Episode Podcast Transcriptions 2 of The Markcast® podcast talking about the CFL, XFL, USFL and other “alt-football” news, stories, insights, commentary and more!!!

Episode transcriptions 2 of The Markcast®. The Markcast® is a sports-centric podcast, covering the CFL, XFL, USFL and other alternative football leagues. Tune in for the latest CFL, XFL, USFL and alt-football news. Episodes are listed in the order they were recorded. *Please excuse any spelling or typographical errors.

Episode 53 - McLeod Bethel-Thompson King of the CFL?

Welcome to the Markcast. Take three. Yeah, it's our big preview show. We're rolling this out right before the game. That starts about 6:30 PM. So we appreciate you joining us, getting, getting you ready for the game. Reed is in majestic Hawaii right now. The reflection of the pool behind his window with a no smoking sign over his shoulder read, how's it going out there? Aloha, how are you doing today? I'm Doing good. I'm doing great. Now that I've got everything figured out technically over here, you know, cause we've had it. We did a live show last week and Reed's on vacation this week. So I'm having a little bit, you know, I'm doing a little bit more of the work than, than I normally do. So I'm just trying to make sure everything is okay because Reed has a tremendous case of OCD. So I don't want to like, you know, I don't want to screw anything up. Yeah. Paul's, Paul's a piloting the ship today. Paul's going to upload the VDD YouTube. This is definitely more of the background I was hoping for. When I talked with Dave Naylor at five in the morning, it was a little bit of a black hole when we did that. Dave is obviously east coast, you know, Eastern time zone. And so we had to do 11:00 AM his time, 5:00 AM here, but it definitely was more what I was hoping for now with the view, then we have a Dayton and you'll see the interview. I mean, I'm in a little bit of a black hole at 5:00 AM talking to Dave, Dave Naylor about CFL, but we're glad we could get Dave on. You were in a little Bit of a black hole. Did you miss your TV news days where you had to put a reporter into a black hole for a live shot that might not need an light shot? Yeah. I was like trying to set up my iPad. That's like a key light and whatever. I just figured we're going to, we're going to roll with it. Yeah, I was hotspotting and on the, on the iPhone, the, the wifi here, isn't great. The hotspot I brought that I live stream with. Isn't great. So we are on the T mobile, a hotspot right now for my phone. So but it, it seemed good for Dave. I was going to be so embarrassed if you know, CFL, insider, Dave Naylor came on and my internet didn't work. It looks, It looks good when I'm, when it's coming out, it looks like crystal clear right now coming into me. So let's hope it stays that way going forward. I know you, you talked, talked about this when we had a little bit of a technical issue before but you switched teams. Yeah. So We, there's been a little bit of intrigue on Twitter this week. We, I, I posted this week. I said, cause I've been sitting here in Hawaii, you know, we've had a lot of pool time while the reflection time. I said, you I've really been re-evaluating my life decisions. And the only thing that the Elks have done since I've become a fan is they upset Derek Dennis' friend of the show, Derek Dennis, you know, CFL, NFL all-star they have disparaged the XFL and they lost. So the red blocks and I said, I mean, what, you know, what am I doing? And so you know, friend of the show, Jim Mullen we have a Jersey coming your way from your team, the Argos, which I'm very would feel very good about if I were you right now and McCall Bethel Thompson, we'll get into that. Why he's the king of the, of the CFL. But I said, you know, I needed Jersey. They're still only selling the Eskimos jerseys. I didn't feel good supporting that either. So I think I'm switching teams. I'm, I'm switching it up. So I have to blank out the word, the word that you just said, I have the blanket out. Now that words, council do it. The cancel that word out. Like, do I have to, do I have to treat you like will on wheelhouse down? Is that what happened at the Blake outwards that are canceled? Because I don't want you to be canceled. I doing anything that's issue though. So, you know, friend of the show, William, you know, he's sending you a Jersey, it should, it's in the room. It should be here. And then he was going to send me one and he goes, you know, I called the Edmonton in store and they're not even selling Alex jerseys till they get rid of all the old ones. And I thought, Huh, so they canceled the name. And then they're just like, we're just going to sell the old jerseys with the name on it anyway. And then, you know, eventually, or are you talking about just the Edmonton football team? No, the ones that says Eskimos on it, that you can bid on it. You can have it. You can, yeah. You can't even get the Edmonton one right now. They all say Eskimos, Man, that's three now. Thanks rain. But so nobody, but speaking of this is another thing and this came in ahead of time, but we have a new review from BC lions fan on apple podcasts, Canada. I asked I, I tweeted the Jamal and I said, Jim, Molan that you, he said, it's not. So we actually have more than one BC lions fan. Do you want to read them? Yeah. We, we got told this is the greatest show ever. Do you love crazy Canadian is when football crazy Canadian rules use your use, your reading skills ball. Do you love crazy Canadian roles when it comes to football, does hearing about spring leagues that have trouble getting off the ground, turn your crank. And I don't know about turning my crank if you said yes, then this is the place for you. Come join the best pro football duel in podcast history. Why, what a compliment and be amazed at the amount of highly informative guests that interact with them. And of course the guests are really, I think that's been driving the show immensely the last, you know, last 2, 3, 4 months and all credit due to read for going out and grabbing those guys because man, it's been, it's been great to hear from you got Dave Naylor coming up Farhan. We've had, you know, Jim, Jim Mullen rod Peterson, like so many great guests and then there's a rush and it's been cool that you know, that we, we, that we focus on, you know, that, that, that part in that review where it's like the, the amount of highly informative guests that interact with them, that's that's been the driving force behind this. So again, we want to thank all our guests and Dave nailers coming up. Of course we want a Dave on for a while now, but we wanted to kind of in the radio industry, in the, in the, in the radio industry, we call a term burn. If you're tired of hearing a song it's burned and there's a burn factor to that. And Dave was getting around a lot of podcasts. We kind of wanted to be like, well, you know, the burn is high right now. We want to kind of give them, get them on here when it's fresh and it's, you know, oh yeah, Dave Naylor. That's great. So that's what Reed did. Reed went out and reached out to him and yeah, yeah. Dave is great. We did the whole kind of post show about last week, everything that happened, thoughts on the games, thoughts, compelling, super compelling with the lions, you know, game with bipolar Riley and all that. We get into the injury reports and, and sports betting and all that. Dave gives his thoughts about the attendance and the TV numbers, which we're going to go through here. And then obviously we preview all the games. So I thought we'll kind of do our stuff. Now we'll plug Dave in it's about 40 minutes with Dave and then we'll do some stuff. And then this is going to premiere on YouTube right now. So I'll be in the chat and stuff to answer questions. So I thought that that was kind of a cool way with the time zones and it's six hours, all of the different stuff going on, but you know, for us still to be able to kind of do a pregame show this week, but I will say Paul, that Dave said, yeah, he has been keeping an eye on us from a distance. And so I think we need to make a new shirt that says, Dave Naylor listens to the mark asked, We'll get, we'll get on that. Definitely. And the reason why we're not doing this live live is because of some scheduling conflicts. I just got back from covering a fire up in Northern California, the Dixie fire, which is now the state's biggest fire. And speaking of which I'm getting a phone call. That's the reason why that's the reason why we're not doing the live cause I have to spend time with my girlfriend. That's right. Yeah. Okay. Congratulations, Paul. And that was all very excited for it to be using that term. Now that that's a big, that's a big step. It's a big step To S to use that term, like put that term on somebody. So yeah, there you go. Yeah. So anyway, so the episode title today is called MOCAD bevel Thompson king of the CFL. And I want to crown him, but your Argos lead quarterback right now as the king of the CFL, we covered, we're going to get into it in the show here immense Wikipedia that Mr. Bethel Thompson has, but you know, w we've covered them from the spring league. I know it was in the CFL before a real journey Mensa. So that is the episode today. I'm going to crown McLeod as the king of the CFL. Paul, what do you think about that? I like That idea because, you know, everybody had the the Argos written off last week, like there's, you know, the Argos are just finding out who their players are and guess what Reed and I picked the Argos to win and they won. So, so they're Calgary That reminds me, I need to enter my CFL fantasy picks when we get off here again. So Paul D do we have any other, I have a couple thoughts here about the games and everything from last week. Did you watch any of the other games besides the big opener? I'm trying to think which one did I watch it? Wasn't the, the Argos man it's, it's escaping me right now. So I will say this. So I turned on social media, you know, we watched Friday night, I think, Dorothy and I were out watching the BC lions Roughriders game. I texted him all on about this. I said this was one of the most compelling things I've ever seen on the football field, just truly from that. And I know we've been, you know, football lacking and it's a preseason and it was, you know, what do we have the hall of fame game with the Cowboys and the Steelers, whoever, but you know, Michael Riley, you know, he wasn't going to pull air. He was going to play, he got pulled, was injured. And the coaches, you know, Dickinson, Dean era, the coaches didn't even know what was going on. You know, they put him in at halftime, a he's like heaving the rock down the field players, like he's hitting his targets, but players are having to like drop back down to catch the passes. I mean, it was just remarkable that they came with the one score at the end, if they hadn't have had points left on the field with their field goal kicker, they probably would have won the game truly, truly phenomenal heart. And another reason why I'm with the line, Very cool stuff. Are you, are you adjusting three down football yet? Or is it still, Yeah. You know, I, that, that, that goes into that, you know, we watched the Alex red blocks game. That was, that was a bit of a slog. I texted Jim again, messy. And I said this is when I hear people say, oh, you know, three down football, like CFL is either the most exciting game, or it is a little bit of a slog. I mean, you could say that with the NFL as well, but it is hard when you're, when you don't have momentum on your side. The three downs really seems to stifle that a little. Yeah. It's like that, that's what I told you. I'm like, it's hard to get momentum going when you're like two, an hour to an hour, to an hour, to an hour, to an hour. Like that's really hard to get some kind of momentum. And yeah, if, if you're not scoring a lot of points, it does seem like a slog. It's like sometimes when they put, you know, three and 10 teams on Monday night football, you're like, well, this is the marquee Monday night game. And we got crappy deems. I like, oh, who wants to watch this? But I, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's a little bit of adjustment. We're, we're, we're, we're, we're getting through it as best we can. And we're, we're, we're, we're figuring things out. It's, it's still the three down thing is still a little bit jointed for me too. So I, I did say this and not to equate it all to the exit bell, but I do, I do like the, the smaller number of teams. I like it being a manageable game load where you could conceivably watch all four games or three or four games, if you wanted to. I thought the ESPN app was great with the on demand and being able to do that. It felt very much like my time last February and the XFL where like I could watch, you know, two games or the one game and watch it the next day and not, you know, where sometimes the NFL is like, so overwhelming. They're like why I want to watch all these games, but they're all on at the same time. Or I can't watch this, or I can't watch that. So I really liked that, like manageable fill you up for the weekend, and then you can go with the week. I think that that is really good. Just really compelling stuff. So Very cool. Well, let's move into well, let's preview the match-ups this week who we got. Yeah. So I have a little tidbit story with each of these match-ups. I mean, this isn't like your big, this is your mark analysis, but he are thinks that that was funny for each one. So we, obviously, we have the liars lions stamps tonight, and we're previewing that, and the other work is listed as a start. If we two, we get into this a lot with Dave Naylor, you know, Michael Riley's, they're big, you know, mop quarterback, all the, all these things, you know, the veteran gunslinger but Nathan work is the, for like the first CFL worky quarterback ever to debut in week one. And there are few rookie quarterbacks ever, you know, debut anyway, not non CFL or otherwise. I mean, Jim Bolin put up a graphic that was like, these are the main, like the leading lions quarterbacks that are Canadian in the last 50 years. And there's not many. So it is, it is a lot of pressure on Nathan work for his second start. So Very gold Toronto traveling I believe they're traveling to Winnipeg. They're gone the road going to Winnipeg only Winnipeg is only an eight point favorite there. Yeah. So I want to pull this up. I'm, I'm pulling up my, my, my Wikipedia right here. So, you know, Macondo Thompson here, Paul, this is it. And we've talked about him before. I've told you, he's like the John Moxley kind of, he's got that, that we're, you know, kind of rugged, rugged, handsome, kind of crazy, kind of scary, right? You're like, I don't really know what this guy's thinking. This guy, I, I pulled up this Wikipedia last night. I spent about 20 minutes reading through it. He, I want you, this is everything that we really focus on when we talk about these leagues and these alternative players, like he's been signed and cut from the 49ers three times in his career Three times. Yeah. Like on the price point. So he is the grandson of the 1948 Olympic shot put champion Wilbur moose Thompson. Okay. So that's a random fact. Yeah. I probably forget he's a journeymen quarterback. He's been a member of five different NFL teams, two CFL teams, and one team in both the arena football league, United football league. And then don't forget he was the star quarterback of the aviators in the Spring. Yeah. Yep. That's true. And you know, he was, he was at UCLA decided to decided to leave UCLA and will go to Sacramento state and, you know, Sacramento, state's a decent one AA football team. He down here in the states, we have two different levels of a top level football division, division one there's one a, and then there's one AA and sec Seco states decent one AA team. The reason, the only reason I know that is because my Alma mater also is an one AA and they play them every year. So I do, I am familiar with Sacramento state and it looks like you did great numbers there too in college. So it's not a surprise that, you know, he's, he's, he's, he's on now, you know, he's managed, it's just a lot, a lot of different teams he's been on. He's been on the Vikings twice, the dolphins twice, he's been on the blue, The Patriots that the, the 49ers, the Eagles, the blue bombers, the Argonauts, I mean, it's just, this is someone, you know, he, he's a little older, I think he's 33. I mean, this is just again, you know, and we follow them for a while, and this is probably no new thing, but I really wanted to, to Stan McCloud and and, and anoint him as, as the king of the CFL and kind of everything that we stand for here on the, on the podcast Canadian, Is he the Canadian version of what's his name, Fitz magic. Is he the Canadian Fitz magic? Is that what we're going to go with? You Know, I, I like that. I, you know, I'm famously Washington football team, a very excited Dorothy and I had a long conversation about that yesterday. We went on a hike to a waterfall and I said, I'm very pleased with my decisions. This was obviously we were going on the BC lions. I said, very pleased about my BC lions decision. And I am very pleased about Washington football. I liked that. I think McCloud has a little fits in it. I liked that it doesn't have eight kids, but I think Gets done. All right. Montreal finally opens up their season after the opening. Bi-Week they're on the road taking on your former Elks. Yeah, This is, this is just this is interesting when James Wilder, he was complaining last week. About some day, I can't remember. He was tweeted about he he enjoys playing with his six-pack showing like a superhero, but buzz kill Jamie Elizondo, you know, the culture changing Elk's head coach. He says he doesn't want him to do that. And Are you fan of, are you a fan of the crop? I'm not a fan of the crop top with that football. I think you need to wear a Jersey all the way down. Yeah. The crop top thing. The, what is it? Who is it? The Zeke easy Gill Elliot that wears it all the time for the Cowboys. I don't know. It's just a weird, weird look. Right. I seek, seek needs to focus on holding the football and nice, you know, showing his dabs off. Very true. And, and getting another contract. I think he's in, is he almost, maybe he signed a new one. I'm not, I'm not I'm he I'm spacing. Yeah. That Cowboys are fascinating in the west, but it's just fascinating to us. The three point scoring that sees and all fam Cowboys that'd be good. Anyway, he, James says I that's always been my swag. I get it from my dad. It's a retro look back in the day that said jerseys remain. So I'm trying to replicate that. I just, I would hate to tackle someone and like, you're like, we're grabbing the app. Like, are you getting scratched? Are you getting like, I don't know. I just would think that that would be a very, like, not comfortable thing to wear on the football. On the, Yeah. As Eagle signed a six year contract, a lot of money for a lot of money back in. Let's see, is it 2021? So last year you definitely no. Two years ago. I'm sorry. Yeah. So he's definitely, you know, he's definitely under contract for a little while, so maybe he can buy some more, you know, fabric to go with those crop tops. Yeah. [Inaudible] Jamie said, coach Elizondo says having the Jersey tucked in, that's just a rule. So era having the Jersey tucked up, that's just a juror's violation. You can't play the game that way. That one is simple. We do everything the way that it should be done during the game. And that was addressed and we needed to move on. I mean, th this is buzzkill. I mean, this is why I'm off the Elks. I don't want to deal with this. Like I, you know, also like, I mean, who do you talk to in your life? That's a BC lions fan, right? I mean, everyone, Dave Campbell, he's carrying the flag for the Alex. We got Connor O'Neil we got all these friends of the show. I mean, who really is a BC lions fan. So I I'm really happy. And the more I hear from coach Elizondo, I'm really, couldn't be happier to be done with the Alex. There you go. The final game on Saturday is going to be Hamilton visiting Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan's a 1.5, 1.5 point favorite. But Hamilton is, you know, is a good team and it's, it's, it'll be interesting to see if they drop to, oh, and two to start the season. That's going to be very interesting in Hamilton to see if, you know, if they can't rally back from, you know, oh and two in the Saskatchewan, you know, they're a good team. What do you think, Ray? The Dave's predicting an upset. He thinks that that would be one of the most compelling storylines coming out of the weekend as a Hamilton goes oh, into, you know, the big, the big point favorites to start the season. So yeah, Jeremiah was Ali. He started again you know, he played good last week. It seemed like, you know, we talked about that and the home open there with the blue bombers that, you know, both offenses really kind of came out of the gate hot and then kind of suffered in the second half. So we'll have to see cause cause the rough riders did the same thing. You know, they came out and cutting for jar though. You know, they had 30 what, 35 or whatever points in the first half and the only score to the whole second half against the lions to kind of hold off that, and that was what was so compelling about that game was it was like the rough riders couldn't score and you know, the lions get like, go get a TD, get a TD, get a point, get a point. And it was like, are they going to hold them off? Because they just couldn't, you know, Cody and for Giardia, when the team just couldn't get anything together, that second house, Very cool stuff to see this week. Let's hopefully the predictions that read through down there or that Reed has given us from other people come true. We'll see, we'll see what happens And that your favorite the red blacks have a bi-week this week. So yeah, I'm still getting used to that so we can use like every team every week, like one team's not playing, I guess that makes sense. Here we go for great matchups and then the red blocks we'll have the week off, but know that was stunning to the stop at the LTO. The Alex got stopped at the one yard line coming back to score. So it was really compelling, a defensive stop by the red blocks. That's Interesting. Put a team in Quebec and you don't have this 1, 1, 1 team a week having a bi-week thing happening, just put demon, Quebec done and done for your new team, the lions Nathan work listed as a starter for that game against the stamps. Yeah. Yeah. So we're, we're excited about that. So we're down here. I just thought it was interesting. The three down power rankings you know, shuffling around a lot, you know, the lions are, although we down in eighth place, not feeling great about that when it pegged, they're still really high and Winnipeg and, and Hamilton still at number two, even coming off the loss. So I, I saw some certain online commentators upset that the red blocks were still in last place coming off of of a wind with, you know, obviously the Alex was still in seventh even though they dropped that big game to the red blocks. So I just thought that was interesting that the power rankings kind of shuffling around and wanted to give a shout out to the three down there. Oh, I see. You're way ahead of me in terms of like the doc. And I'm like, and you're just talking about these things and I'm like, I'm stuck on one page and I'm like, what are we going to talk about these things? But like, Reed's already talking about him. He's like, it's kind of like inception. He's getting them in without me even knowing it's great. The ratings let's move on to the ratings then now that I'm caught up, then turn the page. Writer, nation, apparently big numbers, right? Big numbers. Okay. Yeah. You haven't met this TSM public relations and they attracted 774,000 bureaus, which I think is tremendous. Right. And so I will say this, and this is where we were dummy dumbs before, you know, we're coming into the CFL and we're talking to XFL, we're talking ratings and we're saying all this stuff. I mean, I think 775,000 people watching the CFL game is that is a tremendous viewership of any kind because you figure, you know, one 10th the size, right. Canada, I mean that would be, you know, 7 million people in the states. I mean, that's what watch the Cowboys Steelers game, which was, we'll get to here in the ratings, but that was the highest opposite B Winnipeg home opener. That was the highest pre-season game that the NFL has had, you know, since I think 2017. So I mean, tremendous viewership for the rough riders. I think that that bodes very well, obviously to their, their support in The local bar Winnipeg Hamilton got 683,000, which is a great number to start things off. And then the other two weren't so impressive, you know, around 300,000 a piece for the stamps and Argos and then the red blacks and Elks. So the average, the average is about 526,000 per week. That's what we're seeing right now. Yeah. These are from, yeah. These are from Adam seaborne. I've seen Mike Mitchell had slightly different numbers. I've seen a couple of, they're all kind of within that 500 viewer, whatever. I just, if you're coming out, they actually, they had 683, 100 mean, this is kind of what I looked at a couple of different sources. This is what I saw, but yeah, the, the three 18 for the Toronto Calgary game is because, you know, I thought Bo is like the big star. I thought bowl Levi. I thought the stamps, they have the new jerseys. And so, I don't know, I just thought that they were the big them and like the rough riders. I thought they were like the big Darlene markets, I, that, and that was the earlier game. You know, the, the Ottawa Edmonton game was later. So to me that would make sense for that to be low ratings, but obviously Edmonton has a higher you know, fan base, you know, the kind of that community support that And the attendance numbers surprisingly you know, the, you had the rough riders in lions at 33,000. That's pretty solid, the red blacks. And I was at 30,000 Hamilton, you know, Hamilton and Winnipeg, you know, 29,000, then you get the Argo stamps, 23,000, a significant drop-off from the other, the other three games. Yeah. And that's At Calgary, you know, that was at Calgary. That's not in Toronto. You know, the Argos don't have a home opener. I believe it's one more week. You know, not, not wonderful there, I will say, oh, the other thing that it wasn't quite as sell out in the home opener cause the Hamilton or the blue bombers, I think they hold like 30,000, whatever. It was just a hair under that really surprising that they couldn't get that full sellout for the home opener after two years off, you know, returning great cup champions. I thought that was interesting. I, you know, when I saw these numbers, I was like, oh, well, Toronto's not turning out, but it's like, that happened in Calgary. So we'll see what happens. You know, definitely you have to see what happens cause that's been a big concern is how supportive people in Toronto are of their team. And hopefully, you know, they they'll be glad to see football and they'll, you know, Phil BMO filled up. So they're a BMO now. Right. They did move over to BMO. Yep. Cool. moving on to little tidbits in the news, a CFL has fined lions, linebacker, Jordan Williams, for his headshot to the writers quarterback, Cody Fardo. Wow. Okay. Yeah. This was, you know, they, they were deep in the end zone coming out. You know, Cody was trying to do a dive pretty blatant, you know, they call that like an unprotected it's, it's tough there. I rear the quarterback and you're out of the pocket and you're trying to kind of dive over everything. I will say the deeper end zones. Totally love, love everything about that with the CFL. I, you know, the, the, the uprights at the front, that's kind of weird, whatever, but having that deeper end zone allows for so much more like flexibility in terms of like getting the ball in there. I think that that is phenomenal. I love everything about the deep end zone. I haven't seen one negative thing about that. So It's interesting enough to that. They didn't, they didn't call it during the game, but then of course, after later on, they went back and, you know, assess the fine. And during the media, during the media calls and everything that for Harteau joked that he wasn't big enough named yet to get that call on the field. But, you know, the CFL clearly is, is, you know, taking these things to heart. And I have to say this CFL players, you're not getting paid that much. Watch out on your fines. Just take it easy. Just take it easy because there's other fines that it kept coming up too. Yeah. There's two others. I think, I think you're a little more on the age. I think it's for jar though. I think it's true. I think you're a little more on the [inaudible]. I think it's, I think it's a a hundred, It's a Latino thing for me, so that, you know, with the now here it's called Fajardo. So we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll get clarification on that. So the other fines that went out, Noah Hallett from the blue bombers got hit with a fine, for an unnecessarily hit on defensive back, Frankie Williams from the Hamilton, and then Edmonton, Alex offensive lineman, David Beard threw a chop block at red blacks, defensive lineman Cleon Lang as per the policy, the amount of player finds were not disclosed, stopped, getting friends stopped getting fines because you don't have that much. You're not getting paid that much to begin with. I think it's weird that they don't disclose the fine numbers. Interesting. Yeah, it is. It is weird. I normally you get them in here in America just saying Craig Dickinson for the Saskatchewan Roughriders, the head coach there said that Brendan Labatt, who is their all-star offensive lineman might be interested in during an attorney, the team, if restrictions are lowered for CFL players on August 15th. Yeah. You know, we lost a lot of these players early on. I mean, that's tough, that's tough to get up to shape and go. I mean, unless they're doing workouts in the, in the off season. Right. But that that's a lot of work to come in. You know, as hard as, as training camp was for a lot of these players to come in two, three weeks into the season. Right. And get up to shape. But I mean, obviously he's a, he's a rock star athlete, but I do think that that is, will be an interesting storyline to watch if players are able to come off the couch or the bench or whatever, you know, in the middle of the, of the August year and get back up to game shape, You know? So, so the, you know, when you miss training camp, it's tough. I'm paraphrasing what he said right now, but he thinks a guy like Labatt could probably do it because he's a veteran he's smart and he knows what to do with his body. If he's interested in coming back, they're interested in having them clearly to bolster that offensive line, if he's that great. We'll see what happens. Very cool. Here's one. Yeah. The next one more problems. More problems than Edmonton servants in Rogers. Great name by the way. Great names, servants and Rodgers confirmed. He's tested positive for COVID-19. He tested positive days ago for COVID and the reservation he initially had about the vaccine. This changed that's good serve. Isn't personally, I've only minor symptoms like congestion and smell, taste being off. And he decided he also decided, is this right? Like this is, yeah, these are quotes. So he decided to get the vaccine, but still, you know, is having the minor symptoms. And now you wonder, like if he didn't get the vaccine, if he didn't get the two doses of the Pfizer, what do, you've had more serious symptoms? And that's what we keep getting at is like, you can still catch COVID and you can still have COVID and not really be affected by it. If you have the vaccines, it's only like 0.1% 0.0, 1% of the people that are dying right now are vaccinated. Everybody else that's dying is unvaccinated. There's a such a small number of people that are dying that are vaccinated that you really, you really need to think about, you know? Well, I mean, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a vaccine that we don't normally have, you know, in term like the other vaccines have dead, like dead or weakened virus strains. Right. But this is a different kind of vaccine completely where it like tells yourself how, like it's like a computer program you install and it tells your cells how to fight a certain protein from a certain virus. And that, and basically that's, that's the gist of it. So when you get the vaccine and you have minor symptoms, that's going to be expected. If you get, if you get sick with COVID, it's endemic, it's going to happen every single year now. And getting vaccinated is the best way to stop the variant. That's the big problem now? Yeah, it was interesting because the Alex had the big breakout on Friday, you know, we got done with the home opener, Dave Campbell tweeted, you know, they had, and so [inaudible] was one of them. And I don't know if they've disclosed the other player yet, if it was a false positive, but they kind of had that. Remember I tweet our, I texted you on Friday and we're like, oh no, but so, I mean, I think they've got it under wraps. They've got everything figured out, but again, we did something to keep an eye on, you know, Delta and everything's coming, not even in Hawaii here, they they've pulled back restrictions since we've been here. So you know, this is still very much a thing Going to be a thing every single year, there's going to be another variant that comes around next year. And the best way to go about is like, like we, we know we can't go back to the shutdowns anymore, but so get vaccinated, like get vaccinated. This is something that, you know, any concerns you have I'm sure will be alleviated in due time. Like if you think this is a population control, you're in those conspiracies, trust me, I've done enough research on the vaccine to know that like I'm listening to the science and I know that it's okay. Get your, anybody that I know anyone that I know personally or professionally go get your vaccine. Even if you have preexisting condition, go get your vaccine. Paul, don't get this canceled before the staff. You know who I'm talking to, sir. Go get your vaccine. All right. We're going to take a break. Come back. We'll take a break. Yeah, let's talk to Dave. Let's talk. Let's get Dave in here. And then there's actually XFL news, a not exciting XFL news, but there's exciting things to talk about. Sam, Peter has potentially have a new owner per rod Peterson and it should be, we got more stuff coming up after Dave says, well, Dave Naylor, I really appreciate this. It's been a long time coming. It, no better way than they'll get up at five in the morning here in Hawaii and talk to you as the sun rises. So thank you so much for coming on. How are you doing today? Very well, very well excited for week two of the CFL. It's, it's finding the rhythm of, of covering the league week to week is it's been a bit of a process. I think we're like the players where the officials, we, we got into a totally different work rhythm. Yeah. And, and it's great to be back to, you know, do what I like to do. And you usually do for, you know, 23 weeks of the regular season this year, it's going to be 18, you know, but for 21 weeks or so. So it's, it's great to be doing it again. Yeah. I mean you know, from an outside perspective, just watching the league and covering it so far really fun weekend. I thought, you know, everything there wasn't a ton of glaring issues, right? I mean, it seems like, you know, the football was good. People were excited. What were kind of your week, one reflections after the weekend? You know, I, I thought that the football was entertaining and I don't think it was that great, you know, in terms of just execution. And, and there were periods of almost every game where teams went cold and on offense. And I did a little comparison actually just end look, small sample size, but I was just curious now, what was the, what was the total point score to week one in 2019? What was the total total points scored in week one of 2018? And the other metric, I thought that we had a valuable was passing yards because I think we all understand that defenses are likely to be able to gel more quickly than offense is when you've been off so long. And again, I'm gonna go to these numbers off the top of my head. I think they were 158 points court. This week in one of the years, there was, you know, around 200, one of the years, about 180. So it was definitely down and passing yards was about 1600 passing yards in week one, both of the last two years. And we won had been over 2000. So that's, you know, that's a significant difference. And when you look at it, a percentage, you're talking about 20%, fewer paths in yards and again, small sample size, but overall I thought the games were entertaining. And I think the fact that three of the underdogs, one straight up kind of not just embedding parlance, but, but when you look at it for the course of the season, and I think we've all focused, there may be some real surprises. And there's some, I think that provides some intrigued. When you see teams like Ottawa, go to Edmonton and win. Now they're not going to win with that formula very often, but you know, wins, especially in the opening week on the road. And Toronto, I guess, was the one that stood out for me the most because they have been, you know, a really poor team in the last two years, we back to back for wind seasons. And in both cases, they, they made a habit of getting blown out early. Like they were not close at halftime. And they also got blown out early in both seasons. I mean, they started 2018, I believe one in five and they were, oh, and six in 2019. So the last two years, they're one in 11 for six weeks of the season. And as I say, most of those games that weren't close by halftime. So to see them hang with Calgary at 14 to 11 and then come from behind the wind McCloud, baffled Tom and he's in his third year in the CFL. And I always say this third year for quarterback in the CFL is either when it collects or it does. It's really tough to evaluate and judge a guy's potential before that third year. Usually if they haven't figured it out, by that time, it rarely happens. So he's, he's kind of in that zone. And so yeah, we're all I thought, I thought they were, they were entertaining games. That's really what I was looking for. You know, it wasn't horribly sloppy football. You know, it wasn't offensive. They couldn't make it down the field except for Ottawa. And, and I think there were multiple reasons for that. And we anticipated that offensively. They were going to be challenged. So I thought overall the league had a pretty good week. Yeah. It was exciting, you know, especially, you know, we covered MOCAD Bella Thompson in the spring league, you know, I know he had been in the CFL before, but as someone that, I mean, and that epitomizes kind of what we try to cover on the podcast, right? These journeymen players that have been on so many different teams, right. And they've been signed and let go and signed and signed back to the same teams again and let go, and then to see him have that success is really exciting, you know, as someone that wants these players to get more opportunities, you know, Well, McLeod, Bethel Thompson is your poster guy for that, right? I mean, he's 33 years old. I forget. I counted one time. How many times he's been signed in the national football league? It's it's like even by the standards of guys who have a lot of stops on their paths, but I think he's been a San Francisco, 49 or three different times, at least, you know? And and, and when you talk to them and I think this is one of the things that endeared him to both his coaches and his team for years is, is he is a guy who just he's he's relentless in terms of work and study. And he's, he's a football life. You know, he's not a guy who is into this kind of half-assed right at eight he's. That is, that is who he is. And, and, and I think, you know, I think one of the reasons people may be judged him a little more quickly than they would have otherwise is the fact that he didn't come here as a 24 year old. And he came here as a 31 and, and that people maybe had different expectations, but I, you know, I, I always say no matter what age it takes a while in the CFL, like I, there was a game in 2019, they started him against Winnipeg. It was the game of the Argos, regardless we're owned six Winnipeg was six and oh, and they were down 20 to nothing at the house. Toronto came back, won that game. I'm not sure that if Toronto doesn't come back and win that games, whether methodical Thompson, still the lake, I think, I think his, his situation with the Argonauts was that tenuous at that stage of things that, you know, they came back, it was a miraculous victory. One of the very few highlights and maybe the highlight of the season for the artists in 2019. But I also think it might've saved the CFL career Well, and, you know, and even now, if it weren't for injuries and things, you know, he probably wouldn't be put in the opportunity he is anyway right now. Yeah. I mean, Nick Arbuckle was, I think, signed to be their guy. Like he's, he's a younger guy considered to have a lot of upside seven starts in the CFL, but he completed, but 30, 73% of his passes for Calgary, you know, good touchdown interception ratio you know, it has a history with it starting with the head coach, right. Who was his quarterback coach in Calgary and Ryan Dinwiddie. So I think when we looked at that situation, I think again, and if you, if you're thinking longer term, the Argos would have more of an ability to turn Nick Arbuckle into their long-term franchise quarterback than a guy who's already 33, although, you know, 33, but how many hits has he taken the last 10? Not that many in practice. Right. So, you know, he may have a little more a little more room on, on the road ahead than a lot of 33 year old quarterbacks. But I, you know, I think that was one of those situations that was, was going to play out as a competition. But if it, unless it was a dead heat, I think Nicker Arbuckle was going to get the nod. And as it turns out, I mean, our buckles injury took them out of the mix. It was just no way, the way they were splitting the reps in training camp, that you could even Arbuckle a bit healthy by week number one. And I just think given the, what I understand about the way the reps were being divided because of the injuries that it would have been with Bob Bethel tops. And then, you know, like he said yesterday, and someone asked him a question about, you know, what do you do to hold onto the number one job or something? He said like, every play is an evaluation, I guess like in football, your performance review happens every time you snap the ball. It's essentially what he said. And I think he's made no secret of the fact that you'd like to be the starting quarterback in this team. And, you know, people forget it's got led the CFL and stouts in 2019 and put up a lot of yards. Now, there was a lot of garbage time there, right. Games where they got blown out of and defenses box. And he was able to throw for a lot of yards and throw some touchdowns. They also had, I think three of their four wins in 2019 for Toronto camp against the Ottawa now, which Ottawa had a bizarre season. They were two and oh, and then they went one in 15. So, you know, when you, when you factor in that his stats, the percentage of them that came against Ottawa, the percentage of them that came and gained that they were blown out. I mean, I, that's why I think people don't regard him the way you normally would regard a guy who led the league in touchdown passes. Yeah. It's just exciting, you know, one changes or, you know, something happens a different way. And these people, you know players don't get these opportunities, you know, it's just exciting another quarterback situation I wanted to talk to you about, and then specifically more about C two 18 and all that stuff. The BC game was probably the most compelling thing that I've seen football wise in many, many years. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing, but glued to my seat. I went back, I watched the whole replay cause I had missed it the night before first off thoughts on that game. And then I want to get into the sports betting ramifications. Well, you're talking about the quarterback situation, the drama that is all there. I mean, it's funny, cause there's some context around this, right? Like the CFL has historically been a li where teams have not only hid information, they've used misinformation, which I, I think that's a difference, right? There's a difference between not telling me everything about the status of your players and, or actually telling me stuff that's not true. Okay. And, and, and teams have done that. They have put misinformation into the, into the hands of the media to try to create decos out of players were starting or not starting. And the league has made, been very strong in its messaging that it wants that to stop. And as proof they have brought in NFL style injury reports for the first time, we've never had these before. You know, who practiced, who didn't, who was limited game status, probable sorry, not probable questionable, doubtful out. That is all completely new. And it's a real cultural shift. So when Mike Riley, you know, who was certainly the team at indicated Mike rock, Michael Riley was going to be the starter. The PA announcer announced him in stadium as the starter and our broadcast, you know, talked about, we were on the air for 34 minutes before kickoff or something. And the conversation had been all around, like Riley's starting quarterback. So when he didn't start to a lot of people, it came out as well. Here's the same old CFL nothing's changed. Now. I think two things happened that have kind of muted the initial reaction to that because my phone's blowing up, Twitter's blowing up what the, you know, of course all these people that bet lions plus six, find a guy who is a former mop is not playing. And instead, a guy who is a, you know, right out of college, rookie is starting, which almost never happens in CFL. It happened two or three years ago with Chris traveler, before that it hadn't happened since 1994. So this is not a league that rookie started. Nathan work. We have the third one's is 1994 to start an opening weekend. Two things happen to mitigate the reaction. One is Alliance came back in the second half and covered the spread. So all those people that were on Twitter screaming in the first quarter, they got real quiet after the game when they catch the tickets. Just funny how that works, not such an issue when they cash a ticket. And I think the league dodged a bit of VR bullet by virtue of that, the other one is I think you apply some logic. The lion's explanation was that Riley's shoulder did not respond to treatment or elbows. You mean did not respond to treatment way expect. And they did. And that, I don't know what time, I don't know if he got a shot. I don't know what it was therapy, but whatever he got, they expected it to respond by game time, you know, they're coming under the tunnel of the Anthem starting and Riley says, I can't go. And we had observed that he was not throwing deep balls at all during warmup, you know? So you tell he was, he was limited with his range to some degree, at least in practice. So Nathan work starts and, and we were all scratching our heads. And then during the halftime course for Campbell gives an injury update, says, Hey, we can't start Mike Riley. You know, it's not the best for the team. It's not best for him. And then he comes out after halftime and he's paid back under Saturday, which turned it bizarre night into an even more bizarre night, I guess, whatever they gave him over before the game kicked in at halftime, he said, yep, I can go. And they go that direction. The other reason I'll tell you that the primary reason, I don't think the lions repped any funny business. And I like I, and I think that is, I think that was always a bad look for the CFL. You know, because, you know, I covered a game a couple of years ago where a team lied about it, starting quarterback for a playoff game and used misinformation, not holding information back actually said stuff in, into the hands of the media. That was not true. And, and I, and I think that's a bad look. I don't think that's a way for professional football league to operate. I don't think it's fair to your media partners. I don't, I don't think it started your fans. So in this case, though, the CFL brought in a rule this year that says you can only dress two quarterbacks for games, not three. Okay. One of the things that does is that you're only going to dress guys that you think complex, nobody is going to say, Hey, wait a minute, Michael Riley can't play, but we think it's more valuable to have him as a decoy and have the opposition think that he's going to play than it is to have a backup quarterback. And I don't think anybody in the risk reward equation would say, yeah, decoy as a starting quarterback is more valuable than having to healthy. It just doesn't make any sense that any team would do that. So if you didn't believe Michael Riley could play, you wouldn't dress them. So I actually be as, as unlikely as the scenario is that as the line is ended and I think it is unlike, people telling me, I've never heard of that, that you walk out of the tunnel with your starting quarterback. And by the time you get to the field, he's not your starting quarterback. I do think it's possible. And I, and I just think when you factor in the risk that they would have been taking to dress a guy at quarterback can't play, especially when your other options are rookie. You don't know how he's going to stand up the hits and pro football. He's never done it. I was kind of things, although he took a lot through a lot of hits in college and stood up very well. It just doesn't make any sense. So it was, it was high drama. And as I said, I think the reaction on Twitter post game, would've been a lot different and Saskatchewan, the big lead held up. Yeah. I mean, just the heart behind that and just, you know, him chucking the ball out and, and just, you know, the players having to drop back or, you know, drop forward the kitchen. I mean, it was just it felt very much like a Fitzpatrick coming in last year for the dolphins. Right. And it really just it's like the old gunslinger coming in and saving the day. I mean, it really was just remarkable to see. It was very sudden Scary thing for me, if I'm the lions and this is the same case in auto format, Nichols seem to be struggling to throw the ball. And he, and he just didn't as well. Is this is week one, like how do you recover from that injury? And, and how did it happen? I guess, you know, like we always joke about and football, the guy saying week one, it's the only week where everybody's health. Well, it was week one and it wasn't the case, you know, the most important players on the field. And I know coaches across this lake were very careful in training camp in terms of how much they ask guys to throw how much they ask players in general to do, is it be in 20 months off? And they were dealing with various levels of fitness and those kinds of things. But I think that's, I think that's a real kind of dangerous sign for those teams in BC and auto pro-vaccine week. No one seemed to be having issues, throwing the football, because this is going to be a tight schedule. There are no bi-week this year, you know? And, and it's just the nature of it is there's, there's not that much time to rest and make it along the schedule here. So we'll see rod, Riley's not starting week. Number two, you know, it's going to be Nathan Rourke again. We assume Riley's going to dress, but we'll wait and see whether that's the case as well. If it's a nice game. Yeah. How do you feel about Nathan work going into the game? I'm now I think I've jumped on the, the BC lions bandwagon this week in terms of my fandom, you know, the Elks have said some questionable things about, you know, the XFL and this bit, you know, there's been some other issues there. So but, but w what, w what do we think about Nathan work? Cause I will use the, we now as a BC lions fan, what did we think about Nathan work going into the game? You know, I, I talked to Nathan two days ago in a great conversation with him and, you know, it's funny, he's one of the things that's how he's so, almost overwhelmed by the reaction, you know, being a Canadian quarterback starting, I mean, he grew up in Oakville, you know actually about 10 minutes from where I am right now, you know, sort of halfway between Toronto and Hamilton. You know, he's like a lot of Canadian kids, you know, he grew up idolizing an NFL quarterback and Brett fart was his guy he wanted, and he wanted to play in the NFL. He wanted to chase that dream. He went to high school in Alabama. He wouldn't, he couldn't get a division, one scholarship. We played at a junior college and then he goes to the university of Ohio and arguably is the most successful quarterback and, you know, 130 years of university of Ohio court. Me, he he won three bowl game. I remember, I think, I think Ohio at one. And then I remember said this, split this up several times. I think I would one like two bowl games in their history. He went through no, before he got there. And, and he was, he was a tough guy. Like he, he ran the ball 425 times in three years for more than 2,600 yards. And you take a lot of hits. He's a, he's a very physical that the adjective that was used to describe Nathan work to me when he's in college. So often was game like, you just watch him. And you're like, this guy is a gamer. He'll do whatever it takes. He'll take hits. He'll, you know, he'll eat, he'll pay yards after contact, very physical player. And I'd watched him on television a little bit. I got to see him play live in his last season against the university of Buffalo. It wasn't when he had a particularly good day. So it was one of those days. He had to rely on his, on his running and taken off a little bit, especially struggled in the first half. And it was funny. I talked to him a bit about that this week. And I said, you know, you ran the football line in college. Like, is that part of your game? Now? He says, yeah, they don't really want me to do that. It's all about, you know, my reads, my progressions, the ball coming out on time, get my foot work straight. You know, when, when when I'm hot, recognizing that it's hot in the pocket and getting out of there, they haven't talked to me a lot about running the football is I'd like to do more of that. And he feels that. And I think we see this an all football day, guys who run the ball a lot in college, you know, can do that early in their careers. And the longer you go, you find you refine your game. You have to rely on that last and your team doesn't want to, you know, it was more nervous, the older you get it, but you'd take it yet. But that is a big part of Nathan work's game that he's having to go into the professional ranks, kind of leaving behind. He have one carry for 10 yards that in that first game. So that's a big adjustment for me. But I think, you know, I thought he showed pretty well. I mean, there was a bit of deer in headlights, I think in the first half, just as there is again, third quarter, third rookie quarterback to start a weak one since 19 94, 19 94 was Anthony Calvio did it. Chris struggler did it about three years ago. And now Nathan and, and, and the, the flat-out first rookie Canadian quarterback ever to do it in the history of the lake, never been kidding a quarterback as a rookie start week. Number one. So I think when you put the context around that you put the mosaic stadium in Saskatchewan is considered one of the toughest places to play in the league, nevermind on opening night after a pandemic when they're sold out. And, and they're very good at athletic defense. I think you just sort of look for him to become a little more refined and make make those and make those reads a little more efficiently, you know, make more good throws. Who's 10 of 18 for 194 yards. A ton of those yards of course came on, you know, the one throw that he made right before halftime that the went for a big gain, but yeah, he's all about getting better, you know, that's, that's all. And, and he's, he's a guy who I think has very high expectations for, so I don't think he's put out of his mind playing in the national football league some day. And he, you know, he's young enough to be able to do it. I mean, he's, you look at the Mid-American conference, know he's considered by a lot of people, the best Mid-American conference, quarterbacks, boats, and span rockers. But again, you know, a lot of his game rushing the football the way he did, that's not going to translate to the NFL, right? So that's one of the things even to be successful in the CFL, he's got to be more of a pass first quarterback, if he is to keep his hope and dream alive and getting the national football league money, I think he's going to do that as well. Cause the same way, you know, his, his style match doesn't necessarily translate to the CFL. I don't think it translates to the NFL, cause he's not, he's not a burner. He's not a guy who's going to get on the edge and just leave people behind like Lamar Jackson or something like that. H he's more a guy who would take the tough yards bounce off the hit head for the sidelines, that kind of thing. Yeah. I just think it's going to be compelling to watch and, and something, you know, again, all these fun storylines to talk about now versus like, are we going to play like, you know, this is something very exciting. Oh, wow. I, I want to talk to, before we get off the lions thing, you know, this C two 18, all this stuff, you know, even on the broadcast this week, we're talking sports betting C 18 is two 18 is passed. We're still trying to figure out what that looks like. I mean, you're even saying that on the broadcast, right. But yet this is this lifeblood that's going to save. I mean, we've been very hesitant about it on the podcast. What are your thoughts on this and how important, I mean, I know that you're in a unique position where you're part of this broadcast scene and stuff, but it does seem like it's something even the announcement this week talking about, you know getting some prizes and the race to the grey cup and getting these things doesn't necessarily equate to this $2 million that we were going to see a per CFL team. Yeah. You know, it's funny, I, I think there's a few ways to approach this. Anecdotally, I think it's going to help you. Just, I think people are, you know, we're talking about betting we're mean you've always been able to bet on the CFL and in Canada, we've had kind of a gray market when it came to sports betting, you know, like the U S it's been either legal or not. And in Canada, we've had this kind of gray market where they don't stop off shores from operating here. Like, like most people I know have a sports betting account and they can use their bank credit cards to make deposits. They can use their interaction, all those kinds of things. It's we did we did sports betting in this country. Like we did the legalization of marijuana in-between being illegal and legal. We created this gray zone where we let people do it. And I don't mean just even in the case of marijuana and I, a couple of use it. Like there were, there were a hundred stores operated in Toronto when marijuana was illegal. So, so that was the, that was the approach that, that once through the intent to go legal was understood. They let this gray market flourish and we'd been in the same thing, kind of with Sportsbet. So it's not completely new here. Like I know that a lot of those sites that people use in Canada, they were surprised that the FBI, I jammed them in the U S right. You can't just use your bank credit card, but in Canada, that stuff. So, so it's not completely new. You've had, you know, people like Bowman's, which I think is out bet 365. I mean, they were painted on the field in the CFL Bowman's dot com 15 years ago. So there has been kind of this, you know, wink, wink, quality to betting on the CFL, which is different than being able to partner with sports books, promote legalized sports betting. We didn't put it on sports center. We didn't put it on the pregame shows. We didn't talk about it in the broadcast. So it's a cultural shift, but not a completely new one. And it's funny, I was reaching for my phone and my battery just died. I couldn't read it to you, but I was going to read you an example. On Saturday morning, I got a text from a friend of mine who was telling me about a friend of his, you know, a guy who in his early thirties, not a traditional CFL fan. And he said he had a bat on the lions last night and he watched every second of that game. And I, and I can guarantee you, there's no chance he watches any of it. If he's not betting on that game. Now that's one guy. But the question is how many people like that are there out there? And, and I, and I think it is, I think it's gonna, it's one of the few ways I think that is going to engage younger viewers, which is, has been the CFLs age, old problem, you know, how do we flip the demo? How do we stop being the 50 and overlay? I think it's getting engaged people, you know, in terms of it'll affect television ratings. You know, when you have a point spread on a game, it keeps people longer. I think overall it is going to have an effect. And I, and just anecdotally, I think there's a lot of examples of people like that that are thinking of the CFL, the, the bedding information is better. You know, you can look at injury reports and it's, let's be honest, it's happening at a time when normally the first 10, 11 weeks to CFL season happens before there's any meaningful college football or NFL. So, you know, you've got a, got a big window there where you can, you can do that now. What is it going to mean? Money-Wise, you know, I spent some time trying to answer that question this summer, talk to a lot of teams. I talked to a lot of people in the betting industry, and I can tell you it's very, very difficult to pin down because every market is specific. You've got the possibility of local deals. You've got the, you've got league-wide deals. Nobody really knows what the sports betting environment is going to be like across all provinces, because Ontario is going to go and licensed private operators in sports books. Other provinces may keep it more provincial. Monopoly is going to restrict their opportunities. So nobody really knows. All I can tell you is that teens, you know, kind of, I think hoping that once we get to a fully evolved market, you know, not by October of 2021, but you know, within a couple of years as has all of the regulations come out, as all of the participants come into the market as forced betters engaged, that could be worth a million and a half to $2 million per team all told that's league deals and team deals. Now, I think that's probably an optimistic number. I don't know if it's a realistic number, but I think that's what the teams kind of hope for, but they're under no illusion that that's coming down the pike this fall. So yeah, I think, I think they, the league understands and that the quest of the Canadian football league over the last 30 years has been, how do we tap new revenue streams? That's what produced us expansion in 1993 works, we've tapped into revenue streams in Canada. What can we do in the U S now with television and franchise fees and other things that didn't work out so well, it was a very poorly executed plan, but that was the idea, even Randy Ambrozy CFL 2.0, bringing in global players, that's ultimately in the hope that you can diversify the playing pool capitalize on the evolution of football is an international game, which is a real thing. You looked at the evolution of the sport in Japan and Mexico and Europe. And ultimately, can you sell streaming rights in those countries? And I don't know if you can't, man, that's a big, I think there's some doubt about the ability to actually monetize that as long as you're just nineteens in Canada, but that's, that's what that's about trying to tap new revenue streams, the conversation with the XFL that was about trying to tap new revenue streams when marijuana became legal in 2017, I know the CFL had a lot of conversations about hoping to tap those as new revenue streams in the form of public service message right there, that, that the idea was hopeful that, that a marijuana company would be able to say, you know, X cannabis company and the Canadian football league remind you that you know, when you consume cannabis, it's a four hours till you should drive and blah, blah, blah, and, you know, stay healthy. Like they wanted to be able to do those things. As the legislation came out and found out, you can't do that. You can't do anything basically when it comes to, you know, even anything that looks like sponsorship with a marijuana company that you're not allowed to do. So they, they weren't able to tap that. But I think they saw that. And I think our hope is still that maybe what are we four years into this, that somewhere down the road, those things kind of loosen become a little more like the regulations around alcohol for advertising, and you would get a new revenue stream out of illegal cannabis. They didn't get one as of yet. And then that's what sports betting. This is one where this day, okay, we believe this is a new category. We believe this is a new revenue stream, and it's an, it's a potential new revenue stream that also gives us a way to do what we've been fighting to do for the last 30 years. And that's engaged viewers that, that aren't Trish CFL fans, particularly younger ones. So I understand why they're jumping in on this one beat first. I understand why, you know, our guys are willing to talk about this on the broadcast. Now it is. I, you know, I think there's always, when you're talking about sports betting you know, there, there's always a bit of social responsibility that goes with it because we know there are people that struggle with it, but this is, this is the new world. I mean, the every sport is getting in on this. And I think the CFL has some advantages in comparison to other sports, which they don't always have. And those, those advantages are the biggest one is the CFL plays football. They don't play soccer, play hockey, hockey. You know, I know people, some people love to bet on those sports, but I think we all know that, you know, a point spread in football is just easier, you know, than a pocket line you know, or or a soccer betting line for most people. So that's, that's a big advantage, you know, that they play a sport that the, that the, the point spread becomes part of the story. And I think they want it to be as much a part of the story as possible for kind of, it's funny how people don't understand some of this stuff. Like I, I expressed some concern about what happened with the BC lions quarterback stuff on Twitter. And I said, look, I'll reserve judgment. So we hear everything, but on the surface, you know, be able to say, well, the coaches shouldn't be making decisions based on what they think is best for the better. That's not what anybody's saying. No one is saying that the coach has to be making lineup decisions based on, you know, what people are betting. What we're saying is the league is telling the teams to be as transparent as possible with who's playing because they, they don't want betters to be skittish about getting this information. No one is saying that the decisions that the football team itself makes should be affected by the fact that we're in a legal custody environment and people may have been on that. Yeah, no, a hundred percent. And speaking of the U S expansion that chat that you had on CFL America, I'll give Greg a plug you know, fascinating, deep dive, even for me as someone, you know, now, you know, past the XFL talks and all of a sudden that all of that, that deep dive into the nineties and expansion I thought was fascinating. So that, that just applies for anyone there. I don't want to hold you too long. I do want to get you just your thoughts real quick on TV ratings, attendance. I posted on our media social media, you know, people thought that TV ratings was kind of what they expected you know, numbers wise. I have them all here, Paul and I are going to talk about in the show today general thoughts on either of those two things. It was funny cause I saw the numbers in the U S were kind of the flip of candidates. Like they didn't do well on a Thursday night and they did well on the Saturday and in Canada, they did well at the Thursday night and they didn't do so well on the Saturday. I looked, I thought, I think the number was around 700,000 for the Thursday night in Canada. Which again, if you think of we're, we're a country that is, you know, about one 10th, the size of the United States. So you can kind of translate that number basically as a multiple attacks. If you compare 700 that you look at how many sports are advancing Canada, you know, get 700,000, it's not that many you know, the blue Jays will do those numbers when they're winning. The Raptors, you know, in the playoffs can do those, those numbers. Certainly, you know, hockey Saturday night and this country can do those numbers, but there aren't that many sporting events that just flat out can draw 700,000 numbers. So I thought it was a good number. I, you know, I, I, anytime you get Winnipeg Saskatchewan into the games and when those teams are good, I think you're, you know, you get a strong number Saskatchewan in particular, you know, on the Friday night against BC, again, a similar number as you would expect. The Saturday night number was disappointing, but I think you look at a number like that and it was in the three to 400,000 range. There's always, I think you always look and say, well, what's the explanation? Well, one, it was, it was the Saturday night, the final night of the Olympics, and there were Canadians going for gold medals in the, in the, on those nights. So I think that was honestly, I, I watched a fair amount of Olympics Saturday and tapes and tapes, some of the CFL Saturday, cause I hadn't watched a lot of Olympics. So even me was, was drawn into the Olympics at the same time. Some of the CFL was going on with bounce back. And the blue Jays were in the second half a doubleheader against the red Sox and make no mistakes. The blue Jays are a big factor when it comes to CFL rates, you know, and we've seen it year in, year out. If the blue Jays are out of it, you know, by June, they have almost no effect on CFL rate. It really clears the way for us to have a good year if they're in it and playing well. And I think they won 1200, the last 15, right speed there, they get a national audience. The Raptors fan base tends to go from about an hour east of Toronto to about an hour west. And the Bluejays fan base goes from Newfoundland to Vancouver. You know, like it's a Victoria it's it's right across the country. So that's, that's a significant thing. So overall I thought, I thought that the ratings were, you know, were decent and I thought the attendance was great. You know, we'll see where it is. I think it's, I'm curious to see where it's going to be in week number two, because it's the novelty of the, of the opening game has gone. And then we'll see where it's going to be in a few weeks when the games, movies, we'll also see how many people they're going to last to be allowed to have in stadiums when they move these to the Delta variant. We seem to be in the early stages of the fourth wave here in Ontario, right now the cases of, I just looked at cases today, new cases, 503, which is up a fair bit percentage wise from where we've been the last couple of weeks. So we'll wait to see whether they get to open the full stadiums in Ontario when they come back here. The Argonauts are scheduled to play the first game in Southern Ontario on the 21st against Winnipeg, which is a week from this coming Sunday. So, but overall, I thought both those numbers, both in terms of attendance, presentation, TV, numbers, all those things. It was a pretty good look at a pretty good return for the league. And we, number one, yeah. It's even in Hawaii here, they just like two days ago, they cut down all the numbers here, again, you know, of, of capacity and all those sorts of things just all week. Yeah. I think It's a, it's a tough psychological game for people because every time you feel like you're past it, you know, all of a sudden we start getting dragged back in there and they haven't done that yet here, but I think people are starting to look, you know, a week or two ahead and wonder where we're going to be. Last, last, before we go you know, we, we touched on the Argos and the lions. Any thoughts about the LLS Alex game or the tire cats Roughriders before we go? Well, I, the, the tie cats and rough riders is going to be interesting for me because, you know, Hamilton was considered by most people. If you look at our previous show, multiple things, and it's not shocking that they lost and week number one against Winnipeg, because I, I think there were people that were surprised that they were underdogs in that game, but I think it's just how completely they were shut down on offense, you know, that they scored early and then not at all. And Jeremiah was Ali, you played an exceptional level 2019 until he was hurt. You know, he would not, he didn't have a lot of times thrown off his back foot, the entire game there. I mean, they, they had two young tackles in that game going against two very good ends and a really good defensive line in general. And actually front 6.7 for put a bag of R R I think, you know, it's an elite group that showed up. Saskatchewan is also a very good defensive, very athletic defense and play it on the road. It would be the you're looking for storylines that would kind of surprise people. I think Hamilton going into the open the season would be one, even though both those games on the road and tough place. So you can understand why Hamilton lost one regular season game after August 1st, last year. And they lost that one game to Calgary. And by one point, other than the great cup, this was a team that was almost perfect through the, through the second two thirds of the season. So that's, and then, and then you saw Saskatchewan scored all their points in the first half. So you had two teams that kind of struggled on offense last week. I'm kind of interested to see which one kind of comes on, kind of gets back on track. But Hamilton Owen to start with would cause some buzz in the CFL and, and in Montreal you know, this was the surprise team. You know, they were a 10 wind team in 2019. They've kept a lot of players together. They've got a new general manager in Danny Muchow. Who's really on there, Canadians as relied, highly on players French Canadian players from schools in Quebec. When you look at their roster players, the university of Montreal Laval university, lots of guys, Danny was the head coach at university of Montreal. So he knows a lot of those guys. It kind of reminds me a little bit of, you know, Steve spur back in the day when he was coaching Washington, all these university of Florida guys were, were getting signed. Hope it works out better for them in Montreal than it, than it did for him doing that. But you know, they they've kept their group of American receivers together. I think it's a very good group of receivers you know, and Quan Bray and Eugene Louis Mariott, all third and Jake Waikiki key and others William's stand back, coming back from the national football league. And he, he was, he was, he don't see that many types of rushers in the slate or really physical, like the kind of guys that defendants don't want to tackle. Cause they hit you as hard as you hit them. Stand back. Is that kind of guy, which is why he got an opportunity to Raiders in the NFL because that's more of an NFL style running back then CFL style running back. But I think he, he really presents a challenge for defensive. So I'm interested to see what he can do and you know, they, on the defensive side of the ball, one thing Montreal really lacked in 2019 has been at much of a passage at all. Now they've signed some guys that's always very difficult to evaluate, you know, guys who played high-level us college or spent some time in the national football league, especially when we haven't even seen them in preseason game. So there's a bit of an unveiling, I think for every team, because there's so many guys that are signed, that we look at the resumes and watch their youth Pilates, but how they're going to translate in the CFL. And that's one of the things I'll be looking for with Montreal and seeing no, can they spend a little more time off that defense line and the opposing team's backfill because that was something they were really missing 2019. Well it, it should be exciting. I feel glad, you know, football football's back. It did feel very XFL. Like for me watching the games on my phone on demand, you know, being kind of living it through the weekend, I do like it easier to watch than the NFL, right. Where there's a million games every day. And so you're trying to track me. I do, I do really love that and I think it's going to work, you know? I just think it's going to be a fun season for everyone to, to cover. And I'm glad that we can be a part of that and, and have wonderful people like you want. I hope it won't be another 53 weeks before we have you on again. So I, I appreciate your time to that. Hey, my pleasure. Look forward to doing this again sometime. Thank you so much. And we're back. I want to thank Dave Naylor for his time. Talking to Reed spend about 40 minutes with him as Reed sits on the beautiful shores of I, which island are you want read? We're in the wahoo. We're downtown Waikiki at the Sheraton here. I will say, if you are planning a trip worth the money to stay here, this has been, they got an infinity pool. We've got a private beach. We've got, you know, coffee in the room during school or so it's, it's a good time here. If the Sheraton Waikiki wants to sponsor the Marquette the wifi could be better in the, on the deck. So that's why I'm, hotspotting on my phone. So you better wifi on the deck. Very cool stuff, man. I'm definitely hoping to take my first script out to Y soon. So hopefully I get something planned here. Now that I have someone who is into travel. She's very much in travel. If you've looked at her Instagram read, I don't know if you have she's she's a traveling. She's a traveling soul. She travels all the time. Awesome. You won't have to bring it. You will, you'll you'll have to pay for two full price, adult tickets. You only think you won't get a child discount with delivery. I know. I know. All right, moving on back to the show. We're getting back. We getting back on back back to things that also matter per rod Peterson, the stamps have a new owner. Well, they have yet they have an interest in you by this came out this week. Rod, of course, you know, I love rod a lot. But he's like, I got, I'm not going to give you any details, but I guess that, you know, the stamps have been quietly shopping and owner in the background for about the last year. And they feel like they found somebody. This was interesting. Danny Austin, who covers the stamps and the Calgary flames and everything else very, very upset about this lots of Twitter beef this week about this. He was Bruce Murchie and the XFL again, Danny Austin was about this and it's just like, it's just not a good look for the CFL media. Like rod came out and said this, and that's fine. You can say whatever. And like Danny called him like a piston on the CFL. I mean, he was like, really? I just don't see, you see like Ian Rapoport calling Tom Pelissero like a stain on, you know what I mean? Like it's just a weird, like, I, I think we need to be better than that, about some of the stuff, but any thoughts on the stamps having the new Owner? Well, I thought Canadians were nice to start. I thought they were polite people. What are we doing here? I, you know, if the stamps have a new owner, that's great. It's going to be interesting to see what if Danny is upset about the stamps, having a new owner and, and, and who this new owner is. I have a general feeling that this new owner might be for an XFL collaboration. That's, that's, that's the only suspicion I can start to ruminate is like, maybe this guy wants to join the XFL. And Danny's a little about that. Hence, why he started going off by the XFL again, It's just weird, you know? It's one of those things like just cause you didn't get that info, like just cause I don't know something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Right. It's just, it was just a weird thing where it's like, well, I don't know that, like I haven't heard that. And you're like, well, that's know. Anyway, it's interesting. I I'm throwing a little bit of shade here at and th you know, they three down use this story about Brandon bank showing up accidentally for practice on a day off, they were using it as like, oh, look at him. He's so hard working, right. Brandon Banks is showing up. Brandy banks did not have a great home opener. He like threw the ball. I hit the RAF, he had the penalty against him. And then he showed up at eight on Monday morning, he goes, I just showed up to work today. And I know when we had the day off, just ready to get my back to work and get better branded. Let's pay attention to when the practices, buddy. Yeah. But I like your dedication. I do like your dedication. That's really cool. Your camera's switched there. Paul, is that okay? It's completely okay. It's completely okay. I'm just Me. I just want to make it anyway. No, I just thought, you know, I thought that was interesting that they were trying to say like oh, this is such a hard working guy. I'm like, no, he wasn't paying attention. Like no one practices. I dunno. I mean, sorry, like, sorry to be like read the buzzkill, but I was like, I think branded should let's know. Let's know in practices. Well, I mean you okay. I disagree. I think, I think it's, it's dedication. I think it's dedication that he showed up to practice on a day. He didn't have to show to practice. We're talking about practice here. We're talking about practice. Read. We're talking about practice. Yeah. I just, you know, let's know when the games are all it's so in practices, I dunno. I just thought that was weird. And especially where he came off kind of a lackluster first game performance, I would have been like, I don't know. I would, I wouldn't have been paying attention to That stuff. Yeah. Hm. I was going to play a clip, but you know, I don't, I have things wired differently, so I can't even play the crap. That's all right. Yeah. So we got this, went to KIIROO Yamasaki as I do that, right. He is the first Japanese born player to score a point in the CFL. He of course plays from IBC lions. It was, it was a really tough though. Cause he came out, he had the big field goal, everyone was excited and then he missed like two more field goals that kind of cost him the game. So it was kind of one of those, like it was the best of times it was the worst of times In the NFL, you don't have this kind of failure rate and keep your job. Like hopefully, hopefully he can turn it around. And cause if you left seven points on the field, that's rough. That, that that's that's, that's that's changed the game. That's that's, that's a win as Taylor recently. And how that worked out for the Broncos. When he came from the XFL and had that, you know, he had played one game and it was like windy and he missed like two, two PA Ts and they were like, you're done. I mean, it's, it's not, you don't have that. But, but it was the one thing I will say that the field goals. Yeah. I guess it's the wider field and the hash marks. I mean, it's like a diagonal kick. Hmm. It's interesting. You know, I Mean, it's, it's, I think it's like way more challenging and then that makes sense. The Rouge, the guy standing in the end zone, they like, but like you, you know, you have a receiver back to like catch that field goal. They miss it. I mean, it's kind of a weird dynamic. I kind of like it, but it is weird the first time you see it, like, like they're kicking like sideways down the field. So Interesting. A couple got engaged at the blue bombers home opener. Want to congratulate? Brenda. Oh, gray, sick and Trevor bourgeois. They're from Brandon. I assume that's in Manitoba. They got engaged via the dremmel Tron at IAG field with the man help a mascots buzzard boomer. Grace had got down on one knee and asked her partner, Bruce. Oh, she asked him why? Oh, take a hint, Trevor, take a hint. Why don't you like Michael Scott in the office and stop her for proposing and then propose yourself, Trevor, what are you doing? I bet. That was interesting. Also, Dorothy is all in on the blue bombers. That is her team. We said that last week, but Dorothy is very much a Winnipeg cause of cause of the w and the colors and even another, not that you'd have Huskies. She has a big ski Arabic when the big move on her face, It looks like the Toronto Argonauts had some charter issues. According to Michael King OWG voyages is the flight that we're not taking. Well, at least I'm not taking up to the grey cup. Ended up taxing back to the apron last night. And then they, I guess they had some issues with the plane and well, This was them getting out. Yeah. The tweet was from them, you know, trying to get a home from the game on Saturday day. But I just thought that I couldn't imagine like trying to fly out and then you're like the charter plane had to come back. It seems like they were at the airport for quite a while. I just thought that was kind of a funny thing. Your, your boy, you love this guy Canadian NFL analysts, Nate Burleson, he's Canadian. He didn't, you know, he doesn't analyze Canadian football, but he is Canadian. He's a former wide receiver and he is moving on to CBS this morning. Interesting. No, the neighbor who was Canadian assassinated, I mean, I knew he played in, in Seattle. I, and for the Vikings and the lights. I had no idea he was, he was a candidate. I didn't either with his Kung Lao hats and everything like that. He is making the move from the NFL network over to CBS this morning probably going to be dropping his duties with the extra. He does the extra TV shows as well. He'll show up on there every like once or twice a week, doing stories for them. But definitely this is a great thing to see these former players like Michael stray Han, and a neighbor Olson, get this opportunity after. And you know, they're great people on the field, but they've also shown a great acumen for not being like normally when, when you have a former person, you have a former player, you fit them in a box and you put them in this like, oh, you can only cover sports. And it's good to see people like Michael Strahan and Abramson get an opportunity to be like beyond that. So congrats to date for getting a new job. Please lose the conglom hats. They're annoying. Yeah. I, yeah, just tremendous that way. A couple other last notes here, and then I do have a funny story before we get it out of here. I'm going to share with you about Dorothy, about the wind, the big blue bumpers. Josh Davis has an interview with the director of the, that new AAF documentary came out this week. You know, the fire fast, all that stuff. I'm going to watch it next week. Obviously we've been in Hawaii and if I told Dorothy like, oh yeah, we're going to, I'm going to go watch the documentary. You know, Alliance's broken. That probably wouldn't go over. But if you are interested in that, I know that Josh had a interview with the director and I believe he has a couple of interviews coming up with some of the players, you know, from that documentary. But really, I know a sad friend of the show is watching it. XFL Reddit was, was watching it, the people over there. So, but if you are into that, it's on Amazon and apple TV. Now you can watch that alliances broken the AAF documentary. Very cool. New England Patriots had five players in for workouts on Thursday. One of them is Jordan TAMU from the very exciting, wouldn't it be interesting if, if TAMU actually got some playing time this year, wouldn't that be interesting? And I don't know. Do the Patriots play Washington football team? I don't know. All I know is I think it's week four, they play the Buccaneers. I'm not sure if you knew that that week for the month. I mean, cause that's all they talking about right now then. Yeah. I didn't know if you know that the Buccaneers are going to go play at the Patriots and people are very, very excited about it. Well, Here's an interesting thing. If, if Tom who gets signed to any sort of deal, the first preseason game for the new England Patriots is against the Washington football team. Oh, that's today. That's 12th. Yeah. Today I think it is today. Womp womp womp. One last note here, I've speak in the Washington football. Speaking of the XFL, a friend of the show, Cole Boozer, we talked a couple, a weeks ago. He announced his retirement. When he got, you know, he didn't make it onto the LLS. It was the best of times. Again, it was the worst of times, day. They announced the Washington football had signed Cole as a, as a tackle I believe. And then we were all excited. Everyone was going crazy off the walls. You know, we have a photo of him getting signed, all that literally the next day he was on the practice field for five minutes. They walked him off and they waved him. Man, do you have any insight five minutes? And that was it. Yeah. Josh gave us talks with Cole. You know, I think he may be just as set on retirement. Right. Maybe he got back out there and, and it, it seems like it was a mutual decision. Cause when I first heard about it, I thought, oh my God, Cole went out there and like injured himself. Maybe didn't look or didn't look great. Or maybe I don't know what the protocol is. If you got to whatever. And I thought, oh my God, this is, but it sounds like it's mutual. And, and Cole I think is pretty set on retirement. So but you know, God, I was, I was off the wall. I said, we're going to the super bowl. When they, when they hired, when they signed call, I thought we were we're, we're set on the ring by that. We'll see, Man. Unfortunately, the news nonetheless, and we hope Cole has a great transition into his post football career. Cause it's clear that he's probably done, you know, playing at this point. So Yeah, also a real quick, I have a story, but we, and then we're also, I think I texted you this week. I know you've been busy at work. Oh, I did the ticketing agent for the Washington football team falls to us now on Twitter. So I mean, if Washington football does really well, we might have to do like a DC show and we can get like VIP Tickets, listen to this guy. I'm all in. He wants to do live shows all the time now. So Here's a funny story before we go. So we were talking about Dorothy, she's a well-paid blue bomber fan, all this kind of stuff. Right? So we're staying at our hotel. It's like 30 floors up. Right? There's all these railings. So out row 25 floors up, there's a WASU flag, Washington state university, right? Dorothy's state rivals, right? Yeah. Hanging from, from the rail. And so I think that I saw this from the pool the other day and she goes, what the hell is this Kruger flag? You know what? This is so tacky. What idiot with us that, so she goes, well, I'm going to go get my phone and we're going to take, so like the next day we're out there and it's still, she's just incredulous. She goes, I can't believe this flags out here. And so she goes, he gets her phone. She goes into the pool and she's taking the photo and this guy goes, oh, where are you? Are you, are you trying to find your room? She goes, no, I'm trying to take a photo of this stupid Watsu flag that this idiot has hanging up. He goes, oh, that's, that's my flag. We try, I travel with that. I always hang it up in my hotel room. What was you flag travels with watching them? Like, that's crazy. I dunno if you know this, but on ESPN game day the Saturday morning pregame college show that they run, like for three hours, there is a wazoo flag it's called old Crimson that flies every single week. This group gets it and sends it to the next and one per one wazoo alum or someone that's close receives the package straight, starts hanging it and flying it all over the place. Every single ESPN game day. I'm not kidding. Tell Dorothy's after she got sick, I was dying. That was, that was the highlight of Washington Vinci. Anyway, we're all in on Winnipeg. We're all in, we're all in on BC lions. So anyway, that's all I got to do. Very Cool. Well thank you for joining us. We want to thank Reed for taking time out of his beautiful scenic vacation. You know, Dorothy's asleep right now. She's probably going to get up pretty soon. They're probably going to go I don't know, sit on the beach and drink hard seltzer, you know, whatever they are. Trulys claws. They have Kona. I think we're drinking Kona, hard seltzer, Koa, hard seltzer, Kona. Like, you know, they have Kona coffee. I think it's calling that hard seltzer. They have that out there. It's like chocolate. They have like pod it's like pod flavor. It's good Flavor. Like what do you mean POG flavor? Like the pod passion. Orange guava. Oh, not like the POG that used to throw down and like knock out a circle. I'm going really deep with my youth. All like my slab is like four inches thick. Bam. Okay. I'm done. I'm done joking about gen X, gen Y stuff, but we want to thank you all for joining us and we will see you next week.

Episode 52 - CFL Is Back!

We're up and we're running. Are we live? We are live. We are alive. I'm going to, I'm going to tweet out. I'm tweeting out. We're alive and I'm going to retweet here. We're here we go. This is the I'm going to turn on my fan. Very cool. So I want To start off thinking everybody to our first ever live show. This is awesome. I'm sorry about the wait reads. OCD is going to bother him a little bit, the way the boxes are, but you know, we're trying a brand new thing here today. We're trying to brand new thing here today where like I'm running this new equipment that I got thanks to the normal Thursday night podcast. I no longer work for. And yeah, it's really exciting to go live and be able to bring in guests live and do all that stuff. As long as there, as long as they're keeping their mouths clean. I heard I heard something tonight on the game, by the way, congrats to Winnipeg, a successful start to their season, run In the back, run in the back. When things go back again, they're going to run it back. Apparently they're already planning on doing that. It also, it also warms my heart. It also warms my heart. The Jeremiah Masoli who broke my Arizona Wildcat heart took another L today. So that, that was, that was, that was something that was really warming of my heart because I can't stand your mind solely nothing personal. You just, you just cost me a Rosebowl. So I will say Dorothy was very excited. So officially Dorothy's the only watch my wife has only watched one CFL game ever when they paid blue bombers or her team, because they look at the university of Washington colors. I said to be fair, when they pay, it probably has a few years on the university of Washington's color, scheme and logo, but there you go during the picture with her and and we're, we're going to get on that, so. Okay. Well, congrats to Dorothy on her team, winning a read, have you decided to stick with the Elks or are you going to go ahead and move on to a different team? I did where I did wear my Alex Jersey tonight or my UNC shirt tonight, just because I, I did want to be CFL. I happy tonight. I will say Paul. I just heard from one of our listeners, you have a president coming in the mail to you right now. I would be excited is in, it is in post air Canada right now. It's in The post. As long as it's none of this, we can't have this going on again. I still look like Nidia D is like, I don't like coconut, so I couldn't give it to her. I'm sure there's someone around the vicinity that I know now that will happily take these off my hands again. I wanna thank you know, Josh for a hooking that up. Catch me yeah, so, so still real life here tonight. This is a little different. We still, our Google doc. We're going to do all that. And I, Jim Mullins going to become a nine here in a minute. We have pat Steinberg who was going to come on from CFL. He had obviously heathered right. And everything's nights a gym, a gym got off a call with the Japanese consulate earlier, and now Jim is making himself available to us. So we'll they Jim for coming on, but just, yeah, please, everyone. I just retweeted the link on my Twitter. If anyone is watching this, if you could, like, if you could retweet that link out and try to get that going, we're really just trying to roll obviously with the CFL stuff coming into the season, but it's on my Twitter right now. And mark, if you're a, if mark Perry's in the chat, if you could add, you know, maybe add that to the XFL news hub Facebook page, but we really appreciate trying to get some support tonight for the, That would be great. And speaking of Jim Molan, this is why I'm wearing my pinstripes tonight because my Yankees beat his Mariners. So Well, I am our mayor and just Dorothy and I went to two games last week. Oh, that's right. Sorry. Sorry, sorry. So anyway so we're going to do the big recap. We're going to vamp here for a minute. Jim's going to come on. I'm going to message him here. Officially this is officially one year of the podcast. Now this is also 52. So you know, Paul, I don't think that we ever would have thought that we wouldn't have had an XFL game played by the time that we were on a one year. Can you believe that? I can't believe it. It seems like the perfect, perfect way to ring in one year a one-year anniversary then to go live. That's the perfect way to bring this to you is to go live on our one-year anniversary. So we're really happy about That and that, and w we're going to get, obviously all into the XFL news out later, we're going to start with CFL, cause obviously we're coming off the game, but I just like Leo and the Wolf of wall street. I tweeted out this week, the exit fellow media, I leave in anywhere We ate frozen Delta records. We enjoyed a little bit, we enjoyed it a lot. We're S we're still having a little bit of an issue with the third down stuff, but we'll get there. We'll get there. Yeah, we're, I'm wanting to get Jim's thoughts. I thought that conditioning came into a fact we had ed Tayvon actually from the blue bombers last week, and he talks about how they didn't do a lot of scrimmages, just a lot of like setting up situations or practicing. And then I thought when it came to the third and fourth down, you know, I thought the game, I mean, they came shot out of a cannon and I thought it really grind into a halt there at the end. You know, kind of in the last half of the game, but I think conditioning definitely came into that. But anyway one year for the podcast, I guess, congrats to us, I never thought we'd be talking CFL live streaming after the game, but there you go. I also wanted to say like Brady Olivera, That's it. That's how you pronounce his name. Brady Olvera. What a baller tonight, 126 yards and 22 carries averaged almost six yards of carry. That's incredible. He had one catch for 21 yards. Of course, the big, the big star of the game, I think is Kenny Lawler almost had a trifecta with the touchdowns or the hat trick, whatever you want to call it. A really good game from everybody when, when it came to Winnipeg and they definitely covered the spread for the UC game banners that are going to save Canadian. There you go. If you took Winnipeg minus five, you're into money, that's the way it works. You don't have to bet other two other games. You already want your money. Congrats. I did do my first ever fantasy today for the CFL was very stressful for me. I don't do fantasy at all. So to do any sort of fantasy, especially CFL fantasy very stressful, but I do send Jim a message. We're going to see what's going on here. I did the poll this week as we were waiting for Jim Olin to come on and present football Canada about be CFL game. You know, I, I did a Twitter poll. I said, okay, we're one year in to the XFL ownership, all this kind of stuff. How would you grade the current XFL ownership's performance Paul, we had with a 2.2% people graded it in a B was 23.9% and then C and D were 37% a piece. So needless to say, I think we're going to be getting a lot more CFL than they XFL fans do not seem to be too happy right now. And I do see, we have a wonderful guest joining Us. We do have a wonderful guest joining us, Jim Mullen, joining the show right now. Welcome to our first live. Mark has Jim Well thanks for having me. I understand that that I'm a, I'm a stand in for a previous guest and that's fine. I like being the Tony Randall guests or Tony Randall on Letterman, always used to just kind of wander in when somebody couldn't make it. And he was always more engaging than the person he would have had on. I do have something to push by the way, if this works like a talk show, a crown Gridiron nation returning to TSN on September the eighth. So everything that you need to know about Canadian university footfall and Canadians playing in the NCAA returns the TSN on September the eighth. And for those of you, you stateside that want to follow what the segments will be put up a day by day on football, canada.com. So there, I got my plug out of the way. Here's my plug. Here's my plug. Did you see the game tonight? Also? What was going on And yeah, enough money to buy. It must be nice to, to have owners who are willing to spend money to go after a wild card. I have no idea. Oh, wow. After a wild Card, I, you know, a lot of world series teams when after making the wild card and if the Astros hadn't cheated Astros, hadn't cheated us out in 2017, we would have been a wildcard team that would have made the world series in 2017. But it's who is the Team that the that the Astros cheated the most against in the regular season and finished two and a half games out of a wild card, Seattle Mariners. Yep. That's interesting, Jim, where do they sit? Thank you, Jim, for joining us, you know, no backup with all that, you know, Paul had to work the last time you were on. I'm glad we've already pre-booked you for future events as well. That will be yet to be announced. Thanks again. I see Jen is in the chat. Brian max is in the chat. We're going to hit the child of blender. Jim, I want to talk about the game tonight. What about Dem Cowboys? What do you think? How was it, you know, I watched the wrong game, But I'll tell you what if I'm surveying social media. I'm, I'm looking at people in the Vancouver area who have an interest in what chase Claypool does as a Pittsburgh Steeler and more than within the football community, the, the tight knit Canadian football community seem to be following chase Claypool's exploits with the Pittsburgh Steelers tonight, rather than at least tuning into the first half of the CFL game. I'm sure there were people hot thing back and forth and going over and checking out the Olympics and whatnot. But you know, at the end of the day, there was a lot more Vancouver noise for, for the Steelers in the Cowboys than there was for the for the blue bombers in the tie cats. How does that make you feel? I, I think it's actually somewhat understandable and that you have a player in the NFL who may be the most gifted, skilled position player out of Canada. Maybe just not in a generation, but overall lots of that statement, you know, when when you take a look at the way, cool is capable of heading into his second year and that he came up through the Canadian system, played his high school here. Didn't go to an academy, went straight into to Notre Dame and played and started as a freshmen great story behind the guy. Great personality charismatic. Of course he's going to draw some eyes over there. You know, the CFL is is regionally driven a lot of the time and I'm sure there were great numbers on the Prairie's. I'm sure, like I said, a lot of people in BC hop back and forth between the two games and I'm sure a lot of people in Southern Ontario tuned in as well for me watching the, the the tie cats and the bombers tonight. It was it was emotional for me 620 days. I didn't know if it was turned into 6 21 or, or adver at some points with this league. So you know, to see nearly full stadium to see that energy there, it felt like things were just getting back to normal again. Yeah. And, and, and, and normals enough to bring a little beat of tear to the corner of your eyes these days. Isn't it Completely agree every time, you know, every time I see a sports stadium, like we've been spoiled down here in America for quite a while, with our baseball teams, with, you know, NBA, we're seeing fuller stadiums. So yeah, I'm, I'm definitely, I definitely understand what you're going through. I was the first concert in the United States after COVID and I got emotional when I was there. So I totally understand. I empathize with that feeling immensely. So we're glad, we're glad the CFL is back. Yeah. Now the, the game itself if I step back from the emotion of the of the first half, if I'm being generous, I'm giving it a C if I'm being generous. It was frustrating to watch the interior of the Hamilton line not be able to pick up stunts and twists, and I lost Jeremiah Mazzoli onto his horse to, to to have half the field cut down on them for pass selection up field. It seemed like he was always on the run. I'm sure if we see a chart of where Mazzoli threw the ball through the evening very little of it was between the hash marks kinda hard to establish things in, in the CFL when, when, when you can't spread the ball around in your quarterbacks. So always under duress on the other side for the for the Winnipeg blue bombers a solid defensive effort, first of all solid on special teams Brady Allavara and the offensive line in front of him was the story. All of Aira is a guy that I met back in 2017 down at North Dakota when we were doing our show there were five Canadians in that North Dakota program. He was behind a guy by the name of John Santiago, who read, you might know, was on the Seattle Dragon's roster. It didn't didn't pile up a ton of stats. I think it only had one reception for seven yards but he was a three-time All-American at his level had had a couple of stops in the CFL currently playing in, in Europe. But, you know, he was, he was one, two with a three time All-American he was one a, he was, he was in that rotation and he was two time, a big sky. This is a guy that, that I knew coming into this game could produce especially with with an offensive line that, that, that has their act together. So you know, all of era, once the bombers took a, took, the lead was able to control the ball and control the clock. What a great it came from him. He had, he averaged like 5.7 yards of carry. We're talking about him early, earlier. Lawler had, you know, two touchdown receptions, solid game all around for those two, at least. But again, I completely agree, you know, the first time either team got in the red zone was like five minutes left in the game, or six minutes left in the game, something ridiculous like that. And it was just like, wow, this is, this is really slow going. And you know, this is rust. I think it was, you could, you could chalk it all up to rust right now. Well, it seemed like we were saying, it really seemed like everyone got shot out of the Buchanan. Right? It seems like that first quarter, you know, we had ed Tayvon last week and he was talking about how the blue bombers were doing a bunch of like scenarios and practice, but not really, you know, doing inner squad games or anything. And I told that I go, you know, people always say, you know, you have to play games to get in game shape. And it's like, we know this, but we're still going to just, you know, practice, practice, practice. And it seemed like that second half of the game, it did seem like they really slowed down and it seemed like the rust then piled up there a little bit at the end. One thing that I was pleasantly surprised about was that at Collaros tonight you know, you want to break through rust and you want to break through not having two exhibition games to get you into the regular season. Probably the best way around that is having a quarterback at play Sandlot for you, because that's what he did on a number of occasions tonight, he moved around, he danced out of the pocket. He reset, he bought himself some time, and it was what was literally directing some of his his receivers around to make that turn at the garbage can to, to, to make catches it. And if he tries this stuff in week 13 in terms of throwing against the grain and tight roping sidelines with passes, it's not gonna end well for him, but on a night like tonight where you need to be inventive and you need to think on your feet and you need to create plays. This was a good night for Zach Polaris, You know, had a bad night, Brandon Banks what's going on with him. Oh, well you know, sometimes he gets in his head, he gets in his own head. And I do believe that the broadcast crew pointed out that after he took that 15 yard penalty, probably unjustly. So for a unsportsmanlike conduct it was reported at the field level. He couldn't stop talking. And, and, and he was unfocused. Now that being said, I think that gets back to the, the pressure that the, the Hamilton quarterback, Jeremiah Mazzoli was under throughout the course of the evening, really hard to set up to your, to your receivers. And, and follow your game plan when, when, when your current w when you're constantly being disrupted like that. But no random banks watched his focus, lost his composure, and didn't really seem very interested in getting it back through the course of tonight. I'm so glad miss had a long night that, that, that warms my heart from 2009. Mark's in the chat. Mark says he thinks the banks has hurt ribs. I was seeing if we had any update on that injury after the game. So No, I haven't seen any, any update on that is possible that, that he was that he was playing hurt. You know that's one of those things that you're just going to have to get a report on. Luckily now that we're in the gambling error and the CFL we'll actually get real reports on injuries. So that that's a departure from years past. Isn't it? Well, Yeah. And the interesting thing, I mean, but it's still right day before is when they're going to release the Palm of game rosters. Right. I mean, it's still, you're doing the injuries day to day, but it's still this like cat and mouse. Okay. We're effing around. I mean, so it seems like the coaches are trying to get there. Yeah. As they say in the great white north, a little bit of stick handling there, a little bit of ragging, the puck, I Heard, I heard some definite like different quotes from, you know, the commentators, like a newcomer. They kept saying newcomer, instead of rookie, I was like, is, is that the same thing? Or is that like a, you know, a newcomer to the team? I, I kept hearing them say newcomer. It, it kind of covers both things. You know, if you got a newcomer to the Canadian football league, it might mean that, that he's been a non roster player with an NFL team for two years or a, or he played or he played in the XFL or the IFL or, or, or in a Rena league team at at some point before finding his way to to the CFL mostly mostly applied is to import players non Canadian. So rookie, they, they will apply that language wise to Canadians who just been drafted. I'll tell you if Nathan Rourke steps in for the BC lions of Michael Riley and a short shoulder camp way, he will be referred to as a rookie and against the sketch Swan when the lions play Saskatchewan. And I, I don't necessarily end B Nathan work, but that, that kid's is tough as nails. He might be able to pull it off. So moving on to the other games, big weekend in CFL, you know, coming back after 620 days which we had a question in the chat, Ryan asked, which other matchup are you looking forward to most this weekend? Well, I, I am interested in, in the BC Saskatchewan game. Saskatchewan comes in with a lot of hype into this into this game with Cody, but Gerardo coming off a great season, 620 days ago. And, and Mike Riley or Michael right called him now really being a giant question, mark for the, for the lions, a big investment made in him coming into two seasons go for the, for the lions. And you know, it hasn't paid off so far. And to know that that he still has those shoulder problems. Well, it, it reminds me a little bit of the course of journey that one of the all time great quarterbacks went through a Travis Lulay who was on again, off again with with shoulder injuries. Th this seems like a repeat of that at the quarterback position. So, you know, my eyes are, are, are focused on that quarterback position with the lions, because, you know, it could make the difference between them being a 500 team or them winning two or three games this year. And, and you know, that's not to take anything away from Nathan Rourke who won the Cornish trophy twice as the top Canadian and in the NCAA, and and was on all-star teams in the Mac for three years and, and broke several records at Ohio was as a quarterback. I think the issue for Nathan Rourke is if he does get tossed in into the fire for the lions, is that you know, here here's an option read quarterback who is, as I mentioned, is as tough as nails. He'll make the read off the end, and he's not afraid to turn it back inside and, and pay the price. You might be able to do that in the Mac and get away with it. You're not going to be able to do that in professional football and it, and at some time be scraped off the turf. And, and, and that's, that's where I worry when plays breakdown, he's gonna rely on his feet. If you look at it as a numbers from Ohio, his, his rushing numbers in his passing numbers in about 60% of his games were equal to each other. He you know, he scored what was it, 14 touchdowns with his feet in one year and 24 and another crazy numbers as a, as a rushing quarterback and having that balance. We've had guys in the CFL who have done that before. But you know, the, the, the problem is the body can only take so much through that. Tim had a comment in the chat about the you know, cause this is, you know, right. We're, we're tuning into this, doing the big CFL broadcast, all the virtual ads on the field. He bought very distracting with that. And also, you know, that we have, we have like patches everywhere, right? We're sponsoring the grocery store giveaways for $200. I mean, what what'd you think about the virtual ads on the field? I think there are work in progress. You know, they've done it with other games before and other places where where the stadium in question will not allow painted ads on the field BC place being one of them you're in Vancouver. I don't know what the issue was behind the scenes, as, as we saw someone hit, you know, cursor, right. Cursor, right. Cursor, right. To move the, skip the dishes, add up to the 50 line. So it could be insight. You know, that, that was, that was annoying. And, you know, quite frankly, you know, TSN, hasn't had a game in 620 days either. You know, I'm willing to in this first weekend to cut the boys on the TV side and on the football side, a little bit of slack, there's a, there was a margin for error here. You know, no question about it. If we're still talking about this stuff, four weeks later, I think we've got a bonafide issue. Well, I mean, CSA is not TSN is not paying much money for the rights anyways. So the other games this week, I just think they should get more money for the TV rights. That's all, that's my point. My soap box, the other games is weekend. You've got the Argos against the stamps and the red blacks against Reed's Elks. Okay. you know, the Argos have the toughest schedule in the league and it doesn't start easy for them against the Calgary stampede, or I think the question for the Argos is you know, w what do you almost, if you're an Argos fan, you have to approach this almost like a scout and see where the winds are in each play, because I certainly don't think they're beating the Calgary Stampeders in Calgary. You know, they they've put together a very deep roster across the board through through what they did in, in training camp and off season signings. I I'm, I'm interested to see if the Argos use this game, like an exhibition game to evaluate talent, to rotate guys through positions. I think that would be their wisest course of action absorb, you know, Hey, if you're, if you're lucky enough to get that wind, get that wind, but absorb a loss of Calvary on the road. But, but actually get a good idea with all the numbers that they brought in to, to see who's there, who can step up and play to, to, to, to eliminate some of those guys on the fringes. This would be a really good opportunity to do that. If you're the Toronto Argos. So You're rolling out any potential upset here in this matchup. Yeah, I am. But you know, what, when, when, when, when you haven't played for a, what, 2,620 days, like, you know, I noticed that the CFL rolled out their, their new bedding partner at that the third of the broadcast. And the funny thing about that is I wouldn't want to bet on a CFL game right now. I like, how could you have any certainty with the time off and the lack of exhibition games to really commit yourself to a bet, maybe a prop bet, some somewhere inside the game, once you see it, once you see a pattern develop in front of you, but certainly just on a straight game basis, even with a point spread right now, I wouldn't touch these things with a 10 foot pole. It's probably Smart. I'm going to wear my Argos to here in protest for the rest of the show, by the way you're being so disrespectful about 90 degrees. It's only, it's only 92 in the valley. It's no big Deal. Well, it's been that way up here in Vancouver, too. So Yeah, that last game well, you know, in the whole gym to learn from how you've been, so kind with your time you know, read blogs first, Alex, I mean, this is a, it's just a given, I mean, there'd be Oaks of Redis trounced and over everybody, I mean, did the red block stand a chance? I think the, the red black stand a chance you know, Jamie Elizondo comes in really as the second coach during the off season to to run the, the Edmonton Alex they're, they're, they're, they're just more established on, on offense and defensive key positions and, you know, losing losing a target like the red blacks did like Brad snappily in the opposite, that's crushing to them. You, you can't lose a Canadian receiver especially some guy that, that, that, that cuts over the middle and catches things inside likes monopoly. I mean that's a critical loss to them. And then, and then there's the, there's the retirements they had on the offensive line before, before the start of the season. And, and as people will find out stateside when you look at at authentic lines in Canada, it really after rebuild them with w with Canadian talent and the frontline guys are very good. Once you start getting into depth, you got a lot of projects there. I mean, there's talking about Ottawa, even, you know, starting three three imports on the offensive line, which is unheard of in this league. So I think there's still a lot of shuffling going on in Ottawa. And once again, I think you've got another project, but I think once again, you've got a FL where you've got some strong teams on the Prairie's BC is anyone's gas, and you got one team that might pull away a bit in the east, and you got a dog's breakfast with the other three. We, we we've become accustomed to that now in the cycles with the exception of a few years, probably for the last 30 years you know, the east is as always dragged their heels in this league. And it looks like they're prime to do it again. That's unfortunate. Well, Jim, we appreciate your time. You took out, you know, 20 or so minutes with us to catch up on the game and catch up on this weekend's events. So we're gonna go ahead and let you go. We appreciate, I know I have one, I have one question before we go. I, Jim, I want to know what's on the itinerary October 16th, when we come up and see you, we have, do we have some fun activities on the itinerary? Well, You know what it is football weekend in Canada, the 15th, 16th, and 17th. I will be in Vancouver on that day, on, on the 16th. I, I it's likely, I might be busier than a one-armed wallpaper hanger, but I will have time for you guys. So like, I'm literally going to be, you know you know, trying to get the message out about, about football weekend in Canada. And I know that some of our friends at TSN are going to help us along with that. And we're gonna, I think by the time we get the bat stage I'm hopefully I'm having a celebratory beer with you guys to celebrate just what a success, but a weekend in Canada, I just don't want too big of a float for the parade that we're on. I mean, just, you know, I want this money to keep it manageable for mommy, maybe, you know, I don't, we don't need that much fanfare so, well, You know, I, you know what I can't organize a one-car parade. I have that ability and I have that talent. So, oh, by the way a special piece of wardrobe for you to drag it back in the spring football, Someone pointed it out in the chat. They said that they, they were like compliments on the USFL star shirt, throwing it old school there. So you got a compliment for your shirt and you always get a compliment from us for your immense knowledge. We appreciate your time, Jim. Anytime if you guys want to do one of these one of these post game things again let me know, after the first guy turns you down, I will let you know, not the morning that Jim Mullen. Thanks again for your time. Again, thanks to Jim Mullen, great guest, always on, always on the, a game there. So we appreciate him coming on and dropping some, some knowledge, some insight, letting us know a little bit more about this game, that we're, we're still learning, but I don't care that it's also 85 degrees. It's now 86 degrees. I checked the valley. I'm still wearing this tube for the rest, the rest of the show. Yes. And you know, so again, if you guys enjoyed this, I'd be a like, and subscribe, retweet the episode tonight. We're going to try to do this again. I do think we're going to be doing a live show next week as well. We don't know the timing yet, but I'm going to be out of town. And I think that the live aspect will be a little bit easier next week as well. So we'll, we'll let you guys know about the time, but we're going to, you know, go through the show now, so please feel it, keep chatting and keep doing everything we'll pop on there. And we'll, you know, answer your questions here in a little bit, but w we're kind of going through the show here, Paul, how's everything going on, the toolbox with the graphics? It's where we go. There we go. It just dropped off just Barely that's. Okay. So I have the notes tonight. You know, I have the Google doc going with everything going on here. A couple of notes we did miss out on last week and then came out right after we aired abortion, you know, passing of the outlets. Co-Owner Sid Spiegel. He passed away. He, they, he and with with Mr. Stor what's the Hills, these guys did, this is, this is for the stuff we normally ended up with, since Vigo Burgess, the league, he was the co-owner and obviously they hadn't had a chance to play yet. And so it was kind of unfortunate that he went along. But that was unfortunate to hear about that that, you know, peace and, and well wishes got to his family. And then also I'll start, our Lynn J shell passed away from COVID former LLS all-star he passed away at 39. It came out that it was because of COVID. So any thoughts about either of those Things? I mean, that's going to be very interesting to see maybe there's some pre-existing conditions there for someone who should be in football shape at this point, hopefully, well, he's 39, so he's probably retired, but hopefully he wasn't in too bad of shape. And you know, Mr. Spiegel and Dave stern, Gary stern, I'm sorry, Gary stern, Dave stern, like the terrible. Anyway. can I go there? Hey, Gary stern of course bought the lox. They're really tight with MLSE part of the, part of the group that, you know, was really entertaining the idea of the XFL merger. So we want to wish his family the best in their time of, in their time of grief. Yeah. It just seemed, you know, just kind of a bummer go in and obviously into the kickoff of the first week of the season you know, just really unfortunate about the outlets, a bunch of new stuff here. Like I said, we're going to do all the XFL, talking a little bit with all the, you know, the notes coming out about Ambrozy and how the talks and all that stuff I did want to, I had some CFL stories. We at CFL news hub put out our predictions this week. I put mine on there, Mike Mitchell and Josh Davis, everybody put theirs on there. SEL news hub.com. I took the Winnipeg blue bombers to be the great cup champions. I said they were going to run it back beating the tiger cats again. And I had the Edmonton Alex as a surprise team just to give them all the work and cultural stuff that Jamie Elizondo is doing. I just think that they're going for a big paradigm shift over there. But, but I would go check that out, you know, just to see kind of the smattering of, of opinions and a lot of the CFL news writers house. You're such a mark for the elk it's out of control. Well, and, and I, I do think there's something to be said about running it back, you know, I think with the Buccaneers and everything else and you know, with the NFL, I think that that cohesion, even if it's been 600 plus days since the season, I, I do think there's something to be said for that. So Very cool. Tweet from Dave, Dave Naylor apparently there's a new injury reporting policy teams are not required to list the game status of a player until the day before the game. Yeah, it's interesting. You know, we're doing the thing, the injury reporting we're going to talk about you know, every day, well, you know, what players and injuries and stuff, but, you know, we're still doing the whole like, whoa, you know, they don't who our starting quarterback is, you know, they can't game change against us. And it's hard because it's one of those like old school mentalities, the coaches just feel really dug in and that's something in the NFL. If you're going to bet on sports betting, you cannot release your game rosters the day before, you know, people are going to be betting on your game all week. You know, the odds are going to change up and down depending on the week. And it's just, we need that transparency if you're going to rely on the sports game by the end that they're trying to. And I mean, you know, that's, that's supposed to be the savior of Canadian football is the single game betting. So we really, we really, we really need to make sure that that's protected. Corey had the question in the chat, just what do we think about the CNM and the atmosphere tonight? I thought it was great. I was talking to Dorothy, you know, my wife and I watched it. We, you know, we've always been excited about CFL, right? And, and I watched, I tweeted tonight. I watched a lot of really bad football with FCF. You know, some of the spring league games, some of the other stuff that we've watched this was not that, I mean, I never, ever thought CFL would be bad. It w it was great. I mean, I thought that it was lively about the atmosphere was good. The broadcasting glitches didn't bother me too much. And like I said, I'm used to a very, very much lower standard. And this far surpassed everything that I ever could have expected. I, it was nothing that surprised me at all about how well it was Totally agree. And I was seeing the, you know, they put a lot of, they put a lot of fan shots in there that I noticed. Did you notice that they were putting a lot of fan shots? They made it really about the fans. It was a really cool, different, you know, like we, you know, we see that occasionally during NFL games, but it seemed abundant in the CFL game. And I didn't mind that all those guys look like they were just having a blast to see Canadian football back. And I hope the attendance keeps going. I really hope that you know, this kind of stuff, this kind of stuff is more reliable than single game betting. I hope the attendance numbers stay up and your, your COVID numbers stay down so we can have crowds like this all the time. Trey was there tonight, tray in the challenge, he says I was out. It was awesome. I was there. So there you go. It must be nice. Yeah. There you go. Speaking of COVID the CFL is moving to prevent game cancellations, much like the NFL is like, guess what pretty much place to be games, win stupid prizes. Some of the policies that are rolling out, if one club is suffering from COVID-19 issues and it's, you know, it's overwhelming to the point, they can't feel the team, they are going to forfeit the game. That club will forfeit the game. I like this idea. And if both clubs are actually suffering from COVID issues where they can't feel the competitive team, they'll both be assigned a loss. What do you think? Green? Yeah, it's, it's one of those things where w w the only 14 game journey on a prorated season. So if I'm one of those players and I only got 14 paychecks coming in, I am definitely making sure that we are doing all that there's only three teams right now in the CFL that aren't, we know the rough are one of them. They said they're closed. The other two haven't come out yet about, you know, which ones, at least as far as I know, I know in the NFL, they are a nation or a league. Why the 90% right now, I know that my team, Washington football, was it 60% about a week ago. And obviously we covered that with Ron Rivera being upset, but they're up to, I think, 85% now. So I think it's just one of those things, like if you're only getting 14 game paychecks, like I don't want to have anything happen that would ever jeopardize one of those. So I think it's a good, and also it's like, basically what the NFL did. So why would you change that? Right. And under those circumstances of a team can prove that 86, 80 5% of those players are under are vaccinated. Then they will receive their salaries. So it's going to be interesting to see, do you know what the players union said about that by the way? Yeah. I just added this today. This came out today Brian Ramsey he is the the executive director. They came out, they they're pretty upset basically. And they're standing, if anything comes out of the bat, like basically if this were to happen, that there were going to potentially be a loss of wages, that they would definitely be around to pile a grievance about that. So it's kind of one of those things, like, it's fine right now, but if this does actually happen that then we're probably going to have an issue and it doesn't really seem like they have any grounds for that. And it certainly seems like this is well within the CFLs rights to be able to do this again. I mean, it's a business thing, right? I mean, you know, backs are unboxed, whatever. I mean, if your employer it's, it's, it's hard. It's a really, really sticky line. But I do think that they're really like the NFL really incentivizing the players to get this. And I, you know, there's, there's a lot to be, there's a lot to be wagered on actually holding the grey cup on time. You have to hold the grey cup on time. I mean, not just for our sake, cause we, you know, we have a Casa de mark cast set up right on the was it lake Ontario, Ontario, right in Hamilton. We're going to be having a great time up there. So, you know, they're, they're counting on this revenue and I think it's, it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out with the players association. But I think this is a very fair request of the CFL to make that a come on guys, this is enough's enough. Let's get this over with like, we understand your body, your choice, but you're also, if you're playing football and you're deciding not to get vaccinated, you're putting other people at risk and that, you know, your, your body, your choice, your rights, and when you affect someone else's rights, I hate to be political, but that's the truth. So you, I was just interested in that. I was, I had the hall of fame game on, you know, Steelers Cowboys before the CFL kickoff and they had no mass at all. Right. Where I guess it's one of those like, cause they were interviewing Mike McCarthy and he had no mask and I felt well, maybe he's, you know, can show he's vaccinated, whatever. But obviously the CFL game, you know, the coaches and staff on the sidelines also had masks going. I just thought it was interesting that the NFL, I think is like, if your back's like, you're good, we're gonna, you know, interview people and still social distance. But you know, no mass and people were running down and stuff Far on logic logic tweeted Friday, good news on the front end. COVID when it comes to the CFL since their last update, two weeks ago, there have been zero positive results from their extensive testing. Very cool. Yeah. So it's good. I mean, we're, we're so far so good. This is one of those things. You just, you got to keep the numbers up, you got to keep people safe, but you know, if they get all six teams, 85% vaccinated, like they want to keep it going. I mean, I think that that is speaks volumes for the season and how they're going to go success. I mean, I really feel pretty confident about how everything's going. I mean, with the testing and the numbers, we, that was the hardest thing, getting everybody in Canada, they're getting everybody through training camp to get everybody to go. But now that we're rolling, I don't foresee a lot of issues with that. But you know, who knows we'll, we'll certainly find out this is as I was talking about this. So Ben Regal, Nick Stolski can not be happy for him to the show been on the show before and Nick skulls. He is the COO of points, bends Canada. That Regal has teamed up with the CFL to become the official sport gambling partner. Nowhere in any of this was there brought up how much money was, was you know, th did they pay where they paid any of these sort of things, but, but you know, they have the whole, okay, this is going to evolve. Everything they do. A CFL has been around forever, all this stuff. But the thing that I bolded, it was interesting. And, and so this was the quote there being of a lot of ideas, this will include a free to play sports book, experience, CFL squares in the race, the 108th grade CAPA pickup style game. The wall fell a lot of fans to pick winners and predict scores to win that Regal and CFL pricing. I bet Regal will engage CFL communities and celebrate, you know, community MVPs who have gone above and beyond. Nowhere in that is the CFL making money. Yep. And I'm surprised, and I'm not, I'm not familiar with Canadian betting sites, but I thought Bodog was the top dog for pun intended, I guess, surprised they didn't get on that. Yeah. It just, to me seems like I, again, you're, you're engaging with those with like pick 'em and community MVPs. You're engaging in already engaged fan base, which is great, which is great. I E sports meeting needs to go outside of that and to attract new new people and things like that. Doesn't do that at all. Ryan H in the chat, I did notice exfil influences tonight with obviously with the sideline broadcast you know, talking to the players and the audio and all that stuff. Spring league has done that. That's one of those things where like the sky cam, like the reviews, you know, XFL did it, other people are going to take it. I didn't want to tweet that out. And how people say, what's your Bill's been doing that for 18 years. So I didn't say anything about that, but I didn't know this the XFL doing that or at the CFL game tonight doing that. But anyway, I just a sports betting thing. It's one of those things like I don't, I don't see where the 20 million is coming from by doing race to the 108th and getting CFL branded prizes that it's not equate to $2 million of revenue per team. Nope, Nope. Naylor reports, a new injury rule for immediate American. And I was combining American and Canadian Amedion wow. American and Canadian players playing their concussion as a result of the new collective borrowing agreement. Apparently a rule, a rule of share allows teams to replace a Canadian player injured in a game with an American. Yes. You read that, right. So the ratio is paused. Now, is this this an injury injury, or is this a, is this a COVID related injury? What is, what is this? This Is like basically and Paul freezin with Winnipeg sun. I, you know, cause Dave kind of came out with this, Dave actually like deleted some of the tweets and then came back out and clarify. Cause I think there was a lot of confusion about this, but it's basically, they're, they're trying to increase the roster pool. So it's like if we have a Canadian, you know, defensive band or whatever, that's injured, if we have a if we have, you know, an American that can supply us that then we can bring them in. And, okay. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. But anyway obviously a lot of sound about that, but this was funny. So Paul wrote the article with the Olympics on he's someone I would like to have, come on the show, can you talk to my coach, Michael Shay, he goes, you know, how is this going to work? Am I goes, it's not fair for me to answer that. I haven't read that over yet. So It's a very blunt, honest answer. I love it. I love it. But this is what happens when you pass collective bargaining agreements here the week of the, of the season. Right. And we're trying to figure all this stuff out, but there was a whole bunch of stuff. I've donk had a whole big article about like the 18 different things that they all agreed on. This was the big one Naylor came out cause obviously the American stuff. But you know, you got to have that roster size and, and it's, I mean, Dave salmon, it could be like mid game. I mean, we can be like fourth and two when someone's hurt. And they're like, oh, you're to bring in, you know, but then the player would have to have been in the league for four years or on a team for three years. So you couldn't like fly in Patrick Mahoney. I mean, this is a stupid example, but you can like fly, you know, you gotta there's certain requirements. It Wasn't every CFL team wished they could just fly in Patrick Holmes for like three weeks, Toronto, maybe Toronto, please. So anyway what do you think about this tailgate vaccination clinics in Saskatchewan? That's Pretty cool. That's a pretty good idea. I was actually at a, I was covering a concert the other night, where there was a mobile vaccination site that pulled up on and they were handing out vaccinations here. So this is a great way to get people vaccinated. You know, I'm having my doubts about the Johnson and Johnson, by the way, because a lot of Yankees are currently on the COVID list. And Garrett Cole, the ACE is going through a rough time with COVID and apparently he's vaccinated with J and J. So hopefully they're, they're carrying like what is it up there? That's the AstraZeneca right up there. And AstraZeneca is the prominent one. And hopefully hopefully you guys take advantage of this. If you're not vaccinated, go get vaccinated. You can enjoy the games. Yeah. I'm sure this isn't going to be controversial law vaccination clinics at the Sylvia. I have to remember. I was a, but I mean he was mad. You know, I, I always have these things. I don't have the names in there. And the Scotsman from NDP was mad at [inaudible] was inside. They put himself back, you know, pat himself on the, for a job half down at the time to get serious about this and get the last mile. Cause they're trying to get, you know, we're same in America. We can't get over the last hump. You know, we're at 80%, we're at 70%, you know, we can't get over that loss. So I'm sure this will not be a controversial decision at all to have vaccination, But the rough riders, a whole opener sold out. There you go, there you go. Oh, can I just say, and this is, I understand numbers and all this stuff. We had a comment last week. Cause we talked about the 2,800 people that attended the Roughriders practice out of the 5,000 that were allowed. And I said you know, not grey Bob and Mike and Mike commented, he goes, yeah, you have to remember, Saskatchewan is the size of California. People drive five hours. And then I kind of do that for a practice and all that stuff. That's my, so then the, the Ravens practice on Sunday, well, Martin Jackson was not even there 37,000 fans in the stance. There are 7,000 fans. And I understand, I just, I got to poke fun when I can. I understand this attempt to say I get all this stuff. And I didn't think that was a plenty that I, two days later the Ravens had 37,000 people. Lamar Jackson wasn't even that Interesting. Speed is still in the rough riders beat here. Paxton limb together. Oh yeah. You're you're, you're aligned, producing the show better than a lot of people. Oh, was we'll stop right there. Former NFL quarterback, Paxton Lynch earned a roster spot with rough riders. Apparently it looks like Cody Pardot was gonna start. I, Isaac Harker is going to be the backup and Lynch is going to be the third string quarterback. It's gonna be interesting to see. Yeah. As far as I know, cause I, cause I saw that and I'm like, I don't think he's the backup and he's not. But you know, we talked a couple of weeks ago about how, you know, his base salary and he played for $8 million in the NFL with all that stuff. But you know, Cody, it seems like he has his spot to lose, but you know, good for backs in Lynch. I mean, I dunno. Do you think, I mean, do you think he was wishing he was sticking around to go to the Indiana Indianapolis Colts or something? I think Philip Rivers is going to come out of retirement. That's what I think is going to happen, But God that's feel purpose music, Film, livers, Walk-Up music. What does Philip Rivers want? Company music? Like probably Something like it's babies kids cause got like nine kids. So something, something to do with that, you know This was not a great look. This is CFL tweets James Wilder. He's with the Alex, he tweeted this week, man, I'm not going to lie. I'm a man. I'm not, I'm not going to lie. I'm tired of looking. Who knows? There's a lot of spelling errors here. Sorry. He was looking for available condoms around Commonwealth stadium. So I'm not, he's not in a game week warring. He does have some place to stay. He's getting ready to play this Saturday that he doesn't have a place to say. That's the gist of the quote is we are the week of the game and James Wilder doesn't have a place to say if anybody knows, if you got an empty room like DM, DMS will put you in touch with James Lawler. I mean, that's crazy. This is stress that these players don't need And they're not getting paid that much to do it. This is what I thought was interesting. You know, again, we're, we're aligned producing Rami Trevor Harris, QB talking about doing the Tom Brady TB 12 method to prolong his CML career. He says, I tried to play Tom 67. He was joking, obviously. But you know, he says, you see Tom Brady and you're, you're not just going to model everything you do off him, but the dudes ready, three's winning super bowls. He's projected the, when more people are picking them. So I, he is trying to do all that and become a job, a certified nutritionist and personal trainer. If, I mean, if that prolongs your career where you're, where you're winning super bowls, when you're 42 years old, by all means, by all means Ben Roethlisberger needs to go on me, Tom Brady dies. Then Russell's burger just probably needs to retire. At this point. He probably missed his window to do on the, get on the Tom Brady diet and you know Sean lemons, he signed with this Stan Peters. This was a big, this came out at the end, right after we recorded the last week, he was released by the Alex big deal. You know, Dave Campbell was freaking out about that. But he was signed with the CMP here. So you have the tagline from three down, back on the horse again. So there, there, there you go. There was a lot of, you know, what's going on with that? He's been in the league nine years. He's going to be coming on. He thought he was at Alex general manager Brock. Sanderlin felt that lemon was outplayed by the younger players. And you know, GML is a condo cleaning house. You know, if you showed up and you weren't ready to go, Jamie was a, you know, cultural fence. So another Bit of news here, my Argos have named pass rusher, Charleston Hughes team captain for the first time in his 13 year career, congrats to Charleston Hughes for being named captain Ryan Dinwiddie, the head coach. See, I can pronounce his name right Reed. He was one of the top guys pick. He comes to new ball club and he's taken on a leadership role and owned it. Those guys voted him team captain for a reason, congrats to him. I turn on my fan. I think it was too loud. It was really hot. That's right. It's hot in here too, but I'm sticking through it with this too gone for you. You know, we, we still were doing concurrent viewers. We're, we're still holding strong here. I add some stuff in the chat. We'll come to your chat comments. Or once we finish up, before we go to the XFL stuff this was exciting for me today. And this definitely led my my fantasy pick them league I'm in with CBO new south McLeod metal Thompson formerly of the spring league. And it was in the CFL and all that before he is going to be starting for the Argos. And there Arbuckle is his dressing, but he's going to be out on the sidelines. I was excited about that. So we call it with Dobson. We watched him play, I believe for the aviators back in November. And then obviously he was from the CFL on set, but exciting to see you know, MBT. I liked that. I think he's he's kind of like the John Moxley. Remember back in the day when I was like, you didn't like this guy, he's a, got a screw loose. That's some class. Nice, nice analogy there. From, let's see here. Yeah. Last one. This last CFL news. I had Mike Hogan. He's played by play the Argos. I just thought this was cool. So Mike tweeted out, there's a guy, Wayne Young, he's one of the account reps for the Argos. So there's this Terry Fox foundation. Terry Fox was a Canadian athlete, humanitarian and a Canadian cancer research activists. He lost one of his legs, the age of 18, but he ran across America. He does one marathon a day and pursuit to find a cure for cancer. So this guy Wayne Young, and one of the account reps for the Argos know he's taking part in this this year and trying to raise money. He's trying to raise 20,000. He's at like 7,000 right now. This just came out a couple of days ago, but I just thought it was great. Again, the one thing I do really like about the CFL is like the community base of that, right? Where, you know, Mike has a voice, one of the account reps. I mean, you, you get that in the NFL, but it does just feel like you really can spread your message a little bit easier with some of the CFL stuff. I really liked that feeling. All right, we're gonna check in with the chat real quick. A lot of CFL fans joining us this evening. We appreciate all of you joining on. This is great. Who you got Fred tonight? Reed, Saskatchewan, Siska, Bush or BC. Is that a thing? I think Saskatchewan, I feel bad, you know, from the show, do you have more? But I do think, I do think Saskatchewan is running through. I, I don't, I don't hear a lot of great things coming out of BC right now, except Michael Riley and his soreness and describing the River. Great though. That's not really great though. If you think about it, that's a very bad thing. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. We got Argo fluffy in the chat Evans in here. Evan, he was talking today. I said, you better be in the show show tonight. So he's coming on. No Joshua TV. I know Mark's in here. Even having any questions about anything. We got XFL stuff coming up. So I hope our viewership doesn't plummet now, but there is extra cone news. So anyway frozen records is H read Paul. He's probably like I'm done. I don't want any XFL stuff. That XFL stuff might want to listen. You might want to stick around. You might want to stick around for this one. Yeah. I was going to say this at the beginning of the show and Jim came on so fast. He has gotten so toxic now, like when I post episodes, like I posted when this week, and they're like, if it's, if it even has XFL in it, like, we don't want it here. And I'm like, but we, like, we cover all the leaks and we cover USFL on fan controlled football and spring league. And it's like, wait, we don't care. I'm like, I can't, I can't help you with that. I can't help you. If, if these li like, we cover all of the leaks, we cover all the leads. We just stayed an hour on CFL. We cover all the leaks. Like this is not, it's not a, it's not the XFL show. The whole episode was called this. The XFL have a PR problem because they do, because we are being critical of them because we are not happy with what's going on. Yes. The CFL is better than TSL. That's Yeah, yeah. Mark. Yeah. Yeah. Mark. I was trying to think of what's Mark's tagline. Like, yeah, buddy. [inaudible] Why am I checking disconnected? Oh yeah. Did I mess something up? Maybe my thing I'll refresh here. All my soundbar, my soundboard doesn't work. That's right. Oh, well, that's a bummer. I lost the chat, so maybe we can literally when we pull it up on here, why don't you versus the second Paul? I pulled the chat on here. I'm I'm vamping now. Let me just say this then. I mean, Randy and Brosy has not closed the Door. Kevin, Kevin says, XFL, baby Gemma says, XFL, ready? Get it. Here we go. I'll grab the chocolate gum. I think it's cause we're both like on the thing. And I think it got confused. So as long as you, well, I'm, I'm using my I'm using P Alberto Sanchez to comment to people. So it shouldn't be affecting it. Read. Anyway, so here's the big news came out this week. You know, friend of the show, Dan Ralph came out Ambrozy is not closing the door on resumption of XFL partnership, tops, Paul I didn't, you were having a busy day when all this came out, you were working really long. I didn't want to bother you. What do you think about this? I think it's only a matter of time. I think it's only a matter of time before people start getting upset again, about the potential of this exhale, CFL, merger talk or partnership or whatever. It's really a matter of time where it's upsetting people again. And you know, there's going to be some that are going to completely deny. This is Dave is going to be people that are calling for Randy and bros. He said more than they already are now. I, you know, we didn't think this was a dead deal when it was like, you know, a lot of people just assume that, you know, oh, it was the CFL said, no, it was a CFL that said no. And it wasn't necessarily the case. Mike Mitchell came on and gave a brilliant dissection of what was going. I think it lasted like 45 minutes. He broke it down completely that this was more of like a mutual breakup. And it's not even a breakup. It's just like you know what? I might call you at 3:00 AM and ask if you're up, I might do that. Okay. A couple of comments here on Marco's. Yes. I brought up at Bruce's CFL during the game yesterday. Did that, that was the funny thing too. I said CFL greater than FCF and friend of the show. Seth goes, ah, that's you can't equate the two. They're not even the same product. And then I pulled up the tweet where FCF that Twitter account had said XFL plus CFF CFL is less than FCF. If they want to compare them, I'm going to compare them. Patrick, you have is going to compare Patrick and so hob and whatever his name is, they think the STF superior to the NFL right now. They're, they're that delusional. They're that myopic. And I'm going to call them out for it. Your brand stinks. I mean, it's August weren't we supposed to get back to playing games, Patrick, what's wrong? Did the stocks that you were selling to people not come through? I mean, I'm asking Patrick, I'm asking Here's the thing with these talks. I think they're coming back at the end of the season, right? I think we're getting through this. We're getting through this season. I think they're coming back anyway. The quote was, we both decided and greed. We go back to our respective businesses and focused on our leagues for right now. We haven't set any plans to reconnect about because our relationship was positive. The doors was left open for the possibility that we talk again down the road but for today, but today and for the foreseeable future, it's all CFL all the time. I think they just had to get to this great cup this year, 1701 Patrick asks after seeing a CFL game. How do you see a XFL CFL, two game championship happening one game on XFO rules and field to the second on CFL road and fields. I don't think that'll ever happen because you would need like an aggregate kind of thing. Like in soccer where there's a two game that are played, you would need an aggregate where you need to add up the total scores and the rules are different. So the scores, I don't think that's going to be, Remember when we talked about this, how back in the day they did the NFL versus CFL and they did the NFL, the first half of the CFL and the second half they did these already, this already happened in the fifties. I have like, it's not that different of a game. I mean, I had just as much fun watching this tonight, as I have watched, I mean more fun than watching a lot of these different spring leaks because it's, it's real football and it's real athletes and it's real competition then. I mean, the athleticism behind it is astounding and it's it's, I like the openness of it more. I think SCF felt too cramped. I'm not an arena guy. Anyway. It just feels too claustrophobic to me. I think the large scale is great and I think the longer field and to be able to run it, it only speaks to how much more talented these athletes have to be to be able to do. I mean, it's just, it's even harder than it would be in the XFL. Kevin 360 is marking out for the FCF, despite changing the rules from minute to minute, he still thinks it's great. Gavin's a friend, Kevin's a friend of the show because they're friends with the show. [inaudible] Mexico expansion, Evan. Yes, I, that is what they have talked about. I think that's way, I think that's a slam dunk. It's the Toronto thing that really scares me about that. So I think that was the other thing we got about that. Okay. so here we go. This is our we told you so much warning, warning, warning. We're going to the XFL news Josh Johnson sign with the jets soccer, Suck it, a rush Patriot signed Justin Hickman, college scout and Josh Hench, a pro scout who were under mark Trestman and Tampa bay for the Vipers in action. And we didn't double down enough on that. Josh Johnson. I mean, these are two different stories. Were you excited about the job? I was Excited for multiple reasons because Josh Johnson, he was a quarterback of the LA Wildcats and suck it a rush. That's okay. Yeah, I thought that was cool too. XFL libraries in a couple of a couple, you know, Scouts going on that I can fill up sign with the Argos, you know, he was released from the Thai cats. It was like everyone was immediately sad and then he got signed back again. So that was exciting. You know, good for camp Phillips. He, he is a a smaller athlete. He doesn't play special teams. It's very difficult for him to get in somewhere because if you're going to, especially if you're going to take the spot as an American in the CFL and not play special teams, like I don't think that's going to happen. It's really hard. That's true. You included this in here. I don't know if you're including this because Cleveland, you know, Cousin near Gordon's Audience. There's apparently there's apparently, well, it says that there's a roller Derby team and a men's rugby team that are fighting the Cleveland guardians for the trademark. Interesting. Yeah. So this came out, you know, Cleveland guardians, right? [inaudible] I've been reading a lot of law Twitter hands this week, Dan lust and Josh Groban, Josh covers all the acts of all trademarks out for the NFL, basically like they did their due diligence with the guardians and they did their due diligence with one other thing. But because it's like rugby teams, or I'm sorry, not a roller Derby, I'm not running the roller Derby. They kind of just thought it would go away. And so they actually looked into this and there's a history of this with other football clubs like soccer clubs basically taking the names of female roller Derby groups. And there's the angel city football club. It's like that there was an angel city roller Derby. And then there was Gotham city, one, two, then now that they have the competency, but basically it's because they were female leagues. Like no one really cared. Right. And now, because it's like the man's one and it's the guardians on it's. I mean, it's getting a lot more publicity, but they follow the trademark four days after the announcement. And like the Cleveland guardians don't have Cleveland guardians.com register. They don't have a guardians right. Idea of anything. And then I don't think this is going to stick really. You don't think it's going to stick? I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't trust. I want to hear the chat. Are we sad if they have been, your guardians have to change their name because I'm telling you, you know, I said last week on the show, Bob Dylan says that at the times they are changing. And I think that a lot of this XFL stuff is going to be shaken up. So max was saying too, that like the renegades trademark is probably going to get settled to what, remember there was like that minor league baseball team that they were arguing about that. So I mean times are changing. I don't know if all eight of these teams are coming back to the same way. So It's going to be interesting. Someone did ask a CFL question that think that I think slid on the radar here real quick. Did we notice the 22nd time clock, fast paced? It was fast paced, but there was a lot of like slowing down of the game at certain points. Like it felt like the, it felt like the first quarter and third quarter went rear and then the second quarter and fourth quarter picked up I don't know why that was. I, I drink enough in Tweed meth, watching football games. I felt like now they thought, I mean, I that's how great and everything. I thought it was like, you could, it felt like a football game. It didn't feel any different. I did. And I mean, not good and bad, like, but it didn't feel remarkably like demonstrably different, like, oh, it's like the XFL with the running play Cod felt a little faster, especially when you were there, because it was just like this frantic pace. Like we gotta go, we gotta go. We gotta go. Like, and the players were ready. And they were either the, all the communication and the headsets and everything. But no, it felt like I'm I'm on my phone. Okay. The play is a good piece. I mean, it didn't feel that crazy different to me. Evan Charbonneau says XL should look to Oakland or San Diego. I've been saying this about San Diego. Since the XFL went, you know, went up. I thought that they moved. It should move the LA team down there because hard enough to get people to go to the LA Rams or LA chargers games as it is already. And with Vegas four hours away, you know, where the real football fans are going to be. So Anything You liked this quote, do you like this quote from Hodge? He was on a JJ Adam show. I wanted to get JJ on the podcast. JJ has a show. The fact that the Argos can't get this relate to the XFL because of obviously the XFL Argos, all that stuff. And the fact that the Argos can get 25,000 people does it gives consistently show, but BMO field is a complete and utter failure. It reflects terribly on the leadership of that organization. Does that Hodge dropping hammers? I completely agree with Hajir. Does MLSE want the Argos to succeed or do they have their eyes on bigger prizes? That's the question you need to keep asking when we talk about this, I will say I want to hear this in the chat too. We talked earlier about them showing a lot of crowd shots tonight. And my takeaway of that is I think they want to get a lot of crowd shots tonight because maybe in week 10 or whatever, there's not, you don't have that overwhelming, you know, full to the rafters. Every time that was kind of my takeaway was that I was like, what? It's really. It's like WWE. You're not like we got my WrestleMania sold out, but then it's like the house show. It's like, we're just going to show this one corner of the arena because we don't want to like show, you know, that there's like, we're missing seats. So Your Facebook friend, rod Peterson read. Yeah. Spoiler alert, rod, man. I mean, rod Peterson sent me getting Pretty serious with the bromance was getting pretty serious between Reed and rod here. It's Getting pretty serious. This is funny. So rod, rod went inside. He has this like weekly blog, you know 10, whatever, 10 weekend things or whatever. He went and saw, you know, jungle cruise, like number one movie in the world, you know, rock and Emily blind. They say it's like Indiana Jones and all this stuff, right. Rod goes, by the way, I can see why the CFL wouldn't want to partner with a loser. Like the rock sarcasm off. I mean, Ron is Ron is, and this was even before the stuff came out and Matt and browse, see this one. Yeah. And the guests, what didn't jungle cruise when the box office this week? I can't imagine anything that would be that God want to lose her. That rock guy is right. Is box office. There you Go, Austin emerging as a possible relocation for the spot for the bills amid the stadium negotiations. I Just thought this was interesting. I saw there's just interesting football. There's also jungle. Cruise has made $61.8 million and that's during a pandemic when people aren't going to What a loser, that rock guy is man, terrible, suck and rush. The club is proposing a billion dollar statement. Just the stadium in orchard park. I assume that's in Buffalo. That is funded by the taxpayers Buffalo. You got to keep the bills. Well, I just thought that was interesting because if the, I mean the bills, you know, I mean, if they relocate the Austin, like that's crazy. That is Texas. I mean, we always say like, you know, Texas can't support three XFL teams. I mean, I don't think Texas, maybe can they support three? I think they can. Here's here's what I think they do. If, if this is true, if Austin becomes the potential relocation spot for the bills, they should build the stadium. I believe it's in San Marcos where Texas state is. Don't quote me on that. I might be completely mistaken. So San Marcos is basically right between San Antonio and Austin, but then again, you are kind of infringing on the Houston media market there. That might not be a thing that, that the Houston Texans give up interesting. Evans, a CFL needs to be 10 teams. I totally agree. At first week by for the outlets, it's like insane. I mean, I know that there's like weirdness with the schedule of that to me is, is crazy a couple others this interesting. So we got some TF TSL that I USFL staff. I, Paul had wanted to talk about this on the show, the PAC 12 in Texas. Now it is relevant to talking about because they were talking to Steve Spurrier, you know, X, U S a bell and all that egos. I can understand Texas jumping over it. They, they, they get to play Texas a and M again, they get to, they can't win the big full of anywhere. I think we have only one, two in the last 30 years or so, when Does it okay. Many national titles, if you want in the last 30 years, Steve Spurrier, how many Ted's Texas one. That's what we call a Matlock. Steve, what we call them. What Do you think about you wanted to talk about the PAX role. Yeah. I Mean, this is, this is going to get interesting really quickly. I understand, you know, Texas wants to start that a and M rivalry again and beat up on them every year, because that brings joy to my heart. The Aggies are a weird group. You know, I used to work there in that market. And when I was at a press conference or something, not related to Texas a and M they're whooping like the Aggies. It's weird. It's a weird scene in Texas, a and M at Texas a and M Bryan college station. So I'm, I'm excited to see Texas whoop that again, whoop that Aggie again. It's going to be great. This is going to start another domino effect. You know, we, we thought we were out of it back in the day when they were talking about the pack 12, the pack 10 going to 16 teams ended up with 12 teams. You know, Utah was the girl all alone at the bar 2:00 AM. So the pack 11 was like, oh, come on you, we can take you home. It's okay. And Utah basically got in because we needed a 12 team. But now Texas in Oklahoma, going to the sec, I think the big 12 is done. It's over, it's a wrap. It's going to be interesting to see if, if Texas tech heads, our way to where the pack they're talking about the pack, the pack 12 and the big 10 plus six, potentially emerging to save the rose bowl contract. I still don't think that's a good idea. That's too many teams in one conference. What 28 teams in one conference. That's insane. So it's going to be interesting to see how this all shakes out in terms of conference realignment. Basketball is also going to be affected somewhat because you know, Reed is a proud Gonzaga bulldog. Basketball's going to be affected somewhat to see where you see where BYU goes. If BYU goes to a major conference or stays in the conference, read there, it's going to be interesting to see. So a lot of things going to happen with this going on, I'm glad that UT Austin is going to beat up on the East coast. Rite aid said he found that some of those crowd shots were the highlight, the younger fans and attendance night. Yeah. I mean just cause I mean, yeah, yeah, no, that's good. I mean the CFL and no one says that the CFL doesn't have young fans. They just don't have enough young fans. Joseph had a question there's reading Paul, what do you think of the chances of a TV contract that pays substantially can be attained by the XFL or the USFL Orin combined CFL, XFL entity mark said tonight, like the viewer the web traffic for the science was like off the charts with CFL and XFL. I mean, he just, I, I can't imagine the ex-felon not getting if, if potentially Brian Woods in the USFL can partner with Fox for 400,000 people a week. Like, I can't imagine that the XFL isn't going to be able to draw at least that with a modicum of promotion that the TSL has not done at all. So Texas will not bomb the sec. I'm telling you right now, they will not. It's too much money. They have to do. Texas has the biggest endowment of any university in college football. They're not going to bomb the sec. We got some, I got some TSL stuff here. We'll do questions here at the end. Again, we got TSL stuff biking, sign, chase cookies that was a weird name. He was previously with the generals and the TSL. He left to go sign with Denver. They have tried out a journey, dude, friend of the show from FCF. You know, that would have been exciting, right? Because Kirk cousins and everybody was in the Kobe protocols and they couldn't practice and Vikings didn't have a quarterback. They assigned him. But you know, that was really sad journey. I didn't get a workout, but didn't get signed a couple of signings here that were exciting. Jeff Cotton signed with the Jaguars. He was from the TSL. This is important that we need to get to this point. But Howard, the bug man signed with the bills. That's great. Roe DOE signed with the Broncos with the blues. I gave home signed with the Miami dolphins, Brian [inaudible]. He was with the alphas. He was great. He was working out for the giants. And I said he couldn't be worse than Daniel Jones. I mean, like giant seed. I don't think that Daniel Jones is the answer to this season. Did you hear about him getting his whooped in practice this week? Yeah. And judge was mad. Jo judge was mad that that Daniel Jones went down. And then Jeremiah Poot say the job service, he was with the Raiders. He had been with the SES. So we're going to get through this Sal, he signed with the dolphins, which is great. And then Josh Avery signed with the Packers. So what is this like eight, you know, eight TSL guys. So two STF guys now with Travis toy VN and this Jeremiah Poots Boosie they S so like STFs two guys were just phenomenal. DSL has like 15 at this point. So, I mean, I, I get the whole like Sponge. I get the whole like criticizing. I understand the spring league doesn't pay. I understand the difference of all that, but you, if it was me and it's a difference of, you know, $375 a week or whatever, with the FCF or getting the chance to get real game tape and getting on a practice squad at the NFL, I have to think that if it was me, I would have to go with the TSL every day of the week, play for six weeks and get the game tape we need. I mean, look, we had, I mean, I know he retired, we had Cole Boozer get signed, like from spring league up to the CFL. So Yeah. And, and, you know, spring football works, suck, rush, like I said again. So just any takeaways without the FCF, having to official now and the TSL having a good, I mean, it's gotta be like 15 at this point. That's good. I'm Glad to see these spring league players are getting a chance and proving, you know, the point again, that spring league does have, its does have its benefits. Like we said, you know Any other questions here before we go, we're getting only about 10 o'clock. I think that is, you know, it's, it's one. It's going to be one o'clock right. Eastern. I mean, is mark Margaret use on her? Any questions before we go? Any final thoughts on this tonight? You know, we're going to do the live thing. I think next week, I hope it works out. Maybe post. I know that Roughriders were playing that Thursday game, but it goes a little later. I'm going to be in Hawaii. So the time change is a little different, but a big, big 12 PAC 12 merger. Never no LLL. Evan says, Hmm. I mean, there's see, let's see. The big 12 is now down to what 10 teams, 22 teams might happen, might happen. Argo wants an arena league for the winter plan. Olympic size rinks. I don't know. I mean, I don't love arena football. I don't, I don't. I mean, I know I'm, I'm, I'm poisoned by my FCS staff, but I don't, I don't love arena football. Yeah. I don't know if that will work either. Corey had to leave. His wife was calling him. Okay. And there you go. I mean, I think, I think, I think we think of Paul we're, we're starting to trickle out viewers. We had a good maintain viewership for awhile. We're sort trickling off Jenna, anyone else. And we moved. People are just going to bed though us the rest tomorrow. But if you, I mean, I feel good about viewership for this. I feel like we did good. I, I feel good about that too. And John Newfield says, John Neufeld says, I'll wait to see Regina tomorrow. Did they show the beer steak tonight? The best beer steak in north America? I beg to differ. There was one in Washington, DC. That was pretty massive. No, Greg says, thanks. Ryan says, great. Great. So, thanks. I mean, do, do, do we like this post? I mean, I don't think this is going to be like a, you know, obviously like every game thing, but I don't, I, I, I found this was a good idea and I really didn't see any other podcasts doing this and this isn't like, we're going to, we were going to record right now anyway. I'm like edit the episode and put everything together. So to me, this is way easier. Paul, I have to think that you think this is easier to do. And now that you know, Reed had the idea and then he trusted me to put all together, put it all together, my technical equipment. And I'm happy to say, we've got no frames dropped. It's been great. So we want to thank everyone for tuning in and joining us again, subscribe, hit the like button and you know, help us out, help us get that 1500 or 1500. We picked up like five or six tonight already. Evan said, yeah, let's do game picks before we go stamps Argos, Alex and red blacks. And then we did, let's do all of them real quick. Who do you got ball? I Got it. I can't go against the Argos. I gotta, I gotta hope they pull out upset there. I'm going to go with the red blacks too, because screw the Elks for talking trash about the XFL. I feel that. And then you think the referees over the lions? Yeah, I am against a red blacks. A one. You might know why two, two, I am against a red blacks because I, I love AIG Jackie Beck friend of the show, but he never really tweeted this episode when he came on and said that, then I have a personal agenda. I mean, I don't know how somebody did it, but I kind of have a personal vendetta against AIG. I know what happens when he didn't really share the episode. And then he was on rod show that day too. I'm like, AIG, like, come on, Dude. You know what happens when you start your beefs read? Do you know what happens when you start your beefs with people? Don't do this again. Yeah, I think Roughriders in the land slide, I took the Argos. I did, I think, listening to Jim tonight. And I think that that's crazy time, but I did put that in my fantasy bedroom. And then I think the Alex, I am very torn on the oxtail. I the friend that is sending you a package tonight maybe is going to get me a BC wine. Maybe I'm going to jump on the BC lions close to you, Velma, Jim let's do it. It's closest to you. What are we doing? That's coast. You Know, we always say that. We always say that. So with that being said again, like, and subscribe we thank you for all your comments. Please share the episode because we hope to do this again in the future. This has been great. I think it's been great to get the feedback from everybody in the chat. We love it. We appreciate everybody tuning in Reed. Do you have any final, last words? No, Like it's subscribed. This is going to go out tomorrow. I'm going to post this tomorrow. So even if you have watched the episode tonight, if you see me post this tomorrow, at least share it. Like it retweet it, whatever. I mean, I get, if you've lived through this tonight with us, obviously you can watch it again. And that would be great. But at least to share the episode, because again, we're trying to get all the alternative football. We have no beefs, no vendettas against any leagues. It's everybody, it's the fans. We've had all these people sticking on. So I really appreciate it. Evan, you have a good night, Jenna, Argo. I mean, everybody, I, the chat was crazy about it. We appreciate you all, all of you listening and watching and we'll see you next.

Episode 51 - Does the XFL Have a PR Problem?

It's Friday morning. Good Friday morning to everybody. Thank you for joining us on the Markcast. Your internet glitched. So right off the top, that's a great way to start the show. It's good. It's fine. Thank you. Welcome Paul. This is, did you get a standing desk? Understanding. Oh, it looks good. You look nice and limber. I hope you're ready. We have a good show today. How are you doing on this Friday morning? A little bit. Got a little bit of a headache, but other than that, we're, we're, we're, we're getting through that skin throughout, like your wheelhouse hat. Thank you. I had to do how to do that, how to give some love since wheelhouse is currently on hiatus. Yes, I will say, ah, And if this is the, I, I had a shirt, I was going to wear it today for you, Paul. I was going to wear it for Greg parks to one of our guests that didn't quite make it today. I'm very upset about that. So I have my, my 16 year old iron maiden. T-shirt. But. I'm surprised you're wearing any other shirt. Other than a Jersey or a mark Asher. Our washing machine broke last night. So we're not getting a new one for a week. So we're, we're conserving, we're conserving what we have for a week. That was either breaking your washing machines, breaking everything's breaking rate. It's good. So we have a really good show today. I will say so. We did the big experiment last week. We did. You. CFL staff really leaned heavily into that. Would you be surprised to know that our viewership was down last week only focusing on CFL stuff. I would not be surprised to know that. So, I mean, I'm just saying guys, like, you know, guys and girls and he wants to CFL stuff. Share the episodes we're doing the staff, you know, we've got ed Tate coming along. He's a CFL hall-of-famer he writes for Winnipeg. We got him coming on doing blue bomber stuff. I did a great talk with. Joey Alfie Arie this morning, he is with Montreal. We got all the Al wet stuff. And then we've got a Greg parks coming on. You know, Greg is going to kind of segue, RCFL, talk into our XFL talk, and then we even do Paul for you and, and Michael, you know, a friend of the shower friend, Michael. We have a little WWE. W talk. So I know, I know Kevin [unknown]. 360 On Twitter was wanting the garbage segment, the wrestling to come back. So we got that, but that's what I'm just saying. It's like people, we don't want XFL, but then when we do just CFL, I drastically down this week compared to previous weeks. All right. So I guess we're going to mix in a lot of XFL this week. Hope you guys. I hope you guys start. I hope you guys and girls, I should say, just start listening and then sharing the episodes, subscribing getting notifications, the whole deal. So we actually lost. Scribers this week. Because of the CFO stuff. I, we actually, lots of scribers. I'm like, Wow. Anyway, I, a couple of this week, we got some preface off the top here, and then we're going to get into everything Paul and I have officially booked. Except for getting the tickets. Cause we're hoping to get media access, grey cup we're there. So I don't want me to hear you, Danny Austins of the world. Like Johnny come lately. We've got a sick house on the lake. Is that lake Michigan? What is the lake up there? Like Michigan, I don't think. [Unknown] Toronto. Let me, let me take a look here. What else is going on at this, this awesome, awesome, awesome venue. So it's going to be covered with ice. We're going to, you know, we're not going to, there might be some cool news coming down the line, but we've got a sick house. We've got our flights booked. And we're, we're just, we're about 10 minutes from Tim Horton's. So I don't want to hear any of this, like, well, you guys just don't even, you're just promoting the, you know, your podcast. Well, we're just, we're just using the CFL to get our podcast out there. No, we're putting the time in we're putting. The work in and we're going to be on lake Ontario, by the way. Like Ontario. So there you go. Also, we have Paul and I have booked our lodging for our trip to BC visit our friend, Jim Molan. The middle of October, October 16th, Paula. This is the story we're going to track now. So Dorothy, my wife, Dorothy, lost her passport. Okay. We don't know where it is. We've searched for a year. So, you know, with everything going on at passport, it's like crazy, right? I mean, it's, it's a long time. So, so Dorothy went yesterday and applied to get her new passport. Is we paid with the expedition. It is 12 weeks, which would put it at the Wednesday after the trip. So Dorothy might come on the BC trip. Dorothy might not. Well. This will be a story to track. Call your local state representative, your congressional representative. Okay. Well that extra. Yeah, they'll do it. Okay. Yeah. Anyway, we'll we'll stay, but I tip. Citizens that want to travel and you want your passport immediately. If you pay for the expedition beads as 12 weeks. Call your house of representatives member, not your Senator, but your house of representatives manner. Member. In the chamber. They will help get it to you. I learned this trick 10 years ago. It's awesome. So try that. Perfect. And just a couple other notes. So we've got a weird, next two weeks of shows next week is weird. Cause like the CFL is going to be going on. I'm not quite sure what Paula and I are going to. Your record. A great guest coming on a great return gas. Everyone's going to be happy. We're going to preview the season. The week after that I will be in Hawaii. I will be three hours time zone different. Big time, guests confirmed big time guests. We all know this is the, you know, the white whale. We all know never been on the show. I'm not going to spoil it. Yeah. But big, big time gas. I'm going to have to get up, like at five in the morning to do that interview because of the time change. But I don't know w w we might post that Thursday night if my internet survives. I think I'm going to bring my hotspot, but we'll keep you posted, but it's going to be weird. I'm in Hawaii, I'm in paradise. We're going to be doing the show, but just, and then we're booking a lot of new guests. I'm very excited about. And then we're also booking a lot of return guests, which sometimes is even more exciting for people who had said yes once before to come back and say yes again, don't you agree with that? Very, yep. That seems to be very good for us where we're getting those repeat guests and those repeat guests are helping us get new ones. I like what. I like not relying on one. Guessed all the time. I love that. But if we want to talk to that one gas, and now there's also okay. If that one gas wants to come on our show. So I'm very excited about that. I got a fall back from that guest this week said it's going to be a big, big, big stuff coming. But I do mean that like having these like respected people come back again, means something to me than just like, oh, those guys were like psycho bows. Yeah. I mean, it's clear that they can tell that we're, you know, we're invested. We're here to cover both. CFL and XFL and, you know, FCF to a point. Anything else? Becomes that isn't technically NFL we'll cover it. Of course, we'll dab a little bit in the NFL because you know, some, there's some crossover there despite dumb one that works for. Networking. On Toronto saying spring football, does it work? Shout out to the boy, Josh Johnson. Trying out with the jets. I got to know that later. Anyway, Gary said, this is a great character again, this week. It's like, we're the beaming. I'll put it on the show. Yeah. We're beaming. All the information out. Gary is sitting by the edge of his seat, right on the planet in the middle of nowhere. And we're giving them this up. Also, here's a pro tip. Paul. I, I, I got a lot of feedback on Twitter about this CFL. Dot C a L I cfl.cal reply app.com/cfl. I DME, whatever, if you type in like add CFL schedule to phone, this thing, cfl.com Cal reply out.com/cfl. It adds all the CFL games to your phone. I get ads. Perfect. You know, cause the CFL game is not like, oh, it's Thursday night, every week or it's Monday night. So you just, it adds them all to your phone. It sinks everywhere, but I had a lot of people in line. This is great. Like I didn't, I, cause I couldn't, I was like, I'm not going to enter 87 games or whatever into my phone. Do we try to keep track. So anyway, I DME on Twitter about that, or send me an email, but yeah, that's a, that's a money saver. That's a pro tip. I'm speaking of Twitter right now. If you need to get home, let me just hit, read up. I'm currently off Twitter for the time being. Little social media break. Yeah. Well, social media, right? I just turned on my fan. That's it's a million degrees in here. So if we don't hear it too bad. Anyway, big show today. Like I said, ed Tate, we got Joey and then Greg Park's coming on. Tons of XFL and CFL stuff. This lead story, Paul, this is, this is that. The the. The pinnacle of my career here. Do you see what our lead story is in the show? Sharman Jones hinting. He wants to play in green bay. Yeah, this isn't even CFL related, but we had to leave with us. Just because of outrage. How outrageous this is so Cardel Jones, former DC defenders quarterback. Not friended the show famously. I might post the link. The time that we pranked Cardell Jones that got us blocked on Twitter back, like episode four. I mean, this is, we're getting on almost a year now from this. It's someone tweeted. They go. What, what the heck is going on in green bay and Cardell goes. I'm a mellow, but I like the cold at Packers and then had the eyeballs. You can't block the code on Twitter Cardel. You can't block the cold on Twitter. What are you going to do? Block every fan that. Criticizes you, if you actually do. Well, you know, con your way onto the Packers squat here. You're gonna, you're gonna block every fan in the critic. Are you gonna block ever? You gotta block the lions. If the team Saks you, at least once you gotta. Do that Cardell is. It's at the top of the streets, Cardel Securus. I just had to leave with that. That it was the most outrageous thing. And the Cardell would toss his hat into the ring with the Aaron Rogers in green bay situation. You can't even play for the, you know, I will barns Stormer, Packers. I don't know. Give it up. Yeah. So here, you know, We're a weird time in the show today, they're releasing some of these cuts. Some of the players are coming out, you know, like I just had Dave Campbell tweeting the about the Alex and stop. I just had some weird notes about some of these like training camps, because here we're talking like no preseason for the CFL we're talking injuries and players all this up. The BC lions wrapped yesterday. I believe their training camps do the poor air quality. The tie caps, the tie cats are, I can't speak. They, they ended their training camps yesterday, the 28th. And then the Elks have changed their training camp schedule. Today to a rent. Regeneration day. They'll have a short practice tomorrow, and then they're going to get ready. So it just, it's like weird to me. Like we're, we're, don't have enough time. We're trying to get these players ready, but then like, yeah, we're good. Like we're all set on camps. Like we don't need to go. I mean, do you see my disconnect there, Paul? Yeah, it seems like. I don't. There's just way too, too little time to actually get engaged. After being off, you know, for some of these players a year now, Aye. There's gonna be some injuries. It's gonna be unfortunate. Yeah. It's just, this was an interesting one. Naylor came out and said, Argos head coach Ryan. The wiggle. Doesn't expect a name. Starting quarterback to August synth, Evan. You have a three-way. A tiger. Okay, hang on. I got you beat your Internet's really glitchy. Ball. Paul. I don't know why I dude. I'm hardwired in. Well, I keep it's one of those things where like I make even hearing it. Like on the record, you know what I mean? Where it's glitching then? Was f*****g something. What the f**k is the. S**t going on. I'm hearing a lot of chatter over there, by the way. Oh, there's kids running around that side. Is that what you mean? It's literally like, One moment. Getting getting one gig, download. I don't know what's going on, dude. One gig down. A hundred megabytes up. I don't know what's going on, dude. Okay. Let me do this. Let me do something too here. While I'm thinking about it. Was. Okay. Okay. I'm pausing everything except this, this. Computer. Okay. Let's start with. Let's pronounce it right this time. Ryan, Ryan. Yeah. Another thing. Naylor tweeted out Argos head cuts, Ryan, the wiggle. To fix it in our pond and I still got it wrong. Ah, Ryan do witty. It says he doesn't expect an even starting quarterback until August 6th, the day before the season opener, they have a three-way goal with Nick Arbuckle, and then I'm gonna call Bethel Thompson and Antonio Pipkin. And I just, I tweeted, I said, what is this. Do the, do the Argos thing that they're leaving the CFL and going the fan controlled football. [Unknown] would love that he unfollowed me. Finally, he followed. He unfollowed me completely. So I'd be on. I returned the favor, but I'm sure he would like that. I'm not sure what happened though. I mean. Yeah. Supposed to start in August. I just thought, yeah. Finger drop apply. I don't know where the news is. Yeah. I just thought that was funny that I'm like, why they're not naming a starting quarterback. There was also someone responded to that. They're like, Hey, that's a need to know situation. Like you don't need to know. I'm like, well, if they want to do single game sports betting, Because the comment was like, well, why, why should we give the other teams extra information? Is the internet slow growing. Well, Only thing I've done, dude. The only thing that's not on wifi now is my computer. I'm not great here. Paused every single connection. And I'm getting a hundred megabytes up in 900 down. Yeah. I'm getting. Yeah. 900. What's my upload speed. I only thing I can think of. Zoom. Yeah. I mean, mines, mines. Okay. Do you want to. What do you want to do? Splices on you. Yeah. Look, here's what we'll do. I'll close out of the zoom app and reopen it. Okay. And you just, and I'll just come right back in this meeting. Cool. Let's try that. Let's try that. All right. We're a bit. What do you want to pick it up at? Just that same, the Argos thing. This is Jesus Chris. Jesus. Okay. I would say Naylor tweeted out. He goes, our, go ahead. Cuts Ryan. Didn't witty says he doesn't say. But Paul and I tried three times to get that name right. I doesn't expect to name a starting quarterback until August six. The day before the season opened arrogance counter at Calgary, that they, you know, they have a three-way. Ty go with Nick Arbuckle. He's kind of the lead, but then you have. McCall Beto Thompson spring league guy, and then Antonio Pipkin. And I tweeted, I say that, I said, what is this fan controlled football? Do they think that there is a CFL thing that they're leaving? The CFL and joining a FCF instead of the XFL. Wow. You're totally frozen. There we go. You're that was totally, you were totally frozen again. Yeah, completely. And now it's saying my connection's unstable. Cool. This is f*****g. There we go. Let's see if that works. What'd you, did you change something? Yeah, I switched over to wifi. I'm hardwired. It should work. I don't know what's going on. Right. 1,430. So Naylor tweeted out. Falling off and having some connection issues and we're going to splice it together. Naylor tweeted out the Argos head cuts. Ryan Dinwiddie says he doesn't expect to name a starting quarterback. Until August six, which is the day before the season opened your. At Calgary. They're having a three-way tie go with Nick Arbuckle and then McCloud Bethel Thompson. Who's the spring league guy. And then I'm telling you a pimp candidate. And I said that. I tweeted. I said, does the CFL think they're joining an FCF and stab? I mean, they're not going to the XFL. Maybe they're going to vantage on football and said, naming a starting quarterback the day before. Th that's crazy. It seems weird and maybe, you know, maybe they'll sit there. Hurting quarterback halfway through the game and then just run like the third string out there. Like they're doing. Thank you for football. I'm sure that Andrew, you know, Patrick Jesus called him Andrew. [Unknown] for a second. I don't care. He doesn't like me anyway. Patrick DS would love to have the Argos in fan controlled football. For sure. For sure. For sure. Yeah. Anyway. So I, I just said there's a lot of notes here. So the training camp stuff. There's just some weird like injury staff, Andrew Harris, he's still limping. Right? So Darren bombing, he's going to be on the show here in a couple of weeks. He's from bonfire sports. You know, he's talking about Andrew Harris, you know, he's coming in and taking balls, walking out. He's limping. He's, he's having a lot of frustration. You know, Andrew Harris is his, you know, star a star. Yeah. MVP player. It just, there just seems to be a lot of weird issues still going on with training camps and players this close to the season. Definitely it's going to keep content, unfortunately. Like we have to be honest, it's going to continue to happen. It's going to continue to happen. You know, With such a short training camp. Yeah. So we have Mike O'Shea he, you know, when the pay by the blue bombers head coach, and I'm going to talk a lot about this as well with ed Tate coming up, you know, he's covering the blue bombers. He actually, you know, writes for their site. You know, he can understand why Andrew's going through a lot of frustrations. He goes, well, I mean, it's a process he's going through. He's going to go through a bit of frustration. I know he wants to be out there and we're not letting them go full yet to when he finally gets to play, he'll be less frustrated. I'm sure. But the problem is like, Yeah, that's going to be just in live game reps. I'm just really, really concerned. I was here, heard Steve Simmons today. I was, when I was doing research for the show friend of the show, talking about, you know, W B O a really scared, like what, what preseason. Or not preseason where the first couple of weeks are going to look like for the CFL this year. Definitely. You went over to my crochet thing. Sorry. I'm trying to fix it. I'm trying to fix my wifi here. Difficulties. So I'm trying to unlike the in and out in and out, but yeah, we, we have a thing here. You. Bully by Mitchell. He's still not practicing. He's dealing with groin soreness. Dickinson admitted. I'm probably not going to practice him for awhile. I haven't made up my mind on the backups. And so Bo's got some soreness. So he's kind of going through the backup. And, you know, If you're going through some of the backup cubies, but. Yeah, again, like, is it, you know, we're going to have a full. You know, presumably a limited the week next week, getting into the kickoffs. It's just, it. I know there's a lot of notes here. I have about a lot of these injuries. It's just very disconcerting and disclose to the season. And it's going to, and. And I mean, I don't mean to be Debbie downer here, but it's going to get more concerning as we go on because people aren't getting, you know, up to game speed. It's just, it's. It's going to be, it's going to be just like the NFL was last year. It's going to be the same situation. So rod had an interesting note. So the rough riders did their green and white scrimmage on Saturday. And rod RO that, you know, he didn't go to the game. He didn't know how crazy it was going to be. But they, they announced a capacity would be 5,000 people, limited capacity selling tickets for the games. And there was 2,882 fans that went. And so you could argue while people thought it was going to be crazy. They didn't want to go because they didn't want to get turned away. Right. But also here's, you know, rough riders, one of the strongest CFL franchise is only, you know, there's a first chance you get to do any of this. People have been able to go to some limited fans and some limited practices, but I mean, That's not good. No, it's not good, especially, you know, This could be, you know, like you said, maybe people are thinking it's getting a little crazy, getting a little, you know, There might be, you know, they're not, might not be enough tickets and they didn't want to go for no reason or it could be. They're afraid right now to go out with the pandemic going, that's another possibility or they just don't care about CFL football. I wasn't going to go there. I mean, I'm not, you know, you can make lots of arguments in any cases about a lot of it. I just don't think they dry in half of like when we're okay, we're going to have limited attendance, but then, you know, you hear, I think blue bombers, you know, they're going to have 15, they're not worried people aren't worried about Sellen. You know, Montreal or Montreal is going to have 15 when the tank is going to have 30,000, they're not worried about so-and-so. I just to me, I get that it's this inner league scrimmage game, but you would just think that these football hungry fans would be there. For more than 2,800 people. You would definitely think that. Speaking of like, I guess, is this about testing right here? They're there. Protocol. So. Cause they were getting, they getting fans into the stands, talking a lot about like, Talking about a lot like digital tickets, which people aren't happy about. Right. Because they want like their paper tickets and that the NFL went through all of that. You used to be. Yeah, Paul, there used to be a time when you can collect that concert tickets and people would collect concert tickets and have a whole thing. And now you can't do that anymore. People are upset. I just have a box of my old con concert tickets. Now you're talking to me, like you're talking to me, like, you're the grandpa here, man. That's funny. Keep going. It is interesting now, so this is, I pulled this quote and this is just. You know, like we talk CFL. Okay. I just, I don't [unknown]. Like these quotes coming out from the NFL and they're like, okay. Talk to us about like fan protocol with the, in the COVID era with the fans. Some fan favorites like sunflower seeds, won't be allowed to steam in this season. There's just, and this is the quote from the health of the Saskatchewan health authority, their shifts, a lot of Hansen now than Sliwa. Involved in that obviously blow horns was another one that was prohibited and that's just people blow through them. They're spinning that slide into the graph. I don't know. They just seem like, felt really a little small timing to me. Is that weird that we're like no slam power seeds and the Roughriders game this year. I mean. It's he's got a point, but I mean, at the same time, like, you know, We have to think differently. I think going forward, I, I, you know, this is going to be an endemic situation and, and by endemic means. We're gonna deal with this every year. We are. We are. Like the flu. Yeah. But then I didn't know, too. They, they they're going to be coming out with some more like Cova de stuff. Cause they actually released like their whole list of like approved items and not approve that. And there was no listing at all for like anything about COVID and I'm like, I would just think that that would be in the rules that I was going to release, like the official pre-season, but, you know, I was a lot of like, you can't stand the blog people, you can't do that. I mean, kinda your whatever, but I just had, it was interesting. We talked about this, Nick Armando. Yeah. He's dealing with hamstring issues. Like I said, the Argos, you know, they're in fingernail football. Now we're going to switch our quarterback week to week. But then Paul, we have a couple more Achilles terrorist. I believe this is 10 now for the season. So far. Mm. [Unknown] and it's going to be more again, Debbie downer. Sorry to be that way. But it's, this is unfortunate, man. You need more than two weeks to get people that have been sitting on the benches for sitting on their butts, not in football shape. At football speed, you're gonna need more than two weeks to get. A year and a half of rust off these people's bodies. These players. Yeah, so I'm ready. We're gonna talk with Andy about this, you know, Blake Jackson, he was a rookie, they were just doing like a walkthrough type setting. He's already had surgery and gone home. We had a quote here, Craig Dickinson. Yo, he thinks it's the one year layoff is an X factor. It's just wild. Isn't it? I don't know. It's something that I'll look closely. I, with trainers in our people in the off season figured out, but it's just a head scratch right now. I mean, I know that cam Akers had that for the Rams too. Right? He tore his Achilles last week, but it does seem like it's a little bit more pronounced in the CFL this year. It could be the turf team, right. I've discussed about the term before on the show, how the turf is. Is as. Dramatically different because they can't really grow. Good solid grass. North of the border. Yeah. Then someone, someone, when you said that before tweeted them and was like, that's not right at the website. Of course, of course. They always do that. But here's the, okay. Here's, here's the reads critical thing at this point. And I don't want to be a Debbie downer, but, and Paul, don't read this story because of the malls, Pennywise and clown. There's no photos or anything. I'm not going to terrify you, but. So here's the thing. Rough riders lost four players, two Achilles. We have Stan Peters, Charlie powers. Has it, Charlie power has it Achilles? I have the story here. You know, obviously Blake Jackson, we have all these injuries, all these Achilles we're getting ready for the season. All the stuff you have for just on the rough riders alone. DB Lew cheese. [unknown]. We are fully, he was on the video chat this week. He chases around players at the stadium with the Pennywise doll. I would, I would, I would punch him in the face. You would be terrified first off, right. By being Paul's scared of clowns, but, but I'm like if I was a coach, I would say, knock it off. Am I am I crazy here? Am I Debbie down to read, like stop it. I mean, the problem is going to happen here. You already see what this is doing. He's going to chase around players with the Pennywise doll, and then you're going to turn as Achilles. That's what's going to happen. I'm just saying like, okay. We're like injury central here. Like players. We were throwing the medicine ball. We got hurt. Players are dropping left and right. I saw that they were doing like a water balloon fights for the red blacks. I'm like, I don't. I just, I don't see, I'm watching a lot of NFL training camps right now and I don't see like cam Newton out there throwing water balloons. I see them practicing or Tom Brady chasing people around like Jason and a mask. I don't. Do you get what I'm saying? Like this is in, I don't know, maybe I'm crazy on this and you love it. This is my is read crazy this week comment or tweet at me. I'm sure you will be like. I was like, I would knock that off and I would be like, we gotta, we gotta practice here. I mean, that is just weird. It's interesting to say the least, I mean, There there's there's room for levity in any situation in sports, but. This kind of levity seems. Seems rough. I don't like it. I don't, I'm not, I wouldn't. Cause people like there is not room for levity. Like we're getting paid. We barely got the season off the ground where it's like shoestring, we're getting by, we're doing all this stuff. Like I would not be effing around that, but that's just me. And like, I hear about like, The CFL train, you capture so hard and the American athlete can't handle all this, but then like, oh, we're chasing people around with Chucky dolls. Like. It's very, very strange. We talked to her. Like real grass down here. And we don't tear our Achilles every five minutes either. Just going to say that. Yeah. So we already mentioned Charlie power. He's going to have a torn, Achilles tendon. Here's my, my shirt. That's getting delivered right now. You're here. The FedEx truck. The I tried power is he got, let go. He's going to be replaced by Calvin McCarty. Dave Campbell tweeted this out. He was stunned because Calvin was with a 13 year Edmonton veteran got signed to the rival Calgary Stampeders. Dave tweeted, Dave Campbell tweet. He goes, here's a tweet. I never thought I would write. So I was shaking, shaking the CFL landscape that way. There's some other issues with Edmonton. I know we talked about Kenny staffer getting released last week. Derek Dennis as well. I think you're going to be hearing a lot more about Derek Dennis here in the near future. If, if my whispers are cracked, but. Paul, what do you think about this? So Kenny Stafford. Got let go from Edmonton. Yeah. Jamie Kenny has been with Edmonton for, I believe three seasons. Now, Jamie Elizondo. He was the former Tampa bay. Vipers. It's this offensive coordinator he got brought up. He's the head coach first year head coach. So he cut. Kenny said he wasn't, you know, cultural fit for that for the team. And now Kenny is very upset about that because he feels like that's going to kind of color his. Life now. Right. W, what do you think. It's bringing this question and it's bringing this character into question. In terms of like contributing to a team. In a team, cultural in a team culture fashion. And then it like raises character issues for any other team that would like to maybe add this guy to there. Their roster. It's it's it could be slanderous. It could be, it could be liable. It's going to be, it's going to be interesting to see maybe if. If Kenny decides to take legal action on that, because it's, it's, it's, it's detrimental to his career completely. If he, if Jamie, if coach Elizondo had made it a business decision and said, Hey, this is a business decision. We're, we're just, we're looking to move on. We're looking to get some, some different kinds of schemes in here. We don't feel that you fit those schemes in terms of business. That's one thing, but we're saying it's a cultural fit. That's that's demeaning his character and that could definitely. Land. The coach in some hot water. I just don't like it. They were both on rod show this week talking, you know, he and Kenny release it pretty. Yeah, upset statement. You know, Sunday morning. You know, that business is never personal. And I understand that, but I've been a part of the badminton for years. I've had a home here at countless hours. I just, it's tough. Something's going on with Edmonton because you have the Derrick dentist thing. He signed, he was immediately upset that he was signed. I'm not going to point out the XFL thing again, that Edmonton did, but I mean, there's, there's something going on. It seems to be a weird there that, you know, obviously you have a first year head coach coming in and really shaking things up that way. Definitely retired. Defense back, Courtney Steven is joining the Hamilton tiger cats front office. He's serving as the director of community partnerships. For the team. Very cool. Yeah. I just think that's great. I mean, I've just always, I just put that in here, cause I'm always happy to see players be able to continue afterward. Right? I mean, we talk about. I mean, even during the pandemic, a lot of the CFL staff members seem to be kept on and paid and things even more so than some of the players where it's, I just, I was just happy to see, you know, players of any sport, being able to kind of continue that journey and be a part of that. My child's going to have 15,000 for opening day. I talked a lot with Joey about this coming up in our interview. They're having the late home opener like Montreal. They're playing the first week on the road. They have like a second week by, and then there are two more weeks. So, I mean, they don't have their first home game until August 27th. That's crazy time. Allowing apparently up to 15,000 fans, that might be even more depending on how well they get the Delta variant under control. We'll see. Hopefully. Yeah. I mean, I get, they're trying to space it out with like the, you know, some of the provinces in 70, it just seems really late. Like if I'm a Montreal fan and like, I wanna, I wanna get, you know, a home game here coming up. This was interesting. I just thought, you know, Blue bombers. They're playing the big opening game. Yeah, next Thursday a week from today at Yale against Hamilton. And they're going to be displaying their banner. Cause we had talked before on the show about how they weren't going to do the banner until they get that fans in the stands. Obviously they can have fans in the stands, but it will be interesting to see because obviously Hamilton, that's a rematch, right? Like it's a rematch from the last grey cup. So I, Hamilton has been on the record, Sam, like, yeah, we love to kind of like shove it in their faces. I love the petty energy. I'm here for it. But Hey, that would be pretty bad. Unveil the gray cup championship banner, and then lose the Hamilton the same night. Board material, definitely Bolton board material. This is when Stan and I assume Zach, Nick, as a listener, he supports this a lot in the Facebook groups. He says CFL doin. UN CFL things and they have the, it was like nine days to count down for the Edmonton game. And they had the old Edmonton jerseys on remember just last week they had the New Jersey. I'm like, well, you know, let's promote the New Jersey, but yeah, they probably laid off that person. That's that's higher Brayden. He's he's got a lot of time on stance. John Ryan, former Seattle Seahawk, John Ryan had his writers, teammates questioning his age because apparently I'm hearing. He's ripped. It's looking good. He's 39. I guess he opened the gym in the off season. He put one in his, or, sorry, didn't open the gym. He put a gym in his LA home. He was working out, but they go, man, he's 39. They, they, they think he's going to keep going. They thought maybe this would be his last year, but we know. You know, if he can keep hunting, like the way he did, you know, toward the end of the Seahawks career. It's definitely, it's definitely a. I see, I see five more years for him. Definitely. Five more years. All right, we're gonna take a break. We're going to toss to ed, Joey and Greg, and we got some XFL stuff. To come up. So maybe we'll get some subscribers back. After the break. God, we finally got through that. Yeah. Welcome back. Welcome back. Thank is, and thanks to everyone. I'm really glad we could get Greg on. Finally, we got a little AEW WBE talk there at the end. I hope if you, if you, you know, I presume you wouldn't skip any of the interviews, but, but anyway, yeah. Great stuff with ed talking about the blue bombers and then Joey with the outlet and then Greg, with all that stuff. Well, the knowledge. I really liked Greg. So I kind of got ahead of myself here. Bye. So, you know, mentioning Raj in saying that Josh Johnson. I'm sorry for skipping some steps here. Didn't even read that part, but now I'm reading it. And it feels so good to say it a second time. Hopefully Eros joined us constantly. Mark cast. We go for the gray cup. I don't know if that's going to be a possibility. I don't know if he realizes this next time we'll be prepared and we'll slap him all around, but Hey, whatever it is. Yeah, I, Josh Johnson trying that with. This is, this makes a lot of sense first off, like, I don't know why they have not signed Zach Wilson to a contract. The jets drafted Zach Wilson. Number two. They just did. Yeah today. Well yesterday. No, they hadn't yet. They hadn't yesterday. Yeah. As of, well, this is airing Friday. So as of Thursday, yeah, they did sign. Okay. And that just happened. I'm telling you. There you go finally ends. Okay. Well, Well, there you go. Breaking news for read on the podcast. I was too busy talking to Greg. Zach Wilson science, $35.1 million. Well, so now this isn't nearly as exciting with Josh Johnson playing, but. There is a chance he would get a spot on the roster, maybe as a backup, because he played with Michael floor with the 49ers. And now Michael floor is with. Robert Sala with the jets. So I, it would be really nice to have Josh Johnson. You know, XFL alum and 49 year old Longo spot there. So the jets are going to be scary. Good. They're going to be scary. Good. They might not make the playoffs, but they're going to scare some teams. I think it's Buffalo's division still to win. But the ducks jets are going to be scary. Good. Yeah, clearly it's buffaloes. We have the second coming of Jesus on then. We're back for the bills, but the jets are going to be. Anyway, I love that we do actually have a lot of XFL stuff here. So Reese horn, he was at the Vipers. He was with the lineman with that was, I mean, that was a star-studded team with that coach, mommy. I, he got signed to the Bengals as a wide receiver, you know, congratulations to Reese, Paul, you're a baseball fan. What do you think about the Cleveland guardians? As someone who has spent time in the Cleveland Indians organization, I'll be it for like five, six weeks. The jerseys hanging on the wall. I'm not getting rid of it. It's still, it's still proudly hangs and it still shows chief wahoo. It's just, you know, it's part of history that I'm not, I'm not choosing to forget. I do like the name. It's based after the, you know, those big concrete statues that are on the bridge. Those are the guardians. So it's kind of based on that kind of like a landmark thing. I like the name. I think it's it's it's oh, it's overdue. Atlanta's probably next. This is going to continue to happen. Unless, you know, certain teams like the university of Utah does donate to the youth tribe in, in Utah. That's why they're able to keep the name, but this is going to continue to happen. This is going to continue to happen. Well, yeah, spoiler alert. I mean, this is not good news for the New York guardians audience is mark. Barry always says Gordy. But yeah, I'm telling you guys. As Bob Dylan was saying, the times they are a changing and I have a feeling that there's going to be many changes coming with the XFL stuff. Greg. And I talked about that on the interview, like. Yeah, everyone looks at the Vincent van playbook and like, well, this is what they did. And they have the draft in October. And that means that they're like, this is totally different. It's like, nah, you can't, you can't where will I pass the point now of, you know, some XFL podcasts, like, okay, well this time and eight, you know, April 18th, 2018. What were we doing? It's totally different. It's a totally different playbook. We're getting on that. Anyway, so yeah, bad news for the Cleveland guardians. What do you think about Tom Brady calling Doug Flutie? One of the greatest football players ever. I don't disagree with that. I mean, Doug Flutie had some memorable things that have happened in his career. I mean, when he played at Boston college, he. You know, upset Miami, which was a powerhouse at the time. The dude's got great numbers. He's in. He's been incredible. Like I think he's the last person. History to do the drop kick, extra point thing that he did. I think he did in the playoffs when he was playing for new England. If I'm I'm, I might be wrong, but if my memory serves me correctly, that's what, that's what. That's what he's known for. He's known for a lot of that great stuff. So I completely agree with Tom Brady's assessment. Although Tom Brady is still to go. Yeah, I just bring this up because obviously that fluid is involved with the USFL. Thankfully he's involved with, was involved with the XFL. I did not realize that he was Brady's backup in oh five in this last season. I had no idea that thankfully he was. Was Brady's backup and that you. Yeah, that was the drop. Check that they score for the extra point. Cause you don't want any NFL, like you. The snapper holds the ball, not the snapper. I'm sorry. The quarterback holds the ball or the punter. Over the whoever the place kicker decides. But you can drop the ball on the ground and then kick it off. Bounce kinda like to do in Canada. I'm told I'm told. And you get an extra, I don't know this rule, then you get an extra point. Yeah. It's the same as an extra point of view. If someone holds it for you. It's it's the same principle. It just has to hit the ground. First, then you can kick it off the ground. It's a skill. That's a skill. Oh, yeah, this this go. Here. Here's something exciting. I will say. Kudos for us at accidental news hub and Josh Davis. We were featured Josh Davis and that we were excelling. These having Josh Davis are featured on the pat McAfee show this week. Josh wrote an article about how the NFL is going to be using the Hawkeye system. That's a replay system where they have like the X-Box controller and they have all the different cameras and it's all sinked up and everything. And so Josh's article was featured on there. It was great. So. I'm very excited for Josh, very excited, but you know, I mean, obviously people have been wildly unhappy with the NFL replay rules forever. I mean, any thoughts on them continuing to improve this Paul? Anything that basic. Glee. Makes the game fair humans make mistakes. I've been clamoring for robot. Umps in baseball for strikes and balls for quite some time. Anything that makes the game fairer, where we could take less of the mistakes out of the game. I'm all for. So. Yeah. Anyway, they, they interviewed the former XFL replay official. Robert, you, you know, he was talking to, gives us every feed that's available, sent directly to us that they're all sinked, whatever, but I thought that was cool. You know, I mean, I tweeted, I go. Oh, what did the XFL ever do? Well, here's another thing also, the sky camps. So there you go. I mean, the innovation is good and change is good. Did you like the thing I sent you today about, I know you're off social media, but about rod champion on behalf. Not, not hating so much. The XFL is still like it's still in the news. Yeah. All right. I'm, I'm appreciative at like rods clearly, you know, and, and rod kind of defended the, that rabid vitriolic fan base that we've been getting hit. On social media about, you know, The CSL is greater than any, any sport ever. And it's like, it's not, but okay. Whatever. Like your that's your opinion, but you're so rabid about it. It kind of turns a lot of people off. And I think rod kind of echoed that, that idea. What do you think? And I talked to the grave. This, when you think about WWE and Blumhouse developing the United States of America versus Vince McMahon, limited scripted series, did you know about this? I did know about this, and I think it's going to be completely slanted. It's going to be like, It's going to probably feel, it feels like American crime story, but yet. Completely slanted in Vince's favor when. Come on. We know. Come on. Yeah. Vince back in the nineties was accused of, you know, this, there was a big story, steroid scandal, riot, whole Cogan, and everybody was, there was a big Supreme court. And Vince like really thought he was going to jail. I mean, really, really, really thought he was going to prison for a long time. And that skirted out of that, but yeah, this is. Just that. You know, Watch it I'm watching it. Who plays the chicken? I don't know, man. That's a good question. I guess James Woods still alive. He is, but I don't think he gets. He doesn't get jobs anymore. He's pretty radical. Right. He kind of went out off, you kind of went far. Right. And it's like, it's. You know, It happens. I can just see, I was trying to think of like visually, like who, you know, who could be, well, I guess it's young Vincent man though. I guess it's not. I was thinking. I mean, Vincent man at the time still looked. You know, relatively old. He's never looked great. Well, I mean, no, like he, you know, I think, I think definitely, you know, it's a situation where he's got, he's got, he had. He's had a great physique forever, but. It's interesting. I don't know who would maybe Vince Vaughn. I could see Vince Vaughn doing it. That would be hot. That would be great. That would be a stochastic. I hope it's not like a wrestler. I hope it's not like, you know, cause it's all like in or whatever. Just the last time. I think we get through all this renewing stuff and get out of here. Ah, Head coach. Ron Rivera is beyond frustrated. We care about Ron Rivera because he coached he's in the Washington football team. Hi, Nikki also, it's my team. That many players on his team are unvaccinated. There are only 60% of their players, Paul. That's very disrespectful to Ron who was a cancer survivor in his high, you know, Very high risk and one of those high risk categories. I'm not sure how old Ron is. I can check real quick, but I think Ron might be, you know, in, in kind of like a double situation where he's yeah, yeah. He's he's 59, so he's almost 60. So he's going to be in. Situation where he's twofold. Very high risk. So come on guys. Sports coach get vaccinated. Well, I saw it yesterday. Cardinals are at 90%. So too, that's like the other end of the scale where they're, you know, they're quite good. It's like a handful of players that aren't there at 90% because their stadiums are only going to be 10% full. So that's cool. The hurdles are the biggest bandwagon bandwagoning fans. It all of NFL. Basically any Phoenix team. Let me, let me explain this to you. In 2001, when stupid Phoenix Diamondbacks, I don't call them the Arizona NYMEX Redis labs. He's like, Paul's going to go into rent right now. When the stupid Phoenix Diamondbacks. Went to the NLCS then to the world series where they beat my beloved New York Yankees. In the NLCS they were giving tickets away to get people into the field. Right. So imagine you're seeing people get interviewed on TV. They're like, oh, we've been going to games all year. No, you haven't. You're liars, Phoenix, biggest bandwagon sports. Area ever. And we saw that with the NBA. I've gone there. A couple of marriages games lately as speaking of the Diamondbacks and Randy Johnson. I did show her the famous Randy Johnson bird video. I was at. The park when that happened. Yeah, that's crazy. She didn't know that during these. Beloved bird fan. And did not know if you guys haven't seen that, Randy. John is good. Like literally you go into YouTube and you type in Randy Johnson. It's free. It's birth happened in my hometown of Tucson, Arizona. I was there when it happened and I was like, look. I was shocked. What, what anyway? But also just to end this with Ron Rivera, that was also with like doing Haskins, went to the strip club last year and all that. That's why that was also disconcerting is because they were in COVID protocol. You know, your head coaches, immunocompromised, and you're going to strip clubs on your day off celebrating, you know, wins. And then, Hey, guess what you got cut, buddy. So, yeah, Dwayne. Anyway, last couple of notes. This, not as you listen to this, but as we record it this day in history, July 29th, 1986. I Drea sixth in the NFL, guilty of acting as a monopoly inside with the USFL. And the USFL one, $3 because it was tripled. Thanks to the antitrust law. But this is the first USFL news we have in, in weeks. I've added this section to the Google doc, but there you go. This day in history, the, the year I was born, so 35 years ago I was born, but I was born on July 1st, but. That's interesting. You were four weeks old. No as far resell. I remember it like I was, I got when you were four weeks old. Yeah, exactly. A couple of signings here. It looks like DeQuan Hampton from USC. And assigned with the champion Buccaneers and the Jaster is, that's why I. It was on the downstairs, also on the downstairs. Boonie wrote me. Rotimi I hope I got your name right. Is signing with reads a Washington. Football team. So a couple other things. This just came in as we went on everyone's at yo what's going on with MLSP. Josh Davis just posted this today because they did their filings. They did their K a 10 K filing today. Basically the MLF B has finally put a kibosh on this year. They talked about playing in the summer. They are. Going to be coming back in, supposedly April of 22, competing with the USFL. And all the other things, but they basically just released this long statement if you got to Josh's Twitter, but he was saying the. Financial difficulties with COVID. They didn't know about fans and that it was going to cost more than $3 million to do a trial season. But the interesting takeaway from this that the reporters had was if you look at the filing, which is public, and if you look on the sec filing. Just how expensive it is to run a sports league and launch a sports league. And so. I hope. Our home, our friend, Brian, wasn't paying attention. And, and so, so Rob and that Patrick, these. And then last note on this is, this is interesting. If you're, if you care about any elf coverage. Italy has issued a ban on players from the, you can't go play an elf. Interesting. Can they do that? I think they might get sued. It says late last week, the Italian Federation of American football F I D a F. [Unknown] Italia and the American football, and now the anyone playing in the European. And late European league of football alpha will be banned from playing in any Italian league or for the Italian national team. The members have the duty to participate in the Vance. They can't, if it's not approved by them, they can't play in them. And then come back. That might be a lawsuit that might be another lawsuit. It just doesn't seem like they can do that. I don't know. Aye. Aye. When Josh sent that. See, it's all fun and games until someone invokes the bylaws and then they go. Is this, like all the dogs go to heaven. Like you can never go back. You can have her come. I give you go play an album. The reference. I liked the reference to that solid work. And never come back. Golly. One of the things everybody sticking through our technical issues and then tuning into mark has want to thank our guests again. Hey, Joey Alfie airy. And great parks. I would, you know, I would call Greg a friend of the show now. I think he would be okay with that. I'm glad you finally worked out at the work that out in your eight year plus VIP membership to Wade Keller, your boy has paid off some dividends. We're really happy about that. Yeah. I looked it up. It was like, you know, it's like a thousand dollars. I'd probably pay it over the years. Wow. Yeah, five bucks a month for eight years, nine years. When the math here, I'm doing the. The 9 99, I think it's 9 99. I think it's 9 99 go VIP 9 99. Yeah, it's about a thousand dollars. So speaking of a subscribing to us, please subscribe to us on YouTube. We got some giveaways coming up. We've got the spring league merge that we still have there that we're waiting for 1500, got a couple jerseys, but we've got the one Jersey we're giving away at 1500. We'll give it another way at, at 2000. But again, likened subscribers to us on YouTube. Hit those notifications. And hopefully. You'll be one of the people that wins one of those gifts, if you subscribe to us. So with that being said, One thing, everybody in for tuning in. And we'll see you next week. Okay. We made it. It was weird because like at the very end, it started to clear up. Yeah, as bizarre. Well, I, Greg was the opposite. Greg was crystal clear the whole time. And then like the last five minutes, it was like, [unknown]. I'm like, what the f**k is. Cause he was like crystal clear the whole time. Is there. I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to switch over, back over to the. I don't think we had as many problems when I was running it off. The, the iMac. We'll switch back over the iMac and just, you know, That's what I think I'm gonna do for next week. And hopefully that'll, that'll solve everything. Anyway. Well, enjoy your interview here. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. This week on the mark Cass technical difficulties aside. Screw it. We're going to do it anyway. We'll do it live right. We'll do it live. What do we got going on Reed? Big show this week, we got your CFL Amex. Stuff. We try here. We were all, we were at CFL podcast last week now. I viewership guys, you know, you want the CFL stuff. So we've got a big show today. We have ed Tate, he's covering the blue bombers. Canadian football league hall of fame member. We have joy Alfie airy coming on. Joey covers the macho Al let's for TSN six 90. Very excited to get Joey on. And then this is exciting for me. As a long time, VIP tours subscriber. We have Greg parks who writes for XFL board, even though they blocked all of us on Twitter. Greg parks has, has come on the show to talk. Does the XFL have a PR problem? Paul does he, X will have a PR problem. I think so. And the way you're marking out for Greg parks right now, I've got to say one thing to you. Oh, hi, mark. But, but lots of other good staff, you know, CFL training camp stuff. We booked our trips to the gray cop. I we're getting ready. I'm going to Hawaii. We have some big guests coming up on the show. Rhymes with. Gave Baylor. Oh, we're going to do that. We're going to go there. We're going to grab him. Hopefully, hopefully other people will grab other people when we get, actually get that person on our show. That's all coming up this week. Anything else. Do you want to add before we. I think that. We done good today. We'll see you guys tomorrow. Well, they so much, we have Ed tait on, we have another CFL hall of fame member, right? I guess all the football reporters of Canada media wing or whatever of the Canadian football hall of fame. Yeah. That's good. Yeah, friendly. The show, damn Ralph you're in there with him. And so I. But I mean that, you know, we welcome. People that have spent their lives right. Covering this and educating. And I'm so glad that we're able to have this platform. You know, bring people's voices and expertise on it. So, first off, you know, here we are, we're a week away from the kickoff. Winnipeg is, is part of the home opener. What are you tracking? Whether your thoughts today as we get ready for the weekend. Well, it's just been such a long wait. Right? That's the main thing is that there's an excitement building in this town for it because you know, when you lose a season, it's. It's devastating. And for. You know, I covered this league for 30 years as a newspaper guy. And now that I'm working with the blue bombers, You know, you start to worry about your own job and your future. And so just to get to this point again is exciting and you can, again, you can feel it in town ticket sales are going well. And there's a lot of people just jacked up to see their favorite league back again. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is, you know, and we, we talk a lot obviously about the players and the jobs, but especially for the CFL that's been around for so long, that has such a, just a network of people covering the league and working for the league and working at the stadiums and working at the offices and working. I mean, it just, it takes a village to kind of run this and it really isn't lost. Like you said, when you lose a season, how many people are impacted by that? Yeah. You know, there's, I'm downstairs in the football ops department and there's a lot of guys down here that have been with the club forever. There's people upstairs that have been up. Working for the blue bombers for decades. And so they worry too. And. You know, I got a bunch of colleagues in this league that I started covering the bombers in 1990. And there's guys that still cover this league that were already on board when I came in. So I think I'm old. And then I look across the press box sometimes and see some of the people covering this league and they've been doing it as long as I have. There's a that's. That's the funny thing about this league is that. As much as people can get critical of the things that go on and. And the quirkiness about it. I think most of the people that do cover it. Absolutely adore this league. And with all it's. Works and it's wrinkles and its quirkiness. And so I, again, that's part of why so many people are excited that it's going to be back next week. Yeah, my, my neighbor drives a lawnmower of a truck and the side of the tip. In his driveway. I asked you that. I appreciate that. Ah, I I've been reading a lot about this, you know, banner unveiling at the home, you know, the, the home opener here. You know, Hamilton saying they would love to play spoiler. I think it was one of the, the members of the blue bomber saying, yo. Unless someone climbed up in the scaffolding and then cut the cables. There'll be no. I mean, what do you make it obviously, friendly banter back and forth to what do you make in about all the excitement surrounding, you know, the, the banner unveiling, and then actually having the home opener be played with the big rematch. Yeah. That was funny. It was Braylin Addison of the tagger cats that said they wanted to spoil the banner raising. And it was a bomber's coach, Michael Shay, who said, unless they're going to climb up into the scaffolding and cut the cables. I don't know how they do that. It's just part of the celebration. You know, Part of the backdrop to this too, is that. You know, the, the bomber is just ended a long drought. Of Greek of championships. So the last one before 2019 was in 1990. So in terms of banner raisings, there's a lot of people in this town that don't know what the hell is going to look like or how it's going to feel. Right. Cause they weren't alive back in 1990. It's you're right. It's just part of the friendly banter. And again, that's part of why people are excited to see this again, because. Without trash talk, even if it's subtle. Sports would be pretty boring. Right. So I think that when this stuff was said in the last couple of weeks, or a whole lot of people like me who were jotting it down quickly and type typing it into the old Twitter machine to get it out there, Yeah, well, and, and I think it's nice, you know, and obviously we talked a little before we started here, you know, about the XFL and all the fault, but I mean, just being able to not talk about mergers, vaccine protocols, what is happening. Yeah, just to be able to talk about a football game and Hey, we're going to come in, you know, Hamilton's trying to make right from last time, you know, it just, it feels good to, to be a little normal that way. Right. I think that's an excellent point because. You know, here in Manitoba, we got hit hard. In the second or third wave when we're, this feels like we're coming out of it now. And I think that's what this game. Represents more than just the league starting up again. There's all that other stuff that's tied into this too. People have been cooped up for a long time. No, they're just getting the green light to go back to movie theaters and to be outside. It's. I mean, it's going to be a spectacular night, whether it's. You know, raining or perfect or whatever. There's just going to be people that are just going to be glad to be back at the stadium, walking around and going to the rum hot and doing the beer snake thing and all those things that make being at a game. And here in Winnipeg fun. This is not specifically bomber related, but we did talk about this in our show. Curious, if you have thoughts, if you don't, that's fine. I, you know, the Roughriders have their green and white scrimmage. They have 5,000 capacity only got about 2,800 in there. You know, obviously we speculated, you know, maybe some people just didn't want to deal with the capacity or whatever me, any thoughts that we have this big Roughriders opening. You know, years in the making, you know, give people back. Yeah. I mean, I know it's a, pre-season kind of scrimmage thing, but then not hitting that 5,000 mark. Yeah, I mean, That's going to be a concern here too, in Winnipeg of what weather, you know, what kind of reaction there might be, or the optics of it. If the game's not sold out, sold out, there's a lot of people let's face it. They're still. Even if you're double Vaxxed. About reluctant about being out in public again, until we know for sure that it's okay. But again, there's I think there's more people that just want to get out and experience things. And so. You know, I'm not sure what the rough riders did with the inner squad game. You know, After the previous to the pandemic. I mean, I wouldn't have drawn my drapes to watch a pre-season game sometimes. Right. They were so awful. So, and then it's funny when it's taken away from you, how much you miss that, but. I again, I think for in Regina and Winnipeg, which are two of the best. Crowd bases or fan bases in this league. Part of it is going to a game is the experience. It is about the rum hat in the, in the tailgate outside. And look, there's going to be changes this year. But maybe that's why a lot of people didn't go to the riders in a squad game is because some of that extra, those extra curricular stuff wasn't involved. You know, and we don't have to get political or whatever, but obviously the blue bombers came out, you know, they were the first that said, Hey, we're going to be the vaccinations. We're going to do the double vac. I remember, you know, when that was announced on Rob Peterson show, you know, a lot of vitriol, a lot of anger about that. I mean, Has that settled down now, are people getting used to that idea? Well, it wasn't really a bomber's decision. It was a decision by the, the Manitoba provincial health authority. And so I think that got a little bit blurred there. It was like the bombers were waving this banner. It's just what the club is doing. What it's been told to do by the health officials. Right. You know, there's been a couple of people at the, the, the anti-vaxxers wanted to have, you know, blockade. The roads into the town here into the stadium here. And immediately, you know, A lot of the fan base here. Started sending out gifts of rag. You know, guys that a Royal rumble, you know, if you get my way and you know, it's. So it could have got ugly. I don't know if it's going to happen. A lot of these, those rallies that have been held in. In. You know, in and around Winnipeg at least have had, you know, five, six people at them. So, you know, I think the consensus is if you're going to try to get in the way of however many thousand bomber fans who have missed a whole season, You know, you better bring a helmet sort of thing. Yeah, it's a big injuries here. We have mercy Mastin and an oblate Jackson just came out this week. I mean, you know, we've talked a lot on the show, the last couple of weeks, and even today about, you know, we're getting ready for the season. I, you know, the tie cats wrap their practices early. The Alex had like a regeneration day today. The BC lions because of air quality, you know? So it's like there's two competing factions where, you know, we're trying to get players ready. But then there's like a ton of injuries. And then also we're trying to like, not hurt, you know, not get them hurt me. What do you make of all that with the injuries and with, with some of these weird training camp things going on the last couple of days. Yeah. It was a really different training camp here in Winnipeg, compared to what we saw in other years. I think. And the bombers coach, Michael Shay has said this right from the beginning. It's about having as many vets and it being as healthy as you can for August 5th. And then after that, you deal with what you have to deal with. And so this club was very careful about the start of camp. It was mostly. Finding out who could still run, who was in shape. You know, and so they really eased into before that the padded practices even started or the two days. In that respect, it felt different. And then with no preseason games, I think teams are just trying to be careful that you, you want to, you don't want as many question marks as you might've been willing to go into and to a season in previous years, I think. You know, there's four last games. It's only a 14 game, so it's right out of there. They're starting blocks and that's why I think. A team like Winnipeg or some of the teams that were contenders in 2019 are going to lean heavily on their veterans. It's going to look a lot the same. As it did maybe in 2019 to start this off. When you think about the Alvin Darby trade? You know, it was a surprising to me and I don't want to wave the bomber a banner here, but I was surprised that they were able to get a player like that. You know, basically in an emergency situation because when mercy Maston went down, he was there starting dying back and then to be able to go out and get a guy that with that much experience for an import or offensive lineman that. You know, might've made the team here, but wasn't going to start. It was, you know, for, again, for an emergency move, it turned out to be pretty good. Now, since then, Darby hasn't practiced a whole lot because I don't know if he, he got nicked up early in. And so we'll see if he's the guy next week or not, but it does give them a, a nice veteran piece. Lots of made about Andrew Harris. Right. You know? Leaving camp and not coming there and being on the sidelines, not playing. I mean, What do you make of all of that? And is he going to be ready to go? Well, that's a, one of those classic we'll wait and see. I mean, he's got to get on the field. I was suspect or early next week, or they could leave it right up to the last minute, but. I would have. I would bet it'd be hard to go this long without being on the field. And then just to suit up on game night. You know, he's. He's a spectacular player. He's kind of the face of the franchisees, a Winnipeg guy. Went to high school here. And so. You know, If he can go, he'll go. And, and th they will leave that rate up to the last minute, but if he can't go, they do have a couple other guys that are interesting pieces too. And Brady, Allah Vera, another one that big kid and Johnny Augustine. Who could fill in, but I think everybody's got their fingers crossed at Harris's. In the lineup. Is there a concern? Do you have a concern about player readiness? Well, I think for a lot of guys, you know, the cam Meredith was a guy that we were all kind of wanting to take a peek at you can't, you know, I had a couple of real good years with the Chicago bears. And when he came into camp, there was a lot of hype around him. And I think he lasted a couple of days and pulled. Filled up with something. So we'll see if, if he can go there is concern. Look, let's face it. These guys. Haven't tackled. And a lot of them haven't played a game and they have the physical component. I don't think you can replicate that even in a, in a. A fully padded practice because you know what the bombers do is when they're running inside run or something like that. The running back, doesn't go to the ground. The tackles aren't finished. So that's a concern when it starts to happen for real. Yeah. I have a note here that I guess they had made bombers made a conscious effort not to do a bunch of inner squad. I just ride that they wanted the voice at me. Thoughts on that decision and how they handled kind of getting ready with all that through camp. Yeah, you know, It's a decision that kind of put the club under the microscope a little bit because other teams were having inner squad games and, you know, There was talk of a combined practices, which I know is a, a big thing in the NFL, but it never got to that. And so what they did here. Again, it's partly. About protecting the healthier players, but what they did here was just do an awful lot of situational. Football, you could hear all day in practice. Okay. Second or three, you know? 10 Seconds left. They practiced every kind of scenario you could imagine. Second and long, first and first and 15 after penalty. And so they tried to, I think, implement more situational. Things into the, into the, their practice schedule without having the two preseason games. But again, Nothing replicates like a, a real game, a pre-season game even. And so. It made for some interesting decision-making, which they're going to be doing right now to pick the team because. You know, How many times have you seen in the past where. Guys me being, having a, an average camp and then he just goes nuts in a pre-season game. And that solidifies his spot on the team. Or there wasn't that element this year to help pick your roster. It's just an interesting, cause it's like, You know, we talk about that. And we, you know, we talk. Game wraps. Isn't the same riot, all these things that we talk a lot on the podcast. You know, in wrestling, you get a lot of guys to get in shape, to come back and wrestle, but it's, you know, being in the ring, you know, is ring, shape is way different. You know, game shape is way different. As it is to seem weird to me. Like we know all these things, but yet we still have like the bombers that are like, well, we're not going to do any scrimmages. But we know this, that, but then yeah. It's odd again. I think it's, it's really about. For, for the, the decision here was that, look, we're going to defend. Try to defend a great cup championship. Let's let's try to be as healthy as possible on game one. And so anything you can do to, to keep that intact, leading up to August 5th is important. And. It's not like these guys ran around with, you know, flags and didn't put a helmet and shoulder pads on. They got work, they got work in, it just didn't involve. Inner squad games. There were officials here today. Again at practice. So when they ran their offensive and scaly that for example, there was referees they're throwing flags and explaining who was offside or the procedure. So, you know, I think that's as close as to game simulation, as you can get. How long. Yeah, this long layoff getting back. Had to have been weird to, you know, when the gray cop for the fans, for the players, everything, you know, really not be able to celebrate it. Right. You know, now we're finally coming back. I mean, how good is that going to feel for everybody involved for the city? I mean, for, for all the staff, everybody, you know, people that cover the league to be able to finally kind of like, get this going. You know, It's a great question. And it's really hard to explain what it felt like in Winnipeg before the pandemic. So the, you know, the club wins the grey cup at the end of November, 2019. Ends a 28 year championship drought. You come back, there's a magical parade. Merchandise is going through the roof, which is a big deal for, you know, any CFL team, right. It's almost as important sometimes as ticket sales. So much momentum, corporate people are lining up. Season. Tickets are going to the. The roof and then right. You just like you get kicked in the nuts a little bit. Right? It's just okay. And DEMEC shut everything down. All the momentum just comes to a screeching halt and then. Even last year, there was a bit of a tease, right? Because there was the thought of the bubble going to be happening here in Winnipeg. At least it would have been games. And, but I'll tell you what people have been patient. I know that upstairs are happy to corporate. Support is still there. And a lot of season ticket members just said, keep my money. We'll be back in 2021. So it's been a lot. And, you know, it's been all over the place, right? The high of winning, all that momentum. And then again, screeching halt to that. And so to get to this point now a week away, it's man, it's exciting. And you can feel it. And. I think it's going to grow in the next little while too. Having covered the league for as long as you have. I mean, this had to abandon. An 18 months for the record book. And just in terms of, you know, are we ever coming back, but it's never happened. Awful. Like for me, I covered the Winnipeg jets when they came back. You know, that was an exciting time, but I, this leaves in my heart. I love this league. I grew up. A fan. I got to cover the. The team has a newspaper beat writer forever. It's just, it's fun. It's I mean, you guys are, I wish everybody could come up to a labor day game and Regina or a banjo bowl here in Winnipeg to really see what the diehards feel because it's, it really is fun. And. You're right the last year and a bit it's been awful. It's been absolutely awful. I mean, And you kind of, for me as someone that's trying to create content through a pandemic, I'd get on the phone with players. And sometimes we'll be on the phone for 45 minutes, you know, of which 10 minutes was content. And the rest of 35 minutes was the two of us talking about what's going on. I don't know. How are you? Like it? It's really you, you get put through an emotional ringer. And again to have it back. And when the players came back, And that first day of training camp. A few weeks ago in July 10th, you could just see it. It was like Christmas morning for a lot of people and myself included. I mean. I know I'm kind of rambling, but I'm just so excited for August 5th, because it means so much to so many people. No. And I think especially where you and no, you're not rambling. You're great. We're being, you know, Living through this. A lot of the players. I mean, I've said that before I do wedding videos and it was the same kind of thing in the last year and a half of having to have these conversations all the time. You know, with our clients about, you know, what is happening and what are we going to be able to do? What's going on? How are you doing? How are we doing? So, no, I mean, I definitely think, and especially where you're, you know, in a unique position where you. You know, you work for the team, right? No as well. So if you, you know, it's like you're embedded in there and you have this, this relationship with them different than, you know, obviously someone that lives in the city and covers the team among other things. I mean, do you feel like. Grants you how, I mean, how does that change your job and how you do it? Just to tell I go off track here. And my question. Why. I knew where you're going. You kind of get attached to people. It's different for me now, when, you know, when I was at the newspaper, if this had disappeared for a year, I would have been assigned something else to cover. Right. You know, back on the jets or. You know, whatever is still going locally, which wasn't much. So th there would have been something else for me to do. Right. And, but working for the team, there wasn't anything else to do. And again, so you'd get on the phone. And a lot of it was. It's the worst part of social media in a way too, right? Because your mood can be affected if you saw something. That hinted at positive on Twitter, about the league starting up or whatever, or the merger or whatever, you'd get excited. Right. And then, you know, sometimes you'd get the rug pulled out again and it's. It's funny how your mood could be affected by. One little bit of gossip or one little bit of rumor here and there. And it was look, I'm not gonna lie. I know that. This has been awful for so many people and people lost their lives and all that stuff. But. Just living through it. From the, from the other side too, it wasn't easy. It wasn't easy at all. No. And when you bring up the thing about, you know, if you were at a, at a newspaper, you know, we're trying to schedule, you know, guests for the season and the next couple episodes, you know, and I'm talking with, you know, writers and like, oh yeah, I'm on the Olympics right now. We're on every. You know, and it's like, we'll see, CFL takes a back burner, right? It is. And you're seeing you as we're, you know, as we, as a podcast are entering this first kind of proper CFL season of how everything goes. It, that was interesting to me this week to be like, oh, okay. A lot of the people maybe that we could talk to that. That would be covering and producing content for the leagues. That's not their attention. Right. I don't know of any sport or anything that would take anyone's attention from the NFL over. Anything else, right? Yeah. You know, I think that's what you're commenting on now is sort of a state of the media landscape too. Right? I mean, sports departments have gotten smaller all over the place. There's, you know, I hate to get too nostalgic, but when I first started covering. Sports in this town, the press boxes were full and now it looks sometimes I look up there and it's half full and it's. It's just the changing state of things and, and. And, and part of what you're saying is part of, what's been frustrating to watch this league in the, in some of the bigger markets, because in Toronto, Even without a pandemic, even without the Olympics. Sometimes you look around the press box and not everybody that you think should be there is there. And it's just, you know, that's just an example. It's. It's a fight in some. Bit of the bigger markets and in some places like Winnipeg, It's, you know, it's right there with the jets and the national hockey league. And. It, it means a lot to, a lot of people in this town. No. And, and we have Rob Vanson on last week and echoed a lot of statements where, you know, here, you guys are, you know, we, everyone, as, as the media and, and the CFL, it doesn't always feel like it takes advantage of that. Right. And obviously, you know, you have a great butt. You know, being with the team, but it's one of those, like, It's on a platter to get messages out and to get stories out and to get everything out now that this is happening. And then, yeah. Do you. And obviously with the shrinking sports department, seven mean, do you feel like they're doing enough to, to really take a damage? Where they can. I mean, we're coming off such a long layoff and trying to get. You know, like our, we were basically all CFL news last week. Right? Cause we've, you know, we balance XFL, CFL and demonstrably lower. Viewership last week for our episode, you know, and I get that coming off the merger stuff and all that, but I mean, demonstrably lower, just focusing on CFL seven. Here we are, you know, Season's next week, you know? Yeah. It's you know, for the league. It's. Everybody talks about growing the brand and how do you do that? And that, you know, in certain markets and, you know, It's not like people are flocking to the ticket, wicked everywhere, even in Winnipeg and Regina, not all the games sell out all the time. So. It's it's just the way this league has been. And it's it's, you know, Even when I was. A beat guy. I can remember going to Toronto when rocket Ishmael was there and John candy and Bruce McNall and Wayne Gretzky are the owners and they didn't sell out games. The, the teams of the 96 97. The Doug Flutie at quarterback, they went 15 and three, both years in one degree. They didn't sell out games. It's just, you know, It's not the 1970s anymore. And when the Argos used to pack the old CNE stadium, So it's, it's just a challenge. It's just the way this league is. I don't think it's dramatically different than, than in the past 30 years. It's just, it's always going to be like this, I think. And you know, I don't think there's a magic potion for it. Some people are pretty excited about the new single game betting act that's been passed. That could be huge for, for teams, but again, that's part of what. Makes this league. Quirky special, whatever you want to say. You know, When we were talking earlier about, you know, being on the phone with players. You know, a lot of these guys. Even when things are going good, I've got second jobs. It's not like they could just during the pandemic, take a seat and say, okay, well, I still got my $5 million signing bonus. I mean, that's more than a salary cap for a team. Yeah. Yeah. Quirky. Yeah. Interesting. The league. To learn all these inner workings of everything. And even one of our stories today was about how the, the Argos, they still don't have. [unknown]. I still haven't settled on, you know, their quarterback situation and you have a Cabell methyl Thompson in this era. And I can't talk with my braces at all anymore, but you know, we have all these different situations going and I tweeted. I'm like, you know how. In the world is a team supposed to build chemistry when you're not going to announce it, you know, the lead quarterback, right. You know, and I obviously, I know, you know, we're talking to them. I I'm with you on that, but I can, can see it from the other side now than I am on the other side. And, you know, Aye. I think, I think the Argos knew who their quarterback is. That would be my take from here, but it's not up to them to tell anybody. And I don't think that. You know, maybe they think that's a competitive advantage. And I, you know, I just know that if you have to have your defensive coordinators on the other team, Game planning for two different quarterbacks because McCloud Bethel Thompson. And Nick Arbuckle are two different styles then. Maybe you think that's an advantage? I mean, you know what? It's like, there's a certain amount of paranoia and in all pro sports. And I think that's, what's at play right now in Toronto. Well, no, I agree. I absolutely agree with that, but that's to get back to our point about [unknown]. 18. Oh, I see what you mean. Yeah. If you want it, you know, I mean, and this year it's a little right. It passed we're at like, let's just get through December and then we'll kind of really build out. This infrastructure, but you know, you want people to. And the games they've gotten into the quarterback's going to be, I mean, that's, and that was my comment today is. [Unknown] someone, you know, one of our listeners, well, what's the difference? Why do you need to know? Well, if you want to make the $20 million a year that they want to make on sports betting. You do actually need to know who the starting quarterback is. Yeah. It's a good point. Eh, w it'll be interesting to see how this unfolds in the next few months to see our teams make that adjustment. But I don't think it's going to stop them necessarily from still. I put in keeping that curtain up right. To, to. Secrets are still going to be there. I mean, it's been in place. To the NFL. Had these kinds of rules in place for a while, and it doesn't stop. Bill Belicheck and the like, from. Making it difficult to get a clear answer on stuff, right. Yeah. I'll just be fast that, you know, is this one. Yeah, change it. You. If we're. [Unknown] is going to bring a lot of changes. People are really, you know, I'll be curious. Any other thoughts before we let you go about yeah. The, the season. Thoughts? I didn't ask you about questions. Anything else? It's going to be flat. Look, I keep coming back to how much fun it's going to be. It's a. There's been. The most unique training camp leading into probably what would be the most unique season we've seen. Right. And. I'm just glad we're back. And I'm glad guys, like you are helping wave the banner down south because. If you can get into it, and if you love football, then. Take a peek at this league because it's fun. And, and I, I hate when people say, and it happens in this country, it happens in this town while I only cheer for the Vikings. There's a huge Vikings fan base in this town. I'm a huge Vikings fan. When I lived in Minneapolis when I was a kid for a while. And bud grant, of course, the connections with the bombers. So what I, I love the Vikings and I love watching this league. I don't know why you can't be a fan of both, and I wish more people would get on board with that. And I do appreciate again, I do appreciate what you guys do to kind of wave the. The CFL flag down south. Yeah, take the, take the bullets and wave the flag. Yeah, I get. And thank you so much for coming on. I hope we can do this again. Like I said, I don't. I don't. Take for granted. And we even said on our show today, you know, we're getting into the season. And we're asking a lot of new guests to come on and then we're getting a lot of return guests. And that means a lot that, you know, when people come on and then when they choose to come back on again. So I hope we can count you in that. And I really appreciate your time and I'm really excited for next Thursday. And I think it's going to be a fun, a fun event. Yeah, well, I'll tell you what you can guys could hit me up whenever you want. And when. When you get the chance I'm serious. You got to come up to one, a peg or Regina to check out that back to back labor day. Classic banjo boy. It's the funnest time and you got to get to a great cup. We really do we have we on our show today, we have, our tickets are booked. Are lodging this book. So we got to figure. You know, I don't know if we can get media, whatever we'll buy tickets, but yeah, no, we have, we're a stain on the edge of lake Ontario. We have an Airbnb said, no, we will be like either. I don't want any of this. Yeah. The the, the Danny Austins of the world come with us and they go away. You don't even know. We're we're there. My flights are booked, so we are, we are done. Well done two thumbs up from me. No, we'll be there. And if we see each other, we'll, we'll share a cold beverage hopefully, but yes, we will see everybody in, in Hamilton. Right on. Thanks man. Thank. Joey Alfieri. Thank you so much for coming on. It's been a long time coming. I appreciate it. I know it was busy obviously with your covering the hockey schedule and now getting into training camp. Thank you so much. How are you doing today? Hi, good man. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I was late. What has it been like the last couple of weeks now, actually getting to talk and cover football again. Yeah, it's been great. I keep telling people that last summer just didn't feel like a normal summer for many reasons, obviously pandemic wise, but a trickling down to football too. It just stayed something that. It's a big part of my life. It's been a big part of my life since I was a little kid. So I'm a big Canadian football guy. Family big Canadian football people as well. And we're big on the NFL too. So we did kind of get our football fix. Did follow along with the XFL and AAF journeys last couple of years, but there's nothing like having live football in your city, especially professional football. So really excited that we've been able to talk about this last little while. What what's the biggest story that you're tracking right now? Obviously, you know, player cuts are still coming. You know, there's questions about, you know, Or we've had questions about, you know, readiness and practices and what's going on. What is the most important thing that you're tracking? Yeah. Right now, I think it's just injuries and how. You know, there's been some early on in camp. It's kind of quieted down a bit, but taking 18 months off is, is not easy to come back and play professional football at a high level. So I was actually able to get to the scrimmage. That the Montreal Alawites had on this Saturday night. And it was, it was kind of sloppy. It was a bit hard to tell if it was because of rust or because there was a lot of the. First teamers on both offense and defense missing, but I think the story I'm tracking the most you're early on in the season is sloppiness slash injuries. Just I'm. I'm curious to see if the guys can jump back into a game scenario and stay relatively healthy. Yeah, cause it's tough. Cause it's that balance of not wanting to injure anybody or rush it, but then it's also like, you know, we're playing next week, you know? So I it's stuff to balance that. Right. Yeah. No, definitely. And I mean, it's not even just injuring other guys. I mean, it's for your, like how much can you stay healthy? And we know, look. Hey CFL. It's not necessarily the best 44 man roster that always wins. You look at by the end of the season. There are so many short weeks. There's so many times where, you know, teams will play Friday nights, Thursday, or, I mean, it's happened even the last couple of years where it was like Saturday night to Thursday. And so you get that. A short week thing that the NFL teams only get, you know, they complain about, they only get it once a year CFL teams that happens about, I don't want to say half the season, but almost half. So there's so many injuries. In a regular year. That now I'm just curious to see, like, can they, can they keep enough guys on the field? To keep the average fan intrigued. I think there'll be okay. But I don't think it's the best 44 men roster. That's going to win. I think you've got to probably use about 50, 55, maybe even 60 heists this year. If we're going to be competitive. Yeah, we had Darren Gill on last week. He's a player agent. And he was saying that too, you know, guys, like just for the fans, you know, please temper your expectations right. Going in because. And that's the thing is it's not a one. Not wanting to be in football shape. It's a, how can we practically work and live the last 18 months and support our families. Right. And still be ready to go. It's I, I, it's an incredible, I can't imagine trying to do that. Yeah. I mean, that's it, it already, these guys, like the CFO guys deserve a lot of credit. Like you come up here, whether you're Canadian, American or global. You come up here and you put your body on the line. Week-in and week-out. There's a lot of guys making good money. But nobody, or most of the guys, like 99% of them are not retiring off their CFL learning. So the fact that they're in the first place willing to come up, put their body on the line is just. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm thankful that they're willing to do that for, you know, my entertainment and the entertainment of, you know, hundreds of thousands of people across the country. But yeah, this year I'm kind of expecting week one, week two to even be a little sloppier for sure. Any cuts or retirement said that struck you as surprising, obviously naming. Roosevelt came out. This week about that in any of those that struck you off guard being released or deciding to, you know, some players decided to take it off too. Yeah. I mean, it's not so much that anything really caught me off guard because I was expecting some wackiness. And, and like I said, it's funny Saturday night, I went to see the scrimmage. And one of the things I noticed that people hadn't really picked up on was that name and Roosevelt got a little bit of run with the first team offense, but not very much. And I left that scrimmage. Saying to myself like, Hey, you know what. Yeah, I don't know. I think the 33 year old possession receiver was probably making a decent amount of money. Gonna have a hard time. Sticking on a roster as a backup receiver, you usually want to go younger and cheaper, especially for a young American. So the Roosevelt thing, honestly, it didn't catch me off guard. At all. I think it's more, you know, the guys that the. The CFL I'm going to call them legends. I think it's those guys that, you know, the SJ greens and the John Bowmans that? Yeah. I mean, they kind of got to go out on their own terms, but you didn't necessarily get to say. That that put by, you know, As a country and as a league to those guys. And I think it's just, it's a shame that there's a lot of veteran players that we saw in 2019. And, you know, I only mentioned a couple of them there, but guys like that, guys, we're going to be in the Canadian football hall of fame that you got to see played in 2019, but I don't even think they realized that that was going to be it for their careers. So that's, I find that to shame. Yeah, that's crazy to think that, you know, To take off at the end of that season. Right. And not know in that realize that, Hey, maybe this is, this is all that we got, you know, you really have to. Embrace it and appreciate what you have when you have it, you know? Yeah, definitely. It just, nobody could have predicted there was going to be a pandemic. So, you know, I get it. But, and those guys were closer to the end of their careers than the beginning. Anyway, I think everyone realized that, but the fact that, you know, you don't get to see them on the field again, when you didn't realize it. I think it's, I think it's a shame. I think it's a shame that it. It all ended that way, but hopefully each respective organization and maybe even the league. Does something for the, the superstar players that ended up retiring and not coming back after the pandemic. I think that'd be pretty cool. I have a note here. Eli Rogers. Yeah. He, I think he spent some time with the Steelers. He was on the defenders with the XFL. Yeah. He got this week ending. Any notes? Any thoughts about him? Yeah, I mean, again, I think it's. It came down to the receivers that they have and the way the ALS are set up, it's, they're going to roll with four Americans and one Canadian. So, you know, that, that Canadian spot, I think it's going to go down to Julian Brandt. He was their second round pick from a couple of years ago. But they've got Rashaun Simonides was bounced around the league a little bit. They drafted crystal state KUSI in the third or fourth round. A few years ago. He's done his just school eligibility. So. From that perspective. I think those three guys are kind of locked in. If two of them are on the active roster three, I think that's still up for debate. But when it comes down to the American guys, there's four spots left and it's pretty clear that they liked Gino Lewis. They liked BJ Cunningham. They liked Kwon Bray and they liked Jake Winnick. Finicky. And if you go back to, I think those guys, we knew those guys were going to be sure to start. I think just the, with Kwan Bray, we weren't sure if he was going to be the legal trouble troubles were going to lead to him, not being allowed back in the country, but he got to camp late. He's in, he was practically with the first team offense right away. So they obviously like it. But I think those other spots, I think he was in competition with a guy like Reggie white Jr. By all indications has had a solid camp. Dante Apshire people forget. Don't the opera was unbelievable in the playoff game at Molson stadium that Montreal lost the Edmonton back in November of 2019. He's another young guy was probably less expensive than the name in Roosevelt we mentioned before, but I think he's a better player for the CFL than Eli Rogers is right now. And they have Rashad Ross, a guy who's 31 years old, a little bit older that they clearly like had a big. I in the first scrimmage that had more of the newcomers. He was good. He was really, really good. So I think it was just that bottle where, you know, they want to weed out the receivers that they didn't have long-term plans for so that the other guys can get some more reps, but you have a mixture of CFL newcomers plus the established guys. And so if any one of these guys would've got cut, I'll be honest with you. The newcomers, it wouldn't surprise me at all. So the fact that it was Rogers. The fact that it was Roosevelt. I mean, it didn't. It didn't shock me by any means. Any stories or so, you know, obviously our episodes coming out tomorrow and a lot of these cuts and stuff will be announced. Any other stories like that, that you're tracking going in through it through the weekend before next week. Yeah. I mean, look, I think specifically to Montreal, I've tracked some of the camp battles across the league, but I haven't seen. Any of those training camps. So it's kind of hard for me to, to get a read, but, you know, in terms of the Montreal battles, I think the kicking game is going to be interesting. Like they have an opportunity to go with. Either a Canadian field goal kicker and a global punter. Or they'd go. With Matt mangle. Who's you know, UCLA kid. A guy who, who can do all three by all indications, you can punt kick off and kick field goals. I think that ones. Kind of intriguing. I mean, the rest is, I think it's pretty much said to be honest with you, except maybe for, for middle linebacker. You know, I know they have Maude Thomas and Jermaine, grace. You know, guys who came out of the university of Miami university of Oklahoma guys have bounced around the NFL a little bit, but with Eden Womba now in Toronto. I think those are, those are the intriguing bottles. I want to see what they do at kicker. I want to see what they do at middle linebacker. I think. For the rest of it, we kind of have an idea. Of of what the roster is going to look like. Maybe there's, you know, a question that field corner. Maybe that rotational defense event might be a question mark, but I think in terms of the major battles, I think those are the ones that you're kind of looking at from a, from an Al's perspective. Yeah. And Matt mangoes friend of the show, you know, we're very much. His, his. That's like his video game company. So. He's nice. Yeah. I mean, he's a friend of the show. We tracked him for years. So everything and Cole Boozer is up there too. I know. That's his retirement last week. And so we were, I don't know if that was a. A personal decision or Alphabet's decision, but I, you know, that was sad to see that come down, but yeah. Definitely pulling for Matt and, you know, Following his struggles, as I'm sure many CFL players wanting to, you know, everything that was going on in the last couple months with. You know, are we going there? We're not going. I mean, it's been, I've been able to live just a sliver of that through him versus what every single player was going through was it was a tough situation, you know? Yeah. No. It's cool. I had no idea that you guys were that tight, but look, I think it's really gonna come down to what they want to do with the ratio, right? Like, So to, to commit two guys to the kicking game, even if one is Canadian. That's one less gunner on specialties that you can use in one last backup. At an important position. Like I'm the type of guy that I hate rolling into games with six offensive lineman, because all you need couple injuries. And all of a sudden you're left scrambling. So I'm the type of guy I like. I prefer having seven offensive linemen, CFL teams rarely do it, especially with a 44 man roster. But. That's one of the things you might have to decide between, you know, do you want an extra American receiver or it might come down to do they really want a William stand back and Cameron artist's pain. You want two American running backs on the field? Maybe not on the field at the same time, but on the roster at the same time. So I think it's going to come down to that, but you know, I think in mango's case, it's, it's the thing he has going for him is that I think they're most comfortable with him doing all three. But I still have, I'm not sure where they're, you know, where they end up. I know David [unknown]. That day, the Laval kicker had a good amount of opportunity in the scrimmage hit a 28 yard or so did mango, but then the 50 yarder coat day made it. But I mean, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't beautiful going through the uprights. It just barely made it over. So. I don't know. I'm not sure which way they're leading right now, but that's definitely one of the battles that, that we're tracking. Before we go here. I we have. Am I I've put all these notes on yesterday. So. The home opener is week three. That's you know, I know we have some wonky schedule stuff. If not it's about the week three. And then I have 15,000 expected at the home opener for a protocol. What do you, it's tough in that we are talking with a lot of reporters and they're like, oh, we'll do it this day because it will be our home opener. This will be, you know, and these are weeks into the season. Thoughts on that. Yeah. They're actually, I think they're weak for home opener because they have the bi-week in week one, which is brutal. So look, I know somebody somebody's going to draw the short straw there and the ALS haven't had a weak one by. In quite some time, I feel so. It might've just been their turn, but. I think the way the schedule lays out. Look, I'm not here to complain about the schedule. We didn't have one last year, so I'm not going to complain about it, but at the same time, Their first bi-week is in week one. They go to Edmonton and week two to Calgary and week three, they come back. Host Hamilton in week four, and then they're off to Ottawa in week five. And then they have the bi-week in week six. So you're getting your two by weeks in a 14 game schedule out of the way. In the first six weeks of the season, which is just absolutely brutal. I would've, you know, I think if they are, they're the team that ends up getting the week one by then at least pushed the second by just a little bit. But yeah, I think it's going to be tough down the stretch. I know they have a few more home games. As the season winds down, but it's, it's going to be brutal. I feel like they're going to be dealing with quite a few injuries, just given the way the schedule is laid out. But like, I think if they come out of the first. Couple months of the season, anywhere close to 500. And I know people are not going to like people, especially in this city. You're not going to like hearing that, but I think all things considered, if you can come out the first four, first four games of the season, you're two and two. And I honestly think you would take that at this point, just given who you have on the schedule and where you're going, where you're traveling to. Yeah. Just it's, you know, and I'm not an NFL schedule guy either. I mean, it's really hard for me to process all that when it's on paper, but then when you start talking you're cause I think I was talking with Tim Banes too at the red blacks and he's like, oh yeah, we got the week to buy and I'm like, God, okay, what are we doing here? You know? So Joey. Thank you so much for coming on and making the time today. I appreciate it. Any other final thoughts notes before we go? Anything? I. Oh, man, I'm just, I just can't wait for this thing to get going. I just can't wait to be back covering a live professional football again, and it's just, I'm really looking forward to it. Well, I'm very excited today to be joined by Greg parks. I will say my only sadness with doing the interview today is my new John seen this shirt that I bought last Sunday, or whenever, when he gave you this supposed to come today, it wasn't here by the time we recorded it. So thank you so much for coming on, Greg. How are you doing? I'm doing well. The John Siena's shirt would have been perfect. I'm a little disappointed as well. Yeah, so this is fun for me. I was talking to my wife about this last night, you know? I listened to Greg for a long time with, you know, Wade Keller and the torch guys. Talking about, you know, WWE and wrestling this out, but Greg obviously, you know, covers the XFL and alternative football as well. And so, you know, we've been trying to get this going for a while and I appreciate before you go back to school, making some time. Yeah, try to fit a lot of things in here in the last couple of days before I head back to school. So I'm really excited to talk here. A XFL, maybe some wrestling too. Yeah. And I will say, yeah, I think you as being the teacher. You and my wife's a teacher. I think you have a different level of patience, which I think you need. In, in, you know, not only dealing with the live callers, you know, that you guys take for wrestling, but also, you know, There's a lot of questions online a lot, you know, I know, you know, you, Mike Mitchell, a lot of you guys get a lot of peppered with questions, you know, what's this going on with this? What's going on with that. So you definitely have earned your, your mark as a. You know, someone to help kind of see a sea of mines. Well, not only that, but you got to have a lot of patients waiting out this, a XFL, a return again. Right. Well, and, and you, it is. So I I'm so glad that we could get you today. You had your article on XFL board.com. A couple of weeks ago, I saved it. So we could talk about it today. You know, keep in mind. XFL board has, has blocked all, all of us on all accounts. I don't know what we did from our I'm Mr. Mark Nelson, over there. But, you know, the, among the other CFL. Talk that we're going to have on the show today, the episode is going to be named. You know, does the XFL have a PR problem, right? Because, and obviously spring off the article that you had first off, I mean, What were your thoughts when all this kind of devolved a couple of weeks ago, the CFL CFL stuff. I was surprised. I had written a column about two months after I think the XFL on CFL both went public. That they were talking about some sort of partnership and I sort of ran down the four potential. Outcomes of those talks. And what are those outcomes was that nothing would get done. And I turned that to be the least likely outcome. Just because I felt. There was too much to lose for the XFL, which hadn't really shown. That they were ready to move forward on their own that maybe, and again, we didn't know any of the details about what these talks were about. A lot of assumptions were being made, but one of the assumptions was perhaps. The XFL needed. Something that the CFL had, whether it was money, whether it was infrastructure, whatever, to move forward itself. And so if you looked at it from that point of view, I felt it was likely there would be some kind of deal that would be struck. I also thought that at the time the announcement was made that they were working on a partnership. I had kind of assumed that talks had begun before that. Right like that, wasn't the initial start of the conversation. So if they were going to go public mutually. To announce that they were having talks. I kind of figured, okay. Maybe they're far enough along, even at that point, that. Something would get done because to announce talks and then to walk away. Would be a bitter pill to swallow, I think for the XFL and for the XFL fans. The CFL. You know, They were kind of playing with house money, so to speak here, if they got into a partnership of some sort with the XFL. Great. If not, they were moving forward anyway. With their season, the XFL wasn't they, they put their 20, 22 season on pause for these talks. And of course, Mike Mitchell later revealed. That. With with, or without the CFL talk to the XFL is going to postpone it to 20, 23. So ultimately that didn't really matter. But at the time we didn't know that. Yeah. It's, it's so frustrating. Cause like you said, you know, the fact that they would come out say stuff. And just, you know, I guess what was most disappointing was, you know, every single ounce of anything that we speculated or talked about the last four months literally meant nothing. Right. Then. Nothing, you know, even, you know, cause we laugh, oh, they're going to do a championship game or they're going to do this, or they're going to do that. You know, these cross brands it's, you know, anything that anyone ever talked about, nothing came from any of it. And I think that that's the most disappointing part of it. Yeah, there was just so much speculation. And that came because the nondisclosure agreements that were signed, the lack of any kind of updates from either side on the talks and that allowed the speculation to just spiral quite frankly, out of control. Into things that, you know, putting the cart before the horse on a lot of the stuff, full mergers, nine other people discussing. You know, whose rules they would keep. And I think, you know, just from that, the CFL fans, more so than the XFL fans, I think maybe just because there's more. CFL fans at this point, the next level of fans. Got really territorial about, okay. You know, we're having a partnership, we're keeping our rules, you know, we're we have tradition going back. A hundred years on this stuff, and we don't want to lose that. And some kind of merger with the XFL. So the CFL fans had really dug their heels in. I think about that sort of thing. And, you know, I don't know if the CFO looks at that and, and took that into consideration. So maybe some of the ownerships did, but even if not, I know. It's very difficult to get everybody on the same page when you're not only talking XFL ownership. You're talking CSL commissioners, you talking to the ownership structures of each team and the CFL. That's a lot of. A lot of people and a lot of interests pulling in different directions to come up with one solution. And ultimately they were unable to do so. Yeah. And I mean, I, and I, I think I talked to him, we had Rob Peterson on a couple of weeks ago. This is before it all devolved finally. And I said, you know, if the reaction that we've gotten online and seen, you know, and, and again, that's a small, you. It's a vocal minority, but you know, if the reaction that we've seen is any indication of how stubborn or strong-willed right. The governors are and the team owners and stuff that the fans are, right. That they're so. Like you said, you know, territorial, then I said, I can imagine they walked in and thought, Hey, this would be a really fun thing to explore. And we're kind of met with a brick wall. You know, and Mike had that. The. The quote that came out, you know, they always show them a bunch of different things and, you know, we just couldn't get them on board and I go, well, I have a feeling that it was a pretty strong, you know, fight back from yo like Edmonton came out immediately after the Alex and said, you know, we're pleased that they've moved along well. I mean, that was just one of the nineteens, you know, Yeah. It's I think. From the beginning, I was more in favor of sort of an infrastructure sharing that would ease the financial burden on the XFL in getting started. And also, you know, sort of allow the CFL too. Make some kind of inroads. In the United States, whatever that looked like. Right. So ultimately it sounds like that's kind of where things had. Ended up in the discussion. It didn't sound like they got anything further than that, but I think that would have been good. And really the XFL, you know, we're going to talk about my column about the XFL SPR problem. It even something to that level, which is a lot smaller. The infrastructure deal that could have happened is a lot smaller than a lot of the merger talk that happened. But it would have allowed the XFL to walk away saying, Hey. These four months were not in vain. You know, we, we got something out of it. We weren't just dragging our feet or anything like that. And I think there are a lot of fans of the XFL who look at it and do feel like. It was a wasted time because so much was put on hold for those talks. Yeah. And in relation to that, you know, was it, I guess before we get into the column, was it surprising to you when the CFL came out and said, we're moving on with the season? Yes, the XFL provided statements to the websites. Right. But, but they never came out with anything. I mean, I think you even said in the column, you, even on the website right now, there's, nothing's updated. I. I mean, was that surprising that we have not heard at all from them? On one hand. Yes. But based on their track record in the last, almost a year, I mean, we're coming up on a year now when, when Danny Garcia, Dwayne Johnson and Redbird capital took possession of the XFL. And their ML thus far has been to be quiet. You know, to not leak anything, to not analysis anything substantial. Whether or not, they have anything substantial to announce, but you know, the CFL got the word out there first. It almost felt like, okay, the XFL had to make some sort of statement. And they did, but it was, it was very minimal. Like you said, it's not on the website or anything like that. So from that standpoint, it was, it was disappointing just from a public relations point of view that. That nothing more was put out. Besides that and kind of, oh, by the way, we're starting in 2023 now. Yeah. It's saddening to me that something that is so fan focused as the XFL, right? That is so it's not a big thing right now. There's not that many people talking about it. There's none. Not many, you know, Maybe that's it. Maybe that's there. Reasoning for not being more transparent and putting things out there more that they just part of it is, you know, maybe there's not the clatter for it. Maybe that they don't see that interest right now in it. But I think also part of it is. We as XFL fans like to see this as a continuation of 2020, I think the new ownership sees this as something brand new from the ground up. And so I think there might be a little bit of a difference in how we versus how the ownership, views, what the upcoming XFL is going to be like. Yeah, it is. And we've, we've equated that on the show before, you know, we're Vince McMahon, as big as the WWE is, right. It's still run like a mom and pop shop. Right. Vince has his hands in everything in a very hands-on where. This is mega Tron big, you know, we have $4 billion. We're bringing them the executive producers of Monday night football, whatever. Right. I mean, it's just not, you know, Vince has always been that way. Right. As big as he's ever wanted to be, it's still run like the shop down the street. Yeah, absolutely. And so you have all these competing interests and, and, you know, I don't know enough about Redbird to know what their PR strategy has been for other entities that they've purchased and have run. But, you know, I think a lot of people took their cues, though, from what Danny Garcia spoke about in the numerous media interviews she did when she and the others purchased the XFL, that this was going to be super fan friendly, that this is going to be a 365 days a year, 24 7 league. That you won't be able to get out of your mind. So sort of thing, right. And then to go almost a year. Since they purchased it and not hear any kind of substantial updates on what they're doing or, or where they are in terms of building this league. There's a disconnect there that I think fans are having trouble with. A hundred percent. I mean that, yes. My thoughts acquainted down to 10 seconds. That was so, I mean, so what do we do? I mean, your article, you know, says, you know, the, the interesting, you know, PR strategy or lack thereof, right? I mean, what, what do, what. What do we realistically expect? What do you think is beneficial for them to do. That's a good question. And it's hard because we just don't know where they are. You know, we we've gotten reporting from Mike Mitchell, who starters. Just a fantastic job staying on top. Of this, but really he's the only one. So th there is not a lot of mainstream. Sports media interest in the XFL. There's not a lot of people following it besides Mike in terms of really digging into the details and talking with people off the record on the record associated with the XFL. So. It could be that they just don't have anything to talk about. And you know, that in and of itself seems to me to be a problem a year into this thing and to still not really have made any gains that you can talk about. And. You know, maybe there's a strategy. Maybe they're going to just drop everything at once. Maybe they're filming everything for a documentary that they're going to put together and they want to keep everything under wraps. So it's a surprise when they show this the building of XFL 3.0 or whatever like that. So there are a couple. Halfway decent reasons why they may not be sharing anything with us at this time. But I don't think it makes it any less frustrating for fans. I think if, if they came out and said, look, we've got stuff going on, but we're keeping it under wraps because we want it to be a surprise when this comes out. Okay. I think fans would accept that. I think just to know that. Something is being worked on and that they're not sitting on their hands, which I, you know, personally, I don't think that's going on, but there are a number of fans who believe that. You know, they're just, you know, sitting in their offices with their feet up on their desks, twiddling their thumbs, letting time go by and. As time does go by. Even some of the most hardcore of XFL fans are going to drop off in terms of interest. Well, and that's the problem. That was exactly my next question. You know, I've seen. The the jungle cruise, whatever. Right. Dwayne's a new movie, right. With Emily blunt. And I think they had like film that pre pandemic, whatever. Yeah. They're trying to get it out in that. Right. So I've seen nothing but tweets from the rock, the last two weeks, a jungle, you know, this movie is coming out. I think. I think a lot of the people, you know, and even like Mark Perry and stuff with us. You know, when the rock wants to turn it on, they're going to turn it on. You know, 10 million, whatever followers on these. But this isn't like we got to get people to go see like the new Disney movie. This is like, we got to get people that are messaged in this league. Right. And it's people that. I think, feel very burned. I was on the CFL podcast and they were asking you, well, what do you think. I said, well, you know, I think people are upset that the rock that you know, that they bought it, like you said, the perceived notion isn't doing anything. I think the rock and the Biden endorsement, and a lot of that stuff really alienated a certain fan base that, that didn't resonate with that the one that politics and Vincent man out of it. I mean, it just seems like there's a lot of things going against them from trying to retain any sort of dwindling audience there was before with this leak. Right. And I think you bring up a good point about just, you know, the sheer reach that someone like the rock has. So. In the best case scenario when the XFL does announce all of this stuff, all of these initiatives that hopefully they will be announcing later this year. You know, the rock has that reach to put that message out there. And perhaps that's why they're not worried about. Putting dribs and drabs of news out now is because his reach Danny Garcia's reach Redbird capital's reach is so wide that it's not going to be a problem then. And so again, maybe that's how they're viewing things. But, yeah, there's, I think. If you look at last year and the excitement that people had when this ownership group. Took over to now, which again, almost a year now, a couple of days short of a year as we sit here and talk. I don't think there's a question that enthusiasm has waned from the most hardcore of the XFL fan base. But, you know, it's funny because, and this is, this is what sort of softens the blow for me is I remember in 2018 and 2019 leading up to 2020. We were having the same conversations. We were having the same talk about, you know, if they don't get jerseys on sale by Thanksgiving, they're going to miss a big, you know, and all of this. Time that went by with no news and it frustrated a lot of fans. But by the time. The XFL kicked off. And that first weekend in 2020, who remembered any of that? Yeah, nobody was saying I'm not going to watch because I was burned a year and a half ago when three months went by and there was no news. So I think they can win people over pretty quickly. If they live up to a lot of what Danny Garcia has talked about. I mean, she has made. Very grand plans. For this league public, and she's going to be held to that by a lot of fans. And if it doesn't live up to that, A lot of people may look at this as just another potential failure of spring football. Yeah, I just it's. I I've questioned before on here, you know, they have this grand vision, is it two grand? Right? And we've talked because obviously in it's silent now, but when the USFL, you know, about a month or so ago, whatever it said, Hey, we're coming back, all these people, you know, why can the USFL come back and, you know, next February, which who even knows now rather than me, it's been. Ever since. Yeah. And when I equated it to an is. Like Danny and the rock are like in the matrix and Ryan Woods is like the caveman, just like we're putting the ball ball on field. And I love that. Yeah. Right. No. That's the front of the Chevron woods, but I don't know which of those. Is right, right. I mean, I think the ideally exists somewhere in between. I mean, do you think. Are we, are we going too big for, for, I mean, now we're talking, Mike's talking, you know, expansions to Canada, expansions to Mexico. I mean, are we going to big, did we just need to get one, one actual 10 week season with eight teams? I mean, I love the idea of Mexico city. I love the idea of Toronto. If they can get it to work. You know, but, but right now it's all talk and. The thing that concerns me is early reporting that Mike did, where he mentioned that Redbird capital, isn't going to put any more money into this project. Until they get a substantial TV deal. Now, I don't know if that's still the case. I don't know if things have changed. In terms of that, but we don't have a TV deal and we don't have a lot of money being put into the lake. So I think most people can put two and two together there. I guess my question is. If Danny Garcia and the rock and Redbird, can't find a way to make the big stuff work that they want to do. Are they willing to scale it back a little and say, okay. Maybe we don't have to hit a home run. On our first at-bat let's try and hit a single for a couple of years and then maybe hit a home run after that. Are they willing to do that? Or is this all or nothing? And, and that's what we don't really know yet. Yeah, it does. It does feel that way. It feels like. We're keeping everything close to the chest. We're keeping, you know, it's just, it's, it's just such a different animal. I talked before about the Vincent. It's just such a different dynamic. I mean, even where you have like the XFL show with like Alan and Brian and they're like, well, we were there at the beginning. So where are the podcast? And we're on the west. Danny. They're not going to do that now. Like the bigger this thing gets, it just feels so much more different than. This is what somewhat semi approachable league that it was before, where I would like BS with the people that ran the dragons accounts and stuff. Like, I just don't feel like that is feeling more NFL to me where there's like a line there. And I don't know. If that's a good thing. And we'll have to see, you know, we'll have to see once things get announced, how fan friendly it is, how much they do reach out to a lot of the older fans. Like if they have. Excuse me if they have some of these franchises return, Seattle St. Louis, a lot of the ones that were very successful are those original season ticket holders going to have an opportunity to. Re up, you know, what's their relationship with the fans going to be like, you know, the way Danny Garcia talks, it's going to be a very strong relationship. But again, we haven't seen that born out in the last year. So. Hopefully, if things get up and running, they'll be able to do that. And I think too, What a lot of people look at the Vince McMahon model and what he wanted to do. And I think people get kind of stuck in the idea that that's the only way to do it. And it's not, you know, Danny Garcia is taking that and sort of raising the bar a little bit. And Brian Woods is working a little bit beneath that, but you know, when we're talking XFL, I think a lot of people are sort of stuck in that mindset of. Well, this Vince with man's approach would have worked, had it not been for the pandemic. Why don't they just copy that approach? And, you know, Danny Garcia and Dwayne Johnson did not buy the XFL to copy what this man was doing. You know, that that's not their Mo. So, you know, I I'm willing to. I'm willing to go along for the ride, I guess, to see where this leads, just because I know that there there's. There's a lot of ways to skin a cat and it doesn't have to be the way Vince McMahon did it. There are a number of ways to do this. But until we see it done. It isn't done. Right? So that's ultimately put the money where the mouth is and, and show us what the product is going to be. Yeah, it is, it does feel like this. Well, that was how it was. I mean, even we still. I am mark on his podcast. You know, we're with new south, but Margo, silicone. We'll talk we'll, you know, they'll do the draft in, in, in October and we'll do I'm. They did it one time. Then I'll let you know the summer showcase, you know, that last week and I'm like, it's not. You know, th this is, is just one way of doing it, but, you know, obviously we're, we're trying to use that as a way to extrapolate kind of timelines for now. I mean. It's so far off of any timeline now. And I do think that, you know, even like having the presidents and stuff, like, do we need to have 18 presidents? Do we need to have all these things? I mean, I think that was a good idea to have, you know, community like Ryan Gustafson was a great kind of community figure for Seattle and some of the other, you know, Brian, Michael Cooper. You know, some of these guys were really good, but I do, we need to replicate that again. Like I don't, I, it just, it feels like it's becoming much less than what we knew it was before. Yeah, for sure. And I think as time went on. You were figuring and, and no hires were being made. Right. That was the key that okay. This isn't just going to be run back 2020. With as many people as you can, because if they wanted to do that, they could have done that in. You know, 20, 22, if they want it to. But that was not the plan. And I think there are very valuable people that worked on XFL 2020. That are still out there who may still have interest in working with them, but just like any new owner that takes over a company, they're going to want to put their people in place. And so I think there are going to still be a lot of people. Disappointed for the people holding on to the idea that. When the XFL does get up and running for 2023, it's not going to be the 2020 club returning. You know, you may see some people come back, but it's going to be a lot of new faces. I believe. Speed. I have this in our show notes today, we're going to record after this. Do you have any thoughts on the announced Vince McMahon docu series talking about it was at the United States vs. Finserv man. Yeah. And I joked on Twitter that they should just sell the rights to that too. Brad Feld truck and Ryan Murphy, who do the, you know, the, the FX series and did the people versus OJ Simpson and stuff like that. I'd have a lot more interest in that kind of series than I would one being produced by WWE. I mean, It's just. Just for the sheer. Ego. Trip. That I'm sure it will be for Vince McMahon. It's going to be fascinating to watch. And break down. All the, I will say factual inaccuracy is I'll say they took liberties with some facts. Because, you know, that's going to happen. It's been WWE Mo if you ever watch any of their documentaries on the WWE network or any of the DVDs. You know that they can play fast and loose with history in professional wrestling to their benefit. So I have no reason to believe this is going to be any different. Yeah, I just, you know, it seems like at some point, you know, he would, and just as folk. It was nice where he took a step back with the XFL where it wasn't as much about him riding. It was all for login seven. It is just fascinating how it was that late seventies. Now that we're still, yeah, it's still the Vincent man show. I just. To me that hasn't gone away. Yeah, and I never will. You know, people have always, the last couple of years talked about Vince, stepping down, Vince retiring. I think he's still going strong at this point, having so much input into the product. Both creatively and on the management side that, you know, I think we need to come to terms with the fact that he's just, he's not going to step away until, unless he's literally unable to do half the job. Physically mentally or whatever the case may be. He's going to be there till the very end. I got to ask you a couple quick wrestling questions for. I see you go because I know, you know, Michael, I texted my buddy, Michael. He goes, we got to make sure you're talking about wrestling when you. You know, we're back we're with fans, right. Rather than Thunderdome. I'm very casual at the, at the moment, just because it really didn't feel you. The this pandemic era really did kill it for me. Now that we're back with fans should WWE just have taken the last year and a half off. It's easy to say. Yeah. But there's a lot of behind the scenes stuff, contractual obligations that they have would have made it very difficult. I think they did, they did the best they could quite frankly. And, and, you know, they could. The thunder dome. I know it's not the same as having fans in the arena. Nothing can replicate that. But. It's a lot better than just empty arena wrestling, which is what impact wrestling did. What ring of honor did as they continue during the pandemic. You know, at least WWE thought outside the box a little bit and brought the faces in via the Thunderdome and, and the, and the video wall and things like that. So, I'll give them credit for that. I think it would've been hard for them to completely shut down during that time. Much has been made about Vince, you know, setting down the XFL. Right. You know, how he did, where it was shattered. It was bankrupt. You know, we've long prognosticators on the show that. You know, basically the, a lot of the pressures coming from the TV networks, you know, with USA and Fox and all of that. That basically, you know, that's why he just kinda got rid of the XFL rights so he could focus on, Hey, if I can't run the Vance and then all, you know, having them for their right where they let them run all the events. I mean, what is your take on that? I guess, to get back a little bit to the XFL, you know, why he shut down when he did and let it go as he did. Yeah, that's. That's still a frustration for me. And again, it's not my money. You know, he had set a certain amount of money aside for the XFL. And as a good businessman, he wasn't going to spend any, anything over that, over that three-year period. And when the pandemic hit and it looked like. He could potentially be losing some revenue here that wouldn't be made up with the money he had set aside. He just said, look, I'm backing away from it. And. You know, maybe that's Vince being a good businessman, but I look at what a lot of other companies have done where they furloughed employees over the summer. To kind of. Recalibrate and figure out where this pandemic was going and figure out how to run. Midst it. I think he could have done that again. I don't know all the particulars and all the financial details behind it. But I'm surprised he didn't at least try to do that first. I think simply blaming the pandemic. For the demise of the XFL is too simple. You know, he was, he was on the call. That Donald Trump had as president with the leaders of the sports leagues. And. I think, I don't know if everything from that call has come out, but just based on the president's public posture at the time. He would have implored these companies to still keep going and, and to, you know, not. Stop. Right. So it's interesting that as close to Trump has Vince, is that he sort of went against what we assume that advice would have been. And also you have to look at this, this came during a time where. WWE and Vince let go to very high ranking executive vice presidents, long time. Executive vice-president and Michelle Wilson and George Barrios. And that greatly affected the WWE stock price, which of course greatly affected Vince McMahon's personal wealth. So I think Dave Meltzer put it. That you know, it's, it's easy to lose. It's easier to lose $300 million on the XFL investment when you're worth. 5 Billion than it is to lose 300 million when you're worth 3 billion. And that could have been part of the math that Vince took into account. When he shut down the XFL that all of a sudden. The WWE and by virtue him, we're not worth as much. And all of a sudden. The money that he was spending on the XFL became. More important to him. So. Again, you know, kind of circling back to my original point. I think it's just too simple to blame. COVID-19 and the pandemic for shutting down the XFL. I think there was more in play. Last question for me. I think you sent, you know, gracious with your time. I really appreciate it. And I'm sure, you know, you get these, you know, I can only imagine all that I was thinking back. Do you remember. Boris from, was it Boris from Chicago? They would call it. Does he still call up? He's called in the last couple of WWE pay-per-views. Actually, and it's funny because I'll say, you know, I didn't watch the pay-per-view, but, and then he'll go off on this tangent and I like vintage Boris, you know, So it doesn't like John Faena, doesn't like her own rains. That's the crux of his argument. Usually when he calls into a wrestling night in America that I host on, on the torch family to podcast. So. Yeah. There was a very long period where we didn't hear from Boris or at least I didn't, I don't know if he called into the other podcast, but he, the back of the last few pay-per-views. Yeah, because it was always, yeah, it seeing the turning heel, I'm always going to go VIP next month and then I never actually lost. He's always one paycheck away from getting that. Yeah. My question for you. And this is, you know, I was, we were in San Jose. For the Seth Rollins cash in, you know, where Roman was going to be crown. Oh, beautiful. We were in, I, I I'm very anti Romeo. We were in Dallas when they had the 18 hour show. Right. And Roman finally went over and then we were there for the Brock Lesnar the new Orleans stuff. Now that we are, you know, Romans heal now. We're it's eight years in. I know you get asked this all the time, but was that collateral worth? To get to what we have Roman now and all the bodies that had been strewn along the way. Well, that's the frustrating thing, right? Is that people who had been calling for Roman reigns to turn heel all those years were right. And this is, this is the end result, which has Roman reigns doing not only the best work of his career, but perhaps the best work of anyone in WWE right now from a character standpoint, from an enriching standpoint. So we could have had this five years ago. And I think that's the frustration is, I mean, you look at some, like you said, the collateral damage of the people who were not pushed as top baby faces. Because Roman reigns was the focus. And if rains will heal, what great baby faces could WWE have made in that time when they spent all that effort on run rains and the suffering succotash stuff and the stuff where. They clearly had no idea what, what they were doing with him. Like they were throwing anything against the wall to get people, to cheer him. And so. And I get it. Fans were wrong about John Siena fans wanted John seen. Or turn hail all those years ago. And sticky as a baby face was probably the right move in the long run for him. We can say that now. But we can also say that that fans were right about Roman reigns at the best thing to do. Would've been Turnham heels if for no other reason than fans would have eventually been clamoring for him as a baby face. And I think that's, what's going to end up happening here is down the line. Maybe not. Next year, maybe in 2023. Fans are really going to want to cheer. Roman reigns is a baby face and so WWE will have. Gotten what they wanted all along in the end. Yeah. I, as someone who hated seeing that for so many years, Richard was it late? They haven't triple age in Detroit or whatever. And you know, he got booed at the hall of fame. As someone, I hated seeing it as much as you could ever hate seeing the ads. I like to cheer him now. I was just going to say, I can never see myself sharing Roman reigns, but you know, you never know. Yes, strange things can happen. Okay, final question. I lied. How excited are you for punk and Bryan Danielson in AEW? Presumably the night before summer slam. Right. Yeah, I'm not sure exactly when it sounds like punk will be free starting in August. They just announced last night that the second episode. Of AEW rampage, which is their second show. Their one hour show on Friday nights. Actual debut next month. Is going to be from the United center in Chicago. So a lot of people are putting two and two together. They dropped some hints last night on dynamite that cm punk is, is all but signed, sealed, and delivered. SmackDown and some of the key demographics. Ratings wise. And so, you know, cm, punk and Bryan Danielson, I think. I'm not going to say that's going to put them over the top and that's, what's going to lead to them beating WWE and the ratings or anything like that. But. You know, those are difference makers. I think it's absolutely a fact that they can be difference makers. So it it's going to come out to get real interesting. If, if they are indeed had a w which all signs point to that being a fact. But yeah, it's, it's going to get real interesting here real soon. And the WWE versus AEW. I don't know if I will call it a war yet, but let's just say it's a battle. It's gone. Yeah, I'll never, I think it was last week. It was the, you know, the 10 year, whatever for money in the bank with punk and all that. And I'll. You know, Paul, my co-host and I with, you know, with Lynette forever, whether wastes an opportunity, all that was, and, and the rain was stereos, evid and punk coming back and everything else. I mean, I think that there was such money there and. I don't know, punks really old. I mean, it's been. Long time. Yeah. It's going to be interesting when he does come in. What's his role? Is he baby face or heel? I think if he comes in that episode of rampage in Chicago, no doubt. He's going to be baby face, but he could turn he'll soon after that. How long is he in for like what's what's his contract? Is he in for every busy in, for. You know, just the big shows. What does that look like? You know, his, his body has taken a toll from the years of professional wrestling from his time. Not only in MMA, but you gotta remember training and MMA is no joke. So it's not just the, the, the bouts, it's the training. But he has had some time off and has been able to heal up whatever he's, whatever injuries he may have had. And, you know, if his heart is in it and w. That remains to be seen too, because he's kind of. Backed away from wrestling aside from hosting WWE backstage. And even then sometimes it didn't seem like he was all that into the product. If his heart is in it, I think he can be a difference. But if he's coming in, just because Tony comes for a lot of money at him. You know, fans might be disappointed. Yeah. I totally forgot that he did the MMA thing. That is, I was like, oh yeah, that happened. Greg. We'll have the, we'll get you back on at some point, hopefully not another year from now. Thank you so much again and all the extra time and everything really. I appreciate your time and I wish you well, getting back to school, I know Dorothy is also on that venture here. Thanks for the pleasure of finally sitting down and talking to you guys. Perfect.

