You're listening to DraftKings Network.

This is the Dan Leviton.

Show.

With the Stugatz Podcast.

Yeah.

Let's.

Look at this! A deal has been struck. Business has been done. We have new partners around here and we are very excited. We don't want to be about all the smoke. We want to be smoke-adjacent. We're scared of all the smoke.

We know that- And don't embarrass us. Speak for yourself. Romance is.

Pretty cool.

All the cool reputation and you're already embarrassing us.

We're sports writer. We got the sports writer spirit. We go near the cool guys and write the fun things that they do and then criticize them and yell at them when they misbehave. We've got one of the original misbehavers. There he is. Look at that. Matt Barnes.

Those are great.

First words. $5 fine, Matt. That's going to cost you $5. Anyone around here who coughs into the microphone, the business is already smoking you. What if they're smoking you?

No, $5.

Really?

That's right. I guess with the new money I'm making, I'll be coughing a lot.

Well, I will tell you on the front end, so I don't put this on you, and I already told our audience this, that I am thrilled to be in business with you guys, and we are for a number of different reasons, but chief among them because you're one of the most authentic things going anywhere in media, not just sports media. People know that these two guys at the center of this thing, and Rachel Nichols, that they are about the- They're.

About the smoke.

Not just the basketball life, but they come from the street life and they've succeeded. They've conquered the basketball space and the media space. So I am thrilled. I don't know what you guys are proudest about what you've built there, but I am thrilled to have to be anywhere near what it is that you guys have built because I love that authenticity.

Well, thank you, Dan. I appreciate it. It's an honor to be who Jack and I worked throughout our careers, role players, solid guys, sometimes we get in trouble, sometimes, line-stepers. To be able to cross over this media space and first of all, find our voice and more importantly, found our footing, we took off with it. And to think four years later that we would be signing a partnership with you guys, signing another deal with DraftKings and the world as our oyster, so to speak, in this content space would have never thought it would be possible.

Matt, Dan was telling me that when he was out in L. A, you did some vibe test on Levitard. I'm wondering, after that test, why you still agreed to partner with us?

Captain Dan Sparrow. Yeah, weWe went out to the office, had us meet in one of the offices. We were running late with traffic, and we get in there and he has his glasses and he's doing something. We just want to go in there and kick the tires and see what Dan was about. Obviously, me working for ESP in the past, and Dan, I was a fan of the show, got a chance to come on him and His Father show a few times. I was just always a fan of the authenticity, the realness, and really what you stood for. You stood for more than sports, and that's definitely what Stack and I are. And sometimes it's caused issues, and sometimes we've been looked down upon. But to stand on what you believe has always been important to myself and to Jack and knowing that about you already, once we met and kicked the tires around and saw what you guys were about, I was excited. As soon as I left that meeting, I called Bryan Daly and told him we found some great partners that I know we can create some special content with.

I don't know how to do some business. I imagine that you and Stephen Jackson have gotten very good at saying no to people, cutting through bullshit. You've spent your entire life, I imagine, with people seeing that you're money, that you have money, and that they want money. So when you come in here, can you explain to me how you did this? Because I found the whole thing very intimidating. You come in and it's just you guys. I don't know them. And you really are there just to look at me and be like, Is this person someone that we want to do business with? Because we don't do business with everybody. We got to be.

Careful about it. It really is a massive upset that you passed this vibe check.

We're crazy.

No, again, it was really just to fill it out. I mean, we don't claim to be experts in this space. Dan, obviously, your track record to be for self, what you've done, and again, what you stood for. I'm always a student of whatever game I'm in, whether that's life, basketball, now this media space, I want to learn. I want to learn from the best. I want to soak up. I feel like I can add to any conversation through my life experiences. So we came, we sat. The second we left, we, all three were just talking about this like we can really do some good stuff because your guys' lens is different from our lens, but it's the same goal. So to be able to incorporate what you guys see and what you guys do and feel, and then add a player's point of view to a player's eye and mind, I think bringing those two worlds together, there's not... I don't know too many people that are doing that. And to do it under you guys' umbrella as a partnership and along with DraftKings, I can't wait to get to work.

I'm honored to be your mentor.

I.

Got you, buddy. Appreciate that. I got you. Whatever you need, I got.

