Episode Podcast Transcriptions 9 of The Markcast® podcast talking about the CFL, UFL, and other “alt-football” news, stories, insights, commentary, and more!!!

Episode transcriptions 9 of The Markcast®. The Markcast® is a sports-centric podcast, covering the CFL, UFL, and other alternative football leagues. Tune in for the latest CFL, UFL, and alt-football news. Episodes are listed in the order they were recorded. *Please excuse any spelling or typographical errors.

UFL Mid-Season Review: Alive or Just Breathing?

Well here we are back, just a Mike Mitchell episode today. That's all we need for this one here coming in hot. Do a little intro here and then we'll get into Mike Midseason here. UFL Review. What do we think about all that stuff? A couple news and notes like and subscribe. If you appreciate all this stuff, we're giving away two free tickets to the St. Louis, the championship game in St. Louis for the UFL. When we hit that, I think we're like 50 subscribers away, Mike. I think we can do that. But like and subscribe, give a thumbs up. CFO coverage will come next week. I know the draft happened in Vegas working 15, 16 hour days here Sunday through last night, so we will get to that. But today is Mike and the UFL and all that, but we'll get to that, I promise. Get some player interviews and all of that. I think we might have a Brock keyword sighting next week if everything works out. So I can subscribe if that entices you. Mike, here we are. UFL halfway through. I can't believe it. The theme this week at UFL Alive or just breathing, what do you think? Oh, that's a good one. Well, technically it is alive, right? I would say the thing of it all is I think we're all, a lot of people out there expecting the worst doom and gloom thinking maybe 2024, this doesn't work and maybe these two sides break apart or this is the death of spring pro football. But I think from the beginning I've been saying to everybody that will listen or that pays attention that this bought them two years. So I think 2024 is a bridge to 2025. We're definitely getting 2025. I know that this might not age well if all of a sudden we find out that there's some kind of like, well, you never know. That's why we expect doom, right? But every indication is that this is, at least they're not going to say this publicly, but it's at least a two year thing. Then we'll see from there. So the whole idea of the merger was these two sides coming together and trying to find some light at the end of the tunnel from survival mode to thrive mode. So that's kind of like the story there, but it's interesting. Quick side note, cool, that a former USFL an XFL player was picked first in the CFL draft. I thought that was kind of a unique thing that was washed over. They didn't really mention that that much. Of course. And it's cool to see a lot of these UFL players that have found, we'll see what happens. Training camps starting up in the C-F-L-U-F-L players that have found homes on CFL teams. There's some really good guys out there, Jeff Bette with the Argos, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So they got a shot with the ratio. You never know, but there's a lot of UFO guys that were just recently on teams that have headed up north. So CF L's an awesome league and we're coming towards that. So it's a busy period right now between the CFL draft, the NFL draft, the UFL, all that fun times, but busy times for sure. Yeah, and I was going to say, if you're tracking any of the stuff, Anthony Miller I know did a bunch of write-ups as well for Sports Illustrated as well. So if you're tracking, I was trying to keep track of all that stuff and Farhan was on and everything else with the CFL draft. Speaking of, and then I know the UFL sent out this week, like the Nick Novak specialist happening in the off season for 2025. I said, there you go. Confirmation 2025 season, and they're not quite, but ratings this week a little down. I feel like we've hit a watermark expectations for you in terms of coming from the league and then we'll talk attendance as well. But tv, I feel like we found kind of our little out marker. It really doesn't seem like anything's falling out. And I thought early on they were kind of exceeding expectations considering the heavy competition they had. A lot of people were like, oh my goodness, March Madness, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, we hit a little bit of a midseason lull this past week. The numbers weren't that great. They weren't awful by any stretch of the imagination. I think the key is big thing, I've written about it like a million times at SI is I think we know what the floor is with these leagues. It's contingent upon time slots who they're going up against, whether they're in prime time or not, whether or not they're on a big network over the air, linear television. Those are like, and we kind of know what the floor is. We're waiting to see if this league can hit a million viewers. We'll see this coming weekend, there's four games scheduled all on big network television, three I believe on Fox. No more split games in primetime, which confuse the heck out of everybody. I understand that they always do those regional broadcasts. MLB does it, NHL, et cetera, et cetera. So anyhow, I think it'd be interesting to see if they can actually, because we know what the floor is, if they can actually build upon this, when they get towards the playoff push, when they get to the championship game, I think everybody, it now expects championship game rolls around. The league's going to do over a million viewers, maybe 1 5, 1 4, 1 6 maybe. Who knows? It'd be nice to see a higher ceiling develop. You get what you put in. So in terms of promotion, marketing, the attention that's on these leagues in our bubble, these leagues mean everything. But in the sports world, they're still in that same kind of ignore mode. So you kind of notice it in the periphery, but it's not something that's really on the sports, a mainstream landscape. People forget sometimes the UFL is on. We had Rick on last week, Rick Cella talking about is it more USFL in charge? Is it more redbird in charge? Marketing to me feels more USFL. We're kind of bare minimum. I think social media has been really good this year, and I know we talked about that last year with the XFL and it'd be halfway through a game and you wouldn't even have any plays upload all that's all good. But what is your read on the situation and just your thoughts on that? Yeah, I don't see this perforating out into the atmosphere unless you're watching NASCAR or whatever on Fox seeing any of this stuff. Yeah, Fox and Redbird had shared interest and almost shared values. I know people read into the XFL losing 50, $60 million, whatever the official number is, but when you look at the Redbird XFL model, a lot of what they do is to save money. The whole Arlington setup travel, not paying taxes in Texas, three teams there. All of that is to save money. And we know about Fox, they've been in the money saving business with the USFL for a while now. So a lot of what they do is by default because it's bare bones now, there is some expenses that they're going to be cutting down upon in the future. We saw a little bit of that in the off season with seasonal employees rather than full-time. Their head coaches in order to coach in the league in 2024 had agree upon becoming seasonal employees and reduction in pay is crazy, but it's the reason why Wade Phillips is in San Antonio right now as Heinz Ward refused to sign a reduction in his pay, he's landed on his feet, whatever, he's found another coaching job in the coaching ranks, but Wade Phillips would not be coaching league. The Brahms would probably not be this good if they didn't have Wade Phillips and AJ Smith and all that. And Mark Lily Bridge has done a tremendous job with that roster. So I think this marriage, these are two like-minded partners. Disney's is a part of this too. We don't know their breakdown, but it's been reported. Sports Business Journal, Ben Fisher, that Disney is definitely part owners in this whole thing. You get what you put in. So hopefully at some point they'll be able to sit back and reassess and decide they're going to have to spend a little bit of money in order to grow this brand. It's not enough for them to just exist and expect growth. You're going to have to start planting some seeds and that's going to involve some money. Yeah, all of these, everyone seems adverse to taking any sort of wide swing or risk here, and I just don't, we saw that with USFL and like, well, we're going to go into some of the hubs. I never believed in year three we're going to have eight USFL teams in eight cities. That way it just feels like we're always kind of on this. We're on the edge here and it never really feels like anybody wants to kind of jump into the pool full feet. And I just don't know. I don't see what changes in that. I guess what needs to happen for them to be like, okay, now we got it. We're going to invest another a hundred million dollars. I don't know if people remember this, but I also, I reported this it seems like 20 years ago, but it's not. The XFL in 2023 was going to do a full on hub in Arlington with all their teams playing there just to save money. And then they decided against that. And I remember when I reported that they were thinking about a full on that means the ST playing in Arlington, everybody. And I remember when I reported that they were thinking about that, but they're shifting way. They're going to play in their stadiums. Danny Garcia, who's not on X anymore, I guess it's called, liked my tweet, which further validation of what I was reporting was accurate. So it's crazy. During this whole process, I think people forget there was a chance this merger wasn't going to happen. And I don't know the full details on this, but when Fox and Redbird submitted their paperwork, which I reported first back when I was with Newshub, they, the government asked for revisions and update on info. So it took a while. The expectation was that this was going to be approved by the government, but it actually took a while. And in the meantime, before they actually submitted the paperwork, they discuss so many different scenarios. That's why we got so many reports out there from people about multiple hubs. They legitimately talked about 12 teams. I was just talking to somebody this morning about this. They legitimately talked about 10 teams. They talked about Canton, Ohio as a possibility for the league. They went through everything until eventually the final paperwork was submitted. Once the final paperwork was submitted, they even debated up until the 11th hour whether or not to have the gamblers or the roughnecks. Well, I think they gambled poorly. And when I reported the eight cities, everybody jumped the gun in and automatically assumed gamblers, and then they put it on as their own work and as it turned out, they stuck with the rough next thing. Now we can argue whether or not that worked out or not. I'm sure we'll get into that momentarily. But I love the football aspect. I love these players. But you got to understand what these leagues, and I know there are a lot of people that are upset at me that I put out the attendance figures within the league. They don't like that The focus is so much on those numbers. It's not fun to look at sometimes when you only see 6,000 fans. But a big part of these leagues is big markers for them is how they're doing in attendance, how they're doing in ratings. I mean, you pay attention to NFL attendance, N-H-L-N-B-A, some cases MLB if a team's going really south. The whole thing with the athletics right now, everything's pretty crazy with Oakland losing another team and all that wackiness. But with these leagues, attendance and ratings are important and it's a barometer. It's a marker. As they build up, people have to also understand, you cannot expect you have to step outside the bubble and you put yourself in a family man's shoes in terms of spending money and put yourself in a sports fan's shoes. And as the weather gets better out there, it's nice out there today, at least on my neck of the woods, it looks like it's nice where you are. People have options and things to do. I'm not trying to make excuses for these leagues, but it is difficult if you're, I don't know how you want to list it, but the UFL is like what, seventh, eighth, ninth in the area. I don't know however you want to rank that. It's N-H-L-N-B-A-N-F-L, et cetera, et cetera. And then UFL, it's like a lacrosse league pickleball. It's kind of, I'm sorry, it's everybody out there. I love football to death. I'm paying attention to UFL more than the NBA playoffs. I mean go Knicks, who're probably going to choke in the playoffs. But I'm honestly like I'm here. I'm an advocate for this. I make no bones about it. I'm not a fanboy for any of these teams in the league. I have loyalty towards a certain teams since I was a child. I got it on, if you can see that faded Jets logo there. But when it comes to these leagues, I root for the league as a whole. So I'm actually sitting here, you and I are recording on a Thursday. I'm sitting here hoping that NBA games wrap up and that there's no big time NBA games on Saturday and Sunday, just so the UFL has a chance to do a better rating on the weekend. So I make no bones about it. I'm rooting for these leagues to succeed because I think they're great for the football landscape. It means a lot of jobs, a lot of working people in football. And as someone who's been an advocate of these leagues forever, my love through the NFL, the NFL draft college football led me into my love for the original USFL, the CFL, because I've monitored and followed these players. I understand how such a small percentage of players make the National Football League, and I think there's value in having these kinds of leagues. It's fun to me. And also the odds are so much against them that I actually root for the underdog. So this is the ultimate underdog. The likelihood is that these leagues are not going to make it because all of them have died a miserable death. And so attendance and ratings, it's not fun to look at. I know. And for anybody who's a support of the league, they don't like to see Birmingham and only 7,000 fans. They don't like to see whomever with 6,000 or whatever, Houston, Memphis, I don't know. But hey, those are the numbers. Those are the reality. I got to report it. I can't fanboy it up. So I mean, that's kind of the story there. So we'll see. In terms of these leagues building popularity, I think the leagues themselves are quality. I think what Redbird and Fox and Disney, they need to reassess and they're not going to go all in, but they need to see where they're weak and build some strength in those areas. You get what you put in. So they need to make more of an effort. If they want to see growth, they're not going to get it by default. Expectations for the league in terms of attendance, well, I guess first off, so because you talk about that and not wanting people, you get the Emory Hunts of the world, and I respect Emory tremendously. You watch this football to see fans, I'm like, well, but if the goal is to sell these leagues off in five years or 10 years, or at some point in the history of mankind, you're going to need to have more than 6,000 people. That's why I care about attendance is that you said you view it as kind of a barometer as well, but ultimately that is the goal. We don't care about. It's not the money we're making at the gate. You kind of have someone there that's interested in bringing these teams to market, right? And as far as the attendance thing, and I get where Emory's coming from with that, right? Because I'll watch football anywhere, any place, anytime. So for me, I get it for the diehards. But here's the thing though, and forget about the optics of it for the people who are casual fans that turn on a game and see nobody there. And the thing is, if you're watching a wrestling show, if you're watching a sporting event and there's no fans in attendance, there's no natural game atmosphere and energy home team road team, it takes away from the perspective of the game. It takes away, it decreases the value of it. You watch the St. Louis DC game this past weekend was probably the worst collection of games in the UFL. It wasn't that the play was awful, it was just kind of lopsided. Birmingham beat the crap out of Houston, St. Louis, that game, the St. Louis DC game, that atmosphere was fun. It got away from DC and the second half, it was 1712, they got back in it. And then obviously Battle Hawk steamrolled them. They got a big measure of revenge from last year. But that game felt like a great Sunday afternoon pro football game, the big plays. It was kind of fun back and forth. The crowd was into it. It enhances it when you watch it, when you watch a college football game and the crowd is going crazy, if you're watching a Georgia, Alabama game and there's a few hundred people in attendance and people are just walking around and nobody's a fan of the teams and they don't care, it decreases the interest of the game. It's just the way it is. So it's important from a business aspect, it's very important for these leagues. They need to figure out a way to create revenue streams. Now, I was on your big show when you were in Arlington before this season opener for Renegade Stallions, and I told you I shared conversations that I had that day with someone who had very modest expectations for the attendance. We went over numbers. I can't really, for some of these markets, the expectation was lower than the others. So for Memphis, the Michigan situation, because the late ticket sales, then they weren't sitting there going, I hope we get 20 K. I mean, everybody wants to get 20 K. But last year, because I'm aware of how poorly the USFL teams did at the gate that even when you see 6,000, 7,000, some of these USFL games were in the hundreds, and I'm not talking about the games that had neutral psych teams, whatever the stars play in Michigan or whatever. So they're working hard, but they're understaffed too. Like the Jason Ella am, I pronounce his name correctly, all those guys, that team is understaffed. And so they had a small window because like I mentioned earlier in this conversation, there wasn't a guarantee that the government was going to approve it. When they did approve it, it was like they had just a few months to get it up and running. I know they already had seeds planted in St. Louis and dc, but people forget, there was a lot of uncertainty with the XFL right after their season ended with the Vegas situation where the roughnecks were going to play. And then when the merger was announced or the intent to merge was announced, then it was an extreme amount of uncertainty who's coming back. It got to the point where when eventually the cities were announced and the who's coming and all that, and people were celebrating in St. Louis, yay, battle Hawks are back. They were never gone to begin with, but it was at a point where the leagues didn't know whether or not they would be approved and also couldn't. I know they did deposits and all that, and they ended up refunding certain teams, Seattle, whatever, but they didn't really. So I think this off season leading into the next, we'll see what the timeline in the calendar is, and the league has to help out their staff, the people that are involved in sales, they're trying. But in a perfect world, you'd have teams set up and you'd plant seeds. You'd have teams set up in each market pushing and you would take the entire off season to start planting seeds for community events, everything else to start selling tickets and promoting locally. So you have six, seven months to sell tickets. You shouldn't have to wait two weeks before the season starts to start actually pumping out or promoting to get ticket sales. So hopefully the bridge from 24, the expectations were modest at best for attendance this year. And so there was a hope that the USFL teams will pick up, maybe Birmingham will pick up. They freaking, they've gotten to the point where they're good enough where they should be doing 20 KA game. I can't quite figure that one out because for years I heard about how Birmingham's been burned by these leagues, but so many people said to me, Birmingham needs to have a team. Birmingham needs to have a team. Birmingham needs to have a team here. You have a team. They're really good, they're tremendous. They got NFL talent all over the place. You're going to see when the off season comes out, like 20 players signed on NFL teams, they're well coached, they're well run with Zachary Potter. So you would figure by now that Birmingham would've been a hit, a smashing hit. They have a good name, stallions, cool brand, et cetera, and they're, they're in a position where the stallions might actually make pro. We'll see what happens with the chiefs, but stallions might make pro football history something that hasn't been done in a very long time. Football team won in three straight championships. It hasn't happened since the Elks in the late seventies, early eighties, and the Packers before the beginning of the Super Bowl era. So anyhow, the expectation levels were modest to begin with. I think pressure's on though right now, I believe the league last year, the XFL last year, because the USFL didn't disclose their numbers, they were pretty bad. The XFL last year, I believe sold over 600,000 tickets. I want to say six for 43 games. If you count the championship game, which was like 22,000 San Antonio, I think the league right now is a little bit like 280,000 I believe. So at the halfway point, they're a little behind what they did last year, the XFL. So I think that'll help with St. Louis games. St. Louis is playing really well. It looks like we're possibly going to have seven St. Louis home games. I guess they got a few left now, and then of course the playoff game and then the championship game. So that might help the overall attendance when the end of the season comes. But it's definitely a topic and it's definitely a marker for fans to see whether or not the league is catching on. People who hate these leagues love my attendance tweets. They're like, aha, look how poorly they're doing. They really love the people who are CFL loyalists. They loved my attendance tweets. It makes me feel guilty for putting 'em out there, but I'm a reporter. That's what I do. People want to know. And then even when I put 'em out there, people think maybe they're fudged, trust me, they would not. I have done, I'm just a messenger here. But they would not be happy to let people know that only 7,000 people showed up in Birmingham that only 6,000. Those would not be, you'd want to fudge it a little bit better than that In terms of you're talking getting, we need to get people in these markets working, right? I know Michigan, they sent out, they're doing a meet and greet here on Saturday, but it's all contingent on, okay, we're going to fly in, we're going to go to the thing, then we're going to go to the game, then we're going to fly out. We can't keep people in these markets overnight or do any of that stuff at the end of the season when they lay off or whatever. All these salespeople anyway, I just don't see them doing the year round. I mean, I agree that that's what they need to do, but at the end of the season, a lot of these seasonal people, coaches, ticket staff, all that's going to go away. So I dunno how you build that off season at all. Right? And it's such a small window, 10 weeks plus the playoffs, whatever. I just don't know how you ever hope to build this. The only markets that, like you said with DC and St. Louis that are exceeding any expectations right now are the ones that have been around since 2018, And I think they're not going to do this, but you would hope they would. But you almost need team presidents in the markets. You need infrastructure there. You need to have headquarters there. And so that's money that's spending money. So you need boots on the ground. And I think whether or not they're willing to do that, so it comes down to whether or not you're going to have boots on the ground, like marketing promotion teams in each individual city to promote the leagues. Or if you're not going to put the actual teams in their cities to be there all season round or it comes down to spending money on promotion and marketing dollars, radio ads, TV ads, advertisements locally and then putting a budget towards that. If you're not going to put, because they're understaffed when it comes to ticketing and sales and they don't do a good enough job. That's tough for me to say, but they don't do a good enough job to begin with. I would be beating people over the head trying to tell 'em that tickets are available and all that they try. But I think I would go overboard, just sell, sell, sell, sell, sell to the point where you'd be annoyed with me. So anyhow, but I think it's a tough one because it's going to require them. I spoke to someone who worked in the other United Football League recently, and they said that they saw an increase once they started to put promotion and marketing in the individual markets. They used to put boots on the ground and it wasn't by any beads, great, but they saw an increase. So the other UFL, which people have forgotten about, but not too long ago, but I think that's what they need to do. They're going to need to use their resources and whether or not they want to do that, but you get what you put in, you're not, their whole thing is the crawl before you can walk strategy and then get to walking and then get to the running part. And they're still doing a lot of crawling in a lot of respects. And at some point you're going to need a boost so you can start walking. And I think if you got to go out swinging, if they're satisfied with this and they're okay with low attendance numbers and modest ratings, and they don't want to see the games average 2 million viewers or games average 20 k. If they're okay with this modest stuff, then all right. But if they actually want, I don't think they are. If they want to actually be a success, they're going to have to put in more work, more promotion. They're going to have to spend some money. They can strategically do it. Russ, Brandon, that team, they got to come up with a strategy might as well. That's what's happened to the leagues of the past. They swung for the fences and struck out immediately got into the red. So they're so scared of striking out, but at some point you're going to get to the point where you go, alright, do we want this to last forever and be a success and then we better take our swing. So I'm thinking if they don't do it this coming off season going into 2025, then they're going to strike out eventually. So I'm thinking that this off season is going to be a key for them. We'll see how they allocate their resources. I think they're going to need to step it up a little bit. They're going to have to take a couple of risks that maybe they've been trying to avoid for the last few years in this space. It is just like lack of consistency. Even in, I think it was, Andy and I were talking on one of the things like you have these eight social media people. They're working like Leah's on there doing this. Hey come, I'm here in San Antonio. We're doing all this stuff. Why doesn't every team do that? Why doesn't Jay do that? Why doesn't the people that do the, I don't know who does the roughnecks social media, even if you don't want to spend the money, there's certain things you already have people in place that you can do. And I don't know if it means flying the social people in early, let them run a table up on a Saturday ahead of the game for a Sunday. I mean, I like that we did the draft thing. I like that, but I don't know why there's not a permanent fixture in front of the Rangers stadium all the time. Hey, we're doing games here. We're doing games here. I mean, that is a huge conglomeration of sports and anyone that's been there, there's tons of stuff to do and there's restaurants and they're run a thing where you have a banner in Texas live all the time. I mean, there's just things you can do that I don't think, because people always say, well, you criticize, you don't want, there's things that they could be doing already that they're not. I think this little things like that, Yeah, they definitely need to do that. To borrow a wrestling term, you got to start acting like a little bit like an outlaw promotion. I know maybe they feel you're above it to handing out flyers. I Think they do. I think that they think that, yes, Yeah, they think they're above it, but I think you need to go above and beyond. Another thing that they need to do, and I've been saying this for the longest time, it's fallen on deaf ears. They need to embrace all media, especially people who are trying to cover you, like fantasy football, gambling. Just embrace all of them. These people are going to promote for you. They're going to end up working for you unpaid. So that's the thing. How do you sell tickets in the market locally? There's a lot of good people covering the league. I spoke with Greg Luca, who's in San Antonio. We've had some conversations, maybe I can't get into too much of that, but he covers the Brams. He does very good work for them. They just don't do the traffic there. There isn't a lot of local interest there in San Antonio. I think you need to be proactive and reach out to media members in each market. I remember the XFL in 2020, they had carte blanche. They gave to Rich Samini who covers the New York jets. So the New York Post, they went to media members and Stephanie Rudnick and that team did a very good job, humble yourself. You're a new league, you're trying to, these media members, they'll promote the league for you. So you need to roll out the red carpet. And I would do that with everybody who wants to cover the league. Don't shun them because they're promoting your league. They will promote your league. You'll be surprised if you start giving people access and information, how much they embrace your league even more and root for you to succeed. They'll openly work for you to succeed, for your players to get attention, for your coaches to get attention if you expect them to come to you. There's just not, especially with these new leagues, it takes a while. In the early stages of any professional sports league, it takes time for mainstream outlets and for a lot of outlets to start coming to your games and writing about you. And there isn't people clamoring right now to cover these leagues, not in the numbers that they need. So if you in each individual's market, target every media outlet, it's hard. Get every media outlet that covers you. Be transparent and give them information. Do it. The fantasy community do it. The gambling. You got so many people out there established to run all these outlets that are trying so hard to get these, use another wrestling term, get these leagues over. And so I think that is, if you're not going to put boots in the ground infrastructure in individual markets, have the teams there year round, all that you really need to Olive branch, put out the olive branch for even people who are ignoring your league, contact them and see if they'll do a story. That's what the XFL in 2020 did. Effectively. They reached out, they humbled themselves, they reached out to every medium, whoever was willing to cover. They reached out to NFL teams, they reached out to scouts, they reached out to every community to try to get them to cover the league. And so to, Hey, come on, we'll take care of you. Hey, come on. And first class operation from top to bottom. So they did a tremendous job. So I think you get what you put in. You're not going to get the numbers you want, the attention you want by just existing or being it not going to happen. Well, and some that's worked in local news. I'll give you a lot of these sports departments would love like, oh, hey, I have free extra content here to cover, especially in some of these markets. I mean are the Spurs, I don't even watch NBA, I assume the Spurs are out the, they're not playing. What is San Antonio talking about right now in sports, right? What are they talking about? What is St. Louis? What are they talking about? They're certainly not talking about football of any kind, but I just don't, you need to do that. And then what was I going to say? Because also it's not even like you got to send a crew out. All this stuff is virtual right now. At least take advantage of being in the hub to me and I'm not there. I imagine it's a little bit like summer camp. We're all here. You're kind of just part of this all the time. The coaches, and we had heba on, he had to do it on a Sunday because running, but we're kind of existing in this whole sphere for the 12 weeks or whatever in training camp and all that. It's like of any time that you can get players and coaches on, now is the time. It's not like five years from now I'm like, oh, well, I'm off on the weekend. I'm going out of town. Or what are you doing on a Tuesday after practice? You're in the hub in Arlington. Give these players, give these coaches on. That's what I don't get. It's not even like you got to send people out to do this, pull it up on your phone, have them call it from the locker room. It's not like CFL does that. Hey, we'll have, I can't even remember who it was. He just sat in the locker room after practice for 10 minutes. You could hear people walking around. It was cool, but that was a free thing that didn't cost any money. And here you go. That's free promotion out there. That 10 minutes is someone's time, Right? And the credit to the CFL Lucas Barrett, shout out to all that group over there. They'll reach out. They reached out to Anthony Miller and myself to interview CFL, combine players and all that. And so set up interviews and they reached out to us, Hey, would you like to interview these people? Would you like to interview these coaches? Would you like to interview these prospects? And so that was really cool. And they're appreciative of the coverage and they extend the olive. It doesn't cost you anything to do that stuff, by the way. So it's a matter of hustling. Now I understand they're understaffed, but I think they need to reassess their position and what they can do from a PR standpoint, what they can do from a media standpoint. In a lot of cases, you don't get a second chance to make a first impression. I know this is the 800th first impression basically between the USFL and the XFL and all the reiterations. But yeah, I think that's a big factor. I think the more media members that cover the team, your attendance will go up. That's a trick. They promote your games by default in local papers. I know papers are going by the wayside, but in online media, so it'll help more people come out to the games. Well, and I think that there talked about this with Greg Parks. There was that whole gambling podcast that the guy went on the rant about not being able to go, and I wouldn't have handled it that way. I mean, I think we can talk about that, but I think that the league is afraid of we're going to send someone on a podcast and they're going to get burned. We saw what happened with Who was the guy that leaked the cities and the XFL? The DPP for Orlando. Was it he? Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah. I'm forgetting the gentleman's name. It's passing me at the moment, but I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, so they're worried about that, right? And I understand that, but then you just black bar that person and they're never able to do it. I think that's what they're afraid of, right? Well, we don't have time to go through all these different people that want to talk or we're like, we don't want to deal with how many gambling pocket. They're afraid of that where just let them do it. And then if something doesn't work out, then you're like, what is the worst that happens at this point? Keep Butler. Yeah, no, We're not going to ask for social security numbers. We're not going to ask for passcodes or anything like that. There's no a secret information Or do what Brian still does and just, he'll just sit in the background and work on other stuff. And then you're just listening. And if anyone mean, if you don't, you can be on the calls with a lot of these. I mean, I have that with the CFL people sometimes if they want, or when they had on, when Heimbach was on Bianca with the renegades was on there. I mean, that's fine, but then just keep that on in the background. If anyone's doing it, you can call in. And I could even have on Streamy yards people sit in the background and listen and be able to say, Hey, don't talk about, but at this point, we're expanding cities right now. There's no secret sauce. You're hiding at this point. We're week five, week six of the UFL season. We're just trying to talk about football here. No one's starving and talking about living conditions, whatever the league that Sam's, we don't have players living in hobbles at this point. Everyone I think is being taken care of pretty well. Yeah, thank goodness for that. We don't have the craziness that we're seeing. Unfortunately in the arena football, they talk about dropping the bag, dropping the ball. Anyhow, that's a conversation for another time. But unfortunately with a lot of these leagues, you see that financial issues, everything else, they're unable to. They talk a good game, but they're unable to back it up. And then we'll talk football here. We've done a lot of attendance and TV stuff, but are you surprised with the damage that the SFL markets did, especially with Birmingham season one to two, them not. And then with these SFL markets, with the Memphis and the Michigan, I never would've thought that the hub and all of that would've hurt Birmingham. It seems like as much as it has where they cannot get it, I, and I know it's still a high watermark compared to Houston, but they can't get anyone to that stadium. I don't know what's going on with that general area. At least we saw Fox release the numbers, at least Birmingham locally is doing well. Ratings wise. They were one of the top regional markets that's been watching the league. And I know part of that is Birmingham was the first game of the season. They've been in primetime slots, et cetera. So of course their numbers are going to be a little bit better than some of the other teams. But it hasn't translated obviously to the box office. I'm not, there's a reason why only three USFL teams survived this merger. I know the gamblers are part of it, but not the gamblers brand. The gamblers never played in Houston. So the only home stadium teams basically Birmingham, Michigan, the numbers Michigan. I always thought the Panthers were an awesome brand from the original USFL, but I was surprised they chose Michigan and Ford Field. That was a unique and curious move. And so as far as Birmingham goes, they've been disappointed from day one and they said it publicly in terms they don't understand why they haven't taken off there. So people don't like to hear it. The people who backed the stallions, God bless you, I'm glad you do. I wish there were more people like you. They need to do better. Everyone knows we kind of like you grade them on a curve. If Michigan or Memphis tomorrow does 12,000 a game, we go, whoa, nice. If Birmingham does 12,000 go, oh boy, come on Guys. And people don't understand that too. I mean, yes, you have to grade these on the curve. They're not all equal franchises right now. And like St. Louis for example, we sit there, there's a lot of people, I get it, they did 31,000 in the last game and they're like, oh man, I wish they could have done better. And you forget, Hey, 31,000 is pretty freaking awesome. That's five Memphis. That's not bad. 31 K is pretty good, but they've set a bar now, right? So you got Anthony Beck on social media to halt. They're trying to get the St. Louis fans to show up this weekend for the Houston game. Not that they don't show up, I'm not saying that, but they wanted to build up that number, get in that 35, 36, 37, 38, maybe past 40 range. But there's different curves here. Birmingham is one of those, to me, one of the biggest disappointments I expected. I knew the numbers last year. Like I said, there were some games in the hundreds. I knew the numbers. No matter how many spatulas you gave out Michigan and Memphis, I expected this when I saw the six, 7,000 stuff. I was like, yeah, all right. I wish it was better, but I didn't expect a great leap from 483 to like 20,000 in a year. So I'm sorry, but to me, Arlington and I understand they're own five now, right? So they're win list. There's not a lot of reason to go there. To me, Arlington, it's not quite the Birmingham situation, but you would figure since it's the league's hub, that they would do much better locally there of promoting and marketing and being able to sell tickets and get the word out. And to me, the renegades have been a disappointment in the league. Their last game wasn't bad attendance wise, it was okay, but I think they should do so much better now. I think it's unfortunately their own five. So I don't know how you're going to convince so many people to come out to those games. I hear you. But I think Arlington's been one of the disappointments in League, San Antonio, whatever, drew over 20,000 fans in their home opener last year. Unfortunately, unfortunately in local media, they had stories coming out that people, employees were getting fired and people were expecting that. So it didn't really help matters. And then they were really bad, the Braas. But the Braas are a really good team this year. They're exciting, they're fun to watch. So you'd hope that those numbers will go up as the season goes along. Maybe they might. They might. But it's not to smash it that it wasn't the a f five years ago now. And so there's definitely, you grade these teams differently and Birmingham to me is one of the teams that you hope as the season goes along, that those numbers start to creep up and they start to do better and better that they have a home playoff game that has a 23 K or 20 4K. They should do that because you got to wonder about that lease. You can't lose that Birmingham brand. But I believe that lease expires after this year. So we'll see what happens In terms of the difference, and I was at the USFL kickoff in 2022, that felt like a hub. There was branding around there. They had signage and they had the US FL vault. It felt like that was the home of that. And the players were staying literally right across the streets. That kind helped all that stuff. There is no, and people talk like, oh, the XFL or the UFL hub in Arlington, that doesn't exist. It's not the same. It doesn't feel the same. You would not know it exists. You can sit at Texas live across the street and have barbecue and not realize that this is there at all. I understand the comparison there, but people, unless you've been to both of 'em, it's very different. But it is. You would think that it would draw better, but it's remarkable how it does not in exists there. And all those teams are there locally in Texas, you would hope, because Texas is such a great football place that by now they even adopted the name Arlington rather than calling themselves Dallas to try to ingratiate themselves with the Arlington area location. So anyhow, but yeah, some of these teams and cities have underwhelmed and that's why everyone's always calling for relocations and all that. But we'll see. Two more things, and I want to talk to bras and stuff here with the quarterback. I know we're not surprised that Houston is not succeeding this season with the rebrand and all that stuff, but I don't know, to me that's like what a swing in the miss. And I understand that politics were involved in that merger and you got to keep four and four and all of that. But I mean that killed that franchise. I mean, I don't see anybody in the comments on our videos and our team stinks now and they give us all this stuff and they expect us to come out. Do they reverse course on that? I don't think you can, but I mean either. Same with the kickoff here and changing that whatever before the season. But this to me was a huge swing in the MIS that I think has egg on their face. In hindsight, they should have just stuck with the gamblers. If they were going to keep the gamblers players, gamblers coach, best gamblers players from last season, they should have just said, Hey, gamblers have their own stadium. They're going to be playing in Rice. Come on out. We don't know how we're going to do Come on out. It would've been a different feel, right? Even if they got six, 7,000, 8,000 be like, Hey, this is their first time playing at home and they're trying to build their brand. This is their first time actually being there. Once you knew Wade Phillips was out in Houston and you weren't keeping the rough Next players, I think at that point they should have stuck with the gamblers just done the four and four. Don't create this weird confusion because that's what happened. Basically, it's like you're not really rooting for the roughnecks. You are already changing from T-D-E-C-U to Rice. You don't have Wade Phillips. It's not the same team. Be like if the Jets all of a sudden all their players sauce, Gardner, all their players go and they move on somewhere else, the entire roster. And now they're the, I don't know, they're the Cleveland Browns, whatever, you're going to have a lot of jet fans going, what the hell? And they're not playing in the same stadium. So it created a lot of confusion. So in hindsight, they probably should have just stuck with the gamblers. If you're going to keep the gambler staff, the gamblers players just keep the brand. These are not the real roughnecks. Now maybe over time they'll grow into it, but it was awkward to begin with from Jump Street. They wanted to have their cake and eat it too. It was a poor choice, poor decision. I would've stuck with the gamblers brand. It would be a different optic. Right now if the gamblers, gamblers were finally playing at home and they're only doing seven K, but they're not winning games, so maybe they can build it up over time once they start winning and all that. But it feels like they failed the Roughneck brand, which wasn't the hottest of things last year. They were pretty good. They made the playoffs, but it was much hotter than so anyhow. But it's just the way it went. Well, yeah, you lost the roughneck. I wouldn't say you lost all, but you lost a non-zero. I would say a larger portion of the Roughnecks fans. And then it wasn't like there was this huge Houston gamblers contingent there ready to embrace it. I mean, I know that there's some Go-kart driving or whoever. I fans of this team, but it was the least of both because you lost and then it's like you leaving your wife or the neighbor that's already not interested in you at all. It wasn't a very good situation. No, not at all. Final thought here. We get a lot of people on here. They got to relocate. They got to relocate. What is your thoughts on that here as we get, and you see some of this, I don't know if we add teams. I don't know if we relocate after the season, but what do you think? Honestly, I think you have to consider it. There's no way you can't consider it. Once you make that move though, that's it. Once you relocate a team, because the problem with these leagues is it's hard to get faith if you go into a new market. You have to choose the right one too. So it's tough. Once you send the message that a league is shifting their teams and relocating teams and there's no stability there, then there's no reason for the new markets to believe that you're going to stay there. And it creates a perception that this league is going to go away quick. They already failed. They're just grasping. Its straws trying to find a solution. You really need to think it through before you make that kind of decision. You also could look at the TV numbers at the end of the year, regional markets, all that, see how the market is doing in terms of, it's just funny. Every year I saw the Fox release their top whatever top 10 markets, and I keep seeing Tulsa and Ohio, Columbus, Ohio, they keep sprouting up in these things and I'm not advocating a Tulsa team, but they're watching. So I mean maybe it's a little bit of the Bob Stoops aspect with the Oklahoma aspect. I don't know, but they're watching. I know if they actually had teams, but I think they needed to assess it. A lot of this comes down to business decisions. It comes down to locking down venues and what the rental costs are going to be, all that. And so I think they need to consider it, but once you do it, once you pull that lever, press that button, that's it. That's it. You cannot, I saw that with the original USFL. They were relocating every five seconds. The renegades played in 70 different cities. Everybody, they were trading franchises, was doing all that stuff. It created tremendous instability and it made fan bases think, well, this league's not going to be around for much longer, and why would you invest in the team that just abandoned? So you assume it's just going to move it anyway. Once ticket sales are bad, oh, we got to move this to, so you got to plant your seed and then just put whatever your resources into it to try to make it work. I'm not a huge fan unless there's a few, there's a couple of San Diego and a few places like that you can find. I'm not a huge, there are markets that will embrace this league, but you have to select the right ones and then once you're there, you're there. So it, we'll see. I think Memphis, as crazy as it sounds, now watch this will age poorly. But I think Memphis, I think you could make that work. I know that sounds crazy. I'm definitely on the outside on this one. You could make that work. I think you obviously have to have a good team, but I also think you need to put in money and promotion and marketing. I think that's a market that it could work. To me, adding the Canton team or relocating or the Nashville Tuners or Tulsa, I would do anything in my power to get a team on the west coast of any kind. And I don't say it's got to be, I don't care if it's Seattle or Portland or Sacramento or Oakland. I mean even Denver would feel better. Just something that's just not in this mishmash of the southeastern part of the United States. That to me, when they show the map and you're like, there's just so much of the country that you're ignoring here. And that's why just, I know Andy wants San Diego, but jumping on the Oakland, if they're, I know the baseball thing and it's not quite the same, but it's too much that they're missing out on. I would do anything to get a team anywhere remotely near the west coast. All right. And I talk about so many times, the floor in the ceiling. One of the reasons that these leagues have limited ceilings in terms of viewership is because it's only eight markets. But you got to have, if you want to maximize your viewership, it's not like the NFL where every market watches the games, watches the Arizona Cincinnati game. So if you want to maximize your ratings, you have to be in the right markets that want these leagues to exist there. So if you're going to have only eight teams or 10 teams or what have you, that's a big thing with television and viewership too, is the market share. Not having a New York or New Jersey team is a factor. Not having a team in the West Coast is a factor. You want to be in the biggest television markets. Well, even because if you're doing only, let's just say, right, because I know people like to rag on the New York Guardians, but you would kill right now for an average attendance of 15 K for these teams. By the way, the guardians had close to 30,000 fans of their two games in the dead of winter. But even if you have only 10,000 fans in the New York game, that TV rating's going to be higher because you have that market watching the New York, New Jersey market. Same thing on the West coast. So they're limited themselves by not having a West coast presence by not another northeast team. I think. So they've limited, so if we're up to me, it's not my money. Again, they're not on the West coast because they're trying to save money, but they're not on the northeast because you have to figure out that whole venue situation and all that costs money. But if it were me, if you're trying to get bigger and better and trying to get higher ratings, I would definitely consider a West Coast presence and a New York presence as far as I'm concerned, to make this league have a higher ceiling. You'll have more viewers. The highest rated non NFL games, the New York Guardians game, by the way, that's the highest rated. I just got to say it was on Fox Sunday afternoon. It wasn't the opening game of the season. It actually had higher ratings than the opener for the XFL in 2020. And that was on Fox on a Sunday afternoon. So that market helps. That's one of the biggest markets. So right now, the XFL, the USFL, the UFL, they don't have a lot of big TV markets as far as they're going. They need to have a little wider reach. So if they ever get to the expansion or relocation business, I think they need to consider not only hitting areas that are watching these games, the regional markets will tell you which areas have an interest, an appetite for this. If you do the data from the a F until now, you'll see there's a trend. There are certain markets that always watch, even when they don't have teams that should tell you something, use that info. And so if we're going to relocate, we got to have a West Coast presence, I think. And I know a lot of people are against it. There's a New York bias or whatever, but I think it's important. Well, whatever you do, generals, guardians, whoever it is, I think eventually if this league, I will know this league has made it when they have a New York or New Jersey team, and that's my opinion. I will know if they get to that point where they actually have a team there. It's just going to help the overall, it helps the over league too. To have a New York team in the league itself, you need somebody to hate that you want to beat. So it's really a big factor for these leagues as far as ratings and attention goes and driving interest. So anyhow, we'll see if they can get to that. And I know we've talked about this and I think Greg Parks is going to write the article as well for UFL board, but the markets that they have right now make no sense at all. If you asked a hundred people on the street, what eight markets do you think that this new football league is going? Well, there's going to be three in Texas and they're going to have Michigan. They're going to, it just doesn't. And I know that how we've gotten to this point. But yeah, there needs to be at some point there needs to not just be like, well, we have the protectives, at least for Birmingham or whatever. At some point there needs to be some thought process versus just like, well, it's cheaper to play there than it is to play somewhere else. I mean the three Houston teams and I or the three Texas scenes, I know we've gone about that, but it makes no logical sense why these are the eight markets and you're cutting out two thirds of the country. And it's like a crapshoot sometimes with these things because a lot of people who are casual UFL fans will say, why are they in these NFL markets? And they got a point, right? For sure. But you would hope with the UFL that Birmingham and San Antonio, which are non NFL markets, would actually do better than they have. So sometimes there is an argument for, we got the NFL, let's go to all non NFL cities, but sometimes some of the non NFL cities don't hit the way you think they will in the, Sorry, because there's a reason the NFL teams aren't there some of the time. There's a reason why they don't want the NFL isn't in some Of these markets. It's tough. And in St. Louis has been great. Awesome. They deserve that. It's an awesome sports city. And because the NFL spurred them, spurring them and treated them the way they did, that's given 'em ammunition to embrace this league even more battle hawks, as it turns out, it's kind of a fun brand and all that whole car, they've embraced it. It's cool, right? Anthony Beck is awesome, all that. There's a lot of things to love about the Battle Hawks brand and who's behind it, all that. But it's not a guarantee that if you just choose, Orlando wasn't knocking it out of the park last year with the Guardians. I know that team was awful. San Antonio hasn't been a killer. They should be doing better. I love San Antonio personally. I thought it was a very cool choice when the XFL said they were going to go there. It just hasn't been a, but it hasn't lived up to obviously what we got in the af. And a lot of people expect it. People talk about San Antonio legitimately as a potential NFL. But I'll tell you what, when you see the attendance for the bras, you wonder, I know the NFL brand is so untouchable right now that if you put it anywhere, it's going to do okay. But I do think that they need to start doing market research on what markets are actually interested in their league. I'm not saying they should all of a sudden go to New Mexico and Tulsa and all that, but hey, like Columbus, Ohio, that's a great football state. So they have a nice stadium option there in Columbus Worth looking into. Last question here, we'll get you out. I appreciate you taking the time here during the day. Speaking of the broadness here, quarterback situation, what's going on with this? I know we have the signing. I was traveling yesterday and I don't even really know all about this gentleman and everything, but what's going on with that? And I think Tom Flacco got waived, right? I saw the transactions. So just kind of catch up on that. Yeah, so it's out there now. So last week I was told that the brass were interested in signing Jayden Delo. He has off field issues, a pretty serious one involving rape. So it's a delicate situation here. Not a great from a PR aspect. Him and a teammate supposedly, or a high school friend or whatever, coerced or forced a teenager to have sex with them. And so that was found out by Texas State and then he was kicked off the team. He's very talented player. I could see why Mark Lily Bridge, he has experience in the run and shoot. He has success there in Arizona. So I could see why they'd be interested in him, but I was told last week to not talk about it yet because they're still working on it. So it's out now. So I guess the team will release that information on Thursday. We'll officially announce the signing. Could be a dicey situation. Talented player. Delore would come in right now, would be quarterback three would be inactive A, we're halfway through the season. So there's a question of whether or not he'll get on the field and even play. You would assume, I mean Dormy wasn't that great last week, but maybe down the road they might make a change. But I think it would take time for Delore to step in and be the starter there and we're getting towards the end of the season. So it's an interesting signing from a talent perspective. I totally see it from a PR aspect. This isn't a Chad Kelly situation. Chad Kelly's being accused of basically harassing an employee there in Toronto, but he's not. Look, I'm not trying to Yeah, but there's Different levels here. Yeah, there's different level. I hear you. So this is kind of a different situation altogether. So it's a tough one there. I see why they would be interested in talent wise. If the league had more attention nationally, there would be a lot of people that would be very upset that they're entertaining signing someone like this. Well, no. I mean it's some pros and cons of that. Yeah, it's just weird to think of any PR that if he's even going to hit the field or not. So just kind of odd that way. But Mike, I appreciate it here almost now we're here and they're busy and dealing with family things and everything else, so I really appreciate it. Like I said, I like and subscribe. Get us over the 3,500. I was trying to get Tim Capper on this week to talk arena football. It's his birthday as we record this, so happy birthday, Tim, if you've made it this far. But maybe we'll get Tim on next week. I want to do a little bit of that. I don't, we not full on Arena league football arena, football league, but there's a lot going on there. And then obviously with the CFL stuff. Mike, anything else from you before we get out? No, there's some great things going on in indoor football. I'm so wrapped up in pro football, obviously, but you got TJ Edwards, the fighters, all these cool teams out there in the IFL. And it's a shame with the A FLI was a fan of the Arena Football League during the NBC kind of resurgence, that kind of era. And so it's unfortunate to see how things have gone there. You want as many of these leagues, even if it's indoor, which is not my bag of tea, but you want as many leagues exist and thrive and do well. And so it's kind of the story. By the way, I would hope that people out there would subscribe. You need what, 50 subscribers right now, Reid? Is that Where, I mean, it's 1000th of the battle hawks or whatever. I know there's a lot of negativity and sometimes I know it's easier to get likes and fan service and subscribers if you preach to the choir, if you play fan service. So sometimes Reid has some guests here that are pretty harsh and have some pretty strong opinions and be negative. A lot of these people that come on here, I don't always agree with their opinions. Like last week's show, I won't get into all that. But this stuff, these are people that actually passionate and care about the lead and want to see it succeed. So I think that hopefully that doesn't turn people off. I hate to be doom and gloom with these leagues because such a huge fan of them. So anyway, Reid, thank you very much for having me on. I appreciate it. Awesome, Mike. We'll see everyone next week. Like I said, stay tuned. Should be another good one. And we'll see you guys next time. Thanks.

UFL Week 5 Results + Reactions! Winner and Losers From UFL Week 5!!

