CFB With Andy Staples, CM Punk In Studio, MNF Doubleheader, Tush Push On The Ropes + FAQ’s

13:27PFT Commenter:Are you worried about – so C.J. Stroud, sophomore slump.

13:34Big Cat:you have to defend cj shroud why why do you always have to make everything about jayden daniels and the commander i didn't i was talking about bo nicks no i always have to do it i was literally talking about bo nicks it's sick how big cat tries to inject jayden daniels into every i was talking about bo nicks who's struggle it's disgusting no one wants to hear people talk about jayden daniels is he hurt yes he's hurt but he's not injured and i'll say this I don't want to see Jaden this weekend. I think we should sit him. Because I'm still dealing with my PTSD, post-traumatic Snyder disorder, when Robert Griffin had a sprained knee, came back too soon.

14:14Big Cat:Everything was bad after that. Everything in the entire world was bad after that point for me. We got a good backup, Marcus Mariota. It's a revenge game for Mariota against the Raiders. And I think next week might be another. Yeah, I think it's the Falcons after that. We're right in a great situation for two prime Mariota revenge games. I don't want this to turn into an injury. Right now it's just a hurt. And it's a soft tissue injury.

14:43PFT Commenter:Okay.

14:47Big Cat:I don't want to see him play this weekend. Okay. That's what I will say. PFT's benched Jaden Daniels. Wow. Put on a quote card. No, no. No. Take great care of him. You benched him. No, I didn't say that. Take the best possible care of Jaden Daniels. And also, this is J.J. McCarthy's situation? He benched Jaden Daniels amidst a sophomore slump conversation. Did not. Did not. None of this is true.

15:10PFT Commenter:Bigger sophomore slump. J.J. McCarthy, Jaden Daniels.

15:13Big Cat:I'm saying take great care of Jaden Daniels. Jaden Daniels. Can I remind you exactly where this game is being played this weekend? Yeah, your stadium? FedEx Field on that turf. Every quarterback has gotten injured on that. Everyone. There's been. You can go down the list. Not even quarterbacks. Adrian Peterson. Running backs. Everyone gets injured on that turf. Please.

15:37PFT Commenter:That's kind of a problem because he has to play a lot of games there.

15:41Big Cat:Well, only until 2030. Okay. And then we're going to have RFK Junior Stadium ready to go. But no, I think it's probably a smart move if you were to bench him for this weekend just to let him get healthy. I don't want that. I don't disagree. And also, fuck you. Big fuck you to Hank. you piece of shit. Oh, fuck you, Hank. Here's two of them, Hank. Fuck you, Hank. In the Amon Ra conversation, when you thought that his celebration was him grabbing his hamstring, when I reacted like that to Jane Daniels, it was on the hit that his knee got hurt. It's every time he runs. No, the one that I got most upset about was the one every time.

16:18Big Cat:I mean, I can make a compilation.

16:20PFT Commenter:I could just do two weeks of the gambling streams and you crying when he just moves left St.

16:26Big Cat:Brown tore his hamstring off his bone when he was doing an awesome celebration.

16:30PFT Commenter:I said the words, uh-oh.

16:32Big Cat:Yeah, because he thought he was injured. Get down, get down, get down, get down. Oh my God, he's so good. Yeah, we're talking about C.J. Stroud. Nobody wanted to hear about Jane Daniels right now.

16:44PFT Commenter:I was trying to make a Bo Nix conversation, but yeah. So we did have a bunch of injuries. We'll talk about Raiders, Chargers in a minute. We did have a bunch of injury news. J.J. McCarthy out for two to four weeks.

16:56Big Cat:He's got a baby bump on his foot.

16:58PFT Commenter:Carson Wentz in. There's rumors that it's a soft benching.

17:05Big Cat:That's a rumor? Soft benching? That's a rumor out there. If it is, in fact, a soft benching. It was a quick injury report. I like the move. I like the move if it was a soft benching because he didn't look good at all. He really didn't look that good against the Bears either until like the fourth quarter when he played awesome. Don't get me wrong. He was awesome in that fourth quarter. But he looked like dog shit on Sunday Night Football. So, yeah. Carson Wentz almost won an MVP. Carson Wentz. We're being subjected to Carson Wentz. And I'm not prepared to have a weekend without Jaden Daniels and with Carson Wentz on my TV at the same time.

17:44Big Cat:And also Jake Browning versus Carson Wentz. We got Jake Browning, Carson Wentz. But I do think about Kevin O 'Connell And I'm like if anybody can fix Carson Wentz It's Kevin O 'Connell

17:54PFT Commenter:Yeah although Jason McCarthy

17:56Big Cat:Hasn't looked good But he didn't have to fix him yet Well he had him for a year Maybe now he has to fix him So now it's like let's get him in a system With accountability Trade him away Then bring him back I will watch Carson Wentz Because I'm a sicko But I'm not excited about Carson Wentz Well it's football You gotta be a little excited for Carson Wentz There should be TVMA when Carson Wentz is playing football And children should not be exposed to that type of behavior I'm excited to watch Carson Wentz

18:26PFT Commenter:It's always kind of a What the fuck is gonna happen I'm fired up for Carson Wentz What if he's good again

18:34Big Cat:Max don't do it What if he's good again He's gonna be annoying and he's gonna stink And he's gonna make his faces He's gonna try to wear a cool hat after the game Yeah

18:43PFT Commenter:do we have do we have a like if carson wentz stinks and jj mccarthy stinks is it a tired wired tired the vikings let sam darnold walk wired the vikings let daniel jones walk yes daniel jones looks awesome i i agree with that uh jj i convincing him to sit out for like a month if he doesn't have an injury is going to be tough yeah because that dude is even if he had a sprained ankle he's like i i will heal myself also it's just a very funny idea that he lost his fourth game ever and got benched yeah he's like what the fuck yeah because i literally have i've lost four

19:23Big Cat:games ever because you can play bad and win and then people just be like this dude's a winner yeah play bad and lose then you're like you are you are the problem yeah he's gonna be so nervous he ever loses again i don't i don't think if it's a four-week injury jj's gonna get back there in two Okay. If it's a two-week injury, he'll be out one week. He's going to bring in team doctor Jocko Wilnick, and he's just going to heal himself through the power of mental concentration and personal determination.

19:45PFT Commenter:Yeah. Or just Google it, how to be uninjured. Yeah, how to feel good. Yeah. Joe Burrow officially out for, what, three months? This sucks.

19:56Big Cat:Three months or more, probably the entire season.

19:58PFT Commenter:Probably need to get him an O-line. I saw a mashup video of Andrew Luck and Joe Burrow. That was a bummer. I don't want to think about that.

20:07Big Cat:That was a bummer. Didn't want to see it. They went out there and they did sign some quarterbacks, though. Yeah. They did not sign Jameis Winston yet. I don't think they're going to try to trade for Kirk Cousins either. Because the more I think about it, yeah, it would make sense from a football standpoint. Kirk Cousins is collecting dust on the bench for the Falcons. That would also require a team owner that would not mind paying millions of dollars for a quarterback. Right. When you also pay millions of dollars to Joe Burrow. And the Falcons could take some of that money and eat some of it, but I don't think they're going to eat the entire thing.

20:39PFT Commenter:No.

20:39Big Cat:And good luck convincing the Bengals to pay Kirk Cousins even like$10 million for this year.

20:44PFT Commenter:Correct.

20:44Big Cat:So I don't think that's going to happen. Jameis is the one that we want, but you can't always get what you want. And we've got Jameis at home because they went out and they signed Sean Clifford and Mike White. Oh, Mike White. Now their starting quarterbacks are – or their quarterbacks, I guess they're kind of all could be starting at some point. Jake Browning, Sean Clifford, Brett Rippon, and Mike White, they should not try to pass. They should just try to run the football. Because those four names, that's literally a Mount Rushmore. Like, hand the ball off. Do not try to pass the ball.

21:21PFT Commenter:Do we have any update on Justin Fields? No update. I also disagree with what PFD just said. Mike White could sling it.

21:29Big Cat:Against the Bengals. But now he's on the Bengals. he's got two good receivers okay he does with mike white cook honestly out of those four names i you you might get a mike white game yeah i i kind of agree with memes about that one yeah like if you're going to take a chance with one of those four well jake browning has had moments he's had

21:49PFT Commenter:moments yeah um all right the chargers raiders game uh chargers look awesome justin herbert It looks like he's so dialed in. The Raiders, that was, listen, I'm never going to complain about more football. There was a lot of complaints about how late the game was on. If you're going to have us stay up late, it has to be better than what the Raiders did. That 14-play drive that took like 10 minutes for them to make a two-possession game a two-possession game was mind-numbingly stupid.

22:24Big Cat:It was 11 minutes. It was 62 yards, 19 plays. 19 plays. And they kicked a field goal at the end of it to make it an 11-point game. And it made you question why you're watching football. Now, I have an answer for why I was watching football. Because at that point, I just wanted to see if Harbaugh was going to stick it to Pete Carroll at the end of the game. On his birthday. Which he didn't really do that much, and I was kind of bummed out about. But not because I don't like Pete Carroll. It's good for the league to have coaches that hate each other and act accordingly. but that was a boring game.

22:58Big Cat:Geno Smith looked lost. He couldn't throw the ball downfield at all. I think it was 0 for 10 on passes over 10 yards. It was gross. Yeah.

23:05PFT Commenter:Question for you, Hank. Yeah, transits of property. Yeah. We did this. I talked about it on Sunday, how the Vikings looking like the way they looked against the Falcons made me think even worse about the Bears. The Raiders looking how they looked against the Chargers, how does it make you feel about the Patriots? The Patriots' defense is bad. I mean, they were bad against Miami, too. It's their defense is, as of right now, horrible. So you feel worse. I knew it was bad. I knew their defense was bad. I said it on Sunday. But you wanted to see a little more out of the Raiders. The Dolphins aren't good.

23:41PFT Commenter:No, the Dolphins are very bad. And they lit it up against the Patriots. So that game didn't change my opinion on how bad the defense was.

23:47Big Cat:Can I give you some good news about maybe why you should feel good about beating the Raiders? we didn't but sure oh sorry they lost about losing to the raiders yes okay the good news is tom brady was in the booth giving the raiders all the intel about the patriots organization so the fact that you were even able to compete closely with that team knowing that they had perfect info about everything the patriots like to do that's that's probably good for you guys right

24:18PFT Commenter:Yeah, I don't understand this. This is just the media hates Tom Brady. People are just mad at Tom Brady. Okay. I actually think that last year I was like, it's overblown. The fact that he's got a headset on and he's been doing game planning with Chip Kelly two to three times a week. He's an owner. Crazy. But he also sits in meetings.

24:40Big Cat:How many owners are in the booth with a headset on?

24:44PFT Commenter:I'm sure plenty. At least one. Ursae. Ursae. Miss Irsay. Miss Irsay, our queen, Zach's queen. But, Hank, do you not see – so, last year I thought it was overblown because he also wasn't allowed to go into the meetings. This year, so – What do you think happens at these meetings? He asks them what – we've talked to, like, Joe Buck and Troy Aikman about these meetings. They go and sit down with the coach. The coach tells them stuff that is like, hey, here's how to make the broadcast better but don't repeat exactly this. But this is what we're going to try to do. We're going to try to, this is the guys that we think are really good.

25:18PFT Commenter:These are the guys that we're not so high on.

25:21Big Cat:This person's probably not going to play this week. This person's probably going to play. They give them background on what to expect in the game. Now, I think a smart team could use this to their advantage and give them bad info or just poison them when he's taken.

25:36PFT Commenter:You don't think the greatest quarterback of all time, the smartest quarterback that's ever played, can't figure that out on his own? But I'm saying he's calling the Bears-Cowboys game this week. and then the Bears play the Raiders the next week. Do you not see that as a little bit weird?

25:51Big Cat:Nah. Okay. And he called the Commanders game week one, and the Raiders are playing the Commanders week three.

25:59PFT Commenter:It's a little weird. I think it's overblown. Okay. Here's where... All right, so... Ride or die. Yeah, we disagree. I think it's a little weird, but here's where you could go, Hank, if you want to put on your tinfoil hat and little fuck ESPN. Ike ESPN set that up because they're trying to get him to not be able to call games on Fox anymore the NFL also tweeted it and deleted the call yeah but I'm saying ESPN knew it's Raiders Monday Night Football oh we heard that Tom Brady might be in the booth let's do an entire minute about Tom Brady being in the booth and talking to Chip Kelly now he's not going to be able to call games for Fox anymore that's what you got to go with but do you think they're going to ban him from calling games?

26:46Big Cat:No, I might. They're not going to ban him from calling games, but I think they're, they might ban him from the meetings. He's going to, yeah, he's going to be treated differently when it comes to, but again, I think a smart team could absolutely do some Sun Tzu art of war shit and just tell Tom Brady like the, the most wrong possible information just that they don't get that leg up. I,

27:08PFT Commenter:I, I'm confused. Like you do see that there's a little bit of an issue. you there if Jerry Jones was able to like if if if if the Giants and the Eagles were playing and Jerry Jones got to have full access to both of them they had to talk to Jerry Jones would you not be like that's weird no because it's not I don't think they're I don't think even even if there was no if he wasn't an owner I don't think the the teams are giving him that much information like that that much crucial information that could not be acquired in a variance of different ways All right, that point might be fair, but it is a little weird.

27:43PFT Commenter:I'm not like this is— It is not in the meetings. There's a million scouts and personnel people that can study all the film and get all that information any other way.

27:53Big Cat:I don't think that a Michigan man would do any in-person advanced scouting that was against the rules.

27:58PFT Commenter:I want it on the record. I'm not offended or think it's how could this happen. It is weird. It's a weird setup that he's sitting with Chip Kelly three times a week and then going and sitting with other teams. That is, by nature, very weird. What are you going to say, Max? It's like a thing that even former players are supposed to be biased as a color guy, and it's impossible for Tom Brady to be biased in any way. Or unbiased. Or unbiased in any way. Wait, so what's your point? Is that it's weird. I'm just going off of it being weird.

28:36Big Cat:Yeah, he was dovetailing on the accusations. You just said the color guys are supposed to be biased as former players. He can't talk very well. Unbiased. I mixed up words. It's one of those words like flammable and inflammable. My point was correct, kind of. One of those words like meatballs and salads. They get mixed up. They're both food. It's weird. It's weird. It's weird. Meatball salad is actually good. Admit that it's weird. Tom Brady. People like to just tear down Tom Brady. No, it wasn't Tom Brady. It wouldn't be happening.

29:03PFT Commenter:Tom Brady is the only one who probably could pull it off. Admit it's weird. No. Say it's weird.

29:09Big Cat:I will not. You know that it's weird. I will not. If it was weird, they wouldn't allow it. So I kind of agree when Hank says they're not getting the most perfect inside information in Intel. They are getting some stuff. There's some stuff that's put out that you can't get on film. Like, what? They'll tell some of the announcers what to expect in this game in terms of who's playing, who's not. That happens if you have a trust that's built up. So they're definitely not going to share any of that.

29:37PFT Commenter:But there's reporters that watch every practice, every snap. They hear all these reports. Right now, you're defending Tom Brady. This is all information that comes out during the week. Oh, this player didn't practice. This player practiced. They're high on this person. They're not high on this person. That doesn't come exclusively from these fucking meetings with the announcers. Am I allowed to make one phone call to ask if it's weird? And if the person says yes, you'll admit that maybe it's a little weird. It depends who it is because it's probably biased. Can I make one phone call? I'm just going to ask.

30:04Big Cat:I'm not admitting it. You're not admitting it? Who is it? I think I know who it is. Florio? It's got to be Florio. It's got to be Florio. It's got to be Florio.

30:15PFT Commenter:It's going to be very simple. Hey, you're live on Pardon My Take. Just a very simple question. Is the Tom Brady setup a little weird? Yes. Okay, thank you. Appreciate it, Mike. Bye. There you go. That's weird.

30:34Big Cat:Confirmed. He thinks everything's weird. Hank, right now you're defending Tom Brady's social calendar pretty much. You're like, he should have the right to sit down with Ben Johnson. Why do you care about that? What do you mean? It's just weird. I don't think that he – it's a weird thing that he's sitting down. If Fox and the NFL sign off on it, then who are you to say,

30:56PFT Commenter:well, Fox and the NFL, they didn't do their due diligence. I'm going to do the due diligence as a fan.

31:01Big Cat:All right, well, here's the difference. Clearly, if it was as weird as you say it, it wouldn't have been allowed. That's the job as journalists, Hank.

31:06PFT Commenter:Hank, here's the difference. Last year, I didn't think it was weird. First of all, last year, they did ban him from the meetings. I didn't think it was weird until last night when they said he's on the headset and meets with Chip Kelly two to three times a week. But you're already also knows ESPN. Yes, that's what I'm saying. That could be the galaxy brain one. But when he says he game plans with Chip Kelly two to three times a week, that's where I was like, well, this kind of feels weird.

31:36if he was just an owner i actually wouldn't give a fuck but he's also like helping out with game

31:42Big Cat:plans if he was like in the suite and like reading expense reports and like just hanging out and getting haircuts with mark davis yeah that would be not that weird that would actually be awesome but he's on the head he's literally on the headset what's the difference between him and Mercer. She's not a broadcaster. And she's also our queen. She's not broadcasting.