You, man. There you go. For the uninitiated, what are you trying to do in the media space? Why is this exciting to you?

To create a platform for my brothers and sisters to tell their truth. Dan, you've been in the media for a long time. I was an athlete. There you go. Get it in. -yeah. -breathe it in. It's coming. I got you. It's coming to South Beach. I've been a player for a long time, and sometimes there's a rift between the media and the players. So when we started this space, we wanted to have players speak for themselves, people speak for themselves, and have a safe place to do it. Fast forwarding now, seeing how well that worked, we wanted to be able to create content now for our brothers and sisters in this space and help them create and build what we've been building for the last four years. So really excited about the slate we're building. Obviously, can't announce it yet, but when I can't announce it, Dan and someone you're close to, is Rachel Nichols, who has been a huge blessing to myself and Stack, really took us under her arm and broke down the game when we got to ESPN. So blessed to have her in our circle. But all the people were bringing as well.

I want to talk to you about your crew, but what are you allowed to say? I've done some reporting on this, and Rachel doesn't want to talk about some of this stuff publicly, but what happened to her feels like it was super dirty, conspired. Not just people involved, but The New York Times and ESP and not protecting her on something that may have been illegal. What are you allowed to say about what happened to Rachel Nichols?

I could say it was unfortunate. I can say that we wanted to give, because she was so special to us at the time then, I was working for ESPN. I had to strategically place this and play it and ask the right questions without poking the bear. And oddly enough, after the interview, it went viral. Everyone started talking about it and hearing what happened. And I got a call from the bosses at ESPN, wanting to know my angle and why I did it. And I explained to her. Rachel has been a dear friend of mine, and she gave us a tremendous opportunity to learn underneath her. And she was always there for any questions or anything we had along this space. When she told me what happened, I couldn't believe it. And I couldn't believe it that ESPN and these other companies were just going to let her catch fire and not speak the truth. And that's what hurt me. So we wanted to give her a chance to speak her truth to the extent she could. But I think she got her point across. And now to see her back doing CNN, us getting a chance to work with her, her coming with us on this new deal, I couldn't be happier because she is a you know her as well as I do.

She's a great person, and she got a bad rap. And only one side of the story was really told. And that's the the side that was telling that story was a huge machine. So regardless of what she had to say, it wasn't going to be really digested like it should be.

Oh, but Matt, here's the trickier part for you. One of the reasons that I admire you guys so much is because you can almost say whatever you want in the face of whatever it is. But you got stuck between your friend, Rachel Nichol, someone you care about. And what ended up happening after that is that two black women got better jobs out of that. And you're in the middle of that as Black man trying not to be anti-Black woman as the entire machine falls on a journalist who worked for 30 years. I mean, it looks like she just got railroaded and couldn't say anything about it because it had just happened after George Floyd.

It was unfortunate because in the position I was in and the time I was in, I wish I could have got those three women together and sat down and really got to hear what happened. Not what the machine told you happen, but what really happened. What was promised to Rachel? What was in Rachel's contract, how Rachel was feeling, regardless of the color. This is an opportunity of a lifetime, particularly for a woman to be on the sidelines. It's not about color. It's about you gave my job to someone else because of the political climate the world was in, and I wasn't okay with that. I'm paraphrasing what we spoke about. It's just it's a lot, it's tough, it's unfortunate. I hope one day that those women can talk and really hear both sides, and for Rachel to hear how they felt, because obviously how it was taken, everyone is entitled to the way they digest something. But without knowing the whole story from the outside looking in, I understand how those women took it. But at the same time, I also found out the truth or what really happened in the situation. I'm happy that all of the people involved, all these women involved were able to land on their feet.

Rachel being the last, but the truth will always set you free. Now she's been able to land on her feet. I'm happy for her. Happy to call her a friend, happy to call her a mentor, and happy she's going to continue this journey.

With us. That's awesome. You're into this IST, the in-season tournament? You're into it?

I am. I get an opportunity to work for the Kings. So I was out there Monday when just sometimes the team has your number. The Pelicans were just too tough for Sacramento. They beat them three times this season pretty handily. But I have been. I'm going out there tomorrow because all the smoke is going to be out there talking to people. And I'm hosting an event for the NBA. So excited. Anytime you can get excited about the NBA in early December, that's always a plus. We know how long the season is and it goes through its ebbs and flows and sometimes are a lot more exciting than others. But we had people tuning in at the beginning of December to check this thing out and bring some enthusiasm before the Christmas holiday. So I'm excited I'll be out there and looking forward to checking out some games.