Well here we are, a special weird setting here, kind of funky white balance, but we are here live in Las Vegas. It just flew in. I thought I would have lots of time to get set up for Andy and I show today. I ended up being scrambling down. I had to get some water here and I got a beer. Andy's going to catch me before the hangover here in Vegas for a change. But let's bring in Andrew Murray. We can talk through everything. First of all, Andy, how are you doing? Great. I'm happy to see you on a Sunday sir, and I'm glad you managed to get in just in the nick of time. Yeah, I've got the, I should put the photo up. I've got my light here from the room and we got this awesome backdrop. You can see the stratosphere there in the distance. Not a bad setting here. The stratospheres there, the sphere made it in. John here, John Lewis guns. I didn't have time to find his shirt. I ran downstairs to get some de other, came back up, watched the games today. Exciting. Lots to get to, lots to get yesterday as well. We had another double header and kind of all that stuff. This table's going to kind of move as I type here, but Andy, have we recovered from the Rick Cella of it all? If anyone has missed, I don't know how you could have missed the episode, our episode Friday. I knew it would be controversial. We lost some subscribers. We gained some subscribers. I think we're net up overall but fiery episode with Rick. Yeah, Abdul, check it in here. Phase of the UFL, Andy Murray, Andy. Have we recovered from Rick Sella? I mean I thought I was the poison in the well last week and apparently Rick was the sucker punch. I am just kind of enamored in what he had to say and sort of what he had to say and how he said it. He had a lot to say but I mean your episode overall had a lot of really interesting casts. I know Rick was going to get obviously the most attention, especially considering that now he's officially somebody that works in the CFL, so that was going to be something of a point of contention in terms of perspective. But Rick has been all over the place and you've been in multiple leagues in multiple settings. He's a great scout. I really don't have any problems as far as me. Rick is a really good guy and I think I respect his opinion. I knew it was going to draw the ire of a lot of people, so hopefully people have had a couple of weeks to, or a couple of days I should say, to cool down for that whole experience. Yeah, have you missed that? Yeah, Rick, formerly with the IFA, he's now with the CFL. He is a football scout. Lots of good just quality feedback I think for the league. Rick kind of pitched it as a free kind of marketing session on that, so if you've missed that, but to set the stage here, Sunday night, we normally do this either Monday or Tuesday. We have attendance today. We don't have TV ratings which obviously come out Tuesday. I'm here in Vegas. I'll be filming I think tomorrow like seven to nine, both Monday and Tuesday all day. So just wasn't feasible. So appreciate Andrew, Andy making time here. The face of the UFL coming on and doing all of that. I think let's first Jen is checking in. We got everyone checking this in. Yeah, everyone's excited Sunday night here. This is good Phil checking in and act. Let's talk attendance first. I have some thoughts about that and then we'll get into the games. I saw a lot more of the games today on the flight than I did the games yesterday. We were working and then get ready for the Mariners game so Andy can fill in but have enough to talk about with all of that. Let's put this up first. Attendance came out via Mike Mitchell today, official attendance numbers. Arlington the Saturday game, 10,283. Good to see a little bit of a balance back there. Houston here, a little scary. The 6,285 DC today. I thought a really good crowd. I even had a text from Sam Schwartzstein saying, is that true? I said, yeah, I mean it looks pretty full to me. And then Memphis was 7,600 on that. We have Abdul here, I want to do his a little more context on that, but thoughts about that Andy while we get to that. Yeah, for Arlington, I mean at least they were able to recuperate some of their losses from the last time that they hosted a home game against the DC Defender. So you have a few more people there, but I mean overall this is an audience that is going to be witnessing a product that is not going to be sustainable or satisfying enough because there are no and five team. So we'll see if the record plays into them in terms of how much attendance they have. The remainder of the season, they have two more home games. So we'll see if that is able to maintain that 10,000 people floor for Houston. I mean it was sort of ominous a couple of days ago when Houston started putting out tweets about let's try and get a to 10,000 and I'm thinking 10,000 is the bare minimum for some of these teams and there's already a squad that's saying that 10,000 is a goal. That's a bit frightening just to be quite frank. And look again, I know Rice Stadium, I know it's not that formal stadium that they're going to be in when they eventually go back to the University of Houston and they finally get done with the renovations but still not extremely enviable and I don't think this is something that they can really rest their laurels on or really be okay with going forward because 6,000 and declining is scary time numbers. I mean we're talking about Vegas Viper attendance numbers from last year. You're talking about some of the lower end spring teams maybe in a f. I mean this is a crowd number that needs to be boosted. DC I'm not surprised by DC is fantastic. They've done their job, they're great. Audi Fields is just ruckus. Even though that we saw some history today, I think that the audience is still going to be always remaining strong. I think they've built a good enough brand. See again what I was saying last week, they built a brand, you know what they're about. I think everybody that watches spring football or is not as super familiar with it know that this is one of the best atmospheres in spring football and has been for quite some time. And then going to Memphis. I mean that's sort of where they've been at this season. Sort of the same base mark for them. So I mean that number that we've been seeing overall as far as the USFL attendances not averaging in nearly as much as the XFL attendances, even with St. Louis being taken out is still very much prevalent. And I have those numbers here to talk through as well. Let me know. My internet should be good If I disappear, just talk for a second, I'll come back, but it seems like it's pretty decent. Forgot to mention off the top as well, the plan is getting Mike Mitchell on this next week. We're at the halfway point of the season. We'll do kind of a welfare check. I might try to see if the Tim Cappers of the world can come on. There's a little bit of arena football news coming on as well we might talk to, but I want to hear Mike's thoughts about this. I know he said preseason and during the season kind of 10,000 is kind the bare minimum we want to hit with all that. So I want to get Mike on for all that stuff. I really co-signed here what Jacob is saying with this, and this is what hurts the most about the Houston of it because Houston was kind like the tent pole franchise of the XFL 2020 especially. And then the XFL 2023 had the success in there. You didn't have quite the hysteria with the PJ Walker. And to see this now come down, excuse me, is really sad to me. I know Philip is, I know Philip is kind of co-signing that, but it's hard to see where it's like not only have we lost maybe what could have been a good XFL, it's almost like the USFL poisoned that market side of it and this like, well we got to keep the whatever. I know we had Paul res on two weeks ago talking about this, where is the USFL carrying its weight? And in this regard it's almost dragging down that market because I think if it was the Houston rough next with Wade Phillips and nevermind what you would have with San Antonio with that and what that team would look like. But if you had that team there, I think they would be bolstered up by that. And I think it's almost now it's a double due. It hurts anyway. And then the US L is kind of dragging it down. It really is not a good look. I think they've just lost their identity completely. And that's the thing, I mean you've taken their coaches, you moved them to a different city, you've taken their brand, which I know it's the roughneck, but really it's the gamblers in disguise. That's really what it is. So you've changed their identity as far as the team and as far as what their familiarity is with the market and then obviously moving stadiums. So there's a lot of loss in translation collateral damage here. But most significantly again is the fact that I don't know who this team is. I mean this team is not playing well, but also I don't know what this team is about 2020 high flying offense. They start five and oh and then last year they're seven and three. They're again pretty good efficiently on offense. They've got a good defense. Wade Phillips has a calling card, he has familiarity with the Houston market. Obviously he's been in it for many, many, many, many years including with his father Bum Phillips. And so that familiarity is kind of gone. And with that goes any sort of familiarity with the fans and I just don't understand what the strategy was here in terms of also taking the team and literally changing conferences going from the XFL to the USFL. I mean it just feels, I'm sorry, it just feels wrong. Watching them and thinking this is not A-U-S-F-L team, but I'll say this and this is going to probably ruffle some feathers. They play like A-U-S-F-L team in the hub. That's what it feels like. There's this, there's almost this homogenous feeling sort of in my opinion from my opinion, between a team like Memphis, Houston and Michigan where it's just sort of glob of, I know you have talented players, I know you have good players. I know there are good coaches that are on these staffs, but I don't really know what your identity is as a team. Michigan is starting to figure it out as far as being a defensive minded team. But again, Houston, I have no idea what they are. Memphis is just a mess. I really don't know. Birmingham is the one that has the clear identity out of all of them is by far the most successful team out of all of them. And I think there's a reason for that. So for Houston it's just more it's brand confusion and it's the fact that I don't really know what they are as a team that I think plays into this quite a bit. I want to do a little bit more attendance here, but for Houston in general, is this a personality? I mean is it a player issue? Is it a Curtis Johnson issue? Because I mean the gamblers weren't great last year and we followed this mixed match, but what is it about this team that is just so miserable to watch? I mean it's quarterback playing. I don't think REIT sin net's necessarily a problem. I just don't think he's really going to be the solution defensively. I mean this team has completely fallen apart. They just do not have the same juice that they had last year. You don't have a Trent Harris, you don't have a Genie Harris, you don't have these cornerbacks who are picking off passes and you don't have this premier pass rush anymore. You're getting run over by teams. I mean Michigan ran them over. Obviously Birmingham just has way too much talent offensively for them to handle. I know they won that game against Arlington, but really I thought that was more about Arlington shoot themselves in the foot. I don't know what they really do quite frankly, I just don't really know what they're about. The gamblers at times I thought just suffered from horrible inconsistencies offensively but had good defensive players and last year they were much closer to getting to the playoffs than they were this year. But now I just don't really know what they have. It's both sides of the ball that are just completely unwatchable. I don't really know a player that you can really stick to. Most of the time there's just, again, not really a lot of identity. Mark Thompson is supposedly your star player and he's just now played his first game and I don't think he really made much of an impact. So I don't really know what you hang your hat on if you're Houston, If you're tuning in here, checking this out for the first time, we're not normally live here on Sunday, just remember we like and subscribe. Get us up to 3,500 subscribers. Like I said, had to hit a little pack and forth there with the Rick Sara tells of it. But you would sit with Andrew Murray at the championship game. Two free tickets. We have 50, we need 50 people. I'm so tired of talking about this. Just like and subscribe on that. Michael Payne checking in. Yes, having a little PBR here. Just got into Vegas, so enjoying that. And we are going to go, I think I'm going to go to Yard House after this. I think that's the plan. But speaking of, we had this Abdul posted a couple of weeks ago about this and we talked I think with our show last week, but to kind of put this into context here, so the UFL average overall 12,570 fans and we'll get into the games here. I have a lot of thoughts about the US L conferences as a whole, but just to put a pin in this XL conference average 17,000 XFL conference even without St. Louis, 12,500 USFL conference, 8,200. So I think we're seeing there as we've talked about this kind of the dragging down effect of that XFL continuing that to reiterate before, no surprise that it was the 2020 franchisees that are kind of carrying that. I did want to point out and then we'll go back to Andy. Yeah, John Rain. Rain, man, it's rain and I think the carwash was having to buy two, get one free sale down the road and I think Celine Dion was playing two counties over and yeah, it's a lot. It was rainy, it was beautiful. Beautiful in the Arlington though, I think Andy, excuse me, Anthony was reporting anything else on that before we move on to the games? I mean, yeah, weather will be somewhat of a factor depending on where you are. Again, if it's thunder lining, it's something you can't avoid. But that Birmingham situation, if you know it's coming then you're probably not going to show up to the game. But as far as rain goes, I mean it really depends. Some fans are okay with it and other fans, but I just don't think that can be really the crux of why you're not drawing fans. It's perfectly fine outside and it's beautiful. There's the same number of people. So where are we getting at here? That's kind of my question. Well I think John, I mean to be fair, John's been a little facetious, but yes, I want to continue. I'm sure he is. And that's the thing, by the way, if you're having a car wash on a rainy day, I don't know what's going on. I dunno sure what your priorities are, but That's why it was a sale. We got to get in there. That's why they're having the sale. But it just goes to show that, look, I've read a litany of excuses online and some of them are probably valid and some of them I sort of raise my eyebrow. But again, it really depends on how much the fans are willing to go through with it. And DC look, the DC defenders had some games last year because they had the calendar pushback where it wasn't super nice to go to DC games where it was cold or it was rainy or it was just kind of nasty. And fans not as many fans want to show up. So of course the healthy amount did, but not nearly the same attendance numbers that they have had the last two weeks or the last two times they've played at home because now it feels like it's spring in dc. So that's also part of the calendar thing, again, going back and forth of when is it too hot, when is it too cold, when is it just right, the Goldilocks syndrome, when are we going to have the magical porridge that comes all together and is able to make this fine for everybody to attend a game? And I don't think that really exists, but you can try and thread the needle as much as you want. I just don't know what other factors that could be with Memphis if we've been told that Memphis is a good market and I'm sure that there are people who want to support football in Memphis, but it just hasn't come together yet. There's just not been that same flare. And I don't know if it's again, brand identity. Is it people not knowing that this team exists? Is it people choosing to do chores rather than going to a game? I don't know. It's really hard because it is. It's like the Goldilocks because okay, if it's too nice outside, people don't want to go to the dome in St. Louis if it's too cold, I am so sick of it. And every week and you get the tweet and I got a lot of flack from my tweet, I guess it was last earlier this week, but St. Louis, we had a blowout game like 14 to one and there was nobody there. And I'm like, oh, this is the same team that is supposedly drawing all these people away from the, because the battle hawks have gone down week over week. The opening weekend they had 40,000 whatever and then last weekend they had 31. It was about 10,030 decline. I go, this is the same. You can't have it every way. Well okay, we did really good against whatever. And then I'm tuning in to highlight and I understand it's a blowout game on the week. I understand the context of that, but you don't get it all the same ways. You don't get, this is responsible for drawing away this way. But then when I point out there's only 6,000 people at the game the other night, it's like, oh, well see, that doesn't really matter. There's always going to be some excuse. There's always going to be some reason about it. But I don't know, I think Rick pointed out a lot of things on the interview this week where there's a lot of lack of marketing. I know that there's been conversations in our group chat with certain people talking to team social members about, hey, maybe marketing isn't to staff this time, so something's going on XFL continues to carry the attendance at least that way. I think it would be pretty grim right now if it was still the USFL conferences. Yeah, no, I agree. It would not be something that maybe even they would report on if it was just the SFL to be quite honest. And I see why, because they're not the biggest numbers on the planet and who knows what the numbers were last year. Obviously we'll never know, but maybe certain few what the numbers really were last year in those hubs. But for now, I mean this just kind of shows me that it's a carryover effect of the hub model where there was a lot of attention putting into, well, let's just slowly get the teams out into their cities, which in theory worked and then able to get some sort of local notoriety and able to get people into the stadium, which again in theory worked but not to the level that I think people who watch TV and watch games on TV expect. That's the thing, it's a TV product and I need people to stop pretending like it's not a TV product. The whole point of it, that's what they're trying to sell to their audience. It's not just people who show up in the stadiums. If people show up in the stands, it looks great. Awesome, fantastic. You need both, you need to have people who show up are able to talk about it, are able to be part of the atmosphere, but then also advertise that to your television audience saying, look, all these people are here and checking this out and watching this and are really excited about this, you need to sell that to your audience. And if it's not there, if the energy's not there, it's just harder. It's a harder sell. It really Is. It's a harder sell. And I talked with Rick about it too, it kind of makes you feel like a loser. You're sitting there, you're like, there's 6,000 people here, we're in the rain in Memphis, our team plays like crap. It kind of feel like a loser watching this. I think it's all intangible stuff. But again, what I always get back to, and I'll just flip over to this again and then we'll move on because I want to talk about the games. What person is buying a Memphis franchise that is drawing 7,600 people? That's not, if that is the long-term goal that we are selling these markets, I don't care about anything else that is what needs to be. So that's kind of where I'm at. I want to make sure we get Gemini here. We got a super chat from them. Lee needs to spend money and advertise if they want fans, period. Yes. And I do not think that they are doing that. Let's go on, we can do any other questions about any attendance at the end? Andy, here's a question. I'm going to get this screen share up here. We talked about this in the group chat. The USFL conference is horrendous. Why It's bad. I'll tell you why. It's because Birmingham has a fantastic GM who is stockpiling this team of talent. They have a great coach and Skip Holtz. They have a way of just sort of understanding what they're trying to get out of their team. And that's even with them platooning quarterback with Matt Corral and Adrie Martinez. Even with that dynamic, they're still undefeated. And now this week they finally play our Adrian Martinez and they just run away with the competition. But this has been going on for three years. I mean they've lost three games total in the last three games in the last three years. It's crazy. That means it's crazy, right? I mean it should not be that much parody, the XFL. We've seen parody, we've seen teams take shots or even the good teams or the teams that we think are the best get knocked down at some point. And I mean that happened to DC last year. They lost a bizarre game to the Orlando guardians. They only win the entire season. Came against dc, which was just the weirdest thing ever. But it happened. And then they lost the championship game to an Arlington team that was below 500. So I mean we've seen more parody in the XFL compared to the USFL and I think just tells me that their staff is just so much more cohesive and so much more put together than any other team here. And even if the New Orleans breakers stayed around, I don't even think they'd be catching up to them either. Sorry, they wouldn't have stayed in this fight either, and I just don't really know why other teams have not really been able to pull their weight other than talent evaluation or coaching or knowing exactly what they're getting from it. But Birmingham is just running circles around everybody, whether it's running backs, whether it's defense, whether it's whatever quarterback they put in there. I mean basically if they win this year, they're going to win with three different combinations of quarterbacks at this point and it's kind of ridiculous. Well here you go. So jabon here, how has the SFL conference hor around this? The FL has a winless team and the defenders get blown out. Am I wrong in that? I mean is it just wrong? Maybe it's just my bias. It feels like when you look at the Sands, I will correlate there, but we have two teams with one win on here. There's two teams with one win out later, one team with zero wins. I don't know, to me it just feels like the USFL, at least there's a little bit of action here in the XFL conference. I feel like it's going to be Michigan and here by Birmingham by default it's probably going to be Michigan unless Memphis gets their stuff together. But you got case cookies and you're dealing with that and we can talk about all that today and the other guy playing and Houston, we've already talked to the Chris Johnson, am I wrong in that of you and the XF Ls a stronger conference? I thought the whole point of moving all these we're combining all these teams was to get better talent and now a lot of these teams just don't look very good. I mean to me there's more of a question as to who can win on a game by game basis than the XFL. I mean I know the braas are leading the division right now, but I don't know if they ultimately will by the end of the season. It might be the Battle Hawks. I don't know. The playoff spots are completely solid. I mean DC's not looking good. Could they still make a comeback? Sure. But I still don't know. In between the battle hawks and the bras, which one's going to win the conference with the USFL? I mean there's no question. I mean the stallion should be favored by double digits against every one of these teams on any given day and it doesn't really matter. I think they could easily, I think Birmingham could easily run the table against this entire conference. Now they do have to place the Mexico team, so that's going to stop maybe stymie their mission a little bit. The big big one coming up in two weeks is going to be the Bow Hawks going to Birmingham. That's going to be a humongous matchup. So we'll find out then. But as far as in the conference itself, I just give absolutely no chance any of these other teams because I've seen it. I've seen it the last three years. They just can't keep up. They've fallen flat and Birmingham just has all the answers. They push all the right buttons and we'll see if they can push those buttons against all the XFL teams. They obviously had a fantastic showcase against Arlington, the opening game, but now we've obviously seen that Arlington is the worst team in the XFL and potentially the worst team in the entire conference. But even then, and I know they just lost them, but I still would rather watch and take the renegades over the roughnecks. I know that's extremely controversial. I know, I know. But I just do not like any of the teams in the USS FL conference outside of Birmingham. Jacob has a question. Is it possible for DC to take the second USS L spot? No, because like coach back to put on the thing, hey, oh yeah, they're changing the playoff rule this year because remember he was all PPO about them. Hey, win at home, win against the Sea Dragons. In your end, it's not. It's the top two in each conference. That's why we're going to have XFL versus USFL. I don't know, like I said, cancel the season. Let's move to June here. I mean it's going to be battle hawks against. Well, and I don't know, I mean even the braas have the conference lead right now, but it really feels like it's going to be the battle hogs versus the stallions. It feels like they're coming up. Well we'll see. This Braas team I think is going to throw, could be the monkey wrench in the operation. Again, I'm sure the league is begging and pleading and praying that the Hawks host the championship game and hosts the stallions. They would love nothing more than that. But I think as far as offense goes, I mean yes, this Val Hawks scene looks really scary. They have the entire arsenal, the entire compliment of weapons that they need around Agent McCarran to make everything work out. I mean, in my opinion, they've come off back to back weeks where they should have scored 50 points both weeks, which is insane to say, but that really is a mark that they should have accomplished the last two weeks and kind of got in their own way. So for the SFL, I just don't really see it. It's not really home field advantage that really matters. I just think Birmingham can play anywhere. Anytime they could play on the road, they have the right game, the right team to play on the road. Even better on the road than at home to be honest. Yeah. Alright, let's get in here. Let's get into the games. Speaking of that, right, the last one, I got these all in order here. Last one, Michigan versus Memphis here. It got a little close there. I was watching and I about turned it off. I was on the plane and the Mariners were getting ready to come on and I said, well this is about Memphis made a little bit. I know they had that turnover and said, but it really didn't look even be the same place here as Michigan. What did you make of this Weird game? Just a really weird game. I mean Michigan goes up 19, nothing. They decide not to go for a short field goal and by foregoing it at the end of the first half they give up an 82 yard touchdown pass to Davon Davis, which Mike, and I'll say this and I don't want to speak too much for Mike, but he was going on about how Joel Clad was just flaming, flaming Mike Nolan for and rightfully so. I mean it was just an error decision. That's the thing that's I'm talking about with some of these USFL teams. I just don't see these correct decisions being made by the coaching staff. So the head coaches in comparison to Skip Pol to has pulled all the right levers, but regardless, west Hills looked great. The Michigan Panthers got when Danny at Lincoln did enough in place of EJ Perry and this team I think is probably the second most well formed team in the USFL. They should probably be the second seed just based on how they played so far. As far as Memphis goes, I mean man, they're offensive line. It's is a collapsing wall every time they play. It really is a detriment to the quarterbacks case. Cook is obviously getting hurt, playing behind it. Troy Williams running for his life and Troy Williams Drew three touchdowns, good for him, but two interceptions as well. The guy that I really just love to highlight here in this game and really just for the team in general is Kanaku. He's been outstanding as the safety for Michigan. He's awesome. He's been everywhere. Loved the way he plays the game and I love that he's just been so rangey and just been able to cover all of his bases. He has made some tremendous turnovers this season and I really like his game a lot. But this Michigan team I think is so solid. I have no doubt that they should be the second seed. I just dunno how they measure up against Birmingham and they played Birmingham seven point game, but that was when Birmingham was still platooning quarterbacks. If they're playing Adrian Martinez, are we going to get the same results? We'll see. I want to say too, and speaking of the Joel Clack kind of hammering on, I like his, going back to the conversation again with Rick last week and talking to a different broadcast. I like Joel knowing kind of the history and even the fake punt. I like, Hey, they did this last week and how do you not? It's the over, it's the over it's. I like Joel talking about football stuff. I was on the plane and I just had it on. It was easier just to listen to the game than it was to have it on with just the wifi. And I thought this is someone, even for just the most basic level of a Joel Klatt, even in the NFL draft week, let's just put this in context. He's coming off the NFL draft week and then to be able to still have his research done to go into that, I thought it was really good. I listened to Joel, he was on Brock and SOC here or in Seattle, not here in Seattle, but in Seattle this weekend. I'm like for him to be doing all that stuff to pre-prep for the draft and then still be able to come in and be prepared to do this US L Sunday, Sunday morning or Sunday afternoon game. Let's give a shout out for Joel Cloud. I thought that was good. Oh my goodness. I mean I couldn't even believe that I was seeing him on my TV and NFL network doing the draft cover and thinking you've got UFL games this weekend, buddy. He's had two back-to-back days of UFL games and incredible feed by him. He's just a machine. I appreciate his hard work and I appreciate his acumen for not only the game but the players individually. He knows these players, he knows these teams. They talk to these players and coaches. He does his homework. And also I really like that he's not afraid to be critical of everybody here. I mean, he's really the poster child for color commentator in this league. Kind of how Greg Olson was in XFL 2020 is just this great standard of being very professional, knowing what you're doing, doing your homework, caring about the players and the coaches and the league. And even if there's not a ton of history there, you can at least go off something as far as just the week before. I really, really appreciate that and I love that we need more of that. Honestly, we need more of that in this league and I hope more of that comes, but there's going to need to be more figures like Joel Klatt and some of the other broadcasters. I think there's also kind of an issue too where especially in spring leagues, we don't want to criticize because we don't want to make people look dumb. I don't know. I feel like sometimes, well it's spring football that maybe we're still figuring out the rules and when you have Jim Zorn back in 2020 and going for the wrong, I think went for three or whatever after all these, what's the score and what's going on? I think we don't want to make them look dumb sometimes. So you don't criticize and you focus more like where you would maybe criticize and the Andy Reed, what are you doing there? Why would you I like that. We're all big boys. Everyone's been around you. I'm like, Nolan's been around the block. We can talk about all this stuff. Or whoever Coach Flip, I think it's okay to do that. Jake Bates, not a great day bound to happen. Missed a couple, but I didn't like that where they're like, well he made 60 58. 58, you couldn't hit a 58 yard field goal. But it didn't end up mattering here. Michigan kind of really took care of business. Any other thoughts on this one? Really didn't seem close. I know Memphis got some points there at the end, but It really wasn't. I mean Michigan just had the game plan out for this Memphis team and all they had to do was just rush the quarterback and they got, you could rush four and pretty much do whatever they needed to on defense. So yeah, just more so. I mean you watch the Memphis games just to watch John d Felipe's face turn into a strawberry because that man gets hot during games. He really does. So for me, that's pretty much the only interesting factor here with Memphis games. But as far as their competitive level, I am about ready to just go ahead and stick a fork in them because I'm not really feeling them the rest of the season. If they keep having injuries at quarterback and if they keep playing like they do. So inconsistently, I'm going to go back and say that San Antonio Drive at the end of that game for them to pull that game out. The Chase Garber's Miracle man, I think that broke this Memphis team because they have not been the same sense. The other thing, yeah, the case cus he was okay to play but they didn't want to play. They didn't want, I mean were you okay with that and kind of how they handled it. I mean I want to keep case safe here and just to get kind of thrown to the slaughter grid, but were you okay with them sending him out? No pun intended. I want to encase him in bubble wrap because that's all he is allowed to be in for the foreseeable future. Otherwise he's going to break all the rest of his fingers and toes if he goes back in there. All right, let's switch here over. So this was the big, am I right on my Yes. Okay, so let me get, I got the right time here. I thought that this was going to be a little bit more, this was the big DC's never lost to the Battle Hawks, right? They've never lost at home. They did both today. This wasn't close. I mean, we had AJ McCarran were resting at the end of the game. What did you make of this? I mean, I sense some other YouTube personalities right now with the DC defenders showing This was a curb stop. But honestly, St. Louis was letting DC stay in this game for longer than they absolutely deserved to. They went up on them in the first half, they were up 17, nothing. And then they kept kicking fuel goals and kind of became clear that they weren't really able to put DC away. It was 1712 at half. Really the most critical point I think is when Matt, a friend of the show, Matt McCrae unfortunately doing the field goal off the upright and from that point on, DC lost all the rest of its momentum. But really DC just did not do the little things well, they got punts blocked. I mean their special teams blocking on punts was terrible. They got absolutely bum rushed by the St. Louis defenders. George was running for his life. He turns the ball over three times. I mean, he just was having a rough go of it. They could not keep a sustainable run game for the Battle hawks. I mean you don't even have Darius Shepherd, Jor Pearson's in and out of the lineup and it just feels like they just have too much. I mean, Hakeem Butler was just a man. He catches that EDR touchdown pass and runs away from the defender. I mean like it was basically they were playing with their food today I think is what the battle hawks were doing. And they scored 45 points. Like I said, they should have scored 50 easily. This team has so much weaponry offensively, I love it. And for AJ McCarran, he just looks so calm and collected back there even when things aren't going well. And mind you, St. Louis had injuries on the offensive line. They're getting banged up on their offensive line. They had a couple of shuffling points there. Some guys coming in out of the lineup. They need to make sure that's solidified if they really want to be in their serious contention spot going forward. And especially in two weeks when they faced Birmingham. But so far, I mean this Battle Hawks seemed just, they look like they meet at this year. They were probably so miffed last year being seven and three, scoring all those points and then not mattering in the end. I'm going to say it right now. I think AJ McCarran is your outright MVP, far none. I think he's played well enough. He's playing an incredible offense. It may end up being best player on best teams syndrome as far as the XFL goes. And everything's just sort of come together for the St. Louis team and I think they can play better. Like I said, they haven't even played their A game, in my opinion this entire season yet. To my cha gr here, I'm not the biggest battle locks guy. I just think it's a lot. It's the same and caused a lot, but this is good. I'm glad they have a good team. I mean they came in, they kicked the absolute snot out of DC here. We had a question earlier when we were going through attendance. I mean DC doesn't even really resemble the same team right now. And even it was the sideline, these sideline reporters like Coach Jordan Temu is your highest rushing player right now. Is that your game plan going in? Would you like to get someone else going? They're like, yeah, we'd like to get someone else going here. I'm like, guys, can we, you caught an interception, how did you do that? But I mean, Tam running the route, but they just couldn't. I dunno, the fall off this year with DC is just incredible. I mean, you don't have the exfo leading rush a Abraham Smith that doesn't help. You don't have Derrick King who is really kind of that wild card that you could throw in at any moment and sort of mix up the game plan. No Lucky Jackson. I mean there's a number of weapons that are just missing from last year. You can't throw the same people and you don't have the same proficiency of a run game mean they don't have the same calling cards as they did last season. They were able to put up points at nauseum last year. And also again, their defense has falling apart. I mean, Greg Williams is just throwing whatever he can out there and a lot of times it's not working. I mean, these steam routes are getting abused by these receivers. I cannot believe how easy some of these pitching catches are coming. Especially from St. Louis, who again, I think was determined to do this. And let's say it right now. This is the first loss dcs ever sustained at home. This is history. Audi Field has finally fallen after many, many attempts by other teams. Finally the other team got the best of them. And that's a tremendous feat. And for St. Louis to do it in such a way, I think speaks volumes to their team. But for DC I mean, yeah, this isn't the same team. This is their first time being under 500 going into week six in their entire history, they were three and two the first time, obviously last year they started off odd. They were five and oh. But this time it's just not the same team. And for them there's a lot to figure out, but they got to figure it out quickly because they play San Antonio at home next week and if they don't win that game, they will pretty much be done. We got some starred comments coming in here. I want to make sure we get to, I don't think this is the Chad Johnson, but Chad Jonathan has actually been on the show. We had did have back on episode two, I think it was. We had Chad actually on the mark cast if you want to blast in the pass. But definitely not the same DC team from last year. Gemini here. I don't think the sideline reporting got any better this year and God bless and I love Cole and I love all these guys, but some of the time I'm like, I dunno, I feel like it's kind of Brock Heward or no one to me. And maybe that's just my Seattle bias and all of that stuff. Denzel here is AJ McCarran the best player in the league. Yep, yep, yep. And then John Lewis here who was at the Battle Hawks game last week, battle didn't need to save any offense for next week since they play Houston. Hey, watch an upset. That would be cool. I would be excited to see that Houston come in and flip the table on Battle Hawks. Yeah, Maya, how the turntables have turned. But I look back into the ESPN broadcasting thing for a second. If I have to hear about the over under or the spread one more time from this crew, and look, I understand sports betting is part of the zeitgeist, it's just part of the culture now that's fine. But like you said, to your point, hearing them continue to pound it as far as the team needs to worry about losing by less. It's like no, the team needs to worry about winning. I can't hear anymore about how they're feeling about covering this webinar. They don't care. It doesn't matter. And the audience, not all the audience cares either. If you want to remind the audience about maybe some of your pre bets, maybe in the third quarter or fourth quarter, fine. That's okay. If it's friendly competition between you and you want to remind the audience about that later on in the game, fine, but they just continually use it as a crutch and it's a crutch that I think is easy to kick over because I don't think it's really that sustainable. I really wish that they had other talking points besides that. They got to go back into what's this player doing? Why isn't, tell me why it's not working for DC this year. They Don't know that would take too much research. They Don't. They got to do their research. Let's talk. Why is Fred Keiser's offense not working Well, and I love that story they had about Keis. I mean the thing that he survived in the middle of the season with obviously getting the cancer detected early. That's an incredible story. But they didn't really do enough with that afterwards about talking about the teams and what's going on and the chip on the shoulder that St. Louis teams played because like you said, there just would be a lot more research involved. I'm not saying they don't do their research, but they just rely on certain elements a little too much that I don't think are supposed to be the calling card for why this league wants to be successful. It's like those progressive commercials where the guy, it's the kids that have now become their parents and you don't need to print out the map to go, you use your phone, but it's like that guy like, oh, I got the kids to become their parents. It's like that. It's like they have a call from on high. We need to talk about sports betting. We need to focus on that. I will tell you this, only hardcore people are betting on this league and those people don't need you reminding them. The over is hit. The under is hit. I mean, these are the people that are the Cody Mains of the world that Eric Eger when he was doing, I mean these are the people that know they don't need you telling them that the over is going to be hit by. They've got, I'm not even the sports better to know all the vernacular to get into that, but they don't need telling them. The over is five points away. The people that are actually betting on this leak, because spoiler alert, not a lot of people are betting on this leak, but the people that are do not need anybody that is involved in the broadcast telling them what's going on because they already know. I mean, I have a comrade of mine who does BET regularly, and he always asks me like, okay, how are you feeling this weekend? I'm like, well, I know a guy who would probably be able to give you a lot of advice on that. And it's literally just Mike Mitchell writing his articles. That's all it is. I read his article and I'm like, Mike's probably going to be right. And I just tell that to my friend, and I mean by God, I was sitting here last week saying, well, I think DC is going to be able to pull it off and defend their historic record at home. And I was flat wrong, and that was not the advice that I passed off to my friend. What I did was I read the game preview from Mike who said, oh, it's going to be 27, 23 Battle Hawks and thought, okay, well I'll pass that along and said, because Mike really, really knows this team and he knows all the matchups and not saying I don't do my homework too, but Mike is savant when it comes to that. So of course I'm going to pass that along. But that's literally just reading an article. There's no insider person for this information. And the only people who are going to seek that out, like you said, are the people who really care about the betting aspect of it. And those are few and far between. It's not the general audience, but ESPN talks about it. It's the general audience. No, and like I said, I'm turned off because I don't bet on any of this Gemini here. You can tell they're for money. I mean, it's just like they don't have enough stuff to talk about in a three hour game. They don't have enough stuff to talk about. So you just, it's a crutch and you revert back to it like, oh, it's over. It's over, it's over. And we had, where was it? Abdul here, especially when it's on the screen the whole time, I don't need you to tell me what the over under is on the score by the entire game. I remember when that was a big deal back when the XL 2020 did it. It's commonplace now. Jacob, your question about head coaches we'll do at the end. I think that's a good one to get at the end of the stream here. I have it started. Let's go back here. I wanted to just make sure I have the order right. So the first game, well, I guess these were the simulcast games. Do you want to talk about San Antonio or do you want to talk about Birmingham first? I Know because they were both at the same time. Let's go ahead and talk about Birmingham and Houston. Just get out of the way because I mean, I bet mean we knew this, right? Look, Adrian Martinez is the spark plug. You got to keep this guy in here, this whole two head. How do you like the UFL putting out their tweet a few days ago saying, wow, they got this two-headed monster, Matt Corral and Adrian Martinez. And I'm thinking, what two-headed monster? I mean there's really one head that's really spearheading this entire offensive juggernaut that the Birmingham stallions are, and it's Adrian Martinez. I mean this guy is electric with the ball. My God, he is so quick. I cannot believe how much of a threat he is on the ground because he's just so much more faster than some of the other players. You see him in the open field and he is just quick, this is going to sound like a really funny analogy for your audience, but Adrian Martinez is the Trey Ford of the UFL. And I say this not lightly because here's why. Trey Ford, fantastic athlete, amazing running ability, good arm has shown a lot of propensity to uplift an entire offense when he's in the game. And yet the coaching staff, Chris Jones, namely, refuses to play him for whatever reason. And that's a whole conversation for another season. We'll get into plenty this year. Same thing with Adrian Martinez. He is obviously giving this team an entire spark. I mean, you can't defend every blade of grass against him. You're trying to, and it's really difficult because he can throw he run, he can do a lot of different things. You can run RPO with him. You could run that Wishbone set they do in the backfield with three running backs. You can do all kinds of things with him and under center. But Skip Holtz is really determined to put mackerel in there and give him tape. And I respect that. But Mackerel has just not gotten it down to the red zone. And I think it would be a detriment to this team to continue the platoon because Adrian Martinez just makes this offense hum. And they make them dangerous and they make them lethal and they make them look like the scariest team on the planet. And I just don't really want to see that be jeopardized just for the fact of, well, we got to put in another guy and continue to give him opportunities. And look, this whole league is about opportunities. Of course you want players to get all kinds of opportunities. I'm not saying that I don't want them to, but when there's just such a disparity in terms of the performances of the offense when there's one guy in there versus the other guy, I mean, I would just continue to roll with that. I mean, St. Louis isn't sitting here being like, well, let's throw in Manny Wilkins in. Just see how AJ feels about that. A couple of plays that would not go Well. Give some tape. He needs tape's. Give Mandy some rapture. No, you're trying to win. Yeah, you're trying to win. Exactly. You're trying to win and you're trying to dominate and that's what Birmingham, Are you trying to win? Are you trying to win or are you trying to hit the over? Oh, well, I mean if corrals in the over's not going to hit, I'm just going to tell you that right now. But you can start putting that be in immediately. You cash that ticket. Look, this Birmingham team just has everything they need. CJ Merri. Maribel's great. Obviously Ricky Pearson's been really good. He's started to come on in the season. Anything they really do on offense, Jay Sternberger is just probably the best tight end in this league. There were a couple of candidates, but Sternberger has just been awesome in the past game. And that touchdown pass that Martinez had to him was beautiful. The place to touch on that was amazing. So I mean, this was just going to be a wrong from the beginning. The roughnecks never had a prayer. Just speaking of the re forward, if you're into this now, if you've gotten into all this UFL stuff, CF L's coming soon, I was just like, we're going to have a two week overlap and then we're going to be in, it's a lot of fun. It's just like this, I mean there's nine teams, but it's really eight. It's four games every week. It's really fun, really manageable. Follow right Thursday through Sunday a lot. Especially during the summer before we get into the NFL. Really fun. So just if you've never tried the CFL. We'll be talking about it on here. Andy will be on, I know we'll get hussy back on and hopefully Evan if his schedule, but really fun to get to all that stuff. I know the thing with Birmingham here and losing J, not even losing JR right, kind of injured and losing the spot, whatever, it's really like that Jesse Pinkman meme and breaking bad. How does he keep getting away with this? How does Skip Holtz now and now, I mean he almost has two quarterbacks, but like you said, Adrian Martiz and they're like, again, here you go, Magoo and J Jamar and all of this and navigating, I mean is that a testament to him? Is that a testament to the scouting there and Zach, excuse me, Zach Martin, who's the guy's name? Zach the kid, Zach Potter. I mean is it Zach Potter? I mean, what is it about Birmingham that allows them, just like, I mean without a hiccup here. I mean I think the thing that's the, Zach Potter has done an incredible job of continuing the stockpile, this team with talent in the trenches, the perimeter, and at quarterback. Adrian Martinez is the guy you've watched at Nebraska having incredible rushing days, but you knew he wasn't going to be an NFL quarterback. Now he believes he's going to be an NFL quarterback from a scouting perspective. That wasn't really the grade on him, but this is a chance for him to improve his tape and really improve his game and maybe make himself more enviable from some of these NFL teams and Birmingham really gives the chance to do that. But look, I think it's not only the scouting, it's also Skip Holtz. Skip Holtz is kind of running into that territory that Joe gives did with the Washington Redskins where he won three Super Bowls with three different quarterbacks, which is an incredible feat. It really is. It's so hard to win with a different single collar. It really is. And for him to do it three years in a row, first you have Jaymar Smith and Alex McGoo who's backing him up, who isn't developed enough as a passer last year, McGoo comes in for an injured Jaymar Smith is incredible, wins the MVP award and is just outright the best player in the league. And now this year you're, you're kind of experimenting, you're seeing, alright, well I don't really need JMR Smith. Maybe I got something in macro or something in Agent Martinez and it seems to be Martinez now. I mean he's a bit of a quarterback whisperer and he is so good at not only knowing what he wants but also being able to control the people around him as far as their emotions and also, or not control, but be able to manage them I should say. And being able to keep that in line the entire time. I mean it's so hard when you have so many talented players who want to play and they want to be in there. They want to be able to contribute, but at the end of the day as a coach, you got to decide, look, this is what's best for the team and we need to win and this is how we're going to win. And that is such a testament to him. I am just blown away that it's been so successful and honestly there's got to be a college that's going to call Skip Hold at some point, right? There's got to be some team that sees this and realizes, man, he's really, I mean he was good at Louisiana Tech, but he's clearly hit another level in this league. Yeah. What does it tell you about the USFL that Skip Holts ran circles around teams for two seasons still here when the UF Ls in anything else with this one? Let's get to the last one because I'm, I'm hitting this strip here on a little bit. Let's go here. So San Antonio, continuing on here. I got this on here. I know Anthony Miller was at this game. I don't know how many people were in the press box for this one. What do you make about this? I mean this is basically the ambience of a morgue because the Arlington renegades have been buried officially. I buried them last week. Well, this was just the service after the burial because this is pretty much the end of the Arlington Renegade season. Their defense is just not there. It really is not. And Quentin Dormy good for him. I mean he comes back and he's performed fairly well instead of Chase Garbers, obviously you got enough weapons there with the bras with someone like Elise Mack for example, catching that touchdown over the middle and running it in Jordan Lovett's really good. I mean he's kind of come on for this team as far as a running back goes, you still have Stevenson, you still have a number of guys you could run the ball with. The Brahmas are solid. They're set. They've got, again, they have their identity, they play really good defense. They just seem to be, I mean this is technically the real Houston roughnecks in a lot of ways it's just transferred over to San Antonio. So I'm not surprised that they're successful. And so it really speaks to the fact that they're able to keep pace with the battle hawks and now they're in a fight, they're in fight to try and win this whole conference and maybe host the XF LS conference championship game, which would be huge for them because they definitely don't want to go into the battle dome. So we'll see what happens there. But for Arlington, I mean I can't pin this on Luis Perez. Poor guys play his heart out. I mean you see him with his kids afterwards. You saw him hang his head at the end of the game. Just so disappointed. I can't really pin this on him. I mean he's trying his damnedest. He gets that touchdown pass to Jordan paying to try and cut into the lead, but I just don't think he has the team this year. This is just a lost season for Bob Stoops and his staff. Really frustrating. I know. I mean Greg Parks was on this week as well with Rick talking about stoops just can't motivate the guys and maybe he should move on. I mean, is it a stoops issue? Is he need to hold the players more accountable at this point? It's possible. I mean he's had a couple of rough starts. I mean remember he got off to a under 500 start in the original USFL or the original XFL, excuse me, in 2020. In 2023. Obviously they finished the regular season four and six, but they catch fire and they win the whole thing. So kind of making up for that and we all knew that there needed to be more consistent quarterback played for that team to win this year. Whatever these athletes have been allocated to or whatever they lost, it's just not been there. Maybe who knows? I mean Stoops has said and expressed that he likes this kind of job because it's not as rigorous and as taxing as college football is. But who knows, maybe he wants to coach elsewhere. Maybe he wants to coach at a smaller college or maybe in high school or which I don't think would happen or maybe it just goes back to the desk. I don't know. But it is deflating for him and the staff. It is just the fact that this team is oh and five should not be the case. I think they should at least have a couple of wins and I mean obviously that game against DC was so devastating for them from a mental standpoint. I just think this team, as Anthony has written about before, is just so undisciplined. I mean the penalties have piled up, they have uncharacteristic turnovers, they've just had a really rough go of it and who knows? We'll see if the staff, if Bob Stoop and the staff moves on, really that's really one of the biggest questions going into the off season is what happens to some of these staffs so they don't perform. What does the league nudge them to seek other opportunities or do they just get the benefit of the doubt? No, that's good that curtails in. We have our conversation here at the end. I want to make sure we touch on. Philip here says, said my roughneck out of it. I'm a Braas fan now. No, Philip bus is full. I told you from the preseason I said this. Oh no, it's a rough next week. This isn't even, this is the zombie roughnecks. This isn't even, oh no, we don't care about that. We care about no Philip, you have made your bed and that's just it. This is rules of it. Question for you and I want to get to Jacob's question here. I have PIN before we get out of this Dormy coming in, right? Obviously the Chase Garber's injury. We've got Kevin Hogan here and he was signed. Is Dormy doing enough? Is this our future here? I mean is I've been brams the whole time. I like Philip here. So I mean this is my team. Are we okay with that or how do you feel about the quarterback situation for San Antonio? Well, I mean considering that Dormy almost won the job over Garber's I think speaks to how much depth they had at that position. How okay they felt about making that decision. So yes, I absolutely feel confident enough with Dormy as far as being in the playoff race, I think they're set now, especially if they against, as I said, if they win against DC next week, that's pretty much it. I mean they've pretty much almost guaranteed themselves to be in the dance at the end of their regular season. But as far as do we expect something from Garbers? I know he obviously had a serious injury. I mean in theory he could come back at some point, but I don't know if you really want to bet on that. I think you just kind of roll with Dormy going forward and I like Dormy. I liked what he brought to the table last year. I mean that game against DC had five total touchdowns. He had the three rushing touchdowns, the two passing. He was incredible in that game. He had a really good game against Vegas last year as well. I think you roll with Dormy. I think again, the thing that I mentioned last week, he has the downfield passing game element that garbage doesn't really rely on as much, but garbage is more about quick accuracy, intermediate routes, screens. He's much more about keeping it all in front of him, which is fine. That works too. And that works in AJ Smith's offense. But as far as getting the ball down field, dormy does a much better job of that and he's much more aggressive. So we'll see if digression bites him in the butt in the end, but I don't think so. This offense I think should feel confident enough in what they're doing to roll with him going forward. Phillip, here I am still diehard roughneck just your hand to maybe you can be in the short bus in the back. That's full time bandwagon. Theres will be there and then we'll we'll try you along real quick. Looking ahead here, so next week and like I said, try to get Mike Mitchell on. If I get back and Mike, we'll try to get that scheduled for Thursday for the Friday episode. Birmingham going into Memphis could be a little bit of a blood about there. Houston going into St. Louis could be a little bit of a blood about there. The Renegades versus the Panthers. I expect the Panthers to take care of business there. I mean, not that they have a home field advantage and then like you said, the San Antonio, I mean does DC drop two at home? I don't know. This is exciting. What do you think about week six? Yeah, I mean the clear matchup you look for here is bra as a defenders because again, the braas could end pretty much any hopes that the DC makes the playoffs if they're able to win in field. I mean that would be pretty shocking to have two straight home losses after being 10 and and having such a staunch home field advantage of your dc, but very possible could happen and this team I think can do it on offense. DC has not shown to be very good on defense. It's very possible that that is going to be what transpires next week as far as all these other matchups go. I mean you're just kind of hoping that you don't get upset. I mean if you're the stallions, you really want to be dropping one of the showboats. I don't think they will. I still have a lot of confidence that they're still playing Adrian Martinez. Hell, even if they play Matt Corral, I think they'd still be fine because Troy Williams and this offense for the Showboats, despite having certain skilled position players that I really like, like Darius Victor and Jonathan Adams, I just don't think they're going to have enough firepower at home in front of a pretty me crowd as far as it goes. As far as the number goes, it's going to be 7,000 plus probably again. And then other than that, I mean a lot of these matchups are just pretty much favorite versus not favorite in terms of just disparity as far as who's going to be what I mean Houston, I mean you're walking into the Aldo to get sacrificed. I'm sorry, that's a rough matchup, but you're basically walking into a trap. It's not, or not even a trap. You actually know it's a death trap. It's what's going to happen. Comment here. We have a judge Jackson. Yeah, he's, I don't where the, I don't make the standings so they haven't updated them for today. We're alive here. I don't have it updated here with all this stuff, so we do the best we can on here. I don't on the UFL website, but yeah, I don't know. I think, yeah, I mean if you want to bet the overs here, if you want to bet the favorites. John Lewis here says, good luck in Vegas. Hope he hit the over. Yeah, I think you're pretty safe picking the chalk picks next week for all this stuff. I don't know. I mean to me the defenders is just such a disappointment this season I think compared to any of the teams. I think Arlington caught fire at the end of last year. I don't know if we expected their repeat that, but I don't know. Is the defenders, is that your biggest kind of disappointment this season? I suppose so. I was not terribly surprised that they had a rougher start because they lost so much talent last season. I know Mike Mitchell kind of did a good job of briefing us on that maybe to a fan that maybe follows it a little bit more casually. It is a bit surprising and I understand why. I mean you go nine and one and now you're starting off two and three and you're losing home games. I mean that's quite a drop off, but it is disappointing in terms of that's one of your signature markets and they're not playing that well. But other than that, anyone who is else disappointed, I mean I'm actually really disappointed in Arlington. I thought Arlington would at least have a few wins by now and it's sort of demoralizing to note that they've played so undisciplined and they've been just unable to get it done at the end of games. I'm really disappointed in them honestly and especially when they got run over by the stallions at home that first week. I expected a lot more out of kind of for me, the most disappointing team this season so far. And then just looking at the times here, yeah, we have a noon, so nine nine in the AM Pacific and noon on Saturday Pacific, 3:00 PM Eastern and then Sunday afternoon and then, yeah, no real primetime games. I wonder what they're scheduling around next week. I don't think there's anything crazy going on. Maybe I'm missing that. I know Mariners are in Houston at night, so that'll be better for me to watch that. But I odd kind of timings next week. A lot of early games. Unless there's something going on Cinco tomorrow weekend, I'm not truly sure, but I mean there's going to be events going forward. There'll be, I know obviously NBA playoffs are still in play here. Of course they had to work around the NFL draft. Yeah, it's the derby. It's the derby. That's why The derby. We got John Lewis. I like having a sigh producer here. Yes, okay, the derby. Well hey, remember last year we scheduled alongside that and got whatever it was the one good rating the US FL had all Season. Well the problem is that was NBC, so that's not going to cross over this time. That's that's one bugaboo there. But again, so that's presumably they're at least scheduling around that to not be same by same. Yeah, I believe so. Also, I just wanted to point out one comment earlier somebody was mentioning about how San Antonio is the leader of the conference. That's true. One really important matchup is going to be coming up at the very end of the regular season, week 10 San Antonio goes to St. Louis that could decide who hosts the championship game at the end of the season. So for both teams, they need to keep winning and keeping pace with one another. Now for San Antonio, you want to keep that edge, and same with St. Louis obviously, but the deciding factor may very well come down to that week 10 game for both of these teams. So look, just the message for both of them is take care of business, bow hawks, take care of business, it gets roughnecks, don't play around too much. And then San Antonio, you're going to the Michigan Panthers, or sorry, excuse me, you're going to the DC Defenders, which is a wounded team and you should probably win, but I would not be surprised if DC comes out with a little bit more fire in this game. So you're going to see maybe a bit of a rougher matchup there. So for the battle hawks, they could potentially end up after this weekend being ahead in the conference. So keep that in mind. Yeah, here Gemini says, Arlington's making us look bad for XFL teams. Champ, that only really matters on the interwebs. I mean, did not even, Adrian Martinez wasn't the Birmingham quarterback last year. I don't know anyone that actually watches it knows that Arlington winning was pretty remarkable as is. I was at the game, Andy and I were at the game. I don't really know how deep he lost that game. So the last question we had here, and I've had it pinned Jacob Ho to talk about this. Do you think there'd be a head coaching overhaul for the UFL off season? It seems like half of them are collecting paychecks or and up to it. Part of that to keep in mind is you're going to be seeing the XFL coaches go to more of A-U-S-F-L salary, right? That's why Heinz Ward dropped out this year as he didn't want to do one more year and then get reduced because XL coaches are getting paid more. And if you listen to Rick Cella, that may or may not be a good thing, but I don't know. Does Bob Stoop, I know Bob Stoops likes his time of year and all that, but does he want to coach you to reduce salary because all of the XL coaches will be taking pay cuts next year going into that, regardless of that, do you think any of these teams are performing bad enough that you think they need to get rid of anyone besides, I don't know. I mean, is Curtis Johnson on the chop block? He might be. I mean this is two straight seasons and the results have not been there for whatever version of the Houston team you want to call it the gamblers, the roughnecks with the gamble next. So they haven't really been able to perform correctly. We'll see about Bob Stoops. Maybe he sticks around. But again, as you said, the pay cut is certainly something that's significant and keep an eye on that. For San Antonio too with Wade Phillips and that staff, that might be something that's untenable for them as well. But for St. Louis, I mean Anthony back I think loves this job. I think he loves being here and I think he's going to stay at least for a little bit. Skip Holtz again. Skip Holtz could easily get hired away because I think someone could pluck him and give him a really good position or a good coaching job. But that's up to him. I mean, Mike Nolan, someone like Mike Nolan is, he's just going to hang around for a while and just kind of cruise with this kind of like how Jeff Fisher was and even Jeff Fisher eventually left. So same thing with Kevin Sumlin. It really depends. I think you're going to see a little bit of a shakeup probably, I would guess. I mean you might lose two or three head coaches, but it depends on the motivation. Like you said, the money is a big part of it. It really depends on what they're trying to get out of this league and what they're trying to get out going forward after this league. If they can use it as a billboard for them to get better opportunities. Yeah, I think the salary discrepancy is going to be more at play next season in terms of some of these coaches getting let out than anything else here as we wind up 10,004 field next Saturday, Vicente, if they get 12,000 people into Ford Field, DME, I'll mail you an authentic spring league practice squad jersey. So that is how confident I am that they're not. But yay, maybe they do. Hey, maybe Michigan, the 750,000 that was at the drop, seven, 750,000 people were to watch Roger and insane, insane numbers for the drop that they can't get 6,000 into Fords Field. You mean the whole weekend? I know the first night was okay, the first night Was I saw today attendance was 750. Yes, for the weekend. But yeah, the one night it was quarter million, right? 250,000. First night was 275,000 people and had to close off the gates an hour before because people were just trying to flow in and they were overwhelmed. It was an insane number of people to watch. Go for it. Sorry. No, it was an insane number of people to watch Caleb Williams and all those other people get picked. It's kind of insane. Maybe Ford Fields is closing in the gates. We can't handle it. It's too many people we can't handle that. Appreciate it. I'm going to get out of here. We're going to go track down some food. Appreciate Andy making time on Sunday. Appreciate all of you guys checking it out. Hopefully at least it won't be Tuesday. Maybe we get a little bit more legs out of this. I know we like having the TV ratings to talk about, but we got to talk about attendance and everything else. Like I said, hopefully Mike next week maybe we'll get Tim Capper talking to Rita Football. I'll reach out to him. I get back Wednesday night, so we'll figure all that stuff out. Appreciate it. Yeah, John, great show. Go check out John's stuff. John did a fun blog. I watched his Battle Hawk's blog. That was fun. And then I'm sure John will have some more get rid of the Michigan Panthers U USS FL, which I don't know why I am like Mr. Negative U uss FL when John's like the USFL has a Michigan Panthers problem. Like hey, I think he's the real hater. So appreciate it. Andy, anything else? No, Reed, go enjoy yourself. Seriously. Go have fun. Yeah, Well I got not that many hours. 7:00 AM tomorrow. Work's coming. So appreciate it. We'll see you guys next time. Cheers.

Is UFL Living Up to Expectations?

