that culture that it's been built up over a number of years, I think that's why you really couldn't do without it. But as for this new rule that they brought in the 49%, whatever you want to call it, I think that it's just kind of ridiculous. I think that they didn't, it's just kind of overly complicated and I thought when they introduced this that this was going to kind of be a background thing. You wouldn't really notice it a lot of the time, but you saw the opening week depth charts and it was kind of ridiculous. Kind of silly season over here and that's basically my thoughts on it. Yeah, Dar, what do you make? Because here in we're trying to do the single game sports betting and you, we've dealt with this in the X F L and the U S F L. We get depth charts and the USS f L doesn't want to give us and we want people to gamble on the games and do fancy and all that, but now we have this depth chart kind of kerfuffle. What do you make of this? Well, it's going to be confusing in a lot of ways, isn't it? And what about players who are supposed to be paid extra in their contracts for starts? Is he a starter now that he's a designated national? It it's silly stuff all the time over and over again that I asked Jeremy O'Day, the Saskatchewan R Riders general manager yesterday, he was walking by and I said, Jeremy, could you explain to me this 49% rule, the 23 snaps? And he just looked and pointed at me and started laughing hysterically and he said, well, you know what I'm going to do Darryl. He said, I'm going to watch the other games this weekend and then see how it's handled by the other teams because the rough riders don't play until they visit Edmonton on Sunday. So they get the advantage of watching three games before they have to decide. Jason made a good point. Could I just touch on something about the connection and you're right, it's important to have American players so you can say they came from Tulane, they played in Alabama wherever they played, and if you're going to grow the market, the United States, of course that's important. The reason I always think that the ratio is important to maintain is if we take it out of it, it reduces the number of chances for Canadian players because they're reserved and I think that hurts grassroots, but it also then suddenly the C F L is strictly a farm system or a second class system, a second class league to the National Football League because all of a sudden the best players are all going to the N F L and only the second and third and fourth best players are coming to the Canadian Football League. This way you have a ratio and you say, well, the Canadians are good enough to play. We want to make sure that they have a chance to play and we have these unique rules, including the ratio, which makes the league a little bit different. There's already the U S F L, there's the X ffl. There's American Colleges, which are basically the feeder system for the National Football League. The CFL could become that, and of course they want to produce players to make the big money and the get the big spotlight in the National Football League, but if they're just another farm team or another farm system for the nfl, I think the league will really fall apart and die. Well, Here's my thing and thoughts for both of you guys on it. We talk all this and the American players and all that Hodge was on last week or whatever it was week two ago and said, we want C F L wants the X F L and the U S F L to die. They don't want this because we need to make sure we're getting all the players up here, you know, have this ratio now that's supposed to protect. I mean god forbid if the X ffl exists for five years, do we even need to worry about that or then we like, oh my god, we need to get Canadian players now. Yeah, well it is making it tougher for the C F L to get American players, so is the N right and American colleges that the players are making a lot more money now in college, so don't spoiled a little bit and don't have to come to the Canadian Football League to earn money anymore. They've made enough in their college careers perhaps, and they're not so eager to come here. So that's why I can see John Hod saying that the CFL wants the U S F L and the X ffl to die. I don't know if that's a hundred percent accurate. They've seen a lot of leagues over the years come and go. Some of them have had a little bit of success here and there. Having football around and having people talk about football, I think in the long run benefits every league that is around because then suddenly you more about the game, somebody who's playing the game, you can identify with people who are involved with it and I don't think it hurts the game of football or hurts the Canadian Football League to have the U S F L and the N F NFL and the X F L and arena football and all those other alternatives. The C F L is unique in its way. I know that everybody says it's shrinking. I just think that it's the sign of the times the way things have gone since Covid crowds are smaller. There's less interest paid in it, but I think that it can hang tough and keep its business model intact and continue to exist for a long, long time. Jason are, yeah, what do you judge the hype level right now going into this year? Because obviously two years ago it was coming off the X ffl and the canceled season last year we had all the C B A stuff. It feels like a clean off season. We're getting into all this. I mean, do you sense an overwhelming excitement right now? I think so because yeah, like you said, this is the first year that we haven't had any kind of disruption going into the season or some kind of dark cloud hanging over the league. I mean obviously the shortened 2021 season, the canceled 2020 season, the year before just brought a lot of negative press to the league. The commissioner going to the House of Commons and asking for federal funding for the bailout. The league honestly was just kind of a bad image for the league. So I think that it's good that we have kind of a clean runway like you said, to reach the season here in 2023 and I think that's helped it alone. Darl. What other storylines are you tracking into this season? Obviously we talked a little bit Vernon and everything going on with the quarterback stuff in bc, Hamilton here playing Winnipeg over lots of history between that over the weekend. What are you tracking here? Storylines? Well, it'll be all the quarterbacks give me once the remember no labor stripes this year too, Jason, right? Last year we had a lockouts or lockouts, so that was really unusual and I had never seen it before in all my years to covering the Canadian Football League. There were threats every year, but first time I ever saw any job action taken, so that was different and maybe a bit of a black cloud hanging over the league, all about the quarterbacks as this league always is, there's all leagues are. It all filters down from who's playing where in the mid nineties, and forgive me for that, Reid, because I've been following this league a long time, but when the C F L expanded to the Canadian to United States, all the great quarterbacks were wooed away from their teams with money paid for. They didn't have a salary cap in those times. Matt Dunnigan, one of the great players, went to the Birmingham Barracudas, Damon Allen, one of the hall of Famers went to the Memphis Mad Dogs, David Archer, a former N F L or ended up playing for the Sacramento gold miners. So all these great quarterbacks were swinging around. It was like a ka iope, like a merry-go-round going around and around and round. Everybody showed up in new places and it's kind of like that this year. How many teams are starting the same quarterback they started last season with? I think the only one is Winnipeg, right? If I'm not mistaken on that one. So that's unusual. New quarterbacks and new places, it makes it easy for everybody to follow the big story because fans can talk that they know about the offensive line and the running backs and the receivers, but most everybody knows about is the quarterback. So it's pretty easy to say Bully by Mitchell in Hamilton. Wow. Trevor Harrison, Saskatchewan. Wow. Nathan work is gone and Vernon Adams in bc. Wow. Jake Meyer, how's and Taylor Cornelius. How are they going to do in Calgary and Edmonton? So it's pretty easy. Chad Kelly in Toronto, another great big one. There are so many things that are going on in the cornerback position that that's where we're going to be paying our most attention to Rita. And I know it might be boring and repetitive, but that's the biggest story that we're going to be following that for a long, long time around here. Jason, how big was Bo going to Hamilton from someone that's there? I think it's just a gigantic edition. Honestly. I think that after the disastrous season last year was just seen as a complete disaster. I mean, look at the end of the year, eight and 10 didn't look too bad, but I mean at the end of the day, that team had breakup aspirations last year and really to get back into good graces of the fan base, I think they needed to make a splash like that. And I think if they didn't bring in Boley by Mitchell, I guess Trevor Harris probably would've been the guy that it would've targeted. But I mean, I don't think that would've made as big of a splash as bringing in Bo and I think the vibes around the team this year, he has a chip on his shoulder and I'm just really excited to see him play this year. Darryl, I can't remember who I was talking to. It was one of our guests from this last week. If you had to market a quarterback, if you had a gun to gun to your head, would you rather have to market Trevor Harris here in Saskatchewan or Cody Gerardo in Montreal? I don't think it's close. Cody Gerardo is a wonderful guy. I have you made up with him, by the way? Yes, We're friends. We're Friends. Mark's good. I'm glad to hear that because he's blocked like everybody on Twitter in all of Canada, who's ever criticized him? I, he's very thin skin, which is unfortunate because if you're playing quarterback in Saskatchewan, you have to be able to take the criticism and he wasn't very good at that. But he is a nice guy and so most of the guys in the league are pretty decent guys because they're not these spoiled athletes we're often used to dealing with. So marketing Cody Fujio in Montreal, I got a kick out of him even though he's blocked me on Twitter or somebody will send me something and I've got another account that I can go check. He's speaking French to the French Canadian speaking audience in Montreal and saying, welcome here, my mapel Cody. And he's saying he's a new quarterback in Montreal, so good for him. He can be a marketer's dream because he tries really hard and he's very personable. Trevor Harris just goes out and works every time I've been at the writer office, it seems like even late at night watching the Canadian draft, he's in there working, watching film and what his workouts and his attention to detail are. Legendary wasn't a huge Trevor Harris fan before he got here. I always thought, you know what, he messes up in the big games. He's never won a quarter, a great cup as a starting quarterback. He's gotten there, but he's never won it. So you always think, well, maybe there's something that prevents him from doing it. But when you see what he's done here in Saskatchewan and the way that people are starved for a hard hitting quarterback, a guy who's dedicated and keeps saying he wants to be here, he always dreamed about playing in Saskatchewan. That's a marketer's dream, but any quarterback who walks in here and knew knew is going to be a marketer's dream. And how long does she stay up on the pedestal? That's always the question I want to know. Yeah, I want to know the Daryl Davis burner Twitter account. I think that would be interesting backstory to figure out. No, I mean as a minor d d list here, U2 celebrity covering us, develop and next F l I know what it's like to be the quarterback in Saskatchewan. It must be hard, hard pressure here, hard celebrity pressure. Jason does Trevor Harris and Regina, does that excite you at, if you had to go zero to 10, what is your excitement level? Well, on my channel I've called Trevor Harris, an East Division quarterback. That's kind of the phrase I've kind of coined him because I thought he really rejuvenated his career last year in Montreal. I thought it would've been perfect. He had come back. Obviously the ownership situation there kind of prevented him from doing so. I mean, I would've made the move if I was Saskatchewan. I do agree that it is an upgrade over what they had and I think Trevor Harris gives them a better week to week floor, but honestly, it really doesn't excite me a lot. And you saw what happened when he went to Edmonton even, not even just the 2021 season, which was disastrous for Edmonton, but 2019 he had had his struggles with the team. So honestly, he doesn't really excite me playing a tougher division in the West Division and I'm really interested to see how he does this year, but it doesn't really excite me as a rough R if I was a rough rider. Spanish Ja. Jason, it's interesting. Sorry to butt in on this read, but Trevor, this is Trevor Harris's what fifth C f l team in his 12th season. And as you said, he did revitalize himself in Montreal. Looked pretty good last season yesterday in the media scrum after Rough Rider's practice, one of the reporters asked him, are you looking forward to going back to Edmonton? There was this pause in the conversation and he looked, he said, well, not really. I, I've played a lot of different places and everybody, we all shook our heads. And then he said, well, and to be honest, I like it better here. He said, Well, I don't don't know. And I know that they, they've coined like Trevor's accuracy, whoever, I just don't know if he's head and shoulders better than Cody. And I think you're, what I think's going to happen is Saskatchewan kind of rebuilt, refiguring out everything. I think Trevor's going to get the credit where I think if you would've kind of built better around Cody or that am I have too much Rob Vanstone kind of in my ear. Well, he got a little bit of that because Rob, Rob Vanstone loves Cody Fuo and still does. And I know that you guys have just made up so that you're probably probably on his side a little bit, but Cody Jiro did a lot of things wrong. He couldn't read defenses. He holds onto the football too long. He has one amazing spin move to get away, but everybody knew about that by the time he was done, so he wasn't effective anymore. You're right. There were a lot of problems with the offense when Jason Moss, the coordinator wasn't calling things. They did have a bad offensive line. They've rebuilt that offensive line, they've added good receivers, they've gotten rid of the dead weight they were carrying last year off their roster. And I think that they've really made an effort to help Trevor Harris be a better quarterback. And you're right, if Cody Fajardo we're still here, this team would be better. But I think Trevor Harris makes it even better than that. What team performs better this year? I'll go Jason and Darryl. Who? Montreal all are Saskatchewan. Which team gets the bigger boost this year? You want Jason or first? Doesn't matter. Jason, go for it. Go Ahead. All right. So I actually have both of them missing the playoffs, but I do have Saskatchewan finishing eight, finishing with an eight and 10 record, so just missing out on the playoffs. Whereas I have Montreal as the worst team in the league this year. I just think they've lost too many key pieces at key position, head coach, quarterback, wide receiver, really difficult positions to replace over one-off season. So yeah, I would have to say Saskatchewan, I think Saskatchewan does have a chance at making the playoffs. I just personally didn't pick them. Darrell did Carl by a stinker of a franchise here. Yes, I've never been a Danny Machi fan. I have never been a Jason Mos fan and I real, real, it's the best city in the C F L to visit, but I think it has the worst team and the worst organization around it right now. In terms of administratively, in terms of putting a team on the field, I think that they've taken a huge step backwards. As Jason said, the ownership kerfuffle probably caused them a lot of problems. They wouldn't have lost Trevor Harris if they weren't going through that ownership decision. Trevor Harris was ready to stay in Montreal and Ma, who knows, maybe Geno Lewis would've stayed and they don't lose all those players. Montreal is, as Jason said, I agree with that. The worst team in the C F L this coming season. Saskatchewan is better. I've gone out on a limb and said they're going to win 10 games. I really think that they have filled, and I'm not a homer, I never cheer for them or I never cheer against them, but I keep thinking that they've done a very good assessment of themselves and gone after the people who really help fill the holes or replace the players that they've lost. And one of the assessments is Craig Dickinson, the head coach, has decided he's going to get tougher on these guys about penalties when he, he's been coaching three years here. The rough riders have been the second worst, the worst and the worst team in the league for penalties assessed. And he said in the last preseason game, they only had one. So he seems to think that that's working, that he's doing something that's going to make them better, give them a better chance to win. And I think they're a better team. I think they're going to make the playoffs. Are they going to host a playoff game? I'm not sure about that, but they're probably a playoff team. Are you just speaking to penalized Saskatchewan Air? Are you surprised? Garrett Marino still is employed by the US F L here going into week nine. We're week nine. I'm surprised he's anywhere when the actions last year I jumped on that right away. Reid, I'm sorry I, I'm tooting my own horn on this one and I apologize for that. But right after that game I said they have to hand Garrett Marino an apple on a roadmap and get him out of town so fast that your head would spin. But they just set him there and sit and couldn't wait for him to come back four games later and it just totally destroyed their season. I've never, I've rarely seen an incident. Well, when Cory Chamberlain was coaching the riders a few years ago, there was one spot in the Ottawa game that he played a quarterback he shouldn't have. And you could just see the whole team disintegrate right there. And that's what happened with Garrett Marino last year. They should have done that. I think they've learned from it since then. Yes, I'm surprised Garrett Marino was playing anywhere. He's very talented, but he's very unpredictable and explosive. He's a loose cannon on any team and if you can keep him in line, well you might have a talent, but I think that's difficult and he may explode or implode at any moment, Jason. Yeah. Does the bad boy, the cfl, does that do anything for marketing or would you rather have him out of the league? I think there's a fine line. I think mean some people would consider Simone Lawrence a cheap player, but I think that he's done, he's been a net positive for the league and the publicity and the buzz that he gets around the league. But I think that with Garrett Marino, he has such a history of being that kind of player, that kind of dirty player that, I mean just not the player that you want to have in the league if this league has been kind of hard on players that have troubled backgrounds a lot of the time you look at Johnny Manzel and how they just completely barred him for the league a few years back and I think it was understandable to do so for Marino as well. We got next guest here should be hopping on soon. We got Dan Ralph standing by here in a little bit. Darryl, I want to make sure I get your take on the game at hand tonight. I don't want to do just this game, kind of do everything, but what do you make of BC at Calgary? Well, Vernon Adams had a good preseason game and he does have some explosive games. He's really unpredictable up and down and up and down. I can't see him sustaining that all the time. That's why he keeps losing his starting job Calgary with Jake Mayer stepping in while it's a transition time, but they always seem to put good pieces around. They're quarterback in Calgary. I, I'm never going to be against Calgary in the long term, so I think that I have to, even though it's a flamboyant quarterback against the guy who's proving himself, I think I'm still sticking with the Calgary stamp Peters in most games this year. I do as although didn't bc didn't BC kind of embarrass Calgary at home at the end of last season, wasn't that right? Probably, yeah, you would remember that because it's your team. So I'm just trying to remember. I can't, but I feel like I think if Vernon can keep his head on, I don't know. He is a super fascinating guy. I mean I think he's a really neat guy. I've watched the arrow up and watching him interact with his teammates and everything I think is fascinating. That kind of is just a personality study, But amazingly talented and he, he's been at different places because every coach thinks, oh yeah, look at the skill level, look at what he showed college, look at what he's capable of doing. And he certainly can, if he could do that even close to that consistently, what a great career he could have had. But it just, it's so up and down. He's so mercurial that I don't know if he can sustain it and stepping in after Nathan, there are pretty high expectations out in bc. They have a decent team around him. He's got to fulfill those things. He always takes it upon himself to be a leader and tries to show that. And it seems like everything disintegrates around him. They've got Dan Evans sitting there who thrives in a two quarterback system. Maybe he's the guy who ends up playing but most of the time who knows it's not. It's game one. It's fun to predict what might happen. Does that, and I'll get Jason's thoughts on it too, does that same with Trevor having all this team, does that stink on there? Does that kind of hurt at this point or do fans just kind of give up? Yeah, it doesn't bother them. Sorry. Meaning just having the stink of the Vernon's been on so many teams and Trevor has been on so many teams. Oh, Trevor Harris too, right? Yeah. Well in terms of what have they accomplished all the time, I think they're going to get another chance. Of course, Vernon Adams and everybody's Raven, what was it? 12 for 12 or 13 for 13 in the preseason game you're going to give him a chance. But if things start to falter, it's so easy to point the finger at the quarterback and say, see, he's never won anything. Things are falling apart just like we knew it would happen with Nathan Rourke. That never happened last year it seemed like. Right? And with the good quarterbacks, it rarely happens. They hit a bump in the road, but they don't just go crashing into a valley and these guys are both capable of driving it right into a valley. The same question for you, Jason, about that kind of like the multi-team stink on these quarterbacks. It's, it's a good question because we have seen the CFO's a weird league in how we've seen guys that have gone through, they've struggled at their first couple of stops and then all of a sudden everything just clicks for them and they become a solid starting quarterback. But I mean I think that for Vernon it's all about the consistency for him. I think that I always say he doesn't do the easy things well. I think that he's not great at taking those underneath check downs. He's really good at throwing the ball deep down the field, making these crazy improvisational plays. But it's kind of keeping it simple is the problem for him. And I'm interested to see how he does. I thought he did a really good job of it when he came down the stretch last year with bc. So we'll see how he does, but at the end of the day, I think that it's going to be tough for him to really have that rebound because it can happen. But it is rare. I've messaged here Ralph Alfred. We'll see. Daryl, we're going to keep you on here for a minute if that's okay. I Appreciate it. All right. I'm replacing Dan Ralph again. Hey, I've done that before. Who Knew you were carrying the one on this? Let's talk a little bit about, to me this is in, maybe I disagree, you disagree. That highest profile game of the weekend, the Hamilton, the Winnipeg game just because of Levi, do you think that or what do you make of that game here coming up tomorrow? Yeah, that's probably the biggest one. Everybody wants to see how Winnipeg is. I was in Winnipeg a couple weeks ago. I went to play the Canadian National Racquetball Championships in Winnipeg and I stopped in to watch the bombers practice at training camp and I talked to a couple of old ruff writers, Patty Newfeld, Richie Hall, the defensive coordinator and visited and visited with Mike Sha, Michael Shay, the head coach for a little while. And there there's a different feeling. It was tangible that you could tell the difference between Saskatchewan where they're approving and it's, there's this tense feeling around training camp that you have to prove something, you have to prove your worth and we're going to show them and the laid, it's not quite, it's more of a laid back attitude in Winnipeg. I know that the coaches would resent that, but there's that comfort level that they've done it before. They know what they're doing, they just need a little bit of tinkering. The positions have already been locked up. They haven't had to make many changes. It's such a solid team. They've been so good for so long. If they win a great cup this year, they're basically a dynasty. If they had a won last year, which they were all seconds away winning, they'd be a dynasty. So they're a good team and you always want to see how the favorites are doing and you want to see against, because Bo Levi Mitchell maybe one of the best personalities in the Canadian Football League. How's he going to do with this new team that's kind of been constructed around him? Does he have anything left? So yeah, to me that's the big game of the weekend. Do you agree with that Jason and take your Hamilton Homer out of it, but are you the most looking forward to the Bo Levi debut a game? Yeah, it's definitely the game of the week for me. But I will say this, I think the C F L absolutely got this week one schedule, right? I think we have four great games, but I do think, yeah, the Winnipeg Hamilton one, there's just so many storylines. I'm always fascinated in sports. When do these great teams come to an end? How does it all fall apart for them kind of waiting for that for Winnipeg? I think a lot of C F L fans are kind of waiting for Winnipeg to kind of fall off eventually. Just wondering how that's going to happen. I'm interested to see what bully Levi Mitchell does. Obviously in his first game, I think it's a tough ask to go to Winnipeg and win, but if he can do that, honestly it would be a hell of a start For the Hamilton era for bully, Levi Mitchell. Darrell, I was going to ask Dan this, but the Toronto, there was so much stuff in the schedule and everything and you got the defending champions not playing here. What I know we got the nine teams and all that stuff, but what do you make of Toronto not playing this weekend? Well sometimes as you say, one team always has to have a buy. So which one is it? I agree with Jason. I think this is a good schedule. Let Toronto have another week, right? They can bask in their glory of be the reigning great Cup champions for one more week and let everybody ask, do they have a suitable replacement at quarterback? Maybe it will build some extra interest in ticket selling. So I have no problem with that. It it's going to happen once in a while. There are good meetings this week. This BC Calgary game's a great game. The Saskatchewan at Edmonton Game Edmonton isn't won a home game and how many years and Saskatchewan's kind of a rebuilt team and one of their great rivals. So it's guaranteed win night in Edmonton there. If the Elks don't win, then you're at the game, you get another ticket to the next game and they keep giving you a ticket until the Elks win a home game, which I think is a great promotion and I, I'm interested in that. I want to, Taylor Cornelius is an interesting guy at quarterback so I want to see how these teams are performing. Chris Jones does a good job in the second year when he's running a franchise. So how are Edmonton going to be there? There are a lot of great games giving Toronto the buy no big deal be that might right team to give the buy to. I think Reid, if you were going to ask me who should get the buy in week one, I would say the rainy Great Cup champions And we have a comment here, W Jones week one should always have a great cup rematch. I mean obviously you want Hamilton playing here because of the bow of it all. Jason, what if you had to put Toronto in here? I mean there is a lot of intriguing matchups, even the Ottawa, Montreal one kind of that rivalry over there, but how would you fit Toronto in here if you had to go back? Yeah, I think you take one of Ottawa or Montreal out because I think the other three matchups definitely have the most spice to it. I think that when you look at Jeremiah Mazzoli being out for the first couple games of the season, obviously that wasn't known when they made the schedule, but I mean that takes a lot of juice out of that matchup potentially. So I mean I think that maybe you take Ottawa out, but I think that Toronto's probably as good a choice of any to take the first week off honestly. Yeah, they have gone with, sorry Reid, they have gone with, as your texter said, they have gone with rematches of the Great Cup quite often and to open the season, but there there's some mess ups in the schedule too. Cody Fuo won't be playing in Saskatchewan this year with the Montreal not on the schedule. Bo Levi Mitchell, the Hamilton Tiger Cats won't be going back to his old stomping grounds in Calgary. So you cannot make a perfect schedule. But they've done a pretty good job on this. Well, it's hard obviously, and it comes out so early, but then you have all this off-season kind of free agency stuff. I don't know, are they better off waiting to figure this out to see Well, but I know the NFL and they kind of say, okay, well we got to wait now. Okay, Rogers has traded, okay, now we're going to put the Jets and all this stuff. I mean they have all their amalgamations there, but are they better off waiting and not announcing it so far out and being able to plan this a little bit better? Well they can do that in the NFL because they all have access. They all own their own stadiums, don't they? But it's difficult to schedule in Toronto and Vancouver where the teams and even Montreal where the teams don't really have priority on their scheduling time. So yes, the NFL does that. Well the CFL used to get criticized vehemently and I was one of the lead critics saying, why are you waiting so long to put out your schedule? People want to, in Saskatchewan, people schedule weddings around Saskatchewan, rough rider games that people schedule vacations around when the riders are playing. So a lot of things have to be done early enough. The fact that they did it early, I'm never going to complain now. And the C puts out its schedule because we can make our plans, the media can make its plans. Everybody can make social plans because the schedule is put out earlier, so maybe they missed one, but it's better to get the schedule out early than it is to put it out late and have everybody haranging them for not having it published already. Well no, I mean X Ffl fans know that we didn't have the schedule. Jason, what do you make of this? Because I mean I get the travel and all of that, the exit L one, I think it was six weeks out before the season. I mean it was like drop dead time there to get it out. What do you make of the schedule planning? Well I think I don't necessarily have a problem with when they released the schedule. I think having it released pretty far out is not a big deal. But I don't like the fact that in a nine team league, how does not every team play at each other's like every stadium in the league. I don't think I'd explained that very right. Well, but how does Calgary not play at home against Hamilton? And I think there's a couple, every team I think has one team that doesn't have, doesn't come to their stadium. So I think that's a major problem. I don't know why. I think it's really only become a problem the past couple of years since when came back from the canceled 2020 season. They kind of fooled with the schedule, made it more division heavy. But I'm not necessarily a big fan of that because I think that when it's such a small league, I think every team should be playing every team at every stadium. It used to be a very simple solution, right Jason, that it was, there was a home and home game against everybody and I'd accounted for 16 games basically and then they would add two against their division. But it ended up that the Eastern teams, which were weaker would be playing 10 games against the Western teams when you play home and home because you've got five at home, five away. So there would be 10 games for Eastern teams out of their 18 would be played against the west. And when the west was so much stronger, they started thinking maybe we better come up with an unbalanced schedule because of that. It's unfortunate because as you say, Hamilton, that would be a really big show. Hamilton in Calgary, I would love to see that one. But they don't have it on the schedule so you know, can't predict everything's going to happen, but it would've been a good one. But I understand, as you said, Jason, why they would like to be more concentrated on their divisional play. Daryl, we have our next guest standing by here. Sarah, anything else? Thanks Daryl. Extended time. We might have to put out a p b on Dan Ralph here. Not quite sure if Dan got held up at the grocery store. Anything else from you before we let you go? I'm good. I look forward to the season guys and thanks for having me on. I appreciate it, Daryl. I'll be there. I got my flight. You flight's booked. I got to go through Toronto again, don't like that, but we'll be going Seattle to Toronto and then down, so I appreciate it. We'll see you hopefully up there at this suite. Alright guys, take care. Seasons greetings. Thanks Daryl. Drops out. We're going to bring in Sarah. Now I got to get my browser bigger here. I can't. There we go. This is wonderful podcast. Sarah, how are you doing? Hi, I'm great, how are you? We're good Sarah here, I'm moving transitional kind of stuff. You're following the season, just saw you pop up on the First and Out podcast with Matt and Nick. How is your life going? It's been great. Thank you. I mean, CFL's back, what can I say? Yeah, talking about this and you're doing, you know, have some new projects, right? We've seen you work on and trying to get more C Ffl fans engaged. What are you working on right now? Yeah, basically what you're saying, I mean it's kind of piecing together a few different projects. So some things are still in the work, but I think it's going, it's great. I like making my own content, whether that's from home, whether that's for a different kind of platform. I think just that out there and giving fans something to look at during the off season as well as now during the season. It's kind of my main goal, so I try to be flexible with it. There's not a specific thing that I would say that I'm working on. It's more just kind of keeping up. What do you as storylines you're tracking here going into the season. Obviously we're talking BC Calgary tonight, but kind of everything else, what are you looking forward to? Oh, there's so many storylines. That's my problem is I just kind of love looking at all of them. One that I was thinking about today that really is exciting to me is actually the Saskatchewan Rough Riders in Montreal sort of thing that they got going on there. I mean obviously I'm connecting the two because of the quarterback switch. You got Trevor Harris, who's now a Saskatchewan Rough Riders, and then you've got Cody Fra Jaro with the awes. And to me the intriguing part is that both those organizations last season and even during the off season a little bit were kind of chaotic in different ways. But they both had that energy to them where you don't really know where it's going to go do, are they going to make the correct changes in order to change the narrative? And they're both really trying. You could see, I mean obviously especially with the riders, with their offensive line, they're kind of revamping that, which is what everybody was asking for. Trevor looks to be more settled as well over there. And then on the other flip side, you have Cody Fra Jaro, who, who's I think kind of liking Montreal and not having everybody stare at him all the time with this intense Blair because how rider's, fans are very passionate and stuff. And I think for him he couldn't handle that as much. So I think that's a really cool storyline to follow. I mean, I don't want to compare them too much, they're different even divisions, but I kind of love looking at those dynamics. Jason, do you like that? Do you? The Cody Fuo here, it's kind of like Mr. Bean in the Bean movie. We're going to the museum. It's kind of just fish out of the water. I mean that with all due respect, but kind of a fish out you like this is your sweet Cody Fuo though with everything else, As long as he proves it on the field. I don't really have a problem what he does. Honestly. I think that was the problem last year. He didn't really perform on the field and that's what the CFO's very year to Year league. I mean it just takes one poor season to lose your job. And we saw that last year with Cody so he's going to have to play well to fit in with Montreal. I mean, I think he's a great guy by all accounts, but at the end of the day it's all about performance in this league and I'm interested to see how he does and how Trevor does in Saskatchewan In terms of, and we'll go Jay, send then back to Sarah. In terms of Montreal, how much can it feels like all the weights on Cody here, how much can he realistically do coming in here? Obviously we have the new ownership and everything else, but kind of a chaotic spot for him. I think the big question with Montreal, the big overarching question from a schematic scan standpoint is that head coach Jason Moss, he's never been a guy that relies on the running game a lot and that is Montreal's biggest strength on paper. William stand back should be much better this year coming back from that injury. Walter Fletcher, very talented running back Aswell j Andwe. So I think if they lean on that running game, that is kind of their path to success. I've said it before on my channel that Cody Vado is just not that great as a drop back and sling it 40 times kind of quarterback. He's better when he is, can use play action as an advantage and use that athleticism, run some bootlegs. So I think that is what I'm looking for from a schematic standpoint from Montreal this season and I think that's going to be a big key for their success this season. F Farhan texting me in the background here. Sarah, what do you make of Cody here with Montreal? And let me try to figure out what he wants me to do with his timing. I mean for me a lot of it is seeing the mentality, right? He's kind of been, to me, he's a sassy player because he kind of fights back through inter He is defensive, that's the word. And I think that could be a good thing in a lot of ways because he really wants to show that no matter what, he's going to push back and he's not going to kind of be falling under the brick so to speak. But at the same time, I think having that positive attitude, especially in Montreal is going to be very necessary because it's extremely different than the riders. Obviously he had struggles there, but there's a huge fandom there. Whereas in Montreal it's a little bit less popular, the C F L, so he's kind of going to fly under the radar. But it's like you have yes to be that leadership st presence still regardless. And then you have obviously the whole organization is had to revamp itself. And so when you're in that stage you kind of assume that there's going to be more obstacles down the road throughout the season. It's not going to just fly by in the ways that it maybe has had done before. It's going to be hard and it's going to require some leadership again, like I said, and then I don't know I what to make of it. Don't, there's also some injuries there that concern me. So it's, it's going to be interesting to see In terms of the Ottawa, everything else here against Montreal. Jason the Mazzoli thing came out, he is not playing here and then they got the week three by week. What do you make of that as Ottawa kind of trying to get stuff together here after not a tremendously good last season? Well I think it's very concerning to me personally because this kind of dates back to 2019 when he got injured, he was off to a great start and then kind of a lower leg injury again. And then obviously this past season or 2022 he suffers another injury. So I'm very concerned he's not a young guy. I think he's like 35 or 36 years old quietly because it took him a while to really establish himself in the C F L. So I'm interested to see how he plays when he eventually comes back from that injury. It's smart for Ottawa not to rush him because I think they have a week three by, so I think their plan is to get him on the field in week four hopefully. But I mean it's kind of concerning that he is coming off a big time injury once again and he hasn't really played a full season in a long time. Even in 2021 with Hamilton, he missed some games due to injuries. So I'm kind of concerned for Ottawa and their quarterback position because I don't really think Nick ARB Buck was a guy that you could really rely upon to win as you saw the past couple of seasons. Brandon given some blood here for Sarah, I just can't get a read on Ottawa at all. I just felt like they took the big swing last year with Mazzoli. He got hurt. It really felt like it was a terrible season. Now we have Bob Dyson there as the head coach and God do you have any vibe at all on Ottawa here, Sarah? Sarah going into the season this season? It's a really tricky one because of the MAO situation like you're saying and with Nick Arle, I mean he's kind of been in around the league for a few years, so it's like you don't feel like there's a sense of stability right in the quarterback position at all in terms of just the vibe. I mean I think that there was a lot of hope for Ottawa this year because we thought these people would come back because even just seeing how Montreal's played out, you're kind of thinking, well they could be on top, they could move forward. And then the Chad Kelly question, are they going to be still that top team if we have a new quarterback there as well that's not as experienced as M B T or some of the other guys. So I think when I place Ottawa kind of in the ranks, I think at first it was higher. I think honestly it's probably going to be similar to last year if Ms. Lillie's not there, in my opinion, I think they might be at at the very bottom unfortunately. Jason, what do you make of that, of the vibes here? I'm still kind of coordinating guests here in the background, sorry. Well, I think another problem is they've already suffered a lot of major injuries. I think you look at a couple of the receivers that they brought in, Royal and Addison they brought in recently who was injured at the end of last year, still recovering from a pretty serious injury. Jack Evans who comes in from the Sketch one R Riders, he's had a couple of injury riddled seasons. He was one of the best receivers in the C F L in 2019. But couple of really inconsistent seasons and surgeons of staying on the field. So I think those injuries are very concerning because I think they're very thin at wide receiver behind Jalen Lin. I think you need a very deep receiving core to succeed in this league. And I think that combined with the quarterback injury, they're going to have a really tough time putting points on the board. I think in the first couple of weeks of the season here with Nick Arbuckle, even when Mazzoli gets back, they really had trouble in those first four games last year. I know it was a small sample size and they had a hard schedule but they had a hard time getting the ball into the end zone. They don't really have that great red zone threat. So I think that's a concern for Ottawa and I why I don't think they're going to finish very high in the C F L standings this year, but I could be wrong. We got Dan Sandy by, we'll go to Sarah one more time. Anything else from you? And then we're going to hurry up offense here because we have Farhan calling in here with this in stadium thing here coming up in a bit. Sarah, anything else from you? Appreciate you calling in today. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm just excited for this game. I mean I think it's such an interesting matchup. They were both 12 and six last year. The quarterback situation is kind of brand new. Obviously Jake Mayer was there last year, so was Vernon. But to me this is a fresh start where they really get to begin and hopefully end with the team. I think that with what we saw with Vernon in the preseason was really a array of hope for bc, especially post Nathan rok where there's that momentum already being built. So I think just kind of coming into this matchup, which is going to be perfect. I think also Jake Mayer has a little bit of a chip on his shoulder because I think last time they played it was he was what, 12 he threw for 12 and 22 or something like that. And I know that that bothers him and he is kind of taken on this bigger leadership role there as well. So for me it's a really interesting game. And actually both, I just to throw this in there quickly, I was looking at their stats from last season. Both of those quarterbacks, they both played in 12 games, so it's very much similar. But Jake Meer actually threw for 600 more yards. He also screwed, sorry, scored double the amount of touchdowns he had 14 and Vernon had seven. His percentage completed completed percentage rate was like 74.7 or something. And then Vernon's was like 63 something. So there really is an interesting similarities to the teams and to those quarterbacks. But also there are some differences as well for we saw last season, but this season there's been so many changes. So I'm excited to see how it evolves. The story just evolves. It's exciting. I'm good for this season. I think it's going to be, like I said, settled here coming in. We don't have any labor strikes or anything else. Sarah, thank you so much. Appreciate you calling in. Go check out Sarah on all her new adventures. It should be good. Thanks guys. Dan, I was, we're going to bring in here, we're going to hurry up. Offense can think. Farhan calling in. Dan Ralph here. Unmute yourself. We didn't have to send out the all points bulletin. Dan, how are you doing here? Let's get you unmuted Too much. Not enough hours in a day. My sincere apologies. You're good. What are you looking forward to here? We got BC tonight, Calgary, everything else Toronto's off this week. What are you looking forward to this season? Well, couple things. First of all, I'm glad football starts. It's been a long winter here, especially with Canadian hockey teams battling out early. But I mean, I'm curious to see what BC looks like post Nathan Rourke, post Brian Burnham. And I'm also curious to see what the stamp Peter look like. Paul Levi Mitchell, they lost a couple of people on defense to Eastern division teams in free agency. So we'll see what the scams are all about. But we're also curious to find out is whether or not that horrific 17 game home losing streak Edmonton continues where if they finally get off the Schneider and start the season with a winning Saskatchewan. Yeah. Jason, how much of a black mark is that right now for Edmonton? I think their season could look completely different if they go out and win this first game. If they go out and say this is a brand new season, but if they let it persist, they lose the per couple games at home again, it seems like it could be the same old story. So I think it's so crucial for them to win that first game. And I definitely think they couldn't do it. They won the last team at Saskatchewan last year, the last match of these two teams played. So I think they have a good chance to win this one. But if they don't win this game, it's going to be very concerning for them. I think it could be a snowball effect. Once again, Dan, why aren't they, are they trying to argue on that plane this week? I don't know. It seems to be a recurring theme. This happened in two 19 and happened again last year. So what I think part of the deal is that the CFL or MLSE gives the CFL eight playoff, eight home gates to work around and that ninth game is the game in Halifax or out east. So I think sometimes the Argos are constricted by availabilities and hence this is what they get. But I, I'll tell you, I spoke with Ryan Denwoody earlier or late last week about it. He's not crying, they're hurting right now and they can use the You mean in terms of injuries really? Yeah, yeah. He said they're really banged up and I mean they had a bunch of people walking around with crutches and on and with limps last time I saw them in Guelph two we or a week and a half ago. So they say they need it and I'll take them out. His word, I think it was Steve Milton was saying too that one of the Hamilton recent Sinese injured too. Jason not said, what is this preseason? And we're like, I don't understand that. I guess that seems surprising. Well, I mean I think if there are injuries in training camp, I mean these guys, they don't go, it's not the two AK in full pads that it used to be. So you have a padded practice here and a padded practice there, then you play in a game. And then I still think there's something to be said about you're in shape but you're not in football shape. And that includes learning how to take a hit and how to give a hit. So I mean a lot of veterans didn't play much in training camp either, so there's going to be some bumps and some bruises the first three, four weeks of the season and we're starting a little earlier right now. Jason, I saw you nod. You're headed with that. How big of an injury was that for the tie cats here coming in? I think they, cause the thing is he was kind of their second guy that they were going to use at that boundary receiver position, which is a pretty crucial spot in a C F L offense. And I think that they really lacked size in the receiving corps after those first couple guys went down. Anthony Johnson is the other guy I was talking about. And then Justin McGriff is the guy Steve Milton was talking about who went down. Big tall receivers, something Hamilton doesn't have a lot of in the receiving corps. Guys like Tim White. Tim White I think is like six two if I'm not mistaken. But just not huge guys in that receiving corps. And I think Bo has always been a guy that likes those big targets. So I think having those guys go down in training camp's, a pretty big loss for Hamilton. Dan, getting your thoughts on the Bo Levi in Hamilton, is that your biggest, most watch game of the weekend coming up? Not really because they're in Winnipeg. I think it's going to be a cakewalk, Well, I don't say a cakewalk. I think it'll be a close game. But I think there's something about Winnipeg at home, and this is not a slight against Hamilton, they do this most to anybody. They're tough. They get the home crowd support behind them. And the big thing, I look at that roster and there's Littleton, well there's turnover but not as much turnover as you would think. So there is a sense of comfort that they know each other, they know what they can do, they know what they're capable of. They've been in the offense. If you're looking at Zach Eros and all these guys, they've been in the offense now for two or three years. They know what they can do, they know what needs to be done. There's a sense of familiarity at a time during this early part of the season when teams are still in that feeling out process. Winnipeg's got that familiarity and that's where I base that on. And I feel for Hamilton, they start the season playing Winnipeg and Toronto in Winnipeg and in Toronto. So what I guess I know Bo's turning it into the idea that they're going to see who they are early in the season and that's a good way I expect him to take that approach being a veteran and a guy who's won in both places. So it's not an ideal situation for the Thai cats, but they'll, they'll know who they are week three for sure. In terms of the Toronto Argos here, before we got to bounce out with you, what do you make of this? I mean obviously Chad Kelly kind of right now, but we have the O'Brien Scott there and having Ben Holmes didn't play great and there's a lot of that backup, a lot of interest there. What do you make of that? Yeah, There's a lot interests or uncertainty. I mean they're putting all their eggs in a lot of the eggs in the Kelly basket and good and good on him. He looked very good in camp. The times I saw him, he looked really good in the first quarter of the exhibition game that he played. That being said, it's training camp and it's the exhibition season season. So I think you're going to see him do a lot of the things that he did in the Gray Cup game. He's going to be run, he'll run, he'll be mobile and I think he's going, he's going to be a leader. I think they're a good player. Mean he showed me something in training camp and he showed me something in that exhibition game. And now whether that translates to 18 games over the regular season, the Argos better hope so because there's not much experience, as you said behind him. I mean Ben Holmes who in my mind was the most experienced of the three, they let him go after the exhibition game. So hold your breath time, Are you that, and we'll get Jason's thoughts too. Are you that surprised that they've gone all in on Chad Kelly right here? And then we will let you, we're going to go, Dan, answer this and then we got our call in. We'll get Jason side later. Any final thoughts? Dan on Chad Kelly. And then we got to grab our next guest. I've been very impressed with his maturity. I've been very impressed with his leadership ability and I've been very, very impressed with his team first approach. And I mean, he came in with a bit of an attitude, came in with a bit of a reputation rather. But I'll tell you, I've been very, very impressed with the young man in training camp and like I said, he showed very well in the first quarter against Ottawa. And I think he's a reason to be optimistic in Toronto if he can stay healthy. Awesome. Well Dan, I appreciate it. We got you on. I was about to send out the APB on you. We got Dan. I appreciate that. Dan, thank you so much with the Canadian press Gentlemen. Thank you. Now standing by here, I have been on the other of this a lot where I have been in the field, but now I'm back at the home studio here. We have live reporting, Farhan calling in from the stadium. How are you doing? I'm good. Get some good music out in the background and getting set for the season opener here. Lines and stamps, or most of them are in their locker room. Actually a few of them are still out here on the field right now, but looking to get full warmup started and the season kicked off my friend. What are the conditions out there right now? What do we have going on? Hot, sunny, dirty Celsius, whatever that means in your language. What? It's hot, it's warm. I get to wear a golf shirt. I don't have to wear suits. Viewers are going to want to know what's the footwear looking like tonight. Let's see. I Oh, no slides. No slides. But I'll get back to that at some point in this season. What are you making looking into the season right now? Everything else? Lots of storylines to track. Oh wow. Yeah, that is a big topic. You know, had Dan just on talking about the quarterback situation with Chad Kelly and Toronto and honestly I think there's probably eight of nine teams, everybody not named Winnipeg that has some level of question around their quarterback situation, including the two teams here. Who's going to win these spots? I mean, Vernon Adams is the established starter in dc. Jake Mayers got that role in Calgary. Certainly BC's got the best quarterback room because Dan Evans being there as the backup that they can turn to. If it doesn't go well for Calgary, Jake or nobody, that's just the way it's going to be. But if you look all the way around, there's still some level of question that needs to be answered. I talked today on Sports Center nailer and I had a debate about the top five quarterbacks in the league today and I said, look, that's not the question, the top, the question is who are the two five quarterbacks that have the best opportunity to succeed based both on talent but also situations and what surround them? And I think those might be two different answers. Trevor Harris, if you just ask me who the best quarterbacks are, I'd put Harris in my top three. But if you ask me who's got the best situation to succeed, I don't have Harrison in my top five, so I want to see how some of these guys perform. Jason, what do you got for a Farhan? Any questions for the ma'am? Well this is kind of not football related, but I think here in Hamilton we've kind of been dealing the last couple days with poor air quality issues. How are the skies looking around in Calgary today? Well look, you never want to make light of air quality issues because forest fires are a serious thing. But this is just like a regular Thursday in Vancouver when you talk about air quality issues. Cause every summer we've now gotten into forest fire season, which begins in May and continues right through September and October. So it's interesting to me that you guys are finally dealing with it in Southern Ontario, but the skies here are absolutely clear air quality is not an issue and I don't expect anything to delay this start Farhan am. Do I have right to be worried about my boy Vernon Adams this year? What do you make of Vernon going into the season? Worried. Why? What worries you? Just worried that you know, try to maybe a little too hard. Turn the ball over a little bit. This is our team. I mean this is America's team. Well first of all, if you think it turns the ball over a lot, you got to look at the PFF stats. You actually had the least number of turnover worthy plays in the league among starting quarterbacks last year. And he takes the most beat shots. So he knows how to protect the football, to be honest with you. And I had Vernon on my list of quarterbacks as number two behind Zach Eros because he's in a great position to succeed. We know how good he looked against Calgary in the preseason game and you can only put so much stock into that given how many guys Calgary left home on the defensive side of the ball. But I think Vernon's in a great spot to do well this year. He's been completely focused, completely dialed in. He understands the offense now that in ways that he didn't before. And Jordan McKim understands him in ways that he didn't before. And you've also got a receiving for who loved Nathan Rourke last year and they're fully invested in Vernon now and they want to play for him because he's an exceptional teammate. He's not the hotdog that his playing style would imply. He really cares about his teammates and they want to perform for him. So I think he's in a great position to do well and I think we'll get a 2019 version of Vernon Adams when he was the East All Star quarterback. A couple here real quick, I'll let you go. I know you have a hit here coming up Nailers having a trouble logging in and more trouble here doing this remote than it isn't like you get all, When I'm on the road and I've got the worst conditions, I have better connections to get on the air than Nailer does when he is at home with a properly professionally installed home studio. We're always waiting for nailer and in signal. It's crazy What this PFF thing this week with the cfl, the announcement they're going to be working. Is that a big deal? Yeah, I think so. I mean I think we've all gotten really accustomed to the quality of data that PFF provides and certainly on the betting side, both in college football and in the nfl, PFF has become the Bible. So I really believe having the CFL involved with that I think is a great thing and hopefully people subscribe to the service cause I want give our viewers more credit than sometimes we give them. I think we get comfortable offering generic commentary, not diving into the analytics as deeply as we should. I want to give our audience more credit and I hope they consume that information because it just makes the league that much better. Well it isn't. Yeah, because I got some of the FF guys that come on before we talk X F L or USS F L and they said, well we don't have as much time this year. We're kind of doing the articles. We don't have as much time to deep dive. So it's interesting that CFL has at least kind of gotten above that threshold. I guess they have. Yeah, no, no, there's no doubt. It's good. And I know that there've been some growing pains with the Genius Stats package through the pre-season that I know is going to get resolved here sooner than later. And once that gets resolved then you couple it with what PFF can do. I just think it gives fans so much more in terms of access to players, what they're actually able to do and just resources to get to know those guys that much better. It helps C ffl fantasy, it helps all of it. So it's a real win and people understand the brand of PFF if you're an NFL fan to now be able to access the CFL information just as readily on the same platform is a great deal. Well Farhan, anything else from you? I'll let you go. We'll stop down here before Nailer comes out. I don't want to hold you anything else from you before you got to get out. No, it's just, it's going to be a fun season. It's a great night and I can't wait for this first weekend to get going and it's the earliest start date for A C F L regular season and I think it's going to be a great year. Awesome. Well Farha will get you on proper this season. I appreciate your time. No problem. But next time Dorothy has to ask because she's my favorite of you too. I know she's walking around here somewhere. I don't know, she's walking the dog or something so we'll get her on. All right. Give her my love. Talk to you soon buddy. Yeah, Well Jason here, we'll let Nailers trying to log on. We'll stop down here for just a quick second how that'll allow you. Farhan got full rider plane in the background, Dan, Ralph, everything else. How are we doing here? How have you made the show so far? Sorry, zer, what was the question? I said what have you made in the show so far? How are we surviving here? I think we're doing great considering we've got a lot of moving parts here, A lot of guests but a lot of great guests and I think this has been a great show so far. Yeah, people always wonder why I Bree, why do you pre-record these all the time through the week? But we are here, we have nailer getting ready to hop on. We also have Marty York coming on as well here near the bottom of the hour before we get into it. And then we'll probably log off here a little bit before I know the professor Andrew Murray stopping by as well. The wildfire smoke. Interesting. I did see a lot of that, especially in New York. Doesn't seem to be a concern in Calgary. That's got to feel good, right Jason? Yeah, for sure. It's great to have clear, so clear skies for kickoff in the first game of the season obviously I'm interested to see if that affects the month for y'all game on Saturday night. So something to monitor going forward, but as far unsaid, it's something they're used to unfortunately in the west and it's good to see that there's clear skies for tonight. Interesting. Yeah, I saw Tim Kapper posting that. It seems like Montreal is selling really well for that 20,000 plus trending for that. Yeah. What do you make of the Montreal fan base here? It feels like they've been through a lot here in the last couple years and ownership and kind of everything else that Gary Stearns of it all. What's your read on the Montreal fan base? I think it, it's hard to judge cause I think a lot of the time in the cfl, most of the most teams are not like say Saskatchewan, even Saskatchewan's having some decline in attendance. But I think most teams are reliant upon having some sort of recent success to get the fan base back into it and have interest in the team. And I think Montreal, it's been a long time. They have the second longest gray cup drought behind Hamilton who has by far the longest gray Cup drought. And I think that plays into it. I think when I was growing up, the Montreals were the premier franchise in the C F L with Anthony Calvio. So they were just a very proud franchise and they just have not reached that level ever since Calvio retired. And I think that they were getting there a little bit with Vernon Adams back in 2019, but then obviously Covid happened and canceled 2020 season. So imagine what would've happened if they played in 2020. Maybe they could have continued that positive momentum. But I mean the ownership changes, morale's got to be pretty low I think around the awes. But I mean a new owner has deep pockets and I think that a big problem with them as well as the stadium issue. I think that they really need to have their own stadium and not share the facility with Miguel. I think there's some benefits to having that right downtown in Montreal, just kind of great scenery around the stadium. But at the end of the day I think it's better they're better off getting their own stadium if that's a feasibility feasible option in the future. And maybe with this deep pocketed donor it could happen. Yeah, I mean it looks awesome man. I've obviously never been to much trouble watch now on tv it looks great. W Jones has Lions to sell out their first home game. I don't know, they always open the upper deck. It never quite sells out. And even last year with One Republic this LL Cool J, what is his, I know ll I don't know if it'd be an American, but as a Canadian living in Hamilton, does LL Cool J have any kind of semblance of effect on you in June of 2023? I'm not really the person to ask about rap to be honest. I mean I listen to some of it but I'm not really too familiar. I'm sure I've heard a song or two of his, but I think that it's good that they are delving into more of the hip hop genre. I think that just the country element to what they've used to promote C F L games over the past couple years, it's kind of gotten a little stale. So it's good that they're, some of these teams are bringing in other acts and more popular acts and well-known acts. Obviously one Republic last year was huge. So I think that it's good that the C F L teams are doing this, our Lady Peace coming to the Montreal home opener as well. So I think it's good that they're experimenting with bringing in these concerts to the home openers. But at the end of the day, I don't think that's going to be enough alone to Propel momentum, but it does get the fans out to that week one and you get a good attendance for the week one games doing that. I'm curious, what's the threshold there? How do we decide one Republic, everyone listens to One Republic even I thought the Gray Cup was it two years ago with the Lumineers and all that, everyone kind of knows it's not country. Everyone kind of knows that. I don't know what resident Ello Cool J has in especially Vancouver. I don't know. It is not like we're getting Wiz Khalifa or some young rapper here. I mean it just feels like it's already kind of dated it that way. And then with the rap it does feel a little odd. Yeah, I guess only time will tell and we'll see how many people show up for that game because I mean if they have similar tenants to what they had last year, I think that you can consider that a success and I think that's a good thing for the Lions. Oh, I think we finally have our next guest on here. This we've been scheduling and Valentine everything else today. But the first question I want to ask Dave Nailer, first off, how are you, what do you make of LL Cool J as the big long rumored BC Lions? I bet you didn't think I was going to ask you that I, I've often have been made to look silly on air answering questions about music, especially cool music. I remember I was doing some of the Super Bowl with J Wright show and it was like, hey, before I let you go, what's your favorite Rihanna song? And fortunately his producer had got in my ear and warned me that one was coming because otherwise it would've been a pretty bad moment of dead air on TS n. So anyways, just warning you, it's not my area of expertise LL Cool J how current is he? He, I know he's a guy who goes back a bit, right? But is he still considered cool or is his cool? I dunno, I haven't put any fat in LL Cool J in probably 15 years. Yeah, it's been a while. That's my sense even as an outsider on the cool stuff, I think I know Five Finger Death Punch, I think they sampled part of his lyrics in one of their songs. I think that was probably the most resonance I have as a five finger death punch. Dave, what do you make of this C F l week one? I mean obviously we'll try to get you on here for a proper interview, but what are we making heading into the season? Well I wrote about on tsn ca today just about how it's a quarterback class, the likes of which I don't know if I've ever seen in the league before. If you were to put stat lines from last year in front of each of these guys and said, would you take that one again? And the only guys who would probably say yes would be Trevor Harris and Zach Colis. The other seven would say, no, I need better than that. And on some of it it's not just performance, it's sample size. Like Jake Mayer didn't play a full season and there's a look, there's a lot of potential among this group. You look at Jake Mayer's going into year number three, usually the time that a CFL quarterback makes a big advance. And he was a quick study in years one and two. Then you look at Taylor Cornelius much more refined in year number two, he's going into year number three. Chad Kelly is going to have an offense in his hands for a season for the first time since he was a senior at Ole Miss. And we got a little taste of what he could do. But he walked into camp this year as the guy didn't have to win the job. He could just fine tune and Levi Mitchell, the bounce back of Levi Mitchell that we're all anticipating. So you go around this group, there's questions around every single one of them. Even I'll throw Trevor Harrison there he is 37 and he was a backup at this time of year ago. That gets you question marks. So other than Zach Cols and there's every other quarterback in the league has a big question mark Now that doesn't mean at the end of the year we couldn't couldn't be saying this was one of the great quarterback years we've seen in the last decade because Vernon Adams put it all together in BC and Jeremiah Mazzoli came back in week three or in week four and had a great season. But we know the nature of football, they're not all going to have great seasons. But I do think there's lots of potential in this quarterback class and frankly the CFO needs these guys to hit because the competition for the next wave is a lot tougher than it used to be. You could even see it reflected in C F L training camps this year. The number of guys from smaller schools and smaller conferences we're seeing less of the uscs and Notre Dames and more of the butlers and toons and things like that. And I think that's just a reality of the modern league Just, yeah, Trevor Harris is a month and two days older than me. That is insane. That makes sense. I want to get Jason, just so he doesn't sit here in silences the whole time and then we'll go back to Dave here. I wanted to get your thoughts at Bo Levi, just the whole Hamilton it, it's all our us. I mean you were talking their great cup kind of drought here feels like all our bus. What do you make of that? And then obviously we'll get Dave slots. Yeah, absolutely. I think this team has been in great cup or bus mode the past several years. Obviously this Great Cup drought has just gone on and on and on. They've come so close four great cup losses in the last, what was it, 10, 12 years or something like that. So they've come up close, they just cannot finish it off. And I think that that has been the powering thing behind this off season for the Tiger Cats bringing in so many other players. Obviously Bo being the biggest edition, but I think Beau also helped them bring in other players like Jamir Thurman bring Jerra Davis back who people forgot that he played with in Calgary. So I think that will help. I think they have some experienced guys that could help them get over the hump, but we'll have to see if they do it. Dave. Yeah, I mean it feels like this is the Aaron Rogers equipment with the Jets, right? With Levi and all of this here. I mean what do you make of this whole storyline? Well I think it does kind of reflect of that and it also reflects a little bit of what happened with Henry Burris when he got pushed up out of Calgary and wasn't good about it the same way that isn't good about it. And I don't think Bo wants to make this season about Calgary. I think he's about planting his legacy on another side of the country and having a second run in his career. That's what this is about. I don't think you're going to hear a lot of Calgary talk, but make no question given what he meant to that city, that organization to have your job taken away. I know Henry Burris, it stuck with him for a long time and I'm sure it does for Bo and it was funny cause when that trade happened, he said, I'm going to free agency. And I look, I didn't have any sources that told me that he was going to Hamilton for sure, but water runs downhill, right guys, the Hamilton Tigercat with the longest great Cup drought in the C F L hosting the game for the second time in three years after losing it in overtime two years ago with Scott Mitchell as their president, if you know anything but his nature, there's just no chance he makes a trade and as and the organization because that's when I say he makes the trade, of course they have a front office, but a trade of that magnitude is going to involve the president's signature. There's just no way they make that trade and then walk in, watch him walk out to free agency, just zero chance that was ever going to happen. And I think he's a good fit there. It's a good football town. Sometimes the east doesn't get the respect that it does and Hamilton maybe kind of gets overlooked because of just being in the G sort of considered part of the larger gta. But that's a good football town and I think they're really going to cherish having Levi met. I'm interested to see the receiving corps, they turned, when I went to training camp, it was struck me the number of good American receivers they had. Guys had just jumped out to me at practice and a couple of 'em have made the roster. Terry Goodwin, I guess former Georgia guy had 1800 yards receiving at Georgia was the seventh round pick I believe of Carolina. There's another one as well. Name escapes me right now, who was the Sunbelt player of the year at Arkansas State, had 17 touchdowns in 2019. And every year, obviously every year there's Dalton show. There actually is an adult Dalton show who leads the league in receiving. We had a training camp, never played the cfl, but the nature of this league is there are always guys that we couldn't have a conversation about right now, but in six weeks from now, we sure could. Right. And that's I think what Hamilton's County on a couple of those receiver spots In terms of this roster stuff. We went on it a lot with Darryl at the beginning of the show, but this whole, the snaps and now we're doing the hell number a number of snaps and we're doing long division here to figure out how long to me we've always had this, the depth charts and the injury reports and now we want to gamble, we want to do you X FFL and U S F L can't always get their minds around that either. What do you make of all this? The ratio stuff, the roster stuff? Yeah, it was funny because I did an insider hit on this during our draft show and I remember thinking, I'm not sure anybody knows what I'm talking about, but they will about a month and a half and sure enough, and look the thing, one of the things the CFL is challenged by is bringing its game and its product to people that are maybe more, just more familiar with four down football with nfl, primarily NFL football and trying to get them to buy in. And I'm not talking just about Americans, I'm talking about Canadians too because there're Canadians who grew up as if they might have their association with football. They could have been raised in Alabama, they watch the NFL and American College football and they don't watch the Canadian game. And those are a real challenge for the league to get through to. I think the more things that differentiate your game in a not positive way, the more that becomes a hurdle to new fans. And when you have rules that people don't understand and have trouble processing, they feel like kind of outsiders in your sport. That's what my concern is. I understand the objective of this rule, but I don't like what it does to sort of the fans and that it's incomprehensible. I can already feel the first time Farhan and I start talking about Veteran American and nationalized American and 23 snaps and designated Canadian people are like, we might as well get on air, read the phone book because we're going to get the same level of engagement in people. So I don't like that aspect out of it. And I think that's already the ratio is challenging enough. What? You can't play whoever you want wherever. No, you got even that's a bit of a stopper for some people. So when you kind of up the ante on this, I don't, and then you have the optics where teams are already taken advantage, well not taken advantage of it, they're used it the way we knew they'd use it. The listing starters on the depth chart as backups for one play and just, I think it can get in the way with people becoming fans of our game. I had some, I'll give you an example and I won't use his name, but I'll just somebody I could, whatever doesn't really matter, but somebody I work with who's a really smart guy who played in this league who now works on television, phoned me last night at 1130 trying to wrap his head around this stuff. And so if a guy who's that embedded in our sport is having trouble figuring it out, what's the average fan of the C F L dealing with? Nevermind a general sports fan, somebody who's not familiar with things like the ratio. So I understand the purpose of this, it's to give coaches more flexibility. It's allowed them to use better players in situations to make the game better. I get the objective very hesitant about the application and more than anything the translation. I have another question for Dave here, but Jason, yeah, what do you make of that two it's, it is like we're speaking in another language here. I do think the Canadian game and we know this from trying to cover once you're in the wall of talking C F L or watching it, it's awesome. But it wasn't really till I was up there kind of talking with everyone that you feel like you're okay, I'm part of the club now. What do you make of this Jason of them? It's one more kind of thing. The barrier. Yeah, I agree with Dave. I think it's another barrier to fans that are trying to understand what the C F L is all about. The depth charts were just such a headache to look at the other day when they came out. So honestly, I think that when this came out, I was in favor of the rule. I thought that this would just be a little bit of a background thing. It wouldn't be as visible, but you saw from those depth charts just how visible it is and how complicated it all is. And I think it's confusing to fans and I think that this is something that the C F L will have to get figured out pretty quickly, I think here, Dave, in terms of this American TV stuff. So I'm so dumb. So this all comes out, we've been talking about this for weeks. So I finally sat down about an hour ago. I'm like, I need to, okay, how am I watching the game tonight? How am I going to watch the game? Yeah. Because we thought it's not c bs, it's cbs BS Sports Network, all that. It's on fubu, I have fubu, it's on fubu. If you have U YouTube tv, it's on UT T V. So that to me, that's two of the largest streaming. And if I'm going to watch TV here, if I'm actually going to subscribe to something, what do you make of this? Because I had our big giving the games away for free with the C F L plus and everything else. What do you make of this whole hodgepodge C F American TV deal? Well, I think it is a bit of a hodgepodge. And I think there's, the tricky part is you've got a part of the season that is not up against college football or the NFL is the part of your season that has value, but that season runs out by early September. So the weird thing is in most leagues we think, well, if you were going to buy the games of the league, you'd buy the second half. You want the stretch run the battles for the playoffs and then the playoffs in Great Cup. In this league we have an opposite situation. So it looks to me like the league went out and as CBS and said, what do you want us to do? And they said we'd love a Sunday night game especially, which is we've never had Sunday night games in this league and now we got 'em 10 out of the first 12 weeks and certainly Reg as regular and we'd like a Sunday night game and we'll buy a package of 34 games with you through to September. And then I assume the league went really hard to try to find people to buy the rest and they couldn't. And I think putting them on free streaming is probably less of an affront to CBS who paid for games than it would be for them to give them to ESPN or something like that. And this is just me speculating. I am not in the boardrooms at TSN learning about our international television contracts and streams. So that, that's my speculation. So I think ultimately they kind of served all their purpose. One is to get with a carrier in the US that would be credible and would actually tell people when the games are on. I mean Jim Nas reading that CFL promo on the weekend. I mean honestly that's more promo than like ESPN did. I don't want to, what I'm saying is that one of the issues with ESPN and other carriers is the games just kind of popped out of a crack in the sidewalk. Whoa, there's a C Ffl game on rather than actually telling people when they're on. So that I thought that was significant that they in front of a huge audience that was rolled out. So they actually monetize it to a limited degree. But in the C F L, if somebody knocks at your door and says, you want a hundred thousand US for nothing here, that's the start. That's starting point we believe based on the reporter figure. And then the other goal is to make sure your product is distributed for every game to anybody who wants in the United States. And again, it's one is for fans, the other is honestly for players and coaches so that when you go to recruit, they've seen the game, they understand the game, there's some familiarity. So it's not perfect, but I think in a kind of jigsaw puzzley way, they achieved all their goals. Get with a carrier that would be credible and promote them, try to monetize it and make sure every game is exposed and available in the United States. It it's kind of a side doorway of get there. Excuse me, but they got there. Yeah. I will tell you, when Jim Na talked about that, you would've thought that the 10 Commandments were handed down whatever. I saw some, oh, Jim Naz talked about the c l on golf. I mean it was, but hey, I saw ads today, right? Christina tweeted, I think the C F L Duc. But I mean at least you're seeing that's about what the X F L gets on espn. I mean in terms of we're running a couple ads and banners. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean I think it's the kind of Canadian thing as well when something that's sort of ours gets recognized on a big stage in American public culture, we all get tingly or something like that. And that Jim Nance voice reading about the BC Lions and the Calgary stamp Peters, it's a little bit surreal for some of us, but again, I think it's just the stage that they put it on and I I was impressed that they got that. I wasn't expecting that. Put it that way. We got our next guest standing by. Won't hold him too long here. Before I let you go, Dave, who do you got BC Calgary tonight? I've got Calgary, I think Calgary and one being at home and two, look, the stamps are a team that every year is a fast starting team and that's usually because of continuity. They have a little less continuity this year than they have in the past, but I'm very curious to see what Jake Mayer's like. I love Kaine Carey watching a back at the absolute top of his game and we're going to have some, their young Canadian receivers are going to have to step up a little bit because of departures and injuries. But yeah, tonight I'm leaning stamps. Yeah, like backup Khm Carey, right? Wasn't that? Wasn't that, Yes, the backup. I assume he'll get into the game by about play number two. Thank you. Well Dave, appreciate it. I battling through and getting your connection on, so I appreciate it and good luck with everything. Yeah, I should have tried the computer laptop off the bat. I was messing on the phone and I couldn't get it going there and I thought I was almost going to give up. I said, well maybe it'll work if I tried on the Computer. You can't give up on the mar. I appreciate it. No, I cannot read. Thanks for having me, man. Thanks a lot. Take care. Well Jason, we got our last guest here and then I think the professor's going to be calling in here at the end here, but we got back home here. Marty York, long time everyone talking C f L and everything else. Marty, how are you? I'm good, Reid. Nice to be back on the mark cast. It's good. Marty was on. Jason, I've been asking a lot of questions. I don't want to keep you too silent. Do you have any questions for Marty? Any thoughts about anything you want to hear Marty talk about? Not that come to my mind right now, but That's a story of my life. Story of your life. Marty, what do you make of the game tonight? What are we talking? We're talking bc. Yeah, so I heard Dave Nailers at the end of your interview with him and Dave and I used to work together at the Globe and Mail. So I know I've known him for many, many years and I like his work, but I disagree with him tonight. I think the Lions are a very good team and I think Calgary is in for a plunge this year. I don't like the way the stamp Peters look necessarily not wild about the receiving court and the quarterback to me. While he was somewhat impressive last year in his first chances, he doesn't have the pedigree, let's say, that Bo Levi Mitchell does. And if he gets hurt, they don't even have a backup or at least a backup to speak of. So I think the stamps are in a bit of trouble. The lions on the other hand, I mean, yes, they're missing. They're not going to have Nathan Rourke this year, or at least not for the beginning. And I don't think he's going to be back. But I like Vernon Adams and I think they also have a pretty decent qu backup in Dane Evans. But I like Adams, he can run and he's, he's not afraid to try things and I think that benefits him quite a bit. I like them a lot and I really think the lions are very, very good this year. Marty, what do you think, Megan? That and I saw someone, oh, Bob here was asking you do, will we see Dane tonight? I feel like Dane was brought in and I want to get Jason's sauce on this too, but I feel like Dane was brought in as we have this safety blanket here. We don't really know with Vernon. We didn't really have to pay a lot for him. Kind of got him for a bargain. What do you, Marty first, what do you make of Dan? Do we see him week one week, 10 week, whatever? Well, we saw Dean when he was in Hamilton as Hussy know Jason. And he was very, very good at times and he was very, very bad at times. He's a very inconsistent quarterback. I think the Lions are totally committed to Vernon Adams, and unless he gets hurt, I don't think you're going to see much of Dan Evans. I think you're going to see him on this. You might see some shots of him on the sideline in the opener tonight. But I can't imagine him playing in the game unless, as I say, Vernon gets hurt and he's experienced insurance to have. So it's, it wasn't a bad move by the Lions to get him. Jason. Yeah. What was wrong with Dan last year? Was it injury? Was it mental stuff? What do you make of it? Everything just kind of snowballed for him. He kind of just lost his confidence. Just some strange things were happening to him. So many tipped interceptions last year early in the season kind of derailed his confidence and I think the confidence of that entire team and I think that's kind of what led them to making the decision that they did. I don't think we truly saw him rebound even to that version that we saw of him in 20 19, 20 21 by the end of last year and that's why they decided to go in a different direction at quarterback. I think if I can just interject, I agree with you Jason. I think he lost his confidence and probably a new start will give him some confidence back. Although he not, I don't think he's going to get to play very much, at least not at the outset. And I think Dane Evans was better than what he showed last year. I do believe Hamilton, and I don't think I'm alone when I say this, probably you guys agree. I think Hamel, the Thai cats are going to be significantly better this year. I still think Bo Levi Mitchell has it. I think he's a future Canadian football hall of famer. He's not that old. I know that he also lost his confidence to a degree LA during last season when they brought in the other kid. And I think that Bo Levi Mitchell wasn't the same after they didn't want to play him anymore. He came in a few times, he didn't look right. But I think with the Thai cats, I know Orlando Steiner has a lot of faith in him and I'm imagining the Thai cats having a very, very formidable season this year. I think they'll win the east. Well, I think not enough is said for just a mental and kind of emotional, he like welfare of all this. We had Vernon on the show pre-season talking when I moved to BC and I was paying rent in three different places and I got my family moving and kind of all that stuff. Jason, do you see Thai cats as the team in the east? I mean certainly with Argos here they're, I don't want to say it's a rebuilding here, it's not, but I mean it's a new tutelage with Chad Kelly and all of that, but do you think it's the Ty Kat's division to win? I think they have to view themselves as that and I think people are rightfully picking them win the East as the favorite. I think they're the team that has, they check a lot of boxes. I mean I think they should have a pretty good defense on paper. They almost always have a very good defense. I think that they have some Playmakers and Tim White who I think I actually predicted would lead the league in receiving yards this year. Duke Williams, if he could have a bounce back year this year would be huge for this team. And I think Bo Levi Mitchell going out to the East division, I think where it's usually an easier path to get to the Great Cup, I think that the Tigercat should be favored to get there. And you're right about the defenses. The Thai cats defense is always strong and they're even stronger this year. They picked up some really good defensive players. They have the best defensive line in the C F L, in my opinion that even better than Winnipeg. So I think I'm looking for big things from those guys this year. In terms of the West, who are you? Bc and it could be bcs mean who do you see here challenging on the west? Say Winnipeg and they can, they're kind of in their own echelon. Yeah, I Mean Winnipeg is Winnipeg's a dynasty. I don't think you can avoid that unless they really flopped this year. But if they should have a successful year and I don't see why they wouldn't should win that West. I'm sorry, it's boring. Everybody says that, but I do believe they'll win. I think BC will be right there behind them. And I'm looking for major improvements including a victory this weekend from the Edmonton Elks. And I mean there's several reasons for this. First of all, don't underestimate this. Taylor Cornelius and the quarterback is so important in the c f been covering it since 1979. Unless you have a good quarterback, you're not going anywhere in this league. It's the most important position in any league in sports, in my opinion. The quarterback and Cornelius is good. He can run. He's a big guy, he's got a great arm. But more importantly, and I'm not wild about, I'll be honest with you, I'm not wild about Chris Jones as a person. I don't like his style. However, having said that, if you look at his record and probably your other, you've had a great array of guests on tonight. I'm sure some of the others have mentioned this, that Chris Jones historically has bad first seasons when he runs a team, but he has turned his teams around in the second year almost every single time. The Saskatchewan, he did it, he did it everywhere. And I have a feeling you're going to see a major improvement from the Elks and I mean don't forget, they got the best receiver in the league now. So Lewis is, I can see big things from him. So I think they're going to make the playoffs. I think they're going to finish the third. Jason, are you high on corn dog? What do you make of Cornelius here? Because I just remember last year he got the extension on Tuesday and I'm sitting here on Friday and he's throwing a end zone, interception, whatever at the end of the game you're losing, continuing to lose at home. So what do you make of corn Duck. I think I saw enough at the end of last year to think that he could have a major leap this season. I think you saw him because the first year he was in the C F L in 2021 he was just dreadful. But that's kind of to be expected. The first guy, first year starting in the C F L. But I think that we showed some signs. He has the athletic talent. I mean what six five can run has a big arm. But the thing, I can't get around with him and I think the thing that he has to improve on, he has to get that accuracy, that completion percentage up. I think it's very, very hard to win in the CFL if you're completing in the 50% of passes. I think he was like a 58% passer last year, which was way better than the year before even. But I think that he needs to get that up into the sixties, kind of be like a voie by Mitchell like 63, 64 and just improve the efficiency of the offense. Guys, it's hard to get first downs if you're not completing a certain percentage of your passes. So I think that's one thing I'm looking for him. That's A good point Jason, but I think it'll happen. I think he's going to get more time. He scrambles very well for a big guy, so I actually think he's going to improve his past percent. He's got good receivers this year, Absolut including Lewis, so his passing percentage will go up in my estimation If there's a lot of pressure on the Thai cats in the East, I just have to imagine just overall with Edmonton and Victor's running the promotion. I just don't know. It just doesn't look like they've done a lot. They didn't make a big, it wasn't big move kind of do what that. Do you think they've done enough here to the Thai cats? No, the Edmonton on the others. I think if Thai cats have the pressure in the East, I think Edmonton's got the pressure in the west. I just don't know what they've done to get themselves ready to go this year. Well they got Lewis, that's pretty good. And you've got Jones who made all kinds of moves. I mean look, we're not going to pretend that I'm familiar with the new faces that he's brought in, but he usually has a good read on players who can succeed in the C F L. His track record speaks for itself. Like I said, I don't believe he's the nicest person in the world, but he is a damn good coach and I expect that team to have made enough moves to strengthen itself. I know they haven't won at home in many, many years. I think they will. They'll win this weekend against Saskatchewan and even though they're underdogs and I think they'll win at home plenty this year. I know they're having a guaranteed win night. I don't know if I'd be that caught but Yeah. Jason, last thoughts on that here, we'll get Marty to go and then the professor standing by if they're going to get rolling here. I think Saskatchewan coming in with Trevor and kind of figuring, I think this is your key to point. What do you make of Edmonton here for the try to get their first win? Well, we're talking about how much they've improved. I think a lot of people will talk about the receivers, but a couple of quiet additions they made on defense. Two former Chris Jones guys, a Seed Leonard and Luz Purefoy. Purifoy comes over from the BC Lions, AC Leonard comes over from Saskatchewan. Two guys that started their career careers I believe with Chris Jones or at least were coach under Chris Jones in Saskatchewan. They did that be a huge addition for those that defense who I thought was easily the worst defense in the CFL last year. I think that's going to be potentially those could be really big additions for this season. I absolutely agree. Again, boy, you've made some good points. Jason Leonard particularly is outstanding. He's a top five defensive player in this C F L. Marty. Anything else from you before we let you go? I appreciate you making time in your schedule tonight coming on and we kind of got everyone slotted on here so I appreciate it. Anything else from you Reid? It's my pleasure. You can contact me anytime. I'll try to accommodate you whenever possible. I got to ask Jason one question. Are you related to Ken Hussie at all? No. No, I don't believe so. I don't, yeah Because when I first started and I'm talking about when I first started covering the CFL for the Global Mail, it was, we paid a lot more attention to it back then and there was a Canadian coach named Ken Hussie on with the Argos and I remember having some great chats with him. It's quite a while ago and frankly you look a little like him so I thought maybe you were a son or something. Maybe I'll do some ancestry.com or something like that. Figure it out. I like that Marty, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank You Reid. Thank you Jason. Bye guys. And then we'll bring in here our last guest taking this in. We'll probably get off here at five, 10 minutes before the game starts. Could not wait to talk tomorrow morning. We are already doing our show tomorrow morning 9:00 AM say I got to come in and talk C F L, the professor Andrew Murray. How are we doing sir? I'm just greedy. I really am. I just want more air time. That's good though. But I mean you've said you are excited for the season and you, we've obviously been talking to U S F L and X F L and everything else. What has you so excited for the C CFL season? I think just the amount of parody that I see across the league. I think there's just so much movement in the off season. I'm really curious to see how this merry-go-round of quarterbacks initiates itself and honestly just making picks this weekend. It was really hard for me to pin down a lot of them because there's just so much movement that occurred in the last five or six months since the season ended and I'm really curious to see which teams get off the certain starts. You guys were just doing an excellent job breaking down Edmonton and Saskatchewan. I kind of have to jump on the train here and say that I think that Edmondson's going to win this weekend too and that would be the first time in literally years that they've won a home game. The fact that they even would get that in front of their home crowd I think would be immense going forward and setting the tone for the rest of the season, especially in year two of the Chris Jones program as they try to reboot, really reboot their franchise and seeing guys like Trevor Harris play now in Saskatchewan, seeing Cody, Gerardo in Montreal, seeing Vernon Adams regime really start here in bc, not just kind of being a substitute for Nathan Rourke. I mean there's so many different headlines just with the quarterbacks alone, not even including just seeing how these teams adjust to what they had from last year expectations. I'm really curious to see what happens in the east. I mean I would think that Toronto is probably kind of still top of the heat just because they are the raining great Cup champions. But again, things change so quickly overnight and the C F L just with how much players and coaches move around Hamilton, I am really, really excited to see what Hamilton does under Oli Levi Mitchell. If they can regain some of the magic that they had two, three years ago, I there's know, to me it's just there's so much parody. Like I said, that's kind of what I'm most look forward to outside of Winnipeg. That's still an exception in the whole equation. I appreciate you complimenting our coverage on here cause it really feels just like I've had a whirlwind here of trying to rearrange a guests and stuff on so I'm glad the content's good because sometimes I'm just like, okay, talk. Say smart things Jason or whoever on here. Let's do this exercise before we get out. I think this will be fun because this is the time of year every, everyone's made the best roster moves. We've all positioned in this. I want the team that you are high on that you think is going to not live up to expectations and then the team that you're kind of met on that you think is going to exceed expectations. So let's go to Jason first. Hope I didn't give you enough time to formulate a little bit of a thought, but a team you're really low on that you think is going to succeed and then a team you're really high on, you're like saying the tie cats are going to miss the playoffs, right? I mean that would be an example the other way. So Jason, what do you have? I think I'm not super high on Toronto, but I do think they're going to have a pretty good record this year. I think that changing quarterbacks and going with a first time C F L starter is going to be tough for anybody to succeed. But I think in terms of their roster, they still brought back a lot of different pieces and going cheap in terms of paying the quarterback allowed them to keep a lot more pieces. So I still think they'll have a pretty good season even though I don't think they have that. I do think Hamilton will ultimately win the east this year over Toronto, but I think Toronto will probably still make the playoffs. And then who's the team that you're high on that you think is not going to do good? I think I would be higher on Ottawa if Jeremiah Mazzoli was healthy going into this year. I think that they brought in a lot of players last off season so they kind of got that out of the way. They didn't really do a whole lot this off season. So I think if they were fully healthy going into this season, I think would've been very high on them. I probably would've picked them to finish second in the east. But I think just the uncertainty with injuries around that team is why I think they're probably going to finish lower than I would've predicted. Yeah, I have no pulse at all on Ottawa. This is the longest. Obviously we've sat and talked for two hours here about the CFL tonight. We've obviously been doing team preview and stuff. I just have no pulse on them and now that was Mazzoli being out and trying to come back in here week four, whatever. Andy, who are you high on do you think is going to falter and who are you low on do you think is going to succeed? Well, I'm probably bought too much stock in Chad Kelly and so I might regret it about week three. But look, I'm, I'm going to be buying and buying until I see otherwise because I think he's ready to assume the throne from M B T. I don't know how it's going to be offensively cohesively. I think that staff just always does a great job of getting their guys to play well together and no matter their culture I think is very underrated in Toronto. I really do believe that and I think their coaching staff does an excellent job. I assume that they're going to win the east again, but again, I could be wrong and like Jason said, I mean I think Hamilton could st storm back out of the gates and maybe reclaim the throne in the east for the team that I guess I'm feeling low on that I think could actually surprise a lot of people is Edmonton. I think Edmonton could actually get into a playoff spot. I know that sounds absolutely crazy considering what they've been as a franchise the last two years. I think that's kind of the one that I think might end up surprising people that I think is only a six or seven win team but could actually be surprisingly good. I will give you one team that I think is actually going to bottom out completely and this might surprise a lot of people Calgary. I don't know why but I got this really weird feeling that something's not right in that camp. And I don't know if Jake Mayer's really that guy. I know Levi had kind of reached his end of the rope and he had his run there, but I'm not so sure that they're really ready to move on from that regime. And also I'm just kind of worried about some of the injuries they've had on offense from the receiving corps and I also just, I don't know if they're going to be able to supply enough points in the season. I think Calgary could finish. I think they could finish last in the west and I know a lot of people would disagree with me about that, but that's my surprise really. Tires fall off the car in this scenario. That's interesting. I was going to say, because I have high expectations on Calgary, I'm a big Jake mayor believer, obviously he was on the show. I like Chad Kelly back when he followed us on Twitter a lot more. I don't know what if I did, if my Brian Scott Love was enough to kind of turn Chad against me. I do think tie Kat's missing the playoffs. I think that's going to be my hot take. I think that, I don't think Bo, I don't think Bo has it at all. Same with Aaron Rogers. I think the jets are going to falter. I don't think Rogers has it. I think he's kind of maintained that whole myth over in Green Bay for years. I think Bo comes in and stinks up the joint. That's my, what do you say Jason? We've been talking to Bo all game, but I can't even, that was my heel turn at the end. I certainly think it's within the realm of possibilities. I think one thing I'm watching tomorrow night when the Tiger Cats play the first game is are the passes for Bo falling up short a lot of the time. I saw that a lot. It was a sign of a declining player. Is that arm going to look a little bit more lively after having a lot more time off last season? So I mean that's one thing I'm looking at. He's not the most mobile guy in the world. So yes, it's definitely in the possibilities I think in terms of them completely falling the cratering this year. But I do think that maybe if he gets injured, Matthew Hiltz is kind of an underrated player. He was I believe one of the higher rated quarterbacks by P F F that the C F L just put up those stats the other day on their website. But I think Hiltz could win some games for them. But I think ultimately if both falters, your prediction may come true. I know I do. I think they knew to cut Bay. They said we got mayor here. I mean there was no hesitation. They're like, we're done, we're moving on. We're here. We got Mayor Andy, any final thoughts and then we'll kind of put this show in the bed here. Well I'm actually glad that Jason brought up Matthew Schultz. I had a bold prediction in our chat last year. I don't think Reid remembers this because he might have been doing something else, but I boldly proclaimed sometime in mid-season. I said if Matthew Schultz actually stays healthy, I think that Tigers are going to win the East. He didn't and they obviously had quarterback trouble all year. So look baby, I'm not sure if I'm vindicated for that, but that's a claim that I made because I actually really liked what he was doing. He brought the most consistency to that position the entire season out of all of the quarterbacks. Obviously more than a Dan Evans, more than anybody else that he trotted out there. So I kind of agree with you. I actually Schultz a lot and if he has to come in and play for Bo, I don't think that's the worst thing in the world honestly. In fact, that might be the best backup position and maybe in the entire league possibly. So I think that that would be not too bad. But obviously you want Bo to perform well. You want him to outperform expectations. You want him to become back healthy because it's good for the league and it's good for the type of cats because I think it pushes their ceiling higher than it has been in the last than it was last season. Well if you thought Max was going to come here and disagree with me, he did. He said too much instability in Ottawa, Montreal for them to make it really like Hamilton's defense. Hard for me not is see Hamilton, I'm telling you I'm Cody's going to come in. Career resurgence here. Jim Lapel Cody, I think that that is going to be a Christus your out professor Gabe is starting soon. I think we've made it through. Jason has been in a trying time with me today. We've had guest reshuffling and everything else. I think we did. Okay, Andy hopping on. Don't forget, Andy and I are going to be tomorrow morning live 9:00 AM for our X F L plotting the X F L 2020 fours course. Jason and I will be back on Monday to be determined sometime early in the morning trying to do our C F L week one recap. And then Pat Rapino is going to be joining me Tuesday. We are going to do our U S F L recap that day because I got so excited about doing the C F L one. I said no hater read, don't forget about the U S F L. So we're going to do the U S F L on Tuesday. We'll have ratings and everything with that. We'll go to Andy and then we'll let Jason close this out. Andy, anything else from you? I'm just really excited for this. It's been an absolute whirlwind. I know for you, I mean this is just a marathon. It started with X F L coverage. It went into U S F L coverage. Now here we are with C F L coverage. I mean this is truly a year-round operation now, but I couldn't be more excited for this season. I'm really, really looking forward to just seeing the crowds of the camaraderie and just seeing a lot of players that I recognize. Again, I'm really, really excited for the C F L this season. I can't wait. And I know, I hope that BC and BC's another team, again, I'm an ardent for an and Adam supporter. I wear it on my sleeve. I hope he has a fantastic season. I really, really do. Cause I think he has the ability to, this is the best situation he's ever been in. So for anybody that I'm trying to be as objective as possible, but if there's anybody that I'm really rooting for, it's him completely. If this wasn't the PG podcast, I would've done some obscene hand gestures there when you're talking about your live firm, right? Yeah. This is day 110 here of all football coverage here. Start with our live show back February 18th for the xl. Jason, anything else from you? Plug your channel before we get out of here please. Yeah, so you can find me over on at YouTube on at hussey's huddle where you'll find multiple videos a week on the C F L recap videos or we'll be doing the recap here on this channel weekly on Monday. So looking forward to that. Also, preview videos, other team specific content over there. So if you guys want the best C F L content on YouTube, be sure to check that out. Yeah, subscribe, give jason subscribe, give me a subscribe please here you, lots of work. Exciting. But yeah, another show tomorrow and then we'll have, we still got to figure out the XL rookie draft. I really need a time for that next Friday. But our plan is to do the XFL rookie draft, but I have to film a dance performance, so I hope it is earlier in the day. So let's hope for that. Thank you guys so much. I'll play all this and we'll get out of here. Go watch the game and go. Go Lion America's CFL team here. And thank you guys so much.

USFL 2023 Week 8 Results: Winners and Losers of USFL Week 8, What Did We Learn?

Hey everybody, welcome to the markcast. Happy Monday Morning Reid here. Exciting coming off of U S F L week eight. I have pat standing by here. Going to take 30 seconds of your time. Before we get into this, let me get the banner going here too. Happy C F L kickoff week. We have our normal Friday episode planned. Andy Murray's going to be joining me live. We'll figure out the time. I'll post that. We'll be going live talking to X F L off season, kind of all of that talk. But if you are a C F L fan, we have our C F L kickoff pre-game show coming up at 4:00 PM Pacific on Thursday. Still waiting to confirm all of the guests, but if I get yeses from everyone that's tentative right now, this could be an all-time great C F L show coming up this week. So hope you tune in. I'll be posting and promoting a lot on Twitter here. But C F L kickoff pre-game show 4:00 PM Pacific on Thursday before the BC Lions at Calgary. Stan Peters game and then our normal Friday live show here. I have Pat standing by. Normally I don't wear a tank top on the show, but Pat was sending videos. I saw Pat was in a dress shirt so I had to dress it down. Pat, how are you doing? I'm doing well man. How are you? I'm good now. So I'm blocked by RJ Young on Twitter now, but if RJ Young, his podcast is like the number one podcast or the number one call whatever RJs, we're literally the number one U S F L podcast. I just want you to understand that record break numbers is this last week. I know it's a low bar I credit you and the hard work you do watching rewatching and kind of doing all this stuff. I do what I can tune in. I had weddings this weekend and our wedding show, but we literally the number one U US F L podcast so haters come out but like Archie Young get out of here with all of his stuff. I'm just telling you numbers don't lie. Yeah, I mean we put in the work despite what people on Twitter think, I thoroughly enjoy watching football as crazy as that sounds. I thoroughly enjoy watching both of these leagues and I think including the C F L, even though my champion Mike Glass just got cut from the awes. But on a serious note, I have no problem watching these leagues and even though sometimes the league does stuff I don't agree with, in the end it's not about the shield for either one of these leagues. I don't care about Fox, I don't care about Jerry Cardale, I don't care about Danny Garcia or Dwayne Johnson. I care about Chris blew it even though he just blew the game this week and I care about, I guess I care about Jack come more than Ben, but guys like that. I care about those players and I care about them making money and doing what they can to live their dream. Yeah, papa's in a ton of work for this. I appreciate it. Coming off of it's just us developed a hard time a year for me to get this. I do what I can. Like I said, we had weddings I'm trying to watch before we were going to the game, we're driving. I got the game on my phone, driving to go do photos and stuff like that. But I appreciate it. Exciting week here, week eight, kind of really kind of some of the best football we've seen. I know Brett was excited over at the U S F L and X F L fan group on Facebook. His stallions looking good. We'll get into all of that, but how are you feeling here now? We're eight weeks in eight weeks past. We haven't broken you. I think we've almost broken you, but how have you made U S F L week eight? I mean I'm doing pretty okay. I'm a little disappointed with the North Division overall. I think everyone is, I think I said I guarantee three wins from the south or three wins from the south. I kind of thought, I don't remember if I said the Stars or the Panthers were going to sneak one out, but obviously that didn't really work out. Those all games were, I think decided within one score. I praised the kicking this week. Ironically, there were two big miss field goals from s Skiba had a miss field goal and Chris blew it obviously. I think there was a minute and 40 left in the game. The Mallers, the gamblers game. So quarterback play was pretty decent this week. I felt like McLeod McLeod but overall it was a pretty good performance. Josh love played pretty. Okay, just same thing slow start with that team once again. The Michigan team, Troy Williams, a little bit more mobile with his legs. Kenji Bahar went back to that real safe, safe type of passing and whatnot. Whatnot. Where we kind of saw what Jordan TEU did in the X F L. Very similar. I think TEU was obviously more athletic than Bahar that run game really, really hurting them. But we saw some stars come the defensive side of the ball. Now that these offenses and defenses are actually in their stride now, in my opinion, I'm actually seeing good defensive players, not just bad offense taking care of taking advantage of or bad offenses being taken to advantage of by decent defensive players. When do we get to cancel the U USS F L people did the X ffl for having losing teams here going into the playoffs? Cause we're getting pretty close here in the north. I've got the Panther circled here at three and five, but very excited. I would take that up at this point I I would just like to see because there was obviously we had a lot of everything with the renegades and all of that. Are you concerned with the losing team in the north potentially making it through? Yeah, But I think it's going to be the Panthers because I think the white flag, Mike Mitchell, I think verbatim said that word. The generals need to wave that white flag. Mallers have had some hard luck this year as well. They could easily be three and four or excuse me, three and five. They're two and six obviously and they could have shook up the south a little bit, but it's going to suck because every team in the south is a decent team and it's only a two one game playoff. So hate to sound tacky, but any given Sunday, so we could see two good football teams not make it as we saw in the XFL with the Battle Hawks not making it. But at the same time, I think it kind of validated it when the Renegade, the Renegades won, but then you got some St. Louis Yahoos who were like, oh man, that was our spot we could have been in and all that stuff. So I mean very curious to see. We did that media week this week. Surprisingly my questions were not answered. I forget what my second one was, but my first one was, and I think we all talked about on the group chat, the group chat, was they going to expand rosters for week playoff or at least championship week? Especially when you're coming down and granted the championship is going to be in Ohio so it should be a little bit cooler, but when I did my Panthers preview the day before, they had what 145 degree heat index on the field. So it's like this adds, these guys are going to be a little bit more fatigued than they were. They would be in April obviously, and regardless of the conditioning and whatnot, it's still going to be a little bit of a battle. So I would like to see the rosters expand a little bit for that. I think everyone would, and it doesn't seem like it, it'll cost people on that active roster and whatnot, but it does. It's not going to cost for wind bonuses if I'm understanding the bargain agreement. It's funny. Yeah, no, we had our big US media week I guess previewing the playoffs. You have to. And I didn't have a lot to ask. Daryl Johnston and Mike Perra, Mike Prayer was doing some funny fart jokes and stuff before we got on, before the official call. But I know you had questions. It is remarkable for Fox to hold a press conference and then just entertain questions from RJ Young and Eric Williams to Fox employees. I'm like, can't RJ pick up the phone and call Daryl if RJ really has a pressing question? I got to Daryl. I got to know. I got to know. This was amazing to me. The other question I was going to ask you, we will get into the breakdown here. The things that are sent to me, and I obviously get up later being on the Pacific coast and especially coming off of my wedding weekend, I get up a little bit later, but the things sent in that group chat astound me that we are, we're still yelling at people for talking about fans in the stands and then we're talking expansion versus home markets here going to the next year. Who is that one of the network guys? What would you rather see us f l expansion in year three are actually playing in all eight markets. I mean playing in eight markets. The bullet with the bullet. Yeah, I, so I talked with Sam Shady on his show a little bit about it. So I think something the U S F L has in their back pocket that the X ffl doesn't is Canton. And the reason why is I think Canton will support a Canton football team and then you're going to get residuals from just people visiting the Hall of fame. So arbitrary numbers, if 10 is the max and one is the mim, you're going to have six people there. The capacity's at 10, you're going to have six people there every weekend. Just if you had the Canton football team, Canton Legends is the name I, yeah, I think you would get two more people. And I'm simplifying this because it's, yes, math is hard, but simplifying this, I think you would get two more people for just the casuals coming in and now you're at that seven eight threshold. It looks pretty good when you have that Canton Legends. So while a lot of people are critical of the Canton Hub, I think it's a good transitionary hub and you might be able to pick up a couple more casuals for obvious reasons. So go ahead and put a team in New Jersey or Pittsburgh, maybe take the Philadelphia team, bring them down there, let Michigan be its own thing, and then put the other two franchises, whether it be Houston, which I think they need to go to Houston, figure that out real quick. Go to Rice or whatever where the spring league went And put New Orleans in Canton because now you've exhausted the Birmingham people for the last two years, which these people, I will never talk bad about the attendance for the stallions because those people have been asked to do so much and they've done a pretty good job and it's also very hot. So you can do that. And if New Jersey just flops, okay, we're done with the generals, we're done. Or if Philly just flops we're done with the generals, get New Orleans in their hub in, excuse me, get New Orleans in a New Orleans stadium and then now you can bring this Canton Legends thing up. So I think that Canton Legends can, or Canton Ohio could be kind of used as a throwaway card until you find eight markets that will support these teams constantly. Well yeah, no, I say it was, I can't remember the ed, I think it was Ed that was on, he was like with the Canton Observer or whatever and he would, when they did the whole hub announcement, I said I would do the hub in Canton, the main hub I would do. And I would just say, Hey, with your hall of fame ticket, you're, you come, Hey, we got a game here. This is included in when we did our Alamo tour here before the XL kickoff, you go see the Alamo and they was like, oh, hey, we got, you want to go see the other room with some of the more knicknacky stuff here that's included in your ticket. I would just roll that in and say, Hey, if you're coming in on a Saturday, we got a game coming up at two o'clock, like go check it out next door. I would include that in and just kind of get that rolling. I think that's easy. And exposes people from some dude from Iowa who's got no interest in the league and he's like, yo, I really like this New Orleans thing because it's a nice color. Now he's a New Orleans fan and if he's not going to the games he's watching and then he goes to the bar and he turns it out at the bar. You know what I mean? You expand your demographic to these flyover states, in my opinion with Canton. 100%. So Would there be people on Twitter that yell at him that he's dumb when this person that doesn't know anything asks about this? Or would they be accepting to explain? Oh, they probably, they'd probably harass him. But at this point I have recorded enough ridiculous European songs that I'm just going to comment back at people. Okay. Okay. All right. So let's Scott here. I'm sure we'll get into some more shenanigans here, but we got this had this, I caught some of this game, little scary here. Week eight. We had the gamblers, Anthony's gamblers. I can always tell by our group chat how riveted people are in these games and when I tune in and I I'm, I wonder what's going on. I look at the group chat, nothing, nothing's going on with this. Anthony was like, I'm up, I'm up. What did you make of this gamblers at 20 to 19 Pittsburgh? I mean, what we saw was, I talked about earlier was a safe Kenji Baha game when 11 of 20, 150 passing. Oh yeah, you got it on the screen. 150 passing yards about and it was the Mark Thompson show. So it's funny, we've been talking about Mark Thompson a little bit is I do believe Alex McGoo has solidified himself as the mvp, especially with two weeks. And in my opinion, if they win this week, I wouldn't be surprised to see a very light workload for him. I do want to go into Alex McGoo talk when we get to that game, but now the competition in my eyes is the most eyes on the prize competition is who's going to be the second all U S F L running back, in my opinion, because Thompson's at 13 touchdowns now and he could easily be an MVP of Alex Mcg if maybe Jamar Smith is there and he's playing a little bit more conservative. So it's the Mark Thompson show, in my opinion. The defense is pretty fun to watch as well. Zuber was a little bit more involved in the game because I think, not Justin Hall, but Anthony Ratliff Williams went pretty blanketed and whatnot. The run game, the run games continue in to succeed through that. They don't have any off the top receivers that Bahar has really connected with. I know Halls had some nice long catches and whatnot, but it's been mostly that quick screen, quick checks, all that stuff, and that's this game and it's kind of what they had with, like I said earlier, what TEU was doing in the early parts of the season before. But those receivers that TEU had versus Bahar are completely different as far as the kick over to the Mallers, this running, this rushing attack is pretty limited. Anytime I see Madre London making a play, he's making a guy miss at the line of scrimmage. Garrett Grok, it seems like he's got a guy in his face every time. We've been very critical about the offensive line for the Mallers this whole year. Troy Williams obviously getting back to his legwork a little bit, I said for the Muellers to be successful, I think they needed 30 yards from Gro Shack in like 35 to 45 from Madre London and kind of do a three diet version of a three-headed attack. What they rush for a hundred, 120. I mean sometimes the bulge doesn't go your way and that's what happened. They were in Williams did what they needed to do, pushed the field down and blew it, missed the field goal. So yeah, I mean the team is much better to watch this year. So if you're like, you know, can poo poo crowds and all that stuff. But as far as what quality of a team, I like watching the Mallers compared to last year. Did you read the Miss Field goal kick and all of that? Do that, was that exciting television or was that black strike you wish special teams would be better? I mean I think the kicking and I have the kicking stats pulled up for this year and I mean these guys are doing a lot better, you know got Alex Kesman, 19 of 21, Aguilar is 19 of 22, 16 of 17 for Chris Coughlan Coughlan, Chris Blut 15 of 19 with 27 extra points like 27 of 27 Aubrey's 11 of 12, excuse me, Brandon Aubrey's 27 of 27 Cole Murphy, 11 of 14 with some big misses like big misses as in over 50 yard misses. So we can play that game a little bit. Skiba is perfect, he's nine to 10 now and I think overall it's been a lot better than last year. I can pull up the 2022 stats, I'm doing this all football DB and sometimes they're a little jacked up, but last year, 27, 22 field goals was the high water mark and Brandon Aubrey was 18 of 22 and then Nick Vogel was 18 of 23 with 14 of 22 from Ramiz mod. So the kicking has improved tremendously and there's been less kickers as well. So that means these guys are doing a little bit better of staying even keeled in my opinion. Well that's good. I'm glad they kind of balance it out too. I mean we saw Lasher manes here back with the mallers and being able to not have to do double duty and figure all this stuff out. I think last year was a little messy in that. It's good. Anything else from this? I mean Mahler's kind of continuing their downward slope two and six now kind of it gamblers very much still alive here it looks like. Yeah, and big thing guy wanted the shout out on the mallers is Bailey Gaither and Isaiah Henny Henny, he thing is possible dynamic guy this week his punt returns we're a little bit limited, but overall they both eclipse 50 all-purpose yards. I mean it doesn't get much better than that. These two receivers are doing a pretty good job. I think Gaither gets another practice squad cameo once the injuries come in because he is been close and they're using him more on jet sweeps and whatnot. So he is showing a little bit more versatility that he can air run the ball from a rushing standpoint. But he had another 70 yards, he's that shifty little slot back, slot back. He's a little small. I think we've talked about that multiple times, but in the end he's still being pretty effective and I mean we've seen these small guys shifty dudes in the nfl, so I think he's putting a lot of people on notice because last year he was kind of buried under Jayla McCluskey and Trey Walker and Bailey Gaither as their fourth wide receiver options. So I mean he's definitely going to be turning some heads, especially in the punt return game and we talk about it all the time is I don't care how many rushing yards you have, I care about your kick coverage and I care about what you do on special teams. And he offers that Here in the south. I mean really stacked here, gamblers at the bottom, it's still obviously great record. It is weird how parallel this is to the X F L where it's like the reverse sliding doors here, alt world, but with this really, really competitive south where it looks like it's so very much anyone's game. I mean I know the sounds and we'll talk about that, but just south overall, what do you make of the playoff picture? I mean I hate this. I think we opened it, opened it a little bit. I hate to see just any of these teams not make it. I would love to in a optimal world have one more week of a play if things aren't working out. Maybe if the breakers in Showboats or the gamblers in Showboats or the same record they play a get in a bubble game and whatnot, but the back end of the schedule is all division games. So these teams are going to cannib cannibalize each other a little bit and while we'll all be like, oh, they're more talented and whatnot, they will have an opportunity to take on their division, their division opponents. And just to bring up the schedule for week nine, because I know we talked about it last week, but I mean the Breakers and Showboats play on Saturday, that's, I don't want to say that's a win and your end, but one of these teams will have six wins, the other will have still five and then the gamblers and stallions that could deter some things as well. And then stallion, showboats week 10 breakers, gamblers, breakers, gamblers on that Sunday game for week 10. So that could kind of shift some things up and I think the ex or the US F l did a good job as making those games matter and I don't think I know that's going to avoid most likely a lot of these playoff tiebreakers and whatnot because that last game, if you made that last game C Dragons versus battle hawks, then there's kind of done because then whichever team wins it kind of shuts it down in my opinion. You said a good job by the US L just wanted to confirm you did say that. Yeah, no, put that on. Good job by the US F L. Bad job by R Young for existing Bad job by was RJ Young. Hey Pat, I got to got to know Pat, I got to know. I say next week, week nine looks really good for the US L in terms of scheduling here with we got Fox, N B C Go going back four network games. I think that's going to be good the week 10, we've got the U US, F A U S A S A and FS one here. But next week, week nine ratings should be good. Obviously we'll get week eight ratings coming in tomorrow Gears to see how that works out. I know they're trying to build back up the week before with Memorial Day and all of that getting over here. Let me get back to my schedule over here. But coming up at Birmingham Stars, stallion Stars, whatever game of the weekend. I've heard from a lot of people as well as seeing the parts I did, what did you make of that? And I'll get the boxer pulled up. I mean it's the Magus show at this point. Every week we talk about how good this guy is, we talk about how much fun he is, we talk about his improv and whatnot. I mean, he's the defacto MVP right now. I saw an interesting tweet from Jamar Smith and I talked with Luke Miller in the dms about it and I could try to pull it up, but Jamar Smith said something along the lines is on looking for my next opportunity or something like that. Yeah, It was like a piece out right? You said? Yeah, yeah. And let me pull it up so I'm not But You think that, yeah, the reading of it was, he thinks this is Magoo ship now and he's kind of like, let me move on here. So Jim Jamar Smith wrote next chapter Awaits re Johnson salute and the Peace Sign. So I talked with Luke Miller about this and I was like, I think Magoos going to get a shot at the nfl. Now if I'm Skip Holtz, what do I do? So if Magu gets a shot at the nfl, I wouldn't be surprised if, because I think Ucci floats on a practice squad. I think AJ McCarran, someone gets hurt and then he finds a good opportunity for him to go to another team in which he can either a push that low level backup to where maybe he's the QB two, QB three. But when they're, maybe that team's five and three and then they're five and five and they're like, yo, this second string guy we have isn't working out, aj, take the start. That's a very real thing we've seen in the nfl, right? AJ's only going to go to the N F NFL if the opportunity suits him. He's good. So you have a guy, I think he gets an N F L opportunity whether he sticks in camp or not, then he's in that limbo of what do I do? I think Skip Holtz needs to have a sidebar conversation with Smith and be like, Hey man, let's see what happens with Alex. But would it not be the craziest thing if the X ffl gave him an a hundred K plus salary? Hey man, come here. I think everyone agrees the schedule is a lot better as far as that recovery period for X ffl guys to the N F NFL N F nfl. And that when the X ffl season is over the draft, they have those final roster spots to where a U S F L guy is waiting on injuries and just like a team to fall in love with them. Like, Hey, we, Dr drafted this guy out Kansas State, but he's not doing well in OTAs. Let's bring a U S F L guy in and played that game. So I would try to tell Jamar like, Hey man, chill for a bit. I understand you're frustrated, I understand all this stuff, but let's not make any decisions about going to play for another team because in the end you still need a little bit more tape and I know maybe he can get a C CFL opportunity and whatnot. There's plenty of things that can happen with Smith. I think he's capable, I just think he needs more film. I really expected him to take that next step. Obviously injuries happen, but with Magu, if I was the X F L and I lost teu, I lost ucci, I lost aj, I offered this guy a hundred K to come in. I don't think Brett Hunley comes back next year. So there's an opportunity. Jalen McClendon probably be the next tier of guys coming up. Quinn and Domany is another guy that's probably going to be that next higher echelon of quarterback that we see in the X ffl. Why not throw some money at Alex? You mentioned, I think it was over the weekend that you think the high level, I can't even remember the high level quarterback play in the U S F L was better than the X ffl, but overall the X ffl quarterback, what do you make of that? Because yeah, magoos playing really good, but across the board, I wouldn't say the U S F L quarterbacks have been outstanding this year. How do you look at this too? I think the tier is a little, I think the U S L L quarterbacks overall are better as in they're closer because every week when I did my quarterback stuff, it just seemed like AJ Jordan, Ben, aj, Jordan, Ben, aj, Jordan, Ben. And while that's makes my life easier to do analysis and I can turn my brain off with some of this stuff, I feel that while a goo is obviously in a class of his own, those two through fours are very close. And when you get Josh, love is picking up, he's being a lot more consistent and Cole Kelly's a lot of things that you don't show up in the stat line. It wasn't until McClendon came around that we had a true number four and then Luis wasn't that good for the majority of the year. So until we saw Luis in the back end and his best games were in the playoffs, it just kind of felt like a lot of movement in that number four. And people will say, JAC Coon had over 300 yards passing a couple games. And it's like, yeah, but all he did was dump off the tight ends. It wasn't too crazy. And Nick Holly took a couple short passes and whatnot and Brandon was up there, but then once Brandon after week five got hurt, he wasn't anything to really write home about with John Kirkland getting hurt. So I feel like the quarterback play is closer and more competitive than it is in the U S F L than the X F L. And they've had some bad weeks, they've had some, but I mean they have bad weeks in the N F L as well, so I can't knock either one of these leagues. Oh, I know mean. And especially now with the the NFL rules and stuff and more quarterback, it's going to be hard. It's going to be interesting here with them dressing and carrying more guys on that. Getting back to the game here, I see both these teams march down the field right away you're like, oh my, okay, stars come in. Okay, stallions come right back. Kind of both seems like they hit a wall then and then obviously the game picked up as we went along. What did you make finally? Birmingham eing this out by three. I mean big time teams make big time plays, right? That's really it. Like Magoo chips were down, he needed to make plays. Same thing with Case Cook is he played a pretty good game, three touchdowns. I think his interception was at the back end of the game, if I remember. I'm trying to, because I knew Josh loved threw a pick at the end, so I might be getting those games confused. But I mean Magoo with his mobility, it's not always about all the rushing yards he gets. It's about buying that extra time. And even though on one or two of his sacks that he had, it seemed like he broke the pocket found was trying to make something happen and then the receivers just, it didn't add up. So he had two big drops, one from J Sternberger, that should have been a touchdown. So I don't remember if they scored after that, but Davion Davis, former Houston Roughneck has been extremely valuable for this team. And I mean the defense played a solid group effort to make plays at the end and can't overall the team's the best team in the league right now. And when you return I think 60% of your roster, almost 60% of your roster that won a championship, you just need to add some key pieces. And they did, they brought in Davon Davis and Marlon Williams gets hurt. They pick up La Dionne Kane is having a great season as well. From the return aspect to also just being another N F NFL caliber receiver, the tight end they loses. They bring in Jay Sternberger played in the N F nfl and when you really have a QB one A and QB one B, it makes your job as an offensive coordinator a lot easier. Yeah, no, and you were talking in the interception. I know Josh love had that big Hail Mary interception kind of whatever at the end too, so maybe that we can talk about that. They were not looking good there at the end. The Panthers, in terms of the stars still king of the North. I don't know really what that means here at this point. What do you make of them? I know it's kind of been, it's kind of a tale of two Hals this season. Yeah, I mean their offensive line play has improved. Fox did a good job of H highlighting, I think his name is Joel, he was a late season edition that Star's defense is pretty good on the pass rush. I know Carson player didn't play this week, but anytime you have Adam Rodriguez and they're linebackers, Joel Delanco, Jolie, ALFI and Gabriels are all fringe N F L guys and whatnot, maybe not so much Joel Delanco because he is a little bit limited sideline the sideline, but overall these guys are so it seems like the north is still there forte, especially when you have cookies and Corey Coleman, Devin Gray, these offensive weapons and they're down two receivers. I think Chris Roland's out and then they have one more guy that got hurt as well. So overall, I mean I think I wouldn't be surprised to see this matchup in three weeks or four weeks. Again, whenever the playoffs come around or the championship comes around a little bit dull for me. But for all we know, the Panthers have a good game. If they make the playoffs and they take out the stars and the number two in the south has a good game and they take out the stallions and then we get a different game. I mean, I'm still going to obviously watch this championship game and I think it'll be a good game. But if we get a 27 4 USL championship, I don't see many people complaining about that At the end of this episode that I want to have a little conversation about how the USL and EXL exists kind of differently. So hopefully remind me about that. But yeah, I don't know if this is the most exciting, but look, you have the renegades and all that. I mean anything can happen here with the one game playoffs. I think it leaves from a lot of unpredictability there. I like the idea, like you said, of doing a playoff or something where we have, it's just the eight teams and the 10 weeks. How can we figure out something different than just one C play two c I like the alleged Usal, the one scene and playing the other division, whatever. I think you can experiment more with that and obviously have it known ahead of the season and not kind of change stuff. But it is weird that you would think that they would experiment more than just, well this is the way it kind of feels like it should be done and that's the way we're going to do it. You can experiment with anything here. And I think maybe that's a conversation you had prior to the season and at week five you mentioned it and you sit down the coaches and you're like, Hey man, do you guys want to win the championship or do you want to have jobs next year? And I know that's a hard question, but I mean if we go in the year three and it's star stallions again, what are we doing here? And I do think overall it's definitely more competitive in the south than it was last year. Obviously the showboat slash bandit slash year tailed off at the end, tailed off at the end. The gamblers, they were competitive but they went three and seven and the Panthers and the Panthers and the Mallers were one and nine and two and eight. So I mean from a competitive marketing standpoint, I think they're doing a decent job. But I mean banking on Alex McGoo to be that highlight reel and leaving another game drive you did this week or game winning drive you did this week, how does that bow spur your ratings? How does that bowl? It's definitely fun. It was definitely good to see him doing his Johnny Menzel impressions and whatnot and then giving the ball back to the star stars with I think 15 or 20 seconds or whatnot. But I mean that fourth quarter was competitive for stallion stars. So in the end, especially for the casual viewer, I don't think they'll care. But for the Twitter stand, they might be a little bit more resistant, which at times it seems like the only people who watch the U S F L or X F L or are on Twitter, The heat thing, did you bother? Did that bother you? Right. What was it, the stallions game where they were showing the on field. I mean it is really hot to play here in Birmingham in June. Yeah, I put, that's kind of my high horse about the expanded rosters just because that 15 yard rush, it takes you an extra second, you you're going to need a little bit more water to feel better after a 15 yard rush and whatnot, where you really moved 26 yards because you had to go from the back field to bump it out to the outside and whatnot. So I mean really, really want to see that expanded roster, maybe do it kind of in baseball where they, well they did expand the rosters of 40 guys in September, but we'll see what happens on that. I mean, I don't know the temperatures from last year, so excuse my ignorance, but yeah, with these guys kind of dog, I don't want to say they're dogging it because they're not, but I mean it's just when it's hot, you're playing football in pads and you add eight weeks of workload, you're going to get tired. It's not a big deal. It's not indicative of bad football, it's just reality Coming here. I know Mike in his article for the Bel New South Mike Mitchell, really hard on the generals here, showboats continuing like their, they posted that the Grim Reaper going and taking out all the teams and on the five oh run, what do you make of the showboats here? Todd Haley really on top of the world. I mean I think they did a great job with their marketing department. Seems pretty on point as far as with the memes and whatnot. So I really do appreciate them. I do like that the Groom Reaper meme is always good when it comes to sports. I mean it comes down to Coach Kelly through a bad interception I think in the second quarter when they downs, I don't know if they were at the one yard line or whatnot, but I remember watching it and just kind of like, whoa, what's going on here? This quarterback situation is abysmal for the generals. They went to pup obviously who threw two touchdowns, kind of ignited the spark in everything like that with his legs. I think he had almost 80 rushing yards, if I'm correct. If you want to pull that down, I want to be very, very clear on this. Yeah, 76 rushing yards. I want to be very clear on this. I do think Kyle Lala should be in an alt football league. I just don't want him starting for my alt football league. And I do think Crew Cup has that skillset that's a little bit more unique. But something that I always felt, and they mentioned it so many times, is the time of possession. And if you can pull that up, I, last I checked was like 41 minutes to 18 to the generals and whatnot. So you got some big boys on that defensive line like Hercules, mana, Matta Fafa was in that backfield all the time. Chris Orr was doing his best and whatnot and he got obviously big Toby Johnson there as well. You can't have your defense on the field for 40 plus minutes. How many plays did they run? I know you got it pulled up Plays here. Where is that Time of possession total plays? 71 to 44. Yeah, I mean what do you want? Want a 350 pound man to do? Come on dude. Especially when you got a guy like Cole Kelly. I know he had two or three fourth down rushes and then he had two draw plays I remember as well. So you have this six, seven dude, 250 pounds rolling four with that offensive line be behind them because they had two of those sneak plays and then he ran some draws. You're asking your defensive line to do it a lot. And then at some time seems that Mike Riley is just kind of chilling, living in his best moment type thing. There were some cock management issues that Mike pointed out that were a little bit concerning and whatnot, but we've talked about an en nauseum with the generals. They live and die by the rushing attack one and two. They also have, what's his name, Deandre Johnson who's still hurt her bread and butter. And I've been very vocal about his improvement as a passer in this league. He's definitely a top five, top four when healthy, depending what he does with his legs and not to have him in this league right now is really is I think hurts the overall just, I don't know, just the fun of it in my opinion. Are you surprised, and I was thinking about this obviously the Loleta and Karu cop and all this with Deandre that last year it felt like we saw the Mallers, you're kind of making quarterback moves here, we're bringing in badly, we're doing all that stuff. I don't know if it's the existence of the X F L this year and there's less, but they, the generals haven't really even seem to address this at all. Just well this is who we, this is kind of what we're doing. It just seems weird that there's not as much kind of trying to replenish or bring in someone off the streets here. Yeah, I mean they brought in Eric Barrer, so something that hasn't been tweeted out by the league and shame on. And I talked to another newsroom guy about it. I don't remember which one, but he was on the call with us. I don't know If troll troll 87, I dunno. Yeah, 6 9, 4 20. What is his Regardless, I I'm, and I apologize for not air quote shouting this guy out, but in the end they seem that they made a little bit of a drug deal with the barrer thing because Deandre was in re help me out with this if you can, that they allowed the showboats or not the show, the generals to be at 51 because of the N F L rule and nothing. And I got to re-watch it, but no one has made a tweet about it because of Deandre Johnson being hurt. Gotcha. So they're allowing them. That's interesting. And they brought it up and they talked about it for a minute and I was just kind of like, are we just going to gloss over this real quick? It was just like, yeah, the generals, they're having some quarterback issues and we addressed that so we're going to let them have 51 because it's good for the league and whatnot. I'm like, and then, oh by the way, RJ Young doesn't know that offensive lineman exists. And it was kind of like that. We roll that one back please. Because he said it really quick and slow DJ and I need you to expand on that. And just to me like that, that's been really the only movement we've seen sexy signings and whatnot. I know EJ Perry and Brian Luki, Luki and Michigan guy going back up to Michigan. He's our QB two now. EJ Perry up there, Jamar Smith obviously getting hurt. They brought back sl Kyle Slowder who gets to get paid to hang out with his girlfriend or fiance, which is beautiful. But it's the QB signings been during the season, haven't been the sexy wow type thing. Well and like I said, I don't know if that's because everyone else is tied up in Arlington or whatever. It is weird, and I know we've talked about this in the group chat, that the one team that got literally fined and punished for roster whatever, really has done nothing to address anything with their roster in the generals and now getting this preferential treatment again. Interesting, interesting. I like that. I like the conspiracy. It's like, yeah, yeah. Well you also have, if you know this, some of these X ffl guys that got signed at the back half of the season when there was some quarterback thing, it seemed more of just like, we just don't want these guys going anywhere. We want their riots type thing. Vinny Testaverde Jr. Who's one of the nicest guys I've ever had the privilege of meeting. Yeah, that was kind of a homey thing. But when Ryan left for the Showboats, the Battle Hawks, they took Manny Wilkins who was at the showcases, spent a year with the Packers. That's a guy that is a good alt league quarterback. And then you had some of these I F L guys they took, but Kelly Bryant was a big guy who maybe not the best quarterback, but he's got a little bit of a name recognition success national championship and ended up doing pretty well with the Renegades as a Reid option type guy. And it kind of seemed like some of these dudes that were going to get no burn, I think he's on the Vegas, on Vegas, it kind of seemed that they just kind of were like, yeah, you could go to the US F L and make more money, but do you want to play now? And with players just especially these backend roster guys in these alt leagues, they're just like, you know what, I'd rather make 15 grand now and then do my QB training in the back half than go to the US F L and not really know what's going on type thing. So they took that guaranteed couple grand plus job security versus a little bit of a future. I think DeAngelo Fulford was in the US F L during the off season as well. So good for him, brought in a couple grand for him. Well, and we talked about this on the kind of Andy and I with the rookie draft that they announced here, the X F L on the Friday show, but where last summer you had us, right? X F L, they're kind of doing whatever US F L. Yeah, we're making all these off season. We're bringing people on and the generals and kind of all that stuff. Having this draft, and I know that we were critical of the rights draft and the US develop college draft, but were the EXL this taking place here on the 16th. USL is still in season. They're going to be getting out. Then they're going to kind of get their head around, okay, what do we want to do this summer? Xab Bell coming in now all these guys that are sitting around, Hey, you got a place here, come be on the roster. We'll ride out. They're going to kind of supersede that where the U S F O one last year really made no sense because it was before the draft. And you have all these players, unless you're aware of, Hey, I'm not going to get drafted. Hey no, I'm in the big draft. I don't need to worry about you. And then whatever ends up happening with that, you know had the PR gas where you reporters were asking the guy, do you want to come to the US F l? It's like, no, I'm, I'm going to get here. But I think the timing of this makes more sense and I'll be curious to see what the U S F L does in the off-season, excuse me this summer to address that where the X F L, it feels like they're getting the headstart now going into this signing cycle this year. I think they're in the I U S F L's kind of in a rock a hard place in my opinion because it's like I'm going to timestamp that. Okay, no, I Really think they do because now the X ffl season's over, you have all these guys going to OTAs and mini camps and whatnot and then from there it's kind of like, okay, June is here, June 16th is here. I did my mini camp. I or I like a guy who's on the Panthers now. Levi Bell, he was signed for three days, he was drafted by the US F L and then he got cut and I don't think he even went to OTAs. So it's kind of like, okay, what do I do for every Levi Bell? There's 10 guys who aren't like Levi Bell who weren't drafted by the U US F L. So it's kind of in my opinion that damned if you do, damned if you don't. Part of me would like to see the U S F L do their drafted in May, their college rights draft in May because now you have all the chips have settled. I didn't get signed, but at the same time. But they're in season. I mean they're not going to do that when they're, yeah. How are you Going to do that? So I mean what else are they going to do it their draft? Do you do a draft after the X F L draft? I think you're going to be able to poach in February some fringe guys a little bit quicker that aren't sure of themselves that because they have the N F NFL out. So if the NFL team wants to, I get drafted, I could go play in the U S F L or whatever. I get a call, I'm out, dude. You know what I mean? So I think the X F L definitely has the upper hand now that the chips have settled and whatnot. Cause it's weird sometimes I feel like the U USS F L has the upper hand on some fringe NFL guys who don't get their futures contracts. And then sometimes I feel like the X ffl because of their timing of their season kind of gets like, I don't want to say strong armed, but because now they're kind of doubling down. They're just like, Hey man, if you're not here by week 16 sucks us suck dude. Like are moving out of the opportunity. And then you're like, okay, well I just didn't get a futurist contract. Do I want to go to the X ffl? It's week five, I'm going to get spun up in two weeks and then I have three weeks of game film. A guy like Phillip Lindsay can do that because we know who he is and we know the type of running back he is. And at this point, Phillip Lindsay is just trying to go from an $800,000 contract with the Texans to a million dollar contract with the Cardinals with a $200,000 guarantee. That's what Phillip Lindsay did when he played in the X F L this year. He was going to get an once that running back gets hurt, but now it's like, yo, this dude still has it. We saw three games from him, let's bring him in. And that's something I'm very curious about moving forward if we're going to have some more rentals for the X F L in the week five and on type thing. I, I heard some very interesting stories about Philip Lindsay and just kind of some frustrations with him in the kind of June and the Runny game and all of that with the C Dragons. But I was corresponding with one of someone that's involved with kind of the X F L draft, how getting all this ran up and I was talking with them last week because I said, Hey know I appreciate just when the U S F L did theirs. I'm like, okay, what is this? What's going on? And I thought the inside the league called the X F L did with Russ and Doug just, I appreciated the transparency. This is why we're doing the, this is what's going on. And they expressed to me, no, we really feel like this is the right time. We like the time that we're doing this and we're going to get a lot more of these people that we draft actually be in the league because now we're giving them kind of a home for the summer. I can get my head around, okay, this is what I'm going to do. Where with the U S F L, it's almost like, I think it's maybe it's not fresh enough because they haven't been drafted. They don't know that they're not getting drafted. I think by now you've processed, okay, I'm not making it to the N F NFL this year. Let me figure out what else I want to do. I just like the idea of that. Yeah, just a couple quick go. Go ahead and then we have a couple quick questions. We'll do the last game out. I mean that's 100% it, right? That's G the X ffl guys are going to have the benefit of figuring their stuff out a little bit more versus the US F L guy. A guy like Jared Horst was the number one overall pick. I mean I'm sure he's got a seventh round grade, sixth round grade and I think he'd be a good player in the US F L, but at this point he's like, well let me give this a shot. I get cut. I can go play in the US F L next year because I think he's going to be a fringe practice squad guy, Jared Horst, and let me go get a couple games on film and prove that I'm healthy, that my footwork is where it needs to be type thing. A couple questions here. Dylan wants to know what is the X F L work You draft going to be a televised on Twitter guarantee it will not be televised. We will be doing our show still waiting to figure out when that's going to be. They kind of said mid-afternoon the evening on the 16th, but that will be our normal Friday show on the 16th. We'll figure out. But we will be doing that. And then Mike says, well the XL will be allowed to draft quarterback Malik Cunningham the same way the U S F L. I mean if they want to, it's like you're drafting their rights, the team's drafting their rights. It's like the it's C F L draft. If this player ever comes up to Canada, the Argonauts or whoever have him, that's how the draft's going to work. I imagine the same with the X F L or whatever. If they come into the league that that team would have first rights on that. Yeah, that's 100% it like Malik and then it comes down to what Malik wants to do. I think he's with the Patriots now or had some workouts. I, I'd have to look up to see his status, but in the end and we can pull up the Patriots roster, that's fine. You mean you don't know exactly what every player is doing? Exactly. Yeah. Pat, you need to know every player the second we talk about him, But you know, got a guy, he's going to come in as a QB three and whatnot, he's got to beat out Trace mc, mc, McSorley, Bailey's, zaps not going anywhere. What does Malik want to do? Does he want to go play with the stallions? I mean if I'm him, I don't think the stallions are a team to go to because nothing to do with their system that you have Jalen. You have Jalen more than there who skip holds likes, who's got some game time and then some C F L experience. Jamar Smith who despite wanting to leave is still on the roster. You got Kyle Slowder who regardless of the yays or nays about him, he will garner reps over you unless you blow him out of the water. If San Antonio calls Jack Coon didn't like the world up, Paxton Lynch is there. Reed Sonnet I think is going to get a practice squad thing because that's kind of, or opportunity because that's kind of his, why would I not go to San Antonio over Birmingham unless there's trades or something like that. Obvious. I'm going to pull up the last, I'm going to go grab my power cable. So let's get your thoughts here. McLeod kind of getting his groove back a little bit. Still hot and cold. I'm going to mute myself for a second. I'll be right back. Yeah, so for those watching McLeod, did his McLeod thing start off real hot? I think he was 4, 4, 4, 4 6 to start out cooled off a couple drops. Once again, I know Johnny Dixon had a big drop, which if you look at his stat line, he still put up over a hundred. They well him, Johnny Dixon and Johnny, Jonathan Adams still put up over a hundred yards. McLeod. That second quarterback that third quarterback in this league, depending on this week, eclipsing 2000 yards one this season. Jordan teu was the only one to do that last year. He just beat with two games left. I mean, this is why you paid this guy to be down here, man. He's giving you a shot even last week. Gave that team a shot and then it was a last second interception in the end zone, granted from 40 yards out. But he put him in a decent PO position to win and there was a lot of nonsense. Oh, we lost Pat. We lost Pat. Sorry. That's okay. A lot of nonsense with everything going on and whatnot. So right now you're in a pretty good position, I think with the breakers. Panthers have no, excuse me, the Panthers have a decent amount of fight in them with how the South North is. I foresee them at least sneaking a victory in the last week. If Philadelphia wins, maybe they get a light load with VAD Lee and Kevin getting those reps and the Panthers can maybe sneak in another victory. But in the end, I see Michigan who own one and one and kind of seeing how the chips fall for these other teams for their possible playoff birth. We talked about last week, west Hills 23 carries 36 yards. He's this guy's tired. He is tired. God, he's coming up on a thousand all-purpose yards. Still managed to put up, I think he had 50 yards or 40 yards receiving. So he is still managed to put up almost 80 all-purpose yards, which great effort for running back. But in the end, there's a lot of going on with these Panthers. Defense Breland speaks, Levi Bell continue and Frank into just won his third defensive Player of the Week award. And another good interception Is, did I Fever Dream? Did you get shouted out by USL comms or is that a Fever Dream? No, I did. Yeah, it was cool because I got shouted out by USL Comms because of Darius Victor going over a thousand yards, being the first running back to do that. But I don't know, hopefully we'll see what happens with this week because I put out some good content that got shared a lot by a lot of different people and what's the word I'm looking for, Alex McGoo was one of them. He crossed 20 touchdowns, like total touchdowns. I think he has 16 passing and four RU four rushing. And the only guys have done that since 2000 were Tommy Maddox, AJ McCarran, and Big Ben. So McCarran had 25 total touchdowns in 2023. So with two games left, it's not out of the realm of possibility, which depending on what happens, they might not play 'em on week 10 to keep 'em healthy. But it's a very real possibility that Alex McGoo can get to that 20, that Magic 26 and create a new 10 game record for a lot of these guys, which considering how he has missed time in, I think week four, he missed a couple series in week four and he obviously didn't play the full game in week one. I think that's awesome Is How's my boy Garrett Marino doing here? I was like, I kind of was watching the band. I was like, oh yeah, I just haven't heard a lot of, we haven't brought him up a lot this season for all the controversy coming in. I mean, he had a decent game. I think he had one, two or three tackles from us. He's listed as a starter. They do a decent amount of rotation. I know he is had two or three sacks. He had a nice hit on Cole Kelly a couple weeks ago. But I mean that defense, he's clogging up at the interior with Walter Palmore and whatnot. Big dude that coming from Missouri. But Levi Bell and Brelin Speaks and Frank NDA are the star studded players of that Panther's defense. He's just an enormous man. I was in there watching him before in my head I was like, oh my God, this guy is, it's crazy. Yeah, I mean Garrett obviously, he is a very controversial guy. He's blocked me on Twitter. He's blocked probably a third of Twitter on Twitter, whatnot. I mean, I'd like to believe he's probably a decent human being in real life and when you play football, maybe, you know, just get a little bit lost in the sauce on it. But in the end, he definitely not, he's, he's seems to be keeping his nose clean, which I mean we could say this is his third opportunity because he was in the NFL for five minutes and CFL then now the U usfl. So maybe he can keep his nose clean and garner another opportunity to go back up north, make a little bit more money and whatnot. I don't know if he's been banned from the league, but in the end definitely, definitely not a drag at all. He's doing a decent job being a role player. They started implementing Guy out of Syracuse named Jamal Melan in there. He's younger than Garrett, I believe. So those three guys have been doing a lot of the Brent work as far as that. And then you have Ethan Westbrooks as well as there, and he contributes a decent amount as well. Last question for me on here. First of all, I do think Garrett's soft band from the C Ffl, I think they're, when he got cut before, I think Amber came out and said No teams roll out. So I don't know if that'll we'll go over. I want to talk last thing McLeod on here. I know nailer, he the tweet and I dunno why we're still talking about this McLeod going back up to the c f on double dippy, and I know he was on Sam show talking about it and he was on our show obviously. And what do you make of him double dip? I don't see him ever going back up to, especially with the Argos, you're too crowded right now. Well, I could see him going to the C F L in one capacity of a five week, five week, 15 grand a week. You got to make it worth it for me, homie. You know what I mean? But the thing is, and I don't want to say I'm sick of tired and talking about this, but it's like these guys got to take naps. Yeah, they got to test. I know, I don't know how much Trey I, because I know when you had Trey on your show, you talked about a little bit, but his big thing on your show was getting healthy, obviously the cleats. But when I talked to Trey on mine, he mentioned that a little bit more in depth and it's like, yeah, he probably had a good fiscal year because he more CFL checks. I think he had 10 and then us or X ffl checks. But let these guys rest, man. Yeah, they can't just go. No. Yeah, and I think you put it in our group chat and I think I put it out, I broke it down. I was like, McLeod has made almost a million dollars from the N F nfl. He's probably made close to that in the C F L over, because he had one or two big contracts. I, It was a four 50 for the Argos. And then yeah, he had that first year because he's had two years on that. So I, yeah, he's probably seven 50 at least. So then that he played in the ufl, not that was a financial pipe dream or anything, but that's money. He does QB training. He probably did QB training at one point. So since he's come into in the league in since 2011, he's probably made playing football, just playing football alone. Almost 3 million at granted, not that's over 11 years. It's not the most crazy amount, but regardless, it's coming big gums in as well. Add in the fact that his wife, I don't know if this is an executive at Disney, he's probably doing okay that he can just chill. You know what I mean? And I wouldn't be surprised if he got a practice squad opportunity in the middle of the season, add in some more money on that, and that's going to be a way less workload on your body. Well, it killed and I don't, not that I don't, and this'll be kind of my last thing, we'll get out of here around the hour even this week, because one of the guys, the line where the XFL got signed to the tie cats or whatever, there's all like, oh, how many more I get? All more people are going to go up to the c l or why is the X ffl not allowed? How is that? You said these guys have to take naps, especially going up to the C F L. Okay, so now I need to go find a secondary home up in Canada for six months, leave my family if I have kids, wife, spouse, whatever, leave my family, go up there, play a 21 week season, come in here in, deal with all the conversions, deal with all that stuff, deal with the visas. It is, it's a ton of work. Yeah, it sounds easy. Oh yeah. Logistically have 'em go up and sign with the BC lines or whatever. It's very hard to do that. And I just don't think people, obviously you want them to have the opportunities and play as much as anyone wants to, but I just think that the actual logistics of how difficult that transition is get lost sometimes in this. Yeah, it's just like it's too much, man. It's too much on your body. Everyone talks about Kavante, Turpin, he put it in the U S F L and then the X and then the N nfl and he tailed off, but we conveniently forget that he played in the Spring League in 2021. He played in fan control football. He played in Europe for five games and back in 2020 he played some arena ball, I think with the Frisco fighters. So you're going on 2020 to end of 2022. All those practices, those reps plus the training and whatnot, and then he plays in a playoff game for the Cowboys and you're just like, bro, man, Trey said it best. Some of these vets, they literally get off feet. Do not move for that day. Let your feet rested. I had a day, not that I'm some premier athlete, but I had a day I was with a client, I didn't sit down for 17 hours the next day. I could not do that, do anything. My back was hurting because I have gear on my hip and whatnot. I'm walking around running at some points, dealing with people. When it gets crowded, I got to put a little bend in my knee and whatnot and tense up to grab this person out of here. And it's like, dude, that's just me doing what I do. And the next day, next day I'm out for it. I can only imagine for 60 minutes hitting someone repetitively. Yeah. Well, I think we did good today. Got here all of uss L week eight. Appreciate it. Pat is always doing Lawrence's work, trying to do my best to keep up. Just I tell you. And the same with the C F L. I was texting with one of the C F L media guys, Isaiah, it's really hard for me to keep up with these games with my work schedule. Just not that my work is challenging, just the timing of everything, but do my best on here. Appreciate it. Like I said, C F L pre-game show coming up Thursday, four o pm Pacific a. Got a correspond today, but should be a loaded show. Andy and I Friday, a special live show and then I assume Pat will be back, God's willing next Monday. Do this one more time, a couple more weeks here of U S F L and then we'll figure that out. Pat, anything else from you? No, guys, I appreciate it. As always. Turning tuning in. We talked about it with content and whatnot. It's a lot of football fatigue for some people and whatnot. But these videos have been doing a decent amount of feedback and whatnot. And I got some guys coming on my show after the season and I got one an X Ffl guy I'm talking to on Wednesday, so I'll have that at the back end. So just shameless plug for not only myself, but someone else. Give him Sam Shady. We talk about him all the time and he's done a great job. One of his guys, Michael Washington, who's very knowledgeable, just did an interview with the Felipo, right, depo. I saw that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So guys, a couple of y'all watching this. Go ahead, look that up. And then obviously where to find me on Twitter is by Pat Orino and analyze and educate on YouTube. I think. Yeah, Sam was talking about having me on at some point and then I curiously, once the Kraken kicked the crap out of the Colorado Avalanche and the Santa Cup playoffs, I think Sam got a little so sour about that, but I think at some point we'll do that. Pat, as always, appreciate it. Thanks everyone. Like to subscribe. We'll see you Friday or Thursday and then Friday should be a busy week. Thanks again. Always.