Episode 50 - Amongst Other Things, This Is a CFL Podcast

We're doing this late, man. We're doing this really late in the day. I had to work the day shift. I had to work day shift all week long. So read how to do once again, we had to take care of, read how to do the heavy lifting here on the Mar cast and interview everybody. No, but you know, we got some late breaking, you know, the Elk's Jersey news and stuff. You know, some things came out of me. It's a little more timely. It's either way about it. Breaking news. Off the top. The the, the tooth. Is coming out tomorrow. So we. We've been trying, you know, listeners, if you care. And that we were trying to brace it as it keeps breaking off the. So there it's coming out tomorrow. I had to call all my dentists today. There was three of them. Get this. This is one of the dentists. It doesn't work Wednesdays. When did the dentist doesn't work Thursdays. And then one of the dentist doesn't work Fridays. It sounds like Goldilocks and the three bears. This one is just right. So we got it. Twos going out. We have a really, I think a really good show today. I did some really good interviews today while you were at work. Rob Vanstone friend of the show. You know, Rob. He came on. He's at mosaic stadium, you know, covering the, covering the rough riders. He's there. You can see him like why he's watching the practice while he's talking. Lots of thoughts about, you know, everything we training camp. And then the big reason I wanted him to come on is he had an article a couple of weeks ago talking like, is this CFL doing enough to sell their game? Right. And they doing enough to market now that we're actually playing. So Rob is good. Daring Gill. He is a sports agent. CFL news helped hook this out. Memory that Brad snappily that retired. The big deal we covered that. Remember Alex, Mateas retired, big deal. We covered that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Darren is their agent. And so Darren had lots of good things to say about, you know, player retirement. Training camp, things like that. You. What does he think about the season? What was it like, you know, dealing with the CFL and then also the players, right? Like how has it been the last year trying to figure out all that stuff. And then Paul Woods, he's been on mark shell X had all weekend review, but Paul is an Argos historian. And so we wanted that. Paul come on, Paul's got a lot of thoughts about the Argos and the XFL, you know, all that kind of stuff. So we got everything today. So this is. Amongst other things. This is a CFL podcast. That was our ringing endorsement from Jim Mullen. And so we're going to talk. Lots of CFL. And then we do have some XFL stuff later in the show, as well as USFL. I am so glad that we got the stamp of approval, Jim Mullen, because you know, everybody's been gatekeeping in us as of late. So I just want to make sure that you're like, everybody know, everybody should know that like, At the end of the day, we're trying to cover every league that is like, we'll touch on the NFL from here. And they're like, you know, the X about connections. And the general stuff we'll touch on that. For the, you know, here and there. But ultimately like, Man. We want to cover everything that is in the NFL. That means the CFL two. And I'm sorry that if that, if that bothers anybody. We just, we want to cover it in a non-biased fashion and kind of, you know, We want to cover all the leagues and then I might buy as fashion. And if that means the XFL does things that are stupid, we're going to call them out for it. And we wish we only wish that others would do the same thing. That's all we've ever said is like, Keep the same energy you're going to call the XFL twice. Failed Lee. The point out that how many. The CFL teams have declared bankruptcy over the years. Like you got to keep the same energy, no matter what, that's always been my viewpoint. And we hope that, you know, Others eventually feel the same way. Yeah. I think it's working. So I want to thank everyone, Paul and I, low key discovered last night that I think we're the most subscribed to CFL related podcasts, entity, whatever on YouTube. I mean, please. Correct me. I wasn't like I was trying to do. I was just doing some research and looking at other channels. So thank you, everyone for his subscribed so far, remember where we're like at 1430 and change, we're trying to get to 1500. We have the Argos giveaway and then we have [unknown]. Clusters Springleaf merge with that. And then I also have, it's a, been a once worn, very new. XFL mark. Airride mark caste sweatshirt that I'm going to throw in that as well. So we're actually going to have four items. I'll figure out that out, but please subscribe. Get to 15. We're almost there. Like we could. I mean, we added like 20 this week. It was really great. I appreciate everybody. But no, I mean, I thought that was great. One other note I just had. We got a lot of comments. Hey, talk about the training camps. Talk about this season. No one wants to talk about the XFL anymore. So this week I posted our wonderful talk with Sammy Geoghegan from last week about, you know, the Montreal and the Scouts and all that stuff. I nobody couldn't care less. Didn't care, last terrible views. Didn't, you know, did like a quarter of what they normally do and I'm like, we'll see. This is the whole like CFL people want to have the thing, but then you really got to put your money where your mouth is because here we are, you. We'll see how the show does today. I don't know. Cause we don't, it's all CFL today. I mean, for the most part, it's, what's going on with Roughriders, what's going on with all this what's going on with the agents. So we'll see. But I thought it was very interesting this week that I post this, there was no CFL T or XFL talk with CME at all until the very end and very terrible viewership on that video. And that wasn't Sammy's fault, you know? No, I'm not at all. So would that being said also. Some other notes. I wanted to point this out and it's like the third thing down. But that character that someone drew for us, that was awesome. That was incredible. And matter of fact, Wherever that guy is. I want to send that guy shirt. I want to send that guy something. Cause that was just so cool. If you're able to find me on Facebook, you'll see, this is my profile picture. It's so cool. That guy did a great job. I'm I'm very flattered. I'm very impressed. It's always humbling. For B for me to see stuff that people do for us like that. I think it's awesome. I don't know about you, Ray. Yeah. Twitter handle GB D I'll put the, I'll put the character. You're out right now. He does a lot of other ones. He, she, they do a lot of other characters in, in drying some times. And that you. It's always incredible. And then I was sitting there on Twitter on Sunday in [unknown]. I was like, that's us, that's us like that. On the show, like what is, what is happening? So thank you so much for that. Yeah. Paul sends you a ticket also speaking or shirts as speaking of of things. That's not a terrible segue, but we are officially going to the BC lions, Calgary St. Peter's game. I don't know if the country will allow us at this point. Do you mean the border? We'll talk later. The border is still I tepidly close from the us to Canada, but we do have, we have three seeds, Dorothy, myself, and you were going to go. We have good seats. We have good seats. I bought them. I accidentally bought them for the other game because I was so frantic. And then. We got those refunds. Anyway, we'll be there on October 16th. If you are a BC or Calgary fan, we will be there. When other Paul has something, I have something to like, I see. Crack and flag behind you there. I want to point out that your boys had a very good draft. Well yesterday, it appears to Seattle crack in our building, a young physical team to wreck people. Like. Children. Yeah. Each kids, but Yana. Is going to be a star dude. His dad. That that, that, that mugshot of his, oh, that was great. You know what I'm talking about, right? Yeah. Well, also, I think as of tomorrow I will look like some of these NHL players missing. Missing my front teeth. So I will be. Do then, dude, they're going to put a new tooth then come on. No, that'll be good. Just a couple of other quick notes. The we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, the AAF Alliance. Of American football documentary is now on like YouTube presale and like on Amazon prime presale or wherever it's called, the violence is broken. I think you can pre-order it for like 9 99 or whatever. Listener max pointed that out. And then a really sad note today. Friend of the show. Cole Boozer has officially announced his retirement. I don't know. If the CFL, if it was a money thing or he got cut, you know, I don't know the circumstances about that, but Pope Cole posted a very nice message on, on Instagram. So I just, my thoughts go out to Cole and his retirement. Same here. Hopefully. Yeah. Hopefully it was his decision. And not anyone else's decision. So would that being said, we've got some great guests coming up. The Riedel take care of in the interviews. But let's get to the bulk of the show here where we talk about first and foremost. The Elks haven't built a new jerseys for 2021. What do you think Reed? That's this is your team for right now. What do you think? It looks a lot. Like the gravy Packers Jersey is, looks like. Always been like that though. Even the, from that. The the word we're not allowed to say anymore. You know, Even that. It was kind of similar to the Packers. Yeah. I mean, and I just, my, my note here was, you know, I mean, I've been thinking first cause it's the a hundred year league, but I don't. I would have liked to have seen. Like the elk. Something I eat to me. It looks like it could have been the Eskimos or Edmonton empire. I mean, it could have been, there's nothing about this speaks Alex. I mean, the helmet's really cool. You got the yellow, I'll probably put the photos up here, but you know, you obviously you have the cool yeah. Yellow helmet and this is just the one they're going to have all Jersey with the E. And then they're obviously going to have the white, you know, away Jersey, but. I was very underwhelmed. I'm probably going to get one of these, but I was very underwhelmed. That's assuming you're going to stay an Elk's fan though. Cause you you're kind of on the fence right now. You know, I, I don't, I'm not, I'm not happy with the comments. But, yeah, I don't. Do you have any, I mean, they're, they're, I think they're remarkably unremarkable. Yeah, they're just, they look like they just look like green bay Packers jerseys. That's you're, you're completely right on that. I'm like, this is the Packers, but in Canada, I watch a lot of good morning football and they do a lot of Aaron Rogers talk right now. And I've seen that Jersey a lot the last month. Bucs fans. You're like, woo. Yeah, you're going to lose about five minutes. Sorry. Bucs fans. You guys lost your quote for your franchise quarterback. He was going to go somewhere. They, they they're gonna, they weren't gonna pay him a lot of money. And he was like, no, I'm done. Oh, they were going to, yeah, he, you mean air Rodgers? Yeah. You figured it was going to be the highest paid player. And if my home's is making 45 million a year, right. Cause he's a 10 year, $450 million contract. So that, I mean Lee's 46 billion. 45.5, maybe somewhere in there. Just a mass, but. Anyway. Yeah. Edmonton, but yeah. Yeah, these are very underwhelming. I'm not, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm happy with my pick. I'm happy with my pick. Spoiler alert. We might have. Listen to the show. We might have Jersey sent our way. I don't, I'm not trying to spoil any surprises, but you. You might have it. You might have an actual real Jersey. Coming your way. So just from their arguments. I'm just saying. I work things to background. I worked things in the background. Emails come to my account on the podcast. Clearly they do. And people think I'm tweeting out sometimes. We won't mention any names. Moving on 10 individuals, three ended up being most positive. They tested positive during the pre-training camp. And the quarantine. Yeah, yikes. W, I mean, so. So here I'm going to bold. I mean, So they did 6,000 tests. Ten three were false positive. That's not bad. I think that's a good, I think that's really pretty good. Yeah. I mean, compared to the other sport. In Canada. Yep. Dominates Canada hockey. When hockey went into its bubble, not was it last year? No, this year. When they went into no, the year before that. Yeah. When they went into bubble the year before that. There was a point where they had zero tests for three months straight. So it looks like the CFL's got things under control. Happy to hear it. Now, now, now comes, the next step is, you know, here's the problems. I don't know what variant is hitting the is hitting, you know, Or hit Canada because it seems like. There's been a corner that's kind of getting turned right down in Canada. But at the same time, you look at a place like Florida. And one fifth of art. New COVID case load is all from Florida. And we are starting to kind of tick up again in terms of total COVID cases. So. Now, now my concern is the fence. My concern is the fans. Possibly getting exposed to this thing and, you know, It's going to be interesting. So at least, yeah, it's going to be. I had something else to say about that. I blanked on it. Oh, just, you know, moving everyone up. I mean, you're getting everyone through borders and stuff. I mean, That's a lot of travel and staff, man. I think that's pretty good about that. We had a titled last week, you know, with all this sports betting, all this money that's coming in. The Farhan. I had a report that basically the N they're really gonna have to mere the NFL this year with the injury style reports, where they're going to come out every week and then updated every day about the player and the duration. And then if there's not going to be a separate COVID list, that's just going to be included in that. But that's the thing. Cause the CFL, I guess, has been notorious, you know, for not, Hey, we're not going to close. Transparent. Yeah. So anyway, so, so far Han had a good report about that, that they've been working with a lot of the people in the NFL and other leagues about that, but it should be, I mean, a weekly thing and then day to day, but. Someone's got to like, do that stuff, right? Like, The CFL has been so diminished in terms of, you know, cutting people and laying people off. And Stephanie, I just am curious to see how that's all going to work out when like, oh, someone's got to do that now. Like bill and the county is going to have to like, oh, I got to run the injury reports or, you know, Yeah. That's I mean, I'm hopeful that it doesn't require, you know, like I'm hopeful that it doesn't cause too much of a rift in the players association. Definitely. And to that point, like, you know, The counterpart in the NFL. This came out today where the NFL is being very strict on COVID protocols. Like they're not requiring you to get back snakes, but they're definitely giving you a PR people that are vaccinated preference, and they can do that because there are. They're they're private business. They're not a public business. They're not the government. They're a private business. So they can say, if you aren't vaccinated, you're going to have to live life. A lot differently than those are vaccinated. For example, if you're not vaccinated and you test positive, you're in quarantine. But if you're vaccinated, you test positive. Asymptomatic for example. If you hit two negative tests within a 24 hour period, you're out of quarantine immediately. And that's, you know, it's not that they're, it's not that they're like trying to say, well, you know, we're punishing you on vaccinated people because of your choice to not get vaccinated. They're rewarding. The people that follow the rules, one a novel idea. Yep. Oh, I was going to. The thing I blanked on K dairy is telling me, I guess, already he's on the Kobe reserve list today. That that was the first NFL player from this season that I tested. Yeah. Like Paul mentioned the NFL came out today, basically, you know, and it's just not that it, obviously we're talking to CFL, but it's interesting to see how they're handling it. Rob van stone in our interview coming up, talks a lot about his concerns of where the CFL has no wriggle room, where the NFL came out and said, you know, if any games get canceled this year, or they're not able to play. It's a forfeit and then none of the players are going to get paid either. Tom posted Tom Pelissero who had the report posted that as well. And I think that really helps the players kind of help. Keep each other. You know, Accountable for their status. I mean, this is ridiculous. Like enough's enough. Even if you believe in the political talk, that's going on. Realize the people that are spinning the negative. Things about COVID vaccine and stuff like that. They're still getting vaccinated. Those people are still getting vaccinated. Those pundits are still getting vaccinated, the anti-vaxxers. So please just, you know, do your part, get vaccinated and we can knock this thing out. I think, I think, I think Farhan or Naylor don't. I murder me, but they basically tweeted, like, if you're, if you don't get vaccinated, like you're not interested in winning. I mean, it was a very interesting, I mean, I thought it was like a very, I mean, very pro. I just, I was kind of stunned by that. They do come out here and say that the, this. Health and safety committee is working to reduce those restrictions. We've talked about that, how you do need to be able to treat vaccinated and unvaccinated players differently. And they're going to work on that here in the next couple of weeks, that they're really up on that to present to the governors next week about potentially loosening that. Cause it's, it's crazy time that you're going to keep everyone locked out, but. And we talk about this as well with Darren Gill, you know, in the interview coming up. Is he about, he says to have as many resources as the NFL team. You manage all this stuff. Clearly. Speaking of political spin. Apparently a Winnipeg man was arrested for allegedly planning. Anton anti-vaccine blockade. Around the blue bombers home opener. [unknown]. He's man. [Unknown] that's the one I saw that come across. I thought also someone tweeted, they go all the. They go all the anti-vaccine people that are saying I'm going to, I'm going to boycott the games. They go good. That's what they want you to do. They only stay home. It's like, they sit there and they go my body, my choice, but then they don't want you to get the vaccine. It's just a, it's a weird flex to say the least. So apparently this guy was going to, he posted on Facebook saying. There's only two roads into the winter Winnipeg blue bombers stadium. I think we could block both with around a small amount of people on August 5th ahead of their game. Hmm. It's crazy. It's crazy. 229 Comments actively encouraging them to participate in act surprise. So he's arrested. What's his name? Allard. Patrick Allard Patrick gallery, the alleged alleged all this stuff's alleged, but they're gonna, they're gonna try. Yeah. Try to charge them for that. I just thought that was wild. Interesting stuff. Just receive word per Jeff Hamilton, that people double vaccinated from out of province. Will be. Permitted to attend Winnipeg games, a season. You're going to need the proof of backstage and route from your respective province, or maybe, you know, from your spec of state, if you're coming from the U S. To watch a game. Yeah, because there was concerns about that, right? Winnipeg is, I mean, they're the first one and I believe others are going to follow suit in announcing things, but they've been obviously the most vocal about that. So again, this is a private business people and they're allowed to make their own rules about how they let people in. And if you're double vaccinate and they won't let you in, they can let you in, they can make that decision. So. Talking about traveling across the border Biden splits from Trudeau. Oh. The United States on Wednesday, renewed pandemic curbs on non-essential travel. The. Us Canada land border for at least a month. Month. Marking a split from Justin Trudeau. DHS said and tweet the extension of the measures, which also apply to the U S Mexico border. We'll be extended. Thanks to the Delta variant. Are we in danger of not being able to go to our October 16th game? I think what it means is basically like if you're a Canadian citizen, you're trying to come here. You're screwed, but if you're a us citizen, you're trying to come back. You should be okay. In theory, in theory. Are we going to be able to go? That's my question. I assume so. This is a me question right now. No, no, no. I think you're okay. I think we're going to be okay. It's just because we're us citizens. Like it's, I think it's going to be a different thing. If you're a Canadian citizen, like Nigel, my friend, Nigel coming down here. It would be treated differently because I don't know, you're not American. They can, they can make that determination. So it's going to be interesting to see, hopefully. I mean, this Delta variant is ridiculous. It's just like, why, why are we doing this now? And there's now a Lambda variant. That's out there. It's it's am I going to have to rescind Jim Mullins invited to come stay at my house? Maybe. I just think, say, wait, wait, why is he coming to your house? [Unknown] hang out now to see it. I did offer rod. I did offer rod and Darren, the ride Peterson and Darren DuPont invites to my guest room when golden Knights play here and you can come too. We can all we can. All party golden Knights are playing there during the time we're in Dallas. We just figured it out. It's okay. I did this as I tweeted that before all that came out. Yes, we got our cracking at home tickets. Scheduled today. It's exciting. This, this is a while. This is a only in the CFL story. Do you see this about this to Facebook? Gosh. So the Toronto Argonauts turned the Facebook to find housing for players in Safra, the 2021 season, the John Murphy, the teens vice president of player personnel posted. On Saturday, they have 1.1, 6 million followers, Toronto, Ontario. If you know, if you know of any available housing starting in August, please hit me up. As we have 50 to 60 players in staff. You know, grateful for our citizens and a comment or question why they haven't made already made arrangements. Considering the season starts in just three weeks. I mean, you know, the CFL and all these owners of the CFL teams. You know, make more than Redbirds. So I don't know whether it was set up. Well, again, this is when, like, before, when the like, well, what do you want the CFO to talk about? Well, you want the CFO? Do you like stuff like this? Where are the players going to live? I mean, They turned. Is it as of Sunday that posts had 24 likes and three sheriffs. So really it burned them up there. Really burned in their website shows really good there. CFL releasing a new national campaign video rise with us. This got you in trouble. Apparently. This, this got me. Whoa, boy. I was not, this was like Monday morning I was on vacation. I just. Because, and, and I talked with Paul Woods about this on the interview today. And Paul Woods is a CFL historian. Paul Woods agreed with me and I'm not trying to make anything, whatever. The CFL's previous. Things slogan with our lake. And now their slogan is rise with us. And, and just grammatically away of anything else. Rising the width. Somebody is more inclusive than it being like our thing. And then. Weak, you can't have our league. Well, do you understand what I'm saying? I really wasn't like trying to make anything political or any like any upset. It really. Really got. And I'm just like, no, because if, if I don't live in Canada, it isn't inclusive. And I know it's not about me and that's fine, but, but I'm able, that's my opinion. I have, because when you say it's our league and the new shirts they have, or like one great country, one great league. That's really, I get it right. I totally get like marketing to the CFL and marketing and the Canadian ISP, just when you want to be grow. Think of all the people that watch the NHL draft with the cracking that was like from Winnipeg and from Edmonton and from Calgary and from Seattle and from LA, I mean, you're getting a broader audience than when you're saying. You know, and that's why he disagrees with us. That's all I meant was more inclusive than hourly thoughts. No, you're a hundred percent, right. I have no arguments with what you said. None. Really. Well, they're probably all CFL marks. So basically you just get to sit there and go. Where is it at? It's been a lot of times I pushed the button. Oh, hi, mark. There it is. I mean, let me know in the comments again, I'm not trying to like, Cause I that's literally all I say I was talking to grey James of CFL America podcast. You know, he's been on our show. I just said, I just think that's great that it's a more inclusive slogan. Okay. Aye. It's. It's it's perspective with something is my opinion. Yeah. It's an opinion calmed down. Draft Kings. CFL DFS returns with all these flipping a V abbreviations. Yeah. It's wow. Okay. So due to the uncertainty and then the short and 2021 CFL season, it was unclear if draft Kings would once again, pay money to host CFL games on their platform. Confirmed. A CFL daily fantasy games will be back on DraftKings. They won't be paying you any money for it. CFL. So yeah, there you go. Yeah. Daily. They said there'll be going to have daily fantasy available, I guess. We, you know, it it's a couple of weeks. So we got a guy here we've been, been invited to a couple fantasy pools to this. I got one of those. I saw that. Did you send my email to someone? Did you really do that? Read. Yeah. To a friend of ours. Okay. To a friend of ours. Does he, as a friend of ours, just ask. Okay. Sorry. A couple other notes a day, then we'll take a break here. E CFL announced their big. Play by play everybody for this season, rod Smith, who is hosting the CFL on TSN panel. He's going to be doing the play by play with. Glen suitor. I kinda think or, well, it's kind of actually, it's kind of confusing. Like who's going to be the lead cause you have Rob black, you have Glen Cedar who he's with Derek Taylor a lot on his show. You have Rob black. I said. Rod Smith. Sorry. Yeah. Black, but also friends of the sheriff are on the algae is going to be on the sidelines. With a big note about this as Kate bareness, she is going to be taking over that. Rod's job. Rod Smith's job is kind of like the main anchor for the CFL on TSN it's a lot of people are really impacted in the studio, basically back in the studio. But people are really happy. Cause like, obviously like you claim. Getting an inclusive in all. I, I, so. It's great. I mean, that's great. And, and, and I talked with rod. A rock band. So today about it off Mike, you know, he thinks it's thrilled. Everyone loves Kate. I mean, this is like a home run. Everyone said, even Danny Austin, who we are fusing with, you know, he, he thought that that was a great hire as well. I saw there was a little, little bit of peace offering between you and Danny. I th I still think he's kind of a jerk, but I'm trying. I agree, you're making an effort and that's all that counts. Yeah. TSN winning the Canadian academy award for best live sports event. 2019 grey cup. Congratulations to TSN for doing that. Yeah, we. We always talk about like, who watches the CFL, all this, I mean, tremendous viewership for the great cop, you know, 3.6 million. And they, at 1.1 million in the demo, I mean that that's, you know, for a population in Canada, it's not, not a large country. So, but I did think that was weird that the gray cup of 20 19 1, the TA like. The TSN award. I mean, maybe they just didn't do it last year. Maybe, possibly. Speaking of speaking of awards, award shows, you have a, you have your, what happens tomorrow night, right? I thought it was Sunday. No it's Saturday. Oh, okay. So as we record, this is I it's. Thursday night, we're dropping this Friday. So as the tomorrow, I will be down in Lank on Lankershim Boulevard in north Hollywood. Hopefully picking up my fourth, one of these. Everyone. Yeah. It's a comment or they said that those are your Ballinger. I was someone, I was like those bowling trophies. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Stay mad. I bowled one Turkey in my life, but those are bullet truffles. Yeah. Stay mad. All right. We're gonna toss right now. Reads go talk to Rob Vanstone and Darren Gill, we come back. More CFL news right after the break. One of the things. Rob Vanstone and Darren Gill for their time with Reed. Glad the Reed was able to handle those balls. Busy doing the weird schedule that I was doing at work. Recently. What's going on by now. Moving on. Derek Dennis. What is he the offensive lineman? Derek, Dennis wants the Edmonton Elks to release or train him. This is the engine. You know, we talked about Derek, Dennis. He he's fiery. We've talked about him before. You know, we've, I think we follow each other on Twitter. You know, he he's a big character, but I guess he wanted, this kind of went back and forth all week. I, Derek that this came out and tweeted. I regret signing with Edmonton. Now I gotta deal with this BS and, and the presumption that Dave Naylor did a lot of research and, and, and everything. And, and the Edmonton, Alex released a statement, basically, I think like, Derek Dennis is didn't not want to play this year. He just didn't want to play this year for Edmonton. Right. And so, hi, Chad, this quote down here, you know, John Hodge with three down that he had his anonymous insider quote that was Derek Dennis shouldn't assign with Edmonton in the first place, general manager Brock set in their land loves to throw cheap deals out to veterans to see if they bite. If Dennis had been more patient, I guess he did ended up getting paid by a Saskatchewan. Or Hamilton. So, excuse me. So I, but it's like, he wants out, but he's on contract and he's mad and basically Edmund saying like, Just cause you retired, like you're still with us. Like we still have the rights to your contract. Exactly. That's the way it always works. Joe Montana retired and had to, you know, was basically had the right Kansas city, had the rice dome for like two or three years. It is what it is. You'll sign a contract. Yeah. So anyway, so he. I decide I don't like Edmonton and their statements about the XFL, but Edmonton and their statement said they haven't seen the Alex Scandi terms or Derek Dennis on the contract. It would be glad to honor that contractor decided to retire on his own accord. It is a lot that the club is locking him into Edmonton. Should he decide to return to football? Interesting. So moving on former first round NFL draft pick Paxton Lynch's CFO contract proves he's playing for the love of football. You're taking the XML slogans. Three down nation. Why are you taking the slogans from the, from the XML? If you don't like it at all? Do you see this? I have it bolded and highlighted. Do you see what Paxton Lynch's contract is for after he made $8.8 million in the NFL? 65 grand in base salary, 3,600 and housing, $200 per active game roster bonus. You can also own earn an extra $500 for every game in which he plays 51% of the offensive snaps. Wow. Yeah, I saw. I guess I saw a lot of articles today. Like, you know, Paxton Lynch playing for peanuts compared to the NFL. I mean, I get it, you know, the CFL, but I mean, it's, you know, it's crazy. You got a $5 million, whatever salary cab. I mean, it's, it's, it's really tough to achieve, but that's, I mean, he obviously is really wanting to get his name out there and get back. I mean, that's, you know, that's not used again. Yeah, clear. Yeah. I mean maybe, maybe green bay has an opening soon. Since Aaron Rogers is most likely leaving. Thank you. Milwaukee bucks fans. Andrew Harris will lead another week before returning to practice with a bomb bombers. Of course he is the reigning grape cup MVP because the gray cup wasn't played in 2020 because of a pandemic. Play games. Head coach Michael Shay spoke to the media and provide an update. That he's progressing. He spends a lot of time with the. Had therapist had athletic therapist on there kind of joined at the hip as he gets ready. But another week is probably good. Said Michael Shane. Yeah, this is so a couple of notes with some of these training camps and things. Right. Rob. And I, I keep, I have too many robs and too many rods, rod Vanson. And I talked about this, you know, at some point the CFL is going to be playing games, right? So like Edmonton has been doing a lot of like, we're not playing today or we're not practicing, we're doing stretching today or we're not, or these people aren't playing. And we have a note down here about. Mike Mike. It's now it's not Mike Riley anymore. It's Michael Riley, who wants to go by with Alliance. Like we have a lot of these statements about like, we're taking time off, we're taking these over. So I totally get. Till they get, keep the players safe, get all this safe. But at some point like the games are starting. So, you know, it is, is July 23rd. As you listened to this. And so, I mean, obviously we don't want anyone to get hurt, but I just think there's concerns about like, at some point we're hitting pads and we're going yep. Argo said, coach Ryan Dinwiddie is growing in patient with former NFL Seaver receiver, Martavious Bryant. Apparently. Do you have any takes on Martavious? I mean, is he a big enough name to hit your way there? I like Martavious. I like his game a lot. There's a, probably a reason why he's playing in the CFL right now. I, you know, It just like there's so many players that have potential, but don't live up to the bench potential and Martavious is definitely one of those guys. So. Didn't when he basically said they've had some contact with him, he's getting a little patient with a thing. They need to get him up here. Now, if he's going to make an impact on our team, the ball's in his court. It was passport and get everything squared away. I don't know if Martavious wants to do this, wants to go to the CFL. And it's just like, man, these kinds of things, in my opinion, Our character issues like NFL teams. Want people with good character. To go with the talent. So if you have character issues, like not showing up for first off and. You know, not taking care of your business to play the game. NFL teams take notice. And I think that that might be the situation with Martavious. Yeah, I did a couple of minutes here. We can blast through some of these cutting for Gero. Yeah, they're finally getting some state players in the mosaic to watch some of the practices. They had like a hundred fans there. It's great. You know, I mean, we're, it's like we're slowly going there. We're being, you know, we're being really careful about that. And then I had mentioned earlier, my. I w. It was Mike Riley. I think he posted the big thing a couple of weeks ago that he wants to go by Michael now, but I like, he's still like mixed participating. He has shoulder short. That's a hard word to say with braces, shoulder soreness. Far, far haunted. It was the third street day. Riley was on the sidelines. He expected to be full go next week. Again, it's just one of these, like we got to get these players, you know, practicing here and going up. Definitely. Definitely, definitely. So I'm also Merci Maston. With the blue bombers suffering, a seasoned torn Achilles. That's unfortunate. Is that another, another, I mean, just like that, another, another player, you know, we have the rough rider is there was a couple more, I mean, this is we, I cam Akers this week with the NFL, with the Rams. I mean, this is like a. I mean, it's not just a CFL issue when cam Akers, who you have here imagined has really great trainers. That's scary. This does happen a lot. I mean, you know, like, When you're getting that, that's why you need adequate training time. And that's, that's the, that's the concern that you brought up is that like we're having all these training camp issues and the season starts soon. So what are we going to do? Are, are you going to be able to field teams? Yeah. Mike Mitchell had this article talking about just the shocking trade at al-Din Darby, the Winnipeg for a Terry pool. You shipped away one of the best defensive backs out RV and a trade, sending them to the defendant's NFL champion when they picked blue bomber is for Terry pool. Just tracking some Mia player transaction and seven Mike was, Mike was pretty stunned about that. And Mike is covering the Argonauts for CFL news hub. So I wanted to give him a shout out. Very cool. Former DC defenders, Rashad Ross wide receiver. They're impressive. During training camps for the Montreal. He was with yeah, he was with the defenders and then the Al let's cut. Eli Rogers. He was with the, he was with the Steelers and then the defenders. So, you know, we're Cole, you know, we talked at the top of the show. I mean, a lot of these guys are just trying to, I couldn't imagine me, one of these, like all football guys, just trying to get by and then being cut after spending weeks up there, it's kind of retarded. Definitely. Another thing that's going on. There's a lot of wildfire smoke in north America. Sometimes it's during the summer. BC lions coach Rick Campbell. Basically had to cancel practice. Cut it short, due to a wildfire smoke from nearby forest fires. Yeah, and I. I think the blue bombers had to cancel a practice, too. We were talking about that. I think with Rob on the interview that, you know, I mean, it stuff's going on, but it's, you know, we're, we're a precious time here. Interesting. No I had with this one, it was as the rough riders offensive line. Lyman, Evan Johnson. He left, his wife is giving birth to a child. You know, he went home. They were okay with him leaving. They said he can take us as much time as he wants. You know, we want him back in healthy, ready to go. But, I mean, that's you get all these COVID concerns then? Cause you're going, you're coming back. He's got a bubble again. I mean, do you do that seven day quarantine? Like if you were going, you know, in and out of the border, cause obviously he's, he's local to, to Canada, but. He says it was a quick trip home to be by your side, by your father. It's like, yeah, but you're still leaving the bubble. It doesn't matter if you're going right. Vaccination status. That's my question for all of this is what's his vaccination status. Just a note here. Lee Leroy blue. The BC he's taken the year off, he's gone home to deal with family issues. He family matters. Rick Campbell had really kind words to say about that. And then one final, just sad note here I checked McMahon, Calgary Stampeders, former assistant coach passed away at the age of 70. The Stampeders president John Huffman. Hufnagel sorry, I can't talk with braces. I'm deeply sad. You're doing a better job with your name pronunciation, with the braces. I'm really deeply sad to hear about check's passing. And I saw this pass away a lot, you know, or passed around a lot, you know, my condolences to his life and family and everything for that. So our thought numbers. Nope. Rest in power, Mr. Mr. Chuck McCann. So that being said, we're gonna take another final break here. We're going to throw it over to Paul Woods and read talking. We're talking Argos or we're talking Paul's thoughts on the Argos to the XFL. We're talking to a lot of history about the Argos, you know, what's it like to be a fan there with, with a city that doesn't necessarily care? Also Paul's pretty down. Paul shares. A lot of Paul could be a third chair on our podcasts. Like it could be read. And Paul and Paul, because Paul shares a lot of similar thoughts that we do about like Casey AFL, like fans. Let's, you know, let's get open minded here so I can be reading the polls, you know? Reading the Pauls, that might be the new name of this. And we'll talk to Paul right after this. And then we can just knock through all this stuff. Cause in the U S this USFL thing looks really long at the envelope boss. Okay. Welcome back. Want. I think Paul's got a great first name too. I want to congratulate him on his parents named me, him. That it's pretty cool that they would give him such a great first name. Like Paul, all things considered. I might be a little biased, but. All right. Moving on. Could the Toronto Argonauts really end up in the XFL. This is from Hodge now. And when we went. You know, when we post stuff, it's like click bay, you know, in three down, it's like, oh, Hmm. She didn't have a legit journalism. No. But he, this was interesting. Cause Haji did some research and he talked with people and they go, they could technically leave and join. It wouldn't be seamless. They could keep their logo, names and colors, but they would have to basically renegotiate all of the player contracts because the players are signed to the CFL. And the interesting thing though, is the coaches and personnel. Aren't signed. Yeah. Like they don't have a union, so they could just move there, move the team over. But I thought that was interesting on two notes, just because a Paul and I talked all about this, eh, In our interview, but then also that, you know, sometimes if other people post stuff it's it's okay. And if we posted it. It's, you know, we're, we're being, we're being completely disrespectful and, and, and spinning the face of the 108 year league. And it's just, it's just blasphemous when we post stuff like this. So. But because we're critical of everything. Vincent man is claiming that former XFL. All over Lux, stonewalling. It is wrongful termination suit. Against the league. He's refusing, allegedly a few refusing to answer a, this a sheaf of questions who used the word XIV. When talking about. A list of questions. Yeah. Regarding his use of a company. That's funny. That's really funny. What would you use the word sheet? Oh, yeah, that's it. That I just copied and pasted that. No you did, but who uses that word? Yeah. Of course, this is going on still. Yeah. So this was a July 14th here, and this was sent over by friend of the show who, you know, And it was interesting. You know, Th th there's still going on. I mean, the court phase alone and have to be, you know, Incredible on this. I would love to. Like gone to law school. And just got assigned to this case because I could have probably retired off it. That's how ridiculously lawns is drawing out. Yeah. Cause he had McManus basically. It was saying how like that. He says that he's trying to hide the ball. Basically the, he, Vince is claiming that like, luck wasn't good at his job and was like goofing around. And it's like, Literally the most successful thing, except for like the, the players and everybody, like from the XFL was like the work that all of our, like David, like running the football league. So it's his astounding now where he's like, oh yeah, like luck wasn't even doing his job. He was just goofing off and I want to get his text messages, like, and figure out what's going on. I want to get along for luck on the podcast. And this is all said and done. I love, I would love to have that. So Vince, you've got a lot of concerns on your, on your plate right now. You got a lot of concerns. My friend. Yeah. AAW AWG 1.15 million viewers this week. And that's going to be even better. September 1st one cm punk shows up right. So let's move to another American spring football league that a rush to says will never work. The USFL. I'm starting to. Tabs of potential head coaches, locations, some structures what's going on here with this. Yeah. I just, I wanted to make sure we talked about this cause USFL staff, Mike Mitchell had an article. I think it came out Friday or Saturday. They, Mike really needs to coordinate his article, really scheduled with us. It's a lot of speculation. It's a lot of, you know, Mike's. People are really wanting the USFL news. And there's not a lot of USFL news, but the idea is that. It literally looks like Brian Woods is not because when Brian Woods came out and said, we're doing the USFL, people said, well, where's the money. And it really looks like they're going to try to bring in individual owners. We had talked about this a week or two ago on the show with the former, the gunslingers and all that, and bringing that. I can't remember the guy's name, but who was with the original, whatever. Right. And, you know, but that brings a whole host of other issues because then you've got all these owners and do they really know what's going on? And that basically, that was the whole problem that the USFL had. The first time was. And all these owners that went into business for themselves. And now it's it. Yeah. Yeah, Mike kind of says, it's like, it's the past. This is his Boulder called I had the past meets the future in 2022 at the old USFL went too big to sin. The new USFL is being built with a more modest scale down approach that will only resemble the 1983 version of the name. And last they do this big jump. So it's kind of like, are they being shackled or are they really. It's a really confounding issue. And there really hasn't been a lot of new since they re announced their return, like a month ago now. Brian, if you're getting individual owners for this tease, I'm gonna tell you right now, those individual owners are going to look out for their individual bottom line and. Good luck with that. Best of luck, Brian. Look at the CFL and. Nine individual LT. Ownership you. I mean, it's. That's what happens? The XFL is a little bit easier because when you got with a one entity own and everything, it's a, it's a little easier to do it. All right. Some signings for the CFL happen. The conquers, a offensive lineman drew Richard signed with the blue bombers. Cool. Congrats to him. TSL Jenner generals, offensive lineman. Jordan Murray has signed with the tie. The tiger cats. Yep. The aviators offensive lineman Taylor Tappin signed with the Ottawa red blacks. Congratulations. And the generals. Wide receiver, Jordan swell. Assigned with the rough riders. Of Saskatchewan. Yeah. So we're still getting some, yeah, some TSL action going to automate TSI. Also my last note today, they're releasing more staff. If you want any elf coverage. Now we talked about it last week, they announced in the big all-star game team USA. It sounds like people are going to be able to the game's going to be October 3rd. It's going to be in Dusseldorf, which is my favorite name of a city. They're going to be an award banquet. Josh Davis wrote this whole article up, but fans are going to be able to vote. So. [Unknown] you're going to vote on like who you want to see in the thing. They're going to still have the ratio cause they only allow two American fields. Two American players on the field at the time. I, if you're in the Alf, I just wanted to make sure because people are really hankering for this, like. All-star game. I don't, it's like, what's the point. I don't really get why people are so excited, but how's it really. I don't know. I. I don't feel like it's really moved the needle because maybe this is just us being completely ignorant to European football, but it just hasn't really moved the needle over here. Like XFL talk and CFL talk. Even TSL talked for that matter. Like, it just seems like. The leagues that are over here in north America, all. Move the needle, as opposed to you're being leaks. Yeah, I mean, to me, Yeah, we had last week, that 500,000 people in Germany were watching the games. I mean, there's definitely like interests, but. To do all this work with voting and bringing them to team USA and all that. I just don't know. I don't know if that juice is worth the squeeze for that. Like, I think the Alf s**t is do their thing. Then like we're going to bring in and vote on these like PAC 12 or whatever players and bring them in. It just seems. I don't, I don't get that at all. I get to, they're trying to expand their audience. So that's what it seems like. They're trying to like, let's move into America. A little bit more with getting American football players that, that the west coast at least knows. Cause PAC 12 is all west coast. So maybe we shouldn't be critical cause they are trying to expand their audience. Maybe we should be, maybe we, okay. I take all that back. This is a great idea. This is a great idea. Keep doing what you're doing and expanding the global game. I take back everything I just said, keep doing you girlfriend. We'll keep a wallet. We'll keep an eye on it. Definitely. So with that being said, we want to thank you guys for tuning in to the mark cast. Want to thank our guests again for dropping in Paul Woods. Rob Vanstone. And who was the third guy? I'm sorry. Super agent to the stars, Darren Gill, all joining us and talking with Reed. Want to thank everybody for listening again, subscribe to our YouTube channel. We're hitting that 1500 number. We're going to do some giveaways. Once we get to 1500. So we really appreciate that and don't tell anybody. On these, on the Reddit board. That's UFL people are subscribing. Please. Don't tell me. Did you like my, we didn't talk about my John Sienna hat at all. I'm waiting on my shirt to come. I ordered that immediately when he debuted on Sunday, but, but I had to wear my old hat. They're very, they're very much Edmonton Elks colors, the green and yellow. Just want to point that out. Yeah. It's kind of there. So anyway. Give a shout out. Not that, but the new one that he came out with on the. So hopefully I should have a shirt. So summer has seen that. It is the summer of Sienna. It is the summer of Siena apparently. So thanks everybody again for listening. We'll see you next week. Right here on the mark host. That was good. Romo, we pass it through all that. And we blasted. That was good though. Some of that's just words. We just were. You know, it's all good. You you were on vacation. So I understand. I was f****d up with my schedule. It happens. All right. Promo. This week on the mark cast, we're recording late. We're just waiting for Mike Mitchell to drop a last-minute article on us. Please don't do that, Mike. Tell us who we got. Tell us who you're talking to read. Tremendous this week. Ah, In the words of a president and football candidate, Jim Mullen amongst other things. This is a CFL podcast. We're talking. Tremendous show this week, friend of the show, Rob Vanstone is coming on, where we have him. He's at writers training camp talking to all their latest, all the news coming out of that. And I really wanted to talk to Rob about you. Is the CFL doing enough to market. We're two weeks away from kickoff, you know, what's going on with that? And we got his thoughts. Very cool. Also. You've you talked to, you know, a super agent, super agent. What's his name? Yup. He's kind of serious. Let's do it. I'm going to cut there and do. It is Darren Gail talking about like, yeah. Darren Gail talking about like the struggles that you know, they get in the players, everybody ready for the season. Whenever you want to say. Yeah. Okay. And you're also talking to Darren Gill. Agent to CFL players talking about getting the players ready. That went good. Paul Woods on Argonauts historian also joined the podcast Dr. Reed about potentially potentially. Some rumors. And then you window about Toronto heading south. Yeah, Paul, we got history and Paul Woods on Darren's gray talking all about, you know, what was it like getting ready for the season and figuring out what the player contracts who's looking good. You know, talking about injuries. You know, talking about brats, anomalies, retirement, you know, he's Brad's agent. So a lot of interesting things. It is about a 98% filled CFL show today. Very cool. Rob Vanstone a friend of the show now is so excited to have you back on as straight from Roughriders training camp. How is everything going today for you? There? Well, it's, it's neat. It's still neat to be at the at rider training camp. I haven't missed a session yet. I think this is my best attendance since 1981 when I was 17 and just ending in grade 12 or grade 11 and just going every day after school. So it's. It's neat to see. I've always been kind of a training camp, curmudgeon, at least in my, in, in the last decade or two thinking. Okay. Let's just get to the regular season. A lot of the players who are hyped at this juncture of the year are generally forgotten by the time. The final rosters declared, let alone games that are let alone the, the, the kickoff of comments. That's good. The commencement of games. So, but this year just being deprived of it for a, for a full year. I just find that there's an insatiable unceasing appetite for watching people practice. I can't imagine what a game will be like is because. Training camp feels like a vacation paid vacation right now. Tracking a lot of different things here. I've been keeping notes on, on news coming out from the various training camps. What is top of your mind? The things that you're paying attention to right now this week? In Saskatchewan, it's just the. But how many times have you heard old school football person or even a new school football person say games are won and lost in the trenches. And the rough riders have serious issues on both of their. Both of their lines. The defensive line. Freddie Bishop the third, who was likely going to replace Charleston Hughes, who has been the CFL SAC leader, preacher, the last four seasons. He was one of the, the. The four players who suffered a torn Achilles tendon, right before camp in a players only workout. And so there's a lot of uncertainty along their defensive line. There was even before Freddie Bishop, the third was, was injured, their offensive line. You name it. It's happened to them as far as adversity, whether it's Brendan Labatt, a perennial all-star future hall of Famer. Deciding he wasn't gonna play this season. Due to the. COVID related restrictions that are placed upon players and to Colby Coalfield who was going to compete for the tackle spots, retired and. It just been one thing after another, with the, with the offensive line, to the point where they're, you know, Taryn Vaughan, who was their starting left tackle for most of the 2019 season. And a very good one had no as a shoulder injury. If he does play, it's going to have to be with a brace. And so you look at the composition of both lines and the, the fact that the line backing core is really influx with the Saskatchewan Roughriders. You just wonder about the fret seven on defense and the offensive line and without, without pretty much. Without a lot of sheer things, as far as players who are playing in the box, so to speak, I just wonder what that portends for the Roughriders this year. Oh, we had a, your good friend, Marie McCormick on last week. You know, wonderful things to say about you as well. And that we, you know, we talked with them. What was, you know, we, we have all this buildup, the CFL season, we're getting ready to go to have that freak accident with all the Achilles and all that, you know, the day before, or I think it was Thursday night or Friday right before. What was that? I mean, was that. It's a shot in the gut for people covering the team. Well, it was even just when we heard the additional word that Larry Dean, the middle linebacker and, you know, He was initially that one name seeped out. And it was like, while they've now lost the middle linebacker who is trying to replace Solomon elementary and who's a future hall of Famer. And so you hear that name and then you hear rumblings that there's more, and then you hear that there's four. And that there's, the injury is pretty much the exact same. Doing the same drill. And that this all happened within six minutes. It just defies, even explanation. And, and so that got me wondering, what's it going to be like when camp starts, if players are falling left and right. In a, in an informal workout once they actually get back on the field and training camp. Is it, is it gonna look like a mash unit here and. Now we're seeing sort of the typical training camp injuries that will happen. There's groins and hamstrings and poles and tweaks, things of that nature. But what we haven't seen is this, this spate of serious injuries, there's been some of some concern, but. There haven't really been a lot of injuries that are going to affect the future of this football team. At least as it pertains to 2021. In training camp, Tara and Vaughn is a concern, but it's not necessarily season-ending. It might not even cause him to miss a game. Whereas for catastrophic injuries to starters in their first round draft choice. Basically gone within six minutes. I just made it made you wonder what's going to happen. And not only that, there were two such injuries in Montreal. Leading up to camp. So it kind of led me to wonder, and I think others to wonder as well. Is is with these players coming off a protracted layout. I'd probably lay off. His training camp, our training camps across the league, just going to be a mess. And what does this mean for the season? And so far, those fears haven't been born out by what's happened during camp, but. There's a, there's an inner squad game coming up on Saturday and there'll be hitting each other with a little more venom. So we'll, we'll we'll see, they still gotta get through a significant portion of camp before the real games begin. Yeah, because I'm curious, you know, once we get to the preseason, I know you were on rod show, talking preseason games, but it does seem like even with these practices, like with, with the Edmonton, you know, Jamie Elizondo. Yeah. They're okay. We're sitting today, you know, when we're taking the day off or where were you? Yeah. It seems like we're still, you know, it's not full go all the time. It seems like some teams more than others are really trying to be. Right. I mean, rightfully so protective of that, but then when you get to open game time, you don't get that kind of luxury. I mean, are you concerned about, you know, injuries and things like that once it's full speed ahead. I really wonder because they seem to be cushioned and there's limits on how many times the play the teams can put on pads during practice and, and coaches are emphasizing, don't slam people to the ground during, during practice. Et cetera, et cetera. And then suddenly without any buffer. You're going right to the, to the regular season. And granted there weren't any preseason games in the national football league last year, and that didn't seem to adversely affect the product. And it didn't seem that sloppy right out of the gate, but you gotta remember that the, the athletes who were employed by national football league teams, a they weren't off for as long as the CFL players have been and B they have the resources, even if they're earning the minimum salary to hire personal trainers, they don't have to get a so-called real job and then try to squeeze in a workout. Maybe after supper, they can still train obsessively for it. So I think there's less of a. There's lots of a shock factor. When, when, when the NFL presumes. W, you know, starts playing without pre-season games, compared to what we might see in the Canadian football league. Because a lot of the, a lot of the players on the field haven't. Haven't played in a, in a meaningful football game since November of 2019. So how do you prepare yourself for that? If you're just trying to feed your family? Not by playing professional football, not by making sure that you're working out for four or five hours a day, but just by holding down a regular civilian job, how do you flip that switch? And. And what might the physical costs be as a result of flipping that switch, perhaps too drastically. And unavoidably have players, you know? And, and when you guys do the media, zoom calls and stuff, are they open and honest about that? Or are they trying to kind of put up like a no, like, we're good. I mean, are they B how honest are they about that? Cause it. It is okay for that to be a struggle because players that worked for the CFL, right. Understandably have had jobs the last year where, like you said, maybe the NFL players, this is all they're doing 24 7. I mean, are they being honest about the struggles? We saw it a bit right before camp Craig Dickinson, the Saskatchewan Roughriders head coach. Said he wouldn't be surprised if a lot of players didn't show up in shape. And if, so they could very well have their jobs taken by younger players. And I wasn't saying that critically, he was just saying that well, somewhat prophetically, I think. And, and, and speaking from the, you know, realistically, and there were some veteran players on Twitter. Who took umbrage at that saying, he's got to remember, we've got to have jobs. We've got to, we've got to have rehab, regular jobs. We're trying to feed our families. We don't have the time to put in these kinds of workouts necessarily that would allow someone to be in. Anything approaching game shape. And that's not to suggest that these players have been been lacks in training. That's just, that's just a. They're trying to lead lives. And make sure their dependents are cared for. So there was some backlash as far as what to, to what Craig Dickens does that earlier. There hasn't been much of that since then. Most of it's been, who's looking good. Who's injured. Who's looking, you know, The mechanics of training cap, a bit of kind of taken over as far as the, the line of questioning. It does seem like it just would have to be there in the back of the minds. You know, even if you know, they're going home at night and, you know, really rehabbing or whatever, I mean, it's just, you're just not used to. You know, football and we were watching the NHL draft last night, you know, for the crack and the mean talking about the physicality dos players go through too. I mean, it's just a remarkable how much pain and, and, you know, tolerance that they have to be able to take, you know, both on, on the football game. And with hockey, you. What I mean. Well, you know, and you can relate cause you're trying to, you know, Interview me for a podcast and that's a lot of pain and suffering as well. So. I hope there's no emotional scarring and suing from this, but yeah, I don't think a lot of people realize what it takes to be a professional athlete or even a. You know, a collegiate athlete these days and the sacrifices are amazing. And you look at. A lot has come to light about what's expected of NCAA football players or basketball players, for example. And the cold compensation issue, I think is. As, as I think brought out a lot of stories about the realities of a college athlete and they're borderline. You're borderline professionals. In many cases, we haven't been remunerated as such, and it's just, it's a different world and you, you have to, you have to be a devoted. To training all the time. And, and a lot of the ancillary things are just. Nope parked because you've got to. You've got to put so much into it because if you don't, somebody else will, there's so many people aspiring to do this, even though in the case of the Canadian football league, in case, in the case of the XFL. You're not going to make a ton of money. You're, it's, it's truly a love of the game enterprise when you're that player. But whether you're a love of the game player or whether you're Patrick Holmes, I don't think the commitment is any, is, is discernibly different in, in terms of making sure that you're physically up to the task that doesn't change, whether you're making $65,000 a year. In the Canadian football league or whether you're making 30 plus million dollars a year in the national football league. You've still got to put in that. That training. Yeah. How's everyone else looking down there. You know, we, we talked with Marie about Paxton Lynch, kind of his comments, and then obviously with [unknown]. Zero. And I think it word as he just is looking phenomenal. Right. Really coming out, looking strong. Thoughts on the QB situation going on up there. I mean, Cody for Gerardo. It's his first cap as the starter, since he was playing. Paul knows football at the university of Nevada. And he's just looked tremendous. He's just zipping the ball. And again, again, you're sometimes it's just throwing against air, but he just, he looks like what you would expect. Him to be. The layoff didn't really seem to affect him. He's just like tremendous after that. Craig Dickinson. The rider said, coach said the other day, it's basically Cody for Gerardo and everybody else. And so there's a real, a real Derby for who's going to be number two. And then on the practice, roster is number three. Paxton Lynch's has shown a lot of why he was so high, highly regarded. In fact, I'm just watching him throw a pass right now, as we discuss it. He's got a tremendous arm and a degree of mobility that belies his size. He's bigger than he's. There's a defensive end in cap here. I think it's 6 1, 2 43. And packs the Lynch is 6 7, 2 43. You would think all things being equal, it packs the Lynch is truly serious about making a go of this. I don't know how you, you don't look at the potential upside of keeping him around considering it's not that long ago. That a national football league team traded up to pick him in the first round. The ceiling would seem to be very high. And, and how do you, how do you resist that and fees? Truly serious about it. And. He's only 27 years old. Sometimes you get. You know that while we have Vince young coming up here in 2017 and he was 34 years old by the time camp came and Andy. And, and he wasn't in good shape. At least when he signed the contract and he ended up. Blowing a hamstring in the inner squad game. And not long after that, it was the last we saw Vince young and Saskatchewan. And, but he was, he was 30. He was 34 years old. To see somebody who. Of course, especially quarterback wise 27. You're not even yet in your prime. If, if he can recapture some of what people saw of him coming out of college, that could be a really intriguing thing. Not necessarily for the Saskatchewan Roughriders either because quarterbacking such, you know, positioning being, being. So vital. You're not just auditioning for the Saskatchewan Roughriders. You're auditioning for every team in the Canadian football league. You're auditioning potentially for the United States football league. You're auditioning, potentially present XFL if years down the road. Ultimately, you might be auditioning for the national football league. As we saw in 2019 in the Canadian football league as well, there were a lot of injuries to quarterbacks. And, and, and suppose, I mean, if Cody Pachardo stays healthy, there may not be, might not be another quarterback here for a decade. So it's not the most enviable situation as far as walking. Being a quarterback and hopeful and walking into this camp. But if you look good here and somebody else is looking for a number one or number two down the road, the rough riders might have a good bargaining chip at the very least. If they need to make a trade. Or. There might be other leagues taking a look. I look at Johnny Manzell in 2019. He comes into Hamilton while the Hamilton Hamilton. Tiger cats are in good shape at quarterback because they've got Jeremiah Mazzoli. And then after he was injured, Dana Evans played, played really well. But guess what? The Montreal, the wets gave up a ton to get Johnny Manzell. And so that's an example of how you can take that. Commodity and perhaps a parlay it into a nice return. If he's, if he's for real. But you just don't have an app, a spot for them. Yeah, it's just challenging because you know, there is such this. They talk now. Yeah. QBs peak a lot later in life. Right. You're looking like a Ryan Tannehill right now. The NFL and he's. Yeah. Dean battery now, but then there is such a, like when you come in it's sink or swim because there's so many people behind you, right. You know, the next year and the next year they're going to come up. I mean, you know, someone like Paxton Lynch, it would be great to find success here or elsewhere. It's. It is that struggle, you know, where, where it's, what have you done now, but then also, well, QBs don't really peak until, you know, 27, 28. I mean, how do you, how do you grapple both of those sides of that coin? Well, I think the thing you have to factor in too, with PAX and Lynch, Is that okay. The Pittsburgh Steelers pass judgment on him. And so did the Seattle Seahawks, but this is a quarterback was drafted by the Denver Broncos. And if you look at what my beloved Broncos have been doing at quarterback, since even the years leading up to Peyton Manning and the years postpaid matting. I mean, there was Kyle Orton, then there was Trevor Simeon and there was, there was a washed up Joe Flacco and there was a case Keenum, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Patsy Paxton Lynch. Isn't the only quarterbacking bust for lack of a better word in Denver. And is this, it was a system in Denver. Is conducive to any quarterback enjoying success. They just have not done a good job of evaluating quarterbacks. They certainly did not demonstrate a lot of patients with them. Someone they drafted in the first round in, in, in 2016 was released in 2018. And. You look a lot, like a long, it took Aaron Rogers to Rogers had to serve an apprenticeship. And in green bay, Steve young in San Francisco. Being a classic example of that. So. I think they bailed out on Paxil Lynch pretty early in Denver at other teams, you know? Eventually found him wanting, but you're going into Pittsburgh and has been robbed. Lisberger you're going into Seattle. There's Russell Wilson. So has he really gotten a fair shot? I think people jumped on him so quickly in Denver. And picked him apart so quickly. I just, I'm just not sure that that was a situation that wasn't built to fail. Say what you want about Paxton Lynch, but I just. That was tough. That's been tough for veteran quarterbacks to walk into the Denver has been. Just a quarterbacking graveyard in recent years. Trust me. I know it. I feel it. So. Is it, is it the player? Is it the system or is it a combination of both? 27 Years old. He's certainly got, got time to, to. To, to turn things around. And everything you said, and granted words are, are less substantial than actions in a lot of cases. Except on podcasts when it's all we have. You know, he's he said all the right things much was made about how he said he wanted to go back to the NFL. But I don't think that quote was necessarily presented in context. A lot of the time. Yes, he wants to go back to the NFL, but a what American player wouldn't want to play in the, in the, in the national football league and B it took some coaxing to get him to say that that wasn't a front of mind. Palm it from Paxton Lynch that was in response to a direct question, asked well into that interview by our man Marie McCormick, do you want to go back to the NFL? And he was honest, he said, yes, but then I think a lot of people said, oh, you just got. You know, he's got his head in the clouds. He thinks he's too big for the Canadian football that he wants to go back to the NFL. No. I mean, not that would, that would be extended by. A by-product of success here, but first there has to be success here, and there's a lot of steps along the way. And it sounds like he's amenable to taking those steps. So I just, the whole pack, the whole packs of Lynn's story. I think, I don't think has been. Is that fair to him. And I'm one who is exasperated over the fact that they, that they, the packs on lunch didn't work out in Denver, especially when later in the draft, Dak Prescott was picked by Dallas, but. Honestly, I just think. Maybe just people need to cool off a bit and just give the guy a chance, but. That's the nature of the position you play and the prominence that is accorded that position. Well, I've never, I've never been a part of the Vinny, any sort of CFL backlash of anybody potentially, you know, saying anything. Maybe it would be better and not as good. I mean, I can certainly see how. CFL fans would be, you know, very angry about, you know, that same. Have you taken that? It sounds like we need to blame Marie for that one. Well, here's a fair question to ask, but it just a lot of, you know, Murray didn't Murray didn't make that the focal point of his story, but there were, there were people who kind of extracted that comment. From an extended media availability and it kind of became the headline or the, the, the, the buzz. So this is like, well, yeah, they said that, but that wasn't the. The focus of the conversation and it was not like he came out and said, yeah, I'm here. Cause I want to get back to the NFL. And this is a stepping stone. It, it was well into the conversation. It was certainly wasn't a point of emphasis or preoccupation on the part of practicing Lynch. Just quick. Bye. Side route here as a Denver fan, has your heart settled on the fact that Aaron Rogers will not probably be joining you and, and fall? Still hoping a little, I mean, Something's going to happen with Aaron Rogers. If he doesn't report the cap in green bay and we'll Sue. No. If there, if there can't be a, a resolution of that. Do they, the Packers want to get something for the asset. And, and if so, where, where is he going to go? The Denver just happens to have the cap space and the cavernous void, the quarterbacking position. And there aren't a lot of teams in the national football league that have both. I'd use, for example, the Cincinnati Bengals. They've got lots of cascades, scaps. Gaps cap space as well, but they've got Joe burrow. So you're not only need the cops space. Absorb it 30 plus million, potentially 40 plus million contract, but you also need. To have a void at quarterback that makes it imperative, that you make that move and you need to have the reservoir of young players. That would make it appetizing for the green bay Packers to trade. Somewhat in that direction. Same trade someone to. For, for, you know, give you the, the hall that you would need. And so Denver is, is characterized by many as having a lot of prime, young players, especially in the receiving Corps. You know, they've, they've got four. For guys who can definitely play, maybe even got a, a bit of a wealth of talent. Running back because they've got Melvin Gordon and they've got Devante Williams who they drafted. This year and. Made something can give them the Denver Denver's well equipped to make a trade. Based upon what they have. And so you look at those factors, do you think, well, maybe. But then I think. Okay. I got very lucky once in a lifetime when Pentin Peyton Manning landed in Denver international airport. I just can't imagine. Peyton Manning and Aaron Rogers ending up with the Denver Broncos. Seems to be a little too much to hope for, but doesn't something have to give somewhere. Yeah. One other NFL, and then I'll actually get to the real point of why wine is bringing on today to talk. I do you worry. And again, ratings, aren't everything and ratings don't necessarily matter, except coming off of a two year delay and the CFL and all that. Do you worry about the CFL starting so late and then. You know, four weeks later having the NFL come on or does that, are we just not even worried about that? I don't really think that's a huge factor. Read the, you know, I think it would be a bigger factor of the CFL, did what it used to do and play a lot on Sundays, but they've in recent years, they've pretty much steered clear of Sundays Montreal being. A rare, occasional exception. And they, they become really Friday, Saturday heavy. So they don't necessarily. Oppose the national football league in one. When the CFL eventually does play on Sundays. It's in the east Eastern Western conference. It's east and west division finals. And in the gray cup. And their numbers stack up tremendously against the NFL. So I like it. The standpoint that I really love both leagues. I like the fact that they don't cannibalize one another and I can enjoy the CFL on Friday and Saturday. And then I can overdose on the Canadian football league on the national football league on Sundays. So it seems to be, to be. Pretty decent setup. My worry about the late start to the CFL season is that they haven't really given themselves a lot of wiggle room. What if. And we, I w I hope I'm not fear-mongering here, but you see some stories emanating from the states or other countries about what the Delta variant is doing. The CFL isn't being as stringent as the national football league, as far as. Trying to ensure the players are vaccinated. There's. They've got the, kind of got the two tiered system in the national football league, where if you're a vaccinated player, you have a lot more freedom and latitude. Then you do have your Canadian football league player. And there's an intermingling of vaccinated and non-vaccinated players, and there's soon to be an even greater intermingling. Once those players start colliding on the field in anger and there. Just, I just wonder. If for example, And the rosters are smaller in the Canadian football league than in the national football league. And it's not a matter of. Just being able to snap your player, snap your fingers, and bring in a player anymore because you've got to deal with quarantines and all those factors. So what happens if one team has a COVID outbreak? What if there's an equivalent again? I use Denver as an example, but. What if suddenly a team doesn't have any quarterbacks during a given week. What if that the COVID is more prevalent on a team? They don't really have the, the, the, the latitude to be able to postpone many games because they're already playing well into December in a country where it does tend to snow and get really awful weather wise. So. They haven't built themselves any. Yeah. I don't know how many. You know, I've covered a lot of baseball tournaments. You know, softball, leagues and stuff, and they always kind of local leagues will kind of play Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and then Friday, they'll just say rain day. So that even during the regular season, a lot of the local softball. Baseball needs a build a rain day into their schedule. Just in case they need it. The CFL does not have that. And, and this is such uncharted territory for the Canadian football league. There's just not a lot of wiggle room here. And, and. What is this Delta? Very, it goes crazy. What if. You know, the, the, I don't know what the proportion of non-vaccinated players is, but. You you see various reports and it certainly does seem to be a significant percentage of rosters. What happens you can test and you can do everything all you want, but. What's going to happen and, and there's just, there's no real plan B if they can adhere to that schedule, what's the alternative. I'm just not sure. They've they've talked a bit about perhaps going to six playoff teams to eight in the, in the event that some games are scrapped and you can just use winning percentage as opposed to. Two records with every team having played 14 games, perhaps that's the way to do it. But this Delta variant, I think it's being taken lightly. In some cases and you just wonder where this is going. And I hope I'm definitely wrong, but after everything we've endured since March of 2020, I don't think it's a preposterous thing to be somewhat emperor intensive. Or, or fearful. Oh, yeah. Right, right. When we hopped on that, Paul who's at work right now. I apologize texting, I guess, from Tom Pelissero with. NFL, did they just inform the clubs that if they can't. If a game can be rescheduled during the 18 week season due to an outbreak, they're going to forfeit and be credited with a loss for the playoff seeding, which is obviously different than, you know, they really didn't have a plan last year in case anything happened down there. The big thing I actually wanted to talk to you about I a couple of weeks ago on my birthday. I thank you. You came out with a wonderful article. July 1st talking about. The CFL, you know, selling the league, marketing the league. Part of it was, you know, with all the XFL south, but part of it was just, Hey, we're finally getting back on track. Right? And I wanted to have you on, and then I don't know if you were aware that, you know, these lakes, you. Our news was a little back the last couple of weeks. But I wanted to circle back to this because now that we're, you know, heading towards the season, we're two weeks away. Right. We're getting there. How has, you know, I, I know like Edmonton, they're doing like t-shirt giveaways and under 17 and, you know, Whatever it is the CFL. Are they doing enough now to, to market? You talked a lot about transparency, things that we like, a lot of availability of things. Are they being more approachable and marketable moving into the season? Not really that discernibly July 1st is your birthday. It is. That's that's my, my dad was born July 1st, 1920. So here's to Alan dance. Don't. He. I see. Sometimes I just see the traditional manner of operations just being maintained. You know, some teams are being more proactive on social media than others. And in some cases, staffs of being decimated and they, they have to rehire, or maybe they don't rehire because they're, they've absorbed such losses. They're not going to have necessarily the communications teams or the social media teams and the marketing teams that they once did. But I, for the most part, I don't see a lot. That's different from how they've usually done things. And one of the things I pointed out in that article is that. Maybe I'm speaking from a very biased perspective, considering what I do for a living and what I've done for living for 35 years. But the. The conventional legacy media, it's free advertising. And it's always been perceived as such by professional sports team. What obligation or what responsibility would they feel to talk to us or have talked to us any point in their history, if they didn't think we're getting our message out. This is a way to publicize what we're doing. We're looking at it from the standpoint, at least occasionally in my case where it's, it's a journalistic approach. Then I write about my dog and totally undermining that mindset, but the, that we're looking at it. You know, report tutorials, but they're looking at the incentive for them. Is to just to get their word out. And at a time when budgets are tight and teams are just. Just siphoning money. Traditional media, it's free advertising. If you're looking at it from their standpoint, it's on a platter, it doesn't cost you a cent. Have has the CFL as a. As a whole. Tap that to a sufficient degree, even during, during the whole XFL negotiations, how selective the league was in terms of just saying anything. And sometimes you let the, the, the speculation was a lot harsher than the reality would have been in a lot of cases. I mean, you and I, and so many others have talked about the. The XFL CFL debate and some of the worst fears and et cetera, et cetera. And what's it going to look like? And. It, it just gets out of control sometimes. And the CFL sometimes allows itself to a, let others control the narrative as opposed to. Just telling people what's going on. And I think across the league, I don't know why there just, isn't more accessibility to the media, why they really aren't pushing. Do you, would you want to talk to this person? You want to talk to that person? Just be more proactive because it's all free publicity at a time. When, when I think they can use every ounce of exposure they could get, because they basically been out of, out of circulation for since November of 2019 and the XFL thing say what. You know, and there's a pin opinions that have gone everywhere from a rush modality to forehand lousy in terms of enthusiasm in Canada for that. That that proposal, but at least it got people talking about the Canadian football league. At least it got people. You know, discussing the relative merits of, of Canadian football versus American football and some of the things. That we appreciate about the Canadian game. At least it was being talked about. Sometimes it's just the, the overlook, so many opportunities to just get the message out and become part of the conversation, especially in a country. We're by and large. National hockey league teams rule the day. Nor people or you. There's regardless of the time of year, there's an obsessive interest in Winnipeg. For example in the Winnipeg jets. And, and even though it's technically football season, there's a national hockey league draft. There was just a Seattle cracking expansion draft. Hope you enjoyed it. You love Jordan Everly. A great person. For example, on earlier this week, the bombers decided that they weren't gonna practice. Cause do the, do. I think it was a climactic decision and they said, no media availability that day. Well, Just because you're not practicing. It doesn't mean you can't talk to the media. It doesn't mean to cut your, get your message out. I can think of back to an old sports editor, mine, Greg Drennan when, when teams, regardless of their league or sport or whatever were somewhat resistant to. Dealing with us. And Greg's response was. I guess they don't have any tickets to sell. And it's, it's just free exposure. It's on a platter. Granted media outlets have also felt the pinch and there aren't as many of us. To do what we do is there used to be, there is as much airtime in some cases. And there isn't as much space. In some cases there's more airtime because there's more blogs. There's more podcasts. There's more. Even, even in Saskatchewan, it's amazing how it's evolved, where. We're such a tweener market in Canada where we don't have a national hockey league team. So we didn't have the big team returned to action during the pandemic period, during the peak of the pandemic period. Yeah, we have, you know, four hours of sports. Talk a day on CGMs. KLM Rocco radio. The sports cage with Derek Taylor, two and a half hours a day. Rod Peterson show two hours a day. So you add that up. That's four plus two and a half that's eight and a half hours of sports. Talk a day. And most of it is. And they have increased the amount of time that they're on the air, regardless of the medium during the pandemic. And. Collectively. So. They got to fill that airtime somehow. Why not push that a little bit more. I just think that across the league, there's a, there's certainly things that can be taken it down to jump there. The other thing, and I'm sorry for going on this. Likely Tillbuster Reed, but I don't think they've grasped even come close to grasping the possibilities. Of a built-in audience and how that could be tapped. There's such an interest among youngsters in Canada and touch football and flag football and tackle football. And those kids are already declaring an interest in football. You don't have to question whether they might. Might have an inclination to, to follow football because they're playing it and they're playing it at a very young age. And, and it's in the case of minor football, Saskatchewan, particularly it's been, it's been explosive. And kids love it. But to what extent is the CFL making inroads in those communities? You get the kids interested, get the parents interested. I'm just not sure they'd even come close to tapping not, and it's, it's there and tapping that potential. And then, and. I look at it. I look at it from the standpoint. It's also not cheap to go, to go to a football game. I mean. Compared to national hockey. Peak national hockey league price shirts. It's an expensive, but. You know, foot CFL tickets or in some cases pushing a hundred bucks. If you're taking a family of four. That's a pretty big tab just for tickets. And then you look at how much it costs for popcorn or drinks or whatever. And. A lot of teams across north America. Atlanta Falcons, for example, I think Evanston's done some of this too, where they've taken concession prices into consideration and realize that this is part of. What needs to be streamlined a bit to make it more attractive to people that for people to go to games instead of just staying at home and watching it on a 348 inch television. Have they done anything to address the economic realities of people going to football games in Canada? Have they reduced ticket prices. And then taking into account how many people would take an economic hits? During the pandemic update. They, they thought, well, maybe, maybe we can just make this more accessible by just putting, lowering our prices and. And perhaps getting more people engaged by it. I just don't. There's so many things that they could do and they haven't done in this. I've been in Saskatchewan, predates the pandemic in 19, in 2019, the riders had a first place team with a charismatic quarterback in a new stadium. That's supposed to be a cash cow and their attendance went down and they only sold out one of their nine regular season home games. They sold out. As many regular season home games. In 1999 when they were, when they were awful on a terrible playing surface, winning three games. So they just seem to brush it off as saying, well, there's a lot of options out there. People are dealing with this across the sporting universe. It's not just us. But when you've got all those things working in the Roughriders favor. And. Nonetheless attendance goes down when they have a game to win. On November 2nd, 2019. If they win it, they get first place, but it doesn't happen around here very often. And there are 4,000 shy of a sellout that tells me there's a lot more that could, could have been done and should have been done. And that's that's. That's that's a few months in advance of the pandemic, changing everything. There are some hard lessons that should have been learned before anybody was even talking about COVID. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm going to, I got to hop off here. I'm going to let you go. I thank you so much for that. I, I totally agree that, you know, and when it comes, because I got to talk about our podcasts and I talk with my wife and it's like, you know, What, what subscribers do we have or what listeners should I go? Well, it's a lot bigger percentage of people that wants to CFL. I didn't know if we were in NFL podcasts. It's like 0.01%. Because it's, you know, and like when we covered the spring league and we cover fan controlled football and we cover these smaller leagues, XFL included you. You know that viewership. You know, you, the work that you do is reaching a greater part of that smaller grouping, right? And it should be, they should be more open to that. And, and, you know, thankfully. You know, smart people like you with the CFL, come on and talk with us and have these dialogues. Right. Whereas. If I'm calling up, we have Tom Paris. Doesn't yeah. You know, Adam rank or whatever, it doesn't care. Right. But it's. I totally agree with that. I couldn't agree more. I. You know, trying to utilize, you know, the, the mediums that they have to get the word out. So. It's on a platter, you know? They've talked a lot about how they need a different business plan. And again, we're early in the game, but I haven't seen. Anything that tells me that what they're doing is demonstrably different than what they used to be doing. And that's a little, that's a little worrisome when you consider the plight of the Canadian football league and the general. I think they're traditionally perilous, fragile exist in self Canadian, professional football. It's never an easy ride for them. But there's things we can do to make it. The ride a little less. Little less treacherous. Well, Rob, thank you so much for your time. I want you to get back to enjoying the training camp and make sure that you are a furry friend when you get home tonight for all of us and, and Dorothy as well. I bet you're. Give him a little pat there. Oh, candy has been an absolute joy. She wasn't able to crush the podcast today cause I'm actually at the stadium, but. She's she's, she's been absolutely wonderful. So as of you, it's been so nice to get to know your drain. This. This. Interlude or. Or this, this intermission in the community, professional football. I hope we can keep doing this as this, as football opens up again everywhere. It's like really enjoyed your podcast has been a great contribution to, I think, understanding not only what's going on in the XFL in south of the border Well, thank you so much. We have Darren Gill here. The super agent right on Twitter. CFL sports agent. Thank you so much for coming on today. How is everything going for you now? Like, you know, we're getting into the season. It's been a lot of uncertainty in the world lesson. Like two weeks away now, how, how are things going in your world? Good. Obviously it's a, it's been an interesting ride over the last year and a half. Happy that the league is back and under obviously odd or different circumstances. So there's been an adjustment for my clients, myself teams, like, I guess everyone's still learning through it, learning live, which is interesting. But, but it's been great. I'm just happy to see football back. And certainly, you know, my clients are happy to be back on the field. How challenging was that for you to kind of have to negotiate because, you know, it's like the league is dealing with, you know, COVID things and scheduling things and money things and XFL things and all this. And then we have the players and it's, they're just, they gotta work. Right. They're trying to get money. They're trying to, you know, do what they want to do. How, how was it for you kind of being in the middle there and balancing all that? There was certainly a challenge when the league was allowed to resign players. Or to sign players. There was still a tremendous amount of uncertainty. So, you know, here we are talking about an upcoming season that we had no idea whether a would happen or B what would it look like? So as players are going through the process, it was, it was difficult because obviously most of my clients are, you know, a little bit older and. You know, they have families and they, you know, there's other considerations. Plus a lot of them moved on to some pretty good jobs. So now you've got another factor that you need to consider, which is, you know, I've, I've started a new career. Do I want to step away from it? What am I stepping away for? So there was a lot of questions, regrettably, there was a lot of answers that nobody really had. All right. So going back to December, when, you know, things started to open up. You're like, well, I don't really know what the future might look like, but, but let's plan for good. Right. Let's assume that the world gets better. And let's assume that we're back on the field for hopefully at least 14 games, which I think was initially kind of the view anyways. So, you know, here we are in a situation where things. You know, kind of got cleared up, but even heading into camp. Obviously with the number of retirements we saw, there was still a lot of uncertainty about what will the season actually feel like? What will the restrictions be in my home city? Will I be able to see my family? Will I be able to see. Friends will I, you know, have a normal life. So I would say that it's been, it's been a unique challenge. It's been a challenge that I certainly enjoyed because I enjoy working with my clients and working through somebody special circumstances. But certainly it's unchartered waters. I have to feel like, and not to too quaint a little bit, you know, as a wedding videographer, we deal with a lot of, you know, your business stuff. Right. You know, we're there we deal with it. And I do feel like in the last two years, year and a half now, Very much tied to our clients. Right. And what is happening and the restrictions and what's going on. I mean, do you feel that that bond and that, and obviously the work that you're doing and just those relationships kind of having to weave and, and figure all this stuff out has really strengthened with the guys that you're representing. It certainly has. I mean, you know, I try to have a pretty good relationship with my clients as well, you know? Finding the right clients find that client fit has always been extremely important to me. But obviously this, this makes the conversation different. You know, I, I know most of my clients, you know, spouse's names, I know most of their kids' names. So, you know, I feel for their situation, I underst you know, I know a lot of their parents. Some of the younger players. So, you know, knowing the situations and knowing these clients on a whole other level puts that added layer of care into it. And certainly allowed me to not necessarily be in their shoes because it's hard to do that, but understand their position a lot more. So, you know, regrettably, when Brad's monopoly called me to tell me he was going to walk away from the game first off. You know, whatever my client does is something I'm going to support. And secondly, I understand it a lot more and you know, some other clients, obviously you will walk away Alex, but Taya similarly. You know, again, very different situation from Brad's, but one that I understood and, and it's created, you know, compassion is, is rare in this business, but it's important. So although, you know, losing a client, who's obviously no longer playing is not fun. Seeing somebody step away for the right reasons and seeing somebody who was actually going to start their next career is even more exciting. No. I was left to be there from draft day to hopefully your hall of fame and try mints. And for me, it's been quite interesting that obviously. You know, this, this period caused some uncomfortable conversations, some unexpected conversations, some premature retirements. But it's certainly like, to your point has caused us to kind of get a little bit closer and also talk more about life than just, you know, football or X's. And O's. Yeah. And I want to get into Brad and all that as well. But you know, when we're dealing with these retirements, You know, a lot was made of like coach Dickinson's comments. You know, players are going to come up, there's going to be cuts people. Aren't going to be in shape. And a lot of the people said, Well, you know, the fact is, is a lot of these guys are working, you know, it could be any, any number of jobs, right. It isn't preparing to play for football. Right. And so then I was just on with Rob Vanstone and we were talking about, you know, injuries and going from kind of zero to 60. Right. And getting onto that. How difficult were those conversations that you had with your clients about balancing with the jobs, getting back to it? Is it worth it obviously, you know, these protocols are pretty strict, right? That the CFL is, is rolling out at least. At the beginning of the season, right. Hopefully we're going to, you know, Maybe differentiate, you know, with vaccinated and not, but going on, how, how challenging and difficult were those conversations? You know, I wouldn't say any of them were difficult, but, but they were interesting. And I think that the bigger issue for me was, was players falling out of love with the game. And when you fall in love. You know, when you fall in love with something you want to get up at 6:00 AM, right. If you're barely hockey player, you're going to play at all hours of the day. If you're a passionate, anything, you're going to do things that maybe you wouldn't do it. Normal circumstances. Like in this case. What you saw were some players who actually chose not to get up to that 6:00 AM workout who chose not to put in that extra time because they no longer felt that passion for the game. And I think that was. The bigger issue. Now, obviously there's a host of other players who are throwing up at 6:00 AM, who were working hard, were working out because they fully intended on playing. And that was where their passion was. So it was, it was pretty easy to see. During the pandemic. You know, which of those players might be at risk for not playing in the future. Just given the fact that. If they found something else to fall in love with, they, you know, they, they figured that. It was time to move on in their mind. Forgetting about their body, right? It was the mind that was wanting to leave the game more than the body was. And then I think that was the bigger issue for me. Yeah. I mean, it's a great point. Do you worry about the CFL fan at, you know, as we were approaching the season. Have some of them fallen out of love with the game. Do you, I mean, obviously it's part of the business that you're in and you know, we're trying to get through the season and whatever. Do you worry about that at all? I worry about it. In some cases, you know, obviously the, the chain of football league puts on a phenomenal show. It it's. Yeah, it's an entertainment spectacle into itself and going to a game is, is amazing. Nothing short of it. So, what will that look like? Right. What will that experience look like in stadium? Will the fans. You know, want to go down to most of the state and here in Montreal on a Friday night or a Saturday night or a Sunday afternoon. To watch a game. That's not quite the same as it used to be. So knowing that this is obviously. You know, revenue. You know, generated league through, you know, gates. How do you ensure that people go to the stadium now? Obviously, if you're in Saskatchewan, it's a whole different situation, right? It's like, it's like being a Montreal Canadians fan and hockey or. Green bay Packers, fan and football. You know, they're going to fill the stands because people just love the team. And a lot of other cities, I think they're looking for that entertainment to looking for the excitement. So I'm not as much worried about the product on the field, which obviously this year might not be as good as it has been in years past because some stars walked away. And also, unfortunately, you know, people have been off for a while, so I expect it to be an odd start, but I'm also concerned that the in stadium experience, isn't what it used to be, just because of some of these restrictions. And that potentially will keep people away from the stance early on. How. W when the brand's monopoly news came out, you know, it seemed shockwave. How, how shocking was that for you to get that call? You know, I maintain pretty close contact with the majority of my clients throughout the pandemic. So I think it was, it was becoming a little bit easier to read the tea leaves in terms of what players would be doing post pandemic. So. You know, you are, you're always going to be surprised in that situation, but truthfully, you know, I think the writing was on the wall. For a little while, you know, Brad's. You know, made, made the choice to walk away on his own. And it seemed like I'm not saying it was a long time coming. But I, but I knew that, you know, Brad had so many of the things off the field and certainly, you know, I had some, you know, some things you wanted to accomplish in life that weren't going to be on the football field and. I wouldn't say I was necessarily surprised. Not that it's something that we knew a long time ago, but it's one of those things that when it happens, you're kind of like, you know, I saw some of the, you know, some of the signs were there. That's a. Maybe another client in mind, you know, It would have been a more surprised, but in his case, I completely understood it. Because for us, you know, much is made about, you know, some of the pay that some of the players get ride. And especially this season with all the reduced games and everything. It seemed like he was walking away from, you know, a pretty good contract, you know, had he continued to play right. Pretty good money on the table to continue playing. Absolutely. Several players obviously walked away from some pretty nice contracts or decided not to play. So Brad being one of them. Now let's mutate as being another. So, you know, which tells you, obviously it wasn't about the money. No, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't the fact that they were going to make a little less money because it was a shortened season. It wasn't because, you know, They, you know, they didn't value being football players or what they're being paid. You know, these are players that decided to put other aspects of their life ahead of the game. And that obviously you can't fault anybody for it. And you know, there were players who walked away from NFL, NFL contracts, right. There were players that Saturday, the NFL who were obviously making substantially more money. So. You know, when it comes down to players, health, their safety, or just their passion. You know, money's, money's nice, but it's certainly not going to be the driver for why they were going to stick around. When you're, you know, working through and trying to figure out, you know, what is this season going to look like? Keeping in touch with the players. Is there enough. And I know that this year there were so many unknowns, but. Was there enough transparency with the league? Like what's going on? Are we ready? I mean, I remember, you know, we still didn't have, you know, we were getting ready for the governor's vote. Were. You know, Winnipeg is still signing players. It's like, okay, well, what do you do? We know things, do we not know things what's going on here? I mean, is that challenging to be in that position for you? You know, I think that the information came as quickly as it could. And regrettably obviously, Everyone would have liked to have known sooner. It was obviously players who wanted to figure out what was next to. You know, I had several players who had some pretty lucrative job offers on the table that needed to make decisions. But I do believe that the league did as good as a job as they could. With the information they had in front of them, the CFL PA has been absolutely phenomenal with communicating with membership and has done a really good job behind the scenes of keeping everyone up to date. Agents included. So I, you know, regrettably, everyone worked wanted the communication to be better and quicker. But I don't believe that that was necessarily a possibility, given the challenges and given the hurdles that the league had to go through, which, you know, one was certainly the fact that they needed to figure out their own situation amongst their own owners. And then secondly, needed to figure out what was going to be possible. In each cities that they play. So, you know, I'm guessing that everyone's still going to be upset with how slowly it seemingly went, but I, but I do believe that the league did a pretty good job. How disappointing was last year and now not being able to play and feeling like, you know, that you have, it's kind of like the air was let out of the balloon, right? You know, we, we didn't know. Yeah. This year it did seem like, you know, like we said, you know, they took their time trying to figure that, I mean, how disappointed he was after you and the guys he represent last year. Yeah, it was tough, you know, in hindsight, obviously, It was, it was likely the right decision. You know, given where things ended up and, and what the world looked like last year. Unfortunately, again, I think last year, the communication was a little bit. Different. Wasn't as good as it was this year. So I think the league learns. That the needs communicate better specifically with the players communicating amongst the league owners. And the board of governors is one thing, but last year, the players weren't being, you know, we're not part of that process where I think this year that changed. So I think the most disappointing thing. Going back to last season was the lack of communication. But unfortunately, again, I think the league made the right decision and it was a tough decision to make. But this league did not have the funds to, to go into a bubble. Like some of the other leaks that. I don't want to, you don't have to say anything off color with everybody looking this year. There's been some players. Unhappy with some of the. You know, we gotta be housebound. Some of the protocols and everything, you know, wanting there to be a differentiation. You know, like the NFL is doing. Are you having conversations with those players? Do you have thoughts on that at all? You know, it's a sensitive topic and obviously, you know, My objective is not to influence anybody's decision, whether they want to be vaccinated or not. And what I'd be in favor of having different rules for vaccinated and unvaccinated. Absolutely. You know, Vaccinations were supposed to be the key to freedom and seemingly at this point, the players who have followed the protocols and. Who have listened to have been vaccinated or not receiving any benefits for it. So I, you know, mildly surprised because most other leagues obviously are trading. A two tiered system. But, but I also understand that it's much harder to enforce. It's much harder to control. And again, the league that doesn't have the resources that I don't really have. Are going to have a difficult time trying to figure out how to actually create this two tiered system. So regrettably, the answer is you're going to play. Sydney, what is now the lowest common denominator, which is the unvaccinated person and design all the rules around it. To dry and to dry and be as safe as possible. So I do, I do also understand that the league's focus is player safety, both on and off the field. And this is the way they feel the player safety is maximizing at the least risk is taken. And unfortunately it's a, it obviously is upsetting some players, but again, the players who didn't want to play in that scenario, didn't have to, they could have chosen to, to obviously stepped away from the game. But those that are there, obviously. That's kind of signed up for, for what's being put in front of them. Yeah, it. Cause, cause I get both sides and you know, the CFL has to get through the season. I mean, there's no like they can't have, you can't have the rug pulled out and, and like I said, we just, your interview will fall. Rob's here. Talking about how there is no wiggle room right in the season eight. Yeah. It just came out here today that if some of the NFL games can't be played this year because of the 18 week season. They'll just be forfeits. Right? Cause last year they really didn't know all that stuff. So I get both sides, but it is challenging because it's like the CFL has to play. Right. There's no option for them not to. You know, there, there has to be a great cup on December 14. Exactly. I mean, I think that's what, you know, The board of governors that the legal owners signed up for a season. And I think at that point, And everyone, I think understands the fact that these owners are potentially giving up a lot, which is, you know, a lot of them are gonna be. You know, dipping into their pockets. To keep these teams afloat for a season. There's no doubt about that. Right? You're talking about several million dollars at best in some of these cases for these owners. So I think on the flip side, the owners are going well in order to make sure I protect some of my investment here. I'm asking something of you. And what I'm asking of you is to follow the strict protocols so that we're both committed. I'm committing my pockets and you're committing your time and unfortunately, a bit of your solitude. So I get it. And you know, to your point, the league needed to happen this year. I wouldn't. Even want to think about what this league would look like after missing two seasons. And unfortunately to your point as well. These aren't the ideal scenario. This is not the ideal circumstance, but it's probably the right thing to happen. Looking forward here. Right. You know, we're getting ready for kickoff. I obviously I'll allow your players making waves, training camp, doing things. And a good way. How are you feeling? Seeing, seeing the guys, you know, here obviously, you know, reading the training camp reports, all these kinds of things, looking forward. Who is kind of excelling in your mind and who are we looking for to, to play in the theme? Play this year? I think all my clients are excelling sex. You know, that's like asking. Proud father, which of his kids he loves most. So by no stretch of the imagination, and I'm going to start naming names that are, cause I think I represent the cream of the crop, but you know, I think everyone's excited for the season, but the challenge now is not having a baseline. Like every team feels like they're in a great position. Every team feels like they can go out and beat anybody. But, you know, absent of actually enabled to play anybody. You have really no read on how teams. Are doing. So I think in their own little bubbles, every team is feeling good. Obviously there have been some injury issues which are, which are unfortunate. I think we're all excited just to see you. The season start and really get those first few weeks out of the way. Cause I'm just like, it normally is. It's usually pretty ugly. So, you know, I want to get into week. You know, week five week six and see. Really what's out there because right now I think there's, there's a lot of uncertainty around, under the quality of play with the players being off. No preseason. Obviously there were some games that were trying to be scheduled between teams. That obviously we're not allowed to be played. So. I'm excited to see where the season goes. I think, you know, I want my clients to stay healthy first and foremost. And, and, and really, you know, I'm excited to see real CFL football and, and get people back on the field. Yeah, it's hard. You know, Andy. We even just in the last week, I think like Edmonton, you know, okay, we're taking a break day this day, or we're doing this, or we're doing that. You. It just doesn't seem like it is going to be, you know, we're doing some inner squad, right? I think the Roughriders is doing the, you know, they're and they're charging, you know, some fans are going to come, but it does get to the point where at some point you it's it's. You know, we're pads on and we're hitting and, and it will be. Those first couple of weeks. I think you're going to be interesting to see how that all works out. Yeah. It usually is right. I mean, whether it be the CFL or NFL. First few weeks, you. Although, obviously you have a preseason, you know, at that point, it's, you know, you're trying to evaluate your talents. You're not putting your entire playbook in place. So let's see what that looks like. And to your point, you know, You know, It's been difficult to actually have kind of these full. Really, you know, a hundred percent effort practices because teams are obviously a little freaked out over what happened, you know, with some injuries early on, not wanting to push your guys too hard. And that's the right thing to do. You know, Just like, you know, Anybody right now is getting back into any sport that they were playing before the pandemic. No matter what age you are, what skill level, or you've got to work yourself back in slowly. And I think that's one thing that teams are, are keenly aware of, and they want to make sure that obviously players are given their time. They're taking some action. Veteran days as we call it off, they need, and they're watching their bodies. So, you know, not only are you trying to actually build a football team, put an offense and put a defense in determine who's your starters, but you're now also trying to make sure that the players have high value. Are probably actually getting a little less playtime or what you're also doing, you know, in some cases, You're actually not letting anybody on the field much more than your starters. So, you know, a big concern for me. Some of the players are battling for backups spots. They're not getting many reps in practice because you just don't have those reps to give. So what what's, what's going to happen? One of those veterans gets hurt. Which inevitably is going to happen. Like, it's just, that's not a pandemic issue. That's just the nature of the game and how ready are those backups going to be? So I think that's kind of the, this little sprint we're going through versus your usual marathon is going to cause for some interesting repercussions later on in the season when maybe that rookie needs to step in and he's going. I didn't get a single rep in training camp. And now, now I'm starting, right. Or, you know, I didn't get a rep until the last week or until our entire squad scrimmage. And now all of a sudden I'm stepping up into a bigger role. So it presents a whole boatload of challenges. The good news is that everyone's in the same boat. Everyone's got the same challenges and that's why I think those first few weeks are. We're going to be interesting. Yeah, tremendous insight. It's really, really interesting because it's so much to balance. I mean, I couldn't imagine trying to be one of these coaches or players and try to figure out, you know, like you said, The restrictions and the playbooks and the players coming back and injuries and we're getting ready to go. And we don't know. So. I it's a lot to balance. Any other thoughts leading into the season before we let you go? I mean, I thought this was tremendous and I really appreciate your insights. No, I appreciate it. It's been a phenomenal conversation, obviously, you know? I love your passion as you become a fan of the Canadian football league. And. And then jump into it. So you're producing some phenomenal content. You know, I think this is, you know, I. You know, I guess the fans are gonna have to be understanding, right. Be understanding of the first few weeks, be understanding of the players who chose to walk away from the game. Be understanding of the players who are choosing to play and maybe right now are not playing at their highest level. So just like everyone is trying to readjust and adapt. I think that the same is going to go for this league. Also be understanding for your, your coaches and your GM's, who might not have had the time to evaluate players might not have had the time to, you know, introduce new systems and playbooks. So. It's going to be unique this season I'm sure will be unique in itself. But I think the fan base. Just needs to be a little bit patient, but more, more important. I think it's going to be fun. Like when we get back to blink football here. People are gonna be excited, obviously. I think we're all really, really excited to see, you know, a game that we just fall in love with back on the field. Again, otherwise again, it's, let's get that football snapped and hopefully we're all watching great cup together in person. Yeah. It'd be a, this is the much anticipated season. I can't, I can't imagine the CFL season as anticipated as this one kicking out of sand. So it should be good. There. Thank you so much again for your time. And I think you guys have a pretty cool thing going, you got to let some, some very lively discussions going online every week about, about alternative football. It's really good. You know, so yeah. Thanks for inviting me. I appreciate it. Yeah, let me hit record here. We all have to start yet. You know, I just figured Argo stuff. We we had Dan Ralph on last week, the wrote the big article about it. Yeah. You know, we're going to, we're leading with, like, we have rod Vanstone with the Roughriders camp and we've got Darren Gill. That's like a sports agent with all the retirement. So this will just be kind of rounding out the discussion, but I figured to get you on. Since we ever did it before. And then we can obviously revisit. To send it later, but I figured wallets. Top of mind. And then obviously we'll talk about how your book and stuff. Any, any other thoughts about anything before we get going? Well, I was just funny. No, I was just, I was just watching your broadcast room two weeks ago when the, when the news broke up. The league, the two leaks, the merger talks. Be breaking down. It's funny. I was very interesting to hear you guys that were beginning of the show talking about the, the sense of fan entitlement up here and so on. And, you know, I'm on record. Pretty, pretty blatantly as being, I was really in favor of a full blown merger. I was. I was one of the few Canadians who was very disappointed to see it, to see it fall apart. And. I'm not convinced it's completely dead, but I want football to survive in Toronto. And I'm not sure that the CFL as it stands now is going to be around much longer. So if you want to talk about that, I'm happy to talk about it. People may be sick to death of talking about CFL accidental merger, but I'm happy to go there. If you want to go there and read. Yeah. I I'm getting a weird feedback on your end. Okay. I wonder what I should do. I could try. Well, I mean, if I could try taking out the headphones that I assume that makes it worse or does it change it at all? It's like a weird, it's like, In the background a little bit. It's weird. It's really quiet here. So 11. Let me look at my audio settings and see if there's something going on in there. Hold on. I'm looking here, select the, my slack speaker. That is that's weird. Ah, Let's look at. Okay. So I, I didn't, I didn't really find anything. To change their, are you still getting it? Yeah, it's just when you. Yeah. And you unplugged your mic. Yeah. Can you hop out and hop back in? Yes, absolutely. So I'll, I'll come back in. I got a different set of headphones. We can always try if need be, but I'll leave it. I'll come back. So I'll be right back. Okay. How's that sound? Same thing. Now it's not as bad. It's. It's a Phantom. I think I'll just clean it up. I think they, sorry about that. That's weird. I haven't never had that problem before, so I don't know what's going on, but obviously. Way better now. It's way better. Okay. Okay. That's good. Yeah, it's good. We'll roll with it. Okay. Good. And then recording. Yeah. All of this, I'll put the noise compressor on sometimes the cleanser. Paul's out here. And to my co-host, it's all, it's all the zoom stuff. Like it's never anybody, it could just, we've had some where we've logged in a room and it won't, and like we've literally had to end the meeting and then start a new one. Like it's just zoom stuff. So it's not. Well, I always think it's a miracle to see these things produced the way they are. They usually look pretty slick and they usually sound good. Right. So it's, it's amazing that you do what you do. Yeah. But anyway, no. Back to your point. It was this funny because I posted, we had. I post the interview standalone and everybody, you know, for like the last week. Okay. We're done with the XFL, whatever. So like yesterday I post our outlets like CME Geoghegan scout, whatever a standalone video. Yeah, like. Nobody gives a s**t. There's no views. There's no anything you. Right by posts. You know, Argos to the XFL. You know, and I'm like, guys, it's putting your money where your mouth is. You say you don't want this content, but then yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Well, we have Paul bloods here, a, a CFL historian, Argos historian, Paul, I, I know we've gone back and forth before you've been on that. We can review with Mark Perry. I thank you so much for coming on. The, why don't you just give us a little background about why, you know, we should even trust what you have to say, because obviously you have a, you know, a long history of all this sort of stuff. And who are you hearing that? Well, thanks. I appreciate that. I'm well, I'm a, I'm a long-time Argo fan, lifelong Argo fan. Basically I worked in journalism for most of the past 40 years. I didn't do too much. Reporting on the CFO. I did a couple of years. I was out in Calgary in the mid, mid eighties, and I covered the Stampeders. So that was a, quite an experience. Gov covering a CFL game for a wire service was quite a, quite an exciting adventure because you gotta, you know, you gotta have the story done the minute the game ends and, and the CFL lead changes in the last minute are pretty common. So I, I did that, but I mostly worked as an editor and a newsroom manager and so on. I've been an Argo season ticket holder for most of the past 40 years. And I've written a couple of books. I've written. I wrote a book about the 1983 Argonauts, which that was a team that was really dear to me as a young man. They were a team that broke a 31 year, great cup drought two years after the worst year in team history. So that came out in 2013, the 30th anniversary. Of the 83 team. And I've just finished and it's about to be out released in the next month or so a book about the 1991 Argos, which I describe it as the craziest wildest most magical season in Argonaut history. They've been around for almost a century and a half. Right. Since 1873. But that year 98, 19 91. With John candy and Wayne Gretzky, as co-owners along with Bruce McNall, they've paid. Crazy money to get rocket Ismail out of Notre Dame, pay them more than any football player had ever been paid to that point. They won the grey cup, the coldest great cup ever. The quarterback, Matt Dunnigan played it with a broken collarbone, very erode performance. It's amazing story coming out around September 1st, maybe a bit earlier than that. And I've been following. The fortunate of the Argonauts incredibly closely, really, since 1977, I was a fan as a kid back in the late sixties, but really since 77, I've been fanatically interested in the team. Just paying attention to everything, you know, videotaping every game. And reading every story. I can get my hands on. And I've acquired a lot of knowledge and all the artists doesn't make me. I mean, I'm certainly not an insider, like Dave Naylor or Farhand Lawley or somebody like that. So what I would have to say is mostly just my opinion. Although I can certainly talk very knowledgeably about the 91 team and all the stuff that goes into that book. So that's me. Thank you. I you said, yeah, the coldest gray cup on record that I was going to say, well, maybe the coldest Greg cup yet. Via with this December 14th. And, and I I'm so glad you came on today. So, you know, we did the, if you've made it this point in the show, you know, we did the whole reference thing. We've had Darren Gill on. Now we're going to do a little XFL CFL stuff. You know, we're going to Paul and I talked at the top of the show. You know, I post the stamp. Previewing the season. You know, we don't get all the, all the views. But yet people are saying, you know, just talking about the season we want to play, we want to play people, you know, really wanting to seem to hear about this stuff. So we're going to do XFL CFL stuff. I want to talk to Paul. It's interesting too. We had a will a will from the Argos fan cast on. The podcast a couple of weeks ago, I thought will was great. Cause to me, it's, it's interesting, you know, here. Entering the league. All we hear about is like no one cares about the Argos Toronto doesn't care about the Argos Argos, one of the leave MLSE doesn't care. You know, nobody cared, but then we have these people, right? Like you, this is a story. The team or will, you know, this doing this deep dive fan podcast. And I'm like, how do you, Paul, how do you balance those two things of like, here's this team and the, you know, the history and the lineage I care so much about, but yet. Constantly. That's all we hear is like, you know, the Argos don't care and no one cares about the Argos. Yeah. It's, it's a challenge. And all like where I feel like where we've got this dwindling band of hardcore Argo fans, Argo fan, the true Argo fans are really fanatical about the team and others. The people that go to BMO field, watch that team. They love it. And they make a ton of noise. Even if there's only 12 or 14,000 of us there. But it's too bad. The interest has dwindled over the last four decades. You know, they flipped up from time to time. It blipped up in 91 when rocket came in and candy and Gretzky, and then it went back down afterwards. It's it's really, you know, It's it's it's hard. This market is. I just think this market has, has lost its interest or zest for, for the Canadian football league, as it exists now in its, in its current incarnation. It's, it's a small league. It's nine teams, the same number of teams that were there back when the NHL only had six teams. It's you know, a Toronto's become. Well, first of all, Toronto Stiles itself as a world-class city, it aspires to be thought of as a world-class city, which is kind of one of the annoying traits of Toronto. Made beautiful traits about Toronto as well, but, but it's, it's, it's sort of snootiness about itself is in the world. Stage is an annoying factor and. You know, I think when Bluejays arrived in 77 and suddenly the New York Yankees and the Boston red Sox were coming to town, it made the Saskatchewan Roughriders look kind of small. Right. And. And then 95, the Raptors got here and they've. MLSE, you know, give them credit. They've done an amazing job of building up interest in that franchise. Some people, you know, certainly some CFL fans go online and say things like, you know, they'll all the, as soon as the team's losing, the, the fans will bleed away. That's not happening. The Raptors are embedded in this. In this market now they are in some ways. Among a younger demographic. They're bigger than the Leafs, in my opinion. And the Leafs are of course are gigantic. So you've got, you've got now got extra competition. TFC came along in the early two thousands and MLSE built that up and they, they really glommed onto a generation of younger people who wanted to go there for the. The party and the atmosphere. We're necessarily hardcore soccer fans, but it was a fun event. And that's kind of a generation of people that the Argos may have lost for one reason or another. Some people say it's because the games were blacked out in the seventies and eighties. And some people say it's because the NFL salary thing went so out of whack, but CFL started to look, smell time. There's a lot of reasons why it's happened. But it is frustrating because I love this team. I don't want it to go out of business. And one of the reasons I was in favor of looking hard at a hard, full full-scale merger with the XFL would because I want football in Toronto. I want to be able to go and cheer for the Argonauts double blue. At BMO field. And if it meant. You know, having to play for downs and getting to play against the DC defenders or the, or the battle Hawks or whoever. I, I, that would have been fun. I jazz up the rules, make it, make it something that young kids will get excited about. Maybe it's that maybe that gets football a chance to survive. I'm really worried that MLSE has written around a patient at some point, you know, they they've figured out now that they've owned the team for a few years, they figured out how hard a sell this is. And they may be looking at like, Here's what I've said. Read I, when they first moved into Bemo in 2016, I said, you know, it's going to take three to five years to build it up back. So they get 20 to 22, maybe 25,000 for some games because we're dealing with three and a half decades of. Bad owners or neglectful owners or problems. So three to give it three to five years and it's going to grow now. It's evident that it's going to take longer than three to five years. I now say eight to 10, and I don't know that Amy MLSE is willing to give it eight to 10. That's why I think. I mean, I don't have any inside information that they were pushing hard for the XFL, but I believe they were, and I was with them, frankly. It's just hard. So, you know, we just got the crack and franchise here. Right? My wife and friends and I, we all went, we watched the expansion draft last night. You know, we record for tomorrow show. Yeah. And, you know, trying to explain the Dorothy, my wife afterwards. Cause you know, w try to explain it, like, how has the expanse did you have to work? You know, we had Vegas a couple of years. I go. You know, the difference is, and obviously it's a lot harder to be like adding you. Like look at the, the Atlantic schooners. Right. And, and how long have they been coming? But it's nice. I was, I was at a, a great cup party by the sponsored by the Atlantic scooters in 1982. Yeah. So. 40 Years. Yeah, and I go. But the difference is like, you know, here we're putting a team in Seattle. And the, you know, we watched the whole broadcast, you know, the show was great. We have all the Seattle legends come out. We have all these people there. There's viewing parties all over and they go, you know, think of this whole section of everybody now. That is excited about the NHL. Right. You know, I wasn't in NHL person, I've gotten into it a lot more. Now that a lot of the Canadian reporters we talk to, you know, they follow the NHL, but. Sure I go. Just think about all this new viewership, right. That you're opening yourselves up to, and people are excited about it. And, you know, and I go, we'll see that, you know, I'm trying to explain my wife and I go, you know, then the difference is. CFL doesn't want any change or expansion or any sort of, and I said, you know, and so trying to see both of those things side by side, it's a very interesting. Dichotomy. Do you get what I'm saying? I absolutely do. And I think you're onto something. I think, I think the resistance to change is so strong in. In the league. And among the fans and among a big segment of the media. It's you know, like they just it's like you can't, you can't tinker with the rules. You can't, you can't do anything about three downs or 12 men on the field or the. The player ratio. That stuff's all considered to be sacred. And at the same time, attendance has been going down slowly but steadily for a long time. You. Oh, I mean the lox and the Argonauts play before 69,000 fans in 1977 at Olympic stadium. The Argos average in the high forties, in the late seventies. Now they're averaging 12, 13, 14. Montreals averaging what 18. BC, which has a 50,000 seat stadium has the whole upper deck closed off. Edmonton used to put 60,000 in Commonwealth stadium, and they're not doing that anymore. It's not growing and. It's happening at a time when every other sport has grown, the NHL has grown from six teams to 12 and all the way up now to 32. Basketball was not even on Canadian's radar, back in. 1985. Now it's big time on the radar, particularly in Southern Ontario, which of course is the biggest market. It's like the New York and Los Angeles and Chicago combined for size. So it's, you know, Not growing and not changing is not. A recipe for success. And that's why I was, I was in favor, like, let's go from 19 to 18. Let's. Let's do all kinds of exciting stuff. Let's get, let's get kids to get think, wow, the rock. This is cool. New rules. Make it exciting. It's not happening for now. Maybe, maybe it'll be resurrected in a couple of years or maybe MLSE does what is being rumored or reported that maybe they'll just move the Argonauts into the XFL. I, that would not be a great outcome. It would still give me the ability to cover. You know, to, to go to watch football. Bemo. But it would be, it would be at the cost of. A lot of the Canadian football league, even though MLSE or even, or the Argos or the, maybe the weakest franchise in terms of paid attendance. There's a big market there in the biggest market by far. And Toronto leaves the CFL. I believe the league. We'll shrink. I think it goes down to six teams. I think Montreal and BC follow it pretty quickly. I don't know of Hamilton and Ottawa will survive longterm. If there's no Toronto and Montreal. So you're going to end up with this four or six. Team league. Based primarily in the three smallest Prairie cities and all Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg. They're not tiny, but they're not huge. They're not major metropolises. And what is the salary cap right now? It's five and a half million bucks. What's it going to be? What? It's down to four or six teams and the big advertisers that want the Toronto market or not. Bringing in their money. Maybe the TSN contract goes way down in value. Maybe the sponsorship declines, maybe you can't pay bill Lee by Mitchell 500 or $700,000. You got to pay. Your quarterbacks. $200,000 And everybody else, 50,000 or whatever. Right. So it would be, it would be a sad outcome. That's what happens. I mean, I guess the best case scenario that I'm thinking at this point is that maybe, and this is, this is Joseph. Fantasy. Maybe MLSE puts a team in the XFL and keeps the Argos alive, but who knows? We're going to find out in the next year and a half. Right. Yeah. That's what's so frustrating is, you know, like you said, the Argos or, you know, or MLSE, you know, just not being happy there, right. Having this kind of. It's like they're they got caught holding the bag. Right. You know, they, they bought this franchise. Everything else is profitable. You know, they have the Argos, they can't do whatever. Yeah, then leaving. Isn't a great situation, but, you know, and we said on the podcast last week, when we interviewed Dan Ralph. I don't think they'd be XFL, just like sticking the team in Toronto is the answer either. Right? I mean, I think that that is a terrifying prospect as well, because, and I've said that, you know, I think it's, it's so, you know, contentious right now, the relations, you know, between. Not all, but some of the CFL fans. That they just want to go out of spite. They don't want to even matter though. They'll look. The outsider they'll look at it, which I think that it wasn't that kind of the fear when, when Toronto with the Raptors and all that, it was kind of going to be right. I feel like there was a fear of that when I was, you know, cause this has been years ago now, but I remember when they. Put the team there. And then all of this is America coming in and this is all this stuff. And so I just, that's why I was so excited about the merger talks. Cause I just thought that, or some sort of partnership is better than cause neither one of these solutions is good. Well, and, you know, the, the thing is like, in my, in my view, what they should have been trying for it again. With a merger, but a merger that maintained. A lot of what makes Canadian football, what it is not. I mean, the rules of the rules, whether it's three downs or four downs. You know, you can, you can deal with that. My feeling actually on the rules, let's jazz them up. It's like we give me a more entertaining product than we, than we currently have. And I think that could have been achieved. But I, the division that I sketched out. Would have kept that, you know, the, the Northern division would be the nine current CFL teams. And then the Southern division would be nine teams in the United States. And they would mostly play within their own country, but there'd be some crossover maybe like say the CFL east would play at the XFL west one game per year. So you're playing. The Argos are playing, you know, Canadian teams for 14 games and they're playing or say 12 games and they're playing XFL teams for four games. And every, every team's doing that. A list, a little bit of crossover. You still have a great cup championship to her to reward the Canadian chef, the champion of the Canadian conference. And it's, and it's a neutral site, so people plan their trips and they go there and it's a big deal. And then the week later you have the [unknown]. The merged league championship game down in it. Maybe it's in the states. Maybe it's in Vancouver, Toronto, wherever. And so you've got two events instead of one. You've got rivalries built in the S in the Southern division due to Southern divisions among those teams. You can maintain the rivalries that exist up here and you start to develop new ones. The Argos get to have a rivalry with Hamilton, but they also get to have one with LA or with New York or whatever. Right. That's what I thought would have worked. And it, who knows why it broke down, whether, you know, the business thing was obviously a very challenging to try to bring together. I mean, the, the, the ownership structures are so different, right? The CFL has got three different types of ownership structure. And they're, they're totally different, you know? The MLSE the conglomerate ownership. The individual rich guy ownership, and then you've got the community-based teams and how they'll ever come to agreement on anything is beyond me. I mean, that's part of the problem. This league is that. You can't, you cannot get unanimity when you've got a team that's owned by. 50,000 Winnipeggers we put in a share. And then you've got a team that's owned by one of the wealthiest conglomerates in the sports industry, in the world. And MLSE. Is this hard. And I go back to this NHL thing because just being able to incorporate and do all the, you know, I get you. You know, when all this came out and they go, oh, you know, the nineties and the expansion didn't work. But the world is so different now. And in life, like I said, last night, we're doing this expansion draft and we're drafting people from Calgary and we're drafting people from when you were doing all of this stuff and it, it just, it makes it feel so much bigger. Right? Yeah. And that goes to, you know, I got in. I got in Buku trouble this week because they came out with the new, you know, rise with us. Tagline there the theme. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I go. I think that is better and more inclusive than the hourly league before. And I got a lot of pushback of, well, you know, What do you even know? That was, I was supposed to have inclusive. I go, well, As a non-Canadian. That is not inclusive when you say it's our league. And I absolutely understand, and respect and wanting to have pride and all those things, but, but, but opening your doors and expanding these borders, like I just think of how much bigger the NHL felt, watching everything in the last week with everybody in the world that I see on, on sports media, talking about the NHL and the draft and you know, all the, what if. Carrie price goes, you know, what's all this going to look like. And then, and then we get to the CFL and it's like, no, like this is it. Like we, you know, we, and. It's it's frustrating that we can't find some sort of growth in that side of things. You know, there's, there's Canadians have a sort of a weird, I don't know if inferiority complex is the right description, but there's living beside the United States is a big challenge, right? I mean, It's 10 times the size of Canada in terms of population. And, and it's, and we, we are inundated with American media, right? We get all the TV channels and all the, all the big everything in the world. That's big, almost comes out of the U S. And, and so there's this tendency to sort of be, be kind of insulated. And when somebody, when somebody's Canadian or weird, if they want, they want. They want Canadians to be stars in the United States. But when they, when somebody becomes a star in the United States, they get mad about it. It's just, it's this weird thing. And it's almost like that. I mean, I think it's like, well, we, you. If you, if you were to maybe if there was no such thing as the XFL, you could probably engage Canadian football fans in a serious discussion about what can we do to make the product more successful. Bigger better, more exciting, more entertaining. But because it's coming from this outside reports, it's like, okay, we got to just build the wall. We got it. We got to put the barriers up and I just thought that was wrong. And I was, you know, I was not surprised, but I was just disheartened to see on, on. On Twitter and online. How many people just sort of just. Bike, but pure rote. Just, just, no, we're not doing it. No, no, no. That's all. I was just like that. Right. Man, we should have been open to that. And I think, I like to think some of the ownership groups were, I hope it's not just MLSE, but obviously they, if MLSE was the driving force that didn't get their way. Maybe they've got some leverage now to push for some other things like revenue sharing, whether that's going to be enough to keep them satisfied within the league. I guess. We'll see. But we move on for now. I mean, we do it on season starting and it is exciting. I'm a guy of, can't wait to get back in that stadium for the first time in 20. I'll be almost 22 months. By the time I get in there, that's going to be great. Yeah, I just, you know, and we said, when all this broke down, I just don't know. You know, until the XFL existed. Two years ago. I don't know what was preventing all these sweeping changes and everything beforehand, you know, that. This meeting candida solution and everything else. R I. I think a lot of what was preventing. It was the fact that you've got these soaps, so different ownership styles, like how do you, how do you get those guys to all come to agreement? They've all got different priorities. One of the things that's a challenge for MLSE that makes MLSE. Situation, the challenges that they don't like. I think with the other teams in the league, they want to break, they want to break even, or make a profit. MLSE wants to drive enterprise value. They, they, their whole thing is about making the Raptors and the Leafs worth more than they were worth last year. Because it's on may only be a value on paper until you finally sell it, but they they've grown those things exponentially. And growing the value of the Argonauts is going to be a real challenge when you've got a 19 league and it's hard for them to fill the building. Right. Maybe if they do stick it out for the eight to 10 years, maybe it can happen. I'd like to think the product can be entertaining enough. And if they market it, You know, the way that they need to, and it's going to take a lot of time. It's not like they haven't marketed at all. They, they often get accused of doing nothing. That's not true, but obviously more things are needed if you're not putting bodies in the seats. So maybe five years from now when they've had the team for eight, maybe, and now we are getting 20 to 24 in there and at least it is turning them a nice profit. It's maybe not growing enterprise value, but it leaves us making them a million bucks a year or something like that. So they they're willing to just keep that going. That's maybe the best we can hope for right now. So you do think that the MLSE cause I have heard that and even, I think Dan Ralph last week, you know, I can't remember if it was in his interview, but in the conversation, we've talked with people in the last couple of weeks, they do accuse MLSE of not doing enough to promote you. You do feel like they've, they've made the valley in effort. I think they have, I mean, you can argue specifics, right? I mean, one of the things that gets raised all the time is, is tailgating. They. When the, when the, when the Argos moved into ML or to Bemo rather, they, they, they launched sort of like an officially sanctioned tailgate party. And tailgating, unlike in the U S tailgating is not, it is not a huge tradition in Canadian football, the rules, the liquor laws are harder here and stuff. And so, you know, and, and one of the attractions, why a lot of people like to go to Buffalo bills games, or, or Seahawks games or whatever is because there's this tailgating experience. So MLSE actually was, it was not MLSE at the time it was. Two thirds of MLSE. Okay. The Argos. In 2016 and they said, we're going to launch this tailgate thing. And, and the people that did it loved it. But it, because the laws are pretty strict, MLSE had to staff the thing and you know, they, you could bring in your own beer and stuff. You had to buy officially sanctioned beer and all this stuff. And so not enough people went to justify the cost of doing it. So they pulled the plug on it after a couple of years, never said, well, you can't just do it for two years and expect it to succeed. Well, I agree in a way, like if they stuck with it for five years, maybe it would have grown, but you're asking you're, you're expecting [unknown]. MLSE to just keep taking loss after loss, after loss, after loss. And they're not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. They are, they are a publicly traded company that has to drive shareholder value. So you can't just throw money away. They've done some pretty cool things. And in fact, they replaced the tailgates with, with like, sort of like a beer garden type thing out inside the stadium. And the beer is the cheapest in the CFL. It's fun. They get former players there. That's a lot of fun. They're not, it's not like they're doing nothing. Do they need to do. You know, a huge pile of TV commercials. I don't know if that works anymore. Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't. They have a great social marketing team, social media team. I think the best thing, the CFL, so nobody can accuse them of being bad on Twitter. But is that enough? Well, until they start putting bodies in the building. Nothing's enough, right? Yeah. And that's the thing too, is it's it's, you know, it needs to be one of 85 things, right. That, you know, Edmonton is, is they're doing the free t-shirts or they're doing the 17 kids 17 and under for labor day, I'm like, yeah, that's one of my [unknown]. You know, we got to do the beer garden and the tailgate, and, you know, maybe we gotta make the seats more affordable or whatever, or we merge. Yeah. I mean, it needs to be, it's not just, oh, we did one thing and now let's see how that, that goes for the next couple of years. But, you know, what's funny reading like that thing with Evanston, giving the kids free tickets to the, to the game that the week after labor day, they've, they've actually done that many times over the years where I was living in Edmonton, they did the same deal and they would put. 57,000 Fans in that building on that Friday night after labor day with half of them being kids on freebies that brought their dads, or they buy beer and they buy t-shirts and all that stuff. So as soon as that was announced, last week, people are on lightly. Your articles need to do that. Well, you know what. Edmonton is a city of 800,000 people. Toronto is a city of 8 million people. You know, many school boards. There are, you don't matter how many, how, how hard it would be to muster free tickets for any kid that wants to come in this market. It would be a huge undertaking, right? They're they're, they're hamstrung in some ways by the size of the market. No other city has the same traffic problems. Toronto has. I mean, just getting to a game. It's a, it can be an ordeal. Vancouver. It's not great for those coming in from the suburbs. It's pretty crappy as well. But, you know, it's easy to get to a game in Ottawa. It's easy to get through a game at Hamilton. Regina Calgary. Those places are all, all nicely sized cities. With good size populations, but enough people that want to go to football games. And it's pretty easy to get there in Toronto. You got to, you either got to fight traffic and it's 24 hours a day, 365, or you got to get on public transit and. Other transit doesn't come. I mean, you can get there by public transit through, from most directions, but it still takes a while. Right. Mike? My train ride takes me an hour. Luckily it drops me off right at the door. That's fantastic. But yeah, it's the, the city, the size of the, of the market and the other and the competition. Right. It's not just blue Jays. And Leafs and Raptors. It's also a world-class theater. Tons and tons of music venues. I mean, we got, we get every musical performer known demand comes through Toronto. Obviously COVID has put that on hold temporarily, but there's a lot of competition for your money here. It's just funny and I don't, it's not just, you. That does this, but yeah, I I've, I've hear a lot about, you know, Trying to get to the games and the time of year and the weather and the traffic. I mean, I do, I hear a lot of that from a lot of people. I go. Yeah, I have lived in Seattle my whole life. I've never heard one person complain about trying to get to a C hot game. I mean, I just. You know, cause it's just, you make the effort, right? I mean, it isn't, it's not, it's not just a it's. I'm not trying to create. No, it's a, it's a totally valid point. Whenever, whenever anybody makes that point. And sometimes I've made that point online and people say, well, the Bluejays don't have any trouble. And that's true. The blue Jays, they put a lot of people into that building who also have to fight the same traffic, which speaks to the fact that the Argos are just not in the sporting consciousness of Toronto, the way the blue Jays are and, or the Leafs Raptors of course are, or the way the Seahawks are in Seattle with the way the crack and we'll be going forward. Right. So. It's it's, it's a challenge. Getting, getting the articles back into people's people's consciousness is really the problem here. And it's a problem that has, that goes back to about 19. Well, arguably to 1977, when the blue Jays arrived in it. It's it, it, it took a few years to really kind of begin, but, you know, I would trace it to about 84. The Argos one, the gray company, 83 for the first time in 31 years. Finally, we finally got what we wanted to get. We've been trying for three decades. And then the blue jeans just got good right around that. And suddenly people said, okay, we finally won the grey cup. Now we can move on to other stuff. And so they started going to baseball games. And the Argos didn't do nothing to market themselves in the 1980s. That was a different ownership group and they really did. Screw it up badly while the blue Jays were marketing the hell out of themselves to young families. So it goes back to about there. Right. And then it's good. Like I said, it's gone up and down a few times since then. But it really is. It's a pattern that you can trace back to anywhere from 77 to 84, that this began. And. That's not going to get fixed in one year. Now [unknown]. You know, The logistical concerns are, are always raised. In defense, right? Cause it was the same thing with the LA wild cats, like in the XFL, you know, their attendance was terrible and people blame that. Cause it's outside, whatever New York had the same problem with the guardians. It, oh, it's a MetLife. It's, you know, You know, LA doesn't have trouble putting butts in seats for successful franchises. Right? They were in New York. So I mean, that, that. XFL people are just as guilty gobble. You know, if the LA Wildcats were in downtown LA and not in Culver city or wherever the heck it is, you know, it would be, it would be more easier to get people in there. My last guest, I guess the one, the one reason I bring it up though, I guess, is because people often say the answer for the Argos is to move to the suburbs and like, that is it. That is. Minorly insane. The suburbs is, it's not a suburb. It's the suburbs. There are tons of cities around Toronto, and there is no easy way to get from point a to point B. There isn't transit going from, from Mississauga to Pickering. So you moved the seat, you moved the team out to the suburbs and you're going to hope you're going to hope that that suburb supports it because the rest of the Toronto is not going to no, I think that, I think you need to be in that major. You know, in the, in the, I mean, that's the same. We have the same question. Cause we were near the stadium yesterday for the hockey. And it's it's. It's not a great place to put a hockey arena, right. Obviously they're retrofitting the old Sonics arena, whatever, but at least it's kind of like central. Like you can get there, you can get. Yeah. There's like, everything goes there. Yeah. Not necessarily ideal. My last question for you today. Cause I don't want to take up too much of your time. We, this has been a great discussion. I just don't know what we do. Right. Because all this came out, you know, the Argo city XFL and all these, that's never going to happen. That's included all this I'm like, but like you said before, yo MLSE is not happy right there. They're clearly not happy. They're clearly not whatever. So. It is going to get to a tipping point of how far do we, you know, do they ride it, do they ride it another two years? Did they write it? So, I mean, Something's going to happen. I don't know what that is. Right. So I don't think it's fruitless to talk about this when clearly this is a, an unresolved issue. So what do you, I mean, what do you expect or see, just having, you know, traced everything. It's, you know, that's a great question. It is. It is the question redone. And I, I mean, my fear is that. M MLSE says after this season we're done or maybe it's after next season. We're done. We're not, we're not going to stick to this, to this, this small time thing that doesn't never refuse us to grow. And maybe they, maybe they do jump in with the XFL at that point. I guess my hope is that the Argos have a very successful year on the field, which, which, which produces some excitement and get some more people into the building. And they see that it's an entertaining product and a lot of fun to be there. And that, and that provides, you know, some hope for, to build on. And then, you know, as I said, [unknown]. I've toyed with this notion of maybe they, they decide we're going to put a franchise in both leagues, but that seems pretty unlikely. I, I. If I had to bet, I would say the chance of the Argos being in the Canadian football league in five years are very low and that's that scares and depresses the hell out of me. But I just, I have to be honest, I'm worried. That's where it's heading. Yeah. I mean, because again, that's the thing. If the XFL didn't exist, MLSE is still unhappy. Right. So that's kind of the issue, right. Is even, cause I'm not trying, you know, I'm not trying to be a Homer for the XFL. Well, they, they should go there because I felt that would be, I mean, I think that's a terrible idea to, you know, trying to do, like I said before, but something's going to happen. And, and these problems existed before. You know, before March 10th or whatever, where they officially announced that they were talking to me all this existed with, with them losing money and everything before, you know, Danny and the rock, and everybody came into the picture. So, no, it's absolutely right. And so. So it's going to be an, of course, it's going to be one of these things that they're not going to want anything to leak out about it. They're not going to want it. They're not going to want to tell. Tell the world, what they're talking about doing behind the scenes. So I, I don't know. I just, at this point, I guess all I can do is, you know, go to the game, support them the best way I can. Hope that they have a successful year on the field. They've one of the things that's been a problem is that they can't seem to get consistently successful football teams here in town. They win the grey cup when they get there, but then they go for five years where they're, they're terrible. Then they win the grey cup. Then they go five years are terrible. You know, I. I maybe something maybe, maybe between gambling and revenue sharing, if revenue sharing comes in, maybe that'll be enough to keep MLSE kind of satisfied for, for a few years while they do try to build it. It's possible that they're, that, you know, they want to keep the articles alive. Despite how challenging it is. In hopes that Larry Tanenbaum will end up with an NFL franchise at some point. I know he doesn't want to be seen as having killed, killed football in the city. He's trying to put a football team into, so maybe there is an ulterior motive there that would, that would benefit our girl fans. Your guess is as good as mine, man. Or ball with, I feel like this was worth the wait. I I'm glad that we connected. Yeah, we'll get you back on again. Cause I, like I said, I think. These problems exist regardless of, of whatever is going on. Where am I with the XFL and everything else? You know that. This is a problem that's going to need to be solved. So I thank you very much for coming on and sharing your expertise and just, you know, passion for a team that, you know, we want to see in a franchise you want to see succeed. So well, thank you very much, Rita. That's the sad reality is they need more people like me that want to get, they want to get behind the Argos. Right. And it's. You can see, like I'm an old guy, right. And we need to, we need younger people to, and that was one of the reasons I thought XFL thing was good. Jazz it up. But anyway, we have what we have it, it is, it is a fun product.

Episode 49 - The Argos to the XFL?

Good Friday morning to everybody. It is the mark cast. How are you doing? I have. I have acquired an upgrade in my life. Viewers of the podcast will know. And hopefully listeners won't know this too bad if I have a list, but we are working on the tooth root extraction as we speak. I have braces now my friend ATP. So. Yeah, that's great. At the age of 35 to go back to middle school again. Hey, you know what? I, I, they wanted to put something in my teeth to kind of correct my overbite too. So I might be right there with you depending on you. Whatever. Got my cool little Argos football towel that you know, will send to me. Hopefully I'm, I'm still allowed to have that. So. Yeah. We're going to get into that. I have some thoughts on that first off. So welcome to the show. I thank you all for coming and yeah, please. Subscribe. I do think we have a tremendous show today, and then I'm also lining up. Next week. Cause I'm not going to be on vacation through the weekend. I have a great, I have a great lineup already scheduled for next week. So that's, that's exciting. I'll be able to send that, Paul, we, you know, I heard that put your money where your mouth is. I heard a lot of these things. We now. Our official members of the grey cup fan base. Look at that, look at that. Thank you. I yesterday, Paul and I were having a discussion and this is where this is all going to end. And this is where we're all going to get to with this, because I think some of the feedback last week was, you know, obviously about the merger and all those things. The talks and everything. There was a little bit of like, we're really done here. And you guys talk about CFL, XFL, hate. Totally agree. So here's what we're going to do. You know, I feel like we don't have to prove anybody, anything to anybody anymore. We we paid the, you know, three, whatever, a hundred Canadian to get on the fan base. It's going to be on there. The Mark House podcast is going to be on the grey cup fan base, which is just tremendous. Think, and that we're going to get a certificate, all that stuff. So I'm good with this. Now, there, there was a lot of negativity even today with a lot of the Argos talk that we're going to get into with Dan Ralph and all that. I'm really not engaging in that any more. I really do feel like Paula and I don't really have to prove anything. Do you, are we on the same page with that? I'm kind of over all that. Yeah. I mean, I am too, like I've had conversations with people recently. Mould say who, but I'm just like, dude, like what, how do I, how do we get a system? Stuff to stop and. You know, they've expressed their concerns about things that people on our side of the coin have said, well, I'm, and I've kind of pointed out like, well, you know, we kind of a ship. Pardon my French for a long, long, long time. And we kind of just were like, yeah, you know, we're respectful, respectful. And then once everything's all parked kind of, kind of like you guys kept dumping a little bit. So basically now it's kind of like, let's, let's just, let's just look cooler heads prevail here and you know, let's enjoy this. Let's just enjoy football in general, please. Yeah. And so that's, yeah, I'm very much not in that anymore. I want this to be excited. I had just DMD the BC lions. I want to figure out the single game tickets for the October 16th game. And then if you're going to go to that as well, I know Dorothy and I are going to go and then obviously the grey cup and all that. So I mean, that's where we're at. So I just, anyway, I just, some of the feedback on the YouTube was like, we're done with the, with the, the b******g and complaining, and I get that that's very valid and, and we are moving on and we have, we are still talking the Argos today because that's in the news and the XFL. And all that, but then we obviously we'll plug the show, but. Are we we're figuring out the giveaway with the Argo staff. Right. Are we going to do that? Yeah, let's do. Let's do, like, what are we at a subscriber wise right now? Well, we were going to do the jail serious emergency at 1500. They didn't really move the needle. So maybe we'll add the jesters. And, and one of those with the weather, the gray cup era. One of the Argos things. Yeah, let's do that. Let's throw one of the Argos jerseys into our 1500. Mark. If you, if we have 1500, we'll pick two names at random and you know, Guess what? There's three, three. Yeah. So three names at random, and then we'll send out. You know, depending on your sizes and stuff, we'll send out some. Some jouster is or some. Argos merchandise. Yeah. And we kind of do it before, where if you're, if you can kind of say like which one that you want to be in the running for. So. So just anyway, make sure you subscribe. We got a lot of stuff. I was back again on the third day. Third down gamble podcast. I got out a lot of my angst about the XFL staff, which I feel like is why I'm now at peace with a lot of that. I think that. I got a little heated on that, but we've talked a lot about, you know, the XFL fallout with the merger of the single game sports betting and kind of all that stuff. And so that episode's going to be coming out soon as well. So thanks to them for having me on as well. Read earlier in the week, pointed this up comment on Facebook, out about the single game bedding. I believe associate single game betting. And once I read it through it, I was like, Someone's getting it. And it's, it's just, it's like, We've we've had concerns and it's not like this. Isn't a knock on the CFL. We've had concerns about how the single game betting is going to save the CFL. It's it's like one of their, it is one of those things. That's. Quote, unquote gonna save the CFL. Like everything else is going to save the CFL. Look at like, like when we're being critical of. The CFL in general, we're being critical of the decisions that are made. And people just blindly believing that these things are going to save the CFL. We're not knocking the product. We're not attacking your league. We're just saying, like, there's a constant flow of thought, like, oh Johnny Manzell, he's going to save our league rocket Ishmael. He's going to save our league. Anyway, this guy, John C gave a great John Turner. I'm sorry. I said John C cause it's about C two, one. He gave, gave a great quote on Facebook and I'll drink a little bit of it. He basically pointed out the lowest value team. The NFL is worth 20 times what the entire CFL is worth. I know people are going to be like, well, they, you know, there's going to be people that have say. The owners of the CFL teams have more money than red bird, and we're not getting into that. We're just getting into how much the teams are worth. How much would it be like to buy an NFL team? You'd have to like basically spend, you know, 20 Times what you would spend on the entire CFL. That's the truth. Well, any day, Jackie Beck. The red blocks famously said that, you know, some of the, some of the franchises are worth a dollar, you know, So, I mean, yeah. He's he definitely said that. So. He talks about, you know, the CFO is going to make money on CFL, affiliated books. That means if there's no. If they don't have a stake in a book, like they don't, they. Clearly probably don't have a stake in DraftKings or FanDuel. You know, you're, you're limiting the amount of people that are going to be able to come in and partake in a single game betting. And I don't know how big Bodog is. I'm assuming it's pretty big up there, but you know, the big players down here. Our DraftKings and FanDuel, like that's the big players. And if you, and if you're not, you know, if you're not allowing them into. Your your a single game betting options. You're you're, you're limiting yourself on, on avenues. So basically it looks like. From what this guy is saying to see if I was going to make some money on a CFL affiliate of books, they don't have any stake in the non-affiliated books where that's where the majority of gambling revenue is going to come on that side. Want to just point it out. There too. The CFL's too worried about busy doing business with Canadian companies. And Canadian people to understand that money outside of Canada is what matters. That's what we've been saying. You want to grow the game? You gotta make sure more people are watching. If that means south of your border Canada. That's a good thing. That's a good thing. The other thing. And I pointed this out on my third down gamble podcast. And in the comment talks on this to you, it's a really long comment, but you know, in a normal NFL season, you have, you know, 32 teams, 16 games potentially a week that you can bet on, right. And of those 16 games, real gamblers are only gonna bet on a few of those, right. A handful. And if the CFL, when you only have four games a week, not all of those are going to be appealing. Match-ups right. And we've heard a lot that the later you go in the CFL season, you get a lot of like, Two and 12 versus, you know, three and whatever. Well, You're not going to be gambling on that. So. So just saying like, well, there's, you know, 20 billion, whatever a year the NFL makes. So that's going to be 10%, whatever, for the CFL, like E that's assuming that people are betting on all these games, which have, you know, if you have four games each week, not necessarily, everyone's going to bet on a hundred percent or even 50% of those games. And. I mean. Yeah. A hundred percent right. I'm not going to, you know, If the lions are doing bad and I'm a gambler. If the lions and I wouldn't be doing bad, but I'm trying to think of an, I don't even know, like, I know the lions are allegedly a bad team of lions. Argos are playing. You're gonna, you know, I love the Argos, but they haven't been good that lately. I've I've watched, I've seen the records. If they're playing, I'm not going to bet on that game. I'm just not going to do it. So, you know, you're talking about maybe one game, maybe two games, one game, maybe two games. Yep. And not the entire slate. So anyway, I appreciate that. Good, good, really good show today. So again, There's a lot of talk about the Argos to the XFL. There's been a lot of. Posts online, you know, this is speculation. This is BS. We need to focus on training camps, all these things. We're going to have Dan Ralph on the podcast. So Dan Ralph wrote the article he's with the Canadian press he's in the CFL hall of fame. So I don't think that Dan is just like shooting from the hip here. Dan is gracious. Now, if he's going to come on, we're going to talk about it. If it's, if it's legitimate. We're going to discuss it. We're going to figure it out. But this whole like, well, this is the speculation Mike Mitchell was on last week, said the CFL. That the XFL is interested in Canada. You know, whether without emerging with the CFL. Dan Ralph, the next day, he comes out with this article saying that the Argos are very much still interested. So like this isn't just BS. Like we're just trying to like, keep this narrative alive of the XFL CFL thing. Like this is still very much in the news. And while it's in the news, we're going to talk about it. We're going to lead with that. If you're not interested in that, that's fine. We're going to have Maria McCormick on with the Regina leader post we're going to do. I got a million questions for him about the rough riders practice. The injuries with the players. There was some COVID stuff this week. Paxton Lynch, all these kinds of things. So we're going to do all that. Then I have a wonderful interview that I just did this morning, bright and early, how mommy I think was eating breakfast, but how mommy, you know, legendary air raid coach, coach of Deliman, you know, he was with the offensive. With the renegades. I, he came on, we talk all sorts of TSL and USFL and players to watch and all these kinds of things. So I really appreciate Sammy and the guys over at the spring league for getting that put together. But. Anyway, so, so that's kind of the order of events. We're going to do Argo stuff here. Break, talk to Dan. Tons of CFL staff, all the, whatever, talk to Marie, and then we're going to do the whole mommy thing. So just, if it's in the news, I don't want to hear this. Like it's speculation. We're trying to draw this narrative out when it's still very much in the news right now. That's what happens when you have a group that owns the Argonauts that has an NBA team. Has it, an NHL team owns the Marleys they've had success and they own Toronto FC. Toronto has won an MLS cup in the last, what? Four years? Five years. They have successes. In other sports, they want to have the Argos be a success. So don't, don't shoot the messenger. This is what we're talking about. Would that being said. What's going on here with this thing. So, yeah. So we, Mike was on the show last week. We had all this, I think it was the next day. I think it was the Friday that our interview came out with Mike and all this stuff. Dan Ralph, with the Canadian press posted an article, talking about how, you know, the 148 year old. Argos franchise, they lose about $12 million every year. And that they're still very, very much interested in working with the XFL. In whatever regard that is. I don't know. And w Y what are your thoughts on, on that? And obviously we're going to talk with Dan and get his take, but what are your thoughts on that? And just kind of the poo-pooing the best from, I hear a lot of people like poo-pooing this right now. I think it's going to be a situation where. Are they going to be able to, I think the big, the big, the big catch here is. Here's what I. When I'm looking at it, first glance, I'm looking at this going. Okay. It is clear. The MLSE wants to be with the XFL. Yeah. That is clear as day. It doesn't look like, like Montreal wants to. In a. Hitch themselves entirely. To Toronto, like we had, you know, we were told like Montreal kind of goes lock step with Toronto. And not no disrespect to Montreal. I just don't bank. I'm not sure the XFL is open right now to going, let's get to Canadian teams, you know, up there. Let's, you know, let's go for that. I think the biggest drawing, I think the biggest thing I could draw from this. Does it. Does MLS MLSE actually take the franchise or do they have to sell the franchise back to the CFL and then just get an expansion team? In Toronto. Which at that point means. All these different XFL teams have to get owners as well, because you have to franchise these things out. You can't just have one group owning one franchise in the league owning the other eight. So there's a lot of things I think, need to be like, worked out on the exfil side of things. To make this. Reality. And to be fair. Aye. Aye. I really think this is a horrendous idea. Like I'm not trying to be like the XFL Homer here. Like we're taking over this year. I felt like, I think if Toronto does not care about the CFL team, You know that much. I mean, they care, but not that much. I really don't think they're going to care about it in the next NFL team. So I'm not, I'm not trying to say this as a good, but I mean, this is in the news, this isn't as I guy, so this is what's happening, but I'm not saying that this is, this is a good plan for them. I think they're better off going to Mexico, but that's just me. I think it's a different, I think it's going to be a different thing. If say Toronto got an NFL team, then you'd see the rando. People care about it because. Yeah, there's a chance. You're if you're, you know, if you have a Toronto NFL team, you get to see you like Patrick wrote homes. Once every eight years come play on your field or, you know, that, that kind of thing. That's why, that's why they would care. It would matter if it were an NFL team. And I, you know, I think them having a CFL team moves the needle more than them having an XFL team at this point. But. You know, I could be surprised. And that's a positive thing for the CFO. I'm saying right there. Yeah. Anyway, so, and the less he spokesman Dave Hagan, it's sad. Th that right now, they're focused on the CFLs returning to play. They're excited for the league and the fans. Dan kind of propositions three different kind of solutions here. And we'll, we'll talk about it with him. Obviously you can have the Toronto join the XFL in 2023, you can have them sell the Argos or they need to focus on. Figuring out the business model for the CFL that's going to make, MLSE happy. We have some notes later about potential revenue sharing coming out with the CFL. It is very frustrating. I believe for MLSE too. You know, it's hard with these teams and the money and the business structure and the CFL. And, and again, we talked last week. Okay. We're moving on from the XFL. Now we're going to get back to figuring out our staff. Well, what, I don't know what was stopping any of that before, so. It's it's definitely interesting. It's going to be interesting to see how this goes. I mean, I think. I mean, you're not, you're never going to be able to, without a fight in Canadian court, you're not gonna be able to take the, the name Toronto Argonauts, the ex-felon, you're just not going to be able to. It would be great for prestige wise and it would be something that would, you know, elevate the XFL. The twice failed lead, but you're just not gonna be able to walk away with that name without a fight. So unless they sell it, I mean, unless Argos, you know, unless they MLSE. They own the team and they sell it. I mean, if they sell it and then they want to offload and get it down, that fell franchise. I. I that's what I, I feel the play is. I don't think that they're wanting to be involved. I don't think MLSE is wanting to be involved any, I think they're wanting to pass the Argos there. Hot potato hot. Let's go. Hey, we're losing money on this. Like we gotta, we gotta move on from this. That's what I think. I mean, you know, As opposed to just fixing. What's wrong. I don't know. I don't know. It's so much easier there. They passed the buck then of this, like. You don't really do. Really do the work, right? I mean, that's a, you know, a rush and all these people came on and said, yeah, they're looking at the XFL because it's easier to do that. Like injection shot than it is to do the work. You know, and really build through everything. So. It's ironic because you feel like that. The group ML MLSE group. Would be probably the best that would be poised to figure out the marketing. Because they, you know, they have the experience with owning the proteins. In the NHL in the NBA, you know, I don't know. It's going to be interesting to see. So. I get the quote from the XFL insider last week on the merger falling apart with, we had a lot of cool ideas and they didn't want to get on board. So maybe MLSE has a lot of cool ideas to that that people don't want to get on board with. Anyway, so yeah, I'm good on the Argos. I think we should talk to Dan. Let's bring Dan in right now. Let's take a quick commercial break, bring down in, and then we'll talk more about this. Welcome back. One of the things Dan, for his time, talking about the Argos, talking about all this, this. Ins and outs. And what have you used? Whatever knots and it's, it's going to be interesting to see how this plays out. I'm hopeful that, you know, I'm hopeful that everybody is happy at the end of the day, with, with the resolution that comes, that comes from this. I think a lot of people really about, oh, okay. We don't have to talk about the XFL anymore. Right. Everett since last week and it's not. Again, it's not as like trying to push this narrative, but it's like, this is always going to be a thing now, like you guys think like, oh, we're down with the XFL. Like we don't have to deal with that. They're still going to be there and still make it moves and stuff. So. All right, moving on, Marie. McCormick's coming on here in a bit. In the meantime, we're going to quickly touch on these things. Writers that there's a lot of injuries, a lot of injuries going on. With the rough riders. Linebacker Deion Lacey. Currently in the COVID COVID 19 protocol. Of course the Delta variant is still very much. We're very much going. Canada. California. Our case load is going up and. 99% Of the people that are sick. I haven't been vaccinated, but that's not a political statement. Again, You had to feel like this was going to happen with, you know, second doses rolling out still very slowly. And he is, he was on the field Sunday, Monday, and then back today. So there's a lot of questions of like, they pulled him. They didn't say why now he's back. It's like, well, was he testing positive? Now he's back. Like what, what is the deal with that? And the weird thing is with the CFL is they're very secretive when it comes to like all of the injury reports and like, oh, we don't, I even, there was a quote from. Great Dickinson. That was like, there's things I'm supposed to say when it comes to this. I'm not sure what it is. I'm sorry. Like they don't really know like, okay, how do we, how do we address these COVID things? You know, he, he got pulled off, so we're going to talk with Marie about it, but, you know, there's, this is not going to be the first case, right. If someone testing positive or potentially testing positive or whatever, and the CFL really needs to figure out like, okay, how are we going to. I address these things. We're still getting, you know, baseball players that are going into the COVID nine COVID 19 protocols. I mean, Chris Paul was out what game? One of the Western conference finals. Because of COVID-19 protocols. So we're still having these problems where players are, you know, and it's not even a problem. You randomly could get COVID it's not like you could, you could do everything right. And didn't slip once. And it could be like a non, you know, A non malicious slip. And then all of a sudden you're, you're in the COVID 19 protocols. From this one, I'm drawing from it. Lacey was probably. Around somebody that tested positive for COVID and then he had to go get tested and make sure that he had the two tests to get clear. That's what's what I'm gleaning here. So. Yeah. Follow up. And we were talking with Maria, you know, all the rough riders that got injured, the four taurine. Torn Achilles tendons. You know, They said that they were probably doing some things that they weren't supposed to be doing. They were, you know, doing some like non supervised coach in forest practices. And that's not good, right? I mean, it's one of those things where I think there's, there's a lot of eyeballs on the CFR right now. You know, we really got a daughter, a T's and cross our eye, you know, or whatever. Whatever the saying is it's not the eyes. Hey, I'll see. I'll believe it when the air I'll see it. When I believe it. Okay. I just call me Patrick. Mom's over here. I'll I'll see it. When I believe it. But anyway, I, you know, Farahani had some comments about that and Naylor and, and they probably weren't doing some things they were supposed to do. The other interesting thing here is Andrew Harris. He's a star blue bombers player. There was a whole debate. I think it was Monday, like he left practice to go do like an appointment. Came back now, he's going to be sitting out for two weeks. Again. There's all these secretive. Like, is he injured? Is he leaving? They always say like, oh, someone's hurt. It's a hang nail. Right? Like they, they kind of BS whatever the injuries are. My note with this is not only is this scary right now with COVID and what's happening and all this stuff, but, but if you want to involve sports betting in the CFL with the players, the CFL needs to be way more transparent about like, who is injured, how long they're injured. Thoughts on that, Paul. As a Yankees fan, who gets frustrated constantly when Aaron Boone just randomly sit someone down and isn't transparent about why he's sending a player down. And then two days later we find out he's going on the 15 date. It is frustrating from that standpoint, if you're a fan and then you did point out the Butte pull up the most interesting part is that like, This could dissuade someone who wants to spend big money at your sports book, your own Canadian, only a sports book. From betting on a game because someone's injured at the last minute or. Maybe they, you know, maybe, maybe they do bat and you're not transparent with the information as to why they're injured. And all of a sudden they find out they're injured after they've already placed their bet in the game's already started. They can't pull their bat back. It's it's troublesome. It's troublesome to say the least. Yeah. I apparently they they're. The CFL is actually like trying to rework all of this right now that there is sports betting because they've gotten away for years with like, oh, we don't need to, you know, really tell you how long they'll hold thing with salaries too. We don't know like player salaries. We don't know how long the contracts are. Like all these things. When you want to bring in sports betting, you have to be way more transparent about all this stuff. So I just think we had statements here. The, the players association sent out this big thing, talking about, you know, need to make sure the players are safe. You know, six injuries occurred the day, you know, four on the rough riders and then the other two, I mean, Are they basically saying, like, if you see something, say something, they'll do anything that you shouldn't be doing, but again, it's like do or die for the CFL. I mean, I just wouldn't be doing like unsupervised. I understand the want to play in the one that get in shape and all that. But to me, it's really scary right now what's happening with all this stuff. The other. No was, this is interesting. We talk a lot about Solomon LA. I can't say it before. I couldn't say what my brain says. Alimi on. He, I guess has had, because of all the injuries and COVID and all this kind of stuff. But he's actually had a lot of internal interests from coming back to a lot of CFL teams. He was approached. Returning to 2021, he's happily enjoying that retirement. He declined to reveal which teams they asked him for. But I just thought that was interesting that like, You know, they're really relying on a lot of veterans right now, a lot of veteran presence to, to kind of figure this out. So. You know, it's, it's the situation where. Everything's up in the air. So if they can get someone that's well known to CFL fans, it could help drive, you know, If you, if you're playing 10 years in the CFL and you're. You're considered a feature hall of fame linebacker. That means you're going to drive some ticket sales. I mean, you're going to drive some merchandise sells. That means you're going to drive some revenue. So it would, it would kind of make sense to kind of, you know, help extend the olive branch and, you know, possibly bring you back. Reed's team may be still Reeves team. We haven't decided yet. Offensive lineman from the Edmonton Elks. Colin Kelly will miss the start of the 2021 season. He tore a pectoral muscle during his training. And he said to undergo schedule July 9th. Well, I've already passed. So hopefully. You know, he gets some speeding recovery in a sense. Approximately approximately healing time is three to five months. Yeah, I tweeted this last night. I am very unsettled by the Edmonton comments about the exit film. I very much like that really. I have had a hard time wearing my Edmonton Hawks, Elks hat and shirt ever since they came out and they were so pleased that the XFL talks and did the way that they did. I am. I'm very, I'm very shaken by that. So I just wanted to put that out there on the podcast, like tweeted it last night. Team you pick a new team. I, you know, well, Like the XFL team anyway. Yeah, a couple other retirements, Nila, Cassie. Cassie Cassie. Because I have braces, not really. I mean, I can talk before. I really can't talk now. He's retiring. He was proud to be a part of the team. He played 20 games over two seasons with the rad. With the. Oh, he was in Oklahoma before I have notes here about all this stuff. But the San Peter is. The San period. This is also interesting. They suspended eight players and they released quarterback, chase Layton. Red black stead, not the Stampeders. Sorry, red license. Do you quick on this? Red blacks released chase Litton and chase Litton had famously ban a part of this yellow dragons. As like their third or fourth string quarterback and he got caught, but. The dragons. He was at the XFL. So there you go. Chase lit and couldn't, couldn't cut it. In in, you know, In the CFL. Yep. Hmm. Some, see, this is a big story that I saw from three down nation. I was like, come on, man, what are we doing? What are we doing? Because. Here at the Marc casts. We've always said this, this basic thing. Take care of the players. We've always been about taking care of the players. Some CFL teams are re withholding the Canadian emergency wage subsidy payments to their players. Apparently they were supposed to pay it out no later than July 10th. It is now what? July 15th. What's the latest on this. I checked. I didn't see anything come out yet. I mean, again, these are, these are like a subsidy wages, right? It's, it's kind of like unemployment, but not, I think it's more like those PPP loans that we had down here where it's. Yeah, filling in those gaps. Yeah, there was a debate. Cause they, they wanted to pay the bad trans they didn't know if the rookies fit in all that. Right. Because I mean, they would make sense, right? Like they're coming in the rookies. You know, I know like here, you had to be employed for a certain time or have your business before a certain time to get involved in all this stuff. But, you know, it's certainly not. I saw a lot of players tweet out like, you know, CFL doing CFL stuff, you know, like, it seems like this is pretty. All right. Typical with that. But no, I did look for an update. I didn't see any, any resolution from that yet. So I'm sure if there has been resolution, someone will let us know. In the YouTube comment. I think, I think what it boils down to is that, you know, The thought is. Well, the TV deal pays for the player salary. It's like, yeah, in theory it does, but we're in a once in a a hundred year pandemic. And if the, if the requirements for these CWS funds being, they go to your employees and your players. You need to pay him. Yeah, you can't just be like, well, the TV deal. There's just, you gotta, you gotta do, you gotta follow the rules, follow the rules. Gary stern. Outlet's honor. We talked about this at the top of the show. He thinks you're going to try to figure out some revenue sharing by the end of the season. You know, it. It's like these ideas, you know that from osmosis talking with the. I just feel like, oh, maybe we should do leaks. You know, revenue, Sharon, but it's like, well, why didn't we. You hadn't done that before? No, there's nothing that was preventing that before. There's nothing that's aligned with that now that wasn't allowed previously. So. But, you know, obviously they need to rework. I mean, obviously they're getting through this season, then we need to figure out the business model. But I, it is interesting that he's still talking about that. And, you know, obviously the outlets were somewhat high on the XFL. You know, Theoretically with, with, with, with the Toronto. You know, Stern with his connection to Ms. Lee MLSE was labeled the most. By most an XML supporter, but now it says, since that's closed, They have to get around to, you know, accepting getting together and accepting that the uni game with three downs, a wild field. But the revenue has to be shared. It's it's a model that works. You know, other teams and other pro leagues do revenue sharing. You know, it's just something that has to ask to work, to make the whole league by a bill viable. I should say. Want to pay blue bombers, they're going to have a hundred percent capacity at their home opener. So, and all of the games I just came out today. Now it sounds like all the games are going to have. That's if you're double Vaxxed. Double backs. And if you're getting out of your political soapbox, like my choice, my body, and then you're like, why are they making us do that? It's like, guys, This guys and girls, this is a private entity. That'll chem. Say no, they have the right to refuse service to anyone who doesn't wear their shoes or their shirt, or has their VAX card. It's very easy. Yep. Tim Bains. He was reporting, you know, he was on the show last week that I think it was no two weeks ago. Sorry. Last week. It was crazy with all the news. Red blacks are hoping to get 15,000 fans in for August 28. So, I mean, it's, it really sounds like, you know, we're really moving. There, I think we're going to. I think we're going to slog through, but we're, we're getting there. Did this season on August 5th, I do feel pretty confident about that. The Edmonton Elks GM. Says he thinks it would be easier. To answer what hasn't changed in terms of. I guess their entire makeup, everything. Everything since, you know, they've got a new name and everything. That's that's. That's interesting. He gave a season preview. He's talking about his new coaching staff, new name, new logo. And a lot of new players. It's a new era in Edmonton and maybe Reed will be there for that. Or maybe not. Yeah. We have a couple other Edmonton notes. It just kind of threw this in here that, you know, basically, you know, they're doing the whole revamped, new coaching, south, all this stuff. I got, well, a couple of things from this, and this is, this is interesting. So they're giving away 35,000 free. T-shirts. To really sell out the season opener. So if you get a season opener ticket, You know, you, you get a shirt and then they're also doing the thing where the big labor day rematch with arrogance Calgary. They're going to do kids get in free. So if you're 17 and under you get in free. And I, of course, jokingly tweeted, like quote, the CFL is a gay driven league, you know? Tickets, but I mean, these are good ideas, but this is like, oh, we got to do 1800. Other of these things like this is good, but this isn't like, oh, we're giving away free. T-shirts like, that's, this is good. But we need eight of these stories every week to talk about true. And you need more players that are flipping over backwards. Dunking. Cookies and milk. Paxton Lynch, very excited to be with the rough riders, but he absolutely wants to return to the NFL. He was a firmer forest first round NFL draft pick with the Broncos. He made his debut at the training camp on Monday. He's making an adjustment for. From four downs to three downs. And he says it's very challenging. It's been difficult. A lot of pre-snap stuff has been a big adjustment for me in terms of, you know, getting that snap off as those players are coming to the line. You know, that's, that's just, that's something that he's, he's definitely adjusting to. We, we wish him the best of luck on that. Yeah, I want to get more stakes on that. I mean, it sounds like he thought he would come up to the CFL for like a quick cup of coffee and then head back down south. And it sounds like. Like let's look, let's get through a season here. And then let's, let's figure that out. And then also just, and we'll get into all this with Marie too, but Craig Dickinson. With the riders. You know, we're still talking about how. It was kind of off all these comments about Paxton Lynch and wanting to return and the CFL being tough. Yeah. He says that the Canadian should be really proud of the CFL high quality high caliber, but that doesn't mean that Americans, this is my comment doesn't mean that Americans can't watch it as well. Americans can also enjoy the Canadian football game. So. Yes. Maybe. And the Roughriders they're opening up their scrimmage, their green and white scrimmage. To 5,000 fans are selling tickets. So there you go. There's a lot of stuff about the Roughriders coming up in that Reed is going to chat with Marie McCormick on that right after this. Welcome back. Want to thank Marie for his time. Chatting about rough riders, training camp and everything going forward. With the rough riders. Cool. Now we are in the XFL section. Now we did a little bit with the exfil Argos. Here. And I want to really get your thoughts on this. Now you listened to Mike Mitchell's interview last week. You know, we were at the three times. Three times three times on normal speed. I heard you say, cause you wanted the process, everything, you know, you were at the hospital, you know, Can attend. Takeaways from Mike Mitchell's interview. And then I really want to talk on this international thing, but any big picture takes from Mike Mitchell's interview. Mike Mike is very well versed and Mike. Probably as the one person that if he says something it's pretty much gospel his insight. His insight, track record his, his connections are, you know, Second to none. So when I heard a lot of the stuff he was saying, You know, there's a narrative that was being pushed by the CFL community that basically made it everyone feel like the CFO was the one pulling the plug here. And once you hear Mike Mitchell in a non-emotional fashion, Explain what's been going on. You realize that it was a situation where it was like a mutual breakup. It's not, it's not you, it's not me. It's both of us that we're just not, you know, on the same page where, I mean, the biggest thing that I always brought up was like, Well, the XFL owns all their teams and the CFL doesn't own their teams necessarily. So. What do we do about that? That was the big thing that I was like, well, even the XFL is going to have to like sell franchises. So yet CFL is going to have to own all their franchises. How's that going to work? And then, you know, his glaring thing that he was talking about was. How the XFL put the, put the. I guess a thought out there about international. Yes. And, and so, and, and one of the, one of the taglines for the show today, besides, you know, it was going to be, you know, the XFL to Canada and Mexico now. We talked about, you know, Canada a little bit at the top. You know, I there's been talks about the XFL shifting their schedule from February to, you know, From February, whatever the April to April to June. Right. That would obviously be more. I mean the bowl to the Canadian weather and fans and all those things, you know, we heard about where you can buy. I can't play football on February here. So, you know, it's still going to be cold, but it's better than February. Any other thoughts on the Canada thing? I think it's a really, I think it's a terrible idea to go to the Toronto as the XFL. Franchise. I really do. I just, I think it just depends on, I just think it depends on what they do. In terms of, you know, Yeah, I guess. What I want, I want to kind of get through and help everybody. Realize this. Is that Canada doesn't have a trademark on the stuff that used the, the rules. They used to play football. What if the expo rolls out a new rule book? And they're three downs. And they're doing multiple movements at the line. What happens then? What happens? If the exfil starts already suiting their game. So they can, they can look at Canada and go. Okay. We'll just, you know, we'll just put a team in Toronto and call it. Good. What if, what if. And then it's just this complete, complete speculation. Well, what if you know, the XFL does things to get maybe the Canadian fan base. Interested anyway. That's going to be interesting. My fear is, and again, we're not getting into all the online. Not going to name names right now, but there's a lot of, you know, upset ness with extra fallacy of all that. I see them not supporting the XFL team out of spite. I really do. I think, I think there's enough of a vocal and I know it's, it's a minority that people that are online, but I do think there's enough of, of, of really upset because of all this that they're just like, Screw it like, we're not. We're not doing that. We're not going to be a part of that. And, and that. I mean, I get to see them doing that and be like, screw this. Like, we don't want to be involved and we don't want to have any, any part of that and revolting against that. I mean, it all depends on if, you know, if they do that at first and the new Toronto XFL franchise, assuming they get one. Starts winning. There'll be at the parade when they win the whole thing. Just a thought. What do you think about the expansion to Mexico? A great idea. The, the, the product is super hot down there. I mean, every time the NFL goes, plays games in Mexico city, even though the, you know, the. The air in Mexico city is just horrendous. It was so bad, but every time they go play down there, like. You know, it's, it's pretty much a sellout. You know, people, people in Mexico love are. Love our game. So I think, I think that is a more profitable venture to go to Mexico than it would be to go to Canada. I think I do. I just think they've so botched this and both sides, but, but the accent fell. They're the ones trying to expand with this lack of communication, letting all this, despite all for the last four months, I think they really shot themselves in the foot with this, where if they would've come out and been a little bit more transparent about what wasn't happening, you know, we're just like, we're trying to figure out. Social media, whatever the business plans were, you know, marketing ideas. I think that it's, and maybe in a year it's a little less toxic, but I mean, I feel like it's so toxic to go north. I think that, you know, you move one of the teams from Texas down to Mexico, or, you know, you're are you out of 19? Yeah, they're talking Mike on the, on the interview, talked about either keeping the aid and relocating or, you know, adding to and expanding. I would still get through one season of U S team-based football before we deal with any of this. But again, they got grand plans and I sat, I sat on the third down gamble podcast this week. These plants might be to grant. They really might. Yep. I agree. A little, a little bit of a clickbait article. Sorry, Josh. It has a little bit of a clickbait article. Could Canada desktop, the Canadian football act to stop an excavation. I read the article. I was like, Hm. That's a lot of conjecture, a lot of speculation. A lot of legal stuff that could be considered, you know, Antitrust violations. Basically. I don't know how, how businesses work they're up in Canada. But I do think that this is very speculative and very reaching this articles, very reaching. My comment with this is. We, they exited that we got to write articles, right? Call us. You don't. I gotta read them. I mean, I didn't ride it, but Josh has got to write that article. So like, I don't, I don't hate the article. I was part of the discussion when the creation of this article came up out right in the, in the XFL news hub chat. I. I don't belong to, I don't belong to that by the way. I, I. I've never been on that. It's a lot. It's a lot. I, I don't, I get it. I get, I get it. And what I don't like is the, the negative comments. And then don't read it. And I'll read it. I mean that, and that's where I'm at, you know, at the same with us and the CFO. They don't listen or don't watch. I mean, I. I mean the XFL. You know, the, the wording of that. I get it. It's trying to be hyperbole kinda, you know, I clicked. Beatty, but it does seem like there are things in place that have been brought up before with the world football league, expanding to Toronto. That they, that they didn't want to deal with that. And, and. Anyone for people, they didn't read the article. It's on XLT. You said. Dot com, but it's talking about how back into the seventies. That they, you know, the world football league was trying to expand and that they went about trying to create this bill that would prevent, you know, any in any teams that wouldn't play directly opposing to the CFL from coming into Canada. And it never got signed into law, but the idea is like, well maybe if the CFL was really against an XFL, Expansion that they could kind of dust this off. That that's what, just the context. Does that make sense? Yeah. And in the article. Josh. Mistakenly uses the word, ironically, stop using it that way. He says that Toronto is one of the three cities opposing to the bill, along with Vancouver and Montreal, which of course are the big three cities. Where a team from a American sports could definitely succeed. So really need to work on that. Ironically, ironically usage there. Just my, just my suggestion. The XFL, the Houston Astros, Astro's likely to settle for the eighth trademark issues. Screw the Astros they're entering the settlement docs and we'll see how that goes. Yeah. They're going to settle. It sounds like they're going to, they were, there was a big trademark that he's, I mean, It got the XFL. I would not fight any of these right now. I wouldn't fight them. I wouldn't fight the man logo. I wouldn't fight that. The oil tower. I wouldn't find any of this stuff right now. There's a player that's four foot 11 hitting home, runs against the Yankees to walk it off. I mean, you know, Who's got bad tattoos. Oh, wait. No, he's shy. Oh, wait. No. His wife gets mad. Oh wait. Now it's just, yeah. I hate the Astro. So. Just the last couple of things I don't want to get to getting down on three down. It, this, this, this was interesting to me that they on, on John Hodges Monday morning and they've officially unfollowed us now. I don't know if that's because of, they didn't block us this time. I don't know if it's like we're done with the XFL or. [Unknown] comments last week, kind of making fun of Hodge and dunk, but there's, this is my take on this. This is not three down with ever. We know how anti. XFL three down nation has been the last four months. That's this is a fact, right? On the Monday morning mailbag today, or this week, they were asking him about the talks ending and Hodges take was to be Frank. I'm not really. Are they, the question was like, did the CFL, did the XFL take a lot of business ideas from the CFL? And he goes to be Frank. I'm not really sure what type of business practices the XFL could steal the CFL. His business model is outdated, which is probably the reason why potential partnership was in the first ways the XFL did the better job monetizing their fans in 2020, engaging with admin and creative ways. The leagues on-field product was mediocre at best buy. The games are dressed up in fun and engaging packages, their presence on social media, all of these good things. You see, he actually thinks that the CFL had more of the gain than more to gain from the expo. And the other way around. Isn't like, so then why like, Why. Crying now. I don't. Yeah. I don't get that in the hall. Isn't that weird? It's like, double-talk like you, you were sitting there like you had your leg, a little pro wrestling, gimmick. You were like the savior three down football. And now that you know, now that the kayfabe curtain has gone, now, you can be like, Well in actuality, right? I mean. It's just, we, I just don't get that. Pick a side either. You are, you aren't like you are full board on your knees for the CFL, or you're not. Well, I think this, this is, this is the best thing Hodges said that I've read where it's like, okay, you see the problems then why were you so against it to begin with. That's the thing is I just don't get the, the, the hate I can get, you know, the, the PR we're protecting, you know, we're, we're they like, but there's like hatred. And then to come out with this, like the week after I was like, what is like, Is this, I mean, with Hodge. Abducted by, you know, Mark Perry, like did Mark Perry. Right? Cause I just, you know, I just, I just couldn't believe that they had a couple of quotes. We don't need to read all these, but basically it was like they have the other insider quotes. You know, one person believes the XFL talks are totally dead. If they're not dead, they're 99% dead. Why would the CFL put this out? The other one was, I don't think the asphalt business is over at all with the shortened schedule and limited attendance. Those in favor of a collaboration or merger are going to have a stronger argument. The sweeping changes needed. Randy Ambrozy stake his reputation on this vision. If he's still commissioner in six months, I think this XFL stuff heats back up again. Yeah. I don't think this is going away. I think all these people are like, we're done. We're moving on. And I don't. Right. I don't see it like. I see it paused. Yeah, you pause the tape. You didn't stop it completely and take the tape out, throw the tape of the trash. Sorry, cassette tape for those millennial kids that we, this is what we used to listen to our music on. I just don't think that this is, this is over yet. I know what I'm saying, that like, It's going to happen the way we want it to happen to the way you want it to happen. I just don't think it's over. In terms of. You guys are really still p****d at it, Randy, Ambrozy you guys really still don't like him. And if this doesn't turn things around MLSE is going to be even more like, Hey guys, we need a solution here. We need to make more money. We're losing more money. We're losing more money. And Montreal is going to be like, yeah, we're losing more money and we're losing more money. And Vancouver's. Yeah. BC's losing more money. That's 33% of your league right there. That's going to start complaining. About losing money. Just saying it just, none of this stuff goes away. Right. We all live in this. And it's kind of like when we covered the spring league back last November, and then like, oh, remember the Kobe and the brow break and all this and Brian Woods came on and they was like, wow, that was crazy. But then like, you know, spring of it comes back and now it's like the USFL and now it's all these things like this is all, this is not going away. Right. I, I hate to like break that news to all these people that are like, I mean, again, very vulgar things I saw online today in regards to a lot of these talks and. I mean we're we ain't going anywhere. And I don't think a lot of this stuff is going anywhere. So speaking of not going and speaking of going somewhere, the new a Washington football team is going to have a name. Sorry, Reed. This has been done this thing ever. It's not. It's not. They said they're going to come up with a new name. So that means they're going to get through one more season, right? They're unveiling the new name and logo in early 20, 22. So presumably after the super bowl, right. Yeah. Probably or if they lose them again. I think they'll wait till after the super bowl they won. They'll want all the attention and they won't do it like the Monday after the super bowl. They'll wait a couple of weeks after the super bowl. And then they'll, they'll roll it out. I'm thinking probably March, probably the beginning of March, the first. The first Monday in March. They'll roll out the new name. So. Or like I saw someone I think, commented on one of the YouTube, like. In the Potomac football team or something like I love, I love that. I love, and there's so many people. I love the Washington lithium. I love Debbie Ft. I love that. I love Washington. It's okay. Like in soccer, you got 1800, you know, of Portland football team and the London football team. What. Like in the, in the NFL, it's okay to have one football team. It's not, it's not Portland full team. It's the Portland timbers that they still have a nickname. Some of it seems in MLS. LFC. Former Chivas. That's what we call them. She was 2.0, you know, you're, you're homophobic chance still linger from your Chivas days. Real world-class he bunched there down there at LFC Austin FC. There's another team that has the FC. Yeah. So I, they had to get a name, man. I'm sorry. I hate to break it to you. All right. We're going to. How we have a big, there's kind of a little speculation with this USFL SAPs. If you're interested in the USFL steps. Stick to and after the break, but I do think this is a really great. Chat with how mommy coach. Yeah, or I guess you call them, is it like a president? Do you have to, I have your coach is always coach mommy. Yeah. Guy called the how now? I mean, it's like, it's always president Barack Obama, right? You can't just call them. Brock. I always call him coach. We'll have that out for the break. Welcome back. Want to thank Hal for his time and talking all the USFL stuff, the spring league stuff, all that stuff. All that stuff. Yeah. Just two notes for you, Paul, to see you. So, how is. Very very much interested in the USFL here next year. He's I think he was very close with Brian Woods. He said on the interview also, he, I asked him, have you been approached by Danny and the rock rubber at any of those people without he said no. Okay. So moving on to more USFL news and real quick. Former San Antonio gunslinger. Wants to bring a USFL team to the Alamo city. Jim Bob Morris, that's a Texas name. [Unknown] wants to. During hung up with the first call with an executive from the USFL. Regarding a potential role in the 2022 startup. And he wants to bring a team to San Antonio. Yeah, the speculation with this. Right. So Jim, Bob Morris was Santo gunslinger he's. Now is like a multimillionaire he's with Morris packaging. He was a former safety with the gunslingers in the eighties. And the, that what's interesting about this. It's not only that Jim Bob would be somewhat involved, right. And, and he's, he had a coach that he was talking about bringing on. Did I include that in the. Does not include that in the thing. And this was like a paywall article anyway, he's he's coming on a. But the idea is that. You would be involving other people owning these leagues. Right? Cause the question was like, where's Brian Woods going to be coming up with all this capital. And the idea would be. That maybe they're bringing in owners like this, you know, like Jim, Bob Morris to own when the D seems, what do you think about Brian Woods? Relying on private owners with these teams. I think it's a good way to bring in revenue. You have to you, if you sell these franchises. To private owners. You're bringing revenue in for the leak. I mean, that's, what's going to happen in the NBA. Like I'm, I'm bringing it to you now. Seattle's going to expansion team. Within the next, what? Four years, because the NBA is going to have to offset their COVID losses. This is a way to bring in revenue. I liked the idea completely. And the idea former gunslingers quarterback, Rick knew Hazel would be the potentially it would be the coach. That was the speculation with that. That's terrible news. Moving on to fan controlled football. Nothing there. Elf. All-star game happening, the us players against, I guess the, the other players from around the world on October 3rd. Yeah. In this example, you want your Alf stuff? I guess they're going to have an all-star elf squad. And then they're going to get like a hodgepodge of us players, not in elf, like maybe some X-Pack 12 guys. That are going to be involved in that. It seems really weird, but people seem to oddly excited about that. So I don't really get the excitement about it. Random collection of players playing against a random collection of alpha players, but that's that. But in, in this Instagram live where they kind of announced. And talking about all of this stuff. They said that in Germany, alone, 500,000 people are watching a Alf every week. And that is, I said, max listener, max sent that over. I said, but nobody cares about spring football. So that is an accurate statement. No one cares about spring football. That's why we have a podcast. So with that being said, one thing, everybody for joining us this week, all our guests. Again, Like, and subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's really crucial. We're giving away the 1500 subscriptions we're giving away one of the, the Argos jerseys, as well as the jesters merge, please like, and subscribe to videos, get notifications. Also, if you, if you want to listen to us on audio, that's great too. We've had a lot of great downloads. This'll last to end. Reed's showing off his teeth again. Y'all want to see my teeth. Listen, I'm becoming, then our audio downloads have been great. The last two weeks we appreciate, everybody's just pulling them up on all the podcast players as well. Don't want to downplay that. So. I want to thank everybody for listening and we'll see you next week. Dan Ralph with the Canadian press joining us now. Welcome back to the show. Mr. Reynolds. Old home week. Good to have you back. You know, maybe, maybe not. This is the last time we talked to you about this stuff, you know, I don't know for a lot to cover the CFL anymore. I'm getting, I'm getting, I'm getting, so we really appreciate you coming back and talking about everything that's going on with the. The Toronto situation. Among other things. How have you been lately? It says, I feel like you're, you're starting to pick back up and then get the swing of things again. Yeah. You know, training camp started. They opened on Saturday and. Good news is everything. Zoom. The bad news is we're still in zoom. But. You know, I mean, Until, until we get into one-on-one situations. Unfortunately. A lot of us are still covering the league from our basements or our offices. Hey, we got football to talk about. I'm I'm a pretty happy camper. I w w I appreciate you coming on, you know, obviously we had our big Mike Mitchell interview last week, and Farhana talking all about this, you know, the, the D evolution of these XFL CFL talks, right. And then I believe your article came out on Friday, kind of outlining a lot of this with Toronto and everything. Obviously you ruffled a lot of feathers because I think a lot of people really thought like, okay, we're done talking about the XFL now. Like we don't have to deal with that before. I want to get your take on this. I just want to preface everyone listening to this, that Mr. Dan Ralph here was the one that when all these talks originally happened, you were the first report that came out, had the big interview about everything had quotes from Danny Garcia had quotes from Jeffrey P*****k. Had quotes from Iranian Brosy. So, you know, this is not, we are going to the stores here of someone that is covering this stuff. Right. I mean, this isn't just us like rampantly speculating out of nowhere. Well, I appreciate that. But. Truth be told there was a bunch of those home notes. On that zoom. So I was. One of, but yeah. Thank you. Yeah. So why didn't, what was it? When my contract comes up, I need you as my agent. What was your. T, you know, what was the reaction to this big article that, that Toronto, the Argonauts MLSE are still very much interested in working with the XFL. Well, this is the interesting thing is within the space of about 24 hours. I had two, two people whose opinions I. I very much hold. Hold dear and dear to my heart. Pretty much spell out. The same scenario. Like I said within a 24 hour period now, but maybe they talk to each other. I don't know. But I found. You know, when two people who. I feel are in the know, pretty much paint, the same scenario that there's a little bit of credence to end the way I wrote it. Quite frankly, it was, it was an analysis piece. And here were three options for MLSE to consider moving forward. This was after the CFL had made the announcement that talks, but the XFL. At this time and let's preface those three words. At this time had been put. Had ceased. So. They did not. The CFO did not say that talks were over a hundred percent done. We're moving on. All they said was what the season. Approaching. We've put the talks with the XFL. We've seen those talks. At this time. And I think those three words are what resonated with me. And I, like I said, to have two people whose opinions I respect. Point the scenario that MLSE could have three options facing it. After 2021. To me, it gives it credence. And from what I'm, from what I'm hearing now, It's still giving it credence. I mean, I, I know people in Canada don't want to hear it. I know people in Canada are very protective of the CFL entity. But all I say is don't kill the messenger here. You know, we've, we've actually said that on this episode, Don't kill the messenger. We're just, we're just going with what we're being told and we're just reporting and kind of giving our takes on things. Out of those three scenarios that you pointed out, you know, one being the Argos give sold or. Yep. Whenever, what do you think is the most likely at this point? Where we stand right now. Can you, can you give us some insight? Which one do you think is the most likely. Hm. Putting you on the spot. I'm sorry. No, that that's fine. I mean, I think. I think what's going to happen is. The Argos have, from what I've been told, MLSE has approached the board. About the adoption of some sort of revenue sharing model to help. Clubs that are struggling. The thing that's unique about the CFL is you've got three separate ownership entities. You've got. Privately owned clubs like Toronto. Vancouver and Hamilton, you've got community owned clubs like. Winnipeg Edmonton. And Saskatchewan, and you've got the other three clubs that are owned by ownership groups, conglomerations. Conglomerate. Sorry. So you've got three different business models that you're dealing with here. And so. But I do know that some of the clubs have been very, very persistent in trying to develop a revenue sharing model to help. The halves. Share with the have-nots and. On paper. I get it. I just, I don't understand. Where, how you can adopt a revenue sharing model. That addresses. The three biggest markets in your league. And you're asking the community-based clubs, which are the three clubs that annually before COVID. Posted a profit. To have to give money. To help us offset. The expenses incurred by the bigger clubs. I mean, the optics of that just don't sit well with me, but. So I, you. I mean, I'm being told that that that model is being discussed and then there's optimism that something could be introduced. Either during the year or at season's end. So I think that's a potential. I think there's also the potential that MLSE could sell the club. Problem is, is that I don't know. Who's out there to buy it. And then we, you know, when MLSE purchased the Argos in two 17, my thought was this. That if anybody could make a go of it in Toronto, it was that organization. They've got all the resources in the world. If they've been able to enhance the value of some of the other franchises they owned, like. The NHL Leafs, the MBA Raptors. MLSE I am. ALS is Toronto FC. So, I mean, I kind of thought if anybody had the Midas touch, it was that organization, but. Since, you know, even after winning a great cup at two 17, though. This organization has struggled financially. So. I don't know. I can't say they've done anything wrong. They. And move the franchise. They've moved it forward and they they've, they've invested money in it. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, do I think the XFL is a viable entity? Yeah, I do. Do. I think it's the most. The, you know, it's, it's the most popular entity. Maybe not. But do I think it's on the table? Yeah. I did. To that point. Is it a situation where. They would be MLSE group. And you brought up optics. That's. That's so key right now. It's like MLSE is probably one of the most lucrative. Ownership groups, if not the most lucrative you could, you could debate that all day. They make money on everything else. Yup. Yup. Maybe the fans are just like, Hey guys, you guys make so much money on your other products. Can you not deal with the losses here? Well, they can deal with the losses. I mean, They, they, they can, I mean, if. I mean, let's look at the, you know, They, they pay. Hockey players and basketball players, millions upon millions upon millions. Now they do get TV money and they do get other, other funds to help them. There's no questioning the financial resources. MLSE I, I don't. I just think that. Quite frankly, everything they have done from a sports ownership. Platform has been a success. Except this one. And, you know, when they came in, they said all the right things that we knew it was going to take. You know, maybe three to five years. To to make this a go. I think they're probably looking now thinking, wait a minute, it's not going to take three to five. They may take eight to 10. Which means we're going to lose. A lot of money. And trust me a hundred million dollars is a hundred million dollars. Whether you're a billionaire or a millionaire. So I just think now all the sudden they're at a crossroads and they have to make a decision. Can we continue? Trying to build up this, this, this sports entity to wear it. A scenario maybe makes a million dollars or breaks even. Or do we look at other ways to try and speed up that? I think, I mean, MLS sees a lot of things, but they are also very forward thinking. And I think this. This shows that they are. Well, and no one, I mean, well, I, I think they do no one should own a team or run a business just to break even. Right. Which is. Fundamentally at the core of some of the problems with the CFL, right. Is some of these teams are just in the business of breaking even, or not losing a lot of money. Is it the idea that. Like you said, you know, MLSE potentially wants to get out, maybe align themselves for an NFL team potentially in Toronto instead. And they're, they're just looking for, like you said, who's going to buy. Here are the exit valve might buy, I mean, is it just that they're. Yeah. They they've, we've heard in the past, you know, they were some of the ones that kind of helped start these talks anyway, with the XFL that they're just saying, like, They they'll just pass it on to them and say like, it's like we talked on the show. It's like hot potato. Like we're, we're done with that. Like, we're just going to pass this on to someone else and get out while we can't. Well, I just, like I said, I, I think they're very forward thinking. I think they, they leave no stone unturned. And. I heard the same thing you guys did that they were the ones who were really. I'm gonna say spearheading. Cause I don't think that's the right word, but I think they were the ones at the, at the front of the line to look at this option. And, and for every reason, I mean, You know, I think they could look and see what. Redbird and what Dwayne Johnson can bring to the table from you in terms of marketing opportunities. And according and. And ways to sell the product. In Toronto, because I think it's become very, very apparent to them and very, very apparent to many is that the status quo, the CFL just doesn't work for MLSE and I don't see. In my humble opinion, and this is only me speaking. I can't see MLSE standing for the status quo. For much longer within the CFL. So if they're not going to stand for the status quo, Then we're down to three options. How. And, and I was, I. I'm guess I'm taking a question from Reed's mouth and then spitting it out. If MLSE can't really make the CFL team work. How are they supposed to make an XFL team work? Assuming that that's the play here. Well, it's, it's something new and you're getting, you're getting marketing from the, from a us venture to you got a us TV deal. Quite possibly. And I think you just have an opportunity to sell. A new entity because the current entity or the current status quo doesn't work for you. So you're willing to try and find something at least. The unload and see if that works. I mean, if it doesn't work. No, at least you tried. Right. My only concern. Quite frankly, is. What happens if it doesn't work now, what happens to football in Toronto? I guess we'll cross that bridge when we get to it, but that would be my question. I am. And we said this on the show. I in. You know, cause I'm not an exit bell Homer by any means. I mean, I'll, I'll call it. Like I see it and I am terrified. Of the idea of bringing the XFL team to Toronto. And I think we're at the point where communication from both leagues has been so poor regarding all of this. And I think, and I know that the online doesn't speak for everybody, but I think it is such a toxic environment right now. That I think that, that the disinterest that Toronto has. In the current Argos would turn into almost like a. Out of spite, we're not going to support the next NFL team here. Almost like, like almost like how the new ownership group for the Sonics came in. Clay Bennett and everyone. And the Seattle fans kind of like revolted in and refuse to go to games, which therefore. Seattle moved. That kind of thing. What do you think? I think it's a valid point because I mean, The Argos have a core, a core group of fans. That that like the CFL. That loved the Argos. And the problem is, is that course too small right now. And they they've had trouble in the last. Decade growing that core. And so the demographic needs to be revamped and I think it needs to get younger. And you're talking to a guy who's among the older ones. So, I mean, I'm not the demographic they want to look. They want to. To appeal to. So the real threat is if you do bring in a different entity, that, that core group. And I, I, I wish I could tell you definitively how big that core group is. Judging by home crowds. You're probably looking at anywhere from four to 7,500. 400, 4,000 to 7,500 fans. You alienate that so. I think that that would be a very, very viable. By-product of, of going down that path. Yeah. I think you're right. Could, could they take the name Argonauts with them to the next. That's a really good question. I, I don't that's that's way past my pay grade. I suspect not. But I don't know for sure. And I mean, I'm not sure they would want to, I would think they'd probably want maybe a, they would want a fresh new start. Yeah, it just, it seems weird to me. I know there's been a lot of backlash this week about this, but you know, when we have Mike Mitchell on, you know, basically saying the same thing that, you know, XFL is very much either with the CFL or without the CFL, you know, w. Let's say. Let's see, Argonauts are off the table. Yeah, let's say they're still CFL, still doing their own thing. If the XFL now is the same. Well, we want to be in Toronto regardless. Right? I mean, do you see them or what would you think the chances would be of that? You know? W do we have two teams there? I mean, that's why we come to this conclusion, right? Cause immediately you go, well, And the XFL adds a team then you're going to have to, well, obviously they're just, I mean, it's really easy to get to the conclusion of, of somehow the. Plastic to break. Right. Yeah, I would. It would be interesting because they, you ran a football was in the arena. Football league was in Toronto for one year. And so we did have a situation where. Technically you did have two football franchises in the same city now. It was very, very short-lived and it didn't last long. So. You're talking about to outdoor football. Entities now. And you know, the NFL is big and as you know, the NFL is big and says. Ontario and maybe for down football would be something that. That people, some people would get excited about. My only concern is that. Toronto is such a fickle sports market that if it's not deemed the best. Not deemed at the top. Then you struggle to get people out. And this is the thing that kills me about Toronto's football market is that, you know what the CFL. The NFL. In my lifetime. I don't believe is coming to Toronto. And so the best football you're going to get right now is. It's the Toronto Argonauts. So you either. Choose to embrace it and support it, or you choose not to embrace it. And. You, you, you leave it now. The TV numbers would suggest that there is. There is a good base of people who watch the CFL. The problem is, is getting them to the park. What's the arena football, by the way, is that the 22 year spring league? Was successful for a little while. I don't know. I got to cover one game on one game. Just curious. I love David Baker. Don't get me wrong. I loved him when he was the commissioner, but. Arena football was just not. Something that it was not, it didn't catch on. What about way up there or here in America? Wow. Could you make the argument? Although, you know what. 22 Years. And one of the. And one of the. A coach. John Gregory. He coached up here with Saskatchewan and animals and has a great upbringing. Was coach of the year. He, he coached. The Iowa barn. Barnstormers when, when. Having a cramp brain cramp the quarterback. Hall of fame quarterback played the ran again, went on St. Louis. Or Kurt Warner. Kurt Warner played arena ball. So I do. 32 Years, by the way, 32. Not 2232 years. Right. Okay. The thing to me is, and like you talking about, you know, if it's not deemed big time in Toronto, right. I mean, that was a very similar problem that the exit bell had, right. In, in LA, in New York, you know, it's very difficult to get media attention, right? When you know, New York media, LA media, and that's why. You know, At the end of all this, what killed me the most about, you know, all this, like [unknown]. Ex-felon. I'm like, fundamentally, these are the same leagues. We just different rules and stuff, you know? Grassroots smaller towns. I mean, they're talking about adding a team to San Antonio, right? I mean, that's not traditionally a large market. Football talent. And so it's like, You know, Again, it was so frustrating with all these talks and everything is fundamentally, both of these leagues suffer from the same problems, right. It's, it's viewed out as the poopoo league. That's not the NFL, you know, one's up north one south. And so. Yeah, I just, I don't think replacing the letters on the, on the Argonauts with another league fixes a problem that it's still looked at as, as third rate football, even though it shouldn't be, I mean, but. But it is. No, I would agree with you. I think. But, you know, I, I, I give, this is where I do give MLSE some credit that at least they're. There, they know that what's working well with what's going on right now, isn't working. So they're at least trying to try and to explore other things. So. I just, I don't know. I just, I'm not so sure that this was, this was the way to go just from some of the reasons you just reiterate it, to be honest. Switching gears in a way. Still talking about. How to bring revenue in and stuff like that. Your thoughts on C you know, the, the gambling build a single game sports gambling bill. How is that going to help? How's it going to help a struggling print franchise. Like Toronto. I think it's going to help some I'm I'm not quite so sure it's going to help as much as people in my industry seem to think it's gonna help. I think it's gonna help some. The thing is, is that. You've got, you've got government involved in this now, and government will we'll run it. Government will we'll sanction it. And government will. Be honest tickets. Scott and, and Ontario, you've got three teams. They're all going to be vying for the same thing. Right now, what I think it does do is it does open up. The potential for, for. For sponsorship agreements where, you know, you can. Have kiosks in. In in, in stadiums and, and you can engage Fannie you get more fan interest. But I, I'm not so sure that it's gonna, it's gonna net. The millions that some of my brother and think so. But having said that even if it brought in, let's say half a million dollars per franchise. The CFL is one league where it's teams. Can stretch that 500,000. Five different ways and it's 500 grand. They don't, they didn't have then. And don't have now, and I think any financial assistance for the league. Is something that people will, it will welcome. With open arms. But, you know, and I think some organizations. We'll benefit from this and others, maybe not quite so much. It's just hard because at this point, you know, all the CFL has done is cut, reduced staff, you know, reduce payroll, you know, shortened things. It's just, at some point you gotta turn the arrow in the other direction. Right? You know, and we can get through the season. And I do see a lot of, even when your article came out and I saw a lot of like, well, it's just time to shut up and play. You know, training cancer, starting. And I go. Yeah, but the same people, they criticize the CFL. For the last four months about sweeping things under the rug and going to play now are saying, well, training camps are starting to, we just need to go, Mike. These problems. But it doesn't exist in a vacuum. I mean, it's just really weird, but I saw, I saw a lot of media last week when the XFL and all this stuff dragged out, like, stop talking about that. Now we need to go play. And you're like, yeah. But all of these problems are still here when you, you know, the world doesn't disappear when you close your eyes. Right. It's still. Yeah. No. And that's what I found too. You know, I think even right now, You're not going to hear a whole lot of SFL talk. Within the CFL because the season, you know, we're in training camp. Season starts in August. We have a great cup in December. But I guarantee you gentlemen. December 13th the day after gray cup. Guess what? We're going to be talking about this. I I'm, I'm convinced that it's not going away and it may be on the back burner, but the stove's not off. It's just simmering right now. And when we get through a season and every team in the CFL in 2021 is going to lose money. So guess what we're going to be in the same exact position on the 13th of December that we are now. And that teams are going to be needing money. And, you know, they're, they're going to be looking for alternate revenue sources in. I still think this is. The wording of that press release from the Canadian football league. At this time. Those are the three words that resonate with me that. To me, they didn't say, you know what, we're done finished. Move on. They just said, we've got a season starting. That's where we're going to put all our efforts and we've, we've suspended talks with the XFL. I think to go along with that. And my last question today is, you know, with Mike Mitchell and the reporting coming out, that potentially that the XFL could be shifting from an April to June timeline, as opposed from a February to April. Yeah. Leads credence as well to the idea of let's get it a little warmer up north in Canada. And, and extended out that way. I mean, again, I don't feel like we're drawing from that being here. I feel like we try to do our job and due diligence and you know, it does seem like there, there a smoke here. Yep. And I'll give him credit too, because he brought up something I didn't even think about. And that's the whole internet internationalization. Or that international look that the XFL is going to be looking at and. I mean, we, we concentrate on Canada. For obvious reasons. But there. Their vision is not just solely on Canada. It's I believe on in, in Mexico. As well. So, I mean, that would sort of fit into the global, the global vision and you know, not too long ago. The commissioner of the CFL was talking about making the CFL into, you know, Canadian football into a global global entity. And he introduced a CFL 2.0 initiative and has working relationships with, I dare say a dozen organizations around the world. So that seems to be the. Now the way that. That these leaks are going because they're looking at potential revenue streams now. Having said that CFL 2.0, hasn't provided a dollar as far as I'm, as far as I know. So, you know, the, the jury is still out, but you know, when, when I took a look at 'em. At his reporting, it, it made sense to me. It made sense to me. You can't, you can't grow a league by, by keeping it in a, in a bread. Bread basket. You know, And that is, that is sometimes the vibes that I see online, even, even today with a lot of this is, you know, these Americans are covering my league, these, these, you know, covering our, you know, spoiler, you know, if you're extending this out internationally, you know, It's not our league anymore. It just it's it's your gun? If you want to grow it. And you want it to survive. You're going to have, it's like when you're in high school, when you listen to a band and then they get bigger and you go, I needed them valuable. But it's, it is the way that the world works. So anyway, that is. It for me today, but I wanted to, you know, this, thank you for coming on and hopping on with, with all this stuff. Yeah. Immediately after the article came out. Thank you so very much, chairman, always a pleasure. All right. A hall of Famer, Dan, Ralph, the Canadian press. I'm throwing it out there to help you in your contract negotiations when you need to renew your deal. So whatever we can do to help you get angry. What I sort of led you guys down the garden path. I'm I'm not contracted. Sadly I'm salary. Oh, well, Well, They should put you in a contract. Careful then, then that means they could get rid of me after it too. We don't want that to happen. We thank you for your time, Dan. Always. Was a pleasure. Anytime guys. Appreciate it. Well, Murray McCormick of the Regina leader posts. I want to thank you so much for coming on today. I'm excited to talk rough riders. I've been looking at a bunch of. Different notes and things coming out from training camp at first and foremost, how is everything going for you now that we're kind of back finally covering CFL football again? I have to admit it's different working 12 to 14 hour days. Again, I don't know people. Allow for the. With the pandemic. I was moved over to news for half passports, half new. Sorry. I had to work Monday to Fridays nine to five. Pretty strict hours. And it's a little different now being in sports and a training camp where it's all football all the time, except for today. All football. Because I had the day off all football all the time. So it's been a bit of adjustment. Working again. But it's been so. I keep looking and going, geez, I missed it. I really kind of missed having. Having a purpose in life, having something to do, happy to do something important as a people are actually going to read. And it's been. You've been sort of a. Doubly important as fans aren't allowed to practice. So the media are really the eyes and the ears are what is going on at training camp. And I don't know if it happens down there as much, but. We get between 500 to a thousand people at a writer's training camp. Not as much during the week, but on the weekends. So there's a pretty big contingent of real birds watching things and going on. So we've been on honest. It is to tell kids things important. She was going on and stuff. But the big news is we just got her told today that fans will be loud in the stands on your Sunday. Which is big news or B. It's limited to 500. So I'm interested to see that'll fill up pretty quickly. Cause that'll be. I don't know, we think it might keep them away. I think it's supposed to be. I'm not sure if Celsius. In Fahrenheit, you mean? And she'll be 36 Celsius on Sunday. Which is. Even in Fahrenheit is smoking hot. But we'll see what happens. Yeah, it's funny. I used to, when I was in news, I used to cover the Seahawks here in Seattle and we would always go cover training camp and I never really got it. Why fans would want to go see all that? Right? Because I wasn't the sports guy back. I mean, this was years and years ago. And then now, like I totally get it, especially where you're coming from, where the fans want to know. You know, availability is limited. You know, opening up now. So it is, it's really on the responsibility of you all. You. Cause even the teens, it's kind of like, well, are they, you know, They're reporting things that we really need to know from the media, like what's happening in, like who's looking good, who's looking bad, kind of. So, how has it been the energy and the excitement and everything. Since you've been able to cover this stuff, are you guys doing stuff via zoom? Still out there? Well, we're still doing all the player interviews via zoom, and it's still going to be that way. For quite a while. I'm not quite sure when it'll ever end. And as a journalist, I can honestly say I hate zooms. The world. Yeah. It's on the other websites so quickly, usually before I can even get started writing my story, whatever I'm going to, all my questions of ASAM. That's very frustrating, but I also understand you're trying to mitigate the, the. Well, what's going to happen or they really want to keep pillar safety. They want to keep it learned that. So the best way to do that is keep. An old guy, like me breathing all over them. So I guess that's, that's part of the price we have to pay for having this world opened up a little bit, but yeah, zooms are, aren't a great way for us, but then they also post them all on the team's website. And I hate to me, that's kind of the old joke. We don't like to see, let them know how the sausage is made. We just want them to meet her stories and interpret how we released other quotes and use them too. To tell our story. We don't want the other people to be. Telling their story before my story, if that makes sense. It does it does. You know, it's a couple of days removed now, but the big story originally coming out from the risers camp is obviously the injuries last week, the Achilles injuries, all of that, you know, I know that they're looking into that and it wasn't like an unsanctioned practice. I mean, do you have takeaways from that? Because it was a pretty alarming just when I read that came out, you know, However it happened. You have four players injured at one time. Like that's pretty crazy. Well, I've been in the sports writing business. Since 1980. So there's a little time. I've seen one torn Achilles in that time. And that was why not. The riders quarterback in 2015, Darien direct. Then the regular season opened, tore his Achilles. So when the first one came in, Huh. That's unusual. And then I got a text from a friend and Marie. That's not one that's now three other guys have torn their Achilles. And I'm, I, I have to, I am still shocked. I'm still shocked that that many Achilles injuries. I probably don't know for people who have Achilles injuries and it's kind of a fairly common cause. If you talk to the guys who it's happened to. It's a somewhat, fairly common injury. But it was all, it was, it wasn't an unsanctioned practice. It was a players only practice. And part of the. Covert protocols was no coaches were allowed, which was a mistake because I think. If coaches have been allowed. They probably would have stopped it. So that was one thing after that. So the place and also. You have to understand. The players have been locked up or basically for two years, and they haven't had any opportunities. So they're getting a chance to go into, they had three negative Kota. Covert test. So they were allowed on the field. It just was a bigger group than I think. And then they did this pride, this drill, throwing a medicine hat, ball, medicine ball into the air, and then they all chased the two of Jason's spot. Now they say they've done it hundreds of times, and I've never once seen a rider practice. So I. I don't, I don't doubt they've done it hundreds of times. I don't know when they do it a hundred times. I'm at every practice and there's other media people there. So we don't know when this drill was. If I had to offer my doctor's opinion, that they, their Achilles weren't ready for it for some of the players. Cause if you probably know football players in LA, they played basketball in the off season. They they'd go to a gym. They work on making things stronger than most gyms were an open. So that opportunity to meet, but even then doesn't that doesn't explain the randomness of it. Doesn't explain. True anticipated starters. The first, their second round, the second overall pick in the drought and the promising rookie. All going down within six minutes. With Achilles torn, Achilles. And I'll. I know I'm babbling a little bit, but. It was one of the saddest things I saw on the sideline the other day, when I looked at us, all four of them. Standing together with their boots on. And thinking, man, like, Do wait all this time to get an opportunity to play football. And then to have that happen. You got to think for guys like Larry Dean and Freddy Bishop, the third they're in their thirties. Is it over? You never know. And the other two younger guys. It couldn't be their careers before they even started from a. On the way things happen. So it was a. I don't like to word your Ridge tragedy because COVID 19 changes it or definitions of tragedy. Forever and ever, but it was a tragic, catastrophic thing. And. I think it's, we're going to be writing about it right until December 12th. If the writers are in the great cop. So it's still, it's always going to be hanging over the team this year. Yeah, no, and you're not rambling at all. This is great insights and yeah. Do you not worry at all about that? Cause. Yeah, it's, it's one of those things where, you know, I think the comments that come out a couple of weeks ago from Craig Dickinson about how, you know, some of the veterans would be caught or, you know, it was going to be a tough kind of grind to get everybody because some of these players. We're in, in shape. Right. And a lot of the comments came out and it's like, well, that's not necessarily. Even up to these players who have been working and supporting their families and having other jobs and doing other stuff. I mean, it just comes to a point where, until you're being paid to play football, you can't devote, you know, the five, six hours a day that it needs to be, to be in that shape. Right. I don't think they were out of shape. I just think maybe they maybe weren't ready. Is that kind of, yes. The same thing and. If they say they've done it a hundred times a year. I wrote a story. The followup story, one of the guys said they'd done it that morning an hour before, and nobody had any problems. And maybe they've done it all this time. There's never been an issue, but more with Arizona. I can imagine there's only two trainers on the field. At the time. So based on my limited experience of what happens with this traumatic injury, like in Achilles, there are probably two of them we're working on the first guy Torres one. The second guy looks up and he's torn his one. Then the third guy tears, when, and they had had nobody to be there to really stop sale case. Sit down, I talked to a trainer, I said, sit down, stop. Don't do anymore. Let's start with that. Stop this right now. Till finally, but also in hindsight, looking at it in a matter of six minutes, boy, we've grown. That's, that's not much time for anything. So it's almost like medical triage for these guys when these trainers and I, I really think Craig Dickinson, I don't know how, how your, how familiar listeners are with Greg. Craig is a standup guy. He's one I've dealt with. Many coaches over my years. And Craig's really a different guy. He's honest, he's candid. He understands what's going on. And he said, I think he has to earn, we have to earn the trust of the players back in camp. And I really think they do. And, and I think. Somehow that someone screwed up on someone. Going to be in trouble. I think the CFL PA sooner or later is going to say something went on this stuff, but. For, for the rider shake, they did everything right. Except there should have been coaches out there and that should have stopped. And. You wouldn't be losing your starting middle linebacker. They've. You know, they're defensive and Freddy Bishop to replace Charleston Hughes. There's no, right now that position is wide open where it looked almost like there was locked up. So there's. There's a lot of, there's still a lot of followed from that and it's still going to be some followed from that, but just a crazy, crazy, crazy day when you're trying to just prep for opening of training camp after two years. So it was a bit of a. Chaotic day. Yeah, I just couldn't imagine waiting all that time. You. And then in looking so forward to this as a player, and then coming out of that and having that happen, I want to get your take on, you know, we've been covering this Paxton Lynch right. Coming out, you know, At first day saying, okay, maybe I'm not ready for this. I mean, what, what's your takeaway from the comments he made that, like, I want to go back to the NFL. Oh, I'd be surprised. You said anything less. Like you want to go back to the NFL, come on. Let's do this. And guiding that credit question. Well, I did. So. I was one of the, another journal and other, a radio guy said, what kind of dumb questions McCormick asking? This is no, I'm you have to ask the guy that because you want to be able to put it in the story, what he thinks. And absolutely this is about going back to the NFL for you. He's only 27. You got put into a position. I think with the Broncos, it wasn't. He wasn't ready. He wasn't. He should have been the first overall pick. Probably not that Prescott went after him. So maybe they just sort of. Should have shouldn't have picked them. It should have been, wasn't a suitable offense. And all of the things, one of our, my sports that are Rob counselors are crazy Broncos fan. So I know way more about the Broncos quarterbacks now than I ever thought. I really would know after Payton Mattie. And John Elway. But anyway. So I think he got put in and then he comes out here and he was good. He's. It's funny to see maybe down there in the NFL and the NFL, you see. [Unknown] quarterbacks. They don't exist in the CFL. Six seven quarterbacks. That's that's defensive end height. That's. No, those types of things are offensive linemen. So it's different to see that tall of a quarterback on the field. Talking to some of these guys. I asked him to think it's a bit of an advantage to be that tall because the CFL feels wider and it's more of a crowd issues. Yeah. See what happens. He's looking better every day. I have to give him credit for that the first day he just. I think he was getting out of quarantine. He wasn't quite ready. Maybe not quite ready, but. It's just a different game. And he looked and he looked getting more confident in his past. Isn't. I have to let people know Cody for Giotto is the starting quarterback for the Roughriders. There's no one else. There's no debate. But there is an opening for a backup. And I think PAX and Lynch could push Isaac Harker. Who's was a backup last year and loved the riders for that game against Edmonton. When the. B Demond clenched first base in the home. Home playoff game. So Isaac. Markers. Has some mobility, this Tom Flaco and that's Joe Flacco's brother. Who's got quite the amazing pass and Mason fine. Who's a guy who kicked her out in Oklahoma. And whatnot. Sorry, I'm drawing a blank. North Texas mean green. Does that make sense? Does that name ring a bell. Okay. So there are, there is a good battle for quarterback and there's nothing to sports or to loves more than a quarterback charge. Diversity of training camp. It's 23 days. We don't want to worry about an offensive lineman. People want to know about quarterbacks. So more questions about quarterbacks veteran, as far as I'm concerned. I use zoom earlier on glitch for this second. So you said you were the one that asked the question to PacSun and got made fun of what was the question that you asked that brought that out? I think I asked him, do you want to get back to the NFL? I still don't think it was a bad question. I've never, I've asked them. I'm not most intelligent questions about. I don't think there's a bad question. Just that darn zoom. Cause you don't get the opportunity. And I'll just give a quick story. Like people say to me, Quarterback receiver. I brought three kids. And I'll have to ask them how old they are, what's their names and what their kid, which is a pretty basic journalistic question. But you're doing it on zoom and. Well, why does he turn right? Gossip called know, people want to know who skews you got three kids, how old they are and what are their names. Zoom opens up. As I said, people are finding out how we make the sausage. And they're finding out it's kind of boring. Keisha when we get to the end. But, I mean, it seemed like the big comments were that, you know, Paxton Lynch maybe thought he was going to come up here. Or not come up, you know, come up to you guys, you know, I'm not, I'm not up there, but come up to the CFL, you know, do a quick stint, have a cup of coffee and come back down. And now maybe, you know, people, the comments are like, well, you need, maybe you need to. You got to prove. I thought it was funny that he didn't know there were 12 guys on the field. And as one guy mentioned, he really finds out there's a C in defense. Can you spell it? Her words, but that was a pretty good one. It's an adjustment for guys. I never once got I never once got the impression he's up here for a cup of coffee. He's up here. To see what he can do to prove that he can go back to the states and make a living down there. It may sound funny in 2017. The Vince young experiment up here. If you remember Vince young from the Tennessee Titans and all those things, she came up here under the who cars agent happened to be at least time, or who's the same agent. Let's pack some Lynch's. So they brought Lynn, they needed a quarterback up here because of Darien Dre was been traded. So they brought young up as a guy to see what he could do. And he's another big dude for the CFL. Six five, I think two 30. And. I never got to see what Vingean could do because he tore his hamstring jogging out of bounds. During a really innocuous drill. And I always wondered because I thought I never once saw him unload a past 24 D patch or anything. They just kind of kept them under wraps. And so there's a lot of comparisons made to Paxton Lynch and Vince young, but in a way I feel it's a little unfair towards Paxton because he's only 27. Vince was 34. By the time he was. Actually it was during the one time I've talked to him was a very candid. No, it was a good interview. Didn't maybe. Vince was always kind of in a big press conference. I remember they signed him. In February before he came up here that when he came up here that back in the day, when we had press conferences, Yeah, you seem okay with the idea, but I don't think he was, I think once he got up here and realized that it's not something he wanted to do, how much work it was. Training camps tough on older guys. I think in not just the work, just being away from families and during those kinds of things. So I don't, I don't, I always wonder what Vince could have done, and I'll always wonder that I'll retire. And whenever I retire and keep thinking, remember that was a little like too, and seeing what a Vince. Vince young could have contributed, maybe done in the CFL, but there's a long list of American quarterbacks who have come up here and haven't done squat. Like, I'm not saying they're all hosel homeless of American quarterbacks who have done great stuff, because most of the quarterbacks tend to be a mayor are all Americans, but. It was a little high profile with Graham Harrell up here. Remember him from Texas. He was, he was here for a while before he went down to green bay. Tony Ray skull way, way back to the Nordeen gaze. I'm just thinking the ones off the top of my head when, since I bet around here. There's always been and they just count them. They don't adjust because it's a whole different game. And it's, it's not saying they aren't any good. It's just saying that 12 players on the field, three downs, a 22nd time clock. And try to change in your yard. You go from 45 to 20 seconds. It's a huge adjustment for the American guys. Yeah, well, and that segues into my next comment is Cray Dickinson had come out and talked about, you know, the, the CFL and. In how, you know, people should be really proud of the game. Right. And proud of the high caliber of it. You know, obviously that, that segways from the packs of Lynch comments, right. Where I think Dave Naylor had had a whole big tweet stream this week about all the other. You're mentioning, you know, these American quarterbacks that come up and can't. Immediate is just those. I mean, it's these major differences in the game, but then, you know, the effects, it, you know, The the field size he affected the players on the field with the promotion. I mean, it's so much to adjust you. And then do you think the game is just that much more challenging to, for these players to get used to. I think it is, but I also want to mention there's a lot of quarterbacks that no one's ever heard of will come up here and do great things. Cody for Gerard of bull Levi, Mitchell, Michael Riley. Damon Allen. I could list names and names of American quarterbacks who didn't play for big time programs. But came up here in a really been successful. So the quarterbacks can make the adjustment. It's just seems to be. Maybe there's more focus on these big name, guys that people are saying, Hey, like, You know, as we say with Paxton Lynch shoes, Because he was a former first round and maybe there's more attention on them and there's more pressure on them to really step up. So it's not fair to say that American quarterbacks can't come up here and adjust. It just seems to be the big names. I have problems with adjusting and I. I touched upon the differences and they are differences. And I also think they find out that the Canadian football athlete is a pretty good athlete. They're they're used they're they're faster. I think. They're not as big. They're a little leaner. And they can cover the field and they know how to play some of these guys who've been around a while. And I think the Americans find a home. There are athletes in the CFL. These aren't just a bunch of Eskimos. Who matters to suit up to complete football? There's some good athletes in his game. I'm 100% Craig, I'm a very proud Canadian. I'm very proud to fact that. You know, I get to cover the CFL and it's full of caves and the Canadian is. Struggling some days we get some. The XFL talk. There's a lot of discussion about taking the Canadian or the Canadian football league, but. It's a great meeting, a lot of fun, right. People watch it. And they get into it. They're going to see a lot of good games. That's probably one of the best parts. With a CFL. I, I want to ask you about DM Lacey too, but I wanted to just, as you mentioned it, I mean, do you have any thoughts about the ending of the, of the toxic between the leagues? I mean, we didn't have you on in the time where they, you know, presumably the toxicant being continuing today while we had you on, but it just ended up that the timing worked out. Any thoughts about both leagues deciding to move on. There was a lot of talk about a lot of talk about a lot of talk. I was really underwhelmed by the whole thing. I remember when the media release came out, I sent it to my. To my boss, Rob that's on. I said, what the heck does this mean? Cause it was just like a line of saying the USFL and the XFL are doing this. And then three sets of quotes. I said, well, what does this mean? And it filled a lot of dead time. During a lot of dead time for a lot of people. And I think the best thing has happened right now. The CFL needed to get that cleaned up before we focused open training camp and let's keep the focus on. Training camp and what's going ahead. Because I know as a reporter, I'd be asking questions about the XFL. Almost every guy. No one just because the players aren't opportunities to be seen and the XFL were to provide bigger opportunities to be seen. Another part with the CFL. And it probably does. I don't know if they mentioned the CFL is pretty well tapped into every financial source of money. It can and Canada. It's there's no other ways. We're not a big, we don't have the. Sponsors, we don't have all these things. That you might have in the Americas. So they're trying to find ways to get resourceful, to get money. That global 2.0, where they're bringing in players from Mexico and Europe and stuff. Is a way to expand league and bring in some extra money. So the TFL is trying to find ways to expand its market and to bring revenue in. And I don't fault them for that. Check it out. I'm glad it's over with. I hope. As I said, I'm closer to retirement, so I hope it's gone before I ever retire before. By that till I retired. So yeah, I'm not, I wasn't overly excited about it sometimes. I forget all about it. So that's not a bad day. Yeah, I don't, I believe that anyone's just forgetting about it while it happened. I want to talk about ID on Lacey. You know, he had got pulled off that, you know, the COVID came back on. And I guess to me, first off, you know, updates on that you. If you have any, but in second, I think he just raises more questions because I think, I don't think it was Craig. I think it was a GM that was asked, you know, about it. And they did the line was like, we're supposed to have something to say about this with the protocols, but I'm not really sure what it's supposed to be, or I can't remember the quote that was. Who is in there. So any updates on Dion and then just overall that whole, like, we have to be very transparent about what is happening right now. And the CFL isn't always as transparent about like injuries and things like that. That's a big thing. Do you have a lady? She was back on the field today. Basically, it was a false positive test. In the CFL announced from they did 6,000 tests, I think in the neighborhood, be getting ready for training camp. And they had 10 false positive tests. So they haven't had a positive test. It's just part of the protocols. If a guy test positive, he has to go into cordial. Daisey Lacey felt fine. And he was back on the field at middle linebacker. For a little while today, which is interesting because I thought for sure. He was a star will with the Eskimos, just an absolute stud back in the day when he played there. It was just back to 2016. So. Yeah, I think it was Craig who mentioned the, I shouldn't be saying that. And I think. I'm willing to give guys in this position a little bit more latitude because we're learning as we go along. This is all new. You know, the NHL guys have gone through this whole process in hockey. But we're going through the first time as football reporters. I'm willing to give Craig some room on that. Let him know he shouldn't be taught. If you shouldn't be talking about it, he shouldn't be talking about it, but it did. I tried to find out what COVID protocols meant, and I wasn't able to find it out until the CFL came with this. So. This memo today about the test. So now I know what it means. And there's going to be others, and someone's going to test positive and be positive. I positive about that. If I can. As positive about anything as. It can be. So it's going to happen and hopefully it doesn't run rampid through a team because the CFL. I don't think you can schedule games or. Well, it's some, some room to move things around a little bit, but it happened to the NFL that happens in NBA, happened in hockey. Fortunately. I don't know how many Roughriders were vaccinated. That's that's a big question that is once again, deemed a privacy matter. I think it should be released. I think we should know how many guys are vaccinated because you know how I don't want to go on my rant, but we know important being vaccinated. It is. When you see the numbers. So as an older person, I'll say I've been double vaccine. I feel a whole, much better for it. And I get to see my grandkids. So that's. So it has many, many advantages. I know that's not really been football, but. It's the world to now. Isn't it. I think last question for me today is, you know, we're moving towards home opener, right? I think the numbers, right. Look good for Saskatchewan. Right? We're going to be having. You know, full crowds ride for home opener. I mean, any, any thoughts looking forward to the season here? Once we get past training camp. Pretty good on. Just people. No, no tourney campus. It was a bit of a grind and I know for the players and for us too. So let's, let's bring on training camp. I would think in, someone said to me, asked me today, what I thought about the Roughriders. And I thought before. The Achilles catastrophe, they were in a good position to make a run for first place. Larry Dean is an outstanding middle linebacker and a pretty Bishop third. He played on a bad Toronto defensive line last year, but I think you get more sick sex now. I'm a little less. Certain that they can get that first place, then you're going to be a playoff team. And I think it's, it's gonna have, it's gonna take them a little while to settle down too, because there's only 14 games with can take a couple of games for guys because they haven't played. There's no preseason games. I know the NFL went straight and I think the NFL went straight from the regular practice and they got away with it. But it's going to be some sloppiness. Because the NFL guys are making a lot more money to train in the workout than the Canadian guys. Where are at the time. So. Looking for it. Yeah. I think I'm looking forward to the season started. I have to admit the riders open against the BC lines on August six. And if there's a dry, if you have a, if you don't have a few tears, I don't think you're human. I think we can all look at what happened in the last year and a half. We've gone through the friends. We've lost the people who've gotten sick. And I think it's all going to be part of being part of a football game. That's regardless of all the politicals, politicization, and masks and whatnot, it's going to be a promotional deal for an old sports or like myself. I think I'm going to be, I lost two good friends. The COVID. So I'm going to be thinking about them when the. The ball kicks off and they would have made the game. So it's going to be, yeah. It's not quite football, but it's going to be football. Hopefully. Well, Marie, I really appreciate your time today, scheduling, you know, I know it's busy with the riders and, and covering everything and getting back into the suite and you'll, hopefully we can have you back on sometime during the season and talk, you know, talk about the risers again and again, it's, it's so important for us, you know, down here in the states to have people that are doing the Lord's work up there, covering everything. But I mean, but I mean it right. [unknown]. To be able to provide access right down south to a lot of us to be able to get that information out is, is very much appreciated. And I want to thank you very much for the work that you're doing. Well, I love talking and I love talking football and I love selling them. I I'm not saying I'm an I'm totally I'm biased. I covered the league. Of carbon on the right of beef since 2008. We do when, when to criticize them. But we also grew up loving the CFL. I have CFL memories. I could tell your listeners for many, many years of a guy growing up watching CFL. So it's, it's a big part of our lives. And. I think people need to know more about it, and it's not a bad idea to let people know that there. You know what Paxton Lynch comes up here, Yahoo. Good for him. But we have a lot of other guys that are up here. How does it make him a bit of a living? You've been doing that for quite a while. Let's do some good players. So hopefully they'll turn in. Tune in. That's a better word. Absolutely. Well, thank you again and best of luck. For the season. Thanks coach for hopping on. Well, thank you so much. I'm Reed I'm with the markcast that we cover, you know, spring league and XFL and all sorts of other alternative football. I will say when coach mommy, when I announced that you were coming on today, Tremendous support and interest in questions from our listeners. I really appreciate you taking the time. It does mean a lot to the people that listen to our show. Well, sure. I'm happy to do it. What has life been like for you? The last couple of weeks? I know we're a little removed from the big mega bowl championship game. What has life been like for you? Well, I'm working on, I'm tutoring some guys here in the Dallas area and. Quarterbacks and receivers. So I I've been kind of kicking back and taking it easy after living in a hotel suite in Indianapolis right weeks. It's been fun to be back home and cook her own meals and stuff. But we haven't done a whole tutoring and then next week I'm going to the beach ramble. Vacation. Well, well deserved vacation after a championship run. What was, what was your experience like? In Indianapolis first off, how did that come about you getting asked to be involved in the league? Well, Brian Woods is the CEO of that league and he called me on the, about April, around the middle of April, April 15th, I believe. And. Asked me. If I do it, he had offered it to June Jones. Palm Lula and didn't want to. Spend two months in Indianapolis. So. He, he recommended me. And so then Brian called me and told me all about it. Sure. We'll come to that. Is that something that, you know, as a coach and someone that works with players, I mean, does that get you really excited to go into a league like that? And get to, you know, maybe scout some new talent and work with some younger talent. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. We did see a lot of talent. People might be for the future. And. But the neat thing about those players was they were all kinda guys that got caught in the 2019. Played your senior season. And then the virus hit and they didn't have a chance to have a pro day or any tryouts or anything like that. And then the NFL cut back their rosters. And so free agents were. You pretty much had already been in the league and already get signed. So all these guys were guys. Deserved a chance, but really didn't get one. That year. So then this game. You know, I gave him six, six or seven. Real good. Talk about the quality of the talent that was in that league that you got to work with. I mean, specifically on the line men, but obviously you got to see some of the other teams as well, talking about the level of player that was involved in this relay. Well, I, you know, I talked to Jerry Glanville when I got in that leg and he, he had done it. He had been doing it. He had a team call a Cockers and he said, it's the most fun you'll ever have. He said, these guys hit harder than anybody's ever been around. He was pretty much right. I mean, they're, they're all out there playing per chance. And I know jury's already signed six guys just to the charger. Along. We've signed three to Canada and we're hoping to get some more here. But I think the level of play was, was really good, probably on par with. You know, the, the XFL or Canadian football, that sort of thing. And then, and then there's, occasionally guys are going to get signed by the NFL. So we had Stan battle on our show as well. Earlier on in the season, what was the process like for, for bringing him in as one of the QB coaches? And, and tell me about that because Stan is, is a tremendous fellow as well. Well, he is in these, I've worked with him before. He's really knowledgeable. He's. Really bright. He is the all-time leading passer in Europe. Probably spent about three decades over there playing quarterback. So I, when, when Brian gave me though, The Chaim. He said, I'm giving you a pool of players, but you don't have to keep any of them. Well, of course. Of course, the first guy looked at was the quarterback and it was Ryan Willis. And. And I could tell he had, he had played at Kansas, which means he had, they had been running air right there when he was there. So he knew about it. And then he did a. Great job at, at Virginia tech, but he unfortunately got hurt his senior year. And then the virus. So he's dead. Perfect example what I was talking about while I go. So I thought, well, who do I need to get to be the backup quarterback? And then it dawned on me that. Well, if I bring Stan in as the backup quarterback, he'll end up rooming with Bryan and you'll coach him up all day long. So. That's what we did. I think there was a lot of skepticism at first about bringing a 36 year old guy was five, nine. To be the backup quarterback. Stan. Got he got, we got way ahead of one team and, and he got about. A quarter apply or so, and, and did a real nice job, threw a touchdown pass. So. He might've looked good, but the main thing he did was he, he held for extra points. And he, he was constantly talking to Ryan Willis. And. I think that accelerated the learning curve for Ryan and in our offense. Yeah. So one of our listeners from the fourth and long podcasts, they had asked that too. Did you just decide to go with Willis the whole time? I mean, was that a conscious choice to not have another either? Cause in the spring league, a lot of the teams, we have two QBs that they will. Kind of swap out. Yeah. Half and half. Yeah. I wanted to, I want to just have one guy. So I knew Ryan. Ryan would respond well to Stan and I knew Stan would be on board. You know, just be on the backup and basically be an, a player coach. Do you think that, that I know that there were some questions in the championship game about with Luis Perez and the jouster is, and maybe he should have been put back in or whatever. Do you think it was easier with you having that one quarterback in Ryan the whole time that you really got to get in that sink? The whole season? I mean, and then the championship game as well. Oh yeah. I mean, it's always. You know, it's always difficult to split reps and, and at any level, and that's a professional level. It's really. Difficult. Cause you just don't have that many practice reps. Around a week. And. I think going with Ryan full-time really helped us. It helped us develop a lot of chemistry with our receivers. Going into that. The championship game, you know, obviously a win came down to the wire. What was, what was it like being. You know, winning that big mega bowl. Is it more for the players at that point? You know, w w what is it like to be the championship winning team of, of this spring league? 2021? We had a, we had a unique team. I think those guys really bothered. And, and, you know, we're all living in the same hotel. For eight weeks. And. They saw each other all the time. There there's a lot of room for people to hate each other, you know? But, but our guys responded, they were, they liked each other. They hung around with each other. Like they partied after games with each other. I just like they bonded pretty well. And, and so it was a really pleasant experience for us. I, you know, I, I don't think that's. Always true in that situation, but, but our guys re unique group. And so when, and it was. You know, I, I can truly say that. That championship game, there was just one focus and that was just to get the trophy and, and. There wasn't there wasn't a lot of selfish people on that team. In fact, there wasn't any of that. As someone, you know, and obviously Brian Woods is in the news as well with all this USFL stuff. You know, he brought you in, you know, what's the relationship like there? What are your thoughts with Brian now as he kind of continues on, on this next path? Oh, well, I'm, I think it's a brilliant move for him to do what he's doing. And I certainly would like to be part of it. And we've got a good relationship. Oh, Did that news come as a shock to you during the season with all that, the, the, the news of the USFL relaunch. He told us when we got there. That there was some exciting things coming down the pipe that would be announced, but he didn't tell us what, and Brian's, Brian's a good poker player. He keeps us cards really close to the vest. And so we were all kind of sitting there going, well, I wonder what he's talking about, you know, And, and then when you made the announcement about the USFL, I thought that was just brilliant to bring back those. Logos and those team names. Do you have some fail probably of all these leagues had the best run and the best kind of the best. [Unknown] feeling about it. Do you think that there's enough Goodwill in the soldiers there to, to help, you know, it's a crowded landscape now, obviously XFL has pushed now to 2023 D does that seem more intriguing of a place to wind up as a player or as a coach? And then the wait around for whatever Danny and company is going to do with XFL. Oh, yeah. I won't do the. So have you heard at all from, from Danny and the rock or any of those people? No. So we had a lot of questions from our, from our listeners and some of these are a little funnier and some of these are a little more serious, so hopefully we can, we can bounce around with these. Kenny Stevenson, longtime friend of the show. And this is something that we've talked about a lot, you know, cause obviously us in podcasts, we watched the games, watch you all the way back in the XFL. We watched the spring league, watch all these things. What is the story behind the towel that you wear during the games? Why towels. That's always the first question I get. Well, I'll tell you. I always had a towel around because I really bad sinuses. When I sweat a lot. And. And so I would keep on around. Well, when I got the job at the university of Kentucky, they noticed that obviously the sec is a fishbowl. Everything you do gets scrutinized. And so they came to me after the first season there and said, we'd like to have hell towels. And so like you wanted to do that. So. I said, okay, I'll do it. As long as we can give the money to charity. Well, they didn't want to do that. I don't want to keep the money. So a local hospital there. My ex wife. June had breast cancer. And she was going through treatment. And so I worked with one of the. Hospitals there in town and they, they did it. And they created this hell tails. Like they paid this. Young ladies stand on the sidelines. And all she did was every time I put the pallet down, she put it back on my shoulder. So after a while I made. It didn't take very long. As you see, just got all these pictures and video of me. Weren't tolerant. So. When I, when I left there after four years, And I've sat out a year because the NC, the lifestyle. And then I got the job restarting the program at Southeast Louisiana. And I thought, well, The one good thing is maybe I can get rid of this hotel program. And go back to doing what I use today. So we have the press conference to announce me as the head coach at Southeast Louisiana. I walked in the room. Like 400 people, all waving towels. Well, I thought, well, I may as well just buy into it. So. This kid, Jake Henry wants the, he asked how's the leg. We all watched your, a traumatic incident last a little. I mean the spring time last year, how how's the leg healing up? Oh, it is. It healed up pretty nicely. It was. The hardest part was I broke the burst. Bursa SAC, which caused all this. Swelling. And, and that was really, really pretty bad for. About a month. And then. The fracture was actually just a hairline. Or the top of the tibia. If you'll upon. So I'm pretty naturally a listener set says, run or pass. Of course. Kevin longtime friend, he says, should the chargers be like you and run their offense through Donald Parham? Well, if I had Donald part, I'm not going to try and second guess the charges. I couldn't even tell you. Who's coach. But I do think. Car ham is a weapon. And the great thing about Donald is Donald Nosworthy. And he is, he is a guy who can score. I mean, You know, you see a lot of big guys like him, but sometimes you get them down. In the red zone and they're just. They just aren't as effective as you would expect them to be. But Donald's not like that. I mean, he gets the reds on his eyes. Aldean wants to know. I guess any players that you've worked with you maybe, you know, in this recent iteration of the spring league, You know, if the USFL, whatever the next spring league that launches potentially that you're involved in, any players that you, you know, maybe Ryan Willis, any other players that you would be interested in seeing hop over people that you've worked with in the spring league. Oh, well, I, I. Told that whole team that if we, if I got a job, they were going to get a shot. So. I'd like to work with all of them. They all did a great job. They all had different roles. Some are more talented than others, but, but. The thing I did so well. They played as a team. And. But there are some standout guys. You just mentioned willows. He's won for sure. I think. Zico are our wide receiver and Ben Putnam, our slot receiver. Or, or two that come to mind. There, there are both of our running backs were very effective. And when, you know, when they walked through the door, you know, Most NFL guys, aren't going to lie to them. It looked like the team manager or something, you know? But they. They're both quick. They've got. Burst. They're courageous. They'll block in every situation. And, and they really have a knack for. Finding the running lines, whether it's catching a ball or running the lead drawer or running the counterpoint. I, I was excited. Specifically a friend of the show called Boozer. That was one of the line men on the line, man. Yet he got. Let's you know, during the season. You know, was that I guess, exciting to know that. There were obviously eyeballs on what you all were doing that even in the midst of the season, that they were signing players and talent up north. Yeah. And I was happy for Kali. Got a good contract. And we wish him well and gave him the game ball after our last game, winning. That's nice. And if fourth and long had one other. You know, w w you were involved in the exit fell, you know, for, for, you know, the five, five weeks. The TSL, you know, for the, you know, six weeks. What would be the similar quality of players between the league, similar quality of talent? How would you, you know, similar timeframe in both of those leagues? Yeah. Yeah. You know, the XFL got cut off. It should have been twice as long as it was. The the spring lake, I think for what it was trying to accomplish, it was just about right. I. The basic idea was the players get filmed. And so six games is plenty for that. And they. It gave us a chance to play everybody, give everybody a chance to shine and then get into one more game in the championship game. Then being featured on Fox. Some of them. You know, I know we had a DB sign right after the championship game. So I, you know, I think that's about the right deal. I think. In in, they bring back a real spot. A spring league where you have real franchises and real cities. And real, hopefully real people sitting in the stands and stuff. Crowd noise and a little bit, a little different situation, but I think the quality play will be. Like the spring league or better. Was that weird plane. With no fans kind of in that isolated. I mean huge stadium too. Yeah. You stood after a while, and I've coached a lot of small college football. So we're used to playing in front of nobody. I always remember. I think they asked bill bell check. I, you know, the first game, whatever last year were the Patriots. He's like, it's like practice. This, this is the same. You. You know, there's not that much difference in playing, you know, practice first plan. Last questions. You know, just moving on. I mean, obviously excited for whatever comes with Brian Woods and company in the future. Any other plans you have going forward here in the next next six, nine months? No, not really. We're doing some clinics and stuff like that. Our erode certified deal. Work on that. A little bit every day. And so, you know, we can. We're just going to continue that and see what the next adventure is going to be. Well, I think, you know, I think hopefully in, in high demand here, you know, as, as the, the winning coach of the spring league and obviously putting together a good team and, you know, a lot of visibility, you know, they had a good viewership you have throughout the season that, you know, roughly 400,000 people at each game. You mean, you feel like overall your, your time in the spring league was a success. Yeah, I think it was a success for the whole leg. And, and our players. I think everybody put on a good show. Even the teams that didn't win as much. They still, all the games were close games. And there was very few blowouts. Most of them were. You know, like all our, our last four in a row were all come from. Two scores down in the fourth quarter. So it was, it was a lot of fun to watch and look forward to it again. Perfect. Well, I gave coach mommy, thank you so much for your time. And other people will be excited to hear from you. And I really appreciate you taking a few minutes out. Your morning to do this.

Episode 48 - The CFL and XFL Break Up!

Welcome to the markcast, everybody. It's Friday morning. How are you doing? How are you doing? Your, your lighting tonight is very revenge of the SIF. I don't know what happened. I just hit the. Like I hit my. It looks good. Like these two spotlights that kind of, well, one should be over here on this stuff over here on this wall. But I moved it over here just temporarily. So I stopped tripping over the light. Basically, my brain has been like scrambled. The last, I don't know if you, if you listened last week and you seem, it seemed like I was a little bit off. It's still kind of. Moreso than normal. It's still a little wishy-washy, but my pistons are starting to fire again. The blast. There was a massive, you know, Controlled fireworks, destination. You. You use the mocking SpongeBob meme when we do the caps and lowercase controlled demolition. And then it wasn't too controlled. Was it now LAPD? So would that being said, I got to. Considered a blast wave concussion. And everything's starting to come back online. I felt that I felt that today where I was starting to go, okay. I'm starting to. My thoughts are starting to come back and I'm starting to be able to, you know, Say things in complete sentences again and not have to scramble for words. It's been an interesting week. How about you? This is, yeah, I mean, I, I guess. The good news is we will no longer have to talk about the CFL after today. I'm kidding. I did. I did. I did have people, I bad news brown on, on Twitter. Massive. And he's like, you guys are gonna still talk about the CFL rather than like, yes, we're going to talk about the CFL. I did have a good joke with Farhan coming up. Right. Well, that's probably the last time we ever talk, you know, But no, I tremendous, I mean, crazy week, crazy week, you know, everything going on, CFL ax, the bell, the merger, you know, I had a show brewing. I had a good episode title brewing, and then obviously, you know, now it's the exit CFL and next devel break up. Yeah. Paul is playing injured. My tooth, I believe Monday that you have this coming out. So we're, we're, we're working through all of our we're we're. Podcasting under duress right now, but we're getting through it, but yes. Crazy. It's kind of one of those. Like, it was like when they announced the XFL delay, the initial 20, 22. And I literally had just woken up and I'm looking at my phone and you're like, Oh, this is going to be like the rest of my day. Like, when did you start seeing like all the news kids, kids we saw, you know, Naylor tweeted and then Terry Jones tweeted like back-to-back. And I was like, oh, this is, this is a terrible, terrible news. So, you know, I guess. Let's plug the show and then we'll do it any other preface before we talk about the guests and then get into everything. I mean, I feel like there's a lot of, I think we're going to have a lot of eyeballs this week. I think, you know, Mike Mitchell dress eyeballs. So. I'm while I'm dying to hear what you said to Mike Mitchell. Again, I was planning on being on this call, but I got it's a long story. It's a long story. And I hate to do this here, but if you want to hear the story, go ahead and hop over to wheelhouse.vip. And by the, by the Patrion wheelhouse, sorry. How to plug it there. That's what you get for stealing one of Will's lines. That's okay. Yeah, we got so. Big show today. Okay. So, you know, we were going to have far Hawn on any way. We're getting ready for the CFL season. I vaccination protocols, all that stuff so far. If our home was booked, all this crazy merger stuff breaks. So, you know, luckily the pro champion that he has for Hong comes on, you know, we, we did XFL stuff. I kicked out part of that episode already this week. We got a lot of viewership on that. So we're going to re air that part of it. I'm going to be nice. I'm actually going to put the time code in the video for when the new stuff is on. So if you've actually listened to that interview. Yeah. But stating that the whole thing's going to be there because we get into all the CFL stuff. The the, the big you wanted him. We got him, Mike Mitchell. It's been a long time coming, Mike and I talk all about why it's taken forever to get him on the podcast. We did 50 minutes, Mike and I on everything that you've ever wanted to know about the CFL XFL merger, about how close they got, what fell through, what Mike thinks is coming in the future. Mike, it was texting. Redbird CEO on vacation yesterday, you know, and this is how in the know these things are. So when people are like, you know, the keyboard warriors, like, well, why don't you. That's what you want me to do? That's. That's just going to bed. Literally, I'm dying to hear this, by the way, I am dying to hear this because I feel like. It confirms my suspicions. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah. I got commentary. Paul's got commentary says sick through that. I want to hear Paul's thoughts because Paul and I have her kids again, crazy lifestyle. Paul, and I haven't talked about any of this. I want to get Paul's takes. I have takes. So we've got Mike Mitchell, 50 minutes, extra Phil CFL merger stuff. We've got four, hon. We do another 15 about XFL staff. And then we do another 5, 10, 15, and about. CFL stuff. And then we have Sammy gala gala GaN. Aye. Get Haggin. I said it during the Hagen. It's so late, Sammy. God bless you. Sammy's Greek. If it's an abbreviated name. Sammy is a scout for the LLS. People listeners will know friends of the shows. I'm Matt mangle and Cole Boozer are currently getting ready for the training camps up there. Sam has got lots of thoughts about CFL, you know, scouting players. How does the spring league work into that thoughts about the Alawites thoughts about mango called Boozer? Obviously we talk about the XFL CFL stuff as well. So I jam pack show. Then we're going to come back and do some other XFL CFLA stuff afterward, but. I think obviously the lead story is a merger. Can I just say two quick things. First things first, Jim Olin. Hi scoreboard. Scoreboard. And second of all, shout outs to the Seattle Sounders. They stand alone for the longest unbeaten streak started MLS season 13, unbeaten games, eight wins, five draws. The Sounders have the record. So congrats. To the Seattle Sounders. Awesome work. Right. Spencer and the boys. I'm really proud of him. I have my initial commentary, which is pretty simple, but Paul, what are your thoughts? About this merger. You know, following through. Okay. CFL stands. CFL stands and you don't talk it about. Our boy, Braden might be one of them. This. Isn't a foreshore thing that the CFL was the one to pull the plug on this. I can guarantee you that. By seeing the reactions of these CFL fans online. And it is clear as day to me that they wanted a lot. For nothing. They wanted. Help with marketing. They wanted help with their finances, but they didn't want to give anything back to the XFL. That is clear as day to me because of how, how everyone reacted like that red bird. Redbird capital the rock and Danny. Should all be in debt to the CFL. That's that's, that's the impression I got and I'm hoping that Mike Mitchell confirms it. But that is what I'm seeing. That that is what I'm seeing. Given the I'm sorry, CFL fans. I mean, stands. The sense of entitlement. That some of you have over your league like that you're doing the XFL favor and you're saying stuff like that. Twice failed league without taking anything into consideration. Even considering that the XFL actually snapped the ball once in 2020 and the CFL didn't. The point is. In my opinion, you can't get. The whole house for free. And I feel that we're, there was a sense of entitlement there. And maybe I'm maybe I'm wrong, but maybe Reed can back me up on that. No, I think, you know, and, and Mike is very open in the interview. Yeah, very PC. Mike's very good at walking all lines, which is great. You know, I mean, Mike, some of the Mike's positioning it where we're a commentary site, right. You know, I asked Mike, I said, you know, friend of the show Eros brought this up on rod Peterson show yesterday. And to be fair, I did offer a Roshan invite to come on a rush declined. I said, you know, you welcome to come on and say, whatever you want criticize anything. He, he politely declined. Yeah. He even arrived, even asked, you know, what did the CFL, what were they bringing to the table of these discussions? And I asked Mike that I go, because, you know, and Mike confirms that we've talked, you know, they never even got to the football. Right. So all these complaints about four downs, three downs to feel like none of that was ever discussed. Cause they never made it that far. Right. So if we're just talking about business, I got Mike, so, you know, no football side lineage, 108 years, all, everything, the CFL, all that aside, what did they bring? You know, what business things do they bring? And Mike kind of struggled to, you know, play that middle of the road. Right. You. I mean, he really was like trying to walk both lines and he even said, he's like, I'm really trying to not be too dismissive here. Right. Well, It's interesting. You know, I, I will say, and I think Paul kind of some of this last night, some of the interactions on Twitter, which again is not the foreshadowing of anything or everything, but. You know, We're where some of these players, some of these guys and girls and. I mean everything like w you know, you're going to learn to love our game. Like you just take the time, like you did. I'm like we've taken the time. Like most fans. Like if I'm, you know, I wasn't an NFL fan before the XFL we get into the XFL, would you? They, I felt like nobody was sitting there like gate checking me, like, well, how long have you been an NFL fan? Right. Like, I want to watch Washington football this year because of Taylor. Hi Niki and stuff. You know, I interact with people online. No one's sitting there like. Well, how many Redskins games did you go to, you know, in 2017 or whatever. Right. And this is weird. Like, it's a weird dynamic where the CFL fans. You know, we know that we need to attract viewership. But then the same people that had been the fans of the league for so long. And it's not necessarily people that listen to the show, but I'm saying this to everybody. Like if you see something, say something, if you see a CFL fan, like doing these signs of things, Th th the stop doing that, like union, we need to grow this game and like, you know, being entitled and like sample, you just need to, you need to learn to love us. I'm like, I am learning. I, we are, we've spent all the time. Everyone says, like, not everyone's going to do that. Right. Most normal fans don't sit there and go a six month crash course just to like watch a CFL game. You're a hundred percent right. You know, you want to grow the game, but then when Americans take interest in your game, All we're met with is like vitriol and BS. And it's like, will acid, like, what's the point of like, even paying attention to this? If you guys are just going to s**t on us. Pardon my French, but that's the way you feel. That's the way it feels when you, when you're online and you just get like, This, these ridiculous. And I hope we don't believe that by the way. Th these. There's these ridiculous responses about like, Like, oh, you can't like our game, but we need to grow our game. Do you need you to grow your game beyond the Canadian borders? Yeah, that's the, that's the bottom line you're running out of people. To like your game. So you need to think outside the box. And that was, you know, like we've always said, we've always said here, like we've always been able to get new information, take it in and go, okay. Are our opinions have changed? Like we didn't understand the ratio. Our friend Jim Mullen came on, explain the ratio. Now we're like, okay, we get why there's the ratio and it shouldn't go away. There's so many things that like, We enjoy about the Canadian game that we hope the XFL would just be like, well, let's just use your roles and we're good. And that's what we're always hoping for, but. Every single time. It's just, we're met with this. Oh, we can't lose this. And we can't. Well, no one's ever saying you have to lose it. No one's saying that we don't want that. I just. You know, Well, whatever the game. Then grow the game. Put your money where your mouth is, grow the game. Yeah. I have a, yeah, we have comments here coming up from, from Tim and friends or whatever that guy is. Yeah. My, my big commentary, my big takeaway. I sat all day yesterday. I really reflected on everything. It, my, my comment was. In reflecting on the XFL CFL day, these merger talks rose and fell with literally not a single concrete piece of anything of what might actually happen. Not one. So anyone that says, you know, I saw a lot of tweets of like, ah, sigh of relief, you know, breadth of right. You know, we don't have to sigh of relief. And I go. You're happy because there was never even anything to be scared of. Right? Like there was never, I would get it if, if they were like, Hey, we're losing, this is what we're doing. And all that stuff, like you're breathing a sigh of relief for something that never was never even a modicum of happening. Right. And so. That to me, I'm like good. Then I just feel like it's disappointing. Cause I feel like everything everyone hypothesized about for the last four months is all, you know, crap down the drain. Right. And the CFO gets by again without having to really adjust anything. I have comments. W w about Hodges and three downs comments up here, but it does this feel that way? Like [unknown]. And they move along and like, you guys didn't want it and you fought and then you didn't get it. And there we go. And I'm like, I hope, I hope, you know, I, I hope that works out. I don't, I sure hope single game betting works. Cause that's what I feel. You're pinning your hopes too. You're hoping that single game betting works, that that draft Kings and fan duel or Bodog, or whoever is lining up with a check to set a kiosk up inside your stadium and cut you a check for one 10th, the price. And even then maybe not that. That that that would cost them to put that in an NFL stadium. And that's what you're hoping for. You're hoping for that. [Unknown] I just don't, I don't get the vitriol and this is now we're getting into actual media stuff. I don't get this vitriol. Yeah. Terry Jones writes for Edmonton. We know Edmonton was anti xFi. XFL. We have a statement. But the initial tweet that came out, this is Terry Jones, you know, verified journalist. Breaking it's exit for the XFL. The CFL talks with the non-existent spring league are off after an off season. The plane footsie it's actually for the XFL, the CFL. Has told the twice failed spring lead to take a hike. Like accurate, but like why? Well, that's not a group, but like why. Why. Do you say the talks are off? Why, why do we have to like. Ego and let me, like, I just don't understand like what this vitriol is. Again, nothing was ever asked to be changed. They were just exploring discussions. It's very odd to me. Yeah. And we'd have this little thing. Right to bring up Alaska, but we have this little thing when you do something that's not funny. So when you say something like it's exit for the XFL. We play a little sound clip to let you know, it's not funny. That's funny. It's not funny. It's not clever. It really isn't. Well, like in, in, in, in, in counters thing. You know, Dave nailer tweeted right after that sounds like the CFL has ended talks with the owners of the XFL without entering into any formal collaboration. Lee expected Lee expected to clarify to that. That's the one, that's the way you go. That's a totally normal. Totally normal way to do it. Like, sorry. Right. I mean, Terry Jones, like you're a CFL mark, like, I'm sorry. I. It's either. It again. Again, I would totally, I would go to the picket lines with anyone that they were saying they. They were going to make us change too much stuff. We just get into, like, again, we get into it with Mike. Nothing football was even discussed. It was, it was literally just marketing and business stuff. Yep. Yeah. Th the CFL statement that was on the website, I thought it was weird. Talking about this. I thought it was weird. CFL released a statement. CFL posted. XFL did a little bit, whatever, but like, we really haven't heard from the XFL. Right. Like they barely little baby adjusted the website. They changed the Twitter. So now it's XFL 20, 23. Which I joked about and Mike and I joke about it. Cause I'm like, Then is it 20, 24? Is it 2025? And he actually fell, needs to lose the name in the, in the, in the Twitter handle. I, the XFL also updated their, their FAQ on their website, but that was about it. Anyway, CFL released a statement, you know, they've been positive and constructive. We're working to find new ways. They're focused on August 5th. Which is great. I do think it's odd that this came out, you know, two days, three days before training camp start. I don't know if that was. I've seen tweets and hypotheses that this was a little bit of smoke and mirrors to kind of get through this off season before they had to kick off again. I mean, do you have any thoughts about that? I, I don't. I mean, Yeah, I just. I'm I'm a hundred percent behind you on that one. I mean. There is. And Mike poo-poos out a little bit. I mean, cause I asked him, I go, how, how earnest were these talks? Because I am seeing that I'm seeing like the CFL member, rod Peterson, the first interview we ever did raga. The CFL things are going to get a bunch of stuff for free. So I asked Mike, I go. Hi, Ernest where the talks, but I said, you know, was this kind of a smoke and mirrors show? Mike doesn't think so. Mike thinks that, you know, the CFL really wanted to collaborate. Yeah, right after the Edmonton, Alex, which I'm. I'm questioning my I'm questioning my allegiance. Now today. The, this was a, a damning tweet. And when we were talking in our, in our XFL news, have chat with Mike, all the writers yesterday, this was what Mike said, because we all said, well, okay, well what ha, like what just happened today? And Mike pointed that this statement, and it goes, this tells you everything you need to know about why these merger talks failed. The evidence [unknown]. Alex football club is pleased by Wednesday's announcement. Did the CFL discussion with the exit bell has ended the ALC remain fully committed to the CFL and our treasury brand of Canadian football. Okay. But that is why that is everything you need to know right there. Is MLSE. Committed to the CFL and their treasured brand of Canadian for war where they like an NFL team. Well, Mike has Mike has many thoughts about the XFL? Potentially positioning Canadian expansion here coming up, which is a fascinating. If you want a piece of red meat out there last night and people were like, There were bad again. They're mad again. I'll tell you, Mike, Mike, Mike is talking north of the border and south of the board. That's all coming up on the thing. Sorry. My neighbor is backing up his, his lawnmower. I have a car right now. Raj friended, the show tweeted out a total waste of time. Energy and resources could have reshaped his business model instead, instead of months of ADR. Idiocy and the bag is empty. The magic of CFL 2.0 and the Ambrozy regime. It seems like a, more of a diamond. I mean, Arash really doesn't like Randy Ambrozy clearly, I mean, That's probably one of the few things that I can agree with Eros shop. Yeah. And that's the thing it's like, Could have reshaped his business model. That line right there. Raj. Rush leads me kind of down that path where it's like, you guys wanted something for nothing. You guys wanted to use the resources? And learn how to shape your business model better. But then you said, well, what does the rock know about the football thing? And then we point out that Redbird. Capitol hired someone specifically for this. You know, it's just like, that's kind of the sense of entitlement that I point to that little line right there. Interesting. Anyway. Yeah, it's interesting too. When you just think about the recent XFL hires, you know, with, with the Monday night football and all that, that you know, that all this knowledge now and that, that the CFL is still kind of. You know, choosing to mutually walk away from that and they get Mike and I talk like it's, it was pretty mutual, right? I mean, I at some point, it's the CFL saying? No. And then in some point it is the XFL choosing to walk away. I mean, it is both of those things can exist at the same time. Right? Like your. Exclusive. Yeah. Yeah. You're dating someone you can choose to move on and they can, like, you can both choose to move on. It doesn't necessarily have to be. You said this over Tim and friends. I'm glad I finally found something. I was like, oh, Reed's gonna love this. And I sent it to him immediately. How do you pronounce this gentleman's last name? The callous McCalla. Yeah. Well, he tells ACL fans that you need to put their money where their mouths are. I love this. When I saw this, I was like, thank you. This is, this is a guy saying. You guys don't want the merger. You're fighting the merger, tooth and nail. Okay, then prove why the merger is not going to work. The more mergers should never have been considered. Show up to the games. Buy season tickets. Go to the stupid Bodog. Kiosk now that they think is going to save the league. Do the things you don't. I want to see some young people were still going to the grey cup. It's still gonna happen. We'll still be there. And I want to see some young people there. I don't want to see like a bunch of boomers. I'm sorry. I know it's ages kind of slander whatever. I don't want to see a bunch of, okay. Boomers there. I want to see young people, the gray cup. I want to have drinks with young people. The grey cup. I want. Yeah, he's completely right. He's completely right. Well, and the interesting thing is, is it's not an, and this is I've had these conversations a lot online, not just on Twitter, just online lately. And, and you get these. People, you know, folks and they go. I have been, I have been a season ticket holder for 45 years. I go to every game out of the year. Right. Whatever. I'm like. But that's not, you are not, they are trying to attract, like you will, you are doing is wonderful and admirable, and that is your wonderful family. Like that is not enough. Right. Like, and that's what they don't get. I will say this is a little kid now. So Jim Molan retweeted this Tim and friends thing to you. Last night, I tweeted the gym. I go. I go, how come. When I say this, nobody cares. Right. But when Tim, like this went viral, right? This is crazy. Yeah. Is it because I don't have friends, right? Cause it's 10 friends. Jim only goes, yeah, but I didn't mail Tim a football, Canada Tuk. So I think Jim is saying that we are at a higher level. Oh, that's that's that's. That's very nice. Thank you, Jim. I mean, your Mariners did lose two or three against the Yankees this weekend, but I'm glad to hear it. Speaking of speaking of stuff that came in the mail, this. There's a box over here. By the way I forgot to teach this. Yeah, blocks over there on the ground. I will go grab it. Eventually. Right. Yeah. And we'll we'll we'll we'll we'll have some stuff to give away. So that's it. That's easier. This is a little disgruntled for that. So this is, and this is where I get a little negative. Now. Maybe we've been negative already, but this is when I get a little agitated. So, so Justin donk. Of, you know, three down tweets. Eric is Tim and Tim. McCalla thing went crazy and dunk dunk goes. Uncle Timmy preaching. I hate the dunk calls people. On-call I hate that. He called. Like he calls a Roddy uncle. I hate that. Like, I hate the dunk does that, but he goes. This was, I don't get, if you love football, why don't you just watch football? That's part of this. I've never understood. I love NFL, but I like CFL. I like youth sports, whatever. And I responded and I got a little bit Jackson on that. I go. Football is football, unless it's XFL. Let's get the hell out of here. It's like, I just liked football. I just like watching football, but if it's XFL get out of my face, I don't like it. Not football. I hate it. I hate anybody that's ever rooted for an XFL team. Yeah. St. Louis is the most. St. Louis is the only thing that worked in the XFL. Yeah. The, so as I previously mentioned, the exit Val. So they, they rerelease they're launching in 2022 video. With a new ending that says launching in 2023. Which is just horrendous. I mean, I don't know if anyone from the XML is going to listen to this with the Mike Mitchell stuff, but like, I could have, I really, if you were to given me an hour and 30 bucks, I really would have jumped on you. Kind of really weird. You have a new one, as opposed to just putting that on the end. Have you seen the graphics for our show? I could have helped you out there too. They did update, like I said, it's now actually about 20, 23. They really needed to get away from the numbers on the Twitter accounts. And then they added, this is a crate in DJ Henry. Don't I, if I don't kill me if I'm wrong on this, but it looks like they added two new FAQ questions. So it says. What teens will be in the exit fell and the, where will they play when you returned? We will have many details in the days of share in the months ahead and clean announcements about the teams and their venues. When will the game scheduled to be released? The league schedule will be released in the appropriate time. And, and, and I think XFL read it too, was like, why add these? If you're not going to have any answers, like why even put that in FAQ video? That's weird. Nearly a lot of people have been, I guess, asking for that. I guess it's free. Let me ask the question. Oh, this was also, this was so in conjunction with Edmonton. Alex thinks that Terry Jones that we talked about had they had the tweet. He, he had an article. With the Edmonton's son, I believe. And he had a quote from the Ian Murray, who is the Elks. Chairman. We're pleased by the CFL announcement that that's discussions have ended. The ultra remain fully committed to our treasure brand. We are quite comfortable and confident that that the, that the CFL can thrive on its own unless we get, unless we didn't get single game betting, then we were screwed. Well, I asked Mike that Mike goes, he goes, I think that would be foolish if they're putting all their cards in that basket, I go. They are, I think they're putting. All their cards in that basket. So we plugged this here. Just some quotes, Mike Mitchell. So again, we did the whole thing. His article with XFL news hub came out late last night. Mike needs to talk to me about his publishing schedule because you know, I wouldn't publish it at like 11 o'clock at night, but that's fine. Mike publishes. So the key point and Mike gives context about this, but I want your commentary on this, Paul. This was a great article, by the way, kudos to Mike to put this all kind of in a way that was digestible for, you know, Most people, those that hate the XFL, no matter what, probably isn't going to understand any of this, but this is just, this was just well done by Mike. We've we've known for awhile, that teams like Rondo Montreal. Well, we're completely on board with this because they're looking to make money. They're not looking to break. Even they're looking to make money you're in the business to make money. So these two teams were definitely. You know, As, as Mike says, here they were, they were receptive. And the most bullish on the plans to do a merger with the publicly owned teams has to push forward because. They, they. It's it's like a situation where you're just, you know, you're playing checkers. You're like, well, as long as we break even, or we lose a little bit of money, at least we get to protect this precious thing that. You know, 60 year old people watch. Yeah, I want your take on this quote, and this is an anonymous source involved with the discussion. So that, I mean, this is obviously somebody at red bird that might talk to. And he said, this is a quote. Our planning for alignment is so complicated and multilayered that I feel that all the top decision makers won't sign off on any of our final options. We've exhausted so many possibilities for alignment that will significantly benefit both sides. We've used analysis to break down why this would work financially. Still, we keep hitting snakes in these talks because we can't get everybody on the same page that shares in the same vision. Well, this is clearly someone from the XFL side of things. They, you know, They're the ones that have an adequate business model because they're doing it with Fenway sports and all this other stuff. And this is, this has to be someone on the XFL side of things because. Given the fact that like, Montreal and Toronto. BC and Calgary are all, you know, supportive of the merger, but the other. Teams weren't this is clearly a veiled. A subliminal subtweet kind of shot at those ones that are like in that old school mentality. Like we're protecting this, we're protecting this. No, no more, none, but you know, It's just. It seems like there was so much from. And I'm reading between the lines and I could be completely wrong. It seems like there's so much between the lines. It's like. We try to knit. We tried to compromise on this and they weren't willing to do this. And then we, and then the stuff that they wanted us to compromise on. Eventually, try to compromise on that. And then they weren't interested in that. It just seems like the goalposts were being moved. For pun intended to the goalposts were being moved. Constantly by the, by the teams and the CFL that didn't want this, no matter what. Am I wrong? No. And that was kind of what I said and listen to him, actually pointed this out too last night. And I, you know, talking about this in the interview, I said, it seems to me like they go, here's a bunch of cool stuff. Yeah. We don't want to do that. Okay. Well, here's a bunch of data behind the cool stuff that we could do. Yeah. We're not interested. Okay. Well here's some more data that was, yeah. We don't want any of that. That to me is with that, that reads as right. It's like we had a bunch of ideas. They kept getting shot down. We can't get everybody on the same page. You guys, you guys are like Jim Carrey and dumb and dumber golf. Sticking your fingers in yours. That's what you're doing. That's what you're doing. Yeah. Mike also says that the term merger was done around. It was never that close. It was never that close to that point. You know, many believed that the CFL broke off at best, the proper representation would be the, the decision was mutual. And basically that the XFL. It has intended to implement. You know, They're moving forward with their plans regardless. Right. Mike also has really interesting takes on the timelines of like when the 2022 decision to 2023 was made, how does the CFL factor into all that? I don't want to spoil all that, but like a lot of good insights into like, you know, w was this wasted time, the last six months? Like, where are we on this path already? Kind of interesting stuff like that. The CFL got. The CFO got something out of this, no matter what. People paid attention to their league. For the first time. Since Johnny Manzell went up there. Congratulations. I'm saying it people south of your border. Gave a crap about your league for the first time since Johnny Manzell went up there. So you got something out of it. You got something out of it. You're relevant. Cool. Ju just a couple of last ones from our, our, our friend here, Mr. Hodge. And I know that Braden doesn't like it when I, but I do think we all like, you know, I criticize Hodge because HODs is one of the. You know, focal. You know, people covering the premiere people, covering the lead. He, he wrote an article, exit bell was ever the answer to the CFL's problems. This was the quote. If the CFL's future was reliant on that. If the CFL's future was relying on the XFL, a partnership has been reached it wasn't I'm like, that is, that is the most asinine. Like if this thing was meant to happen, like how about the CFL said no, or they were too. You know, like again, You guys, they openly criticize the CFL for like struggling to market, but then they're like, well, clearly if they would have known that this was the right decision, they wouldn't. I'm like, I don't get how you can, how you can you'll crap on them in the one hand. And then crap, like. Yeah. If the, and then the other quote was if the CFL didn't believe it could sustain post pandemic with a full that, by now, it hasn't. Just wait. Well, even far Han said in his interview coming out of the air at earlier, he goes, well, I think the CFL realized they weren't in as dire straits as they thought they were. I mean, that's like coming from Farhana like, that's, like, he's saying like, you know, I think that they really were worried in October and they're not like they think they're okay now. I mean. Okay. They're okay. Now, because all of this BS has generated. Interest in their league. That's why they're okay. Now. I mean. We're still, we're going to watch Reed and I are going to watch. I hope there's some kind of thing that we can buy. We can maybe the VPN, I don't know. Plus has CFO games. Oh, it does. Cool. Very good. Good to noodles. Yeah. Killed it. Sorry. I have to fly my house. That's been bugging me for like three days. So, I mean, we're going to watch the games. You have two new viewers here. Hopefully you see. Hopefully you CFL fans will allow us to watch the games with you. You won't, you know, Tell us not to watch your beloved product and then complain about it not growing, but you know, we're going to watch anyway. So yeah. I'm hot. I'm fired up. Yeah, I. It's good. It's good. So we're going to talk to some experts. We're gonna tell some Mike Mitchell, we're going to Austin. We're going to toss the Sammy. You know, again, Mike's all XFL. The staff for our Han ends with CFL this season. And then Sammy is mostly, you know, this season and then we get a little XFL. So that's the order that we're going to put them in. So I checked back with that. We have more CFL staff and then XFL news coming up after the break. And I'm just tossing to that because Paul is typing notes in the Google doc. That's good. You're fired. Did you have a drink? No, I'm completely sober. I mean, I didn't, I stopped drinking at dinner cause I was like, I'm going to be under the floor if I don't know. I can, I'm completely sober, sir. Seat. But the brain is coming back online. That's good. Welcome back. What a great, great lineup of guests, Reed was able to hold down while I was stuck in various, you know, Exams. And what have you checking out my brain? As you can tell I'm I'm, I'm kind of getting back on my game now. So. Oh, you know, I asked Paul off camera if. He was just drinking before the podcast. He said, no, he's just. So I haven't had a drink. I haven't had, my Adderall is things are working the way they're supposed to work. Finally, so that, that gives me some hope. So. Yeah. Oh, no, I was just going to say, so this I, I was, I, I hope Rob Vanson is listening this week. If not, I should assume he listens every week on his, on his wonderful walk with this dog. I was actually going to ask Rob to come on this week to talk about this article that he wrote. Maybe we'll do it next week, but I it's related to the XFL, but I got rid of all that now, cause it's really deciding about the CFL and the tagline was it's time to sell, sell, sell, sell the CFL. You know, now that they're returning to the game, the league and it's 19, [unknown]. Sell the league more vigorously than ever, which is again, that's the thing, like, you know, we're down with the XFL. So this is like you it's all on you again. And. Just to finish my last thought about the merger stuff. Cause we're moving on. I saw a lot of comments that said, oh, thank goodness we're done with the XFL talks so we can get back to growing their game. And I asked politely, I go, so what was stopping you? Why, why weren't you able to grow your game while also talking with the XFL or before you were talking with the XFL or like five years ago before you were talking with the XFL or like, You got it. So. So, but you see some of these, these quotes here that Rob, you know, Rob is talking about getting a lot more like media and a lot more like transparency things we're talking about. You know, Call Braden up. He's got some great ideas to get you out there on social media, hire Braden, give him a hundred thousand dollars. Pay him more than the players get paid and let him help help you direct your social media and grow the game with. With, you know, the millennials and gen Z, what do you think. Hey, speaking of games, how about a flip and video game? What do you think about that? That's a great idea. Call up EA sports, call up the people that do MLB the show. It doesn't matter do that. You shouldn't have to take a flipping merger to get you to care about marketing. Flipping league. This is ridiculous. Yeah. I want to get Rob on. I think Rob is going to be, I feel the Rossi to get fired up about this, but, you know, I like what Rob is saying here. NAFA lip service and the platitude that have nonsense, like talking about talking, sell the game room. Honestly, so engage with fans and reporters with every opportunity. The, the quote from Ambrozy. We wanted to be talking about football every day from this day, going forward. Ambrozy said on June 14th. In fact, I like for you guys to see a lot less than my mug and a lot more of our great coaches and players in the days to come. I think we lost Paul's audio. I can't hear you. I can't hear you. Can you hear me? There we go. And peace. I love peace. I'd be out of a job with peace. Now I'm hearing sounds. You can hear me though, right? Yeah. What happened? Something came loose on the board. Oh, Do you need me to send you anything? No, let's just pick it up. Right where you said while decided the Amber Ambrozy quote. Yeah. That's where you started. Let's just pick it up there. Okay. That's the way. Like the microphone for the computer. Ambrozy. I had a quote. You wanted me to talk about football every day from today going forward. He said that June 14th at bat, that like you guys see a lot less than my mug. And a lot more of our great coaches and great players in the days to come. Yeah. I mean, I just like what Robin saying? Yeah. There's a lot of stuff that we've been echoing for a long time about transparency. And now that we don't have to worry about the XFL and NDAs, right. I think we could be a little more. Yeah, let's, let's get more of those guys flipping over and dunking Oreos and a back flip. Well, you know, if 400 people that could do that, why not? So a couple of things, a couple of notes. So there's a bit of, a little bit of confusion about the training camps, where they're being held. Right. Obviously they're letting the players now. The fans aren't going to be allowed into the training camps. Right. And the media is going to be severely limited and I've heard many reporters. Canadian reporters, you know, lamenting that fact of like, well, you know, who are we going to trust telling us how good players are looking or not. Right. I think rod on his show today was like, well, everyone's going to look good if it's the team reporting this, but Paul, this just came in tonight. This is Claire hammer. She reports for the rough riders. IgM Jeremy O'Day com I'm not like this is a terrible thing to laugh about. Jeremy O'Day GM of the referees confirmed today. Four players suffer Achilles injuries at training camp today, and they're all long-term injuries for the Roughriders. Season-ending. He says he's never seen this just came out before we were getting ready to record in that EG. Oh day has never seen anything like this in, in his career. He goes, quote, we wanted to slowly ramp up the players. I think maybe you're seeing a little bit of the effects of the layoff, but that's what's happening, but this wasn't even like full training camp. This was just like slowly getting the players up to speed, to like get ready for training camp on Saturday. And what do you think is going to happen on Saturday when training camp starts. Well that's, I mean, that's insane. I don't want. Want that to happen? You don't want that to happen. You don't wish that on anybody. A former athlete wouldn't want that on anybody. But. You know, it's, it's terrifying, you know? I just have it. I was like, holy. For I for Achilles injuries the first day of like, Anyway, I I'm sure a lot more. That's going to come out. The rough riders there, they're doing their single game. Tickets are going on sale. They think that they're on pace to break the 2019 right sales that are happening. I, you know, the last time they were really able to do this. The big thing to keep in mind with the sales to ticket sales is. All the season tickets we've talked about this before all the season tickets got rolled over to this year. So the only actually new money they're making is, you know, new single game tickets being sold. And then obviously like merge and, and like, you know, So then pop. You know, like beer and stuff at the stands. But, you know, a lot of that money, they've already moved over those millions of dollars of season tickets into next year, but they, they they're Miriam Johnson, the director of marketing is very excited that they're jumping back in and, you know, getting Saskatchewan back together after everyone was apart for so long. So getting bedding. It's going to save it all. They, they, this was interesting. This is from this gasket teen star, Phoenix. They, they pulled 400 Saska Saskatchewan residents. To what degree do you agree or disagree? That proof of vaccination should be required to attend a large gathering at 61% said they strongly or somewhat agree. And 37% said either strongly or somewhat disagree, 2% declined. So, you know, 61% saying that they feel like you should have a proof of vaccination to attend. Saskatchewan refer again. I mean, those numbers are probably better than what you would ask our people down here in America. See Canadians, you guys do some things, right? You know, you guys tell everyone to listen to the science. And I think your numbers would probably better if you held that. Poll. And in most states that are. Leaning a certain direction, not political, but leaning a certain direction. You would have the flip. You had over the inverse of that, like 61% would be like, no, my choice, my body, my choice. And I'm not going to show you no vaccine passport. So. Hats off to you guys for getting that one. Right. Yeah, this is interesting. You w we've had some more retirements if I'm reading this correctly. If we've had three offices of linemen retire from the, from the red, black, so we've had Alex. Mateus Nolan Macmillan. And then also Alex Fontana, they've all said they aren't going to play. The last one was a per, you know, AIG jacket. Becky's been on before I get, I was like, wait, There was two, and then there was another story, but it looked to me like three separate, you know, somewhat star offensive linemen for the red blacks are all leaning towards retirement. Because they're not getting paid enough. And the, and the, and the. They got regular jobs. Yeah, the restrictions are quiet. The, they said that [unknown]. I'm pronouncing that right. Mateus, M a T E. Hopefully, sorry, Alex. God bless you. If we're getting your name wrong, we're trying. Are arguably Ottawa's two best Canadian offensive lineman, both retired. I leave a massive hole. I mean, it's, you know, it's crazy. And then I, Jason. Allows on as they go in from that. The Dean is retiring. He's another key. I, you know, alignment. He w he was with the Alawites and he just basically didn't show up for training camp that he was, he was with a signed, he was with red blacks, and then he signed as a free agent for the Alawites in February. And they basically just didn't show up. Unfortunate. And it's going to it's. There's going to be more, this is not, this is not the end of this. There's going to be more. So, I don't know if you saw any of this. Did you see anything about Brian D. Edwards? No, I did not. I thought this was really remarkable. And this is, this is a positive I really would take from the CFL. That. So Brian. You know, passed away. He was a. A super, I'm just a super fan, right? He was with Edmonton super fan. Someone that, you know, really engaged online and the games and all that stuff. He unfortunately passed away. This came out from the turf district. They're the Edmonton podcast. But it, what spoke to me was I saw this everywhere. Like I saw, you know, duck and Hodge and Eros and for hon, like everyone like this guy, and I did think like, that really spoke to, you know, like when we had Jeff Hamilton on and he goes, you know, this is like the people's league. This is, you know, we want everyone to be involved. This really spoke to me just of that, like of how, you know, not that obviously, you know, condolences to his, you know, him and his family and everything, but that, that someone did this league would be so tight in that his ways. Right. And, and I guess that, that speaks to why, like, Rightfully or wrongly. They're so hesitant about like, people like you. And I like how dare we, you know, talk about the CFL, but, but I thought that this was interesting that, that, you know, rest in peace, but that he was, he was so loved in that community. Do you go to them, Sam? I get what you're saying completely. And hopefully. I mean, you know, that's, that's. I think people like that joining their community. That are so well loved and respected even though maybe it might've been a contentious beginning per period, who knows. I don't know the history there. But it would be nice to have a bigger community like that, that, you know, That can embrace one another and. We contend this with Astro on hand that one day. I'm just, I'm just saying in general, like maybe it's been contentious in the past. I'm not sure of the history. You know, and I'm not trying to. I'm not trying to like. You know, Bash the guy on his way. You know that now that he's passed away, I'm not, I'm not sure how, you know, I would hope that, that, that given this, you know, given us. General vibe around this person passing away. That eventually there's a community vibe that can welcome others in. I don't know. Yeah. Anyway, I just, I just thought it was fascinating. I was just trying to see here if they had anything about, you know, they're the reason why I pass. I don't see anything on the article, but I would just, you know, just the tremendous loss for that other. Notes, I guess. And I was talking to Dorothy's father about this at dinner tonight. I, the blue Jays are eyeing July 30th for homestay and games. This is a report for Toronto. Good luck. I mean. Why would you look the blue Jays or, you know, they're in third right now, and I'm not happy about that. But if, if you're playing well in the states, why fix something that isn't broken? Like. Baseball players are very superstitious. You might want to just stay in Buffalo and Tampa and just kind of finish out the season down here and see where everything goes because you got a great core. I can't hear you. Here we go. I can hear that. How about now? Yeah. Okay, now I know what I need to do. Okay. You have a great young core of players. I keep hitting this button for some reason, I keep it in the. Get excited and pull on that phone. The microphone. You have this great young core of players. Stay in the states and see how well you can do. Down here in the states. Well, either managing the fans right? When they get revenue from fans and wanting to get fans in the stadium, do they, I mean, I guess. Pete is in the CFL. They don't need it. Well, you know, a lot of people have told us here on this podcast that the major league baseball is dying sport. Final side note, and I probably should have included this with the Brian Edwards before, but the mantra Alice. It just came out to that to Michael souls. He is former fullback with the outlets he passed away from, with Lou Gehrig's disease at 54. This just came out today as well. So obviously condolences as well to him. And, and his family. All right. We're gonna take another break. Come right back. We're teasing some more XML stuff. You got some DJ Walker notes, Redbird news, of course. And we got, we got, we got so a box to open up. Yeah. We have a correction. We were Paul. We made a goof. So we have a correction coming up. That's all coming up after the break. Let me go grab that box real quick. All right. You don't have to get the f**k out of here. So I just updated the firmware on the board. Yeah. And I think that's why the it's the USB connector that's like stopping. Oh, Often offload these m***********s know. Yep. Welcome back. Read your favorite NFL team getting five, $10 million. After the investigation of the workplace culture, we've heard so much of, so much of this. In the past, this is, this, this stuff came in. Wow. Literally. Wow. Okay. Sorry, just start that same one over. I'm not going to just start. Welcome back. Hey, read your favorite NFL team. Find $10 million. Yikes. What is, what are they doing over there and Washington football team. This, this actually happened before the name change stuff happens. So it's, it's very interesting to see what's going on. They've added Tonya Snyder. They named her the. Co CEO. This week, Dan Snyder's wife. I believe it is. Yep. That's the problem. That's why it's weird. Like he's the one, that's the problem. Yeah, he is totally the problem. And then they bring it. His wife to be the co CEO. Incredible. Incredible. Moving on. Panthers. Article for the Panthers have interviewed PJ Walker apparently. Yeah, this is a, Hey, first off we talked about Washington football because they are hiding the keys on there. And then we talk about the Panthers because PJ Walker's on there, but the PJ Walker was interviewed by the Panthers, you know, not their newspaper, but like their social media people. That means he's staying around. He says about, you know, the off season of people. He says, we know it's a business at the end of the day, so, you know, anything can happen. I know that from being in this building and being in other buildings day in and day out, you have to be ready for any kind of change. At any point in time, you have to be ready to compete no matter what. As long as I get to come in the next day and compete. That's all I want to show these guys why I'm here. Interestingly enough, they had an interview with well Greer as well, but I don't care about what Greer cause. Put in the XFL. I just thought that was interesting that you have PJ Walker. We gotta beat your Walker said they did know that he led the Panthers of victory against the lions. So let's not forget the fact that PJ Walker accounted for 20% of the Panthers. Victory was last year. PJ Walker would never forget. Never never, never forget about that. That's all we got. Per Adam Schefter that he's twice. East west shrine bowl. The nation's oldest college football all-star game is partnering with the NFL, moving the event to Las Vegas. I'll lead to the stadium, the giant Roomba as part of NFL pro bowl week. The game will be Thursday, February 3rd in prime time on NFL network. That's according to Eric Alco, former XML director of player personnel. No, the area, this is why it's important is because people go, why do we care about the shrine, but why do we care about the east-west ramble on. The actual market or on the markets, we care about it because I was just at Allegiant stadium. I just was damaged. You follow me on Twitter. I was just there. I stood out front of the Raiders. Store, but then Eric Alco was the former director of player personnel for the XFL. And now he is the director of football operations at east-west tremble. Oh, okay. That makes sense. I thought it was. Attributing it I'm so sorry. Chapter. Yes. Anyway. So there you go. But that's good. Good for our gal can remember the whole episode when we couldn't figure out what Eric Alco is a director of in the exit valve. Turned out that he was the director of all, all the player birth now. The final read birdie note today, cause Reber recently bought into the ratchet San Royal's taking a 15% stake. Eh, IPL cricket is more valuable to Disney plus than the star wars franchise. I call BS on that. I know Cricket's huge there, but I don't know if it's star wars huge. Oh, maybe, maybe not after last year. Maybe was, and then maybe let's blame Ryan Johnson for that one. Anyway, but you know, Redbird gets an, all this, all these write ups. They're talking about that. They're. It's going to be worth double when they, when they reevaluate their contracts next year and that the IP. They'll be able to double their, their, their rights this time around. Very cool. Okay, Paul, we made them. Okay. So here's the deal. So people send a staff and then they sent and the USFL. We talked about the USFL LinkedIn page last week. I've never looking at LinkedIn ever again. I hate LinkedIn. It wasn't the right USFL page. I didn't even, I was in Vegas. It's not, it's not an excuse. It's just a reason. Someone sent me the staff and I didn't like cross-reference or that wasn't the right. It was, you know, it's in the same, in the same breath. We're, we're making fun of Brian Woods for like updating the, the LinkedIn profile. I mean, You know, it was kind of a joke anyway. The guys over at fourth, in fourth and long. Email me about that. They already know. I appreciated them emailing me. I did not appreciate the tone and candor of the message because they were like very disappointed that we would include that in the show. And how dare we, if we make mistakes, it's 10, 13 right now at night. If we make mistakes, just let us know. But I don't please. Don't be disappointed by anything I do. Cause I can't stand disappointment. I can only strive to improve myself and Paul. Well, we appreciate the correction. Do you wanna talk about this Hamburg sea devils thing too? Just cause we're on the elf kick. We had Josh Davis on last week. This is just interesting that the Hamburg add the sea devils part of the ways with their head coach, Ted dash here. There are two and O and tied for the north division lead, which doesn't really, you know, Two games so far, but they got rid of him. They, they fired their head coach. The offensive coordinator is going to take over. They go they're qualifying. The league was in the past few weeks. Have unfortunately shown us that we have different views and expectations regarding the philosophy and leadership of this team. Therefore is there for only logical regardless of success to make us change at top. I mean, this guy. We may have to have Josh David. This is his team. Josh Davis covers the end defeated. Or I'm yeah, I'm defeated Hamburg, sea devils. And they're, they're actually my unofficial team as well of elf, but yeah, they, they kicked their head coach to the curb. That was remarkable. That's remarkable. Mr fireball, you laugh at me for using that word, but you can do that. That is remarkable. Did they fire their head coach? They find such a warning statement too. It's like, oh, you know, we're gonna write a novel about why we fired this coach. There you go. There you go. Ah, there we go. So, oh, we're not, we're not going to do anymore. Of the ad. So there you go. That's good. There's no manscape they paused the partnership because only one of you use the promo code. You you mother effort. I want to, I want to see if the promo code still works. I think I'm going to log on anyway and just try to put the promo code in. If it still works. Use it. I'll let, I'll let everybody know on Twitter if it still works. And if it still works, please use it so we can maybe. Get that partnership back. So, okay. So this is a box. So context for end of the show. Here they go for listening and lots of XFL stuff today. Hopefully we have, you know, record viewership. I'm sure there's an [unknown]. 0% Chance that someone from red bird watching this episode, just so you know, because Mike Mitchell is on that. Josh [unknown] Josh McGhee. Yeah. A friend of the show, a friend of CFL Braden, rather than all that stuff. Josh mailed Paul, a Argos gift package with all sorts of cool stuff. And so I don't think all of this is going to either be feasible for you or your fat Reed. Is that what you're saying is I'm fat. Josh to. They ride very small items. Like it wouldn't fit. You know, this is like, child's smaller, whatever, but Josh is going to have a bunch of items in there and then, you know, we, we can do whatever we want with it. Anyway. So if you're gonna, if you're listening, check out the YouTube. The mark has.com/youtube. You know, Please subscribe a lot of the work this week, we got about two hours of interviews. The the mark house.com/review. If you want to leave a review for the podcast that mark has.com/merge, I have my wonderful new mark Hasher. These are really nice, you know, they're nice breathable. We got the hats backwards. You know, it's, it's all good. It's all good. Okay. So I gotta let her with us. Let's see. Hey, Paul, I hope this package finds you well. Well, it kinda does because you know, I've got a concussion. It was a bit of a quest to acquire these items for you. I feel like he went on a little RPG, like low. You know, legend of Zelda link to acquire these items. When it was well worth it, since you have stated your intention and becoming an Argo span, and I stick to that. I was still an Argonauts fan. As you may or may not know you are legally entitled to ice cream as a CFL fan due to a terrible bet by a certain auto Reddit mod. Than a certain audible Reddit mod. Can you. Can you tell me what the bet was like a Braden? Yeah, there was something where they, they were alive, they were live readin a game and it didn't have a lot of traction. And Braden was like, if this, if this thread gets too, you know, Whatever, you know, 1500 posts or something by the end of the game, I'll buy everybody ice cream. And so it, it did. And so to this day, Braden owes every single member of CFL. Read it. So like when we go to the grey cup and brain's there, he actually owes us both ice cream. Very cool. Hopefully we'll have both of our teeth issues sticks by then, so we can enjoy set ice cream. Who eats ice cream in December in Hamilton. Yeah, that is true. That is true. I took the week off. I just blinded to see, you know, Today, actually, I just marked off my whole week of December to go up to I'm dying. Now I'm gone. I'm spending the whole week in a drunken stupor. Why not. So he's throwing some shade here on Braden. He says, Braden, you've done a terrible job of paying back your debt to CFL community, but the Argos, they take care of their own. And he's been trying to rectify these injustices where he can you shipping ice cream? To Los Angeles, that's somewhat challenging. So I hope you like it. Freeze, dried. He sent me a whole list also. It's like, he messaged me. He's like he had this shipping confirmation and he's like, Hey, this got delivered. Does Paul have it? I go. Message Paul. Yeah, please. Seven in the morning message Paul. I want to welcome you again to the world's oldest professional football franchise, and hope that you find just as much enjoyment in this team as I do. Keep doing what you're doing at the mark cast. And hopefully I'll see you at a game of seasons so we can share a Bev or nine. Above is that. Nine. Or nine. Ma'am I am diabetic. I don't think that's going to be appropriate. We need to plug this in the promo too. So people noticed. So this is the first thing we're going to be giving away. And I, I have not disclosed. There's an allergy that I have. This is from St. Anne's bakery. It's never melt, freeze, dried treats. It is chocolate ice. Coconut cream. Okay. Josh, Josh and. First off. Josh. That is the ultimate failure is trying to kill Paul. Josh. I am Puerto Rican and I am allergic to coconut. It's the most ironic thing you'll ever hear us. And I appreciate the sediment, but I'm allergic. That is, that is, yeah. He might as well send the higher this ass into your house right now. Next thing is this this cool. This is cool. This is Argo's football towel. Oh, that's cool. Very cool. Yeah, bell media ethics. I think I'll keep that. Okay. Oh, this was bad-ass gray cup champions. Doesn't have a year, but it says grey cup champions and the a. There you go. A little Tuk for me. Or maybe someone else. Oh, here we go. Here we go. I'm starting to realize how I'm finding this for you. To be on the other side of autism. Vaccines. I do. Cool. Oh, wow. This was cool. This was like this. This is a, I guess, a practice. I lost your audio again. Fall into like the microphone. I'm not editing this one. Paul I'm playing the microphone. Can I hear you? Okay. Here you go. There you go. Not even editing this one, that Rick and. Paul Bond. Find the microphone again. I didn't unplug the microphone. That's just shorting out. What was that? Show that one off. It was the, it was the. This extra large Toronto auger. Argonauts. So that's like a, that's a Paul fit one. That's good. That is definitely a Paul fit one. Something fell. I don't know. Can you hear me still? I can. Okay. I have to pay 11 words for a wedding. I'm like, 12 Hours. Sorry. That's okay. I'm trying here. I'm trying. All right. This is a bobblehead. Hey, Derek Walker, Toronto Argonaut, Baba. I was going to say maybe it was, maybe it was. I'm sorry, what. He should have been in pinball. Pinball pinballs like their new GM or the Argos. No. They're a Walker. A bobblehead. Open that you don't need to open them. Right now Ryan's got a wedding, 11 words or something. All right. Oh, wow. And I think this is what he was talking about. The thing that will not fit me. Yeah. Vintage. There's some vintage in there. It's it's Argonauts. It's Argonauts. Vintage Jersey. It's a medium, it would fit you read. Yeah, this class I'm getting, I'm getting I'm older now. I'm getting a little, get a little look. Here's the deal read can out eat me. And he still stays. Relatively thin compared to me, he works out a lot more than I do. So we have this. We'll be giving this away. If you're a medium, we'll be figuring out a way to give this. We'll do it. We'll figure out the big giveaway. You have a way that. And I'm just taking my sweet ass time, opening all this stuff on time. There's another Jersey. F up Paul's. I mean, Josh spent a lot on this. Yeah, Josh hooked it up, man. This is a small Jersey. Okay. So. It's an Argonauts. Frankly, the show, Jen and I, if you didn't have your auto single ball that looks like it'd be a genocide. Genocides Jersey. Looks like her colors too, with. You know, with the, with the renegades, you know, Dallas renegades. Yeah. So we've got two jerseys, a small, and a medium will be given away. I'm going to keep you long sleeve Toronto Argonauts shirt for myself. Whenever Reed has that look in his face. I'm hoping that Mike hasn't cut out yet. So if that's, if that's the case, I'm looking at the list. Yeah. He says 2012 Argos Jersey, 2013, throwback Jersey, 2017. A hat towel, bobblehead, XL, Jersey. They never dry the ice cream. And then those other two from him to you. Okay. So I here's what I'll do, I'm gonna take, well, I don't know when I'm going back to work, but. I do know that my friend Nidia loves coconut stuff, so I will give this to her and she will enjoy this. That'll be great. Maybe she should leave her. You have a podcast. To qualify for that. That's what I'll tell her. I'm like, I got some treats for you. Some freeze dried treats. I can't eat them. Avi. One time. Did he actually put coconut lotion on. Almost killed me. That was fun. But, yeah, I appreciate this a lot. Justice is awesome. Thank you for hooking this up, man. We've got some good stuff to give away now. And. Thank you again. I will definitely keep a bobblehead. I'm going to put the bubble head right there. On my shelf, it'll join the collection. Because, you know, everyone's sports talk radio, these kinds of things has a collection of. Of crap, you know, like little figurines and Hamill helmets and stuff. So I'll put it up there. And I'll definitely appreciate this long sleeve shirt that you included as well. So there you go. There we go. Longest part of the podcast was the giveaway. I should have probably opened the box and Noma was going through, but you know, it was like Christmas for me because I never get, I never get anything sent to me. So what can I say? There you go with this, I guess I make sure we plug it in the. And from us. So we, cause we forgot to talk about at the top of the show. So, thanks again for listening again. Head over to our YouTube channel. Subscribe, hit the bell. Notification for new episodes. And yeah. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week. Well, we have the big XFL insider Mike Mitchell here. I want to thank you so much for taking the time. I, you know, Mike and I talk a lot online, you know, people on it's always see a window. Am I going to come on the podcast? And I had always said, I, you know, all these other XFL shows and podcasts and everything else. Hey, we're bored. We call Mike Mitchell. I go, Mike Mitchell cherish. I'm going to cherish this information. Here we go, you know, big XFL merger talk stuff. I'm going to break the glass today. We're calling Mike Mitchell. He's making time in his crazy schedule. Mike, thank you so much for coming on. First off, how are you doing? I'm doing well. Thanks for asking Reed. I it's a, it's a pleasure and an honor to be on with you. I also, by the way, appreciated all my XFL cohorts and all the guys. That, that co-writers with being with the jets and everything else that I do. I appreciate the fact that, especially with the XFL guys, like Josh Davis and Jay Noakes and all these people, Anthony Miller, yourself included. Mark Perry, everybody else that they don't impose upon me and ask me, Mike, Mike, tell me the truth. Tell me what's going on. Tell me the truth. I've always figured that I'd get those phone calls. Okay. I know, you know, kind of phone calls. So please tell me, I won't tell anybody. So I'm glad you guys haven't. Done that to me, because it's really hard, you know, the, this whole period time period, this. The last couple of years, few years now covering the XFL since 2018. It's hard. Sometimes you get a lot of privileged information and you try very hard not to be training one's confidence or trust. And a lot of times my articles are what I say. You have to like read between the lines because I'm trying to vary. It's very challenging to try to very challenging, to try to walk that delicate balance of giving out information and being informative and letting people know what's going on and not betraying the confidence and trust of others. So, yeah, long overdue. I'm glad to be on a mark cast. This is such a great show. You guys have done such a great job. I think you've really shined in these last few months. I think you guys have evolved as a show. You've welcomed everybody on from every angle you've reached out. You guys are active on social media. I appreciate what you guys do. Well, thank you. Yeah, I. I, you know, cause, cause give me info. And I think, you know, cause people send me stuff and they have my. We're just a commentary site. I mean, whether I hear it from you. You know, a month early or it comes out. I just, you know, I'm not going to tell you no, we're, here's the thing. Here's the thing people don't know about. You, you have a background in journalism. Yes. So even though your commentary site. And all that. And you guys play nice and you're friendly. You try it. Message again. You have a journalistic side to you and you will call people out on their stuff for lack of a better term. So, and so I'm mindful of that. You know, sometimes we have conversations. I'm like, you know, I don't want to slip up. Put enough pressure on myself as it is. So, and I, people don't realize your background. They just think you're some crazy guy from the Pacific. Yeah. Rabid football fan. They don't realize that, you know, you. You have standards. So there you go. All right. And now for the niceties, we got all that out of the way, Mike, what the hell happened? Why did it happen? What happened? I thought we were going what happened? That's my, yeah. What happened was there. The ownership structure. It's hard getting it's hard enough getting two people to agree on one thing, let alone. You know, nine different ownership structures and the XFL ownership structure. I think. The XFL Redbird capital, Danny Garcia, Dwayne Johnson. They spearheaded these talks. With the CFL and the CFO was interested because quite, you know, to borrow an old rock catchphrase, they, they smelled what the rock was cooking. They liked what he was cooking. So they like what the XFL was bringing to the table and what they were presenting. And I think the CFL benefited from having these talks. It's not to say that the Canadian side didn't have a lot of good ideas in these talks, but I think at the end of the day to answer your question, I think they couldn't come to an agreement. They couldn't, they didn't arrive in lock step. In terms of what they wanted to do. I think some, some of the, some of the owners, some of the ownership groups in the CFL were a little hesitant to move forward and saw the venture as potentially risky. And so, and they're not a lot of the owners and the community owned teams there. They're not in the business of big business. They're localized. They don't. I'm not trying to be insulting in any way, but they don't. They're not, they're not big picture business people. And so trying to get those people to be on the same wavelength. Is is difficult. So they narrowed down their options. They thought that there were headed towards the right direction, but you know, along the way, They just couldn't get everybody to agree. And I think. It wasn't just the CFL side saying, you know, let's pass on this. I think. A big part of this was the XFL saying, well, they're not really on board with what we really need to do. So we got to just end this. It isn't going to work. It isn't going to work out. And I think people, you know, the narrative out there hasn't really been painted that way, but that's, from what I know from, you know, I know people doubt us from what I know, speaking with people inside the, the leagues. And, and I talk to a lot of people in the Canadian side, this, this, this is true. So, so this is why these talks broke off. Yeah. And you know, when you, when we talk, you know, small market or a small picture, it is not a demeaning thing. Right? You. We're I do wedding videos and I I'll tell our couples like. We are a meat and potatoes company. You got some of these guys, girls, you know, they'll fly all over the world. Shoot helicopter, all this kind of crazy stuff. You know, that's not us and it's okay. It's okay to be a smaller market, smaller focused football team or a football club or league. I mean, it's not, that's not a criticism, even if it, if it's factual, right. You know what I'm saying? Right. I know, I agree with you. And it wasn't just business either. It wasn't a lot of it was strategy. The, the ideas that were coming together, people, everybody wasn't on board with them. So a lot of it was strategy. Some people, some of the owners wanted to do certain things. Some didn't somewhere in on board. They tried very hard to get that everybody on the same page and on the same wavelength, but at the end of the day, they decided to part ways. The XFL plans are still in play. They're just going, they're going to go about it a different way now. And so we'll see what happens with the CFL. I'm excited for their season. It's going to be fun watching. I'm so happy for the players. The coaches. That's the thing that gets lost in all of this, you know, people like to paint a brush on, let's just say it, XFL fans will say negative things about XFL fans, but I find from my experience, I'm an NFL fan. First. I. I'm a huge college football fan. I've been watching football for our to believe now, but since I was about six years old, so over three decades worth. So I think a lot of times people don't realize that the people who watched the XFL support, the XFL are the most purist of football fans out there. And they watch every kind of football. I mean, they'll. They love by the way, they'll watch the CFL. They watch indoor league. They've done it for years. I can speak for myself on this. I've watched every single league that's ever been out there. United. If I was a week ago, I was watching United football league game between the, the Sacramento mountain lions and the Omaha Nighthawks, which was their highest rated game ever. And I remember the hope and the promise of that league, and it didn't really quite work out. They decided to play in the fall, but that's neither here nor there. But my point is, you know, I think people like to. Paint XFL porters. Supporters with a negative brush. And I think they don't understand how pure and how much these people are. So open-minded. About and having an appreciation for football players and all that, and an appreciation, believe it or not. Big time for the CFL as I do. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is, is we would get these Canadian. CFL fans and they would. You'll be just like angry and I'm like, you know, as passionate as you are about your league and rightfully so. The XFL people, you know, rightfully so care, just as much about their alternative football leagues and stuff. I mean, it's not a, you know, we are both, you know, two mirrors of the same coin. You know what I mean? I have, I have so many questions. So, okay. So first off and, and, and this idea has been floated around a lot. So obviously you have your wonderful article at ex-felon news hub. You know, we're going to talk about it in the show and have out, pull out some quotes and stuff. Was this just. Propaganda as a way to cover. The CFL and, and kind of fill this time till they hit the field again, because it is very odd that these talks went away as we're entering training camp right now, you know, the conspiracy theories are all over the place right now. But I'll say this. You know, some of the recent developments might've influenced a couple of the diff. A couple of the decision-makers in the CFL. Single game bedding, wanting to a little bit hesitant about pushing forward with something that was a more on a grand scale and wanting to ride this out was kind of a sentiment that I heard from one side. So I think the recent developments may have shied certain teams away. Completely. But I think there's a lot of conspiracy theories out there right now that kind of like been out there for a while. Like the merger term. You know, they never even got to that point where they talked about rules and all that. And I can tell you, maybe it's. You and I were just two guys here, but I'll just say that if the reverse was in play and we found out that the XFL was going to play CFL style football in America. You and I probably, I know for myself, I wouldn't have had an issue with that. But there's a lot of American football fans that we know that would have said, this is ridiculous. Why are you doing this? You got to retrofit these stadiums play American style football. So there would have been, if the story got out there that the XFL was going to play a CFL style, there would have been some backlash on our end. South of the border. From from American football fans of why you play in the Canadian style. We don't care about that league. So I get. Part of me gets the sentiment that came from the Canadian side. Apart. I'm not saying I agree with everybody's opinions, but I understand it. So you think that these talks were entered into earnestly? I. You know, I know that. Right early on. I mean, it feels like, you know, decades ago now. When all this came out, you know, we had rod Peterson on the show and he goes, CFL is trying to milk some ideas from the XFL, right? They're there. They're going to do what they're going to do. They think they can get the rocks, whatever. I mean, were these Ernest talks? Was it the CFL, trying to lead some ideas off? I know that that's been folded around. You're kind of in our chats. And then in other private messages to me, from other writers that we know. These talks were earnest, but it's funny that you say the milks, some ideas out of the XFL. There's no question that both sides. I'm not going to say it's one sided, but there's no question that the CFL benefited from talking to red bird and seeing what the XFL is. They know now the CFL knows. What the XFL, his vision is. They know it completely. And the XFL knows what the CFL's looking for from league and all that. And they provided what they provided in these talks and all that, but it wasn't Ernest from the beginning, it was really an interest. It's business. So why wouldn't you be interested in making more money? Why wouldn't you be interested in creating more revenue streams? Why wouldn't you be interested in exposing your product internationally and all over the world and making your product more popular? And so the CFO was certainly interested. They liked what the red bird was selling in terms of gambling and everything else that gave them ideas. So there, so maybe there's some of that came out of this for them beneficial for them. And I think even in their statement that they released, they talked about how they, how constructive. These talks were how positive they weren't constructed. These talks were in terms of innovation and everything else. So they learned a lot from these talks, whether or not they revisit anything in the future, it's possible that they could work on a few things, but I think. The XFL is going in their own direction with your grand plan and the CFL's going to try and cross their fingers and hope that you know, their league model improves and nourishes and gets better over time. Hopefully. This experience makes their league better and hopefully the Canadian crowds are. The ones that show up are certainly going to be appreciative. But hopefully the Canadian market itself. It starts back in these teams more financially and supporting them. You know, it's one thing to, you know, have a vocal minority online, but when your team's been around for hundreds of years, and you can barely get 13,000 fans in your stadium or 15,000 or 16,000 or 17,000, like BC and Montreal and Toronto did the last time they were playing. So you got to get to the point where you're, you know, you shouldn't be at a point now with the CFL where you've only got three or four healthy franchises. That's not a healthy league. So you gotta be, you gotta get to put them with all nine franchises are strong and healthy and pushing forward. And that's something I wrote months ago on the CFL news hub. But anyway, That's a, that's my feelings on that. So, It's I've talked about it on the show and we were, I. I mean, we were going to try to do. Phone call one day. Just kind of chat about this stuff before all this game. You know, my, my belief is, you know, CFL. And Farhan even talked about this on the, you know, the interview that we published and that it's going to be re aired in this episode that, you know, CFL was feeling maybe a little desperate, right? October time, you know, we got COVID we're coming off that we're coming off the money, all these issues. Single game sports betting. Okay. That passes. And it seems like once that groundswell came. Or I w well, we, then we don't need this other money now. Right? Like we, we can't, as Ambrozy said, you know, and one of the statements, you know, we want to made in Canada solution, right. That we don't need. I mean, is that it. Are those connected that as the single game, cause they're not heard. I heard on the, on the opposite that, oh, well, no single game sports betting is only going to fuel these partnership talks because it's going to be a stronger lead together. But it does seem to me like the second single game sports betting pass, and they have this other money coming in that they didn't need the XFL anymore. The CFL didn't. It's a factor, but I think it's a little bit shortsighted if that's what ultimately ended their talks. I can understand the risks. If it's just single game betting, I'll say this right gambling has been along for a very long time. And so even before it was legalized here in many states, as it is now in America and before single game betting. People wanted a gamble, did gamble. For many, many years. Decades. So in order for your product to benefit from gambling, your product itself has to be popular. And I'm not saying the CFL isn't popular certainly is it does well. But you, you, you know, You to benefit from it. Every single team has to have strong interests, strong popularity. The sport itself has to be dominant. So, you know, it's people gamble on lacrosse, you know, but you know, how much money does lacrosse make from that? I don't know. But I'm not comparing to CFL across. I know a lot of people get upset about that. But. My point is if you're just banking on the single game bedding. And that's a short-sighted view. I mean, I really do believe that. I read that. I mean, I. You know, w w we'll have to see, but I mean, it's going to help. It's going to help. It's no question. It's going to help. Well, you know, it depends how you do it. Gambling when it comes down to is accessibility. There's going to come a time. One day, when you go on the Kansas city chiefs website and you can bet directly there how many yards Patrick mom's going to have, or bet over 2 75 or 300. And once NFL teams make it get to the point where they can legalize it and make it accessible for everybody. I don't care if it's grandma to bet on how many yards Zach Wilson is going to throw for on week one, that's where these leagues are really gonna benefit. So it's about accessibility and promoting, and they'll, they'll try to do that with different partners. So gambling partners that'll help, but you need. Need to understand how to streamline it. It's not enough to just talk about it and hope that you know, Jim, Jim, Jack, and Billy go and bet on your games. You actually have to create an avenue for people to follow. Where they can put their money down on you on the games. You have to make it accessible and easy for them. So if they can figure that out, maybe they pick that up from the talks. Then yeah. Yeah. That could be beneficial. They're going to lose money regardless this year. So, you know, because of the situation with fans and all that, they have a shortened season. They've already lost money. We saw Saskatchewan released their figures from last year, the COVID season, they lost whatever it was. 7.5 million, whatever the numbers they released publicly. So it's about improving upon their business model. And if you're just relying on single game betting, My opinion is that's not going to cut. Well, and I don't either, but I do firmly think that they, they think that it's interesting that hides. You know, and I know that you and mark had talked to them. I mean, there's no Loveless. Love loss with us in three down, but you know, he wrote, oh then God, all these XFL talks are done. Now. Now we can get back to, you know, adjusting the game as we are. You know, building whatever he said, you know, improving the game. I go. Wait, what was it about talking with the exit bell that prevented you from doing all this before? That's what I don't and like all these people now. And, you know, and I can get really. We try to keep a pretty level head on the podcast. I get a little more opinionated on Twitter, but it isn't like, I don't understand what has prevented the CFL on the last 30 years from doing any of this stuff. That now. Okay. Well now we can move on now that these XFL talks are that now we can make all these improvements that we didn't do before. Yeah, it was funny because when you think about it, it's difficult to expand your profit margins when you're only a 19 league. In Canada, it's not like they can go to 16 teams. That's a big part of gambling too, by the way. And fantasy more, more teams. You have more. Fantasy. More gambling. You have more games to gamble on. So anyway, but it's hard for the CFL. So they try to get creative in terms of how they're going to. Find out. Create new revenue streams. So I'm sure their talks with Redbird help as far as three down nation, nothing but respect for anybody who covers football leagues. So I got no issues there. Everybody's got their opinions. I understand where somebody like Hodge is coming from. He's a die hard CFL guy. So he got very defensive during all these talks and he was scared about losing his game. I respect that. Justin dunk is another person. I respect that. That's one of. One of the best things that, that I've experienced during this whole process is interacting with the people like Dave Naylor and forehand. Lougee nothing but respect for those guys from a journalism standpoint. I know there's some people say negative stuff about them, which is ridiculous to me. But anyway. Those guys are at premier, the crop, and I'm not just talking about just Canada, by the way. So, so that's kind of the story there. So I get it. Everybody's got their own opinions on that and you know, it's just the way it is, but CFL needs to you. There's not a cure. All they need. It's gonna, it's gonna take them time to actually get to the point where all nine teams are strong and solid. And so hopefully they're able to pull it off. I love the league, so I want to see them succeed. A quote here that you have, and this was in your article from XNL new south. This was your anonymous source involved with the alignment discussions. Yeah. Our plan for alignment is so complicated and multilayered. I feel that all the top decision makers want sign off on any of our final options. We've exhausted so many possibilities for alignment that will significantly benefit both sides. And we've used. Analysis to break down why this would work financially. Still, we keep getting hitting snags in these talks because we can't get everybody on the same page that shares in the same vision. To me, that sounds like we had a bunch of cool ideas. We show them a bunch of stuff. We show the analysis of the staff. We show them the data of the staff. We show them. The data on D and they weren't interested in any of it. Is that, what is it? Give me some context for that quote. Okay. I'll try as best as I can. It was a little difficult to get clearance on that. So. Thank you. Thank the individual who was, who allowed me to use that quote. He raised his eyebrow like that. Yeah. It's all been tear mud. I I'll tell you this though. Getting all the decision makers to agree. Includes, it's not just a north of the border thing. Because. The XFL, wasn't happy with some of the ideas that were coming from the other end. And so, and th they're part of the reason these talks broke off as well, because they, you know, not everybody was in unison with each other. So, so it just didn't work. It didn't work out on that front. That quote is very telling, obviously, And I, your analogy is funny as hell. No question about it. Am I am I off base that much? You're not far off, you're not far off. I'll say that much. I don't want to go too much further on that. Even, I think even as of today, I believe Raj Madani friend of the show on rod. Rod show they were talking about all this stuff and the Raj said, You know, basically like what, what did the CFL bring to the table? Right. You know, we know the exit foul, we've touted all this, you know, the rock and rubber and then $4 billion, all that stuff. You know, obviously I would say the CFL has, you know, the lineage, right? The history, you know, that kind of stuff in terms of, if this was not football related, yet these merger talk or, you know, not more. You know, whatever it. I haven't even gotten to football yet. What business things did the CFL bring to the table as far as your knowledge? That's an excellent question. I think they already have a, a global initiative. That they were looking into plans that they've discussed during those talks with the XFL. How they want to expand their product, how they think they can do it together. The XFL has their own global vision as well. So they gave their ideas. I don't know, as far as. The variants are, or. Or as the variety in terms of business solutions that, you know, there, there was some ideas shared by different entities involved in those talks that have businesses, other where other places. So, but, you know, overall I think it was a little bit one-sided in terms of. The multiple options that were presented. I think there was a reluctance to do too much. And to put too much on the table. And one side is looking at it from a completely different perspective. Is thinking about streaming partners and Mexico and everything else. So probably we'll get into that in a minute or so, but that's, that's kind of the story there. So I'm not, I'm trying very hard here. I'm walking a fine line trying here not to be negative or say anything negative, but there are, I'll say this on the CFO side, there are some groups there. There are some owners there that have a good history with the business. And they know about business solutions and, and all that. I think, and hopefully this isn't out of step, but I think in, in the messages yesterday, we shared on the chat, the idea was the CFL is potentially taking hundreds of dollars. Now when they could have thousands of dollars in the future. There's an argument for that. There's an argument play going the safe route, you know, going the safe route, not wanting to take the risk. And so that that's maybe why these. Most likely why these talks are done. It's a business and a strategy thing. It's more than just business. So also how you strategically want to do things. And, you know, one side wants to. You know, Expand upon certain things. And another is maybe a little reluctant to do it. Doesn't see the value in it. Or maybe doesn't have the foresight to see the value in it. You had mentioned here, you know, the international talks and all that you said maybe we'll hit on it in a minute. So let's hit on that. Talk about the, the, you know, the global vision or. I think even in the XFL statement, which was weird, like they didn't put it on the website. I think they just sent it to like news hub newsroom or whatever. It just seemed weird that they didn't actually. You know, it wasn't like posted on the website. I thought, whoever, you know, I'm sure. You know, Danny, if you're listening to this now let's, let's, let's get that part of it update on. But I think even the statement was talking about continuing the international growth of spring football. Right? So. Comment on that. Okay. So. There's some questions involved here, and this is currently something that I'm a story that I'm digging on right now, but I've reached out to a few people and asked them questions about this. So I'll present the questions to you. What could it mean to the 2020 markets of the XFL? All right. So I think there's a chance. There's a chance we could see an alteration there. If there's an international element or an addition to the markets that they already had. From what I've heard last few weeks. Mexico is definitely employee. For the XFL. And here's the kicker on this one? What would it mean if now this might be a little bit troublesome, this and that? What I'm about to say? So this is like don't hit, send in your brain. What if the XFL still explores Canada without the CFL, how would the CFL feel about that? Now there's some people already that are jumping on the possibility. I don't know how feasible it is or even possible. Of CFL teams. Making the jump. I'm hesitant to even say that. But what if, and I wouldn't rule it out by the way. The, the XFL. One of their teams in 2023, played in Canada. American style. So that's, that's something to ponder. I'm looking into all this stuff. I know some of that is speculative. Some of it is what I've kind of heard on the grapevine. But I, I think, I think it's a possibility. Both those things that I mentioned, there's going to be changes around the margins to the XFL markets. And whether that's going to be venues locations and all that. You could argue that announcing that you're coming back with 10 teams would be awesome. If you could make that work financially. Expand the league a little bit that might soften the blow for the league. Now playing in 2022. Tell him you're expanding. But I think it's very likely that the XFL is going to be doing something in Mexico. And I also believe that there's interest in doing something in Canada. Nope. Now what that entails. Wait and see. I like that. I tell you. You know, as much as we call out CFL homers for, you know, clutching to this, you know, the pro clutchy and or whatever. I mean, I've said the same thing for the XFL forever. Right? That, you know, just because we have like, and, and even still, it's so funny to this day, like Mark Perry and everybody, you know, all the people who were well, you know, they, we got the XFL drafts in October. We got I'm like Jessica. Just because they did it one time, two years ago, it's like, well, they didn't, you know, they did the summer showcase there last week in June and I'm like, That doesn't matter. Like, you know, I, and I know that we go back and forth with listener max a lot is like, you know, I remember back I think a year ago and it's, well, how many, how many of the same original teams are going to return players? You know, for whatever. Well, oiler alert. None of them anymore. Right. And so, no, I mean, I think that's exciting. Right. But I, I know, and I want to obviously get to this too, is the disgruntlement right now with current XFL fans, because of all this. Right. Because the, you know, and I, I guess I have a lot of questions with that, but. In terms of changing, you know, the landscape. I do think that, that, you know, Might scare some people or not, you know, that, that some of the vision that they had for where the XFL was before isn't necessarily going to be the vision that, that Danny and the rock and everybody has moving forward. Did the XFL just waste the last eight months in these conversations now that we're kicking off in 2023, I've I, and that's confirmed rather than me. We had. Added around that. That's now on the website, but I mean, that's the sentiment I've heard in the last, you know, 28 hours or whatever is a XFL is wasted the last year now doing these talks and now we're not kicking off for another year. Did they waste this time? I don't think so because I. The way I saw it, they weren't going to have a season in 2022 to begin with because of their, their plan. Their plan is still pushing forward. It's just pushing forward without the CFL involved. So I think it's tough for XFL fans. And I think it's tough for fans of these leagues where, whether you were a fan of the AAF for the XFL, a lot of these leagues come along and they make grand promises. And they fail to live up to them and they, they tell you about all these great dreams and great ideas they have and what they're going to do. And. AAF was going to revolutionize technology and football, and then we'd have the greatest app in the history of. Apps. And it didn't really work out with them. And then, you know, the XFL wasn't their fault. They had great league. And then the league ended for the reason that it did cause COVID. Ended it. But I think until the XFL proves itself and starts to show hints of being alive. Cause right now, The best way to say it is. It's kind of dormant publicly. Because you don't it's. They're starting over. It's a league from scratch. They have an awesome team behind the scenes. And there's no question. They have the capital and the resources and the finances and the expertise. From an entertainment standpoint and everything else, sporting standpoint to make it work. But until they start making actual football moves. They're not going to be considered a football league until they deliver on the great promise that. The X it's going to be hard to match up with the promise of the XFL. For those of you who didn't watch the exit on 2020, you missed out. But it's going to be hard to live up to the promise that that leak showed or to top it. I think they can do it, but it's easier said than done running a pro football league is very expensive. And so making it work is. Not going to be easy at all, but I understand the sentiment out there that people have doubt. They have every right to have doubt because these leagues have failed before in the past. They've had issues. Well, launching, failing to launch. There's so many promises out there that haven't been fulfilled. So the end, you know, just put, pushing the league back to 2023, it creates even more doubt until they start making moves. So I think 20, 22 for them is going to have to be a productive year in terms of news. And a lot of those plans that I've written about talked about in the past. Documentary shows everything else that gets complimentary to the league that leads up to the buildup as a ramp way towards 2023. That's going to have to be implemented. You mentioned something there quickly. I just wanted to say this. You mentioned the timeline. I talked to somebody yesterday, close to the situation and they, they hinted to me that we could see the XFL returning in April of 2023, which had by the league a little bit more time. In terms of setting everything up that they want to set up. It also gets them out of that window, that everybody talks about March ban. This. The Superbowl is now pushed back anyway. So the XFL would have been starting either late February or early March to begin with regardless. So I think we could see a little bit of a different timeline April through June, something like that. Now. Not that it might be so great in Houston playing in that heat. In Houston in June, but I guess, you know, players are tougher than people think they can put up with the elements. So, so that's kind of the story there, but there's a lot of layers to this. I get the people having doubt and until the XFL steps up to the plate and start swinging, people are going to have their doubts that this league is going to. Not only make it, but come back and be what it was. Cause, I mean, it is. And, and I guess I, we try, if anything, on the podcast to call everything the way it is, you know, if we're critical fan controlled football, we're critical of the spring league and I'll be critical of XFL is. You know, it does. I feel a little bit like a joke. Now we updated the Twitter yesterday. Now we're actually fell 2023. It was 2022. It was 2020 before that. I mean, it is. You know when people already, I think Jake Henry had sent over, you know, there's XFL, Twitter accounts made like 24, 25. I'm like, you know, it just, it's becoming a little bit of a joke that way. And we've said before, cause obviously, you know, this USFL news coming back. And I have a question about that, but the USFL stuff coming back. And people asking you, why is the U S why can the USFL, and this is again, all in theory, you know, why can the USFL launch next year and the XFL camp, right. And you've written and we've talked yeah. This grand vision, right. And I've said on the podcast, maybe it's two grand. Right? Where I think with Brian Woods, like Brian Woods in them, it's like caveman putting ball on the field. No disrespect intended. Danny and the rock and red bird, it's like the matrix and we've got layers on layers and we're, it's all. And I don't know which one's right, right. But, but, but, you know, and obviously I think the correct answer is maybe somewhere in between, but, but is this vision too grand that like, well, we need a year and a half of programming, the lead of this stuff out. Like, do we need that? I mean, XFL last time. Didn't didn't have that. And it seemed like he was doing AOK before, you know, a pandemic and everything. All right. That's an excellent point. And I love the way you frame that, the differences between the USFL and. The front of the Chevron woods? No, Brian, was it smart? It's it's smart too, in terms of finances that just, if you're looking to run just a football league, And present just football. I get that from a financial standpoint, if you're trying to do what Redbird and everybody else is trying to do involved with the XFL right now. That's going to take a lot of coin. I'll say this about Redbird. They don't invest in things unless they, they figure to see their profits. Expanded greatly and immensely and multiplied. So they'll put in a $500 million. As a sure bet that they're going to get a billion dollars back. That's the kind of bet they're making. As far as like the USFL goes with their model. I think right now there's so many different rumors about how they're going to handle things, whether or not they're gonna have enough time to be an individual markets, whether or not they're going to rely on individual owners. I've heard rumblings about that recently about potential individual owners for the teams to. What's that for, to help pay the bills. So that's a little bit alarming sometimes because in the past, Brian was with the FX F L he tried that the UFL had issues with their owners. So, so relying upon, we know about the USFL, everybody talks about the former president, but they had a bunch of owners that had were flawed and couldn't pay the bills. And players had to go to their owners, houses with guns to get their money. And, and owners were hiring their farm hands to be the ponder and all kinds of stuff. The bus saw there was at UFL basically didn't have any money to, to give their players equipment. And rolling and, and athletic tape and everything else. So anyway, But I think the USFL also there's a lot of doubts about them. Making it work because once you open up that cash register, And start to operate a genuine pro football league and pay your players and all that. And then the, the bills start coming in and you got to pay him. So, so we'll see how it goes. You know, I think they have a chance there. The name USFL has some Goodwill. And it's going to be interesting to see how they do, they're going to have to promote it, market it better than they did the spring league. And they gonna have to put more money into it to make it work. And they have to, it's going to have to be legit in every way possible. So. I'm rooting for them again, it would be interesting to see how they, how they do. And it's great for players if the USFL and the XFL is on the market there, for sure. Did the USFL announcements. Play any factor at all into anything else that was happening and that we had talked offline. You know where they were red bird and Danny and the Rocky. And w were they shocked by everything? I mean, what. What factor, if any, did that play and where they stunned by this announcement or not? They weren't stunned at all. Matter of fact, the people I spoke with were complimentary. They thought that the USFL showing up on Fox and being in that space shows how viable football is in that time period. So I was surprisingly, there were the, the conversations that I've had there weren't, there weren't any kind of remarks that were like, you know, down putting, or kind of putting their nose in the air or trying to say anything negative about it. That didn't hear anything like that. I don't think any. None of what the XFL is doing right now has has anything to do with the USFL. I don't think they're concerned. They're they're there. They have a different operation. So, and so when they unveil that, I mean, they were going. They're going to cut. They were going to play in 2023, regardless of what happened with the CFL talks, whether they aligned with it and didn't talk any of that. So, so that's kind of what people are not really focusing in on. So the fact that the USFL is coming back on the marketplace in 2020 to 2022, it's not doesn't mean all of a sudden the XFL is going to say, you know what, we're coming back in August the next year. We've got to get back out there. They're not going to rush back into the market. They're, they're, they're being very methodical in their approach. And so we'll see it. We'll see if they play it. We'll see if, you know, maybe the XFL is wrong for not considering them more of a threat. We'll see. But what I, I, it doesn't change their vision or their plans at all. So do you feel. They were on a path. The XFL was on the path to a 2023 launch. At some point that changed the sense, I guess. When did the announcement get made August? Right. We're coming back in 2022, right. Late August, right. August was the, when they purchased the league out of bankruptcy. And then I want to say. I could be wrong on this. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but October I want to say is when they announced, okay. Here's when we're coming back because we had a little bit of that period. Yeah. And between them announcing the 2022, where people were pushing for a 20, 21 season. Believe it or not. Yeah. Here we are waiting for 20, 23, but there were people talking about, Hey, let's hub it. Let's put them in one stadium. Let's put them in Houston. Let's do this. We'll work around. COVID all that. So for a while they are 20, 21 was in play, at least in the minds of people. And then they announced 20, 22. So from everything I've heard, they weren't quite ready to go. And like, you know, even before these talks happen and then these talks definitely pushed them more towards. You know, Steering away from rushing out there in 2022, if that was ever an option in their heads. They want to do this, right. I think when. You only get a second chance to make a first impression and understand this is the XFL under its third iteration, but this is Redbird capital and Danny Garcia and Dwayne Johnson's first venture into a sporting league. So they want to get this right. So they want this to be a smashing success, whether or not they'll be able to pull it off for me is to be seen. But 20, 23 was the likelihood all along is, you know, I know people don't like to hear that, but that's just the way it is. So with these talks and everything, it did seem like, and not that the CFL was very vocal, but I feel like they were. You know, and it helps to have commissioner Ambrozy, you know, be a little bit more of a public figure right now. Right. But, but even like, it's, you know, as of yesterday, you know, the XFL website, you know, they give these statements out to the, to the media. You know, there's the video is redone, but it just says 20, 23 now at the end, which I think is a really bad luck. I mean, you know, some of these things, but why. Why not do something to, to be a little more public outfacing, even if there's nothing to talk about right now. You know, there's an argument for that. No question about it. I think right now they don't have to be honest. They don't have anything to announce. So. That's really the story there and they didn't expect this, that they didn't expect these talks to fall apart at this point. They thought that they thought they were, they were going ahead. They narrowed down their options. They, as I mentioned in my article and now down their options, they were looking, they were getting close. And so, but things kind of broke off towards the end. There not everybody could agree upon things. And so. Yeah, it would be beneficial from a public image standpoint. For them to be a little more active, but until they actually have some meat on the bone, For, for, for everyone to, to, to look into and to be interested in. They could have handled the situation a little bit better, how they announced it on a social media and everything else. It made, it created the appearance that maybe they were floored. By this news and the, you know, they didn't expect it. I know a lot of people expected that by year's end. That they would announce what they were doing with the CFL. And then they would, at that point, they would announce that 20, 22 is off. So it seems kind of. Kind of forced in that in, in June. Where are we now? July. In July in July that we found out on the way that we did. They're going to have to do a better job moving forward. Of presenting a public face and image, you know, a lot of people get the impression that Danny Garcia and Dwayne Johnson, or, you know, they're not really talking about the league. They're not promoting it. They're not really saying that much about it. A little dribs and drabs here every once in a while. Have a mention here. I mean, it's gotten to the one where people look for a weight belts and. From the rock and his videos, whether or not they say XFL on them, Danny, every once in a while, we'll, you know, tease people with some information. Some of that has come out, Jay Rothman and, you know, we found out about BCG. They were involved in the CFL talks. So. Yeah, they need to do a better job moving forward. I mean, when they're ready to go, when they're ready to put the keys in the ignition and make their announcements there, that you would expect them to be front and center every day on social media, promoting everything heavily. Once they put the keys, I don't think they're ready yet. Put the keys in the ignition. I just looked at the clock here. Hey guys, I promised that you have too much. I was like, oh my gosh. I was looking at the clock here. I've been. So engrossed in the conversation. Thank you. For your, for your time. I'll come. Thank you. Can we dissuade the. Speculation that there is a trove of coaches and staff and everybody hired right now that I, you know, I think I tweeted a couple of weeks ago. This isn't going to be like the ending of national treasure when they open up the treasure vault. And there's all of these. You know, Can cause I, you know, and we get that a lot. And again, this is what you know, and, and I've, you know, I reached out to the, to the XFL media people, you know, they they've talked to us and, you know, w when all like the. We're going to be on the field in months and then that'll, you know, are. They're there. Like I go. Yeah, I understand that, that, you know, you don't have anything to now through your taking your time or whatever, but like, you know, one day in social media is like a year of, of anything out, right. And the silence is deafening, I think had they been more. Upfront about these talks from the beginning and sad, like, you know, there is no merger or whether, you know, Because they give all this speculation we've done in the last four months. Right. For literally nothing. Right? Like literally nothing at all, nothing came of anything. There wasn't anything. And I'm like, God, if anyone would have just said like, Hey, actually, you know, this is not what we're doing or this isn't like, If Danny Garcia had come out and said, well, actually I met months as in like, we're still a long way away. Not as in we're in months as in like we're kicking off in three months, which is how I read it. But, I mean, at least at a minimum we can dissuade, right? There's no treasure trove of coaches and everybody that's sitting idly waiting for a launch. Yeah. W we can definitely put that to bed. I, you know, w everyone else are focused on 20, 23 now, and they'll talk about, but I even a couple of weeks ago, people reached out to me. Some of my colleagues reached out to me and said, Hey, what have you heard, Mike? I hear 20, 20 twos ago now. And there they've already got coaches. The coaches are telling me that they're coming back and it's already set up. And, you know, I, I had to shoot that down quickly. Yeah. You know, I get it. You know, you have so many, it's great though, that a league that only played five weeks as so many people that are interested in. Is create the league. It tells you something, if you're an outsider and you're wondering what the hell. It tells you something. A lot of the XFL supporters were not even alive for the first iteration. Or we're too young to even remember it or didn't watch it. And so it's pre HD. Era television. So, I mean, so that that's, that there's that, so there it's great that there are so many supporters of the league that are still interested in it and that are, you know, Doing detective work everyday going on LinkedIn and finding phony XFL employees. Or all that kind of stuff. So, I mean, everyone is out there looking for any slight change that's on social media. What does this mean? What does that mean? So, I mean, that's great. But, yeah, it's just funny. You know, we had a, I mentioned this at the open to this interview and I know this has been pretty lengthy, but there was a, I can't respond to every single thing that people say to me on Twitter. And opens up a can of worms sometimes. I'm yeah, I have some privileged information. I can't say anything about it, but anyway, There was one response that I got on Twitter from one of my followers. And he follows you as well. And he asked me to like his tweet. It to ed to identify whether or not there would be no 20, 22 seasons. So what did I do? I went in his DMS and I sent him four separate messages and they were the letters L I K E so. That's a good hold me to it. So, but I appreciate the fact that fans like that are out there and that they still care about this league. It's almost to some people nonsensical that a league played only five damn weeks and still has people almost two years later or whatever it is now, a year and change later that are like, I can't wait for this league to come back. When's it coming back that should tell you something right there. What is next? We'll move forward here, whether [unknown]. Whether we were XFL fans, we've made it, you know, 55 minutes in the Mike Mitchell interview here where we're anxious for ready to go. XFL news. What, what is next? I think by the, by the end of the year, they're going to have to make a significant announcement. That's my opinion. Now they can wait until the new year and announced what we're doing in 2022. But I think that whatever plans they had, the, you know, there. They're moving forward. And they're going to need to start putting the wheels in play. And I think. As we move along in the fall and in the winter, I think I know that's what, another long way for people that sounds like a long way away. But I think we're going to need to start hearing news about what the league's plans are for 2022, leading into 2023. So, whether that be documentary shows, whether or not that'd be new teams added to the league, whether or not be a couple of relocations and league two teams, maybe moving to Mexico and Canada. So, I mean, whatever it is that the international side is in play 100% and that's going to be in play for 2023, how that's rolled out exposure wise and expansion wise remains to be seen, but that's going to be in play. But until we start seeing big news people right now have a lot of doubt and rightfully so. And so I think in the next few months we need to, we need to start. You know, hearing some important information, vital information that shows you that the league is alive and pushing forward, whether that be the hiring of a CFO or whatever it may be, they need to start putting the wheels in motion and putting their league together. Yeah. I think when it, when it all comes together, I think it will be, you know, tremendously exciting in the meantime, but it is. And I do. And like I've said, if anyone, you know, cares about my opinion at all, but I do talk about this quite a bit, but you know, That vision. We, you know, I've heard this, you know, documentary shows and we're doing the. I don't, I don't know. That's, I don't know if people want a year's worth of, you know, It's 30 for thirties leading. I don't know. I mean, All I know is, you know, the XFL is the first time. It. I mean. Wasn't great. I mean, they obviously the social media and Bailey and all that, you know, did a good job, but I mean, I remember, you know, I think we had Ryan Gustafson handing off a season ticket boxes or whatever to random fans in pioneer square for the dragons. And I was so angry that I knew they were staged because I had one of the first season tickets and I was so angry that I didn't. You know, get one of those, but, you know, I think th there, there there's a line in between those two things, but I do wonder that, like we keep saying, like, we're, you know, we're preparing, we're preparing, they're getting all these things. I'm like, I don't, you know, are we packing for a trip with 16 suitcases? Like I just don't know. I get that. It's a big launch, but I don't know. I don't know. It's fascinating to me. We have this slow rollout maybe of the, of USFL, you know, it was, it was the spring league and the hubs and we're expanding and whether we do it, and then I think I, the XFL wants to shoot its load at one time. Right. And I was like, here's our plan? And I just don't know which one is right. And I'm fascinated to see, cause it is like we're seeing too, you know, a mirror image here back and forth. We might get what I thought we were going to get in 2020, which is the existence of the Alliance of American football and the XFL at the same time. Be fascinating then fingers crossed that both these leagues make it and do a great job. So I think it's great for players because when you're talking about it, if you've got two leagues with 16 teams, Over 800 players at the bare minimum. So getting jobs and that's coaches and then people working for the teams and then that's people getting media jobs, or it can, so it's great for football if it happens. So it is going to be fascinating to watch the March towards that. I'm very, I'm curious how the USFL makes things work. And, and what they do, what markets they choose, what coaches they're higher. There's rumors out there about guys like Steve Spurrier and Wade Phillips and Jerry Glanville and others. You're going to have to pay those guys decent coin. And make sure those checks don't bounce. So, you know, that's kind of the story there to get those kinds of guys that would help for notoriety, but yeah, they could be battling each other there, the USFL and XFL. So we'll see, you have to get to the point where you actually pay your players decent money and all that for, for players to want to play in your league. So anyhow, but yeah, it's going to be fun to watch it. We gotta be patient here with everything, but it's going to be fun. W as we start rolling closer towards 20, 22 to see what happens. Yeah. Well, I, my, this has been that way. You know, I will send them. I'm sure Paul is having a heart attack right now. As we get going, but you know, this was a long time coming, you know, we were going to have you on, because I kept saying like, well, have a mom when there's news. And then it was like the AXA found that really did anything. And so now we, I mean, at least we have, so I'm glad that we, we got the bandaid off, you know, the, the toothpaste is out of the tube. Now we can have you back on again in the future, but I, it was certainly not for a lack of us talking anyway, just actually, you know, finalizing and getting stuff on here, but I really appreciate it. Well, Farhan, thank you so much for coming on. I am sad to say that this might be the last time that we ever talked. Now that the, the CFL, I am kidding. Cause actually, you know, we were going to have you on this week. I'm very interested in all the training camp stuff that the vaccination protocols. Everything else with the CFL. So we're going to do all of that too. So far on a, you know, we were scheduled. We're going to do all the breaking XFL CFL stuff. Now I'm going to actually break this out as a standalone video today to kind of hopefully catch some of the buzz. And then we will add on to this and then put that on our episode on Friday. So if you're checking it out the episode today, make sure you're subscribed. Come back Friday. We're going to do all the CFL SEF deal. Far Hahn, I'm sure. A busy day for you. How are you reacting to all of this news? Well, you know, she's surprised at the timing, but not really surprised that we're at this point, you know, I got the sense from people I'd been talking to in the last couple of weeks that this might be headed in this direction. You know, it had been pretty quiet for. Well over a month now, right? In terms of the two leagues and where they're at and. You know, we, we were kind of led to believe that. It got to a point where they just, they needed to get this to the analysts and see what the actual numbers for this whole thing were going to look like. And I just don't think that they were able to get much in the way of clarity. Right. There were still. A lot of questions. Both financially in terms of what it would look like and logistically, right. In terms of what the league would physically look like in terms of where the teams would be on the XFL side, in terms of player, acquisition, and retention, there was a, there was a number of things that were still in play, some of what you were going to be able to overcome, because that's just part of bargaining and negotiations. But I think on the financial side, it, it just. There, there just, wasn't a lot of clarity. There was a lot of hope. There was a lot of potential. But there wasn't necessarily a lot of meat on the bone at the front end. And I just don't think there was enough there ultimately for the CFL governors to decide they wanted to jump completely into this. And I think from an XFL standpoint, I think they wanted some clarity as well because of what's happening with the USFL and the fact that the USFL is planning to launch in 2022 with a television deal with Fox. I think they were anxious to kind of. Have some news and move forward on what they were doing. And, and ultimately the, the, the mechanics of the deal just warrant there where the CFL governors felt comfortable making that leap of faith. How are you? You know, obviously as someone that covers the league as a proponent of, you know, growth. How are you reacting to this personally? Well, you know, like I'm disappointed to a degree, right? I think there was some exciting things around what it could have looked like. But again, like more than anything, I was excited at the notion that. Redbird capital and the rock and Danny Garcia and their promotional might, could have put the Canadian football league in, in really good financial footing. Right. But I think during this process, I think what people around the CFL learned. Was just how much they were bringing to the process. Right. And, you know, you, you, when you enter this on both sides, you're in the throws of COVID. And everything looks so bleak. And then in the last month, things are turning up actually. Actually they should rate your better. CFO's going to start playing his games again. And as you go through the process, you realize just how much this league is bringing to the equation in terms of its infrastructure. The fact that you've got football teams that are, you've got nine teams that are up and running. You've got established Tran basis. We got a television deal. So, so how does that work? Right. I mean, at the front end, would the CFL have been expected? To turn over half inch TV deal, half at sponsorship deals. All of those things. In an, in an attempt to get more on the back end. Right? I mean, there were just a lot of those types of questions, but I think, I think as much as anything CFL, people who are very open to this. At the governor level realized that look. You know, I think we can be okay, we've got the single game bedding coming in. Now you've got things like, you know, revenue sharing and other adjustments to the business model that they've been forced to make during COVID and we're going to make long-term. So maybe we're in a better, better position than we think that we don't need to just do this out of desperation. Yeah, that's kinda what I think. I mean, I we've noticed on, on the show lately that, you know, as all the single game sports betting talk has ramped up as the, you know, obviously COVID and everything has cooled down a little bit. They did seem like this, this cool. Right? Th the talks were maybe. Four months ago, or, you know, back in October, whenever the, all this started and it did seem a little more bleak. Is that kinda your, your beliefs as well? Yeah, I think there's some truth to that. And look, I do believe that when the governors got into this at the front end, You know, there was a certain amount of desperation, but you know, I do think they believed it. Look, this league had some financial issues before COVID right. I mean, you know, you look at a team like the Winnipeg blue bombers, you made a little bit of money. I mean a lot went right for the bombers to eventually win the grey cup. To only make a little bit of money right now, their numbers are a little bit different because they're also still, you know, there's a new stadium that's just been put in both in Saskatchewan and in Winnipeg. And so their financials look a little bit different when you've got to pay off portions of that. But I think overall, I think there was a feeling that the business model was broken and that, you know, when you look at the rock and you look at Danny Garcia and you look at Redbird capital. You see potential and you see. You see glisten, you see glamour and you see things that could potentially bring a lot. So I think they did try to do it from the standpoint of look, even without COVID. This league had some financial issues in 2019 and before that, so we, maybe we use COVID to springboard and to take us into an area that maybe we wouldn't have seriously considered before. But, you know, ultimately that, that wasn't enough and they, they need a little bit more. In terms of, I've already seen people commenting, you know, where they're putting a pin in this. Now they're going to come back, you know, to these. You know, cause whatever the statement said, you know, it's put on pause for the time. Yeah, I mean, I D I mean, do we hop back on the horse here? I mean, I don't, I don't really know. So like, I think today it's over. You know, like, I believe that I, I understand that both leagues put at this time on their press releases, but I think as of today, There isn't, there's not going to be any need to revisit the discussion now. In three years, if the XFL is playing football games and the CFL is in a different financial situation and you know, there's more of a need that you. Like you don't know what it's going to look like in three years, but I don't believe from the people I've spoken to today that the pause is actually a pause. I think they're moving forward. Both entities independently. If there's a reason to come back later, maybe they revisit that. But I don't believe that's part of the plan. To put the brakes on this. The people you've been talking to you, are they disappointed? Are they relieved? I mean, obviously I've seen a lot of, you know, CFL fans, you know, relieved with everything. Depends who you talk to. You know, I think there are certain owners that are disappointed and I think there's some that are probably relieved. I mean, you look at the statement that the Edmondson Elks put out where they, you know, they said that, you know, we're, we're happy about this and we're happy to. Preserve this type of, you know, the game that we've got and all of that. So, yeah, I mean, you know, maybe. You know, as a, as a community owned team. With their constituents, maybe they're in a certain place, you know, but there are others that I've talked to that are disappointed. I think they went into this really, really hoping that there would be, you know, a lot more financial meat on the bone. You. To make this goal, right? I think there was a lot of excitement at the potential of this at the front end. So. You know, but at the same time, I mean, there are people who feel better about the CFO situation with the single game bedding, with some of the other adjustments that they've made. Like we talked about earlier, you know, the revenue sharing and things like that. I think some of those things are going to add immediate franchise value to some teams that are looking for it. So, you know, th there's both, but I think as much as anything else in the CFL side right now, let's just get on with 2021. I think that's probably the single biggest, biggest sentiment that I'm getting right now from. From, you know, the league office from governors and others. Yeah, I as someone that I'm now an Alex fan, I didn't know that. Ty XFL. I'd have to re I have my flag here. You know, I might have to really reevaluate that. A couple more questions on this. And then obviously I want to get into the season stuff. I had, we had rod Peterson back on the show a couple of weeks ago. And a lot of our conversation was about really the, the hostility, right. They kind of came out with these talks with the fans, with everything for me. And, you know, not for, yeah. From that small, you know, I mean, that's who I hear. That's used. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, rod said the same thing, you know, in our wildest dreams, we never could have imagined with a gotten so contentious. Right. And, you know, I think that maybe, you know, Th th the hires out that both the XFL and CFL, maybe didn't anticipate that either. You know, we just get, so the vitriol will be so thick. Yeah. You know, I don't think that really played a role, but I do believe, you know, and this was always the case from the beginning. There was going to have to be something substantial. For those people to go back to their teams and their fan bases and say, listen, This is the better thing to do. Right. And, you know, look, it, it changes the temperature changes in different cities and the temperature also changes with different age groups. Right. You know, and who you are. There are people that are going to be protectionists, and they're just not going to want change. They're just not going to want evolution. They're not going to want to look at this. With any sort of open eyes, right. It was going to be glass half empty regardless. Right. So that was going to be there, but I really don't believe from talking to those teams. Did they experienced a lot of that vitriol firsthand? I don't think there were thousands of fans in Winnipeg and Saskatchewan, and even in Edmonton. Then went to those teams and said, we're out. You. Yeah, we're there. You know, dozens of upset people. Sure. But were there thousands? No, I don't believe that for a second. So I don't think that had anything to do with it that said, you know, and I said, Again, when we, when we were on the first time, was that, yeah, you still have to go back to those people and look those people in the eye and say, this is why we're changing. And you're going to have to give them something tangible, not just hope. In order to tell them why they're changing and they just couldn't get to that. Is this the right decision to make ultimately. Yeah, I think so. I mean from what I've heard today and where the talks were at. Right. And this is not an anti XFL guy, right? Like I'm not that guy. So I just think that right now, based on where they are. You know, the XFL is still got a lot of questions to answer internally, right. In terms of where their cities are going to be, because, you know, I think there's an assumption that you're just going to pick up those nineteens. I don't know that that's the case. What their TV contract is going to look like. You know what their infrastructure, what they were left with. Right. Because I understand that. You know, Redbird and Garcia and the rock got the assets, but what were those assets? Right? I mean, And were they enough to really build it? Full football operations from right. Because in some cases they were just contracts, right. They weren't necessarily a bunch of computers and pads. I mean, there was a little bit of that, but so, you know, when you look at the actual costs, When the Redbird capital folks looked at the actual costs. To get this off the ground from a staffing and infrastructure perspective through to 2023. And you know, you're going to have to lose millions. Tens of millions, hundreds of millions at the front end, in order to make the money at the back end. I mean, that's just, you know, they knew that when, when they launched a few years ago, right. So I think when you look at all of that, You know, I think this is probably the best thing for both sides. Both sides now have some clarity and they can, they can kind of move forward with it. Yeah, it's just a shame. It took so long. I mean, already, I'm hearing, you know, as much as we criticize some of the CFL fan base for being homers or, you know, holding on. In school. Yeah. I XFL and I'm like, guys, That you have, you have far less of a, of a lineage to be really clinging onto. I mean, I try to, you know, play both sides. Any other thoughts on the XFL setup before we transitioned to the CFL at hand? You know what I hope it's successful. I really do. I want to see a spring league work and, you know, there are people and I was one of these at one point that didn't want to see it work and not the XFL specifically, but spring football generally, I was just that kind of doll. Forget it. You know, the NFL, it's just never going to happen. But, you know, I just believe that when you look at the numbers and I, and I think there are enough fan bases that will support it. To the point, you know, I use MLS as the example, right? Because really the MLS it's not necessarily profitable, but there's franchise value. Right. I mean, there's not huge television dollars. There's not huge. Attendance at the majority of games. Yeah, there are some outliers, but yet, somehow they managed to create a business model that creates franchise value. So I would love to see television ratings. You know, for an XFL. Be able to sustain NHL type levels in the United States. Like they showed for their first five weeks. They had a seasonal usher. I'd like to see it happen. I think more football is good for everybody. It's more opportunity for coaches. For players for fans, for gamblers, for everybody. So I just don't see why having something like that succeed is bad. I mean, I think it just forces. The CFL to get better. I think this whole exercise. Forced the CFL to get better at forced to see if all, to take a deeper look at itself. So I hope the XFL works. I lied. I have one more question. I want your reaction to right. When this came out, you know, friendly, the shell Rosh Madani tweeted, you know, look at all this wasted time. You know, we spend all this time, we could have rebuilt, you know, the CFL could have worked on all these other things. In the meantime, reacting to that, that people feel like the last four or five months, six months has been a waste of time. It's not been a waste of time because of what I just said. I think it forced the league to take a deeper look at itself. And what it valued, right? I mean, you know, when the exit, when the CFL went through its us expansion in the nineties, Some people view that as an unmitigated disaster. Right because those franchises failed. You know, ultimately Baltimore came to Montreal and that one worked, but as far as us expansion in the states, I don't believe that whole exercise was a failure because the CFL came out of it. Much stronger than it had been going into it. Right. So you have to look at the big picture and, and for me, Again, the CFL did work on its business model. They did make some changes just to get on the field for 2021. So I think a lot of good is coming in it's four months, like really, right. Like for an institution that's been around over a hundred years. We're going to get all bent out of shape because they took a look at four months. The league, the commissioner of the league office, they owed it to themselves. They owed it to their owners. They owed it to their fans. So overturn every rock. Literally and figuratively to make sure. That there wasn't, you know, a pot of gold at the end of it. Right? Like, look at it legitimately. Don't just, naysay on everything. Right. That's what gets the league into the financial peril? In now people refusing to try different things. So I'm glad they tried it. You know, if they, if this is the right solution, good on him. Perfect. So we'll, we'll, we'll clip this off. If you're listening, you know, please tune in to the whole show on Friday. I do want to get into some CFL stuff. You know, we talk about you guys a lot, you and Mr. Dave Naylor on the show and play a lot of clips and stuff. You know, regarding a lot of the player protocols, you know, regarding vaccines, a lot of the retirements and things. What is the biggest story before this happened this morning that you were tracking this week kind of going into training camp, starting this weekend. While the retirements have been a big thing, right? You know, you've seen what's happened where, you know, every team has lost a certain number of players for a number of reasons. Right? I mean, you could be a veteran player, like, you know, Brendan Labatt. He was just like, like, I don't want to deal with these restrictions. I want to spend time with my family for a couple of months, then I'll look at it down the road. And then you've got, you know, some American players that are younger, that don't necessarily have as much skin in the game and they're not making as much right there on minimum deals. 65,000 prorated down from 18 to 14 games. And they, they don't want to go through it. They might not have their vaccinations. They might not have all their passports and, you know, those types of things dealt with. So just kind of the mechanics around getting to training camp and getting all of that started, you know, the league finally got there. There P hack approval. So that's the public health agency of Canada and they needed to get that formally. So that rather than having a 14 day quarantine, they get up to seven day. So they knew it was coming, but it took to the 11th hour to finally get it in writing formally. But yeah, I mean, just, probably more of the retirement than anything else, you know, and you've got coaches and players that are just jacked to get it going. And, you know, you've got some others that just, aren't excited to have to deal with the restrictions. Right. And now the next step is. The league is going to try to work on those restrictions and try to get them Ellucian. So that's the next process that they're going through. So yeah, those are the main things we've been working on. Is it a lack of, I mean, is it just wanting that. It's really, the NFL had so much more freedom of, you know, we can postpone games, move all these things around. Is it. Is it just a fear of anything happening or is it that the CFL doesn't necessarily have the resources to maintain kind of two different protocols? Like the NFL is going into the season? No. I mean, it really comes down to government, right. And the governments have more control here than they do in the, in the United States. Right. I mean, Money talks. And as most of the U S has opened up. They can just do what they want. And we just can't do that here. Right? I mean, there are travel restrictions and there are protocol restrictions in every different province. The league itself doesn't want to create a two tiered system amongst provinces. Right. They don't want to get into. Okay. Well, Manitoba says you can be double vaccine now. You can. Take everything off at the facility and do whatever you want and then not have Calgary and BC be able to do the same things. Right. So they want to make sure the league is playing on an even playing field. But they needed to go through this step. So we're a little more conservative here, right? When it comes to COVID, you've still got some restrictions in place in various provinces. So the league just wouldn't be allowed to from a government standpoint, do whatever it wanted, like the NFL has done. Right. So, you know, there's a process here. So number one process is can we return to play? Okay, well, we've got that. What's next. Well, how much, how many fans can come? We all know that fans are going to be allowed. But what's the threshold is going to be in every province. And then after that, Then they go back and say, okay, look. Why don't we propose this, that if you're, you know, maybe if a team is vaccinated 85%, or if a player is vaccinated or what have you, it's going to happen. But there's just an order in which it's got to happen here. That there's just not the same level of freedom that there is in the U S for the league to make the decision governments make the decision here. When, when are we going to hear about your actual numbers of attendance and what's going to be. You know what I mean? I think it'll, I think it'll all happen within the neck. By the end of next week. I would be surprised if those numbers weren't all trickling out. It might take a little longer in Ontario just because that province has more to deal with. With three CFL teams, you've got multiple NHL, you know, you've got major league baseball and. And the Raptors as well, although, you know, there's seasons done, but. So they're dealing with, they're dealing with a few different things there. So, but I would imagine by the end of next week, we're going to hear what the capacity is. Or any restrictions are in any given province. So even in. You know, in Winnipeg, they talk about double vacs. So, so that's great. You know, in BC, I know that they've thrown out 5,000 as a possible number, but then we've also heard as many as 50% in the stadium, which would be closer to, you know, 13 and a half, 14,000, somewhere in that range. So all those things I think are going to get finalized pretty quick here. I saw some people flooding. I think Dave Campbell was the most recent one today that some of these players that maybe are sitting out right now, you know, when things get more relaxed than they could be, you know, these like retirement of stories is that doable with how short the season. One is and trying to ramp up. Yeah, I think it is. And I say that because I think there's going to be a real emphasis on the veteran player. Right. The young rookie is not going to get nearly the time because there's no preseason. You know, and teams are allowed to keep extra guys in the taxi squad just so they can deal with COVID protocols. But if protocols get relaxed and. Those players can come in and maybe do a seven day or just do a certain amount of testing and they can work their way in. I just think there's going to be a real premium on the veteran players. So, you know, Brendan Labatt. Whose name you've heard of. And we talked about earlier, like, you know, he's really humble. And he says, you know, I just haven't considered this year as a, as an option because I think some guys are gonna take that role. I don't think you're right, Brendan. I think you're too good. And I think that at some point. These other guys, aren't going to be able to get the job done and somebody else is going to get hurt. There's going to be a real need. And if they can get you in with a few tests in seven days and it's September, October. Yeah. Those players may come back. Who are you? I think you and I Naylor we're doing some team breakdowns, right? You're looking at. Who who is looking good and, and, you know, and obviously, you know, training camps and things are still going to happen now, but who do you have your eye on for teams to watch those here? Well, I think the two teams that were in the gray cup last time around have kept the most continuity and tact. Right. So I really liked what. Winnipeg and Hamilton have both done. You know, I think Hamilton was the best team in the league in 2019, even though they didn't win the grey cup. So I like the roster on both sides of the ball. Depth at quarterback. They. You know, they're, they're talented across the board, right? And honestly, I like Toronto. You know, like the big thing there is, you've got, you know, a quarterback that, that hasn't had a lot of mileage as a starter and Nick Arbuckle and. You know, my colleague Bethel Thompson is going to get to compete as well. But quarterback's a question mark. There. But really when you look at the rest of that roster, like that roster is dynamite. I mean, they're loaded at receiver, they're loaded at defensive line. Like they've got great players across the board there. They really turned it over from 2019. So I think they're going to be pretty good. You know, Saskatchewan, I think they've done a pretty good job of, of tweaking and doing what they needed to do with their roster and the Calgary. Even though you look at the roster on paper, You know, I'm not as impressed as I've been in the past, but by the end of the year, you look at Calgary and they're always right there when the dust settles. So, you know, and so I think those are the teams that jump out at me. I think Edmonton's done some good things as well, but. The two teams that were in the gray cup the last time. And I think Toronto, in terms of rosters on paper right now, I think those are my three teams. I look at closely. It thoughts. It's a couple of weeks from when they release the schedule, we had Jamal and on he kind of, we did a breakdown. Have a great point. You know where there's so many masters to serve. Right. You know, COVID protocols, obviously the TV deals, right. You know what stadiums are available and what days and all this kinda stuff. What are your general take of the schedule? And obviously as someone that works for TSN as well. Yeah. I mean, there's some weirdness to it, right? You've got Winnipeg, you know, I don't want to, don't get to play at all. And then you've got, you know, you've got, I think it's Hamilton and Toronto that are playing. You know, two games with three days off in the middle of like, right, right around labor day. And then you've got. Ottawa that has. You know, I think three games in 11 days, there are some quirks to the schedule, but I think we knew that at the front end, coming in that, that eventually we're going to have to be this year. There's always quirks for the 19 schedule. Right. It's never going to be clean. Everybody's going to have something to complain about. But, you know, I look at Ottawa, they probably have it, the toughest, but there's a few other ones there that are. That are difficult, but like you say, Just so many masters, but the biggest one is just. Trying to squeeze it all into that 14 game 14 week window, right. Any, any cause of concern or panic, anything, you know, obviously numbers and everything are looking good, heading into anything else that we need to be concerned about before August 5th. I don't think so. I, you know, I, I fully expect August 5th to get going. Right. I mean, the big concerns are, what if there's an outbreak? Now the threshold for all breaks, a little different, right. Then. When COVID first began and sports first began. Right. I mean one or two cases in a hockey team could completely shut you down. Now it'll probably take a little more. To shut you down in, in its entirety, just because of vaccinations. And things like that. So I, you know, I hope we don't see an outbreak. You know, you'll wonder with this league. Because the guys just, just don't get paid as much. Right. So, you know, you might be less worried about breaking the rules if you're a young American player, as opposed to, if you're a multimillionaire playing in the NFL, right. I mean, those guys have a little more incentive to, to stay straight. Right. So, you know, you wonder about that a little bit, but you know, I think the protocols also be in a different place and I, and I I'd be surprised if we ended up seeing. Complete shutdowns as a result of where I expect protocols to be. So unless the Delta variant takes over and, and runs over every vaccine, you know, I think we're going to be in good shape. Yeah. It's just tough. I mean, you know, the protocols, you're just asking a lot of the players and some of these. Traveled up in, and it is way different when you're on a multimillion dollar schedule and, you know, being able to chill on a hotel or something, then. It's it's it's hard. You know, I wish that I hope that they can kind of get that worked pretty soon here. So. Yeah, I would agree. You know, and, and I think that's probably another reason why that veteran piece has got to matter so much to this, these teams, right. Guys that care about the league that are invested in the league that understand the league. I think it. It'll matter more than ever before, just to make sure that everyone's. Doing their part to get football going up here. Awesome. Well, I I'm sure you've had a crazy busy day. I appreciate you taking the time. I don't want to hold up too much of it, but I did just want to get you on, you know, again, as someone, you know, heading into the season. There are just a few questions that seem like, you know, pretty, pretty confident, full steam ahead. Yeah, I think so. I mean, look, they've done a lot of work, right. And people get frustrated at the CFL because. You know, why aren't we there yet? Right. And you get players and you get media that just wanted that guarantee when they just couldn't offer it based on the fan. So it took some time to get to this point. I know that people in charge of their medical committee they're as good as it gets worldwide. So. They're in as good a position as they can be. Awesome. Well, we are. I think borders, everything. Never were planning a BC trip, I believe in the middle of it. And then, and then we will be, you know, God-willing, we will be at the grey cup in December, so we will. He will join you there. And hopefully, you know, we can continue these talks, even though the XFL may be off the table, we can still. Yeah, I was going to post something about, well, this is the last week we're covering CFL, but now we're, you know, we're, we're pot committed now. We're all in. And we are excited here for, for training camps this weekend. Well, I look forward to hearing from you and hopefully sending you a great cup. Thanks for having me. Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you, sir. Well today we have Sammy Hagan on I'm very excited for the mantra. Al lads. I am famously an Alex fan, but after many of the comments that you've made this week regarding the XFL things and with, we have a lot of friends of the show on the alphabet. So maybe we'll be switching. Brand allegiance is here, Sammy. Thank you so much for coming on. First off, how are you doing? I know you're on the road. Yeah, I'm good, man. I'm actually home now, so that's good. I started my busy season coming up here in the next month and a half or so. So I'm, I'm enjoying the, the little bit of free time. The little bit of last of the free time we finally can start working in. And getting out there. So. I'm excited to get moving and get out on the road and see all my colleagues and do all that kind of stuff. So it's exciting. So, I mean, what's the last couple months been been like for you? I mean, you know, as you're obviously a scout. Try to all this, you. We don't really know what's going on. I mean, what's it been like for you? Yeah, it's been a lot. It's been different, you know, it's I went from being on the road, you know, when I was with Saskatchewan and BC. You know, I was on the road. August. I didn't. You know, I was going every weekend until. Pretty much end of January. I'm always traveling to schools and visiting and games and. All star games and we sin. You know, it's, it's, it's been different sitting home and having to. You know, watch film and I I'm an evaluator. I like to be in person. I'm not a big film guy. I like to see everything. In person, I like to, you know, body type things and, you know, I read pretty descriptive reports. So I like to be out there and seeing kids and it's been tougher for a guy like me per se. It has to sit home and now watch film and decide whether or not a guy's good or not. Or has the ability to play in early. So it's been a challenge, but you know, It's slowly gotten back to. To normalcy. As much as we can, I guess. At this point, you might live in Florida. And I tell everybody. I don't think COVID came here, man. We've been fooled. Since this thing started. So, you know, a lot of people have a lot, a lot more restrictions than we do. And I just been kind of flurry and just sit here and just say, you know, I'm Toby didn't come to Florida, man. We just sleep. We just keep moving. So it's, you know, it's challenging, but we were getting back to normal. So that's good. When you're looking for players for CFL teams, are there. Specific things because of the league there, because of the way the rules run because of the size of the fields and things that you're looking at compared to. You know, maybe they, it would be for another league. Yeah. You know, so, you know, We, as you know, we've got a ratio, so there's some positions that we don't use. You. Cause I'm in the U S I'm going to state. So. Some positions are designated already for Canadian spots. So there's a lot of. Not a lot of positions. I don't even evaluate, I don't even look at them. There are some that I do. That we don't carry because sometimes I'll look you like. For instance, tight ends. We don't use Titans usually as, as Americans. I'll look at tight end to see if I can flip one to defensive. And so I watch their movements. I try to see athletic ability, you know, I don't spend a lot of time on it. If it doesn't flash at. For me, I don't spend a lot of time on it, to be honest with you on while I'm at a game or, or walking around pre grade, pregame evaluating and body body tracking. So, yeah, so. There's a lot of positions. I don't even look at it. I. I don't look at full backs. I don't look at interior alignment unless. It flashes that I think they can move outside. So it's, it's different, you know? It's crazy. Cause I. You know, I'm with I'm with all NFL Scouts that are in the box with me or on the field with me. And they're always telling me, Hey, you gotta look at this guy. And I'm like, I actually, yeah, it sounds good. I just see he won't fit in what we do. So. You know, It's different, you know? I tell people we evaluated different. You know, I'm not looking at the first round big I'm looking at the guy then. That's you know, Fringe free agent guy. A late round pick, you know, I don't spend a lot of time on, you know, You know, And those kinds of players and Josh fields. And, you know, I just don't. You know, so I. You know, I live on the, you know, Like I always saw people around my biggest claim to fame was two or Toby and Tega and Kyron more, you know? Kyron was one. You know, I didn't even go there looking for Kira and to be honest with you, but he just, he had a great game in front of me and. The rest is what it is. You know, we gave him an opportunity and he's doing what he's doing in the league now. So. Yeah, I CFL news that helps me kinda, you know, who are some people we should talk to. They had wanted to make sure that you got the Kira Maura story out there. There was a good, interesting tidbit about that. Yeah. So I was at the UCF, so they weren't even supposed to play Austin P I something happened and you see that. I seen a hurricane and come in and they had lost the game. They were looking for a game late. And just happened to be Austin P said, Hey, you know, we'll take that game. And so Austin P came to UCF. During the, a UCF national title season. So Austin. B Haman. And, and coach Jones. I was working for her Saskatchewan at the time. Cause Jones. I said, Hey, you know, I'm going to go see Austin P he's a, Hey man. I'm friends with coach Healey. Who was the head coach there now who's now at, I believe. Charlotte, I believe now. He said, even go out on the field when you're due on there and tell them, you know, that you worked for me and Tom. You know, he, him and I know each other. So I'm pregame and I see coach Healey. I go up to him, introduce myself, tell him who my boss is. And he's like, he's running me down through these players. And then he goes, Hey, man, by the way, there's a kid out here. Number four, Kyron more you, I think he was hurt or something. He hadn't done much of that time. And that season and he's like, just watch this kid. He's special. So I walked over to him and I was. As, as a body type and I'm like, ah, another, you know, 5, 8, 5, 9 receivers. You know, in our, you know, we always say as Scouts in the CFL, We can find those anywhere. So I was like, all right. I wrote them down quickly. I didn't even pay, honestly, I didn't pay a lot attention to it, to be honest with you. And that's just the honest truth. Cause he had some other guys. I was thinking that I could look at now is there to looking at Donald, say the UCF kids anyway. So I'm in the move and I have Daniel McMahon is. Sitting next to me, his. Assistant general manager. And I don't know if you know, I'm sure you do, but you know, we have a neg list in our league where you can put kids on the neg list and protect them. You know, I don't have that. I wasn't, I was just saying like my second year in, I don't, I didn't have access to that list or anything. So I had to channel. I had to call somebody. And I, he had to call somebody like he was in a four-person channel to get somebody placed on that list for me. So we get up to the booth and I'm sitting next to Danny who can just text it in from it so we can email it right in. So we're sitting there and I just remember Kyron, just, I just remember his first play. To the kickoff Mack and he almost took it to the house on his first one. And I was like, oh God, is this. And I'm one. Now my binoculars are on this kid. Number four, I'm watching them almost every play. So I kind of take my phone out and I just kind of turn to the side. Cause daddy was to my left and dad is a good friend of mine and I just had to turn it over and I started texting coach. And I said, I said, and then I kept writing 9 1, 1. Putting this kid on now I go, Danny McManus is right next to me. He's looking at the same thing. I'm like. Just do. And I just got a 9 11, 9 11. I must have sent it 15 times before I got a reply. And he's like he needs a ride. I'll do it. And that's how we got them. So we put them on the neg list and then I got his phone number, like a month later. I shot him a text and I said, Hey man, we'd be interested in working out. And can you get. He's living in he's from Bessemer, Alabama. He was living. You know, we had to work on a Montgomery. And I said, all right, coach wants to see it. He went to the, when he went to the workout and he was the best guy there and he's Kyron more. He swerve now. He was tiny in college and they named, they named him sweaty. I'm not mistaken. I ha. I want to say it was neuron Carter named him swerve at a Saskatchewan. And that's how he's known now throughout the league. And he is. He's an awesome kid, man. To be honest with you. Not only is he a great player, which is awesome. But he's a phenomenal kid. I mean, it's just. Detoxy has always got a smile. He's just so excited to be there. I mean, he's just one of those kids you want him to do well, cause he's just so excited to be there. I don't think we'll ever understand his true value and his true worth, just because he's so humble. But man, he's just a great kid. I love to eat. We still talk, you know, he'll call me, he'll text me how you, how you doing. Always messaging me, you know? If you see something on social media, just a green kid, man. He's just a really great kid. So I was happy that it worked out for him. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. It was, Hey, I got to make sure we get that on there. 9 1, 1. And you mentioned a little bit about, you know, you like to be in person. Not a big tape. A person, how challenging was it? Especially with the layoff, with all the crazy stuff that happened, you know, with the drafts and the players and all the different craziness leading into this year, compared to other years with scouting for the CFL. Yeah. I mean, I had, you know, believe it or not, I had to call coach Jones and cause I didn't, to be honest with you, I don't do a lot of film evaluation. I'm an in person, guy. I go to, I go to schools. I do visits. And then, you know, when we were at Coachella, we were doing so many workouts for free agents that we would always see guys. And, you know, Chris was actually a big he's kind of Alina was my mentor as far as looking into evaluating. And if you ask anybody to leave. One of the best. So I had a really good coach. So, you know, he would. You know, between him and Mike Davis. Being, you know, together. And Mike and I have been friends for a long time as well. You know, and I, you know, when I first came into that thing, I all I knew was going and seeing kids. So I didn't do a lot. I don't like to do a lot of films. I'm a footballer. I'm like I played football. I've been in the grind. I understand what it's like. And you know, I just feel like I got to see, like I have to have my eyes and Chris was the same way. He's like, I got to see him. And there was times where I would call him and say, Hey, we need this. We need, this is a guy. He's like, dude, we got to see him first. And he would not. He wouldn't move on a kid unless he saw him in versa. So I kinda died adopted that kind of mentality where I'm like, I got to see him. I got to see him in person because. I can't tell you how many emails we get or texts. We get all the time. From either players or agents, they all, they're all 62, they're all two 20 and they all run for four. So it's important for us, you know, to say, Hey, we got to start seeing these guys in time and I'm in measuring ourselves. So, you know, after my first year, It's a scotch one. You know, those guys never went to the pro days. So, you know, after the first year I told them they didn't pay me to go either. I just said, you know, I said, Christie, I'm just going to go, man. Cause I feel like it's a good opportunity for one, for me to go and be around. Tell guys and listen. He said it was my first year in scouting. I said, but also I can get to see these kids in person. Well, Hi, let me tell you. I went to my first year. I did, I think four pro days in the state of Florida just went to four. And I got so much information. We ended up having workouts. I ended up getting my first workout for Chris. In the fridge at work, I had probably 50 to a hundred kids here. And it was all from the information I got from those pro days. After that year. I told Chris started paying me. And the next year I did 24 pro days and 20 and almost 30 days. So I basically, I drove to Atlanta. I had a hub in Atlanta. I stayed in my family's place in Atlanta. I drove to Nashville and I would just work my way back to Florida. And I hit 24 schools in 30 days. And just evaluating, measuring. So we have all our own numbers. I was putting everything into the computer. We had everything we needed contacted her when they were so powerful. So that's another thing that I used to do. And I, and I just told Christmas, I don't, I don't know. I'm not a good evaluator of film. I can't say, honestly, I don't know my attention span or something. Just doesn't allow me to sit here. And do this. That's why I was never a good coach. I never claimed to be. Coach. I just, I'm a S I'm a visual guy. I mean, I like to see them catch it on tangible, you know, and that's just how I do it. No, I love it. Fascinating. And the work and everything that goes into that. Right. To really, you know, their first. First year and they do all that. I mean, it, it, it shows and obviously, you know, the players that you attract and find. Could be diamonds in the rough for people that may be. Would get the lookout otherwise, you know what I mean? Yeah. And Toby. Toby and T is a great example of that. It's talking about a guy who was a receiver, his whole life. A receiver. Never even sniffed that even as a side of the ball, we're at a workout. There's about nine guys there. And there was, there was a, I think four offensive lineman, one of which after that workout got assigned by the agreement Packers. And we had no defensive lineman. So after Toby's workout, he didn't run very well. For some reason. He didn't. You know, you had an okay workout. We weren't going to sign him as a receiver. So coach Jones says, Hey, I need somebody to rush the passer and tell him, he's like, Hey, I'll do it. Puts his hand in the ground. Goes up against the guy. He just went and started games right after that for the green bay packer in Dustin. And literally the first rep, he just dusted them. Coach. And I were standing behind the women's line. We both looked at each other and the coach goes. Man. You get this, that kind of pass rush, man. And I said, dude, that's unbelievable. He's like he's playing out of the reading. Because I do a great truth Jones. He is man, he's playing that position. So he's like after the work. Tell tell him, he goes, Hey, put on 30 pounds, come back and see me in a month. And I worked out as a defensive in and boom. Toby. We're giving your. The reason why, the reasons I'm excited to talk to you about the alphabet you. You know, it's, it's weird for us. You know, getting into this podcast, you know, covering these leagues. Right. We cover the spring league. We cover. Control football, all these different things. And then when some of the players that had been on the show, friends of the show, you'll go on. I know that we have Cole Boozer, you know, formerly the XFL. Yeah. He played in the spring league this year, I've been on the show. Matt mangle spring league as well. I know they're both, obviously in quarantine right now, going into training camps. You said you're familiar with both of those players, a little bit thoughts on either one of them. Cause it is. When they announced the signings, you know, did they, they were heading out there, you know, so excited. For us just as you know, obviously it's like our little babies, you know, we're sending it off. Listen, I'll tell you, you know, I know, I know who the guys are and I know mango was a, he coaches the staff here. Who really liked him. And he was the guy that they really wanted and not just like five minutes ago, I think they've had their eye on him for a while. So I know that they were super excited to get him. I tried my hardest. I have some other kickers. But the thing that separates him as he does both. And so in our league, You have to kick and have to pump. And because they're not, we. We don't keep one in the other, usually, unless they're Canadian. But if you're an American kicker and you can do both things, kick and punch and kick off. I mean, you can write your own ticket early, but. You know, he's good at it. And he was, he was, he was a name that they were really excited about bringing them in and see what he can do. So I'm not, I'm excited to see how he fares. I know you had a good spring league. So I know the guy, I know the staff is pretty excited that he's there. And they can't wait to see him compete. And then boobs are often as alignment, I think, in, from temple. Right? So. My brother actually coached the kid in high school that I went to Tim, went and played with him. So I've been, I've been watching tumble football for a long time now. I mean probably the last. I would say 10 years, I've been a big temple secretly and big temple, you know, Al. You know, follower. And I always believe we're not all. Every time, trouble comes down here to play with either UCF or USF. That's a game. I always throw on the schedule just because I see really a temple guy. So I, you know, I've seen him play as well, and he's another one, you know, he's athletic and big, and those guys. He fits exactly what we're doing and. You know, not for nothing with all the retirements happening and we don't know how it's going to go to, you know, day to day we're getting us arise. So, you know, guys like that, who. Just come in and think that they're just a camp guy and I think they have an opportunity now they really have a legit chance because, you know, guys, are you. They're just choosing another path right now. So, you know, I think he's going to do well, to be honest with you, I wouldn't be surprised if he, if he's not on that roster, but you know, All we can do is give them the opportunity. It's up to them. Once the, once they get there, it's all about them. Absolutely. We, you know, we cover obviously spring league, a lot of these things, you know, And the narrative has always, you know, there's only so many spots in the NFL CFL. You know, these other leagues, giving players the opportunity, right. You know, getting some more tape, talk about the value, if any, you know, of having the spring league and things, to be able to, you know, get that tape and watch those reps that maybe the players wouldn't get otherwise. Yeah, I think anytime you have an opportunity to get the camera on you. I think it's a great. It can be in the spring league can be in there. Or, you know, IFL, you know, whatever, you know, just for me, it's all about, you know, being able to have people see you play. You know, whether it's on film or in person. So anytime you can take an opportunity to do that. How is. I think it's great because we always tell people you only need one person to like you. There's 32 NFL teams. Only one guy to like you there's nine of us. You only need one LA. So, you know, any chance you can get it. You know, and sometimes a lot of kids don't want it. Cause I think in the spring league you gotta pay. A lot of kids, just, you know, agents don't, they shy away from him because, you know, the agent is people. I always tell people, agencies is a business. So agents are in the business of making money. They're not into losing and sometimes they don't want to bait. And a lot of kids don't have that opportunity. That's why in our league though. Free agent camps are huge. And I think that's a, that's a good thing that we provide for those kids is another opportunity to get in front of a lot of people. But the spring league for sure has been great, man. I think they found a ton of people and they're signing just the NFL. You know, And don't get me wrong in thirds. Far and few between, there's not a lot of kids under signing, but a lot of kids are getting their opportunities and it's because they've taken the chance and then bet on themselves. That was one thing that Chris always taught me. You. You know, these kids. Bet on themselves, man. They want to come work out for me and they can do it. They'll have an opportunity just. Just like everybody else. So. You know, I hope they, I hope they keep it up. You know, and you know, the CFL. You know, we're one in our a hundred and eight oh one oh eight this year. We're going to be around for a while, man. So, you know, a lot of people. You know, it's so funny. A lot of people think that, oh, I can just go to the CFO, but no, and you can't just go to the CFO. Listen, I'm in around coach Jones or he's he's we've. We were, I was with him when we worked out for our low ones. On the field. We worked out Tio to workout. For him to play for us and he didn't even see it in snippet. I mean, these. He's still a first round draft picks and I was thank you before in the NFL. So. You know, we're competitive and you know, we, we, we just like the NFL. We look for the best. So if you're the best at what you do, we're going to give you an opportunity. Yeah. I was, I was looking here. I was talking to Derek, Dennis online earlier kind of going back and forth, talking about. Yeah. Some of the problems that I obviously want to get into the XFL stuff here at the end, but yeah, this perception that maybe the CFL has allowed for awhile, that their players maybe aren't as good. Right. And they haven't marketed them as such, even though they are. Why, why do you think that that is? And why do you think it hasn't been taken care of it and kind of been perpetuated. Yeah. Honestly, I don't know. To be honest without I'll probably be an angel question I've never had really has an answer to it. Where where's competitive. As an ex I mean, S**t s**t. We just, we just had Alex Singleton go and just dominate in the NFL, Samuel guava. A year ago is another one. I mean, we could go down unless you're a, Freeman's a Canadian guy. Delvin bro. I mean, we. Like I said, we can go Deon Lacey. If I sat here, I can just rattle off names. And the last time years of guys that would come to our league and then gone to the NFL and send me Robin's a great opera. Great. Yeah, he didn't ever went to the NFL. He came right to Canada and then boom, two years or three years in. And. Right to the Miami dolphins. So. You know, I don't know. I, I always tell people, Canada for me was a place that you can either rehab your image, rehab your injury and get our gift film. But I also say it's a great place to. To come up there and you can have a phenomenal career and make, make good money and be successful. And set yourself up, down the line and, you know, It's good football. I mean, You see it? I mean, we, we put it out. We were probably. Oh s**t, Nate. Holly, I'm not done all the names are popping in my head now. Like we, we continually. 10 15, 16, 20 Guys. In the NFL every year. So, you know, Or at least are given opportunities. So I don't know why they think that. I mean, we have great dare Dennis's is phenomenal. He's another tumble guy from that mistaken. You know, he, we just got good players, man. It's as competitive as, as the next, as the next league, as far as I'm concerned. I'm going to close my window here. My neighbor decided to start a construction site. What's that. Sorry. I wasn't sure if that would pick up on the mic, but we'll close that. I actually thought it was the music in the background. It's like the second I started asking him that question. Just kind of playing me off. You can hear it. Yeah. So, you know, obviously, and I did at least want to get your, your thoughts on this today. You. News of the week, right? The XFL CFL merger. That's not a merger. Thoughts on that reactions before we let you go. Yeah. You know, I gotta be careful here. So yeah, I, I. Man. I think the CFL. We, we have enough to worry about right now in our own league. So, you know, we've had a tough time getting on the field. So. You know, I'm actually kind of glad the distractions gone to me for me. It's time that we focused on our own league at this point. You know, we're trying to, you. This, this kind of came about and. You know, Yeah. I know it was that easy. Yeah. Like I said, I'm glad that I'm glad the distraction is gone. I'm glad we can focus on the CFL and get it to get our league going. Get our fans. You know, excited about football again, and they're going to be so excited to be honest. And then the league is, it's a great league man. You know, our fan base is so strong and you. You know, they can't wait. I can't wait. I mean, We become fans now, even as a personnel guy, just because we haven't really, haven't been on the field and almost. We're going to go on a year and a half now. So, you know, I'm, I'm glad, like I said, I eat. It would've been nice to have, you know, more Dino. Would that created more jobs? It would've done a lot of the stuff that way, but you know, our focus in the CFL should be on the CFL at this point, trying to get ourselves on the field and playing ball. And I think that's what we're doing right now. And. Where are we going to target for August 5th? And that's what we're doing. Yeah, I I've been obviously reading a lot of opinions and stuff from a lot of journalists last, you know, what day and a half now. And it does feel like for, for every set. And I know that a lot of our listeners are XFL. Fans are frustrated too, right. That maybe time could have been spent. You know, I mean, I think it raised the interest in, in everything. I mean, it certainly gave us a lot to talk about for them. Four months. So, you know, This is going to be the third time. If I was trying to fire up here. So I mean, how much more. You know, how much more do they can they try to do, I mean, You know, it'd be great if we had a [unknown]. And I don't seem to CFL. A lot of people say CFO's a developmental league. It's not a developmentally at all. Bonafide league has been here longer than the NFL. It's not going anywhere. So, but. The spring league, whatever the, you know, I think of. Football can find a way to have a AAA or farm system. Players that you can just go and find guys that are. There's so many players walking on the street right now that. You can't get an opportunity for whatever reason, you know, they can figure out a way how to do that. You know, and, and. Make a partnership with the CFL in the NFL to go and find, get players out of there. So these guys are constantly playing. You know, I think that would be great, you know, but. You know, like I said, third time, you're trying to fire up. I don't know. What else can you do in this xFi? I don't know. Oh, and I mean, believe me, cause I, you know, I don't have a horse in the race, Riley. At this point. But, you know, even like yesterday they updated like the Twitter handle and now it's, you know, XFL 20, 23. Right. Cause it was. And it's like, okay, well, do they have, you know, 20, 24 going to the toilet? I'm like we got to, I mean, you know, cause I get it too. I might, this is. Getting a little scary. You know, And listen to a lot of people that were interested. I mean, I thought when it originally came out, I thought it wasn't going to be a good. Big hit. So, you know, for whatever reason, this thing can stay, you know, on the track for whatever reason. And hopefully they can get it together. You know, everybody loves football. So. You can have football on the field and, you know, quality players. I, you know, You know, it's great. You know, thinking back to back when rocket Ismail was coming out and he came to the gate, he came to the CFL. Rather than go to the NFL. I mean, they did so much for the Canadian football game. And then think about all the players that came to Canada after that. And I mean, yeah. Doug Flutie, you know, David McManus, Warren moon, you know, Ricky Williams game. I mean, all these, all these big names came up to the Jeff Garcia. Another big one came up there. And, you know, If they can find a way to get that done. People will follow. So we'll see what happens. I wish them luck. You know, I, like I said, I love to see football on the field, so we'll see what happens there. Any thoughts on the USFL realized that it was just an elf. Yeah. I mean when they get on the field, that'd be great. I don't know too much about the USFL other than I used to have their base. I have there. Their set of cards back in the day with us. Herschel Walker and those guys, and I actually had the whole set, the original USFL set of cards. And I always see him and my brother owns it. And then I always say, it's mine. So we have that said, that's the only thing I know. So I used to try to sneak that Herschel Walker card out of there all the time. And he used to come after we went after that, but that's. That's all I got for that. I'm so glad we could do this. Like I said, you know, obviously they're. There's players that we've tracked and kind of a bunch of different leagues, but. So I'm glad, especially with the alphabet. Can we get you on. I'm going to have my eyes peel that all the kinds of social media here through training camps and kind of make sure. What's going on. Anything else? Let you go, man. We're excited, man, with, you know, we ended 2019, very strong and you know, we're excited for 2020. We got a lot of them. Nucleus back. We picked up a lot of your guys and free agency. So we're, we're, we're ready to go, man. The Al's are going to be pretty good this year and we can't wait to show everybody what we're doing and, and hopefully we can bring them. Cut to Montreal and, and that's what our, that's our focus. And I'm excited to see, you know, our guys going after it. Hopefully Vernon and. Jari can take us to the next level, which I believe we can. And, you know, like I said, we finished strong in 19 and we're going to continue to build on that. So. It's not, it's not Toronto's east. Like everybody thinks. I just want that to be said. That's good. That's around her hands in there. Those are coming back to promise. That's good. Well, thank you so much again. We're we're looking forward to the season and I think it's going to be a lot of fun. And I'm glad that we can get you on here. Kind of. An LLC. And I'm able to have to call you back here at depending on how the outlets are doing this year. I hope I don't look stupid at the end of this. Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it.