Hey guys, welcome to the Mark Cast. Read. Here is the UFL Living up to expectations. That is the theme we are tackling today as we approach the Midway point week five of the UFL 2024 season. Can't believe we're already there. Big show coming your way today. Happy NFL Draft week a weekend. Lots of excitement going on. Hopefully by the time you are listening or watching this, I have pre-ordered my Jaden Daniels, Washington Commanders Jersey here, pick number two. Pretty anxious today. Here Mariners are playing the Rangers. We got the drafts coming up tonight. A little anxious right now so hopefully this episode goes well. You guys enjoy it. I'm going to give you a little trigger warning here if you're one of those people. Gets a little triggered by a little criticism of the UFL. Just fair warning here. Haven't talked with Greg yet, but boy have I talked with Rick Cella this morning. I don't know if I was ready for Rick here at 8:30 AM Pacific on a Thursday shot out of a Canon. Rick Cella all around football guy, all access football. He's now a scout with the Edmonton Elks been around a lot. He was part of the IIFA for a while. So Rick certainly knows this stuff. Has been watching the UFL games, went to the UFL, Arlington Renegades DC Defenders game and said Reed, I have a lot of stuff to get off my plate and did he? So just, it's a great interview, very constructive, but boy, Rick's got some takes, so just hope you're ready. I assume Greg isn't going to be his fire. We all know Greg Parks the fiery contributor for UFO Board, but hey, maybe Greg's going to have thoughts as well. I don't preface any of this like come on and talking negative about the league, but we're sharing our thoughts. We're halfway here through the season. I can't believe it. Halfway to the St. Louis championship game, speaking of which, like and subscribe. We are, I think the YouTube cleared out some bots or something actually losing subscribers. Maybe it's just all of our fiery hot takes, but trying to get to 3,500 subscribers by the UFL championship game. We are giving away two free tickets and then you'll be able to sit with the professor Andrew Murray at the championship game. So like and subscribe. If you're already subscribed, give a thumbs up to the video, tell the algorithm and comment all your hot takes and commentary against Rick and Greg's hot takes here today. But big show, like I said, Rick Cella, Greg Parks contributor for UFL board sharing his thoughts is UFLA, meeting his expectations, exceeding his expectations for the season. And then always appreciate Darryl Davis as well coming on from Saskatchewan, one of the few Canadian provinces that is not represented in the NHL playoffs this year. Darrell talking Sean Lemon's indefinite suspension for gambling, the Chad Kelly and how does that investigation relate to the Sean Lemon investigation talking the CFL draft coming up next week and the rough riders and everything else. So I will let you guys have at it. Please enjoy the episode If you agree, if you disagree, that's good. Leave your comments, leave your feedback. I respond to everything so appreciate it. Like and subscribe. We'll see you at the end. Well here we are a busy week here. I have my commander's hat on. Hopefully as we listen to this, I guess I'm pre-ordering my Jaden Daniels jersey. We'll see how we feel about that. We can get Rick's thoughts, but we have Rick Tel here, busy football man, all access football. He's a scout with the elk up in the CFL. We wanted to have Rick on during the UFL kickoff and then obviously busy with travel and all of that. So now we get him one-on-one here. Rick, how are you doing? I'm doing great, man. The best time of the year for me. So buckle up. Well no, because Rick said, he goes, Hey, I want to talk some of this UFL stuff and I go, well isn't this, well no, I've done all this, is the work's been done, we're getting ready for all this stuff. But now we're talking, we're going into UFL week five first off, just how are you doing? And then let's get into your thoughts on the season. I'm doing great, Reid. Thank you for asking. Hopefully you're doing well. Listen, I have never been to a Canadian football league game and I'm getting ready to gear up for my first CFL training camp. We report on May the eighth, so I'll be departing for Edmonton and man, I'm looking forward to it. I feel like seeing it on TV and experiencing it, coach Chris Jones had told me, Hey, you really don't understand the waggle until you see it live in person. So really looking forward to it, man. It should be fun. Yeah, Edmonton, they need to kind bounce back this year. I think they need to sign a few more quarterbacks I think this week and all that stuff. I think we have have nine quarterbacks going, is Cardell Jones being called again for that? But anyway, we can talk a little CFL at the end, but let's get into this UFL. The theme this week is the UFL living up to its expectations. So what say you, you're a football guy. Yeah, so in terms of on the field quality of product, I think it's great. I think it's a step up from the level of competition. I think there's more continuity there. The games are exciting and they've always been exciting to me and you see a lot of games come down to the wire, which is great. The ratings are good too, right? I'd love to see the advertising dollars, which might make it sustainable. But then I had the opportunity to attend the game Arlington DC at Arlington a couple weeks back. Didn't pull out my scout card or my media card. I wanted to go and experience it as a fan. I was there with some friends and wanted to just see what it's all about. I'll tell you, and I don't want to make this out to be a hit job on the UFL. In fact, I know they listened to your show. I know they've rejected my help numerous occasions. So through the power of the Mark cast, we're going to offer them free consulting. But man, they just missed the mark on so many aspects and I'd love to dive into some of them. I don't know how much time we have, but for example, the first thing I'd noticed upon walking into the stadium is that I don't think they know who their audience is because what I noticed was most of the people are really not there for football. Most of the people want to enjoy a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, take their family out to the game, have a local tune to root for and not have to pay the NFL cost of experience. And so you've got fan bases there. There was one crew behind the end zone, okay? The Renegades, they're all dressed up robot uniforms, they're going crazy. Anything the renegades do, they're cheering man. Now, I'm not sure they know any of the rules. It came down to the end, they were completely quiet, they didn't know it hit 'em. But my point is the crowd cheers the loudest when they're throwing around a free. And so when I go there and I understand part of the problem is they negotiated bad stadium deals. So I don't know how much of this they can control, but we bought our tickets, I think the two tickets that came out to like 45 bucks in total for the both of us. Awesome, cool, we're in. Then we get there and the cheapest parking's like 50 bucks. So now the parking costs more than the seats, which to be expected I guess at a sporting event. Now you go to the game, we get a couple beers, $8 bottled waters, $12 beers. You have two, three rounds, a couple waters, you're in the hole, another a hundred bucks. So I said, man, this really is not fan friendly to a family of four that wants to go spend an afternoon and hang out and watch a good football game. And Melissa High School, I had a workout there right down the street of Stones throw away from Arlington Stadium Reid, I'd be embarrassed to tell you how cheap I can get that stadium. It's a $35 million facility. It holds 12,000 Fannie in the seats. Why don't we work on filling out that venue first because they reported 8,000. I'd be shocked, shocked if there was even half of that. Then I went to the Frisco fighters game later that night. I actually felt embarrassed for the UFL, but it's by their own doing. But you go to the Frisco fighters game, there's maybe a thousand people in the arena, but there's more ambiance, there's more atmosphere. And guess what? After the game, you go on the field, you get to shake the player's hands, you get free autographs, you get to have that intimate fan experience. There's none of that going on at the UL and I think they missed the boat. Louis Perez is somewhat of a local legend down there. You wouldn't know that he's playing in the backyard right there hanging out in Arlington. I didn't see one Texas a and m commerce shirt. How about maybe giving out some tickets to the youth teams, to the Texas a and m commerce football program? And I'll tell you another thing, I don't know if you talked about this on the air. I'm sure you're aware of the figures. I know what the numbers are for the head coaching salaries. What a joke. They don't have NFL money, but they have money to be successful. They put it in the wrong areas. The stadium contracts, terrible deals. The head coaching contracts, terrible deals. First of all, if you don't want a coach in this league for $400,000, take a hike. See you later. Because I tell you what, nobody came to the game to watch Bob Stoops stand on the sideline. That guy's collecting a retirement check. No offense coach, I'm not out here to make enemies, but this is common sense Logic 1 0 1, every head coach makes $400,000 and I just cut the head coaching budget by 75% by doing that. You do the math. So where they're allocating their resources are just terrible business decisions. And this has been a completely, I've talked to the people. This is completely A-U-S-F-L operation, right? Entirely In terms of management, what do you mean in terms of yes, the People who are calling the shots are the USFL folks, the XFL. This was not a merger, this was an acquisition, so I've got a lot more. But man, those are just simple things that they can get. I know the guy there that owns the biggest Harley Davidson right down there in, I'm not even from Texas, but you think if you gave away a free Harley Davidson or did a Pat mc, McAfee kicking halftime show entertainment, you think you might fill up some seats and have the crowd stick around at least for the first half. I mean it was an embarrassment reed. There was not even 4,000 people in that stadium. And I hope they get it together and turn it around. But I mean there's so much fixing up to do and then you go down the street to Frisco. Yeah, let's stop down a little bit here. I'm down as good. I had to get that off my chest. It's been weighing on me for two weeks, man. I want to see this league succeed. I want to see them do well. Yeah, because we want to be constructive about this as well because gotten a lot, and even on the show on Monday we get a lot of like, well you guys, you re on it, but what are the ideas? I like having tangible things. I said I would have a table out front of the Ranger stadium every second of every day there at Texas Live. Hey, do you know there were Rangers games there this week. The Mariners are in town. Like, hey, did you know there's football played here literally across the street coming up this weekend. But to me the UFL here is in a weird spot because like you said, in going into the CFL, they get that community, right? We're diving into the community, we're investing and I know we do a little bit of that, right? I think they had a homeless, the people in Arlington, the players went and help the local homeless shelters in Arlington, which was great, but I don't care about the Memphis Showboats players going to the Arlington Renegades. We need to do that in Memphis, we need to do that, but they have the money to do that. So you're kind of stuck in this area where I think they're doing a lot in trying to do a lot in Arlington, but there's those other seven markets and they don't necessarily make sense anyway. It really Doesn't cost a lot to do grassroots marketing though. To your point, I could have a couple of Arlington Renegades runners and the parking lot of the Texas Rangers stadium giving out free tickets to kids. I mean, how many people does Arlington hold? 40,000 people. And you can't even put 4,000 grassroots marketing starts with the youth. If you don't make fans grow up with this and like it from a young age, people like you and me aren't going to just discover this thing and become interested because there's no name brand value. You've got to start with the youth and they've done none of that. And I'll tell you what, good thing we weren't hungry. We were already out 250 bucks just from a couple of soda pops. I mean imagine if we wanted to eat that's not family friendly. Well, I'll also say when I was there for covering the kickoff game, we had to purchase our own food and beverage as media members, which is another Conversation in and of itself, but I don't want to say that politely, but yeah, it feels like, and we talked about this last week on the show, how do we get these media members? Because people sit there and they go like, okay, who's watching the crowds? Who's watching the crowds? I watch the crowds because that tells me if there's a level of interest in the markets. We're not trying to just attract the national market, we're trying to attract local. And ultimately the goal here, as they've said is we want to sell off these franchises in the next four or five years. Well, I don't see 7,000 in Michigan or 7,000 in Memphis doing that. So how do you get these media members not in Arlington to hop on these media calls to cover this stuff? There's no practice. I dunno how you get these people that are working at the Fox affiliated in Memphis to care about the UFL. So I pitched an idea where maybe you should kind of make me the media reporter for the league website and have me kind of going behind the scenes, bringing you the stories and the interviews and going behind the scenes kind of thing. But they don't want to spend the money there. They want to go pay head coaches through the roof. But the problem is, Reid, if you notice beat coverage has dwindled down, how many Texas Rangers beat writers are there? Probably not a lot. So no newspaper or local media outlet is going to pay a guy to go cover Arlington Renegades or the Memphis. There's just no return on investment there because it is a niche market. It's a niche fan base, but it's niche enough where you can survive. And the question I ponder, we never see anything about the advertising revenue that they generate on tv, but my big question is are they doing the league a favor by putting the games on the legacy channels? Because as soon as they go to cable, whether it's FS one or wherever else, you got to go looking for the game. I mean the audience drops significantly. So is it like are people just finding this thing on A, B, C and Fox because it's on easily accessible and yet when you have to go find, I can log onto the UFL website and see it's on FS one, but then only 200,000 people bother showing up. That's a bit concerning to me. I don't know. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. No, and I do, I think obviously, and that's been their touting point this season as we've consolidated, we're prioritizing the time slots. But to your point, yeah, I think there's half a million people that are always, I mean the Spring League mega bowl on Fox three years ago drew 450,000 viewers and that was Brian Woods and a cardboard box in his garage putting together a league. So I think that it looks better in that way, but to your point, when you move it off to the ones where we have to seek it out, it's not becoming a destination. We saw that with FX last year. I just wanted to stop down as well with the beat riders and the lack of that covering, I don't know if it was kind of going online. It was like the sports gambling podcast. They got denied credentials to go cover one of the XFL games. They're like, this guy just went on a tirade I didn't want to comment too much on, but they had difficulties and we're blessed that Mark is pretty well accepted with all this stuff, but they had challenges getting credentialed for all this and to your point, he's like, who is covering this league? We're not sending out people from San Antonio to Arlington. You need to focus on the internet shows, the podcasts, the other things at this point, because there's not that many, as you said, Texas Rangers, reporters also covering Arlington or anybody else. I agree and maybe because they're a gambling website, they got denied credentials, but at this point the league should be embracing that element too. I mean I would be broadcasting that talking about the odds, the end game odds, whatever over during the broadcast because it's another element that gauges fan and keeps you interested in the game and by refusing to acknowledge that, again, you're just cutting off a whole nother audience or demographic that if you got somebody that wants to come and cover the league, I mean listen, I'd be opening the Senior Bowl let's, everybody in UFL could probably take a page out of that playbook In terms of I know more constructive things here you'd like to see. I know you had a list of items you wanted to get through. Anything else you wanted, make sure you did your chest here. We had stopped down. Well, I mean other stuff is kind of just, I mean I think they're doing a good job with the talent and the on field product, but again, just like an operation standpoint, how do you make this sustainable? How do you make it profitable? The TV ratings, yeah, they might be able to squeeze or milk another year out of this read, but do you want to sustain or do you want to grow? Because I haven't seen anything that they've done that tells me that they want to grow funny. It's like I hear talk about expansion. How about you master what you have? I mean give me a break. There's one market St. Louis that draws fans and it's only because it's a passionate fan base that had an NFL team robbed from 'em. I had a chance to attend the St. Louis Rams game that is a passionate fan base and the battle hawks are drawing out of default not because of anything that the league did. No. Yes, and we made that point as well. The DC and St. Louis, it's no surprise that the two legacy franchises that are around since 2018 are the ones that are still carried. But you even saw it was last week, St. Louis, they were down 10,000 week over when they had their opening weekend and you always get, well, it was sunny outside and the Cardinals were playing and there was a gas station opening up down the street and Mariah Carey was playing in the county. There's all these different things and I forgot that was what I was trying to reach to before you were talking about you pitching to be the media reporter. I like that they had that Josh Lewin do it last year. I thought that was good. I thought he was too busy. I didn't think that he had his fingers in too many different things and I don't think he had enough time to do what that position could have been, but I like that that at least they had a weekly podcast. At least they had a weekly blog articles, recaps interviews with the coaches even I think it should have been that times five. Let's do something every day, but at least you had that. You want to connect with your fan base. How do you do that? You tell the stories of the players, you tell the stories of the league. Okay, and I saw one of our buddies, Juan Lazano, who's a very well-known agent, said basically the broadcasters are a joke and I agree. I mean I tune in and these guys are on there smiling and just shooting out the side of their neck like Acho, love you baby, you came on my show. Good dude. But don't sit up there in front. You even know who any of these guys are. You never saw any of 'em play. You don't know anything about them. And so why wouldn't you have a guy like Emory Hunt or myself, I've scouted and communicated and spoken to almost every single player in the league. I know them personally. I know a lot of their families. I know their agents, their trainers. I know everything about these guys. I've hung out with them too. Nobody knows 'em more than I do, but they want to go hire some big name phony, try 'em out there and show up with these game notes and just read. Somebody makes a tackle. Well let me look down and see what college he went to. So-and-so went to Washburn University. How about that guys? It's like there's no pride, there's no homework. These guys just show up and just shoot the breeze throughout the game and it's an insult to the fan base for people like you and I who are tuning in that really want to see Kavante Turpen and what this guy's going to do next and if he has a shot to go to the NFL and this kicker, that's the other thing that just is really mind blowing to me. There's teams now being investigated for tampering on the kicker baits. You have a stipulation in the contract that doesn't allow the players to talk to NFL teams in season. Give me a break. That's the best marketing you can have. Listen dude, you're telling me that teams are going to be in trouble for contacting the kicker. What a joke. The best marketing you can have is this guy talking to an NFL team and they wouldn't know innovation if it slapped him in the face. I'm sitting in the stadium wondering why they don't just change it back to the kickoff rule, which they created that the NFL changed. You would have people that would just be tuning in for that, but they got innovative slapping them in the face and don't even know it. So how do you bring the horse to water? You can't force 'em to drink it. I mean these guys, no offense, some of these guys running the show are dinosaurs. I said it, sorry guys. The times have passed you by Do you find, because we've had a lot of comments about between the Fox and the ES ESPN broadcast and I'm always like, normally I'm doing a lot, I'm on my phone. I'm not always like I get a little a DD going on the last week I was watching the Battle Hawks game and it was on ESPN and I'm on the treadmill so I'm glued in the whole time and was no, it was not Tom Luen bill who was a friend of the show. It was a gentleman that was the lead play by play that insistently talked about the over or under of the game the entire time and like, oh we we're going for two here. That's going to help with the over. It's like no, they're going for two to try to win the game, right? They're going for two to try to score points. So do you find that across the board? Is that because people like Joel Klatt and Kurt everyone, do you like the Fox crew or do you think that's across the board or is it ESPN issue? I like Joe Klatt because he does college football broadcast and he's seen some of these guys so he comes across as more authentic. The rest of 'em, there's a lot to be desired. Are you including Seattle Sports Legend and Brock Huard in that mix? Yeah, I think he's coming on the show in a couple of weeks. I like Brock. I think Brock tries some stuff. Yeah, he's not terrible, but I think Clat, you can tell respects the job. I'm not sure ho puts in as much work, but he does have a little bit more familiarity with these guys. I think the college broadcasters are better for it, but there's a lot of talented dudes out there that do know these players and it would be beneficial for the league to investigate that. Well, and we've talked before about even doing these drafts and everything and I think they go like, well who cares about the supplemental draft? Well, it's because no one knows. You got to find people that knows who these people are and then they can talk about it. If you put out their press release, it's one of those and it's like, I don't know, it's never hit. And I've seen the heights of the XFL YouTube back through 2018 to 2020 when I was a fan and nothing has seemed to get to that point ever again. And it's because of this like, well this is what it is. We're just going to put this out. We're just going to do this. We're going to do it on a Sunday. We'll send out a press release. You got to build this up if you want people to care about it. There is absolutely zero fan initiative. And if there is, I mean I challenge the UFL to provide us with a list of what their fan initiative includes because I mean if I had to go off of their actions, they hate us. I mean thank God they got the box scores fixed this year, but they hate us. They don't do anything for the fans. They do nothing to cater to the fan experience. They do nothing to enhance the whole situation. How many years have they been doing this? How many years? They knew they weren't going to fill up Arlington Stadium. You know how many first class facility, high schools and again, you probably don't even have to pay much. They might just want it for the publicity. And I'll tell you what, man, these stadiums are nice down there in Texas and Florida's got 'em too. California's got 'em too. So it can be done at a smaller scale and a much better fan experience. And I think again, if you want to grow then that's what you need to do. You need to grow the gates, you need to grow the merchandise. That was the other thing too. I had to walk probably more than half the stadium to find the memorabilia, but again, after what I paid, I just really wasn't feeling a $50. And so again, you should be given this stuff away. A T-shirt should be no more than $35 for a UFL T-shirt. I don't know, call me crazy, but if you want people to wear that and buy it and grow the game, that's what you need to do. What do you, and I don't want this to be and because believe me, we could rag for a long time on all this stuff and just Common sense, I'm not ragging Marie. This is common sense stuff that me and my entourage in the stadium throughout the course of the game solved a lot of the league issues. Just common sense. So who do you put the on this on about? Is that USFL side there of saying like, Hey Fox, we need to invest more in this. To me it's always this. We saw at the XFL last year like okay, we lost money, we cut a bunch of people Fox, okay, we're accepting the XFL coming into this kind work. Like nobody, we all seem gun shy to be able to take the plunge. When I went from working my full-time job to doing what I do now, you take a jump and you go, I'm going to lose some money here for a little bit. I'm going to build it up on the other side. And I mean you're someone that does a million different things at some point. Is that the issue? What do you think the issue is? Well, the biggest problem with a lot of these leagues, we saw it with Bill Poon, I think with the Alliance League is that football guys are just that and should probably stay on that side of the field. When you have football guys making business decisions, it's a recipe for disaster. You need somebody to come in here and look at this operation as a bottom line business and not just strictly as a TV reality show, right? This is reality TV programming at its cheapest for A, B, C and Fox. That's what this league is to them. But when you have the football guys saying, oh, well I know the guy over at Arlington, we can get a stadium there. Hey, let's put a team in New Jersey and play in giant stadium even though nobody gives a crap about this team. It's just like, and I remember having that conversation with the guys at the time. I'm like, yo, dude, why don't you maybe put 'em in the Metro Star stadium? It holds 25,000. You might have a little bit more of an ambiance. I mean they couldn't get 2000 people in the Meadowlands. What a joke. But it's like are you that tone deaf to your own product? How many years you been doing this? I don't get it. To me, I said before, it is that balance of I think they want to view themselves as NFL light and I think that they need to be more of a CFL brand. We are really investing here. I don't know. We talked and trying to get stories out players. We did get Darryl Johnson on Riot. I mean that was super appreciative. The league set that up, but some of the times, some of these team reps I email every week like, Hey, we'd love to talk to, I know we're setting up all these coach, we're doing all these, the virtual calls that three people are on. I go check this out. That's the benefit to me. I need to have someone on here for 20 minutes, 10 minutes, we can talk and kind of go through. I can't do a media scrum for a podcast and they're like, oh real, we're trying. We're busy. I'm like, I don't know what you're busy doing. Then maybe if it was explained to me, I would understand and then they're like, okay, I'm not seeing what you're seeing but where it's like, I don't know besides setting up the Zoom calls every week, I don't know. It's no time for you. I deal with Matt Baker with the BC Alliance all the time and I go, I text Matt, Hey Matt, anybody in the world you have to talk to today? I'm sitting in front of my computer all day. I can hop on at any point of the day and talk to you and he'll go, Hey, so-and-so Reed needs you for 10 minutes before you leave practice today, call in on your phone, call in on the computer. It doesn't need to be this 1995 Controlled agenda. It's a controlled agenda and they've given me crap. Again, they hate their fans because the mark cast is the best thing going for the UFL. It's the most watched podcast show. Don't say they hate their fans. No, They don't. They hate our fans. I'm a fan of the league. You wouldn't guess it by what I'm sitting here saying. It's frustrating, but I'm actually a fan of the league and they've done me a disservice by their coverage. The whole operation, the procedure, how they go about their business. It really is not a fan friendly league, but to deny you and I interviews and access that comes from Darren over there. I put out some stuff once they got their panties in a bunch over the silliest thing. I'm like, this is a good thing for the league to be talking about this, but they don't know a good thing from a bad thing. What they need to understand that any publicity is good publicity for this league and they need to stop trying to control the narrative and dictate who can talk to who and all these director of personnel guys and head coaches, they're scared to talk to you and guys on the record because of the directive. Again, that starts up top from the dinosaurs running the league, the management, I'm not going to name names. You can go see who's calling the shots. It's not just one guy. They've got people that are just too old for the position. Football has evolved. It's a young man's game. If you look what the NFL is doing, all the coaches and GMs now are under 40. It's a young man's game and they got guys that are twice the age of that calling the shots. That's the problem. Let's get some positives through here before we get out. You said you liked the football, right? We got some matchups this weekend going on. I think, what is it? DC is going into Birmingham or is it the other way around here? Birmingham with redneck. What is it? We got the doubleheader battle hawks at dc. That's how I knew there was one game I was looking forward to there. What's striking you in that way just in terms of some positivities coming out? No, the positive thing is again, the talent across the board is way up. I think the rule changes then tweaks that they do implement and have the fourth and 12. I think the NFL needs to look into that. I know the Eagles proposed a fourth and 20 similar type of rule, but how cool is that? And that means, hey, you could be down double digits with two minutes left to go the game. I was at the DC defenders at Arlington. They were down by 13 points with two and a half minutes that came back and won. That's exciting. I love that. You're never out of a game and again, I think the more uniqueness and creativeness, they should be trendsetters rather than trying to say, oh, well we want a more traditional kickoff. Like, no, he hate me. That was the most innovative thing you did was let players put their own nicknames on the back of jerseys. You should be embracing that. That is what connects you to the fan. That's what sells jerseys and merchandises not, Hey, you can buy this 23 jersey for the year 2023. We're going to print a million of 'em and sell to 'em. I'm like, but again, I just wish this could have all been avoided, but on the field product is exciting. I think the opportunities that the quarterbacks are getting right, you're seeing a lot of quarterbacks showcased and that to me, I go back to the World League, I was a really big fan of the World League back in the early nineties. Guys like JTO Sullivan and Kurt Warner and those guys may have never gotten a whiff of the NFL had it not been for the World Football League. So I think quarterbacks, when you look at what's going on with the draft, I can identify about half the teams in the NFL that would probably like to upgrade their quarterback. Well, I think it's very cool that you have a developmental system for that position because I think that's one of the biggest benefits that the UFL is doing and I would say offensive linemen, it won't get talked about, but developing offensive linemen is probably one of the biggest needs right now in the NFL. If you saw what the NFL did with their Canton program, they were just developing, Mike Tyson was up there just developing offensive linemen. It's a big crisis right now, finding good quarterbacks and finding good offensive linemen, and that's what the UFL is there for and that's why they need to get those contracts. If the NFL team wants to talk to a player in season, that should be welcomed, that should be embraced. Not like, oh no, you can't talk to our guy. He's under contract, bro. The whole reason why he signed up for your league is to get recognized by the NFL. Do you get it? So there's some good, I tune in, I watch every game. I'm glued to it. I love it. I'm a fan, but I want to see it stick around and if they don't make some of the changes that were suggesting, then it was hard to sit there and I stayed to the end, but it was hard to sit there and look around and say, yeah, this is going to last. Come on, step your game up and I'm available guys if you want to call me. No, I get that. It is a little disrupting. I remember we did the show two years ago. We were live and Dorothy went out. Well, we were doing the show walking around and she called in and I'm like, oh, there are a lot of people out there. Then this year I was looking out, I'm like, then you show up and you're like, oh, I just kind of walk in and I'm here. I get what you're saying and it's not the be all, end all the audience, but it is. You're like, I just feel like kind of a loser here. I don't know. I always feel like sometimes I care a little bit more about this, but I want to circle back real quick. I want to make sure anything else about this kickoff? Anything else that we talked, you talked the innovation, the fourth and 12th and all of that. Andy's been on our Monday recaps, pounding this fist, all these under in the yards with this kickoff. People say they like the kickoff. It's exciting, I would say, and Andy would say, well, now it's expected you're going to get a big return. So it's kind of negating that. What do you make of that? And just we want to give these offenses more of a headstart, but now it's like you said, it doesn't look like it does in the NFL is going to be. And any other thoughts on that while we have the football guy on? Yeah, I like going back to the old rule and I don't know why you wouldn't just change it To the XFL rule because I think each league said we have these eight things and we have these things and we got, and it was, well, Football is a game of adapt and adjust, right? They're trying to again, fit a square peg into a round hole. I will say I like being innovative. I like the different tweaks of the game. We should be looking for change. The thing that is really good, what they do the best is probably the challenges. The NFL could certainly learn a thing or two about the swiftness, the transparency, just the whole process of how they do the challenges and replays having inside to the audio and listen to that conversation. I think that's the way to go. I mean, I love that. Well, you even get people like Mike Florio on like, Hey, and he hates all these spring leagues. This is the most transparent in the review. And if you can sway him with some of this stuff, I think that that's a good, if you can turn some of these naysayers because people sit there and then I'm sure the comments on this video will be that say, oh, just complaining and people are sitting there we're the people that are, Mike's not watching this stuff. These people aren't watching this stuff. They're just, I'm Not complaining. I'm annoyed and irritated because I expect more. You expect more because of who's involved. You expect more because of the position they're at or who's behind it. I mean, just because Of the money that's spent, the money that's put into this, it doesn't equate, it doesn't add up. From what I see, the results can be a lot better and there was really, again, no effort again put into it seemed like they're sitting in limbo land with everybody in the dark for how many months? Players, coaches, executives, the communication, transparency. I don't think they're as stable as they want you to believe they are. And that's why you've got, when you see what I saw, you're like, damn, that's concerning. I know they're bleeding money. Well, why aren't they doing these simple things that can help costs? That's How I look. That's good. Anything else you want to make sure you get to before we wrap up here? I appreciate your time. This has been fiery. That's good. I like it. I had a lot of, Hey, if you didn't know, I had a lot of coffee this morning. That's good. We're burning the midnight oil for the NFL draft. I'm excited. But the UFL has been fun. I can't believe it's halfway done. I know, right? It's halfway done. But again, having the NFL connect to the spring League, connect to the CFL, we got a couple weekends this year. Last year was the best year of professional football in the history of the world. It went 52 consecutive weekends with pro football being played on the weekends. Man, that was unbelievable. If we can get it back to that, I'll be a happy camper. I want the league to succeed. I think they have another season in them, but again, the TV ratings are good. You still have to sell the advertising and until I see those numbers, until I see the gates and the merchandise improve and the fan experience, again, Frisco fighters, you get banged for your buck. Now when you go attend a Frisco fighters game, they're giving away food. They're giving away merchandise, they're letting you on the field. They're interactive with players. It's everything. The UFL is not. And I think they might want to maybe check out the Frisco fighters and attend one of those games. To your last point, and I agree, it gets to this, oh my God, we're halfway through the season and I always feel that way. And it's like you said, okay, we're going into next year, and I thought I will at least give Gerald Johnson credit when he was on the show saying We're doing the best we can this year and then we're going to make the push for next year, right? Because of the merger. I understand all that sentiment and everything, but I said, we're halfway through the season now. I always get with going back to these interviews and stuff like, okay, we just need to get through training camp or we just need to get through this. We just need to get through that. I don't know at what point right now we're halfway through the season, then it's going to be next year and then it's going to be okay, well, we just got to get through there. There's always a lack of urgency that I think that the spring football maybe needs, if that makes sense of like, Hey, we need to do this now. We're not going to have an opportunity to do that. Oh, they are at a crossroads right now. Whether they realize it or not, I'm not sure they do, but they are at a crossroads as we speak. I want them to see the $50 hat. I bought three or four of these Reed, this is how they came in a box with no protection. The brims are all warped and crooked. And I could have had my guy Anthony Beck send me one for free, but I spend $50 on a hat. I can't even wear it. It's an office decoration and every hat, I don't know if you could see the crookedness of the brim, but that's how they show up. $150 worth of hats. And I can't even wear the damn thing. I mean, I don't know. They hate their fans. All right, Rick, I appreciate it. We'll get you on again. This has been fun. Long time. Kind of. Did I go Too harsh read? Did I go too hard? No, I don't care. It doesn't affect me. Everybody else gets affected by this. My life is fine. It is, it is. But I think at this point, I think our subscribers know what's coming or what's not. But because we, Monday, we get all these, or I guess it was Tuesday because when all the ratings come out and the attendance and there's a lot of this and that and that, and people, I don't know. I'm here. I care. It's certainly not the $9 that YouTube pays me or whatever. We're going through it. So Rick, I appreciate it. Like I said, hopefully while this airs, I have my Jay Daniels jersey coming in the mail and hopefully the draft of the weekend is exciting for everybody. So Hey, the draft is the best time of year. It gives hope and optimism to all 32 teams. And by the way, who's your prediction? Is it Birmingham and St. Louis are looking like the contenders here are going to run through the league or I think so. I think Birmingham has got it pretty much square in hand. And then yeah, I mean Renegades and we're going to talk with Greg Parks about the renegades and they have just kind of fallen off here. And the Brams, we'll see they brought in that what Kevin Hogan or whatever. We'll see with quarterback with Dormy and all of that. And then, yeah, but out of Battle Hawks right now, Andy Murray said they were the most exciting team since the roughnecks in 2020. And speaking of quarterbacks, I think EJ Brown went down and they brought in Another EJ Perry. Yeah, Yeah, from Brown. And who did they sign? They signed a, Yeah, that just came down. Another quarterback that was intriguing. Oh, Bryce Perkins. Yeah. Yeah. Exciting. He was there hanging out with Sean McVey for McVeigh a couple of years. So Virginia dual threat. I'm looking forward To it. Well, that's the one thing I'll say is at least these coaches are trying, they might get paid too much. And that's the XFL coaches, the legacy, and people want to make sure we touch on that. The XFL coaches got this legacy contract and that's, They're going to hate me after this episode. Well, sly, Hees word isn't there and everything else, but Rick, I appreciate it. We'll see you next time. Well, here we are back busy NFL draft day here. I've married, just beat the, I'm sweating here. I'm very excited. Recorded my intro. Greg Parks here. UFL Board, first of all. Greg, how are you doing? I'm doing well, Reid. Thanks for having me on. It's good. So we're doing kind of a check-in this week. Is the UFL exceeding expectations. Now, I don't want to spoil, we have Rick Ella's interview as well that I did this morning. If the words the UFL doesn't care about their fans comes out of your mouth and you'll be doing better than Rick Cella is doing. But I want to get into your thoughts. First off. I mean, I saw everything you posted with Arlington and everything else, we'll talk teams, but from a broader sense, is the UFL exceeding your expectations? Oh yeah, that's a really broad question. I think that the on field product is about what I expected, I would say significantly higher earlier in the season than what we saw from the XFL, which we expected. We expected. And that's what all the talk was from the coaches and the players and really the fans too leading up to this season was that the combination of the USFL and XFL where you're taking the cream of the crop from those leagues, the expectation was the quality of play would be higher. And I think for the most part it has been. I think the only place that I would say it hasn't met expectations is with the attendance. And I know we're going to talk about that. I know you and the professor, I heard you, I'm sorry, the face of the UFL. I understand that's his new nickname. So I know you guys have talked extensively about it in the last few weeks, and I know I'll be giving my thoughts on it a little later on too. But the ratings have been pretty good. There are a lot of other pieces that I think have been good. And I think the important thing to remember when we talk about attendance or when we talk about all of this other stuff that goes into it, the marketing and things like that, realistically, this league kicked off a little more than two months after it was actually announced. And so I think we need to take a step back and remember that because as much as both leagues said they were going forward while they were negotiating this merger, that wasn't really happening. I mean, that everything was basically on pause in terms of the behind the scenes stuff in terms of the marketing of the league and everything like that. Teams were still making transactions and everything, but there wasn't a big ticket push anywhere to get anything out in the off season because everything was so focused on the details of this merger. So realistically, it was a little over two months. And then you have the Michigan Panthers, you could make the argument that they might be the most disappointing in terms of ticket sales, but they were also selling tickets a month before, less than a month before the kickoff. I mean, they had a very late start because of some behind the scenes issues going on there. So I think when you take those into account, I still don't think attendance is by any means good, but I think it's a little more, you can put a little bit of an asterisk on it as opposed to just throwing the attendance out and saying, it's just terrible. To me, it still feels like we're not taking advantage, and I don't know how we take advantage of these local markets and we're playing in the markets. We're not really doing anything else in the markets. I know that Houston posted, okay, we're doing teacher appreciation. I'm sure you appreciated that. And Dorothy by Mike, Hey, do I sent a screenshot? I'm like, Hey, guess what? But we're having all the teams share do charity work in Arlington, right? But we're not doing anything in any of these markets, which I understand. I just don't know how we attract fans of these markets, media members of these markets. If you live in Arlington, you can come to the practices, but otherwise you're basically shackled to, well, can I get on the Zoom call or can I get an email back from any of these reps? I just don't. If anything, I feel like that is something very easy that could be done at this point to kind of help grow that of let's incentivize the Detroit Free press to cover more of the Michigan Panthers by giving them all that, or let's get Memphis involved. I just feel like there's little singles here that we could be hitting that we're not, while we're trying to grow all this other stuff. It's a low bar to clear, but I do think they're doing better than last year in terms of that because if you're following social media, Twitter and Instagram, they had to the city a day before the home teams do, and almost every week they're doing something in the community that day before. And I think even the Battle Hawks stayed behind an extra day throughout the first pitch at the St. Louis Cardinals game. There was pictures of them at the children's hospital the day before and videos of that. So I think, but again, the downside is you can only do that five times because you're only in your home city five times unless you're going to go, there's no bye week, so you can't go in the middle of the week. So I think given the hand that they've been dealt where they are in Arlington, for the most part, I think they're doing better than last year getting out in the community and being seen. I know I just hopped on Instagram before I was on here, and it looks like the Michigan Panthers have a setup at the NFL draft in Detroit. They have a little booth there. So it's those kinds of things that give me hope, I guess, that things could get better. But I just think the Arlington hub just makes it impossible to be in the markets as much as you would like to. And I'm not sure what the battle plan is on that moving forward. I think it was a three-year deal when the XFL originally signed it with the City of Arlington, and I know it's saving them a ton of money. So you have to do that balance. Is the money being saved by having everybody there in Arlington Worth maybe not getting out in the community as much as you would like to? So, and the only people that can answer that is ownership. In terms of, I guess, and we've talked about this before, the USFL kind of adopting this model now of doing this, we talked and the whole attendance of it all, and I know we make a lot of it, but to me it speaks more to is there actual genuine interest in these communities? Are people coming out? And I want to get your thoughts as it relates to wrestling, which I kind of told you in the dms, but to me, I look at it, no one's going to want to buy any of these teams if there's only at Birmingham that's been there. This is three years now, they've been there, they've been playing every spring around the same time. 12,000 people. I mean even, okay, we don't want to talk the storm game last week. I mean 12,000 for the kickoff, their home opener. That doesn't speak to me. It's like, well, if I live in Birmingham, this is a hot product I got to get involved in. And I think it's hard for me to pinpoint any one thing. It's hard for me to say, this is the fix. It will be better if they do this. So if you asked a hundred people in these cities why they don't go to UFL games, you would probably get 25 to 50 different reasons. And so there's no one thing you can do as the league to solve that. I think the UFL needs to control what they can control, and there's always going to be competition for sports. There's always going to be, as you note, a gas station opening up down the street. There's always going to be something in the city happening that is going to take away potential fans from your game, you cannot control that. You cannot control the time slots that ESPN and A BC Fox give you for the games you cannot control, at least not yet. When the stadiums are available for you to book for the schedule, that stuff is out of your hand. So if I'm UFL ownership, and I know we're problem solving greed, we're not just complaining, we're giving solutions here on this show, but control what you can control. And a lot of that is marketing. And that's why we always come back to that when we talk about the UFL, whether it's nationally, whether it's locally in these markets, you have to have boots on the ground. You have to market as much as possible to get fans to just know that your team is playing in that city, let alone trying to convince them to come to a game. So I think that's the thing that the UFL can do. They might not be able to touch all of these other things, but that's something that is within their control that they can do. And it goes back to how much are they willing to spend, how much are they willing to spend on hiring people to put in these cities? How much are they willing to spend on a marketing budget in these cities? And I hope that after this year, that's something they reassess and they say maybe we need to reallocate some funds to local marketing to beef up that aspect of these teams so that people in these cities know about it and are interested in coming to these games. Yeah, I mean, I used to work at the Fox station here in the NBC in California. If I was, and we have full-time team reps now, I would be following over myself to try to get NBCA CCB like every week. Hey, especially where you're not asking, Hey, we got to go drive a crew out to go do this. You could do a Zoom virtual interview in the newsroom, but to have, even if you don't want to deal with the podcast and the internet shows, and I don't know if you followed all that sports gambling with them getting yelled at about not getting credentialed, but call the newspapers, call the TV stations, call this, have everyone on there every week. I mean, it takes no time at all to take a phone out at practice 10 minutes after and pop on and do a quick five, 10 minute phoner. I understand the point of these virtual, Hey, we're going to have the media call, but get these people on, get 'em calling out. You have a lot of personalities on these teams. I think you said something in one of the recent Mark cast that really intrigued me, and I think I've got a column idea rattling around in my brain whenever I get 30 seconds and could write something down. But it's how these cities were chosen in the first place and how that might be problematic in and of itself. So you go back to 2020 when Vince McMahon restarted the XFL, and I remember that there were surveys done about what cities were hungriest for football and which cities were support a league like this. And they had, I also remember a picture, I don't know where it was posted, social media or whatever, but they had cities basically applying to get noticed and request a team and they made their pitch for having a team. And when the XFL returned in 2023, it was basically, well, we own this ip, let's bring these teams back. Danny Garcia wants a team in Orlando. Let's put a team in Orlando. Jerry Cardinal wants a team in Vegas. Let's put a team in Vegas. And then you had the USFL, which as you mentioned, it was IP driven. It was 1980s driven. We bought these trademarks, we own them. We own the USFL. These are the markets that we're going to go into. And I mean not even really go into them, but just use the team name for half of them anyway. So that's kind of a backward way to select which cities are going to be successful in this league, which cities are going to support a team. And I think you're seeing that haphazard way it was done reflected in the attendance. Now the numbers aren't going to change overnight. And it's really interesting to me how much patience the league is going to have. How many 7,000 crowds are they going to draw before they start looking somewhere else? And you're not going to go to from 7,000 to 15,000 overnight. It's going to take years. How dedicated are you to the Michigan market to be able to put up with seven, 8,000 person crowds for the next two or three years until you're able to build that community or able to build that team? So I think, I hope that they have that level of patience because I think it reflects poorly on the league when you have teams moving. And I know people after one week of poor attendance, people are already kind of fantasy booking moving teams. And I'm like, what kind of message does that send as a league that you are so willing to pull up a team and move it so quickly? I remember back when the Arena Football league was still up and they were moving teams every year. And it's like that's not a professional way to conduct yourself and that doesn't give off professional vibes to the fan base at large, much less the fan base is in these cities. So I don't think the attendance is good. I wish it was higher, but I also don't think the solution is to move in year two. No, I agree with that. It's hard to me. I go back a lot of times we've talked about this has been going on for a long period of time and people that are involved now aren't necessarily haven't been following it the whole time. And even if I wasn't podcasting, I mean I was surprisingly for me, but pretty hardcore in all this league stuff back listening to Mark Perry back in the day and Alan and Brian and all that stuff. But to me, I always look at people involved now and it's Jeff Goldblum and Jurassic Park and it's like, well, you have this now, but you didn't do the, and I'm not saying the people involved right now aren't doing work, but you haven't been a part of this the whole time. You never had to learn why we are the way we are. And now we're here with these markets and you don't really understand why we've gotten here and why Well, this should be working better and this shouldn't be working better. Well, you didn't didn't do the work, so now you don't have the education that you learned in the last six years. Have Vince McMahon or whatever still been involved in all this, some of these markets, like you said, San Antonio burned and you hear all the time, well, we're not going to go back because we feel burned. Okay, well if you don't go back, then you're going to get burned again. You need to go. But I feel like that's how I look at the UFL kind of management ownership right now. It's that Jeff Goldblum yelling at the scientists that have engineered the thing. I'm like, well, you haven't done the six years of research to get to this point. You acquire the league, right Fox. You're like, well, this worked before. We want to do that. People like football. Well, there you go. Well, you didn't. There was a lot more Sam Schwartz scenes and the a lux of the world. A lot of work went into this behind the scenes to get it to a point that maybe you're not privy to. And I look at the XFL in its marketing strategy such as it was in 2023, and it seemed to be here's the rock. He's a movie star. You like, here's Danny Garcia, this businesswoman breaking boundaries. Here's football you should want to watch. And it's like it's not that easy. And you have to give more of a reason why fans should spend three hours on a Saturday or Sunday watching or why they should spend 25, 50, 70 $5 to go to a game. And the other thing that you guys brought up on the last show was as far as the USF FL teams, the ticket prices little steeper than the fans are used to. What kind of damage did Birmingham being a hub do and just kind of that overexposure of football in that market, what kind of damage did that do in the USFL? So like I said, there are myriad reasons why the attendance is the way it is. And I look at guys like Corey VE who did a fantastic job. He's one of the hardest working guys on social media. He was Orlando's ticket guy last year in the XFL, but I think he's in charge of Birmingham and Memphis this year. And it's like, that's great and God bless him. But I think you need people who know those markets. You need people who know what works in those markets and you can't stretch these guys that thin unless you just are kind of poo-pooing attendance for this year. And maybe the UFL is want, maybe they're going to take a mulligan, a self-imposed Mulligan on attendance this year and maybe in the off season we'll see a rededicated effort to pooling more resources into local marketing and getting fans in the games. Maybe it was just about getting the product on the field, getting ratings at a stabilizing place on tv. And then attendance is a worry for year two. I dunno, but I can't assume that ownership is real pleased with the attendance in most of the markets right now. One of the many reasons to have you on was because I was talking with Michael, Michael Payne, one of my friends wrestling, and we all did all the WrestleMania stuff and I was talking to him about you've really saturated these markets for Birmingham two years now. And then the other ones, like you said, you would paper wrestling events back in the day W cw, we just got to get people in the front row we're giving out tickets and a W. And he said, he goes, you should ask Greg about that. And his thoughts of how long does it take to reverse that or just your thoughts of how, because it's a very similar practice to kind of what the US FL did with wrestling. I just wanted to get your thoughts on that of self degrading the price of a ticket for that and then now wanting people to pay a double or whatever it is. And I think we're seeing the results of that right now, right? Based on what the USFL was doing, they had priced their games at a certain rate and when the merge league comes in and prices it higher than that, you're seeing fans in that market not really take to that. And so I think as I said, 25 or 50 different reasons why people aren't attending the games. I think that's probably one of them. I don't know how high that ranks, but certainly you're seeing efforts to discount tickets in Memphis and Birmingham. I know there was $10 tickets that were made public on social media. So the league is tacitly acknowledging this problem by discounting those tickets and giving the BOGO deals and everything like that. So when you do see seven, 8,000 in the stands, you have to take into account, well, how many got there? Because if a buy one get one, how many got there because of a $10 ticket? So you're not even getting the max revenue from those 7,000 people who are in the stands. So again, I don't know what the league's marker is for attendance. Maybe when you have Mike Mitchell on next week, he'll be able to give a more accurate picture of the league's thoughts on attendance. But yeah, I mean you want to get as many people there as you can, but it's going to be a process. It's not going to happen overnight. You have to understand that St. Louis and to a lesser extent dc, they're outliers. That's not the norm to draw 30,000 or even 15 to 20,000 consistently the way these two franchises have done. You guys talked about the reasons why those markets have caught fire the way they have, and I agree. I think the other thing too is those fans have an identity. CAW is the law. It's the blue and white, it's the rabid fandom. It's filling the dome. That is the identity of the Battle Hawks fans, the defenders have the beer cup, they've got the lemons, they've got all that stuff that is their identity and people want to be a part of that. And the other fan bases don't have that same identity yet. And perhaps when they get closer to that, maybe we'll see the stands fill a little bit more In terms of your thoughts of crowd stuff. And I promise we'll talk football here. His Rick was on and talking. He was at the Arlington game. I was at the kickoff, which was higher even than the one Rick went to. But low attendance from a TV viewing standpoint, I know EW is dealing with this riot and nobody's going to the thing. Does that energy translate on tv? My thing besides franchise and all this, if you're a casual fan, you're turning this on, nobody's there so affects the viewing on tv and then if you're there, I kind of feel like a loser. If I look around and there's 4,000 people. I think it affects both sides of that. How do you view the lack of attendance where it's affecting the most from a TV perspective or an in-person or where do you see it? I think it's tv, but I also understand people who are not affected by that. Yeah, no, but I think it cuts both ways. I think that there are people who just want to watch football and to use the old Rod Woodson quote, they watch football played on a highway, they don't care. They just want football. And I think that's kind of the Emory Hunt when he brought up the attendance. I mean, fans have that attitude. There are certain fans who do. To me, I think it affects, I love watching St. Louis Battle HOKs games and DC Defenders games a lot more than I like watching Michigan Panthers games and as do in part to the crowd. I think they add something to the games, add something to the viewing experience, even watching at home. And I do think you're right for the casual fan who's tuning in, they don't want to watch something that feels like a cold product and a EW can kind of get away with it because there are ways that you can shoot inside the arena that doesn't make it seem as empty. There are smaller arenas they can go to, or even if they draw a couple thousand, it looks full. You can't get away with doing that in Ford Fields. You can't get away with doing that in the Alamo Dome. There's only so much production trickery you can use to mask those empty seats. So speaking personally, it does affect me, but I also know that there are people out there who empty seats do not affect their viewing experience. I just think there's different expectations, right? You watch a baseball game on a Wednesday afternoon and you understand, okay, there's going to be not as many people, but also the people that are there are going to be invested in it. I do think, I don't know, I think we're getting better energy crowds than maybe we got with some of the papered USFL crowds where it's like, Hey, we're just here. But I think the people that are there at least care, feel like they're invested in it. Do you feel like, so football good, has the football been at a level where if you're a casual tuning in that this league is justifying its place in the landscape right now? It depends. I think there are some games that have been rough, but there are some games that have been pretty good. There are some stretches of good games that have been bad. So it really all depends on when they tune in. So we're kind of getting into the midpoint of the season, injuries are starting to hit. We're seeing quarterbacks go down. We're seeing other skilled position players go down. Luckily we're getting players like Jako Pearson and Mark Thompson back, so that's going to help the offenses. But I think the level of play is fine. I don't know what the general audience expectations are. I don't know if it's kind of NFL or bust for them. I also don't know how many people, casual fans are going to tune in when they don't really have an attachment to any of the teams. That's the thing, and that's what takes a long time. And that's why another one of the arguments against moving these teams right away is you got the Green Bay Packers who have a waiting list of season tickets that didn't happen overnight, that's established over decades and decades and decades and spring football just hasn't been able to get to that point where they've created that history with these teams. So ideally you get to do that where when a person tunes in to watch the Battle Hawks and the defenders, they know the history of that rivalry. When I watch a Kansas City Chiefs game, I know what I'm going to get. I know what a Kansas City Chiefs game looks like. I know what a Miami Dolphins game looks like just because of their history and I know having watched them, this is the kind of team they are, and you don't have that really in the UFL yet. Teams are trying to find their identity over time, and that's only going to happen when you have head coaches that are there for a while when you have players that are there for a while, and hopefully we get to that point with these teams. Well then you're also battling players. This being the spot where maybe this is the last time that players play and then they retire. They use this as a jumping off point or it doesn't take off. And coaches, I mean, then you're battling that on that side as well from NFL Teams do that too. I mean, there's turnover every year on NFL teams. It's the same for UFL. It's just instead of free agency like they have in the NFL, they're moving on, they're retiring or they're moving to the NFL. You have teams like the Battle Hawks and the renegades that are bringing 20 some players back on a 51 man roster. That's not bad. I mean, that's pretty good, I would say. And you have to take into account that this is a merger year, so there's more player movement than usual coming on and off teams. So I would expect that number to be even higher next year. Renegades. Is that your biggest disappointment of a team this year thus far? Oh, without a doubt. When I was doing my power rankings for the teams and I was kind of assigning numbers to each position group, Houston came down at the bottom. So not surprised that Houston was struggling, but I'm really shocked at Arlington. This is not a team that lacks quality players. And I think that's what's so surprising about it, and it's even doubly surprising when you have a head coach like Bob Stoops, college football Hall of Famer. If there was ever a coach that you think these players would respond to, it would be Bob Stoops. And if you ever thought that there was a team that this would not happen to, it would be a Bob Stoops coach team. So it's really hard for me to understand what I saw on Sunday. I saw players that the tackling was atrocious. It was almost like they were not trying, I don't want to put that on them, but it did not look like it looked like effort was an issue, to be quite frank. The offense not being on the same page and everything like that. I was stunned at the quality, partly because they had been in every game up to that point. They took Birmingham to halftime and they played 'em tough there. They lost on a couple other last second things, and you wonder if that mentally gets to a team. But yeah, I was surprised at what I saw on Sunday In terms of parody of talent across teams. Are you seeing that or not? I feel like that was the pitch. Hey, we're getting all this. Every team's an all-star team. To me it feels like we kind of have the battle hawks, we have the stallions up there, DC's figuring it out. There's a big drop Houston runs and obviously the renegades. What do you feel about the parody across all eight teams? I think it's okay. It's impossible to have complete parody. So for what they're doing, I think it is good. I think the XFL conference has a little bit more parody than the USFL conference where it feels like Birmingham and the team lucky enough to kind of stumble into that second playoff spot. At this point, Michigan's dealing with quarterback injuries. Memphis is dealing with quarterback injuries, Houston's dealing with quarterback injuries, but I feel like they're coming out better on the other side with Reed Sunnet who's performing better than the Jared Guano was when he was in there. So that may be actually a bright spot for Houston. And then in the XFL conference, you've got St. Louis, you've got dc, you've got San Antonio. I group them pretty closely together right now, and then you have Arlington, which is oh and four. But talent wise, when I look at their roster, I don't think they should be this far behind the other teams in that conference, which is partially why I'm just stunned at the oh and four record and the performance. So I think the XFL conference teams are grouped a little closer, and I think it's going to be a little more interesting in that conference when it comes down to it, because I think there's a lot more up in the air. As good as St. Louis has played, we've seen them last year kind of stumble at inopportune times. That's what caused 'em the playoff spot. So I'm not ready to crown them yet. I want to see a little more consistency from them over time. But Birmingham's just going to run away with the USFL cover. I don't see anyone in that conference really stepping up. Well, and then this week, I mean they're going into dc right? So that'll be an exciting game kind of. No, sorry, excuse me. I keep doing that St. Louis going into dc. I keep in my head, I keep thinking. I'm like, oh, geez, whatever. Yes, I do agree. Running away with it all. Last question here. So Renegade's biggest disappointment, who is the biggest surprise here? Maybe because for me, I thought the bras were going to be duty. They were good. And then Chase got hurt now, now we're dealing with quarterbacks switch upstairs and we're signing guys and everything. And I mean, he was around last year. He is not really the most exciting player, but he seems to be pushing the ball. Who are you pleasantly surprised by this year? I figured San Antonio would be good, so I can't say I'm real surprised by that. I don't know if there's any team that really jumps out at me as a surprise. I'll say this, I thought Birmingham was going to be good, and they were number one in my rankings of the position groups, and they're not infallible. It took 'em a last second field goal to beat the defender, but to be four and o at this stage in a league that, as you mentioned, parody is important. It is surprising. And I expect them to go five and o against Houston though. Who knows? We could have an Orlando upsetting DC situation this week. I think that would be the apt comparison for this game. So Birmingham, I expected them to look good. Maybe not this good. So maybe that would be a surprise. Other than that, I mean other than Arlington, like you said, I don't see any other real shockers this far into the season. Ask me in week eight, maybe my answer will be different. We have a little bit more of a base to go on, but through four weeks, I wouldn't say I'm really surprised by any team's performance. Well, there you go. Well, Greg, appreciate it making time, the NFL draft week and everything else. Yeah, exciting night tonight and then everything else. So hopefully anyone actually watching this, I really appreciate it right now. Well, no, there's so much fighting for attention, all that stuff, so I appreciate it. Good luck with that. Get your mock picks in. And I know Mike Mitchell's big on that too, and I don't know, whatever he submits to the big nationwide thing or whatever. But anyway, good luck with all that. I hope it works Out. Thanks, Reed. Appreciate it. Well, here we are back here. Had Dave Naor last week getting back into the CFL coverage draft coming up next week. Sean Lemon in the news with everything else going on, Darryl Davis Here're at Saskatchewan. How are you doing, sir? Great Reed, how have you been? Haven't seen you since cock. I know, I know. We're getting back into the season here. We made the jumbotron, I guess at Jordan Everly's thousandth game ceremony, so that was probably the last time you saw me. They're on the broadcast where I sent you the photo. I can't remember, but yeah, big times here. And we kicked off the CUFL season. We're halfway through, so now it's time to, it's almost June. Can you believe? What's the countdown here for the CFL season? Oh man. Rookie camps open May 4th, don't they? And I think four or five days after that training camp opens. Everything's moving earlier all the time, right? They've talked about trying to get the Great Cup game earlier. It didn't use to start till June, but now there's certain things in May, so that is a little bit of an adjustment. We still got hot NHL playoffs going on big time, so it's going to be a bit of a change getting started earlier and earlier every year in the Canadian Football League. Well, it's hard because right now wanting to talk CFL, a lot of the people I would normally talk to, the Farhan of the world and the Jason Gregors. Not that you're not, but everyone's covering NHL now. It's just kind of hard where Saskatchewan doesn't have that as much. I mean, obviously with everything else, but I figured we could get you on this week. Big news. I guess first coming out, the Sean Lemon of it all was kind of weird where, and I had kind of forgotten that he had pseudo retired two weeks ago coming out obviously probably expected something like this. What's your thoughts on this and how the league's handling It? Wow, it's really wild. You're right. Sean Lemon actually signed a year new contract extension about a month or so or two months ago, and then two weeks ago announced his retirement. Obviously knew that he was about to be discovered. It's a weird situation. 2021 is when it happened. Sean Lemon was playing with the Calgary Stampeders bet several times. It sounds like small bets on CFL games, including one parlay that had the Calgary Stampeders involved. That's a no-no. The worst sin can you can probably get involved with in any pro sports is betting on your own team, legally, illegally, anything like that, because all of a sudden the integrity of the game is at risk. So to prove that Commissioner Randy Abro suspended Sean Lemon indefinitely, it's funny how the case didn't come up until three years later. It was a 2021 incident. It didn't really start getting investigated until 2024 when they found out. And they have obvious proof, and it sounds like they've done a pretty thorough investigation, obviously a better investigation than they're conducting on Chad Kelly it seems like. But they're doing something and decided that they better suspend him indefinitely, which is weird that you would think that somebody who is betting on his own team, even if it's with his team to win betting, that would not be a lifetime ban. That's the first thing I would expect. They've done it with Pete Rose, they did with the, I know it was a long time ago, but this is when it all started. 1919 Chicago White Sox. It goes back, you cannot have anything to do with the outcome of your game other than trying your best. So if you're making money off your team, losing your team winning, that's a cardinal sin. And I'm surprised that the CFL didn't say that Sean Lemon was suspended for life, I guess at the age of 35. He's played a long time. He's played with almost every team in the Canadian Football League. I guess they figure he's done anyway, but I think they could have sent a stronger message and probably should have sent a lifetime ban as part of the announcement. Does this, I mean the obvious question, this Mars, his legacy, but in terms of you get a lot of guys that go up to the CFL and maybe we're trying to make some money or extend our career, whatever, someone like him who has played, like you said, for so many teams, multiple Gray Cup winner here, I assume not going to be included in the CFL Hall of Fame. Is that something that, because there's various levels of players in these leagues, right? And he's someone that's been very invested for a long time, did not have that be an honor. I wonder if that affects him. I got asked that yesterday, Jamie and I asked me that on our radio show in Regina on Rocco, and I'm a voter, I'm a Hall of fame voter, and I'm not supposed to get into the specifics of how we vote, but he did ask me how I would consider it, and I am free to talk about that, what Sean Lenon did as a player betting on his team. I might be inclined to still say, you know what? That didn't have anything to do with how well he played throughout his career. Is he a first ball hall of famer? No, I don't think he is, but he might be considered somewhere along the line. Would this hurt his chances? Of course, it'll hurt his chances, but does it make him for sure not eligible for the Hall of Fame? I don't think so. I think that you could still consider it, and as a voter, I would look at that and say, you know what? His career was pretty outstanding. He might be worthy of the Hall of Fame, and I don't know if I'd be able to convince other people, and that's part of the deal when you get around to it. But did the betting have anything to do with his career? Not at all. So yes, you can think about, because there are character clauses in all halls of fame. How was this person a criminal or was he he a horrible person? Should he get in? No, he's never really tarred the CFL with a bad brush until this incident. And if it's just a small bet, I'm starting to think, you know what? Maybe he still is Hall of Fame worthy and it is an interesting discussion. Rita, there's one that you bring up that justifiably so, because I've been wrestling with it a little bit, I won't have to wrestle with it for three more years when he does become eligible, but the rest of the committee will have to wrestle with that too and decide I would be more inclined to vote Sean Lemon into the Hall of Fame than I would Andrew Harris. Andrew Harris cheated according to using, he was using performance enhancing drugs. Is he a hall of Famer, sir? The way his numbers reacted? Of course they are. He is. But he's also been suspended for cheating, which made his career even better. So when you balance the two out, I think the lesser evil of the two is gambling as opposed to cheating on your lifestyle and breaking the rules that are put in place for every player. I think that's very, this is actually a really interesting debate here. I know he is signing, I think it's today, signing with Winnipeg to retire as the one day with all of that. This is very interesting. I wonder if everyone would have your openness to having Sean Lemon be able to go in, but then Andrew Harris continued to play and win and do it is different in that way too, where he came back and was able to, I don't know, resurrect, I mean a lot of the drug stuff was kind of not the drug, but the performance enhancement was a lot before we were involved in the CFL. So it was a little bit before my time, but where he was able to come back and resurrect that, does that change that at all or no? A little bit. You're right. He won a great cop afterwards, so he only tested positive one time. I know that the drug chain tests and the CFL have been kind of inconsistent over the years, but finally, if he had been only using it, maybe he was only using it that one time, and maybe he did get caught using something that he shouldn't have and got suspended for it. But in my mind, that is cheating. I'm a lot more sympathetic to gamblers. It's an addiction read and sports. I've been writing this a lot for my newspaper regenerator posts that gambling has sold. Its to, I'm sorry, sports has sold its soul to the gambling companies. They wear little logos right on their shirts. The fields are adorned, the boards on the hockey rinks are adorned with gambling websites. So you say, okay, these guys are helping to pay your salary, but don't go near them. Don't bet with them. Okay, I am finding that very hypocritical. I think Pete Rose should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame. I even think that Mark McGuire and Barry Bond should be in the Hall of Fame because Major League Baseball was complicit with that. They said, we want home runs. Go ahead, use steroids, do whatever you want. It creates interest in baseball. So they did it and they made baseball interesting for a long time. That Home Run Chase was amazing, wasn't it? Sammy Sosa, we all remember that. So the leagues were complicit in that the leagues are complicit in this gambling. So they have encouraged all of Canada, north America, what 40 of the 50 states, I think allow gambling on sporting events. All of Canada now allows it. It's only like three years that they've allowed it. It's become everywhere. Every sporting event you watch, you're just inundated with these commercials over and over and over again. The odds change during the game. Here's your prop bet for this quarter of the football game. So the leagues are promoting these things. So Sean Lemon got caught, maybe got caught up in it. Maybe he never gambled before. I don't know. But he did get caught once. What he did was wrong, absolutely wrong. And it probably deserves a lifetime bat. You should never bet on your own team against or for, and that's the cardinal sin once again. But the leagues are once again complicit in all of this. What did they expect was going to happen? It's not just betters around the two countries losing their houses by gambling and running themselves into debt. Gambling is an addiction. The players are affected just the same as the rest of the population is. So I don't have, I'm, as I said, a lot more sympathetic towards somebody like Sean Lemon than I am towards Andrew Harris. And the debate about whether one or the other or both should be eligible for the Hall of Fame, it's going to be an interesting debate and I'm willing to listen to every side of the argument. Yeah, I remember, it's so funny that with just the baseball chase and all that, where I remember I was younger during all of that stuff and traveling through the airport and every single TV was on and every single, it just felt like everybody that you went across was invested in this home run chase, and it really did kind of take that over. Yeah, SNL did a skit, I guess it was earlier this season where it was like, now you can bet on your buddy losing their house. Hey, is your neighbor going to go all in? And all that stuff Saw, And we saw obviously with the Toronto Raptors player, right, getting the band and him playing Jona Porter. Yes. Jontae Porter. Yes. Yep. Did curtail off of this. I saw a lot of, and speaking of the Chad Kelly's and Naylor kind of talked about it last week as well, but well, hey, they were able to get this investigation done. What's going on with Chad Kelly? What do you think of the Chad situation, then how it relates to the CFL, I guess taking action against these various, and obviously different way different circumstances, but they're running these internal investigations. Yes, and you know what? The CFL is a very small operation as you've discovered through your years, right? It's not this big NFL conglomerate. They have limited resources and limited number of investigators. So we understand it's going to take a while. Of course it should. But Chad Kelly had troubles before. We were aware of that when he showed up in the CFL and you thought, okay, but those are the guys who say I'm always fine and hopefully most people deserve a second chance. Okay, Chad Kelly, go have your second chance. His second chance, I hate to say he's guilty already, but it looks pretty bad. And I think the CFL can, without saying that he's a guilty man of any crime, I can say that it looks like he's guilty of misbehaving within his franchise with people within his franchise. And I won't get in trouble for that because that's not a legal thing. He was doing improper things with people inside the Toronto Argonauts, so was their general manager, John Murphy, who according to all reports said, oh, you are wrong. Leave him alone. Don't stir this stuff up. He said to the female employee who Chad Kelly was supposedly allegedly harassing. Those are horrible incidents. All the CFL has talked about over the years is treat everybody with respect. It's a welcoming league. Okay, we're fair to everybody. These reports don't sound like that's what was going on in Argo land. I'm very concerned, and I was asked the other day, do you think Chad Kelly will be the Toronto Argonaut starting quarterback this year? I don't think so. I don't think they can allow him to be after what's been going on. And I asked pinball Clemens the president, the boss of the Toronto Argonauts the other day, is John Murphy still on your staff? Yes, he is. And then they didn't want to talk about it very much. And I see John Murphy tweeted the other day, he is getting ready for training camp if he behaved this way and allowed this to happen and protected his quarterback, there's no way after his second chance, because he got fired and suspended for an off field incident after a football game, he can't be in the league either. I'm not a canceled guy. You get a second chance all the time. I'm fine with that. But what they've been doing is wrong. This investigation better get going. And Randy Ambrose, sure he is, he's done something with Sean Lemon. He better do something with Chad Kelly because those stories are true, which they seem to be then they better get this going before training camp opens. Otherwise they've got a firestorm on their hands and they're being very hypocritical because they're not making the CFL offices a safe place to be. Would this be a different circumstance, and obviously Toronto is the biggest market and all these things, but we've talked before, the Argos get a little swallowed up with all the other activities going on there and visibility of it with MLSE and all of their properties. If he's the quarterback of the Saskatchewan Ruff Riders, is this a different situation? I mean, we had Cody Ferra, I wanted to show he is like, I couldn't even go to the grocery store without getting, and that was just football play, right? That wasn't like that was just, Hey, you're a terrible quarterback, Regina's like that. You've been here, Reid. You know what a small market it is. And when you were talking about all the guys who usually talking Farhan and they're all watching NFL playoffs. Yes, in Regina, we're watching NHL playoffs too, but we don't have a team involved and we don't have an NHL franchise here. So the rough riders are year round entertainment. Everything they do is constantly being scrutinized. I could write a rough writer column every week, every day I wanted in the leader post, and it would be read because people want to know what's going on with the rough riders. If this happened to one of the Saskatchewan rough riders, quarterbacks, it would be getting weekly attention or regular attention. You're right, the Toronto AAU slip under the radar quite a bit, especially now when the Maple Leaf are playing. Oh my goodness, there's nothing else going on in the entire world around Toronto. So Chad Kelly, it's good timing in that respect for the CFL, but they better be able to use that smokescreen a little bit to get to the bottom of what happened and make a ruling on it. Would it be bigger in Saskatchewan? Well, you'd be hearing a lot more about it than you are from Toronto Media because they're paying attention to other things. But because he's also the reigning champion, right? The reigning outstanding player. He won a gray cup two years ago, so he's massive name. He also has massive name recognition in the United States because of his college career. So it's going to get bigger coverage eventually. But you're right in Saskatchewan, if Chad Kelly was the Saskatchewan Rough Riders quarterback and was accused of the same thing, you wouldn't be seeing him in any grocery stores. It's just weird because coming off of the playoff game and I have the concussion and then we go into the off season, and then it just been swirling here where it wasn't really a clean exit into the off season for him and all this stuff. And I think Naylor had said last week, would you suspend him? Because it doesn't really matter right now because nothing's happening. But I mean, it's coming soon here. Like you said, rookie camps and everything. It just feels like, I don't know how you go into that season with the investigations so underway. Yes, they better get a resolution. That's a great point. They need a resolution before training camps open with their general manager and with their quarterback, because the way things have been described, there's no way that they should be involved with the Canadian Football League team right now. And if camps are about to open, they should be able to, even the Toronto organ out say at least deserve the courtesy of being told your guys won't be available. You better find replacements for them. And if they show up on May the fourth, and they're both allowed to be there, I would have a lot of, I wouldn't respect the CFL as much because it doesn't sound like nothing should be done to the people who put this assistant coach in that situation. In terms of the riders here, like you said with draft coming up, how are the riders looking going into the season? Obviously not a successful kind of last year with everything else. What are you kind of looking forward to for the team? Well, the draft coming up on Tuesday, the global draft I think is earlier on Monday or something, and you find a global player or two, and they got a pretty good punter last year. The rough riders did the global draft. So they do find some players on occasion, the riders pick third. Overall, I'm advocating for them to continue to pick Canadian receivers. If you've started a Canadian receiver, you have to have at least one or two backups. They have three pretty good receivers. When you think of Bray, millennias, Keon, Schafer Baker and Samuel Amli, those are three very solid receivers. They're Canadian receivers. And a few years ago, I think before the marque started showing up at the Canadian Football League, the rough riders had a, they called it the Canadian Air Force with Chris Gatz Laugh, Rob Bag, and Andy fan twos great, great football players, all Canadians, all receivers. And it was rare for teams to have that many Canadians. Usually you'll find one Canadian receiver, so to have three of them. And Western Dresser who's going to be in the Hall of fame was the American, and he was from North Dakota, so he was kind of an honorary Canadian anyway, so they called it the Canadian Air Force. And I think the rough riders have built themselves up enough that way to do it, to really rely on their Canadian receiving corps. And that allows them some freedom to add Americans in other places because they've really struggled along the offensive line. The fact that they got Peter Godber last year, senator from the BC Lions as a free agent, outstanding. Robert Blake's there. They've got three decent Canadian players, or Philip Blake, I said, Robert Blake, Philip Blake, and they got as a free agent for one tackle, they need another American tackle allowing them to find more Americans and maybe even playing one in the secondary, playing all American linebackers or something would really help them. And I think that they can do that. They can help their ratio. The teams, we've found over the years that the teams who have the best Canadians are usually the teams that win the Great Cups. So the rough riders have built, they've had trouble finding offensive linemen. They don't draft the offensive linemen. So why not find the players that are good at finding what seem to be receivers and then put the Americans in other places, find Canadians who can start. So that's what I see the rough riders doing, looking forward to it. When you ask how are they going to do this year, same as every CFL team, how's their quarterback? Trevor Harris, 38 years old when the season starts last year, tibial fracture five places. One of his legs was broken in right on the kneecap and didn't play. He missed the entire season. If he comes back, I think he stabilizes a team, but can he play? He's never been the most mobile quarterback, but can they protect him and can he stay healthy the entire year? They have a chance of being a respectable football team if he can play the entire season Pressure on coaching staff and everything else now coming in. Yeah, well, they're new, right? Craig Dickinson was here for how many years, four or five years, and did an okay job. But last year his strategies on field strategies were really bad. Every chance he took blew up in his face and he's gambling at the wrong time or he's kicking at the wrong time. And the players noticed that you could tell that they were losing faith in him, not that they disliked him as a man. Craig Dickinson's a wonderful guy as a coach. Well, he waffled a few things and really was bad and on field strategies. And then the players started thinking, oh, we don't have faith in him. And you could see it fritter away for the last two seasons, they ended their seasons with seven game losing streaks. So you could just see it was imploding before us as we watched. So they did have to change it. They changed. The coaching staff brought in Corey Mace, former defensive coordinator with the Toronto Argonauts, very popular throughout the league. Everybody seems to like him from our limited, well, not limited, he's been very accessible since he arrived in Regina and Saskatchewan. And you see him everywhere, and everybody seems to be buying in. When they get AJ Ette, they're running back a free agent from Toronto because he wants to play for Corey Mace. You start thinking, oh, okay, this guy has something special. And that's absolutely the truth. He has that charisma. He wants to be here in Saskatchewan. Is it the center of the CFL? No. But it might be the heart of the CFL and he understands that and he wants to be a part of it. So he's put together quite a coaching staff. A few guys who are familiar, he's brought along, guys he's worked with, including Mark Mueller, who's a former offensive coordinator, or not offensive coordinator, quarterback's coach, I guess with Calgary. He's the offensive coordinator. How will he do here? You have to remember that last year they took away his play calling duties in Calgary. So he's got to prove again that he's capable of running an offense here. And he'll be given a pretty good green light on those things because Corey Mac likes to have his coaches coach and Corey will be the front guy, I guess. But look it, I'm even calling him Corey, so I don't usually do that. I usually call them by their last names. That's the type of person he is that you just feel like you know him as soon as he shows up. And I think the people of Saskatchewan and the fans of the rough riders really look forward to his coaching style this year. Well, it should be exciting. Like I said, I think AJ going in there kind of rockstar, one of the big names of the CFR and now makes that feel sexy. And Corey Mason, all that other stuff, Darryl, I appreciate it. Like I said, getting back into the CFL coverage here, we'll have you back on. And then we will be figuring out if we can make any games, but then definitely Gray Cup in Vancouver and everything else should be fun. So I appreciate it. Anything else from you? That's it. Look, I can't wait for it too. We'll be watching the NHL playoffs, but training camp is special around here and with the new coach, there's a whole bunch of buzz around this province, even more so than usual Reed. So we're looking forward to it around here too. Yeah, I think it should be exciting. Yeah, a couple of years here and not so great. So yes, do for a bounce back. So Darryl Davis, I appreciate it. Good, good seeing you, Reed. See you soon. Huge special. Thanks again to you if you've made it this far through the episode. And then of course all of our guests today, Rick Cella taking time. I'm like, really? NFL draft week. He's like, I'm ready to come on, ready to talk. So appreciate Rick, appreciate Greg as always making time with his busy work schedule and life schedule and all that means a lot. And then Darryl Davis as well, coming out of retirement now, writing again and contributing, always enjoy getting his thoughts about the CFL and everything, rough riders and everything else. That'll do it for me today. Enjoy all the NFL draft coverage and everything else. It should be a good weekend of UFL gameplay coming up here. And then next week I think we will have Mike Mitchell on. I think we're shooting for kind of a welfare, how is the UFL, but kind of am mid-season welfare check on the UFL. And then I think Andy and I, our post game recap for UFL week five is going to be on Sunday. So I will post that on Twitter. But I think we've been doing the Monday, Tuesday, I got to work all next week, a Vegas conference down in Vegas. So I think we'll do that Sunday night once the games are done. So stay tuned. I'll posts all about that. But life subscribe, if you enjoy this, give a thumbs up, lots of work. We'll see you next time. Thanks.