Episode 147 - The XFL Is Downsizing

Coming up this week on the mark. Well if you thought after the successful completion of season one of X F L 2023, they were just going to rest on their laurels. Think again. The X F L making league white cuts doing the little downsizing. Matt Damon, should we be worried what's happening here? Do you understand that you will undergo the permanent and irreversible medical procedure commonly known as downsizing and that your bodies will be approximately 0.0364% of their current mass and volume Now Little, Well, I certainly did not foresee layoffs happening so soon in the executive branch at the X F L following the championship game. But here we are, chief marketing officer gone, VP of marketing and branding gone. Should we worry? Is this cause for concern? I have smashed the emergency class. The professor Andrew Murray. We need to have a discussion. I Mean it was essentially the black Monday for the entire marketing staff of this entire league. And look, you and I have talked about it at nauseum about the marketing strategies that have been implemented or not been implemented since this league came back out of the doldrums. And then on your regularly scheduled program, we have Evan Willmore coming on. We have created a watch list X F L players that still deserve a shot in the N F L already had players signed off of our list. Since we have recorded, we are bringing Evan on Deep dive who still deserves a shot in the N F L? It's a numbers game. Someone has to get injured, something has to happen for that spot to open up and I do expect more to come for Sure. And then we are still talking U S F L on the podcast U S F L Week eight. We have Furby of Ren Sims coming on full preview of the weekend's. Matchups, I thought they might kind of spice it up a little bit this year. One they kind of give 'em a free pass on some stuff but then year two you think you might make some changes and so far it's kind of felt exactly the same. And then we are one week away from the CFL kickoff. We have three CFL team previous today, JJ Adams over at Postmedia talking to BC Lyons, Mike Hogan of the Toronto Argonauts previewing the breakup champions return here. And then we have Steve Milton of the Hamilton Spectator full CFL team. Deep dives. We are Guinea ready for kickoff beer soon. Probably good to be a long one. Hope you enjoy it. Hey guys, welcome to the Mark Read here at wri. Was really just getting ready to preview, do the CFL previews here. We had the big segment planned with Evan. We're talking all the X FFL to N F L our watch, our wishlist, whatever you want to call it. And then we had big layoffs this week at the X F L. We did the shorts about it earlier this week. Janet Duke being let go. Anthony Zicon. Lot of the sales members from a bunch of the teams across the league. League is kind of reformulating here. Red Bird had a performance review following the season, kind of going in a new direction with some of this. Going to get all into that today with Andy. Really appreciate that. Andy and I already had a big segment coming next week. We had our whole episode plan but we're bringing Andy in early as well. We need the professor here talking through all of that. Really appreciate Andy making the time. Like I said, Evan traveling, getting done with college, he has his watch list, all the players, backgrounds, everything that Evan knows. Tremendous insights from Evan. Really appreciate Evan taking the time and then Furby over at Run the Sims. We've had Justin Freeman on in the past and certainly appreciate the guys over at Run the Sims doing the DFS and the stats, everything else for X F L U S F L and all of that. And then we are a week away from the C F L kickoff. Huss is huddle and I are going to be doing a live C F L kickoff pre-game show a time T B D but obviously before the game there BC at Calgary next week that game is going to be at six Pacific, so probably four 30 there. We'll be doing a C F L pregame show. I tried to get some more guests lined up for that. Should be a good one. And then like I said, Andy and I are going to probably be having a special live episode next Friday, June 9th. So if you want the C F L step come for the pregame show, we're going to be doing that on the eighth and then our normal show will most likely be a live show with Andy if his busy schedule allows it on June 9th. And then keep in mind we've had lots of info as well today about the rookie draft and all of that. Then I'll be talking about with Andy, Russ, Julio and Doug Whaley. Were on the inside the league call with Neil Stratton over there we are going to be doing an X F L rookie draft live show. Hopefully they're on that June 16th. They've said it could be in the afternoon, could be the evening, waiting for them to pin down the time. But look for a Cav native guest there talking the XL rookie draft most likely for a kind of fun live show there on June 16th. I think that's it for me. We'll check back in at the end of the show. Thanks again. Well Andy, we were all set up next week. We were going to do our big live episode off season, like what should the f l be doing? Next thing you know we're breaking glass, we bring the professor in first and foremost. Have you seen the Matt Damon movie downsizing? Do you know the reference I'm making with this episode? I actually have not. When you first posted that thumbnail, I was a little bit confused and then I had to look it up. I I've seen a lot of bad David films that has not been one on my list or even my bucket list so I you'd have to fill me in a little bit more on that one. Well yeah we will. There's no deep dive in that. But it is interesting downsizing because the premise of the movie is people and consumerism is got Scott's so big people are shrinking down. We're using less resources, we're more consolidated a little bit how I feel about the X F L here with some of these layoffs. We'll talk through all of that. Is this a good thing? Is this a bad thing? I know you have thoughts and I have thoughts see a lot of people north of the border having thoughts and everything else. But to set the stage here, this was Tuesday coming off Memorial Day. We just celebrate the championship game, all this. I really thought it'd be a couple quiet weeks. Evan's already on this episode we're doing the XE L players to watch and did the N F L. Next thing you know I get sent a message from Fran who was on the live show in San wherever the heck we were, San San Antonio. And he goes, Hey, look at this. And it was one of the people that was working for the Vegas team and they had posted on Facebook that they just got laid off from their sales drop. He goes, Hey Reid, like let's start doing some digging. I send it to the group, Mike goes, Hey, I think changers are coming, da da da. Next thing we know, mark has this article out, huge sweeping cuts. Janet Duke, you know CMO of the league Gone Anthony, he was the VP of marketing, the brand gone many I we've heard upwards of 30 people kind of across the teams and everything else. What did you, because I know you're working and stuff and I'm like, we got to talk about this. What did you think when you hear heard all these layoffs? First and foremost, I mean it was essentially the black Monday for the entire marketing staff of this entire league. And look, you and I have talked about it at nauseum about the marketing strategies that have been implemented or not been implemented since this league came back out of the doldrums. And I mean we can get into a lot more of those details as the show goes along, but I think the basic point that we came to the conclusion that we came to multiple times that quite frankly enough was not being done to promote this league. Now I have no doubt and in no way, shape or form think that it has to do with the effort of the people who are behind the scenes. I think they put in as much effort as you could probably ask for. I do think one of the things I have to consider is that number that Mike Mitchell has reported a couple times about the budgeting of the marketing strategy. It was somewhere around $120,000 or something in that neighborhood is what he has mentioned in his articles and has mentioned on air a couple of times. And so my initial thought when it came out was this because of the financial limitations or was this because of the strategy not being implemented as Redford Capital and perhaps the league saw to what they envisioned And maybe it's both. I think we've been learning more details since that's happened, but that was my initial reaction when I heard that news And it's hard. So of course I immediately, and I want to pull up Ben's article here. So Mark had the story, Ben Fisher, who's been on the show and I felt we were more apt to talk about this now, I mean Ben's just reporting the facts. I think as much as I respect Ben, I think we can run through this a little bit better than he can. Getting the statements out, the idea that I had people messaging me, that's why I was go, I had people messaging me is this a good thing or a bad thing? I said, well we have had criticisms all year about the marketing of this league and I never want to see anybody lose a job. You never want to see anyone. Janet's been there forever and Anthony was there, Janet was the team president of the Guardians back in the day for 2020. I don't want to see that. But if it's something that you and I and many people have complained about all year and they're immediately making changes to fix that and people had to lose their jobs, that to me is at least we're recognizing this and we're adapting and not like, well let's roll it back again because I think they went into this, they being Danny Jerry the Rock, to whatever extent he's involved, having a certain perceived notion of what this was going to look and feel like, who's going to talk about us? What kind of marketing do we actually need to do? And then now realizing after year one, oh I think our preconceived notions were very, very wrong that do you agree, disagree with anything of that? To some extent, I think what it tells me is that clearly that benchmark that we kept referring to of 2020 clearly was in the minds of the marketers and in terms of the league's operations this entire time. I know it's unfair to compare it to that point. I get it in some ways because it was a different time, it's a different ownership, different just a different mantra that surrounded the league in a lot of ways. A lot of the rules and some of the players and obviously some of the legacy people stayed on board, especially in the marketing department. We talked about that. Like you mentioned with Janet Douche, she's coming from the guardians and had a bigger role here. You had some other holdovers from that regime. But it clearly, I mean look, even though we can make a lot about how attendance figures for some of these teams increased as they're went along, the point of the matter is a lot of them were down on average from their iterations of the teams that were here before. Or in comparison to say another league, like I said, the aaf, I mean we kept going on and on and on about San Antonio how, I mean the commanders were drawing 25,000 plus people for that league in the short time that it was alive. And here you have the Brahmas who are kind of a centerpiece. I know they're not the hub but they're kind of another centerpiece in this operation and the only time that they broke 20,000 the entire year was their first game in the regular season, the next time was the championship game and even that didn't top that opener. So you have to wonder about figures like that and how they compared them or how they measured them clearly whatever metrics they were using were not good enough and this is why these changes were made. I think it's just it, like you said, you never want to see someone lose their position over this. It's sad because a lot of people lose their jobs and it's a league of opportunity but it's opportunity to the point of what's going to be done for the league and what's going to be done for the brand. And before Andy and I get too deep, I'll pull up the article here. We are going to talk the rookie so that the Zoom came out the inside the league with Neil Iris. Julia was on that Doug Whaley. We'll talk about that here at the end because kind of looking forward here to moving on, but obviously this is the pressing news, obviously leading the show with and then we'll get to that because I do, it looks and feels very similar to the U S F L college draft. I don't think it's totally the same call me hypocrite or not. I've been talking with people about that today in fact directly so we can kind of get into that. But to read through this Ben Fisher article because I think there's some interesting notes here. So obviously EXE dismissed C M O, Janet Duke and Anthony Zicon as part of a broader set of cuts generated by a strategic review of the league after one season. So Red Bird apparently went in following the season, said we're going to kind of look through this, what didn't work? Extra bell officials declined to say precisely how many jobs were eliminated. They fit into two different buckets. One group are now deemed seasonal employees and that could be a larger notion of a lot of outside of Jan Anthony, some of these people contracts, okay, we don't need you working game day events at the Sea Dragons games. We don't need you there in August. We need you there February, March, April, but I don't don't want to get too seasonal this we'll talk about that. One is seasonal. They could potentially return to their jobs closer to the second season set to start in February. The other, including Janet and Anthony were done after a review determined the league should shift from a brand marketing emphasis, seen appropriate launch to a more revenue driven approach to maximize ticket and sponsorship sales heading into the critical second season. That to me is the more interesting part. What do you make of that? Because I do want to talk seasonality also It tells me that the bottom line was not being met or it wasn't being met in the way that they expected. And again, yes, I think the brand itself in a lot of ways was pretty strong. All things considered in from the holdover from the last league being in the cultural zeitgeist really since it was created in 2001, it has a lot of currency, it really does. I think people still fail to understand how much currency this league's name has and I think that's why ultimately the name was not changed. I know you've talked a lot about that with some of your guests about what if Danny and the Rock came in and just made it their own league and just rebranded it. Well quite frankly I think this is just a brand that was too strong for them to give up. That being said, clearly there seems to be too much emphasis put on that brand and expecting, oh this is going to draw people back in and reel everybody back in from 2020 and resting in those laurels did not happen. It didn't happen to the extent that we saw back then. And because of that, while you were able to have traditionalists like the St. Louis fans and DC and the beer snake and things of that nature, you had some other new traditions that were starting up with San Antonio and Orlando and Vegas and obviously some of the other teams who had held over even Seattle, but you've been on the ground floor with Seattle this entire year straight up ha has not been the same level of engagement just in terms of the attendance and also in terms of maybe the advertising too that happened three years ago. So obviously with those kinds of numbers across the board, obviously they're trying to drive up ticket sales, they're trying to drive up interest in their membership, they're trying to drive up interest in merchandise sales and everything across the board, they're they and their sponsorships. They clearly see this as the bottom line that they were not able to achieve and there was too much emphasis on what had been achieved before and just kind of living off of the coattails of 2020. Well, and to say it, I don't want to be too blunt about it because I've talked with Mike, the reviews episode that we did with Mike and then it's come up a little bit. If you look at the major temp pole successes that you would say that they had city wise this year, I would say St. Louis, DC Seattle was not a success that it was in 2020. I don't know if you could name any others in those two that you would deem that was a mitigated success and if any of those that were success, any that were done by current regime, all of those were St. Louis DC carried over from 2020, I don't know if you could say of any other city or any newer city that was seen as success this time And even markets like Houston. Houston obviously was also successful as a team, but in terms again in of the attendance numbers, not so much, you know had a little bit lesser across the board there. Arlington I mean seemed about the same as it was before. I mean I think that has more to do with the confines of the stadium and the structure of it, but that was kind of a break even situation. Orlando, I'll be honest, Orlando did not do as well as I thought it. I really thought Orlando was going to be a better market. Now again, that's based on my premonition of how the Orlando Apollos did and the AAF and who were doing very well as far as their attendance numbers and yet they were not able to achieve that same level of success. And look, who knows, maybe the same thing would happen if they were in another AAF market, Memphis or Utah or San Diego. Would they have been able to, San Diego was the third highest AAF attendance, would they have achieved those numbers? I don't know. Clearly if they didn't put that enough emphasis in the marketing of that wasn't going to happen. And I have to tell you Reid, again, one of the things that I can't help but remark at again is just how much local marketing was not being done at some of these levels that we've covered we've talked about and just doesn't seem to be as known or as prevalent this time around. It was there three years ago, it was there in some way shape or form and this time around it just was not there. And you can argue about network television exposure, you can talk about it being only on ESPN and ABC and not Fox and as it was last time around, but the fact of the matter is it just wasn't there this time around and it's splitting the difference with a different league now. It's a different set of circumstances but based on their numbers they did not achieve their goals And we'll talk through and Max says all these notes. I ultimately think a lot of that will go into our conversation next week of what do we want the off season of the X F L to look like with in terms of social media and kind of local events and all that. But at least right now when it comes to they where they want to do some of these jobs that they want to get rid of from focusing on the brand to more revenue driven, maximizing maximized ticket and sponsorship sales, there has to be some sort of standardization across the board from these teams when it comes to ticket sales. Corey the guardians ticket guy, Corey posts every day on every Facebook and Twitter and TikTok and come, hey, I'm sitting at the 50 yard line come by, tickets come like Corey is an example of doing tremendous work on his own. I presume grassroots because there certainly doesn't seem to be standardization. I think the Seattle guy and I hopefully, I don't know if he sell us a job, I think the guy's name was David. I think I just know that because I kind of went to the pick a seat event and I talked to the hey, I host whatever we're here, but I don't know this yellow guy, I don't know the Arlington guy, I don't know the girl, I don't know the San Antonio. The fact that you don't even just have standardization like that across the eighteens and hey, these are going to be our team reps, call them, email them, get in touch with, they're posting outside of Haley or whoever with the Seed Dragons posting that content, trying to drive up ticket sales. No one, I mean it was a far cry from Orlando and then a drop to any of the other seven teams and I just don't think that that's unfathomable. I just don't understand that And I think that's interesting you point out about the lack of standardization. I can't help but think about another league like the C F L who kind of deals with that same issue in some ways, you know have so much varying levels of promotion and engagement whereas you have someone like BC's, Amar, Doman really putting in the capital and trying to get people to go out to Vancouver or Victor Que trying to do everything he can, just trying to pull out all the stops to get people to go in the Edmonton versus your community owned team, the Saskatchewan and then you have Winnipeg who kind of rests on their laurels and has their own success and then there's Toronto which everyone sort of points at as the black sheep of the family in terms of being able to draw attendance, all of them having these kind of varying levels of success and engagement in their own way and there's not really a lot of standardization there. Same things kind of happening here too like you said, But to interrupt that, I apologize, the C F L at least that makes sense because you have nine different heads of teams all coming together with Randy the Ambrosie kind of like that is Ambros role as the commissioner. I got to wrangle these nine governors of all these teams, the X ffl, you're a single owned entity team of anything. You should be able to standardize this across because you own everything. I mean we're not even to the point of the US F L or the X F L, we're franchising these, I mean of any time to have it all working together. It is this time right now. Yeah, I mean why is it, and it almost bleeds into the social media aspect of it too and I know that's not always related to sales ticket sales and all that, but it even seems to bleed into some of the mantras of the teams. Why is it the Seattle account's always on controlling people. Meanwhile the Arlington Renegades account just seems to wage war against capitalization and continues to be the bane of Anthony Miller's existence. But I can't help but feel you're right. There should be some sort of level of flat base level standardization that is being done for all these teams in that respect, especially when you have clear markers of who owns this thing. You have the figureheads who have ultimate control, there are no owners, there is no ownership group that you have to negotiate with or battle with that doesn't revenue sharing all that. It's like there's not something that is there in that terms of that level of parody. So I don't know, I don't understand why that isn't being done on that level either. I have to agree with you on that. Well if you can't parent your kids under your own household, I don't think you're going to be able to parent them outside when they're off into the world if we can't get this right owning all it goes with the US F L as well if they think they're going to franchise this thing, which I believe is ultimately the goal. I mean you can't do it now with Fox and all the money and you got everything in the world here that we're going to, this is what we do. We make football if you can't get it all right now, I don't know how these franchises are going to work because you can't, as we've seen in the, like we said in the C l, I don't seeing that level of disparity. I don't seeing where I, I've been told Saskatchewan they don't do anything because they know people are going to come. I've emailed them to get people, I've done all that you Montreal, anything you want, hey you want the team owner, here you go, let's send them over anything because they understand that but you shouldn't have should at least we talking about parody in the U S F L right now with teams going to the playoffs, you should have some parody here with these teams in terms of marketing and sales and everything. I mean the on field product I think will continue to have parody and there's definitely going to be that at least you have that ability but when you're not having people who see that in person, it's kind of hard to draw them into that if you don't understand that, if you don't have people that understand the notion of, okay, well this team wasn't very good this year but they could be better next year like Orlando and again this is year one so we don't seen this played out. I know this happens in the C F L all the time, which is kind of honestly is a blessing for teams like the Red Blacks for example. Yes you've been terrible the last few years but you could dig yourself out of the hole and actually make a great cup run if you really tried this year and the same thing could should be under the notion of this X ffl league, which I think is very possible. But again, the people, there's not enough people to understand that and just overall, just the lack of outside awareness of some of these brands. I mean we've been reporting left and right about players getting signed but I mean you go into the threads of the teams in the N NFL who signed these people, people that just didn't watch these guys or haven't seen their highlight tapes and that's something that the league has to get on now. I know again it's year one so maybe if they actually start doing something at the next level, they'll start to do, they'll actually start to look back and realize, oh wow, this guy did this past season, but they don't have that level of exposure yet. So you need to get out in front of it and really push the envelope if you're going to get people to understand that exposure instead of just being word of mouth or via your player's success or coach success Success. I do feel a little less old man screaming at the clouds right now just with it. Remember basically came in and kind of assessed the same thing that we've been doing here this whole time here. Let's get there because I want to read this statement here that Mark got for new sub and then Ben got, this is from the Exel spokesperson. Dan is this gir? I don't, I dunno if I've ever spoken with a gentleman as the X F L plans for 2024 and beyond. It has the tie to transition to a dual full-time seasonal base kind of going through all that. The X L will continue to employ a full-time business and football operations functions of both the team and their league and team levels and we'll scale up hiring each year for pre-season and in-season roles. That's what scares me is because we saw what the skeleton crew did this year where we brought, and I understand we're not going to be hiring 800 people again in the year I yes read. I understand that, but we saw what it felt like and looked like this year onboarding seasonal employees at the same time that you have training camps starting, players are showing up, we're doing physicals, we're learning the playbook, we're doing media stuff, we're trying to get the social media stuff. I don't like this scale up, scale down and A C F L does it. They go dead from basically December. They do their little team meetings but they pop up in May when training camp starts the day that a spring football league realizes that they're not a seasonal business will be a day that I'm very happy because I don't think it works Well I I thought that they were already trying to do that with the draft next month for example. They already announced the draft. That's good, that's good. That's something that they need to do now that they get to keep doing that as they go along. Now they have the showcases. Those are good. Keep promoting the showcases by all means necessary. Promote the showcases as much as you can post about it, talk about it, write about it, do whatever you can to post about it. But yeah, I mean some of these people are seasonal employees, which to an extent I understand when there's not a game action going on, it's hard to get people involved but you should see it more in the lines of stadium employees for example if people don't work at the stadium because there's not an event. I get that but in terms of promoting and in terms of keeping it in the cultural conscious this entire time, you need to keep doing that. I mean I know he is a very busy man but I wonder about someone like Josh Lewin, is the podcast just going to disappear for the next seven months? I mean maybe you have an answer to that but I wonder about stuff like that. Pretty Well I was going to say yeah obviously we don't need and the lady that does the DC endgame announcing the la, they're the Adam GOs of for the DC where he's the Argos guy and he's screaming during the games, you don't need to keep her employed all year. I understand that we bring in and we da da da da da. Yeah but Josh did, and I understand Josh is busy but Josh is paid by the league and I'm sure the league would pay him if they felt necessary. Yeah, Josh did the post championship episode and they haven't posted why not interview some of these players that just got, why don't we call up Darius Shepherd right now and go, hey man you got to the Chargers. But it's like we don't go away. I don't have an off season here and I know that we cover the other leagues but we've talked X F L every week and we have planned to continue talking to XF L here into the summer, you know, saw Maddie, I'm done season's over, I'm done. Mark hasn't posted. Mark did his obviously story this week but yet Mark hasn't posted anything. Josh hasn't posted. You can't just let this go away. That's what everybody complained about the U S F L all last year. U S F L goes away because you don't have anything going on to keep it in the news cycle at all and it's just not sustainable and it was really frustrating to me to see how many people were like, I'm all in this year including the X F L and then the second the season's done, it's like I it we're going off and I understand people work hard, right? I understand that but you don't get, there's no, there should not be an off-season. There isn't an off-season in the N nfl. There shouldn't be an offseason here Mean well this kind of information's coming out but this is not the kind of information they want to have in the off-season. Right. You want, one of the things that I want to see done in the fall season is I want to see more P player profiles but player profiles and people who have made it into the NFL who make the 53 man roster or at least are factoring in some way on this team that they're on and be able to interview them and ask them how what's going on, how's it been, what do you take from your time in the league and how has it helped you in your experience Now in the N F L, I think that's something that the league should absolutely think about doing because we get player profiles all the time. But being able to see that transition period too I think would be fantastic for the league. Especially if possibly you could see someone like Darius Scheffer having a big kick return for the Chargers or Hakeem Butler maybe catching a touchdown for the Steelers. Something of that nature that you can at least draw from and see those parallels between what they learned in the X F L and then what they brought over into this league. Because again, seeing commentary on shepherds signing by treasure fans who are like, oh I don't know what this means. And it's like this guy's a special teams player of the year and the X ffl this year. He's a good kick returner. He's going to supply competition for a team that doesn't have a designated kick returner right now. That's just, that's fact of the matter. So I think that's something that I think that kind of content would be one. That's just one idea I have. But yeah, they need to stay on this. They can't just turn off the lights and disappear and which they kind of did last year too. I mean yes we got some announcements but they were really putting us in the dark for a lot of the buildup into the league and that was just mystifying for a lot of us and I don't think that's what you want to do, especially if you're trying to go from year one to year two. You can't do it like the U S F L does this year because there's going to be numbers like you see on the U S USA network or on FS one we've seen with some of the attendance figures where it's like they're just not going up. They're stagnant and there was just because in my opinion there just wasn't a lot done in the promotional material besides the Super Bowl ads for the U S F L that were being done all the months beforehand going into the season. This is going to try, I don't want this to be just a complaint festival the whole time, but I do think this is valuable conversation. This is going to sound like Reid is angling to work for the X F L I do. I own my own business. I'm very happy. I spent all day today editing a wedding video. Very, very happy for that. Have weddings this weekend. The X L kickoff for us was episode 132 of this podcast. Now obviously we have covered EX U S F L and the spring league and the C F L and all that stuff. X F L has always had a say with every single week on this show for 132 episodes without a single game of X F L content being played and most of the time with very limited resources to the league. Now obviously they've been tremendously helpful once everyone got on board the X F L's been great. I have no complaints If we can figure out 132 weeks of off-season content talking about the X F L I, I'll consult for free guys. It's not hard but yeah player we're getting in. I would have Josh on the phone right now with Darius. What is going on? Talk me through this. Like we said, what do you think about the new kick returns in the N F L? Are you, we've heard Kavante Turpin talking about that, how he's going to run it back anyway. How do you think that you know spotlighting here, is that going to change how teams look to feature you now that that's all going to be different? It doesn't have to be that difficult and I don't it like anyway, that's my point. Sorry. Well no, I mean I have to give credit bouncing off that I have to give credit to someone that you had on your show last week, John Hodge and his employer's Free Down Nation look, he said on this podcast this week I was listening, he said that they did a uniform ranking and that generated a lot of buzz. That's content. It's it because there's some new uniform matches matchups for some of these teams. Obviously the Cambridge Blues for the Argos and some of the redesigns for the BC Lions and a lot of other uniforms that are getting rehashed and sort of reformed and that created content. If they're doing that, I mean why isn't the league doing that? What, what's going on with the aspect of just trying to create any sort of content whatsoever? I mean one of the things the N F L does for example in the off-season and I mean the YouTube channel is one of their best resources, at least for me it is. It's just posting highlight videos, videos of old games, legacy videos, things of that nature that really help them continue to stimulate content. I mean right now is the dead period for the N F L. I mean there's really nothing going on but yet there's still things that they're able to create conversation for and I mean even something like, oh is Jimmy Garo going to fail as physical with the Raiders? That's something that just got everyone kicking the tires and buzzing around and asking Tom Brady questions. Are you coming back this week? And him having to come out in the woodwork and saying, no, I'm not doing that. But that's the kind of thing you have to somehow just almost stirring the hornets nest a little bit. Sometimes there's got to be a way for leagues to understand this because like you said, you are someone that understands that and creates content on a regular basis and a weekly basis when there's nothing going on and for many iterations of you doing the show for the existence of the X F L, there really was nothing going on. Did John Hodge bring a bar podcast on their show or no? Did he just doesn't I Did not hear that, no. I just curious, I'm just curious. I gave John the ho, I gave John the follow I gave Hodge to follow here. Let's see what happens. I want to talk through the rookie draft and kind of all that stuff. Anything else because I don't want this to, again, I feel like this is constructive. I just don't want this to be verbal, especially just on my part like verbal diarrhea here. So anything else you want to make sure we touch, we'll do the whole off-season talk next week whether we want to see social media do and the Vegas deal and if local fan events and kind of all that stuff. Anything else? We fired Janet and everybody else. I just don't think this is an alarmist as everyone wanted to make it out to be at the beginning of the announcement. I get it, when you hear layoffs your first reaction is, oh my god, the company's going underwater. What's going to happen that happens? This is the kind of story that comes out for many kinds of different entities now in this case is an entity that has not been around that long so of course your level of skepticism is maybe a little bit higher than it is with someone like say Google or Amazon or Twitter or something of that nature where something all of a sudden mass layoffs are happening and you're starting to set the house on fire. But I just hope that the league is able to understand where it's going. I think they have a clear vision but they need to understand what resources they have on hand and if they're going to be more revenue driven, if they're going to be able to keep the interest going, they need to understand how they have to go about it. If it's going to be the same off season as it was last year, I don't see many results changing quite frankly. But if they are going to actually promote themselves a little bit better and shift gears and if whatever strategy they implement this time around with the new employees or people who get into consolidated roles, alright then let's see if that works. But this something, I think you and I both agree that things need to change and I think Mike Mitchell and perhaps others would agree with you, that there needs to be at least a shifting of the gears here at look. Last point I'll make too, if we're going to do this, try to pitch to people a little bit better about your Vegas team playing on the equivalence of a pasture field because getting people out the Cashman was really a chore this year and you need to be able to get people involved in that market. The Vegas market is something that they really have to push for and obviously the sales team unfortunately fell on the sword for that one and look, Redbird Capital, Jerry Cardinal maybe had a more play in that as far as getting that out there and involved in having that market out there but they've really got to be able to push that because if you wanted to make it work you're going to need to push, for lack of a better term, push more of your chips in the middle of the table. The last thing and then I do have one concern here I wanted to forget to bring up. When I heard that the Vegas, it was the Vegas individual that had posted that they were let go. I immediately thought, oh they're relocating Vegas and then all this other stuff came out and you're like okay, it's much bigger than that. I did see C F L people like oh my god, yeah they laid off the whole marketing staff. That's crazy. I bet you a lot of C F L fans would be very happy if the C F L laid off part of their market. I, it doesn't necessarily mean budgetary but here is my fear. If we're trying to, we're downsizing, if we're trying to consolidate, if they get rid of Janet who for what they were given I think was doing their best, do we just have someone at Bird also do this kind of thing? Which to me is worse because then you're getting someone even further away. At least Janet knew okay this is what was going on in 2020, this is what worked in New York. My fear is okay now we want to save costs, we're just going to have other red bird people do part of this stuff for the X F L. Yeah, I mean that plays more into the hub strategy in a way, but it does sort of question as to whether that's going to change the wins at all or if it's just going to make things just more consolidated, more conservative in terms of how they operate and that's something that it, are they going to be able to get away with that? That seems more in line with what they're going with for the U S F L for example. That's more of in line with their strategy and I have my thoughts on that and I don't know if there's any way that the XFL is going to be able to implement that same strategy. Look, people invest their time and money into this league. There are people who really put themselves forward and invest their time and money and we need to see the league do that too, you know can downsize all you want but you better whatever strategy you implement. If you're going to be outsourcing, you better outsource correctly But mean. That's my thing is I think we were talking about it and Mike, I think Mike was the one that kind of originally brought it up in the group chat and I said that's the Fox sports special. Hey we got so-and-so's doing N F L on Fox Social Media, let's log you into the US account for a couple hours. I just, that's my fear because at least Janet knew what was happening, what worked and was like she was on the ground floor from the beginning. That was my fear when they got rid of Oliver Lock and Jeffrey Pollock was like, okay we're losing some of this identity that was here we're losing. Same with Sam Schwartzstein and all that, you know start kind of shedding the past if you do it too much, I'm a little concerned that they have someone kind of freelance this alongside other things. Just giving too many responsibilities to one person and somebody who's not really has their finger on the pulse of what's actually going on. And we've talked a little bit about that with U S F L. There's sometimes some consolidation or some people that may be involved who are, have their hands on too many baskets and aren't really all in on the operation. So that's something that I don't want to see from the X F L either. I would really not prefer that's the route they go unless somebody is really be committed to this league, be committed to what's going on, be committed to the product, the brand and everything that goes into it. Because let me tell you, the coaches, the players, the personnel, the fans, they're all invested. Then everybody who's working in this league needs to be invested as well. My last point we've seen now there was concerns. We have Red Bird, they want to make money, they're a capital investment firm. The second the season was done, they came in and said these are things that were not like we need to get rid of these immediately. And I think Vince, we talked and Vince was burning a lot of money and doing a lot of things, who knows if that would've, XFL would've lasted into season two or three with the churn rate they had and this is what happens. We have an investment firm and all of that. All right, so we are going to pull up, I want to get through this, I'll time code this too, so if we want to talk through this I'll pull up Mark's article. I watched the Zoom today as well. If you guys, I would recommend if you are a player and I tweeted this if you're a player as opposed to DMing me or Evan or Pat or an like how do I get into all this? The inside the league on YouTube, it's about 46 minutes. Has everything you would ever want to know about the XFL off season here? What they're looking to do with the showcases, with the drafts, multiple drafts, all of this stuff. Russ was on there with Doug. The big things were obviously the rookie draft coming up. I think it's going to be 10 rounds and eight picks. They're going to have a secondary draft in the fall and then a supplemental draft in November. What do you make of this rookie draft? Because it feels very U S F L college drafty, but I'll explain why maybe it isn't, but what do you think? I think it's a little bit different. It's not just drafting someone's name out of thin air and from what I've collected that they weren't players that were known that were privy to knowing that they were actually being drafted by this league or that they were even eligible for the draft. So for the XFL it sounds like it's a little bit different in terms of them actually drafting people who are undrafted free agents and may not be making the rosters and the nfl, which I mean those are the kind of people they should be targeting, right? That's the kind of players you want to look for. They have a multitude of players that they're looking after, but that's one of the pools that they're looking at. They have multiple avenues to go about this and I think that's something that if there's a player that doesn't make the practice squad and the 53 man roster that they have a way to at least have some sort of, I guess hammock or net to be able to fall into in case they are not able to make it past that point. I was corresponding today with someone that's pretty closely involved with a lot of this stuff and just saying, Hey, I really appreciate that this was done so that we could kind of see what was going on because there were so many concerns when it came to the U US F L Oh not concerns like the US F L college. Okay, what is this? Are you guys, I appreciate the transparency that Russ and Doug had on the call and we're still working through some of the stuff and this is why we're not sending out contracts because we're still trying to figure out if we're going to get unionized and so we don't want to have the contracts be sent out if we're going to unionize. Even the reason why they had players signed for one year with a second year extension versus signing people for two years. I think the timing of this is good and Russ was the one that said it. Russ is one of the guys with Doug, they're running all the showcases and doing all this stuff. If you're an NFL player now wanting to be, and it's the middle of June, you're not getting into a camp, most likely you're not getting onto a squad as opposed to sitting around and saying, what the F am I going to do with my life now for the next six months? Getting drafted into this, having your rights retained by one of the teams. It gives you more of a sense of purpose for that. Where the timing-wise, where U S F L draft did it immediately following, I think it was even before the actual draft. All of those players in their heads still think I'm making it to an N NFL roster, why would I want to be this? We're now, you kind of know your lot in life at least for this kind of calendar cycle. So I think timing-wise, even if they're both fundamentally the same in terms of we're just, you'd never have to step a foot in the X ffl, we just have your rights. I think this makes a lot more sense than it does. I think so too. I mean once the draft is a dream for everybody and it's a dream that you want to buy into and that goes for all the people who are drafted or undrafted free agents and are assigned on to a team. I mean there's, there's a litany of players in the N F L who were undrafted free agents that ended up being great players and I think they still had belief in themselves even when they weren't picked on those days Thursday, Friday or Saturday or back in the old days when it was just two days. They don't really feel like they are out of it until they're truly told that they're out of it. And in this case, I think they at least have more of a reality check of the situation and they kind of start the see, all right, when are these cuts downs going to start coming or where am I in the queue or the list of prioritization with some of, with the coaches in terms of the opportunity that I truly have. I mean, again, it's a nice other option and it's going to be interesting to see where the X F L goes as far as keeping some of these players, retaining some of these players too going forward and people who know or want to just be X F L lifers. I mean this year more examples of players who came in for one year and were like, Hey, this is my one year one shot and then I'm out. TJ Barnes, great example, he went up one more year, he had a great year with the Renegade, got his ring and pieced out, and now he's onto his next stage in life. Great. Awesome. Fantastic. I think there's going to be more players like that going forward and maybe some that are more realistic and maybe some that just have more fun and just say, Hey, I want to be guaranteed playing time. Like playing is a big deal. It really is. Some of these players just want to get on the field and the n NFL's cutthroat, you're not going to get that all the time unless you have the absolute right situation. And I think some players are going to be in that realm of just wanting to get out there and just play and develop too. Development is such a big thing N F L, the N NFL is so it can be so brutal and also just so impatient with players sometimes saying, I don't know what this guy's doing. I don't know where he is. He hasn't gone anywhere and it could be their first two years or three years of development and some of these guys just don't come on that early. You know, really want to wait until someone like Jordan Tou being in the nfl, being on a practice squad at 22. I mean, quite frankly, his skillset just wasn't there this past season. I think he has a much better shot. I mean he has jumped leaps in bounds as a quarterback and that took year, that took years for him to get to that point and mid-season even in this year. So I just think there needs to be more realistic stock of where players are as far as where they are and being developed. And especially like you said in the June timeline, it just makes a lot more sense in terms of recruiting and getting people into the system. So it seems like, and I think it was Russ said, all, any XIV l draft now is basically going to be open position. We, we've done our initial one, we're not rebuilding every team from scratch. There's going to be this rookie draft here on the 16th. They're ballooning up the off-season rosters up to 90. There's going to be, obviously they're doing the showcases all year during the summer here, there's going to be the sixth, Nick Novak's going to do one. They obviously could add more that's going to go, they're going to funnel those best players into the combine. All of that is going to kind of be included and it sounds like a September draft that's going to be going on. And then they're going to be having maybe a November draft. We kind of get final N F L cuts. So I don't think any of 'em are going to ever be as big again as the initial, but kind of different stopping points that we can stock up players because it basically, it's hitting three unique subsets. These are players that don't maybe have anything going on right now. You get the guys who are trying to find their way in the showcase and do that. If you're not, because the rookie draft, it has to be this year, you know, were eligible and not drafted. If you're an older player, you can do the showcases and all of that. And then obviously the N F NFL cut, so it seems like they don't want to let anyone fall through the cracks. Does, am I kind of understanding that? Absolutely. I think so. Just keeping all their options open and having as much pool assessment as they can. And also just signing players. I think that's something that's a big bigger deal in these leagues too, is mid-season acquisitions or trades as far as some of these players moving around. I thought about this morning, if I'm looking at it, the two teams that won in the past two years in the US F L and X F L, I think about the US F L added Bo Scarborough, he wasn't drafted initially, he was just kind of floating out there. He was from the Detroit Lions. They added him. He gives him another element on their run attack and he helps them win a championship. Renegades. His fast year, they didn't have Louis Perez, they traded for Louis Perez. The entire season changes. Some of these mid-season ads are a really big deal for some of these teams that players that aren't even in the draft pool initially are not available at that time. But then later on they are. So even just the mid-season acquisitions too, in addition to these drafts, this is a multi-month process. It really is. And I think that because of the fact that you don't have these players who stay for long term and if they play so well, they're just going to move on, you're not going to have the same mentality as far as talent acquisition in all one space like you do with the N nfl. The N F NFL is just, it's the draft, it's free agency boom, that's it. As opposed to in the X Ffl and the U S F L and the C F L where it's, it's all year round. It's available at whoever time, at any reason, at any point. So it's also part of why also the news cycles I think can also bear to be a little bit more year round because I mean the players are moving year round. This is a constant cycle for them too. I like how they were saying, I think it was, Doug said this first batches obviously off of guys that maybe were invited the N F L camps and didn't make it. They're sitting here in the summer because, hey, they were good enough to be brought into an N F L camp. Let's kind of streamline some of our resources here where maybe we don't have 10,000 hours to spotlight. Like, hey, they've already done enough work to deem them worthy to be in this. It was funny here I was going down and I saw, oh, I'm like, oh no, they made the video private. I think Mark must have embedded, they posted the wrong Zoom last night, so that must be this one. Because I thought, oh my god, no, because this has such good information in it. If you go on the inside the league, it's still the correct one is still there. It has 165 views. Think of all the players that DM Mike. I said, Evan Sam, everyone a HU hundred 65 views, it tells you everything you need to know. So anyway, I'm not trying to sell that the last no, and then we can probably get out of here soon. They asked about the n Alumni Academy. Doug said they have not heard from them. Feels weird. What do you make of that? They're kind of moving forward. That's not a thing. Yeah, I have a theory that the relationship with the N F L Alumni Academy might be terminated as far as this season goes. Look, it was a, I'm not going to call it a mess, but there did seemed to be some miscommunication as far as what was going on earlier last year as far as what's, what number of players need to be allocated, who was guaranteed a contract, who was going to get on some of these rosters. There seemed to be a bit of a snafu with that as far as what the league promised and maybe what the N NFL Alumni Academy expected. And they kind of rectified it a little bit before the season started as far as expanding rosters and allowing more players to get on. But the fact of the matter is, I think the N F NFL Alumni Academy expected more and I think the xfl, I think what the XFL realizes that, oh, well actually maybe there's more resources than we realized initially. There's a lot more players out there in different ways that we can collect this talent and we don't necessarily have to rely on the NFL Alumni Academy. And that's not so much the fault of the F L Alumni Academy. It's just what the X ffl found out worked for them. So yeah, I have a feeling that relationship may not be around much longer and to no fault of either side, I think it's just not a relationship that was going to be amicable. I mean, look, this I ffl thing, right? Like this I F L partnership for example, the X ffl, I don't know how much that's really going to factor in the next year. Are those guys going to move up from the IFL into the X ffl? I don't know that, what kind of partnership that is. It's good. More clout for the IFL than anything. So I'm not really, I think the X ffl is kind of piecing this all together, right? They're all saying, all right, well this works, this draft works, this scouting profile worked, this showcase worked. Maybe this is more of where we need to go. They're clearly mean. The number of boosted showcases clearly tells them, okay, let's put more of our capital resources in this than opposed to in the F l Alumni Academy. So they are piecing that together themselves. I mean it's the same thing with the CFL trying to do global draft and people have their opinions on that. Whether that works or not. I think all these leagues are figuring out whether or not where their talent acquisitions work and where they don't. Yeah. I don't think that that relationship between the alumni Academy next is going to be around much longer. There were surprisingly a lot of questions on the Zoom about the I F L with agents because it must have been right. Many of the agents on the call were representing guys in that they said we they want them to focus on plane. No, if they're in the playoffs or whatever knowing that they can, we will see them and know that we can get a spot. I think Doug said we would much rather see them playing football than running around in their underwear or the combine. So we're going to see the football and all of that. But no, I think with the alumni thing it, it's kind of like how some weeks on the podcast, I have seven guests and it's like, why just read? It's like, because I ask a lot of people and I don't know if everyone's going to say yes. I think that was, it felt like, let's kind of get all these things going because what if we don't have anyone that wants to play in our league and the next thing it's like, oh my God, we have so many players we're we're flushed with cashier. It's like having two dates to homecoming or something. Well, I mean they spent months talking to the C F L and talking about a partnership and I mean they turned no stone unturned for this league. Really. They looked through every option possible whether you debate whether they should have been involved in those options, that's up to you. But they were committed to doing their homework. I will give them that credit. I think that's something that honestly, I think something like the C F L could learn more from as far as just explore your options. See what you got out there. See who wants to partner with you, who wants to do this, who wants to work here, the X ffl, whether it works or not. I mean they're kind of just throwing stuff at the wall and see if it sticks in some ways and do they want to be more consistent and more standardized and being more of a league? Sure. But they clearly were trying to do as much homework as possible the first two years before they started up again, see what was going to work for them. And I think they're learning now, which we, to go back to the top of the episode, the marketing wasn't up to par. Okay. Maybe the Alumni Academy relationship wasn't good enough. Okay. We'll see about the relationship with the I F L moving forward, their partnership. They like all these different levels of things that they tried at the beginning and in the middle of their process. If they're going to continue with that, they clearly don't seem to be afraid of switching gears and going another direction because they believe in their product and they want to be successful and they're taking risks. Not all of 'em are going to work out and their right to be criticized for things that they didn't do well or they could have gone about a different process, but at least they're trying. Yeah, it's so weird. I guess my life, we could go on. I mean clearly forever talking about all this stuff, which is, cause if you enjoy this conversation, Andy and I next week will plot out the entire X F L offseason. But it's one of these things, even nowadays, I've just know this and I don't know if it's a thing nowadays, you're not able to, people aren't able to change their mind. If you change your mind, you're a hypocrite. They're like, oh, you deleted a tweet. Ooh, what? It's like maybe you thought a thing and you were wrong. Or I talk a lot with the C F L people now and I was like, yeah, I probably didn't know a lot back when Paul and I were fighting a rash on here. It doesn't mean that you're a hypocrite or it means you educated yourself or you move forward. It's the same with the extra fail here. They went into it, we're going to the alumni academy out of, they thought it was a good idea. They tried to do it. I could have told them it was too many players and I could have told them Cashman Field wasn't going to work. I couldn't have told them a lot of things. But I dunno. Andy, I feel like we could tell a lot of people a lot of things, but anything else from you? I appreciate this. We're almost at 55 minutes here. Anything else from you before we get out? I mean, just let me know when the next alarm bell is wrong and I'll be there. Ready to go whenever you need it. Reid, Andy? Yeah. Put up the bat signal. It really is. What is it Batman like he's got What are the new like Ben Affleck ones or Christian Bele where he just screams like partner smear call me or it's one of his screaming ones. Oh, did you say swear to me? Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Swear to me. Swear To me. Yeah, that's it. That's among amongst his many lines. Hey, listen, if anything else, if I can't be your Robin, your Batman, I'll at least try to be your skip to your Shannon because hey, we got shoes to fill now, buddy. We got big shoes to fill. How did I forget how late in the day we're recorded? How did I forget not to start the episode off with? We have now. We haven't outlasted, but we've out, we've outlived now skipping Shannon, which didn't, they didn't talk about it today on the show, so I think they're just trying to kind of play coy until the end. We're talking like Miami Heat here at Celtics or whatever. Yeah, just heat and nuggets the match up. Oh, that's It. I'm living in the top. Don't keep, don't make Sam come after you. Our re resident. Denver. Denver, Sam, Sam Shady. Yeah. Anyway, thanks you guys. We'll see you next time. Take care. Hey guys, future read here editing the episode and we already have two additional players from the X F L signed to N F L contracts via the Battle Hawks today announcing we have Marcel Aman signed to the Buffalo Bills and we have friend of the show Darius Shepherd signed to the Los Angeles Chargers. I know Andy Murray, it's especially excited about that one. I know Evan and I talked about Darius in our interview and I just wanted to keep you guys up today. But Darius and Marcel getting assigned here, contracts could have more. I hope you guys enjoy Evan and i's chat, but always good to see. I think we are 25 and 26 players now assigned to the N F L via the X F L. So good for them. Well here we are, Evan back from lsu. Still on the grind here. Evan, we talk a lot about how impressed everyone is with all the work you do and this will be no different today. We have Evan Willmore here. We are talking the X Ffl to N F L kind of. We are tracking who's got sign. We have 24 now who we're still keeping our eyes on and everything else today. Evan, how are you doing? I'm doing great man. I appreciate all the kind words. Good to be back from college over the summer, but I'm still working. You're definitely right about that. It seems like life just gets faster and gets busier as you get older. So it's one of those things you have to realize. But I'm excited to be on here today and excited to talk about some players who we think should maybe go to the N F L or at least get a chance. Some of them are, have already been to many camps and we'll make note of that I think as we go. But yeah, I mean there's a lot of good players in this league that played in 2023 and excited to talk about some of them. So we have here and Max has put together Work. Evan's got a list as well. We're kind of balancing. This is the list we have thus far the 24 players signed. We just had Brandon Dylan here with the Washington Commanders, Vegas Vipers this week. As of recording, obviously things could change here through the end of the week before this goes on, but 24 players are. Evan, are you surprised with any of the players you've seen that have gotten signed thus far to the N F L contracts as I tried to address my microphone? Yeah, there's definitely been some surprises I think from my perspective, but it seems like that happens in every Spring league. There were guys going back that I was surprised about in 2020 and a F in 2019 and even some guys maybe in the C F L. But yeah, I mean for the most part it's a pretty solid list. Again, I'm glad that guys, some of the real standouts like Lucky Jackson, maybe Jock West, Patrick, Luke Barco obviously was a really good one. Couple guys on the battle hawks that I really enjoyed and then the Sea Dragons have had a lot of players signed. I was definitely going to bring that up. I mean you just look at that sheet there. I think that's six players so far and it definitely felt like that. But yeah, overall, I mean not a bad list. Definitely hope it continues to grow. I will say maybe I expected a couple more by now. Maybe I thought we'd be pushing 30 or a little over. But the thing is that these N F L camps are starting to get so full up and a guy who we're talking about later, Jaco Pearson, I think should be signed already. And I know the 49ers were really interested in him, but their roster was at 90 and I think Mike Mitchell was the one who mentioned that. So again, it's kind of, it's a numbers game. Someone has to get injured, something has to happen for that spot to open up and I do expect more to come for sure, but it might be a bit more of a slow process. I know Brandon Dylan from Vegas signed with the commanders yesterday and that seemed to be the first signing in a couple days. I think the last one before that was Lucky Jackson to the Vikings, if I'm not mistaken. So, Well it's interesting and we've talked about this before on here and obviously X F L 2020 and the way that that season ended and we got a lot of players that went over to the N F nfl, A lot of them that are still there to this day U S F L filling the gap last year. And then now obviously with the X F L and the U S F L either you're really getting this backlog now of talented players trying to get spots. Not saying that it's not going to happen, like you said, injuries, we don't want to see that. But that does open up this gambling probe that's going on in the N F L, other things like that. So it might kind of curtail into the summer, but it's definitely different scenario than it was even three years ago with the X F L 2020. Oh absolutely. The X F L when they finished that, I guess first or second season, however you want to put it, in 2020, that was right when Covid started in the N F L. There seemed to be more spots open. That was the time where they were expanding practice squads, things like that. So it definitely was a different time. And I'm not going to turn this into a debate about which version of the league was more talented, whether it was 2020 or 2023. I'm sure I know people that are on both ends of that spectrum. But yeah, no you're definitely right. It's a different world now. Even just three years later, the politics are different and there's a lot more that goes into these things than there was before. So we'll get here, we'll pull up. Evan's got his list. Like I said, I know Max was putting together work as well on this ev. We kind of consolidated this down a little bit here and we can go team by team. Touch on this a little bit. Obviously Renegades, CH champions here, X F L champions coming in late. There was a lot of debate even a couple weeks ago. How come the defenders guys haven't got a tryouts yet? How come the Renegades we're moving to that? They're through the championship game. I don't know if that will delay signings or not. It is kind of something to track here. Do you want to make the XFL playoffs in the future or do you want to get out to be able to get in that first wave? But who do you have for your highlighted from the Renegades? Yeah, right, so I've got three players here for the Renegades. Tyler Vaughns, the wide receiver from usc definitely impressed me later on in the season once the offense kind of got going with Louise Perez again, wasn't a lot there to write home about early on between Kyle Loader and Drew Plitt and that's nothing against them, but definitely, I mean we always talk about this sort of transition in the renegades second half of the season or maybe not even second half. I think it was around week seven when they got Perez and started turning upward and eventually winning the championship. But Tyler Vaughns was a guy who really impressed me. And then the one that really stands out here the most that I'm going to kind of elaborate on is Donald Payne, the linebacker from Stetson. He's a bit older now. Want to say he's maybe 29, but he really shy last year with the gamblers and I was surprised that he wasn't picked up by the N NFL again. And if he doesn't get picked up, at least for a camp for a bit or something this time around, I'm going to be equally surprised as well. Because even if this guy's a bit older and maybe in the N F L nowadays, they favor more younger players that are coming in to compete with the undrafted free agents that a team has signed on to the 90 Men roster. Donald Payne is someone who I think even at that age still deserves a shot. And I don't know, I want to say the last time he played in the N F L was maybe 2019. I can look that up. I know he was with the Jaguars for a bit there very early on. But again, Donald Payne, again extremely impressive and it really showed too the difference he made compared to when he was on the field for the Renegades and when he was not. And then the last guy for the Renegades that I have is Marquette King punter from Fort Valley State. A lot of people obviously know who Marquette King is. Spent many years with the Raiders, was a second team all pro punter in the N nfl, then went to the Broncos for a bit and then was with the Battle Hawks in X Ffl 2020. And then this year he was with the Renegades. Obviously a fan favorite. Someone I got to meet during the X ffl season. And for him, again, he's an older guy as well, I believe he went undrafted and signed with the Raiders in 2012. So he's getting up there in age. But I mean he was really impressive this season too. Clearly he's still got the leg and still got the swagger too. A bit of an ego and he's just all around a good guy and I think it would be nice to see him at least get into an N F L camp. Again, punter is one of those positions where a team is only going to carry one of those. So maybe he's one of these guys that kind of sneaks in at the end of December or something if an injury happens. But yeah, Marquette King is kind of one of, excuse me that I wanted to throw in there as well. No, I agree with Marquette obviously. I posted a couple weeks ago, Kyle Brand over on Good Morning Football, did a segment about that talking obviously Marquette with his big single he has release and coming off of the championship game. Yeah, I Donald Payne a friend of the show from this season. I think it's an age thing there. Like you said, you're surprised obviously even last year with the gamblers. Just a couple others just so I don't get yelled at here. We had TJ Barnes, we talked about Tom Zai, LA Lilli, Devonte Busby, Josh Hawkins, Joe Powell, Taylor Russo here, coming off of Ready, get any other notes or comments on any of those players? I mean again, RiNo is a specialist. He impressed me a lot this year. Thought he was one of the better kickers in the league behind John Parker ar Romo who obviously is now signed with the Lions from the Brahmas. But again, kicker's another specialist position where they're only going to carry one of those guys. So RiNo, I remember at the end of 2020 played in a game for the Broncos and that was one game he got signed and that was just kind of what it was. So yeah, a guy like Terry, you know might see him come in at the end of a season or something like that or middle of the season as an injury replacement, but obviously yes, he was impressive. That's about one. Yeah, Bruce, he had that really was that tough game at the Broncos. I remember that it was the win game and he missed on that. We were so excited for him. I remember because even obviously podcasting at that time, it would great stories to have on Lu Perez. I don't know, I know if I see him making the spot here at this point, even having won the championship game, I think Tamu we can get on that. Any brief thoughts on Luis Perez here? What's next for him? Yeah, well I'm glad you brought up Perez. Again, this was not a guy that was on my list and I feel like, again, he's sort of one of these guys where he's, he's definitely not in the twilight of his career because we saw what he could do with the Renegades. He definitely on an uptick of him in performance at the end of this 2023 season. And he was very good with the generals last year in the US F L in 2022. But after even after that he had a season with the Generals last year they lost, before they got to the championship, he was brought back to Ram's camp. Obviously he's kind of won over I think Sean McVay and those offensive guys even though it's been a couple years since he was last there. But with that being said, I feel like he's at a point in his career where he might be one of these guys where he just kind of sticks it out in these spring leagues. Maybe he just hangs around with the Renegades, tries to build things, recruiting the off season with Bob Stoops and the rest of the coaching staff and of course the D PPP as well. So I think personally for me, he's a guy I would like to see just kind of stay in this spring football realm. I don't know, I just don't really see a benefit to him going back to the N F L at this point. And that was something that he mentioned in one of the press conferences. He said, me being able to do this, whether it's the X Ffl or the U S F L or the a f or the Spring League or all these different places that he's been, the one benefit is that you actually get tape and you get to play as opposed to sitting on a practice squad or just getting a couple preseason reps. And I think that's kind of his ceiling in the N F L at this point is just those preseason reps kind of practice squad guy maybe. I don't know. Yeah, just it's someone who would not really be active on game days. It's the idea. Yeah, you get into that. I think this is the same with Sal Canella here where maybe you pop in and out a couple times, maybe you feel a little bit more expendable even if obviously you've had I still able to play in all that. The thing with Lu Perez and we've said this kind of like how does the X F L maintain here coming forward you have to have some of these guys that are just going to be X FFL or U S F L ii, either one, you got to have these guys or their bodies moving forward that are going to be there kind of mainstays. Moving on to the rough next year, obviously a team that you covered thoroughly here for new sub, you got, what is it, six here, my eyes are Hurting me, what do you make of this and who are you looking for from the roughnecks? Yeah, I believe I have five on that list but I will say because I was there at all the home games this season, I would've probably put 10 or 15. Cause I love all those guys and again, this is where maybe a bit of my bias comes in, but regardless, this team still didn't have talent one way or another, whether I'm biased or not. The guy really I wanted to point out here out of these five is the first name Max Borge running back from Washington State. Of course he was playing in a pass first offense with AJ Smith, so didn't have a ton of yards and I think he only averaged 3.9 yards per carry over the course of the season, which isn't exactly elite, but if you watched him during the season, I like to say numbers don't lie, but they also don't tell the full story and he's one of these players that I think falls into this category because he might have not had all the yards or all the high averages or whatever, but his runs were just so shifty and especially his ability to run after the catch coming out of the backfield, he was a great fit for that offense and I really hope he was with three N F L teams last year in 2022 after going undrafted. So he definitely didn't have time to really sit down and learn a playbook. He was bouncing around so much. So I really hope that he can at least get into a camp and get some preseason reps and just stay with one team. Most importantly, whether he latches onto an active roster, which would be obviously the best thing or even just makes a practice squad or whatever, I would hope that it's kind of just more consistent than when he was last in the N F L. So what's going on with John Tray? My mouth isn't working this morning. John Jay Kirkland here. What's going on with him and obviously coming off of the injuries and everything else or what's he looking at? Yeah, so John Trey Kirkland was obviously invited to Giants mini camp as I had pointed out, reported whatever. But I said specifically he is not at a point yet where he has recovered to actually participate in Giants camp. So from what I understood from people on the inside was that he was going to Giants camp just to meet with the coaches, kind of talk things over. It was more of an interview, something you do during the pre-draft process perhaps. So he went in for the interview and it was assumed that he was going to be signed. As of now he is yet to be signed. And again I'm sure the injury probably has something to do with that even. I am still sort of unclear on the severity. I've talked to John Tray on several occasions and again a couple other people that would know maybe more about that than I do. But the bottom line is it's going to take him some time and it might be one of these things that lingers into the summer, which is a real shame. I really hope that he will sign or latch onto a practice squad at some point, but whether he's actually able to fully participate in a training camp or he might even miss time into the preseason, I'm not quite sure. So that definitely kind of hinders his stock I guess you would say. Well that's good. I mean people because people want to know and obviously he was one of the standouts from the roughnecks and then going down one of the guys that people have been dragging down there, you also have Tim Ward, Trent Harris and Alex Mullet. Any other notes on them? So Tim Ward was obviously a guy that got banged up in the second half of the season, but him and him and Trent Harris were kind of that Batman, Robin Duo, whatever you want to call it, one Twoo punch coming off the edge, I mean that defensive law and was just ridiculous. And the two roughnecks players that have signed to the N F nfl, CJ Brewer and Jack Helan, both of those guys are defensive linemen. So that should tell you a lot about the strong point of this team, especially them being coached by Bill Johnson who won a national championship at LSU in 2019. But anyway, yeah, Trent Harris was a guy, I'm really surprised that he hasn't been signed. I think he's 27 or 28 now, but we all know the phenomenal season he had and he was definitely a candidate for defensive player of the year, but he went to Bronco's mini camp and he was there with other x ffl guys, jock was Patrick, Ben Ucci, you name it. But unfortunately he has yet to sign a contract with them. So we'll see what happens. Again, I think he has to latch on somewhere at some point and PR again, this is one of those things where the rosters fill up, you kind of have to wait for a guy to get cut or get injured or whatever the case may be for him to be able to come in and make an impact there. And then the last guy I think I had was Alex Molet who was invited to Seahawks mini camp and he was an incredibly good center, not the only center that I have on this list. I definitely tried to include a couple of offensive linemen and a lot of them ended up being centers because there were a lot of top end centers in this league center talent I guess you'd say. And that is different than tackle and guard and someone who analyzes football at different levels a lot. I think there's a common misconception where we just group all offensive linemen together, but there really is a difference between, again, center guard tackle and then even the sides of the line. I won't get too specific here obviously for time reasons, but Alex Mullet was an extremely good center this season, one of the best offensive linemen in general. Again, I just said don't group all those guys together, but he was really one of the best offensive linemen on that team as a whole. Never missed the snap. He had really high PF F grades from my understanding, again all around just a good player. I would hope that he was, I think with the Colts last year, but he didn't end up getting signed. I think he was a final cut there. So hope he gets back. Well, unlike RJ Young, we do like our offensive lineman and defensive lineman here on the mar. So what was that when he had this all U S F L players or whatever, he had no offensive lineman on there at all. So we have your guardians, couple guys maybe not as surprising just with some of the roster building that maybe the guardians we would have maybe just a few less that would stand out. Who do you have here? Yeah, so I have two players on this list and although I only have two players, there's a third player I'd like to give a shout out to. Annette's Cody LaMer, the tight end who alongside Sal Canella was probably the best tight end in the X F L. He's 30 now. So again with the N F L kind of favoring age the way they do, I really don't think he's going to come back, whether this was the last time that he played football or he comes back to the X F L last year, he hinted at that kind of in a post I think at some point. But yeah, Cody LaMer was an extremely good player. Second round pick in 2014 I believe he was with the Broncos. Again, it was good to see him because this was his first time playing really since 2019. I believe he was with the commanders in the 2020 off season, but obviously there was no preseason and then he got cut and then this is kind of the first chance he's had to play in a while. So special shout out to him. He's a great player obviously on Max's list there. But I just think again, this is where age kind of plays a role and it would be a real stretch to bring him into a camp a given all the other tight end talent that's just younger. And then you also have here Jermaine Martin and Mack Brown here at Pun Ole Miss. Yeah, so Jermaine Martin, again, I kind of thought he was going to be the guy. Devin Darrington kind of ended up being I guess the main ball carrier there and then he went to Commander's camp as well. But Jermaine Martin was a guy I was really excited about during the pre-draft process. I think it was last year coming out from North Carolina a and t h, BBC U School, were trying to build up so more H B C U representation. The X Ffl alone has done a great job of that with their h BBC's, H B C U, excuse me, showcases last year they had one at Jackson State, obviously when Dion Sanders was there this year they're doing it at Clark Atlanta University in Georgia, which is a division two program. But Jermaine Martin, again didn't exactly flash a ton this year, but I feel like he still has enough to where he could maybe get another look. And then Mack Brown again, another punter from Ole Ms. Mack Brown obviously I think kind of got some clout this year you would say for his little trick plays and touchdowns and big passes and that was, that was really fun at the end of the season there, Trell Buckley trying to shake things up for the guardians, get something going, get something exciting. And Mack Brown really brought that, again, punter, we, we've talked about it before and I'll say it again just to really bring the point home. That's one of those positions where a team is only going to have one, it's not receiver where they carry maybe six on the active roster, five and then a couple more on the practice squad, you know, kind of have to be that guy. So I don't know if Mac Brown was necessarily the best punter in the X F L, but again, it's kind of like Marquette King, just one of those fun stories where it would be nice to just see him come in for maybe a game or two at some point and just show what he has. That was boy, because some of the highlights are in the Guardian season. Moving on to the bra here, you have Calvin Turner and Delante Scott, what stands out about them? And I'll flip over here to the other list as well. We can see. Yeah, so Calvin Turner heading into this season was one of the most exciting players that I had personally, it's unfortunate because he didn't really end up playing this season. I think he might have been active for, he have been around for a game or two, but he spent most of the season on the reserve list. And obviously I think personally, I think that if had he played, he would've made a big difference in that Brahmas offense, which continuously struggled really regardless of the quarterback throughout the season. But yeah, Calvin Turner, a really great talent, kind of a hybrid player running back slash wide receiver. I think he projected more wide receiver in the X ffl, especially with the Brahmas running back room there with Jaquez, Patrick and Baj. But he had also taken snaps at quarterback in college at one point, I think at Jacksonville before he came over to Hawaii. And then again, he's just a really electric talent and I hope he's one of these guys again. Maybe he gets another shot in the N F L, but I would be really excited if he came back to the Brahmas in 2024 and kind of really showed why he still is there. Because again, he didn't have that chance this year, he was injured and that was really, to be honest, it was almost devastating to me again, just because he was honestly a top five player for me going into this X ffl season. Maybe that's a bit high. I can debate that with people, whatever. But again, that's just my personal opinion. And then Delante Scott, defensive end, outside linebacker, edge rusher from S M U, kind of wherever we want to put that again, he was phenomenal to watch all season. I think his kind of production in 2023 speaks for itself, so I'm not going to talk about that for too long. But yeah, him, Calvin Turner and Delante Scott were my two guys. And then Max has Drew Beasley there as well, who was definitely a good player Coming here with the defenders. I shouldn't surprise some of the highest number coming from really one of the standout teams and organizations in the X F L. Who are the couple that you want to touch on here from the Defenders? Obviously Tara Mu and Derek King and everyone else. Yeah, well this is where it gets a bit interesting, at least for me because here I have two quarterbacks, we haven't talked about quarterbacks yet. Obviously the league goes beyond quarterbacks. I shouldn't have to say that. And I mean I myself have been guilty of talking about quarterbacks for too long. But with the defenders, I think both of their guys honestly deserve chances. Especially we had a debate I think throughout the season, especially with teu slow start and their reliance on the ground game in dc, whether or not this was kind of his last gasp, but then again, second half of the season there was a huge uptick in production and for me that was enough to at least warrant him another chance in camp. Again, similar situation here to I think Louis Perez where TEU has been in a lot of these spring leagues and he might just want to settle down and be like, you know what? Me moving to another state to just go for a couple months or maybe sit on the practice squad, it isn't really worth it. I'd rather just again, stay here, kind of build the team throughout the off season with the coaches, build the program, whatever you want to call it. So I think, but he's, in my opinion, whether he wants to do that or not isn't up to me. But I think it wouldn't hurt for him to just get a couple more preseason reps and then come back in 2024. And then the other guy I had too was the other quarterback, Derek King, one of my, again, personal favorite players who split his time in college between Houston and Miami. He worked out with the Patriots, I think at Wide Receiver last year after going undrafted. Didn't really work out. I still think he has a slim chance of playing quarterback in the N F L. I mean he might have to still take reps in other positions if he really wants to last through a training camp. And that's nothing against him. Again, it's just one of these things where the N F L favors, again, we talked about age, but size. Derrick King's a very small guy and you could see that, and of course that works out in college better. But once you get to the pros, you know, kind of have to fill in a more niche role. Cause Derrick played this season in DC but he wasn't necessarily the starter. And then it was very odd when they didn't play him in the championship game at all. A lot of people thought that was strange, but he was another guy. And then I think I had a couple offensive linemen on there too. Yeah, Liam Fork, who I believe was on the all X Ffl team from James Madison, Mike Mati, another center from Missouri who might have been for me the most impressive offensive lineman on that team. And then the last two guys, I mean a Smith speaks for itself. He was the first overall pick in the X ffl draft, and I guess that was November now, which that's crazy to think about, but A really long time ago. It Does man. It really does. But yeah, Abram Smith, again, X ffl leading rusher that was a home run pick by Vaughn Hutchins and Crew. I won't go on about that for too long. And then same with Francis Bernard. He was a guy who went undrafted with the Cowboys, spent two seasons with them I think between 2020 and 2021. Played in a couple games. He is got a couple career N F L regular season tackles to his name. But he was a guy who really impressed me again this year too, and I think he deserves a shot to go back and at least stay on a practice squad for another year. Yeah, we talking, I mean at least right now, some of these guys, TIU or Perez, these guys bouncing back and forth, at least with the hub model, kind of the same we've seen with Thompson with the US felt like maybe it isn't the worst thing, you know, moved to Texas, it's not as expensive to live, you don't have to live in Seattle or any of these more expensive cities. You could have your family there kind of train and maybe coach in the off-season. I don't know, it's something to think about where the hub model, although not ideal for everything, it does allow some more simplicity when it comes to like, well, we could kind of position everyone there and work through that. C Dragons here, Jaco Pearson, obviously people know that name. What do you make of him and the other standout C Dragons players? Yeah, so Jaco Pearson, I mean, again, he was phenomenal this season. I think a lot of people who weren't in tune with the X Ffl would probably assume Josh Gordon would've been the best receiver on that team just given his pedigree. But Jor Pearson I think was really a step ahead of him. That's nothing against Josh Gordon, but just to prove a point, sometimes just because you have a big name doesn't mean you're going to be the best player even at your position on your own team in a league like this. Because Jor Pearson, again, one of these smaller guys, but he really emerged split his time in college between I think, well Ole Miss for one. I think the other school is Western Kentucky, but he's gotten looks now from both the 49ers and the Seahawks and I would expect him to be signed soon. I can't imagine a world where he at least doesn't get into a training camp because he, I mean he was just so flashy the season, and again, he really proved, I mean he's five seven playing outside receiver. You don't see that very often. Again, that's one of those things where you might see it in college, but translating it to the pros, typically that's not going to work out. But for him, if he finds himself in the right offense, again, I thought he would be a great fit in San Francisco and they've already worked him out and seeing some of his practice tape from the Niners camp, it looked really good. I think Shanahan must have been really impressed with him. So we'll see what happens. Again, he got invited to work out with the Seahawks as well, and obviously that would be kind of cool just having the Sea Dragons Seahawks connection, I think especially you, Reid would appreciate that. But then the other guy I had was Antoine Brooks, the safety for Maryland. He was kind of all around this year. I think he was the guy that had that ridiculous interception against DC where it, he came down with it, it was tipped or whatever. Have to go back and look at that. There's so many players we have to talk about. My memory gets a bit foggy, but regardless, Antoine Brooks was definitely impressive this year and one of these guys that, I believe he might've been a draft pick in the N F L, I would have to go back and fact check that, but came out of Maryland. I'm surprised he wasn't on the roughnecks actually, because our defensive coordinator, Brian Stewart came from Maryland. We had a plenty of Maryland guys including Sean Davis who used to play safety for the Pittsburgh Steelers. But that's kind of just a side note. But yeah, those were the two guys I wanted to highlight from the Street Dragons. There would definitely be more, but honestly, six of their players have already signed with the N F L, so I had to be, I was looking at the roster and I was like, geez, a lot of the names I want to talk about are already gone. They've already signed wherever, including ucci. So, Well that's the thing. And you talk about Jaqui Pearson versus Josh Gordon. It is interesting that Josh hasn't, at least from my knowledge, gotten a lot of looks following the season and obviously Phil Lindsay coming in as well as kind of that veteran, Hey, we're going to try to get over the hump here at some point. It's a lot of diminishing returns with some of these older guys going back to the league and trying to rebuild their stock. In terms of, we got two more teams here in terms of the ball hawks with no surprise long list here, who stands out? So I'll just kind of go down the list accordingly here. I think I've got five names for this one too. And then five names for the Vipers. So we're getting into some longer lists now, but the first guys, Mateo Durant, kind of a secondary role behind Brian Hill, but did have a couple key moments when Brian Hill was injured, stepped up and he was invited to New York Jets mini camp I believe, and our colleague Pat Rapino wrote an article about that. Yeah, the two guys here that I really want to focus on are the receivers, Austin Pro of Darius Shepherd. Pearl obviously was a guy who was an X Ffl 2020, he's bounced around a bit doing this and that and play for his dad this year in the X ffl. His dad was coaching receivers coach there in St. Louis, which was awesome, especially because his dad played for the Rams too and they won that Super Bowl and there was that picture of him as a baby with his, well maybe not a baby, but a toddler. And his dad was on the field and then won the Super Bowl and what a full circle moment that was. And then Darius Shepherd, obviously again, just electric this year, all X F L performer, especially in the return department. And it's so key if you want to move up to the N F L to be able to play special teams, all these guys that are trying to make a 53 or even a practice squad, it's so important to have not just special teams experience, but to be willing to play it again. You know what I mean? And Shepherd kind of showed not only can he be a weapon on offense, but he can be a weapon in the return department on special teams. Again, that's a huge deal when it comes to guys signing from spring leagues to the N F L and even out of college too, these guys that go undrafted or maybe are late seventh round picks or whatever. And then, yeah, the last two guys I had on there, Lavert Hill from Michigan, believe he was an all X F L performer too. And then Mike Pank, the Offensive Well center, I guess just center for Michigan State, I believe he played defensive line in college and he got to play against his brother in the X F L, which was really cool. But again, another center that really stood out, and I know he might be a bit older now, but I hope that he too can again just find his way into a camp. At least it, it's for all these guys. And I will say this before we move on to our last team, which is Vegas, A lot of these guys, it's going to be difficult to just make the active roster right out of camp. You can't deny that that's hard for anybody that's fighting for a spot, but as long as these guys can just get signed, get some reps, get into camp, get into pre-season, maybe stay on the practice squad for the course of 2023, and then whether or not they come back to the X F L, that'll be up to them. Or if they kind of just hang around in the N F L, that's not up to me. But I just hope that the point here is not to say all these guys are going to be on N F L active rosters, and that's just a unrealistic assumption. But yeah, I mean the bottom line is, again, as long as these guys can at least just get some sort of reps at the N F L level, that would be important. 30 seconds of thought about AJ McCarran. I think he's obviously another one. You like Perez, you're let, let's build something here. Let's really kind of invest. I don't see him bouncing back. I mean obviously he turned down the contact. What do you make about AJ McCarran? Brief thoughts? Yeah, McCarran is the guy that I think is going to stay around now. Had you asked me that in the beginning of the season, I said, nah, he would've been in an N F L camp by this point, but it's clear, again, age is one of these things and AJ really, really appreciated his time in the X ffl. You can just tell that by his demeanor and the whole point of him being there was to watch his kids play and he can happily do that again next year. I mean, he's already made so much money through the N F L having won all those national championships. Alabama being a draft pick, hanging around for X many seasons. I think he was drafted in 2014, maybe earlier than that. But yeah, he's been around for a long time and at this point I think his kids enjoyed seeing him play his entire family. Really, it's a personal thing. So it would be great to have him back in 2024. And I know Beck was definitely open to that. I'm sure everyone on that coaching staff and the rest of the team that's going to be there in 2024 is open to that. Cause he was a phenomenal talent and he definitely played with a lot of emotion. Again, given, given his circumstance I guess this year. Well, and I see him very easily transitioning to the Battle Hawks, just coaching staff. I mean, he was already basically kind of working with Bruce and calling the plays and all that. Last year we had the Vipers, Sheila Mcce, a couple friends at this show here, Jeff Bette, Beyonce Anderson, who joined us for our, I guess it was our championship pre-game show. Who stands out from the Viper here? Yeah, so Jill McClendon, this one can be debated. He was invited to Bill's mini camp along with Quintin Dormy from the Guardians. Again, two sort of underdogs in the X F L at New Sub. We're talking about our underdog award. It came down to Joe McClendon or Quentin Dormy because those guys kind of took, I guess you'd say bottom end teams and at least made them somewhat competitive in this kind of later part of the season. But yeah, McClendon, it's a long shot for him. He was last, I think he bounced around. It was with Washington and then maybe Baltimore in 2019. And then obviously he was with the Wildcats and X Ffl 2020. I've gone on record talking about how that Joey Clink scale's connection with him being the DPP in Vegas really helped him out this year more than any, because I don't think people understand how crazy it was for Jay and McClendon to come in and play like that because he had maybe played a combined, I don't know, at most, it's probably 30 snaps between N F L preseason and X Ffl 2020. I mean, he was just not there a lot. So to see him go out there and really prove everybody wrong, he was even a step above Brett Hunley. You could argue, and I know the whole Hunley situation is still kind of weird. We don't know exactly what happened to him, whether it was injury or he had a problem with the coaching staff, but even then it was clear he was better than Brett Hunley, even when Hundley was playing. And that raised a question, maybe they should have just stuck with him the whole season. Of course Perez was there and eventually they triggered him. So it was a complex issue. But the bottom line is Jalen McClennan, I do think, again, deserves to be at least in an NFL preseason. And when it comes to quarterbacks, we've mentioned it already on this show, just kind of like the Louis Perez and the Jordan TAs of the world. Maybe it's better if he comes back in 2024 and just develops and stays there with the coaching staff or whatever. But the good, what am I going to say? Huh? The chances are that he goes to an N F NFL camp, maybe gets cut after that or is maybe a final cut, and then he just comes right back into everything in September. So he wouldn't have ended up missing that much time. That's the key thing here too, with all these players, if they want to come back in 2024, if you don't make it past final cuts, final cuts for the end of August, early September, it's not that far away. You're not going to be dragged out for months and then you're not going to have to make some key decision right before the X Ffl C's like, okay, am I going to play? Because you're going to have a lot of time to think about it during the N F L season if you're a free agent, as long as you don't get signed to a practice squad or whatever. But anyway, that's kind of a bit of a different tangent for another time. The other guys I have on this list, Deandre Tory running back from North Texas again, kind of in a somewhat reserve role with Vegas, but he only went, he won, he only went undrafted last year, signed with the Michigan Panthers. He kind of took the spring football route immediately as opposed to testing the waters with the N F L. And then from there he went to Eagles camp and then now he surfaced back in spring football. I think he deserves another shot even if the numbers weren't incredible. Jeff Bette from Oklahoma, I mean Bette is one of these guys that we've always pulled for incredible individual, incredible human this season really. I think for him, and I don't want to take the words out of his mouth, but it really felt like it was sort of a, how do I put this? It was a hard work pays off type of thing and maybe that just sounds very vague, but what I mean here is he dealt with several injuries and he was on your show talking about in the U S F L last year, he was depressed being away from home at the hub and whatever, and that format just didn't work for him. And then in the X F L in 2020, he was with the Renegades, but he dealt with injuries there too and it's, he's always been dealt the wrong cards, if you know what I mean. And finally for once, even if his team didn't win that many games, he still had a lot of tape and a lot of highlights to show for and I think, again, he's an older guy now. It's been a couple years since he was in the N F L, but this is one of those things where it's just one more chance if he gets one more camp or whatever, I think that would be really good to see because he, in my opinion, is incredibly deserving of that opportunity and then Very unhappy with this time with the USS F l and I think very happy that he could play. When he said on the show he said, I need one season uninjured, let me get my get highlights. And he certainly Did that. Exactly, yep. And that's exactly what he did. So good for him. Love Jeff. Great guy. Anyway, last two guys on this list, Peter, Tom X Ffl defensive player of the year from Utah. Peter was, I think N F L Scouts had eyes on him throughout the entire season and it would be great to see Peter to me, he could be one of these guys, one of the few that ends up just making the active roster right out of a training camp, because to me he really was that impressive and it would be a great story for the X ffl to have a guy make an impact on an N F L team in the regular season after his team in the X ffl. Wasn't that great? You know what I mean? Because sometimes there's a misconception where it's like the champion or the playoff teams are going to have more players go to the N F L. I don't necessarily think that's true. And again, that's not to fault any teams or to say that certain teams don't have N F L caliber players because at the end of the day, I'd say a large majority of the players in these leagues, whether it's X ffl, U S F L or C F L or N F L Caliber. But yeah, I mean a guy like Peter Taino, I could definitely see him making an active roster. The performance spoke for itself in the league. It was a bit surprising to see him win defensive player of the year outright. I would've pulled for Trent Harris again, whether I'm biased or not, but a couple other people were surprised who are well versed in this space. And then the last guy I had on that list was Deontay Anderson, and that's someone I've been talking to a lot lately. Love Deontay. Obviously he was on your show at the River Walk in San Antonio there for the championship. Dante's interesting. He went to Raiders mini camp two years ago. They tried him out at linebacker because I believed he played linebacker. His senior season at Houston didn't work out. He doesn't like playing linebacker on the inside this season to me in the X F L proved that he can play safety at a higher level because he was the leading tackler amongst defensive backs, but he also had I think nine past deflections. Again, I see him, he proved that he can play in coverage. He's not just a guy that moves up front on the line. He can definitely play further back and kind of fill a coverage role. So we'll see what happens. Again, I know he just got an agent and he's working through things, but I would definitely be excited to see him at least again, just getting to camp and I know he's content with coming back in 2024 if it does come to that, and I think a lot of these guys, again that we're talking about, I brought it up earlier, guys that go, even if they do go to NFL camps, that doesn't necessarily mean they're done with the X ffl forever. They can easily come back in 2024, make an impact. I mean, you saw it in the u s ffl guys who were in the first season in the S F L last year went to N F NFL camps and then came back to the U S F L after didn't work out. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's all about getting reps and furthering your career. Everyone always says when they're a kid, I want to play in the nfl. And whether you count pre-season reps or a training camp playing in the N F L, again, that's something that's debated a lot I think in circles. But the bottom line is like, yeah, if the N F NFL calls and you're playing in the X F L, you're definitely going to take that opportunity and it's great to see the X F L promote that. That's the other thing I'll bring up here as we close this out, I think is just the league. I mean, I think we said during the season they might have pushed the narrative a bit too much. It's like, oh, well this guy, it was all about the N F L and not about his actual production on his X ffl team. And to an extent I agree with that, but it's also good to not see the league just completely shy away. Again, I think some of their partnerships help with the N F NFL Alumni Academy. They have a strong connection there. Yeah, ultimately I think it's good that the league is, and again, they're posting when guys sign to the N F L, could they do maybe a better job with that being more consistent? Perhaps you could argue that way. But again, every time a player gets signed, they have been posting on X F L P. They'll make the graphic, they'll put it up on the X F L socials. Yeah, this guy, it's like X FFL to N F L. And I think the greatest thing that they've done really so far with that is they're doing YouTube stuff with that. They're making these little short documentaries. They had a couple of the DPP talking like Vaughn Hutchins, Randy Mueller, mark Lilybridge going on about some of their players that really impressed them. It's kind of like a player spotlight and that helps N F L teams too, just to get an idea of what they're looking at. So I think again, all around it, it's a great structure there. Yeah, I think just to wrap this up, I think like you said, pushed a little too hard. The narrative, I think if the X F L and the U S F L could change it a little bit, where for however many decades now it's kind of like it's the N F L or bust and you're, if you're don't make it to the N F L, you're S so L and your life is over changing the narrative. No, we are creating these other places, these landing spots for you, whether you do want to play there for years, you want to play here for a year, you want to play here for a few weeks, get back just to not have it be this all or bust kind of thing I think is important to build that narrative around and we're working on it. I think both these leagues are still trying to figure out how they want to frame that. Evan and tremendous work here under your knowledge of all of these players astounds me. I know I talk with Dorothy afterwards. She's like, how do they know all these people? I said, well, this is what Evan does. I appreciate Max putting the list together as well. Some notes on there. Evan, anything else from you before we get out of here? Yeah, I'll just go off your point quickly again about sort of these guys building resumes through these leagues. The one thing that I thought was really cool was especially from the spring football standpoint, there were guys who won the championship with the Arlington Renegades this year that were on the Birmingham Stallions and the U S F L last year, Doug Coston, Victor Bolden, I think there was a couple other guys. But anyway, guys are able to win championships in these leagues Now that wasn't a thing a couple years ago. The last time you had that was really the ufl. I mean the Spring league had theirs, but where does the Spring league fall? Again, you can argue with that, but the AAF never completed their season X ffl 2020 didn't complete their season. So now you finally see guys, I think they're able to be more emotionally attached and that's what I really hope for these players as the leagues move forward, it's like they can really get attached to these teams and it's not just about waiting on that call from the N F L, I'm just here in the meantime. It's like, well, you know, might end up playing here for two, three years. So really try and commit to the team. And I'm not saying guys aren't committed, I'm just saying I think it depends a lot on, and I've talked about this with other people, it depends for the player, whether they've been in the N F NFL or not before. Cause some guys have had a ton of N F NFL experience look at like Marta Bryant, the Josh Gordon of the world and then I don't know, you look at maybe a Bryson Aline who's never really touched the N F L. So there's a couple different perspectives there, but the bottom line is the more emotionally attached guys get, the better the football will be. At least that's what I think personally. Yeah, I think you can just feel like your heart is a little bit more protected to be invested in this now just with the success the US F LS had and now with the X F L completed, I'm like, you're not wasting your time here. Not I can be invested, I can be a part of this. I can, we've talked with a agent McCarran the loose press or Tim, I'm like, I feel like I could build something here for a couple years and kind of know what's going to be around Evan with New Hub. Appreciate it all season. I'm sure we'll do lots more of this throughout the summer, but really appreciate your time today. Absolutely. Yeah, thanks for having me on Reid. This was definitely fun to talk about some players as always. It always is. Well we're going to have good beard energy on the podcast today. I feel like we have Furby here. Normally we have Justin Freeman over at Run the Sims today. Justin said Fury's the guy we're talking to, we're getting you asked about week eight and everything else. How are you doing sir? Good, how are you doing Rick? I'm good. So we're here approaching week eight. Pat Rapino and I have been kind of doing our Monday recaps here the last little bit. What are you making of U S F L season two? It's good. It's a lot like season one. I thought they might kind of spice it up a little bit. Year one they kind of give 'em a free pass on some stuff, but then year two you think you might make some changes and so far it's kind of felt exactly the same. Starting to feel a little formulaic. For some reason I'm a psycho and leave all the notifications on Twitter for all the teams to get the notifications and stuff so I start to see it is the same tweet over and over for all the teams. You kind of wonder if that's a little bit of Fox. If you ever watch a Fox sitcom season 11, it kind of becomes very formulaic and maybe that's kind of what they want. They want this four TV product so they're not really necessarily trying to switch it up. Did you watch or enjoy the XL this year? I did and I think it, it was in its first year too, so it kind of had the new car smell also and now U S F L, I don't think it's stale necessarily, but it's in its second year, so I think the football's good though. I'm a known supposed US L hater on here and so it's either guys got to walk in line With that. I've Heard No, but I, I've said I don't always agree with the X F L'S personality. I think sometimes they try to be a little bit too serious. The broadcast people have issues with the ESPN broadcast, but at least it feels like it has a little bit of an identity where it does feel like this is, like you said, not, I wouldn't say stable, this is safe. We have four games that are very family friendly and you can watch and you kind of know what to expect and it, it's kind of like pizza and it's always going to be fine, but it might not be exceptional or poor. Yeah, I would agree with that. And I think X ffl maybe they're trying to build a little more and I think U S F L, they're probably kind of content having it. This is a TV spot for Saturday, Sunday. Long as their ratings are good, they're not going to leave money on the table, but they're maybe not quite as willing to take some of their risks moving cities out of the hub into their hometowns, stuff like that. So we had the US F L had the press conference this morning and this will air obviously Friday, but kind of previewing the playoffs and okay, we've got this going on at Canton and everything else really championing the parody of all eight teams and it's also kind of up in the air going in. What have you made of the level of competition with the parody of the all eight teams? I'm fine with the parody. I just think everyone, some of the teams just kind of lack identity in the X ffl, you kind of had the defenders run first or defense was really good, you had the roughnecks, they're just going to sling it. Seattle is just going to sling it around the field. I don't mind everyone having the same wins and losses kind of close in the standings, but I just don't know if they have the identity that they did last year even. You feel like you don't Want, you think they had more of an identity in season one? I think so. And you don't want teams like Pittsburgh last year where they're just terrible and a little bit like Orlando and the X F L where that's not even competitive. You certainly always want competitive, but I just look, you know, look at rushing yards per game and there's a few outliers but almost everybody's within 40, 50 yards of each other after seven weeks In terms of teams carried over, obviously Stars kind of feel like they're finding their footing now. Birmingham's looked good. We had kind of New Orleans with the standout and now they're kind of fault truth, I blame, I had McLeod on the show a couple weeks ago, so I blamed the undefeated Ray and ending on that. But what teams have you been impressed by thus far coming into this season? I think I was really high on the breakers to start, like you said, and they've kind of tapered off a little bit, the Panthers have shown spurts and the gamblers I guess have shown spurts of being pretty good team, but like you said, the parody kind of makes everybody kind of a muddle. Well I think the stallions are the cream cream of the crop in the south there though, And feeling like they're kind of finally, they have a little bit going early on, but now, yeah, Magoos looking good. Everything, I mean what's, what stood out to you about the stallions? Really just Magoo. I mean he is clearly the MVP so far and he hasn't really separated through the air, but just standing back he just, he's calm, he's making plays. He he'll scramble. He is not looking to run first but he just converts third downs, runs when they need him. Makes it look easy right now In terms of the Breakers in McLeod, have you been impressed? Did you track any of his C F L this before he came into the league? I didn't track him in the C F L and lots of times the stats are hard to translate. You know, always think, oh he is coming from the C F L, he is going to do really good. It's doesn't always translate. People expect it to be like triple A baseball, you go to M L B, you're going to have a certain ratio and it's not always like that with cfl. Some guys just kind of, it translates better and sometimes it doesn't. So I wasn't sure how that was going to work out and at first it looked pretty good and they've kind of, I don't know what it is, they just hit a wall a little bit. It seems like the stats are still there for the most part, but they're just kind of not making some of the third down fourth downs makes it look a little bit worse than it is. It seems we've kind of pontificated, maybe it's hitting the wall kind of coming off of the C F L and fatigue and playing and I mean that's something with these spring leagues and obviously he had the time off from November but he was injured in the Gray Cup, takes time off, gets his hand figured out, comes back in here and it does seem like it's not really the same energy that was going in the first four or five weeks And I mean that team in general has been pretty banged up and getting away and guys that aren't hurt Hills has just been having a massive workload. You got to think there's going to be some feet fatigue there as well and Dixon was hurt and he's a big part of the offense. I think they're starting to come back around. They were pretty close. Every game's been close, a couple touch a touchdown couple plays each game and we're not really having this conversation With Coach Steve Felipo. Have you as a first year kind of spring football coach here figuring all this out, have you been impressed with his work? I have. I think I prefer seeing the first year guys rather than some of the old N F NFL veterans guys that are on their way up rather than on their way out sometimes. I think they're just kind of looking, the old guys are more looking for just a nine to five job. They're probably not grinding film at 1230 in the morning on a Tuesday night. I think you see that with maybe last year with a couple of the coaches, but Larry Fedora maybe a little bit there in turns of Todd Haley here twerking in the locker room now the team undefeated or are we liking what Coach Haley's been putting together with the Showboats? I mean it it's working apparently, but I kind of had Haley pegged as one of those coaches maybe last year, but I think you're seeing a little bit more that he's not just sitting on the ball. I think he does want to win and they've made I think seven of eight fourth downs in the last four games. I mean things that aren't sustainable but it's certainly been fun seeing that turnaround. A lot of positive vibes, Obviously a lot of parody here in the south especially. Do you, I mean gamblers kind of trying to find their footing with Bahar and everything else, what do you make of stallions figure number one, who's going to get that second seed in the South? Yeah, it certainly stallion up top. I think the breakers will figure it out. I kind of think the Showboats will be a little closer to the first two games than the last or first three games rather than the last four, but it'll be somewhere in the middle. Same with the gamblers. I see stallions spin on top and then the breakers In turns here at Stars you're kind of finally figuring out what they want to do. Panthers still can't win at home and they've even talked about that too. They have the US develop press. I thought that was funny. They were a little self-aware of that, but general's really kind of out of it. We had Deandre Johnson get banged up and the Mallers here are continuing the mall. Is it Stars Panthers without a doubt here or what do you make of the north? I think it's definitely stars and then I think Panthers, but I don't know if love has more up games than down games. They also just signed EJ Perry, so that could be interesting. Yeah. Do you love as a quarterback? Don't think, I think he, he's looked all right I think where is he? But I wouldn't mind seeing a change there. I was surprised they didn't give Bar a little more look, but they obviously had no interest in seeing, I thought Barrer looked pretty good last year, kind of gave him two dimensions but they weren't interested there so he's on the generals now, so without Deandre maybe he'll get a shot there. Yeah, honestly it really seems like they're kind of grasping at straw. Generals obviously had to make a move with that, but I don't know if it's too little too late here to refresh their, is that enough time to get him in and get going here before the end of the season? I don't know. I guess at work with Perez in Arlington, but I don't know that Barer is Perez kind of very different player and they haven't put Deandre Johnson on the inactive list yet now he was D N P yesterday with a concussion and it would be really bad optics after the scene looked really bad, went to the hospital, kind of had two vibes where it would look really bad if he played put the league kind of at risk a little bit, but I would expect him to be back within a couple weeks so I would imagine they stick with him going forward because Lata just has not looked very good. I'd be curious kind of how they handle him in terms of with the active bonuses and things. I don't know if that goes into that. I think they had that last year with when Brian Scott got injured and they kept him on, I don't know, I think they do a little bit of tweaking like that to make sure guys are getting paid a little bit more. I don't know if that goes into it at all, if they just want to keep him on and not worry about transferring that out, but something to kind of keep in mind there with the generals. In terms of the matchups here we have going into the weekend, week eight, this might not be the prettiest matchup here, the 9:00 AM Pacific U S A of the gamblers. Muellers, who do you have on this one? The gamblers are favored by three and I think that seems about right at that line. I'd probably go with the gamblers, but both teams are one and two and pressures and sacks and the mallers have taken the second most sacks in the league, so it might be pretty ugly In terms of offense, It's weird. It's weird that the legacy of the Mallers has kind of continued on here, But Roy H and everything else, I've been able to turn that around. Star stallions. This might be the standout game of the weekend here on the N B C. I think this is going to do pretty well ratings wise at noon Pacific here with the Stars at Birmingham. What are you making of this one? Yeah, this could very well be championship preview. I stars are favored by a touchdown almost, but so stallions are over the stars and I think the story is the Stars offensive line. They were just atrocious through five games and then the last two games they allowed zero sacks to the Mallers and then one sack to the Breakers looking a lot better. They could not get the ball going at all in the ground and then last two weeks they've kind of gotten coal burn. It was kind of the lead dog. Now Dexter Williams was mixing in some, but it looks kind of like all cor cold burn now and they're doing a lot better the last couple weeks. Well Corbin's been great. I mean he's been good. We've tracked him all the way through everything going up. Big good good pieces here. It feels like they're finally getting up right here. Slow star. They're, I don't know if case was slow coming back or a BART was kind of snoozing on the sidelines. It feels like they're finally kind of getting their footing here. Yeah, definitely. In terms of here, the June 4th, Sunday Double Fox, I think the ratings will obviously peak up over last week. We've had probably a season low here for the US L ratings coming out of week seven, but the Showboats at the generals here, I have to imagine the Showboats are favored. Yeah, well the Showboats are two point dogs now. For some reason it opened as the Showboats as favorites and now is Flip. The Generals are two point favorites and I couldn't figure that one out either. I don't know if it was a Deandre Johnson thing or so I would certainly be on the showboats side of that. I would bet that immediately. I mean you have your quarterback injured here and I mean I guess the trade and all that, but I certainly don't think that they bring that up here that quick. I don't think. That seems odd to me. Is the home field advantage of Tom Benson that great? Nope, but yeah, their generals are two point favorites right now And then here Michigan, Michigan at New Orleans. This is probably the other standout game. I think the Fox has lacked a little bit in the ratings compared to N B C, but I imagine this afternoon game is going to go well. Panthers are breakers, Panthers are not in Detroit so they can certainly win here. What do you make of this one? It's time for the Breakers to end the mark cast curse. I guess it's been the West Hillis show so far from a team you think's just going to pass it all the time. They've been running quite a bit. They've had some success but still come up short in a wind column and like we mentioned earlier, I think Hillis just has to be getting tired. Some they gave him a little bit of rest. I don't know, I think he fumbled it for once there and they went to Jones for a little bit but I think they're just going to go back to him. I mean his workload has just been outrageous. Looking here, moving into the playoffs here, a couple weeks left to the regular season playoffs, what are you looking for from any of these seams before we get out of here, who would you like to see you think that you think Birmingham and Philadelphia at the end? I think that's who it's going to be. They're certainly the most fun teams, the best offenses, Birmingham defense. I think their reputation has been a lot stronger than their actual performance on defense this year, but I think if they can do that, they're certainly the favorite. Well Furby, I appreciate it. If people want to learn more about you, kind of what you guys do over at Run the Sims, where would you have them check out? Run the sims.com. You can check out me at Furby hubler on Twitter and we have stuff for U S L X F L, we'll have some N F L pre-season. We mostly DFS betting prop tools. It's a lot of fun. Has the U S F L interest exceeded or disappointed your expectations this season? Disappointed I think especially on DraftKings is X FFL started out about where U S F L did last season and then I think people were just exhausted. X ffl started with a hundred thousand dollars to first place and now we're down to about $2,000 to first place. So I think the interest has dwindled quite a bit and DraftKings just kind of has kind of given up on the U S F L product price wise and the players player pools like LA couple weeks ago, they haven't figured out the difference between the inactive list and guys that were inactive one week. They just don't even add 'em to the player pool. So I think they've mostly given up on the product but it's been fun though. Do you attribute that to a problem with the U S F L product or just a general fatigue in spring football that we've done this now for 20 weeks? It's both and it's kind of self, it just kind of keeps building. They cut the prize pool so less people are interested and then I don't expect DraftKings to keep taking a huge cut themselves so you know, make the prize pool smaller and then less people want to play so they have to make the next week the prize bowl even smaller and it keeps getting smaller and smaller. But I'd say yeah, in the interest in spring football or in the U S F L, it's been a little bit less than xfl so it's just been a grind. And then let N nfl, you're starting to get to many camps and stuff and people are starting to do basketball drafts so there there's other places to play, other games to play. It's interesting, I use all these metrics and ratings and attendance and YouTube come to traffic IC and obviously this is another one about, so I always appreciate those insights as well. Well thank you so much and hope you enjoy, you got to perk. I hope you enjoy the rest of the season. You seem a little down but we got to grind through. I do enjoy it. I didn't want to come across it at all. It's good. It's a lot Fun. It's a luck we've been doing. Yeah, it's been 20, yeah, since February. Now we're working through Well Furby, I appreciate it so much. All right, Thanks a lot. Well last time we spoke I, I think I was in the flamingo over in Vegas now I'm relegated to my living room. We have the lawnmower outside. Here we are. JJ Adams here with the Postmedia. How are you doing sir? I'm good. I do remember you throwing that in my face that you were in Vegas having the time of your life and I was stuck. I remember this, I got the memory like an element. I will never forget that, nor will I forgive but it it's good to see you again rj. It's good to talk. Yeah, well a much stable, much more stable connection here back at Mark House headquarters than over at the Flamingo. I think I was on the hotspot that day. So anyway here we're doing team breakdowns. We had Ryan Valentine on last week talking Calgary. Obviously we have to talk America's C F L team, the Beast Alliance here. JJ is the first time I want to talk to you. How are you feeling? We've had the one preseason game. I mean I know wins and losses and all of that, but what do you make into the team so far? I'm encouraged. I think they brought a lot of the veteran flavor that they had from last year. The guys that were second year players in our third year, they're entering that kind of impact kind of zone of their career. So I think they've got a lot of returners. They picked up some good free agents, they didn't lose too many pieces and if they did they might have found some replacements. James Butler came into his own last year for the Lions and they had to sort of start from scratch here, so we'll see what they have in running back. They lost Fig Figueroa to Hamilton as well. So big veteran piece on the line but of course they picked up Michael Couture at center so they got some more experience there. I think this is going to be a team that's going to be challenging for top in the west again and that is even without Mr. Nathan Rourke, I think big play VA is a capable quarterback and now that he's had a training camp under his belt, he's got some time a little runway. The team is unquestionably his to start the season unquestionably his, I think he'll feel very confident and that can only help him get into routine and rhythm and really be big play VA and live up to that nickname. You said that to start the season, are you foreshadowing the Dan Evans takeover here or do you mean just off of last season with him? Because I want to talk Dane too but yeah, I, Vernon was on the show and I think people really underestimate the emotional toll that is of like he was talking to you. Yeah, moving across the country. I've got, I'm paying rent here, I'm paying rent here, I've got my house here, he lives down in Tacoma. I got basically a stones throw from me. There was a lot going into that besides even just football. Yeah, no, I mean it was a tough move. He fell out of favor in Montreal and the promises that were kept or not kept, he just found himself stuck and when someone sort of questions your capabilities and what you can do, of course it's going to impact your confidence. And then came over in mid-season to a team that had one of the best quarterbacks this league has seen ever. I'll just say it was one season, one and a half seasons, but I'll say it, he was remarkable. So that's a tough situation to come into knowing that if that guy comes back, you're going to be relegated to the bench again. Now he, he's got that off season under his belt. I'm sure you heard about the Kings camp down in Tacoma where he flew in all the guys. He loves to do that, lots of bonding. He's sort of ingrained in the culture of the team there. He's a leader on the team now, so I don't think we'll see that Vernon Adams that we saw last year that was very tentative and conservative, you know, would see him hold onto the ball just way too long and he'd be yelling at the screen, throw the ball or yelling from the, and he'd get sacked or run around or something like that. I don't think we're going to see that VA this year. I think he's going to throw back to his more successful days and he's got so many weapons at his disposal. I mean it would be nearly impossible for him to fall on his face with that, those kind of options out there. So I foresee a very good season for him and if not they have Dan Evans, you're guy. Well I don't want Vernon to do anymore. I think he did the back flip somersault or whatever when he was running out of bounds on, I think it was against Calgary and he did a up go. Okay, Vernon. Yeah, I thought he was going to get seriously injured here just getting the, oh Yeah, yeah, it was crazy. I like the Lion Kings thing and the arrow up and I've talked with Nick and Matt about it. It, it's fascinating to me to track just to watch the little personality nuances between all of those guys. And I love Vernon and I think people love Vernon but Vernon's a lot a comes with Vernon both on the field and then off and just the personality. I like watching all that. They did a similar thing with the U S F L and we saw Brian Scott the quarterback there and you know, saw he was having to have a house meeting trying to talk to some of the wide receivers and I don't know, we'll see. I like it. I they're complicated. You've got lucky Whitehead guys that have been in the NFL and coming back it is curious to see how they all interact. Yeah, no, I mean the Vernon is a leader, like he really is a leader. I mean you saw that in the work that they did with the Lion Kings when they were sitting down and he was interacting with everyone and he has a track record of doing that. I mean he did that in Montreal off-season, flew in guys, put him in a hotel practice with him. So he's kind of a role that he's really comfortable with and I think he'll involve into that leader again now that he is the number one, as long as he doesn't, like you say get folded in half, trying to do something crazy, scrambling out of the backfield. The Dan Evans thing, I remember when he got signed and kind of took me by surprise. I just thought there would be maybe a hotter market for Dan and him coming in seems happy. He's in all the documentary stuff too and obviously he played, what do you make of that? Is it just hey, he didn't have anywhere else to go, Eli, it doesn't hurt to have another person there. Do you think he's really going to compete? No, I think absolutely he's going to compete. I think Vernon is the number one guy, but iron sharpens iron so having those guys together is only going to make 'em better and the lion saw what happens if you have a number one quarterback and he gets hurt and there's really nothing behind it. You saw what happened when they tried to the guys that they had last year. So now they have a guy who is a capable starter in this league and he'll be pushing for number one. I think heading into the season this is definitely going to be Vernon's turn, but having Dane there, I don't think it's a bad thing. I think it's a great room. Everyone on the team talks about this culture that they have there where Guy, it's like a family atmosphere, they're all brothers and they're all trying to lift each other up. So I don't think there's any of that sort of competition. He doesn't find himself in that situation. He was in Montreal where he felt sidelined and kind of left out everyone's included. So I think it can only be a good thing for the Lions to have Dan on the team and I am like you a little surprised there wasn't a hotter market from out there, but we'll see what those other teams do in this season with the guys they brought in. I am very excited to see Cody Fedra though in Montreal. I am very excited to see what that looks like and I know that's a conversation for different team breakdown. But the Cody Fedra who now is a friend of the Pro podcast, Cody, we were not on speaking terms for a little while, but Cody's back in the family here and I'm excited. I like Montreal, they're my team of the east and we've had Gary on the podcast, so I like Montreal and I hope Cody finds success, sir, speaking French and doing everything else. What did you do for Cody to make him an enemy? I need to know. I tweet. I retweeted the three, that nation article, the one where he was talking, he used chicken nuggets as opposed to curse words and I think Cody went on the spree and just sat and found anyone that was associated with that article and just went on the block. And so I apologized, I said I accept all of that and yeah, Cody came on the show. It was great. It was a good time. It's funny, Vernon has had a boat to pick with three down Nation too. He came to BC and anytime in the post game the three down nation writers would ask a question, answer was always the same, got to look at the film, didn't matter the question, you could ask anything. What kind of chicken soup do you got to watch the film? I don't know. Just got, it was hilarious to see. It was JC Abbott from Three Down Nation watch him sweat trying to ask all these detailed questions and Vernon just be like, got to watch film, man. He's awesome. I love it. Yeah, no jcs still not. John Hodge was on the show last week, so I'm slowly working my way up. I think JC is the ultimate boss battle there, so we're working our way up through the three down ranks. But John to be friends in terms of big losses, Butler, all of that. I'm very scared because I didn't think BC they have not run the ball well I felt like in the last couple years, obviously he had a standout year, but I, I'm scared of that loss and kind of what they're going to do there. Yeah, I mean JB was a big loss. He really came into hi his own last year, but if remember the year before he wasn't, wasn't that great. And I think last year was the first year since the Andrew Harris days that they had like a thousand yard rusher and so historically they haven't run the ball well the guys that they got, they had five guys to start camp, they whittled it down to four right away. I think it was Von Watson couldn't come up because he had a baby and then whittled that down to three and then they released Buddy Howell not too long ago. So it's Antonio Williams and Smoke. I think Williams has got the ability to be a very good back in this league. I think he's got the InsideTrack InsideTrack to be a starter because he's the biggest of the bunch and he's, no, he's close to six foot, he's 200 pounds. And blocking is such a huge thing in this league because you pass so much that they need a guy who can provide that protection for their quarterback. And also he's a very powerful running, he can lower his pads and get through some arm tackles and gain those extra yards. So combine that with athleticism. He's fast. We saw a little bit in the preseason game what he and Smoke could do, but definitely he's a guy that can really do anything you ask. Smoke is more of that sort of hybrid kind of guy. He's a very good receiver, he is a good runner. He can return kicks. He's not huge. I think he was the smallest of the five guys that they brought in. But I mean he is shifty, he's fast. He'll be provide a very good change of pace to Williams. So I think they're going to be set and we talk about replacing James Butler, but two years ago they didn't have James Butler, they had to develop him. So I think we're going to see the same thing with these guys and hopefully we don't know until the rubber hits the road what they're going to do. But I think they're going to be pretty much set at running back this season In terms of the Lions kind of carrying on from last year, and I know they're going to announce the band here for the, I think halftime of the pre-season game they're going to announce for the kickoff and all of that. But in terms of, I know Doman was really in into all the FSU stuff and we've had Jim Molan talking about that and building the grassroots and all of that in the community. Do you feel like the Lions are going to be able to carry over the momentum they had last year with Rourke just in terms of popularity in the community? I think that it rourke's magnificent season really the Spark was already there. The excitement was there with having new ownership that was involved, having new ownership that was at the grassroots level, handing out scarves and schwag at flag football games sponsoring the flag football leagues. The Lions hadn't had that for a while. So that kind of started the Ember a little bit, breathed some life back into the team and then Nathan Rourke was just gasoline and just boom. There was just this massive interest in the team and yeah, I don't know who their halftime or show will be for the home opener, but they keep teasing it and I think it'll be, hopefully it won't be chill whack again. I think they're demographic. They do get their demographic a little lower. Not that there's anything wrong with classic rock, but let's make a little lower. I think they're really making an effort to scratch and claw their way back into the number two spot in Vancouver sports. Like no one's going to be touching the Canucks because the Canucks are the Canucks, but the white caps are in a very popular league, especially in the States. I think it's the number three league down there now. So interest is rising in that. Lions have been lucky in that the white caps have been terrible for a decade, no success. So if they can get some wins on the board and last year challenge for a great cup, make it to the playoffs, make some noise that that's going to even give 'em a bigger ramp into season four with Amar for season three. So I think absolutely last year, huge fire. The interest is still there. Even though Nathan has gone to the N F L now, I think there's still a lot of interest in this team and with what they're doing just to make an experience for everybody. Yeah, absolutely. I think it'll be even better than last year. Well, because I think they know Nathan phenomenal talent. Nathan wasn't exactly the most electric personality and he was on the show pre kind of that season and all of that. But I think with Vernon and Keon and Lucky and I mean even Dane to some extent, I think Dan's had stories in the past talking about his upbringing and his heritage and everything. I think you have a really marketable team there. If they can perform even modally well, whenever on the field, I think you have a lot of stars there that you can build around because Luie Whitehead is, I don't, I've been to the, I don't care, I'll do whatever I want and I'm doing sidelines. It gives in that swagger where he's still all in. But you can tell he's a little bit above kind of what's going on. Yeah, absolutely. I mean you just have to look at his, everyone's wondering how is he going to get to the game, how is he going to enter the game? Is it going to be on a horseback, is it going to be on ice cream card, is it going to be on a unicycle? It's just that fun kind of modern social media content and with a great personality, luck like lucky, it's just easy to sell that to people. And like you said, there's lots of great personalities and stories on the team, very marketable. So I won't say that Baker and Nick have an easy job, but it's a lot easier to sell people when they're very outwardly energetic and enthusiastic. And I'm not saying Nathan, I love talking to Nate when the cameras are off. He's a different guy but you know are right on camera. He was very straightforward. Straightforward, yeah. Would you rather sell Vernon or Lucky or would you rather sell Trevor Harris here in Regina? I mean, I think there's certain social media teams have, I can think that is a tougher sell here. Whichever hair is coming in. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean the lion have no shortage of guys that they can sell and I really fear for those guys trying to big up Trevor Harris. Last thing for me, we so did the uniforms, we're doing the bone and blackout and whatever and all of that. I told Matt Baker, I want to work the mark has to get to the point where I get those jerseys sent to me, Don and Dolly dinner, whatever. I said I wonder, how do I get on that? I want to get on that level here. We've had the owner of the team on our show for about 35 minutes, but that we'll get there. But then the Argos do it now. And I think Montreal, they said they're doing the New York from next year. Are we a fan of this? Are we just trying, is this false sparking? Is this a false fire? What do you make of this? Well I would actually like to take personal credit for the lions changing their uniforms this year. I'd been lobbying Mar since it came to bring back the gun metal gray. Those are dope. I'll make, those are my favorite lions jerseys of all time. Even though you couldn't read the numbers of the letters on the back. Just I love the color scheme and so I think you kind of took that under advisement. Tapped myself on the back and came out with these jerseys. I think the blackout one is nice, you know, can't go wrong with black and orange. It's pretty classy. The fog gray or the bone. A fog. Yeah, fog. That's what It was pretty nice. Izzy, I will give him that. I think that you have to change things up if you're going to be, you want to differentiate yourself and continue to evolve because I don't think the CFO can afford to stay stagnant. You need to freshen it up. And so I like the Toronto uniforms, baby blue. I, I'm a UNC guy, so I love that color scheme. I love to see what they come out. You said Montreal's coming up with the I Think next year. I think they said. Yeah, I, I'd love to see, I think it's great. Yeah. I mean I'd love to see you Winnipeg do something different. I think they have the classiest color scheme, but they all look the same to me. I, they've changed it, but they all kind of look the same. So I'd like to see something from out of Winnipeg. They're the franchise, the model franchise. Do something different. Do something bold. The big ass W on there. Right though, Come on, do something. So I don't know if you want to market the bombers in this political kind of climate. I don't know if that's the best. It's like the Washington Bullets. That wasn't the best name. We had to change that back in the day. Yeah. Last thing for me. How do you feel just C F L existing here going into this year welfare check on the league and the health and everything else? I think it's stronger than it was coming out of the pandemic. That it's not hard. It's not hard. I think there's a crop of new owners. There's some new life in the league. They're really trying to push to do things differently than they did before. So I think they're really trying to evolve. Liz, it'll be interesting to see how they continue to coexist with X F L as much as they never want admitted. It's had a huge, huge impact on the CFL player front. So if they can find a way to coexist and not compete, I think that would only help the league. But as a individual entity, I think it's the strongest place has been in at least last decade. Last decade. So I think they're doing the right things now. Let's see if they can attract some new blood in the league. I need to replace some of those fans who maybe aren't watching as much TV as they used to. Let's just say that. So yeah, no, I think they're in a good place. I think it was a direct quote from John HODs is said like CFL staff wants C X F L and US L to die. I think that was basically a direct quote on the podcast about, but I mean it is, it's competition for players and I think long term if the X F L and or US F l survive and it increases Canadian talent up in the CFL because they have to look inward. I mean I think that that's great. It helps everybody mean and everyone, it is more jobs and more roles for everybody. So I think it should be good. Jj, anything else from you? I appreciate it here and maybe we'll get you on here sometime during the season. Hopefully. I think they predicted nine or 10 wins. They had the ratings come out this week, some wager thing. Talked about all the team wins or how many wins people are going to get. The BC Lions were like a 10 win team I think. Oh, I would've given them a little more than that, but hey, I'm not the guy setting all those money bets. Yeah, interesting. But anytime you want to talk BC Lions happy to come on anytime my friend. Awesome, thank you so much. No problem. Well, I appreciate it. We have, I guess joining live correspondent here from our training camp. We have Mike Hogan here with the Argonauts. How are you doing sir? Doing great. Better now that I'm talking to you. Well I appreciate that. So now that the Argos have won, do you get to go around when you and Dave Campbell and all your other guys do your secret meetups? Do you get to flex a little bit harder with the Argonauts, the Great Cup Champions? I love the fact that I will so far I have never, and this will continue right now because I didn't bring up breakup champions. You did. So anytime I've been interviewed across the country, I have never brought that up. I've always let the other people do that, including in Hamilton where I did three different shows last week. And I'm proud to say I didn't bring it up with us. But that's exciting though. It's good. We were there exciting. And obviously with the Jack Kellys of it all and McLeod and now he's in the US develop, it seems like the Argos are in the news a lot, which is exciting because obviously we've talked in the past and others about everything. It seems like kind of the arrows pointing up a little bit. Is that how you feel? Yeah, it is. Every little bit helps. We got quite a bit of a boost from the uniform release and the helmet release and the one 50 News conference where we had CTV C, bbc, global T S N, and we had all the major dailies there, which is not a normal occurrence for an AraC news conference, sadly, in this market. So to see that kind of response, hopefully we're becoming the cool kids again. You'll see more people on the stands at Bemo Field this year, which is great news. And this is our 150th anniversary season. So we've got a lot of bells and whistles planned. Some of which we've revealed, some we have not. Yeah. Is that one of those things, it feels like planning must start a little bit further out and looking forward to the season. It feels it's cool and I know Mike Mitchell cover covers Ya Argos for c l New sub and he's a lifelong Argos fan but it does seem like it's a really cool milestone for the C F L, for the Argos, I mean for everything for the city and all the owners are everyone across the board from for 150 years now. One of the things that we did, and we did mention this at the news conference, so we're not really speaking out of turn and it's got a little bit of play so far on social media. A panel of five of us went through a Argonaut history 150 years and came up with the 150 top moments in Argo history, which was not easy. Luckily we had, I don't know if James Fraser or not, he runs the Twitter account. Bygone Boatman, yeah, he's a history professor here at the University of Guelph whose passion is pre C F L Toronto AAW football. This list would be different without him. The author Paul Woods, the longtime broadcaster and lifelong Argo fan Don Landry and Danny Webb, the longest serving Argo employee who started as the equipment manager in 1985. The five of us got together and it was about a three month exercise and I don't know how many hundreds of hours of manpower were spent on this, but we were actually very, very surprisingly happy with the list. I think we have every decade represented except the 1890s. Well there you go, I like that. So a lot of pressure here coming into this season to perform. We've had the pre-season game. I want to talk a little Brian Scott and everything else, but how did you feel like the Argos have looked so far headed into the season? What's expected? I mean the defense is ahead of the offense and usually that's the case in training camp and Chad Kelly has looked really good. I think everybody's a little relieved. I don't think it was a question at all, but there's always that thing in the back of your mind until you see it. But Chad looks fantastic so we're not worried there. Somebody I assume is going to step up and take the reins in that number two battle. You mentioned Brian Scott, it's a three-way race and one day one guy will look great, Cameron Dukes will look great the next day and Ben Holmes will look great the next day and then it seems everybody will take a little bit of a regression and somebody else will step up the next day. So that's one of the things I think in the final preseason game that's that's going to be something that the offensive side of the ball's going to be looked at looking at. But I think it's, the defense looks fantastic, not everybody's been healthy in camp, somebody gets a little knit, they really err on the side of caution. So one day doesn't become one week, give them the day off and ready to go. The entire coaching staff is back, which with the championship team especially is exceptionally rare. But we're lucky here in Toronto where everybody's stayed put. Well that's the thing with the quarterbacks and it's obviously in all these leagues and the C F L and even this year with the round table, Trevor's moving and Cody's moving and Vernon like all that to have Chad Kelly here, you know have this monumental McLeod who's at least in the time that we've covered the C F L one of the mainstays, at least with the Argos and I know our time is very short in the Argos history, but he goes and then it's like, oh my god, we have just this up and coming star here ready to go. I mean how fortunate is that for the Argos and is that, what do you attribute that to be able to know that to be in such a good spot right now? Yeah, that's great. He knows the offense. It's not like there was a learning curve for him. His learning curve was last year in terms of assimilating a new game, the new rules, the size of the field, the size of the ball, all of that stuff. He's used to that now. He got number two snaps last year, got to playing a game at the end of the season and we did a conversation and you can read Conversa about our conversation at ar ca. He says that the game he got in at the end of the season probably meant more in to his confidence than even the Gray Cup because it had been so long since he had actually played a full game. He got in, played really well and that kind of got his mojo back. And who knows what happens in the breakup if he didn't get those reps in the final game, which meant nothing in the standings. But to the guys who got in, especially the first timers like Chad, it meant the world. So he's got the keys to the car, he's cool with that. He's been a leader vocally and otherwise and has looked really good in camp. So if there are any worries that anybody may have had in the back of their minds, and I know he hasn't even played an exhibition game yet, just scrimmage, but I don't think anybody here is worried about Chad at all. Well I hear a lot in you, we've had nailer on the show in the past and talking about this learning curve, quarterbacks coming up from America there. Here's Chad it seems like, is it just his, what do you attribute that to him being able, I mean one exhibition game at the end of the season is it make a great quarterback. So what do you attribute that to him being able to step up? Well All of the best quarterbacks, he's a film junkie, he wants to get better. His long term goal most American players is to get back to the N F L and he's putting in the work. He was up here all off season, he was in with Dignity Allo, he was working out with the receivers. He is not too far from home being from Buffalo, but which an hour and a half, an hour depending on traffic down the Q E W. So it's within driving distance to go and see his family and friends. But he stayed up here and really threw himself at the offense and even was looking back apparently at stuff that Denwoody had done in Calgary. He just really wanted to know the genesis of the offense. So he knows it inside and out and that work ethic has shown, he talks about doing the right things this year, being in bed on time, putting the right things into his body in terms of nutrition and he's put in the work if you want to talk to him, if you're a member of media after practice, you're going to have to wait a while because he's doing other stuff, whether it be Gassers across the sideline or taking snaps with Peter Castro or throwing with the receiver, he's always doing something so nothing he does this year is going to be by accident, that's for sure. In terms of the backup quarterback position and not to be a biased journalist here on my end, so Brian Scott has famously been on the show. Ben Holmes has famously no showed our show. So if you want to know where my loyalties lie in terms of men getting the second, but I saw Ben Grant tweeting writing a lot about Brian Scott. We were all communicating in our, we have our X F L little media group and I know that it was said that it was the worst game that Ben's played in his time and also Brian looked really good, but where Ben was there last year, Brian's coming in. Has Brian impressed or what did you make of his performance? Yeah, and again having that pro background's going to help, there are the nuances that he has to pick up and I talked to him and he said one of the things I asked him about the 22nd clock, because I've talked to guys who have come up even playing in the N F L and the 22nd clock will beat them quicker than anything else because they're used to coming in, getting them play in their helmet, kind of sauntering up to the line, looking over the line of scrimmage, calling the audible checking down and by the time that happens plays Don. But he said it really seems to help his rhythm, he really liked it playing with it not only in the scrimmage here but in the preseason game at Hamilton. So he's really seeming to pick it up. Ben Holmes had a tough day, he's the first guy to mention through two interceptions it sounds like both were on him. The last guy going to blame a quarterback or a receiver because I don't know the route, but just hearing anecdotally that it was on, Ben took full responsibility for it. I asked him what he's looking to do on Thursday night and he said how about not throwing two interceptions because he knows he had a rough one. No question about that. And with Cameron Dukes, Cameron showed a lot too. He showed that little giddy up, an underhand toss coming out of his end zone, a nice scramble to set up a two point conversion. He showed a mobility that really helps in this league. And after watching Mac, God love him. He got a lot of strong suits, mobility ate his long suit although he could run when he needed to and it shown that obviously in the U S F L as well with some interesting highlight runs where he kind of got cartwheeled at the end of one of them. But that mobility with Chad and the guys behind him is just, it's interesting because we've had guys like Ricky Ray up here, mc, Claude Bethel Thompson who are more of the traditional back drop back guys. So to see the guys running around a little bit and extending plays, I think Argo fans are going to like that style and hopefully everybody is able to fulfill what they want to do by buying that little bit of extra time by scrambling into the pocket. Well I think that's a good point. And you have in Ben got cut kind of pre the U S F L, he kind of got cut in their training camp, but having Brian Scott there and even Chad and his background, but getting these I guess fresh quality quarterbacks up there, I think it's exciting and we talk all the time as the XE L, how are they all going to do all these quarterbacks and everything, but at least right now it seems like the Argos are in a really good spot. Not to focus too much on that, but in terms of carrying over from last year to this year, just championship team and everything, the rest of the roster, how do the Argos look here headed in? Because obviously it wasn't the prettiest season in Win but they got it done and I heard they just said we're on the sidelines, we all got to get together here and Winnipeg and kind of everything else. But how have they done carrying over to the season? It's been interesting because I have not seen any championship merchandise. I have not heard anybody talk about 2022 unless they were asking about it. Ryan Denwoody at the beginning of the camp said, Hey, if you're looking in the rear view mirror, you're not looking ahead and if you look too much in the rear view mirror, we're screwed essentially. So been the mantra is 2022 is nice, take from it what you needed in terms of your development, but CFL's going to be tough. The east is going to be tough again, Hamilton has improved, Ottawa has improved. Montreal might be the wild card in all of this. They might be better than people think or they may be the weak sister this year, but you've got a few veterans on that team who want to win and they're always that surprise team in the cfl so you can't take anything for granted. This team knows they just can't throw on the beautiful new uniforms, go out there and win the games, they've got to go and put in the work and that's been evident this year and all of the coaching staff has been very, very firm in terms of okay, this is what we have to do to get better and it's been always looking ahead. Dinwoodie's mantra is 2% better every day and been the goal is to get better every day. I was just Scott off with JJ Adams talking BC Lions preview and I said the most intriguing story enemy is Cody for Jar when Montreal, I can't think of a more exciting just, I mean he's been on the show now in the off season I'm a fan and I think he's kind of going in full heart, full steam ahead. I don't think he knows any different but I think the east people and you get all these poo-pooing and everything but the east, I think it's going to be exciting this year. I think there's a lot of mobility over there and you know, get mazzoli back and everything else to see how that looks. Yeah, I agree. I don't think anybody in the east is taking anybody for granted. Things will obviously start to play itself out but you know mentioned last year the kind of weird season it was, I don't know the last time a team and maybe it happens more than you think, but it was really weird where we led the league in games due injury and still won the Great Cup. People looked and said, oh Toronto, oh Toronto. Oh Toronto. We never really had our starting lineup until toward the end of the season and looked oddly enough playing our best football toward the end of the season. So that hoping obviously that replicates this year, but maybe a fewer number of games missed due to injury because it was nuts last year. It really is a testament of the coaching staff and the guys who were in those backup roles that were able to come in and sustained success until the guys got back and a lot of them just didn't start rolling back just before the end of the season. I got to talk with Coach Denwitty during the media day at the end of the season. I don't get a lot of obviously opportunities to kind of talk one-on-one with C F L head coaches like that, but incredible guy conversation. What does the growth that you've seen him have here as a leader coming in and obviously with it was messy kind of here we're in the C F L, we're getting through everything and moving into this year more normalcy, but what do you attribute from him to just the leadership on the team? He's still a tough coach and then maybe this goes back to something that we touched on a little bit earlier today. His first year he really wanted to work the guys and get as many plays in training camp so he could take a look at film and implement what he wanted to do. And this year if a guy is a little bit nicked up, it'll be take the day off where he is pushing a little less. He knows the guys now, the veterans especially. So that's a big help. But I think he learned in the first year there was a play at the end of a scrimmage where he was about, okay, maybe I should let the guys go. It's a hot day now let's play one more play. And in that play, Isaiah Cage was injured for the entire season. So that was a learning curve from coach and he continues to get better and every coach does, every player does with the more experience they have in a specific role and he's continuing to learn as a head coach and has the respect of everybody in the organization. And two years here, he won the east in the regular season, came within 15 minutes of winning the Eastern final and then won the Great Cup last year. So he's been very successful here and I don't think anybody here expects the Argos to be anything but successful. Good enough to win the Great Cup. We hope so from sitting here in Guelph, but there are a lot of good teams in the league. Last thing from me today, obviously you get to know a lot of these players and stories and stuff. Who are you looking to see kind of standup performances this year on the field? Yeah, I'm interested to see guys who performed well in other uniforms and how they play here. Flo Flow Ariola is a guy who really flashed last year. If you look at a stats, you go, huh, but if you're to kind of scratch under the surface and just look at quarterback pressures, which isn't a widely circulated stat sadly in the C F L you'd see what kind of pressure he would put on a Darius picket coming over to play the Sam linebacker spot after being Montreal's most outstanding defensive player a year ago, Jordan Williams who astonishingly we were able to acquire on a trade had nothing to do with BC or being unhappy in bc. His day job is as a day trader and he was tired of getting up at three o'clock in the morning to get work done in BC because of the time change wanted to come east and the Argos traded the ninth overall pick and the CFO draft to get 'em and if this guy in his third season going into his third year, let's just say he wouldn't have lasted until the ninth spot in the draft. So it was a good trade for the Argos and that gives a little flexibility there because he can play the mike, he can play the will. So I think those are the kind of guys and I'm curious to see how Roberts and Daniel comes back after a couple of years of being injured. He's looked really good at the field halfback spot, so I'm sorry, the boundary halfback spot. So I'm really curious to see how he does under a full season, but they've got some guys, there's some good guys in this camp. Well Mike, I appreciate it. I'm excited. I'm really excited for the season now because we've got through the X ffl here and we've been doing that and we're getting the US L rolling through. I do it feels like putting on old shoes now. We're going our third season then the C F L coverage, I appreciate it. We have our flights booked to Hamilton so I hope I see the Avants there. Hopefully again America's CFL team and the BC Lions. But I hope to see you guys there and I really appreciate your time. Hopefully we get you on here, we get some games rolling and talk some more argon nuts. Anytime you need me on, just ask and thank you so much for what you're doing. Thank you. Well I just purchased my ticket here. I couldn't fly into Hamilton. I was trying to, I'm coming back to Toronto here for Gray Cup in November so hopefully I'll be seeing this gentleman. Steve Milton, how are you doing sir? You definitely will. I think every night in the Raider suite, won't you remember we have a suite there for all Raider football writers of Canada and you're one of them. Well that's good. We're all in. I'm in, I've got everything. We have Steve here, we're talking, we've done BC Lions preview on this show, we've done the Argonauts and now we're doing the Thai Cats here. Steve finishing training camp here. How is everything going in Hamilton with the Thai cats? Well it was going, I would think fairly well read until yesterday there was some kind of accident on campus and it wasn't on a field with a player they had how you're always looking for those little gems. This is a team that brought in a lot of high priced help, proven help, but they needed in to because of the salary cap, have a couple of surprises at a couple spots and they found one in a guy named Justin McGriff that comes out of Utah State. You don't see this in this league. He's foot six and fast and makes really good moves. He is been terrific in training camp. In the exhibition game last week he dropped the first pass after running a brilliant route and out distancing the guy by 10 yards on the straight fly, dropped it and then caught four passes in very, very heavy track traffic right over the middle to prove that. So he had made the team and had made the team as a starter and yesterday there was some accident, I don't know what it was, but it was off the field and it was somewhere on campus and I don't know what it was, I don't know if he tripped and fell on, there's a lot of construction around here or whatever it was. I'm still investigating that he's done for the season so he never even got to play. He was the kind of guy that exactly what they were looking for, he was the tallest receiver by three inches. The quarterback they're using isn't isn't the tallest guy in the world. So it always helps to have a guy that you can see by looking over the top instead of having to look underneath. Yeah, so that was a bit of a setback but they were very, very, very deep at receiver both Canadian and American receivers and Anthony Johnson who was briefly with the Buffalo Bills was a guy they were looking at as a possession receiver. He played last year. He's out but only for a couple of games. So other than that they've been okay. They have some injuries on the defensive front, but they had too many players proven CFL players on the defensive front anyway, somebody was going to have to go on some kind of list or get cut. So now they're hurt. But yeah, they're a veteran team so I think that injuries could play a factor, but they've built that into the way they've built their roster. It feels like there's obviously with Bo and everything else, a high level of expectations this year going mean. Is it one of the higher team profiles in terms of we kind of got to deliver this year? Yeah, probably similar to Zach the year he was coming off the great year and had come back after injury. This in recent years, Reid, this is the closest I've seen to this year or nothing type of thing mean they've got some futures tied into this too, but this is made for a hometown great cup. They almost won the last time they had a hometown great Cup, they had a team that was built for that, but this is built even more for that. They went and got only players that had had some suc, some success either in the league finals or the conference finals and guys that they upgraded a lot of positions they're up against or over the salary capsule and that's have injuries to accommodate that. So yeah, I think it's not great cup or bust but it's pretty well nothing but at least an appearance in the Gray Cup will do. I mean anything else will be a failure then Anything short of appearing in the Gray Cup is a failure. It's just weird. Obviously we were there back Hamilton coming up short and so close here. It just felt like they completely collapsed last year at the Thai Cats. And I know that Dan had some injuries and everything and obviously he got shipped over here to bc, but why did you attribute to such the kind of collapse last year There? Lack of sustained mental toughness I think and emotional toughness now that began at quarterback for sure and Dan would be the first one. I felt he took almost too much blame there, but there was a lot to blame. There was a lot to blame there, especially early. They fell behind and every game looked the same. Reid, even the games that they won where they do well in the first half, I thought there was a coaching issue last year in terms of adjustments at the half. They'd look really, really good. The defense was good most of the year except on always a key drive in the fourth quarter they'd get a bad punt in there. They all looked the same. Even the games that they won, they lost the first four and the fifth they won. The other team was coming back and kind of ran out of real estate and it was Ottawa or they would've been oh in five with every game looking the same. The Great Cup looked the same. Sorry, the playoff lost to Montreal looked the same, I'm wondering, wasn't an imprint, they poo poo maybe on this one, but I wondered if there was, wasn't a bit of a psychological imprint of losing two great cups in a row, particularly the way they lost the second one at home when it was theirs. They was theirs. It took until the fourth quarter until till Zach found what everybody knew was going to be a penetrable weakness because they were missing a couple players in the defensive backfield. But it took him until the fourth quarter to find it. And even then they had a chance at one of the greatest comebacks at history there and it was, I would say it dropped pass in the end zone, that pass was there, great defensive play, but you got to make that play and they win and then they lose it in overtime. And even an overtime there was an interception in which the offensive receiver should have broken it up as a defensive player so they'd have one more play. So there's that and I'm not sure that when they started having some turnovers and fumbles from key positions in the first couple of games last year and got off to a, they usually get off to an oh two start or a one three start and except that one year they went 15 and three and they usually do that and they're fighting, well they were really fighting from a hole last year and that just problems multiplied. They didn't have good kicking, they didn't have good placement kicking till maybe seven games, eight games into the season last year. And when that came and they solidified the offensive line, the quarterbacks started playing better. Dan had a pretty good last third of the season. Were you surprised to see him basically traded? I mean it kind of shipped off to BC for kind of a big of chips here it feels like. Well yeah, I think they were in a way trying to help him out, but they didn't really help him out that much. I mean they couldn't have brought him back after, I mean it was just one of those things where they felt they got a sense that Bo was available. They got a sense when they saw him in the West semi-final that his arm was okay and when he came off the bench in the fourth quarter and that kind of solidified things. I think the fact that the ding was so obviously and self-admittedly and publicly and I commend him as a human being for basically talking about the stresses that he was under and the pressures that he was under and admitting a lot of things. But at all, that isn't always the right way to do it if you happen to be the court of a football team. So I think that's what they felt as a reporter. I felt differently watching him as a human being conducting himself and be honest about it. I really like that. But they know that he's a pretty good player, but they think that Beau has the championship pedigree and they like to Schultz enough to keep him around as a backup. So they're pretty good one too at quarterback there. So assuming that Bo and Bo takes comes in, takes command, I mean he really runs things and he has a presence with the defense too really. And he brought players, players came here because of that. I mean they signed some big names and that wasn't going to be the number one reason those players came, but it was a factor And obviously his pedigree and mental all of that stuff. But I mean physically is from what you've seen in training camps, is that about right? Did he play a little bit yet or It was, they weren't sure if he was going to go in. He, yeah, he won't play Friday night he played only two series and really they were short series. He was out by the end of the first quarter. They liked what he saw. He threw, he was three for six, but two of the six were drops, including the one I mentioned at the top of the show to Justin McGriff who ran this incredible pattern. Bo hit him in full stride right in the midst and he dropped it and about a 50 yard pass and so yeah, he's looked pretty good. He's looked pretty accurate. I'm sure he doesn't have the same, he is not the same guy that he was 10 years ago, but he's smart. He won't allude people with his speed the way some other quarterbacks do or the way that bow did at one point. But he does allude, I mean he just can make that one like Ricky Ray was later in his career, just make that one little shift with his shoulders and all of a sudden the guy goes rushing by him so you don't have to run out into the open to do it and he can get out enough and they've really, really made sure the offensive line is ready. They'll go with three Canadians, not four. I mean Chris Vanille is there as an option, but he's hurt likely out the first six games and didn't play much last year. So they've really taken care to, they're spending money oner tackles that left tackle bringing back Joel Figueroa who started here back in 2013 and he may be a little longer than the tooth, but he's got a lot of experience and Bo likes him because he's big and James Butler is a tremendous running back. So they had a pretty good running back who ran downhill hard last year, but this guy has more ability and a quicker first few steps. So he is got breakaway speed once he gets to the second level. Well that was actually going to be my next question was about Butler and obviously we were talking with JJ over for the BC Lions and kind to me that was a big loss when they didn't pick up his contractor or whatever and he decided to go. How has he made a difference so far? Do you think he's going to be a big difference maybe? Yeah, they're going to use him on using him in a variety of ways. I mean he's pretty good out of the backfield catching the ball. So I think what they're going to try and do is isolate him in a couple of ways. They may swing him into a short side wide receiver at times, either on a swing pass, but the bubble, I think the bubble screen is what they're really looking at there. Where at the worst he's going to be with somebody if the other guys even come close to making the other two guys even come close to making their blocks. And I don't know that with his speed and his size he can go over or around people. That's the feeling and assuming he stays healthy and they're looking for a similar type backup. So there's a bit of a runoff between two guys for his backup, but it'll be clearly as a backup and practice or type things. He was a big get for him just as their middle. They wanted to get tougher at middle linebacker. I mean their middle linebacker made the All-star team, the Eastern All-Star team last year led the team in tackles fourth most tackles, fifth most tackles in Tyca history. But I think he's, German is a much more physical type of player, very much a physical guy and they're looking for that. They needed to, they thought they needed to get more physical and when I talked at the top about I thought they lacked a little bit of emotional toughness at key moments last year. I think they felt that at times that was related to physical toughness too. I mean they lost a lot of fourth quarters last year a lot. I mean at one point in the season, particularly the first 12 games, the margin by which they'd been outscored in the fourth quarter was spectacular. It was ridiculous. It was like the game was played in two parts In terms of coaching staffer this year, right? Bri rivals back and we've had them slip up. What do you make of the staff that they have going in this year? Well they did, one thing that happened, I don't know if you're aware of there, there was a cap on coaching staffs financially and on numerically and also on football operations numerically cash wise. So what they did was roll that all into one. So instead of the being capped at 11 coaches plus a salary cap for both for opera football ops and for football coaching, the whole thing now is capped. There's an overall salary cap for all the football operations. So that includes, that doesn't include trainers and doctors and those kind of people, but it does include scouts and GMs and all of those things. Even the portion of probably Orlando because he's president of football ops and you could have 25 jobs in those positions. And so the tyca chose to go to 13 coaches that way. So they have now an extra coach on special teams and they brought, brought in the former Argo head coach Scott Milovich in a similar role to when they brought on Kahari Jones last year, but they're doing it from the start of the year. Last year was in result I think was a reaction to offensive woes that team couldn't, that team could put up yards last year but could not score touchdowns. Now that's another reason they went and got Bo, like Bo is touchdown first always Bo considers turning it over to the field goal kicker a defeat. So that mentality is something that they wanted there, but also the offense wasn't scoring a lot of touchdowns in general at you for a lot of reasons. So I wondered if Scott Milovich was there to kind of help with a little bit. I mean Tommy Conde, who is the offense quarter is also the quarterbacks coach and is good with quarterbacks. He's developed a lot of them over the years, so it's just an extra set of eyes, that kind of thing. Scott Milovich, of course Orlando worked with him in the 2012 Gray Cup team when they were both with the Argos and Milovich of course is a very proven football man. He doesn't want to be a head coach right now, but I think he, he's going to commute a little bit from his Florida home, but I think eventually he wouldn't mind getting back in. This is a pretty good way for him to do it. In terms here, just looking forward, I'm looking here before we get you out of here, obviously big game next week, Winnipeg at Winnipeg going to be a big, what are you looking to see, and I mean I know we have the pre-season games and stuff this weekend, but when it comes to the real deal, what are you looking for against Winnipeg that first week? Hold onto the ball? I think that's the big thing. We don't know if Seth's small way back, that's the kicker and he's been away, his wife had a baby and so he is on the suspended list because he wanted to take longer than you normally would. He's a family guy. I don't know what else is going on there. So hang onto the ball. I mean that was the big problem much of last year, particularly early. In fact, many of the last part of the last decade except for a year or two, hanging onto the ball early in the season and beating yourselves has been a big thing. I think they're looking for fewer penalties than they got against Toronto. A little more disciplined that way. And now you've got two big possession receiver or two big receivers out of the five you're going to use not playing in Anthony Johnson and who will be back and Justin McGriff who will not. So Bo's pretty good at spreading the ball around and the manner in which they use Butler on offense on defense, I'm on. I'm also looking for Lawrence Woods to maybe take one back on. He's playing defense, but he's a hell of a punt returner and a kick returner too, so they'll use him a bit back there probably just on kickoff returns. And so I'm looking for special teams there with Ryan Bolt's influence because he's a heck of a special teams coach on defense. The lineback and core is fairly new. The front four has four starters, but they've also got four starters hurt. They had eight starters to fill basically six positions, so the rotation is six or seven and see how that will affect them against Winnipeg who has a pretty good running game and has the biggest line in the league still. I think that line's not as good as it once was, but it's still among the premier lines in the league. Those are the three things. How do they do essentially, how do they do the trenches and how does Bo find enough guys and is Butler the key to the offense? Is it spinoff Butler, Butler and Tim White? Is that the way it's going to be? And is there, at one point I wondered if there was enough football to go around greed, they just had so many people who could play, but Bo's used to that. He played on some pretty powerful Calgary teams. They didn't always get to the breakup or win it, but they were always very powerful, very deep. Well, I'm excited. I think this season's going to be good. I'm sure a lot of eyeballs here with Hamilton, with Beau and hosting and all that stuff, so hopefully we'll get you back on here once we get some games. But Steve Milton over here with the Hamilton Spectator, really appreciate it. Thanks Reid. A huge special thanks to all of our guests today for coming on. Like I said, really appreciate the professor Andrew Murray making time. I said Andy, I texted him the other day, the layoffs. I go, we need the professor this week, Andy, coming on whenever he is called, doing due diligence and then obviously Evan Smore taking time, busy getting into the summer and his busy work schedule. Certainly appreciate Evan's time. Thanks again to Furby everyone over at Run the Sims, everyone there doing the work for the U S F L and the X F L, all of that fantasy stuff that's kind of way above my head, but certainly appreciate their insights. And then the three C F L riders we had on today, JJ Adams and Mike Hogan. Mike's not the writer, Mike's an announcer, but even what I'm saying, the three C F L talent, JJ Mike, and then certainly appreciate Steve Milton as well. Looking forward to catching up, probably having a beer with at least Steve here. Coming up in Hamilton for November, we have our ticket spot for the Great Cup. That'll do it for me today. Like I said, light, you'll keep track on Twitter and the YouTube channel, but Pat and I will be here Monday for our US F L recap, C F L Live pre-game show on Thursday. And then a special live episode with Andy Murray next Friday. Busy Times rookie draft episode coming as well, June 16th. Thanks as always, like and subscribe. See you next time.

USFL 2023 Week 7 Results: Winners and Losers of USFL Week 7, What Did We Learn?

Well, happy Tuesday everyone here coming off of the Long Memorial Day weekend. Hope everyone had a good time coming today Tuesday, pat and I felt like it would probably be better than trying to do it on the holiday and I know Pat was working hard over the weekend. Dorothy's back at school now so I can get back to talking about US L Football here. Interesting games this weekend. Nothing quite as bad as the blowout that the Dallas Stars suffered last night. Six zero against the Vegas Gold Knight, but I'm sure we'll have fun stuff to talk about today. I'm going to bring in Pat. Pat. How are you doing sir? Yeah, a little tired. Shocker. Shocker guys. The USS f l hater in me. I did not watch all the games live, but because we have a show to do and I am a champion of these leagues, I watched them I think starting at 9:00 PM last night all the way till now. I watched them, I watched Yellow jackets, the season finale of that and I watched all the U S F L games until about 20 minutes ago. So I did that for you guys. I was thinking about this, so I was doing a little market research this week and just obviously over the long, let me change my microphone here. That would probably help me sound better. Doing a little market research here over the weekend. I think we are the highest view. It's a low bar, but I do think we're the highest viewed U S F L, either preview, recap, whatever. So the haters that we are, I was poking around the internet this weekend. We've had a lot of podcasts drop off after the X F L season. We've had obviously Stefan and Zack and them and their sports gambling network, whatever. A lot of different guys, but I think we have no off-season here, it's no days off. We have CFL started but I do think that we are as much as the haters we are. I just wanted to point that out. So you are doing good work there Pat. Well, I mean the haters come out to boost our engagement. A view is a view. So if I'm going to come on and on someone's show that I don't like and to say, Hey man, this is the worst video ever. Hey man, it's an engagement, them comments. So Pat here, we are exciting here week seven. I just got the standings up here. We'll go kind of week by week and all that. General thoughts here. You know you're coming fresh off having just watched all the games as well. Oh, I caught as much as I could throughout the weekend, especially the gamblers game and the stars. What did you make of U S F L week seven? So I just did my quarterback rankings and outside of Kenji Bahar it was actually some of the best quarterback play I think we've seen, like Troy Williams had an okay game. He was in the back end, LA led us, started out real slow. I think he was two of seven in the half in my notes I have right now or before the half. Obviously Deandre Johnson getting hurt not only hurts the team in tremendous way, but he's such a fun player of the watch and I, I've seen a lot of improvement from him this year, so it's really sad to see that Michigan gets back on track. Some breaking news on that. He was removed from the roster and then newsroom James Larson got it direct from the source that he was released. So there's an open quarterback vacancy there, so that's kind of a little bit shocking I guess. Who Was, yeah, say the, you didn't say the name. Oh, excuse me. Eric Barer out of Eastern Washington. He played in two games last year. He's a little, he's way more athletic comes from that Mike Leach air raid type offense if you're a C F L guy. Same school as a Vernon Adams, same type of player, same type of offense. They both came from Eastern Washington so I mean that's kind of sad but Josh love it's been put up or shut up for him the last two weeks with cars been strung out. He had a decent game last week this week. He obviously won player of the week. Magoo Magic continues the role obviously Cole Kelly with some big time throws while getting hit. Not the sexiest stat line but he made the plays when it needed to happen and that's why Memphis is, Memphis is a second now our boy M B T showing some fatigue, man, he's making some great throws and he starts off so hot and then cools off. I don't know if that's a script thing. I don't know if that's John d fpo getting Outcoached by John Chavis and Skip holds on the Birmingham side, but I mean M B T keeps him in it. West Hills they're running back looks really fatigued to me as well. I'd like to see more Anthony Jones, their backup, not because I think Anthony Jones is better than West Hills, but because the guy's been getting the almost 30 times a game, people don't realize how much of a thanks Chris, how much of he does in the receiving game as well and those hits add up man. Especially if you're going out for a pass and you don't get the reception, you still get a little nick, you're still putting max effort. So it is a little bit disheartening to see some guys just trail down. I think West Hills was a CFL guy as well, so maybe there's some fatigue of that. But I know you talked to Trey Watson last or two weeks ago. I talked to him last week and we talked about a little bit when I talked about him, about with Trey, about CFL to this, but off camera Trey was like, man, I'm just, I'm trying to get back to the N NFL etcetera, but I wasn't a hundred percent man. And I'm like, yeah, I don't blame you. You did May and then training camp in May to playing almost 10 games in the CFL and then January camp starts at the X ffl. So you got to take into account with a couple of these guys, especially Hills and N B T as well and you can even throw that bow into Sage Sarro who was injured last year and then comes into camp as well. Granted a little bit more advantageous for him, but he probably wasn't a hundred percent a couple weeks ago despite what his statistical output was. So I think we're seeing some fatigue by some guys who have been in NFL camps X ffl for five minutes, CFL last year. We're starting to see some of that in my opinion. But the story of the U S F L is the strong south versus a weak north, which was vice versa in the X ffl. So I'm very curious to see, obviously the tiebreaker was put out by US F L Twitter eerily similar to the counterpart, but in the end it is football so it doesn't get too complicated when it comes to tiebreakers, right? Yeah, I did, yeah, the U S F L it. It's interesting when they had the kickoff thing with the N F L the big vote last week and there was a lot of X ffl kickoff talk, we had a lot of U S F L like hey we also have an interesting kickoff too and now I think that they're like, oh yeah, the tiebreaker that went pretty viral with the X F L, we need to post that as well. Yeah, I mean these leagues football's football when it comes down to it, I like the X F L kickoff for the X F L. I don't know about it for the nfl sometimes the US PEL kickoff is just too much. It seems like the ball is starting at the 45 all the time so maybe it inflates the field at these kickers their stats a little bit because they're having more attempts in a 10 game span and that's something I'd have to dig into. And Greg Parks seems like he has a bunch of free time so he probably dug into it already, but something I always talk about with these leagues is special teams is where these guys are going to make their money so they need to return kicks, they need to run down the field, they need to do all this stuff stuff. The thing I like about the X ffl kickoff is that it keeps them healthy so they can go to the nfl, but what I like about the U S F L kickoff is that they are returning it more so they're getting more opportunity, the returners are getting more opportunity and then you're able to measure that speed from the guy running with the kicker. So I flip a coin depending on how I feel about it that day. Josh Simmons probably made himself a little bit of money this week of the mallers. He had some good returns. Isaiah Henney has been a top pump returner, so these guys are probably going to garner some workouts and interest based off their returnability alone. But in the end we don't talk about a guy who's running down as the gunner, like Vinny Papa caught a touchdown this week and then made a special teams tackle right after Vinny Papa is not going to be your wide receiver three or four on an NFL team. The only way he's going to make a roster is can he return punts, can he cover kicks? That was my big criticism with Reggie Corbin last year that I always get a lot of hate for is I would rather sign Cam Scarlet or Stevie Scott because they play on kickoff, not returning, but they play on the kickoff and Corbin's done a good job this year being more involved in the passing game, so maybe it adds to his value. He's a great kick returner, but special teams is where it's at and when we mess with it too much, we're messing with people's jobs essentially. I'll never forget Larry ISO of the Miami Dolphins couldn't play linebacker worth a lick, but man he made 20 tackles a year on kickoff. Well it's interesting, I was talking with Eric EA eager about this on, I believe it was last week's show, the one that from Friday with John Hodge and all of that and that's what he pointed out with the N F NFL kickoff and all of that going away, you're going to have guys like TE Kavante Turpin who came out. I think there was a soundbite over the weekend, well I'm still going to return the balls. I'm not going to fair catch, which I like, right? I mean that's a good spot for him. But a lot of these guys, like you said, that do make their money in the spring leagues transitioning to the N F NFL if there's not as much of a role for them. The other thing that I have with, you're talking about McLeod looking tired West Hills, I had a back and forth with one of the YouTube commenters this weekend because they were upset that the X F L wasn't allowing players to opt out to the C F L, right? It's only to the N F L and he goes, well I thought know this was a player league and I thought whatever. I'm like, it's not sustainable for most of these guys to play that many times to go from X F L to U S F L or whatever to C F L back to the N F L. Yeah, I mean there's certain cases Darnell Sankey could do the C F L or whatever we want to do that way, but it's just not sustainable to have 80 of these guys transitioning through the calendar all year, if that makes sense. No, and I don't read your comments specifically. I know I love to comment, but John Hodge was completely reasonable about wanting the one of these leagues to fail. They're losing American talent and if you're a Canadian nationalist, that's great. I'm not knocking on anyone for wanting to champion the Canadians to play in the Canadian Football League, but there's just a lot of football players in this weird purgatory of what am I doing and whatnot. So we always champion, there's six, there's 1600, approximately 1600 jobs right now for staff and players and coaches and all that goofy stuff and that's great and I'm Uber about that. But on the plus side, some of these guys are getting cut release, cut release like hey man, you got to think about your body. And it comes down to financials and Trey, Trey and I talked about that as well, but it's like if money's important but man, you're make an extra 10 grand playing in this league and then be done for your career because you blew out your knee because you're not recovering. You know hear stories about bets in the nfl, they don't practice till Friday because they're literally off their feet and taking to all shots left. And I get it, man, you got to do what you got to do. But some of this league hopping while I get it, a guy like Kyle suer going to make a little bit extra money this year because of it, but in the end man, it's like it's a little bit scary for these guys as health. A hundred percent, a hundred percent. Let's go through some of the games. Let's sure we'll get some other stuff here that we'll talk about. Stallions breakers coming in here. I think the biggest news of the weekend is McLeod no longer a bearded, bearded brethren. This was this, first of all, the mark has curse is definitely a thing. I posted this over the weekend. McLeod has not won a game since appear on the Mark House of meanwhile, Ben Holmes famously now of the Toronto Argonauts won a gray cup, not no showing my show going on that way, but McLeod shaving, it was like when Julio Rodriguez, when he was cold a little bit earlier this season for the Mariners, he wouldn't wear his pants up anymore. He would wear the full length. He wouldn't show his stockings when he was batting. Trying to, okay, I got to get my mojo back. Is that McLeod? What is going on here? I mean you got to do it's, it's cool until it's not right with the Beard Gang and whatnot. Obviously it's a little bit hot in Birmingham, you know, Think that's it. It's a temperature thing Mean maybe he tried to trim it up and it messed up. I mean McLeod, he's got a good set of hair on him, so I'm sure he is got decent Nordic genetics, which I think his middle name's Baltazar or something. Yeah, Yeah, McLeod, I wrote an article on him for your site, but I mean he's got good genetics. That beer will come back. I don't know man, what's up with these breakers? He's not playing that bad. He goes to coat spurts, but I think he started four four, yeah, John McLeod, John Beltazar, Bethel Thompson. That's a phenomenal name. 88, not that much younger than me. I mean I'm an 86 baby McLeod and I are practically the same age. Andy and I think his grandfather's name is Wilber Moose and he was like an Olympic shot put. Yeah, go on the Wikipedia page real quick. Okay. Wil Wilber Moose. Yeah, Wilbur Moose Thompson. Yeah dude, I, I've done a lot of M B T research but I mean dude, he put them in a position to win this week, man, I don't know how much of the game you call this weekend, but this one he's driving down, they got the ball to 20, I think it was like 40 something seconds left or something like that. And he threw a dime to one of his receivers that got ruled incomplete, then threw another dime to Jonathan Adams that set them up at the 40 or something like that. And the pocket broke down on that Hail Mary. He threw an interception. That was the big bugaboo, that was the big bugaboo on the last play of the game. But the guy guy's battling out there, man, and I mean he's not playing with the best offensive line and like I said, west Hills is a little bit haggard. He had 20, well he's got 20 attempts this week, probably another three or four receptions. I mean I think he had 90 something old purpose yards, which is probably his lowest output, which is scary, but I mean it is what it is. His receiving core is fine. I think that offensive line just needs to give him a little bit more time. He got hit a couple times by Quinn and polling and I, I'm not Quinn and polling last week for not being able to finish on the wild plays because he was getting in the backfield on almost every play and then just couldn't finish that tackle. So that loss of two turned to a game of no of one yard, which obviously didn't matter too much last week for the stallions. But in the end man, that Birmingham team's, no joke, I think coming into the season they returned like 60% of their roster and they retooled at the position too by picking up Rashard Smith and picked up Austin Watkins and Myron Mitchell and Davion Davis, former Exel guy Jay. So I mean we can knock the Breakers all we want, but in the end, stallions are the best team in the league right now. Well it's crazy because here obviously coming off of last year in the championship game and I think there was a lot of lamenting here at the beginning of the season and what's going on and it started slow here, but Magoo looks like the real deal. Obviously they're not asking to do as much as they are with McLeod here with, which is crazy 24 42. It's just like feels was like a Ben Deci stat line here going on, but I don't know, they're getting back, they got the home field. I thought the crowds looked better this weekend. We can talk about the Showboats during that, but it does feel like they're finally clicking again here and carrying back the way that we were talking in the group chat yesterday where the generals maybe didn't retool enough in the off season, bringing it back to the stallions, were able to kind of retain here what their core was and run it back here and they're looking really good And there was two special teams, blunders for the Breakers. I don't remember if they cashed in on both of them, but I know they cashed in on one. It was one on a fumble and a kick return and then a fumble on the punt. I mean special teams is always a big deal in my opinion. Kind of worked out, it kind of worked out in their favor. Big thing I wanted to shout out was Joe Clat did a great job commenting and I love the fact that they clowned on Perrera at the end of the game. I don't know if you saw that, but there was a punt and clap. Clap was straight up. I don't know what he's looking at here and I think that's kind of a running gag at this point. And also, let's really shout out Mike Perrera wearing the high water sweatpants in this. We lost you there, you cut out for the second where Mike per what Was wearing the high water like sweatpants, jogger, sweatpants in the studio. This is the thing, I don't know Mike Perrera gets heel heat on the show. I don't really understand that in the way that I don't think Plant Dino. Does it seem like, I mean it seems like we commented last week. I mean every time I'm watching the games, they're arguing with him about something or Sandy's not seeing it, right? Yeah, I mean I think they had what is a catch situation towards the end of the game, but there was a down punt by Kobe Wadman that was at the negative inch line and it clearly looks like the receipt, I have football with me and it clearly looks like he had the football like this when he tucked it back before he touched the end zone. But Perrera called it a touchback and I mean it made the game more interesting, came down to the final seconds obviously on an N B T E. But I, regardless of that, CLTs doing a great job. It's uber enjoyable to listen to. He obviously knows what he is talking about. How do you feel, I know last year there was a lot of criticisms for some of the U S F L teams and even this year people where they sound sleepy and I know they're not flying them in all the time and all of that, but we've got a lot of espn, we don't like this. When it came to the xfl, do you feel like the US L commentating is better or worse than the X l? I think it's better because they mentioned the bedding a little bit less. I mean that was my biggest concern. I think you see it over under on the thing when it shows up on the little score on score tracker or whatever you want to call on the scoreboard. But I mean Fox Fox is putting out their aam if I'm not their aam, their A minus team while the X F L with e s. Well the X ffl with ESPN was putting out guys and gals who were in the up and up and Jack Collinsworth last year was a guy you know got Cameron Hayward, he's been doing games here and there and whatnot. But I mean Jack Collinsworth, no scrub, Cameron Hayward's been around the game a decent amount, which obviously doesn't mean anything, but it seems like Fox is using the sideline reporters to be more of their training grounds and whatnot, which is where Jack was and now they have Jake, but Devin Gardner was there last year, but he's always fun to watch. I got a lot of love for Devin. Gar Gardner was a big fan of his at when he played at Michigan, so I mean it's cool too. It's cool to see Jake butt there as well. That's a guy I had high hopes her in the nfl a lot of injuries and still see him involved in the game and whatnot. Yeah, it feels like the sideline, like you said, I don't, and obviously it was kind of like Brock with the Exito back in 2020 and I know when he's been doing games with the US felt like we're kind of trying to replicate that we're, for whatever reason, it does feel a little bit more organic in the Exel. I know they're both doing it now and one's the other and they're both kind of going back and forth, but it does feel like it's a little bit more natural. I don't really feel like I ever gained a lot from the U S F L sideline stuff in the way that I thought some of this stuff that Cole Kubick was doing or whatever with the X F L this year felt a little more fun, if that makes any sense. And when Devin's doing it, I have no problem. But Jake Butt's never done this before, so this is his spring training essentially. But the commentating and the play-by-play with Joel Clat Menifee has done a couple games. Greg McElroy, no, excuse me, Greg McElroy's, the espn, but the one other gentleman, I'm feeling like they're bringing their A team to that because it's easier when you don't have to fly them out, you know, keep them in studio. Oh well no, and that's the thing, I mean it is interesting sometimes when they're talking like Kurt's like, oh you're not the feeling here in Detroit. It's like you're not anywhere near Detroit brother you are. You're saving money here on these flights, Bro. You're not even wearing pants right now. You're doing the hat. So let's see here. All right, so stars coming up here, getting back on track here. They, they're technically top in the north right now here at four and three. God, it's really, really weak. And we have a comment here from Gregory. We can talk about the parody later here with all the teams still being in it, what did you make here, Mallers here kind of continuing their downward slide obviously closer, but what do you make of this? I mean they're way more competitive this year and that says a lot to Coach h. Troy Williams had a mediocre game in my opinion. I think I ranked him at seven or eight. I ranked him at eight out just the head of Bahar dynamic on the rushing attack obviously. But he was there leading rusher. Usually what they're pretty good about doing is getting London to that 30, 40 yard range grok to that 25 to 30 yard range and then Williams does the rest. Cook looked a lot better. He only got sacked ones. He got hit a decent amount. But I've said before, I'll say it again, the stars have one of the better receiving cores in this group. Anytime he got Cory Coleman, regardless of his N NFL career, he's still a first round pick for a reason. I think he took one for 55 yards or something like that. It was great to see him continue to succeed a little bit too much rushing for cook his, I think he was almost 30 yards or something like that. I'm really worried about his health still. But they were able to keep him upright just enough. Colburn had a good coming out game, really leaned on him. Some tough rush rushes as well. But stars are probably going to win the north. They're probably going to go back to the championship and that'll be the what their fifth time shout out by the way for coming up on 3000 passing yards in the US F L in his career. I like too the clip where Case lost his ring. I saw that floating around on Twitter as well. Now I lost my wedding ring. I he's kind of a goober. I mean I like Case Alon and I think he's obviously a good quarterback. He is a little bit of a boob when it's like I tell my wife I lost my wedding ring, I lost my wedding ring. So I thought that was funny. They had that, it was one that's happened before where a guy lost their necklace in the end zone or something. They couldn't find it. Some precious valuable, let's leave. That's why they wear the silicone rings and stuff. Let's leave the hardware for another time Or you get tattooed on. Not a bad. Yeah here. So we're looking here in the north here. I can switch my leg over the stands. Yeah, seems like stars. They're two games up now, right against the Panthers. Is this a repeat? Are we heading back to Star Stallion part two? I think so. I mean I don't see it another way. I know that, I don't want to say that Gaff by the, what was it? The US file website put that new playoff structure in. Okay. I mean dude at this point man, it's not the worst idea. I would rather see the Breakers Breakers stallions than the Stars stallions honestly because it's, in my opinion, the Breakers would put a better, better show on, especially with their one and one and whatnot. I mean Philly Philly's got some good things, but we talk about every week they didn't improve their offensive line. Cookies has been beat up. The defense is doing pretty okay. Channing Scribbling hasn't been as much as a ball hawk this year, but he hasn't been bad. Dennis has kind of picked up his statistical slack and whatnot. But man that I just, the two best teams and I know they lost this week, but the Breakers and the stallions are who I would want if it came down in the USL championship, N B T throwing a 40 yard like heve to the end zone for the final play, not a bad look in my opinion. That was for anyone that wasn't tracking this last week, that was the most bizarre thing. Where I Fran that writes with Paul Reeds over at our Sports Essential, and Paul's obviously the USL historian, he's been on the show a bunch. Fran was on our live show and Fran sends me over the whatever the new article he wrote and I'm checking it out and it's showing for the playoffs that the one seed in each division's going to play the two seed in the other division. I thought, well Fran like Fran, where did this come from? It's like it's on the website. It's on the website, it came out a press release and I go on there and who whoever was writing the articles for that was just the most bizarre thing. I know we reached out to the league, I know Mike reached out to the league, but really the most bizarre thing that they concocted this entire alt universe playoff scenario wrote like C clenching scenarios out of it and then had to backtrack it all. And they said, well no, it's actually the one seed's going to face the two seed in each of their divisions. How did that happen, pat? I mean it's the same guy who probably wrote the 6,500 fan in Detroit. I mean maybe it was a conversation and I'm about hey this is not going to be a good championship game and I think Canon's going to show out, be in for the playoffs, they put together a good product, especially that championship game and they're probably like, Hey man, this ain't going to be a good game dude. And maybe part of it too is that they don't want the stars to play the stallions in Next Champ in the championship. I don't know. But man, I mean you're GE guess is as good as mine someone, someone's getting some heat right now, especially if it's that same guy or gal that did the 6,500 fans. Do we like the parody here? We talked about this every week. I've talked about this on the normal Friday show. Do we like this? And every team's basically, generals and mallers are kind of valid, but everyone else is kind of more or less in that. I mean it makes these games matter. If the stars were seven or six in one or seven in one going into week eight and week nine, would we care as much if they were playing, if they were playing, who are they playing? I think they played gamblers this week. Would we care as much? Panthers are playing the Breakers this week. So now we're kind of like, oh man, this game matters too. Because what happens with the mallers in general is if they figure it out or do the stars take another lead, if the Panthers upset the Breakers, then obviously the playoff run for M B T gets a little bit more murky and then you got the showboat, it's like Cole Kelly's, Cole Kelly's been my dog this whole time. I, I'd thought you'd be good. I didn't think he'd be this good. So I mean it's keeping these games interesting and that's all you really want and especially in an eight game or 18 league. But it's good that two playoff spots, I don't know what the percentage is to the 14 versus the 14, the 32 in the nfl. But we have to care about, if you care about folk watching this league, you have to care about these games. You have to stay in tune to see what's going on. So maybe draws a couple more fans. I'm not really sure, but for me I'm, I'm all about it. A couple questions here. We'll go to the next game but we'll stop here. Or Alex Magu M US F L mvp, hands down, what do you make of that? I mean he ain't wrong. Every time I post a QB ranking, Xander Xander's in those comments saying that pp so I mean Xander, you're not getting any hate from me on that. I definitely agree with you. It's not only what he does with his arm, it's like it's moving around creating that extra time. Sometimes like they said, he does too much but I mean he's making plenty of plays and he was robbed of, there were four bad drops, so stat lines even a little bit deflated like Adrian Hardy dropped the pass, Jason Sternberger dropped the pass, Dion Kane dropped the pass and then Michael Petway slipped and he couldn't reel in a pass. That would've been like a 22 yard first down on a first or a second and 21 or something like that. So his stat line's a little bit deflated in my opinion. Questionnaire from Mike and this is interesting, would it be good or bad for the league if the stallions win it again, my comment then we'll go to Pat. I think ideally you would like to see another team win just to get that rub off of it. I don't feel like Birmingham has been as hot this year. I feel like it felt like they got burned out last year and going to all the home games and the 10 asking everyone 10 weekends in the road to do that hasn't felt like they've got the rub. I do think you would like to have Philly wins and then next year we're moving Philly into their home market here. Gregory has a comment about that moving the teams in. But you would like to see that, let's get Houston get the rub or whoever, what do you make about that in terms of that Birmingham winning Again, An agreement. I like to skip Pulse a lot. So from a personal standpoint I'd love to see him win another championship, but if he does that he'll probably get some calls of coaching. I know he was connected to uab, UAB B this year. My thing would be I would really like to see Detroit or Memphis win or Michigan or Memphis win just because it is a hub city, but I don't think what you're saying is outlandish about Houston winning. People in Houston are like, oh we have another football team, this is pretty cool. And then it might motivate the U S F L so if next year their goal is to get Philadelphia into a hub and then Houston wins, they're like oh okay well we should probably try this one out because people in Texas love football, people in Houston love football. The roughnecks put together a pretty decent show this year. Why not get another team in there and kind of get some of that residual. And I'm curious to see, and from a Houston standpoint, if Houston and the roughnecks are bad next year but the gamblers are good this year going and they are in their hub in 2024 or their stadium in 2024, would we see an uptick in fans for the gamblers versus the roughnecks then? But to do that we got to see attendance and we can talk about the attendance all we want circles, but I'm good with not seeing the for Canton, but show me the Michigan games, not even the stars, just show me the Panther games, show me the showboat games and show me the stallion games. It's interesting where you have both in alternate worlds here where you have both the Houston and Detroit where both of those N F L teams, they really rebuild right now the lion's looking good Houston presumably here. Why this coming year into the next year kind of rebuilding in an alt world where both of those teams are still duty, you would think that maybe you get a little bit more rub with the U S F L where both of those markets are rebuilding. You feel like there has to be a little bit more, and I mean that goes for the roughnecks as well, but these alt leagues competing in markets where the teams are actually building themselves to be better house to kind of herd a little bit. I mean it just depends. I think for the Panthers it helps 'em because everyone's excited about football in Michigan and specifically obviously Detroit with alliances. But then I think it go either way, but we don't have enough data to accurately do that because I think you could be 100% right or 100% wrong, you know what I mean? And I was big on the Panthers being showing out this year and I think, and from what we've seen it's been first two weeks were good, that third week didn't look too good and then last week was okay in my opinion. I think it looked like over 10,000 fans. But coming from Birmingham where I've been very vocal about this, so much credit to the people of Birmingham who are not associated with these players, these coaches, just dudes and gals just doing something on a Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday night to continue to show up. I think they were asked to do way too much that city and I know they made out 5 million plus and whatnot, but man that's a lot dude. I get tired watching these games on my couch sometimes and what we're 18 weeks into this, 17 weeks into this, I'm beat down a little bit but to ask to actually go to the games, even if the tickets are free, even if I'm getting comped drinks and whatnot, man, I have a way better time watching these games on my couch than I do at the stadium. We had a comment here, Dylan talking and I don't want to get into the post X ffl depression, but a little bit of football fatigue here, a little bit of spring football and especially, I don't know how many of our fans overlapped going into the C F L here picking up and at least to me that feels different. The c l is kind of a different where I've had Bill Shahan a couple times with the athletic where for the casual fan there is not a lot to differentiate the X F L in the U S F L. I know that we sit here in the minutia and go back and forth, but generally speaking, if you turn my mom onto either game, she wouldn't know, okay, this is the one that owned by the rock or fox or whatever. So are you feeling that the kind of football fatigue here I am and I think that's why I'm looking forward to the cfl and I think for us Reid, not to put us on a high horse, but because talk to the players and we interview players and we interview coaches and we talk with all these people and I mean you keep sending me freaking guys in my dms to talk, try to get them in my contacts in the league and whatnot. The coaches keep coming to me and I'm like, it's kind of a nonstop grind. What I like about the CFL is I'm a very casual rider for it. So I can just watch the game and turn off. I don't, I pay attention to Brian, I pay attention to my glass, I pay attention to certain players and I watch them from a more analytical group faction. But I mean for the cfl, for me it's just enjoyable. I don't have to press pause, I don't have to rewatch the game. I can enjoy the football and I do that with certain things in the N F NFL as well. Yeah, I like the N F L cause I can sit there and have a beer and do that talking here. So let's get into the next game. Speaking of attendance, I was very, and this is the game I turned on Sunday, I was very impressed with this. I was very impressed how that Memphis looks good. I know we've kind of poo-pooed on them and obviously the non hub, but I was impressed with this. What did you make of the Memphis crowd and then obviously the game? The only thing that I'll say negative about Memphis is just that stadium is so weird that I feel like they may have had a 5,000 person person attendance a couple weeks ago and we would never know because of how that stadium is built because while Birmingham was on the opposite sideline, they still had probably a 500 to a thousand people on the visiting sideline. Granted it's a big game but that the home team sideline was filled up, it looked pretty good. So I don't think Memphis gets a bad shake because don't, if there's 5,000 people for a game, not a bad shake, still probably pretty okay on the checkbook. We don't get the best view of it in my opinion because of how weird shape that stadium is. And that bothers me a lot because I don't think it's fair to even the players getting hyped up and going back to the Birmingham game, there was a lot of, you know could hear the actual chance and whatnot as well. That was cool to hear for the, we don't always hear that in these games but I mean I don't know where else you put the showboats. Well no I mean it makes sense to do it there to me, like I said, I was just impressed where, and I saw comments online, I think it was on Facebook, I felt like it just proves that it's working there. I was talking with listener Seth and I guess Memphis is obviously in the area there in terms of being visible and doing stuff and sending players out. It just feels like that's the ultimate goal in the U S F L. We've talked and people slow and steady and kind of of all that stuff it proves it does work in an area where the team is becoming successful Now I know they started slow but you have that momentum going to me, it's not asking us much. Like we said with Birmingham where it felt like Birmingham was criticized all last year. I wouldn't go to 10 home games either if I had the opportunity to do it. Just it put a lot on them where it feels this might be a little bit more organic with Memphis And Memphis is a good market. There's no football there, there's no pro team there. The grizzlies are there, they got some good minor league baseball. It's a decent Taurus attraction. If you're a real football like hot, hardcore real football fan and you really like the battle hawks to three hour drive to get down to Memphis, you know can pick up some people from Arkansas, you can pick up some people from southern Missouri, Southern Illinois. So there's semi attraction for people to go out, get shifty on Bele Street and then go to a football game. They can get that. Cause you go to, I used to go to Memphis Redbirds games a lot when I lived in southeast Missouri and it's two and a half hour drive for me, two hour drive and it's like let's go have some decent barbecue, go see a site and then go to a game for 15 bucks so you can pick up some casuals as there as well. How'd your boy Cole Kelly do here for the Showboats? So spoiler alert, I ranked them at number two, not the sexiest sat line. He had 50% completion percentage but he made two tough throws for his touchdowns and that touchdown that Derek Dylan, he got rocked on and delivered a good pass and Dylan did the rest another and some of these receivers in the US F L man, a lot of these receiver rooms are high quality guys that could, I'm more impressed with the receivers in both the X Ffl and US F L than any other position honestly. And I mean the chips were on the chips, on the chips, chips were on the table and he delivered man. And that's really, that's all you can ask especially with all and I'll straight up call it all the BS that we saw with the Brady White thing and yeah, I get it. He's from Memphis and whatnot to see him, I don't know if he was an afterthought per se, but kind of have to be inactive for a week. They let Ryan will play a couple snaps and I like Ryan will and everything like that, but I mean Kelly Kelly's better and Kelly's playing and I don't know if he'll get another opportunity in the N nfl. He was with the commanders for 45 minutes, but I definitely think if the chips fall he kind of got that Jaylen McClendon vibe of, he played a lot more in college than Jaylen, but he just needs another year in this league and then we'll really know what type of quarterback he is moving Forward. I didn't like the showboat but now they're on their big undefeated streak and they posted, they said, yeah, if you weren't with us at oh three you can't be with us at four and and I was like, don't normally it's like if you weren't with us and don't be with us now. But it was like you can't be with us. Like I would take any fan that I could get on the Memphis bandwagon right now. I wouldn't be telling anyone. You can't be a fan of our teeth. Yeah, I mean a little bit of alienation, but it is what it is. It makes her a good tweet and we're talking about it, right? Yeah, Mark Thompson here, 13 of times 42. He's really feels kind of like that's game plan here. I don't know, it doesn't feel like they have much more depth on that. Well Kenji man, he was doing such a good job moving around in the pocket and rolling out and I know Josh Peterson had a pretty good game, but they were really hitting a lot more drag routes than Justin Hall and the screen passes and I mean we didn't, just couldn't get it done. I think he had five passes deflected at the line. One of them led to an interception and a couple of them it looked like his arm angle dropped a little bit so it's like he's trying to find those lanes on the mesh maybe, I'm not sure. But there were a couple where he cocked it back a little bit and it still got deflected and he's not a short guy. I think he's 6 1 6 2. It was maybe more about John Atkins than anything else, but it just seemed like there was a hand hand on the football every five minutes that every five attempts had bahar drop back on him. It was impressive from the defensive line and they were getting plenty of pressure all day on this four kid, so he couldn't really take that next step and he's been improving every week and this is probably the worst game he's played this whole year. That's good. I know Anthony lamenting here, gamblers and that that's the team he covers for the news hubs and all of that, but there's still in it here. It feels like Memphis is on the upswing. Todd Haley's certainly not going to be yelling at anyone on the sidelines after this one. And I mean it's competitive. That whole south division's competitive. It's a toss up in these next three weeks. They're all four and three right now I think. Excuse me, except the stallions are five and two. Obviously I think we could see Birmingham finish the season seven and three and then I think we're going to have a tiebreaker personally, I hope it doesn't go down to the fourth or fifth with the Battle Hawks and Dragon Sea Dragons, but I mean these teams are going to cannibalize each other and I want to pull up the schedule just so I'm not talking out of left field or anything like that, but can you pull up the schedule? Yeah, I Got it here. Yeah, so we got Houston here against Michigan, or sorry, against Pittsburgh coming up and then obviously Philadelphia against Birmingham, b, NBC s a and then Memphis at Jersey and then Panthers at Breakers here. Yeah, I mean all three of those teams could win this week and then there'll be some cannibalization with the breakers in Showboats in week nine. Birmingham could lose the gamblers and then week 10 it's going to be at week 10 and it's going to be a big game for the Showboats versus the stallions and if the stallions are clinched do they want to throw everyone out there? They're dealing with so many injuries and the Showboats are playing and the breakers are playing the gamblers. So that's going to be a big game and it's going to come down to some nasty stuff once again because all these teams can be three and or excuse me, could win out this weekend. They're, it's a very winnable game for all of them. They are the superior team. They should be the favorite moving into week eight or going into week A for the betting and whatnot. So it could be real goofy going into week nine and then gets even goer in week 10 because both those games are division games. Well, so spoiler, the ratings will be out tomorrow, obviously delayed with the holiday. I don't think ratings will be good this weekend just because of Memorial Day and people traveling and kind of doing all that stuff. I do think though, in terms of scheduling and I think the time slots and the networks matter far more than the games, but I do think they're fortunate here where the Birmingham New Orleans game I think will be the highest feu just because that was the one on N B C here, kind of more in the good slot. But then if you go here the week eight with three of the games, but especially with Panthers at Breakers, that's going to be a good game on Fox. You have the stars at stallions, that's going to be a good game on N B nbc. I think that at least, and they can't flex these or they don't seem to want to, but at least I think they're benefiting from, if there is going to be a viewership boost with any of these games, I think that some of the better games are happen to be in those time slots. And I was down in Lake the Ozarks this weekend and they were all on all the bars. So there's not much US F L in the Midwest. So in Lake de Ozarks you got a lot of Kansas City people, a lot of people from Iowa, a lot of people from Nebraska come up from Arkansas. So I'm not saying that mattered because obviously everyone's getting drunk and whatnot, but they were on at the bars for what that is. So you get some boosts there and a little bit of exposure to the one or two guys or gals that there at a bachelor party and don't want anything to do with the chaos that is the lake of the Ozarks. It is funny though, when you have a conversation, I'll pull up the last game here. When you have a conversation with someone, what this, what's going on? Is this in Europe? You're like, oh no, this is in, we had it with the exe all back in 20 like no, this is in Seattle or this ist where it is a very foreign concept here to get used to that. Finally here we have Panthers can't at home, but at least can win here against the generals. I know Andy Murray was in the chat very down on Mike Riley's coaching the Deandre Johnson got injured. I don't know if he's out for the year. Lots of things to talk about coming out of this game. Yeah, I mean this is the game I was in tune to the most big shout out to Reggie Corbin. He only had 78 yards rushing, but I think he had four or five receptions. He was running very tough. He was doing a lot more grinding. Taking that Stevie Scott role, I think they give me the damn ball thing is kind of played out at this point over the, he's averaging like 40 yards a game, 45 yards a game since he made that comment in week two or three. But in the end we saw from Josh Love and the offensive coordinator Eric Marty, a lot more of these dig routes and mesh routes and whatnot that sprung Trey Quinn a lot. They attacked the seams again once again. So I mean it seemed like once Love got comfortable in that second half he returned to the prowess. That is his week one offense offensive player of the week. He looks overall much better than he did last year. Very curious to see what's going on with Eric Barer. The last two weeks for Josh Love were kind of his making or break it. We saw a lot of improvement last week being able to play the game. The whole game Strong was out for Strong, was out with his knee injury and whatnot. But on the other side there's an open quarterback vacancy for a guy, so we'll probably see Brian Luki up. I mean, Michigan stays ties to these Michigan players, so don't be surprised to see a guy like Anthony Russo, Connor Cook, I got goofy with this one. Ryan Mallet, a 2021 Spring League guy to maybe get a call because mallet's coaching football right now. So he, he's a high school head coach in Arkansas, I think. So wouldn't be surprised to see maybe he comes up for two or three games just to put on some shoulder pads for a little bit. What do we make of the genital share? Like I said with Deandre Johnson going out, Kyle Little that I don't know why he's been seeing as much action as he has here, but I mean they're genitals are kind of done for the year here if Deandre's out, right? Yeah, I, I'm man this poor, fuck this poor guy man. This poor kid. I love this kid. I know Mike Mitchell was a little bit critical of how babied he's getting and whatnot, but he's so much, he's so dynamic in that three-headed rushing attack that we talk about every week. To see him get hurt on the rushing in tab one, it just kind of breaks my heart. But this La Lata is just, we know who he is. He should be in the U sfl or the X Ffl. I don't, as long as he wants play football, I think he should have a job, but as a backup. And there's nothing wrong with that. And he's probably a financial advisor on the side or selling insurance. So he's probably living a pretty decent life. But in the end, I'm, I'm done with this dude. I'd rather see P Cup play because at least Brew Cup is shifty and whatnot. Well that is athletic, don't get me wrong. But pup's a lot more fun to watch is he's a little bit more Harkin esque and he is a bigger guy. He might roll someone over as well. So it'd be a good highlight. But I mean the general is this team through this team runs through Johnson and with him out, I don't see much adjusting. Mike Mitchell is really critical about the team. Kind of just ran it back and that's fine and all, but it's fine until it's not. And it's not right now. Well that's the thing, it just feels like they haven't, we talked, yeah, they lost some guys. My microphone's breaking here. They had some guys that it just doesn't feel like they did enough in the off-season to kind of replenish that. I mean, generals were one of the kind of standout franchises last year and certainly one of the more recognizable franchises. You like to see them performing better here, but certainly seems like they're done for the year. Yeah, I mean it's definitely sad. Kudos to Michigan. They're keeping Josh Wright or Josh love relatively upright. I think they made a change at tackle. I know Broad's ham was out in an injury. I think he had a right quad or a right knee injury. And then Josh Dunlap got to start and then it seemed like they had another guy in there. I don't know if it was Ryan Nelson, one of their reserve offensive lineman came in, but in the end, I mean they played a pretty clean game as best as they could. They have two roster spots open ish Hyman going to the Mallers now. So very curious to see what's, what they're going to do with two roster spots. Obviously one should be a quarterback, but see I know a lot of people were really excited and I see him up there, Warren Newman, they're a wide receiver, but he's been kind of limited, not really getting exposed, ex as exposed as we'd like to see and more touches. So overall, really curious to see what's going on. Lonzo Moore 30 years old and still making plays man fun to watch Michigan here is still very much alive. I mean I know that kind of their home field, they're kind of the Edmonton Elks here of the U S F L, but I mean certainly still in it. Do you really see them making the push here or is it just too, they're too far gone. I mean they're in that second spot who, who's going to take it from them? You know what I mean? Who's going to take it it from them? Troy Williams is good. It's going to come down to him and it seems like they're leaning too much on their defense and special teams and defense one championships and that's great, but you know, can't do that given up 37 points and against a beleaguered stars offensive line mean if Deandre comes back, I could see them making a push. The generals, if he's done for the year, which I feel like he's going to be more limited right now because of his injury, then I don't see anything happening with the generals. And we had a comment here falling apart. Why don't they play Preco more? I don't understand that either. I don't get why he's never gotten more. I mean he didn't look gray than the little bit we saw at the beginning of the year, but it just seems weird that you wouldn't go to him and stick with La Lata. Yeah, I mean, I don't know he's, his arm strength isn't as good as la but he's a bigger guy. I think he's 6 2, 2 22 30. So you could run a more aggressive approach in this read option offense and have Crew Cup kind of barrel some guys over and whatnot. But I mean while Leda threw some balls in the dirt, Deandre was victim of the two bad drops. One by Brandon Bowman, I believe his tight end. But I mean Loleta kind of turned it on in the second half, but he was two of seven going in the halftime. So I mean that, the Michigan game was pretty low scoring initially and then they obviously won 25 to 2022, but I think it was like six three going in the halftime. Well here we go. We'll start putting the airplane down here, start the land, get the landing gear out. What did you make of this week? Last week? I feel like people were down and the gameplay wasn't as good. Obviously the games are a lot more competitive this week. Thoughts on U S F O week seven as a whole? I mean it's kind of a shame that during Memorial Day we saw some of the better playing and whatnot and I hope there's a lot of people in these bars that I was running around that saw the game and maybe got a little bit more exposed and whatnot to the U S F L. And obviously that might be a national thing because people love football Memorial Day weekend, all that good stuff. But I think the ratings will be down and I don't think that's a US F L problem. I think that's just the nature of the beast when it comes to everything like that. And I don't think people who want to troll the US F L, that's they're going to either way. But it's funny, you see the ratings might go down but the attendance was up so it's like what are we doing here? Whatnot. But I mean as far as the actual product on the field, I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good with what I saw. Like I said, it was some of the better quarterback play I've seen in the while. And the games are all competitive right now and that's really the biggest thing. So maybe if you didn't watch the game in week eight, you turn Fox Sports app on or whatever and you're like, oh these games matter in week nine or excuse me, didn't watch it in week seven, but they matter in week eight. You might get a little bit more giddy about it. Yeah, We had a comment here, Mike. Not going to lie with the holiday weekend. I had no issues skipping the US F l just watched YouTube highlights this morning to catch up. May do that more often moving forward. Mark here says haven't watching S l I pretty much record the games and watch 'em at my own pace. That's the challenge. And I was talking with Dorothy about this yesterday that the biggest ratings issue for the US F L we talking about the X F L March madness and all of that US F L here coming into May through June into July is just weather and people doing anything else outside. They're watching TV where the C F L, they really have their schedule where they go June, July, August through November. It's built where you can not watch the summer games if you want that you could turn on the C F L schedule Labor Day and kind of know what you need to know for the rest of the year or the U S F L here go in their playoffs into the summer. It really is, the gameplay is peaking at the worst time where people are going outside. You get what I mean where the C F L, they kind of understand that and they're like, okay well it's almost like a modified pre-season or it's like season part one and then you can come in where the U S F L it is harmful here going into summer with the games. So we've been very critical about, and I will go on a little journey with me real quick. We've been very critical about RJ Young and his interviews that he's essentially given this platform of X amount of people and he only gets 400 views his platform. So I'm on the US F L YouTube channel, they have 25,000 subscribers. RJ Young did an interview three days ago with Corey Coleman and guess how many of yous that got and we're not a point to this. I got A hundred twenty five three ninety six. Okay, so the US F L which is probably over 400 when you actually look at their analytics, the USL posted one day ago Birmingham versus New Orleans 18 K views on YouTube For the highlights For the highlights, 17 K for the mallers and then they haven't even had it up for a day yet and they're at 15 K for the Panthers and 16 K for the showboats on their highlights. And then if you go into the week before, it's over 20 K for their week before. So people are caring about this enough, you know what I mean? They might not be fully invested in it, but I don't know if it's the algorithm, which obviously it probably is to an extent. I don't know what their watch times are go down that list, but it's getting engagement and I don't have the exit help highlights up because I think they're on espn, which is not fair because ESPN has millions of subs. Oh we lost Pat there for a second. We're good, we're good, all that stuff. But in the end we're seeing an extremely, extremely interesting product and whatnot. So people care more than we probably think. I think that the people that watch shows like this, I tend to be more X ffl or C F L focused. I think that the U S F L fan base and there's certainly hardcore fans and I Gregory's in here talking, he went to 30 Games to Protect. That's phenomenal. We love Love Gregory. He comments a lot, but I think a vast majority of the U S F L fan base is a little bit more casual in terms of I'm going to watch the games when they're on. Then obviously you get the, okay, we're going to seek it down on YouTube, but then people, they're actually going to watch shows like this I do think tend to be lower. I think the C F L engagement online might be a little bit higher. And then obviously the X ffl for take that for what it is. U S F L and X F L are different products, but I think the fan bases are a different max. Oh, max Maxus woken up from crying over his Dallas. Dallas Stars lost here often the content. Yes, ESPN forms less well. Yeah, also just people don't like RJ Young. I think that you, RJ Young is known for a certain brand of football and I think that that's not the U US F L and I think that if anything we've learned going through the X ffl season, just having a large number of subscribers on YouTube doesn't necessarily equate to a high number of views. Oh man. Oh man. Anything else from you Pat? Yeah, I mean if we got five minutes I'll, I'm looking at the X Ffl YouTube page, 80 subscriber, 80,000 subscribers. They posted their season recap a week ago, 2.2 K championship highlights, 1 33 k. I mean that Makes, wow, that's pretty, that's impressive. But then that's a championship game. People are going to be searching that up Playoffs. I mean it's not terrible. They got to dig through it. I mean obviously they post all their press conferences on their and whatnot and have player 54 stuff. I mean that's something I could research later because it's going to take me way more time than anyone really has. But I mean it's doing something right. But we talk about content, I put out these U S F L quarterback rankings and I'm going to keep doing it, but we talk about it all the time in circles. My views are down. We talk about this show when we talk primarily, primarily U S F L. Obviously my first quarterback rankings on my YouTube channel, I have 651 subscribers and it hit when I posted, I think I was at 400 or something like that and I think it got over 600 views and then my last one got like 120 or something like that in week 10 for the X F L. So I mean it's just the nature of the beast. We love this stuff so we'll keep putting out content, but I mean sometimes the things say enough. Well that's how I looked at the US last year. I mean I don't think that YouTube views are everything, but I think you can look at web traffic and views and channel. I think you can tell for products hot or not. And I felt like the U S F L last year was declining going into the playoffs. I think the par of in the league hopefully is helping year two hopefully is helping in this year. We'll see. I mean these shows have averaged about the same in the last couple weeks since the X L dropped off. So we'll see. But it's something certainly something to track there. Anyway, we'll get out of here. I like doing the hour-ish mark. Good show coming up this Friday. We're going to have a obviously U S F L content on another as well. Evan Wills more is going to be joining us. We're going to be talking X F L players that still deserve a spot in the N F L. Obviously a lot of those signings going. And then I have a lot of C F L team previews coming up. If you're interested in the C F L season should be a good show. Kind of getting out of the X F L bump here and going into everything for the summer next week we're going to be going live for the C F L kickoff on June 8th and then Andy Murray and I think are going to be doing a special Live Friday show attacking the X F L off season and what that calendar should look like, what the X F L should be doing. And then we have the rookie showcase coming up on June 16th, which works out and that's our normal Friday show. So we'll be doing something for that as well. So lots of things to talk about, I got to figure out. But I do think we'll be doing post C F L recaps. I need to figure out who wants to do that with me on Mondays. I don't want to put that on anyone. You've got five minutes can talk about the future for these league. I don't know what talking about I think, but whoever I don't know who wants to do the C F L shows with me, but we'll find someone to do that because no one is doing that in the C F L space in terms of the live call wind show Monday. So I am excited for that and I think that could be something else from you. Pat, I appreciate your time today. I mean that's really it. I'm waiting on the X ffl to see if they're going to allow media. Again, I talked to Brian stole about it because they do have a showcase in St. Louis. So I'll definitely have an opinion, opinion on that. That's on the Friday. So I'll definitely see what my camera guy got going on and maybe we'll get some good content share to you and my own stuff. But I mean I'm pretty pumped about these showcases and whatnot as well. We're going to see a new crop of players, something to keep in contact with with NFL spots. I'm sure Evan will bring it up is there's another gambling probe going right now. So we could see a lot of, Mike Mike's doing a real good job of keeping these numbers. I've seen a couple more players get cut. So maybe that the roster spaces are at 25 now and maybe these teams are holding out for U S F L guys, which there's some cheap and we talk and I don't want to discredit the players. We talk about a cheap signing like Phillip Lindsay didn't need to go to the X Ffl to go back to the N F L. He was on the first running back gets heard. This is a guy we're bringing in. What he went to the X ffl was that get that vet MIM of 600 K and get a guaranteed to one mill type thing. So I'm curious to see the signings for both these leagues in the next two months, month and a half and whatnot. Then I hate to say it, but injuries always changed the game as well. Last thing from me, just got an email from U S F L after a highly entertaining week seven where all games were decided by six points or fewer with all eighteens and contention, they're going to be doing a virtual media availability via Zoom Thursday, June 1st at 9:30 AM Pacific time. So maybe we'll be getting some U S F L news here at 1230 Eastern, 9:30 AM Pacific. So just got the email out. You can RSVP I'll, I'll get on that. But we'll be doing Zoom media. It looks like my prayer is going to be there. Our boy Darren James is going to be there. Daryl Johnston. Yeah, Mike Perra. So should be exciting. So maybe we'll have some US L news. Maybe they'll be announcing the official playoffs scenarios. I don't know. I don't know what that would be, but something coming this week. USFL on Thursday. So should be exciting, pat. Appreciate it. Everyone like and subscribe. Let's get you to one of these championship games. Appreciate it and we'll see you guys next time. Thanks so much. Thank you. All right, let me get our outro here. I've never set to go on this. Here we go. All right, we'll see you guys.

