A Shocking Lakers Sale. Plus, the 20 Best and Worst Youth Sports for Parents With Cousin Sal.

26:14Bill Simmons:All this stuff that has nothing to do with the basketball players we have and the product we're putting on the floor. let's talk about our stars, let's talk about our best teams and all of the positives that have happened over the last few years with this league instead of all the dumb shit. And anybody who's trying to dine on the dumb shit for clicks, for attention, for social video, whatever, don't have good intentions. And those people should not be spearheading and pushing the dialogue about our league. Well, nobody did that. And it's just going to continue to happen. And meanwhile, you have a game like last night where the fever looked awesome.

26:50Bill Simmons:And, you know, afterwards, it's the same old shit. It's Stephanie White having to defend herself in a press conference. Everybody in the WNBA has to defend themselves. Why? The league's the best it's ever been. The scoring's up. And I look at the NBA and I wonder, like, with the second apron and the players union and the revenue stuff and all the stuff they have to care about with the new media deal, I still maybe it's a pipe dream at this point you still want to think that the people running the best teams actually care about those teams like regardless Chisholm who bought the Celtics who I really like and I will never understand why they traded Jalen Brown but at least I know it wasn't a financial decision right the money thing wasn't different there was something else going on there with Jalen and Jason and them feeling like they had maybe Brown made a trade.

27:45Bill Simmons:Who knows what happened? But he at least has my trust that I do think he cares about the team that he grew up watching and caring about, that he's not going to want to do wrong by that franchise and by the fan base. You start letting these big money people in here that only care about the investment and only care about what they're getting over the players, what the economics of the league are. everything is seen through the prism of finance. And this is just, listen, in the 1950s and 60s, if you go back and read about the history of the league and you had teams that owned NBA teams that own bowling alleys, right?

28:24Bill Simmons:Or teams that their entire business rose or fell with how they did with like the Boston Celtics, like Walter Brown are on the Celtics and the Bruins. And in the seventies and eighties, the NBA started, teams would get flipped over and over again. The Celtics had six, seven owners in the seventies and eighties. And at one point, John Y. Brown, who owned the Celtics and Irv Levin, who owned Buffalo, just flipped teams. They just changed owners. Like it was just crazy background shit that would never happen now. And I think the Mavericks, when they were an expansion team in 1981, it was like 12 million.

28:58And there's been levels of when the numbers went up and the numbers were realistic until about

29:04Bill Simmons:three, four years ago. And now they're not. They're not realistic. I don't think the Lakers are worth$12 billion when they don't even own their own stadium. Somebody thought they were worth it because they paid it. And they're going to figure out how to turn that into an asset and advantage. But that's a crazy price. And I guess this is just where we're going to be with pro sports, with these bigger things. These teams are going to get bought. And in the old days, you would be worried that you had some drunk owner, you know, or some, or a bad guy or somebody who leveraged himself and then didn't have enough money to run the team or somebody, this was the fourth most important thing they did and they didn't care, or they got left the team and they don't care about it.

29:46Bill Simmons:We had that with the Celtics with Paul Gaston, Don Gaston's son. Um, but now we're moving into this whole other era where these things are just giant hedge fund plays. and is it going to be good for the league is it going to be good for professional sports my instinct is no but i'm a glass half empty optimistic person i think this is watching somebody flip the lakers over a year and a half like he's flipping a mansion in bel-air or something is fucking bonkers this is the crown jewel of the league the lakers and the knicks are the two most important teams in the league i'm a celtic fan even i would admit that celtics have the tradition the titles, the fan base, all that stuff.

30:26Bill Simmons:But if you're just talking about the two most important teams in the league from cities, ratings, money they make, it's the Lakers and it's the Knicks. And one of them just got flipped like a house. So what's it gonna mean? I guess we will find out. We're gonna take a break, come back, talk about youth sport power rankings for parents. Yeah, we're going from the Lakers to youth sports right after this. This episode is brought to you by chat GPT. Imagine you're running a professional sports team. Nice. That'd be a dream of mine. Imagine the player contract report is due today. Not so nice. You've got performance notes from the coaching staff.

31:05Bill Simmons:You got a salary spreadsheet from your analyst, three rounds of back and forth emails with the agent and all of it is scattered absolutely everywhere. Well, that's where chat GPT work comes in. It's a new way to use chat GPT for bigger multi-step projects. Give chat GBT work access to your apps and files and can create real work documents. For instance, spreadsheets, slides, structured reports. You can bring all those to your next meeting and when you don't need answers, you need help just getting the work across the finish line. Guess what? Chat GBT work can move your projects forward while you stay in control.