UFL Week 4 Results, TV Ratings + Attendance! Winner and Losers From UFL Week 4!!

Well, happy Tuesday everybody. Excuse me. Back here again. UFL. Week four recap today analysis. We'll be talking TV, ratings, attendance, everything else. I sent Andrew Murray the link rather late here so he's logging on. That's my bad. Getting some edits done here and coming on today. This should be exciting. If you like the work that we are doing, make sure I can subscribe. Big show coming up on Friday this week. NFL Draft week, big week. I'm a Washington Commander fan here. Very exciting times but we will be having a big show on Friday. Rick Cella coming back on. I couldn't believe this week with the draft and everything else, but Rick said he is done all his visits. Everything else he said he's chomping at the bit. He has a lot of things to talk about UFL wise. We're also going to talk to Greg Parks as well with the UFL board. We want to talk through some more attendance stuff. We'll obviously cover all of that stuff today as well. Get Greg's thoughts on the season. I know he was rather disappointed with the Arlington Renegades performance here over the weekend and then Daryl Davis talking CFL emailing the UFL teams, trying to get some of that stuff going but we will at least have those three interviews if not trying to get a couple players every week is the busiest week so we do our best. I try to do all that stuff but like and subscribe if you enjoy any of that stuff. Throw me some comments here. We can chat through Andrew's logging on. I can see we are back here in the outdoor studio. We are getting ready. This is summer season here. It might be a little early. We'll see how long the weather holds, but at least for right now, weather Studio out here for the remainder of the Mark Cast season. Yes, Abdul, as long as it's not JJ McCarthy. I've been seeing a lot of rumors here lately about the JJ McCarthy and as he broke at my wife's heart for the national championship game against Michael Pennix, she would not be happy so it really wouldn't be a good household. Andy, give me a thumbs up. You're ready to rock. We have Angie Murray here at the professor standing by now Andy last week. I think I had on my LA extreme jersey this week. I have my he hate me jersey on because Andy, they hate us. They do don't they? We're going to talk about that a lot this week but man, there's been a lot going on in this realm that I have to discuss and especially with people in commentary that I've been getting this last week, but we'll focus more so on the football itself, but how are you doing Reed? We're good. Yeah, summer studio back here again. I've got my heat hit me on, I'm editing the video for a slow feeder for dogs and pets. I was like, oh shoot, I got to get on the thing. Weird weekend here. We had the three, the four games, the three time slots actually found a use. I have my Vision Pro, I actually have it here. I was editing it but I have my Vision Pro and everybody makes fun. They go, what would you ever use a vision pro for? I actually watched both UFL games Saturday. I had the Fox sports app on and then I had FUBU on and I was able to watch both games simultaneously. So stick it in your crowd there, Tim Cooks. There's the future for you, right? What was the experience like watching it on the Vision Pro? What was different about it? Well, you can have both on at the same time and you can have it on basically the size of your wall. So it's pretty cool. So I sit downstairs on the couch and I can have, we don't have, you would think for a wedding videographer professionally I would have a big huge tv. I don't, it's like a seven 20 p whatever, but I can have all that on. So watch both the games, watch all the Battle Hawks won, caught up on the Sunday game, all of that stuff. Let's get into, I guess just first of all we'll do ratings, all that stuff breaking news, but just general thoughts. How are you feeling now? We're approaching the midway point here, week five coming up this weekend. I mean in general I think the quality of football has been sufficed for most people. I think it's good. I would say from my standards it's been good. I would say that the audience reaction has been interesting, especially for the lack thereof being an audience in some of these games and cases. But I mean for me, everything's kind of really starting to flatline and we're starting to figure out who's who and what's, what teams are religion, which ones are not. I can clearly see who's probably going to be at least fighting for it at the end of the season and other ones who I think are going to have to be packing up their bags early. But there's a lot of things that are going on here and I am really curious to see what's going to happen with some of these offenses as they still continue to work out the kinks. And some of these injuries too, I mean we're starting to pile up quarterback injuries too, which that starts to speak to the depth of your roster that starts to speak to what kind of coaching do you have. I mean last year we obviously know the most famous case in the XFL with Luis Perez getting hurt and him coming on and sorry, him being traded, not getting hurt, him being traded obviously to the L Engine Renegade, which completely changing their season, but even then their offense didn't really figure it out until the playoffs. So what's going to happen with some of these teams? Do we start seeing trades? Do we start seeing maneuvering? I mean we've been seeing some interesting cuts. Obviously Taylor Sino being cut by the Arlington Renegades was certainly a shocker, at least I know he hadn't had a great season, but there's maybe there's a certain methodology to some of these teams where're saying, Hey, we're going to start cutting these players and we're just going to start moving on because it's not working for us and we're going to find somebody else. Yeah, I think, and we've talked about this before, that the not wanting to lose a lot of these coaches, I think even though it's the 10 week spring league and all that, I think they take a lot of pride in that. We've seen now, and I'm excited to talk with Greg this week, him tweeting out basically impossibly bad with renegades and just showing up and be able to carry that over year over year and I know that it's not apples to apples and teams changed and all of that, but yeah, some of these teams getting new identities. I know you tweeted out, you thought the battle hawks here now the most exciting team you've seen play since it's rough next 2020. There was a lot of stuff with that so it was good. But yeah, generally, and I'm excited to hear what Rick has to say this week as well. Obviously Rick, big NFL Scout and a huge time of year for him and just remember with the NFL draft and it's the biggest thing in the world and then a lot of these players that don't get drafted, they're going to end up in these leagues and the weirdness of we care about them for three or four years and then we don't care about them the next week if they're not drafted by your favorite team is a little odd. Let's get into, let's do a TV viewership here. I want to talk through because there's a little bit of a disparity online with what's going on. Is this the one? There we go. Okay, and I have too many tabs open. So Mike Mitchell posting the TV ratings this week breaking, coming out today, the Saturday game, St. Louis Memphis on a BC 954,000. I thought I feel like tremendously well FS one a little interesting here with the 2 43 as to be expected. FS one we've learned whether it's FX or Peacock or any of these people are not seeking out for that, but this dual cast and the weirdness of that, there was the rain delay in Birmingham, we'll get into the attendance and kind of all that stuff, but average viewership of 951,000. So you saw a lot of chatter online of like, oh well that means each game, and I've even had to have Mike clarify this in the chat. Okay, so it's for one did 401 did 500 and it is like, no, it's averaging. So that was roughly a million for the one 900,000 for the other. Averaging the 950,000 is so to me is a tremendous viewership as well. You saw a lot of comments like wow, well two of the games didn't even get No, we are, that is the average of both of those viewerships depending on where you were in the area watching that. Does that make sense? Does that sound good? I think 9 51 Saturday night for both those games averaging, especially with everything going on with the weather delay is good. Yeah, I mean that's combined viewership of 1.9 million essentially, if I'm understanding that correctly. Which yeah, that's tremendous. I guess it means that you could have had that many people perhaps watching one game, but again, you had regional discrepancies there, so you had people who were obviously tuning in for one team and not the other. I was viewing the Michigan Panthers and the San Antonio bras game, although I kind of got around it and found other ways to watch the other game. But here's the thing, what also added to this element too was that the fact that the Birmingham game got kicked to FS one, right? So that was another part of the element where originally I noticed on the schedule and the TV schedule, FS one was going to re-air that Birmingham game at 10:00 PM Eastern time and instead they ended up airing the San Antonio game because the Birmingham game actually got played on FS one and after the rain delay or the lightning delay. And so I'm not sure if that really affects the viewership either because you're talking about an average of viewership watching that game and then kicking it off to a different channel as well. So that's kind of complicates matters a little bit as well. At least for me. I mean that's what ended up happening. I'm not sure if that happened in the Birmingham region, but that happened for my region where it got kicked to FS one. But numbers wise, I'm not surprised by these. We all know that FS one when it's just FS one, like it was with Arlington Houston, nevermind the fact that neither of the teams had won a game. The FS one experiment has gone through, we've already seen it. It's not going to work as far as having significant viewership like you were telling us about the Ben Fisher article or the Ben Fisher's point about how much impact you need to have from an audience and how much viewership you need to have, and that's kind of below that threshold of how many people are really, really impacted by that. FS one has shown to be not significant at all in that regard and really thankfully this is the only game that's going to be on FS one And I know that we kind of live and die with this and obviously makes for great father for the podcasting and live streams and stuff, but there's just a base number of people that have these channels on that equate in the way that Nielsen works. And I remember back when I worked in Bakersfield and they still do and a lot of it's electronic now, but certain markets, they still send out the journals and the diaries and you fill it out and you're the Nielsen household and if you put the U watch, the UFL, that counts for X number of blocks in your region. So they've done it this way forever because it's very easy for advertisers then for TV stations to charge more for their advertising if people really knew the thing. With YouTube you can see exactly how many people watch and I think Segue and the Pat McAfee of it all into ESPN was tremendously beneficial. PAC sit there saying, I got 60,000 people at any given time watching and we get this many millions of views for all this stuff where TV's always been kind of this nebulous thing, but the point being said, these games being on these major channels is going to prop 'em up across the board just because of, like I said, the nature of X number of stations and people have tuned into these, but you're certainly not seeing a drop off, which is good to me. You factor in an unaccountable X number here to all of these and then we're kind of maintaining that across the board. So I think that that's good. Well, again, you're not splitting viewership. I mean that's the thing with last year about you're splitting viewership in the US FL and XFL, and there are people who, obviously there's people who can't tell the difference, but there's also who have more familiarity with one over the other and maybe just thought, well, okay, there's only one spring football league playing. Oh wait, there's two of them. And that didn't really help in terms of actually throwing it all together, whereas now it's just eight teams. You have all four games to really worry about week in and week out and in some cases now only three because of the regional broadcast. So it's really not that hard to keep up with and it's not something that you have to sort of extrapolate yourself over a long period of time. You don't have to go from February to July 4th weekend to have to watch all these games. So I think that's smaller sample size as well. You don't have to do as much, but I am curious to see what happens as we start to get closer to the summer. Do people start to drop off in terms of summer viewership? Do people start to travel? People start going on their own way and doing other things? I mean that's really always the biggest question that we always face every year is how deep into the summer or close to the summer do you want to get with your spring football schedule? Spring football, I mean it is actually spring football this year all the way around because it's not technically going to hit the first day of summer, but the weekend of the A FL championship game, I mean you're talking about a lot of public schools getting out a lot of kids, a lot of teachers obviously getting out of public school, so you're not going to have that. There's going to be impact there. So I'm curious as when do we start to see that impact? Yeah, a couple points. I totally agree with you and I am someone that has a very active life and likes to go out and do things, and I'll tell you that even with the NFL season, November, December, February, it's very easy. Like, Hey, weather's crappy, we're staying here, or let's go grab brunch, let's go watch the game, do all that stuff. Yeah, it's nice up. You want to go to the park, you want to go out of town for the weekend, you got kids playing sports, we got to go. There's just so much more and we've obviously the things have been shared on Twitter. I can't remember the show it was they were like, this is going to fail because it's not starting February. I think they're going to look at that next year just because obviously getting players into camps, we've talked about that. We've had the agents to talk to on the show, they prefer the timeline that way. But also what's exciting to me about this is the week four, this is generally when you start to see it kind of tail off these seasons. You kind of start and then it goes down and then it peaks week nine 10 going into the playoffs. So this feels good to me that we're week four and we're still at these numbers. Mike has his article over on, excuse me, on Sports Illustrated here. I think Mike's going to come on next week for kind of a, I think we were talking about that, a welfare check, but last year, week four, and this was not a great slate of networks that was on average 500,000 viewers on four Telecast FX and ESPN two the weekend, and it was obviously earlier because of the schedule, the USFL, that was when they had their big Kentucky Derby weekend where they popped the 2.06 million viewers, but that equated to an average of 989,000 and then this year obviously with the averaging basically over a million if you get rid of the FS one. So it just improves in obviously a year and we're not competing against each other and then we're not cannibalizing that, we're maintaining it. So if I was one of the people involved in this league right now, I would have to feel pretty stoked about everything. The one time slot that seems interesting to me is the Saturday morning one. I think that seems to be contentious for some people as far as actually a attending the game in person and B watching it on tv. That seems to have been a bit of a problem spot. It was in Memphis, even in St. Louis this past weekend, you saw an attendance go down because the Cardinals were playing a day game that Saturday morning seems to be a bit tough for people. Maybe just rolling out of bed after a long Friday night maybe tough for some people. I'd rather that be a Saturday night. Obviously Sunday, I think Sunday morning is fine because people don't want to go out Sunday night, but Sunday morning I think you can execute that a little better and Sunday midday as well. So maybe getting around on that Saturday time because Saturday to me, Saturday morning at least for me is always a chores time. I sit down and watch the UFL games, I actively do that and then do my chores afterwards during the season. But personally I would have more. That's more when I actively would try to go and do my chores. And during college football season, I mean the less significant games and the morning, they're basically in the morning time slot on Saturdays. And I think I kind of think the same way where I'm like, oh, I have time to go do other things. I'll worry about the prime time games later. I think there's the same mentality with that. I think people are just geared that way with football and that's the thing is football watchers, what are you most used to? You're used to Thursday night, you're used to your important games being later on Saturday and then Sunday you're talking about NFL all day. So that's kind of how people are wired. You have to consider that. But again, these leagues don't have that luxury of dealing with that. This weekend, the NFL draft's going to be in Michigan. That's probably why they had to put three games in the front end of the schedule. This was an absolute week. Week five was an absolute no-go because the draft's going to be there all weekend. So that's crossed off the list and when you have to start crossing names off the list or saying, well, we can't do it this weekend because of this event, or we can't do it because of that, then you start to lose options. You start to lose time slots. So I think that's still a complicating factor of the league has until they can start to kind of leverage themselves into maybe having better time slots. But again, that's all about stadium and venue availability And that's what kills me. But you talk about here at the Saturday, and we'll get into attendance here, but I mean the Saturday game did really well here on the A, B, C, we can talk attendance and that's another thing people don't understand. Just the UFL has literally zero leverage when it comes to any scheduling at all. Like you said with the draft. I remember talking when the season was announced like, man, wouldn't it be cool if they could do something at Ford Field and you got the draft they're probably using, they're doing other stuff, other things are going on. Even the CFL, they have to kneel at the whim of the other stadiums and they've been around for 111 years. If the CFL doesn't have the leverage that they need to do this, the UFL, there's all this, the brahmas, and it was Easter and then it was a fiesta this weekend. Okay, this is a disaster. They don't have any options. They got to run when things are, the dome was locked up. It was locked up last year at the beginning of the season. It had to start late, but I think they're doing the best they can, but none of that is done intentionally to kind of screw everybody up. And I remember, I think it was Sam had posted in the group chat this weekend where it's the Birmingham's playing Houston and that was the last scene they lost you two years ago. Like Sam, I promise you that they're just scheduling stuff when they camp. It's like Andy and I doing this today for this is the time that works for Andy. There's no rhyme or reason any, I guarantee you they're just trying to get through stuff right now. But all in all, I think attendance is another story. We'll flip the page here to that, but I think TV viewership is very, well, Kwan has a question. They did the regional, they did the lookin where they briefly showed both games as I feel a good distraction. I mean they do that with the NFL. Hey, let's go to Chris and Thompson with the game break. I mean, did you bother that? I don't think so because you already have to be multitasking as a viewer in this league anyways. You're having to listen to, you're watching the field play, you're watching the field, but you're hearing the audio of the coaches talking, the players talking, the officials. The officials, the Army command center dean in the command Center. Yes, you're command center, you're listening to Mike Prairie, you're listening to Dean Blandino. You're listening to a lot of voices. So I would say no because you're already multitasking as it is. So I think dual watching games, people watch four games at the same time. I mean, YouTube TV has a separate channel when there's games for a certain league that will show four games at the same time, we as viewers have just become able to digest multiple things at the same time. So no, I don't think that's a distraction at all. Maybe a few people, maybe for a generation that doesn't really isn't used to that. But for someone my age demographic, I'm used to it, it's not a problem for me. So no, I don't think it's a huge distraction personally. That's like I shared my screen recording and it was like I got in my vision pro, I got the two EFL games on, they got Twitter open, they got my message of Anthony is like, that seems like a nightmare, Hans here. Is there a sports overload going on right now? Too many options for any new league to succeed. I mean certainly in terms of too spring leagues coexisting simultaneously that we saw last year. There's a lot of programming of any kind that people are. You look at the TV and my mom is watching a new series every week. Oh, do you see this on Hulu? Do you see this on Netflix? Do you see this on Max? And you see this. All I know is there's more people watching sports right now than ever before. I think that boats, well, the NFL hotter than it's ever been ever in the history of the world. What do you think about this? I think it just comes down to can you make your product a priority? And again, I'm going to use that as an example, and people don't like this because it's a separate sport, but look at women's basketball. Nobody, most people, I'm just going to say most people on a regular did not care about the WNBA. Okay? The one person I knew in my life maybe 10 years ago was one of my former trainers who basically bet on games and he was like, Hey, the WNBA is really great to bet on because everything's super easy to bet on who's good and who isn't. But now with someone like Caitlyn Clark, I mean, look at the viewership that exploded with her, the notoriety that came around of it. And now because she's in the league and people know things like, oh, this is what her salary is. Well, that's too low if she'd be paying more. No one genuinely, most people didn't. That was not a discussion topic on sports shows even just five years ago. Now you have this as part of the zeitgeist because you've managed to find something to market to people for football, I know everybody, the consensus, it seemed like at one point that people came up with the spring leagues was, well, if we could just get a portion of the viewership from the NFL, it's like the NFL is a different product. I know it's football, but people treat it as a different product for what your product is. You have to find a way to sell yourself, yourself to other people. It's not about, oh, well it's the same sport, there's the same periphery. People will come in and watch it. No, you have to sell the concept to people. I was not a spring football viewer regularly until 2019 and I'd been watching football most of my life. And so for most people to understand is if you really want to get people involved with this, if you really want to have people, if your sport to appeal to somebody, you have to make it unique. You have to make the product unique. You have to make it worth it for them to watch. Yeah, there's a billion options. There's a billion options everywhere. I could go outside, I could go do something else, I could run chores, I could watch a game. I could do whatever. Make yourself unique. That's what I would say to that. I was trying to find the bookmark here of what some of the attendance that we get to. I was just trying to scan through that. Yeah, because the here all around hustle since it depends on sports you like along. I loved NBA before Caitlyn Clark hands here, and all I know is I miss XFL 2020 UFL seems like NFL light sometimes. I agree with that. I agree that it's adopted a little bit more of the Fox USFL presentation, which I don't like. I also don't like the ESPN commentators talking about the over or under embedding the entire time. So I think both have to be, but it certainly has that NFL light feeling in terms of the broadcast, which I don't like. I would rather you try something than me not like it, than have it be I've watched this 17 weeks, now I'm watching it again into the spring. Yeah, leisure report doesn't show scores. Why? I know some of the apps, at least they have the UFL stuff now. I know last year I was using SOFA score and they wouldn't have the USFL games or they would only have certain, so it's just hard to get all that populated in there. I mean, I'm just happy I can get all the games added to my phone calendar, but it's hard. It's hard to get in and build in. Even on the espn.com. You think they would have those listed sometimes and they don't. Any thoughts on any of that stuff, Andy? Yeah, I mean that's the thing. They have a separate tab for the UFL and instead of that being regular in terms of the scores, they don't really have that box score on top of, not the ticker, but the headline basically about the headline. And they don't really have that available for you to just click on and be able to go into. So I think that's just part of being a newer league and you're trying to get yourself integrated with other people's viewing habits. But again, I don't know if people are going to necessarily want something like this unless it's going to be unique and it's going to have its own identity, which again, the XFL kickoff was in a unique aspect to the last league and that's something that I wish they kept, but that's a discussion for another day. But that's something that I think separated it in terms of it being unique. I mean, I guess that's why people watch. I mean, again, something like the CFL Canadian football is very different. It's different in its own way, and I think it appeals in its own way and that's great. I think you have to make yourself unique. As I said, being NFL light is not really the answer in terms of the talent quality. But I think being able to appeal to certain aspects, certain different things, being able to have people gravitate towards certain people's stories or different athletes or different coaches or whatever, anything that you can do to create a narrative storyline, I think that's the most important thing. I do like the FOX broadcast. I think they're very professional. I think league like this needs to be professional, it needs to take itself seriously, but if you can have fun too, I think that's important. Maybe ESPN has a little too much fun, or at least they do things that are maybe more experimental, I will say, as far as their broadcast go and not all that works. So there needs to be some kind of leeway of consensus where you can have experimentation, but you can also take yourself seriously. And there needs to be, I want to see more consistency between FOX and ESPN. I know they're different networks, so they have different mandates, but I would like to see a little bit more flow of consistency for both of them in terms of coming together and having the same message. Yeah, I hadn't really thought about it too much this whole ESPA because I think this came up. I mean it's been going on, but I think we talked about this last week and I really paid attention to that in the Battle Hawks game especially. I'm normally on my phone or whatever if I'm running and watching the game, right? I'm really just listening to everything and halftime. I'm not taking commercial breaks and going to get popcorn or whatever. And yeah, that broadcast sports betting, we talked about that on the thing. Them talking, oh, we got, they got to go for two here so they can hit the over. I'm like, no, they need to go for two so that they can try to win this game. I thought that that broadcast, I loved Tom Ville and I thought he was fine. I thought the other three people involved in that broadcast were horrendous. I thought the sideline people, both the women and man were bad. You just got an interception. How did you do that? I thought that Lee, whatever guy that was talking about the over under that was give me Joel Kla any day. Give me Kurt Brock. I think everyone now is trying to do this Brock Heward imitation, and we've talked about this. I think Brock's coming on the show, I think he said in two weeks. So I know that he's got radar on to come back on. I know his schedule is busy, but yeah, I agree and I get where people are coming from now, even if it is NFL Light, I can handle that versus this mishmash or whatever we have on ESPN pretending to try to talk about sports betting. Yeah, no, I think it's a bit distracting to be honest. And look, you can talk about betting, but you need to mention it in spurts and you also need to talk about it when it's relevant. But in terms of actually winning the game, it's not relevant. They don't care about the betting spread and you as a viewer, you can start mentioning it in certain respects. I still like the tongue in cheek mentioning of it. Back in the day when people couldn't really talk about the spread, it was always funny because when something happened or maybe catastrophically change the over under or the spread and some broadcaster, maybe Al Michaels or Brent Musburger would sort of mention something lightly of the effect of like, well, this matters to some kind of an underhanded play, which was always tongue in cheek. Now you can obviously be a little bit more open, but you don't need to put it out there for everybody because not everybody's betting on the game. Some people are just watching it just to have fun. But I think just hammering the idea of, we have to get to the over, you mentioned when the over hits, but you don't have to talk about it as the only talking ball you need to talk about. Like you said, how does the team win the game? How does it make sense in terms of them strategizing, what points they go for in terms of do they think the other team can convert? Do they think the other team can catch up to them or are they trying to catch up themselves or do they have the right plays? There's more analysis there instead of just over under, because that doesn't matter to the players, just doesn't, Can you hear the ice cream truck going around my neighborhood right now? I cannot actually. They may be concealing it really well. Did you press the mute button? No. You can tell that summer season here at the mark has, I do live in the neighborhood where we have an ice cream truck go by in the evening. So just to put that out, we have a good neighborhood. I like where I live. Okay, let's talk here real quick. I want to get to, we want to talk football here and everything else, but attendance this week. Boy, so St. Louis down, obviously over the first game that they had early game, the Cardinals were playing, it's nice outside. Mariah Carey was on TikTok. I dunno, everything in the world, there's always some reason about that. Then we had the Birmingham way down. I think they were 12,000 the week before. We had a lot of tweets. It was an impending way. There was weather, weather warnings all day and kind of all that stuff. But San Antonio, they're getting there. I think it'd be better without the Almo Dome 11, 12,000 in There isn't anything to sneeze out. That was the Highmark for Birmingham last week, if you remember. And then Houston here, a really kind of a disaster with the 7,100. No other games, anything going. I didn't have any big tweets about, okay, anything. There's a Oilers reunion party going on down the street or anything else. Andy, what do you make of this? Because we had the show last week where we had Paul Rean and talking is USFL carrying its weight, San Antonio here, or excuse me, Birmingham really kind of getting shown up here. And the US FLI was looking for, Abdul had a tweet out and Abdul if you could post it in, if you're still listening to this, the breakdown of since there's been eight home games in each conference and just XFL out drying, even if you take St. Louis out of it, head and shoulders above the US FL ones, Reed, let's be real, there's only two teams that are pulling their weight in terms of the attendance. It's the DC Defenders and it's the St. Louis BA Hawks and everybody else has work to do. And I don't care for people who want to take issue with me throwing their team under the bus for not getting enough fans in there. I don't care. I really don't. And you know what? You want to take issue with me with it? I don't care. Fine, go for it. If the entire city of Birmingham wants to come after me, they can. I don't care. You know why? Because this doesn't fit the narrative and the narrative that a lot of people try to create about why their teams don't sell out, why their teams don't have attendance. You are the Birmingham stallions. You need to be doing better. And if you don't do better, you're in trouble. This is a league-wide issue. This is a health issue. This is an issue where there needs to be more representation from all of these teams. Houston, I understand they're playing in a stadium that's being renovated right now. Playing Rice Stadium is not enviable. I get it. I also don't think the team's doing itself any favors by being possibly the worst team in the entire league. And yes, I still believe that even with Arlington being owned four, I still don't like Houston very much, but I don't get this vitriol that people have. It's like they get so defensive about their teams not having people in there and then I point it out and they suddenly get take up in arms with it at issues. It's bad for me to notice facts. And you know what that's on you and you don't want it to fit with your narrative. That's fine. Again, but I genuinely find this all concerning San Antonio. I know it's long past the days when the San Antonio commanders could get 30,000 people into their stadium, but there's got to be a way to try and reinvigorate that market. There has to be a way to do this. And I just think the league has to do more. They have to do more. They have to get better marketing, they have to do better in terms of getting localization, getting people into the markets, not just training in Arlington and transferring everybody. I know it's a cost cutting measure. Maybe they have a longer term play, but they got to start putting more work into this. They have to because there's two markets that are absolutely running circles around everybody else. And while it's great that St. Louis is doing fantastic, and while it's great that DC is doing fantastic, there has to be more attention to detail here and there has to be more done on these local markets. And I don't want any of these cities to lose any of their teams. I don't wish that upon anybody because I know what that feels like. I don't want that and I don't want teams to be lost because they don't get the attendance numbers. But there has to be more forethought into how these markets are going to be marketed to and how they're going to get more people into these games. And I know there's always a litany of excuses going on of why they can't come for one reason or another. Like I said, you make yourselves a priority if you don't, people aren't just going to magically show off. Yeah, I thought, like I said, we're bringing on Greg Parks this week. I want to get his opinion. Obviously Greg also does wrestling stuff. I want to get, because I was talking with Kraken and my Seed Dragons ticket holder, Michael friend, because we were talking about this because Paul Reeds made a really good point. You had devalued the product in these markets for the USFL markets. We were trying to get viewership, right, and we're giving away tickets in Memphis and we're giving away tickets in Michigan. We're giving away tickets in Birmingham. Now we're on, it's a little less, but we're still on this kind of XFL pricing model now and that you're asking people that got in, basically you were paying them to come in, Hey, we're giving you a beach towel, we've got big coming in with WWE E, we're doing the concert, we're doing all this other stuff. And now you're wanting them to pay money for it, and I think that's why Birmingham has faltered, right? I think you're asking, but I want to get Greg's opinion because it's very much like wrestling promotions back in the day. We're going to paper a market, we're going to give away a lot of tickets so it looks full, same idea, and how long does that damage last? What do you have to do to kind of rebuild that? I want to get Greg's thoughts on the football aspect and then obviously that as well, kind of from the business side. Abdul sent over this tweet, I appreciate it had a bookmark. And so the league attendance is actually, so overall league attendance average is 13,401. It is a miscalculation here, but the XFL average over eight games, 18,237 USFL average over eight games, 8,605. And again, you take St. Louis out of it, it's still outperforms. Again, people are allergic to fax read and I get people don't like to see those little numbers and they don't like to see their averages, but you know what? That's the reality and you got to deal with it. And this hub concept I don't think worked out as well as Fox thought it was going to work out and some team owner is not going to come swooping in and saving this franchise and suddenly getting ready to magically show up to these games. There needs to be more work done here as far as these markets, as you said, trying to just give away tickets originally and now they're trying to do the same pricing model. People are going to be miff at that. They're going, well, what really changed here? What so drastically changed that I have to start paying more money? Am I getting more deals? Am I getting more VIP packages? Where's my cut of this? And so yeah, people are going to be not as receptive to getting those tickets and it wasn't doing that much work in the first place. Quite honestly, there weren't that many people in the first place with those free giveaways or those cheap tickets. Anyways, so the hub model I think was a proof of concept that didn't really, really pan out the way that Fox wanted it to. And it shows Birmingham. I wrote an article two years ago when we went to Birmingham that I got absolutely flanked for because I said that there was no really, the infrastructure, the weather and a bunch of other elements were basically complicating the fact that they were going to have this hub and how well was it going to really work and who was it going to really attract and it didn't really attract anybody. Well, now there's only one market and it's not attracting that much more significantly. Number of people, the most people that we saw, Reed was the game we went to the opening game. That's by far the most people that have been in that stadium and it has not improved sets. It's gotten worse. And now they don't even have tarps out on the bleachers. And I'm looking at empty seats again. I feel like I'm watching USFL 2020 or 2022 and I'm watching a gamblers and a Panthers game in 2022. There's no one there. This has to be done better and there has to be more work done. And you know what? People want to plug their ears and not listen to that. Fine, but you don't do something soon. You're not going to have a league to be upset about it anymore or have me to be upset about anymore. I muted there. Sorry, I was Muted. I was hacking. I said a couple comments here and then we'll get talking to the games. I want to make sure that we talk a little football here on this. I just ran about all that stuff. There's a women's league and they pay two of their players extra 40,000 to live in the city. They play should they do that? They a couple players to market. Yeah, it's always the money. Do we have the money to do that? We don't want to make people seem, we're giving preferential treatment, right? We're already not paying the quarterbacks in these leagues like we did in the XFL. So I think that that might be part of the it get all of that stock speed tech here. What was the strategy? Get so many people to show up for the Battle Hawk game instead of the answer. Let's duplicate that. Well, the problem is this goes back to 2018 and building of the league, and it was the work put in. We've lost that obviously in Seattle. We've lost that in New York. We've lost that in la. We've lost that in Tampa. And then I'm trying to do the math. The markets, the ones that have stuck around that are the best right now are the ones that have existed since 2018 because they've had the work put into 'em. They had all lot going in. They were pounding the streets as you want to call it. I mean, I've told stories on here. I was at just a vendor expo. I was working like a corporate events expo. They had a tent there where they were given Seattle C Dragons here, here's the floor plant buy tickets come, we'll give you tour do it is having people in there and just running the ads out and trying to fit in that we're going to have two players on the steps of Congress before we go into the game here in the afternoon. It's just not enough. But it's no surprise that the markets that had the work put in back in 2018 have basically just kind of retained that, right? DC hasn't been as hot this year as it was last year. Thus far the team hasn't been as good, but we will see with St. Louis, I think you're starting to see a little bit of diminishing returns with that. Where they came out, shot out the cannon, what was that the first week there? Week two. And now we've seen that they didn't have the upper fill the deck and they didn't have all that stuff going on. So you're seeing that, but that is why the only markets that are the ones that are being more successful than the others are the ones that have had the time put in that long. Andy, anything. I think it's just the messaging, like you said, the messaging behind those new teams. It was new and exciting and they were able to get those teams right out of the gate because it was a new idea. And now there's two different ideas here too. I mean, again, St. Louis is coming from a market where they lost their team and they wanted to prove it that they could support them. Again, DC as I mentioned previously, at that time, tan Snyder was there and he is no longer there anymore. Obviously they have new ownership, so people might be going back to commander's games, but you had maybe a little bit of disillusion movement with football in the DC area, but also I think Audi Field has a great location and I think you were able to appeal to a great hater base to a great fan base. Excuse me, that it's a hot Jersey. Sorry, that's Not You really love that Jersey. You were just flexing. Well, someone I put it up, but hey, I interviewed Paul McCallum of the Las Vegas salad with the jersey on, so that was cool. Yeah, that's great. No, another feather in your cap, but I just, again, I think some of the marketing strategies as far as where they decided to put these markets, I mean these USS FL markets, again, I mean putting somebody just an NFL city I think has not proved for either league for XFL and USS FL. I don't think just putting a team in an NFL city has really beared out the way that they wanted to. I think that's part of it. And then secondly, I think there's a difference between having brand identity and brand reliance. And I think what's happened with us develop is they're just relying on the brands that were there before. But again, you have generational gaps of people who are actually familiar with those brands. And so that's why with Birmingham though, it's just kind of disappointing because you would think with the success and obviously the fact that it's not in an NFL territory, there's no NFL team in Alabama. You would be able to work with that and that's just not been the case. So there's obviously a disconnect between how they're marketing or how they're proposing the team to the city itself or to the people in the surrounding area. So I think, like you said, a lot of, I mean, it cannot be understated how much work Vince McMahon and Oliver Luck and all of them did with XFL 2020 because they really wanted to make it happen. They really did. They really wanted it to be a real league, and it was a real league for five games for five weeks and then it was gone, but they really put in a significant amount of work. But there were struggling markets there too. I mean, LA wasn't getting a lot of people. New York wasn't getting a ton of people. I know the energy was great. I know Mike Mitchell loves the energy that was at those games, but they were getting a ton of people. Tampa wasn't getting a lot of people. I mean, there were markets that weren't really pulling their weight. It was St. Louis, it was Seattle and it was dc. Those were the markets that were really pulling their weight, but there were other markets that were still struggling. So this has been a thing. It's just a matter of how do you get out in front of it and you're able to kind of pitch these different ones and it doesn't seem to be a make all solution where again, like I said, San Antonio a f was great, but now San Antonio with the bras has not been as proficient and maybe because were burned, they were burned by the fact that they lost their team already in the same space. I mean, it's different now that they lost a team before in the same space as opposed to losing an NFL team and they're trying to prove something. So I mean, there's so many different factors. A couple things here. I'm going to do a triple barrage here. This could get a little ranty here for just a second and then we'll talk all this other stuff. Leon here, this podcast is best. I've tried to listening to the UFL podcast several times, DOL show going, I, let me just say this. I have a much respect for Zach and Stefan. I saw them at the kickoff game. At least neither of us have resorted to posting a full games to our YouTube channels as a way to get views. So I appreciate any content creator going out of their way traveling to Arlington and then kind of doing that work. But yeah, wild times right now, Andy, maybe we don't even need to do this. We can just go, I'm just going to go clip the game and post it, and then that's my contribution. I don't understand that. Now I'm going to get a little argumentative here for just a second, and then Leon or Abdul has a question for you. Mike says, Andy, the league is doing really well with ratings. We need to brewery this attendance issue because it's really not an issue. Ratings are everything. Mike, this is because I respect you because Mike comments a lot. Mike's a big time, big supporter, A lot of comments, Mike. The reason why we continue to bring this up is a, even if you don't care that the stands aren't full for tv, which you always get that, right, who cares? And even at Emory Hunt on like, why are you watching The Sands? Even if you don't care, even if you're happy with all that, the long-term goal of these leagues is to sell these teams to investors. And nobody is going to invest in the 7,000 drawing Houston Roughnecks or whatever it was, the 7,600 drawing Birmingham Saudis this week. That is why we bring it up and because that to me also speaks to interest in the market itself, right? Yes, we want the TV viewership and that's great, but ideally, we were trying to grow these brands, seeing shrinking numbers every week in attendance and certain markets not carrying their weight that's going to do that. And then the last thing here, run it back. Nobody's plugging their ears. We've just seen you guys get more and more vain on Twitter, even though they're finally getting traction. You guys are the face of the league, and this negativity is pushing people away. I had that. There was a big, and if you guys aren't in the tech sphere space, which is totally fine, there was a big product that came out last week and it was this pin and you talk to it and it had a holographic screen and you could do all this kind of stuff. And this Marquez, M-K-B-H-D did this big review about it, and it was the worst product he's ever reviewed, and they totally tanked the company. And people are like, oh, Marquez, why are you so negative on this? Why do you hate? Are you trying to this? It's like, no, his job is, he's a product reviewer and his job is to keep his audience informed of all that. Andy and I do not work for the league. Andy and I enjoy watching the product, and we want to be able to watch the product as long as we can, and we want everybody else to be able to watch the product as long as we can. And so when we see things like this, so they're going wrong, that are easy fixes, some more difficult fixes, but a lot of unforced errors that we've seen a lot going into this. That's my job for the 10 people, whatever that are watching this money Marquez's audience is about a billion times bigger. But that's what we are. We're a sports business commentating football analyst show. That's what we do. So Andy, any and all of that, there was a lot going on there. Well, first of all, thank you for calling me a face of the league. That's high honor. I appreciate the promotion. I didn't get that email, so I appreciate being told right then and now. Look, my job is to be objective and I'm going to be objectively honest about what I see. And if I don't see things that I like, I'm going to call it out. And you want to portray it as negativity, fine. You know what? Yeah, maybe I do skew a little bit negative on some things, but you know what the reason is Because I want things to get better and I want things to be done better. And I want things to be done in the rights of, I want things to be healthier in the sleek, and I want the players to get better treatment. I want them to get paid more. I want the coaches to get notoriety, and I want them to be treated well. I want fans to be able to come out and to be able to join this product. There's a lot of things I want to happen, but they're not happening. And there's a reason why, and I want to point that out. I don't want people to just construe negativity away from the fact that I'm trying to create objectivity in my observations. I am not just inherently some negative person that hates everything. I think if anything, it's people that are hating on me. Because I see it as it is and I say something and they don't like it. That's just my opinion. And you know what? You disagree my opinion. That's fine. You think everything's sunshines and rainbows and everything's great, that's awesome. I don't think so because things can be better and I've seen things be better, so I'm not going to say that things are all great and gravy right now because they're not okay. So I don't agree with people who just say that because of this of my opinions that they're just going to be outwardly negative and they're completely ripping away the fabric of the seams of the spring football leagues. I don't even think people in the league really care about what I have to say. And you know what? That's fine. That's on them. I don't care if they care about what I say, but I'm going to keep saying what I want and I'm going to keep putting it out there because I want to see things get better when they do get to get better. I will appreciate it and I'll compliment it and I will make a note of it when it happens. Yeah, I mean this is what this podcast says. It makes me so happy when I see comments and then I'm laughing at it. I get to comment here for Andy. Oh wait, no, I don't want Scott right now. I want says does have to go by face of the UFL now instead of the professor For the record, That is what we are going to do. We got Andy, the face of the UFL at least today on here. We're going to have his lower third on all that stuff. Lemme see here. I had a couple other questions and then we'll get, I want to talk Renegade's fall off here before we get off the thing. Gregory, this is a little like humble. It's a little like sour grapes. Hats off to St. Louis. It's nice to have a dome stadium. Football in the south in the springtime is problematic also. Hats off to the 7,000 people to brave. Yeah, the Birmingham war of the April, 2024 when we had to fight all that stuff. And then where was the other thing? Oh Andy, you were the a f person. Did they do, what was the local marketing like for the a f? What was that? We had a good question for Abdul. There was a little bit of it. I mean it did seem to be a little bit hasty because I don't think there was as much forethought because remember the a f was trying to push out their games quicker to get ahead of the XFL. So I think the timeline was much shorter. Obviously the announcement was the year before in April and they had to really start pushing things a little quicker. I do remember, I mean I applied for a job in a F actually I applied as a communications assistant. I ended up getting it and I had a bit of correspondence with somebody who was emailing back and forth in the league and they said something to the effect of like, yeah, we're just trying to get everything together right now. And it was pretty close to the season starting, so I didn't know if they really had all their ducks in a row to be honest. And obviously they didn't in the end of it. But I do remember some players, as I mentioned last week, that they were doing some promotions, some local promotions with some of the athletic fitness clubs that we had around here. There were promotions for tickets to go to the games. So there was a little bit of it, but it wasn't clearly, there was not merely as much forethought. And that's the thing with the USFL and the XFL now where at least there's a foundation that's already in place for the most part with the teams that we have and the markets that have already been played in. But there was still a hesitancy as far as how to them and there was more, I know obviously the merger was a big part of it, but there's just still this kind of slower approach to it as opposed to the af, which had no time, really had no time. They had a self-imposed deadline and the XFL, which gave themselves that runway and did a lot with it. So I think that's why it's maybe for me a little bit frustrating because there was that time and I feel like it may not have been capitalized on as well as it should have. That's just my opinion. A couple of rapid fire here. We'll give, man, we got a lot of comments here. This is good. Oh, prolific one. So why is the highlight show on ESPN? Because they don't have the bandwidth on the main station to put that on there. They have some of the podcast outside on a beautiful day. I am blessed. I have a nice little backyard here. We have a deck that cost of fortune was rotting when we bought the house. Had to rebuild the whole thing. So the only benefit I get of is I get to do that. David here says the show is highlight highlights of my week of the Andy Re dream chain. Wait, what does that say about me? And he says, we criticize because we like football. Excuse me, spring football is the king of self-inflicted wounds. And then Gregory here wants to know where did Gregory Greg's comment go? He wants to have a positive. Yeah, do us all a favor. Give us some of the fixes. Give us something constructive. Find two people in every home market. Pay them $20 an hour and go outside of every major sporting event with a big ass sign and hand out flyers and say there's a Texas Rangers game. There's a series of them tonight across the street from where the renegades play. I would have a big table, I would have a big sign, I would have people giving out tickets, I would have people signing people up. You need to have people in the markets besides just the game day. Seattle here. Not that we have a market anymore or here, but I would've been outside the Sounders games all this week last week, next week. Hey, did you know the Sea Dragons play here? Did you know they're also here? Did you know? You know, I would go to go walkthrough pipeline market and you need to have people in the market because the problem is, and it was interesting because Russ brand and when I interviewed him back when they announced the Arlington hub, he said, because I said, how are you differentiating flying into the markets from what the USFL is doing? How can you more benefit from that? And Russ Brandon said, because we are going to be the first people into these markets and we're going to the last people out that's direct quote. You go look back at the channel where we interviewed. I got to interview Danny and Dwayne and then Russ. It was very excited and they haven't been come in to our, and I understand that and I understand travel logistics, but until they get, besides the fact of having dedicated people in these markets, selling tickets and really just pounding the ham, pounding the streets, knocking on doors, shaking babies, not shaking babies, shaking hands, kissing babies that, but you need to have it. I would be outside of Texas Ranger Stadium 24 7 telling everybody in the world that came there, Hey, did you know that there's spring football playing across the street here? Visibility is everything. I want to echo, sorry, echo something that Paul Reese said last week on your show, which was why not have more exclusive perks for the season ticket holders? Why not have more events Being able to do wine and dine events or maybe promotions for other sports or maybe local sports and saying, well, we'll be part of this and that's something that I think would be really good for the season. Ticket holders sweeten the pot a little bit for them. I think that's would be, that would be really good for them. I think that would be a good start for everything else. I mean tabling, as you mentioned, putting a table out and being able to advertise your product is another thing. Billboards, I mean if you can't afford, if you're willing to put in the money for that, a billboard I think is at least something. It may not be everything, but it's something. I see billboards for our rugby team here that plays the San Diego Legion and I think that's part of it. Anything to just be a presence, be out there, be in the community, do something. If there's an event where maybe there's a networking event, if there's a sports network working event for people who want to work in the sports industry, find that go table there. Go find people that want to work for you and spread the word that way, at least be in the same realm of interest. That's another one. There's a lot of ways you could go about it and I think it's just a matter of just being able to put people physically in there that I think really helps a lot. I do a lot of tabling events for a friend of mine who's an artist, but we travel around and we do a lot of things in the state of California and people are starting to get to know him and know what his brand identity is and his artwork and what he does and people who recognize him the next time he comes around. Maybe fellow artists or people who come back and buy the same thing from him because it's like, Hey, this guy's always around. I think availability is the best ability and I also think visibility also goes an extremely long way in trying to do this. But again, the league, I know the league is kind of keeping their wallets tight and they're just not willing to invest in that and I think that is affecting these numbers and it's affecting people's genuine interest in these teams. Yeah. Alex here says Carlos had a battle Hawks Day. A agent mc threw the first pitch together. Free ball hawks. Yeah, I mean I remember that XFL because I remember I was a fan back in 2018 and 2020. I listened to Mark Perry and Alan and was Alan and Brian. I mean I listened to Chalk talk. I mean I was just listening to all this stuff. I remember writing mark reviews on the Apple podcast. I hate the defenders go sea Dragons or there was the dragons at the point, but the dragons having all the presidents I thought was, you don't need to have a president. But having, and I know we kind of get that now with Corey and Brett and we have some of the ticket people that are on. Leah does it a little bit for the battle hawks, right? I do. She does the social, but I do like, Hey, we're here at the game. I'm here and here's the arch and we're here at the game. I thought Ryan Gus, it was like every Monday we'd come on and he would do a Twitter live for 20 minutes. We would answer questions and this is what we're doing and we're really excited for this and we're going to be at this bar going out this week. If you want to come get a flyer, we're going to do that. And he would do it every week and just feeling like you had people in these communities that were like, Hey, he's going to get off here and he's going and shaking hands and trying to get sponsorship deals or doing all this stuff. I just think having that consistently across the board as opposed to why doesn't Jay do that for the bras stuff? And I don't think that's a Jay decision, but why is Leah the only one that gets to do that for the battle hawks? Is it because Leah is a good looking woman? I don't know. Jay could go do it. You could have whoever does the social ham never did that for the Sea Dragons. I don't understand why there's, excuse me, there's just not consistency across the board. Even if you don't want to pay the president, have all the social people come on and do that, then they can put on makeup and do all that stuff. I mean, Ryan wasn't the most whatever in the world, but I don't get that. I don't know if I've ever brought that up. Why is Leah the only one that gets to do that when there's eight teams and there's eight social media people I think because a market that works and they realize that there's impact, but again, the market's not just going to magically show up and it's going to be there in the first place. You have to be able to build up to it. So yeah, you're going to have to do things like that. You really are, and you're going to have to get attention one way or another from people who just aren't in the know. And that's fine because there aren't people that are necessarily actively looking for those kinds of things. You have to really put yourself out there and you have to be able to make that visible to other people. I agree with you. Maybe social media people would be a way of putting that out there if they're not going to have a team president or somebody who's actively trying to do the promotion themselves. I think that there's a benefit to that and Corey does a tremendous job of, and he's posting Brad, but when you're posting from the league accounts and doing that, I said they should all do that. Then every week. I think the battle hawks do an awesome job of that. Be Leah's in San Antonio or Leah's back in St. Louis like, Hey, this is what's going on. And you feel like, oh, you don't know that. It's Leah the media person. Oh hey, they got a reporter out here coming up. It's such an easy thing to do. You're already paying the eight people for these things. I don't understand that. Like I said, we're do a quick preview of each game next week or this weekend and then we can talk through because I got a big series against the Rangers here starting in a few minutes. Andy, like and subscribe. Just remember we're giving away tickets to the championship game. We're like 50 away and I think we poo-pooed some people last week when the episodes, we lost a couple, but we're like 50 away and subscribe. Get us a three or 500 subscribers. Get to sit with Murray at the championship game. We'll get it. My street will get three tickets of talking about this giveaway. So it would be my honor to be able to get this going. Here we go. So this coming weekend here Saturday, we have the Brahmas going up against the Renegades bras, no beating, really taking care of Michigan there in that regard. Arlington's still winless here. What do you make of this? Because Arlington is almost out of everything now. I mean the one you really have circled here is the battle hawks at the defenders. Well go game by, but going game by game, if we're really going by game, by game, I look, I know it seems presumptive, but I just don't see the renegades really coming back from this and I don't know if it's an issue of player allotment in terms of what everyone needs to do, but this team seems lost. That was such a flat performance they had in Houston. I cannot believe they only put up nine points after their offense, had done a lot of work the last two weeks and really had played well enough for them to win in week two and week three. They just came out. So flat drops everywhere, inconsistencies with penalties. I mean they just so looked so lost and that really was the most shocking part of that entire performance going down 17 three. It seemed like they didn't even want to be there. The bras, it's really interesting. I think with Dormy being in the lineup now, they're pushing the ball down field more than they did with Garbers. They're really starting to get that aerial attack going. Downfield seeing if Dormy can do it week to week is always interesting. Last year he had a couple of exceptional games and a couple of other inconsistent performances. So is he able to consistently perform week to week? We'll have to see, but I mean I would think the problems would be favored, but I'm hearing things from Mike for example. He seems to perhaps it seems like Arlington or at least maybe that they come out and they are able to be more enraged and play with more passion and they play harder at home. But again, what's this attendance going to be like? I mean I know we keep Harvey on it, but how's it going to be with these people in this game? It was pretty down significantly last time. I don't know how disillusioned this market's going to be with this. So you won't really have much of a home field advantage in terms of the crowd noise. I have to pick the Brahmas just because I think they're the better team overall. I can't really take Arlington right now. If they finally play with more passion than they did last week, great. But I mean it's really dire straits for the XFL champions. I mean they're looking at their season going up in smokier really fast. I already think it has, but this would really just be the nail of the coffin. You can call it unfair kind of expectations, but I mean they did win the championship game, but if you watch, they've tried to bill stallion's championship run was very different than the Arlington Renegade Championship run. But I think the sentiment, at least with Anthony Miller in the chat is Bob Stoops and coaching and kind of issues there. I'll be curious what Greg thinks about it kind of this week and breaking everything else talking. Yeah, it certainly seems that you would want to come out and at least play for kind of pride at this point and certainly not doing that stallions here. Going into the roughnecks, I would take the best stallions by a million points. Am I wrong here? I mean I can't really fall to it against anyone's own. It would be absolutely flabbergasting if they lost in Houston. Really the biggest thing for them, the only thing that gets in their way is who starts at quarterback? Look, I'm sorry, but he is just too inconsistent in the red zone. I know the fumble, the handoff wasn't necessarily his fault last week, but this team just cannot seem to punch it in the red zone consistently. I got to think that Adrian Martinez is going to take over the reins here soon. I know they're that skip hold is trying to get taped for everybody, but they've got to start thinking more seriously about who should be under center that's going to actually lead them to a championship and they need to start installing their full-time starters soon. So that's the only composite for concern. But otherwise, yeah, I mean their talent so significantly outweighs the roughnecks and I just don't really think Houston has much of an arsenal to deal with here if they're going to really think they're going to put up a fight against the stallions. I mean it's more of the stallions are going to shoot themselves in the foot if there's really going to be a game of it, but the stallions team should absolutely run away with this game. Yeah. Philip here, that was so wrong. Philip's keeping up. Oh, that's fine. You keep it up there. I dunno. The stallions look really, really good at this point. I know they were close. Was it two weeks ago? Close to kind of losing that one. But here. St. Louis, you said Game of the week or St. Louis going into dc So this is part of, so I guess the top two games are the simulcast and then we have the two games on Sunday. So you'd be region locked here for the Brahmas, but I like that the one late game on Saturday, so we were talking about the beginning of the show, that feels better than me to get some stuff done and then we get the seven o'clock St. Louis here early game 9:00 AM Pacific on Sunday. No one thinks about that. No one thinks about the West coasters, but St. Louis going into dc What do you make? Is that Yeah, big game. Everything tells me that I should be picking the battle hawks because they have the offensive arsenal here. I'm going to go out on a limb and I'm going to pick DC because here's the thing, DC is undefeated at home. The battle hawks have never beat the DC Defenders. Oh and three all time. And this rivalry, I guess you could call it between these two franchises because of their fan bases and because of how successful they've both been in the XFLI am not really going to go against history here. I do believe that DC is going to find a way to win this game. Oddly enough, they were very close to beating Birmingham last week and I don't think their offense was all there. I just wish they could find a way to run the ball more consistently. But I just got the strange feeling that they're going to figure out again and they're going to get themselves back to being above 500. And St. Louis is going to be wondering why in the world they watch out to Audi Field with a loss again, because on paper I think they have everything they need, especially on offense. But there's just something about playing in that stadium that I think just is so offputting and I don't know if they're going to pull it out here. So I'm actually going to go with DC in this game. It's crazy. You think about this DC and defeated industry, right? That goes back to when they had Tyree Jackson who gets court back in there back in 2020. Ty Carne Jones. Yeah, Yeah. Running the ball against it. That was the roughnecks be ground and pound. I think it was DC versus I can't remember that, but the ground and pound game for all that stuff. Are you talking about when they ran Tyree Jackson out of the shotgun and just ran the ball the entire game? Yeah, no, that was against the Battle Hawks and that was Jordan Temu who was on the Battle Hawks at that time. And that was the last game that they both played before the league shut down. So no, that was such a tremendous game because DC had come off two road losses and it was looking like they were kind of lost offensively. And then they kind of had a bit of a shocking win over the St. Louis Battle hawks who were really hot at that time. And I kind of almost want to feel like history's going to repeat itself here. Last game here, the SFL classic. We got the Panthers going into Memphis. Excuse me, bras really took care of Michigan last week here. What do you make of this? Do they bounce back? I know we have QB injuries and everything else there with Michigan. Yeah, it doesn't look like EJ Perry's coming back anytime soon. I guess you're going to have Danny Etling starting who was okay. He got hurt a little bit too. I mean these Michigan Panthers quarterbacks are just getting beat up too for the Showboats. I mean, case Cook is can we get the guy an ambulance ride on call because he's just getting absolutely blasted every play he gets in there, I can't believe he can still get up after some of these hits. Again, Troy Williams is a suitable backup, but I don't think their offense is going to run as efficiently as it would with case. But again, this offensive line has some serious issues and this Panthers defensive front is going to just absolutely smack anybody who's behind the offensive line for Memphis. I kind of feel like the Panthers here on the road because they've got the defense that they need. They may not look pretty on offense. This is probably going to be a really ugly game. We're going to be honest with you from an offensive standpoint, but I just think that the Panthers defense is going to bounce back and find a way to get it done. I mean, they held their own against the promise. They had a bit of a rough start. They held 'em to only 19 points. Just their QB issues were a problem. But I think here their defense is really going to dominate it and give Memphis a lot of problems. And this Showboats team, again, a lot of talent, not a lot of going on for them as far as results on the field. And again, not a huge home crowd to really get behind either. So I don't really see it going well for them. Well, there you go. Getting done here. We're cutting to Texas Stadium. I saw a beautiful shot of the stadium outside. Didn't see Renegades, didn't see a renegades merch stand there giving away stuff. Yes. Just to round this aside, maybe next week you talk about some actual solutions trying to make, I mean we've done, we do that. Greg's coming on this week. I mean Paul brought up stuff last week. I mean it's not always a complaint fest. It certainly feels that way and I think the complaints are certainly louder than the other of it, but I think we do a fine job with that. I think we could do a better job with that. But again, I don't know. I mean my job is to make observations, but maybe we'll put on our thinking cap, Randy. Maybe we should get hired by the league. There was a point, was it last year when it was really, really, this spring is not slow. There was a point last year in my work when it was really, really slow just because it was post covid and everything. I thought, man, I really could just go live in Texas for three months right now and kind of do this, be able to kind of book weddings for the summer, do emails and all that kind of stuff. But go for it. Well, I was going to say, I'm on the record of saying this. If San Diego ever gets a team, I'm there first thing I'm covering it. I'm doing it as a media person. I have to be there. If they ever get a team, it's happening, but it's just harder for me because I don't live there. I don't live in that area. I don't live in Arlington, I don't live in the south. So I need team to really support. Well, there you go. I appreciate everyone. Like I said, like and subscribe. Got 200 and something people here watching right now between Twitter and YouTube, so I appreciate that. David's liking the thing like the Jersey like and subscribe. JP had the lead off double here, so hey, let's get No, Andy is the face of the UFL that is Andy is the face of the UFL. That didn't make me out. You have a better beard than I do, so I think you should go ahead and be the face instead. Yeah, I don't know if anyone wants to be the face of anything. Like I said, Greg Parks Rick Ella coming up this week. Darryl Davis talking CFL. Appreciate everyone, we'll see you next time.

UFL Merger: Is the USFL Carrying Its Weight?

