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Welcome to the Big Sui, presented by DraftKings. Why are you listening to this show? The podcast that seems very similar to the other Dan Lebitard podcast.

I'm sorry. I'm not going to apologize for that.

In fact, the only difference seems to be this imaging. I have been tempted in restaurants just walking past tables to grab somebody's fries if they're just there. That hasn't happened to you guys?

I've done it.

And now, here's the Marching Man to Nowhere, Fatface, and the Habitual Liar.

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Something that we talked about yesterday that we skipped right past, and I didn't expect to then see Jonny Manzell talking to Shannon Sharp about it later in the day. I don't know how we stumbled upon it. It was not the Jimmy Garoppolo story that largely gets ignored. He's got a two-game suspension for prescribed medication. That is being described as a performance enhancer. And we, yesterday, just soared. I said flippantly, cocaine has to be a performance enhancer for a singular game, right?

You brought that up when we talk about Maradona.

Okay. Yeah. For a single game, I would think cocaine is a performance enhancer. But we have some Johnny Manzell sound, and I had never heard it put quite this way. Johnny Manzell is talking to Shannon Sharp, who's doing a good job of getting good guests and just giving them the great deal of room that people want to hear from them. Johnny Manzell gave up more in this interview. He was making the rounds during the selling of his documentary, but he hadn't put anything quite like this. And it was on the follow-up from Shannon where he's asking him how before football season, he goes from 210 pounds to 170 pounds.

I was 210 pounds when I left Cleveland. I was 170 pounds sitting in Vegas that August. That September, October, whatever it was later in that year. How do you lose 40? How do you lose 40 pounds? You're on a strict diet of blow.

And that's what it felt like when he was in Vegas. I feel like a lot of people were watching that and seeing all the spiraling in it. But I would say, and I ask people, I'm not obviously a cocaine user. I'm scared of ever even trying cocaine because I have some addictive impulses, and I know myself well enough to know that that would be a particular horror to be addicted to cocaine. Expensive, too. Over time... Thank you, Tony.

I've been told.

Over time, it is in no way a performance- Think about all the money you're saving on food. Yeah, that's right. Especially me. At Lebitard's show, put it on the poll, is cocaine a performance enhancer for a single game? Yes or no? What are your thoughts there, Rameen?

My thoughts are no, man, because your brain's going at 100 miles an hour, although it could be a performance enhancer in terms of quick weight loss.

No, but what What if people take Adderall for focus? You mentioned Ocho Cinco. He said he used Viagra as a performance enhanceer because of how much clarity it seemed to give him.

No.

I didn't believe him when he said that.

I don't know whether I believe him or not.

Let's do a quick Google search real quick. Cocaine as a pre-workout: In extreme danger.

Yeah, I'm glad someone's doing a responsible thing. Who wrote that, though, nerd? Also, if the blood is not going to your- It's a substance abuse treatment clinic. How is it making you more clear-headed? You're getting less blood flow to the brain. You're getting it to the other head.

All I'm thinking about is clarity about one thing at that point. Yeah, but post that. Oh, that's true. No, Here's a question for you guys, though. Have any of you ever done Adderall?

I've done a half an Adderall once, and I told myself never again. The anxiety crash that I had afterwards took me weeks to recover from.

I've done Adderall one time. It's the most hilarious story ever. This is during the pandemic. I'm trying to write, and I'm not focused enough. And so my buddy says, You've tried Adderall? I'm like, No. I was like, Oh, no, you got to lock you in. You'll be all focused. All right, cool. So I'm sitting down, I'm about to write, and I'm feeling I'm unfocused. Oh, you know what? Let me try this Adderall. So I pop it, and I'm waiting for it to kick in. I'm like, While I'm waiting, I might as well order lunch. So I start saying, going to Uber Eats, and I'm like, Oh, Chick-fil-A. I haven't had Chick-fil-A in a while. I'll get some Chick-fil-A. So then I'm like, Wait a second. Is it faster for me to go pick it up or order it? And I'm like, I'll just go pick it up. Then I was like, Is the Chick-fil-A... I'm pretty hungry. I want nuggets, but I also want the sandwich. Is it cheaper to get the sandwich meal with the nuggets on the side or the nuggets meal with the sandwich on the side? And I'm doing all of these calculations in my head, and I'm like, Oh, my God, it's the Adderall.