32:04PFT Commenter:I just don't. That's a very big difference.

32:07Big Cat:She's not meeting with the Miami Dolphins a week before the game and being like, hey, how's Tua looking? I don't.

32:15PFT Commenter:But that's all information. There's a million ways to find out how's Tua looking. Okay. He doesn't need to ask Mike McDaniel how's Tua looking. There's a million reporters that ask that every single day in practice. There's a million reports. from practice. This is how Tua's looking. He could know how Tua is looking or not looking without having to ask Mike McDaniel. Him having access to Mike McDaniel is not going to give him any more insight than he could find out from the press or the media or whatever during the week.

32:44Big Cat:Do you think that another coach would pick up the phone call and be like, hey Tom, yeah, let's meet in person if he was not working for Fox. Let's meet in person. I'll tell you about it.

32:53PFT Commenter:Yeah, the NFL's a brotherhood. I'm sure he has connections with a lot of these teams. That's true.

32:57Big Cat:It's a brotherhood. Mm-hmm.

32:58PFT Commenter:Right? Yeah, we always say that. All right. It's a little weird. It's weird. Just admit that it's weird. No. He's also playing flag football. He's coming out of retirement to play flag football. Grow the game. I love that. Grow the game.

33:11Big Cat:By the way, Mohammed bin Salman, if you're looking for a foreign correspondent, Hank will do it.

33:17PFT Commenter:Yeah.

33:17Big Cat:He will cover the Saudi Football League. I would love to.

33:20PFT Commenter:I don't want to get political or anything, but you know when the Saudis were like - You guys hate growing the game. their sports washing and everything. Credit to them, they kind of, they're doing a pretty good job. Because everyone just is like, yeah, I'll come.

33:36Big Cat:Yeah, it doesn't matter. Comedians, golfers. It's working. LeBron. LeBron. Us, if they ask us. Everybody. All the soccer players. I'll do anything for$100 million. Anything. Doesn't matter what it is.

33:50PFT Commenter:I just want to grow the game. Yeah, you do. That is what you want to do.

33:53Big Cat:You don't even need to get paid for it, right?

33:55PFT Commenter:Zach, by the way, we did a bad job. Did you have any thoughts on the Bucs game? A couple takeaways from the Bucs game. I do think Baker did a great job kind of spreading the ball around. Hit seven different targets. That was nice to see. We're kind of deep in the backfield. We got Bucky and we got Rashad White. That was nice. Hit the rookie again for another touchdown. It's a little anxiety-inducing with these last-minute touchdown drives, back-to-back weeks. But then when you get to watch it kind of like in a vacuum, once the stress levels are gone, you're like, that was damn good football. That was awesome.

34:25Baker Mayfield is a certified dog and I just family man

34:30PFT Commenter:leader of men dog Baker Mayfield doesn't have a bachelor pad nope

34:36Big Cat:family man I do think that we've overused the dog term too much but Baker is a guy that he is if there's one dog in the NFL it's Baker

34:47PFT Commenter:it's so true we have gotten to a point where everyone's a dog but if we can just eliminate no one gets to be dog except Baker He's the one who gets to be dog.

34:57Big Cat:Yeah, he is the current reigning dog.

34:59PFT Commenter:Yeah. Last NFL thing, and then we'll talk a little college. We have Andy Staples as well. The tush push is done.

35:09Big Cat:It's reached the point. I think it's worked exactly as designed by the NFL. Float out the trial balloons. We're thinking about banning the tush push. Have a vote. Oh, the vote was really close, but then Jeffrey Lurie's speech about it being a wet dream as a 13-year-old boy. and Jason Kelsey walking in with no sleeves on and giving an emotional speech to all the different owners or the coaches on the competition committee. That was the setup, and now we're getting everything that we need, all the ammunition necessary at the end of the season for it to be banned. This is the last season of the Tush Push.

35:46Big Cat:And I say that as a person that wants the Tush Push to stay in the game. It's a football play.

35:52PFT Commenter:It's going to be officiated differently for the rest of the year because you had obviously the broadcast came out and they're like, we're sick of this. Blandino. They're like, hey, it's hard to officiate. There's all the screenshots of all the Eagles players being off sides. The NFL then DMC ate all those clips. I don't know if you saw that, Max. Yeah, they're going around. I agree. And then last night, I don't know if you noticed, but when the Chargers were backed up in their own end zone and they were getting ready to do. a little bit of a push, the refs came in and basically made all the linemen take a half step back.

36:28PFT Commenter:So they're already officiating it differently. It's over. Are you worried, Max? I think we're still going to get them. I just like our front five better than their front five.

36:42Big Cat:Okay. That's fair. And also, in order to get to a position where you're tush pushing, you do have to get close to a first down. So it's like the Eagles are very good at it, and they designed their offense to be able to get in positions where they're making, you know, it's third and eight, third and one, or sorry, third and two, getting eight yards, third and one, and be in a position to tush-push. It's, listen, it is sour grapes for everybody else to be like, we can't stop it, so let's change the rule. That said, they are cheating at it, at the play. They're not cheating if the refs don't call it.

37:16Big Cat:Yeah, you're going to start calling it those days. That's fine. Say it's weird. They're going to start calling it. Say what's weird. Tush-bush. It's a play. Also, I absolutely love the fact that this is just one more point of information that we can use to be like, the Chiefs are ruining football. The refs are. It happened to the Chiefs, and now nobody can do it anymore.

37:39PFT Commenter:Yeah. But it also feels like the NFL, last year, they did it because of player safety, quote-unquote. Now they basically have a new line that is going to work. It's an impossible play to officiate. That's all they have to say. Yeah, the player safety thing made no sense because no one ever got hurt on the play. No sense. But it's hard for the officials to do their job. That will absolutely work.

38:03Big Cat:Because there's so many dudes and you can't see where the ball is and it all happened so fast that you can't see if they false started. Yeah, that's the pretext they're going to use. It will be banned.

38:13PFT Commenter:I think it's lame. I'm over it. I don't think they should ban it, but it does feel like it's going to happen. No, I'm curious to see how it's officiated this week. I still think we're going to get it. I hope that they move everyone back and they're like, all right, this is going to be the thing that finally gets them, and then Jalen Hurts still just fucking moves those thighs up through the middle and gets an extra yard every time.

38:41Big Cat:Hank did not like that. He's got strong legs. That was weird. Okay, I can admit that was weird. I can admit that was weird. No, fuck it. No, I stand by it. He's got big legs. He's got strong legs. Those meaty thighs. Just slide them right up in there. Yeah. We got some strong legs. You do have strong legs on your team. And you guys have the Rams this week, right? Yeah. Yeah, our schedule is a gauntlet.

39:07PFT Commenter:By the way, bad job by us, hand up, on Sunday night. it was the first time since 2020 we had a bird gami. All five bird teams won on Sunday. Yep.

39:22PFT Commenter:What are you thinking? Ever? That was the first time ever? Oh, I missed that part. I thought you said ever as well.

39:28Big Cat:Yeah, Big Cat didn't say 2020. USF.

39:32PFT Commenter:USC, USF.

39:35Big Cat:No one's ever done the bird gauntlet though, right? Nobody's ever beaten all the bird teams in a single year. I don't have that.

39:42PFT Commenter:readily available.

39:43Big Cat:I don't think that's ever happened. Yeah.

39:45PFT Commenter:Well, is it...

39:51Big Cat:Because James had a shot at it.

39:54PFT Commenter:Yeah. Is it possible? Because it's four NFC teams, right? No, the Ravens. No, I'm saying it's four NFC teams in the Ravens, so it wouldn't be possible. Would a team play? Yeah. There have been teams that play. Oh, I guess, yeah, an NFC team could play all four.

40:13Big Cat:It would have to be an NFC team. Yeah. No team in the NFL has ever beaten all five bird teams in a single season. Have they been scheduled all in the same season is kind of what I was asking. Well, this is big. The Rams are scheduled against every bird team this year. Wow. Wow. So this is a massive game. This is a tipping point game. Wow. If the Rams beat the Eagles, we might have the first bird gauntlet. Wow. Would that be special? So special.

40:45PFT Commenter:Although they had to play the Seahawks twice. Yep. Because that would ruin it if they lost one of them and won one of them. But they would still beat them if they won. But it doesn't.

40:53Big Cat:Nah. If they lost.

40:55PFT Commenter:You have to go undefeated against the bird teams. You have to go undefeated against the bird teams. Yeah. We wouldn't celebrate five and two against the bird teams. No. That'd be crazy. What? Memes? Hand up. The closest team to do it was 2023, the 49ers. They beat four out of five. They were four out of five going into the Rams in 2023 but lost. Wait, no, the Rams are the bird team. Ravens, I apologize. Ravens. It's an hard word, sorry. That Monday night game. Yeah. That was a fun Monday night game.

41:24Big Cat:It's not the easiest year for the bird gauntlet. The Eagles are awesome. Ravens are awesome. Falcons look like they're good. If you can beat all the bird teams, that's a pretty good.

41:34PFT Commenter:The Hawks are good.

41:35Big Cat:Yeah. Cardinals are 2-0. Cardinals are 2-0. 2-0. It's a good bird year. This is a great bird year.

41:40PFT Commenter:Great bird year.

41:42Big Cat:Carson Wentz is licking his chops. I'm so excited for Carson Wentz.

41:46PFT Commenter:All right. Should we? I mean, we're going to do a ton of college football with Andy Staples, so let's just do it then, right? Yeah. That's right.

41:52Big Cat:Although there is one question that we can embrace debate on that we did not discuss with Andy Staples. Please. I'd love to. Is Alabama football too gay? Yeah. We actually missed that debate. Jason Whitlock. We're like a week late on that debate. Alabama football might be too gay to win football games. So what makes him gay? Okay, I'm glad that you asked, Big Cat. Because I know you've done your research. It's pretty much Ryan Williams. Ah. The fact that he paints his nails. I have no problem with that. One thing I did love, not to make this about Jayden Daniels, after the game, he went up to his teammates and he told them, I'm straight.

42:26Big Cat:Oh, okay. Which was good. You like to hear your quarterback say that. Not to make it about Jayden Daniels. Ryan Williams paints his nails and he also has like an anxiety doll. oh so let's let's let's discuss this is an unbelievable thumbnail yeah unreal gay to compete with florida state unreal is notre dame too straight the way the the the alabama rainbow

42:52PFT Commenter:yeah i think that's ever been sold the rainbow tide yeah oh what a headline alabama football too gay to Florida state oh man all right let's do Hot Seat, Cool Thrown, and we'll get to our interviews. We will talk Andy Staples and a lot of college football. Dedication isn't born in the light of day. It's carved in the quiet hours before the world blinks awake. At Boar's Head, we rise with a mission to deliver craftsmanship worthy of your table. A slice of something special folded into every moment worth savoring. because dedication means delivering only the very best. Horsehead, committed to craft since 1905.

43:40PFT Commenter:Now at McDonald's, get a$5 Mexican meal deal or a$6 McDouble meal deal. They come with small fries, a soft drink, and four-piece McNuggets. We're going to need a bigger tray. Get more value with your meal deal. Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher for delivery. Hank, Hot Seat Coulteron. yeah my uh my hot seat is the world stone skimming championships oh yeah i had that too oh as you guys know big you know one of one of our probably the five major sports yep there was a huge scandal this year in the stone skimming championships several competitors were disqualified

44:16Big Cat:for tampering with their stones to make them more circular so the rules say that the stones have to be naturally occurring slate and they have to be uh what three inch diameter yeah they have they

44:29PFT Commenter:have can you pull up a picture of of the how they measure if the stone is is legal or not yep it's very very very official looks like something we would have here it's basically just like uh it's

44:41Big Cat:called the ring of truth the ring of truth the stones have to fit through the ring of truth i love that to qualify yeah so guys were shaving them down well so they're making they're taking

44:52PFT Commenter:Making their own. The natural stones and just making it more circular.

44:55Big Cat:I heard that they might be metal. That they might have built their own stones, cut their own stones out of metal.

45:02PFT Commenter:Are you guys good at skipping rocks?

45:04Big Cat:I think I might be top 1%. I'm very good. I think I'm better than BF2. We should maybe have a competition.

45:10PFT Commenter:I think I'm better than BF2. No. Okay. Why? I love this idea.

45:15Big Cat:Yeah. Well, we have to establish the ground rules because - We need to ring a truth. We need to ring a truth. And then also, I always grew up just seeing how many skips you could get.

45:24PFT Commenter:Yeah.

45:24Big Cat:This is about distance.

45:26PFT Commenter:I'm down to just do it our way, skips.

45:29Big Cat:Skips. Okay. Because the winner -

45:31PFT Commenter:Skips is tough to measure, though. But you can tell. You can count them. Yeah, but there's a lot of little ones.

45:36Big Cat:Yeah, you record it on video. Yeah, we can record it on video.

45:38PFT Commenter:Independent judge.

45:39Big Cat:Yeah. All right, so it's on. So the winner was an American Jonathan Jennings, and his stone went 177 meters. Joe Milton would destroy that record.

45:48PFT Commenter:How much money should we put up so that you can go further into debt to PFT? How'd the Starlaid do? Starlaids are 0 for 4. Oh, no. I want... Whatever. What? I'm going to do a new strategy this week for the Starlaids. Okay, but let's stay on this because you just said that you're better than both of us, guaranteed. I think I didn't say guaranteed, but I think I am.

46:11Big Cat:What if both me and Big Cat B?

46:12PFT Commenter:You said you were better than PFT, and then you scoffed at the idea that I could be better than you.

46:18Big Cat:How fast can you throw a baseball, Hank, right now?

46:20PFT Commenter:Right now, probably high, mid to high 60s.

46:25Big Cat:Okay. Well, I threw 71 last year.

46:28PFT Commenter:But that's not really what it is. It's about, you know. It's angle. Yeah, it's angle. The speed of a baseball throw has nothing to do with it. So we got to buy a ring of truth. And we got to go out there. Anyone out there who has a ring of, I'm trying to look to buy one. It doesn't seem too readily available to buy. So we got to go to it. We got to do this in Scotland. Well, no. We're going to go to Scotland?

46:54Big Cat:Let's, you know.

46:55PFT Commenter:We live on a lake.

46:56Big Cat:Yeah, live on a lake. Let's do it in a minute. Let's grow the game.

46:58PFT Commenter:We also should go. We should find a place where we can find naturally occurring rocks. We each get like 10 minutes to collect, I don't know, call it three rocks each. And then we go. I'm very confident. I'm confident as well. I'm super confident. Yeah, we know that. You almost spit in my face when I said that I could beat you.

47:19Big Cat:But credit to the people that were competing because the event organizer, who's a doctor, by the way, Dr. Kyle Matthews, said that the people that cheated held their hands up and apologized for cheating.

47:30PFT Commenter:Oh, nice. Max is in this competition as well. I'm bad. I know. That's so we won't finish last. Oh, okay. I'm happy to finish last for the boys. No, I would love to have someone just guarantee that one of us doesn't finish last. I'll put some money in the pot. I will, too. I will, three. I will not accept a Sarlay. That's fine. I'm going to lose. I would prefer not to just. That's fine. You can just be there. Okay. You can be there to lose so that we can be like, ha ha, at least we're not mad.

48:02Big Cat:If Hank beats me, then if he hits on one of his Sarlays, he can keep a thousand of those dollars. What?

48:11PFT Commenter:Yeah. I don't know why you scoffed at me. Outside of golf, what do you beat me at? Three-point shooting. I mean, that's a toss-up every time we go. I've won the last few. No, you haven't. You won the last one.

48:27PFT Commenter:You won the last one. Okay, golf, three-point shooting. One. I don't know. What other sports? Combine beat you. Did you? Yeah, I won the Combine. last year yeah last year buddy remember we did the quarterback thing yeah oh yeah you set it up yeah i don't know i just think i'm i think i'm a good i'm i have a lot of experience skipping rocks i think i'm a good rock skipper what if what if the what if you have to hit like a plate and it's the playoffs and you can the other team is trying to take walks i mean that's That's crazy. I mean, I was a sub because you couldn't show up. I wasn't even on the team.

49:11PFT Commenter:Okay, you're always on the team. What's your cool throne? I'm excited for this competition. Yeah, this is going to be great.

49:17Big Cat:My cool throne is Mondo DiPlantis. Hank just stole all my hot seat cool thrones. Should have got him first.

49:25PFT Commenter:What did Mondo do? I mean, Mondo DiPlantis, that's my guy.

49:28Big Cat:I was the one that told you that he broke the world record last time. You didn't know.

49:32PFT Commenter:He's my pal. He is your pal. He is your pal. He broke his own world record, now 14-time world record holder in the pole vault. Wow. How high was it? 6.3 meters.

49:45Big Cat:Good job, Mondo. So what he's doing is actually very smart. You get money every time you set a new world record in track and field. So he could probably go way higher right now, but he's just breaking it by like 0.1 meters.