Episode 146 - "Alt-Football Vision"

Coming up this week on the mark. Here we are really peak alt football season here. CFL preseason this year, USFL, week seven XFL, wrapping everything for 2023. Lots of things going on in the world of alternate football TV C F L giving away its games. Part of its games for free in the US XFL ratings Did they end high USFL? Now ratings could be better here following the X F L 2023 season completion. We are talking everything alt football TV today. Do not adjust your sets. It is not WonkaVision, it is Alta football vision. WonkaVision my very latest and greatest invention. It's television, It's won. Now I suppose you all know how ordinary television works. You Photograph something, sure I do. You photograph something and then the photographs are split up into millions of tiny pieces and they go whizzing through the air down to your TV set where they're all put together again in the right order. You should open your mouth a little wider when you speak. Really exciting show today a longtime friend of the podcast Greg Parks returns EXE L board. Greg hates talking about XE L TV ratings. Hates writing about them yet. He's doing both and more here. Coming on the show we are recapping was X Ffl 2023 A TV rating success we Discussed. You're talking about were the ratings good? Were they successful? Well to who? Right? In what context? And the only context that matters is the X Ffl and ESPN because they're the ones who are the only ones shelling out money for this and that money is going to either continue to fund the league or Not and then do not adjust your television sets. That is right from three down nation. John Hod himself stopping by. We are talking everything C F L pre-season, the health of the C F L C F L plus should the C F L be giving away half of its games in America for free and more. And this is a loaded conversation you will not want to miss. I Think the temperature north of the border talking to people in the league is there's a hope that if either league stays around it won't be for much longer. And I'm not saying that as a malicious wish of fans, this is not a representation of how fans are feeling or how the public is feeling, but for obvious reasons with the competition personnel, people in the C F L are hoping that these American leagues Die and then we have survived the great C F L preseason thunderstorm of 2023. We are streaming our games on CFL Plus and we have Ryan Valentine stopping by former Big Brother Canada contestant doing a full team breakdown of the Calgary stamp. Peters also getting Ryan's thoughts on the health of the CFL and what does he think of CFL plus streaming in America. This Is the most financially lucrative US broadcast deal they've ever signed. I'll take it Any, anything that brings more money into the league is better. And then Trey Ford, one of the quarterbacks for your Edmonton Elks stopping by the program. And then we have two separate U S F L week seven previews featuring Eric Eger of Sum Sports and Josh Shepardson of Fantasy Pros. Well like I said, loaded show. Hope you enjoy. Hey guys, welcome to the Mark Reid here teased this a little bit this week. Said we might be mending fences, winning the white flag for one of the longstanding feuds of the mar. We have John Hodge himself stopping by today from three Destin Nation. Really appreciate that. I was purchasing my, now we're going to our third gray cup here coming up in November, purchasing my flights this week for Hamilton and I thought the world is really small. The C F L world, the alt football world. Wanted to reach out to John over at three donations, said hey, might have been a little brash coming into the C F L with all the X Ffl talks here a couple years ago. What do you think about coming on the show? John is great, really excited, a long extended talk with John. Really appreciate his time talking everything C F L plus on here. Before we get to that today, getting Greg Parks on, Greg did a deep dive over on X F L board if you want to check that out. Greg lamenting the fact that he has to talk and write about X F L TV ratings yet we are going to do more of that today, ending the season, kind of doing the post recap here. I know we had Bill Shahan last week talking the championship game. We have U S F L week six TV Radian kind of seeing how the U S F L performed without the X F L kind of crowding the landscape. So we're going to talk through that with Greg, get Greg's thoughts on the X F L ratings and then we're going to kind of segue now we're moving into C F L John extended talk, like I said, everything health of the C F L. What does C F L coaches and staff, what do they think of the X F L and the U S F L? Is John higher or lower on the X F L now that they have completed their season? A really, really good talk with John and then moving into C F L, like I said Ryan Valentine stopping by covering the Calgary stamp. Peters four three donation. I mean this is basically a three donation sister channeled this week but we have Ryan Valentine, I watched him on Big Brother Canada, really excited. We've bantered back and forth for years but really excited to get him on the show here to kind of do the interview portion. And then Trey Ford, we were going to have Dave Campbell on doing an Edmmonton Elks kind of post preseason game. What did we think of the Elks this season? Dave is sick. I blame the weak Canadian immune systems. I'm just kidding but I think Dave's whole family is out so we have Trey Ford on was going to hold that episode till next week. We have Trey coming on the program, get a lot of questions. Why isn't Tracy more field time Trey seems like a wonderful kind of upbeat guy. Hope you enjoy the interview and then not one but two at U S F L week seven previous this week, like I said, Eric Eer over at Sumer Sports. Eric joined us back talking to X F L and then Josh, she from Fantasy Pros coming on. I like getting a couple different unique takes on that kind of what are they looking forward to? Eric's really good with kind of the vetting odds and the over and unders and everything heading into the matchups. And then Josh is great. I thought we had a fun conversation there about are the Philadelphia stars just at the Fat Colby of Survivor All Stars so really, or I guess it was Survivor heroes for Dylans but really appreciate that. So six really good interviews today. Hope you guys enjoy like and subscribe. We'll check back in at the end of the program. Try to get us up to 3,500 subscribers. We'll give away tickets. Sweet championship game of your choosing when we get there. Hope you guys enjoy. See you with the Well last I spoke with this gentleman. We were very fuzzily live in San Antonio. Greg was crystal clearer here. I'm looking great as well talking EXL championship game now we're back. We have a lot to talk about. Greg hates writing about XFL TV ratings but yet that's what we do on here. That's what we talk about. We have lots of football talk on the show. We also have the XE L showcases to go through real quick as well. Greg, how are you doing? I'm doing great Reid. Thanks for having me on. Did the XFL championship game just live up to your expectations? I think so. I think there was some fear of a DC blowout which didn't happen. I mean it wasn't a blowout either way. I think that would've been probably the worst part about it and really I'm actually surprised. I know there was a lot of consternation about Arlington getting in the playoffs and there was some thought that maybe if they won the championship some people would look at it as a little less than legitimate but I didn't hear much of anyone complain about that. They certainly earned their way beating two pretty strong teams on their way to the championship. So quibble if you must about them making the playoffs, but they certainly earned the championship. It was funny, there was obviously a lot of complaints from our C F L brethren. What is the trophy if you can't drink out of it? Coach Heime had told me that they flipped the cup upside down and drank out of the base of the cup, which I thought was tremendous. That had a quarter million impressions on it. People really seem to the flipping the X L championship upside down Now it is funny because I see, I think it was Dallas there, the trophies making the rounds now and I see all these news anchors holding and taking photos with them. I'm like they don't even know, they don't know what's going on. Well And that was my question, maybe they have a headquarters in Arlington. I'm seeing a lot of these press releases having Arlington in it, but it's like the Arlington Renegades don't have a home, they don't have a building where the Arlington renegades work out of. So where does the trophy go? Who keeps it? Does it go in on Bob Stoops mantle piece in his house? That was a question I had after the game but it sounds like it's kind of traveling around a little bit. That's good. Yeah, the traveling maybe Danielle take her. I did see also Danny looks like they're going to be releasing some men's wear from her collection so I might have to partake on that because it's been, I think that GTS q I think it's been primarily female, but I did see a tease for some men's wear coming so Well I hope you'll you'll model some here on the show. Yeah, I will. I'll buy some, I'll pop on some Danny Murphy if they do that. Okay, so that problem Greg, I think it was Tuesday is so proud Greg tweets that like hey guys to stumbled upon this on the website it looks like because the EXELA announced their H B C U showcase in Atlanta and they said hey I found these on and then I think half an hour later XE l tweets it out but you beat X ffl to it. We have the X F L showcases for the summer, there is a specialist one coming later and then there's a combine at the end of July. I have the dates here, I did the shorts about it. Kind of any thoughts then kind of repeating this again this summer. I mean I think if they have the money to do it and who knows, they may actually make money on it given they're charging $260 ahead and they'll probably get at least a hundred if not more at each showcase. So they may end up coming out ahead. But anyway, on one hand it's surprising because the quality of players they got in 2023 were so high that you really don't need to do this kind of open season tryout type of deal. You know can attract a high level player without doing that. But I think the other side of that coin is they're the league of opportunity and they did have a few players from the showcases that were put into the league and were on rosters. I crunched the numbers early in the season. I can't remember exactly how many they had that were from the showcases and I only had a couple of the showcase rosters. I think I was missing the last one or two, but even from the first several there were players drafted and so it, it's all just no stone unturned. It's making sure that you have the highest quality of football even if that means players who are not currently a part of any league or who would attend these tryouts and pay $260 for the chance to be seen by coaches and DPPs. So it is interesting that they're going back to it again. It looks like very much a similar schedule, A lot of the same areas that they hit last year. Even the timeframes are similar in that you've got the specialist one that's much later than all of the other ones. I think that's going to be in late October. Again, the only thing different is the X ffl combine, which I think is interesting. It's going to be select players from the showcases. I guess the best players from the showcases will be invited to the combine. I'm not really sure what the purpose of seeing them again is other than to maybe crosscheck, make sure everybody really gets seen and everybody who's invited to be a part of that draft pool in November checks all the boxes necessary. But that is a major change from 2020 twos summer showcase schedule. And I think to be fair, maybe we don't fly ownership out to the combines this year or the showcases this year. We're not doing the Hawaii one. Maybe we just get Danny and the Rock and them, let's get them at the combine. Have we can send out Beck to whoever would say if they want to go to the things and we'll have Russ, Julio and all of that and then maybe let's do ownership. And I think that will be a big shang. I mean that's obviously extended as well with the three days and I think that will be kind of an all hands on deck situation there. So maybe we parse out what staff we need at the actual share Changes. True. Yeah, I mean it could be St Louis sends their D PPP to the H B C U, maybe Beck goes to the Atlanta one and then at the combine you have, as you said, all hands on deck head coach d ppp, maybe some of the key assistant coaches, that sort of thing. Yeah. Anything else on this interesting last year? I think like the Hawaii one and one of 'em the showcases, some of 'em were in invite only. These appear open as long as you want to pay the entry fee and then obviously the combine will be the invite only, but maybe you'll get some players that want to pay the 260. I think you said that to get in on that that maybe didn't have the opportunity before. Yeah, I mean it could be, there are fewer invite only showcases here and it could be a similar situation to last year where even if they're not invite only, you may have some players who are invited to these showcases to work out as we had on some of those in last year as well. So it doesn't preclude people from being invited, but they're certainly keeping a lot of room open on each of these for people to pay their own way. I just last note, I mean they're really doing, like you said, doubling down doing the showcases last year, doing 'em this year. We've already been scouting, we're doing the rookie draft this summer. I mean they're really putting a lot of time and energy even more so even than last year into, we really want to make sure, like you said, the league of opportunity that like anybody that we're trying to get our eyes on can get a shot here And it's smart, you know, want to keep that level of play high. That's a big factor in getting people to watch the games. You certainly want to beat the U S F L to some of these players and we're seeing already some players who tried out in rookie mini camps who could be tops on the list for X ffl teams in that rookie draft next month already signing on with u s ffl teams. So a slight advantage maybe that the u s Ffl has that they're in season so they can kind of get some of these guys and get them some professional game tape before the end of the U S F L season to try to get themselves back into N F NFL training camps. The X ffl is going to be holding that draft and the nice thing for them is that it doesn't preclude those players who are drafted from still getting into N F L training camps this summer. And I want to do, we're going to do kind of a rookie draft show when all that happens. Kind of like is it the same, is it the n f the US F L college draft? Is it different? It feels a little bit more, I don't know if it's the same thing with a horse with a different color, but it does feel like at least getting these guys, okay, let's get you on our list here. We'll get you on the party list and then you can still do other stuff but at least we kind of have first dibs on that if we're interested. Yeah, I thought it was very different at first. The more I think about it, the more I think it's a little more similar than I thought. The big difference is the U S F L was drafting guys before the N NFL draft. So any of those guys could have been drafted. Any of those guys could have signed as free agents. The X ffl is drafting them after the N F L draft. So they've already had the chance to hook on as undrafted free agents. So to me the guys the X ffl are drafting are more likely to end up in the X ffl next year than the guys at the U S F L drafted ending up in the U S F L. I think that's the difference to me. I agree. I agree. I think that's a very good way to put that. So I won't try to rephrase that any different. We have here the, we'll get to the X ffl, was it a success here? Your big ratings article U S F L this week averaging 451,000 across the four we had two cable games, two network games, those did six 30 and then seven 30 for the Fox. Are you surprised? We talked a lot about the cannibalization of both of these leagues. Are you surprised that the USL didn't tick up bigger here in week six? I think to some extent I feel like that cannibalization is, I don't know, maybe over exaggerated. I mean when you think about the actual overlap, it's maybe three weeks. I think the u s ffl started in X FFLs week nine. So if you're talking actual overlap, there's really not a whole lot now you could make the argument that having played nine weeks, there's that fatigue factor in fans, right? We're coming right off the full slate of N F L playoffs and regular season you're kicking right into the XFL season and then that leads right into the u s ffl season. So maybe it's not that head-to-head cannibalization, but it's just that fatigue factor of fans who just kind of need a break. I mean that's certainly where I'm at. I didn't watch the U S F L next year last year, but even if I had, would I have the energy to devote my weekends to continue to watch football every weekend? I think that's hard for a lot of people. Especially we get into the summer months where more and more people are outside and things like that. So I am surprised that the ratings for the U S F L haven't gone up since the X ffl ended its season or had just not been higher. Generally speaking X ffl or not. And I'll apologize, this is Mike Mitchell's article. I have the reader view one because Mark has like a thousand ads over at U S F L News South, but this is Mike's article. I just want to make sure I have the reader view just so it'd be a little bit more condensed here for us. I still maintained U S F L last year had this, it was the confluence of it been two years since the X F L we're hungry for this since the spring. There wasn't a lot, COVID was kind of getting out. We're watching, I don't know if the US F l ever hits those highs again. I don't know if the X F L hits those highs. I mean the US F l has had one game over a million this year and that was the 2 million after the Kentucky Derby, which if you're an ex FEL apologist you would say, well that the Kentucky Derby and people just fell asleep and left the TV on or whatever. But are you surprised that we've only had the 1 million plus and we're really in this 600 to 700,000 range? I I thought that I was actually surprised the first week because they didn't hit a million on those network games and I thought being the first week they'd be able to do that. And I think it's especially surprising because heading into this season people were just laing the u s ffl schedule and rightly so they put more games on network tv. I think there was a more consistent time slot. These are all arguments that we're making that the X ffl should be doing next year and it really hasn't increased the U s FFLs ratings significantly anyway. Of course there are millions of other factors that go into that than just looking at the raw numbers, which I talked about in my article. But if X FFL fans think that the magic elixir to increase ratings is going to be more games on network TV and more consistent time slot, the U S F L is showing that that's not necessarily going to be the case. Now the X ffl does have the advantage of setting that low bar in the first year where any kind of extra promotion, any kind of extra advertising in market, out of market on national TV should boost the profile of the X ffl where the U S F L was already marketing itself pretty hard last year. You're seeing a lot of ads. I don't watch a lot of shows on Fox. I think I just watched wrestling in nascar, but they have a lot of U S F L, not just commercials but the announcers will do ad reads, plugin games, so there's not a lot more FOX can do to further plug the U S F L where the X FFL and E S ESPN N can say okay, this is where we hit, now we have the potential to go even higher if we dedicate more resources, more money to that advertising effort next year. I do think the US F L and I thought they were, I mean I said that you go back, I thought they were going to come in and completely kill, right? I did and I think Fox, yeah, we're doing all this. It's a little bit of the B D E I get a little bit from Fox sometimes and it's been like you said a little more is, that's a really interesting point that I do think the ramp up for the X F L of 120,000 but rumored that they spent in marketing versus Fox. I watched undisputed today, they got the banners rolling coming up. Skip and Shannon are going to preview the weekends games. A lot of time is being put into that where I think you can ramp up X F L a little bit more than you can ramp down U S F L. Yeah, for sure. And that remains to be seen whether E s, ESPN N and the X F L are going to do that. I think there's been some talk, I think the article on the athletic a week ago sort of hinted that that's going to be the plan for year two is a little more in those areas. It might not be a hundred percent more, but it could be just incrementally more enough to be noticed and enough to take this year's baseline ratings. I mean the other good thing too is you know, look at the X Ffl championship game. And again, this is something I wrote about in the article is they retained over 90% of that viewership of the first week over 80% of the 18 to 49 from that first week. So you didn't see that really hard decline that would hint to you that they've already hit their apex. So speaking of that, let's get to the main appetizer here. We got your extra L board up here. I didn't know if we were going to talk about this week and then you put a ton of work into this. I read it, I know it got shared and I know Mike read it and we said let's have you on. Let's do kind of the final here. We have all the numbers, all the data obviously go check out Greg's article here on EXE L board. So Greg was the EXE fellow ratings success. You tell me. Well, it's complicated as the rest of the headline says, I, I'm feel qualified to answer that question. And there's two big missing components that we've all talked about and that is the ESPN plus viewership. We don't know other than the ESPN press release that said that the championship game was the most watched XFL game on ESPN plus this year. Which again, you would take as another good sign I assume. And the other thing we don't have is the ESPN and X F L's expectations for ratings this year. I thinks p n has said it met expectations. Danny Garcia has said different times they're happy with where they are. They do have room for improvement with the rock. When he was tweeting about it was saying, hey baby steps. Were not lighting the world on fire but we're getting there. We're taking baby steps. So they're not out there waving the banner like mission accomplished. They know that there's still work to be done. And I think in a way that's encouraging that they know that there's still things that they can do to push those numbers forward next year. So without those two pieces of data, I just think it's not qualified to say whether or not the X ffl was a rating success. Certainly it's getting to year two, which is more of a success than the X ffl has ever been. So that's an accomplishment in its own right that should be celebrated. But it, it's really not about year two. It's about sustaining this year to year and we just haven't gotten there yet to know whether this is going to be something that we're not going to be sweating it out every year going forward. Well I'll tell you, I mean you look here at FX and ESPN 425,000 average over the season. Greg's got all the time slots, everything this way. You got to go do the deep dive on this. We just said US Zella average 450,000 viewers across four games with two of those on network windows this last weekend. So you know, put a comparison there, you know, got 446,000 on ESPN and lower is cable and you can say ESPN and ESPN two are widely distributed, but you had a Fox two Fox and the FS one and U S A broadcast here versus 4 46 on that. Were there any of the averages? It surprised you obviously a little bit higher for ESPN with the 6 0 6, even though I think there's a misconception that ESPN two is somehow a lesser network. They're generally distributed about the same. It's just that more people by default go to ESPN one. Is that how you kind of read that? Yeah, there in terms of how many homes the channels are in, they're very similar but obviously S P N is seen as the more prestigious network by viewers and things like that. So they're more apt to go to that channel than ESPN two to check anything out. So that's kind of how I see that there is a big difference. But I think if you go through the ratings for any sports properties that a b ABC ESPN owns, you're going to see that difference from ESPN to ESPN two. It's not just the X ffl games that are drawing that wide of a difference in ratings on those two networks. The averaging over a million, obviously we have the dips here, right week six and then nine and 10 with the ABC games, but averaging over a million on that. I'll be curious with that 2 million the US F L had with the Kentucky Derby, does that raise that overall? Is that enough to raise that overall network above that million when all is said and done, but what do you make of that? The overall average being over a million here for the X F L on a B, C I would certainly take it as a good sign. It's better than being under. Again, we don't know, for a lot of these games that are on midday, we don't have anything to compare it to. I can go through and I can look at the FX ratings and I can say this is what FX draws in primetime. This is what the X ffl drew in primetime and say, yes, the X ffl was above station average. I can do the same for ESPN two and say the X ffl drew well above station average in the rating and the 18 to 49, the total viewership and the 18 to 49 compared to what ESPN two does in primetime. But with a abc, some of these games on the middle of the afternoon, you don't have that again, you don't have the data. We're missing that piece, that comparison piece to, okay, for example, March 25th, week six at 1:00 PM it drew 1.047 million. Okay, but what did it draw the previous week at 1:00 PM? What was the 10 week average before that? So we just don't have those numbers. Week six, that's the middle of the season where you had the March Madness competition. So I think that's what really dragged that down in week six. I think still drawing over a million in week six and week eight, even as slim as it was over a million are pretty good numbers to me as a layman looking at these numbers. So that's kind of my thing. And you know, talk about the U S F L. Is that 2 million post Kentucky Derby going to be enough to average it out over a million? I really don't think so simply because they have so many games on network on Fox or NBC that are drawing under a million that's going to continue to draw that average down. So it may hover around a million. And the other thing is I applaud the U S F L and B C for putting a game on right after the Kentucky Derby. I think that's something that didn't make it into my article, but lead-ins, we don't have the information, the ratings on the lead-ins of, okay, what led into these games? What were the numbers leading into the games? I think it's fantastic that they had the opportunity to draw 2 million viewers after the Kentucky Derby getting the rating up there, but you're also allowing a group of people who wouldn't otherwise sample your product to check it out. The numbers don't say that people have gone back and washed it again week after, but giving them that opportunity, that's just smart scheduling on behalf of the U S F L and N B C. And I had a conversation on Twitter with someone about this is, yeah, you'd like to see a stronger, but those stronger lead-ins are live sports. So for s espn, that would be N B A games. Well if you're airing live sports and live games before the X ffl games, you're going to run the risk of having it run over into the X ffl slot and not starting a game on television until midway through the first quarter. Is that worth the trade off of the strong lead-in or would you rather have a studio show that is going to end when it ends to lead right directly into that game. So just another factor to throw into this pile that I've written about here in this article of the strength of the lead-ins that that's not something we've really studied leading into these games. Well also I think it's kind of like we boosting the post on Facebook using some of these lead-ins where you're going to hit, you're hitting a lot more impressions on that, but the amount of if for whatever it is U S F L or I used to boost my wedding stuff, you're going to hit more people. The number of people that actually interested it. I know WWE E tried that for years and let's bring in the NASCAR guy, let's bring in the guy from Entourage, right? The remember they the guest Host era. Oh, please don't remind me because I think if you go back and if people that tracked the ESPN pr, the tweets every week that would come out from the X ffl, I think you could tell how X FFL felt about their ratings week and week depending on the stats that they pulled from that. Oh sure. Where if they had a million, it's like, hey peak we peaked at 1.3 million whatever the weeks where the ratings were kind of trash. It's like we had a lot of people in the stands that week or hey, the video view impressions were up across. Yeah, I think that they're only championed the weeks if I think if the ratings had consistently impressed for them, I think they would've championed out a little bit more. But obviously they were happy certain weeks enough to kind of pioneer that. Sure. And you can definitely read into that from the press release for sure. But yeah, it just all depends on, I know Danny Garcia in one interview said they had a very complicated metric that they use to determine the success and I think that wasn't just talking about ratings, but it was talking about attendance and things like that. So again, without that piece, because you're talking about were the ratings good? Were they successful? Well to who in what context? And the only context that matters is the X ffl and ESPN because they're the ones who are the only ones shelling out money for this and that money is going to either continue to fund the league or not. And so it's really up to them to decide if it was worth it. It's interesting that we've talked about it with Bill Shay last week and he has his article as well with the Athletic, I think it's always going to be harder for X ffl because you're asking espn, Hey put us in here, do that foxes where they own this, they're incentivized a hundred percent. Same with you, we're selling the playoff ads. Hey you want to buy Super Bowl ads or you want to buy N F NFL on Fox ads like you got to buy ESPN's never going to be as incentivized. And I don't know long term if that's going to pay 10 times dividends for the U S F L or not, but I do think that if Fox wanted to that they can continue to obviously place this as long as they want where you're always trying to, you're begging daddy ESPN to kind of keep us on or keep doing things And hopefully that partnership is strong. It seems like it is. They seem to be on the same page, ESPN n and ownership and as long as they're on the same page, to me that's the most important thing. And one of the points I made in the article was it would be great to have the X ffl on a b ABC more often next year, but it, it's all about the time slots. S P N is not going to bump an N B A game off of a B ABC on a Saturday when they're paying how many hundreds of millions for the rights to air b a games to throw an X ffl game on there. I mean that's just not reality. So there really is a limited schedule window to wear. The X ffl can realistically play so many games on A, B, C or even ESPN N for that matter. I mean ESPN has a tremendous amount of sports properties during the season that they air on ESPN N so it, it's always going to be that struggle. Like you said, it would be a lot easier if e s ESPN owned the X ffl, they'd be incentivized to give it more prime games and more prime time slots. But the X ffl A at least until it shows that is sustainable and can make a significant amount of money, it's always going to be playing second fiddle to these more upscale properties like the N B A at the N H L, like the NCAA Women's Basketball tournament as well that thats on ESPN N and A B C. Well and like you said with the US a develop discussion, I think in this season two of the US CELA showing, just putting more games on network does not necessarily, it's not going to double your viewership that you have to, and I don't know, I don't know. I don't want to be the super negative US belt. I don't know what's going on this year with that where if that is really hitting what they want or not. But I mean it is primed in positions to really dominate and obviously they're winning in the slots, but it's like how much of a margin are you expecting in these US F L on network games versus X F L on Fs or on FX or whatever. I don't know what the margin they're expecting. I would imagine it's bigger than it is, but who am I by? And maybe the US F L and I talked about earlier, there's not a lot more they can do from an advertising perspective on their own networks to push that rating forward. They're doing all they can. So when they look at that, they've got to be saying, okay, where are we going to make up that difference then? Where are we going to get that rise from? And it could be season three going into all markets that that's kind of the ace they have up their sleeve right now that they're still playing in four hubs. If they wanted to take the extra expense of going into all markets and putting a legitimate amount of fans in the stands that could help locally drive ratings. And so that's really where I think they could more so than just throwing more advertising out there or just having more talking heads on FS one. Talk about the U S F L. I think if they look at their ratings and say there's more meat on that bone, I think where they get that meat from is going out into all eight markets. Now, question is, is it worth the added expense that's going to come with that, right? Cause that's what they have to weigh. Is it worth an extra 350,000 or 200,000 viewers on network tv? Is the added expense of running in all eight markets worth that extra number of viewership? I don't know. Well, I mean they're in not county Canton. I mean they're in Birmingham, Memphis and Detroit and I would not say either of those three markets as tremendously impressed to the point of like, oh yeah, this is definitely, it was like, I don't know if you categorically look at the Memphis hub right now and go, yeah, that's worth that. I don't know what they're paying for that. And I obviously the forward field, but I don't want to be too negative on here. But I don't know if then is magically doubling this from four to eight. If I haven't seen it from going from one to four, I don't know if I'm going to see It. That's a fair point too. Well Greg, it's late for you. I appreciate it. Anything else from you? I just really appreciate you, like I said, coming in and doing this here later on the east coast for You. No, I pleasure to be on here talking about it. Just to plug my stuff on X ffl board, I know it's the off season but I, I've got a lot of content coming just today, Thursday as we're recording this. I posted my final season summary. I went through all eight teams, did a season summary on X ffl board of them, took a look at some of the team MVPs, took a look at some places that they can improve roster wise next year, took a look at the head coaches and gave it one to five about the potential hot seat rating for each head coach and each team. So in the coming weeks I'm going to look back at November's draft and I'm going to analyze how well the teams did by draft phase. So I've, I've got a couple of those in the can already. They'll start coming out probably next week. And then of course we've got the rookie draft on Twitter at Greg m Parks. You can follow me. I sort of admitted to the fact that I'm probably going to end up doing a one mark, one round mock draft of the rookie. Or as you know, I've done Reid, I've done a seven round N F L mock draft for 20 some years and so I love mock drafts as pointless as they are. I get it. I understand. I can hear people rolling their eyes watching this, but I love the n l draft. It's my Christmas and I've done this seven round mock draft probably since I was a sophomore in high school. And so the opportunity to do a real legitimate mock draft, even if it's just one round for the X F L, I think is just, it's too good to pass up. So that will probably come out closer. We get to the rookie draft on June 16th. So I'm really excited about the possibility of that and we'll just have so much more content in the off season at XFL board. So check it out. You're really carrying the torch over there doing a good job. I appreciate that. And obviously if you're wrestling fan, all the PW Torch stuff and I wish I had more time to watch wrestling so I could listen to you guys more about a Big weekend coming up. Man, we've got four major shows this weekend. We've got Impacts under Siege event on Friday. We've got WWS Night of Champions on Saturday. We've got NXTs show going head to head with Pay-per-View on Sunday night. I mean it's going to be like my eyes are going to have to be taped open to watch all of this wrestling this weekend. I've said a couple times with other interviews on this show, I think that the X ffl needs to figure out the Tamasa choa Johnny T that to me that was the peak that M X T ever was. And if the XFL can figure out how can we make a show that people want to tune in every week we feature, these are our stars. And then obviously you have the people that want to move up. That is what they need to do is that whatever they've done now, and I don't watch NXC 2.0, but all the triple H and all of that, that was the peak. We got our 10 stars here and then you can watch what everyone else kind of go up to the big show. It's an interesting comparison. You give me a lot to think about. Reid. Good. Hi, that's good. Well Greg, it's late. I appreciate it. My travel agent's calling about my Hamilton flight. I keep silencing it over here. So we'll tag you next time and I appreciate you really doing the Lord's work. All right, thanks Reid. Well don't adjust your dials here. We have special guests. Really appreciate it. We have John Hodge here with three down Nation. John, how are you doing? I'm doing great Reid. Thanks for having me. You have, is that a Padres hat on? I think you're trying to appeal to Andrew Murray here. I think he'll be a fan of you as well here even more after this. I was fortunate enough to go to a Padres game in San Diego a couple months ago. I would be hard pressed to name a single player on their team, but I got this hat for free and I had fun at the game, so I'm happy to rep them and hide my ever graying hair. Well at least you have hair. I don't have any more hair, I just grow it on my face so I'm good. I'm going to be there one day soon so it, it's gone gray and then it'll run out all together. That's good. Well good. We have good energy today. I saw Hodge back up in Regina and now we're trying to, I I've turned over a new leaf here. We're trying to work and embrace us all this up. So I wanted to get John on. We wanted to talk C F L Health and the preseason and everything else. More normal off-season. Obviously in our limited time covering the league, we have all the X F L stuff and then we had the C B A stuff last year. This year seems a little more normal. What are your thoughts going into the season? Well, it's an interesting time for the C F L. I think that with the competition from the X F L, the U S F L, I've talked to a number of personnel people in the league who have, who've talked about how hard it is to recruit talent at the combine. I talked to a number of individuals in scouting who do contracts, that kind of thing. And they were talking about years ago we were cutting guys who were seventh round N F L draft picks or we were cutting guys who were first team all a ACC or we were cutting players who these days we really excited to sign. So I think that that works to the disadvantage of certain teams. And the teams I'm talking about are teams like Edmonton, teams like Ottawa that are trying to rebuild after a couple of really down years. And I think it actually works for the benefit for the team that I primarily cover, which is the Winnipeg Lou bombers that have such a veteran core that maybe 10 years ago you'd want to break up that core earlier because other teams were going to stockpile talent and develop that talent. Whereas these days other teams are having a harder time developing that talent. So you're happy to be an older team of the C F L and maybe stick together a little bit longer. So to me, I still think that Winnipeg is the team to beat. I like the retooling that the teams at the bottom of the league have done. I think Saskatchewan is better. I think Edmonton is better. I think Otto is a lot better and I think that Montreal, despite their off-season ownership crisis, I think, I don't think on the field they're in a better spot than last year, but I don't think they've taken a huge step back and off the field. They're in a million times better position I think than they were a year ago. So all in all, I'm excited for this season. I think it's going to be a good season, entertaining season of football. I think the lack of parody hurt the league a little bit last year, right? Tuning into Edmonton Winnipeg or tuning into Calgary Ottawa. I don't think a lot of people were going into those games with holding their breath as to who is going to win. And this year I think there's going to be more of that. I don't think we're going to see four win teams or 15 win teams. I think the bottom team might have six wins and the top team might have 12 or 13. And that's a good thing I think for fans of this league and for the league itself. Well if this feels like not, it seems like there's been a dark cloud kind of the last couple seasons with whatever else it does feel like the football can kind of shine here. You've got the new C F L plus and we'll talk about that, but it just seems like there's a lot of momentum, if that makes sense. I know there's been a lot of off-season movements, at least to me it feels like a lot. I mean the quarterback carousel and all of that. But I'm excited to see here as we get through preseason kind of the identity of these new teams. Well one very positive thing I think that's happened is with the new C B A players being able to get guaranteed money on their contracts after they have been with a team for two years, you're seeing a lot of guys not signing these one year deals like you did for the decade previous. You're seeing guys like Trevor Harris go to Saskatchewan on a two-year deal. You're seeing guys like Bo Levi Mitchell sign a three-year deal in Hamilton. Zack COIs famously said ahead of last season, it's not in the best interest of any C F L player to sign a multi-year deal because teams don't actually have to commit to you. Well guess what? Now that the C F L C B A has changed, he signed a three year deal with Winnipeg, he signed through 2025. And that makes fans so much more comfortable not only investing in these players emotionally, but even financially, right? You're going to see more Harris jerseys in Saskatchewan, more cos jerseys in Winnipeg because fans are able to identify with these players and feel safer investing in these players knowing that, okay, I'm not going to pick this guy as my new favorite player in August and then by the next year he's off playing for another team or a team that I don't like. So I think that that's a positive thing. And these are all changes that the C F L probably should have made five or 10 years ago or seen coming and anticipated becoming issues one day they dug themselves a little bit of a hole and now they're digging themselves out. You'd obviously rather you know, don't dig the hole, but I'll give 'em credit for at least digging themselves out even if they dug themselves in it in the first place. And it's a positive change. Sports is star driven in many respects. I think the CFL's a little bit less star driven than most leagues because these are such old iconic franchises like the Toronto aaus are the oldest pro team in North America, but the stars still matter. Obviously what Chad Kelly does in Toronto for instance, matters. He has a star quality obviously from his lineage, from being nearby in Buffalo, having a very notorious college career for better or worse across a few different institutions. So the more that you can cater to your stars and the more that you can do to elevate the stars and make fans feel comfortable investing in those stars, the better. Well, and obviously we cover all the different stuff on here, but I do, when the page turns here we go to the C ffl season, you know, would be amazed with the die hard that we have for it's two seasons of X F L or we had this and the us I'm like the go to the C F L, that's times a hundred, you know, just have so much more history and the tradition of all these teams. Speaking of jerseys and the Argonauts, are we fans of the new, what is it, the baby blue crims and blue, what the new do you like the New Jersey? They call it Cambridge Blue Cambridge, Cambridge is the light. Yeah, and Oxford is the dark. I honestly just call it Navy and Baby Blue because then everybody knows what you're talking about. I think they're fine. I think it's an upgrade over the last ones. I thought the last ones I'm not a big fan of, and maybe this is just the media guy in me, but I'm not a big fan of jerseys that are hard to read. And I've found the light blue number on the dark blue jersey was just a little bit tough to read. Previous to that the Argos had always had dark home jerseys with white numbers and those are very easy to read. So I didn't like the new jerseys that they had last season for that reason. The brand new ones they have for 2023 are extremely easy to read. So I'm a big fan of that. I think the helmet detail is lacking a little bit. It's very monochromatic. It's very just baby blue on baby blue on baby blue. I think maybe a little more Navy detail in there would've been better. And I'm not a huge fan of the ORs they have on the shoulders, like the allots. If you Google allots alternate jerseys, about 10 years ago they had these gray jerseys and they had feathers on the shoulders that were, it is kind of cool as a modern take on what an alos are. Obviously birds, but the Argos ORs look just like that. And so all I could think about when I was looking at those jerseys was like, oh, this looks like a riff on the old allots alternate uniforms that they haven't worn in probably 10 years. But ultimately I do like them. I do think that's an upgrade. And I will also say this, it's not that long ago that the CFL's East division, this is before Ottawa came back in the league 2014, the East division used to have four teams and four of them were navy blue. It was Toronto, Winnipeg, and Montreal, which is just silly. It's just silly. So the bombers have since gone back to their roots, which was royal blue, not navy blue. The Allos have kind of doubled down on it. So I like that the fact that the Argos are moved away from it a little bit. There's no team in Canada that wears that color, be it in the C F L or N H L even. So I think embracing that light shade of blue is a good move for that franchise. It's a little, I tweeted it's a little X F L Renegade, so the renegades Have a little bit. A little bit. Yeah, no, no, that's good. That's good. You talked about off the top that having to retain players X F L U S F L moving forward, do you see, and I think would be the dream of a lot of Canadian football proponents having to develop more Canadian talent, sign more Canadian talent that way we don't know. It could be tomorrow, this all goes away, but if the X F L and the US F L continue here a little bit, what do you see the path for the C F L to kind of keep cultivating talent? Well, I think that's a great point and it's something that I have talked to people about in this league is Canadians getting opportunities at positions that normally they wouldn't get. I mean traditionally if you go back to the old days of the S I'm talking like the seventies and the eighties teams generally played five Canadian offensive linemen. They had to start 10 during that era. So they would cash in their first five just on the O line, and then they would often stick one or two slot backs a nose, tackle a safety, and then maybe a mic linebacker. And since then the number's gone down to seven. I think it went down to seven in the mid nineties. But don't quote me on that. Teams have generally played American tackles with Canadian interiors and now what you're seeing is so many tackles with expanded practice rosters in the N F L with as you mentioned, the X F L, the U S F L I. More teams are looking to play Canadian tackles. We saw Dante BOGO at the first overall pick and this year's C F L draft out of Fresno State. He's a guy who started 33 games with the Bulldogs primarily at left tackle. Is he the first overall pick? Five years ago maybe, but maybe not because I don't think he's a guy who necessarily slots in great to guard. He is a kind of true tackle. He's got long arms, he's got kind of a thin lower body, a bigger upper body. And so I think that's a change that we're seeing. I think the Edmonton Elks are also going to start a Canadian at tackle this year. It's looking like Josiah St. John out of Oklahoma was the first overall pick in 2016 when Chris Jones was with the Saskatchewan Rough Riders. He's probably going to start at right tackle. So that's a change that we're seeing and honestly I think it's for the better to a large extent. Trey Ford, for example, was a first round pick as a quarterback, first one in 40 years. Nathan Rourke obviously became a star last season was, in my opinion, the best player in the league, though obviously he got banged up with the injury. So this is a situation where, be it strong side linebacker, quarterback, offensive tackle, you're seeing more guys get opportunities. And I'll also say this, if you've only been a fan of the C F L for the last 10 years, you probably don't think anything of Canadians playing running back. But that is something that did not happen for a very long time. Like Sean Millington out of Simon Fraser, I think he was the first round pick in maybe 1990, was kind of the first guy in a generation to be a true running back in the C F L. And the next generation was this fabulous influx of talent. Guys like Jerome Meum, guys like John Cornish, Andrew Harris, who's still obviously playing they'll, albeit on the very tail end of his career guys who all of a sudden it wasn't just like, oh, he's a Canadian who can get in for some snaps. It was like, this is a guy who can be a thousand yard recce or a thousand yard rusher, 500 yard receiver and be an M O P, right? We saw Andrew Harris in 2019 were it not for the drug testing that happened, he probably would've been the M O P. John Cornish did win an M O p. Joe Meam I think won two most outstanding Canadian awards. So these days with guys like Brady Olvera starting at Canadian or being a Canadian running back, that's starting. It doesn't look odd by today's standards, but if this was 15 years ago, it'd look a little weird. 30 years ago it would look crazy. So we've already seen that transition happen at some positions and it's nice to see it happening in other spots as well. Last question with the F L and U S F L, I don't know how much of it kind of resonated if you guys tracked it all this year, and if you did, you can speak on that, but the X F L completing it season, US F L here going into season two, has that changed your guys' thought process about like, oh, we need to worry about this. What is your current welfare check with John Hodge on the X F L and U S F L? To be perfectly honest, I really don't follow the X F L or U S F L. That being said, I think the temperature north of the border talking to people, the league is, there's a hope that if either league stays around, it won't be for much longer. And I'm not saying that as a malicious wish of fans, this is not a representation of how fans are feeling or how the public is feeling, but for obvious reasons with the competition personnel, people in the C F L are hoping that these American leagues die and that is simply a professional desire for them to have an easier access to this talent. Because it used to be, and most guys who are working in C F L personnel departments have generally worked in a professional environment where you call it players and it's like, okay, you're not on an N F L roster, you're not on a practice roster. Even if you want to play, you got to come up to Canada, and by the way, you're going to be making 50,000 American dollars and if you play every single game, you're going to make less if you're on our pr. And it's not a terribly attractive offer to a lot of guys, especially because Americans, and I think everyone's wired this way to some extent, they're hesitant to leave their home country, they don't know a lot about Canada, they don't really understand what the league is. And it's not until they get here that they kind of go like, oh, okay, this league or this story we always hear from American players modern times is, I didn't know anything about the cfl, so I looked it up on YouTube and they've, they go and they watch a bunch of clips and they kind of go, okay, I understand kind of who these teams are, kind of what these schemes are. The field is really big, there's all this motion. So just given that they can stay local and they can make about the same amount of money playing less games, I don't blame young players for deciding, yeah, I'll play X ffl or I'll play U S F L as my route to try to get back to the N F L rather than coming up to Canada. So I can't speak for my own personal feelings or for the public in general, but what I can say is from a C F L standpoint, the hope is that these leagues, if one of them sticks around or there's a merger of some kind even that would be a lot better than having 16 independent teams operated because it does chew up a lot of that talent that would've otherwise come up to the C F L. And I think the position that's hurting most honestly is the quarterback spot where obviously every league, even the N F L needs stars in a high level of play to have the best level of entertainment value associated with the product. I want to get your take on, and obviously we came into the C F L and it was very tumultuous, a lot of tension there with the X F L and all of that. But I talking with our listeners, other people that cover and we have with C F L News Hub and guys that cover these things and not it, to me the C F L I is a wonderful world once you're in it right now we're getting ready for C F L coverage. I can call people, I can get you try to get you reporters and fans and go to the games and all that, but when you're outside the world as a fan or with me, it, it's a little harder to break into if that makes sense. And I feel like there's a level of, the word I use is gatekeeping, if that makes sense. If you don't know or you don't know the last 50 years of the Ottawa's, all this stuff, it makes it hard to be a fan. I hear I am even a new N F L fan, right? It was the X F L that got me into the N F L back in the 2020. I covered the Seahawks here in Seattle, but I didn't watch a lot of other stuff. And I'm just curious your thoughts on that because now that I'm in it, I love the C F L, love everything. It's great, but getting to that point, and I don't know if the C F L makes itself too hard to get into from a fan and even from players, well you got to come up here, you got to work your ass off for three years and then maybe we'll give you a shot. I would say that I think gatekeeping is probably a fair way to say it. There is a lot to learn about the C F L and I think that the reason people feel that way, that kind of sense of protectionism is because it is something that is distinctly Canadian. And I think I'm born and raised Canadian. I live in Winnipeg, was born here. I do think that there is sometimes an inferiority complex for Canadians just in general and speaking as a Canadian who works in the media, we are bombarded, a lot of Canadians will talk American politics or engage, and I have family in the United States by the way. I got family in Boston, I got family in St. Louis, I got family in a number of US cities and we're in tune with your politics and things that are happening in the United States. We talk about all kinds of political things, whether it's the abortion debate, the gun debate, things like that. Because we are inundated with your media and we know that the same is not true in reverse and that's appropriate in many respects. Obviously Canada has, I mean Canada's the population of California, so it's not reasonable for us to think that Americans are ever going to be anywhere close to in tune as what's going on in Canada as we would be there. And that being said, that that can be a good thing. It can also be a bad thing. A lot of Canadian radio stations, for instance, or network television have regulations in place that a certain amount of content has to be Canadian. And the reason for that is they're aware, the government is aware that if people are given carte blanche to play whatever music they want or whatever television shows or anything like that, that it's inevitable that American media is going to win because there's just so much more resources down there in terms of eyeballs, in terms of money, in terms of all those things. And your currency is also stronger. The Canadian dollar is worth about 20%, 25% depending on the day, less than the American dollar. So I think that all of those things culminate in an environment where Canadian football fans and C F L fans, and for the record, I am an N F L fan, I've always followed the N F L, not as closely as the c f, but I've always followed both Evenson silent. I grew up as a little kid playing Madden, so the NFL's always been part of my life. But there is, I think that sense of protection or fear where well, people are going to judge the C F L before they get a chance to get to know it, or people are going to not give the C F L a proper chance. So why would we give them a chance to fall in love with the C F L or learn about the C F L or know about the C F L? Because I do think the general feeling in Canada is that three down football has better rules than four down football. I will personally say that I am a proponent of that thought. I do find the three down game more interesting than the four down game. So I think that when you talk about C F L fans being a little bit or engaging in some gatekeeper ism, if you will, I think it ties into a larger conversation about what does it mean to be Canadian and also what does it mean to be Canadian in an environment in modern times with not just traditional media but also new media and digital media and social media just being inundated 24 7 by the American news cycle and American culture and American content, which again, in and of itself is not bad, but is also at times at least can be perceived as a threat to what Canadians perceive to be theirs or perceived to be unique about Canada because Canada is a different place. It's culturally similar in many ways. In many ways it's very dissimilar. So I think that it all ties into that big mosaic of what is Canada, what is the us? And how do Canadians feel on any given day about what that relationship is that dynamic is like, Well no, it is and I get it and I understand it all kind of having lived through it now, but it is alarming when you try to get into it and now having lived through it and talk to people and I think going to the Gray Cup, the first Hamilton one we went to, you get it when you get all these people in the room when you're talking with it, but it's online, it's always worse. And obviously we, we've lived through that and everything else. But thoughts on the health of the C F L here? I know we, I've watched obviously the pre-season game and I want to get to ultimately the goal of here of the CFL plus discussion, 17,000 in Calgary, which looked to me having tracked X F L attendance all year is phenomenal for me for a pre-season game. But I had heard reports Cal Calgary, they're not going to sell the upper bowl. I just saw Pitfalls Pod had an article that mosaics trying to lower concession prices. What is your health here going into the C F L this season? Obviously Ammar making big strides over in bc. How are you kind of feeling welfare check? I think the C F L is in the best place. It's been in a long time. That being said, there's a lot of work to do. And the reason I say that at the end of the day, I think the CFO's in a good spot is largely due to ownership. I mean Pierre Carl Peau is the first local owner that the Montreal lets have had in decades and he's a billionaire. You can't really argue with that. And also if his level of engagement was in question, I mean was at their first day at training camp, which I thought is really cool. Training camp is boring just by definition it's generally not interesting. In a three week training camp, there might be four interesting things that happen, be it an injury or whatever, or a player arrives late or there's a suspension or a fight like training camp is boring by definition. And Pierre Carello took the time to be there as a billionaire, which I think is super cool. And for the record training camp is Inua Rivier Quebec outside of Montreal. So he had to make extra trip to get Quebec or to get to that training camp. It wasn't just as easy as walking down the street, which was really cool. You mentioned him, he's doing incredible things in Vancouver. The community owned teams in Regina, Winnipeg are doing very well. Edmonton is struggling, but I think the Victor Kwe, their president and c e o who's done incredible things in M M A and through his own career, I think is the perfect guy to lead them to that new generation of success. Things have gotten bad in Calgary to some extent. We just had Ryan Valentine, our own contributor, who I believe has been on your show before. Reid, he'll be on this episode here. I got to, yeah, there you go. There you go. He's like, he had Jay McNeil on his show. He'd be the best person to talk about this. Jay McNeil is the vice president of business for the stamp Peters, I believe he is next in line to be their president. John Huff Nagle, the team's president. Huff is into his seventies. I don't imagine he wants to be the president much longer. At some point you just have to enjoy your life and go fishing. So I think that the leadership is in is generally speaking across the C F L in position for this lead to be successful. The issue is they were really weakened by the Covid pandemic and they're just behind on a lot of digital trends. And that's getting into the CFL plus thing that I know we'll talk about. But I think coming out of the pandemic was just about survival and this next chapter is about thriving. And I know that the league keeps talking about expansion. I don't personally believe that expansion is any closer to happening now than it was 20 years ago, which is a big problem because at some point people are just going to get tired of talking about expansion because we talk about it and it never happens. With that said, I will also say for people who haven't followed the C F L for more than about a decade, like Ottawa folded as the rough riders in 1996, they'd been around over a century. They came back as the renegades in oh two and then folded after the oh five season due to bad ownership. And so after they folded a second time, there was a period of almost 10 years where everybody said, well, we all know that the C F L will never work in Ottawa because it's failed twice now in the span of 10 years. And now the Red Blacks are arguably in the best position of any privately owned C F L team. They have a young crowd generally at TD plays. And even though the team has been objectively terrible for the last couple seasons, their ticket numbers are still pretty darn good. And again, their demographics I've been led to believe are some of the best in the CFL in terms of getting women out to games, in terms of getting younger people out to games. So this league has a ton of work to do over the next five years, and I think they've wasted, frankly, some time and resources on some initiatives that have just been a waste of time. But I think that the initiatives they're starting to prioritize and the groundwork they're starting to lay if they are able to make the right decisions and have the right leadership and execute things the right way to make some very positive steps in the next five years. So speaking of the TV deal, obviously we are primarily American listeners here. Very excited going into the season. We were there last year and brosy, okay, we're doing genius sports, all of that big excitement, whatever this year we have the American TV deal that's coming, right? It's coming, it's coming. And I think I had Randy on during the C F L Media Day. Okay, it's still coming. And then we to, and it feels a little bit like a wet fart, right? Okay, we're kind of on CBS sports, right? We're kind of on the C C F L. I heard Don on Rods show this week talking people complaining. I don't know who can complain about anything free. I mean the C F L, it works great. I watched the whole thing, but what do you make of this splinter than we got a more money than we got before from C B s, but now we're giving away half of our games for free? Well, I think this is kind of a necessary evil. This is something that the C F L has tried to do for a long time, which is monetize its rights south of the border. We all know that Americans love to watch football. Traditionally that's been N F L on college. I know that X F L and U S F L ratings and you're obviously much more familiar with those numbers than I have. I know there's been a lot of fluctuation. I see things on my Twitter timeline where one week there's a game that pops off and people seem really happy and the next week there's a game that does really poorly and people start ringing their hands. So that, that's the extent of what I know about the ratings for those other leagues. But obviously, right, we are a country in Canada of, again, about 40 million people, a little bit less. If you can turn even 2% of N F L fans into hardcore C F L fans, this league could double its television revenue. And that would be incredible. The rights in Canada are worth about 50 million a year. I've been led to believe that the old TV deal with E S P N paid in the neighborhood of one to 200 grand, which is next to nothing, we're talking like less than 1% of what the Canadian D roll was. Reportedly this new deal of C B S is $1 million, which is 2% of what the Canadian rights are. So they're moving in the right direction. But this is not a revolutionary source of income for the C F L now through C B s. And I think what this new deal with the free streaming service is for the CFL is all about data collection. This is something that's going to allow the CFL to know who exactly is tuning into our games. Where exactly are they tuning into the games? Because the c f right now, they sell the da, at least the pastures have sold the TV rights and ESPN just syndicates everything, which is cool. But now you're getting more money from C B s, you're maybe be losing some exposure. But what you are doing is you're checking on, okay, how has the exposure previously on E S P N translated to people wanting to watch us because the C F L doing this themselves means they're exclusively going to have the data of who is tuning in. Are these men, are these women? How old are they? Do we have an older crowd in the US or a younger crowd? Where are people tuning in? Do we have a surprise bastion of C F L fans in Florida versus Oklahoma? Or is our bread and butter Texas versus California? Where are people tuning in? Why are they tuning in? And also, which teams are they tuning into? Do we find that Bo Levi Mitchell's ratings from his tenure being a star quarterback in high school in Texas, is he a real push for American fans? Are fans going out of their way to tuna, Oliva Mitchell is playing or are they going out of their way to watch? Zach Lars who albeit 10 years ago, was a big start at Cincinnati with the Bearcats. Like this is something that I think the C F L is going to use this season to collect that data and the more data and have the better. They're going to be able to sell things down the line to potentially other television partners where they can go, okay, we gave away our service for free for X number of years. These are the million data points that we've got or millions of data points that we've got, and we want to give this to you to now monetize it to the best of your ability and also specifically target your ads to these people. And something else I'll mention, this is probably getting ahead of the game a little bit, but long term we've seen the N F L start to dip their toe into online streaming and not selling their rights to traditional media in the form of television, but instead doing with online partners. This would be a game changer for the C F O. If Apple right came along and said, yeah, we want to exclusively broadcast your games to the world, so outside of Canada, we're going to give you X amount of money and the CFO's just going to live on Apple TV like that. That is also a game changer. Potentially if a non-traditional media company, if Amazon wanted to come and say, yeah, we're going to make Prime the home of international C F L, that market I don't think is huge right now, but by giving it away for free, I think the CFL is hoping to grow it and have the data to try to enhance that and make it better as time goes on. Did we get a sense, and I know we've just had the one so far, and it was the great C F L preseason thunderstorm and there was a lot of different things that went into it, but any sense I emailed Lucas any sense as to how many people logged into that? Because I know, and obviously I have just my small sample Twitter, but I tweeted out, Hey, watch some thing. I mean, I probably had 20 people, Hey, I signed up too. I got on the thing. This is obviously a fraction, but if I could get 25 people here, do you have any sense of how many people logged on or are they going to release those numbers at some point? I don't. And I would be very surprised if they announced anything. But with that being said, at least judging by an informal social media sense of things, I was also, I think at least pleasantly surprised by how many people seem to be watching. I know obviously people are hungry for C F L action. We haven't had any in six months. And it also helps that the game happened on the long weekend, right? Canadians had the Monday off, we call it Victoria Day. What do you guys call it in the states? We don't. Well, we have Memorial Day next weekend. This is, I work Monday. Yeah, Okay. So Americans were working, but Canadians were off, yeah, yeah, this past Monday. So it's Victoria, we just call it may long generally, but anyways, that obviously helps that people are generally not doing anything. I also think putting things on a Monday afternoon of the long weekend is really smart because a lot of people are going to use the long weekend to travel or go to the cottage and they're back home by later in the day on Monday. So I think the, from a scheduling standpoint was very helpful. I will also ask the league once this is all said and done, how they felt the streaming went and how the preseason live thing worked in Canada. But my guess is they're going to keep any numbers and data points they have very close to the chest because any smart business, my speculation is that they're going to try to sell this to somebody or at least use this information to turn into money at some point down the road. Yeah, Because my fear with this, and like I said, I you know, never want to complain with free stuff and the production was fine. Mark did a great job, Mark's calling on the game and I can't remember his co-host, but Mark's on there and he's a friend of the show, Mark Stevens, but we got money from CBS B sports, no one else wanted to pay for the other part of that. Now we're do does C B S then next year or do they sit there and go, well, we're not going to pay as much now because there clearly wasn't, you know what I mean? Wasn't another, I'm just curious here, years after now giving this, does c b s realize there's not a buyer's market for the C? And I don't know why there's not because like I said, people clamor for football all the time. I don't know why there's not that appetite here in the States. And I mean, the thing that I keep hearing, and I mean even this is something with I I've heard Pat McAfee talk about is like, oh yeah, back in training camp with the cols, like we would always watch C F L games and people generally, once they're exposed to the C F L fall in love with it as you have for instance. But yeah, it could be a hard game to get in front of people and it's never been tougher to get eyeballs on a particular product. There's just so much happening in a digital world all the time to get people to tune in. I know one thing that the CFO really needs to change is currently they're extremely protective of their replays and highlights. For instance, if for instance, partway through this broadcast read, if you wanted to intercut it with a touchdown pass from both Levi Mitchell to Kamar Jordan from last season, you would probably get a letter from a lawyer the next week saying that that's a bad thing. And I personally in the modern day think that that is completely backwards. We need to be putting this product that is exciting and is interesting and is entertaining in front of as many people as possible and maybe giving away a number of games for free to the people in the US we'll prop the C F L to make that decision and say, okay, maybe instead of policing who is sending out our highlights, maybe we should encourage them to post highlights. Because if somebody watches a highlight in May of something that happened last year, they'll be more likely to buy a ticket to a game, to a home opener next month. Because I think that's a huge problem. People right now often go six months without seeing a single highlight from the C F L. That's crazy, right? I'm on TikTok, I'm on Instagram, I'm on Twitter every day. I swear I see some type of N F L highlight Lamar Jackson rolling out making some crazy play, or Justin Jefferson completely undressing a corner on some unbelievably nasty route that he's run. We need to get that same exposure for the C F L. So I think that giving it away for free, and look, if CBS B doesn't want this to be given away for free, they get to show all the games not doing that. They chose to show under half, there's 82, 81 regular season games. I think they're showing 37. So if CBS BS didn't want this to happen, theoretically they could have POed up more money and stopped it. And the C F L has decided to fill the gap, which I think is smart. I'll let you go here soon, I promise. I appreciate the extended time here because in my position, just as trying to get views and all this kind of stuff, like I was trying to look at the other side and I saw, hey, Randy came out, Hey, we're championing this. It's free. We want access. I always think, well, that's the way you spin it when we'll know what no one wanted it, right? Well now we're going to champion the other side. We're going to say, well no, we want to give this away for free. We want people to have access to it. That that's how you spin that. You get what I mean. And I know that I've heard for years, Randy's the biggest spinner in the world. Do you read that in? Do you are agree, disagree? What are your thoughts on how I viewed it? Well, I think Randy Ambrose's job is ultimately to be the CFL's biggest salesperson. So obviously he is going to talk about it in glowing terms. I, I've been highly critical of Randy Ambrosie for certain initiatives that he's undertaken during his tenure years. The league's commissioner, which I mean he still feels like a new commissioner. I think he's been with the league now for some seven years, which is wild. He's now one of the longest tenured commissioners in league history. That is by the way, something the C F L is notorious for in the NFL or most professional leagues. If you get the Commissionership, it's like a lifetime gig in the C ffl, we kick you out after three years. It's generally a pretty short-lived position for one reason or another. But that being said, I do think this is positive. The C F L was stuck in this rut where for many, many years they would sell their rights to ESPN for pennies on the dollar and ESPN n wouldn't promote the games. They would throw them on a random channel. Often they would make the decision extremely late, far too late, even for engaged people to say, oh, okay, where am I going to watch the game? Is this on their streaming? Is this on two? Is this on four? It became very confusing for people who are watching the games and now for the C F L to say, Hey, over half of our games are here and they're free. That's a pretty idiot proof way to get more people engaged. Yes, you have to go the extra step to signing up on cfl.ca, but that's not a hard step to undertake if you are someone who cares about the cfl. And if you're someone who happens to just have CBS and that particular channel, literally every other game is there. And from my understanding, CBS will be making an effort to make it clear with bumpers and things like that when the games were actually on. Cause that is another piece of information I hear from us fans all the time, which was, oh, I would've watched the game on Friday. I just didn't know when it was happening or where it was. And I think we do live in an era now. When I was a kid, you had the TV guide handbook or you or you'd look at the newspaper for when things were on. That obviously doesn't exist anymore. People are not patient enough to go and seek out hours and days in advance. When is this happening? Appointment viewing is kind of dead. You really have to spoon feeded people and say, this is what we're showing and and make that very easy for people to connect to. So I think it's fair if you want to criticize that it's being given away for free. I would be concerned if there was no TV deal and the C Ffl solution to the e s ESPN deal no longer being a thing was just to say, okay, well rather than selling it for pennies on the dollar, let's just give the whole thing away for free. That's not what happened. They partnered, albeit with what I understand, a more niche company in the market, but they got more money and they're getting more exposure and controlling their own data. So for that reason, I see it as positive in a way it's the best of both worlds. You're getting more money and you're also collecting your own data by having people come directly to you. And you can't beat the direct to consumer model and not going through that third party. So is this a perfect long-term solution? No, but I don't think that or any endeavor should ever get caught up in not doing a deal because it's not perfect. Because good is a lot better than nothing. And the new deal is not perfect, but it's good. And I think that that is a stepping stone to potentially in the future getting a deal that's very good and then great and maybe there's a fantastic deal to be had in 25 years. But this is a long-term process and I think this is a positive step towards whatever that long-term goal for the C F L is, which I would imagine is to have a American broadcasting deal that is on par or even bigger than their Canadian broadcasting deal. Yeah, I mean, like you said, apple or what you would do just to have it on. I do. And last thing for me on this, I, and I know it feels a little rushed here, getting into the season, we got the radio broadcast, all that, and I know that they're going to obviously stream the T SM broadcast for the regular games considering that the CBS BS sports network is going to be the app, whatever. And I got to figure out how to get on all that before the season two if we have a C F L app on the Apple TV or whatever. Because doing the laptop thing, jumping back forth, I wish it was like that where I could be on Apple tv, I could go, I got my CBS B S sports here, I got my whatever. Cause I'm like airplane, the stuff off my laptop. I mean it's not super elegant right now, but I think it's kind of a stepping stone. But hey, I get worked. I went on, it worked. It's free. I was able to watch it. It didn't cut out even through all the kind of stuff. So I think it could have gone a lot worse. And I think once obviously they just broadcasted TSN games, I think it'll look a lot more professional. You know what I mean? Well, yeah. And ultimately that's what everybody wants. We kind of want to, in a way go back to cable where it's just you turn on the TV and everything that's on is on. And the great thing about Netflix 10 years ago was you turn on Netflix and everything you want to watch is there. And what we've seen over the last 10 years in that kind of streaming ecosystem is the deterioration where all of a sudden it's like I feel like if I want to watch everything, I need 12 streaming services and I don't know what's on what. And I don't know what all my logins are because I pay for this one and I share that one with a friend and this one is my parents and this one's my neighbors that I secretly don't tell them that I use. And it just becomes chaos and people get frustrated and then they tune out. So I agree with you in 20 years from now, and by the way, that might be the goal long-term goal for the N F NFL in 20 years, you just turn on the N F NFL app and you watch all the games and the NFL is going to sell all their own advertisements and they're going to do it for hundreds of billions of dollars, some ungodly sum of money, and that might be the model the C F L wants to copy on, albeit a very much smaller scale. That might be the route the N hhl goes or whatever. They'll just pay their own people to cover the games and talk positively about the league and ignore all the negative stories that independent media would cover. Maybe that's the motto because as a consumer, that's certainly what I would want. I just want to be able to mindlessly turn on my television and no, okay, every single thing I want is right here. I don't have to think about it, don't have to worry about it. I can just focus my energy and attention on my job or my personal life or whatever. I don't have to spend any time or energy worrying about what I'm watch on TV because that's not where we want to spend our energy. So I get it. That's what I want too. But we're in a very weird place, I think in media consumption in general where 10 years ago we started digitizing it and as the digital space has exploded, what that's done is it, it's taken something that used to be very simple and made it very complicated. And I'd like to think that long term the reverse will happen, it'll become more simple as streaming services amalgamate. I know Hulu and Disney plus are amalgamating in the United States. I think that that process will take place and eventually there will be a couple of streaming services left. But in the intermediate, yeah, fans are going to have to do a lot of work if they want to watch stuff. And hopefully this new agreement for at least the C F L will help simplify that process a little bit. Yeah, someone that's had conversations with my mother last week about getting the F L Sunday ticket now on YouTube or whatever I can, I definitely collaborate. It's a challenging. John, I appreciate anything else from you today before I let you go. Extended time, like I said, I appreciate you hanging on here. No, no, nothing from me. I appreciate you having me and yeah, good luck with the show. Enjoy the C F L season. It's going to be good. John Hodge over at three now. Appreciate your time today. Thanks so much. Thanks boss. Well, I'm excited today. I remember the day that we got involved in all this C F L Twitter and I saw Brian Valentine here tweeting. I said, I know that gentleman. I watched him on Big Brother Canada. We've got back and forth finally getting you on the show. One of the stars, big Brother Canada six, but more importantly, kind of a stamp Peters guy now for the Three Down Nation. How are you doing, Ryan? I'm doing well, man. Thank you. Yeah, I, it's funny. I joined Three Down Nation just before I went on the show. I was in my callback audition. I was sequestered in a hotel room in Toronto when I got the call from Duncan to Edwards at the time. And they said, Hey, do you want to think about writing for us? And I was like, well, I got nothing else to do cause I'm in sequester. So I banged off three or four pieces and they liked them. And so I've been there ever since. So they were fortunate. I was fortunate in that they mobilized their audience to vote to save me at one point, which I appreciated. No, that's good. Yeah, I lived through the Big Brother Canada there for a while and then after Covid I kind of fell off. I went through and when that season kind of got cut, it was, it's hard with the VPNs and all of that, but we're here today. The man survived the great C F L preseason thunderstorm here. We were watching the Elks. I watched that whole thing start to finish. It was Riving. I Mark Stevens or listened to him and Dave Campbell, everything else we had our first preseason game. How do you feel about the C ffl being back? Well, I mean obviously anytime you get C F L football, that's a good day. I'm a big fan of our game and how it plays and for my money. I still think the C F L is the best rule set available of all football leagues. So anytime we can get back to what I consider real football, what I like to see, Oh, you talk real football, you're going to get the U S F L fans at you because U S F L, apparently that's real football. That's what they say. Look, again, you can have your four downs all you want. I appreciate that you need the extra time to get 10 yards, but a three down game with a much larger field, it's more entertaining for me to watch because it's got more possibilities than any of the four down variations. That's good. You see? Yeah, fan control football, they have some and stuff you can look at. You're a fan of voting with Big Brother and all of that. We gave you some fan votes and bring in the, I think they had the fifth down and flip the field and cut all this stuff. So Yeah, that's a lot of video game stuff. I mean sure that can be fun, but from a day-to-day football standpoint, I'll take my C F L rules over any of the other brands. So we have the stamp, Peters here first year now under the full tutelage of Jake Mayer, right? I mean with the bow, and we had all that last year. Jake was on the show last year. I said, I want to get on your bandwagon early. I want to kind of hitch my ride there. How are the stamps looking this year? I know we've just had the first preseason, but obviously training camps and all that, how are stamps looking going into the year? Well, I, if I think basing it off of that first preseason game would be a mistake only eight days into camp. And there's been wildfires raging in Alberta here over the first eight days of camp. So much so that practices are being canceled or converted into video meetings or being relocated. I mean there's all kinds of things that are happening here in the first eight days of training camp for both the stamps and the Elks. So I don't know that this was the best showcase of their early talent, but if you look at Jake Mayer from last season, he was the third highest QB rating of any QB in the league. If you prorate his stats out, he's about a 4,000 yard passer, which is what you want from this team when they're as good as they are in the run game. I think Jake Mayer doesn't have to be a world beater to beat the world this season with the Calgary stamp. Peters Well, yeah, and you, we saw Kadeem Gary out there doing well and I said, yeah. They said, well, they only want to get him in for a little bit. I go, yeah, let's not wear him out there. But it seems like he hasn't lost a beat. I've seen interviews, I know with you or whoever posting you, he wants to rush for however many yard this season and they want to be all that. It seems like they're coming in with a head esteem here at the St. Peters. Yeah, they were one of the youngest teams in the league last season, and they've brought back a lot of those guys. They had a lot of injury problems, especially in the defensive secondary last year. And a lot of guys were able to gain game experience to come into this season. So if Calgary's able to stay healthy, I don't see why they're not in the Great Cup conversation In terms of the West, I don't know, I it's kind of wide the open. We got the Vernon experiment now kind of going into season two and obviously Saskatchewan's may move. So what do you make of the west kind of start to top to bottom? Well, I think you've got Winnipeg and Calgary at the top. I think those are the two teams that will be at the top. One of those two teams will host the West Final. I don't necessarily like Saskatchewan. Their old line was on roller skates last season just consistently and constantly pushed back. And their answer to that was to go and get a less mobile quarterback in Trevor Harris. Trevor Harris a much faster release than Cody Fu. Jaro does, but at the end of the day, I mean he's going to be on the run a ton. I don't necessarily like what Saskatchewan has. I figured them for an under 500 finish this year in bc. I mean, yes, you said it's year two of the Vernon Adams experience, but really what it is, is the Nathan work hangover and realizing that the best quarterback talent that this league has seen in a long, long time is no longer in the league. And Ken Vernon Adams be as successful as they were last year. I don't think he can be. He's been a quarterback that is successful in spurts throughout his career, but has never really dominated. And I think the difference between that team being as good as they were and as bad as they were the year before was Nathan Rourke. So I don't know that BC takes many steps forward and I mean the Elks are at Dumpster Fire, have been for a long time, will continue to be, I don't believe in Taylor Cornelius, Kevin Brown up there as a running back. Maybe they're only saving grace. They have an incredibly deep receiver's room, but I just don't see Cornelius as an on-target quarterback. Why now? How many years are we going to give Chris Jones? Because I know he came in and people are upset and hey, it's going to take time. I mean this is going into year three now that the Chris Jones, how great of a leash does he have? And obviously we hear, you know, guys reported that Edmonton losing and you was it 2 million or 3 million, whatever? Seems like not all is well there in Edmonton. Yeah, I think if Chris Jones doesn't have a playoff team this year, I don't know if he survives the off season. He is an expensive hire and when you look at Edmonton's report, a lot of the reason why they lost money was because they're still paying severance to a lot of people. So as long as that's on the books, they may not make a change up there because they're still paying off Brock Sunderland and Ed Harvey and all kinds of people up there, and that's a big chunk of their loss. But I think if Chris Jones doesn't make the playoffs this season, I think the team up in Edmonton has to seriously look at it. I mean, we're not, and to steal a sound, a famous football soundbite, when I say they're trying to make the playoffs, I mean they're also just trying to win a game at home. They haven't won a game at home since changing the franchise's name and that it's over 1200 days or something since they've won a game at home, they may not be looking for playoffs, but a home win would be a step forward for this club. It was funny, I shot a wedding last weekend and the couple, it was their nine year anniversary and they knew exactly it was a 3,333 day since they met. And I was like, and they didn't plan it that way, but I said, God, the fact that you went back and they were, I guess you can plug that into a computer and calculate that, but that just seems like a wild number to be able to pull up that you No, it's a long time for Edmonton. Did you feel like they looked good? And I'm going to talk with Dave Campbell get obviously, because you're going to be biased, I'm just kidding. But how did you think that Edmonton looked and obviously they're moving quarterbacks around and kind of doing all that stuff? Yeah, Jared Deggy looked the best of their quarterbacks. He was on the run, he was making on-Target throws on the run. I thought that Kai Lockley, that experiment should end guy's a good receiver, but I don't want him as a quarterback. And Jones has this kind of mentality of trying to put players where they may not belong initially because they're athletes and teach 'em how to play the position. But it was also weird to me that he brought Lockley back into the game at all. The idea that he had three quarterbacks and one of 'em played the first quarter and the fourth quarter, which were separated by two and a half hours of actual time. That was really weird to me. But I thought Deggy looked good for French, which I'm sure isn't how you pronounce it, but that's how I'm going to say it because there's two F's at the beginning looked good as a receiver in spots, but he also dropped a couple crucial ones late when Edmonton was trying to get back in the game. So I like the idea of Kevin Brown, he was a guy that really kind of stood out for me as a Elks all-star last season, but he didn't make the trip down the highway. So if he can duplicate the kind of game he showed to in the stretch drive last year, Edmonton will have a very dangerous running game In terms of Calgary. It didn't, obviously we had the bow and all of that, but they were already kind of divorced from him anyway. It doesn't feel like Calgary had to do a lot here in the off season. Have you not? What did they need to shore up and what have they done leading into this year? Well, I mean you did lose Fuller or Milat and Sean Lemon, both of whom combined for 22 sacks last year. Although Lemon went to BC and was cut before even getting to play a game, which I thought was surprising considering he was the reigning most outstanding defensive player for the West Division. So they did have to rebuild their defensive line in that way, bringing in James Vaters and silent signing, Julian Haus there, Kamar Jordan left. So they need to find a third receiver. And who's that going to be? Is it Trey Odom's able to step into that spot or will it be a guy like Tommy Lee Lewis coming out of with a lot of N F L experience but a little smaller or their incoming draft pick from a couple years ago? Rice and John, he's six seven. They targeted him three times on Monday, but he was unable to come down with the ball. But I do think he makes a very intriguing Red zone option. Yeah. What was the deal with Sean Lineman? I do. He did recently cut, what was it? Just a big fall off or I can't say Sean Lemon is one of the most intriguing guys in C F L history to my mind. He has 90 career sacks and he's played for seven different teams and just can't stay on with any team for long. And he keeps leaving Calgary to get more money and deserves that money when he gets it, but then eventually just something goes wrong. He doesn't work out in that market and he ends up finding himself back here. So I don't know that there's a lot of money for Sean Lemon in Calgary, but I sure as hell would take him as a rotational D end if there's a contract to be signed Health, the Calgary franchise, I heard that we're moving seeds, we're not selling up, and I thought 17,000 was tremendous audience for a preseason game. I think that Danny Austin had put that out. We've been tracking us develop and C F L at attendants throughout the last couple years. What is the health of the Calgary franchise? Well, I mean we had president, vice president of business operations, Jay McNeil on our podcast earlier this year, and he said our season ticket base is less than 15,000, which is a dramatic drop off from even five years ago. I think it was 22 or 23,000 season tickets. So 17,000 for the pre-season game was definitely an announced crowd that wasn't a butts in seats crowd that was tickets sold. But I do think they can't, I want to say the fans here are relatively spoiled. I mean this team's been good for 30 years. They're been in the playoffs 17 years in a row. And so the fans here have a great cup expectation, not a great cup hope. And given that Calgary hasn't won one since 2018, they've lost the West semi-final the last two seasons, I think fans are thinking that there might be a better way to spend their money. I mean, nevermind the fact that the games are on T S N, they're free to watch every single game. That's not pre-season, although they did stream the pre-season games, but every game's on television. So do you want to go down to the oldest stadium in the league and line up for a port-a-potty bathroom and go to an underserved concession where you get sometimes a warm beer for $12 or do you want to sit at home and watch your 4K TV with your six pack that you bought for eight bucks at the local store? It's hard to get people out right now. And I think it's even harder because McMahon is not a destination. You know, look at some of the other stadiums in the league and they're nice to go to. I've been to the new Mosaic, it's a nice stadium to watch a football game in. Winnipeg has their new stadium, which is a nice place to watch a football game in. But Calgary just right now, I love McMahon. I think it's got the best sight lines in the league from any seat. But at the same time, just for the average casual fan, it's not enough and the fan experience isn't enough. Well, it's just hard because we've been told here the entire time talking about the C F L Gate driven and now we're obviously doing the C F L plus streaming thing here for free in the states, or we're getting some money on that. And then the people always complain about TSN and the money they're getting from that. But if that's the preferred way to watch it, I mean we even deal with that with the X F L where the X F L broadcast and the access you get on TV as far as superior, they're watching it in person, but then you still get crapped on if there's not anyone in the stands. So it seems to be an issue for a lot of different reasons, but issues for a lot of these leagues right now. Yeah, it, it's switching to the model. I mean, I have trouble with the C F L is failing or is in trouble narrative anyway. I look at TSN and the TSN deal provides 5 million per team per season to each team and the salary cap is $5,850,000 for the players. So you can't tell me that even 15,000 season tickets at an average of 60 bucks a game over nine games, that that's not enough money to run this franchise. I think it's always interesting. Edmonton losing 2 million last season was an anomaly. Normally when you see the public teams open their books, they're at just above or a little better than breakeven and they've always got some sort of fund that they're paying into that draws that eventual number down. But it's impossible for me to believe that every publicly run team in the league either makes money or breaks even and then every private team must lose an absolute as load of money in order for them not to be profitable for the league to be profitable. So I don't buy it. I think it's a story that the owners tell to keep salaries repressed because when you look at the books of the public teams, they're all making money. That's interesting. Yeah. The Edmonton thing was interesting and I know we brought in Victor, we're trying to do a lot of different promotions and things and the senator, I mean, why was that so out of the blue there that in terms of that loss, They've lost money for a couple years? Covid o v is still kicking everyone's ass too. I mean, let's not forget that we're just, this is probably the first season where we're not worried about going into public anymore. The perception of going in public is that it's safer than it has been for three years. You had a canceled season, you had a truncated season, you have, and then last season you had a full year, but now you're trying to claw back from those season ticket sales. We got told on our show that the stamp Peters retain about 86% of their season ticket holders every year. They have a 14% turnover year over year where you don't have new people coming in and buying tickets and you have people no longer retaining their tickets. And when you look at the Covid season, you know lose 15% of your season ticket base there and then from the canceled season and you can't sell those tickets to people. They didn't decide to have a season in 2021 until about two weeks before. So it's too late to get those people back on board. And so you lose another 15% through regular cancellation, well now you're down 30 some odd percent in your overall ticket sales and that they're just starting to try and recover that now. And I think that's across the league at attendance was down almost everywhere and so I'm not surprised to see that happening. What Are your thoughts on the American C F L plus deal, CBSs Sports Network amalgamation? The more Americans that can watch the better football game, the better. I understand that C F L plus or ees on, I believe they were on ESPN plus before and now they're on CBS Plus, which gets to fewer households but has more viewer that I, I'm not sure about all the metrics behind it, but from what they're saying, this is the most, most financially lucrative US broadcast deal they've ever signed. I'll take it. Anything that brings more money into the league is better. I think if you're out there, I think should be, you're watching the mark cast during C F L season, you're going to get a lot of C F L talk. So you're probably already a fan of the league, but if you're stumbling across this because you caught onto this show during U S L U S F L season or X ffl season, I encourage you to get out there and watch C F L football. It's really great quality football. It's a league that's been around for more than a hundred years and I have gone back and forth on X F L and the previous failures, although hey, they got to the end of the season this year and it looks strong. Looks like they want to go again next year and that's great. But for my money, the C F L probably has the second best collection of talented football players in North American football and in the world because this is where we play it. I think the second best set of football players are up here in Canada and I think that proves out with how many guys signed NF N NFL deals every season out of this league. Yeah, does it just real quick here, does it change your tune at all? Yeah. That the X ffl here, we've crowned a champion U S F L here is going to crown the second champion here in a couple weeks. I mean, again, I don't think that that changes my thought on where the best players are because I think what the C F L game does, it features the athleticism of players that may not focus too heavily when you're talking about a four down a hundred yard game. You know, get guys who have the ability to make plays up here linebackers that can track guys across a 65 yard field. If you look at Alex Singleton, he bounced around to a bunch of different camps before now he's having 19 or 20 tackle games in the NFL because he was a guy that learned to pursue across the 65 yard field. Well that's something that translates down into the US game very easily. So I still think that the best collection of talent is still in the C F L from a football perspective that may change over the next couple years I think. But the s l and X ffl right now are, they're gathering their rosters from players who weren't on C F L rosters already. So that may change in the next couple years here, but for now I still think that your best collection of American born players are still in the C F L. Last question from me, you does have a resurgence this year. What is Bo And I've seen the media photos, now we have all the photos and now we have real photos of him. Is he going to have another two, three year career here in Hamilton? I want him to, I like Bo a lot. I like Bo a lot. I don't know if he's going to be able to win a great cup because the only two times he's won a Great Cup championship was when he showed up on our podcast here in Calgary in 20 14, 20 18. Those are the two times he went out and won a great cup. But I do, I, I like the guy, I think he's great for the game. I think he's great for the C F L. It's great to have a guy that's out there that that's that brash and has got that kind of swagger to his game. I hope he has a resurgence season in Hamilton. They often said in Calgary throughout the nineties when Wally Bono was here, it's better to let a guy go a year too early than a year too late. And the news today that Orlando Steinhower is saying, I don't think that Beau will play at all in our first pre-season game. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I think it's very possible that either scenario is equally as likely that he's not ready to play in the pre-season game and so he won't be playing or they don't think he needs to because he is showing out so well in practice. It's going to be a really interesting watch from a guy whose shoulder may or may not be ready for the rigors of a full season. Well I think I got Steve Milton come on next week. So I we'll do a deep dive on the Levi, but so you're telling you have the reverse effect because mcc like MCC McCabe Thompson was undefeated in the US F L until came on our show now he has lost two games in the row. So you have the opposite effect. Were you only weather signed When we were the C F L Horseman? We called it the Horseman bump. The amount of time Alex Singleton came on our show before he was a starter and then all of a sudden he was the defensive player of the year. The next season we have a lot of guys that show up on our show early in their careers and go on to become stars. I can't take credit for that. That's all the stamp Peter's drafting and developing. But our track record's pretty darn good. Yeah. Meanwhile I had a Ben Holmes no-show my podcast and then went up and won the Great Cup. So What you're saying is I need to let the Stamps media know that no stamps are to do your show at all. Well Ryan, I really appreciate it. Like I said, we banter back and forth and now C F L season, I'm sure we'll be talking more online, but I really appreciate you taking the time today and like I said, it was still just surreal that day and kind of discovering C F L Twitter because it really did all come. I think it was either the IRA episode or it was the first day and we're like oh my god, this is the whole world now. So I really appreciate it. Hey man, my pleasure to come on and just let me know when you want me to come talk stamps in the future. Well I appreciate it. We have sitting outside a beautiful Commonwealth stadium there, it looks like Trey Ford, Edmonton Oaks. How are you doing? Yeah, Really good. Just enjoying training camp and getting back into football, which is fantastic. Looks like a beautiful day. What's your day consist of right now? What do you have going on? Just for this practice or this morning? Did some of the hot tub, cold tub therapy kind of routine, ate some lunch, watched a little film, got another meeting coming up at four and another meeting tonight. So full day, What's it getting back into? Yeah, like you said coming off the off season, getting back into the real deal here. What's it feel like? Yeah, I mean honestly it's felt fantastic, honestly way better than last year just based on the fact that I'm a second year player now. I knew a lot more of the offense coming in. I remember last year training camp coming, doing the install, going back to the hotel studying until 12 o'clock, wake it up at 5 36 and then you know, don't get a lot of sleep. The days get long really fast versus now it's kind of just a refresher so it's a lot quicker to review the material and then go perform on the field for sure. Yeah. How hard is the acclimation process of getting up there? I mean obviously you're Canadian having played up there, but coming in and you got Chris Jones barking at you and everything else. What's it kind of coming into that situation? Yeah, I don't know. I feel like I actually came in pretty good circumstances. Team accepted me pretty well. The coaches all super cool guys. Yeah, I mean honestly it was just learning the offense was definitely the tough part, especially at the quarterback position, especially coming from O U A and going to a professional level with a lot of guys who've coached in the C F L for many years and even in the nfl. So it was definitely a struggle to I'd say learn the offense because just in O U A and new sports in general, it's a lot more simplified and then out here there's it stuff's a lot more complicated so it does take a little bit longer to catch on and everything. So Did you feel extra pressure just as a quarterback being taken in the first round like that and coming in as a Canadian, did you feel added pressure? No, I didn't. I didn't feel any added pressure. I always hold myself to a high standard. So whether I was drafted in the first or the seventh or far as the undrafted free agent or whatever it was, I was expected to go in and perform and do well. So I would say there was definitely more stress just put on myself just because I was want to do well versus being drafted in the first round. What was the year for you last year? Obviously the team had struggles and you came dealing with injuries and all of that. It seemed like you gave a spark when you came in. I know a lot of people have been clamoring to see more of you. What was the year like for you last year? Yeah, so there was definitely some highs and some lows. I mean just looking back at it the last week we went and we looked at our pre-season games. So I remember looking back, I'm just watching some of the Winnipeg games today. I was fresh new meat on the block. I went out there and first six or seven plays, boom cover zero. They really made sure I had to know my offense, I had to know where all my hearts were and everything and I struggled a little bit that game, I could admit it. But then I came out the second week against Calgary in the preseason and I played a lot better than I remember too. I played extremely well in that game. I thought for being in the offense for four or five weeks at that point and being a rookie and everything. So I thought I actually played really well that thing. But I'm always so hard on myself. I was thinking back to it last year, I'm like, ah, I could've did better. I could've did better. But this year coming in and evaluating the film from last year, I thought it, I did really well in that second game and then just waiting, trying to buy time to get my first career, starting an actual game in the actual regular season. And then I got granted that opportunity in the fourth week we played Hamilton and I put together a solid game. I'd say not nothing fantastic, nothing crazy, but I don't think I won us the game but I don't think I lost us the game and our defense was able to step up and actually help us win that game, which was fantastic. So we did end up getting the first win of the season and then I was starting to get confident, feeling good in the offense, come out week five against Calgary at home, boom boom, a couple plays here, have a big explosion play where I'm breaking tackles, running around in the back field, throw a ball like 50 yards down the field, big play. And then we had a quarterback power the next play and then I got hurt and then I missed eight weeks. And those are a long, long eight weeks you're out here when you're actually active, you come to the facility, the day goes by super, super fast, but in therapy you're just kind of legging around all day trying to do your therapy, get a little bit of workout in and stuff. So yeah, those were definitely a tough long eight weeks. And then, I mean I'm an adamant film watcher but it it's, I personally enjoying watching film that I'm actually in. I feel like I learned more from it a lot harder, right, because you're like, oh I maybe would've did this a little bit differently, did that a little bit differently. So it was definitely, it was a long eight weeks but then I got back into it after and I got another start later on I think the last game of the year and I thought I did pretty well that last game. Definitely, definitely some mistakes, but I mean I definitely seen an improvement from the start of the year and then even now just being here in this training camp, I definitely can just see and feel the difference, my confidence, throwing more on timing. I definitely just feel a lot better in the offense overall and I mean I'm super excited to get this year rolling. What was conversations obviously you had with coaches and staff and everything, what were your position coming into the year because it felt like you gave the spark last year obviously got hurt and then it felt like you got, and we love Taylor and we've covered him back down through the X F L and all of that, but it felt like you kind of got leaped over and so what is your position now or what did they have those conversations look like? Yeah, I mean I've been told that I, I'll always get a chance to compete for the starting job and I mean I'm super grateful for that but I mean coming in and viewing things, not trying to be biased towards me or towards Taylor or anybody. I understand they have him the starting guy right now. I mean he stepped up last year when the team needed him. He did a super, super great job and I'm grateful he was there for our team last year to pick him up. But I mean I'm still here to compete for that starting job. Obviously if he does better than me, he wins the competition. That's great. He's going to lead the team and everything. Even if I get my chance later on in the year, week eight or four or 12, whatever it is, I'm just going to be ready for my opportunity. I understand he's the guy right now, but you got to play do well to keep your job and so it, it's always job hunting out here in professional football but I've got nothing bad to say about Taylor. He's a great dude. I'm always cracking jokes with him. Great guy. He's a great leader and I think we got a really good quarterback right here. Yeah. Does that give you extra motivation? Seeing obviously him getting the contract and knowing you're coming in and kind of seeing hey maybe that's something I could get to or with either with Edmonton or somewhere else. Does that give you that motivation? Yeah, I mean obviously you always want to be able to get the best contracts you can get, make the most money you can make. But I'm more focused on just like I don't care if he makes more money than me, I'm more into who gets more first downs, who's driving the field more completions touchdowns, better ratios and everything. So I'm definitely more focused on the actual football aspect and then if you know can go out there and compete and do well, all the other stuff will come based on how you play. In terms of we're we cover bc, I mean we cover all everything but I'm out here in Seattle, so BC's kind of our team as well as Edmonton, obviously seeing the success and Nathan Roks been talked to death but getting the spotlight on you guys as Canadian athletes, Canadian any position, but especially as a quarterback, do you carry that as a badge of honor? Does that put more pressure on you? How do you view that and how you compete? Yeah, so I mean I'm grateful to be Canadian and playing in the CFL for sure and I do carry that title. I will definitely embrace it and try to be a role model for younger Canadians moving up. But at the same time I also, it's like I embrace it but I also don't want it to be the definition of me. I don't want somebody keeping me on the roster because, oh I'm a Canadian good quarterback, I'm a good look for the team or anything like that. I want to be kept on the team or being a starter based on how I play and being a dominant quarterback in the league, not just being a Canadian quarterback. How many conversations pre-season have circulated around the whole home losing streak and wanting to kind of remedy that this year? Yeah, honestly I haven't heard a lot about it. We do have a lot newer receiving core this year. Couple new pieces on the old line as well and even on the defense we got some new guys. I think we're a lot further ahead this year than we were last year and I just don't think a lot of guys are super aware of that yet. So maybe coming up on Saturday they'll talk about it a little bit. But yeah, I haven't heard a ton of stuff. I don't think a ton of people actually know the losing streak we've had at home. But I can guarantee we will win a home game this year. 150%. What is Coach Jones? He's been on our show. I would call him a friend of the podcast. What's he as mentor and a coach and everything else? Yeah, he's a super great guy. I mean I think he's a fantastic guy. I think he's a fantastic coach. I think sometimes I have people talking to me about how the media makes him look a little more hard, gritty and like a loose cannon a little bit I feel like. But he's a super great guy. Nothing but good things to say about him. He's a great coach and I mean I'm super grateful that he picked me, selecting me, especially in the first round to come out here to Edmonton and build a new team and get Edmonton back to where they used to be. A couple more here, I'll let you go. I appreciate it here after meetings and everything else fit me in. What goals for you this year? Like I said last year, you said some real highs and some real lows. What are you looking forward personally to accomplish this year? Yeah, so there's like I have all kinds of different goals that I'm aiming for. I mean the biggest one is to just be the best quarterback that I can be and be the best leader for the team that I can be. That's definitely number one. And I think if I can accomplish that, I feel like a lot of the other ones re-earn the starting job and then it'll probably be more to trying to become the leading pastor, getting our team to the playoffs, winning a championship. I think all those teams kind of fall in after getting that starting job back and becoming the best quarterback that I can be and it's not going to be over be the best quarterback I'm going to be this year. Not even next year probably. It's, it's going to be over time the more you learn right, the better off you're going to be. Do you feel like going through last year really kind of hardened you mentally and emotionally here? The kind of I, I haven't played a snap of anything but I've been told football is the most Josh, you think but just having gone through all that so early in your career, do you feel like that's hardened you and prepared you now? Yeah, honestly I feel like, I mean no nobody ever wants to get hurt and you know, don't want to miss any leak but I mean think it was actually a good thing for me to learn because going through high school and then O U A U sports, I was always the guy and I was always kind of just guaranteed everything but you know, get to the professional level you realize nothing's guaranteed everything can change after one snap and I had to learn last year how to be in that backup role and how to try to motivate our team off that how to play, how to practice, how to prepare for a game Cause it's definitely a learning curve for sure and you don't want to prepare for a game as a backup cause I'll tell you what, for everybody who is doing that, it's a terrible idea because it's one snap away. Even if you asked Taylor, I mean you talked to him last, he probably wasn't expecting to go in that game when he had to. It kind of just happened so I mean everything's one injury away and then your name's called and you got to be able to perform so you always got to prepare, you're started. Well Trey, like I said, we get more questions about you when wanting to see you play in Edmonton than anyone. Obviously C F L quarterbacks a little bit fluid sometimes but I hope you get a good opportunity this year. I'll be watching the preseason games, we have our c l plus now, I'll be watching here in the States but really excited. Like I said, Edmonton's one of the teams we hold dear so I really appreciate your time today and wish you luck this year. We're excited for you. Thank you, I appreciate you. Awesome man. Good luck and we'll see ya. Well we had this gentleman on X F L now Eric Ger with Sum Sports back. We're talking U S F L week seven, I can't believe we're already, I saw Brett today posting like playoff tickets. We're getting ready for the playoff tickets. How is U S F L season two treating you? It's been good. I've really enjoyed watching the games. Early in the season you had a lot more scoring and then the last few weeks not so much. I believe every game went under last week if I'm not mistaken, seven of last eight have been won outright by underdogs, many of which were underdogs by quite a bit. So it, it's been an interesting season. Certainly enjoyed spring football is always a nice drink of water during a long sort of walk in the desert so I like it a lot. Is it, and we talked last year and is it living up to season two, did you expect more growth this year? Is it where you thought it would be in terms of production and talent and everything else? It, it's actually better than I expected. I think that continuity has really been cool for the league. So you watch the New Jersey Generals and you get dairies Victor and you get Deandre Johnson, although he was benched this past week when you go to Birmingham you get Alex you know had Jamar Smith before the injury and some players coming on in defense, on defense and then you have some injection of good talent in the league with Breland Speaks and Michigan and I think the coaching has has been better. I think the coaches that struggled in year one have all been replaced and have actually been better I think than previous years so it, it's been good obviously I think that there's some question about is it better than the X F L, what would the best team in the US F L be on a neutral field against the best team in the X ffl? I'm not really concerned about that right now, especially with both leagues are not on at the same time really it it's met my expectations. You said scoring down it has been a thing, I mean this last week we had shut out the stars have won two games now without scoring an offensive touchdown. What do you attribute that to because it's weird we should be peaking kind of here and near the end of the season. Yeah, I mean defense is generally harder to put together than offense and you know have weak link systems, you have secondary play that I think was off. I think more holding is being, I don't have the data in front of me but I think more holding is being called on run plays which and pass plays which is hurting. I think there there's been a reasonable amount of offensive pass interference penalty all these calls as well. So I think that there are just things the league is doing that suppressing scoring a little bit and then the quarterbacks that I think started out really strong, the McLeod, Bethel Thompsons, the Al Alex Magoos of the world, you're not, and even in Michigan where Josh love was really good early on, I don't think that those players are really playing up to where they played at the beginning of the season and offense really does go as quarterback play goes. Do you feel like they've done a good job this year with assembly in the quarterbacks? I mean obviously McLeod does a big the off-season signing but like you said before, the continuity and Deandre Johnson and all the others I think so, but we even look at Case Cook here for example. He really didn't not gotten protected and that's a really hard way to win. As you said, they won, now they're three and three and three I believe and they won the first game offenses fairly strong with Corey Coleman and Coburn and stuff like that but you know don't, from there you don't really have the offensive line to protect him and he's gotten beaten up and it doesn't look like he's gotten, he's been able to maintain even what expectation would be under pressure and so you've seen a decline in play there. That to me I think is a big issue. Obviously we saw Case last year get look it would've gotten more looks after the season but obviously had the injury and then I think he was a cup of coffee with, was it the Rams? I think he got in there for a little bit but do you see any of the quarterbacks here stand out that you would think would looks following the season? I think Cook, if he comes out of it healthy probably will. He probably would have had he not got in gotten injured in the championship game. I think beyond that it we saw some quarterbacks that weren't particularly good in the XFL get looks so you could see that happen. I'd be surprised though given that there are two leagues and I think many people believe the X ffl was the better of the two leagues with Ben Nucci getting literally signed by the Denver Broncos. Not only a workout and the third quarterback rule in the nfl changing that could help a lot as well. There is an incentive to develop these guys now it could lead to more but I just don't know if quarterback play has been good enough across the league like Kenji Bahar has been okay, I think he's been probably the biggest surprise. Maybe he could get a look as a athletic young quarterback but I think it's going to be hard for a lot of them other than Cook. Were you surprised you had that Che was assigned so quick and then I'm seeing immediately throwing pick six s and everything else in practice? To me that was kind of shocking. I mean good for him but very, very quick To me was interesting because I don't know if you got this view when you were watching the X F L, but Ucci felt kind of Kyle Slowish to me in that there were good things you you'd watch him make a completion you're like oh that's pretty impressive. But they weren't scoring as much as a guy with that brilliant of a season. Slowder was first team all U S F L last year but it wasn't like the New Orleans breakers had a great offense and they couldn't finish in the red zone and there were some games, I know the overtime game was very clutch when they put up enough scoring there to win but for the most part he was not delivering and I think Seattle, there were some games where they were in the teens and he was not particularly impressive. Even the game where they had to win to get in the playoffs, the first half of that game they only scored six or seven points and you're just like, I think a lot of people look at football like artistically more than they look at production and I get that to an extent but I think Ucci is going to fall into that realm where I think he was doing some really cool things. I don't know if he was doing some very, he was all that much more effective than some of the other guys Talking the quarterbacks with the U S F L. Have we started seeing the dilution of talent with the two leagues or do you feel like that we're still kind of waiting for that down the line? I think you are going to see it a little bit for sure and I think if the NFL starts to carry more quarterbacks because of the rules, I think you could very much see that. So to me that might be part of what what's baked in. I have not watched these games and thought to myself, oh my gosh there's not enough talent and maybe I have reasonable expectations about what this league should be, but I have not watched a game and thought to myself, oh wow, the talent's really bad. I mean there was a game where the Philadelphia stars, I couldn't stop the Houston gamblers and I said this might be the worst defense in football but for the most part I've been fairly okay with the level of talent across the league In terms of best teams right now, I mean seems like it's in the south Breakers kind of coming down a little bit, obviously stallions holding in there, who are you making kind of your pick here in the south? Yeah, when I look at this, I do think the gamblers are a team that initially I thought it was kind of a fluky thing but I've had to adjust my priors. I make the gamblers about a, and this is how condensed the league is with so many underdogs winning, I make the gamblers the second best team in the league, 1.5 points better than the average team on a neutral. I still make Birmingham four points better than the average team on a neutral but that's declined over recent weeks. I mean when they beat the Memphis Showboats, what was it like 42 to two or something like that, certainly it certainly made me adjust for a while and think that they were a team that needed to be reckoned with but for the most part Birmingham has not been as strong. I know they won and covered the other day but they have not been as strong as suggested. I also think I make New Orleans a point better than the average team out of neutral and then from there you have Memphis about a little bit below an average team on a neutral, whereas I only make one team in the north up better than the average team on a neutral and that's the New Jersey general. So the south is going to be hard. I think Houston is by stacking up wins when other teams have it and put themselves in a really good position. But I think Birmingham is still the best team there. Why did the generals get that up top up in the north division? Why did they get that from you? I think defense is really, their defense is really good offensively they have to figure out quarterback. I'm not sure why they gave Deandre Johnson. I maybe is a little bit banged up but I'm not sure why they would give the entire game to Kyle Oleta to me who isn't, he made some impressive throws but for the most part was very weak the other day and has been for the most of his pro career. But defensively I also think the running game, they lost a game against Philly basically because Darius Victor couldn't hang onto the ball three fumbles. I think eventually things will rise to the top. I think Mike Riley's one of the better coaches in the league so I'm going to give them that benefit of it doubt. In terms of Riley doing good, I think Bar Andrews is looked tired. I don't know, I see him and I was joking like him in case Cook is kind of on the sidelines, it's really a horrendous game for them. Last game and the turnovers and all that, I mean he seems like he's really not locked in right now. Are you noticing that? Yeah, it looks unimaginative for sure. Last year they were kind of wide open in case cook was a lot of fun. Brian Scott before him even Costello in the championship game was able to get them in the back door to cover the spread in the championship game. But I just think it does look tired and when you have an offensive line problem as bad as theirs, I don't know what there is to do. They have shorted up a little bit defensively in recent weeks, but some of that is turnover luck, some of that is getting to pick six against New Orleans. Some of that is getting all the turnovers, although they moved the football enough to kick eight field goals against New Jersey. I think that that was a little bit of a fluke as well. So I think that it does look tired there. I have them about an average team on a neutral field and that's just because three other teams or three, two other teams in their division are the worst teams in the whole league in the Panthers and the Showboats are emerging a little bit but they're still in my opinion a little bit below that Would. Yeah, is that a stat you would champion the eight field goals the most I do, No. I mean at least you're getting into scoring range and I know that red zone efficiency is not a stable stat year to year in game to game. But they've done it now for a few games in a row. As you said, they've moved the football okay, they've gotten turnovers. I think the getting turnovers part is the really unfortunate part but they have not been able to capitalize on it, which has been unfortunate. Are you surprised Mallers looked like they had life now they don't. I mean now it looks like they're kind of back down in the dungeon again. Yeah, they defensively if you can play some defense, you're going to have some okay things happen to you in this league. And they did that offensively. I mean what they went the first two or three games though, scoring a touchdown last week, they couldn't score if you had them against, I mean they were favored by three against Memphis to open on BET online. I texted my Fred, said this is the easiest bet you've ever made in your life on Memphis. And then second half of that game, Memphis didn't even want to really move the football the second half of that game and still Pittsburgh couldn't do anything with it. Yeah, I think they were spunky at the beginning and that's what I like about this league last year you had teams like Michigan, you had teams like Pittsburgh that really added nothing the whole year. Houston was a competitive team but not they didn't win. But teams that weren't even competitive week to week like Michigan and Pittsburgh, you don't have that this year but those teams are starting to fall off again. Yeah because it seems we, we've championed and for better or worse, I don't know if having parody across the league, I hear both things where you know have too many losing individuals that, what do you make of that and the parody here headed into week seven? Well I mean if you're a gambler or something like that, you really do the parody because you like being able to just take underdogs every week and hope and hope it works out. And especially in a league where there's not a's on of scoring right now, that to me appears to be the right way to do it. Does that make for better football? I'm not sure. I personally think the last few weeks have been your low scoring in a sort of ugly way and I'm interested to see if that thing turns around In terms of, you said you talking to your friend in putting the wagers on and stuff, has there been a lot of action? Have you noticed that? Is it better worse than last year? Cause I know you guys all complained last year about getting the injury reports and everything to be able to do that effectively to gamble and all of that. Have you noticed an uptick this year? I haven't but I'm also not gambling now with Sumer so I think the DFS tournaments have not particularly, I don't think that they've had the overlay or the payouts that you really want, which is unfortunate. I think that there are some sharp groups that are betting U S F L for sure and moving lines, but I think that they've gotten killed. If you look at the last few weeks, some of these totals have gone from mid forties to high forties and the games are landing like TW in the twenties so I'm not maybe licking their wounds a little bit because this league has been hard to predict and I think hard to predict is good obviously with a league with so little data, but that means you have to be disciplined and not obviously think more than you do. Is that, so is that just a byproduct of the football? Is there things the league could be doing? Is it just, hey we got it's year two of this and teams are just trying to win and I mean what do you attribute that to? I think that they're calling the games in a way that will be more conducive to unders. They're calling, holding, calling illegal man downfield. They're doing a lot of things that I think you have to call them, but it's one or two I mean in a game and the clock is also a big deal when the clock is running basically the whole game you can't have can't punt and it's weird. You also can't have drives that get you to midfield and the punt and with the kickoff being the way it is, a lot of teams are starting near midfield and then punting and then pinning teams deep and that unless there's a turnover or something like it's not going to be conducive to scoring and that's just an issue of the way the game's branded. But I think that there's a little bit also in how the game is being called that has been a little bit less fortunate as far as scoring is concerned. That's interesting. I want to get your thoughts on a little bit more on the kickoff and then we can do the matchups here before we get out real quick. Rapid fire, we obviously have seen the N F L this week and all that and the fair catch and everything else and the X F L kickoffs been circulating U S F L, they're booting the ball halfway down the field here, kicking it off at, was it the 25 now 20? What do you make of that? Like you said kind of artificially inflating teams are able to start almost midfield without getting touched. Yeah, I mean I think that's helpful for trying to get more scoring. I think it's obviously basically thumbing your nose at this idea that kickoffs are more dangerous because they're not really innovating, they're just making sure more kicks are returned and unlike the X ffl, which I think had an innovative solution to the problem. So yeah, I mean it's going to help and I think kickers in this league have been tremendous for the most part, which has been cool. The special teams in general I think are what's fun and one of the reasons I like spring leagues is it kind of takes you back to when quarterbacks weren't as good and when special teams mattered more and stuff like that. And that certainly is the case in the US F l, it's a little bit weirder in the X ffl because of no extra point kicks and the kickoff rule being the way it is and punts being the way they are as well. I think that it, it's a very interesting discussion about the relative values in sports. Are these leagues missing the mark now that they're not really developing Kavante a special teams player? How much more value value is he going to add if every kickoff is fair caught in 2023 in the N F L? Well I know, and I think it was back when the X F L brass took over here. I think it was one of the podcasts that Jim Manos did or whatever where they had talked about kind of scraping kicking all together in the X F L and I know I think Sam had talked about that on the show as well and it was this balance of well no we still want to, it is football, you still want to have kickers, but how can we do all the extra points and all that stuff. It's an interesting thing. I do think, like you said, it takes away the punt or kick return here. I think this league might have to pivot developing the thing with special teams is a lot of the players are non-REM position players. So running back linebacker, tight end safety, those positions don't matter as much in the 11 on 11 game as they do in as other positions like that. And so maybe this league is like, okay, well we're really going to have to showcase past rushers, past blockers, quarterbacks, receivers A and pivot that way because that that's going to be what the N F L's going to want out of these leagues in the future. Real quick here before we get out, who do you got on this stallion here? I think game of the week on Fox, the one o'clock against the Breakers. Who are you taking? Yeah, so the stallions are favored by two. I make Birmingham more like favored by five. So I probably would lay the, lay it there. I think one of one reason I'm maybe a little bit off market here is I'm giving Birmingham a home field advantage because they're playing at their home stadium even though technically they're a road team here and I make home field advantage for Birmingham and the US F L about a point and a half because people do actually want to go and watch them here. So that would be my bet here. Awesome. In terms here, stars Mallers back here at Tom Benson, this hopefully stars kind of get another right game here. What do you make of this? Yeah, this is weird. This open I think at one in the favor of Philly and then it's moved towards Pittsburgh now through Zero. Doesn't really matter but I make Philly, I make the wrong scene. Favorite I guess is Philly. I make about a two and a half point favorite. So for the second straight week I think there's opportunity betting against Pittsburgh. Yeah, I don't think the home field of Canton I don't think is the most overwhelming, no, I don't know. I think they need to revisit that in the off-season Near gambler I make make Memphis about two point dogs, so Houston has been pretty good but I think Memphis getting three and a half at home where their home field advantage. I am making that right now about a point because people have showed up two root for the showboats. I'm going to make I think plus three with Memphis is the right bet plus three and a half, sorry. And then we got here Panthers generalists here back at Canton. Yeah, the generals are seven point favorites. I think that's too much for any U S F L game, especially one that's either going to be started by Kyle Lata or Deandre Johnson. So I take Michigan plus the Points. Yeah, that's seven point favor. That's crazy. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. No, Eric, any final thoughts for me? I appreciate your time today. No, this has been fun. I always love talking about the spring leagues with you. I can't wait for this C F L to start in a few weeks. I had a lot of fun last year following along and we got some quarterback movement in that league too, which will be cool. Yeah, if you ever want to talk CFL on here, we'll do that. I have my preseason game on this week, very exciting. And we're ramping up. We have lots of C F L coverages. Well the Thing that I like about the C F L that they do much better than these leagues, and I don't understand why these leagues haven't done it, is the C F L will play Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and sometimes Sunday, sometimes Monday. They spread the games out and make them, you know, get a touchpoint with the C F L every day of the weekend, which to me is something that these leagues have sorely missed. Well X F L tried that and then it was kind of such a failure this year. It almost scares them off where they don't want to lean into that. It's like, oh shoot, no one watched. We don't want to do that May. And maybe the C F L having their whole country as sort of their fan base might help them get a down, they might have a fixed amount of watchers anyway and maybe I'm just as sicko, maybe I want to watch all the games and not just a game, one game on a Saturday or something, but to me it's a missed opportunity and it's one thing I really like about the C F L. No, I get it. And like I said, I think the touchpoint and having, especially here us F l coming into the summer, people have stuff to do on Saturday, Sunday, like Thursday night or whatever. Hey, that's a little more manageable that I could do that. So In the summer no one likes baseball that much and basketball's almost over and so maybe it's just about who they're competing with. Who. Yeah. Awesome. Well Eric with super Sports really appreciate your time today. Thanks. Hey, thanks. Well I appreciate this. We had, I think on the playoff push last year, kind of late season, we had Josh Shepherdson on here with Fantasy Pros talking U USS L. We have him back today. Josh, how are you doing? Good. How's it going Reid? It's good. We're getting through. We, we've moved on now X ffl, I've, I've been enjoying C F L preseason this week. It's exciting. I mean U S F L's fun. I, it's like a totally different flare and I don't know if you watched any of that. They have the pre-season game and there was a thunderstorm and a rain delay and cows were running. I'm kidding about that. But it, it's really its own beast up there. But we're talking to U S F L today first and foremost, what do you make of the season here? We're past the midway point. I mean this word gets thrown around a lot, but I mean when the shoe fits I, it's parody this year in the U S F L E. Every time I think I have my thumb on the pulse of who really is looking like the cream of the crop. Something comes up. I mean New Orleans has lost two games in a row after their four oh start, that offense looked brilliant and they've hit the skids. I thought Memphis looked terrible through the first few weeks of the season and they've rattled off three in a row. Houston seems to have found a group, it, it's just the one area that there is no parody right now. I feel comfortable saying, and I've joked about it a little bit on Twitter, but in all seriousness, the south division has just been leaps and bounds better than the North Division. But beyond that it is tight and I don't feel like anybody is truly pulling away from the pack. And I, it's, it's fun as a fan, it is maddening as somebody who tries to cover the sport and make predictions for either sports betting or dfs. But overall I'm enjoying it and it's definitely a different feel from 2022 significantly I would say It's a different feeling. In what way In that Birmingham looked great last year they looked like a runaway club. New Jersey had just such a brilliant tandem at quarterback with Mr. Spring football. Luis Perez airing it out and then Deandre Johnson complimenting them in the running game and they just haven't found that fluidity in the passing game of Kyle Aleta. And so the North division and God the stars, it's killed me. I thought with the continuity, a quarterback and head coach and a lot of the skill position players that they would hit the ground running it and the offensive lines looked so bad. So I just different in the sense that there were a few teams that really looked sharp pretty quickly last year and we could get a feel for who was going to make a playoff push by this point in the season. And at this point it is wide open. The parody thing is interesting and I know that's come up a lot and Pat Rapino and I, we Monday recap show that I get into a lot of the X ffl too and whatever you say it's bad for the one league or good for the other, vice versa. But I was told in the X F L, it was a good thing. We had all these teams and the divisions were kind of fluid and I know the Arlington of it all, but them making it to the championship game with the Lucy record. But people liked that where it felt like the X F L LA or U S F L in 2022, the last three weeks of the year season didn't matter because da da da da. But now all I hear is can people complaining the other way that the parody in the U S F L is a bad thing. So I don't like, you know what I mean? I kind of hear both sides of that. Absolutely. What do you make of that? I think the parody is probably better. I mean people like a dominant team, whether it's to root for it or to root against it, having the villain or the super team is fun. But at the same time, I mean you're keeping all eight fan bases engaged and that's ultimately a good thing. You don't want any fan bases checked out 60% of the way through the regular season. That can't be good for the sport. So I mean, yes, we had Arlington make the post-season and win the X F L championship with the losing record, but the North and south division had playoff spots up for grabs going into the final week of the season and last year, I mean we were just hoping that the Stars and the generals were going to not roll the footballs out there and kneel it out. Joking of course, but treat it as a walkthrough. And thankfully they played a competitive game, but I mean nobody knew what to expect last year and this year it looks like these teams are going to have to play right down to the wire. And I think ultimately that's a better product and especially this year without the one hub city, I think you really need to have the fan bases engaged. The fact that they're playing in four different hubs at this point. You don't want any hub having no teams competitive at this point because it would be just an awful look I think for the product. And I mean it's out of their control to an extent, but you still don't want it to see that happen In terms of I agree, keeping the fan bases and that engaged and that, what was so funny with all the X F L playoff stuff was the last two weeks or three weeks of the season wouldn't have mattered if it wasn't the way that it was with the division. So it was because of that, it came down to the last game of everything that really mattered between the Sea Dragons and the Vipers. I mean we were there for that. You talk about the fan bases and keeping people engaged, it, it's almost like we, we talked so much last season about the attendance that we don't talk about it this year because it's like, oh my God, we've done all this, but it's remarkably slow and I don't want to say that as I get kind of whatever anyway. But it does feel like Birmingham hasn't showed up back this year. Memphis is really kind of Mia, Michigan. They're losing it home. That doesn't seem great. Canton hasn't been good since week one. I mean, what do you make of the four different hubs? I mean, I hate to do the pitting leagues against each other thing. At the end of the day, more football's better than less football. You and I are on the same page with that. But I do think having the actual home cities, hosting their home teams was a great thing. I mean the DC beer snake got all the attention in the world. The Seattle fan base was great. I mean people showed up because they had a team in their backyard. I think it's tough when you have two teams in Canton and neither is an Ohio based team. It it's tough. And Birmingham, I think they might be a little bit worn out from having all of the games there last year. There's not that new Fresh League feel to it. I would've thought that maybe they would be a little bit more fired up because they're hosting the defending champion. But at the same time, ultimately I think it, it'll be better in the long-term interest of the league if they do away with the hubs. And we eventually get the eight teams in home stadiums. But I don't know, I'm not a financial guy. I'm not in their office to really know, but I guess just my general feeling from watching the games is there seem to be more fan passion in the X F L at the stadiums in terms of on Twitter where we see all the people who are the diehards, there's definitely dugin diehards on both sides. There's people like you and I who enjoy both leagues for what they are and I love to see that the TV atte or the TV viewership seems to still be doing at least enough, I don't know relative to last year, but the fact that it's not immediately doom and gloom when the viewership numbers come up is promising, but ultimately I think it would help if these teams had an actual home base as opposed to just a hub Last, we'll get one more round on this and then we'll get to football mechanics here. I get that and moving the hubs and everything and it was last year, right? We're going to go to Birmingham, we're going to go. But like you said, I mean Canton or taking Canton out of it is, it's not like Memphis is really showing up. It's not like, and like you said, if it's the burnout in Birmingham and we had the eight here last year and I don't get the Birmingham drop off, I, they seem really passionate. They have the most Facebook groups from what I know about the Birmingham fans and all that, but I don't know if you had everyone can, everyone that was going to go to a game that lived in or around Birmingham and now we're kind of just spreading that out across, I don't know because it's not, like I said, it's not as if Memphis or Michigan are kind of blowing the doors off the venues right now And that's true and that's surprising to me, especially with Memphis with the relocation from Tampa. I mean I would've expected there to be a little bit more passion and almost like that recapturing what they had in Birmingham last year because it's just a new franchise and something new, but perhaps the slow start contributed to it, maybe things will pick up as they're winning. I'm not sure mean everybody loves rooting for a winner, so hopefully that'll drum up a little bit of extra attendance, but we'll see. And maybe there's a little bit of football fatigue just in the general Spring football public right now because I mean we didn't have the X F L leading into the U S F L, so I don't know. But yeah, it is a little disappointing to see that even with the four hubs and the actual host teams in those hubs, not drawing quite as well as I would've expected. Speaking of the Showboats, is Todd Haley a good coach? He, we lived through this last year. We came back. I see he's really good at twerking in the locker room. I think I saw the videos of that, but I mean it is Todd Hailey a good coach? He is a maddening coach. I don't put my finger on it. I mean I don't know exactly what got under his skin after that Houston loss. It was bizarre. I've never seen a coach quite behave like that after a loss, but he's always kind of had a little bit of a poor sport in him I feel like, and I don't know, I'm not the biggest Todd Haley fan, but I mean he's got them on a winning streak and they have not gotten the greatest quarterback play, so I will give credit where it's due. I mean he's pulling some strings and getting some W so it's hard to argue with that. We look here, I'll pull up, we look here in the south, you don't want to talk about the definition of parody here four and two across the board. I mean Showboats looked like they were out to water come back here and 500 breakers collapse. I don't know if McConnell Bethel Thompson has the Mark cast curses. He came on when they were undefeated on our, and it's not won the game sends. What do you make of the Breakers kind of collapse here against the Stars who I don't think much won the game last week more just kind of outlasted New Orleans? Yeah, that was, that's too bizarre Games, too bizarre wins in a row for the stars. I mean I, I've loved it as a fan, but I went in expecting them to get beaten up pretty good by the Breakers, I mean they eked out the win the week before with eight fuel goals and afforded nothing turnover disparity. I was just like, what is going on? And then it was more bizarre football this week. But I mean I think part of it's that we've got John d Felipo as a first time head coach. There's a lot on his plate. I think he came out really hot because the offense was great and that's his side of the football I think and mean The defense has played relatively well even in the last two losses. It's not like they're giving up 30 points a game to their opponents, but at the end of the day I do still think that they have the offensive pieces. I mean West Hills is such a monster and I love Sage sarro. Jonathan Adams is such a good vertical player. I really thought the return of Johnny Dixon last week was going to be what they needed to unlock that offense again. But I think they have the right pieces to get back on track. If the stallions get healthier, it's hard to bet against them right now. And I mean Mark Thompson's an absolute monster for the gamblers, but I still have some questions about the quarterback play there. So ultimately I still think the breakers are going to be in it until the end and if I were to handicap the division right now, I still think they will win the south, but I don't say that with any conviction at this point. Well that's the thing here. I mean it feels like the stallions haven't really had a lot go for them this season at all, but here they are four and two, it's I game em a piece separates this where the Breakers totally the other way came in so hot, the McLeod and we had talked to C F L people and oh he's going to come in and just run circles around everyone. I don't know if we talked on Monday, is he getting tired and coming from the C F L and playing here and injuries and all that. Any other thoughts on either the Birmingham upswing here or the Breakers and then we can hit the north a little bit? I mean I like what I've seen from Ale Bethel Thompson. I mean even last week in the loss, it wasn't like he was making just dreadful decisions or anything that I think is a true long-term problem. I think your fatigue thing could be potentially an issue, but I mean looking at the quarterbacks in that division, I do think that mean Alex McGoo is settled into a real nice groove and the running ability that he brings to the table is just such a different dynamic than what McClard Bethel Thompson brings for the Breakers. But at the same time, and CJ Maribel is coming off of a very good game. I don't want to that, but I think the missing piece of Scarborough, they had to adjust to a little bit. He would be right in the discussion with the Mark Thompson and the West Hills of the South Division as just a beka who you can run your offense through and I think it took him a little bit to find their footing there, but I would say that the stallions are probably, are certainly on the upswing, but I think that the breakers can match them offensively and I just think, I do still think that they are the top two teams in the division with Houston just nipping at their heels. But that's really the difference between the quarterbacks of those teams. I just have less faith in Kenchi Bahar so, Well that's the thing is and Kenjie, you either we saw him get banged up a little bit. Mark Thompson really does kind of feel like a cheat code right now where, I mean got familiar with the gamblers to be without that. I mean it feels like they're in second here just kind of by default mean. Do you see the gamblers challenge? We had the weird, I don't know if you tracked this week we had the weird like U USS F L playoffs and it looked like they were changing the playoff scenarios and then they weren't and I reached out to the league and got, I was like, what is happening here but keeping it the same divisions once he playing in the two. See I mean I don't see a world where the gamblers stay at the number two or do you agree or disagree? I mean obviously barring injury, which is what I think the default is, I would say they're probably the third place finisher in the division and that we're looking at the breakers and stallions and I mean even though we talked about Memphis reeling off three in a row and it's impressive that they are at a debt even for a point differential since they got beat 42 to two by the stallions. But ultimately I would say you can tier the south with the breakers and stallions in tier one, the gamblers by themselves in tier two in Memphis, just to tick behind Poor Todd Hailey there, he's going to come yell at you on the sidelines here. The other way with this stars were my team last year obviously made it to the championship game K Case Cook has been on the show. I they've had two wins now without offensive touchdowns at all. It seems very weird. I don't know if Bar is just tired, if we're, we've kind of given up on this, it feels weird here at week six going into seven. What do you make of the stars Man? I guess the expression of win is a win really is apt for them. I mean they have just gutted out two wins. I will say the thing that I'm most encouraged about is that the defense has played significantly better the last two weeks. I expected West Hills to absolutely run wild against that run defense, but I mean weren't exactly great against the generals running game Darius Victor kind of just coughed up the ball three times into their lap. But at the same time, I don't see quarterback play an offensive consistency from the generals or Panthers to challenge the stars if they find even a modicum of the same footing they had last year. And I think even though they haven't scored offensive touchdowns the last two weeks, last week was the closest I've seen them resemble the 2022 version of the stars. They had Coburn look efficient and fast and played at just a different level than he's played most of this season and the fact that they were able to really generate a running game last week, Bart Andrews is always going to lean heavily into the past and I think that that's ultimately, I mean it was an effective strategy last year, but they've needed the offensive line to play better and I think they did play better last week. My God, that Keith Cook interception along the sideline is one of the dumbest plays I've ever seen on a football field in my entire life and I'm not embellishing at all. But otherwise I, I feel like he did a good job of circumventing pressure and I thought the offensive line did some very good things last week that has me a little bit more encouraged than I. If you told me that they won two games without scoring an offensive touchdown, I wouldn't probably have expected to feel encouraged. But after the last two weeks and seeing them move the ball last week, I think that they had something cooking a little bit there. It feel the stars feel like, and I don't know if you're a survivor fan, I watched the first 40 seasons of Survivor followed off after all of that, but it feels like the stars are kind of like when they would do heroes versus villains and they would bring back, okay, we're going to bring back all stars, we're going to bring back case cookies. But we had Kobe Donaldson back in season two, but now he's like Fat Col and he doesn't really like, he's a little bit older and he is a little more banged up and he can't really compete. It feels the stars that way. We're bringing everybody back, but nobody feels like they were the first time around. It feels like they're either slower or more tired or beat up or injured, they're just not quite as good. Does that make sense? Yeah. And maybe there was a little bit of resting on their laurels coming into the season, especially since they did have a successful week one against Memphis. I mean the offense looked great in week one and I wonder if maybe they were kind of buying into their own hype to an extent and just not putting their best foot forward and they've kind of needed that wake up call the last few weeks because I mean on paper you're swapping out in somewhat indirect sense. Buck Howard for Corey Coleman is just a monster field Stretcher and Wells has done a pretty good job stepping in for Buck this year. So I don't know, I thought this was going to be a jugg and out offense with especially and the backfield. I think that was an underrated aspect coming into it. I mean Matt Colburn, everybody knew looked good, but Dexter Williams a good down the stretch as just a grinding, sustaining back to as a nice change of pace to what Colburn was doing as an explosive runner. So I do wonder if maybe they kind of bought into what they were doing last year and didn't bring forth the best effort so far this year and now it's kind of coming back together. I think this weekend will be a true test mean again against Pittsburgh. I mean you're facing a stout defense and if you don't bring your A game, you're going to a struggle. So I think this will be a really telling week for what they are the rest of the season. One of my favorite things in the last game with the Stars was watching a case embark kind of on the sidelines watching the replay. I was out of bound. I was like, that doesn't get, it was kind of another survivor reference when we had a RS yelling at Terry Deeds to call the wambulance back in, I think it was Guatemala, what season was that? But I was out of bat. I'm like, but I do feel like that I can't remember the individual that got the interception. I do feel like his foot was on the line. I don't know if we, I know we corroborated that case was inbounds but didn't feel like that toe was on the line of the New Orleans, which was quite the interception celebration where they had done the 10 review. They're, I think they're still going there. I think they're still cheering in the end zone. I Enjoyed the broadcast making note of that being the longest interception celebration they've ever seen. I mean Joe Clat is just so good. I can't say enough good things about him on the broadcast and I believe, if I remember correctly, he even chuckled a little bit watching the replay and hearing Kay say to bar my foot was out. He's like, no buddy, your foot was not out at all. And I was kind of chuckling myself frustrated, but all you can do is laugh at something like that and it's glad you brought up the sideline interaction because circling back to the south momentarily, I thought for sure Jay Sternberger was going to find himself on the Pine after getting chewed out for not following an assignment last week and then to see him involved again, I think they'll speak to just the tight ship that they run for Birmingham. But yeah, I mean the best, my probably favorite thing about the U S F L and I know we're getting going back to a little bit earlier discussion is just the access. I mean the access in these spring leagues is just phenomenal. I wish U S F L's weird in terms of the things that they poke fun at, right? We're okay with Blob. He did the cartwheel and the head fell off. Okay. We're like, we're okay with that. I wish they were a little bit more, we celebrated the Pittsburgh the, what is it? The Showboats return kick, right on the Mallers. Right. Okay. We celebrated that longest. I would've loved to have seen longest interception celebration official, official, this is the, and just poke a little bit of fun at that. I think that's okay. Where they, they'll joke with Blob and Dave the wave and them Yum yelling at who they have the guy yelling at Blob. You're not even a real mascot. You don't even talk. I like all that, but I wish that they played. But see, they're real football so they can't joke about the football. They can joke about their, but we don't, we play really real football, but we have fun with everything else And I mean they poked fun at Alex McGoo in the wall incident and I enjoyed the levity there. I mean have some fun with it, this kind of access and I mean God, we're still going back to the Darius Victor thick Thigh, thigh safe wives. I am enjoying the more human side of it and I agree. I definitely think even the football aspects of it poke some fun at it. The celebrations, I mean this is supposed to be the fun. These are supposed to be fun leagues for these guys to showcase not only themselves but as players but as people. So have some fun with it. I agree with you. I've said both. I think the exit fellow carries itself far too seriously sometimes just obviously knowing their past and everything else. I think the US fellows in that as well and I think it's just like we're Fox Sports don't. Last question here, we'll do rapid fire matchups before we get out of here. Okay. Mahler's historically worst team now in spring football history. I mean we had debates last year against the Guardians. They looked like they were on the rise and now they've fallen back down to earth. What do you make of the Mallers Coming into this year? I definitely would've said the Mallers were the worst team. The 2022 Mallers were the worst team in spring football that I've ever seen, but their defense is, it's too stout for me to put them behind the guardians at this point. I would say their defense is the best unit between both teams. The offense has been laughably bad, but I mean you could say the same thing about the Guardian's defense. They weren't stopping a cold in the X ffl. I mean the thing that killed me with the guardians was I believe it was maybe week six or seven, they talked about Trail Buckley running two a days and I just shook my head. It's just like, what are we even doing at this point? It was a tough watch and it just makes it all the more mind boggling that they didn't finish Owen 10, that they managed to spring it upset against the defenders, but ultimately I would say the mallards have crept just past the Guardians, but that's about as far as I can go with them right now. No, it's in debate. It's the tale as oldest time here. Which one I at. So here we go. We got breakers. Excuse me, we have stallion breakers here coming up back in Birmingham. What do you make about this one o'clock souther there? I think this is the game of the week. We're going to start off with the, arguably the two best teams in the U S F L squaring off the stallions had their number last year. The Breakers played phenomenal in the first meeting. I think that the stallions are probably going to get the better of the breakers right now. I think that they're still kind of going through adjusting after two awful weeks offensively, whereas Magoo is Alex Magoo has just been locked in and I think that's going to be the difference right now. Like we said, the stallions are ascending and the breakers are kind of hitting the skids at this point, but at this point, nothing would shock me if West Hills goes out and has a dominant game and puts them on his back. Sage Surak keeps moving the sticks and McClard Bethel Thompson just flips the switch. I wouldn't be shocked. Yeah, I don't know if McLeod just needs to ride himself here. It just feels, I felt bad. There was a whole C F L contingent that came down to watch 'em play at Michigan last week and just kind of horrendous game there. From the breakers point of view coming into the stars here, I guess ascending. I don't if you don't like, but here Mahler, what do you make about this? See, I think the starts are going to keep the momentum up this week. I really think they found something in the running game last week. The Muellers aren't the easiest team to run against, but if they can just keep themselves to second and third and manageable, I think they can do enough on offense because the mallers are just struggling mightily. I really thought that they had found something on offense with the running game and some mobility at quarterback, but then they just posted a bagel last week and the bar is just, they're putting too much on the defense's plate with the offense just not pulling their way. I do think that the stars have enough balance to squeak out a win this week and I mean put some distance between themselves and the bottom of the division and I think that's got to be Bart's message this week to the club is that we can really put ourselves in a great position to make the postseason with the win this week. Do you think Bart should kind of let his hair go gray? Do you think that the hair dye, do you think the hair, I don't think the hair dye's working for him anymore. It is? No, I think the gray with the thinning on top, I think everything, I think the gray is it needs to come. Yeah, It needs to come. We need to let that go. Thi this might be a scary one. I think you tell me what's the scarier scary Terry here we got the gamblers at Showboats and then the Panthers at generals. This could be a trip up spot for the gamblers. I mean, I have more faith in Mark Thompson carrying Houston's offense than Memphis putting together a solid offensive attack this week. But I mean Memphis just keeps creeping together. Wins. I mean you could say the same thing about Houston. I thought they played a more well-balanced game. I have a little bit more faith in Houston ultimately, but that game, I don't have any conviction in picking at this point. This could be the scariest weekend here. I know we ratings were down a little bit this week with the X F L not being on. We have the one Fox game that's going to be the best game, like you said on the kind of Fox proper. I think this FS one will be all right. I think there's interest. I think the stars still kind of carry that cachet, but this to me, the U S A Fs one of the gambler Showboats Panthers generals. Just, I don't know about that. We haven't talked a ton. Panthers obviously Winless at home here. Do you think they bounce back now that they're on the road back in the Canton? I wish I had more faith in the quarterback room. I mean, Carson Strong uninjured reserve leaves it all on. Josh love's plate essentially right now, but it's not as if New Jersey's getting stellar quarterback play right now. I was surprised to see Kyle ala play the entire game last week, especially when they went to the sideline and Deandre Johnson said that the game plan was for him to get in. So it wasn't as if there was an injury keeping him out because I know the broadcast booth did speculate a little bit that he was banged up in the previous game and wondered if maybe that was why he wasn't on the field and perhaps he was instructed to just kind of go with the narrative that he would play. But I mean, he was suited up and he looked like he could have gone in and when Lala struggled, I thought for sure they would put Johnson into provide a spark. Maybe they do this week, maybe they lean, I mean, Mike Riley loves to lean on his backs in the running game. That seems like a good week to do it with the Panthers struggling to score just win alow scoring affair. I would take the Generals in this one, which it's funny, I just think if you put Deandre Johnson on the Panthers with that combination of Reggie Corbin and Stevie Scott, they would just have such a more explosive and dynamic offense for what they'd like to do. That lack of quarterback mobility, like true game changing mobility, I think hurts them a little bit, especially since they're just not getting enough out of their past catching corpse. Trey Quinn has flashed this year. He had a great game last week, but ultimately I have more faith in Mike Riley and the generals gutting it out this week. But that could be a very ugly game. Yeah, we'll see. I'm curious how this week works at week seven, Josh, anything else from you? Where can people find your work? I really appreciate your time. Thanks for having me on. They can find my work at Fantasy Pros and betting pros. I write up a U S F L D F S piece every week for Fantasy Pros and I offer some betting insights, which has been kind of ice cold lately, but at betting pros. And I give you the thought process behind every bet so you can make your own informed decision whether you agree with my logic or not, but I like to show how the sausage is made and kind of lead you to water instead of forcing you to drink it sw. I like that, Josh, I appreciate it. Tremendous resources here. Thank you so much. Thanks Reid. Well there we go. Loaded show, like I said, thought John came across, like I said very well today. I think it's the same thing. I come on here, do the show. I enjoy kind of doing shows outside of this and being able to talk more long form that way when I'm on John Lewis's podcast or anything like that. So I appreciate that. I thought John, that was a great conversation. Really appreciate Greg making time late at night coming on to do that. And then obviously Ryan Valentine, everyone over at the Elks for setting up Trey Ford, going to be looking to get more into the C F L here. We have lots of team previous next week coming in for the C F L season. And then I teased it on the live stream on Monday. But we're going to have a special C F L kickoff pregame show live before that game here on June 8th. Is that June 8th. And then I'm going to have a special, somewhat cool project. I still need to talk with Andy Murray about this, but Andy, I have a cool project we're going to work forward to here week after next, so should be good. But lots of C F L team previews next week. Still working on some other guests. Hope you guys enjoy. Thanks everyone who contributed this week, taking time to come on the program, set things up, and obviously all of you for listening. I hope you have a great weekend. Take care.