It's the Adderall. It's making me do this. It took me to this crazy, crazy next level of just mental acuity. You know what the downside was? Didn't write a word. I could not. It did not help at all.

Just to be clear, the performance was enhanced in this regard when it came to you and Adderall. You went down to write something and instead ordered a sandwich.

It gave me the wrong performance in Hazard.

He had to figure out if the the Nuggets and Sandwich Combo is cheaper, or the nuggets and sandwich combo was cheaper.

It's too- What is that movie about a pill with Bradley Cooper? Limitless.

Is that what I thought it was going to be? It's just modafinil.

I thought it was going to be...

I'm sorry? Limitless? Look. Come on, man.

I don't know.

I don't know. Is that a pupil starts to constrict and everything. Oh, man.

I like that movie. Put it on the poll. Did you like the movie Limitless?

I don't really have a lot of personal experience doing Adderall, but I was recently having a conversation conversation with Lehman about caffeine before a workout because everyone knows I really, really like Espresso, which has a lot of caffeine in it. I tend to take an Espresso shot before I go to Pilates class. I was asking him if he thought that that was dangerous for my heart because it makes your heart beat faster. It makes your mind race a little bit. Then I realized that Pilates, every single woman in my class is drinking a Celsius while they're there. I feel like one shot of Espresso is not that bad, right?

Lucy, can you tell me what nick Saban's comments here were recently about running the entire sport about being ready- Transition.

Was he talking about cocaine?

I thought nick Saban's on coke? Good Lord. Is he on Adderall?

I saw that Lucy saw the way that Jessica was talking and wanted a part of the microphone. And so I wanted to include her.

Well, she did the Dan Campbell caffeine thing once. Lucy, tell us how that was. Did you work out afterwards?

Oh, that went so bad. I could not work out afterwards. That was maybe the worst day of my life. Just an absolute terrible idea. And I didn't even do the full Dan Campbell, like double Starbucks drinks. I did a more mild version of it because I'm a lot smaller than Dan Campbell. I was like halfway through the second drink and I was like, I am going to die. I'm going to die. And I was posting updates on TikTok, and I had a doctor reach out and was like, Girl, you got to stop doing this. This is a really, really bad idea. And then I pretty much just shit my pants. Terrible day.

Dude, that's the first time I had a vodka Red Bull. I didn't know Red Bull had caffeine in it. So I was doing vodka Red Bulls. It was an open bar. I'm like, This drink is amazing. And when I got back to my hotel room, I literally just sat there and vibrated. My entire body was just shivering with my eyes wide open. I was like, But I'm so tired. I want to go to sleep.

Yeah, I was curled up on the bathroom floor, and it was 2021, 2022. Covid was still pretty prevalent in LA, and I was like, I need to go to the hospital. I feel so bad, but I cannot with a straight face be like, Hey, guys, I'm here because I wanted to do a funny little TikTok video. I was like, I'd rather than face the embarrassment of that. So I sat there and then I went to a friend's house and I told her everything that happened and we were supposed to go on a hike. She was like, Girl, a hike? I know. Bad call. We did not go on a hike. It was a really tough day. I do not recommend trying the Dan Campbell coffee challenge.

Dan, to answer your question, ultimately, I think if you're an experienced cocaine user, it's a performance-enhancing drug. If it's something that you're a novice to, it takes you a while to understand how your body reacts to these stimulants. So in the case of Diego Madonna, that's drinking water for him. Him using that gives him that edge that he can keep going. It's like a marathon runner. Instead of drinking water as they give it to you, smack a little, you know what? And then you keep going.

I like his explanation. Do not take my advice from the show.

Did you want the answer? No, that's the answer.

I did see video. I don't know what was the documentary I was watching about Maradona. There is video of him doing somebody on the field running onto the field and giving it to him, him using it during a game, just on the middle. He's a starter. It's not even on the sidelines.

That's the Maradona documentary, the excellent Maradona Document. One of the best sports documentaries ever. I know we were talking yesterday about The Last Dance. It's not a documentary, it's a commercial. The Maradona Document is a documentary. You should watch it for sure. Also, it'll solidify how he is the greatest Argentine player ever.

Wasn't it an All-Star game that he did it in? Where they ran onto the field and gave him the bag of Coke? I think it was an All-Star Game.