31:42Bill Simmons:Put chat GPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. get started, just go to chatgpt.com by selecting work mode available on plus and pro plans. My friend, cousin Sal is here. We are killing a ton of time until football season. We're in football prep mode. You've been on the Ringer Wise Guys, we're calling it now, which is our old gambling show, which is on Twitch and YouTube and Spotify, breaking down divisions. But you just came back from Cooperstown.

32:16Cousin Sal:Yes. And by the way, let's do it. Let's just do the football. Cooperstown is fine, but let's just do the, we're ready. You're ready. I'm ready. I mean,

32:23Bill Simmons:you know, so we're, we're recording the football on August 27th of Thursday and we were doing a two-parter. Um, and I couldn't be more excited because we are now 15 days away from that, but this was the perfect time. It's my daughter's last college soccer season coming up. You just went to Cooperstown. Your, your son's team finished six out of like 102 teams. you just live this whole week long. Like you're, you think you're in a sports movie. And one of the questions that I get the most, cause people know from the podcast, from other stuff that I've been, you know, a soccer dad for a long time.

32:56Bill Simmons:When you meet these people who have younger kids and they're like, what would we like, give me some advice. What do you think my, my kids should play? What sport would you recommend? And I always find, so I'm finally like, fuck it. We're just going to do this. But before we do that, so you've done your, One of your sons played football. You had a son that did wrestling. And then your youngest son is in a whole bunch of stuff, but probably likes baseball the most. So what's your favorite out of all of those?

33:22Cousin Sal:I could speak to football, wrestling, baseball, basketball, and rugby, actually, now. Rugby. As the five that I've competed in or my kids have. I have to pick a favorite right off the bat?

33:36Bill Simmons:No, you don't. Save it. Save it. We'll save it for the list. All right. All right. We are going to, people are going to hate this. We're going to go from 20 to one. Worst sport for your kid to play from a parent experience. We are not talking about the kids. This is all selfish. This is just for the parents only. Parent only rankings from 20 to one. And we're just going to try to give you some wisdom. I have some guidelines here. I have seven questions. the first one is how does the sport actually append your life which is an underrated part of being a youth sports parent um does it regularly affect the time you wake up do you have to spend a lot of time driving too far tournaments are your weekends just destroyed is there food diet stuff that has to try like you wrestled in in high school like you know there's there's a two-month stretch where you're not allowed to basically eat anything how upset will your kid be at you if you miss one of the events and how upset will you be?

34:39Bill Simmons:And then if your weekends are going to be ruined for years, are you at least having fun or somewhat fun? So from a parent's standpoint, I think that's number one. Baseball, you've been in a lot of, it's a lot of driving.

34:52Cousin Sal:Yeah. Well, first of all, we should clarify a little because like what are the, what time period, right? Because little league baseball when they're six is delightful. I mean, what's better than staring at them in the cute uniforms oh he ethan hit the ball and he immediately ran the third base how cute but if ethan does that when he's 12 you're looking to fight his father right so i you know i uh i i guess we'll put it at what what range are we putting it in a post

35:20Bill Simmons:this is the whole run yeah we're assuming that your kid is gonna at least be confident enough to play from, let's say, age six all the way through around high school age, if it goes well. Okay. Okay? Mm-hmm. I got it. Second question. You just were in the middle of this. What's the parent culture around this sport? What type of other parents are you consistently hanging out with? How much do you actually have to hang out with them? Are there outs? Can you wander off? Can you, like in baseball, you can be like, I'm going to go watch some of this from left field, but you're really trying to get away from agro dad.

35:58Bill Simmons:How crazy are the parents on a scale of one to 10, just day to day, regularly at practices? How competitive are they with the other kids and parents on the team for scholarship stuff, whatever? And just, can you move in and out of this? So wrestling, you go and you're in the stands. You never know, you're watching everybody else and then your kid's up and everybody's kind of pulling for everybody else in wrestling, right?

36:26Cousin Sal:Absolutely. Yep. I would say wrestling, you're stuck in a smelly gymnasium for a tournament, I would say. Like a meet on a Tuesday or Thursday is a little more manageable. You know when your kid is wrestling, you can invite relatives out. For a tournament, weigh-ins could be at 7.30 in the morning. The tournament starts at 9, and he or she could wrestle at 10 and then 2, depending on the weight class. So that part of it is miserable, I would say.