Matt, tell the people, because I don't think they understand what a burgeoning empire you guys are overseeing there, that tell the people, the army that comes with you. And obviously, they have credibility all over the place, but in basketball, especially, they can get whoever they want. Who's your army?

My army is a tight-knit group. Myself, Jelani McCoy, I went to UCLA with a guy named Dylan Dreyfus, who I found on Instagram who was just putting out great content all by himself. I found him one day scrolling, and he's been one of the biggest blessings ever. Young kid, really hungry, but also has his street to current culture and what's going on, but then also is intelligent enough to speak in any room. So he's been like my young prodigy that I've brought along and really excited about. And then a few other people that we can't announce yet due to rules.

That's fine. That's fine. That's fine.

We'll hold on to that. But yeah, it's a tight team, a small, flexible, nimble team that is eager, that has experience and in different backgrounds. I remember one thing Doc Rivers told me as a Los Angeles Clipper's, because we always struggled gelling and getting over the hump. I felt like we were our own worst enemies. But Doc used to preach us to be a star in your role. And that's what we feel like we have with our team at all the smoke productions. Everyone stars in their roles. Some roles overlap, but we're coming, we're hungry, we're prepared, we've done our research, and we're ready for this opportunity that I've wanted for a long time.

We're our own worst enemy.

It's not a great Doc River. What happened? It was better off air. Alex Jones? Did you get scared? It sounds like Alex Jones. It doesn't sound like Doc River. I wish Ameen were here. It's not Blake's fault. His Doc Rivers is exceptional. It's not Blake's fault. You don't do a Doc Rivers as well, correct?

No, I don't do a lot of Doc. But I had a good time with Doc. Some ups and downs with Docs, some world man stuff. Almost got into a fight with Doc when he was coaching the Clipper. And then he traded me at the very beginning of the trade deadline, literally 12:01, I was gone. But we were able to talk through that, get past that. He's been on all the smoke. I've always been a fan of Doc and excited he's landed doing some commentating and get a chance to commentate with his son Austin as well. So always sending love out to Doc.

Fight details, please, if you don't mind. I mean, we're teammates now. We're teammates.

Now, man, I'm here for you. I knew I couldn't just skip over that. This is, what year is this? This is 15, 16 team against Houston. I think we had just beat a tough young Golden State. Or maybe it's 14, 15. Anyway, it was one of the years. I think it's 15, 16.

It's all that smoking. It's all that smoking. It does.

Things at the time. No. Wewe were, excuse me, you guys passed it. So we're heading into the playoffs. Didn't have a very good game. I felt Doc took a lot of stuff out of me that he didn't want to say to the stars. And I'm all good with being coached, yelled at, screamed at. I grew up in that environment. I'm comfortable in chaos, so to speak. But I really felt like he took it too far during the film session and did some stuff and said some stuff I don't think he should have. But maybe he was just in a different place at that time. And I was definitely in a different place. So I jumped up out of my seating film and Deandre Jordan tried to grab me. Everyone went like they're doing the movies. And Doc Feet was over by the door and I was in the other corner. So I walked right past, looked at him and just went out the film room and went to locker room and I was pissed. I was like, Man, excuse my language, I'm leaving. But then I was like, no, I can't let him get to me and I can't let my team down.

So I ended up going back out there. I ended up going back out there for practice. He splits me from the starting team to the second team and put Jamal Crawford in the starting lineup and tried to tell me to flip my jersey. I tell him I'm not flipping nothing. These guys know where I'm at. I just went out as a pit bull the whole entire practice with Dog and everybody, mean to everybody, foul and everybody, but had a good practice. Next day, we have an early game, and I was still so pissed. I didn't sleep the night before. I was so mad. I think I could tell this story now because I'm not in the NBA. I hadn't really been smoking up to that point that much in the season because I was in trouble. I got caught previous to that. That day after practice, I found my cannabis. I started medicating, smoked the entire day, night, did not sleep. We had like a 12 o'clock game, again, I want to say against the Portland Trail Bladers. So we go in early for shoot around. I just get into a yelling argument with Doc.