Episode 47 - The CFL, XFL, ELF, USFL, TSL, MLFB News Buffet!

Happy birthday Reid. Thank you. Thank you. This. We had a little, little busy night, a little busy morning with you. I hope everything is okay as well. I appreciate your kind words. Yeah. It's it's been quite a, quite an interesting 24 hours. Welcome back from Vegas as well. I don't know if anybody, if you guys follow me on Twitter, you'll know that I was very close to a, a. Planned detonation that shouldn't have been a detonation the size it was, but my ears are still, I feel like I'm still taking it easy with the ears. So I'm gonna take it easy on this week's podcast. Reed's basically doing all of the interviews. I'm just coming in to. Give my 2 cents here, but yeah. Anyway, we're all good. I never, never there to be a doubt on any, any cloud chasing any, there's been a lot of comments. Do you even care about the CFL? Are you just trying to grow your, your podcasts? Paul, literally couldn't hear 12 hours ago. My tooth is still about to fall out of my mouth and we are still recording this. Episode on my birthday, so we're good. We don't need any, but I just, I would never want there to be any doubt about, you know, the, the true. A passion and love behind that behind this podcast. That's true. That's very true. So we're not doing this just to like, you know, take over things like we're not taking over your candidate. They did, you know, you were born on Canada day. Did you know that? I did tweet that out. I said, happy Canada day. This is also we're recording. Not July 1st. This is also my birthday. That will be a one other thing that XFL fans can co-op from the CFL is Canada day. Now that is that a national mark has day. So. Yeah. We're taking it all over. It's kind of. Welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us. It's kind of a discombobulated week, but we're getting we're pushing through nonetheless. Yeah, this is that we're going to, I'm going to put together a funny title, but this is going to be the buffet episode. I just came back from Vegas. You. Buffets are slowly opening. We're going to have XFL stuff, obviously CFL stuff. Obviously we're going to have some USFL notes. We have some major league football notes. We have Josh Davis coming on to talk about elf coverage. So like all the, all of the things this week. So there's going to be a lot of different things on the smorgasbord of food. We have 10 Baynes coming on from, he is with Postmedia. We talk a lot about the red blacks, getting that for the red, black season, with the CFL I get to, you know, we get his thoughts on sports, betting, the XFL staff, everything. We have well with a Argos fan cast coming on, we're going to talk with the Argos. I was trying to get some more like, you know, other teams, specific podcasts. And then, like I said, Josh Davis coming on to do Al. So there should be a lot of different spring league, alternate football things for you to feast on in this buffet. I like how he did that. I get it. I totally understand where I'm picking up what you're putting down. We're going to what you're putting down. The first note here that you have in here are the episodes too long. We had our first comment ever in the history of the world. Cause I keep you apprised to all this though. We had our first comment in the world that said the episodes are too long. The gentlemen. Co co one gentlemen, in the history of our world commented on the YouTube because. Your episodes are too long. And I, he goes. The episodes I normally listen to are 45 minutes. Well, we've never even done the 45 minute episode. No, we haven't. You've found a way to take, you know, Nothing into an hour long episode. I think the shortest episode we had was like 52 minutes. Yeah. So, and then, and then immediately people commented and they go. They do it user-friendly they put the time code. So listen to what you want. Listen during the week. So I disregarded that comment entirely, and this is no, I'm kidding. But. Yeah. I just thought it was funny that I know that Paul thing, sometimes it goes a little long, but one comment ever in the history of the world that said they were too long. Well we'll purchase. This also said they're too long. Well, he doesn't comment on the age. If you wanted to comment on the YouTube video that we could talk about anyway, but no lots of stuff today. I appreciate you all sticking with us. Yes. And we are. I have my birthday Zola. It's a little early, but we flew in late last night from Vegas and Kevin, I think someone commented on the YouTube to bring back the camp hops. So there you go. Okay. Why did we have that back? Do you see a couple of YouTube comments that I pulled out for us to talk about? I did. Yes. My Corgan first and foremost. He's basically saying what we've been saying, and he's having trouble understanding how single game betting makes. CFL more viable league. And he understands the sponsorship and everything like that, but like, He's having the same concerns we're having. You know, Reed in his gift game, we'll have the Michael Scott gift going. Thank you. And it's just, it's basically what we've been saying for. You know, Oh, I guess I do like this. He goes, yeah, you're supposed to bet on players fantasy, the CFL doesn't market, their players. So how are we supposed to know like who to wager in bed on? He goes, please forgive my ignorance. I'm just a fan. I'm going to watch. Anyway. I see the rainbow, just not the pot of gold at the end. I know that, you know, again, we all was single game sports. Right. I see the rainbow. I. I don't see the gold there. So. I think that's well, that's where we're all at with this. With a single game betting will not. We're all at everybody. There's some people that think this is, this is the silver bullet. That's going to save the lead again. It's like, I don't see it. To have people care about your products enough. To do the single game betting. The ratings have to be there. The ratings quite aren't, aren't quite there. To make it thing to make you think like, oh, this will definitely work out. I don't know. Robert Schmidt. McGill ski. This is a great name. Yeah. Hopefully, I'm probably butchering that. I'm sorry. Miguel ski Miguel ski. I don't plan on watching the upcoming CFL season, no prison season, too many retirements. The football is going to be sloppy and they expect you to pay money, to subscribe to TSN direct. Which should really be more like Netflix to letting me. Watch what I want to watch. When I want the CFL should have. I've had a bubble season last year. I thought that was a good point. Yeah, no preseason, you know, Going to be really sloppy football. I, I just, I saw a lot of comments this week about that. That was when I cherry picked out to talk about. But yeah, I did think that those first couple weeks are going to be, you know, 16 months off. It's going to be a. It's going to be, you know, we want the spring league and when they have all those players come in and they played a couple of weeks, you know, going in, it's going to be this first couple of weeks with no preseason is going to be a little, I think a little scary. Very true. So well that all being said, we appreciate your YouTube comments, please like, and subscribe to our videos, hit the bell to get notified when we post new ones, of course, Reed is taking those individual interviews out of every episode and post. No solo. Just want to hear. What our experts have to say both. Canadian and American experts have to say. Feel free to. Like, and subscribe to our page. So you get all of those, all of those other videos. Yeah, and this is my birthday. So it doesn't. Free is the freest best gift you can ever give me, is this subscribed today with nothing costs you a penny and they would make me feel just as well. So yes. Please. Make refill swell today. Well, So that, that being said, we're moving on to our news now. And the bombers starting off, they went ahead. Blue bombers. Are hoping for a pact. Stadium. But if you haven't received both vaccine shots, you won't be able to attend. Hm. How it triggered. Do you think the CFL fan base was when this came out? Depends. I mean, How has, how is, how is a Winnipeg doing in terms of their. Second dose numbers. Because that's, that's really, it's, it's a situation where it's like it was, is it fair to. Is it fair to the fans? If they're not getting their second dose in a timely fashion. If it's not fair to their fans, then. Why are you hoping for a packed city? And why are you, why are you selling a packed stadium? If your second dose numbers, aren't adequate to. To house a packed stadium is what I'm asking. So I'm looking at Manitoba. Is that the correct numbers to look at? I believe so. Yes. So. Of eligible Manitoba and 73% have one dose and 42% have two doses. As of this was updated yesterday as of 12:30 PM. That's not bad at all. And I think. And here's something that I think might actually help. These teams. Get people into the stands. I think there's, there's a feeling across, well, I can say here in America, there's a feeling across America where people are realizing the live events that they took for granted. People are going back to movie theaters in droves. They realized that like they took these, these things for granted and maybe just maybe. That might help. Revenues. You know, if you took, if you were like, well, you know, I don't want to go to the CFL game cause I'm not really interested in Canadian football. Well, now you have a chance to go see live football for the first time in, you know, almost two years, you might be more inclined to go and attend a game. So that might help, that might help. I'm trying to look at this glass half full. I will say many of the comments that I've read are people very triggered about this. It's a lot of, and I w I don't want to get too political on here, but. You know, a lot of the CFL fan base is, is more older, right. And a little bit, maybe more conservative. And so the idea is people are very upset that you are forcing them to, and I'm just speaking from where there's, you know, they're very upset that they're being forced to get the vaccines, to go see the football games. Folks private businesses can say, I can lay down any rules. They want to, to make any, you know, any guidelines they want that being said. There's also the question now while the government's also potentially giving them loans to keep them afloat. So there's, there's there's I can see kind of both sides of the coin in this aspect. Where, if you go into a store and they tell you to wear a mask or be vaccinated, That's a private business, but if you're going to a football game and those, those football teams are being subsidized by the government in light of the pandemic. Those are your tax dollars. That's a little bit different. I see both sides of it. I do it's right here. W when all this came out, I tweeted, I said, I'm so glad that every trigger. Emotionally triggering thing now can all be included in the CFL stuff. So now we have vaccines and all this, like I'm so glad that was just what the CFL needed was like now vaccine debates. Now I'm so glad. Awesome stuff. CFL has appointed. Dr. Bob McCormick and Dr. Deren. Naidu as its chief medical offers. There's the league announced on Wednesday. They'll lead a committee comprised of the top health professionals and executives. From a league and its clubs, basically, I'm assuming to help. Determine the protocols and go forward with that. Yeah. [unknown] do you think that, I mean, does this strike you, that this came out like th this happened June 30th? It's not like March. Or February, maybe last year when this pandemic was raging. Down here. Yes. And you had to cancel your season. I don't know. This seems a little weird. I mean, training, cancer's supposed to start at the nine days as we're recording this on the 10th. I just seems a little. I'm glad we're doing it now, but it does seem, but anyway, I mean, obviously they need to get all of this going and it just seems when people ask like, well, what did you want the CFL to be doing here? Things like this. Things like this and hiring the chief medical officers. Anyway, but that, that just came out. I added that that was official CFL, press release. You know, statements from Ambrozy and everything else. So. Awesome. Canadian football league has obtained sign off from the federal government for a seven day quarantine, as opposed to the 14 day quarantine. Prior to the start of training camps, according to our, our, our friend for Han lodge. The CFL has now received the sign and approved natural, natural national interest exemption letter. Only a seven day quarantine will be required. As the league has been expecting a number of has been expecting for a number of weeks and plan to such players from out of town or out of country probably will make their way to training camps on July 1st or second. So, yeah, so they're, they're getting there now. We're going to quarantine. Yeah. I was thinking we should get far Hornbach back on, you know, I had to clip here. We were going to play, but we can talk through it. I mean, he just, he just is so handsome and well-spoken, I was watching them on TV. TSA that we really should get him back on the show. So far. In front of the show, but anyway, Th there was a thing too. He, he did a hit and they were talking about the vaccines and stuff and we were going to play the clip, but we'll basically like they, they can't ask the players when they all come out. They can't ask them if they're vaccinated, they're not right. And once they're in, once they're in the training camp, I believe the medical officers that are involved with the teams are able to ask them, but the players can still choose to withhold. So it's kinda, you know, it's tricky with that. I mean, we're getting a lot of that with like the Cole Beasley's of the world down in the NFL, and it really is becoming this like, I get it, my body, my choice, but also like, It's hard, you know, like I work for me so I can do what I want. But if I was still working for the former new station I was working for, if they said, I don't know anything you got to do either. You got to go. I mean, there's like, I don't know. It gets, it gets tricky with all of that where you want to be employed to make. You get what I'm saying? Yeah. I mean, there's, there's OSHA. Oh s**t. Guidelines in place for scenarios that you just described, like currently at my station, if you are vaccinated, you're allowed to go mask list. If you're not vaccinated, you have to wear a mask. But then again, you can't really ask someone their vaccination status. So I won't mention any names, but I do know that. There are some people that are not vaccinated that are mask lists. And we'll just leave out that it's it's it's. I get the, my body, my choice thing, but I always, I always say that like, My personal freedom stop. When I affect your personal freedoms. And if you are choosing not to get vaccinated. Or choosing not to protect yourself. Then you are potentially upsetting my personal freedoms too. I live, breathe. Statal hospital. Or work. So that's, that's the thing that I air on when, when it's talks, when you talk about my body, my choice. Yeah. But your choice. Can affect people. And in that situation, I'm sorry, but it's not your choice. I was going to say, what is your station's policies on that? Potentially. Dislodging your eardrums from your skull. That's been, that's been quite the fun. Last 12 hours. Talking with everybody about that. Yes anyway. Anyway, so we're, we're getting through the, oh, and as I was going to say to you, Yeah, because when I was in Vegas, like open season, I mean, it was open the world open. You don't. No, nothing. When I was there, the. When I was there. What? A month ago? Yeah. Three or four months ago. That was the first day. Wide open. No masks. If you're vaccinated, but again, Even the unvaccinated, people are not wearing masks. Yep. Come on. Yeah, go ahead and go with the player's association sharing comprehensive. COVID 19 return to play requirements with the players. Some of the key items they've discussed in their team sessions, they're working with a CFL and government. To Lucian loosen restrictions to align with the various amendments that the provinces are making. Like making it hyper-local they expect that to happen after training camp. Yeah. So, so these are, these are supposedly going to be in effect through the second week of the regular season. Tim was talking today. We think it's going to be at least six weeks. He does. This is where, and then we have some player quotes coming up about all of these regulations. And this is the big debate right now is. Obviously in the NFL, they are treating vaccinated players very differently from non-vaccinated players. Right. The protocols came out. All right. So I bolded, this is why the Google doc looks alarm, but I just bolded some of these, like the after, where they're mass all the time, except within the home. You have to have your groceries delivered. Can't go out. If you go out to a restaurant. It can only be with people you're living with. Take out preferred for all your meals groceries. You can't go in to any social establishment does not have seating where physical distancing can be maintained. And then you see some of these ones, the big ones, Paul, are these away team travels. Like when you're traveling with your team, you see some of these. Mm saying that you leaving the hotel for any other reason, other than reasons directed by the club medical staff is prevalent. You go for walks outside of the hotel, but you're not permitted to visit any establishments of any kind. Face covering physical distancing required club provided transportation at all times. No visitors are permitted anywhere in the hotel. Including, but not limited to personal rooms, lobbies to common areas. Players and staff. Permitted to visit each other's rooms and meetings may only be held virtually on the road. Or rooms that maintain physical distance at all times, meals will be provided by the direction of club staff. And if you order meals from, I guess, skip the dishes is like Postmates up there. You'll be instructed on a protocol for picking up your order in the hotel lobby and eating at hotel restaurants completely prohibited. Otherwise, unless it's approved. By your football team and the CFL. My problem with all of this. My problem with all of this is that you're not taking a new account. Vaccinated people. Exactly. They they're all currently. They're all. And that is the big debate is everyone's going to be under this. It is funny. I know, skip the dishes because I watch. Big brother Canada. And they're obviously big. Skip the ditch. This is a big, big brother, Canada. Sponsor, but that, that this is where, and then we have some quotes. With us. Like, this is where the debate is coming in is this is a very, very restrictive to be living from July 2nd through potentially December 15th. That is a considerably long time to be living in this. Very very much. So Vernon Davis from the Alawites. He tweeted out that. CFL needs the same rules as the NFL, as far as vaccinated or not vaccinated players. I completely agree. You follow the rules. You should be allowed a little bit more freedom than the people that aren't following the rules. Sorry. Yeah. I think one of these players, I think it was Vernon Davis. He was tweeting all this stuff out and I was like, oh, he follows us. So maybe, yeah. Maybe we'll, you know, if he's, if he's in quarantine, maybe Vernon's a secret. Mark S listener Vernon. If you're listening that we love to get John here in the next week while you're in your quarantine. Definitely like the NFL's. They're they're. Protocols or, you know, if, if you're not fully vaccinated, you're not gonna be able to go to nightclubs. Borrows house parties. And then, you know, if you do this, you'll be find a game check up to $50,000 for first offense. More after for violating these protocols. And if you're fully vaccinated. You won't be labeled a high-risk close contact and subject to isolation and all that stuff in the NFL. And, you know, the, the CFL players definitely want something similar to this, to where they're the vaccinated players are treated differently. As supposedly unvaccinated players. And of course there's a lot of Americans coming over to Canada. And our numbers are much better in terms of the second dose. So of course there should be a little bit more leeway given to those that are following the rules. Yeah, Brandon bang through a couple of tweaks. He goes, ah, I'm just trying to figure out what was the point of us getting the shot. If he's still going to be prison there for months, and then he deleted this tweet. Starting to think about this now, do I really want to put myself in this situation for Wilton nothing? Dude, the Internet's written in pen, bro. You didn't delete anything. He's a, he's a mop. I mean, he was like the most outstanding player, whatever they, you know, they don't have like the MVP up there. They have the mop, but I mean, that's like that. Yeah, that's a big name to be coming out. Ambrozy his re most recent that I saw, we had the CFL encourage everyone to get vaccinated when it's their turn that, but we know that we must not rely on vaccination alone to keep people safe. That's why rapid testing has been supported. And obviously that's why they're putting everyone just kind of in the same bucket. So, I mean, okay, that's fine. But still people are there. There's people that are following the rules and that should get a. And should get tested. I know you just said that. I know you said Brandon Banks is a big deal for most offensive player, but I'm pretty sure if someone in the YouTube comments is going to say, oh, well, he's not that big of a deal. Someone's going to say that someone is definitely going to say that either on Twitter or on the YouTube comments, they're going to downplay the fact that the most. You know, most outstanding player is not that big of a deal. That's how it works. That's how it works. So we're in McCormick. He's going to be coming on the show. He covers the Roughriders. He's going to be coming on here. In, in the middle of training camp, I can't remember what date we have him coming on. He had this whole article about Brendan Labatt. Where he is taking this time off this season, the, he saw all of the COVID stuff and he's taking this time off. He says, I cherished my family. I cherished my time playing football. However, the ask has never been bigger to play and their reward has never been less. That's probably the biggest influence. And this was, he did the math. He says he's already given up 22% of his salary. I have 150,000 in 2021 due to the lead plane. So he goes in quarantine. I think the salary is about $550 a week and it's 24 7 for seven days. It's 168 hours for $550. So that's $3 and 28 cents an hour. And he's got a big contract. I mean, 150 thousands, a lot bigger than some of those guys are getting. Yeah. Wow. That's really, that's really eyeopening when he, when he break it down to like I'm getting paid $3 and 20 an hour, $3, 28 cents an hour, too. Play football. Because I can't. Enjoy my time off. I can't, you know, I mean, I guess I could get a video game system and, and, and get a Twitch account and start making revenue that way. But my God, man. Oh, my God. That's like when, when we do like our wedding videos and people are, why does that cost $3,000? You're only there for eight hours. So like, well, actually it's, you know, It's the 20 hours of time that I got to talk to you ahead of time. That's the 40 hours I got to do afterward and then dealing with you. And then, you know, like I'm really only getting paid like a dollar an hour or two. I come here and I shoot for eight hours, but you know, you're not seeing me edit your video for, you know, another idea. Yeah. Anyway, but he said I was under the assumption. If you were vaccinated, you'd be granting some freedoms. Tim Banes. And I talked about this too, where he's, he thinks that this is a surprise to a lot of players and this is all coming that's. I wouldn't be surprised if we see more retirements coming out or people being disgruntled about this. I really think that they need to get this. In order. So. One other thing, the San painters and Alex are trying to get people vaccinated. They're adding, like you can get, we don't have to read all this stuff, but they're adding like Washington did this where you could do like a Washington lottery. Yeah. So you can get like a pair of season tickets to the Edmonton ELLs. Okay. I mean a million dollars would be great. Yeah. Would you. Would you rather have? Yeah. Would you rather have Alberta residents? They get a million dollars or 3 0 3 season tickets. To the Sam Peters with merchandise packages. I'll take the million dollars. I mean. I don't know how much, how much season tickets cost. But after taxes, I don't know what Canadian taxes are. I don't know the exchange rate on that, but. I think that you're still coming out ahead. If you just take the million dollars. You don't. They don't pay as much and they don't pay as much taxes on prize winnings. Like so big brother us is 500,000 big brother Canada. There's only a hundred thousand because they don't either don't get tax the same. So it is actually you get a million dollars is pretty good. Like, if you won a million dollars of Canada would be better than when you, if you want a million dollars here in the states, depending on the state, you win. That's the thing. It's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. I just thought that was a couple other notes here and we'll blast through some of this. We talked to, they were going to do the scrimmages with the bombers and the risers and the ALEKS and the Stampeders. We're all going to do inner squad games. The CFL didn't sign off on any of that stuff. So like, You know, they're, they're trying, and they're trying to do all this. Gray. A champion defensive back forest Hightower, retired. The guys, if I ever play again, I'll play here. But, you know, anyway, he may, back-to-back Greg couple appearances in Ottawa during the 2016 Tala game, he recorded a defensive tackle, two interceptions held to Rebecca secure their first grade cop. You know, again, Th this every week, it seems like there's more and more our retirements coming out. Yup. Writer CEO, Craig Reynolds. Expect single game betting to be the biggest revenue opportunity since television. Okay. If you look at what's happened since television, it's certainly one of, if not the biggest thing from a revenue opportunity. We know football is the most bet on sport in north America. We have that product here in Canada. And as a result of that, we have lots of opportunities to capture fans. Capture casual fans and capture fans in markets where the CFL isn't as strong. Th this, this is, again, this is one of those, like when Debbie, Debbie, he was like, oh, remember how those weird, like social media is that they added, like, It wasn't vine, but they were like, oh, come, come follow us on. Remember, I, it seemed like every week they were trying to. Oh, it's a T word. Town. Yeah. But it's like this whole like, oh, people bet on football in America. Like we also have football, so people are going to vote. Aye. He just, he is these, it's this kind of mentality where again, I, we talked to, we had Nixle ski all of a sudden last week. I just think, unless you're going to like. I don't know, we talked about it with Tim and he was like, well, obviously, you know, they're going to get somebody. I mean, obviously they're all going to get some money, but I worry about this. This, this to me. Is, and don't cancel me for this. This is, this is my, I haven't. I. Crapped on three down nation in a while. This is that the definition of small market? Like this is why the CFL to me, if you want to know, like why this rethink the CFL is, is failing, not quote unquote, you know, having trouble to getting by in 2021. So Hodgen donk. CC two 18 pass. You know, we're changing the world. We're going to have billions of dollars. All this. Another podcast, they go. You could have custom made prop bets. It stadiums in what you could bet on something. And when, for example, Beer for the section of road that you sit in. What is it a minor-league single a ball. Yeah, this is like the Everett Aqua socks. Like, Hey. Let's get something. Yeah, let's get that. Let's get it. I have a bucket of bud lights for that, for there, for the row. Hey, if your section catches a foul ball, your section wins hotdogs. Like this I'm like, guys. It kills me and I tweeted. They're like, You know, and my brain too, he's like the CFL rabbit. Love this love this guy, like this is, this is exactly what I might be. Game changer. Everything's a game changer. NFL makes billions of dollars in, in sports betting. But yeah. I was going to get 12 chorus light for the stands and that's going to be, you know, it's, it's the same difference, you know? Wow. Wow. Wow. The Edmonton Elks. Your team have lost other veteran talent to retirement. According to a friend of the show, Dave Campbell, Canadian receiver, Anthony Parker has called it a career ahead of the season. He signed with Edmonton on the, on 2000, in 2019. But miss the entire 2019 campaign. Of course. 2 27, 2020. Due to COVID. He's a nine year veteran. And he's. I know people probably say, he's not that big of a deal, but I mean, you catch her. 2,300 Yards. In nine seasons. In our 17 games or something. That's not bad. We'll start bad numbers. Yeah, going. I just a couple others here, actually that by that with the other retirement, sorry, I put this show together after a two hour mimosa unlimited, mimosa, everything. And then we got on the plane yesterday. The show is built in, in, in route home. The rough rider signed Paxton Lynch. I think this was a big deal. I think the XFL was really trying to get him back. I don't know. I mean, I put some, if you know more about Paxton Lynch, but it, that was the, the highlight was Mark Perry and them were like, oh, that was, they tried that him be an XFL guy back in, in 2019. Yeah. Paxton, Lynch's kind of like the Broncos drafted them and you know, the Broncos have, have been constantly searching for that. The next Elway. You know, it's really hard to find that guy. That's going to lead your team as a franchise quarterback for years and years and years and years. Green bay is lucky to have done it twice now with, with Farve and Aaron Rogers. And a lot of the Broncos exact stop. Paxton was the guy. He was clearly not the guy. And he's been bouncing around. I will congratulations to him to get getting a shot. In the CFL. It's going to be interesting to see how he adjusts to the game, because you know, the NFL is the NFL and college football is much different in terms of formations and movement for the snap and stuff like that. So it's gonna be interesting to see how Paxton. Paxton does up there. Can you believe it's July 1st and we still don't know if Aaron Rogers. Is going to play for the backers. And then September, pretty sure he's not, but we'll see. Do you know anything. Matt Lyons wrote about this for news hub. Obviously Josh Davis has coming up and new sub to do alpha and they were going to do this NFL CFL, officiating, the exchange with obviously with, with COVID and all of that. They're not going to do it, but it was interesting. Cause they're trying to get like CFL rafts, more, more experiences because of like there's a lot less games and opportunities. So they're trying to bounce around, back and forth. Anyway, they're, they're not going to know if they're going to continue, but I just thought that was interesting that, you know, Sharon referees, I don't know. Interesting enough that I'm not, I'm hoping that, you know, the sharing referees is, is training only. We don't have the situation where we had the replacement. Reveries that one year. That was a nightmare. So. Coming up tip bay. Bacon's going to join, read here, solo to talk about the red blacks and other CFL stuff. That's after this. Welcome back. Thanks to Tim Bains for dropping in chat with Reed. Reading is broken to them. He's he's he's he's he's he's powering through for you. So I want to thank Reed for that. DC. My wonderful, just to write like Eva rival. I was gone by just put it on my new official Marquez. T-shirt this isn't even the black. I noticed that I noticed when I got the notification on my phone, I have like some, some weird app that tells me when anything that you guys order on a. On on our website. You basically. I want to point out this too. I do want to point this out. The Marc has.com/mercy. If you want to get your markets where there was a point in time where Reed used to make fun of will permiss buying all the wheelhouse merge. And I just want to point out that you're. You're you're the one buying all the Marc customers. So we would like more people to buy Marc Casper. I had. Cause we have our wonderful manscape sponsor us, you know? Thank you might manscape I'm sure we did the ad plug before. You know, now you're seeing us again. I had the mad manscape. Sure. And I thought, man, this is so great. But you know, I don't, because it's a, it's a nice, lightweight, I can wear it on the podcast by that I needed to get a Mark House one. And then I had my Edmonton hat on, but I didn't want to offend Tim. You know, with that bread, blacks. You know, so I put on my I've tried to be neutral, so. Very very classy of you to say the least. Moving on now, Mike Mitchell on the drive confirms likely 20, 23 star for the XFL. Different league different vision. Keeping cities, maybe changing venues. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how big a deal this week. This is, I, you know, Mike did a big sit down with the drive marks off this week, marks partying down in for that, with new SOPs. So they just kind of aired this interview with Mike. I did listen to it last night. So a lot of the same stuff. Again, I had a lot of people tell me, okay. If the XFL hasn't announced anything by July 1st, we know it's not happening. Okay. Then it's not happening. I also heard a lot of people like, well, it's not by August 1st, then we'll definitely know it's not 20, 22. Well, either way you do it. Mike obviously likely 20, 23 B. I did think. My, my fear is this. We've had all these XFL fans like clinging to this five week XFL, right? Like, okay, this is the greatest thing in the world, all this stuff. If the XFL comes back and does some weird stuff that maybe they don't like, I am very curious to see with all these, you know, we make fun of the CFL homers. I'm really excited to see what happens with all these XFL homers. If they come back and they're like, We're not in St. Louis anymore, a spoiler or something, you know, I'm, I'm telling you right now, CFL Homer's. If the Xcel homers act Adeline, we're going to check them too. Same energy, no matter what. Same energy, but no matter what. Signed your percent. I believe me. But I just, I have a feeling that when the active outcomes bag is going to look very different than what we thought. And I'm very, very excited to see what happens. Moving on talking about the potential merger that might offend some people. Doug Flutie fierce Canadian football uniqueness could be lost of three down league partners with the, the XFL. He says, I see bringing in those names to engage younger fan, you hear those names involved. You hear the rock involved in your Drake involved. Yeah. They'd love that. They'd love to be a part of it. And then you got a good financial backing that can support it for a while and grow the game. His fear is the, the loss of the uniqueness of it. The three down football, the field and all of that. He doesn't want Canadian teams to end up turning into playing, playing American football. He'd love to see that the way it is. I think I'm like Doug Flutie. Aren't you as USFL. Are you the front person for the USFL? Like what are you doing on here? Why are you talking about the XFL? I thought that was weird. Yeah, I mean, true. And you know, that, that might be the ulterior motive here is that, you know, maybe the USFL might start thinking about a three down idea in wider fields. The plots of the plot thickens. That would be incredible. Redbird capital. You know, they're they got their hands in everything. They're buying a 15% stake in the Rajasthan Royals. Founding club of the Indian Indian premier league of the 2020 cricket. Cricket. They're into cricket now. Redbirds into cricket. That's what we're saying. Taking over the world, man, and this was sent over, but you know, they're continuing to expand. Anyway, I, that, that was sent to me by our big, you know, max and all of our red birdie followers. But yeah, they're, they're continuing to expand out the region. Crickets, huge. I mean, curriculum. Australia and India. I mean, Cricket's like the biggest thing in the world. It's it's insane. Like, I mean, you know, I think that more people in India and Australia watch cricket, that they watch soccer. I was going to ask worldwide. What do you think is a bigger sport India or are cricket or soccer, but soccer worldwide is way bigger. Because, I mean more people watch soccer worldwide than they watch cricket. Like we watch soccer in America here. Kind of sorta now. I mean, MLS is starting to move. You know, they're getting a ton of franchises. And we watch more soccer here. We're not just watching when the men play in the, in the world cup we're watching because the men don't always play in the world cup. We're watching also when the women play in the world cup, you know, there's a big. There's a big one of those. I guess Renaissance moments for American soccer. So I think America, I mean, I think soccer worldwide is. No one in Mexico is watching cricket either. And soccer is big down there. So. Don't take it to the break. We're tossing we're we're gonna toss it back over to Reed. Doing solo interviews. It's on a will from Argos fan cast. And then Josh Davis is going to come on with some elf coverage. That's after this. Same energy. Dame energy. Welcome back. Thanks for. All our guests joining us. Will Josh. And of course, Tim. Tim, right? Yeah. Amanda you, you. Sometimes you delete people's names out of here. And I'm like, oh wait, I kind of want that to, you know, my short term memory is messed up and my ears are, you know, anyway, We're going to move on. USFL news. Now, I don't want to get in trouble for this because we've seen some stuff happened lately with LinkedIn, like news and XFL staff, but this is the official USFL LinkedIn account. This is their official account. They have a new bio on there and they're talking about, you know, the USFL they're going to develop, you know, keep the dream alive for players preparing for the NFL, whatever. But this was interesting. I bolded this, he goes. All right. He goes, I assume Brian Woods wrote all this on that. I don't use the Brian Woods updates, the USFL LinkedIn page. I assume that he's in charge of that. He says, although we are excited about kicking off the league, as soon as possible, we do not, we will not do so until full capitalization is in place to secure long-term sustainability and the sure that payment. Of all compensation and all other expenses we have been working for more than a year, ironing out the wrinkles and putting in the finishing touches on our business plan. We have adopted that finance. Financing plants and secure the capital we need that minimize this risk to investors and offers an independent return on investment. So like, you know, this whole, okay. USFL kicking off in 2022. I mean, it would seem like. You get what I'm saying? That this is maybe tempering those expectations a little bit. Maybe possibly. You know, again, a lot of people just brought up the financial concerns of the USFL. Like how are they able to do this when less than a year ago? Players were saying fire festive food. At our, at our, at our hotels. There's still a lot of concerns. And I think they're trying to like tamp tamper those concerns, but I mean, unless you see the books are open, not, not necessarily the books are completely open, but unless you see a plan. There's always going to be these concerns. Yeah. Anyway, I just thought that was interesting. Yeah, because people were talking about the money. They said all the pieces are in place at present. Our sole focus is. Completely in our financial arrangements so that we can then select teams, cities, hire coaches, sign players, and present exciting and high quality and competitive spring football. So like, you know, Spoiler alert if spring league hasn't hired coaches or anybody, the XFL hasn't hired coaches or anybody like spoiler alert. No. None of these people. Also, Mike did say that I'm that interview with a drive that he's like, people think all this stuff is happening behind the scenes. Like, it's really not like, it's really like, if you, this is not the Illuminati, like this is not, I mean, these are like, okay, Just, and we'll get, we're almost done with the show. When June Jones came out and like speculated about the XFL last year, remember how quick that was shut down. Like, they're not like there's no people have mouths and they will say things. And if there was anything happening, we would know about it. Exactly. More Springleaf nudes notes. I should say. TSL justice QB drew Anderson signed by the Elks, your team read. Of course he played college ball. Murray state would go on to join the Cardinals, play a little bit there. I'm curious to see what it does in a, in Canada. Yeah. And then Stefan banks. He is signing with the San Peters. He was on the big mega bowl champions with alignment. So, yeah. You know, it's good to see. I mean, there. Toronto sign a lot of people too, with the CFL. I mean, that'd be curious to see if anyone else winds up there, but yeah. Good to see you guys doing this. This is a weird statement. We just want, I'm going to update this real quick. MLF B is a major league football, I guess. Is it a scam? Is it a football league? A lot of people, Paul have interest in this because they bought. All the old AAF helmets and equipment and things like forever ago now. So because this league did that like two years ago. Now everyone, all the time is okay, when's the MLSP coming back. So they had originally said. Earlier this year that they were going to play this summer. And then now it's July 1st. And if they're going to be playing in the summer, I don't know when, when that is happening. So they have a new statement on their website. They're talking about the USFL and this kind of relates to the MLSP as well. They're talking about the big Mike Florio article that we had with, you know, with Steve Earhart when they were like, who owns the USFL. But basically they're saying like, because USFL. Isn't paying their players. They're operating. They are going to be playing the MLSP. We'll be playing a regular season of games in spring of 2022, in which call quality players will be paid for their services in six cities in the United States. So all these players are people that had messaged all the time. Like MLSP is playing the summer. They're talking on here about how they're going to be playing next year now. So we get a lot of questions about that. So I wanted to update that that is on the MFP website. A lot of these, a lot of these leagues. You know, it's July and they're planning to go next year. Let's see. Let's just. Let's see. Also just please, like, just because one person or like one. It does because they like tweet something. Or is it like things, think of everything in the world that changed in the last two years. This whole like, well, the XFL said that they were playing in 20, 22. Yeah. Back last August. I think of all things of everything that has happened in the last year, till now. Thing has changed plans change. MLSP all these things, but he kills me with our gear. You know, the, the XFL, they said they were going to be playing. Yeah. On the doors of Delta Varian, too. Yeah. I mean, everything changes anyway, so, but it sounds like the MLSP is kind of taking shots of the USFL, which I don't really think is their place to cause the MLSP hasn't played either, but they're like, well, we're definitely paying our players because the spring league doesn't yeah, it doesn't pay. We don't know what the USFL is going to be. I mean, I assume the USFL is going to pay their players, but anyway, I assume. I definitely assume. Again, want to thank everybody for joining us this week? I'm sorry. It was such a. Such a weird disjointed show in terms of like read, taking the, taking the wheel again, I had to go get myself checked out. I'm being ordered again to go get myself checked out. Multiple times in the next week after the blast and hopefully read soon, we'll have that tooth issue fixed. And we will bring. Like I, you know, you showed me the brace earlier. Is it hard to like, not mess around with it? Cause, you know, it's there. Yeah. That's terrible. Yeah. Are you sad? There's no FCF news this week, Paul. I am not sad. I'm not sad at all. I put that in the show that there's no FCF. And this is where you guys scoured the glove. If the soundboard was working, I would fire the applause button right now. So thanks for everyone joining us this week. Remember to subscribe on your favorite podcast player, subscribe to our YouTube channel again. It's Reed's birthday. Give him a great birthday present. Like the videos hit the bell to get notifications. We appreciate all that. We appreciate you tuning in every week. And we'll see you next week. Well, Tim Baines. Thank you so much for coming on today. I appreciate it. Well, I see you have a stone cold, Steve Austin. Is that a cutout over your shoulder at first? No. No, it's the real thing. Like it's, it's really stone cold. Steve Austin in my office. I'm going to lay some warpath on me. Yeah. What is, what is going on? Are you a big WWE fan? I used to ride a rustling call 'em back in the day. So yeah, I think I'm more of an EDW fan actually. Now. I, I, I think, I think a lot of people are, are, are more AEW fans now that we should have you back on for a while before all this CFL staff came about Paula and I used to do a lot of wrestling talk at the end of our podcasts when the XFL chatter was a little slow. So maybe we'll have to do another WWE segment in there. I know a bit about it. I mean, I was, I was more of an attitude era guy, the rock and stone cold were my guys. And it's funny enough, the rock. And the accept Val here. It's like, we've come full circle. But yeah. I definitely want to get your thoughts on the XFL 72 first and foremost. What is, what are you tackling today? What is on your radar? I have a whole show, Paul and I are going to do whether you interested in, in Tim Bane's world, whether we worried about today. Well, today's Canada day. Being Canadian. So what's it. What's up for me. I think I'll take the day off. Yeah, I'll maybe do the Cadbury Canadian thing and maybe I'll crack a Canadian beer or two. And celebrate. Yeah. July 1st. Our big day. So we'll, we'll just go with that. And actually I'm going to holidays anyway. I'm trying to. Finish up vacation time before July 11th, which will be the first day of the Ottawa red blacks training camp. And then it's. Full steam ahead, right from there until the gray cop. Yeah, I, I tweeted this morning today is actually my birthday. And I said, so now this is another thing that the XFL fans can co-op from the CFL fans. This is also in here. What, what biggest news this week, we have a lot of staff with obviously the vaccinations and all of that, that your protocol and things. Obviously the player retirements, we talked about Jalen Saunders on the podcast a couple of weeks ago, Brad snappily. I mean, what, what is the highlight for you in terms of things we should be focusing on is it's related to the CFL. I think the big thing you'll, you'll see happening and we've seen happening over the past week or two are player retirements. And I don't think it's necessarily because the players are fed up with football and it's, it's not even necessarily because they've been asked to take pay cuts, and because they're getting paid. For a 14 game season instead of an 18 game season. I think a lot of, a lot of it has to do with the COVID protocols. And the things that they're being asked to do. And really. Stay amongst themselves. And, and you know, maybe they can bring a wife in, but maybe you can't bring a girlfriend and maybe you can't bring family. And. It's overwhelming for a lot of players who were looking at it and going, is it really worth it? And I don't think. Retirement. Quote, unquote, retirement and CFL isn't necessarily retirement. Doesn't mean you've hung up the cleats. I, I would expect some of these guys would come back. Maybe even this season. But for some of them, it's just a little bit much. The ask of them. Again, under different circumstances under, under a pandemic. In the middle of a pandemic. Really. Unlike the NFL, which is, which is clearly distinguishing between what a vaccinated player can do. And what, what non-vaccinated players can do. The CFL really hasn't distinguished between the two. So for a lot of players, who've gone out and gotten their two shots. I think that's extremely frustrating. They would like to be treated. I think. They would like to have more access. At least for now, the CFL is not going to. I don't even think they're there even. Allowed to ask the players or the players won't have to answer if they've had the vaccines or not. So it really a different situation up here. It's it's hard. I mean, we, we were out of town this week in Vegas, you know, totally open here in Washington, which was probably one of the most strict, you know, states with, with, you know, our governor and everything we're fully open as of yesterday, June 30th. And so. It is incredibly challenging for a lot of these players to be going north through the border now. And it's like, wait, what were they. Were we expecting it to be this? Do. I mean, I have you heard from players and things, is this as much a surprise to them as it is, or should be. Well, I think it probably surprising if you're coming from an environment that's completely open. And we're Canadian. We're cautious. You have a weird, I mean, I'm in Ontario and we're, we're in different stages. We just come out of. Basically stage one, which was a, well, first of all, we came out of a lockdown. Stage one. Allowed restaurants and bars to open, but with restrictions, we're still being asked to wear masks indoors. If I go into a supermarket. I'm out. I have to wear a mask and any right. If I go into a restaurant, I have to wear a mask. Now we're, it's opening up a bit where I can go on a patio and I can, I can actually sit at a table with six people. As we get into the next stage, which should happen in the next couple of weeks. Really? It's all leading towards. It's a province by province thing in Canada. Different restrictions. It's being treated differently. Full stadium. Is it more like the states. When it comes to, you know, we've seen a lot of people wanting to distinguish right. Vaccinated. Non-vaccinated you know where the NFL's got. God knows what money and resources and stuff is it just, is it too hard for the CFL to make that delineation? It's like, we just got to have everybody under one, one roof it's too hard. Is that kind of what's going on? Well, I think it is. That's part of it for sure. I think they're really at the mercy. The league is really at the mercy of health officials. That's who's laying down the law. It's not that the league necessarily wants to do all this thing. Health officials are telling them, this is what you gotta do. So, and that differs from province to province. So it'll, it'll be interesting to see. I mean, I, I would expect. I don't think the league would have okayed his schedule if they didn't expect to have at least some fans in every stadium. Certainly the province I live in with, with three. I'm counting. And three CFL teams. Hamilton Toronto and Ottawa. Probably will be the last to come around. And, and when they host their first game here in August at the end of August, You know, I mean, hopefully they can put. 10,000 Fans in the stands, which may be a little bit optimistic, hopefully by September, October. They're able, they have a little more leeway. It's frustrating. I'm sure for the owners. Who obviously want to try and get a recoup, some of the money they lost last year without a season. You know, we, we obviously touched on the player retirements last week and Brad snappily Jalen Saunders. You know, they're putting them off for the year, right. Because of the injuries and everything were, were these as shocking to you as it seems. I mean, I just saw that go like wildfire everywhere. You know, they, they, they finally, it felt like it. It hit home to fans that some of these players that we love might not be back next year. I think with Jalen, I mean, it was not so much a circumstance of coal, but it was a circumstance that he was in a car accident and physically unable to be in training camp. He's a guy that I w I would actually expect to see before the season is over. It's kind of a procedural thing. It's a paperwork thing. They're all about read blogs. Don't want to carry them on the Ross, on the roster as an injured player and pay him. For the first, let's say three months. But he's a guy that I think they'd like to keep on their radar. A guy who has certainly helped them. They're a really largely unproven receiving core. And a guy and I, and I don't know, I have not spoken to Jalen. But I would expect that if he heals up and it's good to go, a guy we could expect to see maybe by mid-season. With broad synopsis, different. Circumstances. Certainly a proven player, multi time, 1000 yard receiver, a big loss. And should we have seen it coming? I mean, he was back and forth. I think had the season happened last year. He was back and forth and playing. He's got a, it. Is it. Father. Of a newborn at the time. And there were decisions that you got to make. Sometimes what's more important. And, and I think at this point he just figured it was time for him, him to move on and try something new. And he's going to remain with the. With the club as an ambassador, but it's not the same. Being an ambassador is not the same as, as gobbling up a thousand yards in past sketches. So really it puts them in a tough situation where. At least on paper and they've certainly got the most unproven receiving core and the Canadian football league, you look around the league and there are a lot of really good receivers. And with Ottawa it's, it's going to be interesting to see what comes out of training camp, because there are certainly jobs up for grabs. How, how excited are you to get back into, and I have to imagine that the protocols with covering training camps and things, but how excited that someone that covers the league for as many years to actually get back to like talking about football again. It's exciting. I mean, Through the whole thing. I've tried to sort of keep touch. I keep in touch with it and still write about players and what they're doing away from the game, but extremely exciting. And when this is what you do, when this is really occupies me in a normal season, You know, on a daily basis. It's what I do from. May. Until the end of the gray cop and then even beyond. So it was last year is extremely frustrating. From a, from a writer standpoint, I had to, it, it puts a certain pressure on me to find things outside of football. So it's great when you get to go to the stadium every day and, and here are the stories in front of you. I just have to find. You know, a couple of things to write about certainly much easier. And I miss the game. I mean, I've been a Canadian football league fan. Way way back into my teens, going to games and Toronto. Went back when Toronto actually drew fans when there were 40,000 people in stance. So I really, really have missed the game. From a reporter standpoint, it'll. It'll be different because it looks like we're maybe looking at zoom access to begin. The season, which is. Frustrating, I guess when you, when I think about. Wondering about. How unsafe it could be to actually be six feet away from a player on outside. On a football field, but. I'm going to go by the rules and if I have to talk to them by zoom, then so be it. And I'm looking forward to August the fifth and let's get this thing going. I'm just looking forward to seeing this league. Doing what it does, which is provide an exciting brand of football. How do you feel like there are blacks are, are looking this year so far? I mean, obviously we got to get through cuts and stuff and into training camp, but just, you know, like you said, you're losing some of that receiving core. You know, And it did seem to us like that. You know, cause a lot of our listeners are obviously American, but you know, with this monopoly retirement, it seems like a big contract. Right. It seems like a big player, you know, we hear these, okay. The guys get 50, 60,000, you know, I saw, I think Justin dunk reported you the $160,000 contracts, right. The heat. So how, how are they looking this year? Kind of with all the turmoil going on. Well, it's it. It's going to be interesting. I think. At least on paper, their defense could be better. But when we're looking at a 2019 season where they won three games, so the defense sure. As hell, better be a lot better. And your offense better be a lot better. Is the offense better? I don't know they had a, they, they really put all their faith in and Dominique Davis back in 2019, it didn't work out. Nick Arbuckle was going to be the quarterback had they played last year. So we've never really even gotten to look at him. Now we're getting better. And Matt Nichols in here, a guy who's been around the league. Had some success in Winnipeg. Big advantage knows this, the system, that head coach Paul appellee's also the team's offensive coordinator is bringing in. Big advantage there. But who's he going to throw to, who's going to, who's he going to hand the ball off to again, a lot of unknowns. And when you look around. They've got to come out of the east division. And I look around Hamilton, which went to the gray cop, is it looks much the same as it did, then they're going to be strong to Ronald's made a lot of improvements. As we're talking to may have signed a couple more players because it just seems like, like more star players are signing. Every day, Montreal is going to be good. I think. So, I don't know how Ottawa. I again, it's a, it's a new coaching staff, new defensive coordinator, fallout police calling plays on offense as well. Maybe that makes a difference maybe with that. With new coaching in place. It's a breath of fresh air. But it's going to be really tough for them. 14 game season. I've seen. I think the over-under on them is four games. Which won't be good. If you win four games out of 14, that's not good. I got to think their hopes are certainly higher than that. But it's okay. Like, let's see what you can do. Like we really, really don't know because a new coaching staff, a lot of new players. And I mean right now, at least on paper, they're the fourth best team in the east, which is not good. Yeah. You bring up, you know, the carry over from 19, you know, I see. And we're putting in prop bets now who's going to win, you know, who's going to be the, that. You know, the, the mop or whatever. I mean, It's been so long, right? So many changes, both, you know, front office and behind, you know, on all of these teams. It's just interesting. It feels like it's been a lifetime, right? Hasn't it. Since you, since everyone's taken in the field, right. It's been 16, 17 months now. I mean, Eh, how hard is it to like hedge these things going now into the next season? We're so much time has been off. Well, I, I mean, I'm not getting any younger, either. Like a geez, thank God. Football came back. I hit to go into retirement. Like who knows how long that's the way, but, but it does seem like so long ago. Like, I, I, I, I couldn't tell you, well, actually I looked it up a while ago. I mean, there are lots of football games and trying to think I knew they lost their last game, but how much did they lose it by and who they lose it to? And so it, it has been a long time and it's going to be, it's just so good. Naughty only from an Ottawa red blacks perspective, but to think. That. And we talk about breakups being played because Canada gets cold. In November of much like the, the Northeast. A bus and, and we're going to be playing a great cop. Getting towards the middle of December. So it's going to be barely interesting, but I guess we're Canadian like who you didn't. I'll just throw on a. Just throw on a t-shirt and a pair of shorts and go on out in that 20 below weather. Were there any big, you know, I, and I've said it on the podcast. I'm not the biggest schedule guy when it comes to NFL CFO, you know, I just. It's really hard for me to like, look at staff and find good match-ups and stuff. Anything that struck you from that? You know, the CFL schedule release last week, you know, we had Jim Mullen on, talked about, you know, seven teams are playing four games against each other seven teams aren't playing at all. Anything that struck you for weird scheduling stuff. Well, the weird thing from an Ottawa perspective is that they don't play the Winnipeg blue bombers. You play every other team in the league. And like you say, there's, they're playing teams four times. But. I mean, there's obvious there's a rivalry there. You've got Matt Nichols, the former quarterback of the Winnipeg blue bombers. You've got their former offensive coordinator now. Ottawa head coach. I mean, there's, there's gotta be some kind of rivalry there. And I saw the schedule and it seemed really odd, but I didn't criticize it because, Hey, it's a schedule. Like we're going to play 14 games and we're going to play playoffs in a grey cup. I don't care if we play the same team. 14 Times. I don't care. Just get us to the gray cup and let's get through this season. Let's all get vaccinated. And then let's, let's think about a normal 20, 21 season. Well, Hopefully normal, but it really didn't. It didn't concern me who they were playing. Like, let's just get this thing on the road. And get the season done and, and let's let's play football because last year was, was horrible. It was, there was miscalculations by the league. We're going to the government with our hat in hand, looking for handouts. And then when it seemed like we, we get the, okay, we're going to have a bubble. We're going to have a season. And then the owners torpedo. So. Just extremely frustrating. I think from a player standpoint, From from certainly from the media. A standpoint, a lot of organizations were really disappointed and the fans were, felt incredibly let down. And for some of them, I don't know, maybe have lost some CFL fans over. Or maybe that passion that we had before this whole thing started, maybe that it just reinvigorates it. Maybe we're, we're so much looking forward to that football. That it's like, it's just like, wow. I can't believe how much I miss is. I can't believe how much I really, really love the CFL. Yeah, I do think it's it's this was right on the edge right. Of, of if they hadn't gone again. Yeah. How worried were you leading up to the vote the last couple of weeks, months? You know, trying to figure out like, are we going to have this year really? You know, you seem kind of like a straight shooter. How worried were you? I don't. I mean, I, you always got to hope that common sense wins out. But. Really it's, you've got to have nine teams on board with it and through this whole thing. There are at least one or two teams that weren't necessarily on board. So until that actually, till you actually hear word from the commissioner, that yes, we're going to play a season and we're going to release a schedule in a couple of days until you hear that word. There's always a little skepticism and because you've got again, it's not like you just need a majority of owners to say we're going to play it. Play a season. You've got ownership groups. Toronto being one of them. You've got at least two ownership groups in the league that were pushing back. So until you get, I mean, Yeah, for sure. You're you're thinking common sense says we play a season. And if we have to, we will play without fans to begin the season. There were teams that would, would have started without fans. But there were teams that were definitely a no-go on that. So that's the, that's the frustration as well. Of of different ownership groups that want, just want to play football. They want to get back out in the field. And you've got pushback from other ownership groups saying, well, wait a second. If we're not going to put fans in the stands, we're not playing. Well, and that was the thing. I mean, we saw, I think it was the red blacks owner or GM, you know, came out. He's like, we're, you know, we're going fans, no fans, you know what I mean? I remember statements. Can we that where it seems like, yeah, the demand is met with, with Ottawa. It was gung ho kind of regardless. Right? So it is frustrating when you have some that are. Maybe a little more transparent and open, you know, and that could possibly be them trying to spin stuff too. Like, Hey, we want to make sure that people know it's not us. Right. But it does seem like they were more gung-ho than some. Yeah, there's no question. Ottawa, Ottawa and Hamilton in particular in the east. And certainly Winnipeg, Saskatchewan. And Edmonton. And BC, I'm going to try and leave out the teams that were, that were against playing football defense. But anyway, you get the idea that there were certainly some teams that were like, well, we gotta start. We gotta play football. Before we let you go. I hot tags on a single game. Sports betting was thoughts about, is this the lifeblood of the, of the CFL we've been talking about this for weeks on here. For sure. It's not, it's not a bad thing. How could it be a bad thing? If you figure out a way to. Certainly to monetize that. From if you're the league and you figure out a way to monetize it. But they got to put some time into it. Like you just don't say, oh, we've got this, this bill is passed. We can do it. Like let's spend some time on it, figure it out. Cause it is a great source of revenue. If you monetize it, like, will it fix all the woes of the league? No, but it's another source of revenue and a like, I don't know. Can you, can you put a booth in it? And you put a booth at your stadium where people can do prop bedding. I, I, there, there are a lot of possibilities. I think that it opens up and certainly it's something, I think that's long overdue. Do you, my big question to everybody is always, you know, do we believe. Again, Listeners have told us CFL fans, you know, the league struggles with marketing, but yet now this league is going to be able to revolutionize single game sports betting, right. Overnight. I mean, that's where we struggle with. It is the same people that are telling us. One thing I do. Do you share any of those concerns? Well, for sure. I B. You're you're right. If you can't. I think it's a manpower thing. Like you're talking about marketing the league. I don't think they've ever really properly figured out how to do it. But, you know, how are you going to revolutionize this? Single game betting. I don't know. I. I mean, I really, really hope they do because certainly if you can pull it, if each team can pull in. A million or $2 million extra a year. I don't know that fixes a lot of your problems. They think there, there are. Certainly some fixes that need to be made. But. Let's let's hope that the leak pushes forward and whether it's with some kind of merger or affiliation with a league. South of the border. I mean, we'll see, but they got it. We're going to go it on their own this year. And looking forward to it. From once we started, that's where we're going to end up here. You know, obviously we started with talking to me. AWS. But, you know, obviously I hate to lead with all of that now, but since we have all these great minds on, I do always want to get everyone's takes on the XFL stuff. Reactions [unknown]. When all that came out and kind of thoughts now that obviously we've lived with this now it's July 1st. Yeah. I mean, certainly the first thing that came to my mind. I'm intrigued by it. It it XFL. XFL one. Definitely didn't work under that huge Vince McMahon umbrella, XFL two might've survived. Certainly they had some footing. And what will the next incarnation look like? Will it involve CFL? Well, will there be a CFO, all involvement. I mean, there are a lot, there are some. Die hard. CFL fans who been fans for a long time are dead set against any rule changes. We've got a lot of things in the CFL. I think that are unique to the, to our game. And, and make it, they don't, it's not the NFL and the NFL is the NFL. We love the NFL, but that's, what's wonderful about the CFL. It's not the NFL. It's something different with its own distinct character. And if we're going to, you know, if we're going to join. With another league. Then you want to keep some of that character and there are certain things about the CFL game that don't lend themselves. Do the XFL. I mean, the, the field thing is a problem though. The wider, wider field. The longer field in the CFL doesn't lend itself really to existing facilities. Can you convince a majority? Can you convince a lot of American fans that three down football is more exciting than Fordham football? I'd certainly make the argument that in a lot of ways it is. It's not, it's not. Being negative against the NFL. I would love to watch an NFL game, but when you've got a game where 40 passes are being thrown and you know, the score is, is, is, can be 42 to 35 or 42, whatever. Score score is higher. A lot more passing. It's a dynamic game and it's funny, the NFL or some of its concepts from, from the CFL. It it's a great game. So I'm not against some kind of affiliation. I don't, I don't know what form it will take, whether it's. Direct competition against American teams. I'm not against it. I think we have to be open to all ideas. If it means that our league. Our great Canadian football league is not going to be able to exist because you've got some owners you can't just say, well, okay, Toronto. Not drawing fans. BC's not drawing fans. Then just let them bow to the leak. It's not that simple. When you're in Canada, you can't lose two of your biggest markets. You can't lose Toronto. In terms of a Tecan PB contract, despite the fact they don't draw a lot of fans, they get great TV numbers. And so TSM, the national provider is not going to be as interested in, in showing games. If you don't have a Toronto Argonauts in the league and a PC line. So we've got to find a solution that includes our nine teams. And hopefully expands. In in post pandemic days, hopefully we can expand the league and go coast to coast and bring in a Halifax or our team from east coast. And, and hopefully it becomes a 10 team league and who knows from there, but if we're looking at. A merger or some kind of, of involvement with the XFL. I think we have to be open to it for sure. And, and as CFL fans, we, we've got to keep an open mind because. If it's that or nothing. Then I choose that. Are you last question? And, you know, we obviously arrived. Peterson was on, I had just re posted the interview, but he was on a couple weeks ago. Are you as surprised with this, that the VMs. And I know it's that small vocal majority, but our urban minority, but just of how protective and the posed many, many, many CFL fans, it feels like many, many, many were to any idea of any sort of. Yeah. Any changes at all with what's going on? Does that surprise you or not? I don't think I'm surprised. I, I don't think, I don't know that may be overstating. The opposition is there opposition. For sure there is. There's. There's gonna be opposition to whatever you do. If you, if you want division, realignment, whatever you want, there's going to be opposition. Again, if we're faced with the possibility, if, if it's like this. This, or there's not going to be a leak then I think you're going to have more people on board. Will there be people that are totally disgusted if they, if they walk away and when they were talking about. A merger. Four down football was completely, completely. Top of mind. I mean, that's certainly in the discussion. So if there is some kind of merger, there's a very real, real chance that this becomes four down football and there will be opposition. There will be opposition to that, but can you get through that? Well, let's money talks. And if, if you're involved with a Dwayne Johnson, League a, an a. League that Dwayne Johnson's involved with. If you've got TV money coming your way. That's going to be hard for the CFL to turn away from, because I think you've got owners that are desperate. To try and make things work on a, on a balance sheet. And if you're going to throw a lot of money at them, I think some of they're going to be on board with it and, and you can't, you won't take all your fans with you, but I think if you're. If you're a true CFL fan. I don't know how you turn away from the league. It'll be interesting to see what's going to happen these next few months. And the CFL is committed to play now until December. It would be tough to imagine that anything, if you're going to have a merger. That anything happens in 2022. So it'll be interesting. I think these next. Getting it towards the end of the year will be really telling on, on what happens if you, and maybe the league, maybe the involvement. With maybe the CFL XFL involvement. Isn't a merger. Maybe it's something else. I mean, we're really, they're keeping us in the dark. So we haven't got guys. Walking around. Telling us what they're talking about, which may be not a bad thing. I I'll say this as many times as I can. I do place a lot of the four down is going to take over the CFL blame on Jean Jones and shoulders in some of those preliminary interviews that he did. I, I tell the day I die, I will, I will put a lot of the blame and the hostility that we faced on, on his shoulders. Tim Bates. Thank you so much for coming on. Sharing your holiday with us. I hope you will go crack open a, a wonderful beer and enjoy, but I really appreciate the chat. I feel like we. This is kind of the mishmash of episodes. There's a ton of stuff going on. So I appreciate you bouncing around and tackling all the different stuff. I appreciate you having me on. And, and of course we appreciate the support. So the border, we, we think we have a special game. And man, we, we love the FA the fact that we've got support and that people down there care. Yeah, we're doing that. We're we're we, we call it, we're doing the Lord's work and we're working through, and I appreciate your time. I appreciate it, then we'll talk and. One time, we'll talk a www E. Impact wherever you want to talk about. Impact. Yeah, I, I lived through the, the Monday night wars. That was that the two weeks when. When a impact moved and Bret Hart and yeah, all of that. I mean crazy times in wrestling. And I just find, to be honest with you, I find it. So predictable. I mean, it's like you turn it on and, and it's just. Bad soap opera. I mean, I can't even watch raw anymore. I just, I can't, I can watch NXT. NXT is a good program. A w is a good program, but I can't watch raw and SmackDown. Okay. So, but I used to. Every Monday night raw. It was, it was like, that was. It was must-see for me. Not, yeah, man, I I'll record it and I'll watch bits of it. But fast forward, fast forward, fast forward. And then, and then AEW back to Wednesday nights, I'll I'll stick with AWN NXT. We're going to have Greg parks on in a couple of weeks. He writes for PW torch and maybe we'll get into some wrestling. I'll send you the link when we perfect. Perfect. Thank you again so much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Enjoy your day. Hi, happy birthday. Thank you. Take care. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. I'll send you the link tomorrow. Well, we have, we'll hear from the Argos fan cast. Thank you so much. I was on with your cohort earlier this year, talking to XFL staff, and I'm so glad that you could return the favor and come on today. How are you doing so far? I'm doing great. How are you? Thanks for having me on. We're good. It's a happy Canada day. There it's also my birthday. And so I joked that that's now. That's another thing that the XFL can now take a take. Take over as the candidate. No. So, I guess first off, you know, we're heading into this season now we're getting closer to training camp. What are some big things that you're watching or keeping an eye on that? There that you're interested in and that you guys are talking about on your podcast. Right now, we were just going through sort of what we think. How the roster's going to shape up. When the articles have been more active than any other team in the CFL, I would say by far this off season, A lot of people are kind of taking the view of how the hell are they doing all of this right. They're signing all these guys who, who people. Are associating with. You don't having this. Or should be having a significant enough salary that. People don't know how they're fitting this all under the cap. So we did have a lot of. I wouldn't say there's a lot of positional battles going on, but we have a lot of new faces to sort out. See how they fit in. With this team. And, you know, as, as I imagine, you know, The articles have been the worst team in the league. The last two seasons. So. Turnover is a good thing in this case. Yeah, I keep, I keep seeing, you know, signings. I see a lot of memes of like, okay, you're done signing people now. Right. You're really done. I mean, what is, is that I hear that that's kind of how it management there operates, right? Like bringing everybody and then just cut all the dead weight. Is that kind of how they operate there? I wouldn't say. Keeping in mind, they have a new. General manager. Or I shouldn't say he's new, but this is going to be. Well, Technically speaking pinball Clemons is the general manager in name. But it's believed that John Murphy is handling a lot of the personnel decisions. He did have a reputation of doing this in Saskatchewan. When he was there with, I believe Chris Jones was the head coach and there was a running joke that they had a practice practice roster. Type things set up. So it's not so much, this is sort of. Move had. I wouldn't say the team hasn't been inactive and free agency before, but this is certainly the first off season where everybody's sort of scratching their head. Like. What's going on here. So it is a bit of a new thing in Toronto. It seems like having pinball as that face right. Of the franchise. You know, I saw him on a rod Peterson show a couple of weeks ago. I mean, truly has to be in the lecture. Fine, right. Presence for, for the fan base there. Right. Yeah. I mean, he's, he's the one ergo who probably transcends the team into Pronto in general. As I'm sure you've learned, Toronto has a lot of challenges in. Attracting a fan. You know, attracting a significant, you know, fan base to come to their games. The pinball. Yeah. He, he, he gives that sense of. I guess confidence to the fan base that. They are heading in the right direction. I mean, for example, When he became head coach of the Argos 20 years ago, when he retired to become head coach. The team was perhaps at its lowest on the field and off the field. You know, the, the coach they had hired was a complete disaster. And pinball did. Restore a bit of confidence to the fan base. The sort of. You know, they didn't make the playoffs that year, but they played. Much better than it played at a play off pace for the ranger of that year. And. This is his first time in this role. So, you know, it remains to be seen whether. He. We'll have success, but you had success as a player. He's had success as a person in the community, and he's had success as a head coach. So I'm fairly confident hill. Have success as a general manager and at the same time, yes. He can be the face of the franchise. In the market, hopefully get some of the people who are senators sitting on the side and saying NAS, CFL, CFL, and get them into the stands. There's been a lot of talking about obviously the, the long off season, right. You know, 16, 17 months now. What is the feeling up there from other CFL fans, you know, maybe a little more casual than obviously you and I, you know, That we're, we're approaching the season out. Is there a lot of buzz now that training camps, you know, we're getting there, like it's on the horizon. We're seeing everything. Yeah. I mean, when it was two, three weeks ago, when they finally announced that the season was going to go through. I haven't seen Twitter that happy, you know, in 16, 17 months. And. I think people are excited. For it to start. As maybe you've seen though. Over the last week or so we've started to see some players retire. We're not. And people are trying to speculate what that's about. Some people think it has to maybe deal with the whatever rules that the CFL. And CFL PA is going to set out. For teams to have to comply with during the. Season. The Argos. Have mostly avoided that so far. Although there are rumors that. Two players are planning on retiring. Both our linebackers Canadian linebackers, who. We'll be, we missed on special teams, but. All overall. I think people are really excited to get the season underway. As I said it, you know, the. The NFL play at the NBA played NHL MLB. They all played CFL. Then in play and we just want our football back. What is it like being a fan in Toronto? You know, obviously we're, we're coming in from the XFL perspective. You know, all we hear is, you know, no one goes to the games right. In Toronto. It's hard to fill the stands here. You guys are, you know, leading the charge with the podcast, you know, with the Argos. What is that like balancing those two things is people saying like, you know, Toronto doesn't even want to be in the CFL. Yeah. You know, it's hard. Because. I feel like. The people who. Don't like to CFL in Toronto. I'll put that nicely. You read, you know, They post something about the CFL on TSN or on the Fiesta and Facebook or something like that. You just get all these unsolicited comments about people, you know? Oh, you know, people have to let everybody know that they hate the CFL. And, you know, it's not easy. I mean. As I think you. You may have. You know, CFL used to be really big in Toronto. But at my age, Man I can count. Less than 10 people, you know? I fell out of hand. And. Part of that is. Part of that is self-inflicted by the Argos. But. Part of it is. It'll be NFL. Once the eight cable started in the eighties and people got more, be able to see it in Toronto. They just. It's hard to say. I mean, I think people just think you've heard of this before. People are more interested in playing the New York Yankees. They are the Saskatchewan Roughriders, right? There's no mark. Unfortunately, the CFL's lost its marquee in Toronto, specifically. And. I think there, there are people. A lot of the fan base. The articles are just, you're tired of. They're tired of having to. Because I think some of like, I mean. They just don't know what to do anymore about it. I'm not saying the team doesn't, I'm saying the fans are just frustrated. And yeah, I mean, I get frustrated sometimes. It's good football. And I sort of take the approach like. It's okay. To like more than one football league. And I just think too many people in Toronto don't. Take that into account. When you say that some of these wounds are self-inflicted by, by the management, you know, by the Argos. Whether, some of the things that they could have done better in the last, you know, 10, 20 years to, to not be in this position now. Well, it goes beyond longer than that probably starts. Probably starts when the Toronto blue Jays came to Toronto. Fact is the team. Wasn't the Argos went 30 years vote. A grey cup title. And. Blue Jays came sort of towards the end of that drought. A couple of things happened. Once they started winning again in the eighties. The. Front office cut back on marketing heavily. The blue Jays. For an expansion team, at least at the time started to contend. More quickly than maybe some of the other expansion teams did. But I think you really go back. To the end of the, you know, the rocket Ishmael, John candy, Bruce McNall ownership. You ran into a few things. I think. The blue Jays won the two world series. Drawing 50,000 people to Skydome basketball came to Toronto with the Raptors. And I don't a discount. It was one of the bills we're doing the fourth straight Superbowl. Run. So I don't discount that necessarily because that probably gave people more. More of an NFL option than they had prior to that because of the bills. We're not really good franchise prior to the early nineties. And just overall. So many ownership changes over the years. Owner's not choosing to market the team properly. The move to Skydome while that was. Started because of the 1982 great crop. There was a rainstorm in the interim. Imagine a rainstorm and two degree weather. You know, so people were screaming for a dome, but. Of course that came at a time when the multipurpose stadium was coming to an end. And Skydome, wasn't a great place for football. So that didn't help either. You mean, they they've drawn, you know, decent average attendance, you know, 30,000 at times in there, but, and a 50,000 stadium seat stadium that looks terrible. So. And frankly, the team hasn't been very good over the last decade. They've won two great cops. Yes, but those were at nine and nine records. And. They simply have not been able to put a consistent team on the field. So, what do they do? I mean, obviously like, you know, how are you pinball, right as this, you know, focal, you know, public persona. I mean, that works. What are some other ideas and things. That you feel like they could do their improvement? You know what they're doing now? Well, first off, it's going to be a, it's going to be a longer. Long-term fix. It's not gonna be fixed overnight. And people. See, that's in a multitude of things. The. You know, people say, oh, they should be build a stadium out in the suburbs, but they. The way Toronto is. If you look at a map of Toronto, there's no ideal place in the suburbs. That you could put it without risking alienating people from another. Part of the suburbs. And whether they reach out to, you know, Toronto is one of the most multi cultural cities in the world. And. You know, football is probably the one sport where. A soccer. He taught basketball and bait, even baseball to an extent people coming from. You know, Immigrants those sports. Are more likely to be. Present in their home country than football is. So that's a, that's a unique challenge. I know the teams try they'd. Like citizen citizenship. I think they did like citizenship ceremonies before the games. Which is a good idea to try to introduce people to, to, to the game. I think. They haven't done so many cultural nights. I don't think, but. That might be an idea. Even someone suggested that I'm not taking credit for this, but you know, people online have always said, try to make. Take the call at the two college teams in Toronto. Try to leverage, you know, a rivalry between those two teams too. You know, conjunction with an Argo game or something, something like that. The only issue is the two college teams in Toronto. Don't put much. They don't. U of T and York don't really put a whole lot of. Investment into their football team. So they're always among the weaker. Teams in the conference. So it's it's. And just general. They need to somehow get. The name Argo's out there. People just don't. You pass somebody going, if you're on it, going to a game, you pass them in. Oh, there's a game tonight. Yeah, people just don't know. Like it or not. Right. You and especially Toronto and other, you know, CFL teams. Really at the forefront of all this XFL chatter too. Right. Because you know, with MLSE and Toronto and all these things. Thoughts on all this XFL stuff. General thoughts. And then I have a couple other questions about it. I think. I think you might maybe. Consensus. Sort of on our show, we were all, we didn't react as negatively to this News's is I think. You would have seen people on Twitter. And part of that is yes, because. I'm up for looking at any way too. Improve the business model and prove the. You know, the future of the CFL. And. I think part of the problem CFL had is. You've had Marshall Ferguson on, I think, right. We have. Connor on the podcasts with them. Okay. But one of the comments he made on our show was that. The CFL did a poor job of sort of. Setting the parameters of these discussions. So, what it did was. Let everybody on Twitter. Speculate or overreact to it. I'm sure. One of the things you maybe noticed is that. Canadians get there tends to get their backup. When they perceive some sort of threat from down south. And that's where it sort of the, the, the rule things. You know what all the rules. Start and I mean, I don't disagree with that part. Part of what makes the CFL unique is its rules. And, but I think people were just. Assuming it was going to be a merger. Whereas they were just talking to see what they can. What synergies they get fine. I mean, I sort of thought about it along the. You know, the. You remember when they used to pretend that the American league and then they used to pretend the American league and the national league were. They, they, they, they pretended that they were separate entities. You know, they never play. I mean it's, I suppose it's a bit. The rules between American and Canadian football. I guess a little more fundamentally different, but I kind of looked at it along those lines. Several we'll share resources. But not necessarily be abandoning one over the other. It's just, I think it's unfair for people too. Yeah. Go ahead. Oh, it's just, it's, it's crazy to me as someone, you know, I mean, we were just getting into this XFL, you know, didn't even have the podcast, you know, they're coming. You know, we just, it was something to do for 10 weeks, right? In my off season, you know, February, March is a great time to watch football. You know, we get into doing this podcast. All the CFL stuff comes out. And in a million years, I never would have expected. Just, I mean, vehement anger from not, not all fans, you know, not even the majority, but, but really VMs. And I think the word that I kind of that came to mind this week is we posted one of our interviews. That was a little more XFL, CFL, heavy. And it's a lot of gate checking. I don't know if you know that term. Like I got him at the club and I got a check. Like I got that. Like, well, how many, how many CFL games have you gone to, like, or people are asking this, or, well, how many, like how many BC lions games. You travel that for, and you're like, well, that's not the point. You have people now that they're trying to cover, get excited, have communications write about your league and, and the pushback that we've gotten. It's really it's. I mean, it's astounding to me, right? As, as someone that. I mean, what, where do you and I get the, the Canadian protectiveness, right? And you said like, you know, they get there. You know, backs to the wall, but. Are, does it surprise you how angry it feels like it's gotten with some of the fans and things online? Not really. I think. That's kind of how Canadians get when they, as I said, when they perceive something coming down from. The south, you know, That's how they get. And. I think. I'm wondering if some people don't. Realize how. CFL was doing well, I'd say five years ago. But I'm not sure if many people realize how. I wouldn't say it's completely collapsed, but. It's not doing well as it was five years ago. And, you know, To be honest, also part of it was people are also forgetting that. Vince. McMahon's no longer. Associated with the XFL. And. That. Might be part of it. I mean. Vince is a rather. I mean, it's Vince McMahon. The guy is kinda. Yeah. The people look at, oh, he's only succeeded at one thing, you know? Wrestling. And, you know, Who knows how much of that was because of, you know, the six foot eight guy from Venice beach that he found, you know, Minnesota one day. But. Aye. I am. I wasn't surprised. People are very protective about the CFL. You're going to have people who. As much as, as I think. My generation. Doesn't like people who choose one over the other. There is a generation of CFL fans who are CFL only. They'll die on the hill of the third down. They'll die on the hill with the no yards. And everything like that. So, no, I, I'm not surprised. But. Again, those back to the CFL, not communicating what the parameters of this work clearly. You let people interpret it the way. They did. And that probably caused part of the anger. Do you think? And, and we certainly have our own thoughts. You know about this and, and we talk offline. I mean, do you think the damage is done because those parameters are or communication? What wasn't done? I mean, it's been. Four or five. I mean, it's been a long time now that we've been doing this. We haven't heard anything. I think people are kind of right now, there's a bit of a honeymoon period because the announcement that the season's going to take place. I'd say that there's quite a few people who have sort of forgotten about. This announcement. But I think there's been there has been damaged on, I think a lot of the, I mean, I mean. Certainly the perception on Twitter is. Very much against Randy Ambrozy at this point. As I think you've seen. So. I think. Once we get the season going once we sort of see how. Fans are returning to the stands. You know, whether it's an exciting season or not, that may win the CFL back some. Brownie points. But. I imagine, you know, in the off season we'll hear more. Right. Well, no. I mean, I think they said it's not going to, if anything happens, it's not going to happen for a few years. Right. So I think it may stay quiet for the season. Certainly around great cop. It may. Perk up again because that's often, you know, a period, you know, the beginning of the off season. So you get a lot of the insiders. And the CFL traditionally. You know, joining the great cup week. Looking for things to, you know, lose items to, to start. So it may spike up again. But I'd say that there's going to be a bit of a honeymoon. For the season, just because people are excited about having. All back. My last question for you today. And I appreciate it all there. And just open this, you know, where it's, it's like, we're trying to cover this. How do we really feel about it? So I appreciate a lot of your answers. What do you think about Ambrosie as a commissioner, as someone that covers this lake? Well, he's coming off. I mean, you gotta remember the commissioner's simply there too. Act off the behest of the board of governors. You know, he takes his instructions from the owners. Aye. I don't think I have the same hostility towards him as other people do. Certainly a lot of people feel as communication skills or not. Great. People feel. He's a little bit secretive. The leagues become a little more secretive. I mean. And certainly. Under his time, the league is. He's he's faced the challenge. No other commissioner has had COVID. And, but I'm not sure I necessarily blame him on that. Or for any decline that may have been taking place before. So I'm. I'm not ready to. I'm I'm fairly new. You know, A bit of a cop out answer here, but I'm fairly neutral on the guy. I don't have any strong feelings one way or the other. Yeah. It just seems to me, you. You know, we had, I think it was Scott Stinson when he came on and he talked about where. You know, trying to rebuild, you know, Toronto and Montreal and BC, and instead, you know, w. When Ambrozy came on and that's okay, we're going to do the global expansion right now. We're going to do whatever this is with the XFL. And it just seems, I resonated with me that, you know, we, we have this option, we had two forks in the road and we could either build it home or go expand. And it seems like we went. You know, the CFL, not we, but you know, the CFL, winter, that expansion route. And it may be that he needed to shore up some things at home first. You know, Sure, but I, I, I, at the same time, Any good businessman has to be able to multitask, I suppose. And I, I always felt like one. Doing one did not. The other. Fail the. Football is starting to become a bit more global. You know, The last 10 years. It certainly, I think you can see it. I mean, it's not necessarily huge and. Any outside of Canada to the U S but. You can see it. You know, the NFL is playing games in Mexico. In England. And they've been in Japan. Yeah, I think they've played. Play the game. I think they played exhibition games in Japan, like 20 years ago, but. That's how Terrelle Davis got noticed by the Broncos and a special teams game there. But I think. That, in that sense? Yeah. Why wouldn't he try to look at global possibilities? I mean, he's he, we're obviously not trying to compete with the NFL here, but. You know, See, if you can't grow the branded Canadian game. Yeah, I mean, BC and Montreal and Toronto. Do need a lot of fixing, but. I don't think either. Any of them are long are short-term fixes. So he had the option of either trying to do something globally and. And you know, nothing happening locally because it was a long-term fix. And then, you know, oh, you're doing nothing. Yeah. So I, I know by that. That notion, I think. The CFL can do two things at once. And I would expect it to be able to do a few things at once. That's a good answer. I appreciate that. We have will from Argos fan podcast and Argos fan.com. Thank you so much for taking your time. I really appreciate, you know, giving your candid thoughts on all this stuff. Hey, man, how's it going? Well, thank you so much. I figured there was no better way to celebrate my birthday than to talking to one of our longest longest friends here at XFL Nissan. I've been safe on these I'm Josh Davis, how are you doing? I'm doing well, man, happy birthday. Thank you. So we're, we're talking else today. I have a little MLF B I want to talk to you about at the end. What has been your reaction to elf so far the European league of football going on? Overseas. Well, it's, it's filling the gap that that was left by the spring league. And you got to, if you want to watch these things, you got to go into it, knowing that this is brand new. We're we're going into week three. You can't go into it thinking that it should, it's going to be a finished product. The offensive lines were better. The second week, the first week, the quarterbacks were just running for their lives. It is still happened that way in the second week. But that being said, the guys that are supposed to be studs are studs. I mean, we're watching Madre, London, just take it over. 624 Yards in two weeks and seven touchdowns. It's it's it's incredible. Defenses are well, are playing well, even though there's a lot of high scoring games, you're still seeing plays. Dean's is, is, is big right now. In the, in that league and everything will come together as the league goes on. People, you know, obviously have been asking, you know, wanting some coverage of this. Is this a gimmick league is this weird rules in Safford. This is pretty much American football that people are expecting just on, in a different country. Right. Yeah, no, this is a, they play by the NFL rules. The only thing that they have not implemented as of yet a hundred percent is replay. Everything else is, is NFL rule. So kickoffs are the same as the NFL. Although I'll tell you you're getting a lot more returns because they're kicking it short. I don't know if that's purposely. I would assume that the guys over there got good legs. So like, I don't know if that's purposely done or what, but now NFL rules. There's no gimmicks. It's not like anything. That we've seen thus far with, even with the spring league, you could only rush a certain amount of players. So that's not the case here. Yeah, I think it's a welcome relief. You know, the spring league got a little gimmicky with the overtime rules, with the voting and, you know, obviously fan controlled football and all of that. How have you felt, obviously you've been covering that for XFL news hub, writing articles, you know, live, tweeting the games. I've seen all that. What has been the reaction that you've seen from your listeners? Readership, whatever people that follow you. The biggest thing is the pay wall. If we could figure out a way around the paywall, there'll be a lot more viewership, but they've got to do what they've got to do over there at the elf. And, but when people are watching the games, they are, they are. Really, really happy with what they're saying, because it is a really good product. It's getting better. Like I said before, the offensive lines were not very good week one, they were a little bit better week two. But that's something that's to be expected. You've got five guys. That have never played together. You would assume anyway, maybe, maybe a different, a lot of the guys that play for the Panthers have been together and some of those other teams that have, but. For the most part, these guys have got to mesh, they've got the gel and that's going to take some weeks and it's a brand new league. Everybody's getting their footing. You know, you just stick around. Everybody that I've noticed that that has been watching the game seems to be pretty happy with everything that's going on so far. So how many different teams do we have and where are they located? Predominantly Germany. There's eight of them. You've got Germany, Spain, Poland. And I think that's it. We're only in three countries, I think right now I could be wrong. But predominantly Germany is where most everything is. Did they have a long ramp up for the season? I know like obviously with the spring league, it was like, you know, they hit the ground a week or two. You know, Camps. And then they started, did these guys have a lot of time here that they really getting things going on on their feet while the, on the field? They really only had a couple of weeks. To, to get real ready. I mean, they had the, the guys that were in country could, could work out together, but, you know, travel restrictions at the time. Not a lot of the American players get over there and do exactly what they needed to do to get ready. But on the only had a few weeks to go, there was a scrimmage or two, but other than that, it was, it was pretty much it in the ground running. It's tough. I get what you're saying with the paywall and the ability to watch it. You know, we're also trying to, I, one of our listeners, I'm sure you're the max, whoever he's sending us, like. Here's the illegal stream. You can watch everybody. It's like, we're trying to support this right. I mean, it's hard because I think so many people are conditioned to, like, I turn on TV, you know, Monday night football is on. I mean, are we. At an age where people are used to watching these games. I know obviously friends. Neutral friend vans with all football scout. You know, he covers a lot of this stuff too, you know, we're, we're used to watching things online. Is that still too hard for the common man and woman or child to watch these games? No, I'll tell you if you do end up paying for it, they've got it. They're a bunch of different levels of. Of what you can get it's it's well worth it to me. I mean, you get to watch the games is right there. You can get English audio. Sometimes. What I've under what I've week one, they only had one game per day. That was, that was actually called. That was a little weird to watch a game that you didn't have any commentary at all. But it, it, it, it still transitioned well, cause you know, it was football and you knew the rules going in. You know, if you build something where you didn't know about the rules, but they're playing NFL rules or something that we all can relate to when we watch it, it's a, it's a familiar product. They offer so much, even when you just do the game by game, which has only. Five bucks. To get to, and it's right there on their homepage. It. European league that football it's right there on their homepage and click on the game and click on what audio you want and they'll come up and, and it'll immediately right after the game is over. It'll start showing you the highlights from the game. So even if you got in there a little bit late and didn't see some of the stuff that happened early, They get right into the highlights right after the game. And then they've come up with a lot of, they keep up with live stats going on throughout the game. You can see exactly what's going on. They're getting a little bit better with that. The stats were slow going. And I was, I talked to a couple of guys from there, Christopher Hahn's one of them. She got out to him. That's all two week one, he said, we're going to be a little slow coming out of the gate with the stats. But as we go on, it's going to be a whole lot easier and a whole lot better and a whole lot faster. So, and I can, I can already tell a difference. They also offer a full game book. Every single thing you want to know about what happened in the game, how many times they ran the ball on third down, that's how deep this stuff goes. Defensive stats or offensive stats. Play by play drive by drive, whatever you want. It's downloadable. It's a PDF. It's real easy to get to everything. Everything you missed about the spring league is right there. The elf has it. Is there a large support staff that they have working, doing all these things. Are you? I know you've talked to some of the people over there. Believe me. Are we aware of how large the team has working on this? We, we don't know the way that it, that it comes about though, is, is there is a lot of people that are, that are in the middle of this, trying to get this thing going. I mean, they're, they've probably thrown a whole lot at this to get this right year one. And so far, I think they're being successful. And I think they're only going to be better as, as it goes. I can't really tell exactly how many people there are working for them. I can tell you, they have a lot of media people. Each team is, is, you know, Accurately. You know, represented on social media and an online there. There's I just mentioned him a minute ago. Han he just was just talking about, there are articles every day on the website. So there are a lot of guys. Putting in a whole lot of work for this. And to get this thing going. Cause, I mean, that's the biggest thing out of skeleton crew. Like. [Unknown]. Yeah, no, you're good. Let me add it back. Cause I, I cut you off again. It's not a skeleton crew. Like what. Like the spring league head. Gotcha. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is, is we talk about these leagues man control football spring league XFL. You know, whatever USFL it's like, you got one shot to make it work. Right. We got the big ramp up. All the media stuff. Ha have they. For being overseas, have they done a good enough job of penetrating is, is America even on their radar, really trying to penetrate into, are they more focused on the European viewership and then like anything over here as a bonus? They're really focusing everything in Europe, they are throwing. Things, some of the teams will, will tweet in their language and then we'll throw out another tweet in English saying the same thing or they'll combine it. They're really focused on, on getting, getting off the ground there in Europe, because I mean, that's where the tickets are going to be. You know, that's where, that's where they can watch it on television. You know, that's where we're really, their viewership is going to be there. For the most part. But they're not leaving us in the states, you know, out to dry, you know, They are giving us the, the English. You know, audio, they have some, they have at least one person for these games that, that is. An American voice. It's not somebody so far. That's got an accent that we can't understand. I know these guys are, are really focused on where they are, but they also know that this is American style football with NFL rules. We've got to pay attention to America as well. Obviously it's on a yeah. Streaming for us. Is this on traditional TV? Over in Europe? Yes. Yes. They have, they have a couple of different. Go ahead. They have a couple of double different types of contracts with their broadcasting over there, but it is, it is on TV there. I mean, it feels like, you know, and obviously we're watching from the outside with a little bit of meat given to us, but it does feel like an XFL of sort. In Europe, right? I mean, traditional spring football played a, I mean, is that, what is that? Is there a goal just to literally be that spring football turned the div or are they looking to compete? I mean, there's no, it's a weird over there, cause it's not like they're competing with the NFL. You know what I mean? Right. Well, the one thing that they are competing with is the NFL is planning to go to Germany. They have these ain't. They these games in England. They, they don't want any part of that. That they're well aware right now that they are not the NFL and they don't want to be in competition with that because I mean, it. Anybody that tries to do that will will lose. They, they have found their niche. A lot of leagues in Europe play during this time of the year. There's a lot. I can keep track of how many leagues there are over there right now, playing at this moment. Now they're they're taking a they're they're. They're taking a prom time of the year for them. To, to get out there and play football. And they know that they're being noticed now where they wouldn't be, if they were playing it in fall. E they're competing against other traditional football leagues right now, or other like soccer leagues. Now traditional American football leagues over there, but I'll tell you though, the thing that makes the difference is, is that. There's a whole lot more money behind the elf than there is any of the other leagues. Even the German football league. They're they're they're, they're probably number two on the list over there. I'm not real sure. Poland has a monster monster program over there as well. But there's just a lot more that has gone into the elf and a lot more. I guess you'd say there's just a lot, a lot more. Media put into it. To get more eyes on it. And, and they have really drawn from the, from the, the strongest talent over there in Europe. In terms of the money and influence and things behind it. Is there anything. Notable in terms of that in terms of ownership or funding. Not really. I mean, these teams are. Our, I feel like that they are owned by the league. At least starting out, I don't know, 100% how that's done. I do know that these, these, all these teams have taken names from, from world league of American football or NFL Europe. However you want to, you want to take your resurrected names that are. Or that are familiar. Everything is in promotion right now. Like they're just making sure that they're getting their, their product in front of as many eyes as possible. And, and so far they're being successful with that. So, Do we have any way of knowing viewership audience at all? I mean, I know it's so hard even with the streaming and the TVs and the networks sort of. Any idea of how much this is resonating with people. There is a way to know. There, there is a. There's a, let me get to it here. I can, I can get to the Twitter page. For the group that does most of this. Hang on a second here. They always come out with what's going on. With. With the, the viewership that that's going on. It's R a N is, is the name ran? The hashtag has ran elf. And if you search that on Twitter, you can go when you can, you can find exactly what's going on. Cause they keep track of all that. And, and they, they, they give you all of the information about who did, what, what games got, what viewership. They are keeping track of it. So if you, it is searchable, you can figure it out and you can't find it. I don't know that they have streaming numbers though. I don't know that they, that they really know exactly what's going on. With, with people like over here in the states. They are keeping track and, and it is, it is getting a lot of traction. There are still some players or excuse me, some places. That can have fans at the field yet. But Hamburg. Just put tickets for sale for their next game. And they sold out in six minutes. So if that tells you anything about how big this, this is over there. I mean, are we talking tens of thousands of viewers, hundreds of thousands of viewers? I mean, it's so hard to just in terms of Europe and, and, and. You know, America is such this massive, you know, when we're trying to look at, you know, Debating viewership even with Canada, but I mean, do we know roughly the number of viewers are getting. I don't know those numbers and, and you're when you're trying to the search for it, you're going to get a lot of soccer stuff. But I don't know the exact number. Of of the viewers that they have gotten so far. I know that it is out there because I have seen the tweet, but I've not, I've not really reported on that part. Of ESR. I really don't know the numbers. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Is there. In terms of the players involved, are there. Is this, are we attracting maybe out of there, out of the realm American players over there? Are there, is there anyone that the traditional American football fan would know or are these mostly European grown talent? Mostly European grown talent with some recognizable names. Derrius Robinson is one of the names that has a he's he's played in a few bounced around the NFL. A little bit. Madre. London is a name that people will, will recognize from recent. If they paid any attention to the spring league. Or the FCF fan controlled football. He was in both Louise, although he didn't do a whole lot in FCF. That's not his fault. Fans kind of screwed that one up. We're seeing those guys. Derrius Robinson is playing special teams. I had had a conversation with, with somebody on the, on square the other day, about how important special teams is. He scored two touchdowns on specialty. Engineer's a quarterback. He's also got an interception age returned for a touchdown. Monetary London, like I said, the running back he's 624 yards in two games with seven touchdowns. You've got a lot of the quarterbacks, Jacob. O'Connor. Some of the other guys. Zach Edwards. He's the guy that's from America. So there are some, some American players with names that you would recognize. There's also some people from the Japanese game in this that you're going to recognize if you paid attention to the spring league with OMI. My dude there he's he's in there and he's not doing bad. He's got a few catches and a touchdown. So, you know, these guys are, but a lot of the plays are being made by guys that are home grown talent. Because they're already a lot more familiar with what's going on on that field. And they're not really having to acclimate to anything over there. Cause it's, it's just natural to them. Is this something we're in a different year when there wasn't such travel restrictions with COVID and everything that maybe they would have attracted more players. I mean, is this a good star? And would you see. Yeah, potentially this time next year, as opposed to the USFL or whatever here, that players would be traveling over there to go play. I actually think if we're going to a point in time with, with, with less travel restrictions with less COVID. Regulations. We may not see as many American players over there. You know, the they're going to be competing with Lisa had been taking a time off, like the CFL last year. Like the XFL. You know, some of those guys. There's some, some of those American guys would be in the XFL that year. No doubt. There's. I've said this before everything is playing this spring right now has got a talent level that we may never see again. You've got guys that played in the NFL on indoor football leagues right now. You know, indoor football teams right now, you've got a guy with the, with the skill set that I keep bringing his name up. But. And he's just proving, you know, that. That situation determines success more than talent does, but Madre, London, he would not be playing overseas if we had an XFL, maybe not even if the, if, if we had anything that stopped guys that came out of school, when he did from going to pro days and stuff, he may be in the NFL if he had a better option or opportunity, if we didn't have COVID. So a lot of these guys could still be over there. But I would say that come, come next year, depending on how they structured their, their contracts there. If he signed, if though, if. If those guys signed the two year deals. I would say that once restrictions. Get going or get taken away and, and a whole lot less COVID going on. That you may not see as many recognizable American names. But you will see some because there will be opportunity. But you think is there'll be just because right now there's such a vacuum for places for these players to go. The thing that that's why a lot of them have gone over there. Yeah, there's not that much going on right now. You know, the CFL has not started yet. The spring league was about it for, for a springtime for us right now. You know, we really don't know what's going on. Exactly what the XFL, we got the USFL coming up next year. So, you know, there are a lot more opportunities to play American football in the states. Where, where it's, you know, viewership is king. We got. You know, just the amount of people that watch football. Here, just that outnumbers everybody else. So, you know, most people would want to play here, but I, again, You know, there'll be a lot of American players over there. There's always a lot of American players. Playing in your European leagues. And not just the elf. How was the quarterback play over there? Cause I know sometimes you get these start-up leagues, like the XFL, you. There's it takes a little while, right? Because there's only so many quarterbacks and the teams and, you know, like even it's like a dropdown from the ex, from the NFL, what's the quarterback play been like so far in the elf. It's rural hard to judge at this moment, guys like Zach Edwards, man, he was, he was running for his life and week one, but he was slinging it off. Schedule. And him hitting his target. I would say around week four or five, you'll really be able to understand what these quarterbacks can do because by then the offensive lines will have meshed. They would have gotten really used to the playbook. You're not seeing a whole lot of issues. With with guys. Being real inaccurate. You know, of course you're going to see it, but, you know, A quarterback play is not something that, that is lacking there because these guys are, are. Are really being pushed into making plays. Like they haven't in any other league, like a stick. Cause like I said, they, they just been running around. Cause I've always got guys in their face. So it's real hard to judge at this point. Exactly how good the quarterback play is, but so far, you know, There's been a lot of big numbers come out. In terms of [unknown]. I'm like, I'm like rapid fire, like. I got a line. In terms of. In terms of pay, right player pay, obviously been a big issue with spring league finger till football didn't didn't pay them. You know, they paid it. Wasn't the best. How were the, how was the compensation for the players over there? It's it's a little bit it's it's in between. Arena league football and the XFL it's right smack in between one thing that they definitely don't have to worry about as room and board. They don't have to worry about insurance. The teams pay all that. Travel actually, they pay that too. But for the players there, it's right smack in the middle of between the, the IFL right now, which is top dog in the arena leagues. And, and what guys are getting paid in the XFL. But it's still better than either spring league or fingernail football. Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Most definitely better than both of those. And then finally, so we're week, we're going into week three here, right this weekend, you know? So we record how many weeks what's the schedule, like the rest of the season. We have. You know, I've just closed it going into week three, like you said, there is. I lost it. Here I'll I'll I'll edit this. Yeah. Yeah. Hang on. Let me. No worries. Okay. Wow, where the hell the site go. All right. Let's do it again. Hang on. That's okay. How's Paul. He's good. He had a, he's had, he had a work. We talk about on the podcast. He had a work accident last night, where he was filming. I saw the video and saw what he had to say. And that was crazy. Yeah. He's got to go back. So he went to the doctor last night and then he's, he's back there right now. So he's there. Just want to make sure he's checked out. So yeah. We did our part this morning quick, and then he had to go back to deal with that. That's great. You don't say. Let me see if I can figure it out like this. Upcoming 1, 2, 3, 4. Six seven. So. Well, looking at dragons. 10 Weeks. 10 Week, regular season. The 12 week regular season, each team gets two bys. And then, and. Traditional playoffs. Yes. Yes. If you had to sum up an elevator pitch, the elf for someone that was curious about football, Yara was saying like, what's your ten second pantry. What, what would be your pitch be for the elf? You've never seen anything like it, like this, this looks like American football that we know. But there is that little bit of European style behind it. The games, the way that they're played, the way the fans interact is a whole lot, like they do at. At soccer games over in Europe. It's kind of a mess, but between the two, but it is a hundred percent American football. So you're going to know what you're watching. You don't have to worry about that. Just like you would with some of the other leagues that have been coming around here. Here lately. There's there's you know, NFL rules. It's it's. Good brand of football. To watch. And it's a good way to, to get to it's a new. To be fans of new teams and new players, and learn more about how the world plays American football, because there's, there's so much going on around the world. And most people don't even know about. Last question for you today about, so we talked on the show about MLF B and you know, obviously the update we were talking off, off. Camera last night about the update they had about the USFL. You know, I know that they had, you know, had, at some point said they were going to play this summer and now it looks like they're eyeing spring next year. Am I reading that right? Any updates on majorly football? It's looking like 20, 22, but the unofficial official word is that they have not shut the door on 2021. There's still could be a 14 demo league. You know, demo season. Go on. Yeah. Yeah. I'm hoping so, because I'll keep that part private, but I'm hoping that it comes about. This year, but. You know, that's the official unofficial story is. Not completely shut the door on a 20, 21 season. This USFL announcements kinda kinda smacked him in the face a little bit. And that's why that statement came out the way that it did. Why did. It took me by shock. Yeah. They, they, they really weren't looking for, for, for that to happen. You know, they, a lot of guys that they might've been eyeing as coaches or players. Would potentially turn them down because they wanted to play in the USFL. I keep hearing this they're playing summer. I'm like, okay, it's July. It's July 1st right now. Like. You know, it's the same thing, you know, and I know we talk a lot about that with the XFL people. Well, I come July I'll know for sure. Or. Come August. I'm like, okay, well we're July now. So at some point I, you know, when, when is that cut off going to be for when it's actually feasible to get a football league going. I'd say we're weeks away from like, there's gotta be some, some solid I'm talking about. They better already be doing a whole lot more than what I know. And, and. I talked to the CEO often. So. We are weeks away from knowing whether or not this thing is going, because if they don't make an announcement the next couple of weeks, there's just no way for them to get even a 14 demo off the ground and going by the time the NFL starts. And that's not what they're wanting to do. They don't want to be opposite the NFL at all. Yeah. And you're, you're referring to MLSP, but the exact same thing could be said about the XFL where you. And we both know, but like this. I mean, I mean, we're talking hours here where they would need to design by, you know, we're we just, you just get to a point where there's simply not enough time. I mean, look how long the EFL. Elf did their rollout, you know, over the last year. I mean, there's just, there's there gets to be a point where we're we're, you know, we're at the finite amount of time that we have to do something that just can't be done. So. Go ahead. [unknown]. Any other, this is great. Any other hot tags, anything else that we didn't ask you about? I appreciate you with my barrage of elf questions. Hey, no problem. That it's it's it's a brand new league. It's it's exciting. It's I'm excited to see some guys that, that. It's proving my point. I've been saying for a long time, I know you've heard me say it. Plenty of people have everybody who's read what I've, what I've written or follows me on Twitter. You know that I'm about this worldwide talent as global talent that we have out there in American football. And it was proven my point. There are so many talented guys over there and I mentioned some American players, but you know, you've got to really watch these games and, and get to know some of these guys. Cause there is. So, I mean, There's no reason, except for maybe just the opportunity. I said it earlier situations determine success more than talent does. And situations are slim in the NFL. So, and a lot of times they're dictated by who, you know, and now not how good you are. So, you know, I, I said it to, to somebody earlier this year. If it wasn't for Sean Payton being the offensive coordinator in Dallas, we wouldn't know who Tony Romo is, but they went to the same college and that's why Roma was signed in Dallas. So. You know, that's we wouldn't know. We wouldn't even know who Tony Romo was. If it wasn't for that situation. So, you know, you've got guys over there that, that had been playing this game, their whole lives. And a lot of people here in the states don't know about how long they've been playing American football around the world. And this is a very, very good way. And the production level is high. It is very good. Very well put out by the elf. You won't be disappointed. By by what the product is on the field. I promise you that if you check it out, it's worth the five bucks. It's worth the 117 for the whole season and the whole get up. It's worth it. To sit here and, and be able to even stream it on your computer or whatever device. It's worth it's worth putting in the money. That's a watch these guys, cause this is really, really good football and this league should be around for a long time. Yeah. It's one of those things where I understand it and, you know, subscriptions and finances and setback, you got to pick something and ride with that. And if you want to support football, if you want that football, I mean, To me 120 bucks, whatever it is, no brainer. You know, if that's something that you're into, you know, obviously fan controlled football was Twitch ad supported, but you know, I just think at some point you go to a movie and get popcorn. That's 50 bucks, you know? I mean, whether we, yeah. What are we debating here versus getting the whole season of football? So. Josh really appreciate it. I'm going to put this. Interview really late in the show. And we'll get you to listen to the whole episode this week. And. Really appreciate your time. Thanks man. Thanks dude.

Episode 46 - “All In” on C-218?

It's Friday morning. Approximately like shortly after midnight, because we. Drop these things right at midnight now, because Reed wants to get a jump on everyone else. Oh, wow. Like to keep it fresh and hot out of the oven. Welcome to the mark cast. Thank you for joining us here for another episode. Read what's going on, man. Are we, what is cloud? And are we chasing it? We're not chasing cloud serve, but the people that are in our mentions on our verified accounts, like they. They get clout. They like think they're getting cloud for like, You know, hitting us up on Twitter. And saying, oh, look at how I own these verified accounts. Calm down. We're not chasing clouds though. I do. Cause I don't, you, you famously are older than I am, but I also feel like you are more hip to like the lingo, right? Like Brayden said, T I L the other day I had the Google that I didn't know what til met today. I learned, I didn't know what that you didn't know what that meant. I didn't know what that meant, but I just like, I, yeah, I did. I dunno. I mean, we're, I feel like we're, I think, you know, I think the 40 hours a week. We we've. I was sitting there the other night, you know, answering YouTube comments. I'm like, I'm working pretty hard if this is, I don't know what cloud is or what I'm chasing. I just feel like we're, we are working hard. I don't think, I don't think we're tasting clown in. The sense, like we don't argue just. To like, go all, look at, look at what I did to. So-and-so look. They take screenshots of their tweets. They want people to gas. I mean gassing up means, you know, like giving them prompts and like making the, you know, It's like you gas up your friends. If they're feeling down, you tell them like things maybe that might kind of not be true to can make them feel better and give them like a self-esteem boost. So you get people gassing up. Other people like last night, No two nights ago, I should. We announced that that's technically Friday. Two nights ago, you know, you had one guy that had like 50 followers, but yet his engagements were through the roof on things he was saying to me, I'm like, okay, you're just, you're just going for cloud here. You're passing your little tweets around in your little group chats and that's. That's basically what I meant. You go for cloud, because you say things that you don't necessarily believe with to get, to be popular. That's that's the way I look at. Oh, no, I just, I saw that we were accused of just CFL staff. We're trying to like, get, get them on things. And I'm like, I feel like we're doing the work. I feel like that's. Anyway, that was, that was my thing about that. You, you had mentioned in our interview with Steve Simmons, that we just did a tremendous interview. I bet I looked concerned. I think so I have a tooth issue going on. I currently have. And so I feel like I sound different today. Dorothy says I sound the same. I feel like I sound different. We might be going through. I broke my tooth. Paul is what I did is I actually fell. I actually broke my front tooth. A wonderful story. But right now I have a bar holding it in place. So if I look concerned, if I'm like licking my teeth, And, and, and ultimately I may lose this tooth and then they will have a whole cosmetic change. But anyway, if I look concerned, if I sound weird over the next couple of weeks, I just feel like I have a lift kind of lift going on with my bar and my mouth. I don't hear it, but I'll, I'll pay attention more or less, you know, you and me having problems with our teeth now where the Spiderman pointing. Pointing pointing gift. That's what we are. That's what we are. Also. The wife and I are, we're taking a little R and R the Vegas. I don't know if we have any Vegas. If you're a Vegas listener. And you want to go grab a drink here. I'll be in Vegas over that. I'm not going to say exact dates, but I'll be in Vegas over the next coming weekend. So if we have any famous list, I have no idea if we have any Vegas listeners. I know we have like, you know, Jen is in California and then we have max in Texas and then we have Zach over in St. Louis. But. Anyway, if we have any biggest listeners, I just thrown that out there and hang out with me and my bum too. And your wife as well. Let's let's also, let's also hope for good vibes that the Vegas golden Knights pull off a miracle and come back. For my sanity and, you know, cause there you. They're my second favorite team after the devils. And of course, Reed wants to attend a Stanley cup final game, which will be really cool for. You get to do that. I've done that before, so it's awesome. Are they playing tonight though? As we record? No. Like, maybe this is all day, but maybe at this point, you know, There's no. Yeah, they're playing tonight. 5:00 PM. Pacific time. Let's let's, let's be optimistic. It'd be out there. It's like, ah, couple of other quick things in the whole plug, all this stuff. We, I set up, we did this all, and then I think you had to go out of town. I set up a whole offers page. If you're someone that likes to support the show wants stuff, we have an Amazon link. You can borrow your Amazon stuff. Use our code. We get, you know, it's like a tip jar thing. We also have all the manscape links on there. We'll talk about, and Paul's a blow that the stress reliever I can never pronounce it. It's a camo suit. Comoso. Tomasa best maybe. Not messiness. That's my wow. The mark cast.com/offers. We have all our offers on there and there's like all this stuff you would normally get, like on Amazon, all these things. But if you do it through there, we get to, if you want to support, you know, again, we, we, we don't call our merge a lot. The mark has.com/merge. You can get merged. I got, I ordered a shirt that's coming. Cause I realized I have a manscape shirt, but I don't have a mark cache shirt. So I did order that. But anyway, You know, or leave a review, the mark house.com/review. Please subscribe, you know, a lot of work today and, and, and things that we're doing. But anyway, yeah, the Marc has.com/offers. I thought that was good. And we also have more partnerships coming down the line. That I'm working on. Currently setting up a sports memorabilia shop is going to is going to come on and, you know, and, and, and provide some great discounts on some great signed an autograph merchandising, some collectibles. So we have a lot of things going on. If you want some. For the show, please, please, please. Click those affiliate links or do yourself a manscape. Lawnmower 4.0 or any of the other products, you know, of course, 20% off. Use the code. I got two different podcasts. I'm like, ah, It's like a, it's like a competing battle in my brain, but of course, mark has the code to use 20% off. Manscaped. Yeah. Anyway, we don't, I don't like to, I rather would. Talk about my broken teeth at the top of the show, but I do think we need to plug everything every once in a while. Good show today, we got all the big C two, one eight stuff, all the player retirements. And then there's all this big XFL. The players didn't get paid bankruptcy stuff. I have, we have everything coming up. Nixle ski. He is a chief commercial officer at points. Bet, Canada, a great interview. He's heading up. His phone was melting yesterday or two days ago. He said with all that single game sports betting and all the teams are reaching out. So Nick's going to come on. Paul, what did you think of our chat with hall of Famers, Steve? Dave Simmons. It was really good. You know, it was really. It was kind of like, I like to think of like a rush light where he was, you know, he was kind of very critical. In a, in a very. Non dismissive way, if that makes sense. He's very critical of the XFL, which, you know, We're definitely people that accept criticism of the product. We started this whole, this whole podcast follow. You know, When we criticize the other side. That's when that's, when things get crazy and people go for clout and try to take a second. But it was, it was very enlightening. A conversation with Steve. And yeah. Just stay tuned for that one. Yes. And then, and this is kind of some bonus spring league stuff. Jackson, Leonard, he's a listener of the show long time fan. He played in the Vegas showcase, you know, two spring leagues ago. And then he was in San Antonio at the Alamo dome. Jackson's got. You know, stories about Brian Woods, thoughts on the USFL stuff. And so I really appreciate him reaching out and we kind of went back and forth. And so Jackson's going to be on later in the show in the kind of the spring league section. So I re I appreciate his time is off. Very cool. Very good stuff. So the big story this week, of course. C two, one eight that, that passed. It's basically long story short. You don't have to do parlays anymore. You can have a single game sports bet. That's now federal law in Canada. Yeah, it, the thing about it too, is because it was a private member's bill, I guess, very low odds of those ever passing Kevin wo. He was kind of the, the assignee on it. He, he, his quote that I had bolded here, he goes one general manager of a team. And president said to me from the CFL, this is as big as television back in 1954, the magnitude of single sports betting in this country can be dated back to the fifties almost 60 plus years ago. So I, you know, like, which is a listener max. It was funny cause he messaged me and he goes, yeah. The member, how everyone complains about the TV deal for the CFL, but this is just as big. I'm like, yeah. Cause it's anyway to me, we gave them with it with Steve. We gave it with Nick. It still feels. I think if you are someone that bets. This is good. You, I don't think you are going to attract many people that don't bet already to watch the CFL, Paul, whether your thoughts, you gamble a lot more, not a lot more, but I mean, you gamble more than I do on sports. Well, first and foremost, stop gambling. If you're not going to win. Second of all. I think that there's been an increase, like. There was, there's been a stigma attached to gambling. There's a stigma attached to anything that's illegal. You know, across the board, in the, in, in the United States, like. I won't get too political. I won't be. Like marijuana legislation, for example. There was a stigma attached to that now, like, you know, almost half the states have legal marijuana for, for recreational use and. More than half now, have it for medical use. So basically what it boils down to is like now that things are de-stigmatized. I think you've seen the growth of gambling in the United States and maybe. Maybe just, maybe that's what they're hoping for up there in Canada is that now there's, now there's not a, you know, a stigma attached to it. And you're going to have like, Steve. Came on, talked about, you know, you're going to have a draft Kings potential place in, you know, CFL stadiums to go. Place a bet. And, and maybe that's that's, that's that'll help it, but I don't think that, you know, like, you know, there's no silver bullet that's gonna solve this thing. It's, it's gotta be a variety of things all at once. And it seems like there's just this one track. Oh, this will fix it. This'll fix it as opposed to a variety of things like a football game from EA sports or something. Right. You know? Help mark. I don't know. To me, the big, scary thing with this is, and Nick talks. You know, This is going to be up to the provinces. It's going to be up to the teens. And so Nick and we get into it in the interview, but you know, certain teams have reached out and that's where it gets scary to me because it's like, so then you're going to have like, made me Edmonton's really up on it and they're going to be utilizing it. And it goes back to the same problems we've always had, right. Where some of the teams are more successful. Some of the more populated teams aren't as successful, you know, the community on teams or whatever. And so. It still feels, you know, It still feels messy. And I asked them. I'm like, is this something where there's so much money involved, that the CFL literally just needs to get out of the way and let all of these smart people and marketers do their job. And I kind of think that's what it is right. Is it's like just CFL, like shut up and go. I just let us bad and let us run all these things. Cause. Yeah, like Nick with, with points bats, you know, th they, they do this, right. This is all they do. And so coming in and I feel like they can, you know, they're ready to set up this infrastructure. Like they just needed the go ahead. But I do worry, like. I [unknown]. This is just, feels like a lot of heavy lifting to me for the CFL. So I completely agree with you all there. Speaking of heavy lifting for the CFL, nice little segue there. Wow. A lot of retirements going down. A lot of retirements happening right now. Notable names include like Brad cynically. Hopefully I'm pronouncing that correct. And. Joan Sondra, I guess. Is now not playing because of the car crash. He was a monopoly on that note was a scheduled. Earn 150,000, 150,000. Yeah. 160,000. In 2021, I got to get new glasses now. And I guess. For him, it wasn't really like a, you know, a lack of money. It was just like taking care of his health. I mean, do you really want to, you. You know, we've, we've, we've heard so much about CTE coming out. The, you know, The most recent years about, you know, these, these. Gladiators nets, essentially banging heads and, you know, causing issues lived down a life as $160,000 really worth it. You know, Taking care of herself. Those priority. Yeah. Yeah. Th the Bratz monopoly one was a big deal. Yeah. He was kind of one of the big star receivers. It's interesting. We had talked about Jalen a couple of weeks ago. He was in that horrendous car accident. So it's like, I mean, the red blocks people are like they're out for the season. I mean, they're, you know, two of their star players are down. Yeah, what's crazy to me is, you know, we talk about the low pay of the CFL player sometimes. Yeah. 160,000. It's nothing to sneeze at. And he had some signing bonuses and stuff. And so like that's a sizable paycheck to walk away from. He's still going to be involved in the red blacks, like in the organization. What was really interesting. The riders defensive lineman, Chad Jeter retired. He's going to join the air force, but was so interesting to me. He was on rod Peterson show this week. Talking about how so many of these players, obviously we know, okay. Maybe they got jobs, you know, they've been offered 16 months, all these things. But the story that he told is when I'm living, you know, the six months out of the year, if I'm going up to play in the CFL, I'm still paying my mortgage in the states. A lot of these players, you know, still paying the mortgage. Maybe you've got a wife and kids, maybe you've got a partner, whatever, you know, you're doing these things. Then you're also paying to live up in Canada. Right? You got to get an apartment somewhere. Maybe you got to rent a car or you got to buy your groceries up there. And so he's like, you're almost pee. Yo plane two lives. You're living two lives during this time period. And then the money is so low anyway, right. For a lot of these guys. And so, you know, that coupled with, you know, being off for 16 months, you know, getting other jobs and things, just that idea of like, well, now I've got to go. Like, I couldn't imagine that like having that's why, like, I don't have a studio, you know, I work from home cause I don't want to have like another mortgage on top of what I'm doing. That makes sense. Totally. And we wish them the best of Lucky's joining you. He's joining the air force and we're, we're, we're happy that he's going to serve his country. And, you know, defend our freedoms and, you know, protect us. Another retirement. L Edmonton. Alex, Derek Dennis is stepping away. I guess, so you. That football doesn't provide the opportunity to him. And his quote is a football no longer provides the opportunity to be able to care for his family properly. So in all facets. So for that reason, he'll. Not be playing in the upcoming season. He has a big, you know, that, that struck a lot of people that it's basically like, you know, the, I mean, lack of a better word, you know, the money and everything. Isn't enough. You know, we talked, like I said, the Chad geezer story, you know, Playing up there. You know, everyone thinks, oh, you're this big football star. Well, it's a six month gig. You know, you're getting paid a fraction of what you're getting paid. And yeah, I mean that, th that, that sad, I know that, you know, a lot of these guys are our fan favorites and, you know, there's been a lot of questions about like, what are these teams going to look like come this year? And it is, I think people are going to be really shocked, you know, the, the. Players that are in the helmets. And, and, you know, are you going to recognize a lot of these teams with a lot of these guys going Taylor loft Nour? I retired as well. He was, he wasn't signed to a team right now. He was out on injury. There's a ton of like, these are just some of the ones that I organized together. I know there were a time this week. And if your favorite player wasn't on there, I apologize. These are kinda the ones, especially the brats monopoly one, which was a big deal in terms of like the star mega star power with like a contract that walked away. All right. My, my brain froze for a second. Sorry about that. Zoned out. Yeah, a lot of retirements. Again, you. We've raised this concern before we were like, oh, I wonder, you know, I wonder how many people are actually going to come back. I mean, the pandemic probably prioritized a lot of things for a lot of players, not making the kind of money that they make, you know? Down here in the NFL and, you know, that's, that's another concern that we always bring up when it comes to the CFL stuff. Speaking of more concerns. Saskatchewan Roughriders report a $7.5 million loss. In in 2020 and 2021 for not playing last year. Roughriders president Craig Reynolds says it's our biggest financial loss we've ever had in the club's history. It's going to be a multi-year challenge in that for. The reason why. I think this is the biggest crisis we face because it will now really affect the three years. And I think that's optimistic that it's just going to affect three years, but you know, what do you think green. Yeah, it is interesting. The one thing about this is, you know, they had to refund some of their season ticket sales, but then they're carrying over the 10 million and ticket sales from last year that this year. And so that's also revenue you're not going to get. Right. And in the wedding industry, we dealt with this last summer where we have a lot of canceled weddings, right. Everyone moved their weddings to this year. And that was on the, I talked a lot about, I do. My wedding podcast is we're basically living two years off of one season of revenue. Right. And this is very much, a lot of these CFL teams are going to be going through the same thing where any of that, you know, in the rough riders, aren't alone in this, right. I mean, this is just the most recent one that posted their losses, but. Carrying over a lot of these things. You're not getting that money this year as well now. And so they had to go, they had quite a credit cash cow. I know like the Edmonton team has a cash kind of a cash reserve too. And they're really going to have to dig into that. And they said also that some of the other quotes in the article was they got some Wade subsidies from the government. So they didn't get, yeah, the CFL didn't get any of those big loans, but a lot of the teams got like PPP loan, kind of like things to keep some of that. Some of their people, the staff and stuff involved. So. Very cool. I'm not in a very cool. That's unfortunate. Then the, why do I have to set very cool there. Good reporting where to be on it. A writer, a writer said, coach. Craig Dickinson predicts, surprise cuts. Warren's unprepared players are not going to last training camp. And I guess his, I guess his, his thought processes. That they're not going to be in shape, maybe. Yep. Is that where's that where he's going with this? Yeah. They're, they're not. You know, This was kind of the big thing last week at the end of that, I think this, I think this quote came out on Friday, but it kind of carried over to this week where you had a lot of people say I'm like, We'll just go to the gym. I go to the gym. Okay. It's like, no, like did. We hate to be in football shape. Is not to be in like, oh, I'm, I'm in cardio shape. Like I went and we've talked about this before, you know, being in my green shape for WWE is very different than being in like, okay, I'm fit. You know, look at the rock. Famously the rock, you know, owner of the XFL. I when he trained to come back at WrestleMania. And what was it? Orlando, Miami against Sienna. You know, he had. You know, we was in the best shape of his life and he came out to the ring and like five minutes in, you know, he was totally gassed. Couldn't whatever. It's these football guys, right? You know, you can. They're still working. They're still taking care of their family. And then they're trying to like stay in, you know, somewhat shape, but then to get back into football shape, that's a huge commitment. And it is they're, they're saying that there's going to be a lot of these guys that either don't want to, or are able or don't, but I don't think that that's a criticism more of like, this is just a terrible situation that they're in. You know, I mean, that's that goes to like, kind of like, you know, these, these players had to find jobs over the last two years. And maybe they're also looking like. Man I was working, you know, I don't know. I don't know the Canadian workweeks. I know that way they work us here, 40 hours a week, minimum and other countries. It's like, you know, 20 to 24 hours a week. And you, you have, you have a great. Living. You know, Great. Quality of life in, in other countries. And I don't know if it's like a 40 hour, a week thing up there in Canada, but. You know, all these players are probably looking at like I work 40 hours a week. I don't really have time take four or five hours. And get in football shape. That's also, that's also probably why there's some concerns about a lot of these people not making it through training camp. And I don't blame the players. I blame the circumstances. Exactly. It's not a, it's not a criticism. I. It's literally impossible to work a 40 hour week or whatever. And then also spent five hours a day at the gym. I mean, it's just not, so I don't, it's not like a criticism or a poopoo. It's like, there's only so many hours in the day, you know? That's very true. Craig Dickinson also. Kept talking about how. This is great. I love that they're winging it and they're winning and winning. And he said the closest parallel to what they're doing with the wing, through the wing in the season. Is that kind of like the lockout that wiped out the NHL season back in 2004, 2005. And. I guess a one. What he's talking about is like, there was a whole complete, no, like one year hockey. Didn't get played and it costs NHL TV deals like. ESPN didn't I believe that's when the ESPN did not renew their deal with NHL and they had to take a lesser deal with NBC. That's now been corrected because you know, the NHL is starting to gain again in popularity. But Dickinson said, I don't know any of these NFL coaches. They probably refuse my calls. I called them. And. You said they basically like the football staff it's going to be, yeah. Yeah. They didn't get the football play, but it's like, how, how are we going to deal with these guidelines? How are we going to get everything going? I mean, you know, Rod said on his show, you know, I mean, they, they say that we're close to the starting air that are we close to the finish line or are we still very far away from the starting line? I mean, this is a lot of work still to be done. I mean, we're, we're June 24, 25th as you listen to this, but you know, training camp started in, in, in two weeks. Yeah, we were getting some beat reporters scheduled to come on to talk about those, but it will be interesting once the players, because you know, everyone's kind of in quarantine right now, how that's going to look. The big, the big concern now for us traveling up for the gray cup. I'm pretty sure we'll get everything under control Canada. Before this happens. Justin Trudeau is resisting the pressure from businesses to open the U S border for summer. Of course, a lot of people love to go up to Canada in the summer. It's beautiful for those few weeks. But you have a great Greg great summer. I'm not trying to disparage your lovely country. But you know, that, that basically the border chief announced an extension of the current border rules. That shut down the border. Until at least July 21st. Did you play? Have any plans to go to Canada this year or. Well, we're going there. We're trying to go to BC here in the middle of October. I mean, we still got a little bit away, but yeah. I mean, obviously those players going that we're going to get, you know, exemption, quarantining, whatever things, but. Yeah. They're they're still. W w we were the problem for a long time. The us was the problem for a long time. They shut down their border to us. And now they've kept the border shut down to keep them out of here. It's it's. It's interesting how it's flipped. You know, I do still think, like, I still believe in the exemption. I've had my second vaccine for how many months now? I should be able to go up there and be like, Hey, I'm vaccinated. I'm cool. Like, you know, maybe. I don't know. Maybe I'm just being completely, I guess, aggressive with wanting to go to Canada. I always, I I've told you this. I want to go like Wayne's world with her. With like the VIP card going through like, oh, we're good. We're. We're good. We're good. You know, like, like multipass. Saskatchewan premier Scott. Was that empty? It was at an empty mosaic stadium on Sunday in Saskatchewan. To let the. Let the people know that they've received the key COVID-19 vaccination requirements. Of course, isn't Saskatchewan doing great with their vaccine numbers. Also, I believe. One of the least populated areas. They're killing it, but that's the thing is because the numbers are great. There. But you gotta go, you gotta go everywhere, but they're not getting, and this relates to our next story too, with the bombers in there and the riders. But yeah, he wants to fill that. He says three weeks from today on Sunday, the 11th. They're going to be no more, no more limits, you know, we're, we're full up and back again. So. It's exciting. That's the luck with that. Hopefully, hopefully that, that means that, you know, Interstate travel, inner inner province, Schulte, provincial travel. Doesn't, you know, bring their numbers up again in Saskatchewan so they can keep everything open. And get a full stadium. The one of the blue bombers in Saskatchewan Roughriders. Disgusting idea of joint practices during training camp. To prepare for the 2021 CFL season. Regina is of course, just a six hour drive from Manitoba. And, you know, let's see. It's way better in Saskatchewan right now, that'd be doing all this, you know? Yeah, definitely. And I mean with, you know, if you're doing joint practices, You know, there's, there's the, the, the idea that you can go full speed a little bit better than you would on your own teammates. And that kind of, you know, like, How he brought up the concerns about the NFL, not having a preseason games and it kind of led to a lot of injuries. And, and it. For lack of better term. I mean, look what happened to the NBA? The off season was so shortened in the NBA this year. A lot of people got injured, like hiree and James harden and cost the Brooklyn nets a title, but I digress. You know the idea that they can go full speed and get in game speed by practicing with another team is a great idea. Yeah. We last week, the Alex were, I can't remember the Alex and the stampede or something where they were anyway, there is a couple of these different teams are talking and then, and Jim Olin had brought up in the scheduling. Remember that, you know, BC lions are kind of out on an island. So I don't know if they're, you know, maybe there'll be four sets of joint practices and then, then out on their own, I think. The first couple of weeks of the CFL are going to be fascinating with no preseason and no like offer 16 months. And I think Don on his thing, he's like, oh, I think it's going to be fascinating. Like the players are going to be so arrested and I'm like, yeah, There's a thing to be like too well, rested. Like, am I going to play football in 16 months? I'm coming back on the field. Like that's a long off season, you know? Yep. Jeremy O'Day. I said we're exploring right now to see if there's a potential for this joint practice to happen, to be great. From an evaluation standpoint, to see our guys competing against another team. That's happening all pretty fast. So. Cool. We're gonna take a break. You know, do the commercial thing going to come back and I'll talk to Nick. And Steve Simmons right after this. You're it's, we're not going to change anything, your thing every once in a while. Your internet now is lagging a little bit like you'll. You know how it. All of it, then you're kind of, kind of stirred up. I wish zoom could just like, no. And like keep the audio the whole time. You know, like, like lead the video free, keep the audio. Cause you know how it is an answer. I. And then I get kind of tries to catch it up, ice. Crazy. I hate zoom. It's okay. Welcome back. One of the things Nick and Steve for their time. Of course. Great. Talk with them. And it's going to be interesting to see how this. This pans out. Yeah. We really appreciate that. You know, I don't know the single game sports betting. We'll see. I feel like. I'll believe it when I see it I'll believe I don't, I don't think I, I get. I think it's, I think it's a literal coin flip. If it's going to work out and bring those, bring those dollars in. Yeah. So bear with me here that we got, this is the big XFL. We still got some more CFL stuff coming up. This big article came out this week. Darren Kaplan, Daniel Kaplan with ever talking from yep. The athletic they're, they're finalizing all the XFL bankruptcy stuff. Right. So. You're going to hear a lot and I've already had people messaging me. You're going to hear a lot about like active players, not getting paid, getting paid pennies on the dollar, getting paid, you know, 8% of what they were supposed to get. This is what's happening. And again, I I've already sat on online and Twitter and stuff. You know, current XFL management should not be held responsible for past decisions. Right? So any decisions that were made, this was Vince, you know, previous company, obviously I understand that, you know, they brought in the XFL, there's the history there, but. All the players got paid up through the end of when they played. Right. Okay. So. Then when the, when the league shuttered, then there was like that another week or two before they declare bankruptcy. The players were also paid for that time. And at the time a lot of people thought, wow, well, that's, that's cool. Like, because there was always the rumors, like they were going to come back and do the playoffs and the championship game and not like, you know, skip the rest of the season. When we all thought COVID was only going to be like a four week thing or whatever. Right. So the players got paid for that. So then when the bankers who self came out, Kenneth Sparrow. You know, we know kind of the Sparrow he's doing the players union stuff. And so he's going all right, guys, we are going to submit claims for all the players and we're going to get paid for that remaining seven weeks. Already, there's a problem. And I love Kenneth. And we've talked about this with the XFL news riders and stuff. Love Kenneth. Seven weeks is even generous. Cause that's assuming every player would have made it to the playoffs. Right. Right. Ideally, it should have been, you know, the contract should have been five weeks. And, and with these XFL contracts, there were so many different like incentives. They had like wind bonus is they had playoff bonus is, you know, it was very incentive structure. The base salary was only like $1,080 or something a week. Right. So. Kenneth kind of got all these guys really excited and they're like, oh, well, we're going to get, you know, seven weeks times, like we're going to get 14 grand a piece. Like that's a ton of money. Like we're going to get all this money and it's going to be great. So because the XFL paid them through the end of the bankruptcy. All basically like all that other time than afterwards, it doesn't matter. Like if they hadn't paid them for those last couple of weeks. They would have been there where they've been like entitled to more so because of that. They are looked at as a non priority case. So like a priority case to be getting money back from the bankruptcy, I would imagine, would be like, let's say century link, lumen field still needed some money or whatever. Right. I'm just making up right. Roughnecks river. Maybe that would have been considered more of a priority case. So because I'm like going back and forth. Sorry, but are you following me? You're following. Yeah. So, cause I'm getting a lot of questions about this. So because they are not a priority case. Now that they're actually getting paid out. There's not enough money left in the bankruptcy fund. To, to remake everybody whole. So that's why they're only getting that like eight to 12%. It's only going to be like, you know, $500 a person or whatever. I have the number somewhere here. So. It's a, it's a mess of things. And, and, and again, I love Kenneth and I get all that, but I do feel like it started with setting those. Bonuses and incentives aside. No one ever should have expected seven weeks of base pay knowing that not everyone was going to make it to the player. Well, I guess. I guess they, I guess ATM's. Okay. I guess maybe then they would have had the base pay for that for the playoffs, but not, it just, it set a really unrealistic expectation that they were all going to get this 14, 15,000. And apparently Kenneth, when he was talking with Daniel to give these quotes and stuff, Kinda thought he was talking to an agent or something like didn't even really realize anyways. So it's really a mess. There's a lot of questions about it, but that's when you see these, you know, the players thought they would be getting like 7,280, which was that, you know, a thousand whatever a week, times, seven weeks. But it's only going to be five 80 to seven 50, but that's. That's for time. That's like a bonus. They still got paid for that first five, six weeks. Does that all make sense? It does make sense. And basically now it's like a situation where. It's kind of, it's kind of a double-edged sword because like, if you hadn't gotten paid. You would be getting, you would be a higher priority now. But since you got paid, And you're like, well, I got paid, but now you're, you're falling down the list of priorities where other T other things are, are getting 75 to 80% of what's left in that bankruptcy fund. And you're getting the 8% and it's really unfortunate. I'm not sure. Maybe, you know, I don't know if Kenneth was maliciously leading people, I would assume not because he's a player he's looking out for the players. And maybe it was just someone who, who like explained it to them incorrectly. Maybe. That's that's the one. That's what I'm talking up to. Yeah. So this was interesting. So Josh Davis has a tremendous article up on use up. He goes into all these numbers. He has a screenshot of all the different documents that Josh really did. Everyone could I, Mark Barry was like Joshua, tremendous job with us. So this was a quote from Josh. He wrote to me, he goes, there's no way the decision to pay them until the end of the bankruptcy in a prior year. From the end of the season to the bankruptcy, wasn't on purpose because had they stopped after week five, they'd be a priority. But by law, by law, they'd be able to a hundred percent of what was left on their deal, which went through May 31st. Now, whether it been what, you know, Seven to. I think it was more like, you know, seven to 10,000 per player. 400 Players, you know, that'd be like $4 million, right? So like that extra week or two that they paid. Gotham out of the, oh, I mean, they were the old, like four or 5 million, you know, however you do the math on that, but it saved them a ton of money. But anyway, That's the big, like XFL thing, all this craziness, but I just, it's hard to, to wrap your head around a helps reading Josh's article XFL. On, Newshub seen all those documents in the screenshots. And I tried to spend last night kind of going through and making that as concise as I could. That kind of makes sense. If you think about it, it's like, damn. You know, there was no winning situation either. You could have gone without the pay and then have to wait to the end of this year to get your back pay or get those two weeks, the three weeks or whatever that was left. And then be like, oh, well now. Crap. I don't get that much. More, and you're kind of more out money than anything. If. If we're looking at it correctly. Unfortunately. Yeah. And this is more a condemnation on like how bankruptcy works and like the accent. I mean, like, you know, this is no one's ever made whole with the bankruptcy. Like no one ever gets a hundred percent of their claims. So even like that alone that they were the guy, they never, whether got like a hundred percent of what they wrote. So I think setting those unrealistic expectations, he also kind of also had a quote talking about how they think that Brian and the USFL they're going to be keeping an eye on him because of obviously, you know, where he doesn't pay the players. Now, what are they doing? And that he thinks they're going to take a huge chunk of the spring league players into the USFL, which we already kind of knew, but it was just interesting that I thought. A quote from Kenneth on that. That's going to be that. You know, again, We've talked to other people who have been involved in the USFL, they have their concerns about, you know, We discussed it less than a year ago. The food situation at the spring league and stuff like that. Now, you know, here are more concerns. So it's going to be interesting to see if, if, if they, they keep on it, then pay their players. Do we want to talk about this Oreo thing? I didn't know if you had this amazing. I thought this was amazing by the way, this is like, this was incredible. Like I saw it. I was like, oh wow, that's really fricking cool. So I'll, I'll put a reminder here. I'm going to put this on the video. I shot. Shay Ross, the Elks, right? He was doing this back flip Dunkin. The thing. This guy, I feel like I got yelled at for talking on Twitter about this. Did you see. Am I wrong? The idea was, was that this went viral. This guy doing the back flip, got like half a million views, all this stuff. And then there was all these talk like, well, this is how, you know, see, we need to be doing viral stuff. We need to be familiar with the players. And we had a quote from Naylor, Dave Naylor. He goes, yes. If there were 500 guys in the league who could perform stunts like this, it would be easy to market the players. And my immediate thing today was think of. Do you think Marshawn Lynch can do a back flip and donk in that like you don't need? I mean, yes. He's not saying stuff exactly like this, but you know, Superhuman feats of athleticism. Caught on video, maybe that's what he means. Well, I just, I think I have 500 players backflipping and dunking an Oreo that's the first time I've ever seen it in my life. To be honest with you. But do you get what I'm saying? But like, we don't, we can't rely on viral moment as a way to like, well, that's the only way we can move up the players. They do weird crap that we can post on Tik doc. Viral videos. You don't ever know what's going to go viral until it goes viral. For example, like that. That I hate to pump my Twitter here, but that Joaquin Phoenix video of him coming into my joker screening. I didn't think that would go viral. I just posted a video of Joaquin Phoenix coming into the, coming into the theater and talking about joker that got 1.6 million views in a week. So you can't like, you can't just go, oh, this video is definitely going to be viral. It's going to definitely be viral. I just, I don't, I don't, I like talk to Gigi Smith Schuster about like, how, how did you know going viral on Tik TOK? Yeah, he got, he got tackled out of his shoes. Right? I mean, None of these guys. I just. Yeah. And then we have all this stuff in Hodge was talking, you know, we, that. They don't even need to be football oriented, but you don't even equip it. This guy, you know, they're talking, trying to get, I don't know. I just feel like the CFL's like. Like they're just, oh yeah, that would be cool. I basically like, oh, we should do that. Oh, we should do that. Oh, a single game sports betting. We should do that. Oh, viral videos. Like, oh, we should do that. And I just feel like. Who at the CFL is going to be, I mean, unless you're going to hire braid and there's someone that like run this stuff and I think Brayden worked there and got like go or that, you know, I mean, I know there's history there, so like, I just. It just feels like another, like, oh yeah, we should do that. Yeah. Yeah. And like, I don't know, focusing on the football, figure it out and get a video game too, while we're at it. You got to be again, what do you know. BC lions have filed a trademark for a new logo design, the Canadian football club. Canadian football league club has created a BC design and completely application on June 1st. It has to be accepted by the trademark's office. But it's not yet assigned to an examiner. I would assume that they'd have to clear that through the CFL as well. Yeah, well, this is a member when I wasn't, I think it was Jason Gregor was on and he was like BC lions, their logos. One of our guests that we have is like the BC lions have had the same logo for a million years. I'm like, well, here you go. They just don't change it up. Speaking of changing things up. Lions are listening to our f**k. Maybe maybe possibly. Maybe Jim, like I said, maybe Jim. Doesn't far him live out in that direction in BC. Yeah. Maybe, maybe, you know, Maybe, you know, maybe they kind of encouraged the change. I don't know. Speaking of changes. The us PTO patent and trademark office here in the United States. Has issued an initial refusal, the trademark application for the Washington football team. Interesting. What. You know, this. I did not know this. Interesting. Yeah, this is important because obviously Taylor heightened key XFL player plays a week. I Washington football. I have a Washington football fan. That is going to be my team. I am cheering for this year, but yeah. That is the team name. It should be. Right, but I think, you know, There's a Washington football club. That's you know, But get this. If the guy he, this, this. Philip McCauley. McCaulay he, when they were coming up with the team name, he went through and picked up all these other trademarks and now he owns it. So do you think they're going to like pay him out for that? That's probably what he did. I mean, back in the day, back in the day, When the internet first started, people were buying up domain names like lego.com and then they were selling it back to Lego. You know, Granted Lego probably could have gone to court and, you know, Paid a little bit more going to court to grab it, but, you know, There are people buying domain names and reselling them and making a lot of money. So it seems like Mr. McCauley did the same thing here. Yeah, I think it should, I don't want it to be like the Washington warriors or the Washington runners are like, I think it should be the Washington football team. I liked that. I liked WFT I liked that, but anyway, I just thought that that was just my little Washington football note today because yeah. I think they have to get a teammate, man. I think they have to really get a team name. That's your, you're losing so much money on like, not having a mask on, on the side of your helmet. You are, you really are. You really are. I'm telling you. I'm telling you. I was going to happen. I think you got 32 themes. I think Warren can just be, you know, Sounders FC football. Timbers. Okay. Okay. But soccer is a whole different beast. You can't compare the two. You really can't compare the two. Sorry. All right. Gonna take another break. Jackson, Lennar's coming up next to talk to read about a spring league and stuff like that. More. And then we got spring league and we got some finger to football news. Be offended. More fan controlled football news. Stay tuned for that. We're almost done. This will be quick. Yep. Welcome back. Welcome back. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate him. Again, If you're like a spring league player, you never retain it all. That was fine. I worked from home. I do, I interview random wedding vendors all the time for my other podcast. So I. Random spring, will you play? It's over now, spring league is over now. You don't have to go through your media contacts to get ahold of us. He didn't have to do that before, but well, Oh, I got a rant here in a second. Yeah. Well, we'll leave it. We'll leave it a go. Congress wide receiver in 2021. Co-leader in the spring league. And receptions, Michael bandy has signed with the chargers. He was at the conquers and 20, 20 and 2021. So congrats to him for getting on an NFL squad. Yeah, congrats. We have the big mega bowl. You know, obviously Lyman one, I had to work so sorry. It was a bit. Tremendous game. You know, Louise Perez through a game ending interception, like the six yard line. It was a very tremendous game. I can grasp the stamp. You know, Cole Boozer is no longer on he's on his way up to the outlets, but I, Ryan Willis was the QB. MVP. You know, Ryan wills with alignment. He played the whole year on your how mommy here's my problem. Right after the spring league and the mega bowl came out. Spring league email, they go, Hey, like here's the press release all this up. If you want to talk to Brian Woods CEO, how mommy or rye Willis, let us know. We'll set it up. I go perfect. We'll talk to Ryan later. That's fine. I go, I would, we'd really like to obviously Dr. Brian Woods again, a friend of the show, and then we like to talk to coach mummy. That would be great. Right. No problem. Yeah, email. So that was Saturday email, Monday, nothing email Tuesday. Yeah, sorry. Brian's not doing any interviews, not just you, she's not doing the interviews. I'm working on coach mommy. Perfect. Okay. I go, we all. Then we also like, can we get Ryan Willis instead then? Cause I, you know, I didn't want to be greedy and ask for all three. It's still nothing. You know, we're we're Thursday here. I'm like guys. If you're going to offer media availability. Then do it or just don't offer it. I don't offer it then I don't care, but I emailed you guys four times about it. I don't put it out there and he's like, yeah, sorry for the confusion of Brian's. I'm like, okay, well the press release said, if you would like to talk to Brian Woods. Please do whatever. That's my whole problem with the spring league this year. And it's going to be the same thing, but the USFL I'm really getting tired of it already because you know, we have. Our listeners will love to hear from coach mummy, you know, XFL guy, we got what we needed to talk about that tire about the spring league. Talk about all this stuff, but anyway, just infuriating. But that's why we have no spring lake. We have Jackson Leonard, thankfully he came on, but yeah, they waste our time with this. Like it's crazy. I, you know, like it's just, it's it's. We we've had our Clegg. We've had our criticisms of the fan controlled football, but at the same time, like their media representatives have been completely open. I just don't understand why there's so much. I guess. Unwillingness to deal with the media. And I'm going to be completely honest with you. Like if it weren't for us covering these things. I don't know if people would really know about these things as much as they do granted, there would still be people that would know about it. But their marketing has not been the best and their openness and transparency hasn't been the best. And I don't know why that is. And maybe it's because Brian was worried about someone leaking something about the USFL. I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't know. And I don't care to speculate, but. I would, I would hope that once. This USFL thing. Comes into play. Barring any copyright issues that might arise in the courts coming up soon. With trademarks and whatnot. I would hope that Brian would not be. As closed down as he's been with the spring lake, I would hope. And I'm, you know, maybe that's the situation with how the Springleaf fell apart, you know? Six months ago. Maybe that's the reason why they've been so tight-lipped, I don't know. I, I I'd like to get some answers though. I just don't get it like. Hi, I tell me how many. Like media. How many people do you really reach out to like, oh, we want to talk to him on me after the spring lake. I mean. A handful. I mean, I would love to talk to, I mean, our people, I'm not saying it's not like how many media outlets really were, like, we would like to talk to coach mummy or Ryan Willis after this spring lake, I would love to talk to all of them, but I'm just saying, like, I can't imagine it like. NBC sports is like, you know, blowing the door off or like the athletic or the re I don't know who these, whatever people are like. Right. We gotta get coach and mommy on right now. Of course. They're they got, they, they got 418,000 viewers for the mega bowl. That that. Pulls their average to about 400, 8,000 viewers per week on Fox. So. These are numbers. Can complain about that. People aren't really watching, you know, I think, I think that's the thing. That's the problem with, with ratings numbers that people watch TV differently now, like they watch on their phones or they record it and watch it later. I mean, you know, you're saying 400, 8,000 a week, but it could be, you know, could we get upwards of 700,000? You know, you never really know. And these numbers aren't really accurate. So. Yeah. Speaking of inaccurate numbers, zing. The FCF is expanding from fourteens to eighteens. In 2.0, and that was mentioned by Patrick bees. Yeah. He had said it was going to be six, I guess. Qatar. Economic forum. He was the period. I think via zoom. Why does it dissect wrong? I think it's cutter. I think it's pronounced cutter. Q U a T a R. He was on the guitar. Economic forum talking about the future of digital sports. It was supposed to be 16. It's now a day. People seem really excited. It's almost July and they're kicking off in August. So let's, let's. Let's see what's going on. Speaking of cutter. They recently announced that if you are not vaccinated, you can't go to the world cup. I still can't believe they're holding a world cup there. It's going to be really flipping hot. It's going to be really flipping hot. Yeah, that's crazy. So. That's all I got today, Paul I'll. I have one note before we go, I was gonna mentioned at the top of the show. I might do. Okay. If we want L I'm not a big elf guy, the European league of football, I it's really hard to cover. People watch on YouTube. If you want elf coverage, leave a comment on the YouTube video, say re we want elf coverage. All do like I'll bring on vans from all football or I'll bring on Josh or stem. And I'll do that. Paul. I won't bore, you know, burdened with it, with the elf coverage. But if you really want elf, you gotta drive that YouTube algorithm. So comment on the video, say we want elf coverage and we will see what we can do with that. I also saw that you deleted the thing about the NCAA. Congrats. I was trying not to hold you. Congrats to the, the athletes who, you know, they've won a little bit of a, something there. They want a little bit of a win in the Supreme court by. You know, the, the idea of that getting more than getting more than what they're owed. Basically from their colleges. So we want to congratulate. The athletes on a big win. They could have gone a little bit further, but now it's going to be interesting to see how, how players are going to start making more money when your colleges are basically making billions of dollars off your image. The NCAA has been corrupt for a long time. And, you know, I've, I've stood by that and I'm glad now. Of course, what started this whole mess was you went and picked up an NCAA. A basketball game. For example, specifically, the episode that I'm talking about is you pick up these NCAA games from EA sports and you play these historic recreation's like. Can you duplicate UCLA has come back in such and such year. And I'm saying UCLA, because what would happen is you would play as UCLA. And you would be small forward. Number 31. I believe that was his number on completely. Completely. You know, Bro picking at straws here, but let me, let me double check and make sure he was 31. If you play as a UCLA player, number 31 and it would have. All of all of someone's stats, specifically height, weight. So, and somebody would say, A small Ford number 31. And at O'Bannon was like, that's me. Even though you're not using my name, you're using every single one of my stats. You're still using my likeness. So ed O'Bannon sued and they won. And then EA pulled all their NCAA products off the table because they didn't know how to pay the athletes for using their likenesses. And you know, like I've talked about it numerous times here where I've talked like. When I used to work in Tucson, you'd go to the stadium and buy a Jersey that would say Arizona. It was like an Arizona football Jersey. The name wasn't on the back where the number was on the back and you're like, well, I know I'm buying really to be Thomas number. Even though I'm not buying the name on the back. I'm buying the number that, that represents his likeness. So it's, it's a big win and I'm hoping that, you know, This leads to this, this phony amateurism going out the door and these players really making some money. So I'm glad on that. I'm going to end my wrap there. That's good. Josh McGhee, friend of the show. He was on the Argos fan. He just sent me a list. I'll tell ya. Lagging subscribe. We got that. It sounds like we had a good giveaway coming up. He just messaged me staff. He's mailing you a package. And I think we are going to have maybe some stuff for you, but then also I think we'll have plenty. It sounds like while plenty of stuff for giveaways. So please like, and subscribe if you are a Marquez fan or a, an Argo, Stan sounds like we got, I'll tell you a tremendous stuff coming up. So be excited about that. Looking forward to the treasure trove heading my way. I guess it's heading my direction. For once instead of years. Interesting. One of the things I'm reading for tuning in a clear, please like subscribe the video. Get notifications as well. Please hit that bell. Get the notifications. Can't say that enough. And of course read you. Works a bunch of time on this. This work will get worse. It's a bunch of hours on this podcast. So again, Head over to our offers page and, you know, buy a razor for manscaped. Can't say that enough. The code is mark cast. You get 20% off free shipping. no one qualified to talk to about anything. And now we have with all the CFL stuff, there's a lot more. Qualified people with everything. So. Let me hit record. We don't have to start just yet. It's going to blast this thing is super loud. And yeah, I mean, I just figure we'll get into the staff. We have Steve Simmons coming on tomorrow, too. He's been covering all this stuff and. I like seeing all the different perspectives on this because. There's a million things that I think you guys and everyone are going to do, but it's like, is the CFL prepared for all that? That's kind of our, our take on it, right. Is not that you guys aren't going to have, you know, run six ways from Sunday to do all this, but it's like, are they ready to go with all that, the business model stuff? So. Do you have any questions? Anything before we start. No, what's the, the state of play. Can I swear? We try to keep it pretty clean. No, no, it's all good. Yeah. We had, when we did our big Eros Madani interview and he was dropping F bombs. And then we kind of said, okay, well we'll, we'll stop it on that one. But yeah, we did try to keep it pretty, pretty PG. When they'd sell ski. I got, I got you. If you're a chief commercial officer at points, beds, Canada. Formerly of monkey knife fight. Thank you so much for coming on and kind of working this out and then going through all the proper channels. How are you doing so far in exciting week? I'm tired, man. I'm tired. It's been an exciting week. It's been an exciting. Few weeks. It's been an exciting month exciting year. I mean, Oh, it's. You know, I think that that, that. You know, I joined points. Bet Canada's as employee number one, officially. I think around three weeks ago. And then yesterday as, as you know, bill [unknown]. 18. Passed the Senate. There's one last thing left, which is Royal assent. You know, the governor general signing it, but that's more ceremonial than anything else. So with that, it kind of clears the way for single events, sports betting in Canada, which. I mean it's about time. So yeah, I mean, it's, I think, I think yesterday around three 45, my phone began to melt. Which is an interesting feeling, you know, when you're literally my phone was heating up, which is kind of exciting. But yeah, no, it's, it's exciting times. I mean, exciting times for Canadian sports fan. It's exciting times for, for our Canadian sports gaming operator for, for Canadian sports brand. I think it's just an exciting time for, for Canadians, you know? Yeah, th this worked out cause you know, obviously we had kind of gone back and forth with getting you on and then we have always just kind of operated that this was going to pass, moving ahead with it, but it really worked out serendipitously that kind of this, all this came down this week. I was reading a quote today, and we're going to talk about it on the podcast that this is as big a step as the CFL, getting the TV deals and stuff back in the fifties, right? Like how big of a deal is this for the CFL? It's. Paramount to, I believe the long-term. Prospects of the league. I mean, the CFL. Four years is relied on. On the gate. The TV deals obviously are massive. But the gate. Has been key to the league and let's face it during the pandemic. I mean, that's a significant amount of money that was lost because there were no fans in the stands. There really aren't any other significant new revenue streams that are going to come to the table for the leagues. So the passing of [unknown]. What that does. Is it provides an opportunity. For the CFL to actually begin. Working alongside. The best regulated legal sports gaming operators in north America. Whereas up until now. As you're probably aware, you know, the CFL has been. Working with some of the gray market operators. The additional revenues that are now going to come to the table, both from a league perspective and from a team perspective and from an additional engagement perspective are going to be extraordinarily tangible. I mean, let's face it. You. You know, people don't think of, of the impact of [unknown]. Teen and single events, sports betting. With the big picture in mind. All they see is, oh my gosh, that's going to add some tax revenues. That's going to add money for the sports leagues. What is also going to do is, you know, my belief. I'm a gaming operator. So the consumer protections and the responsible gaming aspects are to me, the most important things, but that that's not necessarily going to impact someone like yourself. The content creators. Now. Are going to. See the extraordinary benefit of what the enhanced engagement around CFL games is going to bring to them. Their sites, their content. So there's going to be an escalation of jobs in the, in, in the Canadian sports industry, both by way of operators points by Canada case in point I'm employee. Number one. Points, but Canada is the only operator today. Who is launching and building a distinct Canadian business and distinct operating team. So we will be hiring a sick, significant amount of. Canadians. Other operators will probably build smaller teams, but that's fine. Media companies are going to need to hire. Gaming experts to handle sponsorship opportunities and the content, the data. That's going to trickle down to the leads and the teams there's going to be. There's now a, now a whole new category of sponsorship. In inflow that teams and organizations are going to have to deal with. And then from a content perspective, Hey sports gambling content is going to be. Prominent as it should be. You want to educate the consumer on how to bet responsibly. You want to educate the consumer on, on, on how to bet, you know, confidently. But at the same time, I think now the consumer is going to be even more excited. To into to engage with that content, to dive into that content. You know, you're I think we're going to see. A significant growth and just the overall engagement of, of the Canadian sports fan and the Canadian football league fan. And let's face it from a broadcaster perspective. People are going to watch games longer. Right. I mean, a game could be a blowout, but if you have a few bucks riding on it, you're going to watch it. You're going to watch till the end. Right. So, yeah, I mean, it's a big question, but I mean, the impact of [unknown]. Two 18. It's massive. And let me just end with this, like. And I speak personally, I'm a father. My daughter plays, plays, flag football. She loves football. I think that the impact of the passing of C2. Two 18 in the amount of additional revenue that's going to flow into the sports landscape. As a whole. Is going to trickle down to grassroots, amateur sports, and it's going to provide a stronger foundation for the growth of the Canadian sports landscape as a whole. My daughter playing flag football. We'll be positively impacted by the legalization of sports gambling, because there's going to be more money in the ecosystem and it's going to trickle down and it's going to be operators like points, Beck, Canada, who keep that in, have that in mind and understand that. It's not just about generating bets from customers. It's about building a better. Holistic experience for the sports fan. And that's really what I think. That's why. Well, that's what excites me. Sorry. I talk a lot. Yeah. Good question, man. It does. And it works well for the podcast. The biggest concern for us. And my co-host Paul too. I'll echo. You know, and, and this is people have told us this, right. You know, we come in to covering the CFL staff and people have said, you know, the league struggles to know how to market right. For the last couple of decades, you know, they they've really fallen behind where, you know, the NFL NHL or these other major leagues. But then the same people that are telling us that now are same. Man when it comes to sports betting and you know, the CFL, the marketing potential is just out the roof. Right? It's on my, well, how were those? You know, this, this lead that maybe is more of a dinosaur. Isn't one of those things where this is so big that the CFL almost just needs to get out of the way and everybody else that's smarter around them can run this stuff. You know what I mean? Like you guys can handle it. Like how does that, I just, that's where we struggle with, with the mindset around this. I mean. It's a really good question. And, you know, I think that. I will say the CFL has been spending a lot of time thinking about. The reality of [unknown]. Not to not to call them out, but I, you know, I, I consider their chief marketing officer and chief revenue officer Tyler Mascaro I consider Ty Tyler, a friend. And I know how long he's been thinking about what the impact of [unknown]. Could mean in the marketing activities of the CFL. So I think, I think. It's. I don't think it's right to think of the CFL as a dinosaur, when it comes to their marketing initiatives in relation to the roll out of sports betting. I think that the CFL understands that there are. Experts within this digital marketing or digital sports gaming marketing realm. That they're also going to be able to tap into now. Hey. Points, but Canada or here, you know, I don't want to speak self servingly, but let's face it. Now that sports betting is going to be rolled out in Canada. There are some extraordinarily savvy digital marketing experts that are going to become a part of these activations alongside. Leagues like the CFL. So I don't think the CFL is thinking about this in a vacuum. And they're definitely not thinking about this. Like, you know, 2014, or just to throw out a random year in the past. I think that what we're going to see is a level of new creativity when it comes to how the, the, the legalization of single events sports betting can be applied. To the marketing efforts of the CFL to grow the league. Right? I mean, ultimately that's everyone's desire is I believe. That, and I won't speak for everyone, but I believe that the single events, sports betting in Canada. Is going to help grow sports period. Right. CFL CHL NH. I mean, CHS a little bit tricky because it says junior like younger kids, but you know, MBA in Canada, MLB. And then most importantly, some of the smaller sports, right. Or some of the, the non classic for north American sports golf is going to be big. Tennis is going to be big. You know, there's a bunch of massive. Opportunities, I think that are going to strike the Canadian market, but when it comes to the Canadian football league specifically, I think that they. Are going to be able to bring to the table. Unique. Integration of what sports betting and their brand. You know, we'll we'll, we'll we'll, you know, W w bring together to the market. So, yeah, I don't think we can. Assume that the. You know, their former marketing tactics are going to be applied in the future. Is this one of the things, are we going to feel the ramifications of this immediately, this season next year? I mean, how long realistically is it going to take to for the average, you know, someone that's just watching the other Roughriders or whatever to. Experience all this. Well C two 18. C two 18 past. The Senate yesterday it'll get signed. Hopefully tomorrow. Now, you know, you, you look at the media right now. Everyone's like sports. Gambling is legal, single men's sports gambling. It's not, it's not. It's not, which is. An advantage for the gray market operators full stop, because now Canadians are just assuming that sports betting is legal and now they don't mind. Sending their money off to Curacao or China. And they don't really understand that that's what they're doing, but regardless. Let me step back. Sports betting in Ontario, which will most likely be the first province to roll out. Ontario optimistically will will launch by the end of this year, by the end of 2021. It will most likely launch at the, after the CFL season. So the CFL currently has a deal with a gray market operator. A number of teams have deals with, with, with operators that are operating in Canada currently. Not under regulation. So I think the expectation from a CFL fan would be similar to what the experience is like. As an NHL fan, who's watching the Stanley cup finals right now. I'm a Montreal Canadians fan. Go Habs. Go. I would be wearing this right now, but this is a football pod, right? And I am wearing a football hat by the way. This is. This is I had supporting my, my good friend, Scott fish who runs like the biggest fantasy football. Anyway. So, if you're watching the Stanley cup finals, you're seeing lots of ads for these gray market operators, basically pushing to.net sites, which is free to play. And I won't. You're not allowed to get me started on the hypocrisy of.net marketing in Canada. You see on the ice, you see a number of logos or, or, you know, calls to action of gray market operators. You're going to see the same thing in my opinion, most likely with the CFL broadcast. Again, we're day one after the passing of C two. Hey team. So it's very early. But that's my expectation in 21 is to basically see something very similar to what we've been seeing with the Stanley cup or the NHL playoffs. I think comm 22. It'll be interesting to see how the teams and I will say within the last. What time is it now within the last 16 hours? I've been approached by three CFL teams, which is great. Yeah, right? Yeah. So I think that there are going to be some proactive CFL teams and potentially the league. That decides that they do want to partner and work with. The most legitimate regulated compliant. Operators because ultimately we are going to provide. The best platform, the best product, the best service points that Canada, obviously on bias, we are going to be the only operator. You know, outside of there's one other that we both know, but you know, the score was founded in Canada. We are. You know, I have my own opinions about how we will. Inhabit this market alongside them. But I believe the points, but Canada being a standalone Canadian operator. Operating on top of the best. Product. In the world, in my opinion, from a sports betting. Platform perspective points. Bet. One of the reasons, just so you know, Candidly. One of the reasons why I was so excited to join points bet, and to be employee number of a points by Canada is because points, but has built a best in class product. They built their own tech stack. They operate their own tech stack. They understand the necessity. To have boots on the ground in markets that they're going to launch in. They're an Australian company. They launched in the U S and grown exponentially since that launch about 19 months ago. And we're going to replicate that success in Canada. So I believe that leaves like a CFL and, and teams like the ones that approached. Us over the last day. I understand. That it's not just about money. Straight up. It's not just about money. If, if, if, if leagues in teams want to create true partnerships, And want to create. Really strong, authentic. Bridges and connected connections to their fans. They're going to want to partner with the most compliant. The most. Safe. And the most Canadian operators that they can cause ultimately let's face it. One of the things that you and I both love about the Canadian football league is what so uniquely Canadian. Right. Like a fan in Regina, going to a rough riders game is completely different than a fan in Ottawa. Go into a red blocks game. It's that simple. People can say it. Operators can say it. But how many other operators have lived it? Right. Very few. And I have, I've worked with the XFL before I've worked with the CFL before. I've driven every inch of the trans Canada highway. I've been to CFL games. Almost every, almost from every team I've been to a great cup. My daughter played, my daughter played in the, in the, in the. The CFL flag football championship at Edmondson bred for that great cup representing, representing Toronto, like. There's something so uniquely ax. All experience that I believe. Very few. If no operators truly appreciate it. My hope is that. Hey, there's going to be other operators at the CFL and the teams are going to work with. I hope that those operators take the time to actually understand what it's like to be a Canadian football fan. Maybe they can learn quickly. I don't know. Like, we'll see. I wouldn't bet on it. How about that? That is that's one thing, you know, I, I was just had feedback for some of our listeners today. Ah, You know, some of the time that we put into learning the CFL game. Yeah, as we've expanded our coverage, versus some of the others. And, you know, they, they can sniff through that. Right? The Canadians can kind of sniff through that. I've been dizzy talking about the XFL. I would be remissed, you know, when all this came out and we had Naylor and we had the Don. The three down guys and all that. And they're saying like, well, you know, 20 million a year, whatever, right off the bat, all this money's coming in, you know? And I think Naylor was like, well, yeah, but think about, you know, adding. You know, if you doubled the number of teams, you know, added the number of people involved, you know, with obviously with the U S fans watching that stuff. Is this does the passing of this is this fuel, the XFL CFL partnership talks. What, whether your thoughts on all that stuff, as it relates to it, to what you do. You know, I honestly don't think the passing of C two 18 fuels the conversation. I think that, you know, as said, you know, I've worked, I worked with the XFL when I was running monkey knife fight. We were the second company. We actually put our logo on that back of the LA Wildcats moment. The XFL folks are great and I'm, I'm actually. Quite friendly with, with some of the folks at Redbird that owned the XFL. I have a lot of respect for them. I have a lot of respect for the folks, the CFL. I think that these conversations are still ongoing. I think that there is a potential exciting opportunity as a merger. I also think there's an exciting opportunity for each league to exist independently of one another. I think C. [Unknown] what that does from a CFL perspective is I think it gives them. In the short term. A bit of a. A bit of a boost, right. It's kind of like if you watch fast and furious movies, it's like the. Hitting that nausea button. You know what I mean? I think it's going to spark up, you know, I think it's going to be great for them coming back this year. The reality is. The real, I think the real opportunities around [unknown]. [Unknown] and single events, sports betting will come to the CFL next year. But I, I honestly, I, I think that the idea of a merger. It's such a big idea and it's such a complicated idea. That I don't think, I think it was you. The reality is their sports betting in the states, right? Or, sorry, it's rolling out across the states. And by the time of merger would happen, the assumption is it would have rolled out across it's going to roll out across more us states. And I think even while the conversations with the XFL and the CFL. We're we're beginning. The idea of sports betting in Canada was something that was a matter of when not if so. I don't think the passing yesterday actually has any real impact on the merger because I think it was. Kind of a perceived reality that at some point. Canadians and Americans. In certain provinces and states would have sports betting or single events, sports betting. And a merged league. Would have an opportunity to take advantage of that reality. The same time, like I said, I mean, I'm a huge believer in what the XFL. Tried to do. I think I had a lot of respect. I got to know a lot of the folks. At the league. There's great people. I think the games. Yeah. As you watched during the season, that games got better, right? I mean, Even you see a guy like PJ Walker who goes in and plays for the Panthers and plays play pretty well. Like you're starting to see the opportunity there. I think that, you know, at the same time, You know, I'm a. I'm a fan of the CFL. I'm a diehard CFL fed, like, but I'm a fan. Right. I grew up in Abba. I'm a Montrealer. So when the ALS came back and started playing it at most of the stadium, like that was such an incredible experience. And I want university in Atlantic, Canada. And, and I went to school with a couple and a couple of guys that I went to school with, played in the CFL like Eric LaPointe who you'll probably remember, like Eric was one of the greatest, I think Eric is the greatest Canadian. University football player of all time. Eric played in the league for the tie cats for, for, for the ALS. And I, I can't remember if he played for anybody else. And another one of our friends, you know, Phillips Gerard played play for the, the Eskimos now, the Elks, you know? And so I've been a big fan of the CFL. For many years, and it's just a unique. Identifiably Canadian experience. And as you can probably guess, like I'm as patriotic as they come in, like, I love this country. And whether I like the NFL or I like the CFL, I like football and I love Canada. So guess what? I'm watching. You know, when the CFL is on, I'm watching the games, you know what I mean? So, So, yeah. I just, I'm excited about what this. Is going to mean. Two. Add additional revenues. For the league. To provide a better foundation to grow the sport. Cause ultimately that's what it's going to do, merger or not. I don't want to hold you too long today. You've been so gracious with your time. I kind of the last big question I had and it was all the way back. I think when I originally reached out to you, I saw your interview talking about, you know, guaranteed life for the CFL, all these things. And fundamentally it was something along the lines of like, this is going to, this is the quickest, easiest way to kind of like fix. The CFL business model. Right? And I thought, you know, cause again, I hear these in everyday. You know, the CFL, the business model is broken. All these things. You need to work on this. And I thought, well, it is, it's like a novice, like you were saying, or it's like a bandaid, but it's not. I feel like this is another way for them not to ultimately self reflect. Right. And figure out how to get away from gates and stuff. I mean, Obviously, this is huge, but do you see how we, I kind of we're grappling with that where like, this is great and this is going to shoot him to the moon, but then maybe that foundation still is a little shaky that we're kind of building this off of now. This skyscraper. Well, let me, let me, let me throw this back to you. Let me ask you a question. What's the biggest challenge that's been facing the CFL over the last number of years. Fans in the seats. No, but. More more specifically, what do fans in the seats mean? Well gate revenue money. Yeah, money. It's money. This is money. And this is a lot of money. I mean, it it's kind of that simple. There's no other. Seven figure plus. Truck. Yeah. Or truck with seven figures, plus rolling up to the stadium of the teams, let alone the leagues. Right. This is. The ability to basically say, give me money now. And people like me saying here's some money now. There's. This is it. Right. You're not going to see. You know, a big Canadian brand, all of a sudden say, okay, CFL, we're going to give you. You know, eight figures or we're going to give teams seven figures to be. You know, the, the. Yes, maybe the CFL, if they want to put. Names on their jerseys of prominent Canadian brands and take away the. You know, the. Take away a lot of the, the football identity of what it's like to look at the uniforms, but even that's not going to add. The types of revenues that I think that I know sports gaming is. So, I mean, it's just as simple read, like. It's money. It's money. Yeah, I, and I, I certainly, and I get that. Someone though that has, you know, watching. Not professionally covered, but Watson covered like the WWE and wrestling for years. Right. WWE right now is on the highest revenue they've ever had. Right. In terms of like money coming in and global expansion, all these things. But, you know, like the product is stale, you know, fan attendance, obviously, that's just my fear. It's like, we're going to get all this money, but the CFL still won't be able to fill, you know, the Argo stadium or they still won't be able to fill. That's my concern. This is where we, this is where we also come into play. The other, the other piece to this puzzle is the revenue that's going to come into the space. What it's also going to do is it's going to drive innovation, which is really exciting. Part of that innovation is going to be the in-stadium experience. It will not be. Far in the future when you could be sitting in a stadium. And your making bets on your phone while you're watching the game. And, and there will be exclusive prizing exclusive opportunities. To drive a consumer to a game that they necessarily wouldn't be able to participate in if they're sitting on their couch. Right? So these are some of the. I mean. Th th the, that, that's kind of the thing that I, that I didn't talk about before is this money is going into the sports ecosystem. Part of that ecosystem is also going to be driving innovation. Right. Then in the multiplayer market that's coming into most of these provinces, hopefully is also going to drive innovation. People are going to want to make better products. Teams and the league, you're going to want to figure out better experiences to deliver to their fans. So I think that that is a big issue. But I think this is going to help solve. I think you bring up the WWE and it's a really interesting. Comparison. I think part of the, part of the challenge of the CFL has always had is that there's a lack of major star system attached to CFL players. Right. I think that what sports gambling is going to do, I hope. Is it's going to shine another light on specific. Canadian or CFL. Players. Right? Because when you think about sports betting, it's not just, I'm going to take the alphabets minus four and a half against the red blocks. It's player props as well. Right? So now I'm going to be able to place bets on specific players about whether they're going to throw over under a certain many yards casual vendors. You know, you. You know what I mean? So this the Canadian football fan. He's going to be engaged and is going to become a lot more familiar with a lot of the Canadian football athletes. And now the trick is going to be. How the CFL is going to take this additional money and how the teams are hopefully going to take. This additional in venue, experience, opportunity. And figure out a way to integrate players into that nut. Are you seeing the players need to be involved in the promotion of betting? Because that's not something that I think is, is, is necessarily a good idea. But it's you have additional revenues now you have additional eyeballs now. Okay. How are we going to use that to start shining a light on some of our players that are now going to be more recognizable because of bedding? Right. So I think that that's going to be a big challenge for the league. The WWE generates so much revenue because they're able to create a real authentic bridge to the WWE fans through them following these stars. Right? I mean, jeez, I've watched WD WD WWE in a long time, probably since it was called WWE. WWF back in the day. Right. So, you know, ultimately. You know, I was a big WWE fan and it was because of the personalities. Right. You know, I, I remember being. I remember in the heyday of when I was a kid. You know, or when I was really into it, when it was like, you know, the rocks don't call triple H with, during that whole dynamic, it was just so much fun, you know, and I've I've disengaged, but ultimately the next generation WWE fans. They're attached to the stars, right? They like the Roman ranges of the world and the Luke Bryan's and I apologize if I'm missing these names. But whatever. I know that they've been around at some point recently. And so I do think that that's where if I were the CFL, if I were the teams. I try and figure out a way. To get my players into the limelight a little bit more because to me, that's also let's face it. That's also how you. Produce some extra revenue streams. That's how, you know, you get young fans even more engaged when they have folks, when they have players to look up to. So that would be my, you know, if I, if I, if I was. You know, If I was tasked with. How do utilize [unknown]. 18. It's not just. Money it's we have additional money now. Okay. How are we going to use it? Oh, I think we should figure out unique ways. To harness the extra engagement that sports betting is going to provide the CFL both in venue and at home and through broadcast. Harness that new engagement. Take the additional money and then figure out what that means. And how to shine a light on the players to help. Bring them into the limelight a little bit more. Does that make sense? It is. And I hope that someone is listening and I hope that someone, yes, because that's the thing is, and I'll let you go here. You've been so gracious with your time is, you know, you all. We can have all the money, all the smart, everyone else in the world. Right. Everyone else surrounding the CFL, all this different stuff. But if, if they're still. Just kind of stock. That's just, you know, that's my concern, but no, I think I, again, utilizing that building stars, you know, just today, you know, we have these retirees. You know, people, players retiring and, you know, Sending shock waves and, and it's like, there should be. We need to have more of a focus on that and the players. And I certainly agree, but Nick, thank you so much for your time. You're a busy man. I'm sure this week is. This has been crazy, but I'm glad that we got this scheduled ahead of time. And every once in a while, my luck works out and it did work out this week in terms of timing. So thank you. Read my absolute pleasure. You, you, you know how to find me. You're a great follow on, on, on Twitter. So, How's it going, man, let me hit record. We don't have to start yet, but then. How's it going? Awesome. Yeah, thanks for reaching out and let me come on, man. I've been watching for. You know, Since last summer, at least. So I enjoy every week. Paul there too is just, you. I'll just be me today. I'm doing a lot of these balls of work. Schedule's so crazy. And I have another, Nick is coming on to do sports betting stuff at two. And so I just ended up doing a lot of these now, just because. He works like for the. Right. And that's crazy, whatever. Is there anything specific you want me to bug you about to make sure that we talk about on the, on, you know, on the interview? Well, I was planning on talking a decent amount about spring league wanted to at some point like address, like, you know, my perspective on like when Kent shell became on the show and. Said, you know, gave his opinion on things just to, and, you know, compare it to the Las Vegas showcase, which was the last like spring league. Two week event in the spring, before COVID, before it was a national TV ordeal too. And so kind of compare it and, you know, just give people a different perspective on what it was like. How it changed? I can just my road from like making it, like coming in on the showcase roster in San Antonio. Battling, like not really knowing what you're getting into and not really knowing what it even is like, what we're going to do. And then just. Making a squad. No. But I also took some notes. Just if, if you want me to. You know, just tell everyone who tunes in, you know, a little bit more about myself. My college career, just, just a brief, like, Paragraph about like high school and into college. And my story, I spent some time training with Shara Baltimore, rookie of the year for the auto red blacks. So I was just going to, you know, like maybe like briefly like three minutes, just kind of run through that and then maybe we could chop it up about DSL. Perfect. Just be careful if you're hitting your hands, I think on the table or something out of that view, I just am hearing. Yeah. It's like with the, with the camera microphones, it picks up everything. So just be careful with that. But otherwise, yeah, that should be good. I want to get into all your stuff that you've been doing and everything. So. We'll we'll get rolling here. So. Well, Jackson, thank you so much for coming on first and foremost, because obviously, you know, you. You listened to the show we correspond online, but also I thought this is great. I love talking to players. I love talking to players. Had they been part of the spring league? Why don't you first off, just tell us a little bit about who you are and kind of your background. I was spending the morning kind of looking up stuff. A former spring league, you did both the Vegas showcase, and then you did the one in the Alamo, San Antonio Alamo dome thing back in November. So why don't you tell us who you are and then we'll get into some chit chat. All right. Well, thanks first for having me read, I'm going to crack it off. I don't have a Zoe here. I looked in the end. Supermarket, they had bang. So. Stage of the tradition. So a little bit about me for the listeners tuning in. To give you a little background on myself. I grew up in Maine and played division three football at Huston university. Has a youth athlete in middle school. I played a lot of different sports, hockey, football, soccer, baseball, lacrosse. I even wrestled for a couple of years. But hockey was what I played every single winter. You know, I came from a hockey family. Those other sports. I wasn't necessarily playing every year. I started getting serious about football, my freshman year of high school. From that point on, I played football and hockey. And trained lifting weights in the spring. Why did I end up playing those two sports in high school? I guess I'd say I always love contacts. I was kind of like a head hunter and hockey. And I was fast. So, you know, those two raw skills, I think they worked well. Best with hockey and football. I played varsity in high school. My sophomore, junior and senior seasons senior year was really my breakout season in high school. And the first game are recorded. Four interceptions, one touchdown, and a sack. And I went on to lead at my conference and touchdowns points scored. Rushing yards and interceptions. Had back to back five touchdown games at the end of the year. Transitioning into my college career. I certainly didn't know much about their recruitment process. You know, I, none of my brothers played college sports. My dad played high school football, you know, I didn't really have a. Great person there to look to for, you know, I had great parents, I had great role models, but I just didn't internal getting, getting out and getting picked up somewhere. Right. So. You know, looking back, I wish I had gone to more football camps, the college camps, you know, especially Boston college and university of Maine. So I ended up at Husson university. A division three school in my hometown of Bangor, Maine. Costume was a dominant school in the ECFC conference. We almost always won the conference and went to playoffs and we had 130 kids on the roster every year. So it's, it's. Competitive place to play division three football. So college football was a lot of fun. You know, practice was a lot of fun as a DB compared to like practice in high school. There's just so much competition. But it took me a year to transition from being a star running back in high school. It was harder. It was a harder transition. You know, I was a good tackler and I could run with anyone. I was still one of the fastest kids on the team in college. But some of the fundamentals of DB mechanics. Had not been instilled. It also seemed like a lot of that out of state recruits had been playing cornerback since pop Warner and middle school. You know, we, we had a lot of recruits from Connecticut Jersey, Florida, New York. So sophomore year came around and I was second string at corner sitting behind a future, all American and a fifth year senior who had been starting his whole college career at Huston. So all the field on special teams and some garbage time. But my opportunities were limited that year. It was a heavy senior class. Heading into my junior year. I entered the transfer portal. No at the time I was developing well, I was getting bigger and stronger, but I didn't really trust the process. And I didn't know, I always wanted to play pro football. So I have been emailing back and forth with a recruiting coordinator at the university of may. I was p****d off at my situation. Sorry. But. I wanted to be a pro football player in my college career. Just wasn't going the way I wanted. The coach. The recruiting coordinator told me that if I transferred, I would get an opportunity to try out and make team in the fall. You means a D one. AA school, 20 minutes north of my hometown. It wasn't that hard for me to transfer? I had friends there. My brother was a senior there and my girlfriend at the time also went to that school. So I transferred from Huston to U Maine, the summer going into my junior year. Moving along. That fall of my junior year. I tried out for you mate. My understanding was that the program took the walk-ons in for two weeks to give them time to evaluate players and give them a chance to make the team. That's the way it always been there. Well, unfortunately there was a new head coach and they were doing things differently. So I got a one day workout, no pads with the other walk-ons they called me and said that they were going in another direction. That point, my road kind of stopped for the first time ever. I was just a student. I wasn't an athlete anymore. I was on the street. I wasn't on a team. No, I continue to work out, but I felt like an outcast from the college football world. I was lost. And without a plan, I didn't know if you man would take me in. In the spring. I wasn't sure if I could go back to Huston. The other D three schools in Maine were Ivy league caliber. From an academic standpoint, I could get a fresh start at one of those schools, but tuition would be at least triple the cost of humane or Husson. I ended up enrolling in the spring semester at U Maine. Again. I wasn't ready to give up on the D one school. It was in February of my junior year at humane that everything started to change for me. I reached out to Sarah Baltimore. Sohrob was a former U Maine cornerback. From PG county. DC. He was coming off his rookie of the year season for the auto or red blacks and was back in humane training for the next season up in Canada. I reached out to him on Instagram and asked him if I could pay him to train me. For the next few months, we trained together four times a week. Until he went back for training camp in Ottawa. This changed a lot for me. For the first time in my life, I felt like I had a great DB coach. Charades high school coach and off-season trainer was a former Alabama defensive back for Nick Saban. I already had a lot of change of direction, quickness and power, but now I had a smooth back battle to get in and out of my brakes. And my eyes were cleaned up and face. Not dimension. I was competing on the track and on the football field, doing one-on-ones with Shirad and also DeMar Altman. Who was a former human wide receiver and also played for the dolphins, giants and Hamilton tie cats. Also add a stint in the spring league. Although I was doing all this right inside the, you may not letic facility. Right under the coach's nose. Had Shiraz tried to help me get on the team, went down to the coach's office myself many times to see what I could do. I still did not get offered a spot for the spring ball. And we're still, maybe next fall. So now with my college eligibility clock ticking. I was at risk of losing my junior year. If you made, didn't take me this time. I went back to my. Went back to coach price and coach Clark at Husson. They were the head coach and assistant head coach there. To see if they, if I can come back and play for them. Under the agreement that I would play special teams, they allowed me to come back. I had a great preseason camp. Until the last practice before the first game. Separated my AC joint. I was tackled by a 260 pound tight end in a non-contact helmets practice. Life doesn't always go. How you plan it. Moving forward week five on back and healthy and get my first college start. On a road game to Alfred state in New York. We were down 14, zero, and our starters were getting hurt, left and right. And as a defense, we weren't playing well. Their QB ran the ball on a play in the second quarter and was trying to make it to the sideline before I could tackle him. I caught him in the knees right before he made it. It was a huge collision that sent him flipping over. He came back out, he came back in for a player to limping. But then was replaced. Not sure what the extent of his injuries were, but I knew I was back. We rallied to win the game. And I was awarded DB of the week. I went on to start my senior year healthy, 10 pounds stronger and got some great film. I wasn't a player that opposing teams necessarily liked. But I strapped up receivers and made big hits. And tackles and space. I didn't win the politics. I wasn't elected all conference or all American. When, in my opinion, I did one better. I went to the spring league. So Las Vegas. Mars 2020. Let me, let me, let me do this. I can't use all that. Right. I mean, this is going to be. Let me ask, let me ask you some questions and let's roll through it. Cause I want this to be something that's going to be used. Right. And I appreciate you putting all the work in and typing that up. That's fine, man. I didn't really know how it was going to go. It's okay. It's okay. I read through. I read through a lot of your stuff today, too. Right. Getting ready. So don't worry. Like, well, let me let go. Let me roll with this because I want this to be used and I want people to, to be able to hear your story right. Is that work? That's cool. Okay. Completely fine, man. I just, you know, I honestly wasn't sure if that was. Don't feel like you're offending me or anything. We'll get it. We'll get it going here. So Jackson, you know, you're, you're someone that's, you know, not unlike a lot of these players. Right. You know, you grow up, you know, you said you were playing hockey, football. Interested in all this stuff. And it just didn't seem like, you know, we talk all the time about that. You know, the NFL and people go, who needs all football, who needs spring league, who needs the CFL acts about, you know, The number of people that are going to make it there, right. It's not representative of the number of talent. Right. And the number of people. Yeah, working towards it. Right. So, what do you think about having, you know, alternative football places like the spring league, like the XFL for players like you that maybe, you know, for whatever reason, the circumstances just didn't work out to get you there. Yeah. I mean, it's been the difference, you know, without the spring league. I really wouldn't have had an opportunity after college and obviously, you know, Everything stopped once COVID happened. No CFL. No XFL people were opting out of their CFL contracts to come to San Antonio. So. It was a big deal. And you know, another podcast I listened to is Jeff Reinbold. He was a coach with the generals. I got some time to get to know him out there in San Antonio. And one thing he always says is there's a lot more players that could play in the national football league, then that do play. And, you know, wherever we're going with. You know, I, I don't know exactly where we're going with the USFL and this XFL CFL merger. But there's a lot more opportunity out there, you know, and there's, there's a lot of talent. There's room. People will watch the stuff, you know, they already are. We're getting what 400,000 viewers in the spring league right now. And they aren't even really marketing it. You know, it's a soft opening, you know, it's like when you open a new restaurant and you invite your friends and family, close friends and family, it's a soft opening. That's really what it was. So. They're doing a great job. You know, we're looking one step ahead. Ryan Woods. He's brilliant. He's looking three, four steps ahead while we're looking. One step ahead. You know, we don't, we don't. You don't really know where he's going. It's it's so tough. You know, they talk like the average NFL career is like three years or something like that. Right. There's whatever the statistics and you know, players like you. And we, you know, I talk with a lot of guys on the podcast, off the podcast. You know this all this time with COVID going through XFL being shut down, all these things like, you know, this is a lot of your players, careers or opportunities, right? Yeah. It's a small window and the clock is ticking. Well, is that, you know, and, and just today, you know, as we record, you know, like five or six CFL retirements came out today, you know, cause these players have been offered 16 months. I mean, that's a monumental amount. You'll talk about that. Just as a, as an athlete, as someone, you know, you've trained. You talk about first, I've talked about your mentorship under the CFL. Player that you were talking about. And then the, just how much time that 16 months off now, what that really feels like the players, like you. Yeah, my mentorship with Shara. Baltimore. Was huge. Ms. 16 months off though, you know, it's like he's been in the league for three years. That that's kind of towards the, you know, you talk about that three-year window. Like. That's closing for a lot of those guys, you know, they're thinking about getting a real job. I'm not saying that they don't have a real job, but like, You know, It's a tough transition for them because. No. Sorry, can we cut? Will you be able to cut this out a little bit? Okay. I guess 16 months off. I mean the spring league was the difference for me. I mean, if I can touch on. You know, in Las Vegas, I got to develop a little bit with Dani Henderson and. Are you familiar with Dani Henderson? A little bit. Okay. So. Former DC for the New York jets position coach for many teams, you know, the bills, Ravens Cardinals. He talked about how. He got three guys, gold jackets. He was the defensive backs coach when they drafted ed Reed with the Ravens, he works with Ty law who also got a gold jacket and he was the DB coach with the bills. When Stephon Gilmore got his train, went on to get his $65 million contract with the Patriots and it helped develop him a lot. And so just being able to. Go with there for a couple of weeks. Be in the film room and then get the raps and it's just, and you know that they're better reps and I've ever gotten before, you know, day one you're out there on. Zach met and burgers across from me playing quarterback. And, you know, I'm from division three, so that. That you know, that's a big step for me. I had a pass breakup against him day one. When I talk about Paul Dawson, my first day. In the spring league, we get on the bus. You know, we're staying at on Boulder highway in the outskirts of Las Vegas and they shot a loss on buses every day to Sam Boyd. So you got this 20 minute bus ride. Out into the desert to this huge stadium. And first day I get on there early. Make sure I got my seat and no one's sitting next to me. Cool. Got my headphones in. Getting ready. And last person to get on the bus. This. Big rugged baldheaded man. He comes up to my seat and he says, move over. He's got a Bengal sweatshirt across his chest. So I moved over. I asked him. Hey bangles. You play for them? Like started telling me a story. Paul Dawson. Was the number one linebacker in the country out of TCU. Was supposed to get drafted in the first round, had off the field issues, then ended up going to the third round. Was it backup for bond case perfect. For three years. And then, you know, it was playing a lot of special teams got released. And, you know, on day one, he was just like, Hey. You know, You're probably nervous, but this is just football should come out here and do your thing. So that along with, you know, I'm going to San Antonio, another chance to get some reps, some opportunities. I think one of the. Big things that helped me out there was. Being in that film room with Jerry Glanville. Coach fuller. You know, he's the head coach for. The Jacksonville sharks, but he came to, you know, Just connect. Just like a lot of times those coaches are there for the same reasons as players sometimes, you know, to make connections, move on, move up, whatever it is, or to find some players and bring them back to the national arena league. So. They were running cover for, and I, he told me that and I ha I got in late, so I had to learn. Things on the fly. And first then coach polar says, take everything, you know about cover four and throw it out the window. I'm like, what? So they were doing this type of defense where they, they were bracketing or CBREs they could pick any top receiver. They could move it around in the defense, whether it was the slaw, a tight end. Whatever they wanted to bracket in double coverage. Well, it changed a lot of rules and just going from that. You know, a small school playbook. To an NFL defense. That was the difference, you know? Like I was taking reps in the slot against Nick Holly. You know, he was a star in the XFL. Competing. I got film a breakups against him. But, you know, at that level, once. You got to try and make a team everyone's talented. It's the mental aspect that came into play. And that'll just be huge going forward, you know, as far as preparing, you know, When we're at a time or opportunities are limited. And that looks like in, on the horizon. You look over the hill, things are going to be starting up. You know, just being ready, knowing what you have to be ready for mentally. What was your experiences like with Brian and working with him? Both in Vegas and then in San Antonio. Yeah. So I didn't really talk to Brian much at all in Las Vegas. The only thing I did was. At the very end of camp after the second game. I made sure I went to every single coach and thanked them for their time. And I went to Brian and just thanked him. And I literally told him this was the best week of my life, because it was. You know, being from a division three school, I had never played or competed in a stadium like that. I mean, no, we didn't have fans now. There weren't people there, there were Scouts there. It was awesome. He had Raider Scouts there. Bear Scouts, the Calgary stamped, Peter scout was there every single day. Every single day. Just was extremely thankful and. Moving forward to San Antonio. So I come in on that practice squad. Right. And so my first interaction with him isn't check-in. And he kind of explains, you know, how things are working. The practice squad guys were going to be going at 7:00 AM. First the four practices of the day, right? Because two teams were practice there. At the time there were six teams. So the General's office would practice after that. And then the conquers. And someone else. And then the aviators and blues at night. So. Just talk to him briefly. And then I didn't initially get picked up after the showcase. Although on day two, I really balled out. I got, I was the first kid in the whole showcase to get a pic. Strapped up some receivers after that on day two. Showed out on day three, just didn't get picked up, you know? And it seemed like the showcase was primarily wide receivers and DBS. They had. They had the O-line D-line picked out, you know, for the most part. So it was, you know, like 40 minutes of just position drills on air jumping up high point football, senior breaks, seeing you flip your hips every way. And once you were dog tired, 40 minutes in, okay. It's time for one-on-ones. You know, who's who can compete when they're tired. And I thought that was actually a great setup for what it was. I know it wasn't. What kids were expecting it to be. But the opportunity to also change that. At first, when we got accepted, when I got accepted this thing, they didn't have a Fox sports deal. It was going to be in Las Vegas again. So there were conflicting schedules at the Alamodome. That's another thing that I don't think people. Realize is how much Brian Woods was dealing with. With the manager of the Alamo dome who begged him to come to San Antonio. And then. Was kind of giving him a hard time about certain things. You know, there was, there was a high school games on Friday nights. University of Santa Fe, university of Texas San Antonio had a game on Saturday. So it seemed like every night the aviators and blues would have to practice at that high school field, which was fine. It was just a nice. Texas high school field. To our field. But just, you know, It seemed like it was, you know, He knew he was going into a COVID season. You didn't have everything planned out. He said, Hey, we're going to make it work. And, you know, I think at the end of the day, he had. Tremendous. You know, What's the word I'm looking for. He just had a lot of balls to do what it did. Yeah. I don't know how else to put it. That's good. You, you played with the conquers right in the spring league with, with coach Glanville. What what's he like? What did you learn under coach Glanville? Coach Glenville. There's a man of God. You know, read us something from the Bible every day. He doesn't get mad. Maybe he was a little crazier when he was younger, but kosher in the spring league. He doesn't get mad. He's very calm. He had a great sense of humor. And was just really knowledgeable in the film sessions for the most part, you know? It seemed like the offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator. We're running practice. He kind of was just, you know, how, like a lot of head coaches do. You know, they, they're just kind of watching and. You know, Coming in when they, when they need to, to address things. But. Man just realizing. Cause cause they announced. The spring league announced on Instagram, who all these coaches were, but we only found out about the head coaches. So I didn't necessarily know who everyone was when I first got there. But. Just in hindsight, the research I've done. Like I was playing. Four. Jerry Glanville who coached Deion Sanders for three years in Atlanta. When did, when Dion was fresh in the NFL and, you know, I didn't. I knew that like, when you looked him up, it seemed like most of his height came from the Houston Oilers, but the more I did research and just realized I was actually playing for the head coach of my idol, you know? That's crazy. W, what do you make of all this USFL stuff now with Brian and the relaunch? I mean, It's funny to me, you know, he was on prior to this spring league season kind of outlined a lot of this, right. Kind of said, Hey, we know we're going to do this with the hub cities and build. You know, then obviously the announcements come out. A lot of people think, oh, you know, they're going to eight cities next year, or they're going to 10 cities. And I go, well, you know, I think it's going to be somewhere in between. Right? What, what do you make of all this USFL stuff? I think. I think he, he he's got the best. You know, shot, like, I mean, he's got the grassroots. He knows who everyone who wants to play football, everyone who's ever played in the spring league. He, he knows. Everyone, you know, you try to come. Pair it to this XFL CFL merger. I. I get that the rock and Danny Garcia, they got the money and stuff, but. Brian was, has been in the trenches. He's he's been doing this he's he's been dealing with. You know, so many things thrown at him. For example, you know, I was following him around a little bit in between the showcase and get picked up by a team. I mean. The calls. From coaches, you know, Hey Brian, I haven't gotten my check yet. Well, Hey coach. I mean, you were on the jouster. Esther's the last team to be assembled. The bank won't write you your check yet because they haven't processed your W2 stuff. That makes perfect sense. You know, when you start a new job, a lot of times. You don't get that paycheck till the end of the second week. Meanwhile, five minutes later. The rank manager wants to have a fight with Bryan Woods about schedules. He's getting phone calls left and right. There's just so many things that. He's the perfect one to deal with and he never bats an eye. He never bats an eyelash, you know, Straight faced. I mean, he just takes it all on. And are you in terms of. Potential future plane. Are you, are you, are we kind of transitioning out of the football? Are you looking at something like the USFL? You know, continue or yeah. More spring league. What are you looking for? I'd like to get back into the spring league. I just, I loved playing there. Obviously. I'd love an opportunity in the CFL maybe to play with my brothers. Sharat Baltimore. Up in Ottawa. And I have some Scouts that, you know, follow me, keep tabs on me on Instagram, my workouts and stuff. But I, I went to a showcase actually called with an agency called black diamond in March. And after that, I was planning on going to. The, the ANC that the spring league was doing. And I actually ended up in one-on-ones down there. Laying out for a ball with a receiver and we hit the goalposts and the goalposts. Didn't have a pad on it. And so I got a bone bruise on my shin. And I didn't. I played the rest of the showcase on heart. You know, I, I just finished it. You know, I. It didn't stop me from running and stuff, but then the AMC was the next week after that. And I just, you know, like I was like, they have tabs on me. I got a player grade at the showcase. I've already been on a roster. If I don't think I'm going to run well right now, because of this bone bruise, maybe I should just heal up and see if I get an opportunity. And I have like numbers for over half the head coaches in the spring league. Like I was in contact with them. I've actually talked to coach fuller about, you know, he had some guys get injured. Week one with the sharks. So. Go on to get some opportunities, just getting some reps some more time to develop in either the now or. Possibly with the Massachusetts pirates, they have a talented roster down there. In Massachusetts, actually, almost all those guys have former NFL experience. So. Hopefully just catch on with an Al team or an IFL team. If not, you know, maybe the USL USFL will be popping up with some showcases or the spring league. No. Utilize the spring league. Like I think we talked about in the emails. And I'll be ready to go, just to come out and compete. That sounds good. Well, you've been so gracious with your time today. I really appreciate, you know, the interactions we've had back and forth online. And just, you know, obviously sharing your story and hearing more players. You know, benefiting from these alternative football things. Jackson. Thank you so much for taking your time today. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me read. I'm looking forward to. More episodes and, you know, things opening up again with COVID. So. Interesting content and wish you guys the best. Awesome. Thanks man. Steve Simmons from the Toronto sun, also a CFL hall of fame press member. Back in 2009. Congrats on that. Welcome to the show, Steve. Nice to be here, guys. Good to have you. We love having our Canadian, you know, prince members on, you know, people that are really tuned in to the CFL. To kind of educate us along the way. So we're glad to have you. Let's start with the first things. First, the big news that came out this week C. [Unknown] how does that help? Well, I think it will help in terms of. Advertising revenue for the teams involved. I think what you're going to see is there's going to be competition too. We want to get in the stadiums. We want to be the person who's, you know, the company that you're going to. Do business with, you know, whether it be draft king jar, whomever that company happens to be whether it's the score. They're going to have to pay for. You know, signage in stadiums and they're going to have to pay for advertising in stadiums and possibly for having, you know, places where you can wager in stadiums, which you're already seeing now in the United States. So that's where I think teams can benefit from. You know, who's going to do business with home. Who's going to be the most aggressive in terms of how they're going to go about it. Is this going to be done from a leak point of view from an individual team point of view? And, and how is that going to work for everybody? I think this is a great unknown and no one knows exactly what's going to happen or how it's going to happen. But it's pretty easy to see that if they had no gambling revenue yesterday, they're going to have some tomorrow. It just, I and I, we talked with Nick Saul ski yesterday. He's kind of the points back, Canada, the guy that's spearheading some of this stuff up there. It just, to me, it seems like we're putting a lot of heavy lifting on the CFL. I've always said before on here, we've been told for months, you. CFL doesn't know how to market. They're struggling in the market. They're lacking in these things, but yet the same people now, you know, we talked like I listened to the three down guys. They complain all the time about marketing, but now they go. But now with [unknown]. [Unknown] CFL is really going to have a chance to mark it. And I'm saying, but why, why are we feeling that now? Do you get what I'm saying? Well, I think people are excited that they can bet on individual games, which we haven't been able to do unless every other person who bets online and wants to make a bet. Anyhow. Can can make that bet at any time. So that's part of what I really don't understand about some of the new excitement. If you're a guy wants to gamble. Guess what you've been gambling and you're gambling for years. And if you haven't been gambling on the CFL, it's probably because the CFL doesn't interest you. And so I think what they're trying to see. Determined here is. The, the audience that isn't doing, the Bo dogging and any of those other companies. Now it doesn't have an online account and isn't doing that. Maybe they're the guys that go to the. Convenience store now to do pro-line. In Ontario, which you have to pick three games, not one. Now you can go back to one and anybody that has gambled at all. You know, at one time I was someone who enjoyed. A wager or two. W, you know, parlay bets. To pick three games is next to impossible. To pick one, correct. You know, you've got a pretty good chance or at least a 50, 50 chance. And so, you know, I think people who like that kind of gambling are going to do that kind of gambling, why that appeals or applies to the CFL. Is a whole other issue. And one thing I wonder about is what is the age of the people who want to want to gamble? And are they online gamblers? Are they guys your ages? Because if they are, that's not the CFL's audience. And this is one of the problems the CFL has in, in marketing itself. It's market is. It's quite old. It's a 40 plus. Market. In a below 40 world. And, and so that's always a question of how are you going to do it? Who is it going to affect? And is the guy who would never make a bet. The 30 year old who would never make a bet on a CFL game, suddenly going to bet the Edmonton Calgary game this weekend. I'm not so sure that's true. You're taking the words right out of my mouth. You really are taking the words right on mouth. It seems like. Single game game betting as a young man sport. And right now we've all voiced our concerns. By we, I mean, people that have come on the show and have voiced their concerns, that people 35 and under. Don't really pay attention to the CFL and those that do. Very few and far between. So what is, what is the potential of, I guess the exposure of that? What is, what is the, what is the sales pitch to a company? To, to put signage in the stadium. Where they're advertising to a demo that doesn't necessarily. You know, So is your, is your advertising in the stadium for the people in the stadium or is you're advertising in the stadium for the people on television to watch? And that's where the CFL gets interesting because I'll use Toronto as an example, because it's probably the worst. Example. The worst run franchise in the league. You know, they'll have 11 or 12,000 people in the stands. And they'll have 300,000 watching on television. And, and so they're a decent TV draw. And they're a terrible stadium draw. So when Bodog is putting an ad or whoever it is, that's putting the ad in it. In the stadium. You know, in the end zone, are they putting that ad there? For exposure to the guy in the stadium who needs a cane to go up and down and sit in his seat. Or are they putting it for the guy who's at home watching on TV? Who's considerably younger, but still not the audience that you want to attract. And, and that's why some of this talk of. Possible expansion and, or, you know, inclusion of the XFL. And the CFL. Is, you know, if you have a league. Two years down the road. That's 18 teams instead of nine, then. Gambling becomes somewhat more attractive. Than it is right now. I mean, and so do things like fantasy football where you can't really play fantasy football. In a night in a nine team league, it just doesn't work. You know, but by the time you. You've had how many things you're gonna have in your leave. In a forest, there, there goes. Your, there goes your starting quarterbacks. And, and so it, it can't work the way. The way fantasy has taken over in the NFL. I mean, it's just enormous how big it is become in the NFL, where you can walk into an NFL locker room. And players will, will know what round they've gotten in there. In the, in the beat writers, local draft kind of thing, and everyone gets mad. How come I didn't, how come I went so low? Or how come I wasn't drafted? You know, we'd never had that in the CFL because the CFL's never had enough teams. To be able to accommodate that kind of thing. So I always think fantasy and, and gambling kind of go hand in hand and prop bets. Play into that as well. And I just wonder how all that's going to work with an older CFL audience. And who knows she's watching on TV. Yeah, it's just hard because even Nick, I said, Nick was points. Bet. You know, you are able to bet on these games right now in these gray markets right there. And it's not, you know, the legit team sponsor league sponsor things, but you know, like we go back to fantasy. You know, if you go to TSN or whatever they do fantasy, right. It redirects you to the ESPN. Right. I mean, they don't even do that. Right. And, and Nick had said that since you had to see two. And eight past, I think three of the teams so far had reached out to him. Right. They tried to figure out stuff to do. And so, you know, when, when the CFL, the way it's run with these nine independent whatevers. You're you're really placing a lot on each of these teams to be like, okay, are the rough riders really going to get involved in this? Right. It's and where it's I think it's going to be separate all in the provinces too. Right? Where everyone there's just a lot of like, Everyone's getting all have to do their thing. Well, here's the thing. This is a great point of confusion. Now in professional sport, it's not just the CFL. Let's see if I was kind of late to this because the bill was just passed, but all of pro sport over the last few years has tried to figure out how can we make money on gambling? And how can we cut ourselves in if there's so much of it going on, how do we get a piece of the action? And now you're seeing in the us where I'll use the Washington capitals and the Washington wizards, as an example. In their arena for next season, you'll be able to go and, and. And place bets. And it's almost like they're going to have a sports book right in the arena. So instead of being in Vegas, where you sit and watch 12 television sets. You'll probably be able to sit down in Washington and have a drink. And watch the game you're at and probably four or five other games all at the same time, you know, like you're in a casino or a sports book in Vegas. And I think what's happening in not just the NHL and the NBA, but. You know, the CFL obviously needs. External sources of revenue, much more so than the other legs, because it doesn't have the television contracts. And the, you know, We paid for sponsorships that the other professional leagues have. And so it needs. You know, historically it's gate driven. And, you know, they make their money. Or lose their money selling tickets. Now this is a possibility and I emphasize the word possibility. So yeah, everyone's reaching out to the next all skis of the world. And everyone's reaching out to anyone that knows anything about this, because guess what? They don't know anything about it. And they're just trying to figure out how do I make a buck? And how do I make a buck on this? And what's the buck going to be, and who's going to pay for it. What. Like if I, if I'm. Maybe I'm the Hamilton tiger cats. And I sell the rights in my stadium to the Ontario lottery corporation. Like, is that a better deal for me than an individual, you know, off shore guy? Or is it that a better deal than whatever other possibilities are going to be? Or it's our Ty cats going to create their own. Gambling entity. And I'm just using that as an example. I think everyone is right now in the, what is this? How do we make money? How much money can we make? And how's it all gonna work out and everybody from the guy selling it at the one end to the guys trying to. You know, You know, Get rich or rich, isn't the right word to bring in some revenue from the other end. It's it's, it's a great unknown. I mean, the newspapers are doing it right now. I know for a fact that the Toronto star, which. Basically the largest paper in the country has hired. Like a gambling editor. And they're now going to be doing much. And they're going into the online. Betting business themselves, the newspapers. As a side thing to their paper, they're going to have a website where you can go and, and basically gamble. And. I do casino things. I know we're the tr the sunshine is looking at. You know, what's next and how is it going to work? Yeah, everybody's trying to figure out what the answer is. And at this point, no one really knows. Is there any concern or any. Support systems put in place. And I hate to be kind of a Debbie downer here, but. Gambling can be a very addictive thing to do. Are there any support systems being put in place or considered to be put in place? To kind of help people if they're having a problem. Well, here's the problem with what you're asking for, of whoever the, you know, whether it's the CFL or the NFL or the NBA, or. Whatever. The people who are going to gamble. And need to gamble. I'm going to gamble. Whether it's legal. Whether it's illegal. They're going to ha you're going to have your problems just as you have your problems in society with other addictions and, and other problems. And I'm not sure it's the responsibility. The CFLs of the world and of any league, really to be policing. You know, possible. Addiction issues. Under those circumstances because I'm a. I mean, I grew up in a house with addiction, so I'm pretty well versed on how powerful it is. And how terrible it can be. And, and to be honest, I'm not so sure. That any external force. Of any kind. Could have helped my brother. And so. Maybe my view of things is skewed somewhat through my own personal experiences. But I'm not sure it's. It's their responsibility. And as he told me once, The only way I can get better. Is if I want to get better. And he never wanted to get better and he never did. I'm terribly. Sorry to hear that. I didn't meet him. I didn't bring up. This is a long time now, so I'm not talking about anything. That's new. It gives them just like saying like when, when you go to Vegas, you see. Do you see these ads? And they're like, if you have a gambling problem, call these health numbers. I'm asking more or less is, is the government. Implementing any of these things, do you think that that would. Knowing that. Knowing the government and how it operates in this country. We'll come up with some phony half witted. Thing that says, look, if you have a problem, call this number and you know, you'll call there and it'll ring 92 times and you won't be able to get anyone to talk on the other end. You know, I just, I think they do that for lip service. And for so, so that the critics of like, when a bill like this passes, there's going to be. Firstly critics are gonna say, oh, you're, you're now contributing to. You know, problems in society. You know, there's a governor that makes enormous amounts of money. And taxation on from liquor and. And cigarettes. You know, but. Nonetheless we'll we'll we'll turn our back on that for a minute. And I make sure that people don't have problems betting on sports. I just think that it's a great topic. It's a great suggestion. It's a wondrous thing. And, you know, even if they say they're doing it and if they. You know, pretend they're doing it. It won't be done the right way or it won't be done really at all. I guess my biggest question and what spurred me, one of the reasons to have you on among many is if I'm someone that lives in Canada and I don't watch the CFL, you know, yesterday, Am I going to watch it today now because I can bet on it. Well, I can tell you as a. As the guy who likes to gamble once in a while. If it's the middle of summer. And you don't love baseball. And there's nothing on and you want to put five bucks on a game. I mean, sometimes I'll like, I find a $1 bet. And a thousand dollar bet feels the same. You lose as badly. The $1 is you lose the. Like that's the, the beauty and the w. And the pain of gambling. Is that no matter why you couldn't have, like you ever played a fantasy football game and you lose on the last moment on some weird, you know, play that costs you 10 yards and then suddenly. You've lost it on a penalty and now you've lost the game. Like you're dying. Inside, even though the game caught you. You said no value. So I think what might happen is that the guy who doesn't. Care. In the middle of summer, maybe even in the U S. Might put on a football game and say, you know what? Aye. I'm going to watch this. I need 10 bucks on. On the, on the blue ballers. Or whatever. And I think you're going to get some of that. How much of it. I don't know. And I think that's where again, where the XFL thing comes in. If it's suddenly your town playing. Against. Hamilton or Ottawa or whomever. But then maybe, yeah, maybe you are. I think that's where the expansion of the league or the expansion of how they do business could work in down the road. But again, to me, this is still assuming that someone is predisposed to want to gamble, right. They just, the casual football fan. Who I think that the CFL needs to attract more of, you know, cause this is like a sub-section of a sub-section right. So. If I'm someone, you know, I cover. I've never Paul. We famously about one time in Vegas, on the iPhone. I don't know. I never bet on anything. Right. We, in terms of sports, so. That's my question is yeah. If you're, if you want to gamble, okay. I'll gamble on the CFL, but I'm just someone that, you know, I just don't think that you're opening the door to these, you know, 20 million more people that it wasn't open to yesterday because you can gamble now. Well, again, that comes down to like, I'm a season ticket holder for the Argos. And I'm 64 years old. And I'm a boat, the youngest person in my section. Like. When I say they're going up and down the aisles in canes. I'm not kidding. They are going up and down the aisles in canes. And. That's. You go to a grey cup. And what do you see? You don't see very many people. Under 50. Like most of the people wandering the streets and going to the bars and taking in the parties and all that stuff. It's an older, wider. Proud. What they ha CFL has a long to figure out or long to do. Is how do we get people your age watching? How do we get them interested? How do we get their friends interested? How do we get minority minorities interested? Which is. I mean, if you walk around Toronto today, You know, you can't take three steps without seeing a minority. Like it's. You know, But you don't see them at sporting. Other than Raptor games. Maybe soccer games. You won't see them at very many Toronto maple Leafs games. And you certainly don't see any. Are very many at Argo games. And, you know, The. The league itself across the board. And across the country. Has not really found a way. To get new Canadians involved in the Canadian football league. And it's been a challenge for Randy Ambrozy as commissioner. And it's been a challenge for virtually every commissioner who came before him. And why not? I I'm going to. Make it terrible. Analogy of sorts here. That probably will get me in trouble somewhere. Somewhere in the world. But if I walk into casino, Niagara, Which is about an hour and a half from where I live. Or casino Rama, which is about an hour, hour and a half from where I live in the other direction. Then. I will be a minority. As a white person in that casino and often. The majority. Will be some kind of Asians. They're gambling. They're gambling a lot. Are they watching football? Are they betting on football? Are they watching CFL? How do you get them into CFL? How do you get their dollars? Two. Come out of those casinos and into CFL stadiums and even CFL bedding. And that's challenges for the people involved. Too. You know, to get to groups. That clearly have shown an interest in gambling. And not necessarily in football. And at the same time, just to go flip it for one second, I have friends. Who. Who don't believe anyone would ever watch? I mean, I love football, so I love the sport and I, my kids played and I played. I just really, really enjoyed the gate. But I know people that don't think people, anyone would watch the NFL, if they couldn't bet. Or didn't have prompts on Sundays or didn't have a pool to go in or something. I don't necessarily take that approach because I think the game is so great that I'm happy just to watch. And I can, I can watch a high school game or a college game or a CFL game, or I don't care. I just like the game. But lots of people believe. That gambling is, you know, As kept the NFL. As the number one sport in America. I don't know if I agree with that. I think the NFL is more like a family thing where, you know, you have parties, you bring people over. And I think that's what kind of drives it here. At least for us is that, you know, the super bowl specifically. It's a family event. So I guess, I guess I don't necessarily. Agree with that, but that's what I, you have to understand. I live in a city that doesn't have an NFL team, right. And, and so I remember years ago, my newspaper did a poll. Which team should we cover? Because we do a lot of NFL. We do a lot of NFL coverage in our paper. And, and what. What amazed us was how vast the interest was. Not it wasn't Buffalo bills based, even though they're an hour and a half away. Like I live in a house. For example, climate kids are now no longer at home. But when they were at home where I had a Seahawks fan and a Raiders fan, I sent the Raider Stanford treatment a few times. Is that a whole different issue? But, you know, and they, and when they get together with their bodies, they're in their thirties. Now when they get together with their buddies, You know, there's a Tampa fan and a Colts fan, and everybody's got everybody has a different team. And so that's what you get in a city like this one. So maybe it's not the same as a family getting together for, for a football game, because in this case, the families getting together or the kids are getting together and they're all of different. You know, they're all have their own different favorite teams, rarely. Do any of them have the same one? A question for you since we, you know, I feel like we beaten this. Although the sports betting is fascinating to me. I, you had mentioned the XFL before as obviously someone that, you know, lifelong CFL fan, you know, in, in the Canadian. You know, football hall of fame. But also someone that loves football yourself. What, what struck you with with all that? When you heard all the talks come out about the merger and partnerships or whatever the heck's going to end up happening. My first thought, having lived through both the expansion to the United States. And other attempts of other leagues too, to make it. It is, this is a lot of hogwash. You know, we lived through the XFL. Once before we lived through the world football league. You know, there was supposed to be a Toronto team in, in the original world football league where they signed Larry zonca and Jim Keke. And Paul Warfield from the Miami dolphins wound up playing in Memphis. Because the government at the time, wouldn't allow them into Canada. Probably well before your days. But we've seen how many startup leagues have there been over the years? Any of them finished yet? Like tell me they don't even finish their seasons. So here's the CFL a hundred plus years old. Where. I've been covering it now for in the 40 year range. I'm going to go through this. I covered the bankruptcy of the Calgary Stampeders, the bankruptcy of the Saskatchewan Roughriders, the bankruptcy of the Argos, the bankruptcy of the tight guts, the bankruptcy. Various teams in Ottawa. So that's five of think of nine teams that went bankrupt. And the leaks, the leak stole exists. It's like, it's like, you know, it's like the, you know, it's like bugs around your outside of your house. You know, you. You think you've killed them? The next day, they're back in again and that's the CFL, you know, it can't go away. But I'm not so sure why they don't want to do business. With, for lack of a better word, a fly by nighter. Unless there's something extremely. Attractive financially for you. Because otherwise. You know, you've got a leak. You've been in business now. The other guys have been in business four and a half weeks. Or whatever it's been. I mean, the. The current owner is what? The rocket, everybody. Yeah. Well, they haven't played anything yet. We haven't had a season yet. I don't even have franchises. They have coaches. I don't think they have anything. So, what did they have? They had the rock and some other. You know, some other rich people that, you know, want to do something with. With their money, but you know, I understand Randy I'm Brosy listening. I just don't believe necessarily. And I'm, I'm more in the minority when it comes to guys, who've been around the league. I just don't believe anything. Of subs of substance will happen here. Okay. So let me point out some, some. I think some. Some discrepancies here. The first thing first, I want to get this out here because I didn't have a chance to do with. Our friend Eros that came on and kind of said what you said, but bear in a very like condescending tone. You know, we kind of appreciate the software you've delivered. Your message here. The arena football first and foremost, that that had a good 20 year run. Second of all. I think the difference between the two leagues is that the Canadian football league has owners of individual franchises where one franchise can declare bankruptcy. And it doesn't sink the entire league where the XFL hasn't had that where different owners own different teams. So I think that's the, that's the difference here between these two leagues that we're where we're kind of neglecting here. Well, I just, here's what I don't understand. If you speak one language. And I speak another language. We're going to have trouble communicating. If I play three down football and you play four down football. I've got a problem. If you play a hundred yard football and I play 110 yard football with a 25 yard end zone or 20 yard. Zone. We have things to talk about. There, there are so many little things. You know, one of the, what do you call it? Intricacies historically. Of the Canadian football league. Even though almost every star I can name on the last 30 years is an American. Is that there are 14 or 16 Canadian starting on every roster or how many, whatever the number is. It changes. You know, as, as the, you know, As the ratio goes. But you can't now tell an American team. You have to have, as they did when they expanded. To Baltimore and other places that you can, that you need to have Canadians, first of all, it's against the law. I think in the United States. That you have to have this many Canadians on your roster. So, so you're looking at. Changing the premise. Or everything. That's been the Canadian football league. And there's lots to like about it. And frankly, there's lots not to like, like with any league. The difference being is, you know, all the rest of pro sports. As we know it. Is ostensibly succeeding. Even with Penn, even in the pandemic, you. You know, the NHL is a go and the NBA is a goal and major league soccer is a go. And all these leagues are. The CFL is now walking on eggshells. It always does walk on eggshells. It's a different kind of eggshells now. Because so many things are happening including in the last couple of days, the retirement of some pretty prominent Canadian players. Who obviously, I think what happened is, is they found jobs or discovered their professions in the pandemic. And realize that, you know, it's probably beneficial to them. Not like, it's not like you play in the NFL you're Laska and the roster. You're making 500 grand. You know, If you're the last guy in the roster and you're making 62 grand or whatever the number happens to be. It's not life sustaining money. And so guys, I think you're going to see more and more Canadians saying, you know what? I got a job. It's pretty good. One. I think rather than bash my head in for that extra kind of money. I'm going to stay here. So, you know, there are so many issues the CFL has to fix on its own. That. I'm not sure. Bringing in partners. Unless there's a big number to be made. Money-wise. Bringing in partners makes a whole lot of sense and I've never had anybody explain it to me. Not the commissioner. Not any of his underlings, not the advocates who believe in it. I've never heard anybody explain to me how exactly this is going to work. My question for you would be. And you said that you may be in the minority, right? In terms of not being excited about that, because you know, we've heard reports and talks with people where it seems like a lot of higher ups, a lot of the team owners, a lot of the, you know, whatever are excited about that. So is that. Is that correct? Or I do a lot of the people that you work with and talk with and know, are, are they more bullish on that venue? I don't know if bullish should be the right term. I think intrigued by how much money can be made, where can it be made? You know, where can they save? What could they save from? And I think it's, it's. I hate to say it. Cause I think they might be getting sold a bill of goods. Bye. By a commissioner who frankly has been in that. Sort of sales pitch before. He started that whole CFL 2.0 thing with Europe. I never understood. You know where that went or how it went. And I don't think they spent a whole lot of money on it. I'm not sure they've gained a whole lot of anything other than I know they were looking to try and get a TV contract of some kind in Europe. I don't think that's worked out. In this one, when I say people are bullish, I'm talking about. I'll use some of my friends like Dave Naylor. Who's one of the CFL reporters at TSN or rat ARRA. Farhand lodgey also with TSN, you know, it's, you know, there. More believing that there's something to be had here that there's business to be made. Like they, I think they're more optimistic than I happen to be. And, and I, and I'm, as I'm optimistic, I'm also concerned. That you can't sell out your principles. You can't sell off three downs. You can't sell off, you know, the ratio on the rosters. You may be able to trim it slightly. There are things in my mind, you can't do. And, and still be who you are and still look yourself in the mirror. But having said that. This is the only league. That I can think of. That did a play last year. Like every other league CA. They came back under bubbles or circumstances without the fans. CFL couldn't afford to do that. They couldn't afford to pay for all that testing. Paying for all the travel and pay for all the things. Without getting anybody in the stance. And so now this upcoming year, So much just going to be focused on where they're at right now. And where they're going. And, you know, To go back to where we began the conversation, you know, w you know, if there's money to be made from gambling. Whether it's by selling advertising or putting, you know, Things in your own stadiums. Then they're going to explore that. You know, But again, like anything else? Everything to me, including what's coming up for this season. Including the XFL talk, including everything is a great unknown. All right. Steve Simmons. Thank you for your time from the Toronto sign. Of course, CFL hall of fame. Number in 2019. Thank you for your time. Joining us here on the mark cast. Thank you. Appreciate it, by the way. That's the only time anyone's ever introduced me as a CFL hall of Famer. So I'm, I'm pumped by that. I'd like to give a year. We like to give you your props here on the mark. We'd like to, we like to do that a lot with get up. That has the credentials you have. We definitely like to give you your props. So we thank you for your time. Okay. Thank you very much, sir. I appreciate it. All right. Well guys. Thanks.