36:55Bill Simmons:And not to spoil my rankings, because these are my rankings. You don't even know what we're doing, but the unpredictability of event times is so much more important and crucial to this than people seem to realize, where it's like, my son has a track and field meet today. Well, when is it going to be? I have no idea. It could be 9.30, it could be two. There could be a race here. We might have seven hours to kill. now i'm eating a hot dog from the concession stand or chips or stuff out of a vending machine oh do we have time to drive 10 minutes to go to like jack-in-the-box um the the more uncertainty you have around the schedule the less fun it is so you have that uh the next question is how expensive is the sport to become good at so that includes special travel teams club teams special expensive equipment.

37:49Bill Simmons:You know, like, I think like lacrosse, hockey, some of these ones where you, oh, or even baseball gloves, like, oh, my kid grew. I have to get more stuff. Oh, it's another year. Oh, the lacrosse stick is too short for him now. I got to get that again. Oh, I got to get another, you know, helmet for whatever. I got to get new gloves. The whole thing of that.

38:09Cousin Sal:It's hard to explain the reaction you have when you buy an expensive bat for your kid for Christmas, And then he's using the best hitter on the team's bat by the MLK tournament.

38:19Bill Simmons:Right. And you're like, I just, this is our big Christmas gift to you. And four months later, yeah, it's too small. And then private training and private coaches, because there's some of these where, you know, called privates, but like in baseball, if you want your kid to potentially play in college, you're going to start doing privates. If your kid's a figure skater, like that's a whole other, now you have to hire a coach. Like that's going nuts. versus like some of these other sports, you know, basketball, you could have, you could definitely have privates. You could also just be a really good athlete who could just lace on some sneakers and go out there and play for a club team.

38:55Cousin Sal:Yeah, I think this is, for me, because my kid's a tweener, right? He's not terrible, but he's not going to play pro or anything close. And all of his friends are in that category. So what do you do with the private lessons? You don't want him to embarrass himself, but I feel like this is in the e-bike, like cell phone category. Like they never need it until a couple of their friends take it and then you're screwed. So you really have to rally the parents to resist as much as you can.

39:19Bill Simmons:I would say for soccer, it is important. Yeah, that's when we go through, I'll talk about the different ones. But for some of them, like just like technique, sports with technique, if you're a baseball pitcher, at some point you're going to have some sort of private coach that helps you with your throwing motion, all that stuff. All right. So that's expensive is another category. So that's three. So we have, does the sport append your life? What's the parent culture? How expensive it is? The fourth one is physical mental health risk for your kid. I would argue this is the most important. We're talking about concussion potential.

39:55Bill Simmons:We're talking about dieting and all the crazy shit you have to do to compete in certain sports. Injury potential. Is your body going to be the same when you're 30 years old because you played this sport? um also do you are you solo is all the pressure on you are you part of a team i would argue it's better to be part of a team and have that dynamic and learn how to compete with other people and um the solo thing can can get weird but also like it's easier to succeed in um does the sport get you in better shape there's certain sports where like if you play soccer you're just in good shape, right?

40:34Bill Simmons:You can play baseball and potentially not be in great shape, but physical mental health risk. So you're a wrestler. You, you have all the dieting stuff, all the crazy, you're running up and down the stairs. It's 110 degrees. You have the pressure of these matches of letting the team down. I would say that's like a nine out of 10 pressure toll on your body sport, right? Yeah.

40:59Cousin Sal:I think it's like you're sending your kid to the, uh, off to the service, like to the arms forces, you know, and without doing that, you know, without getting in a fight with your wife about doing. Right. But you would do it again. It's the best and the worst. I'd put it at the top and the very bottom because it's like the mental torture it takes, the physical torture it takes. But later in life, if you have to lose weight, whatever, you got that. You are rooting for your team, but it is an individual sport. I would say from a parent's perspective, if you like to blame people, you're not going to be able to do it.

41:35Cousin Sal:I know we all love to blame people. We're all in the Twitter universe, right? We like to blame or whatever. Politics, it's got to be someone else's fault. Once in a while, a referee will call a takedown out of bounds. It didn't happen. But for the most part, it's your kid effing up or your kid doing great. So the highs are as high as they can be and the lows are as low as they can be.

41:54Bill Simmons:Yeah, anything when it's just you, cross countries like this, track and fields like this. It's like, ultimately, it's just you. You're in charge of your destiny. There's no other people to blame. You can't say, oh, the coach's kid was playing the wrong position, or my kid should have been there, and instead they played him. You have no excuses. You're just looking in the mirror. And then, you know, there's some, you're talking about the more physical sports, there's a real toll that happens. Like my son in high school played, as a freshman and sophomore played football and lacrosse. And he didn't want to play anymore.