I just couldn't let this lie to piss me off so much that he was wrong, didn't apologize. I couldn't let it slide. I went in on him, poked my peephe. We went to shoot around. We did shoot around. Then in the locker room, Mike Woodson tried to say something, so I got at Mike Woodson. I was ready to go at Doc and Mike Woodson both. The players held us back. But it ended up being that fiery motivation that teams need to put their foot on the gas pedal. Then again, no fast forward, something else happened in Houston with James Harden's mom, and we got into another back and forth about it. It was just a tough little month window for us to where things almost happened. Glad they didn't. But I was traded from the clippers. Sorry about that.

You left out the detail I wanted because I think if I were doing the journalistic vibe check on you, if I was trying to figure out how to do that, I would be asking you, what is the disrespect that makes Matt Barnes go from there to there when it's his boss, it's his employer? There's a detail. He crossed some personal line. You are a professional. You can be coach. You're leaving a detail out there.

Yeah. I'm a father. The way he was talking to me, how am I supposed to look at my kids when I let another man talk to me like that no matter what his position is. And it was really just, again, it was two of our guys on our team that weren't doing what they should have did. And we got embarrassed by Golden State. And he wanted to criticize the two shots I took all game. As much as I bust my ass on that floor, guard anybody, run through a wall, fight for anyone, do what I want. I should never be questioned about my shots or how many shots I took or even my shots selection because I'm just not that player. If I'm open, I'll shoot it. If I have a rhythm, if not, I'm going to make the right play. Took two shots that game. He criticized both of them and combat that with what he was saying on just nitpicking, I wasn't having it. I wasn't having it. I hope we have- Nothing that really escalated.

I hope we have no such a disagreement here in this partnership.

They know.

Matt, we are thrilled. It is exciting. And they're going to be traveling all over the place. They're already doing that. And they get all the biggest names. Everybody loves them. Thank you, Matt. It is a thrill to have you on board.

Dan, real quick. Just want to thank you and John Skipper, obviously, for taking the chance on myself and Stack and our team. And promise we won't let you guys down. I'm looking forward to this partnership. You are welcome.

Dan Levitard. Amino Hassan. Stugats.

Amino.

Hassan. This is.

The Dan.

Levittar Show with the Stugats.

Chris and Jeremy both, I don't know. What were you guys talking to Aalyase about out there? Aalyase is my assistant, and she is around here on Wednesdays.

She's great. She really is.

We just overheard you talking to her and we just looked at each other and we were like, Man, I got to get me one of those. I could get so much done in my life if I had an assistant. I think about the amount of responsibilities thrown at each of us in the shipping container, all the different things that we're doing, all the different plates that we're spinning. Chris and I were workshopping an idea. We want to borrow her. Yeah, that maybe similar to the decathlon that you and stew plan to have eventually, athleticall y maybe... I'm getting ready. -we could put on some, whether it's an academic or athletic decathlon amongst the shipping container to compete, to earn one week of time with an assistant, to just catch up on life a little bit.

Before we get to that, Tony, you are convinced that you would crush everyone here at everything.

No, it's just funny how Jeremy said academic as the thing that he was going to win. Just made.

Me laugh. I didn't say that. I just threw academic out there. I did think... Now, if it was a musical theater competition, I'd smoke all of you.

It would be funny. I was insane. I think Mike would beat you all of the canvass. Oh, no, you wouldn't, Jeremy. I had a number one selling album.

You could not beat me in a music off.

A.

Music off?

I'm off. I'm already better at this than you are.

What do you got, Jeremy? I got nothing. That's great. We are making content and we are talking on mics. What a great day we've had. Over to Jeremy now. He really wantsto be the assistant. That's all it is. He's really desperate to have an assistant.

He's got nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Nice vibrato, buddy.

Beautiful. That was really well done.

You were one of the first compositions. I was just trying to like second stage's Doc Rivers impression.

Oh, no, Blake's fault.

So much better without Matt Barnes here.

We need to have the.

Deca-so can we have your assistant?

No? Okay. We'll get back to that in a second. No is the short answer. I can't-An assistant?

It's unbelievable.

I mean, what's funny is that you used to be my assistant. You were so terrible at it, so very bad at it.

You had to.