Episode 45 - Dissecting the CFL 2021 Schedule

Friday morning. You're. Was it that energy? Now we, this is take two, but we're here. We're here. We're here. Yes. Feedback from, especially when listeners Zack, but I think we need, we kind of laid off the year for awhile. I think we were getting a little year heavy and now we are on a year diet. And I think we need to get a little bit more back to doing the years again. It's it's kind of like how, you know, If you're, if you're going through like a carb cutting diet, like, I don't know, the south beach diet, I think it is. You like lay off carbs for a little bit, then you can slowly incorporate them back into your daily routine. And that's basically what we're doing now. So we'll bring it back, bringing it back. Why not? Yeah. Is that? Yes. I see your ID. Well, you see my ALK shirt that says spoiler, it said that. Alex. Merge came like the second we were done recording last week and I was like, darn it. So, but we did Matt mangoes. You know, I have this wonderful Jersey now. So I opened the shirt because I wanted it on when I talked to Jim and rod, but I do have the hat. So we'll do an unboxing here in a second. Congratulations on your golden Knights playoffs so far. Well, that's one, one right now against the Montreal Canadians. So let's, let's, you know, I'm hoping, I'm hoping they can pull it up. In three straight games enough, wrap this up. Yeah. The golden Knights. Golden Knights Islanders. So what's the word. That's one thing. What I would do to go to a Las Vegas gold, nice game in Vegas right now. Every deal. I would do anything. That would be great. Sound it's dude. I mean, my friend Alma went to one and she said it was a blast. She says, she's she bought tickets for game seven, just in case there is a game seven. I'm hoping there's not a game seven. But you never know, you never really know. Yeah. So. So Paul did, did. Did you know that your cohost read that you have been co-hosting with a liar this whole time? I did not know that. Why are you a liar? I've gotten a lot of, well also I'm, we're anti XFL now. Right? So that's the. And I we're, you know, even though we spent hours, you know, interviewing presidents of football, Canada, and yo. Dan Barnes media during the last we have Steve Simmons coming on today, Canadian hall of fame, you know, reporter, even though we have all these wonderful interviews, all this have, we are outliers and the XFL is coming back in February. And that's news to me, it's probably news to Danny and probably news to the rock and probably news to everybody that works at XFL. Cause you know, they don't have anybody hired. So. Yeah, I did. I did post this week that I. When the XFL announces their news, it's not going to be IB ND of national treasure when they go in the basement and like every treasure and from the history of like all the way back to, you know, the Ark of the covenant and everything, is there, they very much, like, I think we will get the slow trickle of news like we did before there. Yeah, coaches, coaches are not hired right now. I'm sorry. No. There's basically, there's no one that's hired. No one, a tired, why? Why is this. No one's hired. So we have a really good show coming up today at first off. And I tweeted this this morning. I, when I talked with Jim Mullen, We, we were trying to figure out if the Edmonton team is going to be playing BC. If one of those games worked for us to go up to BC, you know, Jim has promised us a rooftop party at his house on Bowen island. And so we were trying to figure out that's not gonna work. So I have weddings, everything else. There's two games that work for me. Which is really all that's important that I would like you to be able to come. So we'll check our schedules, but vote in the comments. The, this C Peters are playing. October 16th. And then the 12th, both at BC. One of those two games I would like to make the trip up to. And obviously we're going to the great cup. I mean, obviously, but I would like to go to BC and hang out with the BC fans. What say you about that? I can already tell you which one's going to work better for me. Okay. October October 16th. Well, it still. Given the business that I'm currently in, you know what November means? So October. He was the one that will work. As I, so I still leave your YouTube comments of which one you want us to do really drive that algorithm, but just potentially one of those two dates would work. But, you know, I, I, again, I would love to do the Edmonton thing or maybe fly to Edmonton, do all that stuff, but this is an easy trip. You know, we can do that, do a weekend, you know, a party with, with Jim and all that kind of stuff. So I thought that that would be a good, a good idea for us. Yeah. Let me look into that October 16th. Why not? Why not. I, you know, border opening. Every everything else aside. Yeah. Tremendous show today, not three and a half hours and five guests. We do have four guests. We have. Well, it all kind of worked out. So Jim Mullen, this was like a late add. He was just like tweeting about the schedule. Obviously the CFL schedules release CFLs to returning into play. You know, we, everyone knows all that stuff. Jim was tweeting about some weird, like, Hey, this is kind of weird about the schedule. That's kinda weird about the schedule. I'd like, W do you want to come on the show for like 10, 15 minutes just to kind of like share your thoughts and he's like, sure. And so he has that, we talked for like 45 minutes. Jim brought. The XFL, Jim brought up USFL. Jim brought up all these things, but Jim did a lot of homework. He challenged you to a bat involving the Mariners in the Yankees. I hope that you stay tuned for that. Jim was very fiery about the mirror Mariners V Yankees and Jimmy even wore like a special Jersey for you. It was a whole thing. Yeah, I don't hate. Though, like, I don't hate the Mariners. I, I, I, I like and appreciate the Mariners. I don't know why. I know why there's so much hostility, but you know, It's one sided. I w you know, It's just one sided. So, yeah, but Jim came on, so we do a whole breakdown of the schedule that's coming out. Jim's got that historical perspective. Jim did homework. Cause he was talking about like pre the interview. Hey, you know, these teams are traveling this many kilometers and it's unfair. And I go, Jim, We need miles. We need. Elsewhere in American podcasts. So Jim did all of the conversions. Jim's great. And then we had set up a rod. Yeah, a friend of the show, rod Peterson, you know, To come back on. I felt it was a good spot for rod because you know, obviously everyone's positive CFL media. It's an exciting week. Obviously we're Debbie downers and we kind of want to know, like, realistically, what are we doing here? So I figured rod would kind of cut through a lot of that BS. Really tremendous performance from rod. I thought a really good appearance. We talk a lot about like the negativity that he was surprised about the XFL stuff. Again, Rob brought up the XFL. I was going to talk CFL. But, but a lot of that stuff, you know, the media, the stuff we're going through with the XFL news, I just thought it was a really like open, honest conversation with rod. I mean, I know Rod's always like on like we are, but I thought that we got a little behind the curtain. Thank you very much for rod. Well, and also Steve Simmons coming up, CFL hall of Famer, Toronto sunrise reporter and Kevin Kugler from the TSL mega bowl. The mega bowl. The mega bowl and apparently USL FOC yes, USFL Fox. So he's coming up as well. Yeah, he gets thoughts about that. Yeah. So we brought them on, Kevin's been doing the announcing for a lot of the spring league games. And that he's got lots of thoughts about USFL and Fox and kind of how all that stuff's going to go. So, I mean, we were talking just for anyone that watches any of these spring leagues. I thought great insights from Kevin talking about like the research and prep that they have to do to do the shows. Cause like, you know, Yeah. Everyone knows like Tom Brady story, like nobody knows Willy Yarberry story, who we're going to talk about in the show. Right? So like Kevin's got to do all that research. And so I just thought that, that again, if you're a fan of the spring league, any of these, you know, alternative football leagues, I thought that was great. A great preview for the championship game. And then, like I said, lots of USFL talk. Kevin's got lots of thoughts about that. Very cool. We're still waiting to. I guess the C two, one eight bill is still waiting to be read for the third time as we start to record this. So, I don't know. There, they do need to read it a third time. Is that. Yeah. Yeah. It's got to go through a third reading. It's got to go back to the house. We're we're talking with Steve today. I've already got a guest lined up for next week. We're just, we're acting like it's going to pass. Like everyone I've talked to you, pat Steinberg, rod, everyone. We all, we all think it's going to pass. So we are just operating under that. But anyway, so we're not going to have like the latest, whatever it went back to the house, but. Yes, we're going to talk with Steve all about that. Steve's got some hot takes about the CFL single game batty, and maybe not being as lifesaving as people think it's going to be. So I'm curious about that. So anyway, and then two quick things, so don't forget gestures, merge, man were, we didn't quite hit 1500 by the end of the spring league season. We're getting there. We're at like 1350 or something, but please like, and subscribe a lot of work going into the shows, you know, a lot of interviews and stuff. But, you know, when we get 1500, we still have the jostace jerseys. And then I have my Edmonton hat before we get into all that. All the assessors. It's free open, but I didn't look at the, I didn't look at the, the hat. You got to have my shirt. Do you like, and you liked the logo. I love the logo. It's great. It's sharp. I'm not switching teams though. Sorry. Oh, this is cool. The logo, I wish the logo maybe was a little bit bigger. I might have to do a hat switch mid podcast. Ooh. That's nice. Is it. Is it fitted or is it. Yeah. Well, I thought that was, that was. That was the, you know, them getting all the fitted hats. I thought it was asking a lot for the CFL on the first week of that Edmonton. So we'll get that, but that's a good, I'll put this on here, but anyway, so we got the Edmonton. I would like to get an Edmonton follow back from the football team. I feel like we deserve that. We'll work on that. We'll definitely work on that. So. Let's get into the bulk of the news here. In CFL news, lawyer for the red black for red blacks is. Chris Larson said he's been cleared as a suspect and alleged hate crime. He was considered a suspect. And now his, his lawyer says he's no longer a suspect that we're going to get ahold of the CFL. And coaches there to explain to them that he's not a person, that person of interest. At most he'll, he may be a witness when the peak, when they get, when they actually arrest the people that do what that did do. This is typed up really poorly. That's copy and pasted from three down nation. We believe you re oh, from three down nation, huh? Okay. I guess, I guess he's, he might be a witness when, when they actually arrest the people that, that. Did the hate crime? Interesting. Yeah. I just thought that was important. I mean, we obviously that last week with that talking about it, I mean, we didn't like slander anybody, but it's always interesting to me that when someone does something terrible or allegedly does something terrible, you know, it's like wildfire. Right. And then it was very hard. I didn't see, you know, nearly as much. Hey, you know, this guy might not have actually done anything, you know, he might, you know, witnessed and that's all scary. And I'm sure that was a scary situation. But anyway, I just wanted to make sure we, you know, we led the show at that and got out. I liked my hat. It looks good. It does look good. Very sharp. I mean I'm, I'm in partial buffeted hats because. The, the adjustable ones break my head out more than my face is already broken out. Cause I've been in, I've been in the heat for. You know, two weeks working, but you know, Eventually, I'm sure that other teams will catch up with their merchandise. Cause I'm still checking for Argonauts merchandise all the time. And I'm hoping that they open the flood gates on that. Speaking about moving forward with everything CFL. The board of governors voted in favor of a 14 game season, which wasn't to be a, you know, what was expected. I guess, you know, The public really didn't know what was going on behind the scenes. And all nine teams signed on for a, for a season. That's interesting. Yeah. And the thought process is, you know, whatever. The public facing needed to be unanimous, right? Even if you know, Montreal or Toronto or whoever, even if these people, maybe weren't a hundred percent on board. I needed to have a public facing, like, this is what we're going to do. And I have an interesting quote [unknown]. Algae coming up here about the vote. But anyway. Yeah, I mean, it's good. People are thrilled. You know, we've got the schedule, we talk about all that stuff, but you know, this is what needed to happen. And rod talks about that too, that, you know, this really there. What do you, you, at least you at least have to try now for August 5th, whether we're going to get everything going by then. I don't know, but, and rod doesn't know, but you know, Jim's very bullish and, and people are very, this is a good week for the CFL. I mean, and, and to that point, like, you know, we're always talking about how the virus pretty much dictates how this is gonna, this is gonna roll out. So that's, that's another thing that happens. Like if, if, if it gets to the point where. That was weird. If it gets to the point where if it gets to the point where the virus is kind of going through, I guess it would be considered a fourth wave. Yeah, there was a third wave, right. That just barely. You know, it's kind of calming down. Now, if it goes through a fourth wave, then you know, they're not gonna be able to put fans in stands. And then if they don't put fans in stands, Then, you know, everybody's going to be reconsidering their decision to move forward with a, with a season probably, or maybe delay it, who knows. That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. A couple of statements and Brosy, you know, once he acknowledged the governors for moving forward, you know, he feels like they can't express that, you know, how grateful they are for the healthcare workers, all that kind of stuff. You know, obviously really encouraging. You know, the vaccines for fans. And that's going to be a thing too, with the CFL players is the whole vaccine thing where some of the guys. Obviously you want to do it. And some of them don't. And we have a note here coming up about the, the protocol with the players, but basically so far, and they could change that, but they're going to treat vaccinated and non-vaccinated players the same, right? And, and ideally it would get to a point where they're going to vote, you know, before the season, it is interesting that like the NFL has already released all their protocols for the season that's coming up and the CFL has not, and they're obviously kicking off. So, you know, a month earlier. And you would think that they'd be able to really dip into the protocols that the NHL has and you know, and now there's only one Canadian NHL team remaining in the Stanley cup. So, you know, they can really monitor, you know, they can really do contract contact tracing with the Montreal Canadians, but since there's no cross border participation in the CFL, it should be a lot easier if you just follow the protocols, the NHL undertook. Yeah. Yeah. The player association is really excited, you know, they're moving forward. The one interesting thing is they might change the playoffs. So right now I think it's six teams are going to be in the playoffs. They might expand that to eight, just depending on the schedule is really wonky. And we talked with Jim and there's notes and I've gotten emails from people, you know, rich sent me a bunch of emails. He's upset. It's really wonky. You know, some teams are playing each other four times, some teams aren't playing each other at all. Jim gets into a lot of that stuff in. I get that. Right. And, and what's, what's really interesting about that too, is, you know, the playoffs, whatever, but also when we're building this, Hey, we're trying to get the single game betting. This really isn't a fair schedule, right? Like [unknown]. If you, if you were to expand, have eight teams and all that. And so it is interesting that we're pushing for single game betting. For the CFL at the same time that they have a very uneven schedule this year. And you know, if you're betting. Your money on staff and one teams playing each other four times, and maybe it's a weaker team than another. Do you get what I'm saying? That's not very fair. Those those odds. Aren't very fair for sure. Huh. So they're leaving the album for that. A couple other notes. There's still no formal approval for the fans in the stands. Right? So like we're, we're turning the play. We're working on those protocols. That's all expected, but, but currently there's not, obviously they feel confident in about that. You see this with the Canadian government, they they're trying to really work with, like you said, the NHL with their, with the quarantines and everything that they have with that, which, like we said, all these other leagues now have all, like, they've done all the other homework. Like show us your homework in the CFL. Can, you know, it doesn't seem like it should be that hard for them to figure this out. And I'm curious why the CFL hasn't reached out and actually, you know, Figured out exactly. You know? Why isn't the CFL reaching out and getting information on how to do this? That's my question. Yeah. And you know, and maybe they are behind the scenes, you know, me. Can we talk about, you know, transparency. And things we would like to hear. I mean, these are kinds of things you could talk about. But they're trying to figure that out, you know? With the, you know, reducing the quarantines, getting people back and forth, but. It is interesting this whole, like players not wanting to quarantine or not wanting to get vaccinated and then being, you know, like basically. The idea, ideally would be, if you're vaccinated, it's like fair game and you can go around. But if you're not, you know, you can't go home on the bi-week. You can't go visit people when you're in the cities. You can't go do anything. I mean, it's really. You know, I mean, not to get political, but a lot of these leagues are really incentivizing and pushing people to get vaccinated. And not only that, but like Canada's now allowing vaccine mixing for second doses. So if you, if you've got an AstraZeneca, you can get a. Pfizer or Madonna. So that should help speed up the second doses. Cause last time we checked, it was what 6% of all people in Canada had their second dose. That's not those not, they're not, not very good numbers. When you talk about how Canadian population is smaller compared to the U S like 6% of the us population, it's probably 30% of the Canadian population. So hopefully I haven't checked. I was going to look that up real quick, but I can't find it easily readily available. So maybe, maybe later on, we'll have that information on how many. The percentage of Canadians that have had their second dose. Yeah. It isn't she, I was talking with Dorothy about that too. I'm like, it's funny how you know, that we always use the population thing when it comes to like revenue. Fans in the stadiums, you know, the viewership, all these things. Right. Okay. Canada's one 10th, the size of the United States, like, and obviously a lot of that's fair, but they, when it comes to like the COVID numbers, they're. Well, look, we, we, we also have 50% of first dose or I'm just making up whatever the, yeah. But that's, that's a way that's one 10th, the number, you know, you can't have it all the ways with that. This is a fascinating. Far homology. Was on, you know, Derek Taylor, friend of the show, his, his sports cage. He that he says potentially with some of the teams. Vote to play, you know, this time for the CFL and then use that as a bargaining chip later. Right? Like maybe we're still all this XFL D stuff is going on and maybe Toronto's like, okay, we'll play. But when it comes to this other south, like then you got to go along with us. I think that that is interesting, especially that far Han brought that up. You know, Farhana Naylor. I mean, obviously they're pushing all this stuff, but I did think that was interesting. Definitely is Naylor going to do any other podcasts besides one. I'm just, I'm curious. Okay. Truly remarkable news today. I found out. I can only say the twice resurrected XFL. I like. Those terminology, that terminology better than the twice failed league. Throws out there. Yeah. There's also three of them, maybe. I mean, I do that. We talked a lot about that rod and I are talking a lot about like media hostility and stuff, and he's like, yeah, people have said stuff that they can't take back. I'm like, well, three down has no. They've unblocked us. So I feel, or me, so I feel better about our relations with dunk and Hodge at this point. This is, you know, this Scott Mo he's always coming out to scatch swans also like Saskatchewan, you know, way less populated, way better off with all the vaccine numbers in a lot of the other provinces, but they want full stands. They want, you know, Packed to the gills there premiere. He, ah, he says, I actually personally think that they will likely be able to fill the stadium. I'm going to go to the opening game chair on the greatest football team, this country, and likely the world at St. Bargain the season to return the grey cup back to its rightful home here in Regina. It's been a weather bag for far too long and extended period of time, which is really a travesty. I thought that was a tremendous quote. Wow. The the. The hyperbole in that quote is just incredible. Like the greatest football team in the world. Tampa bay would like to have it word it. Just like to have a word. Kansas city would like to have a word. They just don't like to be another. I'd like to have a word. Hey. Real quick. Can we get your thoughts on the Madden football cover? And that was announced today as we're recording. Oh, my gosh. I saw that there, there people were creating their own mat and football covers and the ones that people were creating were better than the ones that EA is rolling out. It's like, do you. Yeah. Do we need Bri like breathing Mahama to get like, can we get it's like WWE? Like, can we promote anybody else? My home's was on at what not last year, but the year before. Two years ago. Years ago. Okay. Yeah. It's crazy. Anyway, we were talking about this, the COVID stuff, you know, I just had my other note here, but the, the cover protocols being released, I'm going to cue up this quote here from Naylor coming up about the rock. But any other thoughts you do you think? I think, do you think that is. As I do about the players being treated the same, whether they're vaccinated or not. Well, I mean, that's. The general CDC recommendations down here in America are that if you are vaccinated, You are treated differently because you are vaccinated. And I know it's an honor system and it's like, how can you really prove someone's vaccinated without breaking, you know, HIPAA laws or asking, you know, are you vaccinated? It's interesting, but I don't, I I'm sorry. I do not believe that you should treat vaccinated and unvaccinated players the same. It should be the choice of the vaccinated players, because the unvaccinated people are like my body, my choice. What should be the choice? The vaccinated players to say, well, I choose, I chose to get the vaccine. So I should be treated differently because I played by the rules. I wore my mask. And I got vaccinated when I could get vaccinated. So why am I having to, you know, Play by the rules of the unvaccinated people and understand if you're unvaccinated and you haven't had a chance to get your second dose in Canada. I completely get it. That's not your fault, but if you're choosing not to get your first or second dose, I don't think that vaccinated people should be held to those standards. And I'm sorry that the political, but that's just the way I feel. And. I think it's, it's unfortunate for the players that have come up from America and have had their second dose having to quarantine as much as. On on vaccinated players. And I understand the vaccine doesn't prevent you from getting or spreading coronavirus. But it does a damn good job at doing that. So it's not a for sure thing that, you know, because the. Efficiency rate is what, 96% on Pfizer and like 88% on modern or something like that. So there is still that little window that you have to be careful on, but. You know, Bye and bye. You shouldn't be treated the same as unvaccinated people. If they're choosing not to get the vaccine. Yeah. It's interesting. So I will, like I said, so Jim Mullen and rod both brought up XFL in, in, in our talks. You know, on the show today. And I thought that was interesting. Because, you know, the CFL is coming back now. It's very much in their minds. I don't, I don't think we're going to hear anything at all till after grey cup at all. I mean, I don't, that's just me and I don't, I don't. I have no thoughts about the season being played next year. I do not have knowledge about when they're going to announce when the next year, because you can. Yeah. I think too, we got a lot of comments. Like, you didn't even know where the UFL was going to be, and now it is, how can we even trust you by the exit bell? It's like, okay, well, there's also like varying levels of like sources and information and things that we know. We don't like, I don't know when they're going to announce, like I have no idea, but I would presume after the grey cup. Anyway, Naylor was on this overdrive podcast. These hosts are great. Hayes noodles and oh, dog are the names of the three. On this. I'm panties overdrive, this Canadian. As on TSM, whatever, but I listened to what Naylor says, listen to this question and I want to get your reaction to this. This is about a minute clip. So bear with us. Paint a picture to you now. The border opens up. It's all good. Americans are coming across. Canadians are going the other way. And at some point, and let's say October, Rough rider, blue bomber game in Saskatchewan. The rock is in the house wearing an XFL jacket. And he gets up on the big screen. What kind of reaction do you think he'd get? It's funny. You should bring that up. Because I was actually thinking of it as soon as the season was on, things have been going through my head this afternoon. When's the first time the rock makes an appearance. Yeah, right. Right. That's the other storyline that's going to play out here. You know, over the next month, it'd be a month. That story hasn't gone away. Oh boy. In Winnebago. Katchewan. Boy. I bet it's more positive than negative, but it would be a good chunk of bolt. I mean, that is, that is the Heartland. That is the traditional. Yeah. That's where the teams aren't struggling, like where they don't feel like they need to change into something else. Things are good. But I also think there's, there's a lot of people that understand that this lake has to adapt, has to grow, has to see beyond his forwarders. And for the future, they. They, they believe in it. So at least they want to see this. Played out as much as possible. I'm going to say 60, 40 positive on the, on the rock, on the big screen at IgE field in Winnipeg. Okay. So 60, 40 positive. It is it's like winter is coming, right? It's like that rock is rock the night. Maybe that's our next episode. Like rock equals night king. Question mark. What do you think the reaction would be? If the rock showed up at a CFL game? I think it would be a situation like, you know, There are some WDB crowds, like when John seen his music would hit, they would cheer at first and be like, oh wait, we're supposed to not like it. We're supposed to not like this. I think it's a very similar situation where they're like, yeah. Oh s**t. No boom. BU that man, I think that's what'll happen. Oh, that's very soon. But, you know, Naylor, th th these people are still bringing this up, right. I mean, the exit fell. Rod. And I, he had Charlton Hayes. He's a, he's an Argonauts player on, on his show. The other day, railed on the XFL was like, I don't even know why we, like, why would you ever want to go play with them? It's like, well, cause you could get money and jobs and stuff. And there's only so many positions in the world that you can work on the football team. But I, when, when I saw that I tweeted the ending of the Raiders of the lost Ark when they opened the arc and everyone's faces melt. That that is my prediction of when, when the rock shows up for the CFL game. Very possible. Oh man. That's going to be a meltdown. I just want to pop. If, if that happens, I want to pop on Twitter and just watch it like, oh, Gift that I always use where the guy looks up at the fire and it's Bernie smiling. That that is what social media. We'll be like if, and maybe we can throw it in here. That's what social media would be like if. The rock shows up. To a CFL game. Yeah, it's crazy. Do you want to take bad? So you think the rock shows at the season? I don't think he shows up. I don't. Do that. Comment. Comment on the. YouTube video. Does the rock show up this year? Every that show up, where does he go? Does he go to like, does he go to BC somewhere? That's maybe Jim thinks he shows up in BC because BC is a little bit more like. Americans. Even a little bit more. Like a Hollywood. I can't remember the words he used. Like. Yeah. Yes. And Hollywood north. They do a lot of productions out of Vancouver. So maybe that's why they would, might, might be more willing to accept a guy like the rock shoe. You know, Is a massive movie star. Anyway, but yeah, please leave your comments. You think the rock is going to show up? This is interesting. And rod was talking about this on the show today, too. So from Dan Barnes, I want to get Dan back on the show. Cause now that Dan was a good, now that we've kind of got the CFL rolling. So, and then a couple of other teams are as well. So the Sam Peters and the Alex are trying to do some like inner squad games. Cause there's going to be no preseason at all. And I think like the, I came there, there's a couple of other teams like reports coming out, but this was the tweet that I saw from Dan. And it's funny because they're like, okay, there's no preseason games. Okay. Well, we're going to see like inner squad games. It's like, well, this kinda kind of feeds the purpose of, of doing that. What do you think about the, the COVID ramifications of trying to do inner squad practices and games? I mean, it's, it's some kind of practice. I think you need to have some kind of practice. Because if you don't have practice, that's what, that's what injuries occur. I mean, we saw it during the NFL season. When they didn't have that many PR. Well, they went right into the regular season. No preseason games at all. And there were a ton of injuries and. That's something else. You're finding out what the NBA right now is that there are a ton of injuries happening at a key moment in the playoffs. We're down to, you know, the final what's the sons of advanced. We're down to the final seven teams by the end of the, by the end of next week. We'll have our Western conference in Eastern Eastern conference finals. And now we're talking about how Khalilah Leonard's injured and how Kyrie's injured. And James Harden's playing on one leg. And how Anthony Davis wasn't able to go during the playoffs, which pop would probably ended up costing Lakers, a title. I mean, there's all these things that go into why the preseason. Exists and why? These things are important to get people in shape. I mean, you can do something in practice, but you're not running game speed. And in the pre-season you run game speed and that's when you really get up to up to speed. So I think having full on game speed scrimmages between teams are a great idea. They're a great idea. Just to kind of hopefully alleviate energy injuries. The other interesting thing is that the competitive advantage of that, where, and Jim talks about this too, in the schedule stuff coming up, how, you know, BC is going to have to travel a lot more. Right. And they're a lot further away, you know, the lions traveling, but. Like who does BC do? Inner squad games with. Right. Cause they're kind of out, you know, it just, it raises that question. Like do the other teams, I'll get buddy buddy and whatever. And you know, we're BC is so much further away from a lot of the other teams. It just as rays that competitive. And also if you have nine teams, And you have eight teams pair up, you know, as BC are they, are they the loser at the dance? They're the odd people out. I mean, you know, I think the Vancouver Canucks had problems too with COVID protocols during the NHL season. So maybe this is just a one-time one season thing for both the Canucks and the lions not to be up to speed. And maybe, you know, maybe it's just a punch season at this point for, for the BC lions who knows. Who knows. Yeah. Just a couple other notes. W retired CFO, offensive lineman, John Hemisfair rice. Passed away at the age of 37. And I saw this floating around a lot. He was a former BC lions. Diabetes at 37 as of publishing this. At three down, didn't have an update as to what cause of death was, but he was on like master chef, Canada and staff had his own restaurant. And he really sounds like he parlayed his CFL career into a, you know, a big media. Presence. And so obviously like that, that's just unfortunate to hear about. So obviously I can go on and say this to his family. And on moving forward on that, our thoughts with her. With his family. A lot of hate has been directed at Natanz. Oh, bed's way for speaking out against the former Edmonton football Dame. He. Voiced his opinion said, it seemed very clear to me that it was a derogatory term. That being the E word that. I, you know, up until now. You know, I didn't really view as derogatory, but, you know, You get new information, you change your opinion. That's what happens? You change your viewpoint. So this has been considered a derogatory term toward people. The in-unit people in Alaska, Northern Canada. And now, now it's. Now it's been removed and people are, people are speaking out against him saying, yeah, it's probably a good idea that it was removed. Yeah, it's interesting. Well, it's a mix of that, right? You have a lot of people like me that are excited. The Alex, you know, Conor O'Neill. Neil friend of the show, Dave Campbell, but then yeah, he's getting like a lot. He's getting him lambasted now. Cause I think he feels like. You know, it's his fault that they decided to change this? Or he was someone that, you know, he's been talking about this since back in 2015. And it is interesting that people are still not letting each other. You know, as we know, CFL, people are very much appreciate their history and lineage and the things that they hold dear, as we know what the XFL CFL talks and they. People still aren't happy about this whole Edmonton thing, but I'm going to rock all my wonderful, you know, this is all awesome and not offensive to anybody. Yeah. The problem is, is that like, Yes. These things were considered acceptable. At one time, it was considered acceptable to rock chief while whose logo on your hat. I have one hanging on my wall. That I actually wore. When I was playing baseball, people thought that was acceptable at one point, but it's, it's a red face, smiling, native American. Like it's not really acceptable when you think about it from like a, like for lack of better term, a woke lens and you know, what you find offensive. What you, what you think is not offensive to you? To the person that it offends. They're the ones who decide what's offensive to them. And you can't dictate what's offensive to them because they it's their feelings, it's their people. So the hate against him needs a top stop about this because it's clear that he finds that offensive and he has every right to find it offensive because he is the, he is part of the group of people that, that, that. That slur offense. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's, you know, I'm sorry, your football team, isn't more important than the whole, you know, culture and yeah. People. I mean, it's just not, I'm really sorry. I hate to, I hate to burst your bubble on that one. We've talked about this a couple of weeks ago, Jalen Saunders. He was a WebEx. I read Black's player. He was in this scary car accident. It sounds like he obviously isn't going to be coming back this season. They moved him on the retired list. They don't want to obviously release him right now. And, and, and that whole thing, but obviously our thoughts with her, with him, we talked before about that on the show when he was in that car accident. But obviously he's not going to be playing this season. And I just wanted to give an update about that. Okay. All right. I'm gonna take a break, come back, Jim rod, Steve, three people all back to back to back. Just for you. Stay tuned for that. After the show, I am. It's a little, I think I can clean it up and I'm getting, I think it's zoom, but it's like a little hiss every once in a while, but I feel like it's a zoom thing. I think it'll like, I'll clean it when I do my noise filter, but I do think anyway, I don't know. Welcome back. Want to thank the trio, Jim rod, Steve for stopping in chatting with Reed. I was, you know, at work and unavailable during something like that actually had a doctor's appointment to that. I wanted to talk to Jim. I wanted to chat with Jim about everything and. And I hear his Yankees up, you know, Yankees bet in person. I accept. We'll see, we'll see what happens. Yeah. And then [unknown]. Do you have Ms. Fire it up? I appreciate that. And like I said, that was just kind of supposed to be a running thing and, and I mean, President football. Canada wants to talk to you. You, I mean, I, I'm not going to say no. And so, you know, But yeah, right. Rod was kind of going to be the main star and then Jim and not all, but I, and obviously Steve as well. So I really appreciate that. You know, again, like just trying to bring you guys. You know, again, don't trust us, but trust the people we talked to and the information we try to give, like that's my whole thing is yeah. Okay. I mean, maybe I'm the liar, but not everyone. We talked to her a liar. So, I mean, that's the thing, like don't think that reads a liar because we interview someone that's, that's just not. I don't know. I don't, I don't get, I don't understand the logic of math. So moving on Redbird capital shopping, 40% of LPAs and MLB PA's business venture as value source. They own 40% of one team partners, which leverages pro football and baseball players, name, images, and likenesses. It's it could be worth up to $800 million two years after it launched in 2019. Do you know why they might be, they might be doing this or the idea is either freeing up some cash. And also they, they really wrote this on the rebound. So here's the thing. If you want to be all scary XFL CFL step, right? So they bought into this, got the huge growth by, by licensing, these players images and things together, even in the last year when it was, when they weren't playing. Right. They got tremendous growth. Well, now they're trying to offload it. So if you're doing the whole, like, we're scared of the XFL thing as CFL people. This is a scary thing because you're like, well, are they going to get in with the XFL and CFL and all that stuff? Are they going to build that? We don't know. Right. Obviously, but this is something, and there's a lot more info here that was kind of, I put those key points at the top, but. Yeah. And I'm seeing the, the real reason why they should be doing this. Down. That's the last paragraph you put here and I'm sorry to cut you off, but you're good. For example, when a Jay Z owned part of the Brooklyn nets. And then wanted to start his sports agency. There's a conflict of interest that exists. So if you have a company that owns part of the MLB PA can they really own Fenway sports? They shouldn't be able to. Oh, there you go. So that means, you know, anyway, I just, to me, I see both sides. I see the conflict of interest and I see them also riding that wave. And. That is interesting. Yeah. What is their long-term plan? They've you know, said they're committed to. You know, they want the XFL to be a a hundred year brand. Right. But is Redbird involved in that the whole time? I don't know. Right. Maybe do they, do they sell that off? You know again, cause it's Danny and them, and then the investments, I don't know. Anyway. Very very interesting with that. Just w we got a ton of XFL signings here and notes before we get to spring league staff. Do you want to start can't this camp Phillips came out like right after the fricking show. I couldn't believe I got on, but congrats. The cam Phillips former, he was on the roughnecks with PJ Walker. And he's signing with the Hamilton tiger cats. So congrats to camp Phillips, Ron Rivera, talking about Taylor Hideki. He says the one thing you could say about him is that he's extremely accurate passer. He delivers a really good ball to receivers his rapport with those receivers is also very good. We have a guy in Taylor that shows us he can do it. I'm telling you if it's magic, doesn't work out. Taylor's going to be starting. This is a great quote. If you're a Taylor Hideki fan on Washington football team, this is a phenomenal quote to get to hear from Ron Rivera. And I did see this, that Jordan taboo and former generals wide receiver COC mirror. Mariner. Yeah. Are at the Ravens camp for tryouts. So. Yeah. And then also, Brian, Corey of the defenders that was added on, there was a couple of tweets out. Yeah. This is all kind of scattered stuff. And then today, D'Amore Pearson L he was trying out with the Broncos. He got signed to the practice squad. Like I just saw that today. Per Adam Schefter that he got signed, he was in Nebraska. And then he was on the XFL for the ballot box of your ballot. Hawks guy. You maybe have some interest in watching the Broncos this season. A wide receiver. That's on the practice squad right now, but maybe it'll get called up. Hopefully, no injuries call that maybe he just works his ass off and gets on the main, main roster. Calc Falcons are signing former wide receiver kick returner. Jeff [unknown]. He is a former Dallas renegades player and he has run. Runs up 4.27. Very good. Here's your, of your anti XFL anti rock version. Rock. Was on the rock was on the guy or he's going to be on the cover of people magazine this week that the tagline was fame fatherhood in finding peace. And then the subtitle was why he just might run for president. Voice of XFL fans everywhere. [Unknown] cause the rugs do busy. Ready for president. You know, we don't need any more. I don't think we need any more celebrities running for president, please. No more of that. I'll tell ya as polarizing this, his Biden nominee. His Biden endorsement lesson. Last year. I mean, that was like shots fired. It's, I don't know what's going to happen if he runs for president. That was so fierce. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. XFL. That's what I got. I thought the rubber thing was interesting this week. And then obviously all these signings and stuff. I encourage you to check out this Kevin Kugler interview. Tremendous talking about the spring league staff, and then we'll got more stuff. I'll let you toss to it. But I just, I, I w I want to sell this Kevin interview. I thought it was very tremendous. What we'll we'll we'll definitely take a listen to that. He's going to preview the mega bowl and he's going to talk about the USFL that's coming up next. And we're back. Want to thank Kevin Kugler for his time. Talking all things spring league. And of course the USFL now that it's, you know, kind of very similar. And on that note, real Yarberry the defensive lineman is expected to sign with the chargers per Ian Rapoport rap sheet, throwing that out there. Huge. So excited Yarberry played in November. Back at the previous spring league, he was up for a huge standout, big standout again this year. Couldn't be happier, you know, get people talking about spring league and paying the play and all that stuff. Hey, he's, you know, getting the shot with the chargers, right? You can't sneeze at that. Awesome. It was funny with Kevin. We were talking on, like setting up the interview. We were. Online. And I was like, Hey, let me know like what channels to go through, you know? Do you want to come on the show? He's like, I got like, just, just send me the link. I'm like, okay, well, that's, that's very nice because I told them, I said the spring league is. You know, w w. Now we're, I mean, we're never getting these interviews that we were promised now, but. This very night, he goes, oh yeah. Just like, just let me know. We can do that. Like, no problem. And it's like, I really appreciate, you know, Fellow, you know, news, media, people making things very easy for us to do our job. Love it, jesters and linemen playing in the mega. Well, who do we choose? I thought we're going to choose a journalist. I thought we've always been, you know, the [unknown], but I know, but I, you know, we have stand by the offering of the show called Boozer. Now I've hopefully future outlets, a star in the CFL. I'm the alignment. How mommy. I'm very, I'm very torn with this. I have, I got, have we gotten your thoughts on the mega bowl name? Oh, I think we have, and I don't like it. I think it's kind of. It's kind of, it's kind of really. It's the mega bowl. I don't know. It's like, it's just this. So Brian Woods. It's not a super bowl. It's a mega mall. See Brian, like I love Brian packages. What's better than super mega. Like, like, you know, like you go to seven 11, you're like, I don't want the super big gulp. I want the mega big gulp cause that's bigger than the super, apparently you know, that, you know, mega man is apparently better than Superman. I dunno. I dunno. Maybe. I would say Superman. Never met him in any day. Here's an interesting tidbit. If you are, if you are a anti USFL, true, true truth, or, sorry, I can't speak if you're like anti USFL, like what are they going to do? How are they going to launch? This spring league currently, if you want, like the box scores from all the games and the stats and everything they're currently, and this is a true story. I really saw Google docs right there, like Google sheets and they send out. So. Google docs. Yeah, I'm. I'm not going to say that, you know, and obviously we have a great show and we produce our show via Google docs and that's, that's fine, but it is interesting to me that the spring league that is trying to make the leap to be like a national football, you know, competitor to the XFL and all these things. Is releasing their box scores on Google drive. That is interesting. Hmm. Hmm. Can, you know, you can get a WordPress, you know, Template go online, just get a WordPress tablet and release them there. Squarespace's like $20 a month. We love Squarespace. He loves it. City council, president William Parker announcing he wants to bring one of the eight newly launched USFL teams to Birmingham and he plans to meet with league officials the next few weeks. Hmm. This isn't surprising. They're super high on XFL too. Like he had been trying to get an XFL team. He was trying to get them on the realize. This guy, this William Parker, if it's, I imagine it's the same mayor that was on mark interviewed him like a year and a half ago on a XML news out. But. I imagine it's, you know, the same mayor, but Birmingham is like super high on trying to get an all football team there. And so that would, you know, I, again, these trademarks are getting picked up by the USFL, like. I, you know, I don't know. I think Birmingham's a good market to go to. I think that that's kind of left open right now from current football offerings. Yeah, they did have an AAF team there. The iron, I believe it was the Birmingham iron was that was playing in Birmingham. So it's, it's, it's a market that they should definitely look into. It's a market that, you know, You're gonna, you're gonna make, you're gonna make money on that market. You're definitely gonna make money on that market, especially, you know, during a time when you don't have Alabama football or Auburn football. I mean, Alabama is the king there, but during that time, when you don't have those two things, like you want to watch football, you go check out an XFL CFL, USFL game. Whatever it might be. Spring league blues wide receiver, Davey and Davis, heading to Cleveland for a mini cap with the Browns. Congrats to him. Yeah. Just again, we love seeing all this. They got a couple of bears to Salvador. Canela. We I've gone back and forth in, I think he was in the first spring league. Like I've gone back and forth with him forever. He's going to the Chicago's bears camp and then TJ Wheatley. W great. I mean, again, we want to see all these signings and everything moving on. Very cool alphas. Long snapper. Long snapper. Yep. There you go. Mitch, for boney signing with Houston, Texas today. That's a pretty cool cause long snapper is a very, very specific specialized position. You gotta be really good. So congrats to Mitch on that. Sorry. I was trying, I was, I didn't see the, like the little part for the, I was like, is that. It was really fun. It's a side note. They were talking. Cam Newton. You know, with the Panthers, he's got, you know, nicknames for like all the team members, right? Like Mac Jones is Mac and cheese. Like that's his name for him? I can call him. Is his nickname for their long snapper is like snapper man. That's it. That's like Boaty McBoatface same thing. Yeah, Mitch is going to Houston. I, I don't, I wouldn't want to be going to the Texans right now. I mean, I'm sure he's happy to be involved in the national football league, but I don't know if I could pick any team in the. I would not be wanting to go to the Texans. It's a mess. Shea Patterson to the BC lions, former TSL player. Huge huge, huge. Get for the, for the lions. Hopefully, you know, the spring league keeps them in shape. The spring league has kept them in shape for when, when this all goes down. I guess they had their best viewership. The spring league had its best viewership of the season. They had a, what. 461,000 Viewers. That's really good. That's with no E and I don't know if we talked about this on the show also, Shay was on the blues last, I think in November, he wasn't on, I don't know why he, I mean, obviously he signed him right now, but. So that's off of like his previous stint, I think, unless I'm, unless I'm missing something on that. Yeah. I guess. The reason why. I don't know if we talked about this on the show Fox supposedly is intentionally not promoting the spring league because they wanted to see what they could draw on their own before making the decision about the USFL stuff. That's kind of the rumors I've heard. I don't, that doesn't make sense to me, but what do you think about that? That doesn't make sense to me. Why wouldn't you want to promote something that you're putting on the air? I was just. Word of mouth can only do so much. Yep. But anyway. Yeah, Mike's been tracking that all season, but you know, I mean, half a million viewers, Fox Saturday afternoon for a, you know, two teams and aren't even associated with cities. I mean, that's the thing too. People forget what the spring league staff is. You know, even if the USFL comes back and they do, yeah. They're attached with cities, you know, even if they're still doing the hub or whatever, at least you're going to have some city. You know, passion that way. Right where we're right now. It's how do you sell that to people? Like, well, what com wants to Joshua? I mean, obviously we're fans, but I think that can't be understated how good they're doing with half a million people. And they're like, not even in cities at all. Yeah with no, like literally, you know, I mean, I think about like all the XFL stuff like I saw in Seattle, I don't know, LA I can't imagine it was that hot with XFL, you know? But, I mean, we had dragons stuff everywhere and like, you don't get any of that with the spring league. Like how do people even know really it's on except finding that, especially when Fox isn't promoting that. I just think that's interesting. But definitely. And then last fan controlled football note. Johnny Manzell Josh Gordon signed fan controlled football. Sold for 2175, $2,175. Yeah, they're auctioning off like a bunch of game worn jerseys. I, these just tweeted that they thought there was going to be new this, this week. I think they're going to announce some big news next week. Supposedly there I in August to kick off, which is. So now we've got CFL and then we've got the NFL. I don't know who. His plane. In. I mean, I guess just the leftover spring league guys. I mean, I guess, right. Like who is, who is playing in Fango football, if they're launching the kickoff in August. I don't know. Good question. You would think that anyone that wanted to play football during the month of August would already be either in a camp for the NFL or playing for the CFL, you would think. You would think. But anyway, so they were auctioning off a bunch of staff this week, some game wear jerseys and stuff, but this was the ball that Manzell threw the Josh Gord. They both signed it. What? Yeah, it sold for $2,000. What would you pay for that football? I thought that that was an interesting question to pose. I don't know if I'd want that football. No, no disrespect. It's just like something that like, I have very specific, like I have a Russell Wilson helmet right here. That's autographed. I have my Kenny Lofton baseball at my Scott Stevens. Puck. I, my Mar turned. And brood or Jersey over there. Like there are certain players that I would want to collect things from and then ones that I'm just like, hi, I would never want that. So there's not a price for me. Anyway, but that, I guess fan controlled staff coming next week or for that, but that August. Again, I, I would not be submerged the spring league. If I'm fingertip football management. Like that is who is going to be in their league. Right. Like if you're a fan to spring is like, now it's great. Like check out fan controlled football coming out like that is who is going to be playing in that league. I would not be talking trash about anything. If I was, you know, So Rob right. It's like, I've even talked about him. It's the longest route. I mean, that's just where I'm at with that. I don't know if they'll take your advice, but hopefully they will want to thank all of our guests for joining us this week on the Mar cast. A bunch of guests. It's not going to be a three hour episode. Probably. I don't know. I have. We still have to put the whole thing together, but maybe it will maybe a, well, maybe it'll just be under three hours. But it won't be a double episode. So we want to thank everybody for listening. Again, subscribe to us on YouTube, please. And comment on all the videos, help us out. Also, you know, like we said, like we said earlier in the break. Log in to manscape.com. Use that code mark cask at 20% off free shipping. And anything else you want to say? Yeah, I, I, I got some good guests relining that for next week, talking about more sports, single game sports betting stuff. And then I just was talking to. Jackson Leonard he's a former, he played in the spring league before. He's a friend of the show he's been listening to the lot and he supported us for the last year. And so I thought that would be good just to kind of get his insights following the spring league. So normally I'm not this ahead on like confirming gas, but I just heard back from him today and also a Nixle ski should be coming on to talk about the. The C2 and eight step he's a big sports betting guy. So we had to go through all the, his PR people and all that stuff. So it's good to have media people work with you spring lake. Just to note, just to note. So thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you next week. All right. Do you want me to ask it first? Yeah. Okay. Support for the mat. Support for the mark cast brought to you by manscape they're the best in men's below the waist grouping to the champions of the world at that. They offered precision engineered tools for your family. Juul is manscaped just lost, launched their fourth generation trimmer. That's right. One, two, three, four, 4.0. It is the lawnmower 4.0, you can join over 2 million men, including me read well purpose over wheelhouse. A bunch of other people. With this special code. On@manscape.com. It's mark cast. It gives you 20% off. Free shipping Reid. That was easily. There's the code right there. Reads, pointing it out. Use that code. Mark casket. The 20% off. Free shipping read. What do you think about the lawnmower 4.0, I think it's great. We talked about this, you know, sang the praises for the waterproofing, the light, you know, I do it in the shower. Keep it clean. You. Turn the light on. It's like an auto light. You need to do anything. I I keep the charger. It's just ready to go. I'm not. I don't know like how often you need a, you know, maybe you need to shave every day. Maybe you really need to clean up, but yeah, you just drop it in there and get it and go. My big selling point is use the cup mark cast and don't use the code Homer nation over at three down nation that they are also brought to you in part by manscaped. And so if you liked the work that we're doing. They'd please, please see you as a good mark asked@manscapedat.com. And they have a skin safe technology to basically make sure you don't Nick your yourself while you're you're trimming everything down. And if you're, if you're feeling not so safe with going completely clean, you got different guides. You've got like a sizes, one through four, you pop one of those guides on. And it doesn't, it doesn't completely trim you if you want to be, you know, you want to have some hair, a little bit, a little bit of hair, a little bit of stubble, and you you're worried about getting Nick. You can just put one of those guards on. Put size one on why not? But if you don't use the guards, then you don't have to worry about getting nicked again. Got to, got to say this one more time. It's it's one of the it's it's one of the softest. Razors you can get on the market and you get 20% off free shipping right now with the code mark cast@manscape.com. It's 20% off. Free shipping a manscape.com. Use that code mark cast. Unlock your competence and always use the right tools for the job. With manscaped. Cool. How's it going, sir? I've got Paul had a work emergency and had to go in early sour. We'll go sell out here. I appreciate your time. I think we can handle it. I think we can handle that. If you want to talk before we get them to a recording. Whatever you want. Well, I, I feel like it's been years since we left. On the f**k. Yes. In so much has happened. How are you? How is this week going for you? It's fine. If people don't like to hear the truth, right. So I'm getting a lot of s**t thrown at me, but I can handle it. Truth in terms of. How bad the situation is like we can get into that in the interview. Like with just the financial picture for the league. Like it's not good. You know, so. But that's, there's nothing that I'm going to say privately that I won't say in the interview. And to be honest, I mean, I'm stunned at the backlash against the XFL. I never thought that would be, I think. Well, yeah, well, I mean, I'm happy to get into it here. We'll just go for it. And yeah, I, I mean, I have lots of, I wasn't even gonna happy to bring up XFL stuff too, so that's good. I'm just going to f*****g give out CMI. It looks better. Yeah, cause we can see you there. Okay. Yeah, that looks good. Well, rod. Thank you so much for coming on again, I feel like, you know, I feel like we've grown a lot. Since. And since you last modified, you've grown. I, I spent all day yesterday as we're recording, listening to your show, I had to drive down to Portland. Truly wonderful interview. With the Argonauts player, Christian Hughes, right. Charleston, Charleston Hughes. I thought that was phenomenal. I love I, I was getting to know you and Darren and everything else. So thank you so much for coming back on that, on the program. I was happy that you asked I'm excited. It's a good show. Well, this was my thought process. And I, you know, this is all going on. It's a big week for the CFL, obviously, you know, tremendous excitement and everything else, but I felt like you would kind of cut through a little bit of the BS for us. Right. And just, you are. You know, straight shooter and know what's going on. And so that was kinda my thought presses are bringing you on today. So first off, just how is everything going this week and how are you doing. Oh, I'm excited to CFL's back. I'm annoyed that people are asking me for tickets for games. I'm like. I don't do that anymore. Guys. So no, I, the whole country is excited that the CFL is coming back. They've clearly missed it. Read, I mean, big time. I did have kind of a philosophical question for you as we kind of got into this, I was thinking, knowing that you were going to come on. So I'm in like the wedding and event industry. Right. And the last year and a half has very much mirrored the CFL. Right. We were getting ready for summer last year. It socked, it went away. We have just been dealing with. Just crap, right. For months with regulations and what's going to happen. And now that we're finally back in weddings, a lot of the vendors I'm talking to are like, we're over it. Like, cause we're getting into the season right now. Right? It's it's our, our big season here in Seattle. Are you, do you feel like, is the CFL media, are we just ready to go? Has any of this weighed on everybody the last nine months, 12 months about this? Oh, Yeah, 98% of the CFL media, the guys and girls that their whole job is the CFL. I mean, honestly, read. People said some things they probably can't take back over the last year. You've seen a lot of it, right? Like people are on edge. And I'm talking about media people. Didn't bother me. I mean, some guy came on my show today and said, ah, Blue bomber reporter Winnipeg blue bombers reporter. He said, thanks for keeping the CFL top of mine for the last year. And I was like, my alarms going off. Sorry. I was like, ah, Listen, Amanda was self preservation. We had talked about something. Right. But we also talked to NFL and we talked NHL. We talked about a lot of other things, but I guess my point is if your soul. Livelihood. Is tied to the CFL. I could see why a lot of people were pretty upset. Over the last year now they're back. And they're also, they were afraid to say anything, right? Because you know, you speak out against COVID or speak out against the direction that the CFL owners were taking. You're going to get canceled. You're probably going to lose your job. So I can't. I can't understate or I can't overstate, I guess the excitement that the CFL's back. Yeah, it kills me. I get, you know, some of the feedback and they're like, well, why are you talking about this this week? It's like, you know, we do this every week. Like, you know, you gotta go two hours every day. It's like, we gotta talk about something and it's like you said, self preservation is. Well, it's like we got to, what do you want me to do? I gotta fill a show here. Right? Yeah, that's that's exactly yet. But you know, before you started recording here, You know, you talked about what's happened since we last spoke and. I'm stunned. At the backlash against the XFL merger. And I think the huge elephant in the room here is two things. One, the finances of the CFL. Weren't great. Before it's a miracle. They survived COVID through a variety of reasons. Sponsors should sponsors stayed with them, but government helped them out. Paying their staff. There were some private donors that wrote checks for CFL teams to stay alive. So, so that's just to get them through this year. But are they, how, how are they going to come out of this year, financially? And then that XFL merger is still alarming. It's still looming. And what I said, I was surprised at the backlash. I mean, I. Not so surprised from the fans, particularly the long time fans that just love the CFL with every fiber of their being. But you mentioned the Charleston use interview. Yesterday. I was stunned that he said, why would we hitch to that? Yeah, I was just, and he's an American. Brad like Charleston, would you not like to go play for the Philadelphia expansion team and your hometown was XFL? I think he's from Philly. I just, that's done me read and it's not just a casual debate. Right? People are like downright angry about this stuff. Yeah, I never in a million years, and what's so hard for us. And I think we've talked about this before too, is like, you know, the XFL people, we don't have any skin in the game. We're just happy to be like, we're just happy to be invited to the party. And then you get all these CFL people that like the whole game is everything to them. And you're like, okay, well, I can't. You know, When, when, when we don't want, you know, we are happy with anything and you only want this. It's really hard to have a debate about that. I've noticed. And I've noticed that you don't shy away from it and you, you also don't back down, but what's changed since the last time I talked to you is. I'm out on arguing or debating anything like, and what annoys me a little bit is like every single day people are like, rod, what do you think about this rod? What do you think about that? And I'm like, I don't even really want to say any more because I'm just tired of the arrows coming. You know, just to give my thoughts, it almost isn't worth it because it's not going to matter what I think or what I say. The CFL owners are gonna do what they wanna do. But Reed, I guess, you know, we're talking CFL with you today. They were fractured is an ownership of nine teams, whether they were going to play or not. So they sold the ones that didn't want to play and they got that unanimous vote. That was a major hurdle. But I still think they're fractured on the future of the CFL. A lot, one emerge. And a lot. Don't and I, so they're not out of the storm yet. I guess is my point, but everybody crosses countries. People are rushing to buy season tickets. People are popping champagne. CFL was back. Yes. But it's not the CFL. You know, the players have taken major pay cuts. They, you know, one big thing on this new collective bargaining agreement they agreed to last week. And agent told me that incentives, which are huge parts of CFL contracts. Are a gray area. He goes, we just, we didn't have time to haggle over how are we going to split these. Like we play an 18 game schedule and with Canada. So they're gonna play 14. So they're like, are we splitting 14, 18? So a thousand dollars bonus. They just, we don't have time. So they ignored that. They ignored that. You know, and that's, I just think that it's going to create this rental players. I think, especially when guys hit their bonuses and they don't know if they're going to get paid or not. Well, and I know, and I remember, I mean, I listened to the show most days when I can, and I know you and Darren were talking about that and that's the thing it's like guys, you know, for the NFL players, You know, if Antonio brown got that extra PA you know, okay. $250,000 is a ton of money for anybody, but like, okay, that's not the end of the world. If Antonio brown doesn't get that final incentive. Or I know that Russell Wilson, I can't remember what one of the Seahawks, they have the same kind of thing that they, you know, he did like 18 lateral passes to him, but for the CFL guys, you know, getting those incentives huge, right. I mean, it's the difference between paying their rent or not? You know, Or buying their kid a pair of shoes. That's the truth. That's just what it is. So, I mean, I, you know, I don't think people understand that. I talked to the coaches every day. I talked to the players every day. Like when I left his voice, the riders, I crossed the floor from being on the owner's side to the players side. And the players sniff that out real fast. So. And the coaches and players, aren't all in one group either. By the way. I mean, I had coaches saying to me, the biggest hurdle here is whether the players will agree to these pay cuts. And I'm like, they'll agree to anything they've said that they said last year, we'll play in a bubble. We'll take less money. We'll play less games. We just want to play. And so I said to the coach, I'm shocked. You spend more time with the players than I do. I'm shocked you with no, they will play no matter what. And he goes, well, they tell you things, they don't tell us. And I can see that too. That's that's the truth. But to them amending that CBA 19 amendments, that's a lot read. They agreed to them, all the players did. And. So, and then that was, you know, okay. Owners, you now need to vote to play, which they did, but it's just, they're not taking the field real happy. They're happy to play. It's still not a great. Financial proposition for them, particularly the Americans with the exchange and, and all of that, that goes into it. You mean, the players are. I, some of the players are taking the field. I'm happy. There's been concern that some of the team owners are taking the field unhappy. Right. Yeah, well, they all are. Nobody likes to lose money. Nobody likes to lose my they're all going to lose money. And that's why. I came into this interview with you today saying, I want to be positive about what they've done. I've said it on my show. I'm proud of the owners for doing what's right for the league and for the game and for their players and staff. And not necessarily what's right for them. Nobody likes to lose money, but I, I think I just want to caution people that it's not all systems go. I think the stadiums, if they can be full, will be full. I don't think there's any doubt. When the rough riders kicked off, it only gets to BC lines on Friday, August six. I'd be stunned. If there weren't 33,000 people jamming every seat. That's what I'm hearing. Right. We'll see if people put their money where their mouth is, but they just can't wait to get back into the state. And there's a lot of, you don't know what you had till it was gone. People were thinking that league was going to fold. I wouldn't have been shocked if it hadn't. It's a miracle, frankly, that they got through this. So the fans are going to be there. But it's are they going to make enough money to, to pay these players? I'm still not sure. It just, it felt weird to me. And again, I, you know, The announced the delay. We're going to start in August. They have not said anything, nothing changed from anything. Right? I mean, The league was notoriously quiet, right? It didn't say anything. And so then they did do this big vote on Monday and, you know, Twitter, everything's crazy, everyone in the CFL is back on this. I'm like, but they literally just affirmed what they already said they were going to do. I mean, with this, that big of a hurdle to cover, they have all night. And cause I guess last year the teams didn't all vote. I mean, it wasn't that big. Then now the CFL is back and it wasn't two months ago when they announced this. Well, it's, it's confusing and you're confused. I'm confused. Like late last week, you're familiar with Dave Naylor. Use the number one. Here's the. Well, I called dunk the Adam Schefter, maybe he's the Chris Mortenson of the CFL, Dave Naylor. And Naylor said, it's going to be a, they're going to vote. Yes. It's probably going to be unanimous. And I'm like, how would you know that three days in advance? How would you know, four days in advance? But whatever. So when they came out unanimous vote. Yeah, well, Naylor said it was going to be, I don't. I don't understand that. And from a fan's perspective, cause they really don't know much at all. They just know what they read. They're not talking to the coaches and players. Like I am. They're like, get that. You announced that in April, that you were going to play August 5th. So why are you having a vote now? So, if you're asking me for an answer, I don't have it read that's part of what frankly has made this league incredibly difficult to cover for me for the last 25 years, because it just, it's never quite, as it seems. In terms of presenting the information or, or like giving you access to it or what are you. All of it. And you look, people have thought in a lot of people in Canada had thought that the CFL was on par with the NHL and the NFL, because frankly read the games are on national television every week, every game. Right. They saw it. Up here. We've got beautiful stadiums. All that, but I don't, people didn't realize that when money got tight, people were like, why aren't you playing the NFL's plank? You heard it all the time. Everybody else was playing. Why can't you play? And a lot of people still haven't got their minds around that. So that's just one aspect. And then the other aspect is the salaries. You never know really how long a contract is when somebody signs that or for how much it is. The salaries aren't transparent. They're not disclosed. That's kind of difficult to cover rate. You know, if a player, a big name players going into his last year, but we don't really know whether he is or not. That's confusing to report on the league. So, and then just today, a guy on Twitter post these in Phoenix, he posted the NFL's health and safety protocols going into this year. He goes, has the CFL posted their health and safety protocols? I wrote them back. I said, no. And they won't. All right. So the NFL publishes this stuff. I don't know if the NHL ever did. The CFL is not going to, and by the way, it's going to be rigorous. Like I've talked to players that have not had a vaccination rate and they are not going to get it. I've seen the letters that have gone from the teams to the players that said, if you're not fully vaccinated showing up for training camp, this is what you're going to have to expect. You're not going to be able to leave your apartment. You're not going to be able to leave the hotel on the road. You're not going to be able to go home on a bi-week. You're basically going to be in jail for the next four months. This isn't a big secret Farhand Lougee reported it on TSN. He said, how hard is it going to be for a player coming from Florida, Texas, who has been living wide open for six months to go back into self isolation. Nobody's seen those letters, the public hasn't seen those. I mean, I've seen them, but that's the thing. And I just, I. Now, I don't want to, obviously we don't want to talk to him. We've talked to him about that. And now. But it's just that debate. If a player doesn't want to get a shot, he shouldn't have to get a shot. This is stuff that people don't really know that what they're battling internally. Yeah. I remember you guys talking about that. And, and I saw those clips from Farhan a where it's like. I mean, do you think people are going to be okay with that? Players. Yeah. Yeah, I hope that they police themselves. I mean one comment. A coach said to me was these guys have a tough, tough time following the rules when there aren't any rules. They kind of follow these rules, you know, and you're not making millions. It was pretty easy to tell a Seahawk to stay in this hotel and you're gonna make 5 million us this year, but you're making 50,000 Canadian. American rookie. B you better love football. To do that. Yeah. I mean, that was, you know, I, and obviously a lot smaller scale, but you know, with the spring league, back in November, You know, they, they just, the guys weren't getting enough food. So they went out to go get a burger. I mean, it wasn't like they were out partying or. You know, they just went to go get something else to eat. Well, they ended up having that. I mean, they had to shut the whole thing down because they couldn't keep the COVID. And like, you know, that that's a lot smaller of a scale, but it has to be even tougher when you have these nine teams across the whole country. You and I haven't lived it. Very few people have this bubble life, but I mean, I just did a hockey season. That's shortened 24 game season for the Western hockey league with the Thunderbirds playing. In a bubble here and the teams had to play in a university or stay in a university dorm for two solid months. I'll be honest with you. I broadcast the games. They came out of that and said never again. Next season. If we have to go into the bubble, we're not doing it. We won't play. And that was two months. You're asking CFL players to do July, August, September, October, November, December. If you go six months of bubble life for not a lot of money, not saying they won't, I'm definitely not saying they won't. Those junior hockey players did it. We're talking about grown men here. So I, these are some of the hurdles that are left. Like Justin dunk was on my show the other day and he said, there's a lot of things behind the scenes. They're scrambling. He, he was, he thinks they'll get done and they'll kick off August fast. But we don't have the province to signing off from it turns to play and stuff, which is another thing it's not the governor's fault. But we don't have all the information of what's been discussed between the government and the CFL teams. We don't know. There you go, they're acting like they're going to get these approvals, but as we sit here today, they don't have them yet. I assume they're going to get them. They don't have them yet. And to me, that would make me feel a little anxious. Well, and also, I mean, just hiring back all the right. I mean, some of these staff and things, I mean, besides the players, right. You know, you're going to have to. I imagine a lot of these. Staff members have been furloughed rides or laid off. And so we're trying to do all that and do the training camps and do everything. I mean, it's June 16th today. I may just, it does feel. Tight. Rushed rushed. Exactly. And they're working around the clock. I have no doubt that they want to play. They committed to play in the water play, which is another thing I can't believe that it took me this long. Which has kind of elementary after everything that I've told you. They, what they've taught. I got a call on Saturday from a guy from the team. High up executive. And you said rod, just so you know, like we're gonna, we're gonna try this on Monday. The volt will be, yes. We're gonna move ahead. And what I took from that was we're going to start. Where you might not necessarily finish. Okay. And I think that's a key sentence out of all of it. They're going to start. And for me, That's all I wanted. I think that's all the players wanted was the attempt to, right. Like I said, I'd rather go down swinging. Then stand on the edge of the dance floor. Right. Which is what they did last year. They're going to go down swinging and maybe it'll all work out, but if there's an outbreak on the Hamilton tiger cats, cause 30 guys catch COVID. It could spell the end to everything. Do you have faith in the commissioner to kind of see this through to August? Well, I mean, he made us, yeah, I do. I mean, we. I don't know how much of it's up to him. I think he's done a lot of his work already. Convincing. Yeah. Convincing all the owners to just play. And then you've got to rely on your people, which I know Randy and Brosy does do that. The people with the teams, his own people internally. I don't know. I'm sure it's insulting to say that he's done all his work. He's got nothing to do now. I'm sure he's got a ton to do. I don't know. You know, we've asked for an interview. For him. And they said he's too busy lined up for the interview. So he's not hiding. But. No. I was just real impressed a year ago when Roger Goodell stood up and said, we're kicking off September 1st and the stadiums will be full. Just instilled confidence right now, the stadiums weren't full, but they did kick off. So I think what Randy is trying to do is instill confidence in everybody. That's. That they're going to kick off, but like, again, it's, it's frantic behind the scenes. I mean, Charleston Hughes studies. I'm planning to go to Toronto on this date for training camp. I don't know where I'm going. Yeah. Is that not a pretty good indication that there's a lot of loose answer and that can be tied up. And the next few weeks for sure. But as of today, like you say, this is the situation. Yeah, cause again, I don't, we never want to be doom and gloom on here, but I do. I feel like our. It is okay to ask questions. Right. And we've been accused a lot of being a negative, even with the XFL scap. And I'm like, it's okay to ask questions and trying to get transparency and clarity and figuring things out, you know, just saying like, well, it's all okay. August 5th. We'll see you next. You. See you in six weeks. Like, I don't feel like that serves anybody. And I mean, I know you agree with that. Yeah, well, Well, that's the point where I'm just kind of tired of giving my opinion on where things are at, because I don't have all the information. And if I sat here and said today, I'll still believe it. That they're going to kick off on August 5th. When I see them on the field, that August there's. There's a lot of people in the league that still feel that way. A lot of broadcasters, a lot of football, operations, people that say we'll believe it when we see it. And I'm just going to sit in here saying that I just I'm trying to be positive with it. And I see how happy the players are. I mean, I talked to some rough riders players that. Last week. They're like I'm coming to Regina Tuesday expecting a yes. Vote. So I better vote. Yes. And then they did. Right? So these are guys, by the way, they're older. My friends are the older guys. Who is, they've kind of seen their careers pass before their eyes here. Like the average pro football career is 1.5 years. When I started in this gig, it was free. That's so much it's shrunk. We've missed 1.5 seasons. By the time they kick off August 5th, if they do, that's how I knew that they were going to agree to the amendments, to the CBA because the alternatives retiring. And that's literally the last possible thing they wanted to do. It's hard. I mean, it really is. It's like an impossible situation. I mean, there was no, and even without vote, like you said, if we don't get to August 5th, but there's no way they weren't at least gonna go ahead right now. You know, you can't. That's how it looks. Yeah. [Unknown] kind of to my original question. And we obviously, and that's great. Like has this weighed on everybody? Like, are we, you know, I even hear you like, I'm done answering these questions. I'm done talking about this. I mean, this isn't, you know, we're kicking off to the season here, right? I mean, is that scary? That, that not scary, but you know, that people are just like, I'm kinda over it already. Well, who are you talking about? Fans, players, media staff. Everybody. You know, I mean, general Sandeman online has been pretty negative until the tell the, to the vote and everything. Monday, Tuesday, I chalk a lot of that up to fraught nerves. Of 16 months of a pandemic and people are just on edge and I'll be honest. I mean, you don't live in Canada. I mean, we turn on the games and see all these American stadiums that are full of ballparks football, stadiums, hockey arenas in Vegas. And we're not like. Enough's enough. Like I talked to a guy in Alberta CFL guy who said, Hey, in our city, nobody's wearing masks. We're all like, we're over use your term. Right. The government's not even enforcing the mask mandate anymore. Like we're over it. So. People are over it. So bear. Let's put it this way. They better get on the field. CFL because they've got hopes incredibly high. The hopes were incredibly high going into the vote and they passed that. They passed that. So kudos. Good on him again. But they better be on the field August 5th. Cause I don't think, I don't think people emotionally could take another delay. I want to talk about the XML seven a little bit, because it did get brought up at, you know, again, this week. Well, first off, why do you think that that live, like it's in his hands, right? It's in, people's not like, why is this such this negative connotation? And it's like, you'll get my name out of your mouth. I quit to, I mean, it just seems like. It's really easy. Like, okay. Let's, Tashay the XFL at Sasha that, that, you know, now the USFL and that whole thing. I mean, why do you think that that's still, and like you said, it got so negative so quick. I think a lot of it is just football, the mentality of football people. I had CFL people the day, the USFL announced their relaunch texted me saying this is laughable. They're a joke. Their owners hasn't paid as guys in the spring. It was just an immediate to trash. Basically your competition. That's just a business thing. You're a businessman. You know how that works. The other thing is resistance to change, not just this narrow necessarily from a football perspective, but people don't like change, like number two. Number three. People have loved this league for 100 years. I'm sure you're tired of hearing about. Right, but, and I guess if COVID can't kill the CFL, nothing will. And ah, there's a, there's a huge anti-American sentiment, which I don't have half. Our viewers are America. I did normal times. I spend my off season by football off seasons in America, in Florida or Arizona. Like, what's the problem here. I see it with our show. I think you and I talked about it the last time I was on with you. We've got more viewers because of our association. Why would we not want nine teams in America and have more people selling jerseys? And going to games and, and the U S TV contract. And that's why I think it'll happen. That's why I think it is. It's going that way. But from a fan perspective. They don't like to change and they love their game. But for Charleston used to say, aye, I'm still stunned, still stunned. You know, it's more jobs, more opportunities, more games. I just, I don't see the downside other than. Resistance to change. My, my working theory with all of this, and this is just from us. For in all this and you know, more and all the people I talked to know a lot more, but, you know, I think there was, you know, I heard a lot, you know, one league, one rule book, all this kind of staff, you know, I've heard, you know, certain CFL teams reaching out whatever. You know, I think the, the, the backlash and everything that we are seeing. I don't think that the XFL and all that anticipated all of that. Right. Because I've heard it much more softening now to, you know, partnership working agreement. Right. We're forever. It was, you know, we're merging all this stuff. I know we had comments that you had had on, I think, eh, Agee jacket back. Michelle. I can't remember one of the shows a while back, you know, were there moving the goalposts and doing all that stuff. Now, I just think that the backlash that we've all seen, maybe they weren't expecting all of that as well. Do you am. Am I. I guarantee they weren't. Absolutely. They weren't, but it's been four months, by the way. Since Randy and Brosy dropped that bomb. And I think it was a bomb March 10th. I'll guarantee you, he didn't expect this because mostly eggs. View, negative publicity as the worst thing. If, if, if anybody saying something bad about you, oh my God, we've got to shut them up and stuff. The NFL is so big. They don't care. You know that you're in an NFL market, say whatever you want, we don't care. We're bigger than you. CFL is not that. So I'm of the mindset. Negative publicity is better than none. You can see that. That's how I roll. CFL does not. So I'm, I will guarantee you, they didn't expect this coming and who likes to have negative things said about them? I'm sure. Danny Garcia and the rock. Don't like lose the guy, Jerry Cardell. Just the most horrible things have been said about those guys. The Toronto business journal called the rock up pimp. And that's when I started to get upset saying that he didn't do anything to you. He's actually literally almost said nothing. You know, like, like what is wrong with you people? And that's why that's where I really folded my tents. And just said, I'm done with this because I don't need it. You're saying things that are personal. The media has said things personally about Randy and Brosy that I guarantee you, Randy and Brucey will never forget. I haven't forgot it. You know, And I'm not necessarily willing to chalk that up to the fact that a guy I newspaper guy was worried about losing his job, like get it together, man. Like, there's something about decency here. You can see that that line has been leftover, not just crossed over a dam. Foot law merger. Oh, that's crazy. I mean, I see. And you know, part of it's with Twitter and social media and stuff. But I just see. Just some of the most like horrendous, like stuff written enemy. And it's one thing, you know, I come on here like, you know, and you, and like we know who we are. Right. You know, people watch your show every day, but all these people I'm like. Yeah, these writers and, and fans and stuff. And it's like the most hateful stuff. And I'm like, you can't just, you can't say stuff like that. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. I mean, I think pretty much everything I've said, I stand behind. That's what I do. You're the same. You know, but there are, I'm just saying there's a lot of people saying things in the heat of a moment right now that I think will come back and haunt them. I really do. But, you know, back to where we started this. The CFL is going to play their 14 games scheduled. Nine teams agreed to it away. We go. Read, we're going to be revisiting this. The second, the grey cups over in December, we're going to be talking about the merger. And when's it going to happen? You know, And w. We're going to be living this again. I think I don't see it ending. No. I hope not for our working relationship and everything else. I mean, I feel like, like I said, you know, I'm somebody that, and we both, you know, there are many, many more smart, talented CFL media covering all this. Like we are just blessed to be able to talk to you now. Right? Like it, that to me, you know, growth is, is good in that way. Right. Where, you know, we were just such a p**s ant little thing when it was just the XFL. Now did it's, it's involved in kind of this bigger world picture. I'm like, I just can't figure out why people don't get like. Why that's not a good thing to expand and grow. It's crazy to me. Yeah, well, there's an American football reporter. That's pretty tied into the CFL. And he had mentioned to me about the merger. He expects the merger to happen. He's got good contacts in Canada. And he goes, there's a lot of people lying right now. And in leadership positions and back to your question as to why is it so difficult to cover this league? It's that. You don't really know who to believe. And that goes back to Cobra too. You don't know what politicians to believe. You don't know what health officials to believe in? What, who has an agenda? So. That's what's made it very difficult. I mean, I, I like to think. A lot of the forefathers of the Saskatchewan Roughriders here. Past presidents, governors kind of thing. They're like, listen, if we got to merge. Fine. The us expansion in the nineties with a CFL is a great example. There would be no CFL if they didn't do that. And if you've got your rough riders running around, agreed uniforms, and they're playing the Sacramento gold miners who really cares. You know, so that's what you're saying, growth and everything. So. I didn't necessarily think they were going to agree to all play unanimously. And I thought that might just incite him into the ground. But they did. So will they find a general consensus on merging or not merging? It's going to be one of the other. You know, and we'll know within the next year, but I, I have no idea. Cause I don't know who to believe. Yeah, Naylor was on something talking about, you know, if the rock show that like a Calgary game or something, you know, what would be the, what would be the fan reaction? And I responded, you know, Raiders of the lost Ark when they MPN. Now I'm like, I don't think it would be a positive thing if the rock or Dan knew that. I mean, I feel like it is that negative now. I really am. Twitter is just, I know that it's like the vocal, whatever, but it is so toxic. It's not like a little angry. It's so toxic. I got, I got a sense that your feelings haven't been heard, however, many of what's been said. No, but it, it is, I just, it's very difficult for me. And again, I try to respect to all sides and we never, it's very difficult for me to have that much of my. Who I am wrapped up in, in, you know, this Canadian football league. I did that is so much of my, you know, like I reached out to some of the CFL media and they've, you know, they've laughed or they've said, you know, F you or get out. And I'm like, You know, like having for me. We try that. Expand the conversation, you know, it's just, it's very negative for some of the people that want it to be an, I just don't. I don't get. I don't get that, you know, where you can, you can trash, like, you know, so the podcast or the show or whatever, but then. We're not supposed to take it personally, but then they are, cause it. You know what I mean? But you, yeah, you've learned enough and seeing what I've posted and said on my show that that stuff doesn't bother me. But I've undergone a lot of change in my life. Hmm, positive each time. I can handle it, but I can just imagine by name. Who the media was that gave you that reaction? You don't need to tell me. And I mean, I can start to understand that same thing with Charleston Hughes in that their livelihoods tied to it that I get, but the stuff from the fans makes no sense to me because at the end of the day, it's about entertainment and you're going to go to your nine to five job tomorrow. You get their identities wrapped up in being a CFL fan. I'm a season ticket holder, 35 years. My. I hear it all the time. But if this lead goes down, you're going to work tomorrow, right? It doesn't affect your livelihood, but those guys that are getting so uptight about it. I have a little more time for them. But it doesn't give you any right to speak to people. This way. Oh, the, the players, I mean, and especially covering these, the, you know, like the TSL and fingertip football, you know, all these smaller leagues, you know, I feel for all of those players. Right. You know, and when they voted, you know, cause we have guys that have been on the show that we've covered and then like, Thank God, now that they at least get a chance to go make it right. You know, they get to go up to Canada and at least try to get on the squad and it just. I that's who I feel for, yeah. It's not the people that are, I'm watching this on Sunday. No. You know? Yeah. Well, and we also have to remember a huge big picture item here. Is what has made us as sports. People all have to step back in the pandemic and realize we're not that important because I've been dealing with. The hockey leagues, the national lacrosse league, obviously the CFL and the government is literally saying ghetto, get away. We're trying to save lives here. Right. And it's listen. Sports people to them. It is life and death. And until now we had no reason to think otherwise. Right. You got 40,000 people showing up to cheer you when you step on the field, why wouldn't you think that you're the number one thing in the world. That's another fault. But the pandemic has made us all realize the CFL is getting out. We'll get to you when we get to you. And that's why I think that there's a lot of this rush stuff and there. You know, we've got their fingers crossed that they're going to get their health protocols approved and their return to play and all the rest. Hasn't been announced yet. That's been a major slice of humble pie for all of us, but specifically the CFL. I don't want to hold you too long. I'm so thankful. I got one more question for you while I have you here. We've been doing a lot of this. [unknown]. And eight stuff, right? The sports betting and all of that. I just wanted to get your take on that. Where it, to me, I feel like XFL talks have really soured as the idea of getting the single game sports betting and getting that cash and everything. Right. You know, the three down guys, you know, okay. Can offset what we lose every year and we can build on that. Do you feel like. Those are, are connected at all that the CFLs reliance on the XFL. Maybe is going down as the idea that we can do this Canadian made solution that like Randy Ambrozy talks about is going up. From what I hear, it's not going down at all. Okay. No, I that's what I hear. I mean, you can bet on the CFL, you can bet on the CXF. Right. That's not going to change anything. The money from betting is going to be the same, whether they merge or whether they don't. But th. They don't need the XFL maybe as much anymore because they can get the CFL bedding. So that's where I'm seeing one, like XFL talks with the Betty. Now, like maybe we can do that instead. That's the first I've heard of that notion. I still think there's a desire from the majority of people. To CFL to merge. At leadership positions and they also want the betting money. So, yeah, I don't. That's just the sense, but I like, I'm not lying to you, obviously. This is just what I hear. I'm not in those meetings, but I. I do think it's going to happen. I mean, honestly, Although you don't John Ryan, who you would know well came on our show and he was also in the Regina leader post here saying that. He's buddies with whoever owns the Dallas renegades XFL team. And they told them that there's not going to be any inner interlocking play. You probably saw that. That comment, right. CFL stays up here. XFL stays down here and maybe they play a championship game. I think you had mentioned that didn't you, that you could see that I hope that's not the case because I want to make road trips to Dallas and Tampa and St. Louis. Watch games. I do. I don't like that idea. But they're not consulting me. Yeah. Not nearly as exciting I think to do, to do no. This umbrella, whether, I mean, that's the big thing we have right now is that's kind of the, the theory folding that you, Mike Mitchell's been on shows and stuff lately. And talking about this. You know, both leagues under kind of an umbrella. You know, similar partnership of some kind and not necessarily this merger. Which I think is far more accessible. I think the XFL talks gone down because the CFL's playing this year. That's that's the, that's why? It's not a coincidence. That would be my guess. And I don't think CFL leaders at this time, want any talk about it? Because they've seen how toxic it is, you know, they don't like negative publicity. It was a great question by you. Did you, did I think that's. I expected this there's no way they kind of NFA had known. I don't think they would have dropped it. You mean like, yeah, that, that the spoiler, Hey, we've been talking about collaboration. Yeah. I'm talking about talking. Yeah, I don't know. I tell you I just, the longer and, and just. I'll let you go here. But I, I remember when you were coming on our show before and you know, you eyes are, we start watching your show and you were talking about, you know, I know this information and people and w where do you know that show your sources and your. What do you want me to do? Like show taxi light. You know, I feel like we're getting to that age now where, you know, we're covering these things and talking with people. And I feel a lot of, I really get where you're coming from now with a lot of this stuff. And I feel like, you know, not that we're at a fraction of how into everything you are, but I do feel like I get that now, even just from the small sliver that we've been covering that. And I can't imagine, I'm sure it's very difficult to have done this for as long as you have. So how do you mean, what do you mean. Well, just that, just stop with the XFL and you know, like we try to talk about stuff on our show and people don't want to hear it. And you're like, oh, that's. Kind of what's happening there. Well, you know, unless you can show it in writing, I don't believe. Okay, well then don't like, I can't like, you know, I talk, I'm like, what, what do I, what do I gain from lying about anything? Right. You know, we hear things. We talk about what we hear about. Like, I w you know, we both work way too hard on this to be like, BSE and in line about something right. My integrity and credibility is everything. Yeah. Right. So once, once it's gone, you don't get it back. I know that for a fact, but here's a great example of this. I mentioned on my show last week, this is what I believe is going to happen. And I said, can you please give me one incident in the last year incidents where I was wrong? And a PR guy from a team. The CFL texted me. He goes all the fact that you said the MLSE is funding the CFL. And I'm like, I didn't say they're funding the CFL. I said, they're running the CFL big difference. And if, if MLSE had decided they didn't want to play August 5th, They weren't playing. They are running the CFL. I don't care, but what that told me what? Cause this guy's a really good buddy of mine PR guy and the CFO. People are only hearing what they want to hear. And that's again, a life thing, not just the CFL fan or staffer. Thanks again. Why do I even do it because you're only hearing what you want to hear. You know well it's. Yeah, but it's like you said, I keeping, keeping the CFL as relevant as you have in the last year by covering this. Like you said, if it's not you then who, right. I mean, who. Yeah. It's like this has to exist and we have to do these shows every week or it doesn't, you know, it just doesn't exist anymore. If people don't get outside out of the mines is very scary nowadays. Yeah, absolutely. And, and, you know, I'm just kinda, you say how's my week, then I think about pat, McAfee's saying whatever he said it, that. The overkill, the CFL. We kind of thought that it did. And we've had Mac, if he says it. It's probably true. And lo and behold Colbert hasn't killed the CFL. It's a miracle. So I'm just kind of relishing in that [unknown]. And enjoying the fact that we're going to have games and some to talk about on our show. I mean, we've survived with NHL and NFL, but our bread and butter is the CFL. So I'm just relishing in that. Well, thank you so much for coming on. You know, I didn't want to go back to the well too soon before, but I felt like this was a good time now. Everything happening and the big vote. And so I, I appreciate you hopping on and just saying yep. Like. Just tell me when. So thank you so much for that. I appreciate. Absolutely. And we'll return the favor. You'll be on my show here. And actually you can break down some games for us. You can give us the, the view from 50,000 feet. How about that? Okay. But it's looking officious. Barracudas. How are you doing Sarah? All right. Paul was going to join. And then he got held up at the doctor's office. So, oh, that's a shame. Well, I know cause he, he likes you. So I was like, Hey. Kim's coming on at one, he was like, I'll be there. And then of course, you know, did you see my new. Well, you know what? Well, here's the other part too. Can you see this? Oh yeah. Some reason they put it on the. A lot. I like the, yeah. I was going to well, So the second we got done. The second we got done with the podcast last week, the hat they had saw came. And so I waited all week and I was going to do on that box and on the podcast. But then I wanted to have this on today. To talk to you. So I will still do the hat on the podcast. Well, my, I just got a, a, an alert that my Edmonton and looks. Hoodie was refunded. They actually ran out of them. Wow. That's right. It was a sad day. I actually. She'll send a text back, booing them for us. Yeah, right. I won't hold you up too much today. I'll do the intro. Paul normally does all this stuff, but I just figured talk these, you know, it just. Any bad schedule just to keep it easy kind of stuff. And it should be fine. I don't know. Well, Jim, thank you so much for coming on. I told Paul when the schedule came out, I said we needed to talk to the smartest person that we knew about all this stuff. So of course, immediately we came to you. I'm not even going to try to make a joke about that. And so I saw you. You know, posting a lot of thoughts. I mean, you're in his story and of the game and the league and everything else. I guess first off, how are you feeling this week? Now that everything is going, you know, seemingly smooth. Well, first off I'm disappointed. And I'll tell you why, because I wore my bearer. Birmingham barracudas shirt here. Joe just for Paul. I don't worry just for him. Like instead of being the officious football, Canada guy in my polo shirt. I decided to wear this. So unfortunately, He's missing out. Historically. In terms of what's going on today, I'm just happy we have football back. You know, In terms of amateur football and, and where we stand in this country, when the CFL does well, we do well. With, with youth football and university football. Across the board. This is a schedule unlike any other I've seen. By by a long shot. And I think some of the discussion that we're going to have will have some interesting takes on it, but it's not meant as a criticism. Because. We know how much work the people at CFL office and their teams had to put into this coordinating a nine team schedule is bad enough. Doing it within 14 weeks. For a season with two by weeks and a TV network that has already booked certain dates and certain times for other events and block those times off. And also working around the hypothetical nature of COVID rollouts with. Vaccinations. Those are variables that are going to create. These quirks on the schedule that are in some cases, Really wacky. Well, and that's the thing is. I guess I wanted to get you on and our conversation today because I'm not like a schedule guy anyway. Right. I mean, the NFL stuff comes out. I'm like, yeah. Okay. See, See Hawks, you know, what's the kickoff or whatever, but I'm just, I'm not. So even, even on the NFL scale, I don't get super amped for like, you know, the schedule drop date, like everyone seems to nowadays. And so certainly with the CFL stuff, it's like, you know, we're trying to talk to smarter people than us to really round out this conversation. So you were pointing out some quirks in seven. Yeah. I, I did see a lot of. You know, don't be unhappy with us. Just be happy. We have a schedule, but you know, we can still, you know, critique and have questions, whether some questions that arose in your mind. Well, the first one, it quite easily. And it's something that happens when you live on the west coast, especially the west coast of Canada, where Vancouver is the only big city and travel and time zones are always an issue, but I've never seen anything quite what exists. With the BC lions playing Eastern teams. Five times. I want to say. But they play Ottawa in a back to back and back to backs, home and homes. Are notoriously difficult to sweep in this league. Plus. The other three times they play Eastern teams are all back east. So all four Eastern teams get a home date. With, with the BC lions, the team that is the farthest away from them. To engage with. I did the math on it. And just for you guys, I converted it back over to. Miles and Imperial. Well, I ans traveled about 28,000 miles. This this year, over a seven. Road games, the Toronto Argonauts by comparison, 10,563 miles. Two of those trips. Or, or 80 miles. Return to Hamilton. They're just down the road from them. Let me put this into perspective for you. For the Toronto Argonauts. Okay. If this was baseball. And it was the angels and the Dodgers who are Chavez, ravine and angel stadium are both the same distance away from each other who take a look at the percentage of games because Toronto and Hamilton are playing each other. Four times this year in baseball terms that would translate to the angels and the Dodgers play in each other or near seven times. I mean, th that's how kind of out of whack, this thing is now. With four games against each other with the, with the Toronto, Oregon knots and the, and the Hamilton tire cats. And the same thing applies to the animal Watson, the Ottawa red blacks. It's pretty hard to beat a single football team four times, no matter how good or how bad they are. So. You have to expect that, that those games are going to level out. Records. Somewhat, but if I'm looking across the league right now, I'm pretty happy. If I'm the Calgary Stampeders. And we've got a balanced schedule. With, with the Eastern teams too at home. Two on the road. I played two at home against the Saskatchewan Roughriders. I get my traditional dates. Against the Edmonton Eskimos. It's a really well-balanced season for them. For the other teams. As you start making your way out from Cal Creek. Not so much. The good news for you read. Is that the Edmonton Eskimos? Play the BC. Pardon me? The Edmonton Elks. I'm wearing else here. And it's an old habit that dies hard, but the Edmonton elbows. Visit the BC lions twice in the lions, don't go to Edmundston. So you got to, you got to opportunities when the border opens to motor on, up from Seattle and see the elk split. That that might definitely have to happen. I, yeah, we'll have to. I was getting excited about that. I know that Mark Perry, our commander in chief at news hub. He's talking because he's close to Hamilton and going up. So that would be very exciting for that. Yeah, it just seems like a, and I know what the CFL we get repeated, right with teams play each other a lot. You know, we have a longer season. But yeah, it does seem like these. So, you know, 17 was playing each other four times 17 was not playing each other at all. I mean, Is it, is it just. Trying to keep the COVID things separate. I mean, is that, is that what's going on here? Well in a perfect world in a 14 game season. I think you'd have. Six of your games as how many. I think there's there's six home and homes. And the two teams that you played three times to. Balance things out it. Oh, No two teams that you play wants to balance things out. That that would be, that would be the perfect. Schedule, but these are asymmetric schedules and they're, and they're based on COVID. You know, This is sketchy one rough riders open with four at home. For spring games at home. The reason for that is because the Saskatchewan was obviously. The first province that would, that was committed to open opening things up and putting fans in the stands. You know, when you look at some of the Eastern teams, they're all starting on the road with at least two games. In Western Canada, the Toronto, Oregon start. In the west, they have a great opener though. They opened with Winnipeg. And, and the reason why it's such a great opener. Is that they're playing at the same time as the Canadian national exhibition, this, this agricultural and civic fair. That, that they have every year, which, you know, generally you get into the C and D you get a ticket to an Argos game. So, so the stadium's wide open. There's no reason why they can't draw 20,000 to, to their home opener against the defendant grey cup champions. But. Yeah. Looking at at the, at the COVID effect of this, you've got the lions in the middle of the season playing for straight home games. If you've got the Alberta teams hosting teams. At, at the start of this. You know, quite frankly, when I look at that Saskatchewan schedule because of their COVID advantage of the front end, they opened was four and two of them are, are Eastern teams. Hamilton and Ottawa. And they actually have five of their first six games at home. If they don't start the season four and two. You're going to be in desperate trouble. Desperate trouble in the middle of that fight. Five out of six at home, it's a home and home with Winnipeg as a traditional date. It's the labor day classic and the banjo bowl. So, you know, outside of that, You know, they should, they should be escaping those first six. Game weeks with a four and two record, I would think. But some of those right there. They're at home, but they're considered the way, right? Some of those games is that how we're doing that? Cause I know that they were trying to right. Move things around. Am I, am I saying that right? Yes. And no, I mean, you say it like, you know, the, the Elks and the lions are, are a prime example of that, you know, in a perfect world, the, the Elks and the lions would be. A plane. One game of Vancouver, one game in Edmondson. And unfortunately, because of the way things shift around, they just can't do that in some cases, in some of these schedules. You have some teams not even facing each other, even though they're playing other teams four times in a year. Well, I don't was an example of that. They don't play one a big, and it's a real lost opportunity. Because the former offensive coordinator or the Winnipeg blue bombers is now the head coach of the Ottawa red blacks. And that would have been compelling to watch to see those two teams. Come together. So. The other thing too, is that there's some anomalies with, with game days. There's some Tuesday games, there's some Wednesday games. Ottawa in the middle of the season, plays a home game on a Wednesday than a Tuesday. And I have to think that that's based on two things. One of them is TV blocking dates that that TSN may have, or remaining on half. And the other is that, you know, They run a soccer team out of that facility too. And you know, there may be some, some conflicting dates. It may be a way to. To to bridge some of the by weeks that are built into the collective bargaining agreement. But at the end of the day, there's they're. There's some challenges there in the Argos. Don't benefit much for the, for the working man there, that they should be the working man's team. In the GTA. I believe they only have two Saturday home dates. And so, and so that's going to hit them as well. Anyone's trying to make their way. Out of Toronto late day on a Friday. I remember the time where usually it should take you about 45 minutes to get to the airport. It took me two hours and 45 minutes to get to the airport. Simply because Friday is absolutely red light. In that city. Yeah, it's. I mean, and that was, you know, obviously with the NFL this year, you. We lived through that too. And we have that one. It ended up being that I think every day of the week ended up having a game when they handled that stuff with the Ravens plan and all that, but it is tough where right. The CFL doesn't carry. I mean, the NFL can kind of come in and say, this is when we're playing. You know, I think there was that one early Wednesday game that like the dog show or something was going on. Everyone was like freaking out. They couldn't believe that the game was at two in the afternoon. There's something. But, I mean, otherwise the NFL can kind of throw its weight around where it is interesting that when you talk about the. Obviously, you know, the other things happening in those stadiums and then the TV stuff that's already been scheduled. Right. How does TSN handle that? You know, not really, you know, we didn't really know. I mean, we kind of knew, but we didn't really know until Monday that this was all happening, you know? Well, the other thing with TSN as well as is that, you know, they have core crews that travel around to these towns and they have to, you know, build them like teams and move them from city to city. And have them drop into. Into productions around the country. That level of coordination also demands some sometimes shift as well. You know, there, there are a lot of moving parts behind the scenes that, you know, people may complaining about the end result. Of the schedule, but they, they, they camp. Fully appreciate. What goes into it. Yeah. I mean the logistics of all that. Yeah. I mean, I couldn't, I couldn't imagine. I mean, it really puts it in perspective, you know, even these leagues with more teams and you know, what goes into baseball schedules. I all these, I mean, it's, it's, it's just crazy to think. Yeah. Even just do 14 weeks with the nineties. I mean, But, but overall, what, what reactions have you heard? I mean, obviously. I want the, the. The thumbnail of this episode to be like Charlie day. And it's always sunny in Philadelphia with the conspiracy board. And that's kind of how. How I view you looking at this leak stuff, right? But, I mean, what, what has people. Yeah, besides you. I know you've been talking a lot on Twitter. I was working yesterday when all this came down, what is general sentiment across the league? Well, a we're just happy. There's football back. Like I said, at the top of this thing, but you know, there's going to be the inevitable grumbling. About about the draw about strength of schedule. You know about fairness. Now when I see the schedule. At first, I was opposed to the idea of eight teams making the playoffs. Now that I see how uneven it is, I think eight teams making the playoffs. We would have been a good idea. And to it's also to create some Saturday dates. So, you know, a lot of folks think it's when I say wacky, I think there are some people on the coast that are definitely unhappy because. As you get into the foal. And as you look at some of the dates against Eastern teams, they don't match up. Well, time zone wise. Especially if you're starting games early Saturday morning or. Before rush hour is over during a weekday. It's not necessarily the, the best schedule to re-engage fans. On the west coast, quite frankly, even if it's just through television. Well, when it comes to that road, schedule lions are going to have a special challenge with those, with those four straight games at home to, to, to sell them and, and, and build those up. I think there is though the, the expectation that. That we'll be back up to full strength there. Opening stadiums by about at least the end of the first week of September. And, and I think people understand the, the challenges. What the leagues go on, sort of just to, just to get to this point, those who don't understand, probably wouldn't be showing up at a CFL game anyway. Quite frankly. You know, from my perspective, it does hurt a little bit. In terms of. Covering the college side and the university side of the game, because there's a lot of these games are gonna be loaded into Saturdays now. So the Canadians that we watch and the NCAA, we won't get as much coverage of that here. The university side of the game up here, probably get buried a little bit. By all of this, but you know what. That's a hit, you got to take just to get the professional game back on the field, in my opinion. Ultimately, how do you think. We management handled this week with the vote Monday, the schedule release Tuesday. How do you think that all went? I think it went well. I think when, as well as could be expected and I think they didn't do themselves any favors over these last few months. Bye. And creating a void in the media in terms of getting timely responses out there and feeding information out. That could have directed the story. Instead of letting people speculate. And, and, and fill the space. I think it resets things for the Canadian football fan, because they're not. Preoccupied with change. They're just focused on how do I get out to a game? What games am I going to see? When is it on my television? That's that's the positive aspect, whether or not it was really a unanimous vote or not, doesn't matter what they said publicly matters. That it was a unanimous vote, you know? At the end of the day, everybody is playing. Releasing the schedule out the next day was the right thing to do instead of the. Letting another day or two go by, whether it'd be an other pocket of a vacuum. I think under the circumstances they handled it about as well as one could expect. Well, there you go. That's. I mean, you know, I think you have anyone just to. Expectations and what to look for and everything. I mean, I think if you feel happy about it, if you feel content, I mean, I think it really speaks to kind of that collective, you know, what people were looking for. And I think, you know, what people were looking for kind of coming out of this week. So. Well, I think, you know, personally, About seven years ago, I worked on a project for university football called the Northern eight, where we were getting the top eight teams out of the 27 teams. Play. Football in Canada and trying to mesh four conference schedules together with a separate competition schedule. And you're working with odd numbers. You're, you're working in different regions. Like to, to, to work out the. Of variables and permutations of scheduling when you're working with that level of geography and those odd numbers and all of those considerations that feed into it. It is. It makes your sign. Naps is bleeding. Point right. It is tough. And, and so for, for people to think there's a magic one here, especially through COVID. Create a. A magic schedule that makes everybody happy. And that is balanced. You know, you're being a fool, quite frankly. You know, I, I, I just wish there was room for two game, total points series in the playoffs. Like I used to have in the, in the sixties, seventies and eighties. Or Thai. Like, if you look at the history of this league, W w when you take a look at some of the scheduling in the past, This is what it reminds me of. If you go back and take a look at a schedule in the 1970s. Where a Western team would, would. Would make a stop in one of the big, and then sweep into Ottawa and Toronto, maybe Hamilton as well, and do three games or four games in 10 to 12 days. That was the old reality, right? And some of the stuff with some of these mid-week games. And. Some of the oddities that we have here. Remind me of that. But at least player safety is front and center because they are in one way or another working the two by weeks. And I think that's very important, especially considering there's, there's no exhibition games. And you have to wonder in some pockets about fitness levels for these players. It's not a, it's not a question whether or not they're fit. It's a question whether or not their game fit. And how quickly they can get back into the game. And, and sustain that pace. That, that it demands. Yeah. I mean, we've talked about that, Paul and I we've watched wrestling for years where it's, it's one thing to be in good cardio shape. It's another thing to be in ring shape, and go in the ring and be able to. Did you that I know I saw Dave Campbell was tweeting that I think Edmonton was talking about doing some exhibition Practicee game kind of things to try to get some of these players. Up to speed because it is, I mean, it's a year and a half off. And if you've been working in another job, you don't. You know, you're in shape, but you're not in that game shape. Well, the one thing that I would have liked to have seen here is. Sheer training camps and controlled scrimmages, but I know the resources just aren't there for it. The other portion that I'd like to see that I think is a real opportunity for some of these CFL teams is. And an inner squad game that that's the webcast. Is it accessible to everyone? I'd like to see a green and gold game. I like to see a red, white game out of Calgary. We've been waiting for Canadian football for quite some time now. Right? So if there's an opportunity to set up a, a five to seven camera set up delivered something that, that, that is, that is worthy of a, of everybody's eyes and gives us an opportunity to re-engage with the game again. I hope the teams jump on that opportunity. I know it probably wasn't front of mind does everyone's scrambling to get back. But contracted. You know, there's plenty of companies out there. That'll, that'll jump on that opportunity for, for an affordable price that can, that can manufacture that sort of media for you. Right. If they don't jump on it, I think it's a lost opportunity. From what I have now. And then my time, I feel like it will be a lost opportunity. Yeah. To be, you know, not. I was just trying to frame it to. Optimistically. Not realistically, but optimistically. That's the thing too is, you know, Here we are. I mean, Hiring people back now. I mean, we're going, I mean, it is. I know that they had some of the staff there, but we have had them at a staff come back. I just was seeing today that, you know, some of the players now are, are not, you know, are being retired or whatever our plan. I mean, it is now this mad scramble and getting ready for training camps. I mean, do you feel. How do you feel about, I mean, we're, we're going to hit August. But how do you feel the, this looks in the meantime until we get there? Well, one of the things that I'm anticipating is, is imperfection and imperfection can really loan itself to some pretty crazy exciting moments in this game. You know, sometimes when, when, when a game is played at, at, at its very top high performance level and it is perfection. You can actually get pretty boring. And, and, and I think there's going to be some. Improv throughout the year, in terms of juggling player personnel, in terms of dealing with injuries, in terms of some end game compromising, the coaches will have to do. That that will create opportunities on the field that will create some wild point Springs. Swings that will probably create a cup board, nasty blowouts as well. All right. I'm interested to look at this almost from a scientific perspective and see what happens in this lab with the off center schedule. And a start without, without an exhibition season. I think we'll see just how important an exhibition season is in the first four weeks of this regular season. You know, Many people aren't fans of exhibition football. Right. Of preseason football. And. And it does seem to be a bit of a tease that doesn't deliver at the end of the day. That being said, if you're really into watching personnel movements and watching developments and watching battles. At positions. It can get quite interesting if, if you're engaged at that level. And over the years games one and two, since the CFL went to the 18 game season, always feel like exhibition games, three and four. So, so I think you get, get, get ready for some, get ready for some sloppy play from time to time, but that can also loan itself to some, some pretty interesting and exciting moments. Oddly enough. Yeah, it's hard. You know, we just were getting ready, covering this big spring league championship this week a weekend. And not that. You know, obviously the CFL yeah. Much higher caliber of whatever, but. You know this year with all the protocols, they got those guys in so late, you know, I think they only really practiced together for like a week before. And it's I just, this week, you know, week, cause it's only like a six week thing, you know, we're finally getting. You know, really good play weeks, like five and six. And then the season's done. And so, yeah, with the CFL, I mean, we saw last year with the NFL, with injuries. I mean, you have both of those sides, so. You get the injury, conditioning, whatever. And then you just have players being ready to go. Now, obviously, They have a longer training camp here, you know, getting ready for the CFL. So I hope like you said, you know, some of those inner squad games or whatever could help. You know, kind of. Yeah, ease that out a little bit. Right? Well, well, when you look at the Toronto Argonauts and all the free agent signings, they had this off season. How are they going to test these guys? How are they going to properly evaluate. I'm certainly there. They're not going to. Get them into, into, into true game speed. Even if they're playing an inner squad game, they're not getting them up to true game speed. How do you make the total evaluation? On the staff were where you've gone heavily into the free agent market. You know, I would think if I'm, if I'm a player that's cast aside from the Argos. I'm I'm looking for another opportunity somewhere else where I can catch on in a hurry. Because there's a lot of, a lot of talent that's been signed in Toronto that that is obviously capable of playing, but can they make the right read on the moon within the abbreviated camps that they're going to have? I don't have the answer to that, but that'll be interesting to see how that plays out. I don't want to hold you too much today. You've been so gracious with your time. Any other thoughts, quirks, anything before we let you, I mean, I'm sure we'll, hopefully God willing, we'll talk to you again, but. Anything else? They haven't filed. Let you go. No, I'm just looking forward to seeing you come up here from, from Seattle to see the Elton Hawaiians play. When the stadium is finally wide open and. Yeah, BC place. I mean, you're only what two and a half, three hours away from Vancouver where you are. Where you be on the north end or the south end of Seattle. Oh, yeah. I just did Portland to Seattle yesterday. I had to go down for a shoot and back to the, yeah. That's no problem at all. I and they'll release, I assume. You know, the single day, right? Single game tickets. No, no, I'm still a single game tickets at some point. They're good. They're going to open the thing up. You know, you know, I think it's, I think it's great that, that we just have football back again. I'm I'm looking forward. To see. Where the XFL talk starts up again in the middle of this season. Now, now that the CFL had these game platforms. On TSN. Is that a place where that talk is actually going to advance somewhat in what I would suggest is a controlled environment for both TSN and the CFL, you know, it, it, it occurred to me that. About two and a half years ago. New Zealand brought their Maori all blacks up. It was basically an old Mallory. New Zealand. Rugby team. And Jason Mamoa did a, did a tour with them through Vancouver, through a number of first nations reserves. Really whipped up two things, awareness of the game, but a great cultural bond. Between south Pacific Islanders. And the first nations up here and it put people in the stands. You know, they, they had, they had a good 35,000 for that game. I'd like to see what will happen when the rock shows up on a sideline. I would like to see when that happens. When the carnival comes to town. I would like to hear the. Maybe some of the speculation, but maybe some of the facts start coming out. Around this as the season goes along, you know, as much as it's great to have football back, I I'd like to see where the rubber hits the road on this. Because I do think out of all the possible pairings, whether it's us. Fell in the XFL or the XFL. A CFL, what will it? Whatever's on this musical chairs chart right now. The most plausible one is the access. CSL. Whether I supported it or not, it's still the most plausible one. I just want the record to show. You were the one that brought it to the exit. Today. That I did not. Sorry. That's right. No, I did see the, the Naylor tweet, you know, He did some radio. Something about, you know, if the rock shows up and I tweeted at the end of Indiana Jones on the open, the Ark of the covenant and everyone's faces meltdown. That's what I imagine. If the rock walks into, you know, Seriously, like in a town like Vancouver, that that is such an event driven town. There's not a lot of loyalty here. For, for the teams that we have in the stem, not even the economics. Quite frankly. And, and you know, we're a town that's, that's comprised like, like Atlanta, Georgia is. A lot of people come from somewhere else with their loyalties. The locals like me are very few in number. So when a big shiny object, like Dwayne Johnson comes into town. It turns into something. It creates energy. It, it directs eyeballs, you know, may, may, maybe it directs the eyeballs of people with very, very low attention spans, but you do get their attention with it. And I would say just that. If there is a touchdown point for Dwayne Johnson, it ain't in Toronto. It's in Vancouver. It will stir things up out of here. Well, if it happens. Yeah. And I mean, you know, there has certainly been good. Movement on the red bird that lately, you know, hiring that. The individual that helped broker the $110 billion TV deal for the NFL, bringing, you know, the former executive producer of Monday night football coming up. I mean, there was a lot of questions. Last we spoke. What does Redbird have to offer the anybody? Well, we're. You know, I. That we're starting to rally the troops. I feel like on our end, I feel like Redbird looks a little better today than it did the last time you were on the show. Well, I was joking around a bit online about the USFL stealing the XFL is hump. Thunder there. But at the end of the day, what looks more serious to you? Those names lining up in red bird. In, in at least the alignment. With the XFL. Or, or the spring league USFL thing where. We don't even really know. If Brian owns those straight martyrs. Hi. Come on. And the other thing too, is, is that okay? The the, the, the USFL has great appeal to me. And you know why, because I'm, I'm, I'm an old gen X-er that watched it. In my teens, right. And it was this neat spring football thing. Yeah. A couple of USFL jerseys to go along with this one, too. But that was what's 39 years ago. Like, like it has. I mean, it's, it's an antique. It, it has no relevance now. In terms of a brand, in my opinion, like you're, you're not drawing. People in their, in their early to mid fifties out. On a, on a regular basis. Two games. If you're going to be a, a, a fan driven league, if you're going to be a gambling driven league, or if you're going to be. ATV showed the kind of uses a stadium. As a studio, maybe you got to shop with that, but to hear Doug Flutie come out. And, and talk about the great stars of the past, the USFL. That's not happening. That's that's great. That's ancient history. That's not happening this time around with. With this function. I actually have far more confidence in the, in the XFL doing something than the U S SSL does just based upon that. Yeah. To me. And, you know, and we talked to Jim Earhart was on our show last week, you know? To me. If you're, if you're going to go the route of the USFL with the baggage, with the trumps, with the bankruptcy, with all these things, and then not reach out to a single former anybody about anything except, you know, Doug Flutie to come on and do an appearance. I mean, That's what I just don't get, because I would just start, you know, make the spring league bigger or start the Brian Woods football league. It's like, well, why buy those trademarks? And then not talk to anybody involved in that. I will never understand that. Yeah, just. That Brian Woods jumped into the pool before the XFL could. Do you think that's just what it was all about? That's the way it reads to me. It does. And you know, I'm as if I asked. The podcast. I'm fascinated because this is great for us then. Yeah, because. Last. You know, last, our listeners know, you know, The XFL is not coming back in 2022. This is a debate we've had on the shelf, not even a debate. But the argument we've had on the show now, but that's how I read it too. But what I love about everything is like, Well, we talked about it last week. Because they bought the Tampa bay bandits. Right. That's one of the trademarks and they go, I see these guys online. Well, you know, when the XFL comes back to Tampa bay, I'm like. We couldn't get, they couldn't get 9,000 people in Raymond, James stadium. Like don't tell me that the XFL owns Tampa bay football. Right? I mean, You know, St. Louis. Okay. That's one thing, but like LA struggled. I mean, a lot of the markets struggled that's okay. But I, you know, th that there. That they're invading on the XFL street corner while they're gone. But yes, I definitely read it as jumping in before they could get their ducks in a row. That's how I do. And I'm, I'm in the minority with the new SOP writers, but that is what I pick. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's the way it reads to me too. I mean, I I'm I'm with you guys in that. If there's more opportunities out there for players and coaches. To, to pursue a career in the sport. I'm all for it. And, and if it creates more competition, It's going to drive the floor up higher for, for everybody. I mean, You mentioned wrestling. I mean, the golden era of wrestling was really the nineties where, you know, you know, the, the Monday night battles. And, and they forced each other to up their games. And when it came down to two, just one again, when the United under one umbrella, that level of competition, that level of compete completely disappeared overnight. So, I mean, You know, if the, if the spring league wants to repack the USFL and if the XFL wants to jump in and try to do something in the spring space and at the CFL can, can work with them and continue to be prosperous. I'm all for it. Because it creates more opportunities for more individuals. I don't know how anybody could be against it. Quite frankly. That's just the way I think. Last ever. A week I'll have this forever, but the thing it's been coming out lately in our chats with the USFL is not so much the players in the cities. Right. Because I mean, the players are going to bounce. But if Brian and then we get a good group of coaches that are signed to two year deals or non-compete, whatever things that to me is an issue. Then when the XFL comes back and not that there's not a wealth of head coaches too, but yeah, if you're trying to get the heavy hitters, I mean, you know, look at the exit valve, the spring that you mean it's all the same, you know, you get how mommy you get clam valley, you get all these guys. I mean, You know, half the spring league teams are just retreads of coaches from the XFL, right? Because obviously these people know what they're doing. So that to me is the big concern is it's not so much. The cities and the fans and the players. It is, if you get these coaches signed. You know, for a couple of years. And then what do you do? Well, you got, you got some of the coaches that also transit. Between the CFL and these American spring leagues as well. Like I'd like to. You know, get GPS trackers on June Jones and Mike Riley to see where they're at. Like, like, like, you know, th th there's. There, there there's a wider selection of them too, especially assistance. And. And, and coordinators. So, I mean, it's a fluid market, right? So, so it, it, it behooves these leagues to, and these operations to be competitive and step up. My last comment today, even so gracious with your time. I blame about 90% of this XFL, CFL, animosity, and all the fighting and the merge and the rules and everything. On June Jones. I really do. I place all of the blame on him in that first interview when he came out and he goes, The rocks for four downs has come in the rocks taken over. And even at the time I tweeted a lot of June, all this history, you know, June either has the power nor the influence, you know, To really have anything to say about any of this, but it's because. The XFL has never said anything about a merger rule changes. It's never come out from anything official aid. It was all based on that June Jones interview. I really do think. All right. I agree with you a hundred percent on that. And, and let the speculation begin from, from him saying that because. June Jones has a, it has a background in Canada with the Hamilton tiger cats played briefly with the Oregon knots. As a quarterback. And so when, when someone who translates to on both sides of the border, like that, Even if it's just in a local market, but he translates on both sides of the border. So, something like that. It, it puts a group like the CFL or the XFL in a defensive position. And then if they don't defend that. Then it, then it opens up the vacuum speculation. Like we were talking about about 10 minutes ago. And if you don't address that speculation. Well, I mean, I think. I think we've seen some collateral damage in terms of some relationships. Quite frankly, because there was that space for speculation. What do you mean by that? Well, I think between certain media members between certain individuals, I think it's mostly in the media space. I think it allowed. Some media members who had already sharpen knife towards the CFL to go up. Harder. I think it. It, it alienated a lot of the, a lot of the core fans, many of whom will come back because there's a schedule right now. But some who were kind of playing wait and see, especially because we're not 100. Percent safe because of COVID. But, but also going well, what's this thing going to look like next year? What's this thing gonna be the year after? Are they going to take my game away from me? All those questions are there. They don't go away this week. Just because we've got a, we've got a schedule and we got a green light on playing football. Those things are all coming back. That's like I said, that's one of the things that I'm interested in seeing play out. Over this. The this coming season is where does the XFL story go? And I brought it up and you didn't bring it up. I will save it with media going at each other three down nation, no longer blocks me on Twitter. So we have at least men in that field, but that, that was that. That was attaching point for a while. So now I think we're we're finally again, cause there was, there was some nice there for a little while. You guys are good for each other. Seriously, you guys are going to cut. Contrast in ideas are fine. Sometimes they get a little sharp between parties. You got to take a time out. I understand that you got to go to different bars for a couple of weeks, right? Well, I'm going to, you have been, thank you so much again with what started as you know, let's get Jen talking for 10 minutes. But I really appreciate it. I know Paul will be sad that he, but will you just we'll have to come back now. So wait, we have an excuse now, and I am holding you to our rooftop party that we were promised we're going to. Bring a boat up and party at the, at the house I've, I've been promised. I, and I told Paul that. Well, that sounds good. And actually given where the Yankees are in the standards and given where the Mariners are in the standings. I I'm I'm. They're about equal in terms of mediocrity right now. Issue this DePaul it's $10 American that the Mariners finished with a better record than the Yankees do. Let's see if he takes me up on that. Oh, I will tell them that. Yeah. There's been a lot of fire, Aaron Boone tweets lately. I don't know why I didn't notice them. I don't know what an Aaron Boone is or why we need to fire him, but I, yeah, that's good. Hey, I'm a Mariners fan. I deal with that level of frustration on a regular basis. This is all new to him. If you're a Yankee fan, it's usually blue sky and. Your, your, your IRA is only directed towards a red Sox fan. Like, like welcome to the real worlds and jazz. Thank you so much. Again, I can't thank you enough. And that will just, yes, I really appreciate it. Here. Let me just get this roll in here before I forget. Cracking the CFL. How are you doing? I'm great. I'm great. There we go. Try that again. Yeah. Yeah. No. Thanks for helping. The spring league has not been the easiest to work with in terms of media availability. That's why I was like, whatever. Proper channels. We need to go here because. Those guys have been interesting for a long time. I am. I am happy to, to make it easy on you. Well, I appreciate it. Hang on one sec. Yeah. No problem. No problem. I'm glad to do it. There we go. Well, thanks for so much for coming on. I w we're just riding off a good weekend of games, kind of going into this. Mega bowl. What has been your thoughts so far on everything spring league related? Here's here's what I have. Here's what I liked about it. You know, there, there is, I, I grew up in the, in the U S all the USFL days. You know, I've, I've watched the different incarnations of trying to make spring football work, and I know it can work. You. And I both know there is a market for this and the, and to me, The spring league and the USFL to come. And there is a. There is a demand for something else too. A fill the, fill the time for football fans and B for opportunities for players who have the chance to move up to the next level. And that's, that's the best thing. About the spring league for me is the chance to tell the stories of some of these guys who have not had the chance to have their stories told. And then get the chance maybe as a result to go to the next level. I think that's a really cool thing. Well, and especially, I mean the last here year, year and a half with everything, I mean, you know, besides any other year in time and all the players, but you know, here's all these guys haven't had a chance to play. I mean, we've been covering the CFL. You. They obviously missed the whole. So it's like now more than ever. There's there's like this pent up just supply of talent and hard work. And I mean, it's crazy to think. You know, I, I used to work in news too. I used to work at Q3. I equated it like, yeah, there's only X number of like camera guy jobs. Doesn't matter how talented you are or not. Right. There's just only so many slots. Oh, absolutely. And when you limited. The amount, for example. In the preseason, the NFL limited, the amount of guys that would go to the rookie mini camps. So normally where you'd have a chance maybe to have 15 or 20 rookies. You know, mini camp. Get the chance to see what they can do that didn't exist last year. So you take that away. CFL, does it play. You don't have any other opportunities to put yourself out there to put yourself on bill, doing things against other guys. I mean, it's one thing to catch passes or. Throw passes against air. Okay, that's nice. I can see your motion. I can see if you can run an outfit. But I can't tell how you're going to do when you've got pressure in your face, how you're going to do when you've got a defender right up, locking you down. Those are the kinds of things that the spring league can provide. These guys that opportunity to show and you've seen it. You've started to see now guys coming out of the spring league to go to a mini camp, to go sign on a roster, to get a chance to perform. Now that we're opening back up in the pandemic, we hope fingers crossed is waning. Then these opportunities show up and wherever these guys had a chance to play. It's really only been here. And so this year, especially was a really good year for the spring league to be able to make the season work. How do you think the football compares to what you're used to watching the coverage? I think. And I can't remember how much preseason, whatever they had in the November session. I do feel like it was a little, it took a little while to get going this time. What were your thoughts on the football? I think the football that we saw the last couple of weeks of the spring league was. So much better than what we saw at the beginning. And I won't say that as a broad brush because I thought Ryan Mallett came out in the first game and had a really good start to his return to football. I thought he looked sharp. But you see this. As you go through the season, you would think by weeks five and six. It's better because you've had all more, you've had more practice. You've had game reps, you've had opportunities. We talked with coaches and they all compared it to this past week. Would have been the equivalent of a second or third NFL. The season game you've had the run-up, you've had the camp, you've had the practices. Now you're getting some games. And so when you get to that third preseason game in the NFL, that's always the game that's on national TV. That's always the game that everybody sees the starters for more than any other game in the pre-season back, at least in the old days of four preseason games. I'm not sure I want to work this year. But with four preseason games, that third one was always the so-called game test. Well, that's kind of where we are right now with the spring league. You've gotten through all the initial fits and starts. You have some guys transitioning on and off the roster, but I thought the level of play the last couple of weeks was a lot smoother than what we saw at the beginning. And that's the big expense. Standouts for you in terms of talent that you saw. You know, it's funny. I start with a kicker. Because Leerom high relays. Is you not only is a great story if he's not given an opportunity. To be in an NFL camp. I mean, I he's the best kicker I've seen in the spring league and it's, and it's not close. I mean, Jonathan saw him really, really good. I don't want to take anything away from Memphis. He had a really good spring league as well, and I'm guessing he'll get a shot, but higher loss you showed. The ability to kick long, he showed the ability to kick off long, which I think is a big deal. And he is somebody who has been through it at a high level before he's been through the CFL. He's been through some big moments in the CFL. He's obviously been through some big moments in his past, I think to escape a war torn nation, to get to Canada, to have the chance to be where he is right now. To me. That's the number one name? When I think of guys who have stood out in this league. It's somebody like that who makes a jump. And then, you know, you look around and you see a guy like Ryan Willis, for example, for the lineman. And we'll see in the, in the mega bowl this weekend. I think Ryan Willis acquitted himself extremely well. During the spring league, he looked like he had the poise to be able to make some plays. Does he get a chance to be on a roster as a number three quarterback, maybe in the NFL, maybe he does. Maybe he gets a shot to go to a camp. I think he's got the physical tools. Six, four, two 25. Got a little bit of mobility. He's not gonna run around like Patrick, my home's, he's not going to run around like Lamar Jackson, but maybe he can get out there and. Perform at a level to where as a second or third guy, he gets his opportunity. And you can, I mean, you can go on and on this could be a long conversation about guys who I have seen stand out because you look around the, just the rosters this weekend that we're going to see in the mega bowl. And you look at a guy like Adam Wally a day away, who I thought it said some nice place for the lineman on the defensive line. There is Maurine has done some nice things for the jouster. Buster's on the defensive life. Just a couple of names that pop into my head. As far as defensive guys, there is talent in this league, and I think we've seen that talent, a lot of talent on the offensive line. That is always hard for me to evaluate quite honestly. But the numbers that you see starting to get called to go up to camps at the next level, show that the Scouts are paying attention to what they see in the lines. And they like what they see. Oh, absolutely. I mean, we had Cole Boozer on our show a couple of weeks ago. He's a longtime friend of the show. And I mean, here, he got signed he's on his way. You. Hopefully as we record that Monday, you know, the CFL vote and everything, but, you know, I mean, it's a real thing that these players. Are getting the eyeballs that they need to move on. Oh, there's no question. And you're not getting that opportunity without live reps, without live reps against other people, which is where there's always been this void for spring football. There's no true developmental league for the NFL. We all know that college football has sort of served as that developmental league, but. Where is that middle ground, that NBA D league that middle ground for the minor league baseball. Where is that for football? And that's where leagues like the spring league legs, like the USFL come in next year. That's four. Those are going to not only provide a fix for us football fans, but an opportunity for guys to be able to say, Hey, I know I fell through the cracks for whatever reason. But I've grown since this, or I'm better than I was at this point. And I. For example, salmonella is a great example of what the spring league can do for somebody. He plays for the generals in the fall. He plays again. In the spring gets the call at the end of the spring league season and is going to bears mini camp now. That's the first opportunity a guy like that has had to even be in a mini camp. He was a wide receiver. He transitioned he's added weight. He's tried to learn the tight end position. But he still 23 years old. So he's got that opportunity. And he doesn't get that opportunity if he didn't play in the fall and he didn't play in the spring to have the chance to get those live reps. And that's where this, I mean, to me, those are the kinds of stories that are cool, that pop out of I'm an old minor league guy did modeling basketball is more my first career things. And to me, the story of guys. Persevering to get to that next level. That excites me, that fires me up and it should for sports fans, because you know, these aren't the first round picks. These are the guys who are grinding and those are the guys I appreciate. I want to know from someone, you know, working right. You're. You know, like professionally, you know, prepping for the games covering this. I remember back in November, we were getting ready for the first, whatever they were, you know, the kind of extended season. We didn't really know what to expect. A lot of people and we recovered and we turned on the games. Great production, you know, great calls, all the, you know, everyone covering it, they've all done their homework. Everybody knows everything, right. I mean, it feels so how is it for you, you know, getting assigned this or whatever. To call these games. I love football. So that's the first part I wouldn't have. I would have not said yes if I didn't love doing football. So I love to call football the opportunity to call more football is not something I'm going to turn down. So that aside the chance to do that. It's been really interesting at times I feel like it come to an CSI football cause I've got to sift through some of the backstories of these guys. Cause it's, you know, I can usually find what they did in college. So then you go, okay, you graduated college, you left college in 2016. It's 2021. What have you done in those five years in between? So it's sort of, I'm piecing through finding articles. It's required me to do honestly more digging. To find stories out then if I'm doing an NFL game and those stories are so well known, I don't find a story on Tom Brady. I'm you know, everybody knows who Tom Brady is. I don't have to tell that story, but I have to find a story on the Quan Hampton, the tight end for the gel busters, who was at USC, played for the wild cats and the XFL transitioning from wide receiver to tight end. You know, started in a community. College was a junior college, all American gets to USC. Didn't get a whole lot of opportunity there, but it's staying with it. Those are the kinds of things that you kind of have to piece together. Like. Okay, where is he? What's he doing? What's going on? You know, guys like Tyshaun Caroma the center for the justice who was gone all last week from practice. Cause he took a real job and had to go to work all week long and so still gets back. Still plays still starts at center. Why did he do that? Where has he been since he left BYU? There's just, those are the kinds of things that, for me, it's been a challenge, but a fun one. I mean, I don't have nine other games going on right now. I've got the spring league going on right now. So it gives me the chance to dig into the stories a little bit more and maybe be able to tell some of the stories that we've told over the last several weeks on these broadcasts. That's interesting. So you're really having to go through yourself and really find a lot of that information out. Oh, no doubt. You know, this is, this is, there's so much transition in any minor league. And I, and I, when I worked my only basketball, I was also the PR guy. So there's a lot of. You know, there's a lot of similarity to that in that I, okay. I got to find out where this guy has been before he joined our team. So I can write a press release about him. Well, I'm not writing a press release now, but I gotta find out where this guy has been. So I can tell the story about it because here's the thing. If I get it wrong or I don't tell the story. I'm going to hear about it. People are going to say. Dude. That's not right at all. This is what this guy, because mom, dad, brother, sister, buddy is watching and everybody knows where to find you in the world of social media and they'll have them. They have no problem reaching out saying you screwed that up. Here's why. And the players pay attention. You know, we told Stan Bedwell story, one of the first weeks of the spring league and he tweeted it out to everybody because, you know, he had told us a story. We shared the story is a great story. Luis Perez, great story. I mean, there's so many of these that we share with the public, but if we get it wrong, You know, it's on us. So. It requires me to do maybe a little more leg work to find some of this stuff. And I enjoy that. I mean the, the, the, the heart of a league, like this is, yes, you're showcasing the football, but you're also telling the story because I can turn on an NFL game. You can turn on an NFL game and, you know, Something about at least half of the players. I mean, it's not a big surprise when Patrick Holmes does something or when Tom Brady does something or, you know, you know, the guys. Nobody knows these guys. So you're sort of introducing it to an audience, the league and the players. And so that's, you know, Joel Klatt and I will get the chance to do that this weekend for the mega bowl. And I'm looking forward to it. Yeah. Mega bowl, great name or the greatest name for the, for the spring league champion. It's clearly the greatest name. I mean, if there's not mega bowl, parties cropping up all over America, we've all done this wrong. I mean, it's, it's just the greatest name ever make, you know, super bowl is fine, but now you've got the mega bowl. Let's say it's gotta be like a notch above, right? Yeah. So, I mean, obviously the elephant in the room here too, is this USFL stuff coming out right? You know, we had been, you know, our wonderful listeners to keep us apprised of everything had been tracking all these trademarks and everything back earlier. I don't know if, if we expected it to kind of come out in the middle of this season. Reactions thoughts to all this USFL step? Well, from a nostalgia standpoint, I couldn't have been more excited. And, and it's such a, it's such an interesting thing because you could see it from everybody. That was a USFL person as a kid on social media, because when the announcement came, it's people all across the spectrum. I had the showboat set. I had this joke. Maulers t-shirt I had this I, all of these people remember the [unknown]. It's the USFL back in the eighties strikes me today as something like, you know, When, when wilt Chamberlain scored is 100 points. Now, 8 billion people say they were in the stands for that. It feels like 8 billion people say they watched the USFL bell. Oh, I watched the USL fell religiously back in the day. When did you really watch it religiously? I don't know that you did, but I appreciate the. The nostalgia for it. I'm, I'm guilty of that, that I, you know, I went to Nebraska. When I was. Very young kid, micros year was drafted by the Pittsburgh Maulers that was a big deal. He was a top pick. Everybody was, you know, that got a lot of news when I was a kid in Nebraska, because. My gosh that the Heisman trophy winners. A USFL guy that's, you know, And of course there's so many names now. Donald Trump, Herschel Walker. They're all associated with the USFL. Jim Kelly, just think about that. Went on to obviously differing roles, but I just, I, I love the notion of, can you recapture the perceived magic of the USF? I think you can. I think it's going to be a huge thing when it starts next year to return the USFL, the names, the logos, the look. I think it's going to be huge. And I think it's the one, especially now. I think it's the spring. League that can capture a greater amount of the imagination because there's so many people that have a natural affinity for, Hey, the USFL resonates with me. I don't have to explain to you what the USFL is. I don't have to say to you, well, this is this, and this is this, you know, as a football fan. I think that's the cool thing about this. Do you think, how do you think Brian, Mr. Woods and Fox, and everything's going to do, I mean, 20, 22 is, is very, w we've been trying to tell our XFL listeners for awhile, you know, 20, 22 is really short here, right. To be a, what do we think about them actually hitting in the spring? Well, I really think they're going to get it done and I think there's a big drive to get it done. And I think, look, you've seen what we've done production wise on the spring league broadcasts. I I'm proud of the work we've done. And I think. Especially considering a lot of the. The restrictions that are still in place or were still in place as far as COVID goes. I think we've really done a phenomenal job in getting these games on the air. Making them look good. Making them sound good. I honestly, I wish the NFL would adopt some of the audio stuff that we've done on these games. The communication between the official and the replay official as a football fan to me is fascinating. Some of the sounds you hear from the players during the broadcast, I think are really cool, that kind of access and I'm. And I know you're going to see more of that larger, expansive access. There'll just be a lot of really cool bells and whistles. That'll go along with the football and the nostalgia that the USFL brings. So I have no doubt. They're gonna be able to get this thing going. I have no doubt Fox is going to make it look great. I'm excited to see it. W, what do you think about just while we have you here? Leaving that space, you know, accident foul was going to come get, we get all caught up in the CFL stuff. I mean, what do you think about that? I mean, people, I, to me, that's, it's the fascinating story right now is, you know, here was like the prince that was promised and then it's delayed. And now this is, you know, now it's coming from left field. The, the one thing I'm interested to see is. Is the market going to be, is there gonna be so much spring football of a sudden that you're just like, whoa, I mean, I have no doubt they're players, but you have to make sure you have the right players. In the league to make it work. You've got to have a couple of people that people recognize at least in a periphery way. And you've got to have good quality play. Because we can. I have all the nostalgia we want for a USFL. We can look back on a CFL or an XFL or anything. But if you roll out bad football consistently, it's going to be hard. To keep people interested in it. It's gotta be a good quality level of play. The XFL was a good quality level of play. We saw good football in the XFL. I think at this point in the spring league, we're starting to see some good football plate in the spring league. You're starting to see some guys who are making plays and getting opportunities to go make plays elsewhere as a result. That's the thing that will keep this going. Is, can you provide good quality football? To F because the P look, you, and I know this, the people watching this stuff, they're hardcore football fans. They're not watching this because, oh gosh, I'm just really interested in. You know what drew Anderson's going to do a quarterback. I'm sure drew is. I'm sure his family is, but we watched this because we love football. And if you don't provide football fans with good quality football, eventually it's not going to stick. So. I think that's the, that's the challenge. When you have any spring league, minor league, whatever it is is can you provide a good quality viewing experience? And I think with the football we've seen and the differing production elements that have been included in it, I think it's been a good viewing experience. I think you'll see more of that next year. Do you think that the, how, how do you feel the viewership? You know, we were critical a little bit early on with the spring league. This season, a little lack of promotion. It felt like going into it. How do you think. Just in terms of viewership, you know, that 400,500,000, you know, per week, how do you feel like that's been for those Fox games? I think it's been pretty good. I, I didn't really have, I didn't know what to expect for it. And maybe, maybe there's somebody in the, in the upper reaches of Fox management that would say they had a different view. I don't know that they did. I've never heard anybody say, Hey, we expected X, Y, or Z for these broadcasts to me, I thought that was pretty good for a league that is relatively well, it's certainly new in this window. It's new in this time slot it's new in this time frame in the sports calendar. And look last fall, it kinda got lost in the shuffle a little bit because the NFL was going on. All of the sports were so compressed at that time that it was hard to kind of keep track of everything that was happening. So now it's got a little bit bigger stage because it's more isolated. Away from some of the other stuff you have the NBA still going on NHL. We know that, but it's all in its normal windows now. So if you're looking for football, this is the football that it provides. I assume they're pleased with the numbers. I certainly think they should be. I think for a first. True year of the spring league. I think it's been really impressive and it just shows that football. Is such a huge thing in American sports that no matter when or what, if there's football on somebody, who's going to go watch it. And, and, you know, and without any city's attached, I mean, that's the thing too, that people, you know, I mean, it's really just, I mean, we call them. You know, it could just be team a and team B and whatever, you know, I mean, I think with that USFL and getting the back end of the markets, do you, I don't want to hold you too long here. Do you. Do you see. I don't know. I mean, we don't know or not, but the USFL, do you see them making that jump to cities next year or just attaching the names and staying kind of in the bubble hubs? Like, cause we had Brian on a couple of weeks ago, he kind of talked about this. Yeah, that's a good question. And I, I'm not sure what the plan is. I assume part of it will determine, be determined by what the landscape is with the pandemic. And if you feel that it's fine to be in these cities that have fans, I hope you can, because I think. Really the, the way you connect and build. A league like the USFL, and this is just my opinion is having that fan base that's generated by being in a market. It's, it's hard to generate interest if you don't have that local affiliation to it. It's, you know, But then if you're rolling out with the name brand of the USFL, what you are, and you're rolling out with some of the original franchise names. It'd be nice to have those in those original cities. It'd be nice to tie those into a Memphis or somewhere to have that connection that you used to have with the USFL and. I mean, those, some of those cities would be overjoyed to see the USFL come back. And I know there's a fan base that's built in. From years of nostalgia in those places that I think could make it an immediate success. And so, yeah, I hope that that's the case. I hope that they come back with cities attached because. Bye. Lifetime as a sports fan, it's really hard to see. A team. Without that local affiliation be able to thrive for a period of years. And I'm sure the end game is to have that set up in the USFL. Last question today. Who do you got in the big mega bowl this weekend? I like, I like where the linemen are right now. I like the way Ryan Willis has played there. They've been a little uneven over the last couple of weeks, but I think what, how mummy, how mom is speaking. Great stories. How mommy and other grapes are We have two great stories from head coaches, Kevin Gilbride and how mommy in this game. But I think where Ryan Willis is with his game. And I think the problem that you're going to see with the jouster. Stirs is okay. They've had so much flux at running back six games, six starting running backs for the, for the jesters. Do they have the stability that they need to be able to get it done against the alignment team. That's very confident that has a lot of depth. And that has a quarterback that is very, very strong right now. And, you know, some of these, you know, like Louise present, Jerry Anderson are both likely going to play. That's not going to be the case of Wyman. Ryan Wilson is going to play from start to finish. I think that may get an alignment, a little. Advantage. I'll tell you. When they announced the teams last November, I said the jesters, I said, that is my team. As we are going and I have never wavered. And all these Johnny come lately is, and everything else that they can, you know, they can come on board, but that was just for life. Huh? We have some Merce that Brian sent us as the ugliest dancers t-shirts you've ever seen, but we're here for it. Kevin. Thank you so much for your time and setting this up. Yeah. I could talk to you forever, but I really appreciate it. I know your time is important and you're, you're a valuable busy man. No, no, I appreciate you having me on, I appreciate the Twitter interaction during the games. And I look forward to one more game this weekend on Fox. Can we get a yerrr from you before we go?

Episode 44 - The DOUBLE Episode!

It's Friday morning. Good morning. And welcome to the XFL. I keep saying the XFL mark cast. We don't have it's diehard. Yes. All. It's diehard and you are an old dog and we were teaching. You need your ex wow. What was the way to welcome you back to the podcast? This is the way you do it. I was going to say welcome back to the show. Paul. Remember that one time you went out of the town and our good friend, Brian Woods, decided to relaunch your football league. Remember that time? That was really perfect timing for me, I guess, to the leave you hanging there. I'm sorry about that. We got it. Yeah. Matt Lyons came on. But he was like six in the morning. I got up. I was like, oh, this is fine. This is, this is going to be a fun wrinkle on our day. This is fine. Yeah, this is fine. I I'll tell you right now. Well, we get the XFL SEF later. I got a rant in me. I don't want this to be an explicit episode with our big three hour crazy double stuffed episode today. I'm making up for lost time because Paul was out of town last week. But. I have a rant brewing in my heart when we get the XFL stuff later. All right. That sounds like a blast. So would that being said. Do you have anything else you want to plug before we get into this thing? Yeah, so we have a, at first, I just have to shout it from the rooftops or friend of the show. Cole Boozer. Yep. So just from the bottom of my heart, congratulations. The announced yesterday, the lox that Cole got signed to the outlets. Alongside for any of the show? Matt mango Cole was on a couple of weeks ago from the spring league. They're still working through things down there. Also I David Brown and the alphas got signed this well, but I don't care about David cause he wasn't on our show, but. Cole. Just from the bottom of my heart. I couldn't be more thrilled for Cole and congratulations all around. Also it's off camera right now, but I'll grab it in the break. Matt mangle, I have Matt mangles team nuclear. Gamer Jersey. It's a custom Mar cast one. So we're going to open it when we get to the spring league stuff later. So I'm going to tag Matt. Matt's going to share the show. We got all the crazy stuff, but I'll go grab it. But it's, I got my team, New Zealand. Imagine me holding the Jersey right now and we're going to unbox it. Did you know. I'm boxing with all this other craziness going on. Oh, I did not know that you, you dropped that on me. Yeah. I didn't. You know, I didn't know. I didn't know. This is a. What are your words to describe the show we have today? Oh, my gosh. It's not even jam-packed anymore. This is like, This is like a regular, like, ESPN. Length. Like. Podcast. It's going to be over two hours. Maybe we have two hours and seven minutes recorded right now, before we even start today. Yeah, pat and I did 45 minutes last night. We'll drop that in the show. Yeah. You don't have to be involved in any of that. Yeah. So. We are, if there is, if you have any grace in your heart. Please subscribe. I'm going to put the bug out, but by God, you know, If there was ever a time for you to really subscribe and support the show. I I'm looking at about it. And then we have Michael Cohen right. Coming on the way I'm looking, it's going to be a good packet, pack a lunch, bring a sandwich, just like. Hunker down then. And you got some good stuff coming. I have to tell you something. We'll use to listen to our show and he doesn't anymore. Yeah. Yeah, because they're getting too long for him to listen to. It was just letting you know, just letting me know that many. People are listening a lot more. So that's a yes. A huge show today. So. And kids can, we kind of had stuff scheduled and all the USFL stuff came on. So pat Steinberg, he is a flames radio host. He writes for the CFL league. So I thought that that was the CFL definitely knows what a mark cast is because he had to get signed off to do our show. So I thought that that was very good. Pat's on. Ah, he hosts the big show on sports in that. Nine 60 pat and I talk about the boat on Monday, the C two 18 bill. We talk about not, we didn't do too much bachelor. We could have them bachelor, but Pat's a great guy. And then Paul McCallum was supposed to be on last week. Paul had to work emergency. This was our big, you know, Tom Mann act was great as well. Last week is a phenomenal guests, but Paul, he was kind of my ease in the whole. Paul Paul played in the first ever XFL league ever back in oh one, played for the Las Vegas Outlaws kicked the first points ever. I had the ball from the first ever field goal points care. I did the whole XFL. One point though, was going to come back and then obviously, you know, everything canceled and he went back, played 23 years in the CFL. So Paul's got like XFL one point, those stories Dick ever saw Vince McMahon stories talking. I mean, we talked off camera like riding motorcycles. It sounded like a big party in Vegas in XFL. One point though. But he is, he's a CFL legend. So what do you think about our two big CFL guests? That's great. That's that's great. You know, and then. On top of that. We have a steep Earhart. Who was the former, former executive director of the USFL. You spelled it wrong. And he's a current executive director of the Liberty bowl. A lot of insight from Steve Earhart. We have Kyle Smith. Of the USFL project coming on, talking about why people are passionate about the USFL. And then I, I did some work, actually. I actually booked my own guests this week. I can't believe that I'm I'm, you know, doing that. That's cool. Michael Cohen. Intellectual property and copyright lawyer. Is going to come on to discuss the ins and the outs and the what have used. With what's going on with this copyright situation. There's a lot of questions that people like myself. People, you know, like Braden over at CFL Reddit have, and you know, we'll see where that goes. It's just it's. This is, this is like, We felt like we needed, we needed all of these people to kind of. Not only, you know, get that, you know, Talk to people about the history of the CFL and the XFL, but also get into, I guess, The legalees or the. More in depth with what's going on with this copyright thing, because a lot of people have a lot of questions. Yeah, no, and that was great. I mean, thank goodness. You know, Steve Earhart. You know, he's executive director at the Liberty bowl right now, taking the time coming on, and then don't worry. We're going to get into all the XFL and the Kevin Lil forest hire. What is months? What is years? We are going to see that whole thing. Danny dropped another post last night. And Mike Mitchell did a write up on it just in time for our shows. I really appreciate that. So we're all that stuff. So we're gonna do a CFL stuff. We're gonna do those interviews, all the XFL stuff, and then all the USFL. Cause I know that there's a tremendous interest in all that stuff. So there'll be time codes for everything in the show. I'll. I'll you know, we'll, we'll have it all, but please enjoy it. Like, and subscribe. That makes me wonder, like, should I put time codes in the audio version from here on out too? Possible. I can send them over to you. Yeah, let's do that. Let's do that. They might be different with this speaker at, so maybe you might have to do that. Well, then I could just do is just add the time on. I can, I can do basic math. I'm a journalist, but I can do some math. I can do something. I didn't go to Arizona state so I can do some math. Okay, I'll send that over. One just. I just wanted to make sure we talked about this at the top of the show. There's all this stuff going on with the red blacks suspending Chris Larson. Some alleged kind of hate crimes things going on against David Gomez. I know that Braden is really passionate about that. There's a go fund me set up. For David Gomez and you know, in his recovery. I just wanted to make sure the red blacks that have suspended him, he was, you. Over the weekend, there was a bunch of stuff going on. And so I just, I, we don't live in a vacuum. We try not to focus on, you know, all the kind of. Not pleasantly stuff, but I did want to make sure that we talked about that. Do you, did you follow any of that? Any, anything to add on that? I saw the social media posts from the red blacks that said they were looking into it and investigating it. I didn't know what it was about until, you know, this morning when I woke up and read this. Read this article and. It's you know, That's unfortunate. It's it's unfortunate. I mean, It's 2021. What are we doing with the hate crimes guys? Why. Well, yeah, and there's been a lot of like brands putting pride flags and things on their logos and everything. And, you know, I mean, we tried to be. Every June. Well, that's understand, but then it's like, you gotta then, I mean, people are glad that the CFL are investigating this, you know? Cause it's like, you really got to practice what you preach here and if you're going to yeah, that, that is the sentiment is if we're going to do all this, like, Hey look how good we are that we're promoting all this. Then you also have to like, live that walk. So. Definitely cool. Would that being said, let's move into the regular news. Of course. The big thing happening. Next week. Next Monday. I believe it is right. Yep. June 14th. The CFL has scheduled its board of governors to call on a vote for a proposed August 5th. Seasoned start date. Hmm. Interesting. Yeah. So this is, we got some quotes from Naylor here. We have a pat and I obviously talking about this. As well or. Or, you know, pat would be, he says stunned. If they don't go forward with it, it, to me, it just feels weird. Like, you know, we announced this backing that we did the delay, never doing the vote. You know, I don't, I don't know. I'm ready for a bombshell Monday. I don't know about you. I mean, I want to CFL season, but like, I dunno, Naylor says, you know, There's only so many teams. It would be pretty easy to do a straw poll, but. It feels like, I don't know why we're doing this. If that makes sense. I mean, I get that. You have to, but you, you have to, but at the same time, like if they're doing a board of governors meeting, like. Vote. Are there going to be any health officials? In like, not like considered like a vote or something like that. But any health officials are going to come and maybe provide some tests. You know, Some testify basically. Is that going to happen at all? Yeah. It to me, you know, I just don't know. I feel like this is the same thing that happened last year. You know, we did the vote, the teams didn't want to play. We did all this and I'm just wondering. Obviously, we want to move forward with everything, but I'm just curious, like, is all this for not, have we worked all this? If we recorded all these hours of podcasting, but. Yeah, Naylor thinks it's going to be a go ahead. I know far Hahn's bullish on it and like I said, pat, but. You know, we're still like pat and I talking to her interview and he's like, well, You know, we need to get significant numbers of fans in sands anywhere, you know, 10, 15, 20%. I'm like, yeah. But the fact that we're voting on Monday and we don't have those numbers. That scares me. And I get that. You don't want to put that seven concrete and say like, well, we got to have 20% of the fans, but like, do they know those metrics behind the scenes? I mean, I hope so, but that's the kind of stuff that I would just, as someone that covers this stuff would like to know a little bit more. I mean, if, if it's any indication we've covered this, you know, The. I guess debate between. Both. The health officials were saying, wait, wait a second. What. What are we doing? What are we doing? And then also, The football people that are saying, oh, our, our, our protocols are approved. Like there's, there's been this debate between the two sides. So it's. It's going to be interesting to see how this pans out, because. I mean. I think, I think some of the CFL teams are just assuming that. You know, by the time the season starts. Everything will be under control, but like we pointed out numerous times. Only what 6% of the people in Canada have their second dose of the. Vaccine. So. I think it's crazy time to think we're starting August 5th. I think it's going to be, I think it's going to be labor day at best. I think they're going to announce and say, you know, August 5th, we're going to figure out for, I just think it's crazy time. I don't think you can do it, but that's just me. I mean, I, I taught, we taught with people smarter than us and say, it's a go ahead. Obviously, if you trust Naylor and, and pat and. And far Hahn. There's kind of, I have this tentative timeline here. This was sent out from Salmaan, Ellie. I can never say his name. LA Mimi on the CFL IPA president, you know, this is kind of, we talked with mango about this. You know, they're getting ready for the vote. They're going to do a seven day quarantine on June 25th. Arrive on July 2nd. They're going to quarantine from the second to the ninth and then training camp starts on the tamp. That's kind of like the plan, if all goes ahead. So, I mean, at least that's good to know, but I guess knowing here where, you know, June. 10Th. And then knowing that we got to hit the road here on. Yeah. Be there July 2nd. That's a pretty quick turnaround. Yeah. Aye. Aye. Aye. This is all assuming that everything. Goes as planned on. The 14th. I mean, it just, it just seems rather careless that they're, they're doing this, you know, the 14th. And then they expect everyone to like, quit. Cause people. Some of these players got jobs. Yep. Some of these players got day jobs, you know, to make ends meet. So they're not going to be able to even give two weeks of his day jobs because if they need to be. Let's see? Oh, no, they arrive on July 2nd. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, It's a self isolate, 70 isolation. You know, June 25th. So you're talking in two weeks now. Like they would have to tell them. So that's the date. So if you were working and you found out, let's say you found out the 14th, so you have to start self quarantining on June 25th. So that's, you know, You know, like literally two weeks you don't. Well, it's. 11 Days, not really two weeks. It's, it's only 11 days. And that's not even counting like weekends that don't really count against, you know, A business in a business. Weak. Timeline. Hmm. Yeah. The other thing I had here and they're talking, I had a clip here. I don't think we're going to play it. Cause I think we can talk through it, but they're talking about this re their return to play protocol, how the players are basically going to be housebound, right. That they're going to go to practice, go back home, go to the games, go back home. And the idea is in, in, we have a quote from Farhan on the show with Naylor. You have a lot of the U S players that maybe have been living down in the states free and clear, right? I'm vaccinated. I can go out to dinner. I can go do whatever. And then like, Am I going to go up and live in Alberta and not, and like sit at home for four months. That's a good question, but I mean, To that point. It's like, There's a certain percentage, like, okay. So. You can still catch and carry. You could be a carrier for COVID, even though you're vaccinate. That's. I'm assuming I don't, I'm not a, I'm not a flipping scientist. But I think. That's probably the argument that will be made is that like, Well only six, 6% of our population is double vaccinated. So until we reach herd immunity or our vaccine numbers turn, you know, at least 50%, you're gonna have to quarantine at home. And you won't be able to go out and do the things you want to do, even though you're, you're double vaccinated. That's that's a lot of. Hope. Prayers that someone's just going to give up their social life. And going out and about for four months because. I mean, they, they came here, they they're American citizens and they got double, you know, they got double backside or they just, they were here anyway and they got double vaccinated. So now you're, you know, asking them to kind of go against the protocols that we've widely accepted here in the U S that if you're double vaccinated, You're kind of good to go. That's that's, that's a tough, that's a tough. Order. That's a tall order, I should say. Yeah, we had a wedding on Saturday. At one of the night. I mean, I would consider it probably one of the most prestigious hotels in, in downtown Seattle. I mean like really nice. And yeah, like it was no mass, like whatever you want. Cause it's like everyone, you know, you had to self attest that you were vaccinated, but like, I mean, it was, it was crazy. I mean, to be. I have lived in this bubble for whatever, and then like, okay. It doesn't matter, you know, go for it. But, you know, I mean, Obviously like players, like not mangling Cole Boozer. I mean, I don't want to speak for everybody that like, They, you know, they want to play, they're going to go stay in quarantine and do what they need to do. But I'm just saying that, that that is a tough sell. If you're someone that was like, maybe on the fence and you're like, well, I don't want to, who cares? I don't want to go do that. So right. Very good. Very good. A lot of questions. A lot of, a lot of wondering. Yeah. This is an interesting quote because we talked, remember we talked with Jason Gregor about this a while ago about the vaccines and Naylor was on Ts 1200. He, he doesn't think you're going to need proof of vaccination, Japan. Sporting events up there that they're just trying to get fans back in the stands. Reckless, but okay. Anyway, I just, I thought that was interesting. Cause obviously we had that debate and maybe that would kind of crazy. Like his Jason Gregor was like, you know, This may be a b******t vaccine cards and stuff, and people, you know, the whole, I get it the whole, you know, my choice and all that. But if you're going to go attend a sporting event at somewhere that, you know, Isn't it interesting that like the people that are saying my body, my choice about vaccines, I'm not going to get political. Nevermind. I'll just drop it. Yeah. And then, and this was just interesting. You. We're talking a lot about like CFL and the players association and everything. CF, the vice president of the association, Ryan King, things that they are like is close and, and talking and everything is they've ever been. He says a lot of people are paying really close attention to every little thing. You know, it's very much getting the process of getting the CFO back to play. I can say that this is the closest that we felt to the CFL in many, many years. He said that on TSN 1260 in Edmonton. Awesome. To hear. So, you know, I mean, At least they're a prize. You don't need to keep like me, the podcasts are a prize, but at least keep the players apprised of what's going on and how close we are and everything. Cause that's that's. My fear is like, if we're not hearing that they're not hearing it. Correct. And then, you know, they said, That a lot of their concerns are out the window at this point. I mean. Even even, even. The protocols to get fans in the stands that's. That's not a real concern. I don't know. That's the thing. When they talk about the return to play protocol, those are approved now from what I am understanding, but the fans in the stands are not approved. There's. Because there's the two things. It is the physical plane in the field, and then it is the, you know, the fans in the stance. It is an a and a B, and the a has done in the BS, not. This is interesting. The riders just the day they have their $7.6 million contingency plan. I reached out to Maria McCormick to talk about this Regina leader posts. He's I'm assuming friends with Rob Vanstone he's on vacation this week, but I'd like to have him come on to talk about. The Roughriders, but just that they would most likely have to use that money to get back on the field. Because there, I, I mean, I see like Naylor and then predicting like tremendous loss across the board for all these teams, even if they play this year. I mean, it's just insane. I mean, yeah, well, You know, I was talking to someone. Clubhouse Ainslee. Oh, the camera. Aye. I don't want to butcher her last name. But she was like, I don't see how this profit sharing thing works either. Like if, if there were to do all the games on, you know, the west coast of Canada for the first half of the season, then come back over to, you know, Ontario and stuff. She's like, I don't see how the profit sharing. No. Figures out either. So. It's it's, there's a lot of valid questions here in terms of how many, how much money these teams are going to lose, because they're all going to lose money. Let's be honest. They're going to lose money. Again, And, and, you know, part of the, part of the problem that we've been stressing is that there's no. You know, fail safe option. No way to keep these. These teams have float because the CFL hasn't really done a great. Job at putting a business model forth. That would suck. You know, Withstand this kind of thing. Did you okay? Just drop it. You were in the CFL clubhouse chat. I was, I did low key drop that. Wow. That's good. That's good. Clubhouse does have its purposes read. I heard, I don't understand. There is a wedding photographer. I love her clubhouses all the time. And I go, Jan, if you just did a podcast and record these, you would make so much money on them and not have it be this clubhouse. Like. Well, I think what they're doing now is they're using clubhouse to kind of do their podcasts. Are you recording on there? I mean I've recorded clubhouse. All weekend, but that's not. Yeah, I know we can't. We have the equipment to do that, but I don't know. Anyway, so this is happening today as we record. So we won't have the, I have to go, we have to pause. We both have to work today, but they're going to a single game. Sports betting is. Having their third reading today at 2:00 PM Eastern. And then it's going to go back to kind of like the final vote. Like I said, we talk in the interview. Pat's like, I would be floored if this doesn't pass. There's way too much money behind it. And the momentum right now to get this passed before they go to recess on June. I think it was like June 24, 25th that they break for the summer or so anyway, I just like, I want to touch on that pat and I talk about it, but like, we're not going to have the, if, if it gets, if the guy walks in and tears it up on the Senate floor, we're not going to have that on the show today. So. We're not a bully by Mitchell. Doesn't want the CFL to, just to survive anymore. Instead thrive in a partnership with the XFL, keeps talking to the XFL, making a lot of people mad up there, north of the border. He says a lot of longtime fans are resistant to change when it comes to our league. And I absolutely understand that it's been around for a very long time and it has stood the test of time. I understand their thought process that even though things are tough right now, That we will stand the test of time again. And I agree with that. I mean, I think believe I Mitchell sees the writing on the wall that something needs to happen in terms of. Expansion by way of partnership with the XFL or whatever the case may be. It's just unfortunate that a lot of people don't. Share that sentiment. Yeah. He keeps the high and this one, cause I was like, wait, did this. Cause we talked about the believer. I think. Like two weeks and I'm like, wait, is this no, he did like another podcast. This CFL has the waggle podcast. And so he did like an official CFL one on this. I'm like this guy. Because I literally have my, these are some, I didn't even copy over some of the quotes. Cause I mean, these are like literally the same things he said, but it was very odd that bow is a bow is, wants to see. XFL franchise in, in BC or wherever. I mean, he's, he's big on that. So, Very cool stuff. And I just, you know, I talked about that in the clubhouse chat too. And also congratulations to, I guess, your team, the Edmonton Elks. They're selling merge like Austin three 16 shirts back in during attitude era. Did you like that? You, you miss the whole Alex thing. Did you, do you like the Alex logo? I love it. I think it's great. It's sharp. It's it's. It encompasses the colors. It, I mean, you can still use that E thing that you have behind there on your wall. I think it's great. I think it's a great name. I think it's a great look. I think it's going to be awesome. I'm not switching teams though. But I think it's still going to be awesome. Yeah. I just here's my little Reed, Debbie downer. So Dave Campbell loved the FDA was on the show last week. He says that the Alex executive director of marketing Al watt. The amount of merge they've sold in the last seven days is equal to three straight home games in terms of merge. Right. And so like, and I was going with, but here's how I go. And because I was talking with Braden about this day, got lost on him. I go. How often can you rebrand the franchise once every 40, 50 years? I mean, like really like new logo, new name, new everything. I mean new logo? No, I mean, new logos happen all the time. Like. There was, there was, there was a time where the Toronto blue Jays had changed logos every three years. It's true. That would, that used to happen all the time. In terms of new name though, you don't see it that often. But I'm saying like, this is like, this is like the pin in the grenade through the grenade and like, yeah. I mean, they sold three games for the merchant a week. Like that's phenomenal. I bought a shirt and a hat. I mean, I'm part of that, but like, I don't know is that you got, I mean, like that was, that's a big, it's like Dennis McMahon, like that's a big card to play in the WWE. That's a big ratings pop to get. You're not going to do that ever again. You. Like, they're never going to have another ALK, Sri brand to get. That was just my Debbie down. You get what I'm saying? I get what you're saying. You're not being Debbie downer. You're just being realistic. And you, how long did it take you to buy the hat and shirt? By the way? I mean, Immediately. Oh, hi, mark. Yeah, I stopped that. I positive press conference and went to the lab site. That was, yeah, I really. Anyway, so they're coming, we'll do it in the blockchain on this show. But anyway, so that's, that is the CFL staff. I do. You want to toss to the break? And then we got all, I asked it fell ramp, man. All right. Coming up after the break, we're going to do. Well, Reed's going to talk to you, pat Steinberg and Paul McCallum. And then we got the XFL stuff. Stay tuned for that. That was good. That wasn't too bad. No. I use a lot of that stuff. Welcome back. Everybody want to think pat and Paul for their time joining read solo solo chats, but you know, We're just trying to maximize the time we have we'll read house and just, you know, get some of these interviews out of the way. And that's that's, that's why Reed takes these on solo sometimes. So. One of the things that we're stopping by and, and chatting. Moving on. No. That's. Yeah, that's really, what we're trying to do is like, I, our goal is to bring you the best step possible. And so if that's Paul, they're me, they're both of us. That's all I care about this bringing the best content. And so if pat can record and Paul has to work and we just roll with it. And so, yeah, I guess. That is we, I, our goal is to bring in the best content we possibly can. Definitely. So let's move on to the XFL stuff and let's talk about something that might make Mr. [unknown]. A little angry. Look at, look at this. Redbird capital has hired someone that knows football. Hmm. Kevin Lynn force. But it just because you don't know. Yes. You don't know, like I have a wedding videographer, but I could hire somebody to do like graphic design work for me. That is a thing that people can happens. That happened to rush, sorry, sorry to burst your bubble, but a NFL executive, Kevin LaForce. He's the architects architect of the leagues media and investment strategies. Keyword media. He's leaving the NFL to join the sports focused. Redbird capital again, Redbird capital all over the place. Very cool. Yeah, he, Mr. LaForce, I like that name. Cause I feel like he is going to be 11. The floors. Moving on here, but I, he hell. Negotiate the hundred and $10 billion NFL deal. So like, And I, I mean, this is like crazy time and we were going to get all the other XFL staff, but the weeks and months and all that, but like, this is a big time hire there's no, like you can't be asked around this with all, like, this is a big name coming in. Like this is, you know, drop your, whatever on the, on the floor and, and show what's up. And this is what we tried to get through to Mr. [unknown]. That, that they were going to hire people that knew how to do this. And they're hiring people that know how to do this. So whenever you want to come back on. And apologize is great. We'll have I get emails every time we talk about Raj. I get emails that. People still forget that plan anyway, but, so that's great. So he's. He's going to be on. Okay. Yeah, it's very exciting. So that's all good. So. This is my life this week and I I've lost like followers. I don't care. I am so mad about this. I'm so angry about this. It is June 10th right now, because I said it was June last week or whether it two weeks ago. And it wasn't in Cannes. I wonder if the listeners, I guess not June yet. Okay. It's may. Like 31st. It is June 10th. Today, as we record you in 11 days, you listened to this. I, if you think the XFL is playing in 2022, I cannot help you. And I used to think about this. Remember when rod was on our show and people would write it, it'd be like, rod does know what he's talking about. And then Rob would go, well, yes I do. They go we'll show like, show the tech, show the emails. And Rod's like, no, I'm not going to do that. Like, I don't need to show. That's how I feel right now is all these people. I just was in the thing and they're like, oh, If you don't, if you can't show me in writing, then I'm not going to believe you, then don't believe me. All the, all the, the articles that everybody shares from XFL news app. I talked to all those people every day on the chat every day, all the time. Like, do you not think that we know everything that they know that's going on? And it kills me. And like I get on there. I'm like Paul and I spent 40 hours a week on this stupid show. Like I'm not just some random speculator, like go the extra Phil's playing that. Well, But like, it kills me. I'm like you, I'm not just a random guy posting about, they know, believe me. They don't believe me. That was playing in the 2023. Don't believe me then that's fine. That that that that's been happening. I mean, that happens when you're in the field of journalism read, like people are just always going to question. Your sources now, they don't just, you know, Thank you have these things and thank, you know, these things. They're just going to question him anyway. I mean, the whole thing that when, when the PAC 12 was, was when the PAC 12 is when the PAC 10 was going to the PAC 12, like I had sources telling me, you know, So on and so forth, like this is what was going to happen and sure enough. It almost did happen, but it didn't happen because, you know, texts. I've got didn't want to join the pack. You know, would want it to join the sec. But, I mean, that's just something you have to deal with is like, people are always going to question your, your sources, man. It's ridiculous. I just, I just, I'm just, we're not just like some random, random people on there. Like I get, I get all this and that's why we try to do this show and tell you what's right. You know, Zach messages me is this legit. It's not like that's what we're trying to do. And so, you know, that's fine. Go whatever, I'll, I'll just bookmark all this stuff and come back to me. But like, I can tell you what I like that is what is happening. This all spawn. Danny did an interview with E magazine and this was like over email anyway. So that was like the stupidest thing about this. And they were asking her about the XFL and she goes, I want to make sure I, yes. She said, they're talking about things. She goes while it is no small task. And we are months from hitting the field is humbling that the following my passion has received such a positive impact in other people's lives. So I just read that as like, oh, that's cool. Like Danny was in the, I was just going to bookmark the thing to talk about it. And then they're like, oh, the accent bell is months from hitting the field. Yeah. Months. Twice a year, 2023. Nobody would say anything that's happening in 2023 is years away. Is it really years away though? It's not well, it's, it's it's it's about 20 months. That's not years. No, it's not years. That's where it was getting at is like, when you're talking about less than 24 months, you're talking about months, not years. That's what I kept telling people. Like. It's months away. So saying someone saying a football league is going to take the field in February, 2024. Well, I'm sorry, 20, 23. Is months away. Is months away. It's not years away. Yeah, but even just to see that sentence out loud while there's no small task and we are months from hitting the field. Like we're still months away. Here's the deal though. Don't believe me, Mike Mitchell asked them they go, yeah, that was a misstep. So there you go. Like don't believe me then. It's not even a misstep in a sense that like people aren't understanding, like what months away could mean it could be 18 months. Yeah, it's still months away. I guess I don't buy dress. I guess it don't trust me. Trust the people I talked to Mike Mitchell, they said he went to them. This is from XFL. So that's fine. Argue with me. Go, go argue with me. Like I don't. You know that you're hanging your hat to the XFL. I'm sorry, like watch USFL, watch FCF. Watch CFL. Watch the spring league. I'm sorry. The XFL is not playing until 2023. I feel like I'm arguing with the wall. They're they're doing something bigger. They're going to do a lot of stuff next year. We're going to have a lot of stuff to talk about hires and camps and shows and stuff, but like, I mean again, don't believe me then. So Dan, last night, Danny tweeted they're on Instagram and this is actually good because the whole NDA thing was annoying because that was like, this is just like, you know, Dick teas or whatever. But. She, it was, it was her like with her nails and then they got the screen. And so it's, it's, she's sharing her screen with Jay Rothman, who he was a former Monday night football producer. So that now has been confirmed from Mike from the XFL. So again, don't believe me from the XFL they have confirmed, it's a public story now. Jay Rothman is going to be involved in the consulting role. Could could be more as advising as well as your role, but he, and that could be brought in more that's from Mike that's public that's published story. But the other interesting thing about this. Is on the thing. It has, it says new co content plan and deliverables. And generally you used the word like NewCo as a place holder. If you are creating a new brand corporation name. Cause Mike's big thing is it's not a merger now it's going to be a shared partnership under an umbrella, like kind of thing, which I don't know what that looks like. And Mike's going to, I guess, have a big story next week about what that looks like. Thoughts on any of that stuff, Paul? This is a new coat. Something like. Is going to be the company that delivers content or is it just. I have questions about that too. Like, I guess I should. I'm not even on that, that XFL news hub, Chad, I should probably get on there. Overall man. I, I, I feel like that that's the case. I don't know if the new co is the new co does it stand for like rebate branding? The XFL it's just. Maybe how content gets delivered or maybe. How television production has done for this. The XFL. That's where I got some questions about that. Yeah. So that's the thing. Yes. So that's the big thing. I mean, But, you know, that's the thing like they're working on step. This is what we taught and I want to get all your USFL step in that section. But this is what I said when people said, why can the USFL launch next in 2022? And the XFL can't it's because the XFL is, is doing cross-brand promotion. All these, they want to do a lot of the bigger stuff. And I'm not saying hi. They're doing it right. Well, I don't know if it is right. I, I, I, I said last night in the, in the XFL chat, I said, Dumb it down. It's like Brian Woods and Nam. It feels like caveman. And then this is like the matrix. And I don't know like which one is better, but right. Like Brian, and now we're just putting football on the field. And that's great. It's going to be football. It's going to be 12 weeks or 10 weeks, whatever. This is like cross brand cultural awareness, you know, bringing ESPN docs and all this kind of stuff. I mean, I don't know what people want. This is what they think. I don't know if the juice will be worth the squeeze on this year and a half delay. I think. I think whatever they can do to give. The XFL. A long, you know, a long. What is it? I have my, I have my phone. Nice man. No, not lifespan. I'm thinking like runway. And then my drone, I have my drone license. I forgot what the runway. Basically to give the plane a lot of speed to take off and continue flying. I think that's part of it. Like. Aye. I have my thoughts and we'll get to that in a bit about the USFL stuff. So. My poll just came in. The one I tweeted yesterday. Totally not related to anything. My wife. And this just ended my wife and I are going to Hawaii, February, 2023. When is our trip taking place? Months away year. So eight years away, I got 70% of the folks of nine years. You come on, people it's months away. It's not years. It's not more than two years. Yours is plural. Just because a calendar date switches to 2023. It doesn't mean it's years. It's still months. Yeah, we'll get it on the line. We'll get it on the line and not on like flipping pages anyway. So that's going to be the big thing. But anyway, I, I think it's, you know, we it's feeling less murdery and more, this umbrella core kind of like was that like resident evil, like the umbrella Corp, like. Backlight anyway. So that is that, but anyway, very exciting. Kevin, look for a very exciting. Jeremy Rothman. Or Jay Rothman, sorry, in that Jeremy J Rothman coming on. So, you know, we got some heavy hitters it's big stuff, but, but it is, it is 20, 23. I, I, I don't know what to tell you. I'm I'm gonna, I'm sorry to get so angry about that and upset people, but I am tired of seeing other websites. Other XFL news websites have actually blocked us. A book, not because of this. And they're like running these stories like Danny is putting the Instagram thing up to fight back about the USFL. And it's like, it's not like it's not a thing. I don't, I don't participate in clickbait at all. Just a couple of things that Washington football team you saw all those first day, I'm going to keep this, like, I want to put up the one with Ryan Fitzpatrick. All the Washington football players for the first day of trading camp. That I believe is Ryan dustier. And he was the, he is now the Washington football team, social media manager. And he was with the DC defenders in the XFL. Very cool. I think it's a very clever campaign that they're doing. Of course fits magic. How many, how many schools has Fitz magic been to like 13? Everybody's schools. I mean, NFL teams. Does he have more teams or children? Wow. I don't know. I don't. I'm not writing an Amy Amy biography on him. I don't know. So I reached out to this JP Finley. He works for NBC. He covers the Washington football team. I want to get some on the grounds with this Washington football I training camps because he says this one is his tweet. Hi Nikki. Cause obviously right, Fitzpatrick and Hideki are competing right now. Hi Nikki, with a beautiful ball down the sideline, the harm at best play the day. Kite coverage too. I think he getting good reports from training camps. It's going to be interesting to see. I mean, I think. That's the thing I think, you know, Mr Mr. It's magic. Has it has a very short leash he's known as a journey map. So. I think it's a very it's it's, it's going to be interesting to see how much of a leash, I think Fitz magic starts to season, but. You know, if he doesn't. Play well by game two, I think maybe high Nikki comes in and. We'll see what he can do. Yeah, I'm Ray. I reached out to JP. I want eyes on the, you know, we got, she ended quick. We had her with the Panthers. I want ice on the ground with Washington football the whole way through. I want to get our insights source. It's a good idea. All right, we're gonna take another break right now. Come back. We've got all of our guests coming up. Dealing with USF USFL. We got Steve. We got Michael. Michael. Oh yeah. The copyright attorney and then Kyle with the USFL project, all coming up. Right after this. Great. Let me get my, let me get my. Okay. Ready. I am. Hang on. Welcome back. Want to thank all of our guests, all five of them. Wow. And imagine that this spring lead, where they got back to me about our big guests, which they haven't yet, they said, Sammy says he's still working on it. We could, yes. The spring league. I still have my neck out. I'm waiting for our big guy sprinkling fish, but yes. Five guys. So. When this dropped last week, I was unfortunate that I was out of town and unavailable to come on and I I'm regretful for that because. I have so many questions and Brian, you know, like I think I, you know, I have no negative feeling about Brian whatsoever. My concern is. If you didn't have the capital to. Feed your players adequately during the spring league. 18 Months ago. Do I really feel confident you have the capital now, too. Basically start. The USFL again. I don't feel confident. I don't. I don't know how you approached investors. With the track record that you had with the TSL. I have to be critical. I have to beat. I, you know, I like Brian. I think Brian's been a great guest and I have no ill feeling toward him, like my feelings between how I feel about him personally and how I feel about him professionally. Are different. And I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but. At the same time. I have legitimate concerns about this being a profitable and worthwhile venture. Like, you know, I think our guests kind of tiptoed, you know, maybe tiptoed around that because they, you know, they don't know how this is going to all play out, but I am calling it for what it is like. You had trouble. Feeding the players getting a solid COVID plan in place. We, you know, we talked to Kent, Shelby. He went into detail about some of the stuff that was going on at the spring league. You know, not even 18 months ago. And now you're now you're putting another football. You're putting another football product on the field next year. With this stuff still kind of in our collective knowledge, like, I don't know, man. I don't. I. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. The biggest thing for me. And it came out with the Steve Earhart interview. And not that, you know, like he's gonna, I don't think, you know, going. Gonna like fight them legally or whatever. I just don't get. Why why buy the USFL stuff? And not involve past management because I was talking with Dorothy about this last night, because she's like, well, like, cause we're recording it. Who were you talking to? I said, we were tying this to, you know, Steve was she's like, so the, I, they didn't reach out to anybody and I'm like, no, and that's why, again, like, you don't have to reach out to anybody. I go do your own thing. Like, that's great. But then. Why are you buying these trademarks? I that's what I. That's what I don't get. I don't get it either. And I don't know, like. I kind of feel like this is like a situation, much like the AAF situation where. I think what's happening is. They're trying to put a product together without getting the. Capital together. And they're hoping getting the, getting the product together is going to then turn around and get them capital. And we saw what happened with the AAF. It failed miserably because they didn't have the capital there robbing Peter to pay Paul. And I'm hoping that's not the case here. And I just have concerns. That they're buying trademarks and these trademarks. Are going to go to waste in a year if they don't have the adequate funding. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, it was a pretty sparse personally, you know, where they didn't, we don't know a lot about the investors. We didn't know that, you know, obviously Fox is involved in all of that. So, I mean, I, I think it's good. It's good for us. Obviously you're talking about for the podcast is great for whatever, but yeah, I just don't. I don't get doing the past stuff and then not incorporating again, that that's my biggest takeaway. The other funny thing. And the second this came out, people like, oh, they're going to merge, like merge with the XFL merge. They're not going to merge. Okay. Can we knock this off with all this? Here's the deal. And this is, I shared this like 16 times and I'm amazed when Brian Woods came on our show pre spring league. He get laid out this whole plan about all this. That they're going to do the bubbles and then they're going to expand, and then they're going to move to this. And it's like all this kind of stuff. And he talked about the past with the USF valley, he talked to all about the history. I'm like. I just am astounded that, that hasn't gotten more traction, but on the podcast, Brian's like, this is what we're doing and we're not taking the back seat to anybody. That is his quote. Does that sound like someone that's going to merge with the XFL in a year? Paul? Not at all. Not at all. It's not, it's not Brian and that's great. I mean, I'm not saying he should or not, but I'm saying like, I don't. I think Brian doesn't want us to do, you know, I don't think Brian loves the exit fan. I mean, obviously they were together with everybody. I think Brian's like F it, I can do it. I don't need them. I don't need this name. I mean, but I need the USF. Well, now I need to, I need, you know, I need to revive a dead league. Yeah. Just a couple of interesting trademarks. I think there's more, they're still buying trademarks right now, but a lot, a lot of these names and even a friend of the show, Jim, Molan pointed this out that a lot of BS. Trademarks are current XFL cities, you know, St. Louis and Vader is Dallas dally and Houston gamblers, Tampa bay bandits. And then there's like Pittsburgh and new Orleans and stuff. I love that. I get to see all these comments on Facebook. Like. The geo cell is coping into. The XFL is turf. This isn't I'm like there's, this is nobody's turf. Like the XFL barely drew in Tampa bay. Give me a break. Like I am an XFL podcaster. Don't be a mark. Like. They couldn't get 9,000 people in Tampa bay. Oh, hi, mark. You get what I'm saying? Not really the turf. St. Louis. St. Louis, you could make an argument for I'll make an argument. You. You know, he's dead, but like, you know, I just XFL is gone right now. Right? I mean, they're working on stuff when they come back with this whole like, well, they're taking their, you know, when the exit ball comes back, boys, I'm like, This isn't like their, their, their street corner that they left and like, This wire, this is in the wire. This is the Baltimore projects like this. Isn't the towers. You know, Prop, Joe's not going to come out and, and. Omar's not coming and you know, like, come on, man. Recorders. I just a couple of things and they ask, I see. CFL commissioner Ram Brosy about an idea of a partnership with the spring league. He said they did speak he's he, he told Brian Woods CCO that the Canadian league was too busy dealing with various elements of COVID-19 to seriously consider or consider a partnership. He was welcome to send the commissioner a follow-up email. He never requested. He never requested a formal proposal from woods or express interest in the partnership plan. As CFL said, we don't have time for that. Like we don't like because of CFL knows that there's. Maybe they know that like this, the money, the money is questionable. We're Redbird capital has billions of dollars. The money was. With the spring league and now the USFL is definitely sus as the kids would say. It's like when we. It's like, I feel. I feel, I feel like the spring, they kind of reached out to the CFL. That's like when we tried to book gas, like higher than our ceiling, I do certain guests we can get. And then it's like, okay. I that was like them like shooting for that. Like, can we get, you know, can we get someone on the show? And like, you know, we're much more in the, but you know, every once in a while we get like a gym all on there with something, you know, we, we, we can. Out kick our coverage every once in a while, but I didn't think that was out kicking. Just a couple quick game notes. I only I've really only watched the lineman aviators game, but this was a stampede. Stan friend of the show, Stan bell well held the game winning kick that Jonathan sawn kicked and it was just like phenomenal. The back of quarterback, coach that had been on our show that Stan held the, you know, held the ball and it was, it was phenomenal. It was a phenomenal game. The aviators, I have still not won a game. A break. Tough break. 300, 308,000 viewers for the general 39 27 victory over the sea lions. Off just 5% for the season. The average I, I take it right. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. And then they just announced that I just see here, the logo, I forgot to mention this. The TSL championship game is called the mega bowl. What say you. Okay. The mega bowl. Ah, here's a couple interesting, just interesting XFL spring league staff. I wanted to tease this earlier. I forgot. So Doug Flutie, right. Get the big T I. USFL announcement you played and all that. Doug Flutie is a former XFL advisor back when they did the relaunch back in 2019, 2020. I did not know that. Yeah, he's on the website listed as like a advisor. That's very cool. I flew the moon. Doubtful that he is a, is a popular kid at the dance. He knew also this is astounding to me. So back in the doldrums of when we didn't have anything to talk about, Brian, Michael Cooper was the former Houston roughnecks president. We've corresponded a lot online. He was going to come on the show. It just never worked out. And there wasn't really anything to talk about just like how's life, whatever. So Brian, Michael Cooper. Was a lawyer. Then he was the rough next thing. And then now he's back being the warrior again. He is part of the organization. Now that is doing the legal stuff for the USFL. It's interesting. That's very interesting. Nice. Word spend there. So, you know, maybe, maybe if Steve digs is up on their offer at house hires. Michael Cohen, right. To fight this, frankly. Maybe Mike, maybe we put all this together. Maybe, maybe we just become the court of law. Maybe they just argue on the mark cast and you know, we can, we, we can be the judge and jury on this. We can decide who gets the trademarks. Yeah, I like. Like that'd be great idea. Why not? That's our next dual. Let's see. The USFL versus Steve Earhart. But I just that's astounding to me that Brian. Cooper. The U S. Like the, the XFL presidents. It's very incestuous. This guys just hop in, hop in, hop in beds for lack of a better term. Interesting. Yeah. I got an FCF note and then we're going to open this wonderful package and. And we'll get out of here. Oh, I stepped on the keyboard. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. When did you think about we have our first official fan controlled football, NFL signing. Congrats to Travis. [Unknown] [unknown], it's a tough one. Even in my, I don't want my glasses on, so it's hard to read. I could set it higher now. Congrats to him. Wide receiver signed with the Seahawks, giving her a Russell Wilson. More options cause they didn't get Julio Jones. So. Yeah. Is it Julio or Julio? I've heard Julio. I say Julio, Julio. I mean, Yeah, I think it's tomato, tomato. Okay, well, anyway, I just, I'm very happy that Travis Trav, daddy, I think that's like his username whenever we had give rest and weapons, let Russ cook. And I just. This is great. Again, we want the players to succeed, you know, I think it's fair to say fan control. Doesn't appreciate us. And that's fine, but I will look out for the players and I think that that's phenomenal that he got on there. So. Definitely. Cool. Let's open that package. Yeah. So this is summat mangle. A friend of the show, he's going to be kicking for the alphabet. Matt is an avid e-sports gamer. He's got team nucleolar and U K L E R. That's like his gamer thing. And so all the nuclear guys are following me now, but I got this. I think you're going to dig this, Paul. I think we're going to really dig this. This is a, can't get this open. But this is better than the Brian Woods. Gestures t-shirts this is going to be. Anything's better than that. Also, please subscribe. We're trying to get the 1500. By the end of the thing. Oh, may I ask if I wanted it signed? I said, no, because I want to wear it. Yeah, sector six apparel. That's you put this together. Yeah, this thing is going to be sick. Yeah, here we go. This is going to be good. That's bad ass. Look at that, check out the back. Look at. Look at us. Ah, Yeah. I dig it. Awesome. That's cool, man, I'm going to hang it. I mean I'll wear it, but I wanted the, the only way I wanted it is if I could get a custom mark calf, that's a pretty cool, awesome work map. Awesome. Awesome work. I felt like, you know, Matt came on the show, supported the show, I'm down to support, but it says bombs away, team nucleolar and just, you know, best wishes to Matt and Cole Boozer. I said, because I'm an Elks, right? Where were the Elks? And I said, when you find out that Cole Boozer, Matt Mangal are on the lox and they was like the fat kid with the ice cream. Like, cause that's also, that could also be that's the unofficial team of the mark cast. Is that [unknown]. I think so. Okay. Well, we got, we have three teams now like between your team, my team, and that. The team of the mark cast. It's like three. 33% Of the league where we're winning 33% of the time. So that's very cool. I want to thank everybody for listening. Again, go to manscape.com. Use the code mark cast to get your 20% off free shipping. And scores, Lucy rains wearing the shirt. He's awkwardly, trying to point at the logo there. Here you go again. Go to YouTube. Subscribe to us also, please subscribe to us on your podcast. Services, whether it be apple, whether it be Google, whether it be Deezer, whether it be Pandora, whatever the case may be. Please just subscribe. And, you know, keep listening. We appreciate everyone who listens every week and those who interact with us and gives us. Give us constructive criticism on Twitter. Of course. And we'll see you next week. There you go. Cool. Let's get this manscaped out. Leeway before Michael comes on. Yeah. Yeah, manscaped in them promo. Support for manscaped. Oh, support. Support from landscapes. Support for the mark cast brought to you by manscape. They are the best in men's below the waist grooming the champions of the world. As I like to say. They offer precision engineered tools for your family jewels. And they've just launched. The lawnmower 4.0 Reed. The 4.0, you have it over 2 million men worldwide trust manscape. And with this exclusive offer for you, you can get 20% off and free worldwide shipping free worldwide shipping. Yes. Even the Canada with the code mark cast at manscaped. Dot com read. I'm awkwardly leaning away from my microphone. So you can see my wonderful manscaped shirt. This is a great shirt. They said, it says like your balls will. Thank you. And we can't read because the cameras. Yeah, we didn't want you to, just to camera, but just take our word for it that says your balls will. Thank you. Yeah, I use the code mark cast. Don't use a Homer nation, three down nations code. People seem to like that. When I talk about that. So use the code mark cast a, stick it to three down in Asia and don't use Houma nation their code, and use a, use a code mark. How's 20% off or free shipping. By the way I love the led light. That's on the 4.0 tremor. That is like, That is great. That is such a great thing to like, you know, shadows kind of when you're in the bathroom and you're trying to cut around shadows, kind of my block, you know, stray here, here, or there. And that might be the one stray here that might be tugging in certain situations. Like you might. You might, it might get too long and it togs and it's just like, it's really, it's painful and Reed's walking away. Cause it's awkward right now, but it's true. It's true. And then he's like kind of hacking because you know, it's like, Kind of a disgusting thing to talk about, but it's true. Like we gotta get, we gotta keep these things cleared up. We gotta keep them cleared up and dudes come on. You know that if you trim. It looks different. It looks bigger. Come on. Let's be honest. We're we're men here. We can talk about this stuff, right. We can talk about this, right. Good. Reid is turning red, like the color of my Jersey right now, because I'm getting very graphic in detail. I'll just, I'll just leave you with this. The 4.0 tremor I've been using manscape for a while. Now the 4.0 trimmer is definitely the game changer in terms of everything below the waist. Trust me when I say this, you'll want to pick one up and do one. Now that's just, that's just so important to get, you know, get these. Exercise, some hygiene exercise, some hygiene. Take care of yourself. Take care of yourself gets as will. Purpose would say. Give yourself some self care before you get some. Care. I thought something like that. He's great with slogans. I don't know. Anyway again, once again. Once again. You can get 20% off free shipping with the code mark cast@manscape.com. That's 20% off. Free shipping and manscape.com and use the code. Mark cast. Unlock your confidence and always use the right tools for the job with manscaped. That was wonderful. I know. All right. This week on the mark cast. Holy cow, holy cow. It's three hours. It's three hours, right? Paul was gone last week. We made out for it. It's like I'm Jeff probes, three hours. Five gas, like one mark cast. Oh man. It's cool, man. It's the brain as much after this. Yeah. Pat Steinberg coming on, we got PAMA Kalin. Palam. [Unknown] f**k. All right. Sorry. I felt like I was talking over you when you started anyway. Geez. My breakfast is not sitting well with me. Oh, All right. This week on the mark cast, it's a three hour show. So we'll Purvis is not going to listen to this thing. Sorry. We've got like five guests though, you know, it's re take it away. I mean. I'm like Jeff probes. Three hours, five gas, one mark gas. This is going to be pack a sandwich, pack a lunch, you know, stay for dinner. I'll we got you covered. We got all the CFL, XFL stuff. We got pat Steinberg coming on. We got Paul McCallum. We're talking to Danny. What is weeks? What is months in the weather we got for USFL stuff? Ball. Holy cow, we have three people coming on to talk about the USL stuff we have. You know, of course, Steve Earhart the former executive director of the USFL and he's the current director of the Liberty bowl. We have Kyle Smith of the USFL project. And then, because there's some copyright questions that I had, I went ahead and reached out to a copyright lawyer. Michael Cohen. From right here in Los Angeles area, Beverly Hills to be exact is going to come on and talk about possible copyright and trademark issues. That relate to this. Plus we are. I'm back seeing the Matt mangle team, nuclear Jersey. I got it here. I'm going to keep it all packaged out. But now we got you covered where I'm boxing the Jersey. It's going to be a good one this week. Perfect. And then I'll just, I'll cut that around. That was perfect. There is. How's it going, sir? Do you wanna hear us? Maybe he can't hear us yet. Can you hear us? I don't know if you can hear us. Yes. No. No. I can hear him. Yeah. Interesting. I wonder why we can hear him, but he can't hear us. Can you call cell phone or. Do you have that way? You'd have to call in. All right, hang on. Let me, let me look it up. Yeah. I'm going to put this Jersey away. Hello. Michael. Hi, how are you? Yes, not a problem. I'm getting, I'm getting a little double. How about now? Let me unplug my speakers here. But now it's a better. I think that's better. Yeah. Yeah, you can hear, you can still hear us. I can hear you guys great. Can you hold it up closer though? The phone. Yeah. How's that. That work. I work. Yeah, that's good. Hang on a quick second. Thanks for doing this. Hey Reed. Mute him on the computer. Cause we can still hear him on the computer. So if he's yep. There we go. Okay. That'll work. Cool. That'll make it happen. All right. Perfect. Yeah, there were solid. All right. Michael Cohen, a. Intellectual property, intellectual property and copyright lawyer. Joining us now to talk about. This USFL thing I wanted to reach out to. A copyright lawyer to discuss this because we had some questions about these USFL trademarks that have popped up. I don't know if you read my email that I sent late last night. About the ins and outs of, of this whole situation. So we've just kind of wanted to bring you on, in. And get your thoughts and see what, what you thought about. What's going on here, what your legal opinion might be on this one? Sure. So I just want to go into this. That I don't know, whole lot about the league. Right. Okay. And so I did do a little bit of background. On the trademark. Situation. This whole thing is a trademark issue. That's what I did. And I learned a little bit. About what the origin. Of the disputes are and what the current. This view is at least with a beat, right. Earhart right. Yep. Yep. So. As far as I can tell. I know that you said that. There was an objection by him. But I don't think there is any formal. Objection as of yet. So in other words, I don't think that there's a lawsuit. I did a pacer search, which is a federal docket for a lawsuit. And not be able to file the app. When we talk about trademark. We're talking about. Patent and trademark office. And there's a procedure. Certain trademark filing and those are called office. In cancellation. And nothing has been filed there either. But there's no formal. As of last night. Maybe this morning, there could. But there's no formal type of. Objection. So as far as I can tell. B. You have to go to the ownership of all trademark. Okay. So. The league is starting up again. Right. Yep. Everyone knows that. There's been pretty marked filing. And the practice. Was there a public document? And there's actually a. 117. By my account that. Portal filing. Some of them are preexisting. But most of them are new. And a lot of. Okay. And beans or all. Bye. Spring league. Yep. Right. Okay. Yep. The spring league. LLC. Prior. Trademarks. I leased with the United States patent and trademark office. There weren't that many. Yeah. There was only a few registration. Yep. There was USFL. And then the term. Spring league. Is registered as well. Those were owned. Previously by the ninth. LLC. Okay. They have been recently as of this year, been. It's fine. Meaning that the ownership of those. Transferred. So we can kind of go through that. And go through. Who's changing hands. And maybe you guys can. I have some comments regarding that. But that's that's so far the foundation. Of what's happened. My question is, and I, so I have a wedding videography company. And so I have are like business names and stuff trademarked. Right. And it's under my, when I filed everything. I go every five or six years. Right. Don't you have to like re you kinda gotta re op or reapply, right? And I think that that's the confusing being here is, and we talked with Mr. Earhart. He goes well, yeah, we've been selling merch and stuff for 40 years and we found out that, but I'm like, yeah, but unless you've been doing those things right. Then that's how that those trademarks go away. So like, I could still sell. XFL mark has hats. But if I don't keep that trademark live, right. Isn't that? Doesn't that go away? Okay. Yeah. A. A little bit. The trademark. Technically our input. They can last forever. There's no. From. Like a tab and even a copyright. However you have to renew it. Trademarks. Like Coca-Cola. It's been around for what? Under plus a year. It doesn't it. Doesn't. So what happened with trademark? Get the trademark registration. Federal registration. And it's five years. After. Just do a renewal. And the renewal. Is it a government? And so kind. Kind of evidence that you're still using. In commerce, but you're still using that name. In connection with the goods and services that you say. In interstate. That's the requirement. Okay. But you have to do that. Six year and then thereafter. At the tenure. And then. Let's call it a renewal. Is that the section eight? So the I'm not. You guys with the lineage. And when. It died out, but the leak died. What year was that? 80 80, 85. So, all right. So then, you know, I need to be a little bit careful, but the things that I say. Right. I'm not giving a legal opinion. That's my disclaimer. And, and just, I'm just kind of giving some general conceptual thing. Thoughts on this. But there's the band. Abandonment is the. Legal term for trademarks. Whether or not. Trademark is still in use. Or has it been abandoned? And. It's not a cut and. Dry. A black and white. Term in regards to abandonment. So the courts will look at that. And see what, how many years have gone by. And what is non you will the leak. Doesn't exist. What does that mean? That the trademarks are not being used. You can, you can make an argument that you're still using the mark. In some fashion and then it depends. What. How was it? Buy it? So. A lot of these. The names of the team. Or. And goods and services. The D entertainment. The nature of a football game. Or. Merchandise like clothing and things like that. Can see the bolts that maybe they're still selling this stuff. Yeah. There's merchandise associated with those names. That's huge. And commerce. And I have no personal opinion in regard to. Whether or not they're using the name. Football. I don't, I just don't know enough about it. So, but. If it died out in the eighties. And then the team doesn't exist, you know? That's an argument that did they abandon. So there's probably going to be some debate. As you. The former. Whoever had the former right. Which, you know, he was claiming. That he does. And, and that he has an existing trademark, whether. Federal common law, right? You know, whatever he's. Argue. He may say that we had the preexisting rights. Who are these new guys on the block? That are just. Applying for it all the sudden. Okay. That's kind of what he's saying. But. Yeah, I think now maybe we can segue. Into the. The chain of title. Okay. So with trademark. It's it's right. Okay. Like, like a house, but not, it's not. The real real property. But there's the ownership of the house. Right. And that that can take. You sell it. You get a deed. Assign it over to someone else. And then you record it with the county assessor's office and then they own it. Right. Trademark and intellectual property. Are kind of that way too. In which you. You fill out the document. Assignment. And they can change ownership. And it can go from one to another. It's recorded with United kind of trademark office. And that's how it's validated. Who has the proper ownership. So what I'll do. Public information. If you, you know, I know how to. Not everyone knows about this yet. And I haven't seen anyone talk about this yet. You're going to be. There's many trademarks. I'm just looking. The U S F L great mark. Okay. Are they going to continue to use that from, is that. Yeah. To be used. The us still is in good standing. Was pretty reasonable, original owner. Was the United States. Football league LLC. A document called assignment. Transferring the right. From them. The app, I need a world record. No. Here in California. Okay. So the world record. Then O and. And then two months after that, There was another assignment. And with the world breakfast. Then assigned it to the spring. And so now the spring league. LLC is the rightful owner. At least the. The UX. Okay. Interesting. Now. Tell you the name. If you want to sign the document. I'm seeing them. Ed Cunningham here with the world record headquarters and. He's a former NFL. Yeah. Yeah. I have the actual doc and you pull it up. It'd be interesting to see who, who. Who from the USFL LLC sold it to right. Because you would have to sign off right. All right. You guys ready? Yeah. Okay. So. F L E the. The authorized. To that. Or this was the January 31st. 2021. Was Jim Bailey. A person by the titles. So the app. Document it. Cunningham of the world. Record headquarters. That's the first. We called it the chain of title. That's the first. From Jim Bailey to ed. Cunningham on January 31st. Okay. Well, I mean, it's not. Individually and they're individual. Of the okay. So, you know, They're both private. Presidents of the respective apathy. And then thereafter. The next one. Let me just. Pull that up. Sure. This one here. And then. Corner. Okay. And then obviously. So now. Previously. It was assigned to world record. Now world breakfast. I can't hear that the chain of title. I lost my cutout. Mike cut out for a. Real quick second. Sorry, go ahead. Okay. So, no, I'm just saying that. From there. Went from world world record. Spring league LLC. And the signatories are obviously edit. And then Brian Wood on the other side, right. Okay. And I put you in a title and that's lawful. And recorded would be not this time and trademark office. And then now it's up to. You know, if someone wants to contest it. That there's a c***k in the chain. Because maybe there shouldn't have been that transfer. Because maybe it was, you know, In theory to make a. And you argue that you want, but you can say that maybe. But there wasn't true ownership. No, I I've done. Before, where there's been a dispute. In regards to the transfer. For one person to another, to another. And then somewhere. Shaking the chain. Where. It was unauthorized that one person never truly had the ownership rights. Therefore. The rest down the line is. Not correct. I'm not saying that's the case. That could be an argument. Interesting. I guess, I guess the question in here is that. Mr. Earhart has been using the USFL, the trademarks to sell merchandise. There's a bank account. That pays out, you know? I guess former owners of the USFL franchises. Royalty. Yeah. And royalties and stuff like that. So, This, this Jim Bailey situation is kind of. A new wrinkle that I was, you know, was not aware of. That's, that's something that we, we clearly. Merchandise and the youth. Of the, of those names. In connection with the. Football team. It could be two different arguments. Right. You know, So you may have a valid art. But not to the, but obviously those dark. Yeah, because. In a football league. The merchandise. You know, so. How can you not have the ownership rights? Yeah, it looks like there's. Nothing brewing and it makes load at some point. Interesting stuff. So you're not, I know you're not giving your legal opinion, but there, there, there. There could be some kind of argument for Mr. Eric to come in and say, look, we're still, we haven't abandoned these, these logos. Like we're still using them for merchandise there. There still is some leeway there to kind of, I guess, Prove that there's no abandonment. So the law of abandonment. We had a registered trademark. Previously, I'm not, I'm not sure if there were. For these. For the individual name. Are most of these names? A new name, but they just made up or they were. That are preexisting. There are pre-existing names. These are the original names of the teams that were in the USFL. Okay. All right. So. I'm not sure. If they were registered. They probably were. But if they're not being used at all for the class, So all the trademarks are filed. The next with a particular class. Yeah. But for example, For bloating. Clap. Okay. We're as. Yeah, it looked a little more specific. I can tell you what the actual classes are. For example. Those classes, the main ones are class one entertainment and the nature of football games organization. For events in the field of football. That's probably the big one. Right? Right. So, I don't know if there was. Actual registration in that class. For the prior name. Previously. But assume you have to wear. And if they went. You know, If they went dead. Then that's it. It's that you have to renew it. I have an obligation to, to renew it and change the class. If you're selling merchandise instead of four or five. The new one for the one for merchandise. Makes sense. It makes total sense. What we can do is look, let's go through an example. You want to give me a. A name of one of the team. From previously. Now let's do the Tampa bay. What. What bandits? Yeah. Tampa bay bandits. That would be a good one to start. This is, this has been very eye opening. We appreciate your time, Michael. Digging. And helping us out, like trying to get through the legal minutia of this whole entire scenario. So. Oh, yeah. So there's like, There was 30 for 30. Trademarks, a lot of them are registered. Wow. And. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Back in the eighties, like the earliest one, I'm looking at the sunglasses, for example. So they, they filed in all kinds of stuff. And owned by the United States. Football league. But now they're dead. So I'm looking at. They're all the prior, but. Are dead. They're all dead. For now. One, two, three, four. More recently. Hmm. Interesting. Interesting. Interesting stuff. Yeah, I'm just like, I'm just trying to figure out this ad Cunningham world records connection. A world record headquarters. I mean, is that, is that with Guinness world record headquarters? I've just been traveling I've, I've lived literally never heard of that energy and that's just like, This, this like, This whole thing, like raises, like, you know, are we onto some like detective stuff where we're trying to like, figure out where someone was the night of May 22nd and trying to figure out how. How things got from, from a to B to C, cause there's a middleman here that, you know, raises some questions as well. So. And of course like we're, we're under, we're working under the guys that Steve Earhart is the guy that's in control of the, the remainder of the USFL finances and has the bank account and has. He's the last executive director of the USFL. And we're working under that assumption. So now we, we, we were wondering how Jim Bailey and ed Cunningham come into this. This soul. This whole. Game. Well, sometimes when you see, you know, Tina. Title like that. And there's, you know, some companies that are in between that are not familiar. Sometimes you see bank. Who are. And so, I don't know. Anything about the world record? I don't know what. What happened? If they filed for bankruptcy in the past. Or not. I believe that. Okay. So it could be at the world record. Headquarters. Has some kind of financial arrangement. That you know, maybe they were holding onto the collateral. Or, you know, Or some financial. You know, arrangement in which they were the app. And they're there now. Maybe involved in the. Relationship with the spring league financially. Interesting. Okay. So that's, that's not uncommon. All right. Anything else you think we need to look into there? Any other. There is one weird violate here. Tampa bay bandits. I don't know if this has anything to do with anything. But. Another company is. Injected into that. Maybe they're just, you know, They're trying to be annoying. I don't know. Eight. Sports ventures. LLC also filed on January 11th. 2021. Or the Tampa bay bandits. No. For clothing. We're both actually proposing and for entertainment, the nature of football game. So. That's going to be a little bit of a fight. There's also an application filed by the spring league. For. Or clothing. And. I don't know. 41. So spring league. Might have to have a fight with them. Or, you know, Maybe that just files quicker. I don't know. Without it. That's something to look out for. It's a little, definitely. Venture LLC. Awesome. Oh, yeah. We'll have to put that on our, our docket and, and keep, keep, you know, just keep looking into this because this seems like it's not, it's not over, like, it's not a done thing that. The spring league can, can relaunch the USFL from, you know, they've got a lot of. Seems like they got a lot of legal red tape going on with like ABD, sports ventures and possibly. I don't know. Yeah. So this is Brian Woods is on this. So I've found that it's the showboats and the tent ad that the Memphis showboats and the bandits and the email address under that is a, is the one that's associated with Brian Woods. For the sports centers. Yeah for ABT. So it's the same thing. Interesting. Okay. Maybe another. They form. To hold certain. Trademark. And that happens a lot because sometimes there's like broccoli. Licensing. Yeah. They form a separate entity just for that purpose. Okay. This is great. I appreciate it. Well, I mean, it looks like this is the ongoing thing. And. It looks like it. You know, Kind of at the beginning. Of it, nothing formally. You know, last night. And it's nothing. We will file. And it might be. I think we lost Michael's audio there. Oh, hang on. We'll have to edit that. That's okay. I don't want that one. Oh, no, don't want that one. There we go. Michael. You back. I'm back. Cool. I don't know what happened there. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I was just saying it looked. It's the part about the, the, the beginning of this. Saga. And so nothing formally was filed. I saw as a black site. And maybe not me, every will be filed. And it might be one of those things. Where is this? Behind closed doors negotiation. It just plays itself out and works out. You know, They're kind of settlement of some sort. Or it may maybe looking at the news and. The, you know, a lawsuit. Or opposites, right? Cancellation proceeding. We'll definitely keep our eyes posted on that. So. Michael Cohen. Intellectual property, copyright lawyer, trademark, trademark, lawyer. Thanks for joining us here on the mark, as we appreciate all your legal insight. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Thanks. Let me hit record here. That's like so loud, they added that just in like the last week. Nice. What's kicking. How's it going, man? Good man. Good. We're coming through loud and clear. It sounds great. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you hopping on and doing this. No problem. No problem. Happy to do it. I'm glad. I'm glad they gave me the okay. Over the league to do it. They're like, yeah, go for it. It's awesome. Well, I was, and we can, yeah, I was because I've been talking to Lucas for a little while about trying to figure out stuff. So when you were like, Hey, I got to talk. I'm like, well, that's like, he at least knows who we are and that exists. That's good. I emailed him and said, thanks for letting me come on. So I tried to okay. Yeah, because Lucas and then my, the person I answered to her name's Christina and she she's like, yeah, that's good. Go for it. So. I'm getting a weird, we never record this time of day. I'm getting a weird sound coming there, but we'll get you ready to hop into it. Yeah, let's rock and roll. Paul's at work. So I'm trying to do these more. Now. He powers the KTL my co-host. And so he's like, For the midnight everyday this week. Yeah, very hard for, I might do. I just need to start doing some of these because. Trying to be tethered with all this stuff and, you know, cause I just worked from home so I can just hop on whenever. Yeah, for sure. Well, I shouldn't, I don't know if we should start with bachelor talk or with, with CFL talk. What do you think I a you, you choose? I am, I'm ready to rock on either side. So there's a lot going on right now. I mean, obviously we have the vote on Monday, right? Between the, the team governors. We've been talking a lot here about the C. Two on eight bill, obviously. The U S F L staff has come up. What, what is most of interest to you of everything kind of going on right now in the news? Oh, well, I mean the, the, the gambling bill up here is fascinating because I think it's going to be like, I think it's going to be massive for the CFL. I think it's going to be massive for sports period in this country to be able to. Single game bet and all that type of stuff. So I think that is that that is. Probably of most interest to me. Just because I think it's going to be so big and so cool. And for a bit of a degenerate gambler myself to, to be able to roll into an actual physical sports book. And in this country in my city will be pretty cool. But. This, this, this vote on Monday is. Is is huge. And, and, you know, I read all the same things you do. I read all the different things about how, you know, there might be some teams that are into it, some teams that are not into it. I just hope that we're. I just hope that everything's on track so that we're playing football in early August. I'm pretty confident. Like I'm very confident we will, but you know, until, until everything's good to go until you get the thumbs up, you never know. Right. Would you be, you know, and, and. The one, the good thing about having you come on right now is there is so much going on, but also I think we're, you know, part of the bill is being read tomorrow. Like the third appointment of the [unknown]. Two and eight, whatever, after we record, I know we're going to record early tomorrow, obviously the boat on Monday. So, you know, hopefully this all goes well and we can have you back again when there's, you know, it's so tough to schedule these. Do you, do you feel confident that the vote goes forward on Monday? I'm feeling pretty confident. I mean, everything that I am led to believe is that. And everything that I understand is that. CFL is, it is very much planning is if they're starting in August 5th, then, and every. I think just based on the way things are moving in this country and vaccines are rolling and provinces are coming out with their reopening plans and still most of the reopening plans have some sort of stadium capacity here where I am in Alberta. If we hit our target here in the next little bit, like we're already at 67%. Over 67% eligible people vaccinated. And if we hit 70%. Then that means we're going to have full capacity. And no restrictions. So, you know, we're on track in Alberta to have 50,000 people at Commonwealth stadium and Edmonton and 35,000 people at McMahon stadium here in Calgary. So I am confident that it's going to go through. I am, again, I, I read the things, I see what, what Justin dunk is putting out there. And I see what Jamie Knight is talking about now. I see all these very smart. CFL people talking about, you know, this or that or what the worries might be, but yeah, for everything that I'm led to believe, I think that it's going to go through, I think we're going to be playing football on August 5th and. And I just, I can't, it would be hard to wrap my head around no CFL season this year. It really wouldn't be. I just can't. I can't see a world where we're not playing CFL football this year, despite all the uncertainty. And despite the fact that it's not confirmed as of yet. Yeah, because that was going to obviously be my followup was Jess and Donkin. I can't remember if it was yesterday or earlier this week about, you know, there's still those couple of teams. Right. And we kind of all know who they are, but. You know, If it's not going to be enough fans or it's not going to be over. I just get worried about that. Cause I just, as someone, you know, with the accident foul and everything, I've just had the wrong. I feel like we've all on our side, had the rug pulled out a lot. And obviously the CFL people last year with everything was just, you know, a disaster, how that came and kinda, it was like, you know, it just never happened. Right. So. I guess I always prepare for the worst, but I just. I still in the back of my head, I just am really terrified about that. And. Again until, until it's done. And until you've got a sign off and says, yes, they're playing and we're going to be seeing football and training camp. Start on this date and kickoff is on this date. But everything I know from league office and having spoken with Randy, Ambrozy the commissioner a few times, and having talked with people with the team in this city and different people I know across the league, like everything even, even talking with with different players, everything is going forward as if there is going to be a season. And I know. You know, they have backup plans, they have contingency plans. There's always there there's things that are completely out of the league's control. Like who knows, you know, who knows where things go and, and maybe there's setbacks with virus. We don't know those things, but everybody is working under the impression that August 5th is an attainable date. And, and because of that, As, as much as there's always that thing in the back of your head, I covered the NHL on a, on a daily basis here in Calgary too. And everything was pointing towards them playing this season. That is almost complete now. But back in December, everything was going forward as if they were playing. But there was always this thing in the back of your head, you're like, okay, well, they haven't announced it yet. Why haven't they announced it yet? But I actually think the CFL is, is going about it the right way, you know? Right from the get go. They said that. The middle of June is going to be when they. Present a schedule matrix to their, to their board of governors. And that is kind of the, the last possible date. They could go forward with that and by, by going. So when the NHL, for instance, when a bell, their bubble restart. Last summer they'd waited until the last possible minute to announce where they were going to play because they wanted to make sure they had the most accurate up-to-date information. So they could make the most informed decision with the best chance of being able to execute. And that's what I think the CFL is doing here right now. Yeah. Th they, they could have come up with a schedule three weeks ago, but Y if you, if you can go until the very latest date and present the best possible schedule to be executed. I think that's the way that, that you need to go about it. And commissioner Ambrozy has been, I think, and I know different people have different opinions, but I think especially with this return to play, they've been really transparent about what it's going to take. And they've been very open with the fact that, okay, August 5th is the target, but maybe it's August 7th or maybe it has to be August 12th or, and maybe they don't start all their games in the east division. Maybe they teams are starting on the road more than they usually would be to accommodate things and, and be able to be in a better place. And so I really do w when I spoke to the commissioner in early April, he said this to me, he said, they're sitting in a lot of his other interviews at that time. He said, We've got backup plans to our backup plans, and then those are double backed up and we've got contingency plans to that. And I really do believe it. I think the CFL has got five or six different working plans to be able to execute a 20, 21 season. And let's be honesty. It would do a lot of damage if they didn't play in 2021. And I think that the league knows that the players know that the fact there's been dialogue between the players in the league, going all the way back to February. I do. I'm, I'm feeling confident that everything is going to go through and we're going to get an announcement on a schedule here. In the next little while. Yeah, that was actually going to be, my next question was talk about Ambrozy and, and, you know, we've and I, we harp on it too. Cause XFL, I mean, it's even just this week with, there was like misquoted stuff about starting in months and I don't know how much you've been following that we can get into the extra passive later, but. You know, we harp on transparency a lot because I feel like, you know what the league lacks and doing people like you and I, you know, Jess and Don. Hodge. And then you're like the battery and Ram bullet shield. Right? You. Cause like the XFL is in San anything right now. So all the people that are kind of covering the league. And then, you know, we, we get all this. I have worried about these backup plans and stuff. Cause I just, I don't feel like there's been. And I know we're newer to covering the CFL and I have heard that it's been more transparent and more open than previously, but it feels. I mean, we haven't heard anything from league offices in months now. It feels like. Well, I mean, I guess we haven't heard anything definitive since the, the return to play in an early April, but even at that time, they said, we need to see all the vaccine rollout goes in this country and between, I guess it was late April, I think was April 21st is when they came out with their announcement of a return to play. So here we are almost two months later. And I mean, the, the acceleration in vaccines here is gone. Yeah, rapid fire, like, yeah. We're, we were a little bit behind where, where you were self in the border and we didn't start doing it as rapidly and is widespread. But once we did it went really quick. And so it's it's so there's that, and that has ramped up significantly. But what, what is, what I think is, and I know that Dave Naylor at TSN had a report out there this week about it, what they said at the get-go is okay, we we're gonna continue our dialogue. This is our plan. This is what we need. Need, and we're going to present in mid June to the different governors, the nine governors around the league. And that's what we seem to be on track with. So, You know, if, if. All of a sudden we get different news com. Next week. And if we're talking June 14th, June 15th, and now all of a sudden it's like, okay, well there's a hitch in the season or it doesn't sell well, that's where I think we'll need to hear from the league again. That's where I think maybe we need to hear from commissioner Ambrozy again. I, I haven't, and this is just my personal opinion. I haven't really felt the need to, to hear a whole lot about it because every, since, since that announcement, everything has gone the way you'd want it to go. Everything has. Developed in a positive way in this country and everything that everything that needed to be hit. Let we've got fans back in NHL buildings. I know they're full of mistakes, but the fact that we're 2,500 people in an Montreal for, for three games. Now that's a significant step here. And, you know, That and the fact that that's going to increase, and we have governments in different provinces in Saskatchewan and Alberta saying even in BC, their top doctors said that they believe that there can be fans and. You know, the league, didn't say there needs to be. Full capacity. They said that they need to have fans, significant amounts of fans. And we've heard since then that like 15, 20, 25%, whatever that might be, why that's going to be really doable in enough CFL buildings, Montreal, Calgary, Saskatchewan. Edmonton, maybe BC Winnipeg and Manitoba is a little further behind there. There's a big push going on to get stadium capacity and the three. In in Ontario, which would cover three more teams. So I don't know. Everything just seems like it's been on track. So we haven't needed to hear from anybody since late April. If all of a sudden we run into a setback here in the next few weeks then. Yeah. I think that it might be more appropriate to hear from commissioner Ambrozy again, to get a little bit of an update as to where things stand. Do you just for you? To play devil's advocate. I think the fact that even when we're talking about the numbers of fans, the fact that you're like, well, you know, And it might need to be 10, 15, 20% even. We don't even know those numbers that it would need to be. Right. I mean that, like, when people ask like, well, what would you want the league to talk about? What would you want? You know, cause I, we have one of our episodes a while ago was like, you know, The silence or something, you know, sound. We're not hearing anything. And people say, well, you know, what would you want to hear? Well, that to me would be a great, like, we need to hit. You know, average, you know, 22% capacity across. You know, it just, I mean, that's just one example, right? The fact that we're potentially voting here in, in whatever the math is five days, six days, and we don't know potentially what those numbers would be for the numbers of fans. Yep. Percentage wise. Fair. And, but I think what's important there is that. You know, what does significant mean? And I think that different teams and that's why. Because we're talking about such a weird. Limbo world that we're living in right now. I tend to believe that like not giving firm targets on, on things like this is kind of the way to go and not giving like even all along. It's a target date, August 5th, but. Mate, maybe kickoff is August 6th. And on August 5th is just like an era is. So to, to have to have benchmarks is important, but to not make them a hundred percent black and white and firm, I think that's important because. As we know. I mean, it's still so unpredictable and it feels like it's getting more and more predictable and you can, you can start to predict things going. In the right direction and see it developing that way. But I still want, I still think you want to give yourself an elk. So I don't, I personally don't fault the league for at this point, not having those. And I get what you're saying and I don't think, I think there's, there's a lot of fans who would, who would probably be very much of that, of that same mindset that say, okay, well we want, we want to know everything, but. That that can set you up to. Not fail, but can set you up to, to not be able to hit your targets. And then all of a sudden it creates panic. Whereas here, if you have internal targets and don't put them directly out in the public, you can still hit them. And, and be able to get there. And that's why, you know, we've heard from the lions and what a significant amount of fans might be there, and that's going to be different to what it is in Calgary and ticket prices have. So I don't mind them doing that at this stage of the game. And I think, I think once we, once we figured out what the result of this vote is going to be. And, and what the actual status of the league is. And if, if we get news next week, then yeah, we're going full bore August 5th. Let's go that I think starting to have a little bit more in terms of measureables. And actual empirical targets to hit that. Then I think that becomes more important. And that's fair. I mean, that's totally fair. I mean, you know, again, I just we're, you know, we have, we're creating questions here. Right. But I know, I mean, I think that I see both sides of, I definitely see wanting to have. But I just feel like my big thing is it's like every day, the way the world is nowadays, like every day is an eternity. I mean, it just feels like with all of this stuff and, you know, when they announced it and it was like a hundred days or whatever, I'm like, God, that just feels like forever. I mean, that feels like so long. So it's just, that's where I get from it is, is. You know, it does get very tiring. Right? You. I mean having the same questions and concerns all the time about it. And, and think about it from, and I get that because, I mean, if you're a CFL fan, And I write for the league. I, and I've been lucky enough to ride for the league the entire way through. We haven't played a game in this league since November, 2019. Like we're, we're talking about 18 months almost between games and. That, that there's, there is a there's, there's a sizable group of people that, that love this league. Just want to see it back. And, and they miss seeing their team. They miss going out on a, on a Friday night in the summertime and being able to have a couple of beers and watch game and, and yeah, so, so I think there's, I think there's a lot of people are just like a lot of fans. Like I just want to see it back to I get it. I get the inpatients and I get the. We just want to know. We just want to know, but I. It feels like we're going to know here pretty soon. And it feels like we're kind of getting to that point. I'll say this is just personally for me, but man, have I learned a whole lot more about patients during this whole thing? Yeah. And you have, cause I. My, my income is, is very dependent on sports leagues playing. And there was in, in March, 2020 when things shut down. And I didn't know, I, my, my income's very dependent on whether or not the NHL plays for instance. And you're like, well, are they going to come back? Like, and. And you kinda just have to, you. He just kind of had to learn to. Well, I don't know. And I've being a guy that does not like uncertainty, just an NBA guy that doesn't do so well. If I don't know exactly what's coming up. In the near and Nazi near future. I've kind of had to learn how to deal with it. And so, but I get it. I really do get it. Cause CFL fans want their league back and want their team back. There's and there's been a lot of exciting things that have happened. Free agency was bonkers this year. The draft was a lot of fun. There's been, there's been some things to sink your teeth into. But they have a mill on the field yet. And we haven't seen these guys in the field in a long time. I get it. Yeah, and I mean, and for the fans and I mean the players too, I just can't. You know, and not that we're like the biggest. Yeah, we covered the spring league. Right. You know, Matt mango, he's going to be playing for the outlets. You know, he's been on the show. Cole Boozer that's playing right now, down there. I just, we just found out today he got signed by the Alawites. Right. And he was on a couple of weeks. I mean, I'm through the moon for him, right? I mean, this is someone that we followed for the last two years now with everything he's been on the show bunch. And like, so that, to me, I'm like, God, I hope all this goes well for all these guys. I mean that ultimately, I mean the fans too, but to see these guys and how excited they are to get signed and go up there. And that's what I want, you know? Cause that's my fear is, is that. Yeah, like that sucks for the fans. Right. I mean, you know, but like people like you and, and that had been on our show that cover the league, like professionally to get paid. And then these players, I mean, for everybody, I mean, this is, I'm a wedding videographer, right? I mean, this is just like, you know, this is. This is, is totally different world than when, when it's, you know, people that are, they're trying to live and die with what's happening up there. I mean it's well, and the thing, the thing with this league is is that yeah, it's, it's nine teams. And so, but. It gives hundreds of jobs to football players. That, that wouldn't have another way to go. And, you know, You take a look at whether it's, you know, you're. United football league or USFL or XFL. Or any of the other different leagues that have tried to pop up in the last 20 years they've given jobs it's always been temporarily. And, and the one thing that you could count on is the Canadian football league being an outlet for. If you've got the ratio and you've got Canadians that, that. Need to play on each team. But like, if you're a really good, there's a lot of good receivers in div one and give to football. Right. And, and so, yeah. Or, or div one and div one AA football. You've got a lot of good players and there's 32 NFL teams, 30 NFL teams. And it's 32. 32 NFL teams and you you've got. Finite rosters. And to have the CFL as a second place to go, and a second place to go with other elite talent and places for really good college football players, to be able to continue their football career has always been, has always been one of the things that has made this league so great. And. This year, it didn't exist. And, and, you know, I, I felt awful for a lot of these. I know a lot of coaches really well. I, you get to know players really well and it's just like, you kind of have to reevaluate. You're like, okay. And that's why we've seen certain players. It's like, you know, I've, I've had to retire even though they can still play in this league. One year without being able to play, that's a significant, that's a significant hit and they've gone. And. Explored other career opportunities and realized that, you know, At this point because of this. I'm going to have to stick with this career and not go back to football. So. It's been, it's been really too bad to not have that. That extra outlet for players and that extra option for players. And, you know, it was cool to see NBA team, a club, duffel Thompson go play in the spring league and a couple of other guys get some opportunities in the spring league. And then that's something that a lot of guys didn't have any. Reggie bagel tin and, and new Holly and, and some really good, really good players in the CFL caught on in the, in the NFL this year. And, but still like the vast majority of guys didn't get to play a whole season and. And that's why that's the other thing. I mean, It's huge for the league. It's huge for visibility. It's huge for the business model. To play again this year. But it's all these guys, these players need to play, and I think that's going to be the that's why I'm so happy that the PA and the league have been talking since February. They, they they've got their ducks in a row. In that regard, it feels like things are, are positively moving in the direction it needs to too. So yeah, these guys need to play you're right. It's. It's it's really too bad that a lot hundreds of players. Lost an entire season of pro football in the prime of their careers. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is, and you just, you can't make up that time. Right? I mean, You know, we have guys on, you know, that were in the spring league, you know, Brian, Scott, he in the, he was in, he was like the MVP. You know, and he's messaging me like, well, okay. The exit fellow doesn't come back next year. Do I, I mean, there's just no option for people, you know? I want to get, you're talking about you. Other places and, and. You know, backups that people could play in. What are your thoughts on all this XFL? Mumbo-jumbo we have going on. I don't know. I don't know it's so, so here's, here's the thing that interests me the most. So. When the CFL announced their return to play plan, they'd already, they'd already been this announcement of the partnership with the XFL and a partnership that, you know, involves. We don't know exactly what at this point. But one of the things that was really interesting was that in all of Randy Ambrozy commissioner Ambrose's interviews, he spoke very openly about how the CFL's business model needs to change and how this pandemic has, has really underlined. They need to do some, they need to make some changes to their business model, the way they go about their, their revenue and all of that. And so that to me has left so many different possibilities on. The table for what this, this XFL sharing of ideas, partnership might end up being. I see the rumors. Of a merger. And I know there's a lot of people who think that's going to happen. I see, I see plenty of thought that, well, maybe both leagues go about their seasons and there's some sort of crossover games that would be super interesting. Maybe it's just, maybe the start is just as simple as. We're talking about. Sharing of ideas and, and, you know, here's, here's the XFL with the part with, with the financial backing and the, the marketing background and the marketing. I might have of the rock or having Dwayne Johnson behind the league. You're like, okay, that's a. That's a significant thing to have, and there's, there's probably some benefit in learning some things from the way the XFL goes about their business. And look, the CFL has had some ups and downs and the league has had their struggles at times. They've had their times and they're thriving more. The CFL has been saved for this pandemic year. When the pandemic hurt everybody. CFL has been able to for 60 plus years. Go about their business uninterrupted as the other professional sports league in north America, and has been able to survive and thrive and continue as we talked about earlier, giving a place for players. So there's, they've done something right over the last six plus decades. And I think other leagues like the XFL that have had two different incarnations that have not been able to go longterm. I think there's a lot that can be learned. From other leagues about how the CFL has sustained itself with this absolute juggernaut. There's two, there's two football juggernauts, right? There's the NFL. And then it's the NCAA. And yet the CFL has been able to survive and carve out its own place in the football world and do that profitably and, and do that while still being able to have a business model that works for a long time. And now for them to admit that the business model, they could do some updating, I think that's a really important step. So I don't. No long, long answer to, I don't know. I don't know what to make of it. I I'm interested regardless. I know there's a ton of people are terrified about a merger. I get that. CFO's a very traditional league. Bye be interested in it and whatever can, whatever can make it. So that football is an option outside of the NFL, professionally. And. Like a sustainable option. That to me is super important. And so I'm, I'm fascinated to see where this goes, whether it is the full. Full meal deal of a straight on merger, or if it is just an idea sharing thing. Anywhere in between those two, I am fascinated to see where it goes and personally. I'm I'm all for it. I really am. Are you. And I was actually thinking about this today. I was messaging the other guys in our. Writers kind of group. I really put. The vitriol, all this stuff, the Ford, you know, losing the three downs for, I. I really do put about 90% of the blame on this, on June Jones. In that first interview, he did, it feels like years ago now. And it was like, they came out. I think it was like the next day. He's like, it's going to be four downs. The Rock's taken over, but. Are you. So I, I do put the lame on him. Are you. You cover the league, you know, live in Canada, all these things. Are you surprised? In my wildest dreams, it would never feel as vitriolic as it has been with. Like America's coming to steal the Canadian out of the CFL and they're going to take over, I get it. I never thought it would get, so, you know what I mean? It's very tense and I will tell you, there's not one person that listens to our show that has ever wanted to change anything about anything. Well, and, and here's the thing. The CFL, because, because it is. An all since, since the early 1990s and all Canadian league. Right. I know they tried the U S expansion. I saw, I saw you guys talking about that too. You know, the, the American expansion was what it was. I mean, They, they had some successful franchises. They had some good crowds. It just, it was what it was. And did it work out ultimately the way. You know the way that it was envisioned? No, but it's a part of the CFL's CFL's history, but. For the last, you know, two and a half, three decades. This has been an all Canadian league again. And there is a lot of pride from hardcore CFL fans. So Canadian football is not just the CFL, those rules start from there and trickle down throughout the entire Canadian football system. So I think there's a lot of. It's unique and we hold those things very, very dear we're like, yeah, this is part of what makes our brand of football unique and our brand of football. And I get that. But, you know, W when I, of course, when I think about the potential of, of two leagues merging and knowing that they fundamentally do go about things a little bit differently, the way they play the game on the field. I think you can find happy mediums. I don't think it needs to be this as, as, as contentious a thing as it is. I think there's, there's plenty of ways to get around it. There's plenty of ways to. Retain the tradition of the CFL game, which I also hold dear. I love there is nothing better than if for, for me, it's just a hardcore football fan. To just flip games and, and, you know, you watch. A CFL game on Friday, they do their Friday night football. Then maybe on Saturday, they've got, they've got two games on a Saturday. I can flip between in a normal year when, when the world isn't the way to flip between an Edmonton BC game and then go watch an Alabama LSU game and like, okay. It football. And yet it's different. It's different, but they're still elite athletes. They're still the best football players on the planet. And I love the differences between the game. I don't know how much. You know, I don't know how much you, you you've dove into what, what the CFL game is. And, and just some of the differences. Like pre snap. I love. W w when an American would I talked to an American for the first time seeing. A CFL game. They think it's chaos at, at, at a pre snap. And I'm like, yes, but it's not like it's not chaotic. It is all like, it's like this beautiful orchestra and these receivers the way they tied the cadence and they hit the line. Right. It's incredible. And like they're running around and then boom. And here they go on their own they're on the ropes. And, and, and so I would be, I would be devastated if we lost that. Yeah. But I don't think we have to, I don't think we're going to, and I I'm with you. I don't think it needs to be this contentious butting of heads thing. Both, both leagues there's benefit in, in them talking to one another and them learning from one another and, and trying to have the other one elevate each to the next level I, I enter is there's plenty of common ground defined. I, it doesn't, it doesn't bother me the same way that I've, I've seen a lot online. Yeah, I will say. I do. I'm swaying more and more towards, I think CFL fans will be very fine with. I think we'll be okay. I, I was, I had fears before and I've definitely softened my stance on the. When I felt was the one league one, one rule book thing for a long time. And I am softening my stance on that with, you know, information that I've learned. You know, changing my opinions on that. It is funny because when, when we started covering all this, cause we were going to cover the CFL anyway. And Paul, my cohost. You know, the first couple of weeks he was talking, oh yeah, I'm watching all these YouTube videos and he's watching the grey cup breakdowns, all this stuff and we get offline. I'm like, you're I go. Are you. Breathing like. Did you really go on? And he's like, oh yeah, no, he's like, I totally he's. Like I spent the last day. I'm like, okay, good. You guys. You know, Paul sometimes is a little dry and I was like, no, I'm glad that we are. You know, I have, like, we covered the fan controlled football, they got five downs. They're playing on Twitch. I mean, we covered the spring league and then we got these, I mean, we're very open on the mark cast too. To kind of any sort of, you know, amalgamation that is a ball and fields and whatever. Before I let you go because you've been so gracious. I don't want to hold you up forever and we're already, I don't want to make this. Could feel like a three hour episode with everything. We've got a jam packed show. We picked a good week to have you on. I want the, the sports betting stuff. I haven't, you know, following this, we had Tom ManTech on last week talking about this. I T to the life of me a league that loses 20 million a year. The re Ambrozy is talked to, you know, 10, 20 million. At best starting out, this is going to make back 20 million. A year. But seeing it as this big boon to break, even on that, I mean, is that, and I'm not trying to be facetious in my, am I asking that this question is, is that as big a deal as it is that like, the CFL will just not be losing that money? Like, is that why this is, so you get what I'm saying? It's like D. To add this whole new wrinkle to everything. Just to be like in the black. Well, I think why it is such a potential big deal. The way that I read it is that I think there's a real opportunity for the CFL to. Kind of go all in and, and really, and, and really. Differentiate themselves potentially in terms of the way they use sports betting. And you know, it's on both sides of the border now we're, we're seeing it become more and more legalized. It's not just in, in Vegas. And Nevada anymore. It's now starting to become more and more prevalent in the us. And, and I think that you're starting to see. Even with, even with some of the television coverage, self, the border. You're starting to see like live in game betting. It's, it's more of a, it's more of a part of our broadcast and our television broadcast, but I go take a look at like, What it's like overseas and the way that soccer is presented in the way they go about their live betting and the way they integrated in, in the UK at another spots in, in Europe. And I, there's a real opportunity for the CFL to kind of dive head firsthand and, and be a little bit ahead of the curve as to some of the other major professional sports things. Like all of them are embracing it. All of them are seeing the value in it, but, you know, like. If, if the CFL were to take it two, three steps further and really start to integrate it into how their games are, our telecast on TTV and how much they use that. As part, I think there's a really big opportunity. And I think that the league does too, because. I don't think a professional sports commissioner is talking about it as promisingly and as, as excitedly, as, as commissioner Ambrozy is, if they don't see them really utilizing it in a big, big way, it looks sports. Gambling is a billion upon billion dollar industry in north America. So if they're, if they're ready to utilize it and really dive head first into it, I think there's a really big money-making opportunity. Revenue making opportunity. For the CFL and that's why I'm so excited to see. When it eventually gets written into Canadian law. How some different leagues in and different properties in Canada go about it. And, and CFLs had the, the, one of their partners is Leo Vegas. And so they've, they've definitely had some partnerships in the past. Well, Here's an opportunity to whether it's Leal Vegas or another company to, to make that as like the official, this of the, of the CFL or the, I just think there are so many opportunities with it becoming legal. To, to integrate it. And that's the, that's the word that I would use to integrate it into your product and into your brand. Do you, do you think that the CFL with like current, you know, an Ambrozy seems to be right, you know, more expansive thinking obviously with the CFO or XFL talks, obviously with the global stuff. I mean, Because this is all I've heard forever. Yeah, we come into this and we hear, you know, CFL. Management's a little sleepy. Sometimes it's a little tired. Sometimes it's a little behind the times. But yet. They're also going to now know how to. Integrate this billion dollar industry into their game. That's where I, because I'm not like I'm told both things, right? Like I'm told. It fell. And so that's where my dichotomy is, where I'm at. And I understand, like I get that and there's been there's. There's always, there's always. Criticism out there about the way the league has gone about their business or they're they're, they they're behind here or they're not. And sometimes that, that criticism has been warranted for sure. And, you know, I, I even think that they've, they've understood that from not being able to get last season off the ground. I think there's been some admission that, you know, okay. It was hard, but. We're going to take lessons from that and apply them to getting the season off the ground this year. But what, what I think is important, I think that's, those are fair questions and those are fair criticisms. But what I think is different now is that. There's been this pause since November, 2019. And everything that I know about the league and from the people that I talk to is that the minute that the 2020 season was canceled. And they said that we're not going to be able to do this. They went right to work in. When the commissioner says that the, the revenue model needs to change. Like for him to see that publicly to me tells me that there is a behind closed doors. Understanding that there, there needs to be some significant changes, overhaul, whatever word you want to use to some of the, the, the way they go about things. And so I think that this potential bill being written in the law. In the next number of weeks and months is something they've had on their radar. Throughout the entire time and something that they have been working at and figuring out how they can integrate for a long, long time. So that's why I'm a little bit, that's why I'm, I'm feeling pretty optimistic about the way that they could should we'll integrate it into their brand and their product going forward. My last question about the sports betting I, I saw cause you know, obviously they're going to do the third reading here. You know, tomorrow is a record yesterday as the episode. It's like this weird time flux, but yeah. You know, We presume it passes, right? I mean, is that kind of, are you just operating just in general that this is, this is going to pass? I would be stunned if it did. I mean, For governments for provincial and the federal government, there is too much money on the table for them not to, at this point, I would be stunned if it, if it doesn't go through. Okay. So if it's, if it's passing, you know, I saw donk a while ago is like, well, we could get this going by labor day. I mean, is this a next year? Is this a next season thing? Realistically? I think, I think that you can start this season, but I think come the 2022 season is his way, because I mean, there's, there's so much else that you all, you got to figure out what your schedule is going to look like. And there's a lot of moving parts to get 20, 21 off the ground. I think it's going to happen, but there's a lot that needs to happen. And a lot that needs to be figured out. So I think, I think to fully get the full-on product and the full-on experience of it. Yeah, probably the start of the 20, 22 season. That's probably realistic, but I do think Jed's right. I do think dunks right then. You know, you could probably have some of these stuff. If, if it's all thumbs up. And, and, and we're good to go with it. I think you can have some of that very much in the works and starting to be a revenue creator and revenue driver for this season. I even look. I look at. Other leagues like the NHL, for instance. And I keep going back to this, but it's, it's so much part of what we do in Calgary. But, I mean, the NHL has done things that they would never have done this season because they lost so much money the year before they're trying to do different things to try to make up for it. So the, they sponsored the names of their divisions. They would've never done that. They got a helmet ads. They. They're like they're, they're doing things that are very much. Nontraditional and in a sport that is full of traditionalist. That doesn't always, that doesn't always happen, but it did because of like, oh, we lost. How many, nine figures last year. Yeah, we should probably, we should probably do some things to make up that revenue. So everything's being sold and, and so I think that. For the CFL, if they could make up some of the loss revenue. By being able to capitalize on some of this, of this sports gambling revenue and some of the sponsorship or different avenues, they could go down. I could see it starting this year for sure. You've been so gracious with your time. Any other hot takes before we let you go about anything I did or didn't ask you about. Cool. I don't think so. I just, I can't wait for you to, to like dive right in and, you know, start to see games on, on a regular basis. And I just, like, there are some damn good players in this league, man. Like I take a look at. You know, the quarterbacks that we have in, in Western Canada, for instance, you know, you've got bullied by Mitchell who. Let's see. He could have been in the NFL a couple of years ago to Saturday, come back. Trevor Harris is a really good quarterback and Mike Riley throws the ball. Time. And when Mike Riley's healthy, that guy, that guy's a threat for 6,000 passing yards every year. Like I'm just excited for you to see some of the athletes and, and, and see the game. And so I I'm stoked. I'm I'm so happy that, that you guys are on board because I think it's, it's good to have another and especially south of the border to have it in the U S and to have it be more in the, in the football fans. Front of mind. I think it'll be really good. So I'm just excited for you to dive into the product and see it. In all its glory, because when you get, there are things that happen in CFL games that don't happen. And other in other leagues, it's, it's unpredictable, it's fun. It's explosive. And the talent is, is really high-end. Yeah. If you are the tone. If I were to told Paul, you know, back in August when we were starting all this. That we would be covering. CFL stuff now. And then. USFL resurgence and kind of all this other stuff. It was a very remarkable journey has been on, but. It's been a, it's been fun and we are here now and we are adapting and moving forward with everything has been, it's been very remarkable and crazy. It's good to have you. It's it's it's awesome to have you guys on board. It's a, it's a fun league. Cool. Well, thank you again, pat so much for your time. We'll do the big intro and stuff in the show. When it's just me on here, it's a little more casual with all this, but I really appreciate your time. I hope when we get. You know, moving here into the season, we can, we can have you on again. And yeah, we're really, the elk staff got us excited, you know, big changes, you know, Yeah. Recording in progress. So this is Steve Earhart. He was the final executive director and was in charge of the Memphis showboats. Got it. And he was the one that like his quote was, I was surprised when I heard about it this morning. I want to dig into it and see where they're claiming they acquired the rights to, because it didn't come from a legitimate source, but. Josh has said. He's really not trying to be antagonistic. So like, I don't want to go into anything with like, It seems like he's like kind of backpedaling. Like he's not trying to be that, but we'll see. I dunno. F**k. I'm so freaking excited for Cole Boozer. That's good for him. That's totally good for him. Cause he was like, You know, I mean, last year when we talked to him, he's like, I don't need to do this. Ringley like my agent says, and then, you know, then you're like, well, s**t, I really didn't need to go do. So I'm just glad, I'm glad that he's playing. I think he's a tremendous, you know, guy and. So I'm very, very happy for Cole. That makes me good. I tweeted. I go. Because I'm with Alex now, but we have Matt mango, ankle Boozer. They're on the Los. So, you know, that fat kid with the ice creams or he's like, That's like me now. Sorry, the Sikh is really bothering me. It's really bothering me. That's fine. Aye. Why cause it's going through the ATM. Or it's my camera's the ATM, but I'm still using the USB audio and that's going to come. The ATM is going to be delayed because it's the HTMI hookup. Yeah. But I just, she's my iPad, my, my, my camera up here on the microphone. And then the thing's fine all the time. I know, but like, I just want a better camera. What did you just use your internal. Why have you kept it the same way? It was. Oh, okay. The other one looks better. Okay. All right. All right. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, that looks good. Well, I could just take the delay. I get to see the video in shifted three frames. See. I'm not going to do that. I'm definitely not doing that. I know how to fix it. It's just, yeah. Getting the right turnarounds. I got to run. Yeah. I'll I'll have. Because what happens is I can actually switch. My audio over to. I can't hear you. So if I switch it over, And he is with the autism Liberty bowl now. Okay. He's the executive director. I'll tell you. I don't like. They said they're supposed to be by the Monday for this yet. Foul stuff. Even today. Rod's like, I'll believe it when I see it. Like, he's really, I mean, he's really down on it. I guess I just don't understand how the f*****g, the gambling's going to do anything. I don't get that. Well it's besides, I mean, even just them playing, I'm not talking, I'm talking to them. This year. So they're, they're voting Monday. If they're going to actually play on August 5th. Which is crazy. Cause it's like, so, you know, we've heard for months, like August 5th is the plan date. It's like, okay, so you're voting Monday now. And like, even Darren was like, yeah, I could just see him kicking it down the road and they may be updating us on August 5th. It doesn't mean trading. Cancer's supposed to start, like he said that the last numbers that rod saw 6% of Canadians were fully vaccinated. They're not playing. I really don't. I. I don't want to say that, but I don't think they're playing. No, I don't. I think when they vote, I think it's, I think it's going to be shockwave it's next week. I really do. I'm like, I guess I call all these guys. I feel so f*****g bad. If this s**t doesn't happen. All right now, are we going to have kids yelling outside my window? Oh, yeah. And then like, Sam emailed me like twice, like yeah, we're working on silvers are working on silver, Mike. I'm not even emailing the gun. I'm like, I'm f*****g. Out in two weeks now, how hard is it? Is that just to be like, here's the like, I mean, it's crazy. They're nuts. Well, and, and like mark out, all that mark Salza, whatever that he got all magazine, you know, don't contact the players. I'm like, that's the only way I've gotten used to go is I've contacted the players. And then we figured out a time. Like they don't get mad at me if I'm going to be reaching out to them. Yeah, f**k that. It's crazy. I mean, I don't, I mean, we obviously don't need it, but I'm just like, that's crazy. Did that. That Danny that month away. Thing killed me, killed me through that. Like dude, seriously. So ma so I don't know how much we'll say on the podcast, but like Mike went to them and they're like, yes, that was absolutely a misspeak. Like this is not till 20, 23. So like, and that's what like p****s me off about like all these fans is they're like, are you, will you. You don't know, like, you know, as much as I do. And I'm like, didn't trust Mike Mitchell. I mean, you should trust me. And that's fine, but don't trust me, but trust Mike missile then. Cause if. You know what I mean? Like, I don't need to be the expert, but if I'm, if I'm quoting the experts and you need to trust that. You would think. But like, It just absolutely kills me. Here we go. We'll look at that background. Did we get it? Can you hear me? All right. I can. This is Reed. How are you doing, sir? Thank you for doing this. Yeah, no problem. Read that of the dead to visit with you. I freestyle. I was like, I'm not trying to be. But I I'm a wedding videographer. So I spend most of my day following up with like brides and grooms and couples. I'm just like, Hey. I appreciate you making a couple of minutes to talk about Seth. Paul's getting. A recording set on his end. So this is going to be recorded for a later. Yeah. So our show will go on Friday, goes on Friday morning. And so we'll, and I'll, you know, I'll send you the clip. You know, I'll send you the gel and everything, but. We have quite a packed show this week with. Kinda all this USFL stuff. And then I'm talking tonight with pat Steinberg, he writes for CFL and covers that stuff. So we have a lot of different stuff. It should be. Should be a pretty jam packed show. And then we just got off with Kyle that runs a USFL project. I don't know if you know, Kyle Smith he's, it's like a historical preservation of all of that stuff. And so we've had him on. We, we literally just got done with that. So we'll put it all together and then we'll have a non Friday. So. How long do you want to go? With me here. W w we don't need to kill it. I mean as much time as you have. No. Just, just give me what, what's your optimal. 1520 Minutes. Yeah, that's fine. Okay. Yeah. You don't need to, you know, but, and, and so we're, and we're with Josh too, with John, I know you talked to Josh Davis over the weekend or early this week. And so, but you know, for our show, it's super helpful to have you come on so we can actually talk, what did Kyle have to say? He's excited, you know? I mean, we, we talked about spring football and stuff anyway. Right. And, and, you know, he's fielding, obviously a lot of stuff like asking him about USFL stuff and it's like, you know, we're affiliated, but we're not affiliated, but you know, we're excited. I mean, cautious. It will be curious. You know, we covered the exit foul, and then we've kind of got into the CFL thing now. And then we we've covered spring league for the last couple of years. And Brian Woods has been on the show. And so. We've just really found ourselves to this confluence of, you know, it was very exciting for us as a show and content producers by the, I mean, we've who knew if you had told me last November, when we have Brian Woods on talking about the COVID outbreak that they had down at the Alamodome that we will be talking now about Brian Woods launching the USFL. I mean, it's, it's crazy, but I mean, cause we've known Brian for. You know, like a year now, so, well, be a little careful about when you use the words, him launching the USFL. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. All right. So Paul will introduce us when we're ready and then we'll get going. I appreciate it. Hang on. And I'm rolling on my site too, Paul. Okay. I finally got it right. Steve Earhart. The executive director of the Liberty bowl. And former executive. In the USFL, how are you doing Steve? I'm glad to be here with you. And it certainly been a lot of news this week. And the reason I'm involved is I was elected to be the last chairman of the executive committee of the USFL after the. The infamous lawsuit. And I was unfortunately tabbed to be in charge of this, splitting up the. The proceeds from the lawsuit. People forget that we did win the $3 and 76 cents check, which I still have. I never cashed that, but they did pay us nearly $6 million in attorney's fees. So I. I distributed that. And then, so I've sort of been the, the guy elected to maintain the legacy. And the rich history of, of the USFL over the years. And we've done that. We've had reunions, we've had advance. We've kept a bank account. All these years, we, we have some licensed merchandise that's sold through a number of sites. When people talk about, they go to a site. Most of those are the retails that our whole, our official wholesaler sells. And, you know, we get those reports. On a quarterly basis. So we're, we're still around. We certainly haven't been playing ball, but you know, after this announcement that came out surprised everybody that had been involved in the original us have allied must have received. You know, eight or 10 calls immediately. People lived had been executives and art owners of the, of the teams back in the eighties and were still very active. And. And respect a guys for a guy like Carl Peterson, who had been the president art on over the Philadelphia slash Baltimore stars who went on to bring the Kansas city chiefs as their president. You'll be eventually a hall of fame guy. And, you know, Carl has been very tuned in to the USFL. In fact, he donated the USFL trophy to the Canton hall of fame and there's been a great. You know, display up there at Canton of the USFL. So the group of us have been dedicated to preserving the rich legacy. And by that, I mean that the respect of. The USFL name and what we achieved. And certainly as you guys, you guys are the experts. You followed an awful lot of guys that have tried to put together a spring league, including the NFL, including the XFL, including the AAF, all these different. And these, the tried to, you know, step into that same spot. And we've just been concerned that we want to protect them. And I guess the, and I keep saying the legacy, but the blood, sweat, tears, and fortunes that we poured into that good name of the USFL. Yeah, it's interesting. You know, we, and we were talking before we recorded. You know, we, we go back with the spring league and a lot of our listeners, you know, Jake, Henry max, a lot of these guys, you know, we're following a lot of these trademarks back. You know, end of the year, January, it kind of acquiring these things. You. There was always kind of a rumble. Okay. This is happening. What's Brian working on, you know, a CEO, Brian Woods has been on the show before. But, you know, certainly the announcement last week kind of took everybody by surprise, you know, kind of in the middle of the spring league season, all this stuff with XFL CFL going on. Obviously, you know, you were shocked as well, kind of initial reactions. I know that we had the paper. Yeah. The interview came out that, you know, It's kind of stunned words, you know, what, what were your thoughts last week when you saw this? Well, I think you hit it right? Stunned shocked. And within 24 hours, I had calls from at least six or seven of the, and I say former executives slash owners of the. USFL teams from around the country. I already mentioned in Carl's one week corresponded and Carl's certainly been one that the Philadelphia, Baltimore stars they've had reunions from year to year. Not every single year, but they've stayed. Stayed together. And, you know, we talked about, you know, the merchandise that we'd been selling, so we weren't hiding from anybody. There've been several books and, you know, and w were we ever in plain sight and that's why it shocked us. And I'd never met. Mr. Woods. Never heard from him, never talked to him and neither have all these other guys. That's why it was so stunning because of the guys striving to use the use the value. And it's not just sending Ave, your lawyers send in. I noticed. The trademark company or what, not the company, but the government office and say, okay, we're, we're registered here. And when they said he had acquired the rights, they didn't acquire them for many, any of, of the original people. Whether, whether the lawyers say, well, they haven't been using it. Enough, but that's not true. We've been using it, but, but our goal and I'm here on your show today to say that. Our goal is not to get into an antagonistic situation. It's not to get into a legalistic issue. What we want, just want to do is make sure that if, if, if there is going to be a resurgence of, of the good name of the USFL, we want to make doggone sure that it started. Right. And you guys. I've seen for what? 30 some years. There's a lot of people on the trash heap and good respected people that tried to do a spring league. And it takes hundreds of millions of dollars. And you know, when you look back at the AAF. Or I guess I would say AAL. And major league football and all these other people, and they were mostly were underfunded. And that's what we want to make sure of that if they are, if somebody is going to get together with us and want to use those names, that let's make doggone sure that there's enough value in the terms of. The money in the bank. That's the bottom line, not somebody trying to encourage investors to come along or make an announcement. Well, I'm going to do this and we're going to seek investors, but there's hundreds of millions of dollars to guarantee to the fans, to the sponsors and to the public, that it will be there in three years because how many of these other leagues. Had grand hopes. I mean, I looked at the, the. America. AAF is that the one Charlie Ebersol was doing? Some credibility. He had a TV contract, but didn't have any money. And those of us in the know, knew that, but a lot of people got left hanging out in the bankruptcy. It hurt a lot of people. And that's what we do not want to happen to the USFL name. I guess my question is then I'm, I'm trying to ask this without being antagonistic. Can he just say that he owns these trademarks or. I'm I'm confused. I really won't. Well, Paul, you asked the perfect question and, you know, trademark and it's, it's more than just the trademark, you know? I guess, and I'm not trying to be an expert in it, but I guess if you register a trademark or a logo or something like that, and you say that, well, it hasn't been in use for X number of years. Then the trademark office, then they'll say, does anybody have objections or do we write in and say, wait a minute. Well, we, it has been in use, you know, and then you go through that long process. So I think that's where it is now. There's been no, when they use the words. As I was telling to read there, you used the words acquire. I don't know that anybody's ever acquired anything. They may have sent in a request to, you know, register and then they. I could gain, I guess it's the copyright and trademark office and send you a notice and then they start a hearing process. So you're exactly right, Paul. That's a, that's a question. That's why I say we're not trying to get into this to say, okay, you can't use it. What we do want to do is have a voice and make sure that if anybody, whether it's Mr. Woods or anybody else, you know, does it in a way that's respectful and will be successful. And that's the old key. Cause you guys, again, you're the experts you've followed all these look, look at the difficulties that XFL has had. What. Almost three different iterations. And I helped, I worked with Vince McMahon and Dick ever saw them the first XFL and we thought it was going to be great. But then after losing $70 million, people get a little nervous and they start to pull the plug. And then, and Charlie Ebersol's situation with the AA. They never had the money from the beginning. He was scrambling the entire time to try and raise the money. And so that that's unfortunate for everyone and that doesn't do anybody any good. So I don't wish ill will on anybody. In fact, I admire anybody. That's trying to be entrepreneurial and start something, but we just want to make sure. And so it's more than just legalistic or, you know, and taking this, they could say, and, and we've never heard from none of these folks that were involved in the original USFL, a guy like Jed Simmons, some of you may know Jed. Chad Simmons was the original commissioner league. Jed. His son went on to greatness. He was president, I believe with the Sundance network and an experienced TV guy. And. You know, he was shocked by it too. And the wondering, well, you know, his dad, you know, put his name on it first. USFL success level. And so that's what you need. You need to have the public buy-in and you need to have respect. And it's a hard enough. To go up against the NFL, no matter what anybody says, whether you're playing in the spring or the fall. And we of course, went back and forth with Donald Trump about this, but many, many a time. Against the entrenched, you know, Goliath like the NFL, which is so powerful, even the NFL charted their own what it was world league of American football. And then they were thinking about using a bill. Polian remember he worked with trying to make it a feeder league, a developmental league. So it's a huge undertaking, takes hundreds of millions of dollars. And then even then you're on the precipice. Do you make it or you not make it so that, that's why. All your, your question is a perfect question. And, you know, that's what we're trying to dig into now and find out really what, what Fox is thinking, what Brian was. Does he have, what, what kind of money backing? Is there. And so you're asking the right questions and I'm asking the same questions myself. To follow up on that. Were you familiar with what he did? Not this last iteration, the spring league, but the one before. Not, not really at all. I've heard of it. And I've, you know, I've just heard the pay for play and read some of those stories. I've never met or talked to the man. So I really can't comment too much about it. So I don't really know much about it other than the little clips of a pay for play that some of the players have to pay in. And that's something that I would want to find out a lot more about. Where do you think the idea of. You know, we're June 9th, today that we're recording. This will air on, on Friday. Yeah. To watch this league or, you know, relaunch, but to, you know, To take the field in 2022. What do you, you know, it. Six months, eight months. Right. You know, if we're doing it late spring, I mean, what do you, what do you think about that? Well, I've, I've been through three of those. So when we started the USFL, we were way down the road in the summer of 82. For a launch there in the spring of 83 and we were going full speed. And by the, by the summertime, you know, I mean, and that's one reason why Carl Peterson built in the Philadelphia stars and let championship team yet with Kelvin Bryant. So on, you know, he w he was already working well down the road in the summer of 82 to be ready. And so. Even now it would be a race once you had teams and cities and stadium leases and, and all the kinds of things you would have to be ready in 22, even with unlimited money and. And so it's, I don't know, see how it can work and look at, and you guys have been following the, the Colt third iteration of the XFL. Trying to, you know, talk to whether they going to talk with the CFL. I'm not sure the CFL is that interested in, I'm getting. It's third hand to me, but you know, are they going to get off here again in this year? And, and I think there's no question in my mind, because I was familiar with the AAF with Charlie Eversole steel bill. Polian worked hard getting players and that kind of thing for them, but, you know, were they ready? No, they didn't have the financing in place. So I'm not sure that. Here we are and try to let less than a year to watch something that, you know, just trying to get leashes and stadiums, you know, is, is enormous. You know, oftentimes. A political situation in each city, you know, so yeah, it would be very, very tight, even if you had everything all buttoned up with money in place. We've dealt a lot with the XFL, obviously with, you know, the tainted path, just a lot of baggage. Do you think. Brian Woods and company would have been better off. Just we're expanding the spring league. We're going to add a couple more teams then, you know, To go into the past deal with all the, you know, Right. I mean, they're dealing with this now, right? I mean, this is whether it's not like opposition, but I mean, there is like, A lot of questions now about trademarks, about the past, you know, what happened before digging up? A lot of that snappers is like, we're just starting the spring league again. I mean, what do you think. About doing it without going this route. Yeah. Well, I honestly just don't know that much about what he's done in the past. As mentioned, I've never met or talked to the man. I've never been to a spring league game. I did watch a couple of things on Fs one, but not knowing much about that. I can't come on about that, but what I. Interested in is, and I guess I feel an obligation to all those people that have say the blood, sweat, the tears, the fortune, that, and believe me, when people talk about the U S valley. I remember Reggie white, who played for us here with the Memphis showboats you know, when he was inducted in the hall of fame, he talked about. You know, and he was a super bowl champion, you know, in the NFL. You said one of the greatest experiences in my life was playing with the Memphis showboats in the USFL. And then. Well, I'm obviously prideful of what happened, not only the entire league, but here in Memphis, people forget that. We had 17 players from the 1985 Memphis showboats that went straight into the NFL the next year. And of course, Reggie, maybe it was the best player in the whole league. I remember telling the Philadelphia Eagles owner when they came down and trying to, you know, pry him away from the showboats to Norman, Raymond. I said, ah, Mr. Brayman. You said, well, maybe he could make our team. I said, Mr. Brayman, he's not only better than anybody you got on the Philadelphia Eagles. He may be better than anybody in the whole damn NFL. And of course they didn't believe any of that, but. You know that that's the kind of the pride and, you know, trying to protect that, you know, image. And again, when we get down to the final, final, Check points in our lives. You know, we did something that people were. Prideful love. And we don't want that name to be carried down the tube of something, blowing up using the name and the image. And there is the, your question's a good question. Again, I can't comment about what he's done with the spring league, but, you know, by all of a sudden it was so shocking that, okay, well, he's, he's flashing up the USFL logo and that kind of thing and saying that he's acquired it, but you know, those are the questions that. That that we had. And so, again, I'm just as stunned as you, and I'm asking the same questions that you and Paul are asking. Does someone actually own the copyrights? The trademarks and the franchise names and all that stuff. Yeah. I'm not going to try and be a, be a lawyer on this. I can tell you. These are facts. So the facts are that we've had a bank account all these years. Facts are that we've been licensing merchandise. I could read you the last quarters report, how many Birmingham stallions jerseys were sold and how many USFL in 1983 champions were sold. And, you know, there's, there's some value in what we earned and paid for back then. And, and, and it still kept that name pristine for all these years, because I know you guys aren't old enough. I remembered a bit of the games, but. Now the. In 78. So, okay. You, you had four years old. I hope you had a chance to watch these games, but, but the fact that you do guys, it's been passed down to you and there's some respect for what was done in that league. And when ever people talk about that, the players, the coaches that have been in the league, they always talk about. You know, what a great experience they had in the, in the league and I'll respect. It was the big display up there at the Countin hall of fame there of the USFL. I mean, The lady that I've been offered. I better not say it, but I think the latest I've been offered for the $3 and 76 chin check is $50,000. So there's some value in these, in these, these items out that history. And we've preserved that by having and the people who've talked about it. I mean, I've players almost every week, somebody talks about, you know, their experience when they played for the generals or they played for the stallions. They. They played in fact, on last week's report from the sale of merchandise, the most sold were the San Antonio gunslingers of all things. So somebody down there must have been an evidence San Antonio gunslingers already. So there's so. When your question is strictly about, did you send it or registration? And the, the people at the government office say, okay, you've got it. And then it's more so than like the guy at Birmingham, the president of the Birmingham stallions called me and said, well, if they try and come in here and don't connect with those of us who were here and were still in town and just say, okay, we're. We're going to use your name and not have a good. Coordination. I guess I would say too, and I've never met him and talked to him, but if he's listening to your show, I'd say, you know, you should. You should envelop and embrace those Goodwill, not just try and go around it, I guess, because it's a hard enough battle anyway, and that I create the situation of uncertainty and that's what a new entity needs is. The certain that telephones, if you come out and buy season tickets or you get a sponsor, Hey, will you sign a two year contract? Well, no, I'm not going to sign a two year contract sponsoring you. What? I don't even know if you're going to be around and they've been burped. The last couple of times by spring leaks that went bankrupt. So that those are the, those are the issues that I guess, so. It's more than just saying. Okay. Did you file for, I can't answer that question directly. You have a, you know, what are the legal, we certainly haven't been playing football. The last you. 2030 Years, but you know, nobody we've never sold anybody or, you know, there's, there's a lot of historical things about, you know, you look back, especially in the sports world about, you know, Nostalgia and you know, old trading cards. I mean, I wish I'd have kept the original trading cards from the very first year of the USFL with the Herschel Walker cards. You know, then the Jim Kelly and the Steve young cards are worth a ton. Now I used to have boxes in my car, but I can't remember what happened to them, but there is value in that historical precedent. Well, and what I think in what I get from this more than anything is, you know, like I have a business, right? I've worked very hard to establish the brand that I have, you know, not on this podcast right. In, in Seattle. And, you know, the idea of someone coming in and tarnishing that, like I said, you know, you got the AAF, you know, all these, you know, the spring football leagues, all these into. Where you feel like you tried to keep the USFL kind of away from that? The, yeah, I could, I could see that fear of someone, you know, them bringing that in now. And if, if it had just been the Brian Woods spring league that failed here in another year, we added it to the pile, but we're at the USFL now. Then it's always going to be associated, right. That name without, I mean, I get that fear. I definitely understand. Like you guys have tried to do, preserve this for so many years and then have it now. Like it's not even your thing. Right. It's like, Hey, we're going to take this on. And it's, we're diving in the pool and you're like, well, wait a minute. We don't, you know, it is, I get that. It's very frustrating. Oh, no. And you hit it right on the head read you and Paul are asking the right questions and that's what we're doing. And, and I would certainly hope that, you know, We wish the best for any entrepreneur that started again, we've tilted against the windmills ourselves. And so we admire that, but you know, it's something we want to make sure. And protect that. Like, as I keep saying that, but that's, that's the key there. The, you know, the good name that people. You know, paid so many dues for work so hard to do that. And, and if we were be convinced that there's a way for it to succeed and be properly financed and. You know, that kind of thing. We'd certainly be open to that. So that's where, you know, I'm I'm kind of, as Paul, as you said, I'm kind of in the middle layer of a saying, you know, you know, w we're digging into it and trying to kind of understand, and I guess that's why it was so shocking. I would have hoped or thought because. Over the years, I've had very many groups in the UK. You guys can probably count them. I mean, there are different names. There's probably at least eight or 10 different groups that have tried for spring lead. Most of them got to my door. We talked about it. And I remember telling us a couple of different groups that said, I'm not going to help you to step into it until I see a hundred million dollars in the bank in a trust that is guaranteed to get beat. We've taken out of there to give the assurance and the guarantee to the people you're asking, whether it's players, coaches, fans. You know, and. Too, oftentimes, even in the AAF, I mean guys like two of our former players, coaches as Steve Spurrier, Rick knew ISEL some of those guys that were former USFL guys as well. So, well, I'll go, I'll give it a try for three months. So what if it goes belly up? You know, that kind of thing. They didn't I'm I'm paraphrasing. I'm not trying. Call them directly. But you know, we don't want that to have a situation where it's just kind of a flyer, you know, And as you guys know, you've reported on it. Is it, it's a tough deal to take on you. An NFL and college football, and then you've got to spend some money. You got to get some name players. You just can't be. Somebody told me in the networks today that, you know, you know, minor league, anything is very tough to get a national audience. You know, minor league baseball has got his snitch. You know, but they're not trying to be a national television product, you know, minor league, anything the public doesn't seem to want to buy. I mean, Kentucky Derby works great. People have to see it, but that next race at somebody else. It might be just pretty good horses in that race, but nobody cares about that on a national basis. We have Michael Cohen. He's an intellectual property, lawyer and copyright attorney coming up later on in the show. To kind of give his legal opinion about everything. So we're, we'll dive into that with them. What, what kind of questions do you think. You have about maybe the next six months of this process. What kind of, what kind of things do you see on the horizon? You know, I guess. You know, what's, what's the financing. What's the Perjeta. You know, and there's been this debate over many years about these new lasers at single entity, you know, like the XFL was a, is it. Franchised. Isn't an NFL NBA model where the individual owners own their own teams, and then they have the impetus. The competitive juice too. Put the best product on the can or whether do you just have an entity where you know, their employees and the players are all paid by a central office. So that, that the kind of the structure is very important and that B gets the issue. What's the financing, like how much, how many dollars do you need? And everybody in the last 30, 40 years even. Even us in the USFL back in the eighties, you know, that was one of the big issues we. You know, Did we have enough financing to last through it? We did. Superbly the first year and you know, but then a second year there was a few of the owners had lost more money than they thought, and we had to shore that up. So I'm certainly aware of that. And so those kind of things are what we'd be trying to look for. I think. If you can develop a leg in. Again, bill pulling ahead. Enormous respect for, and he he's certainly, he's a hall of fame, executive, you know, from the NFL and he put his heart and soul into the. Alliance, you know, getting players, but he didn't know that they didn't have enough money. To keep going. And so, you know, there's, there's all these. A good pool of players and coaches that 5,000. Players come out of the colleges every year. I think it's some close to that. And certainly not. All of them are able to play. Professional football, but they all want to. Yep. I gather, that's what you know, they're talking about in this pay for play league. This spring league that Mr. Woods is, has been doing. And so there's always plenty of players, but can you get a product that, you know, a national audience is going to look for? That's that's a very good question. Steve Earhart. We thank you for your time. And all your insight on everything. USFL related and there's all this trademark. Copyright stuff that's going around. Well, I appreciate it. Softly, you know, reminisce and I got Reggie White's Jersey on my wall. I got a life-sized poster, Reggie, our team on the show boats out on the river, posed in the, in the Mississippi river, on the, on the Memphis showboat. And then I say, that's, I hope that's, I'm getting across. That's why there's so much. You know, Pride and value and. People that we want to do it. Right. And, you know, we're, we're hoping to it, but I would be interested in. What's your, a legal expert talks about that. And again, factually, you know, we've, we haven't been playing, but we have been maintaining we're in existence. We've got a bank count. We've got, you know, we've been selling jerseys and very familiar with our marks for years. And does that qualify as a, you know, so. I would hope that somebody just can't just what you were saying, Paul, about what you built up there, you know? Is this, somebody can just come in one day and say, okay, you weren't at work. You weren't broadcasting for a while, but now we've got to use your name. So I let me know what he says, you know, and again, cause we're, we're not, we haven't been in that boat of trying to go. We know there's been a lot of bootleggers out there that have been, you know, selling. Merchandise. You know, that we haven't tried to hire lawyers to go out and, you know, cease and desist and all that kind of stuff. You know, we haven't been about that, which been more this overall protect the great legacy of the names and the effort that so many people put in. Very true. Thank you for your time. We will, we'll have this on our show and then, you know, I think we're going to put Michael Cohen right after you to kind of answer all these questions. So. Tell him to give me a call. I'd like his opinion, maybe, which maybe we'll have to get him, put him to work here. But, you know, this is not a thing. This is an actual mural of the full stadium here at the Liberty bowl in Memphis, Tennessee. About a 10 foot of a mural on my wall behind me. So appreciate that we work with the AutoZone. Larry bowl of college football game now here in Memphis. So I appreciate being on with you guys. Good luck. Yeah, I can't thank you enough for your time today and get back in setting this up. I really appreciate it. Sometimes let's. Yeah, I'm just going to start recording. We don't have to start yet, but just, and this'll blast years. Hang on. Here we go. Yeah, it looks good. Okay. I think I know what the sync issue is. It's like a, it's a tiny bit bright. And it's a tiny bit soft. I think it looks, I think it looks great though. I love the Emmys and everything. I mean, it looks really good. Yeah, that's I just, that corner shelf s**t. Looks great. Let me turn the ring light down. Okay. Oh, it's your, yeah. Alex. Great. Yeah, I can see your, your, the. Box though over your face. Yeah, it'll go away and like, oh, okay. Yeah. Well now you're fun. Do you want to try. We'll just have your vertical, if it'll do it. Yeah. Sometimes. Yeah, I know what happens. Punching buttons because I'm old. That's okay. All right. All right. Go, there we go. Okay. We're just experimenting. Paul got a new set up for his background. So we were just kind of. One second. Yeah, we're good. Not one moment. Yeah. Thanks for coming on to do this. I appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely happy to. Yeah, you'll probably I'm over my shoulder at some point. You'll probably see bandit wander through he's the big black and white dog. And he's the one that's actually named after the Tampa bay bandits. Gotcha. Yeah. I was just, I was just reading. And so we're, Josh Davis gets a little bit, we're all in part of the news hub. And so they were talking, I guess Brian's talking about bringing the team back to Tampa. They were just talking in the. In the, in like our little private chat. So we'll, we'll say it's awesome. It's going to be interesting, whatever, whatever ends up happening. So. And, you know, Like I said, we're really easy going guys. But you're going to get so much, Josh just kept going on and going on and we work. And like I said, I got no beef with the dead. It was. You know, we specifically said, Hey, we're, we're about the eighties USFL, not, not this new USFL. And then it just continued and continued. And you know, in the bad part was that he wasn't the only one, there was another guy that's just blowing up our timeline with all of this Navy USFL stuff. I mean, you can only tell somebody so many times that, Hey, you know, if. If we open the floor to talk about the, the new USFL like you and I did. Then then that's fine. But once you say, Hey, we're not going to talk about that. And then you have to go, Hey, we're not going to talk about that. Again, we're not going to talk about that. At some point, you just got to meet the date. Well, and Josh always has to have the last word. I mean, we've known Josh forever, Paul and I, and I mean, it's, it's fine. Like, he always has to have lots of where it, where it's like, all right. All right. Anyway, so, and then we've got a, Steve's calling in here at two. We're going to talk to him too and get his take on all the stuff with 'em. The, you know, the logo and Terry Marks and all that kind of stuff. So I'll be here. Yeah. So he'll call in. Yeah, we'll do this. And then he's he he's available. I just heard back this morning and I've been emailing them for a couple of days. So. Hopefully, but that, that should be going here. So we'll get all, we try to get all the sides of all this stuff, so sure. I mean, cut me off for Steve Earhart because that's the guy, that's the guy you need to talk to. Yeah, we'll get him. You're good. And yeah. We have plenty of time. Yeah. Are we good? According. Cool. Scott. Oh, That's okay. Ah, there we go. Kyle Smith, the executive director of the USFL project. Joining us now. Kyle Good afternoon. How are you? I could not be better, but did something happen with the USFL was weak. I don't know if I heard any news. Oh, wow. Why is much Twitter timeline blowing up. Yeah, I have to imagine this was a crazy. Crazy time. But yeah, Paul Paul was out of town and our good friend of the show, Brian Woods decided to launch a new football league. In the interim. Yeah. What was, what was, I guess it was Thursday morning. What was that like for you? It was pretty wild. I actually called. My business partner, Tom Cato. First and said, Hey, had you heard. This news. And he said, no. And I said, I'm sending you a link right now because we're about to get ham. And so basically I spent all day Thursday, either on phone calls or answering different social media. But yeah. Thursday was wild. Friday was kind of an extension of it. And then it, it died down a little bit over the weekend. We're still, you know, we're still getting questions. A lot of people were curious, a lot of people were excited and they should be, you know, we're, we're obviously fans of. Spring football. We wouldn't have put all the time and effort into the USFL project. Where we not fan. So. I think that's a crowded field. And I think I've said that many times, but you're talking about three. Spring football leaks. And. A time period where it's really been hard to get one off the ground. Well to that point, like getting one off the ground. I mean, the USFL was successful until they tried to go up against the NFL. So I really like look at that and I go, well that, you know, there are extenuating circumstances behind some of these spring football leagues. You know, Starting off. Yeah. You know, To be honest, besides the, besides the AFL, which eventually merged with the NFL, the USFL was off to the best start. At, for any kind of spring lake, I mean, look at what happened to the world football league in the seventies. I mean, it. It started and stopped before anybody could catch a breath. And the USFL had a great plan, unfortunately. You know, the owners didn't. Didn't do what they were. Kind of told to do by David Dixon to make a successful spring week. Right. Before we dive too much in, can you set the stage kind of for what, what is the USFL project? You know, I think we. You know, whatever in. And that mishmash of all the craziness on Thursday, you know, I reached out, you know, and, and looked you up and everything, but, but for people listening and watching. W what do you guys, because obviously you were doing this before Thursday, right? So what is, what is the USFL project? Yes. We started the USFL project on Wednesday. No, no. The USFL project's been around for about 15 years. And. I started it as a hobby. I remember. I remember specifically, there was an autograph show out on the east coast. And as I started looking into it, I noticed a couple of names from the old USFL and I thought. I hadn't thought about that league in a long time. And so. I found a company that sold the USFL mini helmets. I bought a Pittsburgh Maulers and a Jacksonville bulls mini helmet sent it out to that show and got Micro's ear and Archie Griffin to Heisman trophy winner. So when I got these bikes, And I opened the box. It was, it was like Christmas. I mean, it was just like, I went back to 1983 when the USFL. Officially formed. I mean, they formed a year or two before that, but 83 was my first experience with it. And. I thought, you know what, here's, here's the big goal of the USFL project. I was going to collect an autograph mini helmet from each of the 19 franchises that were a part of the USFL from 83 to 85. And that was it. That's all I was going to do. And then it just turned into this animal where I created a Facebook page of people. Strangely started following it. Then I would look at news in the morning with my morning coffee, and I would see these news articles about USFL alumni and the great things that. They're doing, taking coaching positions, starting nonprofits. You know, I was seeing all this stuff and I started posting the articles and we just kept rolling and growing and growing to the point where we finally created a Facebook group. Where other people could get involved because on the page, it's just, it was just me at the time. But we created the group and we started getting even more. We started finding these. Th these people who had ticket collections or game programs, gain used jerseys and uniforms. It's it's just really taken off. I mean, if you. If you would've told me. That we would have over 4,000 people in that group right now. I would have laughed and asked what you were smoking. I mean, I would have never in the. My lifetime guests, I would have had more than a hundred people and we have so many great members and such a great team behind the USFL project. So why do you think, why do you think that is? Why do you think there's so much passion behind it? I think it's the nostalgia. I mean, the USFL was. Only one of two leagues that really. Challenge the NFL. I mean, yeah. As I got older, I learned. About the struggles behind the USFL and the, you know, the financials and everything else. But at the time, a lot of people didn't know that you're talking about a leak that came in. No exhibition games had 12 teams and these 12 major cities with new names, new uniforms, new new helmet designs. And, you know, it's no secret at that point in the eighties that the NFL was kind of branded to know funnily. I mean, it really. That the NFL was a product. But how good of a product was it? That depends on your point of view. And so the USFL comes in and says, Hey guys, we want you to have fun. We want you to play. We want you to have fun. And we're gonna play. We're gonna play in the spring. We've got no competition. The NFL is not a competitor. College football is not a competitor. The arena football league is not a competitor. We really have no competitors. We're going to open up in the spring. We want you guys to go out and have fun play football. This is what you want to do with your lives. And they. They brought in so many great players in the onset that. The success for the 83 season is very well-documented. Do you think, and obviously, you know, just as someone that's covered, the league is passionate about the league. You know, we deal with this with the XFL a lot, you know, the, the baggage that comes along, you know, twice failed league, all these kinds of things. You know, do you think, just in your opinion, Brian Woods. Are we better off just doing we're we're expanding the spring league, right? We're doing that. Do you think there's enough cachet with the USFL to go through all this, to buy the trademarks, to buy all this stuff, to do everything like, or would he s**t? He just started fresh. What do you think? I think time will tell. I mean, without, without speaking to him directly and knowing what his plan is, You know, I. I'd be, you know, I'd be totally out of bounds to try to answer that question. I do think it's going to be an interesting mix with, with. The current decision to keep the spring league and to bring in the USFL. And then again, like we said, XFL 3.0, I guess, coming in in 2022. But. You know, for me, I would love nothing better than to see the new USFL succeed. But I'm also an old time wrestling fan. I would never bet against the rock. I would never bet against his, his ex-wife and that company. I can assure you. That they have a very solid plan going into the ex the XFL 3.0. And, you know, It's, this is not an easy thing to walk into. I mean. Vince McMahon, but. Billions of dollars. Into XFL 2.0, now you can, you can blame COVID. You can blame a lot of things that for the reasons why it didn't work. I, I personally enjoyed it. I watched several of the games, but you're talking about needing billions of dollars. Two. Create a new startup league. And that's exactly what they're doing this spring league does have some establishment, but the USFL snip. And the XFL again is new with new ownership. So that's a, that's a lot of, that's a lot of capital. That's a lot of time. That's a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. That's a lot of talent acquisition. I'm truly glad that these guys are getting a shot to play pro football. But. You are going to be getting into. Guys that wouldn't even make a practice team on the NFL and you got to deliver a product that people can't stay away from. I mean, you can put these teams in whatever cities you want, but you know, we all know LA is a tough mark. LA has struggled in the NFL. So LA is a tough market. I think Florida's a tough mark. And you know what? I have some, I have some personal feelings about the Jacksonville Jaguars that we can go into a little bit later, but. All of these big cities, you've got a lot New York. I mean. There is. There is so much entertainment in New York. Sports and otherwise. Those are. Those are tough markets to get into and even tougher to get people to buy it. Well, I think, I think to the argument of it being a tougher. LA team to succeed in LA. It's gotta become a part of the community. And for that example, the Raiders, the Raiders became synonymous with Los Angeles. And this is always going to be a Raiders town. It really is. So that being said, what do you think the steps can be? What steps do you think can be taken to ingratiate these new teams with the community to make them successful? I think you have to go back to grassroots. I mean, I, you know, I hate to be the old guy in the room. But I think you have to go back to that grassroots approach that the USFL hat. You know, and I don't want to, I don't want to give away the entire business plan. But I we've talked to several of the Tampa bay bandits alumni. And when they had events, they had [unknown]. There goes bandit right there. When, when they had Burt's bash. It wasn't. It wasn't the second teamers that showed up to Burt's bash for the fans. It was everybody. Burt Reynolds was there. John Reeves was there. Gary Anderson was there. They were all signing autographs. They were taking pictures, they were being accessible. And I know we live in a different day in time now where, you know, everybody's got their cell phones and everybody's recording what you say and how you say it and what you do. But I don't see any way that something like this. Can work. Without that grassroots approach where the players are accessible, no matter whether let's, you know, let's just say for, you know, humor. That this whole Aaron Rogers thing in green bay goes Dixie. Like, it looks like it's going to, and Aaron says, okay, I'm going to retire. And then in 2022, he pops up with a team. From the USFL. He's gotta be just as accessible. As the punter and he gets punters, but he's, he's gotta be just as successful as anybody on the team, whether it's public relations director, whether it's a cheerleader. What have. I think the grassroots approach is the only way that people are going to truly embrace this because there's not a lot of people that remember these teams there. There are just as many people out there. That. That know that the New Jersey generals. We're a franchise back in the eighties, USFL. Then there are that people think that the Dallas stallions, which is one of the names that's being thrown around. They think that the Dallas stallions were probably a part of the old USFL too. They don't, they, they don't know because we're in such a time gap here. That you've got old timers like me, that. You know, the love, these old team names and everything else coming back. And then you've got young kids to go, man, I'm going to, I'm going to root for the St. Louis and Baders because they were an original USFL franchise. Well, no, they weren't, but St. Louis is a great football town. But the invaders. We're in Oakland. They were always going to be at. As a matter of fact, the Oakland invaders isn't even the original name. When the USFL announced the teams, they were going to be called the bay city invaders. And the fans hated it. They said no. Let the seams in Oakland, we're proud of Oakland. So the base city invaders lasted about that long. It's just hard because it's, you know, here we are, we're talking about, you know, trying to get younger demographics, trying to get younger, whatever. And then here we are, you know, pulling this team, you know, pulling teams from the, you know, I mean, I was born in 86, right. Like, you know, so I, this is all, it's just interesting to me to go that route. Right. Is there that much cache, you know, here, the spring league is now, you know, we just have arbitrary teams and arbitrary logos and whatever, and it, and it seems like. With no promotion of any kind from Fox, which we're now finding out is, is maybe intentional. I've been hearing things that they kind of wanted just to see what this would do on its own without any promotion. It just seems weird to me that like, I I'll be curious to see how this translates to, you know, the younger to the, you know, the 1820, 25 year olds aren't they didn't live through all this the first time. Well, you know, and I think that's a really tough thing because if, if you read these news stories about pro sports, And the younger generation they're not watching. I mean, I hate to say I shouldn't be so general. A majority of them are not watching. The younger generation now, instead of watching a nine inning baseball game. They're going to MLB TV after the game's over and they're watching a 92nd clip or watching highlights. They're there. They're doing what? We as kids used to do with ESPN. But they, they're not, they're not actually watching the game. I would watch the game and then turn around and watch the highlights because I wanted to. Did he really catch that? I want it. I wanted to see everything. And that's, that's not what they're doing there. They're watching highlights. We live. We live in a very, very microwave society right now where. You know, They don't want their time to be taken up because something might have happened on check, talk. You know that they might've missed something. So I want to watch a 92nd clip of the game, and then I want to go back to Snapchat. I want to go back to tech talk. I want to go back to whatever I was doing, but I am interested to see if this guy. Threw a no-hitter. If he threw five touchdown passes in a game, if he scored a hat trick in the playoffs, that's. They just want to know what happens. You're going to trigger Paul with your baseball talk. Fall fall, fall firmly believes that baseball is as fruitful as, as it's been for a hundred years. Well, I don't think it's as fruitful as it's been for a hundred years, but I think that, I think we're underestimating the. I guess capacity. I know plenty of young people, millennials and younger. That are still watching baseball the entire game. On TV, so, okay. I'm just very, I'm just very, I've got like, I'm very defensive of my sport. I'm very dependent. And I hope they are. I really do, but you know, I listened to. I'm in the Dallas Fort worth area, which it actually should be Fort worth Dallas because Fort worth is a better city than. Dallas, but that's another, that a lot. I hear that a lot. But. I live in this area. And one of the stations I listened to without fail is one oh five, three, but fail. And they're the hall of the Cowboys. And over the Texas Rangers. And one of the, one of the gentlemen on the afternoon show is Mike. Classic. And you may know the name, Mike [unknown]. He was the pitcher that gave up the famous Barry bonds home run. So my Basset is on the show and he talks about it constantly about how, not only his kids, but their friends, they, they are watching the paired down versions. Of baseball games, just so they see what they need to see. And I think, you know, when you look at a lot of the stories, I, I think a lot of the younger people you, you know, might be in the minority. I don't. You know, I hope they are. I hope they're watching because TV needs the ratings. I really do. But I just, I don't think that they, I don't think a majority of them are actually watching full games. And that goes, that goes for me too. I will say this. I enjoy the NFL product, but I watch NFL red set. Or, or whatever they call, I want to, I want to see what is have other. If it's the Dallas Cowboys, I typically watch the game until they start getting blown out. And then I'll be that kind of fan. I'll turn it off and can't watch it anymore. But I watched the red zone champ. I want to see, I want them to take me to Jacksonville. You know, here, Trevor Lawrence is on the, on the goal line at fourth and goal. And then Jacksonville scores and they go, okay, we've got an update for San Diego, San Diego, Justin Herbert's at third and 13 and they're backed up near there. Ends up. I want to see the action all around the league. I don't want to just sit and watch one day. Why do you think there's such this fascination with the spring football experiment, be at the USFL, you know, we covered fan controlled football spring league. You know, XFL all these. AAF. I mean, what, what is, why is this it's like, I used to watch a lot of that Oak island, right? The hunt for the treasure on Oak island. Like it's this. Where we're going or why this fascination. Okay. One. I love that show. So I appreciate that reference. I think it's because. I think it's because there's really only been two competitors to the NFL and the spring one, you got the huge gap. You've got, you've got the NFL season and the college season that run concurrent. And then come February. We've got no football and, and all respect to the other leagues, you know? The, the smaller arena leagues, the Canadian football league. I mean all the respect in the world, but they, they just, the Canadian football league has been around longer than any other. But they just don't. They don't have that international following the college football and the NFL. Has. So I think one, it fills a gap for all of us die, hard football fans, and to it's really only worked once. And I, I say that with a pain in my chest because. The AFL is really the only one that's seen that succeeded because, and then the NFL saw the success and they bought them out and said, you're coming with us. And I think had the USFL done the same thing. And followed the Dixon plan. Like they were supposed to. And stayed maybe even. Two to three to four more years. I think you would have seen the same thing happened with the USFL, but the owners saw immediate success. And they started spending wildly. And that's something that cannot happen with any of these three lakes. I don't, I don't care how much money the rock has. I don't care how much his ex-wife has. I don't care how much that marketing company has. They cannot go out and spend wildly. To try to get, you know, I mean, you know, I hate, I hate using this name and I hate using this reference, but. Don't go signed Johnny Mann sale. Don't don't do it just because he's got a name and he's going to bring a few eyes. To your league. Build on your young stars. And he, the rock knows that he knows that from his WWE days, that's exactly how WWE took down world championship wrestling is they built from within, they built their young talent and built them up to superstars. Where WCW was trying to lean on the older. And sign all these big names that were trying to sign all of these old WWE names and try to keep the company afloat. That's one of the most fascinating documentaries I've ever watched, because one, I lived through it, but. It's actually free on peacock on the peacock app. But the Monday night worship. That one of the, one of the best real life documentaries about. Sport and business that I've ever seen. And then we can get into [unknown]. Docs, if you want. I got, I got a list of those, so we might need a whole other ship. Yeah. How about Colin Kaepernick? XFL Colin Kaepernick. If he's good enough to make a team. I'm all for it, but I mean, he's been sitting dormant for five years now. Is it longer? Paul's on his cap. I just think I just, I don't, I don't, I wouldn't say I love him. I. I think that, you know, I think that there's still something there. I still think there's something in the tank. If, if he's. If he's got the, if he's got the middle. Capacity to want to play and want to win. If he's in shape. And he's got the talent to beat out somebody else on a roster. Buddy man. Yeah. Putting in because we get so sideways about that whole Colin Kaepernick thing. And I'm going to say this, and this is my personal belief. This doesn't have anything to do with what I'm doing, where we're going. Anything, anything about that? But Colin Kaepernick got put in a horrible situation. And. What he was doing, what he was protesting is not what he got accused of. He was, he was protesting. Police brutality. Take your Jean shorts off. And. And just realize what he was actually protesting. He was protesting the way people were being treated by police in a certain area. And. I just, I really do. I think he got sideways. Completely agree. Yep. Lessons that Brian Woods Fox and the new USFL can learn. You know, to do or not do from history, right. You know, to not see history, repeat itself, you're moving forward. Don't overspend. Have a solid plan in place. And don't expand too quick. Those are, those are three of the main things that killed the USFL. You know, there's certain owner out there that was a part of our original USFL that takes a, takes a beating. About being the reason that the USFL went away. And it wasn't him. It was, it was a lot of the owners. Because. That Dixon plan was solved. And if you ever read into it, which fascinating by the way, They had a cap. And the cap was for the teams to stay under this amount of money. I believe it was a little over $3 million and then they had these great TV contracts in these great cities. So. Several of the owners get a little bit of success. And then you've got an owner. Tanenbaum with the Michigan Panthers. He goes out and buys the Pittsburgh Steelers offensive line. Well, that's great, but. You can't do that. That if you don't follow the Dixon plan, you can't do that now. It led Michigan to a title. But the ramifications of it. I mean, you had Michigan as the 1983 USFL champion. And then they have to merge with Oakland in 1985. And move out to Oakland. That's how bad financially it was and Tannenbaum, you know, He built shopping malls for over. He was a, he was a fantastic entrepreneur businessman. But he just thought he could spend wildly. He's like, it's my money. It's it's my money. I'll spend it however long. You're going to tell me that I have to have a $3 million cap. I got, I got more money. And that's what these owners of these teams have to understand. Don't overspend. And the reason you don't overspend in the early part of a new league. Is because you have to be ready for those lean years, no matter how much TV success you're having, no matter how much merchandise you're selling, it does not matter. You've got to be prepared for those lean years. And then again, don't expand. And that's one of the big concerns I have right now. And I think, I think you've even addressed it. They've already gone out and bought more trademarks. So they've talked about these eight teams that are going to start the new USFL minimum of eight. I thought it was interesting on the spring league broadcast this week, it's a minimum of eight teams. Yeah. I did think that was interesting too. And, and I think, I think if they go with any more than eight teams to start out with, I think there's going to be trouble on the onset. I hope that they stick to eight teams. I do. For the Birmingham people out there. I do think it's travesty. Even though I'm going to enjoy having a team in Dallas called the stallions. Potentially. I think it's Travis to the Birmingham did not get the stallions back. They were well-supported in Birmingham. There are a lot of people in our Facebook group that want the Birmingham stallions back. And I think not going to Birmingham. Is is a mistake. That being said, you know, I'm going to jump back into this real quick and then I'll, I promise I'll get back to your question. But, you know, we talked about Jacksonville just a little bit earlier. I will. Stick my flag in the ground. Like I will, with many things that involve the USFL. I don't think the Jacksonville Jaguars are here without the Jacksonville bulls. The Jacksonville bulls are one of the league leaders for three years. In the USFL and attendance. And the NFL saw. That Jacksonville was completely supporting and embracing. That that tape. So it's no coincidence that Jacksonville played their last game in 1985 and 10 years later, the Jacksonville Jaguars were being announced as expansion team. So, if you, if you're going to tell me that the, the NFL wasn't watching every single thing that the USFL was doing and, and, and cherry picking. I'd point you to that. I mean, they, they watched what the XFL was doing with the sky cam. Incorporated that too. So. You know, It's the thing that happens. Yeah. They took every good idea that USFL has. And. You know, Good for them. I mean, you know, there's things that work there's things that don't. And, you know, I'm glad at least the NFL is, you know, Brought in some of those things, but. It was just, yeah, it was just tough. Tough thing to see the USFL go away, because there were so many people that really, really enjoyed it. But when you. Going back to the original question. When you go from 12 teams and have some pretty good success and you, you expand the 18 teams. That's pretty rough. I mean, Yeah, I'm very thankful that they put a team in Oklahoma because that's where I lived at the time. And I loved having the Oklahoma Outlaws, but they put them in Tulsa. I mean football country in Oklahoma is Norman with the sooner. And still water with the Cowboys and you stick that team up and Tulsa. Not. Not a good plan. They put one in Pittsburgh. You know, and Pittsburgh's a great football city. Great football city, but. People didn't buy into it because they had the Steelers. I mean, the Steelers were Steelers were really good at that point. So. Don't overexpand and. You know, again, the grassroots approach, I think they have to, they have to make everybody accessible. They have to have these span events. They have to make them fun. They don't have, you don't have to spend a lot of money to have fun. I mean, I don't, I don't know if you guys were married or single or whatever, but you can, you can take a blanket and a. In a six pack and lay it in the back of a truck. And go park at the beach or go park and park in the woods and look at the stars and have a really good time. And that's pretty cheap. You can make these span events. Cheap and fun. And nobody would know the difference. You just have to be accessible. Absolutely. Yeah. Just two quick comments before we let you go. Hey, we talking about. One of the former owners knew with Trump and all that. We've been talking in our chats about that. And at least his checks cleared. Right. Compare the, when I've heard some of the other owners and then yeah, with the expansions. Absolutely. I mean, we still get every week, you know, the XFL needs to expand to these cities and it's like, but to get through. A season. You know, whether we can talk about it. So yes, absolutely. I really appreciate that. I'll tell us back to Paul, but I just wanted to get into those two comments. I'm totally good with comment. My questions. It's been very insightful to have you on our tile and talking about. You know, What you're doing with USF USF and a legacy project to kinda keep the, keep it in the minds and hearts of everybody, the old USFL. And it's and it's it's great advice going forward for the new one. The new USFL. Well, and, you know, we didn't really get into it. Maybe we can get into it next time. If I'm allowed to come back on. After my hot take on baseball. But, but, you know, we just like the new USFL, we've got some pretty lofty goals and we, we're not at a point where we can share that yet. But we've. We're working behind the scenes. There's a, there's a whole team myself, Tom pedal, Jim parcels, Rob butts. There's a whole team working behind the scenes and we've got some pretty, pretty lofty goals for the USFL project. We'll have to come on and share. Yeah. Yeah. When you, when you get ready to launch those things, please come on. Talk. Talk with us about it. Man. We'd love to. You know, if I can really quickly make sure and go to the USFL project group, you can go to Facebook, to the groups. And a search, the USFL project. We get a lot of chatter in there. We've got a lot of good things. We'd love to have you aboard. We're also on Twitter at the USFL project and on Instagram at the USFL project. And you guys, you guys are one of my favorite YouTube shows. You guys are right up there with hot ones. If you have not seen hot ones. That's one, that's one of the best shows on, on YouTube, but you guys are right up there. Okay. Appreciate the love Kyle Smith, the USFL project. Thank you for jumping on with us. And chatting. Yeah, there we go. Hang on. Let me get this recording here. It's going to blast you for a minute. We don't have to start yet, but let me just. Before we go, how are you doing today? Oh, I bet. Running around doing work today. You're realizing. Yeah. A real estate agent. So, but just got a bunch of run-on things running around to do with no clients right now. Okay. Well, I appreciate you taking the time to come on. Yeah, no, no problem. No problem. Any preface anything before we get into it. I just figured we kinda talk about, you know, thoughts, everything going on, what you're doing now, past stuff with. Yeah. I just think you're a good person that might have a lot of thoughts about what's going on. Yeah, no. No, you know what? I'll be honest. I thought. I think back to when I was there before. And. You know, when, when I thought about all the rule changes the dash for the toss, those types of things, I thought it was really hokey. Names on the jerseys, you know, they were trying to. You know, make it like, you know, I was in Vegas, like. The outlaw kind of league kind of thing. Vince McMahon. You know, when you had the meetings, she said, you know, Whatever it is you want. To the cameras when, during your face. It was just completely opposite of what I was used to in, in the CFL. And then obviously the NFL. I mean, there's not a chance that you could do or say any of the things. So it was a. I thought it was a little hokey, but then what's the start. To to go. I thought, okay, there's some good football. But the problem was, and I'll be honest. I haven't followed a lot of. The past XFL. So I'm not sure a lot of the changes, but just comparison of the first one. You know, you had a bunch of football. Good football players, obviously. There was a lot of guys that went from the XFL. Well to the NFL. But. It was kind of. Too much wrestling at that time. And it took a little while to get to the football and bring more good football people in and, you know, throw it the wrestling commentators and that type of thing. And by then it was kind of too late. So, I mean, I think that now talking about the CFL and the XFL. The XFL has got all the media hype. I think. And I'll just say it, the American way of doing things when it comes to marketing and advertising. For football anyway is completely different. And I'll say better than the CFL. There's lots of things that the CFO can improve on and do, and listen, that last part. Gas you had and, or you sent me. And, you know, The one gentleman on there, I forget his name was saying how, you know, the, the, the marketing try and get a hot, the next CFL. Merchandise things like that. It's just not there. I mean, I walk into the airport here in Vancouver. I'll see the Toronto blue Jays. Hockey teams. And, you know, maybe, maybe the Saskatchewan Roughriders Birch. But it's kinda, it's terrible. You don't even, you don't even get to see the CFL stuff. So. I think that bringing them together. It could be good. But the one thing that I haven't heard anybody talk about is the. The, the ratio. I mean, we've got a mandate in Canada where you have to have so many Canadians on the field. And I was playing when the CFL merged in the states with Baltimore and Sacramento. And, you know, They could play with a full team of Americans. And I think the only reason that one, one year kind of was. Dominated by the CFO is because it took a little while for the Americans to kind of catch onto the game. The coaching didn't quite understand it, all the rules and all the intricacies, you know, of the kicking game as well. So, I think it would have been just a matter of time where, you know, there's a lot more American players play in the CFL game. And with just the amount of people that are down there, we wouldn't be able to compete. So then I think it would be, get gobbled up and what rules you're playing. I mean, there's so many different things to think about. Does it well first. I just have a million different quiet, you know? I think, and we'll include all that too, if you want. Cause I think this is all great, but Paul McCallum here. Yeah. Tremendous life history. You know, rod Vanstone, they'll play this in contacting a friend of the podcast. You know, I've done all the reading, everything about everything that you've accomplished. Just a wealth of knowledge and I guess first off. How did you wind up in the original XFL back in oh one. Well, that's an interesting story and it's a bit of a long one. I'm in Canada playing just starting. My career was going to. To get cut because the club. BC wasn't gonna make the playoffs. The general manager time. Eric Tillman told me that he is going to be leaving and going to the NFL Europe. I've got a British passport. He called up, Jim Criner went over and played in. NFL Europe. With Scottish Claymores and one of the world bowl coach really liked me, came back to Canada. Then I heard about the XFL. Find out that coach Kriner is going to be coaching in the XFL. It was my auctioneer. I picked up the phone and said, Hey. I'd like to come down. It was my option year off season. I could do it. And he said a hundred percent jobs yours. So that was, that was it. Did you, you, you were talking to me about VIN sane. You can talk to the camera and say, well, did you have a lot of interactions? I mean, how, because obviously in the XFL, this last iteration, you know, all of her luck was kind of in charge. Vince was very hands off. Did you have a lot of interaction with Vince in that first go round? No. What happened was Dick Ebersol and Vince McMahon came to training camp. And I believe there was a training camp in, we had one. Vegas. I think there was four teams there and the other one was in. Florida or Atlanta? I can't recall. And so they came in and did the rounds and they had all the players in the hotel and we were told. What they wanted, what did they expect from us? You know, what, what their vision was. Of the league. So, you know, he made it clear. He said, look, guys, we're going to be different. He, I mean, he wanted to compete with the NFL, which obviously can't. But so one of the things was, you know, He wanted everyone to have fun. He wanted the guys on the field to have fun. He didn't want it to be as militant as the NFL is. So, you know, if the camera's in your face, you know, They'll speak up, get in the camera's face. Be animated is I think the word used in. You know, and that was kind of taken from the wrestling. It's all a pediatrics and it's about entertainment. What are the players? Were they excited to be, you know, you said you picked up the phone wanted to go. I mean, what was the. Overall consensus. Was this going to be a success or it's like, this is what is going to happen here. It was, you know, what? It was really interesting. In the locker room in the, in the trainer's room, you know, he got to meet all the new people and players and. And I remember I was in the trainers room, a bunch of young guys, and we had just heard that. You know, you can pick what you want to put on your name, bar in the back. And, you know, I was in there with rod smart, you know, he will, he hate me. And a bunch of other guys, and then they all just turned to me and they're there. They were thinking of the replacements. They wanted me to put laces out on the back of my. Jersey. And then they were saying they wanted me to go out and check an extra point with a cigarette in my hand. And just, just to have fun. Right. So there was that aspect of it, the young guys, and then there was the other, there were some serious guys that wanted to get back in the NFL and this was their platform. And then there was a. A few other players I'd already been in the NFL and they just wanted to have fun. She actually was bounced around. Just thought, you know, I'm going to come back and. You know, he wanted his kids to. See him play because I guess he had some young kids. So it was, it was a big blend of different people in different stages of their career. It wasn't all a bunch of young guys wanted to go back to the NFL. And so it was, it was a, it was a good locker room and it was a good vibe. I think all of the. Teams kind of had that same kind of blend of players. There was a lot of young guys, a lot of, you know, some NFL veterans they brought for, I guess, you know, named big name players that had. Finished and wanted to come back kind of thing and do some things. So, yeah, it was, it was an interesting blend of people. I'm going to do something funny here. Give me two seconds and it's going to be worth it. Slightly off camera here is my F. Oh, and he hate me Jersey from the ELA. There you go. I didn't have time to put that on this morning. I really shouldn't have, but I, yeah, we got this here. Well, we'll hang it. But no, I mean, a lot of. Yeah. I mean, tremendous excitement. I mean, I remember I was a kid when, when oh one, you know, and I remember the kickoff on NBC and Vince screaming and all that. And I didn't even really know cause I just watched wrestling, you know, I was just a WWE guy and I'm like, okay, well I'll go check this out. And I wasn't even really into football, but. I you said. You thought well, okay, so then is it you're playing for the Outlaws, right. And you're one of the claims to fame, right? Is you scored the first ever points kicked right. Scored in the first XFL game. Is that correct? Do you remember that? Any, any specifics about that? Oh, yeah, that's quite funny actually, because there was no nets to the back of the end zones. So I kicked the ball. It was the first. The first points ever scored. And I think I, I. I actually ran into the guy. There was a game. We had the west coast game. There was an east coast game. I scored the first points. And I think I beat the other guy out by maybe whatever. A minute or something like that. And he was like, damn, you got me. But I kicked the ball into the stands. And then the guy who got the ball wanted me to sign it. And I was like, yeah, sure. Whatever, I'll sign up for you. And then I saw, well, actually, you know what? I'd like to get that ball. Do you mind if I buy it from you? And I thought, I think he wanted like five. $5,000 For it. I was like, Like, dude, I kicked the ball and like, I'll get you another ball or I'll do something else for, I gave some tickets or whatever it may be. He's like, Nope. Oh, five grand. I'm like, yeah, you can keep it. And then, you know, when things went sideways. Sure enough, I get the phone call. It'll. How about a thousand dollars? Yeah, no, you can keep it. Okay. You got it. But. It was. It was interesting. Fan interaction was pretty cool. Pretty crazy in Las Vegas. I tell ya. The cheerleaders. Tractive young ladies guys were drinking and just gone crazy. In the stands and yeah, it was, it was a different football crowd. I think. The normal to start with, but. Yeah, it was, it was pretty cool. Yeah, I, people would pay good money. I'm sure for that football nowadays. Yeah, that is, I think that's pretty cool. I think that's a pretty cool. Story with that. We have one of the guys that played in the spring league now that worked with the new accent foul, he's selling some balls that he had kicked. And I know that. Yeah, there's just a lot of excitement for that. I think that's a pretty awesome story. I thought you were going to say, there is no net net, you know, Crean someone in the head or something that way. Oh, no. Well, I might've, I don't know. It, it was. It was, it was a fun league. I mean, you know, the guys. You know, you kick the ball and I'd watch it because it just be big swarms of people going to get the balls every, every extra point or every she'll go. But. It was, it was interesting. I think. I mean, I think the ratings were, I forget how they work with it. They were like 12, there were, there was scalpers getting $700 a ticket for that game. And. There was lots of, lots of hype for that game. And does it was pretty cool. I mean. You know, I never went to a major college. I was a soccer player and. I went to Europe to play professional soccer. Quick story came back, went down to the local park to watch my good buddies playing junior football was community football. And I went down, BC lions, director, person, player personnel is walking his dog. So I'm gonna kick the ball. Went to went to practice for the last two weeks. I'm going to training camp for the following year. And went and came back. I thought I can do this. And I asked if they'd do me. You know, get, give me some help. Maybe I could go on as a walk on or something at Washington. And they're like, no. Chad happened, you. You're a professional. And back then that was in 1990. You had, you got $3 a day for training camp. So, you know, I got, I was there for two weeks. So I got whatever my 42 bucks I'm like, you can have a back didn't work, but. Yeah, it was just. Pretty interesting journey to say where I got to and all the fun that I had, it was pretty fun. Now a tremendous, I mean, tremendous career, tremendous life. When you w when you're in, say we're in oh one, we're going through, you know, the football. Like you said it took a little while. I think just mostly because they rushed it right to the field. I mean, they did everything within that truncated. Well now here and we're living through this week with, you know, USFL ride is going to be coming back here, supposedly. You know, it's like history repeating itself again, but. Like. As it was going along. I think a lot of people left the first season really thinking it was going to come back. Right. I mean, it wasn't until am I speaking out of turn? Was that kind of the general sentiment? No absolutely. I'm a coach at the end of the year. You spoke to a handful of players that he wanted back because you could only protect. I think nine players. And you asked me if I wanted to come back, I'm like, absolutely. I want to come back. And then, you know, I was, like I said, it was in between it's in between seasons with a CFL XFL. So I, I, I called the. General manager back in Canada. I was like, look, you know, I want to come back here again. So I want to make sure I can get out of my contract. You know, I'm a kicker. I'm not going to. You know, not getting hurt, that type of thing. And they said, no. I called the coach back and I said, In, in XFL and said, he's not gonna let me go. So they were gonna get me a job in the off season. You know, give me a longer visa. I was going to be able to live in Vegas, get a job. And it was, it was go. I was, I was really excited. And because things were things that things started really strong. They faded. You know, they changed the rules, you know, whether the gunners could leave on the kick or not, and all sorts of things. And I think at the end of the year, the league was starting to stabilize. Don't know. You know, we lost a lot of the public. The ratings, TV ratings. And, but I think it, it, I think it could have good, have gotten stronger. Like I said, because it was getting more stable. So, yeah, I, I was looking forward to it and everything else. I wasn't, I moved back to Canada. You know, to get all my stuff, ready to go back to Vegas. And I was driving out to the lake and I get a phone call from my buddy and said that it folded. I called the coach right away. Gave him the explanation. What really happened. And I think it was just a. It was the TV rights would maybe TNT and McMahon. Fighting over the rights for the XFL and. Obviously, he just said, well, You've got to take your pick. Do you want, do you want the wrestling or nothing kind of thing? So, Anyway unfortunate. But yeah, everyone that I talked to was. Excited. Was looking forward to it happening again. Just the business aspect of it. Of course. You know, that ended it. Yeah, it's a shame, you know, w when these leagues come off, it had so much publicity behind it. And when you don't have everything going your way right away, I mean, I even remember. Going back. If you watched the highlights from that, the championship game. I mean, it's kind of, it's a little messy, you know, it's a little Eno in ages. You really wish it, you know, and then, like you said, when you, when you talk about the wrestling and all the components behind the scenes, You know, same thing now with the XFL last year, there's all this other staff and, you know, people want to blame, you know, Benson in everything for going bankrupt, but he was dealing with the same stuff last year with Debbie, Debbie, right. Where, you know, with COVID and being able to run events. What. So, how did you find out that it wasn't coming back or was that. So, yeah. Like I said, I was driving to the lake and I found out I called the. The coach. And he had said that. I think NBC pulled out because they had lost too much money. But the other other stations is TN T and another other network in the south. Southern states. They were all excited because they, their ratings were still pretty good. But NBC. They they'd had enough. They were out. And I think that the other stations kind of wanted to jump into the NBC role. And Vince said no, and they just couldn't come to an agreement. But even those other, other networks still had some business with Vince, with wrestling. And so he just leveraged that to say, you know, I'm not going to give you whatever it is you need or want for a. The XFL. And if, you know, if we're going to continue this, then maybe I won't give you the. WWE is either. So they just pulled back and they shut the doors. So that's pretty much what I was told. Obviously, I don't know all the exact details, but that's the, just of it. So. When you, so now we're, you know, we're earlier this year now, you know, you're living your life. You're, you know, real estate agent, right? What. Why do you think when you heard. You know, you said you didn't follow the XFL right back in, in 2020, right? Yeah, it wasn't right into that. The busy going on, but yeah. So now, so, but. But you hear this now you hear accent foul. You know, bought by the rock. In talks with the CFL. What is your initial reaction to that? Do it right. Like you said. And as we discussed earlier is. Too much, too much flying, but a deceit. To your pants. The first time round. Changing the rules week to week going back and forth. Things like that. Have have. Proper football people, you know, The know what they're talking about and understand instead of the wrestling, which I'm pretty sure. You know, I think, I think, I don't think that mistake would happen again. The rock has got a huge big. Social media, public fallings, very well-spoken person. That's obvious. He's not, he's not. How do I put it? I think he's, he's stepped far enough away from that in the sense of he's been, you know, he's movies and. You know, He's he's talks a lot. As a real person, as he's not always acting, you know, So I think that it could be very beneficial. I think, believe it or not having somebody like him. Two two. Start to leak again. There's been the failures, the two other failures. And I mean, let's face it. COVID had a lot to do with the last one. So I think there's lots of positive things for the XFL itself. How it would merge with the CFL. I don't even know if that's possible with all of the. The the two different. The rules of the game. Just the whole thing. It just doesn't, it doesn't seem to be. Possible in my opinion. How, how, how are we going to have stays? You have to, you have to. Protect the CFL. I mean, you just straight up numbers in the population. With, with the amount of players playing in the, in the states and up here. You know, Canadian players would just get gobbled up. As someone that, you know, obviously BC. You know, we talk Toronto, we talk Montreal, you know, these markets that. Maybe need some rehab or re whatever. I mean, Do you think the exit, Val, whatever this partnership is, could help with that or whether we do to help the CFL? Cause I think, you know, one thing that's come out from all of this is there are some shortcomings, right? That can be. They need to be bolstered somehow. So how do we do that? If it's not with the XFL? One of the main points. It's always been a bit of a stickler for me. Is. Is the. The high school football in Canada, they play NFL football. So, you know, How are you going to have a young Canadian kid? Playing an American brand and style of football, American rules of football. On a, on a Sunday or. Saturday or whenever the games played. I relate to watching Canadian game when the formations are different. You've got motion in the backfield. It's just, we don't have, we don't have the roots of the players. I mean, You go to the high schools and all you see them is the relating to the NFL players because you know, the kids playing wide out and he's got Odell back them. A Jersey on. And, you know, we have a, you know, our, our hall of fame receivers up here, like G Roy Simon. And mill Steagall that played a slot because the game. A lot of, a lot of the formation and a lot of the, the running in the motion as a slot, they seem to get the ball more. That. There's just, no, there's no relationship between. The two, the two games, the high school. And the Canadian game. So I think that with that, as well as the marketing there's. You just don't hear about it. You know, It this the CFL. Blip some blurbs. You know, Hockey is a Canadian sport. You know, if, if, if I was playing and there was a huge prac we had. We had a practice going on, which would be media day. And the hockey team had a. An assigned assigning. We wouldn't have any immediate or a practice. You know what I mean? And so it's sort of playing second fiddle. But, you know, I was told, I was speaking to one of the presidents a while back and he was saying that. You know, but our TV ratings are, are better. You know, when we have a. A rivalry between. Say. Edmonton and Calgary or Winnipeg and Saskatchewan playing. That football game on that day will be better than the hockey night in Canada. You know, game of the night. So I just, I don't know. I just don't. I don't know why it is the way it is, but that's the major thing. Two major things I think is that. Is the media, the marketing and sort of the grassroots. Football high schools. Being taught how to play an NFL game. One of the main criticisms you. That's come out with this XFL is, oh, you know, we did the CFL expansion back in the nineties, you know, that didn't work. That was a failure, right? Yeah. When you hear that, you know, obviously having lived through all of that, do you, do you equate that to you? Do you, do we agree that time has, is nonlinear, you know, things change in the world and things progress, or what do you think about that argument? Sorry, you just froze there for a second. I didn't hear it right. Th th the whole debate where the American expansion didn't work before. So it's not going to work now. Oh, That's a, that's a hard one. Excuse me. That's a tough one because I mean, I think when you, when you. We did it the first time. I don't think it was done. As, as efficiently and effectively as it could have been done. But there again, you, you still have. The whole. The dynamics. And this, this, this, the salary cap as well. There's the exchange rate. Is it fair? How are you going? Because all the, all the contracts, I mean, I was a part of the player association for a long time. So if you think about this. All of the contracts belong to the league. Okay. So if we're going to have a $5.2 million. You know, people will laugh. $5.2 Million salary cap. For the players. How's that gonna translate down into. You know, are we going to drop that 30 points for the exchange rate and then try and get a bunch of American players to play for that? I mean, How are we going to keep it? Equal equal playing field across the board. You know, or we know we're gonna get not w we're gonna probably not pull enough players, but we're just going to get guys out of college that were drafted and, and everything else didn't make it up here, but didn't can make it down there. Like there's so many. Variables to think about. So, and then. You know, are we going to allow a us owner down there? That's got huge deep pockets to be able to run the team down there the way he wants. And then we're handcuffed up here following the rules. No. The the, the player ratio. How are those, those, those to me are major challenges. And just to help the league with dollars is how it was done back then. You know, They, the, these teams had to put in a lot of money to come in, which helped the league as a whole. But I think that was short. Obviously. So, yeah. You know, Baltimore. They had a really strong following. I've actually met fans and breakups that, you know, still follow the CFL from way back when. And I think the, you know, the, the whole thing that stopped that was the. The Baltimore. Getting taken over by the NFL, but there again, so. Just just didn't, it didn't work out for various reasons. I don't know. If it can happen again. I honestly don't. Don't know if those hurdles are too big to overcome to make it work. Do you think? Yeah. If everything were to go great. That. That that that would be worth that work, that those hurdles, if we could do some sort of joint cross border lead, Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if we can get by those types of things to make it work, if it can work. I would welcome it. Why wouldn't, I mean, You know, the American. Market is so big. If it could work and we can be bringing in. Television dollar revenues. From. The United States. Why not. I mean, I think look at the NFL. I mean, I don't even know what, what is it? What is a, a NFL team? Get in Tevin TV revenue. Do you know, I don't know. I had. But, but. All right. Like what's what is a cap salary cap for an NFL team? It's like one, one, 180. They dropped it this year when 92 or one 82. 182 Million. Yeah. Per team. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I mean. Yeah. I mean, even if, even if. 2.5. Yeah. And I knew I was close. Yeah. I mean, you think about that. I mean, Even if it was, we were getting 20 million. You know what I mean? I think, I think the TV. I can't recall right now. I forget what the, the TV revenue up here for the league is, but I don't know. It's a. I don't know, 80 million. For the whole league, something. I mean, I'm guessing. Right. But. So I think when you, when you look at numbers, TV, revenue, If it's done right. I honestly think there's enough. There's enough interest in football in north America. To be able to, to have another league other than the NFL. I don't think there's enough for you. The XFL. The other league they're bringing in and the NFL. I mean, it's just, you're going to be diluted, right? It's too much. So, but I do think, you know, there, there is enough football. Loving people. That can do this because I believe. It is labor day halfway through the CFL season is the start of the NFL season. So. It's just giving football fans. Extra nine weeks. Of football. And then, you know, then they can do what they want, whether they're going to watch one or both leagues. Cause it's a different game. And I think that's the one thing that. People have to, to do is it's not a better game or a worst game. It's a different game. You know, and. When people understand that the. The strategy behind it. When you know, you miss a field goal, the gold pollster. At the, you know, at the front of the goal line, you've got a 20 yard end zone. Okay. Now comes down to strategy. Are you going to bring it out? Are you going to give up a point? It's a different game. So. You know, I always hear people that love the NFL. I've played NFL have played in the XFL with NFL roles. I played. NFL Europe. And I can remember. I actually played one game in NFL Europe, or I never stepped, I never punted the ball once. So there's no change of possession. There was no opportunity for a return, which to me. You know, those can be very exciting. So. I think the, the CFO game is a different game. I like it. I think it's, it's a lot more creative and. I think there's enough room for it. Yeah. When we talk about TV rights, the NFL they're when they're signed on, I think it goes into effect next year, the per game. Did the NFL gets is the entire CFL TV rights for the, for the season. You know, which is, is. Yeah. Crazy comical. I, I don't want to take up too much of your time. I know you've been so gracious. Before we go. Just, you know, I've heard this a lot with all this XFL CFL stuff right now. It's, it's gotten a lot more attention on the CFL, right? A lot more people talking about the CFL for the last three months, they maybe would have otherwise. That's good. Right? I mean, thoughts just on the extra eyeballs. Whether it's big green or fighting or whatever is happening online about all this. Yeah. You know what I was told a long time ago. Any type of publicity good. Bad or indifferent is good because it's publicity, right. You're you're, you're bringing attention to the league. So I think that whether people are talking. You know, negatively that it's not going to work or that it is going to work and just debating about the whole. Possibility is I think good for the league. You know, and, and it's bringing awareness to the league. I'll never forget. I went down to. Training camp within a full Europe. In Atlanta. And I had a roommate never even. You even heard of the CFL. Never even heard of it. So I think it's a good thing. Elevate any, any other random thoughts before we let you go? Just anything that you had on your mind coming into this. I didn't ask you about. Oh, no, not really. I mean, it's good to see that. You know, we've got. Like you said, you've got the knowledge and everything else. Of the CFL now what's going on and you're talking about it. So. Yeah, I'm. I'm glad to see that. We're getting a little bit more. Awareness and publicity in the states. It's good to be that way. Perfect. Yeah, we're doing our best. I still appreciate this. Like I said, I just, you know, I was talking with Rob couldn't think of a better person in the world. I mean, such a fascinating life. I couldn't imagine that. I want to thank you so much for sharing your time today and that really appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah, no problem. You know, I think maybe it might be a good idea that people that are they're thinking about doing this, maybe they should bring in an, somebody to just discuss this from a player's perspective and see. You know, because it, everyone that's talking about this always talks about it from like a. You know, management level and everything else. From a player's level. What's it going to take to get players to go there. And what are their thoughts? What are they thinking? So maybe they need to do something like that as well. But I'll tell you it's. These NDAs are a blessing and a curse because it is, it does feel like it's this tight walled room. And, you know, fans, players, everybody wants to know what's going on. And it is, it's hard. I mean, it's frustrating, especially from the players. I mean, Yeah, we advocate on here and that's why we cover a lot of the smaller leagues that we do, right. Is to give that, you know, the platform for these guys and yeah. And even right now with the CFL season, you know, leaving players kind of in the dark right now, I mean, we're hearing. I think this morning that June 14th, right. Is kind of where the drop dead date to let everybody know. But yeah. I mean, any thoughts on that before you go just current CFL timing stuff. Yeah, that's. That's I. I I've heard that. It's a go. And so, yeah. So players are going to know. It's a go, but when. It's unfortunate. I think their hands are tied because you're dealing with the. Each individual province. With, when it comes to government. So, you know, They're doing the best they can, but their hands are tied. You know, some governments. Provinces. Those are closing down. They're getting worse. Some are getting better, but obviously you need to have everybody on the same page. The vaccines that are the, you. You know, that's all gonna have to happen. Last year. I was gonna do some consulting with special teams and kicking and you know, now all of a sudden. The league stepped in and has changed. The amount of coaches you can have and some rules. There's lots of there's lots of things going on behind the scene. It's unfortunate, but the players are the ones that are just going to be. They're players. And unfortunately. Nobody cares about the players till the last minute. So it's, and it's, some people will like to hear me say that, but the truth of the matter is it is what it is. Yeah. Now, I guess. Yeah, it's. We need to, I definitely agree. I expand that conversation and get everybody involved. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, Paul, thank you so much for your time. Busy Saturday, I'll let you go. But from all of this year, we really appreciate it. And I mean, you're, you're like an XFL legend. You. I mean, I know you've spent most of your. Figure life incur and the CFL we're. You're an active Elijah into a lot of people. So thank you so much. All right. Thanks very much.

Episode 43 - It’s Edmonton Elks Season!