USFL 2023 Week 6 Results: Winners and Losers of USFL Week 6, What Did We Learn?

Well here we are, everyone happy C F L preseason day here, kicking off in about three hours. I think they're monitoring the weather or the smoke from the fires up there in Calgary. Seeing if we're going to get the C F L on today, biting a little bit of time here at the beginning. Pat's pulling into his house right now, but I'd like to start these streams on time. So we're going to talk a little c l pre-season wait for Pat. We're going to do the full U S F L week six breakdown today. Very exciting. I watched most of the games. McLeod struggling a little bit. Stars won. How great of a win was it? I don't know. We will talk through all that. Just had a tremendously interesting Twitter DM conversation here. I'll tell you if you are ready for C F L coverage here after we get, it'll be here in the U S F L and pre-season and all of that. But if you are ready for some high quality C F L content, I have a lot of stuff in store. Just had a tremendously exciting Twitter DM conversation. Literally moments before hopping on here. So very excited about that. Chris is checking in here. He is saying, let's go. Jenna also checking in. Jenna should be happy. Her Showboats just absolutely kicked the crud out of the Muller's going to the mall. I think Mahler's came back down to earth here. We're getting some good reps from Matt Mangle, a friend of the show Pontine. I don't know much else that the Mallers have going for them right now, but while I have you all here, make sure I can subscribe. Get us up to 3,500. Could still win tickets to the US L championship game. But if you are, say Reid, I have nothing to do today. If you go to cfl.ca/preseason live, I already did this. I signed up to check it out. Pre-season C F L football kicks off today. You can watch the Edmonton Elks at Calgary St. Peters here for Eastern one Pacific free to stream. All you got to do is put in your email. We're going to try this out. C F L I have lots of interviews lined up this week for our regular show talking. Is it a good idea for the C F L to give away half their broadcast schedule free? I don't know yet. I don't know if giddy people on here sign up with an email, watch the games. I don't know if that's a good idea or not. We're going to find that out. But currently you can watch all these c preseason games including the one today. So if you're watching this cfl ca slash preseason live could not be easier. I already signed up and did all that, so be sure to check that out. Yeah, yeah, we're getting comments here. We'll, we'll talk us l. But anyway, very excited for the C F L season. Very excited for pre-season. I don't know if I'll be like watching all the pre-season games starting to finish, but certainly exciting and I have some really great guests lined up coverage this week and next we're going to have a live show for our pre-game for the C F L on the eighth. Have some special guests for that. And then I also have a special show. I still got to talk with Andy about it, but Andy and I are going to have a Andy, we're going to have another live episode coming up here that fits into your schedule, but really excited here. I see Pat's, Pat's hopping on. We'll make sure he's all squared away here. Mike says us L was a rough watch this weekend. I don't want to be negative, so we'll see if Pat feels the same way. And then Darren says, what's up with us L offices? Should we mess better? I agree. I agree. We'll talk through all that. Pat, can you give me a thumbs up if you're ready? Cool. Pat is here. Let's bring this down. Let's bring it Pat. Pat, how are you doing? And you are muted. Okay, pat is still muted. Looks like he is also frozen, so we're doing, there we go. Pat, I think you're, I think your're. Yeah, pat your connection's way off here. Sorry about that. Pat j just calling from your phone. Calling from your phone Here. Let me pull up the U S F L schedule here. We can start getting into this stuff. Let's just see a pack. Can calling on his phone seems like his internet connection. Little wonky here. Let's get down to where we at week six. This is always fun for these live shows. We'll get through it. We'll get through it here. So we, first off, we had the Pittsburgh ballers coming in. Pittsburgh had not played as horrendously as they had last season. Still struggling a little bit showboats putting on the clinic a shutout. We had the ill faded longest touchdown kickoff, return kick in, whatever, 108 yards, all of that. I don't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing for the US to fell to hang their hat on, but certainly tremendous felt really bad for the Mallers. Felt like Ray H was there trying to do all of that. Trying to, okay, let's get some points before we go into halftime. Certainly didn't work out. All right. I think Pat's on now. Let's get Pat again here. He's still typing on here. Pat, we got you here. How are we doing this time guys? Perfect. We're perfect. Hi. First off guys, a thousand, apologies for being late. It was, I don't know, I'm paying almost $200 in wifi and everything. You would think it would work, right? It's okay. Okay Pat, we talk here, let me get this off here. We'll do a little back. We either, we talk back and forth, Hey, we're going live this week, we got to talk to us. What do you make of us L week six? Are we aware the league should be currently? I don't know man. And this is my biggest thing is what is the expectation? I don't think we have expectations and that's something that bothers me a little bit because we don't care about attendance. Well, what are the ratings? What are your expectations for the ratings? I'm curious to see, and they obviously haven't come out yet and the percentages and whatnot, right? Because you could throw 300,000 people at their TV screens and that's great if your expectation was two 90. But if you're expecting 500,000, it doesn't matter if you get 10 million, if you're expecting 15 million, then you this doing media and film and whatnot. Oh, this movie made a hundred a million dollars. Well avatars spent 5 billion to make it. That's that number isn't sexy anymore. So as far as with the football play, one person that I would really want to focus in on is McLeod Bethel Thompson and I'm very curious to see if, because he played a full slate of games last year full season because there's what, 18 regular season games and then 2021 in the playoffs if he's starting to have some fatigue, something about these breakers quarterbacks in the back half of the season. We saw that with slowly last year as well and he was a guy who bounced around a lot of N F L teams and whatnot in 2021. So I'm very curious to see if that's some fatigue with that overall. I mean you're seeing some of these defenders ball out to do really well, but is that the equation of great play or is it the equation of just poor offense and being put in the situations? I've been on the record on this in the US NFL especially some of these wide receivers are true fringe NFL guys. It seems like every team has two guys at that position where I'm like, yeah, that guy could easily fill in the late season, be a contributor and whatnot. So I'm very curious to see what the actual and help me out use using the correct word because I didn't finish my four year degree is the disassociation maybe of the translation between their play to the quarterback By week six we should be like Chris. We saw that Josh love mishap at the end of the half and I'm kind of just like, what's going on here On the bright side, the kicking the actual field goal kicking is way improved from last year and I know everyone could bring up the chips, but there was some bad kicking after the chips were removed. So I'm really, and I talk with Mike Mitchell about this all the time, is the way you air make your money in these leagues as far as, oh, we sent this guy to the N F L is always going to be your specialist. Yeah, no, I know what you're saying. It's, it's hard and I never want to come on and poo any of this stuff. I watched three of the games this weekend. I had a wedding Saturday night, so I missed the Birmingham Panthers. I want to talk about that. Panthers can't seemingly win at home, but I hear, and I had messages yesterday, they should be further along now. I've also get messages with the XFL was just as bad people have bros cover. I don't know if having the attendance there sweetens that, but it is hard to watch that breakers game, them struggling coming down the field. We each have one drive each in the quarter or whatever and there's not a lot of fanfare and it's just hard. I don't know if even the limited crowds at the X F L that made it better or worse. I don't know if that kind of hides out at all. I'm also having an issue with the officiating and this is kind of the double edged sword where it's like, I don't want guys getting tackled downfield, but case cookies I think threw three, scored three touchdowns yesterday. I know he scored two. I think there was one he was close on and it got called back on the passing play and I'm like, dude, what do you like? And there's holding on every play, roughhousing on every play. The unnecessary roughness. The taunting, I get it. I was hoping because of how aggressive they were, it was going to kind of keel it back a little bit and it seems like guys are still doing whatever they want to do and I get it, it's the heat of the moment. I've played competitive sports, you know, make a big play. You knock someone down, you know, land a good strike on someone, you're pumped about it. I get it. But it just seems like every five minutes when you have an 11 yard rush and you do one of these and you accidentally hit the guy, they're calling a flag on it and I'm like, I'm like, dude, this is, I mean it's taunting, but I just ran over a bunch of grown men. I'm a division three running back. No one thought I'd be playing pro football. Yeah, I'm a little excited about that. I'm not I'm sure and I don't want to come off as old man yelling at the sky. I think when they get the interception and it's a three yard return and then everyone in their mother goes down to the other end zone, I'm like, okay, yeah, I get it. That kind of homers me a little bit because it gives me the fan control vibes where I'm like, bro, this is enough. But it just, man, it seems like every 15 and a half seconds there's a, I don't know how long that last part of the stars game took, man. I was trying to stay focused, but it was just getting annoying for me. Yeah, I've never played a second of competitive sports ever. I can't even fathom. I played a little league baseball, I was placed out in left field or right field. I was sat the absolute right at maximum times they could sit any child that was allowed by the bylines of the little league. So I didn't understand all that, but I did enjoy that after the cookies flip interception, which I believe that gentleman was out of bounds, I think it still was on the line. We got out of the balance there. But they were celebrating. They're like, they were doing a 10 minute review. They go, I think they're still celebrating there in the end zone. They're just absolutely going crazy. It does feel, and you're talking about the officiating, what's crazy to me is as bad as the officiating is, the X F L had questionable officiated as well, but the U USS f L announcers complained constantly about how bad the officiating is, or at least in the X F L, they kind of covered for dean. They're like, oh yeah, okay. I kind of see where dean's coming from here. They, they're constantly disagreeing with Mike. They're constantly disagreeing with the calls. They're constantly saying it should be the thing I go, you should at least be kayfabe for your own product of like, no, this is right. We're okay with this. And then you can talk privately if there's a problem with that. You Think, man. But at the same time, I think, and we've talked about before, Fox puts on a good product and why do they put on a good product? 30% of that is because of the analysts, the color play by play. And I kind of got annoyed with the shilling in the X ffl for the officiating if you're J and yeah, real football, real fans lines, I mean the phaco lines all over the levels of football. But I the fact that they're like, yeah, that's jacked up. Don't show. What are they going to do? They're going to fire Cam Jordan. I'm good with that. I think it takes away, I don't want to say takes away, but it kind of makes it a little bit more enjoyable to me to see them not go with the flow on that you're an adult, make your own decisions and what you're going to do. Fire, fire these guys, they're going to fire Brock Heward. Okay, I'm good with that. That It's just as constant. It felt like it was constant yesterday. It felt like every other thing was them disagreeing with the officiator. I'm like, okay, can we, it's as bad as, and if you wanted to critique on the, hey, this guy wants to go to the nfl, take a shot watching the X F L games, it felt like the same thing. Take a drink anytime that they had disagreed with the officiator, the Same level as far as just like, yeah, I get it. Same level of the betting. The betting talking to the X ffl. And the biggest thing for me when we talked about the players was, I mean remember that Luke Bark who game where they're like if Luke Bark who holds Josh Gordon to less than three catches, he's going to the nfl. And that's kind of a meme in my mind. Anytime I see a Luke Baru thing, I'm like, yeah, that guy's going to go to the NFL because he held three catches. I was not because of his other nine games that he had good coverage and has good movement in his hips. It's because yeah, that's the one reason. Yeah. Okay Guy, We had Mike, and again, this is not my comments, I get a lot of people that write into this show. I think I get like, oh this, I am not writing these things. Mike Prayer seems like he'd rather be anywhere else anytime they go to him again. I think Dean benefits from just being really good looking and charismatic. I think Dean can get away with Pat. You could say just about anything to me you want. I'd be like, oh see that's just Pat, just Pat being charming Pat. But Mike comes off as the lizard, the troll, the swamp lizard is like, ah, me here. Yeah, I mean there's pretty privilege. I mean how many times, and I hate to say this, how many times does have a good looking guy say something at work doesn't get a lot those eyebrows, but someone whose butt is in the front instead of the back, they say something and he's a creep. I mean I kind of get that same vibe as well. Dean's got a good hairline going for him. Younger guy just enough as scruff, good jawline. Oh it's just Dean, he's cute, it's fine. Look at him up there. So here's my question and then we'll get into all the games. We'll do the game by game here are, because I felt like we saw this a little bit in the X ffl, we saw the roughnecks and they kind of crater toward the end of the season and people were, I was told people are catching up to AJ Smith. The defenses are figuring this out. We saw that in the championship game. Arlington very prepared for DC kind of knew exactly are in the US L are the offenses scaling down? Are the defenses getting that much better? Because Chris says here, all excellent defense is improving more right now every game. But is it an offensive issue or is it a defenses improvement? I mean I think it's both. When I talked to two offensive coordinators in the beginning of the season before games started taking place for the U S F L, we were making a little bit of a joke back and forth. I was like, hey, it's kind of the downtime. I was like, you got any articles, any guys you want me to highlight? And they're like, man, if you want to do an article about all these new coordinators and what schemes they were on, I ain't against that. And it's like you're kind of seeing, you probably go to a base defense, less exotic blitzes, less stunts on the defensive line. So you're like, okay, so you I'll give Breland Speaks is a perfect example. You have a guy speaks, everyone knows who he is. Decent College pedigree six obviously viewed as an NFL caliber player at one point. That's great, but what are you going do? Can he actually still play? And now that you're seeing that he could still play. Now we can get exotic. Now I can tell him to do some different things, but before you're just going to have him, okay man, you're an adult, use that s e c body go wreck this left tackle from Farmington au. You know what I mean? So it's like now that these defenses are allowed to expand on their role and whatnot, I feel, I think that's a big part of it to where the offense, you could just run some quick spread type offense. And granted there's tons of intricacies in offense in both sides of the football. And I'm not downplaying any offensive coordinator whatsoever. I coach offense, I'm a big offensive guy, but you're not dealing with as probably as much exotic blitzing as whatnot because you can still run a decent like, hey, our wide receiver beats their cornerback in the cover too. We're good. You saw a lot of seam routes because probably in the early weeks because it looks like they were playing a lot of cover too. And when those safeties kick back, you know can throw it right over the linebacker in front of the safety and there's 18 yards, you do that five times and all of a sudden you're in the red zone And you feel like now that it's, they're not able to be as right that they're catching up to that. And then you could factor in as you know there. Then there's the key talking points that we can talk in nauseum, fatigue injuries, stuff like that at the receiver position, the offensive line position, regardless if you shoot for the X Ffl or the U S F L, if that guy was an N F NFL level offensive lineman, he'd have a futures deal and offensive lineman will always be in short supply because they're in short supply for the 32 franchises and whatnot. So I mean the offensive line, there's always the bugaboo, right? Carson's strong as talented and I know there's a knee injury associated with him, as talented as he was. He's not playing against his college offensive line. He's playing against guys who couldn't get past mini camp. And granted, I've never played at that level, so I don't want to come off as a hater or anything like that, but it it takes a good quarterback and we're seeing it right now with Case Cook is and it makes a stat line disgusting. Yeah, we're seeing a lot of comments in the chat here. USL hate, I watched three of the games this weekend. No one, no one's hating on, no one wants the U S F L here in the months of post. I don't want the C F L to be strong. I want the X FFL to be strong. I want the US L because, and that way we have things to talk about all year long. There's nothing I want more than the S F L to drop off. Trade is Bama boy 2 0 5. I don't know who that is. But yeah, the whole thing here is we want this to improve and to be better because we'll see ratings tomorrow and how that comes out. But I want this to be strong because you want people to have interest in this and that is what fills the news calendar the whole way through the year is Not only that, Reid, we're not bringing in tens of thousands of dollars, guys like you and I, but I mean writing about these leagues, writing about these players, meeting these players. And not to get too edgy, but I literally just got out of some dms with some player personnel people in both these leagues. And I want any person that I come in contact that I feel like, Hey man, I could vouch for granted, there's a lot of people in both our dms and a lot of people's dms who hate to be disrespectful, don't have any business being on this level of football, but I want these players to succeed. I want these coaches to succeed. Someone that I love and love to see succeed is the offensive coordinator, Eric Marty. I would love to see him in San Diego or excuse me, LA with the Chargers. He's a great quarterback. Mine. There's so many good human beings that are a part of the U S F L that I want them to have those jobs. I want Mike Nolan to be for the Panthers, God knows how long, so he could keep bringing up coaches like Coach Bauer and Christian Ronza and create better lifestyles for them so they can go and live their dream and then when they're done coaching in the N nfl, come back to the U S F L and do the next batch. TJ Barnes of the Arlington Renegades just called it quits in his career because of the X F L, not because he couldn't play, but because he used that league to essentially get his life together and win a championship. Come on, Luis Perez. Both successful in both these leagues, man. It's not, it's no different than when you're working out trying to better your life, man. And yeah, I lost 10 pounds, but okay, you want to get a little bit more fit, okay, I'm not benching as much, I'm not squatting as much. These aren't critiques to be a hater. They're critiques because I want these leads to survive because I love covering these teams. And the other day, debt charts were a big thing for us and it took us five weeks and we went from being haters to champions. That kid will or he is not a kid, he's probably 10 years older than both of us, but Will Harris, that gentleman who makes these pregame stuff, that was something the X ffl gave to us as candy and this guy is taking the time out of his day to do it. Come champion this guy. You know what I mean? I did. Once they got the GEM charts out, they got people tweeting me like, oh there you go Ray. I'm like, yeah, you go exactly who complained all last year and then got us L podcast and Mark and all the people into the championship game press box. Oh that was us complaining all year about it. That was what got like, sorry, Sorry. And look at what the S F L podcast did in the past for whatever they call it. I don't know. But regardless, it's like that's greed. We have things going on and I don't know what Stefan and Zach do and that's for their full-time gig. But I mean regardless of how we feel or they feel about us, It's huge champion of the league. It's great, it's great for the league. They did a great job in the presentation and I would love to see that number that they got be 10 times more because regardless of how much money they put into it, they still put the effort. But it's like you have people like that in us. Not to put my stuff out there, but I'm trying to get up to Michigan and do all my in-person interviews because that is easier, that's easier for me to relay the stories and whatnot. And it's like I'm willing to spend my own time and money to give you guys a platform. And I'm not the largest platform out there, but all it takes is one guy seeing it who's got bigger platforms than us? The dude Brandon Perna, that's good sports. He sees it and he's like, you know what, I'm not doing anything this weekend. I like Ben Ucci, let me go talk to him. He's in the Broncos talk X ffl or Caden Davis is on the Panthers now. We'll get to the games here and my last comment, we'll get to the games. People ask even X ffl and they're, I've been treated tremendously well, but people ask like, oh, I used to be the big C F L hater. It depends back and forth. The reason why I like the C Ffl is, and I just bought my tickets yesterday to go up to do the gray cup. They roll out the red carpet, the CFL is happy with any coverage of any climb as long as it's not offensive or whatever. But I'm beginning to plan the slate of preseason and we're going into the C F L kickoff and I can literally email a hundred different people, email the teams, email the team reps, email reporters, they're, they're happy to come on, they're happy to talk. The league is happy to, why wouldn't I want to be work with them and be able to help share that because they appreciate it and the X F L is that way and I think that they were dealing with this, the upstart struggles and I'm hoping and exciting that that will continue throughout this year. Now that they've kind of got their feet under it. But why wouldn't I g talk about these leagues more than embrace and champion the stuff that we do And it's a Coptic relationship versus Fox that some weeks it seems like they want to play ball and some weeks they don't. Okay, we can vamp at the end if we're not go any more about that. I was talking Muller Showboats when you logged on here, Muller's horrendous game shut out. We had the big kickoff return kind of all that was just kind of the comedy of errors leading into the first half. That was kind of when I got involved in the game for the most part. Yeah, I mean we saw some major regression. Troy Williams, he did a good job obviously staying mobile, which is what he does. But he did have a lot of cheap lot of completions, but he also hit Bailey Gaither on the sideline for a decent gain. Him and Isaiah Henny, I think Henny had 1 0 3 or 1 0 4 for receiving yards. Really like that. I mean it just seems like the Showboats are getting hot at the same time at the right time. Big thing from my personal opinion with the Mallers is that they don't have a true RB one. I think gross check only had one carry, one carry for a couple yards. He's not a burner. He's the most impressive three yards a carry guy because it seems like he's always getting hit in the back field and then pushing forward for about three yards. He just didn't have it. And the that's, I mean that kick at the end, I don't fault coach Horton for going for that. I think that you know, got a good kicker. He's an N F L caliber kicker and they went for it and it didn't work out. And those kick return field goals are always scary. First off, I wouldn't say it was the greatest play I've ever seen, but it was definitely the best field goal return for a touchdown I've ever seen because it wasn't the return because at that point you're just bobbing and weaving through obese people. It was that original catch that he tiptoed. That was what was so impressive to me about it. Well I was told it was the best kickoff return in history that was, I saw the USL told me that the history was made. It was the best one ever. Yeah, I mean you only got 13 of them to go off of. So I mean it's in the top 15. That's pretty cool. But I mean I'm a big showboats guy, Johan Washington, a fringe fringe guy in my opinion. Alex Collins was there. He is obviously hurt. But something that people don't talk about enough is Cole Kelly and I don't know if I talked about it on your show, I know I talked about it in my QB rankings videos and articles is when Cole Kelly gets hit, he's six seven, probably 235 to 240 pounds, man is an adult. So when he is getting hit, it does, it's not the initial, okay, I just sacked a six foot quarterback, I sack to a, I'm sacking an offensive lineman slash tight end who isn't going to go down so easily unless I have a good running start. And even then it's pretty impressive to bring this man down so he's able to throw the football away, throw it in completion, dump it off to the running back, and now you're going from a second and 17 to a second and 10 or second and eight or something like that. And that kind of deflates the stat line a little bit because now it's an incompletion. Now the sack, so instead of 14 of 24, he's 14 of 20, but he got sack four times. I mean that adds up because now you're not playing, now you're not changing your playbook, now you're second in eight and you can run the ball. Okay you got four yards, we're third and four, let's run a mesh route, let's run it again. And that big factor in his game I don't think gets talked about enough. No, that's fair. Here we see a lot of comments, knee bigger rosters, a lot of injuries. We saw XL experience US L working on that, right? With the C B A, they're going to add I think another two spots, but again it's cost cutting x ffl, they're kind of bumping up the off season. We'll see how that works out with that. But how Is ultimate legitimate? The gripe with both leagues is like you got 40 something people act, 40 people active right now. I got my second. Do I activate that tight end? Okay, which tight end am I activating? Can he play fullback? Can he play special teams? Now he's tired. And we saw this with the battle hawks, right? And I talked to Coach Beck about it. I don't want to talk XFL too much, but I was like, coach, when one of your players gets hurt, I think Steven Mitchell or Gary Jennings got hurt. I was like, how does that affect everything on special teams because these are your wide receiver fives. And he is like, it's a lot because now I can't run a fake anymore. I can't do certain mix up on our punt coverages and whatnot. Certain things on kick return and now you're shifting guys around. You're like, okay, well that's our gunner. Who could I use on our gunner? Okay, well two of my dbs are hurt now I got to put running back out there and he's taking three reps this whole off season. So those special teams man, and that's how these guys get into the league is their versatility. But that it, you're having these guys out there sucking wind a little bit more. Well but they do that to save money because you think about, you're like, what is the difference? It's two more spots, four or five grand a week times eight teams times seven. I mean it adds up really quick. And just adding on to the five roster spots is million dollars, whatever it is if you do the math rolled out. So I get why they do it. I don't get why, especially XE L, we talked with the team nine when I Cole Kuk on last week, the Team nine and Birmingham too. When you're in the hub doing that Team nine, having guys, maybe you're only paying them the non-active or 1500 a week. I mean I know that's hard but get 'em in there. Get 'em repping every week and then you're in the hubs anyway. How hard is it just to roll 'em up? Especially last year I never got why they didn't do that at Birmingham. I'm like every person is living here. Just have a team play and then you have other people to run routes against and practice just to get 'em in. But you have that team, they come in, they're like the expendables and you play with 'em or you don't and at least have it. I just think that there's more creativity that could be done both X L and us and L to come do that. And last year Reid, a couple players were told that there was going to be a team nine and I wrote a story on it. I had a couple people players reach out to me and it just never happened. And I mean you're looking at longevity if here it's the bouncing act. Both you and I run businesses, so okay, you're cutting the costs here. Does it give you an extra year in change to play in the league versus how much money you're losing but you can't get, it's hard to get that projection of how much money you're losing if your product isn't to a standard. And that's something I don't have their Excel sheets. So I don't know. That's something I think needs to be factored into this. So I mean if the US L is around for 15, 20 years, we'll look back on this and be like, yeah, I guess it was a good idea to have Sage surat playing on all facets of special teams. But again, it's something with the coaches complaining and critiquing whatever us people doing that then that is what leads to. So then when they do add the team nine or whatever, it's not like, oh well there you go. It's like, oh no, there you go, look. But it was the same thing with the X F L. They were going to have the alumni academy experience kind of all season. They're rotating through and it just never happened as well. I think there was other circumstances with that. But going to this game here, this was young game I missed back. Wedding season has started. I will say very glad Pat. The off season for the wedding videographers in Seattle is very long. I work kind of constant all year and then it's like I kind of have a midlife crisis every off season. Okay. And it is just what do I do with my life here? Very glad to get back to this, but I miss the Panthers losing it home again. What is going on with the Michigan Panthers that hate to win in Michigan? Oh man, I think it comes down to the quarterback. I mean you look at that roster and there's talent on the roster like Trey Quinn, I don't know if he's statistically top five, but top five guy. There was a lot of shuffling around. I saw a lot of issues in past protection, not from the offensive line but from the running back spot in which they're looking, they're not looking at that immediate threat. And it looked to me that they were having a lot of issues playing, picking up the additional blitzers and whatnot. I would like to see a little more of Stevie Scott versus Reggie Corbin. Getting the ball to Reggie Corbin in the passing game I think is the most advantageous thing because he's more in space and Stevie Sky, it just seemed like every time was bouncing up and down, up and down, up and down, breaking a lot of tackles. You saw a gentleman, his name is Quinton, polling on the Birmingham Stallions and it seemed like he was in the backfield on every play coming from his linebacker position. And I think that says a lot about either his abil, he didn't make a lot of tackles in the backfield, he was just very disruptive. So that's why he is in the U S F L couldn't, couldn't finish. But even then just disrupting it. And then I don't know if, and excuse me guys, I need to look at the slow down version of the film, but is that just a miscommunication? Is he just reading it really well? Are the guards not going to that second level? It just seems like they were a little overwhelmed by Birmingham, which they were the last year's champion. So what do you expect to extent? I will say, and I don't want to get into the attendance and all of these things, but this is a really real thing where I've talked to you both on the show and off the Tony Scotts and the Bill Shays and the people that are going to, and I, I'd be curious to get Paul Woods's thoughts as well. I know he was at the Breakers game, but you know, do this thing in Michigan, you roll in the Panthers, you go to Fort Field now the lions are on the upswing. You have the history of the Michigan Panthers. I think you're trying to impress these real, I want to say real football riders, real N F L riders coming in. And I think Bill, I talked with Bill and he's like, yeah, it's cute, it's kind of cool. I think I whatever. But I don't think that you're impressing people maybe the way that they thought that they would, right? Oh, we're going to get 15,000 people in here and the writers are going to come in and go, wow, I get that's where some of this matters and not that the attendances live all be all. And not that the Panthers winning all the time is a be all end all, but you have this losing team in this vacuum. You're bringing in all these riders that are used to covering a variety. Does that make sense? And I think that it makes it look worse, at least in their opinion of what may be. Yeah, I may. And the football's fine. I mean it is what it is. It's us, f l, whatever. But I think it makes it look demonstrably worse to them that are coming in to cover this with a fresh eye. Yeah, I don't disagree with you. When we were in the press box in St. Louis, which is the gold standard I think at this point of all football, some weeks depending on what the Cardinals were doing, it wasn't there. But you consistently had 15 members of the media in the press box. And I don't know what Detroit's press box looks like, I haven't been up there yet, but at the same time I thought that the success of the lions would translate in there. And from what I've been talking to people who have been at the games, that 6,500 number the USFL gave out was inaccurate. I don't know what they're doing if they're giving away tickets, and maybe it was 16 five, there was a typo, but that first week was a decent showing. The second week wasn't bad either. I mean, this week let a little bit be desired in my opinion. But when you lose four games at home, people aren't going to want to show. And that's not a, that's, that has nothing to do with the league. That just has to do with your team. People at times don't go to Mariners games a's games if the teams aren't doing well. I a I'm Mets fan, those late 2000, after that oh seven season, you can get tickets for $10 and be down by third base. That's not a U S F L problem. Okay? You have a good market. I think Detroit's a good market, do something with it. Well also, I mean even X Ffl had a problem with that when they came to the Brahmas and people go, oh wait, it was, well because they started 24,000, they didn't market well and then the team wasn't very good. And it's really hard. It, it's such an easy thing when you're not in that market. And I got the same thing with the Seattle fans for the Sea Dragons and they're, why is the Seattle showing up? It's like you're not here there. There's different circumstances for every city, but you can't just say, well the fans need to show up. The fans need to be there. We have a comment here about Birmingham, I'll pull up, but I'm like, Seattle, you're competing Terrible weather, the Kraken, all this stuff, the team is not very good. They're not marketing, right? Michigan here, there's all these, but it's so easy to sit there. Oh, you should go, they need to da da da da da. Mike says, most worrying is Birmingham really thought they would not only stay steady but grow this year considering they're the many champions I know, but again, Birmingham, there's not that many people in Birmingham. I mean there only so many people that are going to want to go watch games are going to go watch the stallions, going to go watch spring football. Yeah, see straight strike. I think the attendance in Birmingham has to do with time of the games, time of year, school activities. Yeah. I mean Birmingham to me, that's one of the largest stories that we don't necessarily talk about because we kind of did the whole last year of it. But that's still very much an issue And I, I can't pull up the numbers to tell you what's yay or nay. And that's disappointing because if I want to say, oh Birmingham looks good, I have to go on YouTube and watch that and I don't want to come off as lazy. But at the same time it's like I can look at the San Antonio numbers and be like, okay, 24, 12, 12, 12, 12, there's an issue here. Yeah, I can't do that with any, I can't do that with the US F l. And that's what annoys me a little bit. And it's like, I think there's going to be a lot of people that are going to be like, oh these attendance numbers are terrible, this league's trash and you can do that all you want. That's fine to an extent. Some people take it to another level, but I'm not doing that to be a jerk. I'm doing it because I want to know am I going to have, are these people going to have jobs next year? Are these people going to do this? Are we going to be able to have a certain portion of our job next year? And it's like, come on guy, play ball a little bit. And that's the thing is my aunt who doesn't care about football at all and it was Mother's Day, I'm watching the game and she's like, oh is this college? And I'm like, no, this is a pro-league. Like let her know about it. She goes, why aren't anyone there? And I'm like, oh man, I'm not trying to have this conversation on Mother. But yeah, it's the ultimate bugaboo for the U S F L and I hate it because there's so much more to their income and what they bring in than the advertising. They got the golden ticket with Fox. But at the same time, to the casual viewer, they're not going to spend 20 minutes on their phones to look about is the U S F L financially successful? They don't care. They just want to watch a game. They want to see good football and they want to see fans in the stands losing their mind. I will share, I have a rant here at the end of the show we'll get to and Jacob says, yeah, there's not a lot of marketing. He drives super him often sees my four billboards just Chris always gives me a laugh every time I read Christmas up I get the Frees and Goose is watching Alex. I think that means he gets some warm, yeah. How's doing, because I want to get to the stars here, but I've been told Magu is one of the standouts this year in the USS f l What do you mega McGoo? He's the mvp. Yeah, the mvp. And even on last week I felt he was off last week. I think he threw two interceptions and he still, or they gutted the way to win and that's what good teams do. They figure out a way to win and to see how mobile he is and to sea his accuracy looks a little bit better. So I don't know if he's changed some things up and whatnot in his mechanics because you can't really tell because he's making so many plays with his legs and doing a little improv. But I mean just to watch him play and as some, I've tracked McGoo for a little bit. He was with the Seahawks and for a minute and then bounced around and just to see his success in this league is why I covered this league and why I love watching this league because it's a guy who's been bounced around for a while, didn't really have the most opportunities coming in as a seventh round pick gets hurt last year and now he's just battling it out. He's done 12 touchdowns this year, ran for three on the ground, TEU through 14 in 10 games. Magoo Magoos going to surpass that air quote modern record in the 10 game season right now and it's great to see. And he's making a little bit of money for himself. Mike Mitchell talked about the availability of roster spots and whatnot and maybe with all this gambling nonsense that came out today, we might see some more roster spots open, but in the end, Magoo is putting himself in a prime position for when a quarterback gets hurt. Your second, your third string quarterback gets hurt and you call AJ McCarran and AJ's like, nah, I'm not going to do that because I want to play. I'm not going to sit on the bench. A guy like Alex McGoo is going to come in and maybe stick around for an extra year or two. No, and we were talking about that Mike Mitchell and I, if you guys haven't listened to our big, we kind of did a three and a half hour kind of symposium here, ex L retrospective and maybe we'll figure out how to do it with the U US F L as well here when it routes. But what worked, didn't be curious to see the number of players. Obviously U S F L last year had a tremendous number of players assigned to the practice squads, a couple of made it Kamonte, Turpin, others got hurt. But then this year now you have this backlog and the X F ffl, there's only so many spots for players to get and then there's going to be even less for the U S F L. So I know all that gambling and everything coming out and players getting suspended for that. Obviously you don't want anyone to lose their job, but there's only so many spots that are going to be, and I'm curious to see now with the X F L and the U S F L, we have this log jam of we're trying to get through the Panama Canal and how many players can get on here. This one, let's get the games a little before we get out of here. Stars again. Win without scoring an offensive touchdown. I felt bad. Paul Woods came down from Toronto. I saw a cavalcade of C F L fans there. Watching McLeod felt bad that they got the performance they did is McLeod cooling off. What did we make of this game? Because I know you were getting into debates with people about the, what was it? The brilliance, the brilliance of Bart Andrews in this Course. And I get using the flashy terms and I don't knock James for saying that. I get it. It's a good comment. But at the same time it's like Bart Bart's been on the offensive side of the ball for a while, so it's like he's coached offense, he's coached quarterback. So that's kind of his jam. Before he came to the stars, he was in youth sports with, I think it was the Ottawa BGS or something like that. And you know, saw what case did last year, you saw what even Brian did last year in his three games. There was success with the offensive side of the ball. And I'm, I've been very vocal about this. They did not reload on that offensive line they should have, despite some woes I've seen on the Panthers, the offensive line is way better than last year. And you know can go from being an F to a D that's still improvement. Last year I felt like they were in that B, low B and now I feel like they're in the D as far as grades go. And it's just disappointing to see because Case is a good quarterback. Everyone agrees that case is a good quarterback. But how many penalties could you call? How many he had almost, I know he had two touchdowns taken away on the ground and then there was one pass he threw within the five yard line that got called back and it's like, come on guys, get it together. They lost Alex A. King Blu, they lost Gunner Vogel. Their center is still learning the position. Perez Sam Shady said he was a a tight end in college at one point for a couple years. So it's like, yeah, what do you expect? This is the third year he's playing the position, he's got to make calls. It's just not working out. And he's getting, we saw him, he put an elbow brace on. It could have been his funny bone I think they said. But regardless, it's another hit that he's got to take. But wasn't, it wasn't the Star Center, wasn't he Downfield two different called back to touch. It was two different plays almost back to back. It's like what happening here? It feels, and you were talking before the Rowdiness and it just feels like these teams are kind of undisciplined. I know that we obviously had the issues in the X F L as well with the Vipers, but it felt like the stars were just kind of all over the place. And it goes back to my undisciplined, these quick triggers on the unnecessary or on sportsman conducts and it's, some of them I feel like are just not warranted. You know what I mean? I said, you roll over some dude for 11 yards and then you just drop the football and do that and you happen to hit him. They're calling flags on that. And I'm like, come on bro, this is not taunting. And that dude that granted the other team will take the yardage, but deep down inside you're like, ah. You know what I mean? It just seems like every five minutes, especially for the stars, one step forward, 15 yards back, it was just kind of like it's you're watching the basketball game, the final two minutes, you got to block out three hours of your life, I will say. And is, that's the problem I have with the C F L. Sometimes some of these end, the end, the game end the half, it just takes forever and we're slowing it down, we're slowing it down and we're reviewing, we're the timeout then we're not using the timeout and then the announcers are complaining about it. It seems like it's kind of a comedy of air sometimes here and near the end of the house in the game. And I saw that a couple times in the X F L and it was just like, bro, especially that middle of the season for the Renegades, a couple of those games. And then I think when the Renegades played the brass, it just felt like forever. Man, man, come on guys, let's get it together. And it kills the tempo of the game because you saw it at one point with the Breakers, they were driving downfield and then they had some penalties that came up and I'm kind of just like McLeod's moving this, excuse me right now he's doing what he's paid to do. Let him spin, let this game keep going and then it kills it and it's third and 26 and you're like, dude, just first and 10 with a 20 yard game. How are they on the 26th instead of the 45? I want to talk McLeod here. We'll get to the last game. I'm going to go get my power cable here because my laptop is not charged all the way when I went out to the deck. I is McLeod, is he are f? Is this the Mark House Curse? Because spoiler alert I had McLeod on before we went to San Antonio so that he's lost, dropped two games in a row here. Now since talking on the Mark House, pat, talk to me about McLeod. I'll be right back. So my thing with McLeod is I saw some great throws from him. One play when he rolled out guys really awesome, really awesome. And they talked about, and I'm so glad they talked about it on the broadcast was him rolling out, there was nothing around, nothing there. And he just threw the ball up and they got that D P I like that's a pro quarterback move. You're kind of seeing guys step in step. You're going to want to just give your guy a chance, either catch the football, go to the flag, if not they punt. That obviously moved them along the field and then either a play or two later he throws a strike to D Anderson and the ball, just like the ball goes through his hands. And I counted Mac for M B T for about three mis throws. He wasn't perfect what quarterback is and whatnot. But the guy made some throws yesterday that should have been caught. There was a couple drops. It was like, come on man, get it together. He's been by far the most consistent quarterback as a passer throughout the last couple weeks. I've had 'em at one or two in my rankings for a while. I bumped them down the four. This week is nature of the Beast. This is his first truly bad game. But overall I can contribute some of that to possibly fatigue, man. Like playing, like I said, 20 20, 21 games in 2022, it adds up. And then when they start camp in March, obviously he was hurt. Not like a crazy injury, but still to throw the football, all that goofy stuff, these things happen. It's nothing in indicative on his play. I just think he's fatigued a little bit as well. And it's tough. And that's the thing that people don't get about these spring leagues is if you're going from the N F L or practice squad, you're going to the X F L or you're going to C F L coming in. Yeah, McLeod beat up and he plays a really physical style. I mean you saw him in yesterday where he was scrambling, was kind of tripped down and then came back up and took another big hit. That play was already done. It's like, God, that's just like another hit this guy's got to take. And we saw it with Turpin people. They talk about him in the U S F L to the N F L, but he played in Poland for a couple games he played in the spring. This is going to 21. He played, I think he played with the Frisco fighters of the IFL or in the Arena League in 20, the back half of 20 goes to the Spring league goes to Poland, goes to fan control football, and these are out of border. So excuse me, guys goes to the U S F L, then goes to the N F L and the dude's been playing for two years in a row, man. How much rehab is he doing? How much? And then he plays in a playoff game as well. So it's like, come on bro. Some of these guys need a break and I get it. We say that for these athletes, yet we're grinding on two or three jobs to make our dreams come true. So who are we to give unsolicited advice? But man, it's a grind for some of these guys man. And I think M B T throws is right up in there. The season ends in November and he's in training camp in March. Yeah, it's not, I mean it really is not sustainable mean you need to figure that out. And I don't know if it's better or worse I think for the players. I do think, and we've had comments here in the chat about the timeline. I think the timeline getting out in April with the X F L having a couple months to just kind of reflect versus you saw how many of those guys were getting hurt coming out in July and then going to the training camps over the summer. It's a really hard turn last game. And then I have a rant before we get out of here. This competing against the Dallas. Dallas Stars here are playing against the Vegas Golden Knights losing and over time we have the Houston gamblers over the generals. This was a slower game. I know Anthony Miller was covering this for New Hub. Wasn't the most of exciting matchups we had. I think it was Kugler and Joe Clat there. Colin, this one, what did you make of the generals and the gamblers? So it seemed like they were a little bit more, the gamblers, they were a little bit more conservative with Bahar coming off injury. I think Kenji has been one of the better stories of the league. Not so depending on who you are, A little bit of an unknown in 2022, Clint Thorton's backup goes two and one and three starts. Obviously very successful so far this year. Played a little bit of a more of Checkdown Charlie a little bit. He had a great pass to friend of my show, Clint Quinsig that got called back. He was like 20 yards. But you saw a little bit of that utilizing the full back a little bit more. Anytime you have Mark Thompson, your life becomes a lot easier. Guy ran in for another touchdown. What do you have for you? 22 carries almost nice. Yeah. Yeah. Now putting together Justin Hall, they hit him a lot on these screen routes and whatnot. He had one ball, I think it was the Ratliff Williams, he wishes he had back, but he played no turnover free game. And for a young quarterback who, this was his fifth start of the year, so we're on eight starts since coming out of college, that's all you can ask for. A little bit of a pro comp to Jordan. I don't know their ages, they're probably about the same age, but that same style of, yeah, I can run it but don't, don't forget I have a good arm. But what I like about Bahar is that he's hitting the check downs more. And I didn't see that from TEU until later in the season, which is when he started be opening up as a passer utilizing his tight ends. And then you saw it last year or this season, the X ffl with Alex Ellis, Alex Ellis, Ethan Wolf and a couple and Bri Moore all having a more sexy stat line. What is the deal with Kyle and why is he not playing? That seems to be up to par. I mean the guy's got a weak arm to those outside the wide side of the field. I counted three out routes that he completely missed. He threw one or two into at the feet of the receiver. He's way more athletic than I thought, than I thought. I thought he was, A lot of people forget he played in two F L games last year, or excuse me, in 2017. And one of them, he was lining up a wide receiver when Eli was on when he was with Eli in the Giants. I am, I'm not sure really why there's some speculation on the Twitterverse, but I mean it's all speculation. Obviously Deandre Johnson was active. Deandre's improved so much as a password this year and obviously his athletic ability is unmatched. So it's really disappointing to not see him get those reps that, and I don't know if Deandre go to the nfl, I don't think he will, but then not get those reps to keep improving and keep putting together the best opportunity for his team. And that's what I feel like the generals need is Deandre Johnson. Because then you have that three-headed monster in the backfield with him, Victor and Williams. And it's a hard thing to contend with and it's just disappointing. I, I feel like as fans in media, we didn't get the best product that the generals could put out there. And that's the thing. You always want the best product for your fan, for team and for the brand. What's the speculation on Twitter? Injury-wise or politics wise or what? What's going on? Yeah, I saw some things about injury and that, but at the same time, if he can't go, he bring up pup like P cup's more. Yeah, PreK didn't look good from what I saw. Yeah, I mean he didn't play last this week but I mean he's more athletic. So you could still bring in the Reed option game and you have to, regardless of his arm, you have to respect his rushing ability. While Leta had some great runs, but they're not designed, they're on broken plays. He had an 18 yard run, he broke two tackles and then he's not a slow guy. I think he ran high four six s, low four seven s, not slow at all. But I mean it just depends on what you're trying to do with the offense. I thought they thought Lolea would kind of be that Luis Perez, but I saw too much improvement from Johnson to kind of buy into that. I thought Johnson should be getting at least 195% of the snaps and you know, use Pup because he's a little bigger kind of in that same mold on the third down the push plays and whatnot. But it's disappointing to Nazi Johnson out there, especially when they're all in the playoff race and he gives you the best opportunity to win. Last thing here and then we get any other thoughts Pat has before we get out of here? I was watching the game yesterday, I have gotten the emails, they've probably ran this ad. I usually tune out during the outbreaks, but I've gotten the emails, real football, real pros, real football, real fans or whatever, real fans, whatever it is. The thing is, but I absolutely hate this. I absolutely took a screenshot of this, the real fans and this guy's going to be in the face of the real fan read think, but I hate this Pat, I hate this. I think this I've seen, oh this isn't a shot the xfl, this is a shot, the X l I think this is absolutely a shot the xl, but I don't like it because the XF say what you want about either of these leagues X ffl is out attending the US F L by leaps and bounds here. But I hate this and I think that this helps you kind of sow those seeds, the polarization and we see it even in the chat here on the show. What do you make of this? I mean we talked about it, right? Who threw the first stone? We're at the Hatfield in McCoy's U US F L absolute like X. I have tracked this all X L has never thrown the stone. I don't think they care. I I disagree. I think it goes back to Rod Woodson. I think a lot our Comment, comment from Rod Woodson that no, I think the first thing ever was the week of the US L kickoff. They interviewed Daryl Johnston and he said we have a slate that our TV slate is better than anything the X F L will put on the air in terms of broadcast windows. I believe that's the first thing. And if you want to credit Rob Woodson's comment on the mark following that, I don't think we're that important. I Well I mean you're important to the Twitterverse, the people who harass us in our dms and it's not, and once again guys, it's not hard. I don't want to get too edgy here, but it's not hard to figure out things, especially when you have a little bit of a background. So like I said, Bama boy got real quiet after we called him out. But yeah, it's weird. But on the flip side though, the, I'm a little disappointed Darryl Johnson because what was he doing in 2020? He was with the xl. Yeah he was And who was he with? He was with the Dallas, right? Yeah. And who was his boy? Now you're asking me two other questions. Big, big game. Bob Anthony Miller Street. Oh there you go father. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, there you the father-in-law. Yeah. So that kind of shade to me is, I don't want to do the remember where he came from because I think he was a part of the AAF as well. But it's kind of like, come on dog, step it up And now it's like, you know, got Rod saying that stuff, which I wouldn't have said. Not that I'm the most boiled back, but my thing is coming from my background when I deal with clients and they're more polarizing and they say, I don't know why I need to hire you and your guys. And I'm like, well sir, you alienate 50% of this country regardless of what you're saying is true, right, wrong or indifferent. You just said that 50% of this country or this market is dumb and you don't, they don't. And I don't agree with you so you're not with me, you're against me. I think it's the same mentality when you do this stuff, you alienate an X amount of percentage no matter if it's the X ffl or the US F l doing it, you alien out alienate a 50% of whoever or a certain percentage of whoever. And to me that's just a bad look. And I will never forget that New Orleans guy who got barrage on Twitter. He was just like, oh there's a New Orleans team, why don't they play in New Orleans? And they're like, because you don't know this and you don't follow this and you're, you're not about it. And this dude's some random guy who's probably an accountant that's dealing with during tax season dealing with millions of dollars and is like, yeah, sorry I'm not on Twitter perusing about why the breakers don't play in New Orleans. I have children, it's bullying season. I just will say because the Rob Woodson quote was if people are, when we went down to the Arizona showcase, it was Matt Lyons, myself, Evan and Brandon over with the comeback period show. And we went down, we interviewed, Beck was there, Woodson was there. We talked with Russ Brandon off camera. I'm trying to think of who other the coaches. We had five of 'em. The video's on there, if you go on the YouTube channel, the video's on there. But yeah, we were asking, I think we asked Rod, how are you going to attract you? All these players are going to the S F L mall or you worried about talent depth? I think he was like, well we're going to care more about the players than the US F l. And it's one of those things, I worked in journalism for years. I worked in TV and I'm like that is a good soundbite. That is a really good soundbite. I wouldn't have said it. The thing is too is like oh you get some of these X ffl guys, they're like fu fu, the U S F L and I'm like bro, you took 80 players from that league and some of those 80 players were some of the best players in your league. Dude chill out. And then it's on the flip side, you get a lot of these us fell guys who's like, oh we don't need Jordan. I was like, ah. I mean everyone could use some Jordan, Everyone could use. There you go. You got the flip side too of the Kyle solar hate. And then he is back in Birmingham and everyone's like, he knows where he belongs. And I'm like, bro, Kyle's just trying to freaking hang out with his girlfriend more man. And now he getting an extra 30 grand to do it. He's having a good time. He's got almost 2 million in income from professional football chilling right now, dude. I do. I do. Where is it? I do. And then we have a couple things here we'll get out of here. I do concur with this rock and roll alien. What brought Tim aside an official statement Fox put real money into. I do coaches comments off the cuff to external new have writers and myself. And at the end of the last showcase at the end of a horrendous two months, I don't think it's kind of whatever that way to I, to me the first shot was the Darryl Johnson thing. That is, I do believe I've tracked it back that far. And that's the thing people are always going to, for example, you and I feel like are pretty levelheaded human beings and we disagree on this, right? People are only going to know what they want to know what, what's fits in their, fits in their thing. Now you've educated me on this, the Daryl Johnson thing, cause I know he said some things, but now does that change my point of view on it? Okay, I consider myself a pretty analytical and rational human being. I'm going to take that information and make a new opinion possibly someone else does not want to do that. They're just looking at this because it, it's gone back so far and it's really not in the scope of reality but in the scope of Twitter, that's a lot of reach. That's a lot of scrolling you got to do to get back to those sound bites and in those tweets and it's like man, just I don't want to come off these 800 people's jobs are around and to me, and I don't want to, I don't, and I've said this before, it's like you got to go Vince Young for example, and Vince Young is going on a little bit of a journey here, but stay with me. You got a guy like Vince Young, Vince Young, it was football or bus for a guy like that. How many guys, they might have had the luxury of going to some great colleges and whatnot, but did they actually go to those great colleges? Did they actually go to communications class for a lot of these players like this is it. So they need to not only build their resume as players, but they also got to build it as coaches and whatnot. And this might be a negative sound bite of all football players are dumb jocks. Well you know what man, if my whole thing was football and whatnot and I didn't like communications class or business class and this is all I want to do, whether it be playing or coaching, I need these things to work out. Yeah, no I get it here. Chris says overall it's a big nothing burger. I think that's just all this. Yeah just, huh. No 100% agree. I mean it's a ridiculous argument that really we're only catering to about what like 84 people on Twitter. Yeah, this last thing year I got to someone working at the front of my house. I got to go check in with here. Last thing Chris is freedom. You picked up US L too. The Philadelphia Stars is the team of the mark. I've had case cooks on the podcast. I have the jersey, I've had the players last year on and we're going back with Brian Scott and Matt Mangle and all that stuff there. Philadelphia stars are the team of the pat. Anything else before we get out of here? Nah, I'm a shill for myself guys. If you want to send me any more good comments, bad comments, borderline harassment, hit me up on Twitter by Pat Rapino. YouTube is analyzed and educate. Always good for a good conversation. If you're going to harass me, I'll just going to background check you, but that's a different fine. And then call you from one of my burner numbers. That'll be good. The thing I just tweeted out, the C F L pre-season game this afternoon is going to be pushed back half an hour. But I am saying like, check this out. I'm really excited Pat, I have a dms right now going on that it's going to make you, you're going to get the gooses and feels or whatever Chris was getting earlier. You're going to get all of that when you see it. Many dms coming. Check out the C F L. We're going to have lots of stuff with that. Like it subscribe. We've got U S F L this weekend figuring out all that stuff. But should have some good shows coming up and some good guests. So appreciate it Pat. I appreciate everyone, a little rocky to start, but we got through it all and we'll see you guys next time. Take care, everyone like and subscribe.

Episode 145 - XFL 2023 Full Season Review

Coming up this week on the markcast. Well, here we are. The XFL 2023 has completed its inaugural season. Congratulations to everybody that's involved. So now that we're done, it's time for a full extensive and exhaustive review of the X Ffl 2023 season. What did the X Ffl do? Right? What did the X F L do wrong? We have you covered with all the angles. First and foremost, X F L insider Mike Mitchell. A deep dive with Mike as we always do. What is the X F L up to you? Next we have the X F L rookie draft coming up. Weather, Mike thoughts. It's not enough to say, oh, we completed our season, so we did great. That's a low bar. Unfortunately it's a low bar we've seen in this space before leagues run out of $50 bills. We've seen the Afaf run out of funding and all that. So it's the XFL 1.0 completed their season XFL 2.0. We know the story behind that. And so yes, of course, tip of the cap to the XFL 3.0 for getting to the finish line. A lot of the financial decisions they made is so they can get move on to a year two in a rookie draft and everything else that's coming. The fall draft and expanding of rosters to 90. So what they did in year one was to enable year two and three, so I totally get that. So, but I can't give it a 10 because there are certainly some missteps along the way. In Bill Shay of the Athletic, we have a full breakdown of the TV ratings for the X F L championship game ad revenue versus the U S F L. What does Bill think? You start off huge. There is some churn as you lose viewers and you level out to whatever you think that's going to be. And then fingers crossed, get a big number at the end for your playoffs championship because of the structure of the X ffl season. Starting a week after the Super Bowl, all of a sudden you're dealing with the Masters and March Madness and things like that. You're at the bottom of your U. We may be a little deeper and everybody knew that going in. And then from ESPN, we have Cole Kule Cole coming back on the podcast. Cole was at the championship game at the playoff games as well. What did Cole make of ESPN's broadcast this year? Is ESPN happy with the X F L? The Ball was better, the atmospheres were better, the access was better. And I think the league is mean. Listen, talking to DJ and Danny a couple of times through the course of the year, they're set up to go multiple seasons. They're in this for the long haul. And I think if you can grow on what you had year one, technically year one, this thing's going to be a lot of fun to watch down the road. And then from a football standpoint, we have Coach Heinbach coming back on the program. Jonathan Heinbach, offensive line coach for your X F L Arlington Renegades world champions. What did Jonathan make of the season compared to his time in the U S F L? What does it feel like to be a world champion? What would Jonathan like to see moving forward with the X F L? I'll tell you what, man, I'm, I'm not a guy to get real nervous before games because it's kind of like as a coach, you've done your preparation, you trust your players and you just want to make some adjustments as a game goes along. But I started thinking about this. I'm like 22 years ago I played in this, we won a championship, we had a blast. We had the best team in the X ffl in 1.0 in 2001. And I was like, this could be pretty cool. I could be the only person to do this thing and do a back to back with 22 years in between. And Then for our friends up north, we have football candidate president Jim Molen coming on. Jim says he has hot takes on the X F L and the US F l plus. We are previewing the C F L 2023 season. Quite frankly, I thought in terms of presentation it was a bit of a wet firecracker. And what I mean by that is that for a championship game, I expect a level of energy to It. And then listeners of the podcast have wanted to hear this gentleman on our show for years, we have McLeod Bethel Thompson, we called him King of the C F L breakup champion with the Toronto Argonauts. Now for the New Orleans Breakers, we are catching up with McCloud, Belo Thompson hearing about his time in the U S F L I scratched tooth and nail up there in 2019. Even when I led the league in touchdown, it's like, it's not like we had team success and it wasn't like it was an easy road to get there and I'm appreciative of that. I like that. I like that nothing was given to me and I like that the Argos challenged me every single year after that, bringing in different competition the next year, different competition the next year. They truly made me earn it. And more than anything, it made me build an inner confidence and an inner fortitude. And then you've seen him on the field for the St. Louis Battle hawks. Now he is auctioning off autograph cleats for charity. We are catching up with Trey Watson. Hearing about his time in the X F L 2023 should be a long one. Hope you enjoy it. Hey guys, welcome to the Mark House Reid here. Going to get to this really quick today. I already previewed off the top tons of XFL 2023 recap stuff today, seven guests, tremendous work going into this. I really hope you guys enjoy it, appreciate it. I hope this is a little evergreen. I know obviously like McLeod's interview and things like that, little timely, but this is really exhaustive coverage here. All the angles. Where did Mike Mitchell think of the X ffl season now that we have crowned champion talking all the angles with Mike, the TV ratings coming, whether it's coming up in 2024, we have the rookie draft that was just announced today. What does Mike make about that and the supplemental draft that should be coming here in the fall? What's next for the X F L? Lots of stuff with Mike. And then really talking you TV ratings with Bill Shay. Really appreciate his time with the athletic coming on the TV broadcast angle with Cole Kubick and then the football angle with Jonathan Hy Box. So I really hope you guys feel like you have comprehensive here. What do we think of the XFL 2023 full season review from all the angles? Really hope you appreciate that. And then I'd be remiss if I didn't hear from football candidate president Jim Mullen getting his thoughts on the X F L and the U US F L. Jim says he has hot takes opinions. Jim football candidate president has been overseeing eSports up north for many years. Wanted to get Jim's thoughts on kind of the X F L season as a whole, the U S F L and then obviously we're rolling into our C F L coverage now. Rookies are reporting camps are underway. Very exciting times up there. We had been Grant on the podcast here a few weeks ago, so didn't want to forget about our C F L. And then a longtime listeners, we have talked about Macau Beth Thompson on this show for years. So glad we could get the breakers to help set that up. We have talked with McLeod all the way back through the Spring league with the blues up to the Argos and we were in Regina when they won the Great Cup last year and then BAU got injured during the game. But just really excited to talk with McLeod student of the game. Journeyman has seen it all. So really appreciate that. And then obviously Trey Watson with the Battle Hawks, really appreciate Brian and everybody over there for setting that up. Hope you guys enjoy the episode. Like I said, like it subscribe. You can still win your tickets to the US L championship game if you want that or presumably the X F L 2024 championship game, whichever one here we want. But try to get up to 3,500 subscribers. Hope you guys enjoy the episode. That pack a sandwich should be a good one. Well here we are. We made it. This is our big X F L 2023 postseason. Everything here. What did we learn? Mike Mitchell, how are you doing? I'm doing very well. Thanks Reid for having me on. It's going to be a fun conversation. It's Going to be good. I can hear you. Which is half the battle today. We have a heart out here at the top of the hour. I have a groom that's in Beijing, so Mike and I, we sometimes we'll talk for, I think we've done two hours before, hour and 45. But yeah, Sometimes usually off the air, off the air we do that. So Mike, I don't want to waste a second honestly talking the XE L championship game. We have Cole Kulis going to talk about that. We have Jonathan Hy Box going to talk about that. So I just want big picture. And then looking forward we'll talk the XE L rookie draft which came out today. That's exciting. A lot of impressions on that. I mean really exciting stuff for that. If that's different than the U S F L, I don't know, but we've made it. We're here one to 10. What do you give the X F L Seven? I would give it a seven. I think overall it's funny because when you sit down and think about it, you can find positives in the negatives and negatives in the positives depending on how you look at it, whether you look at it from a football standpoint or a business standpoint. So it's not enough to say, oh, we completed our season so we did great. That's a low bar. Unfortunately it's a low bar we've seen in this space before leagues run out of $50 bills. We've seen the run out of funding and all that. So it's the XFL 1.0 completed their season XFL 2.0, we know the story behind that. And so yes, of course tip of the cap to the X ffl 3.0 for getting to the finish line. A lot of the financial decisions they made is so they can get move on to a year two in a rookie draft and everything else that's coming. The fall draft and expanding of rosters to 90. So what they did in year one was to enable year two and three. So I totally get that, but I can't give it a 10 because there were certainly some missteps along the way. We know the home runs the league had St. Louis dc those are earned. They inherited those home runs from 2020 and those turned out great. And then we know some of the swinging and misses Vegas and everything else. So there's a lot, there's so many different layers I know in the world in general, people like white or black answers. And I understand I'm probably the king of going into the gray matter, so I'm always focusing on the gray areas of these things. But I think overall it's a positive as a fun league to watch and monitor. I am, I'm warming on this and I've thought a lot about this last whatever, just speaking of the rookie draft, I love that. And I posted my shorts today. Here we are in that three days out of three, four days out of the championship we have XE L off-season news, which I think is so important. And I was talking with Brian over in St. Louis when we were setting up the Trey Watson interview. He goes, Hey, we got stuff coming. Obviously we got to get done with the season here, take a breath. But I said, that's so important because the US F L, the biggest, one of the biggest complaints was July happened, then they disappear. And it's a challenge for these spring leads to keep that momentum going here after the season. You want normalcy, you want it to feel like a pro league. And I think that's the fun part of a year two. Now that we get into off-season mode, you can be like a defenders fan and let's see what happens with some of their players that they lose may potentially to the N F L. But let's say the defenders lose Abram Smith, you can go into a draft going, well we really need a running back and because we lost Abram Smith, he's on the Rams or whatever team he's on. So that's the cool part of it. So you hope the U S F L didn't really hit on that the way they should have. And this rookie draft is interesting because you have a lot of players that the, they're a great player personnel. People within the xfl like Randy Mueller, Vaughn Hutchins, all those great names. And they've been studying this draft class. It just passed. They studied the last draft class. It's how a lot of the players that were in the X F O were from that. All the showcases and the scouting, all the senior bowls, everything. The combine that the X F O guys were at Anthony Beck at the N NFL combine. So it's going to be fascinating to see. I'm sure they already have long lists of players that they liked in this class that either for whatever reason when undrafted and unsigned by N F L teams, it was going to be interesting to see who the these X F L teams target who they pick up. We don't know yet the format how many rounds it's going to be. We know we're going from 51 to 90 overall, but it is fascinating and these players are still going to have an opportunity to latch onto N F L teams. So even if the defenders say draft or running back that they from this past draft class, that player could still end up getting a workout tryout landing on an N F L roster. We saw that last year happen with guys like Stephen Montez, der King, ferret gardeners, all those kind of guys. They got drafted and then they ended up going on N F L teams and then coming back to the X ffl. So it's a fun process. And for the football nerd like me, I'm looking forward to it. I'm laughing here. Max had sent me notes for our conversation. I pulled up, it was, it's four pages here, so we'll do our best, we'll do our best. But I'm like, oh, I was like, I totally forgot to hold up. So it feels a al question for you. I've been thinking about this. You talk about the home runs that the league hit, right inherited, right, St. Louis, Seattle a little bit. If we go back now, if Danny Garcia just decides we're starting my own league from scratch and we'll call it the National Spring Football League and we'll call it the Rock Football League or Danny, whatever we want to call it. If they're not carried down by the baggage, that was these lofty X F L 2020 expectations. And I do think now in retrospect, expectations were way off in terms of what they actually wanted to accomplish this year. Let's get through the season, let's get, let's figure out what TV Windows work best and all that kind of stuff. Are they better off just starting? You see we got 10,000 in Orlando, that feels good. We have San Antonio then we're not way down. I mean we did what we bring over from the X F L. Was that too heavy or did we do enough on our own to kind of balance that out? It was definitely a higher expectation level because they were coming back as the X ffl, no question about it. Because when you look at it, they did some very positive things. They were able to get a TV deal maybe because of the X F L thing, maybe because of the rock. They sold over 600,000 tickets, which is awesome. And I think if they weren't, they had a hard mark here trying to live up to the last league, which hit a home run social. It wasn't perfect with 2020, but it was one of the best first year leagues because that was a first year league. Even though it was the X Ffl 2.0, that was a first year league. It was almost two decades separated. So I do think that this league, they needed to tap into some of that 2020 stuff. Maybe there was an assumption that they're just going to inherit everything they got from 2020 and then just add rock on top of it and boom, we're off to the races. But the fact that we saw the rock in a GQ interview, and I think I may have mentioned this before, but we saw the Rock in a GQ interview said he wasn't aware of the beer snake. And that's part of the problem, right? Because you're going into 20, you, you're going into this league in 2023, you should know about the beer snake, have knowledge of it and about its impact that led into greatness, that craziness of week one where the field security was stopping the beer snake that led into lemons and that a whole new layer to the defenders that was a complete, everything that took place in DC was a complete home run. They needed a little more awareness of the product. I don't know if there was enough awareness of what the things that made 2020 great. And I don't know if a lot of that stuff was applied for 2023 different world, different landscape, no question about it than they encountered through years ago. They didn't have two major networks pumping them out and promoting them. I don't think the league did a very good job. See that's the thing is I can look at the promotion and marketing as a negative locally and nationally, but part of that is why they're moving on to year two because they save money on that end. But also it's why they didn't do as well as maybe they should have done in certain markets in terms of selling tickets and all that recapturing things the way they did in Seattle a few years ago. So when you balance these things out, you can see the disadvantages and advantages they picked up from the last X F L Because I just, I appreciate the beer snake and all of that and the rock not knowing that there's this fandom and everything. And I know the Rock deals with this with DC and black Adam. I mean you're going to have someone, okay, we're go, we're making the new Spider-Man movie that I think that movie's, the new one's coming out and there's going to be someone, oh, back in comic book 87 and he had on green shoelaces that day and then this thing. And so you're going to get that. So you're encountering that kind of no matter what, right? And we're the spring football nerd. I'm curious, you know, look at Tarman, you look at Zah, you look at Black Adam, everything they've done, if you just have Danny in the Rock and they go, we're starting to league I, hindsight's always 2020, but not then you don't have any of these expectations. You don't have any of that. Well the X Ffl in 2020 did 3 million viewers and you guys only did and it's down. I just am curious about that. If what they were able to build organically on their own was enough or did we need the home runs of St. Louis and DC and not really. I mean what were the home runs? Seattle, dc St. Louis, dc I mean I wouldn't even count Seattle really as a home run. Yeah, the home runs is the quality of play. No question about it. The football is, you could Have done that, but you could have done that. Yeah, sure, absolutely. But it does take a lot of hard work to scout the right players. They got the football as far as I'm concerned. But that's something. But you know what I mean, that's something they did a hundred percent on their own without anything. You know what I mean? Is something they did know. I mean you can't carry over any of that. I mean they scouted mean obviously. Yeah. It helps having people back too, right? Who've been through the wars like Theos, the Doug Whaleys, that helped too to have experience through the a f and the X ffl and have an understanding of the marketplace and where you need to target players, how you need to scout them, evaluate them. And then you have the Randy Muellers and those guys. So a lot of it, what they did was you saw a lot of first year league issues like social media to, unfortunately there's a lot of hardworking people, a lot of people that were doing two, three jobs at once. So I don't want to be hard on a lot of people that are in social media teams, but I understand the difficulties of it. But I don't think the league did a very good job of promoting, for example, we go, we harp on this all the time, the football nerd in me. But this is just transparency. Easy doesn't cost a lot of money. Transactions, injury reports should be on the daily practice. Reports should be on the daily. You shouldn't need Reid Johnson or Mike Mitchell or Anthony Miller or whomever. Evan will Wills more, pat Renell, whoever to put out these injury reports every day. The teams should be on top of it every day because yeah, you and I have somewhat of a following, but our following is peanuts, to be honest with you. Whatever it is, 8,000 followers, whatever we got compared to what these leagues have, hundreds of thousands. So even the teams, so you need to every day, that's easy. Transparency helps with fantasy gambling, all that. I don't think that Red Bird Capital capitalized on all the revenue streams they could have. I think that was a big factor when we're following these leagues, we're like rooting for the business end. I don't care about the NFL's business end. I know they make a boatload of money. Oh handover fist, I get that part of it. But when it comes to these leagues, we're rooting for them to survive and thrive. And so we focus on the ratings and the merchandise and all that. And I don't think Red Bird Capital, which I had high expectations in them, they did a very good job in terms of their fiscal responsibility because here we are, we're going into year two and maybe year three hopefully beyond that. So I get their strategy with that, but I don't think they capitalize on the revenue streams in terms of merchandising, in terms of everything gambling, all that. And I think some of these things are very simple. It took 'em forever to put transactions on their webpage. Transactions should have been each team site and we shouldn't be looking towards some weird avenues cause only the die hard hardcores are following us and looking for our information. You want the mainstream public. I'm not trying to disrespect us, but I got to keep it real here. You want to get as much media coverage as you possibly can from the mainstream because that's difficult. This X F L, what they didn't have is they didn't have the media coverage that they had prior because they were limited because they got a competitor in the space that is going to try to limit them and that has two networks and so you're not going to get the Fox and NBC affiliates to get all your players on and interview them and promote the league and all that. So it's amazing that Michael Strahan was on Good Morning America talking about how great the X ffl was. You know, got to recognize the real, but so that was a hard part for the X ffl. So in order for them to succeed too from a media aspect, they need to not only provide information that they should have on a daily basis in terms of the team's information leading into game week and everything else, but they also need to find a way, and this is easier said than done, than to get the media to cover the league and they need to provide access and transparency to go beyond the Mike Mitchells and the Reed Johnsons and everyone else who covers these leagues and really that, because I wrote about this a few years ago and Stephanie Rudnick to her credit, did a tremendous job in X Ffl 2020 of getting the media on their side. I know they had the benefit of Fox and a b C at the same time, but you need to reach out and get the, I hate to say it this way, but the standard regular sports media to cover the league beyond having the rock on. We saw the Rock on first take. We've seen good last few days, good morning football talking about the X Ffl. That's awesome. But a lot of times when the Rock was on these shows, it was like very little was talked about in terms of the football itself or the teams or how are they going to stop Abram Smith or this, that and the other. It was about Rock and his mantra about Player 54 and all that, but it's not about the team. So you'll know these leagues are a success when it's not forced, when it doesn't feel like a paid advertisement. And it's cool that they reached out, pivot Podcast did a tremendous job, Ryan Clark and those guys, that was awesome. For anybody who caught that, that was really awesome. Interviewing Luis Perez and Greg Williams and Fred Kiis, who it was an awesome story this year crying on that show. That was some awesome stuff. If anybody goes back and watches, so the X Ffl needs to provide information and be more transparent on their social media they need to do, that's free marketing and promotion. They needed to tap into better. They did a very bad job with the jerseys. That was something they touted that we got New jerseys and new logos, they did a bad job with that. The price range when they came out with it, you would've thought would Under Armor, they would've had a little bit of a stronger foothold and a better marketing strategy in terms of that. I think that missed opportunity in terms of making money and promoting locally in your markets by not having that merchandise available earlier on. So these are things that hopefully lessons learned from year one and that this will decide whether or not we're here year from now, talking about year three, four and beyond is whether or not they can capitalize and learn from what I feel were missteps along the way. Probably one of the biggest ones was choosing Vegas and now they hate to put it this way, but they'll be stuck there most likely for year two. Well yeah, to me, and again I might be a little rosy just coming off of the championship game and talking with all that. I think that there, and I would love to pick the brand of Russ or Danny obviously or anyone expectations of Embracement here of you've done all these other products and the response, like you said, that the traditional media gives you, right? And when Paul and I remember the first day we recorded our X F L podcast and I'm like, well here, I'm going to post it, bring on 10,000 views, here we go. And you're like, oh wow, really? I got to go on Facebook and post this. I got to go on Twitter and do this. I got to network with people and get to know these people and reach out to you realize then, although the work that it takes to do that, and I'm curious now going into year two if we will see more of that embracement. When Danny, Danny and the Rock did their little media thing on the sidelines before the game and that was the last thing Danny said and she looked at all of us standing there. She said, thank you so much for covering this all, all season, putting in your time, putting in your resources because I'm curious if they thought, oh, we're going to serve this up and people are just going to eat it up and then they're realizing, oh no, this is a grind that we got to go every week and that's why you saw the rock halfway through the season. I got to be retweeting these games. I got to be sitting here, look at this defensive play, look at all that because I think they realized wasn't you're not getting that free publicity all year, if that makes sense. It's the truth. And a lot of what they got was by default it was in a positive way. If you look at it, they sold over 600,000 tickets. That's awesome. Their ratings on people don't want to talk about it. I know some reporters out there talking about we'll get to Ratings We'll get, but all these different aspects, attendance ratings, they were good considering how hamstrung the league was in certain aspects, how limited it was in terms of promotion and marketing. They did really good. I know there's other spins out there depending on who you're in bed with, we'll get into that, but that's really the case. So they did a good job considering the bare bones aspects of certain things. I think they can do so much better than they did. Yes I do. And they just to round out and clip this for Read the Homer whatever, I think if you entirely remove 2020, and I know that's not, we don't live in the vacuum and I understand you can't do that, but if you look at M L F B and the AAF and even I, we've recorded with Jim Molan on here and I don't understand why U S F L gets this. We're the underdog mentality when you're owned by the largest and literally all they have to do is go, Hey all you broadcast crews and everyone that you do all this stuff all year for a living, we're going to do that for another three months in the spring. And it's really not that big of a leap where you have, and I know there was people from 2020 that returned. You have this smorgasboard of 800 whatever employees plus all the players and everything. We've never done this before. We're trying to do this and I think if you remove 2020, I really do think it was a home run. I know the Vegas thing and we've tied that to death, but having 800 whatever, people that have never done anything involved have never all run a football league together. It's like a band. You could have a tremendous guitarist and a drummer, but you bring 'em together, you got to kind of get through the working pants. I don't know, I feel I agree way more positive coming out of this weekend. Absolutely And that's why, like I said, I can find negatives in the positives because that's what I tend to do. Just what I, oh I do. I make views off of That and I tend tend to find positives in the negatives. We can talk about the local promotion lack thereof or whatever, but I also see how the doing that, there's a strategy behind it so we can get to rookie drafts and fall drafts in year twos and year threes and all that and their hub is a very state of the art top of the line. It's like it's really good for play. The players raved about the way they were treated in this league and so much so that when it came down to vote for our union, it didn't say necessarily say we need help here, we're good. So I mean that's another topic for another time. But yeah, when you look at the whole picture, it's like you asked me once to 10, I think I threw out a seven there. I do think this was, they scored, they hit and I feel like they missed out on some things that could have really made it a complete home run as far as I'm concerned. But as far as the product goes, I enjoyed the overall, I enjoyed the product. I think it was fun to watch and I think the biggest thing, it may be small to people, but I think at the championship game, which you were at Reid, many other people were at the die hards. It was so cool seeing all the different fans from different fan bases teams be at the game. The bro obviously goes without saying Braas fans or Renegades Defenders fans who showed up, but then the Battle Hawks fans and you see even see some guardians fans. I mean that was really cool. That to me is a win. And that was one of the aspects I really liked about the league is the crowd energy. Even in the so-called smaller crowds, I even give the Vegas crowd credit, they very easily could have had 55 people at the games. 111 we saw at a certain Stars game recently so mean. So even them having 6,000 fans at the game and it was decent and all things considered considering how late they were to markets, how things were held up ticket wise. I thought the league did a very good job and I think having all those fans show up at the championship game was like a positive sign for not only what this season meant but for the future as well. Yeah, you got to turn it into a traveling event. I, or not people, it's got to be like the gray cup. It doesn't matter what team you are, you're going to come, I will say you have anybody in the world that's listening to this involved in the X F L. If you're going to do the buy week and kill any momentum, you have it all coming out of the playoff game. I understand we got to get people got to travel, we got team rest. You got to embrace the media more with that. Having the media day announced on Friday, two days or whatever it was the day before, two days before I reached out every single team except obviously Arlington and DC that were in the title game. I said, give me people for the show. We're going to be there, we're doing this. People can call in. All they got to do two Vipers got back to me and then Orlando who's phenomenal writer Andy with Orlando. But I'm like, what is the point of having the media bi week if we're not going to do anything media until Friday, just if anyone's listening the bi week's fine, do it earlier in the season if you're going to do it before the title game because don't you think, Mike, what do you think about that? And we'll segue into TV ratings for the championship game, but I think if they would've done it the week after the playoffs, I do think radio, it could not have heard the championship ratings. I agree with you completely. I don't want to go on too long. I'll just echo your statement there. I'll say this, there's not a bad thing to copy what other sports leagues do. So I know some people want these leagues to be different, but when it comes to media day and all that, all you got to do is just what does the N F L do with this? What does the N H L do with this? What does the N B A have you? So I think that would've been useful to use that strategy of not doing it last second kind of thing. It's like you can really build up momentum for the product if you handle it the right way. I would've sat, because Fran was on the show with our sport central Fran was at Media day. I was talking with Fran. I would've sat there all day Friday and done it. I would've done an eight hour stream. Let's bring in people, let's bring in people what this was going on mean. Not that XL gives care or whatever, but that win, I would've been happy to do it for free to sit there and talk with everyone to do all that TV ratings championship game. We kind of did this. We did, yeah, we started at 1.3, we ended at 1.4, the anemic and TV championship ratings. What did you make of the X F L championship ratings? Yeah, they, they're right about what I expected. So I know a lot of industry experts out there shout out to Sports Media watch that they're direct and fair when it comes to breaking down all these ratings. They don't have an agenda. So they predicted 1.35 million viewers for the X Ffl championship game ended up being 1.436. I mean you could say maybe they could have done a little bit higher, but perhaps the Dallas Stars game, which did with your Kraken, I don't even want to bring them up, but we did 2 million viewers on ESPN at the same time. Maybe I'm not saying that's at a huge effect, but I'm sure that drew in some Texas people to that game rather than Arlington's game on championship night there. So they could have done a little bit higher and I know internally the expectation wasn't like 3, 4, 5, 2 or even 2 million. I know that for a fact. So the network itself was pleased with it with the overall number because it could have been a little higher. Sure, it might have been if the stars, maybe if the Kraken had swept the stars and got 'em out of the way, but it is what it is. Well, I'm sorry. Well that's a non-zero factor. I I was arguing with, I think it was one of the guys that helps moderate the Facebook group with me and he's like, well that didn't affect, I'm like, Arlene it, the Dallas team was playing hockey that night. You can't A huge game, a huge game. It was a huge game that just at that Texas market that the Dallas Forth Worth area that definitely, I'm not saying that Arlington is such, the renegades are such a huge draw that they have all the Dallas interested in them, but it definitely went, it would've been a 1.5 million or maybe a 1.55 million. It would've had more viewers at 1.436. I know the, the championship game peaked at 1.8 million viewers when you look at it during the season that was kind of like, you know, knew that the championship game would do a higher rating and then the recent games that took place, it was a primetime game. They had six games overall during the season that averaged over a million viewers. They averaged 1.13 million viewers on b abc. No surprise that five of the six games were on ABC that were over a million viewers. They need more games on network television. They did really well on ESPN two and fx. They were the number two ranked show on both those networks. They did extremely well in the 1849 demo was the most desirable thing they did well with ad revenue. I know some people are trying to lump in different ad revenue aspects to try to create an apples to apples comparison. It's not really real, but I think overall the ratings were good for the X F L. I think they could've done so much better through scheduling being on a b C more would've helped. We had some games during the early season, pretty funny, a lot experimental 3:00 AM finishes, 2:00 AM finishes. So they tried to build up fx, which they got a great chill there snowfall, but they don't have much else on that network. Got movie and then the fact that they were number two on ESPN two on FX shows you that these are respectable numbers and I think they did very well on A, B, C. They could have done even better than they did. The championship game was right at where I thought it would be. Could it have done a little bit higher? Yeah, I think so. But anybody who was painting a picture that it should have done two, three, 4 million viewers is just not really paying attention to anything that's going on. That's basically that, you know, We've all better thanked the prayers that the Sea dragons were not in the championship game because I'll tell you, if you have Kraken stars are up against Sea Dragons renegades, that would've been a problem in terms of the TV schedule and just so we can talk about a little bit on here, US F L this year ratings have been kind of scattershot. We've had some really good stuff. What kills me about these X F L U S F L ratings debates is the it, itll f, it'll be like X ffl on FX at seven o'clock, whatever, and then primetime N B NBC for the U USS F L, they're like, oh man, it killed. Yeah, I, yeah, what do You expect was one, we had only certain instances where it was apples to apples comparison. By the way, network versus network cable versus cable, the X F L, we saw that in week 10 versus week two of the U S F L. I believe the X F L won out in those direct for real apples to apples comparison and E S ESPN two game that does 285,000 viewers or within San Antonio braas compete with an N B NBC primetime game or Fox that does six, 700,000 I think I know this is more about the X F L. Now the U S F L smart strategy with the lead-ins, they've had only one game so far that's gone over a million viewers. So maybe that'll change in an ex, of course the Kentucky Derby lead-in game that did over 2 million viewers. This brilliant strategy because these leagues have, and this pertains to the X ffl read, they have a we what we've seen from this ratings example or ratings war, whatever you want to call it, we've seen the splintering of the audience. Yes, but we've also seen that these leagues right now have a limit, like a cap really on their viewership unless they get a very strong lead in or a lot of different factors that play into their favor with maybe playoff series being over nothing else available to watch. Maybe they get some extra casual viewers in the mix there right now there's a cap one 5 million, one 4 million. There's kind of a cap there and I think we've seen that and these leagues are trying to figure out how can we grow our audience, how can we get, they need more media coverage and so having more media coverage will help. They need to draw in casual fans and then hopefully this off season X F L players signing on to N F L teams, that kind of thing. That'll help maybe Lauren more people for year two like hey, let me give this league a shot. That's the same strategy with the U S F L as well. Them returning for year two and they're hoping that people will be more open-minded because a lot of regular people, to put it that way, are dismissive of these leagues. So they don't think they count. They matter. Well I think you can and I use YouTube and the show a lot to that's how I gauge interests and not that like my whatever, but I think you can get a sample in if you look across at different things. I added X number of viewers kind of in that, well a couple week lead up to the XL kickoff and then probably not nearly as many then during this that you hit, there is a cap. There's a cap to the number of people that are going to watch that. I think that Danny, I hopefully now is understanding that right of we, I remember when she purchased the league and talking about we want this to be a women's league and appeal to that because she said I grew up watching football and there was nothing about it that resonated with me. So I'm hoping that now that we've gotten again past this growing pains of year one, let's experiment with that. My question is, we've talked before, the 120,000 earmarked for budgeting. You talk about billboards, I've seen no billboards ever in Seattle. I know that there was, I guess one in San Antonio or whatever. Do we suddenly now open the floodgates for year two or is this, you get a quarter million dollars now to go market. I don't know if floodgates are going to be opened. The league made money. They got the 150 million right steal, which is good. They made money on ticket sales. They have good sponsors. We saw Budweiser and other top end sponsors during the X ffl championship game. So there is some revenue streams they've created. I don't know spending versus I think it would be beneficial for them and it's good to see this, that the teams are actually still doing some local stuff. We saw that with Seattle Sea Dragons and all that. I think that's baby steps that you do more and more of that now that it took 'em a while to get to. Even to the point Vegas held up the entire league in terms of ticket sales and all that. So now that they have all this time, I think they can do a so much better job of connecting locally. There's talk of mini camps. We've heard that that will help. The more they can do in these local markets, the better. They don't necessarily have to break the bank so to speak, but there needs to be more focus on putting their resources and time into those areas. Cause they can do so much better than they did. They did a lot of what they did by default. We're seeing a lot of the players sign now. It seemed like there was kind of the spike, right? Day one, I think it was 11 and then it was five and then three, whatever. Interesting. I was pointed out by you that there's a finite number of spots on N F L rosters, right? Pending cuts, injuries, all that. I'm curious what this log jam means when the U S F L goes to do it because of course this X F L is going to be compared to last year's U S F L in terms of players being signed. Even though again that's not comparable because there was no X F L. There's still us, it's all backlogged a lot, but are we pleased with the number of, I think overly so the broadcast this year talked about we got to get players to the N F L, this is what they want to do. I don't think we need to quite as much of that. Max says a note here about that. Are we pleased with that number or was it worth the talking all year about it for 20 players, whatever so far? Yeah, I think these leagues, the X F L, there's no doubt that there's a lot of talent within the league. There's hundreds of players that know that have recent N F L experience that I definitely think are worthy of being on N F L teams and having a shot. But the thing is with any of this is the numbers game. I'm a football nerd, so I have a full list to the right of me here of the N F NFL roster size for each individual team in the league and most NFL teams, I believe is 14 right now are at 90 already. And so there are only 21 openings. So even if all those 21 openings are for the XFL players, that's across 32 teams, those 21 openings, you're still only going to be capped out at 40. Now this situation is fluid because there's injuries, there's a bunch of things that happened June mini camps and then a training camp's not until July. So there'll be players added on during that period. But I think this first wave is this first wave of 21 players, I believe it is. That's where we're at at the moment. And so could it grow? I saw the rockweed out 60 players, maybe that's wishful thinking. I don't know. We'll see though. Like I said, there is 21 openings right now, so I would figure we'll see more DC players get signed and more renegades players and other players that are going to get opportunities and these are very fluid. It's funny what happens when we start getting into June and July and all that, but I think this first wave is what we're seeing for the league. There are guys holding out the AJ McLarens that are going to be very selective where they go. And there are some other players that are considering that. The Niners really like Jaco Pearson, but they have 90 players right now. So in order for, this is funny how this works. In order for a Jaco Pearson to get on the Niners roster, he's worked out for three different NFL teams. He's going to need the Niners to cut somebody. Somebody's got to lose their job. And then it's funny watching this situation, you what? Yeah, yeah. It's funny watching this situation because I see players that are cut that I go, wow, that got to be great for the CFL or the U S F L or the X ffl and I'm watching Jacob Eason and Preston Williams today were cut by the Carolina Panthers and I'm looking at those two players thinking how great they would be for the spring leagues. But so in order for these guys to get jobs and that, there's cool situations too. I wrote about Hakeem Butler's going to be in practice playing against Kenny Robinson. So you got a 2020 Battle Hawk against the 2023 Battle Hawk in Pittsburgh Steelers camp and we might see a situation where U S F L players play with X F L players during the summer, during preseason games trying to make N F L teams. So that's very cool. But it's about opportunities. The numbers game is not fair. There's definitely a lot of players within the X F L that are deserving. No doubt in my mind of a shot in the N F L, you just have to find an opening. Someone definitely told the Rock that 50 US L players got signed in rosters last year and he's like, Yeah, and it was over 70. It was over 70 I think eventually because during the se, what happens during the N F L season too is obviously injuries. So there's going to be X ffl guys that get into the N F L during the season, that tryout for teams that have a great tryout and they'll get on a team in September, October, they'll get on a practice squad. That's going to happen. Josh Johnson didn't join the N F NFL in 2020 until later on in the season. Taylor join the N F L until later on in the season. So he wasn't a guy who was just signed and made it his way on. There were other guys like that, Austin Walter, Isaiah Williams, et cetera, et cetera. So the process, it's fluid, so it's going to run throughout the fall in terms of players getting on, but you're not going to have 60, 70 guys sign on to N F L teams if there's only 20 more spots open. Yeah, there's just not, the math doesn't work out. There has to be openings in order for players to get onto teams, but I think we'll see a good healthy amount of guys getting opportunities. And then the key at the end of the day, right now there are 14 X F L 2020 players that are still on NFL rosters. And it's not just random guys. These are guys who are going on to season number four in the N F L, which is such an awesome success story. The Donald Par hands, Taylor Heineke, watch him take over for Ritter in Atlanta. PJ Walker's backing up fields there in Chicago. So these guys have made it through. And so I think that's a big, how many of these XFL 2023 guys end up on the 53 man on the practice squad end up making an impact and the league has done a good job thus far and they need to stay on top of this of celebrating the fact that they're players of signed with NFL teams. They need to during the summer, retweet and post videos of have Ben Deci hopefully is not throwing a pick six and infuriating Sean Peyton, but if he's throwing a touchdown pass in camp or what have you, maybe he's throwing one at Jaco Pearson, who knows? That would be funny. But you want that stuff to be hyped up because you want to be proud of that. You also, hopefully that continues on because it's a huge selling point, not only for fans who are on the fence about these leagues, but also players who might consider playing in the X ffl in the future. All right, we got about 10 minutes here, so we're going to go rapid fire and we got a lot of notes here and just kind of general reactions to this. Are we going to be X Ffl 2023 on Twitter forever? Are we going to reach out to Xavier f Le to buy that in terms of, this is one of not even the most important things, but what do you think about that? I would reach out to Mr, I don't even know how you pronounce his name, LaPage. I would reach out to Xavier LaPage and I would see if we could make a deal to get that X F L handle because you can't just, every year, like you said, go to 20 24, 20 25, there needs to be a handle for the X ffl. That's a permanent one where they're not changing it all the time. So yeah, why not reach out to him? I wonder if he gets tagged so much. Even, you know, got guests on the show like Coach Jaime who tagged him recently. He gets tagged so much because he has X XFL moniker there. And so hopefully I would reach out to him and make a little sweet deal, send him something his way and whatever he wants and move on from there because it'd be great to have a steady handle. Speaking of Jaime, and I heard rumors about this and it was, Jaime talked about it in his interview coming up, Renegade's, very disgruntled that they were not featured very prominently on Player 54. That was honestly part of this is came from, I was surprised. I kind of heard rumors about that. So did Player 54, was that a success? What did we want to see from that? They kind of aired it inconsistently. It didn't feature all the teams adequately. It's hard. We want the best story. You're trying to manage that. How would you do player 54? Again, these are rapid fire. I Think the show needs to be weekly. I think they do need to focus more on different teams. And I'm not surprised by that Renegades thing, by the way, because when you get behind the curtain and you talk to players, like I was talking to players on the New Jersey Generals a little while ago, and so you find out certain things and so Renegades used for motivation. The fact that they were disrespected, the fact that they were ignored, the fact that they were opposing teams coaches saying that they shouldn't have been in the playoffs, that was bulletin board material for them and players, that's all players and coaches need is that little extra juice to get you going. And they definitely used it and I think they could have done the X ffl player 54 was great. I think they could have done a better job with it. I think it needs to be weekly. In a perfect world it would air before games that that's just a perfect lead in. Let people teach people about the players in the league and then hey, check out the game now. So I think, Yeah, what was the XL content house. Did we ever use that? That was supposed to remember we were going to be Dallas, the pinnacle of everything. We were going to have everything out in the Arlington of the content house. Just I don't Think it was capitalized. Yeah, I don't think you're right. I don't think that was capitalized upon. That was something that was brought up about doing that content and I think there was some teases of it during the season at the hub itself, but I didn't see, I think that was capitalized upon for sure. Max has a comment here, and I've said this before, sometimes lack of understanding it seems, and we've talked about the beer site thing, but XE L management, understanding what makes a spring football fan tick and we're hammered down good into the N F L and all of that. We're a lot of fans and Max Max has here. We just want to sit football, enjoy it. We want to have our stars, the N X T WWE E thing, how do we build stars? But also you still need to watch our show every week. How do you think they did this year and with thoughts on management ownership as it relates to that? I think they did a decent job with that. I definitely think they could have done a better job. I think that lies within their social media teams. I think that's content that they should have been putting out there. In terms of the TJ Barnes, what an amazing story. Anthony Miller did a very nice article about him. That's one of the great things that were about the league, is these players that not only are starting and advancing their careers, but also came back to write their own narrative. And then TJ Barnes goes out of champions. So I think the league could have promoted their players during the games. You saw some of that during player 54, you saw some of that, but I think it could have been done a little bit more on social posting clips, highlights, little comments from the players, little things like that. These things add up. So I think they didn't really take advantage of, I guess if you want to say building stars or getting people to know these players better. Because you see during the season, I pay attention to a lot. It's funny, I try tend to ignore the hardcores in this space and I pay attention to what the casual fan says even though they know nothing about the league. So you tend to see, oh my God, I didn't know who Josh Gordon was playing the league. Oh my God, I didn't know this guy was in the league or what really? When did he join the league? So it's like I'm paying attention to that. So I think you can create more awareness was a big problem. It's always a big problem with these leagues. It's a big hurdle and you need to create awareness of your players and your product and do a better job of that. So I think they need to work on that for the future. I think. And they originally, the plan was to have two social people for each team. I think one local and then one in, and I thought, that's overkill, whatever. I get that now. And I think that obviously that's the plan, but trying to have it, Haley works her ass after in the games and Jay's working and Leah's working, but you can't have one person. And we are, okay, we got the wifi issues at the arena. We can't post. We're trying to get on. I know that you've talked about the lack of, we've talked about this lack of endgame, the X F L accounts, tweeting all that. I think you got to have some people at home base doing that. And then some people and then yeah, transcript And you can't over, I just want to say this quickly. You can't overkill it with content. So I don't expect them to put a 20 minute press conference, but a little quick highlight of Bob Stoops on there, maybe snapping at Anthony Miller during a press conference that would, that little stuff would be cool. A little postgame thing, A tease. You can put that little video and then here's the link for the YouTube deal. And they did a very good job as this terms of highlights and everything on YouTube, but unfortunately got lost in the shuffle. People didn't notice it really? Rod Woodson said that three weeks ago. Jim hasnt said that four weeks ago. So I think they could have done a better job with that. Just a quick little, they had some really cool stuff and content, but they got lost in the shuffle that they didn't even hype up and sometimes they didn't hype up their own games. They get the wrong network. They're, they're not during game day, not posting highlights and staying current with what's going on. It's laughable a little bit, but it's not everybody's fault. But I mean you can't have a championship game go on, but no highlights on there. An hour after the game ends, all of a sudden you put a little photo that's shows the final score of the game. You have to do a better job than that. Last thing here, we'll get out off-season preview, rookie draft. They announced today, we posted all that going to be streamed on June 16th, I think is what it was. What do we know about that and how does that relate to the presumed supplemental draft happening in the fall? Well, they're definitely not met. We've seen a lot of players get activated off the reserve list. So they're definitely not maxing out to 51 and 90 in a rookie draft. There's not going to be like 40 rounds, but Yeah, lost in that. Yeah, because the rosters are being, yeah, they're going from 50 51 to 90. Man, That's a big one. That's a big one for me. So then there's a lot of areas there that you can question whether or not, oh, are they going to take 90 players to training camp? That's a little bit down the road to figure that all that whole thing out, but we don't know that for sure. But this isn't going to be a 30 or 40 round rookie draft that gets you to 90 players immediately. So they can sign guys, they can do all this kind of stuff. But I think the second draft portion of this, I think this is great. This rookie draft is not in because they're going to be in contact with agents, players that were unsigned, players that they've scouted that they've already had contact with. So this is not a just drafting players for namesake that we own the rights to the individual player. These are actual players that they want in the league for next year that they want in camp getting opportunities. So I think that a lot of these players are going to be legitimately joining the teams because right now they're not under contract with any football league. They're not in the N F L. They might get opportunities during the N F L season. So I think these two phases are fascinating, adding rookies that these personnel departments love and that they loved in the draft class and they feel we're overlooked and ignored. And then when they add the next layer, which could be rookies again, by the way, all undrafted guys that don't make NFL teams in September and a lot of veteran guys and all that. So there's two phases to this, and I think this is just the beginning because it's every year with the X ffl, the big part of their rosters, the most interesting part of it is going to be those guys that are on the fringe that just missed the cut. The guys are on practice squads we saw in 2023 that ended up going to the X ffl. So that's what we know so far. The question is whether or not they're going to bring 90 to training camp. I don't know that yet. Maybe if they have mini camp, they'll do that and then do cuts after mini camp before they get to, and there's also other layers about the alumni academy and everything else. But that's stuff we can talk about in the future. That's unknown at the moment. Yeah, alumni academy seems to be kind of on the HIAs. Yeah, because the thing is, yeah, they're not being paid to be there on the roster during the summer. So it feels a little like the US F L like, oh, we signed this guy two months later or tweet, okay, we cut. This guy agreed It was, it's a little bit of a longer delay because what they had in November, they drafted these guys, but these guys weren't under contract. They didn't start getting paid until they got into camp. So for two months there, Abram Smith, Josh Gordon, all these guys were Seattle Dragon, their Contract, but, But they weren't officially in the league yet. They weren't pay. They could have left for the N F L or what have you. So there's a lot of stuff behind the scenes that we need to figure out in terms of all that, but I, there's going to be an N F L out for these players until week 16. Same thing they had in November of last year after they had their draft and extended into December, January or what have you. So yeah, these players want to be drafted. They're going to be scouted, their agents are going to reach out to their league. There's a lot of players today that are so excited from this news that they're, they're going to have an opportunity. The intention is to have these rookies in camp and be a part of these teams. If they get an NFL opportunity, cool. They're going to sign letters of intent to be a part of the X ffl. It's just a question of whether or not the NFL shows up and gives a young kid a shot in a tryout or what have you, which could happen. So if I'm on the X L roster right now I'm on a two year contract. I'm on the one year contract. Yeah, some am ambi ambiguity with this whole situation right now because contracts, if you're in an X ffl contract, your contract expires on 1231. But do They have the option then to Bring, so now there is a mutual option. I don't know the language in the past. I've gotten my hands on the contract, I'm working on IT people, but I don't. But they did mention to me, I was through my article I wrote today and it was mentioned to me through the league, through sources within the league that it's a mutual option between the players, the teams, and the league. So I don't know exactly the specifics of how that works out, but these teams are going to retain the right cities players. So I would assume that a lot of these young guys, we'll see what happens at Harrison Frost and all that, but let's say Seattle's coaching staff is back with June Jones. They liked Harrison Frost, so I'm sure they'd love to bring him on back for year two, keep developing and maybe give 'em a shot more may. Hopefully the league has, they got screwed over by the ice storm, but hopefully the league has maybe a preseason game or two or an exhibition game or two before the season starts to give guys more playing time and opportunities to make rosters. So it's fun stuff. All this football stuff is fun. Last note here, we'll get out of here. I texted my brides, I'm running three minutes late. Overall thoughts, what do you make of this X F L 2023 in review, kind of post, post whatever, putting it to bed today? It was very good. It was fun. I'm anxious about the next chapter. If it was a disaster, I wouldn't be interested in the next steps. So I think the league can showed a lot of promise and can be better in year two. And it's fun. It's interesting that the X FFLs going to actually have an off season. They never had one before because of various circumstances. So this is an interesting time. Everybody's winning. Football players, coaches, people in this profession are winning that these leagues exist and hopefully it continues on. You got to give credit to these entities for actually putting their money and resources into these leagues and trying to make it work. Hopefully they do. Yeah, just the biggest thing we've talked about off-season content, keep it going. I know that's hard. You got all these signees, but like the dragons, you said they're already doing stuff. I want to see more of that. You got to keep this existing 12 months out of the year. It's really hard in the U S F L. I think I would give an F for that last year. In terms of keeping anything going. Any other notes? If they called you Mike Mitchell, they said, what do you want us to do here in the off-season? What's your number one marching order? My number one marching order is to promote and connect better. That's what they need to do. They need to connect better. It's, it's easier. It's hard when you don't have games going on, so it's very hard. But you need to connect better locally. You need to promote better. You need to find avenues. It's hard to, when you have a little bit of a media issue with certain outlets not wanting to cover your leagues. So it makes it a little bit, there's some hurdles there, but you have to work around them and then they need to take the lessons from year one and take constructive criticism because there were people in this space like you and I and others that were voice our opinions about Vegas and other things that they were doing and they went ahead and did it anyway. So you need to pay attention market research, you need to pay attention to people who have knowledge about these leagues and you need to apply it. They can do, they did a good overall, it was a good league. It was fun. It was fun to watch fun and monitor. They can do so much better. Hopefully they apply the lessons they've learned. So that, that's basically what I'd say apply the lessons you've learned. It's unfortunate. The Vegas thing to me is an L, and it's probably going to be an L in year two as well. I hate to harp on the negative, but even if they draw 10,000 fans there, that market is a problem to me. It's problematic to me because I don't think they embraced fans showed up, but I don't think the market itself, media members leaving games in the, while they're going on and bragging and laughing about it, that's not the place you want to be. In places like St. Louis and DC where they absolutely embrace and love the league and anybody who's been in a defenders game or a Battle Hooks fan will tell you it's one of their greatest sports experiences ever. Wow. How they feel. Yeah, I've heard, Yeah, I've heard people talk about that. Casual people that like politicians and pe, just regular casual people that went to defenders games and said, wow, so the people should really want to come to see these games. And so you want to be in markets like that. And so we'll see how it goes. Learn from your lessons in year one. You can be in an even better and stronger league if you apply what you've learned. Yeah, I am a wedding videographer by trade. I've, we've shot, produced, edited over 450 weddings in my life. I still talk with brides and grooms every day that think that they know exactly how to play on the wedding and you don't know anything and that's fine. It's your right. And I want you to have the best and happy stay in the world doesn't mean I'm not going to voice an opinion sometimes. Same with the X F L here. You might have all the money and resources U us F L, all this stuff. Mike's been around the block more times than I have. I've been kind of around the block. You got all Mark and everyone. I mean we've all, it's okay to take some ideas here. It doesn't signify failure if you're like, oh wow, that was actually, we didn't think about that. Or Oh wow, the beer snake. That is something that we, yeah, It's like funny to me, all it took was five minutes to talk to somebody who lived 2020 about the beer snake. He could have told you that you don't understand. This atmosphere is so amazing what these fans do, how great they are. I know some people think that they were, they hated, they ended up hating the beer snake. But it really is a cool thing that the fans do there. It's like the unity that's involved there, the energy atmosphere. So the fact that they didn't know that was a thing tells you why they had some issues. Yep. All right, Mike, God speed. Thanks for your time today and well, I'm sure we'll be talking here in a second off here. I'm sure we'll keep talking. Thanks. Thanks brother. Your show keeps getting better and better. You've done a tremendous job covering these leagues. I know the U S F L people love you. Those crazy U S F L fans, they love you to death. I love it. Cont, continue to have U S F L guests on and talk about the U S F L and cover it and retweet it and all that. Let the crazies say whatever they want to say. All Right. Thanks Mike. No problem, Reid. Thank you. Well, when this gentleman isn't frequenting, I guess Detroit field now to watch U S F L games, which is probably a conversation for another time, we have Bill Shay here with the Athletic had his kind of end of the season recap with the X F L talking TV ratings and everything else. Bill, how are you doing? I'm Good, I'm good. Thanks for having me. I'm good. So Bill was on kind of mid-season and we were cracking the magic formula I think for spring football. I think I was very proud of the episode time that we came up with that week. We're back here now. We have some figures and everything else, 1.4 million for the championship game and kind of did the U during the season. What did you make now that 10 weeks plus playoffs championships done with the X F L? That's a great question and I, I'm still sort of digesting it in my head because this is the first time we've ever had two of the spring football leagues at the same time. And I am not a regular, I'm not sitting down every weekend now and watching eight different spring football games. Some people are, and that's awesome. But I do have a soft spot for these things. I played minor league football many years ago, so I do take an interest in these things and honestly, I'm probably not the best person to analyze the quality of play on the field start to finish for both of these. I think they're very similar and I think it's much like the original United States Football League in the eighties where you had some elite talent, clearly a different property, different value proposition back then what they were trying to do, but you didn't have much depth on those teams after the stars. I talked about I've, I've had a number of conversations with Bobby Aber who was the Michigan Panthers quarterback in the eighties and he talked about that Panthers team in 83 that won the championship would've been like a mid-level N NFL team and he's very insistent. They would've beaten the Detroit lions head to head and he's probably right, but they lacked depth and that was a problem across the league and at this lower level of the modern U S F L and X F L. That's true too. There are guys in the games that I saw that will clearly be playing on Sundays in the fall in the future. There is the talent there and the N F L and scouting is much more sophisticated today than it was 30 some years ago. I thought the talent was fine for what the products are for both leagues, the production quality of the networks, I thought fine. And that's one of the things that really interests me because these leagues have their various rule quirks and things like that. And I think much like the original U S F L, which people forgot have a lot of the things the NFL later adopted, coaching challenges, replay all that stuff was there. The two point conversion I think with these modern minor leagues, the NFL and yeah, I know for a fact they're looking at these broadcasts just like, and they'll talk heavily with the broadcasters. I really liked the live look at replays in the booth and then broadcasting that inside the stadium. Now for some people may argue, oh hey, like you lose the drama of what's the rough going to say after this seven hour replay and Talmudic debate over, is the toe in or is the toe out having it live in the stadium. And the people when I was at a Panthers game a couple weeks ago, were surprised by that. They didn't know that was coming that on the video boards, Hey there's Mike Pierra and they were talking about all this stuff. I liked that a lot and I guessing the players may coaches may as well. I like that level of transparency. I'm guessing some version of that ends up in the N F L one day, then there's all the kickoff and other challenge rules and all of that. It'll get sliced and diced. But I like that these leagues can servee as a live lab for that sort of thing because we've all had these ideas I think at different points. Oh, the NFL should do this, that and the other thing. Well here it is playing out. Some of it works. The leagues are still different in the X ffl in all of its home markets. U S F L is in four cities now. I imagine they'll move to eight at some point. We may see expansion, we may see some of the other old U S F L IP from the eighties turn up in new teams. I think that would be cool, but I don't know how much differentiation there is with these leagues beyond playing it in home markets. And that may change as the U S F L. Is there enough to differentiate for fans and advertisers to have rival leagues? Well, it could happen in the 1960s we saw the American Football League and the National Football League competing for a lot of things and helped that rivalry, helped birth the Sports Broadcasting Act and the antitrust exemption for the nfl. That's so important, that sort of thing. And those leagues obviously had years of talks about merging and they did it and we got the Super Bowl and the modern nfl. I don't know if the X ffl and the USFL are positioned to do such a thing. There's lots to talk about. Oh, they could merge. Well these are business rivals in many ways as well and network rivals. Well it's also fundamentally, and you had in your article, I mean fundamentally different how they're viewing it where you said Fox's viewing this as cheaper than cheaper than alternative content that they're using to fill. Do you send C X Ffl and I don't want to be the homer here, that they have a different view of what they want their league to be? Well, yeah, it's outside ownership because Fox owns the U S F L with N B C as a partner. They have perhaps different goals. It's a springtime lineup filler and it's a fun one I think. Whereas the X ffl with DNE Johnson and his business partners, red Bird and his ex-wife, nobody wants to lose money on that particular end. Fox has a little bit more leeway and financial leverage to play around and absorb some things, but they also do have goals that align. They want to be seen, they want to sell advertising and corporate sponsorships. The fundamental business goals are the same for them. They both clearly want to develop talent that goes to the next level to the N F nfl. You hang your hat on that and particularly for boomers and Gen Xers like me, we remember Herschel Walker and Jim Kelly and those guys, Steve Young, Abe, Anthony Carter going from the U S F L to the N F L. Different circumstances obviously then because the original U S F L was, they spent themselves to death even with decent TV contracts at the time and all of the drama that happened there. These leagues aren't trying to do that. And they're all single business entities too. There are no franchisees, there's no owners to compete. I talked to Al Toman who had owned the original Panthers obviously before he died and he was extremely wealthy. I think he told me he lost millions of dollars, but he told me it was worth it because he had so much fun they won a championship. Well yeah, but You can't quite the expensive championship E, exactly different era. He was a guy that could afford to do that. I don't think anyone is interested in spending themselves crazy to a title in these leagues. It's not the same thing. They're not competing with the N F L. That's, that's a immediate fatal mistake to do. Everybody's learned from that. We're still trying to learn. If there is room in the springtime for professional football on television, that doesn't lose a ton of money. And I think because we're in the streaming era, this is a great time to try that with all the flux. Why not? And as someone that loves alternative football, I love that we have two leagues duking it out and they're not exactly the same thing. And that's interesting. Besides the rule differences and the uniforms and the names and the scheduling, they have different one's owned by a network, one's owned privately. Although from what I know, Fox would very much like someone buy it or buy into it to offset some of the production costs and all that. But I think one or both will be around for some time. And particularly if they can produce some guys that go on to NFL success, you know, get your Jim Kelly you didn't know about or you're Reggie White that emerges from these leagues. That's a huge thing to hang your hat on. And legal betting helps too. And I really suspect if we get to the point, and this has to happen at the federal level, if they legalize cannabis for a while there it was C D B or whatever everybody was buying into. There's a huge, it's like booze, it's a enormous marketing windfall for whenever that happens. And that will help prop things up. You'll see such advertising in leagues like this before. You'll see it in the NFL or baseball. This is a place interesting test stuff. So that's down the road. That would be exciting. So I want to talk, and I've gotten to the point now of homes where now even if I share anti X ffl stuff, I get criticized. I shared your article on Twitter here, X L tall game TV viewership sluggish, ESPN says Season met expectations. What did you make? Like I said at the top, did during the season, I don't know if that's a good or bad thing to end, you know, don't want to end with less than you started. But to end with relatively about the same, what did you make of the 1.4 in comparison to the X Ffl TV ratings? I thought honestly it would be a bit higher. The television landscape has changed even since, excuse me, 2020 when they did this the first time around and with heavy promotion and to outside discussion podcasts there, there's an ecosystem that has grown up around these leagues now that wasn't available 40 years ago to help out. I honestly thought it would be a little higher. I have been, if it had hit 2 million, would I have been shocked? No, I would not have been. But honestly with all the promotion and stuff in discussion and I thought it was a little sluggish, the U is was absolutely expected. You know, have your curiosity factors when these leagues start. And that's almost always true. There's been a handful of leagues that were a bummer from the beginning, but I couldn't even name them. They're so obscure at this point. But you know, start off huge, there is some churn as you lose viewers and you level out to whatever you think that's going to be. And then fingers crossed, get a big number at the end for your playoffs and championship because of the structure of the X ffl season. Starting a week after the Super Bowl, all of a sudden you're dealing with the Masters and March Madness and things like that. You're the bottom of your U may be a little deeper. And everybody knew that going in, if the U S F L turns in a similar number at the end for their championship game, I think it would be an even bigger bummer so to speak. I it's like look at the Panthers mall's game right after the Kentucky Derby huge lead in, it was 15 million people or whatever, watched that. So you know, have the people like me who just lean back on the couch after the horse wins and this 20 minutes of post interviewing the horse or whatever. And then you go into the U S F L game and people stuck around. They got 2 million for what was otherwise a really non-descript game and not Necessarily a great game Either. No, I'm sure the network would've loved like a 41 to 39 shootout thriller with crazy rules coming in. That would've been great. But they still got 2 million. I mean that's one of the best audiences of the season and you would hope their championship game comes in around the same. And obviously the mixture of what you're putting on broadcast TV versus what you're putting on cable plays a major role in that as well. And I think we've talked about this before, what benefits sports properties? This is organic discovery and that's harder to do in the streaming era because you don't have that ability to just easily flip through the cable guide and like, oh, that if you're going in and out of Amazon Prime and Netflix and Hulu and all of that, you don't stumble onto stuff as easily. But this era will change for all of that stuff down the road. But I'm a little bit more interested in how the U S F L does with its championship game because simply it's had bigger numbers this season than the X ffl did. And part of that, again, it's a product of more network television and I think starting later starting, they got themselves on the other side of March Madness. And it's not just the men's tournament, the women's tournament obviously has grown as well and that's always going to be a bigger overall sports property for the networks. But the FOX has promoted the U S F L hard. I live in a u s ffl market in Detroit. There's billboards all over the place. There's heavy social media push. There's more than I have seen from the X ffl. And part of that's because I'm not in an X ffl market, but it's a lot as much as I see as for a lions season right now, they're pushing all of the tickets for because the schedule is out. So there's tons of that. But that US FFL championship game I think be limited for how this season, it's season two for them, how that has played out and what did they do, what did they do wrong. So I'm really curious to see that number and which teams are participating. Cause the X ffl had a four and six team, Bob Stoops team was in there and I think a lot of St. Louis fans were upset, rightfully so about that. But that's where you run into the structure. You only have eight teams, everybody's not making the playoffs. So this is the sort of risk that you run with the structure is you're going to get good teams that have to miss the postseason unfortunately. But if they're doing well enough where they expand, that becomes less of a problem. But it happens occasionally in the N F L too. There was a brown season in oh seven, I think they went 10 and six, missed the playoffs. So that's a bummer at any level of you're a fan. Yeah, no, to be fair, I live in an ex L Seattle market. I have not seen any billboards here. But it's not just because you're not in an exl. I had some facts and like I said, check out Bill's article on the athletic talking in game because we talk attendance and we've done that to death. But in game TV advertising estimate show the X ffl lagging behind the US F l, your cancer media via TV Insights, they showed that the X ffl completed the regular season, generated 20.6 million in ad spending with three weeks at the US F L for 2023. They're on pace to do 41.3 with 12 million already done. Thoughts on those figures and thoughts because we want context now that we know that they have these figures And given in mind, these are estimates, these are the pros. So they have some insights and access to stuff, But it's more than people arguing on Twitter or message for it. Yeah, that's what I like. Yeah, no, wasn't real surprised by those numbers simply because the U S F L is a networked owned property. They have the HEF and the leverage to get more money out of this than a rights deal like the X ffl with the Disney, the Disney properties. I think if it's your thing, you can do more with it. You can bundle and do stuff. The Disney advertising can do that as well, but it's a bigger company with a lot of priorities going on. That didn't surprise me to see those estimates at all. I thought that was kind of in line. U S F L I think has more games on broadcast television where you're simply going to pay more and there's more options to bundle that's in the network's advantage versus the rival network also wants the X ffl to do well. But it has many other priorities. These leagues rely on TV obviously quite a bit and the revenue generated by that to fuel ratings and such. But they're a bit like minor league baseball. Sort of a weird hybrid comparison here is that they also rely a lot on game day revenue and whatever deals they may have structured in their home markets for ticket sales, parking merchandise, all of that. And because there's single entity structures, it's not the Seattle Sea Dragons keeping all their money and not having to share with the Vegas Viper, whatever it may be. It the league handles all of that centrally. So that's a bit more flexibility and less pressure there. But yeah, that's attendance matters way more at this level than it does at the N F nfl. I mean you could stage an NFL season with zero fans and those teams will still be fairly profitable because of the enormity of their national television rights deals. They just dwarf everything else on television and we'll just keep getting bigger and bigger. Well That's why I, no, I always laugh because the US F l, they like attendance doesn't matter, it's just a TV project. But then like you said, you see all these billboards, Hey we've got the mascots, bring your kids and we've got face painting and I mean I see more ads obviously watching the US L Games come to our games, come to our games. But yet I hear, well attendance doesn't really, I mean obviously it must matter to them either from an aesthetics perspective or making money because they're writing the money to run ads to get people to come out to the stadiums at least. Yeah, that's absolutely right. It does matter. It's to what degree until I see their books, until they share their financials with me, which is never going to happen. Unfortunately. We don't know. We're trying to make educated guesses. But yeah, it's aesthetics is a big part of it. We have learned since the pandemic, people prefer to see sporting events with fans in attendance. It feels weird to watch something without, we all remember the bubbles for the N B A and W N B A and limited attendance and things. It just plays better on television. It's not that these leagues were ever going to get full. The game I went to a few weeks ago, it's Ford Field, I had like 15,000 people, which was fairly solid for the lower bowl. And I thought a nice crowd for what that property is. I don't know what they're paying Ford Field to be in there. Years ago it was 2008 or so, there was a proposed football league and I forget the name of it, but the recession killed them because the league was financed by student loan debt. One of the giant lenders, private lenders. The whole thing was predicated on the money from that. And then the recession hit and everybody defaulted on things, but they had a million dollar deal with Ford Field and couldn't pay. And there was some lawsuits and things and the lions who run the facility got a bit skeptical of getting in bed with things like that. But in case of the S F L, it's Fox, it's a business partner of the N F nfl. I'm sure there was protections in there, but these facilities are not cheap to rent because it's not just, oh here, here's a check. We'll come in mean there's a ton of stuff they have to pay for security and concessions and what's your concession deal on merchandise is who's handling that? The game I went to, they, they'd shut it down as soon as the game ended. There was people who wanted to buy jerseys and I was going to buy a U S F L, just the blue t-shirt that says U s ffl just to bum around in the weekends. And I was like, oh, I'll just get it after the game. Whoops. Well I couldn't so they were going to make sure that didn't happen again. But yeah, I mean there's big expenses behind the scenes as well and these leagues and their partners are looking for any sort of revenue to offset that because this stuff, I mean even with the controlled salaries and the labor costs are relatively low. Well it's not nothing. And I'm getting these emails for discounted Michigan Panther season tickets now like 25 bucks for the rest of the year. Part of that tells me they want bodies in the stands who will buy things. They get their caps and all that, but they want fuller crowds. And the game day was fun at Fort Field. I've been there a million times covering the Lions and other events, but I thought it did just fine. It was funny, whoever wrote I, Michael said whoever wrote the U S F L article, this was like the fox, this was the US L article for that. I think they had the attendance, I share it, it was like 6,500 or something someone shared because like Hey Reid, because Fox right? We don't put out attendance numbers. And by God that was trauma. They ended up going back, I think they updated the website because they're like, we can't. I think it was more than 65,000, but certainly not a sellout. The other thing here before I get you out of here, you have the playoff figures here for the X F L this year they estimated 1.3 million in ad revenue for the two semi-final games. The NBC Fox Postseasons last year got 6.7 and then you put, I think for context you're a one 32nd ad for last Super Bowl average 7 million. So one 30 ad for the Super Bowl is more than the entire US F L. Yeah, but that's to be expected. What did you make of that? The 1.3 million for the playoffs? We heard our reports and not all the inventory was sold that XF L was giving it away. I know U S F L had kind of bundled stuff last year. We were talking off camera before we started. Yeah, I think that kind of mirrored the trends we've seen with the regular season with these estimates. It's partially a function of Fox having much deeper investor control here because it's their property and their ability. Last year they had the Super Bowl on Fox, so they had a lot of leverage and the things they could package and okay, you went in the game. Well it's the dominoes fall on how these deals are structured and it's it the first minute I could be off base here, it just feels like the U S F L is just promoted better, promoted more vastly broader, promoted by Fox and N B C than the X ffl is by Disney and ESPN and B C. It's not like they're not. But I just think and the U S F L, it didn't have competition last year and in the space that it exists and it fell into a good time to do such things. Whether they get that sort of money this year, I don't know, we'll find out after the season. But they both paced kind of where I thought they would be with advertising regular season and the playoffs. Now if the S F L gets some enormous number somehow for the championship game, we could see an uptake uptick going into next season. But it's definitely fascinating to look at. Well it's the U S F L last year and it's so hard because everyone that we want to compare it X F L 2020 was really its own thing. U S F L in 2022 hit in a way that I haven't seen anything hit and hasn't hit since X F L this year hasn't us f l hasn't where it was just enough time from because people with the X F L and okay, my heart's ripped out, we were in the middle of all this and then now we've waited, we've waited. I mean the US F L, the YouTube streams for the U S F L draft did like 30, 40, 50,000 views on just the them, the U S F L podcast, just them talking about the players being drafted. So there was a hunger for that. I don't know if that comes back this year or not. It certainly hasn't hit with the X ffl the same way. And the U S F L has been down as we've talked before, I mean year over year than last year as well. Yeah, no, and it's interesting because in a relatively short amount of time, 20, 23 years ago, seems like a million years ago, pre pandemic 2019 feels like it's mythical at this point to me. But the X ffl I think in some minds had a little bit of an anchor to it because through no fault of its own, it ended midway through 2020 because of the pandemic and then when in a bankruptcy and his little ugliness around that with lawsuits and the Oliver Luck and McMahon and all of the baggage around Vince McMahon as well. And for folks a little bit older, remember the first one became a national joke in 2001. The late hundred Thompson was making fun of it and I e ESPN two way back then. Why does this? And it was such an over the top ridiculous. It just WWE E and N F L trying to mix those. I understood where they were coming from but it just did not work. And other than it's 70, 70 million fail and Rod Smart, he hate me. What does anybody remember? I don't remember the team names at this point. I don't think that helped. Whereas the U S F L has become that IP from the eighties became, it's recognizable to two fairly large generations boomers and Gen Xers and there's sort of a almost mystical nostalgia around it because of what it produced and then the Donald Trump and moving to the fall and the lawsuit and it was the 30 for 30, there was a little bit more history there and it was a very smart move I think to use that IP. And I think it helped give a leg up to the us the US F L 2.0 cause I tend to use the 2.0 3.0 just because we're talking about two different leagues and there's been five iterations of these things and all the other leagues that have existed around it. And ultimately it comes down to how much of a public appetite is for this and can that appetite be monetized in a way to make it sustainable. I think it can be, I don't know if it would be for two leagues, maybe they do merge or maybe we do get a minor league Super Bowl. I think that would be insane and awesome. The X ffl champion versus the U S F L champion. I don't entirely rule that out one day. Even though these networks compete, they also work with each other on a lot of things too, that FOX and N B C share, nascar, there's a lot of crossover between rival networks and on the sports side especially, there's a lot of talent that has gone back and forth production guys and stuff like that. So that, that's sort of my fantasy is to see that minor league Super Bowl and see what happened. Probably not, would it? Would it be awesome? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean imagine seeing the rock out there and all the U S F L people and some of their old alumni and just to decide this was the first year FOX and N B C could use the old U S F, the footage and stuff. They finally got the rights free and clear and we started seeing the players come back. I had talked to abetter three years ago and he was so excited about doing this. And two weeks ago was the first time he's been back for, he finally got, I mean obviously the Panthers didn't play here in Michigan last year, but they had done stuff in state prior to this season and he was super happy to be back. The Panthers were a big part of, they launched his career and they got him off welfare back in 83. So all of that sort of stuff I think has served the U S F L maybe a little bit better than the X F L. But it's fun having both of them while we do. And the debate between which one is better or worse and which one will last is fun. I don't think that there was a more joyful time I had on the podcast than it would've been that summer or I guess it was whatever the winter before leading into the spring of the US of all tracking and all the lawsuits and the IP and we were tracking, we had Bill, we had IP lawyers on the show. Hey was the whole thing. We rode through that U S F L suing itself. So Bill Shaa with the Athletic, I really appreciate it, your insights and was happy to see a new article come out about that. So thank you for always appreciate the insights and context for everything. Yeah, thanks for having me. And be on the lookout cause I'll do the same thing after the U S F L title game and anytime there's, there's major news out of these leagues and hopefully it's positive. Hopefully. Thanks so much. Thanks For having me. Well I saw this man working hard. I was on the field and then up in the press box and then we were at the trophy ceremony. Saw you running around and we have Cole Cooper back here. How are you doing sir? I'm doing great. Doing well. Kind of bummed that the season's over, but it was a fun ride for sure. Yeah, Kraken ended last night. Exta fell. I don't know what to do with my time anymore. What did you make first off of the game? I mean obviously Arlington coming back exciting. I don't hear as many complaints now about the playoffs now that Arlington came back and dominated. But what did you make of it all? Especially when you think that, I mean if we were to go two, four best teams in the X Ffl, Arlington knocked off two of those in the playoffs to be able to get that championship. So credit to Bob Soups and his staff. I think the first thing that stuck out to me sort of after the game is we hear this term and I asked Luis Perez about this after the game, we hear fit so many times that guy's a good fit for this. He's that coach is a great fit there. I think they found a quarterback that was a great fit for what they wanted to do and he understood timing, rhythm, when to get the ball out. He understood spacing. And when I went back and watched that first game between these two teams, DC was giving up a lot of space and Luis Perez was able to find it. Now the question is, are you going to be able to protect long enough for him to be able to find that space? And they did. He was able to sort of din and dunk, got a little bit going on the ground game and they got turnovers. Turnovers were really the difference in this game. And I think they did a great job in that, that Arlington defense did a great job in some of the site adjustments and where they knew Jordan Tiu was going to be reading the RPOs and they stayed in those lanes and yeah, you just get a finger on the ball, but it showed you that can give you a couple interceptions and an interception that's essentially taken away a touchdown. Cause it looks like DC was going in outside of a couple of big plays. I mean you had the big run and you had a couple big TEU runs and you had the one big pass. I mean if it's not for that set, that game's a blowout in favor of Arlington. So I was surprised just because I thought DC was the most consistent team the majority of the year, and they were balanced. I mean Abe Smith most productive running back in the X Ffl, not even close by the way, that offensive line, even though they suffered some injuries early, had been fantastic. And the defense had just been a problem across the board. But I can tell you, being on that DC sidelines, there was a lot of frustration, looked like a little bit of the leadership disappeared and Arlington showed up, man, they came to play, give him a lot of credit. Well even, and I know that a lot of the season obviously focused on AJ McCarran and Benton. He had some of these bigger names, but from a human intro story, I think Luis Perez here and just to think of the journey he's been on in the last five, six years and having the rock hand him the MVP trophy after winning and confetti and Danny Garcia's there. I mean truly just kind of an incredible moment. I thought, Well, and I kind of asked him how we talk about that fit? How are you able to fit in with this team and this group? And he just said, there's a lot of great guys here. There's a lot of great guys on this team. I talked to Bob Seuss before the game and asked him just kind of how it's been, a recap sort of. And he just said, there's had no problems. We've had no issues with any of our players. Everything has been fantastic. And I know a couple of those guys on that team personally, and they've talked about how much fun it's been, even though they had some ups and downs as far as losses early in the season. And then, yeah, Luis Perez, a guy that walked on, learned how to play quarterback, watching YouTube transfers, has a lot of production in lower level college football. Birmingham, iron X Ffl last time around, the kid's been all over, he's spring football hall of Famer and he goes out and wins the V mvp. It's pretty cool to see. He is the most unassuming, successful quarterback you would see when you see him walking around. His demeanor is his physique. You don't say, wow, I want that dude on my team. That's just not who he is. But then you see the pictures of him at Thanksgiving making his aunts and uncles and grandparents lined up so he can run plays and do different things. And that coaching staff told us, like Coach Hayes said, he's the best preparer I've ever had at any level. So it means a lot to him. And I think it's pretty cool to see him be able to close it out because he's kind of started his journey in a lot of different places and now he finally got to finish it. And maybe the wildest part about all of it is if he doesn't throw those pick six s against Arlington week one Arlington's probably not in. So that gave them a win that got them into the post-season. So just a crazy year altogether. But Luis is an amazing story. When I saw they posted the halftime him in the locker room screaming, we got one half and we're world champion side, oh, Brandon Againsts by a million here. I mean, you really just felt like they had that energy. And I just think you get to that point where I'm going to will my team down the field. And Luis Fe felt like he was at that point, He was in complete control of that game. Now you also give Davion Smith and Lady Brown when Daveon was a little bit nicked up and Lady Brown comes in, they were fantastic. And I, there's a guy inside of this league right now that almost nobody's talking about that needs a little bit of love. And Luis Perez was fantastic, but one of the reasons he was fantastic was that offensive line for Arlington and Jonathan Heinbach, their offensive line coach. This guy won a championship in the X ffl as a player, now he's got a championship in the X ffl as a coach. And he was a champion in the U S F L last year with the Birmingham stallions. So he probably needs to be coaching at a higher level of football just because he's that good. And I know people in the offensive line community think the same way. But to see him be able to get it done too, and that group sort of come together. They had some younger guys that hadn't played a ton of professional football and they got him going and that run game, they needed that run game late to make sure DC couldn't get back into that game. And especially the last two drives, they were able to hammer that thing down. So Luis was in control. He knew exactly where to deliver the football. And then when that run game got going, I mean it was lights out. Yeah, no, Jonathan friend of the show, he was on preseason. We're going to actually have him on this very episode. So he's a longtime just, And I didn't know that by the way. No, I know. That's good. No, but, and I know what you mean because, and he's come with such high regard and what he's done and all levels of football is tremendous in terms of the championship game itself, the pageantry of it, the trophies, we had Danny and the Rock there. What did you make of just the whole spectacle? It was fantastic. And I'll tell you, it kind of started, I've done, I think this was my fourth, my fifth trip to San Antonio this year. I did the Alamo Bowl too. So I've been there six times this year when we roll up, we usually just go right to our truck and go in and we had to go through an extra thing around for security and you know, saw the different symbols and whatnot. And they did a great job decorating the stadium. It felt like a big game. Just the atmosphere just felt big. That lower bowl was about 80% full, over 22,000 people there. And I thought the coolest part about that, Seth, was I saw Houston fans, I saw St. Louis fans, I saw Seattle fans, I saw obviously San Antonio fans, the game being in San Antonio. But it was pretty cool to see almost the entire league represented with their fans there for this championship game. Maybe some thought their team was going to be in it, but either way, the one Battle Hawk guy, the famous dude show the, he's like, man, I got to grow the league. I got to grow the league. I was like, you keep working bro. I love it. Amazing. But that crowd had energy. It was loud, it was a very cool, very fun environment. It felt big from pregame, like you mentioned Postgame with Danny and dj. It was awesome. And the game was super physical. I mean there were some big hits. Unfortunately we had the situation with the cameraman. I'm glad to hear that he's doing okay. But that stalled things for about 15 minutes. But it was an exceptional scene there in San Antonio. In terms of, yeah, well you said that it's kind of needs to be like the breakup is in the C F L where you kind of go to the gray cup no matter what team, if your team's in it, if your team's not it. I think the X L benefits from that. I think they would've done it in Dallas if I think the stadium could've accommodated that. But it was good. The album, we didn't have to worry. We thought there was going to be thunderstorms and then it ended up being, yeah, I mean it was just kind of an awesome day. And you know, saw DC fans, they tried to get the beer snake on, they traveled that thing over from some local pub and had it in the bucket sitting right there on the sidelines. So man, I tell you, it was a cool environment. I wasn't really sure what to expect. We knew that there were a certain amount of tickets that had been sold, but you didn't know that other fans were going to show up in their gear. For teams that weren't competing, you didn't know they were going to be loud, you didn't know they were going to get into it. And even though the game felt like it was a little out of hand, DC did have opportunities late to get back in it, especially with the fourth and 15. So we had a little drama too late, which sort of ramped it up some In terms of, we've already had signings announced, I mean we're recording this a little bit earlier in the week, but 11 players so far. Now obviously the DC and Arlington teams they could talk with do all that kind of stuff. Now after the championship, what do you make of that? So many players already getting looks shots for the N F L? It's not really surprising and there's a couple that haven't really been signed, haven't been announced that I'm surprised we haven't really seen them. I think there may be another, I think, and obviously even guys that aren't signed are going to be in camps. I wouldn't be surprised to see Tamo into camp and be able to stick ground for a while. John Jay Kirkland out of Houston, the wide receiver that if he doesn't get banged up this year, I mean he's going to be somebody we already saw. Pearson is running by guys in camp as well in the NFL camp. He's all over the place. Shakur Pearson. So he's doing some good things. There are a lot of guys in this league that can play, especially at the skill positions and especially up front on defense, whether it was St. Louis Houston, like multiple guys, TJ Barnes for Arlington, I think he's got to be in a camp somewhere. The dude was disruptive all year. I know he didn't have just one of those old adages in football that some people don't really get. He didn't have 20 tackles for loss, but he affected plays each and every week and he's just a monster. So I'm not going to be surprised a lot of these guys not only get into camp, get signed, but end up sticking around to see Romo kicker for San Antonio be able to get in. It's a cool story but it's, there're going to be multiple guys that don't just get into camp and get signed that actually make these NFL teams. What coaching staff impress you the most this year? I mean Renegades coming back, DC kind of dominated the whole time. Somebody else, what were you most impressed by? I know they didn't get the championship, but I probably still have to say DC just because you have a two quarterback system that actually worked. You had the best rushing offense in the league, but you didn't do it through the formations that some other teams tried to do it through. And that was two tight ends. Personnel we're going to run right at you. I think that group probably went in and Coach Ka is just amazing. Just being able to be around him and hear his story. I didn't know anything about him before this season and now I just love talking to him. But the usage of tight ends that they had big play receivers that they had, they had everything on offense and then defensively they're a little high risk and that probably cost him in that championship game. But you get a guy in Greg Williams that knows the league very well, he got his guys to play at a high level. Their safety's come flying downhill, defensive line, disruptive. So I would probably have to go with that group, but I'll say this, no one's going to put San Antonio in there because of where they finished. But they played four quarterbacks. They had five different offensive linemen that were injured at some point in time of the season. I think they played nine different offensive linemen this year. They lost their starting tailback this year. They lost their safety, the bell cow of their defense this year for Hines Ward to still have a chance to get into the playoffs late in the year after all those injuries that they went through. And keep in mind he made a switch at offensive coordinator after a couple weeks. He sent his coordinators to the booth after two weeks. He did some things from a coaching perspective that kept them in it. And I know the record is not where everybody else's is, but you overcome those injuries and you make those big changes in the middle of a season. You got to give the guy a little bit of credit for where he had his team at. Well that's the thing, I mean even when they did the trade for Luis Perez, Arlington did. I'm sitting there and I'm like, okay well this is good for Luis but I don't see this really affecting anything or making a difference. I mean I think even when they set out the pressure release then, but it shows that the people were competitive all year. The staffs were competitive and they never gave up and they always wanted to be in it. Right. Well and then two, just dedication to what you do. Understanding that execution is still the most important part of football and I think, you know, look at those two brothers that are running the offense in the defense for Arlington with Bob soups and we just mentioned their offensive line coach, who's one of the best in the business. You got Scott Spur, you handling your special teams, they've got other great coaches on that staff. And I'll throw out Houston too, everybody knows Wade Phillips, but nobody knew AJ Smith going into this year. Nobody knew par d handling those receivers in special teams. And so I think there are a lot of guys from a coaching perspective that put themselves on the map this year in the XFL and what Anthony Beck did with St. Louis, like AJ McCarran was a great get. When you looked at that roster in the beginning of the season, you kind of said, okay, I watched this running back play at Wyoming. I love the way you runs the ball. I don't know about the offensive line. The defensive line doesn't look super athletic. Do they have the perimeter guys to really contend and they may have had the second best team in the league in the regular season. So I give Anthony Beck's group a ton of credit, he and Hines Ward I think proved to a lot of people. We deserve a look as far as being the head coach. You know, got a guy sitting there in DC that nobody's talking about and now people should be looking at him saying, could this be an N F L head coach? Could this be a division one college head coach? So I think it's just, we talk about all these opportunities for the players and signings and free agents and camps, but there's going to be some big opportunities that comes to some of these coaches out of this league as well. Yeah, we just shared good morning football. I had just done the little segment on that talking with Scott Pele about how not only are the N F L teams scouting players with obviously coaching and staff as well, that you think that all facets of the league players are going to, players and staff are going to get looks. I don't think there's any doubt. And I think that if you go by certain position groups and how they operated coordinators and that's where the access really helped them out. And you had guys, AJ that bought into it and said, come on, I want to be a part of this. I want people to know who I am. I want people to know what I'm doing. June Jones, we all knew what he did, but we got to know his personality a little bit more. Like how he calls plays the communication process with the players. I understand that that's going to get cut off in the N F L and you won't even have that in college. But I do think one of the big takeaways could be whether it's college head coaches, N F nfl, GMs, N F NFL head coaches, they got to listen to how they communicate with their players. And that's big because that's how I was sort of drawn into aj. I'm like, listen to what this guy's telling his players. It wasn't just that he called good plays. He was communicating everything with them and letting them know this is why you need, hey slide in three yards. You need to be here because I want to get outside leverage on that corner when coaches see those kind of things, those little details, they love that. And that was an opportunity for the coordinators to really put themselves on a map and really make a name for themselves as well as a lot of the players. We had Matt Barry on previewing kind of this the championship weekend and he thought then they already had an article out where ESPN's looking at trying to, how can we incorporate more of this and with the rules and the transparency that the X ffl innovated with the sky came back a million years ago here and now we've had other things and wouldn't be surprised to see some of these things transfer over. No, and I mean listen, I've said it for a long time, I don't know how the kickoff rule is not at every level. I really don't just honestly, I think it's dumb that it's not because we want to have kickoff. Nobody wants to say, oh what time are they putting the ball down in Auburn for the game Saturday? Can you start on the 20? Some people want, nobody wants, we want kickoffs, we want the game to kick off. We want the spectacle that is, we know we start our games but to remove 90% of those violent collisions yet still give you the opportunity for big plays. I know we only saw one kick return for touchdown this year, but to not sit there 99% of the time and say it's just going to be out of the back of the end zone, who cares? So now you've got big play opportunities and we actually get kickoffs that matter. How many games did we see held this game? We saw two kicks that worked against DC and that were massive advantages for, I mean what they started on the 35 going in one time off a damn kickoff. So that made that play so much more important in this league than it is in the NFL or in college football because it's just not, it's out of the end zone 95% of the time. I don't know how that's not there. I really would take a look if I were a different level of football at being able to review one thing across the course of the game was I loved it. Now we also love it because of who we have and Dean Blandino up there talking us through it and I realize that if you're doing conference USA or Mountain West or even s e C games, you can't have that for every game. So that's a big part of it. But just to be able to do that and to be able to go back and look at one thing across the course of the game, it can change the game. And I saw it change the game a couple of times this year. So I think some league's eyes are going to be open to different things. And then obviously too, like you said, just the way that certain things were handled from a broadcast perspective, we already saw Brett yo mark in the Big 12, I guarantee you this had something to do with that. Him saying we are going to look at micing up players, we're going to look at coaches' interviews, not just at halftime, maybe at the end of quarters or end game. We had GU Malson on our show here in Birmingham and he's like, that's going to be a part of it. We need to market our teams all for it. Let's go. So the leagues that aren't the big 10 in the S E C and really the N F L, they've got to start doing things to put themselves on a map to separate themselves a little bit. It's one of the things that the XFL had figured out from the beginning. Well I like how, and we were talking with the rule when Beck had the rule, the challenging the holding or whatever and all that. It felt like I was kind of watching Survivor or something where players are learning the strategy of the game ride and kind of figuring it out. And we've seen that with AJ Smith like you said before with the comms and all of that. So I'm excited to see next year here how some of these coaches like, okay, what can we learn from this? Because I do think this first season it's like, okay, what the hell's going on? Let me just get through this. But the smarter coordinators and coaches and staff kind of figuring that out I think is going to prove dividends. Listen, there was a lot of gamesmanship as the season went on for different guys. I heard a lot of conversations about things they were trying to figure out strategies they were trying to use. I thought one of the coolest things, and I know that the people at home didn't get to see a lot of this for me were, and Anthony was one, Hines Ward was one the conversations that they would have about when and when to not use that challenge flag. I mean it was awesome because that you could tell they I saw guys they wanted to do it and then either somebody else or they were trying to, we would hear 'em in the headsets, what do you think? Did you see it? What do you think? Did you see it? They wanted to use it but they just weren't sure enough. And I asked times a couple times, how have you decided what the strategy is? He's like, man, I'm just trying to learn on the go. He's like, I'm trying to get as much communication as I can from upstairs. Other players, what they saw, what does the replay look like because the replays were different in different stadiums, how you got 'em. So just like you said, there's going to be so much more next year that guys already know how to manage that's going to take them to the next thing to be concerned about, try to worry about and try to be better at. It's going to be really cool to watch. Finally here, before we go, just kind of XFL in retrospective, what did you make here of the season? Now that it's all said and done? I thought it was awesome but listen, I'm never going to pretend the access part is not the coolest part for me cause I'm on the sideline doing it and I thought the coolest part too is those guys started coming up to me and that's when they get it and one of our best hits that we had was that playoff game in DC and all of a sudden somebody grabs my arm, I'm like the hell and it's Greg Williams and he starts talking. I'm like, wait, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. I got to get my producer and we get the microphone and then I'm like, you got to tell us this on the air. I don't, I need everybody else to hear this players. Jordan Temo knew I would look at him and he's like, no, come on, let's just, let's do it. Let's go. Abe Smith was the same way. He's like, yeah, I see you waiting over there, let's do it. And so it was really like AJ Smith let us come up in the booth late in the season, sit there and talk to him. So it was really cool to have that access and then to see how it grew through the course of the season because I think once the players and coaches figured out that we weren't going to burn them and we weren't trying to put 'em on blast, that process became so much easier, so much more fluid and that made it better on television and then to the atmospheres. I mean St. Louis is just God, that place is just it. And it was like this last time we had the game last time where they in 2020 when they opened the upper deck and then they did it again DC I finally got to go to a game in DC this time around. I didn't get to do that the first time I did X ffl. That place is magnificent. San Antonio had some great environments. Houston was a great environment. They have passionate fans there. The way they all dress up and the different things that they got going. The end stadium experience was good and I expected to be better next time around and I think one of the things that I'm telling people after this year's been over is the ball was better than I expected. Again, we saw some struggles with offensive line play across the board and I think you'll see that when the rosters are put together next time because you'll see more emphasis on, all right, we probably need to go ahead and get two extra offensive linemen or one extra than we were going to get just so we can offset some of these injuries and manage certain things that are coming our way. The ball was better, the atmospheres were better, the access was better and I think the league is, we listen talking to DJ and Danny a couple of times through the course of the year, they're set up to go multiple seasons. They're in this for the long haul and I think if you can grow on what you had year one, technically year one, this thing's going to be a lot of fun to watch down the road. Yeah, DC Security was so scared for my safety. They said that Audi Field and the championship game, because I was in my C Dragons, they forcibly asked me to leave the beer snake area. They said we're scared I was because I'm a commander's fan so I'm like chopping them up with them about the Redskin and stuff. They go, sir, you can't be in here. We're scared for your safety. I said, okay, okay. I don't want to now don't protest. But it was a wild crowd there. Audi Field is kind of a different beast. I think It's a cool place. That size stadium is kind of where the future I think needs to be for the majority of football. We like listen, Neland Stadium is amazing and go to Mercedes-Benz in Atlanta, it's awesome. You go to some of these other venues like Journey or Stadium or Auburn plays or the big house in Michigan, you get 85, 105,000, that's great. But moving forward that sort of quaint, crowded, no bad seat in the House stadium, that's what we need. That's what we have here in Birmingham with Protective Stadium where UAB B plays, it's a perfect venue because you're not going to have a bad seat. Everybody's got a good line of sight and the noise stays in and when even when you don't get a great crowd, it feels like a good crowd because the majority of the place is packed. Last question. If X Ffl management called you up and said Cole, what would we, would you like to see us do to improve going into next year? What would you say? Oh, to improve? I would say this is one thing that I really loved the last time around and I don't know if you recall this or not, but last time around they had the extra team that practiced every day, ran plays, went through their individual drills. So you had guys that were working out going through actual football practice that were just waiting to be called to another team because I heard some of the conversations from these coaches about how they went about finding guys after injuries. We're calling high school coaches, we're calling college coaches, we're calling N F L guys, this dude's been working at a Toyota dealership, this guy's at a grocery store, this guy's out of work. To have that extra roster of guys to be able to say, all right, we know he's and have access to their practice film to know what they're capable of doing and if they're a good fit for you. I just think that's super valuable. I think it's worth the resources that you would put in place to have that and I think it would make it a lot easier for teams when they lost someone to be able to say, you know what, we're going to go get him and bring him in and then he gets replaced and somebody else is practicing ready to go join another team. Yeah, I think the Alumni Academy was like, I think there was supposed to be kind of the plan and then I don't really know what happened with all of that, but I think that there was supposed to be some sort of rotating section of guys there, but I agree having that team nine kind of do that and having just be able to call up, especially when you're in the hub, everyone's there. Exactly. I was surprised. I was surprised. U S F L didn't do that last year in Birmingham. I'm like, you're, you're all in Birmingham. How hard you know, just have 'em there. Exactly. Well Cole, I appreciate it. Like I said, saw you working hard all through the season and we were kind of on that game rotation at the end, so I appreciate it as always and hope to see you back next year here. Yeah man, I appreciate you having me a lot of fun. Appreciate your coverage of the X F L also, and I thought I was going to be able to bump into you there in San Antonio, which once we got in that stadium, it was a busy day, it was nonstop, It was very heightened on edge. I'm like, I'm standing right here, I don't want to get, I saw Jeff running around, I saw Bian, I saw a lot of like, okay, let me stay in these ropes and let me not, let's go and go with the last thing I want is to get evicted from San Antonio. I did the beer steak section So Don't want that. Could not have that. Awesome. Cool. Thanks again for your time. Absolutely appreciate it. Well I'm excited we have this gentleman on our pre-season sitting in a beautiful Choctaw stadium now back home, two time winner now of the X F L. Congratulations coach Hom, how are you doing Great, Reid. It's been a whirlwind man and excited to see this thing come to fruition to get through a full season and just the way that this thing ended up, I think we got everybody feeling like we were not a team to contend with over the first six, seven weeks. They forgot about us. We weren't even on player 54 at all and then all of a sudden we get hot at the right time. So credit to the players, the staff. It's awesome that it all came together. Yeah, I had chats with the player, 54 people over in DC and we were watching that, watching your guys' thrilling victory there. I just landed for the defenders game. Interesting stuff there. So you pay attention to that too, not feature that player. 54. Well We had two weeks to get ready for DC and it's like we had just played them week nine so we kind of knew what we were in store for so I'm like, all right, let me see what's going on around the league. Well apparently they don't think we're worth the damn, so we weren't on player 54 and we were playing really bad football for about six, seven weeks and we finally got it figured out at the right time. Yeah, what was it like, I mean obviously everyone attributes to the we're train loose press and all of that, but I mean you're there and you know also have gotten a ton of credit even from Cole Kubick on this episode talking about he thinks that you should get be on to the next level here as soon as possible, but what do you attribute the success you guys found? Well, I think it starts from the top with Bob, with Coach Stoops and it's just a come to work lunch PA type of mentality and we may not have seen the fruits of our labor show up early in the year. I mean I think when we played San Antonio that second time, we had 150 yards of total offense and we all took a real deep look in the mirror and we had to make a couple tweaks to the roster and I think guys said, Hey, let's be grateful for this opportunity and I think you look across the board and our team guys started playing better, they started playing cleaner even though we lost to Seattle, I thought that was one of the games that it started to turn for us and just both sides of the ball defense played phenomenal all year and it just took us a while to get our chemistry together on offense and once we started firing on all cylinders, obviously the trigger man makes a huge difference, but we got some guys back healthy when Davion was banged up for a little bit of the year, Leddy had to take a lot of the work and he got banged up and that's just, that's spring football. Every week you can get beat by anybody and you look at DC they lost to Orlando in a nail biter game. We took him down to overtime and it's, you never quite know what you're going to get because you don't have established vets and every week the ball's going to bounce a certain way and it was just a credit to our guys. They persevered, they pushed through and really happy for them to be able to find the success at the end. I heard that, I think it was Michael Mitchell was saying that maybe a little bit bold board material with the whole four and six playoffs and all that. Did you buy into that where the players were like, we're we're not respected, people don't think we belong here. Whatever guys need for motivation that thing's like a warm bath, that thing will last for about two minutes and then it's over you. You got to trust your technique, you got to trust the scheme, trust the system and trust the guys around you. And I think that's what we really built. We built trust within the locker room. We had been through some adversity and maybe some other teams hadn't been through adversity and we found out what guys were made of and if you can make your way through as rough of a early part of the season as we have and got your eyes on the prize at the end, so a credit to Bob, our coordinators, Bo, Jonathan, Jonathan Hayes and Chuck Long and Tim Lewis and Jay Hayes, those guys really righted the ship and Scott Spurrier with special teams and it was just steady work all the way around and look up at the end of the game and hopefully you got more points than the other guy, but if you sit there and you watch a scoreboard and you repress clippings, too much of that stuff's going to get in the way. Like I said, you've gotten a lot of credit, the offensive line, Luis, I mean there's a ton of different places to give credit. What do you attribute such, I mean it never felt like the game was out of hand. I mean obviously I'm not on the sidelines with the championship on the line, but it never seemed like it was out of hand for you guys. What do you attribute the success you had in that championship game? Well I think we scored fast and I want to say we had, I don't know what the total number is, but we had two scoring drives. We scored on the first drive and I think we had a lot of success whenever we did score a touchdown. Our first drive defense went three and out against DC and then we went down and scored again. And so just the kind of the belief and just the trust in each other started rolling when you start that fast and the plays that we wanted, I mean the first play, Luis is getting sacked, he's got two guys all over him and he ends up scrambling around making a play gain a seven and it was just like the stars were aligning, just keep chipping away boys, it may not be pretty but just keep moving the ball Full circle moment for you obviously back with the original F L and 2020 and just stand in and I was there and it was chaos and you know, got Danny there chairwoman giving out the trophy, you have the rock giving Luis the mvp, what was it? Being there and having everyone experience that. I'll tell you what man, I'm not a guy to get real nervous before games because it's kind of like as a coach, you've done your preparation, you trust your players and you just want to make some adjustments as a game goes along. But I started thinking about this, I'm like 22 years ago I played in this, we won a championship, we had a blast, we had the best team in the X ffl in 1.0 in 2001 and I was like, this could be pretty cool. I could be the only person to do this thing and do a back to back with 22 years in between. And I started getting a little nervous like man, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity and then once the game starts you don't even think about it. But it was really cool to get a bunch of text messages from guys that I'd played with 22 years ago, Tommy Maddox, Josh Wilcox, Juan Long, a bunch of guys that I kind of lost track of. And with this game now happening, we're reconnecting and we're going to do a podcast on my podcast here pretty soon. And with that being said, we're going to be on ours and I'm going to have guys from our original X Ffl team on that one. So it's pretty cool to reconnect and see how much the game has grown. But you look back and you see the original X ffl, they had cameras on the sideline, we were micd up, they had cameras in the locker room and all that is what the game is now and it's all about making it more fan friendly and viewer friendly that they can see really what happened. So it was really a cool moment to be a part of it, both the first one, the second one even though covid hit and then to see the third one through its entirety. Well I was going to say I would to, might have to pick your Rolodex for some of these numbers, but if you're going to have 'em on the five and one that that's great. I was going to say yeah, if anyone ever replicates this, that would be something terribly wrong with the world to go back to back exit champions with another 22 years in between. No, I hope this thing's going strong and it does seem like it is. I know that they're talking about getting things cranked up in Arlington again in the hub with all eight teams back again. So it's exciting to see the growth and I think everybody's going to take a little here, I think everybody's going to turn their phones off this week might be kind of the end of 2023 and then put it to bed and then we got to start looking at guys for next season, guys that are going to N F L mini camps and who's going to rookie mini camps and all those things because we want to continue to build the roster. So it's exciting but I think we all need to take a little break, turn our phones off. I'm going to Cabo next week so I'm looking forward to it man. Yeah, so you said you're going to take a little break here. How quick then and you've coached, I mean how quick do you have to flip the script here? I mean you can't rest on your worlds too much. I think everybody wants to get a little bit of a break, get through the next couple weeks, see where things go. I think once things will start to crank up once you get into July and August again and see who's getting invited to N F NFL camps, which guys do we have an option to bring back next year who's available, which guys call it a career and walk off into the sunset after winning a championship, I'm sure we'll have a couple of our older guys on the roster bid, farewell and move on to the next phase of their lives and then we got to see what, what's out there, what do we need to put on the roster and then schematically, we always want to look to get better and what can we do and how can we go and grow and watch and learn and be better teachers and be better coaches. And so it's really an ongoing evolution as you prepare for the next season. How exciting, and we could have added 10 more here in the time that we're recording this, but how are we excited? Are you to see at least 15 guys so far getting signed to the N F L camps? Nah, it's really cool and I think the window is perfect. I know some of our guys got a little nervous because we're in the playoffs and they're seeing all these guys get tryouts and they're like, well wait a minute, how come I, I said hey, you got bigger plans and don't look at the short term look, this thing's a marathon not a sprint. So I know that there's some interest, there's some phone calls, our guys are going to do some workouts. It was hard when I coached in the U S F L last year, those guys weren't done till July and it was hard to make OTAs and make a roster. You see a ton of guys getting picked up for workouts and now getting signed. It's really exciting and that's what we want this league to be a league of opportunity and to turn around and see guys playing in the fall on Sundays in the N F L. That's awesome and that's what you want this thing to be. It's a platform for them to show their abilities but also go to the next phase of their career. We talked, you know were on preseason really excited. We talked to your transition from the U S F L here. What worked or didn't work? Well first off, what worked or didn't work from your opinion in the X F L this year? I think the thing that worked is everybody came in with the type type of mindset. Guys wanted to get filmed, they wanted to get on the field. It would've been nice for everybody on the roster to active game day and that was one of the things that the league did. They let everybody on the roster play in the championship game. I thought that's something that needs to be expressed to those that are watching the league. They may not know that there were six players each week that we had to put down and make inactive and they're not making the same money and so I think the league realized the more players we put on the field, the better the product's going to be and I thought that was a pretty exciting game in the championship. I know that we would like to get with other teams during pre-season. That was one of the things, we didn't have a pre-season game, which is why football was a little rough early on. You need to go through some of those line up against somebody in an opposite colored jersey. There's a ton of different things and I think we're going to learn from it. There's a ton of leadership in our league that has asked for suggestions and how we get this thing better but I think it's all in all a success and excited to see the growth of this league as it continues. Now that was going to be a follow up is do you feel like ownership and management, they are open to that, we have years of experience all this, but you get everyone in and trying to do a football league like this. Do you think that they're receptive to feedback that you guys have? I think so. They have been all year open to doing some different things with the roster and that's good to see from our leadership and really got a great relationship with a lot of the folks. I mean you look at Bob as one of the head coaches that has come back so I know he has some strong insight to what's happening with the league and where it's going so really feel like it, it's trending in the right direction and we got to continue to grow, we got to grow on the field, we got to get more players, we need to get more coaches involved. I think the audience was surprised and excited about what the talent was on the field. I think the ratings were pretty good in the championship game. Somebody just shot me a text that it was like 1.4 million viewers on abc so that's cool there. There's an appetite for this and this thing's going to grow and great opportunity for players, coaches, staff, trainers, equipment, everybody. I mean stadiums need people in the seats and people need something to watch in the springtime so it's a win and we hope it continues Preseason. You mentioned you thought the timing and here again the timing compared to the U S F L, that was one of the reasons why you wanted to go from the U S F L back to the X F L. Is that still, do you believe the X F L'S strongest selling point? Is it the collection of coaches and staff? You guys have ownership? What do you think is the X F L'S strongest position right now? What gives them that? I think everything needs to be centered around the players and when the players are leaving other leagues to come to this one because of the calendar, they really steer the ship viewership. Yes, I know it's tough Leading up and going against March madness it's tough going against the masters, it's tough against the derby and all those things but people that are football junkies, they're going to watch it. They love seeing it and these players need time to recover and get ready for N F L camps and that's hard to do when you're finishing a championship game on the 4th of July weekend. So I think if everything we do is based around the players then we're on the right track and so when guys are showing up and appreciative of the opportunity then we need to keep focus on that. In terms of the time you spent in Birmingham last year versus in Arlington, better, worse, what did you make of your time this year? Both great. Both really run at a high level. Loved working for Skip Holtz last year. Great football mind, excellent leader, first time coaching pro football and you'd never know it And working for Bob, I think just those two strong leaders who have a ton of success at the college level. It all starts with them but as far as both leagues both have great bonuses to it, great opportunities for coaches and players. So loved them both. It got a little bit toasty in Birmingham when we were hitting it in July. I will tell you that man that was starting to get a little smoky down there in the south during that time. But I guess we had to deal with the ice storms in Texas when we had camp so you got to deal with it in the springtime but both great opportunities. Love them both. In terms of moving into next year, you've talked you think having more active players, I had Cole Kubick on, he's talking, we got to get back kind of the team nine whatever with the X ffl getting met. What other changes if they called you up and said anything you want next year, what would you look for? Yeah, go ahead and double that Coach's salary, that'd be great. No, I think the more players we can get on the roster, the more guys we get in training camp, whether we can do a mini camp, those are all things that would be great just to be around the guys and I think having a basis going into next season, guys are going to have a grasp of what the schemes are. We have an idea of who we play. We had no clue what we were walking into week one against Vegas. I mean you try to look back at what history coaches have but some of those things and it's only going to get better. So the more players we have, I think by doing the hub really helped players get healthy. They were right there training with coach Tom Shaw and Tom Shaw is one of the greatest in the world of player development and so credit to him and his staff getting guys back on the field, that's a huge plus. So I think if we can have guys on the ready and that, whatever you want to call it, nine developmental program or players that you would release and they're still around nearby, it's only going to help because it's vicious in a 10 game cycle. It's an irregular calendar and so guys are going to get banged up it, it's the nature of the game. There was no bi-week and when you go five weeks of camp 10 in the regular season, that's a grind. So I would love to see a bi-week, maybe right in the middle you can rotate if two teams are off week 3, 4, 5, 6, however you do that. I know that prolongs a season a week, but we did have a bi-week before the regular semis and the championship game so I know it's all based on TV and that's the one that steers the ship. But I know we're talking and in discussions but loved every aspect of it and excited to see where it goes from here. Yeah, no you're the professor Andrew Murray. We were just talking and we on our recap from the championship of having the month of March madness that we were all so scared of. Yeah, take two teams every week, roll that bi week out, then you're only worried about scheduling the other three games and then people can, you know, pair it off maybe kind of like the C F L and give some bi weeks there in the middle. Yeah, I think so. And it's all about venue availability. I know that Seattle, where you're a fan of is had to deal with a couple Thursday games. That's rough. That's rough for guys. They had a rough go early on I know had some real short weeks and that takes a toll on guys. So it's something that there's a lot of different things you got to look at. If it was a perfect easy equation, everybody would be doing this. So we trust in the leadership, we look at where this thing's going a after year one. I'm sure there's some tweaks that the top of the league wants to have. Also, I'll let you go here, enjoy your vacation. Final thoughts, reflections. It's just exciting. Like I said, who woulda thought all year and you guys and just everything you went through and when they traded for Luis I thought this is not going to matter with all this is like it's good for him and I'm excited to see that. And then here being in the playoffs and the championship, tremendously excited. Anything else from you? No, it's, it's really cool to see a team come together. We were kind of the island of misfit toys for a while and we got it figured out and credit to Luis, he really came in and worked and the guys gravitated towards him based on his work, not what he said. And I know everybody sees the sound bites and this and that and the rah rah this stuff that's hardly him. He's in there putting coaches hours in. He's first in last out and that's how you need to be as a professional quarterback. He's got big goals. He's been in the N F L, he wants to get back and I think he showed everybody how to be a professional football player. This is not roll in at five minutes before meetings and leave at two o'clock and what are you going to do? I mean you're there to play ball and I think he really galvanized our locker room was a great coach on the field and so credit to him, he really did it in a short amount of time and you look and see how the team reacted to him. So credit to him, credit to all the guys that they just persevered and pushed through it and we were excited at the end of the year to say, hey, we've got a couple more points than those guys and happy that they can hopefully save some of that bonus money instead of probably most of it was already spent before we won. But happy for the boys, they got to drink out of the cup, we put the trophy to new use by tipping that thing upside down and drinking out of it. Kind of the Stanley Kish type of deal, like the great cup but awesome experience. Reid was fired up to be a part of this thing and looking forward to next season. I have one bonus question, I lied but that's exciting because we've had, we cover the C F L, we've had a lot of Jim Olens of the world and up there and yeah, what's the point of a trophy if you can't drink out of it? Well you guys, so you manufactured your own, I haven't seen videos of this. You flipped a couple over, you flipped the trophy over and drank out the base. Yeah, there was some guys being creative with celebratory toast in the locker room. So I'm sure something will surface here if you keep searching on some of the guys' IG feeds. There's some interesting people that were drinking out of the cup also in the locker room at the Alamo Dome. I'll make you do your homework man. Last thing. Do you attribute, obviously you being in this before Coach Stoops, the Hayes brothers, everybody else being able, just having that many kind of returning people in that fashion to be able to figure out this monster that is spring football and kind of the weird timing and just kind of everything that goes along with that. Yeah, I think it did help. I mean Bob's leadership was a huge part of it, but when you have multiple coaches on our staff, Tim Lewis who was the head coach in the alliance of American football, Jonathan Hayes who was the head coach at Seattle or St Louis, those guys and the background that they have, understanding how to put a roster together, how to manage practices, practice schedules, just play count. I mean all those little things that you think about and how much the guys can handle because it really truly was kind of putting together an all-star team for a number of months and the sooner you can gel and put a team together it it's going to show up on the field. So I guess it took us a little while. We didn't start figuring out till mid-season, but all those experiences definitely did help us. Well congratulations again to time X F L champion. Really appreciate it. Go enjoy your vacation and that I'm bald too, so make sure you put some sunscreen on there. So we got to Thanks Reid. Appreciate it man. Thank you. Well here we are back again. We've been through many different things with Jim Mullen here. We went through back with the X Ffl C F L merger talks and then when the C F L was going to get rid of the ratio and change to four downs during all the C B A negotiations. Jims been not, but we were, Jim promised hot takes today XE, L U S F L. Just because Jim, like I've said in the intro here, bit of involved in Canadian football for generations covering everything. We'll then transition into the C F L stuff and kind of getting our coverage there. Jim, how are you doing? Good, how are you? You're looking casual man. You're looking like you're in Margaritaville out there Is. Yeah, I got my mountain dude now I got my, no, this is the summer here at the Mark House. I sit out on the deck here. It's really nice and it's good. So Jim, we've talked a lot all the back through with Danny and Duane and everything talking with the C F L. You have now lived through the X F L. I mean we've done it, we've crowded champion. I was there. What did you make? X Ffl 3.0. I'm going to focus specifically on the championship game and quite frankly I thought in terms of presentation it was a bit of a wet firecracker. And what I mean by that is that for a championship game, I expect a level of energy to it. And maybe it's not to be placed on the xfl, maybe it's to be placed on the broadcaster in this case. But I just didn't feel the energy of a championship game. I didn't feel that E S P N A B C did the job that they needed to do in terms of camera angles, broadcast crew. It did flow to me. And so on that level I was disappointed. I I'm sure if the XFL could do it all over again regardless of whether or not St. Louis was in the final or not, they would've moved that game to St. Louis. And I probably see that in their future. The other thing with the X ffl is that this was a very, not Vince X Ffl and with Vince, that's where you get the firecracker quite frankly. And so I'm not sure if just as a casual viewer of that league, if I was with the Rock kind of being the mascot of it, I'm not even going to say that he was the operator of it. It was Danny and Red Bird and all of those other pieces that you had this expectation that would be, it would still be in that pocket, but it was nowhere near that pocket in terms of that level of energy overall through the year as a developmental league. I think they did an outstanding job. I think you're seeing the net result of that very quietly. Mind you, in terms of the transition of the number of players from the X ffl into N F L camps, I would suspect that you might see a number of those players back in the X ffl at some point in time, but they're getting their shot and that's the main thing here. And over the long term, that's the thing that's probably going to make the X ffl viable. If they can find viable markets to make some of their venues pop, never go back to Cashman field again. Well never go back there again. Well, We're taking season ticket deposit season two there. That'll be at least through two years I think we'll be a Cashman field. Well yeah, I remember it in minor league baseball of course. But maybe there's a different way they can configure that. Quite frankly, looking at Cashman Field and then comparing it to an empty stadium in the U S F L, I would take an empty stadium in the U S F L and because maybe I've been to enough low level spring games in my life and on the college side that I can be accustomed to that or maybe I've been to enough college games in Canada, then I can be adjusted to that. Yeah, in terms of everything, in terms of game presentation, I think it was very hit and miss for the X ffl. And one of the pieces that we were just talking about off air, if we want to get into the comparison of things, I put the question out there to people on Twitter, why is it that I like the u S Ffl better than the xfl? Not by a wide margin mind. I've got room for both of them in my life, but why is it, and it occurred to me just before we came on this, we're of two different generations. I liked the U S F L because the U S F L was in my life for three years when I was much younger and all of the excitement around that league, all of those brands, even though I don't like it when they call up the old U S F L in the u s Ffl broadcast. So some of those brands, some of that pattern, it's familiar to me and certainly they don't have the level of innovation that the X ffl has on the field in terms of some of the rules and it just plays better for somebody who's Gen X, like myself. And I'm sure Reid, that when it comes to the U S F L, seeing the Michigan Panthers doesn't fire you up because you remember them from the U first S FFL championship. I missed all that. I mean I was born in 86, so it doesn't do anything The death year of the F l that that's got something to do with it. The mark has brought it. I, I've been thinking a lot about this and I think, and I'm going to record with Mike here, we'll post these obviously out of order. But having spent the weekend with the US X F L people and we're on the sidelines and talking with people before the game and in the press box, I think that there was this expectation of what people had in 2020 and then who knows if that would've been sustainable. I mean, we don't know. And Vince was setting fire the money and we're burning through all this stuff. But that existed and people had expectations. I think that people in the X F L this year kind of know, okay, this is the budget we're working with, this is kind of what the stakes we're at right now. And I mean I think they, having lived through it for the year, take it very personally as a success, feel very much they succeeded in that way and for the metrics they have. And if it's what saying is true. I do think that they have succeeded in those metrics. It just happens to be those metrics are a lot lower right than what the X F L was. And my last point is with the U S F L, it they, they've somehow have been able to adopt this underdog mentality of we're the upstart String Football League. But yeah, you're owned by one of the largest conglomerations in all of sports media. I don't get that. Yes, it's A U S F L, but it is the smaller bank account of Fox back still. I don't know how they've been able to be an underdog in this being financed in the way that they are. All they've done is they've taken the story from the 1980s around the U S F L and without the star power on the field, they've applied it again to what they're doing right now. One of the reasons that the U s Ffl had a chance is because they signed the original one is because they signed a giant deal with a B ABC sports that people didn't expect that they'd have back in the day, and that put them on a pretty solid foot footing to try some expansion pieces and then they got two big for their britches and started spending money in the wrong directions. So that spring startup Underdog league piece fits with all of that branding that they brought from the eighties. They've just transported it over to, it's like a remake of a movie from the eighties, but It feels, you get what I mean, and I get all these people online that they're like, I go Fox Sports does not need, not that Redbird needs swag, but Fox Sports does not need you defending them in any regard. I mean, they have more money than every single, I mean they will be fine whether the US L succeeds or not. Well, I have to say I do like Fox Sports coverage better than what I saw in and around the XFL this year too, which is unfortunate in that when you have a product like the XFL that is trying more things, that is trying to be more innovative and you have a broadcast partner that isn't elevating that the way it necessarily should in comparison to the competing product, that's what makes it, at least from the outside looking in. A bit of a struggle for me to elevate the X ffl over the u s ffl at this stage, but I suspect in about three years we're talking about pieces of both those leagues function in one league that at the end of the day will be probably finally the path to successful spring football in the us. Yeah, you're not the only one that is, and I have many ESPN friends that have come on the show. You're not the only one that has said that they prefer the FOX broadcast over the ESPN broadcast. Yeah, well, I mean I have a show on T S N, which is 20% owned by espn, so to come out and say something like that, I mean it's a bit of a challenge for myself to say it, but I know what my eyes see and even though there's not unique U S F L branding within what FOX does, they still did a better job so far at least of packaging it up and I expect to see more electricity around the U S F L playoffs in the final than what we saw out of the X Ffl. Last question because I do want to get to C F L stuff. I feel it's fair to say a lot of C F L people felt threatened during all this X ffl stuff and the identities and our game was being questioned and we needed all of this stuff. I think the expectations were probably high that the XE L was going to come out and maybe from Canadian people or wrong, going to get 10 million viewers and at Marshall Ferguson's getting on there and tweeting, oh, this is terrible football. I'm like, it's the second week of an expansion league. I think you probably had a more realistic expectation of what it was going to look like both on the field and in terms of ratings. How do you think that it performed? When I look at where it's at right now, and I'm not sure if you got this impression from talking with X ffl people around the sidelines like you were mentioning. I think that they were willing to take a look at where they were in the football world knowing that the N F NFL is the major league, knowing that the C F L is AAA and they came in somewhere between single A and NAA and they're willing to work their way up. I believe that there's a larger game here and a longer path for them. This isn't going to be done in one year. This is not the aaf. This is something that has a strategy around at least a three year window and when we wake up at the end of that three year window, if they are sitting in a solid AAA position, then they're the ones that are going to carry spring football forward. How that has an effect on the Canadian Football League, well that that'll be up to the Canadian Football League in their minds to decide that. Now do they go more in with Canadians on the field? Do they open the market up? Because there were Canadians that have made it to both spring leagues. We just had Sidney Brown sign a 5.6 million deal in the N F L as a defensive back with 28 Canadians in the N F L. It never used to be the case in the C F L. We used to have all the best Canadians in the C F L, they're in the N F L now. N F L Canada is marketing those Canadians quite aggressively, so it's time for the C F L to keep an eye on what's going on down there, develop their own brand, work on what they need to sell, what they are, sell what they have. It's still the second best league in the world until someone proves otherwise. Well, and if nothing else, we've talked before on here and I think Dave Naer has been on this well talking that if there is more players that end up staying in America to get these positions looking more at the other Canadian players to boost them up, it creates more jobs across the board, whatever way you look at it, because the CFL is going to have to find more people to fill or the X F L us. It's overall across the board, it's elevating players on both sides to find more positions to play Well. I also think that what's going to naturally happen is that the typical C F L Edward's age will go up because you'll have younger players that have been cut off N F L rosters trying to dive in with the U S F L or the X ffl and get that chance because they see it as the shortest route back to a national football league camp and getting older players up here isn't the worst thing in the world. The only issue with it is that you have shorter careers and then you can't build brands up around the players that eventually end up here. But I do see that probably as a longer term trend if there is a successful league that operates in that spring space in the United States. So transition to C F L, obviously you're up there in bc. Exciting for the lions. We've had Vernon on here getting, it was a weird year last year and I think Vernon was very open in his interview on here talking about having to, I think he had three different places he was paying rent for and having to move and learn the new playbook and all of this stuff. How do you feel now? Vernon's in charge. We've got the arrow up episodes by Matt and Nick that I think are phenomenal. I text Matt all the time, I'm watching them, whatever the heck they were doing, buying Hawaiian barbecue or whatever and trying to do I film. I have been at many of the places, it's kind of like watching the Canadian documentary about my own backyard, but what do you make of the Lions heading into the season? Well, I think of Mark Oman's made a lot of the right moves considering that he probably had the single biggest challenge throwing his way out of any of the C F L teams, and that was losing Nathan Rourke to the N F L. I think the Lions handled that file well. I think Nathan Rourke handled that file well, and I believe that the lions won't be shy in promoting Rourke's involvement at the N F L level in the future so that they're going to turn that into a positive story about his origin in professional football. That's the way to do it now that that's the way the market is. I will say about Vernon Adams, he's always been one of my favorites, quite frankly, even though he's had issues with consistency over the years. I think that during the time where in his younger career here where he bounced around and maybe didn't have the focus and dedication that he should have, there was a season a couple of years ago in Montreal where he changed his attitude and he changed his focus and he changed his approach and he matured. He was one of those older players that I'm talking about that could eventually come to Canada. He's had that growth period though in the C F L and I, I'm really looking forward to seeing what happens with VA here. Got, I love his personality in terms of being the guy that you put on the poster and what he can lead with. I like how he creates excitement sometimes negatively, most of the time positively. I think in terms of what was available on the market, you couldn't find a better guy to build around to replace a guy like Nathan in this market. And I think there's a few other things that the Lions have done in regard to branding. I like what they've done with the new uniform or liked it better if they had a stripe on the helmet. That's who I am, but that's okay. I like what they've done with the uniform and the branding. I think it was a little overdue, quite frankly. And there's another piece in this, and I've been heavily involved in it and I'm not sure if anybody in the state side has picked this up, but I know a few outlets picked it up. Simon Fraser University is the only Division II team in Canada playing in the only foreign school in the ncaa. They made a decision to cancel their football program on April the fourth when all of the scholarship money is used up, these kids can't move, they can't transfer. There's the, there's transferable credits from Canadian schools to Amer all kinds of problems around that. So I jumped in and my Football Canada role and helped the alumni put together a media campaign that really took off. And one of the reasons that it really took off is because Mark Doman jumped on board and quite frankly, in terms of being a leader in the football community, a leader in bc quite frankly, to step up for these student athletes for this program and to literally put half a million dollars down to say, Hey, I'm putting this money down. We're going to raise some money. I'm going to step up behind this team. Time to bring it back, calling out the university. He was not afraid. He pinned his ears back. He was not afraid to call out Simon Fraser on this in the way that they made their decision. Like that galvanizes a community around you. At least it galvanizes the football community around you and it shows investment in the community as much as David Braley the previous owner, the late David Braley managed to keep the lions alive here for the better part of two decades. E even with David, we lack that presence in this market and that sort of energy that a Mars bringing, you can't manufacture that either. It comes from the person or it doesn't like you can't have spin doctors put that together. So given where this market is at with a failing hockey team, you wouldn't know anything about that in Seattle. You guys actually go to the playoffs after two years, a soccer team that is not on anyone's radar anymore because of their broadcast agreement with Apple tv. They've dropped off the map and their attendance has dropped as well. I think the BC Lions are in a position to really capitalize on this. If VA stays healthy and there's a good framework around them, the Lions could be a pretty good ticket this year in this community. Well, I, because I think it was last year, they kind of teased or we did a little bit of the Jersey stuff. I texted Baker, I said, I want to know when the Mark cast gets to the level when I get my own jersey sent to me because Donnie and Doll, they had him send and they're doing, I'm sure you have somewhere in the question, oh no, No, I don't skip the old stuff. I got an old helmet here. That's all I got. I said, want to know? They send me their junk. I think I got a sticker once. I think I got a sticker sent to me, but I said, I want to know when That's my New Year's resolution. This I want to get the bar cast to the level and the c F community where we get that. But I do, speaking of the Lions in Vernon, what's really struck me, and I know that Ottawa does the behind the R thing too, very different feel for the arrow up. I think that the Lions this year with Lucky and Keon and Vernon and they have such a likable group of guys and Dan Evans is kind of hanging around. It's such a marketable and I don't know if that's like we got some XM F L people in there. Lucky doesn't care and he's kind of going, just does whatever he wants to do. But it feels like you can build a lot around that in terms of is Trevor Harris the most exciting person in the world? You know what I mean? Cody's kind of got a little bit this way, but I think that whole Lion's offensive group has a lot of juice to them And if they perform even halfway up to the level of their personality, it'll be easier to sell tickets. The other piece around this in terms of the marketing piece is who is AMR going to bring in for the opening concert? I mean, that was a signal that concert last year where they got close to 40,000 and I'm not sure how many of them returned, but it created energy. It created energy around the products. So now the product is becoming the energy and that's really encouraging here. Right. Well also, I mean the fact that the Lions made it to the playoffs got far. It's like same with the Kraken. I think I've told, I mean I've talked with more people about the Kraken than the last month that are going to want to return to, oh God, I missed out. I didn't even know this was going on. And you know, want to get that in BC too. Well, they took Winnipeg and I don't know that was the best game in the world, I guess Winnipeg, but at least we were there. Well, the other thing too was Nathan Rourke's recovery. Through that I, that became a story in itself and the fact that he could have easily tapped out because he knew that there was N F L interest out there. He didn't have to come back and play in that game. He didn't have to risk himself, but he did. And that even though he is not on the team now, that makes people buy into the importance of what goes on the field in a C F L game. So I think there have been a lot of wins here for this team. A lot of it's been driven by ownership. I think this, you've mentioned some of the staff efforts. I, I'm really hoping that they amplify the personality of this team now, so the personality becomes part of the brand. We could go on a long time, but I don't want this episode to be 18 hours today. I do have a question for you though. McLeod Bethel Thompson's on this show as well. He right and very excited to talk with him just because we've tracked him for years. When he left the C F L, he wrote a really long verbose Instagram post and really thanked, really romanticized the game. When Nathan left, it was more of a, the C F L was a detour. I don't know if I wanted that, but I had to do that. And now we're here. Did how the two were having any thought about how the two different high profile quarterbacks decided to leave the C F L? Well, I think you're dealing with two individuals of different ages. That and M B T, he had more than a few years up here to experience that. And you've also got, as much as Nathan is together as an individual and is usually always on message, he's still a young guy. That's one of the reasons why the N F L's interested in him was because of his age. I think the one thing that we're seeing about McLeod though is playing in the U S F L playing in the Spring League. Remember I was talking about AA triple A single A? Yeah, here's a AAA quarterback showing that we're kind of high a long season if we're using a baseball metaphoric or he is head and shoulders above everybody else in that league right now. And I respectfully, I think if you put him in the xfl, he might be head, shoulders and waist above everybody in that league as well. So I'm happy that you have him on the show. I'm looking forward to seeing him. I'm not sure if your viewers are seeing me first or him for, I think I'm probably ninth in the batting order right now. Am I not? No, no, you're you, you're, you're going to lead in the McClouds if you have anything you want to McCloud, you can lead in here. Yeah, I'm Privileged. I'm privileged. And also by the way, wearing, wearing one of my favorite U S F L brands, the Boston, new Orleans Portland Breakers. They're not playing in New Orleans right now. Well Jim, I appreciate it. Now I am getting excited for the C F O. I've kind of lived through, it's been a lot of X ffl here since November with the draft and all that and getting through the C Great Cup and everything with the C F L. But coming back around, I'm excited. I got to figure out my summer wedding schedule, but we'll probably be coming up to bc. It's a little lighter this year. People were Covid Covid wedding happy last year, so I think I'll have a couple free weekends, so it should be good. Well and the other part is that I know I'm getting down for a Mariners game sometime this summer, so if you don't get up here, I'm going to be coming down and seeing you and Dorothy down there for a Mariners game. Well that would be good. We'll welcome you with Open Eyes Jim Mullen Can't football, can't what I say football president, football can that and then obviously host of a Crown grid Iron Nation on T S N. Appreciate it. Yep, thanks Anna. And I'm also on that IAF board too. Oh the i f Well this is a gentleman I've been wanting to talk to you since I saw him throwing a football around in the Alamodome back in the Spring league MCC Beth Thompson. How are you doing sir? Doing great. Appreciate you having me on. Yeah, we had on, who was it, Matthew Sexton a couple weeks ago we were talking old spring league stuff as well and the aviators and the Hughes and kind of everything else with that. You are in Birmingham now. How's your life going? How is McCall's life? It's really good man. I'm so happy to be here. The reason why we made this decision is for a family and I got my wife and my daughter here today, so we're planning to go to a Birmingham Barrens game tonight, have some hot dogs and watch some baseball and hang out with my beautiful family. So I'm a happy camper. How has the city of Birmingham feel like adopted you and kind of the US F L and everything else? Yeah, it's great getting to know the town. I'm a California kid, I'm a west coast kid, so Birmingham feels like a different world, but I really like a lot of people I've met and we've been hitting a lot of restaurants and trying to explore and get to know people down here. So every day's an adventure and appreciative of every moment I have and most of all I'm just happy to be with my family and spending quality time. It's awesome. Yeah, we'll talk C F L stuff. It is funny to me, just like I said, coming off the top with the Spring league and everything else now here you find yourself back in the U S F L, which is kind of begat from the spring league and all that. Is it weird kind of full circle and just how your journey has led you through all this stuff. It's crazy. For a long time I was jealous of other people's journey, other people that I felt like I could play better than and had different success in other leagues or got more kudos and as it happened the last couple years and I've really come into my own as a player and I'm just so appreciative of my journey and where my feet are and so appreciative of every opportunity I get to strap pads up and play football at a professional level and play football at the highest level. I'm just really appreciative and satisfied and grateful for every opportunity and just loving the team, loving the Breakers organization. I really love Coach Flip and the brothers I have in that locker room got a lot of really good men and just enjoying building those bonds and just being grateful playing the game I love on a weekend and week out basis. How has it been getting into the organization there? Paul Woods was on a couple weeks ago, I know he's helping to write a book about you and everything else. Talking about they said you were going to have to earn your spot that there was no guarantees coming in. What was it like kind of coming in as I don't talk to many people that are near my age and I'm still older than you, but you're on the other side of a lot of the guys on the roster? Yeah, it's good. It's good. You got a lot of young really good football players and speaking in the quarterback room you have two really good football player players in a que glass and Davis cheek and it was cool to come in and not get that special treatment just going in there and grind it out and throw and try to compete at a high level throughout camp and nothing was given. And it's cool if I'm not afraid to compete, I'm not afraid to throw with anybody and I learned something from those guys every single day. So I just love the game of football and the Breaker's organization is all about practicing fast and we're swagger and we're confidence and we want to play fast and we all love the game of football and that starts with Coach Flip. So it is different being on the older side of it and I get different questions or get different needlings from the young guys or whatever, but a wise poet one once said that AJ none but nu nothing but a number. So I'm just being a hundred percent where my feet are and just trying to play my best football if I can. Well, because I would think if I was a young player I would appreciate having someone in this, you know, do any of these spring football, it's such a, you know, got to come in and get your feet going, yo, I could see other people being, hey, this guy's coming in trying to take a spot. So just always interesting how all the different guys on the roster are going to take that. Yeah, for sure. There can be a moment where it's like, man, what are you doing in this league? You've got to already stab yourself in another league and now you're coming here to play. And the reason for that is just exposure and being with my family and I truly am an open book and I want to leave every place. I am better than I found it and I want to give more than I receive on a daily basis. I don't do this game for fame or for kudos or for anything else, but just chasing my best self and how I can help others along the way. So I truly am trying to give the most I possibly can to my teammates, whether that's helping out DBS or safeties with what I'm seeing there doing or helping out other quarterbacks of my position. I truly want to leave this a better place than I found it and I'm excited to do that on a day, in a day, day in day basis and earn people's trust and confidence that I'm a good teammate and I will do everything I can possibly to help them. How have you graded your own performance? Obviously numbers so far have been good, right Breakers and this will air next week, but Breakers undefeated at this point looking good. How would you gauge your own, how you've performed? Yeah, so far my harshest critic, I feel like our offense is really dynamic at this point. We have the potential of just going out there and dominating folks but we haven't done that yet and it's professional football so you can't just roll the ball out there and expect to, so I expect myself to play at an elite level and am I ever satisfied? Absolutely not. I find there's two or three plays in every game that I want back and I want to correct and this last game is no exception playing the generals. I felt like we came out sloppy and kudos to them, they're a good defense but we want to perform at a high level and when I go up there and have 70 snaps in a game, I want 70 unbelievable snap and that's why I'm playing the game is to chase this perfection and this it takes body, mind, and soul to play the quarterback position. It's an emotional, it's a physical and it's really a spiritual journey as well too. So I'm trying to find that secret sauce where I can just make every play work and be dynamic for 70 plays and so I haven't achieved that yet and so since I haven't achieved that, I'm going to go out there this next Sunday and try to chase it then and really enjoying that process. It's funny because, and I've heard the announcers and Kurt and everyone and obviously a lot's focus on your C F L background, but I mean you've played in many many different N F L roster and squad and we've talked about this spring league. Is it funny that kind of stigma's on you now or what do you make of that and a lot of the story around you being from the C F L? Oh that's for other people to tell that that's looking on the flip side. Maybe I'll get an announcing on that side and then it'll be my job to tell this story, but right now I just got to walk the walk so I don't mind it People, you can't control what people write about you, good, bad or indifferent, but you can only control how you take one step in front of the other and how you move on a daily basis. So just trying to move in the right way, fight the good fight and keep playing good football if I can for as long as possible. Talk about the talent level of not only on your team but the other rosters. Obviously we have other C F L guys even on the Breakers, but I've had people say, oh McLeod should just come in here and run circles around because it's all these minor league players but obviously there's a high level of talent whether it's the U S F L or the X F L. Absolutely. I mean there's good football players everywhere and that, and that's what the great thing is about this league is that they're more football there is, the more jobs there are in professional football, the better for everybody, the better the product's going to go, the better product's going to be. And to be honest, that's, let's be totally transparent, the better the NFL's going to be. We saw some sloppy football in the NFL last year and especially in the middle stretches because they don't have that middle class of the N nfl, right? It's really high paid players and then a lot of young rookies and college football just doesn't prepare professional football players. It's a different game. So the more opportunities there are professional football, the better it is for everyone and there's good football players everywhere obviously in these leagues it's a younger crop, you're not going to have the veterans of the CFL or the veterans of the NFL so you're not going to have that experience but you got good football players everywhere and anytime you get paid to strap it up and go play football, you better put your big boy pants on cause it's going to be a good matchup and that's what we're looking to do week in, week out. How hard was it to decide to leave the cfl? I thought you wrote a really touching post when you decided to go, we were covering the Great Cup when the Argos won back in November into Regina. What was it like to kind of say goodbye? It was tough, man. It truly was and I have so much love for that league that's such a historic league. That game is a beautiful game. It's a really, really hard game. I don't think people give that credit how difficult that game is three downs, 12 men on the field, three safeties instead of two really. It's a totally fluid game. The high motion, it's very complicated, very hard in the quarterback. It's a beautiful game and it challenges you in a lot of different ways because I believe that when people put their blood, sweat and tears into a single endeavor and it's done over 107 years or whatever the nine years, whatever the great Cup has been going, that stuff builds up. So there's a lot of kinetic energy just sitting in those games and in those stadiums and there's a lot of people that have poured so much of themselves into that game. I truly love the C F L game. I think it's a fantastic game, a fantastic league and so it was tough to leave and it was tough to leave my brothers in Toronto cause I built some really good friendships there, but this was the right decision for me. I'm so appreciative to be here. I'm appreciative for the U S F O for the opportunity and the coverage and I'm just loving playing football and be with my family on a weekend week out basis. It struck with me because obviously around the same time we saw the whole Nathan Rourke thing and he had posted and it was kind of the C F L was an unexpected detour I think was the wording he used and it just felt like to have that been juxtaposed with what you had said, it just really struck I think a lot of people in a positive way of just the reverence that you have for that. I think it was really well really appreciated. Thank you. Yeah, it's a beautiful league and I'm, I'm so grateful for my time in there. It tested me, man, it did not take it easy on me for five years they're really tested my medal and it made me become a stronger person, much less a stronger football player and I'm really appreciative of that forever. I will always be a C F L fan and I will always be a Toronto aau, so I really appreciate my time there and the brotherhood I built and I have so many lifelong friendships and so many memories, so much love for that league up there. It's funny because we talked now and obviously with you being in the U S F L, a lot more questions about you and the CFL and I think people think that you're coming in as this big star and obviously here with the Argos and winning the Great Cup, but you know, fought for everything that you had every year in the cfl. I mean it wasn't until year, year before last where you were even given that starting position that it wasn't like that. You were some bonafide mega hit star like okay, now he's moving on to the next thing. I mean you fought every month and every week up there. I scratched tooth and nail up there in 2019, even when I led the league in touchdowns, it's like, it's not like we had team success and it wasn't like it was an easy road to get there and I'm appreciative of that. I like that. I like that nothing was given to me and I like that the Argos challenged me every single year after that, bringing in the different competition the next year, different competition the next year and it truly made me earn it. And more than anything, it made me build an inner confidence and an inner fortitude and an inner idea, inner fortitude and an inner strength and who I am as a football player and who I as a man and forced me to become a champion internally right before I was able to horse that trophy last year and be given the keys the last two years with the Argos. So just appreciative for the whole journey. Don't second guess at all. I know my talent, I know my worth and that was built over time and I hope that I can share part of that and be a resource for others to chase their best selves and to chase their best journey and how they become better men and better people along with becoming a good football player as well. Are you excited to see the Argos with presumably Jack Kelly here as QB one? I'm going to be tuning in every game I can. I got so many brothers in that locker room, there's so many wonderful people there. I'll be tuning in and root my butt off all the way, so it'll be hard. It'll be different watching from the outside for sure, but just so much love for so many people in that organization. I'm so grateful for them and I'll definitely be tuning in and seeing how they're doing. A couple more here, I'll let you go. Enjoy a time with your family. I appreciate your extended time here. In terms of transitioning back to the C F L and obviously you've played before, did it take a couple weeks to get going again, like you said the C F L game, different wider space and the movement and everything else? Oh man, definitely. I would love to, I don't know, I'd write a book on it or do a podcast on it or it's just such a different game, not it's just simply the downs alone. You get three yards on first down, you're immediately in third and seven where you're in second seven up there. It's a pressure cooker, right? You got to get the first down right there. But then much less the safeties and the cfl. It's really boundary half free safety, Sam. So really three safeties on a string and how hard it is to track three safeties as it is two safeties down south. So it's a more rigid game now down south, right? It's a tighter windows it, it's a smaller field. Things happen fast. You don't get that yard off the ball that you do in the C F L. It's really a different game and if you put the Arena League into that mix, it's kind of the extremes on either side right now you're going down to 50 yards and 25 yards wide and only eight guys on the field. So I just think there's so many different ways to play the game of football. If you compare it to soccer, it's like foots all and soccer versus indoor soccer versus 1111 outdoor soccer and really great programs like Brazil and Netherlands and Germany, all these programs they build up from small three V three, four V four five, V five all the way up to 11 V 11 and it develops different types of skills and I think that's what the different games of football does. It develops different types of skills, different types of throws. There's throws that are made in the CFL that aren't made anywhere else. The quick out to the field when that corner's off is a 45 yard, five yard out throw. It's 45 yards to get five yards out there. You don't never see that down here. So I'm just so appreciative of all the different kinds of football and each one has its uniqueness and its own beautiful part. So it is just a beautiful game and I'm appreciative that I've got to play it this long and hopefully I could go on for another couple more years as well. Yeah, I'm always curious how you view as someone that's been in all of these, because we look at anything that's not N nfl, right? I cover like alternative football and we just mean that anything that's not the N F nfl, but then you get the Canadians get upset or whatever the USS F L or X F L, but it's all trying to give players like you and all your teammates. So these other opportunities, I mean, how do you view the alternative the football space with the C F L and the U S F L? See there's a big monster, right? There's so many different aspects of it. What I know is that the more football that's being played, the better it is for the game as a whole. That's what I do know. The more opportunities there are for players coaches, the more opportunity there are for players to sharpen their sword and to perfect their craft. And especially for the quarterback position, you have to play the game to get the experience, you have to be in the fire, you have to be able to feel the edge rush while you're trying to recover two or cover three. You got to be able to understand what does that zone, but it's feel like what am I hot off the front side? All those things only happen through playing. You can't get those reps in practice. So the more football is being played, the better the game of football is and the NFL is the big dog and the more leagues there are around it supporting it, the better product there will be in the N F L and the better that game will be played. So just the more opportunities there are for football, the better it is for the game. And so the more it happens, I'm all for it. How important it to have the support of obviously your family and I say putting up with this, I mean my wife puts up with a lot of stuff I do, but just supporting and being there and allowing you to live this journey out. Oh, I'm forever grateful. My wife Shanka, she's a champion. She has her own career going. She could easily be like, what are you doing? And kind of shut this down. But she believes in my journey and she supports my dream. So I'm just so appreciative that she's willing to come down, travel to places like Toronto or Birmingham and play this game. And that's what I don't think people appreciate is how much the family goes through For football players, football, it's a rollercoaster, it's an emotional rollercoaster, it's a dedication. It's the amount of time alone that you push into it, much less the emotional investment you're riding the highs and the lows of wins and losses. When you see someone make a great play in football, it really is a community behind them. It's mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and wives and children supporting them and letting them chase their dreams. So I'm so appreciative of my wife and my daughter and letting me play this game that I love and hopefully when I play well, it's a reflection on how well they've supported me and I'm just ecstatic to be able to do it and do it in front of them and with them along my side. Finally here, kind of moving forward, obviously the goal is always to continue on and the word leaving the C F L was obviously to be closer to your family but then also continued to pursue an N F L. Has that changed at all? What are your thoughts with that? And especially how you performed here in the first half of the season? Exactly what you said, right? Who knows? Obviously it's here to go win a championship. That's the biggest thing is go beat the Memphis Showboats this week and then keep that streak going and win as many as we can and win this championship here in the U S F L. That's the goal. We want to play at a high level and then who knows after that? I'm so fortunate to be at a point with my journey where I truly am chasing my perfect game. I'm truly chasing brotherhood in the locker room and then how can I perform at that elite level? So a hundred percent where my feet are and whatever comes out of it, heck yeah, I think I got some more football in me, but I'm not worried about that, not stressed about that and truly appreciative of this opportunity and chasing my best self along the way. Yeah, living in the moment here, it's cool just to think of everything you've accomplished and the C F L and the different records and history and you being a part of all of that is it is got to be pretty cool here. Sitting at here in Birmingham now moving on with The Breakers. It's been a crazy journey and I've loved every moment of it and it hasn't been easy, but hopefully it keeps going and I'm just, hopefully it means something to someone and is inspiring along the way and I'm just appreciative of all the relationships and the people I've met along the way. Well, Macon, I appreciate it. Like I said, I remember back the first, yeah, we didn't watch the cfl and I remember watching the aviators game and I thought this guy kind of reminds me of John Moxley, the wrestler, I don't know if you know him, kind of a carefree intellectual but kind of hard worker. And I told Paul, my old co-host, I said, this guy is kind of, he's got a little spunk to him. We watched that whole first spring league and covered the shutdown and everything else. It was a wild time and it, it's cool to come full circle now and get to talk to you here. Awesome. Well I appreciate your support and keep feeding into this game and doing it the right way and doing the coverage. If you're not, we're appreciative over the coverage as well and we understand that it goes hand in hand with playing and media and how they can support each other and expose each other and get these stories out there. So keep shining the good light on everything and speaking positively about all these things and these people chasing journeys and chasing their dreams. Yeah, like I said, the more football's out there, the better. It's for everyone. So I appreciate you doing the coverage and feeding into this beautiful game. Well you go enjoy your time in Birmingham. We were there last year, it's delightful. And go have fun at the movies and thanks again for your time. Will Do. Appreciate you go breakers. Well, I'm excited to hear a couple reasons post-season catch up a St. Louis Battle Hawks player obviously, and then talking t Trey Watson, the signings of the cleats, everything for charity today. How are you doing sir? Doing great man. Having a good time being at home for the off season. How you doing? We're good. Yeah, we're done with the championship game. I was in San Antonio, got home late. Like life for you right now. You said you're back with your family Back home in Tampa. Man, really just the first focus is trying to get healthy. I was in the C F L and then came right into the X F L, so I played two seasons in a calendar year. So body's a little banged up, but trying to get healthy first and then go from there enjoying some family time while we're at it. Talk about obviously, and you were with X F L back right? In 2020. Okay. Coming back, what was it like kind of coming back this time? It was great, man. I looked forward to it. Obviously, besides everything getting cut due to covid, all my memories from 2020 were so positive and things were really going in a great direction. So this time around it was really just more the same. Got to play with and against a lot of my teammates from 2020. So that was really cool, seeing all these familiar faces, guys still being able to play three years after what happened to us. So from that perspective it was really exciting. And then just the season itself was wonderful just from start to finish. We cover obviously the C F L as well on here. What was that transition? I mean obviously you played here, but then going up and coming back, what was that? It's extremely unique. I think being a guy who's trying to work your way back to the nfl, you have to have to get in where you fit in. And when Covid happened, there really was nothing else besides the C F L. So in 2021 I went up there and I went up there again in 2022 and bounced around a little bit, had some interesting things happen up there, but it's very unique being up there. Obviously, you know, talk about it on social media and things like that a lot, but just as a player you have to adapt to so many different things. Just even from as simple as currency exchange, so many different factors that come into that. Having a home base here down in the United States while playing up there, there's a lot of different factors. So it was nice to be able to come back down. You kind of eliminate a little bit of that hassle. So from that perspective, I was really happy to do that. We've started seeing a ton of signings coming out this week. Player signings, I was looking at your Twitter and we're my quarterback, C Dragons bending. She getting signed already. Looks like running into trouble with Sean Peyton over there. But how exciting is it seeing, and obviously you're on the lookout as well, just seeing all these guys get opportunities here after the season so quick after the season. It's great, man. It's what we all work for and you just can't help but be happy for guys. One of our teammates in St. Louis, Lucas, Dennis, I played with him all the way back in 2019 in the Shrine game and then follow his career and when Covid happened, I don't think he was playing at all. Then he goes to the indoor football league in Massachusetts, comes right back here, plays in the X F L, and now in a span of a year and a half he's gone from the indoor football league to signing with an N F L team. Again, that's an amazing story. That's just not something that you see very often and that's a testament to his hard work and all these other stories of guys doing similar things. It's great to see Spending time, obviously with the battle hawks. What was that like both just on the team and then obviously in the great city and fan base? It was a lot of fun, man. I think when they called me and told me I was going to be on the team, I was so excited just because I remember how unique the St. Louis atmosphere looked from afar and I had a couple friends who were on that team in 2020. So I really looked forward to being able to experience it in person and it was everything I expected. And then some, I think the energy, the fan base brought each and every game, even during the weeks man on social media and just seeing how much they loved the game, how much they had a passion for the city and for us being there and then the way they were able to support us each and every week. It was pretty awesome. Well, it must have struck a chord with you. Obviously you're doing your fundraiser here, charity. Talk about the inspiration behind the cleats. I know you have some of the cleats as well to show off that you've autographed, talk through that. Yeah, absolutely. So style and swag and stuff, that's part of my passion and I was able to make that come to life this season with some of my cleats. It's pretty crazy. I was mentioning how the passion that the St. Louis fans had, one of them actually just hit me up on Instagram, man, and he said, Hey, if you have some cleats, could you send him my way and I'd make a custom for you. And he's actually a local St. Louis artist named Brock Seals and people hit you up on social media all the time and most of the time, you know, really think nothing of it, especially when they're soliciting things like that, just out of nowhere, not asking for money and things like that. I didn't think anything of it, but I said, Hey, I'll try it out. And lo and behold, it turned into a great partnership. He made four amazing pairs of cleats for me. So right here, this was the very first one that I got made for our home opener in week four. Pretty cool shoe. Got the Battle Hawk wings on there and then as soon as that game ended, the first text after the game was, Hey, you want to do another one? Hey, you got some more. And then it turned into a season long thing. So I have a pair of Travis Scotts that I got to wear a couple times, those are pretty cool. Some Dior one Lowe's, which are, everyone wants those, they're not in my budget, the real shoe anyway. And then got to finish off the season in week 10 with the Kobe's. So what I took from that, obviously I got to enjoy having some pretty cool stuff and I got to make some amazing memories each and every week that we played in St. Louis. So the whole concept for doing this charity auction was how can give off what I've been essentially blessed with and those experiences, how can I translate that into someone else's experience through the game of football? And there's no better place to start that than with youth sports and being able to give kids opportunities to make their own memories and find their own path, both on the football field and off the football field and working with the media department and everyone in St. Louis, they brought this organization to me and said, Hey, they've been around for such a long time, the Matthews, Dickie Matthews Dickie Boys and Girls Club of St. Louis. And they said, Hey, they do amazing things through football being able to help, I think they have 20 plus teams worth of kids that they're able to sponsor. So this was just a small way for me to be able to give back to them. I said, Hey, I know St. Louis fans would love these cleats. I'm sure collectors all around the country would love them. So maybe this is a small way that I can help create these memories for another kid through the game of football. Cause at the end of the day, that's what it's all about. And as much as the fans appreciate us and they say how much they enjoy games, it really does mean a lot to guys like me. I don't take it for granted that 35, almost 40,000 people showed up to watch us play each and every home game. That's really special. And when a kid comes up and asks you for an autograph and things like that, it really does mean a lot really for me, just as much for them because only so many people ever get opportunities like that. So I really appreciate each and all those moments. So I'll obviously put the link in the YouTube, everything the GoFundMe will go through next Friday, this will air this week and then there'll be another week to do that. Bidding seems to be going well already. I went on there and kind of check that out. How cool is that? Just to see that this is resonating obviously with people, you're trying to put positive energy out there. It's remarkable man, because even with having the idea, having a great organization to do all these things with, it still has to be executed by individuals out there who are willing to put up that money and help support. So even just last night I wanted to look for the first time and see, and bids were over a hundred fifty, a hundred seventy five, two hundred plus dollars. I started doing the math. There was already, I think $700 total in committed money for the Boys and Girls Club. And that's just awesome, man. It shows that people care and it validates the whole point behind doing this is to be able to help other people. And it is, it's all coming together. Well, What I like about it too is the X F L and obviously you spent time in the C F L we talked to, is that more of a connection that the fans have with the teams and they do feel like that kind of partial ownership of especially St. Louis, like this is our team, I spent time in DC this year for a game as well. These guys and girls and kids and whatever they're watching you guys, it is just different than the N F L. It's a different level of commitment and I think that you giving back in this way is really exciting and obviously the Battle Hawk fans or whoever, but I would imagine probably st. Some St. Louis guys want those cleats. No, absolutely. It's a unique perspective not being in the N F L and not having teams that are have hundred plus years of history. Even college sports have that as well. So I definitely got to experience that a little bit in the C F L. You know, have unique places where they have unique attachments to their teams and they develop their own energy for that. And the X F L has done that as well. DC like you mentioned with the lemons and the beer snake and all those things like that, all those little traditions, those are all developed naturally among small groups of people who said, Hey, this is coming to our city. It means something to us. And you know, see it translate when they show up for those games. And that's what St. Louis did for us. So it is definitely awesome to see, and this is just a small way to be able to reciprocate that back. Looking here to the future, obviously trying to get to the next steps, how would you look back at your time in the X F L here in 2023? Really it was just a blessing overall, man. I think I came out of Canada extremely frustrated with my 2022 experience just because for the first time my career really? Yeah, really ever I got hurt and it wasn't just, hey, I'll be back next weekend, it'll be fine. It was, Hey, I actually have to figure some things out. So it was almost a bit of a gamble to go into the X ffl when I did. But fortunately Dave Bowler and Coach Beck and Donnie Abraham gave me a chance and I was able to make the team and contribute. Maybe not in the way that I would've been if I were fully healthy and felt the way I wanted to feel. But at the end of the day, the experience was great from start to finish. My teammates were amazing. The league is as a whole was just enjoyable and that's what you want. It's hard to get sometimes as a professional athlete, it's so business oriented and it's extremely transactional from the player perspective. You know, can be signed, you can be cut, you can be traded, you can be all the same, literally any given day of the week. And you see it happen so often. So you sometimes lose the personal aspect when you're going through these different leagues and things like that. So really just thankful. At the end of the day, man, I enjoy being able to contribute. We had an amazing season ended really, unfortunately I'm sick that I wasn't be able to or wasn't able to be there for that second Seattle game, but family comes first so we were enjoying a wedding during that time period and the chips fell where they did. But at the end of the day, man, it was just a great experience. Last question. We had Cole Kuk on this episode as well, talking from ESPN and he had really high remarks talking about Coach Beckton, everybody from St. Louis, we were kind of running down coaches that impressed. What was your thoughts just on the staff overall that the Battle Hawks had starting with Beck all the way down that have working with you guys? I think they were great man, top to bottom, you know, had so many guys with not only just football experience but high level N F L playing experience, all pro pro Bowl type experience, you know what I mean? From Coach Donnie to Coach Pro, coach Beck to obviously Coach Glove was a Pro Bowl lineer for the Cowboys. So you have all these different names and I left out even some more, but you have all these different names and they really came together and just made it enjoy an enjoyable experience when you're building a team from scratch and you have what, three and a half weeks to form a team. They did a great job of doing that and we went through some things throughout the year as any team does, but I'd say even more so this year and create a relationships that'll last beyond just this football season. So for that, I commend them and would play for them any day I encourage anyone, go check out the GoFundMe. Cool X Ffl memorabilia cool to sports memorabilia across the board. Appreciate it Trey. I think it's really cool and obviously best of luck with everything that comes next, but I know that we've talked about St. Louis is loves you guys and kind of overwhelming me response. I'm excited to see that continue. Absolutely. Thank you. I appreciate it ma'am. Huge special thanks to all of our guests, all seven of them coming on today. Obviously Mike Mitchell working in time with his family work, everything else Mike has going on, super appreciate Bill Shaa taking time, talking through his article, his thoughts on the X F L and the U S F L as it stands right now. Cole Kubick making time through all of his radio shows and everything else, his appearances and then obviously Jim Mullen really appreciate that and Jim helping us, like I said, kind of turn the page, getting back to C F L coverage here and I'm finishing up the U S F L, but getting through coverage here into the summer, really appreciate McLeod taking a lot of time on his day off, spending time with his wife and child taking time to come on the podcast. And then Trey Watson, I think that's great. What Trey's doing, the X F L. I've always said this a little bit more like the C F L. We are working with the communities, the fans, getting them involved and I think it's great that Trey had such a good time in the X F L with the battle hawks that he wanted to give back to the city there. So should do it for me today. I know it was a long one getting back into everything else, U S F L and C F L, but I hope this episode kind of can exist for a little while here. Little evergreen, full XFL 2023 season review and what do we make about that? A plane is flying overhead, a helicopter of some sort. So I will get out here like and subscribe. Take care.