49:57PFT Commenter:It started at 6.17 in 2020. It's now at 6.3. so it's like he's gone it was 6.17 6.18 6.19 like he's just going up by 0.1 meters he's getting

50:10Big Cat:paid every time that he does it he's just the man the dude the dude is dominant okay good hot seat cool throne hank thank you um yeah uh well hank stole both minds so my i'll just say my hot seat is chris fowler yeah he was uh under the weather last night he was under the weather georgia

50:26PFT Commenter:tennessee and then i i actually didn't know it was him when he was doing the intro i was like who's this announcer and then he popped up i was like damn it let's give him a day off

50:35Big Cat:yeah yeah he uh in the intro that he did that sounded like it was ai yeah it sounded like it was a weird voiceover so yeah just take it easy chris take just take a day off we're gonna it's a long season we're gonna need that voice yeah okay and so then my cool throne uh is uh also chris valor because we hope that he feels better that's really good yeah it's really good all right

50:57PFT Commenter:My hot seat is Ken Rosenthal because we talked about it on Sunday, but he issued an apology. It was the worst apology ever.

51:04Big Cat:Yes. Apology was very funny.

51:06PFT Commenter:He fucking sucks. I don't know what that is. His apology. He his apology was basically like he threw AJ Pruszynski under the bus. And then he basically. Yeah. Why don't you just play his apology? Let's hear it. The the the apology that was not really an apology. It's the one below it. I want to talk about what happened Saturday night when I accidentally bowled over Scott Ballas, Ballas, the Brewers team photographer, while I was getting out of the way of the Brewers dumping water on Andrew Monasterio. Now, the ever-observant A.J. Pruszynski joked afterward that I looked like Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston.

51:48Now, A.J., of course, is more experienced in these kinds of interactions than I am. And I must admit, though, when I looked at the video, when I saw this, I was surprised at how upset I appeared. I was more confused than anything. Now, I had to continue the interview. We were live, folks, on national television. Couldn't stop. And that said, I felt awful about what happened. And afterward, I went up to Scott, who I've worked with in pits before over the years, and I apologized. And I apologize profusely because let's face it, I don't think that you ever expect knocking someone down is going to happen in any particular situation.

52:31So, yeah, sure. I apologized. And Fox is doing the American League playoffs this year. So I won't see the Brewers again unless it's the World Series. But if I do see the Brewers in the World Series, I look forward to working with Scott again in the photo pit. And I also look forward to sharing a good laugh with him over this.

52:48Big Cat:bad apology national television bad apology you have to understand that i was on tv at the time yeah so you know sometimes you have to just run dudes over and then flip them off it also like

53:00PFT Commenter:him saying i was shocked at my own face no no dude you were pissed yeah also pissed off and you were

53:06Big Cat:angry angry man the best point that he made was that being a five foot four 123 pound man he's not used to bowling people over yeah he probably doesn't have an experience helping anybody up Yeah. He's always been on the other side of that equation. I feel like the Brewers are going to make it to the World Series now.

53:23PFT Commenter:Because of the Ken Rosenthal?

53:24Big Cat:Because of the Ken Rosenthal. This feels like good juju for the Brew crew.

53:27PFT Commenter:This guy should. And he also got the guy's name wrong to start. Yeah. He should truck stick him.

53:32Big Cat:Yep.

53:33PFT Commenter:That's how this should end. My cool throne is sticking in baseball. Baseball celebrations. Because teams are starting to clinch. Schwarber. never seen anyone have more uh alcohol poured on him in a moment than kyle schwerber i don't know if you guys saw this but he was chugging a beer out of a funnel while every single person on the phillies poured beer on him uh and i just want to remind everyone because this happens every single october and september when people complain about baseball celebrations baseball celebrations fucking rock it's 162 game season let the boys celebrate yes they're gonna celebrate when they clinch yes they're gonna celebrate if they win the wild card and then the ds then the acs then the world series i don't care i love it yeah it's fine drunk baseball players are awesome is anybody upset about it no oh yeah people people definitely have to take like too many celebrations like you're celebrating every step of the way clinching the playoffs is absolutely celebration worthy yeah i I do think the wild card DS.

54:39PFT Commenter:There's your answer. It's a little bit unnecessary. It's like you're there to win the World Series. Why can't people have fun? Yeah, would you say it's weird? They can. It's just like the – I have no issue with players going 100 % all out for clinching the playoffs. That's why you play the whole season. It's a long season. It's a grind. That's the goal is to make the playoffs. I think if they're partying like the world's going to end for winning the NLDS, that's a little bit different.

55:05Big Cat:No, I disagree. Do you have a problem with the videos of it, or do you have a problem with the fact that they did it?

55:10PFT Commenter:Like, if they did it— Well, I have no problem with any of it. It's the way this—it's not the player's fault either. It's like, if you have—the way the system is set up is like, you guys can party, go party. So you would—if you were managing a ball club, you would not do parties? I would go—I would say to the team, you know, let's enjoy tonight. I think, again, I think last night's celebrations for clinching the NL East, like, go all out. That's, you know, that's why we played. that's what we wanted to do starting going into the season. I think when you win the wildcard division series, it's like this should be business as usual.

55:44PFT Commenter:Like we're here now to win a championship. Let's focus on that. But obviously they're going to celebrate. But it's like I think if the celebration that occurred last night, and Max, I don't know if I feel like you should agree with this. If the celebration that occurred last night occurred after winning the NLDS, like that's a little, that's kind of weird. I'm already just like, that's the standard. So if there was one team that was doing it and the rest of the teams were like, oh no, I'm not going to do this, then I would have an issue with it. But that's just the way it is. That's just like the tradition of baseball.

56:18Once you advance, you celebrate, you have fun. It's not like one team is better than the other because every team is doing it. One thing that a lot of Philly people are upset about last night is that we're in the middle of a three-game series with the Dodgers right now and we need to beat the Dodgers to get the bye. So the fact that everyone was wasted, we're basically just punting this game today, which hopefully it doesn't matter, but it could matter at the end of the year because having the bye in baseball now is basically just winning the first round.

56:51Big Cat:That's more of a legitimate complaint, I think, than being like, why are you celebrating so much? You haven't won anything. Yes, yes, but fuck it. The videos were awesome. I stayed up to – it was a late game, and then all the celebrations happened for the next two hours. I didn't go to sleep until like 2.30, just refreshing my Twitter to see the newest video of someone else getting beer poured on him. Let the boys sell it. I think Bryce Harper may have gotten apple juice poured on him. Yeah, I was going to say, Bryce Harper is a guy that doesn't drink. Do you still enjoy like a champagne celebration?

57:25PFT Commenter:Yeah, he's hanging with the boys. Yeah, no, because they brought the – Garrett Stubbs is the – he was in the minor leagues like all year. He's like the party guy on the Phillies. They brought him up. People are thinking in September just for this moment. For the celebration? Yeah, he brought the beer bong. He has this like playlist that they all party to after the game.

57:45Big Cat:Yeah, because I feel like it's almost stolen valor for somebody that doesn't drink to like pour beer all over there. You have no idea why that's so fun. yeah no they were pouring they were pouring there was it looked like there was a little bit of beer in there but there was reports that it could have been apple juice that was going through

58:01PFT Commenter:either way I want the boys to celebrate I think it's fun and you just get awesome videos of just like Schwarber Bryce Harper dudes having a great time with their boys in the locker room Hank doesn't like fun crazy thinks it's weird can't exist, never said that

58:23Big Cat:uh zach my hot seat today is uh the political race in ireland becoming too hot for conor mcgregor oh yeah he uh led on a he was going to run on a promise to bring power back to the people and he has folded and withdrawn from the race uh kind of opened in and i was just curious if you guys think any athletes could run the united states of america if given your choice tom brady probably get all the information from russia before war that'd be good it'd be great uh

58:51PFT Commenter:Wait, so he's out? One out of a leader. He dropped out. His quote was, this was not an easy decision, but it is the right one at this moment. Why'd he drop out?

59:00Big Cat:Is it maybe because of the things he's done? It might be because that, or he might be wildly unqualified to be president.

59:07PFT Commenter:A killer combo.

59:09Big Cat:Yes. A left-right combo. Take your pick of either one of the two. Hank, it'd be like if Tom Brady was president. Also, there was a war with Russia. Also, he was interviewing Vladimir Putin because he also did 60 Minutes.

59:23PFT Commenter:Weird.

59:24Big Cat:Good for us. But Vladimir Putin would never give him information because he's not an idiot.

59:29PFT Commenter:Because he's smart. Yeah. So, yeah, the NFL, you would assume that NFL coaches are smart. That's an assumption I'm not ready to make.

59:37Big Cat:Do you think all NFL coaches are smart?

59:40PFT Commenter:Yeah. No, Chase. No. No way. They're paid millions of dollars.

59:45Big Cat:That doesn't mean... There's a lot of people that are paid millions of dollars that aren't smart.

59:51PFT Commenter:They're smart at football.

59:53Big Cat:Sometimes. Not always. Not always. You might know a couple of them. Who's the dumbest coach? That's a good question. Okay.

1:00:09PFT Commenter:I don't know.

1:00:10Big Cat:Oh, I'm thinking there's so many to pick from.

1:00:13PFT Commenter:You didn't let me finish.

1:00:14Big Cat:There's so many to pick from. If the Cowboys didn't fire McCarthy, that'd be an easy one. It would be an easy one. One championship. Todd Bowles.

1:00:23PFT Commenter:Won a Super Bowl. Did not win a Super Bowl.

1:00:28Big Cat:As a coordinator.

1:00:34Big Cat:You know what? We might have... Hank might be... We might have the smartest group of NFL coaches. Because there's always been a handful of dumb oafs.

1:00:44PFT Commenter:Yeah.

1:00:48PFT Commenter:Hank's starting to make a lot of sense. Starting to turn around. All right. There's different types of intelligence. Hank's never lost an argument. He just ran out of time. Because this is proven. You're starting to swing us. All right, Zach, your cool throne. My cool throne this week is Madison Beer. because I think she might be an NFL good omen. Yeah. He's, let's just say, before Justin Herbert started hopping out of Uber black trucks with Madison Beer, he's lost 35 games. He's thrown 45 interceptions. Since then, undefeated man, five touchdown passes. Pre-Madison Beer, no playoff wins. I think as long as he keeps her close, the Chargers make a great run into the playoffs this year.

1:01:30Wow.

1:01:31PFT Commenter:Okay. And if they decide to split, watch out. I think watch out, yeah. Yeah. I think it doesn't go well. He does look awesome. He does. He looks awesome. All right. Good hot seat, cool throne, boys. Let's get to our interviews. We've got Andy Staples and CM Punk. We had help. On August 21st. We have a story. Mutiny arrives on the big screen.

1:01:52Big Cat:Who are you? It is. Trust me. Jason Statham stars in the action movie to end your summer. What do you want? Vengeance. Mutiny. Rated R.

1:02:01PFT Commenter:Hey, it's Fran from Chicks in the Office. It's peak summer. One plan is turning into five, but trust I'll be wearing Abercrombie to all of them. Catch me in their Sloan Taylor pan at work and then the happy hour right after. The Dylan dress for dinner plans when you want something easy but still put together. And of course, their denim. Because Abercrombie denim just works, no matter the plan. Keep up with the pace of summer without overthinking it. Shop in the app, online, and in stores.

1:02:29Big Cat:And now here's Andy Staples.

1:02:33PFT Commenter:Okay, we now welcome on a very, very, very special guest, one of our favorite people to talk to, college football expert. You can find him on 3. He's writing, he's podcasting, he's back with Ari, which is one of my favorite listens. It is Andy Staples. Andy, what a week in college football. Incredible Saturday. It didn't look like it was going to be one of those Saturdays going into it, and then it delivered all over. So we've got a lot of things we want to talk about. But I wanted to start with your Florida Gators because they're in a very interesting situation where it feels like everyone knows the coach is fired.

1:03:10PFT Commenter:And then they go to LSU and they very easily could have won that game if DJ Lagway doesn't throw five interceptions. Where is the Florida program? Is there a quit factor that's on the horizon because they have a big matchup against Miami? or like what's the status of Billy Napier? Is there going to be a firing in season? Just tell us everything. So it feels inevitable that he'll get fired, but the problem, guys, is it felt inevitable last year after the Texas A &M game, right? They decided to fire him. That happened. It was, we got the money, we're going to do this. And then as things went on, and then Graham Mertz gets hurt, DJ Lagway becomes the starting quarterback.

1:03:52You start to see some, maybe a little bit of a promise that Lagway could be kind of special. And this is not with them winning, by the way. This is with them kind of hanging around against Georgia in a game where DJ hurt his hamstring, which this probably should tell you everything you need to know about how things evolved over the next 12 months. But so they decided to keep him after the Georgia game. They decided they're going to announce that Billy Napier is coming back. And they go lose to Texas without DJ Lagway, but then they beat LSU and Ole Miss. And this is where I started drinking that Kool-Aid a little bit because I've actually, you know, going into last season, the people here in Gainesville were like, you are overwhelmingly negative about Florida.

1:04:33I'm like, but tell me why I should be positive. Give me a reason to be positive. Well, they gave us those reasons in the LSU and Ole Miss games last year. And DJ looked special. He looked like he could make throws that nobody else could make. And you're like, okay, an offseason of him is the full-time starter and they build the whole offense around him. and they've got these good line of scrimmage players. Caleb Banks is coming back. Jake Slaughter at center. You're like, okay, I see it. I see the vision here. And the thing about it is when Napier was told he's coming back, there were conditions attached to it.

1:05:08And one of the conditions was you will hire a play-calling offensive coordinator. You will no longer call the plays anymore. Well, after he beat LSU and Ole Miss, and then he beats Florida State and they beat Tulane in the bowl game, he's got some juice. And he's like, you know what? I don't think I want to do that. I think I'm going to keep calling plays. And that was a problem. And then DJ's heard all offseason, and he's not throwing with the team. And now you get to this year where they play USF. Those line of scrimmage players looked pretty average against USF. They play LSU. Defense played great.

1:05:43They were in the game, but five interceptions from the guy who didn't throw with his teammates for a lot of the offseason. Like, it's a bad situation. I think it's probably about done, but I don't think they're going to quit. Okay. Guys, that's why he kept the job last year is because they didn't quit on him. I don't think they're going to quit, but I also don't think they're going to win. Like, I've picked Miami to cover the 7.5 this week. I picked LSU to cover the 9.5 last week. I don't know what happens with Texas. I think the Arch DJ, we all got it wrong bowl is going to be fascinating. But I don't see a way out of this for Billy.

1:06:20because they're going to lose, you would think, most of these games against the good teams.

1:06:24Big Cat:Yeah, so, I mean, they haven't quit yet, but they do play, like you said, Miami, Texas, and then A &M, back to back to back. There might be some quit that pops up there. And we say we all got it wrong about DJ. Who specifically are you talking about there, Andy? That would be me. That would be me. There is a quarterback ranking from April that is floating around the internet. I saw that. DJ Lagoe, number one in the country. Not number one in the SEC, number one in the country. I have Arch at number four. Well, you had Arch number one in the SEC. No, I had DJ number one in the SEC. Oh, okay. All right.

1:07:00But, yeah, so it was not my finest moment. It's been a rough week. That graphic's been resurfaced a few times. But there's not much I can say. I got to own it. I got to own it because I just like DJ and Arch are going to play. I was joking we need to have the Dr. Pepper competition where they're only allowed to throw chess passes when they play each other in Gainesville.

1:07:24PFT Commenter:Let's do that. Yeah, but in your defense, like the consensus top five quarterbacks, four out of five of them have not looked great. And I'm talking about Nussmeyer, Manning, DJ Lagway, Aller, Klubnik. Like there's a lot of guys at the top of the list that we're going into this year that have just not been up to the standard that we all expected. Yeah. And I did have Matier fairly high. John Matier from Oklahoma. That's my guy. And Big Cat, I know you are a late night ball watcher, maybe chasing some things. Yep. So you saw a ton of Washington State last year. I knew you were in because I obviously listened to the show.

1:08:03So I knew you were in with the rest of us in the Matier hive. But I'll say he's the only one of those guys that has really outperformed. Yeah. I underestimated how good Carson Beck would be at Miami. I was worried about him coming off the elbow surgery. And my thing with Carson Beck at Miami was a lot of times you'll see these quarterbacks move to a place where they suddenly get a much better group of players around them. Carson Beck was at Georgia. He had good players around him. But it's working really well at Miami. He and Shannon Dawson get along very well in this offense. Obviously, Miami has a good offensive line.

1:08:38We knew that going in. But some of these young receivers like Malachi Tony are just great. and so he's been very good um you know i diego pavia i never pick against diego pavia again i've decided because i picked south carolina last week the guy's just a freaking dog yeah period yeah if you watch that the sec documentary on netflix the behind the scenes stuff with pavia before they play alabama like who would not want that guy as their quarterback and and i would argue like is there any team that wouldn't be made better by Diego Pavia being their quarterback right now

1:09:13PFT Commenter:no and he's Cal Cal has a good quarterback Jaren I've been working on this Jask Jaren Sanga Politelli J.K.S. Kiave Sanga Politelli the telecaster yeah yeah he's awesome but it is like in your defense in Diego Pavia he's one of those guys that I wish that he could just play college football forever like yes he's probably not gonna be a pro just let him play college football forever but you have we had a we had a very college football nerd conversation in with with some guys in the office the other day so uh Diego Pavia came with a guy named Tim Beck he's the offensive coordinator at Vanderbilt was with Pavia at New Mexico State so there's another Tim Beck an older Tim Beck who's been an OC he's currently the head coach at Coastal Carolina he's probably going to get fired they just got shut out by east carolina so if that tim beck gets fired i just want to put on the hot board that the vandy tim beck could get the job you could replace tim beck with tim beck and then diego pavia goes to court and wins the case yep and becomes coastal carolina's starting quarterback it would be perfect it would be perfect but yeah so to to defend you and it segues into a different question is like some of the guys that we thought were going to be great this year have not started off great and then you've seen like dampier and dante moore and all these guys that are popping.