Well, we certainly picked a good time. To have Matt come on the show. You'll you'll know this. Paul's not here today. Paul is out of town. And so I had reached out to Matt to come on, Matt. We, we picked a good morning to have all this news come out and, and cover this with the USFL. How are you doing today? Yeah, no kidding. Well, I'm the I'm doing good. I think this is some exciting news. It might not be the greatest for the XFL, but in terms of just football in general and giving people opportunities. It's awesome. Yeah. So we're going to get into all this USFL stout. So Matt. Matt Lyons. He writes for accidental news hub. He writes for CFL news hub, and I'm sure we'll be having the USFL news hub. Yeah, I think mark already got the domains and stuff for that. So I, you know, tried to have Matt on the show before we just have never gotten, I don't know, it just has never happened. So Matt's filling in today to cohost. We have a great show coming up. We're going to do all the USFL step here. And then we'll probably talk about it more later in the spring league section, too. But. We have Dave Campbell coming up. I it's the Edmonton elk season. That's kind of, that was. The lead story now it's probably going to be like the USFL lives, colon. You know, the Edmonton elk season, but I, Dave Campbell with the Edmonton Elks is coming up. I talked to him yesterday. And then we have Tom Mann neck. He's the host of the sport market is on TSM radio. Tom does all the like CFL sports, businessy stuff. And so we've been talking a lot about the C two, one eight bill with single game sports betting. So we're going to have Tom come on and then I'm so excited. And Matt, I think you have to be excited for this too. As you know, we covered the XFL and all this stuff. We have Paul McCallum, he played in the original, original XFL back in oh one, I, as a field goal, kicker, he scored the first ever points for the XFL Outlaws back in oh one. And then he's played 23 years for the CFL. He was with the lions and the rough riders and all of that. So, you know, tremendous knowledge there. Right? Very well decorated too. Yeah. So do you think, how do you feel about our guests lineup today? And he's a great lineup of guests. It's very relevant to everything that's been going on in the news too. So. Yeah, you always do a great job of getting good guests. Read. So I tweeted it today. So the breaking news right off the top, Matt and I are recording early. I got to go film a Memorial service later today. Just came out today. USFL Brightwood, CEO, spring league, they're going to relaunch. It's coming back in next year, 2022. This isn't. The announcement today is surprising. I think what, what's not surprising. Jake Henry I'll give him credit friend of the show. I, he had re we talked all about this back in January, that Brian was picking up old USFL trademarks with the cities and all of that. Matt, did you follow any of that trademark stuff before all this came out? A little bit, but I wasn't too in the loop on all that stuff, just cause I was never too knowledgeable of the USFL in general. It was like long before my time. So I couldn't, I would have never guessed it was coming back. Yeah. It's tough. You know, I mean, here is, you know, we talk about the exit fell, right. With a lot of the. Baggage and stuff. I mean, I think the USFL also has some baggage. I think it's an interesting movie anyway, so they came out. So Brian had acquired a bunch of this stuff. They're coming back in 2022. They're going to be on Fox. Fox is a minority. Owner. I have the press release here. Brian Woods. And we, I kind of thought the, honestly, the, the TSL media people were on vacation this week because we got that. I just got confirmed where we should have a big guest next week coming on XFL fans will be excited, but. I kind of thought they were on vacation. I hadn't heard from them. And then we'll obviously this makes sense, right? That they were kind of. And for all this stuff. But so Brian Woods, he says I'm extremely passionate about football and the opportunity to work with Fox sports to bring them back to USFL in 2022. It was an endeavor worth pursuing. We look forward to providing players a new opportunity to compete in the professional football league and giving fans everywhere. The best football viewing product possible during what is typically a period devoid of professional football. What was your, you were up early with me this morning. What were your thoughts on this? Yeah. Like, like I said, I thought it was awesome. I mean, it definitely caught me off guard and it's not going to be LA it's going to be more competition for the XFL, especially if they're starting a year later than the USFL, but. Yeah. In terms of opportunities for players and coaches and everyone, I think it's great. Yeah, I, I think this is for the players. Great for the fans. Great. I think this is horrendous for the XFL. I really do. Yeah. And I'm going to, we're going to talk more about it later with this single game sports betting that, you know, I think that. I kinda think the XFL kinda got a little fleeced here. I really do. I think, you know, w with the CFL and all those talks. I think now the CFL is so high on getting this money from the single game sports betting. I don't think that they care where the money's coming from is, is. At least what I think. And I'm not, you know, I just talked with people with ever that that's my feeling is that, that, that it's not. It makes sense to me that the talks, the interest in XFL has gone down as the betting interest has gone up. Right. Because at one way or another, they're going to get some cash out of this. Right. And the change. I think it's bad for that. You know, we talked last week on the show there's already, you know, do you see all this anti XFL, anti. Rock stuff like I do on, on the, on Twitter and on the Facebooks. Definitely. Yeah. I can't really. I don't. I definitely don't agree with it. But I do see where people are coming from with it, with the CFLs. Well from the CFL side of things. But yeah. Sorry. I started spaced. A little there. It's just, it's hard because, you know, and we talked last week. If the rock and all that, you know, there was no other option. Right. The accident would've gone away. And so it's hard now. So you have this anti, I am seeing a lot of anti XFL sentiment. And then now we have this USFL thing coming back next year. Right. We've already, I mean, it's not been official. Right. But we're assuming you re you like I am right. That the XFL isn't coming back till 2023. Yeah, the timeline is just, it doesn't line up anymore. There'd be too much to do and too little time to get it going. As, as big of a deal as they want it to be. So, so yeah, it will definitely be a challenge. That throws a real wrench in their plans. I think they're going to have to come up with something real big, relatively soon. To kind of top that if they want to. Stay relevant and in the forefront of like spring football, Oh, I absolutely agree. And you know, I think people will have questions. They'll go, well, how come the spring air? You know, the USFL, how can they, you know, announce in June? And then go next year, right? Why can't the XFL do that? And we've talked about it before, but it obviously bears worth repeating that. Danny and the rock have a much bigger vision, right? For the XFL and, and, you know, programming and year round. And maybe that's too big, right? Maybe people just want 12 weeks of spring football or 10 weeks, whatever the UFL FL that's really hard to say USFL. We do, but I mean, do you think, do you get what I'm saying? Where like, We're it seems like you guys have fell is going to be a little bit more like grounded, just football, more football, right. And do you have a preference? Do you care? Do you, what do you think. I mean, I don't really have a preference because in the end I'm going to be most, eh, Enticed by the on-field product. So if a football will be football to me, but I do think that the type of ramp up that the XFL is looking for would be extremely beneficial in the long run, just because of all the people they're connected to and the brands you can get involved. And just the way that they have the power they have to spread. The word is. Unmatched honestly. Yeah, it's just hard. I, yeah, it's one of those, like, do we want it now? Or do we want like, do I want to eat my candy now? Right. And like, I'm happy or do I want, and that is kind of what I feel like this is, and, and I'm. You know, obviously we're kind of processing this real time. I mean, it came out. I tweeted. I said, this is proved that Brian Woods. Listen to the mark cast because he, you know, courteously posted this, knowing that we were going to record early today, but that's kind of what I'm analyzing real time is like, this is the shot in the arm. Like we're going next year. It's football. Whereas the XFL. It's not as sexy. It's a two year long bill drive, but maybe that's going to last a lot longer. We don't know. But I do think that we are looking at like, I, whatever happens with the USFL now will be like, what would have happened to the extra belt with a gone for it? I mean, it is kind of like we're seeing that without actually living through it. You know what I mean? Yeah. True. I didn't think about it like that, but, but I agree a hundred percent. So this is interesting. I'm going to play this from Twitter. So this is from Fox sports and then USFL sta. They already have a, their Twitter up. It's like USFL official. But Fox sports, put this out. Interesting. Doug Flutie was the one and we're going to talk as you, you sent this over to me, but Doug Flutie was the one that kind of helped do the announcement of that. So let's, let's play this 42nd clip. USFL is back. See you in 2022 it's football. It is real football. It's it's pro football at the highest level. It's just being played in the spring. When I go back to our days of the USFL, that's what it was. We had Reggie white, we had Jim Kelly, we had Steve young, we had Herschel Walker. We had name after name. We had 15 guys that played in the us with all the played in the NFL pro bowl. The following year. And the talent level is out there. It is an alternative. For some players rather than going to the NFL. And it's an opportunity for other players. So th that's interesting, you know, obviously definitely with the USFL, you know, with the CFL, right. With a NFL too. You had pointed out. And we had an email from one of our listers already to talk about this week from. Oh, Dan, I deleted the, where the name came from. One of our listeners, Daniel, I believe had tweeted in that, that they. They got picked up. The, we had talked that the maximum football game, the Doug Flutie CS, CFL, PlayStation, I think two or three kind of digital game. They went bankrupt. We talked all about that and they they're getting picked up and that there's already. Has a buyer for the IP. So you had what you tweeted, what was your thoughts? Well initially before the stuff that came out this morning, we were kind of thinking, oh, well maybe the XFL bought it. They kind of had a hand in, or there was actually leaks that came out that, that the maximum football was working on an XFL scan of their game. So that was just kind of the, the media connection to make, but then the stuff comes out this morning and we'll it's Doug Flutie is maximum football. So maybe the IP ended up in the hands of the USFL and the spring league. Or Fox. Yeah, I think bro. You know, this is, this is tremendous also. Yes. Worth noting. USFL gonna be on Fox. So I tweeted like, I think that's going to be harder for the XFL to get a foxtail. No, they're not going to Fox. XFL is on Fox. They're not getting the Fox deal. Obviously you can do ESPN, you know, ABC with Disney, or you can do Fox, but like, yeah, that means that. I was just, I was. No, it's not going to be harder. It's going to be impossible. They're not going to do that. There's no way if box has a minority ownership in this league. But it's cool. Hey, so now, now, I mean, we can stay on the mark asked that we had football. Owner on the podcast, Ryan. On a couple of weeks ago, I. I mean, we didn't know at the time, but. It's exciting. I, any other thoughts on this before we get into Edmonton stuff, I have some notes later for spring league for this year, but any other like wide ranging thoughts about this? Not too much. Aside from I, I went, when Doug Flutie made that announcement, I didn't realize how many. Like superstars played in the old USFL. That was news to me, but that's awesome. Yeah, it's I just, I don't have the passion there. I know like Josh Davis already sad, you know, our listeners AUL, some of the older generation, I don't know how that plays. Right. I don't know how, like, okay, we're resurrecting this league, you know, it played in like 83 to 85 or whatever. I don't know. Again, W what are the pros and cons? Like, does anyone give a crap about the old? I don't know the trademarks. That's interesting to me. I mean, I know it doesn't cost a lot. Right. But we've talked before w is the XFL, even though the only spent. You know, 28 million or whatever with the debt, like, was that worth. Having this yellow dragons, I had an article and we probably won't get into it now, but five 38, they do. They're like. There are. You know, sports we ever blog, they did this whole article about how difficult it is. Naming teams and dealing with the branding and dealing with the logos and what all that stuff. And so, I mean, maybe it is worth not having to do that. R and D I mean, the Edmonton Alex, you know, spent 10 months, right. Trying to figure out the name. So. I don't know. I think it's interesting, but I do feel really not great for the XFL and I feel better about. Us branding away from the XFL. If I'm going to be honest. Yeah, I agree. I think it well at this point too, there's so many potential options coming in the next couple of years for people between, I mean, you got the spring league hub. You the, the USFL, which yes. Is very difficult to say. The XFL. FCF FCF. Yeah. And who knows maybe more will pop up. So, I mean, at least we're getting opportunities for people. That's, that's definitely a good thing out of it. Yeah, I, it is, and, and this is better. And I will say, you know, Brian Scott, friend of the show with the spring league, we were talking a couple of weeks ago during one of the games. And he was like, wait, The XFL isn't coming back next year and I'm like, no. Like we're either. Where have you been? And he's like, I can't wait till 20, 23. Right? Because you have these guys, right? Like, we've talked about mango a lot. I got a note here. I gotta talk to you before we move on. But. You have these guys, like you're in the peak of your career now. Right? And so. USFL is going to get a crap ton of the talent that. It's not waiting for the XFL. And so, I mean, for, for Brian Woods, like I think this is a really smart, I mean, Again, it's just that difference between building this league for culture or building it to play. But I think, yeah, people just want to see football. So yeah. Yeah. The people that really do want football football will be there regardless of how well advertise it is. Yeah, absolutely. Well, yeah, I mean that bruise that with the spring lake, you know, with the, we get half a million people just, you know, just having happenstance tuning into that. But no, I mean, spring league, I think, has been the success. Obviously Fox has been happy with the results. I mean, clearly to go head forward with this. So, you know, we can nitpick, you know, 98,000 viewers on the Thursday versus 68 or whatever, but. One note before we get into the CFL stuff, Matt mango friend of the show, he's got a couple of, and I told him I would plug this on the show. W when he was a kicker in the spring league, you know, last year when the XFL was working with the spring league to develop the rules, Matt got a bunch of these prototype balls to kick with it. Cause they were like testing the kickoffs and all the different rules and stuff. And so Matt is selling these balls. You can buy them. He'll sign them a tweet at him. Matt mangle. He's got, I think he had three. He sold one to XFL. Jim, of course, XFL Jim, you. You know, like God on that, I just, he offered them to me. I just said I'm not, that's not my. I'm not, I'm never going to do justice with that. Right. I'm like the I'm the hanging stuff guide. Do you want, do you have any interest in the Matt mangle signed football from the prototype? League. I mean, it's cool. I just don't know if I personally would want it. But I definitely get why people would. It is cool if I had like some extra money to throw at it, maybe, but. Right now, not so much. Yeah. Josh Davis was like, I might need a mortgage. Josh Davis was all over that. So anyway, but I told Matt, I would do that. We got his, I bought one of his jerseys. I, it should be here in the F I was going to be here today. We're going to unbox next week on the show, lead story. Now, all that breakfast out of the way with the USFL we're going to in maths, like looking at the Google doc rhythm, get through all this stuff. What was your reaction to the Edmonton Elks? The whole thing on, I guess, Tuesday. I think they nailed it, like everything from how they presented it to the logos themselves and the rebrand and like the helmets look. Awesome. I think, I just think everything looks awesome. It seems like. We've been kind of criticizing the CFL's social media presence for a while. And then all of a sudden it just like turned up. That day kind of across the board for the whole league. I haven't been paying too much attention if they're still on stuff, but. It's also the first like positive news they've had in a long time as a league. So, but yeah, no, I think they nailed it. I think they nailed it. Yeah. It's and so I, I we'll, we'll get through. I have a couple of notes here and then we'll toss. I sat down with, like I said, with Dave Campbell about this, that's what I said. I'm like, it is so great to have some positivity come out. It's just been like a crap storm for months. I feel like with the CFL, there's been no, nothing positive. Eros is yelling at team owners. You know, we've got all, we're talking to this health updates, all this stuff. It was so cool. I think it looks great. I have my Edmonton hat on and my flag, I of course ordered a hat immediately. Dave Campbell already has a hat cause you know, he's cool like that. But I think it's great. I think the logo looks sick. I think they should have called it the elk bell. I think the S I, I understand. If you, if you have to quote Webster's dictionary and say, we talked to Lynn. Linguistic experts about all this you've already lost your battle. What, what do you think about the estimate? Yeah. I mean, I, I, I just don't really see why it's necessary. Like I get that it's both that both elk and elk are correct. But. Yeah, I just don't really see why it's necessary. Cause they also filed an entirely separate trademark for that like months after they had there. Their list narrowed down. So it definitely that adding the S definitely came late in there. Their whole process. Oh, I had a tweet here from Jason Gregor. He was on a couple of weeks ago, a friend of the show. I, he said according to the team, president Elks, Eagles and Al counts were the top three. So. Yeah. So I guess ALK wasn't even in there, right? It was Alex is elk was the, like, when they listed the top seven, it was like elk Elks. Right. And then L counts, Eagles evergreens. Right? There was like ever golds or something like that, too. So what, when no, I just w to be remiss to talk about this. Edmonton. There was a whole horrific thing this week with the remains of the children being found outside of the indigenous residential school. I did see a lot of fans, obviously, Edmonton didn't want to do the announcement when they did their general meeting a couple of weeks ago, because they announced that they lost like $7 million and all of that. But some people did think that like that's very much prominently in the news right now is this discovery of these remains of these 215 children. And so I don't, obviously we're not like a Debbie downer podcast, but I do want to like, you know, condolences. I mean it's horrific and they're going to want to do more research. I saw CFL Reddit. Brayden's a friend of ours. You know, there's all these other schools from the past that they want to go back and look at, but basically, you know, Just horrific, but, but they did. That was some feedback I did see was like, well, maybe we should have waited a little bit about that, but I think they did their best. Dave. Tweeted out Dave Campbell, when he was at the event that the CEO, Chris pressin and president he's optimistic for the August 5th date, he says they've had written and verbal approvals all come in from the provinces. And protocols for fans in stadiums will be submitted jointly. So any other. I have thoughts about them feeling confident. How do you feel about the CFL season? As long as everything stays on track with their reopening plan, I think they can definitely do it. It's going to be cutting it real close though. Cause. I believe they said for they're going to be in each step for 21 days, at least. And. I mean, they're going to be monitoring things the whole time. So if it's something. Takes a turn for the worst. You're likely going to extend past that 21 days. But if things stay on track, I don't see why. They, they can't. It reminds me. And I know you just moved up here to Washington and it really reminds me of last year when we did the whole cause I'm in the wedding industry. And so we covered a lot of these guidelines and stuff and how many people could be at weddings and what were the rules? And it was the same thing. The Ansley, our governor would come out and say like, You know, this step is at least three weeks or at least a month or whatever, and everyone would come out and go, okay. So, you know, 21 day is 20, which is like, It's at least that I get to delete that and it's no less could be more so. It is something just, just to think about in that regard, but obviously I'm Edmonton. You. You know, they wouldn't. I don't think they would do all this, if they didn't feel good about it. Right. Yeah. And they at least want to be on the forefront of that. What other, no, just, you know, a lot of people upset about the Edmonton Eskimos thing. Dave talks about this, like stuck in the past, wanting to be, you know, upset about everything. Dave is kind of, I think like a lot of people like get over it, you know, move on the record. Books are the same it's we deal with it here with the Redskins, right. Cleveland Indians. I mean, it's a lot of these things. Any other thoughts about like, kind of th that, that nostalgic kind of taking over maybe too much? And I mean, I, I get it. You like the team that you've been ruined for your whole life, but. It's something you gotta kind of get over, like when you were. When, when it's collectively decided by like a large group of people that you're offending them, you kinda got to take some steps to not do that anymore. Yeah. And you know, and, and we, we have quotes, you know, from the president, you know, they always meant it to be. You know, empowering and the symbol of what, you know, resilience and all these things. I understand all that, but you know, I, I think it was a good move. They said Chris president said they have the name and logo since February, the toughest thing was making sure it all remained secret and you know, that's good. I mean, I kind of heard it. I mean, I kind of heard Alex. But, you know, whatever we didn't know about it. So we're going to tie, we're going to take a break here. Toss to the interview with Dave. Dave was making the rounds. He was on Rob Peterson. He was on CF perspective and I got him for about 10 minutes. So we will go check in with Dave and then we'll be back to go through some more of the CFL stuff. Cool. I'm ready. We'll do a break here. How are you feeling so far? Good. We're just rolling. Yeah. It's definitely nice that it's not like live, that would have a lot more pressure on, I was pretty nervous when we were on the other. The last podcast than I was live. Well, this is getting your camera's better too. Cause the other one that was kind of off. Like we can eat and everything. So that was good. Okay, well, we'll get going here. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate Dave coming on. I had pre-booked Dave. Weeks ago I tweeted at him. I said, Dave, can I pre-book you for the week that the Edmonton could be any time, you know? And he goes, You got it, brother. And so he came on man of his word. He was making all the rounds yesterday. So I really appreciate that. I've got some notes here about the current CFL season. There was a big interview with the Montreal Elowitz president, Mario. To Cine. Talking about how they're not going to have any preseason games, any thoughts on that? I guess that's something we don't think about. And it's like, oh, that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, like you said, it makes sense. I mean, if you're going to be running right up to the. Start date of the, the league with the reopening plan. Then you can't really do pre-season games, especially. Cause I feel like at that point you'd still probably want fans in the stands. So at that point, you're just throwing money away. That's actually a good point, right? Yeah, no, that's an excellent point. You know, like how are we going to do X. Sorry, I'm burping here with my coffee. How are we going to do preseason? Yeah. With no fans, right? Like who's oh yeah, let's go check it out without reading the B. So you're hungry for that. It is interesting. You know, the NFL last year had all the issues week two and three with injuries. You know, obviously this year with their 18 game season, right? Then they cut down. It's only, is it two weeks or pre-season now what's the NFL doing now? I believe it's three weeks of preseason and then one extra game on the, on the regular season. So, you know, I mean, I, again, it's one of those like, oh, that makes sense. Like, we didn't think about it, but like you said, you know, even the, even just monetarily, like we're not going to be having fans in for preseason games, but like time-wise too, I'll just, it'll be curious to see injury wise. Kind of how that, how that shakes out. I have a note here. From Solomon. Ellie. [Unknown] can never say that I've the CFO there. The players association, president, I guess they're all going through like COVID protocol meetings. A lot of the team leaders are a lot of the players are, and he was saying. They sent this last Friday on the 28th. To get, yeah. To allow you to get your affairs in order and prepare for football, you'll have to attend a team. You will have attended the team informational session over the past couple of weeks. You know, your, whatever people, your reps and stuff, we're all going to be a part of that. Just an interesting, I mean, these are all things that like, We talk about transparency. Like that's coming out from the players association, which I guess is kind of the CFL. But again, like these are things that I feel like the CFL could we talking about, like we're writing their players through this, we're talking here's screenshots from zoom meetings. You get what I'm saying? They get up their social media presence very easily by just making announcements about all this stuff. Yeah. I mean, I'm like scouring, like. You know, the fricking Montreal Gazette or whatever, like trying to find these stories. I mean, It's not, you know, again, they, they kicked it out of the park this week with the Edmonton milks thing, but that's like one. You know, it's like one, one thing. There was the debate last night about the CFL. Media presence. And I pointed out that the XFL has like 120,000 more followers than the CFL does, but we're not on Twitter, but I know it's keeping track and that the feedback was well that the CFL we have, you know, smaller population, that's always the thing. I follow the CFL. I live in Seattle. You follow the CFL, you live in Bellevue. So I don't, I don't want to hear about, you know, a geographic demographic, you know, I G geographical lines, you know, determining why the CFL has lost followers. Yeah. Anyone can get on Twitter. Brayden Brayden, Twitters, worldwide. Okay. The numbers, the numbers of population doesn't always work. Yeah. It doesn't always work out for all this other stuff. I you see this update from Josh Davis. Are you looking at the Google doc or I can read that. So we won't, we know who this player is. We won't say who this player is, but Josh Davis got some information from one of the CFL players. Do you want to run through that? Yeah, there was a. He's self quart, one player, self quarantine for a week prior to flight. There's also an app that tracks players and players are reporting. On seven, two to quarantine for another week, and then camps will start on the 10th of July. Yeah. Yeah. So, and then yeah, the BC lions are going there. We talked last week, they're going to report on the second quarantine and then camp starts in the 16th. So it's interesting. I mean, I, you know, appreciate Josh. You know, pushing that out in the players. Yeah. So apparently we're going to self quarantine for a week. Fly up there. Quarantine for another week, which I guess makes sense. You know, we, we talk a lot. If these players are vaccinated already heading up, you gotta kind of wonder, you know, if we reduce that, but I guess that's fine if you kind of split it and do one on one. You know, get going there. We're getting close. I mean, we're going to find it's kind of a Cropper. Or get off the toilet. You know, we're getting, we're getting. Getting close here. Saskatchewan government. They're saying it's premature to speculate on the number of fans. And this is one of those things. Like the premier Scott Moe comes out, he presents the steps and then you have. We taught. Well, that means in 21 days, we're going to have, it's like, no, this is the plan and it's fine. Th they're got a roadmap, you know, we talked about it's a three-step plan based on 70% of the vaccinations. But they are working on it. The number of fans in the stands will depend on the number of factors. It would be premature to speculate on what that might look like in August. Any other thoughts that you haven't shared on kind of this part already? I know we kind of hit part of that with the Edmonton talk. Not not much besides it just makes sense. Like what we were saying, you. Like there's too many factors that are still to be determined to figure out. Just how full stadiums can be. If everything goes according to plan, then. Great. But. You gotta really bank on that. And this is where we get to it. It's like immediately this discussion where fires come out, we're thrilled to hear from the premier that we'll be able to welcome fans back to mosaic stadium without capacity receptions. One set three is achieved. So it's like, you know, again, That's fine. I mean, we're working towards it, but it's like cart before the horse here, stuff like we need to get through some of this stuff. Ontario that we talked about Lisa McCloud in the past, she is going to be monitoring. You know, they did the 400, 550 fully vaccinated people for game seven on Monday. And so she says, they're going to kind of monitor that over the next couple of weeks. Raj was really that happy about that. That's not really angry tweet from a Raj talking about like, Well they're vaccinated. And like, I kind of like. Is that like a real good sample size? I don't know. I mean, Yeah. Any other thoughts on that with the, with the game seven and the five 50. I get what a rush was saying, like, why are you monitoring? People that are fully vaccinated rather than people that aren't. But I mean, At the same time. You want to make sure the vaccines are working? So. I mean, maybe you don't have to put it, make it as big of a deal as it seems to be, but. I don't think it's a bad idea. It says it's a, it's a small sample size. EO is the first fans in the stands in the province and over 443 days since the onset. I mean, I, I, again, I would rather be safe than sorry, but I, it was. Like Rashi was like really angry about that. I feel that's interesting. So this is the next kind of big thing I want to talk about. And then we're going to toss to one of our interviews here, coming up with Tom. This big Arlo cake came out last Friday. W from Nixle, Seoul, ski. Who I believe is going to be on the show on the 17th. I think we're trying to schedule that or record them, whatever that, that week of that is. But in a couple of weeks, Nick's going to come on. Nick is a former gaming executive and he was on Ottawa. TSN 1200 and he was talking about how legalized sports betting is. You know, obviously I'm the cost, but now it's going to be this game changer in the world, a guaranteed life for the CFL. Before I go into my rant, any thoughts you have about sports betting, single against sports betting. Yeah, I don't know about guaranteed life. Might be. Some help, but I don't know about guaranteed life. We, yeah, we, we caught it. Donk and Hodge last week where they said, well, you know, this is great because the money that we lose. We're going to make up with the 20, you know, we lose 20 million a year on a good year, 10 to 20 million. We're going to make 20 million with it, with the sports betting. So like, It's all we know. This is great. And then it's all profit for them. Like. If they, if they, if the best case scenario is just balancing the books. W my, my thing about this is. Oh, this is my big quote. Not to bring it to the simplest point possible, but if we want to save one of the greatest identifiable Canadian institutions, the Canadian football league, this is literally the easiest way to do it. And to me, and I was talking a lot with some of the moderators on the CFL board. Or boards, whatever on Facebook, like. The mentality behind this is that we can, we can fix our business model without actually changing anything. Is what I don't like. Right. Like, I don't like. People that criticize the XFL, that whole thing as being, you know, this hail Mary and all that. To me, I get that this is more longterm. Okay. We can add gambling for 20 years or whatever, but do you get what I'm saying there? What are your thoughts on kind of that fixing, but not actually changing anything? I mean, I do think that the sports betting helps a little bit. I mean, at least you're breaking even, but the goal isn't to break even the goal is to become profitable. And like, that's not going to happen if you're just breaking even. So you definitely going to have to change some more stuff. Along the way. It's a, it's not a bad idea. You it's definitely going to help, but you're going to have to do a few more things probably to make your league a bit more sustainable. And, you know, and I don't, you know, again, I'm not trying to poo poo. On anything, right? I mean, if this is going to solve whatever, that's great. I said Nixon going to come on and we're going to talk to Tom today. I mean, I want to be proven wrong from this. I still get a lot of it would be cool. Yeah. That was our big thing last week. Like, wouldn't it be cool if we did this and what if we did that? And just, you know, this, this, like fixing anything, I just don't like, like fixing your car without actually like, oh, we just, we're going to put, you know, we're going to put some tape on the engine and keep going down the road. And you're like, well, we need to. You know, we actually might need to get some stuff going. So, so there was, there's a couple of these. So the bill is in the, the Senate right now. And so they had it, it was studied last night as of Wednesday. By the Senate committee on banking, trade and commerce this week. And so there was a couple of key quotes that I got. It's going to be read again on this Friday, and then there's going to be a third meeting next week on Wednesday, a couple of key quotes that came out last night that I pulled from CFL news. Randy Ambrozy this is a quote. It says the league will turn to experts to help the CFL, understand how to reach this new, younger, more diverse fan base. I had two takeaways from that. Do you have any takeaways from that? Very interesting quote, before I give my rant. I'm just curious who the experts are. Well, I'm curious about that. Also. I. Araj took the words out of my mouth. Again, I don't want. We talk about Russian soup, but you know, he's bringing good content. He goes. The tweet was you're just asking the experts now. Honestly. How long have we been taught, you know, They're trying to faster and what I've kind of gathered. I'm not a scholar on Canadian politics, but I think it's like a lot of the current people that are in office are trying to get this through because there's new elections coming up. So if they don't and Dan Ralph was talking about this friend of the show that. There are many more government bills before the Senate. So if this isn't passed by the time both the Senate and house leave for the summer or later this month, it's not going to happen because they're going to go to the polls. So they're like, they're really trying to like fast track this. And if that happens, they have to start the entire process over again. Yeah, right. And I don't. There was I I'll, I, I had a thing on here that oh yeah. Dunk thinks that if they get this done, they'll be ready to take wagers by September. That's good luck. I mean, hopefully if that's a thing, because you're trying to make money for this year, but I think Arizona legalized. Sports gambling at like the end of last year. And they're targeting, making it like beat you. You're actually able to bet. On the day that of NFL kickoff this year. So like it's going to, it takes a while. I just, I don't see us starting the CFL season in COVID with all these things. Also passing the house bedding and getting them Al going by September. I mean, God bless them. Oh. The other thing was when Amber, as he was talking about turning to the experts, I'm like, wait, so you mean that people that own the league and run the league can, can outsource and bring in other experts to help them, because that was the criticism with the XFL, right. Is like, Well, the rock has never run the football league. Well, Randy Ambrozy has never commissioned the league that allows sports betting before, but that doesn't mean that we don't. You can, you can bring in an expert. I would have brought them in for now. But yeah, they said that they feared delay with this bill could kill it. And it could be lost. Like you said, they, it all kind of goes back to nothing. And after that, right, they got to kind of start from scratch. Yeah. So we're going to toss the Tom, Tom is going to be joining this year. I got a lot of questions about that. Again, I wanted to be schooled on this. I'm happy to be proven wrong. We're going to toss to Tom, and then we're going to come back. We've got some more Farhana notes about kind of the CFL. Some more notes about XFL staff. And then obviously we've got our big Paul interview coming up too. So stay tuned. Here we go. How are you feeling? Feeling good. All right, we're going to get. We'll probably get rid of some of this stuff later. Okay. Where are they Tom? Very much for coming on the show, really appreciate him sharing his time and expertise. Do you feel like you learned a lot talking with Tom? Definitely. We're hardly. We record these out at words there, I was like, oh, Maybe Tom totally blew it. And it was no. Anyway. So I thank you, Tom. We still got Paul coming up in the show is to make sure you stay tuned for that Paul McKellen with the XFL and the CFL. It's just an interesting qualifier. Han was talking on the Jason friends show. Jason Gregor. He thinks Randy and Brosy will survive the pandemic turmoil as a commissioner. He says, I'll be honest. I really like him. He's got vision. He's not afraid to think outside the box and not afraid to take arrows. How have you thought that the great commissioner of the CFL Randy Ambrosie has done in the time now that we have been covering the CFL? I mean, I think everybody would wish for a little more transparency. That's kind of been established, but in terms of what he's been doing, I can't say he's done anything too bad. Like, like there's nothing. I can't say I, if I was more of a diehard CFL fan, I at the moment wouldn't be calling for his job, at least, especially if his plan works and they get on the field. People are probably going to look at it more as a hero. Well, that's true, right? W was it live long enough to, or be the hero or live long enough to become the villain? Yeah. He did really sit with me last week. We had Scott Stinson on and he was talking about how Ambrozy does have these big visions. And maybe we don't need big visions. Maybe we can focus more on. Montreal. Toronto BC. That really stuck with me and that I will, will continue to stick with me that, you know, maybe the exit fell and we're looking at the bedding and we're looking at the global stuff, but maybe. Yeah, maybe we could be sitting a little bit more at home. I dunno. I just always thought that was really staggered me last week, far. Hold on. We got physical. Our home was making the rounds. He also was talking about how he wants an NH style percentage cap to make the CFL quarters salaries more sustainable. Do you, are you big NHL guy with the salary cap? I'm not a huge like business side of the NHL guy, but I am kind of an NHL fan, but I am aware of how that works. It's basically. Well, in terms of the CFL, how they would do it, it likely be sort of a forced Tom Brady, like pay cut, like, you know, how he takes pay cuts. Just be able to spread the money out to the rest of the team and kind of be like that. Does that mean? If you have a great quarterback, that's making all the money. That's that's cool. But if he can't stay up right, or he doesn't have people to throw to or a defense to stop anything, then it's useless. So. I liked it. I liked that idea. You got to spread the money around if you want your teams to be successful. Yeah, I just, I don't like reducing salaries. May I get that. We're kind of trying to reduce it to, to expand that to other players, but. You know, I mean, when the quarterback's, you're making 700,000, I know that's a lot for the CFL. Right. But, you know, I mean, what did you know, press. Dak Prescott. You know, 140 million for four years or whatever. I mean, like whether we do inherit. I won't say 100,000, you know, we really gotta, you gotta really kind of cap on that. But no, I mean, it's interesting, again, it's just for a Honda is big on like making cuts, making cuts. We're talking about seasonal employees. You're talking about cutting down things and, and. Yeah, I just can't, I don't feel like you can grow with that. I don't feel like you can grow sustainably with like nickel and dime, like penny pinching. Yeah. So at some point you got to stop trimming the fat and like start building back up onto something. Yeah. I just congrats up our Honda. He did retire from coaching. Last week. He announced Hayak football after 18 years, you know, I know far haunts me on the show before. He really passionate about that and coaching high school football, and then he like tons of press and everyone gave him congrats and stuff. So I just wanted to give a shout out to far, hon. One other thing we missed this last week. I think this came out right after we recorded it. Did you see all this Eros yelling at Bob young from the Thai cats? Did you see all this? Not now. Must've missed that. So this is. So, yeah. Died last week, or I stand at the teams, aren't all on the same page, all that stuff. You know, Bobby Young owner, the Thai cats come out and said, you know, we're playing all that stuff. So he goes, all the CFL teams are keen to play as soon as possible. Our tweets about playing our response to pessimistic press stories. So then this is all on Twitter. You know, rush rights. Oh, it's the media's fault. Of course, Bob. Ah, All wanted to play last year and it was immediate, small, too. Right. And, you know, cause obviously some didn't want to play last year and then either. So then, then Bob tweets back. Don't worry. I love the Canadian sports media, even when they are wrong. He goes and then Raj finally dropped the hammer. He goes. Were they wrong when they reported the score of the 2019 grey cup? All the new to you that we'll have Canadian football this fall. Dicey dicey stuff there. What do you think about friend of the show? Sometimes friend of the show, Raj Madani. So sometimes I like as fire and sometimes I don't. But no, I think he. I agree with them on this one. I think it's like too early for the Thai cat's owner to be saying stuff like that. I mean, obviously you want to be on the field, but everyone does. I think, yeah, it was a lot of like, we, I, I think I said like trying to be on the right side of history of like, well, we want them to know that we were going to play. So no matter what happens, like we're going to be fine, but it is. I just liked it. It's basically what I do with people, but the Roshes it's way more like famous and popular and whatever, but, or, you know, or. I bought color, but I do like, like trolling the CFL team owners. I think that that is, is tremendously fun. We're going to talk hour a day break. We're going to talk to Paul Paul with, you know, the lions, Roughriders, the Outlaws, all that stuff. Paul's going to be calling in and we're going to talk with him. And then I have some XFL notes and then we'll kind of run through some spring league staff and then we'll get outta here. Cause we were tackling the ton of stuff here. So stay tuned. All right. I'm going to cut this stuff out. And cause we got to do, we got it. There we go. Okay. So we are going to. That was the break here. I think we'll just knock this stuff out. We gotta do an add to okay. Okay. There we go. Okay. We've got 20 minutes. Yeah, we should be good. Why they Paul for coming on the show, Matt, what do you think about our wonderful chat with Paul? Always great talking to XFL players. XFL CFL legends, one other. No, I forgot to mention. In the show. I did like that. The CFL Twitter account was tweeting about national burger day. This, this last week. This was in all the turmoil. This was before the Edmonton thing. I think this was like a Memorial day, which yeah, I don't think they. They celebrate in Canada, but I don't think they really it's like the same holiday. But they were thinking about national burger. They asked like, wow, at least the, at least the CFL is, is Stan busy with that? You know, all this other stuff going on, but we were tweeting about national. Ah, This is exciting. You know, this, you follow the spring league. What do you think about the Argos resigning? MOCAD mental Thompson. I'm excited for him. I think that's awesome. I loved him in the spring league. He was not only great. At like on the field, he was a, he was a fun character. Like. I, I remember talking to Mike Mitchell a little while back and cause it seemed like Bethel Thompson just kind of disappeared. For a while. And so I asked Mike what he was up to and he has been saying he was holding out for a starting job somewhere. It looks like you found it. No. I agree with that. And I agree when the TSL announcer. You know, there. They're rosters this year. You're very surprised he wasn't backing. A lot of the people came back, you know, Kevin Anderson and all that. I mean the aviators. I've been like nothing this year without McClard Bethel Thompson. You know, playing for the spring league. I mean, it's just been, it's been pretty poor about that. Are you frozen? Yeah. I'm not sure what happened there. That's okay. Huh. Like my camera's still on. It's just not picking anything up. Sorry about that. That's okay. Hmm. Should I try, like leaving the call and coming back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Huh. That is so weird. Stop video. Start video. Yeah, I don't know what's going on. Do you want to unplug your camera? Yeah. There we go. Okay. It's never happened before. That's fine. Now my. Lighting's all off though. Yeah. There we go. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I just thought when they announced the spring league rosters this year and McClellan Bethel Thompson was not there. I was very surprised and I was curious, you know, it's been quiet. I mean, the aviators have just totally fallen apart this year without him on the team. I mean, you've been watching the spring, like right. Yeah, the aviators have definitely not doing, not been doing nearly as good as I did with him. Yeah, so that's exciting. I, you know, congrats to him. Well, I'd love to, I love the game on the show. I think he's a fun guy. I think he's a, he's a rowdy rowdy kids. So that would be fun. A couple other notes. There was a great, I have my wonderful, you can't see here. My, my Fitz magic Washington football shirt that came this week. I ordered one from my mom as well. She's a big Fitz magic fan. I said, do you want one for your birthday? She goes, I would love one. So I got one for mama at Marc house. But they're at the Richmond times, dispatch. This phenomenal article about why Taylor Hideki should be the starter. Fits a Fitzpatrick should be after. What are your thoughts on the QF? That the QB dilemma and Washington with [unknown]. Well, I get why most NFL fans would PR that aren't too familiar with Hynek you would. Be more high on Fitzpatrick. But having seen Hideki play and what he did last year in the playoffs, like you got to give him a chance. He's younger. Like you have a potential future quarterback for your franchise with them. You got to give them the opportunity. It fits magic, runs out of gas at some point, almost every season. So do you need to, you can put them in and find Nikki doesn't work out, but. I think you have to give high Nike a chance because you have your potential future quarterback. The whole team was rallying around him last year, too. So it's going to be tough to have somebody. Or your team rally around someone that hard and then bring in a new leader and be like, no, this is the guy now. I mean, it happens all the time. So. Yeah, I just, I, I think maybe you do a two a thing in Miami, you know, Fitzpatrick starts to season, and then, you know, we have Jaime Keystart kind of later on, but I'm going to be, Washington's my team, I'm all in. I got my Jersey and everything, so I'm going to be very, very excited about that, but I just thought it was, I love the, even the, you know, the, the DC media is, is picking up on the high Niki thing. The Packers sign, Deandre Tomkins, right? Former Penn state talent. He was on the defenders. They signed them as a wide receiver. Obviously all of that's going on with Rogers in green bay. Do you have any hot takes on, on the, on the Roger situation? I mean, I'm sure that's not the type of, not quite the weapon that, that Rogers was wanting, but I mean, Hey, it's more, it's more, more people to throw it to. So take what you can get. I love that. Yeah, no, that's a great point. Yeah. Roger's wife. Yeah. I, Hey, I need my wide receivers over here. You got former former DC defenders. Yeah. No. That's great. Yeah. Not, not quite the weapons that they about. Right. I love that. Not quite the weapons that Rogers is asking for a couple other. A sad note here. I will say friends of the show, Josh Johnson. When we incorrectly reported that he was on the COVID. He got cut last year from the 49ers when he was on the COVID reserve list. And he tweeted at me on Christmas day in the morning and said, you are incorrect on your podcast. I am not on the, I'm not cut. I'm on the COVID reserve list. He has been released from the 49ers as someone that's, he's played in a lot of teams for a lot of years. Are you surprised by that move from the 49ers? Unfortunately, I'm not surprised by it just cause I can't remember the numbers of how many times he's been cut by the 40 Niners specifically, but it's a good amount. That he's been signed and cut by them. So it's unfortunate because obviously they like something that they see with them if they keep bringing them back, but he just hasn't gotten the opportunity that he's wanted. So. It's unfortunate. Yeah, it's sad. You know, w w w when the 49ers are moving up to number three, you had the wonder, like, I mean, Jess Johnson. We don't feel too good for him in this world, but. Anyway that came out this week. I don't know if he's going to get picked up anywhere right now. I mean, certainly not as a starter. I mean, even the backups, most places are kind of taken care of. I mean, you know, he could do. You know, because he wasn't on the 49ers last year. I mean, they brought him on me midway through the season, right after a grappler got hurt. So. I mean, maybe something like that happens, but I do feel terrible for him. One last XFL note. Did you see any of this Memorial day sales stuff? The the graphic. Said sale and stuff. Like I can't, I saw someone commented on it and said, it looks like they took a picture on like a carpet. Or something. Yeah, it definitely was kind of low budget. Like, like, yeah. The first ad news we've gotten from the XFL, since the CFL talks was a Memorial day sale and they had, it was literally just like a, it was like a storefront, like you having a cafe, like standing out in the, on the street code and they have like sale. Yeah. And it was like, they played a lot of Alma. On the carpet and like took a cell phone photo. And so I tweeted, I said, wow, you know, this looks, I came or what? I said, like, you know, graphic design is my passion or whatever it is. But they did fix it. They updated it. So I said, well, if the XFL is listening to me, I also have some other ideas. If you would like to do. You know, if you would like to follow on with that. We're going to bust through spring league here and then get out of here. The only big game I watched this week was the Congress line, man. I I'm I've worked like every salary. They I've still never seen my gestures play morally weak and it was hard. What have been your thoughts on the spring league so far? Well, I sadly, I didn't catch the games this last week. I was doing stuff with family. But I've caught all the other games so far and it was a slow start of the season. Was you. Would probably expect with a five days together as a team, but it's, in my opinion, gotten better as every week. Basically you have. [Unknown] just the level of play has been. Getting better every week, as you can tell, the teams are getting more comfortable with each other. I love the announcing on, on it and the, all the XFL. Kind of like throwbacky tech stuff they've got with the replay and all that. I've been, I've been really enjoying it. Yeah. So really slow start. You know, I think the play has been there. It was weird this week, they moved around and Josh Davis was reporting and they moved around like geometry Francoise. He was with fan. Neutral football. He's on the generals now. And Nick Fitzgerald went to the blue, something about like, he didn't like the coaching that he was a hard on. He was being coached too hard on the blues. Who is that? There is that Terry Shay. Who's the, who's the blues coach. I can't remember off the top of my head. I think it's yeah, Tara. I know Ted Cottrell. Yep. And he is a, he's a big, scary guy. So, I mean, I can see the other friends. And I'll be like, how do I deal with that? I did watch the conquers Lyman game. A phenomenal game. This was the best game of the season. They were already calling it the best game that's ever been in spring league. You know, silvers was out there. The prince that was promised, throwing the bombs. You know, my Seattle dragons, I got my shirt. But he was great. They, they went to overtime and this was the, we all heard about this. Okay. What is, what is the overtime would they be? And it was the most confusing overtime rules ever. And it was literally like a three minute explanation. Like they win it. So. I Grandville. And then how mommy went out, that was kind of cool. Cause it was like, you know, I could shoot out in the old west. Right. How mommy and, and they're out there. So. They, they do like a 10 minute over time. And did you follow in the overtime rules? Like when they announced all this, when they announced the league rules for this year? I thought that it was just like how the NCAA does it. But I could be wrong. Well, it's like, so the one guy picked the spot. Right. So like, So what one person picks a spot and then they pick like the direction they go. And then the other one decides if they're on offense or defense. So like, I think like landfill was like, okay, we're going to be at like the 20 yard line going the other way. And then how mommy or whatever was like, okay, well then we want to be on defense because we want to stop. It was like very confusing. It was like one person picks the spot and then the other person picks possession. Okay. Yeah, that's not at all. What I thought it was. I think I'm confusing it with the elf. Elf had the NCA's overtime rules. I think you're right. It just, it was just like bizarre and like even the announcers and like the coaches were out there, but anyway, it was amazing. Silver's through an illegal Ford pass that, you know, in overtime almost won the game. The Lyman wine, but it was, it was great. It was like 57 to 40. On the, whatever the score is, it was the highest scoring. It was a total shootout, just really phenomenal stuff. I was really proud to be a TSL fan, but then that, that late game starts like at nine o'clock and you're like, we're I was like 10 o'clock. It's like, who's watching this game. Yeah. Feel bad for east coast people for sure. Oh, my God. It's like, yeah, it was like two 30 in the morning. And I'm like, this is crazy. Finally, this is the last she has something. This was sent to me. Jerry. Landfill. This was in 1988, between the Browns and the Oilers. And. There was this whole thing about how, you know, with the answer replays and everything. So, so the Browns had 12 men on the field and when Jerry was the Oilers head coach, she was so upset. He tried to punch one of the referees. At halftime. And it was it's this phenomenal video. Please tweet at me. I'll send it out. But it's like this five minute thing about how Jerry Glanville was so upset about the instant replay. I just, as someone that's watched Jerry, you know, coach on all these. You know, weird leagues and spring league and all this stuff. It was really funny to see Jerry almost out punch referee. So. Yeah, that was awesome. Did you watch? I found that one. LA. Maybe did you send that over? Someone set that over there, mate. Final notes today. Jam pack show we're we're flying through all this. Finger toe football. I have not talked to you on the, obviously on the podcast ever about fingernail football. Are you excited for season two? Yes. And no, like now that there's going to be more, at least 11 on 11, if not 12 on 12. Football. I'm more interested in that. And I'd imagine a lot of the players are too. But, I mean, I'll have my eye on it. I'm going to. I'm going to see it was fun last year for a while, aside from all the rural confusion. But. Yeah, no, it'll be cool. I believe they're expanding as well. Yeah, this was per faggotry football news on Twitter. And I guess this was all posted on Republic on their like funny page. Cause they weren't going to announce any of this yet. And then I read it user seven and to make 10 originally found this other, they're just giving credit where credit's due here, but they're supposed to start branding in June. Funding's going to end in July and the next season is slated to start in the fall with games being on Tuesdays Houston. Excuse me and Atlanta are expected to hold tryouts again, as well as other Southern cities. What do you think about fan controlled football plane and the fall? Even if it is on Tuesday? I mean, you limit the amount of players that are available to you. Like you're going to have a lot more players that would probably rather be on an NFL practice squad. Or, or the CFL is getting ready to play. They'd probably rather do that. It's going to be tough. Time of year wise, but I'm sure you'll still find people. Yeah. I'm sure that that is the thing I I'm sure we'll find people. I think it's exciting. I just. I don't know. I think. It's hard. You just, he doesn't, you don't exist in the bubble. You know, even if you're trying to be an alternate league or whatever, you still exist with all of these other teams and now. With the USFL with the XFL, with the CFL, with the, you know, it just, it, it gets to be very, very crowded. So we're getting almost oversaturated and in alternate football at this point, Which is crazy. Got Eli. If you got all of these. Yeah. I mean, it's a lot, so. Anyway that. That was my notes today. Matt, how do you feel like did you, did you have fun on the show? Yeah. It's been a good time. Thanks for having me on. We a big USFL. We've got the Elks. We, I think, you know, I think we covered all the stuff today. I got to you. We got to go work where you got family stuff. So if anything else breaks today, The show is in the can, but I really appreciate it. You know, Paul's off. Like I said out of town. Yeah, we'll get, we'll get the gang back together here. And that really appreciate, you know, please like, and subscribe. You know, if you are a fan of what we do here, all the news, I'm going to put the little bugs and stuff, the subscribe box, but thanks again for stopping by and stay daycare and stay safe. There we go. All right, we're going to knock this out real quick. Before we, before they come on, we'll do the, we'll try to do I want to do this promo first, because worst case I can plug in the ad from before. I, we got to do a little Twitter promo. So you've seen these. Okay. So we try to improv on, but you gotta be high energy on this. So like, All right. Coming up this week on the Marquez, I'm doing the intro this week. Paul is out of town. So we have friend of the show, Matt Lyons of XFL, CFL fame. Joining us, Matt, you just survived your first mark cast. The. How did it go? I'd say pretty good. Got some cool guests, a lot of cool topics. Spend an interesting week overall. Yeah, the, the USFL lives at luckily this all came out before you recorded. So we got all your USFL stuff also at jam pack shell. I'm going to say that because Paul's not here. We got Dave Campbell, Edmonton, we're talking all about the Edmonton Alex. We got Tom man neck from the sport market. We're talking all about the C two 18 bill and, and the, a single game sports betting. Is that going to be a life savior for the, for the CFL? Who knows? And then we have Paul Macallan. I'm so excited about this 23 year. That the CFL kicked at the first ever square. The first ever points for the XFL back in. Thank you guys all so much to our guests, Matt, anything else before we get out of here? I hope you enjoy the episode and thanks again for having me on. It's going to be good. We'll see you soon. Okay, we did that. And then. Okay. Where I'm going to. Well, I never did this fault as. So. Matt, did you know that our show is sponsored in part by a manscape.com? I I did recently learn that. Matt. 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Don't use, you know, Homer nation or whatever their code is, but use mark has.com. Yeah, mark has code. At manscape.com to take care of all your male grooming needs. So thanks for having me on. Yeah, I appreciate it. I, and, and it's just really worked out. So I follow CFL news on Twitter and they're big fans of your work. And I think, you know, they see a lot of the things you post. And so, yeah, we were trying to set this up and then now with all this [unknown]. 18 Stuff. It's just, you know, it really worked out timing wise, so we'll get into all that. First off our big breaking news today. Do you have any thoughts at all on this USFL? And it's okay if the answer is no, no, no problem. We can certainly respond to that. I mean, it makes it obviously quite topical and it's part of what I consider to be the most bizarre couple of years in, in, in, in football, in history, in terms of, you know, people trying to crack the code on who is, who can coexist with the NFL. Is it a spring league? Is it, is it something else? And I also think that when you see this news, It gives even more credence to the whole CFL XFL. Chat because Fox is basically very clearly saying. USFL. And XFL doesn't doesn't mean that they don't have any other broadcast partners, but flocks carries a heck of a lot of weight. And from a branding point of view, flux is perfect for XFL. Now they're saying. They, they have more faith in, in, in the USFL, which it's all interesting. Both economically and politically. Yeah, and I mean, we were our, we just did the bulk of our show today and I mean, I don't think it doesn't feel great for XFL fans. Right? I mean, here's a league. A lot of the people that listen, a lot of the people on the boards, they're upset the rock, the delay what's happening. You know, we think 20, 23. And now this, I think, do you think that, you know, whatever ends up happening with this merger, and I do want to get your thoughts on that more later, but. The USFL, this is a good time to strike. If they really can hit in 2022. Yeah, I, I, I do think the. The timing is right. Just because there's so much, how can I say. There's so much pursuit. Oh, The number two position, like, you know, the race for number two. That the USFL has an advantage over the XFL in the sense that. They haven't been around since the mid eighties. And they haven't faltered recently. So the XFL, of course, unfortunately with the pandemic pressure on it, and we have to give them a bit of a Mulligan. Really hard to launch a new league in the middle of a global pandemic. But the fact is they have no track record and they had to shut down. And there's an exit of one of the biggest companies in sports and entertainment from that property. And now you've got the rock. You know, trying to do his stuff with, with, with Redbird and, and, and company. So. I just think it's such a fascinating time. At an, at a number of levels. And. I'm sure you've seen the big Elks announcement and everything. What are your thoughts on that? It, you know, to me, it was a no brainer from the beginning. Like, and I know that. You know, you had some people saying like elk is a slow moving, big animal, but the fact. To the matter is, and I'll get into this. If you guys are okay with it. From a branding point of view. And this comes, you know, largely, I mean, I, I learned so much of this in my couple of years in the MBA, wherever you can be an animate subject, as opposed to an inanimate object or an abstract. The better it is for kids. And I think it's really smart that they've got an animal name, you know, Edmonton empire just wouldn't have cut it. It's too esoteric. Right? That's why. Only during that Chris Bosch, Dwayne Wade, LeBron James year have the Miami heat led the NBA in Jersey sales. Most of the rest of the time. It's the Chicago bulls. It's the warriors. It's, you know, it's animate sub Jackson. And animals in particular. Or the way you cultivate kids. So I think it's really smart. Bye. Meant then that they wound up doing the right thing and, and, and naming the Elks. I think that's fascinating. And this is exactly, I mean, talk about expertise coming on. Right. And being able to share. I, we, I talked yesterday with Dave Campbell about all this, right. You know, to get his thoughts. He said the same thing that his kid. It was a year Edmonton Alex Edmonton now, because I mean, it is, we talk about building younger fan bases in the CFL. I mean, obviously, do you think that this was a good step in that direction? I do I do. And you know, we can get into it. You know, certainly when we're, when we're going, but I. I think other teams in the league. Need to really double down on reaching. The 12 to 18. You know, one thing that I'll share is that when I was in the MBA, we never did a focus group with anyone over the age of 18. All the focus groups were either 12 to 16. And then 16 to 18. Those were the focus groups. And the theory is that for the MBA to be cool. It would need to be cool to that demographic. And if it caught the kids, then you'd have the tug down effect of like, you know, mommy, daddy, I want, I want one of those, but the other thing is. It made it cool for young people of all ages. If you know what I mean? Like the sort of the hipster dudes. You know, who might be even baby boomers, but they think young they're drawn to the MBA because of that kind of branding. And that's exactly what I think we, the Elks are doing. It's not a dinosaur, but I think they can have a lot of fun with it. And what's interesting is. And I might be wrong on this. I know that they. They wanted to keep E right. They wanted to sort of, you know, keep it. I personally think. It's a little bit lazy in terms of branding to say, well, because we've got this, we want to keep it. Because we don't want to change all of our logos. Well guess what guys. You're now doing it with the helmets, you know, doing it with the Elks. There's going to be a lot of, lot more stuff sold in my opinion. That's got the elk on it that has E on it. So that's. I'm I'm quibbling, but you know, we can kick that around for sure. Ho ho how long do you guys think we'll go? Oh, we're going, unless you want to backtrack anything that you're saying, we got, got it. Rolling. So. Yeah, sorry. I was so informal. Is there any way we. We can just start and, and then go from here. Yeah. I mean, I thought it was great so far. Yes. It's up to you. It's up. It's it's, it's, it's up. It's up to you, but you know, I can gather my thoughts a little bit. I thought we were just sort of kicking around prepping. We can do it either way. I'm fine. Either way. I love what you've said so far. If we could keep. Yeah. Okay. Sure. Whatever, whatever, whatever you guys want. Okay, well I'll let me introduce you. We'll do it here. Well, I'll make a note. Will I do this here? We have Tom may have back here. I studied many media appearances of you because I wanted to make sure that I said that correctly. How did I do with that introduction? You did as well. If you haven't then Alex did this week from a branding point of view pretty well. The best that you can do. Maybe you'll have to, I'll have to hire you as my agency. You can talk to a lot of other people, made sure that they get the pronunciation rate, but my, my late parents. Hanson griddle, man. Would really appreciate the way you pronounce it. Because I did. I, you know, I mean, we correspond on Twitter and I, and I it's hard. It was like when we had AGA Jackie back on and I was really trying hard. I want to say this, right? So Tom's here with the sport market. They get so much for coming on. We have a lot of excitement going on today. We have the USFL kind of breaking news that kind of destroyed the show that I have built already. I know you want to talk about the Edmonton Alex, and then obviously we're going to talk about the C two 18 bill. Where, where do you want to start? What do you find most fascinating today? I'm ready to go wherever you want to go. But I do think the breaking news. You talked about Reed. First of all, it's right up the alley at the mark as, and it's right. You know, In this zone of unprecedented. What do they call it daydreaming or visioning about what football can be and who is number two behind the NFL? I think the USF only this today. It's probably as good a place to start as any, because it continues the period of the last two or three years whereby there's a real movement. Among investors among football types among promoters to create whether it's a spring league or another league to create. An answer another way to fill the insatiable American appetite. You know, And when I say American, I mean, obviously Canadians, we have an appetite for all things, a CFL and the NFL is growing in a really big way. But from an American point of view, make no mistake. When you add all the other sports together, you pretty well. I don't have anything that can match the fan base that is intrinsically in the DNA of Americans for both professional football and college football. It's an ma. It's a massive one, two punch. And so this USFL news is really fascinating. For a number of reasons. One is, Hey. Isn't the XFL. Already, they're trying to map out some kind of partnership with the CFL to make it strong enough that it is second only to the NFL. Isn't that? What the plan is there? It is. Isn't you know what the Alliance did a couple of tried to do a couple of years ago. Isn't that been there, done that. Well, apparently not. Because here you've got this. Beast of the eighties. Coming back online, the USFL, which of course was Donald Trump's first exposure to football ownership with the New Jersey generals. And of course, Doug Flutie, who is known to so many of your viewers and your followers. For what he did in both the CFL and the NBA NFL. Is, you know, 100% behind this new USFL bid. The second reason why it's so fascinating guys is Fox from day one, flocks. Is saying we're here with you. And if I'm Dwayne, the rock Johnson and Redbird and the CFL and anybody associated with the XFL, I have to admit I'm taken aback today because if I'm choosing for the XFL brand, the perfect TV partner, I'm choosing. Fox. You know, they're just a little bit ahead of the game. Their graphics are younger, all that kind of stuff. Well, Obviously the discussions have done on that. To be with the people back in the USFL concept, and this is the result. So I think it is really big news who knows where it goes. But no matter what, whether they have Fox or any of the other major CBS, N B NBC, ABC slash ESPN, whoever you have involved. Building a second bleak again, whether it's spring or something else is not an easy thing to do. They're off to a good start. In my opinion, though, if this is a hypothetical league, That wants to get back, not being here since 1980s. They're making it at least interesting coming out of the gates with, with Fox in my view. I have two followups. I don't know which one I want to hit first. You know, there's been all this talk about, you know, the XFL, the baggage, the twice failed league, all this kind of stuff. Well, here we have, the USFL is, you know, similar baggage. You. You know, I mean, w what are your thoughts on that? As opposed to just like Brian, we kind of thought Brian would just be like, okay, the spring league is now a league. I mean, Bryan Woods has been on our show. Right? I mean, we know about his mentality of building this. What do you think about that? Well, you know what I think, you know, read your, your words are well-taken. Just because you say that there's so much football appetite doesn't mean you can deliver on that in a sustainable way. You know, it. It's interesting. I think that some of the leagues would be better off. Trying to first negotiate a feeder type relationship to the NFL so that there are developmental league. So that they have that kind of, that kind of relationship. They have that higher sense. Sense of purpose. I know that that's an ego thing. Nobody wants to be seen as a farm league kind of thing. But when you look at how big the national football league has become. Especially the growth during this pandemic, like make no mistake, guys. The NFL has grown during the pandemic. It did. Take a hit of about $4 billion. But. Very soon that that trajectory is going to be $19 billion industry and they're well on their way. Do you becoming the $25 billion industry that the commissioner and everybody associated with the shield wants to have. So you've got this massive. Godzilla that is the NFL. Anybody else is it would be well-advised to being careful to not try to be NFL 2.0, but be something completely different, be something that feels. A new void, whether it's, you know, rule experimentation like the XFL did. You know, when it, when it tried to come back here, I think it there's a lot of companies say good ideas there, but they weren't given the shelf span. They weren't given the lifespan too. To really figure out. So, I mean, to me, If I am. The XFL and the CFL I'm fast-forwarding. Our discussions and, and, and I'm trying to again, do the right thing. You don't want to do the. The fast thing you want to do the right thing, but I think there's so far down this road. That both leagues have made the decision that they can benefit from having some kind of collaboration. And it's probably a much more integrated collaboration rather than a soft, you know, we're we're best, but these kinds of partnerships. So all those XFL CFL talks now guys, or in the context. Of a USFL that has got Fox as a TV partner. And, you know, Wants to bring back some of the heritage names of those mid eighties, including the, the generals and. And others. So again, I think they need to move fast, but they also need to move. Smartly not bite off more than they can chew the worst thing that can happen here. And that's, it applies to the USFL as well. The worst thing that can happen is exit phones. CFL former partnership and it dies. And then both leagues are in jeopardy or the USF ball comes on board and it lasts a year. It'll be really interesting to see the political reaction response to the NFL. To seeing these nascent leagues sort of nipping at their heels. Yeah. That's, what's interesting to me is, you know, we have all this XFL CFL and, you know, people getting upset, you know, our listeners, what is the rock even doing? What are they even doing? You know, now we're basically. You know, saying, okay, it's going to be 20, 23. Well now USFL coming in 2022. Like, are they. I mean, this is just they're slipping in there and going for it. You don't read it. It's the most important question of the day to me, they're sending a statement by coming out of the gates in 2022, they're basically saying we're going to be the spring league. We're going to be the number two league, and we're going to bring back a lot of fans. Who were entertained by, Hey, you know what? Small names like Herschel Walker. You know, I mean, [unknown]. The fact is they had a short run, but they had a good run in terms of, you know, some of the talent that was attracted to that league. You know, back in the day. So here they are saying. That we're going to get this done. For 2022. They're basically short-cutting. Or hitting off the, you know, the CFL and the XFL at, at, at the past, to me, I'm surprised that. The CFL and the XFL given how long they've been talking. Haven't sort of come up with more of the plan that, Hey, this is where we're going to start, but we also reserve the right to plus we do this and this. You know, it's still sort of, you know, people speculating right. People like us just sort of kicking the tires. We don't know exactly what it's going to be. Except the one thing that stands out to me is that I think. CFL needs this a lot more than CFL purists would have thought a couple of months ago. And I think, you know, not that you are able to hide financial capacity or lack of it, but I think the CFL has been, let's say exposed in the sense that they do need to come together as one league, whether it's with the XFL or not, they've been operating in a number of ways, like three leagues, right? The. The top tier Saskatchewan Roughriders, Winnipeg blue bombers. And. The Edmonton Elks. I'm catching up. I'm I'm I'm current. I'm up to date. With the branding. Then you've got the three week links, which just happened to be in the three largest markets of Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. They have. They've been trying to find an identity in those urban markets. Randy and Brosy has been trying to say, Hey, the way we do it is through CFL 2.0 and getting a little bit more international, and then you've got the. The CFL in the middle, right? The honorary black, the Hamilton. Tag your cats and the Calgary Stampeders. I really think the CFL. In the board of governors meetings has operated, not as one league they've operated sort of as three leagues and, you know, trying to bring those respective interests to the, to the table. Anyway, I digress, but by doing that and by going dark last year and by being, how can I say late this year? The CFL has shown that they can't afford to do anything of substance without fans in the stands. And so they're going to push back the schedule. And I'm really hoping that it does work. And I, rod black. TSN he was on the sport market a couple of weeks ago and he and I both agreed. You, you don't necessarily need to be on this fifth. If anything happens. You can, but you have to be underway by labor day weekend. You have to be able to either come out of the gates the same time or the week before. The national football league does, which is the first Thursday after labor day weekend. And that has got, you know, so many sort of urgent. Red flags around it. So. Again, I think the CFL can come out of this strong, but their vulnerabilities. Have been exposed and the fact that not all the governors see the future the same way that's got to be resolved one way or the other people have to sign off on. This is our vision for whether it's three down football or four down football. This is our vision for the CFL moving forward. And we're all in. I haven't got that sense. That that's been the way the CFL has been these past few years. So shifting gears a little bit, you mentioned the Edmonton's, all their new branding and everything. What are your thoughts on the new branding? Alex and everything. I, I think, you know, they they've done a really good job. I mean, first of all, You know, as I said, when the Eskimos name first came under pressure. That you know, when it comes to any kind of indigenous. Usage or in Disney indigenous applications. It's not, it's not necessarily. Then the name or the logo. It's how you use it. How much respect you show and quite frankly, You know, I think the Edmonton Eskimos were handled quite respectfully by the Edmonton organization over time. Having said that there was enough of a movement. To have them say, Hey, you know what, we're gonna get with the program. Rebrand. And from that perspective, when I saw some of the other. Contenders. I was sorta thinking guys, be careful here. Because you got a great tradition as one of the best organizations in the CFL. You've got a great brand story. Don't mess it up by coming up with something that just isn't going to live up to, you know, the prestige of your organization all these years. And although it's new. I do think that they've done the right thing with ed, with the Edmonton Elks. And I. Can I say so simply because, you know, I had a lot of fun in my three years in the MBA and I learned so much from the MBA approach to branding. And, you know, became a real student when we, you know, when we came up with the whole Raptors name for, you know, Canada's first NBA franchise. We knew we were going against the grain, but we were following the MBA protocol. Of appealing to kids first. And then the theory being, if you're hip and cool with kids, you'll also be hip and cool with young thinking adults and even young thinking baby boomers. And that's what you see. Right. When you see a Scotia bank arena with an MBA crowd. It seems like so long ago, now that we've seen that. You see that there's, there's still a lot of millennials, but there's also baby boomers that are hipsters. Some are, some are, some of us are one of the hipsters, but we're basically hipsters. Anyway, this. Edmonton else. Follows that NBA path of appealing to kids first. And why do I say that? Look at the hottest selling jerseys in all the major professional sports leagues, they tend to be. Some form of animate subject. Whether it's an animal or a group of people. And with kids, guys, there's nothing that is more interesting to kids than animals. And I think that they've. They've done the right thing here by going to the Edmonton ELLs. There's a. Regional Alberta, Northern Alberta Canadian connection with the elk. No question there. And they can certainly have a lot of fun as you've already seen with the, the, the antlers. You know, on the helmets and that kind of stuff. You're going to see. As much as they want to retain the double E as their primary mark, you're going to see a lot of merchandise with the Evanston Elks. And I think it's a pretty cool thing that they've done. It's quite a modern depiction of the, of the alkyne. So I give them credit for that. The reason why it makes so much sense is kids love the animals. You look at the Raptors as an example. You look at the Chicago bulls, the golden state warriors. Most of the best selling jerseys are named after animal nicknames or people nicknames, and even, you know, names like the Los Angeles Lakers as an example. You know, that's still meant to be people who live by the lakes. Could that franchise used to be in Minneapolis, you know? Back in the day. So I, I give, I give the Edmonton organization full marks. I personally. Don't think that they were anywhere like the Washington Redskins or the Cleveland Indians or some of those others who really needed to change. But because they felt they, they, they should. I think they've come out of this in a real positive. And I also think it's a positive thing, guys. They wouldn't be making this announcement and starting to get the engine going if they didn't think if they didn't feel very confident about August slash September, 2021. And that's the best news of all, whether you're in Edmonton. A football fan or a CFL fan. You mentioned. That the, I mean, it's, it's kind of known that. All of the CFL is looking for a younger demographic at the moment. The Elyx might have a little bit of a head start on that now, but how would you recommend. Like the rest of the league tries to catch up with that is when you probably don't want everyone changing their names. I don't think everyone needs to, but what other routes could you take to, to attract that younger demographic? You know, I, I think that in, in, you know, the way you've mapped that out, You know, Matt, in terms of options available. I don't think anybody else needs to change their name, but I do think that brand refreshes are in order. I'll give you an example. The BC lions have essentially for the most part carried the similar. Mountain lion head. In profile. And then the full bodied. You know, mountain lion before that pretty well since they were formed. You know, Back in the 1950s. And I think that it's out of date. I think they can, you know, come up with a, a new look. They tried a couple of years of three or four years ago. You know, by having a derived sort of, you know, claw on the helmets. But I do think that the, they can keep the original mountain lion as a heritage mark. But I think they've got to come up with something that is, it feels much more 20, 20 or 2030 than 1970s. And that's my impression when I look at the BC lions logo. So it's not necessarily the name, it's just what you put behind the name. And that's. That's where I'll go even further. Matt is, there's so many things that CFL teams can do from a marketing point of view. To appeal to the younger demographic. Logo is one thing. The way you do your merchandising is another thing, but I think a lot of little things like what's your club policy towards tailgating. What new twists can you bring in that way? Ticketing policy. You know, it's so frustrating for me to see. Especially in the bigger urban markets, these organizations that have got real good people behind them. You know, including the twin organizers, who've got access to the great minds at maple leaf sports and entertainment that they still haven't figured out the rule of first filling the building. Doesn't matter what you charge for your tickets. Fill the building first. And then you're going to get more concession sales. And then when you on TV, People are gonna say, Hey, full house. That's something that I might want to go to. There's nothing worse than national network television of a half empty. CFL stadium. So I think that one of the things that should be done in answer to your question, man, Is really revamped ticket pricing strategies. I'm I'm really simple on this issue. If you're not selling, if you're not filling your building, your, your, your tickets are too expensive. You're basically. If you've got a flawed pricing strategy, and I'm not saying discount to, you know, $20 a tickets right across the board forever. But get more season ticket holders from the younger demographic, make the CFL. Well, a place where you want to be on a Friday night. And that's the other thing that the CFL has to take the lead on. Why the NFL has been so successful is it builds all of its package on all the social stuff that comes out of any given Sunday. Right. I mean, 80%, 90% of the games are held on that one day. It becomes a big social experience and we see what's happening. That's why it's the biggest sports betting platform. That's the why. It's the biggest fantasy platform. That's why it's the biggest television platform. That's why it's the biggest social media platform. I mean, the list goes on and on. It's it's a social movement built around a schedule. Now the NFL of course, is, you know, obviously primarily Sunday, then they've got the prime time, Sunday night football, which is the new Monday night football. Then they have Monday night and they have Thursday night. So they've got basically for the most part. They've got three dates that they focus on. One, they focus on 80 minimum, 80%. The CFL, I think, needs to follow in the same model. A few years ago, it was awful. How CFL games were all over the place. Like literally Tuesdays, Mondays, Wednesdays. That's not the way you build a television footprint. That's not the way you build a T V fan base. And so that's the other thing that I think they can do to appeal to younger viewers is make it more social. By making it more consistent and I'll just put it out there that with the NFL focused on Sunday. And hockey night in Canada, still being a big deal on Saturdays. Why not build on the success that they've had with Friday night football and make that one of your anchor two or three nights? I know that that puts pressure on Thursday night football, but I'm not convinced that the CFL needs to be Thursday and Friday and Saturday and Sunday and the date. So those are just some of the things that I think would pay off dividends. But I got to tell you. It is a tough nut to crack. The CFL has tried if identified the fact that it needs to get younger fans, but most of the fan bases haven't gotten younger. The youngest fan base in the league is the auto or red blacks. And they're the most recent team in the league. Hamilton tiger cats. Believe it or not are, are, are, are right with them. And then of course, you've got the. It doesn't matter what age you are. You are a Saskatchewan Roughrider fan. If you live in the province of Saskatchewan, otherwise you don't leave your house at night, you know? Basically. So those are some of the things that I, that I would suggest they need to do. And that's why this XFL collaboration is such an interesting thing, because I don't know about you guys, but I don't remember the CFL creating more buzz than it did when this is when these statements came out. And all of a sudden the CFL seemed sexier because it was thinking about getting them to bed with the XFL and go, go where you want with that. You know, that use of terms, but the fact of the matter is it made younger fans who are completely gobbled up right now by the NFL say, Hm. CFL XFL the rock. It's interesting. Now it doesn't mean it's real. It doesn't mean it's substance, but from a marketing point of view, you have to give credit where credit is due. When you've got the multi-millions of Twitter followers and Instagram followers that the rock has. You're reaching a lot of young fans and it's so ironic, guys that. XFL, what could be XFL? 3.0 in partnership with the CFL. It is Dwayne, the rock Johnson who made his break, made his career. On WWE after the company that owns WWE. Vacated XFL the year before. It's pretty interesting. Economics is pretty interesting. Politics is pretty interesting. A family tree, so to speak as the little light. I want to transition to sports betting. This the sea. Two 18 Bella here before. Yeah. I mean, we could talk to you for hours about, you know, fascinating all this stuff. I. No, I do you have a hot take elk versus Alex before we completely move off the Edmonton conversation? Yeah, a hot take on that. You know, I, I, I, I think they could have made it work either way, but I do think Elks is a little bit more, how can I say. I give a slight edge to Elks over elk. Now, if they would've went with elk, It's it's arguably it could market a little bit younger because it's something that younger fans get more than us, baby boomers kind of thing. And that you can also build around the fact that we are one. Right. This, you know, 12. Men team is one it's, it's the elk and we are the elk, the whole community. They could have had some fun with that. And, and maybe I'm convincing myself that, you know, I should lean that way, but I think with Edmonton Elks, There's also recognition that the CFL can't go from an average age of 54. Is there fans. Two 34 overnight. They have to find a way to capitalize on the longtime fans to make sure that the kids of those baby boomers are into the CFL value proposition. So. I don't know if it's a hot take or not, but, you know, I think they could've made it work either way. Either of those two is head and shoulders above any of the other names that were being contemplated, in my opinion. Yep. So I, I wanted to do, I want to do this? This, this C two 18 ping is fascinating to us. We've talked about it in a while on the show now. I just, my take is you're going to go with this, you know, and that's why we brought you on. I just, I don't like the idea. Of doing this. I listened to three down last week. We have Hodgen dock and they go, well, this is great. The CFL loses 10 to 20 million a year. This is going to bring in 20 million a year. Then all we have to do is figure out Montreal and Toronto, and we're in the green baby. And I'm like, To break, even with this, that's my take. And I want to hear what you have, because I'm sure you have way more thoughtful responses than ideal. Well, you know, it's interesting. I mean, I think we're. There's a lot of moving parts around this. And so I respect all the, you know, the other opinions, but to me, maybe to build on what you're saying there, Reed. To me, this has got to be part of a complete revamp. This is not just adding single CFL game wagering to the mix. This is. Leveraging a new way of doing business at every frigging level of the league. And you're only going to make the most of this sports betting revenue, if you've got other stuff also established. And, and, and I do think it's an opportunity to. Rebrand the CFL. And, and I also think that if it's CFL slash XFL, It's even stronger. From a, from a betting point of view. Because people. You know, Not that there's anything wrong with the domestic leagues. I mean, the CFL is an institution to this day. It still has the second biggest annual. Single day sports television event in the country and the gray cup. Only the super bowl is bigger on an annual basis. So when it comes to. The CFL, the, the, they need to capture. You know, keep their, their baby boomer audience as much as possible. But whatever they do with sports betting, it's gotta be part of the full meal deal. Rebranding, repositioning. Of the league and the point I was going to make, and I lost it there. In one era at the out the other. Is the fact that although the domestic leagues are strong and the Canadian league basketball league and the premier league and soccer. Are real good domestic leagues. The top tier is viewed as the north American leagues. And so if you know the NFL NHL, MLB NBA and MLS. We're joined by a, another north American football league and that's on the bedding. Aside of things. I think it has more of an impact because our planet. You know, there's a lot of stuff that is marketed in the United States that comes here to Canada as well. You don't want to create an artificial wall. So that's one thing that you know, is interesting to see. Is this going to be just the CFL tapping into bedding or is this going to be only fully realized what's. It's the CFL and the XFL together. I think it's just an interesting question to ponder. But back to your point. This has gotta be about changing the game experience for fans. This has gotta be about having bedding kiosks. At Tim Horton's field in Hamilton and in all the other stadiums in between, this is a boat having betting lounges, possibly even in the end zones. You know, at these various CFL games, this is about providing club opportunities, club, membership opportunities, you know, to get a little bit more data in terms of betting lines and, and, and, and, you know, The latest parlay of the week. So I think if you just say, yeah, we'll just put our games up. You're not going to be successful. You'll get some, some, a boost. Absolutely. It'd be better than what you have right now. But in order to make this thing truly meaningful for the Canadian football league, it has to be fully integrated into a new business plan. And I still think it has to be targeted towards younger fans and all of those elements of. Seeing football and bedding. We'll make for more of a fan base because you guys have probably talked about it in the Marc cast over and over again. If you bet on something. You have more of an interest in that, and it doesn't have to be just your favorite team. If I bet on two teams that are not my favorite teams, guess what? I'm going to be more likely to be watching. You know, tracking my iPhone. Following social, if not, you know, downloading the game itself. And simply because I've got that kind of a vested interest. So I think it's comprehensive. It's not just slapping a we're open for business, but it's really thinking about what they can do with the various provincial lottery corporations to market this in, in a big way so that every CFL game becomes more of an event than it's been in recent years. My last question for you today, just so we can. We've been so gracious with your time. Coming on here. Do all these things that could be done. Right. You know, all the sports lounges and the bedding and all that stuff. Changing the business model. Do we think the CFL. Is equipped to do that. You know what it's it's, it's probably the most important question of our entire time. Together. And my honest answer is, I don't know. And I don't know, simply because there's been some great conceptualization by Randy Ambrozy, you know, in terms of different ways and innovation to move forward, but there's also been. That sort of approach without dealing with the core of the business. And I still think that your core, just like, you know, for the three of us, the best way we stay in shape is start with our core. You have a strong core, the rest of your body comes along for the ride. It's the same thing with the CFL. And the, the inability to corral Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, and in a better way is, is a concern to me. Having said that this XFL discussion forces, the CFL. To ask itself the most existential questions and maybe you get that unanimity that you've never had before. And, and, and again, I don't want to get caught up in it, but. I've seen really smart commissioners. Get railroaded get, get compromised because the board of governors didn't have one vision and the C and yes, it's the job of that commissioner to sell the board of governors to manage upwards. But I do think that Randy Ambrozy has shown. I'm a real business. Pinash I think now it's just a question of priorities. You know what. What you do first, and then maybe some of the other stuff you, you get involved in down, down the road. But when I look at some of the ownership groups and I'll just speak to two, right. Out of the gates. There are those with maple leaf sports and entertainment. And the kalbi stand Peter's part of the Calgary flames. Sports and entertainment. There's some really good marketers associated with those organizations. And if they haven't been able to crack the code, maybe it's because the league hasn't been able to get all the markets together. I think you, you, you, you, you try to learn from the best in the business. Who've got vested interest in other sports, and you also learn from the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the Winnipeg blue bombers, like. Look at what they're doing with fans, there's all kinds of fans now excited that there could be a mosaic stadium full of fans this fall. Well, you could be five years removed from the pandemic. And if there was a stadium full of fans in Montreal and Toronto and in Vancouver, the CFL would be HomeFree. Absolute superstar. Thank you so much for coming on. I mean, I could tie it. I mean, we're Matt and I are typing questions in the comments. Oh, I can, we can talk to you for eight hours. I mean, this is truly a remarkable, so thank you so much for taking the time today to come on. I really appreciate it. It read Matt, always a pleasure. Certainly. You invite me whenever I can make it work. Time-wise I will best of luck with everything that you're doing, what you guys are doing right now at the Markcast comes at one of the coolest times, I think, to be a football fan, just because there's all this sense of newness. How's it going, sir? I'm good. I appreciate you hopping on here. Not a problem. Nice. Nice to see you again. Paul's in Vegas this week. He picked a good time to be out of town. Well, I don't want to get much of your time a busy man. I'm sure your socials yesterday were going crazy. What has been like the last 24 hours? You know, I think it's been a whirlwind of reaction, honestly. I, I think overall it's been positive. I think the presentation, the way the logo looks. The way it looks on the helmet. The way that, you know, some of the merchandise that was presented yesterday, I think overall it's positive. Some people don't like the name Elks, but. You know, that's the hardest thing right now is what, what name is appropriate, right? What mean. Will X. Psych people. I don't think the name itself really. Excites people, if you just say out, but when you look at what they're able to do with it, the power of marketing, the power of a. The brand, what you can't do with the logo? I think it's, I think it's really tremendous. And then sadly, there's some that are still mad that the name Eskimos was discontinued 10 months ago and we'll never live it down. And I think those people are going to be left behind to be. Brutally honest with you. I think to scale this up, there's so much potential for this name. So yeah, I think overall it's a, it's it's positive. I will say it's a hit yet, but I think it does have a potential to be a hit, but I do think it's, it's been positive. Yeah, I see. So you have one of the new hats you lucky. They're right there. I immediately went on yesterday. There it is, dude. There's the, there's one of the stickers. So yeah, I immediately went on and ordered my hat and I got a shirt too. Cause they shipping, you know, from Canada. It's just astounding. And so I had that, you know, I had a bulk order to get it down, but I'm serious. And I went on. Yeah. I just added my flag where however I do it. So we're building. We're supporting the teammate. Now it looks great, right? It looks modern. It looks polished. I think all of the merchandise looks phenomenal as someone that studies. You know, I just bought this dumb. Fits magic shirt. I mean like big fan of this stuff. So. What has been the reaction from fans, you know, listeners of yours, people that write to you over the last day. Yeah, I think overall it's been positive. I think there is some excitement there. You know, I think there was the lot of people like myself that didn't really know. When the day came of retrieving the name and here's the new name of how that would go over. You know, I was even myself thinking, I don't know how I'm going to feel about this because you know, 10 months ago was a very emotional time for a lot of people, myself included. Because, you know what I, I grown attached to the old name. You understand why it had to go. And why we're at this point. And then you get to the day of the unveiling and you're like, Okay. And this happened rather. Five straight. So as far as, you know, the announcement to when it got put together and until the unveiling, and then when you see it. Like it just invigorates you. Right. It's just, it was amazing. So I think positive. It's been positive overall. I think I see so much marketing potential. I mean, my five-year-old son. Who has been to a few games? Kept saying this morning. Edmonton Elks, the Edmonton Elsie. Wouldn't stop saying it. And I'm, I'm thinking that is that's cool. I think that's what the, what the organization wants is they want that younger crowd. They want. Newer fans, they want. Fans that in 20 years from now, we're going to love the name and the name. There's no problem with the name, Alex at all. It is grammatically correct and proper. It was checked by Oxford dictionary. Yeah, because the, the organization checked with Oxford dictionary and checked with a linguistics. Expert here at the university of Alberta. They've said both. Medically correct. And proper. Yes, it's a little weird, but you know what? We can get around it, you know? There are, there are rock songs that have weird lines and we don't care. Right. And they're not grammatically correct, but we don't care. Right. Lines and movies, TV shows that sort of thing. So. Yeah. There's some people that just think, you know, elk is a dumb name. But, but, you know, I would, I would say to those people too, that if. The team was called the Edmonton Elks. They would not be called the Edmonton Eskimos. Right. So. I mean, what's in a name really? You know, it is a name, but I think it's what you can do with the name that I think this is why it's a big win in the hit out of the ballpark. In my opinion, this has so much marketing potential and power. Yeah, that's what I love too, is all this. You know, we had you on before all this XFL staff to CFL delay, are we. You know, all of this, it's just been so like uncertain and negative and in everyone arguing. And I mean, it just seems so joyous yesterday that everybody was so excited. I thought the presentation looked great. I thought the announcement video was great. How. Much heads up. Did you guys know about the June 1st date? So I knew the day before. It was kept under wraps. Until I believe two hours before the announcement is when was when the, the Elks. When they were not the Alex, then I said that we're gonna announce have a significant given announcement. And we all knew that was going to be. B, what was happening? The is the name change. So I knew the day before. What's amazing too, in this social media age. I mean, this name was picked three months ago. In early February, my broadcast partner, Morley Scott knew. And did a great job. Not saying anything. The PE you have to sign nondisclosure agreements, obviously, but still that doesn't mean that people have loose lips or loose fingers right. In this day and age. And to me, that speaks to the power and the respect that brand has. So, yeah, I knew just day before. And when I, when I originally my original raw reaction was. Oh, my old, oh gosh. I got really nervous about it. First of all, I got nervous because it was my first public event in well, over a year. And secondly, it's just like, oh my gosh, it's happening. But yeah, I had to keep it quiet. It was hard to keep it quiet for the amount of time that I had to. I didn't have to wait three months. Cymbala it was a really quick announcement. And I think that was a really smart thing to do is just, you know, we're going to announce it next week. Like now just here it is. Boom. Edmonton Elks. Well, and I think a lot of people expected or hoped when you had that general meeting right last month that maybe it would come out. We did announce it, but I think this was smart with some of the money losses and things that they talked about during that day. Like this is a totally separate positive event. Do you agree with that timing? I do. I mean, I don't think the organization wanted to do it over zoom. Over. You know, an online event. I think they wanted more of a public event. Now. There was. Participation obviously. And who was actually at Commonwealth stadium? But I think they wanted that interpret that, that. That feel of, so, you know, you're there and you kind of see that logo by the way. That's the biggest logo on a football field I've ever seen and that's staying, I mean, that's a 65 yard logo. That's amazing. But just to be there in the stadium to feel the electricity in the vibe. And yes, it was obviously stream on line as well to the video, which you can play over and over again. And I don't know why you wouldn't do it with this tremendous video. But I think they wanted to have. And I think that was a part of the delay as well. And it was let's pick a time that's appropriate. To have some small gathering. And, and I think that did the name unveiling more justice than doing it online? I think that's a good sign too, that we're going to have a season coming up here, you know, we're. What is it? Today, June 2nd. So July 10th is the proposed, even though it's not official. The likely date to start camp maybe a little bit later. I think that's another positive sign that we're moving in the right direction for a season. Yeah. Tremendously positive. You know, it really felt like full steam ahead. And then also just so smart to have the shop ready to go, and the merge there for, you know, people to take photos of and to be able to sell out. I mean, we cover all these leagues in, in you. I even know some of them. You know, we've had listeners in said, oh, the CFL with the merchandise or with the web marketing. Anyway. Spot on the whole way around. It looks great. Everything went, you know, I heard the website crashed because there was so much traffic. Right. Which is tremendous. Finally, I, you know, I, I don't want to hold you too long and then you have all your stuff today. The event itself. And so who all was there? What was that like? Cause I know that we saw the, the announcement video, right? The YouTube stream. What else was going on there a day up? So there was a, there was a. I would. Say a fair bit of media there, you know, you know, Morley and myself were there. There was TV stations there. You know, papers were there too. Board of directors were there some alumni were there as well. So, you know, and I don't really get to see everybody. It wasn't, it wasn't a huge gathering. I would say, I would say there's probably, there was a. You know, there was maybe 20, 30 people in all. It was a very safe and then I felt safe. It was good that, you know, when you came in, you had to get checked and sign a form and things like that. So, Yeah, it was, it was really neat to be around people again, honestly, you know, This is, I've been holed up at home here for. For a long time, like a lot of people have, so it was really cool to kind of just be in that, in that mix and kind of see people that I haven't seen. You know, honestly for almost 50 and 60 months. So it was a pretty cool event. It was nice to be in the stadium again. I mean, that's often my second home during, during the football season. So that was exciting as well. So it really well done event, a smaller number, but. But it was really good. It was really nice to see something in public. Again. Finally, just in, obviously from talking with the people you saw yesterday and everything. Overall positive feelings, right? Like you said, moving towards the season. And then when everyone feels like, kind of, I mean, it seems like the numbers are good. Any last thoughts on that? Just about general kind of place in time where we're at before we let you go. I think the key thing is you, you said that right there, a Reid is up. The numbers are good. Numbers are getting better. I know Manitoba's still going through a rough, a rough time. So I'm hoping that everyone's hoping it's going to get better there. Assuming it, I think it will cause our vaccine rollout. Well, compared to when I talked to you in March, like our vaccine rollout has been tremendous, so we are close to 60%. Vaccinated single dose. Small with the smaller, with the double vaccinations with the, or the full vaccinations, but we're, we just announced yesterday here in Alberta and other problems. This is how's this how's as well that we're accelerating that process. I mean, firstly, I can go get my second dose in two weeks, so, so that's great. Chris Bresson, the Edmonton Alec's president and CEO said yesterday that the return to play. Plan for just playing on the field. Getting back on the field has been approved both in writing and verbally from all provinces. The return to play plan for fans will all be submitted jointly from all nineties, but. I think, you know, w what we saw in Montreal. Once you're all Canadians game and game six against the league is 2,500. You saw five 50 in the stands for game seven. At the, at the at least home game. Tonight and Winnipeg they'll have 500 fans there. So I think when you're getting you're, you're, you're seeing the ball rolling here. If you can get, even if it's a small amount of fans in an indoor facility. You know, we've seen that doctors have said. Outside transmission is 20 times less. Of a risk. Compared to indoor or risk of indoor transmission compare to outdoor. I can't see why we can't get socially distance fans. You know, here in Alberta restrictions could be gone in a month. If, if the numbers. Friendly the right way. They could be gone in Saskatchewan. You know, and I think everywhere else, the Ontario teams probably we'll have to wait a bit before they can get in, in inside their own stadiums. Same with the BC Alliance. I think the lox will be fine in Montreal. But I think we're trending the right way for a season, you know? There's still that little seed of doubt in the back of your mind, because you're like, okay. Could this fall apart. Of course it could, but so far so good. The numbers are going in the right direction. The approvals are going in the right direction. I think we're going to have a season starting on August 5th. I'm watching the clock here at last question. I saw you going back and forth with Afrin and they showed Josh Davis on Twitter about them keeping the double E logo for alternate Jersey. Uniforms right. Is that. We're not losing that altogether, right? No, we're not. I mean, the antlers will be the primary logo now or, or, you know, like, you know, this logo here, that's the primary mark. The w logo is not going away. Likely or likely will be on the helmet for a third Jersey set up. Now we haven't seen the jerseys yet. So there will be some alterations. There are colors are staying. And my guess is that I'm led to believe that the w logo will be somewhere on the Jersey. So it is not going away. I know that was a big worry for fans. A big worry for myself too, but the w logo will stay. Perfect. Thank you so much. I know you got a busy day. I appreciate you hopping on. I said, I wanted to pre-book you when this day came and you're a man of your word, I couldn't be more thankful for you taking the time to come on. Yeah. Thank you, Ray. And thank you to you and Paul for this podcast and just for your supportive of the CFL. You know, I think in the future, we're going to speaking a lot. So I don't know that that very much excites me. Thank you very much. I've got my Edmonton cave going here. So we are. Solidarity is my team. So we're going for it. I appreciate it.

Episode 42 - Hear No CFL, See No XFL, Speak No Merger

All right. It's another Friday morning, very early morning. Now, if you're subscribed to our, our, our drops on apple podcast, Google podcast, all the podcasts, you'll see this drops like. 12 In the morning. So. I guess you get your fresh and hot. On the, I always think of, I still love our intro music. I was editing something this week and I thought I really do still love that interim music a lot. That's good. I'm glad I was able to find it. And we were using it all the time. Now. It's great. Intro music. It's perfect for what we do here. It's not to a specific, not. Do you, like, I thought long and hard about the show title today. That's that's a good show title here. Don't CFL. No XFL speak no merger. And like I have the, I got the, like the monkeys, like. But I thought that was good. I thought that was good. We got a little bit of CFL. Of course. I'm sure like the second this drops, the CFL is going to be like, come in, whatever July 2nd. But in the meantime, we still ask a recording. The other thing. Yes. Yeah. Sometimes when we record it and then like news comes out. Like we, we record the sliver in time. Yep. And now that my a Thursday nights are freed up, you know, There's there's a good, there's a good chance that we might have a tack on sometimes when, when late news drops. So we'll try to get you the freshest news right out of the box. Whenever it happens with this whole. CFL news or Xcel news, whatever it may be. That's what we do here. Yeah, I'll tell you what the lay thy recordings. I got, I got a heck of a gas coming up that actually my work welfare late and I recorded it. We got a big, big timey. We just got the approvals this week. Related to that, not what you're thinking, but almost as good. Related to football leagues of north. So. Very excited about that. Also, we are journalists. We fall as a practicing journalist. I used to be a journalist. We are still a commentary site. So we had a lot of feedback last week. Well, we are quoting other reporters. On the podcast saying like, Hey, so-and-so said this don't come at me with like, well, actually that's when we are sourcing our stuff, go tweet at them, go tweet at them. They're there. I'll give you the emails, but like, Now, like if I say that Josh Johnson is on the COVID reserve list or that he's cut from the team and he's on the COVID reserve list, which I famously did. Yes. Then please call me out. Josh Johnson, former LA Wildcats quarterback did that on Christmas day, but like go quick, go. Tweet at these other people, like. All you're basically doing is just seeing a quote from it, like a tweet. And that's someone like propagating that, that info from our show. And then you're coming at us. It's it's, it's a re it's a ridiculous look. It is a completely ridiculous look. Well, but I just, yeah, I just. I try to find a nice source. I spent all night, last night, figuring out like, okay, what's the medical staff. Who's saying what. And like, if we're wrong and like a vaccine number, or if I'm quoting something, that's not, you. You know, we're coming from the sources. That's all I can do. I mean, I can look at, you know, and they're like, oh, global, like you can't trust. I'm like, It's a website. So do you want me to do. It's the news. I whatever. Anyway, I just thought we are commentary side. I tried to do my best for that, but anyway. Yeah. And I know sometimes we will troll a little bit, but we still do have some journalistic qualities about the show and we, you know, we're trying to source as best as we can. So if there's a problem with what you're hearing here, Take it up with the sources, not us. Not us. Yeah, so. Go tweet. So speaking of sources, we've got Scott Stinson from the national post coming up. Greg James from the 55 yard line on CFL America radio. And of course, friend of the show, Cole Boozer, former TSL. A lineman coach or just alignment. He is, he has alignment with the TSL. He has alignment with the lineman of the TSL. Yes. It's very confusing. That's okay. Your. It's your right to be confused. Calling. I talk about this. Because coal is. Offensive line, man. That's what he, you know, that's his trade, but he also plays for the lineman in the TSL. They are a team like the power line men. Okay. So, cause I thought this was like a depart. Department of redundancy department here. What was going on? No, you're fine. You're fair to ask that. You are, you are clear in the car, but yeah. Cole played for the D the defenders in the XFL, and he played for Tampa back in the day. And so I thank you again, spring lake for setting that up. I got fingers crossed. I got my line out. We're looking for a big guests next week. I really, really hoping we get that. But thank you all to our guests. Yeah, Scott. Greg and Cole Boozer. I am going to say. I'm not going to mention any names specifically, but a great way to get invited back off of the podcast is to promote the podcast that you are on. If so, I just, I really appreciate when our guests, I share things and that, so I'm not gonna say anything in particular, but over the last. Couple of weeks, but I just, anyway, I thank you all so much. All of our guests, Scott was great. I thought Scott was fantastic. Did you like Scott? I did. I did a lot. You seem very grounded, very light. You know, he didn't seem emotional about his takes. There's some times that people get a lot of emotional takes. About, you know, their beloved Canadian football. And I understand. It's it's a 108 year league and it's older than the NFL and all the other things. You throw out there. But it's, it's like, it's a, you know, To have someone come on and kind of present things. In a very non-emotional manner. Not saying there's anything bad with emotionally presenting things. But it was a very, it was very nice to talk to Scott and he had a lot of good insight and you'll hear that coming up. Later on. In the, in the show here, Scott is like flat line. Like even his emails. You're welcome. You're welcome. Thank you. I very. But I appreciate that. I appreciate that. And then Greg was great, even though he tried to zoom bomb our interview with Scott. So we got it all going. But yeah, Greg was great too. And then obviously Cole Boozer, it's just a wonderful, a charm of a, of a human being. I just had one email. We got a nice email from mark. M a R C in Canada. He couldn't re like Google podcast doesn't allow reviews. He just said, 11, the pie drops consistently. Great football taco flee. When we hear about games soon, and you guys obviously put a lot of work into the shows, keep it up. You do great interviews with interesting guests. I would definitely recommend it to friends. Oh, yes, please subscribe. We we've kind of plateaued with the subscribers. We're trying to get to 1500 to do the Jasper's merged giveaway. I might have like an extra accent that mark has hat that maybe we can give away too, but please. Like, and subscribe, please subscribe. It doesn't cost you a penny, but we're, we're floating above that 1300 and we love to get to 1500 by the end of the spring league. So we can do that. Merck giveaway. Yes. Yes. Yes. Please, please subscribe on, on, not just on YouTube, but on your, you know, whatever. Audio podcast player you have? Yes. We promote the YouTube a lot, but yes, please do that. Just one other note about this. I'm seeing a lot of anti rock sediment. As much CFL staff as we get a lot of, like a lot of people now are like, after the rock you bought the league, what are you even doing? I know I'm all I want to say with that is there was no other option for XFL fans. So. We then go away. I mean I'm serious. Like the league was bankrupt. Danny and the rock were the only people that bought the lake. There wasn't no other bitters, there was no other options. So like, Then it wouldn't have been here. So what do you want, like. [Unknown] that seems to be like the thing, like just, you know, I don't know why people. Just look at like an ownership group and not realize that it's not necessarily the ownership group, but the people that are hired by the organization that will run it 98% of the time. Yeah, I'm sure the rocket will have his, his 2 cents to add, but you're discounting Danny completely. And her ability to. You know, Basically, you know, the. We've talked about it numerous times, the success of the tequila. The success of everything that the rock is doing, you know, is, is by, in large part to Danny. And it's like, You're going to discount it because it's the rock. I just, I don't know, man. I, I don't think the rock is as big of an equation in this, in this whole purchasing of the XFL that people make it out to be. Well, and also then the XFL wouldn't have existed. Like, so we wouldn't have had, but I see that, I see it all the time right now. My guys, there was no other option. There was no third option. Like there was no second option. It was. Like they went away or Danny and the rock bought it. So. Like I don't, I just can't be choosers. Not be choosers. Do you like my I'm not going to, I'm going to let you say what's residing on my head right now. Beanie here in the us, but north of the border, they call it a Tuk. I actually had, I was actually at a bar with my friend Nigel. He's an actor, of course. Up there in Vancouver. And he was like, I'm going to grab my Tuk and I'm like, what? You're what the F is a Tuk. And he's like this thing I'm like not to beanie. He's like, no, it's not. It's a toucan. Like, no, it's a beanie. And we went back and forth for like 15 minutes, arguing, like beanie versus Tuk. And he's like, the beanie is the thing you put in here. The color thing with the spin wheel, Mike. No, but this is the beanie too. This is what we call a beanie down here in America. I'm sorry to offend any Canadian people that we all worry. Meaning, sorry. But that's what we call it down here. And then of course, you know, I brought Nydia in on the discussion. Like it's totally a beanie of Mike C it's a beanie. She's like, no, he's like, no, it's a Tuk. And I'm like, okay. Well, a friend of the show, Jim Mullen, you know, sent me this wonderful ha also. So we now have our Edmonton flag. I'm assimilating to the NCFL. We have our Edmonton flag. I've read on the background and then I have my other hat up here. I thought that was nice. It has a Velcro back. So Jim, I'm not going to wear it, but I will, I will hang it proudly. And then I have my football, Canada. Hat on today. So, but yes, I have all in the background. I like it. We're going to get only background too. So right now this is temporary. I've decided that I'm doing these kinds of podcasts for my bedroom. Is causing me to lack sleep. So I need to get the machinery out of here and have like a peaceful sanctuary. Where I can actually get some rest. Paul is under construction. Two other quick banners. We're getting in a lot of the preface. Sorry. Did you know there is a McMahon stadium in Calgary? I didn't know that. No. Do you think that that is the secret linchpin to the CFL merger talks? There's a, there's a McMahon stadium owned by the university of Calgary. Also. It only has the true. The trailer only has like a hundred views on YouTube, but there is a fascinating new documentary about the AAF failure coming out August 10th. It's called alliances broken. A listener, max sent it to me and I go, well, this. It looks very fascinating, but there's literally like 101 views or something now for it. I'm like, I'll have to. Check it out. Check it out. Yeah, kinda like they, you will like this. They call the AAF, the fire festival, a football leagues. That's completely accurate. Completely accurate. We're back to the zero sugar-free we're done drank all the dog water. So now we're vaccinated to the sugar-free Zola. Is that the pipe pineapple coconut. No, this is just the original it's. Oh yeah. It's I like the original, that's my thing. So there we go. You always need that. That sound of that opening of the canvas summary that we didn't need. We do. We need to be quiet during that. Yeah, that's a good thing. It's a big drawing point for the podcast. That right there. Then comment, comment, if you'd like to. So I can open the, and on the YouTube. All right. Let's move on. Let's get into the meat of the show. Exactly one month ago, May 21st. Wait as of May 21st, May 21st. Okay. Some of the things you're typing in here. Confusing me a little bit. Commissioner Randy Ambrozy spoke on the CFL's return to play plan. And it's been one month. So that's what we're talking about. Here. Yeah, transparency hearing that theme. I just thought that was, he did tweet. He tweeted a very nice get your COVID vaccine message, which I thought was great. You know, he had the very wonderful thing, but you know, we got a lot of pushback last week. Like what do you want the CFL to say? I'm like, well, Anything like it. Looks good. Sounds good. Whatever. I got a lot of like what takes time to craft messages and get the PR department. My husband, he just like Amazon. I could tweet something. It's not a, you don't need over. They may, but it's been over a month now. We're getting ready. But this is the, the, the meat of this story this week is this BC lion setting to begin training camp in early July. Wednesday on the Donnie and Dolly show. I'm assuming it's Dolly. They shared some news with the BC lions starting training camp in early July. That coincides with yesterday's PFD report about CFL training camps beginning soon. And it sounds like they're reaching out to players. Yeah, so they were so a, and we'll get into the pro football talk. That was the big thing came out on Tuesday and Mike Florio. And it seemed at the time, it was a really weird article. Like, and I'm, I'll kind of jump down here a little bit on the Google doc just to kind of give that. So CFL news, we follow up and they help us get all the guests and stuff. They tweeted out, you know, cause they tweet out the articles from the CFL and. Foria route like, Hey, CFL is, you know, we're coming back or we're good to go. August 5th. And everybody was like, did Florio, like, is he just getting to the press release about the CFL stuff from like, it was, it was like really weird. And so immediately Matt mango, friend of the show tweeted. I haven't, I haven't heard anything. I don't know what's going on. And so then three down immediately came out and they were like, Hey, yo, contrary to our report, the Canadian football league has not informed the players. You know, this is not happening, whatever. And then Naylor tweeted. There's no change in the status. It's still dependent on the approvals, whatever. Well then. Then the next day, then this report came out about the BC lions. So it does seem like maybe Floria wasn't crazy. You know what I'm saying? Like it, it, it was confusing, but now it's like, oh, maybe Foria was going on. So. Any thoughts on any of that? Again, It seems like there's not transparency. Like there there's one message going out and then there's these back channels. You know, Who was it that said. It's it's like, it's like the league wants to be for the Franz and like, yeah, come on inside our insiders club. And then once they get to a certain door, then all they're like, oh wait, wait, not this insider club, but you're in the club, but just not this club. And it seems like they're doing some back channel stuff, but not being transparent about the back channel stuff. Like if you're calling players up, that's good news. That's good. PR why don't you put that out there? I don't know. Yeah. So the, one of the hosts of the Donnie and Dali show. Neil Mecca boy, who's the co general manager and director for that football operations for the lions. The quote was, he just told me that we, before we went on the show that the BC lions are telling their players on July 2nd to start quarantining. So that means a July 16 training camp is a go a goal for the lions. That season will start in August. So we're feeling good. I w I was listening to the three down guys last night. Donk is a little more realistic right now. Hides is like, they think they're good to go. Dunk points out, you know, Ontario still in lockdown. Like, are they going to get out? And then we're starting football on a couple of weeks. And we talked with Scott too, about bringing the players up north. And, and I believe Don quoted on their podcast. So if it's wrong, tweeted dunk. Then it would be cost like a million dollars, right. To bring up all the players and everything. So, you know, it's not as easy as just flipping the switch and going. I mean, we talk about, you know, how much lead time and okay. The NHL, they started with everybody. CFL still needs some time to kind of get all this going. And I think. Hearing these weird things from like other podcasts and stuff. I just don't think it's like the way to let your players know that this is happening. Yeah. You should be in direct contact. They shouldn't have to hear like us and go, oh, well, there's, there's our news that we're waiting for. Like, they're going to start calling us now. You should, you should be calling your players before we have the chance to inform your players. Well, yeah. Especially when, like, you know, and I love Matt because, you know, obviously he did on the show and the great guy, but like, he, he is like cut to the chase. She was like, I haven't heard anything. And you're like, I appreciate that because. You know, anyway, so that's kind of the news. It was a really confusing week. We have a quote from rod here coming up later. Right. Peter's in the battle of this, but it was really confusing cause it seemed like there was news and there wasn't, but that's kind of, the plan is I guess, July 2nd start quarantining. So we'll see. We'll see. A friend of the show, Rob Vanstone interviewed Roughriders punter and foremost, former Seattle Seahawks, John Ryan. On the XFL and the season delay and the lead communications. And John Ryan said, he's very concerned about it. And I assume the lack of communication. He hasn't gotten them in for much information. If I read continually in the quote, you haven't got them in as much information from the league, which is kind of the most concerning part. When they told the players, they were going to report to camp on July 2nd. I think everyone was pretty excited because that was the first real concrete news that we've gotten since they told us. That the season was going to be canceled last year. That's crazy time. Yeah, that's crazy time. That the first thing that he's felt like gotten any news at all from the league. And this, this was kind of revolving both the season and the XML, wherever he was like, I haven't heard anything. I, this is the first, like any bit of positive news. And that is terrifying. Because again, the league should be communicating directly with the players. And the journalists shouldn't be the ones informing the players. Seems odd. It's a weird flex. Like just this. This was like, this was a lot of the problems with the FCF when we cover fingertip football and they weren't releasing a lot of the news. Like there was the whole deal where the championship game was going to be like an hour as opposed to 40 minutes. And I got, just came out on like a random podcast interview that one of the players did. And it's the same kind of thing. Like you need to be controlling this message coming out right. And, you know, having people do social media, I mean, you know, they have to see all this stuff. They look at our, like my Instagram stories. Like they look at that. I mean, they like there's someone is they're monitoring this stuff, so they certainly know. John Ryan is really not excited about the merger. He's very concerned about losing that just came out today. I didn't want to blow up the show too much, but he is concerned and thinks that you're losing the whole Canadian aspect of it. So, I mean, as John Ryan's a guy that is played both. American and Canadian football. Of course he was great with Seattle for many years. So yeah. You know, he's definitely got a valid opinion and we, we, you know, we vow. We, we value everybody's opinion about this merger. And of course we stated many times, well, we'd like to see happen, but you know, Regardless, I guess we're just, you know, always, constantly hating on the CFL for some reason, even though we're not, we love the CFL. Appreciate it. I have my, I can't do it. I have my. Ding dong. I got my football, Canada hat. So. Public health agency of Canada is a weighting. Written provincial support. For the CFL. Return to play plan. Before they consider the proposal. They require each of the provinces to approve the leagues. COVID 19 return to play plan. Contrary to regional recent national report. The federal government tells a redown nation that no approvals have been given by any provincial jurisdictions. Remember how last week we talked about like a, TSN kind of jumping the gun and far, you know, front of the shelf, our Han and nail are talking about, you know, Hey, We're brave to play everywhere. Yeah, they came out. This just came out this morning, along with the John Ryan thing that the public health agency of Canada. It's either still waiting on all that. They're also trying to get that quarantine period down from 14 days to a week, because obviously you're going to be bringing in the players, you know, across the border. And we get in with Scott, all the issues with that. But, yeah, it's interesting. To that point. Like if a player comes from across the border and they've gotten their vaccine here and both doses. Shouldn't that quarantine thing be. Yeah. I mean, presumably. But that's not, again, like that could be something that we could talk about. I would. What do you want the lead to talk about? That would be a great thing. What I love about look like, I don't know. It was terrifying when Scott's like in his interview. He's like, yeah, like this is some of that backward back of the napkin stuff that they work on. The mic that is. Terrifying to me. If I was like, oh, here's our plan. Like, what's this. Get a scratch piece of paper. BC lions president Rick. [Unknown] I'm going to substitute. I think it's liqour. Said that a 14 game schedule will be announced in the coming days. This was a football club. We are very encouraged by both today's announcement and the fact that case numbers in British Columbia continue to decline as we stand at all along. Our goal is to host as many fans as we can beginning with our home opener. We will continue to monitor developments over the next several weeks and work with provincial health officials with the goal of welcoming back our great fans to BC place. In the safest manner possible. Okay. Rick. But you, the case numbers in British Columbia are declining. What an Ontario. It's a different story. You have to look at the entire country with this thing. Well, and that's also, I do hear a lot of like, well, the vaccines in Saskatchewan are going good. So that means it's like, well, there's, there's varying levels of population and varying levels of yeah. Anything else? Even here in the U S look at us like California, we're going to completely reopen June 15th. No masks, no nothing. Yep. And that's because our case load has plummeted. Plummeted. And in some states it's still a little higher and you know, California is considering restricting travel from states to here because their case load is a little higher. So long story short, you can't just look at what's going on in your province and go, well, we're, we're good to go. It's it's, it's a national thing because you were talking about teams. Crossing provincial borders. From Ontario let's let's put it out there from Ontario. And coming into, you know, British Columbia and potentially. Bringing, you know, bringing COVID with. I did see today just came out like the Ontario rates have really gone down. I mean, just to like, [unknown]. And we're right. You know, I mean, we're all right, but just, yeah. But what was interesting about this whole Eirich? Sure. With the, with the CFL. Is. So the BC premier, John Horgan, once. So. So BC lions, right, Rick, but then you have the premier John Horgan saying he wants to push this 20, 20 start further into August and that he and Dr. Bonnie not Bonnie hammer. Henry avid communication with the BC Alliance. And so they say, even though Rick puts out this statement, right. This is all. Cause it's weird. Like it's all these conflicting things. So even though he put this out, Oregon says it's not just the dates, it's dates and data. I'm optimistic that if we can push the season further into August, we might be in the better place he said. And then Dr. Henry said, it's not going to be by the date. It's going to be by the data. I know we've talked, you know, we've hammered this adaptive. But my point is, is like you have these like presidents and whatever coming out and like, it's, this is why the, you need transparency from the league. It's because we have all these different things going on and there's no unifying voice of any kind. I don't think there's there's communication between the league. I think there's either there's too many chiefs. None are communicating for the league, like a president here, or a coach here. There's too many chiefs communicating for the league, as opposed to league having a unifying message. And it's just, you know, I understand that you can't tell owners to shut the F up. I understand that completely. But there needs to be a unified message and there needs to be a group that is communicating. I don't know if that's like a direct, you know, like, like a special office inside the CFL that is dealing directly with pandemic related stuff, three people team, whatever it may be. I know that they're, they're losing money that they're hemorrhaging. I understand all of that. But there needs to be a group that is handling the message going forward and communicating with these agencies in different province. Provinces and kind of getting everyone on the same page in terms of what the data says. Because it seems like people are just making up their own decisions and going out with, well, we're going to go play. And then the people that we trust to give us the info are saying, no, you're not. We need more. You're absolutely correct. I mean, Did I absolutely correct in that it's such a big smash. Even like the NFL last year. Good morning football did this whole thing about like they had these two or three women that all they did for the NFL season was like, figure out the COVID. Like if someone got sick and they're like, okay, well this like all the different. That's all they did. Like the whole season for everything was like they manage and they. And they said, like, they literally couldn't have done the season without them. Like they were the three smartest people in the world that figured out all this stuff. And it's like, again, you know, yeah. Like you said, the CFL and money and stuff, but. It's you know, anyway. It's a key, it's a key thing that you probably do need. Yes. So Lisa McCloud, we've talked about her before she is now more hopeful. Last week, she, this stuff goes back and forth. She's more hopeful. Now. She goes, I felt a lot more hopeful today. They maybe I'd done a couple, you know, a couple. Days ago. August might still be too early for fans in the stands, but that's something that I've engaged with the chief medical health officers on. Okay. I mean, it's, you know, She also says that she's absolutely committed to trying to get us to a point where Hamilton is able to host a great cup. Of course. And Hamilton is a site. That's an Ontario. And we'll be there. You will be there. Barring any, you know, any spikes in COVID cases or anything like that. I'm assuming the borders opened by then assuming, you know, There's a lot. There's a lot to be taken into account. So if, if they're continuing to trend downward in Ontario, That's a lot more optimistic now than, and I think, I think once you see that. You know, some people were were saying like my friend who lives in Ontario, she's like, I had to wait. I'm I'm now. There's two, two months in between my first and second doses. And I'm like, that's not entirely safe, but I think now you're getting to a point where they're starting to realize that there are some people that are, are not getting vaccinated. I'm not. Making a political statement, but when those people don't get vaccinated, it means the supply goes up, which means you can speed up the second dose. And you get past that 14 day period where you're like, okay, I can. I can freely. You know, go out and do things and stuff like that. And then once those people get vaccinated, it's up spreading as much. And then, you know, Over cases, plummets. So there's still a lot of time between now and then, and we'll see, we'll just see. I don't like to plagiarize too much, but I do think rod Rod's response to this was great. He wrote a little blog. He was on vacation all week. But he wrote a love. Like it was all caps. Tuesday, it doesn't match him. Rod typing this in all caps. Tuesday was another particularly confusing day when the BC premier said, you'd like to see the CFL moved there August, you know, back a few weeks. Meanwhile, at the same time, President Rick Cortez. For this and the 14 games schedules cause close to being released with an August 5th start date, the Ontario government said there'll be no large gatherings at all. The BC government said there won't be anytime next winter. And then we see quotes from the same people saying that perhaps the CFL's August 5th kickoff is possible. Too many chiefs. There's too many chiefs. So many people are just saying whatever they want. Get get on the same page. And talk to your players too. Here's a fun one for. Your good friend, Mr. Madani. Oh, he's gathered Intel on the drafts, making their way around CFL front offices for the potential 2021 season. BC and Ontario have clearly stated they have not signed off in any return to play pro proposals. And those health and safety plans must be approved before football can be back on the field. Madani said the census I'm getting the sense I'm getting is that there are no plans from the CFL side to play any Canadian football in Ontario in the month of August. This is how it's been explained to me. There've been a few drafts of the 2021 schedule sent around. And every draft has Ontario teams playing west. The latest draft I've been told has the BC lions not being in Vancouver, especially early on in the season. Now I'm starting to really wonder if there might be a scenario where the lions are going to play host home games. Somewhere else, could it be on the Prairie? It's going to be on the Rockies, something like that. Could that even be a possibility? I don't know. Maybe you should call someone at the twice failed league in. Ordinate that. I just, you know, I, I, we talked to Scott about this. I've I've asked him about this race. Explain to me how that revenue sharing works. If the BC lions play in Saskatchewan. Are, are we getting. Dispatcher, like, are they going to the games? Are we getting ticket revenue from that? Cause again, you know, for the NFL, it's like a drop in the bucket, right? Like the San Francisco played in Arizona. Like they don't, you know, they moved around a little bit with that. But we're, we're still dependent on this money and then we're gonna. We're not planning to Nigeria for a model. We're going to do more home games later. Okay. But where does that money go? Good question. Well, we'll, we'll find out. Insider talk. I'm assuming from three down nation. Hodge with his weekly blog of anonymous quotes said, did you see that Bob young owner of the Hamilton tiger cats and mark? [Unknown] the red blacks president and then the rough riders had coach again, too many chiefs all coming out and saying, they're playing. I guess that's them getting tired of bullying being bullied behind the scenes by a couple of teams that don't want to play. Chaplain Montreal, but that's yeah, he gets, he like assembles. He gets all his little tidbits and then like, okay. Is kind of interesting cause you're like, oh wait, but it'd be really cool if obviously, like who said that? I mean, I get that. He's trying to like maintain. He's consolidating and then presenting a case where it's like, we know who the two teams are, the don't want to play. We understand who you guys are, you know? Rod said it on the show. Other people have said it on the show. MLSE and, you know, they're, they're really tight with the Montreal owners. So, you know, And I that's the thing like we talked to who was it that, that said Montreal just barely got bought. It was Scott. Yeah. And. If you just bought the team, why wouldn't you want to see him play? Because you're friends with MLSE and you want to. Drive that that merger. I don't know. It's interesting. I I'm without where I think if they do merge, are they, I do think they pull Vancouver and the two larger cities and then they go. CFL can go exist on the Prairie's. I mean, I mean that, I don't think that that's a, that's a. What people want to hear, but I could see that I could see being a 16 CFL. CFL players association, president Solomon. Ellie man. Ellie. The Amman. Hopefully I got that right. That time sent a memo to the membership on the 21st saying we are continuing discussions with the league, both on, on both the start of the season and the mechanics of modifying the collective agreement. To accommodate a COVID restricted environment. Your bargaining committee is presently to commit to the start. Of August 5th. So you get your affairs in order and prepare to play football with that being said, the authorities in both federal and provincial areas, they have the last word on when we can start training camp and beginning, shortened season. As there needs to be an allowance for a percentage of fan attendance. So even, even the president of the player's association is realizing the owners will not put a product on the field. If they're not able to put fans. In the stands. Well, yeah, also they're, I mean, they're looking at for the players because it's like, yeah, a lot of these guys have jobs, right? They're working they're training. Like you gotta. We've talked about this. Like you can't just. Why can't the CFL just ramp up in the week because these players got to figure out like, okay, I got to take six months off of my job now and go up and player, I got to quit or I got a good dude. I mean, you can't just. You can just go, right? Like a lot of these guys aren't in any cities right now where they're playing. So. This was, I'll take credit for this. I bet Josh Davis, isn't gonna listen to the podcasts, but Josh Davis and XML, and these have you're welcome. Jeff Redbull Reinbold. He's so he's a coach in the spring league right now. That's existing in Indianapolis and Houston. And he tweeted this week. Is he is a special teams coordinator for the tiger cats. Well, he was coaching for the generals. And he tweeted, Hey, I'm heading back to, you know, he's, I'm done with the TSL. I'm heading back up to get ready for the CFL season. I thought. Well, that's interesting. I mean, I again, Communication there's back channels. And then there's no channels. Yeah. Does he know? Does he know something? Anyway, I just thought that was interesting. I mean, he's not like the big, you know, like the season. Yeah, like hinges on his, like, whatever. But I did think that was weird that he was going out of his way to, to tweet about that and say that, I guess, I guess I think. At this point. The people that are really ingratiated with covering the CFL that are, that are the ones in reads mentions every single day. Maybe you start might want to start. Tuning your vitriol to the fact that they are not giving us. There's, there's all this double talking. There's all these multiple chiefs running things, and there's all these it's just, it's out of control and maybe direct your anger. Toward. Getting a collective message from the league and not just an owner here, a coach here. And I think like this back channel communication thing, that's part of what the problem is. Like no players are being told anything, but then coaches are leaving jobs to go back to the CFL. Because apparently the problem told something by someone who might not be able to tell him anything. Yeah. And, and, you know, Coal coal comes out, you know, cold Boozer as on today from the spring league. And I've had my own qualms with how they're handling media and stuff, but they at least have a consistent message. So. So, I mean, I have my own critiques about them and, and player availability and stuff like that. Thank you. Very, yeah, they've been gracious with getting everyone, you know, eventually, but like at least they're controlling the message, right? So you can, you can. I would rather have. I would rather work through the channels and have a cohesive message then kind of this mix mosh of stuff that we have going on, although it is better for the podcast because we have more stuff to talk about. Completely completely agree. Percentage of kidney deans who have received their first dose of COVID vaccine. The percentage is now surpassing the United States. Yep. And when you get that second dose. It's good. It's going to be incredible to see how fast the numbers drop in terms of your case load. I am very I'm. I'm starting to kind of feel more optimistic. About things as I'm reading, stuff like that, where, you know, there's a percentage. There's a higher percentage of Canadians that have got their dose. That being said, There's also a lower percentage of people in Canada compared to us, like, you know, the big cities they have, you know, a good size amount of people in them, but then you're talking like the other outlying areas. Like 53% of people, you know, in a town that has. Maybe 250,000. That's not too many, like that's, that's still, you know, there's still. It's it's, it's a smaller, it's a smaller section. What I'm saying, you know? I'm I'm hopeful. I'm I'm starting to get optimistic. The other injuries. I was reading this. It was either this week or last week that the number of anti-vax. Canadian people as far less than the number. You know, I needed to get into politics and United States politics in the last couple of years that maybe led us to that point. But then there is that there's probably a higher percentage of Canadians that want to get the vaccine just overall. Then, then the United States, I'm still waiting for my superpowers to kick in for my second dose. I have it hasn't happened yet. Yeah, the last thing I just, I mean, I'm sure they're all getting moved towards it, but so far the Panthers and the Rams and the chargers. You know what they're both, you know, with cell five, but they've all announced that they're. We're going full steam ahead. No mass, no vaccinations. Open the fans in the stadium. What do you think about. Tom, Tom Glick president. The day of that, the. They temper sports entertainment. Yep. Sure bro. Bold strategy cotton. I think you, I think you honestly need to have like, Can you show your back's card? Oh, you can't. It's an indoor stadium in LA. It's an indoor stadium in LA. I repeat. It's an indoor stadium in LA. Good luck. Yeah. You can't say this. And when California is saying you might not be able to do that. All right, we're gonna take a break right now. We have big, big XFL. Coming up. A big XFL thing. Huge. I'm sure that is leading other shows. So. Okay, that's fine. I've got a break coming up. We're going to bring in Scott and Greg. And then we'll have this big XFL news right after the break. Scott Stinson national post writer joining us now. How's it going, Scott? Good. How are you guys doing? Not bad. Canadian football Tuk on there that you guys call it a two cup there. We call it. We call it a beanie down here. Canadian friends are like, what? That's the thing. Anyway. Yeah. How's everything. Like how's everything going up there with, with the COVID situation and. Well, it's funny. It relates very specifically with playing football league in that. We are waiting to hear essentially what is going to happen. What's the 2021 season. Because in a very broad sense, Canada was a little bit behind the us in terms of vaccinations. And so. Whereas things. Have opened up. And fans back and stands in the states. We're not there yet. They're getting to the point now where I think we're, you know, A few weeks away, less than a month from having some of the decisions made in terms of approvals and borders, opening up potentially, and things like that. But right now, The CFO came up with a plan, so to speak. A few weeks ago saying we hope to have everything. Sorted out for an August early August start. And we'd be able to make decisions by the mid June and you know, it's almost June now and no decisions have been made. So I think we're getting down to the. The breast tax in terms of, they need to see that the provinces continue to improve in terms of COVID numbers and positive cases. And then they. Go from there to approving some sort of return to play plan, probably without any fans in the stands. In the early going. And then from there potentially, we're going to have some sort of CFL 20, 21 season, but it's almost like the fight against COVID in Canada. Very much. Mirrors the situation with CFL right now, because it's kind of a hold and see, and hope everything gets improved, continues to improve over the next couple of weeks. And then I think some firm decisions will be made. How do you feel right now, optimistically about everything. I think that there. They are on track to have some sort of season, I think. No, one thing that could derail that possibility is this. Say for example, Ontario or Quebec wishes. There are three CFL franchises. In Ontario, Toronto, Ottawa. Juan Hamilton, there's one in Quebec and Montreal. If those provinces, which were the provinces that kind of had the worst of it in the early parts of Cozad. If those provinces are reluctant to allow fans even a limited number of fans and stadiums by. You know, September say then, I think we're back to a situation where we're wondering if the CFO's going to go ahead with CS. That's that's kind of like, The worst case scenario though. I do think having said that, that that will be what happens in that we'll continue to see over the next few weeks that things are progressing. And then though everyone will be okay with what the CFL is. Planning. They might even start with in the expectation is that they'll start with a bunch of games out west. Where the provinces seem a little more open to having fans in the stands and then it'll progress from there. But that is the one, you know, The fly in the yard, man, is that. A couple of one or two provinces might say we're not signing off on this just yet. And ultimately the league needs assurances, right? Like they're not going to start moving. They're not going to start bringing players back and open training camps and things. Until they can be a hundred percent certain that the schedule that they have mapped their to something they're going to be able to do. Has there been any movement in terms of, we haven't touched on this in a while, has there been any movement in terms of. The potential of a government loan to the CFL. We know they got turned down for a no interest loan. Has there been any movement on that or is that kind of still. It is not in the cards. I. There has been a, like a little bit of reporting, basically just. People checking in and saying, Hey, is this a possibility? And this time around and, and it's no more likely to happen now than it was a year ago. So I think that's why there. Put it this way. They're making plans to have a season. With a federal loan, not being part of those plans. So I don't think anything really hinges on it in terms of. Money from the government support from the government. They'll probably be different things they might try to do to help get things off the ground. Again. But nothing in terms of financially backstopping the league so that they could play this year. Something that I'm curious about. And you know, obviously they turned down the bubble. We didn't do the bubble last year. You know, we don't want to do the bubble this year. You know, we're talking, you know, shipping some of the teams out west, I even saw like three down and had a opinion piece the other day about playing, you know, finding a couple of stadiums and playing everything. How did that. That revenue. Do we know how that would work? Like if, if. If one team is playing in another team, it's fan driven. I mean, I hear that a lot, right. You know, that was where the Ambrozy came out and said, you know, that was the big plan, but I'm like, If we need the fans in and we need the money from the fans, but yet there's no revenue share in that way. How would that do. I mean, do we know how that would work? We don't know again, because so much of this is hypothetical and back a napkin kind of stuff. And even when commissioner is saying, well, what we could do is potentially start at west. They weren't saying. And as part of that, Yeah, they would split the revenues or, or whatever. I mean, I guess you could, you could steer eyes that if they start playing games at west, then that just means the Eastern teams are going to have a bunch of road games early and a bunch of home games late. And the attendant stuff, we'll all kind of balance, et cetera. Or they could. Do something where they agree to split gate revenues, more equitable. They might previously have done. I mean, In CML terms, that's a whole nother ball of wax because there, there are certain teams that have really good attendance and there are certain things that don't, and there are. You know, Maybe that doesn't matter if you're only having 5,000 people on stage. Anyway. But historically that would not fly because the Saskatchewan's and the Winnipegs and the Edmundson's of the world don't want to be having to share gate revenue. Significant amount with a team like Toronto, which doesn't get nearly as nice. So. I assume this is one of those things. When embers, he talks about this stuff that could all kind of be worked out, but it certainly would fit under the, under the category of. Details that have not really been discussed publicly yet. When you talk about this, you know, being back in napkin, writing you. Ideas right. Theories. I mean, you've covered this league obviously a lot longer than we have is that par for the course, is that terrifying? Is that somewhere in between? Well, That's a good question. I, I think in the Ambrozy era, There has been an awful lot of like, Big ideas and things that get talked about as this is as something we want to do, and we're really excited about it. And then when you drill down a bit further, you go. How's that going to work exactly. And the commissioner, one of his great strengths is to be very enthusiastic and to be a big salesman and to say, No, it's going to be awesome. This will work and. Look, I don't know how familiar you guys are with the whole global expansion. Project that he's been on for a few years now, but. My perspective from the moment it was dropped was like, Wait. So you're going to get like a couple of guys from Mexico and Finland and Germany, and they're going to be on your practice roster and. In Germany is going to care about that some way. Like, I I've never really understood that part of it, you know, like, cause the whole idea of that global expansion would be you are creating interest in these other countries, in the CFL specifically. And just having a smattering of guys from around the world as part of the league, I don't think is going to make a CFL banner to some random dude in Frankfurt, but. And so having said all that, I kind of feel it's a little bit the same way with, with this pandemic reaction in that the commissioner in his office and the league are Austin. Like coming up with things that they think will work and maybe it will be a bubble and maybe it'll be this thing and, and. And maybe we'll start things off there. And often the details are kind of less for you as sort of sorted yourself. And maybe they'll come out with something a bit more firm. But I do think as much as this can be kind of poking fun at them. If I'm a season ticket holder of whatever team it might be. I think you could rightly say at this point that you've gotten very little assurances, that there's going to be a season that you're going to be able to go to it. That whatever deposit you gave them before the 2020 season was canceled. Is going to be honored. And, and that's the part that I think. And I'm certainly not the only person to say, but there's been concerned that the transparency from the league offices over this whole period has been, has been stamped. What happens if there's not a season? Well, Look, I, I don't think any league can not play for two years and, and. Continue to operate in anything like it's normal. Function. I mean, I just, at some point the players are gonna say, We're going to go do something else. And. And especially guys given. And like everywhere else has been playing. You know, it's not. It's not the CFL is not the only league. That's had some challenges, but you know, whether it's the big, the major pro sports, which we all know of course come back. And operated are now. Like season two during the pandemic, but even much smaller things. The WN da. The, the NWSL soccer. There's a small little Canadian soccer league. That's only been around for a couple of years, like a very lower tier professional organization, but even they played in the bubble last year. So at some point, like you have to kind of put up or shut up and. And I think. That's. Thing that the league is going to have to decide. And if they, they. Sort of rolling with the idea that they're going to get some sort of fans in the stadium. To offset the operating losses. But to my mind, they're going to have to come to a decision point and say, we're going to have to go ahead with this thing even. Even if it means. We might not have the fans in the stands that we ultimately hope to have. Because I just don't think you can not have it for another year. I think that's, that's absurd and ridiculous. Ask of your fans and your employees, especially your players. Could they have done anything different to maybe. Operate operate and turn and withstand this. Yeah, I think they should have played last year. To be honest with you. I think. I think it, it. It exposed the financial problems of the league. And the fact that there are certain franchises in particular, that that don't make enough money even in normal times. And they didn't want to lose even more money. And in difficult times, But I think that that was a decision that, that was bad to the league, ultimately, and, and oh, and they have, you know, ownership groups that are. Some of them are backed by a lot of money. You know, big corporations, that kind of thing. And. I think the move should have been to just play and to keep people interested in the game and to say, you know what? This is going to be. But maybe we can get some support. You know, whatever the loan, we never really known what the loan provisions were with the federal government. They the report of course, is that they wanted a interest free loan. $30 Million. That probably could have got some sort of financing. Some sort of acceptable interest rate. I mean the Canadian government was handing out all lots of money. To all sorts of different organizations during the pandemic when things are closed and. And I think looking back. They, you know, I'm not sure Randy and Breza would ever admit it, but I think they should have played last year. And then. Set themselves up for something again this year. So we'll see what happens. It. You know, I still think if you're gonna ask me what my optimism. The fact that it's going to be a season, I think will be a season. I'd probably say there's a. 80% Chance there'll be a season, but there is that possibility that something screws it up along the way. Something that I've been because I spent way too much time with all this stuff. Now that's something that we. But something that I've been pondering about, you know, obviously last year they had the vote, you know, certain teams didn't want to play. Yep. You know, we've been hedging, our bats fans in the stadiums. You know, we need that to go ahead. You know, obviously Bob young came out with the Thai cats and all that last week, Hey, we're going to play in the red blacks and all that. You know what, if we get here close. And some of the teams still just don't want to play. Right. Even if there we can get 10% of the fans in. Have we thought, I mean, that's what I'm thinking at this point. Yeah. You know, I actually think the, the bigger wrench in the works potentially get to your question secondary, but the other potential. Problem is. The border right now, the border is theoretically closed. It's not really closed. In Canada, the us, but you can drive across it. If you're an essential worker. Or a traveler. Airline travel essentially. Is close to the point where you're supposed to go into a expensive hotel quarantine. If you arrive by air. So one of the challenges with setting up any sorts of training camp scenario is they're going to have to allow players and staff to come back. In some way that is different than the rules for the general public right now. Is that a huge hurdle? No, it's not a massive hurdle because they did it with the NHL playoffs. They said, okay, if you come back, you only have to quarantine for a week and it'll not be a massive burden. You know, it was normally a 14 day quarantine. They let it be a week. They didn't worry about the hotels so they can do that kind of stuff. But the question is like, are people, are people Canadians are. Is the public gonna get really annoyed at politicians too? Or. A sudden making exceptions for CFL players returning again, I think it's entirely possible that that can all be handled relatively. Pain-free. But I also sort of wonder when you have provincial leaders who are kind of fighting with the federal government over the border closures and not doing enough. Just keep people out and. So on and so forth, we'll then turn around and welcome returning CFL player. So, so that's a question. The larger question that you asked about whether certain teams will be reluctant. Again, I got to think that by this point, if you own a CFO franchise and you're sitting there saying no, I'd rather not play in 2021 and go two years without this thing, taking the field. You should not be in this business. Because it's just absurd. The bleak has to play. You cannot expect these guys to sit out two years, as we all know. Professional athletes and football players in particular I'm short careers. So it's insane to imagine that they would send it in another year. I think. I don't know what, you know, ultimately. What drove the decision, the votes last summer to do not proceed. I mean, obviously it was money was a big part of it, but I just think so much has happened. Between now. And then you've, you've got some indication that. Unless things go. Horribly wrong, which nobody expects to happen. By some point in the fall, you'd be able to have fans in stands even in D Eastern cities. So you just have to kind of go with it. And if that means that maybe you're taking a bit of a risk, but you will have fewer fans in the stands than you might've hoped. Then I think that's just the risk acetate because the alternatives. Is, I just don't think an option for Holly. And that alternative being. Being not playing and, or doing something where they, of course they, they sit out 2021 and they'd come back in 2022 with some sort of merger with whatever the XFL might be at that point, too. So. You know, those are. I would say. Like very big picture possibilities, but it would seem very strange to me that that would be the way they wanted the Canadian football league to come to its end was to basically not exist for two years and then come back completely altered form with. You know, a merger with another league and all that stuff. So. That to me seems like not something, anybody in the, in the league or amongst the ownership are really looking to do. That's not to say that the merger and something like that, couldn't also happen, but I just I'd be shocked if they were looking at it as the logical. Next move beyond. The last time they took the field as the CFL, as we know. So, what are your thoughts on the merger? Well, I mean, without knowing anything about what a merger might ultimately look like, I think there's no way for there to be a merger or cooperation of any significant amount between the two leagues without. One of them essentially giving up its identity. The one that would do that. And that scenario is. Gamed football. I mean, The big things. For the CFL AR. It plays over the summer and into the fall. You know, starts in the spring, plays in summer and into the fall. And it has a big field in three downs. Different rules, 12 guys on the field. Some other stuff that, of course anybody who falls Lee would know. I just don't see how you take. An American football league. And combine it with all the things that are unique about the CFL. And don't essentially give away the store at that point, because. You can't really operate a league where there's one set of leagues for one to one set of rules. For one series of games, one set of rules for a different series of games. If, if the merger quote unquote is like, The winner of the CFLs sometimes plays the winner of the XFL in some kind of. Exhibition type game or championship game or. Every we want to call it, maybe something like that could be figured. Hey. I think there'd still be some questions about the timing of the weed. Like how, how that works with the way that you seasons work would be a problem to overcome. But if it's any like real merger where they're all playing each other here and there. They're sort of having combined schedules. Then I just don't think you have with the CFL is anymore. And if that's what the league and its owners, its owners and its administration decides is the only way for it to survive. Then that's what they'll decide, but I think they'd be kind of kidding themselves if they think they could get into some sort of merger that doesn't fundamentally change. What, what the people who are CFO fans. Come tell him no it for. So are you, are you hesitant about that then as someone that, you know, I would assume loves the league that you, you know, Cover. Yeah. You know, it's funny because I've. I've covered the last four gray cups I've written about the league and his challenges a lot. And, and I think in a way it's probably done as much of that relative to normal game coverage. Then a lot of people who follow lead because I just I've. I'm Lee. I live in Toronto or the Toronto area. So I'm in one of the markets that doesn't love the CFO. And BJ just doesn't there's too much other competition. There's a whole. Go on for days, but. The challenges facing the CFL. And the big Canadian markets, which are Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. So I've often felt like these are real problems, that those leads are gonna have a hard time solving because they've been, they've been in place for quite some time. They've only kind of gotten worse over time. Having so-so. I guess what I'm going for there is I, I acknowledged the league has challenges and, and they don't seem to have any easy solutions to them. And maybe. A merger with the XFL is the solution. It's basically an acknowledgement that we've been, we've been fighting the same battles all the time. We're trying to get new people interested in Toronto and Montreal and Vancouver. We haven't been able to do it. I just think that it would be a shame if it came about. In these circumstances where. You know, they were doing stuff. They thought they were moving ahead with glowing, you know, growing the game, growing the leagues are these global initiatives and stuff. And then they basically, because of the pandemic decide to. To give up and go for some sort of merger. To me, that would be. Yeah. Disappointing wave of the CFL to come to an end. And the way we know it, because. You know when Randy and Broza was hired, I think it was 2017. He was very much like a guy who cared about the league play in the league. You know, it was. Was a huge CFO of booster and supporter and has been for most of his time going around and trying to draw up the interest, the league and talking about how great it is. And people like me where I was saying, look, man, your problem is simpler. You need to figure out how to get Toronto and Montreal and Vancouver. Onboard with your lead. And he got to went off on this other thing, but global expansion and try to do other stuff. And now it seems like he's having whatever these discussions are with the XFL. And, and to me, that's, that's the missed opportunity is. Is the key to making CFL a league that can survive and be viable is to just increase the interest in it. In some of the markets where the interest is rate. And. If they decide that they can't do that in the deal. The opportunity going forward to some sort of merger then. I guess that's what we'll do. Why couldn't the rules from Canada football, you know, just carry over. Why, why. Why can't we play Canadian rules with this ex veil potential merger. You mean like the whole of the league plays Canadian rules. Yeah. For example, Yeah. What's not good. They certainly could. If that's the way. You know, Dwayne Johnson and his business partners want to play it. My guess would be that. This is just my assumption is that. Is that the, the number of players who are willing the players and coaches, like it just becomes a fundamentally different game than then the football that. People are used to whether it's us college or NFL. And. To be honest. Like that's one of those things. It's it's a great question in that. Being somebody who covers this league. And obviously I watched NFL football as well. It's so hard to know the really answer to the question of which brand is actually better. Like. In terms of if you had the same players, like nobody's, nobody's a real. A CFO fan does fool themselves into thinking that they have better football players than the NFL does. No, one's that stupid. They're obviously not there. Those guys are, are better there. There. You know, Better athletes. However you want to describe it. They're better at that certain skillset. They're getting paid 10 times when somebody in the CFL is getting paid. So. To the extent that you believe with any sort of meritocracy? I think we would agree that the NFL players are better at football. But the question is like, if you, if you took CFL rules and you applied it to a similar group of football players, Would the game be better? I actually don't know what the answer is. And I think that, I think a lot of CFO's hands would, would accuse me of selling you at the country or something for saying that, but there are lots of CFL games that can look pretty bad. Like it's when you only have the three downs. It just, it can be a lot of punts. You know, and it's just like, It can be harder for drivers to get going when it works really well. It's it's extremely enjoyable to watch because it's a lot in passing. It's a lot of big passing. You know, because they're, you're trying to gain big gems, yardage a lot, you know, you should get. You get a sack on first down and it's second and 20 then probably throw in deep because otherwise it's punt. So it can be, it can be exciting. I just think that it's such a different game, that it would be a harder sell, I think too, for the XFL or. Or the XF cl XFL or whatever you want to call it to sign it kind of sell itself as this. AQI. Football that a lot of American football fans wouldn't be familiar with. I've just always kind of assumed that the XFL wants to at least look like the NFL, even though. I acknowledged that they did a lot of rule changes and things like that. Last time around to try to be innovative and to be different. So, but I do think that the CFLs brand is perhaps a bit too innovative relative to what the football you guys are used to watching now. Yeah, I would, I would do anything to, if I was a fly on the wall and try to keep some of these roles. I mean, we said that before it is fascinating to me. W when you mentioned, when Ambrozy came in and you said, Hey, build within right. Build the three markets. He ended up doing the global thing, right. And then you go Europe. And now here we are again. You know, we need to build here. And instead, you know, he's looking down south and talking to the rock and stuff. I just, I think that's a fascinating repeating the history here. And in the last couple of years, Yeah. You know, and it look like. The situation in Toronto. Again, just give me a bit of background. Like they played in the Roger center, which is where the Bluejays played. And for the longest time it was kind of a stereo. Well, The big problem is. They don't get enough fans to really make that stadium work. Like it's a big same that that can seat 50,000. If you had 20,000 people in it, it kind of sells empty. And you could hear like echoes of cheers and stuff. And so the thought was, well, if they ever get a real life, Better, a little bit smaller, you know, maybe an outdoor stadium. The whole thing would change. And then they did, they ended up moving into the stadium that Toronto FC, the MLS team plays in. It's significantly smaller. It's outdoors. It's by the water. It's kind of a, it's a really nice place to watch football game. But it has made a significant impact at all in attendance. In fact, the attendance has gone down since it's there. So. The problems in Toronto or were clearly beyond just the stadium issue. Montreal has been sold now and, you know, bought by two guys from Ontario who basically have yet to see them play a game because they bought it. At the end of the 29th and season. But it was on the market for a long time and, and you know, it was not a hot property. At all. It took a long time for that sale to get finalized. Vancouver, the BC team has been trying to be sold for the better part of a decade. And, and now the former owner of that team has passed away. So it's controlled by his estate. No one seems to know what's going to happen there again, like. The asking price is just not what anybody in the market is willing to pay because those franchises, those three franchise. Are not profitable. So. That speaks to the problem in those markets. I mean, you guys see this. In any number of other sports, you know, MLS, which has its own problems. Like they can sell expansion franchises for hundreds of millions of dollars and, and those things are valuable and the CFLs. The franchises in those markets just haven't been valuable. So that's all that's been for a long time. Been the problem that needs to be solved. And. Obviously nobody expected Randy and Brosy to wit may of wave a magic wand and suddenly fix those problems. But. It seems a shame that they haven't been able to make any progress given how enthusiastic he has been of Italy again, and how much he seems to be a guy who has big ideas. You. You know, like none of them seem to have translated yet. To increased interest in those. Those few markets and I'm just putting it to you guys. They're big cities. Like it shouldn't be that hard. To get people for nine football games and over the course of a year. But so far, they haven't been able to unlock. My last question for you before we let you go. Cause I do really want to get your thoughts on this. We're going to be talking more today about the sports betting. We covered that last week, right? Obviously it's, you know, going through the Senate and all that. For the life of me and we talked and we got a lot of feedback. I can't for the life of me, figure out where all this. Is where it's going to be the savior. Right. I spent all last night listening to Farhan on Derek Taylor. I listened to dunk and Hodge. Talk about it. You know, there's $10 million or a 10 to $20 million, right. They project per year for the CFL. First off, you know, that's coming from like sponsorships of, you know, having, building, having rooms in stadiums for. Yeah, cause you don't get the money on the bats, right? And then fracking it. Ambrozy San, you know, on a good year, the league loses 10 to 20 million. And so dunk last night on the podcast, he goes, we'll see if we get 20 million from the bedding that covers the losses. Then all we got to do is figure out the three teams that you're already talking, right. Montreal, whatever. And we're going to be good to go. And I'm like, okay, so. You're using this to cover the losses and we're still in the same crappy situation we are. Right. I mean, do you, am I missing something? I mean, Paul. I mean, we feel the same way on that. We missed that. About the sports betting. Look, I think. The idea that there's going to be this giant pot of money that's going to suddenly be opened up for the CFL. Look. Gambling is going to, there's going to be revenues there that, that weren't previously there. That button, that much is obvious, but. To your point, read the. There's going to be companies that are trying to get into the NHL in Canada, into. MLB with Toronto. NBA with the Raptors. I don't think you can just assume that, you know, FanDuel or DraftKings or whoever are going to be just giving boatloads of money to the CFL, just to get their logos on the field. I mean, It kind of gets back to the same problem. If people aren't into the league and betting on your product, as much as they are NFL or NHL or something like that, then I don't necessarily think you're going to. Be the number one place where those dollars are going. There's going to be some revenue there for sure. But I don't think you can just guarantee that it's going to be $20 million or whatever optimistic number that Randy Ambrozy wants to put up. So. That's a big part of it. I also think like there's just not a big gamble market on the CFL. There are no doubt. CFL people that. Would disagree. But. You know, I just, nobody, whereas on any given weekend, I'm like I'm aware that Kansas city chiefs are seven point favorites over. Over the Vegas Raiders and, and what the lines are. And NFL games and stuff like that. The CFL just doesn't it's not a very odds oriented business. It just isn't like people, people might know what some of these, these lines are in the over renders, but, you know, This might be a little bit of somebody who is from Toronto. But nobody's talking about like a free team parlay that they're taking. They're. The CFLs schedule this weekend. It's just not been a thing. So I think there could be some money there and some revenue that didn't previously previously exist. But it wouldn't solve the fundamental problems as you say. Of interest in li in the three big cities. And so, yeah, it's a bit of money. It would help. But it doesn't solve any of the long-term issues, which are the demographics in those three cities just have kind of shifted away from being CFL sands. And so that problem would still have to be solved. I guess the most optimistic takes. For Randy and Brosy or, or anybody like that would be well, if we can get a little money in the door in the short-term and like buys us some time to try to solve these longterm problems. So. I guess that would be my most optimistic vision of how. Gambling legalized gambling on its own could provide a bit of a lifeline to the CFO. All right. It's Constance and national post writer want to thank you for your time. And. Coming on here and talking CFL stuff with us. And I promise I'm not gonna put, when you said the merger may be the solution. I'm not going to, I'm not going to clip that for the problem. I mean, you saying that the merger is the solution? But guys. Obviously they're talking like, so as much as there are people on this side of the border, who might be like, oh, that's nonsense. It's never going to go anywhere. Like there wouldn't be having discussions if they didn't think it was a possibility. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Okay. Thanks guys. Have a good one. Greg James joining us now from the 54. 55 Yard line on CFL America radio. And are you doing. Is it Greg Smith or Greg James? Aye. I go with gray James. You go with Greg James. Okay. Good to know. Welcome to zoom name said something different that was like, wait. That's going to throw me off. I didn't. Yeah, I didn't make a booboo. I was okay. No. And you have your Chicago and Forrester's Jersey on. I'm representing the home team today. There you go. Very interesting stuff. How are you doing, man? How are you holding up right now? Doing good. Doing good. Took the day off. Life's good. I have no complaints here. It's autumn like here in Chicago, too. So it's even better. That's good. That's good to know. It's interesting that you're in Chicago and you're covering the CFL. How did that happen? I don't know, I just kind of fell into it. I've always loved to see it watching the CFL and, you know, You know, it really started with Twitter and probably the first podcast I listened to. How many podcasts do you guys? It wasn't too on the CFO side, but there are two guys over in Japan that do a CFL podcast. They have not done a podcast since the end of the 19 season. But they're the reason why I kind of got back in the CFL and started watching and started really following along. So I credit those. Lanny and Scotty over. Over Japan. I, I take it from, you know, there was a lot of confusion this week in the news, you know, are we playing? Are we not, you know, the pro football talk article came out, we're going to talk about in our show with Mike Forio and all that. What, what is your mindset right now? You know, here we are at May 27th this'll air tomorrow about everything that happened this week. And it was a very confusing week. Kind of just taking the wait and see approach. Because there's nothing, definite things could change in a heartbeat. And if you're watching the news overseas right now, you see the numbers starting to go up in places. Including for instance, Japan, they're talking about. You know, not letting any foreigners into watching the Olympics. So. Are you, are you optimistic for the season? 50 50 For the season at this point. Right? Yeah. Just because we've seen the numbers fluctuate and the way the last year has gone. I think we all realize anything is possible. Nothing is definite. Though with the vaccine rollout, obviously the numbers here are gone down. But we're not there yet. So once I think training camp opens, I think the optimism for me and for everybody else is going to go up dramatically. But I think right now with the CFL. Hey. Until he gets a camp. You know, I mean, there is there, the season is basically hypothetical at this point. Very true. If there, if there's no season. Where do they go in 2022. Oh, I don't know. That's the question, you know, obviously nobody really has an answer to, but, you know, I agree with other people that I've listened to. I mean, if they don't put a product on the field this year, You know, people do forget about you. If you're not around and, you know, getting, you know, having to cancel season the season last year was one thing. But to have to do it a second time. I don't know. I think you really run the risk of losing. Not just. You risk losing your entire fan base? I think. Have you, you know, you exist on Twitter with us and, you know, we are in a lot of the same conversations, right? You know, it seems like when this all came out w with the XFL and everything, and it seemed like it was interesting, whatever, it's become a little, you know, vitriolic, right. It's become a little. You know, I, you know, w what were your thoughts when all this came about, and then where we're at now? Well, my take on it was, you know, watching the CFL for as long as I have. And, and you. Over the years, just seeing the number of people in the stands kind of start to dwindle. And so when the talking to the XFL came up, I'm like, well, honestly, I think this is a good thing because they're starting to figure out, Hey, we need to do something. Now we need to fix this for future generations because the CFL is losing that younger generation. And I, you know, the business model. And, and just in my opinion, from just reading everything and again, I'm no expert. But I think the business model of the CFL is broken. I mean, it was in 19 league and they were talking about expanding to 10. With in Canada, but they have a TV contract that only covers. Player salaries, and it's really kind of a bare bones. Contract. If, if you just take a look at it, I mean, their contract is worth. Less than what's paid for many NFL players for a season. Yeah. So, yeah, and that just, I, I was, I've been positive about it, but I understand the, the, the diehard Canadian Canadian side of it. But at the same time, I mean, if you want to, if you want your game to continue and exist, I mean change is inevitable. I mean, if you even look at the NFL, the NFL had to change. To get words at obviously today, but there are other sports that are in trouble. People talking about baseballs in trouble. So baseball's making changes. That's a trigger warning. Like, you're going to trigger warning. Well with the baseball talk. I think it changes the baseballs. Megan, in terms of analytics is ruining the game. I think it's making it worse. Completely. That's just me. Yeah. Well, you know, it's funny, you know, talking about. Just people in Stan. So living in Chicago, We have two teams. This is a, in my opinion, this is a. There are two teams in a one team town. So you see on the south side. Like last night. Good example. There were a lot of people in the stands, but they were all Cardinal fans. Not white Sox fans. So I just. I'm positive about the XFL coming in, but it's kind of, I've really kind of taken a wait and see approach. And I understand, you know, people being upset up in Canada, but at the same time, And I'm guess I'm just, what I'm trying to say is I'm right in the middle. What. What can the CFL do? Besides this merger to grow the game in terms of getting that younger generation in well, for starters, and I know you guys have heard me probably say on Twitter, you know, a video game would be nice. We've said that. And did you guys ever see the video game that was out. On the PlayStation Xbox. Yeah. And unfortunately, the company went bankrupt. But I looked at that. I've downloaded the game. I have couple of versions of it and it's a great game. For a PlayStation two. But I mean, kids are playing Madden. Now kids are playing MLB. I mean, You know, graphics or the graphics are bad. But they're good for, again, like a PS two or PS one. Awesome, but not for PS five. So I think that's what they needed in terms of just, and that's a start. I mean, that's one of many things that they could do. Video game, better outreach. And, you know, we. You know, all of it. I mean, just even to go online, where do I buy my CFL merchandise? Yeah. Paul's had a bunch out of, and like I had to get mine from a third party. My. Edmonton hat, you know, cause they didn't have the right sizes or whatever for hats either. Right. And you know, here, I mean, again, I always hate to compare the CFL to the bigger league, but the bigger league you don't, you know where to find stuff. It's a one, it's a one. Just type in three little letters into your browser and boom, you're there. It's something that really. It scares me. I was listening to, and we talked with Scott since about, I was listening to Farhan last night, you know, they're talking about the sports betting and all that stuff, but they're talking about, you know, he and Naylor did this big, like, you know, the CFL is getting to consolidate, right? We're cutting jobs. We're cutting all this stuff. We're hiring, you know, potentially like we could hire seasonal employees, right. And then maybe you could build out some stuff and you wouldn't, you know, they could be 10 90 nines and all that. And will we add Jason Gregor on, I guess, last or two weeks ago? You know, we're trying, trying to like, how do you grow the game all year? Right. And when you're like, when you're cutting and cutting and cutting into like save money and there's no more money coming in. Right. Are there like. Eventually you can cut your way out of it, right? Like, yeah. Cut. Right. And so, you know, and I love our. Like he's been on the show with. I'm like, dude, that is not like consolidate, like hiring seasonal employees to promote the CFL is like, that is not the way to do things. Right. I mean, What are your thoughts on all that? No, and I agree a hundred percent. And what I see on Twitter on social media. By just us fans. That's more than what the CFL is doing to promote their game. I mean, you look in the Twitter community again, the Twitter is not the real world. But it's where the fans go. But the problem is, is it's a closed ecosystem and it's basically, it's an echo chamber with CFL fans. If the CFL wants to market itself, it's got to get beyond the S. It's got to get out of the small town mentality and, and I think they were off to a good start with the CFL 2.0, which is a great idea. But when you don't have any money to, if you're, if you're very small time and you don't have the money. To even pay your employees. Taking the game globally. It's never really going to happen. Right. That's that's, you know, it's a fair question. Assuming a merger does happen. Are there any rules you'd like to see come over from the CFL and be implemented into the XFL. Yeah, two, three downs in the Rouge. That's it. That's it. You know what I mean? It's gotta be a compromise if you're combining two leaks. So you've got to start somewhere. And I think the field size is negotiable. What about the movement before the snap? I'm okay with, or without it. It's not, you know, I mean, we grew up here in the states with no movement. So seeing the movement, the backfield though, it's still, when I watched every CFL game and I see that movement. I always, I've never seen an offsite it's penalty for a guy going across that line. A little bit before the snap. So. So it's, it's an adjustment for any American who watches that going well. What is that all about? But, yeah, I'm, I'm fine without not having the movement, but the Rouge to me is a big deal because. That makes your punter that much more important. As someone that, you know, fan watches, both leagues, you know, There's just been so much negativity. Right. You know, w w we changing the game and stuff. I mean, you know, it's easy for three Americans to sit here and be like, oh, well, you know, change whatever. But I mean, I do love the idea of the. You know, whatever this being, not being the NFL light, you know, we've talked about that before, right? I mean, do you. Yeah. Having those unique characteristics, right? I mean, obviously that's what you love about the CFL. Would you hope to obviously incorporate that in. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't want to see it, like, you know, be an NFL, NFL, or American football light. It's gotta be its own sport. And I think that's how. I think that's how they should approach it as let's turn this into another sport. Yes, it is football. But it's just, it's a different brand of football and NFL players. There's a lot of NFL NFL players can't make it in the CFL and vice versa because of, because of either speed or weight or, I mean the CFL game, there's a quicker pace to it. And. You know, the, the great thing about the CFL, it allows, you know, Smaller quarterbacks to play up there. Doug Flutie is a good case in point. Head Kyler Murray not made it with the Cardinals. I'm like, he'd be perfect. CFL. Yeah. Very true. Which goes to show you that the NFL has become more like the CFO. A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. My last question for you today is like, what, what are we looking at now? I mean, you know, the news came out or maybe starting training camps, right. You know, we're looking forward. What do you expect? What are you looking for in the next, you know, week or two in terms of news? Something more than we're talking and we're signing. We did sign not as, I mean, a plan. A plant, like, okay. Training camps and I, before I came on, I made sure just to check the news to see if there was anything that broke. Cause I kind of took a time out today on social media. And. You know, give us a date, hard date that. And again, what is the plan to get all the American players to over on, over to their side of the border? And we don't see anything. The NHL had a plan. Yeah. Yeah, heck we even had a plan, you know, I always jokingly say, Hey, when we, you know, when we were drunk last night, we had a plan to get back home. Yeah. Good analogy. Yeah. There was a plan in place to get us all home safely. One final tidbit on that. You know, I do see that with the plan. And then I get a lot of feedback of like, well, the NHL went in like a week or like MLB went like they didn't meet. I'm like, yeah, but that's not the CFL, like, you know, I think that they were able to, I don't follow all the other sports with like Kobe protocols, like ramping up, but that's the feedback I get. I'm like, yeah, but that's not the CFL. And that's, you know, Yeah. Can Megan snap, a finger and guns. I don't not. Yes. But I think if you're a business and you know, we're talking about nine, but well, Say nine businesses. Each business has a plan. Or at least should have a plan for success and. I don't see what the plan is at this point with, you know, to get back on the field. And again, I'm not a businessman, so I, you know, But I'm just taking that outside, outside look like all fans are going okay. Well, if they can do it. Or even, you know, the minor leagues use the minor leagues down here. The minor leagues have a plan to get back into play. You've got leagues up in Canada that are planning on playing again. So why not have the CFL and nobody has ever really explained to me why the CFL is so different in that regard. Yes. I know they have American players. But using last year, for example. They could have, and I made the suggestion on Twitter and somebody shouted me down. Don't even think I brought it up again. But you've got a ton of Canadian college players. Up there. Who last year could have been there, you know? Their year to play pro ball. Everybody gets our shot. Instead of. You know, and I don't think the CFL should rely so. On American players, as much as I do, I'd really like to see some Canadian talent. But. You know, We'll see. Yeah. Yeah, we will. We. All right, Greg James. Co-host of from the 55 yard line on CFL American radio. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it. We appreciate it. Welcome back. Our big XFL news now. Well first thank you to Scott and Greg. We appreciate them. Thanks. I appreciate them taking the time. So. Danny Garcia. Instagram, when you're working on innovation for the NFL, but the NBA is so deep. The only thing you do is show the art in the women's bathroom, undisclosed location. What was that? What does that? I'm sure you're going to put it up on the screen. When we talk about that. So save the link. I'll do that. I'll forget that. We want to leave that. I Danny tweeted this. I'm sure this is going to be a, I hope I don't have the link of lead to it or something. It might be something else. But Danny tweeted, like it was art from a woman's bathroom, but it was. Boy. Oh boy, that led to speculation and, and I, I felt like I go guys. I have. Zach love you. Messaging me. Jake. Love you. Messaging me. I'm like guys, there's no season next year. Right. Like, and people are, is there the official, okay. Like. Has the accident hasn't come out and said that it's like, they're not playing next year. It's it's June. It's June. They're not playing next year. Sorry. Not happening. You're not going to hire anybody right now. No. I mean, they're working on stuff because they're like people speculate like, oh, does that mean that they're going to like guys, we don't know yet. [Unknown] we don't know what this is all about. It's not, it's not leading us anywhere to think that they're going to a fast track of 2020. Two season. Yeah, it's not happening. They're not playing next year. I'm telling you if you are listening to my voice right now, the XFL is not playing in 2022. Okay. I'm just, I'm telling you right now, it's not Abbott anyway, but that was the big news. I, you know, I'm sure that I, either thing podcast was speculated about that for half an hour, but we're going to give you guys a lot of the other news going on, but I did anyway. That's XFL news. Danny tweet your daddy, put it on Instagram. So. Boldly by Mitchell is not the enemy. Glenn suitor is undisturbed by Bose XFL comments. And cautions players on merger drawbacks. I'm reading between the lines a little bit here. But he's looking at it as any time. There's a chance to improve the business model. It should be explored. And I feel the same way. That's why I've said many times, I'm keeping an open mind on all of this until we get the details. Good for you, Glenn. Well, mine's interesting about this. So Glenn has been like pretty anti merger. Right. So when this was sent to me by my, my, my spine, I my little finger with my error, not verus I'm verus with my spiders. That Glenn has been very anti XFL. And so the fact that he's like, Hey, we should keep it up with mine. Also Danny had Instagram earlier the day put like, Put me in coach. Oh, wait, I am the coach. And it was like curl looking in the mirror. And I tweeted, I'm like breaking Danny to play an XFL. No, it was, that was my takeaway from that. But guys, don't read too much into that. There she's just like effing with you, but yeah. Anyway, Glen, there was a, we talked all last week about bullying by Mitchell and he's, you know, he thinks it's going to be great. The fact that Glen suitor. Coming around. Anyway, so that, that, that is that takeaway. Interesting. Single single game sports betting, bill bill C two 18, sponsored by David Wells, or is it. Probably David Wells. Yeah. Just cleared. Another hurdle has been referred to the standing Senate committee on banking, trade and commerce. It passed its second reading in the Senate. Again, you know, a lot of people are thinking, this is like a magic pill for this, for the CFL. They're going to get all those revenue. Not necessarily case, but we'll see. I mean, this, this will help, but I'm not sure it's end all be all. Yeah, I really have thoughts on this. We tied a little bit about it with Scott. We talked a little bit about with Greg. All of this. It's it's like, Hey, wouldn't it be cool. F. Cause we're talking about CFL loses 2010 to 20 million on a good year. They're talking. This is going to make potentially 20 million, 2 million per team. Hodgen donk talking. Well, that means that we get rid of, you know, we, we won't have any debt. We can. Then we can, you know, we got an odd dental, like then wouldn't it be cool if we got Montreal back on board and then wouldn't it be cool if we got. With all these hypotheticals I'm like, so the teams that have suffered for the last decade. That nothing's been done to change that. We talk with Scott Ambrosie focused on global growth and not local. Somehow now they're just going to come on board. Right. And like, even, and I love Farhana. I love Farhod, but he was on Derek Taylor. Two. And because they're talking and they're like, well, obviously if you're betting on a riders game, if someone best 20 bucks, right. The CFL, isn't going to do that. But. Farhana again, wouldn't it be cool. He's like, well, wouldn't it be cool. If in the stadium there was a sponsored, you know, booth or whatever, and people paid like, you know, Whoever DraftKings paid and they're like, Hey, we want to have a, you know, the draft Kings bedding area at the stadium. And I'm like, guys, that's like small timey. That's like me putting a banner at a local fair for my wedding company or whatever. Like, and I get, you know, and, and I do think we, we lost some followers, listeners. Last week we talking about like the CFL and in the, in the. It's a little small, tiny, sometimes like that. And that's a small, tiny idea. Like, well, we're going to have a, this sponsored area. Do you get what I'm saying? It's all hopes. It's all hopes. It's nothing like that. You've probably eggs. You probably have not approached. DraftKings or FanDuel or any of them? With this idea because you probably legally can't, since it's not even a, it's not even an avenue that they can. Even discuss because you can't do. The single game sports betting things. Right now in Canada. So why would, why would draft Kings and fan duel make that call or even pick up the phone and answer? I think you're putting a lot of hopes and dreams on the idea that that DraftKings and FanDuel are going to think that this is a. This is something that they. They want to spend money on advertising and potentially make some money. There's a lot of hopes and dreams going on here. It's just weird to me. And, and I have a thing, and this was a CFL news did sent there. Commentary to me, but then I listened to the Hodgen and Farhan. Far hung and all that last night. So I kind of have my own, but I still, yeah. And again, it's, wouldn't it be cool. Wouldn't it be cool if we did that? Wouldn't it be cool. And I get it. And to me that my last thing on this is. If the XFL is like that shot in the arm, I feel like this is the same thing. Like, well, we're, we're going to get that money. We got to get that money. Like it feels to me just as shortsighted. Of like, well, we just got to get some cash revenue right now. Wouldn't it be cool. Wouldn't it be cool if I won an Emmy last year for my, my work. Wouldn't it be cool. Wouldn't be cool. If I win an Emmy this year for my work, wouldn't it be cool. A lot of things would be cool, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to happen. I just, I do not see this as the big silver bullet I don't. And I don't think that that merely. By radically changing the gambling market of your entire country to allow single game betting. If all of that is going to do is erase the debt that your league makes. Loses every year. That is not a good thing. No. You're breaking even. The bright, the whole reason to have a business is to. Make money. Right. Could you imagine that? Could you imagine, like the NFL did something they're like, well, we're just gonna, like, this is good. Change the landscape of the world and we're just going to not lose so much money anymore. Just a couple other CFL tidbits. This was a really cool thing. I found this. We talked the whole DK Metcalf member. He was running the track and field and that went crazy. The Seahawks guy. So this Jordan Moore, he is Argonaut. He qualified. Do you want, you know, more about this kinda stuff you wanna talk about this? He qualified. For the 2021 Olympics, assuming there is a 2021 Olympics. His time in the 110 meter hurdles. Qualified them for a spot on the track team. That'll that'll be, that's what he's going to do next month. I guess. That's interesting is that he's not a wide receiver. He's not a running back. The kind of things you would think. Would be. Someone that's fast. He's a linebacker. Yes. So. And oh, wow. And he's not even like, you know, he's not even at like a Nickelback or a, you know, a Sam that, that kind of spies. He plays the middle. And the weak side. So this guy is just in the states. Just crazy athletic and crazy, fast and crazy flexible for a. You know, a very strong linebacker think of like, let's see, who are the, who are those kinds of linebackers? Like junior say out. Being able to qualify for the ER. Elvis Olympic team or Ray Lewis or someone like that. You're like, wow. You know, that would be impressive. This is kind of the same, same level. That is not. That was cool. He's a legit. Beast at linebacker, and now he's going to be, you know, running track. Yeah, the last thing, this went everywhere today and congratulations, Catherine, a rake. A former assistant. Huh race. Reishi, former assistant GM of the outlets and the Argos. She is becoming the highest ranking female personnel in the NFL. This went everywhere this morning. I just wanted to make sure we didn't, you know, We're not sorry. We're not gonna do the whole same habit. And now it's today. She was promoted to vice president of football operations for the Eagles. You are going to have a terrible team this year. I'm kidding, but you're going to have a wonderful professional. In the BP and, and watch. She'll turn it around. She'll turn it around. She may have happened in Philly. She will. I very thrilled for the Carson Wentz in Indianapolis. Experiment that we have. I am thrilled for that first game with the Seahawks. I'm very excited for that game. Anyway, but congratulations for her and that's great. It shouldn't be, it shouldn't be the exception. That should be the rule. Like I talked earlier with the NFL, with the whole COVID thing was handled by, you know, these wonderful women that doesn't matter anymore. It shouldn't matter anymore, but congratulations to her. Some signings, the Cleveland Browns have signed St. Louis Battle Hawks tie in the Connor Davis, the DC defenders, former safety show, Marco. Thomas signed with the auto ride blacks and the CFL. And Alabama receiver, John mechy, the third wins the John corner's trophy as the top Canadian football player in NCAA football. I just felt like I was like, I want to make sure we mentioned that I was like, I didn't want to get yelled at, like, how did you talk about the court? I didn't want Jim Molan being like, you're talking about the corner of trophy and the fog house. Well, I got my hat on Jim. I know. I don't want to. I. I'm kind of I'm coming home, coming home, kind of having some PTSD issues about that. Yeah, then we'll talk off the podcast about, so anyway, but yeah, so that's all the stuff I had spring league stuff coming up, but yeah, we'll go to break. And we also got Cole Boozer. Reed had to interview him solo because I was. I was at work. I was on the job site. So read, grabbed an interview with Cole Boozer real quick. We'll have that after the break. Well, Cole Boozer. I am so excited. Friend of the shell, longtime friend of the shell, I think all the way back to like, Seven of the shell. I thank you so much for coming on today. How are you doing. I'm doing well, doing well. Very excited to be back on the podcast. Are casts, not the market casts. Yeah. Yeah. Long time listeners will know. We did a funny prank and, and we had Cole wish Paul well-wishes and he called it the market cast and not the mark cast. It's so we've got that. Dorothy, my wife and I think a lot of our listeners will want to know first and foremost, how is your dog doing? He's awesome. He's. It's about 10, almost 11 months old. He is. Almost 60 pounds now. He's a monster right now. My mom's watching him while I'm here. But. My mom sends me pictures every day. Actually she says, like having a great time, throwing the ball around. You know, Learning slowly. I have to go back. I went back home last weekend. Just check in. Say hello to everybody and. You know, Then didn't know his trucks. That's good to go. So happy about that. That's good. The last we spoke at, you were training. I think you were doing some coaching. We were trying to figure out next steps. How did you wind up here in the spring league? Very excited when, when you were announced and Ana among other players that we know. So how did that all wind up coming up? So when my agent and I were talking and. At first, we were had a couple candidate teams call and, you know, we were just kinda, they were. Waiting to see for opportunities. We're just waiting, waiting, waiting, and then. He's like Lewis in the spring, he came up like, If you say it gets a good idea, like we could try it out. And so I did more information research and stuff like that. You know, I think it's a good, like, especially because it's on Fox and all that. I think it's a great opportunity for some players. To get booked out like myself. Who you know, who got. Need to improve and get more film out there. And I think this would be perfect for me. Going forward. Yeah, it's exciting. And when I was so excited about was, you know, the players and then obviously the coaches and everything, you know, here you are on the lineman with how mummy, obviously, you know, he was, you know, you guys are separate and he original XFL, but how has that been kind of working under him and the rest of the coaching staff that you've had there. It was awesome. I. Coach. Lobby's an awesome coach. I mean, very. Try to sit very player, player, coach type of guy. Like he tries to rest us, but also like nosing. When we have to go, we have to have to go. System's great. Love it. You know, we got a great team. Great quarterback, great defense, great offense. Like. I think that him drafts and the team we did. But my dad we've had great success so far and hopefully more in the future. It's been so exciting for me. And I know our listeners to watch these games, you know, here are players that we've tracked through a variety of different outlets. To see them. You. We're I was watching the game Thursday night and Dorothy comes down and oh, you know, what's going on? I said, they're like, well, there's Cole. Like he's playing. There's like, I bet on me, I'm serious. Right. And she's like, oh wow. Like, that's awesome. And these players that we've tracked now getting to see them, you know, on Fox in prime time, you know, in good slots. What is that been like? And to have that elevated exposure. I think it gets awesome. The big thing. On Fox, it's just a big network. You know, also the fact is we're playing in Indianapolis called stadium, which is another cool little aspect of it. And just playing in a pro. Another professional stadium. Great facility and no, and I think that definitely this league can. Slowly like. Bye. Is making a reputation for grabbing players to the NFL. I think it's great. That was actually going to be my next question, because you know, not the, when San Antonio in the fall, when they were there and not that that, you know, the Alamodome and everything is exceptional as well and, and rice university, but being in the Colts stadium, I mean, it's just a totally different aspect. Like to be in this NFL stadium. Let me, it looks great. You know, on TV, right? So these have you had experiences like that before and just playing in something that, you know cool and well-known and everything else. I've played in a couple of pro stadiums. I played in Tampa bay, obviously, Baltimore. Ravens. I played in high school. Played in. The. Patriot stadia, couple other ones. I just can't think of off the top of my head, but. You know, it's really cool. Just to add another cool stadium to actually visit. My play in, especially now. Just playing weekend a week out. It's a really cool atmosphere and it's a great field. So we had Stan on one of your. Yeah, quarterbacks kind of pseudo coach last week. And, you know, we were talking about. W with the spring league and, and a lot of the guys, maybe that would be practicing running reps and stuff. Otherwise, you know, being on TV, being elevated, having this opportunity to get the spotlight, you. It is more beneficial, right. To getting, you know, looks and tape. Do you feel like there's added pressure? Like excitement? Good nervous energy from, from your teammates and you, when you guys are taking the field. On Thursday we watched. Yeah. I mean, I think again, I still obviously get that nervous feeling in my stomach, which is obviously means I still love the game. I mean, I think you could see. Last week, last Thursday, when we played the office, we just brought a ton of energy. Right. And I think that. If we continue to bring that energy weekend and week out, we can, we can win the north, which would be awesome. Again. That's championship and really get more exposure for me and other players who haven't gotten a shot or. Need another shot again, to show that everyone in the NFL that we need to be back up there. Yeah. What happened in that game? Because you guys came to play. Even the announcer said, they're like, man, the lineman came ready to go and yo hear the alphas. And went to games you hadn't launched yet. I've been, I mean, even when the commentary is talking about how much like fire you guys, Brian me, what happened behind that? I couldn't tell you. I mean, we just came out well, We knew right off the rip. They were the big dogs. So we're just like, all right, well, we. And. Think that we were low, we were arrested. We were ready to go. Coach really tried to harp on that this week. Like, Or that week. Like, you know, And I think that that being us being fresh and I think the freshest team in this league. Wind up making it to the championship overall. But yeah, we just like came out with so much energy. They looked very tired, very like, I think it was the 10 o'clock game. They haven't done it yet. I think they're going to, they're doing it this week too. So I think there'll be more prepared this week for sure. Is that tougher with that later time slot? Yes, because it throws off a lot of your time. So for us. Coach mommy has us do a. Had us do a midnight walk through. So we would stay up so we can still sleep in a little bit more than that. The next day I'm ready to go. So the first time we did it, we played the conquers. And to be honest, I was struggling a little bit. A little tired. I've never done a 10 o'clock slot. I think the only time I've ever done it was in college. When we played Vanderbilt. I was at temple and we played Vanderbilt. And the game got pushed back so far because of rain delays. And we came out one, but like, we were just, we'd gotten home at like six o'clock in the morning. Like it was insane. But yeah, like. It was very, very tough. I think this time we were more prepared for it. Ready to go. Everybody kinda got like a little sequence ready for it. More prepared. At this time. What is it been like with the, you know, with the two different hubs, right? You got the four teams you're kind of doing your inner mix there. What is that like as a player? Cause I, you know, I think there's like not kind of re recycled repeated games, but you know, where you're playing the same competition may be, you know, a couple of weeks, like how does that work? Just mentally kind of preparing for the games and going through all that. Well, it's nice is that you kind of, so like for us, with the offense alignment, we have personnel meetings on every team. Obviously the first game, we couldn't do that. Because no one had played a game yet. So we had no idea how it worked, but going on, we've had personnel meetings on every team throughout the week. Scouting every person. And then war room has like someone to scout. And then after that, like, you know, we're ready to go for the next week. And then the day before the game, which tonight we'll have our personnel meeting on the conquerors and what everyone has their interpretation on. What's their pass, rush, move. What's their strength plus or weakness, et cetera, et cetera. And. I think that having that helps us a lot. That's why we've been more. That's a lie on the stand. Please. Haven't done those personnel meetings. That's right. I think, I think, oh, sorry. There we go. I'll I'll clear up. Just hit that answer again and I'll clean it up. Sure. Just having essentially just long story short, just having personnel meetings throughout the week and scouting people. Everyone having their share of the room, like. And having like we have the running backs. And oh, I'm in our room like scouting for all of us is a big deal, especially when we were on a run the ball. And I think last game, once we went up, I think showing we could really, our offensive line can push people, run the ball and makes us really dynamic. But yeah, having those personnel meetings for us. When we get it going and it's possible. What's been interesting to me in, in seeing this league now and, you know, It seems like they're getting a little bit more, you know, we're acknowledging the XFL pass. We're acknowledging these other things, but you know, for fans of the sport, you know, we see fan control guys. We see CFL guys. We see former spring league, you know, like Kevin Anderson's back or whatever. We see exit valve guys. You know, we see all this great talent. Is it weird for you coming in, maybe having seen some of these players, other places or heard about them. And it seems like it's almost like a all star kind of were like, Like celebrity, big brother. We're calling in everybody to LA. That way. Condo. That's kind of cool that I do know a lot of different people in this league. Like I know karate plays defensive tackle for the aviators. So I said, what's up to him and I got to play against him. Two. Not this game the day before. For the aviators. I know other people in the league, like a more down south. So I had like two of my unknown. Also Garrett Cole was on our team. He was a coroner for us. For the defenders and then, which is kind of awesome to see him again. But also just having teammates down in the south too, which hopefully they're on the gestures. So hopefully we can meet them in the finals. It'd be kinda cool to meet up with them. And see how this whole thing goes. When you saw, you know, and I don't know how well you knew of the coaches and everything were announced before you came in, but when you saw all this, you know, knowledge in, in the staff and everybody helping you guys out, what was your reactions to seeing that? Do my internet cut out. I think it's pretty cool. Like, especially having faults. Just personally. Which nerd, hang on. I think the internet cut out again. Hang on. We lost you there for a second. Yeah. You're frozen. All right. Let me know. A year. Good. Losing my hand or there we go. Okay. Yeah. Hear me. Yeah, I'll clean all this. You're good. Just trying to wave my hand all. Yeah. You're good. So just speaking personally, like I know that a lot of these coaches. Like, you know, coach clients. So in the north division, like is a well-known coach NFL. The bad-ass of the old NFL, which is kind of cool to play against him, but having coach mommy, like. That the founder of essentially of like the air rate on offense is like really cool to learn from him every day. Kind of see like his perspective on a lot of things. Really cool. How do you think that you've been doing so far? I mean, from the untrained eye, you know, I'm watching the Gans. It seems like Kohl's. You know, it seems good. How have you felt about your experiences so far? So I think that. The first game was really just for me is breaking off a rust, which kind of sucked. I didn't play. I don't think I played as well as I could have. Aviators. I got better. And I think the alpha is I played pretty well. For the most part, especially cause I didn't really give up anything. Other than like one or two batted balls. And I was, that's like kind of something I just worked on towards no, and towards the game, but they didn't really get close to Ryan, which was. For me, which is good. And I think. If I can continue on this, I think I can be. To show that I felt what I really am. As a, as a good offense, a tackle that really can compete in the NFL. How do you, and, and I know, I think we talked about this the last time we were on. I mean, just, yeah. And we've had other players come on from the spring league and everything else. You. This constant having to be at this peak physical condition, ready to go. Right. Trying to get lugs, trying to get taped. Mentally, how do you grapple with that? And keep you motivated. It is tough. There are good days and bad days. But as my agent says, we have to stay at a constant, right. There's a there's no, there's no ties too high, no lows too low. Like we have to just stay at like a. Whatever and something, and sometimes it is something like a distraction, right. Finding something to do. So I can. An example would be my dog. Right. She is a distraction every day. Like something. I loved him. Like he used my thing. He's like something. Something I'm playing for, but also like, again, like I'm thinking of him, like all the time, it's something just to throw my mind away. If I get, if I get to like, like before this, like waiting for an opportunity is frustration like Hawaii. Picked up yet, like that. I'm like, listen, like it's okay, cool. Like you gotta just. Keep costs like that, like working like coaching, like something like that, staying in the game, keeping your mind. Sharp. Working out. A couple of days a week, like just to make. Sure you're good. Keep getting massage. Is like making sure your buys. Condition. So, I mean, again, Role distractions. They keep you in over, burnt out. What's next for you in terms of air and I'm going to let that catch it. I'll I'll this. In terms of you next. He does this, this later slot in may. Does that work out well for, for getting out of this and hopefully getting picked up later this summer, is that kind of the mindset behind that and how do you feel. Yeah, obviously moving in next steps in that way. So the goal. Yes. It would be like to depict up after this and maybe like get into an OTA or something like that. And like give a trial or something might give my shot. Coming up or like, if, depending on how much they can bring into camps and maybe get into a camp. And get Nike that, that offer or that July, August type slot, and I get in there and see him work and see if I can. Get into an opportunity. Whether it may be. I know Canada might be, I heard they're starting later this year, so maybe either Canada or the NFL. Whatever happens happens. But I, when I go home, I'm planning on after the season, he went up training, getting ready to go, keeping my body in shape. But I just started by this league is that I will be in football shape. I'll be ready to go, which is a very big plus about this league. To get ready for the conditioning that you're not, you're getting at home, but you're not getting like five reps, like in your head. Like I'm seeing stuff. Now that I have steamed. Since the XFL like live reps. So it's big time. Yeah. That's something that we, you know, Paul and I watch on the wrestling and that's the same thing. Right? You can work out, workout, workout in the gym, but until you're in the ring doing it. And isn't that, I mean, until you're on the field. With the snaps and all that. What was that first week tough for a lot of players to get, to get worked up to that. I think some, some players. Like like me, it's just banging rusted. It's like, you know, like you ha. Bullets are coming. Like, you know, we'll see what happens. Like I'm going to do my technique and hopefully that works and sometimes it doesn't, or then there's something you can always fix. You go to the film room you fixed to the next week. Forward and. So something, I always like. Thank you about when I, when I go to practice or like when I'm going to my next game, I'm working on this one thing, but I can't work on five things at once. I can only work on one thing. My coach is like, Yeah. My old offensive line coach. Who's now at Georgia tech Titans. Coach Chris Louisiana. He's just like, listen, you got to work this. One day a week. Work this right. Once you get that done, then you can move on to the next thing. You can't work five things, or this, you become average at doing that. And that's just not right. You want to be elite? So now. Well, you know, you've been gracious with your time hopping on you've got meetings tonight, right? We're preparing for them. I mean this episode. Will air after the games this week, but obviously there'll be more weeks. Just, you know, busy time. Right. But overall fun. Any other big takeaways or thoughts before we let you go? No. I mean, again, thank you for having me on the pod. I appreciate it. I always have a great time here. Seven o'clock tomorrow we play the conquers. So when we get our chance to get back and really take this division, so. Can't wait for that tomorrow. Yeah, I think. You know, I was famously a Joshua's guy last season. Yeah, they never made them. On TV, I've been a [unknown]. This fan this season and I've yet with my work schedule to watch it. Even those games, having Stan on and having you on now and not intentionally having to line men. But I do think, you know, and with the dominating performance, you guys have lost. Last week. I feel very strong with that, especially with gutsy. Mommy, do you think I'm making the right call with that? You definitely should be a team of the lineman for sure. We are. We're a great team. I think we're awesome. You know, great guys. We're working today. More like an ear. The actual Unwin. That kind of one more time. Yeah. Yeah. I would say we're a great team. Great guys. You know, we work hard. We're hard working guys. Blue Tato. Working guys like work like. Alignment here. Like in Indianapolis. And, and it does seem with the turnover bell. I got the hat we saw you. I forgot to. I eat with the hat. Yeah. TV. It, it does seem like a really fun group of people. Would you agree with that? Oh, did we. Hang on. Yeah. Yeah, that'd be you. Cause I get the turnover, but for the offense a lot. Yeah, you got me. Yeah. Be the last, this van. This will be, I'm glad Paul's not. A fun group of people. Yeah, so far group of people working hard. Like I said, blue collar guys were working hard. Like the Lima, Indianapolis. The turnover about, you know, you could see that we don't like that, but coach mommy wanted to obviously get, reach out to the Indianapolis lineman, like the Asheville lineman, because no one knows every time. What. Alignment is like, Yeah, but what team are you on? I know your alignment. I was like, no, the alignment. So we got the cool turnover belt, and then he said, Because off it's alive and never get to do anything. Like we never get some cool, like we scored a touchdown. You know, cause he always do that. Right. So you got the chain or something like that, like in Miami or like that. For us, he gets us the hard hat. So he's like the best block of the drive or like the way we scored whenever we score a touchdown, like we get to wear the hard hat. And like, for us, we just like. We're a really like our offensive line is very large. You know, on the selfish. So we're like, all right, everybody had a good job. We all contributed everybody. Just pass the hat down. Like everybody wearing the stuff. So. I love. It's awesome. I saw that. I'll go look so handsome there with his heart. And then last question. We'll let you go. Internet's breaking up. What is whip? Coach money and the towel. To be honest. I couldn't tell you if I get this thing, it's just part of his swag. Like I appreciate it. I told. We were doing the walks or. Oh, hot areas. So you're lucky you got that towel right? There you go. Kind of brush everything off. I'm dripping in sweat. Oh, yeah, I got the towel. It's all. It's all good. He's like dabbing his head, like making sure he's ready to go. I got to ask him, though, for sure. I'll get back to you on that. What the deal is with the swag. His towel. Yeah, because sometimes it's around the neck, sometimes it's around the way sometimes it's so yeah, it's, it's, you're seeing. I don't know what quite the story is with that. Yeah, I'll get you. I'll let you guys know about that. That's that's a very good question. Well, thank you for, yeah. Setting this out spring league again for making this work, we appreciate you coming on and sharing the good word and we'll be cheering for you. I think we're officially lineman. A lion men, men now on the podcast, Paul and I though. Perfect. Awesome. Thank you again. I appreciate. Being on the pod always have a great time. Awesome. Okay. Welcome back. Want to thank Cole Boozer for his time. Thanks to spring league for getting us someone to talk to. It's been. You know, we've, we've, we've gone back and forth and you know, they haven't been as open to having us talk to their people, but we're glad we finally got, got them. So Cole told me I'm not going to break kayfabe, but Cole told me I'll find he goes, Hey, he goes, Other podcasts have reached out to me. They wanted me to come on. He goes, I didn't. I just wanted to do you guys. I appreciate that. I I call God. Bless you. Yep. I appreciate loyalty. So you watched them TSL. Yeah. I just a couple, I will. And then I'm going to get your ratings, but it was so cool. So I watched the Thursday games, the salary day games. I have I've had the weddings like every weekend, so I haven't had a watch, but the Thursday games are great. You know, conquers won over the aviators. They looked good. Brandon silvers played again. You know, this is like the prince that was promised in the XFL. Whereas Brandon silver has been my whole life. The, the lineman. And we, I talked with about this with Cole. Absolutely kill the alphas. It was like 47 to seven, but what was so cool about it was they were up by so much that member stand bad while there was, I interviewed them last week stands. The backup quarterback is never supposed to play. Like he's basically just a player coach. They were up by so much. They brought Stan in and Stan got to like throw it through a touchdown. Got interviewed on the Fox broadcast. And I'm like, I'm so glad that we interviewed this wonderful man, Stan bad. Well, that was on, but he, it was great. Like he, you know, he was a little rusty, right? He wasn't really planning to play. He was definitely more of a coach, but he got to play, got to have a, a TD in the game and it was great. A couple other things, Kevin Gilbride. Was rocking his New York guardians jacket during the Jasper's game. Interesting. Interesting. That was cool. I thought that was neat. I mean, it was a rainy, I guess, that I missed the game, but I guess it was just a slog. It was totally rainy there in Houston. That a couple of things. The, the. The Saturday game average 408,000 viewers. That's good. Previous IGA was 415. I there's this show buzz daily site, I guess like they're going out of business or something that has been provided a lot of these, the ratings for the spring league stuff. They had an office in Hollywood and it's closed. Yeah, so something's going on with that, but Seth friend of the show, a TG master on Twitter, he tweeted a, the spring league is winning in ways. I can't even explain the NHL on NBC averages, just under 400,000. Meanwhile, a league with a marketing budget. I mean, large Coke is beating it. With the 400 eights. I thought that was cool. It is. Alphas offensive lineman, Christian Delario signed with the Titans. Congrats to him. Like see in spring league guys get signed. Yep. That's good. And then I, I wish I could go to this game. I have, I have an event that, that. That was. I booked a dancer salary for last year. We all know what happened last year, it was scheduled rescheduled for the fall. We all know what was going on in the fall. It is that day. I would be in Houston. I cannot get out of this dancer salad, but they announced it. The tickets. For rice stadium, they're going to host the championship game. I it's $30 for GA or two 50 for our VIP sideline pass. And, you know, I would be popping on that. It's silent. How's he totally dead silent. I could see it front row, front row, or we don't go. Anyway. Would you, are you sad that we can't go to the spring league game? I mean, given all the rain that's happening right now. I mean, my sister, my sister. Texted me like during the middle of the show. Send me a screenshot of the weather. I don't know if I'd want to go anywhere near Houston right now at all, with all the rain that's going on, she lives close to Houston and she's just like, oh, make it stop. Make all the rain stop. So. Anyway. So I've been at spring lake stuff is good. I got my net out for a big, big fish interview next week. Final control. Thoughts today. We do have a little bit of news. First off I'll leave the, the, the, the thing that's going to strike you until the end, Paul. Cause you're going to get angry. But before that, when air Rogers was on Kenny Mayne's interview this week, right? Kenny Mayne. ESPN. He had his final show. He had talked to Aaron Rogers. We all know what's going on with him, riders. He, he joked and he goes like, well, air, are you headed the fan controlled football? Yeah. And boy, everyone fan controlled. I go. Like it's a joke. Like it's a joke. Like the fact that I get that as cool to be mentioned with everybody, the fact that you were like, that's like when the exit Val was like, Well, you know, the, the Jaguar sucks so bad. They should go blame the XFL. The XFL is not like, yeah, cause it's, it's like, they're making fun of you. Any thoughts about fingers off football? Imagined by Kenny Mayne. Yeah. It's like what you said there they're mocking you. It's not like a legitimate thing. It's not, but they were like, oh, like here's doing ground. I'm like, no guys, this is a joke. Last thing today and this'll take us home. Badgered these. They did that. They did their show this week. And Patrick D's there. They're teasing fan controlled sports. And the first thing that was brought up was D to expand the leagues and they were tied to about fan controlled baseball. No. Hell. No. Hell. F-ing no. It's bad enough that you have fan controlled football. That's not really football. I can't imagine the kind of crap you would do. To a game that I spent growing up playing for. God. 15 Years. T-ball. American Legion ball. Little league. High school. College. No. What do you vote on? Like the pitches? Are you going to swing at this bat? Like what do you vote on? Do you vote on where do you vote on who who's playing? What position. I mean, I'm curious, like, what do you actually, I, football makes sense. Like we're voting on the plays. What do you vote on? I mean, I get you drafted. I get that. You get like draft the players and pick the positions on that. But what do you do like game day? Basketball baseball already has a timing problem in itself. It already has an issue where they want the games to go faster. This would extend the games probably like twice as long, because you have to pick the pitch and then wait for the wait for the results to come in. And then who's to say that the pitch. Pitcher that's out there can throw the kind of pitch you want to throw. Like you're very limited in terms of like, There's there's some pitchers that can throw a curve and a heat and a heater. And that's it. There are some pictures that can, you know, there's different types of four-seam two-seam fastballs. These kinds of things all need to be factored in. It's like there's too many variables in this and that's a dumb idea. I'm sorry, but it is a flat-out stupid idea. I'm almost, I'm almost really mad at you for bringing this onto the podcast. I'm gonna I'm I'm gonna tell you this, and I don't want the jury too bad. I might have purchased the domain fan control podcast.com. If we ever. This merger thing, doesn't work out the way that we want it to. We might, we might start a fan control podcast. Covering the package of baseball. I'm dying. I knew this would be so funny today when I saw that I found it on the sheet. I'm just joking, but I do on finger, top podcast. That's that con, so if anybody. I'm talking really low and calm about this. This is not indicative of how angry I am about this, this news. This is not funny to me. This is, this is blasphemous. There you go. We're we're in the now. We got the gas we're in and out of the hour here we a good show. I think you fall, but. It was a good show. I thought we did good. Definitely that again, want to tease this? You know, you heard from us earlier. I want to say it again. Hop on a manscape.com plug in the code. Mark has 20% off free shipping on a manscape razor. So do that helps support the show. We appreciate all your support. We appreciate your listenership. Remember to subscribe on YouTube. You know, Give us, you know, give us a review on your audio podcast player, whatever it takes, bump us up. We help we, we appreciate it. We love all of our listeners. And thanks again for tuning in. Thank you very much. All right. Later.

Episode 41 - Sounds of Silence

It's Friday morning. Got it right this time. It didn't say Friday afternoon, Friday morning. And you weren't listening to the mark cast. Yeah. I notice we said that we sell Coke on to the actual mark castle. Yes. We were going to finally, we're going to nail the answer. I was going to say. Hello, Paul, my old friend. It's good to, it's good to podcast with you again. The title of our episode sounds of silence. I felt like that was an apt. For both XFL staff and NCFL staff. I there's been a lot of, of silence and things have been running the muck because of that. So I thought you liked my title. I do like your title a lot. So let's let's stop the silence guys. Let's let's let's open up the transparency. We got Jeff Hamilton from the Winnipeg free press coming up. Later on in the show to talk about transparency, also read. Yeah, Jeff. Jeff was great. We really appreciate him taking time. He's covering the Winnipeg jets as they're going through their, you know, trying to run to the playoffs. We also, I did. Thank you so much spring league for coordinating. I did. An interview with Stan Bedwell earlier this week. Star. With the lineman. He is one of the quarterbacks for them. And then he also is one of the coaches. He has a long history with how mummy, who is the coach of the alignment. And, you know, I was watching the broadcast. A lot of people were watching the broadcast on Saturday on Fox. Heard Kevin and Brock tell his story about traveling to Europe and all of that. And I thought we got to get this guy on, tell his story. And my biggest takeaway from that is that Stan spent, you know, eight years, 10 years traveling Europe to grow his game. And the value that the spring league has. Paid or not. Is is something that would maybe help some of these players in San agrees. I mean, we get into all this, but the fact that you maybe wouldn't have to go on that, such that arduous journey to get taped. So, thank you so much. We're going to get, I think we're going to get another podcast favorite on next week. I appreciate Sammy and the guys from spring league for helping to set up that immediate availability. So thank you for that. Yes. Also, Kyle got us out and I saw that. Kyle got us out. We're going to post the image of that. Kyle got his from doing the review, Kyle. A friend of the show now, I guess he's excited. And that Rod's on vacation this week. I think they have their hats, Rodan, Darren, we mailed them hats. Mark has hat. So that should be on the show whenever rod gets back from vacation. So yes, that, that we are spreading the glove here and the shipping cost to Canada are not cheap. I know nothing about that. And anytime I've had anything from Canada, You know, like whenever Nigel sent like audition tapes or whatever, My friend, Nigel, who's an actor. I, I don't know how much it costs. I've never shipped anything to Canada. Yeah. Yeah. Just a couple more, not too much preface today. There's a ton of news. We're trying to get a, you know, Paul's got to work tonight. We're going to get through all this tons of stuff. A couple of things. Is it someone from three damn listening to the podcast. Funny enough blocked the last week. About four hours after the podcast drop, not blocked anymore. I appreciate that. The three down people from not. Blocking me. As, as a fellow member of the CFL media. Now I do appreciate that. Leonard. I was going to read your email. We got too much news today, buddy. He sent in a photo of his kids, meeting the CFL players and video from the, I was going to do a whole thing. We have no time today. We are too busy. Also third down gamble. I was on this week. I, I appreciate Don and them reaching out to have me come on. And it was a good chat. I was fired up as, as Jeff Hamilton is later today. You know, he is fired up about the CFL. I was equally fired up about the XFL on there. So I would really recommend checking that out with the third, a third down gamble on Twitter. And, you know, you can go anywhere there on Podbean and stop at district. Third down gamble, but I thought that that was great. Very cool. Very cool. Oh, you deleted stuff. And I was like scrolling down. So. Main story. Sorry, I'm killing. All today. Our good friend Eros. Madani back in the news. I sent you this article. What, what did you think? So. Are you all Raj came out and said that the CFL season, there's no cohesion in terms of, you know, are they going to play or they're not going to play. And this stirred up a lot of controversy. What do you think about this? I'm agreeing with Raj. For starters. I know. It's hard to do that, but because basically he thinks he's right all the time and he's wrong. Oh, you know, this is one of the times he's actually right, because it's like, I think Jeff talks about this too, where it's like the. The P the CFL wants to make you part of it and wants to bring you in. And then all of a sudden, when you want to be in. Then they're like, oh wait, well you're in, but you're not really in. And he talks about, you know, the fight club analogy there. And I just. Like, like there's, there's no, there's nothing wrong in the article that Raj brought up. I mean, there's, there's. These health concerns, you know, who knows how fast it just depends on how fast the vaccines. Get out to people. I mean, you've seen it here in America where. Once once, and I don't want to be political once Biden got in and promised a hundred million shots in his first hundred days and reached that benchmark, you saw cases just plummet, like cases here. Just plummeted. So I'm thinking like, if, if, if vaccine proliferation takes hold in Canada, That is reason to be optimistic. But. I think the problem is, is that. Everyone's on a different message right now. Yes. Ministers. The league, the league zoners, everyone has their, their different agendas or their different messages. And I think that that is the biggest problem with the CFO right now is that no one is talking and getting on the same page and maybe that's why we're not getting transparency. Yeah. Because we also, I forgot to open myself up. We were too excited. They get into the shot. I'm going to do that. Also our giveaway where I almost at 1300 subscribers. Don't forget if you want that spring league merge, you can't buy it from spring league, but we have two shirts. I will ship it out, Canada, us. So please like, and subscribe. I even got one of those little subscribe animations. You know, like the little video animations, so I'm going to put that on, but I put that on their interviews too, but yeah, almost at 1300 we need 200 more and we are going to do the gestures emerge, giveaway. Yes, this is, this is the thing I'm all confused now because we were like backtracked a little bit. Sorry. I got too excited. Yes, Rosh is right. There is a lack of transparency. We talk with this about Jeff. How hard it would be for the CFL to tweet out some stuff for Ambrozy to come on. Same with the XFL, Mike mutual with his article today, talking about. On Mexico, new CEP talking about, you know, the lack of news from the XFL as well. It's not that hard to engage with your fans, and it's not that hard to control the message. You know, all you need is a tweet from the rocks and Hey guys, more info to come next week or whatever. And that like calm, whatever. Yeah. When three down tweeted out the rush article, they said there's a growing lack of confidence around the, that the CFL season that the league will put football on the field in 2021. So then immediately you have Bobby Young, the tie cat's owner, and he said, this is just a silly tweet. Of course, it'd be a CFL season. I can't speak for anyone else in our league, but I can guarantee you, the Ty cats will play. Although if no one else plays, I suppose we might even when the grey cup this year, Well, I mean, if you can't speak for anyone else in your league, but you're also saying there's going to be a CFL season, like. Make it make sense. You can't, if you can't speak for everyone in your league, You can't say there's going to be an ex CFL season. You can't. No. A lot of the people thought that this was them trying to be on the right side of history. So if. And I know Darren is filling in for rod this week. He talked about that too. And I really agreed that, you know, if they do cancel the season, at least in Bobby on can come out and say, Hey, you know, we like, we are ready to play. We were going to go forward with that. It's not our fault. Right. And I get that. But again, w when you, when you're lacking transparency at the very top, and then you have the nine teams left on their own to kind of do their own devices, this is what you get. And so then red, black CEO, mark Gowdy responds well, Bob. You know, we're into this, you're going to have to go through our nation. So you're getting this banter online. People are feeling positive about it, but we'll get into some of the health staff here. I mean, I want to be positive too, but I just. I don't, I don't know if I liked that mixed messaging and I don't know if the CFL likes that mixed messaging or if they could even control that maybe. Yeah. Maybe they have no control over what Bobby Young is doing. If they're letting him build his own website for the Ty cats is as Jeff gets into. Make a phone call. Get on the same page. Please. And then Craig Dickinson with the, with the rough riders. He's the head coach. He he's had the same thing. I disagree on this, I believe will play. I feel quite strongly that the season will start in August. As long as we keep getting their vaccinations, we are going to play. So you think the reason why these owners are tweeting this stuff out is because they. Two. Might be frustrated with the lack of transparency. On behalf of the league, maybe that's what I could see that. I could see that a lot. I could see. It's just hard. And we get into this a lot with Jeff and I liked where he, his analogy where the CFL wants to be the league for the fans. But then the fans, we don't want to like, let you know what's going on. And this the same thing. I'm going through the XFL email spring league a little bit when it came to like media stuff, you know, they're opening up a little bit, you know, obviously we had Santa come up, but like the fans wanting to be invested in your leagues. Right. And that was what was so good about the XFL. Back in 2019 was Bailey that was running their, their social media. You know, we engage with the fans. We interact with the fans. The league would come out and say stop. You know, when they had the big bungle with the three seconds left. And the dragons game and PJ Walker and need the ball to her. Like XFL was out right away, like, okay, this was wrong. We're going to do this. We're going to do that. And seeing all of this and being ingratiated now with the CFL, I'm like, I it, th the silence is definitely into me. I can't handle this and not knowing what's going on. Yep. And on that note. You know, that that all relies on the pandemic and. I guess what is CDN like Canadian department of, I don't know what CDN stands for. So Sharon Kirky of the national post. National post up there came out with post media. She says, Oh, Canadians, sorry. Canadian festival. Canadian. Sorry. Yeah, Canadians can look forward to having similar tastes to pre COVID life. When 75% of those eligible have received it, how many of those do they have right now? Paul? Oh 4%. As of Monday that figure stood at less than 4%. And there's a reason why it's because we, I talked about it the other day, my friend, up in Toronto, she was like, I got to wait two months for my second dose. It's like you shouldn't have to wait two months for your second dose. You shouldn't have to wait four weeks for your second dose. Well, I mean, if you've got the maternal yeah. You have to wait the four weeks, but you get what I'm saying. It's like, Come on. Why is there such a delay between the first and second dose? Because you're not getting enough or we're starting to send you some, so I'm hoping. That if they, if they're vigorous with their health department, you know, I don't know what Justin Trudeau's doing up there with, with this whole thing, you know, he's, you know, Other than having like a fake Mac Mac book. There's a picture online. He had like this fake Mac book thing going on. I don't know what he's doing. Like I don't. And I'm not up there and I'm not watching the news up there. So I couldn't tell you how in front of the cameras he is about this whole thing. You would, you would hope that, you know, He was really pushing to get vaccines in people's hands. And especially since we're sending them now, since we have an abundance of them, we're sending them to you. Speed things up. Yeah, I think the challenge is, and I hear a lot of like, you know, they talk like, oh, in, in Saskatchewan we were doing whatever. It's very in populations in sizes, right? So what's working, the Saskatchewan might not work in, you know, Toronto or whatever. And I think that's part of the problem is like we're seeing. And I see a lot of fans, we're seeing one thing work in one city and they're like, oh, well, that's, we're just going to, it's like, well, that's not, that's not how it works. Right. I mean like Washington state, we're doing far better than other states. Right? It's the same thing works up there. This was big that came out. So everyone remembers during the CFL draft two weeks ago. Dave Naylor and Farhan, you know, friend of the show came out and they said that the six provinces had all verbally approved. The leagues returned the play, and immediately that people came out and they're like, well, that's not quite the case. We haven't heard all that. Well now the Alberta governor government is coming out and saying that they have also not issued an official approval of the return to play policy. So they're joining British Columbia and Ontario and denying that report. And this is according to friend of the show. Damn, Ralph, what do you think about kind of where they jumping the gun with that? What would you, what's your takeaway? My takeaway is that. The health department. Is trusted to make decisions regarding the pandemic. Not everyone. I mean, this pandemic is making its own timetable. Its own timeline. And the health department. Like I understand these owners are worried about their bottom line financially. Like. I mean, well, it's hard cause you know, Farhan. And Dave Naylor are getting accused of a little bit of spin here, right? Where they're coming out. They're saying, Hey, you know where you were approved to play everywhere. We're just waiting there. Or our plans aren't, you know, our plans are approved. They're not approved to play, but you know, Pending vaccinations and all that. And now you have three of the six that you know, where the CFL teams are coming out and saying like, we haven't like we haven't. I mean, we haven't, he says we've been in contact with them and generally support a safe return to play. Right now, our focus is bending the curve. We'll keep, you know, Albertans updated. If there's any decisions made. You know, and that's. That's the Tom Tom McMillan, who is the director of communications for Alberta health. So is this a semantics debate? Like where they're saying they submitted a plan, but what Alberta is talking about or the protocols. Like being the schedule when they want to go. But Alberta's being more specific like, oh, what are you going to do when you get to that? When you open up the schedule, you think that they're being semantics debates here? I don't think so. I mean, this. Feels very. Bad to me like this is to me, a bad look on, on. To me, this is TSN one, you know, we're talking about wanting to come out, control the narrative. They come out and say this, but then you have three. I mean, that to me is where I took from it. And that's why to me, it doesn't, it doesn't feel so good. And now this was just this, just the upper, the thing just came out yesterday when we recorded. I mean, this is still kind of, you know, in this, this started. With the draft. You know, two weeks ago. So it, it feels weird. I don't think it's a semantic thing. I think it's them trying to control the narrative and getting caught in like, oh no. Kind of a lie. Well, I mean, TSN has a financial stake in this. Maybe that's. Not accusing them of like doing that, but they, we have to take that into account. They do have a financial stake in making sure CFL hits the field. Well, yeah. And again, maybe lack of transparency from the league is causing people to speculate. About these things. So this came out. Yeah. As we recorded last week, last Friday, city of Toronto canceled all major outdoor events through September 6th. Enjoy Buffalo, blue Jays. Keep enjoying Buffalo in Florida. Oh, sorry. You know, it's not good. I mean, you know, they, they were still talking about it. And I got into this, this week with some listeners too, that, you know, they've talked about. And I talked about this on the third down, the hustle or the third down gamble. I keep calling it that third through down gamble. This whole plan. Okay. We're going to have some teams play in other stadiums. The CFL does not do revenue sharing like the NFL. So. If you have fans, like if you have the rough riders plan in wherever, you know, in Hamilton or wherever, and like the fans go. Are you writing the check for the rough riders? Are you writing the check for the BC lions to host someone like I don't get where that's going to work and I haven't seen, and I think that's where the thing too is, is transparency and everything else you're on Brosy comes out and goes, well, we're going to ship 70 teams east to the west to play, but yet, like literally no other logistics about that at all, about how any of that's going to work. Well, here's the deal. They need fans in the seats and they need money from those fans. So when the fans are in those stadiums, where is that money going? You know, one would obviously assume they're going to split it up, but that's not something that I believe the CFL traditionally does. Are they going to buck the trend? That's fine. But then that's something you can talk about, right. And I mean, there's also like, I'm also thinking about the NFL. Like, there are four teams in Canada playing each other. And then one team comes out of that and plays the winner of the west. Where are they playing these games after they get out of their bracket? They're not gonna play any home games in Canada. It's weird. Especially, especially since Toronto has looked great all year and might potentially give a. People are picking the avalanche, but I'm thinking Vegas. You know, We're. Where are people going to play games if Toronto saying no, till September 6th? MLS soccer also affected. It's weird. We talked about Bonnie Henry, not Bonnie hammer of USA network. Thinking about Bonnie Henry. It says that fans get returned to BC later this summer. And then they're going to do a UK style monitor of the events. I May 3rd. She said it wasn't likely, but now this week she's softening her tone. And she says, she's there watching the UK where they've done experiments. They're doing plan advance where people are monitored before and after the sea of transmissions happen. We're looking into things like that. We are May 20th. So I don't know how long those experiments take to like, figure out right. One would presume if the UK is doing that and sending people home, you have to wait weeks to see transmissions and stuff. I mean, You get what I'm saying? Like, okay. We're, you know, we're a month away from potentially the CFL announcing another delay. If they're not going to hit that August 5th. Yep. I mean, I like the idea of like controlled, you know, spectators where they're like, okay, we're gonna monitor, you're going to take one test now to get approved. And then you'll take another test the day before. And, you know, That's a good way to go about it. That's definitely a good way to go about it, but I dunno. It's it's. I just think, I think what it is. Boils down to vaccines, vaccines, vaccines, vaccines. Don't read this Rob van something. I'm going to move it here. Down below, but it's interesting about that. So here's the other thing. So Saskatchewan, premier, Scott Moe. Coutts vaccinations is the plan. He came out this week and said, we've charted our course in this pandemic. We've been able to do that because of the effects. He feels like they're going to have Saskatchewan. And you're like, we're filling the stadiums we're dealing with ever. And Rob Vanstone. Yeah. A friend of the show came out. He wrote this great article. I read. Scott most high provides a semblance of hope so much has to happen for a well attended Roughriders game to materialize, but the mere introduction of that possibility as a positive sign. Yeah. I mean, it. It's definitely. It's definitely. Optimistic. And I think it just, again, boils down to the, those vaccines. And if, if we in America can turn around our cases with vaccines, where people are getting vaccines. I think we have 64. At least 64% of Americans have at least got their first dose here. And if we could turn this thing around with vaccines, I mean, it's that Scott Mo I like, I like his optimism. I do. The problem is, is now you're having these health authorities come out. Right. And they're there. That's who's getting quoted in there. I like Scott Moe or Bonnie Henry. And I obviously we want to like, you know, trust in the doctors and trust in the medical, but. You know, could that, could we have had a coordinated message with, with some of the CFL offices or the league? You know what I mean? Like that's where I'm saying, like, you kind of have all these bits and pieces coming up. And like, this is, this is a perfect example of this. So the Quebec, premier Francoise, the Galt delivered positive news for four sports fans in Montreal on Tuesday. And he's saying that they want to have 25 people at bell center. Beyond May 28th, right. For there, for the games up there. Literally that same day, Dr. Howard, did you. Are you saying that. They have about N J O Canada's deputy chief public health officer said allowing fans in the games is not under serious consideration at this point. This, this. You know, This big, I mean, Look, the doctors are looking at the data right now. They're like saying only 4% of the people are vaccinated. Beyond their second dose, which means they're safe to be around people, especially, you know, as the CDC in America says, if you're, if you're vaccinated and you're outside, you can drop the mask in certain situations. If you're indoors, you can drop the mask. You only 4% of your population is vaccinated. And they're looking at how long it took to get that 4% vaccinated and going okay. If it's the end of may and it took this long at 4%. We're only talking about 7% and that's 10% of all Canada. That's not 7% of, you know, Saskatchewan has 7% then. Quebec has 24%. They're looking at the data going. If, if we only have this little portion vaccinated, The numbers don't add up to allow that many people into an indoor venue. That's what, that's what these doctors are looking at. That's why we have to, we have to trust these doctors. They're looking at the data. The, the, the stuff that people are saying, the premiers and the, the owners of these teams, aren't looking at data real-time every flipping minute to determine how many people are being vaccinated. The percentage and all of that stuff. That's why it's like. I don't. I want these entities to communicate. I want the doctors to explain the seriousness. Of the data, because it doesn't seem like anyone else outside of the doctors understands the data. Well, and, and we had, I cut it for time. We had a quote with Bonnie Henry. She's talking that, that basically, they're not making any decisions now through Memorial day, at least. And she's like, we're not. We're not talking about CFL right now. Like we're talking about ICU and then we have, I think new Howard knew just Dr. Howard knew just to, I had a sound bite from him where he's like, we're not, we don't care about the CFL right now. Like we don't care. That's what they hear about. So it is, it is hard and it did, but this was odd to me that you have both of these kinds of. Very contradictory, you know, from two different, you know, very public figures coming out about this. Anyway, we have a lot of XFL CFL stuff after the break. Do you want to toss to Jeff? And then we'll. Let's bring Jeff in here after the break and we'll talk to him and yeah, he's got some great stuff to say. Jeff Hamilton, Winnipeg free press coming up right after this. So it's like getting clogged up with things that like, it's got five of the same phone. It's like, bro, that's the same. Yeah. Oh, it's fine. Let me just. It's not a big deal. Derek. Yeah. Oh, that's fine. Oh, got it. Oh, it'll be fine. Mm. Mm. Yeah, I was having trouble. My. I couldn't tell if it was my iPhone or my router. Cause I have like a mesh downstairs. And it went for like weeks or it wasn't transferring me correctly down. Like I would drop every time I went. And I couldn't figure out. And I think it kind of finally resolved itself. I couldn't figure out if it was like my wifi. Because everything else, like all my other devices and everything. Is it my iPhone. Is it like. The wifi band on there. It was really weird. Do you like. The height that van Roger for fall, like to get the rocking Daniel. Good luck with that, man. Hey, I, I. Rather than send the email to me. Saves me at the time of getting turned down. Let's just kind of get through tonight. Just got to get through tonight. I, I very, I'm very frustrated with this man. Like with him, I'm very, like, I'm very. My back and, you know, he said, he's going to trust me to do something. And he didn't. Like, dude. F**k. Knowing all the work that you've done on that it's infuriating to me that he like. Bringing in other people to like b******t and stuff. Okay. He's got people in his ear like that don't know what they're talking about. Talking about our cameras are an issue and I'm like, dude, that's your opinion. It's not the cameras. It doesn't matter. It's not, it has nothing to do. You could f*****g string with GoPros. It doesn't, it doesn't matter. I know. Like not one person ever in my life. I've ha ha 40. Live stream wedding sound last year. That one person's like, yeah, the video quality. Wasn't great. Like not one person. It's not, no one cares, I guess, as long as it's like, says HD on the f*****g YouTube, like, it doesn't matter. Yeah. Pressed it so much. I know. So when he's like, oh, the cameras. But this guy was like, oh, the camera looked better. We're using the ones that I got. And I'm like, no, he's in the same one that I've. Been using. That's dumb. I knew this guy was going to be a problem. I knew this guy was going to be a problem. Mellow man, but the other guy. The condor guy. I knew it. He's like sending me things and I'm like, dude, I already have that. He's like sending me this thing that allows you to do. Twitch and YouTube stream simultaneously. I'm like, yeah, but you still need an OBS. To get to those things like you, can't just, I hear that. Yes. I hear that OBS. Yes. Yeah. Like that's how it works. Like you have to use OBS. And he's like, I don't know what that means. I'm like, so you're just taking advice blindly. Yep. You sought something online and you sent over the link. He's like, my buddy told me about this. I'm like, your buddy doesn't know that, like he's not reading everything there. You have to have an OBS to interact with that thing. You're sending me. I have the OBS and I have a service that's been around longer. It's more, it's more stable. Then this random thing that no one uses, I've never even heard of this one. That's stupid. That's the same guy. Same f*****g guy. Yeah, I don't like that. I emailed him that just as soon as he can help on. I was talking with this guy. He's like a radio host writer. He writes for CFL. He's like, yeah, I just, he goes, let me clear up by them, but that should be fine. And I'm like, well, we know Lucas and Lucas knows us. So that should be, he's like, okay, so he's going to talk with them. But he's got like 95, some odd thousand followers. So I was like, oh, it would be, that would be good. Oh, wait, wait. I said, wait. Do you think about Jeremy as a web guy following us? Oh, I didn't know his phone. Yeah. And so I send them, I. I just sent him a message that, Hey, thanks for the follow up exclamation point. Like, I didn't say anything else, but like it says on there, he does. He does webmaster for Jericho and Fozzie okay. That's that's good. That's f*****g solid, dude. I mean him and him is himself has 18,000 followers. But if he could get like maybe Jericho wants to come, doc CFL, maybe. I would, that'd be cool as f**k. Oh. Dude I would die. I would die if we got. But that's f*****g weird. That's a really weird follow-up I think. Okay. He says he is almost ready. That's good. And then we'll just go. It's fine. Thank you for your patience. He's good though. I think he'll be, everyone seems excited when he was coming on. God, I would die. We got Chris Jericho on our podcast. I would die. I sent it to Michael. Michael is like, wow, that's actually really cool. I'm. I'm like, Hey, I don't, that's f*****g weird. And Michael gets never gets impressed by anything. So for him to be like, that's really cool. That's that's saying something. I think that would be, I mean, that's weird. I mean, even he can come on. Okay. You manage Jericho's f*****g website that you manage the Fonzie stuff. Like you can come on. Do, did you see how low doge got no. It was like 32 again. Like 28. I bought some more. Crypto's crashing right now. We was down to like 41. I know it's crazy down $9,000. Because Elon was like, oh, this is a bad thing. But that's what I've always said. That the N like, The fact that you have to like pry process it, to make it, to process it, to make it. And then, yeah, Ian's. Yeah, this isn't really in line with our. Green cars and whatever, but yeah, no s**t. Nope. But then yeah. Then he, I guess he tweeted like Tesla diamond hands, and then it went back up. Like, okay. Well, Must be nice that he can control all that s**t. I know that's a lot of power. It's crazy. Power for someone to have it's way too much. I think it's way too much. I think it was way too much. You got a quick second. Well, that's good to know. We're pulling them more money than mellow man. No. And it's going to continue to. I'm telling you. Look, he needs to be more than I need him. F**k. Yeah, dude. And I'm not just, I guess I'm not trying to like stroke. You were there. I mean, I f*****g believe it. I mean, I think it's crazy. I think it's crazy that he thinks that he's going to f*****g do that s**t by himself. A little jab there. Don't throw a little jab on Instagram real quick. What. I don't have my phone right now. Subtle subtle jab. At mellow man. The whole entire situation. Oh, yeah. That's. I'll be curious. I guess. God dammit. Oh, I didn't, I didn't tell you this. I was kind of a little perturbed by this. I, so Glen suitor writes for TSN. He's like, nah, he's got far haunt. You know, he's one of those guys. And he is on Derek Taylor show a lot. And so, oh, here we go. Here we go. Hey guys. Let me just get my. You're good. We were having. We're good. We had to reset all this stuff. So it's good. No worries. I we're having internet problems in like the entire province. So I was kind of worried about that. It just kind of pockets of the province or. Had issues. So like it was on yesterday. I had a little bit this morning, but I should be good. I have full bars and everything's great. I'm ready to roll and rock. If you guys are cool. Just let Paul intro, but we'll get in and we'll sure. Yeah, we were having this worked out. We ended up reset and everything. So no worries. All right. Great. Hang on. Jeff Hamilton joining us now from the Winnipeg free press Jeff. How's it going, man? Oh, things are great, man. It's a, it's a pleasure to be on talking football. Any opportunity to talk football, whether it'd be the CFL or. XFL or in this case, both is awesome. So great to be here. Will we get to that though? A Winnipeg winning now Wednesday night. What do you, how do you, how do you think that's going to go? In that series against, was it. Edmonton Oilers Connor McDavid led Edmonton Oilers. Yeah, the, the, the down Owen one Evanston oil is they're playing. Yeah. You know what? I think the series is. Certainly. I predicted Oilers and seven. You know, I don't know how much you guys know about the history between these two teams, particularly this season, but not that great for Winnipeg. They've ended up finishing third in the north division. Edmonton finishing second, obviously. To be their first round opponents. But they beat the jets six games in a row. In the regular season leading into the playoffs. So a lot of people, I mean, rightfully so. Had them as underdogs and, you know, and they were of course saying all the, all the, all the right things, as far as you know, this is a new clean slate. This is a new season, yada yada, yada. And my thing for weeks was well, that's great. You know, it's great that you everyone's propping each other up to this tough situation. And they'd gone also through a seven game losing streak late in the season. So it was kind of just magnified a team that looked like they were. You know, over-producing, if you will, because a lot of teams had them hovering around fourth and then all of a sudden it was like, okay, well maybe these guys are pretenders. So, you know, all that played into their attitude and energy going into game one and they proved it. So. Again, it's game one. As we know. In any kind of playoffs. It's great to get that victory, but it's going to be a long series and, you know, Connor McDavid was held pointless. And that was something, he certainly wasn't a, it didn't do a lot this season, particularly against the jets. So to have him kind of, you know, kind of be off the score sheet. I don't think you can bank on that if you will. So certainly a good. But what it will be. I long series for sure. How cool is it to get the, how cool was it when you guys got the jets back by the way? Oh, man. It was like a massive moment for the province. I mean, you, you kind of have to understand the magnitude of getting them back. You kind of have to understand. A bit about their exit. And, you know, I was, I was 10 years old at the time and I was part of that. Like, I mean, we were going door to door, collecting pennies, throwing them in this, you know, this, this big, large ban, if you will, that to kind of save the jets campaign. And so, you know, it was, it was a tough, it was a tough pill to swallow back then, for sure. I mean, I remember being at like the, the goodbye jets, you know? Farewell with all the players, obviously coming on the ice and in their jerseys and kind of waiting a goodbye. As they headed off to Arizona in the desert, and then, you know, it was just kind of, okay. I guess that's it. I, you know, again, I was only 10 years old, so I don't think I had that emotional. I, I definitely remember them leaving and it socking, but I wasn't bad. You. You know, in my adult age and, and fandom, and that's kind of funny, right? Because it works well for me as a journalist now, because I am super excited. Cause I don't have a tie to the jets as much as a lot of people, even some of my colleagues have just kind of knowing that history and stuff and going back even to the wha days before they merged with the NHL. So, I mean, it's. As far as them coming back to 2011, man, that's like a defining moment to wait a lot of people in this province and particularly in the city and, and to see them having, you know, to see them have some success. Obviously their, their biggest playoff run was in 2018 when they made it to the Western conference final and ended up losing out to Vegas. In their first season. You know, that was a big run for, for the city and, and now the expectations are high. So now it's kind of like those, that whole love affair is kind of over. And now it's like, okay guys, you know, this is. You know, we expect good things, big things, every season. So big moment in our, in our city's history, big moment for our city in general, just the economy, you know, putting us on the map. And, you know, so other places, whether it be in the states or around the world would recognize us just given, you know, the NHL and whatnot. So certainly a massive moment in, in 2011, when they, you know, the jets are coming back. Yeah. You talk about. Not having too much, you know, being able to cover something a little bit more objectively. I guess we certainly run into that a little bit with the CFL stuff, right. With that, you know, a lot of passion, a lot of, you know, All this history of all these, you know, the, the fans and the reporters and stuff we talked to when we announced that you were going to come on one of our gases. Listeners said, oh, Jessica, to be so insightful. And, and he met, you know, bringing wisdom, I think. And I said, well, he spelled it insightful as in bringing anger and rage. And I go, well, that would be a far more like a rush. Madani coming on and hopefully you would bring a little bit more. What, what. Paul. And I, we have a lot of different takeaways today with all the team owners tweeting all the health stuff, the different provinces. Where do you start today? What is, is top of your mind with? I thinks that we should be talking about in terms of CFL. See right now. I think we're almost kind of in that, like wait and see period. Right. Cause, I mean, we're w. The, the new schedule as you guys know and have talked about for weeks. Being August 5th, the expectation to start that day, will we start that day? When we start that date. The reality is, is we've kind of been in a bit of a holding pattern and waiting on COVID-19 and you know, where the numbers are, not just in, in number of cases, in the PR in the various provinces, but also the vaccination rates. And then you look at the age groups that are getting backstage and, and those numbers are refreshing, but. I think the real date we're looking for now, guys is mid June because you can't just kind of say, you're going to play an August 5th and not make a definitive statement, but a decision needs to be made in the next few weeks here. And I'd say by latest June, you need to make a decision if this is going to be possible. So when either, you know, mid June, it's either going to be. Okay. Plan. You know, the plan is a go, we're going to start August 5th. This is when we're going to have the players in yada, yada, yada, more of those details or another announcement saying, you know, look, the COVID numbers, aren't working vaccination. Isn't where we expected it to be at this point, we're going to have to push back. And then at that point, I think you really need to nail down a date and stick to it because you know, if you're going any further past labor day weekend, which is a big weekend in the CFL in September. So like that would be like not an ideal time to start, but it. Would also be an ideal time to start all things considering. So that's the kind of, what we're waiting for is, is, is really the COVID numbers and, and, and ultimately an announcement to be made in mid June about the future of, of the 20, 21 season. With the news this week, you know, a rash. This article with three down, you know, you had with the tiger cats and the red blacks, everybody, you know, a rough riders tweeting. Yeah. The big thesis of our episode today is kind of like this silence, right. You know? And we're the same way with XFL fans. Do you think the CFL should be saying more and doing more now besides letting kind of these team owners run a mock for lack of a better word? Yeah. So are you. I mean, jeez, loaded. Transparency, right. I mean, that's been a topic that you guys have been hammering on for a while. It's something that I certainly think needs to be improved by this league. And the reality is, is like we're in year two. Right? So like this whole process from last year was kind of this wait and see, wait and see. Right. So the leash, I think for fans is getting shorter and shorter, right? Like. I mean, it was a year ago that it was like, okay, we're going to wait. You know, we're, we're not, the CFL was kind of viewed early on as being kind of the league that was in the best situation, because unlike the NHL, the NBA, they, they weren't playing. So they didn't have to go through this massive stop. It was, you know, no one really knew what this COVID-19 would, would evolve to, or maybe we did, but we maybe weren't. Weren't really buying it or expecting it to be that great in, in, in 2020, right. To be this issue. But ultimately it became the worst situation for them because now they're waiting. And, and then, so we went through this whole process of like, okay. Yep. It's not going to start on time. Then it was a new proposed date and then it was silence and then it was another proposed date. And then it was this big adventure to create this bubble here in Winnipeg for what would have been a six game season. And ultimately that didn't work out and in between all of that was the work with the government and the lack of communication with players. And there was that fight. So everyone was kind of had that as a backdrop. And then when they ultimately canceled the season, it was like, okay, you know, maybe. You know, some people even came out. I'm not saying pundits, but fans for sure. Came. And said, well, yeah, maybe it was, it was actually a great, a great thing, but the CFL didn't play, they would have been screwed and yada, yada, but you know, gung ho for 2021. Well, here we are. So at this point in time, I just think it's more or less a. You know, I would like the league to say that this is our plan. This is our backup plan. These are our contingency plan so that people can start planning, not just. He will. Players and everyone involved in the CFL. I can get a better idea of how to plan the future. Now, when your, when your future is based on a ever evolving pandemic, you can't be as clear and concise, but when you have guys like Bob young, who's the owner of the Hamilton tire cat sane. We will be playing this year and you have. You know, people in Montreal ownership who, you know, as you guys know are new, kind of just bought the team at the worst possible time at the end of 2019. They're saying they're going to play that not money, isn't an issue, but ultimately money is not the problem. Here. We are going to put a product on you, set an expectation that things are going to happen. So to me, I don't even know if that's a guarantee that they're going to play this year, let alone when they're going to play. So I think, you know, as far as like, should they be more open? I think there's certainly an argument to the transparency, but this has been an issue. Transparency has been an issue with this league for a long time. And it's, it's been not only an issue in the lack of transparency when it goes. It contradicts directly. Of what they claim to be. And that's the most accessible league in pro sports, right? Like most accessible to players, more, most accessible to their product. Like you're part of this. We need you and kind of thing. And obviously every professional league needs fans. They need that support, but the CFL tries to kind of put their arm around you and say, come on in and be part of this. Well, when Ray. You know, when, when crap hits the fan. You kind of hope that you're part of that. Right. And, and. You wonder. And go back to my earlier comments. Like you understood that. That they couldn't play in 2020. You got to a point where you're no longer angry with the league for kind of dragging this along and now, you know, fast forward a year. And we're in, we're kind of seeing this movie play out again. And then you throw the XFL on top of it and tensions are hot, right? Tensions are at an all time high because nobody has the answer. So, yeah. And including the CFL, the thing is they have a schedule in front of them right now. They know what it looks like at the moment. They just start sharing it with fans, because I think they're trying to balance that line of, of being straight up, but also being realistic. And, and unfortunately for them, I don't think they're playing that dance very well. Or at least they could be planted a lot better. I mean, if, if, if the CFL doesn't play the season, What does that mean for the CFL? So you, like, I think there's lots of. Thoughts to that. I think there's a lot of people, obviously that would say the CFL's doomed if they don't play for a second year in a row. And I think out of sight out of mind is a very powerful thing in pro sports. Hedo big and maybe even unheard of in pro sports. But I think there's certainly some, there's obviously truth to that. I mean, I think if you have fair weather fans, you know, you're going to lose those fans or a good chunk of those fans. I think you're going to lose any momentum. Like, you know, there's PR if you look at a particular teams, I mean the Winnipeg blue bombers snapped at 20. Nine year Kurtz. They won the great cup. They would've loved to reap the benefits of that next year or that momentum coming in. So, you know, I think there, I think there certainly is a problem. I don't even love the September start. I don't love the August star. Right. Because we already wiped out entire season. Now it's kind of. The late stages of the year. So you're already kind of in a position, you know, not a great position. So at this point, I mean, Like the CFL's been through so much. And they've been through, not something obviously like this, but I do think they'll survive if they don't play another year. And in fact, I, you know, but I think you look back at things and even if you go to last year, like I was, I was of the mind that they should have shut the lights out early. Right. I mean, when you started seeing teams losing $7 million, the bombers lost 10, but it was actually seven with the government subsidies that they had, or they took advantage of. So like, I mean, to me, a lot of that's. Salaries like, like employee salary, some player bonuses and stuff like that. And, and, and having these coaches stay on, like, you're somehow, like there's somehow. An an unlimited amount of opportunity for professional coaches out there. And if they don't get a job with. If they don't get paid their $500,000 in some cases that they're going to go somewhere else is kind of ludicrous. So like, I feel like they made their bed in a lot of ways by not shutting down realizing, and this is an ego thing, guys. It's a pride thing is that you're trying to be big time football, but you run it like a mom pop shop. So it's like, that goes to the contradiction of things where it's like, if you actually. Wanted your league to survive or the teams to not post these massive losses. You'd shut her down immediately and realize that you're never going to get up from, from this and that. You're not in a financial position, not just in your business model, but even though you have billion dollar owners, in some cases, A willingness to put that money forward. So acknowledging that, especially for the community teams, guys, the Edmonton Winnipeg and Saskatchewan, like they would have benefited from shutting the lights off immediately. The fact that they're posting anywhere between seven and $10 million losses, aren't going to see as unforgivable, what is just kind of, you look back on it and you go, wow. That money could have been really useful. And where, where exactly did it go? So I don't even know what the question is at this point, but. But in, in this rat, but at the same time, I just, I feel like this is the year where, you know, you, you, you've now kind of, I don't want to say painted yourself into a corner, but now you're telling everybody you're going to play this year. And you know, you're going to take massive losses. It just feels like if you put things into a two year window, just can't help. But to think that this would some of these. Self, some of these damages were self-inflicted. No. And you're good. Like where do we start? I don't know. That was great. I love that. You know, love the love, the passion behind that. It's just so frustrating to me and Paul and I were talking about this before we got on about the whole crypto thing right now, and Ilan and Twitter. And it's. It's so easy nowadays to control a narrative on social media. And it is really easy to let it go away. Right. And to me, you know, having the CFL come out in, you know, once a week and Tweed an update, it's the same thing we're dealing with the XFL. And I just, I feel like it's this lost opportunity where. You know, a billion, little things are going on, on social media, in between every single time that they post. And it's just getting, you know, people are arguing with each other and all this kind of stuff. I mean, what, what do you wish we could be seen right now from Ambrozy from the rest of the, the management? Maybe what are some things that they could be doing better? To me. I think I got like, I mean, not to harp on transparency, but like let's face it guys. Like, we're not like, I don't know what you guys know about global 2.0, this, this, this kind of expansion thing that the CFL has been all about since Randy and Brosy took over as commissioner and, and that kind of conversation was even before he was there. But. That vision was built. On. Canada's reputation and building amongst countries around the world. Not including the U S in fact it was, it was built on, you know, look, it's just, what's looked at. Hey. That's going on in the U S politically all these things we can identify with the world of who we want to be. It's it's it's it's whether the XFL was a lifeline and opportunity, whatever it may be. There are things that are broken with the CFL and a common thing that I've used is, you know, if you, if you had preexisting conditions before the pandemic hit, they just magnified. And that was the situation with the CFL. They already had issues. They were already claiming beating their chest about being the. You know, this big glorious league, but they were losing $20 million a season. Like there's no one in their right mind who would buy the CFL. Now the CFL is a good product. It's a good game. It has a long history and all those things. But when the announcement came out with the XFL that we were announcing that we're having conversations with the XFL, you damn right. The CFL knew what that would do. They knew that even the mention of the, of, of us expansion was going to rattle cage, whether it's a better situation now, which I obviously you could make that argument than it was it decades ago when they, when they, you know, went down and that was just a completely. You wish there were social media back then, because you'd get a little bit more of the information behind the scenes and thank God there wasn't, but you know, the situation now is very. Not simple, but it's, it's, they've now announced that they're having conversation and you wouldn't do that unless you were forward online. As we know, they've been having these conversations for months, so this is just a roundabout way of saying, well, where is this headed? Right? Where are we going with this? You've now pulled the rabbit out of the hat, exposed it to everybody. And now you just think it's just going to just sit there and no one's going to ask about it. No, one's going to wonder what, what the next step is. I mean, once you bring that into play, everyone wants to know the rules going to stay. Are the teams going to stay? Are, are you. W, what does it look like? As far as the great cup, obviously being a massive piece of this puzzle. Like all these traditions are now up in our up and are in danger or at the very least during question and fans are like, well, what? And then the CFO's like, whoa, we're just having conversations. We'll know. You're not just having conversations. You're slowly pulling the bandaid off and you're, and in the meantime, you're alienating your fans and. And, and also leaving them in the dark. So to me, it's, it's just one of those things where you can kind of explain what's happening. I know it's difficult, especially as you try to have a traditional CFL season this year. And ABI. Cause obviously this is in the future, but obviously those conversations have gotten to a point where maybe there isn't definitive rule changes, but we're not here testing the waters anymore, guys. I mean, this is happening. This is the future of this league. We just don't know what it looks like. And I think if anything that could be painted a bit better, but the reality is, is the CFL will treat their fans. Like, you know, they don't know what's good for them and they don't want it, but they're also thinking of the bottom line this season. They don't want to get fans. They don't, if fans are. Going to leave when it's confirmed that the XFL and the CFL are now a partnership. Well, they'd rather those fans leave next year than this season. And I think that's why we're sitting here wondering what the heck's going on. So why the. Why? Why is there such a blind loyalty from CFL fans? To the CFL against any type of merger. Why does that exist? Well, why is there a blind loyalty? Like, why are most fans up in arms on, on why, like why this might or will happen? I think it's just that I think a lot of people, like, I mean, we also live in this world where we think like Twitter is kind of the universe and that every, you know, the, the, the dominating opinion on social media is somehow the prevailing opinion within our communities. And I don't think that's the case, especially in the CFL where there's an older fan base. Now I'm not trying to. You know, say there isn't a young fans that are interested, but a predominant fan base for the Canadian football league is older people. And most older people are not on social media per se. Obviously some are, but I think there's a lot of conversations happening in people's living rooms where it's like, They've already ruled out the CFL. They're not happy with the CFL. And I think it's one of those things where it's part history, right? Like it's part thinking like this is our game guys. I mean, this has been one of those things where it's the t-shirts have been made the, you know, the. The slogans have been abused for years and years and years, it's not like someone came out and was like, Ooh, The big, bad NFL. And then, then, then here's the CFL. If this is our game, like for a long time. It's not the case anymore. Our balls are bigger. Our field is bigger. Like there was an identity to it. So once you start talking about incorporating a completely different entity that threatens to change that identity, to change those traditions and not to have any kind of understanding. As to what cause. Lose people on social media. Media are also, aren't getting the information that some people are getting too. So they're kind of sitting there having conversations with their friends that are probably a bit on educated and fueled with the belief that, okay, this is, this is just the beginning of the end. And not maybe seeing some of the broader concerns issues within the CFL. And certainly some of the positives that could come out of, of, of joining a leadership group, you know, such as the. The XFL. What do you, you know, as someone that covers the league as a fan, that Lizzie, what. What do you want to see? Come from this? You know, what would I, I. I know. Yeah. So I watched. Like four or five-year five cats. And I know, I knew this question was coming so. You know, to me, it was like early on. I immediately thought. Wow. The rock is on a press release, attest to the CFL, you know, and I called his, I called his camp and I said, Hey, my deadline is not for like two months. So just to leave that window open in case the rock wanted to call me, I haven't got that call. And I'm not sure if the two months is up yet, but we'll see. But I thought, you know, immediately, I thought, okay, This is, this is interesting for sure. As I mentioned before, just given the whole global expansion. Plan, but I originally thought, okay, this is, this is the rock. This is Danny Garcia, who has a lot of obviously experience in building brands. You have Redbird capital who has money and now an interest in. In, in expanding their sports portfolio and all those things. And the one thing that the CFL has had issues with is being cool. I mean, people don't wear CFL caps in not even no CFL, like they don't have that brand. Right. They don't have things that like people want to jump at. In fact, it's the opposite. It's, they've struggled to be cool. They've struggled to get a younger audience. They've struggled with all these things that you look at the personnel behind the XFL and you go, wow, those are all answers potentially to these massive problems and these massive issues that the CFL housing growing the game. In growing their product. So that was kind of my first little bit. Then I started kinda thinking like, you know, not that I was against it, I didn't flip-flop, but it's just the way in which things are happening. Right. To me. What, what, what kind of bothers me is that the CFL board of governors is an old tire group. Like they, they are the leadership. They don't have creative ideas. You know, they sit in a room that, you know, I'm not gonna say they just yell at each other, but they all have their own agendas for a long time. Some teams got this, some teams got that, like the Hamilton tiger cats didn't even have a website that matched the rest of the league for years. Cause Bob young owns a, a computer software company. So he was allowed to do this. Other deals have been made in the past, whether it be for merchandise and stuff. So everyone, and then there's the community owned team. That's like, okay, sit down and shut up because we're the ones digging. Digging our, our hands into our pockets to pay money. So there was this like weird kind of dynamic. And I think they just got in their own way. Now that, that isn't a, you know, that's a very, very shrunk down simplified version, but there's things that I see at the CFL that I, you know, like if they're, you know, Whether it's there. Producing of content, like traveling to find players out, like there's one summer, they like traveled like the globe. And watch players work out like that's a waste of money. Like you don't need that. No one cares about that. When, when team, when guys aren't staying on teams for longer than a couple years, you don't like no one needs to do that. Like, so there's a lot of decisions I've questioned, but the, the. At the end of it. I just find that like, these guys have figured out, haven't figured out a way to grow the game. So like, to me, I, I know that there is. Advantages to joining the XFL. I know there are disadvantages to the CFL and losing that kind of product or that identity that you've had that you built over decades. So I understand that stuff. I just, I don't know where I fall and I kind of use Dan Barnes, his comment that you guys had a couple, I don't have any stake in the game, but I do. I do understand the frustration from Canadian fans that know that it's a handful of people making these decisions for them that are telling them this is the, this is for the good of you when in fact. They're just focused on the bottom line. Now this is a business. So MLSE, you know, you know, the relationship with Montreal, you know, you know, you know, the, the, the way things work in that regard. So it's like, they're making the decision not based on what's good for the Canadian game. They're making a decision. What's good for the future of this league. And I don't know if those things are being communicated as well. And therefore aren't being aligned with the, with the hardcore fans that you ultimately need on your side, regardless of what happens in the future. Totally makes sense. Jeff Hamilton Winnipeg free press. I want to thank you for coming on and talking with us today about, you know, CFL, XML stuff, and a little bit about the jets. Yeah, absolutely. It was a lot of fun guys. It's great. We really appreciate you taking the time out, you know, kind of work in and getting all these people on. And, and so we appreciate that and thank you so much. I like the passion I have. Let's say that could have gone into so much too. I mean there's but yeah, I mean, it's, it's great to talk football. It's great to talk with guys like yourselves who, you know, obviously dedicate the time and energy into this and, and, you know, and, and who knows what the future holds because at the end of the day, like, you know, I think I'm with a lot of people where we just want to see football be played again and, and fans attending these games and. And really get things going. So, you know, whatever happens in the future here, I'll be reporting it and covering it. And as will you, and, you know, I'm sure our paths will cross in the future. So if we do have a great cup this year, are you going. To the grey cup every year, man. Absolutely. Yeah. I know you guys have confirmed and committed to that, to it. You know, I'll just add that. It is a great weed, great people, you know, it doesn't matter. It's like it's the opposite of the Superbowl, right? It's it's, it's, I'm not going to say the game means nothing, obviously for those fans whose teams are in it, but it really is about the week leading up to it. And then the games, the game, whereas obviously in the super bowl, it's kind of the opposite. So definitely worth going guys, for sure. I have my I'm a wedding videographer. So that's my, honestly, I might just take residency up there for the whole month of December and we'll just. Deal. I'm sure there's lots of people looking to get their weddings done Welcome back. Thanks. Thanks. Jeff Hamilton. Loved it loved the fire. You know, Canadians. They're nice. They're polite. But when, when you, can you get them about stuff they're passionate about? They come out and they they're very passionate people and, and we loved having Jeff on we've had loves having basically all of our Canadian guests outside of Rosh, all of them. Outside of Raj we've had, we've loved having them on. So yeah. It's it's great to chat with people like that, who, you know, Have the passion and understand the benefits. Everything can hold those two separate thoughts in their head and still work and operate. With their, with their speech. I will say we got an email this week. They're like, Are we talking about a Raj? Rent-free on this. Oh. I'm still asked about it all the time. What do you want me to do? What do you want me to do? Like I get it. I don't care. It doesn't affect me. I don't lose sleep over it, but then people ask about it. Our, you know, We're gonna talk about it. I mean, I don't care. I'm not whatever, but anyway, This love, this love, everything that came from this. So star CFL quarterback Bo. Levi Mitchell. I'm not related to XFL insider Mike Mitchell. Although Mike is considering changing his middle name to Bo. He did this whole lanky article this week on the Bob McCown podcast. And it was, you know, a lot of different stuff, CFL, whatever, but his big thing was about preserving the CFL game. And I pulled some of these quotes. I mean, The interview was extensive. Paul, you see some of these guys, you know, I don't want the history of the Canadian game to go away. I would never want that to happen. But if we want the Canadian game to grow, I think a merger would be an absolutely phenomenal thing. Yes, because more eyeballs on the product means more money. All around. And you put team, you, you, you know, You have CFL teams that are going into USA markets like St. Louis and Seattle. And potentially San Diego who knows, who knows whether they're going to end up putting the XL teams. When this thing goes back on, you have these teams going into these markets. It's growing the game. You're getting eyeballs on the rules of the Canadian game and, you know, Americans maybe go, wow, I like the three down thing or, wow. I like the, the multiple man in motion thing or, wow. That Rouge is kind of interesting. I'm not sure I like that, but it's, it's a talking point. Talking point. And it's an interesting talking point, nonetheless. And I think, I think Bo Levi gets it. I tweeted it. This is another quote. And I tweeted, I said, get this man out of my head. He goes, If you tie the rock to anything and he's got some big friends, maybe he gets straight to buy in on the CFL side, you get the scam a little bit younger, no offense spelled with a C to the older viewers. Mitchell said. We are trying to say there are games a hundred years old that we have no. This is like I wrote this interview. We are trying to say this game is a hundred year old and we have no reason to change. I love this game with all my heart, but things have to change if we want the game to grow. It's not going to it is. Not going to die the way that it is. If not, it's going to, it's going to not, sorry. If not, it's going to, yeah, that's very much changed. The context of that quote. He understands what we've been saying from the get-go like you have to grow this game. You're not going to sit there and just think, well, you know, this global drafting will work. Well, how's it gonna work when there's no season? How's it going to work when you're not playing any games? You have to grow within north America and make it, you know, Viable here before you make a thing about making a viable, other, other places. I loved this. The tagline that the lower part of this article gets three down to the whole big right above it. They never cease to get their jobs in this. It is. There's copied from the article. Three down. The original XFL lasted one full season in 2001 and lasted just part of one season before COVID-19 pandemic, put their toys season on hold, which led to Vincent man filing, selling it, whatever. Meanwhile, great cop. It should be the great cup JC or whoever wrote this article. Meanwhile, grey cup has been awarded for over a hundred years in Canada. I go never like never ceases to get their jobs in. I heaven forbid we have a one CFL player say, Hey, you know, I think this might be a good idea. Keep in mind, the CFL has awarded their trophy for a hundred years. I'm like, you guys are crazy. Like get out of your, I mean, I could cuss on here. I'm really like, kind of done with all this, but I'm like, You guys are crazy. They never ceased to get their jobs in. Nope. They're they're always like, they're just. They have there. That's like, it's like this does. Does a, Raasch pay you guys a salary to get those jabs in. Is that what's happening? Is that what's hot in the streets? Tell me I'd like to know. I want it to be like, I, it there's no good way. Like, where did the rock hurt you as a child? Like, show me. I'm like, but I don't want it. I don't want to get into like, you know, whatever, but it is crazy. One other thing I thought this was interesting for Han was on with Naylor. They were talking about consolidating a lot of the CFL stuff. And for Harlan was talking about, well, you know, potentially they could be hiring some seasonal workers, right. As opposed to like having people back on full staff. And I tweeted that go. Remember when Jason Gregor was on last week and he goes, you know, Build the game all year market, the game all year, invest fans all year. I go, yeah, hiring seasonal workers. That's a great way to, that's a great way to do that. You know, Well, you know, we, we didn't. We didn't renew the contract. For a Twitter person. They're they're off. On leave for the next six months. We're not going to tweet anything. Our YouTube video editors they're, they're laid out, you know, There's we only have eight months out of the 12 months. So. You're not getting any highlights. You're not getting the behind the scenes things. You're not getting postings. You're not getting interviews with any players you might want to be invested in. Oh, the draft is coming up. Well, our, our YouTube guy, you know, not there. All right. I ha I talked to McGee. He called me, he goes, well in your business, like, what do you do? I go. I'm not a sports league and I can market my business. Fine. I don't need like, See, they're not marketing. Like I can run my stuff all the time and if I need to, I can hire somebody, but I'm not basing my small business in, in Seattle as a videographer off of the Canadian football league and, and trying to equate those two things. Is I'm like, I didn't even have time to get into it. Last night. I spent four hours putting together this show. This is the point where if you would like to subscribe, I would really appreciate it. Three down my name, mailbag, John Hodge answers a question about the, he goes, Hey, the right person wrote. And he goes, do you think the CFL XFL is about a merger or creating a development league? And his quote is the CFL. XFL are talking about a full blown merger. For better words, you can tell you that to the bank. All why this, John? Hi, JPX. At the XFL, if we are moving towards a full blown merger and he is talking about it on his podcast. Why does he hate the XFL? Why'd you hate it? Like. If you're talking about this happening and you're crapping on it. Every single day. I don't want to understand that mentality. I'll never understand that. It's a lifeline. It's a way to grow the game. Like. I just, I didn't, I didn't get that. I didn't get I'm like, so you're admitting on your podcast. Yeah. Like we're totally moving to Lauren's the full blown merger. Yeah. I'm going to crap on the rock and Danny and all that. As long as we can. No. You know, like, you know, we'll take your money and we'll take all your marketing advice, but your product sucks. Yeah. Yeah, it's very odd. W we're still talking about the, the 20 million we're we're blasting through stuff. We're getting through all this. There, we're still talking about legalization of single game sports betting. For a hot has a story. This week could be worth $20 million annually for the CFL teams. It'd be like 2 million per team, roughly. And then I have a takeaway the bottom of this. Do you have any thoughts about that number? The CFL we've talked about single game, get betting in the past. I, I still, I am still kind of trying to figure out and parse information here. As to how this ends up in the hands of. The CFL. I mean. I'm under the opinion here in America. That there's only two peop parties that are involved in betting. There's the casino. There's the book. And then there's you. Maybe I'm maybe I, maybe I'm I I'm unaware of how that, how betting in America works. Someone if, if you know, correct me, I, I got into it with a friend of the show brain about this. Cause I, my, my thing was, you know, I say that a large portion. I go, if a large portion of Canadians aren't attending the games and watching the games on TV, I don't see how being allowed to bet on them is going to make them bet. And, and Brayden corrected me and well, this many people watch and all that stuff. I go. So it's, it's 10% of the country watches. So that is true. A large portion of Canada. Doesn't watch. If you're telling me 10% watch the games every week, that is 90% of the people. So like, whatever. But those people are going to bet I don't get how you're going to get other people that like, yeah, I don't watch this or attend this or follow this or care about this. But I'm going to go bet on it right now, just because it's football. I just don't think that happens. I think anybody who bets regularly. Is aware of their product. They're betting on. Right. Yeah. Are you going to learn about the CFL? Just to bet. No. That'd be, that'd be ridiculous. Well, I mean, that's what they're, I think that's what they're hoping, but I'm like, I just don't see that happening. They hope for a lot of things. And it's like, you can hope in one hand and crap. Any other and see which one fills up first. It's out of control, like hope for these things. Like it's great, but if you're not already invested in a league, you're not gonna just go along and learn about it now. Cause I like to gamble. No, you're going to gamble on other things you can like. You're already invested in. Yeah. The one interesting takeaway from this was far Han thought that there could be talks about moving the start of the CFL season up three to four weeks to give them a longer, they basically, where you can bet on CFL more before the NFL comes back. But that was interesting. I mean, that to me is, is, you know, to start the CFL in may to accommodate more gambling. I think that's fine, but then you're moving the gray cup block again with the gray cup. Right. Except it's December this year, but don't worry. I thought that was Amy. I just thought it was interesting. Hides tweet it. You. Should the CFL strive to improve the business model. Of course the business model needs tweaking, but it's not broken and never has been. I think when the league loses roughly 10 to $20 million a year on a good year, I would say the business model is broken. It's broken. I would say that. We are really getting close to the Edmonton team name. I think it's going to be the ALK and that's what we're hoping Connor on the L friended, the shell. But the president, they thought they were going to announce it when they announced all their losses last week. Chris present. I'm impressed that he goes, the new name is 80 to 85% ready, and that the latest possible reveal date will be August 1st. Paul it's three letters, elk lab. What is 80% there they've run. The. And the line of the K the last 15 to 20% or the two letters come due. Lion's coming off the K that's what it is. Or maybe, you know, they've drawn the whole body of the elk. And all you gotta do is add the antlers. I don't know what that means. It just was funny. I mean, they're moving forward. I mean, they got announced by potentially August 5th. That's when the season started. I mean, I get, you're trying to rebrand the team. You're trying to do all that stuff. But he was talking on, on the six 30 Chad and Edmonton about that. I did just say that was odd. I just a quick note, there was a lot of interest from the mark widdle Moray Keith group. They wanted to invest in the BC lions. They, they are dropping out. Now do the uncertainty with kind of everything I would imagine with not only this CFL season, but I would imagine also the CFL as a business model in general. I don't blame him. You're you know, You don't know if there's going to be a CFL, if they don't take the field. I know Jeff believes there still be a CFL if they don't play a game in 2021. I tend to disagree with that. But. I mean. We'll see. Just a couple of notes here. I really scary. This Jalen Saunders, I either wear red blacks. He was in like this horrendous car accident. This week. I saw a post online. He was originally in the rough and the rough and the exhale with the roughnecks, but he was placed on injured reserve. So we kind of had some history with the XFL, but he was in just thoughts and prayers and wishes and everything to him. I saw the photos. Horrendous. Car accident. He he's great. He's on pace. He was playing for the Argonauts and got hurt. We're going to get rid of this rough Rogers thing. One other note. We'll we'll break your pretty quick mantra, Al Al let's. They're doing a new partnership with ready to drink. Alcoholic beverages, twisted tea, and truly heartfelt there. Congrats. Is that going to say. This second to save the CFL. No. I thought that was called Matt mango was excited about that friend of the show, Matt mango. Who's going to be an LOL. One other note, we were following up with Pierre Lestasha. We talked about him getting signed by the Seahawks. Pete Carroll. He calls him really excited about this kid. They're getting him as a guard and emergency center. Really excited to potentially have the CFL players coming in and saving the Seahawks. That would be great. Especially since it's the Seahawks. All right. Let's take a break we'll blast through and then we'll be good. No. Okay. For this we're cruising. This is good. I'm going to play this sound bite here. I know I need this one. Here we go. I will. Yeah, we'll be done here. We'll be done by one. Can you tell us a little bit about how this. A little bit. Welcome back. To the mark cast. Some XFL notes here. I mean, there we go. Yeah, Jordan TAMU. TAMU. Former St. Louis Bell Hawks. He was with the, you know, he just got, let go from the. He was with Kansas. She is, he's been with the lions. He was with the Washington mini worky camp this weekend, which I thought was great. A lot of people are like, what does that mean is, is, you know, there's Jordan going to be joining Taylor over there. What are you doing? I, they, they brought him in, I think I, Taylor, still trainee. You know, like they're not going to bring in Fitzpatrick to do all this stuff I've had. This was interesting. This was shared from Scott, Anthony XFL, extra points on Twitter, but this is they're talking to Jordan. This is like the post press conference. I'll play just like a minute of this. It's kind of interesting. I'm talking to him about his experience. Can you tell us a little bit about how this opportunity. Came about. And what it meant for you to get it. Yeah. I was in Nashville training and then just like a week ago. The chiefs at the, let me go do to numbers. Draft picks free agents, and a couple of days later. I got a phone call from my agent and then the people here. The coaches and they want me to come down for the weekend or however long it takes, but they wanted me to come down and work out with them. So I told him, yes, this is another opportunity for me to. Get better and. My name out there more so. Great. The beer. So anyhow, and then they asked him about high Nikki and stuff too. I just thought that was cool. I mean, he's still bounced around. You got to feel bad for these guys, you know, trying to get around. Trying to get around the league. But I mean, I don't think that that's going to lead. Like Tom, who was not signing with Washington football team. I mean, they just, he's someone that has an arm that they run into decent training, but I didn't think that was cool. And, and they talked to them and he, he did talk about how, hi, Nikki. He really looked up to high Nike, even though Jordan was a starting quarterback for the bell Hawks that he really learned from him. And that he's super. I'm excited, obviously about all the success that Taylor's having with Washington football. And I think, I think basically, you know, Heineken is proving that these EXFO quarterbacks could possibly have a future. In the NFL. Possible. Possibly. I just some quick player notes, former number one, overall pick in the 2020 XFL draft or shard Davis was cut by the Titans. The Austin, Austin parole. We followed him for a while. He's a former sail dragons. He was let go by the 49ers, brought back by the chargers. And then the other thing that was cool was the CLC Hawks are signing Houston roughnecks at Walter Palmer. He joined savy and Smith, who is recently way by the Dallas and signs of the team. So there's, there's seven XFL guys. The number. But there's seven now that are, are on the NFL rosters this year. So that's kind of cool. And then New York add the jets are signing Dallas renegades running back, Austin, Walter. And he was like, go from the 49ers. And he is joining Bella Hawks, Kyler Davis on the jets roster. Also shouts Ernesto has Rattlers. One 51 to 20 against the, the Northern Arizona Wranglers. He was seven for seven on extra points. That's incredible. It's definitely. Currently for seven, you know, I don't anything, anything Northern Arizona, like Northern Arizona. Northern Arizona. All right. Coming up after this, I was, I was busy working. So Reed took control of the entire thing. It's all about read. And Stan Bedwell. Right for the break. And you have that download. Yep. Okay. And then just spring league and then we're done. Cool. And then we got a manscaped basket and that will be after. Do you wanna do the after Jeff? Oh, yeah. Okay. Welcome back. Great interview. Great stuff. Stan. And I get it right. I mean, I've been talking with the screen lean guys. I get what they are. You know, really trying to do and people want to say, and. They don't pay and all that stuff. You know, if you look at Stan and the tremendous success he had at the time and the journey he took to have to go to Europe and play and all these teams versus, Hey, come to a ball. I mean, not that it's this, you know, it's. But. Getting these opportunities, right? Like Stan traveled the world to get opportunities, which is incredible. But like having places where players, you know, there aren't like that crazy league that went bankrupt and they got in the coaches got in the fight. Like a month ago. I can't remember the name of that one, but like the NGL or whatever. I the fact that you can go, you know, there's places like the hubcap and there's places like spring league where the players can get that tape, I think is really invaluable. Very cool. Update on last week's rating on Fs one, it was not under 20 K. It was actually 95. K. We record on there. And posts on Fridays. So when an article comes, it comes out Friday afternoon. We're going to be on the podcast. Like I got the f**k out. Th the reason was the demos were so bad that are they. Like they were so terrible in the demo. They didn't rank, but they actually had more viewers. You know, outside of that, whatever that added to that 95,000. W Mike said that it was 95,050 1000 for the, for the second game, then 114,000. That's actually a nice number. That game was on. Was it Saturday night? Not on like the main, yeah, it was on like Fs two or whatever. So that was good. I got asked a lot to make a correction about that. They got 95 pounds. Dungy left the TSL last week, he signed with the Bengals. Congrats. Congrats. I guess with Joe burrow, right. I mean burrows back. I don't know who the other bangles, like back up quarterback. I don't think it matters right now. You know, Hopefully Joe burrows. A hundred percent they say is so we're, we're hoping for the best for him. The other thing, Deborah Broncos, we talked about this, Leslie Brandon Marshall was going to go to the TSL. That was a big story about that. And that he ended up going to the hub camp and said, and did not go to the spring league. So I think. Maybe he was trying to play one side against the other and was like, Hey, I'm going to go. But that was, it seemed like he was a big name that was going to go. And they were excited about that. Another signing the miking signed Evan. I cannot pronounce his last name. Cause. The K is silent. This is their rec fee. She's our ski as ours. That's good. That's good. Hi, he's been in the spring league before he got signed for the Vikings. I like to keep track of, you know, Matthew Sexton got signed by the Steelers, all that stuff. This is all so exciting. Alphas, QB, JT, Barrett. He is going to attend the Dallas Cowboys, many camps. So he played last year. I think he played for the office last year or last, you know, in November. He was great. So I was very excited to watch JT Barrett play. I mean, He'd be on good behind Dak Prescott. Right? Most highest paid. And they paid him. So he's not going anywhere anytime soon, but Hey, you know, I mean, give a gift for him. Just a couple notes. The Saturday games. Slow start these games slow start. The players are getting the chemistry. But Kevin Anderson came out and really kind of was not good. I was tweeting or messaging with Brian Scott, and I said, man, I really wish you were back out here playing right now. But Brandon silvers came in for the second half Anderson. Hadn't done anything. The first half, they were like 30 yards of offense. Silvers came in. Through a. Like he came in. For, I think there was four plays down. He had it's a touchdown. I go, where was this man? So Brandon silver is mom, Georgia who follows me on a trip, goes well. He was there the whole time they dragons didn't have an offensive coordinator. XFL. I go, okay. Greg violence. I love it. Brand itself was also then immediately threw an interception and how the big sack. So it was, yeah. So it was, it was a mixed, it was a mixed message. But he was like really cool to see Brandon silver. It's like the gunslinger. That was, that was the prince that was promised. When they sign Brandon, and then we went to DC and it didn't work out, but I was like, this is what we've wanted is random silvers. So, I don't know what they're going to do this week with the, with the conquerors, but it was really, really exciting. One other note we're going to get out here cause Kevin Anderson's big. Like he's a quarterback's coach. Like he does his own training. So like, And the answer is talk all the time. I'll look at Andrew saying like, he's really talking to his team and say, okay guys, we're going to do like, cause they're all Mike, you know, like, Hey guys, we're going to do. And it's silver. It's like, he's like, Go on seven set. Like, they're very different. They're like Brandon silvers is like, no BS, like I'm coming out and throwing the rock, but I thought that was good. Very cool. There was a rain delay that I saw that. Yeah, that was crazy on Monday, huge rain delay. I still have yet to watch the justice play live on, on anywhere in the world because they played, they were going to play Monday night. They played Tuesday. I had any event. But yeah, it was good. The other quick note is the spring league on this Saturday. They posted 448,000 viewers for that the alphas went over the conquers. It was up 18% versus last week's rating, 380,000. And I tweeted. I thought that ratings always went down the second week. Yeah. That's what everyone says. They're like, well, whatever they get, like XFL or you. Razor. I was going to go down well. 18%. If there's an appetite for football. Well, that also means that when people know that your season is happening, that they will watch it. So thank you. Brian Woods and Sammy and mark for getting Stan on the podcast. And we're going to hopefully keep doing some sprint coverage next week. Cause I do think that that goes hand in hand. Getting your name out there. Yeah. What, what, what an idea. Get your name out there. Get some publicity. Let people know about your product. And there you go. So would that being said, one of the you all for listening? Sorry, we. We kind of blazed through everything. I got a lot of stuff on the plate today. I apologize for that. Hopefully next week, I'm pretty sure next week is going to be a lot calmer in terms of like doing things. So we'll see you next week. Thanks for listening. Of course. Subscribe, please. We asked, we went through about 12 pages of Google doc, Sarah, about 53 minutes. So that was. That's your news blitz, but that was four hours of my life putting that together. Thank you guys all so much, please. Like, and subscribe. We have 200 more people Jousters giveaway. Leave us a review. The mark has stock. Yeah, the mark has that com slash review. There you go. Thanks. Thanks for watching or listening. We'll see you next week.

Episode 40 - Is This Football League?