42:31Bill Simmons:His body is still banged up. He has hip stuff already. He had two minor concussions. And then looking back, you're like, man, should we have let him play football at all? And you have the parent guilt. Parent guilt is almost its own category in this. Yeah.

42:47Cousin Sal:I would say for that, just real quick, like, you know, football, as far as like a spectator sport, and this is all subjective. You could like soccer better, but Friday night under the lights, nothing better. That's why they make TV shows about it, movies about it. But same time, you talk about like skipping a game, like one of the parents kind of has to be there just in case that God awful thing that we read about happens, you know, the head injury or whatever. We've seen ambulances taking kids off the field. It's not as much a concern with, you know, golf or, you know, the field hockey, but it is for football for sure.

43:28Bill Simmons:Yeah. And, and having been in the stands a couple of times when that happens, it's the single worst feeling of like somebody got hurt. Somebody's down, they stopped the game. Like it's, and he was like, Oh, Friday night football. It's so much fun. And then it's like, Holy shit, what are we doing? That kid's 15. He's getting carted off. Um, three more categories. Is there actual realistic college scholarship potential? Yeah. Could this weirdly all pay off all the time you're spending doing whatever, privates, anything? Could this be a shortcut to not having to pay for college, which can be like half a million dollars in five, six years?

44:05Bill Simmons:And then which sports are the sneaky best bets to get a scholarship? I factored that in the ranking too. Oh, I thought you were saying, which can you bet on? No, we could also, which sports can you bet on? But like water polo is a sport you and I would have been like, yeah, Ben's getting into water polo or yeah. Harrison's a big water polo guy now. And you're like, what?

44:25Cousin Sal:Right.

44:26Bill Simmons:Water polo. And then you watch like my son's school had all of these kids just going from the water polo team to all of these, you know, pretty prestigious colleges. Cause it's not a sport that everybody has. So if you're lucky enough to live in an area that has something like that, you know, was a water polo college athlete who's that you'll never guess this i don't think you know the answer to this joe house really joe house was a big high school water polo and basketball but then in college did water polo for a couple years until i think we shamed him and made fun of him to get him to stop yeah oh that's funny how did he stop he could have gone pro probably didn't want to just be treading water in a pool in the Patriot League.

45:11Bill Simmons:All right. Two more categories, parent entertainment value. So this is a positive category. How much fun is it to attend the games? Are the schedules consistent? Are you outdoors or indoors? How easy, this is a big one for you. How easy for you to sneak away and do a work call or some sort of other call during the event? do you have flexibility or you have to be locked in scared the entire time are there breaks let's

45:38Cousin Sal:face it i have a bet on the undercard and the ufc and saudi arabia at 2 p.m and i have to i have to get away and and watch that match and uh you know we'll see what little nathan does uh afterwards

45:50Bill Simmons:right well and then can you watch can you watch stuff during the events sports yeah i mean we We would do Sunday pods where Zoe had a soccer tournament and I would have Sunday ticket on my phone while she's playing games, trying to keep track of everything and taking notes. Soccer is a little easier, but there's some other sports that would not be as easy.

46:12Cousin Sal:And you're guilty either way. You feel guilty, right? You feel terrible. Because you're missing your kid a little bit or you're missing the Sunday slate. And I have to, how am I going to go on Sunday night and make it like I watched everything?

46:21Bill Simmons:The only other piece for parent entertainment value is, is the actual sport relatively easy to understand? Is it fun for the parent? Do you feel like you could have some sort of opinion slash respectable thoughts about what you're watching? Or are you just like going there going, I don't know what the fuck's going on. Where this goes wrong is baseball, where everybody thinks they're the biggest expert in the world. So this is pros and cons. The easier the sport is to understand, the more people are weighing in with some of the worst takes of all time. You're in the middle of this with baseball.

46:59Bill Simmons:It was the single worst thing about being a baseball parent.

47:04Cousin Sal:Yeah, there's people aggressively like screaming, balk, balk every pitch. You know, it's like, no, it's not a balk. You stepped off, cut it out. There's that part of it. And then there's your wife or husband who doesn't know the game after, you know, nine years of this. is just like, so wait, they have to tag him at first, but don't they have to tag him on a ground ball? No, no, no. But I will say this, like there was something comforting when my son Archie, my oldest, decided to play rugby sophomore year. And aside from like worried that he'll get kneed in the face with the ball, you know, because they wear those goofy kind of protective helmets, but nothing really on the face.