Hire one? We had to leave ESVN. And you've created a job for another one that I can't get Metallark to pay. That one comes out of my pocket. -it's your company. -yeah, I know. It's funny how that happens. You'd think. You'd think I could get an assistant. No, you're going to have to pay for that one yourself. All right, good.

You're paying for yours? I mean, for Aalyase, you pay out of your own pocket? -yes. -that's a big mistake.

I feel like December is the month where I need it the most. I got a lot of shit to do. I got a Christmas shop. I got a lot of odds and ends, a lot of T's I need to cross, a lot of I's I need to dot. Sure. Maybe just for one month. How much does it cost a month?

I'm not going to tell you what the hell.

You're on.

Don't answer that. As your advisor, please don't.

Answer that.

Forget I asked that question, Dad. But you know I was giving it to you at one point.

What? You know what it pays to be my assistant.

Where was this segment going prior to?

I wanted to.

Talk college football.

I wanted to talk about college football and not even just what's happening in the transfer portal, not even just the insanity, which I assume most people are most interested in, that the quarterbacks. You can just buy quarterbacks now. Quarterbacks you've seen play somewhere else. They're all available. They ain't cheap, but.

They're all available. They're also 27 years old.

Well, there's a lot of musical chairs. I think we got to let the dust settle a little bit there because right now it is crazy for these schools, for these NIL collectives. It is all very second to second. But I want to talk a little bit about what the new NCAA President mentioned yesterday about how he's trying to build a new BOLD subdivision. I guess it makes sense. Yeah. It doesn't really make a lot of sense that some schools can directly fund NIL, and this would be a total relinquishing of the notion of student-athletes. This is the prose. It already is. It's very veiled right now, and there are still dying numbers of that notion.

It's crowdsourced prose. It's prosed financed by the community around prose.

That's what it is. And as someone that takes part, active part in crowdsourcing, I think the injustice still stands. The bigger injustice was that these student-athletes weren't getting paid. That has been corrected. But the administrations and universities and television entities making all the money on their backs, they're actually not poning up the dough. It is just crowds. It is the best type of capitalism when it's socially funded. Oh, this is incredible.

It's amazing. It really is the best type. The best and the worst. But it's art. What has happened to college football?

Socialist principles in free market capitalism. It's great.

It's incredible. It is. It's the most amazing business. Football is the most amazing business.

Yes, and I doubt that any future incarnation of college football would see, as we teased yesterday, perhaps administrators and coaches come back down a little bit in rates. I don't necessarily see that happening. Kudos to somebody that left a comment in our college football discussion on our Instagram page that cited an example. My mind was going there and went off like a light. He cited Pumas. Now, not the merchandiser, not the the athletic wear company. Yeah, not what Chris Whittingham would call Puma. Pumas is, for those that are unfamiliar, it's a soccer club down in Mexico in Liga Amex. It plays on a school campus. It is owned by a university. It is a professional team fully funded by a university. That might be the model here in the United States. This Bulls subdivision may be institutions franchising their football programs. We get one step closer to the pros that way. They have their salary cap, they have their budgets, they actually own this pro sport. You could see the NFL maybe getting involved. Like any franchise, you take on investors, maybe collectives have a bit of equity there. But I do think that something that is happening south of the border might indeed be the future of this sport and hopefully get us to a better place.

Because right now, this is not sustainable. You see what's happening to the quarterback positions, they're the marquis. A lot of kids are getting bad advice. There's not a lot of transparency. Kids that thought they were getting a certain number are getting the rugs pulled out. That's not fair. Also not fair for these collectives is you think you have a deal and all of a sudden the games change and we're leveraging family members now and we're leveraging.

Playing time. To make this business dirtier than it already was by just throwing all the money up in the sky and trusting any of the people involved to be following morals or.

Rules on this? I'm holding hope against hope that somehow college football will be a little less shameless than American politics, in that if you have full transparency of what kids are being offered, what kids are being owed, what kids have agreed to, there is a shame governing that'll go on. It's a transparency that I think would keep a very dishonest industry a little bit more honest. I don't know what the solve is for this and what's going on. Do you find it- I just know that right now it's unsustainable.