Hey guys, welcome to the Markcast Reid here. Surely this episode will ruffle no feathers today. UFL merger is the USFL carrying its weight. A good discussion today. Lots of fun things coming up on the podcast. I'll keep this intro short. Gets all the interviews here. Three great interviews today. Valid discussions here as we approach UFL week four. Some of the attendance did Fox, kind of sour the well and some of these markets giving away tickets here the last couple seasons. Now we're trying to get the Memphis attendance up, Michigan, all of that. I know Birmingham showed up last week, 12,000. I know they're competing against Alabama and all of that. We'll see what they do this weekend here. Coming up hosting again the DC defenders. That should be a good game, but lots of fun stuff. Today we have USFL historian Paul Reese joining from our Sports Central. Really appreciate that Paul has written books on USFL has been on through all of the different branding of the league and then the lawsuits and everything with the USFL and Fox back from old ownership there. So always appreciate getting Paul's thoughts on everything really wide ranging conversation with them, the TV broadcast, the attendance, we talk a little bit of football teams and stuff, storylines of the season so certainly I hope you guys enjoy that. Ts ns, Dave Naor coming on talking all things CFL, Chad Kelly's of it all. Edmonton Elks, lots of things I'm sure we'll get into with Dave. And then Matt McCrae of the DC Defenders game winning field goal kicker here last week. They're going into Birmingham. It should be a great game this weekend. So excited for that. If you like the work we are doing on here, 70 away like and subscribe, get us to 3,500 subscribers. We will be at the UFL championship game and if we get to 3,500 before that, we will be giving away two tickets to the championship game. I think you'll be able to sit with the professor. Andrew Murray I think is what we're going to do for that. I don't know he signed up for that but we'll get you going so well I can subscribe. Lots of work going in all the time on this getting interviews and stuff. Appreciate Dave Nailer taking time and DC Defenders getting that set up with the league so obviously with Paul getting his busy schedule coming on. So if you like the work that we do, all the friends that come on and subscribe, hope you guys enjoy the interviews. We'll see you at the end. Well we're back here. We have Paul Reese, USFL historian with our Sports Central. I literally, we were done with the UFL kickoff and I'm sitting there talking with Dorothy. I go, I'm such a dummy. I didn't have Paul on to do the pre-show kickoff stream, but we can remedy that today. Get a longer discussion with Paul Reese. Paul, first off, how are you and why don't you just, we have a lot of new subscribers so maybe just a quick elevator pitch of who you are. Great, thanks for having me on. Things are going well here. So I'm an old guy so I followed the original USFL very closely as a young man, never quite got it out of my blood and wrote a book on the league, did a lot of research and interviews just with various people involved and that kind of led to my interest in secondary alternative leagues and with that interest I started our sports central.com about 25 years ago and have followed that up since with stats crew.com. Our Sports central covers news from around alternative and minor leagues and stats crew covers all the statistics including the historical statistics for a lot of minor and alternative leagues as well as the majors. Perfect, and Paul is here today, so we're going to talk general thoughts, kind of football and then I wanted to get into kind of the thesis here this week of is the USFL carrying its weight here in the merger. First off, we're going into week four vibes. I get I'm watching that. That's good sports on YouTube as well. I got turned onto that. He does. Funny NFL recap seems that the quality of football, people are impressed, people are happy. How are you viewing the season thus far? Now that we have the eight teams? I think it's a little bit of a mixed bag but more on the good side than the bad side. I think you touched on probably my biggest takeaway so far is that the quality of football seems to be improved over both leagues. Last year we've seen tremendous kicking, for instance, our author Fran Berg just did an article that detailed how improved the kicking has been to me when I watched that St. Louis Arlington game a couple of weeks ago. You can put that up against any football game from the last year, N-F-L-C-F-L, whatever. That was a great football game, a tremendous atmosphere and came down to the wire. It was just very well played and I think you really do see a lot of that throughout the league. So that's been positive. Attendance of course has been a bit of a mixed bag, but I do think that the television presentation has remained very solid. I like the energy and that the ESPN and a BC folks bring to the mix, but I also think Fox is up there game this year. It's funny to me. Yeah, it really does depend on who you ask. Some people are very anti the ESPN broadcast. I'm pretty kind of neutral to all of it. I mean there's certain guys like the Steve Levy's of it all on ESPN get on my nerve screaming. I mean he's not part of it, but certain announcers might bother me but I'm generally not. But yeah, it seems like you're either Team Fox or team ESPN. It's kind of weird how there's a divide there. Always got to have these divides here with the spring football. Right. Well and I mean a lot of it is that we're less than a year away from watching both of them and they were different presentations and I think what we're seeing now is a little bit of a blend, but I really do like the energy and I've enjoyed the broadcast by and large. Do you like the branding now that this is the premier spring football league, we've come together. I know we've talked to you and through all this kind of merger stuff, but now that we've seen it kind of in action and what they want this to look and feel like, are you liking the branding around it? To me, we still don't really have an identity. Maybe we'll get that next year And a little bit. It is so dizzying. We saw the relaunch of the XFL, which looked different than the previous versions of the XFL. We saw another relaunch of the XFL, which looked different than the prior two versions. Then we saw the launch of the USFL, which looked a little bit different than the original USFL. And so now we're seeing yet this a new entity and there's blendings of the old and the new branding and I think we're still so new to it that it's really hard to get a feel for how it's different than maybe some of the predecessors and how it's going to end up standing out. We say the same thing every time, hopefully by year five or by year three, let's cross our fingers. Let's hope that we get that far and really do feel like we have a discernible identity And this came up on our live stream on Monday. We were recapping or I guess we did it Tuesday, we were recapping the weekend and talking attendance and we'll get into all that here, but I said if you're a casual person, this league doesn't make sense at all how it is right now. It makes sense. We know how we got to it where we had 18, you would never pick three Texas teams, Memphis, Michigan, St. Louis, that would never be, but it's like, well because they started in Birmingham and then we did this and we did that. Is it striking you? I mean TV audience has been consistent, right? They went up against the masters this week and Fox and a BC are certainly showing their power for that, but I don't know. It is hard for me when they're showing maps of the US and two thirds of it aren't represented in kind of where the teams are trying to get that national appeal. But maybe people don't care. Maybe it's just football on TV and that's what people are liking And I do think that it does make a difference. We don't have anything out west at all. In addition, the Northeast is really represented solely by Washington dc, a New Yorker, a Bostonian, how much do they care about that? Just having eight markets and three of them in Texas I don't think is helping the TV ratings. I do believe that the networks that are involved are fully aware of that, that they just don't have a real broad base. What they're really scraping here is that core group that's going to watch professional football no matter what. And even there was the, not leak but kind of the thing a couple of weeks ago, like new trademarks that it was Canton and Nashville. I'm like that doesn't help with your national appeal for the life of me. I can't figure out why we can't get anything going in San Diego except maybe that stadium is just too busy Now they have built, I just can't wrap my mind. You can't just get a flight from Dallas to San Diego and get this going. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean your operations aren't going to be based in the state anyway as long as you have the Arlington hub. So you would think that it would be wide open. I know that the people who were in Canton who went to the games last year really missed them. There just weren't that many of them. Can't, would be a horrible mistake. It would not help at all with the TV ratings. It just didn't make any sense from that standpoint. It's just really when the USFL did that, they took on all the costs of another hub and absolutely zero benefit besides a kind of decent stadium. Are you surprised now that we're gotten this far that we're doing the XFL business model with? We basically just adopted some of these USFL teams. I mean we knew kind of the Arlington of it all, but I guess that bearish fruit to kind of the way the XFL had been doing it from the beginning, even if it was costing more to do this flying in and out because certainly I think if the USFL had its way or saw success on that side, we would've just done two or three hubs and not been flying out to all of these cities. I think that's certainly right. It does show that the USFL business model that they sat down in the room and compared numbers and they didn't go with the more expensive proposition there. They didn't go with the one that made less sense. So the Arlington hub made a lot of sense and just flying out to the individual markets. I think that it was a realization on Fox's side that yes, we're a TV network. Yes, the ratings are going to be the big driver here, but attendance is also important. It's more than just having props. It's more than just having the people as a backdrop that there's a piece of the revenue equation eventually that's going to have to be carried by attendance. And whether that's 20% or 40% or 50%, whatever, we can't just write it off with $10 tickets or I think I ran the numbers last year in Memphis, if you went to both Houston and Memphis games, you could sit in the end zone for three bucks a game, which is ridiculous. And what I think there's been a realization that we can't do that long-term hurting us. We need to turn the ship around. And so I think you're seeing by and large more normalized ticket prices than a lot of these markets. And we talk and even the Monday, the attendance and Birmingham showed up and I have the numbers here I'll pull up. But you get all this like, well it doesn't matter, right? It's tv. It's all tv, it's all TV A and we've talked about this and we've learned people don't like watching football with nobody in the stands, right? It's really hard. We've learned this with the US about it's such a what's going on here? Any casual fan that's tuning in, it's like why is there no one here? So there's that the energy level of it, but then also if you're trying to get people to eventually buy these franchises, which we've been told is the plan, and I think that keeps getting kicked down the road now as we maybe the SFL had that year five to seven, well maybe that's another five to seven years from now, but I'm looking here. Memphis is averaging 8,700 people a game. What am I buying there if I'm buying a Memphis franchise? It's a great question. I think right now what you'd be buying is the concept. I don't know that necessarily anybody except the guy who owns FedEx would be looking at that Memphis franchise. It certainly has been a really slow start there and there's a lot of different reasons for that. But what you'd be buying is a concept you'd be buying, Hey, I want the San Diego market, I want Seattle, I want Denver. Those probably would make more sense to a buyer right now than some of the markets where we're seeing really minimal attendance unless things suddenly turn around in those markets. I equated it to, it's kind of like how some of these private ownerships with the CFL teams where it's like they would be like, I don't want to buy a yacht. I want to go buy a CFL team and then we have a doman in BC and putting tremendous, that's something he just really believes in and wants to rebuild that and work with the amateur football. But that is a huge, he is dumping the money and one republic comes up and ll cool J comes, we're having all these bands, that's him dumping money. And yeah, I think that that's what you're looking for here with the UFL. It's not going to be here, buy this in turnkey. You're going to make money, you're going to need to put in your own time. Do you see it similarly? Yeah. And the advantage of the CFL is decades of history so that these guys can look back and say, I remember watching them on TV or I was in the stadium when this happened, or this was a part of me growing up or at some point in my life I really connected with this. So they have more of those people who will come in and say, you know what? I can stand to lose a little bit of money or maybe I'll really over the long term kind of draw even on this. That's fine with me. Whereas the UFL, we don't have that yet and it would take a long time to build. So they've got to be looking at some extra intangibles that they're going to build into a UFL franchise in order to sell them. And I do think that it's a few years down the line. Well, and even with the CFL, there's the promise of like, hey, maybe every four or five years you might get a gray cup and then you really get some money coming back into the city. I mean I can't remember. I think when they were talking about one of the sales that came out and it was like that was part of the guarantee was like, Hey, we're going to get you a gray cup here just to make sure you don't have a multimillion dollar event coming in every year here with the UFL that's going to generate that. We could be looking at a similar situation in a few weeks here. St. Louis puts a really nice crowd into the dome for the championship game no matter who's in it. That could be a nice revenue generator and if you can promise that every eight or 10 years or more, that might be something that helps sway somebody. I don't think that we'd be looking at that in the next couple of years, but maybe down the line. So I have a tweet here, and this is from K day on Twitter. This is running down the average attendance. This is just a good way to kind of visualize it. I had Max run these numbers as well because I hate seeing this and okay, this is whatever, but what to me, and I hate being the whatever, but it's exposing these USFL markets that came in Memphis now that we're not giving away tickets, $3 tickets, even Houston on here doing the whole switch and bait with that. I think we're seeing a disparity here. Now, Birmingham showed up 12,000 there game one. You would like to see that for a team that's been in the city three years. I know they have the Alabama game going on looking at this general thoughts and then we can dive in more. And looking at Houston, I think that the stadium switch has really affected them this year as well. I don't think that we're far enough into the season to really see that the roster switch has hurt, but not having Wade Phillips there probably hurts a little bit. And with the rest of it, Birmingham, we've got the one game which was easily the best of the USFL draws so far. One of the things that we're looking at is that I believe they increased ticket prices in all those markets and so it's no longer that $10 seat. So not only are people looking at an increase in the ticket prices, but when they set those values over the last year or two, people are used to those $10 tickets. That's what their football team is worth to them now. And so I think this was probably the biggest mistake that Fox made was they devalued their product to the local populace rather than selling at a normal rate for any other team. They were so interested in getting people in as backdrop so that it looked like there were people in the stadium on TV that they forgot about the long term and I don't think they really helped themselves that much in the short term. I think it was a tremendous mistake the way they priced their tickets. And that's really reflected in three different places on this attendance chart. In terms of, and this is again my thesis this week is the USFL carrying its way, I don't know, and I always struggle even with the roughneck brand, whatever, but I don't know what cachet like a Michigan Panthers, a Memphis SHOWBOATS has here in 2024, outside of my age or your age higher. You get that, but I just don't know where, I don't know the DC defenders and I know where are they at right now? 15,000 average. I think they had two home games, right? At least it's a sexy new brand, right? The battle and then they're kind of standard of that. But I dunno if we're getting exposed that way. Also, the cachet of some of these quantity or entities not having in 2024. I mean I don't think that there's really any debating it. I think you're absolutely right that obviously the attendance would, I mean for outdoor football to have attendance under 8,000, I'm not that far away from Green Bay and they can draw that for an indoor football game is amazing to me and they're doing that at full ticket prices. It really is amazing to me how much these markets have struggled. And there are some reasons Memphis for instance, has had a team in every single league that there's been Birmingham too. And you see before this with the collapse of the alliance that couldn't have helped the local markets at all. But I think your point is right about the USFL branding, which I love. There's nobody who loves the original USFL branding more than I do, but I think they found that it was of limited benefit here in the 2020s As someone that obviously has built a large business stemmed from all this. Is that disheartening? I mean because I think people come on like, oh, Paul's going to rag on whatever Reed's going to rag on. This is something that's been a large portion of your life in a lot of people's lives to see it get to this point. It doesn't. I look at the original USFL as something that had a beginning, it had a middle and it had an end and they really have had by and large so little to do with the current happenings with the new league that took on that old name that it's a new entity. And so that's the way that I looked at the SFL last year. And so you can't compare attendance in the 2022 and 2023 USFL to the 1980s USFL. It would've been tremendously unfair to the new one. You can't compare quality of play where the original USFL was competing for the best players. That's what made them a major league and the new USFL is it was really a developmental league and really everything since the original USFL has been a developmental league and that's fine. I do enjoy it. I enjoyed NFL Europe and I enjoyed the World League and I've enjoyed everything that's come since. There's no insult at all from my perspective there. It just really is what it is. In order to be a major league, you have to compete for the best players and clearly none of these leagues are in a position to do that. The XFL wasn't the USFL. There's no shame in that. The NFL is a multi-billion dollar juggernaut. You're not going to compete with that right now and you're certainly not going to do with that in the spring. So I enjoy these leagues for what they are. So I agree with you, but we had Darryl Johnson on before the season and he talks about they don't want to be a developmental league. What do you say to that? Just as a side note here before we keep going because like you said, you're a decade away from even being to the point where, I'm just curious your thoughts on that, where he says they want to move away from that. Oh, I mean there's perception versus reality. So I can understand that he doesn't want to be perceived in that way. The reality is unless you're taking people off NFL rosters or taking collegiates that the NFL wants, you're a developmental slash minor league. That's all there is to it. So what do we do here? Because like you said, I do think going back, if we could reverse course and go back a couple years here in the price appropriately, what do we do at this point here with the USFL markets, right? I guess how do you rebuild that? And I know if we all knew how to do that, it would be done. But thoughts about that? I do think, like you said, irreparable damage in some of these markets, I mean it's going to be super hard to turn the ship around, I think where you've already devalued your product. I mean, how do you take that away? I'm thinking of John Spolstra. He was former NBA exec who wrote about how to sell the last seat in the house, and I think that was kind of the ticket seller's bible. And one of the ways that you do that is by increasing the value of your ticket, more freebies maybe, or player visits or exclusive ticket holder events. There are some of those things that maybe can be done. I don't know how much that bumps the needle in these markets to be honest. You may be looking at choosing the markets where you think you can build and then reassigning teams to other markets where you can't. That's my fear. I mean I agree with that, but my fear is if you do that, then you are, how locked in are you to any of these markets, right? I mean, I think you got to go, do you pull out of Michigan at the end of this year? I don't know. Then what does that say to the next? I always equate when the new ownership took over the Washington commanders and everyone said, well, they're going to fire Ron Rivera. And they said, no, we're going to give him a season. We want the next head coach coming in to know that we'll also give them the full kind of benefit of that. So I don't know what you do if you pull the plug in any move and then to San Diego. Well God, if we don't get enough people here, they're going to pull it in a year. And you mentioned Michigan, at least you have market size with Detroit, whereas in a place like Memphis, if you're struggling with attendance and your market size is not doing much to help the TV rating, then that's when you really have to take a good hard look at how can we turn this ship around? Can we turn this ship around and then do we move? So a couple different things that you think about is do you move a team or do you expand first and then contract? So that, I don't know what the right answer is there. The other thing that I think about is the original American Football League. If you look at how that league started, and of course everyone knows that the original American Football League ended up merging 10 teams in the NFL and as part of the NFL multi-billion dollar juggernaut now, but originally they were drawing 3000 to 7,000 in Oakland. They had to move out of Los Angeles, they had to move out of Dallas. So there were a lot of things that happened there. But part of it was in places like Oakland and New York, they were able to build from those meager beginnings partially because the league built around them and you entered a new stadium situation in New York, but they were able to continue to build in Oakland, for instance. So you have to, okay, what can we develop a five-year plan on which markets do we think that we can actually improve? And which markets are we actually just wasting our time and we'd be better served getting out of right now, I am always the Mr Pessimist on here and I believe in this space and wanted to succeed. I just don't know what the long-term play is here. Where we saw Redbird after one season of loss, like, okay, we need to downsize, we need to do this fox the same way. Maybe we're seven years away from getting ownership, ratings are good. We're averaging 800 to a million viewers. Is that enough? Are we happy enough with that for the next four or five years? I would love to be a fly on the wall and kind of know what are the metrics here we're trying to hit? Because both of these ownership groups now coming together seem very gun shy about losing any money at some point. And we talked on the Monday show when I quit my day job to freelance, at some point you got to pull the plug, take a hit and then build up the other way. But you can't just kind of meander along at this pace, Right? And I think Fox has to be encouraged by ratings because of what they saw last year. They had to wonder, are we on a downward slide where this thing is is just not working? And to see a rebound I think for them has to be helpful. If anything, I would say that I maybe underestimated Redbird capital a little bit and just how much capital Redbird has. This is a group that has been in talks to by CVS. So these people have a lot of resources now if they have the patience and the plan to continue with this, we'll see. But I'm encouraged by the level of operations that we've seen throughout the league, even just from a media relations standpoint. I think these teams have taken a step up, particularly the former USFL teams. They actually have people issuing press releases and game notes and all the things that you'd normally expect. And that was probably part of the hole that was dug last year and even the year before where people are like, these people don't even really treat this like a real league from a media standpoint. It was certainly obvious. And I would imagine that that translated in how the media talks to fans if they talk to them at all about your product and in fan perception as well after that. Respectfully. Yes, and I do enjoy having the USFL teams, having people respond. I like the media portal. Not all reps are created equal, right? I mean, you get a little bit about that, but even in terms of that, I get the press release every week like, Hey Arlington, they're doing a practice. If you want to come at nine, film the first 30 minutes and then Bob Stoops is going to be around at 1220 and then Luis Perez, whatever at 1230, I would love to meet a single media rep that's going to go to an Arlington Renegades game or a practice on a Wednesday at nine. I used to do that for the Seahawks and we'd go film and you'd go do the first 10 minutes and then yeah, you'd sit around because you're waiting to talk to Russell Wilson or whatever. I don't know if we're at that point yet. So yes, I appreciate the access in that way. I would be curious the number of people that are taking advantage of that. And it's hard with the hub, that is one of the difficulties that the hub introduces as much as it certainly saves them on the cost side, that exposure in the local markets is part of the price that they pay for that. And that's of the areas I think that they really need to continue to do some thinking about how you get exposure in the local market. Does that mean you fly a select group of players in a day early to the local market just to meet, greet, do all those things that you would do if you were locally based, your cheer team, are they always around and available treated well so that they're more than willing to go to parades and different other things just to keep your name and your brand out there? It is one of those things that the league has to overcome. And setting up video meetings is certainly helpful. It does allow local media to interact. So there are some options, but they are going to have to get creative not only in how you really help the press connect with the team members, but in how you maintain a local presence in the market when you're really only there a day or two, five times a year. I think that's really hard. And I think that's what I've learned this season with having all the reps and everything. And we'll start winding this conversation down here soon. I appreciate your time. It is that I don't have time A to do all, Hey, it's Wednesday at whatever on the Zoom. I try my best and I'll look at the recordings afterward. You might have three people on there. You might have two people on there talking to whoever. I don't not being in the markets besides the fan stuff. And they do a good job, I think like, hey, we're doing a thing, a meet and greet right before they're trying to do some things that way. Little town halls and stuff. But yeah, getting the media, I know Anthony was at the Renegades game, I think it was last week, I think he said there were seven people in the press box, which is not a burden. And that's the hub that you're in, let alone what does Michigan look like? I haven't had a chance to go. I was at the kickoff game obviously, but I imagine St. Louis is packed. I imagine DC is packed. I don't know what the Memphis Showboats press box looks like on game day. And that's tough. It's tough. You're going to have a little bit limited media buy-in because of that. So one of the things that I am encouraged with is that, and in particularly contrasting last year's USFL teams with this year's UFL teams is that you can get transaction notices, you can get game notes, you can get game recaps. These were all things that were missing out of the USFL puzzle last year and last year they had taken a step up from the prior year where it was basically, if we can't release it on Colin Coward, we're just not going to bother to release it. So they've continued to kind of up those operations. So when I say that I'm encouraged by the media relations, there's still a lot of improvements that could be made, but they have taken some steps. Oh yeah. Night and day compared to, especially with the US development that was getting, because last year had the hubs, had media people, and yes, having people dedicated the media portal is great. All that stuff. Last note from me, we were talking TV ratings and all of that, and I know that Mike Movahill ville, I can never say his last name with the Fox sports guy, tweeting out 47% increase whatever because they're consolidating all these TV time slots. We're giving Fox at noon, whatever. What struck me in, curious your thoughts, I think we're learning, it doesn't matter if it's the USFL, the X-F-L-U-F-L, if it's on a good time slot, people are going to watch, I don't know how many now I know we've talked this whole interview about USFL hurting their local markets in that way, and I do standby that, but I think a general TV audiences, they don't know if it's the stars or the rough. Okay, which one is this league? Especially when the leagues were competing last year during the same time. And one of the big helps in TV ratings so far is removal of games from USA and FS one. Now I think there's an FS one game this week. Yeah, This one's going to be rough this weekend. Yeah, That'll be the roughest rating. But those ratings were, they dragged down the whole average last year and the year before. So it has been very helpful when you're on ESPN, when you're on a B, C, when you're on fox, it does help. It is a tremendous boost. Well, and even I think just in terms of we go to a lot of sports bars, even flying back from the kickoff sitting down at the airport, the TV's already on ESPN or whatever. You're not sitting there. Oh, excuse me, okay, okay. We don't have ES ESPN two or we don't have whatever it, being on places where people are just going to find it naturally I think is such a boon. And just having it be, there's always going to be a TV on Fox or a BC or ES, ESPN of any bar you're going to walk into. And I think that helps. Oh wow. What's going on? That's awesome. That's right. Yep. That helps a lot. And I think that we have this weird kind of the season when it started too. It's earlier than the SEF L started last year, but later than the XFL started last year. But I still think they're missing their window. I was glad to see that they did take on the NCAA tournament and actually the women's championship proved to be a bigger hurdle than even the final four games. So I mean, the thing that you're going to have to embrace this competition, you're, you're going to have competition on TV no matter when. So when is the best time to hit this right after the Super Bowl tax day, which is what it was last year for the USFL or somewhere in between. I continue to personally believe that it's right after the Super Bowl, you ride that wave of football and try to hang onto as much of it as you can. Yeah. And I think take on the habits that people have already built, right? Sunday morning I'm sitting around watching football. I'm not, weather's terrible. I'm not doing anything. Baseball's not on Paul, anything else from you? I don't want to take you too much of your time. I appreciate it today. Anything else you want to plug or get off your chest here? No. No. As far as getting off the chest, probably I was watching, I've watched most of the games so far and this league had five fantastic finishes in a row, literally coming down to the final seconds. A couple of games this last week were blowouts, but just tremendous finishes and it's been super fun to watch so far. And I think this story, it's been a good storyline of the season. A couple different, okay, Birmingham coming back, whatever in DC doesn't look like the same team they were last year and now we have the San Antonio, the Garber's injury. Okay, now we got another sign in. What does that look like? A week ago it looked like San Antonio was going to be on top of, that's our team here at the mark that I chose. So there's enough little things like that going on. It seemed like especially the overlap last year where I got 16 teams I'm trying to keep track of. I'm like, I can't process all of these storylines. The aid at least right now feels good in that way. And that was really tough. And when you looked at the disadvantage that I think that served up to the USFL because you had the XFL entering its playoffs stretch. And so if I have limited time, how much am I going to pay attention in the league in its first week or two of the regular season versus how much am I going to pay attention when it's coming down to the line for the playoffs? And the XFLI thought did a fantastic job last year with the presentation and bringing that whole season to a conclusion where the USFL, maybe they were trying to do the same thing as they had last year only in four different places and it just didn't necessarily translate all that well. So it has been nice to be able to concentrate attention, but I'm kind of running into the, now it's starting to get nice outside and now it's starting to get really busy. And so not through any conscious effort to avoid games. I'm going to start missing some of them. It was spring break and people are gone. I'm trying to keep up traveling so I can talk about the games when we get back. No, I totally agree with that. Last point for me, I think going into next season, I don't know if we need this, but I think adding a team or two, I hate talking the expansion, but I think having it feel like this speaks to the success of the league. Like we're moving on and this is conversation down the line, but I think they got to have some sort of hook where the USFL going from one hub to three and a half or whatever with the canned thing, it didn't feel like that was enough of a hook going into the next season. And I think that that might be the greatest cause the greatest reason maybe keep teams around for next year is so that you do see actual expansion and not relocation. It kind of answers some of those doubts of, oh, if we struggle right out of the gate here, are we going to get our team yanked? It gives a year under the belt at least before maybe you'd move somebody or whatever, just to make the new markets feel better about themselves and about the patients that's going to be displayed. But I think if you would expand at all, part of that is you've already answered some of those questions. You've already have some good corporate support with sponsorships. You already have an interested fan base. So choosing those expansion markets would be making good choices there would be very important. Well Paul, I appreciate it. Our Sport Central stats screw.com. Appreciate it. We'll get you back on again, but always it means all you taking the time. Alright, thank you so much for having me on, Reed. Great to talk with you. Well it's been a long time since we've had this gentleman on. It was you and Farhan wandering through the BC Lions dead here at Gray Cup. Internet issues aside, we have Dave Naer here, TSN Insider, CFL, everything else. Dave, how are you? Very well other than the internet issues I was just having there, but I think we got 'em sorted out. There you go. That's good. I got Matt MCC crane logging on. I got to do, I'm sitting in my other chat right here when he hops on. I'm going to tell him we're running a few minutes late, so I appreciate it Here. Appreciate that man. So we're getting ready. CFL, everything else going on, we were talking a little bit of the NFL kickoff and all of that. Where do you want to start? What's on your mind right now? Well, let's start with the kickoff. I think I was in the CFL combine where they were talking about that. And it was funny because I don't think people really knew how close the NFL was to moving its kickoff five days later I made it was sort of references to the NFL is going to talk about this maybe as early as next week. And then they pulled the trigger a week later. So I'm kind of interested in how that may have influenced the CFL's decision one way or another. And I think it's always been a different discussion because kickoffs and just the return game in general is so much a bigger part of Canadian football and it's more celebrated and returners are more stars, some of the greatest stars in the league and the NFL because they kind of face it out slowly over time. And because those players in the history of the game have not been as prominent relative to the other players in the league as they are in the CFL. So there's a lot of sensitivity about this. And the curious thing to me is you see fans on Twitter and things like this, they seem to think the league has some agenda to get rid of an exciting play that has nothing to do with injuries. I dunno what that agenda would be. I don't know why the commissioner and the different people in the rules committee and competition committees would say, yeah, let's get kickoff returns out of the game. It doesn't make any sense to me, but I do think there is a greater sensitivity to the fact, the idea of removing them. Now you're still going to get a lot more punting in the CFL than you do in the NFL and you have no fair catch. So it's not like the return game is going to disappear. But I mean there's two proposals I think they're looking at. One is that you would give teams the option to scrimmage on the 40 yard line as opposed to accepting a kickoff, which they already have for field goals. And 96% of the time last year teams took the ball in the 40 as opposed to a return. So you're going to basically wipe out returns after touchdowns. I think we can say pretty safely. And then again, the only time you don't give that choice is the final three minutes of a game that protects the onsite kick. But the other possibility is looking at a version of what the NFL just did, the XFL model. I think that one is on the table as well and whether they would make some tweaks do it or come up with their own. The buzz I'm hearing Reed is, and I think this is smart, that the league is probably going to strike a committee and study this for a year, which would allow them to see what happens in the NFL. It allow them to look at their own data a little closer. And I think it's such a fundamental thing. CFL has been around Canadian football in one form around another, it's been around for over a hundred years. So there's not this, we got to get this done before kickoff 2024. I mean the game has survived for a long time, but I do believe that this is being driven by the same thing that is driven by in the NFL. The rate of injuries on these plays is substantially higher. That costs roster churn, that's bad for players, that's bad for owners who have to replace injured players. It's just one of those things that I think it was kind of naive to think that the NFL was going to go here, college football was going to go here, but in the CFL we're fine. I said to somebody, it's like saying that if you smoke a cigarette in Buffalo, it's bad for you, but you can do it in Toronto. It just doesn't make sense. The physics are a little different in the two games, but not that dramatically different. So I'm not surprised the CFL is dealing with this issue. Well, it's the same irony where the UFL now is using the, and even more elongated NFL kickoff. It's bizarre, right, that the alternative spring league football, if we can call it that, is the inspiration for the most substantial change we've seen to the NFL game in, I don't know in my lifetime, just in terms of how often you're going to see it. And the league that developed it isn't using it. What it reminds me is like you're going to put a piece of furniture onto your curb and somebody comes over five minutes later and takes it away. I feel like the UFL or the XFL put its kickoff out to the curb and the NFL came along in a pickup truck and said, I'll take that. It is funny, and I know you're busy, man, but we had Darryl Johnston on the week before the week of the kickoff and it was very interesting hearing his thoughts on all of that. So it's a little bit of egg in the face on that, but certainly they're doing the best they can. Absolutely. Hey look, I think if everybody recognizes that one of the real opportunities that spring football brings about is to experiment with stuff and people forget, and correct me if I'm wrong in this, you're the exit L expert, but I mean that camera shot above the huddle. Yeah, we use that all the time. And the NFL uses it ubiquitously and that was an XFL invention. So I do think it's great to have leagues that can try stuff that maybe established leagues are a little afraid to try. And by the way, on the XFL kickoff, I loved it the first time I saw it. I was always surprised, especially with the grumbling in the NFL that didn't get more attention. Obviously it was getting a lot more attention behind the scenes than anybody knew. They didn't go from zero to a hundred on this in a month. They've obviously been looking at this for a long time. And major rule changes often take a tipping point. And I think for the NFL, it was 11 kickoffs in the Super Bowl that all sailed through the end zone. I mean, what are we doing In terms of moving on to some other CFL stuff in terms of the Chad Kelly's of it all? Has anyone thought of just deleting Twitter, maybe pulling back his phone? This is all I've seen the last couple of weeks. What's going on with this? Yeah, I have reason to believe that Chad Kelly has probably been advised to use discretion on social media, but he's obviously not doing so to the degree that people would want him to. I think this is a real tough story for a few reasons, including the presumption of innocence, which we have to maintain. And I know that a lot of people are looking at Chad's history of questionable decision making and saying, well, this lines up with who he was before he came to Canada. And again, I think we got to try to be fair and objective and allow him the presumption of innocence as we discuss this. But it's strange because Chad Kelly was a guy who, he came here, I think people were kind of, I don't want to say holding their breath, but keeping their fingers crossed. And it's not so much about him. I would just say the history of players who've been out of the NFL largely for behavioral reasons or character questions and come to Canada, usually those kinds of things follow them here. It tends not to get left at the border. And Chad Kelly for two full seasons, I mean what was the most controversial thing he did? He went on radio last winter and said he loved to play for the Saskatchewan Ruff riders while he was still under contract to the Toronto Argonauts. That would probably be the most controversial thing he did. And then there's the bad performance in the eastern final and bad is a mild world mean I I've never seen a player's playoff performance that was so unrecognizable from what he'd done consistently in the regular season on any team at any level in my life. You put that game up against everything else Chad Kelly did. It's unrecognizable. I think he just threw another interception right now. It was unreal. And not just the numbers of interceptions, but if you actually watch the plays, they are textbook awful, right? And I'm not a break it down kind of guy, but even I can see that when you're looking one way of the field and you pivot and throw off your back foot on to the other side of the field off balance, you're probably going to get picked anyway. Then you have before he was named the league's MOP, he has the concussion story that he was concussed and that's why he left the field afterwards without shaking hands. Well, I can tell you, given the sensitivity of that issue, the league went through the tape play by play, play by play to try to find any play where Chad Kelly might have been concussed. They did not find one. And I think if you look at his whereabouts in the days that fall, that game, he wasn't necessarily, those weren't the actions of somebody who was dealing with a serious head injury is what I would saying. So I'd just say the league, and I believe he signed his, at the end of the season when you have to sign your exit that you're healthy, he signed that. So that was, a lot of people on the league looked at that and went, wow, what's going on there? And now you have the civil suit, which again, we can't really comment on, but we can comment on his social media presence and the video he made during the CFL combine where he went on and dropped a bunch of F bombs. And I would say objectively I would describe him as showing a complete lack of self-awareness. I'm comfortable with that description of what he looked like on that video. I mean, that's the face of your franchise, that's the MOP of your league. That is behavior and conduct that is so out of touch with your role. And again, I think it just kind of raised questions about where his head is at that he would think that that was appropriate or acceptable. And then since then you've had cryptic tweets that can be read a whole bunch of different ways. But again, for somebody who's facing potentially a legal situation or is facing a legal situation and is also facing the court of public opinion, which in this case is a big one for him, because again, a lot of people are judging him and saying, this is the guy we heard about before he came to the CFL, now we're seeing it. And every time he puts out one of those tweets, it kind of moves people more in that direction. So I think I asked the CFL players association about it when I was at the combine. They said, look, we don't proactively reach out and tell players what to do or not do. We're here to accept their requests for help or guidance or counseling or whatever they need. We're here for them, but we don't identify guys and go out for them and say, Hey, what are you doing? That would be more the role of his employer or the league. And I don't know that that's happened, but I would be surprised if there haven't been efforts to try to get him off social media. And I also wouldn't be surprised if he's ignored them. And the last thing was obviously the Caitlyn Clark and her getting the contract coming out and him saying like, oh, that's CFL money. I saw Nathan Rourke tweet out the league taking too long. Is this just time? And Yeah, I don't quite get that and I'm not be, I think the league's messaging on this one hasn't been great. It took what several days until the suit was filed, until they had a statement, Chad tweeted out a denial and then it got deleted. The Argos haven't really said much, and I don't know what they can say, but it feels like there should be a little more clarity about what's going on right now. And I don't know if you can put him on an administrative off season, so I don't know what putting him on a leave does. But even symbolically that might show that you're a little more proactive that hey, until we can clear this matter up, we put Chad Kelly on a whatever suspended list, whatever it may be. It doesn't really affect anything. There's no off season for the CFL anyway. But it would at least sort of clarify maybe a little bit where they stand. But beyond that, I don't have a ton of criticism for the league, and particularly on the, it's taking too long part here. The league has hired an independent investigation to be done on this, which I think people would say is probably the right course. And look, I don't know if Chad Kelly's going to get favorable judgment because he's the starting quarterback and the highest paid player in the league in the MOP. I would hope not. But I can tell you he's getting a different process because we have seen other players who've been involved in situations and the league by and large has acted very quickly without very long process, which is their right to do, I guess, unless to the point that they could be sued by somebody if that person thought they were acting inappropriately. But we can clearly say that Chad Kelly is getting a different process. He is getting a much more thorough process. And I don't have a problem with the league saying, Hey, this is a guy who has tremendous importance to our franchise in our biggest city where we've been trying to gain traction. This is a guy who has tremendous importance to our league. He's our reigning MOP. We are going to take our time and step back and let somebody else deliver us a report on this again. I mean, do we want the league to rush this? I don't necessarily feel that way. So that's what they're doing. I asked Randy and Broy the commissioner about this at the combine and he said, we're not going to act or comment until we get that report. And that seems like a legitimate position to me. I guess the question is when's that report coming now? Because we're a month away from training camp less than a month away from the opening of training camp. And you think that a decision has got to come down before or that report and the league's decision based on that report has to come down before the start of training camp. So we're all kind of waiting to see where this is going to go. And I would expect that this may be framed from the league's perspective as kind of an HR issue. I mean, there's not a criminal accusation here, right? There's a civil suit and the descriptions that are in that suit, we sort of line up with inappropriate behavior in the workplace. So is that the framework that the leagues or the Argos are going to use to deal with this? I don't know, but I think it's an issue that's been hanging over the whole off season and it feels like Chad Kelly's been hanging over the whole off season when you go back to the concussion stuff and just on a personal level, I'm kind of sad just to see when we did a feature on Chad Kelly a year ago and we were at Jim Kelly's house and Jim Kelly said, I would not be doing this if you'd called me two years ago because I didn't really believe Chad had matured and seen the light. And it was my producer, Matt Dunn, who wrote the line in the feature. He said in Toronto, there is no past only a future. That was the line that I thought was kind of the line of the piece that Chad Kelly's able to come across the border and people aren't familiar with all the things about him from the past, they don't care. You've got a fresh slate, man, run with it. And for most of two years he did that. And so just on a personal level for him, I'm sorry that his behavior has become a little worrisome, particularly when you see that video. I mean that video is just, you cannot do that as a starting quarterback in the Canadian Football League. That cannot be your representation. And again, I don't know what the Argos of the league are going to do about it, but it's not certainly anything that would be considered acceptable. Rapid fire. Last one here, I got to hop over Elk sale everything. What's going on with that? I know we're trying to privatize and rapid, I think we're about a week away maybe or within the next week from the sale of the Elks being slimed down to a shortlist and it may be a long shortlist. I mean one of the things I think you always got to remember in these situations is you and I can put our hand up form a partnership and sign a non-disclosure agreement and get all the financials of the Elks and say we want to buy them. I mean basically if you knock at their door and look presentable, you're going to be given an opportunity to look at it. So I reported the number was more than a dozen individuals or groups had looked forward. And I think part of my role in reporting that I think from the Elks perspective is they kind of wanted everybody in Canada to know about this, right? They understand that TSN is a platform that's widely read, particularly for CFL, and I think they weren't unhappy to have me reporting on that because they knew that anybody wasn't aware that the Elks were for sale Now might be. It's a real fascinating sale and I'll tell you first of all, and again somebody else told me who I trust that the number was got up to 19, I don't know what it is now and I don't know what the shortlist will be, but for a league that's been used to having fire sales or distress sales or hoping somebody comes to the rescue, this is not that. But here's the interesting thing people ask, well, what's the franchise going to sell for? Well, it's owned by a nonprofit. It's not even clear where the money would go if somebody paid $10 million, $20 million, $30 million for the Edmonton else. Paying it to the nonprofit makes no sense because there's nowhere for it to go. It doesn't get divided among the board. So I think where the negotiation's going to come in here is how much are you willing to invest in the team in a new stadium, in the facilities, in the infrastructure, in raising the team's profile and driving the season ticket base. That's going to be the negotiating point I think. So you can see a situation where the franchise fee is a dollar, whatever, it just disappears into the ether, but the money number that's going to matter is if somebody's willing to pay $30 million for the Edmonton Elks, 25 million for the Edmonton Elks, 99% of that is going to go to investing on the team, not into the pocket of the current owners because the current owners really don't have private pockets. So I think it's a good opportunity for them to sort of set this right. And I asked the question of somebody, is there any chance that this doesn't happen? This stays as a community owned team like it has been for 75 years and I was told that the only scenario would be somebody who has a ton of money and really, really wants to see the Edmonton Elk State community owned and would donate that money to the board and say, here you go. Keep running the team. Here's my 30 million on. I don't think that's going to happen. No, I think we're going to see a private sale. Well, there you go Dave. Let's get you on again here when we got more stable internet, but it held up today. We got the data. Everything else, I appreciate it. Yeah, sorry for the delay off the top, but as you know, always enjoyed joining re thanks so much. Awesome, thanks. And yes, see a fellow, it's almost June. It is not far away. Well, this is kind of the man of the hour here for the DC Defenders. A great season thus far and then certainly a killer game here over the weekend. How are you doing, sir? I'm good man. I appreciate you having me on. It's good. I know trying to get these remote stuff and with the training camp and hubs and everything, I appreciate it. You're back here again, obviously with the Guardians back in 2020. What's it feel like being around here right now? It's exciting. I think I talked about it a little bit in the post-game interview with Jordan is the merger of the two leagues and to kind of, I guess skip on a forward a little bit, but the merger of the two leagues has been really exciting, really cool. We've been able to put a good product on the field that I think people are starting to enjoy, so that's been good, man. It's been really well ran and has been really exciting. So I've got nothing bad to say so far. What's cool too is you never really know going into these leagues, right, who's going to get spotlighted, right? We had CTE turban, excuse me, turban back with the US FL and all that special teams, especially kickers right now, insane between you and Jake Bates and everybody else. What is that? Is it just getting the opportunity, one of the major storylines of the season? Yeah, I think mean not just me and Jake, I mean everybody in the league. I think I saw the stat what were like 92% or something across the league so far through three weeks. And so I think for a lot of people is it's that it's just limited opportunity. In the National Football League, there's only one active roster kicker out of the 32 team. So you're on each team, so you're talking 32 kickers in the world and it's hard to get an opportunity. I've been in and out of the National Football League for five years off and on from practice squad to active to Covid year and filling in for injured guys. And so really I've only had one genuine opportunity to say, okay, I think this is my job. And that was when I was with Oakland. Daniel Carlson got cut by Minnesota and then they moved on from me and Daniel's been with them ever since. And so I think it's just proving that there's a lot of really kickers out there on the market. And I say a lot, I mean limited. There's only eight guys in this league, so not very many. I mean I'd say maybe 15, 20 guys that deserve a shot to play in the National Football League that just whether it's through injury or guys are performing well in the NFL and so it's limited opportunity to get in. And so I think you're just seeing that right now as there's really good talent out there and kickers are proving that week in and week out. You guys have to get jazzed up for each other. I mean especially coming off of your game and Jake and everything else, what is that like? And just see these record setting kicks and you had super 50 yard plus. This is nothing to kind of sneeze at. Yeah, I think it's always been that way for kickers. I don't think if there's a kicker out there that's wishing ill will on another kicker just to get an opportunity, that's a bad thing coming. That's some bad mojo. But Jake and I were kind of back and forth on social media. He commented on I think a post that I was in after the game-winning field goal and said Congrats or something. I was like, dude, how I commented back and said, how are you going to cover me up? How are you going to steal the spotlight with another 60 plus? And so we have good banter back and forth, but I stay in contact with a lot of these kickers. We all train together out. Some of us train out in California together with Nick Novak. We see each other at combines as honors combines. So it's a tight knit group and I think we're all cheering for each other, man. It's really good opportunity for us In terms of the game itself. This last one with the game winning, you quick really spotlights the UFL rules and we're able to do this big 11 point swing and all that. What is that just from, I don't know, a game strategy? Game planning and you, because it really is, you're really in all these games until the very end. Yeah, well it's funny, I learned my lesson just this week because we were down a touchdown and a normal circumstance I would say, okay, I'm telling my long snapper and holder we're dead is what we call it. Hey, are we dead? We're done for the game. If we score, we're going for two or in this league of course we're going to go for two or three. And so I went to Coach Barlow and I said, we're dead. I think there was two and a half minutes in the game and we were down by a touchdown and he said, yeah, you guys are dead. So I literally untied my shoes and I told Paxton and Trey, I'm like, Hey guys, we're dead when we score, we're going to go for it. Well, what happened was Arlington ended up getting the ball and they kicked a field goal and now I'm looking at it and I'm like, okay, with the new rule, the fourth and 12th we could be back up potentially. So I tied my shoes back on, I got us all stretched back out and ready to go and sure enough, we drive the whole field, we score a touchdown and we're back in the game and need a field goal. So I think it's an adjustment for a lot of us because the fourth and 12th it's more engaging for the fans, it's fun and exciting and it gives the team an opportunity to score points quickly. And we've seen that the last two weeks in a row. In terms of the DC locker room, the vibe, what is everything like there and Coach Barlow? I mean I feel like even last year runs a heavy, a tight shift or what is that? What's it like being in the locker room there? Barlow's definitely a player's coach. I've had a few of those in the past that can really relate to the players. He's very open to different ideas and strategies and things that we go with. He's got an open door policy, so that's really cool to see from him is that he was a player once he gets it. But we're going on our second year of having a really good squad. Last year we had a great team. Obviously we lost the championship game, but we're starting to build that culture and it's really cool to see us excel now. We've had really close games and I think we can play a lot better and our offense and defense have talked about that, Hey, we need to put a better product on the field because we've proven to do that last year. And so yeah, we're building that culture. We got a lot of the same guys back, we got some new faces, but it's really cool to see that now in year two of the same team just starting to build some chemistry. Yeah, it is a lot of carryover. But then between injuries or players getting other opportunities, things, I mean it is Jordan's there obviously kind of at the helm, but it's a different chemistry this year. Is that, do you feel like you guys are getting into this now as we get into week four so hard with that limited training camp and we're trying to come in, you think you're finally hitting it because even last year some of these teams, it's taking you to week seven, eight to really get things going? Well, I mean that's exactly what happened with us last year. It took some time, especially defensively to really start locking it down and Greg's been on 'em. Coach Williams has been on 'em like, Hey, listen, we've got to kind of finally wake up and say, listen, we are a solid defensive unit because Greg's a phenomenal defensive coach. He is on those guys week in and week out. Well, yay. Honestly, I'm witnessing it on the sideline watching it. And so he's very tough. But I think that's where, again, it takes time. We don't had four weeks of training camp, but we don't have an off season to develop. We didn't have the luxury of what some of these NFL guys have. Heck we didn't even know if we were going to have a league. And so when it came out that we had a league, we had a little group chat of all of us and staying in contact with each other. But yeah, I think it's going to take time. We through week three, but still to be able to pull off a win, and I said this the other day in an interview is that no matter in what sport you're in professionally, and I say that because this league is professional ball because there's guys that are 2, 3, 4, 5 year NFL vets and even a one year out there is really good talent on these teams and I think that's what we need to get a point across to fans and people looking to watch this league is like, listen, we're not guys that don't deserve opportunities or we're not good enough to play in the National Football League. That's not the case at all. It's just limited opportunity. So we're able to put up a good product, it's just going to take time. It just takes a couple of weeks to get our momentum and figure out what we do and who we are. The episode that this is all going to be a part of, we're talking kind of XFL and USFL and markets and people, what teams have fans showing up and obviously DC and St. Louis are really obviously the 10 poles for in terms of fans coming up, what's it like playing there? What's it like knowing, I know you were in Arlington last week, but what's it like playing there and just knowing that that team really is full support of you guys? Yeah, I like the soccer stadium. I like the capacity of that. It's really a cool environment because especially towards the end of last season, we packed that thing 12, 15,000 people. And so I really liked that aspect of it. When I was playing with New York, we played at MetLife and so we played at a massive stadium and we still had a really good crowd in New York before covid hit. And I remember when we played at DC like okay, this is a somewhat intimidating atmosphere. I've played in big time college football games in NFL with a hundred thousand plus. And I said, in order to get that professional feel, you need that fan attendance I think. And last year when we played in St Louis, they're packing that dome full and opening up new sections each week. So the fan support is crucial into the success of this league and I think that's the point that we have to get across. Just like I said in your previous question was that the product is there and the talent is there. It's guys that should be playing on Sunday and that have played on Sunday, but it's spring football. I mean, what else are we going to watch on TV as fans right? It, it's a great product and a great atmosphere and again, I couldn't be any more excited with it. I think it's been good so far. Yeah, we were at Audi Field for the kickoff back in 2020 and then I went last year. I'm Seattle and so I went when you guys took care of the Sea Dragons there to go on, I was removed from my own safety from the beer snake section because I had all my, and they said the security and they said, we got to relocate you. I said, I'm just because it's like a hardcore fan, but it's all these spring football. I'm like, this isn't like you're going to, no one's attacking me here at the XFL game. But it's certainly a passionate fan base there, so it's exciting to see. Yeah, for sure. I mean the beer steak section, I think they opened up another section for our home game against the Battle Hawks in a couple of weeks. They're doing a promo I saw, which is kind of cool. They're doing $16 tickets or something in the hundred sections, so they're utilizing my number to sell some tickets, which is cool and try to make it affordable. Bring the families out, bring the kids out on Saturday and Sundays and get to watch NFL caliber talent. What's any better than that? It's really cool. Last question here, just speaking of fan support, you guys are going into Birmingham this weekend going to be a big one. They're one of tremendous teams and obviously everyone's supporting that. Thoughts going into the weekend and what are you looking forward to? Yeah, so it's going to be a huge game. I was going to have a watch party at my restaurant back in Texas, but there's another kickoff same time and it's a regional game so we won't be able to have a watch party in Brownwood, Texas with it. But I'm excited for the opportunity because we believe that we should have won that championship game and so we see this as the XFL versus the USFL championship game. And so that's been our mentality this week as a team is we've heard things about Birmingham and that they're really solid football club, but we're eager to take it on and come to their home field. So again, I'm excited for this league, I'm happy for the opportunity and grateful for the opportunity because it's a platform that not only me as a kicker, but other positions have that we need the game film in order if we want to go into the National Football League or continue playing in this league, whatever it is, we need the game tape. And so I'm thankful for those that made it happen in short term because merging a league like this from XFL to USFL, I don't know how they pulled it off, but I'm glad they did. Yeah, no, as I was at San Antonio, I also don't know, we also expected you guys to win the championship game, so that was as much of a flabbergast, but I mean give Alexander Flowers, you got a little revenge last week, so that was good. I mean I know it's not the same as getting the trophy, but This game will be fun, man. I mean, like I said, we've seen it as the XFL versus USFL championship. That's how we're kind of approaching it and take that mentality of how we've created the XFL in our hand against the USFL. It should be fun. It should be fun for fans to watch. So if that's in your area, man, the people that are listening to this, it'll be one to tune into. Well Matt, I appreciate it taking the time. Dave Naer was running long. I appreciate you waiting a few minutes a week. I'm trying to get all this going so super appreciate it. Good luck. Even though you took the Sea Dragons out of the playoffs last year, we'll be supporting. So good luck and have a great weekend. Yeah, appreciate your support ma'am. Big thanks to all of our guests today. Always appreciate getting to catch up with Paul Reese taking time from his work with the websites that he runs coming on talking about good wide ranging conversation. Don't want to be too negative Nancy, but it's an interesting discussion here. I think Fox maybe overestimated and we're giving away tickets and now we're trying to build this back up. I thought Paul probably vocalized it better succinctly than I ever could, but I thought that was a great discussion with Paul. I know Dave Naor, ISS a busy guy a week before the draft, so I appreciate him taking the time with everything. Always great getting Dave on. I think it is been since the Gray Cup, so it's been way too long since we've had Dave Naer on the podcast and then Matt McCrae coming on DC Defenders really appreciate that and him taking the time and them setting that up with the league should be a good show next week. I know we have the NFL draft, got a good guest coming on that is very NFL draft focused, but he is very anxious to talk about the UFL. So we will get him on working for a couple different interviews with the league and then we'll figure out some CFL stuff as well. So like I said, I can subscribe if you like all this stuff, get us a 3,500 subscribers and we'll see you guys next time. Hope you have a great weekend. Take care.

UFL Week 3 Results, TV Ratings + Attendance! Winner and Losers From UFL Week 3!!