1:10:30PFT Commenter:What though, how bad is it for Arch right now? Because I've seen a lot of the, you know, I've watched the games. He looks so lost. And is it like they have another cupcake this week, but then it's the SEC schedule. What is their plan if he can't figure it out? Because it feels like it's mental and everything's kind of falling apart here with a lot at stake for Texas. Yeah, I've been thinking about this. It kind of reminds me, you know, the golfers, they finish the season. they go away for the winter and they come back and they've changed their swing like they've hired a new swing coach change their swing and they don't make the cut at tory pines and they don't make the cut at augustine you're like what what happened to you and that's what it seems like i like my co-host ari wasserman who by the way earlier in the offseason said there's no way arch doesn't make it to new york and i'm like because he has tickets to book of mormon and i said that back then um but i didn't i i didn't think he could be bad i thought maybe he could be average at worst i don't know what the hell this is it looks like he's throwing from a different arm slot like you got people asking sark if he's hurt and sark's like talking about the faces you make when you poop which he's shitting yeah i mean it led led to a conversation on my show where i learned i'm apparently a very demonstrative pooper and didn't realize that that's not normal uh or or everybody's not like that.

1:11:53So you learn something following Arch Manning. But I just, I never thought that bad was on the menu for him. I thought it'd be average. But mostly that was because of the talent around him. Watching some of that UTEP game, it does feel like it's mental. It feels like the yips almost because these are easy throws. And I went back and watched this morning his start against Louisiana Monroe. That was his first start last year when he was replacing Quinn Ewers when Quinn was hurt. He was ripping balls down the seam, like very confidently. And I don't know where that is right now.

1:12:30Big Cat:He looks like a different guy. Yeah, I don't think anybody thought that it would be possible for Arch Manning to stink. Right? And he looks like he just stinks right now. He's just not a very good quarterback. I don't know how much of a – he's probably going to have a very long leash in Austin because I don't think that they have anybody behind him that's going to challenge him, right? Well, and that's the thing. It's been so set up and so preordained. I mean, I have a bunch of football cards on my desk and I walked past a Quinn Ewers one yesterday and I'm like, oh, it feels like he's saying miss me.

1:13:04We thought they just pushed Quinn Ewers out the door for Arch and I think they kind of did, but it didn't not make sense at the time. And so, yeah, your engineering of your court, like so Diabel, Rajabelle's son, is the big time recruit who's coming next year to Texas. But that was he's as the successor to Arch. The idea is Arch is going to start this year or next year. So if he does indeed stink and, you know, to get back to you to the Florida question you asked first, Big Cat, like that's another thing that the Florida people never even envisioned.

1:13:38Big Cat:Yeah. Like what stink wasn't on the menu. Five interceptions wasn't on the menu. Right. What happens if you have to make a move? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you're a five-star quarterback and Texas had offered you, you're not going to go there. It's like you can read the writing on the wall. You know that Arch Manning is going to be the quarterback. You're not going to have a fair competition. So what's the point? And now it seems like, I don't know, I tend to think that he might be hurt. It's hard to explain away the faces he was making, the winces he was making when he was throwing. I mean, those were bad throws.

1:14:06If you dirt a ball that is normally an easy completion for you, you probably are going to go, but I don't know. But Texas, it doesn't seem like there's a clear and obvious, a number two they feel good about. Florida, actually, they signed Trammell Jones this offseason, didn't know what he was going to be. He's been a pleasant surprise. So if something happened to DJ Lagoe, I think that's who they'd go to, and they'd probably feel okay about that. But Texas, yeah, it's a very strange situation. And I heard Sark yesterday talking about it and saying, you know, I know how, when we see the end of the movie, When he comes out the other side of this, it's going to be okay.

1:14:42Sark seems to think that this is going to get better. He also said, and I found this interesting, we have to wrap our brains around the quarterback being a bigger part of the run game. So I do think maybe he's looking at, I've got to adjust this offense to take advantage more of Arch's dual threat capability. And Arch is a good runner, but that's not the quarterback you envisioned when this Manning family scion came out of New Orleans to go to Texas. So I think we all have to wrap our brains around an idea. The idea of Arch and the actual Arch are two different things. And it's an interesting conversation because we're having, like you were talking about, maybe he just stinks, PFT.

1:15:26And five years ago, I would have been very reluctant to engage in that sort of discourse about a college football player because I always felt like it was a little unfair with guys that are just on scholarship and to be incredibly harsh. But this guy's in national commercials. He's making millions of dollars. I think it's all fair now. I think it's all on the table now.

1:15:48Big Cat:Yeah, and it's not called the Manning-Reed Option Academy, right? He should be able to throw the football. And I actually have one more question for you about Florida. Yeah, Lagway was a problem. That was a ridiculous game that he played. On the defensive side of the ball, did you see that last run that you guys gave up? I'd be concerned about Florida's defense. 51 yards? Yeah, the last play of the game, bad rush defense from Florida against LSU. Brian Kelly told me that. Thank you, Brian Kelly. I choose to believe what Brian Kelly said. Are LSU fans spoiled? Yes. Yes. So we can have a longer discussion about that Brian Kelly answer.

1:16:25And for those who didn't see it, longtime TV reporter comes right out of the gate. It's a very emotional win against Florida. You didn't play as well as you wanted to on offense, but your defense intercepted the guy five times. Right out of the gate, first question to Brian Kelly, how come you all can't run the ball? Yeah, kind of crazy. Well, and so as someone who's asked a lot of questions in post-game press conferences, there's a method to it, and you stack them in a certain way. That's not the question you ask right out of the gate after a game like that. You butter him up a little bit, you hit him with that in question four, or you hit him with that Monday when he's watched the film and he's in a hypercritical mode.

1:17:04but it is the question LSU fans want answered. So of course, if you think that's your only chance to ask it, you ask it then. And he blows up and I agreed with him for the first minute of it, where he's like, after that, you asked that question. And then, but then he got into the year spoiled and all that. And that's where I started going, Brian, you know, what job you took,

1:17:26PFT Commenter:Right. You took the LSU job. The last three people who sat in your chair won the national title by year four. What year is it now? It's four, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's it. Like, yes, they're spoiled, but you knew that when you took the job. Yeah, it's different.

1:17:43Big Cat:To be fair to the reporter, I think he started out a little bit more diplomatically. And then Brian Kelly. He really didn't PFT. Like, that's the thing. Like, there's a way to ask that. Like, no, it's a hard-fought game and your defense had five interceptions, but you struggle to run the ball. It was – and credit to him for asking the direct question. He just straight up asked it. I don't know the exact verbiage, but it was basically how come y 'all can't run the ball. Yeah, because I think Brian, like, he went back at him a couple times, and then the reporter was like, I'll just say you guys can't run the football.

1:18:12Yeah.

1:18:13Big Cat:You made me say it to you. And he's right because the run that Kelly was referencing, the Caden Durham 51-yard run, basically doubled their rushing output for the entire game.

1:18:22PFT Commenter:Made it look a lot better. It was a great run. Yeah. Another game Saturday that was incredible, Tennessee and Georgia, which I came away from that game being like both these teams are college football playoff teams. They're both really, really good. It wasn't a situation where it was like, oh, man, like Georgia is bad or Tennessee is bad. The one problem I had, I do think that Josh Heupel, and maybe this is something he learns from, I think he got tightened up a little bit at the end. Like that's a team that you haven't been able to beat, and you've had a Kirby Smart problem. You finally scored more than 17 points, which he hadn't done the first four times they met.

1:18:56PFT Commenter:And at the end, like your kicker's a little shaky maybe. I just kept on looking him at the sideline like, this guy's not going to make this kick. It looks like he's 14. Yeah, he looks like our colleague Little Sass, but a little too much of running the ball just right up the middle trying to win the game on a field goal. I don't know. But that's what Kirby would have done. Yeah, but that's Georgia. That's the difference. But I disagree on this because the old Josh Heupel, the ones we criticize for not being able to compete against Georgia, when Georgia took the lead in the third quarter, that would have been it.

1:19:30Georgia would have just gone on to win by 13. Oh, definitely. And Tennessee came back. And Tennessee took the lead, took control. It's a tie game. You've got a kick to win it. Like, I have no problem with the way he handled the end of that game. They just missed the kick. And I like where both teams are at. I think SEC fans, well, SEC fans, like they're a big monolith. But fans of SEC teams now need to accept that this is a world where there is no Death Star in the SEC. There is no Georgia or Bama sitting there at the end that is going to blow up your entire program in 60 minutes. It doesn't exist.

1:20:10These teams are pretty good at the top, but they probably can all beat each other.

1:20:14PFT Commenter:Yeah. No, listen. I get what you're saying. My issue with what Heupel did, and he did, like, I went away from that game being like, Tennessee is a really good team. I'm just thinking, Georgia, you got to get over that hump. Kirby Smart does it because he's Georgia. When you're playing Georgia, you have to be aggressive all the way through 60 minutes to try to win this game. And it just felt like a little bit at the end, like I'm trying to – it was even the drive before Georgia scored the touchdown where it's like, hey, we're just trying to kind of run the clock out here. They had them. They had them.

1:20:50PFT Commenter:And they were causing them fits. and I watched that whole game. The first half, I was like, oh, wow, Tennessee's got them. And I was like, but who knows because how these games have gone is Tennessee comes out hot and then Georgia figures it out. Georgia never really figured it out defensively, and then they run the ball up the middle on the last two drives. Just keep going after them. Just end them. Well, here's the thing about that, and I realize I'm looking at this probably now more like an NFL person than a college football person because there was a time when not doing that would have doomed your season.

1:21:25Yeah. But now I look at that. I came away from that game saying if that game gets played again at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta in the first week in December, which it could be, or in the college football playoff, also a possibility, Tennessee plays the game with Jermon McCoy and Ricky Gibson, their number one and number two corner, who are both out for this game. and if they have their best corners like does Gunnar Stockton slip that ball into London Humphrey

1:21:56PFT Commenter:on fourth and seven yeah incredible by the way is covering that play like it's a very different game and so I'm not like if I'm Josh Heupel I'm not worried about that okay I go forward going we are right there with them and if they're the best this conference has to offer we can compete with the best this conference has to offer. Yeah, I just thought it was like the drive before the drive of the end missed field goal. It was another – they get the fumble, they run the ball three times, and then the drive when they miss a field goal, they get down the field and they run the ball. It's like you had them.

1:22:31PFT Commenter:I don't know. Again, they're a good team, so it's not – it's nitpicking. I think Tennessee will be there. They showed their toughness. They showed that they're for real. It's just like, man, I really wanted Tennessee to finally get over that Kirby Smart hump, and it felt like they had them. I see Vol Twitter is a little bit tough to deal with anyway. If they thought they were the best team in the SEC for the rest of the season, they're going to be insufferable. So they might need a little bit of tempering because they might actually end up being the best team in the SEC by the end. The Joey Aguilar thing is fascinating to me.

1:23:06It was a trade, essentially. Nico Imaliava for Joey Aguilar. And Tennessee came out so much on the better end of that trade, It's not even funny.

1:23:16Big Cat:Yeah. I was talking to our colleague, Big T, and he's obviously a Tennessee fan. And he said, this is the first time that I can recall losing a game like this that we play good in. So it's like a new experience. Like we play good and we still lost. That doesn't happen in Tennessee that much. It's usually like we play bad and we lost. And it's a new experience. And I think he's like more optimistic. I think Tennessee fans should be optimistic because that offense, that's to be able to do that against Georgia is very, very impressive. and I would love to see that game again. That was such a fun game to watch.

1:23:49Joey Aguilar is so swaggy, and I thought when watching him at Appalachian State, he would run into games where it'd be more like what you saw with DJ Lagway at LSU, where he's just trying to throw. He's confident he can throw his way out of anything, and he just throws it. But he's not like that. He's more careful with the ball than I thought he'd be in this offense. And I think certain quarterbacks just fit certain offenses really well. I think this offense fits him very well, fits his personality. Because I think Nico was a little too risk-averse for this offense. And Joe Milton would air mail balls, didn't work out.

1:24:28Hendon Hooker was the previous perfect quarterback for this offense. And Hendon Hooker had that right blend of gunslinger, and I know when I need to eat this. Yeah.

1:24:39Big Cat:One more SEC question for you. You remember that one week where we said Alabama football was dead and that they'd never won another game? That was a fun week. That was a nice funeral that we had for them. Are they as dead as we thought that they were? We'll find out next week. The answer. Well, actually, I don't know if we'll find out next week, because my thing coming out of the Florida State game was this looks like last year's team. Yeah. Where they thought they were going to win this game, so they didn't get up for it. and they got beat, which is how they lost to Vanderbilt and how they lost to Oklahoma last year.

1:25:10So if they are that team, next week when they play at Georgia, they're going to be up for it. Like that last year's team went up 28-0 on Georgia and hung on to win the game. It's the Vandy and the Missouri games that I worry about for this Alabama team. Like how do you get up for those? And if they get up for those and they smash those teams, Alabama's fine. Don't worry about it at all. but if they don't you got a problem or next week if they go to Athens and get their doors blown off that's a different story but I just don't think that's going to happen because

1:25:42PFT Commenter:they're going to be up for this game they don't want to get it'll be like last year yeah what how many wins does Kaelin DeBoer need to get to to be safe for another year because it does I don't count them killing Wisconsin Wisconsin's a train wreck right now right obviously ULM that was to be expected uh so like they it covers it up nicely but there could be some issues still here so is there a chance let's say he wins eight games is that is that i don't think that's okay yeah i don't think that's okay even even with the buyout being as big as it is it's in the 60 million dollar neighborhood uh but it is like i always say with with all these buyouts you got to understand how they're structured so like mark stoops at kentucky has the most prohibitive buyout because it's like$34 million due within 30 days of the firing.

1:26:32Billy Napier at Florida has a$20 million buyout. Half of it is due within 30 days. The other half in equal installments. The Kalen DeBoer one, if it happened, would be equal installments through the end of 2031, which is a lot of money. But for a program like Alabama, it becomes a very large line item that you can probably absorb. That said, okay, if he wins 10, he's fine. If he wins nine, I think he's fine. eight it would probably depend on how the how the eight looked and the four looked but I wouldn't

1:27:03PFT Commenter:I wouldn't be super confident yeah yeah in him keeping the job at eight and four um all right I gotta take um ruminating on and it uh it comes from the fact that I can see the future and I know that a 10 and 2 Notre Dame team will be in the college football playoff uh because that's just how it works and I've been talking we have Notre Dame fans here in the office I did a podcast yesterday I threw this out there. They're in no... Like, what happened on the field, the defense aside, they're in no different of a spot than they were last year. They have no margin for error. The NIU loss was a two-loss loss.

1:27:41PFT Commenter:This year they lost to two teams that are going to be maybe college football playoff teams. They're in the exact same spot, two games into the season. They have to win out. Can they? I don't know. But if you're a Notre Dame fan, I think that's what you have to tell yourself because it's the honest truth if they go 10 and 2 and I know they don't have anyone on their schedule outside USC if they go 10 and 2 they will be in the college football playoff I don't think that's a guarantee well because Miami in Miami if they're tied yeah yeah well Miami went 10 and 2 last year and didn't get in but because they didn't have the quality wins right it was the same same situation so but I do think there's a potential that what remains on Notre Dame's schedule is good enough that if you win 10 in a row against it, it's probably okay.

1:28:26Because I think if NC State keeps winning, C.J. Bailey's maybe the best quarterback nobody's talking about. He's fantastic. USC looks really good so far. So if they're good, if Navy turns out to be good, remember Navy won their league last year, Notre Dame blasted them. Arkansas pushed Ole Miss to the limit on Saturday, and they're scoring like 45 points a game. so there's a chance that we just look back on it Notre Dame's 10 and 2 and we're like yeah they beat some pretty good teams throw them in there like but they're not in a good position because you need those teams to be better than we thought they were going to be the problem is if they're all better than we thought they were going to be they might beat you

1:29:05PFT Commenter:right but all right so the pushback I'd have on Miami last year is Miami last year lost to Georgia Tech and Syracuse two games where they were big time favorites and the not very good team. Syracuse had a good season last year. Notre Dame, the quality losses are real. Those are two really good teams that should be there in the college football playoffs. So I agree that they don't have a lot on their schedule, but I think they will be looked upon kindly. And again, this is just projecting. Yeah, if Miami's sitting there. Yeah, and A &M are both good. Miami's the ACC champ, and they're the two seed.