An equipment person brought it to him and he just snorted it during the game. You mentioned excellent documentaries. The Rock is now doing one with Rick Flair, and I thought Rick Flair had already been done correctly. It's on Netflix. Is it a documentary? It's a 30 for 30. This is a biopic.

All right, so that's different. Yeah, no one's actually, how do you try to replicate Rick Flair's natural charisma on the screen? Because what you're going to be compared to is so out there. I think I watched the Iron Claw, and I really liked it. I thought A24 did it. It's hard to like that movie because it's really tragic. If you're familiar with the story of the Von Erichs, it's a bit of a bummer to watch. But the movie is almost entirely ruined because they just did such a poor casting of Rick Flair. They should have cut it out of the entire movie.

Would they cast a black guy?

That would be better.

That would be pretty good.

It would actually, in terms of what Rick Flair was going for with Charisma, it probably would have been a lot better than what they ended up landing on, which was terrible. You have this blanket of a Rick Flair just going through a famous promo, and the entire time you're just comparing it to, if you're familiar with the source material, who's not familiar with Rick Flair? He's one of the most recognizable people on the planet. You're forced to say this pails in comparison to the real thing.

Is Rick Flair one of the most recognizable people on the planet? Put that on the poll at Lebitard show. His life is unrelentingly interesting. I mean, struck by lightning, plane crash. You made me think of it when you said, Well, are they going to do the real story? Because the real story is dirty. The real story, you will find out stuff you do not want to know.

Executive Produced by The Rock, hell no, it's not going to be the real story. What are you talking about? You think The Rock is Why are you going to do a biopic about a fellow wrestler that's going to have this film?

But why do the story about Rick Flair unless you're going to do it honestly? The best version of that story is the honest one. Money.

Lots and lots of money.

I don't think it. The one thing in Rick Flair's past is a plane ride from hell, where, according to first-hand accounts, he walked. They were on a tarmac for 12 hours with an open bar. They went through several crates of alcohol there. At one point in the flight, he got up, put on his robe, and only wore his robe, and essentially did meat spins in front of flight attendants. He talked some about that, but that's the controversy in his past.

Meat spins? I'm just sure I'm sure there's more controversy than that if you were coming up in the '80s in wrestling.

I can understand. Dan, I'm a bit of a student of the game. When it comes to Ric Flair, that is about the worst controversy there is from them, and I don't think that they would have trouble touching on that. I probably should use a different word.

I don't want to be touching on the meat spins.

I think all of wrestling has a pretty big public reckoning, and they dip their toes into it when the Me Too stuff was going on. There was a wrestling version of Me Too, but a lot of open secrets, a lot of people, a lot of rumors, innuendos, and whispers never really quite bubbled to the surface. And I think the Vince McMahon stuff is now acting as an on-ramp for a lot of these really brutal stories, covered up rapes, just terrible stuff that's now getting the proper amount of attention.

We were so close to getting that nick Saban information Question from Lucy. We were right there.

How much coke does he do, Lucy?

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Don Lebatard. Many of you, by the way, are writing in and you're saying, Dan, quit being so mean to co-hosts that you always deem incompetent. That's the formula, man. Me being mean to the co-host is what allows Stugatz to take a very wealthy vacation right now. Stugatz. It's a winning position for everyone but me. Haven't you guys not figured this out yet? That's the whole thing is me being a rotten straight man as everyone else gets to be incompetent, then I yell at them for being incompetent. Here's the miracle of it. It's the magic elixir. Bad, which is the only thing Greg Cody can be, becomes good and lovable. It's because standing next to obnoxious strident me makes everyone look that way.

The brush with death helped. Yeah, that was planned by me. The whole thing was contrived.

This is the Dan Levatard show with the Stugats.

Lucy, I want those Saban takes, and I want yesterday's Love is Blind takes, too. I want both of them. You don't seem like you're yourself today because you feel like you're saturated in whatever gross thing you did yesterday with Love is Blind, and you don't seem like you're quite as energetic, champagne bottle opening effervescent as you usually are.

Yeah, I lost a ton of brain cells yesterday. So we wanted to talk about Love is Blind this week. Everyone has been talking about it out there in the main area. I was getting serious FOMO. I was like, All right, fine. You know what? I will sit down. I will contribute. I will work hard. So yesterday, left work, went home. I logged in to Netflix. By the way, got kicked off my dad's Netflix. That's rude. They caught me. They were like, Girl, you do not live in North Carolina, and we can tell. So I had to pay for Netflix. Do you know it has ads now?