47:43Cousin Sal:There was something nice about not knowing the rules and just like kind of watching along. And, you know, I didn't get loud about anything because I didn't know the rules. So, you know, when they're throwing it in and one kid standing on the other shoulders and there's a throw and like it was fine to me. So I don't know. It could go either way.

47:58Bill Simmons:I had this with lacrosse. Lacrosse is a sport I'd never followed in any capacity, never watched, never cared about. And then my son got pulled onto the lacrosse team and all of a sudden was playing when he was a ninth grader. And I didn't know what was going on. And I became like, it was almost like I was a foreigner sitting on the sidelines being like, so that guy can't go past midfield and these people can run off and they're back on. And wait, why didn't that goal count? I was just confused for two months. I couldn't understand anything. And the goals were fast. These fouls, then it would be like, there would be like this delayed power play where if you had the ball in there and then the guy's running off, but you still have it.

48:41Bill Simmons:And it's like, well, is he off for 30 seconds or two minutes? And I don't know. It was a lot. As long as it eventually makes sense. It eventually made sense.

48:50Cousin Sal:It's not like VAR for all this whole summer we went through. All right.

48:55Bill Simmons:Last question. Bonus question. This is a really important one. When you talk to grownups your age or a little younger, but adults about the sport that they devoted their youth to, what do they say in retrospect? are they happy they did it did would they run it back would they do it over again this is the number one gymnastics is the number one for this i'm still waiting to meet the first person who did gymnastics all the way through high school or college and was like that was great i would definitely 100 do that again the person does not exist even people like who won olympic gold menace like yeah i don't know if i would run that one back um and football is another one where i I think if you talk to people who played football in high school and in college afterwards, like, yeah, football was great.

49:44Bill Simmons:Would I do it again? No. So it's an interesting one. Whereas other ones like soccer, unless you, you know, had some terrible injury or something for the most part or volleyball, nobody's like, oh yeah, I wouldn't, I would never play volleyball again. You know?

49:58Cousin Sal:Yeah. I mean, first of all, when you ask them the question, you're hoping they haven't sustained enough injuries, whether they're not able to verbalize anything. They're typing an answer. But I do have a personal story with this. We'll bring up Tony Romo here. It's not exactly play out what you said, but I wanted my kid. I wanted Archie to play football starting in seventh grade, like tackle football. And like, we know the Romos and we went out with them. Sorry to name drop, whatever. And I asked, I was like, I'll get Tony to convince Melissa and his wife will agree. And that'll be nice. It's like, it's like Tony, Archie could play tackle in seventh grade.

50:36Cousin Sal:Right. Right. And he's like, yeah, he could wait till 10th. And I was like, what? You just ruined it for me. You just took three years of my life. Right. Even though you might've added three to his, but that's not the answer I wanted to hear. So yeah, you will get, you will get negative, honest feedback for whatever reason from these athletes.

50:56Bill Simmons:Yeah. I wish, I wish we had held Ben out until 10th grade. Cause he was ninth grade. He was starting playing, you know, against 18 year olds. I look back at that. I'm like, this is fucking crazy, but he was doing well. And it seemed like a good idea. Now I really regret that. So the questions are, do they acknowledge now is bad for their bodies? Were they more or less likely to have a positive or negative experience with a coach, depending on the sport? You can have some sports where if you have the wrong coach, you never want to play that sport again. You can have other sports where it's like, oh man, that guy changed the course of my life or that lady.

51:30Bill Simmons:If I hadn't met that person, I probably wouldn't be doing this for a living. um another good question is which sport do you actually wish you had played and then uh and then the big one can you keep playing this sport after high school or college which i think gets lost in this whole thing where it's like if you play football you're done playing football either in high school or college you never play it again right there's other sports like if you get into golf when you're six now yeah i'm playing golf for 80 years i get i get invited to baby dolls country club i get to get to play 18 with them somewhere i it never ends tennis is another one like if i'm good at tennis and i have the mechanics of a serve and i can play serve and volley i'm playing until i'm 75 you know and and that's it it's just those two right

52:23Cousin Sal:pickleball i guess if you want to count it now i don't know how there's some beach that'll happen

52:27Bill Simmons:Yeah. Pickleball did not make our list for top 20. But beach volleyball is another one you could probably play until your twenties or thirties. My daughter's talking about this now. Cause she's, she's really competitive and she's like, I'm not playing. This is my last soccer year. I'm done. What am I going to do after? And, and I think she's going to start playing tennis and like really try to get good at it. Cause she's like, I can play tennis. I can play doubles. You play singles. Like my wife plays five days a week and you know, she's close to our age. So, um, So those are the big ones. So the seven are, I'm going to call it life grenade.