1:29:40and Texas A &M either made the playoff or went into the Texas game with a chance to make the SEC title game or make the playoff, yeah, I think that will look good because those are not – they didn't get blown out. They were right in those games. Obviously, if they get the hold down on the extra point, they probably win this game. They couldn't stop anyone. Maybe they don't. Yeah, that could have gone no overtime.

1:30:04PFT Commenter:And Mario Craven, the fact that – Yeah, I think his Instagram handle is like Super Mario, and he is so fast. He's still running through them. I will say A &M hit on Mario Craver and Casey Concepcion, the two guys at receiver they got out of the portal. So Craver was at Mississippi State. Concepcion was at NC State. That might be the best receiver haul out of the portal so far this year. We may find out that A &M's offense is just really, really good, which just scared the hell out of the rest of the SEC.

1:30:34Big Cat:Yeah, Craver just bouncing off people. keeping balance, running through them. That game was so fun to watch. I love that. And I do think that if it comes down to it, two loss Notre Dame is going to get in. And my criteria is that their name is Notre Dame and they will be put into the college football playoff. It's not a bad thought. I mean, the helmet, it glitters, it shines. And you might be blinded by it.

1:30:58PFT Commenter:By the way, if you had to do gun to head right now, I don't think they went out. I think USC's offense is really good and that's going to be really a tough test. I'm just more speaking to Notre Dame fans who are the season's over after two games. Yeah, it's definitely not over. You're basically in the same spot because of that NIU loss being two losses. You couldn't lose another game. Yep, and I was actually watching Marcus Freeman's press conference yesterday and comparing it to everything he said after NIU. And he makes me feel the same. Coaches are about how they make you feel. It's like a presidential candidate.

1:31:32He makes me feel the same way. I'm like, this guy's got this. He's okay. Yeah.

1:31:38Big Cat:Looking at the Big Ten, we don't know anything about Penn State right now. All we have is what we thought that we knew about Penn State going into the season.

1:31:46PFT Commenter:They don't cover spreads at the end.

1:31:48Big Cat:They don't. Twice as soon. That last play against Villanova was good for those kids at Villanova. They probably went to the locker room feeling like they won the game just based on that last throw to cover the spread. but what do we know about Penn State that we didn't already think about them going into the season it feels the same I think their receivers are better I think that's the one thing that we can take away like you know they should be able in a crunch time game to be able to complete passes to receivers unlike in the Orange Bowl last year so I think that is is probably better I my co-host Ari Wasserman asked me a really interesting question yesterday and I don't know that I had a great answer for it.

1:32:29Are Penn State fans watching Missouri games and going, did we pick the right QB? Because Bo Perbula looks pretty awesome at Missouri. He does.

1:32:41Big Cat:Max, we have a Penn State fan here, Max. Oh, yeah, that's right. Did you pick the right QB, Max?

1:32:46PFT Commenter:We got to see the big games. Well, they can't cover against Nevada and Villanova. I know. Both of those, I've talked to you about both of those. It's disgusting. James Franklin is a cover guy, too. Yeah, he is. That he fights for the cover. But yeah, no, there were a lot of Penn State fans last year that said that they wanted Bo Perbula at times. After the Wisconsin game, yeah. And the logical fan was like, no, no, no, no, Bo Perbula is like, Drew Aller's your guy, Drew Aller's your guy. Bo Perbula is like a good guy to bring into the mix, but he's not Drew Aller, and now Bo Perbula's looking like the guy.

1:33:22Drew Aller just, we have to see what he does against Oregon in two weeks. That's exactly right. I mean, it's a whiteout game. That's the big moment. He actually made some nice throws against Oregon in the Big Ten Championship game last year, though if you go back and look at the game in its totality, he wasn't super efficient in it. And it's an interesting argument that I think coaches probably have with themselves all the time and we have as fans of college football. Drew Aller is what an NFL coach, GM, would make in a lab if we said design a quarterback. Six foot five, 235 pounds, can run, has a huge arm.

1:34:02That is exactly what you would make in a lab. But on the field, it doesn't always translate. All of those skills don't always translate. And sometimes people are just better college quarterbacks. The best quarterback Penn State has had this century is Trace McSorley, who doesn't look like that at all. So that's the part that I struggle with because I get where James Franklin and Andy Kotelnicki are looking at this like, we have everything in this guy. All we have to do is unlock it. But he's now in year three as a starter and it hadn't been unlocked yet. And another thing for Penn State fans is that there's PTSD of that you had Christian Hackenberg and you had Trace McSorley and Bo Perbula looks like Trace McSorley and Drew Aller looks like Christian Hackenberg.

1:34:51So every Penn State fan is thinking, are we going through this again? Yeah, at least Sean Clifford and Will Levis didn't look alike, but it felt like that was also a similar situation where they picked Sean Clifford. And I think at the end of the day, you probably should have picked Will Levis.

1:35:06Big Cat:Yeah, yeah, yeah. What about elsewhere in the Big Ten? Are the Wolverines better off with Poggi as the head coach? I just don't. Matty wore sleeves. That really bothered me. I wanted sleeveless Biff Poggi as the Michigan head coach. I don't know if a Michigan man would ever do such a thing. We're going to find out. We're going to find out. This is an interesting week. So Michigan's going to Nebraska. We've never seen this before in a big-time game with a coach suspended because the rules used to be that you're suspended for the game, but you can be around the team at practice and everything. So when Harbaugh was suspended for those six different games in 2023, he was there for practice all week and the game plan got put in.

1:35:48And so he had a hand in everything other than the game day play calling. And now, Sharon Moore's suspension started at midnight on the day of the Central Michigan game. So he was there for practice before Central Michigan. And they looked awesome against Central Michigan. his suspension runs through 11 59 and 59 seconds of Saturday. So he's not allowed to be around for any of this. And we're, you know, we, on our show, we try to figure out where he's going to be, what he's doing all week. Cause he like, do you go, do you just go to the beach? Do you go to an Island? Cause you, you're not allowed there.

1:36:23So what's the point of hanging around town?

1:36:24Big Cat:Is there a radius that you're, that you're not allowed to be in? Like, what are the exact, like, could you be in a hot air balloon?

1:36:29PFT Commenter:What if there's a weather delay?

1:36:30Big Cat:That would be funny.

1:36:31PFT Commenter:Remember the Nebraska-Georgia-Southern game a few years ago where it was delayed for like 10 hours? What if that happens? I think you fly him in. You just put him on the PJ and fly him in. But yeah, I think that would extend through the length of the game if that happens. That is a 2.30 Central time start game, so I think he'll be okay. But good point. But we've never seen this before, so I don't know what it's going to mean. Plus, the other team in this equation is also in an interesting spot because I feel like Matt Rule's got Nebraska in a place where now they win the games they're supposed to win, which is the first step of a build.

1:37:12Can you start winning the toss-up games is the second step, and this is very much a toss-up game to me. So this could be a massive turning point game for Nebraska. Meanwhile, you've got Michigan without their normal head coach but with a hedge fund guy who uh you know likes to chomp a stogie the first time i interviewed him when he's a head coach at charlotte on my show he had the cigar lit the entire time he had that cigar in his mouth for half the interview was it was amazing like i love it i love biff poji so much uh i have no idea though what what this will look like when he is running practice for the entire week and i will say chip lindsey their offensive coordinator used to be a head coach at troy Wink Martindale, our defensive coordinator, long-time NFL DC, has been through everything, seen everything.

1:37:55I think they have the staff to handle this.

1:37:57PFT Commenter:So the crazy thing about the Big Ten is if I had told you 20 years ago – well, maybe not 20 years ago because you'd be like, wait, Nebraska's in the Big Ten. But Nebraska-Michigan is not the matchup this weekend. It's Illinois-Indiana, which is crazy. These two teams are both top-20 teams. They both have really good coaches. they have good quarterbacks like it's crazy to to look at how the Big Ten has shifted here but this is the matchup this is the game I'm most looking forward to in the Big Ten this weekend and I like both are just great stories I and I think both even a loss you know they're both still alive in the whole thing yeah they're still alive but they obviously have their tougher games to go of course in the end I'll have to play Oregon and Illinois is gonna have to play Ohio State and both of them have have landmines along the way so this sort of feels like a playoff elimination game yep even if it isn't but I love this I I love it because Luke Altmaier has been awesome at Illinois the entire time he's been there he's another one that I I don't feel like we've given enough credit to and it's not just because his brother hits me up on Instagram every time I don't mention Luke Altmaier on a quarterback list by the way the awful quarterback list I made did not have Luke Altmaier on it.

1:39:10I did hear from an Altmaier person about that. And you know what? You were right. Luke Altmaier should have been on that list, and I'm sorry. But he is awesome. We're going to find out about Fernando Mendoza. So Fernando Mendoza is Indiana's quarterback. He came from Cal. He was pretty good at Cal last year. Interestingly enough, Georgia went after him at the end of the season. He did not elect to consider Georgia because at the time, he didn't know what was going to happen with Gunnar Stockton. Like Gunnar Stockton hadn't started a game yet. He was going to start the Sugar Bowl. I don't even know if the final decision had been made on Carson Beck at the time.

1:39:47So Mendoza decides not to do that, goes to Indiana to replace Curtis Work, where I think usually when we have these situations where a team that has not been good has a great season, we always look at it as a one-off. Usually it's a situation where their best players were old and they just came of age at the right time and they all go to the NFL. That's not what happened with Indiana. Indiana brought back most of their best players from last season. So we haven't seen them play against anybody of consequence yet, but if they're as good as they were last year, they could potentially be a playoff team again.

1:40:21It was not an accident. It's not a one-on PFT. I know you know all about these guys because Elijah Surratt, D 'Angelo Pons played at JMU and went with Signetti to Indiana.

1:40:32Big Cat:Yep. I have to disown them this year, though. I gave them one year where I'll root for Indiana. But at this point, I can't actively root for the guys that left after that first year. Well, I want to see them because their schedule in the non-conference was really bad. Yeah. But they averaged eight yards a carry. If they're slicing through Illinois' defense on the ground, Indiana's going to win that game. But if Illinois can hold them to a more reasonable number, if you're talking about like four yards a carry, then we're going to have a really good, fun, competitive game, and it's going to probably come down to which quarterback makes a play.

1:41:09Big Cat:Yeah, so we pronounced Alabama dead earlier this season. They might be back alive. Did Clemson take that torch from them? Is Clemson now dead? Yes, the skeleton holding the torch just gave it to another skeleton. I don't know if they're dead. I don't like their chances to make the playoff. I don't like their chances to win the ACC because Florida State seems to be revived, and that's a team that Clemson has to play later in the year.

1:41:39Something's off. Something's off because they have talent. Along their defensive line, all four of those guys are going to get drafted. TJ Parker is probably a first-round draft pick. Peter Woods is probably a high draft pick. But watching Georgia Tech run through them, I just I you can't let that happen if you have that elite talent on your D line and a team just opens holes on you like what are you doing I and it's interesting because I thought that was more of a schematic problem so they fired their DC last year Wes Goodwin and they hire Tom Allen who had been at Penn State he was the head coach at Indiana before that and Tom's a really good DC and I thought okay they're gonna fix this the scheme part of it the players are good, but it might be we're overrating the players a little bit too.

1:42:27And so Dabo, we know we've killed him for not doing much in the portal. He said, I like this team. We looked at it like you've got so much returning production coming back. This is awesome. Maybe we were wrong. Maybe you did it right. Maybe you had it right all along because, and I said this in the offseason, I said, oh, these guys have been through some stuff together. So this team's going to stay together. They'll handle adversity really well. Well, no, apparently they don't. because the LSU team that beat them I think is good but the offense we've seen from LSU between then and now has not blown you away.

1:43:03I think LSU's defense has been really good so I don't know where Clemson is but look at the rest of their schedule, it's hard to imagine them running the table

1:43:13Big Cat:It is, yeah and I got a question for you about a future I'm considering putting in. I need you to advise me on this okay why is miami 16 to 1 that i feel like they should oh i don't get that at all 16 to 1 if you look at their schedule they got florida state and you know anything could happen they play a couple tough games that you have to play like louisville and some others but miami the way that they've looked up until now i i feel like they should be right there with lsu and and texas i would put them above lsu in texas yeah but in terms of the odds like better based on what we've seen they have a better chance of winning the national talk because it's easier for them to make the playoff Yeah.

1:43:50So, and the thing is, because before you'd say, okay, but they're in the ACC. What happens when they play the kind of team they've seen in the playoff? Well, we saw that against Notre Dame. Right. We saw what happens. So what Miami did, and our assumption was the offense will take a step back because Cam Ward's gone. And how can you possibly have as good of an offense as you had with Cam Ward? And maybe it did, or maybe it didn't. We don't know yet because they fixed the defense. The defense stunk last year. And that was the problem. So they fire the defensive coordinator. They hire Corey Heatherman from Minnesota.

1:44:24And they go about bringing in these dudes from the portal. Sorry, Big Cat Xavier Lucas looking really good at the corner. Zechariah Poiser from Jacksonville State. They go get these dudes. You marry them to the D-line talent like Ruben Bain and Akeem Mesador that you already had on your roster. And suddenly, they're stuffing people. and what's interesting is so Carson Beck doesn't have to do what Cam Ward did last year he can he doesn't have to be Superman he can play a little more conservative style and they're fine because that defense is going to make stops on the other end and I think that's the difference like they're a much more complete team but Mario Cristobal is always going to have good line of scrimmage play this might be his best line of scrimmage combination since he's been a head coach so you know because you look at i mentioned bain and mesador who are fantastic ruben bain as as a healthy ruben bain is a game wrecker he got hurt game one last year it was kind of never the same healthy ruben bain's a game wrecker and then on the other side you've got a francisco maui noa the right tackle he goes by cc uh you know why he goes by cc because who's gonna make fun of him because when he gets his hands on you, you are dead.

1:45:42You're dead.

1:45:43Big Cat:And then Coach O as a consultant this offseason working on the line play too. Of course. There's a lot to like about this Miami team, and it's 16-1 when Alabama is 14-1 right now. Yeah, I'm going to bet it. I'm going to bet it, Andy. Thank you. You've talked me into it. I like it. Where are we in the calendar? Like where are we relative to when you guys made the Travis Hunter future last year? Are we about in that spot?

1:46:03PFT Commenter:No, Travis Hunter was actually before the season, so that was my last question. iconic summer moments deserve an iconic drink reach for mountain dew an american original from its beginnings in the foothills of tennessee to your biggest summer yet the refreshing citrus kick of mountain dew is the perfect companion to your american summer adventures enjoy the refreshing citrus kick of mountain dew tasting great since 48 look for mountain dew in stores near you at mountain dew.com that's mountain dew.com It is wide open for the Heisman. I do have – so I bet Jeremiah Love before the season, 25-1, that's in the trash.

1:46:42PFT Commenter:He looked great the other day too. I know, but they don't give him the ball enough. If they'd used him against Miami, they win that game. And then I bet John Mateer at 16-1 before the Michigan game. He's down to 8-1. I just love John Mateer. Right now, who is your Heisman? I mean, it does feel – no one's really popped. You know, it's a wide open, and especially because Arch was the favorite. He stinks. We can say that now. It just feels wide open this year. It's John Mateer for me right now. So he's 8-1 on drafting. So if everyone wants to bet it, I will talk up John Mateer. Let's say he beats Auburn this week and they go win Red River.

1:47:23Now, Oklahoma's schedule is incredibly hard down the stretch. But if they can win these next two games, Auburn, Texas, they can beat any other teams on their schedule too. And he's just so much fun to watch.

1:47:34PFT Commenter:He really is. And he does the things that stuff the stat sheet. Like he runs very well. They'll use him as a runner around the goal line. And he just makes throws that you're like, whoo, can't believe he did that. So he's probably my favorite for this. We may see somebody step up. Marcel Reed at Texas A &M is one I would watch. We talked about how good his receivers are. But I wondered about him as a thrower last year because they used him. in. It was clear he was the better runner versus Connor Wegman. He's improved as a passer. Like I said, if we find out they have a great offense, which looks great against Notre Dame.

1:48:16I don't think Notre Dame's defense is trash. I really don't. I think Texas A &M probably can score a bunch. Marcel Reed's another one that I might toss a few shekels on.

1:48:26PFT Commenter:Also, throw one out there. The big matchup in Utah this weekend, which I'll be out there for a big noon kickoff, you know, take Morton or Dampierre, who you think is going to win the game, because one of them is going to pop after that game, you know, depending on who wins it. This is such an interesting game because you've got Texas Tech. They have the billionaire Cody Campbell, who played a line for them, who helped them build this roster through the transfer portal. They went out and got all these good players like competing with Ohio State and some of the other big dogs for players in the portal.

1:48:56And then you've got Utah, who did use the portal, but it was the import a whole offense, essentially. So Jason Beck was the OC at New Mexico. Devin Dampier was the quarterback at New Mexico. They got their leading receiver from New Mexico as well. And so you bring those guys in, and that offense is kind of fully baked, at least in the skill positions when you get there. But you're doing it with some of the best offensive linemen in the league. So Utah probably has the best offensive line in the Big 12. Spencer Feneau, their right tackle, is probably the number one offensive tackle prospect in the draft.