Do you find it interesting at all that basically what has happened until now is the University of Miami has an extraordinary medical program. I just saw it at work with my brother. The University of Miami is not known for that. The business has always been football that makes the university matter. The University of Miami has never been Harvard of the South, even though the president of the school under Jimmy Johnson wanted to make it that, it's the football program. Now we're just making it super overt. Here it is. It's not even about academics. The school is running a football program, and it is a monster in Alabama, and the kids don't have to go to class. We're just paying dudes because it's Minor League football.

You'd see some of these buyouts probably come back down to earth because if these schools actually own these football franchises, they're more punitive measures because right now they have to get out of jail free card, which is all right, boosters fix our mistake. They may still have that in a future incarnation. But I would not be surprised if it actually we'd remove the veil entirely and it does become a professional sport with ownership.

Don't live a tard. Were you guys building out the A-rod bathroom of your imaginations? Is that what I heard you discussing during the break?

Towels with an A on them.

You know the thing you slide the toilet paper on? That's a baseball bat.

Hey.

I like that. Stugatz. You think he actually calls it the throne?

Probably does. It's an.

Actual throne.

An actual throne? There's got to be a full-length mirror in there somewhere.

I imagine somewhere in his house, he has a replica of David.

But with his head on it.

This is The Dan Levator.

Show with the Stugats.

Can't wait to get excited about UCF signing an 11-year-old to join their school.

It's so brutal.

It's so dirty. It's so dirty.

What separates soccer from globally from here is that they just had an earlier start on it, so they figured out all this bullshit before you're coming around to it because American sports are in its infancy still, and you're realizing that academies might be the way to go. It's all going to become soccer.

But Mike, with soccer, here's the thing, right? Because what you made what I think of at the end of that segment is I had the visual image in my head of just basically capitalism, taking a nine-year-old and throwing him into a woodchipper so cash can spill all over the place. The academies in soccer start very early, and there are all sorts of issues in soccer with knees and heads and stuff like that, but it ain't football. And so the concerning monetization of all this stuff is I don't want to ruin like Portal Day and high school recruiting day and everything else, but do you realize we've all become Tom Lemming now? Everyone around football is somebody running a high school newsletter because we're so excited about that 16-year-old out of Dakota.

Yeah. This is not some dystopian future that's far off. In terms of college football, this is in the past. Usc years ago, like offered a nine-year-old. Once a year, you're seeing a story about how an 11-year-old is getting offered stuff. Now, offers don't really mean much more than the paper that they're.

Written on. They mean nothing in college sports.

No, it raises awareness and it gives you a bit of a brand. It's like a commitment these days. It just signals that you're going to be on the defensive trying to keep that hard commit. I'll believe a commit is locked in when they fax in their commitment on signing day. Fax. Yeah, they still use fax.

No, they have to do it on TV with the hat. That's it, for me at least.

Even then. Of course, Monty McLean had a cake that was in Caines colors for signing day, and then they just decided, Nah.

They're not still sending faxes.

Come on. David Sowne went to a signing day. He was an early commit to Oklahoma.

Does it still make the noise?

There were orange and green balloons behind him. He surprised even his family.

Speaking of broadcasting youth football, High School Football State championships on Valley Sports Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, Jerry, Emmy, Tashay with The Half-Time Show.

All right, go sit in the penalty box. Through Flem. Go sit out there. I don't want to hear from you anymore. What was that? At Levitard show.

I have some breaking news. It's terrible. It's not great news in terms of breaking news. But Zach Wilson will indeed start for the jets this weekend against the Texas. He's going.

To do his job. That was a really terrible story that came out working against him. I'm curious how that leaked. I'm curious how valid it is. I know you mentioned Beningo as Rob Sallas number. It's such a terrible look to not be there for your brothers in that locker room. Maybe that's overstating the relationship that he has with his teammates, given what we know about Zach Wilson and how it went last year for him. But that was a really bad look for a dude that already gets projected plenty of millennial young youth. You don't know how this game is played or how to manage those personalities.

I want to talk about this as more and more young players are going to come into the space with more and more mental health issues. I'm not saying he has them. I'm just saying the pressurization that we're putting around all of this is going to make it very hard for any of the people coming up through this pipeline to be different than the generations that came after them with what this relationship is with works, Dugust. If you're a young person working in New York and you're the quarterback of the jets. And Diana Rosini reports something that Aaron Rogers has commented on now, and I want to get to that sound in a second. But I imagine that so much of what's happening around all of the seriousness that we do around sports, winning, losing in the jets. I imagine Diana Rosini is getting swallowed right now by all manner of awful because Aaron Rogers is pointing out to people that there are leaks in the jets building. And beyond that, and he's complaining about it and giving more news to a Diana Rosini story that Zach Wilson was reluctant to play because he might get injured because they stink.