53:01Bill Simmons:How much does this blow up your life when your kid plays the sport? Parent culture around it. Finances, how expensive it is. Physical mental health risks. College scholarship potential. Parent entertainment value. For us personally, do we have a good time watching it? And then post playing career regrets for the people we know. Those are the seven calculuses. The other thing I would add, maybe this isn't a separate question because it's all encompassing, but what percentage of the games you're rooting against your kid's team for whatever reason?

53:38Cousin Sal:Oh, to have the weekend end early? Because you have to get back, because you have to do something else, because they're going to get killed by the next team anyway.

53:45Bill Simmons:Well, isn't baseball number one for that, where it's like, oh man, two more and it's a mercy rule and we can get out of here.

53:50Cousin Sal:It is. It's number one. It's definitely number one.

53:55Bill Simmons:one thing I didn't have on here just so people know is flag football which I think 10 years from now I think flag football will basically be football um for everyone under 16 and flag football is great I had so much fun when my uh when my son played for his school the Willows they won the eighth grade title which was like one of my great sports moments as a parent um but super fun and not, you don't have to worry about like a major injury for the most part. You might have like, once the kids get better, you might have the collision over the middle where somebody's going for an interception and maybe they hit heads.

54:30Bill Simmons:You see some kids wearing caps, but for the most part, really safe. And I think that's going to keep taking off.

54:36Cousin Sal:And I think you would put football number one for entertainment value and everything else and camaraderie and parents and be able to get away and all those things you talked about, if not for the injury risk. And that flag football could be just as exciting on a Friday night. If you have a competitive game, my kid's been in it for like six years now.

54:54Bill Simmons:So it's great. No injury. All right. We're going to take a break and we're going to come back and we're going to unleash the top 20. This episode is brought to you by my old friend, NFL Sunday ticket kickoffs coming in with NFL Sunday ticket and YouTube TV. You get every game, every Sunday, all in one place. New users can get NFL Sunday ticket for eight payments of just$30 a month. New users pay$240 or eight non-cancelable payments of$30 a month. First charge at purchase availability varies with NFL Sunday ticket for out-of-market games and YouTube TV for local national games. YouTube TV required.

55:27Bill Simmons:Terms, restrictions, and embargoes apply. Commercial use excluded. No refunds. This episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. Look, I already have my dream job. I run the ringer. Argue with Chris Ryan, aka CR. But even dream jobs have not so dreamy parts. You know, the work that slows you down, never seems to go away. That's where service now's AI specialists come in. They're like digital teammates who actually do the job, start to finish, no handoffs, no homework. That means more time for the work that actually matters, which for me is talking about whether the 86 Celtics can beat the 96 Bulls, which they could.

56:01Bill Simmons:To learn how to put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com. This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT. Imagine you're running a professional sports team. Nice. Imagine the player contract report is due today. Not so nice. You've got performance notes from the coaching staff. You got a salary spreadsheet from your analyst, three rounds of back and forth emails with the agent, and all of it is scattered absolutely everywhere. Well, that's where chat GBT work comes in. It's a new way to use chat GBT for bigger multi-step projects. Give chat GBT work access to your apps and files and can create real work documents.

56:39Bill Simmons:for instance, spreadsheets, slides, structured reports. You can bring all those to your next meeting. And when you don't need answers, you need help just getting the work across the finish line. Chat GPT work can move your projects forward while you stay in control. Put Chat GPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started. Just go to ChatGPT.com by selecting work mode available on plus and pro plans. All right. Top 20 best youth sports for parents from 20 to one, 20 being the worst. Uh, very important. These are not Sal's rankings. These are my rankings.

57:16Cousin Sal:Yeah.

57:16Bill Simmons:Sal is my conciliary slash sounding board. I'm happy to move stuff around coming in last at number 20 figure skating. I think it's the perfect storm. I think it checks every negative box, incredibly expensive, horrific ice rink times, right? You're getting up. Oh, I got to get up. Julie's got a figure skating at 4.15 tomorrow morning. It's the only time we get the ice rink. Lonely. You're relying on coaches that could be terrible or great. And the upside is I don't know. They don't really have figure skating scholarships, right? So the upside is my kid might be able to go pro and make money and the odds of that you're competing against literally everybody else on the planet.