It's Friday afternoon. It's a good day. It's always a good day on the XFL Markcast. Well it's Friday morning, all. Emphasize they're alive Friday morning. It's Thursday morning. Right now. We're good. Yeah. At bright and early. I know, I wish we didn't. I didn't start posting the videos at 7:00 AM. Like I wish I had in my head year, like months ago, but like noon because it is, I get up every day at six 30 and get everything ready to go for the video while we definitely appreciate your hard work. Here on the XFL Markcast, of course Reid is the, I guess the heart of the operation, where I tend to think. You're maybe not the brains. I'm just kind of the. The resident jerk, but that being said, I want to thank you guys for tuning in for another episode. I'm wearing my Vegas golden Knights Jersey celebrating, sorry, my friend Alma. She's a sharks fan, but Vegas. Put some put some hurt on the San Jose team last time. And I'm, I'm, I'm happy for my west coast team. I'm sorry. I will still be a Vegas fan when Seattle comes into the league. You know, it's my west coast team. I of course my east coast team devils, but yeah, celebrating that. And I think we've got, we're gonna talk about the golden Knights in this show. Yeah, we got a big, big time. He interviewed coming up. Sorry. I'll pause. I got some breaking news. I'll plug it in here. And the minute we got a great interview with Jason Gregor coming up, we get the new, a little, a NHL stuff. Jason's great. It's been like a month getting him scheduled to come on. We really appreciate that. And then we also have a super fan. Josh McGee coming on, Jason went so long. I don't want this to be like a three hour episode. So we're going to post a, I'm going to post it and then link it in the description. Josh was out location like the first ever gray cop. So we get into all that. It's kind of interesting. If you want some bonus content, we're going to put that on there, but I just can't. I don't want to kill Paul with the audio link today and trying to produce everything. So we're going to put that in, but Jason, Gregor's great. And then I have max listener, max tweeting me right now, I guess, as we record, probably while we record today, they're going to announce the, the PAC 12 commissioner. There's probably not going to be all for luck. Damn. So just, I don't at me. W we're doing our best. Paul's got to work tonight. We're recording right now. But if, if what comes out, if the pack commits or maybe all of our, like got it. And then we say no, but it sounds like he's saying that. From John Wilner, there's a 99% that nobody in college sports is ever heard of the next PAC 12 commissioner. So, and it will be, maybe we'll get an update here later in the show, but I just, anyway. Also. Yes. Thank you all for our subscribers. I wanted the plug at the top. Don't forget. We have our jazz masters. If you missed the episode last week, I don't know what you were doing with your life. We have our jesters merge. We're giving away. We're almost at 1300 subscribers, so we need 200 more. When we get to 1500, we're going to give away the jesters Emirates. Merge. We got two shirts here, so, you know, Like it subscribe and ensure the video. I was thinking about this. If you like the video, if you see it on Twitter or Facebook or something. Share the round. I mean, I share it all shares it, you know, hopefully our guests and everybody share it. But you know, if you're a fan of the show, Just give it a little retweet, get it, get it out. Expand your circle. It's not gonna hurt or cost you anything. And we appreciate that. Also at this point, I'm going to put a listener. Max finally got off his butt and sent in his photo of his hat giveaway from our big fallacy. I mean, how many weeks now have we been in a thousand subs? I'm going to put that photo right now. Max just sent me a very nice photo. We're. Okay. We see CC. Okay. There we go. To that point about the PAC 12 commissioner. It is MGM resorts, president George. Cliff cough. Cough. I hope that I'm saying that right. He took, I don't know. Is, but generated billions for bam did a big deal of Hulu. And this is the quote I'll, I'll censor it because we don't, we try to stay away from expletives here. Someone said he's proven. He knows how to get S done. He's not Larry Scott. He's going to listen, collaborate and build trust with ads. George first thing you need to do is get that PAC 12 network on direct TV. That's been, that's been a major thing where schools haven't had that revenue source of additional TD revenue from direct TV because the PAC 12 network hasn't been on there. So apparently this guy, MGM resorts. President George cliff cough. Is the new PAC 12 commissioner. Interesting pick someone who's not sports related, someone who's entertainment related and Hulu. That's good. I mean, it's cool. Anyway. So hopefully we'll, we'll see here, but anyway, just that time and all that about. Just real quick reactions to last week. I had so many people comment, Jen, that cried at the end of the episode with our gestures and were trivial that we did not get our spring league. There's Jersey. I had a spring league announced this week that they're going to try to open up a merch store and sell some game worn jerseys later this season, I guess. And I had people on Twitter, be like, dude. If you get the extra foam mark as. What is going on. So, but Jenna literally commented that she cried at the end of the episode. So Brian, if you're listening. You made a gender cry and max is confirming that George got. Up is. Yep, we got it. So max confirms that the report that we just gave this happened in real time, but anyway, don't make our listeners and viewers cry. Brian Woods, CEO of the spring league. What are you doing with your life? So anyway, that was. The players give us some players to talk to Ryan Woods. That was kind of my question at the top of the show here is like, what are we doing? Right. That was kind of like real talk. And then I wanted to do a little, we have a little preamble today before we get into everything. I spring league. They don't seem like they care about their viewers. CFL draft, like nobody cares. And it's hard for me because, and I know you feel the same way that. We are the front lines like arguing and fighting and people are defending and all these things. It doesn't seem like their leagues very much care about anything. I couldn't argue that point at all. I. I mean, you said everything I would want to say. Same brain right now. Yeah. Add to that. It's R I posted our wonderful chat with Dan Ralph from, you know, two weeks ago, I posted it this week on YouTube, but then I share that and I, I have to write like YouTube, you. You know, you write like, okay, what's the description, whatever. And for the title, I wrote something like, what would you give up? What, whether we willing to give up in the CFL game for next NFL merger. And I am. Stop stop messaging me max right now. I said, what would you give up for a CFL merger? Every comment, nothing. Not zero nada, nothing. Very. [Unknown] like I am. I get that. I understand that, but it's just, it's troubling to me when, when it seems like the, for both leagues CFL spring league, and I would say XFL two, it seems like the fans. Care very much more about what is going on. And we get into that with Jason too, but it seems like the fans very much care. What is going on more than the leagues do at this point. Stop touching your pearls. Stop putting your head in the sand. We have always said, and we'll say it again with Jason. What we'd like to see happen. And. You know, the people that are covering the XFL. Have no. Like, oh, no, it's gotta be this. We don't have that. We don't have that. For lack of a better term. Ego about. The idea of these two leagues merging and what we need to keep with as Americans. Love all your rules. Keep them all. Even the Rouge, keep them all. I don't care. I just want something that works, that we can watch in the spring. Without a, you know, Without a rush saying spring league football never works. Okay. That is the funniest thing we were talking. With Josh in the, in the bonus interview. That. I said, well, this is our first ever on-site location. And Paul pointed out that a rush with the duel, I assume that was like the sports net office there. The Rashi was at when we had our big deal. Paul thinks it was a library. I think it was a college library, it looked like. College library to be. That's the wild. Araj had their big dual and a college library. That is a lot. I know. And just one other comment on this before we get it. Someone posted today on one of our videos we shared. He's like, I just don't get where all this hate is coming from, like from the CEO and. Aye. Aye. Exactly right. Exactly. I don't like there's no. A whatever with that, maybe we get into the three down these stuff later talking about hate and things like that. But anyway, I want to get into the bulk of the show, but one quick note, God bless you. I listened to a lot of other alternative football podcast. This week. I listened to all of them. I had a lot of driving. If you're recording when like the spring league is going on or whatever else is going on. Nobody cares about it on the podcast. Like when you're like, when you're commenting on the game, a lot of podcasts were recorded this week when like the spring league games are on, nobody likes stop recording and talking about what you're watching while you're. And I know, of course I'm just texting max and we're talking about the breaking news, but nobody cares about that. So there was a lot of alternative football podcasts this week that were recorded during the spring league. And I do not care a week later. What is going on while you're watching the game while recording and commenting on the game. Do you understand what I'm saying? I hope they do. And isn't it also ironic that allowed mouth like a rush. Was in a library because just to be quiet. In the library. Well, I mean, now that I'm going to go back and if someone could. ZipRecruiter that right. It's a recruiter. There's a group. Go back. I, I think you're right. I thought he was, I was like, oh, this, I was like, wow. A sports center has a nice office now. Absolutely. Cause he did rod shell from his. Like his house yesterday that we, I incepted on. I said, I go ride, give, give a rush a year for us. And then they talked about XFL for eight minutes. So rod and producer Clark, if you need us to come on and produce your show, I'm happy to give you show ideas. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. But they did, they did like eight minutes on XFL. And all I did was try to say hi to a rush. So you're, you're really, you know, you want to eat. They they're accusing you of taking over their Canadian game. And now you want to take over rod show. This respect from Reed Johnson. Folks. The, the title episode today is going to be, is this a football league? And I got excited last night about this. We didn't ever talk about why I named the episode last week, presenting the CFL, but that's or presenting the CFL draft, but that's beside the point. There's been a lot of talk. This week is the XFL league is the screen legal league is the CFL league. What is, what is a football league to you? Paul Sanchez. A football league to me is a corporation or nonprofit organization that. Either awards, franchises, or owns franchises of like trademarks and slogans and move. And I wish I had my SpongeBob mocking meme that you got me. I wish I would've had that. I opened before. We're not going to shame me anymore for opening it before I go to the podcast. But there are, there are assets. Intellectual property assets too. That a corporation or nonprofit organization holds. And that is still league. I mean. They're saying it's not a league because it hasn't played, you know, it hasn't. There's no more snaps of football being taken. Well, dude, I mean, I don't mean to beat. Disrespectful here. But one league actually took at least one snap last year and I wasn't the CFL. Yeah, and this is goes, and this is no shade. I mean, I think it's a good discussion to have because CFL read it. You. Yeah, Brayden's been on the show. He had, he was commenting on the merger stuff and I, and I said, I go. You know, if the spring league. Is a league. I think the XFL. Is a leak. And I'm not, you can say that the spring league is not a league and that's fine. I that's meant like if we that's where, what I just, my question is, am I getting, if the CFL that hasn't played in two years, You know, some of the, you know, AGA Jackie Beck was on rod show after our show, when we was talking about how some of the franchises are valued at like a dollar. Right. And so it's like, we'll have. Yeah, this is. I mean, that was his word. I mean, not my words. But Asia goes, you know, some of the leagues, you know, some of them are valued much higher, but you know, we're, we're going to talk about Edmund here and obviously Edmond is worth a lot, but. Anyway, so it's tricky, but I, you know, I think that the XFL. You could conceivably, if the spring league can draft and get players in, in a couple of weeks and get rolling. I know the XFL is a lot bigger, but I think. CFL. No. I mean, the XFL would have a much bigger scope. In the spring league, but I think like you can also ramp up. So I'm just saying, like, I think we're all like leagues anyway. I just thought it was a good title for the episode. And I liked the meme of the guy with the butterfly. Like, what is this? Is this, this football. You send me an easier, like, what do you think the title of this episode is going to be? And you sent me the meme and I was like, Mmm. The butterfly was the government and the kids like asking is this a non-interest loan for a 108 year league? Because we're 108 year old league. Yeah, that'll be good. Anyway, so thank you all for the preface. I have, my Dorothy is high on the Zoe, too. They had one of the. Is the super barrier. So we're, I'm shaking everything there. Ooh. That was a good thought. Remember, remember. Love your dose drink. She, she got to know the first thing she goes. She goes, oh, this smells really good. Yeah. I'm just saying anyway, on with the show. Thank you for the preface news. What do you think about this Edmonton football team? Have their big general annual general meeting. They lost, they posted a $7.1 million loss in 2020. Spending money on what. Yeah. We talked with Jason about that. It's like, you know, I. I again, There's this idea of. Losing money, like losing less money to play versus not play, you know, what would the losses have been if they had played? I mean, it's. Jason talked, we talked about this going, like, why are you not paying the players? Like whether we, I mean, obviously you, you seem like some stadium upkeep and, and, and staff, but. That's a that's. A lofty loss. We might have to have Dave Campbell coming back on talking about this. I did. Pre-book Dave for when Edmonton announces the team name. Dave will come on our show that week. I have pre-booked him. I've said Dave, whenever that comes, I've heard rumors, rod things that might be like June 1st, second, Dave did not collaborate that or corroborate that, but. I have Dave pre-booked for that. So I thought that was a good get for us to pre-book Dave Campbell for that. But anyway, they had their annual general meeting. We talked about this with Jason, you know, they got kind of a government loan. They still lost money. They have a war chest. But again, you we've had Winnepeg announced kind of their $10 million loss. Edmonton, but the 7.1, I mean, these are not good. Things to be talking about. Do you have any other takeaways that we did not get into Jason later on this. I mean. I all I can say is there are 108 year-old league. They're just going to go ask for money based on the fact that they're 108 year-old league. Well, I it's, it's getting, you know, it's, it's dicey. I, another quote, Dave. Had Dave obviously covered, covered the league. The current board treasurer and incoming board chair, Ian Murray. With Edmonton. He says a 14 game season is still the goal. However, several other scenarios are being looked at, which includes possibly canceling the season that this did go kind of big, like rod tides about this. And other people talked about this because there haven't really been any, and obviously the Edmonton. For treasurer is not like Ambrozy or someone like in the thing, but the idea that we even like mentioned like canceling the season has not, that has never, like, I think that's the first time that that has publicly come out. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I do. And I mean, You know, I think the, the most realistic. Scenario here is in a 14, 14 games is I think it's a nine game season. I think that's, what's going to happen. That's what's. Ended up happening. They can't cancel the season. God bless them. If they, I mean, if this doesn't go like, Oh man. Radians are polite, but they're going to have a melt down of epic. Epic epic proportions, because honestly, like at what point. Is it, is it even a league? If you're, if you're canceling two years in a row. What point is it even the league at that point? And I'm. I'm not trying to be disrespectful to the CFL. I'm just, I'm wondering. That's gotta be the death. Now, if they do not have a season this year, they are done. It is over. It is a wrap. Yeah, they said, and this is Ian Murray. Again, he goes, the cancel season is a very last resort. If it comes to that and then football will be in a position to meet all of their obligations and be ready to play in 2022. I mean, for them like the money and for some of the teams, and money's an issue for some of the teams, it's just. The visibility. And we, it was astounding to me that the quote that Jason had in the interview coming up where even if the CFL plays this year, they have a horrendous public. PR image like problem, you know, cause we're all talking about, you know, if they don't play, Dan, Ralph said a couple of weeks ago, I. I mean, they're already in like a PR nightmare right now. And they were still like trying to play. So the Edmonton president, Chris Preston, he, he thinks that they're going to have a CFL schedule finalized by the end of may. I would hope so if they're kind of, you know, that mid June is kind of that drop dead date for if we're starting in an August, but. You know, pressing. The Edmonton president, the quote is we still will feel very confident in the August 5th start date, but then we have some other stories coming up to maybe go against that. But what do you anything about the ad and the schedule? I mean. It's lofty. It's very lofty. I just, I think that. When we talked to Jason about it, and I think you have to see how the vaccine rollout is happening. I know it's getting better. Their case count is going down. Ontario is in another two week lockdown. They're going into June now, apparently with their lockdowns. Many of my friends in Toronto are not happy with Mr. Ford. It's it's it's I think it all bases on how fast you guys get the vaccines up there, north of the border. And reach that herd immunity because. California's been a great example. I don't mean to like, You know, be that kind of guy that pumps California all the time, but we have the lowest numbers in the nation. I mean, I live in LA county. We're in the lowest tier. The next year after this is full opening, like everything's done everything's off the table, orange county, just south of me. They went into the yellow tier. There that's the least restrictive tier. And I mean, You know, It's a combination of eventually some of the population getting it. Unfortunately, and then, you know, the vaccines on top of that. That's the way, that's the way out of this. So hopefully Canada gets that under control. Then then a 14 game season is very likely. It is interesting. Obviously the NFL released their schedule Wednesday, as of this recording. Good morning football had a very interesting conversation today with two of the people that work on developing that schedule. And what was interesting to me is he, one of the gentlemen said, you know, January 3rd or whenever the regular season ends, like we're, we're working on this every day. Like we're talking to. Yeah, the TV partners. What games do they want to see? What are the marquee games like? Obviously this year, it's Brady going back to new England, right? Like that's a marquee game. Okay. LA versus Detroit with golf and Stafford. Okay. That's not this kind of a marquee game, right? You. W where's Aaron Rogers going right there. All these things you're working on. And I'm seeing how my, yeah. Like the CFL. Like none of it's like, we're just trying to get by. I don't know, like it just even, I mean, like they're going through it, like, and they've had 875 billion, like machinations of the schedule and trying to like figure it out. And the CFL is like, Well, we're, we're working on it right now. And, and even Jason says like, whatever, what are we doing right now? I we're waiting, but what are we like, what are we working on? Nothing's coming out. You know, It would be nice to get a little bit more transparency, I think is, is one of the key words for today with that. I think transparency has been a keyword for quite some time when it comes to everything. CFL related. This next article we had, I want to try to get this J Scott stint. Stinson he's with the he's with the national post. He's a post-it I think he's with kind of a Dan Barnes kind of in that whole. You think his quote, that headline was is Canada headed towards another summer of canceled tournaments and shuttered stadiums and Ontario it's clear. Optics are winning the day is stay at home order, but now. Especially when several provinces have further limits on gatherings. The idea of doing any organized activities outside is, is not really doable. Nope. It all comes again down to vaccines and the herd immunity idea in. Hopefully, you know, that's expedited. I think. If, you know, if there's any vaccine shortages whatsoever, if there's, if there's, you know, a warning sign that. You know, they're running out of vaccines. And the stock is limited. I have a friend who got her first shot and she's waiting two months to get her second shot. Wow. That's a problem because, you know, They say Pfizer within four weeks, Madonna within six. That's a problem. Wait. No, no. Pfizer within three weeks. I'm sorry. I'm. We're going to get those numbers. I got my second child on Monday, so I'm like, boom. What did you get Madonna? Pfizer. Yeah, it was good. We talked about this Raj tweeted at Lisa McCloud. We've talked about her coming out again. It's going to be ambitious to have 5,000 fans gathered at CFL CDMs come August. She says, I don't see that at the moment. I mean. She's she's going and saying the virus is going to make its own plans and the way the vaccines are going, she doesn't see 5,000 bans being in, in the state and in the stance. She didn't see it. I mean, Do. And I forgot to bring this up with Jason. Did I think. That by the middle of may. Dodger stadium would allow. Close groups of people who have proof of full vaccination. To be in the stadium by may this year. I didn't think that was going to happen. But that's where we're at. So it again, all depends on that timeline. Getting science out there, getting the vaccines done. I know people in Canada probably won't, you know, argue the, the, you know, the news about the vaccine, the worries, the concerns. They seem to be pretty level headed when it comes to science. And I think that's what. Boils down to vaccine distribution. Yeah. And we're going to get into this a little bit more later. We'll get through the guests. And then we have, I've a little rant coming up, but BC and Ontario governments officially say they have not approved any returning to play plans. And that the, the issue with that. His TSN came out last week and said like all the provinces have approved plants. And that's not like that's not accurate. And so there was a lot of public pushback from a lot of the shows I was listening to and articles, I was reading that people felt like that was disingenuous. You have TSN, you know, and obviously we've had TSN people on and the Rashi, whatever, but that, that was almost. Not like, well, it kind of was fake news. Like it kind of was like they were putting out this message that wasn't necessarily true. Where, where we have at least two health officials saying that they have definitely not approved returned the plate plans for, you know, for BC and Ontario, which are obviously large provinces with. CFL teams. The other tweet I have here is Isaac. What is that last name? Well, okay. He's a Canadian infectious disease, physician and scientist. He had tweeted out. He's one of the guys, you know, doing all this stuff. They vaccinated 400,000 people. This was earlier this week, about 1% of the population over 40% of adults have at least a single dose. And they're ranked the third in G 20 countries for percent of the population who. I received at least one dose. And then the Ontario says they at 65% of adults will have their first vaccine dust by the end of may. But it's the second one. That's the one that, you know, And you could, you could argue in the limited. Us. It seems like a lot of people in Canada are eligible for the vaccine and they didn't think of like, well, we should probably. Tear it, you know, where the older population gets it and we have to make sure they get their second dose within a certain amount of time. It seems like everybody got theirs. And of course, my friend told me she had wait, she's going to wait two months for her second dose. That's is the vaccine less effective in that case? I don't know. You know, I don't know. My last note here, before we go to break to go to Jason. The Calgary stampede. I, you know, I was like, oh, I guess. Because, you know, we hear the Calgary of St. Peter's. I was like, oh, there is a cow, Gallagher St. Pete. They were talking this week about how the, they call it. The greatest outdoor show on earth is going to have with modifications. And it's a lot of things. You know, the obviously United States people would be used to a lot of social distancing and a lot of spread out stuff like that. But you know, everyone's trying to get through. You know, my question is always, you know, the stadiums and the outside and NFL. I don't know if it's so much like in the stadium outside, but there's still a lot of congregating through like concessions and inside and bathrooms and things. That's like, yeah, it's an outdoor stadium, but. You know what I mean? Like that was the same with WrestleMania this year, where they had everyone in Tampa and then when it rained right before. Like they pulled everybody inside and you're like, well, but now we're all in like this closed space. In Florida. In Florida. That doesn't believe in masks. The same. Anyway. So that's that kind of stuff. We have a lot of other XFL CFL stuff coming up after the break, but I figured we tell us, Jason, you know, you can toss a wonderful interview and then we'll get some other stuff. Yeah. Coming up after the break. Jason Gregor. With Gregor. So very good name for that. He's coming up right after this. Jason Gregor host of the Jason Gregor show. That's the, that's a perfect name for you. Your show. The Jason Gregor show it's weekdays. Two to six on TSN 1260. You're also the co-host of the DFO hockey podcast. Writing for the nation network and also a P H w a members. Sorry, it's early in the morning. I want to make sure I get everything in there. Welcome to the show, Jason. That's a real original name that I have thought a lot about it. So we actually changed that name. Originally. My show was just a game with Jason Gregor, but then they said it was too long. So changed that a few years ago. Just to Jay. The Jason Gregor show. I like it. Yeah, it's very simple. Yeah. Hey, keep it simple, stupid as what they say. I can. Now I can fall into that category. I think. Oh, first and foremost, I kind of want to ask, how are you doing during all this pandemic stuff up there? You know what overall I'm I'm I feel I'm pretty lucky. I've been doing my show from home since March of 2020. Like, I think. Whenever that season was canceled on the 12th. And I think the, the next Friday I started doing my show from home, which it's not a real big difference. I'd be doing live remotes for years for my show, but you know, you're from home. So I changed, I got a stand up desk here, a while back, just so you know, I don't have to sit down for the entire show and prepping and stuff, but. You know what I'm, I feel pretty good. I'm lucky we have a family farm, so I was able to get outside lots and I'd go to the farm and it's, you know, there's no one else around there other than my mom and you know, the animals. So I'm pretty sure I'm not getting cold from the cows. So it's a, that part's been good. And I have a young son who's got a real. You know, kids, I learned a lot from kids. They don't like when school got canceled, he was just like, oh, well I guess I'm doing school at home. And he didn't. They don't focus on the negative for too long. So that's been really good. So I've just done a lot more outdoor activities and. I'm tired of it. Let's be on. I'm not going to lie. Like I. It'd be nice to. You know, to go to it to a sporting event, to go to a concert, hell, it'd be nice to go for dinner at your friend's house, not on the, on the back deck. So I do look forward to all that, but now I consider myself pretty lucky overall that I don't. You know, I've gotten through everything fine and mail business is still going good. So all in all, it's now for a pandemic. I feel lucky compared to some people, I don't know, people that would have to live in like a condo in downtown billings where they don't have a lot of green space as a farm kid. I would, I would have a tough time with that. Do you think. Having lived through all the CFL set last year and you know, the, the loan that didn't come through and the bubble and all that stuff. Do you think, did you think, or why do you think that we're still talking about that now that it's still, like, we don't know if the season's going to happen now a year later. Well, I wasn't surprised when the CFL didn't play last year. Like they, they don't have a billion dollar, a million multi-million dollar TV contract. So how can you play without fans? Right? Like. The NHL played this year without fans and they'd lost like 3.6 billion, right? Like they've, they've got billionaire owners, the CFL doesn't have that. And that doesn't mean like tons of businesses aren't running. I don't, I don't. The CFL to me is, is no different than a lot of other businesses who had to shut down. And they're more in the public eye, but when you look at it realistically, and then, you know, you take away your sports, excitement and wanting the game. I understand why they haven't played my only concern. I don't know if the CFL has done a great job of outlining and being very honest and upfront and just say, you know what? We can't play without fans. That's, that's our financial model. And I think most people would understand that most businesses can't thrive without customers. So just because the NFL does doesn't mean that that other leagues are going to do it right. So, you know, each leagues on their own, it doesn't make the CFL less in my mind. I've always. Anybody who judges anyone by that, by the amount of money they make, I think is failing and losing out in, in life. That's a good point, but speaking of losing money, this came out recently that Edmonton had posted a $7 million loss. And we were talking a little bit before the show. What are your thoughts on that? Why. Haven't had an, I haven't had a few businesses and talking to accountants. I spoke to my accountant afterwards, cause I said, well, so if you lost 7.1 bill, is that projected revenue? Or is that actual 7.1 million? Because if it is, and they didn't pay their players, I'm curious, you know, unless they had tons of signing bonuses that were due, but I was told that those didn't get paid. So other than I know the coaches have guaranteed contracts, right. And a Milanovich got a half, a million dollars, never coached a game. So that's unfortunate, but. You know, How much more is staff making, if it's 7.1 million, because I know that, you know, they laid off a lot of their staff members during this. So I'd like to know where that number came from. And, you know, Why because it does seem a. A rather high number when you're like your biggest expense was players. You're not paying your players. You didn't play any games. So, and less lots of their guys had bonuses, structured and good for the players if they did. But I talked to the PA and lots of guys said they didn't get paid anything. So I I'd have to dig deep on exactly where that figure came from, because it did catch me off guard a little bit, but you know, every year I've seen. Now I been to that AGM many years ago, and I remember they, they post a loss and I'm like, watch you guys had 30,000 fans every game. And they posted a loss of, of like, you know, a hundred, 150,000 or something like that. And I'd be like, well, how's that possible? So. I'm going to say people are lying, but there's different ways, I guess, to, to make the numbers look how you want. So that one's a little surprising to me. I would expect them to lose some money, but I just 7.1 mil, I just seemed high to me. Is there some kind of audit process that lead. We can go through to find out. Where they lost that money or is it just, well, if the league wanted to, I'm sure. It's it's, you know, like you'd have to have somebody, I don't know, account, right. So I asked my accountant the question just because he's a big sports fan. No, we had a conversation about it and he's like, well, you don't really know until you see all the numbers, but you know, he'd have to look at. You know, maybe they have a bunch of fees that we're unaware of, which is very possible they do, but I wondered how much of that was considered in, you know, projected losses. And if it, and if that's the case. Sure. But was it actually $7.1 million out of their savings account then, you know, that's a big concern because if that's the case, They're not going to be able to. You know, How are these other teams surviving? Right? Like Evanston isn't owned by a billionaire owner, right. They're publicly owned team. So where's that, where's that money gonna come from? And I know that it had a really good war chest in Edmonton for a lot of time. They'd been a successful franchise for a long, long time. But, you know, I'm, I I'd have to dig in. No one really knows and no one ever really takes the time to dig deep on it, but you'd probably have to have somebody with, with much more financial acumen than myself. To go over it with a fine tooth comb to find out exactly. You know, where that blossoms were coming from. Like, don't just say a loss then come out and say why? Like, where was the loss? That's what I'd like to know. Well, I think it's, it goes to speak to the greater issue of just transparency. I think in general, and the focus on our show today is going to be that where, you know, we have fans. You know, with the CFL draft, you know, arguing about everything we're covering this spring league fans are wanting to be involved. And then it does seem like these leagues, maybe don't want to have that transparency, which I get. Right. But, but it's. It seems to be right now, we're dealing with these fan bases that are more excited about the leagues and the leagues are, it is kind of the vibe that I'm getting from, you know, hopping on with the CFL and all of that. I had the Edmonton. From the three down nation article, they just said that it was in that operating loss in 7.1. And they did have an assistance for some of that of a 2.5 million. Which is interesting. Cause we had talked about that last week, how some of the teams had gotten, like we have PPP loans in the. For that. So it seems like probably that was made to give you as it net operating loss of 7.1. So it is interesting there. You know that, and they do have a, you know, sizable. You know, Backlog. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Edmonton's done well financially for many years, right? Like they've. You know, for years, decades, they were the, they were the star franchise of the league. You know, their fans would tell you that, that maybe hasn't been the case over the last 15 years, you know, from, from on-field success. And, and off-field, decision-making, you know, that's a total different conversation, but you're worried about transparency, I think is valid. I, I think CFL fans are diehard fans. Like they really, the ones who are like, they care about their team and it felt like they just weren't being told what was going on. Like, I think everybody. People respect honesty. You might not like the initial answer. If the commissioner comes out and says, we're not having a season, and these are the reasons, if this doesn't happen, we can have a season. Now that initial you're going to be like annoyed, but then you'll okay. Well, at least I respect them because now I know where I stand and I can follow the. You know, doing nothing and saying nothing for so long and, and seemingly not, not even having a plan like we're hearing. You know, they come out in Ontario that they haven't really spoke to them about return to play. And you're like, what? Like what, what else have you been doing? What else have you had to do here for the last few months? That should be at the top of your list because the CFL let's make Noma. They can't play without fans. Right. The TSN TV deal. Isn't big enough. To play without fans, because if they're losing this much money without players, how much money are they going to lose with players? Right. Because the TV contract isn't covering that much. Right? Like the TSN TV deal has helped the league stay afloat. There's no question, but it's not like the NHL or the NBA or major league baseball or none of those other leagues. It's just. It's not as big, it's not remotely as big because you only have 35 million people. Right. Whereas, you know, when you have the American TV deals, you're talking 400. Plus million people to look at not to mention Canadians, right? So it's, it's completely different. And, and I think Randy, Ambrozy the, the miss the mistake, I believe that the CFL has made in all of this is they haven't connected to their loyal fan base. In some cases, I feel they've turned them off and that's a real big challenge because if you turn enough of them off, because they don't have a ton of new fans coming. Right. So if you're not at least connecting with your loyal base, what's going to happen when you come back and play. If you lose 10 to 15% of them, that's a massive blow to this leak. Yeah, I wouldn't a hundred percent agree with that. And that's why it's so hard right now. And we talked about it, you know, when they had the, when Ambrozy came out and said, okay, we're going to delay to August. We have some backup plans. We're not going to say what those are, except maybe ship teams to the west. Right. We're going to come up with a schedule later and we say that here, like, so what have you. What have you been doing then? Like, I mean, we're waiting on, you know, vaccines are waiting on rollouts, but like, You know, supposedly they're going to be coming out with the schedule in a couple of weeks. Right. And I want to get your thoughts on that too, but yeah, like you said, I think having that transparency and I know I've seen numerous, you know, TSN and other reporters, Glenn suitor. You know, all these people say, you know, Gary lawless, you know, we want transparency of what's going on. What do you think? Supposedly, we have a schedule coming out soon. How do we feel about that? Well, yeah, precedent set here, you know, later in may and. And you know that that's great. I understand the CFL, you know, they had plans for a 14. Seasons. Schedule. I honestly thought 12 would make more sense at that August time, because then you could just could have had the great cup. In, in the end of November, like you've had all the time right now, you're extending those extra weeks and you're getting into December and Hey, I live in Canada and sure it can be okay, but it could be gross, cold. Right. And now fans haven't been out to party in a long time. And if they could, they'll probably be like, I don't care. I'm bundling up because I haven't been able to do anything for almost two years now. So maybe they're baking banking on that. And I also understand. You know, what if, if you have a 14 game season that, you know, you can, you can potentially, you know, get a little bit more revenue. Yeah, the players agree to it for sure. Because I understand the players. They don't want to have to cut a third of their salary off because there's no chance you're getting the players a hundred percent salary. If you're only playing 14 games, right. Like financially, that's just not going to work. Right. Like the league doesn't have the war chest to do that. So. You know, the schedule I'm intrigued when it comes out. I always thought August would make sense. You know, hopefully. There's there's as many people as possible who are vaccinated at that point. If I, if in any league I've said this about the NHL, I've said this, we saw it for the Rangers. We've seen it for some teams, but I would say, Hey, if you want to come to our games, you have to show proof of vaccination that that's going to, because the reality is we're not going to get out of this until most people are vaccinated. Right. This is not, this is not in my opinion, that scientific fact, right. They talk about it. So. I think all pro leagues, all music venues, have they set all that because we know it's going to be that way for flying. And this isn't a. Stomping and taking away our freedoms, anyone who's ever wanted to traffic traveled to Africa for the last decade. Guess what? You had to go take certain shots. If you want it to go there. It's that simple. So if you want to fly, you have to take the shot. If you want to go to sporting event, you have to take this shot. It does. It's not. You get the choice, it's your choice. So it's still freedom of choice, but if you want to go, then you have to abide by it. So I would like to see more leagues do that. I don't think the CFL will do it just because others haven't, but they should. And to me that would be leadership because leadership is not always doing, it's doing the tough decision, not the easy one. And, you know, starting in August is fine for, for the CFL. I don't have a problem with that. I understand it. I didn't think they were ever going to start in June ever. So, you know, if they come out with a plan for August, but you it's going to depend. I know now what's, Ontario's extending another two weeks for their lockdown into June, which is fine. But when we see that the vaccine numbers keep going up every day, which is awesome. And in a lot of places, hospitalizations are going down well, that's, those are the great numbers that you want. Right. If you tied into football, Hey, you want more passing yards for and less passing yards against. And that's exactly what's happening now. So hopefully that continues and we get CFL back because, you know, People just want to go out, but diehard fans want to go, but I think the CFL is going to have a big image problem when they come back, because I think they've really annoyed some of their loyal fan base. Like I have so many people that were diehard fans of my show for years. They're like, man. I've kind of lost interest in the CFL out of sight out of mind is a dangerous thing in any walk of life. Completely agree on all of your, all of your. Points there where you're talking about like vaccines and science is proving like. I live in California. We are now the lowest in the U S. Are in LA county. We're we're in the lowest tier least restrictive and it's all because of vaccines. So to that point, vaccines have definitely been helpful in getting that herd immunity idea down. Lisa McCloud, hopefully I'm pronouncing her name. Right? I think I am. The minister of heritage sport, tourism and culture industries. That's a long title. Is it, would it be. It would be ambitious to have 5,000 plus fans gathering. At CFL. Come August. I'm not sure, like she says that, but we've seen indoor venues have more than 5,000 fans. So I don't understand that rationale. I re really I I'm curious why, if you have places that have high vaccine numbers, And they're doing it indoors wearing masks. When everybody, every scientific doctors talked about the fact that it's, you know, it's going to spread more indoors and outdoors. Why, why would 5,000 be such an, an egregious unrealistic number? Heck Vegas is talking about potentially in the NHL playoffs having full capacity indoors at 18,000. So I, you know what that might. That's one person's opinion, right? She's not a doctor. I'm not really. I look at the places that are falling, what the science to say and the doctors. So I'm always gonna, I'm always gonna beat to them. No offense. I don't really listen to politicians on this because many of them have been grossly wrong. You know, whether you're whether you lean right or lean left, it doesn't matter. Many have been incorrect in their statements on it. So just, this is one where I listened to what the doctors say. And, you know, if the doctors are the one approving it. Then that's good enough for me. I was actually at a concert, I believe two weeks ago. You're in LA. At SoFi stadium and there were over there more than 5,000 people inside SoFi stadium. So yeah. You know, I think that's kind of, I think she's like we're talking three months from now, right? Like in August or September, and you're saying you can only have 5,000, like, like. You know, some state like Edmonton specifically, right? They've got a massive outdoor stadium that fits close to 55,000 people. You're telling me you could only put 5,000. They're like, give me a break, like go to a Walmart or a Costco right now. There's more of those people in. In a confined space, not 5,000 of course, but in a small area. So I don't. Sometimes, like, there's just a lack of consistency that I don't really understand on this. One thing I wanted to circle back on. We had had Dan Ralph on a couple of weeks ago and he had said, you know, obviously if the league doesn't play this year, right, what is that going to look like? What does that mean? You know, image problems, whatever you just said. You think if the league plays this year, they already have a huge image crisis. I want to hear what. Well, I just, I think that they're like to me, the CFL has struggled and this is not, the CFL has struggled connecting to their fans for many years. I felt like, you know, simple things they could have done. If you don't want to list the, the contract. Not value of your players. No problem. There was no place where you could go on a website to young fans to see who are their free agents at the end of the season. That's ludicrous in 2018, 2019. It's it's baffling. Stupid is what it is because fans want to be able to talk about it. So if they're sitting there in October or September, July, and they pull it up, oh, geez. Look at our linebacker. He's up. Well, geez. You know, I guess we're going to have to find a replacement for him and I don't care. The amount of money he makes is irrelevant. I don't need to see that. Right. If you don't want to have it because you know how some trolls are going to be all. Looking back. I only makes 50 grand. I mean, meanwhile, the troll is making 20, but he wants to feel better about himself, I guess. So. I look at like, they're just not connecting to your fans. Right? Like we, we have you look at like puck pedia, which is for hockey connection. It has the salary cap fans go to it every day to see whose contracts expiring. So they talk about that. Right. And to me. And what about your protected list? You list 10 players publicly once a year. What a joke? Why not have your protected list? Updated all the time. Cause you know, what's going to happen now, your fans, they might end up watching more NCAA games just because, Hey, we got that quarterback or we got this defensive lineman from Utah. Let's go watch some of his games. They'll maybe. The, the team will sign them. None of that is available publicly. Why? Like we all know the other teams already know this information. So what are you hiding? You're hiding nothing other than information from your fans. So this has been an issue with the CFL in my eyes long before the pandemic. Now the pandemic has just magnified it and now they've been out of sight out of mind. So I think the diehard fans will come back, but those who are like casual fans, There'll be like, wow. Maybe I'll go back. But if they went to four games a year, they might only go to one now because they're just there. They've, they've lost their emotional connection. And I think the CFL is going to have to do a, they're going to have to be, have a much better online presence to connect with their fans and they didn't do it beforehand. But what else? Hey guys, what have they had to do for the last year and a half? Like if they haven't thought about. On an online digital presence to engage with their fans. Then they're clueless. Yeah, and I. I think like you're pointing out something completely new that we've pointed out numerous times, week after week, we're pointing out. Oh, they could do this. They could do that. They could do this, they could do that. And now you're pointing out something new that they could do that we haven't thought about that. You know, down here in the states when majorly. Major league baseball has free agency. Everybody's wondering where the big free agents are going to go and it draws interest in the off season. I think having a year round interest in having these digital presences, whether it's the website you're talking about, whether it's an app on my phone or on my apple TV box, these kinds of things help grow the game. Now like TSN has their free agent list, but it really, and the CFL releases their free agent list two weeks after the regular season. What. Like why? So now you're only allowing your fans to have thought about it from middle of December until the middle of February. Like that's lunacy there. Why would you have it year round and just updated? Here's Montreals here's Edmonton. Here's Saskatchewan. Oh, look at these guys. Geez. They got 40 contracts assigned. We all know there's lots of them. And like I said, I don't care about the salary. Don't put the salary on it's none of my business. I don't really care that doesn't impact that it's like, geez, this guy's a free agent. You know what sure. It would be nice. And, and, and I'm sure if you want it to, you know, agents could get it out there. It wouldn't be the end of the world. But it's just, it's something the league. There, there hasn't been that they, they, you know, they haven't worked in conjunction with some website to do it, you know, and three down nation has done a good job of trying to, you know, add a presence to, to the CFL online. TSN obviously, you know, Farhand and a lot of those guys, Dave nailer, they do a great job. But it's still, it's not enough. You should have independent sites doing it and you can't get that information anywhere. And it's just, it's closed minded by the league. They like the NHL works with some of these sites. You know, other leagues do as well. They, they released that information and the protected list, like guys, how, how was that? Not out there. It's just, and the great part about the protection list is it changes literally every week. Every week. So you're getting new information for your diehard fans to go EV oh, they just dropped this quarterback. Huh? I didn't like him anyway. Oh, now they got this quarterback, right? It's going to get your fans more engaged. 24, seven, 365 days a year. And the CFL just, they don't seem to grasp that. They think, oh, you know what, we'll have our fans engaged two weeks or three before free agency then during the season. And that's good enough for us. Well, no other business runs that way successfully in sports nowadays. No, I completely agree. And I mean, obviously they would say, well, that's a money issue, right? We have to hire somebody with ever. I mean, we're going through the same thing. We're covering the spring league. You know, it's like a developmental thing down in, in the states right now. And they have like no presence at all. And, and, you know, we've, we've had the CEO on, but then we're trying to get players on, you know, they don't have time. I go, why do you would cost you one kid with a camera for two weeks to go down there and film and pay him 15 an hour? Like why you don't do that and send some video back of these players doing things, but it's. It is, it's like a weird lack of motivation, but then you're, we don't have the money, but then we don't have the money because we don't have the, you know, it's this chicken and an egg thing. And it's like, well, you have to, at some point, you know, hire an intern for the CFL, just like you said, You know, to do some of these web things or, you know, the fact that you have this Canadian football league and that like three down is really the only place to go for any information on anything is also very weird, right? That we don't have like competing outlets and all these things. You know, doing those same things. It's it's, we're going through very similar things. Both of these leagues right now and frustrations. Well, the thing is, the CFL has been around for a hundred years, like no offense to the spring league, but, you know, they're kind of starting up fledgling league. So I could see maybe having some restrictions, the CFL could have brought this in very slowly, a little bit at a time, and it would have been super simple and in the off season meet and say, okay, we're going to have one staff member it's going to cost us $65,000. Every team is going to put in that eight grand. Every team's going to put in six grand, whatever the number is, I don't care. Right. And, and, oh, by the way, now that we have the site up, we're going to have sponsors. There's on there all the time. I work at probably going to be able to recoup it. And even if we only break even. We're engaging our fans significantly. And that's actually going to help our bottom line elsewhere because they might buy more jerseys. They might come to a few more games. Now they're going to buy more beer and more hot dogs, right? Like it's, it's an easy trickle down effect that if you have a simple plan with that, it's not hard because you know what, when you change the. Like think about it once. Like the original cost would be the set up of the site. Well, you get any web guy to set up the site. It's not that ridiculously expensive. And then you have somebody who monitors it. So the teams, cause they have to send in their list to the league every day when they're changing, when they're dropping and adding someone. That's all you're doing. It's only nine teams. You just all adding and dropping, right? Like one click. All right, here you go. And you know what? Even if the guy only updates it every second day, like, even if it's only say, you know what, we're only going to update it on Wednesdays and to start, we're going to do it every second day. Fine. That would still be a significant improvement over what they're doing now. And it wouldn't be that like the cost to me is that's. I think that's a lame excuse by the CFL. It's just, they don't have the plan. They're they're a league. That's still believes that. You know, they have to protect everything and that's just, that's not how you're protecting nothing. It's a protected league. All the other teams know who you have protected, so you're not hiding it. There's no competitive advantage here. Very good points. Very good points. Another question I had about players, we're seeing some players go into maybe an early retirement. Is that also a concern to get a full season? Like all these players are just. You know, they're, they're like 29 30. They're going. You know, I don't know if this is going to last too much longer. I'm just gonna retire. A hundred percent. That's a concern. I, you know, I get it. Like, I've talked to a lot of the players, you know, in Edmonton Ryan King and Calvin McCarthy, and now McCarty. You know, he's older, he might've retired anyway, but you know, Ryan King, now he had an opportunity to, to, you know, start a career post football, which a lot of guys are thinking about anyway. But you know, you start losing a few veterans. Now you can bring in young guys, but too many, too much youth at any league. Isn't good for the product. That's just a fact, right? So I think that is a concern for some players. No question. And then the other concern is going to be for, for some guys who have waited and, you know, like, think about being a player now where, you know, you've gotta be training the entire time with no reward of ever playing a game. Right. Because that's, that's be honest. That's you work hard all off season. And the reward is you get the practice in play then from may until November, right? That's your reward to haven't had a reward. So mentally I could only imagine how. Challenging that would be for the players to stay motivated. You know, for, for young players are coming out of college. Sure. But you know, it's, it's going to be fascinating to see, obviously when the league returns it'll be the largest turnover from the previous year we've ever had, because there was a full lockout in between, but. You know, that's, that's going to be a challenge. You know, coaching staffs have already been shrunk a little bit. So now you might have fewer coaches to try to. You know, teach the rules to two more guys at one time. So it'll probably lead to maybe more mistakes. You. It might lead to a little bit more exciting football because more mistakes is more exciting, usually, especially if you're like offense. So maybe there is a silver lining in that. But I think after that long of a layoff, I won't be stunned if there's probably a lot of tissue injuries early on. I I'm laughing here as, as I look at the clock and I want to make sure we touch on this before we go. Would you believe that an XFL podcast talk to you for 30 minutes about CFL staff and the XFL hasn't been brought up yet? So I do want to know what your thoughts are on all of that. And the potential merger partnership talks we have going on. Yeah, well, guys, we've got a few more minutes. I'm in no rush. Don't worry, but you know what? Hey, first of all, I, Dwayne rock Johnson, but behind the XFL, like the guy respects the game of football. I think he truly respects the CFL. I've talked to my hip, had him on my show many years ago, talking about it. And you know, he, he talked very highly of Wally Bano and in his brief time, In the CFL and. You know, I know there's some, some diehard people that are like, you know what, Hey, we expanded into the United States wants and it didn't work. I'm like, well, we could you're right. It didn't work, but it didn't harm the league. Right. Baltimore. There's lots of diehard, Baltimore fans who still follow the league because of that. Right now, they went into some markets. Like you're not playing football outside in Vegas, in the summertime. Like, dude, like you talk to the players about it. Like that was. That was ridiculous. You know, they're dying literally, like not literally dying, but physically it was tough. To play football there. So I think if, if you have a plan and a proper plan, like I'm not one to just say no, no chance. It's not going to work. I'd like to hear it, but you know, put it put out there what your plan is going to be. How are you going to amalgamate? What rules are you going to play? Is it, is it going to be where you just cross over a few? Like I'm not. I don't want it to be two separate leagues that play each other once or twice, or maybe that is maybe that's totally different thinking outside the box and maybe that's what they could do. And you know, it would. Now, obviously you'd have to have buy-in from the players that suddenly they're going to play a different set of rules for one or two weeks a year. Right. So that's, that's the thing you can't. Have two separate leagues that play each other once or twice, because now you're going to play by completely different rules. That, that looks too gimmicky for me. What pick a set of rules. And I know some people are. You know, a little opposed to four down football, cause three down football is being the lifeblood of Canadian football league. So I, so I couldn't understand that I have empathy for those who are like, Hey, I don't want to change lots of people. Don't like change at the same time in British Columbia, they've been playing for down football for a long time. But that also doesn't mean, you know, if the rock really says, Hey, you know what? She's the CFL has been around a long time. They've got much more success track record. The XFL has ever had. Maybe we should look at that and say, can we go with three down football? But is there any other things we can incorporate? Like maybe you eliminate the Rouge because we're like, we just don't want that. Right. So if there's a give and take here, I think there's. There's an opportunity that that could work together. I am definitely not opposed to it at all. I'm not one who thinks that. You know, because the X of, I don't really care about the XFL and Vince McMahon. This isn't who it is now, right? This is, you know, Dwayne rock Johnson and their group. And, and what they're going to do is, is probably going to be different, right? They're not going to be having sprints at a, to see who kicks off first. Right. They're not going to. Like, there's not going to be things like that. So I would actually, I'm kind of intrigued by it and I don't, I think for the Canadian football league, they haven't had a lot of growth in the Canadian market. Teams have been shrinking their fan base. So, you know, if you end up only having six teams in Canada, maybe in the future, And you've got six in the U S I'm. Okay. If that every other league crosses the border and travels, it's not a big deal. It's about when can you play it? How can you make it work? So it's going to work, right. And I think there'd be some Canadians that are like, I know the CFL plays at opposite time for the most part of the CFL September. In October, November, they're they're head to head and that's okay. You're just not going to play on Sundays. Who cares? Yeah, I, I think, and, and we had, I was watching rod Peterson show yesterday. He had a rash on who we have a history with and, and the XFL and everything else. When you imagine that the XFL came up yesterday, but it seems like the concern is, and I think his quote was we we're with this merger talks, whatever we are losing the Canadian in the CFL, right. That. That to him equating your 110 yards wide, your fields, all these things that is. It is tied to your national identity, pride, everything else. Where, you know, for better or worse, the XFL were just like who? We don't know anything. Right. Like we don't have, we don't have a hundred years of this, like loyalty to everything. So, how do you grapple with that? With the quote unquote, losing the Canadian, this of the CFL. If that happens well, People, you know, I've talked to a lot of football guys, especially the players, they all grew up playing American football. They came up to Canada and they said, man, like, there's a, I think one of the biggest misnomers is everybody just assumes like certain body types have more success in the CFL. That's just a fact. Right. And you know, there's more space. You gotta be quicker than the 22nd time clock. I like it. There's more of the game. Like, Hey, as, as great as you know, the NFL is the final two minutes in the NFL are the worst, two minutes in pro sports to joke. Like you just take it, like you just take a kneel down to, to run off the game. It's embarrassing. Like it completely eliminates the, the highest potential stress time of a game to nothing. I hate it, but I liked the NFL and I liked the CFL. I've liked the XFL. I've watched it. I have no problem with it when the, when they had it. So now right now, there is no XFL of actual. Actual football. So I would hope you would think that they're open. To understanding and saying, Hey, if we're going to play on a 110 yard field, so what we're going to play in 110 yard field. Like it's not, I don't think that is if that's the deciding factor, if I'm the XFL and say, Hey, we can merger with these guys. Okay, we're going to stick with the rules. You know, They won't stick with all of them. Cause, you know, like anything you can tweak some, but if, if the field distance in width is, cause that's what makes it exciting, because if you're going to shrink the field, there's no reason to have the 12 guys on the field. It would be even harder. Right. So. The reason you have the extra man is because you have the extra distance. So I would definitely stick with 12 just because it's different. You don't want to be the NFL. Don't. You're never going to compete with the NFL ever. So don't try to be the NFL. You can play good football that has different rules. And I think people who respect football will be like, okay, this is different. But I can still respect that it's still football at the basis. It just has a few different rules, right? Like you're still snapping the ball. You're still throwing it. You're still sacking guys. You're still having interceptions. Like it's just a few little nuances. So I wouldn't get too caught up in like NCAA football has different rules in the NFL. No one says, oh, wow, jeez, one's completely garbage because the rules are different. So you're going to have a few different rules. I'm I'm okay with that. Jason Gregor hosted the Jason Gregor show. We want to thank you for coming on before we let you go. I want to get your prediction on. Who's going to lift Lord Stanley's cup at the end of the year. I know it's not CFL related, but. Ooh, man. That's a tough one. This is just, you're so unique because the teams have only stayed in their division, which I've really liked for one year. It's it's been a lot of fun. A big Vegas guy. I like Vegas. I'm not sure they got a top center though, too. To win the cup. That's my only concern. With, with Vegas. I'm going to go. I'm probably going to go a little bit off the board and I think it's Carolina, Colorado in the final. Okay. I Carolina. I feel like Caroline is a deep team. They got a lot. You know, maybe goaltending is a concern for them. If Colorado, like if Nate McKinnon's like, I know he's not playing again. If he's banged up, man, that's a huge blow for, for Colorado. So like if Eric Johnson was healthy, I'd say Colorado, I'd take him easy, but big defense on man. Come play off time. It's just like in the trenches boys, most of the games are one of the trenches in football. If you don't have good old line, a good D line, it's hard to win. If having good defense, it's really hard. Not and Colorado has good mobile defense. But man, Ms. Eric Johnson would just make that they'd be my cup favorite for sure. But them in Vegas looked like on a collision card. I'll say this. How about tonight? To to decide who's gonna win the presence trophy, because that's a huge game because the loser between Colorado and Vegas has to play Minnesota. And that's a big difference, man. Like I'd rather play St. Louis than Minnesota all day in the first round. Like suddenly you have a much more challenging first round for whatever reason. Minnesota is mashed up really well against Vegas. Like. This year we've seen match-ups are, are a much bigger thing in hockey when they play so regularly. And is it. Any, any chance that Toronto might sneak in there and surprise people? I'm not sold. Toronto is going to be, I think Toronto and Edmonton, like it's, that's going to be, I, cause I think Toronto beats Montreal and I think Edmonton beats Winnipeg. And, you know, you've got Matthews and McDavid and Marner and dry satellite Connor McDavid on a different planet. Right now. In what he's doing and Hey, I know that, Hey. Matthews has scored his goals, but always scored more goals and 52 games in 2008. Like what Matthews is doing is good. But it's not something we haven't seen in a long time, but David's doing is off the charts. And so, you know, Toronto has more depth. No question. But they got some goaltending concerns. Like I'm, I'm intrigued by that one. And I'm really intrigued whoever it is, Edmonton or Toronto, whoever wins the north. I think they're going to surprise some people because I've heard, you know, a lot of people mainly out of the U S claiming that the north is a weak division this year, there's really no statistical data that backs that up. In fact, Did you know that going into the season, the north division teams had 32% of the top scores in the last two years, 32%. So in theory, they should have scored more goals, right? Because they have more talent in that division against all the other teams. Well, that didn't happen this year. They actually. Ended up with second, most goals per game. Like, Hey, my nephew plays in San Jose, the sharks aren't good. LA isn't good. Anaheim. Isn't good, Arizona. Isn't good. Like, you know, Vegas and Colorado and Minnie are good, but are they that much better? Because they got four crappy teams. So there's a debate everywhere. I'm fascinated, whoever wins their four divisions, how those other divisions match up because they haven't seen each other all year long. And I, I kind of liked that. It's got a little bit of a football field to it. Cause a lot of times, right. There's a there's Superbowl. Match-ups where those teams haven't. Haven't met all year long and I kind of liked that. Well, when, when Paul and I started our out, where's my flag. When we start our cracking podcast, we'll have to have you back on. Hey, buddy. You know what that's I love it. The Seattle and Vegas, like those are two easy road trips for, for Canadian fans out west to want to get down to, and I'll say this man, Vegas is the greatest hockey experience right now. If there's any of your listeners who haven't been to a Vegas golden Knights game for hockey. I've got to go. I don't even care if you know anything about hockey. You'll go there and you'll be like, damn, like they know how to do it right. For a game entertainment. Which is another thing. It's a total different topic we could get onto boys, but I think sports is something they have to figure out the game on the ice is one part of the entertainment package. You've got to do a lot more. And if you do those other things, then your fans, like this is a party man. Like the game's almost like that's a bonus. And it also helps that your teams being successful right from the get go, but go to Vegas. I'll say that. And Nashville, like there's a few cities that you might not love their team, but if you're looking for a good entertainment value night out where you're like, damn, that was fun. I'd go there. Vegas is unreal. Thank you, Jason Gregor hosted the Jason Gregor show. Want to thank you for your time. Drop it in talking to CFL stuff and a little bit of hockey at the end. We appreciate it. Hey guys, can I ask you one question? You're the diehards, what do you guys think of an XFL CFL merger. I said this from the get go. I would appreciate a defacto expansion of the CFL. I think that would be the most logical thing to do and try to find a way to fit as many Canadian rules in the XFL game. Because like you've said, the CFL has the track record. They have the grey cup, it's been a. You know, it's a 108 year league in some consideration and then like 60 years in another consideration. But the point is, is that. I think. To me. I think that. We should bend to what the Canadian fans want to make this a successful partnership. Yeah, I, I, I. I've heard from the beginning, from the people I talked to one league, one rule book and nothing that I've. Talked about or heard has swayed me from that. So I hope that we, I hope I've told Canadians. I said, yeah, I'll be at the front lines with you if they changed too much stuff. Cause I, I do think it needs to be. And because we're critical of everything. I mean, I'm not a mark for anything in particular, if they take too much of any way. But yeah, I do. I've always heard and felt one league, one rule book, and you have to keep, you have to, you have to protect the ratio. I think that's the number one most important thing. I think needs to be protected as the ratio. I see, that's funny. I actually, I would be in favor if they dropped it to six. Wow. Because to me, the best players are still going to make it the best of the best players are going to make it look at Canadians in the NBA. Look at Canadians. Look at Alfonzo. Davison's in soccer. Now in Europe, you want the best athletes and you still have six per team, especially if you're actually expanding guys and you're expanded, that's going to be way more Canadian. So in fact, if you expand the league, you might have to drop it to five because currently, if we say there's seven on each team, right? That's 63. Right. Well, if all of a sudden your league is going to be up to 12 teams. I don't think you want seven per team now, because now you're asking for way more and I'm just not sure there's that many quality ones. So the easy one is to combine the expansion and lower the number to six. You're still going to have basically the same amount right. And spread out and it's fine. And so I think it, it helps it overall. And what that, because we're seeing more Canadians at different positions thankfully than we've ever had before. So it's not going to be a challenge in some teams. There were years, some teams had nine starters because they were that good. Right, but, but having six, I'd be fine with, I don't think you need to keep it at seven. If you expand to more teams. Makes sense. Any other questions for us, Jason. Always good to have a lot, but I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on and looking forward to it. I'd love to see a expansion. I I'm a huge fan of CFL. I grew up as a kid. I actually worked at selling ice cream. At Edmonton games. When I was in my teenage years, I would only sell enough to, to break even. And then I watched the second half because I felt like I got in the game for free. So it was perfect. But, you know, I've loved the, the great cup. I'll say this boys, hopefully the league gets back up and we'll, you guys will have to come to a great cup. Cause I'll tell you. Like, I don't know if it trumps the Superbowl because the Superbowl, unless you're in the elite category, you don't get to do a lot of the fun stuff. The, the gray cup is a great party week and every doesn't matter what team you cheer for. No one cares. Everybody's just super friendly. It's loads of fun. Canadians are always friendly to me. So I, except on Twitter a little bit, they get a little bit of belligerent, but all at all, we love you guys. Thank you for your time. Jason Gregor for hosting Jason. Gregor show. We'll hope to, hopefully we'll bring you back on eventually when the season gets moving. Yeah. Oh, that'd be nice. 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Manscape we're doing it. Support the show. I'm serious. We're. A lot of work goes into that support it. Please, please, please. Moving on now as talks with the XFL. Continue. CFL leagues. CFLs partners in Mexico. Hope for a seat at the table. Interesting. Yeah. So remember a couple of weeks ago we had that translated like Reddit article, where it was Alejandro. Yeah, sorry. I'm very American. Dan Barnes wrote this, all our, the club. And I thought this was funny. So we, but anyway, so we thought about a couple of weeks ago, we kind of said it was a nothing burger. All this stuff came out now. The MRNs friend of the show. Where there's great articles. This is really funny. So the quote from the commissioners, so everyone freaking out, oh, this XFL is going to expand in Mexico. Whatever, if you read the article. The quote, Randy says, he's always thinking about Mexico. We told them we are so close that we should be more probable that the [unknown]. And CFL on the LFA should be making something. We have two strengths. We have the same football as the XFL, the same rules. And we are neighbors. Now we want to be in the conversation. The CFL has told us they are going to put us at the table, but I think at the beginning, I think we are in the formula. So then you have a quote from Ambrozy. This is it's like they're talking. I promise my dear friend Oscar Perez. And he's one of the guys with the elephant is I would say. This are frankly, all of our international Alliance partners is that we have something of substance to discuss. We will, of course share it with them. Rosie said. And then Dan Barnes can congregate. I love Dan Bart. This is what he writes. That doesn't sound like I see it at the planning table. That sounds more like a phone call after the fact. The LFA will leaders will remain patient and remain hopeful. So I still think it's kind of a nothing burger right now. I saw that going around a lot this week, like XFL expanding that New Mexico. I'm not saying that that's going to be, but when Ambrozy is even saying like, I said, I would give them a call. Yeah, it was like, Simmer down. Simmer down. You're making way more out of this than you need to make. And I, I mean, I don't. Maybe I'm being a bit. I guess. Dismissive. I don't see. I guess, you know, I don't really see the other than delivering some markets in Mexico. I don't really see. A a, a need to bring the LFA into this is if that's wrong, I'm sorry. But I think that there's. I think there's plenty to go. You know, NFL goes down there and plays games. I just, I think that that's. That's kind of the thing right now is like NFL and NCFL. I just, I. On the list of things that, that register LFA is way down there, here in America and Canada. So one step at a time. Let's get through. I think that that is a future goal for sure. And I know that other people have looked at. The tweets a Danny Garcia did when the whole like merger thing and she had all the flags and then they actually had the world and people said, well, that means that there. This is where we're going. But that, I mean, that's a quote from Ambrozy like that's, I mean, that's a commissioner. I know that you could take it or leave it, whatever, but he said, yeah, we told them, we'll give them a call and keep them up on this. I did. I just had a rant. Can I have a rant? You certainly can. Do you remember on the show last week when we talked about how the BC, the doctors there said that the, maybe hundreds of people in that door stadium or outdoor activities. And then we were talking about the BC lions president saying how he was going to open the roof and allow people in and that they, that they were going forward with their plans. No matter what the health officials say. Right. So we do this whole show on and we do a whole thing on it. What happens this week dunk with three down comes out. Hey, did you know all this? Goes everywhere. I go, we talked about that for 15 minutes on the show last week. And I, I gave my sources. I showed my homework. I say, here were the quotes that we use. It's frustrating. I, you know, people on Twitter know three down blocked my personal account this week. I don't really, I mean, I'm American valley with a lot of people. I really have not been competitive with any of that. Like three down proper, you know, like JC we've gone back and forth with one of the writers, but. You know, we are a resource, we had 45 minutes with Jason Gregor coming on, you know, talking about things like we are the media, we are resource. And I don't appreciate that. What do you, do you have any thoughts about that? Or, I mean, we don't need to get too into details. Easy out, but I guess I don't understand. I mean, they blocked your personal, they didn't block my personal, I don't understand. Like we. We view them as a resource. I mean, yeah, they do get a little click baity and a little bit Homer ish, but they still have some resources that we like to site and we like to, you know, give credit, always give them credit for them reporting that. And I just, I, I guess I, I think that's cutting off your nose to spite your face because. Like, we're not trying to troll you heel on you completely. We just, we're just trying to like, get some perspective in terms of like, Guys, the CFL is not the only thing that's, that's going to drive. People to watch your product. Like you're, you're, you're, you're resting your laurels based on the 108 year league thing that you keep bringing up. And I, you know, I just think that when you. When you block. Other opinions. On how to grow the CFL game. I just, I think it's my OPIC. I think it's, it's very, you know, head in the sand, plugging your ears, clenching and pearls. All the, all the analogies apply here. And I don't, I don't understand why they. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, it's a new site. You're a new site. It would be like NBC blocking. I mean, it's not that we're, but like, We are as much the CFL media at this point is, is anyone. I mean, I feel at least for commentary. I mean, maybe not for like investigative reporting. And I just, just. Just to throw this out and say, if you guys think that I'm being whatever. Think of all the people that we've had on the show, Rob Peterson, Dave Campbell, Derek Taylor, you know, Jason Gregor. I'm sure that's not going to change anything. With all this. You know, Dan Barnes, Dan, Ralph, rod vans down all you think of all the wonderful people we've had on the last three months. The only interview. That has ever gotten published by three down nation that we've done is when a Ross talked crap about the XFL. That is the only time in the last three months. If they've ever acknowledged our existence with all of that, like trying to brainstorm the game. Jim Mullen. President football candidate comes on. Nothing. And I'm like, guys. We are a resource to talking with these people, trying to figure out what's going on. You. What do they think about this season? What did they think about this? What did they think about this? You know, I don't care. Don't write up what we say, but right up with our guests, say they come on our show. I mean, I don't care that like, I'm not a brainiac, but you know, president of football candidate comes on. I would assume that you would do a write-up about that. I don't think the CFL news is blowing off the door. The three down doesn't need to like write up when, you know, Dan barns comes on and shares his thoughts about the CFL not being transparent or whatever. Right. And I want to thank Jim Olin. He sent me a care package. So when I go. When we go to the grey cup, I've got, you know, like, A, they call it a Tuk up there. We call it a BD down here. Yeah. Got to Canada. I'm sorry. Read. I tweeted, I go to gym. I was like me being sad. And then he, he tweeted. George Bush, like mission accomplished in the Iraq war. So that maybe that was him acknowledging that he didn't do deliver fully. To get a little political. Well, I mean, do you want the hat? I can send you the hat. I mean, Jim, I'm just saying anyway. Enough with that. I just, I just want to point that out. We are trying to be, and a lot of people said that they thought that that was more to do with the CFL on three down than us. So I appreciate all of that. The last thing about C N L stuff. They w they were kicking off the debate. We talked last week, the single sports betting was going to the Senate. This is so funny. They're like the Senate commemorate, single game betting is going to save the CFL. Right? Ambrozy we're going to add, it's going to expose more people. It's going to, we're going to be able to brand all this stuff, whatever. Sedative candidate as began debating legislation that could legalize the game. There's a good chance of getting it passed before the current session of parliament ends. If progress has made update feminines adjourn May 6th until May 25th. So like, Again, these are like, this is what they're trying to say. They're trying to say like single game sports betting is going to save the CFL and then it's like, yeah, we're adjourned after the end of may. It's not. It's not. It's not, I mean, I don't see how it does. Well, and it's not going to come into the, there's no way it comes into effect this season. Now, if they've adjourned through the end of may you think if they come back in June and that like, with all this other crap that they're going to get this going by the time the CFL kicks off in August, like no way. Nope. And that was going to be a big Ambrose. He said this was going to be a big, we're going to, we're going to expose all these more people and we're going to do whatever. So. Anyway, do you want to do a break now, before we get NFL and stuff? Or how do you want to do some of the roll through? Let's just roll through. I think, I think we're okay. We can roll through here. Put this, you put this in. I want to hear your thoughts. I did put this in a, I thought that when I put this in, they only had released a week. One. Notable games in week one. Include, of course, we're going to keep our eyes on the LA chargers, still trying to get used to that. LA chargers, heading to the Washington football team. Are they going to get a name? Is that going to happen or they're just going to say Washington football team for the rest of time. Yeah, this is it. This is the NFL schedule. I. I love the Washington football team. I love the eminent football team. I love the team has no name. I think that's wonderful. I liked the WFT. I liked that. Just the generic Washington. I will tell you. I have seen an, I do follow Taylor. Hi Niki on Instagram. I saw him yesterday, dev left about a billion pounds. I'm like crazy. I mean, this dude is. Out of control. I don't see the same from Fitz magic. Fitz magic is very sporadic. Yeah. If you weren't so sporadic and were very consistent, he would've stayed with one team as a. Opposed for playing for 12 different teams. So if he falters. Is it a situation where high Nikki goes in there and. You saw what you saw at Hideki? Did. Washington gave Tampa their toughest game of the NFL playoffs. Taylor. Hi, Niki stepped up and I mean, It fits magic falters at all. You got to watch. See. Taylor, Heineken's going to come in. But of course, I think he's playing this year. I think Washington, where he made a swing in the draft. I mean, I think that they are very content with him as their backup right now. And then Fitz and Fitz is on a one-year deal, but I. Washington made no moves at all to get a quarterback. And I think that that speaks very highly to what they think about Jaime key. Who's on a two year, it's not a, you know, $10 Million deal, but it's like two point something. You know each year, but it's good. Yeah. And then we have the Jetson and the Panthers, which is going to be one. Sam Darnold hosting his former team. And I know how, how, how angry New York jets fans are about Sam Darnold. So it's going to be interesting to see if Sam Darnold validates the jets, fans concerns or shuts them up. That's that's the thing I'm going to be looking forward to. I don't think Durango passive. That's just me. I don't know. I don't. The gestures were horrendous. I don't know. Speaking of Carolina. Yeah. I found that. Yeah, Teddy Bridgewater. Dissing the Panthers organization. So on the all things covered podcast. Bridgewater set up. One thing we didn't do much of when I was there, we didn't practice two minutes. Really. We didn't practice red zone. You walked through the red zone stuff and then Saturday come out and practice red zone. But you only get 15 live reps, guys, reps would be limited. And I'll tell you, what did they say all season? The Panther struggled with red zone. That's all I heard watching these games. PJ came in and played. You know, one PJ is transport for 20% of the winds of the Carolina Panthers had last season. But they. They stunk in the red zone. And then when you have Teddy, Sam, like we never practiced that. I go, that's remarkable. Yeah, you would think like if you started to see some struggles, Normally coaching, you focus on the struggles you're having. Like if, if you're a basketball player, the team is playing a really crappy zone. You know, you practice more zone defense. I mean, that's just common sense. Rural responded did criticize Bridgewater's play. Call me Elizabeth. Ultimate competitor and a great dude. But he sounded like a disappointed dad. Cause he said, when you have 140 guys in the locker room, Because we'll disagree on some things. You can't ask everyone to agree with everything. But he feels really good about what they do. I mean, I, I that's spicy. The article later on was like, yeah, he basically, I burned all bridges there. I'm like, man, Teddy is someone that bounces around a lot. I mean, I got good. He's gotta be frustrated, but man, that is, that is rough to be doing that. This came out right after we recorded. It's not a lot to talk about, but the rock had, they had that under armor ad. This is like right after where we literally stopped recording. And I went to Twitter, I will say though, where is mark had the quote on here where it have like a hundred thousand views in like an hour or something? Hmm. Where. Is this going to shine? I don't want this. Oh, yeah, there. It's gonna play out. This has, where do I see the, here we go. This has 145,000 views. This ad that shows that it's like the rock working out and it has the XFL belt on it. That is three times as many peoples watch the CFL draft and that's like, that's on the right. And then on his Instagram, it's got like 3 million or whatever, but again, you can't. Don't care twice. Don't care. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. You can't buy that kind of publicity anyway. That could have been like you. A lead story in a different life, but we're kind of on CFL stuff now. Do you want to talk about the chiefs? Chiefs cutting. Former St. Louis XFL St. Louis quarterback, Jordan taboo. Also, they made a SME quarterback, Shane. Bushel. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. They made him a priority free agent. Guaranteed guaranteed them $175,000. And that then of course, of course the chiefs did cut Jordan taboo. They've got Jack Henry placed him. Yeah. Chad honey. Shane. Michelle. Anthony Gordon. All backing up, Patrick, my homes. Hmm. It's tough, you know, I mean, Camou bounced around. He went to the lions, he came back. I would really like to see. You know, it's tough. It's tough. I just a couple other, I will blow through some of this because we have a lot, I Dallas renegades. Writing back Austin Walter got cut by the 49ers that came out today. And then the CLC Hawk sign Houston roughnecks, CB Savion Smith. Cornerback less than 24 hours on the open Margaret, after being cut by the Cowboys, they signed him with a Seok. So that would be good. I like this. Yeah. And, you know, the Seahawks are really good at finding defensive backs. Those diamonds. You know, Richard Sherman. That's around, you know, It's it's it's. It's going to be interesting to see if he, if he pans out there. If you don't have anything to say on this one, that's fine. I just. Look, I'm wearing golden Knights Jersey. The golden Knights purchase. Indoor football expansion team. What do you think? The arena football league, which was successful for 32 years, despite [unknown]. Insistence. It no longer exists, but the indoor football league. You know, Now I see this article here, they're like, including some of your favorite AFL teams are even in the indoor football league, including the Arizona rattlesnakes incorrect. It was the Arizona Rattlers. Do your research, as you know, Those people that watch YouTube videos about vaccines will say to you, do your research. You Google's your friend. It really is your friend. The, the new expansion team will be the ifs 18th team. It would be based out of Las Vegas. It's it's targeted for the 2022 seasons. So the golden Knights making moves in that, in that area. Is it. We'll work now in Vegas. Now that they've got. The Raiders. They might have the athletics. From from Oakland. I heard that. Yeah. Are we getting a little oversaturated with sports in the Vegas market who would have thought never. I love it. Vegas is like America city. I mean, that's like, yeah, Nidia says it's my favorite city. I'm like, I like Vegas too. I enjoy it a lot now that I can afford to go to shows and stuff. And. You know, when I was in college, just to just an hour down the road, I couldn't really do that, but now I can afford that stuff. So she makes fun of me all the time. Never never, never mentioning that. She saw J-Lo in Vegas too. So. I gotta share this story with the, when you. The Navy. I think I see boys to men. And they did. Fall said the. And he was like, there were a second round. If I, boys to man, I was like, what'd that cost you like 60 bucks combined. He's like, shut up. You were so mad. Because Paul was so proud that he got second row seat. I mean, boys to men. It's boys to men. You didn't grow up on boys to me, like I grew up on boys to men. So it doesn't matter to you also to that point. Aye. We're going off topic completely here, but boys to men turned down. The song that lone star made amazed. And when all the Grammys they turned that day were initially offered a man. They turned it down. I was, that was an incredible story. So, sorry, this is bear with me. So we have an update with the all over LA who is not going to be the pack to equip missionary. Max is still sending me things about this. So there's this weird stuff going on where basically like they're going to start doing testimonies. So like Lux going to do a testimony, which I'm thrilled about Vince is going to do one and then a couple other alpha people. But luck is trying to. Like pull another testimony in like he wants to depose someone else. Yeah, I'm trying to get in here because Vince has this great quote where, so McMahon, who is the CEO of world. You know, WWE and alpha. He's calling luck and good. Good. This Vince is Vince is saying this about someone else. Luxe escalating pattern of abusive and harassing discovery, tactics and gamesmanship. This is, this is like pot con. That's why I put this in here. I can kind of get into semantics with like, okay, they're trying to call Juan. And they're trying to call. But the fact that Vince is like, well, this rattlesnake trying to do all this. What do you think about that? Don't be a bully. Be a star. Right. I mean, Devin, he runs. That's very true. I like that. Anyway, so I, this is going on right now. I think they're, I think they're calling them like this week. It's continuing, but it's really getting, it's just funny to meet with Vince, trying to paint anybody else as the bully in that situation is just absurd to me. Then you just send someone one of your former wrestlers, all our belongings in a trash bag. Vince. It's not that same, that same person. Didn't you direct talent on her way out the door. The first time. To make fun of her weight, Vince, I mean, Come on Vince. Yeah. It's okay for you, but not anyone else. Last XFL. We'll do a break. We'll bust through. We're gone long here. We'll bust through TSL stuff then came out with, I don't want to throw anyone under the bus. Some news came out about someone potentially being hired from the XFL on LinkedIn. This Michael Lewis, he like lied. Like he put this on his LinkedIn and was like, I'm a regional talent recruiting. And I guess he like went on the podcast and was talking about how he was recruiting talent for like Oklahoma. And it was told a lie. I this guy literally like, but he's. Not as a, he's still on his LinkedIn right now. Anyway. That kind of went viral this week with like is equitable hiring and all that stuff. Both Mike and Jay reached out to the XFL. They're not, none of this is true. This guy's not connected and they're also not hiring anybody right now. So that is either good or bad, how you look at it, but that is. That is going on. You're done. You want to be in, you want to be in football, you are done. You are as done as Christian Dawkins is with the game of basketball. And if you don't know what I'm talking about there, then I won't. You mean the guy's done not the XFL center. No, the guy has done in the, in, in all football now, guaranteed. [Unknown] was talking about how he was anyway. So I don't want to, you know, who we know everything, but I just wanted to make sure every in case he didn't see that that was not actually accurate. And it was, I blamed that gentlemen, a hundred percent for a lie and all this stuff. Yep. All right, we're gonna take a final break here. Pay the rest of our bills coming back. I have some spring league notes and some random notes right after this. Hang on. Welcome back to the show. Sprinkling nuts. You put this guy's name in here? All all on Leerom. Hi, Gerard Lou. Yeah. I'm sorry, Lee. Lira. I'm really sorry. Normally I'm on the podcast. Fellas, how are you getting there please? The 31 year old with perfect five for five on field goals Saturday afternoon. Tying a single tying, a league single game record his toughest kick. Came from 59 yards out. Of course. That sets a new record and the old record holder, Matt mangle from the show. I did get really sad when I saw this. I'm very excited for Leerom and this actually got some play on like CFL news. Cause you know, he was from Canada, you know, three down and then with ever ran about this. I feel so bad. Cause that was like, not that. That was the only thing that Matt mega like held his hand on. But Matt was very proud of his time in the spring league, kicking the field goals, all these things. We talked last week on the show. He is very upset, but he is waiting to play for the outlets while the spring league is going on. And you figure in a different world. That would have been Matt back there. Yeah, right. I. I mean, these are like sliding. I mean, it's just, we're all this is going on right now. It's crazy. But that could have been Matt and he could have been there. And I, and I feel really bad. I'm very happy for Lear, but that is yes, not good. Some random notes on the screen. Yeah, I took some notes. So I watched the Thursday night games, just a couple of notes without we're not going to break down and analyze all the games we did that last year. And like it doesn't. You don't come to us, like talk about. You know, who like the throwing accuracy of whatever. The games were incredibly late. They, it went till like one in the morning, east coast. I thought it was crazy. There was a two. Good production is always, that was great. I was so surprised at Silver's play. I didn't play at all. Didn't play at all for the conquerors that they had. Kevin Anderson, who had been, then this was his third stint in the, in the spring league. He played. But they needed more staff, like Fox had one promo video that they played and then they had a couple, like they had a really great Louise Perez spotlight piece. But they played it on Thursday Lewis. Wasn't playing Cal salary day. I'm like, wow. Think of you had like, how does social media person in, in Houston, you know, producing videos or had people on. Podcasts doing things that we could share that wouldn't cost you anything. Right. Okay. You don't want to hire an intern to come shoot videos, stick Brandon silvers, or Kevin Anderson or someone on our podcast. And then we can do the video and then we get send it that way. So I just thought that was really weird. What do you think about the night? One ratings being below 20,000 people watching this game? Everything is cyclical. When you don't allow people to promote your product people, aren't going to be aware of your product and people. Aren't not going to check out your product. You're not promoting your product correctly. Call the guys at the FCF. We give them a hard time about their on-field product, the rules, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But call the FCF because their marketing is amazing. Yep. Really good. I really bad. I, Mike nitro said, you know, all three of the games on Fs, one ranked outside of the top one 50, which means that they were under a 0.03 rating, bringing the totals. In the five digit area. So we don't know exactly that it's like 120,000, like it's really bad, really, really terrible. Brian Woods teased on the local Fox station down in, I think he's in Houston right now. There's a big E. There, this is what kills me is like, okay, we got a big deal with fog coming up. Like they want to be a developmentally for the NFL is I think where they want, they want the NFL to come in to help pay them, whatever. But I'm like, but. You didn't do a really good job to prove viewership. You really didn't do a good job. Under 20,000 is really bad on Saturday, they did better on Fox 380,000 people watched. And do you see the breakdown here of the ratings? Do you want to, any of dots about the TSL with 380,000, any of these other leagues that did a lot better than them? I mean, you could, people, you know, will say, well, soccer doesn't really draw people in American. Watch it. I'm like half a million people watch soccer. I mean. On Fox. I mean. Is that Saturday or Sunday? These are all Saturday. These are all, these are all comps. I think the reason why people watch the MLS on Fox is because that was all traffic. So that's one of the rival, that's one of the key rivalries in MLS. It's, you know, El traffic goes number two. And of course Seattle Portland's number one. That's why a lot of people watch the MLS on Fox too. It's like those rivalries. Draw people in, but for the TSL, not for the, for F for a sport that is allegedly better. Allegedly more. Popular than soccer. TSL didn't do good numbers. That's up for PGA. The 2.2 million premier league on NBC did not just have the, and. The long story short about all of this. And then we're almost done with this show. Thank you all for listening. John Hodge three down nation came out with the most asinine tweet I've ever seen in my life. It was lauded by everybody, even like, I love it when like far Hawn even is like, Hey John, you're really off with this. John Hodge tweeted. This is a remarkably, this was on the Fox, that 380,000. This is a remarkably blah bad rating, which further reinforces how little appetite there is in the USA for spring football. I hope the CFL front office is paying attention. This is in response to Mike's tweet about that. Radiance. Dots on that before I get mine. That hurts my head. Yeah, it really does. This is such, this is such a myopic view. Like. I don't know. You know, I, again, we talked at the top of the show is the spring league, the league, whatever. I mean, this is, this has zero promotion. I responded, I go the fact that 400,000 people having to stumble upon this league on a Saturday afternoon, that to me is more remarkable than the fact that they only did 380,000 it's in fact, that that many people just randomly stumbled upon this league because who even knew it was going on. I mean, they. You know, they promo the games on Fs one for Fox, but I'm like, well, that doesn't. You know, I mean, like you're, you're, you're advertising the Fox game on the smaller network. That's not going to do anything for you. But, you know, I mean, this is like a, it's a developmental league. It's not, there's no stars, there's no whatever. And a lot of people pointed out that a lot of the CFL games only get like 600,000. Now I know there you'll say, okay, Canada has this. That's why you can never win with the CFL fans is, well, Canada has one 10th of the population. So numbers don't matter at all. And you're like, okay, well then. I can't have a debate with you. I don't know. But anyway, it was really, it was, it was really bad. I said, I go, these are terrible ratings. I said, I think it's horrendous. I wish they would have promoted that. I said this would have been a good sign for the exit fall and spring football. And this had gone well. And it really didn't. And I'm really sad. I I'm very upset and sad that they did not do a better job promoting this because it makes our jobs even harder. Now. Trying to back XFL and other alternative football leagues. I just responded because I didn't see that earlier. Oh, I just responded. Right, right now, like, Is this a thing north of the border, picking a narrative and not taking any circumstances into account. When a developmental league does no promotion. No one hears that nonexistent message and checks out the product. Yeah. Is. And also like, I mean, I like to talk about the spring league, cause I liked the players on this and people don't like to talk about the spring league because they don't pay their players, but. I mean. If you don't promote it and it's. I can't help you. I mean, we, we can't and I agree, like I said, they're terrible ratings. I think they're horrendous, but that doesn't mean. Like the TSL doing. Now, if they had come out and done like a million, I would have been like, sweet. That's a great news for the XFL, but this is one of those, like them being good would have helped our case. And I don't like that. I don't like taking two sides on the same thing, but like, if the ratings have been good, that would have helped our case, but the ratings being bad. Doesn't hurt our case because I do think there are a lot of other circuits and I don't like that, but that is how it is. Last note. Broncos. Legend. I don't know this guy, Brandon Marshall. He's joining the generals. Do you know about him? He's like a former NFL big name. Yeah, he's been around for quite a bit, quite a while. I mean, great, great stats. And that's it. He's playing in the league. Yeah. These joined the genitals. I think he's gonna start this weekend. Very cool. Good for Brandon. So. Last note. I got an email. If you want a finger to football trading cards, I guess you can go and get some fingers on football trading cards on their website. That was good. I am good on that, but what you are. What you need to do. Help support the show. I'm going to plug it again. Manscape.com. Enter the code. Mark cast. Get 20% off. There you go. Sorry. I had to throw that out one more time. Good. Anyway, thank you guys all so much. And it was a lot today. But I hope we did a good job and yeah. We appreciate all your listenership again. XFL show.com/review XML show.com/youtube. And subscribe, leave us a review. We appreciate everybody who tunes in and checks us out every week. And we'll see her next week and it's well, you can go to the exit. If I show that company, this, the mark cast. Now you go to the markcast.com. But the the XFL show, all that still works. Cause I'm smart. I didn't get rid of the other ones, but I, you know, I got to get used to that whole. It's a mark cast.com thing. So. We appreciate. We appreciate everyone listening, watching on YouTube and subscribing and leaving your comments. Even if they're, you know, Oh, none. The negative ones though. Because I have similar. Someone just wrote today. They're like, you guys are idiots. I was like, okay, I can't help you at that. I'm sorry. Sure opinion, which is in fact. So anyway. Thanks for watching.

Episode 39 - “Presenting” the CFL Draft

Welcome. Show, I guess, formerly known as the XFL mark cast. We are the artist formerly known as prince and yes, we are the podcast formerly known as the XFL mark asked. We are, we are now the mark cast. The website has been updated. You can go to the mark house.com. All of the social media, seven updated. It's at the underscore Mark House. I thought that that was good. And yeah, it's, it's been a process this week. Like the podcast artwork is still working. So like Paul and I were just talking, his apple podcast shows updated mine. Doesn't. We're doing it. And, and, and read is very OCD. So it's bothering him quite a bit that it's not updated on his, but update it on mine. So. Yeah. I'm hoping that apple gets their act together. And I'm going to check Spotify, maybe, do you have Spotify or now? I, if it's on, if. If it's on speaker.com, it's on all of them. I mean, I've looked at. Everything, but yeah. Listen, your max was quite the point that it didn't have to hit on them. I'm. I can't. I can't call Tim apple and tell him what to do. Okay. I can't, I can't do that. So. But, yeah, so we are the mark cast. We are covering all your, what way did we say CFL, XFL and all football stuff. You wrote a very good tagline. And then of course, someone's like, well, this is not alternative football. And I'm like, okay, we're separating. I felt like the description was separating the CFL from the XFL and then alternative football. They're all just the point of what I did and describe what I'm saying. Alternative football is not the CFL. We didn't, we're not. You know, Come on. We're being respectful. It's one of those every, yeah. Yeah. I feel like we, we explain ourselves every week and what our train of thought is because people just take things out of context and read is the king of context. So. Put it all together. Yeah. Anyway. So, so the mark Hass is there. I, you know, like I said, I, it, oh, And, and, and I did want to play this at the top, please. We're building this subscribers are working towards the 2,500 giveaway. We've added we're at like 1250 something now. We have a lot of tidbits in the show later, we have great draft coverage coming up with Conor O'Neill from the CF perspective podcast. Derek Derek Taylor is coming on from the cage sports cage. And. And the Saskatchewan Roughriders. I played the I thank God. I didn't say Dave. I put Dave in the notes, Derek Taylor. But I have a lot of tidbits later in the show, XFL staff, murdery staff, we got some red birdie stuff. So I, if you like all the work at, even our listeners, max and others that are helping me to like, you know, put together this special, please subscribe. You can go to the mark cast.com/review. All the links still work. All the XFL show links still work, but you can go to the mark house.com. But please subscribe. If you like all this, we tons of work today and we're going to have you CFL draft coverage. We're going to have you all of the different stuff going on. So. Yes, please. We, I, I post I tweeted the poll. Do you think that I picked the right team for last week? What do you think? The results where I'm from my big, I have my Edmonton hat. It's a nice hat. I was showing Paul, I got it. I'm going to move the mic. They were watching on YouTube. This is the funniest hat in the world. Okay. He's pointing at his hat for those who are listening, it's like, It's like an emblem on the hat. It's like a CFL emblem. Like I thought he was like a patch. It's like, you can. Like you can scratch it. It's very odd. It's a very nice hat. Can you sniff it after you scratch it? Possibly. Anyway, I, I posted the poll. I said, did I pick the right team with the evidence 42% said yes. And 57.9% said no. So I definitely a divisive decision here. I'm sure. Not the last of many divisible decisions that we will have on, on the Mark House, but there we go. Right? Okay. So we got these, these people that are coming in with their hat. Giveaways. Our hat giveaway. I asked last week I have my extra, we have our extra X. This is like vintage now. Cause we're not even the XFL mark has anymore. So it's like vintage merge idea that I did. If you left us a review last week, you were injured into the dry. We only had three. Can you believe that a free chance taking a minute that your time. Do you get a free hat mailed to me from me? You know? I mean, this is crazy. I it's in the box. Ready to go. William, they give you your review kid. Coheed welcome. Thank you for your review. And then Kyle, a welcome for your review. I put them into a randomizer. Kyle is Zegna, but didn't get the bid. Is the last name? I can't say it. Zen. Zinc glue, whatever Kyle. Kyle's give him a hat. So IDM me, give me an address. It's in the box. So this could have been your hat. Anyone else listening to this? If you had left this review, but Kyle did. And so that is what we are doing. So, are we going to open this package now? Or are we going. We're going to tease it that, yes, this is the most anticipated. I thought you were getting a helmet by the way, that doesn't look like there's a helmet in. Basically first off. I don't think I game ball nor helmet is fitting in this box. If you're listening on audio, God, please watch a YouTube today. This is going to be fun later in the show. We're going to open our Brian Woods. Spring league. A merge box app. Longtime listeners now, Brian promises emerged last year. It never came. So this is supposedly the Jasper's merge. Paul. I hope there's two articles of clothing in here. I don't know how heavy this feels. Would you be, would you be distraught if there is not two articles of clothing in this box? Given the situation, I would not be distraught. I would be kind of like, okay, okay. I'm just telling you right now. I have, I have felt this many times in my hand this week to check. I don't know if there's two articles floating in here. I hope there is. We'll see. We're going to open this as a, at the end of the shell. I will tell you guys real talk. We were going to do a whole spring league episode today, spring league kicks off tonight as we record this. Last night. As the episode airs and then there's, Morgan's on salary day. We had as any immediate outlet would do. Submitted our media request to Brian through his PR people. And I said, Brian, here's our list of people about week and a half ago, I sent this in. We'd love to find some time here's our availability as you would with media. Availability. Paul works in the media. Like, this is a normal thing. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And then on Tuesday they said that they didn't have time. Didn't have time. Didn't have time. I don't care that they are not coming on our podcast because I get that they're on Fox broadcast. You don't need to tell me, read your, the mark cast. They don't. I get that. They are not on anything. I mean, I have not seen any articles about the spring league. I have not seen any commercials. I've not seen it. I have not. This is like the dentist launch of anything that I've ever heard. And I, Paul and I went on Twitter. I said, we gave fantasy football, a lot of grief. At least they promoted their product. Paul, what do you think about that before we kind of move into the meat of the show? I guess it's just, you know, it. It seems that. It seems that every one of these leagues lacks something. Yep. And in terms of spring league, they lack the ability to promote themselves and realize what's really important. What. Like the best type of advertising is word of mouth advertising. It literally would have taken. Someone 15 minutes to come on here and talk about what they're getting ready for in the spring league. And you couldn't afford that. I mean. Not saying that everyone not saying that you're going to get like millions of views now that we're talking about the mark cast. But it's getting the word out nonetheless, to people that might be willing to check you out. That don't even know you're, you're launching, you know, last night. It's I guess I just, I don't understand the philosophy there. No. And like I said, you don't need to tell me that we're not a big platform. I understand that. But I'm saying they're not on anything. I mean, at least Spaniards or football was on like sports center and they were on ESPN. I mean, at least, I mean, Sabrina is not on anything. I mean, they tweeted last night, they go, Hey. Yeah, empty locker rooms, but you wouldn't, you know, kickoffs tomorrow calm before the storm. I said, I would know that at all, but storm. Except for your, except for the law that the roster releases that they have this week, you know, the, the tweeted just like text images. There hasn't been anything. I mean, at least last year when they were in San Antonio, they had that K or whatever her name was. Doing the, the, she did videos every week and they had player spotlight. I mean, even if you're not going to, I have the players like fangirl football, let the players be accessible. Like we could call them and schedule step. Right. Even if you want us to go through the league. You got to put some players stuff out there. I mean, you got XFL guys. You have CFL. Got you. Have you. You have a lot of big, you have Louise pres I mean, you have these big names coming in and unless I'm reading in the roster and I see Louise Perez is the second name on the QB depth chart. I don't know that this is happening this week. So. There was going to be, it was going to be the gestures ride you and I on the [unknown] logo, I had the whole episode ready to go. So we will open this later, but we're going to do. A deep dive on CFL draft cover itself. Insane. I, I there's no other way to. There's no way. I got about it. So moving. Yeah. And then last flag before we go, I'm going to be on the Argos fan cast. I want to try to get them to come on and. Because you are working tonight and you are making, you're making good money with your Mela man live YouTube show. So I am what we're trying to, I'm trying to plug you here. I'm trying to compliment. Paul is working tonight. So I'm going to go on the Argos fan cast. He reached out, I want to get them to come on and do an ML S E deep dive with us. So we're going to work on that. So I will tweet out when that episode comes out, but they, them for coming on that. I want to compliment you. That's the first time you nailed. MLSE. Aye. You didn't think about it all. You didn't look like you thought about it. So. Kudos to you. That's awesome. Yeah, I really thought about it. So we applied Derek Taylor and Connor coming on and we are good to go. I have. This week, I got my new shipment. I got four boxes. Don't tell Dorothy, I got four boxes of Zola. I now have the, the super barrier. So I get to try this line. I got two super berries and I got two original sugar-free. So we're going to try this. This is a new flavor. I'm working on our sponsorship as we speak. Yeah, this is, this is all for, this is all like a long game folks. It's playing chess, not checkers. As we said, wheelhouse. I'm waiting to see what he thinks of the aftertaste. Oh, it's delightful. That's good, man. This is good. I tell you it's we, you didn't have, you did have the sugar-free. Yeah, this is really good. I like this. What I did was. No, that was terrible. I know what you're saying. Oh, it is weird. Now you see it. Oh, that's what I don't taste it, but. It does it smells like. Yeah. I told you. I told you. What I started doing when I was finishing drinking it, I would, I would. Sometimes I breathe when. I'm weird. I breathe when I drink, so I just stopped breathing when I drank it and it went down fine after that, but the smell is terrible. It is, it has a terrible, terrible smell. I don't know if that's the way the chemicals are reacting with the, can. Yeah. You need to look at that. This is what it smells like. It doesn't, it tastes wonderful. This is what it smells like. This is, if you want to know what they are right now, go to your medicine cabinet. If you want to know what. Super Berry, zero sugar smells like. I take a lot of fish oil. It's good for your heart. It's good for it. Like you're whatever. Stick your nose in your bottle of fish oil and smell those capsules in there. That is what that smells like. It smells like fish oil, capsules, or just what your dog down. Wow. It's the same thing. Same thing anyway. Here we go. Thank you for our preface, the Marc CAS. We're moving on. CFL tweeting the wrong draft date for the CFL draft. Yikes. Did you see this? I didn't see this, but this is hilarious. Friend of the show CFL, read that braid. He goes, I between wise and I think we're going to have to censor ourselves. It goes. T tell me your. Tell me your employees don't give an S about the draft without telling me your employees have given the S about the draft. And they, it was a CFL, the official Twitter account. It goes. CFL draft tomorrow night at 7:00 PM. But he was the day of the draft. So. We'll talk here in a minute about the subpar ratings for the draft and that whether our listeners. Big G tots or whatever on Twitter was like, Well, you need to look at the Wednesday draft numbers. Because they didn't promote the Tuesday draft. You need to look at the Wednesday numbers. Now as a joke. I mean, he was, you know, he was being facetious, but not, not a really good luck to have three hours before the draft have your official social media tweet, the, oh, watch tomorrow. Don't watch tonight. I just want, if tomorrow you'll be okay. I, you know, I watched a lot of the draft. I watched Connor we'll we'll have later on in the show, see a perspective. I watched a lot of his live stream. I watched a lot of the three down nation guys livestream. I thought that they did a superb job. I mean that, it, it, it, it didn't shock me. The radians came out. The CFL draft was down 22% from last year, had 57,000 viewers. Last year was like 73,000. I didn't surprise me when the CFL draft. A live stream had like a hundred go current streamers. Right. I mean, and, and that's no like dig on them. Cause I thought the content was super, but that was like, God. Lord. I wish you guys have more people watching this cause they were, they had rod Peterson on, they had all these players on, they had donk and Hodge and you know, the guy that were, that blocked us all on Twitter. You know, JC, but like they, they really did a good job. I mean, I felt like all the CFL guys across the board, like killed it with draft coverage and it just seemed like nobody cared. We'll get into, obviously that all later, too. Of course. And you said no energy. Well machine gun Kelly was in that and the NFL draft they had at 12 million viewers on draft night, night. One. Do you think if Mudgee, if machine gun Kelly would have done like a zoom stream concert that I would've got more or less viewers. Awful hit the machine gun. Can I. Well, I'd love to talk about that too. You sent me the clip off your football show. Good morning football. And Nate Burleson, the Kung Lao hat wear guy on there. Who's also on extra said that MGK like killed M and M on a song. It's like, bro, did you listen to the entire battle? Because I mean, that's what happens in a battle. You listen to all the songs and you make it make an assessment and I'm sorry, he did not kill M and M. Please please go back and review Nate Burleson. Take the hat off. Mortal combat. Go back and review, please. Thank you. I am. Do you have, I'm going to try to pull this up and play it. So I tweeted this about the CFL draft and this, this got a little, a little heated. So at the end of the young rock show on that, it was the season finale. They had this clip and basically he got drafted. I'm going to try to play this. He got drafted to the CFL. Yeah. As we know the rock got. I drafted to the Stampeders. So I'm going to play the audio from this, and then we're gonna talk about it. And it's like him and like a snowstorm, like you can't even, it's like hot, right? Like he's like, it's like Luke on hot. Like he can't see anything. And so I tweeted, I said, What do you think got the CFO more exposure last night that, that last 10 seconds on young rock that was seen by 2.3, 6 million people just on just on TV that doesn't include streaming at all, or that 57,000 people to watch the CFL draft. That was it. People are not happy about that. Again, I, I feel like, you know, they think their culture is being attacked. And we'll talk about that with. Derek Taylor was talking about that as well. We'll we'll hear from him coming up and I, you know, What was the, might there have been a subtle jab there from the writers of the, a young rock show, Brian. Former WWE rider I think is, is working on that as well. So was that a subtle jab? I don't know. I don't know. I do tin foil hat. I do think it's weird that that potentially next season of running young rock is going to involve the CFL on the XFL is intox, right? I mean, maybe they're like they are the ultimate chess checkers, like maybe. They've thought this out, like rock two years ago. Well, I'm going to do the show. We're going. I mean, could you imagine next year of young rock, if he's in the CFL and the XFL CFL, I get that all happens. I'm going to ask the Brock for lottery tickets. What, what should my lottery numbers be? That's great. I'm just saying, I mean, But I mean, in all seriousness, like facetious, whatever aside. Like. 2.3, 6 million people on TV that don't know about the CA you know, potentially don't know about the CFL. Heard about the CFL on, on Tuesday night at the same time and that 57,000 people that are watching the CFL draft know about the CFL. So like, You just, you can't. And I understand like, you know, viewership in America is bigger in Canada. I get all that stuff. I'm just saying like exposure wise. That, that, that, that that's. You know, two point, whatever million, more people that, that just saw about this, that didn't see about it on Monday night. So like that is. That is a good thing. I would think. Not all people online really thought that way. So when, when you hear people like Raj, Madani say, oh, You guys aren't. The XFL team isn't bringing anything to the table. Reid's point is. Now all of a sudden, all these people know about the Calgary Stampeders that might not have known about them before. Yeah. And I mean, again, you can say, okay, whatever in, you know, impressions versus actually, you know, click through and all these kinds of things, but. That brings a level of visibility that you just can't buy. I I'm sorry. You can't. And, and that's, you know, prime time NBC show across the demographics. You know, in terms of agents and you just, you can't buy that kind of stuff. We're going to talk, we're going to do big, deep dive with the draft here, coming up with Connor. I just, I just had to note that, you know, Jake Burke. Jake. I keep saying that Jake Burke was number one to Hamilton tight end. I thought it was cool that in the year that Kyle Pitts was the big, tight end transcendent player in the NFL going forth, which is like one of the highest the tie. Then I think that was the highest, the tight ends ever gone. Connor points out, you know, that, that Jake was the number only number one tie then that's ever been taken. So I just thought it was cool. I think the games are evolving. You know, 30 years ago, I don't think you would see a tight end go number four in the NFL at all. So I thought that was cool. I just put notes here. Did you watch any takeaways? We have our Seahawks thing with the CFL. Any other takeaways from the CFL players in the NFL? Or do you want me to get into that? No takeaways right now, again, Connor talks about that somewhat. So I, you know, on the, on an NFL draft note, I was surprised to see the bears basically just, you know, Go for it. That was, that was the big surprise. They just went for it. And. Hopefully the interesting thing. I was reading all the things they were talking about, Justin Fields, right? Yeah. Basically that he, he was, he has like, he has like the photographic memory and he can just, he's very, he's very like sharpen. This is this a franchise quarterback. Chicago bears have been looking for. I wouldn't even say Jim McMahon was a franchise quarterback that they, you know, they won a super bowl with him. I understand that. But that was the defense that won that super bowl. It wasn't really Jim McMahon. So they'd been looking for a franchise quarterback for as long as I've been alive. And this might be the kid. We'll see if that happens for him. Yeah, I had one audio drop here. I'll play from far hon talking about some of the CSO. And then we have a note here coming up because one of the Canadian guys, Pierre, I cannot say the name and I texted her to smile. Pierre Ali. Olivier less stock. Yeah. Let's dash. He went to the Seahawks, but I have a note here from, I'm going to try to time this out, right? Let's say it this way. This is Farhana talking about the CFL guys in the, in the NFL draft. No, not only were four players selected. What's important to note is all four of these players. We're skilled positions consider that in the previous 15 years, 19 Canadians had been selected. Only four were non-line men. And as much as we love our linemen young Canadians who were looking to be inspired by the next generation of Canadians in the NFL, want to see players touch the football. So this was the first time ever three Canadians were taken in the first three rounds. The first time ever for Canadians were taken in the first four rounds. In other words, a couple of other Canadians that were possibilities being sold. There you go. So, yeah, it's cool. It seems something has come up. So they were the four guys drafted and then four guys signed his undrafted free agents. So, and I think the reason why you get those four guys drafted that high is look at the schools are playing for you guys. All they're all power, five conferences in terms of Oregon in the PAC 12. I actually said the PAC 12 for once instead of the PAC 10. Minnesota and the big 10 plus 18,000 other teams. And then you got Tennessee and the sec and Oklahoma state in the big 12, which is actually only 10. So, I mean, you get, you get [unknown]. Power five kids that come from Canada to go to these schools. They're going to get, they're going to get more development. They're going to get better. Looks. And a good, happy to see that, you know, some of those Canada kids are coming across here and. And, you know, Playing the NFL. We'll see. Yeah, one of the cool things. I just, for us as [unknown] fans and Seahawks, they signed the offensive lineman. Pierre. Prior to the end of the draft, Carol personally called the 23 year old during the pre-draft process and ensured them that they. They had legitimate interests. It wasn't just Scouts doing the work. And he signed a peer, said, it's the team that showed me the most interest. I was definitely feeling a good vibe with them. The team is serious when the head coach picks up the phone and calls a player at serious, you don't do that with any player. That was his agent at pier. His agent says, I just thought it was cool. You know, we'll, we'll, we'll be checking in for the Seahawks and. What's interesting about this is the sea ox desperately needed some protection for Russell Wilson. And so that all the talk we'd done last year. Well, here you go. You got a Canadian guy coming in superstar, and they're going to plug him in and. Maybe that'll help out a little bit. You know, hopefully, you know, The Seahawks were known before they won the super bowl for finding these, these, these diamonds in the rough. And I'm hoping that Mr. Lasage, I'm going to see. Maybe it's a stage. Hopefully he's one of those diamonds in the rough. That actually helps contribute protects Russell. And keep. Russell happy. I think that's the big, that's the big thing the Seahawks are working on is keeping rum Russell happy at this point. That that Dov water tastes is really building up. SI Ella. Told you it's really about that. You thought I was hating. So anyway, so we're in the Connor is going to come on here and a little bit, we're going to do all the other drafts staffs. I want to move into. I got some CFL, this season news. We'll do all that. And then we've got some merger and XFL staff, but w w we'll have definitely more, some standout players at Connor identified in the CFL draft coming up here in a little bit. What do you think about this? The players association. We talked with Derek about this as well as well. The players' association, basically saying that the league has not made a firm decision on that August 5th deadline that we're hearing basically. Between the lines they're saying don't quit your day jobs just yet. Cause you might need them for another month, maybe two. I think that the players association feels like there's going to be a season no matter what. And I think that's key for the CFL to succeed. But I think they're just like, Wait. Just wait to see how this pandemic. Is handled here in Canada before walking away from whatever it is you're doing to make. To make ends meet currently. One note about this and, and I don't want to. Err too much of, you know, talk too much ever. But I do think it's pretty factual here. Matt mango friend of the show was in the spring league. Last year. He got signed to the outlets as a, you know, as, as one of the kickers this year. Matt is livid with all of this, because here he could be in the spring league right now, even though he wouldn't be getting paid. Still getting more exposure. And Matt has, has messaged me and he goes, you know, I feel like I'm at the peak of anything that I've ever worked towards. Like right now, I can't. You know, cause here he is, he signed to the CFL. It's too late to go to the spring league and sell. It's really hard. And I feel for Matt and all these players, anyone with the CFL, these guys getting drafted, signed the O'Connor talks about, well, they're still signing players, like, yeah, but you know, what do you. Could you imagine like, okay, I just signed it, the BC lions, but I don't know really for playing this year or like, you know, we're pretend I, it just, it's such a confusing situation. I feel so bad for everybody. But yeah, Matt is like, Matt would be at the spring league right now, but he, he can't, you know, cause he signed and I don't know what the legalities are with like, okay, your sign, you can't go do other things, but you know, it's a big deal to him and I'm sure he is not an isolated case of that, of someone that would want to be doing that right now instead. To be playing. Because, I mean, we're talking about the pandemic here and British Columbia is top doctor Dr. Henry, Bonnie Henry. Says it's likely we'll see the return of smaller distance outdoor events this summer. There's not likely to be a big events of any sort, even though outdoors in the summer. Early next year. Anyway, that's, that's really also concerning when you realize that. One of the CFL teams plays indoors. Well, yeah. And this. Well, this is great. So, and to follow this up, I liked having both of these stories back to back. So. Despite that despite Dr. Bonnie hammer, body handwritten body hands. Bye buddy hammer Eastern USA network. Right. Honey Henry. Bonnie Henry I doctor up there. I Rob excited about this on the show too. But the BC lions are still moving ahead with everything. Their president, Rick. Well, last year believes they can safely reduce their crowds. Sure. Little usher. And he says, they're going to open the roof. And me coming out to our stadium, he goes, of course, that gets a far greater air circulating. It's a pretty big building. That's, you know, there's a lot of space. I like the best, not. Like bandaid. BC doesn't. Aye. The BC health district. I, if I don't care, if you can open your roof to get in some more fans, I mean, it's really like. And we've, I've talked with guys and we've had people on the show and I've listened to other shows where, you know, a lot of that, the health departments up there, aren't really interested in any return to play protocol of any kind right now, because they're like, we are ICU. It's our fault. We don't care about the CFL. I mean, he got, and they don't care about. [Unknown], but it is interesting where you have the leading health professionals saying yeah. Maybe hundreds of people for outdoor events. And then you have the, the lions president saying, well, we're planning on moving ahead. And I, the, both of those things cannot happen at the same time. So, I don't know. Let's let's let the doctors control this thing. I understand. Everybody wants to, you know, get back to get back to normal. And play football and play sports. But. The virus has its own plants. Yeah. This is interesting. And I added this the other day. So I'm going to do my best to get we're going to kind of play through this. There's still talks with the federal government, potentially giving the CFL some money this year that the Winnipeg member of parliament, Jim Carr has publicly confirmed the federal government and the CFL are still talks. The 69 year old said there is a possible arrangement for this year. Conversations are ongoing and their relationships are good. And the line of communication is fluid. There's still a lot of variables out there. So, yeah, they, they got denied the interest free loan before, you know, we feel like money needs to be coming from somewhere, whether it's the owners or whatever. They said that. Basically, you know, even though the, the loan was denied last year and this year, a lot of these teams have still gotten like in the U S we had like PPP loans to help cover like payroll and stuff. So a lot of these teams are still getting that, right. So they're getting like the Winnipeg blue bombers got 3.1 million. And they got 2.9 from the Canadian emergency wage subsidy. So he's saying like, I think the idea is. If you're, if you're going to deny this blanket loan. But then still be giving these like team individual ones. Maybe you would be better off. Figuring out a way to fund the season ID. That's kind of where I'm reading from that. Do you get what I mean? Like, well, we're not going to give the CFL loan, but we're going to give all these teams money to plug in holes. Well, that kind of equals with that whole amount would be, so why aren't we. That's kinda my question where I got from that. If that makes sense. I think if we're, if we're calling this the equivalent of like the PPP down here, some of those loans stuff that we paid back, some, some people still have the, they can't be forgiven for their PPP loans. I know there was a, there was a guy, a chiropractor in LA that kind of got dinged really hard for his, because they did some overestimation. But, I mean, I think that maybe that's what's going on is that. Again, the money that was asked was interest free. They were asking for an interest free loan, and I don't think the Canadian government was willing to do the interest free thing. But the PPP equivalent up there, maybe that's what's going on. And that way they pay some interest back on these, this money that's being loaned to them. The article also just said that if the CFO really wants money above and beyond this, you know, the kind of like the assistance that they're getting right now. They would really have to share their books and really showed that they would be financially solvent for years to come. And so it's, that's the issue too with maybe the CFL wants the money, but they don't like, well, we don't want to show you our books. It's like, well, okay. We need to. It's kind of like the CFL XFL thing, like, well, you. You kind of, can't just have everything that you want and the egg. Something's got to come first. And so anyway, but I just thought it was interesting and you know, where like they're still getting money, but they're just not. Like okay. We're we're, we're, we're band-aiding these things, as opposed to like let's, let's pitch this forward. So get a solution. A two year delay has revealed some harsh truths about the CFL. It's not two years yet. We're almost there. Yeah. Mike Mitchell wrote this. Yeah, this is, I just wanted to plug this in. You know, Mark and the exit on news hub, they're launching CFL news hub to cover a lot of the CFL staff. Mike Mitchell had this great article that came out a lot of this stuff that we've been talking about, you know? Flushed out more. Th the biggest thing for them, Paul is this last bit here that I'm going to bold and it's talking about, do you want to kind of go that's my big takeaway from this magnetron article. Well, I mean, we, we know that the NHL and the NBA and all these other leagues have these. These additional revenue streams, like people really wanted baseball, so they would, you know, get, you know, MLBTV they would, you know, have NFL. NFL subscriptions that they could watch old games and. There's so much money already in the coffers for the NFL and NHL NBA, because of TV deals and whatnot, and the CFL game hasn't marketed well, has it marketed well to build up a coffer to kind of support the teams? And that's the problem that I think that's the only problem, not part of the problem. Like it says here, that's the, that is the problem that they don't have this kind of. This kind of kafir, this kind of like buffer where they go. Okay. We can afford to go two years and still be financially solvent. Because we don't have that TV deal. I mean, we've, we've talked about it numerous times before that we feel like they're getting raped, raked over the coals. Yeah, and it makes me think, is it just, they shouldn't. You know, whether you want to defend or hate on the XFL or the CFL or any, because this kind of problem should not exist for a league. That's been in this present form of place since 1958. Right. And, and, and we can, well, in 1958, I thought it was a hundred and some odd year league. Yes. The current, the current form of play. Yeah, I believe me. I had a good discussion with a fellow last night about that, that, so, yeah. This is a side note. So they talk about the 108 year a gray coat has been awarded for 108 years. Up until I believe 54. Before that. You would have like amateur teams and kind of a mix of leagues competing for it. So the first all pro grey cup was awarded in 1954. So. Again, you can't have, you have the 108 years, but they like. The grey cup in its current form with the current CFL and the current, everything was from 1954, I believe is when the first Astrum listener max. But I believe that's from when the first one was awarded. So like, you know, you want to get ticky-tacky about 0.3% ratings for the XFL and the week five, we're going to get ticky-tacky about the 45 years of your league that didn't play with the current form of play. We're just returning energy folks. We're just returning energy. So, I mean, And if you don't, if you think that our energy is, is, is denigrating your league. I'm sorry to say. It's, it's really not, but we're just returning energy. As Reed takes another drink of a Zola. I tasted it. I'm sorry. You just plug your nose when you take a drink and I'm telling you, it goes down a lot smoother. That's all that's all I'm saying is just like, we were just returning energy. So, I mean, if you feel like we're bashing the CFO, we're not, we want it to succeed. I wish that our Canadian counterparts wanted our XFL to succeed. It is what it is. So I, yeah, I will have a conversation with the look at the rush. I will have a conversation with any informed. Opinion the ones to have a conversation with me. I won't. Stand for this like bashing. Aye. There's this ax, this X, this, I I'll have a conversation with anybody about anything. I don't have any, we have no skin in any. Anything succeeding. They're not succeeding and we have no benefit of the CFL going under. So yes, I love a conversation with anybody, but if you want to come at us, then yes. I think there are ways that both can go back and forth. All right. Would that being said, we're gonna take a break. Talk to Derek Taylor coming out of this also Conor O'Neill. And yeah. We'll bring it down the draft and then then getting of course Derek's opinion on exactly what he thinks is going to happen and what he would like to see happen. Coming up after this. There's that there's a retaining wall, a company in front of there, like literally they're jackhammering right now. That's good. Just real quick producer read before Derek hops on. So Derek. So the big news that just came out today. A CFL draft Radian threw down 20% from last year. So it was 73,000 last year. And then it's 56,000 this year. So Derek is kind of all higher level stuff. So. CFL draft, what do we think? The season, the merger. All that kind of stuff. Connor. And it's not going to, I think be particularly interesting to you or me, but I think we need it. Like. What are some good players that got drafted, whether some of these teams that they need that like, Connor's ready to go for like analysis stuff. And I just think we need, like, mark got skewered on his thing for like, not knowing any of these people. And so I really don't give a s**t, but I think we need to, for our credibility be like, Hey Connor, like who were there? Some of the teams are really bad. Even further from the draft and the players. And, you know, I mean, we don't need to do like an hour with him, but I think. Just that credibility. We really need. Right. Does that make sense? Yep. Again, Like I don't care either. So I will also be bored, but I just think we need that. Okay. Because mark got like lambasted by like, cause he was like, I don't know who this guy is. I don't know who this guy is. I don't know who this guy is. And you're like, You're going to call me. You're going to call yourself CFL news hub. You know, you gotta, you gotta have that, but D Derek will be way more higher level staff. Like what did we think? Like the ones we've done for weeks. Okay. If that makes sense. Yeah. Okay. How are you? It's Thursday. It's Thursday. I guess I'll take one of those. And Derek seems pretty like he's pretty cheery. I've watched a lot of his stuff. I think he's going to bring a good energy. Yeah. And he seems to be like, Able to. Separate, like he was the only one kind of like backing us when the whole garage thing happened. Those guys from three down nation are f*****g clowns. What killed me last night. Cause I go, I literally sat and like wrote out a thing and I was like, yeah, people really value your guys's opinion. Rightfully. So they look at you as a news organization. And then when you put these things out, I mean, I really took the time to write it and he's like, well, you're blocked. I was like, okay, well then, I mean, you're, that's fine, but you're clearly, you just don't want to have a conversation then. And that's fine. I don't need to have that, but I was trying to honestly have a, have a real conversation with you. No. I know because I watched the live stream and he seems like a nice guy. And I mean that, like, I'll talk today about that. Like, Three down crushed it. I mean their viewership socked. And we'll talk about that, but I mean, they put on a super product. I mean, they're really, they're, they're doing. All that. Oh, wait. Jack. My hat. I do. Dude, this thing is like, it's like an envelope it's like, I do hear that. It's a brighter. No, it's like plastic. I give, I mean, it's like, it's like, you can take it off and like stitch it on something. Oh, very cool. I guess it's like, you can't even if, well, I guess we could get that. On the podcast. Yeah, Connor will be in the weeds for us, but that is okay. He is very excited. All right. And I think we need that. I saw that I was like, what do we need to have? Like, cause I said, we're never, I know our weaknesses and I'm never going to be the like, well peer or whatever from BC university. Like I'm never going to do that. So. So here's what we'll do. We'll go through and. Do all this. Do the entire show. And if our. Manscaped comes. By the time we're done, then we'll do a quick. You know, read. Okay. Those are really wanna, you know, start pumping that out. How'd that start registering it. Okay. I'm recording too. Ah, there we go. Recording. Gentlemen, how's it going, sir? Not bad. How are you? Good. I appreciate you hopping on. So this is good. It's all good. It's a little, a little early in the morning for me, but it's. I'll try to have my thoughts straight. Maybe. It's early for us to it's 10:00 AM over here on the way. I don't know where you are. And we're on mountain time right now, Saskatchewan. So mountain time. So 11. Yeah, it's a, I wish I was Pacific time is like the best time I can not, I can say, okay, Hawaii, time's the best time. But Pacific time. It's the best time to live on. Come on. Possibly. I'm kind of torn between Pacific and east coast time. Cause my family and my family is all out there. So yeah, sometimes everything starts so late on east time. Pacific time when I lived in BC, ah, oh, four o'clock hockey games. Sure. Sure this sounds great. NFL starts at 10:00 AM. Yes. I wouldn't know. I really wouldn't know how to even do my weekends. Yeah. If I'm a. Tell me am. I wouldn't know what I would do till one o'clock so right. Yeah. It's. Terrible Hawaii where it's like 8:00 AM or 7:00 AM, whatever it is. Oh, that was. That was. It was the best honeymoon I ever had. Oh, wait, that's only, only one. Yeah. So I I'm good with whatever you guys want to talk about. What what's, what were you, what were you thinking? Yeah, I was telling Paul, so we have Connor with CF perspective coming on. He's going to do a big, deep dive into like draft analysis stuff. It's not like that is not me at all or us in, in, so we're gonna do that. So I told Paul like high level, you know, The draft, obviously the draft numbers being down. You know, what do we think about the season? Whether we think about the XFL kind of the same stuff that we've been talking about, but nothing like we don't need to get like super in the weeds. He about anything. Sure. Yeah. Whatever, whatever you need, if you need to. Yeah. The draft. Isn't my, isn't my specialty by any stretch, but obviously I've been talking about it on radio for two days, so we could intelligently talk about that, but yeah, high level. Yeah. And just like, The numbers and staff, they were, they just came out. So yeah. Connor's going to come on and do. Cause I was like, I am not ready to do that conversation with anybody. So yeah. Connor Connor is great. He. One of the guys. I do see a perspective what's so yeah, no, he's, he's got it. Nailed. Cool. All right. According. Yeah, I'm. Good. Derek Taylor host of the sports cage. And is it color, voice, color, commentary, play. Play. Yeah. Sketch one rough riders. Thanks for joining us. Can you first give Reed a hard time for his Edmonton affiliation here now? Well one, they don't have a nickname, so that's, that's bad to their final list. Wasn't what the one I wanted. I wanted the Edmonton in doubt because what American. Wouldn't come up. I get to play for a team called me in doubt. Hey, what team you play? The endowed. They didn't go for it. Read that. Crap. They didn't go for it. Come on. They a friend of the show, Dave Campbell beat you onto the show. Edmonton color analyst. I said, I gotta throw my hat with Dave and there's some XFL guys that are making their way. To Edmonton. So we are excited about that. Just between this, between us. With what Edmonton did between free agency in the last couple of off seasons, Edmonton is going to be. Good. This season. I don't know where I'll have them when my power rankings come out, when the season looks on the horizon, but Evanston. Mike contend to be first in the west, in the regular season. I liked that I liked. They've done some really nice stuff. Reed's already amped also. I listened to your show after the whole. Thing. And I thought it was very. You guys, you guys. We're the only outlet. I thought that that like, kind of saw where we were coming from and, you know, I've I've gone over that numerous times. I could have hit him with the arena football league and Ben. Boom. And that would have been, you know, that would have been the argument to win that thing. But yeah, I was really, I was like great. Somebody, somebody up there is finally kind of, kind of understanding. Like our viewpoint on things. So. I want to profess my undying love for a Rashma Danny, because he's fantastic. He's connected within the league and he is not afraid to set things on fire. I love that about a rash. There are just some, some parts of his, of his argument that you go. What's what's successful and what's a failure. If you want to say every American league, that's not, the NFL has failed. Is the, is the arena league running from 1987 to 20 1930? What two 33 seasons. Is that really a failure? Sure. It's not in business, but for 33 years, here's another version of football outside of the NCAA, outside of the NFL that. Made it made its way through in America. So to me, that's not a failure. Maybe I'm a big softie, but not everything is a failure just because it did die off at one point. I totally agree with that. They I've, we've gone back and forth with a lot of the three down guys and. Yeah, that it's like, we'll do, does it exist right now? Then it's a failure. And you're glad I don't really know if that is, if that's the bar that I would set for anything. I mean, you know, lots of things run their course and for a variety of reasons, we just, because something doesn't exist right now, today does not necessarily mean it's a failure. Was friends with TV was friends, the TV show a failure. No, it was on the, it was on the air for like 11, 12 seasons, and then it had to go away. Yeah. I mean what a great example, right? Seinfeld. I still watch two episodes of Seinfeld at some point today. That's the one off a year, 22 years ago. I forget what it was. 98, 23 years ago. Yeah, it's. But that's, that's the narrative that we drive. That's that's, you know, it's just the NFL and the NFL is a, is a behemoth and you can't really compete September to February when the super bowl happens. The people are insane about the draft. Somebody people outside the NFL makes so much money just talking about the draft all year around, but there's, to me, there's not a reason why when the NFL isn't playing football games, another league done properly. Can't prosper. The rate of league has gone, but if you went back and investigated it, I'm sure there are several inflection points where you went. If they'd done this better. They might still be around here in 2021 packing people into [unknown]. Chris center in Fargo, North Dakota, or grand forks, whichever one that is like, come on. Like there's there's there's rule. There's real ed. I loved, I loved a rash with the twice failed XFL. That's the only way he would refer to it. I get it, but I don't think that it's gone under twice has particularly anything to do with what will come in 2022 or whatever. I don't think the past performance indicates future performance in this particular case. Completely agree. We're in a once in a lifetime situation. Multi-generations generational situation once in 100 years. Yeah. You can't really say it's twice. When you look at that. That's blaring. So. Well, and the sins of not even the father, but the sins of like the weird, great uncle for the 1999 XFL. You're putting those on the sun. I don't, I don't think so. I don't think so. I'm just curious. I was listening to it to rod this morning work, obviously going to be covering the spring league tonight. Are you watching any of that? Is that on your radar at all? Not at all. No. As a football fan, I'm kind of super heavy on the CFL. I'm heavy on the NFL. And then. I saw about 30 minutes of college football this year. So no, if there's, if there's some CFL player that I remember that shows up in the spring league, I may want to poke my. My head into some highlight, but. No, I'm just super, I just go very deep on the CFL and try to go deep on the NFL as well. Did you, did you watch the XFL back in 2019, 2020? I watched some of it. Yeah, for sure. Because it's football, right. Ultimately it's, it's football and. We have a CFL that's that's based on not being the very top level of football and yet it's still awesome. Right. So I did check in on some XFL because the other part of it is. There were CFL names that made their way down there. And you went, oh, I wonder if I'm going to see this guy. Will I see Derek, Dennis? I love that guy. Oh, great cup champion. I got to see, I got to see double D and I ultimately didn't. But you, yeah, there was a curiosity. It just, it wasn't around for long enough because March came and blew us all away. Yep. In terms of all this. You know, murder talk or maybe superly talk or maybe interleague talk. What. What do you, what, what would you like to see? The CFL keep around in terms of rules, in terms of those kinds of things. I am one of the few in Canada, Jose, whatever it is, the Rouge has got to go the single for the pump that thing's got to go. I've always hated that you miss a field goal, you blow it through the back of the end zone. Here's a loser point. No, I don't know. Nobody wants that. That one's got to go. What do I want to see? I'm not so attached to the rules that you know, that I played high school football. With I liked them. I liked the CFL is different. I like free downs. Waggling sprinting full speed toward the line of scrimmage at the snap as to me is, is, I don't know why the NFL doesn't do it. Can you imagine. When some of their guys could do with the waggle, from the slot, just forget it, it could be uncomfortable and it could be 60 to 50, but then defenses would respond. So I'd love to see the waggle stick around unlimited priests that motion have that stick around. Other than that, I'm not so tied to three downs, other than it promotes more passing. It's a 70% passing league. In great part because of the three downs, right? You don't have time to waste the first down by running the football, as often as you do. In the NFL. So I wouldn't mind that one. I'm just not so tied to the rules as they are. As the reason I love Canadian football. I love Canadian football. I don't know because I love the game. I love football. I love that. It happens in my, in my hometown. I love that it happens in all these other towns that I love. I take what, what TSN is for homology. He said on my show, one day he said, The football and there were the Canadian football. That I want to protect is football being played in Canada, maybe. The football. He wants to, that he loves his football played in Canada. And to me, it's just the chance for young people, young boys and girls to play and experience football and have those great sports experiences I had. Whatever form. It's like, I'm, I'm probably cool with that. I can be talked into wanting to join the protected side and Brit keep this around. But honestly, I just want football played in Canada for me. Hey, have you been as shocked as, I guess I have been, and I'll speak for Paul too, is we have been with just the divisiveness that has come from. I mean, it really has become like this Canadian culture, like conscious of like, well, no, this is, you know, we just, we, Paul and I were having a conversation with the gentleman last night online and he's like, yeah, I am pro Canada. It does not matter. Right? Like we don't care. I mean, have you, and obviously, you know, you host a radio show, you hear from people you talk with, you know, lots. Lots more people that we do. Have you been shocked just with how divisive it feels like it has gotten. On protecting Canada? No, not really. Right. Because so much of our broadcasting is set up on protecting Canada. I remember when I was a kid, I would be watching Thursday nights on NBC where cheers at night court and then whatever stuff they would put before that. And I would think. Why does it, why does it Canadian TV show? This, this stuff is hilarious. And as you, as you grow, you go like, oh right. Because American culture and American influence would absolutely overwhelm Canada. Population 10 times greater. There's no end of American entertainment. That would absolutely come in and just blow ours out of the water because we could get it cheaper. We could put it on TV for less price than creating stuff. And then that would absolutely stifle, you know, Canadian entertainers. So I'm not, I'm not surprised by that. We, we do need to protect the incredible talents that we do have here in Canada. And yes, they may leave to go to America at some point, but they need to be grown and fostered here. And we need our kids to grow up, believing that I could be the next Brent, but of corner gas. I could be the next Nickelback. I could be whatever. We, we do need to protect that. So I'm not surprised that people are, you know, protective of the CFL. I it's. Yeah, we, we have great people who can do great things up here too, if they're given the opportunity, but America can be so overwhelming. Sometimes our newscasts are what happened in America today. I want a Donald Trump do today. That was four years of Canadian newscasts. There's not stuff happening in Canada. So it does, I believe it does need to be fought for, for sure. On that note, when you talk about, you know, kids getting involved with the game. We both questioned the marketing tactics, tactics in the CFL and how to grow the game and keep, keep the youth involved. What do you think they're doing wrong in terms of those marketing things? Huh. To bring the youth in and have them watch. That's such a good question, because it's one that they've struggled with for the longest time, right? Like you can have the Sprite zone where families can come and watch, you know, you can have a section carved out for families, like opposite, completely opposite the section where you can have it for the people who want to get just plastered. Cause they were in their twenties. It's it's such a tough question. I think the thing is people believe the CFL hasn't been trying with stuff like this. Well, they had a flag football league. What happened to that? What ran for a couple of years. And I don't, I honestly don't know the answer to that. They, it. It probably costs them money. They didn't have to spend everything. Is everything is. It costs money to do. And to, to another extent, I think when people say, if people have a problem with what the CFL is doing to attract young people, they miss what's being done on the team level. There are nine teams that are actively reaching out to their, their provinces and their cities. Let's sketch on rough riders. Just, they can't stop having guys come in and say, I want to go do some outreach. I want to go up north. I want to be running this camp in my hometown and Saskatoon and I want to be here. I want to be out talking to kids. I want to tell them my life lessons. I want him to get him to love football. When we think of the CFL, I think we put it all on the league office in Toronto to be doing this stuff. When, and that ignores the fact that here are nine clubs, nine independent businesses, semi independent businesses that are out doing that stuff and reaching out to their community. Because it's, it's, it's great to have the CFL tagged onto it, but person to person is just so much better and kids will probably forever tell stories. Of old man, I met the writers log snapper, Jorgen Hoose one day. At, at my school in Northern Saskatchewan. And it, it affects me greatly to this day, 30 years later, like there are going to be those stories. So I think this, everybody could do more, but one of the big ones for me is this comes with a price attached to it. And. To to think about that now. Outreach outreach and growing the game from the very base roots and supporting football. It's going to be expensive. And frankly, I mean, there are other groups that do this stuff. It'll say to say, it's not being done to put it all in the CFL. One, I think is unfair to the CFL. And it certainly benefits them, but I think it's unfair to them and to, I think it ignores the work of tens of thousands of other people in our country who are helping to grow football. At the very base level. You talk about that. Reaching out in the community kind of thing. Is, is that another reason, do you think there's so much divisiveness? Because this seems like a very, like when, when, when, when it seems like all of these teams are owned by the vans, not. Necessarily on paper, but like they own the teams in there. You know, they're, they're a vital part of the community. Isn't that another reason why you think the Canadians are so protective of this? Oh, a hundred percent. Like when, when I came here a couple of years ago to take the job, doing riders games, I knew what I was walking into. Right. Like it's all green on Friday game nights and people are so excited. And I, once I put out a call during one game later in the season, So tell us where you're listening from. Boom Australia, boom, Denmark, boom, every corner of the province, boom, every province in Canada, you know? Wow. This, this is scaffold number the first and only time my wife would I ever went to Mexico. We were at a, it wasn't the best resort, so I wouldn't recommend it going forward, but were imported by ARDA. And we go down to the pool the first morning. Boom. Someone had planted a Saskatchewan Roughrider flag there and we thought. We're Puerto Vallarta. Really? It reaches this far, they had their Saskatchewan Roughrider giant mugs for their March all day margaritas. It was, it just, there's a real, yeah, there's a real Rachid passion for it. And, and I think that's, it's what they've known in a lot of cases. Do you hear a couple of the guys from the university of vagina who were drafted as you're talking about? I grew up being a rider fan and now, you know, 22, I'm going to the CFL. I've always been a rider fan. He then got drafted by the bombers, which I'm sure we'll cut it as it is core, but. One of the things that tell me what you guys think about this. I think. That one of the main problems with the perception of this. Comes down to the, the very zero level of what condition do people think the CFL is in? I think you get people who are absolutely fighting. Like the XFL needs to bow to us. Out note, the CFL is poached and it all comes back to what do they. What condition do they think the CFL is in? If you think the CFL is okay, and can weather this pandemic and not having played for a season. Plus, I think you're on the side of, well, the XFL is going to need to need to really sell me on something. But if you are on the Winnipeg blue bombers posted a $7 million loss and teams might lose 60 to $80 million, according to Dan Ralph's report. You're on the side of. This has got, got to happen. I think it's that base. Well, none of us know what condition the CFL is truly in, and that leads us to a lot of these arguments and a lot of these fights. Yeah, it's hard. I mean, we've always said, you know, from the beginning that yeah, the, the XFL is, is obviously struggling from a lack of lineage in history. Right. That the CFL has. And I think when we had Rob Vanson on last week, I think I was saying, you know, the XFL gets glossed over a lot with, okay. You know, the Rock's going to come in and save it or look what Vince did or look at all this stuff. Yeah. At a fundamental level, the 2020. XFL was about, like you said, building those community ties, right. Doing fan events. I mean, we went to all of the Seattle dragons events and you met Jim [unknown]. Soren and met the players. You know that. These things you. When we picked our season tickets, you know, you had the opportunity. You know, to go in, sit where your seat would be. These things that, you know, I don't have the thousands of dollars to pay for like Seahawks season tickets. Right. But I do have the $500 or whatever it was. I mean, we sat, I was, we were front row, 50 yard line for the games. Right. But it was that it was that, that fan engagement. Right. Did I think he is not dissimilar from what you're saying that the CFL is doing and what they need to do more of. Right. I mean, I think both of these leagues. You know, we look at three downs and we look at, you know, Vince and he hate me and all this stuff. Well, it gets lost. Really is. I fundamentally a grassroots grown league on both sides. It needs to be. You know, do better at. And I mean, everybody kind of understands that the whatever version. The CFL XFL thing happens, or if the XFL ends up going it alone, one. You're you're going to build it from the ground up. You're going to go to the grassroots. You're going to do community outreach in these places. Two, you're going to have real ties to gambling, but that's a, that's a whole other other deal. But yeah, you, you need to let people see that these are human beings and sure. It's, it's not the top level of football, but we accept the not top level of football. So many times in our lives that, that. This one shouldn't be particularly difficult. Okay. NCAA isn't the NFL. We still watch NCAA. CFL is not, I love the CFL U sports football. Our college football is not the. It's not the CFL, which is not the NFL, but we still love our youth sports. I was the terrible high school football player. People came to watch that, even though it wasn't. You know, you sports or the CFL or the NFL, we, we embrace the things that are at the top level for, for different reasons. And I absolutely think there's there's room to go. And I mean, you guys are an example of that, of. Like how many, how many Seattle Seahawks games can you see for 500 bucks from the 50 yard line? Like. One quarter and then get the hell out. Like. Yeah. You talked about, we don't really know what kind of trouble the CFL is in. To that point. If the CFL isn't in trouble, like some people believe it's not in trouble. They're there. They're putting the blinders on why even pick up that phone call from the XFL at that point. That. And that's exactly the point I made from, from day one on the sports cage. There were so many things on that very first day. That I couldn't quite process and led me to all the CFL must be in real trouble. If you're not a real trouble. Why, why, why are you talking to them at all? Why aren't you just plowing through it and go and head on, on this alone? Why would you make an announcement to them? Why had you been talking to them for eight months since the rock and company. Took this over. Why did TSN the broadcaster here in Canada, the CFL put out a statement on the day, the CFL announced they were making it, have a discussions with the XFL. Why did the XFL put off at season? There's there's so many things in so many pieces of circumstantial evidence that lead me to believe the CFL is in. Real financial. Maybe not exactly dire straits, but like. We mentioned Winnipeg. Winnipeg's the one of the three publicly owned clubs that has put out its financial statement for the year. And they posted a $7 million loss, which was 7 million, but they didn't make a payment for their stadium either. So is it really more like 10 and a half? Plus they got government support. So whatever. Whatever it is, they lost $7 million versus a less than a million dollar profit the year before. That's a long time to dig out of that hole. That's a long time to dig out of that hole. So to me, I take all the circumstantial evidence. I look at it, I listen to the people that I've talked to and I think. The CFL is in real trouble. So I then am on the side of Ooh. They're talking to the XFL because they need help in a bad way, whether that's exactly how it's, how it is. I don't know. But that's where the evidence that I see leads me to. Yeah. That's kinda my point too. You know, I had asked you, you know, spring league kicks off tonight. So Brian Woods is, is their CEO. He's been on the show to, to promote that. And, you know, we had talked with him a couple of weeks ago. Back in, in the last year, you know, he had approached the CFL and said, Hey, why don't you guys come down? You know, you can play in the states. We can sell the blue bubble, all these things. And. They said, no, I've heard they laughed him off variety of reasons. Right. But the point was was that last year, You know, and not that Brian is, is nearly, or the spring league is nearly the level of the XFL, but the spring league helped the XFL develop their rule systems going into last year. I mean, there's, they they're big enough. There could have been some sort of ideal worked out, right. And the fact that the CFL said we don't need that last year. And now answer the call this year. I mean, it is just something to keep in mind that there's a, there's a history of. Different entities reaching out with different results to the CFL. If that makes sense. Yeah. I think everybody. Everybody could probably use everybody. That's not, the NFL could probably use some help in this time and you try to figure out, well, if you're the CFL, what, what can they do for me? What can I do for them? And then figure it out. I don't know if that's connected to, well, we want to focus on the XFL thing or they didn't see value there or just was the wrong day. Who, yeah, I'm not sure what that would have been, but yeah, we're, the CFL is definitely looking for some ways forward. I think we can, we can all infer from what's been happening. Realistically, what's your, what's your. I guess. What do you think is gonna happen this season? How many games, whole. So the plan is to start August 5th and play 14 games. They've moved the gray cap back by three weeks. So to play essentially 14 games in three rounds of playoffs over a 19 week span, I think from a, from a player perspective, they could, they could do that. That's not out of line with what they've done from a player health perspective. They could get that done. In Canada, where Ontario won't reopen until May 21st to me, you kind of have to take August 5th and work back about eight weeks and say, this is the day in which we have to say go or no, go on August 5th. So I'm watching for very early in June, the CFL to go, yes, let's go. Because guys will then pour across the border to the app to be vaccinated. I got to get my backseat. I got a secure place in Regina, so I can work for the riders. Boop, boop, boop. There's so much that has to happen. You got. To fire up the marketing side, you get a fire up this side and the business let's go. Let's get our people in there. So I. I put those together, I think, well, in Saskatchewan here where the riders play. You can't really, you can't go visit your friends, right? You're supposed to keep to your own household. That's not great for going to see a football game with 8,000 people or however many they'll allow in. They've got the very first level of government support saying yes, your plan for players to play players is great, but we still need to work on your plan for fans to come in. I I'm struggling to think that August 5th is the day that, which it will actually start. I. I don't have anything to back that up. Concrete. It just a feeling that August 5th, it was a great day to put out there, but I don't think they're going to hit it honestly. I think it probably ends up being very early September. And if it's a half a season, nine games, plus the three playoff games that they've, they've put out. I think nine is probably more, what if I did lay money? I'd probably say it's closer to nine than 14. We have a note in the show this week, you know, they send out the, the players association. You know, send out another note, you know, Hey, we're still working through this. I mean, does that. Are they just doing business as usual? Does that make you pause more when they're still saying like, Hey, we, we don't know August 5th or does that kind of coincide with what you think. I think it's, I think it's probably in line with what the player's association should be doing. Right. When the CFL put up the date for August 5th. They set up the CFL players association set on a note that essentially said, don't quit your current jobs right now, just because there's a date. That wasn't the exact wording, but it's, that was the tenor. Hey, if you've got a job right now, you should probably hold on to that because there's still so much that is uncertain here and. You're spanning six provinces to, to play the game. Each one, which has their own different health regulations. I think, I think the CFL PA doing that, and I think it's just prudent and, and the best thing for their players as opposed to. Indicative necessarily of anything that they believe about August 5th. I wanted to ask it. It came out today, you know, draft numbers. Down 20% from last year. And now I know that last year was, was one of the highest that they had had with, I believe last year was like 73,000 have watched a drought. That was the highest in many years. This year it's down 20%. I think it's like 56,000. I have in my notes for today. What does that tell you? That you know, here we are, we're getting ready. Obviously the CFL is in the news more than it's ever been with the XFL talks and everything else. And the draft numbers are still down 20%. I don't put a ton into CFL draft numbers because. One, they didn't play last year versus the NFL. I mean, the NFL draft was, oh man, here's some superstars. And this storyline about what's going to happen at number three. I think that I think the third pick. Was one, the most bet on draft pick ever who was going to go number three. And I saw someone put out online yesterday that it was more than it was gambled on the entire CFL all last year. Like number three, pick. There was incredible drama about that. Horrible, terrible idiotic Mac Jones, rumor all they love Mac Jones. What are we doing here? Let's. Let's not pretend. So I, I don't take a ton from the CFO's draft numbers cause they didn't play. And the thing is it's where the CFL gets its Canadian kids from, but you get. In truth, you get zero quarterback from there, your, your star players, aren't coming from the CFL draft. The star players in the CFL, the, the sexy positions are generally banned by AR or. Generally taken by Americans, right? So they're done through this system, their negotiation list system, which is very obscured and private. And I mean, we have our quarterbacks and we have our star receivers. It's it's interesting. I don't know if the CFL draft is ever going to be a really great big. TV event because you're not getting superstars. I think people. Can't wait to see Jomar chase back with his old college teammate in Cincinnati at number five. Oh my God, this guy's going to kill it. I think people, there are certain sector of people that go, oh man, that Jalen Phillips at 18 is going to absolutely murder some people. If he's healthy, this is going to be phenomenal right there. So Jeff, not to mention getting sunshine from, remember the Titans, that number one turns Jacksonville on its ear, right? Like there's this so much immediate impact and immediate stardom. Trevor Lawrence has been a star for three. Years already like eight at a, almost a level sports Darfur for three years already. That's who the NFL has in its draft. Our, our draft of Canadians is. Not the same, not the same. Start up Jake Burton, who went number one overall to a Hamilton out of Boston college might turn out to be a phenomenal hall of fame level CFL player, but it's just not, it just cannot possibly be as sexy as the NFL draft. So I don't take a ton from the year to year ratings of the CFL. I'm just happy to see super smart people talking about football on my TV. Again. I love it. Yeah. I mean, cause we, that's good to have your perspective and obviously we'll talk with Connor too. Cause you know, we, I see that and I'm, I'm alarmed, but that's why we bring on. You know, experts who we can ask about that because, but I mean that right. Cause you know, these narratives come about. And I don't know. I mean, the NFL had 12 million people watched the night, one of the droughts. So, I mean, it is just something that obviously is alarming to us. Well, th th just, I mean, just think about the, the picks that were, that kind of turned the whole draft. Like everybody was waiting for number three in the NFL draft, because we've been brow beaten with Mack Jones or. Justin Fields or Mac Jones or Trey Lance at that number three pick there's so great at creating the drama in that. And when, when you're in the Canadian draft, okay. We're filling our guard center guard, our field wide receiver, defensive tackle, safety, and another position. The last time, like who's the last defensive tackle that went number one overall in the NFL draft. Like, was it Dan Wilkinson back in the day? Like, it's been a long, it's been a long time. Sorry last the best of tackle. Yep. Sorry. I probably didn't hear you there. I'm trying to think of the last expensive tackle, the big ticket overall. Overall number one, it might've like it might've been Wilkinson way back in the nineties. Right? It's just the priorities for, and maybe it's a fault of the Canadian game that we would dive into if we had a full hour or two, but Canadians get shoehorned into less sexy positions in the Canadian football league. So the draft bot is. Set up to be not the viewing event that the NFL is just by the nature of how Canadians are used in the Canadian football league. Yeah. Technically it's a Myles Garrett. 2017 For the Browns. Well, he was the defensive end though. Right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's right. I'm trying to, yeah. But yeah, like defensive tackle. Isn't the sexiest position. Like if it wasn't for Aaron, Donald, or JJ watt, when he played mostly on the more on the interior. We kind of like Vince Wilfork, if Vince Wilfork, what number one of the draft we would all had? Just, just wait a bit, just raging about that. Oh my God. I can't believe this. Guy's amazing. Right? It's just not, it's not as sexy as the skilled positions. My bad, I guess. Our last question for you today. Cause like I said, I feel like we could, you. The steep dive. The Canadians. I mean, this is like, you know, all kinds of wars, but. You hear. On the show. Yeah. Covering CFL in the world, all these things, you know, all the XFL, everything. What, what do you want to see? Come from all of this ideal pie in the sky. Pie in the sky. Honestly, if I, if I had my drugs, I would love to see the CFL. Be able to continue as it is with nine teams and the hope of a 10th team out on the east coast in Halifax. I would love that to come back at around because I think COVID has really probably set Halifax back quite a while. It's what government wants to help fund a stadium in this time. I'd love to see it be attend team, all Canadian CFL with its with at least its current commitment to Canadian players. You have to have seven starting every, every game. I would love to see that continue. I would absolutely. My dream is to have it continue just the way it is, honestly, where, where we get these guys, the NFL has looked past and they become stars in our league. And I I'll tell my kids about Brian Burnham, even though Americans. May well not remember Brian Burnham. He's an American player who I just, I would step over my own mom to, to shake Brian Burnham's hand the way he plays the game. Right. That's that's. That's what I want. I want, I want Canadians. And, you know, the Canadian running back, Andrew Harrison gets in there and makes me go God, that guy didn't even go to university. He's one of us. And he's killing this league. This is fantastic. I want that. I want everything to stay exactly as it is with it. And the business people can figure out better how to, how to improve things. That said I. I don't think it can, but honestly, that would be my dream. I want every, I want every kid to grow up thinking I could play in the CFL one day. I could play for this team in green. I could be a rider. I could be like Dan Clark. I could be the next Brendan Labatt. Aye. I would love that. But then what do you think. Is going to happen then? That's a real good question. I honestly, I just believe there is some sort of. Mixture of CFL and XFL. I, I think it, I think it's coming. I don't know. I don't want to put the term merger on it or. The XFL Pac-Man eats the CFL. I it's. I just think there's some sort of mixture where the CFL. Brings it's nine dedicated fan bases to an XFL, which brings, you know, potentially attention and, and revenue. That the CFL desperately needs. I think they put, I have a wager. They put on a wager on Bodog. It was a will a CFL team played XFL team in 2022. And I, I immediately took yes, I took yet because I just. I just believe it's going to happen. I wish it didn't have to be this way. But. Money problems before the pandemic. Plus the pandemic equals a lot of options. We didn't have to consider. Before, if you're trying to save your own life, how many of your limbs are you willing to hack off to save your own life? If you, if you had gangrene poured up your arms. Well, they, they might be the. Chance they're the gangrenous body. They just got to go up. Well, okay. That was nice, but I want, I want our people, I want our Canadians as the commissioner of the CFL. I want people to experience the game that I was, I played and was drafted number two overall at, so I. I think it's, I think the CFL looks drastically different. If we talk a year from now. Very good stuff. Derek Taylor, voice of the Saskatchewan Roughriders and Horace host of the sports cage Conor O'Neill CF perspective. Joining us now to talk about the CFL draft. How's it going? Not bad guys. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me back on. I appreciate it. I told, and I told Connor offline. I sent you. We're never going to be. You have the draft analyst people. I think we need to know where our strengths, our weaknesses are. We are the mark CAS. We're going to be talking about a young rock on the show again today. So. It's good to bring on someone that has expertise. So I watched a lot of your guys' stuff on Twitch on Tuesday with, with the coverage I bounced around and watched. Couple of different streams, but as it Connor, we got to get you on a and talk about the draft. So thank you so much. Oh, no, I appreciate you guys tuning in though. Is, it was fun to do. We, we figured, you know, TSN kind of didn't they covered the first two rounds usually every year. So we were like, you know what? Like we study this thing like year round as do those guys. No, no. No knock on them, but we're like, we study this in year round. Why don't we take a crack at it and do something on Twitter? So, so that was a lot of fun and it was, it was fun to do as a fun night, a lot of surprises too. Yeah, I, you said, I messaged you. You said wild night. Wild, crazy drafts. So I've like takeaways. Overarching first off before we dive in too much. Yeah, it just, it really didn't go as expected. Like last year too, it was kind of. A little bit of more of a wild wild year too. I mean, A lot of the times you can usually say, okay, here's like kind of where we think the CFL draft is going to go. And a lot of times it does, but these past two years, I've just ripped up and burned my mock drafts. As soon as the picks come in, I'm just like, yeah, no, this one's, this one's going to be fun. So I'll do it on the five, but it was, it was fun. There was a lot of, a lot, a lot of unexpectancy I should say. Wait, wait. So I have here, you know, obviously Jake Burke. Burt goes first. Was that, were you anticipating that to Hamilton? What was kind of the reaction to that? I mean, does it, does the prestigious, like the number one CFL draft pick, does that carry weight? Like in the NFL where you're out by Trevor warrants, number one, like that's going to be huge. It does. But the funny thing with the, before I get into Jake Burr, the funny thing with the CFL draft it's a lot of the time teams are drafting for futures. And more so than ever this year too, because we didn't get a CFL season. So we still have a 20, 20 class coming in as well. Now on top of that, we have this, or, sorry, I should say 2019 class, 2020 now coming into 2020, 20, 21. So we've got two rookie classes going into a rookie camp. And a lot of these guys do to have the option to go back. Even the American guys, you know, we saw guys like Deshaun Stevens out of Maine. He got drafted high, but he's transferring. So he's going to go back and put another year down on tape. The CFL draft more so than the NFL draft is about securing these guys for futures and special teams. A lot. These is where these guys are gonna crack. Rosters is special teams. Now the exception is Jake Burt here. I didn't see him going. Number one. I think people did as the draft. Started to close in, but I was really pat down on Hamilton getting a defensive lineman, but the pickier for Jake bird, I mean, I get what they're doing. Jake Bert has been in an NFL camp. He's huge. He's six three, two 60. And he's going to be a guy that's going to come into Hamilton and play. Now he is breaking the rule or the he's the exception to the rule of drafting the future. Hamilton went out and said, yeah, we're going to draft a guy that's going to play right now. But they do have a guy like Nicole, Nicholas. [Unknown] choose a similar role to Jake Bert. So that was kind of head-scratching but Jake bird. Like when you watch him on tape he's he's undeniable. I think he's going to contribute right away, especially in some, some heavy packages and things of that nature. And the cool thing about Jake brute too, is he's the first ever listed tight end to be drafted. Number one overall in. In the CFL draft. So he's the first, first time a tight end has gone one. Interesting. Oh, sorry, Paul, go ahead. Well, first, first things first up, do you think overall that people address the needs that they had? Yeah, I think a lot of these teams did Ottawa. They, they did. Sort of, they had a really good first half kind of fell apart in the back half, but there was a lot of teams like this was a year where you look at the draft and you're like teams, teams had. Two years now to evaluate a tape on these guys, especially well for youth sports guys, I'm speaking of, but so they had two years to study these guys tape. Then they go in and they get a there's some very good NCAA talent drafted as well. So I think between the youth sports talent and kind of the CFL draft is really regionalized. So you see, you see a lot of Montreal guys going to Montreal, they address their needs there, but yeah, a lot of these teams did whatever they needed, whether it be linebackers, DBS, offensive linemen, they kind of fell to the teams that they needed to. Are there teams that you are more excited about now having gone through Tuesday night, specifically? How, how is Edmonton looking now? As I have a vested interest. I wrote down two teams that I really loved their draft. Edmonton was one of them. I loved Edmonton's draft right off the hop. It was a surprise pick weighed myself. My co-host on, on CFP. We had this guy nailed, like we thought he was going to go high. We just didn't think he was going to go first round high. But when you look at this guy, he's a six foot, five offensive or six foot five defensive lineman, three 12 ran a four, nine 40 at six five, three 12. It tested off the charts in Edmondson has two really, really good defensive ends. In Quaker boats, Ang and mats, you bets and Cole Nelson is going to be, this guy is going to come in and play. We call it three tack here, be your nose tackle down there. He's going to come in and play nose, tackle D tackle. And he's really gonna, you know, eat some double teams, triple teams and free up these really good edge rushers that Edmonton has. So I think Edmonton. With Cole Nelson. I think Cole Nelson, depending on what, whether he wants to go back to Alberta or whether he wants to kind of make a run out of CFL camp this year. I think he could be an impact player. I don't know if we'll see it, but I certainly love Cole Nelson's game and what he's going to do for the future of the edge guys in Edmonton. They were the linebacker in grant McDonald. Six foot three linebacker, random four or five 40. Speed. Speed. Speed. And a phenomenal linebacker at the Calgary university program who just won the Canadian national championship in 2019. Deontay Glover or running back in the third round at a shepherd. D two program. He had like over 2000 yards on the season, so phenomenal product in him. Peter Cortez, big offensive lineman, six foot five, 300 pounder. Another nice addition there on the line and then Keenan Clark at DB out of Cornell. Who had a couple of interceptions. And he's pretty, pretty speedy as well. So I loved Edmonton's draft. And what was the second team that you had written down there? I I'm staying in the west. It was the BC lions. So they went with a defensive lineman right away. I really thought they were going to go get a guy like Ben [unknown], who was a linebacker from UBC. A six foot, four linebacker, 29 rent bench it a four, you know, four, one seven shadow. So his lateral movement is insane. But I think teams are a little bit, when you hear big linebacker, it's like, how does he move? Just, just watch this day be moves just fine. I think it was a steal at three 22 for him, but Daniel Joseph in the first round and NC state address. Or who I believe he is going back, but again, you know, he's going to go back and play division one. Football is going to develop a lot more and then he's going to be able to step in and make an impact. In BC Alarick Jackson, the four year starter out of Iowa. They picked him up in the second round. I wasn't as high on him as everybody else, but you know, he went in the second round for a reason. He's huge. He moves well, Alfred green, a defensive lineman from Laurie. Laurie Laurie, a defensive lineman just translate to the CFL. They just, they just do. I don't know why. They have a damn good defensive lineman coach down there and a great program. So quake Kubota. Tang, the addressor for, for Edmondson actually is a L'Oreal grad. And then they rounded it out with Tyler packer from Calgary six, six, three 15, offense alignment. So size to protect Mike Riley, who was one of the most hit quarterbacks in the CFL in 2019. So they needed to address that and they did. Plus getting some defensive help too. How do, how do they balance it? And we're, you know, coming into all this in, in, in, especially with the COVID year and we have two years now in the back. You know, you feel like there is. It's like a backup of all this talent. Right. And then some can go back to the states and some are playing now and then some. You know, I was trying to make sense. TSN had far Hawn on and he was talking about how, you know, like you were saying, some of the players they're stashing them for later. Some of 'em they're gonna just hang. I mean, how do you balance it? It just seems like it's a lot more, you know, NFL, like Trevor Lawrence is starting, you know, September, whatever. How do you balance that and how do you fans work through that? It's tough. A lot of these guys are going to go back. You're right. With the NFL. You. Trevor Lawrence, Zach Wilson. They're going there. Those are your starting quarterbacks. And then when you get these guys drafted in the CFL, you know, a guy like Cole Nelson, he might go back a guy like Daniel, Joseph, he's definitely going back. So you're not going to see these guys necessarily right away. There are going to be some oddities. I mean, guys show up in camp and they just ball and that's that's end of story. There was a guy out of Western university here in Ontario. They're one of the. The premier programs in Canada raised their stopeth. He was a, one of the top defensive players coming out of Canada, went high in the CFL draft. Had a heck of a camp and he stuck around on specials. So, you know, You. Bands that really follow the CFL draft and really love the CFL draft Fraser. So big cracks, a roster. And they see that and they love that. But the average fan, right? Like, doesn't matter what league you're in, whether it's, you know, use sports, NCAA, CFL, XFL, NFL, spring league. You're. How often do you pay attention to a teamer? It's it's not often. But for these guys, special teams is the way to crack a roster. So maybe not right now, you know, first two, three years. You know, He's not. A known player, cause he's just playing gunner on, on punt. But you get a guy who then cracks the roster, works his way in, whether it be through play or through injuries, circumstances happen. Like he knocked Mwamba who is in Montreal and now in Toronto. Stuck around stuck around and stuck around crack the team through special teams. They kind of had a neat out line backer. He filled it all of a sudden he's a Canadian starter on your team and he's one of the most recognizable players in Montreal. So it just, it takes longer for these guys to develop. And, you know, I think Canadian bands recognize that a little bit because guys do go back and they have to develop, and then it takes them a little bit to develop when they're in the CFL, because there's so much because we can then go pull from the American town full. Right. So those guys often like a Jake Burke. You know, if he didn't get drafted, he was getting signed and played right away. So he steps in and he takes over a role. And, you know, fans know him from day one. So it's a little bit tougher, but. I think fans realize it here. So. That you broke it. You've broken down to teams. Who is kind of that. Those last players pick that you think will have the biggest impact, maybe one or two. Like a Tom Brady type, you know? Oh, I'm not saying that you're the CFL's version of Tom Brady, but one of those late, late, late picks sixth round that you think. Is going to make is going to make waves. Okay, so you want lay and I'm going to go really late. How about the last pick in the CFL draft? I'm going with the last guy off the board. Miles Manilow a linebacker from the university of Western. I'm going to bring them up again. I know they're, they're, Canada's like favorite team to hate on, but they just put pros into the league. Like they're like the Alabama up here every year. It's like, oh yeah, they won their conference out. Yeah. They're going to the national championship. So. They're they're pretty good program, but miles Mandela was a linebacker. They're six foot, two, 230 pound linebacker. And we actually found this guy's tape of evaluating an offensive Lyman's tape. So Bryce bell, the 11th pick in the S in the CFL draft, Laurie, a offensive lineman, big, big guy. We found mild Manilow because he was coming on a B gap blitz. Bryce bell kind of met him in the hole. And miles Manilow blew Brice bell up, drove him back, got to the quarterback, made the play, and we kind of were sitting there going, oh, who's this guy. And then we started watching his tape more and more and more. And miles man, a little like a Fraser soaping. I think he has that special team's ability to special teams, size defensive players. I mean, they just loved to run down field and hit people. And that's what special teams is, right? Like kickoff in the CFL. You gotta run it out or you're giving up the one point. So. Hey miles, go run down the field and hit that guy as hard as he can and just get hot to ball. So. Did you, did you track any of the Canadian players that were in the NFL draft from last week? I did. Yeah. So Javan Holland. I'm you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna admit this on air. I'm I'm a Detroit lions fan. And so sitting in the second round, I'm sitting there going, Hey, Detroit's a DV needy team, Javan Hollins, still on the board. He's coming up DB out of Oregon. Unfortunately, he goes to Miami. Not unfortunately for him. I'd rather play in Miami than Detroit. No questions. So Javan Holland. He went high and I think he's going to make a difference. Another DB, Benjamin St. Joe's the Montreal native out of Minnesota. He went. I believe you went in the third or fourth round as well. Or I have my notes here that we're going to talk. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. Yeah. Third round and then a guy like Josh, Josh. Or another Playmaker. So yeah, there was, there was a lot of a lot, I think there is. Including UDFI signings. I believe there was eight Canadian. Eight Canadian signed or drafted two NFL teams this year, which is awesome to see. And Javan Holland was the highest Canadian drafted in I believe, Canadian draft history. So that was awesome to see as well. Yeah, I think Detroit. I think they're working on something this year. I believe in Dan Campbell. I watch a lot of good morning football and they're very, they were talking about their, their line that they drafted and all these guys like 300 pounds and they said, they're going to be. They're definitely building a, a culture down there that I think is going to be good. I don't want to get too out of myself. I say this every year and I get the point disappointed every year. But I think this is the first year I can actually say I'm excited to watch them. Detroit lions football. So now, you know, we're, we're through the CFL draft, you know, we're getting, you know, August 5th. Are we in a waiting game now until June to kind of figure out what happens with training camps and things, or what are you guys working on in the meantime? I think so. I think we're just kind of waiting for a start date at this point. I mean, the draft going forth to me. It indicates that they're doing everything they can behind the scenes to get, to get something going. As far as I've heard, they're trying to push for a start date. I believe. Maybe August training camps probably end of July is what I would, I don't know that, but that's just kind of what I would expect based on the arc of, of where it's going right now. But there was the, the message from the commissioner. We are going to have a season. I know you said a, I know you said a lot of things, but I, I think he's working hard. He wants to see football. Just as much as, you know, The fans do I believe at this point, whether it's, you know, for financial reasons or getting players on the field, but we want to see some football up here. He recognizes that, but camps, the draft indicates to me camps are gonna happen. Guys, keep signing, which indicates to me it's going to happen. I mean, Toronto just went out and signed their second overall pick last or yesterday. Sorry, I should say deja. [Unknown] the wide. He ran out of Virginia. He got drafted high last year. They signed him this week. So they're not signing them for no reason. What realistically, what do you think? What do you think we're looking at total games wise? Is it going to be the 13, 14, 15, or maybe a nine? I think they're going to do, I think 13. I don't know. It's tough to say 13, 14, 15 is what I want to say. Really though. I mean, a December gray cup is not that unrealistic. I mean, We play well in an NOV anyways, it's a couple of weeks later. Yeah. It's going to be a little bit colder, but still Hamilton is not like relative to some of the other studies in Ontario. Like you're not playing north in Montreal. You're not playing north and Ottawa. I mean, it's snowed in November. It's going to snow in December. It's relatively the same weather. I would say. I mean, BC would obviously be the. You know, they'd be the ideal choice because they have the dome out there, but Hamilton won the bid. It's going to be hosted in Hamilton. I think we're going to see a December grey cup. I thought I saw someone just tweeted about it. Just know there was a dusting of snow somewhere in April or may. And I was like, okay, see then we're not going to win. I mean, You know, cause we're talking February XFL. I'm like, okay, well, if it's snowing in may, we're never going to win anything. So like we just, at some point you gotta put the jacket on. I guess. I don't know. I lose patience at that point. Unfortunately, I was part of that snow. That was an Eastern Ontario Ottawa. So I got hit hard with that. That was awesome. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, it was that just this week, it snowed. It was, it was the past weekend, the weekend, just like the weekend weekend to the NFL draft. I was watching the NFL draft and it was snowing. I was like, this is, this is fitting in Canada. Wow. Conor O'Neill CF perspective. Thanks for joining us. Talking about the CFL draft. We'll look to have you on. Hopefully as the season draws closer. Awesome. Thank you guys so much. It's a lot of fun. Love talking. I love talking with you guys. So. We really, yeah. We appreciate the experts and, and expertise and analysis. So thank you very much. We have some XFL news to report now that we are just the mark cast. We were just the mark assets covering the other football leagues. I still Paul, my, my AirPods max. I didn't charge him overnight. So I just got the Dingle that they are low on battery. So if at some point in the shell, I just can't hear you. We'll have to figure out a solution. So anyway, This, this came out. I in a different world, maybe this would lead the show. A nailer. Was on. I don't know why he, I mean, he's on everything now. I love Dave Naylor, but he was talking about. They they're committees, basically. There's different committees coming together. He feels in his herd. I involving the CFL and exit foul, including Dwayne looking at different areas, trying to stay in the business and see what benefits there are. How does this going to affect everything? He, the long story short is he's really not thinking till 2023, Mike Mitchell has talked about that. Naylor says based on my conversations, I think there's a strong likelihood. If they were to come together, we're talking about 20, 23, just looking at where we are on the calendar. What do you think? Completely agree. Completely agree. I mean, this is just like, I think like, like we've all suspected that there's been long talks going on, you know, and. We do have some inside sources now that are plugged into the Canadian side of things that, that have told both us things off the record that, you know, That this XFL thing, you know, kicking off in 2023. Makes sense. When you, when you, when you really think about it, so. I think we're just waiting to see what happens. With a CFL season and see how, how, how it plays out and then how potentially the XFL. Builds a partnership there because I think it's, I think it's inevitable. I will say, and I w I'm actually, we didn't, this is on the show, but I, I played devil's advocate for Mark Perry this week, mark on his podcast now. You know, we can review XL needs to have, it has gone back and, you know, I've always heard and believe it's one league, one rule book. I don't know what that, any of that looks like, but that's what I believe mark has backtracked now and he thinks it it's. That you know, they're going to work on business like, oh, they're going to slot business ideas. I go mark. What does that mean? I get every now and. It's not just mark. Like I get a lot of people like, okay, well, they're not, they're just going to work on business stuff. What does that mean? I don't know what that means. I don't know what that looks like. The CFL is nine a mix-match of all these teams, some owners, some public, like, what does that mean? The XFL is going to help the CFL with business. Is it money then? It's a merger. If it's not, then it's not, but there's no, like, we're going to give them our social media analytics and help them figure out their like Google ads. Like that's not, what does that mean? You're not getting anything for free CFL. Like you're not, you're not even if you did, what does that look like? What does that. It's like defining what help with business means. I'm just so fresh and it wasn't just with mark. I'm like, I'm just, I hear that a lot. Like, well, they're just going to help business. I don't know what that means. Be specific. That's what you want. You want, you want a deeper, contextual, contextual meeting in, in what business really means is a marketing. Is it, you know, Yeah. I don't know what that looks like. I mean, yeah. Okay. To have the rock, you're gonna have the rock retweet it. I. I mean, is that I just don't know. We have, would not have gone from October till now, if they are not merging and doing something. I mean, like, this is just crazy talk. Now they wouldn't put the extra fat, they wouldn't do all this stuff just to like, Have the rock come on and do some commercials or what any other machinations you can think of? Like, I mean, I don't think they took the XFL, his call. That's all you need to know. So that's just where I'm at. Anyway, I played devil's advocate with mark. I was like, he, mark says, he's going to talk about it next week on the show. I said, I want to know, I hear a business they're going to help with business. What does that mean? Speaking of a business. We, I tried to help them. Paul, I gave them, we tried to get them on the show and now we know why. Yep. Apparently. Doug Flutie is maximum football. The only Canadian football game has ceased operations. David winter, the founder of the company said as of this time, and as many of guests development of the titles, And been suspended. And the company itself has been put on hiatus. Unfortunate, very unfortunate. I can't. Download it anymore. I assume they'll be with. You also said that the studio and the IP is being offered out for sale. So would you like to invest in Doug Flutie? Maybe we could. Maybe we could. That could be our next venture. It could be a Canadian video game. Possibly. So something to think about. I just, we, I tried to get them on the shell. I wanted to get Doug Flutie on the show. I would love to have. On the show. There you go. Another Boston college kid that went to the CFL to play like Mr. What's his name? Jake bird. Yup. Yup. Yup. Here is some now. Okay. We're past all this. This is kind of inside jury stuff now. Listener max, but a lot of this together, we have a lot of different red birdie things. So we're talking about like, what can XFL bring? It's not just hearing sounds for at birth. So. And this will affect you because you're in New York. I know you don't like the Mets, but the others. The former owners had the York managed to exploring the sale of S Y N, which is the team's regional sports network. Huh. As N Y. That S Y N S I am. Yes. And so. Steve Cohen who owns the team now? Right? Okay. He is looking at potentially selling this to the yes. Network that includes Sinclair and Redbird capital. What do you think about Redbird buying into the New York Mets? Expanding their reach that way. That's interesting because you know, Redbirds tied up with a family group too. So it's, that's, that's an interesting thing. And. I think, I think what he's doing to Cohen is not necessarily the yes. Network is not necessarily going to. Maybe by S N Y but maybe consult Cohen on how to make it all happen. Yes network, of course is the home of the New York Yankees, the 27 time world champion. Franchise the dynasty, the, the, the gold standard for all baseball teams. The only team that should be wearing pinstripes. So yeah, I know I'm going there. So I think, you know, I think it makes sense that that Cohen owns SNY as well as the man. It's just like the, well pond's dead. Because ends. SNY has been very, it's always very pro Mads. It's never, it's very Homerage in that sense. It very, it very much. Drafts that way. Sometimes every once in a while. You'll see. You'll see. S N Y defend some stuff that the Yankees get, get accused of, like the cheating thing. Andy Martinez been a big, big defender of Yankees. The Yankees and, and the letter that apparently is coming out anyway, long story short. I think this, this, this just makes sense. That Cohen does by S N Y S N Y and keeps it. Mets type of station, but anyway, he's talking with rubber and rubber, they own a part of the red Sox network too. Right. I mean, that's probably their Fenway thing, but they own NESN. How many of these, like regional baseball, isn't baseball struggling for like viewers? Why do we have all these little networks? Like, no, no. Despite what you might've heard on. Mark's podcast. Baseball's not hurting at all. Like it, people do still care about I'm very much a baseball guy. Like people still do care about baseball and. Yeah, I, this makes sense. You know, like for example, the, the, the announcement that came that NBC sports network. Was shutting down. That was the national sports network. There are still plenty of regional sports networks that are still. Going on. Our friend Kaseem, you know, Caseen he works for NBC sports network, just in the bay area. And they are still, they're still going strong covering the Oakland athletics. So I think the regional sports model that's, you know, that was a smart thing for Sinclair to buy up when the Fox merger happened with Disney. I another thing, this elixir max out, LeBron James, who is involved with rubber in the family group. He is investing in a Spanish soccer team. He's they're already involved with Liverpool and French club to lose. And now he is going with the. The shares of Malaga CF. Okay. Do you know, Malaga CF, I don't. Well, they are, apparently I used to be like the premier Spanish. Do is it during the past few years, the team was managed by Cub president, Jose Munez. During this time he made all sorts of efforts to get the team back kind of into the mainstream, but they have been. I guess they used to be more premiere and now they have kind of gone down. And the idea is that. Potentially. The theory would be, is that. LeBron and rubbery, maybe buying in to kind of bolster, similarly looking at the CFL, you know, some things that maybe could have gotten better. But it is interesting that they're involved. The I know there was the whole super league thing came out and they were at Liverpool. I mean, do you have any thoughts about LeBron Redbird? Fenway can kind of continuing to expand their growth. I think what's what's happening is you're seeing a lot of like soccer clubs. They're they're supporters. Pushing back against these big owners coming in and taking over their clubs, especially I think it was either. It was a man city or it was, I think it was man city. This last week, the supporters got really up in arms and protested and stuff like that. So, I don't know if this is a good thing, but. It's it's going to be interesting to see. And Redbird capital. I mean, they have their, their hands in. And Liverpool as well. So it's just. Big companies, big corporations, seeing a chance to hop on these things and buy them up. Yeah. It's Spanish. The media has been set up lays by this. They're looking at areas a very jocular tone by the excited. So anyway, so I just thought it was interesting. I'll last a little bit here from Redbird, Danny Garcia launched a new women's lifestyle collection. What I wanted to talk about this. I don't, you know, this is great and they're trying to impassion women, and I think it's like upscale, workout, wear whatever. My takeaway was wait. So Danny Garcia never on the women's fashion line before. Right. I mean. Certainly something that with, with money and, and expertise, and you can bring in professionals and help you do that. According to some people. She's just going to fail. I don't know why she does this. Some people in Canada. Thanks. She's just going to fail. Yeah. Anyway, I, this is just, you know, adding to her portfolio. I she's the owner of the XFL Vos, Terra, Monta, tequila, salt and straw project rock. Zola. I mean, it's. The, these are smart business people and this idea of like, well, what is the rock or the, any nail about running the sports league? They're going to hire someone. That's just that's it. Dummy dumb. Everything they touch turns to gold. Yeah. If you would've, if you would've told me at the end of season one, we were going to get a season two of young rock. I would have laughed. I didn't think that it was, I didn't think that that, that, that they would have the kind of viewers they've had and they proved me wrong once again. So maybe. Maybe we should start talking about it here on the, on the Mark House. I don't know. We'll tie, right? Yeah. Just a couple last notes. Panthers with PJ Walker, they have picked up Darnell's fifth year option. So they are sticking with Darnold. You know, I know we went through the draft and. We traded Bridgewater. You know, I hope that PJ, could this be the backup there and make, you know, a couple of million a year and. I think that sounds fine. Washington, this is kind of a wide receiver. Jeff bidet. He was with the Washington football team may cut him. He was formerly with the renegades. I think that's going to happen a lot right now, now that we have the new class and the new draft guys and the new, whatever. I think you're going to L you. You know, And that was like taboo was with a, he was with the chiefs and then he was with the lions and then he was back with the cheesy and we're going to, that's going to happen a lot right now, a lot. XFL guys. And then you guys talking about Scott daily, daily, daily, former. Former XFL long snapper. What team was he with? Oh, you didn't include that. There. Scott daily, long snapper, which is a very, very, very particular skill position. I'm signed to a contract from the Detroit lions. So Connor might be happy about that. Conor O'Neill you're a guardians. No we're guardians. Okay. The Gordy as mark would say, the guardians, the. So maybe Connor might be happy about that because the long snapper is a very precise position. So. Good luck to you, Scott. All right, so let's take it to the break. Go to the commercials. Listen to these people. Come back. We'll talk about the spring league as much as we can right here on the mark cast. Hmm. And we're back. You'll be. You'll be happy to know. You'll be happy to know. This is the first week we don't have any fingers off football news. Right. They tweeted someone tweeted a photo of like the team back together. And it was like Patrick D sitting on the couch and a couple other people. But you will be happy to know there's no, I do continue to post though. There's been a lot of fingernail football guys, Deandre Francoise among them. That are going to the spring league. And every time that they post online, I share a seraphs. Tweet where he calls the spring league. Now the real league. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I mean, here's the deal. A lot of these players are going between all the leagues. Like that's why they're it does no good to like for Sohrob to crap on spring league. I, Brian, you know, Brian was jokingly crapping on fan controlled football, but I don't think it was like a serious. You know, jab. I think you need to be all these leagues because these players are going between all of them. I mean, look, you know, Matt mangle spring league went to the CFL XFL guys, you know, got, I mean, this is, it's just like assess pool. But this cattiness is ridiculous. It's ridiculous. So Eric Dungey pulling out of spring league. He has been invited to the bangles mini camp. This just came out today. Yeah, it just came out this morning and spring lake came out, wished him, well, he was going to be one of the. He was going to be one of the QBs. We already talked about the lack of coverage. They tweeted the rosters. We kind of did all that stuff. Spring league. Announced the announcers and it's a lot of guys brought cure this back. Joel Klatt is back. It's a lot of people that did extra valley steps. So people are excited about that. Do any of those names strike you? They don't. Petros. It brought cure. I mean that, that that's exciting. I mean, we, we know Brock and he was definitely with the dragons and stuff, covering that. It. And not a lot. I mean, here's the deal. Hasn't been a lot coming out about this spring lake. Hasn't been a lot of. Like I said, just like, I would do anything for one of these leagues. I own the video production company and I don't, but like hire somebody to like one guy or a girl and the videographer and go and like, You could do 18 videos a day and just like get the guys at camp and get them after camp. And like, I will say fangirl football really did a good job. It didn't translate to the viewers. You know, with the 50,000, you know, per game, but like, They really did a good job and I give them all the credit in the world. Now seeing how the spring league has followed up, where is wide open right now? There's no CFL. There's no fan control. There's no anything. Spring league kicks off tonight and I think it could not be colder right now if they had tried. They, you. They should've done something. They should have, they should have come on. At least someone else. Even if it was Brian again. I don't care. Someone. I don't care. I gave him a good guys. I had a good wishlist. I had, I had it all planned out. We had the whole show going and then they didn't want to do it. So the games tonight, Yeah. As recorded, the alphas were playing the aviators conquers alignment. There's a game tonight. As you listen to this, the sea lions are playing the blues at nine 30 Eastern on Fs one, and then Saturday's going to be the big one with the generals and the gestures. Neil, we're going to play a game. Adjusters are gonna play a game. This is the time the Jazzers are playing. Yeah. Anyway, so the games are kind of weird. I was looking on their website. There's like a Monday game listed. I don't. Yeah. XFL news hub did a good job of listing all the games, but I don't. I would just check your, like I'm on YouTube TV and you can just subscribe to the spring league and they're all on there. That would be how I would best do that. All right. With the spring league being talked about right now, it's time to open that box. This is exactly. See what happened here. All right. What do you. Are you nervous? A little bit, but I'm nervous. I think it's going to be on brand no matter what I'm really in there, there was a, there was a tab or the tab go. Where are the ha there was by the way. There you go right here. Another thing coming by the way. I just sent you the information on that. So we'll talk about that next week. Okay. Ah, here we go. If you're listening to this, make sure you check out the YouTube. Natural sound. All right. Here we go. I'm nervous. I'm really nervous. I kind of want to close. We're not going to be happy. We're so not going to be happy. No, we're not going to be happy. Nope. Nope. Nope. Well, we might, well, some of our listeners might be happy though. Nope. Nope. Well, Paul. I tell you, we got. No jerseys. We got two t-shirts. What sizes are the t-shirts. We have a large and. I assume a large, probably two largest. So one of them would be big on you. And one of them will be small on me. I mean, they're, they're just, I. Oh, I wanted was the Jersey. That's all I've wanted for nine months. Are we giving those things away then? I think we're well, we were. Can we see them? Can you see them? No, you've got to like backwards, not the white. One's fine. The dark ones, not fine. It's. Yep. There we go. Guys. Just give us your designs and we'll put them up on that. We'll put a little mark, mark cast. Website and you can make some revenue that way. I don't know. I'm so disappointed. Can we just include those in the giveaway. We'll figure out a good giveaway for those we hasn't spring lake. If you guys, if you want. Yeah, I don't, I don't want a t-shirt. So if you guys want the gestures merge. We'll figure it out. So tweet me some ideas at the mark ass on Twitter, or you can email us. The Mar we have a new email to mark has podcasts@gmail.com. So you can email and give me some ideas. Let's do a giveaway. We got to get some subscribers up. So I figured that out. I, yeah, super disappointed. Here's what we'll do then let's get the subscriber count up to 1500. We're two 50 away. Okay. Let's give it to 1500. We'll go. Those two shirts away. To someone I like that. Do that would, that being said, we thank you for listening again. P**s poor way to end this show. Wow. I knew the second I, the second I felt that box, I go, this is not good. I knew. Knew it wasn't you really wanted the Jersey. I know. How hard, how it's like, I thought he was going to send a helmet to didn't even. Brian you're you took the time to mail the thing you took the time to mail the package and you couldn't send a Jersey. I'm stunned. Why don't you. Don't send it. I have no idea. Wild. Wild crazy ending. Then he wouldn't when didn't see that coming. All right. One of the things I'm ready for listening. Hopefully this doesn't this end of the show. Doesn't like dissuade you from listening next week. And hopefully next week we'll have someone to come on and talk about the spring league. Cross our fingers. We'll see. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you next week. I'm. It dead to me. No. I feel like a robot talking right now and I don't know how to end this episode, so we're just going to end it right now. Yeah.

Episode 38 - Reid Picks His CFL Team!

It's Friday. That's right. Which means. XFL mark cast. Or the mark cast is we're kind of calling ourselves now the mark cast so that we feel a little bit more. Inclined to talk about things, not just related to the XFL. When I, you know, when, when the, when the critique is, we're not gonna listen to you because you're in the XFL podcast. That. Am I grabbing Piper when you change the questions I changed the answer is there. Is that guy like. Just when you think you have the answers, I changed the questions. We're not even the next. Cast anymore. Come on. Come on. No. But seriously, cause I'm like guys, we're, we're covering you. We got 50 minutes to CFL reporter stuff already here. We've got as spring league. Yeah, we're going to get those interviews set up. So I, yes, we are. It is the mark Cass. I don't want to do all the changing right now with SEO stuff, but I do think it's the mark Katz from that line. I think that's where we're going. Do we keep the X in it just. I'm not am. Am I saying, I make Vico. Our designer hate us by changing the logo. Again. I think we stick with this. Maybe we just irritate the Canadians a little bit more and put a C. See you there instead of an actress, I would really get on their nerves. Wouldn't it. That would be, I've got my, my Zella. We're going here. Oh, by the way. What you sent me, had sugar in it. So I'm taking it to work. You know, cause I don't drink sugar. It's. The diabetes thing, but I drink diet soda, which is just as bad. I know. No, I, my body is clearly not my temple on this one. So are your coworkers. Are they friendlier with you now that you're giving them free Zilla at work? I haven't dropped it off yet. I'm going to do it Friday. So. There you go, it's going to drop the case there and be like, eh, You want an energy drink? There you go. So we'll see you we'll see how maybe they'll get wired. Just like you do every time you have one of those things. It is. I have my one a day and now it's my one a day. And it's like my. I don't smoke. I don't chat out. Your Cinco does. Cigar is I don't have my cigar. This is my one a day. Okay. So good. What do you want to start with? Do you want to talk about who we're talking about? How like, We're kind of getting there's, there's a little people that are a little mad with us online about our, you know, CFL batter. Like, we're not trying to be negative about the league. Like. That's never been our goal. Like we want. The CFL. To succeed. We want the XFL to succeed. If they do it together. Great. If they don't great, but as long as they succeed, that's all we've ever wanted. Yeah, I a little bit this week, all the negativity, you know, merger talks, we don't know what's going on a little CFL XFL. My only takeaway is. You know, I don't want to be lumped in that you can laugh and you can do what you want with whatever. I think we have now put in the work too. Have our own opinions on things. And the one comment I had was we, when we announced it, Dan and Rob were coming on the show. As. They someone retweet and they go, well, you should tell a mark with news hub. The, he should have more, you know, get more Canadian guests on and you guys need to educate, you know, you gotta educate, figure out about our game. And I said, nah, that's fair. But I said, I haven't seen a lot of CFF podcasts reaching down south to talk to anybody. I mean, it's not like my door is blowing off the hook. And not that you know, okay, we'll read, we don't care what you have to say, but like, you know, Mike Mitchell, I, you know, our, our XFL insider and, you know, I know people joke, what is the XFL, whatever. But I'm just saying like respect and learning works both ways. And I feel like. I see a lot of staff from up north criticizing, you know, rightfully so Americans and whatever, but I have just not seen a lot of reaching out from the north down south. That's all I want to say on that. Okay. Everybody's getting a giveaway stuff on a positive note. I saw a lot of stuff going out. A lot of people, you know, tweeting photos with our giveaway stuff. So we appreciate that we're growing rapidly. What did we say our next number was that we're going to do. Another giveaway. What was it? 2,500. So we, we added literally 50 subscribers yesterday, so thank you guys all so much. For coming on. You know, please subscribe. Doesn't cost you. A penny really helps us out with the numbers. Thank you all so much. Yes, please. Like, and subscribe. We I'm going to post all the photos right now. I know that. Well, we already posted Janet got her football. Maybe I'll post that again, but then I know that Philip got his hat and Yon got his Jersey. Mark got his hat. And then I'm waiting listener. Max. He's too busy doing his study in the college. Doesn't have time to send in a photo, but I will say here's this, here's a breaking news. Shipping logistics prevented us from getting one of our hats to one of our listeners. They're fine with it. We, you know, we're all taught. I have a hat in a box. Ready to go. It's all taped up. Ready to go. So if you go to XFL show.com/review and leave us a review today, it doesn't cost again. Doesn't cost you anything. Send me either tweet me of the photo at XFL mark on Twitter, or you can email XFL, mark Asad, gmail.com. If you don't have Twitter. I'm going to take one of those and I'll, I'll send you the hat. So if you send me a review of this week, I'll do a hat. You will do a giveaway next week for that. So it's already boxed up. It's ready to go. So you can have it lickety split. It's a really nice one. It's a flat brim, whatever. It's a really nice hat. So please XFL show.com/review. If you want to be included in that giveaway. Nope. Speaking of packages. You've got spring, late spring league package coming. This yesterday. My email, this Paula, this. This delighted, this delighted. I got an email. Long time listeners. It's shallow now. Back in November of last year, Brian Woods CEO of the spring league promised us Jasper's merchandise. Yesterday, I just came home from work. I got an email from FedEx. Shipping package in route from the spring league. And from Houston to Seattle and I was texting or I was not texting and I don't. Right with that. I was emailing Brian today about things and he goes, ah, [unknown]. Merge in route. So it was speculated and now confirmed. The job. There's emergencies coming. We should have it on Monday. I believe. So. We will have an unboxing on the show next week. Very, very excited for that. I know you've been waiting for this for as long as we've probably been doing the podcast. So. Wow. They finally got around to giving it to you. Yeah. Also my, my hat, we gotta talk about this hat. We got our new brand new hats in the store. We've we've had, we had those hats. You were like, I don't want to have those hats cause the other podcast has those hats, but now we added those hats. So we'll. No, we made the big logo. It's all perfectly embroidered. I've got a couple we're going to change our shipping so we can get a hats to rod Peterson up in Canada. And no more digitization fees. We're not going to change anything else, but I have, I bought a couple more hats for me, and then that'd be a XFL dot. XFL show that concepts merge. And that rod has guy, Rod's going to get his, and if you want to support it, they're really nice ads. It's a nice flex fit. And we got that. So. Very cool. Big news. The top of the show here. This is the most anticipated thing I posted all week. Yeah. You're picking the CFL team. I already picked mine. Gone on Twitter and then made that public. There was no. There was no suspense. So Rita's picked us too. Yeah. W, why don't you talk about your team first? I picked Toronto because while overwhelmingly everybody is. He was like, you should pick Toronto. And I liked the color scheme and everything like that. And. I think it was, it was more or less. And now I'm kind of getting some grief because people like, oh, MLSE you. That whole thing. And I'm like, oh, I get it now. You know, I'm I'm, I'm a Yankees fan. So it kind of made sense that I picked, I guess, kind of the Yankees of, you know, The CFL. So, and. You know, got a lot of. That a lot of people kind of pushing me that direction too. It was between, it was, it was honestly between Toronto or BC actually. BC because of that west coast. Yeah. Yeah, I see. I see you as a boatmen. I see that. I see, I like the. Yeah. And also you're trying to tear apart the CFL. That worked out very ugly. The you have the, are gonna lead your team. Right now, people are going to think I'm really trying to tear apart the CFL. I know, I, I put a lot of thought into this. I've heard a lot about into this and it was really funny. So I, I purchased the merge the other night and I tweeted it out. And I guess that, that the supplier, because of course the CFL didn't salvage hat in the size that I wanted, it was out of stock. So that tells you anything you need to know about the CFL making money. So I had to go on a third party, like, you know, a verified site. And that Argo fluffy, one of our followers, he goes, oh, there's only a couple of teams that sell from that site. So he's like, I know it's, I'm like, oh, I wasn't trying to like incriminate, you know, we've got like the jacuzzi. Where's the JFK that the. Your C****r film. Yeah, where they're like analyzing like the trajectory. That's what we have here on the, on the Twitter. I put a lot of thought into this. I was walking. Huh. Let me know when you want the drum. I was walking Rosie the other night. I thought about all the, all the great people we've had on the show. I've thought about the history of the teams. I thought about the names. I thought about the colors so that the team and I'll get into it. So the team that I've picked is. I can't hear it. Cause it's zoom. That's okay. He ended. I have. Tagged is Edmonton. I have picked the Edmonton football team as my official team. I ordered a wonderful green E flat brim hat it's coming and I pay the express shipping for it. It's got a wonderful CFL logo on it. I thought about Ima Washington football team. I very much like the team has no name. Right. I really liked that. I've thought about friend of the show, Dave Campbell. I really appreciate the work that Dave is doing, you know, covering everything and, and on Twitter and, and, you know, find that the shell. I thought about all the XFL connections with Jamie Elizondo and Taylor Cornelius going up. And I, I liked the colors. I liked the, you know, the green and gold kind of green bay. He kind of, I don't know if that's like blossoming, but I, that is who I have picked. I have a wonderful Edmonton hat coming. And so I have officially picked my team for the 20, 21 season. So basically what we're saying here also is we need more merge guys. Like I wanted, I want logged on to the Argonaut site. I was like, oh, I can buy some merge. And I'm a little bit shabbier than Reed. Well, not a little bit, a little. That's significant amount of Chubb. Compared to read. I, you know, I wear an XL and there is basically no Xcel merchandise or the Argonauts. So can we please. We get that going. I told you I had to go through third party sites anyway. So I have put, I put my money where my mouth is. I have bought into Edmonton. I was gonna get like the Jersey thing. They don't have a great selection right now. I didn't really love the journey. And it was a lot of money to like, get a custom, they didn't call it, put a custom name on it. They put like, put it custom. It was a weird name that they talked about putting like your name on the back. They would have been like $250 or something, all that. And I was like, that is. That's too much, but I bought like the $45 fry. Flat brim hat. So. We are with Edmonton and, and MLS. I'm with Edmonton. No. Don't what are you doing? Anyway. So we got a good show coming up today. I think we already mentioned, we have Dan Barnes from the Canadian press coming on, and then we have Rob Vanson with the Regina leader. Leader posts coming on. We're talking, you know, obviously the XFL merger stuff. And then also, you know, checking in, what are you guys thinking about the season? How are we feeling target dates, you know, draft coming up next week, kind of all that stuff. So I don't, I know we're kind of satiated with the merger talks, but I still get bombarded every day on my Twitter about it. So that is at least a portion of what we will be covering on the podcast. I am sorry. That is what it is. It is what it is. Are you seeing, she ended with the merger tox yet? I mean. I'm I'm. I'm good. Like I, you know, I just, I want to cover this, you know, the best we can and it's not overwhelming for me. There's just the, just the overwhelming aspect. As you know, all the negativity like. And I understand, you know, We're going to talk, you know, we're going to talk to. Dan and Rob later on the show and they have very sentimental views on it there, and they're on the older generation. They, they, you know, There's stuff about it that they remember. And I completely understand for lack of a better term, Pearl clutching about what the Canadian yeah. And sport is, and it's, it's never, I, we just reiterate it enough. Like, this is not a situation where we want to ruin the game. Like I would be completely okay with. Everything being Canadian football rules. I would be completely fine with that. So, yeah. And this was interesting. This was posted on our YouTube. Heaven forbid. I can, if you're listening to this show, have them for bed cam left two comments. And I said, Hey, thanks so much. You know, we appreciate it. He goes. The, the laziness that you had copying and pasting the same comment onto both of my questions. Says all I need to know about the XFL. It's like what? This is not, I don't. I work, I came home from filming the Memorial service forever. A fallen soldier. I just trying to check in with the YouTube comments. I'm not trying to offend anybody by copying the pacy. My thank you for listening to the show, but he brought up and this was interesting. We have not had any of our guests bring this up before. We talk a lot about, you know, the inner league, super mega Intercontinental title match between the CFL and XFL. There is a history of exhibition games between the CFL and NFL. Did you know all this? Am I dummy dumb? I did not know this. No one's ever brought this up and, and Ken was very livid on the YouTube. That's how I've been brought up. They're the first recorded matchup and I looked this up and this was on I three down nation and everything else. They took place in 1941, the blue bombers played a three game exhibition against the AFL's Columbus balls. Bulls like, you know, And I was doing the research and they did like Canadian rules first half, and then American rule, second half. Interesting. Did we solve this whole problem right here? Has it been staring at us in our face the entire time? We might, you might've just done that. You might've just fixed. You want to just fix the, the, the war between Canadian fans and American football fans. You yourself. I'm serious. Cause I hear that. We talk in the XFL, you know, Josh and Jay and mark. And we talk all in that Mike Nichelle in the, in the private chat. And we always talk right. The games are two different. You can't just like you can't just flip a switch. And I, they, I mean, they were exhibition games. But they did it, they did it. And they, I just thought this was phenomenal that literally this isn't staring the best the whole time. Wow. Why, why don't, why don't we just. Let the rock know right now. I'm going to call him up. I will say, though, I was doing a little more research and in the exhibition games, America. There was, I believe eight wins and two losses to the CFL teams. So maybe that is my, maybe they're trying to bury this news. It's because they know. That they can't handle us. Even on their rules and we still beat it up. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. But this was crazy. The two leagues came together, the rough riders in 1950, or the rough riders hosted I from. In Ottawa, they hosted the New York giants. They played two sets of rules, Canadian first half American. I the giants roll through the Roughriders. This is their words, not mine. 26, 27 to six for 11,000 fans. Not really rolling. Is it 27 to six. I back in like the fifties, that was a big score. Not true. And we got a good point. That was great. Anyway, so I just thought that I'm going to call Dwayne and Danny after this. And we're just going to get this wrapped up by next week. I think we're going to be good. I think we've solved this. Okay. So moving on. Sports net reporter and intellectually dishonest person. Madani sorry. Hate to say it, but I don't hate to say it. Came out today and said, It's not, it's not, you know, there've been talking about 14 games being the thing. It's going to be four D it's going to be a, you know, it's going to be 14 games, gonna be 14 games. And you'll hear later on. Also some dissenting opinion, but. Raj, Madani saying not a slam dunk. We're going to get 14 games. Yeah, it seems like, you know, there was a lot of optimism last week. You know, with the announcements and the delay and all of that. But, but people it's like reading the fine print in the contracts. And that said, you know, we're, and, and, and I've got, Rob did a really good job of kind of writing down his thoughts, but yeah, you know, you say one thing. But then there's all the kind of fine print in those press releases. And it's like, well, if there's this many fans and if it doesn't rain and if the sun is this way, and if I feeling good and I had a good snack and I mean, there's just a lot of like, Variable ideals to get in here, but yeah, he was on a rush was on the sports cage. He said there's still a lot up in the air. Health. You know, obviously with health regulations and all of that. So. Interesting. Let's see what's next here. Stephen Brent also saying pie in the sky that you're going to play 14 games. Longtime Canadian sports journalist, Steven Brown. Wants to see the game in 2021, but it says there's a lot that needs to happen. Apparently the they've targeted. We've talked about this they've targeted August 5th. For a potential 14 game, regular season. But, you know, they're still, they're still in panic mode when it comes to all of the COVID stuff that's going on. So everybody's kind of doubting that August 5th is going to be a starting date. Unless they speed up the vaccination process. And I know we're starting to send a lot of our surplus there. We're sending a lot of our surplus to India. We're also sending a lot of our surplus to Mexico. So hopefully, you know, Hopefully this doesn't become, this becomes less pie in the sky. Yeah, no, I got my first shot last week. I have. I asked for. I tweeted I for my super power, I wanted a future site. And I said that the, the XFL merger is all going to go. Good. I already have, I've already looked ahead in the future with my. My super powers. No, I mean, this is tough. And we talk with RA. Robin Dan, a lot about this, where it's like, you know, we're doing the draft next week. We have the global draft, all these things, but it still just feels like. You know, you're kinda, you're, you're putting this front out and then there's still panic in the background. And I don't, I don't. I don't think that that's good. Right. I don't think, I think that the, the shine has worn off a little bit from last week when the announcement with a lot of people really digging in here to what this means. Yeah. Yeah. Steven said, you know, obviously you have to put a flag in the ground and say, this is when we're playing, but my hope is they don't, you know, obviously move the December back anymore. Right. I mean, you would just start later. Cause the other fear with that, you know, and I've heard a lot of people type this week is. If the XFL is, you know, we don't, I don't, I want to see a 20, 22, I haven't met, but you know, let's say they were trying to target like a spring 20, 22. December to spring is a really tough turn. If you're trying to, if you're trying to do anything so. The later the CFL season goes is not looking good for any of that stuff. And then you have to like start thinking about adjusting. You know, later seasons to accommodate like, you know, the NBA season, they cut 10 games out of the schedule because it started so late. So then you have to kind of shift the next season. And then get everything back on track. Eventually, you know, baseball is now back on track in terms of their season. So, you know, That's that's another problem with. Maybe, maybe, you know, there'll be some solutions thrown out later. Dan Ralph had some solutions about what they should really be thinking about. In terms of scheduling this year. And that way you kind of don't push the 20, 22 season that far back. So. This is interesting. There's been a lot. If, you know, passionate people on Twitter and a lot of anger and things this week. We have John. I can not say this. The GM. Of the Stampeders. How do you say this, John? Hufnagel. Of Nagel he's ambulating on about it. All these, all these people fighting and arguing on Twitter. John is ambivalent. He says I'm ambivalent about the decision. I'd rather our season started on time, but if it won't allow it. I think we're doing that in August. So, I mean, these are like, cause this is like, You know, all these fans that like, we're fighting, like we're hitting each other, we're fighting and it's like, you have the GM's like, yes, fine. Like if we started in August, we started in August. Like, I don't really, I don't, I would like to see a little bit more like. You know, fire it up about with some of these owners and GM's and stuff. That's just me. I don't, I, I, again, this is just one that I pulled out this week, but I did think that was interesting. Hag Hamilton tiger cats, chief operating officer. A lot of people give me grief, Hamilton fans, give me grief about picking the Argonauts. Tiger Katz chief operating officer Scott Mitchell has provided a glimpse into the financial hit taken by privately owned teams in the CFL. After, of course the government has denied the initial $30 million interest free loan, not to say they won't get it alone later on down the road. You know, the board of governors motive cancel. And they lost 60, $80 million last year and are set to lose even more this year. Tiger counselors. And yet at least 15 million, he said, which is crazy. So basically, you know, We are bringing our guest on. They're going to. You explain the reasons why they need fans in the seats. This is, this is key. This is why bubbles probably won't work for this. This league is because the losses will just be too much. What else did that was interesting about this. And I've been doing a lot of listening this week and obviously with the guests. This whole idea of it being cheaper to not play than play, right? Like you lose more money by playing. It's just a fascinating. You know, I'm a business owner, right? I mean, I don't run the sports league, but I mean, it is fascinating to me to think, like I could not do something and, and. Lose less money than my, by doing what I'm right. I mean. Actually I take that back. We do this podcast every week. Is it isn't Pharrell is. So, I guess, I guess I I'm only happy do. You get what I'm saying? Like, it is interesting that we could just bunker down and lose less money. Yep. That is definitely very interesting. So is this. Is this a Canadian article here that I'm seeing? Yeah, so they, they, their. Prognosticating. They could lift the restrictions going on by summer. If 75% of the vaccination thresholds reach out, this is from the federal modeling that they came out with. Dr. Theresa Tam. I've had, this was interesting talking about giving hope. Do you want to go through this? There's new models that are there's new models that are coming out. Sorry, I'm getting a weird email. That's okay. I am amazed. You know, we're, we're looking at this August. We're trying to figure out. Yeah. Federal the hell of that there, but I mean, 75% is a high, you know, I think Dan said in his interview, you have, they can get at least 50%. It's just. It's a tough number to hit here. And it's really like, You know, you're kind of asking like, whether what's more important, right. Getting the people vaccinated or playing football. And I know that in the past, yeah. The CFL has presented some, some of these plans and things to some of the local. Yeah. Municipalities for lacquer. The provinces and they've been like, we don't care about this right now. Like we need to get people safe and healthy. We don't care about football plans right now. And the big, the big vaccine they're using up there as the AstraZeneca. One of course, that's the one that I've seen a lot of Canadian people getting. And there's also this. This weird thing that's going on down here in the United States where people aren't getting their second dose, like, that's just bizarre to me. Like if you went through and got the first dose. Why not just get the second one. I don't know. So a lot of this, a lot of this depends on personal responsibility, not just the virus, but personal responsibility, which helps curb the virus. You know, the virus is going to make its own plants. So. Well that's, I mean, look at the, look at all the best laid plans of everything. I mean, It's so interesting to think that we were sitting back August of last year, launching this thing, talking about that. Yup. The rush to start in February of last year. They don't like. It's just how the world has changed. Now we're talking about CFL vaccinations. I mean, it really is remarkable. Going on. The other funny note. Blue bombers they've come out this week. I saw. Wade Miller president. I always think Wade Keller with PW. Sorry. I see that. He says that they are not going to raise the 2019 grey cup banner and tell they can hold a capacity crowd at their home stadium. I think that's cool. When you think about that, I just thought that was neat. I definitely liked that idea, you know? I know that the Lakers gave away their, their rings and stuff without, you know, Fans and attendance. You know, I, I, I liked the idea of having that, that moment where people are. Are there to cheer. You know, it's a big deal to watch a championship banner go up. When we were working. Media in Seattle. You know, being on the field and watching, you know, Paul Allen hoist. The Lombardi trophy. When Seattle one. The super bowl. Sorry, Rob. Against Denver. Basically like it's, it's such a, it's such a moving experience as a fan of a team you are, when you see your team raise that banner, raise that trophy. So, I mean, you do it for the. Crowd pop. In wrestling terminology. So. I'll look in. I think that's, that's the best idea to go about it. When this. K a side note here. It's interesting. We were talking about that. Remember when we talked in David DBE about like, oh, are they fi because they've been doing the Thunderdome and all that. And they're like, okay, finally, when we're going to have fans again, it's going to be like, God, it's going to be crazy. And then they did fans this year at Tampa, and then there was like the rain delay, right. Sorry, it just like craft on it. Such a weird. It's like they can't even win here. It's been a year. You finally get fans in or your last year WrestleMania was in the, in the performance center with no fans. They do it this year. And then yeah, like two. A half hour before the kickoff. They're like, yeah, we gotta move everybody out of here. Like, this is crazy. Brian would working his first job in broadcast in 1972. On December 3rd. Had no has no real issues with the potential of a later grey cup game. Well, this is interesting. This is he's a weather guy and he he's the. C H C H I don't know what that is. I kind of like, like, you know how, like, we, we, you know, there's Casey BQ in Seattle. It's kind of like their call sign, so, well, yeah. Cause there's been a lot of, we've talked a lot about that. We go, where does it look like December? I mean, we're going to be there. So what's December 15th, look like. Yeah, he was working on December 3rd. He said it was fine. It wasn't that bad. There was a lot of snow. I temperature for the kickoff. Was zero degrees. But, I mean, if you're, if you're used to that kind of weather. Yeah. I, you know, I have a lot of friends that went from Seattle to Toronto for the first MLS cup between the two sides. And they were like, this was so, just so bad, so freezing. And they were so uncomfortable, but you know, Seattle ended up winning. So hopefully that warmed them up just to. Just to consider a bit, sorry, Toronto. Should we, should we invest in more stocking caps with mark castle logos on them? When we go to the grey cup, potentially we need ski park as in the whole nine. We need to make that happen. We need to call Columbia sportswear right now and get ourselves taken care of in that way. Yeah, I'm going to take a break, come back and talk to Dan, Ralph and Rob Vanstone about their thoughts on everything CFL related. Want to welcome Dan Ralph to the show hall of Famer. Dan Ralph. It's harder to have you on the show. He writes for the Canadian press. Thanks for joining us today. My pleasure. And you know that in a dollar 75, we'll get you the same coffee. I do. How's everything going up there. With all this banter for you? Like what are you hearing? What are your thoughts? How, how, how are you taking in all this banter about potential mergers and stuff? What's the, what's the grain of salt. I'll be honest with ya. Anybody tells you, they know what's going on. They they're not being totally truthful. There was NDA signed all over the place. You don't know, you don't know. I don't know. Anybody tells you. They know, I don't think they're being totally truthful. I think everything's going to be on the table and everything's going to be explored. Where did we go with this? Who knows. What else? But they're talking. Do you have, you know, as someone that's covered. Cause I was telling Paul before you came on, I've. I've been reading all about your background and getting inducted and all that. Man. Yeah. I love these I'm just like, well, versed and talented people were having come on now is exciting. As someone that's weak. We've tied a lot of XFL for months. What do you want to see come from all this and your ideal world. Well, in an ideal, I. I'll be honest. I'm a bit of a traditionalist. I would like to see Canadian rules. I'd like to see the Canadian field maintained. Because that's the brand of football that. That I was raised on and that's the brand of football that I know best. What. I think it would be wrong to be closed minded about this. I mean, I think the two sides are talking for a good reason. I think they both need to explore. Different avenues to make there. They're their product's better because I mean, let's face it. If the CFL didn't need this. To see if it wouldn't be here. And in my humble opinion, the business model needs to be. Revisited and re. Text, I guess, for lack of better words. So, and this might be a way of doing it. And I think it behooves everybody to. To explore every, every avenue, but I mean, I, to me, it's, it's wasted energy to get all wound up about what could have, should have, would have, because we don't know. We really. That makes sense. Yeah. I mean, you know, life's too short to worry about stuff that you and I don't control have no control over. So when, when they release and if they get to the point where they let us know what's going on and show us what's being discussed. Then I think then we have a much more meaningful conversation because right now, We don't know. And there's a lot of people get now wound up. We just don't know why. Right. And I mean, I wrote something earlier this week that the national amateur organizations are. Or, or asking the CFL. To consider some rule recommendations in their talks with the XFL and. And not to me. I mean, a lot of pizza was a lot of pushback on social media about that. But they were recommendations. They weren't demands. They weren't do this. Do that, do this. They work. Hey, when you start talking, can you, can you bring this up or can you look after this? Totally totally get that. Totally understand that. Go for it, Paul. We talked with Jim Mullen and. Before we talked with them, we didn't understand the ratio thing, and now we understand a lot better. And it seems like these recommendations definitely would protect the idea of having the ratio and having the entire system between juniors. And college stuff. Yeah. I think, I think we're football. Canada is coming from is they're worried that if we eliminate the Canadian ratio at the professional level, there's not going to, it's going to be a trickle down effect down through the amateur ranks and having been. A former minor football coach and, and involved in. Executive matters. I understand where he's coming from. Totally agree. And so I, I see where they did. I see why they did it and I get the rationale, but I also get the impression that they're nowhere near that yet. So. So really that they were saying, you know, to me, these are the recommendations. And when you get to that, Can you, can you sort of remember that when you're, when you're discussing, but I'm not, I'm not led to believe there are anywhere near that yet. Well, I, so I followed and I think rod Peterson did the big write-up on it too. Cause I obviously read your article. And I said, this is, I love when we invite people onto the show and then they have these articles come out right. Then that caused a conversation. Right? I mean that, and so. But the takeaways that I've seen are that it was interesting that they did not get a response right. From Ambrozy for the letter. And then the fact that maybe they felt that they had to write that letter. Anyway, that may be in an ideal world. They would be involved in not like in the room with okay. Whether we hammering out the XFL CFL, but that they would be in that conversation that they didn't feel like, okay. We have to make sure that our voice is heard in this. I mean, is that. What were I, am I correct in those takeaways? I guess. I'm thinking the same thing. Like it's funny, I got ahold of the letter and then you start calling people and they don't want to talk. And it's like, well, you've got a letter. You. You've got your name, do it. And they, but yeah, that's to me, I mean, if there's, I don't like the term, but it's like a preemptive first strike. It's like, when you're talking, this is what we want you to talk about now. And I think in a perfect world, you're right. You would like the amateur organizations to be involved, but this is a professional football matter. So I totally get why the CFL may be wanting to do this on its own because it's the one that's most dramatically impacted by whatever agreement, if there's an agreement reached. Or whatever merger, if there's an emerger reached. Is re you know, that they're going to be the ones that have to live with it. And they're the ones that are going to have, they're going to be the most impacted by it. But I do get where there were the amateur organizations feel that there is a trickle down effect for sure. I'm trying to, I'm trying to think of my next question here. I think you answered what I was going to ask. So if Reed has another question, don't. Don't you hate it when that happens. Interesting to me because, you know, W when all this came out and we've been learning through with everybody, right? You. W we are in XFL, you know, media, what is that Eros asked that, you know, but we, you know, we've been covering this all ticket leagues and then it is really easy to say, we'll just merge them up or what's going on. Yeah. And you know, when we had Jamal Anon, You know, president of football, Canada. You know, this is a legacy of all these schools and high school and college and juniors goes, you know, and it's this whole world of everything that it's not just as easy as, you know, you say, okay, there's the nine CFL teams. Okay. Just put a different logo on it. I mean, It's kids growing up in the system. I mean, it's. I know, I think that a lot of people there that maybe aren't, you know, listening to the work that we're trying to do or doing the research themselves, don't get how deeply entrenched in all of this. This one decision is. Yeah. And like I said that there there's, there's a lot of, and celery. Impact down the road. And, and, and like I said, the trickle down effect. And, and I didn't, I w I'll be honest with you. I was I'm with you. I didn't realize it either until you start reading the letter and. Okay. That's that's true. Yeah, that's right. And so I, I get it. I get it. But I also, I, I'm not going to defend the CFL, but I'm not going to, I'm not surprised that that the amateur bodies felt that there was a bit of a disconnect. First of all, because I don't think the CFL and the XFL are there yet. In terms of. Talking hashing out rules. And see, like I said, I think the CFL, this is. They're the ones that are going to be most impacted by this. And so I think they're probably going it alone. For, for that, for that reason. Right. So, I mean, I, I get it. I totally get it. I understand. And, and like I said, I know when I wrote it, I wanted to make sure when the tone of the letter was that these were recommendations. They were not demands. And that we're not quite there yet, but they, they just basically wanted to. You know, like I said, fire. A shot off the ballot just to let them know that, Hey, we're here. You know, and, and we're impacted by this as well. The whole goal of all of this seems to be, seems to be, to grow the CFL out beyond the Canadian borders. And, you know, you could play devil's advocate and say, well, kids aren't going to school. But, you know, there's not that much interest. How else can the CFL market itself to the young kids to get it, to get, to grow the viewership? You know, if you add the answer to that question, you can become a rich man up here. I mean, I do. Yeah. You think, you know, the answers. I have ideas. Yeah, no, that's a good question. Because, I mean, The CFL is not looking to, to appeal to people my age and my demographic. They want that 18 to 25 or the 18 to 30 demographic. And this has been an age old question. They've been trying to find that. That magic was the young route of what the young people. And I mean, I have a, I have a son. He's in his early thirties now. He played minor football. And he's he's. You know, peripheral CFL fan and he's a peripheral football fan. So. They sort of lost him because when he was growing up, they did not do a good enough job of getting him entrenched and getting him involved. So that he knew what, who. The Tron Argonauts were and developed a following of you. Name your player type thing. His favorite? His favorite football player was Barry Sanders. And here's a kid in Canadian football, right. Yeah. I grew up playing team football instead of saying Mike Pringle or. Bill Simons or, or George Reed or something along that line, his favorite player was an expo, was a, whoops, was an NFL player. And, and that was because he got to see Barry Sanders play every week on TV. And that was the appeal and I don't know what they can do, what more they can do to, to get to that. That demographic, because I think that's, that's who they're trying to. That's who they're trying to appeal to enhance. I think. Getting into talks with people like Dwayne Johnson, who, who has global appeal. And that, you know, that his involvement they're hoping is going to bring more, more young people into the fray. It's just interesting. You know, I was listening we're on XFL Nissan. It mark the guy that runs that site does his weekly podcast talking and. What's interesting to me is, you know, and the XFL gets, it gets a tough knock, right? For the oh one thing, which isn't true. And then they also write our we're in everyone. We're speaking. Okay. The rock and Danny, they're going to solve all this and whatever true. The XFL of 2019 in 2020 was really based on ground roots, marketing in the CDs, getting the fans involved, you know, getting the headsets, getting the calls, getting people to know what's going on in the field. Getting the younger demographic, you know, in DC, they have the beer snake. And that was the thing where, because it was like a soccer stadium and they would, but it was these things. It wasn't like any big, okay, we're going to bring the rock in and he's going to put, you know, he's going to announce the games and it's going to sell a billion dollars. I mean, these were, and I'm not saying that they were any better or not, but, but I think that that gets lost sometimes in this discussion, as people think about, oh, one XFL with vans, or look at all this other stuff the rocket do, but the exit call did really do some, some really good tangible things to get people involved. I mean, do you. What do you think? Did you follow the XFL back in 1920? Were you, what were your thoughts even peripherally about it? I did 20. 2019 2020. Yeah, I did. I did follow it only because there were a number of CFL players and coaches involved. I'll be honest. I didn't watch much of it. I kept in touch with certain people. And then what have you, and then unfortunately, when there was the, the pandemic rolled in on the rollout of people that you knew one employee and what have you. I'll be honest. No, I did not watch much of it. I did. I watched a little bit of it. No one. I watched a little bit of it. The first week I was impressed with the level of football being played. But it, it did not. It did not grasp me enough to want to sit down every week and turn it on. And, and. And watch it. And, but. Like I said, they're not appealing to people my age. They don't want. Sixties. Late fifties, early sixties, people there. They want the young kids involved and I totally get it. Totally understand. Those are the buyers. Those are the, those are the people that are buying things now, and that's where the money's being spent. I would agree with that. What do you think? You know, one of my things that I've come back to constantly, and I'm kind of, it's living rent free in my head is the TV deal. And how many, how much that, you know, how little goes to the players compared to the NFL counterparts? How does that improve? I don't, I, this is. You guys, maybe you can educate me. I do not see our merged entity. Results in more TV money for, for either or both leagues? I don't, I don't because. I've seen what. The 2001, 2019 entities had in terms of TV deals. I don't see a major American broadcaster willing to pump a lot of money into something. Like this, because the track record in Canada, they, they, I. Bet you, I could tell you that they don't know much about what goes on up here, football wise, and then you've got the track record down south with the, with the XFL. Aye. Aye. Aye. My brother and up here are extolling the virtues of a, of a. Of the major us TV deal. You know, breathing life into reading money into the, into CFL teams. And I don't see it. I really, and I'm sorry. I stand to be educated, but I don't see it happening. I just don't. And. There are so many questions with it. That to me to sell that as, as a major thing and I mean, I'll go you. This is the. Just came to my head. CFL commissioner, Randy and Brosy. When he came aboard, kept pushing the CFL 2.0 model. Of growing the Glenn growing the Canadian gain globally. And trying to, trying to bring revenue strings back into the league. Well, it's been three years since he talked about this. And I know. Rome was not built in a day, but there hasn't been a dime. Come back to the CFL four at CFL 2.0. It's global it's global approach. And that's been years in the making. And I'm I'm hearkening back to that. I don't see it. And until, like I said, I stand to be corrected. I stand to be educated, but I don't see where a major TV deal is going to be in the offing for a merged entity. I mean, I hope I'm wrong, but I don't see it. I share that. Right. And that's what we've always said. You know, I don't know if the XFL is the option, right. It is a option, you know, something to talk about. We have the spring league coming up here. Kicking off next week. Right? So that's the developmental league, Brian. You know, eight teams it's bubble. You. It's it's there, you know, the football's. All right. All the games are on Fox this year. Well, last year they kind of in the, in the fall, they did like a couple of games, Rob, but most of them weren't televised this year. They're all televised. It's like 20 games. I'm good. You know, good times Fox Saturday afternoon. So I think that will be a very telling point of how those games perform. Right. Yeah, because yeah, like you said, I mean, we stand to be corrected too. I don't know. We don't know what is going on. Right. But, but if they come out the gate swinging and it looks like there's interest. That that says a really good, you know, for a may kickoff that says a really good something we've been talking maybe February doesn't work for the CFL, but maybe something a little later. So we'll see. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I do know February up here is. Is is a, is a no go, but I mean, it's, it's a lady April here we've been without snow for the better part of a month. I'm I'm outside walking in a hoodie and it's it's. It's very good. It's nice weather. And it, you could play football. And I, when I was a minor league coach, we were, we were outside in this stuff practicing. And it's, it's doable. That to me is doable. You could do that. And there's been a long standing argument at Western in Western Canada that they want the season to end a little earlier. Because they don't want to be sitting outside in snow in November watching playoff football. You know, living in Eastern Canada where it's not as cold, I don't. I can't readily appreciate that, but I have sat outside when it's frigging cold out. Trust me. I don't care. How much of a diehard football fan you are when you're, when your toes are cold? You're cold. What are your thoughts on what's happening this season? What do you think's going to happen? Well, it's funny, you mentioned because if you'd have asked me that in November, when they, when the CFO unveiled his full schedule, I would have said, and, and my, my argument hasn't changed. I see football coming back, but not until September. And we've been slow to get vaccinations going here in Canada. And until you get more than half of people vaccinated, and you can get to a position where you can get people into the stands. I don't. I, I don't see, I don't see how you play football for any length of time here without fans in the stands cause CFL teams, they lost a lot of money last year by not playing in revenues. The bulk of the revenues are, are the result of ticket sales. And if you can't get people in stance for any length of time, then, then, then I think it becomes cost prohibitive to come play football without having any revenue. Like fan revenue anyway. We're losing money either way. Yeah. Yeah, there. Those that that said last year. I mean, the big, the big thing we heard last year was that there were some teams saying it was cheaper not to play than it would have been to play. And my an abbreviated season. So, you know, when you're losing. When the difference between playing football and not playing football is in the millions, then I think, you know, I don't see teams being eager to resume play just for the sake of zooming play. I think they're hoping banking, praying that enough people get vaccinated that we can get maybe five or 6,000 people in stands to start with. And then sort of slowly, maybe increased that over the course of the season. But if you don't play a season this year, How. I've been told that if there's, if there's no season than then the CFL, as we see it does not exist, that doesn't mean it goes away completely. But I think the way. The lead you see now with nine entities. Does not, maybe does not survive in that. Maybe you. You come back and you don't, you're not a national league anymore, or you've lost a franchise or two. I don't know. But I have been told that if there's no football this year in year out of the public eye for two years, then that's, that's crippling up here. Yeah, I've heard both sides of that. I agree. Right. That's how I feel. You know, I've heard it equated to like, I don't follow hockey, but like there was the hockey lockouts and stuff. Yep. No year. These. Oh yeah. They came back bigger than ever, but yeah, I think if you don't play a game in, in, I think I was listening. I know, three down last night, they were talking, you know, if you have a three calendar year, right where there's no football plan. It, it does get a little scary there. To keep our momentum going when there wasn't. It wasn't, you know, Bear with me. It wasn't the hottest product in the world. Exactly. I mean, you, you talk about. You know, hockey, like during a lockout hockey was away and, and, you know, you worry about will the fans come back. Fans will in Canada will always come back for hockey. I mean the junior, the junior hockey ranks in Canada for the second straight year will not be having. Won't be having a full season and you know, what. When they come back next year. Their fans will come back cause it's hockey. When you're talking about a S. A sport like football, which I'm not saying is on the periphery, but it's not, it's not, it's not paramount, paramount to can, or to a hockey Canada. So you can't afford not to be on the field for two straight years. So we have a couple of, we're going to do the bulk of our show here after we have a lot of comments this week from, from Iraq and from Steven Bryant, a lot of people saying, ah, 14 Game season is still pie in the sky that we're saying. Yeah, I'm I. I always thought. Started labor day and playing nine games, season half, half a season I nine or 10 games. I, when they said 18, I, I said, good on you. Think big. I get it. But 14, I thought was still ambitious. And to me, you start. Labor day. I mean, the argument in Canada is that football doesn't begin until labor day because the games start to meet you're going down the stretch. So start at labor day, play nine or 10 games. And, and try and bank on your rival recycling year. Yeah. Feared in Southern Ontario, you've got Hamilton and Ottawa. Playing you've got Hamilton and Toronto plan. You've got Toronto and Hamilton place. You got Montreal and how you sort of build those rivalries up. You saved money for, for travel. And you build up your rivalries. And then you play a great cup and you play it in Hamilton and you sell the place out. And you have a night, you end up really bad situation on a positive note. That's what I've been thinking. And I I've been telling anybody who will listen. You can talk about 18. You can talk about 14. I'm thinking nine or 10. The one last, we kind of hit it. A tipping point this week on Twitter or an online, and, you know, we're tired of the merger and it's toxic and all this stuff, you know, we had the global draft last week. You know, the, the draft here is going to be on the fourth, right. Are are the B the necessary ongoings of the CFL right now, is that getting lost with all this other stuff? I mean, whether we are, are we paying attention to the right things? Are our people not paying attention to the wrong things? I mean, what are we. Are we, I don't know. Cause I I'm getting conflicting messages here. Right. I hear okay. Let's focus on this season, but then also it might not exist. So where, what do we do as fans and as someone like you that covers the league? Well, I think what they're trying to do is trying to put on a brave face that it's business as usual, right? We've had the global drafts. We're gonna have the CFL draft. We're going to have a season. They're going ahead. You know what talk like they're looking like it it's it's it's business and that they're going on. And doing something and, and it's, you know, It's business, not as usual in 2021, but after not doing anything in 2020, we're doing things in 2021. And I think they're trying to build that confidence within the fan base that. You know what we're we're, it's, it's coming, it's going, we're progressing. And I mean, I understand they can't. Definitively say, we're going to do this, this or this because the pandemic is wreaking havoc up here. And I get that. But I think what they're trying to do is put the best brave face on as possible. So that fans are saying, okay, well, I'm going to put my season ticket money down and, you know, because there's going to be a season. And because they're doing this, you know, I'm there. They're hiring. They're hiring G there. They're filling up their staffs. You know, I mean, I think they don't, I'll be honest with you. I don't think they have a choice. I think they've got to do this because if they don't do it and then all of a sudden August comes and then there's a football season. It's like, holy crap. Now what do we do? But I think teams have to. Prepare. For the best case scenario. And as they've been doing throughout this pandemic, Just be ready because at a moment's notice, things can change. Do you think it's working? Do you think them putting on the spray face is working. Not with me. But you know what guys in the media and you guys will. Attest to this. We're skeptical too, but everything anyways. So, and like I said, when they did 18 in the back of my mind, and then the people have gone out not going to be 18 in my mind. It's not even going to be 14, but I think what they're trying to do is create the brave face that, you know, we're, we're going, we're going to have football to show just don't know differently. What yet? And I think that's what they're trying to do, but I do believe there will be football. I don't, you know, I don't believe it's going to be 14. I think nine. Anywhere from maybe, maybe eight. Depending on how late this thing goes, but I think nine or 10 games. Play a lot of. Division rivalries and, and. Capital the gray cup. Yep. Sounds perfect. Dan Ralph. We want to thank you for your time. My pleasure gentlemen. Long time, long time. You should have done this a little earlier, but yeah. You know, we've, we've, we've just been jam packed with people and we appreciate him. I'm just taking my shots where I can get them. I get the dots all the time. It's nice to give them once in a while. What was it? I w when I first messaged, I used Paul, Paul will be happy about this. I use the spider man. I'm pointing. Yeah. Dan goes, that's my new favorite one. So we're either man buddies now. And then, and then all of a sudden. And did he put the Spiderman? A GIF. And then all of a sudden I started listing. What about all these other villains? Right. And I mean, I was a diehard stud. Spider X Spiderman. Cartoon kid. So, I mean, yeah. Bring on rhino. I'm all for it. Thank you for your time. Stay safe up there and stay warm. Oh, hell. I'm in a hoodie. I'm in a hoodie. It's good. It's all good. Stay, well, guys stay safe. We. I appreciate that, that we'll we'll poke. Everywhere. Thank you. And any time take care. Bye now. All right, Rob. Regina leader post joining us now, Rob, how are you doing? I'm good. Thank you. How are you doing Paul? Hi Reed. We're I'm always excited when we were talking about when your articles last week and it was, it was fiery. It was about the CFL global draft. If I go. I like this guys, fire, we got to half of the podcast and then I reached out and he goes, I would love to come on the podcast. I just heard you talk about. Yeah, my name on your podcast. And so that's always wonderful timing. So thank you for coming on. Oh, it's, it's been. It's been a great. Resource to kind of find out more about. About the XFL and more about the CFL, because a lot of the CFL reporting that's being done. Lately is, is. Has been via your podcast, considering the array of guests that you've. You've had on and the rash modality session. I think we'll go down. Is a classic for. If anything belongs in the all time, if there's a podcast hall of fame, that one belongs in there already. And. Just a lot of people I know. And a lot of people I respect and I've really enjoyed listening to in fact candy and I, my. She's laying on my lap right now. Mind you, my foster dog candy. And I listened to most of your, most of your podcast with AGA Jackie. And with Dan Barnes while going for a walk around the neighborhood. So. It was a podcast and a podcast. Quality humor. You're going to be putting up with until you tell me to get lost. First and foremost, what are your thoughts about all this chatter? About the potential of a merger? It's interesting because part of it. I think is, is really. Exciting and interesting. And. And part of it is terrifying and maybe I'm showing my age by being a little terrified. But when you think of. You know, the reach that the Danny Garcia and Dwayne Johnson and Redbird capital have, and the resources they possess and the followers and just their whole vast network. And you can, and then you look at the CFL. The state that it's in. You think if there's a, if there's a workable symbiosis here, What a lifeblood. It could be for a league that really needs it back in 1996, 97, the league was. In a situation. Maybe not quite as dire as it is now, but pretty close. And the national football league interviewing with the intervened with an interest free loan that the basically kept the CFL going. And I don't think they'd really that far off from that point now where they need. They need a benefactor to kind of come out of the blue. And maybe. Maybe there's a potential here for the, for the CFL to be sustained. With some, with some insight and support south of the border, you just look at. Who they are and what they do. And it's, it's really intriguing. At the same time. I'm old. And I grew up watching the Canadian football league. I went to my first. Outer game in 1963, I was born in 1964. My mum was pregnant and she was taking me to games. And, and so I've grown up with it and loved it. And my first sporting heroes were members of the Saskatchewan Roughriders for more than, for more than 50 years. I've just been all about it. So. I'm not the demographic. The Canadian football league is after anymore. And. But it's just something I've loved. It's been, it's my first sporting love and it's still my favorite thing in the world. So you start to. Here talk. And speculation about how you're tinkering with something. That you really love, and it's, it's kinda hard for traditional like me to, to grasp it sometimes. And. And I'm not really sure on what grounds I'm what grounds I hopper speculation. The Canadian football leagues left it. So open-ended. Beginning with their introductory media release. That. They've really, they haven't discussed any of the issues pertinent to this, this partnership or whatever it might be. So. You speculate and you start kind of, the snowball starts. Forming and building, but then you wonder, what is the foundation for all this is, is this a legitimate fear? Just because they haven't this game of football league, hasn't come out and said, we're going to preserve three down football. We're going to preserve Canadian rules just because they haven't. Declared that does that mean they're not going to, or is this, and is this such an outrageous thing? Anyway, you know, But I, my, my visceral gut reaction right off the top, when you, when you. Talk about messing with the size of the field or the, or the three downs or even the Rouge. I just kind of recoil a little bit rightly or wrongly. I think that's, that's my background. And a lot of my foundation is as a sports fan and. I was a sports writer. So. I really wrestled with it sometimes. And you're kind of balancing, what does this leave me to merely stay alive versus kind of the. The, the prototype of what the league has been and what, what. Old gargoyles, like me wanting to continue being yeah. Sometimes there isn't sometimes those concepts, I'm not sure those concepts can really merge anymore. You talked about you not being the target demographic. And we had Dan Ralph on here earlier, and he said the same thing that he's no longer the target demographic. How do they grow the game to target? And grab that demographic if they want. What we're saying to 18 pluses, you know, The kids now, the gen Z years that are growing up and becoming adults and buying things. That's that's the real, that's the real tug and. That's a different. Audience now than it was back. In 1902 when I was 17 years old. In my foundation in Regina following the Canadian football league was we only had two TV stations here. And there was CBC and there were CTV. We didn't kick out American stations here until 1978. So the rough riders are everything and there's wrong line. Casa and George Reed and these iconic players who were there year after year after year, there wasn't the player mobility that there is now. So it was. If you think if you were living in vaginas, Saskatchewan in the seventies or eighties and even into the nineties. I think you automatically just became. Part of that, you didn't, they didn't really have to hunt for that demographic. We were, when I was five or six years old, I was trading CFL football cards in the playground at mousey school. When everybody wanted the wrong line, Casper, everybody wanted the George Reed and. And I had 49 Ken Fritz, right. And so they just, they just roped us automatically. That's no longer the case. And then the attention spans. I don't think you're not just for young people, but for all people are, are pretty fleeting now. So how do you get that younger group? And. There's a bit of a conundrum here and that I think that in order to sustain the Canadian football, like the wisest, or I think the, the most. Foundationally based strategy would be one interaction at a time. Get out there, talk to the kids, just make them love the game and expose them to it. Like they haven't really been exposed to it before. And there's, there's a huge army of kids playing flag football, touch football. Amateur football in Canada. You've got. They've already declared their interest in football. How do you get to them? But that I think that's more of an incremental process than might need to take place here because. When, when you look at the financial situation, there's teams losing 7 million, there's talk from some losing as many, as much as 15 million. The legal, losing 60 to 80 million. And it's never been a really profitable venture before, even before that. You're trying to build brick by brick, but sometimes you just need the ready-made. House right. And so is again, is that concept compatible? I think it's a wise way of doing it. If you have the luxury of time, just build your foundation. But maybe they just need something that in order to stay alive without seeing the numbers, maybe they just need a quick fix or there's no other option. That's again, that's more loose speculation because we haven't seen the books and we don't really know, but. They haven't done a good job over the last few years. I think targeting the demographic that they're now lamenting isn't there. And I think part of the. The issue they're going to face is that if they try to tinker too much, To deal to attract that young demographic that thinks all these there's really into a lot of the things that daddy Garcia and Redbird capital and Dwayne Johnson are doing. It'd be target that demographic. So closely that they're doing everything to try and adhere to that. Do you lose the foundation of fans that, although it's an older demographic, it's still significant and it is still a. You know, it's, it's, that's, what's kept the league going for a number of years. So how do you keep the older fans while attracting the younger ones? And you don't have the luxury of time and you don't have a locker, a lot of resources to even throw into marketing or all these things that they need to do. In the meantime, you've got. Billionaires. Who have declared an interest in at least talking to the Canadian football league. That was a really long answer. Sorry about that as okay. Ah, so. When we're talking about this XFL stuff, you know, when we had a rash on he, you know, he said it's a hail, Mary CFL is always looking for the hail Mary, you know, they're looking for the quick, you know, the quick. I mean. Is that how you view these XFL talks? Is it a hail? Mary is, is, I mean, You know, you know, what the XFL is now and whether either weather reporters had watched it, you know, year and a half ago or not, people know now what it is. So do you think that. That is a worthwhile endeavor to go down. Or do you view that as like that candy? You know, the energy drink kind of the quick fix. Well, my dog just raised her ears cause her name is candy. Thanks for the dog, your dog. Dark content. Isn't she? A good girl? She's she's resting on my lap as we talked, you know, that's the thing, because we don't know. I mean, they, they tell us it's a desperate situation, but we almost have to take their word for it. And, and I think there's certain markets that are, that are more interested in the. In the, in the XFL than others, it stands to reason the Toronto Montreal BC's sort of desperation, really depressed situations in the Canadian football league. Bigger cities in Canada. I think there's like, there's likely to be more of an interest in that. Or, or, or. Perception of that as the panacea compared to say Saskatchewan Winnipeg. We're that where the interest is greater and maybe there's a. It's harder for us in the west to relate to the plight of. Of BC, Toronto and Montreal, because we're just not we're. So in you're into the environment where football is big, but. When you look at the devastation that has been wrought by, by COVID. The the, the leagues governors couldn't even muster up $30 million last year to play a truncated season. And they're facing a. Might be facing a comparable. Situation this year and the leagues come out and acknowledge that there's been discussions. It. It's a. It might be a hail Mary, but they're sure, hoping that Roger Staubach, then he can hit drew Pearson for the touchdown against Minnesota. It might be that dire. And if so, to what degree do you have to adapt your game in order to just simply stay alive? And if that's. If, so what is left of the game? I wonder if there's, and I've been trying to wrestle with this one and maybe you can provide me with greater insights, but. You know, is there a kind of a middle ground solution where both leagues can look at what the other one does well and extract things from it? The one thing the CFL has despite its economic issues over the years is his longevity and tradition. And, and, and a, and a fan base that has shown that it loves a game that isn't the national football league. So you've, you've got a bit of a target audience there. Maybe there's there's something that the, that the XFL people from con. Glean from the Canadian football league, simply by virtue of its its longevity and its established roots. And what can the, what can the XFL, you know, Get get from that. Maybe there's some things. The NFL in a way succeeds in spite of itself, it's a tremendous game and people love it. And same with NCAA football. But you still look at some of the timing rules. You can walk off the field with 38 seconds left in the game, whereas it can, there could be two lead changes in the Canadian football league with 38 seconds left in a game. And the, and the, the pre-snap motion, things like that. I think there's ways the American game can be improved by borrowing some Canadian rules. So could they jazz up? The XFL game. Bye. Taking the best of the Canadian football again, incorporating it into what they do. Now, what does the Canadian football league have to gain from, from the XFL? Certainly marketing expertise, certainly profile and certainly money. But is it enough just to kind of. Pick really kind of Ella cart from the salad bar or do you need to just help yourself to a whole, whole hookup? Prime rib and take it to your city. You take it to your table. My suspicion is it's the clean and football. He was closer to the point where they just need to. Show up with. You know, wheelbarrows and take everything from the salad bar and, or to just simply, that's probably about an LG, but I'm hungry. I just, I'm not sure that, you know, kind of picking and choosing from, from the best of each is, is what they're looking for here, because. The CFL is facing such a desperate situation. And the XFL is trying to prove that it can. Be enjoy some longevity. I enjoyed what I saw of it. In in 2020, I really, I really did. I love some of the things they did, especially with just the access and how close fans can get to the game and knowing what play is coming and. And things like that. I think you have to do that to get the attention of, of sports fans in general, you have to make it as interactive as you. As you can. So. Yeah. Is, is that something that both leagues can, can use to make their overall game more appealing by bringing fans right into the huddle, right into the dressing room and kind of erasing all those lines that are all those barriers that are enforced by football people who are so. Just by nature, militaristic and paranoid and, and guardians of the slightest morsel information. That whole mindset would have to be changed, but if you can bring, if you can create a game on both sides of the border, that is so fan-friendly. Maybe that can do it, but I, again, I think we're talking about tinkering when the imperative might well be something that requires an immediate infusion of cash. We don't, we don't yet know. And nobody's saying anything. So speculation runs wild and my answers take up 48 minutes. So. Yes, sir. My neighbor decided to like bulldoze his driveway. I had that. I had a Dunbar for just a second there. This is what we get into and you've covered this, you know, And, and, and we, we try to talk with the experts that know what's going on. Right. Cause you know, social media and staff and people now, you know, we hear this. Well, the CFL doesn't need the help. They're not in the state, right? They're not, I mean, what, what is your perception of how dire or not things really are? Without you seeing the books. Yeah. Without seeing the books. And even if we did see the books, I'm not sure. They would tell the complete story. Yeah, I think it's safe to say the teams are losing seven or eight, $9 million, but some of them are owned by billionaires. So once you. What the books wouldn't reveal is what is the tolerance for losses here? When you buy a CFL franchise? I don't think you're doing it with designs on making money, but how much are they willing to lose simply to say that they have this franchise? So I don't think the books would surprise us a lot because we know. We know that. The just the situation is unavoidably dire. And the balance of power is held by teams by owners that they decided they just don't want to operate. As part of this model. Suddenly you're looking at a team that the lead there might be six or seven teams. And then your, your total economic picture changes cause your television contract with TSM, which has been very good to them. Changes and you have to scale down the whole model. Dave Naylor put it really well. They've nailed it. From TSN and he said, It's a matter of, do you get bigger or do you get smaller? And even not necessarily in terms of the amount of teams necessarily, but. Do you have to reduce your whole, whole business plan and your expenses to the point where they're commensurate with the market. And the status quo is not going to suffice and there's so many possible ramifications. Of that. But I think, you know, I covered the, the, the, the CFL back in 1996, 97. And it feels a lot the same. I covered the grey cup in 1996 in Hamilton. And coincidentally, the grey cups in Hamilton. Again, this year, the Hamilton purse. And the whole preamble to that. The undercurrent that entire breakup week was, is this the last grey cup ever? And at the. ScotRail Roughriders final home game of 1996. My angle for my column was have we just seen the final Saskatchewan Roughriders game? And. And it wasn't a preposterous premise at the time. It sure seemed like it a decade later when they were. Usually successful, but at the time it was a, nobody thought that it was beyond the realm of possibility that they wouldn't exist. That's not the discussion now. And, and now we're dealing with a variable, like COVID weed. We know what it did to 2020, what it did to the XFL, what it did, the Canadian football league. And we're still not sure what the effects are going to be in 2021. So, and how much of a tolerance is there? Four. With, with the, with the ownership in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, how much are they willing to put up with before they put, pull the pin? And if they do. What is left. The national hockey league was six teams for the longest time. And it's sort of perceived to be the glory years. In some cases, the original six was kind of a luster to it, but. I'm not sure that's gonna, that's gonna fly with Canadian football. It's I think it's com. Too far. I think they would be the perception issue of 16 lead would be a. Would be a real impediment. And, and then, then what have you got left? So. I, I think it is absolutely dire because you're almost looking at these owners now. And of the teams that are really struggling and, and they've been such benevolent owners. For the longest time and they have, they have absorbed some losses. Now you're asking far more than, than has ever been asked. And how much are they willing to withstand? Where, where is the pressure point where the bar just snaps? And if we're not there, I think we're very close. Yeah, that, you know, when they talk about, you know, Toronto or Montreal, kind of leading this charge with the XFL staff and. Yeah, I don't know what. If that CFL X. You know, if you, if you pull those, you know, bigger city teams down south, and then it's a Prairie league with the six teams or whatever that the CFL, the remains, I just don't know. I see people make that argument. Right. And it's like, well, I don't know, is the money there for that? You know, what's going on? With that, then the last thing I wanted, I did want to make sure that we touched on today is kind of your thoughts as we sit right now with the CFL this year. Right? Because we get a lot of people, like we're tired of the mergers. You know, we want to talk about this year. And obviously you had talked about. Draft. Being kind of a waste of time. You know, E you're talking now, I had your headline CFL finally, and silence, but uncertainty endures the CFL has a multi-layer plan in place for 2021 season. But still absent from the equation as an unequivocal commitment to play. So whether your thoughts going into now, we have the target date. What do we think? You know, I. The buzz word from. We always hear from the teams. We're optimistic, et cetera, et cetera. But that really doesn't. Isn't really that similar to what we were hearing a year ago at this time. And we just don't know what an. Our COVID numbers here in Saskatchewan are, are worse than they were a year ago. And I mean, there's crime. We're talking about the third wave. Here in Canada. Whereas in New York, they're opening everything up again. And you're seeing fans in the stands in the United States. We're still not anywhere close to that in, in Canada. So arguably the COVID situation is, is more of a. An impediment now than it was a year ago, despite the vaccination rollout that. Is taking place here. And that's what really makes me wonder where we're, I think we've assumed. Right from the start that okay. You can think in January when the vaccine talk really began or when. You could. The layout of the schedule took place at okay. By the spring, we should be fine. Well, Now we're pushing may. And the numbers are terrifying. And, and I really don't see where it's, there's going to be. A huge change anytime soon, it just. We just keep seeing the same numbers rolling out, even though more people are getting, being vaccinated. There's still too many people dying and there's hundreds of people suffering. So now here we are almost in may. Can we just. Is it, is it still, is it now a safe assumption that things will be okay. By July, July or August. I'm not sure you can make that assumption anymore. And, and. Given that there wasn't the will on the part of the teams. Two. Proceed with the season and pay for it themselves last year, even it was a six game six team for six games per team, regular season, starting in September and Winnipeg. The men, they didn't want to pay the $30 million themselves while they may be very well be. Facing the same scenario again this year, if they didn't want to do it a year ago. Would they want to do it this year? They've demonstrated in the past that there isn't that inclination. So despite everything that's been heard and everything that's been said, I'm. I'm becoming increasingly skeptical because I just want to, you know, what's the old saying talk is cheap money buys, whiskey. I want to see. A natural unequivocal. Resolution to play. And the press release that the CFL put out last week, there will be CFL football. In 2021. Okay, good. But then as you kept reading further into it, it was. If this happens, if that happens, this qualifier, that qualifier, then by the end, it's we're optimistic. Well, Where is the. You know, The. The complete unequivocal declaration that they're going to go ahead. And the further we go without. Hearing that the more we have to wonder and. You know, and, and simply if they do play this year, this year, it really doesn't. It doesn't. Necessarily address their financial situation. There'll be, there'll be smaller, small crowds in the, in the stands, maybe for a gate driven league. They'd lose. They lose some money, either ways. Do you want to get hit by a truck Volkswagen or do you wanna get hit by a truck either way? You're going to get hit by the vehicle. It's just a matter of scale. But are they willing to absorb or welcome that collision at all? They've proven then they prove last year that they weren't willing to. There may be the morbid imperative this year, because two years out of circulation. Might be fatal. Yep. Again, you put it in the XFL con context. And they they're mothballed for the time being, and they're trying to. One of the things that hurt the CFL when it expanded the United States in 95, is that they did it too. The two impulsively and you can serve up if you've got the money you're, you've got an expansion team and no, by the way, your first game is a month from now. And it's only a minor exaggeration. Yeah. And so, because you didn't go into it with enough care and attention. That was the ultimately injurious to the entire concept. So there may be an argument that okay. If you're just going to proceed with a fragment of a season. Maybe you just build it from the ground up and start from scratch and hope that 2022 is what, 2021 hasn't been so far. And then there's sort of a conformity to the U S the U S pardon me? The XFL model because they've mothballed it for a year. And maybe there's maybe the timing. Of the Alliance might work better if they're both trying to. Get themselves going at the same time. Because the simply playing this year is going to be the salvation of the Canadian football league. It would be nice. But. It's not without cost. Yep. And they're not in a position to absorb many costs. So I'm. Again, I'm really. The longer we go, I'm, I'm really becoming skeptical and worried. I'd love to see it again. It's something I've loved since I was a kid and something I'll always love. And, and. And, and I, I dearly miss it. Good stuff. Very good insight from Rob Vanstone. We appreciate your time and we appreciate you joining us here on the mark cast. Well, thanks, Paul. Thanks Reed. It's been a pleasure to chat with you. And I look forward to. Listening to the subsequent podcasts with my wonderful dog candy. Who's also a fan. We appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, we'll count it too. On your subscriber account for her. We appreciate your time and, and that listenership as well. So thank you. And we're back. Want to thank Dan Ralph, Rob van stone for both joining us here on the Mar cast. The mark cast now. And thanks for giving it up there. Their insight into. You know, The whole pie in the sky. Dan had a good 0.9 game season. Keep it within the divisions. Play the gray cup. I like that idea. I think that's the most reasonable idea that they could come out with. Hopefully someone's listening. Hopefully. You know what I like, I like. Talking to a variety of, of voices and opinions on the podcast. That's my. We like getting different, different varying. And we like, we like additional new information because it helps us change our minds. We, we enjoy that too sometimes from time to time. Toss in the shade. It's another. Audio audio. Are you recording right now? Wow. Decriminalization of single events, sports betting, potentially happening in Canada is bill C two one eight. Passes the house of commons moves to the Senate. Looking really good. So this is Ann and I do think we need to touch down on this just a minute, because this is like, there wa like Ambrozy people think is like their silver bullet, right. They really think like, if we can get betting going, that's going to save the CFL. And yeah, so it passed like at second reading of the house is moving onto the Senate. Ambrozy said that the league is preparing to maximize the Bill's potential effect on leagues revenue and fans engagement. And that's via a friend of the show. Dan Barnes. I, I just said, I go, you got to have games to bet on them. I mean, and I mean, It's really funny. I like, it feels like a year ago now when Rob Peterson came on the first time, remember he talked about this and he said the same thing, like. That's not going to, you gotta, you gotta have the games, you gotta have the game. So what I mean, obviously that's good. Do you have any thoughts on, on expanding that out? Who's winning. Who's. You know, cause you know, Here's the problem with this is that so. Sports books. Are they kicking money to CFL franchises? Is that what's happening well. Or, or are you just getting more engagement? I mean, like, do I bet on it? I don't know. Yeah. Like that's the thing. If I'm not going to go to the game, am I going to bet on it? I don't know. I mean, like, you know, if you're, if you're in a situation like where you're in Vegas and you're betting on games, single event games, like that's, that's one thing because you're in the moment of betting on something you're not attending. I don't know if you're just going to go seek it out online when you can bet on an NFL game or, you know, and I hate to say that because that's been some of the. Some of the competition that CFL has, is betting against the NFL in terms of viewership and potentially this. So I don't know. Again, need to expand the young to the younger crowd. I'm not sure betting on games on teams. They might not completely be invested in is the way to do that. That's my thoughts. That's my thoughts. I just don't know if yeah, if you have a. And we talked with Robin about this. All right. Sorry, Dan. You know, if you have this league that that is going away and isn't, you know, lack of a better word. Isn't, isn't the hottest thing right now, right? I mean, let's just be calling it. I mean, you can call it the XFL twice. I believe, whatever, but the CFL is not the hottest sports property in the world. And so if you're like, well, we can take this. Lukewarm property, but now you can bet on it. I just don't think that that oh, okay. Like that's gonna like, let me get in on that. Like I gotta get, I gotta, I mean, I just don't know when you have 5,000 or 10,000 people in the seats, but now you're like, oh, but now you can bet on it that it's going to. It's not, you know, the, the, the effects are minimal. Minimal. It's not gonna, it's not gonna be like, oh, this is a game changer. It really, isn't going to be. I'm sorry. I don't see it. Well, I'm glad we, I mean, people, people do think of this, so I just wanted to make sure we got our opinions out there. So, I mean, Walt while people are very versed and knowledgeable about CFL. Insight information. Us here in the states have been doing single event betting for quite some time. Now. No a little bit more about this. So. I was going to say that. By the way. I bring that up all the time. How we won money on the Cavs meeting. Oh, the warriors and games. Greatest Snyder. That, that, that that's a highlight. That's a top 20 night of my life. I think. The heater on. The craps table, bro. Paul and I, it was my VA. It's my pseudo bachelor party. We went to Vegas. We watch your money in the bank. Paul and I, and our friend Michael Payne. And then we, we won money on the Cavs game. We won, I think I went $500 on craps. And then we realized that I hadn't won enough money to buy an apple watch at like 1130 at night. And we went, I was running down the Las Vegas Boulevard to get to the apple store at the forum at the Caesar's palace. Couldn't find it. And Michael and I just sat on the bench and Paul had to come find this. What was funny was you guys ran down there. And you left me behind. Like we gotta go and I'm like, I'm not gonna be able to walk as fast as you guys. Cause I'm like fat. So basically. I got to the apple store before you did. Like you guys couldn't find it. I was actually at the apple store looking around for it. Where are they? And finally I looked down, I was like, oh, they're they're on a badge. And then a really good friend of yours, Adrian. Sends me a picture of me on, on the pay-per-view the wrestling. Pay-per-view that night. Yeah. I live, I never have completed that transaction. I was doing. They would not have sold me the album a lot at that point. Vegas dude. They'll put a tattoo on you. They don't give a crap how drunk you are. Anyway. Just a couple other CFL things here. We had another quote. Damon Allen. He is going to hell. Famer. I, he believes that, you know, they needed a coach that as do the, the three down game, you still need to teach that to kids growing up. And this goes to, you know, we were talking about with Dan and the letter from the organization, sell that. And I think we've talked with Jim Mullin, both on the podcast and off like you could, theoretically you could still do three downs in high school and college and still have the CFL before down game. If you wanted to go that route. I mean, I don't think it's an either or. Yeah. I don't think you have them that sound something, you know, You get an extra down. And I know normally when you get, when you get, like for, for example, the American college game, as opposed to the NFL game, You get two feet, you get one foot in bounds in the college game, but when you're in the pros, you have to do too. So, this is like, you're learning how to operate. On a three down level, then you're like all of a sudden you're like, oh, we get an extra down. I don't think that's that's. Jarring. I don't really see, like I understand like people love the three downs. I get it. I get that. I guess this is the least important thing that I think. They should be keeping like, I love the Rouge and I love all the other aspects of, of the CFL game, but it's just like, there's one thing to sacrifice. And I don't think it's going to affect the college game or the juniors game. If you get rid of, you know, if you're like, oh, now we get an extra down, we get the pros. You know. Yeah. I, I agree with that. And like I said, I mean, look at the, I think that the two feet to one foot thing is a perfect example of that, where, I mean, that is, and when fan controlled football came out and they're like, we're doing one foot for receptions, I was like, this is. I did not think it was a good idea because I'm like I wanted this much parody between the one that the players are going to be wanting to try to play at, but that's just me. The last thing here on this. And then I kind of, we have a little rant we're going to get into. Toronto. They, they said they they're. You can bet. Now on the, the first Canadian city to host an NFL game, Toronto is kind of leading that, you know, obviously they, they expanded the season to 17 games now, or they're going to be doing the neutral international games. I mean, what are your thoughts on Toronto having NFL games in it? We still have Toronto in the CFL right now and all that. I mean, thoughts on any of that? I mean, I think that, you know, This is why this is why it's so important for the CFL to not fold, because if they do fold. Look. I'm going to say this right now. I believe. MLSE is going to be okay. No matter what ha well, not, no matter what happens, but. With a [unknown]. XFL season. CFL season a merger between a CFL and XFL, or if they just fold all together. I don't see a situation where the NFL doesn't look at Larry T and go, Hey. Y'all want a franchise. I don't see a situation where they don't reach out to him first. I really don't Toronto is the, I think it's the biggest market. It's the biggest TV market in Canada. Followed up by, I believe Montreal had the numbers up here just a second ago. I don't know why I closed that. But I mean, This is, this is. This is important. Why this isn't so important as to why. The CFL means to. Needs to stay going because if they don't. NFL is going to come in and it's just, yup. The league has done. That's my thing. I mean, and like I said, I want the CFL to be around. I mean, I don't want it to be a. One, one game ruling. Everything is not good for anybody. So whatever it means, if it's CFL, XFL, whatever independently together, you can't have the NFL be the only game in town. It's just not, it's not going to be good for, you know, It creates that. That tier system, like they're the elite and the pay and I don't know everything. It just, it gets a little messy. I like having that. I want to touch on this, Paul. So this is a little contacts. So we talked about the super lead last week in the ESL collapse. So earlier this week, a three down nation came out with an article talking about. How did I thank God, this collapsed and how the XFL CFL and the fat with a merged. That you know, could have been the same thing. And basically the article I posted online, I said, this article is riddled with inaccuracies and I got a lot of pushback. Both on Twitter and Facebook and, and everything else. The biggest thing to me, and I really am a little tired of this, and this is going to be a little read rant. And obviously I want to get Paul's thoughts on this too. Ever since this XFL CFL merger talks have come up. The Canadian guy, a lot of the Canadian media ha have presented by the XFL as you know, this twice failed league. You know, obviously Raj came on and tied about that. And three down a nation talks a lot about, you know, the twice failed league and Vincent man and all these things. And so then what happens is I get a lot of comments and they're like, well, Basically like they're they created this narrative and now they are also now perpetuating the narrative that they created. If that makes sense. Totally makes sense. Like. You know, and we talked with Raj about this, like, you know, the oh one thing is not the same thing, Vincent man, 2019, now the same thing. And the big quote that I had on this was. And, and this really infuriated me, and this is a quote from the article. The most recent time or the XML has gotten out of the business twice. The most recent time was pandemic related quote by the Vince McMahon truly believed the second XFL had the chance to succeed longterm. Do you really think he would have pushed the eject button so quickly? You know, that's a quote that's written, right. And I go. And we've said this. For, you know, months and months and month to month. Yeah. When all the pandemic stuff went down, WWE had a billion dollar TV contract between Fox and NBC. That they did not know if they could run events to fulfill. And so Vince McMahon. I think had planned on dumping the XFL. You're buying it back, saving some of the debt, whatever. But the fact that he, well, he clearly, he didn't believe in it and clearly it doesn't work and that's why he dumped it. That's a false narrative. What do you think about that? I mean, they're, they're not taking into account the WB thing, like the product was, was suffering and that's his bread and butter and, and none of these articles are none of the things Iraj. It says ever take any of those variables. That Vince could control into account. And that's the problem. It's just like, you're, you're eliminating. You're eliminating. You know, 50% Of the reasons why. And it's it's dishonest. Yeah. It's that time of the whole picture. It's you're, you're being very selective with your facts. And you're presenting a narrative. You're only presenting the facts that support your narrative. Yeah. Okay. Bankruptcy twice. I get it. But look at the reasons behind the bankruptcy, dig a little deeper. Do your research is I hate to hear it, but do do some research. And realize that that, that. That's what happened? Well, and I, and friended the show, CFL America on, on Twitter. It's our league now is, is the display name. You know, he, cause I, I tweeted, I said, you know, I'm tired of this. And like, you know, figure this stuff out. He goes, 99% Of America still equates the XFL with Vincent man. It's a tough sell dude. And I, yeah, but like this honest articles, like this don't help that. And so that's what kills me is it's like, well, that's the way it is. And we're going to keep like every single. A three down article about this merger stuff has like they copy and paste at the bottom. Like. In case you didn't know, the XFL was bankrupt by Ben sick man. [Unknown] I get it. It's like every single time they keep pushing the same. Like, I'm just so tired of like, we, we are trying to be open in this and, and I do think like CFL or M three down nation, and I don't really get it. Because, and we've talked offline a lot about this with like mark, with news, having everybody else like. Whatever survives with the CFL XFL. I assume three down. Nation's going to cover it. So why would you talk negatively about this for a year, two years? Knowing that there is a good potential that you're going to cover that I don't get. I don't get the, I really don't. I don't get the. Hatred there or that, you know what I mean? The bias, I guess, is the right word. Not hatred. Just look at what happens when you criticize a league too much. What happened with us? FCF. Just realize that. But I just, it's interesting. And, and, and, and I know that they believe in the game and John Hodge has come on and said, you know, he's, he says, he goes, I'm a, I'm a home guy. That's why we made fond call. I'm a Homer nation like egos. I, this is what, like I'm a CFL guy. But. If this does exist in any kind of like, you're still going to cover this. So you do. They, they. They everybody has a bias or everyone has an agenda. Our agenda is to get the most listenership and hopefully viewership that we can. And so that's our, we're open to these things. Three downs. They might not have that same interest. Their interests might be preserving the Canadian game and that's fine, but everybody has a bias of where they're coming from. Ours. I'm open to anything because I just want more people to listen to my dumb podcast so we can actually make some money on this thing. Where are they? I apparently don't have that same philosophy and that's fine. I mean, you can, you can. Value the CFL game. I get it over. I got absolutely. You can value that over my, like, I'm just saying everyone has a perspective over there coming from completely agree. So moving on. Kind of adjacent news happening. We, we always talk about this on the show you're wearing your, your Carolina Panthers Jersey. The Panthers have traded Teddy Bridgewater to the Denver Broncos. So hopefully, yeah. Rob is happy about that. Getting himself a quarterback, that's making $20 million. Oh, wait. They they've, I guess they've renegotiated the contract. I'm reading here. Seven and the Broncos are going to pay him $3 million. That's half of what he was originally. Oh, slated to make. This is, I mean, Daddy's got to have some photos of someone in Carolina. I mean, this is a sweet deal to get traded to the Broncos where he was. Lord knows what was gathered. And the reason we talked about, you know, CFL fans, the reason we talked about the Panthers, PJ Walker, MVP of the XFL from the roughnecks, he plays, he's a backup on the Panthers. I feel better about PJ's life now than I did two days ago when Teddy Bridgewater was still in front of him. Yeah. You know, these, these, these people in Carolina, they're still gonna draft a quarterback, like you said, They're still gonna do it. Yeah, happy. And that's all drafted by the way. I am. I'm thrilled at that. Broncos interesting tonight still, they said that they're going to draft a quarterback. The Panthers, fascinating stuff, but yeah. Good for Teddy, but three teams in three years. That's tough. That's a tough look for that. One other thing I did see, I don't know if it was true or not. I saw that they. 49 Years, tried the trade, their third round pick for Aaron Rogers. Did you see this? Yeah, we're going to talk about that right now. Okay. Aaron Rodgers per Adam Schefter. This just barely came out. Yeah, he does not want to return to green bay. He's done. He's done. He's out. He just, he doesn't want to do it. He, I guess it started last year when they. Train it up. To draft a quarterback with her first name. Yep. And they, they took that as a sign. He took that as a sign that his days are numbered. So he wants out, he said, I want out, I haven't changed my mind. Of course. The coach. GM have both flown out there to talk to him. You know, he's also engaged to Shailene Woodley. She's a Hollywood actress. You hosted jeopardy did a great job and he would also, he. You know, that's something he would, you know, he's, he's looking after football. That's what he's doing. He's he's trying to set him up. Himself up for the life after football. So. Being in LA would definitely work. But the problem is now, where do you land? I mean the charters have Justin Herbert. I don't see them getting rid of Justin Herbert, but maybe green bay will take him. Justin Herbert is a great player. Oh, Justin. Herbert is phenomenal. The question. That's crazy if they. I San Fran, I don't get what they would want. I mean, you figure Rogers only has like two years left, right? I mean, two, three years maybe. I mean, tops. So. Do you give up? I mean, I don't think that made sense at all for the 49ers where you're going to give up. I mean, whoever, if you drafted number three, that is Kyle Shanahan's quarterback for the rest of his life. As a coach in San Francisco. Yeah. I mean, and then I, you know, unless something happens, so like why you would trade that, you know, potentially 10, 15 year quarterback for someone that, you know, is. Still playing phenomenal, but clearly just at the end. He was the league MVP last year. Yeah. But I mean, just, you know, personally done. Ah, that's interesting. Wow. I mean, I, you know what you. Aaron could land somewhere. That's close. That's close to LA. They need a better quarterback. Even the Raiders, they've talked about the Raiders. Yeah, I think that's, that's a potential and that would. That would limit Russell's options. Because I know it came out recently that Russell is everything's all, you know, Kumbaya over there, but I don't know. I believe Robert turbine, finally, a final note on an NFL quarterbacks and stuff like that team. Tim Tebow. Try not for the Jaguars as a tight end. Yeah. I came out too. Ian Rapoport saying Tim Tebow tried out as a tight end for the Jaguar. So maybe Tim Tebow will become all elite Beth. That's remarkable. Former. Just last night here, we got one more quick break and then we've got a little touch 70 and. Director of player now. Eric Galkayo. Alco. He was with the roughnecks, right? Please forgive me. Who is he's the. He's going to be the, with this tribal, I don't know what this is. He's a director of football, operations, and player personnel for the shrine bowl. What is the shrine bowl? It's like the east-west shrine. I believe it's like the senior game kind of, it's like a senior game. I'm I'm pretty sure. East west shrine bowl. So it's seniors from. Small and big schools competing against each other. So, oh, there you go. A friend of the show called Boozer would be very excited about that friend. The Shriner hospital or wherever we donated when, when he came on the show. He was, why do they not have. He was with the roughnecks. Right. Please forgive me. It was one of the texts. I think it was, I think it was DC. You see, wasn't he. Eric. Ah, I'm just going to come here. I'm going to vamp right now, you're going to XFL show.com/merge to buy some XFL, mark cast merchandise. That's what we do here. We vamp when Reed starts to Google things and none of these, none of these have. You're kidding. And these have. Aye. Here we go. Now. Director. They don't even have, they just have. Wow. He was with one of the Texas teams. I feel like anyway, that's I, I, sorry. Interesting. All right. Coming back. We're gonna talk about spring league stuff. Ah, that's up next right here on the market. Last. How do they not have where he went? Air. This is killing me. Eric. Gal co. I followed him. Maybe he just was with her. He was just with the league. All right. There you go. And we're back. He used to support the league. He just was the lead director of, I thought he was with a team. I thought he was with like the, I don't know. It's where the accident. There you go. Oh, there we go. Spring league practices started. Wednesday. April 28th. Whether we're starting in India, we see in some photos come down. I have given Brian Woods, our out wishlist of people to talk to. So I'm hoping that we have some good guests coming up next week. We already have a CFL guests lined up as well. We'll we'll touch on that. Or we'll we'll handle that later. I'll I'll post about that. Couple of things, Andrew Jamil, he was a standout with the, the fingernail football. He was a glacier boys, wide receiver. He is going to be in the spring league so we can, you know, so Rob can shove it when he says that people don't want to go in between the two. And a friend or not friend of the show are. Well, hopefully friend of the shows. Brandon silvers Seattle dragons, quarterback. Playing for the conquerors who went at that. Cool. Now for the jobs. Are you gonna stick with the jesters? No, we're there now. Where are the jobs is all the way. Cause with Gilbride and pres. One thing I just, and Vince friend of the show, all football scout. When they announced, like, Oh, when they announced guy Kevin Gilbride and, and, and Louis Perez and all that, they're like, oh, former, like they formerly played together and they never mentioned the XFL. And I screamed again last night. Like it is okay. If you're the spring league to acknowledge that people played in fingernail football or XFL, same with Panadol. It's all football. Same with XFL. Like the people that watch one of these leagues watch all these leaks. And so it kills me with like, oh, here's like a former connection. You're like, well, what is the connection there? Cause they don't want to say like, well, they both played for the New York guardians. So it is okay. It is okay, Brian, I'm going to give him a note. I'm going to email Brian Woods. I'm going to say it's okay to acknowledge the XFL. You worked together, you took money from the XFL. They paid you to test their rules. This isn't like, you know, The 1980s WWE, where you didn't pay attention to the fact that a hundred. The giant did lose ever every once in a while. This isn't like that at all. No, no, we. We can, we can pay attention to other things that are going on. Do you know anything about Ryan? Mallett Molech. Ryan Mallett. Yeah. I do remember that he was in the league for a cup of coffee. He's playing for the generals. He was replacing friend of the show. Brian Scott, Brian, Scott's working on is getting in the NFL camp. So. Yeah, the, the generals will be having the new quarterback under center for them. Cool. Yeah, just a couple other, I like Eric Dungey he played for that. He was a backup for Landry Jones. He's going to be playing for the blues. Nick Fitzgerald is going to be playing for the sea lions. We know that Perez is playing for the jouster. As I said, they're kind of getting all the quarterbacks. It was really exciting to see Brandon silvers there. I do think that's a good. To me, that's a very surprising person to get in the league because it seemed to me like, Silvers was kind of done with football after the XFL and the whole like BJ experiment and all that with the dragons. So it is surprising to me that even if he is not pain, But he is not getting paid. I would presume to go play. I'm just surprised. I'm surprised that I'm surprised they got silvers, but I think that's a good, what do you think about silvers playing in the league? I think it helps grow the audience for the spring league because he's a recognizable name to people that have watched, you know, alternative football leagues. He's very recognizable names. So getting Silver's there can only help. In terms of drawing some viewers in, I mean, we're not going to talk about. You're not talking like tens of thousands of viewers, but some people are gonna be like, oh, Brandon silvers is playing. I remember him from the XFL. Let's see what's going on. It's going to bring some people at it. Definitely. I can bring some people. I mean, there was eight starting quarterbacks in the NFL. So I think the fact that you got like, I mean, I know there was a couple more cars like that. People moved in Cornelius and all that. But like, if you can get Louise Perez and Brandon silvers and they can play, I think that that's good. I completely agree. Finally, I don't know where we're still covering this, but. We did go a couple of fingers. Oh, no, it's I got an email this week. You can still buy in. If you want to buy into a fingertip football team, I thought that was closed down and they opened it back up and then they sold. I won't, I won't be investing. Yeah. That's it. The key to me is I got an email I've now they're selling like retro shirts. And I thought, well, this is wonderful for a league that's been around for like, you know, well, I know it took like six years to build, but one season of the thing, when you can buy retro, like Marshawn Lynch, honors, t-shirts now. So. So, I mean, when, when I see something like that, like a one-year-old league selling retro shirts, it like makes me think of the WWE. You know, and seeing someone that just got moved on from NXT and just saying, oh, that's vintage, Bianca Belair. Like. She'd been there for five minutes, but now you're saying vintage. Bianca Belair, like it's. Retro shirts like. There's no retro here. I will say, and this is a really honest note about all this at the end. I'm very surprised how dark. Finger to football has gone PA like post. I know that they're working with everybody. I've talked a lot with Jake Henry about this online. Cause they're still doing like weekly shows, right? Like on Thursdays are still doing, I dunno what they talk about, but they're still doing shows. And like their viewership is like in the thousands. Like it's really, really low or like in the, I mean, it's not. And I'm like, man, it's, you know, I get it. And to come out and, and you. Talking about viewership or whatever before, but then they just went dark. I mean, I haven't seen Patrick D's tweet in forever. I haven't seen so Rob tweet, I haven't seen like Ray Austin posted after the George foil thing. Like they did a post, which I thought was nice the way Austin. You know, as, as a minority commissioner, I believe I thought that was great that he came out. I mean, you know, I'll give credit where credit's due. I thought Ray Austin, that was nice. You know, the, he, he did that, but scary to me that they just went dark and, yeah. Do you have any thoughts on that before we go? Them going dark and not, you know, I know they were trying to, I know. They sold the highlight as an NFT. I know they did that. But other than that, I haven't seen much. I saw, I think I saw Patrick tweet. To somebody. A couple of days ago, but. The going dark thing. I don't know. I, I, if you ha if. If your league is, is as successful as you say it is. When you want to keep. That in the. In the mind in the, in the, in the court of public opinion and keep that fresh and relevant because you say you're going to play twice a year. Right. Yeah. So what were, what, what. Technically five, four and a half, five months away from the second season. Why are, why aren't you doing more things to get ready for that second season? I, yeah, I just think it's. It's odd. I. And I know I'm sure that the insurance and stuff that, I mean, I joked, but I'm sure it was like insurance that ran some of those social media accounts. I mean, it just seems like. It's kind of like game of Thrones and it was, it was this big thing. And now, like we don't talk about it. It's so weird. It, it it's weird. Like it's weird that it's, it's just fallen so far off the radar and I just don't. Anyway, I just, I thought that was interesting. I don't understand it. All right with that being said, we thank you for another you're another two hour episode listening to us. For probably two hours. Reid keeps doing this to me. It's okay. I understand. And we just, we, you know, there's a lot to talk about in terms of the CFL thing and we appreciate everyone listening. We. Appreciate them, the constructive criticism, the helping of us getting our info in and everything and helping get us up to speed on the Canadian game. What we, what we don't like doing is, is dealing with trolls or dealing with people that are, you know, stepping into waters and, and kind of just being, just being trolls. You know, we don't appreciate that. So yeah. Other work. Yeah. A lot of work. But then thanks to Dan and Rob for coming on. I really appreciate, I mean that when we get like, these are real professionals that real cover this, like for reals, I mean, you know, we, I know we cover it, but like, this is, you know, this is like Rob's life and so dance life. And so I do appreciate when they. I mean that when I don't take for granted, then, you know, taking the time to come on and share what they know. I completely agree with that. Sediment completely. And we appreciate you. Listening to us, leave us a review. Oh, your note is empty. So we must be done. Must be done. So I'll leave us a review xflshow.com/review. If you want to buy some merch XFL xflshow.com/merch. We're probably changing the name of that a website soon. Also, also subscribe to us on YouTube. We'll be giving up doing another giveaway. When we hit 2,500 subscribers, we're already halfway more than halfway to 2,500.

Episode 37 - The XFL is NOT the Enemy…

Yo. What's up Reid. That's our when we're being asked to do that now, Coming up spoiler or in the show for AAJ. He asked me, he goes, I got to get a year from you guys. So that's, I guess that's our thing now. It's a kind of like, it's kind of become our call. I lied. Dig it. Sorry, Bronx. We took your little saying, and now it's kind of becoming, becoming a thing among the XFL CFL people, but we're spreading the love. We're spreading the love. We know where it came from. Of course, you know, Much love with the BX. I tweeted at rod Peterson. And like I said, I went before the show today and I said, rod, if you're going to break it, we're recording in an hour. If you're going to drop any earth, shattering news, let us know now. And he didn't get back to me. So I assume we're good to go. Also I, Dan Barnes, who's also going to be on the show, said that this is,I guess, going to be in the big news. You know, he goes nothing to talk about after this week for a couple of weeks. So hopefully we have a great show that is evergreen through tomorrow. Fingers crossed for everybody listening. So I really do not need you sending me. 40 Text messages. No, no. Nothing personal. Lynn you're you're like what the app and you're using. You know, words that we don't normally use here. You're freaking out. You're like, Because the show basically just got blown up. Last minute. That'd be great. Yeah, that'd be great. I keep checking Twitter to make sure nothing is late breaking, because I don't want to have the situation that we had the other night. So with that being said, speaking of spreading throughout Canada, going back to that. That your thing's running throughout Canada. Far hands calling us famous in Canada. I remember that last week. Yeah, I, I, I added a shirt to the templates. I haven't added it to the shop yet. Potentially going to exit polls, show that con slash merge and get a, Hey, you guys are famous in Canada. No. It's cool. It's good. We have a great show today. I appreciate. Aji from the red blacks and then Dan Barnes coming on to talk. I'm the, I keep, I keep skirting around saying ages, last name. Do you notice that. We'll get to the bottom of that. Jackie Beck. No, we have a jacket back. With the red blacks coming on. And then we have Dan Barnes, lots of fun. CFL XFL staff continuing to educate ourselves and the listeners. I think people are appreciating that. I repost it, our big Eros duel on YouTube. I had a lot of comments of, Hey, it's almost better that you guys have. You know, conflicting views, it adds to the legitimacy of your podcast. So I like adding the legitimacy to the podcast. What I'm looking to add is a plate of humble pie to a Roshes. Dinner table. Yes, I already, when they announced the exit. LCFF merger and it's called the XF. CFL or whatever it's called. I already have the thumbnail in my mind for the video of us serving humble pie to Eros. I'm on the podcast. A couple other quick notes. I Jenna. Congratulations, Jenna winner of the Chad Ochocinco giveaway ball. We announced that last week on the show. Got the ball either this morning or last night tweeted the photos. I retweeted it. Congratulations. I have sent out all the hats and everything, so that all should be in row. And the Jersey, if you guys don't have that here in the next week, I think Paul paid like premium for the shipping. I did not. So you guys will get them with when FedEx gets them over there. I'm not going to say where Jenna lives. But it's relatively close. Sure. Okay. Yeah. Kelly Kelly. So, yeah, so anyways, so I that's good. Also XFL show.com/reviews. We had two reviews come in this week. Listener max finally got off his butt and left us a review. And then our, our friend Bray, then I have a CFL rabbit. Left this year review. So we are climbing up the charts in iTunes, Canada. That's good. I mean, we were number one in iTunes, America. I don't know if we're still holding that out spot. Hopefully we are, I haven't checked in a bit. I know. I made bounce. We bounce. We bounce up and down, but it's fine. We'll we'll we'll, we'll lock down the number one spot and we won't let it go here soon. So. This is the podcast that doesn't lead with clickbait. Right? That's what you want to say. Is that our new motto here? I did. I just wanted to point this out. I don't like to talk about the competition too much. Or, or any other XFL podcasts? I did think it was very interesting that what we mocked and called clickbait on our show last week about the intergalactic super mega league game between the XFL and CFL. Was the lead of another XFL podcast. So I just. That I, again, I am trying to do the best job we can by making sure we know whether it's correct and whether it's not, and that's not to make fun of anybody or not, but yeah, I take it very much seriously to get, you know, I'm like having a Jay and Dan on today who are people in the trenches covering this stuff every day and not speculating on clickbait. So I I'm just happy that we did that. The other thing. Oh, I have my rough, I have my notes here. I have my roughnecks hat. Yeah. I, it came like literally the second after the show aired last week in my panic of my rod Peterson breaking news, I was like, oh, am I, am I rough next hat camp? So it was, we recorded an hour or two early last week, but that's okay. I had people sending, if I get motivated on the video edits today, Josh Davis, who won't see this, but then Vince and Phillip Ramirez all sent in their merge from their roughnecks. I did a call. So I might put some photos up here if you're watching the YouTube video and I'll probably put Jenise photos from getting the ball to so a little plug, if you're listening on audio to watch the YouTube version. Yeah. So when you get your merge, send it to send us pictures of you getting emerged and we'll. We'll throw them on the YouTube. Why not? Yeah, I know. What did, and what's this. Mark running into the mad king. I don't know what is this? So the episode today, the episode title, and we'll get into this more later. The XFL is not the enemy. And I'm going to maintain that. I have my note here at the XFL CFL to me equals lost. I tweeted this a at the end of season one, if anyone seen lost. And Jack. Huh. Marler alert. It's been out for 20 years. Sweller alert. And you know, it season Y very climactic episode and Matthew Shepard, or Matthew Fox, Jack Shepherd on the show screams at everybody. He goes, we need to live together. We're going to die alone. Right. Cause they're all, they're all living on that island and they're all doing this stuff. And that's how I feel about this mark this week on his podcast, exit on these whole weekend review. Got a barrage of like [unknown]. Foul anti all this stuff going crazy. And work like. Did devolved in the last, like half hour of the show. And he was like, you know what, like, we're number one, we don't need your views. Like. We're in this day. Number one. And I was like, mark is like, Burn them all. Margaret really turned into like the gift that I have. I keep posting with a guy looking at the fire behind him. That's kind of what's happening. Yeah. Mark's like, we'll play one down. We'll play for dance a little bit. I go, mark. You have at it. So, and we'll get into this with XML. It's, we're not the enemy. And, and there was a very heated discussion. We're going to get into all of our stuff. I hate all this preface, but. I had tweeted the night before the XFL, the CFL delay. Where they said, Hey, we're going to play the grey cup in December. And I go, okay, so what's on this question. Is it worse to play the grey cup in December? Than it is to start in February just asking weather-wise what's going on. That, the heat, that, that question got and just, it was, I, I finally had to turn off, like I couldn't even, and I was just asking the question. I had no idea. I was like, Hey, people that live up there. And the sentiment I got and Bebe can re Ryan. Follows us. He was on big brother, five or six. He goes, you know, I just hate this false narrative that the XFL wants to hit, you know, save the CFL and like F you guys and all this, I go, dude. As upset as you are. And other people about people not taking the CFL seriously saying the players, aren't good for the NFL C and three downs or dumb say and all that stuff. That is the same with XFL. People feel like we're all the same. Like we all want to be together here. So like, we are not the enemy. Like we want to build the staff. We want to build our stuff by. We are not go hate on the people that are crapping on. You know, they're seeing that it's NFL or nothing. Hate on that chase Crowder on pat McAfee show. Like don't hate on us. We're not, we are, I, I told them I go, I have bent over backwards. We have the last six or seven weeks to get people on here to educate. So don't look the whole thing, the whole rivalry, I guess if we're going to say that between. The CFL and XFL is one sided. Yeah, it really is one sided. The XFL people have, have started to get to know your product, get to appreciate your product. Think there's a lot of things about your product that need to come into the exfil to make it good too. And we don't, we're not attached to letters. We're not attached to a name. You can call it the CFL. It'll give a crap. Just like, realize that we want the CFL to succeed. To succeed at the end of the day. And you guys are pushing Reed to become like me on Twitter. I we've, I've noticed that lately, the Reed's getting a little bit, get a little bit spicy with you, people you Canadians about this stuff, and it's like, dude, we're not, we're not trying to fight you. We're trying to, we're trying to, we're not, we're not. I know you don't, maybe not trust Americans were arrogant and cocky, but. There are some of us that care about the product and care about the heritage of your league. I know you say it's a hundred years to actually 60, but there's a lot of us that care about the lineage and history and PR and product that you have and want to see it succeed. Long past. 30 20, not saying the world's going to be around. But you get my point. You get my point. I get what I'm saying. Yeah. I was proud of my one tweet this week as a, again, the laziness talking about the American expansion of the CFL. And, you know, it didn't work in the nineties. It's not going to work. I go. Think of all the things that didn't exist in the nineties, I iPhones Netflix, high-speed internet selfies, Wikipedia streaming music, Google texting. And please tell me the nineties expansion didn't work. Think about that, think about how different our lives are from the nineties from now. And tell me that, like, we'll just, cause it didn't work 30 years ago. It's not going to work. That's true. Did you have a fact check on one of my, one of my bullet points? Well, I do know that when I was in high school, back in 1996, you know, We did have some high speed internet access at like the schools. We didn't have it in our homes. So there's maybe a clarification there. And the first text message was actually sent. On December 3rd, 1992. So we didn't have text messaging in the nineties. Messaging was just exactly that the Bengals have not wanted to play off games since texting existed, but. You've seen the whole thing. And if I'm going to borrow from a, if I'm going to borrow from us something right there, pointing out that the text message was sent in 1992, which means we have texting for the. For the majority of the nineties. I don't know what that means. Cause you don't listen to the wheelhouse. Listen to your other podcasts. I still. I don't know what that means. So that means I just want an argument. Are you going to now? You're okay. Anyway, so. Done with the preface onto the news. I have my I'm hooked. I got my Sarah sugars. It's 10 45 in the morning. Here we go. So we're, we're cracking here. By the way. I told you that I was drinking. I, I finished the case that I got. Wow. I noticed, I noticed the case. You got has sugar in it, so I can not drink that case. Cause you know, Diabetes. Well, they didn't have a zero sugar when I ordered it. It didn't exist. I'm not judging. I'm just saying that it's sitting on my it's sitting up above my fridge right now and I'm going to just take it to work and just say here's, that's what I was going to say. I was going to say, bring it into the newsroom. So. So the big news that happened this week, the CFL is announcing a target date in big quotes. August 5th, 14 game season grey cup on December 12th. Target date. Yeah. I got a pencil. On my calendar. I'll be there. If the grey cup happens this year, I will be there. No questions asked. We'll both be there. Yeah. I mean, I'm just telling you, so it's got to ha I mean, I can I'll come December 12th. There I'll come. Whatever. Like I said, I asked about that. I asked about the logistics of, okay. Is it, is it better to do the Greg like, cause the whole thing I've heard from two months. Can play in February. It's too cold in Canada. We can't play in February. It's too. I go. Okay. So then when they announced the December, I go is. Is that better? Is that worse? Oh, it's way better. It's way better. If I got a lot of arguments about how I, how I dry called is better than the wet February call people being candid that are like very in, on like the weather. I heard a lot of arguments about like for crops, it's better for like the farmers that are watching me. It was crazy. Like my Twitter, that when I asked that went crazy. Aye. Aye. Well, you know, the farmers, it is better for them. If, if, if. The thing is it's crazy. This is, this is not really like. It's it's more, this is all based on health. That's what it looks like to me. Yeah. Just my big concerns about this, and I've copied a lot of stuff on here, but we don't have to get into all that. I just. And I did go back and forth with Dave Campbell about this friend of the show. He feels very positive that the CFL is really being open and honest about this. Right? Cause we don't cover the CFL. We're new at this. He goes, no, this is great. Like they really would ever. Yeah, but it didn't seem like Ambrozy said a lot. I saw a lot of retweets about backup plans and backup plans and we have backup. But nothing. I said, you know, what's better than backup plans, like telling us what those are. And so far, the only things we've seen is that they're going to cut the schedule. Or have the teams in the east play road games at home in the west. What do you think about those as the only options for backups right now? If things go awry. They need a bubble. And if that bubble. No bubble though. I mean, I know they said no bubble, but. I mean. They need to have some kind of games. They need to have some kind of games and, you know, we get into it later on about, you know, you need to have some fans, they need to have some games. They need have some fans. I mean. If you have a bubble, then you don't really have fans. So it's. I think. The backup plans are limited. And I think the reason why, you know, we say bubble, but then we go, what. Well, you need fans to, to pay the bills. The backup plans are very limited. And I think that that should show people. How. Fragile and vulnerable league is if they, if they need fans. If they need fans. Everyone we're talking to says they need fans. So they're ruling out a bubble. So now they're down to two backup plans. It appears. I, I mean, Am I reading this wrong? No. I mean, I, that's just what I asked and, and, you know, and I guess I tied with Dave and he goes, well, I feel like people are holding, not just us, but people are holding the CFL to a higher standard. And I go to be fair. I think we had asked if Walmart called everybody two eyes. I mean, talk to me about fan controlled football, and then we can talk about holding people to, but I go. That's your big plan is. Well, if, if it's still bad in the east, we'll just travel to the west. I'm like, well, How does that work with crossing the provinces and border? Like they don't. Does Canada want that? Like, well, it's really diseased in the east. So we're just going to show him all the players to the west and play like, that will be fine. Like, is that okay? I don't. I mean, I, if we had I'm. I mean, these are just questions I'm asking, but like, if that was in the us and you're like, yeah, the east coast is just like real with COVID. So we'll just have the teams fly to the west. Like with the U S gun. Oh yeah, that's fine. I just fly him into LA. Like, we'll just play in LA if we can't play over there, like he isn't there some modicum of like, Rules for the whole country. I wouldn't, I wouldn't even begin to speculate. And, and you're talking about, you're making an assumption. How many weeks out? That one, the east is going to be terrible. Well, that's what they're saying. This is what Randy says too. If, what if the east, the east drops dramatically and the west pops up now, all of a sudden you're going to move the team from the west to the east. Like. There's there's so many projections you're making and the virus is making its own projections. Unfortunately, that's the way it is. And I know a lot of people, a lot of her friends, I'm seeing a, like rod got his. Rod got his Fowchee out. She, as we call it here in the U S he got shot up, Jim Mullen from. What you got yours? Yep. I got my second dose last week. It knocked my ass down for a few days. The murders, no joke, kids. So I'm seeing a lot of our friends in Canada get their, get their shot on. So we're hoping that mitigates the spread slows it down and everything can go off without a hitch. Yeah, I just, I, the other concern and I was talking to Dave. Kneeler and Farhan about this on Twitter is [unknown]. Those players, aren't going to be made whole for those loss games. Right. And that, that is another sad thing. So. You know, it's already, they're already paid like crap. You go from 18 games now to 14 games. It's just not good. It's not good. And it is crazy how it's showing how fragile. You know, for whatever you want to say about the different leagues and stuff there, it's a very fragile situation. Even the online Betty, we talked with rod about this. A month ago. He said, you know, people think online betting is going to solve everything. Yeah. But you gotta have games and you gotta have games. You've gotta have fans and you have fans, you gotta have like, it's all reliant. It's all this house of cards and it is crazy. But yeah, Naylor said, he goes, I would just presume that those are last paychecks. And I said, well, that, that really stinks. So. The other quick note, Roughriders president at Craig Reynolds. He said the reality. This is just a quote. I pulled, he released a statement yesterday. They did the fans. He goes, the reality is it will take several years rest to get back into the black. And now that the whole, this pandemic has left us playing football. This season is the most important and most exciting thing we can do, but it will not solve our financial issues. So. I'm gonna make an assumption that he is onboard with the merger or some sort of interleague stuff. Yes. No. Aye. It's interesting. I mean, we, we talked a little bit about, about this with Dan I, and to plug his article. I had a note. Cause he, he did some research with talking with the players. The, the CFL PA up there about the pay cuts and stuff too. He thinks that, you know, the CFL, it will continue for a million years and I don't disagree, but I, and I'm like we said, they could come in with the XFL and still go back and do their own thing. But it is, yeah. This season is not a cure all, I mean, we're just trying to get through the season and figure out whatever, you know, 20, 22, I guess, looks like. I, I think you'll hear Dan coming up later on. I don't. Yeah, like I said, I don't disagree. He's he's very knowledgeable about the subject. I think that. There's a lot of optimism on his end. That this is going to happen regardless of merger or any kind of. You know, Support from. The American side of things. I think maybe he has some info on the government stepping up finally in, in helping out. But it's going to be interesting to see how this plays out. Speaking of funding. Per Dan, Randy Ambrozy said the league is not the ass. XFL or Redbird to fund their 2021 season. And they've never had that discussion with the XFL. And he believes they can create a maiden Canada solution. Yeah. Okay, Randy. Then do it. Well, and. You know, I can, me as someone that, that, you know, tries to walk the line, That hurts when, when, when that comes out and then I get a lot of like, yeah, she, like, we didn't do it in Canada, like F you guys. And I get that and I get the America thing. I get all that. But, but to me, that Stokes, that national pride, which I absolutely get and respect a hundred percent, but. You know, I, it is bigger than that at this point. Right? You. If we're looking at the leagues or I would like to think so. I mean, I don't care. You know, we're going to go to the great cop. Like I don't care what side of the border anything's on, but when he says that, like maiden America or remade in Canada, like we're going to have that solution. I get a lot of feedback about that. Like, see, we don't need you guys like F you and I'm like, well, no, like ha I just think he's means they're trying to figure it out. Yeah. I think. Yeah, a they're reading too much into it. And. I don't know if I completely agree that they haven't. Had some talks. With Redbird or XFL. About potentially coming up with some. Some money. It just doesn't seem like they talk about everything else and not talk about a 2121 season being funded. I know people are saying Randy Ambrose is being completely transparent, but it seems oddly we have talks about everything else, because again, why does, why does the CFL pick up the phone and call the XFL? If they're not in serious financial trouble. And money's never discussed. I don't know if I buy it. Sorry. I don't know if I buy it. Well in the idea, is that a bail out? I guess hasn't been discussed. I got my hot take here. I left this on Facebook yesterday. If anyone wants to read tot take and don't flame the podcast, please, but this is my high take right now. The article came out. Ambrozy said like that the XFL CFL discussions had never involved rules so far. It's always just been business. Right? They'd be talking to business. And so I sent people were sharing that. You don't want to read things. They haven't discussed rules. And I'm not saying I want this. Cause they. Cause they're rolling over it's XFL. That's my hot take. Is there, like, we don't need to talk about rules because we're not taking those rules. And rod said last week we talked, you know, that, that, that one change was the, the post and the frat versus the back. But, you know, for downs, all these things. That's it. That's my hot take is like, they don't need to talk about the rules because they're not taking any of that. And they're just plowing through it. That's just my hot deck. So you're, you're, you're hot. Take it. You're stepping away. You're stepping away. Your hot take is that they're taking all the XFL rules. That's my hot take. And I don't, I don't have anything in the world to justify that at all. But I'm saying like, if they've talked for too much air since October and they're like, yeah, our focus is really, hasn't been about the rules. It's been about business it's because like the XFL does not care about the CFL rules. And I'm not saying I want that. I'm just saying that is my hot tech. I want, I want the multiple motion. Aye. Aye. I'm cool. With three downs. I'm cool. To four downs. Whatever it doesn't matter to me. The, I think the yardage on the field probably needs to change. I saw, I think it was Braden that said. If that happens. And they go uniform a hundred yards, then all of a sudden, it's not a truncated field anymore. Like there's, you know, you see some of those, those fields that have the end zone that isn't quite square. It's got two corners cut off. You take the field down to a hundred yards and then all of a sudden the corners aren't cut off anymore. And the only reason if you need, if you don't, I don't know if you knew this, the only reason why American football. Fields are a hundred yards and then, you know, 10 tenured ends on is because of multi-use stadiums. Oakland. Oakland. Alameda county Coliseum. The last multi-use facility. Is no longer a bla multi-use facility with the Raiders moving to Las Vegas, but that's why our fields are a hundred yards. And then the extra 10 yards on the end zones. Is because of that. So I think that that's probably something that, that. Unfortunately, you're gonna lose a 55 55 yard line there. CFL fans, but. Probably you're going to lose three downs, but. You know, the ruses are fine. I think the routers are cool. I think it's a cool aspect. I think the missed field goals, I think there's so many things of the CFL game. That could be implemented. And I, you know, we're talking about rules here, but. And it seems to be some things that people are dying on. When I want four downs. Well, your kids are playing Madden and on Madden, they get four downs. Yeah. Anyway, I, this is my hot take. I saw that. W just one quick note and then we'll get into this XFL stuff. Cause I'm sure people, you know, we know what's going on with the CFL delay. I did think it was interesting. Randy Ambrozy did an article with a cfl.ca. And they were asking about like, you know, getting a revised schedule and everything. I do these where like, they don't have that yet. And I'm like, so what if you guys been doing it for, I mean, Like I get it. And I get, okay, we're trying to figure out the date and all that, but like, can you plug that into it? I mean, the NFL has just a guy that just goes in and does the NFL schedule, I guess there's one guy that does that. He knows all the, whatever, like good morning football talks about it a lot. Like he just spends a week and doesn't like, In all this time, we haven't, we haven't heard anything for you guys in minds and you're on gab. We're getting the schedule figured out here in a couple of weeks, like. Well, we know we're going August 5th. It. I know, you know, if, if. But if one guy can take a week and do a schedule with 30 teams. 32 Teams. There's no, there's no reason why this. They can't have one guy do a nine team 14 game schedule in a week either. This seems weird. I, again, I'm not trying to hold anybody too. Standing anybody allow anybody to a high standard? I do think it's weird that we don't have a schedule that they can just like pencil on it. And it's pretty easy to figure out what the NFL schedule is going to be. If you follow it. By the end of the season and the standings, you know, like, okay, Seattle finished second in the NFC west. So they're going to play every second place team in the NFC, including every team in one division of the NFC, whether it be east or north, whatever the case may be, you could figure out pretty much how the schedule is going to go. When the season ends. The previous season, you can figure out where, what. What teams are gonna play? What teams. The next year or so the CFO. I know, I know what you're saying. Not the worst thing. Yeah. So Chris O'Leary on the CFL thing. I just had a couple of plot quotes here. He talked to Dan Brosy and the XFL thing came up. This was a phenomenal quote to me. And that really resonated. I want to get your thoughts. It is a direct quote from Ambrose that you guys, what has become increasingly obvious to me is that the business of our league has never been as good as the players who play our game and the game itself, what we're looking at and what we've been working on is improving our business model. Hmm. Okay. I mean. You know, Just when you, when you have the commissioner of the league saying like, yeah, we, we, we, we need to do that. Like we, our players deserve better. I don't think. I don't think Goodell's coming out and saying that. I got to think of Delos coming out, like doing his zoom. A draft from his, like, you know, remember when you had that like fancy living room for his, for the draft virtual draft let's drag. I don't think it Dells. How's it coming out and being like, yeah, our, our business model and really needs to step up to our player. I mean, I'm not saying that's not true, but it just really struck me that he said that. I mean, it's, it's all like, it's all paradoxical in a way. Chicken. Kind of situation. You know, you need, you need a better business model. You need a better TV deal. You need to be here. Players better. You need to, you need EDD, you need, you need. And I mean, He's, he's not, he's stating the obvious here. He really is stating obviously, or we need to improve everything about our league. So. The other one I shared, and this is to feel good for CFL XFL fans. Every time you were on a call with them. That's him talking about XFL people. You are struck by how genuine, authentic. Sincere they are. And trying to determine if there's an opportunity to do better, do better together in some form. That's been the spirit of our discussion so far. Genuine authentic insincere. I think those are good words you want to hear? Yeah, you want to hear him, but I don't know if anybody up there is believing them. They just think that we're going to come over and take over their league. Some of them do. The other quote and I, I. Oh, there we go. Frank Gunn with the Canadian press and Brazee and. A couple of quick interviews yesterday talking about this. He goes, ah, and this is good if you're. Jake Henry, a friend of the show. He's getting a little like, well, I don't know what's going on with these XFL talks. If they're talking about the CFL season Ambrose, he goes, I think there is without a doubt, a sense of urgency to try and advance our discussions. Urgency. Urgency. What, what would cause urgency read? Well, Yeah, so. Because urgency, I mean, is it the five letter word? It's a five letter word. It starts with an M ends. And why. And a business model, not being good enough for the players that would. That would have a sense of urgency, but there's still also looking for a main candidate solution. Do you see how this is? Like. Yeah. These different quotes. And I'm thinking like, you're kind of contradicting yourself. Like you're saying, you're not talking to the XFL people about money, but then you're saying there's a sense of urgency. Like if there's, if you. If there's no urgency, then if, if there's urgency, then you need money. Yeah. If there's no urgency, I don't feel you need money. I think those two go hand in hand. I don't think the urgency comes down to anything but money. Yeah. And again, I just, I had a lot on here. I deleted, I, yeah, I. I don't throw a lot of stuff yesterday, trying to find like quotes and stuff. I just, I appreciate, you know, if you want us to scribe. Appreciate, you know, the work we put into this. Dunk dunk with three down. He, you know, he said the CFL PA advised his players not to make any decisions related to their current employment, even after, you know, even after this delay. And I would echo that. I feel terrible for friend of the show, Matt mangle, who? Even yesterday he's oh, he was tweeting. He goes, give me a flame thrower. I'll be there. The championship game, like in the snow, I just want to kick and play. And I'm like, Matt. I, I get you so much and I could not feel worse for these players. Yep. Completely agree. Al let's go owner Gary stern, intrigued by potential with X. It would be, it would have to be something great for CFL. To train its uniqueness. But even that, do you get how, like hypocritical that is. Yeah, because we. We know. We know that, that you are one of the owners. That's you know, You're in you're you're tied to. MLSE. So we feel like. That's lip service. Like we already, we already know the behind the scenes story about how you're tying your boat to MLSE wherever Toronto goes, Montreal follows. So I don't. I'm sorry, but I don't think he cares about the uniqueness of the CFL. I think he cares about, you know, building, following Toronto. It's Rhonda is following the money. Yeah. And we'll, I'll jump down here. Mark Perry had just posted our article today. It'll be on news hub. Breaking out some really interesting quotes about this on Rod's show last week, but he had the guys on from the outsiders podcast and they kind of echo that too, that they're hearing a lot of it's Montreal and Toronto that are, are want now. And that it's kind of, it's kind of an all or nothing boat at this point that it's like, The CFL, isn't going to have a TV deal with TSN. If they don't have nine teams. So if those two teams are kind of like, Hey, we're wanting to go with the XFL or Rwanda to go otherwise. That's where this kind of confusion, you know, Not all the teams are aligned. If that makes sense of what everyone wants. I think that we've, we've discussed that, you know, there's two teams there. I think it's Winnipeg and. Was it Montreal and Montreal and Toronto. I know, but there. There's two there's there's nine teams. Two teams are actively going toward an ex of emerge. That's Toronto Montreal. Yep. There's two teams on the other spectrum that they're like, no, we can make it happen ourselves. I think it's, is it Hamilton and Winnipeg or something like that though? I think those are the two teams. The owners are like, no, we don't need this. And, and we're, we're kind of telling you now that. If Toronto and Montreal go in the XFL. All of you guys are going to the XFL. And we're going to call it the CFL called expo. I don't know. We're going to call it. Yeah. But if Toronto and Montreal want to join the XFL. You are all coming with. Yep. By then I could or not. And then all of a sudden, when you see the, when you see the financial revenue increase for everybody, Maybe it's not a bad idea. A couple of just last things here to get off of this. So we'll get to our interviews. Araj of course, friend of the show, he was on three down nation now of course. And he wonders if Redbird capital is going to write a check. C H E Q U E. I go. We need to spell, check that if it's going to be American money at the CGC gate. Okay. It's a check. All right. I don't want to hear this, like, oh, It is interesting though, you. Mr Eros. Dan says, you know, and he'll be coming up in the interview. We asked him about that, about XFL and the, and the Redbird money and what he thinks is going on. You know, he, I won't spoil that. But it is. Three down kills me how thin skin they are. Sometimes that I feel like we will take it on the chin when it comes to XFL all the time. It is interesting to me of all the illustrious interviews we've had recently, you know, far hon Gemma. [Unknown] O'Connor all these wonderful interviews. I the only one that three down took the time to write up was the Eros talking crap about the XFL one. And I just thought that was odd, but I mean, if you're talking crap about the XFL, why do you want to take a check from Redbird? You don't talk crap about him. Cutting off your nose to spite your face. A rush. No, not in the streets. You three down nation guys. I love your content, but y'all got to step out of that Homer box. You could have stepped out of the Homer box. Yeah. We have conceited, multiple things with the XFL. The fact that they used the initials the second time around. Dumb idea. We're objective. You are not quite so objective. So. Love you guys, but let's. Let's try to distance our emotions from your beloved sport and let's work towards something. It works. Rick Dan Perrin global news. He brings that postponing the season, which they did is going to further feel the CFL XFL merger talks. I I'm curious about that. I'm curious. How do we, I asked Dan, I asked AIG, like, how did we cover this season? If it's, it is like, winter is coming. It feels like the night king is on my shoulder. Yep. Russ Jackson, legendary CFL quarterback. I think if there was an amalgamation. Oh, wow. Tremendous word for a Latino to pronounce. Of the American and Canadian side, it would lead towards playing the American game. I have no interest in that. I have four season tickets here in Hamilton. I'm not sure I would keep those seasoned seats. If we turn into an American type football game. I want to see if I have to play three down football, the Canadian game is better. I can already see the American game at the plate is titled highest level. I watch the national football league. If I want to cutting off our nose, a spider face, why are we dying on this hill of three down football? Well, and you know, Russ Jackson is a rod. Speaks. Hi. Legendary CFL quarterback. I get it. It's not like. They don't care about you. Like, I'm sorry, like. They don't, they don't care about anybody. They don't care what I have, the thing, they don't care what rod Peterson has, the thing, they don't care what Farhana. I mean, and they're going to do this. Like they don't, and that is terrible to say, but. Yeah, they don't. It is money. Emma. Anyway. Yeah. And, and I don't know why. Why is the three down thing [unknown]. The th the hill. Like there's so many better things about your football. That you could dive Dianne, like. We've talked to people who've said that. Youth leagues are playing four downs. Like, why is the three down things such a stick, sticking point? The funniest thing. Rodan and moose, whatever his co-host for talking. About that, about the kids growing up and they go. Shoot. If anything, having four downs, it's just more opportunities for the kids to play the game, right? Like, oh, we get to. Other down before we get to go sit on defense line. It is interesting. A couple of things that we talked about, the global draft last week that went out. I don't, you know, that's not really our, we're never going to give you the expertise on like the, you know, the guy from Mexico that got recruited or whatever. But I did hear a lot of players turned down contracts because it wasn't worth it for them to relocate to Canada for the money. And Rob Vanstone on there. Regina leader posts. He says facing the world of problems. The CFL nonetheless conducted its second annual global Thrapp thereby wasting everybody's time. What a fire take. Oh, I like that. I might have to get Rob on the bike. I like that. I like takes like that. I dig it. And then our friend [unknown]. Rosh Madani. The the. Eventual recipient of some humble pie here. He said on Friday, the return to play committee has a conference call scheduled. There's going to be a conversation there there's still hope and attention to all systems. Go of trying to make this a reality somehow. So of course that'll happen after this podcast drops and we'll cover it next week. So, yeah, just to kind of round out. That's that's what I've got today. And there, there was a ton of staff, all the different websites. We got Dan Barnes here in agent coming up. But yeah, I did my best to try to give you the highlights and stuff that relates to the XFL. Very quick, very fast moving. It's still 37 minutes, but yeah, we're going to probably have another two hour episode. It's all good. And the reason we're going to have two episodes. Cause we got to, we got to go to commercial break coming back. AJ and Dan are going to drop in and chat with us about their views on everything. Stay tuned for that. Welcome to the show. Glad to have you, of course, the play by play voice of the Ottawa red blacks. And you're on TSN 1200 up there. How are you doing this morning? Doing well. Yeah. Excited about. You know, We'll we'll see where this news goes in terms of CFL and a season. I mean, I'm sure. We're going to talk about a lot of different things. Future present all that kind of stuff. But in the end, I've just fingers crossed and hoping that we get something in 2021, because I know. You know, I missed it a lot in 2020, and I think a lot of other people in this country missed it. As well, and we need, we need some sort of football in 2021, whether it's a shortened season or whatever. At least a it. You know, I think there's optimism in a lot of circles that there's going to be some sort of seasons. So that's, that's good enough for me. Yeah, it seems like at least across the board that I've heard many people feel pretty positive about it. You know, I want us to be positive about it. It's still scary, just cause we don't know, time-wise kind of, you know how everything's going to go. Right. But do you feel overwhelming? You know, from, from people to listen to you there. You know, the call into your shows and stuff. Are they feeling good so far about everything happening? It depends. You know, like there's, there's different levels. It depends on who you talked to. Right. Yeah, there's different levels of optimism and pessimism, you know, no matter who you talk to, I, I. We've got a friend. That's an ICU doctor. In the area. I talked to a number of different doctors about, you know, like to me, I just want to why you'd lessened it. This is, I don't want to get into politics or anything like that, but. To me, this has always been a health issue, right. And, and it's become. A political issue. But the reality is this, this is a health issue, right? So if I want to talk about sports, But football. I talked to a football guy. If I want to talk about politics, I call a friend that works in politics. If I want to. Get information about health. I talked to doctors, right. And so I guess the one thing that encourages me and why I'm maybe a little more optimistic than pessimistic is when you talk to doctors right now. They think, you know, like in Ontario right now, it's not good. But they think that. If you look into the future. You know, you kind of looked eight to 10 weeks ahead. That you look at where Israel is at and, and that, you know, probably you asked, gets there before Canada and UK gets there before Canada, but you look at. Where Israel is at right now, and they're pretty close to normal life right now. So. That that's, you know, I go by that. More than anything else, you know, it's, it's tough to. It can get in there. You can get down a rabbit hole, right. You can. Find a lot of different information that scares you and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, just based on that, I I'm optimistic. More than pessimistic. You know, How quick is it going to turn around? Once we get to that point? Are the authorities going to, you know, Are they going to say, Hey, we want normal life as quick as possible, or are they going to be cautious as they've been in Canada? And in particular in Ontario. You know, once, once we get to that point, that those questions I can answer, but. I think everyone wants to get back to normal life as quickly as possible. And so once a good part of the population is vaccinated. I think. I I'm hopeful that, that, that we start to work in that direction. How, how does, how does the league pull it off? Let's just, just try to be a little bit more pessimistic than optimistic. How does league pull off a season? If things don't get under control? If fans aren't in the stands, I'm talking from a financial standpoint. Yeah. Well, that's a great question. Because I, I don't think there's any doubt they need fans and stance. Right. There needs to be some sort of. Indication by June that they're going to get fans and Stan somewhere in Canada. Right? Like. To me. If all of a sudden in June, Ontario is still hesitant, maybe. Cases are still high hospitalizations are still high. The healthcare system is still. It all being stretched then. You know, I don't think they're going to be a nap. Points in a position to say, okay, You know what? Ottawa Hamilton, Toronto, you guys can host games in August. I don't know if we'll be there yet, but if all of a sudden. In, let's say Alberta. They say it's full bore. All right. You know, like they're, they're hoping to have. Fans at games and Stanley cup playoff. Okay. And Alberta at some point. And so, and as we know. Or at least we should know. Indoors. In terms of transmission. You know, the virus transmits far easier indoors and outdoors. So if all of a sudden Alberta has. You know, if there's Edmonton oiler, playoff games with even 2000 people there. That'll be my indication that, okay. You know what. Outdoors is safer than indoors and Alberta is headed in this direction. So there's two teams. There's Saskatchewan. Would likely follow. So, I mean, Good. You have a bunch of games in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and maybe Manitoba. To start. I think you could. And I think that's the indication that I've been given and talking to people close to the red blacks is that. They expect to start the season on the road and how long that's going to be. Is that going to be a couple of games? Is that going to be four games? I don't know. They've done this before, where they had a soccer team where, you know, they'd play games in April, but. Quite frankly, they they'd start on the road and play four or five games in the road and come back and you don't play a lot of home games after that. So I think. They're just, everyone's just looking at a lot of different options here, but I know. In terms of the red blocks and I get it, you know, one of the issues I think in the CFL, and it's always been an issue it's, it's hard to get unanimity in an ITM league, but I know Ottawa in particular is hell bent on playing this year. And, and I think that's the majority of the teams for sure. It's just tough. And I went back and forth with Dave Campbell about this last night on online. He's been on the show before, too. Yeah. Randy came out with his video yesterday. You know, and one of the ideas they said is, you know, the teams in the east plane in the west, like you said on the road, right. If, if transmissions, whatever, still bad come August, but yeah. And we've never covered the CFL. You. You know, going into the season now, obviously am really getting in, involved in all this. And, and Dave feels like Randy is being really transparent and really honest about it in a way maybe that we're not used to right. Or maybe we're expecting too much. But when I watched that and I go that, that's the only thing they mentioned in the video is where we could. You know, if we could play on the run, I'm like, yeah, but what. You can't play on the road or whatever. I mean, that's where I just started getting worried about it. Right where I am. That's the one idea that's been put out. Are there other ideas? I don't know. And that's what we're trying to, you know, That now is where my fear went yesterday. Kind of watching that announcement video. Yeah, I mean, Look, if we're on the same spot. Cases wise hospitalization and all again, it's it's, that's the, that's the key, right? Where. Nevermind cases at this, at this stage, it's about hospitalizations, right? And. You know, if, if, if we're at that same point, Six weeks from now in terms of hospitalizations, then, you know, I'd probably feel, yeah, I, I hope we're not, you know, like again, In terms of the conversations I've had with doctors, they think at least in Ottawa, You know, the next two, three weeks are going to be tough, but. You know, th they seem to think that this thing's going to be turned around by then. So we'll see. Right. Well, we'll see. I. You know, And Hey, they admit that. I don't think there's a lot of people. That thought this third wave was going to be. As harsh as it's been, right. This is. Our numbers are as bad as they've ever been in terms of, you know, the hospital system being stretched. So. Could that still be the case of two months? Could there still be issues in terms of, you know, Supply when, when it comes to vaccines. I guess we'll wait and see, but, you know, hopefully. In six weeks, we're talking about a different story. And if we are. You know, then I think I'm not going to say it's smooth sailing. But I think. You should be able to pull this off. In the end, like the reality is. And I've, you know, And I get it. It's tough because it's football, right. You know, this, this goes probably deeper into, you know, what we're going to talk about, but, well, it's CFL XFL, but. You know, there it's not apples to apples. I was frustrated last year. Because. If you look around the world. Like I follow a lot of different sports. And if you look around the world, there is not. A higher league in terms of revenue around the world. That has not played a game that that's, that's a fact. You know, like whether it's Aussie rules, football or cricket or rugby league or rugby union, or, you know, The big five, so to speak and soccer, hockey, football. Baseball basketball. I mean the Canadian football leagues on an island here, like every soccer league in the world is playing. Every rugby league is playing. Every, you know, hockey league outside of the Ontario hockey. For the most part, which canceled their season this year. As played. And so at some points. You know, Why you think that okay. I think they recognize this. You, you can't, you can miss one season. There's a lot of different cases where leagues have missed one season. I mean, major league baseball. They didn't finish. 1994. Hockey 2005, they didn't, they didn't have a season. You know, with a full season lockout, there's, there's a lot of, you know, the Spanish flu canceled. The Stanley cup have canceled the last breakup in 1919. That was the last breakup. That wasn't played until 2020. So. You can miss one. I'm not sure you can miss. Too, in my opinion, especially, you know, it's not like hockey where the NHL came back. And in 2005, everyone was just thrilled because it's the best league in the world. You know, the CFO has to worry about the national football league. They're already losing. People and especially young people. That you know, I'm a guy that loves boats. I just love football. But, you know, there's, there are people in this country that pick one or the other and, and over the course of the last year, no, one's saying I picked the CFL if they're on the fence because they haven't played. So I think. They have to find a way to play that being said, I understand that their issues. Are a lot tougher than say basketball, right? Like the CBL Canadian elite basketball league, they played their second. Season last year they played two and a half weeks. This year's schedule is going to be 14 games. A piece, but you know, they don't. They don't require fans in stands. And I think part of the reason is. Get 10, 12 guys on each team, right? I mean, It's. If you add coaches, trainers, everybody involved, you're still talking about. You know, a group of less than 20. So that that's, that's far different than football. And I think. That's. That probably partially explains why football is. Struggled to really have any league, have any success outside the NFL and the CFL and why, you know, some of these spring leagues have come and gone and NFL Europe and so on and so forth is just the cost involved. Right. You're talking about. You know, when we travel on the road with the red wax, you're talking about. A traveling party is 66 44 man roster medical trainers. You know, coaches, all that kind of stuff. So it's it. It is an apples to apples, but. The same time. They have to find a way to play. And I think they will. I really think they will. And I think we're just going to be looking at a different world. In two to three months, just when you looked at. Everything like. Aye. Aye. When you see fans at angels games, for example, right. California was one of the most strict places in the United States. It's one thing to see it in Texas or Florida or whatever. But when you start to see that, when you start to see. Games being played in Europe. You know, in, in places where they haven't had fans, like UK has an advance, you know, hopefully that changes soon. And hopefully just that mentality of get, you know what, Hey. There's fans everywhere you look on TV baseball. Soccer, whatever there's fans, all of a sudden, I think that'll change. A little bit of a mentality once we're at a certain point in Canada with vaccinations where people say, okay, you know what. Time to turn the corner here where we should be a little bit further. On where we want to be in the end. I think politicians, right? You talk about elections. There's an election here in Ontario in 2022, people are expecting an election here. In Canada, federally in 2021. I don't think you want to go into an election. With people in Israel, the UK and the United States, Germany and everywhere around the world, living normal lives. As we're sitting here, not allowed to go to a sporting event or a concert or a restaurant or a bar. So at some point when we reached that point, when it's safe, For everybody then I think it's going to be gold time here. And that's why I'm more optimistic than pessimistic. Your PR. That your president, mark Goldy. He says you guys are ready to go. I just, you know, let, let me know. You know, he said, let me know when we're ready to go for the season. So they certainly feel optimistic moving today to the XFL. And I have a quote here in a minute too, but general thoughts on that and the XFL toxin it had been going on in the last couple of weeks. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's fascinating to me. I like the idea. For a lot of different reasons. I don't love everything about it. Right? Like there's certain things I'm not going to like about it. I know that. But I understand, like to me, everyone's focused on the rules. To me. Football is football. I don't care. Like I could list you my 20 favorite games in football history, and I could list yeah, six or seven and college football, six or seven in the NFL and six or seven. In the CFL. So like to me, That that has nothing to do with three downs, four downs, like Auburn, Alabama, that the kick six, a USC, Texas Boise state, Oklahoma. I mean, Boston college, Miami back in the day, I can go on and on and on. Those were great football games. You know, like what, what started me? I, I started watching football in the early 1980s. And so I remember, you know, the chargers beating Miami in that epic. Overtime game in 1981. And then I remember the catch. With Dwight Clark and soul like that, that wasn't good or bad or whatever, because it was three down, four down it's football. And so I get it. There are people that are a little more passionate about their brand of football has to be for down. It has to be three down. In the end, it's gotta be a good product. And I think if it's a good product, Then people will be on board. And, you know, I I'm positive that a guy like Wally Buono will be a big part in terms of the rules. And I don't think it's going to be NFL light if they do it. I think they want to be different. You know, so, so what, what do they do? Do they have. You know, CFL return rules. Do they have a CFL play clock? So pacing is quicker. I mean, There's a lot of things, you know, that, that you can do to kind of match the best of both worlds for me. The the bigger concern. And what doesn't get enough play is the schedule because how do you find a schedule that works for everyone? And the reality is you can't, you're you're compromised, right? In Canada, the Stanley cup playoffs are a big deal. You know, that that takes place and. You know, late April, may and early June. So that, you know, they're, they're going to be playing games. No matter when they start at the very. Latest. I would think they'd start in April. I mean, you know, Dave nailers talked about maybe March. But. You know, they're not going to be playing games in February, you know, but everyone I've talked to is kind of April to September. Dave, I mean is obviously as well connected as anybody has talked about maybe late March, but. You know, so that that's, that's an issue right there. I there's not a, there's not a lead really in a world. That has a championship game and has their playoffs. In the middle of summer, right? I mean, NBA. Well, But they, but. But that's a Jew. Yeah. Right. I mean the NBA and the NHL are in June. Like I'm talking like July and August, right? And so. Like there's kind of there's. There's you know, football is typically played in fall. And then, you know, in this country playoffs in November. In the United States. All college football. You know, you have championship games in December. You have bowl games in December and early January playoffs. You know, in, into that mold. And then, you know, There there's a climax kind of like the football. Sorry, the basketball, the hockey and the European soccer model. Basically. Goes okay. You play your games during the winter and then spring. They're like early summer. You know, like you're, you're talking late June. It play a final. So how are playoff games going to. Be received. In August, right. I guess is a question that I have. I don't love the fact that. There's not going to be full football. You know, labor day is a big deal here. You know, I understand what game maybe you have championship game labor day. Okay. That's okay. But, you know, it that's usually the. The time of year where people really get excited about football here. Right? So you're, you're talking about September, October, too. Really important months when it comes to the football calendar, where all of a sudden you might not be playing. So, but I get it. Because if you're going. Like, that's why, like, I love the idea. I love so many different things about it and I can tell you why. What I love about it. I'm just going to be in. Pessimistic here now. For a change, but. I, you know, I think. You know, again, just in terms of the schedule in terms of fall. I think. If you're going ahead with this, to me, you need a commitment and money. That you're getting a television contract and not like not the pro, not the hope that you're going to get one. No, you need a commitment. If you're going to go with that type of schedule. And, and completely revamp what you're doing, because for example, in Canada, that television ratings are by far the best after labor day. So if you're revamping everything. You better be because you got contracts in hand. Hey, you know what. Fox and ESPN or whoever has come to us. And they're saying. We're giving you this. To play at this time a year. And it's a long-term commitment three years, five years, whatever it might be, then you say, okay, you know what? How do we argue with this? Because we were getting a television deal, right. But I. I understand I'll problematic, right? It's as problematic to play against the Stanley cup playoffs. April may and June as it is to play against football in September and October in the states, right against college football. I mean, what are you, what nights are you going to play? High school football Friday, all it's football Saturday. The NFL is taken Thursday, Sunday and Monday. So you're going to play Tuesdays, Wednesdays. You know, maybe Fridays or something like that. So I get it. There's no perfect solution in terms of schedule, but to me there. There's been way too much focus on three downs for downs, in my opinion, and not enough on schedule, which to me, I think is the biggest issue here when you're talking about. The two prime months of football in this country being September and October. Very very good points. Yeah. It seems like everyone we've talked to it. It always comes back to all we can. We got to keep our three downs. It's like, well, logistics need to be figured out first. I think you nailed that completely. Your GM. Are the red flags. Do you have Marcel date days are Dan warned against going down the rabbit hole? Ex XML, speculation, not a game worth playing. Does he mean like, just. What do you think it means? I'll tell you exactly what he means there. Right? It's. We asked them that question. On the radio. And I think the question was. What do you tell your staff? So like this wasn't about this wasn't about the fans like this. This was, you know, what do you tell your staff? And basically I think, you know, his answer is a good one, right? How do you worry about that? W we got to worry about the present. We've got to worry about what we're doing in the here and now. Right? So that's from a football perspective. You know, football ops coaches, that sort of thing, rather than I think. You know him. Tell the fans that, so I think. You know, His answer was. Was a good one, right? He's not going to worry himself. About what he has to do scouting wise, if all of a sudden he needs a different type of athlete, different type of player, right. Because that's one of the big things about the CFL. You're, you're not necessarily getting, in some cases, look, football is football, but there are certain players, much like international hockey, much like international basketball that are just kind of more geared for the CFL game. Th the six foot, 230 pound linebacker. Who's. A tweener, right. You're too small. To be a middle linebacker in the NFL, but he's perfect size to be a middle linebacker in this league with, you know, the amount of ground you got to cover it and that sort of thing. You know, like in the end, I think, you know, from a football ops standpoint, you still worry about what you're doing in the here and now you're still taking the same type of players that you think are going to be quote on quote, CFL players. You know, that, that smaller guy, that, that more athletic guy. That that that maybe wouldn't get a chance because of his size. In the NFL. So, and if it changes, it changes. Right. But I think that was kind of more the message that he wanted to get across. Seems to make sense. My last question for you today is. And this is first, you know, I kinda just want to know where you're coming at this. I mean, we're going to do our main bulk of our show here. Once we get done with these interviews and we'll flesh our stuff out. Knowing that the CFL. XML stuff is going on. And we're talking, whatever that means. I've had a lot of people ask me now in the last two days. Hey, well, does that mean the mergers off? Does that mean whatever? What does it mean to you? Knowing that they're moving ahead with playing now and then continuing to have these talks or whatever else? I mean, what is, how do you grapple with that? Because I think that we're going to have to figure that out. For us and our fan base and stuff. Moving forward here. You know, in the next month now. Yeah. I mean, it's a great question. It's so hard to know, like, yeah, I mean, There's so many questions, right? I mean, Just in terms of, you know, because like it's all. You know, there there's so much speculation about, okay, well what's going to happen next year. What's going to happen 20, 23. And in the end, like I think. You know, like it, it seems like the CFL is just going forward and worrying about. The here and now, which is a good thing, right? It's not like they said. You don't like to have a, a great cup in the middle of December. You're here starting right away in the spring. That could potentially be problematic, right. But. Hey there. They're just looking at the here and now. So, yeah, I I'm. I'm curious to see where this goes and, you know, I, I just, I just think there's so much. Good that can come out of it. And I understand that. The traditions and all that stuff. Look, I, I grew up in Evanston. And the early eighties I watched, I remember distinctly the last two to three years. Of the Warren moon dynasty. So like, I, I, I've got a great passion for this league for, for 40 years of watching games and, and, you know, I, I appreciate I've lived in four different provinces, BC, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Ontario. I could walk to come back. You know, right on the border, I can walk. Like a little really drive to come back in five minutes. Walk there in 30 from where I'm at. So I I've been in a lot of different parts of the country. And, you know, I appreciate the history. I appreciate the tradition. I appreciate it particular, the passion for this particular brand of football that people in. You know, all over the country, but in particular it's scaffold and Manitoba work, you know, a lot of the frustration has come from. I think on social media, I understand. Where that's coming from. I just, I do think that there's, there's too many good things to avoid here. Look, number one, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. They need a shot in the arm and that's being, that's being nice about it. Like, you know, the last seven games. That I've broadcast in, in those markets. Over over two seasons. Three games in Montreal two and sorry, I think it's three in Toronto, two in Montreal. Two in Vancouver, 2018, 2019. I looked the average attendance for those games. Average announced attendance was 14,500 for seven games. Highest, highest was 17,000. And I can tell you. In terms of actual butts and seats. I don't know. If it's over or under 10,000, but I know I'm not betting my life savings on either one. So you're, you're talking about probably. I guess 10,000 people in seats. You know, for, for those games over two years and the three biggest markets. You just, you know, like you have to make calls to all markets and I get the passion in Saskatchewan. I get the passion of Manitoba. I get the passion. You know, in different pockets across the country. I talked to people in Ottawa. That don't like that as well. But. I think, you know, the biggest thing for me is like, If Toronto says we're out of maple leaf sports and entertainment says the road and I have. No one has any proof that they've said that. But you can connect the dots here that they're pushing this narrative. So if they say they're out. And Montreal says we're going wherever Toronto is going. And there's a bunch real Toronto connection in terms of ownership there. And Vancouver's got no ownership right now. It's in a trust because Dave Brayley passed away who, by the way, it wasn't, it wasn't too long ago. We own two of those three. Franchises in Toronto and BC. Well, If you kind of connect the dots and say, okay, well this, they need to look at something different. They need to look at something. Bigger, I think, and I think the biggest things for me, you know, obviously broadcast is a part of it. And, and that's why I say like, you need some sort of contract in hand. Multi-year deal. You know, with money. From one of those big us networks to say, you know what. Here here's a hundred million dollars. A year for five years, so that you say, okay, well, at least. We've got time to build this, right? Not like we need, we need this in year one or else we're screwed. Right. So you need some sort of long-term thing there. The gambling part is huge. Like Larry Tanenbaum, I don't think it's been brought up enough. You know, as, as. You know, a lot of different contacts in that regard. And, and so, you know, I, I think, you know, on that, that's starting to change in north America all over the place in terms of single game batting and, and everything that's going on here. So I just think, you know, with fantasy football, You you've you've you've got, you can only do so much with an eight or nine team league and, and again, You know, is it going to be an eight or nine team league if Toronto says we're out. Right. So, you know, th there's a lot you can do on that front. And, and video games, right? I mean, you'll look at kids and you know, how many, how many kids. Start watching the NFL cause they started playing mad. Right? Or they started, you know, watching the NHL because they played. You know, NHL 21. I think. Everyone just seems to think or not everyone belongs. Video. Well, it just doesn't work that way. You need. You need money, you need cache. And I think if you go there with the rock. With Redbird capital. Seem to be experiencing some decorative. Yeah. Easier. I think we lost him. Completely. Yep. I think what AGA was getting to was the marketing arm of Redbird and the rock bringing video games up. Did we get them? Do we got them back? Nope. We can just cut out. We can. Yeah. Let's just, let's just. Well, technical difficulties. Cut that short with Jack Kubik. I hopefully got it right that second time too. I want to thank you for your time here and coming up after this. Dan BARR. And he's back. You didn't oh, wait. There we go. Sorry guys. That's okay. We'll round you out here and then we'll kick you out. Yeah. Just to finish my point on. If you go to EA sports, right. I think it's to go with the rock. If you go with. You know, The CFL. History, but also you have the rock, you have something new, you have the American market. You have some money from Redbird capital? I think. I think you can go and make that work. Right? Like I just don't think it's not like they haven't tried to make a video game in the past. I've talked to people about that, but it's not easy to get done. And so if all of a sudden you go with. You know these groups and any say, Hey. You know, we want to do this. And now you've got EA sports CFL slash XFL football with picture of the rock and, and Toronto Argonauts. And a Houston roughneck gun. On the cover. Maybe maybe all of a sudden that makes a kid say, Hey, you know why. I'm going to play this game. Hey, it's a great game. You know, I'm gonna. I'm going to, I'm going to tune in right. Netflix. I can't even tell you how many people, like I just did. You know, a bunch of hockey interviews actually, before I came on here, cause I'm doing American hockey games right now during the pandemic. And I asked. You know, someone, what he likes doing outside of hockey and said, well, I'm watching F1 all the time because I liked the Netflix series. So like, if you can get something like that going right. And I just think there's just more opportunities for that. If you have both sides of the border. So yeah. I mean, look there's problems there. There's there's things that are problematic for sure. This is not going to please everybody, but in the end, like from my perspective, I I'm. 45 Years old, I've been watching Canadian football and American football for 40 years. And the only thing that's important to me is that in 20 years, whether I'm calling games or not, if I'm in Ottawa, then I can go to a game. That, that that's most important to me. And I think too many people have like, like I get there certain Hills, you want to die on, like, for me, the great cop is one, like they're, they're great cop. You're talking about a a hundred plus year history. You don't throw that in the cupboard and say, you know, it's, you're gone. You know, I I'd like to see some sort of Canadian content. You know, I don't know what that number might be, but some sort of Canadian content for sure. Where, you know, they're not getting thrown under the bus. And, and I don't want teams in all nine cities that that's yet, but too many people have too many Hills that they're dying on. And in terms of this three down four down, or has to be this, it has to be that. Look, like I said earlier about spring and fall football. I'd love to be calling games in September and October. Guess what? Probably not happening. That's the way it is in the end. Rather be calling games in April and going to games in may. Then. Not seeing football at all, professionally in Canada. So I think that's why this needs to be explored. And let let's see where it goes. Awesome. Thank you for joining us. Hopefully. Name a right again, there on the pronunciation. On the second one. We appreciate your time and talking with us and giving us some key insight. Thank you. Hey, can I get a year? I want to, I want like, A full-on year. Like, like I see online. All right. All right. Love it. Love it. Thank you, man. We appreciate it. And we'll see you soon. You bet. Cheers guys. Dan Barnes, post media, joining us now to talk about. All of this chatter between the XFL. NCFL potential chatter chatter, none. The less. Thanks for joining us, Dan. You bet. Thanks for having me on. And that it always excites me when, when we have guests black. And then I see all these wonderful articles being posted and shared about, you know, the delay of the season. Not that that's good, that they're delaying, but. It does make me glad when I see all this and I go, Dan, I'm really glad that we got you scheduled for this week. And he said, it's good timing. So we, we, we I'd rather be lucky than good. So I think we're on a good track here. I think you have to be good to be lucky. Isn't that the old saw yes. So first off what I mean, what. Thoughts. How are, how are you doing today? I mean, this'll air tomorrow, but you know, we're on Thursday, April 22nd. And we just announced the CFL. A delay to August 5th. How are you grappling with everything? Well, I think it's having followed the league. For 30 years and then covered it for on and off for, I don't know, 25. This has been a difficult time for the league and its fans, especially because the fans have been largely kept in the dark. The CFL, wasn't doing a good job at telling them what's going on in part, because it kept changing and they were at the mercy of COVID. So they didn't want to appear weak. I think. So better than say something weak, they didn't say much at all. Which was unfortunate, but this announcement though, it's bad news in terms of cutting four games off the schedule. It's good news in that. They're actually going to play the game. They're they're fully committed. And if it's not 14 games, it'll be 12 or 10. I don't know how much. Lower than 10, they would be willing to go. Obviously last year they were going to play six in a bubble in Winnipeg. I think that's, I don't. I mean, I know the, the bubbles off the table at this point, so they they're geared at 14. All kinds of things have to happen though. Right? The COVID landscape has to flatten, especially in Ontario where they have. So many teams and so many cases, that's, that's definitely a problem. Alberta where I live also not good. BC's dealing with the variance. Not good. So it's going to, I think they kicked the can far enough down the road to give themselves a fighting chance at 14 games, the players. Though they would have loved 18 they're on board with 14 and they're going to do whatever they can to make it happen. Short of taking a massive salary air cut because they feel they've done that already. And when you look at the renegotiated salaries this year, they have indeed done that. Guys who were playing. Two years ago for a buck and a quarter are suddenly down in 95 or a hun. And it's, you know, convincing those guys to take another slice off the top. That'll be tough. Getting. Significant numbers of fans into all these stadiums will be tough. Like a what's significant, is it 50%? You know, by the end of the year. Wait Miller of the blue bombers said he wants a hundred percent. I think that's seriously pie in the sky, but who knows? So. A lot of good things have to happen, but simply getting the announcement out. Letting the fans in on something was a good move. So if there's more to follow great, you know, that that represents progress. Is it a situation where. CFL's looking at the vaccinations and looking at the, the case count in hospitals, but also looking to what the NHL is doing to allow fans back in as well. Well, yeah. We've made no secret of the fact that they have incorporated. Return to play protocols, health and safety protocols from the leagues that are in business. Again. So they've done that. Obviously the, the NHL plays indoors, CFL plays, outdoors, and hope that that plays to their advantage. Right. But I don't know if it does the BC lines. Who can play kind of indoor outdoor in their BC place stadium. They're looking at only 5,000 fans to start. Right. So that, I mean, you could make a joke about their attendance. Off the top, if you like, but they're looking at 5,000 to start maybe 10,000 at some point. As I said, the blue bombers are looking at, you know, 30,000 plus at the end of their season. Good luck on that, but it'd be great. Obviously. It'd be great to see. Are they copying me NHL? Yeah. To, to a large degree, they are. They've learned some lessons from them, but that only goes so far. Because. The NHL is bankrolled by a serious TV deal. Right. They can test their players way more often than the CFL could possibly afford. And that's just for starters. Got it. Yeah, that's it, that's a big concern for me as well. And just knowing the tremendous amount of money and everything that's being spent, you know, in the NFL and these other leagues in testing, we had early, we're going to. We're gonna do the bulk of our show here. Once we get done with these in, in your article, I in the Toronto sign it, you had said that Randy and Rosie had said he had not asked XFL for any. Funding help with this. And he wanted a amazing candidate solution for this and that he hadn't asked XML or rubbery or whatever. What is your take on that? I believe that, I mean, Can't call him a liar. If he says they haven't asked the XFL ownership for funding for the 20, 21 season. Then that's probably the case. It doesn't mean they're that they're not talking about a financial arrangement down the road. Right. If, if whatever comes of this, Chatter, this incessant chatter that they're having. And it's mostly around business. It's not about rules. I don't believe not at this point. I think they have to go way bigger picture in terms of what a business arrangement could do for both leaks. Right. I think you have to have that off the top. If you don't get an understanding of where this is going and what kind of revenue it drives, why would you bother talking about the Rouge? Right. I mean, that's crazy. So look big picture and drill down from there. So have they talked about. Money in the future. I believe they have, they must have. Either that, or they're just wasting their time, but has the CFL asked the XFL for money to run their 20, 21 season? I don't believe they have. They have talked to the federal government. They have talked to their sponsors about coming up with, you know, upfront payments they've talked to TSN about what TSN can help them with. They certainly. You know, ask the players for accommodations on salaries and other things. So they are looking to maximize whatever revenue they can, but I don't believe that includes the XFL at this point. Do you think that with asking for player cuts and you know, going to the government. Do you think they should have thought about asking. I mean, should that have been on the table to ask red bird in the XFL to help subsidize that? Nope. I don't think so because what are they getting into? What, what is the XFL buying for? Call it 30 million bucks because $30 million is what the CFL was hoping to get an interest free loan from the federal government last year to run their bubble. So call it that. What is, what is Redbird get for? It's 30 million bucks a piece of what? A piece of a league. That's going to lose a lot of money this year, whether it plays or not. Right. So that's a crazy investment. Those guys are way smarter than that. CFL. Could not possibly offer them anything of value for their money. In 2021. It doesn't make sense to me. Why would you bother. So down the road. I mean, if you want to think of it as a good faith gesture, not that this is business, right? This isn't friends. It's not here. I'll, I'll give you a 30 million bucks so we can talk about it in two years. Nope. It doesn't work that way. I completely agree. There was a lot of chatter online when this whole, this whole thing started going. And a lot of CFL fans were just like, well, You know, Redbirds just gonna come in and give us money. I'm like, they're going to want something on their return on investment. That's the way it works. They're not. They're not fools. Then they're just going to give you. You know, a blank check and go here. Nothing in return. It's all yours. Just to have them know. No, that's crazy. And when, when they start talking about what the two leagues for, you know, I mean, The XFL is what it is. It's a bunch of assets right now. It's not even a league at this point. So. What. They have together. Is better, right. They scale. So they scale up to what pick a number. Is it 17 teams? If it's. You know, if they go beyond that, if they suddenly have some power to spread the footprint around north America, Then you talk about streaming deals, then you talk about. Traditional broadcast deals. You talk about. You know, gambling revenue, you talk about all kinds of things, but right now they can't talk about any of that because they have nothing to sell. So why would you, why would Redbird just essentially flushed. Millions down the toilet by bailing out. A league they're not even in business with yet. They wouldn't. I wanted to ask you. And I was talking with Farhan. About this last night too. And part of your article was talking about player, pay cuts. You know, obviously you reduced schedule 14 game season. I, you know, and I know that the payer players are paid, you know, per game. Any chance of any of that being figured out? To make them whole, at that point, you know, for the games that they're not going to be playing. I mean, I know that it's, it's, you know, you're asking the players who take the time off work now, potentially even later. I mean, what do you, what are your thoughts on that? And kind of helping the players out. Well, helping the players out. You know, that's again, this is business, right? This isn't Hey, let's get together on this and it's going to be contentious. It has to be contentious because the CFL is trying to scrape every nickel at this point. They according to many reports. That nine teams lost as much as, I don't know, 60 or 80 million. Canadian. Right. So they're going to lose some more money. They don't. They don't want to. It means they want to minimize that. So they will ask their stakeholder partners for as much as they can get out. The players. They've already given. They've given at the office, man. It's it's been a tough go for those guys. Some of whom have not been paid. Since October or November of 2019. Right. They, yeah, they got some federal government money that was passed through the teams. Like any other employee in Canada was eligible to receive. But in terms of football money? No, I. It's not flowing. So. And the guys who restructured, we like to call it restructured. Contracts while they renegotiated down. Right. So why would they. Being willing to go another 20%. I don't believe that's even close to on the table at this point. I was floated. The players pushed back. I don't believe this PA late leadership even took it to the membership. Because it was a pretty offensive offer for them. So they will have to come to some agreement on several issues. That are contained in the collective bargaining agreement. That's certainly one of them. They did a lot of that hard work. For the bubble because they basically came to an agreement over the bubble. So they had reached that, but whether that translates from six games, To 14 games, you know, mathematically, no idea. Yep. You had a story that was re posted through three down nation that claimed at least two owners believe they can survive another year without playing. Yeah. They, they believe they can. They believe that because this was the camp that is. Committed to playing, but not committed to playing at all costs. Right. So they want to protect the value of their franchises. And if they take on too much debt, Through playing in empty state. This is when. Right. This is what you saw yesterday. Came out of those talks. The proviso for playing on August 5th is health and safety. And. A significant number of fans in the S in the stands in every stadium. That is a nod to the, the owners who want to play, but not at any cost. And the cost of an empty stadium for these guys. Some of them is just too great. I don't know why that's a big shock to anybody. It's not, I mean, you know, and it's, there are, there are groups like MLSE that, you know, could afford. You know, in theory could afford to play games in an empty stadium, but do they really want to lose money? Everything they, everything, they, they own makes a lot of money and this is the one thing that they own that doesn't make money. So when you talk about. When you think about some owners that need those fans in the crowd to actually pay the bills. And then there's an MLS eaters. It seems like there's way more than two teams that can't afford. Either from. You know, Being completely in the red. Or, you know, having one of their products bleed out. There has to be fans. Absolutely. What's interesting to me. Is that the teams with a really low attendance? So you look at the three major markets with low attendance. I believe they lost. Less money. By not playing in 2020 than they did by playing in 2019. Cause you throw in the player cost the cost of a training camp, which is like half a million bucks in some cases. Cost of all the travel. Right. So suddenly you've got all these costs that are not. Backstopped by large crowds. So you take all that off the table. You take the crowds off the table, but you take all those other expenses off the table. And they actually lost less. I believe so. You got that going on? That's a weird dynamic in the larger, larger picture of the 19 league, right? Because that's very specific to three places. So if that's the case and I've been told that's the case. Then you've got people with vastly different. Interior business models. That might be at odds with the larger group. So there you go. It seems like there's either the news came out a lot of optimism, obviously. Right. You know, CFL, you know, we just talked through the AGA, he wants the, you know, everyone wants to season, right. You strike me as, as maybe a little bit more of a, of a realist. Just down the line. Do you think there's too many loopholes in this like, well, we got to have significant numbers. We've got to have this. We've got like, are they, are they hedging too much? Or do you feel confident about this August 5th? And, and what, what happens if, if we don't hit significant fans or we don't hit, we can't go west to play games or we can't do all these other things that they talk about. Right. It's all business. So as a fan, everybody says, yeah, we gotta have football. As a business owner that is thinking not only about this year, but next year, and then a year after that. And you know, a legacy of football, not just this year. You have to be more realistic. The only way they can play is with fans. So if, if COVID suddenly goes through the roof in June and July, And they can't play in August on August 5th. They have contingencies for pushing the season back and reducing the number of games. I don't know specifically what those dates are and what those numbers are, but that's true. Right. And Rosie said yesterday, they have backup plans for backup plans as well. I, it only make sense that they have contingencies for fewer games in 14. Now. I mean, if that doesn't happen. And the choices go broke by playing in empty stadiums or don't play. It'll come down to a vote of governors again, and it'll be close. And it certainly could go either way, but if, if enough teams don't want to play. Knowing that they're going to just drown in red ink with empty stadiums. How do you convince those guys to go ahead? Can't no way. What, what do you want to see? Come from the CFL XFL talks. I don't have any skin in the game. I don't know that I want to see anything. You know, the, the two leagues will, if they decide. That they can expand their global footprint. If they can drive revenues that the CFL could not normally find. Right. The CFL is almost maxed out. And people will, will criticize them for not doing enough marketing. Well, you know, good luck. So. If this. Dalliance with the XFL turns into global streaming. And U S TV deals. That strengthened the business model of the CFL and great. You know, it's not that I want to see anything, but. You know, I believe the CFL is going to outlive me and my kids and their kids. I just. It's the cockroach people who have been trying to kill the CFL since I think I first covered 1986 and then 87, when the Montreal Alawites folded. I don't know, two or three days before the season, everybody was saying, that's it. There's going to be, you know, who's the next franchise to go? How can they possibly outlive this? That's a lot of years ago. And, you know, they. They had their expansion into the U S that whatever, I mean, it. It didn't look good, but it's set them up financially for a little while, right? For a little bit of a run. If, you know, whatever happens, call it a merger. If you like. If they wind up with a merger that includes gait. XFL teams and suddenly that does go south. I don't think the CFL just folds up its tent and we never hear from it again. I think it outlives us again. I think it comes back right. I don't believe that the CFL can exist without Toronto. I mean, for sure it can't exist without Toronto because that drives the national buy. Right. And if you don't have national ad buys, you don't have a league. If you don't have a national TV deal, you don't have a leak. If you don't have Toronto, you don't have a CFL. I've seen people's suggest otherwise. I think it's crazy. But I don't think the CFL lives and dies on whatever happens with the XFL. I think that's a interesting. I and, you know, cause we're not, I mean, we're the XFL markets, but we're not, we try to be objective. I track, we try to be where I've seen that, where they say, well, yeah, let's say the XFL thing doesn't work out. And then the CFL discontinues, right. It isn't necessarily the selling. Yeah. I mean, I have seen that flooded. The, the, the question that I'm curious personally, and I asked Asia in this too, are we asked AGA this. How do you approach this season? With still these talks going on in the background, right? To me, it's like game of Thrones, winter is coming, right? Like, we don't know what this is, but yet we're still covering this league. That's happening. How are you grappling with that? As someone that covers this professionally? Well, there's not a lot of news coming out about this XFL talks. First of all right, you can't get it. Like I can't get an interview with Danny Garcia. I can't get an interview with Redbird capital. And I've tried a couple of their people. You certainly can't get anything out of the rock unless he's posting it on Instagram. And the. You know, the, the news that you get from Randy and Rosie and others on the XFL is pretty vague. So. Until there's meat on that bone. Right. Or somebody wants to tell you what's going on. It's going to exist and we all know what's happening. We all know they're talking to one another. So it's it'll exist in the background. And now that they've put an August 5th start date on this. There's not a ton of work to be done on the CFL beat at this point. Right? There'll be a couple of follow stories here and there about announcement, and there'll be some stuff about vaccination hopes and blah, blah, blah. And, you know, What players feel about this and whether they're going to quit their day job. You know, and they shouldn't. Obviously not yet. Don't be doing that. So. In terms of a distraction, there isn't any. Right. I don't believe it's a distraction. Cause there's, there's nothing else going on at this point. August 5th is a long way away. And you know, if, if training camp starts, as they say on July 9th or 10th, I've seen both. That'd be great. That'd be nice to cover some actual football. However we do it, whether we're allowed to attend, practicing on who knows at this point. But no, I, I think it's quite easy. You can, you can, in fact, Chew bubble gum and walk at the same time. And so we'll let them do that. Sounds good. Dan Barnes. Thank you for your time. We appreciate you jumping on here on the mark cast. And we'll be in touch soon and hopefully we get some good news. About the 2021 CFL season. Awesome guys. Thanks for having me on. And you have you, when you get that interview with, with Dwayne, I, you, you have this on the zoom call. And we'll do the same for you. I promise. Awesome. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time. Insights and expertise. You bet. Thanks guys. Yeah, we've been talking a lot about the Betty in the CFL on set. So I was telling Paul this in the break I had. It was too interesting. What. I'm already laughing at what Hodge said. Oh, well here. So, so you can read them here, but just, I found this interesting that two different CFL media. So this deal was announced at the NFL tons of money and then two different media people in candida, depending on you know, their predisposition for what they believe had very different takes about this. So do you want to take this? Yeah. John Hodge. Three down nation, Homer nation. If the CFL struck a deal, even one 10th. This size, it would mean over 20 million Canadian dollars per year. You could keep his legs. Existing business model unchanged. I'm not suggesting they should. There. Illustrating a point. And it was still turning a profit every year. Million dollars Canadian. Whew. Swanee million dollars. Why are you thinking like this? What do you shouldn't be thinking like this? Yeah. So then, then the big boy Daniella comes in here goes. Or maybe both the CFL next event, folks know that four game per week betting card has no value and they need to partner and create a league big enough to offer a legitimate betting options within they can expose to 400 million people instead of 38 million just maybe. And that was his tweet. Like, how is he is I'm like, whoa. Naylor is throwing like. Hardcore shade. Yeah. I mean, I do like. God bless him. But three downs. Sometimes it is. It's like this, this pin, the whole idea of like what we're trying to do. And it's like, we gotta, we're bigger than that now. Like who gives a crap about 20 million? I need to point out. Read that as the first time you've ever sworn on the XML mark cast. Congratulations. What'd I say. You, you dropped out, you dropped a swear word. You did. You did congratulations. Why did I say, you said the S word. Really. Wow. Wow. Are we going to. [Unknown] we'll let it go. I just wanted to point it out. Cause you know, I've had my slip ups from here and there, and you've been pretty clean and pretty good. So it's the zone. We're going to blame yourself. I do feel I love the zero sugar wine. Like I would be, I feel so Olivia and that this is like a it's like day drinking. I do feel like. Is it too early today? Drink now. It's 11, 15. We're good. Okay. Very good. Do you want to, this is interesting. This was sent to me, Jake Henry friend of the show. You know, when we're getting, when we're talking about 20 million Canadian, you know, getting these betting odds. What do you think about this? From XFL, Reddit, according to the Mexico's lead commissioner. [Unknown] I can't say this. Yeah. Thank you. He says that the, the, the LFA, the Mexicans. Mexico's version of the NFL. They're in talks with the XFL and that was on Reddit. All right. If the XFL decided to cancel its activity until 2022. We had talks with them. There are talks about how we can develop Mexican players. We already sent a few Mexican players to the CFL. We'd also like to send some to United States to play in the XFL, the XFL. LFAs director of idea of exporting players, his shirt bot. There's without a doubt, a good level of interest. I assume there's a good level of players or interest. Yeah, I think it's lost in translation here. I'd probably have to read the real article. To translate it correctly, but. They say we are Mexican football after all a powerhouse in the international scene. But we also acknowledged that our player development structure is quite different from that in the United States. Despite that Jaime said the XFL wants to integrate Mexican players into this roster. Just like the CFL. Yeah. They said talks took place with a previous XFL. I would assume that means Vince. But they're going to have meetings with the new owners as well. And I, what do you think about this? I mean, This is going to come off arrogant American, but. The CFL has something to offer the XFL. In terms of heritage in terms of lineage, in terms of organizations that are already in place. I don't know too much about the Mexican football league, but what I can tell you that the Mexican football league can offer. Is Mexico city and the NFL already goes and plays games down there. And. There's a limited amount of stuff. And I am. Of Latino heritage. There's a little bit, a little bit of limited amount of stuff that the Mexican league can offer the XFL. You don't see them. You see what I'm saying? Like in terms of players? Sure. In terms of media markets. Sure. But. That's about it. That's about it. You think the CFL has a stronger, even though their business structure isn't good enough for the players that they have in the league. But they have a better business structure and league than that. LFA. Yeah, I'm actually making the argument for. The CFL going to a bank and going, Hey, we've got a hundred a year, eight year old league. Just give us a loan. I'm actually making that argument right now. I think the CFL has a more, you know, I don't know how long. Forgive me. I'm not well versed on the Mexican professional football league. But I think the CFL has more of a right name recognition more, you know, More of a viewership. I think. The same problems that people are saying the CFL has with four downs saying, oh, we'll just watch the NFL. I think Mexican fans are just watching the NFL. They're watching the Cowboys. They're watching, you know, they're watching the Raiders. You know, they're watching, you know, the teams they gravitate toward. And I think that. I don't know. I don't know. I figured this would be a good breaking point. And then I have some other XFL. And the, and the scattered stuff after this. So I figured that. Come back and we'll talk about that stuff. I also have to go to the bathroom really quick. Sorry. Oh, let's see. And I figured we'd just get through this. There's just, and then there's just a tiny little TSL and a FCF stuff. Yeah. Let's just let's barrel through. I don't think we need any more breaks. Okay. Welcome back. Just a few little tidbits here and there. I think I'm going to go off about something real. I think if this is what I think it is right here. I think I'm going to go off a little bit on that. Let's talk about this luck lawsuit first. All of our luck lawsuits currently scheduled for a jeweler. Your jewelry jury trial on October 8th. Who's drinking the Zoe now. I would focus on contractual teams in a company context of the two sides in actual terms. Actual terms. I'm sorry. I'm I'm going right through this way too fast. At any point, the two sides can resolve their differences and settle the court. I don't see that happening. Yeah. Is here we go. October 8th. So set your calendar is get your, you know, I wasn't truTV on this. I want you to treat TV. I want a camera in the courtroom for this. What was. The vote you pay. To be able to watch this trial. Oh, you know, maybe $5. I would pay, I would pay I'd get. Nine 99. Can we get it on the network? Anyway. But, yeah, so there, there you go. Mark. Your calendars. We got the offer. Luck is gone and they can settle at any time if they want it. But it's scheduled for the eighth, right? Oh boy. Did that blow up quickly? We're talking about this cause Redbirds involved with. You know, the Fenway sports group who owns a part of Liverpool. And. That seems to be what drove it is the American greed aspect of things. But we're talking about a European soccer league, super league, super league. The super mega league, super mega league. Blowing up basically. And it was because the premier league teams and then of course, I think it was. It was premier league teams. And then I believe it was, was it Madrid or Barcelona? Or was it AC. Another leagues team was like, we're done. We're out of this. And they blew it up and I, I think it's, it's a great thing for soccer. I think. The Americanization. When people say, when people say American players need to go overseas to learn how Europeans play soccer. It's because of a wide variety of things. To learn the game better to be better soccer players. What this was doing was taking the European structure and making it an Americanized structure. And I think that is bad for the game. You need the relegation, you need the reason to like really push through and finish at the top of your league. So you can get not only, you know, stay in your top flight. League, you can get into champions, different leagues and. They're already the super leagues. And in effect in a way, I mean, every once in a while you get a random team, but ultimately on, on, on the scope of things, It's just, it, it. This was dumb. This was a stupid greedy idea. And they're talking about how. They're going to do. Profit sharing. Nonsense. That wouldn't last long at all. But, so if you're going to. To play devil's advocate. Cause I saw a lot of people say like, well, this is why the XFL and CFL should say separate. And it's, and that's an apples and oranges. Cool. I'm just going to, so here's here. Here's the, here's the comparison. What if. You. RF. What if. What if your kid. And you go to school at let's let's just throw out Arizona. We'll play in Arizona. And then all of a sudden. USC. UCLA Oregon. And Stanford. No, you know what. We don't want this pack 12 thing. We're going to go join up with Texas and we're going to go join up with Oklahoma and we're going to go join up to Florida and we're going to go join up with, you know, these blue blood football schools, and we're going to, we're going to have a league. And then every in every year we'll pull four of you out of the L out of your conferences and bring into our thing. But, you know, You guys stay over there. That's that's that's what's going on. It's not like it's, it's not like, it's not a fair comparison because. I pointed this out on Twitter too. It's not like the Packers and the Cowboys and the Steelers. Are getting together going well, we're making the XFL. That's not what's happening. It's not the same thing. It is really not the same thing you're talking about. Leagues that are already good financially. Yeah, it really gives good difference. League is good. Syria is good. You know, the Spanish league. Oh. I said Liga, you know what I'm saying? Like, all these leagues are financially viable outside of this. Yeah. The comparison fails because XFL and CFL. Are currently not financially viable without one or the other. I feel. And that's why it's different. So this is a stupid comparison to say, The ESL is the same thing as XFL and CFL merging. It's not. Well, I'd just like to know what this. But my trailer looks like Sundays. I just wanted to make sure we talked about it. They would have been a bigger story if it hadn't fallen apart. In the last week. I was p****d. I'm like, and I, and the last, I believe the last premier league team to pull out of this was Tottenham, which is my club that I support. And I was like, I know why you were the last team to pull out because you need this to play top flight ball. Tottenham's currently in. Potentially not even going to Europa this year because of how bad they playing. So they need this kind of top flight international competition for money and all that stuff. So I understand why they were the last team does not pull out of this and that's, you know, And they say it's because of the pandemic, but let's be honest. The teams they named that are going into the super league. They, they have owners that are plenty wealthy and it could survive three pandemics. Don't get me this stuff. That's going to help them for the pandemic aspect of things. A couple other notes. This is a somber note. XFL Reddit was reaching out. I helped put them in touch with Cole Boozer. Loser friend of the show that's been on. They wanted to get in touch with the family and friends and maybe help mitigate some of those funeral arrangements. And I know that they were looking to put together a go fund me for that. So. A, I know that touched a lot of people. If you are someone that feels compelled, I didn't hear back from EXFO rather than about the final, you know, putting the GoFund me yet, but reach out to them on Twitter. It just like Braden with CFL read that there's an XFL Reddit account and the guys that run that are great too. So. Just really sad. I know Mark Perry was really affected by that. And I know a lot of the guys that covered the league, we obviously weren't lucky enough to cover the XFL last year and go to the games and, you know, see the players like that. And so I know that that really affected a lot of those people. So no, so. Thoughts and prayers to his family. And let's see, let's see if we can get some kind of information when I go fund me. Let's, let's figure that out too. Heather Brooks Koretz hopefully I'm pronouncing that last part. Right. Former Wildcats president has joined UTA. As the executive vice president of growth and operation, I don't know exactly what that entails in terms of sports. Division or is it overall? Growth. You're asking the wrong. I know. [Unknown] I just wanted to make sure we talked about it. It came out in the show. Or you could look at a, it came out in the show last week. I was, I was freaking with the Rob Peterson news and that came out of that. When I found that was the big news that we missed. And then everything else, but I there's this just a couple of presidents now, Ryan Gustus in president of the XFL dragons has told me he's out of, you know, not doing sports anymore. Brian, Michael Cooper with the. Roughnecks. Ready ref next. Yes. Roughnecks. He is no longer. He went back to his law office and then Heather now is moving on. So we just. Again, people move on. I just, all these preconceived. Oh, the roughnecks are going to be around for a million years. All these things like people move on and, and yes. I just looked up. She's joining. UTA. To. Grow the influencer and singer. And so it's not just sports related it's it's overall business. So congratulations, Heather. Congratulations, but yeah, no, I get for that, but I said, people are moving on, man. I just, I tell people that all the time on Twitter, like the things that we hold dear and Brandon silver is just. Back in the dragons. Like we're talking big pictures and stuff here. It kills me and I had a tweet today and they were like, what do you think about playing in a. The red bull arena next year for the guardians. I'm like, bro. First off I say, normalize, not asking me these questions at six 50 in the morning. That would be number one. But it's taken off like. We, we got to go big picture here. I'm tired of this. I'm tired of like, I mean, we're talking like global landscape. I don't want to hear about like the red bull arena and the number of seats in it will be a good fit for the, you get what I'm saying. Well, I mean, I think. I think. Point we've got bigger plans here going on. Well, I think, I don't think the attendance is the issue. The issue is getting, getting the virus under control. The issue is figure out this merger thing. And I think like, Environment goes into that. Like they could, like, for example, the DC defenders could have played at a FedEx field. I don't know if it's still called FedEx field of the Washington football team plays, but they've chose Audi field because. The environment and I think that's, that's why I was throwing out there. Mike. MetLife is kind of too big for an XFL team right now. And I know, I know what you're saying, but, but we're like two years away. Like. I I'm not gonna lie. I swear again, like I guys. Guys and girls like we've got to grow that, like, if we're making fun to dunk or Hodge for the 20 millions. Like the same goes for us. Like, I don't want to hear about. Well, I w did getting a better stadium right now, two and a half years out from what I got don't care that you got what I'm saying. Yeah. We got to go big picture here. I'm tired of this. Like, well, Brian, Michael Cooper was the president two years ago and that means he's got back. Like, no, he's not. Heather is moving on. Brian's moving on. We're here. But we have not moved on. But we're, but we're expanding our focus. I think if we were still talking about, you know, young rock at this point, we would have questions about our sanity, right? I mean, I think we gotta grow. I think we all got to grow here. Yep. Anyway. Sorry. I covered the last things. Eric Dungey. Moving on from the exit valley, he was a former runner. He was running against backup with Landry. He's joining the blues in Houston for the TSL. We're very excited about that. Big time news coming out. Mike Mitchell had teased this before. To us in the group. We already knew that Kevin Gilbride is going to be hosting the downstairs. That the windiness team ever in the TSL. Luis Perez is, is, is going to be apparently the QB there. And that is, that is so I'm telling you. And I got one more thing to say about TSL up hall com my numbness, but that's exciting. Kevin Gilbride Luis Perez. That's that's the Guardian's reunion in MTSS. Yep. Named all the head coaches for all the TSL teams, aviators, Terry Shea, the generals, Bart Andrus, the blues had control. The trial, sorry. Conquer is going to be Jerry Glanville, Granville coming back on the back for his 70th year of coaching. The lineman is Hal Mooney. Mommy, mommy, that's a big one. He was the offensive coordinator for the renegades. That's exciting. Alphas is Peter Voss. The sea lions is Larry Kirksey. [Unknown] Kirksey and the gestures, of course you mentioned. No bread. Yeah, I some good names in there, you know, I'm the Tara Shay bar Andrus. They said that Mike. My guilt. Kevin Gilbride. No Mike Singletary. They said that Mike Singletary was going to come back and do one of the teams. He was one of the, he was with the Zevalin. I didn't see him on there that fell through, but how mommy's excited. A lot of old guys Gilbride old school, mummy, old school Glanville old school. So, you know, that's exciting. I think the TSL is going to be good. My other, no, I, and. We went back and forth with a couple of people on Twitter, about spring league. And then I did on Facebook as well. Say what you want about Brian Woods and the business model and paying players and all that. I will not stand for people criticizing. Players trying to get more tape and better their game. And I saw a lot of heat coming out this week about. Spring league on the Facebook groups. And I will not stand for that. These players work too hard and trying to get their name out there. And I don't care that it's, it's not, you know, XFL or, and I'm like, okay, let's not be an XFL mark here. Like, okay. I mean, Like, let's not hate on the spring league. Cause it's not the XFL. Like let's. We're all good here. We're all good. Same with the CFL, but I won't stand for that. And people criticize you. You say what you want about Brian and not paying and all that kind of stuff. But I won't, I won't stand for that. Well, I mean, Is it XFL people that are doing it, or is it, is it a certain group of people that ran a bubble of an indoor football league down in Atlanta that are doing that? XFL fans. Okay. Because I had a block, that one, that one. Troll who thought that he could do a better job? Being your sidekick. Then I could apparently. But no, I won't say it, but guys like we, we gotta be players first year and I don't. If they want to go into spring league for six weeks and play. And not pay, you know, like not all the guys have to pay if they want to go. And. Like doesn't affect you. It doesn't affect you if they want to go. And also the criticism was like, once I have a good football, it's great football. It's great football. It's it's as good or better than fan controlled football by a long shot. So I don't want to hear that the players work too hard. It's it's it's get out of here. I won't stand for that. Taking shots at the FC half. I love it. Speaking to those guys. Journey is in talks with the bears, the Packers. And the Panthers. Joined the eighth. Be their eighth quarterback. Potentially coming on their roster. He originally recently attended his pro day in Minnesota. And they sent 50 50 representatives from 31 different teams. That's pretty good. When you get all your. One team didn't send it. I'd love to know what that team was. Kansas city probably cause they're locked down with this guy that. It's cost them half a billion dollars. Who is it? My home. And then Kurt with tobacco, he retired right after he did the big shoulder hit. When my homes went down with the turf tote, Kurt cranny, is that right? That's a deep hole. I was really drunk. Back day. But when Kurt and he went and when. Mom's went down against the Browns. Had any right. GoDaddy Chad, honey, that is it. Journey tweeted too, that some scout had doesn't write about him. I go. I'm watching it. I give journey gets drafted. I'm going through a wall, like exited felt. Jim's going to need to give me a wall that I'm going through. If journey gets, cause God blessed them. That would be one good thing to come out of Atlanta and the FCF level. So. Love it love the spiciness toward the FCF. I love it. You're done. I'm rubbing off on you. And I love it. I love it. And you're acknowledging it. It's all good. So anyway. Look, we don't mind you interact with on Twitter. Just don't be trolls. And let's have positive discussions. Let's have like discussions. We're into solutions right now, there are problems and we can't just look the other way and say, there are no problems because there are problems and we just want to, we want to solve these problems. We want to see. The CFL succeed. We want the XFL to succeed. Succeed. If they do it together, even better, if they don't. Whatever, that's the way, that's the way we look at it. So let's, let's, let's chill out, everybody. That's it. That's all. I've got Google. SMT. Thank you for joining us again. xflshow.com/review. Leave us a review. xflshow.com/merch to buy some merge, you know, support the show. Again, we want to thank you all for getting us over a thousand dollars, a thousand follower, mark. And we're going to aim for another giveaway when we hit 2,500. So, hopefully you'll share this podcast around. We'll get to 2,500 and. We'll we'll we'll do another great giveaway. Yeah. Maybe we'll get like a. Like a PJ Walker sign something or like, we definitely can't get Sharman Johnson sign and he's just not, he's not going to have it. BJ Daniels. I don't. We could get something cool. I send this idea and this idea is if you want for a good giveaway for the 2,500. Definitely. Awesome. So with that being said, I want to thank you for listening and see you next week. And they, sorry, thanks to our guests, Dan Barnes. And AIJ. Did you do. Sorry. To Kevin, Nick. Did you go back? Did you come back? Thanks to our guests. Dan Barnes and ADJ. All right. I'm going to try to stop right now. I'm just going to stop right now. Thanks to our guests. Thanks to everybody listening. We'll see you next week.