Well here we are back again Tuesday this week recapping UFL week three here, a preview in UFL week four. Lots of stuff going on. Andy and I had batted around doing the show. Yeah, I thought I was going to have to work yesterday. No show last Friday was out of town. Big show coming up. I will preview that on Friday, but first let's get Andrew Murray in here. Andrew, how are you doing? Good man. You survived la We did. Made that all the way to Bakersfield, my old stomping grounds and back hung out with some of the friends there. Orlando and Adams on my old station. 14 years since I left Bakersfield. I hadn't really done that. Math made me feel very old. I mean I've been through Bakersfield before. It's a town. That's all I can say about it really. It's a town. It's a town. I appreciate. Yeah, we were going to go, I thought I was going to have to film late yesterday so we said okay, let's do it today and then I ended up, my gig was done at noon and then we were okay, we were going to do it and then we had all the Garbers news coming down so we'll be able to do that today. Basically We'll do TV ratings via Mike Mitchell. We'll do attendance thoughts on that. We'll do the chase stuff. We won't probably do game by game breakdowns of everything just because it's Suzy, but we'll talk through the weekend. We'll preview all that stuff last week. But coming up this Friday, USFL historian Paul Reese is going to be joining the show. We were going to do that last week, was hoping to get a little league support with some interviews. So we will see I got my hooks out for a good XFL guest as well. Someone from one of the teams. I think you would like Andy, but Paul Res confirmed. And then for all you CFL heads, Dave Nailer nails coming back on. So we're going to be talking to the Edmonton Elk Sale and the Chad Kelly's of it all and maybe get Dave's thoughts on what he thinks of it. What is a UFL? All of that stuff. Andy, does that sound exciting? Well I mean it's your bi biannual meeting with Dave. You got to have it right. You meet him at the Gray Cup and you got to have him on the podcast once in a while. I mean the C is so honestly I was thinking about the CFL this whole weekend. I know I think some of us joked in the chat about some of the C FFL previews because I mean it's not that far away. Training camps are going to happen before we know it and the draft will come through so I hate to already be onto the next league and thinking about CFL, but I really have to give it credit. I've gotten fully integrated with CFL fandom the last few years and I really wish it's going to be interesting having not having them at the same time as the USFL and now be able to cross over from UFL over to CFL in a smooth transition. So I mean I always love having your CFL fans. I know your CFL fans are clamoring for you to have your CFL guests on. Yeah, we'll get it. Yes. What I was going to say is I like not having to do whatever it was 32 weeks straight or whatever of post-game recaps and all of that on Monday. So that'd be good. We'll do the UFL here and then we'll do that getting here. Mike Mitchell loving. Yes, I brought out, I have so many good jerseys, but I get so perspirating during the podcast and so I try to layer, but I need to bring out more of this stuff. I have a whole, I had my John Cena one last week and then I have this, so we'll do all that. Yes, Philip doing that as well. First off, I guess just breaking news reactions. Do you want to talk Chase the Chase Garbers news or do we want to do TV ratings? Where do you want to go first? I think we got to talk about Chase first. Okay, so let's talk about Chase. I'll pull up the story here. Yeah, we were like literally we would've been just going live yesterday before all this comes out, but know Laughing Mather big deal, right? San Antonio, Bramos quarterback, chase Garbers bras lose the game, he gets injured, kind of all that stuff. What do you make of that? Let me pull up Mike's story here. It's a tremendous shame. Chase Garver was off to a scintillating start in that offense. He was accurate, he was poised. He already had an epic comeback under his belt with the game they had against Memphis. Apparently he got injured in the middle of this game and still managed to play through the injury. He actually was on a heater in the fourth quarter for San Antonio when they were trying to come back against the Battle Hawks and it's really just a detriment to the whole operation of San Antonio's offense. And the same thing happened last year when Brandon Silvers got hurt. This offense just never looked the same with AJ Smith and this entire staff when their head guy got hurt and here you have the same situation with Garbers almost around the exact same time that Silvers got hurt. So it's almost eerie in that way unfortunately. I don't know as far as their options go for people who were fans of Quentin Dormy, he might get his chance again, he might be blowing his horn and charging in, but there have been speculation about or what could be done, who they could pick up and what kind of players they could add in Chase's stead. But the fact of the matter remains right now. They've lost their number one starter and you were talking about a potential MVP candidate, so this is really just devastating for the Braas. Yeah, it's tough and it's one of those, like you said, it is so hard to build kind of the continuity. We're getting all these wraps, we're getting everything going to go down like this. Obviously losing the game anyway, going down to two on ones for that. I don't know. I mean we had batted around, we call PJ Walker, do we call Cole McDonald? Do we call any of these people? We kind of batted rather in our group chat. I don't know what the best option here is. And I think dorm, I think he was doing the media avail today. I was getting my teeth worked on, so I would've hopped on that to kind of see what he had going on. His is either today or tomorrow, I can't remember because AJ was working on that as well. AJ Smith. But yeah, presumably he goes this weekend. What do you think, does the offense look any remotely similar with Dormy there? I mean the question with Dormy is can he be as efficient as Garbers? I mean dorm's arm, I have a lot of faith in just based on some of the tape that he put on for the Guardians last year and he was pretty accurate down the field. Garber's obviously operates much more in the efficiency standpoint in terms of throwing a lot of screens, throwing a lot of seam routes, throwing a lot of these shorter routes and letting a lot of the players do yards after the catch. Like John, Trey Kirkland, Cody Latimer, Anthony McFarland, all these weapons that they have on the Brahma's offense and now you bring in a different kind of pastor with dormant. Can he do the same things? I think he can if he's able to be coached up, I believe in his ability. I just wonder as far as the overall efficiency, I mean one of the most impressive things about this team was they started off the game three for three on fourth down. So even when their backs up were against the wall, they still always had a great game plan down by down and they only failed on a fourth down at the very end of the game when they were trying to come back, whether they were down by seven. So I mean I'm not sure if the accuracies is going to be there. I do think maybe some of the downfield passing game might open up a little bit, but again, that's not always in the cards for AJ Smith's operations, so we'll see how he adjusts. It's interesting you bring up PJ Walker. He's currently an unrestricted free agent, but it's one of those things where we see this in some of these leagues where once you make enough of a name of yourself, you get your paycheck from the NFL and then you're kind of indoctrinated in their system and you just kind of cycle through the rest of paternity. I mean that's happened with a number of guys that managed to make it there. Some of them now, I mean there are a couple names like Chris Traveler, he's going back to the CFL, he was in the NFL for a few years. You've had Josh Johnson, I mean he was in the NFL, he went to the A f, now he's back in the NFL has been in the NFL. He's not really seemingly going to be joining into these spring leagues ever again. So it really depends on the personality of the player, what they're looking for, what kind of opportunities they have. Do they just want to play or they want to make a paycheck or try to work their way onto an NFL team. So I don't know if PJ Walker's really realistically a chance. I think it'd be shocking if he really actually came back. I mean it would be like if Nathan worked way back to the BC Lions, it really would be Well and the whole idea and we were talking that the PJ Walker maybe in another year that makes sense where he's still so fresh coming off of this, the practice squads and all that stuff where he's still hovering around and God knows what's going to happen with the draft next week and everything else going on that way. And so yeah, God forbid he comes in here and gets hurt or whatever and then isn't able to make it into camp. I think that that's kind of unrealistic. But that man, that would be at least, I don't know, do casuals get, I dunno if PJ Walker to the UFL is like a casual, oh we got to go. I mean I think the fans of the league would go crazy, but I don't know if that has the same kind of impact as even doing the Matt Corral kind of someone that was just there. Do you think that that pops like a casual fan rating? I don't think so, but certainly for people who followed the XFL, absolutely they would go bonkers and people obviously Texas residents would go bonkers because he played over in Houston. I mean PJ Walker was five and oh, he was on pace to throw 30 touchdowns in that XFL season, which is insane. I mean that is gargantuan numbers in a spring league, but I don't think he really moves the needle for the casual viewership as you said. But the thing that I really kind of took away from this, especially with these injuries happening, especially with we'll get to Case cus in sort of his plight right now, it's a risk for some of these quarterbacks to come back to these leagues because offensive line is everything and there's already talk at the NFL level about their not being enough offensive linemen and it's something that we talk about in spring leagues. I mean they're just not in that big of supply and also defensive linemen are getting more athletic and they're getting more dynamic as a quarterback. It's really a risk injury that is not worth the compensation that you get or maybe the notoriety that you could receive if you played well enough in the league. So for a lot of these free agents and maybe in talks with their actual agents at home, they may not find that it's overall long-term good play to be in these leagues in terms of just the injury risk. And I kind of can't fault them because we've seen it happen. I mean we see it at all levels of football, but especially when there's a chance that you could be signed by an NFL team, you don't really want to throw caution to the wind like that. If you really think it's possible you could get hurt. Well it's kind of like this is such, but that was why the Rock for years, they're like, Hey, we want the Rock to come back to WWE and the rock's. Like I have a $200 million movie I'm working on, I'm not going to go risk. And I mean the Rock made $9 million here coming back for WrestleMania, which is crazy. But yeah, I'm not going to go, we have bigger sites has head here than four weeks or whatever by the time he gets in. That was even the bents of it by the time we get in. Okay. Obviously whoever you bring in won't play this week. Okay, so now we're next week. Okay, now we're in the week five already. You just have to wonder, I don't doubt Wade and AJ's motivation some of the times, some of this USFL coaches, the Jeff Fishers of the world, like hey, we're fine. Are we really making a push here for the last four weeks? Do you sense that? Because I do think it's interesting how all these coaches would attack this situation. I mean you could make in-season trades maybe with other teams and maybe there's a quarterback that was on a roster last year, but again, it depends on what their priorities are and where they're going. And I always think about quarterbacks that got injured last year. I mean, I don't know, does Brandon Silvers, is he interested in doing that Again, what would happen if someone like Luis Perez got hurt? I'm not trying to wish that on anybody, but if he got hurt, would he even consider coming back or has he made enough of a name of himself that he would say maybe I'm good. I'm just speculating in that way. But I mean for these coaches you have to really think outside the box. You of course want to have backups. I mean there's some teams like Birmingham who they don't care. They'll just plug anybody in and they make it work, but we'll get onto them later. But for the reality of a lot of these teams, you have to have somebody in place that knows the system and is able to work within it. And it really depends on who they want. I mean the battle hawks really like somebody like Nano last year, does he work on a team like San Antonio? I'm not so sure you could throw a lot of names out there, but again, unless you know the system and you are confident in what they bring to the table and if they want to be part of it, it's really threading a needle and I'm not sure it's as simple as people make it seem to be in terms of just signing a name And like I said, not that, but just to kind of put it in. I know we live and die by all of this, right? Anti and all the merger. Do you punt on this season? I know even people with the league we're just trying to get through this year and to figure out what we want to do next year and how we want to brand, I don't know. I think that this isn't, we're making the chiefs are trying to get the triple threat and we got to go back again all the, it's the UFL at the end of the day. I mean I like, oh Chase, what if he gets, he could be non-injured, come back in time to play the rest of the year. It's like he's not coming back to play the last week of the season. If he's on borderline, I mean this isn't Lamar Jackson game time call here, we're trying to get to the playoffs. You just need to be kind of just realistic about where all this is in the world. I think in terms of people's health and last point it was like the A GM McCarran thing, he needs to come the guy's playing, it was like the McLeod, Bethel Thompson. Pat's always on this. These guys have lives, these have families, they have other things to do then go play four weeks in spring football or whatever for yeah, it's good money, but it is what it's, I give AJ McCarran all the credit in the world for coming back. That's a great name to bring up because he really had no reason to and he didn't have to. He's proven it. He proved it last year. He was spectacular and now he comes back to an even better arsenal. But there's no guarantees with that. Obviously you never know what's going to happen. You could get hurt like you said, and then he doesn't have a chance to go back with the Bengals and be a backup, but he decided he wanted to come back. So all the credit to him. But this is always an individual decision made by every player and you can't really assume just based on what you're projecting them to do in the league or what they could do in the league or what kind of clout they could get. Again, I think that's a little overvalued in my opinion. It's great. I am thankful for whoever comes in and decides to play. I'm thankful that we get continuity like Perez, like McCarran, some of the Birmingham players. It's great, but it's not guaranteed Getting a lot of calls here. Philip starting to hear the Charman Jones so out of football now didn't he go try out for a CFL team last year? Wasn't he on the training camp for the Elks or something? He Was, yes. Yes. Okay, good. But then again, the Elks have signed 827 quarterbacks since last off season. So they'll sign anybody. But I mean no Charmin's out or Cardell's out. Last we spoke of Cardell. He was doing cameos in about 15 minutes for the podcast because he had so little going on. I don't think that he's involved in that. Leon, the other question we got to get Ben Kurt's done. I mean he's like, I don't think he really liked his time with the XFL. I know he got hurt. I don't like how he handled any of that situation at all. I'm like, well, they said I'm signed to the league and I don't even, I'm like, okay, well then the league's tweeting it out. This isn't insiders. The league tweeted that you signed at at least it was far enough that mountain line. But I think Ben Kurt's out. I don't think that that's a possibility. I don't think so either. I mean, once you make it as a media personality, you're pretty set. You don't really have any reason to have to move beyond that. Pat McAfee probably could have played a little bit longer in the NFL, but he's got a media empire he wanted to start. You don't really have, don't have to do those kinds of things if you don't want to. And football is a tough sport. I think football is really just a way of getting your name out there. At the end of the day, it's not even just about making money. I mean if you're playing in the NFL and you're a top player, awesome, fantastic, but that's not the reality for a lot of guys. Some of it's, Hey, I got to get my pension, I want to make a name for myself once I know that I made it, I'm out. I'm good. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with it. This is one of the most brutal sports on the planet. I get it. And so for me, I'm not beholden to the idea of somebody coming back just because they played in the league previously. I mean sometimes like you said, they have a sour experience, they don't want to do it again. Yeah, and I agree with you there where you're talking about, I think it's understated sometimes just how brutal football is and it's like, yeah, let me just, what was it, Joe Flacco did it last year, right? And that was the greatest story in the world, how he came off the couch and he came and played. He went to the playoffs. Like that's nots not the normal thing that everybody does that they're going from the carpool line in and they're calling plays at the line of scrimmage. I just think that's understated sometimes. Like, oh yeah, you can just play another six weeks. It's like McLeod played an entire CFL season, got hurt, came back and then played an entire USFL season. That's really hard. I don't care who you are, I don't care how old you are. Anything else from the garbers of it all? Like I said, I mean it's just going to be really interesting to see if they trust someone like Dormy or if they try to swap for somebody else. But like you said, it doesn't matter how quickly they get them. They can't integrate 'em this week. They're going to have to wait. And that's the only downside. That's the one downside that I said and I've advocated for before in these spring leagues. I want to see a bi-week installed for these teams just to have a time to sort of recuperate and have a midseason break to be able to sort of reassess where they're at. I mean the team that could really use it right now for example is Arlington. They need a bi-week, like no one's business. Same with Memphis. There are teams that need that and also just for injury's sake as well, if they had a bi-week, then maybe I could say sure, maybe garbage does come back, but I don't think that's really reality. But that extra week I think could do wonders, especially for trade possibilities too. So hard to trade for somebody and then expect them to be integrated immediately. Had a question here, and I was very dismissive of this, maybe you won't be as dismissive. What a chances to see a player like Zach Wilson come down and get some reps. I say 0.0% at least for a couple of years. I don't see that happening at all. I mean these former draft picks, especially first round draft picks, don't grow on trees, especially aren't going to be growing on trees that come down here. They don't want to really stoop themselves to this level. Look, guys like Johnny Menzel are an anomaly because Johnny Manzel just decided to flame out of every league in existence. That's his own methodology of going through life. So that's different. But as far as the normal basic first round player, it's really hard to expect them because once you get that, you get a first round grade or you get drafted in the first round, you run around with that label for the rest of your life and every coach thereafter thinks even if your first team doesn't accentuate your talents, maybe they can rehab your career in some way, shape or form. And that's just reality. That's a whole nother thing as far as how NFL teams evaluate talent from year to year. But that is just a label that teams can run with when they are trying to look at players and say, well there used to be a first round pick. Maybe we can do something with them and they believe it too. Alright, let's transition. We we can do more roundup questions at the end here if we wanted to do anything else about Garbers. Let's talk TV ratings here. These came out today. I'm always like, oh yeah, because I always check everything and I go back to bed for a few minutes. I'm like, okay, yeah, these were this morning. Mike Mitchell here at the Saturday game, the ESPN DC Arlington, I'm just pulling up so I have the times on here. So that was the 1:00 PM Eastern DC Defenders, Arlington Renegades 534,000, the Memphis at Birmingham Stallions, that would've been the seven o'clock primetime game, 8 37 on Fox and then Sunday, A BC, Houston, Michigan, that was the early one. That was at noon. Noon eastern and then 3:00 PM the St. Louis Battle Hawks Brahm is there hitting the million for that. General thoughts on this? I have a couple thoughts, but general thoughts. It appears that the Saturday morning time slot is maybe the roughest of the entire slate because that also was the case with Memphis and San Antonio last week. It doesn't seem to be an enviable time slot for a lot of people to be watching football. I think a lot, I'm going to be honest, there's people like me who probably would rather be doing chores on Saturday morning and getting all that done as soon as the weekend starts. But I mean the fact of the reality is you're seeing a lot of these numbers come from the network televisions. I know ESPN obviously is this is cable as opposed to having a B, C and having Fox. So that does factor into it as well. But the time slot is also a big factor into it. And the night times it looks like as far as the Saturday night does pretty well. The midday game on Sunday does pretty well and even the Sunday morning game does pretty well. We had that Easter game with San Antonio that first weekend. They seemed to draw at least a decent audience television wise, even when there was really no reason to. So this tells me that it looks like the one problem slot could potentially be Saturday morning. I know that's unavoidable for certain circumstances and also as Mike was talking about, there was the Ohio State Spring football game on at the same time as the DC game, which may have affected viewership and that was over on Fox. So ironically enough, that same network may be drawing away from that audience, but people are going to want to watch those games, whereas with the Alabama game, the Alabama spring game you had after the Arlington game and before the Birmingham game. So you were able to sort of sandwich it in between those two and it didn't affect the viewership at the later game. Yeah, I see time for UFL. We'll talk to your question. We have the two games at the same time coming up next weekend. The issue too is it's also the ESPN, right? So it's early ESPN and the game last week, the early game on Saturday was early ESPN as well. So I had tweeted out and we have, I got here the bookmark from the Mike Ville or whatever with Fox. But to me it's really highlighting, and this is what they've said, this is their game plan. We are consolidating, we're giving the best time slots because, and I've had this conversation with Brett and some of the guys in the Facebook groups today and there's all this talk about, oh, okay, well next week that's the DC Defenders versus the stallions. And that's a really hot game. That's a big, I'm not saying it's a non-zero number, but to me what really dictates this, and we had this song with Ben Fisher last year from the Sports Business Journal. I'll reach out to him here probably like midway point once we have enough of a sample size to kind of talk through. But really at the end of the day, it is the network and then the time slot that it's on the matchups and like, okay, what are the standings? Okay, does this game map playoff implications? As much as we all like to salivate over that like, oh, I can't wait for the Brahmas revenge game against whoever. It doesn't really work that way. I mean Fox is clearly carrying the day here, really good rating for the a b night game, but also that's the A BC night game, right? Sunday night I think that you have, there's X number of TVs in America that are tuned to Fox X number that are turned to A B, C. That's why last year, the USFL in 2022 with the kickoff, let's do the simulcast on Fox and NBC because then we'll get the double ratings because there's roughly about a million people that are going to be watching you and roughly a million people they'll be doing that. I dunno, I think anything around the millions good. I think if you're significantly under that, I think it's losing relevance. I think Ben Fisher said have 500,000 and lower. You're probably not necessarily hitting that on OTA. I'm not talking the ESPN one. I'm talking like if you're on Fox A, B, C, but yeah, I mean it's good. It is certainly not falling off a cliff for any guard. Well, I mean those Fs, so one games which score a 200,000, which was just that wasn't going to get it done. These numbers on network television certainly are encouraging and it shows you that there is a floor involved here. Again, the floor is not as high as it was when it was XFL pre covid, but you still have a lot of numbers here to work with as far as the floor goes. And like you said, I agree, the matchup doesn't really matter to the casual audience. It's time slot, it's convenience. It's when people can be in front of their televisions to watch these games. And of course you want to showcase the best games with the best audiences as well. That Arlington ESPN game, which from an attended standpoint, it wasn't the greatest TV product, which we can get into later, but that first St. Louis home game was on a B, C at night on Saturday, like a 5:00 PM primetime matchup. That's great. That's exactly what you want. You want to put those kinds of games. I know they can't really do that in terms of being at the mercy of the venue availability and being able to have time slots that they want to work with, but you do what you can. I still think this is better than we've had in previous years. Obviously no competition head to head with both leagues existing and also the fact that you're not using channels like FX or FS one to sort of put your games on or Peacock, which was another one. So you're not cutting viewership that way either. Just to put it in context, I had a question here from Leon did the spring, I'm assuming you're talking about the Spring League, but this is a good comparison, is when did the spring games draw Radiance wise on Fox? If we look here and let me pull this up on XL new sub would a throwback, the Spring league, the Brian Woods cardboard box. I made a football league out of a cardboard box in my garage, 418,000 for their finale on Fox in the spring. And that was different times and covid and all that stuff. But just to put it in perspective, because when the USS L Season one, oh my God, we're doing, I'm like, okay, it's such a jump from what the Spring league was in terms of now we're paying the players, obviously we're paying the coaches and we're doing the hub and we're doing all this stuff and we have all these teams and we're not just playing basically scrimmages and all that stuff to get 200, 300 more thousand. It shows you kind of where that four is. And so what do you make of that here to get four 18 for the Mega bowl? I mean we're getting 800,000 for the UFL here, but it shows you, I mean there's even a four below this and it's really, that's always interesting to me. I mean the Spring League was not a leak. I mean the Spring League was a proof of concept that honestly I've grown to appreciate more as time has gone on because the fact that it was basically operating on the budget of a Diet Coke and to me that was a testament to how the players played and also the fact that you could just put football and TV in it work. Now, I do not believe in that concept for the UFL because there needs to be more effort put into presenting the product because it has be a TV product. Now, if you're going to say it's a TV product, then start pretending like it's a TV product. You can't just put it in front of people and have a venue full of 15 people on a drone and expect it to sell. That doesn't work. The Mega Bowl was the baseline. I thought that was basically an experiment and then it spilled over to the Birmingham hub and it was not an enviable TV product. So that is something that I think was lost in translation there, at least on Fox's end. But it does show you that there is a baseline interest in the sport, which is great, but you have to work on that and be able to build on that if you're going to present it to the public. Okay, so I guess the spring games were the Ohio State Spring football games that you're saying said well, so that's another good comparison as well. But I like talking about the spring league. Any chance I get, maybe I'll wear my Joer jersey next week. So mean, there's certainly a floor here for I think for football of any kind. I had tweeted out at the end of the day, the time slot is really all that matters. People don't care if it's X-F-L-U-S, F-L-U-F-L-Q-F-L, it's football on in the place where I can easily find it. That's good enough for me. Do you agree? Disagree. I mean for now that's just the reality and it's not really going to be about the matchups. Maybe some people will become familiar with a Battle Hawks brand or a stallion's brand or a defender's brand, but that takes time to build that relationship with people. And for now they're just another league, another football league with a bunch of random teams that most people dunno about. And that to me tells you or tells me that you have to have a good time slot to show these games. Yeah, I'll be curious to get Ben's slot. I have a feeling I know what he's going to say just because we always had 'em last year. Mike here has a question. Replace ESPN with NBC, that'd be a major coup. Yeah, if wishes and buts were candy and nuts, we'd all have a Merry Christmas. I mean a certain point you're not like this was pulling teeth to get to this kind of merger here that we have going on. I mean generally speaking TV networks are like, Hey, hey buddy, do you want to work on this with me? I mean Fox wanted to get involved in this obviously bit off a little maybe more than they thought they could. Redbirds doing all this stuff. They weren't finding the return on investment they wanted. It was very fortuitous circumstances right now. But that's generally not how major TV networks work. No, it's not. And also keep in mind NBC was burned by the XFL in 2001, but I know its time has passed, so maybe tempers have cooled since then. As far as the relationship, obviously they took on some of the SFL games last year and the year before, so they were willing to share in that load a little bit. But look, SPN and A BC are invested in this product and I can't really fault them either way. It's not an idea of people aren't watching ESPN, I think it's just more how are they presenting the product because people clearly will watch SPN for other things like women's basketball and that's not a problem. So I think it's more of how it's being presented and that you can go into TV presentation and all that if you want to. But that to me is more of the story here as opposed to let's just throw it over another network and let them have the numbers. I don't think that's really sustainable. It's good to have that here. I think you need to work on building on the audiences on all fronts, A, B, C-E-S-P-N Fox. You need to be able to build into the audiences that you have right now because that's where your familiarity with that audience is. People aren't flocking the NBC to watch spring football. Yeah. Leon had a question here. How many USFL and XFL games topped a million last year? The USFL only had the two, and Mike's comment on here was the championship game and then the one where they had the whole Kentucky Derby and they popped that rating coming into all of that stuff. But XFL, I'm sure Max is on here and can do that stuff. If Max is still on the chat, I'm sure he can pump that out. Yeah, Mike had more than two last year. Let's see here, we have a $5 super chat. That's exciting. Andy, we're rolling in the money right now. Let me get this out from Coach Sip and jam juice out of a straw. I appreciate that. I know if I've seen you on here before, please like everyone like and subscribe. Like I said, big show coming up on Friday. Dave Naor, Paul Reese, US Val historian, do you think the league underestimates the value of A UFL films, innovative NFL film circuit, sixties, seventies in terms of marketing? I think we are trying to do the best we can right now. I think we did the player 54 thing and I don't necessarily think they saw the return investment on that. I know we did the United by Football thing. I'll tell you, I think it was week three, they hadn't uploaded the new episode yet. They had re-uploaded the weeks before and I did not hear one peep of anybody on it until I went on to try to watch it on demand. So I can tell you the viewership isn't necessarily outstanding there. Andy, any other thoughts on that? I think maybe in a couple of years down the road, I don't know if there's even the UFL today show. I know we champion like, okay, we're doing this and this is good, but I don't know how much appetite there is. I mean, I love to have a pregame show, but I don't know if that's there either. I don't know if the appetite is available for something like that and for UFL films, I mean it would be great to have that. It really would. I just don't know if they have the allocated resources. I mean they're already dealing with things like social media and community marketing and other things that I think that I'd rather them work on first before we really worry about things of that nature. But yeah, it would be a great way to promote your product and promote the league and promote your brand. I just dunno if that's really a priority right now, considering other things that I would rather they work on. But sure, that's something that I would like to see from the league eventually. Max. Yeah, six XFL games over the million. The other thing as well, comment, I guess we've never talked about this on the show talking about we never got to cover the destroying injury, which I shouldn't laugh at, but I guess that happened right as I was flying out. But another blow, I don't know if I can say exactly what I said in the group chat last night because Dorothy came home and I said, Hey man, the brass quarterback got injured. Chase Garbers. And she's like, oh. She's like, man, the bras are really having a lot of injuries. I'm like, what's his story about the bra? She goes, well, no, that annoying YouTuber that you, I'm like, oh God, we had been to LA and all that stuff. But yes, the Donald, Hey, any comments on the destroying injury? We never really got to that. Well, you certainly started a firestorm before that even happened because of the video of him doing the tackle. But look, I can get into that in a second, but I'll say this first, destroying, it's unfortunate I feel for him because it was a cool story. He obviously made a lot of notoriety, a lot of people who wouldn't have followed the league otherwise were following because of him. So he brought in an audience. Now from my standpoint, it's fascinating to see a player celebrated so much who had never even attempted a field goal in the league. I've never quite seen that. I can't just for my money and no offense, just not offense to him or anything, it's hard for me to characterize you as a star player when you literally don't record anything on the stat sheet as in your primary position. I mean obviously he'd done special teams things, he'd done kickoffs and he had tackles to his name, but he had never attempted a field goal and San Antonio didn't attempt a field goal until this past weekend when he was out. So for me, I mean it's a fascinating phenomenon that happened with him, but it just goes to show that you got to be ready for these games. And as far as filming and being part of something really special, that's cool. But at the end of the day, it's a brutal sport and it can chop your head off in a second. It can take you out immediately. It can all end in one fell swoop. We've seen that with other players. So I feel for destroying that aspect that it just ended so abruptly. But that's kind of the reality with the sport and we've seen that for many guys who don't get nearly as much notoriety. Yeah. Jared here has a good comment and this, this doesn't need to be a whole tangent on term right now, but I agree with the thought process, right? This is someone big we're going to bring them on to do. I have lived through my entire life and thankfully now WWE E is at a point under Triple H where they are confident in being a pro wrestling brand. I lived through 25 years, whatever I was watching, and Vince McMahon of we need to find other cooler people than we are. So they can come in and then they'll bring in their audience, we'll bring in David, our cat back in WCW. He will win the championship. We'll bring in, I remember Jeremy Vin came on like Entourage is hot, let's bring on Bob Barker. I mean, they did this whole thing and every week it was like we were giving away money at one point. And anybody that's cooler, just be confident in your brand. Just be confident in your brand. I think at the end of the day, yeah, I mean it doesn't hurt to have destroying a part of it. I just don't think we need to be falling over ourselves. This is so incredible. That's my 2 cents. Max was asking for this and I'm doing this under protest. I think this is rude, but when destroying posted his neck brace meme, and now keep in mind this is very serious injury. I'm glad he's safe and thankfully he's going to be fine. But I mean it really is a new meme, right Andy? I mean this really is right. Am I wrong? I don't know if he's selling it as a meme. I know you are. I wouldn't have gone that way, but for me, I don't know how much light he's really making of his injury here. Well, I know, but I mean it's a little bit, it's a thing. It's a thing. Sorry, I just had that Max was asking for it. That's the thing. It's a little bit of an envelope push. I'll just say that. Okay. Okay, okay, okay. Okay. Let's talk about anything else on that. We'll talk attendance here. We got to talk some actual football, but I want to have it, we had a comment about the building local fan base is all that stuff. So you want to move to attendance Always. Okay, so we have this, and I'm going to have again, Paul Reeds on the show this week talking about some of the USFL markets. Birmingham showing up here with the 12,000 for their home opener, high weather mark of the weekend. That stadium, we have a whole breakdown of, I think Stefan and them made it, but Max checked the numbers. We'll do all that deep dive with Paul Reese about attendance and all that stuff on Friday, but 12,000 for Birmingham, Arlington, the new low for them at Michigan, continuing a three week decline at San Antonio. If that darn stadium wasn't so big, I think that would maybe feel a little bit better. What did you make of the attendance this weekend? Disappointing is the word I would use, but here's the reason why, and I want to go into a couple of things here. First of all, for Arlington, I mean it barely looked like anybody was in the stadium when they first started the game. And our colleague Anthony Miller had noted as such this was going to be a low attendance game. And he was right. I am not quite sure what happened here because they drew 14,000 their first game against Birmingham. Maybe the novelty of playing another XFL team wore off, but the people just did not show up. And it is the lowest attendance they've had ever. Any of the leagues that they played in the 2020 version, the 2023 version, and now this version, they've never had so many low attendance numbers. Now I know the team had started off oh and two, but they've gotten off the slow starts before and that didn't stop people from coming. So something was lost in translation here. Really disappointing on that end. Birmingham. Okay, look, I've had just about enough of all these stallion fans coming out every week and saying, look, you don't understand this league. These people really care about Birmingham. They care about stallions football back to back, whatever. There's all these people that really care about stallions football. I'm sure there are. They're not showing up at the stadium. Half the stadium is empty. You pack everybody on one side, it looks awkward. I don't know what it is. Either it's a Celine Dion concert or it's a gas station opening, or apparently it's the Alabama spring game. Now all of a sudden, that seems to be the other aspect of it. I don't know what excuses, I don't want any more excuses. You have a back-to-back champion. You have a consistent football team, you have notoriety, you have success, you have history, you have everything you need. Why aren't people showing up? I want to know. I got to know. And you know what? Maybe the answer isn't there in plain sight for a lot of people. Maybe it's, maybe it's Fox's undoing. Maybe it's the fact that there's things around Birmingham that are stopping people from wanting to go to the stadium. And I know I got heat for it for writing an article two years ago about how the infrastructure was less than desirable around it. And people took the issue with that. Well, you know what? They can keep taking issue with it. There's got to be something here that's stopping people from going to games. Because what's the excuse? This team is getting significantly out drawn by the Battle Hawk brethren who have just about more than three times as much as attendance as they do, they get out drawn by dc I mean, people were celebrating. I saw somebody celebrating this week where they were showing the attendance numbers and the percentage of the stadium that they're filling out. It's 26% of the stadium that it filled out. And someone's like, great, we're third place. That's not an accomplishment to sell. I'm sorry, it's not. It's really not. This Birmingham team has to draw better. I'm sorry, end of story. I don't want to hear any more excuses from the stallions fans, Nate here. How can there not be a smaller stadium that's usable? They're in a deal with protective, right? Wasn't that in the whole, I mean, I think now maybe this is year three and we can move on from that, but I agree with that. I don't know. I think the 2022, the 8,700 home games or whatever for all the teams, I think they really did just really hard there for irreversible damage for that Birmingham brand because yeah, last year these numbers are down compared to last year and even last year was down compared to the time before. So I don't know. I agree with you because talking and we had, excuse me, a comment from Jacob. The Houston game next week could be really rough because the rice stadium of it all, and Houston's not good. And I don't know. I agree. Attendance isn't the end of the world ride. And you always see that like, oh, it's the TV ratings. It has been wildly proven here now for two years that people do not like to watch football with empty stadiums. It makes you feel like you're back in Covid. It's really weird. It doesn't look right. Even I watched the Mariner game last night, Monday night baseball. It is a crowd. It's fine. And the mariners aren't onto the hottest star, but it's a griffey Bobblehead night. It was fine. You got to have some sort of energy in there. And when you have some of these, this Michigan with the 6,900 people in that Ford field, like it is rough. And then to me it compounds because then if the game's slow and then it kills the audience even, it's just a compounding effort at that point. Yeah, it kills the energy level. I mean, that's the attendance of high school football championships in the state of Michigan. That's the kind number we're looking at. And I'm sure state of Michigan football and high school is great, but for a pro league, that's not the number you need to be drawing. You got to pump that up. Now, three home games in a row doesn't help to start the season, so that does tax your audience a little bit as well. But I mean, the proof of concept of being in an NFL city hasn't really beared out for the USFL here or the UFL, I guess in this case for San Antonio too. I mean, I have to keep myself from framing it in this reference, but I can't help but keep looking back at those commander games and back in 2019. But the thing is, it's a different audience and it's a market that's been burned. It's been burned before, and I think they all remember that they have that skepticism for San Antonio. They've got to find a way to build that audience back because the Alamo Dome can be really cool when it's filled, but at the time being, it's still kind of cavernous with how many people really go to those games. So look, there's work to be done on all fronts. The only teams that are really doing their job are DC and St. Louis. They both have rabid fan bases who are crazy, who are enigmatic, who have personality, who have specific traits to them that you can point to immediately that continue to increase their attendance instead of decrease. They both have success. They both have identity as football teams. You can draw on that, and that's the crown jewel of your leagues. But that's two out of eight teams. It's got to be more than that. It's not going to be enough to be sustainable as far as a marketable entity. You can't just rely on those two teams. There has to be more and work done for these other squads. Well, a couple of things, and I have a little bit of a rant here. I mean, it's not lost on me that the two most successful of any of these brands or two XFL 2020 brands, battle Hawks and defenders I hate. And just as someone that's been, we've all been a part, I mean you've been a part of this as long as I have, but it is been a part of this now, just how we've gotten to this and these markets and everything is the most backwards way of building the football league ever, right? XFL 2020. Okay, we're setting that up, and that was its thing. And that died. USFL, Birmingham, Alabama was the only place that would pay, and they could come up with a deal to do that. Okay? So we're going to do a hub there because the taxes are right and they're giving us a benefit and we can use the stadium. There's all these different reasons why we're going to do that. Otherwise, you would never choose Birmingham, Alabama to be the home base of any football league ever, right? There's just too much competition with college. So then the other seven markets are, well, these were the trademarks that we could acquire from the eighties. There was no thought process of like, well, should we even go to Michigan or should we go to Tampa Bay or should we go And they had comment quotes about this, well, these were the trademarks that we acquired and this is what we're going to do. So then you have those eight teams now, and then when the XFL, a little bit of thought process, okay, we got to bring Seattle back, obviously, DC St. Louis, the Vegas thing we've talked about, and then we're doing all these Texas teams because we're doing the hubs. So again, you would never put three teams in Texas, but now we are. Well, now with this merger, it's like you're keeping the worst out of a lot of these except for the two, right? You would never choose Memphis, Michigan. These are not markets that you would choose to do this. You would choose Oakland, San Diego, St. Louis, you would choose these NFL markets that got left out. And I know there's all the other logistics, but just there's no rational reason why these are the eight teams right now, unless you've seen how all this has gone down. Nobody would pick these eight cities in any map of the world of how to have a football league. I mean, that's the thing that seems like not just a logistical decision, but there's also a little bit of a motion mix in there. The St. Louis fans want to prove to stand Croy, you left us on the side of the road and you were wrong. DC fans proving to Dan Snyder, Hey, we really don't care about your team right now of the way you've operated it. We're going to go over here instead. And they've managed to draw enough. We'll see what happens with the commanders going forward, and if Josh Harris is able to bring those people back, but they've managed to establish themselves in a market that needed them. So for these other markets, I mean, Birmingham sounded like a cool concept, but it just hasn't really borne out that way. And same thing with Memphis. People talked about how great, it seemed like having football in Memphis was, well, it hasn't really borne out that way. And same thing with Michigan, the fact that they're just kind of relying on these ips and these old markers of, well, this was really popular in the eighties, so why isn't it popular now? Because the market's changed, things have changed, the demographics have changed, the communities have changed. You have to do your research on those. And for me, again, I'll always advocate for a team to come into San Diego. I always will, because one, it's the same feeling. A lot of people are spurned by the fact that the charter's left, but also the city is building back its sports identity. They're adding teams now. They're starting to put teams back into the system and they're starting to give themselves their feet after being burned by so many different teams and markets for so long and bad ownership. That's the thing. You have to know what the people are looking for and maybe not every market has this, but maybe some markets just want to thumb their noses at owner that completely abandoned them and for other leagues and other cities, there might be different reasons, but I agree with you. It doesn't seem like there was always enough forethought on placing these markets in the first place And they always dangle that like, oh, well we chose, okay, Memphis might have an owner lined up, right? Mike has said Memphis and that's what they did, and it's the FedEx guy, whatever. You're not buying this franchise. It's averaging 7,000 fans. It's certainly not for anything that the FL, excuse me, that the UFL is going to part with. I mean that's like this idea of I'm going buy and then I'm going to spend my own money. I mean this is a CFL thing all over again. People own CFL teams because it's a cool thing to do. I can't own, obviously they're not going to buy an NFL team. I can own the Bob. I guess Bob Young is different. He really wanted to build it back up, but we own these teams to be cool and to be able to show off and we spend our money until we're done spending our money on it and then we pawn it off on somebody else. I had one thing here and then let's get to some football. We'll probably go a little bit over an hour, but we'll try to get out of here decently and I love that comments a lot. Could Michigan playing in the don't be beat issue? I live in Michigan. There's always an issue. There's always an issue. There's a carwash that's having a sale and there's a bookstore opening and they're like, there's always a reason and I am tired of that of everybody like, well actually seven counties over and they're having, I remember when the Savannah bananas, that's why Birmingham can't draw. It's the, there's always something and I mean I said the same thing with Seattle. It's cracking and that's why people don't want to go and especially when you're playing at exactly the same time three miles away, that is a little bit of a reason, but otherwise there's always going to be an issue And I think it's something that you've touched on before is just getting these guys into the community and being able to be part of the community instead of working out of a hub and then being transplanted into the community after the fact. I mean, you want to integrate these players and be able to get people on board with your product. I mean, one example I can think of in recent memory, which is just drawing bananas numbers all the time, is this team down here called the San Diego Wave. I mean before they even played a game, I was seeing stickers of theirs on people's cars and hoods all over the place and thinking, man, this is a women's soccer league team that is getting this much notoriety and they got some notable players like Alex Morgan and such to play for them, but the fact that they were able to just put themselves out there as an expansion franchise in this league and immediately just draw numbers. I mean they are selling out this 30,000, 35,000 seat stadium sometimes and it's nuts because it's a league that people in most cases would just say like what? NWSL. Okay, I don't know what that is. And they're doing gangbusters because of the way that they integrated themselves into the community and they do all these player signings and they go out and they encourage girls to play soccer in the area and there's some local people. I remember the San Diego fleet, not to get on too much of a tangent, but the San Diego fleet, they had some partnership with this fitness center down here called Orangetheory and there were guys who were getting sponsorships to go work out and be part of some different branches with that company around the area and get people be like, oh, you're a football player. Okay, so where do you play? Oh, okay, you play for this league and that's how it starts because again, your average Joe's not going to know this and that has not been done by this league. It's been more of the corporate mindset of let's just get our numbers audience wise. Whatever it is is what it is. We want the TV ratings, let's just get that interest instead and try to draw national interest. But you have to start from the grassroots first and we've seen that. A couple comments here and then we'll talk games. I had a comment from, and I agree with this and this is going to be more the discussion I wanted to get in with Paul Reese on the show Friday. US L'S ticket model really sandbagged them and you create an expectation that you don't have to pay for tickets. Fans won't show up when they do. I mean, I do think that this, Hey, come five bucks and get a beach towel and we'll do all WWE stars are going to be here, we're doing all this stuff and then now it's like, you want me to pay $70 for it? Whatever it is for the ticket, I don't want to do that. The other thing I love at this Jared buy UFL team when they're small, then sell data for massive profit. Yes, because Philip asked this, right? This is what they're like the model. We want to get the local owners and all this stuff. If I had any amount of money in the world to buy a team and put it in Seattle, I wouldn't do it right now. You're not buying. There's no product to buy, right? If you had done this and if two years ago the SFL had done things correctly and rolled out, maybe by year five you are enticing people to buy into this stuff, but otherwise, what am I buying? 6,000 people showing up? I mean, that's not a gate. That's not even enough to run some of these gates, the venues anyway, like Lumen Field to run that. You're bringing eight whatever. What was the external average in there last year? 10,000 at Lumen, 12,000. Like Lumen Field cost a ton of money to run. I know that because talked to Sam Schwartzstein about the numbers that were involved in that, how they didn't think they were even going to do it there. So this whole idea with that, I don't know. I'm enough of a rant on that. Anything else? And then let's do a little football before we get out of here. Well, just to touch quickly on the MLS thing, I think it's fascinating that in my time sort of talking about it, I mean this is a league that I quite frankly don't spend much time watching if we're just talking about a different sport, but the fact of the matter is what do they have? They have a TV deal with Apple. With Apple plus tv, they have slowly expanded franchises. The expansion fee for the San Diego team next year is upwards of 400 million. I mean for an expansion franchise in the MLS for a league that seemingly most average people don't care about. And obviously I get told by all these people that I teach in my regular job, all these European students and Brazilian students and all that, I'm like, oh, it's an significant league and no one wants to play their mess is obviously going to destroy everybody by playing in there. It's like, okay, but it makes money. It appears to make enough money that people care about it and invest in the product and it keeps expanding, but they don't focus on just television audience or the spectacle of it. Look, the giveaway thing. Why do you think I'm going to a Padres game for the giveaway? No, I love going to Padre games. They're fun and they're a part of the atmosphere. Do I want to be, but I do go to some, I'm going to bar giveaway. I like getting a knit beanie as much as anybody, but that's not why I am going to a game. I could buy that online. That's the thing and that's probably what people are thinking about the other stuff. They're like, whatever. I could buy a spatula and put my slap my own logo. Who cares? That's not the part of it, but maybe you're a giveaway person. I don't know. All right, let's get into some of this stuff here. Just big surprise, upsets for the weekend. We had the Ballad Hawks year over the Bras 31, the 24 Panthers, sherlocking, the roughnecks. I was traveling. I was doing my best to keep up on all this stuff. Birmingham obviously over the showboats as to be expected for their home opener and then DC eking out of the wind. Biggest takeaway from that and then let's start focusing on to next weekend, but just any major takeaways from week three. The renegades really just fell flat and be up 10 points with just a little over two minutes left, which they could have ran the clock down to this two minute warning. They mishandled that and could have ran the clock down on the field goal attempt. They make the field goal. Then you kick it to Chris Roland who has been pretty good the entire game. He's made some big plays. He runs it back past the 50 yard line DC scores quickly and is able to get a two point conversion and then they get that fourth and 12th onside play, which is starting to become pretty easy for teams at least as far as conversion percentage wise, it's definitely, it's a lot more possible than the onside kick and it's been converted two weeks in a row and like San Antonio gets Memphis last week, DC gets down the field this time. They just have to kick a field goal and they win and just an absolutely devastating loss for the Renegades who on offense, I can't fault them. I mean Luis Perez almost throws for 300 yards. Tyler Vaughn, I don't know what DC was doing. They just thought it was optional to cover him all day. They weren't doing it period. But DC's, defense man and their special teams have just let them down this season and it's not the same unit as last year and that's really crippling them because they finally figured out their offense. They have consistent offense, but it doesn't matter because the other two units have just fallen by the wayside. I have seen this a lot and I obviously don't think we'll do it this season because we're not fan control football changing rules in between games. But I think this conversion and it will probably be adjusted in the off season if it's too successful, but hey, maybe they want it. Maybe they want to. Yeah, it gives everybody a chance. It gives your team a chance Anyway so that with that and then so I mean Birmingham, right? I mean not too much of a surprise here, right? Pretty much took care of business. Anything stood out to you from Birmingham? I joked in the chat, I said, if Adrian Martinez can find a way to throw a pass, this team is going to be lethal. Well, guess what? He had himself an outing. This is frightening for the rest of the league. If Adrian Martinez plays like he did on Sunday and he had a fumble too, he had a fumble in the first quarter, but if he is able to become any semblance of a consistent passer and really is able to utilize the full skillset that's around him, forget it. This team might run the table. I mean this is really terrifying. They can run the ball, they can throw it now with Adrian Martinez whose legs are obviously a tremendous asset. This team, they treated Case cus like a pinata. They beat him senseless, they killed him. I mean they had three sacks in the first four plays. They just treated him like a ragdoll. Bless him. I can't believe he even kept getting the way. He just kept getting up but just kept getting beat up and beat up and Troy Williams eventually had to come in. Oh man, this Birmingham team just has all the pieces. They really do and they don't have to use someone like Jaymar Smith and we were wondering is Jaymar Smith going to come in? Well this is a resounding no, he is not coming in because if Adrian Martinez is the guy, this is it. And it also, on a sideline note, I mean this basically kind of ends the Matt Corral experiment at least for now. So for Skip Holts to just continue to get these guys, these quarterbacks to come into the system and play like this is just such a testament and I'm sorry, I really just don't think the rest of the USFL has a prayer. No, I agree with that. I mean if you had asked me preseason and especially going in and even the first week and them thoroughly taking care of business against Arlington kind in the second half of that game, Panthers here, I mean are we good? I mean we beat the roughneck so it's not a tall task, but I mean is Michigan give you anything to be inspired about? Their defense is what's going to carry them offensively. I mean I think this is more of a byproduct to the fact that the roughnecks are just lack of a better term, rough to watch. They just don't have much going for them on offense. Reid Sin Net tried his best, but there's just only so much he could do that interception wasn't even his fault. It bounced off one of the players' hands and ricocheted into Panther's hands. Look, EJ Perry still a passer that I don't really envy. Now 16 for 19 is fantastic, but it's his legs. I mean he's just a runner. He always breaks out of contain and he is able to do these QB draws and he makes a lot happen with his legs offensively. They'll do enough. Matt Colburn. I mean that's awesome. Great one two punch. Matt Colburn or West Hills and if you could EJ Perry, they should be a running attack. They should focus on that, but their defense really what their calling card is and of course you have Mr. Myers back there just bombing it away. I mean the Panthers are probably your second best demon. Probably remain that way for the rest of the season. I just don't really give them much of a shot against Birmingham, but as far as getting back into the playoffs, yeah, absolutely, and that's a testament to the rest of the roster at least being cohesively built and Mike Nolan knowing what he wants to do with it. Yeah, I saw RJ I think put RJ Young put the Panthers I think in number two and I was like, man, is he smoking? Like, hey, okay, you agree with that? We saw a bunch of comments like, Hey, maybe Birmingham will trade Matt Corral now. I don't know. I don't see them doing that just for competitive advantage to the bras just because of all that. Speaking of that here, St. Louis came in, took care of business against the bras St. Louis. Are they picking up steam here at this point? I know it's been kind of slow going the first couple weeks. Oh absolutely. I mean you have such a bevy of running options now and not only that, they're supposed to get Jako Pearson back very soon. He's apparently cleared the practice. So I mean you just continue to add this arsenal for this team, give it up for this team figuring out on offense with Adrian McCarran just being the smooth operator, I mean he's in full command of this entire operation. I like St. Louis a lot defensively. I'm still a little bit concerned about them, but from an offensive standpoint, I mean they can score with anybody. They can get into shootouts and they always have a chance. You got to think that as of right now, they're probably the favorites now, especially with the Chase Garber's injury, but I mean it's really a matter of them not getting in their own way. I think it's going to be really interesting to see them face off against dc. I mean that's still to me, one of the best rivalries in this league and DC has completely owned it, but DC and St. Louis is still the thing that you have to really look at most and who gets the most out of those victories is going to determine who wins this entire conference. But yeah, I love the Battle Hawks offense. They're so tenacious and Beck's really just, again, I like the way he coaches this team. I feel good about them going forward as far as San Antonio goes, I hope they can find a signal call. I really do because it's really a shame considering what they accomplished the first two weeks. Yeah, I texted John Lewis because he had had Brams as a one team, a one win team, and I said, you're crazy. And then Chase Garbers came out and lit the world up fire. I said, don't you feel foolish now? Well, hey, maybe John Lewis is a sightsee here and can see a Sosay. Yeah, Maybe he and Mike. Yeah, he can see in the future here. Then let's do here. We'll quick we'll get out of here. We did have a question. What is Mark as Cohos name? That's the professor Andrew Murray, so you can follow him on Twitter. Paul Murray. There you go. Coming up here this weekend. This is going to get controversial. We have the big triple header, but it's not really because two of the games are at the same time. Memphis going into St. Louis. Oh, I was going to say St. Louis against Birmingham in St. Louis for the championship is probably the best case scenario right now. I think that they quickly, do you agree or disagree? Not a hundred percent. I mean from an audience standpoint, that's going to draw your biggest number from an intrigue standpoint. I think those two fan bases going against each other would be fantastic. I believe that's what the league, like I said, the league would never say it, but I'm sure they would love nothing more than that matchup to happen on paper because that just is a guaranteed draw for everybody. It gives us a lot of energy to look forward to as far as going there in person, but I mean if DC recovers or one of the other team recovers, that'd be great. I do think what I'm curious about, because we saw this with the XFL championship game, there were fans from other teams that showed up that weren't in the championship game and I gave them a lot of credit. It felt it gave off a semi gray cup vibe where you saw representatives of other teams show up even though their team wasn't in the big game. I wonder if that's going to be the same case here or is it just going to be all St. Louis fans and then maybe a smattering of stallions fans in there, or you're going to see representatives from other parts of the league. I think that's the sign of a really good healthy league is when you have people who care from other fan bases that still want to make it to the championship game even though their team's not in it. Well, I think if you look at St. Louis, I don't think they need any other team support to fill that dome. I mean think the fix is in, they want dirty saw the turf truck. The fix is in want. We're fixing this getting St. Louis here, but no, I mean I think they could fill that stadium just with the Battle Hawk stands. I mean that place is going to be rocking. Alright. I will say viewership this weekend could be rough here. So we have Memphis going into St. Louis, that's on A, B, C. That'll be good. Then we have this double header at the same time, DC going into Birmingham. That should be an exciting matchup. We'll see how Birmingham does Michigan at San Antonio. Both those are on Fox. I think it'll be locked of how wherever you live. I don't know. I don't know if I get to watch either game. I live in Seattle, I live on the west coast, but maybe they'll let me watch one of those and then we got the Renegades at Houston on Sunday standalone on FS one. I mean, woo. That could be a rough game. What are you looking forward to this weekend? Well, the shame of it all is the two games that I really look forward to the most are playing at the same time. So whoops on the league's part there DC I was not incredibly impressed with in their win over Arlington. I give Jordan Tommo all the credit for sticking in there. He made some tremendous throws on Saturday, but I don't know if this team really has it, especially defensively against the stallions. They're in for maybe a rough matchup there, but at least I like the intrigue of DC traveling to A-U-S-F-L team. I think that's the coolest aspect of this matchup. The Panthers of the Brahmas. I mean it really depends what the Brahma situation is. A quarterback. I mean, it could be a good game. It could be a rough game. I mean rough from the standpoint there may not be very many points. Is it very important for both? Absolutely, as far as the seating goes, but I just don't know as far as a product goes, so I guess DC at stallions would be the most intriguing of them all. I agree with that. I do think DC is going to go in there and be like, you call this a home field advantage. I think shots fired on that. No, that's probably good. I don't know. This is rough. This doubled up. I will because people, they say, how are we going to watch these? I don't know. Like I said, I think it's going to be region locked. I could humble break. I'm going to get my Apple Vision Pro and I'll VPN and I'll just have both games, simulcast, simulcast, one to each eyeball. That'll be how I do this. But yeah, this could be tough. This is when you get, plus we're getting into the midseason. The novelty is worn off. This could be when you get the Mike Pereira or Mike Florio. I always do that. The Mike Florio like is the UFL doomed radiance? I do think this weekend is going to be pretty bad. Well, as far as their competition goes, I mean again, they're competing against themselves in this case and I still just don't really understand that model at all, but we'll see how that experiment works. I'm very curious to see what that means in terms of the head to head, literally head to head matchup that they have. This is my conspiracy theory, and I said this when they announced it because with them, because I think it's two, I know it's at least two if not three weekends, but it's at least two weekends where they have the double simulcast on the fox that allows them to say, we have four Fox games on that. Because if otherwise they're putting that game on FS one or whatever, then it's like, so it bumps those numbers of, Hey look, see we're getting, we're really pushing all this out. We have a team whatever on A, B, C, and then we got 37, whatever the numbers were. I think that that's part of it. It could be an experiment too, right? Kind of like, Hey, see how this works and whatever. But yeah, I don't see how this works. How did anything Well, I think it just gives them more numbers on OTA cables that they can talk about. I mean, again, I just don't want to be barred as a viewer from watching one game because of a region log, which again, we're on the West coast, so does it really matter who doesn't Care about us? Well, we'll find, we'll report back to see which ones they actually give us if they give us any. Yeah, Abdul says I'll probably get, Ooh, I'll probably get it. The Panthers Braus games because yeah, I couldn't even fathom a guess of which of those. All right, let's start getting out of here. Andy, any final thoughts if anyone has any final comments of there are. I'll put this one to bed please. Like I said, like and subscribe. I think we added a couple during the stream. USFL historian Paul Reese is the USFL carrying its wade in the merger. Spoiler alert for the theme this week. I'm sure that will go over swimmingly well. And then we have Dave Naer coming on CFL Insider and I'll get Dave, he, I'm sure he'll be like, I'm not watching, but we'll ask him about the UFL as well. It continues to really be fascinating to me to see how these ratings and these attendance numbers develop because again, this is new data. I feel like we're collecting and sort of harvesting over, but at the end of the day, I just want things to work out for everybody involved. Me, Reed, and I know we have our complaints and we've put in a lot of work, but we care and we both care about what goes on here. I just hope that there's more consideration for what some of these trends are showing. But I am really curious to see what happens this weekend as far as the ratings go. At some point, and we talked about this with the USFL as well, and this is similar in that at some point you go from breaking even or losing a little bit of money and then you need to pull the trigger at some point. I do not think that these leagues are going to find ownership that they're going to carry them over that finish line at that point, right? I worked in news when I was starting my videography business and I spent a year and okay, let me build up my clients. I'm going to do all that. And then eventually got to the point of I can't accept any more gigs because I don't have any more sick time left. At some point then you got to quit and then you, okay, now maybe I'm going to take a hit for six months, but then I'm going to be these leagues. You're never going to be able just to be Sal on this at this point. I just don't think they're ever going to get to that point with the local fan bases engaged enough by still being in the submodel. No, I think breaking even is not the strategy you're going to have if you're going to get individual ownership. You must find a way to show some sort of level of growth that encourages them. And TV audience is good. I think attendance is even better and profitability is obviously the ultimate goal, but they need to show that first. Excuse me, sorry, I sneeze here. Max was talking about, I don't know if this is new. We have replica jerseys now as well. They don't know if they have the actual jerseys, but I don't know if anyone else has tracked that because I think it was Gavin with the newsroom posted it yesterday and I was busy yelling at people for that credit, Mike Mitchell. So I don't dunno if that's new. I dunno if all the teams have it, but that's how I'm posting them with that. So hey, at least we have jerseys at this point. I mean probably we'll shit by the end of the season, but we're doing there. So Evan, thanks for checking in here and yeah, we'll get out of here. Andy, anything else? Good work as always, Reed really appreciate it and always being flexible. Oh no, Andy is the flexible one. I appreciate us being able to do this. I mean that check back in Friday, like and subscribe, Paul Re, Dave Naor and hopefully a big name DC Defender. Well say hopefully a big name UFL man, they'll be get back to me and then we'll see you guys and then next week we'll figure out what time we're doing all this stuff. So thanks everybody. We'll see you next time.

UFL Week 2 Results + Reactions! Winner and Losers From UFL Week 2!!