58:03Bill Simmons:And you have to buy skates every year and you can't really do it when you're older, except for if you're doing like a Christmas stroll skate. This is my number one worst. And I don't think it's arguable. What do you think?

58:16Cousin Sal:Pretty good. I would say the only good thing is you don't have, you know, you're not freezing outside. The rain, the weather doesn't affect it because it's indoors. That's the only good thing. You're right about the morning times. But the rinks are cold, though. The rinks are kind of cold. Yeah. And there could always be some lunatic who hits your knee with a lead pipe, and who the hell knows? It goes on and on for, unsolved for decades. So, yeah, I would put that to, by the way, this is going to be, get ready for this because you're going to get more backlash from your list no matter what, I haven't even heard it, than any other podcast you've ever done.

58:49Bill Simmons:I'm fine. I'm going to take it. This is just my rankings only. And if it's an opinion, opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one. Everyone's going to have a hundred. That's a problem. Figure skating. Also, when it kind of goes up in levels, now I got to buy outfits. Yes. I have to buy the fancy little figure skating dresses. I've got to pay coaches. If you're doing this, you better know from age four, your kid is an absolute prodigy. I don't, I don't see it.

59:20Cousin Sal:And the weight thing is a problem too, right? Like keeping the weight down. Yeah.

59:24Bill Simmons:There's a whole bunch of, yeah, there's a whole bunch of eating stuff that could happen too. All right. Um, I guess the benefit is if you're, if you're pairs, very tight relationship with your pair's partner. So you're not, you're not alone. That's true.

59:39Cousin Sal:You find a, find a partner.

59:40Bill Simmons:Also, when you think about scariest moment as a parent, like let's say your kid's getting good at figure skating and is in sub tournament, but then does the, Oh, here comes the triple axel and then falls. Is there, what would be more devastating other than like, if your kid's a kicker in football in college and your kid misses the kick and there's 75 ,000 people there and your kid just blew everybody in the game penalty kicks, maybe, um, baseball that you're just, your kid's never playing football is probably the biggest amount of people. Yeah,

1:00:12Cousin Sal:I think so. pick six or something, something like that. But yeah, it does individualize it as much as anything else. Figure skating last.

1:00:20Bill Simmons:Second to last, gymnastics easily could have been number 20. An actual body ruiner. There's a really good book that somebody wrote like 30 years ago. I think it's called Little Girls in Pretty Boxes about like, especially gymnastics, like has real effects on its stunts growth, like knee back stuff. One of my wife's best friends did gymnastics and is like an advocate now for, please don't ever, don't have your kids do this. Yeah, it's just, there's, you have back stuff, you have spine stuff, you have leg stuff, you can have foot stuff. You're constantly like, oh, I'm a little sore, but we have a meet tomorrow, I gotta play.

1:01:03Like, I'm out on gymnastics.

1:01:06Bill Simmons:A lot of people like it.

1:01:07Cousin Sal:it's well everyone loves it in the summer for the summer olympics isn't it the most watched i mean it's like it's the most watched it's the best of the best it's the one thing the whole family will

1:01:16Bill Simmons:get together and watch i feel like yeah but those are like the best 50 ever like what about all the other ones who who uh went through college see this is where people are gonna get mad well they

1:01:26Cousin Sal:should do it how dare you the simone biles of the world like hey this isn't for everybody in fact it's just for the like seven of us and that's it don't even try uh i i think dance is more

1:01:39Bill Simmons:interesting for gym because we had some some little girls like we had zoe did gymnastics for i don't know like the first year and they were like you got to get her coming five days a week she could be amazing and we were like zoe's gonna be like five nine where she's not what is she gonna be a gymnast um but i think there's there's i would push toward dance would be my parent advice not saying i'm right or wrong but if you want your little girl to be limber and do stuff like like go the dance route because you're going to get great balance from it and everything else

1:02:09Cousin Sal:i have a friend my buddy tony i wasn't sure if you're going to include dance not our mutual friend tony but i did he did say insert dance in there and he's like from a parent's perspective it's awful because you're seeing them do the same five minute routine over and over and overgun. Yeah.

1:02:27Bill Simmons:It was that dance did not make the cut. Right. Number 18, um, swimming. Yeah. So bunch of stuff going on here. Um, the all day meets we talked about with wrestling, especially if your kid's doing multiple things, you might, the first one might be at seven 30 and then the next one's at two. And then the last one's at five. I had our buddy Gus had a kid who was a swimmer and that it was the meets way. It really, it's an all dayer with the added bonus. You can barely tell which kid is yours. If you're in like the bigger things, it's like, is that, is he in lane five or lane four? And then, then you're going and, um, there's a lot of chlorine exposure.