It has ads? What the heck? So yesterday, you're saying this is work, to watch Love is You went and bought Netflix. Did you charge the company for the work? Can I?

I don't know how that works. Yeah, okay. So I'm going to do that. You guys owe me $7.21 now. So I said, All right, I'm going to sit. I'm going to watch Love is Blind. I'm going to contribute. Six hours later, I'm like, Oh, my God, I can't function. My brain is rotted. Those episodes are so long. They're like an hour long. And I think I understand what happens. I don't really want any of them to find love is how I left that show. I was like, I'm not rooting for any of your happiness actively.

Love shows are always popular. Are they not? All of these things, Love is Blind is hugely popular on Netflix. Anything that is people seeking love or dating, all of these things are gold mines, correct?

Am I like Guilty Pleasure is the Bachelor. I like that show. I don't really root for love on there either, but I like it. I love the social experiment aspect of it of love is blind. No, it's not. It is so not blind, and we learn that every here. And so it's basically like, do you know the premise of it? I do not. Okay. So basically, they take these people, and this group of people was from Charlotte. So they all go and they are in these pod rooms where they're talking to one another, but they cannot see each other. And so basically, you go in the pod room and you go on these dates with different people. And then to get out of the pod room, you have to get engaged to somebody who you've never seen before. So you get engaged.

Is that how it works? There's a two week span where they're dating, right? So there's 14 men, 14 women. Two weeks? Yeah. I thought it was three days. It might be more.

But never seeing each other.

Never seeing each other. So they live in separate quarters, but they go to these rooms. Imagine a room like this, but the glass is tempered and you can't see through it. So you're having conversations quote, unquote dating people through the glass and trying to figure out, Hey, am I compatible with this person?

Do I like this person? Do I need to see a human being?

I don't need to see the person to fall in love with them. And spoiler alert, everybody falls in love. It feels a bit like a Stockholm experiment, but we'll get to that in a separate But in a separate time.

We're also going to get there serpent time.

A little bit, especially if I'm telling the story.

The experiment aspect of it, I agree with Lucy, is the intriguing part because you're speed dating strangers that you can't see, essentially. And the promise is that if you fall in love with someone, you will get engaged and then get married by the end of the series, which is maybe a month time period- It's like six weeks.ish, six weeks. And then at the altar, you will say, I do, or not say, I do. And that is the series finale of every season, is you find out basically people get left at the altar every single season of this show.

So you go into the pods, right? And then from the pods, you get engaged, and then they take all the engaged couples. There's a lot of couples that don't make it on the show, by the way.

And they just don't talk about them.

They just don't talk about them whatsoever.

All these random people in the room, you're like, should I know who that is?

They just take the best stories, right? They take the best 20% of the stories.

The best bad stories. That's right.

Because none of them are really that Yeah.

So they take them from the pods, then they take them to usually a honeymoon of sorts prior to getting out into the real world. So this time they took them to Dominican Republic. Usually, they take them to Mexico. So they have this week of, oh, my God, we're in love. It's the honeymoon. Everything is so great. And then you start finding out, oh, wait, you brush your teeth weird. Oh, wait a second. You chew with your mouth open. I don't like that. So they start picking apart the certain things of now that they're in person with each other, they start figuring out. So from there, then they take them back to their home city, and now they start living with each other for another two weeks until the wedding. So they start meeting the families, they start meeting friends, and then you start finding little things out because the whole thing is there's love triangles everywhere, right, Dan? So in this particular season, Jimmy and Chelsea-The worst.Sucks.Sucks. The worst. So Jimmy is in a love triangle with Jess, not that one, with Jess and with Chelsea. Jess has a 10-year-old daughter. Jimmy to me, didn't like that.

Chelsea is more... She's a flight attendant.

That didn't come up in their conversation?

No, it did, which is what turned him off. And he's like, Oh, I don't know. And then he goes to the next date, which is literally five minutes later to Chelsea, tells her he loves her, proposes to her, and they're off and running. So there's a love triangle now where Jess is, like Lucy said, conventionally attractive, right?