1:49:31Caleb Lomu, their left tackle, is going up the list pretty quick too. I can't wait to see this because Texas Tech went out and got David Bailey from Stanford. David Bailey's an elite edge rusher. He's awesome off the edge. The knock on him from the scouts is what happens when you run straight at him. Well, you run Spencer Feneau straight at him. That's about as tough as it gets. If David Bailey can handle that and Texas Tech can overcome that, then their way of doing things worked. They're your favorite in the Big 12. But if Spencer Feneau is just running people over and Devin Dampier rushes for 100 and throws for 200 and they win, Utah is your favorite in the Big 12.

1:50:12Big Cat:Yeah. I like Matier. I like that pick. I would also – I'm just thinking a lot about Miami. Carson Beck I don't think is a bad pick either at 9-1. And then if you just want to take a shot and think like Drew Aller, he looks the part of Penn State is as advertised. At 25 to 1 right now, I think that's pretty good value. I might look at Dante Moore at Oregon. I haven't looked at his odds lately. I think they're probably down a little bit because he's probably moved into the favorite group. But yeah, he's been good. Hey, Gunnar Stockton. Yeah. He's not that high. but that was a clutch clutch throw on fourth down the other day because all the Georgia fans were freaking out after the first few games like after the Austin Peay game they're like I don't I don't I don't know about Gunnar Stockton and then you see him make that throw you're like okay that's

1:51:00PFT Commenter:our guy yeah yeah um all right Andy you're the best everyone listen to him on on three uh you can see him writing he's covering everything college football it feels like this is a wide open year, nothing better. And thanks as always for joining us. Thank you, gentlemen. Appreciate it. Thanks, Andy. This one's brought to you by TickPick. Ever actually read a ticket receipt, service fee, processing fee, convenience fee, convenient for who? That's an extra 30 bucks a ticket. TickPick doesn't do that. Never has, never will. No fees means the exact same seat, same section, same row. Cost less on TickPick.

1:51:40PFT Commenter:Fans trust TickPick for all their live events. Check the reviews yourself. So why overpay for the exact same seat? Download the TickPick app and never pay another service fee again. And for new TickPick customers, take$20 off your first order with promo code PMT20 in the TickPick app. Terms apply. That's PMT20 at checkout for$20 off your first order. hey Illinois Stella Blue Coffee's new canned lattes are here and in a store near you crafted with 100 % Colombian coffee each can is a good source of protein and comes in two smooth flavors espresso cafe mocha and espresso sweet cream whether you're braving your morning commute or chasing your pup Stella Blue Cans are for those always on the go and for those who care Stella Blue is more than just great coffee it's about giving back I named the brand after my rescue dog Stella who inspired our mission to help more dogs find their forever homes.

1:52:38PFT Commenter:Every purchase supports animal rescue organizations, so when you drink Stella Blue, you're not just fueling your day, you're saving a dog's life. Try the new cans today, head to our store locator on StellaBlueCoffee.com and sign up to redeem a buy one, get one free offer. Okay, we now welcome on a very special guest. Very, very special guest. Recurring guest. Very, very. I'm going to throw a couple more very's in there Very very very very very very very You deserve it it's like your third or fourth time You're in studio We got Wrestle Wrestlepalooza Coming up on Saturday In Indianapolis Explain to me what Wrestlepalooza is Because you know Wrestlemania You know SummerSlam You know all these things But now we got Wrestlepalooza Are you guys taking all the events Because Wrestlepalooza feels like that's a big deal yeah well it's a big deal mainly because it's our first ple i'm still trying to uh warm up to not saying pay-per-view okay i've my entire life it's been pay-per-view yeah uh but these are premium live events because pay-per-view is a dead technology uh it's a big deal because it is the first one on espn so new partnership with espn uh and it's a big deal it's why i'm here we're doing media we're trying to get everybody aware that uh you got to get the espn to see all rple's and i've been doing my best to not say the word wrestle palooza the entire time that might actually actually be the first time i've said it really yeah why it's a ridiculous name it is but i kind of like it yeah because you add a palooza to anything you're like that sounds like well lala palooza yeah right and you add wrestle to it and you kind of understand what you're

1:54:26Big Cat:getting yeah like it's pretty self-explanatory a shitload of wrestling yeah yeah it sounds exciting extravaganza and you've been back in town in chicago for a while how would you rate your first pitch that you threw at wrigley um i don't think my mechanics were great but i'm

1:54:43PFT Commenter:dealing with uh an elbow problem can't make excuses and and i don't so i my thing was throw get it it used to be get it over the plate and do it from the mound and now i'm just like in the zone where I'm like, I have to throw a strike. I'm not trying to throw 80, 90 miles an hour, but I off the mound, off the rubber threw a strike. Okay. That's all that matters. Yeah. As long as you don't hop it or throw it so far. The bounce is what everybody at. Everybody in the organization. Hey, you didn't bounce it. Don't bounce it. Yeah. That's the big thing because people get up there and they don't realize how far away 90 feet is.

1:55:21PFT Commenter:And I respect you going on the rubber. You have to go to the rubber. Have to. Yes. When did you do it? Oh, geez. It feels like 12 years ago already. I've thrown pitches a lot. I think I'm in the double digits now, but the most recent one was Friday. Two Fridays, I guess. That's perfect. Yeah. Friday at Wrigley is nothing. It was a busy day in the Brooks Mendez household. Yeah. I was at Wrigley throwing a pitch, singing the stretch, and the whole time works like, hey, when are you going to get here? You know what? You sent me here. Yeah, right. You know where I'm at. Right. You know where I'm at.

1:55:53PFT Commenter:That's, I mean, Friday Cubs game. There's literally nothing better. Yeah. My favorite. I was shocked at how many people weren't there. Like, normally I go to Cubs games and it's always 40 ,000 plus. Yeah. It was only like 32. Huh. It was bad weather? Were you playing? No, it was beautiful. But it was a Friday, so I'm assuming people are working. Yeah, I guess actually. Well, no, I think it does dip a little once school starts back up. That makes sense. Because obviously kids. There were. You say that and there were a lot of kids there and a few of them had signs that said, I skipped school to CM Punk and I was like that's hell yeah that's amazing that's awesome good for those kids are you excited about the Cubs this postseason because I am I am cautiously optimistic like I you know it's hard you guys understand it you know we haven't won a playoff game in almost 10 years yeah uh and it's also you know I know the organization's gearing up for a run so it's just like I think even if you win a game or two but you wind up exiting in the first round I think that's kind of a disappointment.

1:56:53PFT Commenter:Yeah. So we're crossing our fingers. It's also just this weird zone the Cubs have been in for, I don't know, about three weeks, a month, where they're far enough back in the Central they probably can't realistically win the Central, and they're so far up in the wild card it's not a worry that they're going to be in the playoffs. Yeah. So they're like, we're in. We're a really good team. It just happens the Brewers have had a better year. Yeah, especially recently. They're on a hot streak. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So when you get – how has it been being back at WWE? Are you loving it? Are you – like it feels like everything's going well right now for WWE.

1:57:30PFT Commenter:Is there a part of you that's like, this could always turn for me? Oh, always. I'm eternal doomsayer. Yeah, right. I really try not to be now. I try to live in the moment. And, yeah, I really got nothing bad to say. But, yeah, there's peaks and valleys to everything.

1:57:47Big Cat:Yeah. But you're always like on that razor's edge. like yeah i think everything's been so hot there's definitely a part of me that's just like man when

1:57:53PFT Commenter:is the bottom gonna fall out of this you know right because it's been so great yeah it's it's great seeing you back it's just a natural progression of things like things can't always be here if they're always here you can't that's fair i don't know you you expect it you can't enjoy it you got to take the lows with the highs yeah maybe maybe this will be just great for a long time though mate i'm knock on wood hopefully and hopefully i don't shit the bed on you know saturday wrestlepalooza wait so what is shitting the bed like is there a moment you've had uh wrestling where you're like man i fucked that up or like man that was a i went in with this plan and it just i didn't perform because yeah like athletes obviously have games where they're not their best for sure i assume you have those moments where you're like why i wasn't at my peak or even close to it tonight yeah i think that happens often but i think with us it's harder to tell you know yeah i mean if you're if you're a pitcher you look at the stats you look at your era you look at how hard or fast you're throwing you know and there's metrics that'll tell you like oh you're having a bad day right you know for us i think a lot of the times uh most of the time a lot of us are probably having a bad day but when you go through the curtain and the red lights on like all that goes away you know like it's it's stressful it's a job it's a fun job don't get me wrong but like i was talking to you guys off you know off uh off air and like my dog just had surgery so like i'm trying to travel with them because i and i don't want to fly with them so it's like i got him a stroller you know and i got my wife on the road too so yeah she's back and i'm making sure like she's she's accommodated and taken care of and i'm like trying to do all this stuff and like you still have to go be cm punk on camera and you have to be on and you have to do this but but you know the house could be on fire people who watch you on television don't

1:59:43Big Cat:know because you just that that's the job right yeah right that makes sense it does bring up an interesting conversation though is there such a thing as sabermetrics or like advanced stats for wrestlers no has anybody tried to put those in no but i think you should like yeah how many how many folding chairs you've taken to the back right like the speed of the swing the launch angle of your body going off the turnbuckle and back in the day it would come it would have come in really handy because it could be like what town were you in last night yeah how many miles did you drive to get to this town did you work out did you sleep what did you eat like it's it's a roller coaster

2:00:19PFT Commenter:who is on your wrestling mount rushmore if you had just if we did the sabermetrics and you're like hey i'm i'm part of this you know team sitting in a room being like these are the best four wrestlers of all time i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna cheat i'm gonna be a really annoying um i'm sure somebody will call me a liberal cuck okay uh i like to say six grandfathers instead of okay no that's fine six grandfathers is what it was before we decided to carve four white men in the side of it okay it was a an american indian uh monument sacred land and you get two more picks And that way, yeah, here's me under the auspices of trying to be this bleeding heart liberal.

2:01:00But I also get two more now.

2:01:01Big Cat:You're the first person that's ever done a land acknowledgement at the start of a segment, a part of my take, I think. Yeah, there we go. It's the first time for everything.

2:01:08PFT Commenter:This also, we do Mount Rushmore season in the summer, and it almost tears us apart every single day. It's hard. I mean, four is hard. Six would be a problem. To me, it's interesting because in sports, if in the 60s you said, give me your top four baseball players, that's infinitely easier than 2025.

2:01:24Big Cat:Yeah, for sure. Same with football. I mean, same with hockey. Because you're, you know.

2:01:29PFT Commenter:Why don't we keep adding? Yeah. Yeah. All right, so six. So inflation, now we get six. This is why some people love me and why some people hate me. Yeah. What do you, you know. The top six pro wrestlers of all time? Yes. Man, it's still pretty hard. Bret Hart. Okay. um in terms of just overall like to me he's like a 10 out of 10 of everything that people can give him flack for not maybe having the the the best mic skills but for who he was and what he was trying to accomplish like brett was always brett you know like real sports like badass in the ring excellence execution like he didn't need to have the promo ability of say like a roddy piper right um speaking of piper i'm gonna go ahead and put him on there too okay so it's it's brett it's piper uh it's terry funk it is eddie guerrero it's harley race you're five already that's five oh man yeah it's hard right who's six

2:02:39Big Cat:Are you going to put yourself on there? No, I don't think I would put myself on there. In terms of just overall best of all time, wearing multiple different hats, this is where it kind of gets dicey. Because everyone normally says Flair, Shawn Michaels is a good pick, Dusty's another good pick. uh logan paul no not even top 100 very very uh very good very skilled uh picked it up very very fast but he's got a lot of work you're talking yeah you're talking to a wrestling history yeah buff of course of course yeah i'm gonna yeah and if he wants to get offended at that that's fine great new feud yeah great um god i don't know it's like do you throw misawa in there do you Do you say it's – I mean –

2:03:36PFT Commenter:I think Dusty Rhodes is a very good pick. I think Dusty is a very good pick. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Dusty, six. Because then you get Cody, too. Six with a bullet. Yeah. I don't think that's a package deal. No, it is. Dusty made Cody. You think so? Yeah, literally. You get his balls, right? Yeah. Dusty's balls, which he's saying Cody. Okay, the seed. Yeah, seven, right? Yeah, then he's number six.

2:03:58Big Cat:Yeah, perfect. If you were to self-scout and be like, what what's your one weakness that you would improve on to put yourself on that what'd you call the six grandfathers what would what would cian punk have to do to make it there no i i just i just look at all these other guys i mean we didn't even i didn't even name steve austin like steve austin's like another favorite you know what i mean like uh am i do it have i had a better career am i better than steve austin or eddie garrer no no i'll never i'll never think that you know uh i think i'm more off more apt to put myself ahead of my contemporaries right but like the legends that i grew up watching the that i studied that i learned from no i'm not better than those guys yeah so with you in particular how does how does it work for the storylines that are being written how how big of a say do you have in that process because i imagine you you're very opinionated guy not afraid to speak your mind yeah do they bring you in like early on and they're like, Hey, we might as well include them or else he's going to tell us to shove it up our ass and try to rewrite it.

2:05:00Big Cat:Or do they just kind of give it to you and you, you go along with it? So I think there's a little bit of magic that can happen because to me, there's a lot of great minds that I work with. There's a lot of people who have more experience than me. And maybe back in the day I would say, no, I know, I know what to do. And, you know, now I'm more, I guess I'm just kind of chill now. Whereas before it was more rebellious. And now I, to me, there's a magic about maybe taking something that you didn't see or you didn't think of somebody else's idea and going, oh, you know what? Yeah. Okay. I can do that with this.

2:05:42And hey, what if we did this? I don't really pitch things and I've taken a page out of Cena's book. They deal them. I play them. You know, I have ideas and I have suggestions. And more oftentimes now it's for other people, not for me, you know, and I just I just kind of roll with it. Yeah, that's cool.

2:06:04PFT Commenter:What? So I have a question about feuds. So you had a feud with Drew McIntyre in 2024. You have a feud right now with Seth Rollins. when you're in a feud with a guy does it leak over are you like i like almost like a daniel day lewis method acting where it's like i got to get into this feud to a point where i can't be around this person behind the scenes and how how does that work yeah i'm not i'm not going out to dinner with anybody i love and that's the magic of our business too is like if you're a if you're a true professional you don't have to even remotely like the guy you work with you know you but like The business is built on trust.

2:06:44So if somebody's going to try to double cross me, no, that's a whole different problem. But I work with professionals who aren't going to do that because I think they do realize if we do that, there's going to be some sort of a problem. But yeah, I'm not going out to dinner with these guys. Some of them don't like me. Some of them I don't care for. And that's the magic. That's the line we get to kind of weave in and out. I would imagine. What's real, what's not.

2:07:14PFT Commenter:Yeah, I would imagine it makes the feud a little more real if you're not like hanging out with them, you know, having dinner. 100%. Yeah, I like that. I like that.

2:07:23Big Cat:What about the people that you're teamed up with at the moment? Do you spend time with them outside of a restaurant? Yeah. Yeah, your wife. By the way, I don't know what her sit-up regimen is. It's insane, right? I don't know what she does, but respectfully, the best stomach I've ever seen. Yeah. It's incredible. Yeah. Respectfully. Respectfully. Mine too. Yeah. Me too. Yeah. And I've seen it up close. Yeah. It's insane. Yeah. Yeah. She's, she's inspirational, honestly, like her willpower. It's a lot of that's diet, but she's also super strong in the gym and she's like lifting heavy weights and just busting her ass all the time.