XFL 2023 Championship Weekend: What Did We Learn?

Well here we are back. I'm in Seattle. You would know that from the sun. Don't normally rock just the tank top on the podcast, but got back to the house about two 30 in the morning back here at 9:00 AM Pacific. No days off here. I know listener Jared has it worse I think still in Houston. Jared, if you're listening, call in. I'll we'll do a stand by here later in the show, but busy times. Another busy guy I have, I was just drinking Rinder Bach with him on the Riverwalk not 24 hours ago. Andy Murray. How are you doing sir? I was about to say, did I see you somewhere recently? I'm not sure. I can't quite remember, but it's been quite the rollercoaster. I'm glad that you were able to get out. I've been hearing the same thing. It's been a little bit of a cluster for some people trying to get out just out of the Texas area, so I guess escaping is a victory in itself. Yeah, just sharing this a little, Jared, we, Jared was on the Alamo tour with us. Jared stuck at the airport that had to sleep at the Houston airport, so I know I was at the San Antonio airport with the mayor and with Haley from the Sea Dragons and Haley tweeted out walking out of the Sea Tac airport at 1 45 in the morning after being delayed for four hours following the X Ffl championship game. It was really the kind of cherry on the top. I don't know if that was an insult to me like, oh, I got, my last moments were with Reid walking out of the building, but that was good. I will say though, what and we'll get to all the ex exit championship stuff today. Jenna is checking in here. Good morning from Southern California. Greatest thing today and I mean this waking up about 45 minutes. Go to just the wall of this player. Signed this player, signed this player signed. We have six players so far signed from the X Ffl. Haley had hinted at that last night we were talking because obviously the Ben Ucci comment came up and she said, yeah, there's wouldn't be surprised if we had some more here rolling out. It's really just day one they're able to sign. Now I know we had a bunch of camp tryouts and everything, but May 15th is the day that they're able to do that. Andy, what did you make of the signings? I'll pull up real quick. We'll get to all the championship stuff, but we'll pull up analysts, Exel analysts, tweet just because he's got the most concise thing. Ucci to the Broncos, Barry Wesley to the Falcons, Bryce Thompson to the Dolphins, all those from Seattle. Jaquez Patrick to the Broncos from San Antonio, Lucas Dennis to the Falcons from St. Louis and CJ Brewer to the Buccaneers. Yeah, these are some solid picks up pickups already. I already like Ben De Nuri, obviously one of the most talked about players in the entire season. A lot of people that even N F L fans are already familiar with. Obviously with his time with the Cowboys already playing a primetime game, I think the Broncos is a great fit for him just because their quarterback depth has been a little bit lacking in the last few years. Even behind Russell Wilson, it's not always been the most outstanding. One of our colleagues, Matt Nagashima was pointing out that GU Garrett, or sorry, Jared Guano was one of the third stringers and he specked up light last season and he's not necessarily guaranteed a roster spot. So I think DeNucci has a really good chance coming in here at camp and making an impression with this coaching staff and I mean look, if Sean Payton likes you, that's a huge deal, right? Sean Payton clearly being interested in X F L players, he picked up two of them already, so that's says a lot. If Mr. Payton is already in interested in you Jacquez Patrick, I said it during the season, Jacquez Patrick should have been starting from day one for San Antonio. Caitlin bla is fine, but Jacquez Patrick was by far the best running back option for that team. The Broncos, again picking him up, that's wonderful for him. See if he gets some burn. I love Barry Wesley going to the Falcons, giving a little more lined depth there for an offense that's trying to p piece itself back together. Obviously they're sort of a rebuilding operation. Bryce Thompson, that's awesome. For the Dolphins look, I mean we don't know the status with someone like Xavier Howard or some of the other defensive pieces in the backfield. That's great for them. Lucas Dennis, also the Falcons, that's good. So two of these teams picking up two players already, so are multiples of Expel players going to the same team, which is also great. And then CJ Brewer going to the Buccaneers, which traditionally has had pretty good defensive lined depth but they're also kind of in a transition period now from Tom Brady era. So yeah, I'm not surprised that these signings are coming in. I expect more to be the case just even by noon Pacific time today because look, it's all the gates are open now all these guys can start signing. It's not just camp invites. Obviously the championship players now have more free reign. The Arlington and DC players will start to see flooding in here, so yeah, I'm not surprised by this so far. I was looking to find, and I'll just pull up his Twitter because I was trying to find, Matt must have posted it as a comment on one of 'em over here, Matt Lyons where he said if I had a nickel for every time, what was it? Every time a Denver Broncos signed the Seattle quarterback, I would've two nickels, which isn't a alive but it still is interesting. So Matt doing the Lord's work, Matt's writing these articles fast and furious out for with Mark over at New Sub, so go check that out. All the new sub guys. Obviously the work doesn't stop now. I know Greg Parks is going to be doing that as well, tracking all of that. So it's just exciting. Like I've said, and that is kind of the one thing right now, U S F L brass really holds firm and obviously I want players to succeed from any league, but I feel like I was wrong last year when I thought the April to July was the better timeframe. I think this will be much better and hopefully getting players in May versus July, a chance to get assimilated with the training camps and all of that. Any other updated thoughts on that and then we'll get to some comments here before we go to the recap. No, I agree. I think just having a chance to get in the building early and really being able to learn the playbook and be able to practice with some of these other players that have been drafted. The undrafted free agents, some of these other people who have been signed the mini camps, OTAs are really important, crucial period. They may not be as important for some of the veteran players. The established stars don't necessarily have to be there. It's more important for people who are trying to establish themselves and just trying to get their footing in this league. So yeah, I think the timeline from that standpoint really helps them as far as being able to have that knowledge going into training camp in July and then preparing themselves for preseason action, which obviously is going to be pretty busy for all of us because now we have just a slew of players to follow now X F L and U S F L both and maybe some C F L players mixed in there too. I F L, I mean there's just the more these leagues happen, the more players and more persons that you get familiar with, the more you start to follow and really invest in some of these preseason games because it's like, well I've watched a lot of these guys play now, not just these aren't just some college player from some community college or some division three school that I didn't watch during season. No, these are guys that played real professional football in a lot of different leagues or maybe just your, you've seen them on tv. That's what I'm saying. They've gotten the exposure so yeah, it starts to become more important that way too. Yeah, so we have here jj kk, Bob Suits the president. We have a lot of Arlington obviously Jenna. Jenna told us all year she said the Arlington Renegades will win the championship. My congratulating Jenna so excited. I mean Jenna obviously Covid and I know Jenna, it was hard for all of us back with all that. I know that Jenna has been cursed with her love of the Red Blacks, the Buffalo Sabers and the N H L not always doing the greatest, so obviously the dust cowboy, good to see an Arlington franchise actually winning a title. Someone posted the Drake showing this is what you do for the playoffs, this is what the Arlington Renegades need to show and James Baker a complete turnaround from week one, so lots of comments here. I'll keep flashing some more up. We'll get to the game we did our live show if you haven't seen that, obviously encourage, I think we have 1800 viewers now. It's never as good as I want. It's never as you know, bad as I fear, but it was good. What did you make overall San Antonio hosting? I don't know if we will ever do that again just because of the outlash from St Louis and all that, but what did you make of just the weekend as a whole? I love that I finally got to experience San Antonio. What a great town and just historical vibes. The atmosphere, the river walk was wonderful. The people were friendly. I really enjoyed San Antonio. I've been wanting to go there for so long, not just for football reasons, just to go there in general. I've really wanted to experience it. The thing I take away from it is that it doesn't feel like a Texas town. Does that make sense? It feels a little bit kind of removed from just the normal, I guess my premonitions of what a Texas town would be and I've been to Houston, I've been to Dallas, I've been to San Antonio. The only big one I haven't been to yet now is Austin. But yeah, no, San Antonio was a great hosting site. The Elmo do was awesome. Great venue. Again, like I said, just the overall atmosphere of the entire place was fantastic. I think for hosting a championship game, I think it was a grid pick. It was a very solid pick for the first inaugural game we were talking about on the stream. What are some other venues? One that I should have mentioned that I think will definitely be a play later on outside of St. Louis. It's probably Orlando. I would think that Danny Garcia wants to get in our hometown. That's going to be a huge, huge get for her if they get into Orlando and are able to sort of start the fill camping world stadium, which this, I assume they were going to use that stadium. But yeah, no really impressed with San Antonio. I loved it. I enjoyed it so much and I'm glad we got to do the river tour as well. We did that after the game too. That was really fun. Yeah, well Andy, I'm putting up here. James Baker, the only one like Kevin Anderson, I forgot, I didn't mean to put this one up right now, but yeah, it was weird. Kevin I think was just kind of the locker room leader for the Renegades. I think more of kind of a coach mentor at this point. Anything on that? I was going to pull up our wonderful Alamo tour picture that we did. I don't think I showed this during the live stream. I don't know if I have the ability to do that, but obviously you're yourself and we had Anthony here, we had Fran over with our Sport Central. We had listener Nate and then Jared who is currently stuck and so you had lots to do. Orlando feels far right. Texas feels centralized. I imagine if it wasn't the rugby game going on at Choctaw, it probably just wouldn't have been at the hub there. It is a little more spread out. I do San Antonio that you can stay near the river walking, everything's really there. I mean you even talked about that, the kind of walkability of that and getting fans in because I was surprised that we were surprised to see a lot of DC fans traveling in as well as obviously Arlington coming up from Arlington fans coming up from Arlington to San Antonio. The proximity was great and also the amenities were really important. I mean the Alamo Dome was an 18 minute walk from my hotel. The river walk was a five minute walk. The airport was really not that far away. I took the bus in and then I took an Uber back and it really was pretty seamless. Honestly, getting an out was really easy and for me that's becoming more and more important. As I get older I really start to criticize and look at different venues and think, okay, what's around the stadium? What's going on? Is there something you can do and how hard is it to travel there? That matters a lot for, look, we're all maniacs here. We all follow this religiously. We are the niche of the niche because there are more casual people who need more, they need more if they're going to be attracted to that location and to that venue. So I think for San Antonio it was great because just everything was so close to there. Really what I took away from it is just how much that town transformed over the last 50 years in after the world's fair in, what was it, 1968 and a couple of the other historical facts we learned, but just everything is just so close proximity, which again is awesome because now it's easier for people to use it as just an example of keeping everything tight and everything in close proximity because the farther you have to travel. So I think the more cumbersome it is and some people don't want to deal with that. I get it. Like I said, that's something that I always think about every time I travel somewhere. Okay, how much time does it going to take for me to get to this spot over here and then have to go from here? Just logistics are important, they really are. I could see them wanting to do field in the future, but again, east coast really far, WWE has various results because it is a very similar vibe eventually. I know they did the media day on Friday, but the vibe is you get everyone in for the weekend, you do the game Saturday, you get people in Friday, you do the game Sunday, whatever, get people in and wwe, we did New Orleans, that was great. They get everything kind of in proximity there when they do it in LA or New York or it's a little more spread out so it really is good having those central locations. Like I said, Orlando, there's tourists you have to do. That's just far. I mean it's good. I think they did the best this year. I know they were worried. We had weather concerns, flash flooding concerns all weekend and obviously that wouldn't have affected the game but kind of the crowd without in the tailgates. I know Jason had the live check-in from the show with the tailgates, did you happen to see any of that walking over because I kind of Ubered right into the press box to go up inside. Yeah, I scanned around, I walked to the stadium but I walked around some of the parking lot. I think by that point it had dispersed and a lot of people had started to move on in. I'm not sure if that was because of potential weather, but actually it held up the entire weekends. But there was always kind of that ominous thought of, all right, is it going to start raining? Is there going to be thunder and lightning? I don't know but yeah, most of the tailgating we saw was on your live stream. I did not witness that personally when I walked in I was sort of taking care of some other things before I started my way over to the game. We were Tired. We were Tired. Yeah, it'd been a long weekend. So I asked the question on the stream prelims have come out, it was like 1.34 for I believe the third hour of that showing. It was a 1.25 and it was like a 1.23 and then the 1.34, we'll see if those get adjusted up. The U S F L ones got bumped up. That was about in line with what I would expect. I mean I wouldn't say there was tremendous interest. I spoiler alert, I can kind of gauge with viewership on the YouTube channel. We went to the gray cup when we're shooting up 10,000 views during the game, I'm like okay, this is probably going to rate really well tomorrow when the ratings come out just correlate so there's more people who you're getting a fraction of those. I could see the numbers we had watching from the kickoff show versus the championship game. It kind of in line, do you feel like we made it or we just made it to the championship game here? I think we made it to the championship game. I think that's the overall impression that I get As far as the ratings go, I mean I think now people are going to compare it to the U S F championship game ratings from last year, which we're better, but I think that's something to consider as far as what is the threshold, and this is a conversation you've had. We've had a million times. You've had it with Ben Fisher, you've had it with other individuals who cover the league extensively going to be continued to be talked about as far as the exposure and what kind of interests you gauge. It is interesting though, at least from what we've gauged so far. I think that people who did watch it, I think were engaged with it, but getting those numbers, again trying to attract that casual audience. I mean I had a couple of my friends who did tune in and watch it and I think I value their commentary too because they don't follow it so religiously. I do talking to people who are not as in it as we are because they have a different perception and they have different knowledge and they have different expectations. I think that's something to consider as well. So how are we going to gauge getting those casual audiences involved and based on the numbers, I think the X ffl would be the first to say these aren't exactly what we want but we're encouraged by the baseline level of interest. But yeah, to answer your question, yeah they made to the championship game. You can't just say they've made it because there have been leagues who survived three or four years and then folded. I think that getting here I think is huge. We talked about it on the stream. I think the bi-week hurt a lot of that. I just don't know if there's enough. I don't know if there's enough you can do. I think needs to be, and I think it was Anthony, forgive me if it was you, but on the stream, do the bye week that first week of March madness, take a hiatus if we're going to do a bi. I don't think if you're not going to utilize the media week ahead of the championship game, I just don't. I think you lose any and all momentum in that way. Any different thoughts about that and then I've got the game stuff here we can pull up. That's tough. I mean you need a bi-week because 12 straight weeks of playing football is tough for teams that actually make it that far. That's really tough, but taking a break at all, I think I came up with the idea a couple of months ago, I thought about this, I didn't think I've said this on the stream. I would do bi weeks for every team every week or so. You have two teams that are able to do it. I know with you can figure it out with the TV schedule but I was thinking somewhere between weeks, maybe five to seven or four to eight or something like that. You have two teams that take off a week each week so then each one of them has a chance to rest up and then later on you start to get into, okay, do we take another bi-week for the media or do we just get straight into the game? I think that would help a lot. Just have a mid-season like N F L teams do, right? Kind of have this four to eight weeks. Okay, let's recalibrate, let's, let's reassess, let's see what's working and what's not working. A team, a team like Arlington could have used that. A team like Houston could have used that maybe San Antonio. I think there are teams that could have benefited from having my week of just saying, okay, let's slow down and see what what's going on here. I think that to me would be the move is having a set of weeks, four weeks where two teams get a bi-week each week and then everyone's had their rest Kind of a rotating C F L does that obviously with the nine teams and every team gets to by I, I don't know if you need a mid-season break and then you come back for season B part two or whatever, but the week before I think proved to not fruitful if they're not going to take advantage of it the way that I think they could have. I mean I know the Rock did the pivot and stuff, but I just think that there was, and I know we're getting through this year, I just think that there's more beneficial uses we could have for that. We can talk more about that. John Christian says definitely the idea of a buy during March Madness. You used Andy's idea during Yeah, so maybe we do a rolling, rolling bi weeks kind of the month of March. I don't think that's a bad idea. He also says if they had gotten less than the million it would be caused for concern. They should be able to work with us. Let's talk some game. We can always kind of vent more at the end. How do I pull this up here? There we go. It talked about it all week and everyone took dc. Everyone took DC Max. Max was texting me calling for Emery Hunt's head for his heavy merman of Louis Perez and the Renegades. This was a really good game. I was in the press box, the crowd was hot. I think Mike posted Mike Mitchell 22,000 and changed 700 something for the crowd. They seemed invested. I will say some of even the press box seemed maybe more invested than maybe you should. I've like I thought we were in the press box, we weren't supposed to talk but in the San Antonio press box you are part of the arena. You're not closed off. It's glass but it's open so you do F which I really liked because I felt like I was still part of the game watching experience. We talked a little bit about people coming in. What did you make of the crowd? Hot knot. You were there kind of third row on the 50 yard line. The crowd definitely warmed up as the game went on. I think they started to wake up, especially with all of the action I, I'm kind of impressed by how many different kinds of fans showed something that you've experienced and we've talked about with the C F L is and what all the C F L people talk about is you get all these fans from all these different teams even if their team's not in it coming to the game. Well the same thing happened here. I'm seeing St. Louis fans, I'm seeing Orlando fans, I'm seeing Houston fans, I'm seeing people from all over the league going to this game. That's great. That camaraderie is awesome. There's people who want to be there for various reasons. There are San Antonio fans obviously. There's a guy heckling the Arlington team. He had this anti Arlington Renegades sign the entire time and he was having a back and forth with Kevin Anderson and a couple of the Renegades players just pointed the scoreboard the entire time. The energy was definitely there. I was very, very happy with the energy overall with some of the fans. Some of them I think were more knowledgeable of what was going about what was going on more than others, but you're going to get that right, especially with the due league. No, I mean it was really cool. I think the number of the attendance number is good. I think it was absolutely a little bit better than I was expecting. I was expecting about 20,000. It was 22,000. That's great, but look, to get into the game itself, this is not the same team I saw at the end of March. I saw Arlington in San Antonio in Arlington and to me that game was like the death of football there. The offense was atrocious. Drew Lit and counselor were not going to it done. San Antonio was having their own problems on offense. Those games, those back-to-back weeks with Arlington and San Antonio were brutal to watch. Those were probably the most unwatchable games of the entire season and Anthony could probably attest to that. He had to go through all that. This Arlington team night and day difference, unbelievable on offense. Luis Perez is the Spring King. He cemented his legacy through this game. He was incredible. I I've seen him in person three times than each time. He's just gotten better. He just looks better and better as time goes on and he accumulates all this knowledge. I can't believe that was the same team I watched a month and a half ago. It didn't look like it because they were just firing on all cylinders on offense. It was so cool and I'll just pull up here. I got the video. We were able to get down on the sidelines. Danny did the trophy presentation to Coach Stoops and then obviously the Rock was there. He gave Luis the v p award. I did want to say I forgot that. I liked how visible both Danny and DJ were during the game. They did the crowd and they came down, talked to the media before the game. Danny expressed sincere thanks to everyone there for covering the game. Felt very sincere, right? Thank you guys because again, I think that we went into the season maybe what are the expectations of coverage we're going to get? Okay, now we're kind of seeing how we exist in this space. I liked how they came down on the field at the end. Arlington gave DJ the Rock a hat to put on. I thought what a cool moment for Louise Perez here after five, six years of all of this. Everything he's gone through and I still remember the teaching, learning how to play quarterback on YouTube and having his family run routes for him on the field so he could pick up the new playbook before he was going to the new team to be able to stand here and be the more or less the face one of the faces of this league and kind of getting his accolades acknowledged. I just think it's incredible. I I was just over the moon for him. I know we talked about this yesterday when we were hanging out, but really couldn't have a nicer guy have this happen to. Not that there's not a hundred different players in the league that deserve it, but really glad with everything Louise has gone through. He got this. I'm immensely proud of him and it makes me proud as a fellow San Diego Luis Perez coming from Tula Vista, California right down the road for me and for him to just go through all of this, all the different trials and tribulations for all the different leagues and all the different starting losing his job and getting his job back and playing through all these different offenses and I mean this is also a culmination of all of his hard work and he's lost some big games too. He lost the TSL championship game with the Jers. He lost that semi-final play playoff game with the generals last year and finally he breaks down the door here and he looked fantastic again. He has looked better than ever. He looked so instinct with this offense. If Louise Perez was on this team at the beginning of the year, Arlington would've won the south, I'm sorry, Houston fans, but this Arlington team just looked fantastic. They have the defense, they had the special teams and now they finally have the offense and the big part of that is because of Luis Perez and his ability to be so calm, so measured in all these different situations, being able to take what they were not doing well on offense and be able to approve on it every single week. I mean again, he was just hitting every pass on Sun on Saturday. He was head downfield passes his in intermediate routes, he almost got sacked on the first drive and he managed to flip it right out and get out of his hands and from that moment on it was kind of like he was just in control of the entire game. But yeah, he's a great person. We ran into his brother actually on the Riverwalk and he was a really nice guy when they were looking around for something to eat and I was kind of hoping that we'd run in the to Perez because, and it didn't happen, but he's a guy that I just ru I can't help but root for. I try not to be too biased in terms of certain players I fall on in teams and all that, but I root for the guy, he's great and I'm so happy for him that he was able to accomplish this and like you were saying to me a couple days ago, getting the trophy from the Rock, are you kidding me? That's like, that's a life highlight. That's an amazing accomplishment that very, very, very, very, very few people in their life are going to be able to say when it's all said and done. Yeah, I have Heim Bach, him, tweet now. He was friend of the show Kim on over the summer. He won. He was a line back in the oh one with the extreme. I like seeing that a lot full circle. Some of these. Anthony, I have one more way to get to but Anthony getting, think of the journey. Anthony's been uncovering this, all of that obviously Nate, all this was the one the really show the Cowboys what they're supposed to do in the playoffs. Oh no, okay, that's what I got to do. But this one up here I thought and Louise had won as well. Taylor Ris, yo, he's a friend of the show. I don't know if he's ever been on the show, but he's certainly a friend of the podcast getting to rolling the confetti with his child. Just the coolest moment in the world. I just thought here was one. We got Louis Perez here with his family as well. I mean this is a moment he's never going to forget. I don't know if Luis ever takes another snap of football if he comes back next year if he transitions into being a coach, but just an incredible journey for him and I'm just really proud of everything with Luis. Honestly, I have to say this, he's probably going to get looked at it by another NFL team, but selfishly I want him back in this league or some iteration of spring football and playing and starting. I mean after seeing him on Saturday, all I can think about is what would he look like for an entire year under this offense if he came back with this same team and with stoops and everything, it would be a completely different story. This would not be a below 500 team in my opinion. I mean obviously the roster's going to change. There's going to be defensive players that move on, special team players and other pieces that kind of move here and there, but for me, I mean I'm selfish. I want to see him keep playing because he's only 28 and he, he's already accomplished so much. I mean he could just walk off right now and he has again cemented his legacy. He doesn't have to stay. But yeah, I think just seeing all of the players and all just the energy and all the emotion they had. Again, I was sitting right behind the renegades bench and I mean those were the jolliest lads I'd seen in quite some time. Kevin Anderson again was just having the time of his life, seeing all the defensive linemen just get really into it. The offensive lineman and Heinbach did such an amazing job with this group. I mean they kicked ass on Saturday, they played so well. Getting good holes for Davion Smith and protecting Perez mean he has to be just so proud of his work and his ability to perform so well. I mean he's champion in multiple leagues now. I mean his resume is really just so impressive as is Stoops too. I mean you can't forget about Stoops as well. What he's able to do to come back to come back after Covid. All that happened and be able to coach this team and come back and do this second time around is also just such an accomplishment. Max has a question here. To be fair, Houston would've been a lot different if they still had Kirkland. What do you make of that? If we had to redo knowing what we know and how good the Renegades looked in the championship game at replaying that south division playoff game with Houston with kind of their full roster? I'd have to agree. I mean Kirkland was a huge part of it and it changed the season when he hurt in week five, things changed when Arlington traded for Luis. Things changed like that. That's your nexus point for the south and for really the entire season. My only thing I think about though with Houston is just they seem to have so much confusion as far as what they were doing at quarterback. Brandon Silvers is in now the lineup. I know he got hurt. I'm not sure what his role is or was in that semi-final game. It was really bizarre. I don't think we know the full story behind that. McDonald just couldn't get it done. It was just too inconsistent. Obviously there was a lot going back and forth between him and AJ Smith. I mean Houston clearly lost something obviously with John. Trey Kirkland not being there didn't help but something chemistry wise just was completely thrown off the second half of the season. They just could not get anything going on offense. They lost something and Arlington gained something. That's what I'm saying about this bi-week thing. You really could use it for some of these teams where they start to realize, okay, what's going on here? Because it's not, it's hard to readjust for that week to week. You try to have to figure it out, but yeah, I mean Houston was, they probably would be here mean in this case because Louise came on late. Luis Press came on late probably, but again, it's hard to say because their quarterback play was really inconsistent down the stretch. Just speaking of sliding doors here and kind of everything else, I was sitting and I guess I just didn't put the connection together because obviously the Seattle Kraken we're playing the Dallas Stars game six must win for the crack there. Saturday night I did have the game up on my phone, especially during some of the timeouts. It was some of the TV timeouts. I know obviously the injured cameraman and that was not funny. I'm glad that he is doing well. I did hear the whole story about that and that was a very scary moment, but I felt like some of the popping circumstance in the beginning I'm like, okay, I'm watching. They had the game on in the corner watching whatever, but what was interesting to me was a lot of the Dallas media there were very interested in the game. A lot of the San Antonio media, a lot of the, because obviously it's Dallas stars against the Seattle Sea Dragons. I thought, man, if Seattle had beat DC and you had the Sea Dragons versus the Renegades in the championship game with both Seattle and Dallas being playing that game six elimination game, they dodged a bullet with that because I will say a lot of the people there because I don't know, I'm like, I'll stand at a to, they're like, oh no, we're like, we're Dallas Stars fans or we're from Dallas here covering the game. We are Dallas Stars fans because I really thought that was going to be the only one that even cared that the N H L game was on. So I think they avoided that and they were sliding doors that got the game to that where we had events here that pushed it back, but X ffl could have really been in trouble there. If Seattle had been in the North team and had gone up against Dallas or Arlington, Dallas, whatever, I think that would've been interesting. I mean this is the toughest challenge for them going forward. How are they going to compete with all these leagues and how do they make themselves the priority over all these established leagues? The N H L you've been saying to me a couple of times, there was no Kraken in 2020, they didn't exist. Now they are. That's changed the market. Seattle is a different market now than it was back in 2020. That's a deal. It matters. I think about that too. I've talked about that. Obviously I go on and on about San Diego getting a team, but the reality is too, San Diego keeps adding teams. There is distinct possibility that an M L S team is going to come here soon and that changes the dynamic. All these markets have different competing interests and that also goes for the local interest too. We're not just talking about getting casual viewers, we're talking about getting your market involved with it too. That's something that the X F L really has to pin down and really work on next year. They really do. Look, you got St. Louis, great, awesome. They don't have a team, they don't have a football team dc Everyone hated Dan Snyder and no one wanted to support the commanders and maybe that changes now in the near future, but people got behind DC and they support them. That's great, but how are you going to get the Seattle audience back now? Get Orlando really involved, which traditionally Florida teams are kind of hit and miss with their engagement. San Antonio should be right. San Antonio doesn't have any teams. They should be a stronger market. Houston obviously they have a lot of competing interests as well. My point being is you just have to make sure that these entities are invested and you're going to have to put more money. Probably more of their money's going to have to go into that than anything else. Honestly, the market, the local marketing is really going to have to be a big emphasis point for them going forward, especially if they're going to be in the hub model and their actions going to be walking around during the week. That, again, if that's the case, if that's what you're going to do, fine, but you need to put more resources into devoting yourself to these local markets. Max does that did last it. The star slogan is Texas hockey for a reason, but I that's like their hashtag all they scream at the game is Go stars, go star. It's kind. It's kind of with the knight to go knights go. Some of the hockey chants are very, very kind of simplistic there. Back to the game for a little bit here because I could kind of get sidetracked on these live shows. DC speaking of Seattle kicked the absolute snot out of us. I was there and we, we've relived the beer steak and all that. You were not on the show the week that I got. I think Evan was reliving my horrors of the beer steak that week, but I mean DC looked like a different team on Saturday. They didn't even look, it didn't really feel competitive. It felt like Arlington d DC was able to keep it close a little bit, but it felt like Arlington was never really in danger of the entire game. I know you were tweeting that Arlington has DC all figured out. There's nothing Greg Williams can do that they're not expecting. What did you make of DC that looked, I mean obviously it looked like the best team all season kind of having this game. They had their worst day and I think that was confirmed with some of the DC faithful that I talked to as well. Nate, one of the guys that joined us in the Elmo tour, he agreed, he was just like, this is the worst. He looked all season. I mean they just were lost and the thing about it is Greg Williams was kind of playing with fire down the stretch. If you look back on it, I mean there were a lot of quarterbacks that had some outstanding performances against him down the stretch. Quinn Domany obviously lit him up. Ben Ucci did it a couple times and should have done it even more in the North Division championship game. The only problem was that the receivers just couldn't hold onto the ball, but that was not a Tori's fault. He had been playing with fire and finally Arlington was able to expose that. They exposed his over aggressiveness and they just were able to hit all their passes. I kept saying at some point he has to stop blitz, but I don't think he knows any other method he plays with his hair on fire. He coaches with his hair on fire and it finally bit him in the butt and as for DC on offense, man, I mean that whole first quarter you get negative yards. You don't even have the ball for more than a minute the entire first quarter. That really set them behind as well. They just could never get the run game going. They were so adamant about passing the ball and I know they did it a lot in the second half too because they were behind, but they were kind of out the gate trying to throw the ball and Tomma didn't have his worst performance I think because I know the three interceptions looked bad. Well that last one was the fourth down conversion, which wasn't going to go through and it was kind of obvious for Arlington it was easy for them to hone in on, but clearly, look, Arlington's defense is good. They've been good all year. I'm not surprised they got those turnovers. Anthony Miller did a great job pointing out how they've gotten a turnover every single game they played in this season and they always usually get multiple turnovers, so I'm not surprised there, but I mean for dc yeah, it was just the worst timing for them to have the worst game of the year and part of it was a great game playing by Arlington, but other part of it too was they just weren't able to adjust to what was going on on the other side either on defense or on offense. And I don't think any lesser of them, they're still a great team. I still think they're worthy of winning the championship, but they just didn't show up on Saturday. I mean they had negative one yards the first quarter, negative one yards. I mean I think Arlington had 97 or a hundred. I mean it was watching from, it was kind of cool there. I did in the San Antonio, they had obviously you have your TV feed, but they had a really good kind of scoreboards going throughout I thought was helpful for keeping track up there because sometimes in the press box you get a little lost with like, okay, what's like, what the hell's going on here? But if you had told anyone, and I know so much was made and you know kind of missed the whole playoff screw couple, screw couple, whatever that word is, being in Kerfuffle, Kerfuffle kind of being in being Japan and traveling and everything, but if you had told anyone watching the game, Arlington is the 10 and one team, Arlington's the 10 and one team here in DC is the four and six team that happened to get their way into the playoffs. I don't think anyone would've thought any different if you were turning on the game for the first time. No, I mean that's the thing. You kind of had to throw the records out and I know that's a cliche, but it really felt like that during the game. I mean it didn't seem to matter. Like I said, this Arlington team was not even close to being the same team that I saw a month and a half ago, but again, their offensive game plan was just so solid. Again, their mix of run and pass was awesome. Luis was super accurate for dc I mean the killer one for them, which is not on the highlight reels, was Chris Blair dropping that pass in the fourth quarter. That was it. Once he dropped that long pass from Tom, because Tom was throwing some great de passes, don't get me wrong, he hits some of his spots. He hit one that Josh Hammond earlier in the game. Hammond had a great game by the way. He was awesome. But yeah, that drop by Blair was just absolutely killer. It's something you don't get over and it just completely destroyed any sense of momentum and you felt it in the crowd. Everyone just kind of side collectively. When Blair dropped that ball and it stopped them from mounting a cutback against Arlington because if they get that pass, I mean you're talking about 35, 26 at that point in the game, which is more with about five or six minutes left in the game as opposed to a minute, less than two minutes and then having to go for the fourth down conversion. So yeah, just after that you knew it just wasn't their night, it just wasn't going to happen. Yeah, tweeted in our group chat, I said this is the game. I mean this is the game and there's some things like that where you just can't get that momentum back. Whatever happens, and we've seen that in hockey games and baseball game when the momentum, it just felt like that was their last grasp. It shifted and I thought because I was sitting there and Journey was up there with the X fan show, we were kind of joking and we kept saying like, oh, Arlington's got it, and then DC would score. It's like, okay, but then Arlington would immediately answer again, come back. It just never felt like the game that DC was playing like, oh yeah, they're going to get two touchdowns here in the last four minutes and tie the game. It just never felt like that was really kind of when we had in Seattle with DC for the playoff game in Seattle, really going to get 18 points or whatever here in the last six minutes of the game after playing absolute dog trash the first three quarters. I really don't think so. I just don't see the momentum shifting in that way. I knew DC was going to score in a third quarter because they always do come out with a great second half adjustment and they're able to score in the third quarter. They've been doing it all season, but the difference here again is that Arlington answered, Lenny Brown scored two touchdowns in the third quarter. He had a running touchdown and then he had that long touchdown where also DC made a horrendous mistake kicking the ball out of bounds, then giving great field position to the renegades, which they took advantage of immediately and Luis Perez was able to hit that pass to Lenny Brown and he ran it in and it was just like, okay, they clearly have the answers for dc. They may score but they're going to score. That to me was just the other thing. They were able to weather that storm and take those punches. Even when DC was trying to mount a comeback, it just, Arlington had all the answers they led from wire to wire. It felt that way and it never felt in doubt at any point. It never felt like they were just going to do it. The only thing that could've happened for them maybe again, is if Perez threw a pick, which is what I said on the stream on Saturday. I said, if he cannot throw a backbreaking interception in this game because that's going, that's going to come back and haunt them and it didn't happen again. Arlington was mistake free and their game plan was fantastic and they had all the answers. There was weird kicking issues the whole game. I thought it was really weird. We had a couple kickoffs like that and I'm like, what is, you're in the dome here. We're week 12. I just was kind of surprised that there were still kickoff issues here going into the championship game A little bit. I mean maybe it was just the nerves getting to them. I, it's unfortunate and that just happened for a couple of different reasons, but I mean nerves are going to get to you in that kind of game. One of the things that I was mentally impressed by were some of the players who did step up though Tyler Vaughns was awesome. Oh my God. I saw him basically with that sideline catch that he had early in the first quarter and he got a deep pass from Perez and got smacked out of bounds and held onto the ball and just the entire sideline was like, yeah, they were all rallying around him. He had the best game of his entire season. Someone like Javonte Peyton didn't really show up in this game, but he didn't have to. Again, Canella caught his first touchdown the entire year. Canella had gotten catches all year, but I was almost like shocked when he got that 40 year touchdown in the first drive. I was like, oh my god, where's that been all season? Just things that what we had expected didn't happen this game. Right. Again, what Seeing Arlen's offense, I mean Arlington could score 40 points. They had a real opportunity to score 40 points. Their only mistake they really made was when they fumbled that ball in the fourth quarter, but then they were up by too much and I think DC just was not going to come back, but again, this game just didn't go chalk. It was completely opposite of our expectations and again, you have to give credit to Arlington for just being able to make these adjustments and even at the end of the season, I mean they scored nine points against Houston the last game and you're still thinking this, the steam this game can't score. There's no way they're going to win next week. It was there. This wasn't something that, there wasn't even signs of it at the end of the regular season. The only sign was that, okay, well they played with DC but it just never felt like they were going to get it together in time and miraculously they did. When Louise and they showed it on, I can't remember if they showed it in the stadium or if I just saw it on Twitter. The Luis's halftime him, his halftime locker room cheer. Did they show that in the stadium or is that just on my Twitter? It's all kind of a blur now. No, that was only on Twitter. They didn't show that on the highlights package, but I did check it on Twitter during the game and I thought that was great. I mean, he was just in it. Well, there's something to be said there where I'm like, this man is going to will this team to win. We're kind of getting that right now with Yani Gord here with the Kraken where he's playing and he's been with Tampa and everything, but you know can get, if you're in a position like that to kind of will your team and I really did feel like Louise is not losing this game. I really felt like he was so locked in. Here's my question for you and then we'll kind of round out here and we'll get out of here at the hour. Louise Perez won the game. TEU played better arguably during the season. Who do you see now having more success transitioning out? I see TEU getting signed before Luis Perez. I just think age and everything, what do of that with those two quarterbacks? I think Tamo is going to get another shot because I will say this as much as I am immensely impressed by Perez and his ability to survive all these situations, Tom, this season improved the most just from game to game. I mean from week one versus your dragons versus the middle of the season, the end of the season. I mean he just got better, especially as a deep, deep ball passer. He got way better than he was a few years ago, better than he was in the U S F L last year. He just improved immensely end over end. He is a great athlete. He can run. He has a better sense of be able to dissect defenses. I think his body is as probably now more in shape and he is able to take, I mean he takes hits. Should he be taking those hits? No, I don't want any quarterback taking those hits, but he's definitely a lot more sturdier than some of his contemporaries, so I think for him, I think he's going to get another opportunity to stay on a squad and maybe this time he finally stays not just floating around on the practice squad. Maybe he's actually be able to be a third stringer or something. As far as Perez goes, yeah, I think he's kind of maxed out on his potential as far as making a roster and if he does, great, but again, I think his skillset is best utilized in leagues like this because he's able to just be able to be so versatile in being able to jump from team to team and be able to readjust on the fly, but for trauma. Yeah, I think he has the better N F L prospects I would say. Yeah, they got a comment here. Delta Cardinal should be looking at next, quarterbacks Murray won't be back until December. Exactly. It's interesting and obviously the timeline because DC and Arlington, they're in the championship game, so that's why Ucci kind of got the jumpstart because he was able to go the pr, do the tryout, but Ucci is a little more free with the ball. I would trust the ball a little bit more with teu going in there where you want that backup roll. Just please come in and don't throw away the game. I think Ben's really going to have to not try to do as much you. I know we talked to Dank off the top. I have some comments here as well before we get out. Do you get what I'm saying? I don't like Ucci as that backup just because I don't know if I trust him not to throw away the ball. He's a gut slinger and that's the thing. He's going to have to find a way to reign that in and if there's somebody again who's going to do that, it's going to be Sean Payton. Sean Payton will tell you what you're doing. Right or wrong, he's not afraid to do that. I think if Ben's going to have a chance, he's going to need to listen to him because Hazlett obviously, we made so much so about Hazlett wanting to take Deri out behind the wood shed a few times because of how of this play style and it's funny, it's hilarious, but in the N F L you can't do that to, I know all these players have bravado and some of them are able to get their way because of certain concessions that their GM or their owner might make towards them. Colin Murray's one of those examples, but with Ben Ucci, he has to find a way to be able to reign that in because he doesn't have that same leash as some of these other players. That's why he's in this kind of league. He needs to be able to build his pedigree back up and be able to say, Hey, I can learn. I can develop. I'm not just going to do it my way. Even though he plays like that, he has to be able to at least show the coaching staff that he's willing to make adjustments as he goes along. So yeah, if he's going to survive, that's, that's going to have to be an adjustment on his part. And I will say this, look, there's going to be injuries during the entire season. There's going to be so many injuries during the N NFL season. Guys who don't get signed now probably get signed later on because it happens. It's the nature of the beast, it's the nature of the business and there's going to be coaching staff and scouts kind of look at players and say, well this doesn't really help right now, but let's keep them on the back burner and they'll at least have that tape and that exposure now to where if something does happen in the fall, they go, oh no. Well what do we do? Well, remember that guy we kind of looked at earlier? Yeah, I do. And then maybe they go back and maybe pick him up because that's going to happen. There's going to be injuries, there's going to be opportunities for these players. Maybe not be right now and it may not be at the beginning of the season, but at some point during the N NFL season, they will have a chance. Well also, and you're just not only the tape, but you're just more in game shape. I mean obviously you're never in game shape, game shape, it's all, you've been off football for two and a half years here, Heineke. The reason why he was able to transition to the Washington football team was because he had just been up to game shape, even not taking snaps for the battle hawks. A couple questions here before we get out. Joe Boo has a question. It'll be interesting if they built continuity with the rosters that's critical to improving the execution and then the end quality of football. If you haven't seen our talk with Terrell Buckley from the live pre-show, all those interviews or time coded so you can go back to our live show, just go and watch that. But we asked Coach Buckley about that, about whether what's coming next with showcases and he was talking about, well we're still, we're figuring out how we can retain players and how we're going to rebuild and move that around. So I would check out that if you were interested. Any thoughts on that, either Buckley and kind of the retaining players moving forward? I mean as far as continuity goes, again, something that we looked at with the U S F L this year and one of the things that I liked was that some of these players were moving, kind of rolling over and playing a little bit better than they were the year before. But look, your top end guys are going to get the opportunities and they're going to be gone. That's just the reality of it. Your best quarterbacks are going to be gone. Your best D lineman, your offensive lineman, your receivers, Jaco Pearson. I don't expect 'em to come back to Seattle. Would I love him to of course. But if he gets the right opportunity, he's gone. He's a immensely talented receiver and I think for maybe some of the guys who were improving or still kind of finding their way, you hope they stay on the same roster and you're able to kind of be like, all right, I'm familiar with him. I remember him, he wasn't great, but I do remember him and that's something that does help going forward, I hope. And I think they will have some continuity there because it does help for fans to get involved with and be able to be invested in as well. So yeah, my answer to that is your top line guys are gone, but if you could have some continuity, that's at least a start. But again, the X L pitches themselves as the league of opportunity and a lot of that opportunity is moving him on to the N F nfl. Yeah act. My age here, I can't remember which jersey he got. He is a prize winner here. XE L has taken the next step, needs to take the next step now retain key talent N F L assign and players, but most will be available next year. X L needs to spend money and give key quarterbacks additional money to bring them back. It's always that balance. We've talked and I disagreed with Coach Beck when we talked to him and Arizona, I want every player to get on an N NFL roster like hey, that's not realistic, but that's not practical to kind of what you're trying to do here in the league. I do think obviously you want players to get that, the success and those opportunities, but I don't think you still have to be a football league. You still N X T and WWE E still has to put on TV products every week while also getting players up to the main roster. It's a really tough balance. I would look at NX D and I know we hate Vince McMan and all of that. NXT now is different nxt before they did the revamp it's like I thought they did a really good job how we pay a little bit extra. We got Tomaso choa and stuff here. How do we build storylines, see people care about here, but also trying to develop players for the mid roster. It is possible it is possible to do that, but it does take a lot more work. It does take a lot more work. And let's be realistic, the finances are not there to keep some of these guys around. If some of them, yes, some of them no. And again, some of these players aren't just fit for the N F L, some of them are more geared to be in this league. The same thing happens in the C F L. There's a lot of guys that I see that are great for a CFL roster, but they're not good for an N F L roster. And I think that's going to be the same thing here for the f l then we won't know that answer until we get multiple years and we see players who are more committed to this lifestyle and saying, Hey, I just want to play in the spring and I don't really want to commit myself to that kind of level of play in the next level. I just want to be able to get out there and play period. Not just be stuck on a practice squad. You're going to have those guys and that will your league ultimately. But as far as shelving out more money, that's something that is going to take some time or at least that'd have to be a hard line discussion with the league ownership and I don't think that's something they're going to be able to afford right now. So that part of it is tricky. It is a tough balance and it's not something until you get further on down the road of okay, what's working, what's not and who's actually willing to stay around And I still don't know if that's the case for the U S F L, right? Once we get into to year three maybe we'll know that. But as far as now, I don't know if most of these guys are still going to be there next year. We major, we're just talking continuity here. John Christian, Arlington, wined it all my throw. Yeah, we're still saying the playoff change. I don't know. I mean if Arlington to come in and craft the bad, it'd be different. Wait here before we get out. So the Tom Hardy meme where he's like that's bait, here we go, this is Joe B wants now how about we get Andy on the record predicting how many players will get N F L contracts? U S F L, I believe they're claiming 60. I think that's some players that double dipped or weren't necessarily on rosters that were assigned. I believe X FFL 2020 had like 70 If I, and please do not read Strike Ibel and Mike has all of those numbers but US L had 50 I think kind of more or less. And then obviously kamonte, Turpen and all that. What do you think with the X ffl here, It's so hard to predict because of how many players stick around in the N F L and some who get replaced by these other players. Well no, the quality of how much all this preparation and all this playing time in the spring really benefits them. I mean I guess it would be somewhere around the same number, 60 to 70. That's that would be my guess because it really depends on the practice squad is really the biggest thing. Getting on the main roster is really hard to do, but getting on a practice squad is more feasible. So somewhere between 60 to 70, that would be my guess. When it's all said and done, I, I'm going to have to stay in that ballpark number because otherwise it's just really hard to keep predicting that these guys are going to retain and remind you. There's still expel players from several years ago. They're still on these rosters, right? I mean PJ Walker's still floating around. Hynek is still floating around. Some of these other guys are still hanging around from a few years ago. So now you're talking about expel players replacing the expel players from a few years ago. That competition just gets tough. So yeah, I mean I'd say the at best 60 to 70, conservatively 30 to 40 because again, I don't know how many roster spots there really are located. I'd have to look at each practice squad and kind of reevaluate that. So ceiling is 60 to 70, floor is 30 to 40. This was what I was thinking this morning and I think that obviously XL 2020 exists in the vacuum half a season done all that exists in the vacuum U S F L last year exists in the vacuum as well because that there was no competing league. They were the funnel line in. If you were trying to get, I think this year, I think both X F L and U S F L will be lower than the S F L had, right? Because you've talked about now we're doubling down, we're piling up, we're piling up. But my question is if let's say X F L got 35, does U USS F L get 15 or does X ffl? Yeah, if X F L gets 40 does us, because again playing later now if we're competing against X F L 2020 backlog F L 2022 X F L now and then us F l like you're piloting on that and there are only so many spots. So that's my thing and I'm sure people will trumpet us F L 2020 versus X F L 2023. I don't think that's a fair comparison just because of there I just said. But any other thoughts on that before we get out? Yeah, you're right. I mean there's so much competition now. This is the first time we've had two leagues that have players that can get signed. We've never had this before and so I think that's something that I don't know, there's no really straight answer for that. The only thing that would ever improve that is if we had more NFL teams obviously, which is very distinct possibility. We've been hearing things about that coming from that league and potentially players playing in Europe and all that. But as far as right now, I mean yeah, it's probably going to be less players than people expect because there's all that backlog and there's all the teams and there's all the players that had already been signed from last year and from 2020 and those other iterations even be, gosh, even maybe like TSL players that were signed as well. So with that in mind, it's really hard to predict it being the same exact numbers as it has been in the past. This is all new data for us and it's all new extenuating circumstances. This picture, that's why it's so tough for us because the picture keeps evolving, keeps changing. A lot of speculation because this is all unprecedented. This is new for us. This is new territory And the words of Rod Piper, just when you think you've got the answers, I changed the question. So just then we'll do that. We're going to get out. I've got to get my life, my suitcases and stuff unpacked Now if you are even, you're not a hockey fan, Arlington, you've won the title here. Let's give goodwill to the Kraken tonight. We have a Pivotal game seven. I got to go to the watch party over at Climate Pledge. Big time there. Big time show coming up this week. I just confirmed with Cole Kubick going to be coming on. Cole was on the sidelines. Get Cole kind of a post retrospective of the championship game, the X L season. I got Jim Mullen coming on as well talking C F L and all the U sports and the S F U kind, all that stuff. Jim's got thoughts on the X F L of the S F L and then I'm trying to work with Mike. Mike's really busy trying to get Mike scheduled coming on either this week, next week, kind of like you know XL 2023 in retrospective. Andy, should I give away who our big U S F L guest is on the podcast or should I tease that out because Keep teasing. No, I, as much as I love to open my Christmas gift early, keep teasing it. Okay, well we have a big, big special US L guest coming up this week. I know we did lots of X F L talk today. I did not watch a second of us L Football this weekend. I did see the Philadelphia won the game with a field goals. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but they did win. They set the record I guess. Professional football record. Yeah, eight field goals. That's just immense. Well it's real football Andy. It's real football. They got real football records they got to do, they got real a Andy. Anything else from you? It was great to see Andy in person again. We have a lot of fun. I've told you off mic. I appreciate all of your help. Everything else obviously Anthony, everyone for the live show and Matthew and Fran and Jared hanging out and everything else. Anything else from you before we get out of here? I just want to say mean it was tremendous to see you and everybody there and also just be able to experience that community in full force. Being able to see it like that. That's something I just imagined I wouldn't be a part of a few years ago. And again, you'll see it just so formed out and to see where it's going. Can it improve? Can it be even better in the future? I really do believe it can be, but from where we've started and where we've gotten to at this point, it was so cool to be part of that experience. I will never forget it and I just want to continue seeing more and more improvements like that in the future. But yeah, I can't wait to do more of these because it was so fun and I hope this continues. There's real potential on this. There really is. I think there's a place for this and I will trumpet it forever until my last breath. Yeah, Chris here acting my age. We did a whole breakdown ro, go back, just rewind the street. We did the whole breakdown. We got everybody, six players X F L so far and probably still maybe more have come down since I've been on the street, but we had six so we started, we've been here for an hour so there you go. They sat on the pivot that planning it for 2024 starts today. Thanks again everyone at X ffl rolling up the red carpet as always for us and Anthony and getting to participate in all of that stuff. And I know that Andy wouldn't have been the part of that. He was busy traveling and all that way. Get through everything. I appreciate everyone. Check out the show Friday and I think that's it. How do I get the heck out of here? We will see you next time. Thanks everyone.

Episode 144 - LIVE From the XFL 2023 Championship Game!