She's a very- Her words are mine. She's a hottie. Yeah, she's very TikTok-attractive. She's a very beautiful woman. Chelsea is also beautiful, but Jess would be considered more traditionally attractive than Chelsea is. Chelsea also had this little bit of an incident where he was like, What do you look like? She was like, I've been told I look like Mgk's girlfriend, who is Megan Fox.

That's Machine Gun Skippies inspired.

I know. I saw that trending. I saw that whole thing of now a lot of people making fun of who doesn't look very much like Megan Fox.

Yeah. They didn't really look like he... When she was like, Oh, yeah, that's what people tell me I look like, he was like, I would marry you right now. He legit said that.

That's the point right there.

Because love is so blind.

Because love is so blind. At that point, Dan, in his mind, he's like, Oh, I'm good. Whatever happens with the trick with the 10-year-old, it doesn't matter. I got Megan Fox waiting on the other side. I'm all right. And then he ends up choosing her.

Does the show end very often with something that feels like love being found and enduring, or is it all just watching the deterioration of love episode after episode?

Has there ever been a TV show where it feels like they're leaving with love?

I mean, The Bachelor does have a couple of success stories in their history, do they not?

For 30 years, they got four people that are still married.

I recently read that the only couple that is still together from season one of Love is Blind, which came out in 2020, which I believe is why this show latched on to people, because there was not a lot out, like we talked about yesterday. One of the only couples that is still dating or still married from this show is now in couples therapy. I I read that yesterday. It was very sad.

I want to ask you, Lucy, if you feel at the end of... Did you say 6 hours of Love is Blind? Yeah, dude.

Those episodes are so long. I only watched 6 episodes.

Do you feel the way the rest of us tend to feel at the end of Sunday night when we haven't moved from the couch after watching too much football for 10 straight hours? Because even the most diehard of football fan does not feel great at the end of Sunday night, Speak for yourself.

When I lived in LA and I did my college football Saturdays, which was wake up at 8:30 in the morning, watch Rutgers Northwestern at 9:00 AM, and then sit there till 10:00, 11:00 PM, finish PAC 12:00 after dark and go hang out with my friends. I felt electric. I had never felt better ever. My step count was in the hundreds.

That's different, though, because Saturday, you have the Sunday to recover.

I had to work on Sundays in my last job, so no. Boom. Got your ass.

You really did get my- You really got it. Your young person's stamina is a sight to behold. You are the one who can handle an overdose of football.

Dan, she's young. She still likes sports. Can we five more years in the business?

I believe that the more you love the sport, the more Sunday night hurts because you have to wait another week to get that particular infusion of the 10, 1 o'clock game.

Dan, I know that you feel this, too. So when you're done with those games, then you're like, Should I take a shower before the Sunday night game or not? Because you only got that 20 minute window. And then usually we do Sunday night live.

Get rid of that Mike Ryan inner thigh smell.

Right. So I don't know if I have the time because then I do the show and then I got to go straight to Sunday Night Football. So when Sunday night football is done and we finish watching Ram Seahawks and it's like, oh, it was a barn burner 1310. I'm usually finding myself in the shower with the water hitting me in one hand like this, leaning on the shower like that and just letting the water hit me and just being like, I did nothing today.

My wife hates me. I think there's an element of shame. You're saying it's about loving sports late in your life. I think the more you love sports, the more Sunday night hurts because you know you've wasted a day just with your guilty pleasure.

What? Wasted a day?

17 of them, Dan. I disagree. I was pretty sad this weekend. I was pretty sad. I'm not going to lie. All-star Game didn't hit the way that I wanted it to. I needed something Sunday night. I miss football a lot.

All right, let me ask the audience this. You guys think I have this wrong. At Lebitard's show, you feel how after 10 hours of football on Sunday, on Sunday night? Do you feel dirty or do you feel exhilarated? How do you want me to ask the question? Because I thought everyone felt this way at the end of NFL Sunday. You got your fix, you enjoyed it, but it was too much. It was obviously too much. It was not a productive... Lucy's looking at me I'm super- Too much?

This is your whole job, Dan. You should love this.

But I do love it while I'm watching it. I'm talking about when it's gone. I'm talking at the end of it, after it's over.

You're talking about the crash after the sugar rush.

See, I didn't get much of a crash. Living on the East Coast, I feel like I get less of a crash, actually, because I just go right to bed because it's so late and I'm tired, and then I wake up and I'm here the next day. I don't really get a crash. I usually sit, and after my college football Saturdays, and I sit there, and I think about everything that happened, and then I go listen to the shutdown forecast after dark. So then I get more college football, and then I get to think about what they've said.