Episode 36 - This Episode is NOT Clickbait! (ft. Farhan Lalji)

You're we're at a thousand subscribers on YouTube. How's it going? Yo, I like many hours later, I've different shirt on, you know, I haven't moved. Just been in this for the last eight hours waiting. Come back from work. I'm driving down to Boyle Heights to do the premiere episode of have Ana lounge. My phone gets blown up. And everything that we're just talking about here, like 10, 15 minutes. Out the window. Out the window. Right. Right. Peterson. End of the show. I would have appreciated the heads up for our record schedule that you were going to drop all this news here on that 1200 TSN Ottawa. And that he did too. He did eat, it was 1200 and then like 1260 or 12, eight. I go, he did two of these interviews, two of these interviews today. Like, I kind of want to just say this is going to be a vulgar episode because. Like, what are you doing? Man I anyway, so w w we had a whole show, Paul, you know, He been working months, getting his show ready to go. I said, we're going to get far Hawn on early today. We're going to have everything ready to go. I figured it CFL global draft day. Obviously, you know that coverage, but I didn't feel like there would be any bombshells. And then a rod Peterson, good friend had decided to, you know, didn't run anything by us today, but went on that went on the tear and the here we are. Yeah, apparently. This is all done in, so this. This is all done and over with. From what he said, I listened to the clip. I'm driving into Boyle Heights. I'm listening to the clip. And it's all, it's all over. It's a merge it's happening. You know, I mean, to be fair, this is Rod's personal opinion and the people he's talked to, I'm not saying he's not wrong. Let's be honest. And if it's sources or are leading them. You know, The sources are blowing smoke in his way. There's a, there's a fire somewhere. And the fire isn't like us scrambling to get a new. New information to you. It's this. So, so anyway, rod was on today talking about. Well, I guess the one thing is going to be a, you know, potentially September star, you know, we're still waiting on a, on a timeline for the CFL. We're going to talk with Farhan about that and everything else. I mean, that's all still good, even though we we've only really ever had to do one of these air than then fix it in post later, that was when they announced the actual XFL. Delay from 2021. So yeah, it doesn't happen too often, but we have a potential delay till September. We'll, we'll find that for sure. Next week. The big thing I wanted to talk about on this episode now, because I think the timeline stuff we'll get to next week is what rod is saying about this full on merger rule book that they have. Is that kind of where you're at? Yeah. Pulled up the article. Before summarizing what happened on the 1200. 1200. The drive in Ottawa. I'm tired. I know. Yeah. It's. Yeah, we're. This is really over time. If you feel the need to subscribe at this point, but Paul and I would really appreciate it. You're really doing overtime right now. I would say, I'm not going to work. Yeah, Rob. Rod believes it. He says it's going to be a full-on merger. Good news is the Canadian football league. Won't go away. He does think they might keep the Canadian football league. There's going to be 18 to 19 teams. That goes in line again. None of this stuff is surprising to me. What's surprising is it happened today? Right now? We have to talk about it. Cause I, not, not a lot of this surprises me, but that's kind of where I'm at. That's very true. And I mean, It's it's it seems like it's our luck. All the time. Whenever we have something that happens, something breaks after we're done with the episode, whether it be. Friday morning, something breaks and are basically were dated. Thank God. This happened tonight when we're able to. I got done with work. I'm able to come home. Able to record something fresh and here we are, here we are. So just say again, how we appreciate it. Four downs, apparently for downs, they're talking of four downs, 15 yard end zones, a hundred field, a hundred yard field. 65 Wide. And the big thing, I guess, is the uprights in the front, in the Canadian fields, leaving them where they are and the uprights in the back for American fields. I guess that. Isn't isn't the biggest change. I think aesthetically, you know, it feels a little tight as well. With the, you know, obviously if you were to move them to the front for the American end zones, any big takeaways. So they're going to play in the front for Canadian. And in the back for. It needs to be uniform. Well, and again, this is all speculation. Again, this is just, you know, what rod sources are saying, but I do think that, you know, rod Peterson, a friend of the show does seem to have good sources. And so I wouldn't, I would take this from what he's saying. Yeah. I like the idea of it being uniform, but I think the, the least amount of cosmetic changes you could make. To the Canadian. In the interim, I think. Yeah. Maybe we get to that point at some point. The 65. Width of the fields. Which is what it is now, is that, is that going to be a sticking point for anybody? No, I don't think so. I honestly, I honestly think that the big thing that people are gonna get p****d about is four downs. I really think the biggest thing people are going to get upset about is four downs. And, and rod seems to think that the ratio is going to be gone to, they, they, he had reported the other day that there was already talks about stepping that down. To go from. Whatever it was five players to three or whatever. And now. It gives, it would be hard to keep that across the board. The other quote. That was interesting. Cause you know, these people, people. Criticize, you know, th the reason they call for the ratio is they think that you need to have uniformity. You know, you're worried about. You know, certain teams being overpowered when they did the expansion in the, in the nineties. The American and Canadian team for 500 against each other. So there was parody in terms of talent levels back then when they tried it. Right. And I mean, you know, I think this, this just lends to more money being in, I think. I probably probably what's spring this on was. I read the article. And it said that that a health agency in Ottawa was saying that the earliest you get fans into the, into the stands would be September, October, and MLSE was probably like. Yeah, no. No, we're not playing them. And if they're not playing then guess what? That's it. It's done. Yeah. You have two teams right now. You have the Argos and Al wet. So that seemed to not be on be playing, you know, they, they didn't push forward last year. Because certain teams didn't want to play. And it seems like. You know, that was the other question brought up today was what's the point of doing the season this year? If it's going to be this super truncated. You know, we're not starting training camps till August. And then, you know, we got to go back again and let's say we do launch in March or. Yeah, March or April, right? So you end in November. Is that too quick of a turnaround or do you just say scrap it and move all, you know, all speed towards 2022. I think you have to scrap it. I just, I eat. It's too truncated at this point, you have to scrap it and you know, you have the promise now that you're like, okay, we have a plan. And I think that's what they need to say. April 20th is like, we have a plan. This is what our plan is. And people like our Raj can suck. Because basically it's us, the XFL people saving the CFL that's what's happening. That's what's happening. That. That's going to be a hot take. The twice failed league is saving the other twice. Fail Blake. But we're all failed. I mean, that's the thing I've always said on here. I said, I'll say it to them. I say, you're going to listen to, we all need each other in this. I really do think. The XFL absolutely respects 100%. The legacy of the CFL. And the CFL absolutely is going to respect the, the money of the XFL. So that is really where it's at. But I think that, you know, obviously we've talked in the last episode, I think Naylor knows what's going on. I think Dave Naylor is as close as anybody on the earth to knowing what's going on. And if he says that they're close to having a robot printed, I think that that is, is if he's hinting at that, I, I feel pretty good about that. You could probably go to Vegas and bet on this happening in Windsor money at this point. So, yeah. And, and the good news is rod seems really comfortable with it still being called the Canadian football league. And I don't really mind that at all. I don't, I don't mind having to be the CFL Mark House. I don't mind. I think. I again, I think, I think. Preserving the Canadian pride in the game that they love is more important than finding a name that appeals to XFL fans. Yeah. Like you've always said that if the initials or something else, the second time around, then we wouldn't be talking about twice. Feld league. So that's what needs to happen. I need to take a break real quick. I need to go up to the door. Okay. Mm. Mm, mm. Mm. Mm, mm, mm. Mm. Never. Nevermind. It was my neighbor. She's on her way home. That's okay. To the house. I shouldn't say home. You've been live here. The other thing I wanted to bring up, we were talking about the names. Yeah, I did a, I did a search the other day. I haven't seen, and I'm not, they don't quote me as being the biggest investigative journalists in the world. I haven't seen a lot of new trademarks being looked at and filed right now. I mean, I do know at least how to do cursory searches for that sort of stuff. Having my business names, trademark. And I don't see anything else via alpha. Anything else now, obviously they could have a new company name that they're doing all of this under. Right? Cause they went from alpha, whatever to alpha Pico and all that kind of stuff. But I don't see any new sports trademarks being done right now. Right. If they were close to being announcing a name or something. So I, I do think a CFL makes sense to me. I agree. I. It's Canadian football league, continental football league. I don't care. I just, you know, I think we're all in agreement that these two leagues deed each other now more than ever. And if MLSE is not wanting to play ball because they're not lying, fans backed by let the latest October then. Let's move on. Let's let's, let's put it on pause again for another year. And those just relaunch. You know, CFL 3.0. And I like the idea now that you can go ahead and open up XFL to getting what's the, you know, franchises, MLS style. You have celebrity owners of XFL teams or CLT, whatever you want to call them. You can bring celebrity owners in like you do with MLS. I think it's a great idea. I think. That's where the money comes in for Redbird is like you bought this league for what? $40 million with the debt and everything. Now you can go and take these nine teams. And you go, okay. You want a franchise it's $10 million. And already you've doubled your money and then some on your initial investment. So I think that's, that's, that's been the play. I think that's. That's what the deal is. So I like it. I like it a lot. And also what I like about it the most is I think you're good with the CFL teams. I've always said this. I wouldn't write any of the XFL stuff in stone. If they want to move teams, if they're taking the year now, and if they wanted these San Antonio versus Austin or what, you know, From LA down to San Diego, whatever. I mean, I think. I think a lot of XFL people, as much as we criticize CFL fans are the three downs. I think a lot of XFL people are like, Well, they, they used the roughnecks man and that logo, and I've always said, I think that all that could go out the window in the blink of an eye itself. Anyway, I think that's good. I think we just want to make sure that we're timely enough on this. I think most of our discussion today still stands with everything else going on and just adding this in. And again, none of this is confirmed. That was intense. I do think that that is the calling card of our show. Now is a ride. It did not make it already this week. Right. Wow. That went crazy. Also before I want to start the show. I want. I want to point out my shirt I'm wearing. I had a point that the shirt that I'm wearing. It's great. It says more female. Black Latinex. Indigenous Asian, LGBTQ plus. Voices and sports, you can get yours now. Meg Rayez. My shopify.com go over there and grab one of these great shirts of benefits. Benefits a bunch of different organizations. To get the word out to get more people. You know, involved in sports, more voices, more diverse voices. I will put that in the show notes on the YouTube video. And I think, I think that will be good. I also have my equally important, not really a while they use insurancy. We'll talk about that in the fan controlled football segment later on in the show, but. No. Is a great way to start your day. When you wrap an interview with renown, the Canadian journalists are on lodgey. That's going to be coming up in the show today. And he said that we are famous in Canada. So there you go. Rod's talking about us on the show. [unknown]. [Unknown] is saying that we're famous. I think that we are moving in the right direction. I thank you, everybody for subscribing. We crossed we're now at like 1100 something where we were way past whatever, if you are still interested in all this, please still subscribe. I mean, they're simply not like we don't need to stop it at a thousand, but. Please subscribe. Paul, and I are doing this for the love of, of all this kind of staff, you know, ton of work goes in. We just got 30 minutes with Farhan coming up. We're going to do the giveaway at the end of the show today, I have all the names specked we're going to do the giveaway and also a XFL show.com/review. We still need podcast reviews. I haven't plugged that in a couple of weeks because we've been gung ho on the subscriptions, which is great. But neither of those things cost you a penny and it helps us out a lot because we also do not make a, we make pennies right now. So. Penny Penny's is saying a lot because all these digitalization fees for the merchandise. You know, cause Reed's really particular about a side. So that's what's going on right now. Are you still wearing the XML hat? By the way, because you're wearing it backwards. I can't tell. I have my eye Dragon's hat on today. I have, I ordered my ref next may on my discontinued logo, Jersey, our hat. I was going to talk about that in the show. Still shipped from. So. Okay. Backtrack order the roughnecks man hat. Cause the logo got canceled, trademarks, all that stuff we covered last week. Or did they hat still ships from WWE headquarters? Really. I so put your tinfoil hats. Whatever he wants about the accent. Honestly, here's what I think. And we're going to get into all the CFL stuff. Bear with us. We have a little bit of preface stuff today. I think they're still just dumping all that merge. Like I think that ex WWE is handling that I would not be surprised. I went back and forth with listener max about this, this week about. The roughnecks. And when they changed the name, I think they could change all the names like that and not have a blink of an eye. So I, I don't think anything is set in stone with anything dragons, roughnecks or anything aside. I completely agree. So anyway, so we did the plug, the giveaway, that's coming up at the end of the show review subscribers. We Paul and I have not done any talk about the Eros. Feedback. We were going to save it for the podcast. I want to hear what Paul had to say. I had no idea how crazy that was going to get last week. I really didn't. I mean, I knew a Ross was a big journalist and all that. Credit. I had no idea, no idea. So what did you think about all this stuff that came from that. Okay. So. Let's let me, let me, let me digest this in a way that, that makes it sound like I'll, I'll admit some things. There's some things where you see. See us kind of pause up a little bit and kind of like digest what he's saying. But mark said it on his podcast this week. That there was some intellectual dishonesty going on and. I, I feel like I probably did not prepare for that as well as I could've. And I, I acknowledged that. I could have pointed out that I felt like there was a conflict of interest there and there was there's some definite. I guess there's some definite bias to where. Araj is hating on the CFL and hating on the XFL, but there's an underlying thing where, you know, he doesn't want anything to compete with. Something that's his bread and butter, which is Toronto blue Jays coverage. That's that should have been the point. And also the other point that I've kind of neglected to bring up was arena football. And I feel bad that I didn't bring that up because. Despite it failing. How many years did we get 29 30. I mean. There were some things that like, we allowed to spin and I feel like, you know, when we, we look back at it a week later, get some, you know, hindsight's 20, 20 we'll look back at a week later. Right. Damn, I could've got it there. Damn. I could've got them. Their damn I could've got them there and I didn't want to get him, but at the same time, he's bringing up a lot of points and we're sitting there like a little bit locked up. But you can't just go into any place and go, Hey, we're going to pay the bills. We got 108 year old league. You just can't do that. That's that's. That's why they're not. That's why they didn't play football last year. That's. Having problems this year, you can't just go and go, well, we're 108 years old. Give us a check and it's not even, that's an even. That's not even like that 108 years thing is like, You're really about what? 72 years old, really technically 62 or something like that. I'm not doing the math. I'm a journalist. But you get what I'm saying is like, They keep harping on paying the bills based on this a hundred, eight year old legacy. And it's like that doesn't pay the bills. Money pays the bills. That's all I got to say about that. I mean, There it is. Yeah, no. It's fair. I mean, I guess if w I don't think I'm, I'm fine with any of it. I think is critical as I have been with, you know, fan. Ghetto football with, you know, CFL XLA. Yeah. I welcome all opinions. I really do. And so I, I think that. You know, I was talking with Dorothy about this because I really had no idea all this was going to go so crazy. And I'm like, yeah, but it's not like I have no money on the XFL. I have no money on spring league. I have no money. I don't have any money on any of this stuff. And so I do think I welcome dissenting opinions of any kind, as long as they're informed. Yeah. I mean, I don't like some of the intellectual dishonesty that went on, but I think it's really easy to take cheap shots. A lot of that, I think a lot of listeners thought Ross came across really poorly. I thought a lot of listeners thought he came across very well. I mean, clearly the three down nation posted their article. You know, unlikely hero Eros. Issues PA passionate rebuke of exit on merger talks. I share that. And I said, yeah, you know, he trashed the XFL a lot, but there really wasn't a lot of, of all the CFL could use a government loan or flag football. And that was it. And so, you know, I felt like. No OSI looks good in any of this. That's why I think we all need together. And I really do. I think the more that I've digested it this week with a rash, with the CFL problems. You know, and some blatantly obvious problems that the XFL may or may not have. I think both leagues would really benefit from everybody coming together and figuring this out. I really do completely agree. And I, I, you know, I just don't think that like, you should cut off your nose to spite your face. And I feel like Iraj was, was kind of doing that. Like you just like, oh, well we don't need, we don't need your money. We're gonna, we're gonna need this loan from the government. And are you sure? And we'll talk about that in a bit. Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure? Yeah. So. That's my thoughts. I mean, I, I just felt like we needed, I don't want to like dragging on forever. I just felt like we didn't need to. I had no idea, you know, mark from. Excellent. New sound like super bright. Did a great job. It was great, but he was like, you know, people were really. Again, like I welcome that. I welcome. I'm Eric Bish off WCW controversy creates cash. I mean, I like people talking and people talking about the mark cast, you know, that's kind of what I'm at. And I have no skin in any game. If I had ownership in the XFL. Maybe I would take offense to it. I did want to, we had one email. Well, we had a lot of emails, so we had one email coming this week from Craig. I told him I would, I would read his email on the show. I, he is a lifelong CFL fan. He's extending attended games for 50 years and he is attended every grey cup in person, not as the media, as a fan, since 92. He says, as part of this aging demographic, I wanted to chime in and give his perspective. He says that there's been a lot of pushback, not all fans are close minded personally. He's in favor F O U R of a full merger. And. Yeah. He, he gives a lot of, you know, his ideas about the season, but I just thought that it's good to hear some older fans. I mean, someone that's attended every game since 92 is it's crazy that they're not everybody is close minded. I do think sometimes that we get caught in that like, well, the CFL is Haiti. Not like. I think that's the vocal. That's a vocal group, but I don't think that's all the group. Right. Yeah, I think that there's a lot of CFL fans that will be. You know, excited about this. I was going to talk about that and, and, and probably why that, that is what it is. And he makes some very good points. That's coming up later in the show. Yup. I'm going to open my. Zella. I ordered, I. I ordered the sugar-free ones. I, this is my last one. So I had to order some sugar-free ones. And so we're going to do those. I think they're shipping now. So anyway, I'm, I'm hooked now. I'm all in. And speaking of which, you know how we had a little issue with getting the ones you ordered for me? Sent to me. The other night I got home. Like four weeks after you ordered I got home and there's a box on my door and I'm like, what is this? I thought it was my supplements. And all of a sudden I'm like, oh, there's more Zola. It finally came. It finally showed up. So I don't know what flavor you got. Hopefully it's nothing. Coconut that'll kill me. It's original, but. But I got refunded for that. So that means that we're up on Danny in the rock. We're making profit. We're up, we're up 36 bucks or whatever. Anyway, so that's an that preface, but there's a ton of news to get to, but anyway, I just wanted to touch on all that. Thank you all. Cool. So a CFL global draft is happening as we record this. Of course, it's part of the CFL 2.0 initiative. Players from Japan and Europe. South America. To get drafted by the CFL. Of course. Each roster is mandated. Two global players. And then of course you have to be able to ratio. So yeah, it's going to be interesting to see what comes out of that too. Kind of expand the CFL. As a global game. Yeah, I got, I will say this. So that's. My little cliff notes. They use a different, it's not cliff notes in Canada. I've noticed that they have a different author. They call it like, it's not SparkNotes, it's not cliff notes. It's like, please comment in the UC. It's like Collins notes. There's something I've seen that a lot recently. Like, Hey, can you give us the Collins notes on this? That's Conor O'Neill gave me some insights on that. If you guys want really great global draft coverage at the CF perspective podcast, he was on our show a couple of weeks ago with the one with Jim Mullen. They're doing full on, blow out global coverage of that. So that's really not my speed. I'm the Zola wild ACEs Jersey guy. But if you want like really good breakdowns of the global players, go check out Connor's Connor's podcasts. They're they're doing full coverage today on that. Definitely. Dave Taylor coming up today on Ottawa 1200 and said, there's no chance. The CFL season starts on time. Yeah. This is, and we're going to get into this. Farhan is talking about the April 19th, 20th, whatever announcement with Ross coming up. I have a clip pulled from this. I have two clips. One coming up later from the alert as well. So hopefully this works. As I want. The sport minister. I'm going to. Now I'm going to play the clip. Okay. Sorry. I think the thing they've got to decide. Is all we prepared to play without fans in stands. In, at any point in the season. Like, I don't think they want to play an entire season without fans in stands. But I don't think anybody thinks that an entire season is going to go by without that. But again, we don't know for sure. I think the thing they've got to determine and determine soon. Is are we prepared to do that? You know, at least for, you know, a period of weeks. And I think that's, I think the, I think what they're struggling with right now, Is how to give. We know the season's about to start on time. Okay. They haven't announced that, but like, Anybody you talk to in the lake will tell you let's do this. Everyone knows that. So why haven't they announced it yet? I think the reason is that, and they've been saying this going back to last fall. That they did not want to sort of set the season a drift like they did a year ago where it went on and on, it was dependent on government and deadlines that were reported. The media came and went. So that's kind of part of it. And he talks a lot about pain points too. Like. How much pain are these owners going to be willing to accept, you know, with. Monetarily, right. Cause basically they're going to have to, if they're not getting the money from the CFL. Maybe they'll get a provisional, you know, loans like Farham was talking about, but the owners are going to have to supplement a lot of that money. And so that's the question is if, if they're going to be willing to do that and how much pain they're going to be willing to do that. And of course you look at. Place like on target Ontario in Canada, it's blowing up right now. Via Thursday, they had a new, single high up. They had like 4,700 cases. I don't know if it's this. Probably last Thursday. This article is a little bit. Dated, but last Thursday, I don't know. Yeah, this is brand new stuff today. So Thursday, they had a new, single hot. Single day high of 4,736 cases in Ontario. And that that's just. They got to get it under control. And that's, that's another thing that has to be put into play is like, they're starting to get some vaccines from us. Like you're starting to see people like rod Patterson, Rob Peterson. Sorry. Got his, got his vaccine done. Here posted that to post that sticker where we're glad to see he's getting his vaccine. Jim Mullen also got his vaccine done. He had the AstraZeneca. So I told him be careful. I'm I hope everything's okay with that. So they're starting to get some vaccines up there and starting to get it distributed. So hopefully this case count will come down and we don't have to worry about this much more, but. Lisa McLeod from the Ontario sports ministry office was blunt and honest. She's not given the green light for the CFL to return to play in the province at all. Whatsoever. Until this gets under control. Yeah, and this is a, that's why there was just a little confusion this between Paula and I, like, I just added this this morning, like this just came out from three down nation. So I, you know, we're getting close to the end of March. I think it's very clear that the health conditions across are not at a place where we can sign that for return to play. So. Yeah, like Paul said 4,000 whatever cases today, 400,000 in the province. Pandemic began. So. Really scary staff. With, with all of that pandemic, whatever. But yeah, that, that that's new as of today. I mean, we're recording this a little bit earlier in the day, so hopefully nothing goes too crazy, but it's yeah, a lot of news still coming out, even this morning. I don't want to. According to the source. Ottawa will not provide the CFL with an interest free loan in 2021, Dave Naylor saying that's not that big of a deal. It was an option. It's not the only option. And Farhan is gonna touch on that a little bit later. With his talk. A source familiar with the discussion said they granted. They said basically neither the league nor federal government have real the nature of the discussions with regards to the, to this loan. The CFL unveiled a full 18 game schedule for all nine teams. Last November. That's slated. Begin June 10th, but of course. That's probably not going to happen now with case counts, growing and growing and growing. And we're going to hear more about that probably after this, after this gets launched, and then we'll, we'll hear more about it and we'll have to cover it next week. Yeah. And. Our Ross came out. This week, you know, I guess. Friends. The show. Our ops Madani I say in circle, April 19th for a Han feels like it's the 20th. We're going to talk about that in his interview coming up because that's the federal calendar, whatever is going to the books are going to close that day. And yeah. It's not, it's not looking good for that. And it is interesting. Cause I, I asked Connor about this. And I asked Braden to and Brady and get back to me condor. I'm like, why are we still doing this global draft right now? Like all this stuff is going on. It is, and we touched on this last week too, that it does seem like it's like business as usual, but then also, like, we don't know if we're going to start right now. And so it is, it's a little interesting, I will say. Th the CFL. Global draft, not as on it coverage on it. It's basically just like on the CFL Twitter. And I said, that's basically how the XFL did their draft last time. So really both of these leagues are like really simpatico from the beginning. Like neither one knows how to cover their droughts appropriately. And something that FCF did right. Was they put her on Twitch. So maybe, maybe the CFL could take a note there. Maybe. Maybe maybe. So Rob is on something, buddy. Stuff on Vonda. One thing at least. But no, but I am joking about that, but not that, like, there was a lot of criticisms about the XFL with the draft and like, really not like, Hey, could you at least put the stuff on YouTube and have like two guys at a booth talking about it? I mean, not real expensive stuff. And here's the CFL. And I know it's not the main draft, but still like we're trying to generate interest in this league. I would do something besides. You know, just doing it on, on Twitter, but that's just. And to [unknown] point about the CFL. Commissioner's office. The administration looking for that silver bullet. This is part of those silver bullets. Have a look at for us it's global draft let's, let's call it what it is. And. Maybe this will work this time, who knows? Yeah. The players association sent out a note, Mark Perry, our father, over at NewsHour, basically it was dubbed is don't quit your day jobs and said they sent out the following note, encouraging players, not to make any changes that would affect their current income streams or risk, the employment they have. Now that is. Not good. That's that's going to lead to more retirements. I've been, I've been watching the retirement wire for the last week. And a lot of players that, you know, you would think have some years in them are just walking away from the game. Well, then you've had a year and a half off now to get a job, right. I mean, that's all. That'd be a long, you. It's one thing. If you're like, Hey, I got a six months job. And we do in seasons, but now, I mean, if you have employment somewhere, And you might not be starting until July or August. Are you really going to be quitting that job for a three month season? No. I mean, that's the worry thing here is if they do play the, the number of players that are still going to be accessible is, is scary to me, at least thinking about it. And trying to, and, and again, going back to the ratio thing is like, What, how do they fill those, those roster spots in case. You know, They're low on the ratio. How do they fill that those spots? Now? Now that's another question needs to be brought up. Yep. I want to get Glen suitor on the podcast. That's going to be my next goal we had for Han on today. He's phenomenal. Glen is a DSN analyst. And he is very frustrated with the lack of communication from the CFL and his quote that I pulled is you don't have to break news every Monday in your press conference, but you have to be communicating to be out there filling the void. Listen, we've talked to the Alberta medical professionals. So we're doing good things so far, nothing needs to report, but we're getting closer to something. They just. The idea that, and he was saying basically like the CFL has been so closed for so many years, because it's so hard to get like all nine teams all on the same thing. You got owners here, you got owners there, you got all these different cultures. And he's saying like, yeah, in normal years, totally fine. Okay. Secrecy and NDAs and all this up. Like right now, we really got to know what's going on. This really is okay. And this goes back to my thing before, you know, CFL fans or XFL it. Oh, we can't have. You know, it's gotta be 110 yards. It can't be like, these are extraordinary circumstances here across the board for everything, you know, we're watching movie theaters, close malls, close, all this crap going on. Like I think it's okay to like, Have some news come out when you aren't normally used to doing that. Dave Campbell tweeting Ryan King confirming he will remain on the executive board of the CFL. PA says a certain the players association and CFLR communication. And can he continue to work towards the 2021 season? Yeah, David is doing the work, you know, I mean, Dave, Dave's optimistic too. I mean, gaze optimistic, rod Peterson, not so much for Han you'll, you'll hear what he thinks. You know, he gives his percentages in the interview, but a lot of mixed questions right now about what's going to happen this year. And I'm terrified if, if the CFL season doesn't happen for everybody. I mean, the players, I know, like not mango was on a couple of weeks ago. I mean, here's guys, I mean, these are real players that are like, What do I, what am I doing with my life here? What am I doing? Am I going to have a place to go? I mean, it's really, really terrifying. I wanted to break down this damn bar and sink because it looks a little daunting, but this is, this is really interesting. And this goes back to our conversation last week with a Ross, with the U S a F L and all that kind of stuff. So Dan Barnes, he's a reporter on Twitter and he recounted this story this week. And this is kind of gives you some insights into the CFL and kind of like how they're playing ball and how they, maybe they don't have the money to play ball all the time. So Doug Mitchell is a member of the Canadian football hall of fame. He was there. Six commissioner. He served five years in the eighties. He says he's not concerned that the league is currently talking to XML, man. Ownership as he remembers, he took a call from the USFL, which folded prior to the 1986 season. At one time we had the USFL approached me about four of the teams join in the CFL. One of the funny moments, which they didn't think was funny. They said, we've got four strong teams. And I said, What would you want to do with the CFL? They said every league, every time a league starts down here at bolt, but you've been in business for 95 years. Sounds familiar. Right. As we're dealing with now with the XFL and the CFL, he says you've been in business for 95 years. You have stability, but you said you have one condition. We have four teams with money. If we could join up with you, everyone of your teams would have to play the a hundred million dollar letter of credit. My only answer was, does this have to be from a bank because we don't have the money to play in that kind of ball. Well, I mean, That's interesting. So I did a terrible job of reading that, but basically the USFL with the CFL back in the eighties is, is not dissimilar from the XFL now where it's like, Hey. We have these teams, they could be successful. You guys have been in business for 95 years. You know, this was in the eighties. Now we're 110 years. And, you know what, let's figure out a way to work together. And at the time that the answer from the CFL. Commissioner was, we don't have the money to bring that on. Like we can't support that. So we, we don't have a place for you. I mean, you're talking about, you know, we talking about TV deals and stuff like that. And. Back in back in 1980s. A hundred million dollars back in the 1980s is like, what? I think we did the math. It's like two 50, $250 million now. And you're asking nine teams to put that up. Well, how many. What billion is that that's almost $2 billion. Like no way, man. No way, man. And I just, it makes me feel like that a hundred million dollar letter of credit was more because the USFL was in trouble. I know they say they had four teams that were, that had money, but I kind of tend to believe that all the teams were in trouble, not just, you know, the teams that outside the four teams and, you know, Brian Woods talked about it, talked about how ESPN was gonna give him a great TV deal if they stayed in the spring. So ha. Listen to the whole podcast. Basically. That's you know, It just seems like all the USFL was in trouble. I just thought it was interesting that it's like history repeating itself here. We had, you know, we talked with Brian about it. We talked to her, the Raj here, Dan Barnes came out with this story that, you know, this is not been a weird thing for, you know, some of the teams in the us to, to talk with this. We asked them insights with rod coming up later. I just thought it was interesting when other just quick note about CFL management, just for you and anybody. That's not familiar with the CFL as much as the XFL. The CFL has had eight commissioners since 2000 averaging out to one new commissioner, every it's about every three years. And so to put that in retrospect, NHL average commissioner length, 28 years, MBA, 18 years, NFL 16. CFL has at three year average commissioner lifespan. That's nuts. When you look at like NCAA. Conference commissioners. They get about six, seven years, eight years. And the CFL, if they're constantly switching out commissioners, they never, it doesn't seem like they're giving a commissioner enough time to get their initiatives in play, to grow the game. That's what, that's, what that reads to me is like, They want results now. And then there's some people that want different results and they think, you know, doing things the same way and relying on, you know, built in. It just seems like. I know the commissioner works for the owners in every sport. Like the owners hire the commissioner. I just, I think they should give a commissioner a little bit more time. To let their there. Their view play out and maybe just maybe they can grow the sport. It was a good stat, right? That. I think that's an interesting stat. I found some tidbits this week. These are, you know, I get the headlines, but I CA I got a couple of tidbits here. So that's kind of my, my thoughts on, in my notes, on the CFL plane right now, obviously we're going to go to far Han here in a minute. Do we want to, I I've got CFL XFL merger talk now. So I don't know. Do we want to take a break? Do we want to. Real quick. We'll take a break and then we'll go into CFL, XFL merger stuff, and then we'll go into Farhan after that. Does that make sense? Yep. Okay. Hang on. Always start a new clip. That's good. Whatever's easy for you. Totally. So now this is like XFL, CFL, merger stuff. And we're back. Dave nailer tweeting. If I was to guess right now, we're looking at more of a 20, 23 play. I would be surprised at the XFL and the CFL venture merger is a goal for 20, 22, but he thinks it's going to happen in 2023. It looks like it's going to happen there. Yeah. You know, cause there's been a lot of questions, right? You. If the CFL plays this year, are we doing one season? Are we going in 20, 22? I can actually, if I really take off another year, In that same clip from earlier on the, on the Ottawa 1200, Dave had this to say, and just to kind of set the stage. I know we kind of know this is XFL. We've been. You know, we're there, it's simple media, whether we cover, but. This is just to give you some perspective of like, kind of the red bird behind the scenes, kind of, of how they work. And hopefully this scope works. So that's that, that's one thing. And then if you look at the last intonation of the XFL, and I know it's different because it's different ownership and things like that, but their last coach was hired. About 10 months before their kickoff. Well, Do the math right now, if we're going to play in it. CFL. That we're going to play in March next year. We're 11 months away. You think they're going to have eight coaches hired within a month? I don't think so. And, and I doesn't mean they have to it's. I've just showed you is based on the way, the timeline that was rolled out to the XFL last time. It was not a hurry venture. And I don't know, you know, everything I know about. I've been doing a little digging into Jerry card now. And Alex Shiner, the people that run the. Redbird capital. And if you look at kind of their ventures, they're very calculative. I mean, they said they did, you. Four years of research. On European soccer teams, you know, of. Nine leagues in 13 countries and 80 clubs before they bought one. That doesn't sound like a group of people that want to sort of, you know, do something in a hurry manner. So. That's it. I mean, cause we talked about that, Hey look, they bought, you know, they, they invested in AOL and Fenway and, and all these other properties and they are, they're a slow, methodical, you know, company that wants to make money in the investments they have. And so I. I am terrified if we have to wait to tell you. Visually three. I was thought we were terrified when he was going to be episode like 79 before we were going to do the XFL next year. And that goes to show you that I think Dave Naylor. Echoes what we were saying, you know, where we're from. Raj. Sorry. Ross was like, oh, it's $20 million. They pay, you know, $39 million for this league with crusty helmets and blah, blah, blah. Then they just lose their $9 $39 million. It's like, they're not going to just throw money at something they don't think is going to work. They just don't do that. Yeah, I just, I, I am terrified. I'm terrified if we don't go this year. I'm Tara, you know, we gotta have CFL this year. I mean, I can't be there. Yeah. And not that, not that the spring league isn't going to be a wonderful attorney they've either, but I can't be the TSL. Heavy. We got to have something here to cover. I'm very terrified about that. I saw this week. 13Th man. It's like a Canadian podcast. They tweeted they're like, we're done. Like we don't, they don't feel good on this season and they're like, we're done. We got nothing to talk about. And I thought, wow, that is really terrifying. Friend of the show. Rod Peterson. Aye. I think there's going to be some news coming out, but he had posted last weekend. Really about this, Ms. MLSE. I can never see that. And neither can Mark Perry on his podcast. M S L E neighborliness. ML is sports entertainment. Basically how they're really, we talked about this last week. Had a really wagging the dog. I'm this. And that rod said, one is unimpeachable source told me the moment the MLSE realized it's impossible to turn a profit with the Argonauts. Roughly two years ago, they immediately turn their attentions in the blowing up the CFL and turned it into a profit making venture. Yeah, I heard it. I heard it and it, and you know, Rod was kind of alluding to it. He was kind of hinting at it for about a week and a half. Whereas like sources telling him that MLSE is behind everything. And you look at the other properties that MLSE has. The Raptors. You know, Say what you will about. A shortened season. Some people will say the Raptors are still the defending champions. The Lakers are not really the defending champions. You have. Toronto FC who's played in. You know, Three of the last five MLS cops. You have the maple Leafs. All profitable, all super profitable. Then you have this one property that's not kind of pulling its weight and it's kind of draining from the other three. So, of course, they're looking at that. They're looking at their other, other properties and going well, these things bring in a ton of money. We need this to bring in a ton of money. And the only way we bring in a ton of money with this. Is if we get people south of the border to watch the product. And fill in that spring football gap. They see, and that's the point they see the potential of spring football. Otherwise they'd be like, oh, well, I guess we're just going to wear. We'll just sell the team, but they see the potential of spring football. So, yeah, I think. It appears that that MLSE is. On board. It's it's interesting, you know? To give, to give the devil a screen, to give a rash, a little credit. He said, you know, you don't get into spring football. Eh, it's not a, unless you're the NFL, right. It's kind of a losing money venture, right. And here is MLSE, you know, getting in with the Argonauts realizing two years ago, like we can't make money in this. The way this league is run right. And so, you know, we, we talked about the blue bombers reported their loss of $10 million, you know, a couple of weeks ago. A, it does seem like. You know, You know, we, again, we talk about the a hundred, eight years, but we're, it has been a little bit limping along on some of these franchises. You know, bolstering some of the other ones. And you wonder, you know, I do think it's kind of an all-in at this point where the pandemic got us to this point, potentially two years without plan CFL. Like we got to figure out something here. They really, I shown the holes that were in kind of the foundation that was going on. So. Completely agree. And also, this was funny. I saw this and I was like, I was laughing my butt off. TSN 10 50. A radio. Forgets the Toronto Argonauts and their 10-year anniversary. They showed every single other Toronto franchise. And then show Tom Braden. There's Tom Brady played for the Argonauts. Also he plays in Tampa, which is like, could not, it could not be further away from. I mean, it could be if it were, if we were talking about Vancouver, You know, opposite corners. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, that came out and I credit rod and, and at CFL rata, you know, Brayden and a lot of the internet because that came out, I guess, Wednesday, and it just went crazy or was it Tuesday way? It came out and. Crazy crazy. Crazy. To, to not have that. And they said, they said like, I don't even think it's intentional. Like it's an oversight, but I'm like, how, how do you do that? How do you have. You had the football team, like how do you do that? Like I said, in a history of violence, how do you F that. I, you know, it doesn't say AF, but you know, Come on. Come on. All right. Far Han lodgey coming up after the break. We'll talk to him about his thoughts on the merger, CFL. What they're, what they're gonna do this year. All coming up right after this. And I have a rant coming here before. This is, did they stick you tunes after a far hon if you're thinking about dropping off, I got there. I got to read rant coming up. What a welcome, [unknown] sorry about that little stumble there. It's early in the morning. Want to welcome from TSN joining us talking about the CFL. How are you doing this morning? I'm good. Paul Reed. Thanks for bringing me on. We appreciate it's big, big to have you on here to talk about this thing that's going on. It's kind of blown up our podcast recently and we just kind of want to, you know, Kind of want to gauge everyone's opinion basically. Well, there's certainly a lot of opinion about the XFL and the CFL here in Canada, the necessity for what. At what cost is going to come. And I'm certainly on the side of it being a good thing. I think they need to explore it. I certainly believe a lot in red bird and the rock and Danny Garcia, regardless of what the history of spring football or non NFL NCAA football has been in the U S. You know, I just don't believe that because it hasn't worked before that it can never work again. Too many people want to just look at the situation. Say it'll never be the NFL. Yeah, for sure. It's not going to be the NFL, but it can still be pretty profitable and successful and exciting and new. And I think that's what the Canadian football league needs. Yeah, it's crazy right now because we have really two sides to the story. There's the whole merger thing what's happening. And then now, I mean, even coming out this morning with Naylor's reports and staff, you know, are we having in this year, I know a Raj reported the other day that, you know, April 3rd, 19th, we might be hearing that postponement. Where are you? Kind of in your thoughts on everything happening right now with the timeline. Yeah, Dave and I just finished up and, and have an update on it. We expect there to be an announcement on the 20th and that's because the federal budget up here. Is released on the 19th and I think there's going to be some wage subsidy. Clarity. Clarity on programs around wage subsidy and how that might impact the league. So the presidents, the owners, the governors they're meeting all this week. And, you know, I think we're going to get an announcement on the 20th or there shortly thereafter that there is going to be a delay. I do. I think the season is going to happen. I. Absolutely. The season is going to happen. And one of the reasons. It's taken this long. Four. The league to basically make that announcement, I think is because they want to. They don't want to have an open-ended announcement. They don't want to come out and say, okay, well we're delayed and that's it because I think that's going to create a lot of apathy amongst fans. Other stakeholders and most importantly players, because if I'm a player, look, I've had players texting me saying, what should I do? I've just had a job offer. Should I take it or not like how confident are you that we're going to wind up playing it? And I'm confident that we're going to wind up playing. So I think the league wants to be able to say more than simply there's going to be a delay. Now, does that mean they're going to say. Absolutely July 1st, we're starting 100%. No, they can't do that because there is no 100% when it comes to the virus there. Close to getting their safety protocols approved. We've got to get that done, but I think, you know, you might see a bit more of a hard commitment to play. You might see some other targeted dates that look we'd like to get started by this date, because they've been reluctant to do that because if you do that now, all of a sudden you're forced to deal with it. And there's more pressure. So. I do think we're going to play. I think we're going to get some more clarity on that in the middle of next week. And a lot of work is being done this week to be able to iron out what that's going to look like. Yeah. Because there has been, you know, and we were trying to do on here is be the most informed that we can and that, cause I see a lot of people. Tweeting at us now, other people will, if they know. Those are famous in Canada now. You guys, after our big guy duel last week, it was. I didn't know. But, you know, cause there has been like what they know it's going to be delayed. Why don't they just say it now? But what you're saying is they're trying to get all their ducks in a row on the backend. And that is why they're taking this extra time. Yeah, absolutely. I think the league has been criticized a lot for a lack of communication and I get it right. I mean, if I'm a player, I want it all. The challenge is, is that I think there's league on some level, just being held to a bit of a higher standard than some of the other leagues. And I say that because if you look around at the national hockey league, like it was weeks before they started. But they said we were starting. You look at the national football league, the same thing. I mean, we were into training camp period. When they finally made their decisions and they were still going through it. I mean, major league baseball. When you look at how close those other leagues work to creating clarity and finality. It was these types of timelines, the differences. That's none of those leagues miss time. And I think that the, the finances, the economics around those leagues. Are so large. I just don't believe fans at any point thought there was a chance there wouldn't be a season. Whereas now here we missed a season. So I think people are a little more worried. I think the, the economics from the CFL are a little more fragile and tenuous, so I get why people are concerned. So are you going to get 100% iron clad? In the way of a guarantee when they finally make an announcement? No, but I do think they're going to go. And offer a little more than simply to say. We're we're delayed. Right. Because I don't think that's going to be good for anybody. So. Could the league be a bit more transparent and communicate more? Yes, but I think because of the fluidity of the virus, it's been difficult to offer guarantees. So they've just chosen not to pin themselves down and back themselves into a corner. That makes sense. And of course, you know, You touched on it, where the reason why people are feeling. The trepidation behind this is because he didn't have a season at all last year. So like, we can't go two seasons without this football league, we have to do something. So that makes sense. I wanted to touch on the financing thing. I know it came out that there was a no interest, no interest loan denied by the government. That doesn't necessarily mean that's the end of the road, right? Well, I think in terms of making a decision on playing in 2021, it is the end of the road, right? And that's not to say government might never help. But, you know, we've known for a while that these two sides have really not stopped talking since last August. And you know, I've been talking more of late. You know, A little bit more, but not significantly more in talking to stakeholders around the league. I don't think it ever felt like the. In the last few months since cancer. At 2021. Who's going to hinge on a government bailout. So. Yes, they've been talking. I'm not sure that's really news. And the fact that they're not going to help. I I'm not sure. It was really news. Because I don't think the league ever expected it. So could the leagues, or sorry, could the government step in down the road? And offer some additional assistance to what the current wage subsidies that everybody's eligible for, that all businesses could get. Could they potentially get more? It's possible, but th this is the same type of Ash that was ultimately turned down in August. The league wanted it. An interest free $30 million loan. And. Many people believe that they were expecting that that loan would eventually be forgiven. But, you know, none of that is happening in the short term. So when they go through their process this week, Next week's budget. And then eventually next week's announcement. I don't think any kind of government subsidy is going to factor into those decisions. Now that said, I do think that. There are asks of provincial governments and local governments. Right. So, you know, so those governments, I think, which have a bit more of a direct tie into the league. You know, some of them have direct financing arrangements as far as the stadiums are concerned and things of that nature. You know, do I see teams in constant dialogue with those levels of government asking for [unknown]? Some assistance. Yes. Do I think a lot of that is going to come. I do do, I think it's an equivalent of 30 million. I don't, but I do think there is going to be some government help along the way here. To, to get things moving forward. And it's not a situation where it's like a government assistance. Couldn't come with interest attached to it too. That might be on the table. Yeah. You know, and if you're some businesses, I don't know that you want that. Right. I mean, because we do have some large businesses here. So if you are going to take a loan. And it's going to be at a rate that's not necessarily favorable than what you could get individually. You know, and so look, I'm certainly of the opinion that when. You know, when the league asks for these and, you know, I do believe that at some point there's a thought that. It'll probably be forgiven and the loan essentially will become a grant. You know, and I'm not saying that's how it's been presented, but I, you know, I, I do get the sense that. That's kind of the hope because these, these business entities, if it was really about a loan bearing interest, they could get that on their own. They don't need the government to sign off on a loan for that. Well, I appreciate the insights on that because you know, we see that come out and it's like, you know, CFL denied the loan. Right. And people are like, okay, well, that's, you know, that's sad and that's in line. So, you know, we, I appreciate the insights on that. Cause we do try to spoiler the episode, the title of this episode is going to be like, you know, debunking rumors, you know, this is not clear. Just cause there's been a lot of stuff going on. So my question for you, you know, as seeming we play this year and this goes, you know, whether it's a start in June or July, As someone that covers the league, knowing that this merger is on the back burner, right? It's like game of Thrones, winter is coming. Right. How do you like handle that and covering the league as it sits now? Well, you know, I think there's a lot of. Different approaches people in the media up here are taken because you know, generally as Canadians, we're pretty proud. We don't necessarily, you know, Flag wave and go like this the way American's doable. You. And chant USA, USA all the time, but I don't. Immediate members in the U S do that. But certainly, you know, Americans are, are more patriotic, but when it comes to the Canadian football league, I think the media did cover the league are fans of the league. And myself included. We can't deny that, you know, there's, there's a mom and pop nature to this league where it draws us closer to it. And we feel invested in the league success. Now, what does that investment look like? So some people believe that. Canadian football, the rules and traditions are the most important. And they want to defend that and they want to, you know, they want to be, be angry at the notion that we could potentially lose some of that knob a little bit different. I want to leave to cover in 10 years. And I'm a football guy first and foremost. Right? So I've coached high school football for 32 years. I'm truly invested in the game. And for me, I want football to be played. And I don't view football is three downs or four downs or big field or small field or 11 or 12 minutes. I viewed as blocking and tackling. And I want kids to play this game for a long time. So for me, I don't care if it's 10 downs. I don't care if it's six players, like I just want to football played at a professional level that we can cover. The kids can watch and we can feel, see and touch. So for me, You know, I do believe from, from everybody I've talked to. Can I sit here and tell you that I've seen the books? Of the British Columbia lions, the closest team in my backyard, you looked at their financial statements. I haven't. But I've certainly been around it enough that, you know, in the nineties, I was here when payroll arrived one week in a brown paper bag, like I was at the lions offices when that actually happened. I was there when players used to sprint to the bank. The second the checks came because they wanted to make sure their checks cash. Now that was 25 years ago. That was a different league. But I've seen the comings and goings enough as of many of the media that are kind of on the other side of how they want to portray all of this. So I, I do believe the financial concerns are real. Now there are people who believe that. You know, it shouldn't be about making money. It should be about the greater good, well, I just don't think you can legitimately say that to businessmen. Now we've got three community owned teams here. We've got six privately on teams. If all nine teams were community owned. You could make that case that, Hey look. We should just be trying to break even and preserve, preserve our cultural institution. I just don't think when you've got people who are, who are wired to make money. Then you should have that expectation of them. So if they think that this is going to create. A much greater revenue stream. You know, I certainly believe it. And it's not that I believe them. It's just that I believe. I have a sense of what the economics of the country are and where we're at financially and where the league resonates, because there is a gap in terms of people who are really excited about this league and people who are kind of. You know, they're, they're younger and they've kind of gone past it and they're a little bit tired. And if, if some of the, the brand possibilities and gaming possibilities that, that the XFL can provide are real. Then I think you should pursue that. And I don't want like one extra player in one extra down to determine whether or not we pursue that. That's a fair point. We we, you just touched on. You know, getting the younger people involved in, in watching the games and stuff like that. We've discussed it numerous times. You know, oh, I want an app on my phone. I could watch CFI, CFL highlights. I want, you know, possibly a subscription service, you know, I don't. Necessarily have the, the network that air CFL games. And I think that's a, that's a situation you have to look at. How else can you grow this sport? If a merger doesn't happen. Well, you know, it's a good question because I think that one of the things, Randy, at Rosie who was the commissioner came in on, was a platform of trying to have a bigger pie. Right. You know, we can't try to get a bigger slice of the same pie. We need to grow the pie. And that's why that the CFL 2.0 initiative and trying to get global was important. And I don't think the thinking behind that as flawed. You can debate the execution of it. You can debate whether or not we've got enough. Money to, to initiate a program like that. But, you know, certainly the governors have bought in and, and I think it makes sense that you need to find a way. You've got three cultural centers here in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. That are, you know, as international cities, as international us city, times three, as anywhere in the world. Right? I mean, you go walk the streets in Vancouver and Montreal and Toronto. It is a complete global melting pot. You know, enter the United States. You go to some places and there are. You know, you can identify it. You know, to three ethnic background, you come here and it's everything like. It is everything. And so if you can find a way to get fans that are, you know, from it from a different cultural background to connect and engage with this game, then you do that. If you can find a way. To make this league relevant in other parts of the world. And I think you do that. The challenge the CFL is going to have, it's not a flawed premise. It just might be that the NFL might be ahead of him in that area. I mean, I just watched the Florida pro day. Last week. And there were, you know, four big time European athletes that were part of the NFL international pathways program that came even the NFL gets it, that the game's going global and, and. You know, we need to kind of go in that direction. So I think the thought of trying to create a bigger pie is a, is a good one. I think gambling. And once the legislation gets passed up here too. To increase that I think that's, you. That's a good one. You know, people talk about. Three downs and four downs. And how kids engage with this game. Here's our kids engage with this game Madden. You know, I got a 12 year old son. And he used to sh I would take him to the BC lions practices from the time he was five years old. He used to throw footballs with hall of Famers, right on the sideline. Like if ever a kid was engaged with this league, it's that kid. And yet, you know, his heroes are. You know, Patrick Holmes and others. Yeah. Those guys are great players, but like, I think a lot of their engagement is, is mad. Now the CFO has looked at trying to develop a video game and there are some. There's a cost benefit analysis there. And, you know, I just don't think they've been in a position to invest, but there's a number of different ways that you can grow the game. And I think that's what the CFL is looking at. When they see red bird and when they see the rock and they just think that some of those entities forget the XFL. We're talking about the people who are potentially going to own the XFL. Some of the things that they have done. That they just might be farther ahead. They just might be more equipped. And, you know, just they understand how to do it. And I think that's what appeals to the governors up here to try to pursue every opportunity here with, with. You know, Collaborating. Speaking of XFL and on their ship and Redbird, you know, we had Arashi Madani on last week, you know, it did not have the kindest things to say about, you know, XFL. You know, to be mild. What, what are your thoughts on this? Did you have any past experience? You know? You know, watching the league back in 20, 19, 2020. And what are your thoughts in, in any of that sort of stuff? Yeah. You know what? I was surprised. At how it was talked about. Right. So number one. Okay. It's five weeks. If you want to take the five weeks that ended with COVID and throw it in the scrap. With every other failed attempt. That's on you. I like, I just want to look at things differently. So when I looked at it, like, I'll be honest with you. I was that guy that wanted to roll his eyes. Because I want the CFL to be important and I don't want to lose players to the XFL. I mean, you're gonna lose players to the NFL, but when I went into it, I'll be honest. I went into it with a somewhat jaundiced. I almost kind of expecting ready and kind of hoping that, yeah, I hope this doesn't work because I want the CFL to be. We're all the next best coaches and players go to. I don't want to see a talent drain. Like we see in so many other industries to the second best league in the, in America, as opposed to the first best league. I was surprised. And you know, when people talk about the fact that they didn't get a lot of money on their TV deal, here's what they did get. They got some actual credibility and traction because I watched how that lead was covered. And I watched how the ESPN challenged covered the league because it was on ESPN and they viewed it like a legitimate entity. They talked about it like a legitimate entity. It wasn't constantly being talked about like a startup or a freak show or an accident waiting to happen. He talked about it like football. He talked about the players and. I thought, well, if that continues. Over time. This is going to matter. So, you know, one of my friends, Steve levy. Is doing play by play of the game. And he's doing the research and prep before that, he's going to think about those players in that game differently. I read about it in the athletic and it was covered like a legitimate entity. And I think those things matter. You know, as you, as you roll that out over time and, and really the, the ratings for the league in week five, before it went away were good. You know, I I'm close to the Seattle market. The fans were into it. And you looked in St. Louis, the fans were into it. Yeah. There were some others where it was bad. I get it. But it's not always going to be about that because if you can, you know, if you can build the brand, some of those fans will come to gambling. There's other things that can come. And here's my example. MLS. Right. Well, this league will any kind of CFL, XFL collaboration, turn into the NFL, no chance, but look at the X or look at the MLS. Right? Yeah, my lesson might be fifth year. If that in terms of worldwide shock. Right. I mean, this is not the premiership and it's not close to the premiership. Right. It's not illegal. It's not. You know, the, a Syriac, it's not those leaks. It's somewhere down the totem pole yet. It's profitable now, the television money, the XFL brings in. Is minimal. The ratings are minimal, but yet they've somehow found a way through all of that with their brand placement and other promotional opportunities in and around that. And what TV affords them that the franchise value around an MLS team is 350 million. You know what the franchise value is for a CFL team. Barely that. Right. Like it's, it's crazy. So you can't look at that and say, it's not working as a second tier product. Right because the product in the CFL is very, very good. You know, people look at the CFL and they think, wow, you know, it. They the haters up here. Just hate it based on salary. These guys make five to 10% of what an NFL player makes, but they're 90 to 95% as good as an NFL player. So I think it's good. When I, when I looked at the XFL as an idea, You know, I expected to see XFL 2001. You know, we're Vincent McMahon did make it an offshoot of wrestling and it was stupidity wasn't that this time around. So the way the league got talked about and me viewing it as kind of a. Kind of get to an MLS level. I think that's realistic. You talked about player salaries and that's been one of the things that we've definitely stuck on is like, We, we, we definitely feel these players deserve a lot more than they're making right now. And we've had discussions when we're talking about the TV deals and stuff like that. I have, I have to, I have to put this out there. How, how, how do you get a better TV deal for this, this product? And pay the well, you can't, you can't in Canada, right? I mean, you know, when the, when the CFL TV deal was signed, You know, it was lauded as a very good television deal here, but now there's a lack of money. Chanel. People want to focus on the television deal and I get it. I worked for the company, so I'm not going to sit here and trash my own employer. You smart business and you guys wouldn't expect that. But the truth is when that deal was signed. You talked to people around the league and they thought this is fantastic because now at the very least the salary caps are paid for. Like there was enough money coming in to the salary caps for every team was paid for. And that was important. And ultimately this comes down to economies of scale. Right. And you look at. Where it is relative to, you know, just our size of population. And, you know, I think these things are a reflection of, you know, where we are as a country economically, because I I'll tell you that if there were. A myriad of networks that wanted a bid and drive the price up. Price would have gone up. Right. But ultimately that was what the market bear did that time. And at the time was viewed as a very good deal. And I still think it is again, Relative to your ship, the economics around the country and viewership and things like that. I think it's the things, the right number. I was laughing and I texted Paul here on the chat. If we didn't have our episode title already, I would have the XFL. It's not a freak show. I mean, think about, he hate me and those things back in 2021. They would do a race to center center field to. Instead of a coin toss like that was craziness yet. The cheerleaders in the hot tub on the sideline. Like it was foolishness, at least these guys this time around. You know, They tried to make it a credible product. They did market research. They adjusted rules some for safety, some for entertainment, but all of it still kept the, you know, the, the fundamental credibility of the fact this was football first, right? You know, all of reluctant and go out and try to just, you know, make this aside and show it was. It was actual football. So. You know, I, I, I thought it was good. Yeah, you touched on that XFL. 2001. I remember there was like a. A marketing thing. They tried where they were like making kind of like an old school wrestling beef between Jesse Ventura. And one of the coaches and it was ridiculous. I think it turned a lot of people off, like, this is, this is just wrestling with football now at this point. So yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm glad you're bringing that kind of stuff up. Yeah, it's important. Like I said, the credibility of it mattered. The coaches, they got involved mattered. You know, I think the biggest downside to what I saw a year ago at the XFL is I think the quarterback play was really average. You know, I do, but I think. It's a more difficult game to quarterback in than the Canadian game. Right. And that's been brought up by other journalists here as well because the windows are just so much tighter. Right. I mean the CFL game. You know, when you're throwing that, that wide side corner ball where you can just kind of put it into a spot. Yeah. There's an art to it, but it's a much more forgiving play than trying to, you know, throw a cover too. Fade ball where it's gotta be a low trajectory. You've got to get it there before the safety can get over, or the receiver is gonna get his head taken off, you know? So I think. You know, being a quarterback. In the American game presents its challenges. And I think that the quarterback play in the XFL was, was kind of ordinary. But I do think that that can get better. It was just your one, but beyond that it was football. I liked what they did with the kickoffs. You don't want moving the players down where they wanted to keep kickoffs in the game, but. Still wanted to respect the safety element of where special teams were going. There were some creative things that they, they approached in an analytical way and, you know, and I think the NFL looked at a lot of that stuff. Thought, Hey, how can we implement some of this? I do have to play devil's advocate though on that situation where we look at people that have gone to the NFL, gone to the NFL from the XFL, and you've got to tailor. Hi. Lucky you've got a PGO. So some of those quarterbacks, you know, you say they're ordinary, but they are making NFL rosters. And Taylor. Nike does have a $4 million deal. So that, that needs to be. You know, That needs to be put out. That's fair. Look. And I loved what he did at the end of the season when they needed to go to him. And that really what it comes down to it. And honestly, Like Paul, you, you make a great point and, and that so much of it is timing. Right. And you see a guy and you give them an opportunity and he's at the right stage in his window. So I know that it was on social media last week. About you could bowl Levi Mitchell. Play in the NFL. Yeah, I believe he could now. Could both be a starter? No, but do I think bowl is one of the top 50 quarterbacks in the world. Yeah, I do. I do, but you're not going to take a quarterback that's in his late twenties or early thirties. And invest in, give them a big opportunity out there. That's just not how that league is wired. So we see players from this league. In the CFL all the time. And I know your, your point was quarterbacks, but you know, my point around Taylor Heineken was, was timing. Right? And, you know, it just kind of takes that one guy to believe in you in the right time. Who's the quarterback in with the ramps. That finished the season for them, that Sean McVay really warfarin what's that. Yeah, John Wolford wall of a sudden one guy liked him and it was the right time. And he was at the right stage in his career. We get guys that get cut from CFL rosters. All the time that in August. Just happened to be available and an NFL team has a need and they bring that guy in and he got cut from the CFL team. Right. So, so much of it is about timing and where you're at in your career. A lot of these CFL guys don't become special until their late twenties and early thirties. You know, maybe 30. And now it's too late. Right? So even though when you look at them on the whole, are they better than that NFL rookie today? Probably. But that doesn't mean they fit the NFL profile and that an NFL team wants to invest in them at that time. My last question for you today and hope. I would hope that we could maybe get John here and in the future, depending on how long. Don't get me fired. We can do it. Yeah. Yeah, I call ours our jerseys moldy, you know, whatever. My last question for you, honestly. Yeah. A friend of this show, rod Peterson was on his thing program yesterday. He feels 60 40, the CFL is not going to play this year. Right. We're where you're sitting now. How do you feel optimistically or not about them getting through this season? I think there's a 95% chance the CFL will play this year. I, and I'd say higher just from the conversations I've had in the last couple of days. I think there's absolutely going to be a season. You know, everybody understands what's at stake. And yeah, I think they're going to find a way to play. I hope so. This has been great for everything. Yeah. I mean, we're all steamer heads, so there, yeah, there's certainly no. Dissenting views from anybody trying to cover this. So. Well, yeah. It's a fun league. I missed it last year. And, and, you know, I'm glad if nothing else that it just being talked about right now and hopefully a few more American fans that were somewhat interested in the XFL before. We'll kind of look at this for a period of time and say, yeah, you know what, maybe this is where we're going. And. And, you know, it's been around a long time and I think the credibility of the CFL. Is one of the reasons the XFL wants to get involved with it. So. You got to play this year. If you want that credibility to remain intact, completely agree. Foreign lousy. Thank you for joining us right here on the XFL mark cast. We appreciate it. We're probably going to rename the show, the CFO mark, as the way we. We keep this thing. So we appreciate your time. It's been an honor to speak with you about this. All right. Paul Reed. Thanks so much for having me. I look forward to doing it again. Thank you so much. Stay safe. [Unknown] for coming on. TSN. Sportscaster extraordinary. Let's give them, let's give Ms. Flowers extraordinary. You can't, you can't ever let me have the word last. We're going to break. So get your ran out of the way. Well, I wanted to make sure people see the title of the episode is going to be a, you know, this episode is not clickbait. People are going to stick around for the giveaway though. So. You would be surprised how many subscribers that we have and how many actually filled out the, I mean, good, good. Good odds if you fill it out for the giveaway, I'm just going to say, I mean, we have a lot of subscribers, but just not, not as many did the giveaways. I was at that. This is my crux of everything this week. I am so mad about this. I am just really upset. I am so tired of, you know, and I know brain is tired, too. CFL Reddit about the XFL media. Whatever do we cover it? Well, now this isn't even XFL media. This is front office sports. This is Michael McCarthy. I guess he and Mike Mitchell are friends because I have gone back and forth with Mike Mitchell about this ad nauseum this week. Ah, shame on you, Michael McCarthy for this article, the article is, is the rock cooking. You know, cooking. And XFL CFL title game. It says they could have their own super bowl. The two leagues have been in negotiations. And it says basically like how, okay, this is the club. Here's how it could work. So are still for the office sports, both leagues would play the razors he's and there could be an entirely game similar to MLB. And once the represent a respective XFL NCFL championship. They face off in, in, in your league play. This also could, this could also be an all-star game, penning up. In the 271 word article, but this is the word could, is used five times. I could win the lottery tomorrow. I could win. We could. This makes me so angry and this, this went everywhere. Th th that thumbnail of this episode is like 18 different headlines. I found out about this this week and it infuriates me because this stuff gets posted. Yeah, here we are trying to do ding, the bell, the Ward's work, figuring out all of these, you know, what is real, what is not what's going on? And they hear this Michael McCarthy. And like I said, shame on you. I T I tweeted at him. I said, I'm challenging you to an XFL ball scramble. This is ridiculous. My mom texted me. She goes, Hey, did you see this? There could be an all-star game between the XFL and CFL. When my mom tested me. No one's going that far. I might have to close. Hey, will you verify for two seconds while I close the window? So when, when Reed's mom is. Paying attention and figuring these things out. You know how widespread this is and it's misinformation. It really is misinformation using the word. Could. I mean, you could say the word could about a lot of things. I could go and drive down the street and get in a car accident. Don't want to go. Hope. But that does happen, but you could S you could say, I could do this about a lot of things. My biggest thing about this. And I have been told this from Mike Mitchell that talks with all the XFL people. They have said when it came to this merger that anything is on the table. I understand that. I understand that every, and I'm sure that this was talked about, Hey, we could do an XFL. See about whatever game. When you say that everything is on the table, not everything on the table has the same percentage chances of happening. Right. So, yeah, I'm sure this was talked about. As was a million other things. And the fact that you decided to write this article and have it posted, I saw it on Fox news, CBS, NBC bleeds, your report. XFL newsroom. I saw it on everything this week and it really makes me mad because what it does is it. It whittles it, the integrity that we have and the other thing that came out, you know, XFL newsroom, if you guys were following this week, they had posted cause Brayden friend of the show, he tweeted. I see, you know, in my opinion, the XFL merger is happening and whatever it doesn't matter. Right. Because he deleted it. So what does EXITO newsroom do they go do a whole story about it? According to the CFL Reddit, eh, The merger is happening. I tweeted brain. Or I, I messaged him. I go, Hey man, like this, he goes, oh, I'm going to go delete that. Like, that's crazy. But what does that do? It demeans us as what we're trying to do. And I D you know, we said this before Paula and I take this very seriously. We both work. You know, Paul works in journalism. I worked in journalism. I really take this seriously. And so when I see stuff like this, come out. It infuriates me to no end. And I do say shame on Michael McCarthy and, and the fact that this got so many clicks where I would, I would give my soul for, you know, quarter of that for doing the work that we're doing. Look, if, if, if opinions were facts. The Clippers, according to skip Bayless would be ordered the NBA title. If opinions were facts, the problem is opinions aren't facts. So when you take someone's opinion, like Brayden's. Who stated it wasn't opinion. Why were you presenting that as facts? Yeah, it's so, yeah, they, they, the two things, cause there was the, the brain thing with newsroom that the article is still up on their website. And then there is this, excuse me, the zoom is getting to me. And then there was this thing about the, this championship game. And then this was this, the icing on the cake. Renee Montgomery, our tweets. Renee Montgomery owner of the fingertip football bees. Maybe, maybe the winner of that game could play the FCF champion. CF between did they go. I think you're onto something. And I said, living rent free, and we're going to talk all about living rent free here. I've been just a few minutes with, so Rob. The the XFL is so rent-free and advantage of football's minds. It's astounding to me. But anyway, I mean, You know, friends of the show. Yeah. I told Zach message me. If you have questions about what's real, what's not, I know Steven, another guy messaged me like, Hey, is this real? I go, Nope, because all right, moving on. And that's fine. I mean, follow us. I'll tell you what's real. And what's not, I don't have any problem calling out to anybody, but it really did tick me off. All right, let's take one more. I think we're going to take one more last break, maybe one, maybe one after this, but let's try and make this the last break. We're going to come back. Pat McAfee got some things he wants to say about the XFL. Also a lawsuit update on, I assume Oliver luck. Maybe. I don't know. I just, it's very vague in here. We'll we'll let Reed tell the story and that'll come up after the break. Well, hurry up. Sorry. Thanks Reed for letting me toss to break there. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. I'm kidding. So pat McAfee. On his show. Said. This week, this, this is going all over the tweets right now. Channing Crowder. We've talked about this guy in the past. He's up on the he's on the IMF fleet podcast this week and all this, this clown. I tweeted this. I tweeted today. I go. Don't know and share this with Paul, but this is Channing chatter getting ready for work. And it's him putting on the clown mask because I didn't want to scare you. Yeah, I'll do that. I'm definitely afraid of clowns. So pat McAfee a couple of days ago, I deleted this clip just to try to save us time. He did a whole thing about, Hey, I think the XFL deserves more credit than the dad. Yeah, because pat McAfee did some, you know, reporting work for the XFL back when it was on. So then you have similar things. What Mr. Chatter has said or Crowder I'll call them chapter. I don't give that number. What, what Crowder said, and this is I'm losing my place here. It is so demeaning. This is a clip. And then we can talk about it. You said the rock wasted, his God damn money. Everybody wants to know why you hate the XFL. You don't like the rock. I would like to learn a little bit more about this statement. And how do you feel about a developmental league of some sort having to happen at some point don't you think? Yeah, the developmental league makes sense, man. I love the rocket debt. I'll raise a baby with the rock. That's a good looking man. Watched him when he was a rock and now I'm doing, you know, Do it on a movie and stuff. The rock, but we tried it. They've tried this man. They tried that. XFL AAF and all that stuff. It's not top quality football. It really isn't. If you are top quality players, y'all know what you're going to be in the NFL. If you that developmental St bro. Colleges to develop guys, how many guys literally come out of the AEL for XFL in the past and went to the league and bald and really changed the league. The concept is great. It's just failed so many times that I really think he's wasting his money. Taylor fricking hi, Nikki. It's bad, man. I, that way, right. It rod said, and I said the same thing I tweeted, I go. Don't you want your other teammates and players to make money? What an idiot. People playing in the XFL. Have no impact on you. Don't want, I don't, you don't need to watch it, but you don't need to hate on it. There's a lot of people that do want to watch it. I'm sorry. Eros, you know, it might not be the, you know, a hundred million that watch the NFL. But, you know, there are millions of people to watch it and let these people play and let them make money. Who cares? It doesn't affect you at all. Like, and when you come on and you laugh and you had, what made me mad is you had pat McAfee a couple of days earlier. He did this whole, oh, the XFL gave us all the credit. And then here he is, chumming it up laughing. Oh yeah. It's just total dumb. This doesn't even, you know, this is no place for this. And then, okay, pat, it's really easy to talk on your own. And then when you have a, you know, one of your boys on making fun of it, then you hop on the bandwagon to make fun of it. I don't like that. I don't like these players deserve as much as anything. Same energy, pat, same energy. Yeah, same energy. If you love them. The XFL don't like be part of the mob mentality. And then, you know, Crap on it. I was going to say something else, but crap on it later on. Yeah. That's that's stupid. Yeah, I know that's the right right there. Same energy. If you're going to come on and you're going to talk whatever, a couple of days earlier, and then laugh up with your boy. I don't like that. And that really offended me and things like that. And when that gets, you know, a million views or whatever on Twitter, that the means with all these players are trying to work towards. I really think Pat's just p****d because he's no longer the celebrity that's had the best wrestling match. I think that's, what's really going on. Wrestling ring sense. Cause he got worked. I mean, you know, I know it's. But let's be honest. That did definitely hurt some of the spots he did. So, yeah, I mean, That's why Pat's p****d. Yeah. This, this is the last I will give Josh Davis all the credit in the world for this. And he's not, he doesn't listen to anything in the world, so, but he will. Yeah. He's a very interesting man. He reported this week that the XFL has reapplied for the trademark for the love of football. That there was never a statement of use five extensions are granted. And once those ran now that the league wanted to use it, they needed to refile it and may dead on April 9th. I just thought that was tremendous. I laughed at that because that is their big, like hashtag for. Book ball. And they never like had used it for anything. And so they had to refile the whole trademark. I wanted the. For the love of football podcast. That's what I should have gotten on this. I missed it. I was a day late and a dollar short, but I just thought that was tremendous at the exit. Val loss almost lost the trademark to, for the love of football. That's great. Switching gears now, spring league making their broadcast television debut kind of sorta because they did have some games on. Last year, but May 8th on Fox sports. Six regular season games as well as a championship match airing on Fox. Those seasons remaining 18 regular season games with Erin primetime on Fs one and Fs. So congrats to. Mr. Brian there, Mr. Bryan, Ryan Woods. Yeah. I saw some people ask about that. They go, well, That's not like why aren't they all on Fox? Be happy with this. We only got, we only got two games a week last back in November. I be happy. They're all on TV. I don't care what channel they're I understand. Yes. Ideally we want them all on Fox or whatever. Like. I don't care, be happy. They're all on there and be happy for the players that are wanting the tape and wanting the credibility. Just be happy for that. I would be, yeah. I would not be questioning anything about anything right now. I would just be happy there on there. It was very vague. NGL story. What is that? I want to talk about that. That's the league that went bankrupt this week and then all the players got in the fight. Do we want to talk about that? It was crazy. I mean, there's videos on the internet where I guess the commissioner gotten cool. Like an actual fisticuffs with one of the players. It was crazy. And that kind of started. I don't know that troll on Twitter, that that kept coming at me. Talking about why don't you do this? You're always talking bad about the FCF. It's like, we're talking bad about the FCF because not a good product. And because they just kind of set themselves up for it, which. Let's let's discuss that right now. You got your Jersey. Congratulations on that. Well, I will display this. Yeah. If you want, Josh has been covering that NGL staff. I saw that come out this week. I just figured the interest for our listeners. With all the CFL staff, I just didn't think it was there for me to do a deep dive in this. Josh Davis is, and I will tell you like, He is not a friend of ours anymore. Cause he's involved as, but I do know that Zach with Gridiron gallery is doing a whole podcast this week about it. And he's talking with people so I'm serious. Like, and he does not seem to be a fan of mine right now. I don't know what I did, but it seems like he's doing it really deep dive on this this week. So have you, if you want to hear about the NGL staff. Go talk with, go listen to Zach's podcast. That's this week. Cause it does seem like he's really done. I just don't like to cover stuff half-ass and if I don't know what's going on, then I don't. I just didn't I've been planning. I didn't quite have the bandwidth to read into it a little bit more. So if you want to, yeah. I can't believe we're plugging someone else here, especially someone that has an issue with you. I don't know. What the issue is. Did you like. Pee in his gas tank or something. What's what's the deal. I don't know. And this is before all the newsroom, because I was harsh on these during this week. This was before all that, by that I. I don't know. Anyway. Yeah. So I got my, while the sisters, he was like a dress kinda. So here's the deal it's really long. And it's got that split in the back. Right. And it's so I texted journey about this. I go, Hey, you know, journey from. You know, Wow. [Unknown] cause they're the game worn Jersey. They only did one print of all of them and they shipped some to the fans and some do whatever. I go, what's the deal with this? He goes, well, I think it's so like, you can get your pads online and then if you're, if you're a bigger alignment, like it'll stretch and it'll still, it'll still fit you. And I go, yeah, but you know, obviously they should make one for consumer, whatever. It's a great Jersey. I will say this is probably one of the best things. The fingers of football did this year is these jerseys. They're phenomenal quality. And I don't mind that the length and the split, because if you just kind of roll it up a tiny little bit, it hangs like [unknown]. It stays in place. And it makes me. I, it really makes me look trim because it really like hangs. Correctly. And so I will say like, I would have bought other teams of this. I really do like this Jersey a lot. And as ugly as the beast ones is, I wish I went and got a beast one because I do really think this is phenomenal Jersey and for all the stuff that we've been given to Sarov and everything, I thought that. Props here kind of going at us on Twitter too. A little bit. I just, you know, Come on syrup. Yeah, we FC ERI XFL. Lives rent-free in fingernail football sets and yeah, we don't have the time to get into all that, but it, anyway, finger's a football getting ready for next season. I haven't seen a lot of tweets about a lot of staff. We're keeping an eye on journey. I asked him, he said, he's waiting. You know, she's still working and plugging and trying to get. These are the players. When that Crowder guy craps on whatever, it's someone like Gertie, that's trying to get a position. You know, and to get money. And so it really does. As much as. I never really thought about any of this stuff before we started this podcast. Like, and I know that Mark Perry is the same way with news hub. Like we care about these players and we do care about them getting the money itself. And that's, that's been our point with the whole, the CFL coverage. When we've talked about how much those CFL players are getting. And you heard far far on talk about those CFL players, their skill set is 90, 95% as good as the NFL players. And they're getting what, five to 10%, what the NFL players make. That that is our main motivation is to make sure the CFL game grows now. To where we can get more money for the players. I would love to see that. That's just me a hundred percent. Last thing before the giveaway. They, they, this was kind of like one of those what's the website. Oh, this is a New York post stories. Oh, there you go. They ran more than 30,000 Americans were in a poll conducted by pips. PIP PIP, slay. There are, I guess, a polling place. And nearly half of respondents, 46% would consider the Kanig at candy. Get candid, this sea of the future president of rock and he's to AI. Easy ideas since 2017. And the young rock show right now, he is currently running for president. And that would you vote for the rockets president? No, I wouldn't. I did see a lot of people. I think we had too many celebrities run for president. If we're being completely honest, I did. I did see a lot of people go out. Well, what would happen to the CFL then if the broccoli and I go kiss the Rock's not going to be running the CFL, the right they're going to hire people. They're going to hire Scott Pioli or someone to run the league. I don't want to hear this. Like, well, if the rug runs through prison, what's going to happen to the league. So anyway, Kim Kim, can I just throw something real quick out here? This just came up on my feed. It's I, I can't share the screen, so I can't show read, but I'll, I'll send the picture to read and then he can look at it later, but I will describe that team Canada's Olympic wear for Tokyo was dropped. And I don't know if you guys are fans with how I met your mother, but one of the characters on how I met your mother, his name is Robin. She was a Canadian pop star. And if you look at the, the, the Canadian Olympic. Outfits and look at Robin Shabbat. Let's go to the mall. Video Robbins sparkles. Robin's Markel's. Yup. Robin sparkles. It's it's clear that maybe Canada owes the creators of how I met your mother some dollars. Cause they, it looks like they ripped off. Robin sparkles. Let's go to the mall. Out west. Go to the mall. Oh, that's great. Hopefully number one, Ted Mosley had had that as his ring tone of the show. I, we fell off of him yet, but it was a good, that was a good, a good run wall. And it was like 10 seasons. Wait too many seasons. The last season was one whole day. And then the very end was like, oh, let's go. Let's cram eight years in. Why not? Oh, I don't spoil it because there are the ads that we haven't watched. I mean, I know the finale would dry the SNC in the finale. I said, No spoilers for the premium. Who the mother is. Okay. Have we vamped enough? We got to go. Cause then Paul's got to go. He's got his big show debuting tonight on YouTube, the mellow man, Asia. Will be last night. Yeah, that'd be last night, but you can watch the replay, right? It'll be on YouTube. Right. On Twitch, I believe. Yes. Yes. So anyway, Paul. It really did a lot of work today, getting all this ready, and then Paul's going to go work here. So we have the giveaway. I have there's seven giveaways cause there's five hats. There's the Jersey and the Paul's got the ball. So we're going to start with the hats. All right. So winners of the hats and I'll mail these off. We got them all here. And what I did was everyone commented, Jersey hat ball. I searched, I got everyone's names and I put them in their randomizer for each one. So there's five hats. There's the Jersey. And then there's the ball. Winners of the hats. Phillip Ramirez, you're getting the hat. Mark Brennan, you're getting the hat. Kev new 360, you're getting a hat, passenger Escobar. You're getting the hat. And then ranger king six 69. You're all getting hats. So here's the deal for any winners? Don't tweet at me. Don't call. I mean, please comment on the video and say, I want I'm so excited. Email us xflMarquez@gmail.com. I need your address. And then I'll send the, the ball one to Paul because Paul has the ball. I have the rest of the stuff. So AXA Valmarc. [Unknown] at gmail.com. Send me an email. But please comment on the video and say you won and God. If you don't send me a picture when you get this, I'm going to be so mad. Yep. Same with the ball. Same with the Jersey. Okay. And then, and then. And then I will say this too. We're going to do another one for 5,000. We get to 5,000. We'll do another giveaway. So I know it's a lofty goal to get there. Reed's disappeared for a minute. 2,005,000 Is a lot. 500, let's do 20 to 2,500. We'll do another giveaway. All all acquire something else. And we'll make that happen. And I tell you, if you don't send me a photo with these, I'm going to be so mad. So mad. Okay. When you're at the Jersey, the high end, like hi, Nikki. It's a medium. So it was a smaller entry size because it just, you know, size-wise. Ah, Yon dues and Barry, you're getting the Jersey. Email yawn. I'm glad that went to him. Friend of the show is given this he's. He was famous for the XFL job posting that came up. So thank you so much for that. Paul drum roll. Do you have the ball as a hidden somewhere? It's locked away, but why I did show it, it's in, it's in my house. It's locked away in a safe. Little area. Is there anyway. I'm glad for this long time friend of the show. I'm so glad. And again, this all randomizer, I'm glad that this went to someone that truly deserves it. Jenna. You're getting the ball. Yeah. Jacko. I don't know. I have the usernames. But you are getting the ball. So send me the email I, Jen has got that. I'm sure if anyone else congratulations, all the waiters. I'm sure if anyone else really wanted like a 10% discount on, on, if you want to buy some merge and get maybe like a 10% discount. Tweet. Comment on the video. If you want a coupon and maybe we can do a coupon code. She had some XFL, mark CAS merchandise. Hopefully it's nothing that costs. Another digitization fee. Thanks for you for that. Yeah. So we'll, we'll definitely get you into some Mar CAS merchandise, so you can, you can show it off and then kind of, kind of help help us. You know, You got a new shirt? Yeah. Thank you all. Please subscribe. Leave us a review. If you haven't, if you get the merge and you haven't left us a review, I'm going to be super mad. So like, you definitely need to leave us a review if you want today. And you have a left. Did you, are you okay with the zone? A little bit, so I'm going crazy. It's giving you a little bit of, a little bit of an issue. They're in your soft focus area. If you saw how Reed was animated was about these clickbait articles. He's going to be 10 times worse. If you don't send photos. And, you know, promote the things you got on our giveaways. So please keep read. Happy. I'm in the community. So anyway, thank you all. I that's all I got today. All right. Cool. We'll see you here next week. Thanks for listening.

Episode 35 - The XFL vs. CFL DUEL!

All of this jam packing though has made us gotten us to our goal of, of a thousand plus subscribers. Thank you everyone for it. I was going to make a Stephen Colbert, like mission accomplished, pulled down the ripcord sign here. But I just ran out of time. I was getting all the merge ready for the giveaway, but I, yeah, I, all the jam packing got us to a thousand, a thousand subs. So it was the big, long. CFL filled episodes that got us there. So shout out to the CFL for giving us a lot of news to talk about and filling our show and then making us. Probably the premier. XFL podcast right now. I'm going to, I'm going to go ahead and say and toot our own horn. Return for that matter. And say, yeah. Dude, like this has been great. Who would have thought. We started this less than a year ago. That would already be at a thousand subscribers. We're close to that mark of people that have watched the, the, the. The podcasts. And once we hit that, that number, then we start getting monetized and that's, that's always been, the goal is to, is to make this a, a fruitful venture. In terms of, you know, Yeah. It sounds like there's never going to be salary replacing. It'd be nice to get. We're putting a lot of work. I really appreciate you guys. Like everyone has just killed it. The last three, four weeks here, jumping on. One of the comments this week was I cannot believe the Shannon only has at that send subscribers. So thank you very much for that. But no, thank you guys, everyone so much. So here's the deal. We're going to get through all the news today. And then we've got all our giveaway stuff at the end. We're still trying, like Paul said to get the, the, the view hours up, we're almost there. We're about a week or two away. So we're going to run down all the details about getting shadowed at your Cinco sign football. I've got some old merge to give away, so just stick through the episode and then we're going to give you all the details, but you have to watch the only way you're going to be eligible for any of this stuff is the details at the end that we're going to provide you. So please stick around and enjoy the show. A tremendous show today, Paul and I I'm, I think I'm still sweating from our duel yesterday with our OSH. How do you feel that that went. You know, He just kind of, you know, you got a little belligerent, a little bit, a little bit dismissive and, you know, I had to, I had to bring out that arrogance, that someone pointed out. On a CFL board. I had to get a little arrogant with him and say, Which league actually played some games last year. Was it the XFL or CFL? Oh, wait. It wasn't the CFL. And I hate being that guy, but Araj kind of brought it out of me, but it was a, it was a fruitful talk. And you'll get to hear that later on in the show. I hope you enjoy that. As much as we enjoyed bantering with him, I cannot oversell enough how great this talk is arrived. Yeah. Normally we've been bringing three guests lately. I know that was getting a little overwhelming. I would say a Ross feels like he has three guests worth. Of content than the Raj brought. So. Thank you for that. We also have spring league CEO, Brian Woods coming up to the age of rundown. They just announced all their staff. Very excited to talk with Brian, asking him about our jesters and merchandise that we've been promised. I have the clip ready to play and potentially a sensor, a bell from Paul. If I get a little too feisty with that. But now Arashi is great. I just, whether you like Eros, whether you don't, whether you like us, whether you don't. I think there's plenty of staff. I've crossed the board. I cannot thank him enough. We already donated to who did we donate to? Paul I university bishops. Right. The refugee scholarship program. Cause near and dear to our Russia's heart. Basically a rush and I had a bet over the Arizona Stanford women's game. I will give him a little grief over that. Arizona was a job a little bit by the referees, but we'll, we'll talk about that. He said he's going to donate no matter what, no matter the outcome of the game. And I made the same pledge. And what I did was I doubled. What we waged as, as my contribution to bishops you after Stanford. How to help with referees to beat Arizona in the national championship game. But yeah, it's a great cause. And it's something near and dear to his heart. We encourage everyone. To sign. To to donate whatever you can log on to bishops use alumni page. I I'm, we may be able to get a link down there. I don't know. What real do when, when you do that, you, you have to click other, and then when you click other, you have to type in refugee sponsorship program and then it will go to the right area because there's not a dropdown selection for it. So click other type refugee sponsorship program. And you'll be able to donate. We encourage everyone to donate. We appreciate the charity during this. Definitely a unprecedented time. Your lighting change. You're a little flush now. You're a little red. Is that, is that leftover from our Asha set? So I have this new thing called the stream deck. It's not new. It's not new in terms of whatever. It's, it's new to me. And basically I can actually control my hue lights through this thing too. It's it's ridiculous. How much stuff I can do with this. So I've got to, I guess I got to change out my lighting here. Ooh, that's a little bright. I look like one of the people on cocoon there. Where's the. This is riveting. This is, this is, this is great stuff. This is why a thousand of you subscribe to this podcast, right? Anyway, so great, great combo with a rash, all your CFL staff, a couple other things we did to give away. I'm excited that Jazzmasters are lit our, our live, our, our living again, Kenny fat friend of the show, the Jasper. Jaster is art. Spring league team is coming back where you get into all that. Tremendous comments this week on the YouTube people love Jim loved the education he brought, and also there's like history lessons going on in our YouTube chat. Like people are like, Hey, so what's the deal? Why is this CFL do this? And then other people are, are, are like literally giving the history of lesson on our YouTube page. So I'm thankful for all of our people. There was a question this week on the CFL Reddit board, who is mark. We are the mark asked who was mark? I don't know. Oh, hi, mark. I don't know. There's there's no, I am read this is Paul. We had the Marc cask is we are the XFL marks. We are, we are marking out for it's an old wrestling term. Apparently I'm your sidekick, according to people on this, I mean, you know, your graphics don't help that conversation get furthered. I like to think of us as. As a team. I know you put in more of the work, but apparently I'm your sidekick. So. Equal cohost. 50.0% Across the board equal cohos in this venture. So there is, but there is no mark. There's only reason Paul. We are the mark cast. Also I braid and pointed this out and I forgot you had said last week, he wanted to play a CFL football game. I Doug Flutie has a football game on the PlayStation that you can digitally download. I forgot that. Which PlayStation. Any of them, it's on all of them. Really? Yeah. So go, go for it. It's new. It just came out like the last nine months I followed the whole thing and I was going to have them come on the show and then they never followed me back. So. All Canadian rules, football and everything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to have to check that out. Yeah. So that's, that's a a hundred percent serious thing, brain. I was like, God, I was like, I totally forgot that. That exists, Doug. Whatever also, I just pulled out from the fridge. We got another. Two for the price and one I'm going back to the well today I got Zola. I've been drinking these all week. I love it. Okay. So I figured out, I figured out a way to drink it. Because of the smell that bothers me. It's not necessarily the taste and I should, I should apologize. To the rock. You Dwayne and Danny. Four four, a. Disparaging such a product. It's the smell that throws it off for me. So if I, if I drink it without breathing, I close my nose completely. My taste buds, like as like, okay, this is really actually good, but it's the smell that kind of makes me go, oh, that's what it is. It's not the text. It's the smell. I'm back. I should have had Zella yesterday. It was nine in the morning when we talked to a rash, maybe. I thought we were hiring anyway. So. Preface. I do you notice the Jersey I'm wearing today? It's the rough necks. Could be. So we've been doing CFL for the last couple of weeks. God darn it. There's a XFL news to, we. We are starting with that today. Big news yesterday, it came out for, for months. Now, the NFL has been, had a lawsuit against the XFL for the roughnecks logo. Both their primary and secondary logo. And yesterday the XFL for clothing. Not for digital assets yet, but for clothing, the abandoned, the trademarks. So that means that, that the roughnecks logo on my PJ Walker, which relates to our second story of the PJ Walker Jersey, they're abandoning those logos. What is your reaction? Vintage. Jersey there for read now. It's a collector's item. This was, this was going to happen. No matter what I did, I didn't think, I didn't see this being a thing that the XFL was going to fight. To be honest with you, it's, it's easier to change the logo than to spend tons of money to keep something that. Honestly. How many people are, are, you know, Are actually that attached to that logo. How many people? Not very many. So unfortunately, you know, Araj now makes more of a point coming up in his talk. That, what does the XFL really have? Because they have one less logo now, apparently. Yeah. I mean, I, I was, I guess I wasn't, I wasn't shocked. I was still surprised that they would just abandon it. Again, it's they, they're still going through with the digital assets and like games and toys and whatever, but at least for clothing and merchandise, it's done. A friend of the show, Josh Davis, and I both would not XFL shop.com as well as VINs from all football scouting report. We got all of our rough next immersion. So I did buy a hat. So have you want your XFL roughnecks merge? This is that, I mean, I would go. It's yeah. How bad has the city of Houston had it recently? They lose their, they lose their logo for the XFL team. The rocket stink. I mean, the Astros are doing good, but you have to blame the Astros for all this karma. That's coming down. The Houston Texans. We won't get into too many of the details, but. All your news about your city has been bad news as of late. Sorry to say this, Sean, lots, all that stuff. She's getting bored today. It's. Not, not, not a good situation. I, anyway, so yeah, roughnecks a little. Other than the other. No, and I didn't want to lead with this because this is important to me. The Panthers this week, it was announced that they traded for a quarterback, Sam Darnold from the New York jets. The jets, hold the second pick in the draft coming up here in three weeks, it's presumed that they're going to exact Wilson. Number two, that's kinda been the, you know, Lawrence and the Wilson. At least according to like good morning football and stuff. The, the problem with his, his MVP of last year of the XFL PG Walker plays for the Carolina Panthers as a backup, along with lo Greer. He played one game this last year and was responsible for, I believe, a quarter of the wins that the Panthers had. So I don't feel like this is a good situation for PGA with Darnell being brought in just for a myriad of reasons. What do you think. I I'm. So I have a lot of friends that are New York jets fans and the New York jets offensive line is trash. But the Panthers offensive line is exponentially better. So now this is a chance for one for Sam, Donald, too. Put up or shut up. If Sam Darnold can be productive in Carolina, then we know what the problems were. It wasn't Sam. It was the jets offensive line. This is, this is becoming a log jam though. Still. I mean, what do they got now? They got, they got Sam. They've got Teddy. They've got PJ, they've got wheel Greer. Don't they have somebody else too. They have, oh yeah. They have like a fourth guy that they had brought in. Yeah. Yeah. So the. Do the pant that Panther's gonna have to offload Teddy. I mean, and it's, it's unfortunate for a. I like PJ, who definitely has the heart and the ability to get things done. I think PJ would be a great backup. You know, I really do it. If, if. If that's the way they're going, then that's, that's, that's great. But it's like you, you want PJ to get a chance and he's not going to get a chance being behind both Sam Darnold and Teddy Bridgewater now. So we'll see what happens if they get offload Teddy. I see PJ possibly sticking around. It just depends on if they're able to offload Teddy. Also, I I'm, I'm going to look at my audio recording here for a second. I'm going to ask you one more question, ask you van so we don't have to edit. What do you think about, I think PJ Walker fit more into a Teddy Bridgewater style offense a little bit more than Sam Darnold. Sam Darnold is a little more stagnant. I. Yeah. Yeah. He's definitely. What do you think about that? And that we'll be right back. I think that. It's going to be interesting to see if Matt rule changes his whole offensive scheme to fit a Sam Donald type of quarterback, or potentially tries to make Sam Darnold a runner, a scrambler, a. You know, who can throw on the run? I, I don't know too much about Sam's ability to throw on the run. So I'm, I'm curious as to how this is going to play out. If they're going to try to you. You know, shove Sam Donald into that play schemes into the place games that Teddy Bridgewater would do. And PJ Walker would do, or if they're going to adjust their offense completely to fit Sam, Donald, it's going to be a diff definitely an interesting, interesting. Puzzled to figure out. In Carolina and we're, we're, we're hoping for the best for everybody involved, especially PJ cause we're big fans of PJ. We'd love to have on the show and chatting about. His time there. And as you can tell right now, I'm probably stretching. Quite a bit because Reed was gone checking his audio settings for a while. So I just kept rambling. We're going to have you send me the audio file. Great. I think my car got full. I think my car got full on. We didn't, we didn't do a format beforehand. Anyway. Anyway, so I don't feel great for PJ. I am a little worried about that. And so I think, you know, Darnell is going to come in. I don't know. I think he couldn't do worse than with the jets, but we'll see. We'll see what happens with that. So, anyway. Those were kind of my two XFL notes off the top was just, I worry about PJ and then obviously the logo stuff. Moving into the CFL news. I, you know, I had a copy of this with you guys have been talking about the same stuff for four weeks. I, I do think there's, there's more insights to have Dave Naylor had a tweet come out today. I was in the discussion yesterday. It came out. And he, he, Dave Naylor, who I believe is his closest, is the closest person on the face of the earth to the situation right now that can talk about what's going on. Tweeted. My opinion is there is a better chance that this gets done, then it does not, but I have no knowledge of this being a done deal. And couldn't accurately handicap. The chances of it getting there. My thoughts with this are sometimes with, with reporters, Mike Mitchell, I know does this. Sometimes, sometimes they know things and they can't say things. So like when Mike Mitchell comes out and goes, You know, there could potentially, I would get your mind wrapped around there not being the next NFL season in 2022, just saying. It kind of means there's probably not going to be an extra PLCs. I mean, you know, Mike can't come out and say it right. And he doesn't want to divulge. You know, break trust and all that stuff, but that's kind of the thought. And so I believe the similar is here where when Dave Naylor comes out and goes, I think there's a better chance of it happening than not that I, and we told the Roshes yesterday. I mean, I think that that means that the merger is happening at some point. I completely agree. And to that point, you know, there's, there's been. And I hate to stray away from, I just want to give an example real quick. Sean Miller was fired. Has arrows on head coach. Yesterday. Wednesday, I should say. And people have been Laming they're people who are going to be on that list of potential. Phil ans. And of course they're talking about bringing. Bring in another wild cat. And like they did a women's team. And now look at the women's team is doing. Somebody on that list is miles Simon. I happen to have some info that I've never Diebold has been trusted to be. That tells me miles, Simon will never, ever step foot. As a coach. In Tucson. And that's and that's stuff that's been told to me and given that where it came from, I completely blew it. So there's some times when reporters know some things. And they don't. Specifically drop them until right before they're going to be dropped normally. So, and that's, that's the thing. Like we protect our sources very well. We're both practicing journalists. Well, yeah. And we're going to get into that more too later. You know, like Rob Peterson in front of the show when he comes out and he's like, Hey, I hear staff. Well, what are your sources? Yeah. You know, you can't just break trust with all that set, but, but I do think if Dave Naylor is coming out and saying that I would. I would start getting my mind around that fact. And, and that is a, I don't know, like I said, even what that looks like, or if I'm ready for that, you. And certainly not CFL fans that have been fans of, you know, friends of the league for, you know, Years and years and years, but, but I don't know what that looks like, but I would at least start getting used to the fact that that is potentially happening. I think it's, I. Like I said, like, I think like when there's smoke, there's fire and. The talks. It's just my opinion. My speculation, the talks are much further along. Than what we've been publicly told. Yeah. We're going to get into this too, with this Randy. So Randy, Ambrozy a CFL official, released a little video with a commissioner, Randy. Ambrozy. Kind of, it's basically just a rehash of a lot of the stuff they've already said, but there's one clip here. I marked for Paula that we're going to play. I just said a few seconds and I want to talk about that. Which was look, we just wanted to be transparent. You know, we we've got great fans and we have a great group of players. And we thought, you know, before we get too far along, we'll just let the world know that we're talking. We don't know what the, we don't know what the outcome of all of this will be, but we are, but we are excited to be in. In this conversation, but I think. Yeah. And what I don't like about that is I don't feel like they're being transparent at all. I feel like when they came out three weeks ago and they said, Hey, we're talking. I don't think it's, it's like report it's fact, but I think it's widely assumed that these conversations have been going back to at least October at the earliest. And so I don't like that when the commissioner comes out and goes, Hey, you know, we've been, we just want to be transparent. Where did the same way? I was like, no, you're not because, and I don't think that there. And the interview continues and he goes, well, you know, They like football too. And you know, they have a global vision and we have a global vision. I don't buy any of that. I buy like a Rosh is going to talk about in the episode, I do buy that the CFL was looking for that hail Mary and if right or wrong, and, and this is what they're viewing. Right. And, and I think that the potential is way better than a Rosh and a lot of CFL fans fear, right? Like, they're fearing this. Okay. The XFL is going to come in. But I do think that they are looking for the hail Mary and I think this is it. So I don't, I don't like any of. What do you think? Well, I mean, Raj talked about the hail Mary, and we'll get to that in a second. It's just like, You have to, you have to like sometimes. Try different things and see what works and see what sticks and, you know, He'll go down and list everything they thought was the, the savior of the CFL to begin with. But it's, it's almost like wrestling in a way where like they have to try out different gimmicks and see what works and see what happens. And try different characters. That's that's what's happening here is like, okay. That didn't work. Let's try something else. That didn't work. Let's try something else. So now it appears that they're trying something else. The XFL and. It's my opinion that expanding the goal of the CFL that Randy Ambrozy has said that we've read up on is to expand beyond the Canadian borders. And I feel, and I want to stick to this. I feel like Americans will fall in love with their sport. They will appreciate it. I think they will. I've I've grown to like it a lot. I I've watched clips. I watched. I watch at least five or six. Like. They do, they do like 40 minute games on YouTube. I watch five or six of those. Every week. I don't want to, like, you know, maybe not six, but like, you know, between four and five, I watch, you know, of those things when I'm not doing anything, I'm like just trying to catch up on the product and trying to get the history and, and try to be more. Knowledgeable about it. I think the Americans liked the game. I really do. I think it's, it's, it's fun. It's fun. Yeah. And I guess my thing in, in, you know, we get into this a little later. Just because things haven't worked in the past and I get that, I get the fear of the foreign money and the business person and, you know, Raj says, you know, they're going to come in and people get tired of spending money. What then what happened? You know what happens when they come in, they dismantle everything. We have, they get bored in five years and move on and I absolutely get that, but, but in my heart of hearts, I think that the, and I will. For sure. Admit. You know, if in five years, God, You know, God willing, we're still doing this stupid podcast. But I will, I will definitely say like, man, they totally screwed the pooch. Like they shouldn't have done this, but I believe in my heart of hearts, there, there are strong, smart, talented people there, not just Danny and the rock. Other people involved that. Are going to see this in through, or they wouldn't be doing all the work that they're doing. I completely agree. And you know, you have the guy. A guy like the rock who played in the CFL. He, he understands the, the heritage and the lineage of it. He's not going to just dismantle it just to dismantle it. It's not like it's not like a payback thing for him. That's not, that's not what this is at all. And if anything, he would probably more, he would probably branded those CFL before he changed the name to the XFL. It would just. That would be dumb. And I don't think he's going to do that. He's got smart people around him. He himself is smart. So. He himself as smart as I have been now. They, they, they were real rock defender, you know? Well, what does the rock even accomplish? Well, I don't need it. You know? Yeah. Hockey has accomplished a lot more than I have. Maybe the rock could defend me a little bit. Would you be amazed? I don't know if you've looked at our YouTube stats and listens lately, would you be amazed at Canadian football? Social media presence has spiked over the last three weeks with the XFL dogs. I'm not amazed at all. I'm not amazed at all because. You got, you got a big y'all at least markets south of the Canadian border. I don't know how big Toronto is. I think Toronto is like, I think the population is equal to LA. If not bigger, I could be completely mistaken, but you have, like, you have like, A few big cities here and there. And then you have like spread out, you know, 50,000. Good 0.9, 3 million people in Toronto. 2.93. Oh. So not LA size, but still big. It makes you considerable. So. You have way more populous cities and way more people in the U S than you do in Canada. It's it's true. So that's probably a, probably a big reason why you're seeing a lot of social media spiking is because Americans are going okay, what's this. And people that don't know about the CFL are going what's what's what is this? And they like me. Hopefully they watch it and go, oh, this is really fun. I like this. Yeah. I would say. It was humbling a little bit. I will give a Rashi a little way. He asked us okay. As the XFL media, what do you cover? It did sting a little bit. As someone who spent the last two years of my life area. Then this. You know, league. To be asked that, but I'm just saying that yes, they, they clearly CFL, you know, wasn't like hot in the market either when all this happened, you know? That's I've always said both of these things need each other, right. Because it's not like CFL is the prettiest girl at the dance either. So it's kind of like, you know, you. You're kind of average to look in and you meet someone that's kind of average looking and you go. We, you know, we're in this together, right? We got to go. It say like 2.8 million impressions, 150,000 engagements at an increase year over year of a hundred thousand. This is not a hundred thousand, but yeah. Thousands. Sorry. There's no. Zoe's hitting me anyway. So it just goes to, you know, the rock and all this stuff and everything else. But I, you know, CFL needs help with social media stuff. So maybe they could hire Braden when all this is done and he could run their Twitter forum. Shout out if they get, if they get Braden on there as their social media adviser. That was the smartest thing they could do. So. Yeah, there you go. Naylor says also that. There isn't one upper-level CFL person he's talked to that isn't open for a merger. Huh. So am I reading that right? Or. Do I need to do. To kind of decipher what's what's going on here. I wrote that that is a read written statement, but that is the gist of it. Is that yeah. No. Naylor has come out and said there is not one opera level person in the leagues at all that he's talked to. That is not open either open or for this. Basically he has not encountered any opposition at all with upper-level CFL people right now. What defines an upper-level person? Are we defining someone in the administrative office? Are we defining owners, both anyone upper level, huh? Because the XFL, all the teams are run by one person. I'm not one person with one entity. Yeah, it feels a little different. So that's a question that needs to be worked out. Yeah. And I'm not saying Naylor's talked to every person in the league, but I'm saying that. The point of this. You know, to not get into semantics, but it's like, there's overwhelming positivity for this potential merger from all the different, you know, higher up levels that are going on. And the article says, you know, make no mistake. There's going to be plenty of risk associated and you know, and leaps of faith. But if a collaboration holds to keep the nine teams committed, it's going to be less likely than steering forward with the status quo. Because that was the other thing that I might've combined this with a previous story, that Naylor was also saying how, like the most dangerous thing right now is to not do anything. Right. Right. And, you know, and that's what we ask of Roxy. It's like, if they need money and you know, they try to get the government money last year and they didn't, you know, at some point you need money to play this year. And I do think that there. I'm hedging a little bit with announcing all the different starts of camps and all these kinds of things, because they don't necessarily know that they're going to have the money to do that. So. Very true. Very true. Hmm, we'll see what's happening. The players are reacting to the pay. Cut. Here's a clip from TSN. And it's who was it? Dave nailer. Dave nailer. Yep. Well, we've seen a number of high profile players since that 20% rollback hit the news. Delvin bro, with Hamilton, Brian Mitchell with whip. We've seen a number of high profile players since that 20% rollback hit the news Delvin, bro, with Hamilton, Brian Mitchell with Winnipeg, Adrian, Tracy, of course we would sign with Montreal last off season, but you know, From the most part. These players are. It wasn't the 20% that pushed it over the edge for that. I think these were players that I had looked at retirement. The overall situation. I think the relationship that the players have had with the owners through this may have played into it, but I don't think it was just the 20% that said, okay, I'm out on this. And you know, when you talk to people in the league agents and such, you know, you get the sense that there may be a lot of unannounced retirements thus far. You know, one agent told me, he thought 10% of his guys, you know, were sitting on the fence and we're just going to wait and see when the season started and what the actual proposals were going to be to return to play for them. There you go. So, I mean, that's pretty staggering numbers, right? 10% Retirements because. Yeah, I mean, You'd have to fix the ratio. Well, we'll get into the vacuum. I mean, there's a lot of, there's a lot of stuff going on right now with this and, and, and, well, we're going to talk about the, the Canadian numbers here, coming up with the ratio. I mean, big, big. Life altering changes are currently in the works right now. And I think. That is not a good number. I mean, I know that's just one agent, but the fact that you have a major sports agent saying, you know, one out of 10 of his guys is not going to be playing in the league. They just sit and buy. I think that's, that's scary. And especially when they're, you know, they've already announced the 20% proposal, you know, that hasn't been agreed to, but yet, but they've announced that, and now, you know, you've got players in, are going to be planned. You've got the draft coming up. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that's got to be worked out here. And even if the XFL isn't involved and the 20% pay cut. Fans aren't in the stands. The fans are in the stands. The pickup probably wrote a good, like 10% or something. There's a formula that it'll scale down, but spoiler on Terra, like. The shutdowns are happening right now. Like people are lined up at Costco. Like I said, I was tagged in stuff yesterday. I go, this looks like Seattle. Last year. When we have lines out the door at Costco with people getting toilet paper, it's. Tremendously terrifying that we are a year now from this and a year and a half. Almost a year and a half. Cause he came out. 2019. My June, this will be a year and a half. And that's two months away. Yeah. And my friend, Andrew. In Toronto, her name's Juliet. He and she is, she's like, great. Another lock down. Like, you know, And then she asked him. There aren't any Americans that would be willing to give her papers. That was funny. But yeah. It's just, it's like, We, we need to like help expedite. Getting. Getting Canadians vaccinated. Basically. The fact that like, I am. I'm a week away from my second shot and there are 60 year old people that aren't quite getting their first shot in Canada. Is a travesty. We, we need to get, we need to help out. We need to, we need to get Canada back. Back on track here. And that might be American arrogance, but. Well, it is what it is. Yeah. This came out for three down nation. I just applaud John and. I Hodgen donk did a it's Justin Hodge and John. Please forgive me, but the guys at three, that nation did a tremendous interview this week with mark and new south with Mike Mitchell. Our parent site breaking all this stuff down, you know? There one of them is a former player, or they've been covering the league for 10 years, all this kind of stuff, tremendous insights into, you know, the CFL. And things like that. They had an article come out this week. Basically saying that, that young. Canadian fans don't really care about for them football. They care about the NFL. And so the fear is that, you know, XFL brings him four downs. Like that's not what the Canadians grade they're describing, like the bright lights of like Patrick Mohammad and Lamar Jackson. I think you, I think that you need. I don't even think it's a situation where it's like, ah, they're craving the NFL and the bright lights. I think they're just, they're into better marketing and the CFL doesn't have the marketing to grow the game with a millennial fan base. That's. That's what's that? That's the bigger problem here. It's not necessarily the Patrick Mahoney. Lamar. Jackson's a Russell. Wilson's, that's not the problem. The problem is you're not marketing it to grow it to the millennial audience. Yeah, you got to get some of those younger viewers, you know, I mean, like we said, Where's the CFL stream in service. Where's the digital content. Where is the on demand? You know, where I can watch the games wherever. I mean, I should have an app. Actually having that, th this is an interesting story that came out. You know, we talk about the CFL and, and they're really like pinching their pennies. Scott Milner. I can never say anything. Milanovich. And I know a similar thing happened to mark Strassman too. He was the coach up there. I Scott made a $500,000 without a CFL season in 2020, because of, you know, the way that like the contracts and stuff, where they basically, he got paid to sit out. And I know when Trestman came down to coach the Vipers in Tampa bay, he also was still getting paid off his CFL contract. And, you know, in the NFL quarter, you know, half a million dollars, obviously it's nothing to seize out either. But then the CFL, when like the entire TV budgets, like $48 million, the fact that you had half a million dollars sitting with a coach that didn't play. Or they didn't coach. It was pretty astounding. Who paid that? The league, he was with Edmonton. He was hired by the Edmonton team in 2019, and after three years stamped with the Jaguars. In January, he left to go be the quarterback's coach with the Colts. During the cancellation season, the 48 year old never coached the game. But according to Adams, who's the story is from the former bench. Boss are in half a million dollars for 13 months work. So did the league pay that or did the owner of the Edmonton team payback? I would assume the team paid that. I mean. This can go one of two ways. I think. An owner of a football team is free to spend their money as they see fit. But. The player should also be taken care of as well. There's two sides to this coin. For me. This, this, I will not be able to pronounce his name either. This came out of this room. Yeah. Alec Alec Shiner. He is with Redbird, a lovely friend of the show listener of the show, max. Basically like my Twitter researcher at this point, if I have questions, he'll do it. It, it was really interesting. So they, he didn't, he did a podcast back in February with, are you not entertained podcasts talking about like Redbird and the XFL and the acquisition and all that stuff. Max tweeted this article out to CFL news. This week and it went everywhere. Like it was new news. And you know what I hate about old news, it gets tweeted. That's not new news. It's click baby. Well, it's not clear. It's it's. I mean, people are just craving, craving stuff right now. The big takeaway from this was, he was just basically saying like, you know, there's more than enough people that watch football. You can't argue that a lot of people watch the XFL more than other sports. I think there's more demand for sports. You know, it's a good thing. It's it's good news, click baity stuff. Okay. We got rubber, you know, we can tweak this, but this went everywhere. This was in all the Facebook groups. This is all over Twitter. And I'm like, If we don't, this was her from February. This was her from I, and I get that he's with Reverend, but, but it does kill me and I know. Just trying to, you know, it's like a little finger, like sewing. As you know, Sowing chaos. Chaos is a ladder. Yeah, it did go everywhere this week. And this is not new with Alec on the, are you not entertaining podcasts, but he did have good things to say about the XFL. I mean. I think the reason why a lot of people wants to XFL. On TV was because you had a limited amount of franchises. So you had curiosity from. From cities that weren't able to attend XML games in person. To see what this was really like. And that's why I think that the rating showed that. They were there. Yeah, no doubt that there was, you know, 1.3 million is nothing to sneeze at for our midday Saturday game. All right. So. A rod. Ron Peterson. Run to the show. Decided to drop some kind of a. That's the wrong one. This was big. So this was big news came out and I wish we were at a time. I will say in retrospect, I wish we would've talked with the rash a little bit more about this. The news coming out of the MSL E. That they own like the Raptors and all the people in Toronto. That it's almost like they are wagging the dog between the XFL and the CFL that they they're trying to figure out a way that like better position the teams that they own within the CFL is kind of the vibe that I get. And they talked about this on the three down nation XFL news hub. Interview as well that. Basically, they own the other Toronto teams, like the Raptors and the maple east ripe, and then they own the Argos and they haven't done anything with Argos at all. And so they're trying to figure out like, well, if we can bolster the CFL. Like they almost own the Argos is like a write-off right now. Like, well, we have all these other teams and then this team is losing money. It's almost like a tax thing. Like it's a really fascinating. Dynamic there, but anyway, rod, rod kind of broke news with this on Wednesday with Ms. Leb. Potentially behind the merger talks. Yeah. I went off the air yesterday saying that I just got a message from a CFL insider saying that he's going to give me all the deeds on the CFL XFL talks. And so he just dropped a little bit. But he said I'll know more in a couple of days. What you need to know is that. What's behind. This is MLSE. And he said, listen, don't, don't quote me too much on this until I have more details. But he said with everybody going nuts at Ambrozy, everybody going nuts at the rock, he goes. If anybody's mad or if you want to know who's behind it, it's. MLSE. Which is basically what David Naylor has been dropping on Twitter and on the podcast interviews and everything that he's done MLSE for whatever reason. Is wagging the dog of the CFL. XFL collaboration slash merger. So we've just diverted the quick six to jump into that, because that wasn't in my quick six and probably should have been. Is that necessarily groundbreaking news that MLC is behind this. Yeah. And they say, it's not like it's not groundbreaking, like crazy thought that that would be a thing, but it is interesting. Just tons of dynamics going on up there between all the TV networks and the owners and all this kind of stuff. What do you, what do you think about that? I'm trying to digest and I think. Look, the Toronto Argonauts. From what I remember in my youth, that's where rocket Ishmal went to go play. He didn't go to the NFL. He went to the Toronto Argonauts. And there's some kind of there's there's history and there's knowledge of that branch. I think Ricky Williams actually went to go play for the Argonauts too. And didn't Johnny Manzell go play for the Argonauts. I want to. I know he started with maybe he started with arguments that went to Montreal afterward. If I'm not mistaken. It could be complicated, right? According to Wikipedia Johnny Manzella. Is the, is the quarterback for the FCS staffers. Joel footballing never delivers jerseys that people. He played for the tiger cats, Hamilton. He played for the tiger gets then went to Montreal. Anyway, Ricky Williams with the organized. So I do know that. The Argonauts are our well-known brand. They're not necessarily. I don't know their history in terms of getting it done in the grey cup or getting it done on the field, but they're a known brand and I think that's the power of MLSE and I think MLSE. Might try to position the Argonauts as like. On that gang keys. He's level like. The franchise of the, you know, of the league, maybe that's that's their play. I don't know. I don't know. Well, so alongside this and this. Another article came out this week from three down the Asian they're like, are there like the XFL news hub up there? Canadian leaks? Arab Canadian news. They, they were saying, forget the rock. A Drake could potentially be. And is it, you know, so it's got in, in the light that maple leaf sports and entertainment owner, the Argos are one of the main forces pushing because their discontent with them losing money. It's a bit ironic considering that the MLSE has really yet to sink any significant marketing dollars into the oldest. Pro sports franchise in north America. And basically they they're trying to say like, Yeah. What have you, what have you didn't have the rock wave? You had someone like Drake endorsing and doing that stuff. Do you think Drake has as big of a pole as the rock? No. No. Even then can even in a Canadian land. In a Canadian land. Canadian land. You know, No, I'm sorry. I don't think so. I think Drake. You know, There's just so much more to the rock then. The actor. There's the businessman. There's, you know, there's a lot more to the rock than just the actor. And all I see from Drake in terms of his involvement at Toronto sports teams. Is being. The Jack Nicholson of the Raptors sitting on the sideline. Being belligerent and being like, I would be at a wrestling event or a sporting event that I cared about. He's that guy. I have yet to see him at a Toronto FC game. I have yet to see him at a, at a maple Leafs game. But at a Raptors game, he's chilling and he, he that's, that's their, that's their marketable face for the Raptors. And that's it. Like Jimmy. Jimmy from the grassy is only going to the basketball games. That's it. He's not going to the hockey. He's he's not. I don't know. I don't, I don't see it. How, how he could. Well, I, I do, I think too. And not that drag isn't successful in his own. Right, right. But I think they, you know, The rock and Danny had proven with, with the movies, with the TV shows, with the tequila, with the energy drinks, with a. Everything. [Unknown] and I get that. Iraj says, you know, what, why have they run the sports league? I absolutely understand that. But if we're looking at celebrity, like jump the shark castings with ever between dragging the rock, I think the rock has more business acumen and the team behind him by, by a mile at this point, then Drake, this rock has a diverse business. No diverse business knowledge. I don't. And maybe this might be, might be my ignorance about what Drake is involved in outside of music. I know he shows up in a movie or a TV show every once in a while. But I don't, I don't know how broad his business acumen is as compared to the rock. So I think comparing the two and saying, oh, we can just get Drake. Could you. What could he do? That's a good question. Let's do I hit this last one and then we'll go to a rush. And then there's a couple of scattered things after that. Former CFL commissioner, Larry Smith. He's a Senator now up there. I actually emailed his office to try to get him to, you know, try to set up an interview with. Larry Smith. He's basically saying you have to play this year. People are going to forget sponsors. We've been talking about that for a long time, and that is the fear. I mean, we're talking pay cuts, CFL people sitting out, you know, Locked down. We don't have a, you know, vaccines, all this kind of stuff. I mean, if the CFL doesn't get off the ground this year, I don't know what's going to happen. It's done. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's like, that's why, I mean, and we're talking to people like, well, we don't like. XFL. We don't. I might get you. You gotta figure out some here. I don't know what the plan is. If they don't get, you know, Raj said, they're going to the government trying to get money. I mean, that didn't work last year. So I don't know. I don't know. What's changing about that this year that wasn't there last year. I think there's just a lot of hope. There's a lot of hope that, that they can save it without going outside. That's my, that's my thought. So that being said, you want to. You wanna bring in the Raj right now? Yeah, I think so. We'll take a break. And then that got a couple of more scattered, a little more XFL stories after this, and then obviously all our spring league and all that other stuff. Raj right after the break. I be ready. We're ready. Bring your popcorn and bring your sodie pop. Bring yourself. This is going to be a good one. How's it gone. Doing great. How are you guys doing? Yeah, we appreciate you putting their position and against and coming on. So well, To talk about your twice failed league. Get out. You're a man. So I wanted to set the stage today. This is what I woke up to today. I woke up at two more comments. Basically saying welcome to the show. Thank. Basically saying. But saying, you know, I don't feel comfortable handing over the keys to our 108 year league to the rock and I go do things it's not a 108 year league it's emerged right. Yet. Rugby league back in the fifties and you're not handing the keys over to the rock. So Hey. The leaks over the legal burden. Nobody. Cause there's no, there's no such leak. What's the leak. Well, it's the, it's the. It's the ownership behind it. If you got rid of, so if they didn't have the XFL, if they started and just called it the RFL, the rock football league, would you have a problem with it? Yes. You because every league has failed every single football league. Has failed. Are we rolling? Is this, are we on, are we just talking? We're going, have you would like to. Yeah. What reset we can reset. No, this is fine. So. Let me, let me paint a scenario for you. We're going to start a football league. We're going to have it televised by CBS and then NBC. And then ABC. And then ESPN is going to buy a stake in this football league. And they're going to televise it. That sounds like it's, you know, After a couple of networks have had it. And then NFL, network's going to jump on and they're going to start televising some of this stuff. And then Ted Leonsis, the owner of the Washington capitals and Washington wizards is going to jump in and get ownership. We're going to have a franchise in Washington, DC. This is camp miss right for pro football. Welcome to the arena football league that doesn't exist anymore. It went into bankruptcy. Guys pro football leagues do not work. There have only been two that have worked the NFL, which is a behemoth. Forget it. Don't. Don't even compare anything with the NFL. You can't. Emma CFL. And every other league. Be it. The Alliance. In American football, be it. The world league of American football. Be it arena football to be at arena football. Be at the XFL twice. They have all failed. And there's a reason for that. It's not just that the CFL's business model doesn't work. It just doesn't work. People do not have interest in anything outside of major college football and the NFL in the United States. And in Canada, people like the NFL with people like the Canadian football league. And that's it. There has been no. Nothing has shown us in history as a way of repeating itself. I E pandemic at the moment. History has a way of repeating itself. And nothing we have seen in history. From the USFL that had real stars. To even leaks that have had major money backing it. Vince has more money than the rock. To network supporting it. Two networks investing in it. It has not succeeded. So you just not eat, just say that's it CFL. No, no. So, Mike, my question is when you have the only other league that works. Why would you then merge with a complete unknown hanging to a brand? And the league is nothing other than. The marketing that they had was marketing. What is it? What's the marketing up the sleek. Tell me about the marketing of this. Who's running the marketing of it. You have, you have a four lab? You have no football people, you have no helmets. You have nothing. You have nothing but a name. What that that's all. That's all the XFL is right now. It's a name. The XFL is the $4 billion behind it with ties to Wasserman media and Fenway sports group and insurance groups and streaming groups and production groups and things like that. There's a lot more. The Fenway sports group has no interest in making spring football. Putting spring football on their priority list. Then why would, why would all this be involved then? Why would they be involved with Robert and all of this and doing this that they had no interest. They want red bird's money to be involved with the Boston red Sox and. Big bigger projects beyond that. Not spring. When you think about where you make money in sports. From 1980 to 2000 to now 2020. Where does w w who is ever made a dime off spring football? When is spring football ever really gotten a shot? We're talking about a once in a generation. In a multiple generation issue that happened this last year. I'm telling you, right. If you're watching. If it weren't for the pandemic, we watching the XFL right now. All the fans and butts for candies and nuts, but what. Merry Christmas, it would be. What happened to the XFL the first time? But see you can't, you can't compare any, anybody that compares. Then what about the Alliance of American football? Launch rushed. When in nine months head start went in under a year, had no money. Just continue to bring up leaks to you. And you guys are saying, well, you can't cut better with that. And that wouldn't work, but if not for the pandemic, the XFL would be a success. The management. Those are two big things. You mentioned that look at the management, the USFL they're paying Steve. How many, how many dollars. Steve young. To be. The face of that lead. They outbid the NFL and it ended up breaking USF. Now you're talking about management issues and you're not even given a fair shake to the potential of the management. The management is coming on to the XFL with Dan. And the rocks. You're not even you're, you're dismissing it already. You're just going well. What have I seen from either of these people and running a football league? What have you seen? What, what have you seen other than the public that they've been successful at everything they've touched, they've been successful at. Everything. And it just, the XFL is going to be. The one outlier, the one that doesn't work, everything they touch works. Danny and the rock, everything they touch works, but how can you cocaine? So among the thing, let's go through what they've touched and let's compare it to how that is. Has the, any relevance to running a professional football league. But Danny and the rock are not. The phase and the money and the branding behind it, they have Jeffery Pollack. They're going to bring in like, what's the brand. What do you mean? What's the brand of the XFL? I don't know what you're asking. Well, what is it? Well there, because I look at the XFL right now. No, hold on. I'm looking at the XFL right now. What is it? The XFL right now is a logo that maybe they changed it. Maybe they don't that's on your hat. Read. Terrible hat by the way. Terrible. So there's remarketing. Do we have one person involved? Is there one player signed to a contract anywhere? Nope. Nope. Is there a football operations employee anywhere? Jeffrey P*****k. One. Okay. Is there another one? There there's a handful of people behind this timber skull. Things involved too. We're getting. Why would you. If you were the XFL. Why. And you have a bunch of history and you've had a bunch of championships. Are you going to put all of that aside and merge with. Whole Cogan, who starting up an upstart league with, you says I'm going to have nine teams. I, you know, And it do it that way, because if the CFL didn't run last year and needed $30 million to do a bubble season, right. And they're going to do it this year and they didn't get that money last. They might in play this year. So where's that money going to come from? If not from Redbird or some other source. CFL can't do it themselves this year. They, they brewed it. They were, they ran last year and you're telling me. I spoke with some people, the federal government last week. And they are in conversations with the CFL right now about. I mean, they'd be wonderful. I would love, I mean, the thing is, is it w. It's been so interesting to me is I do think Americans rightfully so get this terrible. Arrogance it's our way or the highway, all this kind of stuff. We'll be in this scenario when it comes to four downs. Which you will be in this scenario when it comes to the field. We'll be, we'll be in this scenario when it comes to having a ratio. You think that what's that team over your right shoulder in your twice failed league? Seattle dragons dragons. Dragon's going to have half the roster be Canadian. Oh, I think I. I think you can do a territory system, like the AAF den. And you do drop people out of the local, you know, territories that way. I think the field is asked to go. I just don't think the NFL stadiums can support that, but I think. I, I had not heard any of our listeners, any of the other XFL media, any of the excellent local press. They know the three downs at all. Fel media and the XFL press. What is, what is this? What are they covering? Nothing. There's no. Right now we're talking about. You're talking about nothing though. You're talking about a league coming in and going with the XFL. What. What does the XFL media cover? For the last six months, we've covered a lot of alternative football leagues and a lot of players from the XFL and the NFL we've covered spring football. We've covered fan control. Covering a leak because there is no leak. This there. Except L is actually nothing. There are assets. There's an organization. It isn't not. Is that? What is. Assets. So name me a team and your twice failed leak. Once failed and a pen. Everything's just named me a team. Cl dragons. They're also attracts what are the Seattle dragons? They have leases in place and. I'm not going to disagree that there's not a lot there, but what I'm saying is I just don't get the other. Not a lot. There there's nothing there other than like moldy uniforms and expired. Hello. Shoulder pads. I'm sure they have a staff to go wash them. Maybe Jennifer, maybe Jeffrey Paul. Here's the thing to be fair. I like, we, you know, we're the XFL Marquez. I'm not. You know, Yeah, I agree with that. So, you know, it has nothing to me about, you know, trying to justify the exit. Ellen anything I'm just saying. You know, an option has been presented from everyone that we've, you know, I've talked to, we've talked to Jim Mola and president of football, Canada. We've talked to rod Peterson. I know you've been on his show. A lot of people that are covering this and I'm talking to you, I mean, we're trying to get the whole picture here and it sounds to me like the CFL is in dire straits. There's questions. If they're going to run this code. Shut down. There's COVID. Hold on. Hold on. So what are you going to do? No, no, but read. Here's what you do read. You actually have some leadership in some people who, who put together an idea and a plan. Does it. Well, you have to understand that the CFL is. No, hold on. Hold on. I just let you do your little rent. Here's the issue. The CFL has been poorly run forever. Yeah. It's been poorly run at the league side and at the team side all over the place. Okay. They are always thinking about now the, now the now, and they're always looking for. Well, in COBIT terms, they're looking for a vaccine. They're looking for a magic bullet to save the day. Okay. That's all this XFL fingers right now. They're looking for a hail Mary all the time. Doug Flutie got it. To draw art. Failing once. Okay. Once. Not every old, there's only one Aaron Rogers who just pulls, pull s**t out of his ass all the time with hail Marys. And let's not as a Vikings fan. We don't discuss it on Rogers too often. But where is, where is the future of football going in this country? And th this is what I want. You guys just hear me out on. Yep. And I think south of the border. In certain markets, this may be the same too. Moms don't want. And by moms, the proverbial moms. Moms don't want their kids playing football anymore. Because their kids are going to get brain damaged, not concussed. Concussion is a, is a nice way of saying they're going to get brain damage. So to keep the sport alive, longterm. What is. Where is this going? Well, if you look at football registration in this country right now, I actually made some notes to come on your. Mark asked about your twice failed leak. You got it. Flag football. What and you're saying, well, what does flag football have to do with anything? Do you know the plan is for flag football to be an Olympic sport in 2028 when the LA gate, well, if the LA Olympics happened, who knows what's going to happen with the future of the Olympics because of COVID. Do you know that beginning next year? Four football players registered under 12 in Canada, 12 on 12 tackle football is banned. So the future, why? Because brain damage happens when you continue to collide head on head like this. I get that I played football. So. There is more of a grid. I like the emphasis on flag is significant. In 2020 now, granted, this is a COVID year. But there were 28,000 registered. Under 18 football players in Canada. 80% Of those were non-contact. Spring of 2021 90% of registered players in football flag. In 2018 flag football represented 41,000. Participants male and female. Tackle was 79,000 male, 1300 female. The future of grassroots football is going into flag. Okay. If you are a business like the Canadian football league, if you were seeing V this happening right here. What has the CFL done to grow a grassroots flag football program? Nothing. Nothing. They knew. They knew basically in July, August that they were not going to play in 2020. They said we were going to come out and fix our business model. And what have they come back with? It's now April, we're coming up on what? Nine months? Nothing other than a merger with your twice failed leak. Nothing. There has been nothing other than let's strip the players for more money. Let's cut staff and let's staff. We're making no money. Let's let's take away from their pocket books too. So the issue. With the CFL. Yes, it was their business program, but more than that is the leadership at the league level and at the team level to not eat. Like, this is just a basic program where you can have an investment in the ground. Get every kid playing flag football, wearing a different CFL Jersey. Make that a priority show moms. Hey, we care about. We care about your young kid. We want to be part of this, but instead they're looking for the hail Mary all the time. They're just saying, wait, until we get out of the football, the baseball stadium in Toronto, we're going to move out doors. We're going to have tailgating. It's all going to be fixed like that. Wait till Johnny Manzell shows up, then all our problems are solved and he's going to sell a million tickets. We're going to bring Ricky Williams to Toronto, and he's going to take the city by storm. Nothing is a quick fix. Look, I understand the rock has a lot of money and I understand Redbirds got a lot of money. They have no idea how to run a pro football league. And everything that we have seen in, in spring football, in every league all over the place has failed. And here's what I'm going to tell you guys about what I've noticed about rich people with a lot of money who invest in sport. They love it in the beginning. They love being called Mr. Or Mrs. And their last name. They love getting to go to the parties with the players and the coaches. They love walking the field. They love being in the broadcast booth. On ESPN and CBS and NBC and the rest. And then, you know what happens after year one? They're like, oh s**t, we lost a lot of money. And then after year two, they lose a lot more. And then suddenly that novelty wears off and it wears off in a hurry. And then what ends up happening, all those ideas and all those plans and all those visions that they had for this thing. They start getting stripped away because of costs too much. That. And I'm not saying just football, that happens all the time in a lot of, and there's a reason why there's the four major sports, because those leagues have a business model where you don't lose money. You can count five now. MLS has grown. MLS has grown. But I'm with you there. No, that's fair. And you bet you see, you said yourself, right? That there's there's issues with CFL management, too, right. With ownership with all this stuff. So. If they're not going to come around to it. I mean, here you're presented, not. But why not? Well, cause you just said they happened in the last year. I mean, cause I'm trying to, I'm going I'm on your side here, right? We're trying to save this, right. I mean, I don't want anything to die. Right. I don't want anything. I mean, we're, we're what. I more, I covered the stupid Twitch football league. Don't talk to me about, you know, covering not wanting stuff to succeed. Right. So, if you're saying for the last year a CFL ownership, hasn't done enough CFL management, they don't have a plan. Here's like, so. So then are they just going to wake up tomorrow? I mean, what is the, what's the solution then? I think he said amidst, all of this they've survived a hundred years. Are they. Other league has what other league has. I think you're banking too much on the fact that they've survived for her a hundred years, as opposed to the fact that they need to survive for another a hundred years. You're just like, well, they survived for a hundred years and that's the explanation as to why they're going to survive. Had you had any evidence in front of me? That says the XFL is going to work a third time. Well, what's your plan? What's the plan. How is this going to work plan? I mean, you you've, you've given a solution. You said the flag football thing is growing. That's your solution. That's awesome. No, that's on idea. I'm saying they've come out with nothing. But, you know what? They tried to do the, the brilliant minds at the league office. They came together and they said, we're going to charge. Our fans get blood out of a stone $300 a person. If you would like to put your name on a virtual grey cup trophy. He thought that was going to sweep the country. We so to answer your Eliot's. Yeah. The answer your question about this surviving there. So are our parents. I X. All new staff did a wonderful interview this week with Donkin Hodge over at three down nation. And, you know, and John Hodge came on there and he said, I'm an accent fel or a CFL loyalists. You know, I'm colored. You know, but this is what I want. Right. And they had this great question. And they said, yes, the league has survived, but don't we want the league to thrive. Absolutely. So that's what I'm saying is if you've just, you know, eat by and eat by the last, you know, it's not 108 years. It's whatever, from the CFL from 58 or whatever. You know, at some point don't you want to move this into the 21st century and get going here and figure out, you know? Yes. And video games and on demand and apps and oh, by the way. Arena football. I had video games to multiple. No. Multiple. Yeah. So I'm just saying at some point, But why are you going all in with nothing on nothing? I, if I'm going to invest, okay. Let's, let's take this side. Let's say I'm an investor in my own money. And you say to me, Okay. Let's invest into the XFL. I'm like, all right, what do you got? Well, we got the rock and we got Danny. Cool. What else you have, you have the eight city set up, you have logos, you have teams, you have a rural block. You have, you know, that thing. What rule book? XFL rule. Oh, so, so then that's it. It's the XFL rule book. No I'm saying. I feel like that is, I feel like I'm asking what it is. I'm asking what it is. I'm investing it. I think you're investing in that in a potentially new way of thinking that can. We can open you up to some ideas that the league has been closed off at for seemingly the last 20 years about. Doing things on demand and streaming and making games accessible for fans that they would want to see it, that aren't on. TSN. That would be a start allowing everyone to be able to watch the games in Canada. That would probably, I don't name me another team other than Seattle, because we weren't out Seattle. We have the LA Wildcats. We have the. So I'll tell you this. Let's be Ellie wild cats. Roll into Winnipeg. Or Saskatchewan or Hamilton. The number of Canadians who would give a flying bleep. About the LA Wildcats quarterbacked by. Josh Johnson. I mean. I mean, I'm the franchise player. You here talking about practice. We are talking about merging a league with Josh. Johnson. There you go. I'm here's the thing. I'm not saying that's a good answer. But what I'm saying is when Dave nailer tweets today, Hey, you better get your minds wrapped around a merger. That's all I'm saying. I'm not saying it's a good idea. Right? I am. That's what I'm telling you. It's not. It's not, it may not be, but if, if this is the video, Dave Nadler is tweeting today. Hey, get your minds wrapped around the potential merger coming on. You also said if and a capital lip. I've heard Dave Naylor is as close to anybody in this entire world with what's going on right now. Do you want me to hop off here and let you guys just go at it? Well, the water carrier has gotta be done by somebody. What is the XFL? It's a league that gave Taylor hanukia. $4.75 Million contract over two years. It's a league that gave PJ Walker numerous start the season. So what's the XFL. It's it's the step. To get you to the NFL here in the U S it is. There are CFL. There are success stories. About people that have played in the XFL. That have gone on to the NFL. And you're dismissing it as a twice failed league one time because of a flipping. Paul. Generation pandemic. You're dismissing it a second time, as opposed to yeah. The first time that was, that was whack. That was ridiculous. They tried to make it like the WWE and it sucked, it was terrible. It was nonsense. I love the names on the back of the jerseys, but that was it. They actually had a system in place, an organization in place to make it happen this time. And the numbers proved it. We have. No, no, no. The numbers proving. It is just nonsense. You know why? Because the numbers. The first few weeks in 2001, didn't they. What did the numbers prove in the first third of the season of the first XFL go around, you cannot say anything was. With a sample size of six weeks. Six weeks has not determined anything. How big was your sample size for the CFL last year? I'm talking to last year, man. We're talking one year to one year. What was your, what was your listen? Listen, man. Let's wait. Oh, wait. What you were telling me is your AAA baseball. You're the AHL. You're saying this is where you're going to get guys on the way to the show. I'm telling you, there is not a big enough audience for that. Long-term. I will assure you of that. It doesn't matter what sport it has nothing to do with football. If you're going to be the pathway for Taylor. Hi Nikki, to go from the Vikings and the practice roster, and then out of football on the couch. And then he ends up in the XFL and then he goes and gets an opportunity. The NFL that is not going to get people interested. Because guess what the best story of all the best story of all was Kurt Warner. I will Barnstormers and we've already talked about where Rena ended up. I'm when Paul I'm turning down the heat in my house. I was like, I was like, wait for Rita Chubb, jump in there. For you to do the Iraqi thing you're running, you're running read. Come on. Now. What happened? You're out of breath. I have no, I have, my magnets will stay here at 38 XML players on the NFL roster and 80 former XML. And all the players are on CFL rosters right now. I agree that nobody cares. Well, 1.3 million people a week here. They did for the first few weeks. How many people watch the first few weeks of the first XFL go around and then how many watched it yet? Well, again, that's that's. But because, because it doesn't fit your narrative. Well, it doesn't fit your narrative. If they had called it something completely different than the XFL. The second time around. No. If this was AAF, if, if the CFL came out today and the AAF was just launching, I'd say this is stupid too. And if the CFO was going to merge with the. Spring league. That's just about to launch with Mike Riley. Who's at so much success at the CFL in college level. Why would if Mike Riley puts a stamp on it? Let's do that. That's stupid too. You need to have something with a little bit of a proven track record. There is, there is nothing here that suggests that these guys are going to have anything that's going to work longer than a couple of years. And there's not best. And there's nothing in current ownership of the CFL. That's gonna suggest you guys are gonna make it. Another couple of years says who. This is the books. You're contradicting yourself. Because the reason why this year. I just told you the reason why is they're working with the federal government gets some kind of funding. Plus, plus this is where it gets. This is where it's going to get really interesting is with the CFLs longterm plant here is, is to minimize and crush, Canadians and dismantle the. Okay. And football players association. And by merging. And by doing this with the, with the. Twice field leak. What they're going to be able to do is really reduce player salaries, which is absolutely what they want. That's their intention. And that's, that's a big part of this. And, and I I'm I'm with you on that same page. They shouldn't be reducing player salaries anymore. They're not getting paid enough. Correct. Enough. Let me, let me ask you this then. Well, when we announced that you were going to come on. [Unknown] needless to say. Had a lot of DMS. At one I got last night from a listener. You guys. He's a really nice guy, but I hate his guts. And so, so. But here's the thing, cause we gave the big, only half of that is true. You know, We, I think I w. I'm a solutions, opinions guy on here, right? We're not. And I've even with the CFL people on the boards and stuff. I think we get credit for. Being open-minded having both sides, all this kind of stuff. A lot of criticism. That I've seen from you are, you know, he hates the CFL, anti CFL, all that stuff. Right. So if we want it to succeed, if we want you to not be the bad guy, right. To be the, I hate the CFL thing. What do we do here? Why do you know what, what. Yeah, but if. People tell me I hate the CFL. How much do you think that affects me on a scale? 10,000. I want to get, I want to get solutions here. Besides. Let me just throw this scenario at you guys. Let's just say. Somehow some way, your twice failed. Failed league actually succeeded. Once, and it lasted about 10 or 15 years, and then it was in some financial turmoil. Em, in a league in Norway says to you, Hey. Let's merge. We got ourselves. An Olympic speed skater. Who's a mega star out here and we're going to change your rules. And let's put your teams together with the eight teams at Oslow and everywhere else. And, and. We're going to play by a whole new set of rules. And somebody else is going to run the league, but we're going to merge. What are your thoughts on that? You're assuming that you're assuming ads. The XFL rules. I love your rules. There is no way Paul Paul, you know this, and I know this, there is no way there is going to be any kind of broadcast revenue in the United States for three down football. With a field that size. With a 55 and a C in the middle of the field. And with goalposts, the front of the end zone. Well, the gold ones. You and I. I'll both know all three of us know there is no chance. That's going to happen. But here's the thing and we've tied with it. We are football fans. We all are. Of course we are. And I've talked with a lot of people this week and they go, I asked him, I go, are you a football fan or are you a CFL fan? And they go, I'm a CFL fan. I go, well, then I can't help you. Because we cover football on this show. And if you're telling me if someone's coming in and doing whatever, I guess. If I, if I spent the last six months of my life covering the stupid fan controlled football spending 40 fricking hours a week, interviewing all these stupid players. We are fans of football. And so if you're asking me if they're going to come in and help the league, if we're in turmoil and move on, I'm for it at this point. But that's clearly not how lot of CFL fans are. And that's what we're trying to figure out here. It doesn't seem like you guys. And then that's fine. I mean, you can go down with the ship. Like I said, from everybody that I've talked to on XFL and CFL sides, and I'm not a big whatever insider person. But it really seems like something is happening with unified leagues and unified rules, whatever that is. Yeah. I don't even know what that is. I don't even know what that means. But I'll tell you this in November of 2019, which isn't that long ago. The boastful commissioner of the Kane football league said we have our ownership set up. Which time to take the next step as a league, we have CFL 2.0 global expansion. We are bigger and badder than we've ever been before. We are not a small time leak. We are. Then the pandemic hits and they're like, yeah, our business model doesn't work and we have problems with ownership. So which one is it guys? Which what, like, so. Oh, that's we're asking which ones were there with you. Yeah. And I think it's a lot more of the latter than it is the former. But I truly believe this. Selling your soul to go down the river with something that is not established whatsoever. For, for a product that very easily can get forgotten about in the sports landscape is a major mistake. Okay. Do you, so do you think that spring. I mean, are you against the idea of spring football of any kind? I think that's what you said earlier and all these other I'm against the idea of spring football of any kind. I truly do not believe spring football can work in north America. You just don't think there's the bandwidth. Paul. What, what was our wage? Not Sunday. And then I'll be dead honest with you. I'm assuming you live in California or Arizona or something. California. I was born and raised in Tucson. So that's why I'm, I'm very partial to the Wildcats. What happened at two oh six in the, at the, in the fourth quarter. What happened at two oh six? Tell me what happened there. We're going to break this down. We're going to break this down. Do you remember what he. What I'm going with, this is spring football. Hasn't it's way the NCAA tournaments. Has itself the masters. Has itself. What's going to be the bigger deal. The NFL draft. Or the XFL playoffs. Like there. There's an appetite for football at certain points of the year. And there's appetite for only certain bits of football. And I wish it wasn't that way. Because truthfully guys, if it were up to me, If there was a Stanley cup finals game. And there was a high school football game on. I'm watching the high school football game. I love football. I hate football six days a week because it drives me crazy because they're killing these guys because they're modern day tobacco, but then damn it, the game starts. And it's a beautiful thing to watch when there's not. Needless head hits for no reason. But. What we've seen. Four generations. Plural, what we've seen in so many different indoctrinations indoor, outdoor, small field, big field, big names, no names, middle of the road names. Is that it doesn't work. It hasn't worked. And God bless Dwayne Johnson for sleeping on a mattress in Calgary. And his. Suppose it passion for the CFL. But I just do not see how there is a longterm interest with this thing. Will, will hemorrhage money. Longterm. It will, because there will be some interest. There will be some broadcast revenue in the beginning. There will be committed ownership in the beginning. And then the losses will pile up. And the reason why Redbirds interested in going to the Boston red Sox is because the Boston red Sox are able to play a major league baseball season. With zero revenue from fans. It's still be okay. The NFL and teams in California had how many fans this season? Zero. And yet they're still able to make it a go because they're a plus. Plus revenue before they sell the ticket, a parking spot, a popcorn, a Coca-Cola or a beer. I don't know if you could say Coca-Cola anymore. The state of Georgia, but that's a different story. What I'm saying here is football works. Spring football. Doesn't. And everything we've ever seen has proven that and showed that. And so for the CFL to completely throw the baby out with the bath water, I am not on board with that. I am a fan of football. I want to see Canadian football succeed. I get that kids don't grow up wanting to be CFL players. It's not because they have NFL dreams. It's because they want to make the money. And kids are not going to grow up saying, man, I want to be a Seattle dragon. They're saying I want to be a Seattle Seahawks. But there's more of a chance that they're going to say, I want to be a cyst. Catch-all Roughrider if I grew up in Saskatchewan. And I don't disagree. I to be fair from the beginning, we've always said, you know, the XFL needs to lineage and the legacy, the CFL needs. I mean at this point some money. Right. And so I'm not, I'm not saying that. That I think that it's the best solution. Right. And I, you know, we, we certainly didn't get into this. You know, you talk about XL media and stuff. I mean, I didn't think a year ago that we would be talking to a CFL, you know, broadcaster right now and, and doing these sorts of things. Right. But I think. If this is where it is, if this is something that is on the table and being presented, I mean, I'm just trying to kind of navigate what this is going to look like. And I'm not saying it's, it's a right answer. But it is, I answer. And if, if. Everything that's happened in the last year and a half that we've gotten to this point. And now I see photos of Ontario. I think this morning looking just like Seattle, the last year with people, I ended up at Costco waiting for a stay at home order. I mean, we lived through all that last year and this is what God has to at this point on that sand. It's what anyone wanted. But if it's, if it's where we are in now, then we need to figure it out. I don't know what the, I don't know what. Yeah, figure it out. Okay. But figure it out before you're fully in on this thing. Well, I mean, I think that's what they're doing. Imagine this being your money. Imagine that this be your passion. You're like, I'm not putting. Everything. I've worked for to be like, well, let's just go all in and see what happens. How diversified is your stock portfolio, Canadian football league. Like you had a year to come up with something and it's this and nothing else. I agree. I agree. And, and, and to that point, like we're making a lot of assumptions as to what is going on internally in the organization of the XFL. You're saying you don't think they have anything. We're defending it more. So. You're saying twice failed. You're saying they don't have anything. We, the three of us do not know what they're being taught or what's being talked about inside the organization. They can have a lot more that they haven't rolled out. You have to agree that you have to agree with me on that. Yeah, we don't know anything. Yeah, that's true. But, but here's what we do know. How many staff people do they have? How many players do they have under contract? How many coaches do they have in place? What's the whole structure going to be. I bet. I bet. We, yeah, we don't know, but I bet they don't have a lot of those answers themselves. They may have a few, but I bet you, they don't have many. Well, and I think, you know, from what I've been told, these talks have gone back to, you know, at least October. You know, when they bought the league in August, I would think we would have been much further along with the XFL structure in place right now had all these talks. Now they've been going on since October. So I think, I mean, it's, it is fair to criticize him and judge him. I absolutely agree. Right. But it is also saying like, well, why, why would they be building this infrastructure internally if they didn't even know where these talks were going to end up? I mean, so I think it's, it's the chicken before the egg, but I do think that they're both connected in that way. So FA. So red bird. Is investing how much into this thing. Let me do the math here. Yeah. I don't. I am. I have Twitter researchers. Into this information. You got yourself, a staff man. Here's my staff. Yeah, it's a blessing and a curse. This is a staff. I do. I do know that, you know, red bird is definitely putting more money behind the. The Fenway sports deal, because then of course, You have the red socks. Got Liverpool. You keep. You don't mention Liverpool at all. They're involved in that as well. I'm trying to see real quick. How much money to actually have put capital into this. I manage over $4 billion in assets. That's more money. That's more money than Vince. I'm trying to think here. Now this article, doesn't say it. It's from our partners. XML news hub. Thanks mark. Thanks mark for that. Right. Roughly what's your guess? I would, I would guess. Well, they bought it for $15 million. So, this is my point. They can walk away with this will be a drop in the bucket. Oh, yeah. Why would they buy it if they didn't want to make it work though? But then we'll give it a try. They'll give it a try. If you've spent $15 million on something and you went up beat. Like. They're CFL teams, guys understand this, like they're losing a rail $10 million a year. Okay. So if, if you're going to end up in a situation where you're going to be losing way more annually that you put into this thing. Goodbye. And what do I like? And what's my consequence. Just some money. What, what, what wreckage have you left behind? A lot. Everybody goes in with good intentions. Nobody. Outside of reality TV people probably goes into a marriage saying, oh, well, I'm hoping for a divorce. S**t happens. And what we've seen in pro sports is a lot of s**t happens and a lot of losses happen. And what's the appetite. For losses for how long? And then what happens when that person walks? What's left. Good questions. I agree. Moldy jerseys. I agree. I mean, I'm, I'm saying yeah. I think, I think we're further. Together on this and we are a part, I mean, I hate to think. I mean, I do, like, I mean, it came into this in b*****s, this big, whatever. I mean, I have as much criticism as for anything we cover as anybody. And so I agree with you and you know, and I'll, I'll, I'll have the egg on my face with the XFL hat and all the other stuff, but I mean, I, I don't agree. It's it's the best solution is just a solution. So. To me, it's not even a solution to me. It's an idea. And to me, it's a okay. Let's. Let's see if some things can work, but this all out merger and it's either we have to do this or the league folds and there's no owners to do it is to me further. Really illustrates just how lost the CFL is, how poor the leadership is, how the lack of vision for what that's going to mean for grassroots football, this country, for the development of amateur football, this country, the fact that they've had a year to, to try and solve. Some different business issues. And the all they've really done is come up with this and firing people. It's brutal. And they have done nothing. To look into ways to generate more money other than a virtual grey cup. Trophy to put your name on it. It's it's just it's. As Paul's friends at the NCA would. What would call this? It's a lack of institutional control. And does that round that out? We are, we had our conversation with Jim last week. Jim Bowen really did a run through. All of the ramifications of dismantling the Canadian football system from all those levels you talk about. Right? Cause when people, when we are looking at this and we're joking and whatever XFL see it, but I mean, This is a nation of, of. You know, football infrastructure and they would have to change. And so, yes. I mean, I definitely think that there is colossal, you know, thousands of different millions of different things that are going to be impacted by this. What happened at two oh six, the basketball game. I'm trying to remember yet. Oh, it was. It was a kickball on staff. Right, right. Arizona. Yes. In that situation. Had they called those things right. You would have had to, you know, You know, you probably would have contributed a little bit more to children's children's hospital LA. I do appreciate that. I. Yeah, no. Likewise, likewise. Danny for, by the way, the last three positions, not even getting a shot up, what are they doing? Go Lee. Before we let you go weather. What was the wager on this for you to come on? We're gonna, we're gonna tweet out and donate something. Can you remind me? But for him coming on the podcast, we have to do that too. So we're going to. I'm going to put a tweet out. And you guys can reach me, but also just Bishop's university is my Alma mater. It's a small school, an hour and a half from Montreal. They have a program that refugee sponsorship program, basically refugees from countries all over the world. I'm looking for a shot at a better life. We have a number of refugee students who are getting a degree at bishops and have graduated, moved on to different things. So we're just trying to get some money raised to, to help them do their thing. Get a, get a degree. Maybe have a beer or two, a Lennox full Kobeck while they're getting their degree. And so it's the Bishop's university of refugee sponsorship program. If anybody could make a donation. That would be outstanding. And Paul and I have had a friendly wager on the Arizona Stanford game. And. I guess we. Got her gambling. No screws mixed up. Cause we both made a donation. I don't even know what we were betting in the end, other than. Everybody got a donation. So, which is great. I think what happened? What happened was you were like children's hospitals getting a donation. Either way, either way, those goals, you ended up doing the 25 that you said you do. If. On a one. So I doubled that because you're a pick one. So I sent $50 to bishops you and I encourage anyone and everyone to donate to bishops you a refugee sponsorship program. Although the 50 Canadian dollars is probably going to be 25 us anyway, or something like that. Yeah. For coming on, I feel like this has been a dual as advertised. Yes. I feel strong. Always. Nice to talk about your twice failed league with you guys. I feel good about my Photoshop skills. I hope you enjoy the video thumbnail art for this episode and that we will. Well, certainly welcome you back on once the merger is complete and then. Right, right. So two years after that, let's have another talk about. We will. It won't be there twice. It will be the thrice family. I got to play the lottery tonight. Can you give me some lottery numbers? Sure. Let's start with two. Oh, six. Oh, I see what you did there. Okay. So much take care and God bless all. So you guys. Ooh spicy. Oh man. I will say my only thing I thought about this, I laid awake last night, thinking about this, when the Raj said, how much money has Redbird invested in the XFL. And I knew that $15, $50 million purchase, and I knew that they acquired the debt. That was like another 13 million or something. But I was, I was just in my head when he asked, I was sitting there racking my head, like, okay, Do we know, have they invested anything else? I was trying to figure out if there was any other stories. So I don't kill me on that. I'm sure. Mike missile is sitting there listening, like reads a dummy. He didn't buy. I will say I, the second we got down and I was like, I knew that. I mean, I knew that, but I was just, that was my defense was, I was trying to figure out there was like any other stuff going on. Yeah, I mean, I go back to the point. Like we don't know what money you're still spending right now. Yeah. They pay, they paid $15 million for it. Yeah. And then, then they paid $13 million of debt, whatever. You know, $30 million deal. But we don't know what they're spending at this moment per day. To get ready for a season later on. We don't know that. We're just speculating. And I, I think that that's, that's something that Eros is not necessarily taking into account. Honey. I get his point about, you know, the Fenway sports group. The purchase of part of that. You've got two well-known. Sports franchises, the lost in red Sox, the garbage team, and then Liverpool in England, like. That's that's a, that's a significant thing to have in the portfolio. So if they're playing in that. Sandbox. Why wouldn't they want the same thing for this XFL thing when they want that to be as lucrative as a property, as those two, as, as much as it pains me to admit Boston's a lucrative property when they want this XML thing. To have that kind of. They're not just. Let me just get the throw. $30 Million away. If they're playing around that sandbox, they want to elevate that. I think so. I think, I think they proven that they want to, you know, going into Liverpool, going into family. I mean, I think that they're really wanting to expand that out and, and I think. You know, when a Raj says, what do people know? What do they know that running the football league? What did Vince know? I don't think we need to play this clip. We're just looking at time-wise. You know, what did Vince know about running the football league? Nothing, but he hired all of her luck and then all of her luck came in and said, this is what we're going to do. He hired Sam Schwartz Dean. Then they, you know, so like, just because you don't know what to do. Doesn't mean that you're not talented enough and skilled enough with the money in the marketing. You know what I mean? Like we'll round you the do know what to do. But, but yeah, I mean, like Vince doesn't know anything about football at all. Didn't didn't play. Vince doesn't know anything, but he hired all of her lucky. Why did everyone credit the XFL 2020. Yeah. The league was good. The rules were good. The play was good, all this kind of stuff. And so just because you don't know, you know, I, I'm a videographer and I don't know anything about my taxes. You hire someone to do that step, you pay someone to do that. And so it's. I don't think that that's a fair criticism all the time. When you have as much leverage and power as they have. And then what kind of money they have to. Yeah, I mean, Well, they have $5 billion in assets. They overseas. Was was reading correctly. I'd say yeah, like four, four. Change for. Yeah. Daily formula. It's just pocket change for them. But you get what I'm saying? It's like they have the money to put the people around it to make it work. They will find the people. They will surround themselves with the people. So the specific thing about the toys. Build league again, your point is if they had called it anything, but the XFL, the second time around. It wouldn't be known as a twice valve leak. No, that's the stigma. I was going to say one thing too. I am in the name. Escape me. When we were talking with rush. Scott Pioli is the former Patriots. You know, like GM and he's worked with all these. You know, There's Ruby. Rumors going around that, like, he is someone that like is interested in like coming into the XFL and like that when they were talking about the, the chief football officer stuff. And like, he is someone that has spent, you know, 30 years in the NFL that can come in and be like, this is how we're running the league and this is how we're going. And so I just, I. That name escaped me, Scott Pioli, but he's on good morning football all the time. He's the one executive of the year, like five times for NFL. And that is someone that you could bring in, in a heartbeat and enter in stuff around. Right. So moving on. Moving on here. There's a, what does this talk about? CFL board. See if XFL board CFLs story. Did we already talk about that? Yeah. Just a quick note. I'll keep this short because we're, we are running long and we're going to get through the rest of this. I know Paul wants to go. So. Well, no I'm being, we can't go. I could go on this for half an hour. So. CFL, our XFL board is a, is a forum, right? XFL board forum for people, whatever. So there was a rumor that came out this week that a guy, someone posted on their polar bear or polar pan that or something. That they have all this insight information into the CFI merger and all this kind of stuff. And what happens is, and I understand this and message board, and I understand that it's like posts, whatever you want on there. But XFL board is connected to Twitter and they automate those posts. And so when you post it thing on there, it automates it and sends it out. And so the XFL board Twitter account has 9,400 people that follow it and change. At one last now, cause they blocked me. And so when. So I came home from a walk and this story was sent to me and he was sent to Josh and Jay and Mike Mitchell and mark all the XFL risers. And they go, Hey, you know, Jake sent this to me. Max sent this to me. All these people send this to me like, Hey, what's going on? But this, we see these news what's going on. So I, I, you know, I tweeted it to them and I said, Hey, you know, XFL board, you guys have any more insights about this. I, you know, there's a lot of confusion and basically mark and, and I shame on Mark Nelson that runs this board, you know, they blocked me and, and they, they unfollowed it and they, they basically blocked all the XFL news hub writers. Because we asked like, Hey. This is a message board. It's going out to 9,400 people. I understand it. It's like moderate yourself, whatever, but at that point you have some responsibility, right? And so, so I woke up the other day. They had blocked everybody and that's when I did my big post about. We are both journalism people. You work in the news industry. I've worked in that for a decade. You've worked in it for most of your life. I'm not just an internet troll. I know that we joke. And I think that's the pleasure of our show is that we, you know, Yeah, then we can challenge a Raj to a duel, but then still like, bring you credible news and whatever. Right. And so I just, I mean, just be careful of these rumors going around and because it just went wildfire and it gets into all this stuff and I hate sewing confusion and I. Shame on XFL board and everybody involved in that for how that was handled and for blocking us. Merely. All I did was ask. Do you have any sources to back this up? Cause you guys are causing a lot of confusion. Yeah. I mean, you're, you're a hundred percent right. Stick by your questioning of that. All right. So Ron Peterson set of source was telling him that CFL leaders are talking about dropping five Canadian players per team for the rosters and reducing the studios starters ratio. Down to three starters. And to reiterate, they're talking about talking. Not a sure thing, but potentially big news. Yes, it is. Because as we learned from Jim. The ratio thing is a big, big, big, big, big thing. It's a big thing. And we were dismissed and we were dismissive of it. Who gives a crap about. Who cares about the ratio? But once Jim explained it to us, we're like, okay, that makes sense. Why that they put that in there is because both the college team and, you know, the youth football, everything is symbiotic, everything relies on each other. So having the ratio drop. That low. Yikes. Oh, I tweeted when rod sent that out, I go, it begins because this, I mean, and again, I don't want, I don't want the Americanization of the CFL. I don't want this takeover. I don't want that. But, but when I see something like that and they're talking about reducing the numbers and then the other story they were talking about, Normally, they have like two global player positions per team. And they're talking about dropping that down to one. And part of that could just be because of like, you know, travel restrictions and COVID and tryouts and all that kind of stuff. But, but, but these are things that are industry, you know, like institutions in the CFL. And when they're talking about this, I just think that's crazy. I think it. It goes to underscore that there's way more. Discussion. About. The merger than what's being led on. If they're already discussing, dropping the ratio down. And the Canadian players per team it's, it's seeming like there's a lot more. The merger, the merger negotiations are a lot further on than, than. Then they're letting on. Yeah. And then the final note about CFL staff. We tied about this with the Raj. I just think, I want to reiterate that the number of players, you have 38 XFL players playing in the NFL right now, and you have 80 former excellent players in the CFL. And so when there's questions about legitimacy and league in, in, in, in ability, I mean, I get I get where Ross is talking about that we don't want like the NFL lie or we don't want the leftovers, but I think that the quality of play is there. I think if they would've had a year to get by. It would have been totally different. I agree. Do you want to do the Mexican football league? We'll do all spring league stuff with Brian, and then we'll just finish with the financial stuff at the end. Yeah, the Mexican football league, the pro football league down in Mexico has decided to postpone again a another season and they're putting it off until 2022. Yeah, a little bit of news that just barely came out before we started recording. And maybe it's, you know, I think it's probably COVID related because it seems like. Both borders north and south don't quite have a handle on it as well as we do. Forgive the American arrogance, but that's, that's the situation that's going on. And I think this is also part of, you know, Part of that whole. We're w we're going to be in this thing probably for another six months. And by we, I mean, the world in general, not, not necessarily us. It seems like we're turning a corner. But, you know, These are things that need to be taken into account of Canada's having problems with Mexico is having problems where Mexico postponed a season. Yeah. Interesting. Brian Woods with the spring league. Thanks for joining us here on the XR market cast. Thanks guys. Thanks for having me on. It's a, it's a busy day. It's a busy time. The, the amount of pouring the feedback. I've gotten from our, our listeners when I posted the, you were coming on. Wanting to ask me one question and I want you to see if you can remember what that question would be. One question. You know, I don't know that it involved. [unknown]. Esther's merchandise is. It could have potentially involved. I'll tell you, it's not just me, Kenny, Jenna. Andrew all the listeners. They want the status of the jesters merged from November of 2020. You're going to get it, you know, that. The, the interesting thing is the last time you and I spoke by the time we had actually. By the time I came on the show. Everything had been shut down in San Antonio in terms of we had put our equipment and storage. My equipment managers were already back in their respective places of domiciles. So we didn't really have anybody that could readily access. The downstairs merchandise, but I can assure you that. A football helmet and juror. Prizzi's are certainly coming your way very soon. So we definitely want to get to that. The other, the other news I can drop on you guys. And this is as an exclusive on your podcast. Is that the gel stirs will be, they will be the first big game if you want to call it a game of the week, because you know, all of our games are going to be televised. And I will, I will be able to tell you more next week because we're going to have a bigger announcement next week in terms of our TV schedule. But. The jouster is, will be an action game one against our defending lead champion general. So there'll be front and center. So we're pretty excited about that. Yeah, we're, we're excited and I'm really excited that we've spent. I do want to get your takes on a finger to a football here, at least asking you if you have any tangential knowledge of that here in a minute, but I am really excited for the spring. I get to come back. You know, I think there's no denying that the talent and the quality of the football and the players you guys have. I mean that in ultimate sincerity across the board, I think is tremendous. We've talked with many of them on our show. And so I know that we are very excited and our listeners are very excited to, to see that, you know, you guys all returned to the field. So I do mean that a hundred percent. No, I appreciate that. One thing. The one thing for sure is that we know we've got a little bit of a runway here that, in that. The CFL has not played a game since 2019. They are. Teetering on the verge of collapse right now, there's a lot of things at play, including COVID. They're still dealing with the ramifications in Canada with COVID. They have provinces up there that are getting ready to go into total lockdown. So the, the prospects of, of the Canadian football league playing this year, but more importantly, playing in stadiums where you can have fans in attendance, which is such a crucial component of their business model is just not looking good right now. So our Lu. Serves as a real platform for these guys to stay active, to stay relevant. And we're playing, I joke to everybody else that our motto should be. We play because we're actually playing and we're going to be playing again this spring. And, you know, it's been a while since the CFL is lined up in plate. And, you know, obviously with the XFL, I know that was a good experience for some of the players before they came to the spring league. But certainly. As a football person and understanding exactly just what goes into building a league from the beginning. And kind of our Genesis and just how difficult it is to put a quality product on the field and the amount of time that you have to do it in. The idea or the notion that the XFL could play in 2022. At this point is absurd. It's just, it's just, I could probably tell you with great surgery. It's just not going to happen. So you're looking at 2023 at best. That is if it ever returned. So in the meantime, We want to establish ourselves as kind of the professional outdoor football league outside of the national football league here in the United States and abroad. And we've got. You know, some more plans to expand our international development program. We're bringing on some better coaches. Why I say. They better. I'd say maybe coaches that have, you know, more name recognition that fans are going to know. Fox is a hundred percent committed to our property. So that was the interesting thing. Last year is once we. Once we ended our, our, our 2020 season. I think a lot of people wrote us off immediately and said, oh, they're never coming back. They're like every other league that shut down. That, that wasn't the case whatsoever. It had nothing to do with our financial solvency. It had everything to do with the fact that we had planned a short abbreviated season. That was our plans. And that's what we did. And we came back and regrouped, albeit not in the, in the perfect situation having to do it weeks later, but we were able to regroup and finish the season strong with the championship game. You know, in Orlando. But we've got quite a runway here. And while we have a business model that we've been following kind of slow growth has been our motto. We're certainly looking to expand and we're certainly looking to grow and we are not taking at this point. Our, our approach is not to take a back seat to anybody. So, you know, we're excited about the upcoming season. I think you guys are going to be very impressed with some of the quarterback names that come out next week. So are. Our quarterback play was good last year. And I felt like the product looked good, but really at the end of the day, we want to have good quarterbacks and we want to have consistent play. And so some of the guys that are going to be joining us this year, Are going to be recognizable and they're going to be guys that I think are going to make our product look even better. Very cool. I mean, we just had Matt mango on the show two weeks ago. He's moving up to the CFL. I know that Matthew Saxton just got signed with the Steelers. I mean, Brian, Scott, I know how to try out with that. Colts. A few months back. I mean, these are players that have told us that they feel like they would not have been put in these positions to succeed if it weren't for being able to play it for you guys. So. You know, we, I feel like we've really tried it to tell it that the horns is hopefully, you know, Veer in the traffic there. The sirens, but. No, but I, I do think, and, and even from the press release that came out with Jerry Granville and bar Andrus, and now Kevin Gilbride, you know, former XFL Guardian's coach now is going to be leading the Josh Harris. I believe. A tremendous amount of coaching talent as well. Ah, How, how difficult was that to get those coaches involved or are they excited to jump on the product with you guys? Yeah, I think the bottom line is we've been out there now since 2017. So some of these coaches have. Had experiences in alternative professional football leagues. E. The AA. Yeah, yeah. For the XFL. And I think they've seen us as being a consistent player in the space and knowing, and they've spoken to other coaches that have been involved with us for several years now. And while Bard, Andrews isn't necessarily a recognizable or household name. Bart Andrews was the head coach in NFL Europe for several years. So I'm looking to hire the best coaches that are going to help develop our talent. And we're, we're building slowly, but we're doing it the right way in the sense that first and foremost, I wanted to be able to create a product where other leagues come into. Into formation. And the first thing is let's be big. Let's be in multiple markets. Let's hire all these big name coaches and spend probably way more than what they really need to spend to retain those kinds of guys services. And let's just find the best product we can find or the best player we can find. Let's have them know. Concern over their age. And that's really a mainstay of the spring leagues that we're really looking to develop that player. That's 23, 24 years old, that Matt Sexton. That's right out of college and for whatever reason hasn't caught on with the team yet. So I've got to have guy. Is it buy into it. They buy into developing players first and foremost, as we slowly grow because. We're going to have some big plans to announce with the spring league and what we're doing going forward in 2022 and beyond. And those, and those announcements will come probably during the season or right at the end of the season. So it, wasn't a very hard, wasn't very difficult for me to sell the coaches, not just on what we're doing right now, but getting in, getting them involved at this juncture so that they can be along for the ride when we expanded into 20, 22 and subsequent years. So. But it's definitely good to have coaches like that. And Kevin Gilbride will be another really solid name to add to our, our list of coaches that are going to be involved. What went into the decision to pick two cities this time in two different bubbles, as opposed to just one city, one bubble. Yeah, I think again, it's just part of our expansion, I think, from a standpoint of it, but it was just a spring league. Absent a major media partner that is Fox. Then I think it would be a much easier decision to say, okay, let's make things a little more efficient. Let's operate out of one market. This is part of our growth pattern. So the idea always from justice Springleaf business model alone. Even before Fox's involvement. Was too. Have four teams in one region of the country, whether that be the Southeast and the Midwest and north. The Pacific coast. And so you will see more of that potentially going forward, but that's kind of the idea. This is just part of our growth. And I think, look. Again, Outside of putting teams in eight different markets. I think that's very problematic. And this is why I can tell you with great certainty that the XFL playing in 2022 would be a very difficult. Journey. You're not marketing in those cities yet. Yes, there was, there was an XFL presence in some of these markets two years ago, but what's happened since then. What's happened since these teams have folded. So the idea too, to have regional teams or have teams in one area of the country that eventually could be attached to certain cities and these cities at some point, could each take a turnover two to three years of hosting the league, if you will, or at least the division in that, in that, in that league and eventually be awarded a full-time team. I think that's a better way. Way to, to market our league and get people excited about our league and really build a fan base from, from a grassroots perspective. So we're excited about it. And certainly it's a little more to manage and it's definitely a lot more moving parts. One, one example I'll give you is that when we have this every year, I'm always on site the entire time. But I'm in one location. I can do that this year. It's going to be a lot more difficult. So I know we've got staff in both markets. We've got boots on the ground already. I'm going to have to go back and forth. And, and obviously spend some time with the children at home. I have a, I have a two year old boy. I have a seven month old little girl, so I can't. Can't be away from them for two months. So it's going to be a lot of air travel for me, but we're excited. And I think you guys again, One of the, one of the biggest, one of the biggest things I'm excited about this year is just the, the exposure we're going to get by having all of the games televised. And not doing it at a time of the year where we're going to be competing against college football, the national football, even high school to some, to some extent on Friday nights, we were being diluted in the fall, you know, week one, we were going head to head with game six of the world series. We too, it was the fallout from the election. It wasn't until week three that people actually started paying attention. And by week four, we were done. So it was, it'll be interesting to see, I think Fox and I are both very intrigued to see what sort of ratings. Or viewership we can get at a time of year that a football person that I, I like to think of myself as a football person. I hope I'm a football person. Being that I do this for a living, but. I'm always looking for. Or football in the early summer months. I'm not necessarily interested in football right after the super bowl. So I think we're interested to see what sort of viewership when we're competing against baseball and golf. And I think I like our chances right now, so we'll see how that goes. But you know, again, just very excited about the upcoming season. Yeah, I think it's a tremendous opportunity to see what interest there is. You know, we've been covering obviously the CFL XFL merger and potential crazy season. What the heck are they going to do? In your talk with the cities and the bubbles goes along. We, I XFL extra points on Twitter. I'd ask people if they had questions with you coming on. He had said, I mean, so the eventual goal is to get to cities eventually or continue in these, in these host cities for the, you know, bubbles. I think short term, obviously for this year and maybe even even 2022 is to be in these hubs, if you will, or these bubbles. And then expand from there. But again, we're not. We are not precluding ourselves from being in more markets, obviously. In 2022. So we were excited and, and look at the end of the day, I always said the ultimate goal for me with this league was a eventual partnership with either the national football league or big media partners. So knowing that that Fox has bought into our property and is. Totally supportive of what we're doing and wanting to help us grow it and are willing to, to, to infuse capital into the business to do so. Is is, we've got a very promising future. So we don't want to. We don't want to out kick our coverage right off the bat. We, we, we have the, we really had to kind of temporary. Enthusiasm when Fox first came on board, because obviously there was not just the production value that they were going to bring to the table. And the exposure that we were going to get by having a partner such as Fox. But there was also that monetary component that we had never had before. So all of a sudden, wow, look what we can do with this. So I think we had to be very disciplined in our, our approach and that's always the way we've looked at our business model. But, you know, again, I think that. There's a lot of possibilities on the table for 2022. And so you could see us. And definitely multiple markets that that possibility is, is, is definitely out there. We had a rush Madani on the show earlier, before we talked to you and he completely dismissed the idea, the notion of spring football. When you have someone that, that comes on and let's, let's, let's call it. What it is, is very negative about the idea of spring football in any way, shape or form. How, what do you say to change that person's mind? How do you try to like sway them to maybe understand that this, this does work. Well, the one thing I think, look, there's a couple of points there. Number one. In recent times, we've seen too. Attempt at spring football on a grand scale by business models that let's just call it for what it is. The blueprint was pretty much identical. We're starting at the same time, we're going to start in eight separate markets. We're going to hire big name coaches. It's going to be the full bells and whistles we saw. That with the AAF, we saw that with the XFL. So I think the fact that those leagues failed, whether it was COVID related or not with, with, you know, obviously. Factored into the circumstances with the XFL. Two leagues with very similar business models failed in back to back years. As a matter of fact, I even mentioned to, to Oliver luck and some of the people associated with the XFL, that the worst thing that could happen in my mind, Was that the AAF folded and went away so quickly because that audience that you had, or at least the people that were trying to finally buy back into spring football. Could potentially just meet your product with a high degree of skepticism. But, but even with that, even with that climate, the XFL was still able to find viewership and attractive numbers and the ex. The AAF to that extent had very good ratings right off the bat. Now, granted that waned a little bit, and I think ultimately everybody wanted to see what would happen when the XFL went head to head with March madness. I think that's kind of the big question. And I think you can make the argument that they probably would have lost some viewers due to that sort of, you know, audience going away, maybe momentarily, if. If you will. But I think the constant here is where I guess the, the, the main theme here is that we've had two recent failures. So that's definitely going to bring out the skeptics that's number one, but. Going back to the days of the USFL in the 1980s. People forget something very quickly. They were offered before the XFL or before the USFL rather made the decision to move to the fall. And I believe it was 1986 or that was their plan to play in the fall. They played their last spring season. The network at the time who they were partnered with ABC and ESPN. Had given them or promise them collectively $250 million. If they would stay in the spring. That is a significant amount of money. Now that was an even more significant amount of money back then in 1980 standards. So they very quickly got to a. Promising TV contract. Now, granted the NFL did not have a stranglehold on all the networks back then. But I think we saw some success with the USFL that had they not moved into the fall and tried to compete with the NFL. They might still be around today. That's always been my theory and my position. And in terms of the XFL and the AAF, there were viewership numbers. There were millions of people watching that product. So to say that there's not an audience for spring football, I think I would dismiss that notion completely. Charlie Ebersol came out with the idea that, Hey, look, there's 80 million or so football people that effectively. Away right after the super bowl. That we come back if you had a football product and all they're trying to tap into is a small percentage of that people of that, of that. You know, crowd. And they did it. And the XFL did it. So I think that Fox that's what got Fox interested in our property. They had seen us when we did some rules testing for the XFL. So I didn't reach out to them. It was the CEO reached out to me directly and said, look, we've seen your product. It's just as good as the AAF XFL, not better. And we like what you're doing from a business. So let's partner together. Let's help you grow this. So. That was kind of their approach. And so I think, look, I think we absolutely have an opportunity to be successful. But I think we just have to be mindful and you have to be very disciplined with your business approach. But absolutely the numbers and the TV ratings don't lie. There is an audience of people out there, or there is a crowd, so to speak. That is absolutely. Entertained with, with spring football, but it has to be done the right way. And I think you have to be disciplined your approach at least from the, from the onset. And for perspective, if you take $250 million back in those days, that's adjusted for inflation. That's about $600 million now. That's crazy. That's considerable with, I mean, you can run a league off of that. You can make money off of that. And so that was, you know, again, the. The one thing I will say the other point to that of course, is that. The difference between the USFL and the XFL and AAF. Of modern days is that the USFL went after the best talent. And as a matter of fact, They secured players before the NFL could sign them. That's what made the USFL in my mind, so successful so quickly. And that is also an instance. And it's very rare, but you'd have to go back to the 1960s with the AFL when, and I, sorry, but I'm, I'm, I'm drawing a blank here. I can't think of Lamar hunt. Lamar hunt was tried to buy an NFL franchise. They refused his membership. So literally on an airplane, he drew on the back of a napkin. Drew a business plan. I'm going to go out and I'm going to get this guy. I'm going to get that guy. I'm going to go into markets where the NFL is not currently at and there's population. And I'm going to find guys, and we're going to form our own league. And Lamar hunt got TV money from the beginning, somewhere between 10 and $15 million, which again, and inflation is probably worth a hundred million today. Okay. So. They got TV money from the get-go. The USFL got TV money from the get go. But the difference is both of those leagues win. After the very best talent they could get their hands on at that time. And I got my own theories on, if somebody wanted to compete with the NFL tomorrow, what would you do? I've got plenty of theories on how that can be done because quite frankly, the average NFL career is over with and a little over three years. Okay. So it doesn't take a genius to figure out where you need to go to get players before the NFL can get them not to mention that the wear and tear that a player has to incur with a LinkedIn college. Greer these days, just not something guys are interested in anymore and the stuff out there about CTE and all these other possibilities of longterm. Health. Conditions that they might experience with a long career, same thing as a pitcher that you know, you're going to covet an arm that hasn't thrown as many pitches. Over a career versus a, a guy that has done a lot. Right. So, you know, again, that's just an additional point, but I, I strongly believe that there is a audience for spring football. But it has to be either a discipline approach from a business. The standpoint, or you need to go out there and you need to get the very best talent and you need to find a TV partner that's willing to buy in from the, from the get-go, because nobody could deny if you went out there right now and started signing the top sophomores and juniors, not seniors. But the top sophomores and juniors, or even red rising red shirt, freshman, right out of college. And they're given the PAC 12, 200, $250 million a year and the sec 400 million a year. You can't tell me that that product would not generate TB interest. Because it would so that there's, I've got a lot of theories on how it can be done, but, but the bottom line is, I do think there is a, a market for spring football and we're slowly but surely trying to tap back into that or, or bring some of those viewers back. While we have you on here. And this might be a oddball question. You were talking to the CFL merger, XFL and all that stuff. I in my Missy years ago, were you not, did you try to get involved with the CFL and business-wise, I think that there had been some talks about it. I know the XFL reporters have talked to me about that. Is that accurate? Am I remembering that right? And whether. What do you think about everything going on? Yeah. A couple of things. One. Yes. So last summer, when the CFL seemed to be flailing and trying to find a way to play. My theory was okay. This is a very simple problem to solve. The majority of your, your coaches and the majority of your players that make your product all reside here in the United States and with the restrictions at the time. Air travel, the border issues with Canada and the United States. They had shut it down effectively. My position. I reached out to Randy Ambrozy and obviously some reporters jumped right on it. And I basically said, look. Why don't you partner with us? Let's play some games down south, you can satisfy your TV contract. We don't even need to play against one another, but you can utilize our facilities. You can utilize our league to draw players from you can play CFL rules. Obviously we'll have to modify some fields, but I was, I had submitted a proposal to him. So that they could play a 20, 20 season and at. The initial, the initial response was that. You know, he was very busy looking at other things and trying to find ways that they could play up in Canada. But I told them I had a way forward that would, would obviously require them to operate in the United States. And I also informed them that look. If you can't have fans in the stands is. Shear, and you're simply playing to satisfy your TV contract. I can find you, I can show you some ways down here too. Cut or mitigate some of your losses. But more importantly, you can satisfy your TV contract. And I don't think it really matters where you're playing with the CFL. If in fact, you can't have fans in attendance anyway, so there seem to be some initial interest. But it never, never went anywhere. So that's the first part of your, your, your question. As it relates to the CFL XFL merger. You know, quite frankly, I don't really know where to start on that. I mean, What I would tell you is it's kind of interesting to me because this is how I look at it from a logical perspective. You have a very established football league that's been around for, you know, basically at least playing the rules that we know today is CFL football over 50 years. They have a brand that is, that is specific to their, their country. And I think that that's what makes it unique. And I think that's why there's a fan base there because it's Canadian rules and it's, you still have to have half the players on the roster that are. You know, Canadian national, so to speak. But the idea that a league that's established like the CFL. I believe a couple of things are at risk here. One merging with a, a league that let's call it for what it is. I mean, at the end of the day, Vince McMahon's XFL is long gone. That no longer exist. What exists right now are effectively trademarks and use football equipment. That's what exists right now. So the idea that we're going to partner with you, because you're known for innovation, you're known for this, you're known for that. They're known for starting seasons at two different times. Both seasons were over with. In in short form. But the Vince McMahon, XFL is no longer here. This is going to be a different XFL. I'm not even sure that they know exactly. What it is that they're creating or what it is they're trying to do. So I just find it interesting that, that a entity like the CFL that's very established. That is all on the verge of, of, you know, disaster. There's their best business move is to reach out to an entity that just emerged from bankruptcy. So I don't. You know, again, I, I know some people think that it could be a winning formula. I I'm not one of those. I think that it just creates more issues logistically. But so I don't know. I mean, I've, I've heard from some individuals that are very close to the discussions. That these are absolutely serious talks. But that's it. I don't know if there's actually a way forward. Where these leagues effectively merge. I can see where they work together in terms of player contracts. But, you know, at the end of the day, I like to see ourselves right now as the premier professional football development league. That's, that's where we see ourselves. So we're, we're focused on our brand of football building, what we're doing. And to me, it would make a lot more sense of the XFL was, was having a conversation with us, like Oliver luck date a couple of years ago. And it made sense for us to work together at that time to test rules, to help develop players for them. It would make a lot more sense for, for a US-based partner. So maybe then. Than than, than what's being talked about right now. But regardless, you know, we're focused on, on what we're doing and, and we've got an exciting future ahead. I just, we had two quick questions before I let you go. I don't want to drag this on too long. The, the new rules that you guys are implementing the quarterback protections. And then the, the overtime seems a little bit more straightforward. What is, what does that mean when you guys are going to have extra protections for the quarterback? I think right now, what we're doing is looking at a series of rules just to make gameplay a little safer for the quarterback may look at the end of the day. With the spring league, I feel like that. Where we serve the NFL best is trying to develop offensive linemen. And most importantly, developing quarterbacks do live game repetition, something that a practice on the NFL. You know, fall short of. So we have to find ways to make sure that when we get these. You know, the agents that reached out to us to have the high profile quarterbacks. We need to make sure that these guys are coming in and they're going to be protected. Or at least as much as we can protect them without affecting the integrity of our game. So I can't tell you all of the different possibilities we're looking at right now, but everything from as simple as you know, what they do at the senior ball. So I don't know if you're familiar with the senior bowl every year, they just eliminate intentional grounding. So there's no intentional grounding at the senior bowl. And that that makes the quarterback, you could be 30 yards behind the line of scrimmage and all of a sudden, if the. Six five, 260 pound DN is breathing down his neck. He can just throw the ball into the ground. He doesn't have to worry about getting crossed the line, scrimmage, finding an eligible receiver in the area. So that that's something that makes quarterbacks. Cause you're not, you're not talking about a quarterback just back there. Handing the ball off, you're talking about that quarterback and specific passing situation. So it could be something as simple as that with a slight modification to that rule or some other things that we're discussing, but that's at least an example where we're just trying to find something that will offer further protection for the quarterback. Right now, we've got a couple of different ideas. Last question for you before we let you go today, we might try to ping you again here during the season with everything going on. Obviously you have to be aware of fingernail football, all that going on. General, just thoughts about that. And then also there had been some criticism because we cover that league as well. With some of their owners calling out basically saying like, Hey, you know, we pay our players. I'll be at not very much, their salaries are not very much per game, but where, you know, some of the players here, and I know it's, if you have three years of NFL, you know, The development fee is waived. Otherwise it's the $2,000 development fee. I just, I really wanted to get your reactions to that. Cause they, they were very harsh on now when you guys announced the tryouts earlier this season, and we obviously defended that and the benefits that come with the spring league, but I did want to hear your take. Yeah, look at me the first, first and foremost, I know the owner of fan controlled football, like he, him and I I've known him since I believe 2015. And he's a great guy. I think he's got a very unique concept. I think he's onto something to some extent. But by the same token, I don't consider what they do. 11 on 11 outdoor football. And that's, that's no knock to what they're doing. I think they have a unique audience and I think they have, they're doing something different. They've got, they've built some buzz. Their viewership numbers. I don't know what to speak of in terms of viewership numbers. I know that they were numbers they released, but I believe the actual consistent viewer. I, how many people were actually tuned in at any given time, probably didn't exceed 30 or 40,000 people is my guess. I believe that collectively, they had a lot of people coming in and coming out. But again, I don't, I don't view their league. First of all, it's legitimate competition to what we're doing and to, if they want to line up and play against us, we're more than willing to take them on. I will tell you that last year. I look, I got a lot of guys in my league that are former CFL head coaches, Marcel bell Faye. Who's an assistant for the generals, Bart Andrews. These two were both former head coaches in the CFL. So they know what's out there and I've got, I've got position coaches with different different teams throughout the league that have coached in the CFL. And so we got toward the end of the season last year and I made a hands down, Mike Singletary, all these guys that look. We know Brian there's two or three teams. It's like right now you can go up to Canada and beat any team up there. And I would put money on that. Okay. So our product. I can say this with great certainty and I could care less. Who's paying and who's not paying. Yeah. We're charging or assessing a development fee to guys that have not been with an NFL team in the last three years. What that typically means is this guy comes out of college. He's never had an opportunity. He's never been in the NFL camp yet. He continues to come back to the spring. Like, well, we're paying to obviously develop this player versus offering a service to some extent, to a player that wants to remain active. The reason why we do this is because the probabilities for us is the likelihood of a guy who's never had an opportunity with an NFL team. The further he's removed from college. That chance becomes lesser and lesser. The higher percentage of a player returning is a guy that we signed. That has been with an NFL team within the last three years, been in a camp. You're going to see a lot of guys this year in our league that have active, active roster experience. You're going to see guys that just run practice squads last year. In the NFL. So it's going to be a good product. And I don't think there's, I don't think that there's. There shouldn't be any sort of effort to marginalize what we're doing simply because we held a couple of tryouts and. And players paid for those trouts number one. Those trials are not being run by the spring league. They're being run by a company called ANC that ran the tryouts for the AAF. And ran the trials for the XFL. We don't actually see a dime from those trials. Those that try out money goes directly to ANC actually lose money. Because I have to pay for my NFL Scouts to be there, to do all the evaluations for the spring lake. So we're not making any money off that. That's that's. Full transparency. Okay. But we are looking to try to find some street free agents, if you will. Some guys that we feel like, you know, we should give, we should certainly give consideration to, but. You know, ultimately look. We play outdoor 11 on 11 football. And, you know, the fan controlled football league is, is, is something completely different than what we do. But if they ever want to line up in scrimmage, we'll be more than happy to play them. So they can, my money's on you. My money's on you. Yeah. Exactly. We're not trying to get up here and we're definitely not going to mark. We're not going to marginalize you. EMCF has done it. Everybody. That's okay. I love this lesson. So Rob for Rudy is a friend of mine. He started that league and I think he's got a great vision for what they're doing. And so all kidding aside, I don't think anybody looks at their league in our league and says, oh, their talent is better than yours. I don't think it's anything like that. But what they're doing is completely different. It's not the outdoor football game and it's also not what the USFL was or what the AAF was or what the XFL is. The real core football person wants to see coaches. They want to see players. They want to see integrity. I don't know how you could ever. I mean, if I was, if I was the owners or the. The people involved with that league? The one question I would always have is. One of the biggest spaces right now to get into with professional football is in fact, the end game wagering betting space. So if you're going to change your roster every couple of days and have lime and go from teammate to team B to team C, I don't know how much integrity is in that league. And it's going to be crazy to set lines on games like that. So that's, that's one part of the business model that that's kind of has me for a loss. Well, [unknown]. He has no friend of mine. So we. I'm sorry to hear that. He's a good guy. I mean, I, I, I'm sorry to hear that. No, I'm teasing. No, I I'm being completely facetious now. We we've, we've gone back and forth with the link, but that's been fun anyway. I don't want to hold up anyone. Good. Too much time today. I'm I'm being facetious. The other thing you got to remember. The biggest thing in this conversation is they don't have a team called the [unknown]. That's true. That's one thing they do not have. It's true. So they don't have a team called the jealousies, the glacier boys. Can't hold a candle to the joblessness. Now let's not kid ourselves. Okay. Well, we appreciate your time. Thanks for taking so much of your day out to talk to us about the spring league coming back. Looking forward to. All, all of the teams, eight teams now, two different cities. We'll be definitely tuning in. To make this podcast a winning deal. And, you know, we should talk offline about this. Cause I think there's some things that we could do to help support you guys this year. I can get you, get you more involved with in the mainstream. You just need to change it to maybe the TSL podcast versus the XFL Marquez. You. Give me a, if I can give me, give me a Jaster, sir. She didn't broadcast with. We hear every week. So absolutely. Absolutely. Then we'll do Brian and we'll get out of here. Want to thank Brian Woods for coming on, discussing all of the stuff with the spring league. Glad to have him on a second time. Probably our first second time guests that we've had. Maybe. Yeah. First time. Josh Davis was on twice. Yeah, spring, like I forgot about that. Listen to the podcast and never forget about Josh. Yeah. I just don't want to think I Brian, for coming on and chatting about the spring lake, for sure. For sure. Yeah, I would encourage, oh, I forgot. We might go on, we had to do our giveaway stuff real quick. We're gonna hurry. Hurry through this. Hurry up. Offense to get out of here. We just a couple of fingers or football things. I am excited for spring league. I CFL fans. If anyone, if you're not into the spring league, a great football play. That that's the one thing we like about it is it is. Issues they had last year with COVID and the bubble and things like that. [Unknown] the play on the field was phenomenal. We talked about it last week journey. I had a tryout with the, the gophers, the Minnesota gophers. And he did really well, and it was really funny. So he did an interview with Fox news. And he, they spoke with the governor's head coach. I and. Several team representatives at the tryout asked about journey when he was doing this trout, who the heck is this guy? Where did he come from? And I, I tweeted, I go, that speaks volumes to the millions of years and Fang show football. I had every week, the fact that these professional football Scouts, professional football Scouts, that this is their job is to professionally scout football players did not know the main quarterback of the winning team of the fingers on football. Yep. Well, I mean the millions of views, I think we've, we've kind of chalked up to you open up the Twitch app and the featured video. Isn't a video game. It's probably the football game. So that's where I think the millions of views might've come from. But. Huh? Yeah. Was that was that James Laurie's in the post of that day. I don't know if we talked about that on the show that that was a great feedback. That. Yeah. When fan controlled football is on their game is as a front page of Twitch. So anybody that goes to Twitch that games plain. So that is where we think those millions of views come from. Not, you know, and because that equates to the three minute watch time, because if you have millions of people going on Twitch and seeing all this. Watch this, I want to watch someone play, you know, Fortnite or something. It's like when I look at our YouTube impressions, if we're on the front, like people's, whatever. You know, we'll have like a million, not a million, but we'll have like 30,000 impressions. But that doesn't mean that we had 30,000 views. That meant that we had an op you know, like a thousand views off of that. Our, our favorite, our favorite CEO of the fingers of football. So Rob, I commented on the exit LCFF news this week. And he said. This won't work, unless combine properties gets a massive media rights fee. Canadian teams only adds to the cost with a little update, 40 million people across Canada. Don't move the needles for us. Broadcasters. I would be shocked if anything came of the XFL CFL news. And I responded with my tweet. I said, wait a minute. Who are you? It's accurate FCF. Doesn't have a media deal. I don't want to talk about this. They're on Twitch, which is amazing until FCF. Has negotiated TV deals and worked across the United States. And I don't want to hear, so Rob's thoughts about this? You know, I would rather ask Brian's thoughts about this because Brian has negotiated media deal. Yeah. So Rob has not. Ever. And I know that DS and all the guys are going to hear this probably and go over there hating again. No we're being critical. Cause you guys are hating. You guys are going out of your way to disparage the XFL to despair. CFL. The spirits, any other football league, you are going out of your way to do that. So when we're being critical of what you're saying, we're not hating, we're just saying, okay, well, you guys are hating. We're telling you that. You don't have a place to speak about media rights deals, because guess what? Spoiler alert. You don't have one. You don't have one at all? No, they, they, they, the comment was, wow. The XFL must really live rent-free in Surat. Upset they've had to, he would go out of his way to comment on that. That was this down in solid. My wild ACEs, JD finally shipped. It's been almost three months. So that is coming to, hopefully we'll have that next week. So it's only been three months. They were stopping. You can't buy any of them as of today, April 9th, when this. For the first season, but anyway, my Jersey is supposedly coming. And so we can finally shut up about that. Cause I guess one listener in particular is really tired of me talking about it. So. Well, I know who that listener is. It's Patrick DCIS burner and we'll leave it. Do you want to do giveaway or break or just go right into the giveaway? Let's get the good way done. Giveaway done. And let's, let's wrap the show. Why not hurry up offense. So if you, so this is how you're going to get into the big giveaway guy. Paul Scott is OSHA Cinco. And then I'm going to show off the rest of our staff here. This, these are the rules to enter the giveaway. You have to be subscribed to the channel. So whoever wins, I'm going to go in and verify all that stuff. If you've made it to this point, you're going to leave. You're you're going to comment on the video has to be a video comment by Wednesday at noon Pacific. That is the cutoff. So whatever that is, the. The 14th at noon, you're going to comment and you're going to tell us what you want. We have the, oh, just think of ball. We have the Taylor. Hi, Nicki ghetto sideways logo Jersey. So we have hat or we have Jersey ball, and then I've got a bunch of hats. The Jersey is a size medium. So if you're not a medium, don't do that one. And then I've got. Five hats. Varying. I actually love mark asked the stitching was all weird, but these are good hats. We have our we're working on new hats. We have this one, they're all like reject hats. We have the sideways logo one. I know Philip is wanting that one. And then we have this one. That's like the front smelted off. Cause it can get along the line. So we have the ultra single ball. That's the main price we have the high Nike jerseys, and then we have five hats. So you're going to comment and you're going to say. Ball or like ball hat or ball, hat, Jersey, whatever you want. And that is the only way you're going to be entered. I'm going to get all the people Wednesday at noon. I'm going to do a thing. And then we're going to draw the people on the show next week when we're not in, hurry up offense here. So. Does that make sense? Well, it makes sense to me. Got to have a comment on the video. You need to have made it this far in the show, and God bless you all for watching. Yep. So. We'll see you next week. For tuning in and yeah, we'll be giving away all our prizes next week. So make sure you definitely tune in. To see if you've won one of the prizes. Yes. Comment on the video and thank you. Give her the thumbs up. It's you that balance. Do you have a thumbs up? We appreciate that. We appreciate your viewership again. Exfil show.com/youtube to do that. No show.com/merch to buy some merchandise. Why not? And we'll see you all next week. We have a new hat come in. We have a new hat coming. Yeah, that's right. I gotta put that up. Thanks for reminding me. I'll do that right now.

Episode 34 - ZOA, Official Soft Drink of the XFL-CFL?

I should really replace the Puerto Rican flag. I have here with a Canadian flag. What do you. I was like, I wanted to. I was trying to print out like a maple leaf or something when I was on a rod show the other day. And I just couldn't, I don't have like a color printer, so it wouldn't have been, wouldn't have been the same. You know, We're slowly, we're slowly morphing into something different than we had originally intended. And that's a good thing. We're very accepting of change. Wait, are you saying that that growth can be made through change and changing your opinions? What a remarkable idea. What a remarkable idea. So I, I bet you didn't know that you were. Hosting. Co-hosting the podcast with Mr. International, Mr. Worldwide. I read Johnson. Your camera is eventually not going to be able to fit your head inside the dimensions of the zoom call. If you. He pumping your own ego like this. Of course. Reid showed up on the rod Peterson show. North of the border last, this Wednesday. Two days ago. Now this is airing a Friday. Hey, I happen to do it on Wednesday and yeah, congrats on that. That was cool. I did, I, I snooped on the YouTube comments on their, on their page. After eight people said hi to me. I was surprised. I figured, I felt like, well, maybe they'd be like, who's this idiot XFL guy, but I know they said like, Hey, where are you? Oh, I listened to read already. Or, Hey, we're going to check out the show now. So. I, I do think we're gaining tremendous viewership. I appreciate everybody doing it. We're very close to the a 1000 subscriber Mark, which has been our goal. We're doing our big giveaway. We have our chat, Joe single ball. We have lots of other old XFL Mark House merchandise, and we're going to make a whole. I whole thing of it. So please, if you're checking this out for the first time or the second time now, you know, Building with rod. We have Connor coming on today. Jim Mullen, we have a big show with a lot of gas, really trying to do the CFL thing, but please subscribe. I really remarkable. I can't couldn't it not have imagined. Two weeks ago with our Nesto. When we read 180 subscribers that we would even be. Close to a thousand at this point, it's truly been remarkable. So thank you all so much. And blowing up and I don't know where those all subscribers are coming from, but we appreciate every single one of you. And we appreciate you viewing like our, our, our videos are getting a lot of use of one of the episodes recently was over a thousand views, which is remarkable number. Yeah. Remarkable numbers for us. So we appreciate everybody checking us out again. We're doing the giveaway. When we get 1000 subscribers, we're also giving away. Some Mark cast merchandise. You can get that over it. Exfil show.com/merge. Right. Yeah. Excellent. So we got, we got a big show today. We're going to get to our special guests here in just a minute. I want to, I want to set the stage. YouTube. I encourage you to listen on audio too. You know, we're on Apple podcasts. We've been pushing that YouTube subscriptions. Big shell, lots of CFL there's XFL stuff as well. We have Jim Milan coming on. He's the president of football, Canada. And he's also a TSN remarkable interview. We just got done talking to all about, you know, what does this merger mean? Dismantling the greater, you know, Canadian football, everything going on, the infrastructure that they have in place. And then Connor Neil comes on as well. Fellow Canadian CFL podcaster. And, you know, just again, trying to really round out the conversation and inform us, you know, the listeners, everybody viewers, as much as we can about everything going on. Did you like our interviews with Jim and Connor? I did. And you'll get those here in a second. And I got a lot of thoughts about those things afterwards. Like I'm. You know, Change is good. When you understand all of the aspects of something, then you're like, well, maybe I can form a different opinion. Don't have to believe in something straight away. So I like your Las Vegas. Throw back XFL Jersey you're wearing there. Yeah. There's, there's been a lot of talk. I'm going to turn around here. There's been a lot of talk lately about, you know, XFL 2020, and then XFL 2001. And you know, the twice failed leak. So, this is my new old stock. It came, I was going to do a whole thing on the shell and then all this CFL blue step blew out. So we never had a chance to it's my rod smart. He hate me a Jersey. I'm going to turn around. That's great. That is so amazing. And, but it's like new, old sock. Every print, they have it had the tag on it. I unclipped it right before we recorded. I, and I also congratulations on your Yankees opening day, Paul. I know, and I'm missing the game right now to record this. I don't want you to ever doubt my commitment to this podcast if I'm missing my Yankees opening day game, but I never do. Just, just so you know, and it's on ESPN too, just so you know, we appreciate it. We appreciate it. So here's how we're going to do today. Lots of stuff. Everyone has been waiting for the Zella taste test. We've been waiting weeks for this. Paul got his. So what we're going to do is we're going to open them. Now I have the original, and I think you have the sugar-free. I have the sugar, zero sugar, super Berry. So we're going to open them now. You have the original, so, okay. Rock sweat. I don't know. So this is Danny and the Roxy energy drink. We're going to taste it. I throughout the show and then. And then what we'll do at the end in the garbage segment, we'll say what we say, because we want to get, we got to get total view, time up as well. We got this subscribers, it's all these things. I know. It's like what. Ask people to watch the podcast. I was given a review on an energy drink. Well, I'm just, I'm trying here. We're asking a lot of you guys, we're not getting paid for any of this, that the 2 cents on this. On the, on the speaker ads is not doing it. So check out the Zoe thing at the end, and then we're going to get the rock to retweet this as well. So yeah, let's crack it open. I'm excited. Oh, it didn't that wasn't that exciting. If I pop. And we're going to, we're going to do art. We're going to cheers. We're I'm we're going to talk about it at the end. So please stay tuned. Even if you don't care about any of this, keep the, keep the view up and, and, and let the view count. Go up and we'll go on. We're not going to give him the offense right now. And we're going to bring it during the show. One quick note. I we're going to get into all this stuff. I hate doing too much preface. People have been leaving tremendous amounts of YouTube comments lately. I still appreciate that. I try my best to respond and comment on every single one. YouTube does a terrible job of letting me, I have you respond to like another response. I can't find it unless I go in and, and it's I tried last night, I got a couple of emails and I was like, I literally couldn't find the comment. So if you have something. That you want to make sure that we see, we read, we got a lot of comments about doing like live shows fan in your actions, stuff like that. X at XFL Mark on Twitter, feel free to DM me. My DMS are open. I'll read, respond to anything on there. Or XFL Mark cas@gmail.com. I just, if you want us to see. That cause I feel bad. Cause I see these people responding. I get like email notifications and like can't find the comments. So if I see him, I call him at, but please. At XFL Mark on Twitter, not trying to plug the Twitter, but it would be great to get the, you know, that. It all was up. But anyway, I, Daniel wrote. There's a great email. I just wanted to read part of it. And, and just thank you all so much for taking the time to leave comments and whatever. He says, he wrote this whole email. I talked to all about the rules and the ratios and everything, but he said, To conclude I'm in favor, even excited about the CFL XFL partnership. And I hope it leads to at least some inter league play. The CFL gets to play new teams can access new revenue streams. Then the fit for modern, robust marketing initiatives, the XFL gets established and reliable teams. First-class TV production for all games in Canada, as well as the infrastructure and institutional knowledge to run an actual football season, the potential for a mutually beneficial exchanges there, the questions are just down to logistics and I think Daniel. Yeah, it represents the perfect. Fan of this, that we are trying to talk to, you know, I get that your CFL people I get where ax, it felt whatever. We just love football. I get asked a lot. Why are you cool with three downs? We discovered fingernail. [Unknown] football with five downs. So we're down to it, to all that stuff. And don't, don't worry about it. Did I put something else on the Google doc here with us? This. What do you mean? Oh, yes. I'm just like, yeah. Cause I tweeted last night, football equals football and I got a lot of pushback because people are saying now, I'm not a football fan. I'm a CFL fan. I understand. Well, but, but. So I get that. I get having the national identity. I get all those things. But anyway, so Danielle, thank you for the email and just everyone for commenting and subscribing and all that stuff. So. Definitely. Oh, this, I saw this tweet here that about the football equals football. Someone commenting. A Winnipeg jets fan. Glad you finally have a hockey team back by the way. So you don't mind if we keep CFL rules and field size, then right. Seeing as football. It was football. No, we don't. Yeah. We look read, and I have been watching and dissecting a lot of CFL lately on YouTube. I mean, I'm going to go ahead and be safe to speak for a read on that, because I know how much time he puts into the podcast, but I love the motion. I'm I'm I don't care about three or four downs. It's not a breaking point for me. I think the CFL game is fun. And if Americans were exposed to it on a wider basis, guess what happens? You can go get more revenue for a TV deal. You can get more desire for other products. I like it. I, yeah, the person's going to respond to that. So are you okay? And I did the Jim Carrey in dumb and dumber where he was like, yeah, like I'm, I'm, we're totally down. I like it. I like differentiating the XFL game a little bit more from the NFL game. I liked that key, you know? Keeping the four downs, you know, maybe doing the motion, the field size. I don't care, three downs, whatever, but like I liked the idea of having the, the, the alternative spring league be not, you know, NFL light. I like having it be, have its own thing. And I do think merging the two ideas is going to be better. I completely agree. I'm not. You know, and we have some interviews coming up. And there are now some, some other ideas that I've been percolating on and we'll discuss those. When those interviews come up with Jim Mullen, of course. Coming up later in the show. Yeah. So sorry, my cans pop in there. So just to kind of the, this is came out yesterday, but this relates Ontario's moving. It looks like they're moving to an emergency brake. Shut down. There are a lot of variants coming out. And so I'm not good news. No, not good news at all. And we talked to Connor about this too, and Connor told us that there's a, you'll hear more of his interview, but there's, I guess they're averaging 6,000 new cases a day. And Canada's not a big country. I mean, it's not a big country in terms of population. So for them to get 6,000 new cases per day, That's that's, those are frightening numbers. And so I guess they are activating a four week complete shutdown break, I guess, system. Cause they're having a third surge. Yeah, not get, I mean, even we're opening day to day for baseball and I saw games. The Washington nationals game was delayed because of a potential exposure. Right? So, I mean, this is still, you know, we kind of thought we were past all this and you know, it. CFL and everything last year and who would have thought, you know, year or two now of the CFL potentially to start being affected by this? I mean, it's crazy. This isn't a dig on Canadians in general. The government hasn't had access to the vaccines, like rehab. Down here in America, you know? We've we've I don't want to get too political, but what I want. I want to say is that once they get more access to vaccines and we're sending some up to you guys right now, North of the border. Once they get access to more vaccines, we're going to see some cases come down and I'm hoping that happens very soon. So you guys can get, you know, free and clear of this thing too. To live in. I mean, we're trying to, to, they just said they Washington state by the middle of April, that everyone would be eligible to get one. I mean, it's crazy. April 16th. I mean, for me it's anyway. Yeah, I just. I only bring that up just because that could potentially start, you know, with when you have training camps and things going on and all that stuff. Th the big news. First off is the CFL draft. The announced it's going to be taking place on May 4th. I Connor and Jim, we batted around the ideas of that. I think it's good. I think it's later than it normally is. It's going to be obviously past the NFL draft. Which rod had said yesterday on his show that he doesn't think it matters as much anymore. Any, like, I think the CFL draft used to be before the NFL draft or trying to get players or whatever. I mean, do you. I guess we're we're on we're on track. Does that feel good? Yeah. That's on track. It feels like they have more of a plan then. Then they're letting on. Just like, you know, it feels like there's been talks between the XFL. CFL longer than they've been letting on. So yeah, I think, I think this is, this is. I don't see why it wouldn't. Yeah. I mean, there's been a lot of polls lately asking, like how many games do you think the CFL is going to play this year? If they need to postpone that a little bit. I mean, I think we're really in that waiting game. Now. I know that Matt mango was on last week talking about heading up North. And doing that, but we'll just have to see, I'll be excited to watch the draft. I'll be excited to start to kind of start getting some original CFL content going on. The other big news. That kind of blew up on Saturday. I was excited. Jim, we had set this up like two weeks ago, Jim, to come on the show, he goes. Whatever you want. Tell me I'll be on, you know, great guy. Jim was on a Twitter discussion talking about, you know, the, the, the seasons Jim came out with this smart season that we're going to talk about with him about either. Doing the kind of a code junction leagues running. And the rock. Co owner of the XFL Tweety back at gym. Man. That is remarkable timing where Jim had said. And what I think Jim was referring to was when Danny. Bought the league. She, they said that their idea was to have a year round content. And I think that they met like, you know, kind of ESPN 30 for thirties documentary stuff. You know, things with the players shows and stuff like that. But Jimmy tweeted one of the most interesting nuggets from what the rock said when buying the assets is he won the games at various times in the year. Is that a, is this a possible path that fits that narrative thoughts? And, and I know that Mark with news hub, we were talking kids. The second that came out in the rock, I was talking with Mark Perry over at new South. He goes, yeah, I don't think that's what the rock said. And I go, yeah, I don't, I don't think that's what the rock said either. And the rock tweeted Agim, which is awesome. He goes, I, Jan, I never said that we'll figure out a smart season to create phenomenal opportunities for the players and be the best experience for the fans. I played ball for years and wrestled 280 nights a year for years. So I know the value in smart scheduling and recovery. What do you think about the, just that whole situation, I guess. I think, you know, that. Maybe there was some misunderstanding of what the rock said and, you know, and. You know, I think gyms. Kind of, you know, Testing out. The waters and finding out. You know, What people's feelings are. Yeah, I mean, I think the idea with the X of L is to create that year round. Thing, right. I mean, I watch NFL network right now. I watch good morning football every day. You know, NFL, we're not, you know, it's nowhere near this season. Right. But it's, I think it's creating that, you know, getting that interactivity, building those players, Connor talked about that. And Jim, you know, getting the players out in the community, get him at well-known. And kind of building that. So I think there was a miss. Understanding there between the rock, but I phenomenal that the rock is. You know, apparently he paying attention. I mean, Jim, Jim has a big name, but Jim's not like verified on Twitter. So, I mean, I thought that that was remarkable that, that the rock. Stumbled upon that Twitter conversation and took the time to respond. I guess that was my big takeaway from that he as big a name, Jim is or not. You know, being verified on Twitter increases the probabilities of having the rock, see your information. Oh yeah. When you get verified on Twitter and you respond to anybody, as long as they don't be blocked or muted. Like it pushes a notification. To your, like, it'll let you know. I have everything muted. Verified accounts though, for some reason, pop up on my phone, say, you know, like you're a verified account to read John's and replied to you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So a for, yeah, maybe it wasn't the rock. The tweet, maybe it was someone on the rocks team that caught the tweet possibly and was like, Oh, this is something that we should have a dialogue on it and pass it on to him. Of course, you know, I got a birthday shout out from the rock for the tequila thing. So. And we were going to get one for our, for our Zola. If we have a positive zone. Maybe be long, maybe it won't be a positive. We don't know yet. Anyway. And then Jim got, you know, Mark Perry did a whole thing about it this week. I knew South talking about this smart season. I put the diagram in the show for you, Paul. This. Basically, it would be a way to run the XFL and CFL together. Starting in March three, training camps, both leagues would go through the end of June. You would have in your league playoffs in July, and then continue the CFL through November to doing a great cup. As someone that watches soccer, watches other leagues in international things. And what do you think about doing this thing that Jim presented. I like it. And you know, he, he mentioned the soccer aspect and we get to get more in depth with his background in terms of soccer. I liked the idea. I think that this is a weight. I I'm, I'm too young to remember. I think this is the way the AFL NFL merger started to happen back in the day where they just kind of stayed within their own leagues. I mean, and the same, the same thing with how majorly baseball was like, you didn't play. National league teams. If you were in the American league. Until the very end of the year. I mean, you played in the all-star game, but at the very end of the year, then you played a national league team. And the instituted, you know, interleague play and that's talking now, now we're getting to the idea that. Pitchers will eventually not hit in the NL anymore. So, yeah, I mean, I like this idea if it's, if it gets us on the, on the path to a potential merger, cause I'm still in favor of one. I think it's a great idea. Yeah, the question really is, are Danny and the rock content with letting not letting, but, but having the CFL play. Then it moves to that in a couple of years, you know, we've had tremendous emails and comments this week about all the different malformations of things that can be played together, but it really, you know, it's certainly a nice visual thing to look at. Right. I think that helps your cause. If you wanna, if you wanna make a, a hypothetical season or whatever, I think having a nice branded colored blocked thing that you can send over helps. But, but it got a lot of publicity of this week. I mean, Jim, Jim says in his interview, he just wants to have the conversation going. And the more I would say, the more we are talking about the CFL is probably more than CFL has been talked about. You know, recently by a long shot. So I think that actually in America, Yeah. In America. Yeah. So. The next one is the merger media rights deal could be worth a hundred million dollars us dollars annually. I think that's, that's still underestimating that, but if you had the same Canadian markets in the same us markets, And you're talking about a pretty, pretty big league. Now at that point, of course, you'd have to expand the XFL. If you're talking like 10 teams, 10 teams, right? No, wait 19 nine Tuesday, you have to add one more team for the XFL. You're talking about a property that they can take that can touch 30 of the top 60 markets across both countries, all paraphrase and you could easily market and be asking for a hundred billion dollars a year. This, this killed me stories like this. Kill me. If you want to know what takes read off. It's we get done recording last week. This comes out. And then all these websites, other podcasts. Report, you know, TV deal worth a hundred million dollars. I go for it. It's it's a, it's an educated take. But it's still a take, right? It's still just speculation. It can be educated. It can be qualified speculation. It's still speculation. The CFL gets about half that now. I mean, I know it's Canadian. Everybody it's like 45 million. So to me, even when I saw the thing in the first place they go we'll combine thing could be worth a hundred million. It's like, yeah, no, F the CFL is worth half that already. So yeah, one plus one is equal to, like, I kind of. I kind of. Just shrugged it off because this came out like right last week when we were getting done recording. And I thought, well, I mean, that's not really saying anything. I figured the other XFL podcast might have a field day with this. Not as much. But what it continued. And I just saw a lot of posts about this and it's. It's fine. I mean, we're all trying to do with everybody, but it's not, it's not a report. It's speculation. It's qualified. But I do think that I would hope that it would be worse. More than that. I would hope that I would hope that if you're taking the XFL and the CFL. Putting them together. You're not getting what's equal to the two separately. I hope that them together. Would get an exponential number higher than what just each of them independently would be. And I mean, your, your point is that it's, it's a situation where it's like, okay, If you're just doubling. If you're just doubling the amount of money it's it's. I don't even know if that's a qualified take that the captain obvious take to me. Yeah, no, it what that looks like, because I got this sent to me and I'm like, this is not, but I know how the internet works. I know how all this. And I'm like, guys like this isn't news, it's not news that these two things together would be worth the same as them independently. Yeah. So I saw these things here is that, I guess these are tweets. Well, this is, this is a confusing, how I put it in here, then I forgot to put the link. So the story is came out again and again, it's like captain obvious stakes. Here they go. If this NFL doesn't play it this year, a merger is highly unlikely. It's like, yeah, no. Because there's not going to be a league to merge with. Yeah. I mean, it's going to be, you don't play football this year. It's over. Someone else can come in and buy everything up. And guess who that's going to be. Yeah. I mean, if the CFL doesn't play this year, I mean, that's like does Asher priority, is that yeah, the CFL's top priorities should be, I think this was an article from three down nation. Please forgive me if I'm wrong. It says the CFL stoppers should be returned to play because it was a very serious in general concerns about the league's ability to survive. If it's forced to cancel a second straight campaign, it's like, again, It didn't obviously. Does it continue? Like it's probably not gonna continue. I wish we get cost down here sometimes. I'm not going to do this week because we don't have Robert Turbin on, but by God, like some of this stuff that gets traction are really kills me. Are you starting to get the jitters? So I'm feeling. Crazy. A little warm in here. It's a little warm in here. I got this sugar and one I'm on an empty stomach right now. I'm feeling a little. I could be a little like energy drunk by the end of this book. You bring it. There we go. Maybe we'll actually pull Robert Turbin and swear on the podcast. I will, I will. Because I've sworn on the podcast. We've got a blank mind profanity out from time to time, but maybe we'll get up. Maybe we'll get a read on here. No. You can just go with the S bomb. Not a big deal. Yeah. A couple other tidbits here. I don't know how deep we get in to get all this stuff. They're working on trying to get the Canadian sports betting passed. It single game sports betting pass the justice committee unanimously, and it's going to progress to the final legislative step. And so we talked about this with rod a couple of weeks ago, where he thinks he thinks the CFL thinks that this is like the silver bullet save all for the CFL. And what rod says is yeah, but you actually have to play games that have people bet on them. So what do you think about the sports betting going on? It's it's it's, it's a great thing to get other people into the sport. It's going to grow the sport, but you have to have the sport. It's a choke point. Paul Heyman talked about it, you know, on his stone cold interviews. Like you have certain choke points. And this is irrelevant. If you don't have CFL games. This is completely irrelevant. It says a it's an industry worth $14 billion in Canada. Is that true? All right. Bill C two 18 known as a safe and regulated sports betting acts. It was introduced last year by SCAs khatoon grassroot member of parliament and noted rider. Fan Kevin Woah. As a common sense change to end an outdated restriction on single event. Sportsbet in an industry worth 14 billion in Canada. Are they. Well, how, how do they know that? That's the number that if there's a ban on it, is it a ban on CFL, single game events or is it bannock? All singles. I think it's banned on, on all. I don't think you can bet on single games in Canada right now. Well, then how do you come up with the money? The 14 billion. Are you betting on an entire season then? Is that because it's not single game? It's an entire season like. Is that what we're doing? This is also three down nation that ran the media deal is like the reported thing. So I do. You know, I liked them. They, they, they tag me in a lot of stories. So I'm going to give you a spoiler alert. If you're going to tag me three down nation. Finally follow me back on Twitter. But like all the rides and stuff. You take XFL, Mark and a lot of stuff. So I would really appreciate kind of some fall backs and maybe like, Hey, come on our podcast or stuff like that. If you're going to be taking this spoiler alert read is the King of context. Please provide more. Yeah. So Farhan lodgey with TSN. I've been talking with him about wanting to come on the podcast. We're we're talking with their PR people. He thinks that there's going to be a certain level of sacrifice is going to be required by everybody for a full CFL season. And he has a quote here. Do you want to look at that? Their message to me was they're going to go to every stakeholder as they try to put the puzzle together on how they find, how they can financially make this work, knowing they're not expecting any government money to play without fans. And then he's also say w. What's it worth to you? What's it worth to make it happen? This goes back to like, you know, the CFL pick out last time. I think I have another story down here about how this there. They've already talked about pay cuts. You know, across the board and things like that. And so it does seem like one of those, like, we all need to kind of come together to, to push through it and it just kind of depends. I, if the people are motivated, we talked last week about CFL players retiring, worrying about the season starting. I mean, that's definitely an issue that that is going to arise here. Totally agree. And I, you know, I think that's, that's a sacrifice on behalf of the fans too. They have to realize that. While we're not knocking their game. We think it's a great game where we're, we're catching up on it, where we're getting a lot of the rules were understood, standing in a lot better. Excuse me. There are sacrifices that need to be made on the fan side too. I think, I think that's, that's it relieves be underscored here. Stop coming at us on Twitter. I, this is it. I have the story here. I found that they, he, he far, far hung also reported. The CFL execs and staff have accepted $6.5 million in pay cuts. 215 jobs eliminated since the pandemic began. And that was a debate last week with CFL players being asked to take further pay cuts. This is a quote I spent the last week checking out what cuts are still in place for team personnel is across the league. Virtually every team that rollback salaries a year ago still has those in place. According to league sources, since the pandemic hit pay cuts, totally in 6.5 million had been accepted. That includes office and football ops for the nine teams as well as the league office. So, cause that was some criticism last week we had and others have had is, you know, the players. Yes. Th th the staff, the ones that have not been laid off have also worked the last year. So even if it's less money, they still have had more money than the CFL players that have not been paying. But what a big blue bombers president and CEO, Wade Miller has some good news for football fans. Is it? Oh, that's not the same thing. Wade Miller says. Hopefully. Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself here. It's I'm blaming the Zola. Yeah. Exactly how many fans will be permitted to attend games. The blue bombers. Putting the finishing touches on a plants. Those fans. In 2021 and Miller says, hopefully we can scale it up. As the season goes on. It's about doing what's right. And working with public health. Both provincially and federally. Just got to get some vaccines going guys. Yeah. I mean, they're, we're gonna plant, I think it's good. I mean, I don't know to me, it's a little scary. If, if I've, if I'm CFL people and I've watched the NFL for the last year, Progressed to allowing fans in the games by the end of the season. And now they're still working on their plan. You have them saying, like, we've seen every other league now do this. Like, how are we still developing this? And we're, you know, a month from the draft. I think it, and I, and I, and I'm not trying to be like critical, but I have to be critical at the same time. Not trying to be like a hater. But either the federal government candidate. Is not doing a great of as great of a job. As we are down here and that's not, I'm not trying to, like, that's not opinion, like it's clear, we're getting our cases down and, and Canada is not. And that lies on vaccines. That's that? That that and underscores the point. There's not that many vaccines in Canada, as opposed there are here where we're getting close to getting 200 million people vaccinated, 200 million doses, I should say. Out within the next 30 days. So it's like, we. Have this under control. And I think that partnership where we're starting to send vaccines up there is going to help Canada. And help the CFL too, because I think that's the key to all this is getting this under control. Underscore. Are you saying that, that you, the Americans and Canadians could work together on one unified goal and come out better because of it at the end, what an effing concept. That would be one, an effing concept. That would be right. That's crazy. And then the other thing. Ontario sports minister. At least McClard right. Did I. Well, I see they have their Twitter handles as the opposite of their name. Yeah, Lisa, Lisa McCloud. Yeah. Lisa McCloud. If the CFL can slay, it feels like a return to play. She is optimistic. She says they have proposals and I believe the health table right now. We've made provisions for the professional sports in the past. So I can see if we get to a stage where they can safely return to play. I can be optimistic. She's talks about this and, and Jim, doesn't our interview. I'm very partial to the grey cup. I think it exemplifies what this ministry is. Its heritage sport, tourism, and culture. And that's something that we are looking at. And I didn't know. That's great. I think. Oh, like we said in the past. The CFL has the legacy that the exit felt needs in a really positive way. And I do mean that in every way across the board, that I think that preserving that culture and that history and turning it into a thing I think is, is a phenomenal idea and something that I'm very much. I don't think really any. XFL fan it's like your culture and your history, whatever. We're all going to be on board with like embracing your culture. I think that's, that's where, that's what, again. We just said, that's what the XFL needs. What do you. Do echo, just. My thing yesterday, I sat on, on Rod's show. Cause they were, he was asking me all about like, you know, what the XFL people think of all this and anyone that didn't listen to that or is listening here. You know, the XFL fans, we went through the mourning period back in March, April last year, you know, the league shattered and it went bankrupt. They canceled that. They hangs all this sort of stuff. So when the rock bought the lead, Danny and the rock bought the league in August. No one expected that no one expected, you know, any of this to come about. So it's like we are in house money now. Like there is no expectations of any kind I would say for most, eh, I mean, I don't want to speak for XFL fans, but I would say the majority of everyone I've heard being in this community for the last, you know, year now. We're just excited for whatever. And so you're not gonna find a lot of pushback from most, if not all XFL fans about this. Cause we're no one expected this at all, you know, certainly a year ago. And even in August, you know, with all that, like XFL CFL stuff, like. I thought we'd be lucky if we got, you know, we were talking about doing the bubble season back in February. I mean, who would have thought that we would've got to this point now? Completely agree with that being said, we're gonna take a commercial break. I'm going to bring Jim Molan on. And discuss everything. Canadian football with him. We'll be right back. Well, and Connor too. Aye. Aye. Put Connor down. Oh, okay. That's perfect. So perfect. Yeah, that's great. A lot of things to process there from Jim. I, I wanted to do this after, you know, like. We're recording the bulk of the show now. And I wanted to kind of take some time to process my thoughts, what Jim said, then we'll take another quick commercial break because of course there's going to be a little bit long of an episode. But Jim is explaining things to me that I kind of didn't have context and kind of didn't have understanding for, in terms of how the Canadian football system is structured. And now it makes more sense to me. Why. Canadians are so protective. That being said, I think there's a way to preserve that system. And merge. And I think that, that that's definitely. That needs to be the first thing that needs to be one of the first things that's discussed is how do we keep the quote unquote Academy system as I'm going to call it in place to make sure that you know, that everything doesn't fall in terms of Canadian football altogether. And now that I have this information, you know, I'm going, you. Prior to this week, I'm going into the line going. Okay. Let's just merge and we'll figure out everything. No. There are some other hurdles now that I've, I now realize we have to merge. So. Kudos to Jim for schooling me a little bit there. I appreciate the additional info. And while I still am in favor of a merger, I think that that, that is key that we need to. Preserve that, that kind of system. And maybe develop our own. That's a thought. Yeah. Talking with Jim and hearing him talk about the infrastructure up there. I do, you know, well, first off, I mean, I think it's clear, we've talked about this before, and I've talked with Mike Mitchell about this offline, you know, the likelihood of a 20, 22 XFL season. Is very low, right? There's just, there's so much to do. And if this were to happen, I just, it is one of those things. Is this too big of a conversation, right? Is this too big of a thing when you have something? Like Jim said that so integral to the high school and the college in the, in the junior leagues and the junior colleges and all this kind of stuff. And to up and that. You know, Or I think. Ideally, you know, Run them apart and then, you know, move to this and have it be a 10-year plan. Right. Or whatever. But I worry about that where it's, it's going to be one of those things where like it's too far down the line. If XFL does not come back, you know, until 20, 23. Which it looks likely. I mean, that's, it's just a long time. You get a lot of, there's a lot of things working against you for this. I think the benefit is going to be better, but I do think there's a tremendous amount of. You know, uphill, whatever that both sides. I mean, Across the board. I think it's, I could not. Imagine being in these conversations and trying to figure this out. Look. I mean, if it, if it took like 19 years between XFL 1.0 and 2.0 and people were more excited when 2.0 hit. Especially in St. Louis and Seattle. If we have a three-year break in between. 2.0 And 2.1 or 2.5 or whatever we're gonna call it. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. We don't have to wait another 19 years for it. So I don't think it's a bad thing. But I didn't do it. We do a weekly XFL podcast in the last 19 years. That's what I'm worried about. I don't care. I mean, screw Canada. It's screw America. Like. Screw everybody. We got, we got to have content every week. I that's where I'm at. My head's at. Completely agree. We're going to take a quick commercial break, come back and talk about some NFL stuff. And then we're going to put Connor in later. Yeah. Okay. Sorry, just flows better. That's fine. I don't care. I just wanted to make sure we didn't. Yeah. All right. We're back. Paying paying a lot of bills these days. With our super long. Episodes that Reed is putting together. My eyes are blinking very quickly because of the zone. So into my body right now. It is a healthy warrior energy drink. So there's that. Yes. I feel like. I'll be warrior today while we're going to get into. I feel like I get my run through a wall right now. With everything. Coursing through my veins. What's interesting is like I had my. I have a prescription for Adderall. So that combined was though is making me feel really like focused and. I'm digging it. I'm going to need coffee today. It's my bear in the routine. So this is the NFL stuff that, that relates. And then we have a little bit more accent. All right. CFL, XFL. We're going to talk to Connor here, coming up. We got it. We'll get through this. Sorry man. There's a lot of stuff. NFL is expecting fans in 2021. Obviously. Obviously, I mean, Dan's full stance, full stadium. I don't know about that. That's where I get. Roger Goodell said this week. Roger. You're not, you're not, you know, you don't specialize in epidemics. Roger, you can't really, the virus is going to make its own plans. Roger, I'm going to let you know that right now. The virus can make its own plants. You think we should get shot out your sink? Go back on. Why not. So big, big news. Remember back when we were there, the only thing we thought about was like the XFL launching and how many weeks the NFL was going to go on so that we could be just the right the week after the super bowl. Remember with that, remember? And that was our big debate. Well now the NFL, I pushed the 17 games, which I really hate. I liked the idea of eventually doing the international game, but I hate the. I hate that you can't be an eight and eight team anymore. And I hate that it's not eight home games and hate. Eight away games. And I hate that. Like it's so perfectly scheduled now where you play. You play everyone in your division twice. You play. If you finished first in your division, you play. You know, the number one teams in each division. And then you play like one division. The other three teams. Everything is so perfectly scheduled in terms of matrix. It's like throwing off my OCD. To add a random game with a random team. You, you know, Maybe that's an inner, maybe that's a game. That's like a rivalry game where like, if you, if. For example, if the Raiders don't play San Fran. That year, even though the Raiders no longer in Oakland. Maybe it's a yearly Oakland San Fran game now, and that's done in Mexico cause it's clearly internationally. Inspired is that you do that Raiders 49ers game in Mexico. Cause there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of fans in Mexico of those teams of the Cowboys, of course. So maybe that's that's the that's the play is that you make that. A normal rivalry game where it's like two teams that necessarily don't play each other every year. And if it was on those, if it's on those years in which. Like San Fran and Las Vegas play, then you do two different, do you do two games? Against those two teams. Can you hear my neighbor outside trying to weed? Whack. I can a little bit. Okay. I'll close them. When they're here in a second. I, I liked the idea of building the brand. I had a, our building, the international brand, whether our listeners too, they messaged me and they said, Hey, you know, with the NFL doing the CFA or doing the Canadian international game, right. Are they looking at what Danny and the rocker thinking, right. We're expanding. And yeah, so I like the idea of that doing eight and eight and then one game as an international game. But in the meantime, having to be now a nine and seven season or whatever sounds terrible, I'm going to close the windows so damn for a second. Seven. I think if you're talking about. No games. 10 And seven. Nine and eight. It's throwing my OCD off and yeah, I don't. Just keep it at 16. What's the problem with doing a regular season game somewhere else besides like. I don't know, but I know what they're. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do the man's out. Yeah. Okay. I see. I see where you're going with that. I see we're going with that. You were in the mailbag, the mailbag this week about the possibility of a XFL merger and then the cosmetic field modifications. Done to more closely line with the CFL game. The XFL would need to do. Yeah, friend of the show, Greg parks, he's going to come on. He covers. Wrestling for PW torch. And then he covers XFL news. And now CFL news for XFL board. He always posts his mailbags like, Hey, do you have any questions from the mailbag on? I always tweet. I go. Why are the XFL rules superior to the CFL rules, please discuss. And he's always like, you're trying to get me in trouble. So I said, all right, this week, I'll write your real. So I wrote it in the real question and I said, what are the realistic possibilities that the accident fell? Do. Yeah, the cosmetic stuff, right? Because we're talking like three downs emotion, like, are we building bigger fields? Are we building smaller fields? Are we moving goalposts? All those things. So Greg answered me, XFL board.com. They do these. It's great. If you, if you want. Kind of that long form written word, people write in questions and stuff. I think it's great. But he says that. He would want. The CFL. In order to get CFL fans on board, I would think the CFL would want to push to have as many rules going forward in the merger. Yeah. Cause it's all about the CFL FAS. No, I'm kidding. But it's not. You know, it's like a relationship, right? Like I, you know, like my wife, Dorothy, my life, like it's, it's, it's mutual. Presumably. Presumably it's neutral. So anyway. And sometimes one party has to sacrifice a lot more than the other party. That's the way that's the way marriage is work. That's the way these kinds of mergers work. And while, I mean, I I'm going to keep sounding like a broken record. I love the CFL style of play. I think. Americans that were, that would be exposed to. Like, wow. This is very, this is fun. This is fun. And, you know, And, and, and opening up to where it's like, not just the play on the field, but, you know, we talked to Jim about getting out in the community and just how, remember how the XFL used to like go and interview players on the sideline while things were going on, that kind of stuff. And just opening up. The aspect of. Being personalities on top of being football players and, and not necessarily being corporately structured. I like all these ideas. And I think, you know, the CFL rules definitely tend to lean and lend themselves to that kind of fun league. Well, and I think too, I think if you can get CFL games more accessible in the States, I think that's the thing right now is just like, okay, am I going to watch the thing on VPN? I got to watch a YouTube highlights. Like if it was on like an Fs one or Fs. For that, all the people that watch all the spring league stuff that we covered in the fan controlled football, like. I think people would watch it. I think just even just having that, even just having CFL games more readily accessible for NFL fans, I don't understand, I guess why that isn't a thing already, because like, These sports networks are so like deprived of, of, it feels like content sometimes, especially in the last year with things, you know, Be canceled or whatever, like. That you don't just have a channel that you can put like CFO games on. I think that's remarkable. That that yeah. Last note, we talked last week about the XFL sports betting. Now you can vote or not voting betting. You can bet if the XFL will play, will emerge happen and how many games the CFL will play. This is like actual betting. If you've got like sports betting.com. Yeah. So there you go. If you are, you know, XFL, Jim, if you're listening and you want to get your, your vetting fix on, there you go. There you go. All right, we're gonna. Take another break. Connor's coming up next and we'll talk to him about his views. On a, the potential of a merger. I just start new clips every single time. Now it's easier for me. Great do this is. I'm like this I'm like, Jesus Christ. What is going on there? What did you do? We'll get there. There it. This is easy stuff now. Yep. And we're back. We might have to take one more commercial break. I'm sorry about that read, but you packed the show jam packed as you always like to say. I assist sitting there. We were in the commercial. I go. We know all this, where did all this stuff come from this week? It's cliche about this isn't this what happens when I, like, I put the show together a couple of days ago and then kind of forgot them. Like, what are we. Why are we talking about here? So we're done with CFL, run the XFL, and then we've got, I got a little spring league and then we've got a little fan control to it. It's not that crazy. Still going up. Vince and Oliver, the, that the lawsuit is still going on to, this was last Friday. Our attorneys for McMahon filed a 47 page document. They portrayed the luck as attempting to mislead us district. Judge Victor Bolden on key aspects of the lawsuit. The case about whether McMann illegally fired luck for cause. Which is, you know, extinguished Alpha's obligation to pay the remainder of his five-year $35 million employment contract. And whether McMahon's personal guarantee, the alpha would pay luck is enforceable. Hmm. I mean. You know, like. All of our luck had turned around and followed the same kind of thing. Right back on Vince. He was like, the motion was also filed by Lux legal team, asking the court. That basically they want a bunch of emails that speak to the matter at hand, but McMahon's team says that these emails contain privileged information and they're not eligible to be part of the discovery, which is just stupid, because if it's like. That's all it should all be open, right? Like once you're suing. All that stuff open. It's open. It's open season. I don't. This is, this is. They're going to get these emails. Yeah. Anyway, it's continuing, you know, remember back when we thought that this lawsuit had to do. XFL delay, like all these things that we used to talk about. I go, yeah, I think the overlock thing, whatever. But yeah. Anyway, it's still heating up their, their CHRO. Still squabbling. God, you wonder like the core cost of this every week going in and to think like, You know, if luck loses, I'd be so p****d. You're going to need a job and maybe he's maybe we got the job for him coming up. We're going to Ooh, Cielo doing there. Yeah, he's going ahead. I was going to say. Speaking of the legal stuff. The per Josh Davis giving me he's keeping an eye on this. They trademark all the Patriots man stuff and all that stuff was extended by another 30 days. So I like we were down with the extensions were still extended. Remember. We thought that the logo lawsuit, I know I've said this before. Remember if we thought that was like, Oh, they're holding up the delay of the season because of the logos. No. I like settled this. Is it that much of a sticking point where it needs to be extended, like 18 times, just settle it. Chase logo. I figured you would get a kick out of this. The Houston Astros are opposing the roughnecks. I guess I didn't realize this was the thing. Apparently the roughnecks, how to trademark slogan. That was for the H. That I literally had to Google and found one XFL usher, like a knockoff, one that like had that. Thing, right. I mean, cause like the dragons was like hashtag breathing, fire, I guess it was like for the age, but the Houston Astros. And I know you are fans of the Astros. I hate the Astros. Almost swore there. Does that. Almost swore there. I hate the Astros. Hey Astros. Focus on the fact that you have the world's worst public relations problem right now. Like people are still going to boo you at ballparks. Focus on that. Focus on extending Carlos Correa, because if you don't. Eh, you're gonna, you guys will lose all your bandwagon fans. You've got over the last few years. Yeah. I said it. Like focus on those things. Don't focus on this for the age. I don't even know if that's an actual shirt that the rough necks were selling. So what's the big deal. Yeah. I felt like one weird trademark man is like, For the age, I was like, what is this? That's you know, is that Houston? Say that for the H yeah. They were saying that for the age. I think it was last year. They were saying that too, like for the age. A couple other lawsuits. The software company take two interactive. They do games. I can't remember what, like video games. They are. The rockstar, they do a grand theft. They do they do with the rockstar games? They're opposing the, our trademark for the roughnecks, the renegades, you mean. Sorry. What's what's the side-by-side comparison here. They're they're not close. There's also a Keystone baseball professional baseball club. That is redundant. How I wrote that as opposed to name logo. For the Dallas. Renegades as well. So basically like all these weird little lawsuits are like coming out of the woodwork and it's really weird that we went a whole year. It's very odd and like the Keystone baseball professional baseball club, like, what is this? Well, they own it. I guess they own a minor league team. The Hudson Valley renegades. I'm looking at the. Yep. Hudson Valley renegades. Let's see what there are. Looks like. Or the logo doesn't look anything similar. It's I think it's like more, I think it's more the name. What. D O R as Kentucky gonna Sue Arizona because they want to be called the Wildcats. Is that the LA wild cat? I forgot. We're going to be sued by Arizona, Kentucky, Villanova, all the teams. We were state all the teams that say they're wild. Cats are going to suit. What this is stupid. I know. Well, it's just, it's really weird. It's weird that all these coming out, you know, maybe the Carolina Panthers are going to SU Seattle prep where I went to high school. We were the Panthers. Yeah. Maybe. Maybe it may be Arizona. State's gonna Sue Sunnyside because they're the blue devils and their sun devils. And it's there. You know, it's giving a bad record reputation on devils altogether. I don't know. Yeah. Fear ASU. You have problems besides the Sunnyside blue devils, giving your school a bad reputation. On the PAC 12, speaking of Arizona state. Wow. Nice little segue there. You talking about this? Oh yeah. We're going to talk about a potential new commissioner. Jean Smith. From the Ohio state university. I have to say a V in there. The 80, there is being considered as a potential replacement for crappy Larry Scott. Yeah. I said it. Dan redneck. Kovich. Hopefully I got that right. Clemson. Also being considered a response. Potential replacement. And here we go. I'll as here we go, all over luck, former NCAA, senior administrator. And IGA, you, you, you know, his resume. Yeah. It was resume. His son went to school in the PAC 12. So he's definitely got a, probably a passion for it. PAC 12 was a projected to have a replacement for Larry Scott. By late April. And let me just say this. Let me just say this. We're going to get [unknown]. Hi, Larry. Don't let the door hit you. Where the good Lord split you get outta here. I can't stand him. I'm sorry. Can't stand them. Listener max. Things that all of our has got a good shot at this with a degree in the industry and what he's done with the XFL and everything. So good for him. I mean, he's shoot, these needs a job now. He's got all these legal bills. Let's get up there. So I think all of our luck is the choice. If it's, if, if he wants a job, you give it to them. Tomorrow. There's no reason why you don't bring him in. A spring league, running trials from the university of Houston. Yeah. So a couple of, a couple of spring league things. He threw me for a loop there. I thought we were going to go to a break. I. I haven't been mapped out. There we go. A couple of things. Brian Scott. Not Brian Scott, Brian. Scott's my friend. I was doing. We knew him last time. MVP of the spring league, Brian Woods, CEO of the spring league is coming on next Thursday. We just need to figure out his schedule and your work schedule. Brian Woods is going to come on. So I was talking to Vince, all football scouting report about this. What that tells me it. Brian Woods is coming on next week, Thursday. That means news about the spring league this year is happening between now and Thursday, because Brian is not coming on the XFL Mark as, as big as we've gotten in the last year. If, if like Fox isn't talking first, right? So that's just Mike. I don't know anything. Ryan has been very tight lipped, but my assumption would be Brian Woods is coming on the show next Thursday to air Friday. That that means news is coming next week about what the spring league is doing. They are currently at a currently. Yesterday, ran tryouts from the university of Houston or this week. I can't remember whatever. But anyway. So just if you're a spring league fan, if you want some more football stuff, I, that is, that's what that tells me. The other news. Matthew Sexton. He used a standout from the spring league. He got signed to the Steelers. So hell yeah, Matthew that's awesome. Good to hear. I think the Zelle is like getting to you like, hell yeah. Matthew, like. Higher than I've never experienced before read. I love it. That's awesome. The whole thing with the spring league, they did all the CFL signings that people that were already in the CFL that went back. We talked about that before. I think this is great to have a real guy, Matt mangles, going to the CFL. That's another spring league win. When this came out yesterday, Matt mango tweet it. You guys, you know, all these people chap crap talk, crap. This is the Zola. People talk crap about the spring Lake. And this is exactly right. I mean to get Matthew. Who knows if he ever, where they got that shot, he had like two punt returns for touchdowns standout guy. He was, you know, killed it the whole time. And here you go, he signed it. The Steelers, it works. Fan controlled football notes here real quick. You, you had a plug for someone's podcast. Yeah, I was on Vince. If you, if you want an end of the season, good Roundup. I was on Vince Quinn's FCF owner's box podcast. That would've been on Monday. I came out Tuesday. It had Josie from the ASIS wild podcasts. It. Josh Davis from news hub and finger to a football. It had me, it had Vince, it had Andrew Pettit and then it had Jack from FCF news. He covers like he does the words really does the Lord's work cover and all the FCS stuff. And so we were all on there. So if you are a fan. Fair. Football really good long hour and like 10 minute discussion about the end of the season. I wasn't as negative as I could have been. It was a really good discussion. And so anyway, I just shout out to vans for having me on, and I appreciate that. So I don't want to irritate Patrick deans too much more at. At us, I, January 14th. So, and I'm a Jersey, that's all I'm going to say. Ah, and then the final note for any of the show, journey, German journey. Yeah. He has a tryout today, as of recording with a. I was at university of Minnesota gophers. So he's having to like, kind of like an exhibition for Scouts. He's he's doing like. He's part of the pro day there. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. So. Good luck journey for them to show God bless him. And anyway, so journey's doing that. I hope we get some morphine because that's the whole point of these leagues. You know, spring league, fan control, whatever it's you want these players to move on? I don't think you're going to get, and we talked about this on the fingernail football podcast. Like, are you going to have lifers and fan. Hold football. Are they going to bring people back? I think if you're EMF, you're going in those leagues to play. I think you are wanting to move on to other op opportunities who knows, maybe they're going to start paying players more money. You know, three 50 to 700 a week is not a good salary. I don't think forefinger to a football. So anyway, good luck to journey. That's true. All right. Final commercial break, come back and we'll finish up with our garbage segment and the thing you've been waiting for our review. Of Zola energy drink. And we're back. I'm like buzzing. It was like, I don't want it. Like, I, you know, like this is the garbage segment, but I kind of, you know, one of you speak, you speak again on the CFL thing. I think, you know, we've, we've had our eyes open to a lot of things right now. And of course, Connor brought up some very interesting things about how the gaming world is kind of getting integrated with. They were trying to integrate the gaming world into it. I want a CFL football game on my PS five. That's what I want. I want to play Canadian football rules football on my gaming system. I brain talked about that. Braden talked on, I think on Twitter, he posted about how, you know, the CFL needs streaming. He needed to have some way that you can watch the games. You know, if you're not. Right here. Alive, if you're watching them after the fact. And then also having the video game. Braden talked about that too. No idea. So I added this to the document last minute. Ernesto Lacayo front of the show. Oh, hooks to the show. Goes to the show one time. Was a, was a place kicking and. I don't know if you saw this tweet. I posted it in the, in the doc. And he says, laces are never a problem. And he's kicking. The ball with the laces in which of course reminds me of. Good to see somebody who doesn't. Buckle under the pressure. I'm not gonna play the whole club. I know everyone knows. Yeah. The whole movie was predicated right on the fact that they missed the field goal. Cause the laces were yes. So basically what we're saying is that the Miami dolphins would have won the Superbowl that year in that fictional year. If they had. No look high. Okay. That's the, okay. Let's see if he is or that's. If you're listening to Steve in the show, I want you to give me a, I don't want you to give me a ping if you, if you, if you've made it to this story in the show. Kick to kick the ball with laces in. I had, I got so high on Zilla. I forgot to play my clip from Rob Peterson show. Can I play that real quick and the grabbers technique? And then we'll talk about Zoe. This is we're in crazy today. Sorry. And then as I'm like, I'm really tripping right now on the SOA stuff. This was me on rod show this week, check it out. It's on his YouTube. I pirated it on our YouTube. I think they said that was okay. So anyway, check it out. And this is his question to me. What's your last word? For Canadian football fans, as we sit here today, as of today, My biggest thing, I'm all about solutions, right? Like I said, we didn't know that we were ever. Chance again and all I see, you know, third down nation, just take this and the thing with all the insider comments earlier today. And it's, you know, it's, naysaying the XFL it's NACEE and the rock it's NACEE and Danny it's NACEE and all this stuff. That's fine. But I want a solution then, because clearly the path that we're on for either league. Isn't great. And so I, I'm a can-do kind of guy. And so at this point, I want to hear solutions. I don't want to hear excuses and criticisms. Cause that's clearly not gotten the CFL to a good position now, and it's not gonna, you know, benefit anybody moving forward in the future. There you go. I hit you up immediately after it all went down, I was like, I love what you said about. Give me some solutions we're into solutions. How are you going to solve the, the, the debt? How are you going to solve the money problems? Oh, you just going to hope that it goes away. It's going to vanish. It's not the way it works. So, yeah, I definitely had to compliment you. I called you immediately after I was done listening to that and had nothing but good things to say about your, your appearance. When Paula texts and goes, can I give you a call? It's like, it's like mom or dad call him like, You're going to be really good or really bad. I hate talking on the phones and it's something that I've had to do a lot of lately with everything going on with, you know, of course the new mellow Manet show coming. To the network. We're going to be running an audio version of that show on Monday. Be tune tune in for that. We're going to be streaming that live on YouTube, streaming it live. Good stuff going on. While the work gave this Ernesto clip on. So I will add it to the show. I'll try that. I'll try to do a screen record. And now that here we go. It's the moment of truth. I am. Mine is empty. Is yours empty? No. Well, you know how I mean, half the, I drank the whole thing. What do you think of. The. Zilla drink. I'm trying to find out what they put in this thing. To make it sweet. I'm looking. Well, mine has sugar. Yours has something else in it. Yeah. Mine has chemicals that are probably going to give me cancer in like five minutes. Well, Can I be honest. Yeah. To be honest, this is, this is our view. If you've made it to this point in the show, Here we go. Like. Here. Let me take one more drink just to kind of get that. Get my palette. That's fine. My. I might take a, be very simple when we're done with this. Okay. Want me to give my first. Yeah. Here we are like, we're like a caffeine drunk right now. I mean. Adderall and Zola apparently is the breakfast of champions. It was crazy. I'm saying. I hate to say this, but. It tastes like sweet berries. Like the fake sugar and diet Coke. Mixed with a little bit of the water that you get when you wash your dog. Wow. Yeah. I don't know if it's a sugar free version, but. It's just not doing it for me. And I, you know, I, I went online because you were supposed to ship something to me that got. Missing somewhere. I emailed the Zoe people. I said where where's that? So I went online and I was looking around and I was like, I can't drink this. All I could see was pineapple coconut. And of course, I'm allergic to coconut. I mean, I'm Puerto Rican. I'm allergic to coconuts, most ironic allergy of all time. But it's true. And so I got the super Berry. Zero sugar and I'm no, I don't know if it's just the zero sugar formula the way it's. It's just. It's not bad. I mean, there's just aftertaste, like. Let's say it's like dog water, kind of sorta. That's hard. I was going to say, did the [unknown]. That was Barry's. Yeah. Super troopers. Yeah. Yeah. Here's my take I'm like jittery. If you have ever had a monster energy drink. It's exactly what tastes like. Now maybe it's maybe it's it's it's like, you know, healthy warrior, right? It's got all this other stuff in it. I beat the original. You know, I can't speak to the blueberry, but if you, if you've had a, I used to live on, I used to drink four of these. Sugar-free monster today. I was insane. It was like, don't do that. But if you've ever. I've drank it a lot of monster energy in my life. If you've ever had a monster. I'm not saying this isn't going to be more successful or bigger with the rock and all that, but this is exactly what that tastes like. I don't know, man, maybe, maybe I'm being a little too harsh, but. I think it's the smell that's what's throwing me off. It's the smell of it. It's not necessarily the taste. It doesn't smell good. And normally when you like open up a mantra, like, Oh, it smells kind of refreshing this, th this has a bad smell to it. And that's, what's kind of throwing me off. Like, it doesn't necessarily taste like dog water. I should say that. It smells like it though. And I don't. It shouldn't smell like that. This smells like monster. This smells like blue monster. If you've ever smelled blue monster. I've G I can't tell you how much monster I've drank in my life. This is literally the exact same thing. This is literally the monster formula in a, in a different camp. I wish I were lucky as you. It just smells like. Yeah. That's just not, that's a bad smell. It's not very apt. It throws your, it throws your taste buds off. The best part of this is like, I can actually taste it. I know I don't have COVID. So thanks thankfully for that. I got my second shot on the 16th. That's good. I will be supposedly eligible on that day. Anyway, I was checking my tweets just to make sure there wasn't anything breaking. And I have like eight messages from the new sub chat, but it doesn't look like there's any. Any breaking news at this point. So we'll try to get that Pfizer, if you can read. Trying to get the advisor. This living so. Yep. All right. Another jam packed show for y'all. And. Thanks for listening. Thanks for sitting through all of this and our Zoe energy review too. I'm I'm. If any, were you either of. You stayed through til the end for the zone energy. I mean, I guess it's better than opening playing cards on a podcast trading cards. Trading cards, playing cards, trading cards, whatever. It's all opening cards. Okay. Yeah, thanks everyone. And tremendous support, please subscribe. And yeah, we're at like we've added we're at eight. Eight 17. That was just added another one. So thank you very much, Jean. We're almost close to that 1000 Mark that would get us. That'll get us one of the benchmarks. The other one is the. Public viewable hours. So we appreciate everyone just staying here and watching this entire thing. As well as subscribing and of course. I got the giveaway coming up probably next week. Maybe if things go in. We could do the giveaway next week. I would be through. Just leave it on in the background. Like if you've made it this far, just. Add the playlist and just let it go in the background. Help, help give you hours. You appreciate it all.

Episode 33 - The XFCFL?