Well here we are, live in San Antonio, 22 years in the making. Here we are crowning another XFL Champion. Tonight I'm here with the professor Andrew Murray. We got Anthony Miller here, cavalcade of guests coming on today, both live and remote. Let me know if it sounds okay. Looks okay. Internet. We're, we're working through things. I have three different Wi-Fis here and we're bouncing in between. Andy, how are you doing? I am so happy to be back, man. It's been a few weeks. I was on my worldwide tour there for a little bit and I'm just happy to be here and just so excited. Really it's the culmination of so much hard work and so much anticipation and waiting and I'm just really happy to be with both of you and everyone here today for this momentous occasion. Anthony, how, how's life treating you? Yeah, it's good. This is, it's unbelievable just covering this league back in 2020, not being able to have a finished season and being able to come to a championship game. So to be at this moment, I mean I was eight years old when the first X F L championship happened, so to be able to experience this as an adult and be here, I mean this is a joy of a lifetime. So I'm really excited about tonight. Yeah, it's exciting. We, we've already toured the Alamo today. We have a little small studio audience here. Listener, Jared Franz coming on the show in a little bit. Toured the Alamo. Andy and I out late last night went to the Esquire, the oldest bar in San Antonio. We were going to chug a beer on the podcast, be based on the US L thing. I cannot drink anymore. Shout Vodka right now. We'll save it for after the game. We'll Save, we'll save it for after. So like I said, we have many guests coming in, Colleen in here throughout the show. We have a special ex Ffl head coach calling in at the bottom of the hour, so you don't want to miss out Head coach. And then Dante Anderson's going to be here from the X F L Vipers, your X ffl, all X Ffl team should be good stuff today. Andy, talk about, we saw a lot of shirts, a lot of people here. What's been the atmosphere here? And I'll hold the mic. It's been pretty nice, honestly. I like that there's just been so many, honestly, so many DC fans. That's one of the biggest things that stands out to me. Certainly you got your Arlington faithful around a lot of random, I guess, celebrity sightings. We've seen a couple of very key figures in the league and people related to people in the league, but overall it's very quiet that the weather's held up so far. We weren't sure if it was going to be kind of like thunder, lightning storms or rain or whatever, but it's been okay so far. And the Riverwalk is beautiful. I mean it's magnificent. I've wanted to be on this exact place for quite some time. This is really a great excuse to come out to San Antonio. But yeah, I, there's a lot of families around a nice atmosphere really. Yeah, we were going to be outside, we were kind of worried. Thunder lightning, not quite sure I finally got set out outside and there's no power out there. So we have the next best thing we could do. Anthony, what's the atmosphere like for you? We would spend all day walking the Riverwalk. Yeah, I mean, I will echo what Andy said. I'm really surprised to see the amount of DC Defender fans out and that it's really great to see even just, I've seen battle hogs, I've seen renegades, I've seen a lot of X F O gear, a lot more than I was kind of expecting to be honest. So I, I'm really excited about to see who's all going to come out to the game, what the tailgate's going to be like because the atmosphere here and being able to see all the X F L fans that have come out this weekend, I mean that's what kind of makes us really exciting is that it's a celebration of being able to complete a season, something they haven't done since 2001. So I think that's a really cool thing to be a part of and I, I'm really excited to have everyone here kind of like a big family reunion and celebrate the season we Had. It's exciting. I see we have our first guest here standing by he'll Give me a thumbs up when he is ready to hop on and just exciting. So let's bring in our first guest today. We have Rick Sarata here. Rick, hopefully we're looking sounding good. How the hell's it going for you? Hopefully we're looking good. Sounding good. I've been ready for this day. Buckle up fellas. How we doing? It's exciting. What do you make of this 22 years in the making? We have another X F L champion. I'm so excited that I caught the tail end of the conversation. To me, the true champion is the XFL regardless of who wins tonight because we got through another spring season and what we're witnessing is the longest football season that we've ever endured and I love it. And we still got another five weeks left of the u s Ffl, so how about that? There is no off season pro football's here. The ratings are here. The attendance in some locations has been good, but I do got to say the Rock and Danny Garcia get a lot of credit. How about Doug Whaley? How about Russ Brandon, how about David Dyckman? Those guys that prepared 18 months in advance for all of this and man, it's easier said than done. So buckle up. What do you guys think about attendance today? We've kind of gone back and forth about that. Yeah, I'm really curious. I mean for San Antonio what the threshold they had this season in the regular season was 24,000 I think that opening game. So you're hoping I guess to see if they surpass that number, if they're able to approach that or surpass it. Like I said, I mean we've seen a lot of jerseys, a lot of people wearing a lot of paraphernalia walking around town, so it's very possible. I mean San Antonio is supposed to be one of the standout markets in this league and you would expect there to be the same rapt support around it as well. Obviously the DC Faithful have pulled their weight. St. Louis has pulled their weight. San Antonio's kind of that next one you're waiting for it. It was sort of a team that represents so much from not only the league but also the rock and his image with the Braas and everything and also just the city in general. See it'll be interesting to see if they can really get behind it today. Anthony, are you surprised not more Arlington fans here? Yeah, a little bit. I mean this, it's a four, four and a half hour drive from Dallas to San Antonio, so I would've expected to see more Renegades gear, but I, I'm fully expecting 'em to still be traveling. So it may be they're traveling throughout the day. I think by tonight we may see a good blend of DC Defenders and Arlington Renegade fans. So I think there's still time for them to come out. I know being a part of those Facebook groups with the Arlington Renegades, there's a lot of fans that have been talking about, all right, we're on our way, we're driving. So I think they will still travel well it just may be DC Defender fans, they have to travel a longer distance so they probably got here early yesterday so that they can kind of recoup and be ready for tonight. Where Renegade fans, they can just travel three four, it's a one day drive to San Antonio. So that, that's what I'm kind of expecting. Rick, we saw Luis Perez's family wandering the Riverwalk today looking for reservations where to eat. What are you looking forward to seeing from him? Are you surprised that these are the two quarterbacks we ended up in the end? You both original XFL 2020, obviously Tiu now with the Defenders and then Luis with the Renegades. What are you looking forward to seeing from Perez? I love seeing Luis Perez here. What a great story that he continues his journey. He continues his path and I've had a chance to chop it up and talk with Luis out in San Diego and get to know him and get to kind of understand his journey and credit to Bob Stoops for recognizing Louis Perez was essentially the renegade savior and getting them to the championship because this man brings the experience, the alternate league experience. He's been here, he knows what to expect, we can talk about predictions and whether or not he has enough horses to take him across the finish line. But man, Louis Perez, I mean what an outstanding and the way he came in, he sat for a week or two, bited his time, didn't come in with an ego and said, bro, I'm the best man here. I should be playing. He kind of led by example and I respect that. Andy, what do you make of that? We, we've talked, we haven't gotten quite your take on this. I want to get Rick as well, the whole playoff debacle, renegades being here, you haven't been on the show, you've been traveling. What do you make of all this? Look, they made the most of their opportunity. I know the fact that they were four and six seems like an abomination. But look, I saw that team in person against San Antonio back when they didn't have Luis Perez and it was evident to me that at least half their team was fully complete. They had a great, have a great defense, they have fantastic special teams, they have a good coaching staff, they just didn't have the quarterback and it was abundantly clear that Drew PLI and Kyle SL were not going to get it done. So for me, I mean yes, the four and six doesn't look great and as far as pedigree and getting a team like that in there, but make no mistake, this team deserves to be here. And especially with Hal Luis Perez is, I mean his ability to just survive all of these situations. I've said it a hundred times on the show, he's a zombie. The guy just does not go away. He never will go away. He is immortal in the spring football verse. Rick, same question to you and then we'll go to Anthony. I think there was mass disappointment and I hope it reverberated up into the league office because I do think they need to get the best teams into the tournament. And when you're dealing with only eight teams, I would love to see the regular season essentially be, I mean put 'em all in, let the regular season be essentially around Robin tournament for seating for the post-season. But I say put 'em all in, let the regular season be around Robin and then that way there's no dispute. Anthony, you've spent many a night watching the Renegades play from the press box. So what do you make of this season for them? I mean, overall it's been a rollercoaster ride. I mean you look at this defense, they, they've been phenomenal all season despite all the injuries that this defense has had to deal with with Emmett Robinson being out, Donald Payne to Josh Hawkins, they've lost a lot of guys on the defensive side, but the thing they've done a great job of is having depth at positions like Darnell Sanky ended up being a great signing for them earlier in the season. They brought in guys to really step up and be X-factor on that defense. So that's been the impressive part. Obviously the offense we all know have really struggled in the passing game, converting on Shorty yards, dumb penalties, turnovers, but they, they've been able to clean up. The guys have been saying, I mean Louise Perez is that guy. The one thing coach Dukes speaks very highly of him about is this iq. One of the smartest quarterbacks in this league is because he's been able to adjust to multiple different systems and been able to play at a high level doing it. So I mean I understand everyone's got their concerns about him with the playoffs. I kind of had my feelings on it as well, but I'm going to echo what Coach Stoops been saying to us to the media for the last few weeks. If the league doesn't like it, they can change the rules. Otherwise we did what we needed to get in the playoffs, we did what we needed to them make the championship game. So at the end of the day, Arlington has nothing to apologize for. They took care of business, they played their best game of the season in the playoffs, so you got to give 'em credit there. Rick, what do you make of this? The Kyle Slowder Drew play. I mean I feel like slow, there was the big, we're jumping from the U S F L, we're going in Big Splash and they just never seen to materialize. What do you make of that? Well I think going back to my previous point, it might be good to put all these teams in the dance because as you guys saw, it's an ever evolving process and it's not like we have a 17 game schedule to vet, vet all this out. And so by time week six rolls around, sometimes the identity of a team is just coming into place. And I think what you're seeing too is these quarterbacks are not protected like the nfl, there's not laundry littered all over the field with every single big hit and protection is an issue with every team. There's not enough good offensive linemen. These quarterbacks are taking big hits. Backup quarterback has become very valuable. And I don't know, maybe you guys do, is there a starting quarterback that got through the season unscathed that took every snap? I don't think so. I think Ucci was closest, right? I think Ucci Montez threw one incomplete pass, right? For the C Dragons. Yeah, that sounds about right side dc Andy, what's impressed you with DC here coming down the stretch? I mean just kick the snot out of the Sea Dragons and the playoffs. They certainly did. And look, Vaughn Hutchins has done a tremendous job putting this roster together. Reggie Barlow has been a superstar. This whole team has just had all the answers in the entire season. It's hilarious to me that their holy loss came to the guardians and the Guardians holy win came against them. So at least there's a sense of parody there. But this DC team has just been outstanding from the jump. Their offense has been able to morph into multiple different ways of attacking people. Their running attack was great and then all of a sudden Jordan Tamu just had a renaissance in the second half of the season. Their defense is very opportunistic. They get the ti turnovers that they need, they get the plays that they need. Greg Williams is play coaching with his hair on fire most of the time. He's a mad genius. He gets people into situations they don't like those being the quarterbacks on the other team. And look, overall it's, it's a tremendous job all around. It was. This has been a fantastic campaign for DC and they would love nothing more than to stomp their foot on the ground and say we are one of the best teams in spring football history tonight. Yeah. Rick, how dominant has DC been this season with Yvonne Hutchins and everyone else over there? Well yeah, I, I'll get toon. You mentioned Greg Williams who I think was playing with a heavy heart the other week. How about that? And don't tell me it doesn't mean something to these guys. Listen, I think that we talked about it right in the pre-season show like DC Defenders, they're built for the track meet. They got nothing but speed and they load it up on speed at the wide receiver position. So I think they have the weapons here to take it the distance. Abram Smith, by the way, how is this guy not on a, I can't figure it out, coming out of Baylor. This guy was a beast. I love me a linebacker converted, running back guys, I don't know. There's a lot of yak there and I mean he plays like a man amongst the boys. I see guys like David Montgomery and Jamal Williams getting 6 million per year. You're telling me that Abram Smith is not in the same caliber of runner. Hello? Max wants to know thoughts on the Pivot podcast? I have not watched the R'S appearance on there yet. We were, Andy and I were drinking at the Esquire last night. Did you watch the Pivot podcast with The Rock? I listened to it this morning on the way I thought it was solid. So a lot of it was talked about. The Rock was talking about his battles with depression and being able to deal with his story of coming home from Calgary with only $7 in his pocket and having to get into wrestling. So I think it was really cool to see the personal side of him and I know he's kind of talked about that story a little bit and trying to figure his life out. That was something that was really interesting to me to see more of a human element out of the rock. I kind of liked hearing that part of it. He talked a little bit about the X Ffl at the end, but I think just hearing his personal side of it, I think a lot of players can, Ryan Clark talked about it, Frank Taylor talked about about it that they all kind of went through similar situations and their lives through their football career. So that's the one part that I thought was really cool and I hope those are the type of stories that he can tell as well as players in the X Ffl can too. Rick, what do you make of the rock? And I deal a lot with the C F L people too. I was just on Rock Peterson show yesterday kind of preview in the championship game. Has the rock done enough? Too much? Not what do you make of him and being, I know it's Danny's baby but him in terms of trying to use his obviously his massive audience. I think some valid points were made there because the reason why we love this great game of football is because it applies and carries over to the great game of life and Rock is speaking to how football can mold not only life but these football journeys and to learn some of these stories. And what are the 57 guys? I is wearing that number 54 now going to training camp and that's what it's all about. And personally, I mean I think I would've liked to see some more pizazz. I've seen what Hard Knocks is capable of doing. Last time I checked The Rock is the highest growth earning actor in Hollywood. I would hope that you could have some connections or pockets to bring in the same caliber. Now I saw some of the behind the scenes and documentary and stuff leading up to it. The standards should be a little bit higher in my opinion and I think they need to vet out some of these markets a little bit better and do their due diligence there as well. Anthony, or it's too hard to do the double Two A, so it's Yeah, Andy, any feedback on that? Yeah, no that's very interesting you say that. And I mean it depends on how many connections this league wants to have. I mean we already saw someone like destroying getting involved YouTube personalities. I think what you're referring to though Rick is probably a little deeper than that. Some really established stars. I don't know if you get someone like Vin Diesel to just sort of walk out onto the field, but it'll be interesting to see if you can get the Fast and Furious crew and all that. But yeah, I agree. I think this can go deeper and there can be more connections here that this Lee can tap into. That goes on Danny's side as well. Russ, Brandon, all of them. Everybody. I think there's just more characters and more people that can be involved here. Maybe perhaps they were just being very tepid this season in terms of how many cooks they wanted to have in the kitchen I suppose. But if there's one Criticism, not to cut you off, Andy. If there's one criticism that I have for the new version, and this goes back to the last season too from the original version, I like the individuality. He hate me. I like the extra over the top entertainment element because I thought that kind of separated itself from my Sunday game day and to me, I wish they brought more. I know they're trying to take this more serious approach but I actually want to see more of that entertainment value back. I completely agree with that and I've said anyway it really stark when the U S F L now being, they're broadcasting and it feels like Fox N F L exactly the same. It feels that way. I do think the X Ffl carries itself just a tad bit too seriously, especially just with the legacy we all know and Vince and even back to oh one, I think that they could inject a little bit more humor sometimes, but if it means we're playing this safe, we want this to be around Anthony, what do you make of that? Yeah, I mean I agree with Rick and with you Rita. I think that you got to have a balance of it. I think what happened in 2001 is that they were too gimmicky and they kind of went a little too far when they were talking about going into the cheerleader's locker room and having that whole sequence. It was funny hahaha, but a lot of people didn't like the sexualization of it because it got a little too far with it. I think there I lovely, he hate me, I love being able to, whatever name you want to put in the back, do that and really build those characters because those are the characters that you want to put on the Player 54 documentary because those of you want to hear the story of, I mean someone like Rod Smart talking about why he picked Hate me and learning his background, that would've been an awesome feature to have on Player 54 if it was there back in 2001. So you kind of want these football players to create their own characters, even the coaches as well being creative because that will make the storytelling a lot easier. Cause that's something the Rock talked about yesterday. He loves talking about the storytelling part of it. So if you want to add that element, let the players be themselves, let the coaches be themselves. Andy, what do you Got? Yeah, just to bounce off of that too, just quick mention, I thinks ESPN would like that too. Obviously ESPN really tries to build up these characters and these profiles a lot. All of them are clearly invested. The broadcasters put a lot of energy into that product, into that presentation, they want that too. So I absolutely agree with you and everyone here. They need to be able to inject more personality, not again, being too gimmicky, you know, don't want to be a cartoon, but you do want to have entertainment value. I mean that, again, I'll say this about the, like the NFL for example, the NFL's an entertainment product, it's not always about the football. In fact it's probably becoming less about the football as time goes on, but that's because they're trying to entertain a mass audience and I think that's what the XFL has to consider as well. Going forward, Rick, we got our next guest standing by and keep in mind we have our head coach calling at the bottom of there. Anything else from you, Rick before I let you go? I appreciate you hopping on. Well I just want to give a big shout out to again, Von Hutchins, Reggie Barlow, Bob Stoops for the wonderful job that they've done with the roster construction and highlighting these guys and listen, I've got my guy Koran Reid out of Princeton coming up with a big fumble recovery today. I got a 38 24. I just think the DC defenders are too much. I do think there's going to be some fireworks. I think Louis Perez will keep it close into the second half, but I think the DC defenders are just going to be too fast, too much too furious for the renegades and so I've got DC Defenders bringing home the confetti. Awesome. And thank you guys for the wonderful job that you've done on the Mark cast, the best alternate, alternate football show on the planet. Make sure you get that out there. I appreciate it Rick, thanks so much for spending your time. I know you're a busy guys, that means a lot. All right, absolutely. Hit that lake subscribe and we'll catch you on the flip side. Awesome. All right, now we're going to bring in a friend of the show here over with the Sam Shady Sports Network. Sam, how the hell are you doing? Doing great. Super excited for the game. How are you guys doing today? We're good. Are you are in Feverish online? I mean see there's a little energy building here. What's it like for you kind of seeing it online here from the far side? I think it's still surreal to me. I mean it, it's been such a long time coming. We, we've talked about it so much that it almost felt like we would never get to this point the way 2020 ended and yet here we are about to watch the X Ffl championship game and it's again, it's still almost surreal to me. What's your prediction here, just to make sure we get it on the record before we go into anything else? Well I would be foolish not to pick DC against Arlington here, but I do think that Arlington does have a path to victory. I did read Anthony's recent article. I do think there are some reasons why you might want to pick Renegades, but I definitely think the DC's offense just has too much fire power. Anthony, you Yeah, you had your preview article and then we'll get Andy says, how big of an upset would it be if the Renegades won this today? I don't know if it's as big of an upset now as it would've been before Luis Perez because this team has mightily improved over the last four weeks. I mean their offense literally has gained 110 yards per game more than they had with Drew put and Kyle Slowder. So I think the offense is getting better. The two things the renegades have to do is they have to cut down on the mistakes when it comes down to turnover of penalties and also convert on Shorty yards. That's something they have struggled with but they did a better job of against Houston in the playoff game. So I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility. This is one of the best defenses in the league. It is just they're the playmakers on offense have to step up and they have to have an even keel mind going into the game and not let anything affect them in terms of penalties and on sports and conduct and turnovers. Andy, same question to you. Yeah, again, it's being able to live at turnovers, which is not easy to do against dc obviously even playing in DC is the bigger case here. That's the thing. I mean we really are going to see how much of a home, I guess home field advantage that DC's going to be able to bring to this game. I mean going into Oy field is just a death sentence for people. Luis Perez absolutely cannot make a crippling interception. He cannot do it. It's, it will kill his team's chances today if he does that, he's done and look as wonderful as he was against Houston, he's had the propensity to throw picks sometimes he is done it his entire career. Can you get back-to-back performances like that from him? That's the question. He's always been able to have one and then kind of have an off game the next time. That's really a big thing. I'm really looking forward to seeing the Arlington defense. I know that sounds strange to look forward to a defense, but I really have been so impressed with that. Devonte Bosley, that entire unit has been just so, so good and I think they're going to find a way to stump DC in the first half at least. I think they're going to limit them a lot. I think. I would not be surprised if Arlington let it halftime. Sam, how much credit do you give to Bob Stoops and Megan, these moves laid in the season and you were doing the Louise thing. Everything else never given up, keeping his guys motivated the whole time. Oh it's 100%. This is coaching that got them there. I mean we've all talked about this offense all season long, but he still hung in there, continued to try and progress and make moves like you said, and make improvements and that's the reason why they're here. I mean ultimately Luis Perez was the difference in that game last week. And if he's not here, I don't know that we see Arlington in the championship game this week. Right on. To be quite honest, You spent a lot of time talking with him, Mr. MAs good an Anthony. What do you make of this? Yeah, I, I think Stoops does deserve a lot of credit but I think him in the front office deserve a lot of credit too. You think about the moves they made earlier in the season when it comes down to bringing left tackle Willie Beavers in, he didn't really have an impact toward until later in the season. But he's been phenomenal at left tackle for this off offensive line over the last few weeks. You talk about Darnell Sankey coming into that Lineback representative, especially when Donald Payne got hurt, he was the guy that stepped up and was able to make plays for them. Javonte Payton trading him earlier in the season from, I think he was on the guardians trading him. He ended up being the biggest playmaker in that playoff game, getting 120 yards in two touchdowns. So I think just credits stoops in the upfront office for being able to bring in players later in the season to be able to make an impact. And I can't forget Letty Brown, what he's been a great number two guy for Deion Smith and that running game. So just bringing those type of players in and having them make significant impacts as well as Louise Perez. Obviously that's why the renegades are in the championship game because of not what they did in training camp. It's what they've done since to bring the right players in, build the right culture. And now they may be on their way to a championship tonight Andy, because it's like we saw this a little bit last year with the U S F L, like all right, I'm done. I'm out some of these coaches. I mean like seeing these moves, it shows people are invested, what do you make of stoops and everything else? He's weathered the storm. I had my dolls as well. I mean we all watched the offense the first half of the season. It was atrocious and we openly debated should there be a change at the coordinator position as they're going to have to start moving their coaching staff around and they held fast, they stick stuck with it and they worked with the program for stoops. I mean it's just so fascinating to see him back again in this role being able to have success despite the on-field product not always being the best and the sexiest to watch. I've seen him also tearing his hair out at various times. Anthony can attest to that as well, but for him to be able to keep with us and really sort of have his foundation to be so strong in a non-college setting is really impressive. It speaks to his acumen and it speaks to his experience as a professional being able to do this. He obviously was the right man to bring back into Arlington and it'd be really interesting to see if he can get his second pro football or well second championship I should say. He had one in college. Can he get another one, Sam, before we got to make sure we get all this in before we have our special head coach. Colin, thoughts on the XFL season as a whole? I asked Matt Berry last week on the show. Great, at one to 10, what do you make of the X FFLs performance? That's a great question. I'd probably put it like an 8.5 to a nine. I'm always an internal optimist so I'm, I'm going to give it a little bit higher grade than maybe some people will, but at the same time I think there's still a little bit of room for improvement. I think everybody within the XFL would say there's still room for improvement and I think honestly that we're going to see them to continue to make steps to make this a bigger and better league going forward. Andy, what do you, well let's go toy first. Andy talk grade one to 10, what would you grade? Yeah, so I may be a little bit tougher than Sam's going to be. I'm going to give it a 7.5. I think there were some really good things. I think the on field products was really good. Player 54 documentary was good. I think stadium experiences for the fans were good. I think the things they need to work on is number one marketing. I really hope they put more budgeting into the marketing cause I think that will lead to higher attendance, more viewership. I want them to be able to, they need to get more eyes on it. They need to do more marketing. I want to see more commercials. I want them to be on a B, C more often. I want them to get off of FX and ESPN two and only be on A, B, C and ESPN and maybe even even bring in cbs, bring in another major broadcaster and do the same thing. The u s Ffl is doing the u s Ffl is on national television three times a week. I mean that's why they've been doing the numbers they have been doing and the X FFLs able to do that with b ABC and another broadcaster. I think that would make a significant difference. So I think they've done well and I don't think it's, I'm not trying to give them a bad grade. I think there's stuff they need to work on but they're on the right path. Andy, I'll get your response here in a minute. We have our special guest Danny by here. We're going to bring him in a second. Sam, anything else you muted before we let you go? I appreciate you stopping by. All I'm going to say is that if a LinkedIn can create a couple turnovers, this might quickly turn into a win by them. That's good. That's check out Sam over on YouTube. Sam Shady Sports doing the Lord's work over there so I appreciate it Sam, thanks so much. Here we go. Special guest calling in. The only man to beat the DC Defenders all season. We have a coach Tru Buckley. How you doing here sir? I'm doing awesome. How you guys doing? We're good. I appreciate you're live on, you were on the show a few weeks ago but now you're live for the X Ffl pregame. How is life going for you right now? It's going pretty well. I'm actually on vacation. I'm in the Cayman Islands right now. We'll check the game out a little later. But never far from the x ffl mindset. I was in Arlington a couple days ago visiting, just hanging out a little bit. So just getting ready. They do doing good here. Get Coach Buck calling in the podcast for you. You did pretty well Reid. I'll give you credit. Good job. Let's get Anthony or let's get Andy. A question for Coach Buckley, what do you got? Coach Buckley, wonderful to have you here. Thank you for joining us today, really appreciate it. So you have the unique distinction of being the only coach that has found a way to defeat this DC team this season. I wanted to ask you about what was it kind of preparing for them, knowing this team has such multiple phases on offense. Obviously they were more of a running team in the first half of the year and then when you faced them they were sort of in the middle of their renaissance throwing the ball down the field and just were so difficult to prepare for. What was that like preparing for that kind of offense? Oh it was very scary because they was winning cause of the run game. I know the passing game and the big throws and the big plays get everybody excited but the bed and brought butter of what they do offensively is running the ball and we had to prepare obviously for that too. Even though what you just said, they was throwing the ball all over the field so it was a stressful week preparing for him and thankfully we got it done. Anthony, what do you got for coach? Yeah Coach, appreciate you coming on the show. My one question is, obviously I'm very jealous of you being on vacation right now, but once you get back to being on vacation, what's the plan for you in preparation for the 2024 season? What's your process in getting ready to get the team up and running? Well before I went on vacation I've been doing a little season recap of where do we start, what happened, why do we get up to the best start? Been doing all the house cleaning stuff and now starting to, okay we've hit that point. I understand what was the issues. The majority of them now we are in the process of correcting that. How much fun was the season for you and being able to kind of participate in all this? Oh man, just being a part of the X F L, you take the record out, let's get that first. You take out overall record out, which was very disappointing. The other things being a part of getting a chance to hang with the other head coaches, the X ffl, the opportunities these players that hadn't played in a couple years, getting them back in the football groove. For me, being a first time head coach, making those adjustments and trying to grow and seeing where I fit. You talking about, we say being light on your feet, I would say light on your toes the whole season and excitement at the same time From a football fan, what are you looking forward to seeing today? What I've been seeing all year, it is going to be a great football game. Great minds matching up against each other and strategy who's going to make the least amount of mistakes and over this year that's been DC and I would say to me they should pull this game out cause they've made the least amount of mistakes the entire season. Andy, back to you. Another question for coach. So obviously thrilling victory that you had over them earlier in the season, but what's something that you're expecting from DC in this game as far as do you think it's going to be a completely different style of team or what are you expected to see from their side? Well they have the unique ability offensively to throw it all running it. Depending on how the game flow is going of defensively, you're not going to see a whole lot different. They're going to play their two shell, they're going to fire zone them and try to create habit with five, with a four man rush, then a five man rush and make plays in the back end. Anthony, for you, do you have another question for Coach? Yeah Coach, we've already seen a few of your players already getting mini camp visits with Quentin Domany and Charles and Rambo. How does it feel as a coach knowing that you've been able to, despite the season you had, you're, you're getting a lot of players that are already getting interest from the N F nfl. How does it feel to see those guys getting their shots? What this league is about and myself, no matter what all circumstances are as the league and the coaches, the bottom line is X stands for the opportunity and that's what's happening. The young men are getting the opportunity to reach their dreams or make their dreams become reality and I'm so thrilled and happy for all the guys, especially off in the league and off the land Guardians, I want to say we have five now that have been invited. Would that be the biggest accomplishment to you to see some of these guys making onto rosters and stick? Absolutely, but besides winning the X F L championship, the next thing right there is giving them opportunity to reach their dreams and then they cashing in on it. In terms of the season as a whole, obviously not on the field but just your experience better than expectations, worsen expectations Better. The hub was awesome how the exit, the management set it up was first class, the rules, the implementation, implementation of the rules, the coverage, the fan experience was better than I can imagine. Andy, another question for coach. Yeah. As far as your players moving on and potentially having greater opportunities at the next level, are you hoping for or maybe anticipating any of them being with your old coach, obviously Coach Belichick up there in New England, you could foresee that happening. Yes, I mean we have some guys that can get it done. Obviously it'll be up to coach, be check, but just give guys opportunity and see what happens. Who on your team impressed you the most to coming out of the season? Oh man, there's a couple guys that impressed me. Rambo, obviously the number one pick really improved throughout the whole season. Devin Dorrington running back that came on and he heard his hamstring early in the year and he just came back and he was ready to go. Quentin came through after all the stuff and did a great job. Cody, Latimore, d lineman, Patton c Patton. So we had a few guys that did a great job. Two of those made all XFL team and that's what you want. Yeah. Did you like that? Did you like the all x ffl and them doing the awards and how the league decided to handle all that? Absolutely. I mean you put in the work, you have all these stats, you have you know see all this stuff and then you need something at the end to say okay, here are the guys that did it the right way and we won to reward game. Anthony, for you a question for coach. Yeah Coach is there, reflecting on this past season, is there anything that you would change that you're going to do moving forward to season two? Maybe just some things you learned from season one and trying to reflect on that for next season. Absolutely. I always say every year is a learning experience. I think the really understanding what the league is about, how to win, what the rules implemented and then your competition. I think that changes who you competing up against right from the draft mean you can have the best coaches, you can have the best schemes and all that, but if you don't have the players to get it done then it doesn't matter. So yes there are several things starting with identifying eval, eval evaluations and making sure they fit into our system. We have a question here for you coach from listener. Denzel, have you started recruiting for next season? He wants to know. Yes, we recruiting is, we are looking and putting down names but it won't kick in. We really won't start until next year, next month with camps and getting this thing rolling. So just be on the lookout for everybody's interested in x ffl, we're starting our camps next month and that's going to run throughout the year. I know last year it was on xfl.com. I'm pretty sure that the schedule and the address will come out pretty soon with those dates. How excited do you just have a second crack at this now because obviously everyone comes in, it's chaos and we're trying to do all this, being able to kind of now, okay, we've learned from season one. How excited are you to get to roll on this back Now Man, so I wish we could be, could start in a month. That's how excited I'm when you know what to expect, how to do it, you'll admit your mistakes and you start to grow and correct those mistakes. You can't help but to get excited about it. That's how I feel. I got a couple more for you here and then we'll let you go. I appreciate you taking the time on vacation. We have our next guest standing by Andy. Another question for coach. Was there anybody that you were most impressed by during the season who improved the most during the season? Somebody who really was able to get past some adversity? Oh man. We had several guys. I just, Devin Dorrington to me improve the most. Cause how he started off, I think that's his story of having a hamstring and we had to put him on our R for a couple weeks and then he stepped in and within two weeks he was a starting tell back. I think that's a story that a storyline or a situation that I was very, very pleased and excited about. Well and I think Devin 10 got a try out too with the commanders, which is my listener. We got listeners, Seth and my Washington commanders here left hand up, so exciting times for him. I've seen a couple of the X F L guys go up to Washington for tryouts. Yes, they know when you can eval, right and you see some talent, you see some guys that can help you. Why not bring, Max has a question here then we'll go to Anthony one more time. We'll let you get out of here. Have they explained what the process is for player retention? Is the draft calendar similar to last year? The draft calendar's going to be similar to last year and yes, we have discussed how we can protect some of the players, but the final decision, they're going over there right now. We have to get through this championship game and then we are all going to get together soon after that and make a decision. Anthony, any last questions for coach? Yeah, coach, we talk a lot about the players but I'm interested to get your thoughts on the coaching staff and who is, who's the guy that really stood out to you? I mean someone that I, I've seen as Shane Matthews really did a great job with the play calling throughout the season. Is there anyone on your coaching staff that really stands out similar to the players? Yes, Shane. Shane did an excellent job for us. You hit it from taking over the play calling duties really, really helped us and got us going in the right direction. Also, Mark Snyder, we lost our defensive line coach that went to Sam Houston State during the season, so Mark Schneider defensively had to kind of do double duty and running. Lee kind of had to do double duty also taking over doing a lot on special teams and helping out with the linebackers. So it was impressive for those guys to step up when we needed them. Anything else from you? I I so appreciate it. Like I said, having you on a couple weeks ago and taking the time can't express enough and obviously the listeners never when you coming on any other messages, words for the people watching? I would just say Orlando Guardians fans, Stan Guards and then our new model this year is going to be The Guardian Way because we have identified what our issues were and we will improve and I'm excited about next season and I feel like we are going to be here talking about us in the playoff making that playoff round. Well I appreciate that. I am you a friend of the show now means a lot, so thank you very much. Go enjoy your vacation and take care. Thank you guys. Take the game out tonight. It's good to be good. All right, well there you go, coach Buckley. How was that? Did we do all right? What do you think Andy? Oh that was Fantastic. Little great poll by you. Honestly. That was really great to hear him talk about not only the players that improved the most, the ones that obviously impressed him the most and just kind of his overall process. See, I know obviously of course he wants more winning who doesn't, but he obviously has had a tremendous impact on his players and also has been impacted by the league quite a bit. He seems really just, it was a joy to really talk to him about his whole process. Well I mean I'm kind of all in on the guardians, how I said before, if the guardians could play o on the field, they're, they're coms people, their social people work behind the scenes. Andy over there, tremendous job didn't hesitate at all when I reached out. And Anthony, what did you make of Coach Buck coming up? Yeah, I think Coach Buck is exactly the type of person that the X F L wants. This is a guy that he's getting an opportunity to coach for the first time and he's got some growing pains, he's got some development, but the type of character he is, you know, saw him, the player 54, how emotional he was when he got that first win. Even when he was going through that losing streak, the emotions that he was running through. So those are the type of stories that, and the type of people that you want to have showcase your league. That's a guy that really improved his team throughout the season and I think next season the guardians will be better off because he got that one year under his belt. Now they can improve upon it. Perfect. So we're going to bring in our next guest. So here's the plan. So you guys go rock, paper, scissors. I believe Deontay Anderson's walking around here so we might want to try to get him on early if you guys could go track him down and maybe rock paper, scissors, who wants to come back on and ask questions with him. Does that sound good? Awesome. We'll bring in Fran here. Thank you guys. We'll get them out of here. Thank you guys for checking out the show. We're going to bring in Fran and we'll see if we can get Deontay out of here. I know Matthew standing by as well, but we'll try to move people around. I appreciate everyone's patience. We have Fran here. We don't need a headphones. You're good. We have Fran from our Sports Central Paul Reese historian, everything else Fran, how are you doing? Doing great today I've been waiting 22 long years for this expo championship, the game to cover 22 long years. Fran, we were at the Alamo today. We saw the tour. What have you made of the sights and sounds? You were here for Media Day as well. What do you make of San Antonio So Far? San Antonio is an awesome city. It's type city where you can get the vacation experience. I've had the media experience and the fan experience. You participated in the media day. What impressed you the most from the people you were able to talk to? Well, Russ Brandon, I mean it was nice to talk to him briefly. Some of the players, they were all wearing their underarm uniforms, the awards ceremonies with the offensive player of the year with Jordan Tamu and also Coach of the Year with Reggie Barlow. It was fun. Then we even had the military dogs that were going to be representing halftime. That was a fun experience seeing these dogs be on and with five military veterans as well. In terms of Russ, you said you talked with him, we interviewed him back at the Arlington press conference over the summer. What do you make of him and the job he's done from a football ops perspective? I think he's done a good job, but it's been a slow and steady approach. It seems like they want to build long term. They're doing very slow with him. It's like they're sticking their pinkies in the water and they're taking their time to, they want to build a sustainable product. In terms of, you've obviously covered all three versions, is this better than expectations, worse than expectations? What do you make of this year? All said, done. I think it fits expectations. Some people are comparing too much to 2020 but it's a different world. It was before Covid Inflation. It's a different world and plus the fact some people are still skeptical about the legal and they don't want to invest in something that's going to fold and throw money and then be giving the merchandise away on eBay. Reggie Barlow, right, obviously Coach of the Year, a tremendous job. What does impressed you the most with him through all of this? His professionalism and the fact that he lets his assistant coach as coach. He doesn't, I mean he doesn't lean on them for advice. He lets them coach and run the team. Other coaches were kind of manipulate them. The defenders didn't make any coaching changes around the off season, unlike some of the during regular season, unlike some of the other teams that did that. What do you make of the game today? We've talked in hearing the up potential upsets with the renegades, everything else. What do you make of the matchup? I think it's a game for the DC defenders to win. They have a high power offense and the thing is, if they get out to a big lead as we see 'em with them, they're going to milk the clock. What the expo? Long timer rules. AMS just runs the ball, the time runs off the clock and they get a chance to get out to a lead and hold onto it. The thing is, I don't feel if they get that Arlington can match some score for score. I mean they may have hit lightning in a bottle last week against the Houston roughnecks. We got the question here and we've had this a lot. W Jones wants to know, do you think the XL Championship needs a a name, the trophy? I mean we're just calling it the XL Championship. What do you think the x ffl trophy should be called? XL Championship Trophy. It's buried than the million dollar million dollar game that it was in 2001 and I like this trophy a little bit better. It symbolizes what the league is standing for. I the episode last week, our preview episode, I called it the big game at the end of the season because that was originally what the X Ffl oh one, that's what their game was going to. It wasn't the million dollar game I think until week three or four. They kind of rebranded it. What was it like covering X F L oh one? I mean it feels like it's got to feel like a generation ago. It was so much fun. I used the TV to get quotes for my columns. It was my first article I wrote for Aport Central Paul Reese is one of my best friends. We talk all the time, every time after the expo games we're all on the phone doing Monday and morning quarterback breaking down the games and he always gave me good advice how to see my comps. Do you have a score prediction Today? 26 14. The DC Defenders Low score in the fair? Yeah. I see it's going to be be in a low scoring range. I'm not sold on Arlington's offense. What do you think attendance is going to look like? I'd say around the 20,000 range. 20,000. Would that be more or less in your expectations and what you think the league's looking For? My expectations, especially when the fact that Media Day, Russ, Brandon was biggest concern with all these crazy reigns that were going to get the casual fans to not show up. That's what they were worried about the most. They talked, they posted no beer. Snakes allowed, no beer snakes in the alma them. What do you think the people in the Alamo dom are going to do with potentially with the no beer sticks? Well, they may try something but it's going to get cut off by security. I see. Yeah. We got Kyle standing by Kyle, we'll bring you in a few minutes. I appreciate it. We're shifting around guests here. Fran, anything else from you? It's exciting. The Media day, Alamo tour, everything else. What do you make of everything? It's been an awesome experience just being down here. Just the fact that we're getting through a season in 2020. I covered it. I was down in Arlington, covered the Dallas renegades against the New York guardians. The week for Covid had shut the roll down so I got all my vacationing out for several years. How impressed are you with Danny Garcia, ro dj, everybody else for everything that they've put together this year? I'm impressed with what they've done. I kind of feel, I wish they were a little bit more involved in getting the brand out there, getting the exposure. Because the thing is you have these people with big name credibility and you can get more followers and get more likes and get more people to tune in. And maybe if Danny Garcia or Duane Johnson made appearance a media day, it would've been a zoo. Do you like the bi-week? I like the bi-week. From a media standpoint, from a fan standpoint, they probably, it kind of kills the momentum a little bit. But I think from a standpoint for a travel and plans and everything else, I mean I think it gives DC the edge because Arnold, they were high. I mean they made fall a little bit. You can't give Frank Williams two weeks to prepare for that defense. Watch out Anything else from me before I let you go? I appreciate It. It's been an absolute pleasure. I'm looking forward to the game and breaking it down on in our sports central next week. Yeah, tell people where they can find your work. R Sports central.com And one of, probably one of our most regular guests on the show. Paul Reese as well. Yeah, Paul Reese, first class guy. He know he a true professional. He's been doing this for years. And the thing is he loves football. He loves football. That's why he wanted me involved. I covered him arena football and he liked all my passion and the work I was doing and he wanted me as a writer for Arco Central and I jumped on that. Perfect. Well Fran, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. I'll get the mic back here. Thank you so much. And Fran voted Jo on. We'll bring in Deontay here came a little early. We're going to shuffle people around. We have Matthew with the XFL Insider podcast. Anthony, do you want to come on and ask some questions? We got Anthony coming on here. Take a seat here. Congratulations. Appreciate you. We have, oh I'll give you, yeah, you don't need that one. Yeah, we have all X Ffl defensive player. We have the Deontay antigen here with the XL Vipers. Really appreciate it. How are the mic is on. How are you doing sir? Man, I'm doing Great man. Thank y'all for having Me. Why are you in San Antonio? Oh Well one of my good friends playing, he plays quarterback for DC Defenders. Oh. And so I was already coming Dear King. And I got family out here too, so I was like going to come support and might as well just come do this man. What was the season like for you? Well, personally it was good as a team we wish could have finished better. Kind of frustrating some games, but I think we we'll be really good man. Yeah. What was it like with Coach Woodson and everyone else over there? Yeah, Coach Woodson a good dude. Everybody. We really had a good staff, good people from equipment managers to athletic trainers, man, really video people man. It was great. Great style. Obviously disappointing at least in the records. Yeah. What did you overall takeaways from the season? Well first of all, I didn't know I love to win but I think for next time we just work on finishing better. But other than that man, it was really a fun experience despite these didn't come out how we wanted to the record. I really feel like our team didn't, our record didn't kind of relate with our team but you know are what your record is. But it was fun overall though. It Really was. Anything you got a question for? Yeah, Yeah. Sorry I did that Awkward transaction. Yeah, you're good. So I guess let me ask throughout the, no this season, is there something in your game that you thought you developed or you got better with going to the X F O that you didn't maybe wasn't as good to coming to the league? Oh yeah, for me, mostly I think slowing my mind down. I know in years past I would try to just, for example, you know, study your opponent and then you kind of try to remember everything they do, which is impossible really. And my position coach, coach Perry was like, man look, you going to study all these things you want at the end of the day, you still got to go out there and play football. All you got to do is remember two or three things. And he said that I said okay. And it kind of slowed down for me and each game has got better. I think that was a big thing for me. But you've heard a lot about obviously ownership executive team, right? With Danny and everybody else. We've heard a million times to Player 54 and all that, but I've also heard it really resonates with you guys. Yeah. What do you make of how ownership has treated you guys through the season? They treated us really well. I'm glad that they actually wanted us, give us an opportunity again for guys like us. Cause I mean I was going around the league, man, it's a lot of good guys that not in the NFL right now and it was a really good league, really good talent and I'm blessed and happy that they provided us this opportunity to showcase our skills man. And hopefully at the end of the go, at the end of the day, the end goal, get to the nfl but even F don't work out. I think I speak for a lot of players that were very happy they decided to go through with it. You said you're here seeing your friend TA move here. What did we expect? They kick the snot out of the Sea Dragons. I was there, I was at Field. What are you looking forward to seeing from dc? The same thing. I'm just here support man. I think DC will win. I think they honestly think they will win by a big margin, but this is a championship game so things do happen, but that's my opinion. Yeah. Yeah. Anthony, you got another question? Yeah. What's your pitch to the NFL on what makes you the guy that you don't become the 54th player anymore, you become that 53rd player? I think I really show, especially this year, my playing style man is fearless. I just love getting to the ball man. I just love getting to the ball. I love hitting, I really do love hitting. I bring passion, I bring leadership. The thing about it, one thing my coach always say, if you get to the ball, good things always happen. So I always keep that in my mind. And so I wouldn't know when the team wants me and they see that on that film. That's definitely what they see. I'm fearless. Talk about the importance of having, whether it's the X ffl or the other one, what do you having these alternative leagues for you guys? Yeah, like I said, it's big man. Like I said, when I noticed this year it's a lot of good talent that's not in nfl. A lot of good talent, especially in this league. And so I just hope that N NFL sees that and actually give us a very favorable opportunity and things like that. Very NFL kind of political a little bit, but it's a lot of good talent man. I can't really stress that enough. Seeing the players get the camp tryout, seeing everyone you moving, what is that? You're all in this together. It's like you've been through a battle together. What are you seeing all everyone kind of trying to get to the next step Here? Yeah, it is just amazing. We had a few guys already did some workouts, things like that. So it's amazing everybody, they really want to get to the next level and I think a lot of people show that with the tape they put out in x ffl, things like that as well. Anthony, you got another question? Yeah, what Was the experience like of being in the hub and everyone being in one place where you, you're kind of sharing it with other teams where it's just not you guys, but now you have you're, you could be developing a relationship with other players, with other teams. That took getting used to kind of sharing hotels a little bit. Took some getting used to, but I think once we got used to it, it was pretty steady, pretty cool. I know Vegas, we've won with the Seattle team and we meshed pretty well so we didn't really have no problems but I, I'm pretty, maybe other teams may have problems but it took some getting used to. But everything else was pretty good though. Everything went smooth. Getting on the plane on the way home, did that ever get any easier? Yeah, man, it is not really a good feeling when you get on the same plane with the same team that you probably lost to. But that was good. Everything was a good experience man. I think it only gets better for me honestly. Yeah. Coaching staff, we talked a little bit before, but just how impressed were you as a player having all these guys around and women that be able to learn from, grow from, I mean we talked with Luis Perez when he was still with the Vipers talking about 200 whatever years of Experience, 270 years of coaching experience we had at the Vegas Vipers man. And I listened to every bit of it, every single bit of it. I took it to heart and it is really, like I said, it's really a blessing to have that around the game, man. Oh, when did Luis got traded Man, so it was crazy because he had asked me, he was like, Hey bro, you might take me to the facility, but I was busy and I was like I can't do it. But I was like, man, why you want to go to the facility man, A few hours later he got traded. I guess he wasn't going to talk, but I mean you got to do what's best for him. I think everybody kind of agrees with that. You got to do what's best for you man. If you feel like at that moment it was best to go to a different team then kind of play worked out here. Yeah, They roll out. How did you guys find out about the all ffe honors and all that? Actually my video media guy, Sage, he had texted me. He texted me like an hour before it came out and that was actually one of my goals. So actually when I seeing that and that kind of made me really happy. That's how I found out. Yeah. Anthony, you got anything else? Yeah. What are the next steps for you now I guess when you're now preparing to get to the nfl? How do you go about preparing for what's, what's the next steps for you? Yeah, shoot, workout, man workout. Just take steps of faith with it. Things will open up. Things will open up everybody's time and different, everybody's journey is different. How you get there, things like that. So my thing is staying cost, constant communication with my agent and just stay working man. Anything happen any moment. Well we appreciate your time. Anything else you want to say? You came by the show. Yeah, I appreciate that. Making the time. I guess predictions for the game. Like I said, I got dc, DC by a million. I ain't going to say by a million, but I think it's going to be a big margin. I got DC though. I like their defensive scheme and I got to support my friends too, so that's why. Yeah. Oh well Deontay, congratulations on y'all X F L I appreciate it and have fun at the game. Thank you man. Thanks so much. All right, let's see here at Matthew. Do you want to hop on or Kyle are you, I see you in the back. Are you cool sitting for a minute or do you want to hop on now? You're cool sitting. All right, let's bring on Matthew. We got Matthew here from the XL Insider podcast coming on and Anthony you can hang out or get out of here. It's up to you. All right. First time I'm meeting this gentleman here, Matthew over with the XL Insider Pod. How are you doing sir? Very Good, how Are you? I'm good. What have you made, how long have you been in town and what's going on? So we came in last night, got in about 1230 ish, late, about a nine hour drive my way. Beautiful city, love San Antonio, love the people so far. Curious to check out some more stuff after the game and tomorrow, but hey, I'm focused on game time today. I'm ready. What's it been like covering the season that you have? Man, it has been an awesome experience. I came in as an amateur brand new the XFL back in its first comeback, hardcore Battle Hawk fan back then. And I just wanted to pursue it more, started following, making connections, networks, postings. I, I'd say most of what my success has come on social media. I post a lot of social media stuff. I've get millions of hits on some of the things I posted in terms of followings, it's not as big, but those postings and the videos I make, I mean it's getting the word out for the XFL and that's what I'm about. It's an opportunity just to make the XFL look good. So What, what's impressed you the most by DC here? Winding up in the north playoffs, Definitely the quarterback. Jordan, my guy, he was my guy for the Battle Hawks back in 20. Look forward to watching him pull that win off today. I'm not trying to be too biased, but I am rooting for him as well as Abram Smith. Great, great athletes. I'm looking forward to some numbers they're going to put up. Interesting enough, I found that their lost to Orlando was Jordan's best game. So I'm curious to see if today if he's pushed to even play better. Anthony, we talked and Rick, Rick who was on the show and earlier the c dc really built to go from the beginning there. Do you want what it's like we predicted at the beginning of the season, DC's still here mean, was there any surprise just of how well that team was assembled? I mean, yeah, I thought this was a good team. I didn't know how great this team was going to be. I think a lot of it is the development of the receiving core that came on with Chris Blair and Lucky Jackson and Josh Hammond, all those guys played really well for them. And then with Jordan Tema, we weren't really sure what Jordan Tema would get. Are we going to get the one in 2020 with the battle hawks who was protecting the ball bowl or are we going to get the one from the U S F L where he was throwing 12 interceptions with the Tampa Bay Bandits? So I think there were just some questions about it. We didn't know how Dr. King was going to be used. We knew Abram Smith was going to be a guy. So it was really just a matter of how is the passing game going to be? And I mean DC ended up having one of the best offenses in the league, so I think they signed with those questions pretty quickly. Yeah, I mean I don't know if you've followed the U S F L and with tamu there really seemed to struggle and I don't know if the scheme didn't fit but really has come into his own not only running when he needs to but passing. I mean it seems like his arm has only gotten better during the season. Yeah, no doubt. And I want to note a lot of the offensive line play is making a big difference for him there. I've watched all season that offensive line is really dependable. They've got some studs up front that give him time and also that offense. I mean it seems like they really gear a lot of things around him now at this point coming in we saw a lot of different stuff from King, but we don't see too much that way. Now I very confident in today's game and me as personally, I'm looking forward to seeing him throw some passes. I had the grade, I've asked everyone this grade, the XFL here, one to 10, what have you made of the, and what are you looking forward to seeing hopefully improve for next year? Personally I'd say a seven. We definitely need to get some more marketing going. We got to get the word out more. I felt like a lot of this has been on the ground running. Guys like us have really been putting in the work, whether it be with each other or alone. Many, many networks and strings have to be pulled just to get in the place we're in. I want to say thanks to my network, ambush Sports, they're the ones that got me in the position that I'm in for my podcast as well as the show. So thank them. But like I said, I'd say a seven. We got to get some marketing improvements, we got to get some more word out, get the communities and the cities more involved, make things personal for people. I feel like that's what Vince did at first and that's what got people going. And if we could get that again, you're really going to see an impact in each of these cities. Yeah. Anthony, are you surprised? I mean we even talking here, walking around, even just having some signs up. I mean I checked into the hotel and the they're not, don't know what's going on you. I know we want to to keep it shoestring this year, but I just feel like, I don't know, it just seems like it's lacking. Yeah, I mean I wish they would've done more for a championship week. And I know this is something we talked about offline, but a lot of it is the bi week. I think that it's kind of an awkward bi week where you have a lot of momentum, especially coming off the playoffs. You want to ride that momentum to the very end. So it's one of those things where I wish the bi-week would move. My suggestion would be move the bi-week to the first weekend of March Madness so you're not competing with them directly because they're going to own the television screens all weekend. So that would probably be the good time to do the bi week. But I feel like the bi-week kind of killed the momentum. Not as many events were going on, you know, had Media Day yesterday, which seems like to be a great experience, but you should do more during that week. Get the players, get the coaches, find a facility, have 'em practice in the location for the week and then have them go out and interact with the communities and get people excited about going to the game. So yeah, I think more definitely needs to be done on that front. Well that was my thing. I mean I want to get your thoughts on the bi-week that this isn't the Super Bowl I we do the Super Bowl we have this week. I mean I understand it's a championship game, but I just didn't feel like it was utilized. Obviously Sage with the Vipers getting deontay on, we had Andy with the Guardians getting Coach Buck on, but I reach out to all the teams and I mean trying to coordinate, I'm like, I don't know if I'm the San Antonio, I don't know what the bras are doing today. I think we could have facilitated, we announced the media day just a couple days before my flight was already booked coming in Friday. And what do you make of the buy and how could they better utilize that? Yeah, I mean as Anthony said, we really got to get people involved, whether that be just going in and getting some advertising or actually getting some practices or something to show people the momentum was lost and it's sad but we've tried to keep it up and I see it personally just from the social media postings, how it's kind of just declined hardcore. And me personally, you should have had maybe some kind of event, some kind of show, some kind of conference, something to put on ESPN just to give people, this is our Super Bowl for the X F L and I mean we do treat it serious and I know they're doing the pivot stuff. I know that came out. I don't know what that does at this point. I don't know. Is that, I wanted to get your thoughts on that. I mean, having the Rock on Pivot and having Marquette king on the pivot the day before the championship game, is that enough to resonate? I mean, personally I didn't hear about that. So a lot of these things that I've heard about have been the day prior to the actual game time. I've received emails through media that were the day prior and then I would've loved to attend these events and we just couldn't. What do you think, Amy? Yeah, I mean like the interviews that Pivot did, I thought that they did a great job. I talked about what earlier about the Rock and being able to hear his personal stories of battling the depression and just telling more of the story than in, he's already talked about Calgary and coming back with only seven bucks in his pocket, but hearing the other side of it, talking about the depression, he went through trying to figure out his career. That part was cool and it was good to hear the other stories about, cause I do think Shannon and Fred Taylor and Ryan Clark, they actually do a really good job with their interviews, so it's a very engaging, they get their guests to open up. So I do think it's a very good show. It, it's just, I think more could have been done to promote that because I, that is a pretty big podcast, but I don't know if people knew if they were necessarily going to be on, so I wish they would've done more to promote like, Hey, we're going to be on Pivot. Make sure you check out an exclusive interview with Dwayne the Rock Johnson. That would've been cool to see Pip's here. And then we're going to bring back in Andy here in a minute. We're going to bring Kyle on. I juggled everything, but I appreciate everyone's flexibility. I just didn't want to keep Deontay kind of hanging around here in the thing. Pip's talking here. Atten tickets have really moved. Well the last few days I was finally able to sell our extra tickets at loss but was able to sell them. What are you expecting for attendance today? I would say we're going to be lucky to look at 25 to 30,000 just from judging what I've seen now, the X F L may win and gave some tickets out. That'd be my hope. The more people the merrier as you did. I gave some tickets out. Also, I've give tickets out to two games as far so far as well in Houston. So I mean I I'd say 25 to 30,000 is what I'm looking forward to. Matthew, anything else from you where people can find your work? Anything else before we let you go? I appreciate it. Like I said, your flexibility kind of waiting around so we can get you on. No problem. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate everything so far. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Spotify, any of the streaming networks our podcast is on. We finished episode 12 a couple weeks ago, so I mean it's been hanging out through the bye week just like everyone else. Find me interact, send me a message, love to hear more. Next season we're going to try to be coming out with some video as well. We don't want to compete with you guys. We want to all work together and make this a good network. I think if we all come together and partner, we're going to have a good thing going next year. Well, I appreciate it. The more serious we treat this, right, the more care we take in all this. That's the thing and people like, oh, why are you pooing on the, it's like because this needs to be real, right? Like the CFL for whatever people want to owe, who cares? They carry themself. Is this the most important thing in the world, right? Sure. You go to the gray cup and it's like a sacred, a sacred thing and so we need that here and I get that we can get on ESPN and do that hit, but having people like Anthony, right for USAP and Andy and you doing your podcast, having the weekly stuff coming out, it makes it feel U S F L exists Saturday to Sunday and that's it for the week. It doesn't exist outside of that. Sure. Any other thoughts from you, either of You? Hey, I'm good. I appreciate everything. Thank you Reid for having me on. I thank you Anthony. Appreciate everything guys at home. Appreciate it. Awesome. Thank you Matthew. Thank you so much. All right, we're going to bring Kyle on here in a minute. We're going to get Andy back. We're going to do the big reset. Anthony's going to need his headset. We're going to get Andy on here. Let's give Anthony that mic as well. We're going to bring Ann, thank you for your patience. We got Kyle Nash, student of the game. Hopefully our Internet's home now that it is. Keith's giving me warnings. Kyle, how are we doing here? So Far so good man. Hey, I know it was good from my perspective watching you guys rock your past couple guests there. I had no problem waiting if that's the thing. By the way, glad to see you made it through the whole thing with the beer snake in DC When you were there with your dragons brother, Did you track that that was the most wild thing to be being forcibly evicted from the beer snake section, giving the beginning the ticket be Roca relocated? I couldn't believe it. Well, hey, you talk about people taking it seriously. I don't know how much more you can say that the defenders can take seriously the beer snake in all its glory, right? Do you like the no beer snake today? I don't. I don't. I'm not a fan. I'm not shocked by it, but let's be honest, I mean at the end of the day, if you wanted a situation where you wouldn't wanted it to not happen, have it any anymore, air quotes, neutral sight, which I know is a tall ask for the league just coming out, but yeah, no, you got to have the beer snake. I mean, am I going to tell you not to wear your stocking cap with your D you? You're dragging on it. No, it's not appropriate. Have we talked enough about that? What do you make of the no beer snake? I think it's a mistake by the league that they're not going to allow it to happen. But I was going to ask you Kyle, do over under one and a half beer snakes, are we going to see today at the game? Oh, it's definitely an over, yeah, I would've put it at two and a half before we guys, they're going to retry after the first one stopped. I'm pretty sure of that. Anthony, what do you maybe we have already, maybe I have brain fog. Have we talked about the beer steak on here yet? No, but I will say like Andy said it, I think it's a massive mistake. You had a bi week, so you had two weeks to prepare if you needed the cups for it or whatever it needed to be done to have the beer snake. So I think it was amis by the league. It's kind of the identity of the league and it's the way the league can connect with fans is having that beer snake. So especially when you have DC here, you got to be able to have it Build on that. They totally got it right with at first it being pulled and then rebuilt, great marketing stuff there. They nailed that and then they come out and do this for the championship game. They earned the right to get their beer snake and it's a good thing. It's a good piece of hype that's memorable over and above and outside the game, which if you look at other championship games, the hype isn't taking place on the field. You get that outside action in there too, whether it be halftime shows or whatever, all that. The beer snake is a perfect non-expensive way to go ahead and add some of that hype in and yeah, I'm with all you guys. It's a huge miss from my standing. Well, And you get the viralness of it and the social media of it. I mean am quite honestly tired of hearing the announcers talk about the beer snake, but it is something that they're able to talk about, right? Yeah. I mean for most of us who cov cover it, it's going to be a little fatigue. But let, we talked about this before, I think on social media too, Reid, if they were to come out with a set of cards for the XFL and do tributes to certain things that weren't players like mascots or whatever, the beer snake would have its own x ffl card I would seem essential Going to. How about, I'm going to run to the facilities real quick here. How about Anthony or Andy, do you want to carry on the conversation? I'm going to utilize this time before Jason and the crew comes. I have a feeling it's going to get wild. Do you want to carry on the convo? Oh, With pleasure sir. Okay. Absolutely. Well great to be taking over here. Kyle, thank you again for joining us today. Really appreciate it giving your time to us on this momentous occasion. So obviously I wanted to bounce off real quick before I launch into my next question, but yeah, I agree with you. There should be some sort of merchandise for the beer snake. I'm surprised there's not like replicas of it being sold yet, but it is a good point. It is an identity for the league. I saw I was looking at a post by the Chicago Cubs the other day, or I think the mlb, we retweeted something from one of their games they were, and you're able to carry that over and kind of cross reference it with other things in other leagues and other sports. So I absolutely agree with you. The fact that it's not being represented here potentially may not be represented is a huge opportunity for the league And just the organic nature of how it came to pass and all of it. I mean if they're worried about lemons and all that, that's a whole other question. But yeah, you're nailing it here Andy. The beer snake is definitely a piece and it should be at the championship game. Like I said, they earned that, right fellas? Well, I mean make note, they didn't say anything about lemons, so we could see lemons tonight. So I don't know if that ends up being the replacement for it, but I mean something they could have done was do a giveaway like first thousand cups, here you go and you have market as X F L championship cups and you add it as a mini beer snake or something like that. So yeah, it's like a missed opportunity. Yeah, we'll let you know if we see any great fruits out there or any of that, anything of that nature. But yeah, so beer, snakes aside, what is something that you're really looking forward to the game tonight for this matchup? I mean you guys mentioned it with Jordan tiu me, I want to see how big a game Lucky Johnson has and taking nothing away from Arlington and the Redding Gate to what they're doing and matter of fact, it's because that defense is so good to pull off what they have that I want to see how this goes in order in my mind to have this big blow up of this, I don't want to say lopsided, but there's a lot of people picking DC and I get it right Lisa, so the Renegades had an air quotes losing regular season record, got hot at the right time by finding Louise Perez. It's interesting when you talk to Donald Payne of the Renegades and as a defensive player, as a linebacker, he says the biggest spark that got us through the roughnecks in the playoffs and getting into all that was a quarterback in Louise Perez. So a defensive guy is saying that, but I digress. The part I get to with that group there, we all know about Abram Smith, Jordan Tiu pulling the offensive player of the year award out of the hands of Ben Ucci and doing all of that is impressive in itself, but you got to have that balance on offense if you want to move the ball on this renegade defense and I think Wonky Johnson's a big part of that. We have a question here. I assume St. Louis is getting a championship game next year. Where would you like to see the championship game, Kyle? I mean St. Louis would not be a bad location at all. That would be, I mean selfishly, if it was in Orlando, I would obviously cover it too, but for me, I think actually I think St. Louis might be the best choice outside of Texas. It's relatively centrally located. The height there is great. I feel like even if the Hawks don't make it, the Caco nation and whoever else would still show up in droves and fill those stands, but I don't think they were prepared for St. Louis to react the way they did and listen good on the battle lock fans and Caco Nation and all that for pulling out those high thirties, near 40,000 numbers. Man, those were amazing for the league. Anthony, what do you make about that? I'm trying to make sure that Jason's not trying to message me coming on the show. Yeah, so I mean agree with Kyle. I think St. Louis would be the best place to do it. I mean, right, even today I've actually seen quite a few St. Louis Battle Hawks gear being out here. So I think putting them in that, I don't think it really matters the end of the day where the location or if St. Louis is going to play in the championship game or not, they're going to get fans to come out to that Hundred percent. Yeah, it looks like the internet here is a little wonky. Anthony, where would and I keep doing that, Andy, where would you like to see the championship game? I change my name at this point, but for the championship game, I mean, God, there's so many options, right? St. Louis would've been awesome. Obviously you would get fans, you would get people showing up for that game anyways if they had a home game for the St. Louis, I mean that would've been tremendous. It wasn't going to happen for San Antonio this year, unfortunately DC I like dc the problem is it's just not big enough. I think they would want to have more seats for that kind of occasion. I don't know if you could have a different stadium, a different contracted venue. Probably not. I don't think is really sufficient enough in my opinion. It it's probably something that needs to be reconsidered going forward. But the thing, it's hard to say the really your two ideal locations are the domes, the St. Louis and in San Antonio. So it's hard to say right now unless they get an expansion team sometime down the road and they're able to find a better venue. I don't really see any other options that they have currently. Kyle, what's your experience have been covering the league so far this year? Yeah, listen, being at the Guardians Games, even with a team that's struggling, you see those Lyle loyal diehards there on a regular basis and it was really fun to see the fans respond when they did pull it out against the now North champion DC Defenders for the only loss on the year for them and just the excitement for the fans that are there. I is amazing. The numbers did kind of dip as the season went on just because the winds weren't being put on the board and rightly so. I get that. But I heard some talk earlier on the show here with you guys about that local outreach concept and as I think as they get away from that centralized model, the X ffl will be in a better position than to do more of that local community outreach. I did see them try a few things here in Orlando with the guardians with land in town on Saturday and they'll visit hospitals and stuff and things around kind of do their community service and then also do what they can to be communities of their own team, even though they are spending so much time there in Texas during the week. So I think we'll see more of that outreach kind of happen as things sort of migrate away to everybody being in their own home city on a more regular basis. And that would also present or prevent rather any issues such as what happened with, but I digress. What what did you make of that? I really think it was just all a misunderstanding because of nobody really being in that situation before. To hear Quentin talk about it, to hear the scuttle bud around it, from what I heard from stuff around the facility and things like that, it was all just kind of stuff that was just morphed on its own. It looked wrong. Nobody thought it could really put a finger on what exactly happened. Obviously weren't speaking too much about it, but from my personal experience, just playing semi-pro ball, I can't imagine riding on the bus home with the team that done beat me. So there's all sorts of stuff that went on there that I feel like people weren't used to that environment. So something that they saw that was out of whack was it was just processed the wrong way. But I'm still amazed how afterward Doee and the team embraced each other and he came out and performed and he's one of the guys that's now getting looked at by an NFL camp with the Broncos. So I mean it's funny what a statement for the x ffl guys really quick. The team with the worst record in the league has somebody from every offensive skill position going to an N F L camp in some fashion. That is amazing to me. I won't comment on the offensive lines, lack of appearance there, but having a skill position in every part of an offense by the team that's in the lowest in the standings, that means the lowest on the chain is still getting to the next level and getting looks. That's interesting. Yeah. Andy, what do you make of that? Then we'll get Anthony, That's what I've been saying all year. I totally agree with you, Kyle, even though the team did not perform well and had a lot of trials and tribulations that didn't go their way, they still have talent and they have an immense amount of talent, especially at the offensive skilled s like you said, Cody Laer awesome, Charleston Rambo very highly skilled, even their quarterbacks, I would've loved to have seen Normandy play more. He had some exceptional games, one being against dc, another one in Vegas. He obviously had his downturn as well, but still there was talent on that team. They were lacking in certain departments. Offensive line obviously wasn't good. Their defense just couldn't create turnovers, but the individual skill positions were there and that's the case for every team in this league. Every team has talent, every team has skill players, every team has good coaches and this, even if the results weren't, there was still a lot of potential in what could have been done. I felt really, really felt like there was parody in this league. I truly felt that way. I don't really feel that way about 18 leagues or smaller leagues where sometimes it's such a disparity between these talent gaps or coaching staffs. But I really did not feel that way too much in this league and that is a testament to the Orlando staff to be able to get the most out of their players. I thought you were talking about the New Orleans breakers, new breakers. Well we can talk about them later. That's another team obviously that's done a fantastic job, but yeah, No, and so Anthony and then we'll get Kyle the parody, right? Parody we've talked about we're seeing huge gap last year in the S F L. Seems like it's going to be also quite a large gap this year. What do you make of the XL having as much parody as it did between all the eight teams? I think that speaks to the quality of the play on the field and the job that the front offices did in bringing in the right players to right systems. I think that's something that sometimes these leads kind of struggle with is finding the right guys and being able to have everyone be competitive because it really did feel like, yes, Vegas was not good, Orlando was not good, but they were in a lot of games like Vegas could have easily been five and five, six and four. Orlando could have won two or three more games. So I think that really speaks to what the front offices did and that's really the strength of this league is being able to find talent, look at someone like Jaco Pearson as somebody that, not a big name but because of the work he did with destroying and all the videos that he had for it that got him into the league and he ended up being one of the premier receivers in the league. So it it's guys like that really make the parody is such a big thing in the league where everyone is going to be able to compete. Obviously you're going to have really good teams, you're still going to have really bad teams, but as long as the bad teams are being competitive then it makes for a really good product on the field. Hey Kyle, what do you make of that? Yeah, well I mean, let me add to that too. You mentioned Pearson, Anthony, hey listen, this is a guy who's across from a dude that was leading the NFL and receiving yards before his whole situation took place and he's still dominated. So definitely mentioned Pearson as a story is a must and parody for any league. You need some element of success in for the major sports out there. The problems they have with lesser teams is, well I think what bails out lesser teams is revenue sharing. And this isn't just for major leagues, I would argue the same thing is through college football conferences as well as some way Vanderbilt stays alive because the s e c is what it is. But that parody is important because it keeps the fans coming in and that's what drives that attention. Everybody at the beginning of any year in any league needs to believe they at least have an outside shot. This is what happens. For example, if you are an Orlando Guardian fan, sure you only won LA one game last year, but hey, like we just said about guys getting shots in the N F L all over the roster except for certain key places and hearing Coach Buck say himself that if he had only stuck to his own guns and not listened to everybody and trusted his instincts drafting his players, he might have had a better roster and good in his know. With all the changes that Orlando did make, we saw that upward, upward step in real time in beat. What a field goal game with the Arlington Renegades, a K A of the South Division championships could have gone. Is it just a fuel goal opportunity which they didn't get in either game. Whether it be because of a close call or just an excellent defensive effort by the Renegades and their sack and Quentin Doty on the play before. And you get those situations where that one play decided the outcome and we're looking not only at a different record for the guardians, we're looking at a different pair of teams in the south, or excuse me, in the X ffl championship, not just the south championship. Right Andy, Are you surprised with that when I had Buckley on a couple weeks ago too and just do you got to give more help to these first year coaches when they're league building, they're like, how we want to bring in, we want to get new people involved, give people an opportunity, but then how do you fix that? Giving them a good support staff, good assistant coaches, and also just maybe more correspondence from the league. If you're going to be a league of opportunity, you also need to be able to present those opportunities and support those opportunities. You can't just expect people to figure it out on their own. Now you have other individuals like Hines Ward for example, another coach that wasn't able to really be successful this season as much as he wanted to, but he was kind of figuring it out as he went along. Same with Rod Woodson. I mean the only guy that really was a superstar in that aspect was Anthony Beck. Obviously Anthony Beck was fantastic from day one from the jump, but he seemed to already have a programmer idea in mind. Not all coaches have that and so you have to be able to find a way to support that. I don't know exactly how you go about that. Again, maybe just bringing in different personnel or being able to have more correspondence with the league. But I absolutely agree because a guy like Buckley is smart. He knows Ball, he knows a lot. He is very passionate about this and is dedicated to this. I mean he's already, you know, heard him earlier in the program. He can't wait to get back out there and start coaching again. So yeah, you absolutely need to be able to find a way to foster that. Anthony, same question for you. Yeah, I mean when you look at guys, Anthony Beck has had coaching experience in the past. So Andy, like you said, I think just having that program already set in place on how he wants to do it. I mean he was a guy that was chasing the X F L for years. I mean because he wanted an opportunity to be a head coach because I think he knew exactly what he needed to do to be successful. And having that plan in place I think helped him out to be successful. I think guys like Hines Ward and Rod Woodson who had not been coaches as much, that was a new learning curve for them and getting into the flow of what it takes to be not only a head coach in coaching these players how to play football, but also being a leader that that's als, there's two elements to it. Anthony Beck was a great leader, that's why his team was successful. And I'm not knocking on Hines Ward and Rob Woodson, it's, there's a learning curve to being a leader. It, it's more than just being a head coach and telling guys what to do on football assignments. You have to be able to lead them and motivate them and them push them onto the right pathway. So I think that's kind of where the gap is. We have a dirty standing by here. Our next guest, they were all going to come down here and I guess they're stuck at the tailgate, but that'll be good cause we'll get a live look in at the tailgate. But Kyle, before we let you go and dirty, I see you, they're still adjusting their camera. I had a question here from Garrick. Let's not forget about coaches that might be getting some looks too. What coaches would you see? And it's weird because the head coaches are locked in, but obviously if someone called, I'm sure that they'd let hens go or do whatever, but what coaches do you see getting looks from this league? You And I like that Garrick asked that question. I was going to go here. This is the talk about League of opportunity. As much as we talk about the players, this is it for court coaches too and being able to, I'll just say one too that I got to watch a person here in Orlando seeing Shane Matthews turn around this offense the way that he did in Orlando. I mean you got to give him some consideration for that. Taking guys like the Jordan Thomas's, right? The Katie Cannons who weren't in the building necessarily a week and a half ago. Sure they had X Ffl experience with another team, but they come in within 10 days, they're catching touchdowns. Jordan Thomas's case, he went on to get an opportunity in the N F L in one of the camps here upcoming. So that's always something you want to see there. And when you see a coach turn our turn things around that quickly. I said we watched the guardians improve in real time. Even Coach Barlow after the loss had said he was worried about the guardians and their ascent. He just wished it wasn't against them. You know, see a coach showing real ascent like that. I think that's the kind of guys you want to look at that that can turn things around. Because if you're looking for a new coach and you're trying to tap talent at this level, let you know and you're in the N F L ranks, let's say for example, you're going to be looking probably to turn around your franchise. And if you see somebody with that experience firsthand, that's going to be a good target for you. I also like to kind of follow with that too, how they've kept Coach Buck in and all these other head coaches are still locked doing their thing with that all still happening. They know what they need to fix now and they're given an opportunity to do it. I think that's ultimately a net PA positive for all the coaches. Last question for you, and then I think DER's ready to go. This could be a catastrophe here when we get to this next shot. I'm, I'm seeing them prepping in the thing journey. I'm coming to you in a second. Over under one and a half coaches hired from the xl by the end of this next season, I'm going to say over because I think it'll be two. There you go. Kyle, appreciate your time. Good luck. Thanks for sticking around and working with the flexibility coming on. Really appreciate it. And I'll be on Kyle's show next week here. I think we'll record that Monday if I remember right. That's Absolutely right, man. Hey, looking forward to that great job putting together this production, man. You're managing live guests me remote. You got dirty off doing whatever he's doing somewhere at the tailgate, the listen an absolute circus and you're a heck of a ring master. The difference is you have a different hat because you'll have your Seattle D on there. It'll be all good. It'll be good. Kyle, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Honor, Ajoy and privilege guys. But until next time, class dismissed. Kyle is great. Love Kyle. All right, and we're going to break now. This guys, this could be a disaster here. I can't wait. Can't wait. I see the preview. We got dirty here. What's up buddy? Now we're going to keep this pg. I know you get a little more vulgar on your show. Yeah, No, you're good bro. We're good. Look, look Reid, I got stuck in the tailgate. Look at 'em all. Reid. It's a sea humanity here. I see the mayor there. I see we got The mayor. Look. You ready? We got the mayor right here. Look at that. We got the Los Bandit right there. We got the predators there. We got battle fans back there. Hawk one Green. You're missing, you're missing a really good time. Re Really? We are. I love you Buddy. I'm, I'm going to be heading over there soon. Hotel. Hold on, hold on. Reid's asking a question. What's up buddy? Oh, Let's go. We're here. I've been fighting the internet connections all day. It's hard enough doing it at the hotel here, let alone trying to do it out of the tailgate. I we're still having that. Alright, dirty. How you guys did the podcast last night. What did you made of your time in San Antonio and just, are you feeling the vibe You want? Look, you want to see, this is what San Antonio's all about right here. This is what the X Ffl is all about right here. It's just about the camaraderie of all of these fans. I mean, we got Battle Hawk fans, we got DC fans, we got Houston fans, sea Dragon fans. It's just crazy. It's just unbelievable that we've actually got to complete this season. Oh yeah, we got Orlando. It's just been, it's unbelievable. San Antonio's been great. The city's been great. The hospitality has been phenomenal. And the food's great. Ray, you really should come down for the food. Do you guys have any questions for Dirty? I guess my only question is have you seen any other fans from, what am I forgetting? Oh, you said Orlando, right? There's an Orlando Fan. Orlando, we got Orlando here. We got every single city represented right here in this tailgate right now as we speak. How upset are you that St. Louis isn't hosting the title games? Not they don't deserve it. They don't deserve it. It's a perfect city to do it in San Antonio. Look, I love St. Louis, right? But the dome's not very nice right now, so we need to upgrade it. I'm having a feeling next year it will be upgraded, so we'll be there next year. So I'm not really upset. I get why they did it this year. Logistics, money wise. I get why they did it. Did here in San Antonio. Makes sense. Dirty. What are you looking forward to from a football perspective tonight? Here's what I want. Okay. I want a competitive game and we're all talking about how the renegades were four and six and made the playoffs right? But you put Luis Perez on that team a lot earlier. That team, that team could be the best in the south, right? I just want a competitive game. I want it to go good. And since I got to be kind of objective, I got a man crush on Jordan. So I'm going to go for, I'm going to go, I'm going to go DC. That's who I want to win. Anthony, you got anything? Yeah, I don't want to talk about the game right now. I want to ask about the tailgate. Is there I, I've been hearing about the Brahma beers. Have there been any Brahma beer sightings at this tailgate? Yeah, she Wants some. Hey, where's my broma beer at? Where's the Broma beer? I need? I'm sorry, I had to ask Reid, I had to ask. That's Okay. There's the Broma beer right there. Sorry. Sorry, Reid. There's the Brahma beer. Yeah, it's all over this place. It's crazy. These people are nuts. Forma beer. Can I get the crowd's reaction to the fact that the beer snake isn't going to be allowed tonight? Guys? Who's upset that the beer snakes not going to be here? Nobody. Yeah, they don't care. See, they just still don't care. They all just said, I thought it was going to be outrage. Well, no, they don't care. I think it's a DC thing and I don't think they like it here in San Antonio. Any other thoughts, observations from the weekend here? Sir? Sir, it's just been a great weekend. It's been a fun time. San Antonio's a great city. I've been here before for the first battle hogs name against San Antonio and it's actually my favorite place to come to for an X Ffl game. The atmosphere is just unbelievable and the fans are great. Very nice. I've been getting fed and drinking water all night long, so, cause I can't drink today. Well dirty. I appreciate it. We'll let you go. You guys have fun here and we'll bring on our last guest here in a second. Thanks so much. Hi Reid. Thanks brother. Thanks. Well there we go, we survived. That was a little, I was a little wary. I didn't know. That's Quite a party they got Over there. We're waiting for Greg to hop on. Greg Parks will be hopping on in the minute X L Board. Thoughts so far how the show's been, kind of post recap while we wait for our last guest. I'm really hyped up now after that, but this is, it's been eclectic honestly. All the guests have been great. All the wealth of knowledge that we've had, all the people from different walks of life and different parts of this league really just shows you how diverse this community is and that's something I take away from this whole experience and the fact that we've been able to, you have been able to assemble all of these people really is a testament to what you've done here. Yeah. Ma, major credit to you, Reid, for putting this all together. Have we done okay today? It feels like it's biblical, chaotic And it could have been chaos but it's been very organized. I will say Deontay, I loved his interview. I loved hearing from him and talking about his experience in the X ffl. That was kind of, if I had to pick a favorite interview, that's probably my favorite one. And hearing from his perspective, he was very open and talking about his experience. I love that part. I will say they've been talking thunderstorms all day. It does seem like we're getting a little more cloud cover. Obviously the games inside don't have to worry about that, but they were predicting major flooding and everything else. Do you think that inhibited people from coming out and hanging out before the game? Yeah, I mean I'm sure that had probably has an effect on it. I mean you probably saw from whenever there were rainy games in Seattle that kind of affected attendance numbers. But I think if fans are able to see right now that there is no rain beforehand, they may be more likely to go out to the tailgates now because I, I'll be surprised that tailgate atmosphere, that was awesome to see how many people came out for that. It was cool. I like getting to check in on that. Like I said, dirty was going to come here, stuck over there. We have our last guest here, I vamped long enough he was with us for the XFL kickoff, now we have him back here for the X L championship. Greg Greg Parks, how are you doing? I got to be honest with you, I'm a little jealous Of you. I see everybody posting on social media being down in San Antonio for the championship game and maybe one day, maybe one day I'll get to the championship location but it just couldn't make it work this year. So I hope you guys are having fun and I hope it's entertaining time and a good game for you guys for being there live. Greg was at, he didn't know we had to see work around. He had a kid's birthday party today. Wasn't sure if he was going to make a nice day. I, I dunno if you can see it was a Super Mario theme. So I've got my Bowser tattoo on my hand as proof, so if I have any, there's might be some cake left leftover on my face or something like that, that that's just from the birthday party. Well no, I said kids have a birthday every year. The ex developed, we might not have a championship for another 22 years. That was both the funniest and the saddest thing I've ever read. So I did get a chuckle out of that read. I'm going to ask this to everyone. We'll start with Greg. We've made it. Have we made it like, oh yeah, we've ascended the mountain here or did we just make it to the championship game? A little of both. You know, don't want to get too ahead of yourself and in proclaiming now that we've made it here, put down your season ticket deposits for the next five years, I don't think anyone's ready to do that yet. We have seen Danny Garcia and Duane Johnson do a lot of media leading up to this game and they've been, from what I can tell, it looks like they've been pretty honest. They, they're very happy about some things and there's some things that they can work on. And so I think that acknowledgement of things that they can work on and getting started soon. I know in a couple of articles they said they're going on a management retreat here coming up soon. So that's the place to really develop ideas and bounce ideas off of each other and really look at the data from 2023 and sort of use that as your guide in how you want to approach 2024. Do you like the honesty of that? Do you, I mean U S F L is a little bit more, this is the best, I mean don't talk to us, we're Fox Iman, what do you make of the honesty? It's important and humility is something that you need to have if you're going to be able to continue doing what you're doing. Look, I like confidence, I do, but I also like to know that you are realistic in your expectations and what you accomplished during the season. And clearly that is the case from chairwoman Danny Garcia from the Rock, from Russ, Brandon. All of them. I think they know Rome's not built in today and this is going to take some time to really construct and put together. Now that being said, I think there is optimism for next year. Obviously already there's already potential. There's some teams that have already started to put out the links for deposits on season tickets next year. But I sort of agree with Greg in that let's not just draw the cart before the horse and just be like, all right, next 10 years, this is where I team, this is my identity. These may move around, there might be expansion teams, there might be different venues, there might be color changes, uniform changes, logo changes, name changes, all kinds of things like that. So we're down out of the woods even just in that regard too. But there a lot can change, a lot can morph because this is so new. It's a Petri dish and I think it's easy to want to just say, well this is where we are and this is it, that this is definitely not it. And I don't think that's how the league sees it either. They know there's so much more to be had and so much more growth and evolution to go with this. Anthony, same question. Yeah, let's crack open the champagne bottle after we get to our second X Ffl championship game, then we can be like, okay, now we're in the flow of it. Now we can get a rock and a rolling and look, I love the honesty from Danny and the Rock. I, I think as us journalism for the fans out there, we know that things are not perfect. We can talk about cash from field all day. We can talk about the marketing, we can talk about attendance all day. But for them to also recognize that too, that that's a big thing. You don't want to have that huge ego and be like, oh we're perfect. We don't have to fix anything. Obviously there's stuff they need to fix and they've acknowledged that and that's all you want to see. Want to see that human element out of them. And I really hope that's something that they can, if they do the Player 54 documentary next year, let's talk about that part. That would be something I would love to see in the first episode is the off season and them being transparent about, okay, we didn't do this, we didn't do that and doing that correctly, but this is what we're doing during the retreats to be able to work through those issues and be able to set ourselves ourselves up for more success in the future. So that'd be something I would like to see out of the league because they have been pretty transparent so far. But I wanted to go to the next level in terms of how they're handled the off season. So I love that about the league and I hope they continue to do that. Greg, I had a dream, I think it was two nights ago I spent a day with the Rock. It was actually pretty delightful. I was just like, we were just hanging out in Seattle. I think we went over to the view, it didn't catch all of the rocks stuff with the pivot this week, but I did hear the sound where he was talking about, I never really just sit and talk with my boys and kind of vamp and all his interviews are so staged and forced. It did make me think that's got to be a weird life for the Rock. You're always living in this. Everything is so perfectly tailored, you'll get a lot of vulnerabilities. So it's always been jarring to me when the rock is a little bit more honest about where they want the exit be to go because you're just not used to that from him. Well I mean when you think about it, he, he's conquered two industries. He was for a short time the best professional wrestler and probably the most popular. And then he goes on to film and just dominates that and becomes for a time the highest paid actor in Hollywood. So not, he had some rough patches growing up for sure. And he tells that story often and getting to college and playing college football and thinking that that was going to be his big ticket and then realizing after he got injured in the cfl, that wasn't going to work out. But to dominate two industries the way he has in his adulthood and then come to the XFL and try to work your magic on that. I think the acknowledgement that he's made that it really is a long game. They're not in it to pop a big rating in the first week and then kind of sit on their hands and say, all right, we've done all the hard work. I think he understands that there's still a lot of hard work left to do. And for someone who's been in his position, that does take a lot of humility and you do have to set your ego aside because this could have been a very public failure. The likes of which he's not really encountered, you know, mentioned his life. He's very careful if you've ever seen interviews and things like that, he's very careful not to criticize anyone, not to step on anyone's toes. It's a very sanitized version of the rock that we often see in public. So for him to show this vulnerability with the X F L and to go on social media and say, Hey, we're building this one brick at a time. The ratings aren't super great, but we're building it. We're slowly moving in the right direction. That sort of thing has to be hard for someone who has just been so successful in his adult life that as he's been, Truth be told, I was always more of a stone cold guy than the rock guy. Well I mean it was Definitely one or other. There were two very distinct camps. So I don't blame you And I'll everyone's thoughts on this, doing this brick by brick stuff every week, Mike post the attendance and everyone goes crazy and the US NFL's kind of like, do you think that, I don't think they care at all. I think that they are like we, we've got a plan here. I don't know. What do you make of that and what do you think that they think of where they're at or where they think they should be? I think they just don't overreact. I don't think they are going to allow results such as attendance, color, their entire perception of where they are and where they're going to be. I think they look at it and I'm sure obviously they want higher numbers because you're always going to compare it to the old league, the 2020 league. That was inevitable that was going to happen. And of course I don't think they want to dwell too much on that because that was a different ownership group that was a different set of circumstances is different. There's, it's a different time in everyone's lives before. So if in this case, yeah, I don't think they're going to really react too much to those sorts of things. And I don't know if it's not, they don't care. I just don't think they take as much, they don't take as much stock in it as maybe someone we do in observing it because they have I guess bigger fish to fry I suppose. But they also just try to be realistic in what they can address at certain times and other times that they have to maybe put things down and kick things down the road and try to address other issues. Yeah, cause I mean it really is, we're on this right now. We can't do anything. We can flex games a little bit. We can move at the ESPN too, but we can't, yeah, the book's already going right now. We can't stop the horse It same question to you. Yeah, I mean can't overreact. I think for the ownership group, they can't overreact to what's going on. So if they see that attendance numbers are going down or ratings are going down, they can't be like, oh okay, let's just pull the plug, this thing is over. They can't react that way because they are playing for the long haul. That is something they've talked about multiple times. This is not a short term thing. This is we're going, we're in for the long haul. We know things are not going to be perfect, we're going to fix it as we go. So that that's something that the ownership group has understood from the moment that they paid 15 million for this league is that we have to be in for the long haul. That's why they didn't play in 2022 because they were like, we're not ready to go. We need to get this right and we need to take our time with it. So they're going to take that approach with every single season. I mean they didn't spend a lot of money on marketing because they know we want to try to build this thing organically and then we could start putting money into marketing to try to get more eyes on the product. So at the end of the day, this is going to be a three to five year project and after three to five years we'll figure out if this is going to be the real deal or not. Greg, are you, we've seen now with the U S F L and obviously the lawsuit now they're showing old clips and they're talking Hershaw Walker and all that now that we've got made it through the whole season. Are you surprised that we don't acknowledge oh one at all and then even just in the slightest terms, acknowledge 2020? No, I'm not surprised. I'm a not surprised that they don't acknowledge 2001 because that really was a long time ago and it was a very different league and we have seen xfl.com did an interview with Jonathan Heinbach who is the offensive line coach for the Arlington Renegades who was a member of the Los Angeles Extreme Championship team. We've seen ESPN do some pieces on Tom Lugen Bill, who is the quarterbacks coach for the Extreme and who's now announcing X ffl games on espn. So they're kind of dipping their toe into the water a little bit. But I'm not really sure what from x ffl 2001 is relevant to acknowledge in this day and age. I think once you get to the championship game and it truly is the first X ffl championship since 2001, I think that's where it feels more relevant to acknowledge. And I think they've done that. The comparison to 2020 is interesting because you know were talking about the attendance and how it's down from 2020, but really, I don't even know if this ownership group even compares those numbers. They seem to be so checked out of what happened in 2020 and they're forging their own path. So I really think they don't like the comparisons to 2020 partially because they weren't in control then. So they don't probably think it's very fair. Not only, as Andy said, it was a different world back then, but also it to them, to the ownership, even though they're reusing the name and reusing a lot of the teams, it really is from the ground up experience. So I don't think that they even feel like there's as much crossover as we feel like there is from 2020. Same question. Yeah, again, I think it is the case that there's not really a lot of crossover there. I agree with Greg and it's hard to, for any business, not even just the football, but I think any business really compare a lot of things from three years ago versus now. I mean the world has changed, things have moved on, there's just not, and also in terms of obviously with the numbers as far as viewership goes, I mean now you have a competing league. Fox and ABC were in tandem and ESPN were all in tandem last time and this time that's not the case. You have real competition. I mean there's us F O games going on literally right at this moment and they're cross firing with each other and it's creating a giant rift in sort of splitting splintering attention that that was not something we had to worry about. We had to, while we worried about three years ago was can we have a league? And now we have two leagues. So yeah, it circumstances have changed drastically now it's more of just, I suppose with Danny and the Rock can, are they going to be, the other thing is how much are they focusing on each other too? Are they trying to shoot across the bow and make it known about what they can and can't do? Or are they just sort of ignoring all of it that's like what's their attitude towards the U S F L as well? That's another thing to consider Anthony the U and then we'll get Greg and then we'll get out of here at the to hour, hour two mark. Yeah, I mean I think if you're Danny and Dwayne and Jerry and Redbird, I think you have to go into this with a clear mind and just forget about everything that happened in the past. I don't think they're doing it on purpose. I just think you have to have that type of mindset, especially if you're starting a new business like this where you need to set your own expectations, set your own standards. Andy's talked about this, this was a different world three years ago and Vince McMahon was running things differently from how this group is doing it. So I think they have to set their own standards. They know what kind of budget they're going to have for the league. They know how much money they're going to spend, they know what kind of strategies they're doing. So for example, for Vegas, they knew they were going to have low attendance. They were shooting for 8,000 a game and they only got 6,000. So they're going to go back to the drawing board and be like, okay, we didn't hit the expectations. How do we hit those standards next season? And they're going to go back to the drawing board. But I understand why they don't want to compare it to 2020 and I'm sure the U S F L doesn't want to compare to want to be compared to the 2020 X ffl also. So I think when you go into a new business, you forget about everything, set your standards, And then every year you keep elevating it from there. Greg, anything else from you? I appreciate all season and everything through the whole way through. Any other thoughts from you about either the game or the season as a whole? I, I'm looking forward to the game. I think it'll be very interesting. I don't know how much you guys have talked about the game on the last hour and a half or so versus just like X Ffl as a whole. But I'm hoping for a good game. Obviously it's going to become a big story if it's a blowout or something like that. And cause they're going to have probably, I would say the most eyes on them tonight than they've had all year, probably even beating the first game. So the advertising, I think we can rightly criticize the advertising throughout the year and leading up to the season, but I think ESPN and the X Ffl have done a fantastic job of in the last two weeks really pushing this game hard on social media, on television outlets and things like that. So I'm really hoping they get a good rating this week. And the off season is going to be very interesting because we've not had an off season like this before if we've ever covered the X ffl because it's been one and done. So an actual off season going into a second season is going to be kind of crazy. And I don't know if you can see on my computer back here, I was in the middle of working, I'm compiling all the rookie mini camp players and teams, so I'm making a big list. So when X ffl teams start compiling their players, I can go back to this. So the grind never stops for us covering the league, even heading into the offseason, there's so much to grind on and things like that. So I'm really excited to see where the off season takes us, what next year looks like, what the off season looks like, what player movement looks like, what the draft looks like and things like that. That's kind of my area of interest I think more than anything else in the xfl. So yeah, certainly we got a game tonight and I hope it's a good one, but after that is really going to be where it really gets interesting. I think. Yeah, the work will start. I'm excited. Like I said, I think we've the been rolling down the hill. Okay, let's get done. Let's stop, let's reevaluate. Greg, thanks so much with XL board, all the work over there and all your postseason. I've been trying to retweet as many as I can, all your postseason, recaps some, all the teams and everything else. So thanks so much for your time. Absolutely. Thanks for having me and have fun tonight guys. It should be fun. We'll get over there soon here. Well we did it. We do As well as you can expect, it didn't get rained on, it didn't rain once the entire time, which it was such a 50 50 proposition. But no, I just wanted to say this was fantastic, the work done by you and everyone here. Greg, I didn't get mentioned before he signed off, but I'm, I'm excited not only for the fans and for the players and for the coaches and for the league, I'm excited for us because we've put in so much work into this and this is really our Super Bowl in a lot of ways and it's something that is such a culmination of so much hard work and determinations and just waiting and grinding. So much time spent on this pontificating on getting to this point. And again, I'm just really excited for all of us and I can't wait for tonight. Anthony, anything else from you? Yeah, I mean tonight's about the celebration of a season being completed. It's something that we haven't seen in 22 years from the X F L and it's similar to the U S F L and how they celebrated completing their first season last year. I think this needs to be a celebration of all the work we've been doing as journalists, but for the fans and for the players and the coaches in the league in general. So I hope tonight, regardless of what the score is, regardless of what happens, we can all sit back and celebrate getting through this first season and look forward to season two. Well thanks everyone for watching. If you haven't subscribed already, make sure you're subscribed on here. I appreciate it everyone, you guys, everyone waiting and we do our best. I've been watching the internet dip back and forth the whole time here, so I think we got through it as best as we can. I appreciate you guys sitting here the whole time. I appreciate everyone watching big. I already have one guest interview already recorded for the show on Friday. It should be good. And then we need to figure out the Monday recap. So I don't know, Andy, if you're back around, maybe we'll do get hot back on the horse for the post Monday recap. Oh, absolutely. Love to ba back in my regular chair. We'll get Andy back on that. Thanks everybody. We'll see you soon. We're going to go ahead, how do I get out of here? We're going to go head to the media and do all the other stuff for the game everyone. Bye. Thanks. Okay, bye guys and thanks as always. Take.

USFL 2023 Week 4 Results: Winners and Losers of USFL Week 4, What Did We Learn?

Well here we are everyone. Welcome to the Markcast Live Little hoarse. Today was at the Kraken 72 end over the Dell Stars last night. Game three, the cup playoffs, round two very exciting times. I think this is going to be the true test of the X Ffl or of the US F L's drawing power, I don't care. TV ratings, attendance. Let's see what the mark cast does on Monday morning. Just talking to USS f l I think that will be the true test. We have Pat Rapino here and we have Evan Smore I thought was moving this week. Evan moving back home for the summer. I said no I want to come on and talk to USS f l. So we have Evan as well. Always happy to have him. Pat, how are you doing? And then we can talk to Evan as well. I'm doing well. Thank you guys for having me. Especially with Andy doing his pit bull tour right now. Yeah. Andy, Mr. Worldwide. Evan, how are you doing today sir? Yeah, doing good man. Bit tired but I'm excited to talk football just like we did last week and there's a lot to go over between the four games we had, so looking forward to it. Yeah, so just a reminder here. Programming note, no normal Friday show this week we will be live on Saturday from the Riverwalk in San Antonio. Andy will be flying in from Japan. We have Anthony Miller joining. I think Jason with the Xpa show will be there. They're doing the big Shind Dick Friday night. I do not. No one corresponded with me about what? Like hey I'm flying in about seven o'clock San Antonio time so I will be partying I think after the show, but then we will do our big show on Saturday, two to four local. I'm calling the Alamo today. I have about 10 names on our list if you're going to be in San Antonio, if you want to be a part of the Alamo tour, we're doing that 10:00 AM central and then the big show two four before the kickoff game. But just us f l talk today, we will try to do our best. Evan or Pat, any thoughts on the U X F L weekend before we get to just U US F L today? I mean not so much with the game because I think in my opinion, I think this championship game could be one of the best games we've ever seen or one of the worst games we've ever seen. I have no idea. And I think if anyone was to tell you that they knew that this was going to be a good game, they'd be lying to you because the renegades. But pretty excited to see the signing set or the camp invites that will lead the signings in the future. Yeah, a lot of traction there. Evan, I know you've been tracking that as well. Are you surprised so many camp invites coming out from the XFL season before we get to us F L? Yes and no. I mean a camp invite isn't the same as a contract really. Everything on or an after May 15th is what I'm looking forward to. It is a bit more than I expected but I will say everyone's deserving of that opportunity and I've liked all the players that have gotten those camp invites so far. There's a couple that I'm surprised but I'm assuming maybe something is in the works or they're just going to wait until May 15th at this point cause we're only a week away from that. So I am tremendously excited as Pat and I know a lot of U S F L brass really grasp onto the U S F L, the N F L signing, so I will be very curious to see how the X F L stacks up with that. This was an exciting weekend. I watched two of the games. Obviously I did not watch a lot of the stallions game last night. I did have it on at the bar. I did my part at the Kraken bar heading to the game, but I obviously watched The Breakers and then we watched the gamblers as well. Pat overall thoughts on the U USS F L weekend here Week four and no, we finally no overlap. We don't got to worry about the DAR in that X F L for a week. So I had the luxury of watching all the games. I'd say about 80% of all the games the quarterback play is so weird to me right now cause I do my weekly quarterback rankings and I'm sticking with M B T at number one, but he had a good game but he didn't statistically light it up as far as four touchdowns. He always does and everything like that. But overall we're starting to, and I was looking through the, because I track receiving stats as well, this has been my next phase of my tracking and I'm going through all the rosters and I'm pretty impressed by a lot of the skill position players the U S F L has found slash has been building up because even I'm looking at the Muellers roster and I'm like, Bailey Gaither definitely not a scrub N F L experience is a fringe practice squad guy who kind of that week 17 when all your receivers are hurt has an 80 R game and you're like, oh this guy and Isaiah Henny has kind of taken the role as this punt return, the stud punt returner this year and the generals, Deandre Johnson isn't the sexiest quarterback in the league, but a couple of his incom completions were some of the best passes I've seen him throw in a while and he's got a good stable of receivers right now in Alonzo Moore, cam Eckles Looper, those tight ends, Brandon Bowman and Woody Bra Bradham. Terrible tight ends at all. Not the most athletic. So it's good to see these skill position players. It kind of seems like they're a little bit ahead than the defense and the Troy Williams, he looks better and better each week along with Kenji Bahar. And that's the thing is, I've talked about them a lot in my rankings is they're, they be the biggest risers because they just need experience and I don't know if their NFL like Williams' N F L game would translate, but he's putting together a good film and he is, he's entertaining and he looks better than James Morgan out there. I mean if we're talking about the entertainment product, not the NFL translation, he's keeping me engaged when the Mallers have the football. It's funny, I just saw just comments and we were sharing a few of 'em I think Sam in the chat where oh I'm so glad that U US F L this weekend can't handled the gimmicky X ffl and X L has the same rule book we've copied. It's weird to me how this narrative just seems to be right now, okay, well now I can enjoy or this is different kind of football feels very similar to me. I mean S F L feels like the X F L was in week four at we are trying to get there some of these teams. Evan, do you feel like teams are further ahead than they should be or less ahead than they should be here week four now at US develop? I mean I like what I saw this weekend. It's hard to say. I mean like Pat said, I do like the talent level. Personally I think that there is a bit more talent this year than there was last year and I kind of like, it's been interesting to see the development of certain players that I didn't expect to do as well. Take Troy Williams for example was a really good one, but I think they're doing all right. I think they said on the U S F L broadcast yesterday on one of the games, I forget which one, but they were kind of saying week four, week five is the point of the season where you sort of see the cream of the crop I guess is the term you like to use, where the good teams rise and then the bad teams kind of fall and you start to get a bit of separation in terms of who might be in playoff contention and who might not be. So right now you've got New Orleans and New Jersey and then let's see, what else This Birmingham I guess too, those teams are all kind of on the rise and then you've got a couple others that are still, we'll get to Memphis. I like their performance, but they're still down there. Michigan's got a couple things to figure out. I know Pat will talk about that. And then Houston's kind of a wild card. They came out and scored like 41 points or something against Philly, which was a big deal. And then I mean, yeah, the Stars are the other team that's just kind of like, well they definitely got some stuff to work out. Better regression there. So I we can talk here. So I made, the wager I had was turning on the game first thing on Saturday morning. I said, oh it's Anthony Miller's gamblers against my stars. We'll have a big bet. Anthony had his Kenji Bahar jersey on. I said, whoever win, whoever loses this game is going to have to chug a Shiner Box beer in San Antonio for our live show because either way we're going to win Stars look horrendous look like you could not protect Case cook here with a paper bag. Why have these stars regressed so much here, pat? Well they lost two key players and Sam brought, Sam and I talked about this offline. Alex, Alex, AK Bull went to the Washington Commanders. He was one of their tackles in addition to Gunner Vogel who's now in the X Ffl. So those are two high quality guys. Vogel's had some N F L looks, AK Bull was active towards the end of the season. So you have two of these guys who are lost and it seems like the game planning in my opinion is a little bit more linear. I think when I watch Case Cook play, he's getting a little bit of Happy Feet because of the offensive line, having more holes in it and then Swiss cheese. And it's really disappointing because I thought we all thought that Case Cook would take this next step and we want to poo poo him a little bit because his numbers aren't there, but when you watch the games, he's not having any time to actually run around and sit in the pocket and actually make his reads and whatnot and it's a little disappointing. The running, the rushing attack, I think they had what read 20, not 20, I want to say it was like 40 yards. I know you have it on the screen right now, but cookies has been a part of their rushing attack. Yeah, 44 yards and they running the ball 11 times. You have two quality NFL level running backs back there with Dexter Williams and Matt Colberg and obviously they might not be elite running backs on the N nfl but they're serviceable to a backend roster slash they should be pretty good in the U S F L and it just seems like they've become very one-dimensional with Bart not in the passing attack because they do have a stable of weapons with Corey Coleman, Chris Roland and Devin, Devin Gray, Devin Gray back there. But I'm just, it all starts in the trenches and right now they're getting dominated up there and it's disappointing because they did lose two quality offensive linemen last year and the Center, even the center, I think his name is Perez, it seems like he's slow off the snap a little bit. So I'd like to do more background into him on my end for future shows and whatnot to see if that's his natural position because it just seems like he's not really popping up and engaging and whatnot. And there were a couple plays where they didn't identify the linebackers it looked like and the guard is just going straight to the nose or that three, that one technique and the linebackers just coming in and then you're asking, we want Dexter Williams who's not a great pass protector to take on a linebacker who's running in with a full head of steam. So it's disappointing because we know who Case Cook is, he has that fringe level NFL potential and we're not seeing him take that next step to show, hey, I could be an actual, I could go into an NFL game and actually make a player or two. It feels very much, and I was just at the cracking game last night, zero through the first period Goose Eggs and then we erupt, we go five one in the second period and it really felt like we were never kind of felt like this game, I'm watching this game, Philly felt in it for, we have the drive score at 77 and then it felt like once Houston started going, they never looked back. It never felt close at all. Harrison has a question here in the chat. One of the things we're seeing midway through is that a lot of the new coaches are improvements over the guys to replace that may be, but it feels like Bar has stagnated now and everyone else is running circles around him. Evan, are you just surprised is that bar has been found out? I think Mike was talking about that in the group chat as well. They're just not trying to do anything at all to deviate from the plan. Yeah, well I mean Pat talked about the one dimensional factor in a way and you know could definitely say that Philadelphia is getting exposed to an extent. To me, I think the biggest problem is the run game. You know, can't win a game really in any pro league if you have 44 yards rushing and that's just from the Star's perspective again, they have have a lot of good talent like Corey Coleman, I remember writing about almost two years ago saying, Hey look down the line, this could be a guy that comes to the U S F L and here he is what is supposed to be a premier team with one of the premier quarterbacks in Case Cook and so far they only won one game in week one and they barely squeezed by Memphis who just won their first game against Michigan this weekend. So I don't really know what to think of. It's a real shame. I kind of thought they'd be quick risers because if you look at the rest of the league, I just feel like last year they made the championship game and that was really close with Birmingham and I like Bard a lot. I think he's a great coach. I think he's great for these leagues. He did the spring league obviously and that's where he did some great things with Brian Scott who was with the Stars last year obviously got hurt and then the whole Case Cook era started. But yeah, definitely been a surprise. I can't say the stars won't turn it around, but they've definitely been the most shocking team so far and I don't mean that in a good way. Yeah, I feel like Case is going to get hurt out there again. I mean it's just really crazy to me. Pat here, here's my thing, and this might be the Homer in me, but are the worst teams worse in the X F L or the US F L? Because it feels like some of these teams in the US F L, if it just feels like more of a divide. I know last year it felt like that in the US F L that come like week six, we kind of knew and it didn't matter X ffl we talked for at NAM for weeks, the game's near the end Mattery more because of more parody. What do you make of that? Do you think that there's worse teams in the X F L or the U S F L? Well, when I think of the bad teams of the X F L, I think of the Barass and I think of the Guardians. And the Guardians were fun to watch because they were extremely competitive and even though the Brahmas had some and the Brahmas had some bad games, their defense was extremely, extremely competitive and they were making plays. So they might be down 15 points, but then you might see Delante Scott or Troy Williams make a play and then their offense stalls. So it's kind of nice to watch if you look at the Stars defense because right now it appears to me that the stars are the least competitive team to watch and maybe that's incorrect, but regardless, that's how I feel teams are shining away from even throwing the ball around, chanting, scribbling, and I'd actually have to rewatch the all 22 of the film, but it kind of looks like, and I've talked with a couple Michigan like U of M guys because that's where scribbling went. Stib STRs got some weaknesses. Sometimes he, he's a little too aggressive. He gets beat a decent amount. He's a very good zone cover corner. But the thing was is he was able to make those reads and get some cheap interceptions and whatnot. He's a big guy too, so he is physical, but it seems like we're not even seeing that and they're kind of just shying away from him and because their defensive, their front seven isn't that dynamic. You're seeing a lot of Mark Thompson averaging 10 yards a carry and Andy, Evan to go back on your rushing totals. When I do rushing statistics and evaluate those, unless it's a design quarterback run, I don't really include that. So Case Cook had two carries for 16 yards. You take away that because they're off script plays now we're looking at nine caries for 28 yards. You're not going to win football games averaging a tick over three yards a carry. This isn't the Vince Lombardi age anymore. Evan thoughts on Mark Thompson looked great for the gamblers. I thought he was tremendous. A lot of good positions over there. Any more thoughts on the gamblers before I move on to some of the other matchups? Yeah, I mean the gamblers were fantastic On the other end. I kind of expected that to be a pretty close game where maybe Philly would have the advantage, but the Houston's really got it together. Seems like they're finally getting in their groove after last year where they had a really good defense but the offense would sputter and they blew a lot of late games and it was just kind of a rough year all around. Sure, if Anthony were here he could tell you all about that, but yeah, no, I mean look at Kenji Behar, he, he's come a long way and I'm been very surprised in his development too. Again, another one of these guys that I didn't really view too highly, but he had a near, well near perfect game yesterday. I mean he had quarterback rating. It says there of 139 and then you Mark Thompson was fantastic. He's really been helpful for them. Yeah, I mean the gamblers look great if they keep that up. I don't think they'll have a problem against even some of the top talent in the U S F L and some of the better teams take a Birmingham or a New Orleans. I know they had that close game with New Orleans that they weren't able to win cause of the turnovers, but that's the main thing. Without Behar throwing interceptions this time, his performance with 230 yards and two touchdowns actually looked a lot better and the team was able to, I mean that game was over before it even really began in some ways. Yeah, I mean really the only life that Philadelphia ever had was that it was like the mist handoff and they fumbled and Philadelphia was able to get the ball back the 35 or something. I mean it just didn't seem like Philadelphia could do anything. Really disappointing. I mean obviously that's the team that I root for, but you just want teams to be competitive and it just didn't feel like for the sparse fans that were at Michigan, it didn't seem like they had that good of a showing. Pat any other thoughts? We can move on. Yeah, I think the most impressive thing about Houston is, and we talked about it in the pre-game show or pre pre-season show, was they lost Micah Abernathy at the time. They lost Isaiah Zer who's playing defensive back for them right now. By the way, he was a wide receiver last year. Joey Ivy, Ahmad Good and Chris Odom, Donald Payne, they lost, I think Ike Brown was on that team as well, who's with the Raiders and their defense is, I don't know if they're bettered statistically, but you're judged by your win loss record and at two wins they had three last year. So I think that says a lot to Curtis Johnson. It's also a big deal to me that I think we all can agree that case Cook is not healthy. He was definitely favoring his right hand slash arm yesterday and I'm very curious to see what happens moving forward. They put in Kevin Thompson for that fourth and 12 onside kick play, so it was good to see and he completed his pass for 11 yards. It was obviously short, but I think it was good to see their B both backups play yesterday. Bahar was out, they said he could play. They just took him out for precautionary reasons, but I think it was good to see Terry Wilson and Kevin Thompson play a little bit. Just get that first actual real game snap. So overall, I mean, excuse me, the gamblers are our team team, the watch, they were competitive last year. It seems like they're kind of piecing it together a little bit more and Bahar only, this is his seventh pro start, so he should only get better. Yeah, Harrison, you got to remember USL early season, no, be week four. Week four. I mean I dunno was Arlington as unwatchable as the Stars were week four? I don't mean we're going off recency bias, so obviously we'll say no, but we're also U S F L haters, so we have to say no. Right? But I mean Arlington had a lot more fluidity because of Drew PLI and then Kyle Slowder and then Slowder did give them that spark, right? Nine points, 10 points, 11 points. So I Don't that spark the elusive spark. Yeah, I think he went two and one as a starter, so I, I don't know. The thing was is I loved watching that Arlington defense like Darnell sa. That was when Darnell Sankey, Darnell Sankey came from the CFL to the Renegades and he was an immediate impact and whatnot and they had some studs former, I think he was a gambler. Tamasi Lo Low was playing pretty well, so I just felt like their defense was way more watchable. You kind of tune out when the Renegades offense was on the tv, but that defense was fun to watch. We had, yeah, Lewis here started about 15 minutes late behind the, yeah, catch up there Louis. Catch up there. This was the game. Next game on here. This was one that prompted my release, the attendance reports meme that I posted online. We had the Memphis Showboats here, Michigan Panthers 29 to 10 Michigan Panthers seeming to be the Edmonton Elks of the C F l. Cannot win at home, cannot perform well at home. Evan, any thoughts from you? And then we'll go with the pack because obviously this is the team that's near and dear to him, but the continuing sparse attendance at Detroit Field before field in Detroit, whatever, you Know what I mean, right? Yeah, I mean look, the marketing thing is not something I'll go into deeply here because the U S F L again is not in all their home markets and it is a bit of a small turnout, but again, for me it's hard to track where these teams are playing on a week to week basis between the four hubs and considering the Canton Hub doesn't technically have an Ohio team, I think it's Pittsburgh and New Jersey or the home teams there if I'm not mistaken. Anyway, I don't know, it's kind of, it's hard to track where the games are and I think it's probably, again, the team is already in year two, but because they weren't in Detroit last year, you don't have that continuity. So I don't know, we'll see how it is maybe next year once the word has gotten out, they're like, hey, there's this pro team playing at Forward Field. But right now, I mean, I don't know, it doesn't surprise me that the attendance is somewhat low. Again, we don't even know what the number is unfortunately, so I can't sit here and go off or base anything around a certain number, which is difficult. But again, just kind of eyeing it from the tv. I mean I would like to see a bit more people there, but I don't know, it wasn't terrible. I'll give them that it's it, it's a step up again from what they had last year with only the Birmingham hub. So that's the way I look at it. If you want to have a positive takeaway aways like hey, we're still building again, that's where the USS Ffl doesn't have the advantage over the XFL is the XFL was already in their home markets year one and they brought back a lot of the franchises from three years ago. So you sort of have that fan base establishment. Again, I've talked about this before so I won't talk about it for too long, but in the U S F L, they're still working that out. They went from one hub to four hubs and then hopefully next year you have all eight teams and who knows next year if they're going to change some of the cities around, who knows if Pittsburgh lasts or we'll have to see there. There's in my opinion, a couple things that aren't necessarily permanent. Just going into year two, we already had the Tampa Bay Bandits become the Memphis Showboats who we're about to talk about here in a minute. So yeah, that's kind of where I'm at with that. It's not bad, but when you know haven't necessarily marketed yourself and when you're, I guess still again trying to figure out all these things and people still don't know a lot about what's going on. You can't expect to fill up an entire, well, I mean weren't going to fill up Ford Field obviously, but even just filling up a couple sections I will say, you know, can talk about attendance being important, not being important. YouTube subscribers being important, not being important. I wouldn't run the banner on the thing. I wouldn't talk about liking and subscribing if subscribers weren't important. Don't think the US L would be running ads ad nauseum come to the games. It's great for kids, they're really cheap face painting, we've got the PA mascot. I think attendance is important. I think they can say whatever they want. It's a TV product, we don't care about that. You wouldn't be running ads all the time on Fox trying to get people out to the games if it wasn't Pat Football time, Foxs here, showboats Todd Haley didn't kill anyone on the sidelines this time. That was exciting. Finally getting their first win over the Panthers. Like I said, we get home. What did you make of this matchup? Well first off, I don't know if you knew this, but did you know Brady White went to Memphis? I might have heard about that. So we talked about it a little bit last week, but praise be that Cole Kelly has gotten in full reign of this offense. I didn't think he'd be air quote this good, but I was pretty vocal about him being this big six seven guy. It's hard to sack him. Breland speaks as a massive human being and he had trouble getting Kelly down it looked like to me because of Kelly's size. He avoided two or three sacks when I was watching the game. So that's your guy, man. Ryther die with him. I'm a little bit of a shill from for Ryan Willis and I've been on record talking about that a decent amount, but it's good. There's been two good weeks from Cole Kelly. The offense is moving, he's athletic as the dickens. It's been great to see. It kind of seemed like Mic Michigan didn't play their best game. I think if you go on record about it, I think Michigan is better than the Showboats. It's any given Sunday and whatnot. I'd like to see Carson strong, Carson strong, get the nod. Josh love his arm to the outside, just doesn't look strong enough and it seems like he really only has a lot of success when they're throwing through the seams, but now it seems like it's been taken away. They went real run heavy this week. The Panthers did because the Showboats have won the worst run defenses in the U S F L and I think that Panthers still broke over a hundred yards, but it did seem like Reggie Corbin was making a lot of plays in the backfield. So he did his Garrett Grok thing where he makes one or two guys miss in the backfield and then gets a six yard gain. Obviously usually grok only gets a three yard gain from it, but man, we saw some good stuff from Carson Strong. He was moving the ball down the field and then when he threw that one ball up, I think it was right before half he threw it short. Where on that play you want to throw it more to the pylon. So even if the defender does make a play on the ball, he's not going to be able to get his two feet in bounds and whatnot. Cool thing I saw about Carson Strong is that he was moving around in the pocket a little bit more, so that's really good for me. As far as watching his knee look like he's a little bit more mobile strong, did run a four eight during his pro day, so he is a lot faster than we probably think. I know a lot of people are shilling for Eric Barer because of Troy Williams's success. Barer only ran a four seven and I talked to another guy about this Panther shadow and he was like, well it's not straight line speed. Yeah, he's right, but Troy Williams runs a 4 5 5, probably a four little bit quicker. So it kind of gets to me, I don't think Eric bariers the answer right now if they're two and six, if there're barer in there, the last couple games, whatever. But this team is still competitive and they have a lot of good pieces on defense to where they can go on a run Biden if you're going off numbers and statistics and analytics. As long as they don't play in Michigan, they're good allegedly, but we'll see what's going on. I think they have the Muellers this week, so that could be a get right name and whatnot, but we'll see what the injury port leads as well because I think Noah Dawkins, their linebacker is out for a little bit so we could see a little bit more, Terry a lot, excuse me, who's a lot more athletic and kind of put that spy on Williams so he doesn't get as elusive in what or as many of these off script runs. So I'm happy for the Showboats. It's more about the guys, once again, they have a good receiving core, both these teams do. So it's good. It's good to see Cole Kelly have some success because he definitely has that Taum Hill vibe for me to where he could go translate to an N F L camp and all he needs is the reps. I think that Panthers need to a start winning at home challenging. I think Detroit I is a way different market than the other three hubs for the USS f l. We're Birmingham and I know they love football, but it's a little bit more as shocks were Birmingham mean. I've had Roy on and the guys from Birmingham, but it's just not a major whatever. You're in Detroit, you've got the of the world right out there. You've got Bill Shaa, been on my show coming out looking at the games, you're comparing them to the Lions, you're comparing them to what was there in the eighties. You're comparing all these things. I just think it's a tougher market there. Canton's way different. Memphis is way different. It's the biggest market of the four. I think you got the hardest, got to impress the most people there. Evan, does that make sense? Kind of what I'm Sam? Oh definitely. I mean, yeah, if you look at the four hubs right now, it's Birmingham, Memphis, Canton, and Detroit. Like you said, Detroit is by far the biggest hub there and it's a lot, let's just say this, a Showboats game at that Memphis stadium, even if they don't get a lot of people in there, probably looks a lot better than if they don't get a lot of people in the Ford field. Cause Ford Fields's in the NFL stadium and then the stadium they're using in Memphis is for the University of Memphis. We're Brady White plate. If you didn't know, we like to a joke about that, but I'll just talk about the game quickly for a minute. So like Pat said, Cole Kelly, I went on the show last week and I said, I think Cole Kelly should start for the rest of the season. And that was only after one game and he proved me right Again, it wasn't anything, didn't blow your socks off or anything like that in terms of the way he played, but he did a good job and he kind of got things done, got things moving, he had two rushing touchdowns and he's just got that big frame, right? That's what makes him different. That's why I think N F L Scouts really liked him even though he came from a smaller school at Southeastern Louisiana. But yeah, I mean think at this point, just given how things started, you're in week four and you finally found some consistency. I think Cole Kelly's the guy personally and maybe I've got a bit of bias, but again he looked pretty good just going down the list here. Yeah, talk about the Panthers for a minute. Like Pat said too with Carson Strong, it was good to see him and he didn't throw a touchdown this game, but he was doing some stuff. And again with the mobility, that's the major concern with him. One wrong step, one wrong twist, and that could be the end of his season with given how fragile that knee is and how concerning it was during the N F L draft process, that was the thing that turned a lot of teams away. That was pretty much the difference between him being a third round pick and him being undrafted was that need. That's all it really was, at least to a lot of people and a lot of teams. But to see him now kind of getting in his groove, yeah, I think he deserves a start, a full kind of game over Josh love. And that's not to discredit Josh love. I don't forget what he did in week one. That was great. But yeah, Josh love I think maybe has kind of hit his ceiling in a way and I don't know if Carson Strongs hit that yet, but then the rushing attack for the Panthers I really liked between Stevie Scott and Reggie Corbin, I thought they did some nice stuff. Corbin didn't necessarily average a ton of yards this game, but that's okay. They were kind of just chugging along and getting what they needed when the past game wasn't there. And then Joe Walker of the Panthers in their receiving course, someone I've really liked to watch this season, I think he's come a long way and he had another great game. Another Panthers play yesterday. I'm already forgetting this weekend. Yeah, Yeah, Saturday. Saturday, right, right. Yeah, it was Saturday night I think. Yeah, now I remember. No, so I like Joe Walker. He had seven catches, 76 yards in a touchdown. He kind of seems to be the number one option on that team from the looks of it. And then I don't know, hoping to get a couple big games from Ish Heim in this year too, because I like him a lot. Would enjoy seeing that down the line. I think that's about it. I was definitely surprised that Memphis won the game by 19 points, but I knew they had the chance to win with Kelly at quarterback. And I'm not saying that was the difference maker in this game because Kelly only threw for 150 yards, but you kind of looked at the Panthers and as good as the Panthers are and as much talent they have, they're still kind of ironing these things out and it is kind of weird. They've can't win at Home bug right now. So if they can get over that, maybe things will start looking better for 'em. But we'll see. There's a lot of, I mean again, week four, like I said earlier is kind of where you start to see teams separate, the good teams getting above the bad teams, getting ahead, getting ready for, I mean obviously six weeks out from the playoffs still, but getting into position for that and the Panthers, I don't really know yet. They're kind of that one team where it's like, okay, I can say the stars aren't great unless they changed something soon, things aren't going to be good for them. Pittsburgh I didn't talk about earlier, but they've got some things to work out. I like what they have, they look better. There's still one in three Memphis still a lot of work to do, but then Panthers at two and two, they're kind of just right in the middle, like, I don't know. There's a couple different directions where this could go depending on who steps up for them. Interesting here, just a couple comments talking about you Lewis. I think he's still catching up on the show watching this. We're like watching Lewis watch through the show in real time here in delay. We had a question here, and this is the only game we have the prelim for John watching another prelim. N B C always does well coming and especially coming off the derby. 1.5 I believe was the first hour dropped to 860,000. So it'll probably average around I think absolutely above a million probably 1, 1 12 in that for the n c, which for whatever reason has always done more than Fox, even though obviously Fox with the US L Pat. Any thoughts on that prelim rating and then we'll get to New Orleans. I mean, yeah, they got to be happy with that. It's a week four game and granted there was the benefit of without XL pulled out X ffl and the Condu Kentucky Derby lead in, but just playing a football schedule. You play y play who's on the schedule type thing so we can talk. It's no different than the talking about a team who hasn't air quote played anyone in this seven to, oh, but that was the card that was dealt this weekend and the U S F L did a good job and people who want to poo ppo, the ratings could be like, well, it's only because of the derby and no X ffl. That's not the US L's fault. If anything, they took advantage of it. I would rather have that conversation than if they were at like 600,000 than, and it's like you can't win with people, it's not a big deal. This is the game. Interesting. So New Orleans, we had the breakers at the generals here in Canton. This was my 2 cents just real quick read sub box before World lost their minds back in, I think it was like week five XE L, we had the John Mcar row, we have the pickleball game on ESPN two, the pickleball tournament at which spoiler alert drew more viewers than the XE L did that day and the X L had to push the star of the, or ESPN N had to push the start of the X L game, like ESPN plus or whatever. People lost their minds. Oh my god, this shows absolutely how ESPN views Y xl da da da da da. Yesterday I turned on the game at noon. Here I'm watching Orioles Braves going into Extra Inn Indians. Nobody said a damn word. Oh, let see, because it's baseball. That's different obviously. No, it's the same difference. It's a live sporting event. We're pushing this off. It says nothing that NBC or whoever cares about anything more than anything else, pat or Evan, any thoughts on that? Because I was incensed that nobody thought, and they're like, oh, it's a totally different situation. Biased to baseball, I'll be 100. I care way more about baseball than I do. I do pickleball and I think, no, no, I on taking emotion out of it, Reid, you are absolutely correct, but I didn't grow up throwing the pickleball around. My fondest memories with my father are throwing the baseball around. You know what I mean? I don't care about pickleball and I'm not even the Braves fan. I'm a Mets fan despite what this cardinal hat, cardinal hat on. But I mean it's know, it doesn't bother me either one doesn't bother me because here's the thing, pickleball and the whole pickleball league has been around for a while. Baseball's been around for 900 and a half years. Spring football is not priority to these networks as much as we want them to be, in my opinion. So that's my take on it. I don't really care either way because here's the thing, I'm going to win and watch the games. I'm curious to see how the ratings feel about that and the casual viewer who's like, oh, I wanted to watch U S F L or X ffl, but I'm watching pickleball. I'm going to go get a sandwich and then, you know, talk to the guy at the deli for a little bit and then you don't watch the game. The whole world, the whole world is a trend at that point. I mean to me, I think it's going to hit the ratings a little bit personally, but I need to go back to the X ffl ratings as well on that. I just thought it was funny. I just thought like, oh, well this is fine because it's baseball and it's not behind because it's, well, it's Twitter too. So who's more vocal about things on Twitter than when we go down the fan bases? Evan, any thoughts on that before we talk football? I know you really don't want to get into these shenanigans too Much. I mean, look, I'll just say this, you're definitely right, Reid. I, I'll say this much. Pickleball makes for a better story. Baseball doesn't seem as bad because a lot of Americans are watching baseball and that's going to take priority over spring football. That's just known. Again, like Pat said, maybe we want them to just cut to the U S F L game, but the rest of America doesn't want that. The rest of America wants to see the Braves beat the Orioles in extra innings. So I was there because I remember that that whole pickleball thing was week seven. It was St. Louis, ATD Houston, I was there. We were sitting in the press box and we're like, oh, time for the game. What's going on? The players aren't coming out. We haven't kicked off yet. And then there's some chatter going around in the press box and they're like, oh yeah, John McInroy pickleball. We had it up on ESPN and we were looking at that and we were just like, yeah, I guess this what's causing the delay. So I don't know that was was there for that. It was fun to to experience, but I don't know. I didn't think the one yesterday was terrible. It ended pretty quickly. That's the difference. I mean, I don't know, obviously I don't know how many minutes each delay was, but the pickleball one was pretty significant. That one was a good 10 minutes after the kickoff time. But anyway, yeah, as you said, Reid, I don't really get involved on that side of it, so I'll leave community with that. Fair to be fair, this was a regional baseball game of the Atlanta Braves and the Baltimore Orioles, right? I mean pickleball, listen, that's a nationwide, I mean that's a nationwide appeal. John McElroy is a historic figure in test. Anyway, going to, and speaking of baseball here, I will say, could the us EV l, could we implement a pitch clock here somehow? Because the first half of this game, by God, I came up, I took a shower, came up, changed, made a sandwich, sat down to eat. We're still in the two minute warning here for the first half, pat this, we got to speed up these games a little bit. I know the S f L's working with their clocks, but by God, this first half of this game took about three hours To caveat on some John. First off, Evan loved the no poo there I was war story with the week seven and fun fact, John McIn roll actually went on a date with my aunt in 1927 or whenever that was. So yeah, he's a queens guy. So John McEnroe's got a soft place in my heart to keep this girlish figure that I have. I do pushups during the breaks and whatnot, and sometimes it's real quick, sometimes it's like I'm getting a good pump in and whatnot. That's why I was probably in better shape during the X ffl season. But this one, I tuned out man towards that last, and then the second half comes and I'm fully engaged, got a good pump on going and everything like that. And it was weird because I was just like, man, obviously there was a time delay, but I was like, dude, I'm, what's going on? I'm tooting out right now. And then that second half everything started clicking a little bit West Hills put the team on his back, M B T hit s Sage surat for a couple nice passes and whatnot. But I mean, I don't know what this time clock situation's going to be. I haven't felt that way during a football game in a while except that Arlington Orlando game, the ten nine one, that kind of tuned me out. But that first half was pretty tough to get through, but the second half made up for it became a lot more engaging and whatnot. And it was good for me on a football side to see Deandre Johnson actually look like a pocket quarterback. And I love his rushing ability. I think that's great and whatnot. But even on his Incom completions, he was sitting in the pocket and he was throwing some of the best footballs I've seen him throw out. There were two drops that I saw him throw that from the receivers. Randy Satterfield was one of them, and the ball just zipped out of his hand. And I'm so glad, and this is a big thing and I don't want to poo the CFL right now because very sensitive group of people, but when everyone talked about this two quarterback system with Dakota pcu, I was like, he's a slower version of Deandre Johnson. If you're going to do a two quarterback system, use Kyle Lata. And I don't think Lata has got it enough of a upside with his arm to take Deandre Johnson out of the game. Luis Perez last year, very limited guy, especially in the outside, the outside throwing to the outside parts of the field and whatnot. But Perez has a way more experience than Johnson did at that time. Johnson only played in the Spring league where him and Ben Holmes battled, battled for the starting job. I think they were with the Sea Lions Reid's cousin brother-in-law over there. Great Cup champion Ben Holmes. He's watching by the way, he's weird. But the C Johnson kind of get full reign of this offense and actually implement his skillset and the development he's taking. Mike Riley's one of the better coaches in this league. I don't want to put him on that high of a pedestal saying he's the best because there are a lot of great coaches in this league. But to see him take that step forward, even if he went, the stat line changed to five of 14. When you actually look at the film, he does look a lot better. Big shoutout, by the way, the Trey Williams, for whatever reason, this tweet is getting a lot of impressions, but Trey Williams totaled over a thousand career rushing yards between the A f, the X F O and the U S F L. So that's pretty cool because he does also have N F L experience. And then Darius Victor as well, pinballing his way and doing that consistent, giving me the rock. Three yards, three yards, three yards. And then he breaks off of a couple rushes of 15 and 30 yards. And it's such a well-balanced attack because look at the numbers, they're all within. Williams had eight caries. Johnson I think had four caries. A couple of those were actual Reed option plays. And then Victor had nine. The generals are starting to hit stride. They're going to become a little bit difficult to deal with, especially if Johnson finds consistency and is able to make this plays. They have a great receiving corps. Cam Eckles, Alon, Alonzo Moore, an alt league veteran coming up on the thousand yards career in the alt league and whatnot. And then those tight ends. Anyone to scoff at as well? Toby Johnson looks a lot better this year than he did last year and he's creating a decent amount of push up and push up front. So this general seems a lot better than I think people give him credit for. I don't think they get over the hump going to winning the championship because this league to me runs through the Breakers and the stallions. But overall, they're proving that they could be a playoff team once more, which is great for Mike Riley and his grandson who's an assistant coach apparently. Yeah, I know this was tough. This was the M Rob game and I'm a big Michael Robinson fan with the Seahawks. I do think this was the weakest broadcasting team out there and talking about McLeod, oh you got extra down. It's got to be easier for him here than the C f I. Just some weird takes that way. But this was good. Like I said, certainly turned up in the second half. Evan, thoughts on thoughts on the cloud? Anything Generals breakers? Yeah, I mean it wasn't a perfect day for M B T, but still got the job done. Still had 207, 9 passing yards, looked like a veteran. This was a bit of a difficult game for New Orleans, and I'm not going to say it wasn't difficult for New Jersey either, but it really, I mean it was 20 to 17, it was a really close game, a really good game. Definitely lived up to my expectation. West Hills was a bit slower too, but he still had two touchdowns. I mean, my God man, like West Hills is, he's looking to break some pretty serious stats. I think at least with touchdowns, if he keeps up this pace, pat would've a better grasp on that than I do. But in terms of other things like Sage Sark has been great. I knew he was going to be good this season. I had feeling, definitely kept my eye on him, but he has really exceeded my expectations. He nearly had a hundred yards yesterday and then we haven't really talked anything defense yet on the show. But Vonte digs for The Breakers looked great yesterday. I've had my eye on him since last year too. I think he flashed a lot of potential last year. Again, I'll have his numbers from 2022 in front of me, but here's with the Breakers then too. And I look at him now and he had a phenomenal game yesterday. So that was one. And then from the general's perspective, I talked about Deandre Johnson on the show last week, so I won't get too much into him here. But this was another game where didn't have amazing numbers, at least in the passing game. But as Pat said, there were a couple of passes that were dropped and I really liked what he was doing with his arm. I think he's come a long way like he's Deandre Johnson is a perfect example of why spring football is important for development, especially at the quarterback position because a guy like Deandre Johnson came out in 2020, was undrafted then in 2021, went to the Spring league with the Sea Lion, and then last year obviously he was in the U S F L with the generals, but Perez was there and Perez obviously has the upper hand with his experience and his abilities. So this wasn't really an opportunity for him. Now I think John Johnson still finished a year with 700 passing yards or something. Last season he had a role, he had a couple touchdowns and again, they really used that sort of run element. And I think I said it in last week's show too, but I'll repeat it again, reminds me a lot of what Houston did in the X l with Brandon Silvers and Cole McDonald. That was what the generalist kind of did last year where you have a guy who can just stand in a pocket like Perez and just throw down field and then you kind of bring in a guy behind that on package plays with as adding a run element. But now Deandre has full control over the offense and I think it's been really cool to just see him kind of find his groove. And then the Generals have a couple of guys too in the receiving department that have come a long way, like a Cam Eccles Looper would be a great example of that. And then, yeah, I mean just all around at Darius Victor, we've talked about him plenty of times. I mean at this point he's a veteran. I don't know how old he is now, but he's probably up there 28, 29. He can still run extremely well and Mike has said it before cause he covers the generals, but Darius is having a great new S F L, he's having a really fun time and that's really important. A guy at his age finally finding his groove that late after bouncing around the NFL for a bit and being in the X Ffl in 2020 with the guardians. Just happy for guys like him all again, we can talk about these games and how they play out and how sort of the flow of things is and the broadcast people. Again, I'm a Mike Robinson fan too, but what's really important to me, again in all these leagues, not just the U S F L, but just seeing certain players again, like the Deandre Johnsons and the Cam Les Loopers and all that, and even like an M B T, even though he's been around for a while, to see him kind of again have this revival and I mean he's been good for a while, but just to see him do this on a different stage with a different set of people, it's just all cool. The storylines will never not be cool to me. It's funny to hear Lewis asked a question in the chat. I wonder if the US l would allowed groups of fans to own the franchise. Could you do something like Green Bay from that? People pooled their money would only take a few Moed fans fan show football man can control football. Get on it, get on it. You can own one of the guys used to work for me, Matt. Yeah, he's part of the owner of the Wild ACEs now. The was, it should have been Star, I'm sure whatever Pats rolled his eyes and Andy Murray checking in from Far East. The professor approves that. The wicked beard energy on the stream. Welcome to the show. Yeah, we just had a lot of chat chatter here in the chat about owning a US Hall franchise movie that Pat, anything else talked so much. We got to get to the last game before we get out of here for an hour. Who knew? We knew these haters had so much to say about the US Hall. Well, I actually have to go because I have to go help Ducky dry his walls real quick. But no, I'm here for the long haul. The cool thing that we saw as well is West Hills obviously taking another facet of the impact is him in the receiving game. He had some tough runs and then towards the end kind of broke off a couple more that inflate the stat line a little bit, but West Hills putting over I think 140 all purpose yards between that. So I think that's a great facet of the game. Something about Breaker's, tight ends, man, you know, put that Breaker's uniform on and Sage charette, he had a couple bad drops. I think he had three. So that took his game from a minus a hundred yard game ta. He'd obviously be over a hundred, someone not, they talk about him a little bit, but I had him as my number four or five player coming into the USS F L in 2023 is Jared Fernandez and I think he's one of the better linebackers in the league Pass coverage is okay, but definitely a top tackler in the league as well. And I don't think he gets talked about enough, A little bit of MBT shade I feel like, and people, I don't know if you knew this, but his wife is also an executive at Disney in Atlanta and that's why he came back to, came back to America to play football. But M B T was an all-star in Canada. This dude was a top two, top three passer there. Not according to the C F L fans, which is wild to me. I mean, it's wild to me that I still see comments like, oh look, he wasn't even that good in the C F L. Yeah. Here I have some Copi for you as people would say. I mean the guy also played in the N F L for seven years. Yeah, he was a practice squad guy. But it's hard. That's, that's not an easy thing to do, to be like, oh our quarterbacks hurt. Yeah, let's bring in the 27 year old M B T because obviously he's just a scrub. No, when your quarterback gets hurt, that means you're putting in your backup who's also more prone to get hurt because he is not practicing as much. And now his random Yeah, no they're salty, John, that's 100% true. So give those guys, these Josh Johnson's and whatnot, like the sign a guy, because you're not, you're signing him because your quarterback's hurt. You're like, okay, if we have to put another human being in, we have to play this dude. So I just laughed. You're in the chat. Sorry, I just, Lewis is, we're still on the owning the US franchise and I think this is my favorite comedy exchange ever. No, no, no, No. Let me die on this hill real quick. Okay. Okay. Okay. Let me do, I do not want anyone who watches this show to buy a U S F L franchise. And the reason being is because, and I'm not trying to poor shame people here, it is expensive to have this and there's probably some guys who are making 300 grand that follow us or whatever, bro. If I'm buying the franchise or I going to be selling a couple helicopters first off and I'm paying each one of my guys a minimum of 150 K and I'm saying you do not go to the N F L. You work for me, this is what you're doing. I do not care because we are going to run circles through this league. I would bring back Herschel Walker. I've seen the guy, I've seen the guy in person recently. Guy is Yolked still. Okay, I'm bringing back people. I don't want anyone in the price range of what the U S F L team is, bro. 10 million right now. Cash like dude man, come on. Like stop. No, no, let's stop. Do you even run a business Pass High Ons in right now? We'll get Devi in here. He just said, this is my exchange. He goes, still would like to know the price range with Fox and value these teams at. And then jj KK who I think is the US XL fan, probably at least negative 4 million. No, That was my favorite. 10 million. 10 million Last game here. Muller's going to Mall Stallion. Kevin Muller have not looked great. This season looks better than they have in the past. Evan, any actual football conversation on this? Pat's had, Pat's got too many in right now. Yeah, no, I'll keep the football conversation up. I mean I study sports business so everything else around the game is important. But no, I mean I'm happy to talk football. Let's see, I'm just pulling up the stats. So this game was interesting. Again, another one that didn't exactly go the way I thought it would thought the stallions would've taken this one a bit more. But Pittsburgh again, Pittsburgh has shown some flashes and they haven't necessarily won a lot of games yet. They've won win. But again, Troy Williams looked good. They had less than a hundred rushing yards. Still barely, but what's the guy's name? Yeah, Troy Williams on the Mallers, the quarterback. He had a decent day rushing too. And then Garrett Grok didn't do a lot, but I think he kind of offers a unique element to their run game. And then, yeah, I think Pat talked about it earlier. Bailey Gaither and Isaiah Henney for the Mallers. I both really like Isaiah Henney in particular because I've seen him work out in person before. I was with him right before he signed with the Mallers and he showed a lot of flashes at that time and I thought, oh, here's a guy that can maybe do something. And he signed late last year with Pittsburgh I think. And again showed a couple things but nothing serious. And then this year he is just, he looks really good this year. I mean he looks like he's found his stride and him and Bailey Gaither are definitely sort of like a dynamic duo. And Trey Walker too, didn't even mention him, but he's all right. I think he was there last year as well. And then you want to look at the defense again cause we haven't talked about defense a lot other than me having my bit about VTE Diggs and how much I liked him with the Breakers. Keva Taino, I think his name is, he's, he's been all right this year. Again, led the team in tackles last night. Another maller from the Kirby Wilson era in 2022. And then, let's see what else here. I want to talk about Stallions for a bit. I mean Pittsburgh, I don't know, they had a good game. They gave the stallions a run for their money, but at the end of the day, this game, once again to me was about Birmingham. And yeah, McGoo had a very slow start through two interceptions early, didn't look that great. And then I think it was at the two minute warning before the second half, it kind of just seemed like there was a momentum shift and suddenly the stallions kind of wrote it out for the rest of the game. Especially with that Dion Kane return touchdown. That was a fantastic play. I think it was 91 yards or something good for Dion Kane. And then the other guy too is Davion Davis, who I know personally met him because he used to play for the Roughnecks. He was there for, I want to say two games and really nice guy, just fantastic. I mean he's really come a long way just in these couple weeks in the U S F L. And I knew when he signed with the Stallions it was a good sign. I figured he was going to have a big role there and especially now that Marlon Williams is out, he's really starting to get in his groove and this was a great day for him. I think he had a touchdown earlier in the season, probably. I think it was week one. But quick shout out to Dave Young man, I love that guy. And then on defense with the stallions, Scooby Wright coming back was a big talking point because obviously he last year was a key piece to their defense and I don't think he's played this year, but he came back yesterday, led the team in tackles how to tackle for loss. Nothing outstanding. Some of these defensive players, they haven't necessarily had ridiculous stats so far in the U S F L. We haven't had a Trent Harris or anything that comes out with a four stack game and that's totally okay. As Pat said, there's a lot of guys to fly onto the radar like Gerald Fernandez on The Breakers. I'm glad you brought that up earlier by the way. But yeah, I mean a Scooby Wright coming back was a really good look. And overall, yeah, the game, just going back to the overall sort of flow of things, Birmingham's down a couple guys right now. So like a Bo Scarborough, they don't have, and obviously Marlon Williams, Jamar Smith, those guys are out for the year. Alex McGoo kind of came back down to Earth a bit after he is, had a couple really good performances but they still got the job done. It's one of those things, it was the same with The Breakers. They had a close game with New Jersey who again, I figured the generals would give the Breakers a run for their money and they did. But in this case, the stallion's just kind of veteran complete roster really showed. And again, Dion Kane I loved, I was so happy to see that play. Cause I've been pulling for Dion Kane for a while and I want to say that's his second return touchdown of the year. But that one in particular at that time in the game really helped him out. Cause I think that was after the Troy Williams touchdown. He had a decently long rushing touchdown and just great to see it was all around a really nice win for Birmingham. And now at three and one, they're right behind the breakers there in the playoff running. And it would be really interesting, I mean again, fast forward however many weeks, but it would be really interesting to see a stallion's breakers playoff game. I'm already looking forward to that cause I already think it's going to happen. But that's definitely one to have circled on the schedule. Excuse me. Pat, any thoughts on this? The EXL just tweeted out they're all EXL list. We'll talk about that in a minute. Any other thoughts on the game? Why tweet this out? As far as, and I've been vocal about this with Birmingham as they were, I think they brought back 65 or 70, almost almost 70% of their roster came back. So when the chips are down and you are met with adversity, the experience comes to fruition. And the only thing negative out on the sidelines I really saw was you did see Magoo get a little bit more flustered than what I would like. And maybe that goes to some inexperienced whatever, that's another conversation. But you did regardless is he knew he wasn't playing his best football to the yesterday and he was still able to leave the team and do what they needed to do. The defense didn't panic and something they brought up on the broadcast a lot is, even though the Mallers were doing a great running up and down the field is when they got inside the tent, they could not finish. And that's something that bothers me a little bit because a couple times on first down they were within I think the five yard line and they didn't even try the power run a power player or anything like that. I'm not saying that Grohe would've got in the end zone or anything, but he's a stocky dude. They have this guy, ironically his name is Mason Stocky, they're fullback, they're throwing the ball a lot to him. He's a big dude. I'd like to see them go under center and just trying to power it in and if you don't get on first down and get cute, that's fine. But Birmingham was able to not the best game they played, not Mao's best game threw some bad, he missed two or three touchdowns I saw. And then when they were within the, they were on the 17, he missed Davion Davis, he missed Jay Sternberger with Sternberger could have caught that ball. It was a difficult catch but he did get two hands on it And then there was that interception, the Deion came where Kane beat his the defensive back. So it was a little frustrating to see McGoo miss those throws. If he could make those throws, he'd probably be in the nfl. But just kind of putting the team on his back and a collective effort from the rushing attack without both Scarborough as Ary white cj, Marbel doing all collectively. I think they all had within about 40 to 50 yards each. So you put up 140 rushing yards, you're usually going to have a good game. The Muellers, it comes down the experience for me man, Mueller's going to Maller. We know who they are. They're two wins in what, 14 games at this point. It's a little bit frustrating but they are overall as a product way more competitive. The watch Evan touched on it with Davon Davis, this guy's been a major upgrade, especially with Marlon Williams out. I think we all thought Williams would take that next step and then he got hurt, especially with the team not having Cyrus Mitchell and Victor this Victor Boldon this year. But guys are stepping up and McGoo like saw I said didn't play his best game but still got it done with his legs and that touch. Both his touchdowns were awesome and the awareness he had by the way, it was kind of ticking down to make sure he had appropriate ball placement and tap the end zone, not try to dive or anything. All you have to do is tap that pylon to get a touchdown that says a lot about his football IQ and Magoos easily a top three, top four PA quarterback in this league and you're going to win football games with that. And it comes, it's going to come down to the Breakers and Birmingham in the south. On the flip side, we're seeing a lot more competitiveness from the Mallers. They're not as air quote memeable, so it's pretty okay with the product. I'd like to see Pittsburgh punching in the end zone, get a little bit more aggressive. But in the end, if we talked about this last year that the stallions who obviously won the championship were going to win by four points points against the smallers would probably be like, okay, that's a good football game. It was ugly at times, but overall it was way more engaging than that first half of the Breakers game. Last thing here, we'll get out of here soon. We're over an hour. I appreciate Pat and Evan's time today. VE did all that. Exe just tweeted that we could probably do a whole episode about this. I'm sure we'll talk more about it on the live show coming up this weekend for the kickoff. But the XE L did send out their all XIV L team, XE L'S North division champions led the league and all XE L team honoree with seven while all eight teams had was at least one player honor, we have TEU here for quarterback Abram Smith running back, yo, Dante Burnette, Hakeem Butler over there, lucky Jackson, Jaco, Pearson, Cody LaMer. Lot of good names on here. Evan, any just, again, we could do a whole thing about this, but any initial thoughts on kind of this all X L team list is coming up? Yeah, I'm just taking a look at it right now cause I haven't seen it. I see Deontay Burnett made it on there from the roughneck, so congratulations. I guess, well did they say anything about McCarran on there or are we just assuming that that's interesting? Maybe, I don't know. Maybe that means there's better things to come or I don't know, maybe that just means they favored teu, but either way good for him I guess. Jeez, you really put me on the spot here man. I'm just like, Sorry guys. No, no, you're good. I'm just like I, I've not seen anything from this yet. I see Dete Anderson on there too, who's someone I've talked to on a pretty regular basis, so shout out to him as well. Peter Toma. Yeah, no question there. A lot of these again, I'm just looking over very Jack too. That's a good one. Glad they got him on there from the rough next. Again, I don't know, just grazing over this. I'll have a deeper look into it later and I'll probably put some thoughts up on Twitter. But yeah, I mean Mike already put out his all X ffl team and some of this seems to be a lining up with that. So, oh the bottom line here is, look, if I can't just stay away from the players for a minute, even though that's what this is about, it's great to see them get some recognition. I mean I won't go too deeply into the specific players because like I said, I'm just looking at this for the first time, but the bottom line is it's good to see the X F L kind of do this offense defense special teams because the guy players deserve this. It's, we've talked about it before, but as much as this league is a showcase to get film and the kind of alls springing football leagues are guys want to get to the N F L, there was a lot of time and effort and money put into this seasoning. People really had to buy in if you wanted to win. So this is the fruits of labor being shown in of these awards and honors and whatever. It's really good to see the league doing that and not just saying, oh here were a couple good players from our season and these teams. It's like, well they've really put some thought into this as people like Mike have with their all X F L teams and really any one of us who's covering a specific team, it's a lot of time and money and effort. So again, just good to see this in general. Pat, any thoughts on this before we get out of here? I mean we could talk the snub a cornerback when it came to the throwing of, so this goes into my high horse about who is an mvp, right? And when everyone kind of throws it to the best player in the league and I've always been very vocal of, I think Andrew Luck should have been the MVP for his when he actually played because at that time the Colts were very bad, offensive line was bad and he brought the most value to his team of any league. While I do think that Jordan teu and you got a factor in his rushing ability was very valuable to the team. Abram Smith a lot of times kind of chilled the rock and TEU had some pretty terrible passing games for the first three games of the year that all quarterback, all X F L quarterback in my opinion should have came down to Ucci or McCarran and then flip a coin. I'm biased towards McCarran obviously with the St Louis thing, but in the end I think 90% of people would agree that the quarterback position should have came down to McCarran and McCarran and DeNucci. Good to see Hakeem Butler on there. I feel like Darius Shepherd kind of got a snub at receiver when you look at his numbers, they were a lot better and I think he was top seven in yards and top four in receptions and his touchdowns, I think he had six or seven touchdowns as well. Burnett obviously had a drop off just like a lot of the Houston receivers. But in the end, nothing too crazy about that. Tight end looks good to me. A little bit surprised with Stephen Gonzalez. He was a good solid player. I think he's going to give an f l look but he wasn't one of the staples of the X F L but he's definitely a solid player and he definitely deserves recognition. I'm glad I got that. He got him. Jared Jones Smith was suspended for two games but when he played he ranked pretty high. Honestly when I watched him there's only really one game where I thought, man, this guy changed it up a little bit. But he ranked PF F Wise, I think he was their top player two or three times. Levert Hill statistically had a good season. But I feel like Lucas Dennis was a lot better than he was the best defensive back. He rated the highest. Would've liked to see him get that recognition. But ultimately I don't make that decision. A big snub for me on the battle Hawks was Carson Wells and while Carson Wells didn't have the sexiest stats, they lined him up inside on the defensive line as an interior defensive lineman. He played the mic, he played the will, he played the Sam, he played the edge, he played multiple facets of special teams. So his versatility to me the lack of recognition kind of hurts a little bit. I don't think there's much debate with the return specialist. Shepherd had almost a grand in returning yards overall. I think he had almost 1500 yards and there were so many games where they were down and or the offense wasn't moving and he puts them on the other side of the 50. I know there's a couple games he had 70 yard returns. But even the short kickoffs, you know getting 'em to the midfield, even if you're getting a field goal when you're down 10 nothing and they turn that into a ten three, all of a sudden there's a ball game going on right now. So as far as the Battle hawks Carson Wells and Carson Wells and Lucas Dennis are my big snubs. I mean I don't feel like bothering people with talking about how great AJ is because I think everyone knows that and according to some people he was the MVP of the X ffl and given by the official X ffl even though it was given by us at a X Ffl news hub. And I'm pretty sure a lot of people think Vaughn Hutchins is white as well based off the awards. Well that's good today we got a little X ffl talk in there. You didn't have to torture ourselves too much with the whole Yos L show. I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding. Like I said, reminder we will be live San Antonio Saturday, no Friday show this week working on an interview though, that might be kind of cool and we'll put it in probably when we get back from San Antonio. Evan, any final thoughts from you today? We'll toss to Pat. I will be posting all the live show information here coming up this week. Anything else from you? Definitely going to have to take a closer look at those, the all X F L team. But again glad we could talk about that and looking forward to the X F L championship next weekend mean we did this entire show about U S F L and keep in mind I've watched all the U S F L games this weekend too just like Pat, I had a lot of time on my hands just kind of hanging around. So yeah I was able to do that. That was good. Enjoy the games, enjoy talking about 'em and yeah, I'm looking forward to again, we'll have a bit of U S F L X F L crossover next weekend again cause we'll have one X F L game and the four U S F L games but looking forward to it again after that it'll be full U S F L and then the C F L will eventually start too for again that crowd people who are interested in that which might includes. So I'm excited. I saw Cody Fuo tweeted this morning, he's landed in Montreal, he's tweeting that bone sugar Montreal, very excited for that and watching the travels of Cody Fuo there and the new lay pat. Anything else from you? Not much how it's going to be a busy week for me as far as articles doing a bunch of battle hawks follow up from the season to us. F l quarterback rankings I'll be doing as well. So check me out for that. Just do a shameless plug, follow me on Twitter by Pat Rapino and on YouTube analyze and educate. Shout out to Mike Glass quarterback of the alos who has just got engaged and he'll be reporting the camp former E M U guy. So Fu Jaro looks like to be taking the obviously QB one snaps but Mike Glass St. Louis native bounced around I F L guy should have a good opportunity to make that team as well. So once again, thank you Reid for having me on and full force. We got 20 weeks of football right now so a little bit fatigued but I'm here for it because once the NFL shuts off or comes on I can shut off my brain and just watch the games as a fan. Yeah, I've been we between the Stanley Cup and the U US F L X F L, everything else, a lot of lot that we're in the sports world right now and I am glad that we basically pressured Pat last week on the show in the changing his Twitter handles. So I'm glad that we were able to because we did that right. We kind of bullied you into changing that, so I appreciate that Evan, good luck with your move home from college for the summer, pat, good luck with everything and your travels. Thank you everyone. Like I said, like can subscribe. We will see you Saturday in hopefully sunny Birmingham. Looks like there might be some rain, but hopefully Sunny or not Birmingham, San Antonio, where will I be? San Antonio. We'll see you guys Saturday. Thanks again.

Episode 143 - The Big Game at the End of the Season

Coming up this week on the mark. Well here we are officially one week away from crowning the second ever XFL champion, R I P LA extreme. And while many of us know the original X F L 2001 championship game was called the million dollar game. Did you know it was in fact originally just going to be called the big game at the end of the season? That's right. A history lesson for you today on the mark Cast LA in San Francisco. It'll be a war this Saturday night on NBC books are going to be in the LA area, Paul, but X L Personally I I've never liked football but for a million bucks you are. I can't wait to see the Game. That's right. We are talking everything X ffl 2023 championship game. We have ESPN's Matt Berry recapping the season. What does the X F L do next? We crown the champion. What are the next steps and what does Matt think about the weekends matchup? If I'm doing The one to 10 scale, I mean I'd put it at a 10 and I'll put it at a 10 for a couple of reasons. One, it finished. I mean you go back to 2020 when the pandemic through five games canceled the season and I think we were all left wondering if this thing was going to be sustainable again. And so credit Danny and DJ and Jared Carden down in the ownership group for putting a vision back onto the field. Then little US F L talk, Kevin Kugler, a longtime friend of the podcast back through the Spring League days, comes back on talking everything U US F L Season two is Fox hyped as we are for United States Football Action. I just say it's football action. I see what goes into these U S F L broadcasts and it's cameras, microphone, everything that you would put into an nfl a big time N NFL broadcast goes into each and every one of these U S F L broadcasts. The level of commitment that Fox has had to making this work is pretty remarkable. And then I have been trying to get this gentleman on the podcast since the beginning of the season. You may know him for his food choices in Birmingham, Alabama. I prefer to focus on his play on the field. Deion Smith running back for your X F L South Division champions comes on the show. I hope you guys celebrated with some pizzas after the championship game. Hey, Hey I'm Mike. Do it cause I saw something on Twitter the other day, says some, I hope you celebrate with a slice of pizza. So Do you still being known for that as one of the things? Are you kind of over that? I kind of over it to a certain extent, but it definitely keeps a chip on my shoulder because team missed out on me, my leadership and me as a player. So it kind of motivates me still. And then finally getting back in the saddle C F L action here. We had the big draft this week. I was watching the cracking game, but we had Ben Grant X's Knows podcast coming on, we're talking CFL draft, Toronto Argo's, quarterbacks including Brian Scott Andreen me of the podcast Ben Hos plus just CFL off season talk. What do we have coming up here in 2023? I think It should matter. I I'm so disappointed when I see numbers, how many starts draft picks beyond the second round have had over the last five years for any given team or what percentage of players are still on the team that drafted them four years later and it's really low and it's really sad. I don't think it has to be like that One week away. We'll see you in San Antonio soon. Hey guys, welcome to the Mark Reid here. Had debated going back and forth with calling this the buy, buy episode with that NSYNC this week. Settled on, did you know that? Did you know we all know the Million Dollar game, right? Everybody knows xfl. Oh $1 million Game. They gave away a million dollars divided for the winning team. The original name of it was just going to be called the Big game at the end of the season. They changed it during week three because they thought it was too wordy. They thought that people might be able to copy that, right? You can't like how do you trademark that? But thought that was wild. Vince McMahon, all of his genius, the big game at the end of the season. Check it out on Wikipedia, hand to God. Just mind blown, mind blown. But we are talking the X F L 2023 championship game today. Matt Berry coming back on the show from E S P N getting Matt's thoughts, Grady, the X ffl season as a whole. Now that we're through the regular season, what does Matt think that they did? The future of alternative football and the X F L's place and all of that should be good with Matt. Really appreciate Kevin Kugler coming back on, going through Fox Sports PR for that. Getting Kevin's thoughts on this season. Wild U S F L season right now with Todd Haley's yelling at coaches on the sidelines and the showboats cannot get their life together, but Moka Bethel Thompson is looking good. That is exciting. Really pumped to have Deion Smith on the program courtesy of the Arlington Renegades. Really appreciate the team over there. And then Ben Grant, long time been trying to get Ben on just figuring out a good spot with the Exes and Argos podcast. Getting back into the C F L here. I've been tremendously lazy with that during the X ffl season. I know we've had Cody Fu Jaro, we had Rick Campbell and everyone from the BC Lions, but getting back into C F L coverage here and now that training camps, rookies are reporting and everything else. Last thing for me before I go, if you will, going to be, you're going to be in San Antonio next week. We are doing our big live show Saturday at two to four I think Local times. So that's central. Not going to be a Friday episode. Next week we will be going live. Anthony Miller, Andy Murray, people calling in. Everyone I'm I'm going to post the guest list. All the people you would expect we're all going to do that. But if you are going to be in San Antonio trying to get a guest count number going through the Alamo Saturday morning before the show, so I'm thinking at 10:00 AM we all go do the Alamo that we can all go get lunch, do whatever. We're going to do the show two to four. You can come hang out, you can go explore. I'll post the locations and all of that and then the game's at seven so that way we're not too stressed. We can go do the Alamo whatever, hang out, go do the show and then go hang out at the Alamo Dome. We'll be around. I know that Jason with the Xam podcast, they're doing stuff on Friday night. I get in too late to be a part of the show, but I will be hanging out afterward as well. I'll be living on the Riverwalk every moment of the time that I am there. Save for the X F L game. So come say hi, but if you want to be a part of the Alamo tour, send me an email, the Mark House podcast gmail.com or send me a DM right now if you're listening to this because I want to get a guest count because I want to call them on Monday. Get, we'll get a tour guide. I think it's $45. That includes the tour guide, like you got to pay it to go to the Alamo anyway, so I think it's $45. I'll get a guest count, but send me an email or a DM right now. Just pause the episode. Hey Reid, I'm in just so I can get a guest count. I don't know if there's going to be five people there or 15 people, whatever, but if you're in San Antonio, Alamo tour 10:00 AM Saturday, I know Haley with the Sea Dragons is going to be around, maybe she will be there as well. Enjoy the episode. We'll see you at the end next. Well we were joined earlier in the season by Matt Barry. Now kind of a post recap and we're still looking forward to the championship game. We have Matt Barry back with the p n, how are you doing sir? Hey, good being back with you. Can't believe we embarked on this 10 week journey plus a playoff and here we are a couple of weeks away from the X Ffl championship. It's been a good run. It's good. Yeah. So first off, if you had to grade kind of the X ffl here, we season inaugural kind of season 3.0, what would you say I'm doing if I'm doing the one to 10 scale? I mean I'd put it at a 10 and I'll put it at a 10 for a couple of reasons. One, it finished. I mean you go back to 2020 when the pandemic through five games canceled the season and I think we were all left wondering if this thing was going to be sustainable again. And so credit Danny and DJ and Jerry Cardin down the ownership group for putting the vision back onto the field and it finishing at a high level. I'll put it at a 10 for that part one, part two, I'll put it at a 10 because the quality of play week in and week out just got so much better. I mean week one, week two, week three week kind of knew it was going to be a little sloppy. These guys were coming off couches hadn't played a lot. There's a training camp so to speak, a long one or a pre-season. But each week and each game we called, it got better and better and then we started sitting in the booth, we're like, hell man, we're watching some good football. And so I'd give it a 10 for that. And then the other reason I'd give it a 10, a lot of these cities bought in. I mean a lot of them bought in. Everybody knows St. Louis and that story DC and the beer snake, I called week one at San Antonio with St. Louis. That crowd was phenomenal. These cities bought into what these teams were doing, even Houston this last week and had a good crowd. And so you never know, spring football leagues have had it tough, not a secret. And so the fact that we got in 10 games, the playoff and now the championship, the fact that the quality of football improved, the fact that fans embraced it and that the numbers all told were pretty good based on what you go up against in the spring man, right? I think it was a really, really good season. Do you sense e s ESPN feels, because obviously beginning of the season, okay we do this partnership and hey, we're going to do all the tv, whatever, but then you go through year one here, do you feel like they, ESPN has bought in now that they're kind of getting this as well? Look, I know that the game that I called Saturday, the South Division championship to nine Arlington Houston, that peaked at over 900,000 viewers on a Saturday when there's a lot going on. You're going to run up against stuff in the spring. You're going to run up against the masters, you're going to run up against big racing events, big fight events, N NBA a playoffs, you're going to run up against the stuff. It's just going to happen. And the fact that the numbers were still sustainable throughout, you got to hop around networks because we've got contractual agreements with other entities. It's just the way that it is. But I'll tell you this, for me and ESPN's perspective to be able to do what we did from an access perspective, I'm telling you man, like I say it probably every broadcast that I call the transparency with officials and the dean Blandino, to me that is the best thing in sports because as fans we sit at home and we want to know what in the hell the officials are talking about at midfield. Well the X F L you can and the Dean Blandino angle you can with some of the rules that were put in place. I think E S P N could clip this off, go to other partners leagues, S E C N F L, big 12, whoever you want to go to and say, Hey, you know what, some of this stuff works. And it was very innovative TV and I would say top to bottom, everybody's thrilled. Yeah, the dean plan knows funny we have him on back on a couple weeks ago too because he really, I can't decide if it's better or worse if you disagree with the call or you think it's a bad call, but then you still, it doesn't go your way. I don't know if hearing Dean makes it, it heard any less as a fan if it's like, oh my guy, cut, cut. And you know what? It's more of like the why. I want to know the why if, and here's what I loved doing during the broadcast read. I loved doing, there was a couple of times, there was one this last week where we know there's the challenge, everything rule. And we know that there's a lot of times it doesn't even get used in a game. There was one specific incident I believe, was it roughing? The passer that didn't get called. Something didn't get called and it wasn't challenged. I loved hitting Dean on that kind of stuff. Hey Dean, there was, that wasn't called on the field. Had one of the coaches challenged that, what would you have said? He's like, I would've called that a foul. And so even right there in the middle of a game, he's admitting that the crew missed something. I find that kind of thing. Fascinating. When you're talking about a live sporting event, If you now looking, obviously we're going to crown the champion, all of that, moving to next year, what would you want to see or what would you think that they could do? Obviously this is kind of a pseudo reboot and we are wanting to get a foundation. What would you like to see happen before next year? I, I'll stay away from that one because it's so hard for me to know from an ownership perspective what they want. I know Danny, DJ and Jerry are very passionate about this and I know they made every decision they made for the good of the league. I think the product spoke for itself. I think they did what they had to do with the hub to get everybody the right quality of facility and care at a good cost because you have to. And so I think it's a startup. It's what it is, whether it's a startup. And so there's going to be things that you could pick and choose. And right now, the next thing I believe for the X ffl is play the championship game May 13th and San Antonio between DC and Arlington. And then really, really, really, really sell the amount of names that are going to be going off to the N F L. I've said it from day one. Well does this, can a Spring league succeed? All these people talk about, well yeah, you know how it's can succeed. I mean how many times have I said it this season, it's a league of opportunity. It's a league of second chance. Well if these guys are starting to get N F L opportunities because of it, how much more popular does your league get? I firmly believe that if there's a player that's coming out of college and they're a fifth round pick, sixth round pick, seventh round pick, probably sixth or seventh, and there's just not a lot of good tape on him. I believe the X ffl could eventually go to those kids right out of college, Hey, come play with us. You're still draft eligible. Come get some, you're dude, you're six round pick. Come come be a fourth round pick. I think that's where this is headed because I'm telling you in the next two weeks you're going to hear a lot of names that we recognize from the X F L on N F L rosters. And to me that's going to make the league jump to a level. Well, we've already, even just right now before we got on the EXE was posting, Ben Ucci got a invite over to the Broncos camp. They just posted the whole list. I mean you're already seeing that. We haven't even crowned the champion yet. Yeah, and there was rumors, there were some Saints rumors with Ucci over the weekend. There was a lot of rumors about who's going where. Hakeem Butler's going to be back in the league. Tim Ward, he's a player that you got to watch all the sack masters for D or for Houston are going to be in the, I mean these, they're, they're going to be guys that are going to be getting looks again because the tape they were put, the Jack Cohen is getting some interest. I'd be stunned if aj, but Karen doesn't get invited to a camp. A lot of these youngest, if you're not a roster, how come you can't give three from Seattle a look? You know, how come you can't give him a legit, he's little but he can move. I mean there's a lot of these guys pass. There's a lot of these guys that I believe are going to start getting looks in the N F L. When I knew you were on the South division game, I watched it. I was in DC for the north and I was watching it at the bar there at the hotel. I said, I got to get Matt's thoughts of how the hell did the renegades, how did this happen? Because we had the playoffs and even Anthony backed his tweeting and he's upset and all these different weird playoff things. Renegades came in. They took care of business. What did you make? So I'll peel back to curtain a little bit. We have our production meeting. We have one production meeting midweek for our crew. It'd be every Wednesday after I got done with Sports Center, we'd have a production meeting. We'd discussed kind of the storylines of the game and we all candidly said, we're like, Hey look man, it's hard to beat a team three times. We gave you the sports cliche within our group. And then Saturday morning we have a production meeting prior to the game. We're sitting there having coffee, we're at a conference room at the hotel, we're going around the room and the producer, we just candidly ask guys, what do you see happening tonight? What are the storylines? And I think every single one of us in that room was like, I just don't see a way Arlington pulls this off. I just don't. They just, Houston's defense is too tough. They're physical, they can run the ball. And the two-headed quarterback with Silvers and mc and McDonald, it's just going to be tough. I just don't see it happening. They've lost both games of this team by an average of 12 and a half points by at least 12 and a half points. I know the week 10 game was whatever, but it's the facts, right? So we were just kind of hoping were for a close game just to get the viewers just for the good of the product. We go to midfield before the game, I just go to Stoops. I'm like, Hey man, you guys going to open it up today or what? And he and Galloway started laughing and Stoop was like, man, we want to have need to. And so it was almost as if start four for Luis Perez, it was almost as if he was due for a breakout game because the guy's smart Chuck Long told us in our meetings that he's one of the smartest, if not the smartest quarterbacks that knows football that ain't quarterback he's ever been around. So the guy gets it. You just wonder how it was just so perfect. I mean he played perfect football. Houston didn't get to him as much as I think they thought they would. And it was a game where you had to sit there and be like, all right, let's create a perfect start. Arlington goes down and scores, then the defense holes, then they're getting big plays and Arlington's defense stepped up, silvers was ineffective, McDonald comes in and it was just really a perfect storm for the renegades to get in there and pull off an upset. Cause I think there were seven and a half by the time we kicked, they moved to seven and a half point favorites. Houston did. By the third quarter it had flipped to Arlington six and a half, which means that's a 13 point change in the line just in two quarters of football. It was almost speechless. This kind of watching it, I don't know, I just don't think anyone, I don't know if it was them playing because they felt disrespected and with the standings and all that, if they just came out. I had Debbie on Smiths on the show as well this week and he said, we hear all that. We hear people saying, Hey you don't deserve to belong there. But I mean they were four and six, I think they lost four their last five games. I mean there was no indication. I mean l l, let's be honest, they're in the south. If they're in the north, they're not in the players. They're even sniffing the playoffs if they're not in the south, they're not in. That's just the facts of the division breakdown. They were fortunate. But what do you do with that opportunity when you get in? Had they got blown off the turf than the people that said they didn't belong? Were going to have that argument. I see. I told you. But now that they won, I mean it's a great story. I've got Bob Stoops on Sports Center with me on Thursday and it look, it's a great story. You've got a team that wasn't even 500 got a quarterback trade at mid-season and here they are playing for the championship. Was it just Louise Perez? Was it just, were they just lacking that we need someone that can advocate with us The ball? Yeah, that's all it was. They're off I think going bef pre Perez weeks one through seven, I think they were averaging at 13.3 points a game. And then since Perez jumped in there, they were well over 20. I mean the offense had zero punch, none. And people wondered if, again, if week four was going to be that week where just everything clicked and three for them was amazing. I mean so many guys had big games for them and on the other side of it, like South Canella, where was K guys that you would expect to have big games. And so it look, it was fun man. It was a fun game to call because I don't think we expected it. In fact, I know we didn't expect it. And the more things developed more we were getting excited, hey this could really happen In terms of them actually Dragons did not see, dragons did not look good against DC And I don't know how much of the game you saw obviously with the weekend schedule, but do you think that they, do the Renegades have a chance here against the Defenders? Yeah, I mean if last week's team shows up, no question. I mean they could score with anybody. I mean DC's been the best team I think in the league, top to bottom for the entire season. But there's no question, I think if Arlington plays way to a neutral site, Texas might favor them. Yeah. Cause they've got confidence. There's nothing scarier than a team that's told they can't do something. And that's what Arlington came into the postseason with and they showed it last week that against the team, they'd lost you twice. Not been competitive against twice you go in and get the win. But DC top to Bottom's been the best team. I was surprised by Seattle. I haven't been shy about my love for the Seattle roster and that when they're clicking and I legitimately thought they were the best team in the league. But it just goes to show you, I mean that cliche, any given Sunday in football at any given Saturday in college, sometimes we saw it this weekend in the X F L, I mean it was probably one of the best, if not one of the games that Tucci played than people just couldn't handle the ball. I mean we were there, it just wasn't, didn't feel like they got it all together. I don't know what the deal was That happens. I mean same with Houston. I, there was sound of Bob Stoops shaking Wade Phillip's hand at the end of the game and he was like, stoops looked at him. He is like, I don't know how this happened. And Wade's like it was a perfect storm. We didn't play like this thing. It's sports man. You just never know. There are weird things like Perez could have just had this moment of clarity before the game where everything just slowed down for him. You just never know. And the fact that Silvers never got going for Houston and they, AJ and them made that switch so quick, it was almost as if they were trying to play catch to get rhythm of them. Even Cole I thought was great the week before and it's like, hey, we found something in them Cox, they found a running back that they loved Alene. I mean they had the guys, they could never figure it out. Yeah, I couldn't figure out, we didn't have the audio at the bar, but I think Silvers was three of six. It certainly wasn't a horrendous performance, but it seemed like they just went away from him so quick. I just didn't Well it was Quick figure out. Yeah, it was quick. I mean I think it was the first quarter we never saw him again. It was clear that they were going to ride McDonald to see if they can get it going again. But it just didn't seem like McDonald had nearly the accuracy that they needed. I don't know Cole or Brandon is not the athlete. I think that Cole is, but it just felt like Cole, they didn't have the right arm that day. And keep in mind we Arlington's problem was their offense all season. I mean the defense led the XFL in interceptions. I mean they had a really good defense but they had only scored 12 touchdowns all year going into the game, five of them through the air. So they were inept offensively until they got Luis Perez. You matched that up with a pretty stout defense. Now you got a pretty good team. I'm curious what Brandon Silver's next role, what does he do here? It didn't seem, when I talked with him on the show this year that he was, I think he was just happy to be playing football and be winning. And I'm with AJ Smith, I'm kind of in the comfortable place, but I don't think really being benched more or less in the playoff game is a big outing for, hey, you're going to go do great things here in the off-season. That I'll tell you is the off-season storyline that I think everybody should watch. What to make of the guys that don't move on to the N F L, I mean what do they make of this experience? How do they grow as football players? Are they coming back to their organizations? What are some of these coaches going to do? I think now that we're going to be out of it here in two weeks. I mean it's a long off season. The season won't start again until February. So what is it May, so June, July, August, September, October, November, December, January. I mean you're talking nine months and a lot happens in a startup in nine months to get it back to year two. And so players like silvers, like you mentioned in some of the other ones, it'll be interesting to see if they say, look, I'm going to be an X ffl football player. And I think that's okay. I think even DJ said it, this could be a league that people want to play in. There's going to be guys that came from the N F L that want that opportunity, but then there's going to be guys that says, you know what, I'm going to be an X F L football player for four months a year and that's going to be good. Well I think you have mean for the sustainability of the league. I think you have to, I mean can't have to eventually get, and you can do a year or two. I mean even the C F L, no one, I would say vast majority of people don't dream in playing in the C F L. But once you go up there and you go, oh I can live here and it's nice and I get paid and people like me and I on tv, there's benefits to doing it. Correct. There are, and look, and if you just playing football, you're gone not too long, it's a 10 game season. You make a decent amount of money, you all your food and meals and hotels and everything are paid for during the season. So if you're wise with money, man you can stack some cash four months a year, three months a year, go do something else and then come play ball again. Any other wrap up thoughts here? Any other final kind of takeaways? I went into this thing open-minded when they asked if I wanted to do it coming off college football season. I was like, man, I'm exhausted. I just went through 16 weeks of college football. And I said, but you know what I, I'm buying what Danny DJ and Cardinal are selling and I wanted to see it and I wanted to see these, I know these names from covering, I know that these players, I know these coaches and I wanted to see something succeed and I'm glad I did it man. I'm damn glad I did it because it was a fun run of a league that I believe because of the buy-in is only just beginning of what I think is going to be what we finally see with a successful spring football league. It's just weird. And you do so much college. We have people all the time and these guys online, just the random people, whatever, you know track these guys all the way through in college and I've watched 'em four years and I've watched 'em in the draft and then if they don't go wherever, it's like what? I'm never going to watch them again. I don't care. Don't watching them in the extra f don't you think that's weird that so many people track hundreds of thousands college players every year and then they're playing in these leagues and they couldn't care less about watching them. And it's funny cause I had the opposite reaction because you're thinking like, well what happened to Vic Beasley? No kidding, Vic Beasley's playing. He was an all pro in 2016. Josh Gordon was the best whatever happened to Josh Gordon, no kid. And he's playing in this. So I was always fascinated by it. I was always fascinated as a kid growing up, my favorite Sports Illustrated issue was where are they now? I always loved it because I did, I followed all these guys in college. I want to know what they went up to because N F l man, you're here one day, you're gone the next. And so when you start hearing some of these names again, man, I think it's fascinating and I would encourage everyone, if you're a football fan, you can gamble on it. I know that was big form sports betting. You get to follow these careers because some are going to have a great comeback story and some are just going to never live up to their potential and be really good X F L football players. And again that that's fine. But Foot Pro football's hard. It is really, really hard. And with that motto, player 54, we just saw eight teams filled with rosters of how hard it really is to make it to the top level. Well no, and I think more people need to be like you and adopt that mentality, right? Because it's, it's so foreign to me that's like, oh I don't even the cfl, it's like, well they're not in the nfl. I don't care. I don't, I have no interest in that. It's just weird. Yeah, You get because the NFL's been so dominant for so long. Yeah, I mean it's the brand but people start learning there. There's more out there. The G League and the N B A got some popularity. They they're look, there's a time and a place you should see double a baseball stadium in some of these towns. They're packed every night. Now they don't get the TV audience because it's not a TV type thing. But there's stuff outside the big four and I think that the sooner we learn to embrace that, it's still a good product, the better off everybody'll be. Last question from me, I appreciate your time Was besides just obviously X Ffl succeeding and we're doing all this whatever, AJ McCarran, didn't you choose, what was the biggest storyline that you thought came out of the season that you'll remember? Oh, there's a couple of 'em again, I ucci you hit on because I think he's an n NFL caliber player. I think AJ showed what he's got. I think a guy like Reggie Barlow, DC head coach, he's going to be a coach man, he's good. The stories for me, these guys that got opportunities, even our guy Anthony backed, I mean he's going to be a coach. These guys that got chances to show to chase their passion. Hines Ward coaches were a big story. You have a guy like pro pro's kid. I mean he is not big but man, he's got fire. And so a lot of these guys that really had a chance to lead the league, Ja Corpse, I just mentioned him a while ago for Seattle, that kid's a stud. Where did he come from? Give him an opportunity. And so the guys that I expected to show out, a lot of them did, but the ones that you never heard of that became stars. That for me is what a great story is. Well Matt, I appreciate it fitting me in busy times here and it's been fun listening all year. Yeah, I just kept thinking that whole night. I said I got know what Matt thought about the renegades win, so I appreciate you peaking my curiosity and whatever to come back on. So no man, I appreciate what you do for these leagues and guys like you and your passion projects and getting the stuff out there. We need more of that. So anytime you want me on, I'm here for you man. Great stuff from you all season. Well it's a big day when I pull out my spring league, Jers jersey. Just a little throwback for my spring league man. We have Kevin Kugler here now obviously with U S F L and everything else. How are you sir? I am good. It's, it Harkens back to those good old days of the spring league when we all enjoyed a little football in the off season. Finally I got the interview Luis Perez as well here finally now obviously with the X ffl. But it was cool to have the jers jerseys yawn, just a lot of memories and all the way back to 2020 with all this stuff. Yeah, it was And you know what, in 2020 especially, it was really good to have the spring league because we were kind of craving extra sports at that point and it kind of came along, had a good time and filled in some gaps for us. And now we've got U S F L and it's clicking right along already moving along into week four. I know it's exciting. So you were at the kickoff in Memphis. We'll talk about that kind of general thoughts and then we can talk about your game this weekend, Birmingham at Pittsburgh. Thoughts you're back for season two. How? How's it feel? You know what? It's good. I'm how excited I am and was about this last year and I still am about this league. I really do think this league has so much potential and I think we've seen it over the last couple of years. You see it in the television ratings, you see it in the people who are interested in this. There is an appetite outside of just you and me, there is an appetite for other football and I think we've seen that throughout the course of the spring, throughout the course of the two years of the U sfl, even to the spring league. There are people who want to watch football sport right now. No offense to my baseball friends, but it's sport and if you can give us more football, we're going to watch it. How did Fox coming out of last year going into this year? Obviously we're doing the hub more hubs now. I saw a lot more advertising. I mean we have the infamous Super Bowl ad and kind of all that, but it seemed like last year, okay, we're kind of trying this out now we're really making a go for it. Yeah, I think Fox has really gone all in with the U S F L. I think you've seen the commitment from the amount of bells and whistles that we have on every broadcast from the people that we're putting on the broadcast, the crew that we have behind the broadcast. I mean we've really gone all in, not to sound like a company guy, but I mean there's a lot of stuff that goes into each and every one of these broadcasts from microphones to cameras to drones to, I mean you name it and we're trying it out on these U S F L broadcasts really. It was something we did last year and we've been able to carry that over and even grow it a little bit this year. I love the technology and the football that shows where the first down line is when we can zoom in on the graphic that shows through lasers, how close this was or is to a first down, all of that stuff I think enhances the game. It enhances it for me as a broadcaster. I think it enhances it for viewers too. I got to believe it's better for a viewer to know immediately just how close they are to either getting a first down or how just across the first down line they got. I think it's a really cool thing. Well, what I like about it, and I noticed turning on the first game in the Memphis game, I don't think anyone does football like Fox. I mean, and just whether if you didn't know any different and I said on the show that week, you'd think it was in October and whatever. I mean the broadcast looks good, sounds good, you know guys are great on the call. The technology it, there's something about Fox and the way that it puts it on air that I do. I think if you're hesitant and you're watching that you feel a little bit more at home there, if that makes sense. Yeah, no, I'm totally biased and I say this with all bias, but I agree with you and how I know that is I see what's put into these broadcasts. I know what goes into an N F NFL broadcast because I do N F NFL during the fall, but I see what goes into these U S F L broadcasts and it's cameras, microphone, everything that you would put into an N F nfl, A big time N F L broadcast goes into each and every one of these U S F L broadcasts. The level of commitment that Fox has had to making this work is pretty remarkable. So obviously you in Memphis, what was that like? That was the early hub announcement and obviously we had Michigan over the weekend in Canton, but it seems like a lot of efforts being put into the showboats, kind of revitalized that. What do you make of all that? It's funny, we were driving in that day to the game and going through the parking lot and there's tailgaters out there and it's a little thing, but you're thinking, well this is kind of cool. People are excited about this. People want to see this. In the original incarnation of the U S F L, the Memphis Showboats drew very well. They had a lot of interest. People were excited about them. Obviously they had Reggie White leading their team at that point. No one really knew that Reggie White was going to become Hall of Famer and legend Reggie White as his career went on. But there was excitement for it then and there's excitement for it now the key to this is you find markets, in my opinion, that are hungry for football and you provide them football, you see it in Birmingham. We saw last year Birmingham hungry for football, they love football. We all know that about Alabama. So you provide it to 'em and they come out Memphis is the same way. They love football, they love to have a team and I think you've seen that in the early going, they're going to support this Showboats team and I'm excited to see where it goes from here. What do you make of the showboat so far? Kind of off to a rough start. We obviously Todd Haley with the Bandits now we're moving over and he was getting a little flustered here at the end of the, I saw that going viral. So what are you making of the Todd Haley? Yeah, certainly a little frustration has started to show, and that'll happen with any team that starts off oh and three. One of the struggles that they've had is they can't get a run game started and we saw it again last week, Cole Kelly performed admirably over 300 yards passing in the loss. But when you can't establish the run, I don't care where you're playing high school football, college football, professional football, doesn't matter if you can't get a run game going and you become one dimensional, it's really tough and you can see that frustration and Todd Ailey's a great coach and a great offensive mind. And when you can't get both facets of that offense going, it can be a little bit frustrating. Well, because it's weird because here we obviously Todd Haley kind of carried over from last year, but here we see the Breakers, they're undefeated and obviously they have McLeod, Bethel Thompson that's kind of I think a cheat code a little bit here coming in and I mean we've tracked him for years and I mean him all the way back to the Hughes of the aviators, whatever they were calling it back at that time. I guess first off that, what do you think of McLeod? Because obviously you watched him play years ago. Yeah, what's funny is you've seen him play and you realize he's the same guy. I mean he is what, 34 years old now. He's been at almost every level of football that you can imagine. And I think it's a great story. It's a story that as the breakers continue to win, it's going to get bigger and bigger. I mean, what more do you want? You've got a 34 year old quarterback who has been everywhere and has performed everywhere now performing in this league. Oh by the way, his partner is a writer for a Marvel show. That's going to be a huge hit in, you've got this great pairing, you've got a team that's unbeaten, you have the story of John d Lippo, which is an ama amazing emotional story of a man showing resilience and coming back to coach the game he loves surrounded by the leaders in the league in almost every category. It's a really cool story and I think as this season goes along and if the Breakers can continue to play, we saw this past week against Birmingham, you're going to see this Breakers team and that story of McLeod Bethel Thompson grow bigger and bigger and bigger across the country. Yeah, don't, it's not really good now to call maybe Tom and Gisele, but it really, I mean maybe at the time MBT really, I mean of the power couple here, I think it's great for the league, and I said this because obviously we cover C F L as well, whatever circumstances made him come and to be closer to the family and all of that, it looks good for the U S F L to be able to compete with a high level talent that way to get him to come in. Oh there is no doubt about it. If you can have that kind, because here's you and I have talked about this before, what this league is all about to me in part is stories. Because you need to, when I'm on an N F L game on a Sunday in October, I don't have to introduce the audience to Patrick Mahomes. Everybody knows who Patrick Mahomes is. There's stories to tell, but it's not the who is this person that I have to tell you have to do that with all of these guys who's West Hills. I have to tell you the story of who West Hills is, who saves Surat, who's McLeod, Bethel Thompson, you and I know who he is. We watched him play in the early days, but not everybody has. So that's cool about this league to me, not only the football and the chance to see football and to see these guys realize their dreams of playing professional football, but the chance to tell the story of these folks to a larger audience and to me that's what it's all about. It's a great league to tell stories and it's a great league for innovation and I think when you marry the innovation that we have on the broadcast and the stories, you can really have some cool stuff happen. So McCloud coming in and you have John d Felipe, I thought that was tremendous too. And him being able to run out in the field and all of that, you know, have someone like him finding success and obviously Todd Haley who's been through this before, I always think we've seen Bar Andrews like people that have done the spring league system or have done whatever the alt football circuit are able to get up to speed a little bit more. I mean, what do you make of Todd besides the run game, some of these new coaches or returning coaches as struggling to find success here? I think one of the reasons why you see that is I think the league's better this year. I think it's a better coached league from top to bottom. I think it's a more balanced league from top to bottom. I mean I think Birmingham is outstanding. They were outstanding last year. They'll have 45 points. I mean this is a better league this year. Skip Holtz hasn't gotten any worse as a coach. I just think you've seen improvement. I mean we haven't even talked about, and I know we will, but we haven't talked about what Mike Nolan's done with the Michigan Panthers so far. I think I've been in as impressed with that as I have been with everything else. I mean this is a team that at times last year really struggled to generate anything and Mike Nolan has that team energized and what's been cool to see is how energized Mike Nolan is by this opportunity. We sometimes look at this as, oh this is for players, this is for players, this is for coaches, Sue John Depo, Mike Nolan, who has been a head coach at the highest level. San Francisco coordinator was a defensive coordinator for the Dallas Cowboys just three years ago. The energy he has about coaching in this league, it is palpable when you talk to him. When you watch him, you can see it. He's excited about being here. So I think it's a league not only for great stories but for coaching stories. And I think this league has a better story to tell this year from a coaching standpoint, top to bottom. Well I think people are realizing it's a pretty good gig. You come in here, you know, don't have to do the f l, this is my entire life for 12 months and I'm like, you're able to come in, really get invested, kind of stop down, do it. We got the hub situation now it's a little bit better. You think the league has done more to entice to get some bigger names in? I think, and I give Darrell Johnson a lot of credit for this, my colleague at Fox on Sundays in the N F L season. But he manages a lot of what's going on with the U S F L right now and I think he's done a really good job of talking to people, working with people, getting them interested in this league and getting 'em interested in telling the story of the U S F L and helping out these guys at their core. And I've never found a coach who would say anything different at their core, no matter where they coach all of coaches want to do is help players get better, help players achieve their goals. It's, it's why you get into coaching in the first place and I think you've been able to sell that to coaches who are like, look, maybe you've gone through the N F L ringer, maybe you don't want to go back to the N F L. Maybe you don't have an opportunity to go back to the N F L, but you still want to be involved, you still want to coach, come coach here, come help these guys achieve their goals. A reason why everybody is in the U S F L right now and one of the big reasons is they want a chance to go to the nfl. They want a chance to play at the very highest level of professional football and this is a great opportunity for them to do it and it's a great opportunity for a coach to help them get to that level. And that's at their core. That's all a coach wants to do is help those players. And we don't need to talk too much about the other league, but how much is having Fox on, and we've talked in the past, but now going into year two, we've got Darryl Johnson in and you're on Fox, we're in all the nfl. Like being able to kind of bridge that gap for the U S F L, like you said, for coaches, for staff, for players, for everything else. Well it goes back to the core of what Fox has been since I've been there and it's one of the first things I heard when I joined Fox N F L and what they've always said is Fox's football, that that's been the mantra of Fox for as long as I can remember. Fox's football. And so for Fox, this is just an extension of the mission. Fox does a lot of different sports, nascar, baseball, basketball, we do a lot of different things, but at its core, Fox's football, Fox is N F L Fox's, U S F L and that marriage now allows Fox to just continue to grow that brand over the course of an entire year. It's been a really natural progression for a network to be able to be involved as they are with the U S F L, to just kind of extend that and have that football as a bridge because now you've got this all the way through late June, early July and then before it we're preseason football in the NFL again. So Fox being football means Fox is football almost all year round now and I think it's fun. I it's cool I, I've gotten a lot more into watching undisputed and stuff and it is, I do like you feel like you have some synergy there. I don't know, I was never really the biggest skip in Shannon fans, so I've really gotten into it with the downfall, the Cowboys and kind of watched Skip Drive on. So it's been fun. It does feel like there's, the world exists are across all the different properties And they've done a really good job of marrying everything together. You know, saw Michael Strahan, you saw how long doing commercials for the league and the preseason. You see those guys tweeting about it all the time. You see that marriage with the shows, I mean it really has been a great ability to take the brand of the U S F L and put it all across the Fox brand and really that's been a big part of helping the league grow and helping the league sustain from year one to year two. Did you like that commercial that don't accept any alternatives? No Hollywood knockoffs. I thought it was clever. I did mean it was clear what was the point of it was, but anything you look you can do to grow the sport and give us football junkies more opportunities to watch football, I'm a fan of, so let's go. Let's have some great spring football all the way around In terms of, so you're going to be at the Birmingham Mallers game. Birmingham lost this week. Crazy shootout. McCloud put up a million points here. We last year we had Mugu go down. JM R comes in this year, J M R goes down. Magu must be nice to have two just stunning quarterbacks there come in. What do you make of the stallions through three weeks? You know what, I do think the stallions are an excellent football team and I don't think anything away from what happened last week because I think the breakers are hitting on all cylinders right now and then I'm already looking ahead. I don't want to blow through my schedule, but week seven I've got that rematch game on my card with Birmingham and New Orleans and I'm already looking forward to that because that could, I mean honestly that could be for the South division title when you look at the way this thing is shaping up right now. So I'm kind of fired up for that one down the road, but this will be my first chance to see Birmingham in person this year. One of the things that Y mean look, is the question I have was what we saw from the defense of Birmingham New Orleans or is it something that you need to be concerned about with Birmingham? I'm more on the side of its New Orleans strength versus Birmingham weakness. I mean, they didn't give up any offensive points the week before against Memphis. So I'm not exactly looking at this and saying, well let's push the panic button Birmingham, the Champs in trouble. But I do think that the league is stronger and that's going to give Birmingham more cause for pause during the course of the year. And look, I don't know what to make of Pittsburgh yet. I really don't. They hadn't scored an offensive touchdown for like 25 or 26 drives and they finally get the touchdown and then they get the win over a team that I think is very good in the Philadelphia stars. So they've got to be better in the red zone. That's been a real problem for Pittsburgh all season long. But I do think they have some pieces. I do think they're a better team than we saw last year, but I don't know how much that's going to translate against a Birmingham team that I would guess is going to be a little bit frustrated with what happened to them last week. Yeah, I know. Yeah, Bailey Gaither was kind of one of the really standouts of any of the Muellers last year. We didn't see a lot of that, so it was no surprise to see him get the touchdown. I had the game on there getting ready for the, I was in DC You have a new coach in Pittsburgh, it feels like they have some of the same issues as before. I mean they just can't seem to get out of their way it seems like. Yeah, and they're not a dynamic team yet. I'm hoping that develops as the season goes along. But through three weeks we haven't seen any sort of dynamic multi-dimension offense. I'm hoping that continues to develop. I think it'll be good for the league if we can get that, the bottom part to grow a little bit more. But that was kind of the problem we had with Pittsburgh last year too is that they just weren't able to ever get anything consistent generated on the offensive side. And we've seen the same thing in the early stages of this season. I mean, look, when you're not scoring a touchdown through your first 25 or 26 drives, that's a problem in this league, especially when points can come in a hurry, that's a concern. And if you're Pittsburgh, you feel good because that that's a really good win against the good football team in Philadelphia. But you've got to find more consistency on offense if you're going to knock off teams like Birmingham this weekend. We talked a little bit about the Panthers. Obviously they have their home debut, they had the early game and then they were kind of in the primetime slot. Yeah, I saw a lot of coverage mean it seemed like a lot of the Detroit media came out for that. What do you just make of Michigan? We're trying to make Detroit and kind of this hub go, I like what Mike Nolan has done. I think he's brought out energy to this team and I think Detroit is one of those markets that is going to support a football team again. I mean look, there's a lot of buzz in Detroit for the Lions. We all know that they're probably going to be the favorites in their division for the first time at a generation when the new season starts in the fall. So there's already some excitement building for football in the state of Michigan. Obviously we don't Michigan, Michigan State always bring up there. I do think there's room for the Panthers to have some success and draw fans out. We saw this past weekend at Ford Field it, it's going to be interesting to see if they can build a little momentum. They've got Memphis coming up, they've got Pittsburgh coming up. There's a chance for this Michigan team to be maybe four and one after five games. Well that's going to generate a lot of noise in that area and I think you'll really start to see people coming out Now they've got the back half of the schedule that's not loaded friendly for them. So we'll see if they're legit when we get to the last five weeks, I think they've got New Orleans, I think they've got Birmingham, I think they've got Jersey in there. So you're going to have some challenges, but Michigan's got a chance early to make some noise and really build that fan base up there. Yeah, it's just hard. It's the same with Memphis. You want to get these new, have we seen in the other and stuff like you got to kind of win to get the people out there, especially if you're trying to get people to buy in initially here at the start. And I think that's what's been so encouraging for Michigan is you've got to coach. Everybody knows in Mike Nolan you do have some players. I mean you and I saw Reggie Corbin last year and he was fantastic for most of the season. He didn't really have a great game, this pastime out, but we've seen him, he's very dynamic. As we heard a couple weeks ago on the sidelines, Reggie is Reggie's an exciting player to watch and to listen to and we'll see if this is a team that can generate some of that going on forward. They do have a conducive schedule to that over the next two weeks and I would love to see it because I, I've spent a lot of time in Michigan doing work for the Big 10 and obviously covering the NFC for Fox and folks up there love football. They're going to come out, especially if this team is four and one that's going to generate some excitement around there. Are you finding more of your colleagues and maybe people just in the industry more interested now that we've hit year two of the us? Did that help getting over that hurdle? I think it did. It adds credibility to any league that can come back. I mean that's a simple statement, but it's the truth. It just doesn't happen very often And we know the pandemic derailed some of this stuff initially and maybe leagues would've been back then. But the truth of the matter is the U S F L is the first one to really sustain from year one to year two and we're already talking about year three. So I'm excited to see what comes down the road assuming that we continue this path with the U S F L, which I don't see any reason why we wouldn't. This is something that has been built to sustain and you can't ignore it at this point. I mean it's on broadcast television, at least half the season. It's all over the map on the Fox shows. It's got a lot of high profile players and again, you're going to see a lot of these guys dotting the roster of training camps for the N F L coming up in July and August once this league is done. We saw it last year. We saw some guys stick and make an impact. I think you'll see it again this year with a lot of these guys from these rosters who are going to have a chance once again after a second year of this league to make it to the next level. Yeah, I think you just rounding out here. I'll let you go soon. I promise. I just seeing where Fox positioned a lot of the broadcast this year spoke to me as like, we have confidence in this going into the year, right? And it's hard the first year and we're you trying to make it fit, but given nbc, windows, Fox giving them one or two windows every weekend, obviously you're still going to compete on USA and all of that. But to me it spoke like, hey, we want to put this in the position to succeed. No there, there's no question. I mean I've been in the meetings and in the conversations the commitment to it is full on from the Eric Shanks all the way down. This is a product that Fox believes in and is fully supported. And I look at my schedule coming up, but I mean Fox, Fox, Fox, Fox, everywhere I look, I'm, I'm on Fox doing these games in big time Windows. Windows that are normally reserved for the N F L in the regular season in the fall windows that are in primetime. We're in primetime this past weekend. I mean this is something that they've really committed to. I'm proud of them for that. I think that's the way you make a league successful is by fully committing to it and showing that it's important to you and showing to your fans that it's an important thing that they should be paying attention to. And look, you and I are football junkies. Maybe we're outside the norm of this. There aren't a lot of people that can remember watching the Mega Bowl that I was there for the Mega Bowl. You watched the Mega Bowl. It's not something that everybody is a part of, but for people who love football, this is a great thing to spend some time with The Mega Bowl and lived in Laura of spring football. Never forget the mega bowl. R i p for that. Well Kevin, I appreciate it made the connection years ago through everything with T S L and I appreciate you continuing to come back on and now it's awesome and I see you on Fox on the weekends and I'm like, I know there's Kevin, so you walk around. I appreciate your time and always making time to come on the show. Appreciate it. No, I Always enjoyed coming on the show with you. I know you love football and it's always a good chat. Thanks for having Me. Awesome, thanks. Well I am thrilled. I've been trying to get this gentleman on since the beginning of the season. Now we have these Southern X F L division champions here. Dev Smith. How are you doing sir? I'm doing pretty good. How about yourself? I'm good. Exciting game here. The, we've been covering this for weeks and the playoffs and everything else. What did you feel like going in underdogs here? Everyone's complaining about the playoff standings. You guys win anywhere, you're going to the championship. A lot of people doubted us. We knew going in that week, we had a great week of practice. We put pads on. We were so locked in as a team, there was no way we were coming out that game without a one really. What's it been like with Coach Stoops this season? It's been pretty cool. Fellow Youngstown guy close to home. He's been pretty good coach. This is my first time ever being coached by him, so it's definitely been a learning experience. But overall I have enjoyed it. Overall experiences with X F L? Has it been good? Yeah, it's been pretty good. They definitely know how to take care of their players. Yeah, they take care of us. They take care of us. They make sure everybody's taken care of on and off the field really. So I have no complaints really. Take care. Make sure you get the food you guys want, huh? Exactly. Yeah, that's good. Isaac, I hope you guys celebrated with some pizzas after the championship game. Hey, I might do. It is, I saw something on Twitter the other day, says something, I hope you celebrate with a slice of pizza. So Do you still being known for that as one of the things? Are you kind of over that? It is kind of over to a certain extent, but it definitely keeps a chip on my shoulder because the team missed out on me, my leadership and me as a player. So it kind of motivates me still. So we were in DC for the north game. I watched every snap of the South Division championship game there along with some people from e s, espn. What did it finally mean you guys were able to put everything together? I mean it was just a dominant performance start to finish. Well honestly, I don't think we've put everything together just yet. I mean in our second half we going to scored what three points? So I mean we still got a lot of work to do, but that first half, it felt good. It looked good. I mean we know what we're capable of offensively and defensively, so it was a good way to start. But we got some work to do before this game really. You've been dominant all season for you, if you had to grade your performance, how has it been Overall? The season? Yeah, it started off slow. I think in my personal opinion haven't when I haven't touched the field in almost, almost three years, two and a half, something like that. I feel like I should have been a lot better than what I was at the beginning of the season, but I'm starting to pick up where I left off in the 2020 X F L season. Biggest changes from that to now? What have you noticed? As far as my performance, Just for as far as the league goes, I think the biggest change is us just mean for as far as my team. I don't know by everybody else and within the X F L, but as far as my team, we just kept believing, listening to our coaches, take the coaching properly and taking it one day at a time. I mean this is our first time being together as a team. This whole, I mean, you know what I mean? This is our first time being together, well coming together as a team. So we had to get used to each other really. In terms of mid-season, we've had Luis Perez join, he's a friend of the show. We talked with him back when he was with the Vipers. What has it been like having Louise, has that opened up, you guys being able to rush more as he's a little bit more of a legitimate pastor than maybe some of the options that you guys had before? No, I mean really Luis just came in and took control man and the team trust him. He, he's softly spoken, but when he speaks everybody's listening, he's a leader. I think he just took control of the offense and everybody just was with him. I mean we had no other choice at that point, you know what I mean? So we all believed in him when he got a shot and proved it's all right, Will you guys play up a fight against DC earlier this season? But the offense struggled a little bit, seeing their aggressiveness now firsthand, you feel like you're going to be more prepared for everything they're going to be throwing at you guys? Well you never know. You got two weeks to prepare for our team so they can throw anything at you. But we are practicing what we saw previous game and I know they're going to probably throw some new wrinkles into their defense. So I mean all we can do is prepare for what we know and kind of guess what they're going to bring. But we're ready for anything. Just having the extra bi bi week here, is that good, bad? What do you feel about that? I feel I'm happy about it. I get to rest my body a little bit. I don't have to bang in many people, you know what I mean? But no, I think it'll be good for both teams, just make sure everybody's good and healthy because it's our last game. It's the most important game, the championship and we need everybody to be out there 100% locked in and focused really. So it gets us a little bit of time to debrief and do what we need to do to get focused on this game. What does it mean for you to be able to compete here first season X L championship, to be in that game? We'll be at San Antonio. We'll be covering everything. What does it feel like for you to be a part of that? I'm honored. I just, Luis preached last week, big, big time player show up in big time games. So I'm ready for, this is really my first football championship I've been a part of since I think little league. So definitely motivated and hopefully we go out there and put on a show for you guys. Really? No, I'm excited. I think it's good. We've seen they've shared the photos, right? We've tweeted out the photos. Have you seen the championship trophy in person? Have you seen the photos? What do you think of the trophy? I like it. I've seen the photos. I haven't seen it in person, but I like the trophy. I like the design of it. Hopefully on, what is that Saturday we play I believe. Yeah, hopefully we're holding that over our heads, you know what I mean? No, I'll get up in close in person with it might give it a little kiss. That would be good. We talked a little bit about kind of the res disrespect against you guys just because of the record here. Yeah. How much is that a motivator going into the championship game? Because we had heard that from some players and online and that there was something kind of in the locker room a little bit bulletin board material. Well no for sure. Teams don't really respect us age still to this day. They think we probably, we got lucky. But it definitely adds motivation because people don't really want us in the championship because they think it's going to be a blow up. But we're going to go out there and prove all those people wrong. Come in full circle here with 2020 and cancellation everything else. We're back here. You're in the championship game. How does that feel just to come full circle for all this? It feels good, man. Job's not done yet, but it feels good. It feels good, man. That's the best way I can say it. I don't know. I know my team and everybody's excited, but we still got one more game and after that game we can celebrate. Well, I don't even know if you even noticed, but if you look at me when we won the Houston game, I really wasn't. I was happy bud. I really wasn't smiling because I knew we should have work to do. Yeah, because I mean this is a long time coming for all of us. I mean certainly you guys can working your ass off and being all that, but just everybody going through this whole process, it's just been a tremendously long time to think you're however many years later we're finally putting up. But we're actually going to be playing the championship game here coming up in two weeks. Yeah, it's hard to believe man, don't for 2020 y just this is my first time being in the league or spring league where something didn't happen. So let's cross our fingers. Hopefully we get to this game. I know we will, but just never know what could happen. Well for me it is a pretty exciting feeling and can't wait for it really. We've heard a lot from about how having Chairwoman Garcia around and motivating and league ownership and management and obviously Russ, Brandon and everyone else and dj, is that true? Do you buy into that and having them feel like they're invested and feeling as though you're kind of carrying on that chip on the shoulder that the Rock has and everything else? Do you buy into that? Yeah, I definitely do. I know there this league right now hopefully is doing a lot better than the other league I don't even want to bring up. But no, the ownership man, they're fully invested in their players. They believe in every single one of us or they wouldn't have us here. Really. They show up to games and it is not like they're just in the press box. Ooh, I show up now I'm leaving now. They're fully invested. So it is pretty cool having owners like that, you know what I mean? You get up close and pressure with them and touch shoulders with them. We have a lot of listeners, listener, Jenna, long time big fans of the Renegades here never doubted you guys during the whole season. What would be your message to them before I let you go? Just about the riser dies here that never losing record everything else and always said you guys were going to wind up here in the championship. Got to believe man, just know we're coming. We're not going out there to lose. You know what I mean? We're playing with a chip on our shoulders. Everybody is expecting us to lose. So I mean just keep believing and we got you. Well we will be there. I was saw my sea dragons get embarrassed here. A little embarrassed with the defenders here over the, so you will have my vote here going into the championship game. Devi, I really appreciate your time today coming on after practice and everything else. So thanks so much. No problem. Appreciate you. Well I'm excited to finally make this connection. I've been trying to figure out how do we get the event grant on here with the Xs and Argos podcast. I also feel like I'm such a hypocrite. I haven't had enough C F L content lately. So we are here, the C F L draft happened this week and we have been here to talk about it. Ben, how are you doing? I'm great and I'm glad we can finally get together. So it's been a long time coming, so here we go. In an alternate world I had humored doing some sort of C F L live draft show and then I ended up going to DC for the X F L playoffs and then the Kraken were in game one last night against you are not a Leafs fan because the Leafs were playing the Panthers. Well, yesterday was supposed to be my first day of returning as a Leafs fan because I swore about 10 years ago. I'm not, I'm done. I've had my heart broken too many times. When they get to the second round I'm back in. And so yesterday this was supposed to be my rebirth as a Leafs fan, but I didn't watch the second of the game obviously because we had the C F L draft. So that prioritized my T TV viewing and other responsibilities of course. That's good. Yeah, no Kraken there with an excited five four overtime victory against Dallas. We'll see. First we're going to talk to C F L draft. Ben also has been watching the US F L because obviously McLeod Bethel Thompson down in that I am a noted supposed US f l hater. So you don't need to worry about being too critical on the podcast. But when some of us watched the C F L forever, I'm just kind of curious, what do you make of everything U S F L with the Breakers? It it's, well first of all I think it's exciting football and it upsets me sometimes to see some U S F L and X F L hate sometimes coming from C F L fans because it just seems so, it's just sort of ironic because they spend so much time defending themselves from C F L haters and there's plenty of those around here unfortunately. And I don't know why we can't just all love football. I feel like that would be a great thing. I watch N F L, I watch C F L, I watch X F L, I watch U S F L whatever, if it's football, if I'm driving down the road and I passed by a Pop Warner game, get out of the car and watch for a little bit football. So I don't know why there can't be more of that attitude, but that's where I wanted to start was I don't know why every time I post a U S F L tweet, everyone that responds is like the U F S F L is garbage. This football is so bad and it's, it's really entertaining football. Now I do think the C F L is a higher level of football but not across the board. Not every position. Not every spot. And regardless of that, the U S F L is highly entertaining football. So I've really enjoyed watching that because it's pretty new for me. A lot of those players are pretty new. I know a couple of the guys on the Breakers, a couple of former C F L guys like West Hills and obviously McCloud, Bethel Thompson, that's really who I'm watching. But yeah, I've been really entertained now part of it is too that the Breakers are a fun team to watch. So it's not necessarily every game is a Breakers game, but man those games all come down to the wire. Well that's the thing. And we had gotten into it as well with the X F ffl because I kind of defend, I'll always defend the X F L against the C F L or whatever we got to do if we get the Marshall Fergusons of the world poo-pooing on the X ffl but like C F L, not that the X F L and U S L are not real football leagues, but the C F L we have real proper training camps and we're rolling in months of onboarding and players are rookies are starting next week here. You got to remember the US guys have been together three or four weeks. They're just trying to figure out what the hell have we got? Can we not get injured here the first couple weeks while we're trying to get up to speed? And you see that reflected, especially in those first couple games where O lines had a lot of trouble, the protection was not there. Cause that takes time. It takes a lot of time to gel. And even with the C F L schedule, they spend a lot of time in camp. You have a couple preseason games, but even that, you have the first few weeks of the season where DBS have busts all over the place in coverage complex stuff. And yeah, everyone's played football. Most of 'em have played their whole lives. But this is not easy stuff that you're doing. The relationship that you have with the guy next to you is so much more important. I always find there are almost sort of prudent military ties sometimes when people talk about the brotherhood and the trust that you have in the game of football. It's rare in life to find a situation where the guy next to you is responsible for your safety and you're responsible for his. It doesn't come up a lot. And I think that's why you see a lot of military crossover and there are some obvious similarities between the two as well. But there's that when you don't have that trust there when you don't for sure a hundred percent know I know he's got my back no matter what. If I'm not feeling that, then I can't do my job properly and he can't do his properly. And so the first few weeks are that feeling out process until you have this trust in each other. So yeah, that that's I think all levels of football early on. But you really see that in a league without a longer camp and a longer prep period. I McLeod had the best game so far and I think it was like 40 whatever the 30 I saw highlights. I was flying to the to DC for the X F L stuff. I had seen all this, oh, McLeod should just come in here and run circles around everybody because the C F L is so much better. What do you make of the success he's had? Is it just he's been around so long, he's obviously older than a lot of the players anyway. What do you attribute his success? He's a different quarterback than he was a few years ago. So we can start there. If you put the 2018 McLeod Bethel Thompson on the Breakers, they're not undefeated right now. He really changed in the last few seasons. And I think the biggest lessons he learned there were sort of two lights that went on for him. One was, and I, I've mentioned this a few times over the years, but I remember breaking down a game that he played against the alos in 2019. A meaningless game for the Argos. They had a terrible season, nothing was going. But in the middle of that game something clicked for him and he started to, you've heard the things started to slow down a little bit. We've heard that in all sports it seemed you could actually sort of see it there with him. And Montreal was throwing so much at him. They had 11 defensive back blitzes that game. They were all over the place with exotic pressure looks, which normally was death for him. He held the ball too long. He was always taking too long to figure out what he was looking at. And in that game the light went on and from then on he was a little bit better. And then the second difference was in 2021 where he decided I'm just not going to throw picks anymore. And it wasn't not, I think every quarterback says that, but he decided that if he wasn't sure, he would hold onto it. And if he's got to take a sack, he's got to take a sack, but he's not going to turn the ball over, especially in the red zone and in 2022 in the red zone 15 tds, one pick astonishingly good numbers from a quarterback who back in 20 18, 20 19 through interceptions in the red zone a lot. So those two changes were huge for him. And it's just a maturity. And like you said, all these young guys that are, they're playing the U S F L, this is new and they're making those rookie mistakes and he's just not. And in that first half of the first game, he took a lot of sacks, took a lot of hits because the O line wasn't quite gelling but he was going to do that as opposed to put the ball in harm's way. And so I think that's a lot of it. And he's just this Wiley veteran back there reading coverages. He knows exactly what he's looking at most of the time seems to be covered too. He's looking at a lot of really simple coverages and he knows exactly what to do with it. Do you think that and the first thing I turned on, I think it was his first game and Kurt was making fun of, oh I think he McCloud threw the ball over the line of scrimmage because he was scrambling like, oh maybe he's playing in the metric system or whatever. But I don't like that. Right? Because that's when we talk about people hating not like that is the people you need to get mad at making fun of the Canadians or whatever playing. But do you think McLeod exceed is succeeding? Will that draw eyes to the C F L? Is there enough connection there for U S F L fans to look up? I don't really think so. It, it's unfortunate. I wish that happened. I think we had talked very optimistically. Sometimes that is a thing, but I don't really think it is. It's not like U S F L fans don't know the C F L exists. Everyone's aware of all these leagues and I think if people wanted to watch badly enough, they'd already be watching by now. There are that, not to say there aren't things that leagues can do to grow and to introduce themselves to new audiences, but I think if you're the U S F L, you're already open to another brand of football. And so seeing a guy come in then yeah, this guy played in the C F L, well they've, they've seen N F LERs who played in the C F L before too. So I don't think that's necessarily going to draw more viewership. Maybe a few, but I don't think it's going to make a tangible difference. Well that's what goes exactly back to our argument of C F L fans. We are all these people that embrace all of these alternative leagues. And so you would think that there would at least be love between all of the non N F entities between all Of us, you would think. But it doesn't. You would be surprised. There's a lot of S F L fans that do not like the X L and there's a lot of X F L fans that do not like the U S F L. I've seen that too. And again, I don't get it. You just love football. Watch the Japanese X League, that's great football. Well at least it's highly entertaining football. That's not always the same thing. But yeah, those games are amazing. So yeah, I don't get that, especially between two leagues that you can turn on your TV and see like U S F L X F L, I don't know why. If you're a fan of one, you should be a fan of both. So here we're talking draft and we've now been doing the C F L, I think this is kind of our third season going into all of this. This is C F L draft matter. I hear every year a hundred different opinions of it. Doesn't matter at all or it matters a lot. So I mean you spend a lot of time tracking this. I know this for your podcast, so obviously you think it matters, but what is the general consensus of this? I think it should matter. I, I'm so disappointed when I see numbers, how many starts draft picks beyond the second round have had over the last five years for any given team or what percentage of players are still on the team that drafted them four years later and it's really low and it's really sad. I don't think it has to be like that. And I think one of the things, the reason that the C F L draft really should matter, you look at the Toronto AAUS as the great kept champions from last season. Well what did they have going for them? Did they have the best quarterback in the league? No. Did they have the best anything in the league? Not really. A couple positions maybe you could argue they had a really good team, but mostly they had real contributors who were Canadians. Guys that were draft picks, not necessarily all Argo's draft picks, although some, but the strength of their core in building up Canadians who are not just not a weakness but actually a strength actually contributing for you is a huge advantage. You can find American players. There are billion American dbs who are excellent football players, American running backs. You can find 'em all over the place to find a Canadian who not only is not someone that another team can try and pick on but is actually a strength of your team makes you a great cup contender. And proof of that is you look at the Argo's roster coming into this year, they were probably the only team going to the draft yesterday who didn't need a thing. They didn't need anything. You look at the guys they drafted aside from maybe one player, I don't know if any of those guys are actually even going to play this year. Cause I don't think that was a priority. These guys are drafted for 2024 because their core of Canadians is so solid. And when you're in that position, it affords you the luxury to be able to continue that cycle, keep drafting for the future. And that's how you build a dynasty. So the Canadian, the C F L draft does matter because that's how you win long term. And they're not always the guys that are on the highlight of the night. They're not always the guys making the ridiculous catches in the end zone or the 20 sack seasons. It's not always those guys. But having a team without any holes, without any weaknesses, without having to hide anybody is actually how you breed success in the C F L. It's just so weird. And obviously not the purpose of the draft is not in and of itself to be a TV juggernaut or an interest building juggernaut, but it does feel like it is something that could be in the C F L in some form or fashion in the world. And I was just looking up the ratings here. They had 11.4 million people watch the draft per whatever station here in America. I look at the coverage and I see all that is C is it just because it's not immediate, no immediate payoff for it. You got to wait two, three years. I think that's part of it I think is that they're still getting used to even the draft being on a regular TV for a couple rounds, it's still a fairly new thing. But this always amazes me. No sports draft really should be good tv somehow it is. And I will watch, I watched every round of the N F L draft, I will watch drafts but there's something wrong with me. I don't think it makes a lot of sense. Like the N F L draft, it wasn't that long ago they were holding the draft in a used car dealership. It was just how it went. They're like, people actually want to watch this, want to hear about this. And they put it on TV and it took off and now we've got hundreds of millions of people watching the N F NFL draft. It's really weird. The CFO's a little bit behind on that but I don't think, like you said, I don't think it will ever quite reach that level even like per capita that the N F L draft does because yeah, you're right. The guys that you draft in the first round in the N F L, those guys are going to be immediate difference makers. Most you're expecting that they actually have a tangible, they'd make a tangible difference on the football field. If they don't, that's a bust in the C F L draft. You're hoping that first rounder is still on the team at the end of the year. It's a very different thing. And if he starts amazing Toronto's first round pick last year Gregor McKeller actually played at Guard and that was seen as a huge success. Hey look at this rookie actually starting because that it just doesn't happen a lot. Is that compounded with more, and not that the f L isn't transient either, but the more transient property it feels like of C F L players on the teams? Yeah, if I think part of it is too, again, when you're looking at N F L and C F L, there's a big difference in attention to college university football between the two countries. And I think that has to enter into the conversation too. The N F L in that first round, you already know who all those guys are. No one has to, no N F L fan, well I shouldn't say no, most N F L fans don't have to look this up. They've been studying for months as well. They've been doing mock drafts on p fff or wherever they do their mock drafts. They know every player in that first round. They know about their stats, where they played stories about them. And by and large, the Canadian fans, people do watch university football but it's largely their own city, their own school. That's what they pay attention to. But even that, it pales into comparison to what you see like a city like Toronto, which is a huge city even by American standards, it would be one of the biggest cities in the US and yet you have a couple thousand people on a good day watching the York lines or the U F T Blues. It doesn't draw that way. And most people in the city couldn't name a single player on any of those teams. Now it's not the same necessarily when you go out to Saskatchewan and you go to Alberta, there's a little bit more interest but still nowhere to the degree that you have of what's happening like Tallahassee or Baton Rouge or something like that where it's just everybody knows everything. And you can all nationwide, everyone can at least name three or four players on every Power five team. So in terms of the draft this year, you said Argos stashing stuff. Who some of the teams you were impressed with and some of the names, I have the list here on Wikipedia right now, but some just kind of big picture, any of the teams that you thought did a particularly good job In the draft yesterday. So there's a couple that stood out, although again trying to prognosticate the c l draft is really hard to predict. Usually terrible at it. I actually did all right this year by my standards and I do feel like I know what I'm doing going in. I'm been around football for a really long time. I went to the combine in Edmonton, I've studied the film with these guys, I've graded them all. I've got film grades and testing grades and a system to pull it all together. And yet still I swing and miss way more than I hit. And so I was really impressed first of all that Toronto did not leave me in the dust for the fourth year in a row because each of the last three years they picked someone in the first round that I had as a third or fourth round prospect. And every time they made the pick I'm like where is this coming from? And this year I didn't have that but pretty much every team had two or three guys that I had in my top 15. But then they would spend second, third, fourth round pick on somebody that I either didn't even have on my board or somebody that I had way down at the bottom of my list. But just off the top of my head I thought Ottawa did really nicely. It's easy when you have the first overall pick and two picks in the first 10. But yeah, they got a couple guys that I had really high on my board, Dante bull offensive lineman from Fresno State. He was my number one overall prospect. Loved him and he's the guy that could actually get in there right away and contribute. He could be one of those first year starters for sure for an Ottawa team that needs some help on the line. They also got Lucas Cormier who was by Draft Crush this year DB out of Mount Allison. And the guys that play outs don't typically get a lot of celebration. They don't not usually talked about very much Mount Allison especially not really known as a football powerhouse. But man I loved his tape and I was hoping we would fall to the Argos, although they don't really need a safety as it wasn't really a huge need for them. But I just loved his play and so Ottawa to get him and bull, those are two guys that could probably step in right away. So that impressed me. And then Edmonton, it seemed like Edmonton was on the clock every two or three minutes. But yeah they got a bunch of guys early on but they were inconsistent and that's a very Chris Jones thing. He had a bunch of picks that were also way off my board as well. So there's no one that ran away with it. Calgary has a couple really nice receivers that I have both in my top 10, but it was spread around pretty well and there was no one that really I thought bomb did either. I looked through my top 15, everybody's there. So I thought a pretty even draft In terms of, and obviously we have rookies are just reporting all this. It feels like C F L it, it's in the long rear view mirror here, gray cup and everything. What are the odds this year? What are teams looking like? I mean obviously Toronto's trying to figure out what Jack Kelly and everything. I love Vernon as a person for bc. I don't know always what I feel like about quarterback there. So what are teams you're looking forward to this year? Finding success. It's not exciting but I think Winnipeg should be good. They're, I'm so tired of Winnipeg being good. Could we please get somebody new in the gray cup from the west? That'd be fantastic. They're a good team again, they're going to be good. I think they're better than they were last year. That's the thing. Some of their pieces, big pieces are getting older at some point that's going to matter but it hasn't shown up yet. And just anytime you've got a good head coach quarterback relationship, which they do in Michael Shay and Zach Claris already going to be in the mix. But yeah, just adding some of the weapons that they've got on top of what was already probably the best team in the C F L. I know the Argos won the Great Cup but I think Winnipeg was the best team up until that game. So I would expect them to be back again with everyone else. There's a question mark. I think Toronto's probably the the second most ready, but like you mentioned, there's a huge question there and it matters a lot. It's not like we're not sure about our holder, we're talking about we're not sure about the quarterback that that's going to be a big deal. Now I personally believe in Chad Kelly having watched him all year last year at practice having watched a lot of his career too. I actually have been kind of following his career since he was in high school cause I was enamored with him at the punt pass kick competition where as a 14 year old he was throwing the ball 80 yards down the field. And so I did kind of follow his career along a little bit. I have full faith in him but it's easy for me to say we haven't actually seen him do it on the field yet. So if that's your s maybe second best team in the league and they've got questions that the most important position in all of sports, it kind of means it's anyone's league. So I think it should be a pretty exciting season because of that. Because there aren't clear haves and haves nots the way there have been over the last few years. Well and we've seen so much shuffling mean obviously like I said, Vernon's back in BC but Levi's moving around and my now friend of the podcast, Cody Fu Jaro, a long story now friend of the podcast is on and we got Trevor Harris and all that. I know we're trying, it's so hard you look at paper and all of that but it does seem like yeah there's a little bit more fluidity heading into the season where you might have to see where the dust settles before we really know. And nothing would really surprise me. I think aside from Winnipeg, if any other team in the league you said at the halfway point only had two or three wins. I don't know that it's shocking, right? Because you look at every team like Saskatchewan was, I don't know what they were last year. They're a mess Calgary, it's got so much turnover. All their stars were picked by their teams. But it also wouldn't surprise me if they went to the Great Cup. So with all these teams like that, Montreal's the only one probably where I think they're in a bit of trouble because they had such a bumpy, I think they lost a lot of talent. They're going to I think have a little bit of trouble getting off the ground this year. But they've got talent there too. And the east is, it's so hard to predict at the best of time. So I expect Ottawa to rebound Edmonton. I expect to rebound too. So it it's going to be come September, October. I think they're going to be some really cool playoff races. I think probably Winnipeg's got a bit of distance in the west but I think everyone else is at least believing they've got a shot. It seems like it back on the Toronto quarterback situation before I let you go, it does seem like Chad has gotten a little bit big in his britches. I think there was a little bit of the bombastic ness before you're like, oh that's funny with everybody. It does seem like he's really like, no, I'm better than everyone. I played the quarter of football and won the great cup. Are you sensing that with Chad A little bit, Yes and no. I don't personally like that. I like from a quarterback and I don't really justify this. I have trouble with it because I really like quarterbacks to think that way. I always want you to believe that you're the best. I want you to believe that you have been overlooked and that you're going to prove yourself and everybody else wrong. I love that attitude. I don't usually quarterbacks team leaders to say that stuff for it to come out on social media or whatever else because you just don't typically see it. But I have trouble explaining why I don't know. Is that just sort of an old coach thing that I've got going on? Maybe it is. Maybe that's just me in my, I don't know, 1970s mentality of things where it's the Paul Brown thing. Act like you've been there before. I do like that. I prefer that. But having a quarterback that doesn't have confidence, we saw what happened with Dan Evans when he lost his confidence. If you lose your confidence as a quarterback, you're done. And so you've got to think that way. Just there are times where I wish Chad didn't always say it, but I wouldn't fault him for thinking that. But the other thing is I think he's right. I do think he's better than a lot of the quarterbacks in the N F L and I think he would be in the N F L if he hadn't had some issues off the field if he hadn't made some mistakes. And the good thing when you look at Chad is that he hasn't really made mistakes since he's come to Toronto. He's stayed out of trouble. He's been a great teammate. He was awesome on the practice field last year. Encouraging guys talking to fans that would come out to watch the practice being a positive influence on some of the younger players there too. Cause he is not a younger player. And so all of those things, he's doing everything in that regard. It's just the little quotes that sometimes make it out there. And I think that's what people tend to gravitate towards because it seems very UNC quarterback, right? But that's Chad being Chad. He's going to have to actually back it up though this season because he is the guy and so we'll see how he handles that. I expect him to do really well. But we'll see. It's so funny, I was watching the BC Lions knew their arrow up the episode today and Vernon was doing this big, have all the guys come down to Tacoma, which is, I'm like, oh I've filmed a wedding at that hotel. I'm like, I know exactly where that is. And Dan Evans was walking in the workout room shaking people. I'm like, oh that's right. Dane's in BC now for it really is like the prodigal sun or something. He just cast what Dane just has seemed like his stock has fallen so much. It has. And I really like that guy. I hope he, I hope he can pull it together. He absolutely torched the Argos in the East final two years ago. I don't think I've ever seen a better half from a C quarterback. And then the next season it just was different. But it's tough when you go into the season as the number two quarterback, there's no pressure on you, you know are everyone's favorite, right? You're no one more popular than the back of quarterback at all times on any given team. And suddenly when it's yours and it's your hat to wear, that's a very different feeling. And it seemed like Dane struggled a little bit with that. But yeah, just knowing the kind of person he is, he's very open and honest with it. That part of his game. And he is talked about that he, it's something he's obviously worked on and I think if he does get a shot, I think he's in the perfect position that's a talented team and if something happens out there and he needs to play, I think you'll see that old confidence that old Dan Evans come back in. But it's true, it doesn't take long in this game to go from here to here. So you talked about this earlier in the conversation and I think I answered a whole different question. I went off onto a tangent, but yeah you forget it's so easy year to year. Where is this guy now? Where is this guy now? And we're used to free agency in all sports, but you certainly see it a lot in the C F L where if you're not following along in the off-season sometimes takes you a few weeks to realize where everyone has gone to in the C F L. I would be Remi if I didn't ask, we got our big Torontos insider here before I let you go, friend of the show. Our boy Brian Scott now is going up to get, I've heard for years CFL's been clamming for Brian and we've had Brian on M V P and then he was in the U S F L injured and then things fell out in the X F L and I've heard various accounts of all that really hard for players to make it in the C F L, right? Americans coming in and we've seen the packs and lites of the world and all that. Brian, does Brian have any chance of sticking them with the Argos here? I think he does because again, look at that quarterback room, all new faces, right? And I like them all. Scott's a great player and yes he's run into some obstacles along the way, but talk about pedigree and ability. You watch his highlight tape and see some of the stuff that he's done on the football field. I'm excited about that addition to the room. And I already liked the quarterback room. Ben Holmes is a great quarterback. Look, don't forget that he's in the room too. And so between those three guys, that's, that's where I'm not that worried. I felt like this was a good strategy for Toronto this off season and I've heard a lot of criticism and even some of the guys I work with at Ex and Argos too that aren't a hundred percent sure necessarily all the time that this is the right plan to go in with no C f L experience essentially. But I like these guys and I think between the three of them, they're not young guys. This is not like you've brought in 3 22 year olds. So yeah, they're inexperienced, but all three of those guys are great quarterbacks and it doesn't matter where you're watching them play, whether it's the Ole Miss film or Tarring State or whatever it is you're turning on, you watch Chad Kelly Holmes Scott, it's good football. So whoever is in, and I don't expect Chad Kelly to play every single step of every single, it's probably not going to happen. Realistically, one of these guys is going to have to come in. I, I'm really not worried about it. Oh, you've have made the Cardinal send of bringing up Mr. Ben Holmes's name on the podcast. Ben Holmes is the only player in the history. I've done a, this'll be a episode 144 of this show. Ben Holmes is the only player that's ever stood me up for an interview and then went on to go win a great cup. So I wished him luck in the C F L but certainly he nos showed my show and then had a horrendous showing in the preseason for the US F l and got cut. So I'm glad that he has found the home up there and the great cup ring and he's probably doing better than he would've been doing otherwise. You got to give it another shot. Cause I've, I've never had anything but positive stuff from him, just whether it's at practice. Sometimes I'll bring my son along and he's always good for a wave, maybe throw the ball, something like that just seems like I don't know him well but he, he's seems like a pretty good guy. So I think you got to try round two. Maybe if he gets in this year at some point that'd be the time to ring him up. Yeah, you just got to keep remember he's stood me up, not the other way around. I was I no, I appreciate that band is a long time extended here. I appreciate you coming on, but I thought we tackled a lot of stuff and like I said, gotten the, got to ramp up the C F L stuff again now. So I'm excited to get us through the summer and it should be fun. Yeah, thanks so much for having me on. I've really enjoyed talking football with you. I'm glad to do it anytime. Special thanks to all of our guests coming on today, Matt Berry, always making time. Incredibly busy as well as Kevin Kugler with Fox Sports. Really appreciate that. And then Deion Smith coming out of the practice doing the interview, Matt, everyone over with the Renegades, really appreciate that. And then obviously Ben Grant spending extended time there talking C F L kind of off season stuff as we are excited for this season. Talking about the C F L gets me excited. If you guys are watching the U S F L or the X F L, get ready for this C F L. It's fun. The storylines are great. The fan bases, the richness of the history of all the teams. I get very excited and I think it's going to be a really unpredictable year. Just so many quarterbacks have switched teams and the awes, they've lost their owners and now they've like the new look, Saskatchewan Rough Riders and Saskatchewan Scott, Trevor Harris, like going to be crazy, going to be interested, interesting to see kind of all of that stuff. Like I said, show next Saturday, not Friday, it's going to be Saturday, but if you want to come to the Alamo with us, I will be booking. I don't think I have to book the tour, but I think I can call 'em and say, hey, we're going to have 15 people coming, but send me an email, the Mark Cast podcast@gmail.com or send me a dm, the mark cast on Twitter if you want to be a part of the tour so I can get an accurate guest list in. We'll see you guys all Next week, like I said, live show two. The four Local Times Central on Saturday Should be fun. Championship game and then know we'll probably be doing a recap of some sort on Monday as well. After that, we will figure that out. Thank you all for your support. We'll see you soon. Don't forget everything's bigger in Texas. It's going to be fun. The light, the stars at night. Shine big and bright and the heart of Texas. That's the whole thing there. Going to be drinking lots of Shiner Box. Should be fun. See you soon.