I don't know.

I'm having a really good time. I enjoy my Saturdays with three screens not moving at all.

Mike, you feel good about yourself at the end of one of these football 10-hour binges?

No, but I generally don't feel good about myself ever.

Can we go back to Love is Blind for a second?

We're missing the point. Jimmy sucks. Jimmy is the worst. Okay, he's terrible. Lucy's only seen six of the episodes. I saw 789 last night with my wife. So there's stuff that happens in 789 that blows the top off of certain things. Certain relationships don't make it.

I saw the preview, so I think I know what's going to happen.

I don't know. I don't want to spoil anything for those of you that haven't seen because it only came out yesterday. But Dan, when you're in a love triangle, it's not even a love triangle. It's a double love triangle.

Trevor. We forgot about Trevor.

We completely forgot about Trevor.

A six-pointed star?

Yeah. What would that be called? Heptagon? Is that seven? Whatever. Not the point. The point is, okay, so If we can draw the diagram, Lucy is going to do it for you here. So we've got Jess, we've got Chelsea, and we've got Jimmy at one point.

And we got a Trevor in here somewhere.

Trevor was the other guy that was dating Chelsea. So now we have another triangle of Jimmy, Trevor, Chelsea.

Trevor is the guy who is like, Everyone judges me because my muscles are so big.

He's to the right-hand side if you're watching on YouTube. If you could see Jimmy here to the left-hand side, a bit of a very poor man.

I didn't know Megan Fox was on this show. Yeah, right?

A very poor man's Christian McCaffery. Very poor man's, like goodwill Christian McCafrey.

I don't see that at all. Okay, now he's going to go on a dating show and be like, I've been called Christian McCafrey. We're all going to roast him.

Timu, goodwill Christian McCaffery to the left. There's a lot of things happening. We need to go to the next segment.

She looks like the Millionaire Matchmaker woman. Does she not?

I don't know what that is. What is that?

Is that Megan Fox? That's Megan Fox. Don Levatard. All All of us who were watching college football elevated everything the weekend was because we missed football in general so very much.

You didn't watch the ending of UTEP Jacksonville State.

It was awesome. A daisy. Boom.

Stugatz. It's such a lane for you. Just everything in college football is awesome. Any single thing that happens, she gets deliriously happy about.

Don't you miss viewing sports through that prism, though?

I'm envious I love Lucy. I wish that I could still be happy. This is the Dan Levatard show with the Stugatz.

I mean, darted out to do oddball. You can catch that Tuesday through Friday with Charlotte Wilder. Love his basketball stuff and his unusual stuff. He's happy to have sat out the last segment because he has no interest whatsoever in Trevor, in Chelsea, and Love is Blind at All.

The only thing I know about that show from This season is the woman who says her friends told her she looks like Megan Fox.

People told her, not her friends. People.

That wasn't Megan Fox?

That's the segment that we just did about that.

I just told the behind-the-scenes folks over here that she looks more like Joe from Family Guy than she does.

Nothing will ever go more viral than a million people telling a woman that she doesn't look like a hot person who she said she looked like.

I mean, there is a resemblance.

But that's the worst part.

They're white.

That you walk around in life and your friends tell you something, you're like, I could see it, or whatever. What usually would stay within your friend group and maybe a couple of people you meet along the way now is put on display for the world, and the world is ruthless and merciless.

Yes, of course. The internet is ruthless. And if Stugatz was on one of these shows, he'd be telling people he looked like George Clooney. Because it's love is blind and you got to sell yourself. The thing that I wanted to talk to Amin about, though, in terms of selling yourself, because I really do find fascinating for reasons that many of you are probably finding off-putting because of how often I'm talking about the industry. But you know at this point that first take has gone from the most criticized show that ESPN had to now a real kingmaker in a space when all of these media members are creating their own content islands and businesses. The career of JJ Redick has been fascinating me to watch for a number of different reasons. And keep in mind, JJ Redick had his choice of all the jobs he wanted in basketball, all of them. He could have been a coach if he wanted to. That seems like a nightmare compared to what he's doing. What he's doing, very smartly, using first take as a tool is being on first take, being smarter than anyone at ESPN about basketball, and knowing that he's smarter than anyone at ESPN at basketball, and now condescending both the audience and the people with him on first take with a smugness that is unique to him because he's a Duke guy and he's known how to be hated for 25 years.