And I don't blame him for not wanting to play. Nobody would want to play quarterback for that team. But the mentality of football players is you go for your teammate and you fight with your teammate to make us better because we're all breaking our bodies out here and somebody who comes in with the Gen Z of like, Oh, no, man, what are we doing.

Around here? Aaron defends that. To me, that part is annoying. First off, if Diana Rosini, I'm glad you brought this up, if she reports something, it's accurate. If she's telling you something, it's accurate. She's one of the best NFL reporters that we have. I don't care what Aaron Rogers says. I don't care if he tries to discredit her. I don't care if he's mad at the jets. You chose the jets. You have played football for four downs for the jets, okay? Yep, there were leaks. Welcome to the party, pal. That's what our organization is all about. You chose this organization.

It's called John McLean.

Yeah, I did. It was weird. Green Bay has to be sitting back and laughing at all of this because he's the Jets problem now. The Jets are paying him $40 million a year, and Jordan Love is making a lot less. And the Packers, the Packers, and by the way, Jordan Love will be signed by the Jets in about 15 years. The Packers are about to go on the greatest stretch of quarterback play in the history of the NFL, from Farv to Rogers. And if Jordan Love is the guy, oh, my God. Mark Murphy, Goudicis, they're all sitting there. They are laughing at the New York Jets. And they should. We're pathetic.

If Jordan Love is closer to what he's looked like the last few weeks and he did at the start of the season. He's been great. Then it's unprecedented. It's like the Stealers with head coaching. They've got all the luck. But we've referenced this Aaron Rodger soundbite from the Pat McAfee show. Here it is.

When you use sources, and whether intentional or unintentional, try to assassinate someone's character like that report does for Zach, I have a real hard time with that.

Okay. So you're saying that that was an effort to maybe make Zach look like a worse human than a.

Potential people already view? I think that that was, how can he not read it any other way? I mean, you're basically saying that this kid is quitting on the team and doesn't want to play and has given the middle finger to the organization. If that's journalism now, if you're going to use sources and whoever that, I want to say the F word now.

You can't. We're doing journalism.

You can't, right? Yeah, that fool. That's one of the rules.

That's one of the rules. Whoever that person is that thinks it's okay, number one, to talk to anybody like that, I don't understand what you get out of that, number one. But number two, what is your impetus? What is your motivation to try and bury someone like that? And that's a problem with the organization. We need to get to the bottom of whatever this is coming from and put a stop to it privately because there's no place in a winning culture where... And this is not the only time there's been a bunch of other leaks.

Big city, a.

Lot of reporters. I get it. A lot of friends. I get it. They're not your friends. No. They're not your friends. Yeah. Not friends. They're not your friends. Even if they are, is that really what you want to be about? You want to be about using someone in the media to leak stuff to? In order for what? To get them to put your name out there for a job? Or if you're a player to get you a write-up, something. I think it's chicken shit.

Looking directly into the camera for effect is pretty powerful there. I'm with Aaron Rogers on this one. Me too. I think if it is indeed a true report coming from within the organization, that is someone trying to drive a schism there, and I find it really hard to believe, even knowing what we know about Zach Wilson and how he stepped into it in a postgame press conference and essentially lost his job last year because of it, I find it really hard to believe that Zach Wilson would be given the opportunity to start again and say no.

This is why I side with Aaron Rogers on this, and it's not sighting against Diana Rosini. It's just the tension we're in the middle of that we just talked about with Matt Barnes. Many of these people do not like us because we report the truth. Aaron Rogers's problem is not with the media, although the media is an easy target. It's the truth? It's his organization giving the truth to someone outside the organization. I don't blame him for being mad about that. That's not what winning places do.

But you can't get mad at Diana for doing her job.

She's reporting the news. He just doesn't like the media. Look, Stugat, the tension he can get mad at is, yes, absolutely. No question about it. These athletes can have trouble with the truth and journalism in general because our job is really inconvenient to them. It's not there to support them. It's not there to help them. They get buried under this when the truth gets reported.