Well here we are back here again. Week two UFL Recap show here. Got Andrew Murray standing by later in the day today. I think this is good slotting in between the men's finals tonight and people are complaining that's too late. So I think this is a good time here, people getting home from work and all of that. Some announcements to get out of the way, but first let's bring in Andrew Murray. Andrew, how are you doing sir? Always good, Reed. How are you doing? We're good, we're good. I have on my fashionable John Cena jersey today in big, big Night last night John came out, helped Cody finish the story. Exciting WrestleMania I had all weekend. I had WrestleMania on one tv. I set up a whole nother tv. I have a cavalcade of them to do wedding shows and trade shows and stuff, so I brought out another TV so I could do that. A couple of big announcements here. We are less than a hundred subscribers away from giving away two tickets to the UFL championship game. I think we're like 24 13. So if you like and subscribe, even if you don't want to go to the championship game, let us be like Cody Rhodes. Let us finish our story here and then we can start talking about something else but like and subscribe, give a thumbs up because speaking of the St. Louis championship game, Andrew Murray and I officially booked ready to go. We will be there partying in St. Louis. Flights are booked, hotels, everything. Pat Rafino will be there. I'm sure we'll do a live show. Pat's got connections or we'll figure all that out. But we are official. Andrew, how do you feel? We will be at the championship game. I'm ecstatic. We did it last year on we discovered a beautiful city in San Antonio. I discovered it. I know you'd been there before, but I loved it and St. Louis has always been a city that I've been curious about. I'm glad that I finally have a chance or an excuse to go there and I'm really excited to see Pat too. I've never seen Pat in person. I've known him through online interactions, but I mean this is one of the coolest things for me is meeting all of you guys in person and I've already gotten a little bit of feedback from people that we'd met last year in the championship game in San Antonio and being able to meet them again. So it's really exciting. I love it and I'm happy to be part of it and happy to be with you again doing it. Yeah, I'm excited. So I always go back and forth with this stuff as with you, I enjoy the connections we make, getting to see the fans there, people that watch the league and know who we are and we know them from being online and you and everything else. We have the most view that UFL pregame show here for kickoff, so it only makes sense we roll that back. So that'll be exciting. So like I said, like and subscribe, get on the train and then we give that and Andrew will probably be in the crowd as well for that. I'm going to try to get credentialed, so maybe we'll just you sit with Andrew Murray, that could be part the prize here, so lots of members checking in as well. You can become a member 99 cents a month. Flights to St. Louis aren't cheap, although I did get a screaming deal and then Andrew and I got a hotel nearby. So overall we are lots of things to talk about today. We'll do kind of general thoughts, attendance, kind of all that stuff and then we'll do game by game breakdowns. I probably saw the most of the UFL that I possibly could this weekend just being at home with WrestleMania and everything else where last weekend traveling back. So I feel like I have a good handle on a lot of this and I also feel like these teams are kind of coming into a little bit more fruition what they are. What do you overall thoughts on the weekend, Andrew? Why I pull up Mike Mitchell's tweet about rating or attendance. Yeah, I mean it was a lot of navigation around other events, right? Men's Final Four, women's Final Four, the WrestleMania whole bit of it. Obviously you still have baseball, you have a lot of other sports going on, but for the UFL standpoint, I mean the biggest thing that we noticed from a disparity standpoint, and I can get into this now is the attendance numbers. I mean we have seen and had enough data at least for the first two weeks to see almost every home market and so far it has been arousing success for the XFL markets for the most part. I'd say DC showed up, they did fantastic with 15,000 in their home opener and then St. Louis obviously breaking a modern record. I don't know what modern day record really is for a lot People, but for basically the US FL back in the day, right? I would say, I'm going to just say 21st century, which is a sizeable number of years now, 40,000 is insane for a spring football game that's absolutely bonkers, but that crowd in that area has been just all in on Battle Hawks football. But to pan it over to some of the USFL teams, look all of the SFL teams so far at home have drawn less than 10,000 and I know a lot of it has to do with their model that they had the last couple of years playing in hubs, playing in markets that they were more interested in just being in as opposed to actually marketing too. And I think what you're seeing is the results of not really putting a lot of backing into drawing people in those areas or really in those markets because it was just the idea of here's football, come see the football and that only works with so many degrees and also you have to consider which cities they're in as well. I'm talking about obviously some of these factions are in NFL cities, not all of them of course, but some of them were. And I think this is a problem as far as optically what you're seeing on TV and then what you actually have in terms of the actual attendance. I mean, and I know XFL didn't have flowing markets either all across the board last year either, but at least you were able to get a sense of what they were trying to do in some of them, and I know the Vegas one was just kind of a disaster in a lot of ways, but this is something they have to work on. I mean Michigan, their attendance went down from week one against a good team. Birmingham was a good team to watch in your home stadium and your attendance goes down Memphis, that's your home opener and you draw less than 10,000. I thought, I know Mike Mitchell was on here last week saying how apparently there's people willing to be invested in buying the team and actually being an individual owner of Memphis. Well, that's not the number I want to be seeing as an owner. I need to be seeing more. St. Louis is much more interesting to me. If you're talking about individual ownership if's like a cash cow right there. So this is something that, look, I know there was a lot of fudging of the numbers last year and there wasn't really, I know Mike couldn't really discuss some of them or really disclose some of those official numbers, but the fact of the matter is the XFL, whether you want to talk about is the remnants of the numbers that they had from 2020 or the carryover or whatever. I know DC this is their third season existence. St. Louis is their third season in existence. I mean the numbers prove out and they bear out to show you that the XL markets are clearly, in some ways, at least from an attendance standpoint, are a little healthier than the USL markets and in some cases much healthier. Yeah, I had over, because we have the Battle Hawks game on opposite WrestleMania and my buddy Michael came over and it was 72,000 at Lincoln Field for the WrestleMania and he's like, God, what's going on with this UFL? Because he was with the C Dragons and all that. I said, well, they're going to break a record tonight. They're probably going to have 40,000. He's like, there's no way. He's like, there's absolutely no way. Absolutely no way. I said, no, they're already tweeting out that they're approaching. He's like, that's insane and proves that because the big thing you had with the Michigan attendance, I saw a lot of people tweeting like, well, the Tigers are playing across the street and this is going on. That's going on. St. Louis had that as well with the Cardinals playing and with the soccer team playing. So there's always going to be a gas station opening or what was it, Celine Dion concert or whatever. There's always going to be something. I knew I had one other announcement. So we're going to LA this week, I'm going to see Paul and we're going to see a lot of Dorothy's friends and stuff. It's like 50 50 right now. If we do an episode this Friday, I have Paul Reese on USFL historian kind of wanting to go live. I was trying to get a couple pre-taped interviews because I thought then Paul and I could do a half hour and then we could still have, he doesn't have to be on there the whole time. Of course, not hearing back from people today trying to schedule that, but I wanted to talk about this is the USFL carrying its weight in terms of this merger, which got me thinking about this again. So let me know if you're interested in hearing that in the comments, but kind of 50 50 otherwise, I'm sure Paul can do the next week, but I thought it would be nice, do a little half hour live show and then play a couple interviews, kind of smorgasbord all that together. Because even taking out the Battle Hawks game, the XFL is out drawn all of the USFL and even I saw numbers all put together. Even the Panthers have two games and it's still whatever. So I don't know. I think like you said with Mike and all this Memphis stuff, I don't know what I'm buying there at this point except for DC or St. Louis. Very much. Let's hope San Antonio, we have JP checking in. You're like, hopefully San Antonio kind of builds up now with their team. But yeah, I don't know what you're buying with a lot of these markets, which long-term wise I think is kind of an issue. I mean Memphis, they've been trying to make it happen for a while. The Memphis maniacs back in the day with the original XFL, obviously the Memphis Express with a F and now this market, I'm not sure what's going to happen with them and I'm not sure if this is really the long-term solution. I know also on your show last week Mike was talking about the idea of a Nashville team. Do you really want to have two teams in Tennessee at that point or are you just going to, I mean that's the thing. If you can't hold one team in the state, are you going to be able to hold two? So that's another thing that I think is worth discussing as far as what other potential investors want to see if this league moves forward and if they want to put their capital into it. So look, again, I know not every market is thriving. I still think it's interesting that San Antonio, their first week they had 13,000. Now they had Easter Sunday morning to deal with in Texas and they still drew plus 10,000. So I don't know, I know maybe Memphis goers are obviously maybe doing their Saturday shopping instead of going to the game. And that's the thing, you have to make your game the priority. You have to make it seem like, no, this is the thing I want to do with my time on Saturday and Sunday. That's hard for all the teams. It can't just be, well, there's football in town, let's go watch football game. I know in some markets that may work in terms of maybe people's familiarity or the nostalgia for some of these things. I can't imagine that it's really USFL branding because look, a lot of these teams have not been around for 30 plus years, 40 years, and you can't just expect these generational gaps in your existence as a team to suddenly just come flowing back. Yes, I know them at show about successed at one point. Not a lot of people who are alive now remember them. They're existing. So that's something that you have to keep in mind when you're building these new brands. DC is a new brand, it's a new hot thing. They're 10 and oh at home. They have an incredible record at home. They like St. Louis can talk about home field advantage. DC has a significant home and field advantage in terms of their success. They can pitch that to people and they can also pitch the fact that Dan Snyder was running the Washington Commanders for however long and that was really what disillusioned people from going to those games. There's other aspects here that you can look at for why these teams are outdrawing others, but for the USFL, I just don't think they can just rest on their laurels of here's the football, come watch football. Also, this is a brand that your dad or your grandpa might remember. Again, I don't think that's really going to work because there's just too much of a gap in the time that the last time that they were around versus now. Yeah, I don't know. I think the USFL, at least the rebirth of it back in 2022 fit that niche of it had been just long enough from the XFL 2020 people were really starred for that. We're coming out of Covid, we're ready to do that. God knows if they had started with this model, the pseudo model back then and flying people in, I know people still complaining, you need to have practices in town. You have this and that. I don't know if that's a make or break for any of that kind of stuff, but to me it is just hard and you're just asking. I've seen people online posting, well, you just need to go out to the games. And I've told the group chat this morning, it is so much easier to say than to do and a lot of these are big commitments to go, okay, got to For me, I live 15 minutes from Leman Field. We can pop down there. I can Uber down there, pop street, some of these places I'm driving to Birmingham. I know Brett's, the big Birmingham guy runs the Facebook group. He's got to drive two and a half hours in and do all this stuff. It's way easier. You need to go to these games. Well, we're getting in the spring and people got birthday parties and got to go shopping and God forbid do anything else in the world. We have the Kraken to compete with. There's always something. And so this whole like, well, you just need to go to the games. It's hard. It is a much bigger ask than I think we will get to. If anyone has comments on that, we can chat through any more of that stuff. I don't want to hammer attendance too much. I like this and I saved this. I tweeted that last night. Want to see they update this. Of course I'm totally anti this and then now the XMLs tied it back up, but what do you make of this two V two here with the conference, the conference, whatever records after our two weeks? I mean, I know I joked about it last night too about the update not being there initially, but of course they put it out there last Monday. So I gave 'em the benefit of the doubt if they'll probably put it up on Monday this time as well. I'm still weary of the idea of creating tribalism or at least stoking the fires, but if this is really what they're going to go for and this is what they want to drive out of this conversation and discussion, so be it. If they want to just keep hammering at home, then that's their choice. But I mean it would've been really funny if they just decided, you know what? We're just going to tweet when one conference is ahead of the other. That would've been, I think they would've shown their hand a little too much there. So for them it's important to keep that head-to-head and keep those tallies going along. Look, people can come out and be like, well, Memphis shouldn't have lost. Yeah, should have would've, could have. Sorry, they that's just the end. Or IT team's like, well, Houston should have been in dc sure, should have would've coulda, guess what? Every team's going to say that every single week where they're like, well, this team should have won. They didn't. People would've said that about St. Louis last week and then Jake Bates ruled the world. So it's going to be a continued part of discussion. I think it's just a different kind of discussion. This is an A-F-L-N-F-L stuff where the NFL had a superiority complex that they've been around longer and said, well, the A ffl can't keep up with us. And then the Super Bowl happens. Super Bowl III happens and then all of a sudden all hell breaks loose. It's not the same thing, but there's going to be that rivalry baked in. Again, I just worry about it that separating people and creating a little bit too much of vitriol in the discourse, but if that's what they're had their head on, then so be it. I did laugh with Mike Mitchell and if you guys haven't, haven't listened to Mike Mike and I's chat last week, a little more timeless of a chat and it's hard and I kind of go back and forth with do we do the week preview and then it's kind of dated once Saturday goes around. I struggle with that a lot with the CFL, with kind of the Friday posting of our episodes, but a good timeless talk with Mike. But I thought it was funny that Mike's said, well, once we get through this, we're you going to get rid of the rivalries? We're just going to be excited for players getting to the FL. I said, yeah, until we're ranking like, okay, how many USFL conference players got in versus XFL conference players? That's going to happen. So I kind of go back and forth with this. It's fine. It's something they hang their hat on, but I do think we need to eventually move past this. You were talking about the bras and all of that should coulda, woulda, let's talk through that. First and foremost, that was the game I personally was most looking forward to. Just obviously with the bras of it all and my connections with AJ Smith and Wade Phillips and all that stuff, I don't really know how San Antonio won this game, Andy, I was Saturday, I'm getting ready and I'm watching the game and I'm running and then I cut my hair and everything and I'm like, there's a minute left. I go, well, I got to get in the shower. Let me just, I'm like, no, let me keep you. I'll keep my phone on. I'll listen to this. And so somehow San Antonio won this game. I don't really understand. So why don't you walk me through this Reed? I have a hard time telling you from watching the entire game myself, San Antonio had absolutely no business winning this game whatsoever. But I'll tell you what, one of the mitigating factors is a couple here. First of all, Memphis, horribly inefficient in the red zone. I mean you kick three field goals from under 25 yards, 22, 22 and 23, that's not going to do it. I mean your red zone in efficiency is a part of it. Second, your terrible clock management at the end, I tracked it, San Antonio Chase Garbers on fourth down throws an interception with 4 25 left on the clock and they're down 20 to eight. I mean the proof is in the pudding at that point. That's it. You're done. I remember you saying on the group chat, this is over and I agree with you, this should be over four and a half left down 12. But to Memphis' undoing, they just couldn't control the clock. They didn't run any time out. Their offensive line play is really suspect. I don't think they can run the ball. I'm really worried about Chase Cookes. He is just, he's going to die. He keeps running around with reckless abandon for the love of God. I want him to slide baseball slides so badly and he just won't. I know some people like that about him and his bravado. It makes me nervous. It really does. So there clock management's one of it, John DeFillipo, I know it's really fun getting all those sound bites, but he needs to do a little less yelling and a little bit more game managing because the last two weeks Memphis has gotten, well, the first week they got away with it against Houston. The second week they did not. Their second halfs have been really suspect offenses just dried up. They can't run the ball effectively and really close out. A team like San Antonio, San Antonio's offense was so listless for three quarters, completely listless, couldn't get anything done, couldn't run the ball, couldn't throw the ball, nothing. And then suddenly this fourth quarter they just explode. Really, it just goes to show what they had in some of their weapons. I mean Marco Stevenson, I give credit to that guy. He was incredible the entire game. He was awesome. They just kept catching these passes from Gar Garber. I'll give credit, just never gave up. But yeah, Memphis just really let this slip away. It was crazy. Yes, John DeFillipo is probably my favorite character kind of in this season so far. We had a little bit of the, was it Barlow last season? They had to be drug off the field during the DC game when he was upset about one of the Dean Blandino calls. But yeah, we're kicking the ball and he can't change his mind and he's screaming, I thought it was great and you would never get that in the NFL broadcast just in terms of that sort of access. I love that. Just back and forth with all of this and they going into the half and we're going to take the penalty and I was trying to figure out, okay, how the heck did this work? And okay, we're going to take the penalty but then we're going to, or we're not going to accept it on this, but we're going to accept it on the extra point. Is this, I don't know because obviously San Antonio two one oh and they're at the top of all the power rankings and stuff. Now are we bullish on San Antonio moving forward here? Is this a repeatable kind of situation here? I am glad that there are top of the standings, but that's not really consistent play through. I mean their offense, obviously, they put up points. I mean they put up 47 points in the first two weeks, but it's inconsistency. And again, I voiced this last week, could they run the ball? Well, they didn't this week. They really could not run the ball this week. And I am concerned about that out of AJ Smith's offense the last couple of years, they really need to find a way to establish a run game. You can't just put it all on the quarterback. So I mean good for them. They came back, they got those slate touchdowns, Garber stayed in the pocket. He was brave enough, they got the fourth down conversion, not what would've been the onside kick. They got the fourth down conversion to keep themselves alive. But you can't get away with this again against a team that actually knows how to close somebody out like Birmingham, maybe even, well maybe dc we'll talk about them. And also St. Louis, I mean I don't think you can pull this against them. So for San Antonio, I think it's good for them to get the W. Obviously it keeps them a top, a very competitive division, but I can't imagine they can get away with this. Again, they have to find a way to keep an established run game or being able to just move the ball and move the chains at all. I mean again, they were just so lifeless in the first half offensively it was really an eyesore, but Memphis didn't put 'em away. We were talking in the group chat, a lot of the AJ Smith play calling and how that worked against dc. A lot of the short, I can't even talking about I'm the idiot here. And then that not working here against dc is that AJ Smith issue? Is that just Memphis? Am I smartening up? I always think of AJ as one of the smarter kind of brighter coordinators in the league. And so I'm just curious if he's already being found out week two, is that an issue? I mean it was found out a little bit last year. Now keep in mind also Brandon Silvers got hurt That didn't help their case. Obviously the Cole McDonald's experiment went a little bit awry. There was just a lot of problems last year with the offensive setup. It did seem like he was married to the wide receiver screen game a little bit too much in this game. And I think he can get in his own head a little bit. I want to see more adjustments from their offense throughout the course of the game. Now again, they adjust in the fourth quarter just fine apparently. But I think if you're talking about in the first half I got to see more adjustments mid quarter as opposed to in halves what's been going on and what had happened last year as well. So I think it's just a matter, I think Arie's smart enough, I clearly, I believe in his ability to play call, it's just I think sometimes he has to look at it a little bit as far as what's going on in terms of the alignment, what's going on with man coverage, are they blitzing what's going on? Sometimes their athletes are just not enough. John Tree Kirkland just wasn't the same four that he was week one, week one against dc. He was awesome. The second week it was more of Stevenson and other guys contributing In terms of, and I know they did that fourth and 12 whatever and that looked mighty short to me. I don't know. That was just, It was suspect I'll say that. Yeah, I didn't see the true view whenever we didn't see that. And then I liked how on the one, I think it was the first game where also this game where they were showing where the ball was spotted but then it wasn't at the line. I'm like, oh, this is great. But then they explained the center had already moved back the ball to, so I thought that was nice. I like having that transparency that ball is not at the, but then they say, oh well no, it's because he's already got the back for that. In terms of the Memphis of it, yeah, it is crazy to me here, San Antonio shut out through three quarters and then to just kind of explode there. Memphis falling apart. I don't understand where that comes from or kind of how they fall apart with how good they looked, especially last week. I know that game was a little slow, but I thought Memphis looked pretty good. I just don't know if Darius Victor can be the bell cow the entire game. I love Darius Victor. He's been awesome. I think they need to have a little bit more change of pace in their backfield. Again, just rely on case cookies to run around. It's going to get him, it's going to get him sent to the IR immediately. He's going to be put on reserve if they're not careful. So for me, they have to find another way to mix up their run game a little bit. And I just want to see them be able to not be so inefficient in the red zone. Again, there's too many short field goals. They can do that throughout a game. They have to find a way to punch it in when it matters. Anything else? We have a bunch of comments we'll go to before we go to the next game. Just kind of what people are talking about in the chat. Anything else from this game that you wanted to highlight? I mean, again, I really can't express how much of a pleasure it is to see Cody Latimer really be used in an offense that knows how to use him. I mean him being in the San Antonio offense is so good. When he came over for Orlando, I just thought that was such a perfect match for him. His talents were clearly on display with Orlando last year. It didn't always factor into winning obviously, but there was no doubt about his individual skills. And I'm glad to see that it's finally being put in place. I mean we're catching that game-winning touchdown with Garbers rolling out, when Garbers was rolling out in about three seconds left, I thought, oh my god, there's going to be someone open, but who is it? And it was Latimer right there in the end zone. So it's great to see his talents being put to full display. And I agree, just thinking back with the Memphis stuff too, and obviously there is Victor being on the show, I think it was two or three weeks ago. Yeah, it can't just be him running the ball a hundred times a game I think and he would burst. It's one of those like okay, we go and we go and we go and then finally you pop through. There was a lot of negative one or we're getting back to the line of scrimmage comments here, people talking, I have some star Christian here saying Memphis gave the gave away. We're talking a lot about attendance and everything, Scott, I got to admit USFL fan, we don't support our teams as well as the XFL fans do. And I don't know if it's just the way that they ran that, like you said last year of like, okay, we're basically giving away the USFL tickets and not that the FL was charging an arm and a leg, but it would be 35, 40 bucks to get into an XFL game where it was like, Hey, we'll give you a free T-shirt in a beach towel. Can you come to one of these SFL games? And I don't know if that's part of it. If that's pain now where you've diluted that ticket so much and not, we don't care about attendance and now we do care about attendance. Gregory here, my hats off the entire UFL family quality of play is greatly improved. And then we're talking about Jan here. Mike Mitchell says the league is so far happy with attendance. I know he said so on the podcast. But yeah, I still think I will say as we roll into this next game, attendance matters as much of, well no, I guess it would be the Sunday game, so we'll get to that. But the Michigan home game where Ara is texting me who we were on the Rod Pearson show last week and my friend and me and he's texting me like, wow, there's nobody at this game, right? I'm trying to explain to him St. Louis at 40,000 and this and that. You can't, but you get these people that tune in the game and the first thing you tune in is 7,000 people in the stands. It sits with you. And that's why I think attendance, not that we're making or breaking the bottom line by this, but you need to have enough people in there to make it look like a competent football product. I'm sorry, CFL fans. But from what I've seen, St. Louis Outdrew, every market from last year, nobody had 40,000 plus at a CFL game last year. Just going to say that right now. VC drew a lot of people I know, obviously Regina, obviously the Saskatchewan always draws really well. Obviously Winnipeg fills their stadium, which has a capacity mark, they can't get to that many. So I get it, but 40,000 is nothing to sniff at, okay. And for a market that's really only been around for not even two full seasons, I think that's really a testament to St. Louis. I mean, they show up. That's why they have the championship game. This is why they're able to have it. And I think the league, you can't put out a conspiracy theories or anything, but I'm sure the league would love nothing more than St. Louis to show up in that game and to host that because that would be absolutely ruckus and they may even have to open up more sections if that happens. Oh, I think it's going to be rocking there. One more comment here before we get to the game. Yeah, Darren. Hey Reid, it's the CFL so insecure that Jim Barker had to go on RP Ambassador after week one. Well, no, I saw that. I had seen that yesterday morning and see this is one of those people might think that I'm like, oh, Mr. Anti USFL or I used to be anti XFL when I said that they weren't kicking off whenever that was going to be. But the thing I will not tolerate is anybody, Nate is saying either the SFL or the XFL from you, the CFL or the NFL all Protect. That's where my, at the end of the day, my allegiances are to all spring football when it comes to that. And yeah, I was sitting there, I saw the interview and then someone tagged me in it and he was on and he said, it's the second rate for down league Jim Barker on the U-S-F-L-U-F-L RP while you're enjoying some of these UFL games. And then I just said, oh, let me get this hidden. I said, yeah, what if I said, Jim Barker's his second grade football commentator, what does that accomplish? And also Jim is in football scouting development was with the Argos. They have a lot of XFL talent on their roster. It's one thing that Mike Mitchell I thought, put this really well. It's one thing if you want to be tribalistic towards like I'm the XFL or you're the SFL. If you're a fan, if you're someone in football operations or coaching, these are all your compadres here. These are all your, whatever you call that. We're all in the same world here. Morgan, I just thought and I listened to the interview, it's certainly not as bad as this makes it out to sound, right? He was a little more like, ah, I just don't find it interesting to watch, but I just don't like that. I don't think anyone in the CFL, it's clear that having eight teams is better for them than 16. That's more players they can, Scott, I just don't like that. I go, Jim, it'll be June soon enough and you guys can play the CFL. If you're calling it a second down league, then why are you harvesting second rate players if that's going to be your messaging, right? And I don't think there are second rate players. I don't think any of them are second rate players. Look like you said this is tribalistic thought from personnel standpoint, this is not good. You can't do that. People cross over all the time. Look at all the coaches you had on your show, the players you've had on your show scouts, people who go back and forth between both. They don't discriminate. The real people who understand how football works don't discriminate between that. They realize football is football. If a guy can play, a guy can play. I think it's just more, there's always this distancing from Canada because they want to believe that they have the most premier talent and be able to repel an American invasion or say that any player from another league can sniff the CFL, which is not true at all. There's a lot of other mitigating factors for why players don't come up. Namely a ratio first of all. Second of all, you can't just believe that somebody from all of these other leagues can't play. It's just nots. Not true. It's not true and it's not beared. Its way out like that. Obviously there's people who come from all over that can play different leagues. McLeod, Bethel Thompson went back and forth. You have darn, what about Darnell? Sanky was in CFL. He comes down there Arlington and he goes back to CFL. Did people jump back and forth all the time and then I don't think this is really the right way to go about it. I am with you. I don't literally seeing this tribalism, especially from inside league offices. We got Sam here checking in, hit the like button and subscribe here. Like I said, we got 138 people watching between Twitter and YouTube right now. Appreciate that. Yeah, get us us to three. I'm so tired of talking about giving the tickets away. I just wanted to give them away and move on. So next game here. This was going up against WrestleMania. This was going up against lot of this busy sports weekend here, but this game, going back to the dome, the dome looked great. Like we said, Mike Mitchell reported record breaking crowd there, Liz Load in the first quarter and then it kind of really picked up and then it really max was texting like this is an instant classic read. And I'm like, okay, I'm watching Rock, rock and Roman and Cody. But yes, okay, this is a good, what did you make of this good showing Battle Hawks get it right at the end, the field goal kick there to win the game as time expired. What did you make of this Reed? I don't often say this, especially with how much football I've watched in my life. I say this maybe four or five times during an NFL season, but I can confidently say, this was a great game. This is a great game. This would definitely be one of the best of the season. I can confidently say that right now. Look, these were both two teams that desperately wanted to win. These were two teams that had pedigree. These were two teams that you could just tell. Both of 'em had a chip on their shoulders. The renegades had lost an embarrassing fashion in the second half to stallions at home last week. St. Louis lost the game. I think they believed that they shouldn't have lost two in Michigan and you just could feel it with both these teams. The dome was incredible. The energy was ruckus. I loved it. I love how back and forth this game was. I loved how Luis Perez competed. That man just never gives up. I think Arlington can feel confident having him as their starter and I know that's, of course we've already made him out to be the Spring King. He's won the UFL, the XFL championship with him already. But I just feel it. He never backs down and he always gives them a chance. I love how that guy plays ball for St. Louis. I think this is just such a showcase of all the weapons they have. Mateo Durant, oh my god, he's incredible. His speed was on par with just about any other running back I've seen in the spring leagues as of late. I mean he was just explosive. Every time he touched the ball, he made an impact. It was obviously noticeable with him not being in the lineup last week. We complained about it. A lot of people complained about them not having a run game last week. Well, they had a run game this week. I mean Durant was just there, but Karen was just spotting the ball left and right. Darius Shepherd, Marcel Aman, he clearly is ready for the season. Marcel Aman is already in the running for offensive player of the year in my book. He looks really, really rejuvenated. I know last year a lot was made of him being drafted by St. Louis. He really couldn't do anything. He was hurt. But this year he's explosive. St. Louis offense has the potential to be the best in the entire league. I just think they have to be under the impression that they're going to be in a lot of close games. I think that's just how they live. Anthony Beck seems to almost thrive off of it. He is like an adrenaline junkie. I'm sure they wish they could have blown teams out a little bit, especially the dome, but they clearly seem to be playing a lot of close games and I think they'll continue to play close games. But I mean, yeah, this was an instant classic. I really just feel for Arlington because I felt like neither team could really lose. It felt like even the loser felt like they won something, but at the end of the day, somebody was going to go home. Owen two, It is hard. I mean we had these questions about Arlington going into the season, how, I can't even say the word. Can they replicate what they did last year and going into the heater kind of in the playoffs, battle hawks? I don't know. To me they looked really listless last week. I mean that game was a sno against the Panthers here. And so they come back, it seemed like, like I said, that first quarter and they're okay. We really kind of got things clicking there always the way this goes and you get all these people tuning in, there's going to be this big record setting and then it's like nothing's going on. And so I'm glad that they finally picked up. I hope the ratings echo that. I think a lot of these games are on ESPN this weekend, so I have a feeling ratings will be questionably hovering anyway, we had a question before. When ratings come out, we'll get those tomorrow. Follow Mike Mitchell on Twitter. He'll be posting all that stuff when they come out from Nielsen. Has St. Louis kind of erased the questions now for you? I know Beck was on social media this last week. I'm disappointed we'll do better. I feel like he really carries kind of the weight of St. Louis and the city on his shoulders with this. Do you think that they've done enough to alleviate those concerns? I have trust in the offense. I'm still not sure about the defense. They played really well the first week, but playing good defense against Michigan I don't think is going to be a challenge for a lot of teams this year for this team. I mean I do think Arlington just tried to throw the kitchen sink at them and it didn't end up in their favor. I mean, Taylor Rus misk kicked, they would've gone up 27, 24. Then St. Louis is going go down the field and maybe you have an overtime situation there. So I mean St. Louis got the break that they needed and they took advantage of it. But I'm still as a full operation, I'm still not sure, but I absolutely trust AJ McCarran. I trust their offensive skill players. I trust them being able to score points. I just wonder about their ability to maybe be more ahead of a team and maybe kind of try to bury them. They haven't had that opportunity yet. They've had plays where they've sort of had mental lapses on defense, but I think they can still be formidable. Absolutely. I am not fulling on them on their offense. I am their defense. I'm still not sure about In terms of yes, half the games run ESPN, Andy, there's been an outburst in the chat half the game. So just god heaven forbid you ever say anything everybody, do you ever say anything wrong here? Matt's talking about what source do you use for snap count route runs? Andy, do you have any insights on, I don't know where is that like a P fff thing That's more P fff data? I have not accessed that data specifically yet. I have not really looked into PFF as much as some people have, but I know that some people track it themselves. But PFF would probably be the most accurate source. If you go to the pro football focus, they have all the player ratings and everything. That would be the most accurate if they, I assume they're going to keep tracking it throughout the season because I know the USFL had spotty tracking last year. They're getting better for it. And then no time for UFL? No, you're asking a lot of the same questions and people in the chat seem to be answering them. You're asking about where Jaco Pearson is. You're talking about asking where J Mar Smith is? Seems like people are answering in the chat. So I can't derail the entire, I'll do it this second, but I can't derail the entire conversation from that. So just to let you know that Well, jkor hurt. He still has the injury, but he will be back at some point during the season. I'm not sure exactly what week he'll be back yet, but he is going to be in the lineup at some point. But again, you're already joining a very full arsenal, Hakeem Butler and Darius Shepherd and Marcel Aman, there's only so many miles to feed. So even when JA comes back, I don't know if he's really going to be a focus in Seattle. He clearly was the guy. Now this offense, I don't know if that's going to be the case, but is the a luxury item? Absolutely. Yeah. Anyway, so getting back to this, yeah, time for UFL football, we can't answer every single one of where every single player that isn't on the roster right now is taking part. So I appreciate if anyone in the chat wants to help out with that. Anything else from this? I don't know, Arlington, again, we didn't have the highest of expectations, but certainly seems like champions here struggle. What do you make of this? What do they need to do? I mean, Arlington's going to have their backs up against the wall, which we'll get into later. But I mean they just, they've really had, their defense is not the same. I don't think they've been to really get the same push that they had last year and haven't been able to really rely on it. They just have looked, especially in the secondary. I mean they've just looked lost. Eight men got behind them last week. It was cane he got behind them. They've just had really bad lapses in their past coverage. I'm kind of concerned about their overall ability to contain teams. They've just gotten burned. I mean they go up 21 to 17 and then 17 to 14 with Sal Canel getting the touchdown and then immediately give up in that long pass play to eight men. And it just goes to show that their ability to contain these explosive plays has not been as good as it was last year. So for them, they've got to figure something out on defense. Obviously with Jonathan Hayes involved, they've got to do something with Jay Hayes. Excuse me. They've got to find a way to be able to get their act together back on defense. It's not been the same. But as far as their offense goes, I mean, I trust Luis Perez also, just, I want to say shout out to Daveon Smith who really unfortunately had a really horrific week with the lost his brother and kudos to him for playing this game. A heavy heart from an emotional standpoint. I maybe wanted Arlington to win just for him. And I know that's such a difficult thing. You can't wish that for every player unfortunately, because somebody has to lose at the end of the day. But that's just good interview on the sideline with ESPN and just kind of getting, getting into his emotions a little bit. Really raw stuff there. I really feel for him. I mean, he's been such a spring football lifer and really just unfortunate for him, but it's just part of life sometimes. And that's why football can mean a lot more to people. It's not just playing for money, playing for tv, exposure, playing to get back in the NFL. Sometimes it's playing for your family. It's playing for the people that you lost. So really just feel for him. Honestly. My heart goes out to him. It is a different level. I mean obviously all athletes are human beings and you get a lot of that in the NFL as well, and I think they a great job. But the step difference between the people watching these games and the people playing these games for the most part isn't drastic, right? Tyreek Hill's out there making millions of dollars and this is freak athlete. I just feel the relatability and I think that they do a good job with the Jake Bates thing last week. I think we do a good job of really humanizing a lot of that. And I think that I like that more and how we've done that this season versus like, well, this guy's trying to get to the NFL and this guy's trying to get, I mean, I know we're still doing that, but I like just hearing these player stories because ultimately, even if they're not the biggest stars now, Jake Bateson and we'll talk Michigan here, right? Coming up. But he's a superstar, right on that team. I mean, he might be the most over guy. I mean he's probably the most productive guy on that entire team. So any other thoughts on that? We'll move on. I mean, Jake Bates is probably more famous than Brandon Aubrey. I mean, Brandon Aubrey never got this kind of coverage last year. So good for him. That is really, the story is so fascinating. We can get into that in a minute. But yeah, I agree. Just continue to harp on these individual stories and really give the notoriety to these guys. They don't get that kind of exposure. They maybe didn't get that exposure in college. They certainly probably didn't get it in the NFL. And you really get to see what these guys were like in real time. I think that's really one of my favorite parts of these leagues, especially when they have the live interviews. That's really fun. One question here from PIP, and then you'd be nice. They were very rude about me being wrong about the ESPN games. I've attended. Summers continue to be bad in certain markets, and this just makes me think of Michigan here as we move in. Do you think teams are be relocated or they committed my 2 cents? I think you got to at least give it two years here. I think you can't, it's kind of like when they took over the commanders and what's his face was still the coach, right? Ron Rivera. And they're like, we need to fire him. And they're like, no, we're going to keep him through the year because we want the next head coach to know that we're committed to you and we're going to give you the time that we need. And I think with this, it's the same thing. You got to let markets know, we're going to give you a year or two years to get this going. We're not just going to pull the, I mean, unless there's six people in the stands, do you have any difference with that? I think you got to give future franchises the security that you're going to keep this going. I mean, there's a lot of unanswered questions with that, namely because we don't know what would've happened to some of the other franchises that weren't able to stay around. For example, with the XFL in 2020. I mean the league went bankrupt, so there was no moving of franchisees there. The USFL 2022, you had the Tampa Bay Bandits. Well, they got moved, but not really moved because they didn't ever play in their home markets. So that's not really moving them, it's just moving the ip. So the USFL has done that too. The XFL, we don't know would've happened to Vegas. I mean essentially because four teams went away just because of proxy of merging. But there was always talks about whether they're going to move or not. And so there's not really a clear answer to that. I would suspect that the XFL would be more willing to do that than the USFL, but I don't know. Actually, no, sorry, let me reverse that actually. I think the USFL would do that more than the XFL because the U-S-F-L-I think has all these ips in their back pocket, all these old brands and say, well, we could just toss this out and go try this market instead. Which again, I don't know, like you said, I wouldn't necessarily just pull that plugged so haphazardly now that you actually have people in the stands and you're actually are selling tickets to these home venues, that's really going to disillusion people further. You have to be careful about that, but I know that's the easiest, obvious answer, but relocation, it burns people. It really does. And you have to be careful about burning a market and then expecting to come back to it later. Yeah, they say Michigan would be the one Ford Field sucks about, let's get to that because I want to get to the Michigan game. We'll try to power through these too. We might go a little bit over the hour, but I want to make sure we touch on these. This was the Jake Bates invitational, at least for the first half. I tweeted about when Mike had the attendance. I hope Jake Bates mania kind of runs wild through the season of Detroit because it was like 7,400. I mean, this was rough. Birmingham still doesn't look the team that they were last year. Obviously we have the lack of Jaymar Smith and all of that. What did you make of this? Because Michigan, it really doesn't seem to have an identity at all right now. I mean, offensively Birmingham did everything they needed to except punch it in the red zone. They went one for six, which is a big problem. They can't seem to Memphis really take advantage of the fact that they can just run over teams. I mean, their running game is really strong here. As you can see across the board. You get Martinez in there, you got Maribel in there, you get Pearson, you got all these people that get in there and just start rolling with that football. But offensively, as far as the passing games goes, it's all over the place. Corral, it still looks really inconsistent. Adrian Martinez, I don't think it was really ever much of a passer, even in college. He was much more of a runner. As you can see. I mean, people are going to be asking, where's Dream r Smith? And I think the question is going to continue as far as they keep winning. If they keep winning, I'm not sure if he's going to just suddenly reemerge past the curtain. And I know that's a little bit weird. He played with Skip Holtz before in this league and in college. But for some reason there's no sign of him ever really getting out there at any point unless this team loses. So for now, I think they're just going to continue rolling with what they have and just hope that corral and Martinez figure their stuff out and start to develop. But it kind of reminds me a lot of Alex McGoo that first year in the USFL, I mean he really consistent. I was really unimpressed with his passing game proficiency and then he took leaps last year. So maybe that's just the thing. Maybe Holz is really kind of taking a longer term approach to this, but I mean offensively Birmingham could do whatever they want at least on the ground. I laughed when you were talking about people asking J Mar. I'm like, yeah, literally people in the chat are asking what's, but Joe has a comment here. I don't understand why Birmingham won't give snaps and qb. Would neither of the current two have been consistent? I agree there, but I mean Adrian Martinez comes in, he can run, I mean he all over the field. I think their top rusher, right? Really. I mean he had a really good game. Again, I mean his speed is so lethal, but the other thing about it is if you don't have consistency in the pass game, how are you going to be able to do anything? I mean you got J State Sternberg, you got Marlene Williams, you got some of these whiteouts, but you just don't seem to know how to utilize them in the red zone. It gets tight down there, corral through a hideous interception in the fourth quarter and could have gone up by double digits on Michigan and kind of let them in the game. Moving over to Michigan, man, 205 yards. Total offense. Woof. I mean West Hills after rolling through the first week looked nothing the same this week. Birmingham's defense I also think is part of that. EJ Perry's, not it. I just don't believe in him. I'm sorry I'm not really into the EJ Perry experiment, but I'm really not into their whole quarterback room in general. Brian Luki and a couple other people back there, I don't think it's really going to work for this Michigan team. I just offensively look just really lifeless. They have to ride the Jake Bates show pretty much. I mean if you want to keep banging 62 Yarders and 64 Yarders, that's great, but it's only going to get you so far. At some point you've got to do something on offense. A Mike Nolan football team doesn't seem like it's going to figure out itself on offense. I am sure they want to run the ball and Perry does have, at least from a standpoint of running, he can do a lot of things. He can run out of shotgun and he can do QB draws, but they have to find a way to establish some kind of passing game because it's not going to go very far. And this Birmingham team, I mean again, can just kind of overwhelm you with all the talent that they have and at some point they're going to figure it out. Michigan, I'm just very skeptical about their operation. We have your comment Pat. Typical stats guy, pat Rafino. Adrian is number two in the UFL in rushing right now, so yeah, I mean this is what they have going. I liked the Oh yeah, Philip, don't worry Philip Slate. That's fine. You check in here. I like the sideline talking with Skip Holt where he's really coaching the guys because both those, like we said moving up and down the field, but both of 'em having struggles in the red zone and I liked how he like, Hey, that was a good drive. Don't worry. I mean we've talked about him and sung praises just his, he's built for this. I feel like this is really the perfect spot for him and being able to kind coach these guys at the level they need to be so impressive there. Yeah, Birmingham is still not great, but it is certainly steamrolling right now. We knew that Michigan was going to have issues going into the season. I mean are they making a trade here? I mean it feels like they need to, I don't know. What was it? etling comes in and fumbles the ball and immediately pull back out. It doesn't seem like they have an answer of any of their guys right now. I mean they're going to have to trade for a QB. I don't know who that would be. I mean with Arlington last year, I mean just being able to get Perez but because Vegas had bigger intentions of having someone like Jalen McClendon who that's a guy I really miss. I wish Jalen McClendon was in this league. I was really excited about what he was doing with Vegas at the end of last year, but they had ulterior motives. Do you trade for someone like Quentin Dormy or do you find somebody not really smitten with their second quarterback and say, Hey, we'll give you something. Maybe a linebacker or somebody. I mean Michigan's defense is there. Frank NDA has 14 tackles. He's awesome. Obviously you still have Brelin speaks again, their defense is legit. I give them credit and they were able to hold Birmingham from really rolling away with this game because Birmingham could have trounced them if they'd been able to be more efficient in the red zone. I mean this could have been a runaway and that already dwindling crowd would've just been more unimpressed with what product they had on the field. But for Michigan, yeah, they've got to make a trade or something. I just don't think their quarter rack room's going to get it done. We have a comment here, appreciate with Scott. No one's going to give up their quarterbacks this point of the season, especially without injury. I know, but you wonder, does the league just for the state of parody be like, Hey, it was kind of like the least press trade last year was kind of weird and yeah, let's just kind right. They trade him for can't. It was a very lopsided trade that they got for that. It felt like the league was like, Hey, we need to get this going Here. Well, the same thing happened if you remember the 2020 with the LA Wildcats trading Luis Perez to the New York Guardians, same thing happened. Matt McGloin wasn't it? And suddenly the guardians were able to possess Perez and he started to turn that team around before the season had to end on ly. But I mean that's the thing. Does the league have the authority to do that? I still think that you allow these coaches to coach their team up until a certain point, but if you get to maybe week six or seven, but it's kind of the same thing in fantasy football for example. Teams don't like other teams trading for players off of bad rosters and being like, Hey, you can't just make your team a super team because the other guy's not pulling his weight. That's not fair. That's why there's a trade deadline. So I don't know if that's really the obvious solution. I mean be great if they did. I think for us as fans it'd be more fun but I don't know if the league, if they would just step in and kind of usher that along for the sake of parody Max here. Of course, no. Where is it here? Elise Perez for Ryan Mueller who the Vipers cut like a week later and then ended up on the Renegades again. I knew there was some that flew with that. I wish I just had an encyclopedic memory too of everything that's ever happened in the history of spring football. I can't even remember. Most of wrestle. Maybe part of it's my drinking but I can't even remember WrestleMania in the game last night. The best I can. I and you're taking notes, but anyway, there you go. Yeah, I knew there was kind of a fluky tre going on with that situation. Yeah, we'll see what happens, but I think Michigan, they need something. This is not going to work out. Any other comments on this? We'll get to the last game. We'll take questions, comments, get out of here. Anything else? Stallions two though here has everyone predicted in the Panthers here? We've talked a little bit to Jake Bates. I totally thought, yeah, he's going to come in with this 62 yard field goal because that's such the story. Good for him. He's able to be a rockstar for another year. Anything else from this I until further notice. Birmingham's your obvious favorite. I can't imagine that really Michigan or Houston or Memphis is really going to put up a fight against them. Birmingham is the gold standard in the USFL and I don't really see anybody competing with them. The XFL on the other hand I think is a very competitive conference that's going to be a dog fight until the end, but Birmingham I think has this really cinched right now. I just don't see any consistency enough from any of the other offenses or really of the other teams from a coaching standpoint that can really put up a fight against Birmingham for the time being. Yeah, I don't know. I mean and we have the game obviously the showboats. I like the Showboats is that number, I mean I've even stand this high. Is that your second team in the USFL conference right now? I want to but I mean a second team in the USS FL conference doesn't hold a lot of weight to it for me right now. It could be Michigan. It's just a matter of can they actually get more? No Memphis, I mean Memphis because Michigan's trash and so is Houston. I mean well Houston now we'll talk Houston here come up. They're a show in life but I dunno, I like the Showboats. Maybe it's just the masochist to me with Chase Cook is getting beat Up. I just really question their late game management. I know from a talent standpoint they're probably the second best team, but I just really worry about what they've been doing in second half that's just flirting with disaster. I'm concerned about them going forward, but I mean I understand again from the standpoint of their defense now Memphis is, defense is also legit. I'll give them a lot of credit there. Case has got to protect the himself. Someone's got to tell 'em get into zero and be like, Hey buddy, you've got a baseball slide, don't do this. Don't play hero ball. We need you. Yeah, Philip here where we're going to talk here, the roughnecks come up. Philip's a member. You can be a member of support. We don't get many super chats. I've always said on here. I'll watch my Kraken post game and they're like super chat, super chat, super chat, super chat. We just bought our tickets to St. Louis. It all rolls back to this. Although I will say Andy, I got our, because Sundays I get our audio download numbers, right? I mean I think I could go on during, I think I could go on the look, but they send me the numbers on Sundays and our post this show last week did really good for the audio. Listen, so that was good. It did good video wise and then it did good on here as well. Last game. We'll skip to this I will say and beer snake aside, which I'm already tired of hearing about. I mean I get it, it's a beer snake. The games at Audi Field looks so unlike any of the other games in either the XFL or the OS FLI really, really like that. I think the aesthetic of it is really good. This game we had quarterback injuries really came down to the wire DC able to, like we said off the top, kind of maintain their home winning streak. What did you make of this game? Much same to what I said about San Antonio. I'm not sure if the defenders really deserved to win this game either because boy, howdy, the roughnecks were giving them all they could ask for. I don't think the vendors really came out and played their cleanest game and really the blessing in disguise for Houston was that Reed Ette came in, stepped in for Guantanamo Guano and it just was night and day. I mean CNET really put in the work. I think the biggest thing that I really take away from here is that one of the turning plays in this game, Kirk Merrit looked really great out of the backfield and CNET hit him for that big pass play and then he fumbles the ball, it gets the ball punched out and that just turned the entire momentum of the game. Jordan Tom, good credit to him to be able to fight back. He throws that pick that gets tipped at the beginning of the game and gets returned all the way back for a pick six by corn elder and it really deflated the crowd. At first the DC crowd was just kind of out of it for a little bit, which is really what you need to do. If you want to spring and upset an out field, you've got to get that crowd out of it because it's going to be a fiesta the entire time. But they let DC get back from the game they took the lead man, Greg Williams, bless that guy. He sticks to his guns and he never changes. You draw up man coverage on the last play of the game on one-on-one situation when you know that Houston has to throw into the end zone never changed. Greg Williams, I'm sure all Jets fans will remember him fondly, but I can't get over how Houston really had a chance in this game. The two false starts on the last drive that ran off 10 seconds of the clock each. I mean that's just coaching this management, this coaching staff. I think that there's players a huge disservice. Once again, I'm really skeptical about the artists formerly known as the Houston Roughnecks because we all know who they really are and it really disappoints me to see the potential that they really had here to actually win this game and really get a huge upset. I mean you could have been the first team to ever win an Audi field as a road opponent, but as it stands, Audi Field undefeated 10 and oh defenders and Defenders have done it across three different seasons with different players and different coaches. I mean that's a testament. I mean that's really a testament. They embody their home crowd, which is always fanatical. They're crazy. The DC fans are nuts. If you had, I wonder what would happen if you had the St. Louis numbers in DC I think that would be just absolutely untenable. It'd be raucous. Yeah, packed beer snake section. As long as you're wearing the proper colors, they let you in there. Hey, we got, I wanted to put a cup on the, was I going to say the quarterback, the guano getting injured here. Read Sunnet coming in. Obviously you don't want to see anybody get hurt, but especially a quarterback to kind of make that change. But I certainly seem to give Spark there. He's going to be out presumably for a long time. Greg Parks tweeted out during the game or I think it was the post game, Hey, they said that he's hurt, he's not going to play for a month. It's like I knew he wasn't going to play when I saw he was not able to physically get himself to the locker room. I mean it seemed like a very serious injury. Is this enough now? I mean do we have something to work with here with Houston going forward with Reed? I mean I really liked Reed Sunnet with the San Antonio bras last year. Just again he got hurt and that was kind of the end of any offensive hope that that team had last year. I think it creates a spark for Houston. I'm still not sure about their overall operation because their coaching decisions have been suspect, but I mean I have to say they have more of a chance now than they did going into last week and I'm sorry, but the injury to Jared Guano is actually might be a blessing in disguise. I know that's awful to say, but it might've worked out. A lot of people were already starting to ask for a read Sun net and I think this might actually give them a spark, at least in the short term we'll see about long-term, but I still think guys, I mean Ruben Foster's just such a dog. I love him. I hope he doesn't get injured too much, but he's been so good for Houston. I've just been really impressed by at least their defense to kind of keep things in front of them for dc I mean this is clearly not the same DC team as last year. I think that they just don't have the same spark as far as the two quarterback system. It's not really working out the same way here. They don't have that guy like Di King that they can just plug in and make him run. I think they're trying to make something happen there, but it's not really the same. They've got to find out they're a little bit of their dynamicism on offense. I mean you saw Lucky Jackson, he was visiting for the game. He was on the sideline, which was great, but I think they really miss those kinds of guys like him to really have Jordan to throw to. So it's going to be a work in progress for dc but I don't think this is the same team that we saw in the championship game last year. We have a couple comments here, Jacob saying if we get Mark Thompson back or get Reed in that I think we could win a couple of games. Yeah, I mean we've heard about this off the email, the Mark Thompson injury and all the offense running through them. Scott still comparing next to F against us. FL. The league is tweeting out the conference records. It's part of it. Spoiler alert, I don't dunno to tell you Scott Friday is going to be us l attend, not care this, I mean this is all part of it, it's all a part of that. I want to get your thoughts here and then we will do a quick little preview and get out of here. Curtis Johnson, a friend of the podcast here came on preseason. Are we high on him here? Getting this figured out with the new quarterback and all that? What do you make of Curtis Johnson because Barlow, we know, I think he's going to study the DC ship even if kind of the pieces aren't there from last year, but what do you make of Curtis Johnson? I like them a little bit more last year at least stabilizing some of the collateral damage left over from Kevin Sumlin, but I just, your old buddy Paul I know remembers him very well, but I just think that there's a little bit of inconsistency in how he makes decisions, late games decisions, like I said, those two false starts are excusable, you got to fix that and for this offense, just fighting any semblance of rhythm I think is going to take, yeah, I agree. Maybe Mark Thompson coming back into the field when he finally is able to get back onto the field. Just something for this Houston team, but I think it just seems so identity list right now and that's really for me, the biggest thing about Houston. I just dunno who they are at all. They don't really have an identity to me compared to all these other teams. Although a lot of these other teams I think have an identity even if they haven't won as much as they wanted to Houston, I just dunno what they have. Yeah, Jacob be says Chris Johnson needs to go. So let's look ahead to next week or this weekend and then any other questions we'll get out of here. Like I said, reminder 50 50, oh excuse I'm on the wrong. 50 50 on if we are going to, there'll be a Friday episode, I'm going to be traveling so it's kind of one of those like, Hey Dorothy, I got to go do this. We'll see if Paul was still following this stuff. That would be kind of a funny beer podcast to talk about, but I don't think Paul's got enough of the knowledge about any of this stuff. We'll catch up. I'm sure we'll be posting some photos. Week three going to be, okay, so the defenders going into Arlington. We got the Showboats at stallions. Their home opener will be really curious to see the attendance there. Triple Michigan home games to open the season that is rough. And then St. Louis going into San Antonio, that is circled to me as the biggest game of the weekend here. 3:00 PM on a b, C. That should be a good showing for that. What game you're looking forward to here? What are your thoughts? Yeah, I think your marquee game there is the battle hawks at the Braas. I mean you expect a lot of offense in that game, right? That's going to be potentially a shootout down in San Antonio. Obviously San Antonio trying, if they got to 3.0 to begin the season really going to sizable leave in the XFL conference, that'd be huge for them. But the battle hawks, I think I figured some things out on offense and I really think that's going to be a hell of a game from a scoring standpoint. The other game I really have circled, I mean the renegades man, it's kind of do or die for them. They're already in trouble. If they go to oh three, that might, I don't want to say that's the death nil, but that's really hard to climb out of. I know they started off really slow last year obviously in their offense, but I mean the offense is not the problem for them. It's just really their defense now that I think has become much bigger of a concern and obviously RiNo missing. That kick was so uncharacteristic of him last week DC you wouldn't want to think to keep the momentum, but like I said, I'm not sure if they have all the pieces together that they need. I would not be surprised that Renegades can finally pull one out and get one at home. They desperately need it and this Arlington market I think would like to see that from their champions and so I have that circled as well for Birmingham. I just want them to show up. Let's see, Birmingham show up. You're the back-to-back champions. Everyone talks, all the stallion fans talks. Let's see what happens. Let's see if the Birmingham market really gets behind them. That's my question. Let's see an official attendance number from the Birmingham stallions. I think that would be important, but the one I'm actually going to tell you that I think is surprising I think might surprise a lot. I think the roughnecks are going to go into Michigan and win. I know that they're O2, but I think they're going to go in and upset the Michigan Panthers. I don't really like the offense for the Panthers. I don't really love what the roughnecks are, but I actually trust Reed Sunnet much more than I trust anybody who's taking snaps under center for Michigan. I know Jake Bates is a great story. I know they have a good defense, but I think this Houston team can come in and get an upset. That's my call the weekend. Yeah, I mean like I said, the Jake Bates thing is good and all, but that should not be the shiny moment of your offense is that you're a kicker. I mean that's great and they've gotten a lot of mileage out of that and it's been really good and I know they even had the former USFL, whatever the kicker was there and giving him a hat and all this stuff. We're going through all of that, but yes, I agree we need to have a little bit more there comments before we get out. Yeah, put your game of the week on here. Put who you're excited to see Foosball fans as DC versus Arlington's going to be good, Mike. Geez. Yeah, I'm ready for Birmingham. I'm just so afraid we burnt them out that first season. I know obviously you can't, we don't want to move the team, but I think that that really did more harm than maybe we anticipated kind of running all the games there back to back to back and then Max says, I hope if the bra is keep winning, we can see the attendance creep up. That's the thing. They started really strong last year, the braas dead and then the team was just duty and now where the team is winning and if they're winning hopefully a little bit more convincing, then oh my God, this ref or the umpire just got smacked in the face with his baseball. Oh my God, I'm watching them mirror the game out of the corner. He just fell it right into his face. But yeah, I'll be curious with the bras because I think that's a potentially strong market with a sexy team that has a lot of things going for it now I do too, and I think not having that morning time slot against the eastern crowd, the eastern crowd will really help. But San Antonio, I think about it too. They were so strong with the San Antonio commanders and again, losing that team, that IP and that league I think did some harm for the San Antonio market. You wanted them to buy back and be like, look, here's the team. We're keeping them. They're not going away. I think that they got to build that trust back up again. But I like the San Antonio market a lot. I really do. I love the city again and I really hope that they can find that consistency. I think they deserve to have a football team and a good football team and they do have a good football team right now. Very different team from last year. So for them, I mean if they can draw, continue to draw, plus 13,000, maybe even 15,000, that would be great. I don't know if we need ever get the 20 like that one time, two times we did last year with the championship game in the opener, but that would be great, but that to me would be gravy. Yeah, Mike every game has something. Yeah, I don't know. This feels last year when we had some of this in the eight games going on with the US F felony, it felt really, you have a lot of storylines here with all this stuff and I like that. I like having the condensed and I got to just keep track of eight teams and we got the eight kind storylines and we intermixing that way. Yeah, I know that it is that w Scott Bailey that writes down in San Antonio, he's always talking about them being burned and why. That's one of the reasons people are hesitant and I totally get that and that's why it's important. Do a two year plan here. Mike Mitchell's talked about, let's get through this season, let's make a good case next year and then kind of see where we're stand from there. Any other things from you, Andy? Anything else? Comments? We're just talking about games and attendance and everything else. Anything else you want to talk about? I just want to say mean the quality of football, I really have to say has been really good. And I mean for me, I like that there wasn't a whole premonition from the social media account about saying, oh, well we had this many close games this weekend. That was a big thing for the USFL and I always kind of batted, I sort of rolled my eyes sometimes when they made such a deal about how close the games were and I always thought, well, I'm not sure about some of the quality of these games sometimes, but I can actually say the quality of these games and these teams have overall been very consistent and very good so far. I'm pleased by what I've seen. Like I said that Arlington St. Louis game was awesome. That was really a great game. I hope we have another one of those soon and I'm sure we will, but quality overall, some of these quarters can be a little snoozy, but I do think that from what you're seeing from the players I think is what you want to see from a spring league. I really have been impressed by the overall quality so far. Yeah. Where is it the Foosball fan here this next weekend? Belong to the UFL this week three going to be, I know we have the masters I think starting Thursday so that I don't fall golf, but that's kind of the big temple event next week. But yeah, certainly no final four. Certainly no wrestling. I mean wrestling much of my life this weekend and so we'll be cleared out from that as the Mariners give up and run here. So yeah, I think it's going to be better. I'll be excited to see where these ratings normalize here just without a lot of the competition that they've had the last week. I mean they performed and we'll get ratings tomorrow, but they perform well against their competition thus far for the first weekend. Well, I mean I'm really glad that you, Mike, again, always talking about the schedule and where the schedule lies and where are these ratings going to be. They're going to run into somebody at some point. I think it's just been tough the first two weeks because they ran into the buzz saw that was the NCAA tournament for men's and women's now. I mean that wasn't even something that XFL 2.0 didn't really even have to run into with women's basketball, but Caitlyn Clark was such a sensation and that just such gangbusters the last two years with how much notoriety that sport's gotten now. I mean there's just another competition point. There's always going to be a new competitor. Next thing you know people are going to be watching and people are already starting to watch F1 races and you're going to be giving maybe, who knows, maybe MLS starts creeping into people's lives and really starts to take over. There's always going to be competition. You have to find a way to dig out your niche and be able to appeal to the people that are already in your space and then be able to work on getting other people involved in the periphery. But I mean there's no magic date I guess there's pros and cons for all sides. So you get into, I mean that would be a whole nother three hour podcast, but I think it's just always an ongoing debate and look, there's always going to be competition. It's just become the fact of the reality. Yeah. Last thing here, Abdul says Skip Balo said he watched the San Antonio Memphis game and praises the fourth and 12. Now they most certainly either gave him a sheet of paper that talked about it and either or showed him the 32nd clip and said, you're going to talk about this on the show. So I have seen who is it now? It's Skip and Keyshawn. I saw their segment from last week. Yes, they're most certainly because they're still doing the same. Wow, this is great. Getting players into the NFL. They just have kind of their talking points and like, well, the NFL needs to adopt this and they can have a developmental league. Keyshawn didn't watch a second of any of that and Skip most early did not. They have their notion of what this is and they've been told enough that they need to what they need to talk about that is all that that is. Yeah, I mean it is just an agenda item for them, but it's not really a viewing agenda that they really have in their own free time. And it's the same thing with Colin Cowher and all of them. There's not really this integration into the Daily Sports Talk sphere has not happened yet when it does happen. I mean credit to Pat McAfee for getting involved in it. Obviously good for him, but there needs to be more of that, especially on the Fox network. There's got to be more synergy there. If you're really going to be pumping up this leak, maybe you should really get some dedicated people to talk about this. Like I said, get Joel Klatt on Colin Cowher, get Colin to talk about it for a few minutes. Just be able to talk about it. Clearly knowledgeable. There's been some really good broadcasting from a lot of these guys, but especially from Clad Menifee. I'm really impressed by their presentation every time they're involved with the game. You got to get more of those guys involved. Yeah, you notice though today, pat, which I watched Pat McAfee because he was still at WWE e. There was no UFL segment today, right? I mean the UFL is really great for McAfee, but we don't have a lot to talk about on the Monday right here. We have a couple of weeks we're talking draft and Caleb Williams and all of that, but that really fills like, oh, okay, we need 18 minutes filled here. Okay, let's talk with Jake Bates and let's talk with destroying. Let's talk with all these people. But yeah, they had Cody Rhodes and m and our truth and stuff on today. They couldn't care about any of that stuff, so we'll get back to that. I still wish that we have the UFL today. I want to get Scooby on. We've been DMing about because he's doing that coming on the show maybe when I get back in town. But I still wish we had that Josh Lewin or whatever doing stuff, a little bit more training camp coverage. I know Anthony's working hard. I know Mike and everybody doing the pressers, but today I turned on the SHOWBOATS one and there's three people on it, so I don't even know if those are doing due diligence at this point. I've tried to get players on and coaches on this week before I get out of town, so there's certainly issues with that. So let's clock out here. Hour 15. It's 2 72 here between Twitter and YouTube. Should be good. I appreciate it guys like and subscribe, Andy and I. Like I said, off the top we'll be in St. Louis for all that championship game that have the Mark Hass and the professor and the stats guy. Pat Remo take over. St. Louis. Anything else from you Andy? No, Maria, thank you as always. Can't wait to see what happens and hey, maybe de destroying will actually attempt a fuel goal this weekend. So that's something to look forward to. I'll tell you that when people hopes the hate at some point you got to, we showed, and I know God bless Jane Oaks and I know I'm sure it's league mandate, but we're posting the highlights of destroying tackling during the game and almost broke his neck. I mean it was a very dangerous tackle and many of the comments were like, please, please don't tackle like that. We're really reaching here for this. We got to talk about destroys. Yeah, let's make a field go miss a field goal, but you got to kick this week. I can't just see you doing kickoffs and well we're over time. But yes, got a lot of hate on my tweet about not liking the USFL kickoff here in the UFL, which I stand by, but I got a lot of hate on that when I tweeted out. Are we tired of very drive starting from the 50 yard line now? It seems very divisive with that. So I don't know. Any last thoughts on that? That would be our ending point. If people want to see their office and start at the 50 yard line or start at midfield, they can watch maybe arena football. I don't know, but I know that's mischaracterizing it, but that to me, it's still something that drives me nuts because I want the field position to be earned. I've always said that and I still believe that way with the kickoff, but you know what UFL can go watch, see if the NFL is going to do it for an entire season and then maybe retroactively put it back into the game. So we'll see. Yeah. Abdul, I did notice that he said that. Did you know how God, we just cannot hit anything. The blue Jay is here at the warning track. God just killing me. I did notice that the RAM was punted. It did not go for 54 yard. Yes I did. I did notice that. But I'm getting a lot of heat right now, so I really got to be careful with how I deploy my, I can't be talking to Donald all the time. I got to be really selective about when I tweet about it, so I did notice that. Alright, excuse me. Alright guys, I'm going to go watch the Mariners, hopefully not blow this. I'll be in LA watch social media. I'll post out what we're doing Friday if we're doing anything, and then Andy and I'll be back next week. We'll be talking at UFL week three. Thanks to everybody like can subscribe. We'll see you next time.

Will UFL’s Extreme Makeover SAVE Spring Football?