I want to talk for a moment about what he did yesterday, a couple of different things that he did. One, he goes on first take purposely using that platform the way Shannon Sharp is grateful for it while condescending it, while locking it, while on it in a way that makes Steven A. Smith turn up the argument and makes for good television, indisputably good television. Jj Reddick is good at television. Stephen A. Smith is great at television. Yesterday on the show, JJ Reddick pulled back the contrivance of the sports argument in a way that made Shannon Sharp yell at him because Shannon Sharp saying, You got to discuss the hypothetical and Reddick saying, I talked in the meeting about this. I don't have a place for disagreement here. I want to educate fans. I want to be smart. But you don't want the education, he says. When I put up a clip of nine straight Zion possessions, you don't want to see that. That's got 54,000 views. But when I say Doc's not accountable, 10 million views because that's what you want. And so I'm giving the customer what they want. And what he's doing is creating the career that all of these guys, Amin, who are just as competitive at 40 than they were at 20.

They're all trying to win the media game. And what JJ Redick is doing is he's now got some of the most powerful positions in sports to be smarter than others, to remind you that he's smarter than others, that he knows it, and to deal with the consequences because he's been a villain for 25 years of that wildly increasing his profile because now he's polarizing as well. He is a Duke guy through and through. And to traffic on it for profit in retirement, he's going to make more money post-career than he made during his career.

I don't know about that.

I'm going to check that one out.

A lot of money playing ball, man, especially those last few years in Philly and stuff.

That guy is going to have money. That guy, if he wants to work for 30 years in this business as Pat McAfee, he can do it. He's building his own brand. You guys got to pay attention to what these people are doing. You don't think Shannon Sharp is about to make more money than he did playing?

117 million, JJ Reddick. Dude, 117 million.

We got 50 million for Chris Cody.

No, he didn't see it.

No, when you break it down, Chris Cody didn't get $50 million.

Dan didn't get $50 million.

Jj Reddick is his own brand, our thing.

God's got all of the $50 million. We can walk this takebacks up.

I don't think you have to.

He made a lot of millions.

He's going to have a successful media career. Is he going to make $100 million on this side of his career?

He's just starting, and he's starting with one of the prime gigs in basketball. Doc Rivers wanted that gig. Mark Jackson was dying to get in that gig. He can coach wherever he wants. The rest of his career is going to be whatever. You can argue with me with the semantics, or you can argue with me by $40 million. My point is these guys are going to be just as competitive about the money post-retirement as they were before retirement.

Of course, I'm competitive about the money. We all are, aren't we? We're doing a thing here. We're all competitive, Dan. But I think the interesting thing to me about JJ is JJ has been doing this the whole time, where he's like, he's right. He's like, I want to do this stuff. I want to sit down with Thierry Halliburton and talk about the thing Atlanta did where they vacate the left side. And then all of a sudden, you get a back screen over here by a Kongu, and then you get a wide open shop for a McDonald's. He wants to do that talk. But you know what he discovered? The same thing I discovered when I was writing for esbian. Com, I was like, Nobody gives a shit. Everyone likes to complain about, All you guys do is this and that. No one ever talks about the actual basketball. But the reality is the actual basketball, and this is my theory that I've run with for damn near a decade now, what I realized is Basketball is a game that is a low barrier to entry. In order to understand basketball, okay, there's two hoops. There's a team trying to score that way.

There's a team trying to score that way. You got to dribble. In order to get from one place to another place, you can't pick up your dribble and then dribble again. All right, I get the rules. Pretty much. People who watch a lot of basketball think they understand basketball. I get it. I've been watching basketball my whole life. The reality is they don't know what they're looking at. When people start to reveal to them how much stuff... So many people think they don't run plays in the NBA. Are you insane? There's all types of plays getting run. But when we start to reveal what's getting run out there, you have one of two reactions. Well, there's one reaction. It's like, Oh, man, there's so much I didn't know that's happening that I didn't realize it's happening. And so there's one of reactions, either, wow, maybe I'm not as smart as I thought I was, or two, man, you're full of shit. It's to lash out because the feeling of, Oh, I'm stupid. I'm not smart, is not something fans want. They watch the stuff that makes them feel smart. Kevin Durant is not a leader.