Guess who's back. As soon as back, back, back, back. Again, welcome back, Paul, how are you doing? I'm I'm still like I've got two more. Little things I got to get done, but I'm going to try to schedule them around to where I don't have to stop by what I want to think. Or Nesta did a great job guest hosting. Things really got moving. Initially, there was a little bit of sputtering, but I mean, I think once you guys got comfortable, Things move smoothly. And I appreciate him stepping in and. And helping out. I also want to apologize to you on the podcast here. I feel like it was such a, such a big, big jerk. So Reed sent me a bladed kiss, Christmas gift. And he texted me. He's like, you got to open it to the podcast. So yesterday, a blank box arrives. I've been ordering a lot of stuff for the mellow. [Unknown] show that's coming, you know, soon. And I thought maybe it was just something that I ordered apart for that. And it ended up being the actual thing that we've got me, which of course. Yeah, cause it's overexposed a little bit. It's this job, it's a SpongeBob mocking me and I was so excited. I found out online. Paul always makes fun of me for my tweet game. And I found that was perfect. Yeah. And I ruined the whole surprise. I feel like a jerk and. Basically next time. I'm going to, like, whenever I get a box that shows up at my door and I haven't got the boxes, Zoe yet. I'm wondering, I'm wondering if someone might've picked that up. So that was going to be my first. First off. Welcome everybody. Thank you all so much for coming. So Paul last week, you know, Anessa came on and I said, we needed to get subscribers. And, and that, that, you know, I had joked that when all this XFL news would come on, did we might have to expand the show, got it. Two days a week, all these other things. And I know that that's a long shot. I know. That's an alarm. But I said the only way would even be conceivably possible is if we added more subscribers and letting you know, we added like 250 subscribers. So I think people are liking, I'm not saying we're doing, but people are liking what we are doing. Welcome. All of our. Canadian fans for up North. A tremendous show that I've tried to put together today. I'm very excited, but thank you all for subscribing XFL show.com/youtube. If you like what we're doing, I have. I put Paul and I just got done conducting three wonderful interviews. We're going to have Dave Campbell on. He covers the Edmonton. A football team up there. We've got Matt mangle on. He is a friend of the show kicker from the spring league. He got signed to the alphabets. And then we have Braden who runs the CFL Reddit community. So what I tried to do is we've got, you know, the media covered, we've got a player, you know, whether this math think about the 20% pay, cut, all this kinds of stuff going on. And then what did the internet thinks? It just. A lot of work. Got put in today, Paul and I just got that undo, literally doing, you know, almost hour and a half where the interviews. So, thank you guys all so much, but please subscribe a tremendous, tremendous viewership and I, and subscriptions. So Paul, did you not get your Zella? I didn't. Well, I'll tell you this. So I've had friend of the show, max friend, does it shows Zach here's what we're going to do. I have my Zella. It's on Amazon now you don't have to do it or not. I'm giving you the option. I tried to order Paul [unknown]. The rock and Danny's energy drink. Next week on the show. We're I'm drinking Zola next week. So Zach max. Paul. Amazon it's on there right now. I got mine. We're doing it next week. So order ordering, if you got it. We're going to do it next week. It's on Amazon. They've got, they've got sugar-free. That'd be great for your, for your health conditions. Yeah, thank you for. Completely violating my hippo. You know, I just said. Discussing that. I've said it I've said it on numerous occasions that I'm type two diabetic. And that is what helps me get my first dose. The shot. Folks take it from me. If you can get Pfizer, get Pfizer. Madonna kicked my butt. Yeah, for at least a day, it was bad. Anyway, but yeah. Welcome back. Shout out to everyone. We have viewers from Ukraine, Russia, and Egypt this week. On the show, plus obviously candida healthy, probably 30%. Anyway. Thank you guys. All so much. And please continue. Commenting on the YouTube. I was going to read some of them on the shell. There's a million. I read and respond to all of them. So you can go back and verify people are, there's a whole healthy discussion about all this stuff. So. Thank you guys all so much. We're doing this for free. We're trying to get, you know, trying to get that monetization on YouTube. We're almost halfway now. I mean, who would have thought in a week that we would have been almost halfway to our goal? We're doing the giveaway. Paul's got a child. That's your single football. I've got, what's lots of old XFL show merge. We're going to do a whole thing. So any thoughts on that before we get moving, Paul? Yes. You can, if you're a subscriber. The podcast is boring you, or there's a part that you don't. Pretend that you like, kind of tune out on, just leave the YouTube. Link on and go do the dishes or something. Because there's two parts to this thing with monetization on YouTube. There's the subscriber count and there's the public hours watched count. So once you have those two things combined, Guess what. They monetize you. And I really want to get to that point where, you know, all of Reed's hard work is paying off. And yeah. We'll we'll we'll hopefully get there very soon. Yeah. We've got a great show today. I'm really excited. Zach was messaging me yesterday. When you got, I guess we got all the angles covered today. I'm really proud of the show that we've put together. Any interviews that we just did. So thank you all for our guests. I had a time for first. Taking the time to that. So the big news. That came out this week in terms of the CFL Iesha. We're going to leave with that, I guess. The CFL. Has delivered a proposal to the player's association, targeting an on-time start to the season and asking for a 20% pay cut. That would apply if no fans are in the stance. Yeah, this is rough. You know, we talked with Matt about this. The problem is. That you know, CFL players traditionally do not get paid nearly at the same level. You know, I think the average base salary is 65,000 for the season. You know, taking the 20% pay cut. They, they haven't been paid the last year. And that's a difference. I've seen a lot of people talk online about, okay, well, but the front office staff and whatever they're taking pay cuts to. And absolutely I get all of that and an ego it's terrible for everybody. But. From my understanding. And a lot of the management has still been paid the last year where the players have not. And so that's where I think you're taking a dip now where you didn't even have a paycheck. And I mean, what do you, you know, you've played professional. I mean, what do you, what do you think about this? I mean, I, I played like for, you know, But I, I think that like, It's hard to ask. A group of people that have already given up. A season of pay to give up even more. So, because. You know, at a certain point, like, They're not playing for free. Like they have to be paid. It's a job. That they work toward, even when they're not playing, like they're in the gym. Or like Matt mangle and, you know, Or nest or kicking, you know, and also in the gym. And working on their craft. Outside of when they're getting paid as well. So ask him to do 20% pay cut is, you know, they're kind of just really squeezing the players and putting it on them. And it's, it's going to be interesting to see. I think that, like now that there's a situation where the us is starting to send some vaccines up to Canada. That you're going to start seeing a lot more people. Become immunized. And that will bring your COVID rates down that will bring, you know, everything down to where we can get staff without fans back in the stands. And to that point, you know, Fans coming back in the stands. Maybe, you know, maybe they don't have to do such a drastic. Cut on pain. Yeah, I just, I saw comments today, even still about this and it just infuriates me talking. They're like, well, if you can't survive off of, you know, It's $65,000. You know, you can't survive off bad and you don't, I don't know what you're doing. And it's like, you know, we're, we're friends with these players, right? I mean, Matt came on the show, you know, But I would, you know, I talk with Matt, I sent him stuff like, you know, these are, these are people, you know, Ernesto came on last week. Took two hours of his time to come on. How's the show. You know, they're out kicking. Every day, every day, I see them online, working out and working out and working out. And so it's, it's not just the, you know, the, the six, however, You know, 20 to 23 weeks or whatever, the CFL it's, you know, all that time. I had the time and just the unknowing now. And I've got the soundbite here. I'm going to play in a second, but just, you know, You can't ask these players to, just to put their lives on hold. You know, we, we don't know if the season's going or what you're getting paid and it's like, these people are not getting other jobs. They're not working other jobs right now because they are trying to stay in peak or Nessa tight about that last week. The difficulties of trying to stay at peak physical condition to go out and play football. All the time is incredibly hard. It's incredibly hard. And I don't know how they do it. I mean, quite frankly. Yeah. I mean, you know, like, My, my, my situation is that I had Tommy John surgery. And for me to get, start getting back out there and getting going and throwing again. After my surgery. It was such a, it was such an uphill battle. So it's like you constantly have to work out if you're an athlete at this level. And it's, it's asking a lot. It's asking quite a bit and this, and you know, people saying that $65,000 is enough. No, it is not, no, it is not. I live in, you know, I know I've chosen to live in LA. And I, I could not make my life work on $65,000 here in LA. I couldn't imagine, you know, I used to make less than that in Seattle. And it was hard for me to live in Seattle. On, you know, Around, I would say two. Two thirds of that, somewhere in there. Anyway, point being is like, These players deserve to get paid their full amount. They deserve to get paid more for being honest, if we're being compelled way more. Way more. So that's, that's like the biggest, I think, drawn to this merger is that they'll be able to expand their footprint. And. Bring up those TV rights, bring up those player contracts and really start playing around with, with these players getting paid. Exactly what they're worth. Yeah. Cause the idea is that. Just to complete the story, they would pay the 20% pay cut, starting off the season with no fans. Cause obviously you wouldn't have the fans in to bolster the ticket revenues and everything to pay the teams. Because as we talked with rod Peterson on the podcast last week, you know, that the TV rights that the teams get just cover salaries. So like anything else, you know, is they need to compensate from, you know, the sponsorships and the ticket sales, all that stuff. So. You know, as fans would come back in there's formulas in place that does. You know that that 20% would ratchet down, right. You know, that they would be getting paid more full, but it's not a wonderful situation. Matt has comments about that. I'll encourage you to stick around a little bit later for his, for his take on that. I had a, this was Dave Naylor, a he's a TSN insider with the CFL. He was on last night talking about this. I'm going to hopefully hit play here, and this is going to work just fine on his thoughts about everything. And, and angry when you also, this is terrible audio quality, and it's not our fault. This is. Are blaming you. No, no, no, no. This is a horrendous audio quality. Do that headline 20% pay cut. But then when you stop and think about it and look at it and realize it's not necessarily a 20% pay cut across the season. That these are games that might be canceled altogether because the owners aren't going to open up the stage with no fans and that this is maybe an attempt to play games that otherwise wouldn't happen. That said, he said a lot of players have moved on and gotten jobs. They're they're very devoted to, and they're hesitant about leaving these for less money than they thought they were going to earn. And then the sort of uncertainty or worry that the rules could change again, once the season begins and this particular player said, you know, before he would sign off on 20% or not is a lot of questions about what happens. If there's an outbreak, what happens if games are canceled and can't be rescheduled, all kinds of things. I think players are very skiddish. And are very aware of the uncertainty and really this offer right now, I think has left as much uncertainty as it has answered about what may happen this season. So, yeah, I horrendous audio quality blamed TSM for that. Thoughts about that? Well, first and foremost, TSN you're the ESPN of, of Canada. Let's get it together. Chop, chop. I mean. I everything's valid. What are they going to move the goalpost for lack of a better term and, and say, okay, well, 20% wasn't enough. We need to cut you down 25%. You need to cut it down to 30%. Are vaccines. Aren't, aren't getting here as soon as possible. We need to catch it. Like, where do you draw the line? Yeah. Is there a sliding scale that. They'll start cutting it back even more. And that's a very valid concern. That's a valid concern. Yeah. So I, you know, that's kind of the main story right now. You know, Matt has thoughts about it. We're going to talk with him and Dave coming up. I wanted to also spend time here at the beginning of the shell, just as we are XFL. You know, fans on the podcast. You know, a lot of CFL, people are listening and I wanted to, you know, Paul and I lived through all this last year. And it's so funny now. I know. Would have thought, you know, sitting in Seattle, you. On that chilly February, watching the dragons leads to the renegades. That this would be part of this like larger narrative now of like merging or whatever with these leagues. You know, a lot of attention has been focused now on rightfully cell, I guess. The five weeks lash or the XFL, right? Paul. So you hear what I'm saying here? So, so I wanted to tell you just a little bit about everything going on at first and foremost. The XFL went bankrupt last year. Surely I believe because Vince McMahon was concerned about the Debbie, Debbie and, and Paul. And I have talked about this on the show. Paul D do you want to share some thoughts about why the XFL Dean does shutter last year, but why it went bankrupt? Why it went bankrupt. It was an act of God. For lack of a better term, you know, forest Missouri. You're like, this was, this was an act of God. This was a pandemic. And, and to that point, like at the same time, this is going on. You're in the you're in the midst of planning, a WrestleMania, like the biggest show of the year in the WWE. And now you're having to deal with that too. So all of a sudden now, Vince is being Vince is Vince is a workaholic, right? We've we've established that we've understood that Vince is now worrying about. I think the TV deal came up last year, too. During this time. There's so many variables that Vince is realizing that now all of a sudden. I need to spend adequate time with WWE again. That was my baby. That was my, that was what got me to the dance. I need to go back and focus on that full time. So some things might have gone by the wayside, the XFL. You know, we've talked about the Oliver luck situation. Maybe Vince was hoping that he would do more to help bolster that. But, you know, the WW got shut down. How they came back to being in a central business, you know, we've discussed that. We've questioned that. It's it's done. It's over with. I think that Vince just kind of needed to come back to where, what got her to the dance and that, that was, you know, focusing on fixing what was wrong with the WWE. And I mean, they're still not completely back. With everything that's going on. I mean, there's, there's in terms of storylines, they're getting better. The storylines are getting better in that aspect. But the day-to-day operations, you know, there's people switching up positions. I mean, how that. John Laurinaitis clown is back as head of talent relations. That's a bad look. And it's just like, you know, I, I think that like that when that whole thing started happening, when Vince. Realized that. Maybe his wrestling organization was falling apart. He had to step away from this XML thing. And that's that might've been, you know, Part of. Not the big picture, but a little sliver of. That on top of a, of a force majeure, like pandemic stuff. Yeah, I mean, Vince. You know, Vince on the WWE first and foremost, that, you know, obviously that's where he's made this money. Dairy that we eat is on, was on a billion dollar five-year TV deal with like five 50 to USA and then four 50 to five. Either or it's, it's a billion combined to produce raw and SmackDown every week. And when all this was going down with the XFL and COVID in everything that we had, he had nowhere to do their shows at all. Right. And, and they were trying to figure out like, Are we going to be taping best OBS? Or were you going to be rehearing or clips, you know? Cause WWE there. Their whole business is predicated on live original content every single week, 365 days a year. It's in the contract. And so when all this was going down, you know, Vince shattered the league. The, the plan was. We route everything that was said that they were going to shut her for the F you know, week five, whatever. And then they were going to come back and do the playoffs because everybody back ha ha last year thought, you know, this is going away and no time, but that was the plan they had kept. They, they, they were going to do the champion chain with all that. So just, but then when all this went down with WWE and they didn't have anywhere to wrestle. Luckily, you know, Florida came in it's Rick DeSantis, right? Rhonda Santos. I always get it wrong. I came in and basically VINs paid them a lot of money and got approved through to do, you know, wrestling in Florida. And you're very specific. COVID protocols. And that's why I, I firmly believe that Vince took his foot off the gas with the XFL and just decided like, I gotta be beholding here, you know? Okay. It was one thing to try to get the XFL back. ESPN made fun of me with the 30, for 30. I'm going to relaunch this thing. I think at that point he realized like, I, okay, we're done with this. Like I got to move on. So it just. You know, The XFL failed in Oh one. The XFL did not fail last year. And not that I'm an XFL Mark. But I am a critic and. And, and that's why I think it went bankrupt or I think Vince with his still owned it and gone about that way. Here's another question, man. I hated that grabs onto that evidence. The situation, but they're currently in their Thunderdome, in the Trump, which is a piece of crap in Tampa. They have to be out of there by Friday. April 9th. They have to be out of the Trop because guess who's coming back. The race. They have to be out of the Trop. By April 9th. Yeah. I mean, it's a lot. I, I said, I think with all this came about, I think Vince realized. You know, just that there were other priorities. It's just also interesting too. I saw a lot of analysis this week about, you know, TV ratings with the XFL attendance. Okay. Well then, you know, week one in Seattle and then week two, there was like a 6,000 person drop and dah. I seen a lot of CFL people, very critical about, you know, a loss of a hundred thousand viewers or whatever from a league that has lost. You lost $80 million or whatever last year. I just, I just wanted to put that in perspective. I understand I'm not the XFL whatever guy, but like, Yeah. It being snowy. I was at the game. It'd been snowy in February in the Seattle game. And having less attendance because of that, it's all in context. And I just don't want to hear like, well, you know, the TV ratings on week five and did the, did the CFL has lost money for years. So. It is dying. CFL fans. Spoiler alert your league is dying. And if you don't do anything about it, it is going to go away. So, what are you gonna do about it? You going to b***h about pardon? My French. You're gonna b***h about the tradition of the CFL. Or you do something to save the CFL. Stop trying to compare. Things stop trying to say, well, the exit Valdez who cares this point. It doesn't matter and I'm not in. And I tweeted to them. I said, Calling me. XFL a twice failed league. The XFL one. Oh, one is not the XFL of 2020, and it's also not the XFL 2022. I wish when Vincent brought it back, I wish he would have changed the stupid initials. And then we literally wouldn't even have had this conversation. And if Danny and the rock had come out and said, Hey, we're starting a new league. And it's called the P w w whatever. Like. If we wouldn't have had these conversations either, it's literally the three letters. And that is the only similarity from this point, especially from the 2020. You know, from the 2019 2020 version. To the Oh one. That was the only similarity. And to now it's definitely the only similarity considering that Jeffrey P*****k is even still one of the only, you know, there's a handful of people that are even still around. I, the last thing I am sad about, you know, I just wanted to have my like eight teams and 10 weeks. I really, I mean, I never thought we'd be CFL podcasters, Paul. I've never really thought that. But I am sad to think that if this all goes and blows up into something huge. I missed that. I wanted that I wanted that. I'm S I am sad that we won't have the original promise of just a nice little compact league that we can watch it in the 10 weeks in this off season. Tough. Sorry. I think it's beneficial for both. I mean, you know, like we've discussed that before, where I'm in favor of the merger. I think it's beneficial for both. XFL and CFL to fill in each other's weaknesses. Yep. So, is there some other CFL, several. Thoughts on aye. Of course, we talked about the NFL. TV deals and everything. It got finalized last week, Amazon's getting a Thursday night and whatever. The games and we we've talked all about this in the past, but that, that key point now is that one NFL game in 2023 is going to. The rights are about $40 million. You know, it is about where the CFL gets. For the whole season. And I know it's not apples to apples and whatever, but what is your reaction to that? Paul? I've I've I think I sent it all when I sent it last week. That those TV rights there. You know, the CFL's getting screwed on the small amount of money they get for those TV rights. And we got a brain coming on a little bit later to talk about how much the NFL, the NHL Meg's from Rogers. And the discrepancy between the two TV deals. Even underscores my statement even more that, yeah, I know. Not too many people are watching the CFL. Like they should. They sh they were back in the day. But there's still more money than we made there in terms of TV deal. So I think like it's really staggering when you look at the Thursday night game on NFL making $40 million a year. And that is two thirds of what the TV deal is for the CFL entire season. It's just insane to me. Christopher folds, F O U L D S with a cam plus this week. Okay. Adian, whatever this got on my radar. He wrote this whole article about how he wants a Canadian Congress to come in. And basically save it. Has the comment save the CFL. You know, We talk about this with the race. I mean, what are we, what Hill are we dying on here, Paul? You're not going to save the CFL with a 55 yard line. And unlimited horizontal. Horizontal and vertical move behind the line of scrimmage. You're not going to save the CFL of that. You're going to save the CFL with money. Money. Fear. That's a joke. That's a choke point. As Paul Heyman says, you have to there's certain choke points when it comes to, when it comes to delivering a product in the CFL as a product. If you don't have the distribution on TV, that's a choke point. You're going to go away. If you don't have the money to finance it, you're going to go away. There's so many different things to go to choke point where keeping a 55 year old 55 yard line. Isn't gonna matter. If you don't have the money. To put people on the field at the 55 yard line. Yeah. This in the QB Cody. [Unknown] I'll hire that. Sorry. You know, he's got mixed feelings. Yeah. I think it dilutes the CFL. There's a lot of logistical things you have to think about the rule changes. You have to think about the ratio and maybe I'm just not a Canadian national and I just don't get. I mean, don't you just say tomorrow, there's no ratio and then we just move on. I mean, I don't understand. I don't, I understand the need for it, and I understand that the philosophy behind it, but. Like, I guess I was thinking about this this week with everything that's happened in the last year. And, and you know, how up is down and down is up. And our entire world is different, right? That like movie theaters don't exist anymore, but yet we're still like, well, but the Canadian ratio says that you have to. At what point do you just move on from a lot of things? I mean, life, things that we were thinking about before. I think we're taking a lot of things for granted here. Yeah, I think. We need to shut the F up. And realize. That this time, last year, we didn't have any sports in art. We did everything was shut down. Everything shut down leagues got shut down because the idiot, Rudy go bear was touching microphones, making fun of Corona virus, and guess what he was positive and it shut the entire league down in the NBA. And then everyone else followed suit. MLB shuts down. Like. What are we doing? You just, we lost. Sports. And now you're complaining about the traditions in sports. Just take the sports. Be happy with what you got. I don't care that, you know, when the movie theaters are old, but they're opening up now. Again, I don't care that have to wear a mask to go no movie theater. And then I'll only take the mask of the pop, a cup of popcorn pieces in my mouth, take a drink of my soda and then put the mask back on when I'm done doing that. I don't care as long as I get to have the experience. So. If you have the experience. Why do you care about. Stupid things like 55 yard lines and ratios. Who cares you get to watch football. Yeah, I again, and I know, and I'm sure we're going to get yelled at, you know, it's. I get it. And we thought with brain, you know, the XFL is not tied to our lineage the same way the CFL is tied to their lineage. And I absolutely understand, I absolutely respect that, but yeah, I do just think we need to get caught in the perspective here is I just remember. Even months ago, I think, I think the first listener max. Other podcasts. I think the first thing he ever messaged me was like, Hey, well, do you think that the leagues, when they redraft the leagues this year for the XFL, that they're going to keep the same teams. And like, and I said, no, like this is not, they don't care about this. Well now. Here we are like, we really don't care about that. This is a wide open now. I mean, we were going to be an XFL podcast. Now we're talking to Canadian radio personalities. I mean, Who would have thought that this would've been our life ball, we have to adjust. Everything has to be an adjustment. You can't just like. You know, I guess I'm I'm guess I'm way more frustrated about this then. Then then, then you are clearly. And I just think, aye. Aye. Aye. I don't know, man, I don't know. I think it's a bunch of, okay. Boomer stuff, to be honest with you. You know, Yeah. All this traditional B acids, boomer stuff. It's like, okay, boomer, we get it. You know? Kick kick the pun out of the end zone or whatever they do over there. I don't know. I think it's just boomer stuff. I really do. Bob Irvin. He is the Winnipeg blue bombers announcer. Aye. I tried to get him on the show. He, he hopes that the CFL honors and presidents are not drinking the XFL. Kool-Aid I hope you're getting the rocket. Nice. Cool. They don't include the CFL. Who might want, they might want to take a step back and seriously consider whether they're going down the rabbit hole, where there is no return. What. What return. Do we have. Bro. Do you know what the number one. Crafts. Keala brand in the world is right now, Bob. Tara mana. Do you know, why it's that? Because the rock. And his team are marketing geniuses. So maybe you should start drinking more of the Kool-Aid mix with the term on it and realize that the only way to grow the sport and get more people to watch the sport and care about the sport. Is to market it better. So why are we not drinking that? Kool-Aid. Nixon with tequila. The survey came out. This is hopefully I don't butcher this, trying to read this. Paulo's Sandra. And they commissioned the national survey a few years back to understand where the fandom of the CFL was the percentage of new Canadians, less than five years in Canada, that were fans were 18%. Okay, so humanity is a pyramid scheme, right? You have a couple. That has three kids and they have another couple has four kids. So now instead of four people, they're seven. You know, seven people, it becomes a pyramid where you're the population's growing. And so. 18%, like one fifth of the kids that are coming out these days are, I mean, you got to find a way to grow the league. Yeah, you gotta. The other interesting. There was a. I see a lot of talk about. I got tagged in this. Looking at non soccer, specific stadiums, like soldier, field and Yankee stadium that can accommodate a CFL. Field. And I don't like, why, why is that a precedent for, we need to find stadiums that can hold the CFL field. Like, I don't care what the field, whatever is, but if you've got 87 stadiums in the world that can hold the NFL size state. I'm saying like, again, we're like we're getting caught up on really interesting things that we're getting caught up on here in the, in the fandom. Well, first and foremost, there's only one soccer team that play. I don't even know why they're involving, I don't even know whether involving the dimension of MLS here on this one, because I don't think it like why I get one of their men benching it, mentioning it now, because it makes sense that. The DC. The defenders played at Audi Audi field. In DC. I get why they're mentioning now. But folks like, Hey. There's also soccer specific stadiums. In. In New York that aren't Yankee stadium. The only reason Yankee stadium gets a soccer is because it's a part of the group that, you know, owns the Yankees. I believe NYC FC is part of the grants. It makes sense to like, put that again, key stadium, but red bulls play somewhere too. Like we don't need to necessarily have it at. Yankee stadium. We don't necessarily need to have it at soldier field. I know the fire do play at soldier field, but we don't necessarily need to have. And do we even have a sh Chicago? XFL team. So why. The idea, is it the idea behind this is that they're looking at stadiums in the us that could accommodate a CFL field. And my question is why. Like. Like, you know, either, either we're going to play. CFL North XFL, South. Right. And they're going to have some ownership or whatever. Or. I think you just standardize it with XFL. I'm really sorry. I don't, I don't know. I'll have the 55 yard line there. Right? No. I mean, that's where I, that's just where I'm caught with this is I just don't see. I either see them running independently, but together. Or you just standardize it. And I don't think the standardization comes from. You know, in the CFL fields. Can't you just shorten it and not make it as wide. Like it's a lot easier to, or am I dominant? Is that an a down, like a slight easier to cut off five yards on each side than it is to like, Rejigger a whole stadium to fit a bigger field. Well, I mean like, okay. Yeah, it just seems like that's a stupid thing to adjust. Well, I mean, I guess, cause you're trying to maintain. But I think the hashtags wider. Okay. That's fine. You can make the hashtags wider, like the, you know, the, the hash marks. They're very narrow for the NFL game. You can. Expand them out, but do you need that five yards on either side? I don't know, man, like I just, I think that layers there's too many things that they're focusing on here. I was like, Oh my God, we're going to lose five yards on it. Who cares? Who cares? Yeah, that's, that's kinda where I'm at. I just, I listened to a bunch of stuff here just to. I've various criticisms. I just, I think we need to be excited about this. I think it's, it's, it's a reason to be excited about growth, about innovation for both. I mean, maybe the acts of God, maybe the dragons never come back. I'm not going to Boohoo and cry. I mean, you gotta, you gotta be excited and just embrace, you know, the difference that we have going on. I w we're going to get in all our finger told stuff here at the end. I don't have a ton today. We'll, we'll talk about the championship and all that, but CEO. So Rob a fruity of the pharyngeal football that he was talking about. I finally get Paul's take on this. I've been waiting all week. And I got a story about Sohrab later too, with my, my Jersey. He was asked about the, you know, the XFL and all this kind of stuff going on. Egos. I with you to the XFL is on-field product and talent was top notch, but if they don't completely change their business model, this third iteration will end up like the first two XFL should stop talking to CFL and start talking to us. Fingernail football. Am I right? Is it my turn to talk? Yeah. Shut the F up. Shut up. Shut your mouth. Your product stinks. Why would they call you? You change the rules, every five flipping minutes. Why are they going to call you? I'm serious. Why would they ever call you guys? You guys barely got a league off the ground. You've been working at it for five years. Why are they going to call you? I do think there's something to be said that running the four week bubble season versus an eight team cross country. Just his world's different. And even the CFL compared to the XFL is, is world of a larger thing. And I think that that equation and not bet fingernail football has not had their success, but I think equating the success factors are global at this point, too. Even the AAF to any of these. You know, involving travel and personnel and stadiums, all this guys have, I think is, is laughably off, off base. Bro you are like, you are like the person that comes online starts a bookstore and thinks you're Amazon. But get out of here with this nonsense. You're not like you're not, you're not the end all be all. And let me go back to that point you made the second time the XFL went down, it was because of a pandemic. It had nothing to do. With what they were doing. Business model wise. The major reason was the pandemic. The major reason. Yeah. And you. You know, they, they talked about, again, all this nitpicking this week and the extra foul and the ratings. That was, I guess the other thing I wanted to comment on you. You know, there there's been a lot of criticisms about, Oh, week five of the XFL. And again, nothing. Whatever Mark. But. Like they were on like Fs two and Fs three. Three, like at Saturday at 11 o'clock. And they were still out drying PGA and Wimbleton and all the other sports that we had going on. So I just, you have to remember that to the diff. If we're going to get a TV deal, you know, on NBC and prime time or on Amazon or on Twitch, like. The deal that Vince worked with was good for the time I criticize online this week, Mike Mitchell, XFL reporter, you know, he we're friends, he came back a little bit and said, you know, It was really good for non proven product and yada, yada, yada. Okay, I get that. But like now you got Danny in the rock and you got all this money. You have all their production, you have tightened games, you have all these movies, you have everything else. I just think that they're going to command a better TV deal then than what was originally going on. I want, I want Sarov on the podcast. I seriously do I want, I want, I want him on the podcast and I want to decimate them. This is ridiculous. I'm sick of this nonsense. That fan controlled football is going to be the show, bro. It's not. It's not. Average view time was five minutes. Yeah. No, we got, we got talk here. Like I got a whole, I think about this last couple of things. CFL, you know, Again, all these questions about when everything's going to be coming up. They have a global draft day scheduled for April 15th. You know, th. It's scheduled. I've seen some criticisms online about this, about why is the CFL, you know, why are they still continuing with this stuff? As opposed to like figuring out the pay cuts, figuring out the vaccines, figuring out like all the, I just. Maybe this year, the priority shouldn't be, I understand the global initiative and all of that, but, but maybe not, should not be on that. I agree with that. And it's not really. I mean CFL too. I'm already slipping there. It's not up to the CFL to determine. You know, Vaccines, like that's the Canadian government and I'm glad that there. We're loaning them some, some bags. I'm glad that's getting figured out. And our friends up North are going to get vaccinated soon so you can get fans. A couple other notes here. XFL dragons running back. Trey Williams. He's gonna go into the Stampeders. He's the XFL dragons guy. So I just wanted to give that show that there's a couple others this week, but I just, any dragons ones come on. So here's, here's the thing that came on XFL newsroom. Th there are extroverts. USA online sports books.com is an online sporting site. Right? You can, I can go on here right now. I can book on. Do you know about this? No, I don't. I don't do like the, all these sports books. Yeah. Okay. So apparently you can bet if the XFL is going to return in 2022 and the odds are plus one 75, I don't know what that means. I think it means you have to. You have to bet 175 to win a hundred, or is it 100 to win? One 75, something like that. But would you, would you vote, I mean, would you, would you bet on the XFL not going in 2022? I might. Not going in 2022. Yeah. I would bet against it. I mean, I barely I'm saying, like right now you could go to online sports book.com and vote or not vote, like bet. Did the accidental, I just thought that was, I thought that was phenomenal. Can bet on anything. Like, I mean the stock, market's a bet. If you're being honest. Okay. I thought that was interesting. Is this. Did you, did you get this from me or did, did you find this yourself? Oh, so I added something to the group. Proud of myself, fixed pages. Do. They've all got one bullet point. Ah, this is great. This was a, this is our last XML thing. And then we got, maybe we'll do. We'll bring our guests. I just, this is a side note. Yeah. You know, we obviously covered. The XFL guys in the AAF guys in the NFL this year, like Andy Dalton played for the Cowboys. And John Wolford, who was one of the AAF guys played for the Rams. He was actually the one that beat the S. They didn't beat the Seahawks. They be, he got injured in that game. They beat the team that week before they beat the. Was it the, the car that I forgive me, but he got hurt and they brought back in Jared Goff. Yeah, what did they say it? They said, ah, Because ultimately they're the Rams got rid of golf. They traded for Stafford. W what was the story behind this? Basically that the reason why they started considering the Jared wasn't the answer there in LA is because Sean McVay. Saw John Wolford and said, Oh, Oh, here's that? There's other alternatives. There was other alternatives let's extend. Let's extend Jared one, one year, then get rid of him the next huh? Interesting. Spring football works. Doesn't it. I that was, I was, you know, we, we had a whole episode, the Wolf of wall street. That was, that was a big time for us back in the back in the late. The late football season, but. I guess we can call them now. Anyway. So yeah, I think we'll do a break. We'll do our guests. So we've got Dave Campbell coming up, Edmonton football team covers all that. We've got Matt mangle, literally coming off the practice field. He's getting ready to go to the LLS. And then we have Braden who rents a CFL Reddit. So again, I just, I hope you guys appreciate the work they put in coming on and everything and, and really trying to get all the angles covered. Then we'll run it. We'll be right back. Hi, Dave Campbell. Thanks for joining us. It's great to be here, guys. Are you doing? What's that. Sorry. I said, how are you doing, sir? Oh, I'm doing well. Other than being hard of hearing apparently today. I'm doing very, very well. I like, I love your backdrop. It is, it is green and yellow, Edmonton all over the place. That's green and gold. That's really a goal to you, Paul. I'm filming in green and gold in my, in my office. I've been working from home. For well over a year. So yeah, we, my wife and I decided we gotta, we gotta reconfigure this office to be a green and gold setting. And here we are. It's the commitment when you actually paint the walls. That's what I mean, I can duct tape up the flag, but I mean, it's one thing when you've got, you've got the pan on the law. That's good. Yeah. I liked your motif. Just, just put every bit of memorable. Really up. So you don't even see the darn wall. I like it. Yeah, it's good. Well, thank you for coming on. I I'm glad that we connected last week. I was telling Paul before we were recording here. It's so nice. The CFL staff is nice for us as a podcast because we can reach out to other media. People were like, we are the XFL media. There's just not a lot, like I'm in a group chat with like the six reporters that cover the XFL. So it is. Very nice to have people that we can reach out to be like, Hey, you're an expert in this. What do you think? Because you know, otherwise we're just talking to ourselves. So thank you so much for coming on. Yeah, that's great to be here. Well, first things first. How are you doing during the pandemic? I want to get, get the sense of your, your, your wellbeing, your mental wellbeing. Hello, how are you doing? I, I honestly think it's been over a year now and obviously. A year ago. We had no idea what hit us. Absolutely none. And a year later. We understand, I think more what we're going through, but the feelings are different now. We're. You know, I think a year ago it was a very galvanizing moment. For a lot of people now, a year later, we're just sick and tired of this whole thing, but. You know, I think we just have to study along here. I know here in. In Alberta and Edmonton, we're going through. What would we, would we, what we would call the beginnings of a third wave. We're trying to get as many vaccinations up here as possible. Canada is lagging behind. Unfortunately. And that should start the close. And you would hope a couple of months. But it's, it's tough. And I think every day is kind of the same day in a lot of respects. But, you know, the nice thing is the, the, the weather is getting better up here. We've had a pretty good start to spring. With some CFL football, hopefully around the corner. Very, very soon. And yeah, but I think a year in it's it's a grind. And everyone. Is affected by this in different ways. And unfortunately, there's a lot of people that are really, really down in the dumps about this. This is a mental health crisis too, but me personally, my family. You know, we have our tough days, but overall we're doing pretty good. Good to hear. So, you know, we've been, obviously, you know, we were fans all this XFL set last year, you know, this comes out the rock. We started the podcast. It's all this craziness for the last year. Did this CFL news com. As a surprise to you guys, as it did to us. I think the answer is yes, for sure. And because this is something that's always been kind of background talk, I think for a lot of people up here, Hey, there's this league down South. It's the XFL. It's not the NFL, but it's still pretty good. You know, the CFL could use some help. I know they're, they're trying to, you know, really. Advance their global initiative. With what commissioner Randy Ambrozy calls. CFL 2.0, the pandemic hits and it screws everything up. Right. So CFL did a play last year and fortunately the XFL. When people say the XFL failed. In round two. They didn't fail the pandemic, put them on ice. You know, But use a Canadian term, put them on ice, you know? It's not a Canadian term, but there's a lot of lights up here. Yeah. But, you know, It's it's, it's a, it's a silly notion. So it makes sense that the two are talking now. I think what's unfortunate is the over speculation that happened almost instantly. They're going to merge and play games together and I'm going, Whoa, what the heck is going on here? Right. So now people kind of who, who have been reporting on this and very good people that have been reporting on this. No, pumping the brakes and going while they are talking. I do believe it's more serious than just talking about talking. Right. But I think when you have the power of Dwayne Johnson and you have the power of Redbird capital with Dami, Danny Garcia. I think you have to explore it. And. A lot of people are frightened. A lot of people are intrigued. A lot of people are excited. So this is definitely covered all the emotions. I guess real quick. I'm gonna jump in with one more real. What is your, what is the general perception in, in CFL media of the XFL? Just in general? Like, is it a joke? Is it, I mean, what, what do you cause I've, I mean, believe me, we've had CFL people, you know, Defend the CFL to death hate on the exhale back and forth. So w w what's your perception? Well, I think there's some media that are misinformed about the XFL. I don't know if anyone. Who are criticized again? How much they watched it. If they watched it more for five minutes, if he watched it more for one week. But I do think it's very easy. For people that cover the CFL to really get a little bit. Get their backup. And go well, why would the CFL merge with another failed spring, spring league in the United States? And I'm going well. I don't think it's that simple. And I do think there's other. Media. And I think all the media up here is good. I think everyone does a really good job overall. But I do think there are other media up here that understand. Yeah, XFL dude, fail the XFL. Was felled by the pandemic, like most other sports, right. And for the XFL, because they don't have the dollars with the DV money. Like the. The NFL or MLB or NBA, or even the NHL. And then sell to a lesser degree. They, they can't. They couldn't play. So I think overall, the media respects the XFL. I really enjoyed it. I think the first two, three weeks were a little tough, but then it got better, you know? I mean, I, I was, I love watching Dexter McCoyle play because he used to play up here for two seasons, with the OEMs and football to even help the. Do you want a great cup in 2015? So I think overall, I think the XFL gets a bad rap because people just put it in the category of a failed spring football in the United States. And I don't think it's failed. So I don't dislike. I don't agree with that. Would that kind of, with that notion that some people have about the XFL being a failure. Do you think that. How do you think. A potential merger and I might be getting the card. Ahead of the horse here. Would help expand the CFL game, help expand the reach of the audience. Maybe potentially get more. A dollar from a TV deal. Yeah, I think there's a lot of avenues in the CFL house to explore here. I do think the XFL could help the CFL in marketing and branding. And things like. Streaming rights. And a TV deal. Perhaps, and I think the CFL can help the XFL and how to operate a league. Broadcast. There's a lot of things, staffing, that sort of thing. There's a lot of things that, that. That both leaks can help you. To other. So I do think this has legs. Now, when we talk about a full merger where you would have the XFL and the CFL playing in one league, that's something I just cannot wrap my head around because the logistics are just. I mean they're wild. I mean, You can't play games in a lot of places in Canada. In March, you just can't. Okay. Like you just can't do it. Right. It just doesn't work. The timing of the seasons where the exfil would like to be wrapped up. Potentially by August or in sometime in August. Oh, the CFL likes playing in the fall because we all say labor day is when the, when the season really starts to ramp up. You got the rules. You've got the, the ratio up here in, in, in the CFL with seven of your starters have to be Canadian and you know, almost half your roster has to be Canadian. So how do you work with that? So, You know, there's a lot of people married to three downs. I'm kind of married to three downs, I think for overall. That's something that's so fundamental about the CFL and what's so unique is the three down game. But they have discussed up here, the board of governors in the CFL and the competition committee. How about four downs? With all the rules in tat you don't hear in the CFL and they haven't gone forward with that. But do I think there's legs here for a partnership? Yeah. For a full merger to have one league. Or two leaks. One. That's going to be really, really difficult for a number of reasons. And a lot of them are just logistical reasons. How are you feeling about the start of the season and the timing right now? We just got off with Matt mangle. We followed him. He's a kicker, just got signed to the lox. We followed him through the spring league and stuff down here last year. You know, he was saying that, you know, he doesn't. In trouble. He had a players' meeting yesterday and he felt like that. The mood. Wasn't wonderful. So how are you feeling about a potential started the season here because training camp should be starting next month, right? And then the kickoff, you know, coming in June, right. Presumably. Traditionally training camps start in mid may. We don't know if that will happen. There was a report yesterday. From a TSN reporter here in Canada. Forehand laundry, who said him? He's really, really good. Reporter said that likely mid may is going to be, or mid April will be the decision on whether camps started on time. Yeah. Players are antsy right now because they're going, we didn't play in 2020. We haven't seen a CFL Paychex since 2019. And a lot of them were kind of were hanging by a thread because there was the talks about going to the bubble in Winnipeg and playing a six game season in the fall for a couple of months. And then that fell through because the federal government wouldn't give the CFL any. Basically. You'll be any assistance to. Financial assistance, but I do think there is going to be a season. The question is when. The problem with the CFL is they need fans in the stands and they don't know when that will be. A realistic option. Now there are three provinces. Alberta, Ontario and Quebec that are talking with government and health authorities. To kind of lay out a framework to get fans back in the stands and it won't be full stadiums this year, you know? We will be limited, but I do think there'll be a season, but I think the players. Are getting very, very antsy about, you know, the timeline. The CFL issued a proposal, which I don't think this has any legs at all. Well, so we can play a fully thing game season, but without fans, we've asked you to take a 20% pay cut of your salary. After we asked you to take pay cuts all throughout the off season. And then once we get fans back in the stands, we'll, we'll top up your salaries. And they're going well, I might as well just retire and go get a job. Right. So I don't think that would ever happen, but I do believe there will be a season. The question is when, you know, and I, I would say by labor day, Sure we're going to have a season, but I could see. And it all depends on the vaccine rollout here in Canada, through that's very important to the league because that would allow for fans probably to go back and that would make the health authorities and governments. A lot more comfortable, but I do believe we're going to get a season. It's just, it's just when we're going to have a season. Yeah, my, I had a follow-up, you know, we, and we're going to play in the show here before we interview you. I didn't nail or resign TSN last night. And he was talking. You know, a lot of these players, you know, have gotten other jobs and have done other things. And like you said, they've, they've you waited last year. You wait this year and now, you know, if they're thinking we're going to go in June, when now we don't know. You know, I got to work. Right. You know, we've had, we tried to have a lot of the players on from the XFL, you know, we just had, or Nesta like IO as a kicker. He co-hosted with us last week. Yeah, these guys that do it full time. You can't just wait around and wonder is that this is going to happen. So reactions to that, I mean, we're going to play that clip with Dave during the show, but you know where a lot of these players maybe have moved on by the time this comes about. Yeah, a lot of players did now. I don't think it's as many as we thought. I think a lot of players have hung in there a lot. A lot more than I thought. Or a lot more players have hung on. Now. Let let's say the worst case scenario is that they actually did cancel the season for some reason. I would say the 80% of 80% of the total player roster throughout the league, I would think they probably retire. No, that's the number, right? I was told because you're asking them to hang on after one last season. After two, there was no way they can hang on anymore, but I don't think that is going to happen. So Dave's right. I mean, they are getting the, are getting antsy. Now I will say the communication between the league and the players is. Is better. And it's something that it hasn't been that it hasn't been that way for the longest time, but it's starting to get better. I do think the league understands that they have asked a lot of the players they really have. And that's why I'm led to believe that there's going to be a season. I mean, when you're asking players. And you're telling them every payroll around the league has to be cut by half a million dollars or a little bit more. You have executives on teams that have cut their salary. You know, by 20% they have really shaved down the South. Especially at the league office. It's down by at least half. And you have two presidents that have basically come out. And said, we're going to play. So to me, their plan, this is a window dressing where I thought last year, there's probably maybe what, a little bit more window dressing, a little bit more leaving the players on the list. This time around. So yeah, I'm with David, the frustrations there, but I think there's an understanding that, you know, we're going to have a season, but. The the, the league. Like we're sitting here wondering what this virus is going to do. You know, in two hours from now or tomorrow or next week or next month. We don't know. The leagues don't know. I mean, you look at the major leagues. You know, Around North America. I mean the NHL. They didn't have final approval to play in Canada until five days before the season. And they were going through the training camps. So it holds it's. It's not simple to work through this virus and come up with a plan, but I don't blame the player for being a little bit ancy. One bit. What about a bubble? What's been the, what's been the reaction to put potentially a bubble. I would say zero chance. 0%. They don't want that. Nope. They don't want to have a full season bubble because one. It's very expensive to the players. You're not getting paid enough to get the full buy-in. And that's why the season was going to be so short in Winnipeg. Six game season plus playoffs and plus 3d camp before that is that I think the, the total time in the bubble was going to be 11 weeks and even thought that was gonna be pushing it. So the bubble concept is think is in the back pocket of the league. If they need to use it, they can use it cause they've planned for it. But yeah, I would say it's a 0% chance. We're going to see a bubble. They'll they'll have teams playing out of their stadiums and maybe limit travel. Because if you do have to cut your 18 game schedule by 16, 14 to 12 games, hopefully not more than that, then you're probably. You know, changing up your cross country travel. So maybe East doesn't play West and West doesn't play East as much. Maybe you're just playing all your games within your. Within your region. I think what's the reaction I've seen, you know, talking about the pay. Cut. You know, the 20%, you know, They're going to reimburse, you know, potentially later or not reimbursement moved back up. When fans come in. You know, a lot of these staff have been on, you know, even if they've taken pay cuts, a lot of the staff had been paid for the last year where the players have not. Right. So, I mean, I think that's a frustration too, is it's like, well, yeah, everyone's taking their pickup, but you've also had a cut pay cut the last year when I haven't. Right. And I'm that way. It's just so weird where in the NFL, the players. I do kind of rule the roost. Right. You know, we have, you know, Tom Brady making this move and basically shifting the entire landscape of whatever on his shoulders were there. I just couldn't imagine in a world where the NFL players don't get paid, but yet, you know, and I, everyone should get paid, but you know where, where they don't, but you have the front end workers do. It just seems weird. Well, you know, In other leagues, like the NFL. When you get into a labor dispute, you have billionaires against the millionaires. The billionaires wind, but the millionaires. You know, they kind of have their way of. Of getting what they want as well. Because they created that much money for the owners. In the CFL, you do have millionaires and billionaires because there are, I mean, maple leaf sports and entertainment is a $4 billion company. Right? David Brayley, the late David really used to own the BC lions in the Hamilton tiger cats. And at one point, save the CFL. Back about 30, 35 years ago. Left gobs of money when he passed away. Before the end of the year to the BC lions still operate for years. Right? So there's money up here with, with, with ownership. But when you look at the CFL, you have millionaires and billionaires against players that make maybe five. Six digits. Right? So it's, it's so unfair. So, but I do think there is a lot more respect between the two, the two sides it's. Especially owners, the players. The, the players have gotten a lot smarter over the years when it comes to labor disputes and, and, and collective bargaining, I would say. So, yeah, it's it's. It's usually an unfair playing field, but yeah, the there's more power in like the NFL with the NFL player. The NBA player or majorly baseball player compared to. You know, the, the, the CFL world, it's just almost, it's just not comparable. I have a question. It might be. You know, may be old by this point, but we discussed it in. You know, in full detail last week. The USPA putting out that a statement. What was your initial reaction? What are your thoughts a week later about that statement about them hearing? There was a, there was canceling. Cancellation looming. First of all, I'm happy with them. Google, so I can find out who the USPA was. I I've never heard of them before. I never heard of them before. And I'm like, what is this? So. You know, I, I saw the tweet and I, I texted the source from the, actually I text someone right in the legal office and I said, what is, this is like that this is not true. So. I think it just created a little bit of a. What is this, you know, like who are these people? And then you find out quickly, they're not affiliated with. The CFL or the NFL PA. You know, in the media, we have this phrase called chasing ghosts when you have to chase the story when there's not even a story. So that's all that was. So yeah, it turned out to be a bit of a loud. Kind of more morning or early afternoon for those that cover. With CFL. And, you know, even the XFL, but you know, it was quickly disputed and. Yeah, it's it was a much ado about nothing, but it was a serious thing. I learned about a new players union sort of in North America. But, yeah, I don't know. When they, and I, I think I was listening to the three down podcasts and they were talking about. You know, one of the reasons why the CFL, it has a longer season. More games, extra by weeks and stuff. Is, you know, for more fans to come in for the revenue, right. To kind of bolster that ops. Cause you get, you know, you can average more. So, you know, if there's not going to be fans this year or, you know, They, they, whatever, with the vaccines and all this stuff, I mean, What is the realistic possibility is of them doing just a modified you. If it's by half or what is a realistic number that they can still do where it's it's considered, I guess this is a season, but where it's maybe not stretching it out. Yeah, quite as long as they normally do. Yeah, it's a hard question to answer, just because of the question about fans in the stands. But I do believe that the ownerships around the world. We are okay with having maybe one to three minute three games max with no fans. Maybe just to appease the health authorities a little bit more and then bring in fans after that. So, If we're talking like a nine game season, then you're talking only six, seven home games, but then again, you're starting in September. If you're doing that. And maybe by that time, You can get full stadiums with the shortened season. Well, maybe not full seasons, but you will be allowed to have some sort of percentage of fans in your stadiums. So. Or if you feel you can get the approval earlier. Now, when I mentioned the provinces that have. That are asking the governments and health authorities to allow fans in that's from getting tell level that's the Edmonton Oilers. That's the Calgary flames. That's the Montreal Canadians. That's the Ottawa senators. The problem. Beliefs. They want fans and I'm sure the Vancouver Canucks in the Winnipeg jets are gonna follow suit. So the CFL just. They perk right up and go, wow. If they get the approval, then why can't we get the approval? Because we're open air stadiums. And it's been proven that if you're an open air stadium, The it's a fair environment when you talk about a COVID 19 environment. So I think. It's such a hard question to answer. I would tell you the league wants 18 games, for sure. Just to back summize whatever revenue they can, when can they. Start that I don't, I don't see a scenario where they could start in June. There was a report up here. From Dan Barnes who writes a, for a national newspaper called post media, that they could start in July, play 18 games and have shortened. Kind of a short and compressed schedule. Remember up here. We have, it's normally an 18 game schedule with 21 weeks. That's three bi-week for teams three that's two. Too much. Way too much. Now they did that from the health and safety standpoint, but then the players go back and they go great. Another week I don't get paid. Because in the football world, you get paid game by game. So it's, it's a moving target right now. As far as when they could play how many games they could play, they want to play a fully team. With. As many games as possible to get fans into the stadiums. So I do think they're going to go for anything game scheduled, but I could see July training camps and August start. I could see an August start in September. You know, or August camps September start or I, I, I can't, I can't realistically see a June start. I just can't write right now because the, the vaccine. Rolled out, up in Canada as a bit as a bit murky right now. So where we were getting a lot of them and then it kind of stopped and now we're kind of getting some frequent him, but the hope is by me more will come in. But is that enough time for the CFL to. You know, to turn around and get a season going. So my guess is we're going to start probably. I would guess July, August. My last question for you today is, you know, where you were talking about, you know, ownership, you know, being okay with no fans for a couple of games, I've seen a lot, you know, all this CFL stuff is new, you know, we're XFL. Like we're just happy to kind of, you know, whether we get our season got canceled. You know, the rock comes back. It's the greatest day in the world for us, you know, we're doing laps around the sidewalk. Yeah, it doesn't seem like the CFL is in a position to like really play hardball on anything yet a lot, you know, and it's not from, you know, From from fans, from other, from everybody, I keep hearing this like, Well, we'd be okay with this. Well, we'd be okay with it. Like, what leverage do you have at this point? What is it is a weird mentality, right? It is. Yes. When you're talking about the people you're dealing with. With Redbird capital and then Dwayne, the rock Johnson. You would see in your, your level of influence would be diminished, right? Because money is power. I will say this. Dwayne Johnson spent a training camp up in Canada. With the Calgary Stampeders, I believe around 1995. The head coach at the time was a fellow by the name of Wally Warren. [Unknown] who is the willingness that ghost and CFL history. To this day. Johnson always credits [unknown] and the CFL, and just, he says, if I didn't have that moment. Then I wouldn't have become who I am. And, you know, I'm not saying wallyball, don't leave him the rock. Going to WW superstar and a movie star. In a, in a venture capitalist and things like that. But the relationship that was built between Dwayne Johnson and Wally Buono, it's strong and they still speak today. So I do think Dwayne Johnson respects the CFL. And I don't think he wants to come in here and steamroll all over the tradition. But at the same time, those in Canada that are just. You know, hanging on. To the tradition. I think our close minded. And I think they're, they're doing it as service and that's been a big problem. And, and we've had this mentality within the board of governors from the CFL. You also unique league because you have three teams that are community owned. Including the MTM football team. And those three are empty football team, Winnipeg, blue bombers, Saskatchewan Roughriders, and they make up half the revenue of the league almost. Then you have three teams that are single owned. And then you have another three themes that have roots. You know, And they're worth billions of dollars, right? So it's not like there's no money. In this league and that they can't look up. You know, stand up to Danny Garcia and the Dwayne, the rock Johnson to go, Hey, we have no money. They can show them their bank accounts and they would be very impressed. So I think there is a big time respect from Dwayne Johnson about the CFL. If there is a full merger, you'll be interested to see what that looks like. Cause I have no idea. I have, I have no idea. June Jones who coached in Houston in the XFL and coached up here in Hamilton for the tiger cats. On a podcast up here, he mentioned. Probably four downs, but a lot of the Canadian rules. So there's a lot of people within the SFL that liked the game in Canada. You know, the gaming cannabis, fine. The businesses not. We're not in the world. Of philanthropy anymore. You know where I own the team because it's cool. It's great. You'll go, come in my graduate, look at my nice Ferrari, which is breaking down. And then, you know, and I can't afford to fix it cause I don't want to. We have to start making money. If you're a CFO owner, the business has to be stronger. And if it can be that way, Under or with, I will say. Danny Garcia and Dwayne Johnson. Cause I don't think they want to just take their thumb and just press on the CFL and go. We're going to squeeze you for everything you got. I think there was a room. So mutual respect here. I think Danny Garcia loves the global outreach that Randy Ambrozy as has implemented with CFL 2.0, he liked it. You know? She likes that Dwayne Johnson likes that. So we'll see where this goes. You know, it's hard to. It's hard to think about a full merger again. But I can see a partnership for sure. In the beginning. I think the full merger thing that might take, if it ever happens, that might take a lot more time than people. Awesome. Dave Campbell. We appreciate your time. Thank you for coming on, chatting with about, with us about the CFL. Looking forward to talking to you a lot more as this thing kind of unfolds. All read. It was a pleasure. Thank you so much. I would love to do it again. Thank you so much. Stay safe up there. What's up, man. Thanks for coming on. How you doing, man? We're good. I said, I need to quit sending you my call of duty highlights. And actually get you on the show. We had her nest them on last week. And he said you guys were hanging in and I figured this would be a great, just talking CFL stuff. So how are you doing. I'm good man. Can't complain every day is a, every day is a good day. When you wake up. So I can't really complain, bro. Good to hear. Good to hear. You just signed with the Alawites I'm seeing. Yeah. Sign with about a month ago, month and a half ago. Yeah. Congratulations, Matt. What was that? What was the process like going through that? Dude. Dude process has been long as. Taken me five years to finally sign a pro contract. I mean, we signed with the spring league, but I mean, when we talk about like pro contract, we talked about like an established. League and funding and all kinds of stuff like that. So, It was amazing, dude. From all the NFL workouts I've had to the XFL workouts I've had. So then. Getting, I actually got a call from BC. Asking if I would be interested in signing with them. And I said, I'd be interested. So they put me on their negotiation lists and then a week later they called me and said, yo, BC took you off your negotiation lists. Their negotiations. Would you be interested in starting with us? And I said, hell yeah. I'm good do let's go. I said, if you offered me a contract tonight, I'd sign it and I'd be up there playing for you this season because I, I we've have been me and my agent has been told that we have, we would possibly have camp invites from the Colts and the bills. But. I don't want to wait. I wanted to sign something. I'd rather not go off of just word of mouth and actually go with something super certain. So I told him, I said, look, if you offered me a contract and sent over numbers tonight, me and my agent will look over it. We negotiate. I would sign and over the next two days, everything was finalized. And I signed with the other words. How many years did you assign for just one? Two with an opt-out of one. So on both parties. After the first year I can, I can not doubt or they can opt out. It's so hard because I know, and your friend, Brian, Scott, you know, we followed him and I know he had to try it with the Colts a while back too. And they did. So just like uncertainty, where you kinda gotta go with, you know, what's offered in front of you right now versus it's this whole game that we've been covering you all you players for, for months now. It's like, what's the best route to go, you know? I was actually talking to my, I was actually talking to him. The. That's the successor of my job at UCLA is now signed to BC. His name's Stefan Flintoff and I talked to him. After I signed and said, so what is your goal is your goal is to use the CFL that gets the NFL. Or is it, is it what, like, what is your focus? And he was like, bro, if I signed a 15 year contract with the CFL, I would stay here because job security. And that, that really like hit me. And I was like, dude, like, I'm getting paid to play football. Like. It's the dream. Who, who in the world gets to say that. Especially in my position where I get to do all three duties, which I've been training. My my butt off this whole time. Like not many dude. There's not many in America. That can even do all three so that when he told me like job security, I was like, you know what? Like, John security. Like I'm so confident in my craft right now that I'll go up against anybody in camp. And I know I'll beat them out. So it was just that. That hit home for me, man, that I would rather just go off of certain instead of uncertain. We know the there's like, you know, different rules in terms of kicking extra points and stuff like that. Have you ever practiced that kind of stuff? Have you ever gone through that kind of stuff? I've seen the highlights where like someone missed a field goal or something. And then like they caught the football and kicked it back out in the ends out. And that's tripping to me. But. I mean, hashes are like high school hash is a little bit wider. I think maybe like a foot wider than high school hatches. It's NFL posts. Really it's mostly just aesthetic wise. I've already talked to the team and they said if I had five, Oh, Pints instead of driving them. They like, so CFL is really only seen driven ponds. They really haven't seen sub punter that could go up there and hit a 50 yard ball with like a five-hour. Hey. They like it like a 50 yard ball with like a fluoro hang because they have the halo rule and they don't want to get penalties. But I've mentioned to my football operations manager, like. Can I come up there and hit NFL parents and he was all for it. He said, if our team gets penalties, that's on our team. Like that's on them. Not, not on you, you go and just drop bombs and we'll, we'll cover. They're really having a direction. Which the NFL is already having a direction. So the only thing that I can't do is kick it out of bounds. Prior to the 20 yard line. So that's what I've been really focusing on. I've been really focusing on trying to hug. The sideline with insane wins. I'll try to go out late in the day, over here in Cali. Cause that's when we get like bad winds on sales, because they're mostly open, so I'll go out and then I'll really like challenge myself. I've been really honing my punting in on that, but feel goes. I mean, it's just a harsher angle. So aesthetically, I mean, every kid is supposed to go straight anyways. So aesthetically, it's just visually how a cake looks instead of. Just on terms of angles. It's not, it's not anything more. I will say though, like 50 yard kick on those steps, the hashes. Feels like a 60 yard kick. I feel like it adds way more distance to it. So the respect I have for American specialists and the CFOs has gone way up. What did you think? Yeah, obviously you signed and then all this has come out the last couple of weeks about potential, the CFL, XFL, all this stuff. I mean, yeah. We talked with our Nesta last week about it. I mean, just as players and people that bounce around these leagues. I mean, what did you think of all that? And obviously heading into, you know, to Canada now. I don't know what to think about it, honestly. I think it's, I think it's an amazing opportunity to make football a global. A global sport instead of just basically. Really, I mean, America is just dominating. You're talking about like sponsorships dealership content, like in America, football that's Americas. Sport. And Canada, I think it's a second sport. And actually Canada invented football from what I've been told, it's been here. It's been longer in Canada than in America, but if America, if. If the XFL could some, how. Take this sport global. And now you got global teams. I think the opportunity is limitless, man. I think there's a lot of doubt though, in terms of. The merger. I think there's just, there's just so much stuff that needs to be figured out before they can even. They can't even think about merging, man. There's just all the way down to like legal stuff, like insurances to player insurances. The salaries to. I don't know, man, it's just so much, but I mean, I think the business. Like. The possibilities of business-wise, if it happening could really make football global. And that would be absolutely amazing. Given the fact that the CFL didn't play last year, did that cause you any concern with signing with alphabets? Oh, yeah. I'll had major doubts. I actually told my agent, I was like, Like they didn't play this year. What are the chances? They don't play it. Like they don't, they didn't play last year. What are the chances they don't play this year? And he was like, Matt job security. So. I'd rather be signed to a football team and have that opportunity. Then, then continuously being an oversaturated market where. Kickers and punters are continually overlooked by NFL teams. And I'm having to deal with the politics of football. I would rather have job security and know that I'm in a situation where I can go and play and be on a team. Any, just even have a name. Just on my resume saying, dude, like I signed a two year contract with the team. Whether money is great, whether it's not great. Like I could say, like, I'm on a team right now. I have that under my belt. And that's just the first step is becoming closer to either the NFL or. The possible merger with the XFL CFO stuff. I have job security now. So. Yeah. Yeah, there was doubts. I was scared. Honestly. And it didn't really hit me that I was like, man, like, I'm going to go play pro football now. Now I'm only focused on jam, man. I'm only focused on. Getting out there and dominating whatever I need to dominate doing whatever the coach. Tells me to do and just. Being the best I could be. Have you, you know, we obviously have the whole stuff last week. Kenneth Farrow and the United football players, you know, that whole controversy, he came on our show. We did the whole thing about that. Have you. Heard anything that gives you pause for this year? I mean, are you just moving ahead and not, not worrying about that? I hear I'm hearing all kinds of stuff. And I don't want to be that one person that came on a podcast. I got exposed. No, and that's not what we're saying. I could tell you stuff that I know. But then I also. I don't want to be that guy. Yeah, no, we don't. I'm excited to play football. But we did have a players' meeting yesterday with a Canadian football players. So. Show creation. Basically like the NFL PA here, their players association up there. I just took a survey this morning asking me specific questions. That. They make me unhappy, but. At the same time though, I'm in a position to where I can't complain. I get to play football professionally. And those. There should be no reason why I'm complaining about getting paid, play football. So, I mean, either way I look at it, I need to look at it and the utmost gratefulness. That God and the universe has blessed me with the opportunity to play football. And I just that's how it is. I would say the state of the. The CFL right now is still uncertain. Whether they're going to have an on-time start or a delayed start. Like everything we went through in the meeting yesterday, it seemed like everything was still up in the air. So. I read the room when they asked about the player. Cut. For salary and yep. And I don't. I don't think no one wants that. So. I'm in a position where I'd say yes to anything and just go up there and get the film. I'd need to come back down and try to pitch to us and NFL team. If anything were to happen. So I'm just in a position now where I just want to go play football, dude. I really don't care what the hell happens. But everything's kind of still in discussions from the meeting that we had yesterday. Did your time with TSL, do you think. Getting taped down there. And of course your breaking your own record for the longest field goal. Do you think how much of a factor do you think that had. In terms of getting you this opportunity. Let me know, I'll put something into perspective for you. There's thousands of free agents out there that say they could kick footballs. The only type of exposure, a free agent kicker has, and a free agent Potter has, or a free agent. Sniper has is going to these combines that they have once or twice a year. Where they're put in situations where they only hit one punt every 20 minutes in front of all these NFL Scouts. And they're just hoping and praying and. Basically on their hands and knees hoping for a chance that a scout says, you know what? I like this guy, like, let's bring them in. That's what our market is like. So going to something where it provided me the opportunity to do punting and kicking. On. Live television in front of hundreds of thousands to millions of people during COVID. And I was the, I was able to be the best performer in that situation. Literally gave me all the leverage. I needed to sign a contract. As soon as I was. Set home. After the first COVID outbreak happened before the championship game happened, the Colts called me and we're actually gonna fly me up when their punter came out and said he had cancer, they were gonna fly me up and compete with. Think it's Ryan Allen. They wanted me to compete with an NFL veteran to start. That next week. LA didn't have flights to be set out. So I, I couldn't get there in time to start my COVID protocol in order to have one practice to compete, to start in the next game. So that kind of screwed me. But I was right there. After the championship game, the Bill's called and told me that they wanted to bring me up and I was on their shortlist and the state tight. But. When trust, investigate, you know, actually went three for three in the field, goes with the Niners. They brought him in over me. They wanted to be more sure. They would rather just have a soul kicker come in instead of an all three. And basically their, their scout told my agent, like it was a split decision in the room. And ultimately the owner wanted to go with someone who's proven in the NFL than someone who wasn't yet. So just to know that I had that. All because of the spring league. I had to play off. NFL teams calling me and saying like, we're ready to bring you in. And then just politics kind of gotten away. That right. In there. It tells me that the spring league. It was more effective for me than any other combine has ever been for me. So I think the, what Brian Woods has done with the spring league, And what he's trying to do at the spring league offers way more exposure. Then than what I've been in this oversaturated market. This whole five years of my. My experience. Well, that's good to, I mean, but that's great for us to hear me. Brian's going to be coming on the show here a week after that. Getting all the stuff ready for me. So, I mean, it's great for us as, as a podcast that does cover the Supreme league and these. You know, alternative things. It's great to know that, right. That you feel like that time was worthwhile and got you that shot that maybe you wouldn't have had. So, I mean that validates it to me that like, We're not wasting our time, like covering that stuff because it is great. To get the exposure for everybody, for sure. Oh, yeah. That guy really get that guy. Really cares about getting dudes to the next level. And he may not show it publicly or social media wise or anything, but I know in his heart, like everybody that's in the spring Lake, he hopes gets a shot and it really, he doesn't even get a percentage of whatever they do. Like he's not. It doesn't I don't, I honestly, he hasn't gotten anything from anybody. I know that's been picked up. So like it's literally out of the goodness of his heart, honestly, like. I really liked that dude. He's helped me a lot in my career. I think it's a situation where it's like, you can look back and go. It's, it's almost like a resume builder for him in a sense, not saying that he's using you to like boost his name, but he can look back and say, I helped this person get here and this person get there. And now. That person, you know, that one person, whether it be you or someone else could get that big break and do something major on a scale. And he, I think maybe can sleep at night going. I got that person that opportunity and maybe that's why he does it. That's living a life of abundance and providing opportunity for people. And if someone asks for help, you get them help. That's been my motto. For a long time. So. I completely agree with that statement. That's a good way to live if you're living like that. So what's next. I mean, a lot of uncertainty, you know, obviously keeping your head down. I know you're out there all the time. I mean, all you guys, you are Nesto. I mean, everyone that, you know, we fall online everyday kind of grinding. I mean, what do you. Just keep your head down. Do you have any idea of when you're heading up? Yeah. I mean, they get, we're not trying to get anyone in trouble with anything. Just trying to see what you have going on in the future here. There's a lot that needs to go on for the CFO starts. Just to players. If, if, if it were to be the players pay cut. Like, that's not all that needs to happen before this starts. I know that they had a vaccine up there that ended up. Hurting. And I think. Hurting people so bad that they actually lost a lot of lives because of a certain vaccine up there. I'm not sure if that's true, but I did hear that from my wives. So I know United States gave him a lot of vaccines. But they still need to vaccinate people. And I know Providence is haven't even begun discussing health guidelines in order to have season. So. There's way more. That needs to go on. Besides just the players, like the players, guys to me is just minuscule to what needs to happen. So then I have a season. But. So the hundreds and hundreds of players that want to be playing football, they're seriously pushing to play football. I think the coaches want to play football. I think that if the CFL goes without having a season one more time, I don't think that. I don't think that they'll bounce back from it. What was the question again? Sorry. No, it's good. It's great stuff. There's yeah. Planning on hitting up. Yeah, I hadn't met. I've been quadrupling down on my training. I've literally. My mindset is just being undeniable right now. So, whether it's taking that mindset through a left or through kicking one rep. On a field goal to training with the appropriate people I need to train to, with, to feed off of and, and compete against whether it's NFL guys at your throw guys, free agents, like trying to find that niche. To get that feel to compete. I'm my mindset is I have to be 100% prepared for any absolutely any situation for them to bring in Justin Tucker and to compete with me type stuff. Like that's that's. One of my mindset is from what they told me and the opportunity I'm going to have. I'm still taking it as I have. I literally have to lay everything on the line and show them, look like I am the best partner in America. I'm the best kicker in America. And that's why you have me here in Canada playing and doing all three positions for you. So my mindset is literally nothing could get in my way. That's how I take my trainings. That's how I take my lifts. That's. I'm even transferring that over with my gaming organization. Like I'm literally trying to mimic that mindset. Every single thing I do. And if there's a situation in life where like, I'm going out to dinner with someone I like. I don't like in the family to friends that I feel like would take that mindset away from me to, it's just, I try to exclude it all out of my life and I'm trying to maintain 100% consistent with that mindset. So. Going up there right now. That's the only focus I have and it's every cake. Every morning, I wake up I'm in visualize and making game winners. And. Dropping bombs and. Do it, I'm just. The fire. I wish I could share with you. It's it's intense. My life is intense. Is that right now? You mentioned gaming organization. How did you get into that? What's what's, what's the story on that? I had a group of friends that we would play call of duty with the last call of duty. And they were like, Matt, do you think if you paid for this. We could. Can you get us into something called the amateur world series? I said, let me make a few calls, made a few calls, got them in the amateur world series. From there. We quickly realized that I was not good enough to play in that. So we found other players. And. All in all it turned out. We finished third out of like 27 teams. And then from there. I figured, dude, what if we started a gaming organization? So for three months, We planned out and actually I. Submitted the paperwork for an LLC and trademark my logo. And then boom, like. I had a gaming organization competing in call of duty. My mentor. David Meltzer. He owns the Toronto ultra and he linked me with one of the owners of faze clan David Chen. So now I'm in a I'm intermingling with people who have been in Forbes. Nearly 20 plus times and have e-sports organizations, media outlets, e-sports organizations that I had no idea. Had all this. Connection to e-sports and now I'm sitting here. And I'm like, s**t, like. I have this and they have that, like, dude, I'm learning everything I can. And I'm making this a business. I had no idea that they even did that. It just kinda, it just kinda, I don't know. The universe was just like bang, bang, bang, and now I'm here and now I have this business. Where am I going with it? So I actually signed a couple of kids that were unknown in the Cod community that were amazing. They ended up getting a [unknown]. [Unknown] recently. Top 16 in the world for college duty competitively. And everything's just been kind of taken off from there. I've been signing some streamers. Pushing the brand out. We just secured a partnership with sector six apparel. Who is. One of the high end apparel companies that do partnerships with top, top e-sports org. My buddy came in from the Dallas Cowboys and decided that he wanted to fund everything and he. He's one of my best friends and. It's just. It's going like wildfire. It's crazy. We love video games. I can almost all athletes. Like literally when they get home from practice would rather just sit and buy games instead of go out. Get in trouble. To parties. You know, paparazzi, you know, that s**t. Video games, keep us straight. So, and we can compete on them. So it's like, it's always keeping that mindset going on and stuff. So. It's crazy and. Yeah, man. Totally cool. Yeah, it's great. I just, I love her cause you know, I'm not very good, but I do. If I remember ever proud at all at anything that I do, I like to say tag you and send it your way. Just like, Oh yeah. My white friends are there. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Like I said, you know, I tried to get anyone in trouble with anything. I think you were great with, with everything and just, I'm sorry. We get a call from the CFL. What the hell are you talking about? No, at all. No, I appreciate it. Like I said, we we've followed you since the spring league, you know, last year and, and, and just that whole world and all these players, I love catching up and finally get you on the podcast. So thank you so much. Yeah. If. If I can be of assistance in helping you find or get anybody else on that you want maybe an hour wet player or. Or even an NFL player, let me know. I'll try to see if I can reach out to them. We know a lot of guys, so. Yeah, man. Appreciate you letting me shout out my work too. It means a lot. Of course, man, we appreciate your time. Thank you, Matt. Of course, you guys have a great blessed day, man. Thank you. How's it going? We're good. I've been, I we've been looking forward to this. We have the official policy and should a Stan account now. How's it gone. Not too bad, not too bad. How about you guys? Doing great. You know, staying healthy. I got my first shot. I'm really happy about that. I got my first one. Two weeks ago now. What'd you end up? What did you end up with? Pfizer team Pfizer. Ah, I got Moderna so. I was down for a day. I was hurting so bad. It was, it was like, I did a, a leg day at the gym after not going for two years, but all over. See mine was like, I I've heard the second trial will absolutely just like wallop you, but the first one for Pfizer at like, it put me on my ass for like a day, but then I bounced back like, Lucky. Good. So to set the stage and we're going to do this in the show too, but we got, we had Dave Campbell on E. There's Edmonton. We had Matt mangle as a player, and now I love this with you. W with the Reddit community, because I want to get this way. We've got all our bases covered this week. We've got, you know, the, the, the press. We've got players and then we've got the internet. So what has it been like the last two weeks? You, you know, moderate helped moderate the CFL Reddit boards, if they're, what has it been like since the XFL has invaded your world? I mean. As a fan, it's been like insanity, just because like, my phone is buzzing, nonstop because I have like, obviously the Reddit community and the Twitter account, both tied to my phone. So I'll be sitting at work and my notification center just like. All day from a pure analytics point of view, like. It's been insane. Like we've had people from the NFL people who are not traditionally football fans, XFL fans. CFL fans who have kind of like fallen out of favor with the league, all rushing back in and just, just like shooting our numbers through the roof. Like, it's been insane, like absolutely insane, like with the community it's me and a bunch of other strapping good-looking dudes running it. And it's like, it's slowly improving on our full-time jobs, just having to contain all of it. But it's been exciting. It's been awesome. What are, what are, what. What like personally. Favor of this thing. Let's just get out of the way. Are you in favor of this merger? Yeah, so I need to cover my bases just because like my posting history. You can dig into it. Originally, I wasn't like I was a Canadian, like I bleed maple syrup. And like, I wanted the CFL to say the CFL and in the past we had all these people pop up and say things like, Oh, like the XFL and CFL. Merge the CFL and the AFL should merge. The CFL should become NFL Canada and just be the defacto D league. And I was very staunchly. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Keep my Canadian football Canadian. But I'm also a realist and I understand the reality of the situation and through the Reddit community, like I've been able to build contacts within the league office. I told you read that I did work for the league for a brief brief period of time TSN reporters, which is essentially our ESPN. People who look. Work in the actual teams. And talking to them and realizing. Just how dire things are with the CFL right now. I basically come to the conclusion that I would much rather football in Canada, survive through a merger with the XFL, then no football at all. So. To answer your question, I guess, is like, I'm for it right now. If it's going to save our league, if it's going to inject capital into our league. And if it's going to ensure that I can go to my red blocks games every weekend, up in Ottawa. Let's do it like let's merge. Did you have any familiarity with XFL before all this came about? So I wasn't a football fan, so I'm 29. I wasn't a football fan in 2001. My football fandom started in around 2009 ish, 2010. After playing it a bit in high school and watching my local university go to the banya cup, which in Canada is our college championship. So that kind of all kicked it off for me, but my, like I do have early memories, obviously. Like he hate me and just like the crazy. Instead of the coin toss, where they were just like running and giving themselves concussion, diving, diving on the ball. And then when XFL 2.0. First launched. I was talking with a few people in the league. And they were. How do I phrase this? They were more weary of XFL 2.0 than they ever were. The AAF. Just because like the innovations and it seems more like a Polish, legitimate product where a F. Like there was rumors and things popping up every other day. And like, were they funded? Were they not funded? So my interest was peaked and I watched a bunch of the games. During 2.0, before everything's shut down. So that's my general. I'm not like too, in depth of the understanding of the mechanics of it, but like, I have a general understanding of where you guys are at. What's been the outcry, you know, I I've seen a lot of, and we just had Dave on it. It seems like, you know, CFL people, it's it's, you know, Crying foul where they they're, they're really holding on to this. Right. And that's great too. I mean, we've said. Yeah. The first time, the day announced, it's like, we're not XFL Mark, like rules. Like I don't care. We just, I mean, we cover a fan controlled football. It's on Twitch. Yeah. But, but if the league is dying right, or if they're running out of money, You can't. I mean, what Hillary dying on here? Yeah, and that that's kind of. Ben. My argument when I've been conversing with a lot of people is like, if the league is dying, what's the point of dying on this Hill? Like we're either going to shoot our shot merging. And it might work or we're going to be dead. Or we're going to keep going the way we're going and go and we're going to be dead. But I think you see a lot of the pushback is because. For a lot of people, the CFL is like as Canadian, as hockey, as Don cherry, as Wayne Gretzky, like it, it's a huge, huge part of our identity. So all these merger talks of just. Essentially been. Making people incredibly anxious that this huge part of their identity is about to go by. So. I get it. I. You know, like I'm, I'm heavy into baseball player. At every level. And the, the whole idea of like statistics coming in and being so important to the baseball game is making me like I'm a 42 year old man. I'm like, wait, what is this crap? You know, like bonds are a part of the game and that kind of thing. Completely get the traditional aspect of this. So would that being said. How do you think it's going to. If they do merge, if there's a merger that happens. And let's just say they adapt the grey cup as the championship for the entire league, which I want, which. I'm in the paper for. How do you think that's going to play out when the first XFL team wins that grey cup? So I think. Like you guys are obviously familiar with the U S expansion back in the early nineties. Yes. So I think it will. It depends on how they align it. If they're going to keep the CFL and the U S as two different divisions, I think personally, that would be great TV because when Baltimore went to the grey cup twice in 95 and then won it in 96, Or what? 9,495. Either one of those. Sounds right. Yeah. It was very much just Canada versus the us. And I. There's this weird dichotomy in Canada, where like, anytime we do something better than you guys, we just love to boast about it. Like we love it. We love the whole Canada versus us narrative. As much as our countries are very much friends and very much on amazing terms. So I think realistically, if something like that happened again, it would just be a huge boon for both leagues or especially here in Canada. I don't know how much it'd be received in the U S because I feel like you guys. Every now, and then think of us as an afterthought until Drake or somebody. Some other famous Canadian pops up. But yeah. Is this interesting. Cause you know, the CFL is your XFL, you know? Oh one. Yeah, we were there. It's kind of a joke, you know, 2.0 comes about, and it's all this. You know, they spent, I don't know. Why Vince didn't just except for just his vendetta. I'm wanting to prove that he was right. You know, call it something else. Right. I mean, there's so much baggage on, you know, terrible baggage on, on all this from the two thousands. Where the CFL is so tied to like the Canadian identity. It's just weird. Where, how about these leagues exist? And there's just such a different stigma as to both of them. Definitely. I think. Like. The biggest thing that I'm worried about right now is if. Now, this is more so for the older generation is if the rules change dramatically, a mass amount of the season ticket holders for the. Every team across the country are going to go. Like they don't want to see for down. They don't want to see a hundred yard. Fields. Like they don't want any of that. They want their three downs. They want their motion. They want all that fun stuff. But the only saving grace I see in that is with Canada, because we're just so exposed to us marketing. Like we get blasted by the NFL's marketing machine. For every 10 times we see an NFL ad. We might see one CFL. My only solace in that potential move would be, it could reinvigorate the young Canadian football fans to start coming out and start supporting their teams and start doing all that. So it's. It's a balancing act. Everything about this to me is just going to be one giant balancing act. And if everything that I've heard and everything that's out in the media is true. We like this is it. Like we have to try this and if it doesn't work well, we were going to die anyway. Yeah. Do you think a big, you said. If they do adopt XFL, you think that there's going to be. Of revolt. I think there'll be a big, big role. In the older fans in like are you're 50 plus who grew up with the CFL? Not the millennials to gen Z, who, I mean, Out of my friend group, I'm probably the only like one true CFL fans. The other ones possibly watch, but they're not fully into it. I think their interests might get peaked, but it would be game over for a lot of the. Gen Xers and boomers. That's interesting. You say gen X was cause I'm I identify as gen X. I'm you know, I'm right there on the edge. And I think, I think like a lot, I've seen some CFL games here and there. I would not necessarily revolt against changing the game to make it more marketable and. Get a better TV deal. I'll keep coming back to that because it was. Heard about the TV deal and. It sticks with me cause I'm just like, that's such a small amount to pay for something that's got such a heritage. It is, but it's not, I forget who was it? Rod, who you guys were talking to. Who told you about the TV? Yeah. It's not in the scope of if you understand, like the money moving through Canadian media markets, like I think the biggest. Media by any company has ever done in this country is when Rogers bought the rights for the NHL and they spend, I believe just over $2 billion. And after that happened, they basically had to slash a giant chunk of their company because they paid so much. So media deals in this country are insane. Like we just saw the NFL sign one, $110 billion deal for the next 10 years. So I think putting that in perspective with the number that the CFL is getting and understanding that games on average range between 600 to 700,000. Canadians. Yeah, it's not it rages. I mean, me personally, I'm a CFL Homer. Like I think it should be. A billion dollars every year to the league, but. Again, putting it in perspective. It does make a lot of sense why that number is there and it has every new broadcasting deal has gone up and up and up and up and up with TSN. I just don't feel like there's, there's such a big difference between a $2 billion deal for the NHL. And that number that we got for the, see if there's just such a big gap. Yeah. Massive. And I don't understand that. Yeah. We were one of our, we're going to record the bulk of our show here after this one, did that. I talking points here within you. NFL deal is one NFL game, basically equates to the budget for the. The CFL gets for the whole season. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Just an app perspective alone. I mean American dollars and Canadian viewership and the populations, all that aside like that is astounding. That one NFL game could be, you know, the whatever Thursday night left over game, you know, that the rights for that equals, you know, the whole it's crazy. I remember. And this is. There's a certain segment of the Canadian media population that just loves to crop on the CFL. I can point you to a few of them. If you'd like to interview some of them. But one of the articles that sticks out in my mind is when drew Brees signed his last deal in one year, he was making more than every single CFL player. They're like all their salaries combined. It's drew Brees was still making more. But. It is what it is. Yeah, I just, I guess my last question today. And we'll, we'll probably follow up with you at some point, you know, later when we know more stuff here is I just, I I'm really, and hearing, even hearing you talk today about, you know, the older people and the younger and the losing money, like. I don't know if there is a win here where like, you know, the accent all comes in, people are going to revolt. If they don't, the CFL is running out of money, you know, they don't have anywhere else to go. I just don't know where this is going, where it's going to appease. Everybody except XFL fans that just want to see the XFL, I guess. I think a lot of people. I think they'll come around. Like everyone's adverse to change. Nobody wants something that you love to change, but reality of life is things need to change. Things need to evolve. And if we want football in this country, We need to change and evolve. One of the big things that I've been parroting, especially on Twitter though, is. I keep seeing things, people saying like, Oh, what can the XFL bring to the CFL? Or, Oh, what can the CFL bring to the XFL? And for me, it's been insanely obvious. And this might just be because I've seen the inner workings of the CFL and how it works. But the CFL needs marketing. They like go to the CFL stuff. Directory. When we get off the call, look for a single person who is hired or currently working with the CFL right now, who works in marketing. There's one. And it's a C suite executive level position. They have no marketing personnel and stuff anymore. When I worked there, their marketing department was in shambles and I'm not talking social media. I'm not talking communications like communications, social media, marketing, completely different things. I'm talking purely marketing people. They don't have any. The CFL needs marketing and CFL has always needed marketing. Their marketing sucks. We had to bully them. The Reddit community had to bully the CFL. And we've done this a few times. We had to bully them to get a Tik TOK account. And I'll. I understand like tic talk, like the impression is, Oh, it's for 15 year olds. Right. But Tik TOK has a billion users now. And what demographic is the CFL missing? The younger fans. Like we, as a community should not have to bully you. On the flip side, the XFL needs established operations history. All that stuff, which the CFL has. So the more we dive into this, I guess, thought experiment of an actual merger happening. On paper. It makes sense why the XFL and the CFL need each other, like. The rock and Redbird capital and all that can provide a massive marketing arm or the CFL can come in and provide this wealth of operational knowledge. And on paper. It should work. Will it work or will it even happen? We don't know. But. And so, yeah, it's, it's, it's this tough. I just don't. I don't know the deeper we get into this and, and. Like I said, we're not the XFL marks, but it's, it's at some point, you know, the rubber hits the road and you gotta kinda. Get your stuff together. And if it, if it's bleeding out and you gotta, I don't know, I just don't know why it's going to be fascinating to me. I'm glad we were going to cover the CFL anyway, before all this XFL staff came about. And now it's, it's certainly become, like you said, that, you know, a full-time job as well to try to kind of keep up at manage all this stuff. Hmm. No. Are you guys for or against the merger? I'm for it. You're for it. I'm for it. I think, I think like you said, you know, I think we're, we're on the same page where the great cup could be something that's adapted as the league title. I don't know about a Canada versus us divisions. Maybe split it. Half East West. East West. Where you get, you get variations of, you know, like there could be two Canadian teams playing for the gray cup. Still. There could be two us teams playing for the gray cup. I think the East of West divisions might, might work better in terms of. Travel. And in terms of potentially getting a Canada versus Canada team match up in the grey cup, which would make of course Canadian fans happy. I think some of the rivalries too, like, I don't know if the XFL plans on coming back with the teams that were originally launched, but one of the things I've seen all over. Twitter and just in the community as a BC versus Seattle rivalry would be. Amazing. Yeah. I mean, look at MLS. So we got, we have white caps and the Sounders. That's part of it. That's part of a serious. That, that soccer rivalry up there in the Pacific Northwest between Portland and Vancouver and Seattle. It's massive. So I liked that idea a lot. Yeah, it's just, it's just tough because we're the exit fellas, singular owned, you know, all these teams and, and either the CFL is not even that, you know, it's a mix and you have these owners. So that's my thing is, cause I would say, you know, you just run them separate, give red bird. You know, 40% or whatever of the CFL on the marketing end. But at that point you can't do that because you have all these different teams and stuff and the ownership, and, you know, you have an old money up there and maybe they don't want to let you know, why would I want to let go if I've got whatever intelligence. So. Awesome. Braden from CFL Reddit. We appreciate your time. I'm sure we're going to be talking to you very soon here. What if any other news breaks? Yeah, I'm sure I'll be all over it. Yeah, it will. We'll be chatting. I appreciate you. And I think it's a good connection and I think it's a good angle for us to take. I think it's on brand for us. That's awesome. I have to mention this. I appreciate you being a Stan. I have to, I have to appreciate that. Shout out for that. Well, I I'm trying, I'll see if I can try and make it an ice cream level meme in the community for you. Great. Do I get any tidbits with that? Or like a 10 beds. We might be able to shoot you guys some like free health care and maple syrup. So let me go talk to Justin Trudeau and like, we'll figure it out. Sounds good. Exactly. All right. I want to thank our guests, Brayden, Matt mangle. And of course, Dave Campbell, all for coming on, chatting with us about, you know, CFL. There stuff like Matt, specifically his stuff, his gaming stuff seems really interesting. A great, great kid, Matt. Great Britain. Brain's a good, great kid too. I'm like, I like forget sometimes that how old I am and I'm like, Oh, they're great kids, you know? And then yeah, Braden. Running the CFL community on Reddit. Doing a great job over there. And of course I appreciate the Stan account. Shout out from Brayden. Yeah, I think so. Now that we're through the extra health stuff, I think we're going to be a little more casual now. I. Yeah, no, I don't know. I see something coming up that might fire me up again. I know, but I feel like, you know, we get a lot of CFL staff. I didn't want to, I wanted to point out two things first off. Do I sound better with my windscreen? You do. And I also stop. I want to compliment your Jersey. Well, I was going to get to that too. Matt Lyons. When you retweet the episode today, I want you to tell me how I sound with my new windscreen. Cause Matt does audio work as well. And I was thinking about this, Matt or Jenna, our one-on-one for longest time fan, I dunno, like it's one a and one B I might have to go back and check the tape, but I was thinking Matt Lyons in Jeddah. One-on-one I we're going to have to figure out who is the longest time fan and yes, I also have my. This is my official one. I got my Chinese knockoff one and it was terrible. The XFL or the NFL logo is sideways. But that Jersey is going to be included and all the fun stuff that we give away when we hit a thousand. Subscriber. So lucky listener is going to get the Chinese bootleg Taylor. Hi, Nikki Jersey when we get to that point, but this is my official one. What do you think. I like it. I like it. I dig it a lot. I actually, I actually picked up, there was a cell. I got a Kevin Durant Jersey on the way. Cause I'm really excited about my Brooklyn nets. I also got a friend of mine, a relo Jonas. I got to Mayo because we make this joke about that. I don't know if you've seen the video where the guy that sounds like Michael Rappaport. I'm pretty sure it's not Michael Rappaport. Gets all excited about. Like it's p****d. The fact that the Knicks drafted crits. Kristaps Porzingis. And he's like who the F is this Dingus? Pingus so I got my friend relo, a Tinga. This pingers Jersey as a gag gift. Yeah. He's like, I'm going to wear that thing to the garden the minute they let fans back in. So yeah. You know, I'm buying jerseys too. Yeah. I was like, I'm all in on Washington football this year with fits. Hi, Nikki, we got chase young. I'm all in I'm. I'm a hundred percent on the Washington football team. Okay. I mean, you haven't, you have a football team just down the street, but okay. Well I can have two and they can be in the same. And that's fine. They can be in the same division, but I, I am, I am I'm with it. And I've got fourth and long podcast. They were talking about fits this week. Going on their friends. They like everything that we ever post. And I said, well, hi, Nikki leads, Washington football to a playoff win this year. I want to come on the podcast. And they said, I can come on. So shout out to fourth and long when that happens. Yep. Just a couple quick notes about spring league. Brian Woods is confirmed to come on not next week, but the week after. There Jake Henry. We talked about this last week with our Nesto, but there's a little bit more info coming out. A lot of people are thinking that the spring league and all the little stuff that Brian's working on, they're going to be eight teams. Connected to cities. Maybe a couple of like two different bubbles. Like he got one-on-one Seth friend of the show. He's been tweeting a lot about this as well. And Jake. Brian, I guess with the spring league is acquiring IVs, old USFL trademarks, like the new Orleans breakers, Houston gamblers, Michigan Panthers, Dallas stallions. Pittsburgh. Maulers I like that name St. Louis and Baders Jake. Henry's happy about that because Jake's at bellhops. A Hawks fan. Tampa Bay, bandits and Memphis. Showboats, you know, they're all kind of over in that side. What do you think about this? You're you're nodding. I mean, you know, If, if, if. People are going to knock the XFL for their baggage. These names have baggage too. They do, they do have a little bit of baggage, too. I mean, people still remember how, how. How the USFL bankrupt itself with that Steve young deal. And I mean, Not for nothing. It's not political, but at the same time, Donald Trump was also very instrumental, a downfall of USFL. So I mean, It's interesting. The names are great. I liked the names, but. I hope there's no baggage attached to it. That's all I got to say. Yeah. You know, where are the jesters? That's who I want. I don't care about the Maulers remove magnet jesters. I don't. I, I don't, I don't know. It'll be really curious to tied to Bryant because it really depends on how big he wants to go with this, because there is a very big difference between doing four on city teams in, in San Antonio and the bubble versus, you know, like. Travel. And teams attached to cities and, you know, do we know? I mean, it's just, we'll see, I'll be, I mean, Brian's coming on. I have verbal or written confirmation from him. So that'll be very interesting to see. What happens with that, but I just, it could be, we could have some spring league stuff to cover here. If the CFL gets delayed. And I mean, you know, how do you, that's a big question I have is how do you encourage fans to emotionally invest in these teams? If they, you know, Everything considered. I'm just, I don't want to be the, I don't want to be like. Negative Nancy here. There's plenty of that to go around, coming up here in a second. One last thing I just wanted to get Brian Scott, a shout out friend of the show. We talked with Matt, his teammate from spring league. I Broadway sports media did a nice interview right up with him. He's just talking about trying to get into the NFL. I'll just, what I like now is that we're covering these guys, you know, math, science and the alphabets. That's awesome. Right? Like Ernesto is doing the football with the Rattlers. Like I like knowing these players and that Brian, Scott, he did a try it with the Colts. He was talking all about that. I've seen them be posted and workout stuff online. He had like a film crew working with him. Like I just, I'll be excited to see where these guys end up because I feel like we know. Them now where I feel like a different level of like fandom for Washington football, like with highly key. And I just, I, I feel that I liked that as a football fan. Completely agree. Completely agree. So we just want to roll on the fan control here. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put the commercial breaks in the audio podcast while you already heard them, but I'm going to put them in between the interviews so that, you know, we'd get all, all of them out of the way. And we get to the end of the show. All right. So we're going to do fingernail football seven now. They have their championship game. And it was great. It was fine. And this is what I've come to realize. And we're going to talk about expansions and everything here in a minute. In control football at its best is just like, it's fine. I bet the broadcast was fine. Like everything was fine. There wasn't any N words. There wasn't any like, Ray Austin is still in sufferable. So that's where I'm at. I had a feeling it, I had a feeling about that. You saying that. Yeah. So that's kind of where I'm at is it's like, well, we'll see. You know, I'm not going to get as heated, tried to get as heated about set fear. You. I know we got a little out of hand this year with everything. But at the, at the end of the day, you know, it's fine. Like, it's fine. I want to talk about the viewers and stuff, but it was 44 of the egg crouch ran in with the game winner. I've been talking with him. I said, yeah, we should get him on the show. Yeah, he that the wild ACEs one, which was awesome. All the NFL teams with their players got out the previous week. While this is one Greg Miller, you know, friend of the show, like they won the YouTubers on the team. And one, I think all that is great. Like I think that is all a wonderful things and, and, you know, but like I said, I. At its best. It is just like fine. Something to watch. Yeah. I still do not have my Jersey, my wildest sisters. He, I looked it up this week. I actually, so I talked with Sarov about this and I know this sounds nitpicky for like the podcast, but there are people, people commented this week on the YouTube. I can't believe Risa doesn't have his Jersey. So, so Rob was talking about expansions and I retweeted, and I said, I would hope that before you expand, you would S you know, send all the jerseys that you guys have. He goes I'll please DM me, whatever. I ordered this Jersey on January 14th. January 14th. I ordered this Jersey and I still don't have it. And it is May 25th. Every recording of this, I spent $70 on. 25Th. Yeah. Sorry. And the, the, what I got was. When I tweeted that the finger to football responded and they said, Oh, you know, we saw XFL and the name. And we figured that you guys would go bankrupt and we'd have to buy this back anyway. Shut up well, and you can get into all that and whatever, but I I'm a fan that spent $70 on something of your product, right? Like I'm a fan. I'm you know, w we were fans. But like he's a real person behind the account. It's not just a corporate entity idiots. But, you know, and, and that was even like Brayden, when we were trying to schedule the, you know, him to come on and he's like, well, what is like, what is the deal with this? Like, why are they being elegantly? I get it. Like I get, and I get that. I trash talk and I trash tweet. I absolutely get all of that. A hundred percent. But, but you know, I'm someone that spent $70 on a Jersey. You have people that spend $150 to buy into these teams. And I just, that. That's where the interesting I take that they had a idea was Sohrab and he goes, well, clearly some people got their jerseys. I don't know, you know? Sorry, you didn't get yours yet. And I said, well, okay, clearly some people did. And clearly some people did because I had six people of the 700 people that follow me on Twitter, which is, you know, a fraction of fan controlled football. Five people that follow me that are fangirl football fans also don't have their jerseys. So like, I just, I just didn't like that. The CEO came on. Yeah. And was just very, I guess, just dismissive of that. And, and the fact that, you know, it was a $70, whatever. They emailed out this week. Well, first, I guess you wanted to talk about this. Sohrob tweeted about selling tweets, like top shot things. I've been looking into this, my friend frees brought it up in the wheelhouse podcasts. Like have you heard of these NFT non fungible tokens? Basically. It's like selling digital. Digital assets like tweets and Facebook posts. Like if I take a picture and I posted on Instagram, I can now sell that photo. To someone. And it's like, I guess the new form of crypto in a way where people can own a digital asset. And then sell it off for. Maybe a loss, maybe a game later on down the road. I guess that's, that's, what's happening with digital media these days. And I think it's very interesting. I like the idea, but I'm not sure there's a market for the first editor. First ever. Fan controlled football play. Yeah, they were throbbing. He was like, well, would you buy this? I mean, I think it's, I think Matt comments. A friend of the show. I think he, I think we talked about this and he thinks that. It's dumb. I mean, I think crypto. You know, it's still, I mean, clearly taken off. I was hesitant about that, but you know, I think buying these, you buy the rights to the, to the MBA replay or whatever on these top shots. I think, I don't know what you really are owning from that. But I also really don't know what you're owning with these spiritual football teams. This, this email came out, this was sent over. It looks to me like they're diluting the offerings. Is that, am I reading this right, Paul, you know, a little bit more about like investing and things like that. They basically, they send out in there. They were saying like, thanks for your support. This season buying in a we're increasing the maximum offer for these teams. Is that what they're doing? Why are they diluting? Why do they need to raise more money? Well, cause I think that they, I think that, cause I think they only sold 3% of the teams. In this first round and now I think they're like, Oh crap, we a lot more people want to do this or we need more money. Or I would presume that just, I don't think they need money. I do think they're fine money. I think. I think they just are like, Oh shoot, we can sell more of this separate people. Like, well, how do we get more ownership? And so is that just how investments work? Am I looking into this too much? I mean, that's how investments work. I just, I don't know why they need to raise more money. Cause that's that's, that's what I see when I see this, I'm like, Oh, they need more money. Hmm. Stop making digs about the expo going bankrupt when you need to raise more money. Well, I, again, We've had about this earlier. XFL went bankrupt for a lot of other reasons. Journey was really the champion of the fans. I just thought that was cool. I loved that journey friend of the show can, you know, when the first people we, you know, we have the home with his finger told stuff. And he's just excelled in everything. And I think he's really gonna run wild with all this new found popularity he's got from finger to a football. So the stream numbers came out for the championship game. They had a million views, which is down significantly from the headline 3.2 million, I believe the week before. But what was interesting was the average view time per view was three minutes. Sounds a lot worse than five minutes, average. Because last week it was five minutes for, yeah. For that's for your championship game. You think more people would stay tuned in. For championship game, but they didn't. Well, I'm, I'm confused here because I've seen and, and Kevin, a friend of the show, Kevin on Twitter. He, you know, some people think it has to do with like, people like going on and off, like they're voting and then it's like opening back up. So I get to either, so either the viewership either the number of views is, is skewed than wrong, right? Like as if I'm going off and going back on, if I'm voting or something, then that number is wrong, then it's not a million views. And that skewing the other thing. So like either way, I think it's a terrible luck either. Like either the million views is inflated and it's really only like, you know, 500,000 or two or whatever, or that, you know, that, that skewing that. But I don't think like, I just think that's really poor and especially where it's down from the week before. I mean, like I said, it was 3.2, 1 million views down. I mean, the number of views. I know what happened. Someone was watching it on Twitch. On her phone. Their cell phone signal dropped out after three minutes. And they came back up and then all of a sudden that counted as a new view. So that's, that's probably what happened. But so, but then, then it's not. And then, and then we, then I do buy into those concurrent views then of like the 45,000 people or 50,000 people that are watching. Right. Cause it's. Right. We get these numbers. We get, we have the co current views. We have the toll of views and then we have whatever. So like, One of them is wrong or as reflecting wrong. And then I think it is more than the only have 45,000 people that are watching and a listener max pointed out that any single XFL game last year, average, more viewers than that in Columbus, Ohio, which isn't even an XFL team, then 45,000. Yeah. Two last notes about this. We had talked about fingertip football salaries. I never wanted to go public with it because I just didn't have it verified sport. Marco was talking this week about the success of the season, wanted the FCF and all that. They, they, this is the same numbers. We heard that the players make 400 to seven 50. A week plus their lodging and meals. And so I I've known this the whole time, but I didn't want to be the guy that was like, am I, you know, remember when we interviewed Braden Smith and he was like, well, it's better than nothing. And I knew what he was talking about. Cause I know it's not a lot. We got to get this up. What do you think about that 400? This, I mean, I know meals and lodging are paid for it, but 400 to seven 50 a week. This. I don't mean to sound like I'm bragging. This is not what I'm saying. I make. More than $400 in a day at my current position. Oh, I make, I made more on unemployment from the business last year through the pandemic than not. On on, on state, on Washington state unemployment. And when we have this special, because I'm, I'm, self-employed. And, you know, they had all that, like you could be on if you are self-employed or whatever, for a while. I made more than that. On on state unemployment. Yep. So I, you know, I get that there there's all this. And this relates to the last question. So FCF is, is confirming. So Rob confirmed online. Now this is updated from what I hear six teams and they want to go in the fall. What do you think about. I think 16 is fine. I mean, six or eight, whatever. You think about fingernail football doing season two in the fall. Who's going to watch it. The NFL's on. Yeah. I don't think there's a, there's a chance in the world. Oh, wait, this is the bookstore. That's set up a website that thinks they're better than Amazon. I get it. I tell you if you're going in fall, I think you are. Effing crazy. I think, I mean, WW. If they go and fall and they fail and fall, which they will, if they go and fall. Oh, I'm going to bring up that little tweet that I retweet quote, tweet it right now. Just barely. While we're talking on this podcast, I'm going to bring it up and I'm gonna say update. Oh, y'all bankrupt too. Oh. Well, I just, I do think that that is a, but that, this was my question before, you know, when they talked about doing the, you know, the, the multiple seasons every year, I get that, I get one to do all that, but like, When do you, when do you run? You know, XFL and all this, this spring, time's a good time, summer fine. But you know, NFL is King and WWE fights at every year that they know the second, that first Monday night football game comes on. You know, Debbie, Debbie is, you know, 50 years stablish brand. And like, you know, they, it just tanks and I really am concerned for them going in the fall. I am too. And I think that that's, I don't underst I, I guess I don't understand the logic of going in the fall up against. The NFL. No, and college football and everything else and high school football. And I mean, when, when do you run it? I mean, the high school football is on Fridays, right? Fridays. And then sometimes Thursdays. There is a football. You got my name. I just know you, you go Tuesday nights. I mean, spring league, dead spring league did in, in November. They did that Tuesday, Wednesday. I mean, that was fine. I guess you do that. I mean, I guess you have to do. But I ask, ask Brian Woods, how spring league viewership did. Member not good. Not good. And they were on Fox. I mean, they were on Fox. Fs one and Fs two. So. Can we re did we're done. I mean, we weren't really long, but what is it with the cinnamon toast crunch with the shrimp? This is the Grammy. This guy's a comedian, he's a TV writer. I'm not buying them. So he's not shrimp. I think he put the shrimp in the stupid bag. I guy found the shrimp tails in this. San Matos creed. He put the shrimp in the back. That's the. And that's the pangas husband. Wait, what. That's what I heard. I heard that it was Topanga his husband. Danielle Fisher. Huge crush on Daniel Fisher behind. Or Fisher, however, you should know. Yeah. Yeah. Danielle fish shell. Husband. Yes. That's crazy. Pause right up. Yes. Scratch guy, Samaritan anger from boy meets world. That should like raise all the red flags right there that like this guy's in the industry and he's a, he's a comedian. Like, why are we not. Paying more attention like. This is stupid. This is like, this is fake. And I hope they assume I hope cinnamon toast crunch sues his ass. I just, I saw that. Just two guys. Can we talk about that? I just didn't know what was going on. So anyway, we went really long. It's okay. It's a good, we had a lot of stuff that. We, you know, get one of the thing, Matt. One of the Braden. Want to thank Dave Campbell for coming on? We added four more subscribers. We recorded this podcast. So that's kind of make me feel good. I just made me feel good again. Right. Yeah. Dot com slash YouTube. Please subscribe to the podcast again at a thousand subscribers, we're giving away the ultra single ball we're giving away, I guess, a new knock-off Taylor Hanukkah Jersey too. So. Kayla. Hi, Nikki. We got, I got two hats. I got a Jersey. I got stuff. I got stuff off. What else we're going to do. I'm going to pick 10 people out of the subscriber count. I'm going to give them a coupon. The XFL Mark cast. Store. There you go. Let's do that too. Why not. We got, we got a lot. Anyway. Thanks guys, everyone. I put, put, yeah, please subscribe. We got a big show coming up next week, too. Thanks again.

Episode 32 - The JAM-PACKED Episode! (Guest Host: Ernesto Lacayo)

Well, I, I made the joke last, uh, two weeks ago, the Paul, I said, I I'm so good at filling this show that if we ever get any actual, real XFL news, we might have to do like a double episode or you might have to go to two days a week. And Paul was terrified at that thought, but here we are, we have real XFL news and Ernesto. Would you believe that, uh, before you even sit down today? I think Paul and I have an hour and 20 minutes of content already recorded for today. So no matter what we do talking about all the stuff that's currently happening, uh, we have a lot of stuff that we've gone through. So, uh, it should be a good episode. Uh, Ernesto, why don't you just say hi, and then I have my little spiel I want to get into at the start here. We have Ernesto Lacayo of, uh, the XFL dragons among a myriad of other teams, right? Arizona Rattlers Playford one in the past. So why don't you say hi, and then I have my little spiel before we get in here. Everyone glad to be out here, hosting the show. So it's pretty exciting and let's have some fun. Yeah. So Paul is currently going under the knife. He's getting some dental surgery. Uh, we we're coming off our biggest episode ever. I say that Ernesto was on our Christmas episode, a huge, a huge reception for that, and obviously being a dragons fan. So I said, you know, we want to get, see if her, it would come on. He said, of course it would be an honor. Uh, I'm going to say this today, we're coming off. Our biggest episode, we've ever had a double, at least any other views we've ever had. If you, if you liked the work that we're trying to do, we've got interviews, you know, on all sides with everything today, uh, please like, and subscribe XFL, show.com/youtube takes you right to the page. Uh, we've added, I think 45 subscribers this week. Paul wanted me to make sure I mentioned we are doing our giveaway. So when we hit a thousand subscribers, which we need to do to get monetized, that's the goal. So we can start getting paid back for some of this YouTube stuff. Uh, we have a Chad Ochocinco friend of the show, Chad Ochocinco signed the game ball that we're gonna to give away. Plus I have a bunch of old random, like messed up merchant stuff that we had along the way. So please expo show that comm slash YouTube, uh, you know, and if you see the podcast, you know, share it, uh, you know, give it a thumbs up. Uh, we have lots of comments on the YouTube. So please, uh, you know, we're really trying to do the words work here. I don't have Paul today to, to call me out for using the cliches, but, uh, we have spent Paul, we have all spent so much time this week. Um, Ernesto, first off, I, I guess I'm going to go through just the rundown of the show and then I want to get your thoughts on all the CFL stuff. So Ernesto and I are going to break down, uh, kind of the, the most recent stuff with Kenneth Farrow, with the United football players association, uh, talking about the CFL we have, uh, Paul and I have an interview with Kenneth Farrow. He's gonna come on the show, uh, talk all about where, you know, where they were trying to do come across with everything with their statements. This week, we have a lengthy with rod Peterson from CFL, uh, or not from CFL, from Canadian football radio, uh, very, very animated interview. Uh, then Ernesto and I are going to come back. I got a bunch of different, um, statements and stuff from all the CFL stuff we're going to talk about. Uh, there is actually other XFL news this week. If you can believe it, uh, we're going to talk about spring league updates or Nestle got into our football stuff. We're going to talk about, uh, spring Lee era fan controlled football. And we even have like to bury the show, a super bowl champion, Robert turbo turbine. We have an interview with him coming up as well. So this literally could be a two, two and a half hour episode all said and done. Uh, so just, you know, sit tight. And like I said, please like, and subscribe, if you can, what do you think about all the news and stuff that we have today? I mean, it's just coming so fast with all these different, you know, sources coming out and in the news and hearing the S CFL and the XFL wanting to merge, or just in talks, you as a player perspective, we're looking at it like, all right, you know, they got the ball rolling somewhere here and we're just hoping, you know, at the end of the tunnel, we see something happen. You know, we're just hoping that things are pushed back or, you know, cause a lot of us free agents, we're all still training, living our lives and trying to make our dreams come true as well. So we're hopefully that, uh, some of this news gets cleared up and that things get going pretty soon. Yeah. So to start off today, uh, Mike Mitchell just came out with an article exit on new sub. Uh, I just shared it on Twitter. Uh, he does not feel good about an XFL 20, 22 season at all. Uh, we had talked about that last week and, and that, that there might be just too much to do with the CFL and everything. What do you think as someone that, that was in the last iteration of the XFL? Uh, obviously you're going to be playing in the indoor football league right. Coming up here soon. We're going to get into all that. Uh, what do you think about that news of potentially it really being hard for them to get the timeline going this year? It's not surprising. I mean, we've seen, you know, a lot of lakes come and go trying to rush things and it's always good to, you know, plan things ahead and hopefully they organize things pretty well. Uh, but from a player you're just thinking, you see that kind of news. You're like 20, 22, or I work in trying to gear up for that. But then you see a 20, 23, that's going to be, you know, detrimental for a lot of the guys trying to do something, you know, having to put their lives on hold and just seeing what the other outcomes are going to be. So looking ahead, it's just one of those things where you scratching your head wondering, okay, what's really going on. What use is really true. And we're just hoping that, you know, the rock or anyone else in the ownership group come out and just give us something just a little bit more, something more security, just so that we know, and we can plan ahead and keep our training and our dreams alive. Good. It's tough. So we had, uh, back when, you know, the rock bought everything we had called Boozer on the show, you know, DC defenders, He's friend of the show as well. And that was, you know, his take, you know, this was like a year ago now when they said, Hey, we're going to do in 20, 22. And he said the same thing, God. Yeah, there's a lot of these players do. They've been waiting that this is their last shot before they're going to maybe transition to do something else, you know? And, and so even at that time it was detrimental, you know, and we were talking, you know, this was back in September whenever they made that announcement about the 2022. So now here we are with 2023, I mean, have you heard, have you talked with players? I know that you were just hanging out with, uh, Matt mangle and Taylor and all the other kickers and stuff. And I want to hear about that as well. Cause I saw very cryptic tweet this week from, uh, Matt mango talking about stuff you guys are working on, but I mean, what has been the reaction? I mean, you know, here we are, we're just entering that podcast people. I mean, you're a player you've been in the league. You've been talking with players. Uh, what do you think if we're w what's the reaction to, to push them back another year? I mean, a lot of us, when we come and train, there's always gossip here and there is no different, a couple of guys going out and play golf and, you know, everyone's exchanging news and all that stuff. And for all of us would be in that one spot a couple of days ago. And training is very rare. You know, everyone's doing their thing in different parts of the country. And, uh, you know, as we're all talking and talking, CFL, talking XFL, we are under the same, I should say same platform as far as not knowing what's going to happen. We keep hearing from our respective teams, you know, just to hang tight and news will come out. But when that's being said month, or maybe a week or two later, things change every day seems to be something a little bit different. Uh, but for all of us to come together, you know, even different characters and different egos come around, but just work on our craft is the most beautiful thing. Uh, but we all decided to take that picture not too long ago because we're like, well, if we really want to serve the pot going on here, let's see what happens. Take a picture with CFL, IFL, exit bell, and, you know, reagents just coming together. And, and hopefully, uh, you know, we get things going because as players, we're just, we're working every single day, working our jobs, training, you know, beating up our bodies, just to be able to see the, you know, the light at the end of the tunnel. And hopefully something comes out, but we're all in the same boat as everybody else, you, as a player, we would like to know a little bit more, but now we're all on the same boat. Right. I want to get a Matt on the show here coming up at some point soon, cause he's got a CFL tire as well. And I, I all ID right now. We're, we're friends. I'll tweet him like my call of duty. Uh, you know, how well I'm doing on that, but, uh, obviously Taliban. So, uh, the big news this week, I mean, we did all the XFL CFL South last week, you know, uh, Kevin Farrow, United football players association on Tuesday, uh, you know, came out and they said that, you know, they had been talking with sources. They, they, they basically, they didn't know if the 2021 season was going to happen for the CFL nor the 20, 22 season. And man that, that went crazy. You know, wildfire, you know, Canadian football players association came back. Uh, the CFL came back. We had already scheduled rod to come on the show. Like we, I had already talked to him over the weekend. I go, Hey man, we want to get the Canadian perspective. He saw the canvas stuff. He went crazy about it. I mean, it was, it was it, you know, just literally wildfire, you know, all, all day on that. What, what did you think when you saw that come out Love? Kenneth's a great teammate of mine and you know, he knows a lot more than I do when it comes to, you know, understanding what the league and the process of what's going on. But when I saw that come out, I'm just like, I just hope, you know, everyone is on the same page. You know, the, the source are there and someone is saying something that's credible because if I see it in the past with it, with AFL IFL and other leagues, you know, I've been in is that once something comes out, you gotta be ready for the fire to come out and you, cause you're stirring the pot there. And sometimes you start, it starts kinda like pulling away from the real actual news that's going to happen. And that's, what's what kills a lot of the things as far as the steam going, because I think before all that was coming out this last week, I think the XFL was on a nice little run here, but I knew in the back of my mind that a, there might be something that pops out, whether a picture like our, we took or, you know, just some news like just came out, that's going to really blow up. And that's where you gotta be very, very careful. But you know, like I said, Kenneth is a great guy, great running back, great teammate. And he knows a lot. So, you know, I have all my respect for him and he knows what he's doing. Yeah. It's just tough. You know, and we, we kind of, it's going to be on the show here, coming up, you know, sharing his side. I get what they were trying to do at, you know, not wanting to put, Hey, if you're a potential CFL player, you know, if you don't pay, you're not going to get, if you don't play, you're not going to get paid. Right. So just if you need to have some trepidation, just I know that that's what they were trying to do. It went crazy. Uh, you know, I feel bad, you know, you know, um, the one thing we've learned in the last two weeks, you know, with the CFL stuff, uh, CFL fans, people are, are really passionate about it. And I absolutely understand that. And we've said on the podcast, we are a strictly football fans. I don't care. We're not XFL rule marks. We're not CFL three downs or dumb, or, I mean, we are, I want to see football. I want to see good football. And so that's kind of where we're at. Um, you know, the news came out, uh, CFL dismissed it. They said the claims being made in our name and the upcoming season are false. Uh, the CFL, uh, PA president sent out a memo. He said, there's an organization called the USPA United football players association purporting you to have knowledge of the CFL, our bargaining and the status of the 2021, 2022 seasons. They do not the only credible information come from, uh, should come from your player reps or the CFP, uh, PA uh, office directly today's statement has created unnecessary distractions as we remain focused on the 2021 season. Our advice to you when seeking information is to contact the players association when you're, um, when you're a player and you're in these leagues and stuff, is there a lot of clarity and communication? Is that something that you feel like, uh, Canada and them have a role to keep people up to date? Or how does that work when you're someone in the leagues and trying to get, like, when are we going to be here, what's going on? What are the statuses of everything? It all depends on the organization where, what, what league and has, uh, an established players union. And based on that, it's just a matter of who's in charge. And who's really, really focused on what they're doing and their work to be able to get all that information out to us. Um, but for the most part as a player, you know, you hope that those, uh, player unions are there for the best interest of the league and also for the players, as well as the news. So we know we get our information from our player. Reps is the best communication there all the time. Not necessarily also depends on the organization because you know, some of these guys where the player reps are actually the players, you know, and they're, they're having to focus on their craft and work at them every single day. So it's a lot of pressure, a lot of time, but very time consuming. So that's how it really works in most leagues. I mean, I've been a part of player union, like in the AFL that was the no longer exists. That was one of the worst ones I ever been part of, honestly. And, you know, the communication was not there and you got the news as fast as everyone else did, which in most cases, the players should know first players, coaches, and, and staff members, but that's usually how it works. Yeah. I just think it's so hard because, you know, time is such of the essence here. You know, if, if the CFL is going to be kicking off, you know, if these training camps are going to happen, it's just, it, it really is like, we kind of need to know, right. And if your players, you really need to know, cause this is your live of the head. I mean, I guess that's the thing that's being lost in all of this. And it is so great to have a player on is, you know, we're talking, okay, what are we going to watch? Whether we're going to cover, I mean, this is your guys's livelihoods. I mean, this is how you're putting food on the table. I mean, is there an extra, obviously there is an extra level of pressure on that. I mean, what is that if you're waiting and where you've been a part of that, some of these leagues that have made it and not, I mean, what is it like going through that and the ups and downs? Yeah, it's frustrating. Because as like, as you said, it's, it's hard for us as players, just knowing what the future holds in store for us, you know, cause we're trying to prepare for our next lights work or also just being able to compete at a high level because you know, every single day or every single year, I should say, there's a younger player coming in late. And then as you get older, you know, you're having to fight against these guys and, you know, just be able to stay in your job and to be put, you know, to put food on the table that puts an added pressure because a lot of guys don't work in the off season, they're focusing on your craft. And another guys like myself who work full time, you know, just be able to balance both, you know, the CRI the sport and work is very difficult and just not knowing is crucial for us is just trying to get something going because we need a plan and know whether it starts tomorrow, whether it starts next week, we need to know something so that we can build our bodies, build our mindsets and to be able to worry about that league or about that season. So that in the future, we're all going to be good and set because it's better. I always say it's better to be prepared to not an ever an opportunity and to have an opportunity to not prepare. Yeah. I th I really don't know how you guys do it. And especially these alternate football, I mean, we've been covering fan controlled football and your spring, Lee's going to be coming back and they're supposedly going to be doing the mapping. I mean, I just can't imagine, um, you know, it's one thing, you know, to get for me to like, get up on here. Okay. I gotta do a podcast. Okay. What's going on? Can we just, just to be physically ready to go, and then also just emotionally and mentally going through that. I mean, I just can't imagine, like having to be up on both of those things, it may just really seems like it would be really taxing to go year after year of dealing with all that. Oh yeah. Definitely. I mean, just the fact that for me to play in the XFL, it wasn't something I was preparing for. I was getting ready for the next IFL season and I was not mentally prepared for that. But when the call comes, you have to be prepared mentally, physically, and be able to perform in front of the coaches for them to like you in the signing you the job around the spot. And, you know, I was lucky to be able to do that, but a lot of younger guys, you know, they need years and more experiences to go through that kind of thing, because I mean, early in my career, if I would have been doing, if the XFL would have called me when I was 21, 22, I would have not been ready. I would've not been ready up here. And physically, we think that we are physically at a young age, but in reality, there's so many years that come with the preparation and the wisdom that prepare you for these kinds of things. And so it's no different than preparing for a league. I know all these individuals who are high up in the league right now and just trying to really get things going, because I know it's not easy. And you know, my hats off to the, to the XFL 2.0, I should say right now that got it going. Uh, because when, as a player, when I got there, I was like, this is amazing. I couldn't even, I, the fans, especially you guys were there for the Washington game and the first game, it was amazing from day one to the last day we were there. So we can appreciate all that, all the preparation, but as a right now with them saying, putting things on hold, Oh man, it's brutal. It's brutal for not only the fans and not always the ones working in your organizations, but for players. Yeah. So w we're gonna, I want to dump into our candidate interviews now on our rod interviews. So what you guys, so Paula and I recorded these earlier Kennedy at the United football player association came on, and then we have a really long extended interview with rod. Now I'm going to Warren, I'm going to Warren CFL fans. Uh, Rod's a little fired up, right. Rod's a little fired up. So she is w you know, w we'll come to that, we'll talk about stuff on the other side, but, but I really appreciate, you know, fire and things being brought on, uh, you know, I like hot takes. We like hot takes on the podcast. So, uh, we're going to take a break palsy. We're going to put in these interviews, and then we're going to come back and we're going to talk about some more, uh, we got reactions from Pat McAfee. We got reactions from other, uh, you know, June Jones. Of course, it's making the news again. So we'll come back and do all that after this, or we go Stay hydrated, sir. I see you got everything in the background. You got your good friend Ernesto coming up too. I assume you guys are friends. Ernesto coming up here. He's going to co-host with me. Paul's got dental surgery today. So Ernesto's coming on here in a little bit. So, uh, yeah, we're very, very dragons heavy too. There we go. There we go. Nothing wrong with it. Sorry. I chose the wild cats. So that's where my loyalties lie. Nah, I appreciate you coming on on short, short notice after everything that happened this, this week with, uh, the CFL, the XFL and the USPA statement. Yeah, no, I appreciate y'all, you know, showing support and offering a platform. Um, you know, it's been a, it's been a long kind of year of just being, uh, well, one not employee because of COVID. I think everybody's facing tough situations and guys trying to navigate how they're going to go about continuing their careers. So I'm glad to be able to come out here and shine a little light on some of the stuff that's going on. Yeah. So first off, so we, we talked with Rob Peterson already, you know, I know that he had some, you know, hot tags, uh, we recorded with him on Tuesday and I kind of filled him in on, you know, who you guys are. We've obviously been following you guys since, um, you know, last year when everything was starting to go. Uh, but for listeners, uh, here, you know, they're hearing this kind of in the order of everything happening in the podcast, uh, why don't you tell us a little bit about, uh, who you guys are and then specifically just kind of, you know, your background and getting into that? Yeah, yeah, definitely. Um, you know, I think first, you know, there was all types of stuff getting thrown around yesterday and, and, um, I think we tried to kind of refrain from, uh, responding to a lot of things because we understand that, uh, well, first off, you know, we're not a union. And so there was a lot of who are these guys, are they union? And this and that, unfortunately we don't are not in a position to even have a players union because we don't have an employer. And that has been the case for the past two years. So it's really just been a collective body of, of the players from the past two seasons coming together and realizing that, Hey, we missed out on a lot of situations and opportunities that we had to go back, um, after the fact and find out about, and so, you know, this isn't, you know, um, like, you know, I saw where rod put out the video kind of afterwards and, you know, definitely appreciate changing his tone a little bit, uh, out there, you know, getting informed about what we're doing, but, you know, this is not an attention grab. This is not a followers thing. You know, I said, if, if we only have 416 followers and it's all the players, that's all we'll ever need because that's the only people we're here to protect and look out for. Um, so, uh, a players association, we started up as a trade association cause that's the only thing we could do to collectively organize. And, um, it, it was everybody, you know what I mean? It was, it was guys from all the teams. It was guys from the AAF. The unique thing about this situation that we've been in the past two years in these spring leagues is that you've seen guys who would have played in the league for multiple years, been a part of the NFL, PA been a part of a players union, and know what that looks like and really went into these two situations. I won't say naive, but a little bit, um, maybe taken for granted how much that players association, uh, really holds, holds weight for, for the guys. Um, and so situations like the IRS tax situation with AAF and, and the bankruptcy situation with the XFL, these are all things that, you know, we're kind of left in the dark because we were never in the, in the room anyway. And so, you know, that that has been our, our, our main goal. Our main focus is just to educate players, um, and try to navigate we're in the middle of a pandemic and guys don't know what's going to happen next. And the number one priority is to make sure that guys are aware of the situations that might be faced, because right now we're in a, we're in a time as a country where job guys are getting laid off of jobs. There's not all these things we're talking real life at the end of the day, this football stuff is secondary to putting food on the table for your families. And so, so be going back and forth. Um, are we planning? Are we not planning? We haven't really got the direct answer yet. We were excited to see the commissioner as passionate as he was yesterday and say, come out and play. You know, we have 80 guys from the XFL that are in the CFL. Now we've helped those 80 guys out in situations when we didn't have a youth. So we've, we've talked to some of these guys in the past year and it's, there is no, uh, you know, ill will towards the CFL or CFL PA or any of that. And I think a lot of stuff was just, just a little bit misconstrued, you know, there was a bunch of, Oh, we're we're denying their claims. Our clients were never false. Our clients were never that they're not having a season. It was what we've heard. Um, because we had guys reaching out to us saying that they did not hear a definitive answer. And they just went through that, you know, in the past year, uh, with the CFL, not being able to have a season. And if you look at the three leagues from the past two years, that was probably the worst situation of all when it comes to COVID and all that stuff, because they didn't get to play at all. You know, we got five games into it, at least got to, um, give a little bit of film, get a little bit of money and things like that. So, um, you know, uh, I'm excited to just kind of come on and really just expand on some of this stuff that, you know, we've been going through, but that's the basis of it, man, we're a players association that can't unionize right now because we don't have enough lawyer, but we would like to be in a position to be able to progress whatever league comes about. And, and, and you hear Dwayne Johnson and Danny Garcia speaking about the players and about, uh, opportunity for the players and being a player at first league, we're a hundred percent on board and excited and behind Wayne and Danny, because we do feel like Dwayne has come from where we come from and speaking, uh, and hearing Danny talk, uh, she's a powerful woman in the industry. And I, I'm a firm believer that we need more of a balance and the top of industries like that with women being in those positions. So, you know, I think there's a lot of good things to come. And I think right now everybody's a little bit on edge and everybody wants to have an argument and that's not what we're trying to do. Uh, at the end of the day, like I said, if 800 players are all players and those are the only people we have the attention of, that's the only people we need them players to come to us because we don't, we're not getting paid for any of this work that we've done for the past years. We went through IRS one-on-one and bankruptcy one-on-one, you know, voluntarily because we've been trying to help all of us out in the situations that we've been faced with for lack of having to use it. So that's a little bit of a background on everything. Yup. No, thank you. So, um, to that point, I think what needs to be underscored here is that everybody who's been commenting on this, this week on what seems to be different sides. Like let's just, let's just say you and rod are kind of on different sides about certain things underlying all of that. Both of you, as well as us here on the Mark cast care about the players. That is the underlying thing that we, we can all agree on. We all care about the players. So how can we improve the communication between, uh, someone like yourself and people that are, are, are more in tune, maybe with a CFL, like a rod Peterson or anyone like that. Right. You know, I think, you know, it was, you look at some of the potentials that'll happen. And, um, and we, you know, we had a little bit of early communication, um, before a lot of the players started signing to the CFL. You know, we've had guys reached out to us, like if I signed to the CFL while I'll be able to come and maybe possibly join a relaunch of a 20, 22 league, and that, that was stuff that they had to be aware of, or their agent had to be aware of going into those contract negotiation, because you have things like team options, where if a guy signs a CFL, he might not be able to lead a CFL unless it's going to the NFL, all these other leagues, these, these leagues want to have the talent and, and all of this stuff to make the league go. And so that was a little bit of a situation where once again, we were educating players on, if you're going to go there, just make sure that if your intentions are to come back to the States and play in a relaunch of the XFL, make sure that's in your contract. We know how contracts get, you know what I mean? And I think that's another thing too. Uh, and, uh, because of all this stuff that we've had to go through, players have really learned a lot, these last two years on the business side of things and, and what has to be done, um, to make sure that, you know, the circumstances are what they think they're getting into. And so, uh, when you look at the horizon of a potential merger, that means that what is going to happen with the experiences that we've went through as players here in the States in the past two spring leaves. And they experienced that the CFL PA players have gone through, um, if there's a merger, there's going to have to be some type of merger of collective union or something to move forward. And so we want nothing more, but to have a healthy relationship with the CFL PA to be able to say, if there is a merger and there's a superly with Canada, the Canadian teams and, and USA teams, we would like to all be on the same page and all working forward, uh, for the better of the collective. And so I think that's just, you know, like you said, I think, uh, I think all of this is definitely going to result in conversations. Um, we, we, we try to nail down a meeting. Like I said, with the CFL PA, they reached out to us, we had kind of went back and forth a couple of times, just kind of missing each other. Um, and then this happened and, you know, we had, we had received more stuff from them. So I do see a meeting to kind of, you know, in the future to kind of clear everything up and get everybody on the same page, because at the end of the day, uh, communication is what's needed and it needs to be transparent and honest communication about whatever the situation is laid out. Cause we're in too serious of times to be, you know, uh, not, you know, uh, letting guys know all the information that could possibly be real. I think if nothing else, what you guys are trying to do is just to let players know that maybe not to have all their eggs in this basket right now, I saw some players even commenting, you know, on all the threads saying that yeah. You know, they had not heard a lot about, you know, when are we reporting the training camp? I mean, we've covered all of these leagues for the last, you know, the better part of a year now between the spring league and fan controlled football and, and really trying to look out for the players. And so I definitely understand where you guys are coming from, you know, where we did have, you know, food issues and COVID issues in San Antonio with the spring league. Um, I know when fan controlled football, their championship game will be Saturday and they, they were going to have kind of a compensatory game. They called it. And, uh, with the other teams that hadn't, you know, that weren't in the championship and they canceled that this week. And I was very vocal online, making sure that those players would get a chance to be paid, even if they weren't going to be playing in that game. Cause cause maybe it wasn't necessarily their decision. Right. So I do think, uh, it is important to have people like you and a union, not, you know, whatever you want to call it, a collective of individuals, whatever to advocate for that. Because, uh, as someone that has covered these leagues for the last year, like I definitely get where there are things that fall through the cracks. Uh, and so I do think it's important to have someone like you on there. Absolutely, absolutely. And that's all we want to do. Uh, I think, you know, like I've said multiple times out the circumstances that everybody is going through, not just us as football players, you know what I mean? It's, there's a scarcity right now because of lockdown because of travel restrictions because of all these different types of things. So, uh, the last thing we want our guys doing, and this is, let's be clear, this is not a league that revenues billions of dollars, these aren't multi-million dollar contracts. We were in the XFL with a $27,000 base salary that because of lack of a union, uh, we couldn't negotiate anything in there. And so to, to go to that, it's, it's it's needed, you know what I mean, the communication is needed. Uh, all of these things are needed, uh, especially if, if this spring platform is going to continue to grow. And I've said multiple times, these platforms for players are like gold. Uh, there hasn't been a rural, consistent, uh, not to the level that the AAF that the, that the, that the XFL was able to accomplish, uh, shortly there hasn't been that type of, uh, you know, level of play like that and the, and that, uh, time span. So it's something that the players appreciate, but we can't let the opportunity kind of Trump us being in the dark or being ignorant to what's going on. Uh, what, what are your thoughts on this potential merger situation, then that'll be sad. Uh, I mean, you know, yeah. I mean, yeah, we just, you know, I think that's going to be something that waits to get played out. I know, I know one thing that, you know, we've come across is the fact that the Canadian league right now, uh, and the Canadian government it's been said multiple times, that they had reached out to try to get loans and they were hurting for money, this, this and that. And so I think one of the things that's going on right now is there's a bedding bill to get passed and Canada, which could increase their revenue, uh, if gambling is, is allowed there. And so, you know, we don't know what that looks like. If they're able to pass that, do they, do they still merger if they are able to pass that, is that, is that gonna, uh, bring about a even bigger type of, uh, opportunity for a merger because of that, um, you know, cross border and bedding and all these things that come on, but, you know, at the end of the day, this is all stuff that, you know, like I said before, we, as players need to be aware of all the possibilities, because if the merger is going to be something, then you're going to have, uh, having across borders to go play and all of these types of different things. Um, you know, that's, that's a lot on the player, um, on the player and their, and their families and all of these things. And at the end of the day, that's what we want to be in the know about. I think if it's a merger and it's better for the league and it's better for the game and it's better for the players and it provides more opportunity, we're all for it. We don't want to, we're not trying to shut down anything. We want to be able to shine light on things for the players to be more aware of things. And, and if it's a, if it's a bigger league where it contains more people and more exposure than guys want that, that's what we want as players for everybody. So, yeah, I mean, I, you know, I hope, you know, maybe something comes of it. Um, and, and there is a North American and Canadian, you know, that that would be a cool deal. Uh, if they can get all the logistics and stuff, right. With everything going on with COVID, that's, it looks like that's going to be a lot to have to plan out, which is probably why a lot of logistics that have to go down from travel restrictions and all types of stuff, taxes and all these types of things. So, um, yeah, more opportunities. That's what guys want. Perfect. I just, before we let you go final thoughts, um, you know, obviously there's going to be a lot to work through here in the coming months, whatever, uh, you know, if there are players, you want them to reach out to you, right. So you guys can keep everyone in the know kind of final takeaways before we let you go with everything going on. Yeah. I think this is the biggest thing is that, you know, the players who are part of this or the people who are a part of this are players, like we've been in these situations. So, um, you know, we've been, hands-on, we've been hands-on with trying to navigate some of the difficulties that we were left with. And so, uh, you know, we bring experience and knowledge. So what has gone down here in these last few spring leads and, um, and we want to help the guys no matter where they're at, if, like I said, there's 80 XFL guys in the CFL, and I'm not saying that to say, we only want to help the 80, 80 guys in the exit that were part of the XFL because they already have a players association, but, you know, we've had guys from there, reach out to us and ask this question. And so, and nobody's trying to step on CFLP toes or anything like that. I know guys, personally, we all know each other, we've all played in all over the world. And so, um, at the end of the day, if we can all come together, have healthy communication. And I think it's only going to be better for all of us. And so, um, you know, that, that's the only thing that, uh, I want to get across, uh, from the USDA is that we're all in the same boat. Um, to be honest, CFL was hit the hardest because they didn't have a season at all. So, you know, it's not, you know, nobody's throwing around any type of agenda or anything like that. This is strictly for the players to get them in the know and make sure that they're aware of all the things that are on the horizon. Awesome. Kenneth Farah, we wouldn't want to thank you for your time. Joining us here on the exhale Mark cast. Uh, we'll hopefully have you back on to talk about more of these issues, uh, at a, at a later date, We wanted to kind of, uh, start with, um, the, the, the thing that happened today, the United football players association statement, where did that? I was so baffled when I saw that I'm like, this is a kind of semi existed union that doesn't represent any CFL players. Where do they come off? Oh, I was hoping you, I was hoping you'd tell me, because I, sorry, I'd never heard of these guys before. And if you saw the clip from my show was talking to a CFL guy, right. When this dropped. So I read it to him over the phone and I'm like, Hey, whoever was whoever worded it, it sounded very professional. Didn't, didn't it? You know, like you could see how people would be fooled by it, but we kind of did a little digging and listen, I got nothing against Ken Fairhope, Ken Farrow. I was following him before he was a pro baller. I apparently he played here in Saskatchewan. Not that long ago. I think he had a cup of coffee. I'm not saying he's not legit, but I talked to a guy with an alumni association. He was like, Aw, guys, get disgruntled. As they go off and splinter their own alumni association or their own players association. This is not sanctioned guys by the Canadian football league. And all the media in Canada was scrambling to get a statement from the CFL to say, is there anything to this? I didn't need to go to the CFL because I knew that the U S what is it? You FPA wasn't even affiliated with the Canadian football league. And like within an hour, the CFL denounced the statement. So I, and that, and now, by the way, those guys have come back at me, the USPA, and they've said, you haven't done your due diligence. You're misrepresenting us. I said, wait, Hey, you saw that. I saw what they wrote. Yeah. Ooh, I know legal speak to it and deploy his, they may still cancel this season in the Canadian football league, but I'm not going to come around and say, these guys were right. If they cancel the Canadian football league season, it will be a CFL decision, not something from the players association that don't, you guys think when I got players in the CFL, DM-ing me saying, what is this when wouldn't a union? No. Yeah, exactly. It's tough. I mean, you know, we're, we're friends with them. I've reached out, you know, I tweeted at them. I said, you know, we're going to have rod on today. You know, our episode, I think we're going to push it Thursday. And now that kind of get ahead of all this stuff, you know, we certainly have given them, uh, if they want to come on later today when we're done with this or tomorrow, you know, to respond, because it is something that, you know, the new we've had no XFL stuff for, you know, 18 years. Right. And then last week goes crazy. And then this week, now this morning with all this stuff, I mean, it's just been so overwhelming trying to keep up with it. So yeah, no, we definitely, we know them. They follow us. We've talked about them on the show back when they, you know, when they formed, uh, it's a lot of former XFL guys and at the core of it, I do think what they're trying to look out for is when you have, we have, um, like fingernail football here in the States, that's this new kind of like offshoot, Twitch thing, uh, XFL. We have the spring league this year where they flew all these guys at the end of the San Antonio. And then like, they weren't feeding them properly. There was COVID outbreaks and they had to shut the whole season down. So at a core, what they're trying to do is good, right. Where they're trying to band together, a lot of these players from not the NFL. So just to give some context for that word, we have gone back. So I'm not saying that they're like the be all end all one way or another, but I do get what they're trying to do somewhere, But that they're trying to, yeah, go ahead, man. Go ahead. Sorry. That point they don't represent any CFL planes. The CFL players are represented by the CFL PA. And so why is a union that isn't representing the CFL players commenting at all? If I'm, I know what they're trying to, they're trying to protect the players. I love the players. I'm on the players side. I'm all for all of that. And believe me, I've had buddies that have played in the spring league and I'm following the fan controlled football league very closely. I just I'm entertained by ball. I'm on the player's side, but in that clip today, and I talked about them today, just don't represent the CFL because you don't that's all. And, and by the way, I think the big crux with me was the way it was worded. It said they cited sources, coaches, and players in the CFL, but the next two seasons were going to be canceled. You can't send out a news release, citing rumors. You can't do that. If you send out a news release, say it's canceled period. So I just think, I, I just don't think they know what they're doing. That that seems like something in the front office of a CFL, like in the commissioner's office, if they had sources within the commissioner's office that said this, there might be more weight to it, but you're talking to maybe one player, one coach who are they're giving opinions maybe. And then all of a sudden they run with it and say, Oh, it's confirmed. They're going to do this. It seems weird. Uh, we're getting just a little, uh, your Mike's rubbing on your jacket just a little bit from your headset, just to that. I've never called it. Yeah. Um, so just in general, you know, we've really been sprung on all this CFL stuff. I mean, the last week, obviously, you know, we were going to start covering everything anyway, you know, needing kind of some football content here, alternative football content, you know, did all this come out of nowhere to you, to all these talks and everything between the XFL and the CFL. Okay. It did. But I told you guys before we went to air and I'll, I'll say it here. When the XFL was first formed in 2001, I had a lot of friends playing the CFL guys that played in both seasons. And I thought, you know what? We were living hand to mouth as a CFL back then I'm like, Vince, McMahon's got more money than God. Why would we not bring the two leagues together? That was 20 years ago prior? Like I faced the firing squad for saying that from CFL fans. And that was before Twitter and Facebook see like the, the, the backlash was immense. So the, the notion of, of, of having a merger or collaboration was never new to me. But when it came out that they were actually talking, yeah, I was absolutely stunned. But the more that we've had CFL media people on my show in the last week, they all realized the CFL wouldn't be doing this. If they weren't at death's door financially, I don't know where you guys fall on this, but what the people like I'm foreign I'm for whatever will work for both leagues. CFL has got a a hundred year brand, pretty good football. Despite what Pat McAfee says, calls it, state fair football, whatever. It's got the brand. One thing the CFL always done right is football. They haven't done business, right? They haven't done marketing, right? It's a shrinking business. Attendance is going down. Ratings are going down. The XFL, doesn't have a a hundred year brand. They have a year and five week brand, but they do business. Well, they do marketing off the charts. They've got the TV contracts, that national news or on national networks. If you bring the two together, it seems like a perfect marriage. That's why, that's why I'm supporting it. Especially when you think like, uh, if you're trying to grow the game of the CFL, you have to think outside the border, you have to think, well, how can we get our Canadian football league teams into us markets? And maybe give some exposure in those markets and grow the grow. That's why I'm in favor of it to expanding that, that footprint for Canadian football team. But this is why I think this is new. And why I think if they've been talking prior to last week, I don't think it's been for very long because our commissioner of the Canadian football league, Randy, and Rosie's a former player. And for the last 18 months, he's been pushing what he called CFL 2.0 global initiative. Have you been following this at all? We've had, I've read a little bit. Yeah. This coming up. Yeah. So we've had a global draft and the Saskatchewan Roughriders who are down the street from me, the stadium is five minutes from where I am right now, had a Mexican player on the roster and a German player last year. Well, they couldn't play. They couldn't get on the field. They weren't at the level of a CFL player. Listen to our caliber plays tremendous. Our caliber of athletes is tremendous, but those European European and Mexican players, they simply weren't. And so what Randy Ambrose, you said to me as well, look at the NBA. When they brought over yellow, Ming, it started the international influx and look where it is now. And look at the NHL in the eighties invasion. If you guys are hockey fans of the Russians and the Swedes and the checks, I'm like Randy was an all-star first year Sergei Makarov was the rookie of the year of the NHL in 1988. They came in right at par. So your global initiatives, I'm like, I love our commissioner. He's a great dude. These guys can't play. And our fans sniff that out immediately. They know. So he wanted to expand past our borders, but he wasn't looking at America. He was looking at Europe and he was looking at Mexico. So there's that. And the other thing is we have the all-time winningest coach and the Canadian football leagues, a guy by the name of Wally guano. I'm not sure if you guys ever heard of him, but he racked his winds up with the BC lions and the Calgary Stampeders. He's an absolute icon in the CFL. He's bill Bellacheck without the genie. And he's a good guy. And a year ago he said on my show, he knew why he's done. He's he's done shooting of Canada. Okay. And he said, the CFL's getting stale. And nobody said a word I say on my show, the CFL's getting stale. And again, everybody wants to disbar me and lambaste me. And some of it. Well, he said the same thing. We're getting stale. So the XFL is exciting. And why saw the games last year? Uh, Mark Trestman is a really good friend of mine. Jim, Jamie Elizondo is become a friend of mine. Um, I just think the synergies are all there, so we need to grow because we're dying. But you saw the backlash from our fans. My God, like they're saying, they're going to burn their tickets. Never go to a game. I don't believe that. But hope you're seeing the passionate CFL fans. They've long been passionate. See that's what I had them get is, is, you know, and we said, when we did our big episode last week, you know, we're the XFL Mark House, but we're not trying to be marks for like, okay. The XFL has been, you know, is nearly as important as the CFL or all this kind of stuff. Right. But, but why is it where the NFL has commanded the most money it ever has this year? We talked about all the TV ratings and deals, you know, a week or two ago, you know, a hundred percent, uh, TV now, rights fees, you know, year over year to this year compared to last year. And then, you know, where the CFL is clean to survive. What is it about like that game or is it I've seen all the excuses as week? You know, CFL has got less, um, you know, there's less teams, uh, Canada has less population [inaudible]. I mean, why is it that the CFL here is, is breathing, you know, hardly breathing the live, but yet, uh, NFL is as popular as it's ever been. Well, just allow me just a small history lesson. The Americans came to the CFL in the sixties and seventies because the CFL paid more. Some of our icons, again, they won't mean anything to you, their names, but George Reed retired as the old time rushing leader all the time, sack leader, Ron, as they came to the CFL, cause it was paying more than the NFL. And around 1980, the NFL just took off like a rocket. And I assume it was because of television revenue. I'm sure that's what it was. And the marketing machine that is the NFL, the salaries in the CFL haven't really changed for 40 years. I was starting rookie salary right now for an American or Canadian too is like $62,000. American. The salaries never went up so I can tell you whose salaries have gone up exponentially presidents, CEOs, general managers, head coaches. So what the critics of the CFL were saying, it's a top heavy lead. We've got think the last season they played a couple of quarterbacks making 700, 750 grand a year, nothing wrong with that. That's more than some guys in the NFL, but that's like, I can count them on one hand. Everybody else is making nothing. So the people that have been running the CFL for 50 years have been football guys. And that's why I say they've got football, right? The game's great. The talent's great, but they have not been real good business guys. And over the last decade or so the shifts have been for business people to run the teams and they've run it somewhat into the ground to where we are right now. And the other thing is that a CFO of a team told me probably four years ago, he said, the number one issue we're facing the CFL right now is ticket sales. It's been declining rapidly. That's where their revenue is, you know? So that's that kind of gives you if they did not keep up business wise, their marketing has not, has not been good. And that's, and it's come back to bite them. The pandemic just exposed all this. Who do, how much do the teams get paid out from, uh, the TSN contract? Yeah. Every rough figures, every team's salary cap is 6.25. That's their payroll 6.2, 5 million. And the CFI, is that a lot or not a lot? Not a lot. That's dirt cheap. Right? So TSMs contract covers every team's payroll For context for the salary cap this year for NFL, it's a one 82.5 per team, Right? So JJ watches sign for what? Three times? Yes. 30, 32 million for two year, for two years, he's on And there. And there's no money left over from that. Is it just, is it just a that's all they pay is just the salaries. That's what they pay the teams. And then that covers the payroll. So from a business perspective, I was on the radio on Ottawa a couple of weeks ago. And it was a hockey guy interviewing me. But he said, if all the payrolls paid and the number one costs and the CFL's labor, why aren't we playing? What, why can't they make any money? I said, because they spend too much on office salaries and they just spend, spend, spend, spend on things that don't matter. So I'm just telling you the TV deal pays for the players, period. I think that's pretty good. I'm just, I guess I'm, I'm trying to do the math and wonder if there's any more left over from what TSN pays. Cause if you just pays the salaries for the players and that's all they pay, you're talking $60 million. That's all they pay for the rights for the DV. Yeah. It's actually, I think a little less, but the Saskatchewan Roughriders, which have long, they're like the Dallas Cowboys of the CFL, their last season, they played, they made $19 million in season in tickets, sales alone, 19 million in the year that's leftover money. So a lot of people are going where'd that money go? Like it's been bled out through the pandemic because the league hasn't played in a year and 15 months. So they've been banned, their coaches paying their staff, like in the pandemic. Here's another problem with the CFL. The only people weren't being paid, where the players, how do you think that went over and listen, the coaches are my buddies, the staff, all those people I worked with in the league for 20 years, they're my friend. But they were being paid the players weren't until they made a huge stink over it. So the players were at the bottom of the totem pole in the CFL, whereas in the NFL it's like this, right? So they've just done a lot of things backwards. And to get to this XFL, CFL, collaboration talk, guys, the commissioner is pretty steadfast in saying, we're just talking, we're just talking. We're not talking about a merger. Where does the message that's been sent to me to share to the viewers? I don't believe it, but they're saying we just want to tap into the rocks, contacts, his brand, his marketing abilities, but we don't want anything to change with the CFL. We don't want to merge. We want to keep our nine teams maybe grow to a 10th in Canada. We want to stay with three downs in the larger field and all of that. And I'm like, guys, you think that you're going to use the rock? Cause he CFL alum out of the goodness of his heart. Now I literally said to the guy that told me this what's the rocket out of this. Yeah. He goes, how is this going to do it for free? No, no. Well they, they believe that. Well, it's interesting. So I was just on, so our podcast is part of the XFL news hub and they're kind of like the, I would say the premier ex of all kinds of new site here. And so we were just on the round table last night. Um, so this would be Monday when this is Erin, you know, all the writers, everybody trying to fantasize, all these different things, you know, is it, is it, do we do a CFL season? And the XFL season, are we merging the teams? Are we bringing them in there? You know, do we, I mean, what, what do you see coming from all this? If we just back up for a second before the XFL came on the table, I was fully thinking one of two things was going to happen. MLSE was just going to buy the CFL. Like the rock bought the XFL MLSE is maple leaf sports and entertainment. That's the corporation in Toronto that owns the maple Leafs, the Raptors Toronto Argonauts, Toronto, Toronto, FC soccer. Plus the facilities they play in big company that one off the table because they looked at their own bank account and said, we're we're hemorrhaging and the pandemic. They don't have money to buy the CFO. Next. I thought it would be NFL Europe, which was the spring league. And I had coaches calling me who had worked in NFL, Europe and NFL. And they're like, Hey rod, how would that work? I said, play in the spring. Just like the NFL Europe. They just slapped Canada on it instead of Europe. Well, our commissioner went to Roger Goodell sounds like he had, they had a few talks and Goodell said, we're not interested. We encourage you to be your own self-sustaining league, which they haven't been able to do. So now enter the XFL. Right? So here's my take on this is it becomes a spring summer league. We've been a summer fall league. I mean, you guys are football fans, you know, when we play kickoff basically June 1st and go to December 1st and it's worked okay. But I think that it's March here. And although we have brutal winters, it's melting, it's above 35 Fahrenheit. Right? And we could open training camp in March, kick off April 1st and go to the end of September and get our six month season in amalgamated with the XFL. So you guys start right after Superbowl. Well, we're just backing it up a month and then you can do it. And you wouldn't have to compete necessarily with the NFL because I don't know, like do more people do more people watch the NFL in Canada than they watch to see how I see that. This is another great question. This is another problem that I have. Obviously, when I called games for 20 years, I was close with the TV guys. I was doing radio. And I said to them guys, you better start pumping your broadcast more and marketing a little better because the NFL is gaining on you and the guy, the broadcaster for TSN. Our ESPN goes, no, they'll never beat it. They'll never beat us. Canada loves and CFL. That was probably 10 years ago. I would say CFL ratings were here. NFL was here, it's gone like that. They caught them and passed them. So we do compete with the national football league to the point that in the last two years, we've moved all our fall games off Sundays. Cause we were getting murdered by the NFL and moved them to Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Thursday night, football became a thing in the CFL. So my point to you is 15 years ago, didn't compare with the NFL. Now they're losing to the NFL and NFL. Canada is an incorporated arm of the NFL. They do not get along with not only the CFL, but football, Canada, which is our sanctioned governing body for university football, junior football, high school football. We're getting a little sorry with your mics. A little, sorry, Sorry about that. Anyways, NFL Canada's come in and just eating their lunch and then it doesn't help that chase Claypool is Canadian and he went, there's more Canadians than ever going straight to the NFL. And they're making so much money that they retire when they're done. There was a time for decades. The Canadians would go to the NFL and then come back to the CFO and play in their hometown team. Cause it's a great story. And playing from their family and friends, they don't need to do that anymore because as you guys know, football's a brutal sport working out. Isn't fun unless you're a freak and you're addicted to it. So we're like the NFL is just come in and just mowed. The CFL just took taking their lunch money and CFL has done nothing about it. Do you do kids grow up in Canada now and play in high school and college wanting to play in the CFL or wanting to go to the army Here they care where I am, which is the heartbeat of the Canadian football league. They dream of playing for the Saskatchewan Roughriders. I mean, we just built a brand new stadium, played in it. Two seasons, maybe three, same designer is at and T stadium in Dallas. It's a Mecca, right? So they, they do here, but we just, we I'll give you an example of a guy by the name of Chris Schultz. He just passed away last week at the age of 61, he grew up 15 miles South of Toronto. And his story was he grew up dreaming of playing for the Dallas Cowboys did was drafted by them out of Arizona. Played for their Cowboys for four years. Came back to the CFL, played with the Argos, won the grey cup with the John candy. Wayne Gretzky on Toronto organized then did 20 years on the TSN panel as an analyst, Southern Ontarians people in Southern Ontario that grow up. They, they dream of the NFL and it doesn't help. The Toronto has been trying to get an NFL team for 25 years. It's just brainwashed the people of Toronto, which incidentally is like 5.5 million people that the NFL is better. Like they draw crowds routinely and Toronto of 11, 12,000 fans for the Argos. And it's a crime where they used to get 55,000. Another instance that just getting again murdered by the NFL, in our own market, Your Mike's still rubbish. So I don't know what to do. I'll talk to this. Um, so w when you talk about running here, you know, running a little bit later or whatever, I mean, do you see it all as one league, as two competing divisions? I mean, you see, as one, one league of, of, I think you would call it the continental football league, right. You know, just that's what takes over all of North America. Okay. Well, I would like to, I would like to see you guys go to 10 teams in America, or maybe eight existing and one in Mexico city and one in Cancun or something. Cause a Mexico is just an untapped football market, right? So three countries, but 20 teams. And the problem that we haven't even brought up in this interview yet is a little thing called the ratio in the CFL. Have you heard about it? Yeah. It's a mandated CFL bylaw that 40% of teams need to be Canadian. So if we could merge tomorrow, frankly, if it wasn't for the ratio, but in the nineties, when there were eight U S teams and the CFL American government would not recognize the ratio, they said it violated anti-trust laws, competition laws, which it does. So those teams played with a hundred percent Americans while the Canadian teams played with 60% Americans. And it would, you didn't really notice a difference on the field, but we're not going to merge to answer your question with the ratio still in place. And that is a huge Hill. That is a Hill. A lot of Canadian football people will die on. They don't want you. Don't why, because then your population size versus ours and how many American football players are available versus Canadian players. It's, that's kinda what we're talking about right now. I think most people would be in favor of a merger. They really would. But if it means getting rid of the ratio, it would be the death of Canadian football. And frankly, nobody wants that. Would, do you think it would be the death of Canadian football? It would be the death of Canadian three down football. Yeah. Right. Cause I'm, I'm listen, I'm all for in 20 years ago I was throwing the entire Canadian game out the window and going to American rules. If that's what was going to save it. I mean, in the province of BC and Ontario, they actually play four down American rules football. Now it's just guys, haven't really got my face about it, but I know they're mad when I say let's not hide behind the ratio. My dream Reed or my vision is an American hockey league model. Are you guys hockey fans at all? Yes. Well, there's never been an American ratio in the American hockey league for a hundred years. There were way more hockey players in Canada in the U S and it was never a ratio mandating and a minimum amount of Americans on the team. It's just not the way Americans think, but the way the CFL does it, that's just so Canadian. And that's, that's just what needs to change. And, and, and so my idea just to go one step further on the full merger is to take all the players and put them in one talent pool, American, Canadian, and global have the Scouts, rank them one to 500 and have a draft. And we'll find out where, who goes, where as to where the priority players are, Because it's so interesting to me. And you know what, since we started posting this stuff and getting a discussion, it seems like a lot of CFL fans are like, you know, if, if it can't be the three downs, the ratio, all these things, you know, we don't want em, you know, we don't want the XMO. We don't want all this stuff. And my question is, and they get, we're not the XFL marks, whatever, but you got to look at, you know, where the money's coming from. And if the CFL and the, you know, where, where they've turned down, all these things, you know, I know that, um, even, uh, Brian Woods, who is the CEO of the spring league, I think he had even reached out to the CFL, um, earlier this year, last year about, you know, buy into that, you know, all these different things. And it's like, at some point you have to take the lifeline, or you're not going to have, there's not going to be a boat, right. To get into. I mean, is that kind of, am I wrong in thinking that You can no, but you hide your face. You can't do it. No, but they've been doing it for a hundred years and you have to understand something, gentlemen, this is a key part of the interview. These CFL owners, I know them very well. They're not bad people, but they are holding on to the current CFL business model, like grim death. You know why? Because they know if we emerge with the XFL they're gone and a buddy of mine, like there'll be out. And a buddy of mine with a beat with the BC lines. And once say who he was, he just goes, these guys all like to play Jerry Jones. They like to watch their team and their luxury suite, neat shrimp cocktail, and have everybody kiss their. Cause they're the owner. That's why they're hanging on like grim death to the current CFL model. And they also believe as hard as it is for you guys to believe that they can again, pick the rocks pocket and give them nothing back. Because they're used to doing that. They're used to doing that. The concept of a partnership is different than the concept of a sponsorship. It's like, give us your $1 million and see you later. And you're lucky to be involved with the CFO. That's, what's put them in this bind right now. So I guess then that, that brings up like, uh, I'm trying to draw this here where if they, I guess I I'm starting to see why they would even entertain a phone calls if they are under the naive belief that they can just use the Rock's marketing arm for free. And that, that They've said that to me. And now, now with like, we we've speculated, of course we were sitting there going, why would the CFL even entertain a phone call from the rock? If they weren't looking to get a financial help or be merged. And now you're proposing a C they're just looking to the marketing arm and, and give nothing back. That's fascinating. Mine's going to be spinning tonight trying to get your head around it, but it doesn't surprise me. I know these guys. Go ahead. Read it. No, no, no. So that's, I mean, but that's what they're thinking. Right. But what, what do you think is going to happen? I mean, if that's why they answer the phone, right? But if, if there really is, you know, you've said on your show, you know, uh, CFL is out of the money, right. Or they're close to being that. So, so if that's what they think, but this is what the, you know, the reality is what, what, what's the next steps? Where do we go? The next steps are, if the rock refuses to inject capital into the CFL for this season, they're done, there will be no, the CFL will fold. They need money from somewhere. They won't play, they will fold. And then the rock will be able to waltz in and literally buy this league for nothing. And then from there they rebuild and that's that 20 league, 20 team vision that I said to you, and it just, the rock would be familiar with the ratio from his time in the CFL I guy, my thing is while I think we should get rid of it, I'm willing to listen to suggestions as to how we can work around it. But I don't, but I'm not a football guy enough to say how they would do that. Or even if Americans would accept it. So again, they've been turned down by the federal government of Canada for funding. They've been turned down by that. They've been turned down by the NFL for funding. They've been turned down by the MLSE for funding, say they're going everywhere with their hand out. And I know for a fact, they've been begging their sponsors here, this football team here for millions of dollars, just to cover their payroll. We're seeing last stages, gentlemen, of the Canadian football league. So where I see it going is they're not having a season this year folding. And then the XFL walks in and, and takes it over. That's what I think is going to happen. The CFL would be adamantly against that obviously, but I don't see any other way. Wow. That's the sound bite. That's the sound bite I'm going to use here. That's easy. It's a very scary thought, because like you said, it's a a hundred year brand. Uh, you would like, you would like to think that they'd be willing to change with the times, but it seems like they're, they're playing by the rules from 50 years. They've never changed with the times. And the other thing is there's a motion been passed in the Canadian government here, a bill within the last couple of months for single game betting that we haven't had allowed in Canada. And the CFL is just like dollar signs going off in their eyes going, Oh, we can get in on betting. I'm like, guys, you can't get the betting money until you play games and you can't play games until you have money and they don't have money. So they're sitting there. What I'm talking about is money to stage a season, fly your players in, pay them. Like they don't have that money right now. I'm just sitting here waiting, waiting to hear some cash injection from somewhere to get this season. It's not happening. And we are, what are we? Middle of March training camp would start May 1st. We're six weeks away guys. There was an owner from the Ottawa red Black's team and the Ottawa sun this week said, we're 90% sure we're going to play 90% sure. But that's going to go right up. And maybe until the day before training camp. And I'm like, you can't give yourself wiggle room like that. You can't a hundred percent, it's gotta be a hundred percent, but here's why they can't do that. We haven't even got into the vaccine. Right? Well the vaccination thing, Oh, that's true. They have said the only way that they will be able to play is that they get fans in the stands. They won't do a bubble concept like fan controlled spring league, but they weren't paying their players. I mean, a CFL, maybe 6.2, 5 million per team. Isn't NFL, but it's a lot more than the spring league. You know what I mean? So, so the point is they got to get fans on the stadiums and while the vaccinations are going okay in Canada, nowhere near what you guys got going, it's rolling in America. It looks like I saw Dr. Fowchee on ESPN last week saying we will not have full capacity stadiums in America this summer. Forget about it. So there's that whole thing about, maybe we do throw the doors open to 50% capacity. That's still not enough to pay the payroll. And even if we did, we still have to convince people to buy tickets and come, right. That's that? That's the second hurdle here. And just to reiterate, so, because we had talked, I just want to make sure I got all the numbers, right? So the TSN is covering the payroll, right? And then this lack of money is just because they haven't played now in two years. And because of the lack of fans and because of a lot of good tickets and because kids, we covered all last year, um, you know, they're not getting the loan and all of that in the bankruptcy or not the bankruptcy, but you know, the shuddering kind of last year of all that. So that's where we've come all led to this place. Well, there's been zero sponsorship revenue because I know for a fact, there are, there are corporations that sponsor the rough riders here to the tune of, into the millions or like the radio deal where the, my, that I was under for 20 years is a half a million a year. Radio rights. You all, their revenue is predicated on playing on games. So sideline ads, ticket revenue, luxury suites, broadcast rights. Why are you sponsoring a football team? If there are no games, I'm not saying you shouldn't, what's in it for a corporation. So that's why they can't get their revenue going because they've got nothing to deliver on it. See, it says real chicken and they need to play to get the revenue, but they need revenue to play. I get what you're saying. It's, it's a paradox. It's kind of like a choke point situation that, uh, like when, and I, I don't want to focus too much on wrestling, but Paul Heyman explained this with ECW said, there's many choke points when it comes to, if you have a product, if you have a way to distribute the product so on and so forth, if one of these things, Then everything folders, and it seems like that's, you know, like everything is, everything is symbiotic. Everything's a paradox chicken and the egg. Um, but if one of those things falters, the whole thing falters, you can't have two of the three. You've got to have all three. Yeah. And I, I like to think that I'm completely out to lunch and all of this, but everything points to what I'm saying. They haven't been able to declare a season because they don't know if they're going to play, you know, cause the player like this is hilarious. If you've probably followed this, when the announcement came out last week of the collaboration talks, current players were saying, yeah, but when's training camp. Do I need to ask the rock? Like, forget about collaborating with the XFL. Can you give us some concrete details about this year? And the only reason the owners haven't been able to give them an answer is because they don't know, it's predicated on getting butts in seats. And we don't know when everybody's going to have enough vaccinations across this country to get in. And even when they do, are they going to buy tickets? So listen, it's really pointing to them, not playing this season, which goes to the league folding, unfortunately in the XFL, riding to the rescue rock, buying it for a song. And I'll say it again with him being cut by calorie. By the way, if you've seen all those interviews with him, it seems like it burns in him. They left him destitute with seven bucks in his pocket. I'm like you guys. Yeah. You guys really think that he feels that he owes the CFL, anything he has said being cut by the CFL was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. What is in it for him to come back and save you, given what you did in 1995 to him? I just, I haven't got the answer. Yeah. Well, rod, we appreciate your time. Thank you for joining us. You gave, you gave us plenty of time and we are so grateful. You came on and shattered about all this stuff. And wow. Just really opened up our eyes to a lot of things that were going on. And this is going to take some time to process. I know. Well, thanks Jen. But you know what? When we do play the continental football league, you'll be coming on my show. We'll be analyzing the green time and what's going on between your followers. And my followers is a perfect example of what could happen between in the league itself is growth. Yeah. Right? Opening our doors to America is the greatest thing ever. I'm not welded to the Canadian game, but you know what? I don't speak for everybody. And it's been fun to talk about. So we'll see, we'll see what happens as it goes. But I appreciate the opportunity. I really appreciate it. It means a lot for you to come on. Thanks guys. My head is spinning right now because the way I'm understanding this is that their TV deal with TSN pays about $58 million a year, $58 million a year to televise a football product. What You, you pay $58 million a year only to televise. Yeah. It, it was it C uh, you know, I'm, uh, we're going to do some more research with the numbers and stuff. It made, it sounds, it doesn't sound off. I mean, I know rod, you know, has covered this forever and it, it seems frightening to me, you know, but you look at, you know, NFL is King and I mean, even look at the spring league and stuff, trying to struggle to get on, you know, we're on Fs to all this stuff. I mean, it's, it's a weird situation. What was the XFL, uh, TV deal? Do you remember off hand? You sh you should know this, Uh, they got production cost, uh, cost covered. And then the XFL split the rad ad revenue with them. XFL wasn't paid. I mean, that's fine, but it's like, if you're only making $58 million, that's close to nothing for a league that's been in existence longer, well, not longer, but a hundred years, a hundred years. And you're still only making $58 million on your TV deal. Yeah. You're making like, you're making a 10th of what you should be making. Look at the money that they have the restaurant. And I mean, it's crazy. You know, when we're talking to me, we covered the ESPN and all that, you know, a week or two ago. And you know, what did we say? $8.6 billion between the four networks covering to do the NFL. Right. And obviously, and people were using it. Obviously the NFL has got more teams and more, I mean, all of that said, but we're seeing, you know, eight, eight point we did the math. It was like 8.2 billion to 58 million for nine teams, 58 million. They could charge 580 million. How much is TSA? Like you talk, he talks about all these people that buy that, that are like her staunch, Canadian football, blah, blah, blah. You know, like they're, they're, they're sticking to their guns. You know, they, they love the Canadian football game, whatever that means there's viewership. There that's means there's ratings there. That means TSN is literally bending the CFL over and taking advantage of them. And also, I mean, I've seen people argue all week, you know, Canada's got a ninth of the population. I mean, there, there's a lot of things to go into. I mean, I get, I get both sides, I get both sides and that's what we're just trying to cover on here. You know, cause I get a lot of, you know, America and the next NFL and NFL fans on here. And then we've had a lot of CFL people coming. Right. And so, you know, for every pro there's another pro on the other side, I mean, I've gotten all these messages all week, but yeah. I mean their, their argument would be, you know, less teams, less people, less population, Uh, 58 million still criminal to, to me though, I'm sorry. That's still, that's still too low. That's still low. If that is, if that is in fact the case, the TSN pays $58 million a year to televise a football league and probably makes 20 times that on ad revenue. That's insane to me. Well, well, well, we'll do some more research. I mean, you know, uh, we appreciate rod coming on obviously and sharing that and you know, I don't want to get hung up on the 58 million. I want to get, you know, where it's covering the, you know, I just move into numbers and stuff like that. Sometimes it was like, well, actually it's 62 million. Okay. I mean, roughly 60 minutes argument, that's a semantics argument. Anyway, I just, I like to cover our bases here on the show. So, uh, we appreciate rod coming on and, uh, I really, uh, it means a lot for him to take that much of his time to come on. And I know that our listeners in his listeners are really gonna appreciate that. So lots of it, lots of good insights there from, from a CFL, you know, analysts, you know, sports person. Yep. Well, so obviously, uh, you know, fiery, uh, rod interview, that was good. Uh, really thankful too, for, for Kenneth coming on and kind of sharing, uh, you know, his side. I know that they're trying to just get the word out there. And I do think that it got a little, uh, fire stormy with, uh, with just, you know, CFL fans and players and everything. So I really appreciate everyone coming on. Uh, we have, uh, I I've really spent a lot of time this week getting all sorts of different, um, you know, interview tidbits articles from what, you know, lots of different people, obviously lots of different thoughts about the XFL CFL stuff. Uh, so we have Pat McAfee, I, he came on and he wanted to bank a former Saskatoon player, Dwayne Johnson for saving the CFL. He says, uh, keeping jobs alive, keeping leaks alive, keeping hopes alive. Thank you, Dwayne. Thank you for what you're doing and make you the Danny Garcia as a, as a kicker. Ernesto, are you a Pat McAfee fan? I enjoy watching his shows. Um, and it's interesting cause you know, I respect them as an punter. I've never, I never kicked with them before, but I think it's amazing that he was a kicker that transitioned into a punter and exception upon her over the years. Uh, his shows are funny. They're, they're, they're informative. And uh, there's some questionable times where I've seen where he tries to push certain guys in our, in our profession where I'm like, we kinda know that guy. So it's interesting, but I mean, I love watching a show. I think I have, I strive to a show every single day and there's always something interesting. I should say that much. And the guys he has around there it's, you know, it's fun. It's just a little bit Obviously. Yeah. Just focusing on the jobs and stuff as well. I mean, I know we talked about at the beginning of the show, but like more than anything, you know, it's not even the football thing, it's a job and it's an employment thing. I mean, do you look at it that way where it's, I mean, it is so weird to think of something that people watch for sport you're doing as, as a profession. I mean, how do you, how do you put those two things together? It's tough. It's tough because when you're coming out of college, you're, you're thinking yourself wanting to be a professional. I'm going to do this full-time and as you get older, you're like, okay, this is a job. And then you got to also balance out other things too. So, you know, I don't even watch football after I play in the season. It's it's brutal because we get so much football during the season and you're, you're so mentally engulfed in your, your profession that after the season, I'm a big 49ers fan. I grew up at 40. I understand, but I can't even tell you how many games I even watch. Probably not watch one game this year. You will ask me all the time. You're a football guy. Yeah. But I live this every single day and I mentally, I need to take a break from it. So it's always difficult, but I think it's different, you know, like I got friends all the time, Hey, what'd you think of this game? Or they're they have their fantasies and like, Hey, I got this kicker or I got that. And I'm like, yeah, they're good. I don't know. We're we're worried about my own thing. So, Uh, is Jimmy G going to be back this year? God, I hope not. I hope not. I think all 4,000 fans are done. You can't trust the good looking guy and uh, you can't even stay, uh, stay healthy. So I'd rather go with somebody else. One note here I have, it was so funny. Is it the funniest thing about all this with the CFL and XFL stuff is be your whole original XFL back in Oh, one kind of the, the word on the street is Vince tried to buy the CFL and they turned him down. And so he says, screw you guys, I'm going to start my own XFL. So it is really funny to kind of, and obviously with the rock and Saskatoon and all that and come full circle. But I mean, there's really all came about because Vince got turned down back in, you know, 99 or 2000, I guess I have notes here 99. I mean, did you follow the XFL? Like 1.0, back in 2000, I was in eighth grade. I was in eighth grade when the first XFL came about and I remember watching the demons and I believe it was the, also the Outlaws Las Vegas, I believe. I remember. And I remember watching that and the reason why I was watching that I was falling because at the time I was discovering football and actually got into the sport, fell in love with it, but I had no one at the time to really relate to. And at the time I think it was for the Las Vegas Outlaws or Los Angeles extreme one of the two. Uh, there was a kicker by the name of Jose Cortez. He was the first, uh, Salvadorian. And I was like, that's interesting. I didn't think Salvadorians played football because we're so short anyways. And he was an exceptional kicker and made it in the exit thought he was the best kicker of the XFL that year. But I followed you. I think it was more interesting to see that kickoff because it was like a coin toss and he just ran for the bond. Oh, that brutal. So, but yeah, I did follow him spawn back then. Uh, it got a little bit weirder as the season went on and it became more wrestling type of things. So yeah. Yeah. I got, uh, it's been buried. The big thing on the show a couple of weeks ago is I bought a, he hate me Jersey, like an old like tags on like, you know, original stock. And then obviously all this, all, all this CFL stuff's gone up. So I'm still gonna I'll bust out the rod smart. I reached out to rod. I tried to get rod on the podcast cause I thought that that would be a great when all the trademark stuff was going on with the, he hate me. Um, when you got, uh, June Jones was making the rounds again this week, uh, it seems like he's really trying to keep his name out there. Did you have any interactions with, with him, with any of the, when the, when the dragons played? Uh, the roughnecks? No. No. I remember seeing him, uh, during the commercial and I'm waiting to kick off. I did not have any interactions. It was a great game, a game that I thought we were going to be able to pull off a very controversial ending to that game. But, um, I got a chance to see him and I think it's always been an honor to be on the same playing field, uh, with some exceptional individuals that I've known over the years, growing up, including playing for Jim Zorn, but also seeing Jim Jones and everything. So it's always fun to play against these individuals. Unfortunately, in my profession as a kicker, it's better not to be in the spotlight and talking with these guys, we just want to do our job and get away from there and everything. But no, I never got a chance to talk to them, but highly respect them as a coach. And who knows maybe in the future I can talk to them. Yeah. That was a great game. That was, you know, BJ got to play. He got the start, we have the big three seconds left. Everyone knows three seconds left on the clock, you know? Uh, but yeah, junior was making the rounds. He thinks it's going to be four down football. He thinks the rocks is going to pull off a merger. Do you have, do you have a strong take, if you want to see, uh, the league combined, you want to see the like AFL or, uh, AFC NFC kind of thing. I mean, what do you, what would you want to see in an ideal? Um, just as a, you know, as a fan and as a player, I think what I would like to see is a platform and another Avenue for players like myself, who went to small schools who didn't make it to the NFL, we're still striving to do it, but another place to play and not to be able to challenge the NFL, because I think that's a downfall for many leagues that once they try to challenge the NFL, it's downhill from there so they can become their own entity. I think it'd be great if the merger would be interesting. I think it'd be great to have Canadian teams and I'd States' teams and be playing each other. Now, when it comes to the rules, that's going to be interesting because I was never a fan of the three down rule. I think four downs would be great. Uh, I think our kickoff would be it's, it's been exciting and I think it would be great. Um, and for me, singing in arena football, I always saw, you know, the motion man, the receiver. I think it'd be great to have one motion. I think that'd be more exciting to do so little things that maybe they come together. I would not like to see the goalposts in front of the end zone. That'd be weird, but you know, it's interesting to see that I think it'd be great if they can come together and really make it work and not push things back, but also to give another platform for players is great and people love football year round. It is really hard cause I know with the original XFL and I know, you know, Sam Shorenstein and all the work that the guys put in, uh, and girls, you know, to, to figure it out that, you know, the rules and what can we tweak and what's it not going to break, you know, we've covered, you know, and we are still covering fingernail football. We'll talk about that. You know, we're, they're still figuring out, um, the rules kind of, as they go, I mean, we're changing, you know, they, they just announced this week and we'll get it in the finger till later. But you know, the games are going to be two 30 minute halfs this week as opposed to two 20 minute halves. Well, that's, you know, it's a big deal. And when you're talking about stacks and plays and stuff, so, uh, yeah, I mean I've seen more fantasy bookings of potential CFL, XFL merger rule things in the last week than I would ever know what exists before. Wow. You know, if you take this width of the field, but the CFL may put the field and leave, you know, leave the goalposts, but they do all that. I mean, do you, I mean, there's such different games. I have not watched enough CFL football. You know, we have people that have been educating me and we're going to have continued to have them on the podcast. I mean, is that, is it where you play? Like, you know, you're doing the XFL, you're doing the indoor football, is it all these rules and stuff? I mean, how hard is it to meld those together as a player? I don't know. It's not so much from a kickers perspective. I mean the only, well, the biggest transition I had to make and the XFL was, I remember when we score our first touchdown in Washington, I was trotting out there for an extra point. And I remember, I remember one of our coaches, like, what are you doing? What are you doing? And I'm like, we just go to touchdown coach. I saw coaches Oren do this, which means one point. Yeah. And I think coaches all was a lot confused on that one too. So someone had to tell me, no, no, no. So I was on the 20 yard line of the opposite side and it was a long way back walking to the opposite side. And I remember the he's like, look, we're learning as we go through this strange. So I mean just like little, little rules here and there, but from a kicker perspective, it's just once we know the rules we adjust during the off season and make these adjustments, I mean, in the CFL, the kicking is almost the same with the exception of the goalpost being in front. But for punters, it's a big difference up there because they have, you know, where they're taught here to have the hang time where in the CFL, there's a halo rule and it's a protective returner. So, you know, it's not so much the hang time to get the ball to as quickly as possible. Same thing in the XFL. That was the thing we had to figure out was not so much hang time. We had to get to the ball to the return and quickly so that everyone can move, but we're still figuring out. And I was like, Oh, okay. So eliminate the four second, hang time, just get it down there as quick as you can. So little things here and there, but from a player, as long as we know the rules, it's our job, our job as professionals to work within those rules and make it work. Uh, we have a couple other statements here to go through. Uh, so football, Canada, president, I guess he it's like it's actual title up there. I was trying to do some ratios of this. Uh, Jim Mullen. He's very, you know, he, a lot of the CFL people really want to stand proud and you know, XFL wants to come in, they can play our game, you know, but we, we really stand behind that. You know, we've talked and, and rod in his interview talked about, you know, if there's no money and there's no league, then there is no game, but he's, he wants to talk about moving forward with confidence and whether we've developed over the last 150 years, let's dialogue with those globally, who we respect and have what they've achieved in our sport. If a visiting team wants to, uh, wants to play here, stand proud, then invite them to play our game. I mean, it it's, I do worry. And rod talked a lot about this on the interview that, that the Canadian, I understand wanting to have the pride of the game. Right. And I, I got out, so, and like I said, we are not XFL rural marks. Like we just want football. Uh, what do you think about that? And just like, that could be kind of the death knell of the CFL, just wanting to stand too proud of what they have. I admire the tradition that they've had up there. I mean, I love seeing the historic players I've come through like Warren moon, Doug Flutie, and other players of that sort. But you know, there's, there's a time and a place to adapt and to move forward, if you want to make things sustainable. And man, it's, I know they want to stand proud. I think we'll see NFL fans are amazing. And it's just a matter of if they want things to keep on going. And like I said before, not compete with the NFL, but become their own entity and to bring more, more views to the CFL because I think that's the way to go. Actually, I think it is the way to go. It's just to make sure they can adapt and improve. Because I remember as a player here in United States where we were thinking, you know, there's always that option. Would you play in the CFL? I'm like, all right, you only, I don't have dual citizenship or I have to get dual citizenship because they only a certain amount of American players and beyond there, but there's not like, Oh my God, we're, we're looking forward to a, Hey, what are you going to watch today? I'm going to go watch the CFL TD here. There's not, you're not into that, but the fact that they can merge and, and make things work and hopefully they're open to it as well. I mean, it's just, it can skyrocket, it can be huge for the both, both leagues platform. Uh, one of the CFL play by play guys, Chris Cuthbert, uh, he calls the XFL toxic deal with the devil. I mean, these are, you know, there are hot takes coming out. I mean, uh, you know, and this, I would understand if it was Vincent man, right? Like I would totally understand. We, we are, you know, I have watched WWE for my whole life. We know all about Vincent. I would totally agree with that. If it was previous management, I think Dwayne, Danny Redbird, there's so many other things now. I mean, w what do you think about that? Where if it was Vince versus, you know, current management and it really harsh words, kind of the deal with the devil. I agree. I think it's a little too harsh, um, with Vince. I mean, I never got a chance to meet him. I got a chance to meet his son. Yeah. Shane was staying her Washington game and, you know, and they seem to be on the same page as everybody else. But I think with, uh, with Dwayne and Danny Garcia being charged, I don't think it's going to be the same thing or at all. I think it's better. The long-term I don't think, uh, the deal with the devil is the right thing to say, because if anything, I felt like the pandemic might have really exposed the CFL when it comes to their financial things, but it's not fair to the defense, not fair to the players. It's just, it happened. And not people had no controls. For example, for us that last game of Houston, you know, we were getting ready for the next game against New York and settling. It was that, that was it. That was it. So it was just a matter of, everyone's gotta be open to, I think people are a little bit prideful and as they should be to an extent, because they love their sport, they love their CFL. We love our XFL and they just got to come to the table and hopefully put egos aside and make things work if they want to survive. Yeah. Even some of the owners, lox owner, Gary stern was talking, he's saying, yeah, the CFL most certainly needs help. I'm open to it. If something good comes from it. Fantastic. If it doesn't, we'll have learned a lot and maybe got different ideas on what we can incorporate it. I mean, the problem with that and what rod said is, you know, if there is no money, there is no like, well, we'll learn some stuff for next season. I mean, when we're really at the question of, if this season is going to happen, if the vaccine's going to roll out in Canada, I mean, I think that's a worrying thing. It's like, well, yeah, that's great if we get there, but I just don't get, like what the CFL's leverage is at this time. I agree. I don't know what their leverage is. And I think it's all, um, smoke that's coming out, that he looked back on as you take community, take a step back and you look at it. You're like, okay, I don't know why they're saying what stuff. And when there's so much going on, there's so much uncertainty. So it's just a matter of time and see what happens. But I mean, it, it does not hurt either league to just sit down and talk like what they're doing. And hopefully that's exactly what they're doing. And not just saying that they're coming to talk and nothing's happening. That's the worst thing for all of us is that they're saying things or they're putting things out there and nothing's really happening behind the curtain. Uh, so a couple of quick, last notes about CFL staff, and then we're going to get into all the other XFL. Uh, Calgary Stampeders have announced, are signing Nick Holly, he's a former, uh, roughnecks player, uh, stand out. He was in the spring league and we covered him, uh, his twin brother, uh, he's twin brother of current, uh, dolphins, linebacker, and former San Peter, Nate, Holly. And he was the CFL's 2019 most outstanding rookie. So, you know, there, there there's a ton of, uh, excellent players go into the NFL. Uh, the last note I wanted to get your thoughts on this, uh, Jake Henry, he's a friend of the show. I, his conspiracy, he's all in the conspiracy theories. Uh TSN which is the Canadian network, but you know, the one ones they're playing the XFL, ESPN 30 for 30 documentary. And he's like, is that a sign that there is a TV deal? I just wanted to make sure we know about that. What do you think about [inaudible] playing the XFL 30 for 30 documentary and, uh, Well, it doesn't help their, their cause and trying to make sure there's nothing going on. I think that's interesting to be for them to be playing over there. Um, maybe it's to get the fans excited, um, maybe to buy into it more, uh, well played, I should say, well playing and we'll see what happens from there. And it should be an interesting documentary. Yeah. Jake, we appreciate you. So that Jason, to all the conspiracy there is go give him a fall. We're going to take a break. We're going to get into all the XFL. There is actually a lot of other XFL news, and we're going to talk about or Nesta what he has going on and everything after the break. Yeah. And that's what they were talking. Yeah. That 30 for 30, I think, I think it's the one that was played before. It was kind of what really ticked Vince off in the even wanting to do. That's kind of the word on the street is that they did that 30 for 30 on the fall of the XFL and Oh one and then Vince really got motivated again, at least that's what I read back in like 2019 and said, Hey, I'm going to try to make another go at this. Did you ever hear about any of that, those rumors? Yeah, we, I heard the rumors too, and I mean, it makes sense. I mean, the guy's very prideful. He has a, a very good established, you know, company as far as the WWE. So, I mean, when pride kicks in, sometimes it, it just sparks something and he got it going. And we love the fact that when he brought it back, you know, we were hoping he was standing by saying, you know, this is going to work. This is going to be here for a long time. So yeah, we all heard the same thing. We're not surprised. I mean, if we were in that position yeah. I'm sure a light would have been fired right there. So, Uh, a couple other XFL things, uh, the, the xfl.com website has been updated to reflect kind of all the CFL talks. If you go to the FAQ section, it talks about, you know, plannings on hold. We're trying to figure out all this stuff. So I had posted that on Twitter this week, it got a lot of traction that way, just because, you know, the site doesn't get updated that much right now. So it is good to note that they're doing that. Uh, one note I want to ask you about, and it's okay if you don't have an opinion. Um, we are big Washington football team fans here at the podcast. Obviously we have Taylor Hideki, you know, coming off the battle Hawks, uh, Fitzpatrick, going to Washington football, uh, you know, signing this one year, a $10 million thing. What do you think about Fitz magic going to Washington? Oh, I love it. I've always been a big fan of, uh, you know, if it's magic and then the way he plays. I mean, yeah, the record doesn't show RS wins losses, but if you want someone that's going to put a spark in our organization that needs it and it's him, it's him, you know, the bearded wonder I call him. So it's interesting. So the guy from Harvard, I love it, small school and you know, just the fact that he's able to still play. I feel at times looking at his career, he's playing for like, I think on his tennis team, I'm wrong, right? It's nine 30, 10. Yeah. Either chat. I mean, I can relate to him because in arena football, I've been already on so many teams because of, you know, most of the time they failed or, you know, it has gone under. And so I've been on so many teams. So in fact, when I was in Seattle, there was someone that was asking me, they're like, how long have you been playing? I'm like, Oh, there'll be a, my ninth year at the time. And I'm there, like, how many, what scenes were you on? I'm like, well, they bring up this list. It's a long list here. So, so I love the fact that he's there. Uh, I've always been a big fan of like, you know, underdog to use. And, you know, I have a special place for Washington because the era, the only NFL team to ever have an MVP kicker in the eighties. So really? Yeah. And it was a straight on, yeah, the old dinosaur that he's the old, I think it was 1982. It was a strike year. And he won the most valuable player of the year. I was the kicker. It was a straight on character. There you go, Mark Moseley. There you go. Mark Mosley. I remember. Well, what I like about it in all honesty is w what they did with, and I know this is, this is where we get a little XFL, Mark calcium. This is where I get a little B in the Mark, but, you know, you had Fitz magic in, in Miami with [inaudible], you know, they brought two. And after a while now we have Taylor, hi, Nikki. Maybe you bring Fitzy in as kind of that blanket and maybe halfway through the season, maybe he could get a little point. That's what I'm hoping. I'm hoping to get a little, you know, you signed Taylor to a two year deal. It's not a crazy big deal, but it is, you know, it's a couple of million here and there. I mean, they obviously see something in him as, at least as a backup. And so that is, that's my hope. We will definitely be following Washington football this year. I have, I think today it's supposed to be coming. I have a, I bought a Taylor, hi, Nikki, a Washington football Jersey. So we're very on, on, on watching football on here. So, I mean, am I, am I crazy in those, in those thoughts? Or what do you think about Taylor potentially getting some play time? No, I, I think you're, you hit it right on the nail there because you have to make the best of the opportunities. And I, I played against Taylor, uh, Hideki. Uh, he was a backroom in St. Louis, but you never know. And that's the thing, that's the beauty of this sport is that you never know on any one of these teams, just because everyone's like, okay, that's a starter. You don't know what the second and third stringer what they're going to make out of it. Cause they had the best of their opportunity. So I think it's E fits magic as a blanket. You need to have a veteran presence there and if he's open to learning and it keeps getting better, I think he's the future. And I think it's awesome to see and the XFL player to be there and perform so well. Yeah. I'm really excited for that. Uh, Mike Mitchell reported, uh, Baltimore Ravens signed XFL defenders, Brian, Corey. I'm not going to see that. Right. They signed. Uh, so that's 38 former NFL players on NFL rosters. Um, a couple other notes, uh, sadly, uh, the passing of rusty Tillman this week, he was a former, uh, 2001, uh, New Jersey Hitman's coach. He also coached for the Seahawks as well. He was one of the assistant coaches there. Uh, I saw a lot of news about that this week with rusty Tillman, just being passed. I wanted to make sure we acknowledge that. Uh, any thoughts on that? Any, I mean, do you have any comments on that? Uh, no. No. It just, uh, it's unfortunate, you know, it's been a rough year for a lot of people and you know, hopefully the recipes. Yeah. Uh, the final note on this, and this is read, speculating a little bit, you know, we have rubber Capitol, they just bought the, in the family sports group a couple of weeks ago, 750 million, um, family sports just added this week, LeBron James, as a, as a partner in that. And so, you know, you're, you're just, you're getting in a lot of pieces together, you know? And so, I mean, there's nothing really concrete right now. So they're also kind of like finalizing that deal. Cause they, we had announced the Fenway deal with Redbird, but uh, I mean, just, there's a tremendous amount of money behind this league now does that as someone that dealt with the XFL before, do you feel better about ownership now? I think we probably talked about this when you were on before, but just see amount of like money and influence and they're continuing to grow. They've got like 4 billion in assets behind them. You know, Vince was, it was a big entrepreneur, but he did run the XFL like a mom and pop shop is kind of what we've said. That's how he ran the WWE for years. Uh, am I wrong in that assessment? And what do you think about the and stuff? No, I don't think you're wrong. I think you're you're right, because he did run into like a mom and pops and it was his own little, his baby's thing, you know, and that's what you want to do, but you know, Redwood capital hopefully, uh, and just keep on doing what they're doing. They keep on bringing this revenue and stuff, but I think it's going to be a better ownership than it was before. I think, uh, having that tie to the deputy duties always grow. Maybe not as much as now, but the rock is there. You know, you have the rock, there's gotta be some, some sort of WB element to it. Um, I'm very shocked about LeBron going to the Boston because I'm pretty sure he was a New York Yankees fan. If I remember what I remember here. Yeah. But, well, we'll see what happens. Hopefully they do well there, You know, you're absolutely right. I saw it there. It was, he had some big photo of him with holding my hat up or something you're absolutely spot on with that. He, uh, but you know, I mean, look, he went from Cleveland and then all, you know, he's, um, one, uh, quick spring league. No, and I wanted to get into an essence stuff here cause we're kicking off with indoor football to, uh, spring league this week, uh, pro uh, pocket pressure media, they're a new kind of cover and some old stuff. I've seen them post on Facebook to, uh, the spring league, according to them. Uh, you know, we, Brian's going to be coming on the show here in a couple of weeks, CEO, Brian Woods of the spring league to talk about their plans. Uh, apparently they are making the move and picking up some, uh, U S F L trademarks, uh, for some of the teams, uh, the new Orleans breakers, Houston gamblers, Memphis showboats Michigan Panthers, Pittsburgh Maulers and Tampa Bay bandits. So there's like 16 since like they had, so it is interesting. We covered the spring league last year, they were doing the bubble thing. They just have like the jesters and, um, that was our team. I can't remember. Oh, like the conquers and stuff. It was just like, kind of like random teams. But if they were to go, I don't know if I love all those cities, cause they're not, they're really kind of East side, whatever, uh, you watch the spring, they get all, have you checked any of that stuff out? Uh, I watched briefly because, uh, as you mentioned, Brian, Corey snapper, in fact, his first professional game was in one of my indoor games. So I got him the job at the San Diego Strikeforce and he was my first snapper in 2019. So that was his first professional debut. So I was following him because he was a good friend of ours and he trains with us and very hardworking guy, but that's about it. I didn't really pay too much attention to the spring league. Um, I think it was a nice little platform for guys, um, to get some playing time and everything. So it's interesting to see that the USFL doesn't some of those names, like I'm right with you. I don't like those, those cities where they're at. I don't think there'd these as successful. Um, but it's interesting to see that what could be, you don't want to see what happens Yeah. Spring league. I mean, your, your friend, Matt mango, you know, he holds now the world or it's the spring league record for the longest field goal kick. And he was on the winning, uh, generals with Brian Scott friend of the show. So, uh, that's good. You know, I like building this community of friends and seeing people that signed up in the CFL, what's going on all over an I is doing, you know, I just, I love being involved in this from the, from the small perspective that we are. I want to hear more about what you have going on here, coming up. And I also want to hear about how it's been going, getting ready for it, with everything going on. So what, what do you have? What are you training for right now? Oh, well right now I'm training for the 20, uh, well basically this year coming up, the, the IFL season I'll be playing for the Arizona Rattlers. One of the most historic arena franchises that's been around in the history of there and, uh, just being ready and getting ready and balancing between combines and going to practices, training with arena football. So that's on a whole nother level there. It's just trying to get ready for the arena season because of the fact that at least I'm doing something, I'm keeping myself very active before we hear any news or hopefully sometime soon about the XFL. And that's one thing as a kicker, I want to make sure I'm always active because practicing, going to the field all the time and practicing around other guys, um, yeah, you're doing, you're working on your craft that I think you need to be able to stay in the environment where there's fans. There's a like situation. So keep myself busy in the IFL is going to be really, really fun and looking forward to them for you my 10th year in arena football and be able to play for a winning franchise, uh, that I haven't been on in a long time, it's going to be really, really fun. Cause, uh, I played Arizona at 17 times and every time it was a bad, bad loss each time I think I was on two teams where they broke the record, most points that they scored on. So that's a, I'm glad to be on the other side of that. So I think the NFL is going to be very, very fun. There's great athletes there. Um, I was one of the ambassadors to be able to play in the XFL that a lot of the guys were looking up to and I think it's great. Um, I think people shouldn't sleep on the indoor football league. There's a lot of great players. It's fine. It's fast paced. Uh, they think they're just coming out with a new TV deal pretty soon. So right now getting ready for the indoor football league. It's, it's, it's never easy, uh, because of the balls are like composite Walmart footballs or like Nerf balls and be able to control that from certain distances is not fun is definitely not fun, but you know, I'm a veteran of game. It's just a matter of fine tuning of the, of the swing here and they're no different than golf. So right now that's what we're looking forward to as far as, so the 20, 21 IFL season, it's going to be fun. It's gonna be exciting. So I hope everyone can tune in and, and look for some players and make the jump to the NFL or the XFL or XFL CFL who knows what happens a year ago. No, I, well, I definitely think now with everything that we will definitely be looking at coverage of that with, I mean, I mean, in all earnestness with, with everything going on, I did put that on the episode graphics, I did put the dragons and then the Arizona Rattlers logo behind us. I wanted to make sure we got in the mods to that as well. Um, when is the league, uh, when's the season kicking off? How does all that go? Because this is I'm going to be diving way into this year. When, when all this, you know, the CFL supplies, I believe the first few games are going to be at the end of April. I know that our first game isn't till May 16th against the, uh, Northern Arizona Wranglers and we report April 30th. So I think it's a two week training camp, but I think the first two games will be played in probably towards the end of April with the champions of the soup, all storm they're, they're fun wise. They're like the Patriots of the indoor football. You got the weather rant and you know, there've been a lot, they've been checking so many times. It's fun to see that. So there'll be playing pretty soon and we'll be getting we'll kick in. We'll be kicking off, I believe May 16th for our game. And there'll be running all the way till August. And you said, they're working on a TV deal. They're working on a TV deal. I know that YouTube, they play their game. We'll see you there. And then, uh, they're working on a TV deal that hopefully there'll be announcing pretty soon. Um, so hopefully I don't get in trouble for saying that, but we'll see, we'll find out it'd be fine. Yeah, Well, no, cause I mean that cause, and I think for people now we're getting them with fan controlled football. We're getting done with all this stuff. I know, I do think there's going to be a really desire for that. I mean that, and so we'll definitely be covering that. Uh, are, are they doing no fans, do you know, is that, have they even announced that yet? Maybe they haven't even announced, Well, the Texas, the Frisco fighters in Texas, they just announced a couple of days ago. They're going to be playing in front of full capacity of all the fans, which is interesting. So we'll see how that works. But they were the first ones, of course, Texas, right? Uh, that was the first team that announced that. And I think also Massachusetts as well. Um, but when I was in Arizona and Labatt a week ago for an NFL combine, I mean everyone's wearing masks, but it felt like Arizona was quite normal. Everyone was all out and about the airports were filled. So I wouldn't be surprised if that's why they moved the season back. We would have been started about a month before. I think they moved it back because I can see that Arizona might play in front of a fans too. And I would love that because there was on a fence it's packed, it's loud and they need that. They love that. Perfect. Uh, well, yeah, I got that on my notes to kind of figure out here, coming up, uh, you know, doing some coverage of that. Cause I think it's going to be a long, we'll see what CFL does here coming up and me, and we'll, we'll certainly find that, but it could be a long summer without courage with Marquez. Uh, we're going to take a break. We're going to go right into our Robert Turbin interview. Uh, Robert, uh, turbo turbine played for the bees. Uh, they, they lost the game last Saturday, but he has told me that he is going to be playing with the glacier boys for the fingernail football championship game coming up. I am going to warn you normally we're a very explicit free podcast. Uh, Robert is, is there is some language. So if you're with someone small children, I didn't, we didn't feel like censoring him was really in the spirit of the interview. Uh, so I just wanted to give you fair warning, but he does have versed off. Great is a fantastic interview. Uh, lots of insights about his good friend, Russell Wilson, who, uh, did not go to the barest this week. And Robert talked a lot about why he thinks that that wasn't going to happen. He kind of predicted that. And so there, there really is some nuggets in there as well about that. So, uh, we're going to do Robert's interview and then we're going to come back and wrap up with, uh, some fingernail football thoughts from Ernesto. So we'll be right back. Welcome to the show. Robert Turbin former Seattle Seahawks player. We're both Seahawks fans currently. You're down in the bubble. Sorry about the game last week. It happens, man. Uh, he lived to fight another day. Why you came in, scored right away. They had to feel good. How was, uh, how was that first drive going down and yeah, Uh, man, it felt good. You know, you got to keep in mind. That was my first carry since 2018, you know, and I haven't had much practice time here. I was quarantining when I got here for seven days and we practiced Thursday Helmets only, no pads and practices, you know, practice here is pretty, uh, you know, it's definitely not like an NFL practice, you know, I think I had maybe like three or four total full speed reps and they were all like, one-on-one, you know, running routes against linebackers, you know? So, uh, so it's not like, you know, I had any practice content and I'm a big practice guy. I'm big like preparation. Like, you know, You're not like you're not like Elena Everson with practice. You're you're the opposite of Allen Iverson. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. So, uh, so you had to get in there and bang a little bit. Um, but, but getting in the end zone of that first play was, was, was a pretty special moment. Talk about that face mask issue that happened. Uh, it seems like things are getting a little chippy there When my helmet came off. When the guy ripped your helmet off, I guess they felt like that was the only way they could take me down. I mean, I, uh, I don't know. I don't know if you guys can see, like they cut my eye right here when they did that. Can you see that? Wow. Yeah, we can't have it look like the Wolverine a little bit, man. I'm like, what's wrong with you guys? You know, I guess Even on the, on the first TDN, I mean, you carried like three of the, three of the guys into the end zone with you. I mean, do you feel like, uh, were they ready for that level of physicality? I mean, coming from the NFL and you know, they've been playing against each other, you know, fan control players, you know, for the last couple of weeks, uh, how do you feel like coming in, you know, with the, you obviously have been used to have your hits, right? Yeah. I mean, I don't know what the other guys expected. I know I have obviously pretty good size on me. So, you know, most of the fellows felt like that. Uh, maybe I'd be pretty physical. I think the thing that shocked him the most was my agility. And elusiveness, if you watch that toss play, you know, make a couple of made a couple of guys missing us, just a part of playing a running back position, but I certainly wanted to let my presence be known, uh, and, uh, kind of let these guys know, you know, who I am, you know, even on that second toss play, like you just kind of reading it. There was probably an opportunity to, to come back again. Uh, but I had kind of predetermined that I was going to go around the edge and lower my shoulder and put my face mask on somebody and just kinda let my presence be known. You know, sometimes as a runner that's, that's what it's about. You know, like there, there, there are times where you can make a guy miss, but you wound just because you want to let them know like, Hey, it's going to be a long day today. with me, that's just part of the game. Do you think, do you think that there was a, maybe a target like with you and you know, Josh, Gordon's there, do you think there's like, if there's a target on you because you come from the NFL? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, these guys are competitive man, and you'd be surprised at how hard they work. I mean, you know, you got a couple of guys who are just kinda like, you know, here, they don't really get it, but there's some guys here, man, real effort training in the off season. Some of these guys are out of college and didn't get opportunities last year because of the roster cuts, uh, made by the NFL and, uh, and NFL Scouts, not being able to, uh, you know, go and watch, you know, everybody as it pertains to like their pro days and, and stuff like that. So these guys are young and are hungry and they're, you know, search for opportunities. Uh, similar to me, you know, as a, as a veteran guy who wants to, uh, you know, show the league that, uh, you know, you can still play and what an opportunity to get back. And, um, and so, you know, we're, we're equally, you know, we're equally hungry, you know, but you know, being in the NFL and playing in the NFL, myself and Josh and even Johnny, uh, a little bit of a target on our, on our backs, they want to see how they, uh, you know, how they line up against, uh, you know, some guys who've been there. I want to, I'm curious how all this went down with you and Marshawn and the beast. I know Bob Manary, you know, had Menzel from the get-go and then he brought in, you know, Josh Gordon, and then it seems like Marshawn was finally like, well, if they can do that, I'm gonna, you know, tit for tat or how did that, how did that all go down? So I got a call from my manager, uh, Matt Rogers, who used to use to represent, uh, Russell Wilson for, for seven years in his career. And we've been working together over the last couple years and he called me, says, Hey, you should, uh, you should get in this fan control football league, you know, had word of it. Have you seen anything? I said, yeah, Ms. Dockable highlights, but I don't know too much about he's like, look, you know, I think this will be a nice, um, you know, gateway and set up for you to get back into the league, let's make this happen. So, um, knowing that Marshawn was one of the owners of one of the teams and I have a good relationship with her named Montgomery as well, who's own are the same team, but, but I'm close with Marshawn. I hit him up and I said, Hey, what's good. You know, how would you feel about playing for your team? And he's like, are you serious? I'm like, yeah, how'd you feel about me playing for your team? He's like, man, don't play with me turbo. I'll around, have you on a flight in 24 hours. Those are literally his words. He's like, I around and have you on a flight in 24 hours. And literally I was on a flight in 24 hours cause something too bad. I had to quarantine for seven days. So as soon as the better. So yeah, we talked on like a Monday night and um, I got here early Wednesday, Wednesday morning and there was, you know, That is one thing that interests me, you know, we've obviously covered the whole league, you know, leading up and then through, uh, and you know, if there's, you know, season two, you know, they've talked about not having to deal with that bubble situation potentially. And being able to, just to fly in more players, I do think is a very exciting, uh, possibility where, you know, like you come in and it's like, okay, we gotta, he can't do the practice. We got to wait the seven days, you know, when Manzell left and then came back in. I there's just been a lot of dealing with all those protocols where I do think it will be very exciting when they could just, you know, like you said, Marsha, the sketch on a plane and then come in and, you know, potentially beyond a professional football field, um, that weekend is, is a pretty incredible thing now. Right, right. And you know what, I I've been really impressed with how everything's been ran here, that the professionalism of it, the organization, like, and they talked about how they had some, some rough spots, you know, in the beginning. And some things were, you know, some mistakes were made and stuff like that. But, uh, but by now, by the time when I got here, it seemed like man, they had a really good rhythm going. It was smooth. And the fact that they're able to even put this bubble together and have food consistently and laundry, just the small things, laundry and stuff like that. And the housekeeping aspect of it. And, you know, you can order food and all that kind of stuff. And the weight room is set up and the equipment and, and they have, uh, like a, like a media area, you know, for their show and commentary and et cetera. When I was quarantining, I'm telling you every day, same time in the morning, breakfast at the door, lunch at the door dinner, you know, at the door, you know, I came into the room, I got a full case of water and a big old box of granola bars and a bunch of fruit, you know, you know, just for me, you know, while I'm in here quarantining. And that is, you know, uh, it just shows how, like how well this thing is, has, has been run and how well they're taking care of us and the rest, you know, all the players here and the people who are working here, uh, as well. So it's, it's, it's a pretty good, uh, it's been run pretty good. It seems like, you know, they, they might've saw what happened. I don't know if you're familiar with what happened with the spring league down in, uh, San Antonio, where it was described, the food they were getting was described as like the fire Fest of football food. And also the players were going out, hitting the river, walk, hitting water burger because they weren't getting adequate food. Seems like they've learned their lesson. Do you think that's, that's, that's showing that they care about the players? Well, here's the thing, you know, keep in mind that this league took seven years to develop and put together, you know? So, uh, even though they, they still made some mistakes early on. I mean, I'm sure they've thought about all the scenarios. I'm sure they they've looked at other leagues and where they succeeded and where they failed out, how they could do things differently. So they don't make those same mistakes. Uh, and so, you know, a big shout out to Ray, uh, Austin and everybody else who's involved, man, um, for really, you know, taking the time and, and, uh, you know, really being hands-on and putting this thing together the right way. Even though you guys didn't win last night, they're having a, they're calling it like a compensatory game or whatever next week. So are you going to be involved in all that next weekend with the beast against this? Yeah, I'll play, I'm glad I'm here. I'm here for, uh, you know, one mission really. And, and, and I mean, and it's more than that because there's opportunities, uh, you know, to expand your brand and do some things off the field. Uh, that's really what this league is about, is really giving the players an opportunity to, Hey, if you have a clothing line, if you've got this, or if you got that, man, this is an opportunity for you to advertise that and, and, uh, you know, grow your brand, uh, perhaps, you know, using the FCF. But, uh, but at the end of the day, um, you know, play football, man, you know, get some film out there and, and, uh, you know, hopefully that can lead to an opportunity for me to get back into the NFL. There've been some Various rule changes from game to game that we've been critical about from time to time. How, how, how as a player, do you handle those rule changes when you see them happen? You know, game to game sometimes. Yeah. You know, I gotta be honest. I've been here for such a short time if I'm playing a one game. So I, like, we had a situation, uh, yesterday where, uh, it was a power play we're down, uh, in our own end zone area. Uh, and, uh, it was like, it's first in 10, you got to get a first down to recover. The onside kick is like an onside kick. Uh, but the defense is not allowed to blitz on a, on a, on a power play. Um, but they blue star linebacker and we weren't able to execute and everybody's dropping F bombs and and, you know, cussing the reps out and everybody's off and I'm just kinda sitting there like, well, what happened? You know, what's going on? And I supposed to play as in a power play, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so, yeah, everybody keeps, you know, I'm like, man, I'm asking about the rules, every other play. And they're like, man, they change every week, you know, we're trying to keep up with it. So I think that's one of the things as the league, uh, probably, you know, could be done better, could, could improve on is, is, uh, you know, getting the rule book together and sticking to the Bose rules. Um, but it is the first, the first season, if there is a time to play with the rules and change them from game to game, it's this one. And I'm sure, uh, when the second season comes around, it will be much more solidified Coming from, uh, you know, obviously you and the NFL and, and other players that played, you know, there's XFL guys in the league and stuff too. Um, when you see a little bit of that, uh, miss not mismanagement, but you know, whatever with the rules and all that, you just kind of shrug it off and go, you know, I I'm just here to play football. I mean, you just, how do you, you just kinda you're over that and you just say, well, I'm just here to do my job and it doesn't matter. Yeah, Yeah. For me personally. Yeah. You know, some guys, you know, get pretty intense, you know, uh, for me, it's, I understand, you know, these guys are trying to put together a leak, you know, a business, you know, it's not, that's not easy to do. And you know, some of the things that come with that is trial and error. And so I, I understand it. Uh, I understand it totally. Uh, so it doesn't, it doesn't bother me at all. I have A question about, um, where, you know, the zappers would obviously brought in, um, Josh Gordon and, uh Manzell and then, uh, you know, you had the beast, uh, you know, the two teams that are playing in the championship game, uh, have not had any of those advantages, right. That you could deem to do that. And, you know, not to, I w I think it's cool, you know, we're advocates for the players, I'm advocates for any players get more tape, but it does, it did speak to me that, uh, you know, you had Bob Manary and, you know, all the powers of anyone bringing in all this stuff, and yet a team of YouTubers that own the wild ACEs, uh, you know, they're in the championship. Get me thoughts on that. And just kind of how all that worked out with the championship game. Yeah. The roster is really, that's another part that's confusing too. Um, aside from the rule changes is, is the roster the way the roster fluctuates week to week, like, you know, there were some players on our team who literally the day before the game, all of a sudden we're on the wild ASIS, or we're on another team, they weren't planning for the beast anymore. Everybody's looking around like, what happened? You know, you know, we need, we need these guys, you know, these are, these are good guys, you know, there's some good players up here, you know, who can, who can play, you know? And so when you take away like that, you know, some of the good players and just all of a sudden put them on another team, uh, that, you know, that's, uh, it's going to be tough, you know, and I think you got a chance to see, like, even in this league, uh, the game is, it's funny how the game is kind of won and lost in the trenches still, you know, so it's like, you know, we played the game that we played, what happened. They were able to get a bunch of pressure on us. Right. And we weren't able to do that on the other side, you know, they would get stopped on defense and we weren't able to do that, you know, uh, on the other side man. And so, yeah, you know, uh, the beast and the zappers, you know, got the advantage of, of couple of NFL guys, but, uh, the other teams were able to put together, um, I think a better overall roster, um, as it pertains to the player that other positions about that, you know, you know, there was, there were times when every week they did a, did a player draft. Do you think like players, switching teams like that every week, seemingly might've upset some team chemistry. Yeah. You can't develop any team chemistry. If you're a player for a brand new team every week, I thought it was, you know, I thought it was really weird. I told the guys who said, look, you know, the two games that I'm here for, I just want to play for the bees and that's it. And I don't want to switch jerseys and switch teams and stuff like that. I don't understand the concept of it necessarily. You know, I think, uh, perhaps the fans should be able to have, you know, one big draft in the beginning of the season and, man, let them let them like, make some other types of transactions, like trades or releases. Ah, you know what, I don't want this guy anymore. Let's cut them and, you know, like, you know, it. And then he can go to another team that way, you know, but it is the first season, you know, like I said, but I think every week having guys changed teams, um, probably not the best way to do it in my opinion. Right. That's feelings we've had too. I wanted to ask about, uh, just the talent level, uh, that you've seen, you know, obviously, you know, the brief time the week there, um, you know, uh, Quintin flowers, right? Your guys, his quarterback, you know, we've covered them all through the XFL and everything else. I mean, what do you think about the talent level of the other guys that you're working with out there? Yeah, I've been impressed. I've been impressed. I've been impressed by their work ethic. Um, there's a lot of talented players here and the cool thing is, is that they want to learn, you know, I've been able to develop some cool relationships already and, and talk to some guys and they come up to me and ask questions and I asked them questions too, you know, and, uh, they want to know how to get better. How can they improve, you know, w what kind of things that they can work on to be able to, uh, get in the opportunity to play in the pros and stuff like that, man. So some good town low up here. I think, I think you'll see a good number of guys get a shot at the league, uh, this upcoming season. Very cool. Uh, speaking of the league, you mentioned Russell Wilson. I have to ask you, what do you, think's going to happen, man? You think he's staying in Seattle or do you think he might be on the move? Uh, I think that is tough. Uh, I think at this particular moment in time right now today, I think, I think it's a real 50 50 shot right now. Uh, I didn't feel that way a couple of weeks ago, a couple weeks ago, I thought I was pretty sold on him staying in Seattle. And, uh, you know, I have to be honest, I don't title, I'm not as confident. Um, Do you have a relationship with Russell at all Optimum? A couple of days ago, you know, I was the best man in his wedding. You know, him and I are, are, uh, are really close that's, that's, I'll take a blue dye for Russell. I'll take a bullet for him. And, and, uh, and so, uh, we were roommates for four years, you know, we're, we're really close. I don't really advertise it. I don't normally tell people because I don't, I don't care to he's really my friend, you know? So when somebody is really your friend, you know, you're not concerned about the clout that comes with letting people know, like, you know, Russell's my boy and we kick it in the off season and we FaceTime at least once a month and, you know, text message, you know, every other week and like that. I don't, I don't care. Like it doesn't bring me any sort of satisfaction at all. That's my boy for real, like, I don't care, you know, and it's vice versa on the other side, but, um, you know, yeah. The situation has been crazy. I think that it's 50, 50 right now. And I also think that, uh, this season, particularly this season, I think you'll be in Seattle, but think Next season he won't. And another question I had about port former players, you played with, I know you went to Utah state. I actually went to Southern Utah. Uh, and I know you were probably there with Bobby Wagner at the time. Does Bobby Wagner still have the Ninja turtle collection? Always, always Madden 99 player with a Ninja turtle collection. It's crazy. It's like an alter ego when he gets up there on the field, man, it just turns into balls, a special guy, Robert Turbin. We love to have you on. Thanks for coming on, man. And chat with us about fan control football and some former Seahawks memories. Yeah. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Thanks for making the time means a lot. Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah. We'll be watching it this weekend. We'll be cheering for you guys. Cool. Thanks. Uh, so we really want to thank Robert Turbin for coming on and thank you to rod and, uh, Kenneth as well. I hope I thank them all earlier. I can't remember now as we continue, uh, recording here, I really want to hear or nest those thoughts as someone that plays a Rena football and were football, all this stuff. Uh, what do you think of financial football? It's a tragedy. There's no kicking, right? Say that it's a tragedy because a lot of the indoor game, not the field goal or extra point aspect, but the kickoff is it's really exciting because that is a brutal kickoff, whether it was the AFL or arena, you're going to see a lot of touchdowns in score. It's fun to see that. Um, but I think it's great. I think it's interesting, the different kind of football, uh, let the fans be more interactive. I know a lot of the players that are on those teams, a lot of great arena players that don't be probably getting ready for the IFL season. So it was interesting to see that Johnny Manzell was there. And I was like, huh, seems a little, uh, if it was just me, I think he's off. I don't think he was as, as accurate as I thought he would be on like, Oh, wow, this is a little bit different, but I've seen that a lot from guys making the transition from outdoor to the indoor game. It's a lot faster. It's a shorter field, your reactions different and you know, vice versa from being to the algebra. It's never that easy, but I think it's that I did watch a game or two and it was different to see something like that. But, um, as a kicker, I'd like to see a little bit more of the special teams come in to play. No, I, and I mean that in all earnestness. So, uh, when the, when finger till first kicked off the week before they were doing the test game and then ended up it got, um, it got leaked somehow. I don't know if they meant it to be or not, but it was on Twitch. And so I was watching and it was them and they were basically doing like a mock, uh, game, you know, a scrimmage and they were calling it. And that was their big thing. And then even the first week of the real season, that was their big thing, was like, well, if you're here for kicking, like we got nothing for you. Like no one ever watched football and got a, well, I want to hear what that kicker is doing. And I thought you guys are this, we start from the beginning, you know, I would want to cast as wide a net as possible for any potential people to want to see it. And, you know, as, and you know, I mean, I'm speaking to the lives that every day, but you know, many, a time in football lore have been won and lost by, you know, feel, go kicks, extra point cakes, all these things. And so, yeah, I totally agreed not only to eliminate that whole aspect of the game, but then it was almost like mocking on there where it was like, well, we don't like, who gives a F about this? We don't care. And I thought, man, and he was like the first five minutes of the broadcast. I'm like, why? Like, you know, welcome everybody in like F you like, we don't, it just, it seemed to very, uh, you know, we've had questionable stuff all season with them and the league and everything. Uh, but I really did think that was about looking. I felt bad. Cause you know, we got your friend matzoh, Fran Taylor rustling. I mean, I got friends of all these XFL guys, you know, the kickers are like the best I was thinking about that. When you guys posted that photo, like you guys are the best kind of bunch and everyone's doing stuff and you're interactive and you're talking and you're posting and I'm like, man, I've just felt bad for all you guys. And it was like a slap in the face. Did you freeze? Did I do that? Did I make I had, so I got so animated. I frustrating that stuff. Well, I mean, it was interesting to see that because I mean, I, in playing in the arena game games are lost and won by extra points because there's such a high scoring. In fact, I always tell young kickers going into football, like, look, do not worry about fuels. It's a 50 50 shot. Anyways. They're already, the goalpost is so small already, but you've got to make your action points. You've gotta be 92% that on your extra points, because you're going to be gaining these 70, 60, 70 point gains. Then it comes down to that one point. And even the Dropkick to Dropkick is worth four points in arena. It just hasn't been done in a long time. It's one of those kinds of things. But I mean, it's great for the position players to have that, something like that. And it looked fun, but I was confused with after they scored a touchdown because I remember going to like seven on seven camps in high school. I remember seeing that little little platform for like the quarterbacks. So I was confused about those rules like that. So, I mean, I was confused. I wish I would've learned a little bit more rules. I've understood that, but I can see how people work in fuse. When we have scored a touchdown in the XFL, everyone was like, so what happens next? You know, you got a one, two, three, it was all those kinds of things, but it's interesting. I hope, uh, we'll see how, how big it really get and gets and everything. But yeah, from the kicking world that we were not a big fan of, it's something that we're like, all right, it's on YouTube. All right, there's no kicking off, Uh, some notes. We're getting into the big championship game this week. Uh, we are going to do a serious deep dive with a podcast and with our listeners after the championship, if we will continue to cover this, um, you know, we've had a love, hate relationship with the league. We've had league management on, um, you know, we've had many of fans and players, uh, team owners on and they have gotten not a lot of warm reception from the league. So we're going to see, you know, I thought it was weird. You know, we, we tease Robert turbans interview and, you know, that was not shared, uh, Robert, uh, scored in this first play. Uh, we talked about that in the interview. He got really beat up, but it seemed like they were really, you know, letting them have it. Um, my takeaway was it felt like, you know, Manzell came back, he'd been in, he was in played whatever, went home to get emergency dental surgery. And it did seem like they brought him back in just to get that Manzell to Josh Gordon, like connection, reception pass, and then they pulled him again. Like, it seems like it's like, okay, let's, let's get him in, let's get the sports center clip and then let's get him back out. And I don't, I don't like that, that we've been critical of that. We had a brain Smith on, um, last week show and he was one of the quarterbacks that played under Manzell. He was the one that won the game, uh, with Josh Gordon, he threw the TD reception, like at the, at the end of the game to win the game. Uh, you know, the clip when everywhere fangirl football shared it everywhere, uh, and Brayden was not tagged or mentioned in any of that. It was, Hey, look at Josh Gordon, look at this touchdown. And so that's where I want to see growth from fingernail football is if you're going to bring in these veteran players, uh, you know, don't highlight Josh Gordon definitely get the sports center stuff. Right. But, but, but give the guy your homegrown talent that, you know, that threw the touchdown pass. Let's give him, you know, simple Blessey as well. What do you think about that? I agree. I agree. I think it's always great to have your hometown players. It's what fans gravitate towards the most. Um, but I, I mean, I seen a situation like that in 2012 and 13, when Terrell Owens was playing for the Ellen Wranglers and the IFL haven't played against him, I was like, there's taro and he's going for a fade. I don't think Terrell realized there's a wall there. He forgets there's a wall. I remember that. I was like, Oh yeah, we always say in arena, the wall is undefeated every time. So, but you know, he's a big, he was an ownership of the cause at the time, no longer exist, but you've got to do, you know, your, your hometown guys that, that, that spotlight. And I just didn't like, I'm with you. I didn't like the fact that they did that. I think it's, if you're going to leave Manzell and be a man the whole time know, but that's just my take on that. Uh, it, it is interesting in the championship game, uh, all teams that all the NFL stars, uh, Terrebonne is going to be playing, uh, supposedly for the glacier boys. But, you know, you had, uh, Manzell Josh Gordon turbine, you know, all of them, those teams did not win. It's the, the wild ACEs that were owned by a bunch of YouTubers, Greg Miller has been on the show friend of the show, and then the glacier boys it's owned by Quavo and all of them, but all the stuff that Bob Manary and Marshawn and all these calling up all the people and we've people stress for weeks about what's fair and all this stuff, none of those teams won. It was all the people with all the homegrown talent. So I do really like to see that, uh, and it was a blowout, like the one, the zappers with Manzell when they, it was a total blowout, this last game. Uh, what do you think about the championship game being called the people's championship? Where the rock, who is the people's champion owns the XFL now? Well, I mean, it was the people's champions in this for the bank control football, right? Yeah. I think it's makes sense. I think it makes sense the fact that okay. It's for the fans. I mean, it's fine. I guess it's interesting to see that. I mean, I get, I'm going to try to watch that game a little bit. I mean, I would have liked to see one of my, um, high school rivals, who I played against. He's still playing. He was on the beast team is, uh, uh, Troy Evans would have loved to have seen implant. Um, so we'll see, we'll be, it'll be fun. You know, the people's champion, that'd be interesting. I would like to see that more in the XFL or something like that, but that'd be, make more sense, but you'll see, it should be fun. I mean, voted on by the fans. I get it. But I was like, man, you guys realize, and I know that Vince Quinn, he does the FCF owners box. They're like just fan football. Podcasts are great. And uh, they said the same thing. They're like, man, this is like, you guys know that the rock owns this a couple of just final notes on FCF. I know Ernesto has given us so much time today. Um, uh, the streaming numbers from this week, Jake Henry, he was the one that showed us the 30 for 30 earlier. We talked about, uh, he sent over the streaming numbers. And so the, the big games this weekend averaged our got 2.3 million views. Right. And so you think, man, like that's incredible, right? Uh, average watch time of those views because they do the thing. And then like our, you know, like our episode, right? It's like an hour, but the average view is never an hour. Cause some people watch an hour and some people watch five seconds. The average watch time of the games. And it was a five plus hour broadcast was five minutes. That was the average view time for the 2.3 million views. What is your takeaway from that? It's not very long. It's not very much, um, like I'm glad that they show that that because they could have never shown that at all. Because 2.3, when you mentioned that, I'm like, that's, that's huge. Yeah. But five minutes is no than me watching the highlights on like on YouTube and it's probably five minutes and that's probably what you're going to get. So I think there's needs to be a bit more engagement, something more exciting to bring able to add, probably extend that time. But I want to say it's always the confusion that I think the fans also didn't realize what was going on. I think they need to understand the game and be more involved because I'm sure the fans we're watching are the same guys that played Madden and know exactly what plays the call, you know? And that's the thing. So yeah. [inaudible] yeah, they tout the views, but you need to, it's all the picture there. And again, I'm not trying to criticize, but you gotta, you gotta show the whole picture with that. Uh, and the last note is they did cancel the compensatory game. Um, we talked about that a little bit with Kenneth in our interview because my fear was they were going to have two games on this weekend cause there's four teams. And when they canceled that first game, my fear was those players weren't going to get paid for that game because they're only the players are only paid down there in fingernail football for the games. Uh, so, uh, Sohrob who's the CEO came out this week. He said they are getting paid for that. They got sent home, but the players are getting paid regardless. So, but I I'm glad that we asked those questions because that's a big difference. Cause if I'm in the bubble on Tuesday and I have the option to stay for four more days to get, and they're not great paychecks, but if I have the option to stay for four days to get a paycheck, uh, I will stay. I mean, not everyone, you know, you can have your own preference, but, uh, so I was glad that we asked that because I feared that we were going to have a spring league thing all over again, where they canceled it and then they sent the players home and they need to get so, uh, am glad about that. Yeah. I've definitely been in a lot of situations where organizations, um, they'll send you home and you don't get that paycheck or you get that paycheck and you better go to the bank quickly before, Right? Uh, no. Well, and because you know where you've worked in, in these, you know, not like it's not all the leagues are created equal and you're going to get some that don't, I mean, I ordered my fingernail football Jersey the day that they were announced, whatever, I still don't have it. So I paid $70 to support. So we'll see. I mean, they, they claim it to like a delayed whatever, but like that was, um, like two months ago. And I don't have that yet. Um, the final note, uh, in honor of Paul not being here, we have our garbage segment and the only thing I have this week, cause I took out everything else is, um, cam Newton, who is just signed back to, uh, the Patriots this week. He got signed back for one year deal. Uh, he was on the, I am athlete podcast with Chad and they were talking about Chad Ochocinco, friend of the show getting, uh, cam Newton back in shape for the, for the game and basically what the diet that they were going to work on to make sure that the cam didn't get hurt. So I'm just going to play the audio. I don't want to get in trouble playing the video, but I just we'll we'll listen through this and, and it it's a, it's about a minute and half, but it's a funny Lesson. Listen, we gonna, we gonna, I'm gonna get with you cause I'm gonna get you a meal. I'm going to be a meal prep. What if that's going to be the case? Let me see what the first day meals prepped. Won't be what am eating for breakfast per state meal prep. We want a McDonald's hotcakes with sausage, sausage, and a large orange juice. Okay. What's going to work out well for my snack. Pop tarts. Six boiled eggs. Okay. Or flavored strawberry frosted. Iceland. Okay. From Publix or Winn-Dixie what's what's for lunch. Lunch. What? The Bahama breeze, pasta overarching. A pasta, extra chicken. No asparagus say less. Well, my strong wasn't my other snack. So before we get dinner, we got a snack in between and that's that's for you. You can put your healthy in there. Your little rice cakes were rice cakes. I don't know if vegan, I say the right thing or whatever vegetables eat. You can throw it in there. And then denim, we go ham what's ham. We eat the ham, no dinner. We're going soul food, soul food, soul food for the viewers and the people that your soul, my soul food, my, my desk, which I'm going to put you on. Cause it's going to create a callous in the body will prevent no more injuries in 2021. So make the fried chicken. You can go dark meat, white meat. For me, I liked three legs, candy, AMS, macaroni and cheese and greens, Sweetwater, corn bread and chocolate cake, yellow cake, chocolate license. What do you think? What do you think is your secret diet? I was thinking my mind feel the same. McDonald's at some point, because I remember seeing those HBO training cam shows, but I was like the hard knocks. Um, I would think that they're, they're building the stomach muscle because that's going to be rough that that's going to be rough, but uh, I even know Camden was a vegan. Uh, anyway, I just have you get that in today with everything going on. Uh, Ernesto, you have been so gracious putting up with all of our nonsense this week, uh, jumping at the chance and then with all this crazy CFL stuff in the, in the, all the notes and everything. And uh, I really appreciate it. Um, final plug I AFL is coming up here. We're going to have more details on that. Anything else you want to talk about before we let you go Now? Just everyone stay safe, but it's always fun to come on this. I love watching you guys show, but it's an honor to be here and, uh, look forward to the, the news. That's going to come out for the XFL. And hopefully once we hear something as players out, I know exactly what I'm going to go to. Thank you. I appreciate it. If you guys have made it this far, uh, you know, like and subscribe, uh, we're really trying to get the monetization on the channel. You know, we get the ads on the, on the podcast listening, but we'd really like to get the YouTube monetization. So it would make Paul really happy if you would subscribe again, we have the chat that your Cinco giveaway ball, uh we're uh, you know, we're almost 200. We only got to get to a thousand, so it's not, it's not like it's a crazy it's it's as we got to get 10 million, whatever. So we're building this, uh, I, I, this is a full-time job at this point for me, so I appreciate everyone sticking with us and, uh, thanks again.

Episode 31 - The CFL Markcast? (ft. Braden Smith)

All right. It's Friday. Good Friday. Well, not good Friday. Good Friday. It's a good Friday, nonetheless. It's always a good Friday. I I'm. The XFL Mark has now. Potentially they called that the CFL Mark cast. Easiest episode title I've ever had to come up with the CFL Mark gas question, Mark. Mark Perry, our commander in chief, let us know that he already owns CFL news hub.com. So if we have to go that route. [Unknown] we here we are on the, we are on the right ship and we will be taken care of. So you need to start buying some domains yourself. Let's not advertise the domains. Yeah. But you might want to. They're buying them. I got a lot of demands. Yeah, I was involved before we started at tremendous interest today across the board. I've had more people. Just add someone on Facebook, like 20 minutes ago. Hey, do you guys have any thoughts that, you know, don't want to spoil the podcast? So I have not shared my thoughts about anything. Did anybody about this? I will say please, at the top of the show, I have done more work in the last two days on this. Blew off all my adult responsibilities yesterday with my actual job. I T I I've read like every Canadian article and listen to the news reports in seven. I tweeted last night about this. So, if you appreciate this. XFL show that. Comm slash review. If you see the podcast on Twitter, share the link. If you, if you see the YouTube video, give it a thumbs up. You know, all these things don't cost any money, but like I spent out all day yesterday till 10 o'clock last night, reading through everything to make sure that we could have the best show today. You said you read through every Canadian article. Did you read the ones in French as well? I did I, I got very deep into the Canadian sports talk on YouTube. And, and thank you so much. You. You know, to the, to our listeners that messaged me, you guys know who you are that have sent me, you know, different stuff about everything. I really appreciate it. And I'm just, I'm really wanting to do the best job we can covering this. I know there's lots of speculation. We're going to have thoughts. And then I've got a lot of details and stuff to go through. So thank you. Also next week, I will not be on the show. I'm having oral surgery done. That's why I'm kind of my, if you see me grimace from time to time, we've got a little bit of a two thing. It's. Nothing, nothing big, but we're going to have to get that done this weekend. I probably will not be on the. Mark cast or CFL Mark cast. If that's the way things go next week. We will have to get someone who is better. That's pretty easy. So we're good to go. Yes. Hopefully I don't. Yeah, I don't annoy Paul more than his, his horrible to think today. I tried to organize everything in the, in the clear way. I said, if we need the yada yada some stuff at the end, I guess, you know, this is a deal. Like I built the whole show all week. We had tons of stuff. We were going to order Zola energy drinks. We were going to do taste tests. We were going to do all this kind of stuff. And then, you know, this news dump came yesterday. So we still have all this stuff on there. So we got to yada, yada some stuff at the end. That's great. But like, you know, I build the show all week and then literally we have this news dump of the CFL stuff. I just, before we get into all this stuff, I am going to be on Mark's XFL news hub podcast. Next week, we're going to do a writer's round table on Monday. We're we're part of that family of, you know, content producers. I know like Josh Davis and Matt and Anthony and Mark and Mike Mitchell are all going to be on a writer's round table. And then they asked me to come on. So I'm very grateful for that. So that will be on the exhale new SAB IUT. YouTube on Monday. And then also we still have our giveaway going on so free to subscribe on YouTube. When we hit a thousand, we added like 10 subscribers in the last week. Paul has purchased us a Chad Ochocinco. Well not purchase his, acquire that shadow. Joe's Cinco. Signed a football. And so we were going to, to be given that of the way a friend of the show, which funny enough, you know, Chad has just seek a relates back to our history and the CFL in the funniest way. So. If you are a, if you are a, you. You know, just again, A lot of work on this. It doesn't cost you a dollar just to subscribe on YouTube and bump those numbers up. Give you that thumbs up. Tyna thumbs up last week, I was having a down the week. Tons of comments, tons of everything. I don't think Bangor. [Unknown] football agrees with our takes on everything. But a lot of our listeners do, we got a lot of positive comments. So even the fan controlled football does not. I appreciate some of the comments that we have. I know that our listeners do. Speaking of fan controlled football, we've got Braden Smith coming up. He was the quarterback who won game three winner. Johnny Manzell went out and then he won game four. Would that pass to Josh Gordon? Of course, all the focus has been on Josh Gordon this week. We're going to talk to Brayden, the quarterback that threw the ball. I give him some hype that that is well deserved. That is well-deserved for Braden Smith. Yeah. I thought that that was kind of on-brand for us. You know, we been. Not against, but, but just, I hadn't thought about some of the NFL guys coming in and taking the spotlight. And so I hit a brain the other day. I said, you know, has anyone talked to you this week? Have you, have you gotten any requests? And so he's going to be coming on here in a little bit. So I appreciate that. And, and again, you know, we're loving the football and the players and just trying to give the spotlight on that. So I appreciate him coming on and that, yeah, we'll have some good fan controlled football discussion. After all this, a CFL XFL staff. Yeah. So this is, this is, this kind of blew up the show this week. Reid had it all set up. Everything. Ready to go. And then. I'm gonna turn my phone off. Yeah, that's true. Last night. I didn't put it on, do not disturb. And I get. The barrage of text messages that wake me up, of course not feeling well. No offense to Reed. Reed was not annoying. He didn't know the situation I was going through with my tooth. But all of a sudden, this whole thing with CFL blew up. And. This, this, this came out of nowhere. I didn't, I didn't expect this. Yeah, it's really interesting. I want to know, I still have my XML black Friday hat on as we have still not had actual news from anything. Yeah. We've had some statements come out and we found all that. So Mark and I are going to be in solidarity. So we're in the hat. The, the funniest things I was sitting there, I was just getting ready to get up. I get my emails done in, in the morning, laying in bed with the dog Rosie. And I see this article come out from that. The L let's the president of the CFL team, Mario. She should ne I never real. You have a problem with like these Italian names. Mac daddy, Mac Jeff. Neglia chatty got that one. There you go. So, yeah, he had come out, basically he jumped the gun, came out with this news, our press release from the alphabet, say like, Hey, the accent, Fallon CFL, or announcing this partnership. You know, don't worry. It's not going to have any effect on our season, whatever. So luckily some of our listeners at screenshot at some of the things, cause I was getting ready to tweet it at like the link. It was already gone. Like, you know, the, the XFL had come out, pulled it, whatever. So, so then we started thinking like, okay, is it going to happen today? Is it going to happen this week? Like what's going to happen with this ESL CFL stuff. And then like five minutes later, XFL came out, they had updated the website. They have a new XFL today. Section CFL released a statement. They had three statements, you know, from Randy, who is the CFL commissioner, Danny who her official title now, which I think is, is what she's been using on Twitter. But now it's on the website. She is the XFL chair, woman, and owner, and then Jeffrey. Jeffrey Pollock is, is officially the XML, president and CEO. So it's kind of cool to see all of those titles come out as well. Anyway, so initial thoughts on this partnership, and then I got lots of stuff to get into Paul. There's initial thoughts. This partnership, I guess. It's cool. It gives Canadian football league, a footprint in the U S so to speak. There's what 10 CFL teams. Nine a, you get nine XFL teams when we're at we're at. Eight eight. Now you add one more. You have like two divisions and then. You, you have like a grey cup game. Maybe the gray cup becomes the trophy for both CFL and XFL. It's like a merger. This kind of makes me feel like. I've I've always thought that there, there shouldn't be competent. Like all these, all these leagues should compliment the NFL, but this makes it feel like this is a situation where these two leagues. Are trying to a little bit compete. Now. Now there's some competition. If these two leagues merge, I see some ideas where they're going to compete with the NFL and not necessarily compete on the same on the same weeks. So to speak, like they're not going to go. We all, we're going to start it off, I guess, to go til February. No, like March through July, you'll have CFL XFL, you know? Combined. That makes me think that like, there's, there's some potential here for real. Legitimate. Second football league. That will fill in the gaps where the NFL isn't and that, you know, That will be profitable. Yeah, I, so I think there's, there's a scale here in the nobody knows. And I guess the best thing about this right now is I don't have to wake up on Friday to like you're wrong tweets. Cause nobody knows right now, right? This is all speculation. To me. I look at it as a scale, right. So for, at the bare minimum, you could think about like, you know, maybe player swapping, right. You know, combine, draft, pool, whatever talent scouting that way. And then you can scale up obviously to a merger or two. You know, even like the XFL acquiring the CFL, which I'm going to share my thoughts that I got a deep dive about this last night. I do think it is going to be more on the larger scale. I think with it, with the announcement coming out, that the. And Jane Oaks made sure that point out Jane Noakes. He's one of the writers who have XML news, IPS sources in XFL. They have said, you know, planning for the season is on hold. But, you know, the season is not necessarily delayed or postponed. I do feel very worried about the 20, 22 season I do, because I think that if this was just as simple as like, well, we're going to share some draft reports or we're going to, you know, we're going to look at combined players or we're going to figure out how to implement different social media or whatever. You're you're that putting the season planning on hold at this point? I think the fact that we are in March. We still don't have a CFO at all. Mike Mitchell we're going to get to later in the show has reported that that search is also on hold. I think that we have no CFO and the fact that now they're announcing this, I, I do very much worry about the February, 2022 launch. Just me saying that. Oh, yeah. I think that that's. This. The things that like, Now you start to process, like it's been a rapid 24 hours of processing. What's going on here. And the. I completely agree with you. I completely agree with you that the 2022 season is in danger. And now it leads me to believe that this has been going on for a while. Like this. These, these talks have been going on for a while, which is why we haven't had any news, which is why everything's been slow, which why they haven't been hiring people. Of course, we posted pointed out. Last week, there was a job post. That job post is now down the Houston XFL content. Whatever it was, that job is now down. It makes me wonder if this has been going on for a while and then that's that's that's now like, That's the speculation. There's going to be a ton of speculation in the next weeks months. Until they officially say, you know, 20, 22 is off because we're waiting to, you know, we're, we're gonna, we're gonna do this merger with the CFL. And yeah, I, I, I know the CFL was in trouble. They had to cancel the entire season. Of course, we talked about that. We, we broke that news Jed. Oh, to a single, he was like, wow. Really? You couldn't believe that they canceled it. They tried to get aid from the Canadian government. I think it was like $30 million. Canadian government said no, no. No. So, yeah, I, I, yeah. A lot of questions to be answered. And I, you know, I share your sediments that this is, this is not probably, it was probably not going to go forward in 2022. Yeah, I'll also, I'm a terrible co-host. I didn't notice your wonderful accent on Mark Asher. I just barely got it today. I didn't even notice that it's that you're wonderful. I have my sweat shirt. Fall has, I didn't even notice that. Sorry, I'm going to segue back. Oh, wow. For sure. Yeah. And, and, and here's, here's kind of what I think. And we're going to get into, I've got some notes below about CFL financials. The team is losing. You know, they said on a good year, Without a pandemic. Some of the teams lose between 10 and $20 million. Right. And so. I seen a lot of CFL fans, you know, upset and the rules and all this stuff. And you're how are you going to merge the two and how are you going to keep it? You know, three downs and the goalposts and all the wider field, all this kind of stuff. This is not me being an XFL Mark at all, but I believe the, the CFL needs the XFL far more than the other way around. I. We just saw a Redbird capital drop, $750 million to buy 10% of Fenway, you know, with the red Sox and Liverpool and NASCAR and all that stuff. Yeah. The fact that the CFL needed a $30 million loan last year to basically get through the pandemic. And like, it was supposed to be a really shortened bubble season or whatever, weird season last year, the bad that they couldn't get that. And here's Redbird dropping, you know, 10 times that, you know, whatever 20 times that on. I just that, you know, a 10% stake in something. Tells me. I you. Yeah, I don't want it to be that Mark. Right? Well, they act to fell it ever, but I do think that Danny, the rock, the money behind them, you know, and, and if this came up where Danny and the rocket said, yeah, you know, we're going to buy the XFL, we're going to do it. And then here, since, you know, August, September, October, they thought. Nan CFL financials are really low. You know, maybe we could acquire them too, or part of that. And at least they're putting it on pause now. That's kind of where I'm at. And I do see them. You know, I hope we don't delay the CFL season this year. Cause I would like to add some football for us to cover here. I know we have TSL coming up. We have an update from Brian Woods later in the show, but. That's that's my fear is that like, they, you know, they bought this, they had that plan and that was like, Oh, we can also do this other thing. And they are going to kick the can down to 20, 23 and make sure it's all good to go. That is my fear. That's it. You can disagree with you any, any. I can't disagree with you at all. I can't disagree with you at all. I think. You're spot on and I I'm, you know, There's concern. There is a concern. They, they talk. Yeah, just the financials here. There's the, for example, with the CFL financial system Peters or when the six individually owned CFL franchises. It's ownership group, Calgary sports and entertainment has assets that include the Calgary flames and the lacrosse leagues. The other three teams are publicly owned by shareholders and, and, you know, Like I said, the teams go. At least we take 10 and 20 million. So it's, it's kind of this mishmash where it's weird. We're like part of it's own. And part of it has private ownership. You know, They're losing money. And I, you know, I was sent links last night to. CFL radio talk shows and they said it is clear that the CFL is out of money. And you know, when they have not announced what this season is going to look like for the CFL, either they're supposed to be, you. I know what they've been signing players, you know, Taylor, Cornelius, they've been bringing in, you know, Jamie Elizondo, you know, all these coaches and stuff from the XFL, but they haven't announced yet what their season's going to look like. And. Maybe they don't have the means to have a season this year. I mean, that's kind of where, where I'm at and I'm wondering if the two are going to combine to kind of figure out something else. I mean in, in theory gifts, if they're on life support, which we're assuming at this point that the CFL is on life support. So 108 year old league. Something like that. It's ridiculous. How long has it been. They've been in, in. Existence. Maybe this is an emergency thing. Redbird floats on the money to get through the season, and then they acquire CFL. That's that's. That's what I'm seeing. That's that's the that's the conclusions I'm drawing is that if the CFL does have a S. A season this year. They're owned by red bird. They just, they seem to be in trouble. Yeah. And, and I've seen, you know, I've seen a lot of fantasy stuff. You know, posted and sent me, you know, you could do. You know these teams and, and, you know, they have like conference, whatever, moving back and forth, you know, all these different fans things. I understand that the CFL has 108 year tradition. And it doesn't matter if you don't have the money to keep going, it doesn't matter. And like, not to be like crass about that and not to be, I, again, you know, the XFL Mark, what does it matter? Right. Like, You know, AB if this had happened six months earlier, maybe any of the Rockwood about the CFL. I mean, I don't know, you know, it's it, at some point, you know, they have the money and they have a vision to build a league. And they're sitting there and they go, well, we're going to own this thing. They've always said they viewed the XFL. Jeffrey Pollock had said, they'd be the XFL is a hundred year brand. Well, you know, we talked, you know, Postville hit 20 to 22. It will do they really care again now, you know, dating of the rock, Havel, all these other projects going on, you know, they don't care about filling the XFL. Mark cask, Google doc here. They're looking at and we can make, you know, Hundreds of millions of dollars, you know, $1 billion on this, you know, moving forward. We're like, you know, maybe the plan wasn't initially all of this, but I think that that is why they're putting this on hold. I mean also you have to look at the idea that this also helps with a TV deal. If they're, if they're going after a TV deal and they're saying we only have any teams. And then they go around and turn around and say, Oh, now we have 18 teams, nine in each division and XFL division and a CFL division. All of a sudden, now that TV deal becomes much more lucrative. And not only that, but like now you're, now you're also negotiating with a Canadian TV, like TSN or whatever they've got up there. You're negotiating with Canadian TV to provide you're basically double-dipping at this point, like you're, you're getting an ESPN or a Fox sports deal, and then you're getting a TSN or whatever else. I don't know what other Canadian sports now I just know TSN. Yeah. TSN sick more than I know because they have the WMU. So you just, you have that opportunity to double dip now and go, okay, we can, we can go out and get, for example, the AHL just got a $200 million ESPN deal, which is great for the NHL, because I think their product's been hurt. Dramatically by not being on ESPN the last 17 years. If I'm being completely honest. So now they've got ESPN back. And. Something like this. I don't think you're talking like a 200 million a year deal for this, maybe a hundred million dollars a year for this. Maybe, maybe. Combined with both, both. Canadian and us markets. So that's, that's, that's a potential to blossom that TV deal. That's that's the. That's the way the money is going to be made back on this thing is if they get that lucrative TV deal. Yeah, my, my fear is, you know, if we are a building like a continental football league, I think I heard Ron Peterson is that the guys that he's like a radio Canadian. Talk show hosts. I think he was, he had, he had flooded that name, you know, keep the CFL, call it that like the continental football league or something. I do worry. You know, at that point, you know, if I want to be a fan of something and, and you know, there there's team. You know, it's the same goes back and forth. You know, if I'm a Canadian guy, like, w do I care about the Tampa Bay Vipers or you. If it's this whole spread out, you know, moving players and, you know, across, you know, North America basically. But that that's kind of where I'm at. It just really depends how big Danny and the rock want to build it. And I certainly think that their ambition is no lacking of anything. And I guess that if I'm Danny and I'm the, I'm already the first woman, a professional sports league owner. And now I think, man, we can, you know, get a stake in this or take it over. But I don't think. I again, I think whatever happens. I think the CFL needs XFL way more at this point. And not necessarily the XFL, they just need the money. They need the money. And if the XFL has the money, it has nothing to do with, who's got the better rules or who's got the longer, you know, life's, you know, hundred year legacy, whatever it has to do with that. Well, we already know who's got the better fields because I mean, I've talked about it before. I've talked about it before on this podcast, the CFL fields. They rec they wreak havoc on players' bodies. The turf is just terrible. And yeah. It's it's, it's going to be interesting to see what's going forward. We have this clip. You want me to play this clip? Yeah, couple minutes. So, so this is what we're speculating, right? This is speculation. Now everything from the XFL is purely on. Having conversations, trying to figure it out. So again, you know, we can be jumping the gun. This is just me having read through everything for the last two days. Danny was in the Calgary Herald. She was talking about basically how the furthest thing from. The money has nothing to do with it. Everyone's going to have a lot of fun with speculation. When you talk about the money they're deeply invested in any adding innovation opportunity, expanding the football experience. These are different quotes, then we're in like the XFL press release. I went and one of our listeners max sent this in and we dug this up. She talks about how Randy with the CFL has been working on expanding, bringing in players from other countries and things. And so they realized that they're kind of similar mindset. And so they wanted to. The two combine, you know, they say where this goes. We don't know it's a conversation, it's an exploration. I understand all of that. But if you're, if you're talking about, okay, well, we might like also want to, you know, include other, you know, draft pools or whatever. You're not putting this season on hole and maybe they already decided like, Hey, we're not going to be ready for 20, 22. We're going to, you know, we're doing this too. So like, this'll be a good excuse. Like, you know, people blame, Hey, my business shut down. It was Covitz fault or whatever. Well, maybe now they're like, Hey, we weren't going to be ready in 2020. 82. We still don't have our CFO. Let's just put everything on hold, right? Like maybe they maybe a year and a half wasn't enough time when they purchased it in the first place. I, I I'm, I'm now thinking about reading this reading, what she's saying about having conversation with CFL. If the CFL weren't in trouble, why did they pick up the phone to begin with? Exactly. Why did they pick up the phone? I'm telling you right now, if, if, if they weren't interested in having someone potentially even buy them out, I'm sorry. I'm going to say that. If they didn't have that because it's. We're speculating. It's clear to me. That's the intent here. It's clear to me. That's I'm assuming a lot. I know I'm jumping the gun, but it's clear to me that there, there is. There's a genuine interest for Redbird and. The rock and Danny to buy the CFL. And. They're saying it's a conversation. If the CFL was fine without the XFL, they wouldn't have picked up the phone. And again, and if, if. If this wasn't going to be in some way or form eight landscape all-terrain move, whatever it is, merger, acquisition, whatever. I don't think you put it on hold or I don't even think you, you use those words. I don't even think, you know, Jeffrey Pollock. That was his quote. And again, at, you know, everyone's freaking out about delays. I mean, I, you know, I, I could see it being delayed. I know that people don't want to hear that. And you know, the, that. We'd rather take something this year, whatever, but they might, they might move down the road. So I have this, this is a long, this is a minute and a half clip, but this is Randy that. CFL commissioner on TSN with rod Smith last night. This is a really good and again, so this is opposite of what we're saying, but I want to present both sides of it and hopefully I edited it down and it's easy enough for you to play via Dropbox. Yep. Your final season as a player in 1993. Was at the beginning of an experiment that CFL had with teams based in the United States that year? I believe it was just Sacramento. So, you know what that experience was like as a player. Could this possibly lead to a point where CFL teams are playing XFL team. You know, rod. Your your questions. Really way ahead of where we are. You know, we, we are talking about talking today. You know, rod, I should point out that this finger that I'm showing you, which is a little pointed or a little curved is the byproduct of a game in Sacramento. So I have, I have my own memories of that experience. But yeah, seriously today was just to acknowledge that we want to have a conversation with each other. We wanted to make sure that our stakeholders knew we were talking where it ends. We don't know. But it is an exciting day for us. And looking forward to where this might take us. Yeah. And so along with this, it would be premature to ask you any questions about the future of, of Canadian football rules, three downs, the field size, the ratio, everything else, I guess you're saying there's no point to be asking you about that right now. No, not right now, rod. I mean, look, it is a really good moment for us to just acknowledge that we want to grow. That's that's the common DNA. That underpins the discussions that we've had so far and will take us into future discussions. And we are really wanting to embrace the idea of growth. You're fine. That's it. So, you know, again, they're putting all this on and he continues to say, you know, basically like the rock social media equates the population of a, of a small nation. And so if they can get any of that going, whatever, but. You know, he's saying all the right things, but again, and also great Canadian accent. But, you know, Why even make a big deal about it. If this isn't going to be some sort of landscape altering thing, I honestly. What's what's the Harmon like. Pushing this up then. If, if, if, if you're trying to downplay it, what's the harm now in going screw it. Let's just, let's just get our intentions out in the open. And let's just say it. So that people can get excited about it. So people can get already invested in the CFL teams that exist. If they're going to do a 20, 21 season. That, that would be a way to like possibly get, get revenues up. It, you know, There's so many, there's so many ways too. To grow the CFL. On the backs of this and just maybe open up the flood Gates. Maybe that's that's the solution. I posted a poll here a couple of hours ago before we started. I said, all right, now that we've had 24 hours, how are we feeling? The XFL CFL fans? I excited, neutral, nervous, upset. Most people are excited. There's some neutrals. I not a lot of nervous. And then if you upset, so, you know, Across the board. People seem to be very excited about this, but yeah, I agree. I would, I'd definitely be moving things and showing, you know, potential. Then I just don't get the point of like points of coy with this. That's what I don't get with NBN on here. Well, you know, this is just an acknowledgement of us having the conversation. They just, it seems weird to me that you would. Like make sense or press release about that. Get interest up now. It can't hurt. It can't hurt. It can only help if you get interest going in the CFL. Now, if you get American fans invested in CFL teams and CFL football. It can only help your product open up the flood Gates, just let it all out. We finally got the rock finally acknowledged late yesterday. He posted on Instagram. He said, there's an owner of the XFL, our discussions with the CFL been very exciting. If you remember, you know, the rock was the one that yo got cut from the CFL. The real polls here is cause you can feel the unique opportunity we can potentially create together wherever it leads. I can tell you. This one is personal to me and this driven by all my passion, because me being cut by the CFL was the greatest thing that ever happened. It sent me on the path that years later. Leave me right back to the league. Stop. Am I reading too much into that. We're saying it's set me on a path that years later would lead me right back back to the league. Like it seems like he's jumping, jumping to the conclusion that everybody else is jumping to. Would that quote. I posted. I said yesterday, when all this came out and I said, is this like a kill bill, 20 year long con of him coming back? Like, I'm going to get cut by the CFO. And then come back, you know, by the exit, Val, just about. But yeah, no, I totally know what you mean. It's leading you right back. Lean back where Dwayne leading back for what. It just, it just seems like. That, that comment. Is like. It's led me back to the league and that's, that's a foot, that's like a final kind of statement. That is a final kind of statement. That's like, this is going to happen. So how has it, how has it. Bad for us to speculate Danny. If, if your, your ex-husband, I should say, sorry, if your ex-husband is out there saying. Making that kind of statement that leads everyone to believe that this is going, this is a for sure thing. So Mike Mitchell, he's the big XFL, one of our big, he's like the big insider XFL CFL guy. He had posted a big article last night. I highly encourage you. If you're interested in this, it's the best one I've read so far and that's not just because he's with us. He in his article, he said the chief football officer search is also on pause temporarily. And that, that, you know, that search has been ongoing. We still didn't have a CFO and that he talked with one person and about the potential merger and they told him quote, Don't jump the gun yet talks are still developing and have advanced beyond the preliminary stages, but nothing is set in stone or finalized. And he said, P I S. Just like Paul said, perhaps if the CFL wasn't in such financial peril, they wouldn't have answered the extra bells call to begin with. And that Randy has the CFL commissioner has recently talked about adapting and changing the league's business models. Desperate times, call for desperate measures. Cause I think the CFL has, like, I was listening to this radio thing last night. Like the CFL has like no young fans at all. I guess it's basically like all holdovers, like our age and older, but like they don't, they have, they're having a very difficult time attracting. Young people that the rock and Danny, you know, really appeal to that demographic. I saw this and I want to kind of jump ahead a little bit. The wind blue bombers, president and CEO, Wade Miller has denied the CFLs. New potential partnership with ex-felons due to league financial struggles. I have one thing to say about that, sir. Well, that didn't work. Or did you have a sound effect? Yeah. I had a side effect. Sure Dan. There you go. Yeah, I, I think. Yeah, I think that, that, I don't know again. They're losing money. They needed $30 million to get by last year. They didn't get that money along from the government. People thought that was really weird that the. That the Canadian government denied them that loan last year. Getting getting a car. Controlling the pandemic or giving. CFO money. That's true. Okay. I mean, Canada. Played it smart in that way. They're like, we'd rather, you know, get our people. Vaccinated in and. You know, I talked to my friend Nigel, and we're going off on a tangent here, but he's like, yeah, the Canadian government isn't paying for our hotels. Either. So if we have to sequester in hotels, if we travel, we have to pay like, this is something like $1,500 a night. Well, this is like, Canada's not financially supporting people that need to sequester in hotels for quarantine either. My friend Nigel lives up there. He's an actor. And he's like, if I travel out of, out of country, then when I come back, I've got to spend two weeks in a hotel at $1,500 a night. Apparently. That's. So, I don't know what, what Canada's doing with the money. What are the, what are you doing? What are you doing? A couple last things on this and we'll take a break before we get into everything else. I'm sure. Ah, ah, Matthew ski a needy. I cannot say these names. Schemey. Meeting with TSN sports. He reported that, that the CFLs players CFL PA was caught off guard by the announcement yesterday and that they were having a meeting to discuss reaction and everything. I'm sure that's going to come out like right when we, you know, we post everything. Ross talked about that on the commissioner, talked about that on the show. The TSN show from the clip we played earlier tonight as well. He said that they did inform them, but that the, the word just hadn't reached all around yet, but they did send the email or call some of the heads of that before the big announcement came out. But it did seem a little rush cause there was like the Alawites thing and like, it just, wasn't all cohesive as I think they probably wanted that. It seems like you would need a new collective bargaining agreement if this merger happens by the way. And that would. You know, we talked about how the XFL needs a player union. That might help XFL players to, to get, get, get unionized in terms of joining up with a CFL PA. Yup. Huh. Two last notes, Danny, how the Instagram, you can play the game. You can pioneer the game to get there, create as many lanes as possible for collaboration, growth, opportunity, and innovation. So, I mean, she's really trying to like, Play coy with it, but I just, eh, The juniors there, the messaging is there for me. So in that, that they're looking for acquisition and, and fan controlled football, stop this. This was so. I retweeted this about four times, because it should never be forgotten at all. A fan controlled football. I had the worst. Tweet I've ever seen. And they wrote, they wrote exit XFL. Plus CFL is less in Farrington football with the arms up. And first off, like you said earlier, all of these leagues should get along. All of these leagues should play nice. There is, you know, Many of the people that are watching fan controlled football would have been watching XFL right now. And please. Going on. And even the comments on this were atrocious against, against basketball football, basically being like, yeah, you, you guys know that you have all of the same fans, like all the same fans. Alienating. Yeah, it's really bad. It's really off. It's really off a comment. I had. Tweeted when they said that I go, meanwhile, so while the CFL and XFL or peninsula potentially looking at an international, you know, cross-brand relationship of some kind. A finger to a football is tweeting about voting on the coaches outfit for this weekend and earning points that you'll be able to get like a power rep in the game. So that was what they were focused on. When Danny the rock CFL, Jeffrey Pollock, everybody was working on. Yeah, potentially. You know, landscape altering and move here in football. Thank control football. Why don't you work on, you know, standardizing the rules game by game minute by minute. Why don't you work on that? Do you want to talk about that by the way, fan controlled football. People unfollowing you on, on, on Twitter. Well, let's get through all the, do you wanna take a break? We'll get through the XFL rest of the stuff, and then we'll do finger trolled by the way. It's awesome. Now because our podcasts. Distributor is allowing us three commercials, her break so we can get through our commercials. Oh, We don't have to take as many breaks. You have to listen to more commercials. I apologize for that. But of course, if you're on YouTube, you subscribe to us on YouTube. And I have these commercials. So enjoy these. We'll be right back. Let me know if you can hear this. I can't hear that. Good to hear now, is that a fan? It's a heater. No, I can't hear it. If you need that to keep it on. That's fine. It's it. If I keep the room temperature warm. My tooth doesn't hurt. Okay. Yeah, whatever you gotta do. How do you pronounce this referee's name? Maya Chaka. Okay. So she was the big, okay. That I just didn't. You. Okay. Welcome back. To the, to the Mark cast, this potential CFL Mark cast. We want to change our logo and everything. If this happens. Aye. That that is a fear. I know we have a, I do, I have to be CFL Mark on Twitter. I don't know what that, what that looks like. I haven't, I really hope they keep the branding. I really hope they keep the accidental branding at this point. Maybe. Maybe it's X. SFC the XF conference. I don't know. No, I do, honestly, that, that calling it continental football league. As a lot of. You know, You're still using the letters. Yeah. Keep this on call it continental football league. I'm here for it. I do some other stuff. I XFL, I let us, I guess I had a whole show going here. We were going to do. Zilla Zilla energy, drinks and stuff. We'll do that. Still. They're coming. I ordered Paul and I both. Zola's a former XFL referee. My Chaka. She was, she became the first black female official in NFL history. She had worked in the XFL before. She'd also worked in PAC 12. Even my mother, mama Mark hast had tweeted me. She goes, Hey, did you hear about Maya? And I go, yep. I got it on the Google doc. So any thoughts on that? Well, I don't want to disparage the pack. I don't want to disparage any official right now, but if you come from the PAC 12 and you got out of the PAC 12, maybe it's because you're actually good at your job because PAC 12 officials are some of the worst officials in the history of all sports. It doesn't matter football, our basketball, PAC 12. Yes. Any PAC 12 fan. And they will tell you how bad the officials are. So congrats to Maya to getting out of that bad situation in the PAC 12. Yep. It's something interesting here. This, again, these are all topics that could have been, you know, All segments of the show. The Ravens had submitted a proposal for a booth umpire, a eighth official sky judge to the NFL and presented it to competition committee hearings this week. With the backing of the coaches subcommittee. What does having a, having an independent sky judge to review plays sound like from a former spring football league, Paul, any, any, any ideas. That's what the XFL did last year. Yes. An independent sky judge with an X-Box controller that looked at all the players. So. [Unknown] again. NFL. They have the sky cam, when the XFL kicked off in Oh one, they took the sky cam from them. They did all that. It is very interesting that the NFL now is [unknown]. They've been working on this for a couple of years. I mean, it's not that this is the XFL was the first one had ever thought of this, but the XFL implemented it really well. And it seems like a NFL is taking note again. Again, it's about moving the game forward. And then it fell just, you know, taking the good parts and it's like Apple. You know, like people like companies these days come out with innovations and then Apple goes, we like your innovation. We're gonna make it a little bit better. Yep. And I think that's, that's what's happening here. So. Just a couple updates, everyone. Remember back when people are, do delaying the seas are. They're not announcing the XFL stuff because of the logo updates. And now we find out that like, I mean, that's fair. I mean, there's a lot of stuff going on. B logos had been extended again, even though they were like done being extended. The oil tower I extended through April 7th. And the, the, the man, the Patriot's logo is currently gonna come up on March 30th, but it's expected to be pushed back until April 29th. So thank you, max listener of the show for giving me those dates when I needed them. But anyway, so if you're still on the, they're not announcing the CFO because of the logo updates. Now, this is what's going on. Okay. I just change the logos. Yeah, I know this now we might not even have, it might be the Canadian roughnecks or whatever. The Winnipeg, whatever. At Fox sports landed. Bob stoops. He's going to replace urban Meyer on the pregame show. Do you have any thoughts on this? I like Bob stoops. He's a great mind for the game. Aye. I'm critical of urban Meyer. Anyway, I don't think it's going to last too long. A Jacksonville. I think urban Meyer. His tendency to allow like, like the whole situation where he allowed that guy that I guess was a weight conditioner, weight training guy. Yeah. I don't know how long Urban's gonna last Jackson's it'll begin with, but Bob's got a great mind for the game. Relatively young. I was going to add some, some, some. Some great insight to that. A pregame show. So I'm all in favor of this. I like Bob stoops. A lot. People are worried. They were saying, you know, Hey. You know, could he still coach and then do the thing because college football's in the fall. Yeah. I mean, he could definitely still do both. I don't know if it, Bob stoops wants to go back to the XFL. I mean, he's certainly open. The funniest comment. I posted this and one of the Facebook groups, there's literally a Facebook group called like the Bob stoops army. I said this and someone was like, who cares about students? And they were like, dude, you're in a little. Bob's just army, literally the name of the. Yeah, but anyway, I mean, yeah. You know, at this point, I don't know if the XFL is playing in February to whatever. Maybe they're moving to the CFL schedule. I mean, you can't play February football in Canada. That is going to be a little tricky. March. Maybe you. Not even play Mark. It's really cold in Canada. Like. In April. It's kind of cold there. The, the bankruptcy thing, it sounds like it's all moved through now, which would make sense if that kind of ended on on Friday, they canceled the hearing. We had talked about the hearing that was going to happen. They canceled it basically because there was no objection. So they just paid off kind of the last like legal professionals would kind of make sense that that would end. Friday last week and then this week they would talk about the CFL step. So I don't yeah. Blue hat, you know, tinfoil hat theory, whatever does that make sense? You kind of see why that would happen this week. Totally totally. Also, I, I, I do what I can whenever I see something that pops up of course read, puts so much time into this podcast. He was already on it. And I appreciate that. Chargers decided not to franchise tag, Hunter Henry, which means what Reed, which means what. It means they could have faith and a six foot eight, or as I call them previously on the show, seven foot tall, Donald Parham. He's only 23, but he's going at the charters. Have a good track record with a tight ends. Of course, Antonio Gates. Donald Parham is a freak of nature. He's a great player and it's good to see this kid get, get a really big shot here because that's what that, you know, we're talking about speculation earlier. That's more than speculation to me that that tells me the charges have found their guy with Donald Bahram. So kudos to Donald laddies, getting that is getting a real look. It says he runs a four, six, seven foot wingspan and a 36 inch vertical leap. So he's basically more than seven feet. That's what we're talking about here. If he's got a seven foot wingspan, it can jump jumped three feet. You're talking about a guy that can, you know, What's what's the average here. I'm trying to do math, trying to do the math, trying to do math. You're talking about a guy who can jump 12 feet in the air. And, and if you throw a ball 12 feet, No one else was catching that, but him. She notes on Jean Jones here. He was making the rounds on Fox news this week, talking about a CFL and exit foul. And, and be, I dunno, like why Ginny Johnson is just always popping up. He's trying to keep his name out there. You know, there's speculation is he being brought back in this again, would have been like topics for a whole nother show. He was talking about how. He, this was his quote. It was funny. I, he thinks that the XFL is preferable for us players over the CFL. Cause he, and this is according to Jean Jones. I've been beer, still dealing with the bankruptcy. I think there's some unfinished business there. Until they get it done. I don't know where they can get started. And the last year I was a coach, I was hired in June. But pretty much all the coaches were hired in March of April. He was talking kind of about the timeline. And this was again, back before. Kind of all the speculation came out with the CFL stuff this week. But he does think that, that the play in the XFL is going to be better than the CFL. He also had hot takes about the NBA becoming more like the ER. NFL becoming more like the NBA with players jumping around. Do you agree with that? When we talk about like, there's, there's all these no trade clauses that have now been entered into NFL contracts. They've been an NBA contract for awhile where, you know, like you talked about how the Paul George thing happened with the Clippers. How Paul George, you know, only waived his no trade clause. So for certain teams, and we're talking about that now with Russell Wilson. Where there's only certain teams is going to waive his no trade clause clause four. And I prediction. He's going to end up in Chicago. I think it's going to happen. You can end up in Chicago. God, it's going to cost them to just the world. Chicago or Seattle. Oh Seattle. Cause they're gonna have that dead cap space too. They're going to, I think what's the, what are the bears going to, I mean, they're going to have to offer. The little Mac is definitely coming over. They're going to rebuild the difference. Think about, think about a defense with Khalil Mack, Bobby Wagner, and KJ Wright. If he comes back. That's a solid defense. You bring Sherman back for another couple of years, you have them retire as a Seahawk. Like you. I mean. You got to win games, defensively, and that offensive line. Russell Wilson's contract is structured in a way that offensive line is not going to get any better. So you've got to win games with defense at this point and just, you know, I don't know if it's a Nick Foles situation coming to Seattle, or if it's a midterm ski situation coming to Seattle. Of course, I'm a big Nick Foles, Mark you've I've said that numerous times, but yeah. I think Russell's done in Seattle. I really do. It's looking, it's looking like it's the end. It's looking like it. The last, just now we're not talking, we're not covering young rock, but the young rock had the largest digital launch of any NBC comedy ever. And this is just, I only bring this up to talk about the impact that the rocks brand has. It, it had 11.8 million viewers that the season premiere. Or a series premiere it's it's accumulated. Cause it's been a couple of weeks now. And that includes Hulu and the NBC app and peacock, but 11.8 million people watch system shell. And it was the only. The lower, only two, a, this is us season premiere last fall. So either, you know, it's really hard to debut new shows nowadays. They also have started replaying the young rock after WWE. And it's the highest rated post WIB shell in nearly a year, which would make sense that if you're NBC, I was wanting to get some of those wrestling fans. I carried over to young rock. Interesting. I mean, you know, you got to put that in context though. I mean, how many, how many shows digitally have been launched on peacock since peacock started this? Probably the first one. Right? The first comedy. Yeah. Yeah, but anyway, Anyway, it's just, it's just, I just like, I like seeing that the rock is, is making moves and, and getting viewers and all that stuff. All right. You, you talked to Brian. Brian Woods. I send an email again this week, wanting to get the update on the spring Lake. Ah, he goes at this point, the only news to release is to try outs. Of course, I mean, Go figure. They're trying to coordinate all of their efforts with Fox. So, I mean, you know, Mark asked, is it not quite to the level of, of Fox sports? Right now, I, he says their player selection meetings going to be taking place at the first week of April. And so he wants to come on that week, but he did say, and this wasn't no, Kenny, I hope you're listening, Kenny. He goes, by the way, I thoroughly enjoy listening to your podcast. If you're doing a great job with that. Brian. I don't, if that is true, where the F. Sorry, Chester's merge. If you're listening, Joe. That is still going to be the first question I asked him when he comes on in April, but anyways, so they're working on that. So we'll see what the CFL stuff goes. I mean, we might be a really heavy on spring Lake. We'll see a really curious where the hell that ends up. So. All right. Do you want to take him to the break, bring our guests out, or do you want to get through this other jargon about the fan control? Do fan control and see a Braden, the hops on. Why not. Let's take a quick break again. Pay the bills, as we say. And then let's, let's see if we can bring, let's see if we can. What's happening. What's happening in Google doc and there's moving up there. Okay. Let's take him to the break and then hopefully brain will just join us in the middle of our chats about a fan controlled football. We'll be right back. I think that's the easiest. If we could just do that. Yeah. And I don't, then we don't have to, whatever. You're. As I was saying we'll house all the time. You're okay. Oh, I haven't, by the way. I got it. I got it. Just this morning. It's good. How to knock on the door. And before we started the podcast, I was like, It would be, it would mean a lot to read. If I went and checked the door to see if that was a shirt, it was the shirt. I also have a wheelhouse hat now. I finally got one of those. I don't know why I didn't have that before, but I decided to wear this. To, to brighten your spirits. Thank you. I also, I ordered, we, we have new XFL Mark asked hat's similar Highbury. I'm aware of my wheelhouse at recently, I both on the podcast and on and off. But we did give that X of a Mark cast. Cap too. So that should be coming. It got shipped out the other day. So it should. We've had those for a while. I just haven't been public. Yeah. You wanted the flat back snap bag, brim ones and a friend of wheelhouse, Chris Vitaly. Really good guy over ball nine. He does a lot of like old school baseball stuff. He said his wheelhouse hat is one of the most comfortable hats he owns. Nice and you like it. So we, we, we rolled out an XFL Mark Hass version of the same hat. You can buy that now@axmlshow.com slash March. Yeah, it's a, it's a fantastic hat. I talking about Merck. I will say. I don't know if you are in this boat as well, please. DME XFL, Mark on Twitter. I ordered my fan controlled football Jersey the very first day that they were announced the very first day. This was like five weeks ago. Now I still do not have it. I have message Patrick about it. He is supposedly has talked to the champion. I know I'm not the only one. And yeah, speaking a fan controlled football, all, all management with the league has unfollowed the show on Twitter. I take that as a sign that, you know, obviously they're probably not happy with some of the comments we are obviously going to continue at at least covering it, at least through this season. You know, we have Braden coming on today. And I think we are advocates for the players that are advocates for football, and that's fine with me. What do you think we want to like this lead? Patrick, we want to promote this league, but we have to be critical when things need to be criticized. And I'm sorry if the management doesn't feel like. That's supportive. I think it is supportive too. Be completely honest and transparent with how our feelings are on how this league is being ran, changing the f-ing rules from minute to minute game. The game is wrong. And if you don't like us being critical of. Of this. Then guess what? Maybe you need to listen to people outside of this echo chamber of people that are just. For lack of better term looking your boots. They're just telling you this is great. No matter what. What you give them? They're, they're not doing any service to you by being. Completely. You know, like, yes, ma'am. They're not doing any service to you. If you listen to somebody that's critical of you. Maybe you can get a different perspective, a different viewpoint. And get outside your myopic echo chamber and realize that there are some things you need to standardize. You can't just change things on the fly because a one game, it sounds like it's great. The other game, it doesn't. Well, you know, I I've always said, I think there's a difference between hating on something and, and constructively critiquing. And I feel like I give all of my criticisms come with, you know, suggestions again, you'll have to listen to me. You know, I know this week, we, there was an N word dropped on the broadcast by Marshawn Lynch, not a member of the broadcast booth. We have said before on here, I am critical of vulgar language being used on a Twitch stream. I think that you would want to attract the largest demographic you possibly can. You can disagree with that. You can say the S word. You can say the F word. I think Marshawn Lynch saying the N word. I think crosses a line. I had tweeted that and I was going to say, you know, friend of the show now no longer, you know, Patrick had, you know, and, and to his credit, I always give credit. I think Patrick is one of the best people they have publicly. He goes, yeah, I understand this is on Twitter. Look, it wasn't from the broadcast team. We aren't going to stop. Having gas. All we can do is request that they support our standards and try to do better. I appreciate that. I appreciate him reaching out. It was two in the morning and you know, and in Atlanta, when they, when, when he responded to my tweet about that, I think for all the good that, you know, Patrick. Does with the broadcasts? I think Ray Austin does the opposite. I think Ray Austin is a horrendous on the broadcast booth. I think you cannot have somebody that is the commissioner of the league hiring and firing. You know, RAs players. You had imagined he's in control of all of that stuff. Also openly complaining about the rules, about the rafts, about players dropping balls and all that stuff. Being completely like. I remember the one game I watched. He was like, I told you about this guy. I told you like being fans of players. Is great privately. But publicly when you're the commissioner of a league and you're like extolling the virtues of these players, it's like, Roger could Dell would never go and say, Tom Brady is the goat. Roger Goodell would never said Adam silver would never say I can't even pronounce his name. I'll just say LeBron James LeBron, James lived on Michael Jordan. Adam silver would never say that by the way, Adam, you need to give Seattle and NBA team back. Immediately. Moving on. Anyway. So what did you watch the games this week? What did you think of the, the, what they're calling now? The on-site kick game, where we had about 87 onsite kicks that made them change the rules in between games. Again, why. Set this up. At the beginning of the year. I know this is a beta version. But it's a beta version. That's allegedly better than the TSA, the XFL and CFO combined. Right. Well, and also it's a beta version now that, and this is a point I just thought up. They are getting viewers, right. They had the stats posted before the game. They've had 3 million live video views. A 900,000 live draft picks and plays called they're the most watch English sports channel on Twitch and most live. You know, sports channel on Twitch. What'd you say, yada, yada, yada. Yeah, but anyway, and you know, you're bringing in, you know, Josh Gordon and Johnny Manzell and all this stuff. And so you're getting millions of viewers and then you're, you're learning on the fly. So that I would say like, that's almost counterintuitive to me, but he is like, well, we want to bring in sports in there. And we want to bring in these millions of years and we want to bring in all this publicity, but then also like, watch us, like learn as we grow here. Does that seem weird? It does. I mean, There's so many things that could have done, like testing before this even launched. And I think this was part of the testing thing, by the way, speaking of the N word. How many efforts did Bob [unknown]. Drop the other night, too. I mean. It's really fair for. Oh, bro. You know, I was making fun of his voice. To read it. And it was like he was dropping. There were like F words, every other word with Bob. Manary too. Sorry. I forgot about that, but it brought me back. Yeah. I mean, it just, again, I get wanting to break. I mean, they've had tremendous viewership. They've had tremendous, they had 40,000 CU current the whole time. It's been tremendous. It's been a success from a viewership standpoint. Without a doubt without a doubt. Unmitigated success. They should be happy with that. But again, you're learning on the fly while you're bringing in all these viewers, they have this first game at ended, you know, 56 to 52. They had all these on-site cakes. It basically broke the game because the thing was, the fans had ability that the beginning of the season can we do onsite kicks, like anytime we want, when we're trailing, there was a couple of different options in the fans. Bulleted. Every time, you know, we want to be able to do onsite kicks anytime we want. Well, then what they finally figured out this week, it took them four weeks to figure out, well, we can break the game by scoring doing an on-site kick where it's, it's not a traditional onsite cake. You have to get if like fourth and tents. So as long as you can get 10 yards in the arena football thing, like you're going to get the first down. So they basically broke it the game and I have, well, we're just going to score and then do a first day on and score and do a first. And I was a gourd and do a first down. And so they. They, they launched the poll, like midway through the game. Like, yeah, we need to like change this rule, which I totally agree. That's fine, but I don't think, I think anybody could have seen that being a problem from the beginning, I think. And also I think then Matt, Matt, friend of the show, he had tweeted that, you know, for the second. Time now. The zapper is have gotten to play by more fair rules simply, simply by playing the second match of the night. Right. So like, you know, cause they, they, they, they changed it. Yeah. They changed the timing rule before, and then they changed this just because you're the second game. You almost get like a better chance of winning. Got it makes sense. You get the bugs worked out in the first game. And then it's like, kind of like how they want to view this as a video game. Your, your, your alpha version comes out. It has a bunch of bugs. And then you get to play the beta version, which has the bugs worked out, and then you have better chances. Of beating that because. You don't have errors. Renee Montgomery was on the halftime show. I thought she was by far the best owner they have by, by just a mile. I think, I think Renee is such an advocate. I think she had been brought in late. Is one of the best people that they brought in. You know, I know that Marshawn gets the eyeballs, but if you're going to bring in someone like him, and then you're going to have to worry about, you know, the, the potty mouth for lack of a better word. I think you. Yeah, Bob Manary comes on. It's like he's watching he's at the casino, watching stuff in the background and trying to comment on the game. Like if you're going to bring people into the game and have, you know, have these owners be involved and invested, like have them be invested. I agree. And Renee has been a big cheerleader so far. And been great for them. Great for this. And she's been very active on Twitter. You know, I don't know about Richard Sherman's involvement with it. Murals a coward. And Renee has been very active with people on Twitter in terms of not just this, but in terms of what she's doing. Of course, she's, she's now retired. She was part of the ownership group of the Atlanta dream. We commend her on that. Renee has been a great advocate for all things. Sports. Not gender specific, just all things, sports that she is touching. She's been a big advocate for, and you know, it's been great to see. It's been great to see for sure. Yeah. Josh Gordon. One the, when the game. I'm looking up. Robert Turbin it. He's going to be in a he's in the bubble right now. He just came on today. He wasn't able to play last week. Josh Gordon did play. He won the game, winning touchdown from Braden. Who's going to be on here. So, you know, they're getting that supposedly Manzell is going to be back this week. So of course, you know, Margie and Braden are probably going to get at the back burner to that. So. I'm kind of interested to see how that goes. If this app is you're going to have three quarterbacks, what's that going to be like? The zappers are, Oh, and two with mans L leading the game. They won this week 32 to 26 and the next week is going to be that the playoffs. The bees have voted to play the glacier boys. That was a fan boat. And then the wild ACEs are going to be playing the zappers. So we're, we're getting, I think it's going to be. What is that a week of playoffs and then the championship, right? If you've got. So, when do you want to play? The glacier? Boys are terrible. They're they're terrible. I mean, we're getting to the end of the season, we'll, we'll be doing some soul searching about covering stuff. I, you know, I hate the cover stuff out of obligation, but you know, if they're pushing. XFL and CFL. I mean, we're really gonna have to see, we're really going to have to do soul searching as a podcast to see what we're going to do. I completely agree. Did you see this viewership at the bottom? They have 1.2 million viewers on Twitch. The highest before was 826,000 viewers. And they said for contacts XFL on week four last year, average 1.37 million viewers on traditional TV networks. I was told the FCF was better than the XFL and CFL combined. That tells me that. Well, they're pointing out that on Twitch. Hating. This is hating. You'd put a stupid tweet out there. Now you're seeing what Hastings like this isn't being critical. You put a stupid tweet out there and now, now I'm hating. I'm hating. No. I mean, again, it's tremendous viewership. I just don't know. I wouldn't be boasting about the viewership. And then also I'm struggling to, you know, get the, get the games across. I the last note on here and hopefully we'll time this out of their brain hops on an anonymous source. This came up on Twitter this week that one of the fan accounts had created a, like a test. Cause the whole thing is you vote, you get points and you get, you know, call the plays and you get it's like power it's Everett. And they had created a test account and had basically become the fifth highest account in like an hour just by voting on stuff online. But like all these things that people are going on to earn. That they were able to just like vote on stuff through the app. Hack it, I guess. Yeah. So, yeah, Patrick's that, you know, of course it was right on it and said he was going to take care of it, but, you know, It's just one of those things, like, you know, we're working the bugs out. You want to really. Push this fan engagement and like push the power ups and push all this stuff. And then if, if you're going to have problems, people get upset. I mean, I, I certainly sympathize for management. I think that, you know, It's hard to deal with EO yelling voices at you. And of course, in, in our case, they've chosen just to turn that yelling voice off. Right. With that being said, we're going to wait for brain. We're gonna take another quick commercial break for our podcast distributors on the audio side. I'll come right back. We'll have Braden here on the Mark cast. That works. We got through everything. Yep. I'm going to stop down. Let's start a new clip. Let me check to see if he, I was, I kept looking to see if there was a bunch of. Mm. Yeah. You're he says he, he, I, because my Twitter is obviously close. He messaged me. He he'll be ready in about five minutes. Okay. Wow. Ah, That would be good. Let me see. He called me Mr. Johnson. So formal. I know. Well, we can do our promo if you want. Yeah, let's do it that other way. Okay. Let me do this, that we know. Okay. Oh, let me get, Oh, what happened here? What. Screen with. Cattywampus. Flash reminder. This week on the XML Mark cast, we're talking fan controlled football. Now we got to leave with CFL status. Sorry. Sorry, sorry. Sorry. Take two. This week on the F. My tooth. This week on the, my God. This week. On the exhale Mark cast, we're talking the big news that happened that blew up read show, read head is nice. Plan, show out everything was going great. And then all of a sudden the bomb drops. Oh, here we go. We got Brayden. All right, let's do that instead. How's it going, sir? Hey, how's it going? Good. Thanks for hopping on. Yeah, we just, we were rolling and we were just figuring we try to time it out with you coming on. So this'll be good. Okay. How's your day going? So far so good. We just got out of practice, has got back and showered up and everything pretty light day. You. Our Thursdays are normally. You know, we're still on the field. So we got helmets on everything, but. You know, it's mostly. So. We're releasing it out. A little bit losing you there a little bit. Braden. Congratulations on throwing the game. Winning touchdown. I know all the love went to Josh Gordon for catching it. Congratulations on throwing the game. Winning touchdown. What's what's what's, what's been the reaction like for you after that? W, well, first of all, thank you. You know, I. Throwing it once is, is one thing. And then throwing it to. A guy like Josh Gordon as another thing in itself. You know, but I've kind of, you know, There's been a lot of jokes. Going around. Oh, you know, I'm the hail Mary thing. Just, you know, Just give him five seconds. You know, that's all he needs. You know, stuff like that. But really, you know, I've just. I've just been super blessed and fortunate enough to be throwing to guys like Travis and Josh, you can both go up and get a ball. You know, Be that athletic? No. But other than that, I mean, it's been pretty. It's been pretty cool to see, you know, obviously seeing the play. Pop up on different. Instagram pages and things like that, you know, it's kind of cool to see that. It was on sports center, man. Yeah. Yeah, the first one. Yeah, for sure. That was cool. I didn't really expect that to happen, but yeah. Yeah, that was awesome. Got a lot of love from people back home to site. No, I always appreciate that as well. Aye. Aye. Aye. When I tweeted at you, I asked you, cause I've been working at my day job before this week. Did you have, you have a lot of chances to hop on media stuff? From the game last Saturday, they, till today, when you're talking to us, What do you mean? Like looking on like Instagram, things like that. And even on other podcasts and stuff. Oh, so I've, I've only been on. One other podcasts and it's a guy. Down in Florida. And I've been off his twice. But other than that, I know I haven't really been, you know, like nobody besides you guys have really reached out. As far as that goes. Well, see, that's why I asked because you know, we're, you know, we we've been critical. Well football, you know, we've we follow them, you know, the whole way through we've had Patrick on and chase Baker and we've had Greg Miller on, we have all this stuff. And, you know, when I see this touchdown and I saw the tweet go out the fan controlled football, yo Josh Gordon with the game winning touchdown. And I think you had like retweeted that like with the arms up like this, you were included in that. Right. But, but to me, I look at that cause, you know, cause we've been critical about NFL players coming in and taking the spotlight, taking spots, whatever. What do you, what do you think about that? Are you guys excited to have Josh be a part of the bit Johnny Manzell I know that you won the game. When he was out, what are your thoughts when it comes to the NFL stuff? And it's okay if you're positive or not, I'm just really curious what your thoughts are. Yeah, no, honestly, that, that wasn't really like a. A shot at anybody for, I, you know, I'm not, I'm not searching for credit or anything like that. Honestly, I think having Josh here and having Johnny here has, has been. I would say beneficial to us for the most part. It's, it's drawn more eyes to us. So, you know, maybe that can lead for more opportunities, even if it's not for myself, but for other people in the league, I think overall it's been. Pretty positive. Yeah. So like that's where it wasn't really like. I was doing, I actually, I, I did that emoji because during the one-on-ones I did it at the camera and I had some people like react to that. After I threw a ball. So that that's kind of been like my, my thing that, that definitely wasn't like a. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not searching for it for any kind of credit because obviously without. Josh Gordon with a guy, you know, he had a guy hanging on his arm. Still came down with the ball. You know, so I'm not too concerned with, you know, my personal fame, you know, obviously if it's enough to get me to. You know, continue to play then. And then great. But you know, I'm not, I'm not really hunting for that. What's your, what's it been like so far? We're a day like 60 now, something in the bubble, right. What's it been like? What's been just your experience with the league. I mean, I I'm, I'm glad that. I really thought, you know, we had journey on before. You're really talking with the players that are there and have been through it from the beginning. Yeah. You know, it's been a grind. I'm not going to lie. The. The first few weeks, especially during camp was. It was a grind going twice a day. Coach Jenkins style going two and a half, three hours of practice. You know, twice a day. And then, and then, you know, you've got meetings in the morning meetings at night and new players coming in. I mean, it felt like. Like my college camp and went in a certain way. And you know, I haven't been in the NFL, but there's guys here that said, you know, this is every bit of, you know, what we were doing when I was in the pros. And. You know, so. I can appreciate that. You know, for sure. With all the coaches here. I think there's a lot of football knowledge. There's a lot of football wisdom here. You know, so even if. Guys don't go to the league after this. I think. For those who want to coach or give back to the game in any way? I think it's, it's been, it's been great. You. You know, and this is, this is the first league in a while that's sprung up and actually maintained itself, you know, obviously. COVID you know, the XFL last year was doing really well. That kind of. I mean, they can't control that. I'm sure the XFL would have continued to go. And I'm sure that they'll have success. You know, And their season's moving forward, but, you know, overall, I think it's been a great experience for me, even if I don't go play anywhere else, even if this is my last football, you know, I'm super happy that I came. Good to hear. And so, so you, you, you do definitely have your eyes set on potentially, you know, like maybe trying out for an NFL team, possibly when the XFL we discussed it earlier in the podcast. There's been some kind of there's, there's been some, some news to where they potentially might delay due to a CFL partnership. Definitely have your eyes set on that. What intrigues you about going to that, that level? You know, I I've always, you know, from the time I was a kid, this is going to sound cliche, but I dreamed of being able to play, you know, it. At the highest level possible. You know, I went to a small school. A D three school in Indiana. And, you know, I, I won't say that I gave up on that dream. Yeah. But like playing D three ball. It's not exactly like, you know, you don't have a lot of guys that, that make it, you know, And so my senior year, when. I started getting some looks from some NFL teams and I was like, okay, you know, maybe I, I can, you know, point at that level. And, and then coming here and theirs. There's guys that have played in the CFL, played in the XFL, played in the NFL. Played a lot of. Indoor ball or like, whatever it may be and seeing that. I'm right there with these guys. Just the confidence. You know, so having the opportunity to go play for a CFL or XFL or who knows what will happen there. As far as them. Teaming up somehow. I'm not sure. You know, I did see that headline yesterday that they're meeting up to discuss some, some options or something like that. I think that would be really interesting. I would 100% and B be up for trying out for that. Sure. Even if I'm just going to have the opportunity to have to be a camp arm for an NSL camp, you know, that's something I would 100% do. That's just something that I've been striving for. And now that it's, I'm cool. Closer than I've ever been, you know, I guess. Having the exposure that we do. So I'm, you know, I'm just doing my best every day to try to get better, you know, in case that opportunity comes. We we've been critical as. Is a light word. I'm here for. I, you know, some of the rule changes between games and stuff. You know, we know it's beta league. We know they're working on stuff as someone that's playing in that has that been challenging where, you know, like the clock is different on one game versus the other. The on-site kicks and stuff, just as someone that's like actually trying to deal with it. Is that a challenge or is that just while rich? You know, we kind of just, we've kind of just had to roll with it, you know, I'm, I'm sure other guys would have other opinions. But I'm at the point where I understand this is, this is FCF 1.0, this is the first time we're going around, but it has been frustrating having to. As players learn along, you know, each game you. Okay. Well, you can do that. Or. They can use the power up here. And this is why. And this is a power that we can actually use. So it was like, we didn't really know. I didn't know. Any of the power-ups. I knew that. The fifth down was going to be a thing. But like we didn't know much beyond, as far as uniqueness goes, we didn't know much beyond the extra points. A one-on-one like we, we, after that, at least speaking for myself, I didn't know much beyond that. So, like I said, that was a little frustrating, but. At the same time. I, I am. I am aware and I'm. I'm sure that season two will. Improve season three would be even better, you know? So. I'm not, I'm not going to be too critical on, I understand that. It takes a lot to make a league like this work. So, you know, I'm again, just happy to be here and happy to roll with whatever they throw at us this week. When we talk about those, those rule changes on the fly as a player, do you feel like you have an Avenue to express potential? Criticisms within the bubble. To your coaches, to management the commissioner. Do you have that Avenue to discuss these things with, with the higher ups? That's a good question. I would say so for sure. You know, I, I won't say that I'm best friends with any guys, like an operations or anything, you know, but, but I've, I talked to these guys every day, you know, Commissioner rays and a lot of our zoom meetings, you know, so we have the ability to, to speak. Freely. So, so I'm sure that if, if, and, you know, it may take, it may take two or three guys that may take. 40 Guys, 50 guys to, you know, if they feel strongly, I'm sure that the league and everyone in operations and the executives of the league, I'm sure that they would listen. And they do make it pretty easy. You know, if I really felt like. I wanted something different or something needed to change. Then I, I have the phone numbers of people that I could reach out to. Who, if they couldn't change it, they could get me to somebody who I could speak to about it, you know? So they haven't made that possible. Which is pretty cool. I think. In, in terms of just having gone through all this, you know, season two comes about, you know, they're, they're talking about three months on three months off, and then coming back again. If asked, would you, would you participate in that and what's been your experience so far with that? Yeah. So we've heard different things, you know, I think, I think the goal is to. You know, be the focus of. Sports. Oh, obviously. You know, like with the XFL not being able to come back yet, we were young teams. We were the only pro football going, you know, so if they came back, you know, it took three months off or whatever, I would definitely consider it. I haven't had me personally. I haven't had too much. What's the word I haven't had too many teams reach out. I've had a couple indoor teams. Reach out to me about playing, you know, Or starting early this summer. So I'm considering that, but I would definitely also consider coming back, you know, we've had the discussion just between players, you know, If the, if COVID. You know, didn't exist. How would this be? How would this be ran? And then also with. If they expand to more teams, you know, then there's there more players, potentially more money potentially. You know, there's a lot of different things that could go into that. So I would definitely consider that. Myself. I wouldn't say. I would jump on immediately, but, you know, once things settle. As to the finalization of. FCF 2.0. I would definitely look into it. Yeah, I just, I hope they, you know, the goal is. Yeah, I don't. You know, we've talked with people, I'll find out, you know, the pay and everything for the games, you know, I don't, you know, compare the bowl. The other leagues and stuff. I just, you know, I hope if the vision is for you guys to be able to move into like indoor leagues, I know that you had had, I was reading an article about you this morning. EO you were talking about going into arena. You know, one of the arena teams before they called you for the fan control. I just wanted to make sure if you guys have the opportunities to go elsewhere or whatever you feel like you're getting the visibility from this or something out of this, right? I mean, you feel like whether it's money or exposure, you know, we covered the spring league and the whole point of that is just. Players to get taped right. To go other places. Right. You know, you feel like you're leaving here with more than, than you came in in terms of exposure and money and all that sort of stuff. I would say so. Yeah, for sure. I mean the money, you know, it, it is what it is. It's not, it's not a ton of money, but from what I understand, I mean, it's more than I was going to get, you know, prior to coming here, it depends where you go. Depends. Who you played for? As far as indoor leagues go. But definitely exposure wise, you know, this is my first year playing any sort of pro football. I've got some pro film. Under my belt now. So if I'm, you know, I'm actually working on. Putting a little highlight tape, if you will. Together, so that. I'll have that on Twitter for anybody who, any scout. Anybody that would. You know, be, be interested in that. I'm sure my agent would. Disperse that as well. Yeah, I would definitely say that I I've improved as a player. Oh, for sure. I would say. You know, getting to play with these athletes. Like I said before, A lot of these guys are. Are solid athletes, you know, obviously. So I think. You know, competing with and against. Yeah. I mean, these, these corners, like I said, I was. I was a small school guy. There's not many corners. That I played against maybe a couple, but these corners in DBS are, are definitely better than the ones that I've played. So. I would say that I've improved. And that's all that I got out of this was improved, then I think it was worth it. We'll just, you know, we wish you the best of luck, like I said, and you're just seeing, you know, seeing these highlights, I want to, you know, I was like giving credit where credit's due and I know that some of the guys are getting some of the big flashy headlines and stuff, but we always want to make sure that, you know, 98.9% or whatever of the players in the league are, you know, Blair's like you trying to get exposure, trying to get play time. So I appreciate you coming on. If there's anything that we can do to help you facilitate that moving forward, let us know. Definitely. Yeah. Thank you very much. I enjoyed it. We appreciate your time. Thank you. Thanks man. Have a good day. You too. I'll pull. We'll go on tomorrow. I'll take you in South. I'll send you the link when it's up and they'll go on tomorrow. Audio drops like it overnight. And then the video usually gets posted about seven in the morning. I gotcha. Okay. Awesome. Thanks. Good luck. I played good this weekend. All right. Thanks guys. That was good. Yeah. I mean, if we wouldn't have. TSL or if we would've had CFL, that would have been like the main f*****g thing. So. Good Hoboken. Do you want to just come back there? We will have to say goodbye here, or are we done? Oh, let's do that. Okay. No re recording here. Want to take Brayden. Sorry. We're going to Smith. One of the things brain Smith for dropping in and saying hi and chatting about his experience so far with fan controlled football. Really nice, humble kid. Definitely looking forward to seeing a lot of great things from him in the future. Potentially maybe, you know, in an arena football league, maybe in fan controlled football, 2.0. Maybe even in the CFL XFL merger thing, that's going to happen possibly going away. I can't draw conclusions, but you know, Yeah, I just, I appreciate that again. That was the whole idea. This week was just, you know, I like giving credit, you know, we see he's won the last two games and I want to never forget that, but you know, you might have the big names and the former Seahawks and Marshawn Lynch involved and Richard Sherman, whatever. But you know, a bulk of the league is put up by kids right out of college or. You know, the people that are trying to get opportunities. And so I always want to make sure that we give spotlights to them as well. So. All right. So again, we want to plug this bright and reads week every week. Log-on XML show.com/youtube subscribe like our videos. Leave us a comment. Let us know what you like about it. XML show.com/review. Review the show on, on all the podcast. Format. Distributors. And also actual show.com/merch. You can buy one of these cool little shirts that I've got on one of the hoodies that Reed's got on. Of course the new comfortable hats that Reed bought for himself. Those are also online XML show.com/merch. We're good. That's all I got. We'll see you guys next week. Well, we'll read, we'll see you next week. I will be absent getting the oral surgery done. So read, we'll see you next week and maybe read we'll bring a special guest host in that will do way better than I could ever do. And I'll just be replaced. That'll be the end of that. Yeah. I mean, Paul's basically playing through handicap right now. I mean, it's like, yeah, it'd be like playing through through Obama ankle or something. I mean, Paul is really podcasts and through the writing through the world of her right now, It hurts when I talk. That's the, that's the worst thing about having a serious injury is like, it hurts when I talk and I, hopefully I had my a B game today instead of my game. So we appreciate all your listeners, all listeners, all the Watchers on YouTube. We appreciate you. And Reid will see you next week.