Well here we are here back, not live to them. I'm so used to saying that here, but we are live with Mike here in the present recording this no intro. Today we're going to get right into everything. Mike Mitchell, UFL Insider with Sports Illustrated. My only plug off the top. If you enjoy the work that we do here and subscribe, thumbs up the video. We're about a hundred subscribers away. We get 3,502 free tickets to the UFL championship game. It's looking more and more like I am going to be able to attend that, so that is exciting. But two free tickets like and subscribe. Get us over that hump. We are here today one week following the UFL kickoff. I was in Arlington, Mike was on the show. We have Mike Mitchell. Mike, we have a ton of listener viewers submitted questions. We're going to get to all of those. I have 'em all bookmarked. First and foremost, we got week one in the can. What do you make of everything thus far with UFL? It was a lot of fun as a fan, as somebody who follows these leagues writes about 'em. I enjoyed every one of the games. I think there was some hiccups here and there, but I think overall it was a lot of exciting plays. A lot of plays that went viral, A lot of cool finishes, some unique aspects to the league. I think it can only get better from here. I enjoyed the broadcast. I've always been, one of my favorite things about the U US FL broadcast the last couple of years is that I'm a huge Joel Clap fan. Big Kurt Menifee guy and I like the Fox aspect. I know sometimes some people feel that maybe it's a little too much f Lish, but I think those guys are so knowledgeable. Joe Klatt is terrific. If you're someone who's a casual fan who doesn't follow these leagues and you actually listen to Joel Klatt, he's breaking down the tendencies of these teams the last couple of years. So what Birmingham likes to do on third down, what they typically do on defense, John Chavis, blitz packages, et cetera. It's just like if you're a casual fan who doesn't know much about these leagues, if you're listening to one of those broadcasts, CLT can teach you a lot. He can get you abreast of the situation. So overall, I like the opening week. I think there's room for growth and improvement there and we made it to this point and I'm glad both these leagues have United and hopefully they can build from this season. It's going to be a fun ride. Yeah, I've done a couple, I was on Rod Peterson show today as we record this and a couple other podcasts this week. I think it went about as well as you could expect, right? For a new league opening. I mean obviously this isn't really, it's a new league, but it's whatever. But to me it just makes sense. This feels like how it should have been all along if Fox and Redbird and had all got their act together three years ago, you got games on Fox, you got games on ESPN. We're promoting Pat McAfee's talking to the players on Monday. It feels like this is the prince that was promised here a couple of years ago. We're getting here. Sure. And kudos to Ben Fisher by the way, had a fantastic article last week leading into the week one of the UFL season where he kind of gave background. I mean this is stuff that I reported in the past, how Fox tried to buy the XFL out of bankruptcy and Redbird and Danny Garcia and Dwayne Johnson kind of beat them to it and how Ben Fisher to his credit got quotes from Jerry Carne from, I believe Tim Reed from Disney, from Eric Shanks of course with Fox. And they talked about they had wished they had gotten together earlier sooner and it might've been a different world. We wouldn't have had this particular setup if Fox and Redbird had just bought the XFL and then waited it out and brought out the league and all that. So here we are. We might not have had the Birmingham stallions and all this. Who knows what teams we would've had if they were just bringing back XFL from the grave again in 2020. So I'm glad these entities are together. Fisher also noted something that's very interesting. I kind of flew over people's heads that they told him and they wouldn't lie to him that Disney has partial ownership of this league as well. Now nobody knows quite the breakdown, but I think that's fascinating to have Disney, Fox Redbird, Danny Garcia, Dwayne Johnson, all as owners of this league. It begs a lot of questions because in the past these kind of leagues, the big thing is like, oh, can we get a TV rights deal? But if you're the actual networks that own the league, there's no deed for a TV rights deal. That's your in-House league right there. It's all about getting sponsorships, obviously attendance, selling, merchandising, selling off the franchises. So I mean it kind of eliminates the equation of, oh, I hope the UFL can get 50 million a year or 40 million a year or whatever. It's right. And so because the networks already own them, so they're covering all the costs, production and paying for the expenses. And so it's a little bit of a different dynamic. Excuse me, if the networks own the league. Yeah, We will get to, oh, so as we talk through attendance ratings, all that today, we have questions for all of that. It's your understanding right now, and I know you talked about this on the pre-show that we did, thank you for calling in for that busy Saturday. We're kind getting through this year and then it feels like we're on kind of a two year window right now as we look at attendance, everything. We're not going to freak out if next week we drop because I'll ask you here about TV radio. Is that your understanding that we're at least on, I've had talks with people directly in the UFL higher up, several people, and I know a lot of them have been kind of instructed to not let loose lip sink ships kind of deal. But from what they told me is that they feel like this is a new launching point for them and that the real test will come in 2025. Their expectation is that they'll get their footing this year. Their expectations are modest and that they'll build towards next year. And I, I've mentioned this throughout this whole process, both the leagues have merged because I don't think either side, and they'll never say this publicly, and I know this to be the case, they did not see the light at the end of the tunnel. And they feel by uniting together, by coming together, they can potentially, because the facts are out there for anybody who wants to see come out. Fox has been trying to rope in investors into the league and sell franchises for going on. Now, year number three, both Fox and Redbird have hired prestigious investment firms to raise money. They haven't been successful in that end. So I think they're doing this because they both, they're obviously very bullish about the concept of running and operating your own league. They think the concept is strong enough. Fox was so impressed with the XFL in 2020, that's why they stayed in this spring pro football game with the USFL. So I definitely think that 2024 is the launching points of 2025. And then when we get to there, because everybody, I speak to people even in Canada, I've been like, you are with Peterson there. I've been on Canadian shows, I've talked to Canadian agents coaches and they ask me, Mike, what do you think? Do you think this is really going to last? Because everybody's skeptical. Nobody will be surprised if this doesn't make it right, because we know the history, the graveyard is littered with these leaks. But they all asked me that and I told them, this merger has bought them two years. What happens beyond that? We shall see. So ratings came out this week, you reported, and I like to kind of preface while we do this, we still live and die by all this every week. I'm like, oh, it went up two points. It went down two points, but just, I like having the stage set here. We have a little bit of a runway here. It's not like it's got to hit a certain benchmark here by week three or else this thing's kind of falling apart. But you reported the ratings, right? We had 1.3 high, 1.3 for the Fox and the secondary game on that 1.1 and then 900 and the 800,000. What was your reaction to that? And then they'll all have the questions here from the listeners for everything else. What was your reaction to the TV ratings? I know you wrote about it on Sports Illustrated. Yeah, it was a stressful Tuesday morning. I can't tell you how many messages I get from people. What's the ratings, Mike? Where are the ratings, where the ratings are you going to report it? I got a couple messages. Where are you going to get your ratings from now? And this whole time I've been getting 'em from Nielsen. And full disclosure, this says this is not tied in completely, but I used to be part of a Nielsen Home way back in the day. It's kind of a unique science. It's not an exact science. The way they measure audiences, you're responsible, if you're a Nielsen home, you're responsible for that particular region. So if I'm watching, I don't know, walking Dead, all of a sudden my entire neighborhood is registered as watching Walking Dead. So it's not quite exact science and I am a little old school, but there are so many different measurements now between streaming and out of home viewership that's not really calculated in. So that Tuesday morning was stressful waiting for the numbers from Nielsen, from Fox. There are a lot of great people out there due to ratings, Austin Karp and Sports Media watch, sports TV ratings, all these guys. And then I get those numbers and then I was surprised when I got them. I had a feeling because even though this is a new entity and you consider it a new league, I see it as a bit of a carryover from what we've already seen. So I was a little bit lukewarm on how much appeal this would have for people watching. And then you throw on top of the fact that it's Easter weekend and then of course the heavy competition that's out there now. I mean women's basketball has become so popular now too. That's really changed in the last couple of years. And then of course NCAA doing what they do and then all the MLB stuff, et cetera. So the landscape is very difficult. So when I saw the numbers 1.1 million, 1.3 million, I said, wow, I had a couple people in the UFL reach out to me because they read my article Sports Illustrated, and they gave me a little bit of hard time of undershooting them. I thought they were doing that 8,000 k range, so they exceeded. That doesn't mean I'm absolutely correct, although I had people in the industry who read my predictions article and they thought I was spot on. So when I saw the 1.1 million, 1.3 million, I said, okay, wow. They did a little bit better than I thought they would. And then the Sunday numbers to me were impressive too. You've got that early start in San Antonio, 11:00 AM start and they do nearly a million viewers on that, and that's pretty impressive at 12 noon eastern to do that. And then they did 700 and that game was kind of slow. Admittedly the Memphis Houston game at the end, there was a little bit of drama involved. The game was close and there was a chance for Houston to steal one, but it wasn't as sexy as some of the other games. But I thought the numbers were very respectable. What's going to happen now as you're going to see the ratings go down? I think the reason why you're going to see the ratings go down, and I'm sure there'll be plenty of narratives out there of how the league tanked and look, it's so typical and all that, but they're running into a buzz saw this weekend. So again, I'm very tame in my predictions. I mean, they're going to be going up against the Final Four Women's Championship. They're going up against WrestleMania too, which I find that there's a lot of fans of these leagues that are also fans of the WWE and WrestleMania is a once a year event. It's huge. It's two days. You got the rock wrestling and the main event. And so I think those are going to take, those different elements are going to take away viewers from the league. The key is going to be the follow-up once March Madness goes away. Sure, there's other leagues, N-B-A-N-H-L, all that. They'll do their thing. But I think this league, because it has so many games on big network television will by default when the season ends, I guess these leagues last year, although it wasn't an apples to apples comparison, there were what in that 600, 700,000 range, whatever it was for the year. I think this league will do better just because they have more big network games. So by default, their yearly average will be better and they always do. The first week is the highest, the championship game is the highest. And we've seen that to their credit, USFL and XFL, we've seen their highest rated games take place. At least they're able to retain some of the audience that they have or close to it when their championship game arrives. So the next few weeks are going to be very telling. I think there's, they're going to take a little bit of a hit this coming weekend, but how far of a hit that remains to be seen? Well, and also WrestleMania is huge this year especially, and I've been a wrestling fan off and on my entire life and MS Seen Ford Field area, not all wrestlemanias are the same level, but this has really been built into that, especially with the two day nature of it. Quick follow up and then we'll get in where you're talking about it being a continuation versus a new league launching. I think that that helps maybe not have as much of a drop next week where maybe it's actual generated interest versus like, oh, this is a new league, let's go check it out. I think it's not like they've been marketing this for 10 years pushing to this date and everyone and then they're going to turn away. I think it being a continuation might lend a little bit more to this is actually the level of people that are invested in that. Does that make sense? No, definitely. They developed a niche audience. So the question with these leagues is I think they have, I know there's a lot of people who are detractors of these leagues. I think they've developed a nice floor. The question with them is how far can they get their ceiling? And everybody I've talked to has been, and I, it has been skeptical about whether or not they can reach a larger ceiling. And I know the idea of these two leagues coming together is let's own this space together and perhaps we put our efforts together and we can reach that light at the end of the tunnel that I was talking about earlier in the conversation. So I do agree, Reid, I think there's a chance, we'll see what happens with this weekend, but I think they've developed, see this is the cool thing about the USFL and the XFL now is you have established identities with these teams and leagues. There is legitimate fan bases for them and it's like watching a show like season three of a show, season two of a show. So they have identities. This isn't just some random new league where you don't know the players. They're guys like the Luis Perez is the Jordan Temo. We all know the Skip Holtz, the Bob Stoops. So the audience that's been around for these leagues the last few years is along for the ride. So you got a dedicated group, may not be as large as other sports leagues, but I think that can stabilize and keep the question in the long run is the ceiling, how high can they go? Can they get higher? Because we haven't seen leagues in this space perform like the XFL did in 2020, even though that league was getting trashed for their ratings. But I remember on Twitter where I would every week post sports ratings comparisons and the XFL was beating a lot of leagues. I couldn't do that with the USFL in 2022. I couldn't do that with the XFL in 2023. But I remember some of my most viewed tweets and my little whatever six year run now on Twitter were those sports because a lot of people were crapping on the X NFL's ratings. I said, oh yeah, so I would put NBA on NBC, the NHL on a B, C and then compared it. And it was funny, the XFL was beating the NFL combine, the NFL combine. The XFL led into the NFL combine and the XFL got a better rating. I know it's different. I know it's guys and shorts, I get it versus an actual game, but still, right. So anyhow, but I think the ceiling is the key on this. Have they developed a decent enough floor? I think they have a good product. I think it's a good TV product. I think it can get better. And when you put it into context too, Seattle, our regional sports is completely bottomed out. The network that carries the Mariners and the Kraken to put into perspective, I watch a Kraken every week, this full blown production. They got big stars doing the commentary, all that. I think root averages like 13, 15,000 a game. So it's really puts in when the XFL pops off 1.3 million versus this is not that. I know that you hate hockey enough. I don't hate hockey, I don't dislike hockey. I'm as football. As football gets over the years, I've become more of a casual fan of all the other leagues, but football's the one thing where I'm diehard. Alright. Eugene wants to know what has been the league's reaction to ratings versus expectations, especially given the competition March start? They're happy. Like I said, I got needled a bit because I said they would do 800 K and they ended up doing 1.3 and 1.1 million. So I got a couple friends of mine were teased me about that. They're happy with it. Are there some people within the leagues that maybe feel that they could have done a little bit better, I suppose, but I haven't communicated with those individuals because the way I look at it is they really, you got to understand there was a lot of consideration about this league starting in February or starting the week after the Super Bowl, but they just didn't have time to pull that off. Next year's timeline might be a lot different than this was. So they went right smack right in the middle. Usually what we get with say the XFL starting in February of the a f is, although the AF didn't get a chance to finish the deal, you needed to do the XFL in 2020. But what ends up happening is by week four, week five, week six, you can afford to take a hit with your league. If you're going directly against March Madness, you're like, all right, I'll take our lumps for a few weeks, they'll go away and then the end of our season we'll build up to the playoffs and we'll do better then. But to debut launch this league week one against it right in the heart of it, right in the wind of the storm so to speak. That's a tough one. So they were really pleased. The people I spoke to were really pleased that they were surprised that some people were surprised by the numbers and they were attendance too. I know they're really prideful about how hard they're working and I could see a lot of the teams are doing $15 deals and all these different deals and they're trying to doing free ticket giveaways and all this stuff. They're really trying to rope in people. So they didn't really have a lot of time to make this work. I know we've heard that excuse before, but I think the true measurement for a lot of this stuff, the ratings and attendance is really going to come a year from now. But so far to answer the question, they're pleased with what they've seen. Well, especially that second game going up against Caitlin Clark and all of that, and that was 12.9 million. I mean, it completely blows the water out of everything that's really come in that space before Abdul wants to know what is the percent chance, speaking of the start, the percent chance of the 2025 season starts earlier, mid February based on Reed's conversation with Daryl. It feels like it's heading towards that. Yeah, I think the discussion was initially for them to be after the Super Bowl. There are so many arguments for and against that. One of the arguments, there's a couple of different arguments. Well, if you launch after the Super Bowl, you don't obviously run into what they're running into now, which March Madness and all that. You also run into a situation where you're in the dead of winter where you have more people that are at home. So there's an argument for that. If your timeline is later, you run into the spring and summer where more families are outside and they're not at home early Saturday afternoons are doing things, and then of course agents and players prefer for their players for their season to wrap up. Before NFL teams have mini camps and all that we saw last year, both leagues have quality talent, but the XFL ended up having 69 players that signed with the NFL and IDENTIFI contracts, not counting all the mini camp invite guys. So 69 signed and then 42 signed on the USFL side. So that's 111 players total. So you can still get a good amount of players if your season ends in June and July as evidenced by the 42. But hey, 69, 42 or 27 more opportunities there. So I mean, agents and players want to have a better opportunity to get in the NFL. You got 35 players right now from the XFL and the USFL in 2023 that are currently rostered in the NFL. So 30% of the players that signed ended up in the league, we'll see if they make it for next season, but hey, they got a job in the NFL. So that's part of the goal of these leagues, even though they don't want to be a straight up developmental league. So as far as the calendar goes, I think they're going to debate it percentage wise. I don't know. Like I said, there's an argument for waiting until April. There really is. Here's the thing though, if they add more teams, they're also, I know we expansion, well, we have expansion. Expansion is talked about too much. I know, but if they add more teams that extends your season. So if let's just hypothetically, if they have 10 teams next year or 12 or whatever, that extends your season. You have more games during the week on television too. You'll have five, six games a week on TV rather than the four that they have now. But that would theoretically extend your season as well. So maybe if you start earlier, you can end May, June or something like that. Yeah, if you add teams and then you're starting late and then you're going late after that. Eugene has a follow up. Any talk consideration from the leagues now reverting to the XFL kickoff now that the NFL will use it. I know we talked about it a little bit on the pre-show at the end of the stream, but I am surprised they didn't about, I mean I know that we've been practicing in training camp for four weeks, but I'm surprised almost that they didn't do that. Having watched the US L kickoff again, now Greg Parks did a complete breakdown about all the given yards and all of that. Do you think they move back to that next year, the XFL style? It's fascinating. I've been watching the USFL for a while now, obviously, and their kickoff is just interesting to me. A returner will have 15 yards with, you'll see a returner run for 10, 15 yards without a defender even getting in the picture. You can argue whether that's a good thing or not. It's fun to watch returns like that and all that. You saw the opening kickoff of the season or Arlington's already in enemy territory. Honestly, I think the UFL is going to play it out and watch how it works in the NFL first before they do an about phase. Here's the thing, I do think the NFL is going away from, unfortunately they're going away from the traditional kickoff. It's because of safety. We've seen what they've done. They neutered the kickoff to begin with, no wedges, none of this different alignments, et cetera. So it sounds only 22% of kickoffs are returned and you've eliminated injuries, but you've eliminated the play. But I think the NFL is only signed up for one year with this kickoff. I'm so fascinated to see what happens, how NFL teams adapt to it, how it comes off. There's going to be people in the preseason week, one of the NFL season that are going to look at this radical looking kickoff and think this is ridiculous. Just go back to the old one. There'll be people that go, Hey, why don't you just use the UFL one? That was pretty cool. They moved the kicker back and they still get returns. So you'll get that argument too, right? So I think if it's not a disaster, because the NFL has some differences from the XFL kickoff. Obviously they're trying to paint it as their own. It's Sam Schwartz's baby, but they do have some differences. How many people are upfront? I think it's seven versus nine. Obviously two returners rather than one. So there are maybe those tweaks will make the kickoff a little more exciting. I don't know. I know Sam Schwartzstein and his team tried a bunch of those things already, so they trial by fire I guess. But let's just say it's crapped on by the critics. The NFL kickoff is just, nobody's like, this is ridiculous. Go back to the old kickoff, then the UFOs be like, Hey, we made the right decision by not going to that kickoff. But if it's a smashing success in the NFL and it's fun and there's a lot of returns and big plays and not every place, just the kickoff in the NFL is like I'm watching to see how strong, it's like an exhibition watching to see how strong the kicker's leg is, see if you can get it through the uprights. It's like the guys, the returner just walks away as the ball goes through the end zone. So it's become nothing play in the NFL. So I think they could go back to it, but I think they're going to react upon what happens in the NFL. If the NFL loves the kickoff and they're like, this is it. We're as far as we go, this is our kickoff from here on in. Then I think other people, not only the UFL, I think college football will follow suit. I mean you got the European League of footballs doing it. I think the CFL who's looking at it, if it's a smashing success in the NFL, the CFL will have it. So you'll have all levels of football using it. But first things first, let's see how the NFL implements it and how it works in their league first. Yeah, if the CFL takes it over that, that would really be this illustrious of that. Peter, Texas, Pete wants to know what's the status on selling teams as franchises. Are there any conversations about what that would cost or look like? And I guess to add to that, for mine, you talked about Disney and Fox kind of owning equity in this right now. So maybe there's not as like, okay, we got to sell tomorrow. So does that change any of that? And I guess how does any of that update now that we have all of this new kind of mishmash of all this ownership? Yeah, all the markets they chose specific for this merger, they chose specifically because they have designs on specific potential investors. I think I've heard for the longest time now that Memphis is a city that they feel is going to have maybe perhaps the league's first owner. So that's one of the things I've heard at Birmingham, Michigan. There's also hope there. All these teams were chosen specifically the surviving USFL teams with the idea of them being sold off. And I think I've heard a lot of rumblings about Memphis, so I wouldn't, here's the thing, it's very difficult to get eight good owners. You can get one or two of 'em, but it's very difficult. So we saw what happened with the a f, so it's not an easy task, but I think there's a good chance that if this league has success in the next two years, I think there's a good chance we're going to see at least one or two of the franchises sold off to local ownership. You would hope. Why wouldn't you want to own St. Louis? We saw you tweeted it out, the Battle Hawks beating out the cardinals and the ratings, how well they did locally up against Kaitlyn Clark and all that. And then so why wouldn't you, if you're in St. Louis, consider owning the battle locks and you figure the stallions by now, that was the hope of Fox that somebody in Birmingham would step up, right? You'd figure well see how their attendance is. It's a crucial week for some of these teams. The expectations are modest for attendance, but I think the threshold for a lot of these teams is 10 k and above. So try to shoot for that. The big thing with these games too is that you want, and I think they all had good crowds. I think you want whoever shows up no matter what the number is, 10, 12, 14,000, you want energized crowds that are into it. That crowd sounded great in Michigan. It wasn't the biggest crowd, and the crowd was decent in Houston. All things considered they team didn't look very good, but I thought their energy level was good there. San Antonio is pretty good too. So I think these markets, how they do, if they start to take off, if they have good seasons at the gate, Birmingham, Memphis, Michigan improved from last year. I think there's a chance maybe they can, I mean that's the ultimate goal outside of the NFL stepping in and funding this league. Somehow that's the ultimate goal is because they've centralized it. They're all going for the MLS model. And so what they would like to do is have it centralized control costs and then owners come in and that takes care of itself. It was funny, I actually want to pull that up because one of our listeners, they tagged me in that St. Louis thing and I texted Max, I said, has this been shared yet? He's like, oh yeah, that's been around. I'm like, oh. And I'm like, well, I'll tweet it anyway just because, and then it ended up, a lot of people hadn't seen it yet. So just let me see if I can share this just so we can talk about it super quick. This is kind of an ad-lib here. So the TV numbers by these are the local ratings for each of the teams. St. Louis beating there, the 4.5 on that. Are you surprised with the lower numbers here for Birmingham, which this is year three of them having a team with 2.6 and then Detroit 2.2 and then Dallas, the central hub of the UFL with a point a. I mean I know Dallas is huge, there's a lot going on. Just any takeaways on that since that's kind of new info since we've posted anything? Yeah, I'm not so obviously not surprised. It goes without saying St Louis's number. Okay. I wish it would be better. Detroit. I'm actually surprised it's that, to be honest with you, that there, and you would think by now that Dallas would be a little bit stronger for attendance was decent. You were obviously at that game. I thought I was a little worried before the game, seeing some of the photos that were out there and how the crowd was potentially going to look. And then I think it filled out nicely. Yeah, those numbers could be a little bit better. The Dallas number could be better. The Detroit number is fine. Birmingham should be a little bit higher. St Louis is awesome. I mean that's so cool to see. So I think some lessons can be learned here in the future in terms of it's probably never going to happen. But I keep looking at Oakland, which has no pro sports teams basically. Now, especially with the a's move in today, they're going to be playing in Sacramento. I just keep thinking of myself. If this league ever decides the journey a little bit differently on the calendar and maybe head to the west a little bit rather than just be sectioned off there, maybe Oakland will be in consideration. Could you imagine if you had an Oakland UFL team? That entire market, there's no baseball to watch, there's none of that. And don't get me wrong, there'll be some loyalists that still follow the a's no doubt, but it's kind of hard when they abandon your city. So for Oakland to have their own football team, they lost the Raiders. I think that's something for maybe it's cost efficient, it's not cost efficient, I don't know. But that's something to consider because you're looking at the example of St. Louis and what happens when you go to a market that's been shunned by pro football in general, and then you can see how they've embraced it and those numbers are very impressive and they're going to hold up. St. Louis is going to do well all season loan. Robert has a question here on Facebook. Speaking of attendance, what attendance numbers do the teams need to achieve to be viable? We talked a little bit about that, but for example, Michigan averages 9,000 per game. Will they fold for next season? I don't think so. When You're running fourth field, that's the problem you're running for. I mean it costs a lot to run Forward field. That's a tough one. That's a tough one. So I mean, like I said, for people I've spoken with, I think their expectations are modest in terms of attendance. I don't think they're expecting 20,000 in every venue. I don't think that's the expectation there. They'd like to do better than 9,000 for sure, but you got to remember last year I got the figures, but I wasn't able to release it for two reasons. I could have been a jerk and released it, but I didn't want to make the USFL look bad. That's the God honest truth. People told me not to do that, but I didn't want, I understand the non Panthers games, there was a couple 989 paid fans kind of thing. So I don't think that they're expecting 20,000 at Ford Field. I would love if they get to that point, that would be what a success. Maybe the Panthers beat the stallions this week and they start proving that they're one of the best teams in the league and they start to take off. They have one of the coolest helmets in the history of pro football. They have great history dating back to the old USFL. I'd love nothing more than to see that team take off. So you never know, maybe that market takes that team over time. I don't think there's a set marker. Like last year, if I'm not mistaken, this is off the top of my head, but I think the XFL sold 600,000 tickets. Now I have to double check that, but I'm pretty, that was, I'll have to double check, but I am pretty sure it was in that neighborhood in terms of how many tickets they sold for the season. So this league could do better than that. I have no doubt about that. And if you look at the, because last year you had Orlando, they had the Vegas situation. Vegas averaged like 6,000 per game, which is a miracle that David got that all things considered. And then Orlando was whatever it was, I think 9,000 or 10,000 thereabouts. The key is paid attendance. So they give away a lot of tickets and all that stuff. The key is how many paid. So that's important. I do think these numbers have to improve in some of these markets, but I think the threshold right now is like 10,000 and above. You'd like to build upon that. You'd like to do more obviously. But to expect all these markets outside of St. Louis to all of a sudden be hitting 20 K by now Birmingham, Birmingham is such an awesome team by now. They should be. They're trying to attempt to win the third straight championship. That's something that hasn't happened in football since the Packers in the sixties or the Edmonton Elks in the late seventies, early eighties. I know people look at these leagues differently, but it's professional football mean. So by now Birmingham should be embracing the team. So you would hope that my expectation for them is higher than it is for say, Michigan or what have you. I think they should do 14, 15, 16,000 and above, and they shouldn't be in that eight, nine, 10,000 range in my opinion. These other teams have to build up a winning tradition and build up their fan base. I think by now, stallions in year three should be doing better. It's funny because we talk attendance and you get, there was a CFL guy over the weekend posting the average attendance for all the CFL franchises last year. It's 110 years versus one week here just to be whatever. But to piggyback off that, and then I have another question from Darren here about attendance. You're talking about ownership. We talk about franchise ownership, but I have not looked at the seating charter this weekend. I've heard Memphis is pretty low. I know they're running into $10 ticket sales and you want, but yeah, if I'm buying the Memphis franchise with 4,500 paid attendance, 6,000 paid, what am I buying at that point? And I know we talk about TV ratings and all that. I think it was Ben Fisher that was on last year where the Sports Business journal was talking about you can't evaluate an MLS franchise that's getting a million viewers each week the same as you can USFL fca because you have season tickets and you have hundreds of years the people and they're buying the merchandise and the families and they're passing this on. And even just the mental hold you have in the communities, there's all these other intangibles that go into it. So I guess if Memphis looks really weak this weekend in terms of attendance, I don't know what you're buying there in terms of a franchise, It's tough too with football seasons because it has to go beyond the ticket sales in terms of your revenue because it's not like we've seen baseball games at 3, 4, 5, 6,000 fans, but they got an 81 home games so they can make up some money along the way there. So they can, by doing that, these teams have five games. That's it. And then if they get to the playoffs, maybe they host the game, maybe they get to six or whatever. But you have to be somebody in Memphis that figures with my money, with my promotional ability, I can market this team because the league is not willing for better or for worse because they know they can go into the red rather quickly. They're not willing to go all out on spending money on promotion and marketing. So for better or for worse, and a lot of leagues in the past tried this and they ended up going in the red immediately. So you're going to need an owner that sees that is bullish on it, that sees the potential and goes, you know what, if I take control of the showboats, I will boost attendance. I know exactly what to do in this market. So you're going to need those type of forward-thinking maybe egotistical, brave guys that come into market. You're not going to buy a readymade smashing success product. You're going to need people who are innovative and they feel like they have a handle in the marketplace and they can benefit from owning one of these teams. And then, am I getting a percentage of the shop sales for? How does that go? I mean there's so many. How does that go all in when you have central ownership and all? I mean, I know MLS has all that stuff. Darren wants to know, what do you think is more important TV numbers or live attendance numbers? I think TV numbers are more important because I think the more of an audience you can build, the more sponsors you get and the more popular your product is on television, your attendance will improve. So I think that's a very important aspect is building up your popularity on television because you become more visible and then you sell more tickets. So by default, so I think they go hand in hand. I think the big thing with these football leagues is they have to figure out, and Jerry Cardinal, I've seen him listened to him speak on many different forums. He's talked about monetizing. How do you monetize the fan base when they're not at the games? And that's a thing that these leagues haven't quite figured out yet, whether it be through fantasy, gambling, merchandising. So they haven't quite figured out how do we, because you have to be able, and for a football league to be successful and make a lot of money, you have to be able to profit off of beyond just the three hour window that your game is on. That's where they need to figure out. They need to build up their revenue stream. So they're all important. Each one of these things is important sponsorships. But I would say if I had to lean one way or the other, I think the ratings are a little more important than the attendance. I think your ratings, it is funny how it works though. I think your ratings improve too. If people turn on the TV and they see people in the attendance because then they see it's a hot product and this is interesting and let me watch it and this crowd is awesome and look how amped up they are and it enhances the game. That's what the USFL, unfortunately, they have so many great elements that the league lacked is their games had artificial energy with the pipe and crowd noise and all that. And if you flip it on, you go, oh my God, nobody's had these games and then you would just change. So anyhow, so they kind of all work hand in hand, but I would lean towards the TV ratings. Something caught in my mind. Did you watch? I was traveling. Did you watch the UFL today? I'm looking here on the ESPN. It got about 12,000 viewers on the ES ESP N YouTube channel talking about destroys debut and kind of all that stuff. Did you watch that? I did watch it. There are aspects of that show that it's very sleek looking. I like Scooby. I'm a fan of Daniel dopp. I've listened to him with the field. Yates do fantasy football. They try to do an interactive thing with the fans. I think there's a great gem of an idea there. It looks sleek, very professional. I don't think they're quite hitting on it. It's trying to be hip and the guys are walking around with the pads and all that and they're doing, and I think this show, if it finds its groove, it can be very formidable. It's very up to date leaning into technology, interactivity with fans. I love the concept of it. Like I said, I like the people that are working on the show. I did see it. I thought it was good. My expectation level. I think it could be so much better than what it is. I mean, it has potential. I think it'd be a very entertaining show. They'll have guests and stuff and that'll help. I think they need a little bit more of exclusive access with players and coaches and all that, which we get a lot of. We take it for granted now. I've been watching the XFL and the USFL. We take for granted all this access. It's ridiculous. We never see this. During NFL games, I was watching, I just wrote an article, defender's article, and I watching Reggie Barlow was ripping on Brandon Smith because Brandon Smith was on the sideline saying, you're not throwing me the ball. You're not throwing me the ball. They drop up a play on third down for me, drops it and the DC has to punt the football. And then Reggie Barlow's on screen saying, you begged for the ball, we throw it to you and you drop it. Good going. That kind of deal. I'm like, woo. That stuff. You just don't, I know NFL films does some great work and then after the fact you see some stuff. But some of it you have to question how much of it is cleaned up for television and how much is they make sure we don't hear any read call somebody a jerk or an asshole. So that kind of thing. But I think there's some of that element that I think the UFL today show can benefit from the extra added access. And I think the league, in some respects, it's a work in progress. I think it can be better. I like what they do. I did watch it. It's available out there. They need to do a better job of promoting that. It's coming up. I like the whole idea. I like the idea of a highlight show after the fact and bringing some personality and some flare to it with some cool post-game reactions, some news. I think there's potential there for it to be better than it is right now, as is. It's okay. I enjoyed it last year. There's nothing wrong with it, but I just think it can be so much better than it's, Yeah, it is just like you were talking just ways to exist outside of just a Saturday, Sunday. I know they do it on that makes sense. Do the the post game. But except for these coaches media calls, and I know TMU had a thing they sent out today that you could download. Trying to keep this league and the zeitgeist during the week right now is it's always kind of the problem. And I think the CFL has an issue with that sometimes. I will say really good job with the YouTube channel. I mean the XFL one as well, posting clips and everything. I thought they'd done a good job in terms of being able to catch up and do all that. Even if the one of 'em is the super cut of destroying kicks or whatever. I thought that was kind of funny. Yeah, that's another thing. There's so many hard work and people in the league. I thought it was an impressive week on social media for them weekend, especially in comparison to last year. I thought they did a very good job because last year you'd go an hour, an hour and a half. Come on man. You've had all these cool plays. You're just like, I know I'm seeing it. But the point is, you have to put it out there and then you have to show those highlights. So it's a part of the viewing experience. Now you got the phone in your hand, you're doing it for people who don't have access to TV anyway. But I thought they did a very good job with social media. They're doing a good job on their YouTube channel, a much better job than they did last year. There's areas for improvement. What you have to do is you have to put yourself in the shoes of a fan whenever you're doing any of these things. And you have to say, okay, as a fan, when I watch the NFL, what do I want from a postgame show? Then write that down. What do I like from their Postgame show? Write that down. What are they missing? And then I think you need to do that. You need to do that. What do I do? Like the XFL social media teams, these special teams, if they're NFL fans, they have to sit there and go, what do I do on Sunday mornings when NFL games are about ready to go, about an hour and a half, you have a routine of going to see the inactives. Every team post them. Why can't we do that? So I mean, every routine posts their injury report every day. So it's not a bad thing to copy. I had the NFL. There's some things, right? Because there's stuff they don't do, right? The NFL, and you could see it in the UFL because the UFL with the transparency, with the review, all that stuff, it's ahead of the game with the technology they use with the first down marker. That's way ahead of the game. The access they give the U-F-L-X-F-L-U-S-F-L have given you on the sidelines with players. I don't know if we'll ever see that in the NFL, like players being interviewed during the game. It's so cool. I think it's cool. I know a lot of people traditionalists don't like it. I think you don't always get great moments. I know, but I think it's cool that right after somebody makes a big player, or the crazy thing is they didn't really, the old school XFL would've went to Jean de Lance and would've went right in his face and said, why'd you spit on that player? And that would've made us a heck of a television. But I guess they avoided that. They kind of interviewed destroying. But I mean, hey, it's part of the game. So anyhow Destroy. I got a lot of heat on that. I'm like, if you like, what's his name? Delo Hay de Hay. Donald Delo. Hay Donald. I'm like, it's fine. Well, here's the thing with him and I get it. I give him total credit for building up the social media deal that he's built up. That's awesome. I would never be able to do that. I don't know how he did it. Good for him. I know he got in trouble for it in college football. So the world has changed a lot now with the NIL. So I think it's cool that he came out the other side. I think it's also kind of cool. I know he was with the Toronto Argonauts on their practice roster a few years back. I think it's cool that he's getting an opportunity. He's got to deliver when he's given the opportunity. He didn't do very much. And I know they're building him up because he has a following. I get it. But when he gets the chance, he's got to deliver. Now, he didn't have to do anything in that game for the brass who had a great debut, but under that new regime. But we'll see. He's got to come through. He's getting a golden opportunity. He got a golden ticket here. League's given him, it's helped him that he's got that social deal, that he's got that popularity. It's an interesting story. But if he falters, I mean then he's got to produce. When he's given the chance to make field goals and to help his team win, he's got to come through. Otherwise there are going to be people who think of it as a publicity stunt until proven otherwise. Yep. So we've avoided asking this question. Here we go. Pip wants to know. Mike, what are your thoughts on adding teams after year one? How many teams should they add? We got to touch on it. Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. Absolutely. Expansion. Expansion. They discussed having 10 teams and then I'm not surprised. I know there was a big controversy on this. I'm not surprised Going into this season, Going into this season. I'm sorry. Yes, they discussed having 10 teams. They came close a couple occasions. They decided upon eight for this year, then revisited for next year. So I think there's a good chance, I would say better than 50 50 that we get two new teams in the league next season. It doesn't mean, now there was some controversy attached to this because the recent trademarks, the Ohio Bulldogs, the Nashville Tuners, I do know that if there wasn't a merger that the Vegas Vipers were either headed to Nashville or to Arizona. So make of that what you will, whether they would've been the Nashville Vipers or the Nashville Tuners, who knows? But is it, I don't know there History with that. Is there history? Not that I can recall. See, that's why I'm like, that is a terrible thing. The only way I'd sign off on that is if you tell me right now they have a Nashville owner that wants that crazy name. If you tell me right now, I'll say, okay, yeah, his money's good. Right? Okay, sure. Tuners it is. I don't know. I mean the doers is the greatest spring football league of all time. I mean, maybe the tuners. I'm changing my tune. I'm changing my tune on the tuners. There You go. You never know. Maybe the logo, you could do the tune thing somehow looks kind of cool. I don't know. Could Work fork, I imagine like a tuning fork, right? And then It Could come out and make it like, right, It could work. It could grow on you. I mean there's a lot, the origin behind a lot of these football names. I mean, the Packers are meat packers. They didn't have any money that franchise, so they named it after the meat packers right there locally. So they needed somebody to fund the team. So Packers it is. So anyhow, but maybe you never know. But Nashville and Ohio, I do know that the idea was for Viy to go to Nashville, Arizona. And I do know that Canton just missed the cut. So I put Pictures tuning for just so we can get an idea. It looks pretty good. That might work. I don't know. You can sell me on it. Big on it almost has a Trident look to it a little bit. Yeah. I love it. So anyhow. But yeah, I do think this league is going to go barring them if they have a horrible year at the gate and their ratings are very bad and things collapse. I could, and they don't have a good championship rating and they don't do very well as far as sponsorships and all that. Let's say the year's a disaster, which I don't think it'll be, but let's just say it's just completely craters. They don't do very well. Then it's possible that they decided let's just stay with eight teams again. But I really think that they came so close and people were telling me, Hey, the Canton would be a part of this and that they would have 10 teams when they decided on eight. Ohio was on the chopping block and I'm a huge supporter of, I'd like to see 'em in Columbus, but anywhere in Ohio. I think it's an awesome football place. So I think that'd be very cool. So I think we're going to get two new teams. That's a hook too, by the way. I think they almost kind of have to do that. They need a new hook for 2025, not just, Hey, we're coming back for season two of the UFL. I mean, that's cool, right? But I think the hook is we're going to have, we're add on two teams. We'll have five weekly games or I think that would be pretty cool. I think the fans want it. Fans always want expansion. It just has to be done the right way. The right choices have to be made, but I honestly think we're going to add at least two teams next year. I thought that hurt the USFL going into season two. The biggest stories were okay, Memphis is playing in Memphis and Michigan's playing in Michigan, but that wasn't enough, like you said, to get casual fans like, oh man, they're adding two new teams and I mean, I don't know what, it's a non-zero number of people that supported the Michigan Panthers more when they were in Michigan, but I don't know if it was that, oh man, now that they're here, now I'm all, And there's always going to be people unhappy, right? Let's say they choose just hypothetically, they choose Ohio and Nashville, there's going to be a bunch of people that go, why don't you go to San Diego? Why don't you go to Oakland? How come you don't have any in new Northeast teams? Why don't you bring back the malls or the stars or the generals or the dragons or whatever. So there'll never be people that are fully happy, but I would be happy if you added two more teams. That means more players, more jobs, more games. So I'm all for it. I think they need to have a good season this year and like I said, not have an awful year at the gate. Awful year in the ratings. If they do that, they'll come back for next year, but they'll be limping into it. Eugene, this might be a quick one. I thought he wants to know any plans on flex scheduling. We had a little bit. We have Flex last year where we shifted time slots a little bit And they do that during the season. I think that's a very good idea, especially as you get have, I'd have to look at the schedule, but it's a very good question. I think as you get towards the end of the year, depending on what the playoff picture looks like, I think you need to flex your best games into primetime or into the windows, the A B, C, Fox windows. Fortunately the league has whatever it is, 31 games on both those, but you might have two teams that are out of it and they might have the primetime game on Fox and I would like to, if possible, I would like to do that. So I think they did do that. They announced ahead of time during the XFL season. Oh by the way, we're moving this game to this time and this game to that time. So I think that's possible for this season. I think ideally you want to wait towards the end of the year when you get into those final few weeks of the season before you start. I think everybody's still alive until you get to week eight, week nine, week 10, and last year was crazy. We had three, four and six teams make the playoffs in these two leagues. One of them was a sea dragon game. I remember we got the email and we had tickets, so, oh, this game's going to be whatever time now mirror. Twin wants to know. I know Alt Fantasy is doing their thing. I'm in the league and it's been good so far. Plans have A-U-F-L-E-S-P-N partnership for fantasy to get some more fans involved. I mean, I know we had Darryll Johnson on, we've been talking injury reports and kind of all that stuff, but trying to, it just feels to me like they never really grasped this and we had Eric Eger on and Jovan on and the pre-show I would literally hire, if Fox doesn't have this, hire someone to do fantasy DFS brain trust for we win of these leagues. But what do you make of this? And I'm trying to get these fans in. Yeah, it's very old world thinking that they're not up on top of this. As far as fantasy football goes, I haven't heard a thing, I've reached out, I've asked, I haven't heard, Hey, we plan on doing this this next year. We plan on doing this. I think they just want to maybe develop partnerships with the popular DFS sites or what have you. I could only imagine how successful their app would be if they had, how much traffic they would get if they actually had fantasy football on their own app. Everybody would sign up and If they had injury reports on there, if they had all that on there and the transactions on there, if they had all that on there, you would get people every day checking that multiple times a day when Multiple times, yeah, you have to think about it again, put yourself in the shoes of an NFL fan. What do NFL fans do? And that's what I do during the week. I play fantasy football and I pay attention to every team's injury reports and I do all that stuff and it's immersive. It's part of the process of being, you can't wait for that first practice report. You can't wait for that first injury report. I'm not even a gambler. I pay attention to the lines too, the over the under. So that's all part of it. And I have, unfortunately these leagues have yet to get it right from the a f on down. They haven't delved into it or figured this aspect out if they need to hire someone to do it for them because it just seems like an old world thinking kind of deal where they don't, none of the Jerry Card now's not picking up running backs from the cardinals. I very unlikely that Danny Garcia is making trades in her fantasy league, so they have no knowledge of it, they don't understand the worth and they just do not get it. They don't understand how fantasy. There was a time Peter King was just retired. He wrote an article for Sports Illustrated where 10 Ways to Save a Boring NFL. And I remember in the early nineties there was a time where the NFL was considered boring and I really think that fantasy football was a big reason why the NFL started become the monster that it is because it just made people in their markets, fans of every team and show interest in every game. And that's like where we're at. It's a red zone and all these channels, all that stuff is fun when you're playing fantasy football. Good lord, stressful but fun. And then also even if the game is lost or it's not a competitive game anymore, it gives you a reason to kind of watch all that stuff. Because I remember, and they even tried to talk about it this weekend, wasn't a great weekend for me to do commentator analysis because the one game we were in the press box, two of the games I was at bars and I was watching on the airplane, the other one, but they're like, oh, they kicked the field goal. If you're betting the over on this game, you're a happy camper. I'm like, I don't know sports betting at all. I was just on the podcast and they're like, Hey, what are your prop bets for the weekend? I'm like, you were asking the wrong homie for that one. But even I understand that there is such a large portion of that they would just watch the games just to bed and play on 'em. They don't even care about the league at all. What's funny, I had a tweet last week, I bring up his name, Maddie Fresh, put out the lines. So I went ahead and I replied to it and I gave whatever who I thought the favorites were and it only had four likes to tweet. I was thinking, ah, nobody even noticed. I said, I like Michigan and San Antonio's home underdogs and I take Memphis outright and obviously taking Birmingham, I didn't think anybody saw it or cared about it. How many people reached out to me and said, wow, Mike so much, how did you know this was going to happen? I'm like, what? And people who are into this are asking me my opinions on DFS. They're asking my opinions on props, on spreads, all that. And so I got lucky sometimes you're completely off. But I had a feeling about those teams covering, I had no idea Jake Bates was going to kick a 64 yard field goal. I knew San Antonio was going to be better than people were making 'em out to be. And I knew DC especially early in the seasons going to have struggles. They lost too many big time players so it not affect them. So anyhow, but there are people, my point is to say there are people out there that are so into this stuff and that they're waiting for you to provide this and when they don't, they turn away from your league. It's unfortunate they just haven't quite none of these leagues could figure it out. I don't know if it's just older people that are just older generation that don't understand it, they don't get it, but they don't understand. You just have to pay attention. You have to pay attention to what happens during an NFL season, how immersed fans are. That's how you monetize your fan base when they're not at the games through, well, You have entire TV shows on NFL network now that, and I watch L Network a lot, RIP, good morning football right now while they figure out what the heck's going on with that, but they have entire programs, hour long program, get in your fantasy set lineups. It is such a stupid thing, but the world is invested in this now. I mean I don't get it. I can't justify Dorothy would divorce me, but it's such a thing that like you said, for them not to understand and my last point, and then when you don't provide the stuff, then these markets dry up, right? I remember USFL season one, I'd have people on every week like, oh shoot, these are guys that actually know all the football and they're taught because they got to know all this and you get to week eight nine and they're like, yeah, we went from having a hundred thousand dollars pot to $10,000 pot or however it works because like there's not enough interest to justify doing it. It's unfortunate. And that's the thing. That's the thing what the NFL has fantasy football and gambling have turned casual fans that, hey, I'll check out the NFL game when it's on Sunday to everyday fans, 24 hours a day fans, they're completely bought in and so it's a big part of it. It's huge and that information is free to give out. I'm hoping that one day that actually they'll have someone who comes to them and pitches them on it that has experience in the field and that can help them join the year 2024 because they're really way behind on that. So they don't understand how much interest and traffic that'll drive if they do it. I have eight guys that have been on my podcast in the last six months and a heartbeat and be able to revolutionize that. It's crazy. Sorry to interrupt. It's all good, but it's the truth. And then the people who are like the Matthew Berrys of the world who I respect, the field Yates, all these people that Daniel Dopp was doing, he knows all about fantasy football. He has good opinions too in that area in the NFL Stephania bells, these people would have more interest in the UFL if you actually had straight up fantasy football. And so one day, I don't know, We got this will be rapid or this is actual football now we'll talk here. Rapid fire here. There's multiple ones in here, so we'll kind of rapid fire this and then I have a final round out question here. We'll do Federal Hill. I can't even speak now. Friar wants to know first question Houston really that bad? Yes. Here's the thing though that what will keep them in games this year? If Mark Thompson's head's on correctly and he's healthy and that defense we saw, I'm Mark Thompson. I'm working that. I'll tell you that they have a chance. Mark Thompson's the best running back in the league and their defense is really good. Their offense put 'em in bad spots in week one. Memphis is so much more talented overall than they are. They still had a chance in that game. So Houston's bad, but if this makes any sense, they can be a competitive bad until they get the quarterback position correctly and figure that out. They're going to have a hard time stacking up against Case Cookes in Memphis. Obviously Birmingham with Matt Corre and Michigan now with their defense. So we'll see what happens to EJ Perry. But Houston is that bad because they can't right now stack up at quarterback until they figure that out. But I do think they can be competitive every week because they do have the makings of the top-notch run game and a really good defense. Next question. How did the Rams get so good? They got 41 new players, they got 50 player roster, they got 41 new players and it's not just roughnecks from last year. Yeah, they got a healthy John Trey Kirkland. That kind of helps. But if you notice some of their new imports like Anthony McFarland, these guys, you got to give Mark Lily bridge credit. You could see a lot of recent Mark West Stevenson wide receiver, slot receiver, six round pick of the Buffalo Bills. Mark Lily Bridge Bridge did a very good job putting that roster together and I think a lot of people were overlooking what he did and they kept thinking about last year's promise. They only have nine players and the ones they brought back from last year, Delante, Scott Alize, Jose Mack, those guys are really freaking good. So you want to bring those guys back. I think hot San Antonio, you don't see that very often in a football team. I know there's a lot of turnover in the NFL, but like 41 out of 50 new players that's quite the makeover Will thrive with the Showboats If he could stay alive. I admire his toughness. He stays in the pocket up until the last second and it makes me worry about him staying healthy because he waits. I love the fact that, and you heard the announcers there, like Lu Bill was so impressed with Cook. I think this is their first time calling a game with him. I know they've heard of him, knew about him, but I was like, yeah, you guys are learning for the first time how tough this kid is. I think Kku is the one quarterback that I trust overtaking Birmingham in the USFL conference. If he can stay healthy, Memphis has a very talented roster. Got to remember Case Cookes was in that first stallions championship when he left the game. Unfortunately right before his wedding would've broke his leg or whatever. The stars were winning that game when he left and then it got craziness, whatever it was. KJ Costello and Alex McGoo battling it out. Both starting quarterbacks got hurt, stallions came out on top, but Kki is a good quarterback. They kind of slept walk through that game last week. But I think Memphis is a chance to be better. I remember getting yelled at because I wasn't at the USFL championship game that season after I was working I think four weddings in five days or whatever it was. That was always fun. What is the issue with dc? They lost their three biggest stars. So think about it in any sport, does it matter if it's football or any sport? If you lose your three best players, if you take any team in sports and just take your three best players off of it, you're going to have an issue. So I mean there's no disrespect to Jordan Temu who I thought had a decent week one, he was actually victimized. I think they had five drops DC he threw two touchdown passes that were negated because of penalties. Mr. Lance, see you later sir. So I think that the loss, two of the wide receivers in the NFL and Chris Blair and Lucky Jackson were fourth and fifth in the XFL in receiving their yards per catch were ridiculous. They produced so many big plays. Teams tried to put eight men in the box to stop Abram Smith and they paid for it dearly. When they did that, it was difficult to defend against the defenders. So Abram Smith is a huge loss and until somebody steps up, I think the Kiki QT pickup was a good one, yet he should have two touchdowns last week. I think Brandon Smith has to play better this week. Ty Scott had a nice debut, his first game with the defenders. I think that this team, they got a wake up call and they got a huge game coming up on Sunday against Houston. That might be ugly. Both those teams only scored 12 points a piece last week. So DC's got a lot of pressure to keep their undefeated streak intact in DC and to get their mojo back because they kind of lost it in that championship game to Arlington. That was a game they shouldn't have lost. And then San Antonio was two steps ahead of them physically and mentally last week. Does the league go through Birmingham? I predicted the stallions would win the whole thing. So I'm obviously bullish on them. I have a lot of respect for Skip Holtz. It's kind of interesting. They have 13 players from that 2022 championship team, so they got a lot of big leaders from that. They're trying to win their third straight championship. That staff is very good. Continuity helps. They're the team to beat until proven otherwise, until proven. They're the kings of the spring. So until proven otherwise, until they're knocked off throne, you got to respect the ring. Was St Louis lost just bad luck or was there something else they could have done to win? I don't know. St. Louis kind of deserved to lose that game. It's kind of crazy. They lost on a 64 yard field goal. They were thoroughly outplayed at the line of scrimmage. They did not play well. Anthony Beck was ticked off after that game because their performance, they're better overall than Michigan on paper, clearly have a better offense. They missed opportunities. A G McCarran missed a wide open touchdown down the field. They just were sloppy in that game and I think last year they got away with that. They played some games like against San Antonio where they were outplayed for three quarters and a half and then found a way to pull that off in the end and they almost did the same thing in week one. A lot of pressure on St. Louis too. They got a huge game coming up with Arlington. One of those two teams is going to be o and two when the smoke settles on week two. I don't think it was bad luck. I know that's hard to say. What other opposing team kicks a kick? 64 yards twice. But the football guards were like, well you guys don't deserve this one. So I think at St. Louis had won last week, they would've stole that one because they really didn't play it very well and Michigan kept EJ Perry turning the ball over in the red zone. Kind of kept St. Louis alive to make that little Marcel Aman comeback at the end. And then the final one to bounce off or bounce off at that Panthers contenders question mark. Whew. That defense is really good. They're running back. They're like Houston in a way. They have a big time running back in West Hills and they have a big time defense. The question is the quarterback is kind of spunky like he's a good runner and he's tough EJ Perry, but he can't play like he did last week. I Michigan has some moxie to 'em if that quarterback can straighten out and their offensive line played. Okay. Although St. Louis I think kind of won that battle. The line of scrimmage. Michigan has a chance. They'll be in every game. They'll be in every game. EJ Perry's got to play better though, otherwise if they stunned Birmingham this week, I think you got no choice but to respect them. If they go to two and oh and they beat St. Louis and Birmingham and back to back weeks and stop those offenses, then you have to tip your cap and say that the Michigan's for real, especially on defense And then bonus one here before the last. Do you like the U-F-L-U-S-F-L-U-X-F-L, the whole conference keeping track of all the wins and all that? I'm not surprised by it. You knew this would be a part of this whole thing. I get it. Part of me I to look at things from every different angle. I get the argument that these two leagues, they should be united. We got to stop this crazy Pickering we've been doing the last few years. I think there's a bit of a complex on the USFL fan side. They understand it a little bit because their games had no fans in attendance. They had the fake piped in crowd noise. A lot of people were loyalists to the XFL league in 2020 and they were just waiting for the XFL to come back. So the USFL fan has felt like disrespected. So of course they're going to hang their hat on, hey, we're just as good as that league because people are telling them the XFL has more fans, they have fans, organic fans in attendance. The XFL had more players signing at the NFL. So they hear all this talk you now it's just one week. Right? So I know Birmingham beat who I think is the fifth best team in the XFL last year because Seattle was better than Arlington last year. DC was obviously better than Arlington last year. St. Louis, they didn't make the playoffs, but they're seven and three, they're better. And even the Houston roughneck to falter at the end of the season, they were better overall than Arlington. They just, Arlington won two games at the end. So they got a 64 yard field goal from Bates and you got Birmingham beating the fifth best team from the XFL last year. I know they were the champs, but they weren't the best team in the XFL. So it's just two games. It doesn't end after this. But I think there's a chip on the USFL loyalist side because they felt like they were being belittled or treated as if they didn't count or if their league was inferior. Maybe people won't like it, but that tribalism is going to be a part of this. If there was social media back in the sixties, NFL fans back then were crapping all over a FL fans calling that league a gimmicky league. And then so when the A FL came up with Joe Namath and beat them finally it was like a badge of honor in the nineties. I remember the NFC used to win. It felt like every single Super Bowl. So I used to remember the discourse back then where NFC fans were just saying the A FC shouldn't even be a part of our league because the bills get to the Super Bowl, the Broncos get to Super Bowl, they're not going to win it anyway. It's all about the Niners, the Cowboys, Washington, the Giants who won multiple Super Bowls. So world changed a lot in the next decade or so, but this tribalism, I get the people on one side that are enjoying it. I get the people that don't like it and don't think it's necessary. I hear the arguments. I'm not surprised by it though if you didn't see this coming, the league's playing into it too. They could have easily not named the conferences, but they're playing into it as well. It's a storyline for 2024 moving forward. We'll see. And I'll say this little, just my little thoughts here, this deep end, the podcast, I don't know if I've ever really talked about how it's so interesting to me. You're talking about the USFL fans and all of that. To me it's like the XFL was around and I was a fan. We weren't doing any of this stuff. Paul and I went just to DC as fun. I mean just to go drink and have fun and hang out, had a great time. And then when it went away and people were sad and then it's like, well maybe it's going to come back. And I felt like even through the spring leagues of IT all and the fan control football and even the flirtation with the CFL, I think a lot of us were kind of waiting for the XFL to come back waiting for the XFL. And then yeah, when the USFL came, you got a lot of people that went all in on that league. That to me it felt like you're not patient or you're trying to take this hot shot that's kind of, we're in this gap in the marketplace right now and you have the USFL podcast, you had all the USFL, the media group, whatever those guys call all the avatars and all that stuff. Then the XFL came back and showed maybe how it's really done. And yeah, I get that inferiority a little bit of that. At least that's my take is you kind of jumped off the wagon here at the one stop when the rest of us got all the way to Oregon on the Oregon trail or whatever, if that makes sense. Now you're trying to I that to me is where that divide always came. I get it. Yeah, I get it. Reed, here's the thing. I remember when the a f came out in 2019 and the XFL had announced that they were coming out and the AF beat them to the marketplace. This is back when I used to actually frequent message boards. I remember AF fans talking crap about the XFL. I remember them saying, I remember them saying the XFL, it's a command again, it's going to be a gimmicky lead. We already beat you to marketplace. They foolishly thought they had a relationship with the NFL because they were an NFL network and they were, Ebersol was selling that Charlie Ebersol. So there were a lot of fans trash talking XFL fans saying your league is not better than ours. We're with the NFL, et cetera. We're on CBS. What networks are you going to have? It man's an idiot. This could be a gimmicky league, all that. Look how stupid the XFL was in 2001. So there was tribalism during that and then there were fans on the XFL side. They were saying the a f is not any good, no kickoff. You have no good rules, your league plays awful, et cetera, et cetera, and we're going to actually have fans. We're going to have energy, all that. So I get it. What I find funny too with the USFL is that there are USFL loyalists that didn't even watch the XFL in 2020. There are USFL fans that don't know that the overtime shootout XFL 2020, the tiered extra points XFL 2020, the clock rules XFL 2020, like all this stuff, the existence of X, it's funny how it worked, but the existence of the XFL in 2020 is what led to the US FL. And then a lot of the rules that you see, there's definitely that tribalism. Some people like it, some people don't. It's going to be a thing. I think in week three there's no outside of conference games, but this week we got two of them. We got the Memphis and San Antonio and then it got technically another USFL versus XFL game with the roughnecks, which is really the gamblers against the defenders. So hey, if it gives USS FL four oh, you'll definitely hear it. The birdies will chirp the ones that are on that side that kind of want to say, I told you so. I told you either we're as good or better than you. We were always better than, you can't really, even if somehow the XFL conference teams win this weekend and it's two two, you can't really claim superiority. It's going to be a thing until champion Crown. Because right now half the team's undefeated and half the team is winless. So if one side feels like they'll never win game, the other side feels like they're never going to lose. But that's after one week, you can't really declare anything. But if there's anybody who's questioning, who was questioning the quality of the USFL, they're mistaken to think that it was like a vastly inferior league because there are quality teams and quality players. We're getting these supercharged up teams now too with all these teams that unfortunately didn't survive. Last question, and this is the theme of the episode, so we might as well actually ask this question on here. This is from Reed in Seattle. Here. Will U NFL's extreme makeover save string football? Yes. Is This enough? Yes. Yes, I think so. I think this is our best chance. The first article I wrote about in Sports Illustrated as far as the UFL goes is that I feel that if this doesn't work, unless the NFL does their own league, which I'm old enough to remember when they tried that and they had teams in Canada and all over the world and in the United States, San Antonio, et cetera, and it didn't work for them unless the NFL decides to do it. I think this is your last viable chance because look at the networks that are involved. It's extremely expensive to run these leagues. I think this league's going to be around for a while. So I think this is it. Will there be somebody who tries to partner up with CBS or something like that and try to sneak into it? Sure, why not? But I think this is your last viable shot to make Spring pro football and I think they're going to be all right. I actually think as long as these owners are fine with, here's the thing, they want to make a lot of money. So if they got to have that mindset where they're going to hit, if they're okay with getting on base, maybe hitting a double rather than hitting a home run or a grand slam, then this will be around, they throw their arms in the air after two years and say, you know what? I don't think this concept's ever going to be the home run we thought it was then. So I think this story has a lot of chapters left to be told. I think I agree with you. I think that expectations have been tempered. I think egos have been checked. I think there was a lot of, I think it's coming together as a merger or not as mergers like a marriage or when you got to work with someone in class you don't really like and you got to like, Hey, we got to settle our differences here and make this work for the common group or the common good of whatever. I bought what Daryl said, Daryl Johnson, when he said, we realize we need to practice what we preach. Basically if we're in it for the players, we need to set them up for the best success. And that's coming together and kind of lowering, not fighting, coming together. I buy that. I take that that they really took a hard look in the mirror and said, if we're trying to do this for the player, we need to figure this out. And I like the united aspect of it. I like them coming together, joining forces. And look, the fan bases eventually are going to join forces too, because when we get into the UFL off season, we're all going to be celebrating all the guys who sign NFL teams. It'd be something they had 111 players from the X-F-L-U-S-F-L sign, NFL contracts. We're all happy when we see John Trey Kirkland back in the NFL, Matt Carrell back in the NFL, all that kind of stuff because it's a validation of the league itself. So if they have 120 players sign, it's not that you need to use the NFL name to show the value of this league, but it does help that the success rate of players, you hope that there are some superstars that come out of this league. It helps show the value because right now we've seen people with their opinions out there. They don't think there's anything special about the UFL, like Sims and all that for pro football talk, talking about how this league's not special, they don't have special players, so they do need to deliver on special players. But I think there's a definitely need for this kind of league. And I like the fact that they've united and I think they can make this work. They're fiscally responsible. The question is can they do enough things correctly to capitalize and to open up revenue streams? It's the same thing I ask about the CFL. So I root for these leagues. There's no doubt. I'm not a fan of any one of these teams. I don't care who wins and loses the games. That's a good thing kind of for me as far as being a media member because I don't have to be a fan boy, I'm a fan though. However, for this league, nobody has to root for the NFL. They're going to be around forever and ever and ever. I'm rooting for this league to make it, to finally be the league that makes it and succeed just the way I root for the CFL to stay afloat and get through the hard times and adversity and to evolve because that's such a tremendous football league. So anyway, that's just my thoughts on it Though. When we start getting players assigned to these leagues, it's going to be the USFL conference. X number of players signed the XL conference and player signed. So that's So funny. Yeah, but you know how that That's True. You got a point. You got a point. I mean I'm sure the stallions will lead the way. We saw that the stallions and the battle hawks had a ton of signings. I felt bad for all the other U USS FL teams. It's like the stallions had a bunch of signings and then all the other us, we got three, we got two, I got four. And then the stallions are like, we got 19. So anyway, but yes, Reed, you're right. You're right. I totally forgot that angle. Yeah. Anyway, with that, we'll put the pin in it. I appreciate it, Mike. Hour and 20 minutes here at checkout. Mike's work on Sports Illustrated. We're getting all that website stuff figured out, but follow Mike on Twitter, post everything on there. Same with Anthony Miller. All the work that he does. Both you guys writing, covering all that stuff. And again, Anthony was with us for the kickoff and doing all that stuff. So really appreciate that. Like and subscribe. Give us the 3,500 subscribers eventually. Eventually I'll be done talking about this. Mike, anything else you want to say? Yeah, congratulations Reed. You've left the mark of positive one on this space, which your podcast and everything else. You have great guests on the show. You've done such a great job covering these leagues over the years. All the great guests you have on, appreciate you and what you do in this space and what you've done. And hopefully you get to that mark you want to get to in terms of subscribers and everything else. But I appreciate what you've done. And I think your name sometimes it could be a detriment. Mark has, I've been on. People call you Mark Cast. That's terrible. It's A terrible name. It's terrible. Yeah, it's a terrible name. I don't think it does your show justice. It's stuck now. It's the brand. There's no turning back at this point. A I can't get into it. I was going to get into something else here, but I got to let it go. Maybe we'll talk, we'll talk out, we'll talk off there. But once again, Reid, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. Thanks to everybody out there who took the one hour and 20 plus minutes to listen to what I got to say. And thank you for reading my work and checking me out. A Sports Illustrated shout out to Casey Sager and Art Garcia who do tremendous work at Sports Illustrated. They're just great editors. So I just want to say that. Yeah, no, it meant a lot. Thank you for all that. Yeah, when Evan and I were at Texas Live the Friday night of the kickoff, we were having dinner and one of the league higher up came over. I saw this person in the thing. I go, oh, they're here. Came over and said hi to us. Said hi to Evan and I. So I appreciated that. Meant a lot. Taking the time to come to me like, Hey, read, it's good to see you here. And then again at the kickoff they said, are you coming at you any more events? Hope to see you out here. So I mean, I think it's the beard, but at least they can spot me from across the room. So I appreciate it and subscribe. We'll see you next time and thanks. Thank you.