I'll tell you why. When has he ever led anybody? When has he ever won? That's an argument that someone can have a counterargument to and feel smart about.

You have done a record number of fake voices today, I feel like. You have done No, you've done seven or eight impersonations. The Murphy one was my favorite.

The shirt is just so bad. You know what? I can't take you seriously.

It wasn't wrinkled on oddball. The cameras in that room? Stop it. Way better.

These cameras- And I saw you trying to pull your shirt down.

We all saw you.

Then you just had the Victorian era sleeves going.

He was standing in front of the hand dryer in the bathroom for 10 minutes trying to get a steam on. It didn't work.

That is one of the worst shirts I've ever seen. You're totally unpresentable.

But But then, to my point, it's a sport, it's a game that people want to feel smart about because they feel like they watch it all the time. As opposed to football, where we have been programmed to know, Oh, this is so complicated. Spider Y, X, Banana, 2,0, Double Zip. Fans are programmed to think, Okay, so I don't know as much as these guys here, but I like crashes and stuff like that.

You look crazy. Put on a jacket. Have some pride.

I do have pride, bro.

We have sweatshirts. Just put something on.

You know how I have I don't find self-worth in what I'm wearing, Mr. Material. You should.

No. You really should consider changing your whole view on it.

My self-worth, my internal locus of control happens around.

You look totally out of control. You look like you're falling apart. No. It's not a good look. It's just really bad.

You know what? You do the runway stuff, I'll do the meat and potatoes, right? I'll do the real analysis. You are not a serious person. The analysis that people crave.

I'm embarrassed to look you.

You're breaking down backdoor screens. You're breaking down what coaches are doing and how that...

This guy's talking about fashion.

Impossible. You look like you do not care at all about cleaning this pool.

What?

Can you, as a group, explain to me whether you think the way nick Wright does when he talks about vanquishing his rivals? I've told you before, if you've been listening for a while, to me, the victory in this is being able to do it. As I got later in life, competitive became less and less important to me.

You used to be competitive at this?

At newspapering. This was born out of a competitive nature to prove to Hank Goldberg that he could do it better. No, I just wanted to have a voice opposite his in town because- A little bit.

A little concession. That's competitive. It's okay.

I remember the day that we beat him in the ratings. It was a big day.

That's fine.

Do you think writers don't have egos? No.

You bought everybody at the quarter deck a lemon drop.

Wow. Money back.

Power Line Road.

To answer your question, Jess, writing, yes. This, I feel like Dan... Maybe I just caught Dan at the right time, but it just feels like it's always been a labor of love. Let's have fun. Let's have fun.

But you say money. You were just saying for a second ago, we're all competitive about that. When I get accused correctly by the audience about talking the industry too much, it's only because I'm genuinely fascinated as people who are still coming up in it in some ways, whether you guys are interested in watching the people who are taking the most interesting paths to the pioneering routes. It is really hard to retire from your sport and make a broadcasting career. Draymond is one of the few to figure it out. I'm going to do this right now. I'm going to start building it right now so retirement's easier. I'm fascinated by how Redik has done it. If you told me when he was in college that he'd be able to pull it off, I'd say, no, he's one of the most hated people in the history of Duke basketball. That's the most hated of the most hated. There's no way.

It is a pretty excellent point. I take myself back to that time. But he's doing- I don't think I've ever really seen anything like that in college.

I told Dan that up until 2009, if you went to a Wizards game and the opposing team was on the free throw line, they would throw up JJ Reddick's face to make the crowd go crazy and boo.

But to be now in his 40s, the dude that he was as a player, which is he's going on first take and he's insulting everybody by saying, This is beneath me. Thank you for the platform. I'll use it for the moment, but I'm I'm going to show you how I don't agree with how you guys do television. You guys are doing this dumber than I want to do it.

But having said that, he does this shit all the time because remember when he said guys in the '80s played against plumbers and electricians and shit? He said that on first take. This isn't the first time JJ Reina can send some out-of-pocket, just Neanderthal sports take. Stop acting like you're above it, JJ, because you do that shit, too.

You're going to get clipped and you're going to be wearing that shirt, and he is not even going to click the thumbnail. He's going to be like, What the fuck is this?

Look at this guy. Look at what happened to him when he left the ESPN.

Can you spare a dollar?