XFL Playoffs Recap! XFL vs. USFL: Who "WON" Week 3? XFL Playoffs + USFL Week 3: What Did We Learn?

Well, there you go. That was weird. About 30 seconds late starting. Always good to be sitting chatting with Evan. Wills more for 20 minutes and then get ready to go live and the internet goes out. We are here live. I am no longer evicted. I was evicted from the beer snake section. We'll get into that today as well as lots of other X F L and U S F L stuff. I'm still in dc. We have Evan Wills more Join us here. Evan, how are you? I'm doing good man. I was disappointed that Houston lost this weekend, obviously, and we'll get more into that here in a couple minutes as the show goes on, but I'm doing all right, man. You know what? We had a fun weekend. There was lots of football obviously. I probably don't need to say that. Yeah, man, I'm having a good time. Yeah, I'm on hotel wifi, so God willing and everything goes if we have some glitches today, that's what it is. Yes. Evans Houston Roughnecks lost to the Seattle Sea Dragons lost Kraken, low Kraken N seven beat the Avalanche. So if it was a soul for a soul, if the Sea Dragons had to lose for the Kraken to move on, we'll take that. Evan, overall thoughts of the weekend? Crazy football both in the U S F L, we'll talk about McCloud be Thompson as well, but what did you make of everything? Yeah man, it was a lot. I mean between the X Ffl playoffs and the U S F L kind of getting into their groove. I mean we really have kind of hit that point now where there's more football than maybe we've ever had in the spring. At least it feels that way and we've only got more coming. I mean the X ffl season will obviously end in two weeks and next weekend we're on a buy in the X F L, so it'll be a full slate of U S F games for people to enjoy. And then CFL's coming up right around the corner. I mean we still got a bit to go, but there there's a lot. Football season never really ends, so It was a crazy weekend. I guess we'll talk through the two X F L games, so we'll do some U S F L talk. Arlington, I mean they did it. They came back. It proves we were just talking about the Bruins ahead of time here in the N H L. That doesn't matter what you do in the regular season, you got to go to the playoffs. I watched the game at the bar with some actual e s ESPN employees. That was exciting. I sat down at the bar and I said, oh, the game's on. Okay, I'll just watch the game here. And I realized everyone at the bar knew what was going on in the game and I thought, oh, this is kind of interesting. So watched it with some of them. That was fun. And what did you make? You were there with Anthony Miller with News Hub as well. What did you guys make of the game? What was surprising? Well, we can just start with that. I mean, I don't think anybody expected Arlington to win, let alone win in that manner. I guess mean they came out fire and man, shout out to Luis Perez. I mean, what an insane performance. I had put in my articles previously. I said, Luis Perez really does change this offense and even if they haven't won a ton with him yet, it's going to matter I think in those key moments. And it sure did. I mean, they turned up in the playoffs and they beat the breaks off Houston, that's for sure. So I mean, that was just crazy to see him do that. And it was very, again, I talk a lot about full circle moments and seeing Louise after he's been in the U S F L last year and the Spring League and the X F L in 2020 and the AAF in 2019. I mean I think we call him the Spring King now, but to see him do that and to see him just go out there and just chuck the ball around and have such a fun time doing it and make some incredible plays, it was very fulfilling in that sense. Again, I was a bit disappointed that it was happening in the playoffs and that it was going to eliminate Houston, but hats off to him. That was a truly phenomenal performance. Well, I didn't even put two and two together. We were obviously texting after the DC game last night that here we have Jordan TEU with Battle Hawks 2020 here back now leading the defenders and then you had Louis Perez with the New York Guardians, two of the original X F L 2020 quarterbacks getting now to play in the championship game. I just think it's tremendous. Oh, it really is. I mean, again, for people who watched the league in 2020, this is very special because TMO in particular was really good in 2020. Perez was kind of up and down and I'd have to go back and look at some guardians games to kind of jog my memory from that era. But the bottom line is like, yeah, I mean both of these guys have very impressive spring football resumes and they really know what they're doing and it's clear that they can lead their teams to victory. Luis came in late from Vegas and kind of rallied Arlington to a couple wins I guess down the stretch, even if they didn't win a lot. I mean they had that game against dc, which is now going to be a rematch in the championship where they went to overtime and they really kind of started battling things out with Luis. And then TEU again was one of those guys who hit his stride late in the season as well. It started off where they were very run heavy with Abram Smith and a bit of De King, but now you're kind of seeing once they open up the pass game with TEU taking shots to Chris Blair and Lucky Jackson and a couple of their tight ends. I mean once that opened up it, I don't want to say it felt like game over, but you saw it. I mean DC has not slowed down since then You, you've covered the roughneck all season at tremendous job. I was telling you before, we recorded with the News Hub and all the time spent flying out to all the games and everything. Was this a Houston collapse or did the Arlington, did they just outplay them here? Well, whenever a team loses in that scenario, it's always more than one thing. There's so many factors that go into that. I think one of the major issues was Houston, they played, I would say better last week against Arlington when the game didn't matter with their sort of altered dumb down playbook than they did when it was supposed to matter. And Arlington was the exact opposite. Luis Perez was talking in the press conference. He was kind of saying what we all thought and knew about how last week obviously weren't trying to pull out all the tricks in the book and everything like that. They were trying to have a very simple and vanilla offense, and clearly Houston maybe wasn't ready for that. I think the one thing on Houston's end that was kind of uncharacteristic, because we've had a slower offense ever since that, I guess week five game against Seattle, it's, I don't want to say gone downhill entirely because we've had a couple good games running the ball, but in terms of passing, which is supposed to be our strong point, I guess that it hasn't quite been up to par. But yeah, I mean look at, I'm trying to think of where I was going with that. But anyway, I think the one thing that Houston did that was a bit uncharacteristic was there was a lot of separation on some of those plays. And shout out to the Renegades offensive line too. I mean, Louise had so much time in the pocket to make those throws and make those decisions. Again, that was a lot of Arlington just kind of getting things together. They haven't done anything like that all year. I mean, for Houston, it felt not like a normal Houston game mean that was definitely one of the, I guess, most poor performances of the year. No other way to put it. I mean, it was not exactly fun to watch, and you could tell even by the second quarter it was kind of like, you know, got to start making some adjustments before halftime or else this thing's going to get out of reach. And unfortunately, I think it did. But yeah, I mean the one thing that was, I guess uncharacteristic too was just, I think I said the separation, but there was that, it was in particular on that 59 yard touchdown to Jote Peyton. I mean, man, that was just an uncharacteristic plan on our end, giving up such a deep touchdown like that and to a guy that had already had a touchdown in the game previously, again, it felt very, I don't know. I don't know what happened. Maybe it was because we only practiced once that week, and I had found that out before the game, and I figured that was the case from the injury reports that we had got. But unfortunately, it was just sort of didn't get things together at the right time. And Arlington, I had said in the articles, they were kind of trending upward. You can't count them out despite the record, despite everything that's against them. And yeah, that's what happens. So It's so weird. We had this whole controversy last week and the playoffs, and we had even Anthony tweeting this weekend, coach Beck seven and three sitting at home watching football. I tweeted back a photo of me at Field. I said, not me, but we have all of this and Renegades don't deserve to be here. Is it better or worse now that they're in the championship game with the losing record and everything else? Yeah, well it's a great question and great point. I think now that Arlington is kind of, I guess you could say silenced a lot of people who said that they were just going to be written off in the playoffs and Houston would win by 20 plus points. Yeah, this changes things a bit because had St. Louis had to play DC like in DC essentially taking Seattle's place, they lost to DC twice in the regular season, and Arlington did the same with Houston and Bob Stoops mentioned in our press conference. He goes, well, I guess third time's the charm, and maybe it could have been the same for St. Louis, but again, Arlington was on such an upward trajectory there at the end of the year, and I don't know St. Louis, they finished their season on a high note, obviously with their 53 point game against Orlando, AJ McCarran, I mean, boy, with his 400 yards and six touchdowns, that was phenomenal. But I don't know, dc DC really is that good. I mean, I'm not trying to make championship picks too early and count anybody out because clearly I was maybe counting some people out this weekend. I don't want to make those picks too early, but going to be hard to stop the defenders man. So the fact that the Renegades were able to take down a seven and three team in the playoffs, again, that's hats off to them. They came out and they really performed well. And part of that too was if Anthony was here, he could talk about a lot about this, but Donald Payne kind of coming back and it was almost a strategic thing. I felt like, again, stoops in the press conference said that Payne had a misdiagnosis or whatever that means he had a misdiagnosis with his injury and he was able to come back and we kind of agreed, I don't know how accurate that is. Maybe it's just strategy. Donald Payne is one of the best linebackers in all the XF L one of the best defensive players. I mean, he was a game changer. I think he had 10 tackles in that matchup against Houston. So having a guy like him come back on short notice, I mean that could throw off the game plan a bit. I just didn't figure out we're watching the game and we didn't have sound on, we were at the bar, but I don't know, do we just give up on Brandon Silvers? Why Cole McDonald's out there? I mean, obviously athletic obviously a great story, but not making tremendously great throws that I thought and we thought watching and throw missing or throwing into coverage. Why did we go all in on Cole McDonald's here for the last game? Well, This is a bit of a difficult thing, and the way I looked at it is Brandon, obviously he has not played as well over the second half of the season. It's a tale of two worlds really. I mean ever since he got that injury, I think it was in DC like that injury's been lingering and he hasn't been practicing and that's definitely played a role into why things haven't been as good for him. Again, I've said many times not having John Tre Kirkland, there is the deep threat down the field that hurts, right? It's harder to move the ball. The offense clearly does not function as well without him. And there was never a clear replacement found really even over six or seven weeks. So I think what happened was Brandon effectively got benched. I don't know, I don't really like using that term, but it's kind of true. He started the game and then pretty quickly it was clear like Cole was going to finish it. But in that moment, and here's the thing about Cole, I love Cole McDonald. I've gone on records saying great things about Cole. He was one of my favorite players in college. And then once he came to Houston, I was so excited and I thought he was going to be the starter. He ended up doing a lot for us this season, even though he wasn't in a true starting role, it was a two quarterback system. They ran the ball a lot with him. But I think what happened is they wanted to give Cole the shot because I looked good last week in Arlington, and again, maybe that was a bit of a different playbook, whatever, but he did some cool stuff against Arlington. It wasn't a ton, but I think he did enough to make the team feel comfortable about his abilities going into this playoff game. So they played him for the rest of the game, but I think what happened is Cole is a bit maybe further behind in his development than I initially thought going into the season, and maybe that's just the offense he's playing in. Maybe it's not the exact version of what he had in college where he found a lot of success. And obviously now you're playing against maybe higher level defenses, especially the Renegades defense. I mean, that's an extremely tough town challenge, excuse me. But I think what happened again is just he needs a bit more time and there was probably a bit of pressure on him in that game, and I don't want to say he made a lot of forceful throws, downfield or anything like that, but there were a lot of balls that were missed, and I kind of saw that coming from a while away, just even as the ball was leaving his hands, I'm like, I don't know if you should be throwing that man. Maybe we should go a bit more to the run. And I think he ended up finishing with nine and 25 completion. I mean, whatever the line was, it was not good at all. But obviously I wish the best for Cole, and I don't want this again, just like I said in that St. Louis game in week seven, to be a reflection of who he is as a person and what his capabilities are. As a quarterback, I just get wanting to do reps and wanting to do all this kind of stuff. It's the damn playoffs. I mean, it's where I just didn't get in, shut down, not giving Brandon, I think it was he had a elbow issue or something like that, and it was right after, right? Yeah, try. So right after I talked, I think it was right after he was on the show. I think it was that the game that weekend at dc, I think it was the Monday night game. And so I don't know anything else on Arlington all that. We'll talk DC here and we can do either wide range of thoughts at the end, but anything specific on the game? Yeah, I mean, again, I was a bit shell shocked I guess is kind of the term. Watching that. And I was up there with Anthony and there was a couple of Arlington guys there, and I just remember Anthony telling me, he's like, we might actually go to the championship, man. He's like, I did not expect this at all. I came to Houston ready to lose and ready to just go home, and I was kind of just hoping for a good time. But yeah, he was surprised, especially, I mean for Arlington it was just such a jump in expectation and from what they were used to the entire season. I mean, if you go back before Perez was there when it was the Slowder era, I don't think that kind of thing would've been possible, and I don't want to try and knock anybody in particular, whether it's play calling or the quarterbacks themselves, but they just could not get in their groove, and they tried a lot of different things I felt like, and it just never really got going. Then suddenly in the playoffs, I guess they had a different type of hunger and I mean they came out firing and it worked. That's the bottom line. Well, good for stoops. Obviously we were going to have a Texas team most likely in there anyway, say for the guardians. So you know, have Arlington, there could have been San Antonio. I don't know if I see San Antonio playing the game against Houston that Arlington did. I think if San Antonio's in there, I would give Houston the Edge, don't you think? Going in sliding doors, different world? Yeah, I mean, again, I had really said the whole season, I mean, I expected the Renegade to be good. Obviously their record didn't really reflect that, but now that they've beaten us in the playoffs, I kind of have to say they're good. But even going into the year, I said Houston or Arlington are probably going to be the top two teams in the south and going to be, it might be a toss up. I obviously want to give Houston the advan advantage, excuse me, given that I know everybody on the roster. I know the coaching staff better. I cover that team. I just know them better in general, but you know, can never count Arlington out. And it was good. It's good to see, I mean, we've talked about it all year. Teams making changes at coordinator and quarterback. They care. It's not just about showcasing people's talents and getting the film. That's certainly a part of it, but teams really care about winning mean. You saw San Antonio making some changes in week four, and then the Renegades were later in the season again. They were like, you know what? We need a boost. We're going to go trade for Perez. And they kind of revamped the offense a bit. And I mean, man, it's just so great to see that in the X Ffl where people care that much even in a short season to make those adjustments to become better teams. Well, this is good. We'll talk to d DC Seattle here. We can do in the other thousands at the end. I do have some funny, some stories from my time here in the nation's capital. First and foremost, I was watching the Cracking game last night. I was at the bar and I was there all night because the game games are going on and whatever, and I go to the restroom and I come back and there's four people sitting there, and it was then Nuci's brother, sister, and cousin. And so I ended up watching the Kraken game with the Ucci family. Ben was not there obviously. I think Ben was probably reflecting kind of doing whatever back in the hotel room. So they were not nearly as invested in the Kraken game as I would've liked. But it was fun that Ben's brother looks and sounds exactly like Ben Nucci was pretty wild to be sitting there. Oh, that's cool, man. Yeah, I know you would say you texted that yesterday and I thought that was pretty interesting. It was like his family, you asked him or No, cause yeah, they had Seattle, they had C. Yeah, because I'm trying to remember that. They had, one of 'em had a Seed Dragon shirt on. I was like, oh, you guys, are you from Seattle? Are you, because wasn't a lot of us there, right? And they're like, oh yeah, no, our brother plays. I'm like, oh, okay. I know all of this. Yes, he's been on the show. And it was funny. It was funny. The other story I just wanted to give out, so I have my X L ticket here, so excited to go to Audi Field. I've been there. We were there for the kickoff back in 2020, bought a ticket for the beer snake section because that was obviously, I just wanted to be a part of it and be a part of the beer snake. And they were cheaper anyway, it was like 20 bucks. So I get there, it's pouring rain, everything. I go into the section and I've got my dragons shirt on and I've got an orange jacket and everything, and I'm getting a few jers as I walk in there and you boo. I'm like, oh, I'm laughing. And I'm a watching Commanders fan. So I'm talking to 'em about the commanders, we're talking about the Redskins and everything else, and we're just, people are giving me crap. But it's funny, I wasn't there more than five minutes and security comes over and I'm just talking and he taps me on the shoulder because I'm kind of talking behind and he goes, sir, we're going to need you to leave this section. This is first supporters only, and everyone in DC is so nice. They're everyone here and the staff and the bar, everyone is. And I'm like, oh, you're ahaha. That's so funny. Good one. He goes, no, I'm serious. We saw you on camera. You need to leave this section immediately for your safety. I was like, that is wild. So they gave me a ticket. I ended up sitting in front of Jared, who's one of the listeners at the podcast. It was going to be connected that way, but I was not able to partake in the beer snakes section. I was evicted from the beer snakes section. Evan, what do you make of that? Yeah, I mean when you told me that, I thought you were joking too. I was like, oh haha, classic, classic read, good one, whatever. But then, yeah, that kind of thought about it, I was like, oh, what if he's serious? And then it turned out you were, and you got moved. I guess it was closer to the 50 yard line it looked like. But yeah, that's quite interesting. I mean, I understand the DC fans are a bit rowdy. They were throwing lemons yesterday and everything that we know. And of course there's the beer snake. I don't have to talk about that anymore than ESPN N has already mentioned it. But I mean, I was not expecting to hear that from you. That was one of the last things I would've thought would happen. Again, I can understand it, but it seems like a pretty serious measure given that there's only, what, 18,000 people there. I mean, that's still a healthy number, but I don't know. I think you would've been fine personally. People know who you are, man, you're not there to cause a problem. Well, that was the thing. I absolutely get it. I absolutely get it. Like MLS and people get like, I absolutely understand. And it was more just a safety in retrospect. I'm like, well, that probably makes sense, but I just figured for the X Ffl because I go over to the ticket thing, they're like, well, do you want to leave? I'm like, no, I'm not. It doesn't seem like I have an option here. So it was fun. I was able to admire it from afar. And the beer snake was great. I will say 18,000 there. It ended up not stopped raining during the game, but it was absolutely horrendous all day. So I give a thousand percent credit to DC for showing up as they did with the 18,000. Yeah, I mean the crowd looked great. That was extremely impressive. And you could hear it during the game too. I mean, I'm very glad the weather opened up cause I was kind of worried it was going to be a bit of a slug with the rain coming down and I mean clearly the field conditions were still not adequate. And again, we'll get into that in terms of performance, especially on the Seattle side. But I mean, yeah, the crowd was great. That was a fantastic atmosphere. It was a great sendoff for DC because that's sort of one of those venues too that's become very, I guess famous or well known within the X F L community or X F L lore or whatever you want to call it with all the beer snake, the people coming in the outfits. And then the lemons were a new thing that came around in week one or week two whenever they had the home openers. So it was fun. That was fun to see. So what did you make of this? From an actual football perspective, really to me felt like a collapse of Seattle. I know Matt Lyons has his article out right now, and I'm sure Evan or Evan is well on the new set, but I was just reading through Matt's before we got on here over at New Sub doing the reflection of all that Seattle can't run the ball, we're throwing the ball in the rain. People can't seem to catch the ball. DC doesn't seem to have a problem catching the ball. What did you make of the game? Yeah, well you're right, it kind of was a Seattle collapse because people, despite that score, this game was tied nine nine at halftime. It was a very slow first half and that's when you saw a lot of the drops. I think it was nine nine if I'm not mistaken. 9, 9, 9, 9 and a half. Yeah. I already got to jogged my memory even though it was yesterday. I'm so busy anyway. Yeah, no. So Seattle, yeah, I had a couple of uncharacteristic drops. Not sure if that was with the gloves or the field conditions, but it was very odd. It got to a point where, I don't want to say comical because those guys really are trying, but it was just like, oh, there's a drop. You just know it's coming. The balls are bouncing off people's hands. And that was very unfortunate because there was a lot of opportunities. I think of that one catch on third down where Juwan Green had it just past the line and it dropped. It was in his hands and he kind of juggled it and then it fell and then he went back to the sideline and he had his head down and everything and teammates were trying to lift him up. It was very, very uncharacteristic. But I think what really killed Seattle in this game, besides the late penalties, was Greg Williams and his defense, because June threw the ball so much in that game that I think, I don't want to say Greg really ever had to catch up because he always plays aggressive. He was saying that to the commentator, he's like, yeah, I think Unleash hell was the term that he used and that he always does Greg Williams. That's what he is been known for throughout his entire tenure in the N F L. But yeah, man, I mean DC's defense really brought it coming and I guess Seattle's defense had a couple turnovers off tip balls too, but I don't know personally I was more impressed on the DC side with their Greg Williams making those adjustments. And I mean he kind of exposed June. This is a defense that has worked at the NFL level. And keep in mind, I love June Jones. I think he's a great offensive coordinator, but in this game, again, it was sort of like what I thought about Houston. Maybe just try and give it to Philip Lindsay and see if something happens. I mean, typically if you're running the ball late, it's kind of a sign that you're just trying to burn clock or get things over with. I get passing the ball, but I mean it's only to a certain point. I mean, hell, Ben had 15 pass attempts in the first quarter or something, and I'm just like, at this rate, you're going to put too much pressure in certain areas and something's not going to go. And especially again against the defensive coordinator of the caliber of Greg Williams, it's only a matter of time before things slip away. And that's exactly what happened in front of my eyes. So Yeah, it was crazy. The Seattle defense played, I thought we gave up obviously some big games, but they had that one, it was, they tipped it in the air and then the other guy caught. We saw that in the end zone DC came back. We just weren't able to do anything with it. I mean, we get down and you know, ended up kicking field goals and stuff. We have a lot of questions here, the same questions, abandoning the run, Gary's checking them, but knew they were down to one road. But yeah, why do you bring in Philip Lindsay and then you throw throwing the ball however many times it was 48 times. It's crazy. Yeah, it was a lot. I mean, yeah, again, I think June, like that offense, that offense is extremely successful in college and it is extremely hard to defend. Keep in mind, they've had a couple pretty successful games running that this year, the run and shoot. But at the same time, I keep giving credit to Greg Williams here, and I should give credit to Fred Kaist, the offensive coordinator in DC as well. But we'll talk about more on DC's offensive side in a minute and maybe Seattle's defensive side too. But yeah, I mean Greg Williams, this is why I think DC is in part 10 and one because Greg Williams again just has that pedigree. And I remember when the X Ffl first did their hires and Greg Williams was a name that really stood out, and I think it was KJ Sales who plays for DC put on Twitter yesterday. He said, this is the best coach I've ever played for this guy. I mean, he knows so much and he plays so aggressively that. So even with an offense where you're trying to get big gains or even short gains through the past, even how many times you're trying to do that, Greg can stop that. And clearly after the F, it was really after the middle of the first quarter. I mean Seattle just that felt like it was, they had a bit couple drops and then maybe had those gone their way, they would've sustained more momentum and not had to settle for some field goals. But once, I don't know, even if though it was tied nine, nine and half, if you could clearly tell where the momentum was swinging. Well, that was the thing, because Dorothy was watching the game. Obviously Dorothy didn't come with me this weekend and she turned it on and she goes, oh yeah, how's the game? I said, oh, Seattle is playing garbage. And she goes, well, I thought it was tied at half. I'm like, yeah, but it didn't really feel that way. I mean, they had plenty of opportunities. It's just weird that Ben three tds, no interceptions played, played the cleanest game probably of the season and it just couldn't get help from the wide receivers. Like you said, you don't want to make fun and say it was comical they were dropping, but I mean we were counting 'em in the stands. I was sitting with the DC fans and like, oh, that, that's four, that's five, that's six. It crazy. Yeah, no, I mean, again, I mean hats off to dc. They got the job done and they really came out in the second half and put that one away. I mean, that was a very complete performance. Again, maybe it wasn't his best game. Think he had two interceptions off those tip balls. But other than that, he still had all those big plays. Again, things that we didn't see from him earlier in the season. And I think the big debate now, and I don't want to really bring the N F L into this because they've been talking a lot about X ffl, N F L, the whole opportunity bit. But you know, start to wonder, it's like, well, if Tamu goes out in two weeks and wins the X Ffl championship after this kind of late season rise and DC's passing game, does he get that N F L shot again? And I think there's a chance that he gets invited to a camp especially this way. It didn't look like that at the beginning of the season. And at this point in his career, he's been with bounced around the N F L so much. I think it'd be okay if he kind of stayed in the spring football realm. But yeah, I mean hats off to Jordan and the receivers, and again, I think I mentioned Fred Keis earlier, the offensive coordinator for dc. He's been fantastic all year, and I mean without him, again, credit to the players, but the coordinators too play such a big role, especially on that DC team. Barlow kind of rallies everybody and he's had experience as a head coach in the lower levels of college before. But Fred Keis, the last time he coached, I think he was offensive coordinator at Alcorn State in like 2017. He's been out of football from what I know for a while. So for him to come back and do this and just make it look effortless to an extent, excuse me, for him to make those adjustments, going from heavy run at the beginning of the season to opening up the passing game and to now where they're really more pass heavy and Abram Smith doesn't really need to be the main part of that offense, to have more options now to see him put that all together. Hats off to Fred guys too, man. Yeah, it's cool. Here we have a question I was going to pull up, and Mike was asking about the atmosphere and everything. Did DC live up to the hype? And this relates as well to the team, but I will say tremendous Audi Fields's great. We were there for the kickoff. The way it's built, it goes basically up vertically, so you're almost always on top of the action, whether you're in the standing section, you're sitting, it kind of caves around. But what was so cool to me was it feels like DC just like St. Louis is done with the Battle Hawks DC fans love that team. They are chanting for Reggie, he's on the sidelines, he's got respect, you know, can see him going back and forth and talking to players. And it just feels like they've so bought into that team and the respect that they have for everyone. And obviously DC has earned it, but I thought the tremendous atmosphere, tremendous crowd, but they love that team and they really like that is Washington Commanders are not great right now and it feels like DC has really adopted, I saw hats and shirts everywhere at the hotel I was staying at. They had signs up, all the staff had shirts and hats on game day. It really feels like the area around here is built into it. It's really cool. Absolutely, and I mean think it's a similar scenario in Houston where a lot of people are out on the Texans now. I mean, you'll notice there's a lot of people who are roughnecks fans who are also Texans fans, but they're not pleased with the state of the Texans organization, both internally and externally. You know, look at performance on the field and everything that happens inside the building. They kind of wanted to be refreshed. And obviously in 2020, Houston was the best team in the X F L, even if the season didn't finish. So people bought into that early on. And again, you know, want to talk about fan atmosphere. I mean you see a lot of the 2020 jerseys in the crowd and Houston, and I'm sure it's the same in dc. I've seen a couple when I'm looking at the TV and again in St. Louis, all these returning markets, you kind of see it's not all new fans. There's people who were there in 2020 and who were us committed to just riding it out and seeing what was going to happen. And now here we are and people have bought in and that's the importance of I guess being in a home market and kind of establishing yourself the X F L. Again, their marketing budget was pretty slim this time around. But again, having those 2020 connections I think really helps with those fan atmospheres, especially in a place like dc. So what do we make here? And obviously we'll preview the championship game a lot, but just initial thoughts, we'll be live at the championship game. I'm getting all that set up. I assume Evan, you'll call in. You're certainly welcome to. I know Andy and Anthony and I believe Fran's going to be there as well. Initial thoughts here, DC versus Renegades and maybe people in the chat could drop. Who do you got here on the matchup, kind of initial thoughts? Yeah, well, I mean looking at the last time those two teams played each other, it was exciting. It was not a game. Again, many people would say, oh, well DC's going to blow the breaks off. It seemed like Arlington, but that was kind of right when the Renegades were starting those late season adjustments and the DC game kind of showed like, Hey, you really can't count this team out, and they probably are going to make the playoffs even with their record and they could do something. And as time would tell they did. But I go back to that game, I think it was week eight, maybe week nine, week eight, something like that. I go back to that game and I mean there was a couple things that went in the renegade direction. I think the big reason they won that game was because Bob Stoops on that last drive challenged something. He saved his challenge to late in the game and then he called a challenge. It might have been pass interference or hold or something on the defense, and he got it and then Arlington gets a couple extra yards and that keeps the drive going. Or else that would've been the end of the game, if I recall correctly. It might have been on fourth down. So that kind of made things exciting. Again, the fourth and 15 conversion played a role in that. We've seen a couple times the season where that's worked and maybe kept teams in games. I think the best example of that was very early on the St. Louis San Antonio game, which feels like a million years ago now after everything we've been doing and all these leagues kind of happening. But yeah, I mean the bottom line is I think this is an intriguing matchup, and I would still favor DC obviously, and DC did end up winning that previous matchup. It went to overtime. Again, very exciting game, a lot of stuff going on, but DC is just so complete. And you saw yesterday, I mean, against Seattle, the favor was certainly swinging. The momentum was swinging their way even before halftime when they were tied. But I mean, DC closed in just tremendous fashion, and I get that was at home. They won't have this time around. It'll be a neutral site, but I mean, they just came out in the second half. And I mean, even if Seattle had played a perfect game and they didn't have the penalties or the drops or whatever, it was still going to be really difficult to catch up with that. So again, DC's a really tough out, and again, I understand Arlington is still mean after their game against Houston this week, they're still trending upward. They're still clearly worthy of being in that championship spot, I think after what I saw. But yeah, we, we'll just, we'll see how it goes. I'm very interested to see if it's the same sort of flow as it was the last time, or if one team kind of dominates early and then another player comes back into it. There's a lot of things that could happen, as is the case in any championship game. Definitely. The last thing I'll say about that matchup is it's interesting, I don't think anybody expected DC versus Arlington, especially Arlington. I mean that side of it is, I think a lot of people would've said, Seattle, Houston or DC Houston, or if you want to bring St Louis into that sort of playoff talk, maybe you incorporate them into a couple scenarios. But yeah, man, this is definitely something that I don't think a lot of people anticipated. It's just the game yesterday really felt like Seattle ran out of steam. I've been watching a lot of hockey here lately, obviously as well. And you know, can be down two zero with five minutes left and okay, we pull the goalie, you know, get one in and you kind of run back around it. It never felt like Seattle, even at the end that we get the touchdown and we go for the fourth and 15. It's like you never felt like they were in this game after really about the end of the third quarter. It just felt like, yeah, we're kind of going through the motions out there. I'm like, you might as well just walk off the field here at this point. It really feels like, I mean I don't want to competitors and all that, but it felt like they could have just set the ball down and walked off and kind of ended the game right there. Yeah, I mean, again, unfortunate for Seattle, I mean, I probably don't need to say much more about it. It was just one of those things where had a couple things gone right earlier, they might have been in it for longer, but DC came out and they pretty much played a hundred percent. Again, despite the weather, despite everything that might have been against them, they've played one hell of a game. And that was again, the second half takeover really kind of defined. It's like they know how to close, that's the most important thing. You see teams oftentimes where it looks like they, they're good and then they blow leads. Vegas was one in particular this year where they would always go up and then a team would come back in, especially a team with a winning record and kind of take it away from under their feet. I think the term is snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. That kind of thing. Don't, I'm not going to say that happened yesterday because Seattle had a lot of work to do really the entire game. But from what I heard in their press conference, again, I wasn't there, but I listened to a couple of the clips. They seemed to be very professional about it and very Ben was saying this was the most fun that he's had playing football in a long time. And a lot of players have said that. I think, again, that's a separate kind of discussion, but you want to talk about true opportunity, mean you've had guys, again, Ben's been in the N F L, he's started an N F L game with the Cowboys and he's here in the X Ffl saying, this has been awesome. This is the most fun I've had. Just being able to lead a team and go through all the ups and downs and meet all these cool people that I wouldn't have met otherwise. That's, that's what football's about. That's what these leagues in particular are about. So that's pretty cool, I guess to end that sort of Seattle DC game. On a positive note from the losing side, We've got a couple questions here, and I, I've missed a lot of the chatter on this. People seem to be upset about these trophies, the north and south division. Obviously chairwoman and co-owner, Danny Garcia was there for both. I thought that was cool that she was in Houston for sure. Yeah, the dc the N F L, the divisional trophies are not phenomenal as well. If you've seen those. Yeah. What did you make of the X F L division trophies? Yeah, I mean I thought they could have done a bit more, but at the end of the day, that's not what you're playing for. You're playing for the actual championship and I assume that trophy's going to look a bit better. We haven't seen it yet, or I haven't seen it. I don't know if it's out there, I don't think it is. But what I thought those trophies, they really reminded me of the whole, you go back to when the X ffl did their rebranding and they kind of unveiled the new logos and the whole black and white scheme. It was extremely minimalist. It's a very modern, you're not putting a lot of work into it, but I didn't think it looked terrible. Again, they could have done a bit more, could have jazzed up a bit, they could have at least put a plaque on it, maybe with the teams like the game in the year or something like that. From what I saw and what I recall, and they had the trophy and the press conference in Houston, it was just the X F L logo and then the six sort of bending pieces of stainless steel or whatever material it was to form the shape of a football. I didn't think it was terrible. Again, that's not what teams are really playing for. It's a fun thing to have, but at the end of the day, teams are going to care a lot more about the next trophy in two weeks. So I will say was if anyone out there in the ether is listening to this, I want the Seattle Sea Dragons version of that championship shirt because they made it because they had a box of 'em immediately ready for DC yesterday, you know, can buy it. If you're a fan now you can buy the DC one, but a box exists of the Seattle Sea Dragons North Division championship shirts, and I would like one of those. If anyone out there is listening, I think that would be a really cool memorabilia piece. I mean, same here for Houston. I wouldn't mind one of those. I've act, I was asking around yesterday just to kind of see if I could get some equipment, if anybody's watching this that has ties to the equipment people in the X ffl. I mean, hit me up because I wouldn't mind a helmet or practice jersey or something along those lines. I'm always open to those kind of things. I collect a lot of weird and cool memorabilia. We got one of those, the X F L jerseys from when they were doing the showcases. I think we got that from Russ, so that was pretty cool. Yeah, I want the Sea Dragons FRA Practice Jersey looks better than anything they've worn on the field this year. I will say that the other question here, and then we'll talk USS F l Darren, we get this a lot. Do you think they looked at the North Division championship game, realized MLS stadiums are the way to go except for St. Louis in San Antonio? The problem is you have to go with, I mean, not every city has that, right? Obviously they couldn't have done that in New York with the Red Bull Arena, Seattle, the Sounders play at Lumen Field. There is no m l s stadium there. I mean obviously LA and stuff has some other options. I think that's the dream, but it's not really the reality. What do you make of that? Yeah, I mean I can definitely understand that. I think m l s size stadiums are, I are the way to go if you have that option. Obviously, again, it depends on which market you're playing and not everyone has access to an m l stadium. I will say Snapdragon Stadium in San Diego is where the wave play, the football club, the women's team in San Diego, that's where I'm from originally. And that's a pretty good sized stadium. They get a pretty good crowd in there and it looks good. It looks like sort of an X ffl style environment. But I think the other thing too is college stadiums like T D E C U Stadium in Houston where the roughneck play, I mean that's a great spring football venue and even though they didn't open up the 200 levels seating this time they had in 2020, the lower bowl was always really packed for our games. It looked pretty good and that stadium I think has the capacity of 35,000. You could maybe squeeze in 40 if you were lucky, maybe added a couple extra seats somewhere. But those stadiums too at colleges, I think alongside those M L s stadiums are perfect venues. But again, I mean, venues are super hard to get and super hard to find. I mean, look at Vegas as a prime example using Cashman Field, which is a minor league baseball stadium that's definitely kind of a tier below these nicer college and MLS stadiums. Again, it comes down more to the markets than the stadiums themselves I guess because you know, could have a stadium. I mean there's plenty of MLS stadiums, but if the X ffl teams aren't playing there, then why go? I mean, I'm not going to drag the whole U S F L hub thing into this cause that's a separate, that has nothing to do with this discussion or argument or whatever. But I just think the bottom line is, yeah, I mean m L stadiums would be good, but not everyone has those. So yeah, now they has, they also, euc I had put up tearing up the soccer field. Yeah, don't soccer people don't necessarily love the football coming in and tearing up the field. I did know this and obviously it hit rained a lot. DC United played Saturday night before the game yesterday. So I don't know what those field conditions were like, but I did see some slipping. We saw Bend run and slip and fall. It was wet. I think the field can't it, it's a lot to work on that where if you have football and soccer kind of playing there simultaneously. Yep, for sure. So anything else? X F L I want to talk to McLeod and we talked Michigan here a little bit deep. We don't have to deep dive S F L, but any other X F L general thoughts for the weekend? Yeah, I mean I was impressed with the games. I, I thought, I don't want to say both of them were terribly exciting. Again, the renegades coming out the way they did was such a surprise. I think that made the storyline interesting. And again, that would really kind of put people, I guess maybe that dragged more attention to the game. It was like, oh, Arlington's really coming out here and doing something. Not saying that they couldn't, but again, they really impressed. I've said that multiple times. And then DC Seattle again, it was like a decent game in the first half. A couple mistakes from Seattle DC wasn't perfect either, but then DC eventually pulled away and that game was over before it was over, you know, could say. So that's kind of where I'll leave it with the X Ffl. We can talk a bit about the U S F L now cause I did look at those games and there are some interesting points that I want to talk about. Yeah, we're just wrapping up the conversation here with Audi and all of that. Cashman. Yeah, I mean they're selling tickets for Cashman Field next year. Oh, the preliminaries. Yeah, I think 700,000 for the U S F L on Fox there Saturday night. What did you, let me see if I can share this here. I was flying, I saw many of the highlights, MoCo, Bethel Thompson really having the game of his life here against, with the New Orleans breakers here, 45 to 31 in the absolute shootout. Yeah, well first of all, I think this was kind of a marquee matchup sort of in the US F l I mean these are two very good teams from just roster perspective coaching. I mean, you name it, right? Going into the season, I think I looked at the Breakers as probably the favorite to win and I've kind of been quietly rooting for them between all the other stuff that I'm doing. But yeah, I mean man, M B T has been fantastic. He kind of had a bit of a slow start in week one against Pittsburgh from what I recall. But ever since then, he's kind of been on this insane trajectory. And I said going into this season, like M B T was a massive pickup for the U S F L. That's the guy that the X Ffl could have had or wanted. And again, we're not going to start this whole argument here, but M B T was huge for the U S F L is the bottom line and he's played it. He's lived up to every expectation, again, despite age and despite not playing the C F L game for the first time in several years, mean he has lived up to every single expectation I've had for him. And then also too West Hills, the running back, another C F L guy who was previously with Hamilton. I mean he has been fantastic too. Not just this game but really the entire season. And he's more interesting because while M B T was kind of well known up in the C F L and he's coming off a great Cup win, even if he didn't finish that game, Chad Kelly was the one who kind of rode that out. But again, M B T was good in Toronto was the bottom line there with Hills. I think he only had 400 Russian yards over two seasons in Hamilton. He was not the future back there. And to see him do this in the U S F L clearly seems like this might be the better opportunity for him. I wanted to get your thoughts on this and I've seen a lot of, I get C F L people on my Twitter and U S F L and X F L, obviously McLeod should come into the U S F L and run circles around everybody because C F L talent is so much better than U US F L. What do you make of that? Because I don't really know how to process that Well, I mean, I don't know if that's entirely true. I will say this again, I'm not comparing the C F L and the U S F L is hard because the C F L has some homegrown talent from Canada. And again, the C F L's been around for longer, but I have been, I think the U S F L has can't, again, I don't have every single roster from 2022 and 2023 in front of me right now, but just doing a compare and contrast off the top of my head, there's a lot of new players to the league this year. Like the Cory Colemans and the Ruben Fosters that. I really think Breland Speaks is another one too. Some of these bigger names, there's a lot of talent this year in the US F L maybe more than there was last year. And I like that a lot. I think that's good for the growth of the league, especially because they're not in their home markets yet. They're kind of dragging that part of it out from the operations perspective. So it's hard to say. I mean, look, I figured M P T, I think it comes down to just M B T's been playing for so long in a league that is covered with some guys that are maybe a bit newer to football and really haven't had these opportunities. Again, not saying that's everybody in the U S F L, but to see a league where there's so many young guys that are up and coming newer like U dfas, that type of thing. Ute T is like what, 34 years old? I mean he's been doing this, he played in the original AFL in the U F L. This guy has been around forever. So I think what it comes down to why M B T is so good in a league like this at this point, it's hard for him not to be good anywhere he goes just because he's got so much experience. I mean he's coming off a championship win in Canada again, he's, he's been with a good handful of N F L teams through camps and practice squads and things like that. I love N B T man, that's the bottom line. I think he's great and it's good to see him in New Orleans doing that. And especially again from that personal perspective, him coming down to the states to support his family and to support his wife and taking a pay cut. I thought all of that was again, he could have easily, I mean I don't know what Toronto was going to offer him and obviously he's at a point in his career where he might be getting a veteran discount but I think him coming to the U S F L has a lot of benefits. I'll put it that way In the, I didn't think I would get blocked by this person so quickly. RJ Young, we had this big article out on Macon, Buffalo Thompson this week and said McLeod plain stateside for the first time since whatever. And I said, well, McLeod was actually in the Spring League, which is the pre predecessor to the US F L in which you are currently working for Fox Sports. And that was a quick block from RJ Young. So RJ Young not a fan of being corrected online from his mistakes about moca Thompson articles. I mean look, I'm not going to get involved in that. I mean I did think it was a bit weird when he was saying M B T was the most outstanding player in the Great Cup when he didn't even finish the game and Chad Kelly was the one that wrapped things up. One that came for Toronto, not a slight against M B T, but that's just sort of a quick Google search could probably tell you that information. You look at a couple stat lines and that's all it really takes. So I'll leave it at that. Any thoughts here? I will be honest, I did not watch much of this game. I was watching the Arlington Houston game. Any showboats? Oh and three, Todd Haley yelling, he's yelling after the game. That was probably the biggest highlight I saw in me was Todd Haley refusing to handshake? Yeah, I mean again, I haven't been too in touch with Todd Haley in the Showboats this year. I covered the original bandits with Hayley and TEU a bit last year. Look, Memphis has had a tough go at it. They had that, I mean just awful game against Birmingham where they scored the only points they had on a fricking safety and then this game it felt like was right in their grasp. But I mean this was probably from the entertainment perspective, the best game of the weekend really came down to the wire there. Again, I don't want to really stick to just quarterbacks cause there's obviously other players on these teams who have an impact. But like Cole Kelly for the Showboats, like I think he got his first start this week. I mean they've had Brady White in there and then Ryan Willis came in for a bit at one point. But I mean Cole Kelly, I've been waiting a long time for him to get this sort of opportunity and I'm really glad if I'm Memphis, I might consider starting him for the rest of the season because in this game he wasn't perfect. Could have completed a couple more passes but had over 300 yards. Only turned the ball over I think. Yeah, one an interception but two touchdowns, pretty good performance again, 55% completion it looks like. So not terrible, you know, might want to get that up to 60 or something. But yeah, he looked up so far like the most complete quarterback for that team cause they're still trying to figure out some things identity wise that I think they're oh three now. So looking at that I think, and Brady White has been a bit, again we joke because he's got that Memphis connection now he's playing in Memphis. It kind of feels like he has to be the guy. But Brady's been sort of spontaneous. He hasn't really, I don't want to say he can't hold down the starting job, but there's so many guys behind him. Again, Ryan, Willis, Cole, Kelly's like you're going to have to play those guys at some point. And here we are in week three of the X or U S F L season and they're already playing him. They're already playing. They've already played three quarterbacks. So Yeah, it's going through the comments here. Max talking to being Antic some early U S F L games. So yeah, Todd Haley coaching himself out of another football league. It's not good. This is a good comment from Gary and then we'll talk the other games we'll get out of here at the hour. I do like the US F L not playing the next level angle and so itself as the league, that's something I think is being overplayed in the X F L I would say internally. I mean we can see from what they did last year after the season, hey we're going to come on to turpen all these guys to the N F L. Obviously they care about getting this but I think in season correct, I think X ffl plays up way more than, okay, this guy's going to be in the N F NFL next week. Any thoughts on that? Oh absolutely. I mean I was talking about this with Anthony over the weekend at the game. I mean the X F L, their whole player 54 initiative, like Player 54 is the term that comes from the N F nfl, like a 53 man roster. And god forbid I say the term player 54 more than a couple times here else, we're all going to go crazy. But I think yeah, they've definitely focused on it a lot and even if you look at it from the broadcast angle, e s, ESPN will be like, oh here's a guy that might be going to the nfl. Then that's kind of the one of the first things they say and I don't measuring these leagues in terms of who's better, who's more successful based on which league sends more players to the N nfl. I don't think that's the end goal. I think what these leagues should be determined by in terms of success is the on-field product and how they build fan bases and the culture aspect. Because if you're just going to say, oh well these leagues only exist to send players to the N F L, well I think you're kind of missing the point. Yes, they're developmental is the bottom line. Some people say the word minor leagues, I don't really like that term minor then yeah, I guess it's a tier below the N F L, but there's players in these leagues who are not minor league players in my opinion. So again, it kind of just comes down to how you look at it and people will debate that till the end of time I'm sure. But that's my take on it. Yeah, I think there's an identity crisis and I don't know what the answer is to that because I think both X F L and U S F L, we're trying to figure out what are we in this space, where do we exist? And I remember back when we had the rash madani on back when all the C F L X F L stuff was going on and he said What? Why would people want to watch the X F L? Is it to watch people on the show before they make it to the show? What is driving? And you don't really have any answers as a spring football fan because you're like, yeah, we want to watch games and this is exciting. But then every single player there would rather be somewhere else. I mean I think the CFL does a better job of once you might be not wanting to go to the cfl, but then once you get there you do realize a lot of the benefits and you like, okay, I want to be here. I can make a career here. It it's just weird. Would you get what I'm saying, the identity crisis, it seems like they have. Absolutely. And I mean if you want a bit of a different take on this from the player perspective, and I brought this up again with Anthony over the weekend when we were in Houston too in terms of the players coming to this league and really buying in at, we talked about it earlier with dc, you're kind of buying into their program and that's why they've been so successful. I think it really depends on the player because some of these guys, they, this really is their first opportunity in Houston. You look at a Garrett Owens or a Bryson EEN who hasn't really touched the N F L before, those guys I would assume, again I know Bryson pretty well, those guys take that opportunity to heart because this really is their chance and maybe they'll go to the NFL after, maybe they won't. I'm not really as worried about that from someone who covers the team and doesn't cover N F L transactions really besides the draft I suppose. But anyway, then there's guys that have take a Cole McDonald or Deontay Burnett guys that have been drafted or been around the NFL for several years where it's like maybe this does feel like a bit of a downgrade and you're, your main goal is to get back to the N F L and I really hope mean my, of course hope and I think the goal would be for everybody to buy in. And I'm not saying those players did it. I'm not trying to call out Cole or Deontay or anybody. I love everybody on that team. It's personal, don't get me wrong. But I'm just saying people are going to look at things differently based on their previous experiences in life and that goes far outside of football. That's just a general thing. So that is that whole identity crisis point that you're bringing up about these leagues. I don't think that's something that's going to get resolved very quickly because there's a lot of stuff surrounding these leagues that are just new. There's a lot of new concepts. You're bringing in things that have never really been seen before. We're entering a new era of football in the United States and I guess you could include Canada too if you want to talk about the C F L in this mixture of all these spring football leagues, there's a lot going on and it's going to take I think a couple years until we really figure out where every league sort of places and how they really market themselves and things of that nature. I do think we make fun, but fan control football I think really kind of exists in its own bubble and they've done a really good job of that is our identity and that's what we do before we get out of here. We have the Michigan games. I did put the Mueller Stars game on at the bar before the X F L game. I did have the bartender do that. Stars looking not great. I think Case Cook is probably going to get injured here even more very soon, which is scary to see. And then obviously the generals bestie the Panthers. I had tweeted out with the U S F L here from Michael. Michael Cohen, 6,500 they said was for the Panthers game this weekend. Maybe they took it out now after I tweeted. But the tow, the crowd I anyway. What did you make of the Michigan games? Yeah, again, I didn't have too much time to watch. I went back and look at a couple highlights. Again, I look at Michigan, I think it was Trey Quinn who was a former Mr. Irrelevant in the N F L in 2018 or 2019. I think he was drafted to Washington, had a pretty decent game for the Panthers. Josh Love is kind of an up and down love is one of those guys who I think he kind of needed this extra year in the U S F L if he really wanted to develop. And again, he's had some better games but he's still coming along. And last year he split time between Michigan and Pittsburgh. So been a bit of an up and down ride for him. But I, I'll save the Panthers talk for Pat because I'm sure he'll have an article out and if he was here he'd be able to do a way deeper dive than what I'm going be able to do. But from the general's perspective, I keep talking about quarterbacks now I know there's more players on these teams than just quarterbacks. But John Dre Johnson for the Generals had a fantastic game yesterday and I was really impressed to see that after he's kind of been stuck in these two quarterback systems. Last year Louis Perez was carrying a lot of the weight and this year they've brought in the former C F L guy, Dakota Pru cop to take off some of the weight. But yeah, I mean Deandre Johnson had a fantastic game passing and rushing for the generals last year. They used him a lot more for running. It was a lot, it was reminiscent of what we had in Houston in the X F L with Brandon Silvers and Cole McDonald where Cole would occasionally pass. But he was mainly the guy we'd have run packages for or you'd bring him in on third, fourth and short, whatever the case may be. So yeah, hats off to Deandre Johnson again, one of these guys that's been waiting a long time to find his stride and I think he definitely found it yesterday. So I was pleased with that. I thought those games were pretty good. I mean I will say Pittsburgh reading Philadelphia was the surprise of the weekend. I mean I think we were all kind of shocked when that happened, especially how Philadelphia played in week one. And ever since then they're starting to slow down. Things aren't looking as great. Maybe they're kind of getting found out a bit in terms of their play style. So a couple things there that were interesting. Yeah, so I can confirm. So this is the article now that's on us. Cause this came out last night. Paul Reed sent this over to me. He said, Hey, we actually have, because we never get official attendance numbers from the us like hey Reed, they actually put, so this is Michael Cohen, this is Fox sports usl.com. And so down here, and that's what I was looking for it I had, because I am smart here, screenshotted last night on here where they had the roughly 6,500, I don't know what my belief is, there was more than 6,500 people in Detroit. My belief is, and Mike Mitchell's belief is that was paid tickets and then they paper it a lot more to make it look full. So whatever it is. But it was just funny that we had official league attendance and then they paid well, But see the thing is like 6,500 isn't an official number. An official number would be like 6,526 or something. Yes. And it says roughly in that article too. So I feel like yeah, I mean that number really isn't accurate but that might be the best we get from the U S F L this season, given that previously in Canton and some other places, Birmingham, we didn't have attendance at all. So I do think that is a bit strange on the U US F L'S part. I don't know. Again, they said something along the lines of, because we're not in every Hallmark yet, we don't want to give out attendance because it seems unfair, but I'm like, is it really going to hurt? What difference does it make? There's people there, why not accept the fact that there's people there and kind of incorporate that as part of the league's growth. Last year you only had one hub, now you're expanding to four. Let's try and champion sort of the attendance growing. Because last year the reality was outside of the stallions games, the crowd was extremely sparse and that was just kind of, I guess what was expected because you have eight teams playing in one city in Alabama and only one of them is actually connected to the city that people want to root for. So I feel like with this expansion now, and the other thing I'll add here too, I mean this is kind of maybe a bit off topic from the attendance part of it, and Mike brought this up in our chat too, Mike Mitchell, they really should have rebranded one of the teams to Ohio this year. I mean I know Tampa became Memphis, but I think had, Pittsburgh was one of the ones that was brought up. Take the Pittsburgh Mallers, turn 'em into the Canton Mallers or the Ohio Mallers because the reality is you have a hub in Canton, Ohio, and I get why they have one there because the football Hall of fame, that's great. They had the championship game last year. I can understand why you'd want to have that as a hub, but if you're not going to have a team there, then the attendance is always going to be less than what you want it to be. You know what I mean? I feel like if you're going to have a hub in a city, Birmingham has the stallions, Memphis has the Showboats, now Detroit has the Panthers, but Ohio is the odd man out and it's just a weird, again, it's one of these weird quirks in a way. I'm like, well why didn't you consider putting an Ohio team there to at least get more fans in the building? Which is what a lot of people are focusing on when it comes to U S F L discussion. It's weird. I just had a question, we'll get out of here cause I don't want to keep you too long and I got to go get lunch before I hit the airport. It just in my name is Reid, thank you. But I get called Mark Lott, I got called Mark Lott yesterday. But see a defenders game, I don't know why attendance is down and I don't know, I don't think XE L or USL has done a tremendously good job marketing for new markets. We saw San Antonio come out really strong the first week and I know their season hasn't been what it wants to be. If you look at the markets DC St. Louis, that's carryover, right? Seattle carryover us F l, they really, I think struggled to hit that balance of we want to be a TV product, but then we also need people invested in the stance. I will tell you, every single person in dc, not that there's not invested us f L fans, but every single of those 18,000 people there yesterday for the defenders were there to watch that game and cheer and throw lemons at me if I was in the beers. They were all wanting to do that. And I don't think the X ffl has done a tremendously good job, but doing that outside of the original markets and I don't think the U S F L, I think they're both struggling in that regard, if that makes sense. Yeah, well I mean look, we talked about the X FFLs somewhat lackluster marketing budget this time around. And I personally, I think the u s Ffl has done a better job with marketing. But again, for them it comes down to if you don't have eight teams playing in eight stadiums where there's always going to be a loss of attendance and I expected the XFL attendance to go down from what it was in 2020. Again, it's the same with viewership. I mean viewership for both leagues is down. And again now that spring football isn't like this new crazy concept, we're kind of getting used to it. I can understand why there's a drop off in that. But again, it goes back to my point earlier about how these leagues are still growing and there's still a lot of kinks to work out. There's still a lot of unknowns. It's going to take really some time and I mean even it's hard because you have such a long off season where you still need to garner interest. I mean, well for us obviously it's kind of our life in a way. So I'm always tied in with these leagues even when they're not playing. But for other people it's like this is only a short part of the year. And again, it's a very experimental thing, it's a new concept to a lot of people. A very niche market is the term I always like to say. And until this kind of becomes normalized and you sort of have more time to figure these things out, build the brands, build the fan bases, everything like that, you know, can't expect a ton of interest. Es especially again now that this is U S F L season two and X ffl season two, well technically season three, but I I'll say season two for, given that the 2020 league was a lot different from 2001, Well I think this is good. We didn't have too many angry comments sir. I don't know. I think it's we, I think Kurt, I don't know. I view differently Kurt Menifee saying roughly 30 thou or 30,000 people in Memphis. As a side note on the broadcast and it being on the US F L printed thing, maybe that's me. I don't know. I we're taking the time to write this. This has been vet from U S F L without obviously not because they took it out. So I don't know what the issue is with that, but I do, I don't live by Kurt Manees saying 30,000 in Memphis week one is that is an official attendance number, but that's just me. Yeah. Anything else? U uss, F L, XE L, anything before we get out of here? I appreciate your time today Evan. Yeah man, I mean think the last thing I'll say is just again, we're entering a period now where it's like, I mean well the past couple weeks we've had the X F L U S F L crossover per se and I just think that's really been interesting to see because again, we had talked about for a long time, and this goes back years, I mean you even really after X ffl 2020 and then kind of when the U S F L was starting to get talked about in 2021, it was like, well imagine if we had two leagues here in the US competing at the same time, two outdoor leagues. It was this, again, for the people like us who really follow these leagues closely and analyze them and really know what's going on, that was a, was just a concept that didn't really seem like it was possible. It was like, oh that would be crazy. Imagine that. And here we are living that and I know again it's a very short kind of crossover time and the X ffl season is winding down whereas the U S F L season is picking up. But it's been fantastic to see There's been so much to follow and there's so much to talk about. I mean I could probably go on for another hour here if we brought up more players in certain scenarios and I wouldn't have a problem with that. But yeah man it, it's just so cool to see this all come together and I mean man, I'm glad to be a part of it. I'll leave it at that. Yeah, it's exciting. I think Evan's done a tremendous job this year covering the Houston. If you guys, obviously I assume everyone here that's watching follows Evan, but make sure you go follow Evan on Twitter and he's just done the really, and I just, that's what with the U S F L and the X F L, realizing the people that are spending the time, the money, I mean I just came this weekend as a fan here, but seeing and the time you spend every weekend and taking time away from, I mean living your life in college and doing what you could be doing to cover this because you love it, it's something that you want to support the players and do all that. I think it's tremendous. It should be good. We have the bye week this week. I have a good show coming up. We'll get ready for the championship game. Be curious if the US L ratings bounce back this week and obviously we'll have our ratings news tomorrow. I don't think I'll go live though. I got to talk with one of our guests tomorrow around the time that ratings are going to be coming out. Anything else, Evan, before we get out? No, I think that's it, man. I've, again, thanks for having me on as usual. This is really fun. Glad I could talk football and all these different leagues that are going on now. It's just such a crazy time man. And I'm so grateful for everything. And I will say this too, again, kind of like last note, even though I feel like I always say last note and then I keep saying things, but anybody who puts time and money and effort into covering any one of these leagues, whether it be there's the U S F L X, ffl C ffl tier, but then you look at guys below that, like Sam, he does a lot of the arena ball, the more, again, those are even more niche leagues, more semi-pro, whatever you want to call it or classify it, all those people deserve credit. We can sit here and argue, and I know Anthony put out a tweet about not having conflict on either side and I completely agree. I think we're in a time now where we just really need to appreciate this because we don't know how long it's going to last from either side or this is just such a unique time and really a place where we never thought we would reach mean. I think there was a lot of people in this field who were pessimistic after the Afaf collapsed in 2019 and then Covid shut down the X ffl in 2020. It was all these times where we were finally getting there, finally getting to a place where it felt like we could do this. And then last year, yeah, the U S F L kind of sealed the deal and had a full season with their, and the X ffl is going to do it now a year later alongside the U S F L. And I mean, man, it's just so cool again to see all this, I can't stress that enough. Look for us, Friday is normal big, well our normal Friday show and then we will be live there for the XE L championship game, getting that all set up on the Riverwalk. So if you're in the area you'll be able to come by and say hi. But we'll be online for everyone doing that. So appreciate it everyone. Appreciate Evan. I'll play the outro music and we'll get to have here. Thanks everyone. Like and subscribe.

Episode 142 - Let the Tournament Begin!

Coming up this week on the mark, happy N F L Draft Week everyone. While the rest of the world tracks the future prospects of the N nfl, the XFL or USFL here coming up in the near future, we hear are still talking spring football. It's X Ffl playoff weekend in the words of the ruthless ruler of DU lock. Lord fire quad. Let the tournament begin. Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make. Let The tournament begin. That's right, a Shrek reference here in 2023. The Jim Morrow ones kind of played out. Playoffs. Playoffs, we'll talk about playoffs. You kidding me? Playoffs, That's kind of the played out here. So we are talking tournament football here with the XE L first up on the show we have Emery Hunt, busy guy with the draft week and everything else. Emery is coming on to preview everything X F L playoffs as well as U S F L week three. I Feel like this is going to be a game where DC shows that they're the most complete team on both sides of the ball. Now they have to stay locked in because there's no other game. This is a one game season and I feel like they'll take care of business against Seattle. And then returning to the program, we have Tom Loganville here, kind of a retrospective. What did we do? What did we do wrong in X Ffl 3.0 and then looking forward towards the X F L playoffs, This is going to be a battle for the ages. I actually think this is the championship game I do. I think these are the two best teams, two of the hottest teams. It's interesting because I do think Seattle has a great opportunity here. I think I know a lot of people are going to vote for AJ McCarran as the MVP and maybe statistically you should, but I'm not so sure the best overall player in the league's, not Ben Nucci. And then finally you have watched him on the sidelines all season tach. We have Terrell Buckley, coach of the Orlando guardians stopping by extended talk with Terrell. I really appreciate his time. Just The opportunity was an A plus. Obviously execute foods one and nine got off to one of the worst thoughts that you can imagine. I can even picture that changing the roster. Some of the details on how the makeup of the team and the expectations and all those things. We really didn't get correct. We corrected a majority of that probably after week four and we started to play obviously a lot better and was in a lot of games. So very, very exciting and learning to experience growth opportunity for me a very big growth leap. So it was good, it was good. Hope you guys enjoy the episode, like and subscribe. Hey guys, welcome to the Mark cast Reid here. Busy week this week. Everything, like I said off the top with the N F L draft. A lot of regulars or maybe potential people that I was trying to get on this week busy with the N F L draft. Still think we have a tremendous show for you. Three blockbuster guests look to get some more ratings talk with some of our normal sports business people next week. Like I said, a lot of them tied in with the N F L draft this week. Also want to get more C F L stuff. I was kind of debating doing the C F L draft show with going to DC and everything. I don't know if that's going to be possible for the playoffs. We will be doing the C C F L draft a post-talk. I already have guests lined up for that next week so we'll be getting back to more C F L stuff as well. Just busy with work and then balancing cheer for the Kraken and getting all the X ffl and U S F L stuff. So we'll work towards that. But I know a lot of the players are headed out of Arlington and coaches and stuff and so appreciate obviously Coach Shrub Buckley coming on and the guardians as always. But we'll look towards that. Just a weird week with the draft and everyone kind of leaving Arlington, but three tremendous guests. Like I said, Emery Hunt coming on. Busy guy ready at Emory. I'm like Emory, am I crazy to even ask you to come on this week? And he goes, oh no, that's fine. Happy to come on. So appreciate Emery. And then obviously Tom Loganville making time as well between his radio hits and then TR Buckley that's going do it for me today. I will be in DC this weekend for the playoff game. I have a ticket over in the beer snakes section. So I've already had some people dm happy to meet up. I'll be flying in Saturday night and then hanging out all day Sunday and flying out Monday. I know listener Seth is going to be around as well. So I'll, I'll be at a bar somewhere drinking before and then we'll be at the game hanging out, look for a Monday recap show. We're trying to figure out, I think Evan Wills more is going to be coming on. So we'll figure out the timing of all of that. And then like I said, I don't know if we're going to do the C F L draft show live stream, but at least we'll do post draft coverage here next week as well. It subscribe two tickets you give 'em to the U S F L championship game if you want when we hit 3,500 subscribers. Thank you all for your support. Like I said, did my best this week. Hope you guys enjoy. We'll see you at the end. Well in the busy week. I certainly appreciate Emory Hunt taking the time here back on, I'm trying to remember the last time we had you on talking, I think pre X ffl, but we have Emery Hunt back on. How are you doing sir? Doing fine, Reid man, I appreciate you having me on and again, love the show. I'll watch religiously, man. You are. Your show is great for the treadmill, I'll tell you that. Well I appreciate yeah, try to keep it long. Sometimes my wife says, how many gusts do you have on this week? So we have Emory here, we're talking, we'll get U S F L as well talking in the big X F L playoffs, the sea dragons. I'm going to be there. I have my, I'll be in the beer snakes section. I have my flight booked as of last night. What do you make just overall X F L thus far? How has it been for you? It's been great, man. I'm glad they were able to put the cleats in the grass football in hand and get out there and give it a go. Now we have another spring league that was able to finish a season. Knock on wood, nothing is going to happen. They'll finish this one as well. But I love it. I was religiously watching every week whenever there was a game because again, you got to be locked into these spring leagues. We as media and pundits and journalists and analysts, if we don't show interest, we can't expect the public to show interest. So I was locked in each and every week Has it, has X F L, did a good job kind of reaching mainstream outside of it. If I'm not someone that's totally involved in spring football, Not yet. And that's the next step I believe in terms of what can grow, how they can grow this thing. I feel like the football product takes care of itself. They're good on that part, but it's about making sure you get that outreach. So in a way it's almost like how folks were thinking, well the US L played in the hub for one year. No one outside of Birmingham knows about the U S F L. But now we see when certain teams go to markets or go in their markets, how different it is when they're living there and in that city from a Michigan to what we're seeing in Birmingham, I know they probably had more of a dip in their attendance, but for the X F L, we'll start, well they're going to be playing their cities and it's going to be cool because they're playing in the cities and playing in the stadiums. But if you're not living there, it is not the same. It's no different than playing the hub. So I feel like if they go into their markets now, I haven't been to Arlington. I was there for the college ground showcase in Dallas Fort Worth and I was on a flight with a couple of guys that were going down there for their training camp or their training camp that in January. But outside of that, you didn't see anybody talking to X F L. You didn't see anybody any banners hanging around. But when you're in the city, we see in Michigan and Detroit and also in Birmingham a difference. It was, we were there for the kickoff last year, the U S F L. It did feel like Birmingham was like, we are home of the U S F L. You can't go anywhere here without seeing a, I am a kind of, I guess not concerned but confused that maybe why or I think the X F L could lean more into that. I know Andy and I talked on the show a couple weeks ago, let's really market, if you're going to be in the hub, let's market that. God forbid you let a couple people in to go watch practice. I mean even if you're just in Arlington, it's something to do there. In terms of the football product, has it been up to what you were expecting? Yeah, absolutely. But we see the same things over and over again with a lot of these spring leagues. I saw this in the U S F L last year. We saw it in the first iteration of the X ffl and we've seen it again now in the X F L and some early semblance of that in the U S F L season two. Say, Hey man, play your best players like for Vegas. Why did it take you so long to realize Jalen McClendon is your best option out there. Let the guy play, let him out there, let him make his mistakes and grow the offense looks significantly better. You see what happens when you allow a guy to play through those mistakes. And so I feel like right at this point, and it's not a knock on Louise Perez, I like the guy, but he's probably better as a QB two now on a roster than a starter. So you got to give a young guy a chance, look what Josh love is doing for the Michigan Panthers and his second time around and now he's back on the team familiarity with a lot of the players on there and he's playing better. We see it with Case Cook and how well he played when they went to him over Brian Scott, I imagine they were trying to figure out what to just play your best players man, especially at that position because everything else going to take care of himself. People tuned into X Ffl 2020 because PJ Walker was lightening up and it was like, man, let's tune in. Nobody wants to watch as good as their offense was in this last game. Or as great as the story is. Heartwarming story, no one's tuning in to checkout AJ McCarran period. They want to see the young guy and people want to see that from these spring leagues. So play your best player. I'm not saying McCarry their best quarterback, I'm just saying give these young dudes a chance to play. That's how you attract new fans. I think you were critical of the AJ signing, right? I think if my memory serves, Yeah, cause it was like he's 30 plus we know what he is. I thought this was a league of opportunity, so why didn't I get the young guys in there, man? And granted, you want to have Guy, you guys like AJ McCarran because here's what I like about AJ McCarran and playing in this league. If he's not going to be a starter in the N F L, we would've known, we should have known that by 27 then this would've been perfect for him to play five years and B 32 on the other side of it, right? Instead of waiting till he's 32 and jumping in this league. So now people look at this league like AJ Mcca, Karen, I'm not watching that. Even though you won a league for a guy that's probably not going to be the starter, a starter in the N F L to play somewhere else. So a league like this or the U S F L would be ideal for those guys. There is a market for that, but you can't go out and sign guys that people have seen in the N F L at times they've seen maybe a decade ago in college football that's not got to going to work. And I also feel like a lot of these leagues make the same mistake every time they come out thinking, oh well we have a team in Orlando or we have a team in Detroit. Let's get a lot of the players from that college. I'm going to tell a Secret College fans do not care about former college stars that are not currently playing for their college team. It's not going to work. Pat Rapino right now. I'm sure his head is fuming with your AJ Mcca smack talk. But that was the story of the X F L this year. I mean just to be contrarian, you know say no one's watching. They marketed the crap out of that. Here's AJ and he's playing for his kids and turned down all this money that was one of the major football or otherwise storylines coming out. Same what we're seeing now in the U S F L with mc McLeod, Bethel Thompson. Great story, phenomenal wants to be by his family, yada yada yada, bro, you got a quill glass there. Who needs experience play him. We've seen Macau McLeod, Bethel Thompson win a great cup. Fantastic. I don't want to see him playing in this league that y'all are saying is developmental at worst play the guys and if they struggle, go to your McLeod BLE Thompsons or your AJ McCains. And that's because otherwise people are going to think, oh this is just a league for guys that want to play in front of their families. I'm not going to play. I need to go man. Matter of fact, let go get married, have a couple kids and then I can use that story to get into one of these leagues. No, let it be about the guys, your Cole Kelly's guys like your Aquill glass to go in there and play because they're not getting the opportunity as young talent to play in the N F L. So you go in there as a quill glass or a Cole Kelly and you play really well for a season and now you bounce right up, the cream will rise to the top and the league will pluck regardless. So play the quill glass, play the case cookers, play your cow loaders and roll with it like that man. Don't bring the elderly back in. Let the guys grow into the elderly within your own league. What are your thoughts about my boy Ben Deci here, quarterback for the Sea Dragons? It's funny because Ucci is able to play through all his mistakes. It makes you wonder, any other quarterback that had the amount of turnovers that he has had would've been pulled. But this is why these leagues exist. You want to see him stay out there, don't go to the backup, let the nucci play through it and let him just ride the wave and then you reevaluate the position and they off season. So I like the decision to stick with him. Otherwise you'll see what went down in Orlando, Normandy and Francois and it's like, man, which guy can get a rhythm if you're constantly pulling guys And then one guy has six touchdowns and next week he has six turnovers and it's like you could have won that game but why aren't you playing a guy that's younger a little bit more dynamic? You know what I'm saying? There's a lot of things that go into the coaching decision and we don't know that because we're not at practice and we don't have the benefit of daily news coming out of these practices we would have if they were in cities. Interesting. We were talking today on the show, the dichotomy of, and I want to get your thoughts on the playoff thing too here, but people are outraged. St. Louis didn't make it, but you have kind of what feels to be more of a family coach Beck. Okay, we have everything and we're like living in diet we're Seattle feels a little bit more like a super team ride. We brought in Josh Gordon, then Philip Lindsay and we've got Ucci and Jim Haslet like maybe isn't this connected? It feels, and I've been on the sidelines here, it doesn't feel as cohesive. What do you make of the difference of those two teams? That's a great point because when you feel like St. Louis, even though every team in the X F L is homegrown, you feel like St. Louis is more homegrown than anybody else. Cause of them playing in St. Louis, the fan base, you feel like they're more locked into what the battle hawks are doing as opposed to Seattle you feel like, man, I feel like these guys just kind of collected great parts and just PCs these guys together and it's be, I think what people have toay because I feel like we've constantly seen, even though this is so weird to say this, everybody's played on tv, we've seen all the games, but it feels like St. Louis has been on TV more than everybody else, even though everybody's been on TV the same. But so people have connected the nation has connected with St. Louis. The whole caca is the law. You have Anthony Beck, who is very, I vocal on social media since the inception since he was announced as the head coach. So all of that buys into why people have followed St. Louis and they just don't feel like Seattle brings the same cache. But I will say this, in defense of Seattle, they just have to tweet out, beat us last, all you had to do is beat us and guess what? We are in the playoffs. That didn't happen. And guess what? Now you are out looking in. I saw a lot's been made of the coaches that didn't make the playoffs and have the first year had coaches and we got Buckley and Beckton all that. Any thought of that and the coaches that were able to make a longer run here, I know back and we'll get the playoff with, I want to hear, get your thoughts of the seating on that, but thoughts about the coaches not making it? Well I thought at they started to figure it out and these are first time head coaches, so you like that they're figuring it out on the fly. And when you have a young coach in a Buckley or Rod Woodson first time head coach and you start to see them figure it out and their teams start to play better, which just gets you excited for next season. If they're able to do that and build on what they learned in this iteration Hines war, start to figure some things out as well. The next thing, next season these guys will be more experienced, they have a better idea of how to manage. They won't be as emotional on the sideline. I think Buckley and Ward were a little bit more emotional than Beck. Beck really was even killed. And when you're overly emotional on the sideline, your players tend to reflect that out there on the field. That's why they're making mistakes or that's why they're afraid to make the mistakes on the fly. So that's what I feel like we should see in the next season from Buckley and Ward. I think in Rod Woods, I feel like you could have created a whole show about Rob Woodson versus the refs because every week it was chaotic on the sideline. So I feel like with those guys having now gotten their first year as a head coach underneath their belt next year, their teams will be much more locked in, which would make it competitive across the board Because it it's that tough mix. Yeah, because I think back to portrays a little bit more than every man, I'm one of you guys here where Woods, it does feel like you still have that player mentality like, oh come on Raf, come on yo, where's the flag? And I don't know what the balance is there. I mean obviously all the teams played competitively for their coaches, even the losing team, so I guess you can't nip it too much. But was there any of the coaches that maybe didn't deliver in your mind? No, no. I felt like everyone, and again first year I want to go in and give everybody a clean slate and just say, Hey man, I understand this is the first year, first time GM coach working together. You're figuring things out on the fly. It's an unusual situation because you're not in a home place, you don't have a place to call home. You're kind of working together, you beat a team, it is it and then you got to get back on the plane with the same team. So it's a lot going on. So I, I'm not holding anything against any coach, I just like the fact that coaches seem engaged. They seem locked in, they seem like they want to be there. They didn't seem like they checked out. So it was good for me to see that week to week from the X F L. Are you as outraged as the world seems to be about the playoffs and how the battle hawks and all it missed and they're seven and three but yet somehow Arlington's in People are hilarious it. We've had divisions in sports since then. This is how divisions work and St Louis, all they had to do was beat Seattle and this wouldn't be a conversation. You had a winning and get in situation, guess what? You didn't win and you didn't get in. So that happens all the time in the N F L where you got a team that plays earlier in the day and does what they're supposed to do but the team later in the day they need to lose, ends up playing a game of their life and they get out the playoffs. Well if you would've did what you had to do earlier in the season and not let it come down to this, then this wouldn't be a problem. So I had no issue with it. It doesn't bother me because hey man, this is how sports work, this is how competition works and you have a better record than San Antonio and yeah, San Antonio's going to get the doors blown off their first in the playoff. But hey, had you beaten Seattle, this wouldn't be a conversation. So you don't like the thinking that we need to move it and it needs to be the top two and then points or anything because that's the thing is if they would do it a different way, none of these games would've mattered this weekend. Right? It it's because of the playoff situation. That's why because that couldn't have been a nothing game there. Seattle and Vegas or Vegas at Seattle here Sunday night. Maybe we should ask Peter King because if Peter King says something then rules get changed. If he didn't like that Brett Fa loss against New Orleans, next thing you know everyone should touch the football. He didn't like that Josh Allen lost Patrick Mahomes. Next thing, well everybody will need a possession of overtime. So maybe Peter King when he says something, rules get changed for whatever, whatever team he wants to win. Looking here at the playoffs, the more exciting one I think will be the north, we'll talk about that. But Arlington at Houston, it feels like Arlington has never really found their, you're trading quarterbacks all that stuff. What do you make of the south playoffs? It is the south playoff and the north playoff to me are the same thing. So the south playoff is about can Houston stay locked in for 60 minutes and not allow Arlington to hang around because what we saw last weekend should be what we see this weekend and nothing will change with the game plan because there's no threat from the run game from Arlington. There's no threat from the passing game, especially vertical passing game from Arlington defensively they do a great job of applying pressure and turning the ball over. They had a pick six last game. So this is not going to be a good look for Arlington, you know what I mean? So for me this is a situation where it is more about Houston than it is Arlington. Now Arlington does have some really good defensive players. They do have an ability to really slow down an offense but if they can't depend on their offense to put points up in the paint and kind of make this a game, it's going to be all for not. And I feel like that's going to be the case again, Houston has been through it trying here and Brandon kind of got hurt and everything. They looked good and they're win against the north. I mean is Houston a real presuming they make it onto the championship game, are they a real threat here against whoever comes out the north? No they're not because their offense is too scattershot on paper. Their offense looks dynamic, they can score, they have shown flashes of brilliance. But quarterback play is crucial in these games and we've seen over the course of the season, those that have had the more consistent play at quarterback have been the teams that have won more than they lost and have ultimately saying St. Louis found themselves in the playoffs. And maybe that would've been different had Agent McCarran not gotten hurt, maybe they would've found a way to win more games. So I feel like Houston's quarterback play is too inconsistent to win against whoever comes out the north. It's weird to me because I love AJ Smith been on the show, everyone talk this wizard football everything I is it is he just getting found out? Is he getting out coached? Is it like what's going on with him? And it seems like Houston's just kind of hit a bunch of roadblocks. There are certain times where you feel, and this happens in the N F L and college football, I want to say it was maybe two weeks ago where they had a team beat and they went forward on fourth down or went forward on third. They threw it like silvers threw an out route and they got picked off and it was like why are you throwing in that situation? Run the ball force that team to use their time out. And this is something that happens with these guys that love to throw the football a lot. They get enamored with their passing game and their play call and miss out on situational football. So for me it is mostly about they have to tie up the loose ends. I have no problems with the play calling or what I'm saying with the play calling and how he runs his offense AJ Smith. But situational football is what wins you games. And if they are not playing great situationally, they're down offense, red zone offense, four minute offense, then they're going to find themselves losing. And plus guys also have to make plays and it falls onto the quarterback position. He has to be consistent in beating pressure, beating the blitz just like he did earlier in the season when teams wanted to blitz him. But he was fine, he always had an answer and if he can get back to that and I feel like that's something that can help them out, they'll have a shot In terms of Bob Stoops and everything, it feels like he's kind of made chicken salad out of everything this year and it's just not a great, I mean do we blame him for assembly? Maybe a subpar team? Do we blame? I mean what do you put on Arlington? Arlington needs a quarterback and they have to go into the off season and find one. Right now there's not getting any production out of the quarterback position. They're not dynamic at quarterback, they don't have the athleticism at quarterback. All of that needs to change next year because there's talent on the roster but when you don't have the at least a threat of the QB run or you don't have a GameBreaker in the backfield there, there's an issue. So maybe quarterback and running back or where they have to address first. And if they can answer those questions they'll be a different team because again, they got players on defense, they're very strong in my opinion. They can rush the passer, they got good front point of attack, play up front on a defensive line, but offensively nothing threatens you on offense outside of the guys on the perimeter. But the quarterback has to get it down the field and for them to really take effect In terms of the north here, Seattle going in, I'm excited. To me it's cool that we have the kickoff there in 2020 and now we kind of have the playoff game this year. Ucci even threw an interception at the end of the game. We're like can we just get out of this game please? What do you make of this matchup? It's going to be a strength versus strength battle, right? Seattle's strength is their ability to work touchdown the checkdown, they can throw the football vertically down the field. DC has a good defense, there are opportunistic, they can get pressure where DC has a problem and I was there at the Arlington game and witnessed this again firsthand. They play with their food far too often. They had Arlington blown out and if you were a Vegas guy, you know just felt like oh this was a comfortable lead plus nine and a half is going to cover and then they just get tired in the last five minutes of the game and just allow them to come back. And now you find themselves in overtime. So the football side is, if DC keeps their foot on the gas and stays interested for 60 minutes throughout the whole game, then they'll have a problem with Seattle. They can play the run on their way to the quarterback and do a good job of shutting down. They know the nuci's going to give 'em at least two opportunities, turn the ball over. So they just have to capitalize. They haven't really dropped interceptions all season long on offense. Probably the perfect blend of utilizing the two quarterback system, knowing when and where to fit guys in and pull guys out as opposed to some scattershot thing that we're seeing now with the New Jersey generals with Mike Riley. Let Deandre Johnson just get out there and rock out man. You take pre cop, you put pre cop in at the worst possible time and your offense goes non-existence for three straight drives and the other team gets back in the game. But I feel like with DC and what they do, they understand who they are, they get Dara king in at the right moments and he's able to execute at a high level. Same for Jordan Tiema who's played better this year than he did last year for the Tampa Bay Bandit. So I feel like this is going to be a game where DC shows that they're the most complete team on both sides of the ball now they have to stay locked in because there's no other game. This is a one game season and I feel like they'll take care of business against Seattle. I'm just scared. Ben played horrendous the first half of the game on Sunday and I just really bad and I'm like, I'm looking at the silence, I'm like what is going on here? And then we got the touchdown before half and then he comes back and it seems like, but then it's the sustainable, it never feels like he learns anything. It just, we're still out there and we're running and I, I don't know if it's, he's a really emotional player and he gets caught up in it. You go I, I'm very scared if we're going to getting to continue to give the weather ball we have, Oh you guys will give away the football. That has been the most consistent thing and there's going to be not one where he is going to hold the ball long and he is going to fumble and another one's going to be like, yo, where were you throwing with that? The dude was either covered or that dude clearly has on a DC defender's uniform. So yeah, it's going to happen. It's about when it happens. If it happens early, not a problem but it happens in crunch time you are in trouble. Yeah it was like, and we were trying to do the math in the stands. I'm like how many points do we have to win by And then he gives up the turn over, I'm like, can we just please get another touchdown and just get out of here? It was very, very scary there. Very trying times. Yeah listen and first of all it's hard to hate Seattle because I, I've said this, they got the best out there in the xfl. Their uniform is phenomenal helmet color scheme, everything works. So you want to see them do well because you keep want to seeing, you keep wanting to see the uniform but the play has to catch up and the play has to be consistent and they only have one more shot to get it done. And that's this weekend in the playoffs. I have my replica jersey, I think I'm getting ready to ship it back. I they're getting ready, they're getting ready to return that to it's not, it's just up to snuff. The ones that they put out right now, I don't know to me and it's two Broncos it looks like we were at the bar and I saw lady and she had that Philip Lindsay jersey and it was, or I'm like did she get a custom Philip Lindsay jersey from China this quick and then she turns around as a Bronco jersey. I'm like oh of course like that. But I mean it looks and we hate the Broncos here in Seattle so Right old a FFC, west foes. My thing is I'm a small mini helmet guy. Can we at least get the X FEL to sell us mini helmets? I would buy all eight right now including the XFL league helmet because right now I don't have any X F L helmets. Make the mini helmets available on the site. Easy to do. I'll rack those eight up right now if they do that. Well the chairwoman of the league now follows me on Twitter so maybe we can work out things. Maybe you're A big fan now. I thought she tweeted you too. Listen, Might have to worry but I may have to pull some strings there. See if we can get Ms. Garcia working on that before we get out of here. U S F L comes back I, I'm trying to watch Forgot. So what do you make of U S F L season two ratings? Ratings we're down week one. I presume they're going to be down again this week. Well to me it is. We got to focus, get people to focus on the football in both the X F L and U S F L. We spend so much time talking about ratings and crowd attendance, focus on the football, get people talking about that. That's the real battle and the football has been solid but again, play your best players. Why is Deandre Johnson getting pulled and being absent for three series no less. Figure that out man. The whole thing was you had a longer extended off season or training camp so you shouldn't have had this issue. And also you guys just play those guys that are better. Let those guys play man. Let the young guys play the football is still good And it is funny to watch these U S F L games and you see the benefit of having an extended preseason, the hit the ground running in week one, the scores are higher, the competitive balances there. You recognize guys, continuity is king. So now teams remember, fans remember who was on their team last year. You see the difference in continuity with Alex McGoo playing much better this year than he did last year losing Jaymar Smith. So now you have some intrigue there like oh man Jaymar was good last year but now Magoo who was there last year has improved. So now you're starting to see teams have progression. CJ Merrill is running better this year than he did last year. You're seeing Kingston Davis who was on the generals roster last year now get an opportunity to tot the rocket and now you say wow they got a really good one two punch in New Jersey. So I like the fact that the continuity that we're seeing in season two is manifesting itself out there on the field with better play and I can't wait to see what it's like in Detroit for the Michigan hub. I'll be there Mother's Day weekend to check those two games out just to see. But I like the fact that we are now back and teams are fans are invested in year or two. Everybody keeps saying what about playing in their cities? But these people that keep saying that are probably horrible at business, our finances, you got to understand finances first in order for this to really sustain itself. And I think over the long haul with the approach the X F L has taken and the approach that the U S F L has taken, both leagues will be able to be here for a long time, which is what we want because everything else will increase. So we can't like people, well that's not the N F L. Well again the N NFL has been around since 1920. Why are you even trying to compare this to something that's been around 400 plus years? I just don't understand people's focus. But I do like the fact that year two they can't, first of all, let me stop. We got to stop saying year two and year one and year two. Can't we just say last season this season? Because if we say because it's going to be, it is going to come a time, we're not going to be able to keep up with year in, right? So just say this season. But this season I'm glad we've seen them back and we're seeing teams, more hubs are open, which means more teams are in their market and this slow approach is working for the U S F L. And I think with them having that draft that they had, I like the draft concept and we'll see how it continues to work itself out moving forward. But I'm just glad that we're seeing, we still got spring football to watch it. We're not jonesing for football. Imagine if there was no U S F L and the X ffl just ended. He like man what are we going to watch Now we're not going to fake like soccer, you know what I'm saying? We're going to watch N B A playoffs but we want to watch more football and we have more football. That college draft was, it's like wait, I was drafted. What's going think the execution leaves a little bit to be desired there. I like the concept of it and I like the valuing players' rights and the teams and all that kind of stuff. But I think that they needed to, the messaging needed to work a little bit more on that. What they have done, what one team has done that it seems like Pittsburgh was really locked in with who they drafted because a couple of their guys have already committed to playing in the league and that's where the focus has to change. Like hey man, we know football players and athletes have the ego of I'm going to the league. Yeah we want you to but let's be realistic right here man you just played at middle Mississippi Baptist, the likelihood of you getting drafted and getting an opportunity is probably slim. Come play these 10 weeks here and let the league reevaluate you from there. What if you ball out week one and week two in the U S F L and now you find yourself here in week three with the N F L draft approaching, you probably just played yourself into a draft pick because you played two extra games here for the Pittsburgh Mallers or the Michigan Panthers that. So I think the more these leagues are around the messaging for both leagues have to change. I think we need to stop saying N F L. Stop talking about the N F L N F L going to pick guys up regardless. X F L focus on building your stars U S F L. Focus on building your stars and as the leagues grow, obviously the salaries will increase and it'll become a more attractive option for guys that are on the smaller school level that won't go anywhere so they'll be locked into the league and it'll just help the league grow I think faster. Last question today. I appreciate extended time on here. How terrible is the Pittsburgh mallers and how are they still so bad this year? Common theme man quarterback play find you a quarter. Granted they were banking on Lindsay Scott. Now Lindsay Scott is a phenomenal player but all seriousness is quarterback play and that's what these, there's a big myth out there Reid, that people feel like there's not enough quarterbacks out there to that yes there are, there's enough quarterbacks, there's enough athletes, enough football players, there's 860 football playing colleges across the country and into Canada. There's more than enough football players to field two spring football leagues. So it's about trusting what you seeing playing the best player and allow that player to play. And that's what has to happen once you get good quarterback play. People think you have to be Patrick Mahomes or Josh Allen or Lamar Jackson or whatnot. Nah, you just can't be out there not being able to evade pressure terrible with reeds and skipping the passes all over the field. Just get competent quarterback play. It doesn't have to be spectacular, it just has to be consistent and if you can get that, everything else will work itself out. Pittsburgh also has a lack of speed running game wide receivers right now. Everything is a possession. They have possession receivers and they don't have explosiveness in the back field. So I think their defense is ready to win. They got really good de, they had a good defense last year but they just didn't have the explosiveness and dynamic ability on offense coming from the quarterback running back or the wide receiver position. Well wish us luck this weekend. Big exciting stuff with you, you X L playoffs, U S F L, week three, everything else Emory. Good luck with the draft and everything else you have going on. I really appreciate your time today. Appreciate your read. Always a pleasure man. And good luck down there in DC. I had fun when I went man. I got to see the beer steak in person. Like I said, beer's fine. That's a lot of beer they drink, but if it was a Cabernet snake I may have gone over there and particip or if it was a Uncle Nearest bourbon snake I probably would've gone over there. But it's cool to see it live in person and this'll be a fun time for you. Yeah, I'll be in the section. I got a ticket listener, Seth hooked me up with the code early. I'll be a paid member there of the DC Army so it'll be fun. Well I appreciate it. Here we have him on preseason now we have him back. Tom, how are you doing sir? I'm good man. How you doing? Thanks for having me back. We're good Megan. The rounds busy week N F L draft, I appreciate it. We're here at the playoffs. First off, what has been this whole experience like for you X F L 2023? It's been a blast to be honest with you. I've had probably as much fun as I've had in the last 18 years at ESPN n Broadcast and football. Whether it's college football, high school football, being in the booth, being on the field. And I think the reason why it's been so much, much fun is it's such a different product. It's subtle differences to the game that make a big difference. The pace of play is fantastic, we all know about the access and the audio, but it's how you have to call the game that's so dramatically different than what we've done at the collegiate of the National Football League level. And it's made it a lot of fun, a lot of adjustments. It's kind of like having to start over when you, you're taught or you learn a certain way to do your traditional broadcast and this is anything. So it went about as I anticipated, some rough sledding early with teams trying to find their footing and particularly in the offensive line. And then as we rolled around about week 4, 5, 6, you really started to see the gains become ultra competitive. You saw more points being scored on behalf of both teams. There's a lot more familiarity, a lot more things to scout and prepare for. Cause you remember those first two weeks, what are you watching to prepare for the opponent? And so I thought it materialized and grew and matured the way the league hoped it would. The viewership I think went the way the league hoped it would. And you know, look at the last couple of weeks of the regular season, we finally get a two overtime games one weekend and then you get a third one and then you know, find yourself in these one point games or these one possession games and that's competitive football top to bottom. And I will say this, it was a dream come true for the league because they could have no way they could have scripted. Having every single game in the last weekend has some sort of impact on the playoff picture and that's exactly what you want to have happen. I still see people upset with the playoffs. I saw Coach Beck, I think it was yesterday, even still tweeting about it. I are we over it now. What do you make of this? As with anything in startup leagues and startup franchises, and I've been a part of a lot of 'em, you're going to take stock, you're going to sell scout, and you're going to go back and you're going to say, what do we need to correct? What do we need to fix? What do we get and what do we want to leave alone? How can we add, how can we subtract? And I don't think there's any question that Russ, Brandon and even Danny Garcia and Dwayne Johnson, everybody affiliated at the league level, Dean Blandino from a rules perspective, do we need to evaluate having division champs, which is fine north and south division champs, but then also ensure that the top four best records get into the playoff. And that's really where the beef has come from fans. And I get it right, this was an unfortunate byproduct of something that really couldn't be foreseen. I mean if everybody can sit there and say they've got all the answers, but if you were heading into the season as an executive at the XFL and you said, Hey, at the end of this deal we're going to have a four and six team make the playoff, but we're going to have a seven and three team not make the playoff. They'd be like, what? No way. What's the statistical chance that happens? Well, it happened. And so now they'll have to figure out how they want to address it if they want to address it. And those will be decisions made by people way above my pay grade. Yeah, I mean if anything you have to write it out at least now. I mean I think that it would be worse if midway through the season they're like, oh no, we need to adjust here. This isn't working out. I mean if anything you write this out, you reflect later because it would be worse the other way. I do think it would've been worse off for them to make any changes based off of what they started to see could potentially happen because then it looks like you're scrambling and then it looks like you're trying to write a wrong. And I think they were smart just to stay away from it, let it play itself out. You'll deal with it in the off season. But it's just like there are going to be rules that are going to be looked at. For example, there was a rule that happened, it was either an uns sports bike conduct or a personal found. It was after an extra point trial and it was on the offense. So what would happen was is the penalty would be assessed after the kick. All right. But all it, or excuse me, would be assessed during the kick, but it didn't actually give the team that should have gotten the yardage to the yardage. It actually just moved the kick closer to the zone that they had to get in the 20 yard line. Whereas if you make that a post kick penalty, then the team that should have received the 15 yards gets 15 yards on top of the kick return. So little things like that that are going to be looked at and examined. It's, sorry, we were talking about radiance and everything and obviously we don't know their metrics, but I think going into the season maybe X F L 2020 fans had maybe a grander vision of what this would be. I think maybe this was kind of a test pilot we got through, we kind of maintained the whole way through. How do you view that success or not in terms of maybe what expectations were versus what actually happened? I think it carried over supremely from the end of week five in 2020 because what was happening in 2020 was fantastic and it was very well received. The product on air was fantastic, ironed out the kinks and got rid of the troublesome approaches that plagued 2001 and then the pandemic hit. And unfortunately that we all know what took place and the rest is history. So I think that when you consider that there was a foundation there in 2020 that was really successful and so you know, can see envision that it can happen, it can work. And then I thought it was really, really important that the X ffl did not just jump in and decide to go that very what next year after the pandemic and go 2022, they decided to wait and really map things out and play the slow game, which I thought was a smart strategic move, probably made the league more organized and better as a whole. And so again, now moving forward, I think the fans got what they were clamoring for. They got access, they got audio, they learned about the game, they hear things whether it's an X as an O type of element or it's some type of verbiage type of element. Hey, what does that mean when I hear that, what am I supposed to know? And I think that really benefited the fan and listen this league's about the fans. And when you look at DC and you look at St. Louis and even San Antonio who didn't have the season maybe on the field that they would've liked to have had, they had a pretty good team that was just ravaged with injuries and they had tremendous support at home. And so there, there's a good foundation to build upon. Now whether that foundation, whether that building includes expansion after year one or doesn't include expansion after year one, whe whether it includes playoff scenarios or tiebreaker changes, that remains to be seen. But I think as far as, and not just on a linear perspective of A, B, C, espn, ESPN two and fx, but I think the league felt really, really good about how the league was received digitally, whether it's through social media platforms, the digital program we did at S P N each and every week, social media engagement. There was a lot of interest there and there was a lot of fun and a lot of banter back and forth. If they had gave you the clipboard headed into next season and said, Tom, what would you do? What would be your advice for us to maximize kind of year one to year two growth, whatever viewership, everything. What would you say Operationally or from a football perspective in way, Whatever way you see. I mean I think the football product on the field was good. I think they could have done a better job of cultivating some of the local fan bases that weren't already built in. I think they inherited St. Louis, right? I don't know what was done there to further kind of grow that and DC Yeah, I think the one thing that could be important going forward is to really examine cities that have MLS teams because those stadiums are perfect, absolutely perfect for the xfl. It's 18 to 22,000, they're right on top. It makes for a great game day experience. I think that's something that's, that could be really interesting moving forward and looking forward because the venues just seem to be really, really good in that regard. And then I think what you'll see, this isn't something I do and this is what I think you will see happen naturally is the player pool by which the teams will be able to draw from, will get more experienced and more talented with each and every off season. Because agents and players and their representatives are going to start to realize that if I've got a guide, let's just say made it a practice squad, then you made an active roster for one year and he's this close, well, is my client better served signing an N F L future or is he better served playing 10 games or 11 games or 12 games? And there's a lot of validity to that question because if these guys start realizing if I'm playing I'm going forward, I'm not moving backward and I'm giving more people more opportunities to evaluate me, that's going to get better. Bigger name higher profile players to jump into the player pool, which is in turn is going to make each and every team's roster more talented. And I think you'll see that naturally occur over the course of time. Obviously W with Vegas and their field setup. I think that that's going to be something that will be addressed. Aside from that, I really kind of liked how things played out. I liked the director of place player personnel and head coach relationship on each team and how they managed that and how they managed it was, and again, there were a lot of young, when I say young, young in the coaching profession, inexperienced coaches that were first time head coaches and so they've learned a ton and they're going to go back and they're going to sell scout and they're going to examine and say, well, what did we maybe do wrong in draft prep for me? I think that there were so many more positives that outweighed any negatives that came from year one Coaches that you were impressed with. Obviously we had a lot of the new head coaches not make the playoffs, but who did you think really kind of excelled, Thought Anthony Beck does a fantastic job. They were extremely organized. They did a really good job of identifying exactly what they wanted at each position and who fit and who didn't, and they didn't deviate from that. I thought Reggie Barlow and his staff and the approach they took offensively was brilliant because in professional football you rarely have to deal with quarterback run and defending quarterback run. So what do they do? They look like a college team on offense and then they go out and they sign or draft three athletic quarterbacks. So if something happened to one of them, they don't have to change the offense. They just plugged the next guy in. And as we could see, particularly throughout the first five, six weeks of the season, people had a hard time figuring them out because you just in professional football, guys don't have to prepare for that and you do every day in college. So I thought that was really, really well done on behalf of Reggie Barlow and the DC staff, I felt for Hines Ward because that team was just crushed, crushed with injuries, particularly at quarterback. But really what the common denominator is, and the coaches would tell you this and it's true at every level anyway, but the teams that ended up hitting the market quarterback were the best teams, all right? And sometimes not just with one, but with two. I mean Cole McDonald and Brandon Silver is on one team. Nick ti, AJ McCarran on one team, the two players at DC that we referenced here at King and Jordan to au. And then the teams that struggled to settle in at quarterback struggled to improve offensively and get enough wins. I mean that's just kind of the bottom line Looking towards this weekend. Speaking of dc, Seattle going in all be there, does Seattle have a chance? I mean they've held DC close both other times. What do you make of the North division? I think Seattle is the most dangerous team in the league right now. And when you really start to dissect their season, they're three plays, all three of them essentially on the last play of the game for being 10 and o the fumble on the one yard line at dc right? The field goal to Seattle in week two, or excuse me, St. Louis in week two and then the 35, 34 or whatever, one loss or one point loss at home against dc. This is going to be a battle for the ages. I actually think this is the championship game I do. I think these are the two best teams, two of the hottest teams. Interesting. Because I do think Seattle has a great opportunity here. I think, I know a lot of people are going to vote for AJ McCarran as the mvp and maybe statistically you should, but I'm not so sure the best overall player in the league's, not Ben Nucci. And while he does take risks with the football and he, you're going to have turnovers from him, you're also going to have some utterly spectacular plays. Players that have changed their season, plays that have changed the course of a game. And I think the biggest challenge for Seattle isn't whether they can go toe to toe and match up with dc. It's h how do you handle the crowd road environment, which will be really, really difficult, especially if you get backed up in that one end zone. And secondly, can you get over that mental hurdle of saying, God, can we finally get these guys? And we're so close, we feel like we should have won, but we didn't cause we made more errors than they did and maybe it's now their time. Can you get over that? Do you think Ben has played his way into a new N F L role here after the season? Oh Yeah. In fact, I think it'll have multiple options now getting into camp, going deep into camp. Whether he sticks or not, I firmly believe will not be based upon anything talent related. It will be whether he can prove he can consistently protect the football. Cause you're not going to be able to do what he's done with the football and make a National Football league roster. That's they're not going to do that. And Ben knows that. But you don't also want to take away from what makes him really good, that riverboat gambler, gun slinger guys out in the street playing with his boys and things break down. You're just throwing the, I mean that's what he is and it's fun to watch. Yeah, you wonder what Seattle would be if we didn't turn the ball over 87 times, you know, whatever. Right, exactly. I mean at the end of the day, football's football blocking, tackling and who protects the ball? I mean it's get down to it. And the bottom line is they were really, really careless with the football this year, especially in those first four weeks. So you give Seattle the edge against dc? I Do and I'm surprised that I'm saying that because we had DC so much this year and I'm so familiar with them. But I think they just might be due and I think they're playing with such confidence right now and I don't know if you've noticed, but all of a sudden Josh Gordon's become a much bigger piece of the puzzle when the other wide outs on that team started to perform. Right? Jordan vc, Blake, Jackson, Pearson, I mean they have a group of four or five guys, they're really good. That's enabled everybody not to just say, well let's focus on number zero now. You better defend the whole entire field. And it's really helped him become more of a focal point of the passing game. It's just crazy looking. And I've coach Buckley on this episode as well, how some of the teams were so much able to build so much better. It seems cause everyone's starting from scratch here. And is it just, yeah, better and being able to scout, how are some of the teams stacked so much more like Seattle and then you have Coach Buckley going, I got to go through 25 different guys to get a team here. Well I think that for some of the first year head coaches and the guys that hadn't built a franchise or built a team, and I'm not saying this is the case, but in supplemental leagues like this, it's all player evaluation. It's all player personnel. And if you look at Dave Bowler at St. Louis, over 25 years experience as an NFL scout, been in personnel's entire career, obviously Mueller out at Seattle and then the the NFL pedigree of the coaches on that staff. And I think as the newer head coaches become more entrenched, they're going to start, I believe to really see the value in an off-season in a league like this. It is all player evaluation and I go back to 2001 on the team that we built. We worked harder and longer in our off-season than we ever did on a single day during the week of the game of a game in season. And it was because we wanted to ensure that when we went into training camp and came out of training camp, that barring injury or something unforeseen that we had a chance to win. And that comes to research and study and evaluation and it's months and months and months and months. And not to say that Hines or Rod or Tach or any of this, but they haven't necessarily had that background at this point. And some of the other coaches had a little bit of that. They had some more, it was just like when Galen Hall or Jim Kreer came over from N F L Europe and comes into the X F L in 2001. Well they had distinct advantages over a guy like j Jerry Donardo, right? Just because they'd been through that whole prep of how you do this in professional football in a supplemental league. And so I think again, going back, taking stock, evaluating a lot of teens will probably choose to maybe tweak things or go a different direction. Sometimes You do you think the league threw all of their different, we had all the showcases and everything and we're finding out, do you think they provided the coaches with the best talent that they, and then it was just who was able to work within that? You think that the quality that they assembled for everyone was up? I thought let's talk about Orlando for a second. Cause I thought Orlando outside of the quarterback position until they settled on quitting dorm, I didn't think they had bad players. They just self-destructed each and every week mean, and Uck will tell you that, I mean double digit penalties, turnover, snapping game kicking game fus. And you can't go out when the playing field, when the margin of error is so small you can't go out and do that and expect to be successful. And then they compounded it because they were struggling at quarterback. And then lo and behold, if you watched the game that they beat DC it was the one time leading to that point that DC had actually done what everybody on the else in the league had done, gone out there and played bad, just flat out played bad. And on that day, Orlando didn't play as bad and the quarterback made some plays and we all know the result. And so I think that all of the teams had pretty good players. I thought some of the teams lacked some team speed, other teams did a good job at that with some of their skill. I do think that there's so many good players out there, really good players, players that can make an F NFL roster, all right, that will be in the player pool for an NFL draft or a showcase or a supplemental draft for the XFL or whatever it is that if you do your homework you can put together one heck of a roster. I mean you really can, but you know that homework's going to be watching every single guy that's been cut for the last three years and every single game he's ever played in. It's going, I mean it is an arduous, arduous process Before we get out of here, thoughts on the south, I know not as intriguing the match period, Bob Stoops kind of limping into the playoffs you make of Arlington in Houston. Well hopefully Davion Smith will be back because their whole offense really if there's a strength, if there's something you want to look at, it's the offensive line in the run game. But they've just struggled to come off of that with any semblance of consistency in the passing game. And outside of Sal Canella, Arlington hasn't had a guy that can just run and take the top off the de defense and not a lot of teams in this league had that. John Kirkland had that until he got hurt and we saw the impact that had on Houston's offense. So I think it's really critical for Louise Perez to have a chance they're going to have to run the football effectively. So getting Smith back I think should be a help. I didn't like how Arlington went out and played last week. It kind of left a sour note. You find out that you're in the playoffs before you kick off. Houston comes out and plays with a vast majority of their reserves and Arlington play well and you could hear Bob Stoops and the frustration that he had on some of the open mic conversations and listening in and I don't blame him. And so now you, you've put it, you're limping in against the team you just played and you went out and you kind of laid an egg. I'm really looking to see Arlington come back and play some inspired football. That's what needs to happen for them. And if it does, if they do because defensively they're good enough now Arlington is good enough on defense. So if they come out and they can minimize the mistakes, they'll get into the fourth quarter and this will be a heck of a football game. Houston obviously coming back down to earth and I'm trying to figure out if AJ Smith kind of got found out, like you said, we have the Kirkland injury, what happened to Houston here just playing against better teams in the north like aj, it just seems like they're not even the same team they were five, six weeks ago. Yeah, I think everybody kind of got caught up with, I mean look at how DC got exposed on defense in the last four to five weeks of the season. The first five weeks of the season he's playing chess and everybody else is playing checkers and don't kid yourself. They do some things on defense at DC that are on sound. Well, after about five or six weeks of studying it, people started attacking it and having some success. I think the same thing can be said here. Here's where Houston had a huge advantage. Houston's offensive line was further along in the passing game in the first two to three weeks of the season than everybody else in the league. And Brandon Silvers did a great job of getting the ball out of his hand. So unlike a lot of the offenses the first couple of weeks and not so much DC but just about everybody else weren't dealing with a lot of negative plays, they were always playing with a pretty full deck. And then listen, he's a young offensive coordinator, he's probably created tendencies that became glaring and guess what, a lot of good coaches start studying up and now you have more to go on. And I think John Tre Kirkland getting hurt, crushed them. I really do believe that. And then Brandon Silver's got dinged up a little bit. So it's a multitude of things but I think it applies to the league got better because everybody got to know each other better. So the gains became more competitive because there was more to prep for. And then at the end of the day, quarterback play who got hot late and who stayed healthy. I mean that's a big part of it too is where we sit heading into the week one of the playoffs. I liked it that everyone seemed to really give an us all year. I mean we're having leaving offensive coordinators and defensive, we're doing all this. It just seemed like, I dunno sometimes in the US F l seasons the one that felt like some of the coaches maybe were out for a cup of coffee a little bit. Sometimes it felt like we really we're all in right now this is our job on the line. Well I'll say this, I think that there are young coaches, middle-aged coaches and older coaches that would love to make a career coaching in the X F L. I think they really enjoy it and I think they can be paid well enough to do that and support their families. So there is an investment and I think one of the reasons why there's been an investment is the coaches can clearly see how invested Danny and DJ and the investment group is towards making this thing work. When the owners care and the owners are visible and they're there and they're interacting with the people they've hired because they want to support 'em and see 'em succeed, it makes for a pretty fun work environment. It really does. And so yeah, there's good football coaches that have coached. I mean Reggie Barlow to me is just, I mean here's a guy that's won everywhere. He is bent right now. He gets a chance in professional football and has one of the better plans of any coaching staff in the league. They knew exactly who they were, what they were going to be, how they were going to go about doing it. The players bought in, he didn't deviate and so he's looking at this thing as not just an opportunity for him to move up but even if it didn't happen, what a great gig man. I mean what a great gig. So much fun. Well Tom, I appreciate it. Busy here making the time. Anything else before I let you go? Thanks for your time today. No man, I'm just looking forward to watching the playoffs and seeing, I keep joking with everybody. I got this X ffl championship ring and nobody's come and take it from me so sooner or later somebody's going to win it. I know I had my extreme jersey on the first time we talked. I appreciate it. A lot of time with the league and everything else, so thank you so much. I bet. Thanks for having me. Well I'm thrilled today we are joined by, I have been glued to my TV every week watching this man. We have head coach Stre Buckle here. How are you doing sir? I'm doing well. Doing well. Appreciate you for asking. How are you doing? I'm good. We're excited. I'll be in DC this weekend. We're going to be at the Sea Dragons defenders game. Wish you guys would be in the south but there's always next year. You said you're back home. How's your life right now? How are you doing Well, I'm kind of revealing reliving, I should say this past season on the good, the bad, ugly but also very thankful and really, really excited about this weekend watching some more X F L football. Yeah. How's the process? What was the whole process like for you if you kind of had to grade your experience? Well, well grade just the opportunity was an a plus, obviously execute smooth one and nine got off to one of the worst starts that you can imagine. I can even picture that changing the roster, some of the details on how the makeup of the team and the expectations and all those things we really didn't get correct. We corrected a majority of that probably after week four and we started to play obviously a lot better and was in a lot of games. So very, very exciting. A learning experience, growth opportunity for me. A very big growth leap. So it was good, it was good. When you talk, do you internalize that? Is that on team building? Is it on the coaching? Is it on the players? Where do you place that? If you had to look back of some of the troubles you guys had? Well remember I try, remember this, we didn't have a team this time last year had no players, no coaches, so you talking about entirely new league, new staff, new players, no OTA days. So we went right into training camp which was trying to learn each other, learn a new system, implement a culture in a new city. I mean everything and it just did not gel. Some teams had jailed a little bit earlier and they got off to a hot start but as you see at the end I felt like we was competing and we just couldn't get over the hump. We had two minute turnovers earlier. We couldn't score in the red zone, we couldn't stop anybody kick off a turn the first part of the season defensive. We played pretty well out in the field. I don't think we played very well in the red zone and then we just didn't create enough negative plays on defense. We had some explosive plays on offense at the end. Too many turnovers, just the little things, again the errors pointing in the right direction from the penalties to moving the ball to stopping 'em. It was a learning experience and I felt like we got better. When you look and see Houston or any of the Arlington, them being in the playoff and you're not like were just, when you talk about gelling better, being able to work, what did they do or what happened with them that they were able to succeed where you guys, I thought they got off to a great start. They rushed the pass pretty well on defense. Houston did. They made more big plays and they made 'em when it counted, I don't it just for us, we didn't make the plays when it counted. Just like with Seattle, you look at halftime, I go back to the halftime scenario. We played Seattle, well we got a phantom call about one of our linemen moving his hands. So we go to halftime ten nine verse 13 six Cause we was five yards away from being in Fieldable range. That could have been a huge difference. We get a plot, a block punt with down one. We punting it in the fourth quarter with seven minutes left, we lose by seven. We lost to Arlington by combined two games by three points and we got a call, we had a big catch against Arlington the first game that had us in field goal ranges. That was overruled by Dean Blandino, still mad at Dean for that. So we did some good things but we didn't execute and make the plays when it counted Because it's tough because then obviously next year it'll be different and people coming back but everyone's starting at square one this year so it's just hard. I'm always curious where some teams were able to gel or find success earlier because everyone's starting in the exact same place. I mean it's challenging for all eight teams, right? A hundred percent And I feel like the guys, this is what I say, being the first time head coach and creating that type of environment hurt me, hurt us. But that's the great thing about it. There's only one time. So again, moving forward it won't be like that. You look at Wade, you look at Stoops, you look at Barlow, you look at has, they've been head coaches, they understood kind of how to build a team correctly and they have it. It was kind of w as sword too. They have a bunch of older players. We kind of emphasized even in the league we wanted a younger team kind of developmental. By the time I realized that was not the case, it was too late and if you could see the turnover on the team, we had over 25 transactions. So once we realized, and I think this is good for us, we realize okay, we made a mistake, that's not right, let's fix it. Versus just sitting on it like you see a lot of teams just sit and pump fingers and blame. No, I take it d p P, the minister, we took that and we started to make that change. Things you would do different. Going back you said Scott and signing younger players that way, is that the biggest thing you would change if you had to go back and do it together? What would that be? That not having so many and having some guys that have won which will make older guys. I turned down as a group, we turned down some guys we like, ah, he's 29, 30. I don't know, does it count out of shade? Do we really want that? We run, we rerun that. Yes, we would take four or five of those guys, which I think would've made a huge difference for us. You did have some bright spots. We had Devin Darton on our show a couple weeks ago and obviously who stood out to you and I want to talk quitting Dormy separately, but who stood out to you as Bright spots on the team? Well Devin, Darren Darton did a great job. Terence Plumber did a great job. Savion Patton, Eli Rogers came and did a great job force Jordan Thomas at the end. See that's one of the things we wanted Jordan earlier, we couldn't get him to the middle of the season. Mac Brown, our partner, so we have a few guys that came in and did a great job for Jayla Spy Center. The 20 might be the youngest player in the league center that started the last two games In terms of the quarterback situation in Dormy. We don't got to have to get into all that other stuff. But everything that he went through and playing the way that he did and just what do you think that was like and what is your thought process on seeing everything he went through? Well it is a different situation. Unique, which I've never been a part of. He's never been a part of. But the way the maturity, the professionalism on both sides of okay, this is what happened with everybody disagreed. You go through these things but then as a family when it comes back around it it's like okay this might not have, let's water on the bridge, let's handle this men professionals and let's move forward. In terms of the league overall, how do you think that the season went and if you had to grade league management and executives and everything from kind of a football ops? Oh man. I would say for a new league for I think we had over, it's going to be an end over about 700,000 fans to come playing and having a hub and playing in your home stadium. The logistics of that and I would give us a eight, there's a league and the first class of it, the ownership group being available and then being what we said lie on our feet, being able to adjust, make adjustments from not having an indoor when it got cold to having an indoor just in general the flexibility that we was afforded I think is second to none. Thoughts on spring football in general, having the league like this to give these players an opportunity. I mean awesome. I now obviously we had the N F L Europe before, which was unbelievable. This being here in the states, United States and being able to support each other. We do, I think it's unreal. I think it's needed, it's appreciated on both sides. Fans and players and coaches and the opportunity for the X F L that it gives to guys like myself that get the opportunity to have the ups and downs, to make adjustments, to be the head coach, to be in charge and do all that. It's unbelievable. And for I'm, I'm just very, very appreciative In terms of, yeah, I misspoke. In terms of not only the players but obviously the coaching and staff giving you, do you find yourself or do you think other players, former players would now be interested in utilizing this and kind of taking advantage of this opportunity also? Absolutely. I was talking to somebody last night that I'm thinking about bringing on an old veteran coach that has been in the nfl. The scheduling, everything about it, it's still coaching. You still getting, I call 'em their pros. It is almost like that developmental part that fifth year senior. You get a little bit of that, you get a little bit of that first year rookie guy and you get to keep working your craft, doing something you love and providing entertainment and having an impact not just on the field but off the field. It's what it's about I think and that's why I love it and appreciate it. In terms of other players and things being involved, when as a player seeing the head coach and obviously you're going to have a million different things that you think that they should do different now with the shoes being on the other foot, does that make you look back at maybe some of the things that you were critical of with former coaches or players now that you've got to hold the clipboard on that side? Yeah, I think there's a couple things that I look back on and will says okay, maybe I shouldn't have said that it not a whole lot cause I was always respectful and knew how tough it was. But there's a couple things you're like okay shouldn't not been this tough but I understand now what those guys were going through at that time being now that I'm on this side and some of 'em I'm actually going to reach out to over the next few days and get some more advice from 'em like Tony Dungy, Dan, just different guys like okay, how would you handle this situation? What happened when this happened? Hey, looking forward the year two here, what would you like to see from the league to help you guys be more successful? And it is happening now. It it's one of those, we have a calendar of events that we've already started on the camps. We already have picking out teams that we're going to visit N F L teams. So the improvement and this is why this league is so great and going to have standing for, they're not waiting around to decide what could we do better, what do we do good. They've been doing that the entire season and been giving us that information. And you think they're receptive of anything that you guys might need to help success, help set yourselves up for more success? Absolutely. I mean they sent out out something a couple weeks ago asking about that and I think from Dan and Garcia to Dwayne to Jerry card, the owners, that's what they want, that feedback. And then you throw Russ brand and Mark in there and Doug and you got a management team and a ownership group that wants to get better. They want to put a grade grade one product on the field. A couple more. I'll let you go here. I promise I appreciate your time here. So we talked with Coach Beck in the beginning of the season and he was talking, his biggest success would be to have all his players signed on the N F L camps at the end of the season, rebuild obviously continuity, all that. How do you view the team and your position and the league? What would you like to say? Kind of echoing what be said, you want all these guys to get opportunity to go to the next level if not as they come back and we get them core guys going if they really appreciate this opportunity and stay focused on what's in hand and worry about the future later and let's try to put this thing, turn it around for us, the landlord, guardians and being the playoff and get opportunity to win the championship. Were you impressed with the level of talent in the league or what was your thoughts on the talent level of the players? Oh man, I was very impressed talking about from first of all how big and high in shape those guys were. And then just from the playbook, the football kid it is I'm tech schemes schematically, there are a bunch of n ffo, N F L coaches, former coaches on the staff. So implementing that, how quickly they received that and the play just kept getting better and better and better from everybody around the league. The respect factor from each team was unbelievable. The professionalism, I mean we literally would, we would fly down on the same plane, split the plane up, fly in, compete, I mean try to tear each other apart after the game, see each other, I'm talking about literally 30 minutes later and congratulate each other. Obviously we was congratulating our team a lot, which it won't be the case next year and the professionalism then get back on the plane and bus and there was no issue. So I could really, really appreciate that for the players. Yeah, I hadn't been, I think probably a little chippy after some of the games depending on who won or lost. Well that's what I'm saying. It might have been initially but after the cool down and everything, cause we had to go through the buses were parked right beside each other. We had to go through the same security gate and then you had the bus ride over, separate bus, then you get on the same plane and you get off the plane together and the buses are parked right beside each other to the professionalism of the players I think need to be highlighted just across the league. That was amazing to me and I really appreciate the players. Last question, what would be your message for Orlando Guardians fans? Obviously tough year trying to build a new market, new franchise, we'd like to see more success. What would you have to say to them? I would say, hey, have some patience with us. If you saw us at the end of the season, the second half, we was very, very competitive. We are working diligent and trying to find guys that can finish and make plays when it count. We've already started the process of improving the team. So we had this saying last year, Orlando Guardian stand guard, we've already changed in that I we're going to make it the Guardian Way, which is first class, professionalism, playmakers, all those things that we need to turn this around and get in the playoff and give us a shot to win a championship. Well I really appreciate your time. It was fun to watch. I enjoyed you trying to ask if you could get your time out back the other day. That was fun. I had TAed you on there about it. Did you really think they were going to give it back or were you playing to the camera? No, I really because the ref, you guys didn't hear the whole conversation, right? The ref was telling one of the players on the field that we had 12 guys on the field, which was not the case. So that was their mistake. And so I was asking, since you guys made the mistake, then you should give us the penalty, give us the timeout back. That was the whole thing around that. We had Dean on last week fi I bonus question here. Were you happy with the level of officiating or would you like to see it improved? Well, it just like us in the beginning of the season it was needed improvement just like our team. I felt like the second half it was very good. I thought it started to be fair and balanced and all that. So in the beginning need a lot of work, no different than us and at the end it got really good and it was unique and very exciting too. Well I appreciate your time. We'll see you next season and I know that you just enjoy the watch and a lot of guardians fans on here, as bad as they were sometimes and it's good to see the improvement. Well thank you again and just have patience again, guardian fans. We will do better. Appreciate all the love and all the other stuff we get too. We will come back bigger, faster, and stronger next year. Awesome. Head coach Buckley, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Bye. Huge special thanks to all of our guests. Like I said, I know it was a crazy week with the N F L draft, just kind of engulfing everybody's time. So really appreciate Emory Tom and then Chob Buckley for coming on the Guardians Media team. If we joked, if the guardians could play on the field as well as the comms team plays off the field, the guardians would be a force to be reckoned with. But hope you guys enjoy. Hope you guys are enjoying the draft. Hope you like the X L playoffs. Hope ratings go good. Like I said, I got some spokes in the fire to get one of some more sports media people on next week to break all that stuff down. Ratings came out this week when I was working. Sure, I'm sure Twitter was fine. I was filming over at a school for an auction video, but I'm sure Twitter was absolutely fine when the U S F L ratings came out this week. But should be good. We'll see how they do again, C X F L playoff games and then obviously X F L will be going away, so hopefully we'll see some boosts in the U S F L ratings here coming up here in two weeks. Or I guess it would be that we got the bye week and then the championship, so we'll see. I'm sure they will figure it all out. Like I said, like it subscribe. Thank you guys so much for your time busy and taking the time to watch the show with everything else going on in the draft and I hope your N F L team got the best draft pick in the world and that you did not throw any remotes against your TV or anything else with that. Thank you guys. We'll see you next time. Cheers.