2:07:59PFT Commenter:Is it fun having her back? Oh, it's, I'm having the time of my life. Yeah. I would imagine. I'm like the Uber nerdiest like wife guy. like so so i always like to say i try to spend as much time with my wife as i can and i spend a lot of time with her and it never feels like it's enough so having her be back in this environment with me at work is like a dream come true yeah that's very cool are you still doing any acting

2:08:23Big Cat:yeah yeah yeah what are you up to these i think last time we had you in studio you were working on horror film right yeah that's actually uh premiering on the 19th at fantastic fest in austin and it was gonna go but the instant uh aj coming back became a reality i had to make some calls and be like i'm gonna skip out on the premiere here guys but it's uh so that that debuts at fantastic fest uh movie called night patrol directed written and directed by uh david prowse um me and a bunch of crips no is it is it bloods yeah it's bloods there was bloods in that right i'm trying to think red or blue bull both it's uh it's la la pd uh bloods crips it's a real bastard of a movie i'm excited to see it uh but that'll also i think uh west coast debut uh premiere at beyond fest i think on the 29th and so is that something you're going to try to do more of like i don't know what the rest of your career looks like in terms of wrestling well neither do i but you have to think about it right yeah at some point you're not going to be able to wrestle anymore yep and then you're going to have to figure out what you want to do now what are the career paths for like a wrestler that's stuck around that long that's been that impactful like what do you do after the point that you can't stay in the ring well you know i think it's funny i think a lot of the the greatest wrestlers um sometimes aren't the greatest coaches or you know you would think like oh hey why don't you train people they they don't have the aptitude for it or they're not interested in it you know like to me steve austin's probably the biggest box office superstar that the business has ever seen you know and you can argue like hogan's up there obviously um but you don't see those guys like running a training school right you know because it's just you know sometimes it's like barry bonds isn't isn't a coach you know i think he he did like was he hitting coach he was a hitting coach for a little bit but we're like a heartbeat yeah and it's just like why aren't you the greatest hitting coach of all time you're the your home run king you know and sometimes it just it doesn't work out that way and then sometimes the journeymen wrestlers who weren't big superstars on television or the guys that are behind the scenes are like really smart uh and it's the same way with baseball i was just talking when uh at the cubs game when they're playing the nationals and i was talking to a lot of the you know the old heads on the nationals team they invited me to sit on the field and watch batting practice and i was just like well you you guys are the lifeblood of you know and you know they so-and-so play i played for nine teams i played for seven teams i had this long career and it's just like you learn from so many different coaches and you kind of understand the game a little bit better yeah somebody who's like oh it's superstar fielder hitter pitcher whatever like they burn a little bit brighter on the field but when it comes to like the x's and the o's you know it's just one of those weird sports things i think a lot of times it's the

2:11:18PFT Commenter:guys who are the best it sometimes comes more naturally and easier for them so for them to then tell you how to do it it's like well no they just were able to do it they're just savants right yeah they didn't have to grind their way to get there as much as everyone obviously they worked hard yeah very bonds can try to teach you how to hit a home run 450 feet but he he just do it to do it yeah yeah let's do it how do you tell someone what to do when you can just do it naturally

2:11:42Big Cat:yeah it's very hard so outside of coaching like would there be a reason for you to still work in wrestling yeah like after it's after you're done being in the ring I mean I think I'm I'm one of those going back to sports I'm like that five tool player you know like I you can put me on commentary you could like I could ref that probably wouldn't work I'd probably take some attention away from whoever's in the ring no but I mean there's so many behind the scenes roles there's you know like we call them producers now but in my day we call them agents you know like Like there's people who put shows together.

2:12:18There's writers, obviously, now, creative people. I love all aspects of the business. There's like a thousand hats that I could wear once I'm crippled and I can't go anymore.

2:12:30Big Cat:Yeah. The refs are always really interesting to me. Are there good refs in wrestling and bad refs? There's great refs. So what makes a good ref? A good ref is a referee that you do not notice or really pay attention to. Okay. you know uh Tommy Young was like probably one of the the greatest refs back in the NWA you know and it's like we recognize him now but during the the heyday like you didn't pay attention to him Earl Hebner was another good one I think we got a lot of we got a crew of like really really good refs WWE now they're not trying to be a character on the show they're trying to play their position they're doing their job you know they're not like Angel Martinez trying to make the show about him right you know they're just in the background ancillary character just kind of playing that role as a referee they're not trying to get their face on tv and all that other stuff that's what makes a good referee yeah like how can you be easily distracted without making it about you being easily distracted right yeah yeah that's my favorite reference you hold your hand up

2:13:33PFT Commenter:long enough on that on that three how slow can you count yeah yeah right the kick out can you

2:13:39Big Cat:time the kick out one yeah that's perfect yeah two how sternly can you warn a guy if he's going to bring a bat into the ring right yeah hey you better not yeah well we always i always tell referees like be a ref like if you catch me doing something it's because i fucked up not you like i need you to like play it straight yeah yeah position uh when you do decide to retire are

2:14:07PFT Commenter:Are you going to do a year-long retirement tour like John Cena? No, I think he can't because he did it. He did? Well, no, you could do two-year. Just one-up him. I said this on the microphone. I think with Cena, one of the segments we did, I said, we are on the same path. I'm just not egotistical enough to announce it. I like that. And honestly, it's the truth. Yeah. He's a little bit older than me. You should retire like a day after him. And be like, that's how you could do it, dude. it's it's one of those things where like i know it's looming and you know when i when i came back to wwe and i blew my tricep right away i was there was part of me that was like oh is this it right this sucks and yeah i came back for it in record time pat myself on the back like six months i was back in the ring and i was doing the best work of my career in my opinion but after a while it's like not so much the injuries because you can rehab and come back from anything but it's just and do i want to do this again right you know do i want to bust my ass and work impossibly hard and it's not recognized because all the hard work goes on when people aren't watching and then do i am i setting myself up to hurt something else or whatever but we're all banged up yeah we're all limping around and i try not to assess how i feel like when i wake up or when i'm sitting on the couch i i need to warm up and when i warm up i'm like fuck let's go i got another i got another 10 years do you still have the same uh feeling like right before the pop of a crowd before you walk out is that still there because i would imagine that would be the thing that maybe if that ever goes away that you're like all right now it's time to hang well that was one of the reasons why i disappeared for seven years right from the business and 10 from wwe is because i wrestled the undertaker at wrestlemania and i i was just like it didn't get you excited it and it worried me because i was like no this is everything i ever wanted like why you know but i at that point i'd been on the road for like nine years straight no breaks you know and it's just like it it's a grind and i i loved the match we had i loved working with him and there's a part of me that's just like man i i should have i should have been in a better headspace for that to really be able to enjoy it and realize the the gift that it was it's just the way the world worked it was i just wasn't mentally there yeah and that sucked and that's a big reason why yeah that's when you got to step out because the last thing you want to do is get hurt hurt somebody else you know um not that when the bell rang my head was in the game but i just i felt like i should have been more excited about it i should have been more amped up about it it should have been you know like yeah here we are you know and i was you know just more pissed off and angry about like all this other bullshit uh that feeling is still there and it's actually i i think amplified now because i am more present i'm more like like in the now not worried about yesterday not worried about what the hell we're doing tomorrow and i can enjoy it because i know this ain't gonna last forever so when that first feeling happened to you what you mentioned the match with the undertaker did it like did it shock you did it come out of like nowhere because i you talking about it right there made me realize like i hope this doesn't happen to me but like someday what if i walk into this studio i'm like i'm not excited to go yeah you know because it's it's been yeah obviously some days they're long days some days you're tired but for the most part i'm excited to come to work every day so did it kind of just happen and you're like whoa what was that or was it something that was you felt it coming like a wave and it finally hit you yeah i think there's probably a straw that broke the camel's back or you know like the dam exploded and you know everything flooded but i there wasn't any particular one thing i just at that at that point i just needed time off yeah i needed to step away and i eventually did you know like i i wish it could have happened on better circumstances i begged and pleaded like hey let me go home for a little bit let me like recharge my batteries you know nine years ten years on the road is is a lot yeah uh so yeah i hope that doesn't happen to you either yeah this is an instance like that is where i wish like man i wish i did drugs because like is this what drugs do like can i just like yeah do coke and then i'm good yeah i'm ready i'm ready to go don't do drugs kids i'm just kidding

2:18:36Big Cat:drugs you probably could have smoked one joint and been fine and then be like oh yeah i love wrestling yeah eat some mushrooms would that get me would that get i feel like that would mellow me out even more and i would just be like yeah that might turn you that might then you'd have to switch your character up yeah yeah that would change that would be a very funny rebrand if you just went as i gulp my copious amounts of caffeine just cm punk just smashing bongs over people's heads i'll do that i think i have done that one like as a yeah like the dea right yes yes stop using drugs or kick the shit out yeah yeah it's great as society baby come on kids uh are you going to riot fest this weekend i can't wrestle palooza come on sunday well when's wrestle palooza wrestle palooza is saturday yeah um i will be in indianapolis on friday you know i'll be around at smackdown i won't be on screen but i do things backstage i help out um i i'm i'm a little bit i can't go to riot fest anyway because of legal reasons but i really wanted to see the uh lambrini girls that was like the one band that i really i'm really into that i wanted to see yeah i love the legal reasons yeah just leave it at that yeah well they're you know yeah legal reasons yeah correct my lawyer has advised me probably best i stopped talking yeah all right i'll switch to a

2:19:57PFT Commenter:different uh topic because i i think that indianapolis is the number one city for putting on events what's your favorite really okay pat mcafee all right no no here's here's why and i know that it sounds crazy because there's you know you can go to new orleans there's definitely other great cities and we do the super bowl every year we do march madness every year final four indyapolis is one of the only cities in america where you can go to you can check in and you never have to get in a uber or car for the rest of the weekend you just walk everywhere it's everything's there like when they do do the final four you're just there and can't you do that in chicago though Chicago is a walkable city It's walkable But not like If you're If you're staying downtown And you gotta go to the United Center You gotta go Like you still have to You can't Like you can walk But Indianapolis Like you can walk And it's Everything's five minute walk Really Yeah So everything's that close Everything is that close I feel like I should know That I was just there For the Royal Rumble

2:20:52Big Cat:Yeah All the hotels are right together All the restaurants Are right down there You've got the stadium You've got the convention center And if it's cold outside They got like the tunnels Yeah Yeah You just walk in the tunnels There's tunnels and there's also like Yeah

2:21:07PFT Commenter:New Orleans is also up there But New Orleans also puts a toll on you If you're there for a long time It's also below sea level Yeah right But I'm not saying the Indianapolis is the most beautiful city I'm just saying when there's an event there I like going because it's like I know it's just going to be easy You don't have to wait for taxis So that was a long way of saying What are your favorite cities to go and do events at Do you have a list of, hey, I'm excited to go here? I think people always ask us what our favorite buildings are to work in. I don't care about the buildings. Slam dunk 100%.

2:21:42It's Chicago. It's the Allstate Arena.

2:21:44PFT Commenter:That's personal for you, too. Yeah. United Center. It's hard not to be proud of yourself when you're from a city and you look at all the arenas in the city and you're like, man, I've sold all these places out. Yeah. I've been on top. people hanging from the rafters literally like i've sold all these buildings out so now it goes to like oh well hey i i we gotta have a show at wrigley field you know we gotta have a show at soldier field yeah like that's where my mind goes um but the new arlington i bet you win arlington heights whenever the fuck that happens that will have a wrestlemania we're crossing our fingers yeah um as far as cities go it's just like i don't like new york i don't like traveling in and out of new york but once i'm there and i'm like boom okay i'm here because i'm a big guy i like i love walking i love putting my head my hat on sunglasses earphones and just walking yep uh and that way you get to see where you're at you get to experience different cultures i'm a big fan of people watching um new york's a good one uh in the garden obviously the world's most famous arena.

2:22:55There's little buildings. There's a building in White Plains, New York that I always love wrestling in. And there's a building in Hammond, Indiana. It was like an old territory building. And there's just something about the building. There's like a balcony that surrounds the ring. And when you're in there, it just feels like the people are on top of you. Yeah. You know?

2:23:22where else i mean normally when i when i travel and if i have to be somewhere like the day before like i'm out walking around trying to see things experience things just because i don't like just

2:23:34PFT Commenter:sitting in a hotel or you know yeah that part would get very uh like tedious stinks yeah yeah

2:23:40Big Cat:if you if you try to go incognito and just lay low are you able to walk around most cities if you got the sunglasses the hat the hoodie i still get recognized yeah yeah yeah but i do my got your sleeves cut off i do my but they i actually don't ever cut sleeves off they just i don't know i put a shirt on and they like they don't fit and they just do you get bothered a lot explode yeah do you

2:24:02PFT Commenter:get bothered a lot in chicago or people mostly just let you i don't like to say bothered because it makes it seem like everything's a negative experience but yeah yeah you know because everything's not always a negative experience sometimes sometimes there's really good fan interactions and sometimes it's not so much yeah you know but you take the good with the bad yeah do you have any uh any least favorite cities oh man that's good i mean i already said i don't like new york i mean they put their trash on the streets it's insane it's crazy it's insane to me and that's why i always tell people chicago is a clean new york you got you got alleys yeah alleys are there for a reason correct correct hide the the rats hide the garbage yeah bomb the rats every few months and you're good i love that notice when it's a fresh notice it's like yeah we just uh you know agent orange all the rats in your alley don't let your dog out there okay got it cities i don't like though oh man i don't know like now you're gonna now you're gonna pick a random one just to shit on so that way you get a good pop you know uh so the funny thing is is i still i still kind of do this it's interesting a lot of people are always like oh you're a much better heel than you are a baby face okay like i i get that i feel that i it's just a lot easier to get people to hate you than it is to get people to like truly love you yeah and i'm in this space now where i don't know if i'm ever going to be a bad guy again because it seems uh i've you know i've kind of like leveled up and i've reached this point where like a lot of it's nostalgia a lot of it is i i think how hard i work and how i still can compete at that super high level uh but i like to mess with people so when we were just on a european tour and i think we were in liverpool i had to say something shitty about the beatles on the microphone just because i thought it was funny yeah right you know and then we were in

2:26:01Big Cat:was it uh manchester where's oasis from uh they are from i think it's birmingham is it birmingham or manchester it's one of those two and i don't give a fuck about oasis so i had so i had to say something about oasis too because and it's hilarious because everybody's like yes we love you and then i'm like yeah uh nolan bob whatever their other you know and they're like but i love you yeah they get really confused and then i just move on and i i get my little dig in like I'm a bad guy and then we just kiss babies. Because you were saying before we started taping how much you hated St. Louis. St.

2:26:38Louis isn't great. It is kind of a walkable city. I do like walking around when it's nice out, but I mean shit sports teams, shit pizza. Not good. No. The pizza's weird. Weird. I don't even think it's cheese. I think they use like some sort of glue or paste.

2:26:55PFT Commenter:Yeah. It's real weird. It's a whole entire city of people sitting under an arch eating paste it's like first grade man I was thinking about it because Rizzo's weekend you know here in Chicago and then we had Patrick Kane in the office like a couple months ago it's a little crazy that it's like all that stuff is now 10 even more than 10 years ago blink of an eye brother like another life damn it that went fast and I don't know if the Blackhawks will ever be good again The Cubs are obviously good right now. I think the Hawks will be good. I bought season tickets the minute we got Conor Bedard, and it hasn't really gone well since.

2:27:37I mean, he's not a cure-all. No, of course.

2:27:40PFT Commenter:But I thought maybe. I like Spencer Knight. I think he's still young. I think he's going to improve. Rumors that we might get Kirill. Yeah. That's kind of hot. That's got to get you all boned up. Yeah. Like, you know, like, I think they're making good moves. I think they're... We're going to start... I'll tell you that right now. He ain't winning a cup in Edmonton. No. Not at all. Why?

2:28:07Big Cat:Why? Yeah. They fucking... They're choke artists. Might as well be Maple Leafs, you know? Like, it ain't going to fucking happen.

2:28:15PFT Commenter:He is unbelievable, though. Yeah, he is unbelievable. He's really good. Leon Dreisaitl. Unbelievable. So, like, is that, like, just an institutional thing? Is it, like... I don't know. You can always blame the culture. Always blame the culture. Losing culture, yeah. I mean, what's to do in Edmonton except lose game seven? They've been close. Do not tag Ryan Whitney in this clip. Don't. David is awesome. He does like, when you watch him play, you're like, holy shit. Sure, but one guy can't win a Stanley Cup. No, no. And that's the great thing about hockey. and I'm sure other people will be able to argue other sports that they're more knowledgeable about.

2:28:56But to me, you need a Conor McDavid in goal. You know what I mean? You need a goalie that can stop the shots.

2:29:09PFT Commenter:Bob for the Panthers. Goalie Bob.

2:29:11Big Cat:Incredible. Yeah, there you go.

2:29:13PFT Commenter:Yeah.

2:29:13Big Cat:You got to have assist guys. You got to have tough guys to make sure they don't fuck with your McDavid. Right. Then you have to have two more lines. Marty McSorley's. Yeah, you need your McSorley's, and then you have to have two other lines where it's like you've got McDavid Jr.'s on those lines. Yeah. Cheaper McDavid. I think you compare it to the NBA, it's like a different sport. That's the other thing, too. It's like the price point he's going to command when his deal's up is like, what team?

2:29:38PFT Commenter:What do you do after that? Yeah. You have to fill out a roster. Are you a team that wants to win? Are you a general manager that wants to actually build a team to win a cup? or are you just going to be like, no, we're going to have Conor McDavid and we're going to make all our money selling McDavid sweaters and we don't give a shit about the team we put on the ice. Yeah, you basically have to be perfect. Like the devils, you know? Yeah. If you get a McDavid, you have to be perfect with your draft picks. Yeah. Because you got to be, the young guys have to be really, really good right away. Right, because he's going to get paid$15 million a year.

2:30:12PFT Commenter:Yeah. Yeah. All right, I got one last question. Rowback question. R-H-O-B-A-C-K.com promo code TAKE. 20 % off your first purchase. Q-Zips, polos, hoodies, joggers, shorts, roback.com, promo code TAKE. Awesome having you here. Respalooza, Saturday night, 7 p.m. Can you give us any, like, what are you going to do special? Maybe give us like a hat tip or something, like a secret code? Well, I just think it's a spectacle because of A.J. Lee. Yeah. A.J. Lee's coming back. and i said it when i came back um unbiased take almost two years ago now who's aj lee it's a bias it's a biased take obviously because she's my wife but you know when i came back and it was insane in the all-state arena if you look at the field of eligible free agents in pro wrestling there's only one that could top what i did and it was her you know and it took a while to you know massage some things out and get it done but to me wrestlepalooza is the celebration of of wrestling and you know my wife getting to kind of sit in the shade of the trees she planted over 10 years ago you know everybody's big on everybody getting flowers you know but it's nice to give them the people while they're around to smell them yeah you know agreed and to me that's what it's about so i think maybe back in the day 10 12 years ago me and her probably tagged together on like a monday night raw and it wasn't a it wasn't a big deal that to me this is a big deal you know we don't do a lot of these mixed tags um i don't really like seth rollins so therefore i really i really don't like his wife uh so it's it's going to be interesting and i i think we stack this entire card because it is the first one on ESPN.