USFL Week 2 + XFL Week 10: What Did We Learn?

Well happy playoff Monday here for some of the teams. Some of the teams in the XFL. We'll talk about it today. USFL week two. Exciting stuff coming down the way I have with me today. A sad It's okay. A sad Pat Rapino representing his St. Louis Battle Hawks. Pat checking in with you. Welfare check. Pat, how are you doing? I'm okay because the speculation tweets are beginning with AJ McCarran putting out his tweet about wanting to play with that man next year. You think AJ back in the X F L? I mean I think he'll, the cool thing about AJ and we've talked about this at nauseum is that the world is at his feet. So he doesn't have, if I'm him, I kind of wait till that middle of training camp. Okay. Like when the Vikings said Teddy Bridgewater get hurt. You know what I mean? Let me choose the N F L team. I want to go to Kind of pull on the Del Beckham there. I like that though, that I'll choose. I'll tell you which teams don't want to play For. Don't call me, I'll call you. I love That. That's good. Well we're here today. We have everyone checking in. Chris, we got Matt here. Exciting times. I was very rowdy on Twitter last night. Very exciting. I don't like going to the press box for the C Dragons games. I like being in the field for that. I will officially be in DC and our nation's capital next weekend. I bought the standing room only ticket in the beer snake area when the tickets went on sale. Listener Seth help me out with the code and then I waited. I have my flight purchase on Miles last night. So we are locked in Pat e. Exciting times. We'll talk about the St. Louis of it all but see Dragons in the North championship game against the DC Defenders. Do we even have a chance? I mean, yeah because here here's something I saw last night. Matt Sexton friend of the show going in for the touchdown, right? What happened? Cause I think it was the gentleman's name is Kelvin Knight, I forget, forget Kelvin Wright. Does that sound right? So obviously the points thing kind of got figured out. They got they're comms guys on the sidelines saying hey we're good and he still did the reverse Damn Beebe ding Don Beebe ding from the Super Bowl on Leon Lu. So to me that says enough about the team that they definitely have a chance and we saw it with the generals last year in the US l that nine and one doesn't mean anything, but I do think Vaughn Hutches and Reggie Barlow are a way better team than because obviously last year with the stars it was just getting case cookies getting into his group. So there are similarities there, but nine and one doesn't mean anything and that sound cliche any given Sunday or Saturday in this case I believe I didn't like that. I didn't like Matthew Sex and friends of the show. I mean Matthew was kind of flexing on Seattle coming in there. Obviously we didn't hear the broadcast with Dean. Also a friend of the show. I'm sure he had some. Is that the X ffl rule now that you can't fumble it into the end so ridiculous. That shouldn't have been a touchback. We were all screaming about that. Very, very exciting times there. I still don't know. I know Brian stole, sent out the email about why the battle hawks are eliminated. Don't still. Did it really come down to one point? Do you understand how the playoffs worked? I do. My problem is this, I think every time I understand a new thing comes out. So maybe this is my slow brain or anything because I'm getting it, I'm breathing it and then I have five other people who are texting me or messaging me who are the casual Battle Hawks fans. So what's going on? And I'm taking what Mike says, what other people on Twitter says. Then Brian sends something out and they're like, well ESPN said this and I'm like, bro, I don't know at this point. Don't, I'm going to be honest. Let's wait till the game's over. But my girlfriend brought up a really good point and she was at work talking to people and people were talking about the X Ffl St. Louis and they were like, so why aren't they getting in? And she's like, well what do you mean? She's like, it's a tiebreaker but what are you talking about? So it deterred a lot of casual people to where it's like we live, breathe, make a little bit of money from doing this. All that good stuff where it's some dude who just got done working 56 hours a week, building roofs is like, dude, this team's seven and three, why are they not in the playoffs? This is stupid. And I think it could have turned off a lot of people to the, I don't want to say absurdity, but just the very fluidity of the playoff situation. Yeah, I mean we're still having Jared in the chat here, max. We're still talking about we didn't and I had Producer Max texting me and I told Mike because I had people DMing him. I've been drinking Rainier since two o'clock. Like I'm not the guy to be asking about this right now, just right now. Except obviously when they announced it in the stadium, yo, it was good. It was good. It was exciting. The south a little bit more locked up. Are you pleased to see or Arlington back again with Houston? Is that an exciting matchup in the south? I mean third time's a charm for Arlington. If Arlington won, it wouldn't surprise me at this point. You get to the point Luis Perez, like they were running kind of a stale offense yesterday. Don't show too much. Obviously Brandon didn't play yesterday. I mean based off the playoff structure, that's just the way it is. There's a lot of things in life that aren't fair and being a St. Louis Battle Hawks fan today is not fair despite what you're doing. But it kind of sucks. But the team does look better with Perez. Obviously Davidon Smith didn't play and whatnot, so it could be a good game, it could be a blowout. I think everyone's tuned into the North division. We'll watch the south division, but I, as far as a ratings perspective, if they had a major drop off in ratings from the Houston Arlington game, that would not surprise me. Especially what, there's six games next week. If that was number six on the slate of spring football, that would not surprise Me. Well yeah, so it's going to be, so the Saturday game here, and I can pull this up, we got Renegades at Houston at 7:00 PM eastern in ESPN N two and then obviously the Seattle game DC on the ESPN proper there. But I could see that being love and I wish we could go live tomorrow. I've seen the prelims for the US L of weekend numbers. I think it's going to be fun tomorrow. I think if we could have done that, max has a comment here. It almost could be St Louis not getting in. We could fix this next year. You might have to be the sacrificial lamb where the Battle Hawk fans are still outraged. So they do get rid of the divisional playoff and they do the division winners and then the top two points, whatever after that to get in. Would you like to see, I know Andy and I have been kind of harping about this for weeks changed X F L playoffs whatever next year. I mean that would be good for this year, but we don't do know if it'll be good for next year. I, I don't want to say case by case basis, but I think what happens next year if someone else gets screwed, I don't know what the fix is right now. It's easy for me to get on my soapbox and be like, St. Louis should be in, this is nonsense. But what if there are a bunch of teams? What if the next tier of teams all went five and five? What are we doing here? Then we have to do this whole tiebreaker again versus St. Louis goes five and five last year with all five of their wins come into division and then Seattle went five and five and all five. They just beat up on the south. I mean we're going to run into problems. I think maybe a little bit more education and clarification on the TIEBREAKERS could be good, but what Max is saying isn't outrageous. I just don't think there's a perfect scenario in this. I think you're going to hurt someone's feelings somewhere. Well because I, I was pulling this up here, this Jake guy, whatever on Twitter, he is like, this is a travesty DA the holy hell. It's like because no sub 500 team is everyone in the division. I mean this happens in the NFL ithappened, why should commanders two seasons ago, one when the N F C said it happens? I don't think it's a bad look. I think it's just, it's the numbers and that's the way it worked out. I don't think this is a stay on the league. That stuff, the battle hawks r and n and that potentially that the renegades whatever. I mean I just think that's nonsense. I think that's something that people are picking on just to pick on the exit help. Yeah, I mean it's definitely a possibility in an 18 league and that I think he tweeted that. That's something I'll give credence to. But I mean right now in the US L there, I think there might be a 500 team making it because the stars don't look as good as I was tuned into that game yesterday and the stars don't look that good and k K is clearly hurt. He's going to keep playing but he's not a hundred percent so there's no Brian Scott the case K drop drop off. There's case K is some guy we haven't really heard off and badly so we might be dealing with this in about seven weeks in the U S F L. So it's pretty, I mean don't know, maybe they're different, maybe they have a better system. Maybe they're just like, we should start maybe because of what the X ffl happened, they're starting the prep for it a little bit. Let's not be that guy type thing. So yeah, I think it was also just hard that it was so convoluted last week with the ESPN broadcast and bringing Dean on and then this week I think that was the problem. I know that Mike has been on the phone talking to the league and figuring that out that there was so much, excuse me, confusion. It was such a in the minutia thing and I had Dean on the show and I know Dean likes talking about it, but it's such a thing that's over people's heads. I'm just thinking it'll work. Unless you're the hardcore of the hardcore spring football fan, you're not whatever. And even if you are, you're still, you can't just look at a text message from someone. You have to, for me, I'm a pretty visual guy. I have to write it down and if I'm getting these texts and I'm at dinner, I'm not working. I don't have my notepad in my back pocket. And if people are asking me they want a simple answer. So are we winning or are we not? Like what's going on guy? And I felt bad I couldn't provide a text message worth of explanations to people, but I don't poo the league for this. It's out of all the things that get on the high horse about the spring football wars, this situation is the least of my concerns. It sucks. Obviously I can't go to a game next week. I can't cover a game. But overall this is the least of my worries at this point And we're going to talk you as a fellow in here, I want to talk Santa Antonio not making it. It does feel like the animosity right now is at an all time high. It's very, very interesting. We were in the chat yesterday and even people asking about what is the usfl, what are the breakers met with harassment of you don't know enough about this. It's a really weird time. Like I said, I'm glad wish I could go live tomorrow to talk about the ratings we have to work, but it really, it's interesting right now the world we Live in. Yeah, I mean semblance. So it's parallel the society. If you don't this thing, you're against that thing. And I mean, I don't know, trying to go back to who started it and I don't even know who started. It's the hat fields and the McCoys who actually fired the first shot. Because in my mind there's two things that I think started this whole thing of animosity and I think it was the Rod Woodson thing I think kind of ruffled a lot of feathers. I don't want to put the blame on Rod Woodson because I think I really don't want to put the blame on anyone. I think the Rod Woodson thing kind of irked a lot of people in the U S F L. And then I think there, I could pin it to one or two people on Twitter who were very anti u s ffl and I don't want to say they started it, but then it's like it kind of kicked back real hard, which is natural of society. If you're one way for so long and you're, you go so far one way, then people are like, well I don't really like this so I'm going to go the exact opposite. And then everyone's like, oh my god, how is this going on? So mean at this point I covered both leagues. I don't think I'm biased. Some people say I'm biased to the battle hawks because there's a team in my location. I mean that makes sense if you really think about it. But in the end I'm going to cover both leagues. I literally put out videos for both. Both leagues cover both leagues. I've actually written more US F L articles this year than I have X F L articles. So I mean I'm going to cover both leagues and I hope both leagues are here this stay because in the end, what is it, 800 jobs per league. So if you celebrate that, yeah, Mike is right, controversy does great cash, but if you celebrate one of these leagues failing, you're essentially cheering the fact that 800 people are out of employment. Well and not only the players staff and social media and kind of all this kind of stuff. When you say you're here, the chat I was mixing about sometimes, what did you think it came down to Mr. Automatic Romo for the San Antonio not making the field goal, one field goal away from our boy Jays team being in there. What did you make San Antonio just being on the outside looking them. I mean they had plenty of opportunity. You can look back on every team that they were within one score of a couple games, obviously starting it off in the season with that Battle Hawks win. We all championed St. Louis and I definitely will as well. But I mean we played to the level of our opponent multiple times that dc, even our first DC game, granted AJ threw a pick that first pick that was a pick six if that guy stays on his feet, I think it was Gary Jennings it, I think it was Gary Jennings. If he stays on his feet, that's a nine yard game and that picked six. Now there's a reverse on that score and then it just kind of see Seattle, we came out flat. That's second DC game was our really the only one that felt like we didn't have a chance in. But I mean you can talk about it to any team like San Antonio, shoulda the won. I kind of, what is he saying Max? Yeah, no, 100%. I think he lost his NFL job with that kick and it's unfortunate because of how good he was for the majority of the year, and I don't have a stats in front of me, but I remember every time there was a new 50 yard, 50 yard field goal, it was John Parker Romo and whatnot. It was between him and Matt McCraney for a while or two of the better kickers in the xfl. So Hines Ward made a lot of great strides as a coach because let's be honest, he was a rookie coach. I think if we can go back, and I was very vocal about this, I'm a Reed Ette, Homer fellow Reeds Unite type thing, but they went with Cone and Cone really only had two good games like yesterday. He played pretty decent but they couldn't get into the end zone. Caleb, Caleb Bajaj getting hurt. I mean that bra team, and granted we don't really know what they're going to look like next year, but I'd like to see 'em get another quarterback and that's nothing against Cohen, but there was a lack of development and it's felt like he was very stagnant and that offense really only moved with Reinette and then he broke his foot. So I mean because they're three and seven, Arlington's four and six, that margin of victory isn't is or that margin of error for them to get them into the playoffs. But in the end, Arlington Air quote was the better team in the south on paper. So I'm glad they are getting to play this Saturday. Yeah, I mean I'm trying to think. I guess at the end of the world it comes down, I'm happy. It would've been nice to have obviously St. Louis in here. I think Seattle is fine. DEI is one of the faces of the league. I know McLaren's been fighting for that as well. But do you think that having ucci in that position, beating out AJ just in terms of a PR and we're able to talk about Ben now, is that a fine step down from AJ who has really gotten a lot of the focal this season of hey look at this guy choosing the league and everything. Well it's not only aj, it's the whole team, right? Because of obviously with everything with Croy. So for them to bring a championship to the city, you could have ran with that storyline. They filled the stadium, they're over, I think they averaged what, 34,000 for every game and whatnot. They were the champions of the league. And as far as attendance, the Hakeem Butler story's great. Dairy Shepherd was one of the most dynamic players in the league and he is also a Missouri guy. There was a lot of local kids there as well that made this team a lot more lovable and with all the comebacks and everything and the wackiness. But I think that was a great story. I know a lot of people, and Rick talked about it last week, about the Ben Ucci ism and I don't want to talk negative about Ben, he seems like a decent enough guy, but I know Reid, you're right behind the bench. When I was at the Battle Hawks game, I took some friends and my girlfriend did June Jones go up to him at all in between. So I mean that tells you something in my opinion. So I mean there's a very big family aspect. It seems like DCI's kind of a loner in this, that air quote, this league might be beneath him because in the press conference when he was walking up he was like, how many yards did I throw for? And they were like X, X, Y, Z. And he is like, what about rushing guards? He's like, they were like X, Y, Z. He's like, all right, so I broke 300, that's all that matters. And I'm like, okay, I mean your team just blew us out but whatever. So I do it. It is weird. That's actually interesting that you bring it up. I do very different dynamics on the St. Louis and I don't know if Beck is kind of instilling that and he's with AJ Haslett's a different coach and he's kind of doing his own thing and we're watching and he seems grumpy and I know Seattle was playing with Heavy Hearts kind of yesterday with all the Chris Smith and everything and they did the moment of silence for him, which was great. But it does very different dynamics between the Seattle team and between the St Louis team. I think that's interesting. I mean I think there's a lot more, and this might come off negative, you have have Lindsay, you have Gordon, you have a couple guys who are just, their goals are clear, you know what I mean? I'm just doing this to get to the next level. While you have AJ who's like, yeah man, I could just go to the, he had three NFL workouts per, I think Aaron Wilson is a guy who always posts the NFL workouts. He had, I counted three of his workouts or NFL teams. So I mean we talked about earlier in the show it's world, we're all just living in it as far as his next contract. So I mean Ucci had a couple NFL workouts I saw last year, but in the end he's still establishing himself and everything like that. Well and he's talked about multiple times. I think they showed it on Player 54 is is another coach. He was like, I don't want to use the word grilling Ryan Willis, but he's like, okay, if this option isn't here, this is the thing and X, Y and Z, hey Bruce is just kind of chilling in the back just like, yep, that's what you got to do. So I don't know in the end, Houston got in so that that's good too. We get to see more Wade Phillips. Well and I saw, I have a question here for you, but yeah, Wade almost getting taken out on the sidelines, I saw that very how Mummy esque back in something with the Houston something with the Texas sidelines, or not the Houston but the Texas sidelines. We have a question here. Ty's talking Beck's, the players coach, his press conferences are emotional made cry. What was Beck's post? Kind of knowing they won but it wasn't in their hands and it was up to Salia. What was Beck like post game on the Saturday game against Orlando? So I wasn't at the game so everything I got was second hand from people who were there. And I think he's a realist when it comes down to it. It's like, yeah, it's great, we've won. I think he knows, okay, we didn't take care of business for Seattle. If they obviously beat Seattle, we're not really having this conversation. So I mean he's a realist, he's been in the locker room, he's been on some good teams, he's been on some bad teams, he's been around the league. These guys gravitate to him. He's an amazing, just a nice guy. I can't say anything negative about him. He first time head coach, this is only a second coaching opportunity. The poor guy last night was feverishly eating. I kept shining the camera on him and he just had this look of dread and it's not so much that and obviously they want to win a championship, but in my mind it was now I can't like I'm losing this group of guys, this special group of dudes and he's been vocal about and I know when you talked to him he was like, yeah, if all my guys leave next year, I won as a coach. They all went to the N NFL and all that goofy stuff. But he loves this team. He loves being a part of this team. He loves the men in this locker room, he loves all his staff and it's your first hurrah. It's like nothing will ever be as special as that first season. Bringing it back, feeling the energy, all that goofy stuff. I agree with that and I think the hub kind of instills out as well. And we're all in that I want to talk because obviously we didn't see the broadcast. What were they were showing them like him and AJ or whatever they were back in Arlington because I saw Stoops was at the Arlington game as well and they had Troy Achman in there. So what were they showing back during the game During the Arlington game? He was in the booth? Yeah, he was just doing his thing. AJ was on the sideline with I think Mateo Durant and they were all at a restaurant, they had a live feed on them and he was just kind of looking and then each, as the game was going over, he kind of looked a little bit more, and I hate to say this, but dead inside and the face and they would show it after a touchdown or they would show it when they were driving and he just looked displeased and then you could, so I started on the third time they did it, I started looking in the background of the other players and staff and the energy was getting sucked out of that restaurant and it was, I mean unfortunate, that's the only thing you can say about it. I mean this guy put his heart and soul into everything, AJ put his heart and soul into everything. All those guys you know have Hakeem Butler, his journey DMing back. You have so many different of these guys and something that doesn't really get talked a lot is you have a lot of his guys and Dave Bowler, the dpp, those are guys that Becca's known for almost four years from the San Diego fleet. So you had those guys, Donny the kicker is a San Diego fleet guy, a couple of the linemen, TNY, tupo, Travis Feeney, there was a lot of retreads that these, so Beck has known these guys for years and then there's the Iowa State connection like Mike Rose, king Butler, Willie Harvey, all these guys, Iowa State guys that he's connected to because of his son and it's just over regardless of anything. But the thing is you can't be sad that it's over, be happy that it happened. Kind of like the Kirk, Ben, Kurt situation. Oh we're seeing a lot of comments still about the playoff and I want to talk the kind of the US F L at all as well here just because I think that WA was an interesting weekend for them. We're still seeing, we're adding two more teams, make sure they get expand. The problem to me is I don't want it to be the Academy Awards where now we have 10 best picture nominations and everybody gets in and we have the CFL where everyone but you know have to be really terrible in the CFL not to make a playoff team. I think there needs to be something earned. I like the idea of that maybe the division winners and then two and three play and then you do a bi-week in there but then still six of eight teams are making the playoffs. Man, I think this is a fine format, but I could see them working on figuring into that next year because I dunno, people seem displeased. I mean four teams is enough. I'll be a little bit more open to six teams if we obviously expand. I'm pretty anti expansion for both these leagues because until you get actual owners and all that stuff where it's like some guy in Vegas owns the Vipers, so if he wants to make his team better, he'll pay Tom Brady 5 million x, Y and Z. Let's get these people living here, let's get these people established. Let's get, maybe not AJ is the best example, but let's say Gary Jennings wants to be here, let's get him in St. Louis to a four year contract, kind of how in the eighties the U S F L was going for it and then we can talk expansion. In my personal opinion, I'm okay with the 10 game season. I think that 10 games is good regardless of if there was one spring league, eight spring leagues, whatever. It's just enough because ultimately until you can pay these guys competitive N F L wages, no point, there's no point. Let these guys go. Obviously you might like Chris Smith, rest in peace was a decent example because he was 32 years old and if that guy can make a practice squad salary because that's kind of where he was at in his career, great, we've accomplished that. But the expansion talk to me, which obviously leads into a little bit of the playoff talk is a little bit irresponsible at this point. And while it sounds great, especially with the U S F L because they have god knows how many franchises and trademarks, it sounds good. And even to the X F L because you can air bring back the Birmingham bolts and the LA Extreme or the LA Wildcats. It's just to me, let's both these leagues, let's get some continuity, let's get some, let's prove that we're not going away in three years. I agree. I think E and we've even in the chat here, comments Vegas, we got to leave. They're already selling season tickets next year in Vegas. I think we're locked into Cashman field. Maybe they do some work on the field in the off-season, but I think they're locked in there. I think you can fill that. I see people they need to move to bigger venues in Vegas. I'm like no, we need to fill what we have here. Max has a comment here and then I do want to talk to U S F L. We have what did you make of the X ffl players voting not to unionize this last week. They had the vote on Wednesday. I heard that some of the polling locations were switched last minute, the players weren't able to get it. What do you make of them not wanting to want voting thus far? Not to unionize. I mean I think right now it comes with a little bit of a, we don't know the specifics right there. So for me to make a comment, anyone to make a comment on it I think is borderline that irresponsible. I will say this, that they were, it's not that they're anti-union or whatnot, it's that they didn't want a union with the steel workers. So I mean how many people said no? How many people said no to that? But they still want a union. Yes Andy, I don't want to San Diego franchise, not yet. But how many people said no to the steelworkers union but actually said yes to John Smith's union or the N F L P A, which was brought up a couple times. So I mean beyond them for making the decision of not just, I don't want to say blindly following and whatnot, but in the NFL you want to unionize. There are some union, there are some unions that I think are great. There are some unions that I think take advantage of the situation, whatever it is. But in the end these guys are making informed decisions. Especially a lot of these guys were in the NFL and they saw the NFL pa like what it was and whatnot. So I don't think they're making ill advised decisions. I don't think people ever thought about unionizing until the u s Ffl did it. So I think that's kind of why the Steelworkers Union kind of benefited on it. But it is like we don't know the details and for us to get up here and make oh they're dumb or oh they're smart is irresponsible. Now the polling situation, that's an issue obviously because I feel like you can just do it in the team facilities, but I mean we don't know if that's 100% true or not. I'm a big proponent that players are smart and know what they're going to do and I think that they, Kenneth and them came into the US F L situation last year and said we have to fix this now we have to get the what. And again, I'm not living in the hotels and doing all that, but they said we need to deal with this and now, and like I said, it could be they want to figure out something different with the steel workers if the NFL PA or whatever, but they, they've been through this, they know what's going on and so I think that them, I would trust them at this point. I would trust the players wanting to do what they do best. Obviously if anything comes out we'll talk about it. But yeah, I was surprised. I mean just you figure, oh they did with the US L they're going to do it here and maybe they're something bigger. And that was my general general knee jerk reaction especially because we did see the positives of what happened the US F l and whatnot. So you know what, Kenneth being there, it definitely in my mind, but he hasn't come out and made this statement himself, so that might tell you something about it. Granted, I think he just got surgery or something like that, so maybe his benefits are working pretty good right now so he's not got anything to complain about. But I mean it's all, I'm curious to see what Kenneth has to say when he gets his bearings under him and whatnot. I mean I reached out to Ryan and obviously he's been on the show with Kenneth and I think if there's things then Ryan knows that he can obviously if there's messages they want to get out, they can do it with me as well. Something we're seeing still expansion talk everything in the chat. I watch as much of the US belt this weekend as I could. Obviously we were at the game last night so I didn't see the stars, our team, so surprising loss to the Panthers in there. I did watch basically all of the New Jersey general's, Pittsburgh Mall Earth game. To me, the hub is not working right now. We had down attendance. I don't know when we're allowed to talk about the Birmingham attendance on Saturday. I saw the prelims for that. Obviously the Breakers game. I think there were more people on the field for St. Louis than there was in the stands for the Breakers game. What are your thoughts on the US of L here week two From a game play perspective? I mean the Mallers are going to molar. I was talking to someone about like, oh, what should I do for my power rankings at the Showboats? Obviously only scored two points. And I was like, well you have to keep the molars last because I mean it's continuity here of the last several 12 games of them have been just subpar quarterback play and you're going through the list of Kyle Lala, Joshua Valey, Roland Rivers, now James Morgan and Troy Williams. But I mean, can we put a halt on the Brady White experience? It's two folds on Birmingham. I talked about it on your show, I've read about it. I think they retained 60 something percent of their roster from 2022 going into camp. Maybe it's a little less because I know they cut some guys and whatnot, but we saw how good they were last year. This shouldn't surprise anyone. Granted the Showboats I, the Brady White experience has not been a good time. And I don't know if you know this fried, but he went to Memphis and he coaches like Memphis, so obviously that needs him. That means he needs to be the quarterback. And they gave Ryan Willis two series and they were moving ball decent at one point and with Alex Collins and then kind of just died. I'm a big Vinny papa guy, but Vinny Papa shouldn't be your number one option at wide receiver, especially when you have both Cyber Mitchell, if this is surprising you about how good this Alex Magoo is, you haven't been paying attention. This guy is crazy athletic. He's made plays all over the field. Last year when he had the opportunity, obviously Jamar, Jamar Smith last year did nothing to lose his job. It was an injury. Just says Magoo McGoo did nothing to lose his job last year. It was an injury in week one. But the stallions are the team to beat the cream of the crop. The panthers look way better, which we've talked about in nausea. I cover the Panthers and it's good to see everything. A lot of people were knocking QB play in last night's game, but I'm, it was raining pretty decently. The people were slipping and if you look at cookies and Josh love, they're double clutching the football to get that additional grip on it. So that's why the routes are off, but they're making the right reads and that's to me more important. And that's why I was telling someone who's a Panthers fan, love didn't play that well. I was like, well he is playing in the ring, he's double clutching the ball. These receivers were slipping but he was making the correct reads. I think I saw three Ill advised passes from Josh. Love that W had nothing to do with the elements. I'm a little disappointed. The Canton game looked pretty during the day from what it was. I'm very curious to see what Ford Field is next week. I mean per Ticketmaster and everything it, it's going to look pretty good. And also the lions being good in the NFL kind of keeps football on people's mind in Detroit and they are returning and whatnot. So we'll see. I mean the quarterback player for the Muellers has been trash pup looks okay, but in the end he wasn't a star and he wasn't a star in the C F L, but he's very, and Deandre Johnson, my biggest thing has been like, okay, you're the guy now you're going to have to throw the ball of more in 10 yards and he's not getting his feet set. He's looking a little jittery for, because I watched the Muellers game pretty in depth or yesterday and it doesn't seem for on Pittsburgh side, they are so wishy washy as far as like, okay, you get a series. It goes back to that mantra. If you got two quarterbacks, you got no quarterback, you got, yeah, you got none. And I, I'm seeing some things in the chat right now talking about Canton. They should just do a Canton team in my personal opinion. I think Canton will be a transitionary hub. Yeah, so they're able to get them the breakers in the New Orleans. They find the spot for Pittsburgh, but they don't find the spot for Philadelphia. Philadelphia will go to the Canton and that makes as much sense to me as it can be. I think they're discovery and I think they thought, hey, we got 17,000 whatever in there for the championship game. And if get there was a lot of people there, I think the whole hub should be Canton just because I think then you have the football Hall of fame and all that. I know I don't want to already the Homer, I don't want to be the Homer in here, but I get a lot of comments weaving in the chat. Something is not working with the U S F L this season and I don't know if it is just in comparison to the X ffl right now and the games are meaning more because we're in week 10 and we have crowds and it's a sell on DC and we're cutting. But something doesn't seem to work. I don't know if it's just more glaring this year than it was last year. To me it's kind of the same. Like I said, the Mallers game yesterday, I'm like it's three at half. It's really hard to really hard this by Sunday watching this game And it's a good three. It's not James Morgan is throwing the deep ball and the defensive back makes a great play or they're at the goal line and they're just great defense. It was sloppy play. And even if, okay, we can talk about, oh there were sacks here and there, but they weren't good sax. They weren't the defensive end going for a good rip move and putting some good skillsets together. It was the quarterback lost his first option and it is just like, oh my God, where's the rest of the play going? So these guys are still high level athletes. If you're in the pocket for six seconds, someone's going to be in your face. I, the gap disparity between the U S F L is a little bit concerning to me as far as with the play come coming down, that really bothers me. Maybe the showboats get it together with another team. I mean the gamblers showed some life this week, but I'm still not on team Kenji Bahar throwing three interceptions and whatnot. I don't know if Terry Wilson is any better. But regardless, the gap, the disparity between some of these teams, because we can knock on Orlando and I think Orlando gets more hate because of Terrell. Buckley more than anything else because he's kind of a living meme. But in the end, the The Guardians were very fun to watch and competitive and outside of their offensive line play, which is the biggest thing, they had decent quarterback play with Paxton Lynch. Quin Domany put up some good games. Even this Saturday he had a good game. He regressed for two weeks, came back and we're not getting that with the Muellers. And I know there's Twitter debates of who would win the Muellers or the Guardians. I'm like the Guardians. Yes, A hundred percent. A hundred Percent. I mean their receivers are so much better. And Ruben Foster has been playing pretty good and Boogie Roberts has been doing pretty decent as well. He looks boogie. Roberts actually looks way better this year than he did last year. And it's like those are only two players, dudes. We have a tied here and I noticed this early on with the X F L. It did seem like, and I don't know if it's espn, if it has a wider reach or we know that Fox, we are, we're protecting the U US F L, we can control everything. But it does seem like I, I'm seeing many, many more viral and everyone's sharing stuff from the X F L than the US F L are. Do you disagree? Agree. What do you think? I expect though, like ESPN Air quote, the worldwide leader in sports. I mean you're going to share these videos and more people I think follow ESPN or N F L on ESPN than they do do with Fox and whatnot. But I mean that remains to be seen because now we're in, we're it, I feel like it's not fair to talk about this because now we have 10 weeks of stories players, maybe it's shame on us because we didn't do our due diligence to really keep track on track this for the first week two and three or one, two and three weeks because of what were the analytics of that. So now everyone's like, okay, the X ffl is around right now. That's great. Oh, there's another football league, the US Ffl. So it's like I don't see anyone but that I don't see anybody talking about the US F L. Yeah, I mean don't think they will until the X FFLs over. But then is it, I mean does a three half game suddenly become more watchable without the X ffl? My question is, we had Andrew Buckleton last week from awful announcing, we're talking like, okay, does the USL get a 30% bump here after the EXL goes out there? I don't know because I wouldn't, that was a horrendous game yesterday at Canton. We spent five minutes, we're talking with the crew cop's wife in the stands. I'm like, what are we doing here? I don't know. That becomes more watchable when the exit L goes away. Goes Away. I mean I have no idea. I mean I think I've said it in the group chat, week five will be the biggest indicator of where this league goes. You should get a bump just by attrition, even if the games are on at the same time, whatever. But you should get a bump at least a couple hundreds, hundreds of thousands of people just because they're like, well football's on. Because I mean that's who you're catering to. You're catering to the dude or the dude who's going to the bar after working and building his roof and you're like, I'm going to take my girlfriend, my wife out to dinner and we're going to watch this game. That's really who you're catering to. You're not catering to like us on Twitter because we're going to watch no matter what because it's Eric quote, our job and we're supposed to and we need to know what's going on. So like how are they going to attract the casual viewer? And that's the challenge for both leagues, right? That's the challenge for any sport coming in the mainstream. But honestly, I have no idea. I don't think the US fellow is going anywhere. I think Fox has a five year plan that they're ready to go kill the war with and we'll see what happens. But yeah, no, they need to figure something out as far as with this quarterback play and whatnot and the can cannibalization of the ratings and whatnot because they're going to have to deal with this every year for three, for three, four weeks. Well, to me, and it hurts the momentum getting off because I don't think, like I said, I think we're going to see some growth, but I don't think it's just going to spike overnight when the develop, max has a comment here. And then jj, I've started a comment we want to talk about. I think the US develop execs expected the interest in the league to be more what it was in the early weeks instead of, it looks like the interest was about where it was at the end of last season. Yeah, I don't see, there was nothing in the US F L a season saved for a meaningless college draft. I'm sorry that did anything. Okay. We relocated the showboat six months ago. Okay, we're doing that. There was nothing that you're ever going to get that spiking in going into year two. Yeah, I mean what is there their goal, what is the reality for them? What numbers are they like, okay, this is good, this is sustainable. Are they going to be banking on more the kind of promoted, are they going to be looking for investors, the Fred Smith of Memphis, are they going, what is their business model? Because I, and I could throw that question at the X Ffl as well. What is the goal? What is okay to them? Do they want to pay these guys at some 0.3 million a year? Do they want to continue the path they're on? Is the Rock going to just keep putting out black Adam movies to fund this? You know what I mean? He's like, oh man, okay, we're going into the red. Yeah, I guess I'll make Moana too. You know what I mean? That is, there's not a set of, in my opinion, other than, excuse me, there's a set of goals. But what is the expectation? What is your actual, okay, we need to make X amount of dollars, we need to put X amount of people in the stands, obviously. And I asked this question and I didn't get an answer, was like, what is the expectation for the non hub teams? And are you factoring that into your budgets? Are you just kind of like, Hey man, we get 2000 people. That's a win. If we can get a little bit more transparency on that. Are you good with not caring about any of these other teams? Are we focused, are we riding and dying on the stallions, the Showboats and the Panthers? And that's a very, very concerning thing for me right now. Well, and we'll see Detroit next week, and I think Detroit's going to show up, but Canton did not look good. Memphis looked good last week. I think the numbers were inflated. I think there was 30,000 people there, I'm sorry, Kurt ee. But Birmingham looked really bad, looked really bad, looked really bad. And I go, and I know it's Birmingham and I know it's a smaller city, but that is your hub. That is, if anybody in the world knows the US of L exists is the people in Birmingham. You have the champions here. The season one champions, the ra I, that was a very poor crowd Saturday night, and I know that was it Shania Twain or something was playing down the way and there was a rodeo and there was a garage and there was a new gas station opening. But so at some point, I just don't understand. That's your hub. That's your base. If you can't fill Birmingham, I think you got a problem. And I just want to know if they're okay with that. Yeah, if you're good with that, if you're, we do not care about attendance. We are making our money and we are paying our coaches and we are doing X and we are doing Y and all the checks are going through, that's fine. I don't care. You know what I mean? If you are okay with that, but what is the goal? And that's a little bit, do a little bit skittish to me on where we're at moving forward. Because while I do think the X L doesn't have the most transparent goal, I think this is a little, a little bit of showmanship on some aspects. They are still in their city while attendance in some places, as I think St. Louis has messed up the attendance metric of maybe if last year, if St. Louis didn't exist and he told me 15,000 people went to the Sea Dragons a spring football game in Seattle, 15,000 people, I'd be like, oh, that's really good. And now you're like, well, St. Louis had 33,000. And you're like, well, Seattle was better than Louis. They have more, you know what I mean? The St. Louis thing has messed up my metric of what is a good attendance for a spring football game. Especially going there too. I don't have the appropriate answer. Well, and like I said, we'll see when the US F L ratings come out tomorrow because that's the thing is that we don't care about attendance. We only care about ratings and ratings. Were down over last year and they were down last week and I don't care, whatever Fox PR wants to span a 4% increase, ratings were down and that whatever you did it to yourself, you have the cast and everything else, and that's whatever else last year. But I'll see, I think it's ratings tomorrow are going to be very, very interesting. And the 4% thing kind of irks me, right? Because we'll put it into two different perspectives. In my mind, if I told you I was running back and I had 1500 yards my first season and my second season I had 2000 yards, but we played six more games. Was I a better running back? You know what I mean? You're robbing Pete. It was a robbing Peter of the pay Paul type thing. In my mind, I think it's better if, let's say, so they hit seven 40 and what it was seven 40 was the average. If my whole metric was between eight 50 and six 70, I'm way better with that than, okay, we had 4 million and then 26 people watch that. Yeah, we're up 4%, but the disparity is not where you should be. I would rather be within a hundred thousand of that 700 and of that 700 average where, okay, we're retaining a good base, you know, could can do a decent job if you got 700,000 people watching every game, a true average rather than 4 million to 1000 type thing. That to me, because now you're just like, you're grabbing your eyeballs but you're not keeping them. And where I, I am like, okay, yeah, 4% raise, but why was anyone watching other products? Because honestly, the molars are, and granted it's not a coach in the sidelines, or excuse me, behind the scenes, it's probably a coaching thing with schemes, but it's not a coaching thing as far as these guys are jokes of men. This is a respectable group of men doing a good job trying to do. And there's not the outside nonsense of what we saw with the Muellers last year of Kirby Wilson benching badly for no reason. Some of these guys aren't as good as the other guys, and that's football, that's sports. But they're not fun to watch. The US L has not, I thought the Showboats game last week, I felt the same as last year. I thought the kickoff was good, good energy. And then it is just something missing there. Like I said, I don't always like the X F L's personality and I think that they carry themselves too seriously or they do whatever sometimes. But to me the USL has no personality. And we have Jace Collinsworth there that kind of sounds like Chris or watching. And we got, what was his name? Michael, a sea hot guy, the Michael Dread. Oh, Mike Robinson. Yeah. And Mike, I didn't think he was great last year. I don't know if he's any better this year. It just feels, I don't know, something feels awry there. And maybe it's just because the X F L game's meant more this weekend, but Oh yeah, JJs reminded me. Well, and then we'll get out of here pretty soon in an hour. He wants to know who has the better quarterbacks because this will curtail back into, because I want to talk about Ben Ucci again before we get out of here. Uss F L or X l, who has the better quarterbacks? Right now it's the X ffl. Like there's two metric. So this people are going to poo poo me for this, and that's fine because obviously I don't know ball, but I cover, when I do, I have spreadsheets, I have way more spreadsheets about this stuff than I care to admit. But when I cover the X F L quarterbacks, the U S F L quarterbacks, and if you guys don't know, I cover the quarterback rankings on my YouTube channel, analyze and educate. But there's two factors. I throw this in there. I throw in pass attempts at the N F L and I throw in income earned at the N F L. And then last year, the u s ffl going into season one had I think 18 million earned all their guys this year it was like six. Now, I didn't factor in MBTs income from the C ffl and I didn't factor in PCOS income from the cfl. So you're like, okay, maybe that's a little bit closer or whatever. The X ffl had I think 30, 38 million earned by their quarterbacks. And it was inflated because of AJ and Paxton Lynch. They accounted for like 28. And then you had banker, even Louis Perez had a decent amount, slows, got 2 million blitz, got a little bit of signing bonus money go down the list. So there's definitely, well that, and then people might combat me with, okay, that doesn't matter. Well, to the extent it does, because now you have guys that even if you're the fourth string in training camp, you're still there, especially if some of these guys are around being the Reid Sinte was around Tom Brady, he was around Mike McDaniel, he was around, he was around Jalen Hiz, Carson, or I think he was there where Carson went. But if not, he's been around quarterbacks to learn from these guys and be in these systems and that stuff matters. And did Max, I think Ucci is in the almost 2 million because he did play at three years and active. But stay on track. That stuff matters outside of, in my mind, you have Carson Strong couple tea cup of tea. James Morgan's been around a couple teams. Obviously Case Cook has been on six different teams including a C F L team. But like M B T is the class of the class there between him and Alex I think is one of the top earners as well. We love Jamar Smith, but he had 15 minutes with the Patriots and then another 20 minutes with the tie cats, like the N NFL experience. Even if they're just going to be camp bodies, they're still going running the scout team. And that matters to me. And the more practice squads, the more training camps, the more preseason games you're a part of, all that stuff matters in the long run of the quarterback players. Especially now because some of these three and four year guys are 20, 20 U dfas they didn't get a real training camp, they didn't get real workouts because of covid and everything like that. So now it's like even all a year behind and not just for quarterbacks but everyone. So short answer to the L, Ah, we Joe's like he says, yeah, press ucci, McCarran, tamu. Then there's a big dropoff that's half of the quarterbacks. Yeah, I mean, yeah man, only half of the league. Only half of the league has good quarterbacks. Yeah, well have you heard of the N F L? Have you seen week 15? The week 18 in the N F nfl and this is another right? 68 guys started last year at the quarterback position in the N F L. That was more than covid year when they were like, oh you saw someone who you thought had covid. Yeah man you're out for a week. There wasn't any covid reserve really last year, you know, had illness, whatever. So all that these leagues need to figure be around to be tamu might go from the third string to four string to the heiney situation. Granted the covid thing maybe regressed that, but these guys are getting hurt and there's a lot of controversy as far as what's going on with the practices and should they go harder in practice because when they go to the games, their bodies aren't ready. That's not my job to care about from a media standpoint, but in the end, half the league is good quarterbacks, that's not a bad number no matter who, what league it is. Madison is here. Interesting. Some of the guys that pass on the X L L to go to the US F L and then still our ask Brian Willis about that. I mean Max and I'd your feedback on this, to be fair, Akiel Glass and David Cheek did have a good chance of starting because Zach Smith was there and then this, he follows it up like MB T comes to New Orleans. Who are you going to bench? Are you going to bench M B T over a keel glass and Davis cheek? It kind of sucks because this is kind of a red shirt year for them as long as m BT space healthy. But he's put together two good games in my mind. He's a top two quarterback in the league. Magoo is playing out of his mind. Josh love playing really well. Pup is that line of demarcation. If your quarterback is worse than Poo Cup, you would bench him If he's better than you're good type thing. So My boy Chris here, checking in section 1 35 over in Seattle, Chris enjoying that. I want to talk about the playoffs before we get out of here. We're talking connect. The players go right to the US F L, they're under contract, right? They're under contract Now if give us shameless plug, bye Mike Mitchell on Twitter. We'll be able to answer all those questions because the playoff scenario, when Mike's talked about it some was it on your show that they were talking about it? I believe the release of the contracts and whatnot. I've seen it. I've seen It. Yeah. It's this whole, the contracts and what, who's with the U S F L and how many years in the X F L but I, it's my understanding that both leagues you have to, it's out for the N F L and that is it, right? Yeah. So I mean I know there are players who are trying to figure it out, but I think that would be a pretty cool thing to see these guys bounce between the X F L and the S F L just to one obviously more if they're signing you to the U S F L, they think you can help their team so that would raise the competition level and that's not an X ffl versus U S F L like war. Don't take it as that. That's just reality. If a coach wants you sign any player, it's because they think they will help the team. Don't get on your high horse about that Twitter, but I mean I'd like to see it especially guys who are that third string receiver who put up some numbers. Let's see what they can do. But yeah, I have anything here. Max is, and I didn't make a big deal about this, but chairwoman Danny Garcia of the XL does now follow me and Mike Mitchell on Twitter. I was first, I throw that out there. I was first but I will say, and then Mike pointed out, so Mike Mitchell got mentioned by XL today and this rounds out kind of my comment here is I do, and this is my hope, I think we're getting through X ffl and it's talked with people at the league and even doing stuff with Dean last week and we're getting through everything now. My hope is now we're getting through this, we can start engaging a little bit more with the content creators with people. This Mike's a reporter that's no different than F NFL network showing or ESPN showing she's tweet and so got traded to the Ravens or whatever. Mike is a reporter, Mike covers the league. I think it's phenomenal. It makes you feel bigger than it is when you're able to show other people and what that does is that builds up Mike show. There's all positives there. What did you make of that? And Mike, his playoff scenario is getting talked about on next. I mean if you don't know who Mike Mitchell at this point is, and unless I'm not going to harass you don't know what the New Orleans breakers are, but if you don't know who Mike Mitchell is in reality obviously by Mike Mitchell at Twitter, he's so plugged into this. I think he's admitted. He's so old that he was covering the AFL in the sixties, but no, he's been an OG U S F L guy covered the X Ffl 1.0 U F L, probably the spring league, the amount of work he does good work, and this is going to sound a little bland, but the amount of good work he does, not just to get the information out but for the leagues, for the players, for the coaches, this guy's in it and I hate to, sometimes we take advantage of it because it's like how, well, I don't need to know this because Mike does, Michael will figure out, but the amount of that Mike get, yeah, I'm drinking a Reiner. Everyone go to Mike Mitchell about questions tonight, but he's a no BS type of guy and these are the facts that deal with it. If you can't deal with it, that's you problem. Yeah, Mike Mitchell is the Adam sch of spring football and something gets lost in it. Is his love for the CFL And the US F L. Yeah. What's that? And the U S F L Mike has all the Leaks. Yeah, I mean Mike is in a euphoric pleasure zone with all this going on. So mean it's a great thing to see but I mean we're off tangent. Yeah, no, it would be cool because I've been very, not to come off as selfish, but I've been tracking a lot of the quarterback records and there was no mention of that outside of the one tweet that you sent me for Bleacher Report and then Football Talk wrote a story about AJ McCarran, but they don't mention Ben Ucci in it. Ben Ucci broke Tommy Maddox's yards record. So it's kind of like, I know you saw my tweet, it was almost like 30,000 impressions just because you saw the AJ one. Did you actually do the research and look it up? That's an issue I have. Ben Ucci is still an air quote sexy name. You couldn't even look up his thing. It literally, it took me 10 minutes to put the correlation like, oh, he is storing for a lot of yards and I have the whole list of active quarterbacks and the passing rankings since post 2000, especially with the U S F L. Now I'm getting ready to write articles about this, but for the eight franchises I'm going to do a quarterback spotlight from the eighties. I just thought that was a funny comment and not according to four or five US Charles entre, the don't think Mike Mitchell is anti-us L there's no change in their minds. Yeah, I I don't want to come off as borderline people, but stop. It's crazy. You guys need to stop because in the end you're going to find someone who I don't know knows how to use the internet and has access to My thing was, my thing was this, it was yesterday and then we'll get out of here soon, I promise you had someone tweeting about the U US F L, why are the breakers, why are they not in New Orleans? What's going on? And you could have had someone go on there go, oh hey, this is the new league and it's fox and they're trying to save money and they're working towards that and we have expansion instead, you have a bunch of people mansplaining in the comments, what'd you even know, bro, get out of here. I'm like, I would. And then if I was that guy, I'm like, I would never watch the US belt ever again. Thank you very much for saving my time on that. If I was, yeah, if I was that guy, I would to be so petty depending on how much time he has, I would go to whatever street he lives on. So he, he's in New Orleans, so downtown Bourbon Street and I would go to every bar and I would turn on the X Ffl on every bar. Hey, I will give you $10 if you put this game on. Just don't change it to inflate the ratings. Just to be that because that has definitely done that. Last year we were at some vacation place and I went to seven bars and just turned on the US F L on every channel and it had different, I was definitely boosting views and I was like for the brand And it's like when you go used to go the Apple store and subscribe to people's YouTube channels or whatever, going down all the phones than that. I have a question. You need a lot more Saturday football and now that we'll talk, we'll get out of here soon. Exe L had a very, very, very successful season Disney network backing, making lots of TV money, kept the teams closer, travel. What your thoughts? I mean I think Exe L's got to be thrilled right now. I think they got to be thrilled. We're going to do the championship game. DC sold out. I hope they sell out this week. I think tickets look pretty good for that. I don't know Houston, I think that's going to be tougher, but I think they'll have a good show in there. Grade the X ffl here going into the playoff games, Man. I would say B to give an A would be excusing some of the blindness. I think in the early part we had some issues especially, one thing I do like about the U S F L is their transactions are very transparent. It's just on Twitter, how were we finding out players? Players were announcing they were getting signs or scrolling through the transaction. That training camp period was very frustrating for me as far as doing cuts and everything like that. There were some, the Cashman field thing, the Cashman field is not a positive in my mind. I'm a little skid by this playoff thing because I think, and this is me taking my bios as a St. Louis Guy out of it, it could, oh, coming out of your cave there Ubl L, but I'm a little skied by it. I just wish there was a little bit more transparency and just because they didn't know what was going on as far, it was a very fluid situation. Something I think they could have did a little bit more is embracing the 2001 numbers. I get the connotation, but no one has a problem with Tommy Maddox from the X Ffl in 2001 or Jeff Brown or whatever. They have a problem with Vince and NBC and that's fine, but a little bit of the Vegas correlation for the Outlaws and he hate me I thought would've been cool. That's something and that is one of my favorite things about the U S F L is now that they got all the lawsuits behind them, they brought some of the stallions back for week one. I think it's cool that now there's fluidity and I would've liked to see that with the 2001 AJ McCarran just threw more touchdowns and Tommy Maddox did and all that stuff. That would've been cool to me and I don't know what the reasoning is. It's not as public as the lawsuit was with the eighties U S F L to like 2022, but incorporating some more 2001 stuff would've been cool. Yeah, I know we had Paul Re on last week. He's the USS f l historian over our Sports central. That doesn't do a lot for me, seeing the Herschel Walker highlights on the US L Twitter, whatever, but it's fine. I mean it is what it is. When they come out and say this is the first touchdown in Memphis for the US Valley in 40 years, I, but I didn't live through that time, so maybe if I lived through that time, I would be a lot more excited about that. I like it from a historical statistical point of view and I think so right now, obviously they played more games in the eighties in the US F l they played 18 game seasons times 3 36, 54 games. So it would take our quarterbacks five years to get to that point. But how cool, you know, put the, this graphic of Chuck, Chuck Faina who is the Baltimore Stars guy against Case Cook if he were the cross, the career passing because now in my opinion, it shows fluidity and transparency and whatnot, not transparency. It shows length and culture of it because now it's like, well it's not season because I hate when they say season two, it's not a TV show, it's the 2023 season. I think X Ffl 3.0 is appropriate because there has been breaks and iterations and changes, but it's not season two. I find that really cringe, especially with the lawsuit done. This is the fifth season of the US development. I get it, but it's a big accomplishment to have a spring football league, but don't be doing the meme where you're in third place losing when the first place, second place. I don't guys, the season two thing is just too cringe for me. The 2023, I never refer to it as season two in my articles going into the 2023 season. As we look to the 2023 season established, you guys are established. Do it act like it. I see. I completely disagree. That's really funny. I don't think Brian Woods should be a friend of the show. I don't think Brian Woods buying some old trademarks entitles them to, I don't. I don't. And whatever, I don't know if that's a controversial take or not, but I would much rather the US of L just do its own thing right now. And I'm probably wrong and everyone's watching for nostalgia, but to me it it's been messy from the start. It hinders, it gets convoluted and all of that. And I don't care about the Memphis Showboats, like you could call them anything and play me. I don't care. But again, I did not live through that time so I'm probably not the one to ask. But do you agree with me as far as the continuity, as far as the brand, the branding of Case Cook is all-time leader in passing yards for the stars. No, I don't. I think us F l, this isn't something I do. I think and I probably the Ffl as well. It's different. It's totally different. It's like staff and what was the level of talent back then and they played all these different games roles. I know you're the STA guy and I don't want to crush your dreams on all this. No, it's fine. I have a hard time of, I think it said something. I think it, I think they should be completely separate, but I certainly appreciate the history of it and everyone that you're doing, maybe I'm tell me in the chat, am I wrong? Jared says us serious finale comes Jesus God, God forbid man, I hope both of these leagues last for until I don't feel like covering football anymore, man. That's the thing too is I know some guys, not players, but coaches who they coach the high Jonathan Heinbach is a perfect example, you know what I mean? He does his own thing in the fall coaches four months and then he like, dude, I just made 150 grand this year. You know what I mean? I don't know what the coaches get paid in the X F L or U S F L, obviously not 150 grand, but it's a good side hustle for them to continue to do what they love. But it's a good side hustle that what they do and supplement their income and continue to do what they love. Being an N F L coach has a lot of demands. You could still be a pro coach and see these dudes continue to progress and Beck Beck's going to be on the sidelines watching his sun play or being doing the Jet's radio next. So he's got the best of both worlds and Mike Riley gets to bring his kid to be on the sidelines where his grandson, which I think is kind of cool. A lot of people think of that's flame. But my dad was a firefighter and he used to take me to work. So take that for what it's worth. Well that might be more exciting than go this going to the city Canton and freezing. Yeah, yeah, it's warmer. Definitely warmer. Yeah, I did like that we had to cut the pre cops pregnant wife sitting out there in the freezing cold and Canton. I did like that. If the other league did that, someone would be very vocal about Danny Garcia hating women. Yeah, well this is kind of my thing here and a lot of football, you're right, you compare the eighties big money. It's not cringe, but yeah, they're paying. It is the economy of scale and everything totally different. Totally. But you had independent owners. So if I bought the Showboats and I had my budget was 11 million, I could go to whatever player's house and be like, I will give you 10 million play for me. And he'd probably say, yeah, because one, I am awesome and two and two, I'm giving him 10 million. All those teams are independently owned. It was haves and havenots for the league in the eighties. I think we're mixed. I think some are saying we should talk, some are saying it shit. I think it's good. All right, we're going to get out of here soon, pat. Do my, see, I'll see Dragons. Do we have a chance against DC this weekend? I mean of course you do. You're in the Northern Division playoffs, you know what I mean? You can't count out any of these teams, obviously any given Sunday type thing. Slightly, this is going to sound weird. I'm more intrigued to see the Renegades Roughnecks game because I want to see the Louise Perez offense in full force and obviously Brandon starting, but I might not, I don't want to say turn that game off, it'll be on, but I might tune out of that game from actually watching it after the first quarter to where the C Dragons game. I'm going to be in depth the whole time just because it's a little bit of, not really on my end, but the league's end animosity towards the Sea Dragons right now. The defenders obviously agree with the crop, but we know that it's going to be sold out and how's going to do, they just released Reque que armstead, they're backup running back. So I'm very curious to see what's going on with that. I mean, Demetri's hitting his stride. Abram Smith has, I think in week eight he was at 717 yard, 17 yards. I think he finished the league the year in seven 60 or something. Still the leading rusher of the league, but he had three opportunities kind of average at a hundred yards a game and go for a thousand. So very curious to see what they got going on. They've expanded DRA King's role a little bit, so that's kind of cool. But are they going to ride and die with tamu? Yeah, I think they go back to tamu. I think that, Yeah, to and the gentleman Benjamin Turk put it up as well. It's like it's really hard to beat the team three times in a row. That's the comment right there for me. Yeah, eventually. And I was of talking to someone like about that during the year. It's like, yeah, you want to lose that second game in the season because if you're going to play them in the playoffs, you want to see what you did wrong and everything like that. So that's my opinion. It might not be unpopular. But then what do you get better at, you know, learn more from a loss than you do from a win Win. Well, we're going to get out of here. I appreciate Pat spending over the hour today here on here. I appreciate it. I will be in DC for the championship game. I'm flying in Saturday if I'm staying near the stadium. So if people are around or we can hang out Sunday, whatever, but hit me up on Twitter. I'll be sitting at the bar somewhere drinking, probably watching the Saturday night game and then, oh yeah, I should be in that should be good. Be able to watch the Saturday night game and then be there for Sunday. So say hi Pat, obviously check out Pat's YouTube, pat, analyze and educate. Just a lot more real football talk. I mean, I think we always do a little bit more of the business of football on here. And Pat, anything else you want to say about your YouTube channel? No, I'm doing my quarterback rankings. That's kind of my big thing. I have some interviews that I'm doing as well and I did a interview with Clint Sig of the gamblers, Mike Glass of the, excuse me, alos, and then Terry Meyrick of the Panthers. I got some guests lined up for after the season, nothing. My thing is I like to be in person, which person with them? So that's kind of my thing. Papa Zinn and then just kind of go with these guys. Obviously I'm sponsored by Zin, but yeah, I got some interviews coming up, quarterback rankings coming out tomorrow for the US F L and X ffl. And then you can find me on N F L QB talk, which is ironic at this point. But you might need a new handle, pat. You might need a new handle at this point. I do. Honestly, I don't know how to change it All the time. We just change it to bearded path or something. I think you'd get a lot more traction if it was. I think you should change your handle at some point. Yeah, I mean I think I need to, I don't know, we can make a pole and we can make a pole and see it get hijacked. But yeah, I mean N F L QB talk as of today and analyze and educate for the YouTube. So as always Reid, thank you for having me. Come on the show. Andy is obviously doing God's work out there. Yeah, I guess I didn't preface that off the top. I'm so sorry, Andy traveling. I was horrible. I was too tired this morning. I was very tired after we had many Rainers yesterday at the game. But Andy, my partner in crime for our show, I feel so terrible now. I didn't start the show with that. Andy, my partner in crime is traveling. Andy I think was doing some bachelor parties down in Arizona and now is headed to Japan. Andy will be back for the championship game. We'll be live in San Antonio, still figure out the location for that, but we'll be doing that. Make sure you like and subscribe. Hit the button on this. Given the way at this point, two tickets maybe to the US F L championship Dame didn't quite hit the 3,500 in the X F L season, but whenever that comes about you'll get two tickets of your choice. So appreciate everyone's support with that. We will get out of here and yeah, it should be good games next weekend. So we'll see you guys soon.

Episode 141 - The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Football?

Coming up this week on the mark. Well, here we are. We now live in a world with two competing spring football leagues airing at the same time. Eight games weekend here at least for a little bit. Ratings could be better, could be worse. Are we living in a Berenstain Bears situation? Do we have too much vacation? Too much tv? How are things shaping out? Oh, That's it. We're going home. The best vacation ever has been Nothing but the worst vacation ever. Nothing has gone right? The cabin, the fishing, the ferries, the stew. It was also supposed to be big Fun, really fun show this week. Somehow wound up with six guests again. First off, you love him, you hate him, you love to hate him. We have Dean Blandino, the xls VP of rules and officiating stopping back by the program doing a mid-season check-in with Dean before the playoffs. Oh, I'm good, I'm good. I don't social media people on Twitter that it in officiating. I learned very early on is that you could be really good at what you do and people will still think you're an idiot. So it's, it's Fine. And then speaking of those XFL and USFL TV ratings, we have Ben Fisher coming on from the Sports Business Journal, giving his thoughts as well as Andrew Buckles of Awful announcing lots of deep dive analysis into the XFL and USFL'S ratings this week. Getting on a broadcast channel looks like about 80% of the battle right now for better ratings. So of course the S F L, because the two head-to-head windows were broadcast versus cable, they won both of those. Does that necessarily tell us anything about the popularity of the actual product? No, I don't think so. The Big takeaway for me is that both of these leagues playing at the same time, even if you combine their numbers, they're not as good as some of what we've seen in the past, whether that's for the X ffl in 2020 or for the U S F L last year. And I think that does maybe add to some of the concerns people had about what would it be like with these two leagues playing at the same Time. And then still lots of football talk on the podcast. We are approaching week 10 of the X F L season. Cole Kubick is coming on of ESPN n previewing into DC Defenders. We're talking to San Antonio Braas, everything X ffl week 10. Think the Ball's been pretty good. I mean most of our games have been very competitive. I don't think we've had a game that was completely out of reach going into the fourth quarter and that always makes it more compelling and more Fun. And then don't you think we forgot about the U S F L? We have our Sports Centrals, Paul Reese, the U S F L historian making his return, previewing U S F L week two talking comparisons to the X F L. What does Paul think about them utilizing the old U S F L history, all the Herschel Walkers of the world, everything else. And then we even have a player interview for you. We have Brandon Aubrey coming on from your world champion Birmingham stallions of the U S F L 22. Brandon making his return here for us F L season two where get his thoughts. Should be a good show. Thanks as always. Like and subscribe. Hey guys, welcome to the Roman cast Reid here should be a good show this week and do not address your dials. This is the Roman cast for the week. We are not the mark cast paying off I bet to listener Max where I have predicted that Exe l co-owner Dwayne the Rock Johnson DJ, as you might refer to him, would be wrestling Roman rains at this last month. WrestleMania, I think it was WrestleMania Hollywood, really thought the rock would make his return against Roman reigns. Your tribal chief leader did not happen. Thus we are the Roman cast for the week. We'll return to the mark cast next week on a super Sears. Nope. Before we get into the all of these shenanigans today, heartfelt condolences to Christmas family, everybody, all the Sea Dragon's teammates, everybody with the X F L staff and ownership and league executives and everyone else hearing about Chris's unfortunate passing this week and news making the rounds. So it is never easy talking about any of that stuff, especially mid-season and the X F L and how do you play football and kind of move on from all of that. The Sea Dragons in the big game this weekend, still just a game more than anything else. And so really just heartfelt condolences. I know that people are deeply affected by that and I just want to make sure that we touch on that and just know that everyone involved in that is in our thoughts. And I just have gotten to know a lot of the people with the X Ffl and there's all humans behind all of this. And as much as they try to do for the football and the operations all and all of that stuff, this is tragic. And any time life is lost and especially in these circumstances, certainly not great. So our hearts thoughts and prayers go out to that. Hope you guys have seen the messages. I saw Baker Mayfield tweeting about it and obviously the Rock and everybody else. So we will keep Chris and his family and our thoughts and prayers. Really hope you guys enjoy the episode this week. It's exciting times right now. We've been talking about it a lot in the group chat. Josh Davis, another individual that's left our lives too early, kind of looking forward to this coade of kind of everything right now with you. The U S F L play in season two and the X ffl and ratings and are they good? Are they bad? What are we doing with all of that? Lots of deep dive today. Like I said, Baron steam bears. Too much football right now, too much, too much T tv. What do we have going on? I'll let you guys decide. Feel free, chime in the comments and let me know. Too much football, not enough football, let me know. Special thanks to Dean Blandino for coming on making time. Everybody with the X F L. I know that's not an easy request Mid-season approaching week 10. Super appreciate that. Obviously Ben Fisher making the time coming on with the Sports Business Journal. Hope you guys, I like getting kind of a couple mixed opinions this week. We have Ben on and then we have Andrew Buckholtz with awful announcing. I think it's good to get a couple various opinions on this X F L U US F L TV ratings rivalry. And then obviously Cole Kbl coming on, Paul Reese. And I hope you guys enjoy Brandon Aubrey's interview as well. I thought he was fun. I will check back in at the end of the show. I think that's it for me. We'll see you soon. Well I'm excited today we have de Blandino back on. We talked preseason, so we're going to check back in during the season. Now we have you man of your word. Dean, how are you doing? I'm doing really, really well. Good to be back. Good to chat with Alexa. So serious question here. First off, like welfare check on you, how are you doing? Because every time we always see de everyone's complaining. Dean's the worst ever, all these, how are you doing mental welfare right now? Oh, I'm good, I'm good. Don't social media people on Twitter that it's in officiating. I learned very early on is that you could be really good at what you do and people will still think you're an idiot. So it's fine. Well, you're not an idiot Indian, even though I might have also angrily tweeted at you from the C Dragon sideline for one of those DPI calls. So during we're here, we're approaching week 10, we, I've of course collected a bunch of questions we have from people we'll get to, but we better than you would expect right now, worse than you would expect, that guy level of quality of officiating. I think we're in a good place. Look, when you're talking about bringing a group of officials together that these crews, they've never worked together before. Some officials work in the same conferences, maybe they worked together in 2020, but for the most part, all of our crews were new coming in. They're learning a new set of rules. They're going from college rules to X Ffl rules. They've got to learn the differences. And I feel like we're in a good place. Look, it's the fishing's never perfect. There's always going to be, look, we've missed calls, there's things that we could improve upon, but overall I feel like we're in a good place. Number of fouls per game is right around 15 and a half per game, which is right where the N F L, the historical average has been for the N F L for a long time. And that means that we're officiating the game, we're getting the fouls that we have to get and not being overly technical. So I think we're in a good place, Quality of play, especially now all the games matter this weekend we're seeing a lot of parody and coming down to the Wire. Are you as the officiating person, as a fan, as someone with the league, are you excited to see that? No question. No question. And just like the officials, the players needed time to gel and we can see it. I mean we've had less false starts, less formations. The teams are getting better as they start to to gel. And what's awesome is that we're averaging just over eight points in terms of margin of victory. So we're averaging for the season a one score game. So every game has been close. So many of our games have come down to not just the last minute, the last play. And like you said, week 10, every game matters. What one more could you ask for? Well it's terrifying if it's the other way. If it comes down and we to want viewership and we got to get the games up and we've got to talk about 'em and if you have a bunch of games of oh and eight teams, it don't matter, whatever. I mean, yeah, it really is the best world right now. I think for everyone involved with the league. I think this is tremendously exciting. Yeah, no question. No question. And even the teams that are eliminated from the playoffs, they have something to play for. They want to be the spoiler, they want to be the ones their competitors. And so I'm excited. I'm excited for all of the games. And obviously you look at St. Louis and Seattle have to win and then could go to tiebreakers. Arlington has to win. San Antonio could get in. It's really exciting. We all have some tiebreakers stuff here. How much is your being involved with the N F L and all that, how much does that influence your decision making here when you're looking at things? Well, it certainly helps. My experience with the N F L has helped me as you navigate through different situations because I can rely on that experience and I've been through a lot with the N F L and I can take that institutional knowledge and transfer it to what's happening with the X ffl, whether it be the competition committee, the rules discussions, things with officials. And that's been really helpful. My experience has, I've always kind of leaned back on that, my time with the N F L and it's really helped because we've, this year you're talking about new rules, you're talking about a new league and you want everything to go well and it really has. And we've been just really excited. Are you trying to deviate from certain rule interpretations we've seen, especially the Seattle and the D P I and we don't have to either have our back turned or you trying to reinterpret any of that stuff or follow along with what's been traditional? Well, I think we're sticking to the rules, but we have a standard in the X ffl of what is a foul and what raises to the level of foul. And that's what I've been trying to adhere to. When we do have a review look, if we want it called on the field and the coach challenges, then we want to make it a Fallon replay. And I've really tried to adhere to that and to be consistent. And that's, look, I know there might be situations where not everyone's going to agree with my judgment, but I'm trying to apply a consistent standard so that I'm not looking at a play in week three and then in week 10 I'm looking at it from a different perspective and applying a different standard. So I'm trying to make that so the teams understand, hey, here's where the bar is and we're not going to move it throughout the season. Are you, and I've seen, obviously we get the mics and everything and we get some of these coaches yelling or is it hard where you have send it to Dean or what does Dean think? I mean, having that interaction there, is that normal? Is it just that we're seeing more of that or how is that different Maybe? Well, yeah, I don't know if it's quite, you know, see that quite as much in the N F L or college football, but I think it's great because I can hear what the coaches are saying and there have been times whatever coach is giving the officials a hard time and I'll get in the officials here and say, Hey, just tell 'em, I'll call coach, I'll call 'em after the game and we'll talk. And we have good relationships with all the coaches and they're competitors and they want to win and it's emotional. So we understand that and we understand that officiating can impact games and we want to make sure that it's not impacting it in a negative way. Yeah, I mean I thought Coach Wood say whether it was about to be forcibly removed from the field at halftime there at the DC game. I I watched that in real time and just seeing his mind kind of implode on everything And those things happen and our officials understand that and we're just trying to deescalate a situation like that, Something that's exciting. So we've had the coaches challenges and that we've had a couple this weekend, I'm watched Survivor my whole life and I equated it to the strategy of the game continues to grow. So now we have this coach's challenge. Then it seems like Stoops and Beck kind of almost broke it a little bit where hey, we've had this big play go well now someone had to have been holding on that play. It's almost like it's the next evolution of that I got to keep this in my pocket if I'm about to get voted out. What was it living through that real time because it was a really cool moment this weekend, No question. And we anticipated that, look, when we put this in, it had never been done before. No, no, we never N F L college, we never said you could challenge anything you want. And the concern going in was, okay, are we going to get a bunch of challenges on that game ending play where the coaches are going to say find something. So we tried to say, okay, you're only going to get one even if you win, you're only getting one. We really wanted it to be saved in case of that emergency, that really significant situation. And we also, that's why we said you have to be specific. Yeah, you can't say there's a foul on that play, find it. You have to say the left tackle held or my tight end got, there was a legal contact against my tight end during the route. So that allows us to be narrow because if I have to go in and look at all 22 players and try not what this is designed to be, it's designed to be like Coach Stoops, which was a fantastic example of it. Fourth and four, they throw an incomplete pass, he challenges that their receiver got held, it was there and the drive extends and they end up kicking the field well to tie the game. So that was a perfect use of the challenge. And I think you're right, the coaches are getting better and they're getting a better understanding of when to use it Any thought. And I know because you don't want to open that wormhole of okay, we have more, but even you get to use it if you get it to get another one. I mean obviously you'll look at stuff in the off season or are you pretty firm on the one? I Think we're going to talk about that in the off season and I can see it both ways. The coach says, well why do I have to fix an officiating mistake with my challenge and then I'm done for the game and I get that. But if you adding another one, then it becomes, then you become right more liberal with your first one and then it goes away from what we're talking about really the game changing, the game impacting play. And so I think it'll be a good healthy discussion in the off season. I'm not opposed either way. I liked keeping it narrow year one just to see how it went and then we'll take that data and we'll look at the information and we'll have a discussion with all of our people and the coaches, football operations and see where we land. But it really does feel like this immunity idol, I'm pulling it out, I just visualizing these because it's been interesting for us to track these rule changes. We've seen AJ Smith really be able to utilize the comms and we're talking to people and certain of these coaches have figured out different strategies to use and then some have not. And so it just breathes new life into the game, if that makes sense. No Question. And anytime you introduce technology and coaches and I dealt with this with the N F L, the N F L there, there's some coaches that don't want to bring in video on the sideline, right? Because they feel like, well now I've game planed done my homework and now that's going to benefit a coach that isn't as good at game planning and adjusting on the fly. And so whenever you introduce that technology, you're going to have to adapt and use it and the coaches that use adapt quicker and use it better are going to be successful. And that's what we're seeing In terms of the comms a couple. Yeah, it seemed like early on we had some calm issues for some of the games, especially at the Cashman fields of it all, which we, yeah, that's a whole bit. Have we resolved that? What was going on with that or how do we work to implement that? Sure. I mean there's no question, especially when you're dealing with a new facility. Cashman is, it's not a football stadium, so you're trying to build that in, there's infrastructure, there's things and look, anytime you're using technology there, it's never going to be perfect, right? We're on a Zoom or whatever and somebody freezes, it just happens. And so I think we've gotten a better handle as the season has gone on. We've had less and less interruptions, but again, doesn't matter, N F L, whatever it is, there are always going to be issues because again, with technology you're dealing with wires, you're dealing with all internet, everything else that is happening on game day and there usually is something that comes up, but we've really done a good job in terms of limiting those and I feel like we're in a good place In terms of the overtime, obviously we have this week and the couple, are you surprised or not with maybe the rule changes and tried to get more parody with the league, but we had no overtime all last year in 2020. Now we've had three in a couple weeks. So what do you make of that? Well, we're happy to get a couple of overtime games in. Like you said, we didn't have any in 2020 any through the first seven weeks of this season. And I think you're always concerned with the three options on the try. Does that create some unusual scoring and less opportunity for ties? It's just the game is who knows if that really has an impact. But the thing is all of our games have been close, like I said at the top, I mean we're averaging a little over eight points in terms of margin of victory. And so we really like our overtime. We feel like it's played out, people think it's exciting. Every play is a score or a stop and we've had three exciting games finish with either a score or a stop, which is awesome. In terms of the fourth and 15 being implemented here, apparently there's some discrepancy where ESPN is mentioned in it where they can use it when the team is tied or trailing, but before the season that restriction maybe wasn't mentioned or it's not in the official rule book. What is the official rule of the fourth and 15 and we can it be used? Sure, fourth and 15 is only fourth quarter and the score, it's either tied or the team attempting, it must be trailing. So we didn't want to use it, we didn't want to have it the entire game where we're just eliminating the kickoff. And the other thing is to have a strategy where you're ahead and you're to, whether it's take time off the clock, whatever it may be. So we felt like Tide or behind fourth quarter was a good place to start. And again, that's another thing that we'll discuss in the off season and see if we need to make any tweaks. We also cover fan control football and I think one of the games, their first season they kind of broke it where the team just kept going for fourth and 15 every time. So you got to be careful because it can be a keep away there where the other team never even gets the ball back. Sure. And that was the other we talked about, we debated whether to make that an untimed down or let the clock run and that was part of it. And we decided to let the clock run because what we didn't want is to have a fourth and 15, you score a touchdown, you go for it again, you score a touchdown and we have multiple plays with no time running off the clock. And I can see both sides of it. And again, it's something we'll discuss in the off season. We've had a lot of discussion about the playoff format. Obviously it's hard eight teams and the parody and all of that and people are upset because either the battle Hawks or the Sea Dragons are going to go home. Any thought of division winners and then just the top two records, whatever after that competing and moving on and not division specific. Sure, Sure. And that's always, that's a debate going back to the N F L with where you have a team that wins a division and the wild car team has a better record and the division winner gets the home game. And I think the theory and the logic behind it is the division you play every team in your division twice, those games are so critical and you know can tell your fans, if we win our division, we're going to have a home playoff game. And that is, that's irrefutable. And then I think you get into, again, I really feel like those teams are playing each other in the division. If you're successful in your division, then you're going to be in the playoffs. And again, look, we're going to end up with one good, really good team, whether it's Seattle or St. Louis out of the playoffs. And that's just the way it goes. And I think, we'll again, we'll visit that, revisit that after the season and see if we want to make any tweaks to that In terms of this upcoming weekend and the tiebreaker and all this. And I mean we've had emails come out and the e s ESPN broadcast and I'm DM and Matt Berry like, hey, here's all these different things going on and thoughts and just mental gymnastics are trying to figure out this tiebreaker situation. Sure. Tiebreakers are interesting. And even going back to my N F L days, I mean the N F nfl, we have eight tiebreakers in the X F L. The N F L has more, there's 11 and when it comes to playoff, and the last one is a coin and it's never happened. It's never happened in the history of professional football where the coin toss decided a team going to the playoffs. So I think what we see that's unique is that we are, if both teams Seattle and St Louis win, they'll have the same record they'll have, they'll be one in one, they'll have the same division record. And what's amazing is that their strength of victory will be the same. Their opponents that they beat will have had the same record. So now it goes to a fourth tiebreaker, which is very unusual to even get that far where you're talking about your division rankings as it pertains to point scored and points allowed, which is why Seattle kick the field goal at the end of the game, which didn't seem to have any impact on the outcome of the game, but trying to score more points. So it's really just, it's cool, it's exciting because these two teams are going to have to win, but they're going to have to keep in mind that those rankings might end up being a determining factor. Do you enjoy that or is this a lot of emails and stuff that just kind of like you're trying to explain all this to everybody? Yeah, it's interesting. I do enjoy it and anytime, look, when you have eight teams, four in each division and you're playing 10 games versus the N F L playing 17, now there's more likelihood that there's less separation and that's just the reality. So, but I it's cool. I think it drives interest, right? It's exciting and people want to talk about, look, the reality is if we're talking about it, that means we're interested in it and that means we're going to tune in and be invested in how the games play out. So I love it. This is a complex question. I'm going to do my best to read through this. Has there been discussion of simplifying the tiebreaker to just point, differentiate point differential after the first two tiebreakers instead of going with the complexes and the N F L uses, which is pretty hard for teams to plan for. Does that make sense to you? Sure, It's a good question. Yeah. And point differential is one of the tiebreakers later on and I think the theory there is it's much more or it's more likely that if that were higher up on in terms of the tiebreakers have more teams just trying to run up the score, you'd have more teams just doing what Seattle did at the end of the game. Not that they were trying to run it up, but I think even early on and that, I think that led itself to things that we don't want. I mean blowouts, other things, bad blood, I mean there's things like that. The reality is it all matters because the rankings, the more you score, the less you give up, it matters. But I think the net points, the differential, I think that was the theory behind just mitigating the opportunities in terms of running the score up. I got three more for you here, I'll let you get out. I appreciate it. The pontine seems to have given the same results in terms of return rate, but it does seem like there's been less willingness for teams to go for it between the forties. Has there been enough aggressiveness in the go zone the season for what the league has been looking to establish? I haven't looked at the fourth down numbers yet in detail, but it does feel like we're, we are punting more in that kind of no man's land and look the punt and I think that's something we're going to look at because to be a punter in our league is really tough. I mean it is really hard and because the touch backs come out to the 35, if you kick the ball out of bounds, it comes out to the 35. And so I think we want to look at that and maybe bring that back in and maybe we limit that, those restrictions on the punters and things like that. And we'll see what happens in terms of at the end of the season, looking at the fourth down their attempts, how are we really down from where we were? Because look, the punt, it's not a touchback is not an exciting play and so we certainly wanted to prevent that and we are getting, our return numbers aren't through the roof, but I think they're solid and we'll have to look at how we can beef that up going forward. Yeah, because we were looking even in the oh one X F L, if the punt was over 25 yards, I guess it was like a live ball. So I mean there is other things that you could do. Sure with that punt and the C F L has it where they can recover the kick and get possession. I mean things to work on with that. You feel like with the punting situation? No question. I think that's one thing we're going to look at. Special teams is always right. The kickoff is unique punting game, we have some different rules. So I think that'll be really a focus in the off season, our special teams rules and do we need to make any tweaks? And then finally, yeah, we still get questions C C F L, any consideration bringing the WA or any kind of movement, any emotion kind of anything like that? It's always up for debate. I think the C F L is a great game and it's exciting. It's a more wide open game because of some of the rules. We wanted to stick to more of a American football traditional rules, but we'll have those conversations in the off season. And again, anything we can do to drive interest to make the games more exciting, we're absolutely open to listening and having those conversations. And we've looked at a ton of C F L rules and we've had conversations with the C F L early on, so those are definitely in play and we'll, like I said, everything's on the table in the off-season. Well Dean, I appreciate it. Yeah, I think you get a lot of grief and I think you wear it well and I mean I could not handle all of that. So I think you do a good job and we appreciate your time here with just everything with the league. It's a lot of work. Appreciate you and just looking forward to an amazing end of the season. I'm excited. Yeah, we will be front row for the Sea Dragons game, so hopefully it all comes down to that. I mean you couldn't ride it up better last game of the season could end up happen the most Now truthfully, what is in your heart? Would you rather see St Louis win and then have Seattle have to win and go to the tie break or do you just want to St Louis to lose and Seattle win Clearly? Yeah, clearly I have the same energy as Ben Ucci, our quarterback in chief of waving goodbye to everybody. So no, very excited because we do this show, but I'm a fan and we like to sit there like I said, and get rowdy on the sidelines. So it is fun. That's kind of why I do this. Yeah, well Coach hasn't likes to get rowdy on the sideline too. Well he likes to. He's One of my favorites. He's one of my favorites. Well Dean, I really appreciate your time and good luck with everything. It means a lot. You came back on. Thanks. Well we have Ben Fisher here today with Sports Business Journal. We just had Austin Carp on a little bit ago as well. I appreciate getting the outside perspective here as we live in the minutia. Ben, how are you doing? I'm doing all right. Happy to be here Ben. So we have your article here. I'll get ready to share U S F L week one X F L week nine overlapping, all of that stuff. What did you make of everything coming out of the weekend? I think it's basically what the stories suggested even ahead of time that the real difference is broadcast versus cable. There's just more likely to stumble into Fox ABC or ABC N B C or ABC than you are ESPN one or two or Fox Sports one or two. So I mean the extent to which I getting on a broadcast channel looks like about 80% of the battle right now for better ratings. So of course the U S F L, because the two head-to-head windows were broadcast versus cable, they won both of those. Does that necessarily tell us anything about the popularity of the actual product? No, I don't think so. I think it's not at all clear to me to what extent people are choosing one or the other or just interested in watching both. And for right now the numbers maybe in a few weeks we'll get some clarity on that, but for now it looks like they're both in similar spots. I think strategically You've tracked it as much during the season, but obviously now you're kind of looking at it from a God view, kind of looking down what do you make of these numbers and is just a worthwhile endeavor? Yeah, I mean I think only people inside who know exactly how much the X ffl and the US F L are spending can really say what a good ratings number is. If you're really able to do this cheap, 800, 900,000 viewers is maybe okay, I mean I used to cover Olympic sports where a volleyball tournament a year and a half before the Olympics starts might be okay with eight or 900,000 viewers. So it's all about your expectations. Certainly the N F L wouldn't view that as good. However, at eight or 9,000 hundred thousand, which is where the broadcast games this weekend were, you could have an argument over whether that's good or not. I don't think there's any world in which viewership numbers of 400 or 500,000 is considered good. That's below a level where no matter how cheaply you're doing it, you're just not resonating with people. I mean any little old thing can get four or 500,000 viewers on the weekend afternoon sometimes. So those are numbers that should be pretty concerning in terms of, or is anybody even noticing what we're doing type questions? Are you talking network cable or just network? I think for all, for any platform. I think that it's easier to get bigger numbers on a broadcast. I'm just saying whether it's on ESPN two or Fox Broadcast, if you are getting under say 600 or 700,000 viewers, I think it becomes very difficult to see how that really is penciling out for anybody. Now it's early, I mean X Ffl is still just year one and us F L is the very beginning of year two. You can argue you got to give us time to step up, but on their face those numbers are not the face of a property that's really landing with the public. So you're saying this 2 35 on ESPN two for the Orlando San Antonio game that's on ESPN 2, 230 5,000 years, that would be somewhat of a sign to you? Yeah, I mean look, that's one game. It's on ESPN two, which isn't as well distributed as espn. So I don't think that alone is concerning. But what's the annual, what's the season long average? I think for X ffl like 600 or so. Yeah, I have it here. Yeah, I forget my numbers exactly, but the average is the average, so that means half their games are less than that. I think a world in which half of your games aren't even getting 600,000 measured viewers is a bit of a troubled world and it's season one. I'm not saying they're giving up, but that that's not what you're looking for. I don't think and U S F L numbers are a bit higher, but again, I think you know want to be in a million. I think in general terms here, that would be a point where I think it would be a lot easier for an outsider to say, okay, they got something here. Yeah, it's 5 88 2 50 US X FFL 2023 season average U US F L obviously only has one weekend, 7 89 on that. So I mean obviously it's always going to be higher on that, but yeah, 5 88 for the X ffl through nine weeks now. Yeah, yeah, I mean look, I don't want to be, they might even call and object but because it is first year and that's certainly what their spin would be is like, hey, we're still getting our feet underneath us. But I mean you look at other things that that's like regular season college basketball, that's fine, but they've got March Madness to bring you around. I mean what's the big thing that these low numbers are building up to? Maybe the X F L championship game will do a good number. I'm not saying it won't, but I'm just saying I see these, I guess I'm bringing this up because I wrote about who won and who lost these numbers because it is interesting, it's the first time they've gone head to head, but I don't think either side of this should be feeling like they won really. Exactly. Are you surprised that X ffl this year hasn't been able to capitalize more on the nostalgia than it feels like it does to me feel like a new product again versus this is the third iter, it doesn't feel like they've been to really carry over a lot of the momentum from 2020. Yeah, I think that too much time elapsed the news about how the 2020 XFL collapsed was not particularly positive. Yes, it was a pandemic, but also was Vince going 12 rounds in court with Oliver Luck before finally settling? There was a lot of stories and bad blood about teams and employees not being communicated well. I mean nostalgia presupposes positive feelings about the history with the notable exception of DC and St. Louis. I don't know how many people think, remember the 2020 X ffl of all that positively and hey, I mean two markets, it's great for the X ffl. I mean those are places where they've really got something going in terms of a meaningful crowd base, people who seem to authentically care about those teams. That's great. But I think it falls off pretty quickly outside of those two places. In terms of U S F L here coming back and any novelty maybe of season one, are you surprised that they did the mental calisthenic of, okay, our season it's high 4% higher if you base it off of all last year kind of the numbers, but are you surprised as there, was it more of a holdover? I mean I think it was like 50% decrease. Yeah, well it was 50% decrease year over year for the debut. But remember the debut last year was on n NBC and Fox this year was just on Fox. So that's bound to lower the numbers. Is it enough that it would that actually translate to a true decline, a 50% decline? And I'm not being very articulate, but what I mean is if you had the exact same amount of market interest in the game but only put it on Fox instead of Fox and n nbc, how much would the rating go down? I think it's probably close to 50%, but that's a little higher of a drop than I might have expected. So I don't know. It's hard to say that number didn't surprise me because they weren't sul casting it. I don't know in terms of how much carryover there was from last spring. I think just in our modern world last spring feels like a long time ago. And if again, it's a market to market thing, if you were a Birmingham fan and saw that team Almo very, very dominant on the field and you were able to see the games in person, that is something no other markets were able to do. You might have actually gotten a little bit excited about it, but I think the rest of the world is still kind of in a very much a wait and see for u s ffl. Yeah, well it was interesting because it felt like they used that last year to prop up, we're going to simcast it the same game and kind of all that stuff. And now again, only Reid here is that US Haer is pointed out that he climbed and all of that. But still it is interesting that the propping up last year now has led to what perceived as a bigger drop this year When you know, never think about year two after year one. But had they not simulcasted last year, it probably would've been a flat or maybe, I don't know, I shouldn't speculate what it would be, but right. By trying to have such a big splash last year, they give themselves, they gave themselves only one way to go this year. Right. A couple questions I'll let you get out. I know you're busy working here. Do you, is Fox exec they doing high fives and laps in the boardroom here Monday morning or Tuesday when the ratings came out? Or how do you think that, obviously you're not in their mind, but what do you think they perceived it? I mean, discerning what the networks really think about ratings is really hard because they spend any and all ratings. I mean I ask Austin about that next time you ask him, it is legitimately hilarious. The ways that they will find to put out a nice press release about even bad numbers and even to get them to speak freely on background about what they really think of these numbers is hard. My best read of the Fox mindset off the U sfl was that it was fine. I mean the week one was fine. I don't think it's a grand slam. I think they're happy they beat X ffl. They like that there's a low level rivalry there. They try not to be too public about, but I think they definitely are calling attention to each other's flaws from league to league in an un understated way. So I think Fox is happy they won the, the numbers are good enough, they could put out a good press release, but whether they do they really believe the positivity of the press release. Hard for me to say. And again, I think the vision for this would mean numbers more like 800, 900 and a million rather than 500, 600 and 700, that sort of thing. So Does spring football here have a place? I still don't know if we know that. I mean I think we have a lot more data than we did a year ago about this because as I said last year, I've said many times in print simply existing and remain continuing to put games on television. It's a big part of the battle here. It's a multi-year process. Nobody became a diehard Green Bay Packers fan in one day or even a year. That's the result of years and years and years of building bonds with your fans. I think that, I know I'm not answering your question, I'm just trying to think this through. I mean man, You're doing great. Forward momentum is good. The fact that U S F L is in more is playing more markets is good. The X ffl, I mean I watched the St. Louis game on Saturday and just the energy in that building is really great TV and that is just light years different from the hub model where most of the time Birmingham Stadium was empty last year for U S F L. So I think the question from the league standpoint is how do we make sure we keep our doors open just so we keep playing these games. It's about reps, it's about getting people comfortable with the idea of spring football. And I think I still don't, to answer your question, I don't know if there's a place for it. It's very difficult to get people's attention. You're competing with nice spring days and baseball that suddenly seems much more watchable with the new rules changes. The masters is pretty entertaining. There's just so many things, it's very tough to really find a product market fit on this, but I think that every day that there's more X FFL and U S F L action on without them going out of business is a step in the right direction for them because it is about just repeating and creating a habit in the customer's minds. And I think they're going in the right direction on that and I think there is a way to do this, but it takes a lot of bus business discipline and some luck to have some things come together. I have one more real question then the joke one and you're done. I appreciate it. Do you worry X L 2020 we have ESPN, A b, abc, we have everybody together right now and obviously the, there's feuding and the split where both U US F L and XE L feels like you're existing kind of half of the former X F L 2020. Are they enough on their own? I mean I know people, I don't want to talk merging or anything, but is there enough behind either of them on their own to really knock it out of the park? I think that is the billion dollar question. I think that is a question about talent and I can talk marketing and ticket sales and the stadium deals and the venue agreements and the strategy all day long. I think that's a question for football experts. Are we, and we reached the limit of the quarterbacks that you want to watch on television. There's roughly 90 quarterbacks in the N F L and then well 60 90 plus plus you get the emergency to the third stringers in. And then so we got two more spring leagues now playing. I mean how many of the quarterbacks are consistently hit an open receiver? I don't think either the US Ffl or X ffl is like unwatchable. I think it's a plausible product. I watch it and think, yeah, these guys clearly aren't, this clearly isn't Patrick Mahomes, but they're also not just skipping balls into the dirt on a wide open wide receiver, which is better than the Big 10 can say sometimes. So and people watch that. So I think can they both succeed? Is can two separate spring leagues get enough football players that are worth paying to watch? And I think the answer so far is yes, but there's only so many people who are good at quarterback or good at being an offensive lineman or being a wide receiver. And I think that's what we're going to have to see is clearly DC is a dominant and X F L and Birmingham and the U S F L, but what about the worst teams in the league? Are they worth watching? I don't know the question answer to that. Yes. Last one for me. If listener, Seth and I, we have a bottles of champagne chilling to pop when the commanders are sold, when are we getting ready? When are we getting ready to pop those champagne bottles? I think it's happening pretty soon actually. I mean look, it's Dan Snyder. There's always a higher potential for drama or nonsense than with other people. But I've decided after being a real skeptic on this for a long time, just in the last week or so, that the motivations and the intentions all line up. The buyer, the seller and the league all want this to happen. And I think when that happens, things in the N F L move very quickly. So look, I mean there's billable hours. Lawyers are not going to let this deal happen without making their own money on that and it's a complicated deal. So I'm not saying that work isn't real, it's going to take a little bit of time to cross all the T's and dot the i's and to make sure everything is a hundred percent kosher and get it approved by league owners. But they're all really excited to have this happen as soon as possible. So I would guess Josh Harris is going to be approved as the new control owner or the commanders easily by the start N F L training camp. That's good. That's that. Well Ben, it's good to catch up with you. I know you're busy with everything, so thank you so much for your time, our listeners appreciate it. Happy to do it when I can. Thanks for having me. Well excited. Today we have Andrew Buckles back on awful announcing talk with Andrew a few weeks ago getting his take on the X F L ratings. Now we have U S F L week one, all the head-to-head everything else. Andrew, how are you doing? I'm doing well. Thanks very much for having me. It's good. So you have your article here and we'll go through it over at awful announcing, but general thoughts, what did you make? We had the big final head-to-head to two football league here, Aaron. Yeah, I mean I think the big takeaway for me is that both of these leagues playing at the same time, even if you combine their numbers, they're not as good as some of what we've seen in the past, whether that's for the X ffl in 2020 or for the U S F L last year. And I think that does maybe add some of the concerns people had about what would it be like with these two leagues played at the same time. Do you attribute that to a busier sports marketplace viewer fatigue? What do you attribute that to? Yeah, I don't know. I mean I think there are a lot of factors there. Both of those Fs are properly part of it. There is good sports competition going on, but there that's been the case in the past as well, particularly with the U S F L and with their April on schedule. They're always going against the N nfl, I mean the N H L and the B a playoffs. So I think there's a bit of viewer fatigue possibly. I mean alternative football is much less of a weird and out there concept now than it was say in 2019 when we had the AAF or when 2020 when we first had the X F L. This is a thing that's been sort of going on for a few years. A lot of the stories about these various leagues have not been great in particular with regards to off the field stuff. And that's what makes it remarkable that the U S F L is even going to a second consecutive season, which no major outdoor league had done since the original U S F L. So I mean think there's a little bit, maybe the novelties wearing off a little bit, but it's also maybe just these leagues, both of them are taking some of that audience and some of that attention and that means there's less for each of them perhaps. Well, I was surprised. So we were doing our live stream on Tuesday when the ratings came out and I was surprised that Fox came out and said basically that there was a 4% increase season one to season two, which mental gymnastics was if you average the 10 weeks of uss of L season one, which whit down as any league does and then compared that against week two era, season two, week one, there was a 4% increase because they average a 789,500 viewers here. I have your article that to me speaks, we're really trying to do some mental calisthenics here that kind of show an increase. What did you make of that? Well, I mean I don't think that's unusual really. If you look at or look at ratings releases from network PR departments, they're always looking to spotlight some good fit and they, they'll make a wide variety of comparisons to try and ensure that there is some good theme there to be spotlight. But I think you hit on the absolutely key part of that, which is the, yeah, this number looks higher, but that is versus the whole season average versus week one last year, which was week one last year was not as good as week one this year. I mean, sorry, the other way around week last year Yeah. Was better. And this is not, Yeah, because I think it was the average, what was it, 3.2 whatever million this year and it was more like 6 million the previous year. Even if you factor in that the Monday night reschedule game because of way rain and wind delays and all that, even if you just took the three, it's down substantially about 50%. Yeah. If you average the free from last year, not that rescheduled one, it was about 2 million in average audience, not peak audience then. So that's a long way from the 789,000 this year. I mean yeah, of course with all of these fades, even with a raw decrease, that doesn't mean this is necessarily a bad thing, a terrible thing for these leagues or for these networks. Would they love to have the heights? Absolutely. But there're still some level where this is worth it for everyone involved. Were you surprised in being on the three network windows and then the FS one for the U S F L games and not hitting a million and any of those? I was really surprised the N B NBC game did as well as it did. It was like 9 84. But thoughts on, we have three network clearances and none of them were cracking a million. Yeah, I mean that's interesting. And if you had brought that up a few years ago, would've been, people would've been, why in the world are you showing this on network tv? But we're in an environment where all sorts of TV is taking hits compared to what it used to be. Numbers that used to be fatal for network TV are no longer, we're seeing more and more of an emphasis on putting sports on network TV with increased cord cutting. And I think that's a huge part of the U S F L to X F L comparison here. Is that free of the X ffl games this weekend were on cable and free of the U S F L, were on network. Yeah, because I think it was what, 700,000 average versus, I mean obviously the SFL is going to draw more on that. Did you read any more or less into that maybe X ffl here in week nine should pull more or is it just those clearances are always going to hold it down? Yeah, I mean think the bigger thing is where it's televised and I think rather than week one versus week nine, I think a network slot is generally going to win out over a cable one. And you saw that with the one X ffl that was on broadcast Vegas Houston on ABC on Saturday that got 878,000. So that's pretty close to It's in the it. Yeah, it, it's above the two Fox ones from the U S F L below the NBC one. So I mean isn't a huge divide between any of those where the drop really is when you get to those ESPN games on the X ffl. And really when you get to the ESPN N two one, and to me the ESPN N two thing is interesting because I think a lot of people talk about this in the wrong way. They say, oh, less people have access to it because obviously ESPN two, that's not really true. All the corporate reports indicate that ESPN two is in pretty much the exact same numbers of homes as ESPN because they negotiate all of those Disney networks together. But the thing is, people turn on ESPN by default and will watch whatever is there, and that's especially true for bars, restaurants, gyms and so on. Nobody turns on ESPN two unless they're looking for a thing. And I think that's what really is indicative about this alternative football in general here of if it's somewhere where people aren't necessarily looking for it, where people aren't necessarily going there, then you wind up with that 235,000 on ESPN two Saturday night. But if it's in someplace like espn, you're much more likely to get 500, 600,000. Yeah, because I'm looking on here that to me, 2 35, excuse me, 2 35 7:00 PM Saturday night that that's a slightly alarming. I mean do we know competition at that time? I mean obviously the NBA A stuff's heating up and everything else, but that to me seems a little bit low, But it's also it, it's a question of relative to what else, right? Whereas 2 35 for ESPN two is a way better number than 2 35 for ESPN would be. And so it comes down to what the other network is showing what they need it for and even the overflow channels of ESPN two and FS one and whatever, they can be fine. You just have to understand that it's going to get way lower of an audience Going us to L season one to two. Did you ever expect there to be an increase or is it just you're always going to have more novelty and more interest, more everything year one and then maybe we build over five years, but did you ever expect two the top one? Yeah, that's an interesting question. I think some people at Fox and U S F L headquarters would've expected year two to possibly top year one with the, we've established this, we've built this brand, we're coming back with it. I think from my perspective, and this is not just with hindsight, but I think it, it's hard to imagine it being better when it is up head-to-head against another league. I think the overlap in audience for these leagues is significant. I think it it's football fans but then beyond it it's fans of who are willing to look at football beyond the N F L and there's one very wide group of that they'll check in occasionally just based on novelty and that really falls off when you go into a second year or third year or whatever. There's another group that's more committed to it, more interested in the actual product and I think that's what you're trying to build over time and that's what both of these leagues are trying to go for with let's do some more games in markets, let's play in more cities. Let's set up for the long run. I don't think that group is anywhere near what the novelty group was and I think the novelty group has fallen off because it's not as much of a novelty anymore. Was curious to me, and obviously we'll have to have you back on here in a couple weeks, but when X F L goes away, is there going to be a 35% increase in all the U US F L ratings? Are people just, I sit and watch eight football games in the weekend or especially if the two are overlapping or whatever and we don't know that yet, but what is your instincts or what thoughts do you have on that? Yeah, I mean I think you'll absolutely get some boost. I think you'll get some boost from lessened competition and from people who, and I think an interesting thing is with both of these leagues still being quite new, there's probably some people who are hardcore fans of one team or one league and so on, but there's a lot of people who are just here for alternative football and so I think you will get a bunch of them transitioning over from the X Ffl to the U S F L once that X ffl season wraps up. The thing is though, you're not going to get all of them, so I don't think that this becomes just, let's add the U S F L audience and the X F L audience from this week. I don't think that's what you're going to get in the first week of no more X ffl. I think what you're more likely to get, and of course this depends on network placement, it depends on what other sports are going on and so on, but I think what you're more likely to get is maybe 30 to 50% of those people who would've been watching the other league there may be coming over and watching the game here, It's hard. I know that both leagues are strategically positioned, right? X ffl wants to go right after the Super Bowl and U S F L and we got to get done because we got to get players in OTAs. But if there was a two, three week window where they could separate it and not that, I don't know it mean it's the overlap worth it or do you just ride it out for those three or four weeks? Yeah, I mean I think the interesting fade with all these leagues is that there's a lot of considerations beyond them and beyond their what's best for their tv. I think you hit on some of it particular with the US L focus on getting done in time for people to go to OTAs and for both of these leagues, they're really trying to build their credibility by getting guys to go from there onto the N F L. They also, they want nothing to do with any level of actual N F L overlap, so that marks off a large amount of the calendar year that you just can't use. So I don't know that there's, there's a better way to do this. I think that if both of these leagues are going to keep going, they're probably going to keep going with similar schedules to what they're doing right now and they'll just take the overlap and take the audience cannibalization. When you saw the Radis come out this week, I mean what was your kind of initial gut reaction? I mean I think the first initial thing was it was sort of interesting that nothing cracked a million and because I mean that's often been sort of a mark that's been what people have been looking for and that didn't happen at all here. I think that's particularly disappointing for the U S F L perhaps because this was their big launch, this was their week one, they're hoping to, and we were talking about it really was way below what week one was last year. It's good in comparison to their overall audience last year, but it's way below what their launch was last year for the X ffl. I think this is, it's st. It's just continuing the trend of a bit of a decline week by week by week. It's still probably sort of fine, especially when you consider that two of those are ESPN one's, one's ESPN two, but they're not. And it's interesting because if you look at the comments from them, from their executives that I wrote that I wrote up last week, they were like, oh, this is going to get so much better in the back half of the schedule. We don't have the March Madness competition anymore. We've got these better network placements. We're not on FX anymore. Which like, yes, absolutely true. All of that is valid, but it hasn't really worked out the way they had hoped. I guess expand on that more because I think it goes maybe along with what you have thought and when you came on the show before, you talked about how you think sometimes network accepts believe that there's a higher ceiling here than maybe there is, right? That exists in the viewership level, but expand on their plan here for the second half and maybe how it hasn't worked out or what you've noticed with the trends. Yeah, absolutely. So this is an based on an article I wrote on March 27th and that had Dwayne the Rock Johnson and Danny Garcia talking with Tom chat of U S A today about their ratings so far and where they were hoping to go and in particular they were talking about, we understood the Garcia said we understood the challenges that would happen all the way up for week five and as we get into the week six and lah half, we knew where it would open up. So we're really pleased, really, really pleased if the execution, and that's all fair, they're right, they got a bunch of games on fx, the FX GA add, like we talk about the ESPN to ESPN two. Well FX is way worse and it it's fine in distribution, but no one is going there looking for sports content. So you have that and whenever you wind up with something like that, you are limiting yourself much more to the hardcore fan who looks up where a game is broadcast, is going to go seek it out, is going to find the channel listing. What we've seen that with all sorts of other things. I mean that's the long running thing with March Madness and True TV awareness. Month of tons of people have true tv but they can't find it. So that's the same with fx. It's the same to a lesser degree. With ESPN two, the X F L was right to have a little optimism of, okay, we're getting some better network assignments in the second half, we're getting away from all these FX games. But I think they were maybe over optimistic in how much that would boost them, especially with the U S F L coming back too. And the thing that I brought up the last time we talked here, but as always we're remembering with these leagues is that Fox has strong incentive to make the U S F L work because they own the league. NBC's working with them, it's working fine for nbc. Great. ESPN is just the broadcaster for the X ffl. So the X ffl really has a tougher road to climb in making sure their product continues to work for a broadcaster that doesn't own them. What do you make of the, and I have one more question here before I let you get out of here. What do you make of the N B NBC always seeming to track higher than Fox? Is it just, is NBC just a more popular station than Fox? Is it that they have maybe have less competition that day? It's just Michigan always ranks well, but it does seem like NBC always their viewership last year was significantly higher than the average Fox viewership over the course of the season. Yeah, that's an interesting point. I think some of what's going there is what's going on there is that the overall NBC broadcast weekend schedule is probably stronger than the overall Fox Weekend broadcast schedule. And that's something to do about, that's something to do with sports. Not always, Fox is decent at the moment with some M L B stuff and so on, but just in general, N B C has sort of put more programming effort into weekends. There have been more big national themes carried on N B C, whereas Fox's national strategy outside of primetime has often been a little hit or miss. So there may be as less people just naturally turning on Fox, there may be less people expecting sports there and expecting sports there at those given times. I don't know for sure. I don't know that that's exactly how it works, but it would make some sense to me that there is a larger subset that defaults to network NBC than Network Fox. My last question, and I know we live through all this and the minutiae of everything, I wonder what the non-zero number of people that don't even differentiate, right? Oh, it's football, they're on the field. I couldn't even tell you that one. Is U S F L or X F L or what the rock who, I mean, and we don't know this, but I mean the savviness of the viewer to even differentiate if we're switching between games, you might just think this is all kind of spring football going on And I think that there's definitely a group in that category. I think that's especially the real casual fans I was talking about and I think that's especially true for a lot of the out-of-home viewing of if it's on in a restaurant or a bar or whatever, a lot of the people are going to be, oh football rather than necessarily knowing the difference between the leagues and who's involved in which. And I think that is a significant portion of the case for both of these leagues going forward as a viable product is, hey, we're giving you a football game that you can throw on in your bar restaurant TVs in the middle of winter slash spring. So that is an audience that both of these leagues need and it's one that they both have to continue to court, but it's now interesting that there may be taking a little bit of that audience away from each other. Exactly. No, I think it's fascinating, at least right now with like I said, we'll see the increase. I'm sure there'll be an increase when the X F L ends, but whether that does that ramp up or ramp down, be curious. Andrew, any other thoughts before I let you go? Andrew Buckles with awful announcing, I appreciate it. No, thanks a lot for having me. I think just the last thing is that this is a very interesting thing to watch and fall and especially with both of these leagues publicly saying they want keep going, they want to keep doing this for years to come. I think from my perspective, the real interesting thing is going be to track what level of ratings, what level of ticket sales, what level of everything do they need for that and h h how long is it viable for them both to keep going. Well Andrew, I appreciate it. I will try to get you back on here after the extra L championship game. I think that will be an interesting week to monitor. So I really appreciate your time today. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Well I'm excited. Today we have long awaited Cole Kubick joining USS ESPN sidelines seeing him work in the sidelines all season for the X F L. How are you doing sir? I'm doing great man. Appreciate you having me. We've been trying to connect for a couple weeks here, so I'm glad we got it worked out. Okay. You guys are busy. I appreciate balancing all the other ESPN stuff. How's your life right now? How are you feeling approaching X F L week? 10 Tired. I used to getting going through. My wife and I went to dinner last night. We were talking about it go through fall and then we've got Spring to kind of be a married couple again and then get through summer with the kids and then we start up. But it's been a lot of fun. It really has. I did it in 20 and did not know how much I would love it and just love being a part of it and it's been even better this time around DJ and Danny and Red Bird Capital, the folks behind it have been amazing, so appreciative of us and been communicating with us on a regular basis and the coaches have been very welcoming. I think the players have a pretty good idea of what we're trying to accomplish on the sideline, what we're trying to talk to. And I think the ball's been pretty good. I mean most of our games have been very competitive. I don't think we've had a game that was completely out of reach going into the fourth quarter and that always makes it more compelling and more fun. So I've met some great people, had competitive football games. It's live tackle football. I'm always going to be a fan of that and I'm a fan of this league. I think it's got a long term sustainability. It's been a lot of fun, but make no mistake, here's the thing, the Sunday games really kick my ass because I do a morning radio show with McElroy who's on my X F L crew. And so we had one cancellation St. Louis, we got canceled, had to spend the night, we had the eight o'clock kick in Houston and then I had two other delays on Sunday nights. So getting home at one 30 or midnight and that, that's just brutal or flying out right after doing the show from the hotel the next morning. That's been the toughest part, but it's absolutely worth it because I love being a part of it. Yeah, talk about I think week 10 here we cover the US F L and everything else, you know could have a very dud week 10 coming in where there's not a lot of stakes in an 18 league, but really all the games still have medium this weekend obviously we'll be at the Dragons game with the Vipers, but all of these in DC Brahma's kind of trying to play spoiler there. What do you make of just the competitiveness and the parody across everything I think mean but maybe one or two games this year have had some sort of playoff implications and that's throughout the course of the entire season because even Orlando wasn't eliminated and two weeks ago, so they were still in the hunt longer than you would've expected if you looked at their record. And that's kind of same deal with San Antonio. I'll be on DC and San Antonio this weekend. Braas can still play their way into the playoffs. They need some things to happen of course, but it's possible, it's feasible and you're looking for other teams to get in. I mean St. Louis and Seattle obviously both have an opportunity to get in that's going to be exciting and two of the best venues for X Ffl games, those crowds have been phenomenal. We know about what DC has been as well. Fantastic there. I've had a couple of games in the Alamo Dome that's been fun. The rough next crowds have been showing up in Houston, but I don't think anybody would debate you that St. Louis and those Battle Hawk fans have been unbelievable and obviously Seattle as well. So the fact that we get to go into this final weekend, yes, two playoff teams set, but two more still haven't work to do to get in. It just makes it that much more compelling in the final weekend. What surprised you the most in a good way or bad way kind of going through this season? I think biggest surprise to me has probably been the coaching changes and how teams have adapted to that. You saw Las Vegas, they fired their offensive coordinator, Hines Ward makes a move at offensive coordinator. You're just kind of like, hold on, you're three weeks into this, these guys haven't been around each other very long. You're not going to have a ton of continuity anyway. How is that going to go over? And I actually feel like it when Jimmy Johnson, I had the game where he came in and became the OC against Arlington. It was working early on and then all of a sudden you lose Reed sunk and you kind of got to go back to Jack Cohen and then it's become cone puma pass if it wasn't for the quarterback juggling, I actually think that that move may have been really beneficial for San Antonio long term. Vegas has been a little bit more of a rollercoaster offensively, but I think they now have their guy quarterback. So you see them start to climb here late in the season. Rod's got the kids still playing hard. That defense is fun to watch. They, they've turned it over and they've made some silly mistakes over the course of the season. So I didn't anticipate coaching. It's not a long season to begin with and these guys hadn't really been around each other very long. A smaller rosters. So I don't know if I anticipated that much turnover at the coaching spots, especially coordinator spots. And it's been weird to see, but it's been pretty cool to see how the teams have also managed it. Yeah. What do you make of Coach Woodson? I mean a very emotionally driven and kind of see some sideline stuff and credit to him, I think to keep the players playing hard here even into week 10, but he's very vocally upset sometimes about lots of things. It seems A lot of times now I have been opposite him twice. We had Vegas in the first game against Arlington and we had him last week against Houston and I've been on calls with him, I've talked to him for a while before the game. I think that's just a competitor that comes out and whether it's going after the officials on a call, whether it's, I mean you've heard him say some things at some of the players and just the intensity level that he wants them to stay at. But I would just say specifically on defense, look at how he's had those guys continue to play and there have not been many moments that I've watched him on film or live in a game where I've felt like anybody's been checked out or doesn't feel like they still have a lot to play for. And he is, it's his first time doing this, just kind of like Mike Hines Ward, a couple of these guys. They don't have a ton of experience of how things happen in game, how to manage your emotions in game, who to go talk to on the sidelines so they're learning at the same time. But he's been a joy to be around Now listen, I also grew up a Steelers fan, so being in the league with Hines Ward and Rod Woodson's been pretty cool for me In terms of Coach Ward and obviously you'll be at the game this weekend, you know, talked the quarterback thing, there's got to be something else going on there. I mean we saw Kurt Baner come in and get injured. I mean they haven't been able to keep anyone healthy just do you attribute that to Bad Luck or what is San Antonio's Wos? Yeah, I don't know if you would put it on an individual, but I mean last week you lose maybe your leader on defense and Jack Kerner had say, or two weeks ago you lose Jack Kerner at Safety. We were on that game and you're just kind of, hold on. How, who else can you even afford to lose? Mike and Delante Scott have kind of been in and out of the lineup. They've been nicked up at times. I think they've played 15 different offensive line combinations. They've lost multiple offensive and they've had to bring more in. You lose Jacquez Patrick who was your kind of go-to feature tailback, even though, I mean, excuse me, Patrick's filled in, but you lose Billage earlier who he was kind of your go-to guy. The guy you started it off with, they had a receiver in Calvin Turner. They were excited to get back and see what he could do and then they lose. He doesn't really make it all the way back in. So they just haven't been able to have their full allotment of talent. And I think some of the guys that Hines were de was depending on to be able to carry big loads in this season, they've been banged up or they've been in and out of the lineup. And when you play four or five different quarterbacks over the course of a year, you're going to struggle offensively. And if the reason that those quarterbacks are not staying in the game is because of your inability to block people a lot of time, you're really going to have some trouble. So they're thin tailback, they're thin on the offensive line, they've rotated quarterbacks, now they're sitting on the back end of the defense. It's been wild to watch. He has been incredible about it because we've had San Antonio, this will be our sixth time. We've had San Antonio this year and he has stayed positive, he's had answers for everything. Like I said, he made an offensive coordinator switch on his own and Jamie stayed on staff and continue to coach on the staff as well when he was demoted. So he's kept the continuity about as strong as you can anticipate and I can tell you that record not where you would want it. And like you said, they've suffered because of some of those injuries, but still being competitive and still fought their rear ends off in games and have it still have a chance to get into the playoffs this weekend. Yeah, cause we get a lot, there's a lot of chatter online and we want to bring in new fresh new coaches and give them an opportunity here. But then you know, do see Hines Ward and Tre Buckley. People are, Rob Woodson are struggling and I just don't know if it's circumstance or if there's things that they could have done differently because obviously it's a learning process for everybody, but you just wonder if it's what came first in that scenario. Well I think they're very different examples with Hines. I really do believe if that's a healthy football team, for the most part we're not talking about them being sub 500 right now. When you look at TJ Vasher at wide receiver Alize M at tight end, whether it was Patrick or Barage at Tailback, they had things going at different points in time. The past Rush has been in incredible. I mean Mike and Delante Scott can get after you. Those dudes are fun to watch. I think Drew Beasley's been one of my bigger surprises in the X Ffl. I didn't know a ton about him and then I put the film on him, San Antonio early on. He's playing down inside, he's out wide on the edge, but he's finding ways to get to the quarterback and then of course Jim Hermann's going to bring pressure so they're going to get after your ass as well and that's side of the ball. So I just think that's more of, they brought in Camp Kelly I think after week three and Hines was like, we can build our defense around this guy. That's how important he became. But he wasn't even on the roster in camp. And then I think when you go to Las Vegas last week, rod told us, he said, listen, we're a totally different team than week one when you saw us last. Obviously a different quarterback, but we've manipulated our offense a little bit defensively. Listen, I love that San Antonio defense, but good lord Las Vegas gets after you. I mean you talk about playing downhill and it's not one or two. Peter's had the best year, maybe anybody in the X F L on that side of the ball, Vic Beasley can still get to the quarterback. Their safety's come flying down. I mean Vegas has just been awesome to watch on defense. So I do think that the injuries have played into some of it. I think Orlando kind of had some quarterback issues from the GetGo like you were having trouble protecting. And the weird thing about Orlando was Seth is when, because we had them I think week two or three and I'm watching 'em and I'm like, hold on a minute, they're running the ball when they would actually hand the ball off. They're offensive. I could give movement at the point of attack. They had good backs that hit the whole hard, but there was a lot of that rpo, pull the ball out. Listen, I talked, we were talking to Houston last week and talking to AJ and he's like, man, I'm not. We're done with RPOs. He's like, there is no run past option. He's like, it's run past throw. That's what it is. He goes, it's not rpo, it's run past throw. And he's right. Most quarterbacks if you tell a quarterback you can hand it or throw it, they're going to throw it. So I think that Orlando had a little bit of an identity issue on offense early on and if they would've figured out some of the things that they have throughout the season, if they would've known that about themselves early, they may have been a little bit of a different team. And listen, now you got a quarterback on their team that people were saying needed to be fired and kicked off the team because he was alleged to do some things he never did and now he's having success but they haven't been able to protect very well and I think that's a big reason that they just couldn't find their way into the wind column very much. In terms of DC here, not leaps and bounds above, I mean we saw Seattle keep it close but obviously the best team in the league right now, what do you attribute that success for them? Very stout defensively as well. Maybe not as aggressive as far as attacking like a San Antonio is or the Las Vegas is, but they don't really have to be. I think they've been pretty smart with showing some different things up front, some simulated pressures getting in and out of it that they don't dedicate a lot of their bodies to the back end of the defense because they understand that teams have had trouble sitting in the pocket and throwing the football. So what's the intelligent thing to do? Play seven or eight in a box and then you take away the short throws, you take away a lot of the run game and you can apply pressure when you need to. And then just that two quarterback system has really worked out well. I mean you, you've got Jordan Tamo, a guy who understands the league, he was in it before in St. Louis and was having a hell of a year and then you could bring Dre King in for a little bit of a change up. Who I don't really even think, I think that's a kind of a sidebar story of this league are other quarterbacks that are sort of getting opportunities that I could see as future x ffl starters. When I put the tape on of Nick Tierno the other day, he threw some dimes in that he wasn't just running the ball and being a power runner. He had some great throes and D King doesn't need, in my opinion, doesn't just have to be a change up guy. He could be a full-time quarterback in this league. So I think we may have seen bits and pieces of some quarterbacks that are going to end up being starters in this league down the road. But DC the thing that sticks out for me and it's a little bit similar to sort of St. Louis is just balance. They have the ability to run the ball. Now DC does it in a little bit of a different way. It's not as traditional what Brian Hill like St Louis does, but they have the run game, they have different option plays that they can utilize to go run the football. They play good defense. They've got some guys that can help 'em on the perimeter. So they're just balanced. They're offensive line is probably the best in the league and that helps a lot with what you're trying to do on that side of the ball. Do you give San Antonio any chance this weekend against dc? The one reason that I would is I'm uncertain how DC's going to manage things because you're in and you have home field and listen, these rosters aren't big enough to sit five or six different guys, but does it change how they call the game? Are they less aggressive defensively? Is it just kind of a ground and pound plan on offense, try to run the clock, get out of there, keep guys healthy? I don't know how it's going to be managed. That would be one reason that I would, and like I said before, Hines has done a great job of just staying positive. He's found different ways to get his guys motivated and as I pointed out some of the, they have Delante Scott who can take over a game. I think it TJ Vassar's a guy that any one-on-one ball he's got a chance to go get. You still have Jack Hispa tailback who's been pretty good for him this year. So they have individuals that can give you explosive plays on both sides of the ball even though they've lost some and a lot of 'em are out, they still have guys that can make plays that are talented. So I don't know if I would completely count 'em out of this game. Last question for you. I'm watching the clock here, we get done with this season. What's your advice moving into season two? What would you like to see or what would you hope to see? Well I think for the league it's maybe add a roster spot or two just because injuries have affected the teams and some of the games so much. But part of that too is there's only so much talent to go around. So are you going to add spots to bring guys in that may not contribute if you didn't have injury concerns? The one thing that I thought was greatly beneficial the last time around that we don't have this time around was the extra team, I can't remember if it was like Team nine, team 10, whatever they called it. And you had guys that went and they practiced every day on a team. So they went through individual with their position groups and then they went and ran team drills against one another. They ran plays through Routes Pass protected, then those guys are ready when you lose two offensive linemen in a game or you lose two running backs over two weeks like this kid's been playing. He's ready to step in right now and the league has been monitoring him. He can have share the facilities and work out. Other than that, it's been, I think it's been fantastic. I mean what they allow us to do from a broadcast perspective has been amazing. The access that we get, I absolutely love it. The promotion has been off the charts. The involvement with the league between us and the teams and the players has been fantastic. So that would be one thing that I would kind of think of that I think could be great because the rules have been awesome. I don't know how this kickoff rule's not implemented at every level of football. I really don't. It makes too much sense and I think the only reason it hasn't been is people don't want to do something. They don't want to make that big of a change when it's not their idea. Having that one challenge, apparently Belichick's been after that for years in the N F L. That has been incredible because you have immediate drama of is the coach going to use it? Should he use it? And that has been just a really fun talking point and then listening to Dean come in and be able to describe things. We don't get that at a lot of other levels. It's been really cool to see. But I think maybe having that extra team there practicing every day ready to play football instead of working at U P S or working at a grocery store, that could maybe be beneficial year two. All right, cool. Well you need to go hop on your coaches' call. I appreciate your time and we'll look forward to hopefully having you get on in the future. Thank you. Absolutely. I'm on playoff game and championship game, so we're still living the X here for a couple more Weeks. Sounds good, thanks. Well I'm excited here. We've been talking Paul Ruiz here, US L Historian with our Sports Central has been, we've been talking U USS F L for better part of two years now. Now we're back season two X F L competing. It was kind of, I didn't watch all eight football games, but I watched probably more than my wife would've preferred me to do. But how are you doing Paul, and what do you make of everything so far? Well thank you for having me on Reid. Yeah, world one weekend, eight games the most that we've seen in spring football since 1984. I tried to catch a little piece at least of each game, but it was difficult, kind of flipping back and forth, but fun. I mean what a blast. Who ever thought that we'd be in this position? We're just enjoying this plethora of riches in spring football this weekend. What did you make of the FLS return? Anything that surprised you in how they did or didn't do? I know this now we have a lot more on Twitter, we're showing Herschel Walker highlights and things like that. Anything you're noticing? Absolutely. The tie-in to the past U S F L was a big emphasis. No, the high handcuffs were off as far as mentioning the original league, you saw some video highlights, plenty of mentions of the old leagues. So that was one thing that did stand out in contrast to last year when we don't know officially that there was anything said, don't mention the old U S F L, but there was obviously something said don't mention the U Old U S F L. So now that they've reached an agreement with the old U S F L, they're now free to mention it and try to tie in records and all of those things. Is that, does that make you feel better or worse and different about the new regime in here? I'm glad that they reached an agreement. I'm glad that there's no longer any contention between the old guard and the new. And I'm always happy to see mentions of a league that I have a tremendous amount of fondness from the 1980s. So those things are all good. In terms of the actual, I love our ESPN people with Avelia, we just had Kubic on and I love all that. I do think Fox brings a certain familiarity or I called it on our live stream this week. It's like you're kind of putting on an old pair of jeans, you kind of know exactly what this is going to look and feel like if you watch M F L on Fox, what did you make of broadcast and them returning with the U S F L. Fox always does such a solid job with its coverage and you're right there, it does seem very familiar. You hear the music and you're thinking NFL football right away and your mind is kind of in the game. And some of the innovations that they brought last year they've brought back such as the helmet cam and the drone cam. Some of those things come with some minuses too, such as the noise from the drone cam. I think that they're doing a better job of using some of those elements now rather than, hey, let's look at this from the helmet cam. It's something that we show going into the break. Just a unique angle on it. So there are some things that are very familiar with the Fox broadcast that super solid The Sunday games, the Memphis Birmingham obviously kind of had the same hub issues. Were you impressed? Not impressed with the attendance we had in Memphis and Birmingham. So both games on Saturday where you had the home teams playing in Memphis and Birmingham looks like they drew about 15 grand each, somewhere in that range. I know some people might quibble with the figure but roughly in there and those games look good. I mean to me Fox has not put much of an emphasis on revenue from in stadium attendance. Obviously with $10 tickets and all kinds of different deals, it looks like there were plenty of tickets available in Memphis for anybody who wanted to go. The people are props. They're props for the TV broadcast and it works. That's fine as long as you can continue to show crowds in the background, it really does change how that game looks on television. So all of that is good. You noticed on the Sunday games, one of the funnier moments I thought was when Pittsburgh scored on a fumble return, they're right there at the end zone. The guy goes to the back of the end zone where there were people seated and then it seemed like he wanted to give high fives and a bunch of guys in hoodies just stood there and stared at 'em. It was kind of a funny moment. They didn't have any skin in the game, so it's a much different feel even with some people in attendance. Well I, it's hard and obviously certain XFL markets, obviously DC and the sellout I thought was tremendous. I mean really contrasting that Sunday game of you. I don't care if it's 8,000, 12,000, 30,000 having a sellout just environment in whatever that venue size. But yeah, you cut to some of the even Arlington where they haven't always had the most amount, I still feel like the people there are invested it. There's a balancing of we need that. We want people but we also want people that really care about it. Even in Vegas, I mean, you know, have the smallest crowds in the league, six, 7,000, but they're vipers people and so it gives the camera something to focus on. It gives a little bit more life to the ballgame rather than two or 300 who are just there for the afternoon. So yeah, it makes a difference. Now having said that, I like to contrast U S F L year to date. We have three games last year in front of almost nobody this year it's two games. So they've made strides there doing a better job. I think it'll be interesting to see what they do in Canton, but I think we'll see a little bit more life in Detroit as well. And then you have Birmingham and Memphis. Well that's the thing. I think Detroit, I think it's supposed to look really good. I mean we had Tony Kahn or Tony Scott on, not Tony, not the promoter of a w, Tony Scott on the writer for, I think it was the Detroit press or whatever talking about there is an energy there with all the ca and stuff. Yeah, Canton, I don't know if you get, I don't know, it'll be very interesting this weekend. I think that could be a very dead market Be, we could be seeing that same issue. I think the attendance will be better than the neutral site games in Birmingham and Memphis and I think it'll look better because that stadium is smaller. But who has skin in the game? Will there be energy with that attendance? It'll look better to a degree no matter what. But yeah, it will be interesting and especially as a season wears on, I think there'll be some curiosity initially, but then as the season wears on, what do those Canton games look like? Well that's the thing is, yeah, it is one thing we're driving in or we're coming in from Pittsburgh or whatever for a weekend to do the open. I'm not doing this every weekend even with the X ffl here. I mean I did the kickoff, but it's really hard for me to be like, yeah, let me go fly to St. Louis to go see the Dragons game there. Whatever I, it's just like, and I'm happy, well why aren't you going? I'm like, cause people have stuff to do. I mean I don't just have a weekend to go. I would love to travel and we have certain X Ffl super fans that do travel around, but it is hard to expect that of people every weekend. And so most of the people I imagine are going to be fairly local and you might have some people making tracks from nearby metro areas, including Pittsburgh that help out. But I think you're going to count on most of the attendance being local Quality of play for the U S F L, obviously we're a week at nine of the X ffl, so that's not a fair comparison. But what did you make of the quality of the four U S F L games? Again, I'd like to do that year to date comparison. When we looked at the U S F L week one of last year, it was pretty rough. It was pretty rough offensively. Now contrast that with what we saw this past weekend. We had a couple of teams that were really rough offensively, Houston and Pittsburgh, but we had a couple that really kind of stood out. We had Philadelphia and Michigan both doing a very solid job offensively and Memphis too. So year to date I think we've seen that progress. We're likely to see some struggles these first few weeks. I don't think that's going to last as long in the US F L as it did last season where some of the teams never really gelled and a lot of the other ones that took it after. I think we're seeing that kind of happen a little bit faster because of the continuity that we have Love and cook Us for instance, were in the league last year and that helps. We also see a little bit of continuity here and there on offensive lines. That helps immensely. So I think that year to date we're way ahead of where we were last year Because it is hard. The announcers, I think they're talking, oh the gambler's defense last year and then this year you're like, guys are leaving and trading and not coming back that. But there is still I think a core, it's a tough balance. Is there really enough to analyze on that? But you do feel like there's enough continuity in a lot of these league teams to be able to quantify that? I think that there is some continuity and even if you have a center guard combination that now know is familiar with each other, it knows, okay, if you situationally they know what the other guy's going to do, that makes a huge difference. So instead of allowing a 15 yard sack, they're picking up that blitzer. So I mean those are some subtle things that you don't necessarily notice, but that continuity does come into play. We, we've done in our couple other interviews, this show big kind of deep dive on the ratings, but were you surprised with that the USL didn't hit a million on any of the network broadcasts? I was a little surprised to be honest. I thought even with the competition that we'd be looking somewhere around 1.215 maybe. So again there there's just no precedent to what we saw this last week with competing leagues. So it could very well be that the X ffl kept those numbers down and so the U S F L has another week and a half before those numbers come back up where they retake maybe some of those X F L viewers. Yeah, I think that's going to be the great mystery here that middle of May when the x ffl is done, if we get a sudden surge or not. I'll be curious, here are people, are you satiated? Are you moving on? Are we going on road trips or I, I don't know, there's a non-zero number of people that are only going to watch the X F L or the US F l. I know there's obviously quite an overlap, but I am curious about that. And I think the most helpful thing is that we saw so much spring football spread across multiple networks and multiple platforms. We're the core who follows these leagues, but there's a huge population of people who are like, what there's spring football and oh, are the New Jersey generals in that X ffl thing? Or they don't understand that there's a difference between the leagues, they're unaware of spring football in general or when it's on what networks it on, it's on. So even just accidentally bumping into it, it's so easy sometimes to say each league and wonder, okay, can they get their share of the pie? And maybe by having two of them playing at once, we're actually increasing that piece of the pie that that's my hope anyway. Yeah, because I believe it was in listener, Seth I think was the one that sent it to me that during noon on Saturday there was 1.5 million people watching some form of spring football at any given. Which for you as a historian here, thinking that we would ever get to that point has to be kind of monumental, Especially in today's splintered media lineup. There's so many more things to do than there were 40 years ago. So even I think comparing the ratings from three to five years ago is so difficult, but live sports is one of those things that still can bring an audience and absolutely 1.5, the X ffl didn't see that rating since maybe week one. So it's helpful. It's helpful to have both of them going on at once where we're increasing the size of that pie a little bit. In terms of the football gameplay here, New Jersey generals really seemed to kind of lament the loss of friend of the show. Luis Perez, Dakota PCO was in there, kind of one of the C CFL guys generals losing, didn't really seem to have a lot going. What did you make of them here and who are they playing this week? They've got, they're playing the Breakers or no, they're playing the this great, they're playing the modelers here at Canton. Well somebody's probably going to look better. So that's the good news. The generals, yeah, rough game couldn't convert on fourth down in important situations, otherwise they were kind of in that game. You didn't really fear that passing attack on a lot. Darius Victor let the league in Russian with I believe 84 yards in week one, but a big chunk of that came on one place. So there was very little continuity. Continuity to that offense. They looked like they struggled and struggled a little bit more than I thought. They've got a really good head coach in Riley and I thought that they'd look a little bit better than that to begin with. Pittsburgh, same story, different day offensively. How many quarterbacks are they going to cycle through this year? I saw the, and I'm going to cut the head coach some slack first game, but just because it's a guy's turn and the rotation doesn't mean you put 'em out there for the last drive. He completed the third of his passes, he averaged 1.9 yards per tent. He never should have been out there on that last play. Morgan had improved throughout the game. That was your better chance to win the game and I didn't understand that. Well it is, it's hard on here because, and we've seen that I think less in the X F L and I don't say any league or team is wanting to win more or less, but you do, I feel like you see a lot more of the, hey we got to give both of these guys equal reps in the U S F L than Seattle. Ucci has never not seen the field and as long as these guys are healthy, they've never not seen DC uses it for strategic. They're not just, okay, we're pulling Te Yamo here, we're putting in Derrick King. Why do you think USS f l coaches are more apt to do that? I wonder to a degree if they just don't feel they have a standout because it is weird and we see that two quarterback play used in Houston as well in the X ffl and I think both Houston and DC have done it so tremendously in situational play. They don't have to give the guys equal reps, but they bring in the guys when it makes sense. This is our guy with the better legs. He presents a different threat to the defense and it doesn't mean that Eric King in DC for instance, is always going to run the ball. We've seen him beat the defense with throws. So I would like to see a little bit less emphasis on just getting guys reps and more on going with the hot hand. And I think that's kind of what we saw last year in New Jersey with Perez. But Pittsburgh, I think I, I'd like to think that if the head coach had to do that over again, he would've made a different decision. It's this crazy here, the modeler, we can change the you tiger can't change it Stripes, right? We can get the new uniform on and a new coach and we're still the same lamenting woes here. Yeah, and they scored a couple of, I don't want to call 'em gift touchdowns, but touchdowns that you wouldn't necessarily have anticipated and still, you know, get beat by a late drive just in a painful way and we'll see if it changes throughout the rest of the season. Obviously you follow all the leagues. What did you make of Macau? Bethel Thompson here, journeyman coming in, getting his, I didn't like when I turned it on and I heard Kurt making fun of Macau for playing with the metric system because he threw the bottle over the line of scrimmage. I didn't appreciate that and that's the kind of thing that C F L Homers should get mad at and not me for talking about alternative football. But what did you make at McLeod? Started off rough and then really improved and what I love to see kind of my M B T moment was that head first diving first down on the game winning drive. I mean that you see a guy pouring all his competitiveness, completely unfamiliar with his teammates, there's going to be some stuttering with that offense to begin with, but you saw that competitiveness and that on display and when he dove for that first down, I had very little doubt that they were going to score it. It just was one of those things where I'm like, yeah, the Breakers did a good job getting this guy Well and I think it speaks credit to him. I mean he is someone that's been poo-pooed his entire career and the C F L at. They come in as an older guy in the locker room and we have quarterbacks already and we've got players and continuity and kind of all this stuff and I think he's a real locker room leader there and I think even if he doesn't play all 10 weeks here as a starter, I think just having that presence there is going to be valuable for growing all of those guys together. And when you look at this from kind of a spring football perspective and there in some camps you almost have this feel that every guy out on the field should be some kind of N F L prospect, a young guy developing and he's trying to get to the N F L. But I think that there's a great place for guys like Bethel Thompson who want to play in front of his wife and young child. I mean that's awesome and he can get out there and he can perform and he can lift the level of play in the league. So I'm so happy to see that the U S F L made room for a guy like that. A couple last things here. Obviously the stallions losing Jim r Smith this week. A broken, I mean I think he's, seems like he's out or at least out indefinitely for the long term. Alex Magu looked good. It's hard now you're trying to repeat and what do you make with the stallions are going to do And if I'm defending the stallions, I defend that quarterback run first and make Magu beat me with the pass. You can say that a couple places around the U S F L, but I think it does change the equation a little bit and Birmingham credit to the defense, maybe that alone is enough to lift them, but we'll see throughout the rest of the season. Anything else? Any other kind of general thoughts, broadcast thoughts, X ffl thoughts? Anything else you wanted? Share It. Super fun switching back and forth amongst the games. It was just really interesting to note the contrast between the X ffl presentation and the U S F L presentation as well as the X FFLs with the season winding down and a couple of home playoff games at birth and just the energy and the excitement and then contrast that a little bit with the US F L Sunday games where that energy and the excitement weren't necessarily as high in those venues, but a couple of great games on Saturday for the U F L as well in front of crowds. So the thing that struck me was that we are seeing almost this, really this unprecedented weekend of spring professional football with two leagues competing in a way, but really putting their best foot forward. And I enjoyed it tremendously. It is weird to me. We have talked and everyone has talked attendance and the no energy and all this stuff to death. Highest rated us F L game was that the Houston, Michigan game was absolutely no one in the state. I think it was 9 64 on, yeah, N B nbc. So we talk it to death, but I, it's know, it's just because it's that time slot and people don't care that it's just bizarre than mere probably the least amount of fans at the highest view game of the weekend. And that can be a blessing and a curse, you know, have your most fans watching a game that didn't necessarily have the same energy level as some of the other games, especially the two U S F L Saturday games. And again, the broadcast windows are different. You had three network games for the U USS F L, you had one for the X ffl. So those numbers are somewhat different and I think both leagues, as we look at the schedule, even for next year, assuming that both come back next year will look at any overlap and try to figure out the best way to handle that. There was a lot of energy in those X F ffl venues this past weekend and I don't know if I still have some kind of PTs D from the Covid era where I just don't want to see empty stands. I don't want to see 'em. I don't care if there's, there's little groups of people scattered. It's way better than just seeing empty stance. No, I mean Andrew Murray was on the stream this week and you said it reminds him of the f l in 2020 and how many N F L 2020 play games are you going back and watching highlights of or whatever it's, it is, it's ingrained in people's minds at this point, but Paul Reese, I really appreciate it. Our Sport Central and SAS screw.com. Anything else? Thank you so much. Yeah, just totally enjoyed it and looking forward to another full weekend X F L playoffs on the horizon. I think we're going to see these U S F L teams gel a lot faster than we did last year, so hold on, just hang in there and know a couple of the offenses were rough but I think that they'll gel a lot faster. Yeah, I mean the X F L is really peaking right now I think at a good time and I think the US F L will have its time to shine as well, so it should be good. Exactly right. Awesome. Thank you. All right Reid, thanks for having me on. Well when I reached out to the stallions they said this is the one guy you wanted to talk to, so I said all right, perfect. We have Brandon Aubrey here. How are you doing sir? I'm doing fantastic. Just wrapped up the day with meetings in practice. It's good. So we're back here season two. We have the big premier games here over the weekend back in protective stand. How is your life going right now? It's going well. Feeling a lot more comfortable in season two. Got some of the kinks worked out in the first year, feeling a lot more confident and a lot less nervous going into week two, I should say. Yes. And congratulations on your U S F L 2022 season champions here with the stall. I know you kind of transitioned out last year and that was kind of the big story. Obviously now I haven't a year under your belt, but what was last year like coming in and I'm sure quite the learning curve? Yeah, last year was quite a whirlwind. Not a lot of time once we got here to learn, sit down and really learn football and then learn what my role was, how to practice, how to be a pro in this sport. So really took a lot of time in the off-season reviewing what happened over the course of the year, figuring out what works for me and what I needed to improve on to have a better chance at making the ultimate goal, which is making it that transition into the N F L from here. I'm sure you shared this story a lot last year because for our listeners and viewers transitioning from soccer into football, what brought about that change? Yeah, so I had two year professional soccer career and when I was done with that went on to software engineering and did that for a year and a half. And the whole time I was doing that I realized I had taken maybe my professional sports for granted and wanted to make the transition back and maybe wasn't quite ready to go back to soccer. I might have burned out of that so figured I'd go something adjacent cause I've, I've always loved watching football and really felt like I'd take a gamble on myself and move towards kicking footballs as opposed to playing soccer and it was a natural transition but the hardest part is getting someone to take a chance on you when you have no background obviously. So I got pretty lucky having some connections through Notre Dame kicking world and Skip Holtz obviously when there, Well it's cool because, and we cover X F L and US F L and C F L and having these leagues to get players for a myriad of reasons, these opportunities to live out their dream or try to find a new dream mean. Did you ever think back playing soccer as a defender that you would be kicking, that you would be a world champion here in the alternative the football league? Yeah, absolutely not. The thought never really crossed my mind until watching N F L games working as the software engineer like I said and my family pointing out, Hey we think you could do that. I know you're not super excited in your current role as a software engineer so maybe go pursue that. And through hearing that a couple times I said, why not take that gamble and go do it And spent time with Toronto fc. We cover that we, we've covered a lot of the c FFL leagues there you we've got the Toronto Argos and kind of all that stuff on as well. Would your family think you were crazy when you said I want to go play professional football? They, they're really the ones who pushed me towards it. I thought they were kind of crazy at first knowing what it took to get to a professional level in soccer and how many years and work that took. So I kind of thought they were the crazy ones but they pushed me out there and I stuck with it. I spent about two and a half years training on my own before even going through all the circuits and then going to combines and events showing in front of scouts in front of other coaches. It took me about a full year of doing that workout cycle before I ever got a look and drafted eventually into the U S F L. So it was quite a time commitment and my family actually were very supportive. They had seen me succeed as a soccer player so they knew I had the potential to do it if somebody would give me an opportunity. And finally through the perseverance and their support I was able to stick it out long enough to get that opportunity. We've heard a lot about Coach Holtz and players kind of love playing for him even when he was introduced as one of the coaches last year and his enthusiasm and I think really buying into the whole experience there. Talk about him, the rest of the coaching staff and kind of everyone they have to help you guys out. Yeah, skip has been incredible. He is exactly that. He's a player's coach, he really knows what we're going through and has a good sense of how the players are feeling throughout the season from week to week, day to day and Taylor's our practice schedule to that. So maybe if guys are feeling a little nicked up, ramping down practice, if it's getting a little lackadaisical out there, ramping up practice and dropping periods if we need to ramping up that intensity if we need to. So he's been great about that and we have all of our position coaches are following that lead as well. And I can say I work most closely with Coach Bones, our special teams coordinator and he's been fantastic in that as well. He is been a great mentor for me as a kicker that played and won the Super Bowl with the Cowboys actually he's been great for me kind of guiding me through what it looks like to be a kicker in the next level. So it's been absolutely great. Our staff is wonderful and they're a major part of why we've been so successful In terms of coming back this season and what's it like to feel homecoming, what does it feel like here coming back to the hub here, it's slightly different this year. I know we have the multiple hubs but what's it like coming back home? Yeah, it's been awesome. It's been a lot calmer here with just two teams as opposed to eight. So it feels like we have a space of our own. We're not waiting for meeting rooms, not trying to find practice fields all over the place. We've got protective and legion when we need it that are always there so it feels a lot more stable, a lot more like home and just a lot calmer and I think we've kind of got those issues ironed out that we had last year with the schedule so it's been a lot smoother and it's been a lot of fun. I love the city of Birmingham and living here, It felt like having the games come back on this weekend when I watched the show books game and then this stallions game and it just, Fox really knows how to put together a broadcast. I mean I think they're able to highlight you guys and obviously we've had some of the commentators on our show and it just feels like they're able to tell your story and being able to highlight this where Brandon came from or this is where Jamar came from or wherever. What does it feel like knowing that your on the national spotlight in that way on Fox and n nbc? Yeah, it's been nice. I've had a lot of my friends reach out to me and know the broadcast has been very kind to me and have done a good job telling my story, which is great for me. I love the publicity and it feels good knowing that you've got the a premier broadcast, they do our games the same way they do the NFL games and that's a good feeling knowing we have that support there and that the league is really putting in capital to showcase us and tell our story. You were the one, it was last year and you had punted and then had the big tackle right? Saved the return that I connected On a kickoff. Yeah, my first tackle I kind of just threw my head into his head and didn't know what I was doing but got the guy on the ground and I think I got the job done and then the next week they, they'd showed me how to properly tackle I to hurt myself. Well because that's the thing, I mean I think you soccer players get kind a bad rap sometimes. It's a lot of flop, whatever. I mean are you out there trying to dissuade that and show like no I am tough, I am able to kind of, Yeah, no, I mean I'm a big guy compared to the returners six three myself, 210 pounds and the returners are probably around five nine on average, maybe just under 200 pounds. So I think it would be a bad look for me to shy away from them in the open field. So I'm going to give it my best effort and if my form doesn't look quite right, I mean as long as he gets on the ground good. In my book I've never tackled a man so I'm certainly not going to critique you how to do it. Yeah. In terms of, we were at Birmingham last year. I was with my wife on spring break this year. We didn't make the trip out but I saw a lot of the festivities leading up to it. A lot of your world champion stallions kind of all that stuff. What was it just kind of being a part of all of those festivities? Yeah, it was fun. It was good to go back and relive those moments and enjoy them with the team and the guys that were there because it's kind of a real whirlwind at the end of the game. We were over in Cleveland, the game's over, we have kind of that night to celebrate even though it's a little bit late but we celebrate with the guys and then we all hop on a plane and go our separate ways. So it was nice to have those activities set up for us to go back and relive it and take it in, celebrate it and then close that chapter and move on to the next year. I think. And obviously we've lived this graveyard of spring leagues with like AF and X F L in 2020 and 2001 all this to have a championship team be able to come back and be able to I think be adequately honored and just respected in that way. I think it's just a cool thing for the history of spring football. So I mean you guys are kind of etched in that stone here as one of the rare people right now. We're able to get that. I mean do the teammates, how do you guys view this or do you talk about it does, what does it mean to you all? Yeah, I don't know if we fully appreciate that in the moment right now just focused on really repeating and defending as much as we can. Maybe when we look back in the future, we'll see in the history that we really were what you said the first spring league to finish and be able to win is the special thing for us Coming out looking strong for week one against the generalist here. What was any nerves, any rust? There's a lot of, I think weight on your guys' shoulders to show strong here again this season And I think we did a good job not buying into that. I think Skip mentioned we're not going out there to defend a title. We're not going out there to win the season today. We're just going out there to try and go one. Oh. So that's our mentality and we're going to look at that each and every week. Just go out there and try and be one and oh try and not bring up last year whatsoever. In terms of your own personal, you've talked about your growth and wanting to experience now and move to other things, what are you looking for goals this year? What would be a success for you? Yeah, a successful year for me is winning all of our games. You never want to miss a field goal obviously, but doing what I need to do, make my or get my job done, lead the league and kick off average and starting field position average and going for that all pro again would be absolutely massive for me. Any thoughts on the new kickoff rules or anything this year? I know they're mean, obviously you're kind of living through all this as as a new but moving it back, kind of creating some more space in that way, further distance. Any thoughts on that? Yeah, it's fun that kickoff opening kickoffs are the most explosive plays in the game. It takes a lot of energy and for me as a kicker it gives me an opportunity to showcase my leg, you know, hit a 80 yard ball, you get a touchback. That's really, really hard to do and I think we've had two of those in the league so far, so that's something that I want to go out there and showcase I can do as well. But it just gives you a chance to showcase your leg, Showcase your leg. Sorry. Well I appreciate it. Anything else before you go? What do you keeping yourself occupied with when you're not at practices or camps right now? Yeah, so it really eats up most of my day in the, but when I have some free time, it's just watching some TV shows, hanging out with the other specialist and maybe sneaking around a golf when we get a chance. That's good. Well we have lots of you, we have lots of special teams. Friends of the podcast here, both in the US F l, you'll know Matt Mangle over with the Mallers, he's a longtime friend of the show so I appreciate always making those connections that way. Brandon, big game this weekend against the Showboat so I hope you guys have fun. It should be a good one there at Protective Stadium. Yeah, appreciate it. Thank you very Much. Awesome, thanks. Good luck. Yep, Thanks for having me. Big special thanks again to everyone for coming on. I thought Dean was fun. I think Dean gets just so much grief from me tweeting from everyone during the X F L games. I think he carries that, carries it in stride. I think Dean's fun. I think I cracked Dean up a little bit so that's always fun as well. Huge thanks to Ben Fisher. I know he made a lot of time for me this week. They're working on the big conference and getting ready for the commander's sale and all of that for the Sports Business Journal. So huge thanks to Ben Andrew as always for coming on. We definitely want to get Andrew back on when the XL season ends and kind of see what happens with the U S F L TV ratings at that point. Cole Kubick, we've been going back and forth for weeks. I know Cole's a busy guy and that means a lot, him taking the time And then obviously Paul Reese always loved to check in with Paul and then Brandon Opry as well, even a player interview. What would you imagine that's going to do it for me today? Really exciting times right now. Really exciting. I feel optimistic about it. People kind of in my private life will know I've sent some messages of some cool things that have happened recently and it just means a lot. We work really hard on this show and I appreciate everyone's support. We did our big U S F L live stream before the kickoff last weekend. Highest viewed one of anyone doing that. That means a lot you guys checking that out. And everything else Kraken, give your, if you don't have an N H L team, give your good vibes to the Kraken. Hopefully we'll be two and oh by the time you hear this. But either way, whatever works out with our game with Colorado tonight should be an exciting series and just happy to, to have the crack and be part of the conversation. So that's going to do it. I've been really happy this week. Very emotional with a lot of stuff. Good stuff going on. So thank you guys as always like and subscribe and we'll see you next time. Thanks.