2:32:07We want to get off on the right foot. Stephanie of the care against EOS Sky, I think is going to be an absolute banger. You got Brock Lesnar and John Cena. And anytime Cena's on the card, especially now it's his retirement tour, it's a big deal. You know, you got the bronze against the reuniting Usos. It's a, it's a hell of a card. It's going to be, it's going to be a great night.

2:32:28Big Cat:Maybe 15 minute ovation afterwards, like the rock. I hope so. That was pretty impressive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 15 minutes that's a long time to clap for anything for sure but yeah are you talking about the the the safety movie yeah the movie that he was in 15 minutes that all seems so pretentious doesn't it because like after about seven minutes i would be like yeah fucking all right answer all right but indianapolis see if you can keep it going for ajla 15 minutes after we whip that ass i like fuck sets rollins yeah also when seen a retire you should retire actually right before he does like five minutes beforehand total total kanye uh yeah i'm gonna let you i'm gonna let you retire john but first i just want to announce my retirement okay goodbye everybody yeah do it

2:33:11PFT Commenter:do it that's a good idea that's all right all right man thank you as always anytime you you want to come by brandon by the way is very upset he missed you again is it brendan yeah brendan brendan brandon but we'll have to figure out a time you can break out to talk to you what a stupid name don't clip that all right thanks so much man thanks guys

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2:34:07PFT Commenter:You're saving a dog's life. Try the new cans today. Taste the difference and make a difference. All new Stella Blue coffee can lattes now available at StellaBlueCoffee.com or subscribe on Amazon for 10 % off. okay uh faqs henry yes did you see by the way uh since we've been recording breaking moves shefter had to uh come out and they had a story clarifying all of brady's

2:34:35Big Cat:saudi arabia no in the booth versus practice what they say uh he's not allowed i did see it he's not allowed to uh go into the team facilities yeah banned from team facilities Which I think is fair. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah. Same. Yeah.

2:34:51PFT Commenter:All right.

2:34:52Big Cat:I actually think it went to the point where it was so ridiculous seeing it on Monday Night Football and seeing the image of him up in the booth. But ultimately, I don't think that they were going to give him any information that he was going to be able to use against them. It just pissed me off that you would admit that it was weird. But you just didn't see my point.

2:35:10PFT Commenter:I feel like my original tinfoil hat point is very true. ESPN set this up. to get the controversy that Fox now has to deal with. Yeah, but it's really a nothing burger. Okay. FAQs, Hank. If Max was around for the double doink game, how would Big Cat have reacted? Would it have gotten Max fired? Were you there? No. No, no. There's a video of me watching it. I mean, we had Eagles fans with us. It wouldn't have gone great. I mean, Cody Parkey was going to do that eventually. that was the craziest part about it is like remember going into that game it was just like cody park he's missed so many kicks it's going to be a bad situation obviously double doink is

2:35:56Big Cat:something you never expected but i'll give max some credit he's a pretty good winner yeah he's a funnier loser and that's why we kind of root for him to lose sometimes but in victory max is gracious that's most gracious that is true yeah no i mean what am I supposed to say to you guys like I mean you might say something like you little small oh

2:36:16PFT Commenter:that's that's fair okay that was bad yeah that was a bad like if you had hit big cat with a with a you big fat but Max and I don't really have a rivalry like that like you have a rivalry with PFT you have a rivalry with Hank but that's just like our natural teams yeah but also just like outside of the teams too we don't have we don't but no but I don't really butt heads with Hank, I mean, I don't like butt heads with PFT outside of Eagles commanders. Yeah.

2:36:44Big Cat:It stays between the lines. Yeah. Yeah. I love my Max. Same. And honestly, I would have just felt like awkward. Yeah. Losing like that. It would have been very funny. Yeah.

2:36:57PFT Commenter:Yeah. Would you sign up for getting to a point of double doink right now? Having a team as good as the 2018 Bears? Yeah. If you knew that a double doink was at the end. I don't know about that, but maybe. I mean, that would be a really good team. That was a really good team.

2:37:16Big Cat:I'd suck a dick for a double doink. Yeah.

2:37:17PFT Commenter:I mean, that was a really good team. We also didn't talk. The doink last night was the loudest. Crazy doink.

2:37:23Big Cat:They're micing up the polls. Yeah. And also, when it hits higher up, the higher up it hits, I think that's where the mic is. Yeah. So if it's at the top of the poll, that's where you get the doink from.

2:37:33PFT Commenter:You think they have a doink on the top? They have a mic on the top of the...

2:37:36Big Cat:I think that's where the microphone is. because every time it hits up high, you get these crazy doinks, and when it hits down low, it's not as good.

2:37:43PFT Commenter:You think they rig a mic on top of the...

2:37:46Big Cat:I think it's like the Masters, they might even pipe in the doink.

2:37:49PFT Commenter:This is Hank... They pipe in the bird sounds at the Masters. Is producer Hank about to mansplain? Do they not? I don't know. I feel like... I don't know.

2:37:59Big Cat:Because the doinks have been getting louder over the years. How would they get it up there? How do they get the flag up there? How do they get the flag up there?

2:38:05PFT Commenter:They just put it on before it's a record?

2:38:07Big Cat:No, they just put it down. They can put them down. You can't put anything on a pole before it gets erect. You got to wait until it's erect, and then you can roll it down. They put it down. Yeah.

2:38:19PFT Commenter:Who knows? Okay. If you all had to switch bodies with each other, who would you all pick? What?

2:38:28Big Cat:If I had to switch bodies with one of you guys?

2:38:30PFT Commenter:I mean, I hate to say it, but probably Hank. Hank's probably got the bang in his body here. I'm not going to say that. But he does. Who else would you pick? For how long? It doesn't say. I actually don't know. I'll say this. I have no idea what Meme's body is because he always wears a sweatshirt. I have no idea. Not great. Not great? It might be like Adam Sandler. I think Hank has the best body on our show. That's tough. But it's also a fact. I mean, you're the closest to a six pack. That's true. Because you're the only one who said they could get one. That's all it takes to get his closest to a six pack.

2:39:04Big Cat:Yeah. Hank, but also if I switch bodies, that would imply that one of you guys had to have my body. Correct?

2:39:11PFT Commenter:I'd probably take your body over.

2:39:13Big Cat:It'd be the funniest if... That was such a rude stare. That was rude. Those eyes were... That was rude.

2:39:20PFT Commenter:It'd be funny if... You said I would pick your body over, pause, look at Max, look back. I'd look in the booth. I mean, I guess memes. He's normal sized. Zach has been losing some weight. Zach looks good. Max can't hit bombs, though.

2:39:36Big Cat:Yeah. He's got power. Sneaky athlete. You know what I mean? Yeah, the power I would get from Max's body would be great. Plus, then I would switch with one of the tall guys, the taller guys, just to make you guys everyone else live in my body. Yeah, just let you guys see what it's like in these shoes. Is that sad that Hank has by far the best body on the show?

2:40:00PFT Commenter:Yeah. Yeah.

2:40:01Big Cat:You do? I'm going to get jacked again, Hank. I'm going to show you. I am too, actually. I'll have a six-pack. I plan on getting really jacked. I had a bad week. Oh, no! I'm having a bad week. Oh, what happened? Even though you got the air fryer right next to your desk? No, the air fryer never came.

2:40:16PFT Commenter:Oh, wait. Are you off your diet? It was a bad weekend. Yesterday was good. Today I was doing well, and then we just did some ads that required eating some unhealthy things. Were you in ads? No, but they're there. That's a good question. You were eating them too, Hank. I am not the one that's on his diet. He's got the best body on the show. You're right. You're right.

2:40:40Big Cat:He's got some wiggle room.

2:40:41PFT Commenter:I got no wiggle room. That's bullshit when you say that. That pisses me off. I can't gain or lose weight. That pisses me off. That's such fucking bullshit. That's a bullshit thing to say. I will be between 175 and 185, I think, forever. You got to keep that to yourself. Yeah, you got to. Yeah. You got to keep that. Can I tell you something? Yeah. Yeah.

2:41:01Big Cat:Right in that zone. I literally can't I try when I was doing the dunking

2:41:06PFT Commenter:I was dieting as hard like so fucking hard trying to lose weight I got down to 170 and it was like two months of dieting yeah and now I'm like I'm like alright I wanna you know put on some muscle gain some weight and I'm trying to eat more and I'm like 179 I honestly think I could easily gain and lose 10 pounds in a week like either way if you just said hey you gotta do it yeah I could easily do it I could do that in like two days

2:41:32Big Cat:Yeah, but there's a big difference. What would be easier?

2:41:34PFT Commenter:Obviously gaining. Yeah. But I could do the losing.

2:41:37Big Cat:Is that the case?

2:41:39PFT Commenter:Actually, no. No, I don't think I could gain 10 pounds. Yes, you could. In two days? Not in two days. In a week. In a week, for sure. In a week, for sure.

2:41:48Big Cat:Yeah. But, Hank, when you're at like an unhealthy 185, that looks like it's 200. Like the healthy version of me at 185 looks so much skinnier than the unhealthy version. Yeah. It's probably a 40-pound swing. I think if I had one genie wish, like any superpower, I think it would be that. Oh. Just being able to eat whatever you want without gaining or losing any weight.

2:42:13PFT Commenter:Yeah. That would be awesome. That would be awesome. But what about unlimited money? Because then you could just buy it. Yeah, you could just get a chef and get a trainer. Also, teleportation is always the one that I go back to. teleport where would you teleport you could no commutes yeah you could literally live anywhere in the world and your commute would be the exact same oh my god think about that that'd be sick yeah time zone so that's honestly good fair point why

2:42:49Big Cat:just think we don't want to get in yeah yeah max would still be late for work if you could tell it was work. Well, if I lived in Italy and I just was like, all right, I got to go to work, would that be in the middle of the night? Yeah. No. No, it'd be the middle of the day. You'd go to work at like 2 p.m. Yeah, like noon, 1 o 'clock.

2:43:12PFT Commenter:This is where... Yeah.

2:43:15Big Cat:We'll do a quiz maybe in like a year. Set a reminder, quiz max on time zones. You have one year to understand time zones.

2:43:24PFT Commenter:Hi, Large Feline Florio Cometor and Franny Lydon. Besides Jerry, Whitney, and Max, who were your favorite guests who turned out to be huge AWLs?

2:43:38Big Cat:So Max Homa, that's what they were saying? Okay. Max Delonte? I like, I mean...

2:43:47PFT Commenter:Blake of the Year? Oh! Jared Goff. Jared Goff. So I had an update of that because remember I said I texted him and he didn't text me back. He got a new number and then he texted me from his new number with a picture of him watching the show. Okay. He's like, I'm at the point where you're talking about texting me and here's me texting you. There you go. That was kind of cool.

2:44:10Big Cat:That is pretty cool.

2:44:10PFT Commenter:Yeah.

2:44:11Big Cat:Did he apologize?

2:44:12PFT Commenter:Yeah, he was like, I got a new number, my bad. No, did he apologize for the game? No. Oh. I mean, why should he? Yeah.

2:44:19Big Cat:That would have been worse.

2:44:20PFT Commenter:yeah no way worse i wouldn't want him to apologize i'm sorry i had to do that but yeah i just couldn't stop scoring i had to play perfect football right in your face uh who else who else who else kiddle kiddle kiddle's a big one yeah i love kiddle he'lls the fucking man i mean he needs to get healthy i want to see him out there just fucking trucking people kevin garnett kevin

2:44:40Big Cat:yeah also uh boomer yeah every year me and big cat get a text from boomer on week one of the nfl season just wishing us a happy nfl season yeah and when i wake up in the morning i look at that text that's the happiest i am all year it's just it's it's surreal that chris berman is like our buddy our pal yeah he's our boy max home was was one of the first people to text me congratulations when i got engaged he was like one of the first five people good guy sick i love that i love that

2:45:09PFT Commenter:Yans. Yeah. Yans, big time listener. Love Yans. Shout out Yans. What's up, Pipsqueak Football Tool?

2:45:18Big Cat:Whoa. That was football at least, yeah.

2:45:21PFT Commenter:Da Biggest Cat. Ugh. And Hank the Shank. Oh. Is this Rose? Walk us through the most chaotic 10 minutes that has happened right before a show, and how did you manage to get it back on the rails?

2:45:35Big Cat:What? Ooh. There have been some times on Grit Week where we've been really mad at each other. And by each other, I mean two of us have been upset with one person.

2:45:45PFT Commenter:Or one person's been upset at two people.

2:45:48Big Cat:Yeah, and then the other two people get upset at the one person because they're upset at the two people.

2:45:52PFT Commenter:Chaotic? Most chaotic?

2:45:54Big Cat:Right before taping the show? I don't know. That would be more like a game that just ended that was a crazy ending. So the Chiefs-Eagles Super Bowl was pretty chaotic. The one that the Eagles lost because we didn't really say anything because we want to save it all for the show. Yeah, that's that's the hardest part. So we didn't talk to each other for like an hour. And then we hadn't seen Max yet until he got back. So but that was still tough. Just sitting, not talking about the game.

2:46:21PFT Commenter:That's the hardest thing is when we watch a game together or do something together or have an experience together. And then we have to sit there and be like, save for the show because we naturally want to laugh with each other. so we start telling stories and like wait hold on a second we got to save this for the show yeah so that is always the hardest part because you just want to hang out with your butt okay is that it yeah good faqs i don't know if we've ever had a chaotic like truly chaotic

2:46:48Big Cat:no i'm trying to think there's been uh there's been some times what what max oh what you're

2:46:55PFT Commenter:say the billy the billy football oh yeah yeah we've had some chaotics also the election in 2016 election yeah that was crazy the when pft's car broke down and he came in late for an interview

2:47:09Big Cat:that was a little chaotic yeah but that was just me being like 15 minutes late yeah but it's a

2:47:14PFT Commenter:little chaotic when we gotta like like oh shit we gotta do this interview oh shit is he here oh is he dead oh when we thought hank died when i thought pft died too yeah i've had multiple times where I thought both these guys died because they just couldn't get in touch. Zach, we almost had the police for Zach. Yeah. When was that? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So pretty much any time anyone sleeps in. What would you guys do if I did that? I've never done that. You've never slept in? I think I would just be dead. No, like if I ever, I don't think there's ever been a time where I haven't been where I said I was going to be.

2:47:49PFT Commenter:I think I'm going to promise to you guys right now I'll never do that unless I'm actually dead. so just treat it as dead you also have so many there like so many things would have to go for you to like not show up to something like you have like your kids yeah your wife like you have to if you're like anyone who lives alone can can sleep and and just not wake up right but but if but i just want you guys to know that if i don't if you don't hear from me and i don't show up dead confirmed yeah you'd probably be i mean i don't know what other like with no text or anything, I'd just be dead. Jail, maybe?

2:48:24PFT Commenter:Jail. I guess jail, but I think I'd still get word to you guys, like a little carrier pigeon or something. Send it out to you. Jail would be crazy. It is. Jail would be crazy. Jail would, that would be an awesome show.

2:48:35Big Cat:Just call in. As long as we're supposed to collect a real crime, like serial. That should be a rule that if anyone here goes to jail, the one phone call has to be here. And you have to tell them to screen record it. Yep. I don't know if that works. Who's the most reliable to pick up For jail

2:48:54PFT Commenter:Probably me I'll pick up for jail I'll memorize your number You planning on going to jail Sure

2:49:04PFT Commenter:I think that was me I think that was me

2:49:10I don't know

2:49:11PFT Commenter:That might have been a dead heat That was pretty close Oh no Which one was it thank you pug he's at me oh wow president he had good good choice bug all right uh jack pocket by the way it's time for this week's lottery ball segment brought to you by our friends at jack pocket the go-to app for you ordering official lottery tickets right from your phone mega millions powerball state lottery games and even scratch off tickets jack pockets got them all and is extremely easy to use if you're new to jack pocket sign up with code pmt2 and opt in to get$5 in lottery credits. That's$5 towards a shot at the next massive jackpot.

2:49:50PFT Commenter:Don't miss out. Use code PMT2 on Jack Pocket today. Alright, so numbers. Memes has three. Memes, what were you going to guess if you didn't get three?

2:49:59Big Cat:Jared Goff, 16.

2:50:00PFT Commenter:Alright, 16.

2:50:01Big Cat:33. 20. Brie Saul. 22.

2:50:07Big Cat:64. 19. 99. Pug. Pug was going to pick one. He's going to pick one. He's a day.

2:50:20PFT Commenter:Come on.

2:50:25PFT Commenter:81. Love you guys.

2:50:45Thank you.

2:51:15Thank you.

2:51:46Thank you.

2:52:16Thank you.