1:03:08Bill Simmons:Yeah. And, uh, the benefits are you get in six shape and there's scholarship potential, but um i don't know i'm just right where do your swimming body image issues for sure right i mean

1:03:22Cousin Sal:yeah sixth grade on you're in a you're in a one piece at school yeah that's it or yeah boy or girl so it is tough yeah that chlorine killed me my kid trained for junior guards out here to be a lifeguard and it wasn't swim meets but it was a lot of intensive uh and the coaches can be crazy too. That's an underrated, uh, like, like, you know, uh, iron chef type coaches in the background.

1:03:47Bill Simmons:See, we just lost Zach Lowe, whose dad was a famous high school coach in Greenwich for swimming. And he's going to be furious that swimming came in 18. Um, look, there's no, there's no losers. These are just the rankings. Um, I include diving and swimming. This is all anything with a pool. Um, also pool time's hard, you know, sometimes that's another one where you might have to get up early to go swimming. So anyways, swimming's 18. Wrestling's 17 for a lot of the stuff we mentioned. And I say this knowing that you loved wrestling, but when you think, when your kid wins a match and pins somebody about as exciting as it's going to get for a parent, and then I would say every other piece of it's terrible.

1:04:28Cousin Sal:A lot of it's terrible. Yeah. The discipline's great for later in life. Like I said, the the body thing like if you're 112 pounds trying to get down to 106 now you're talking about like you know eight percent of your body weight and stunting growth and those 112 pounders are or it'd be tough for them to get to 135 140 in their later years uh the times like i said all over the place scattered don't know when to invite people to watch your kid for a tournament I mean, I'm in my car for four hours watching EPL on my phone because the time between the weigh-ins, 7 a.m., and his first match is 11. And I don't even know if that's going to be, you know.

1:05:09Cousin Sal:That's another thing. If your school, whatever, there's a whole other story. We didn't have buses, so we had to each drive our kid for the weigh-ins an hour and a half away. Yeah, you got the weigh-ins too.

1:05:20Bill Simmons:It's rough. One other benefit other than when your kid wins, I mean, and then when your kid loses, it's devastating. but you can use this later in life like you're like a sneaky i would trust you in a dark alley as my sidekick if we had to fight people like you do have moves and i don't know you learn some

1:05:41Cousin Sal:stuff you're you're cagey yeah there's no jujitsu uh team in high school right so this is yeah if you want to be able to handle yourself in a fight like a lot of these fights end up on the ground So, but no, I don't, I don't use it for offense, Bill. You know that I'm defensive. You're like Mr. Biagi. I'm Biagi all the way. Yeah.

1:06:00Bill Simmons:You don't, you're not supposed to punch somebody unless you're challenged. All right. So number 17, I'm sorry. Number 16 and 15, I put together cycling and cross country. Cross country is interesting. No, a couple of cross country parents. The kids by themselves just doing stuff. They're on a team and it's fun, but it's really just them. but the real problem is there's when you actually have like a meet, there's nowhere to go. You basically have to pick a spot. It's like, Oh, my son runs 10 K. It's like, Oh, he's going to run. All right. I'm going to pick this. We'll go meet him at the halfway there in the trail.

1:06:42Bill Simmons:And then you wait and you wait. And then he runs by and like, go, go, come on, buddy. And he's not listening because they're like locked in the cross country. Right. So fun, but also not fun at all. at least you get to be outdoors. The benefit is you get to do this after you, you know, your whole life. If you run, you run your whole life.

1:07:00Cousin Sal:So learning good stuff. I asked for some input here from my friend Megan, who is a long distance Olympic hopeful, actually, for 2028. So she said, the meets are typically further away at some random park or in the middle of the woods or sometimes on a golf course. But again, it's a 20 minute race. So you can realistically be back home by noon. And then she said, this is what really got me. She said, you would love being a cross country dad though, because the night before you get to have pasta parties so you can eat all the carbs, which is right up your alley. She's right. Yes, it is up my alley.

1:07:30Cousin Sal:Wow, that sounds amazing. Yeah.

1:07:32Bill Simmons:So is cross country too, should I put it higher? I guess we'll see. Well, I don't know. We'll see. We'll see where we put everything else. Next one's rowing, number 14.

1:07:42Cousin Sal:This is so douchey. This is so East Coast prep douche. You didn't need to put this in, but go ahead.

1:07:48Bill Simmons:Listen, it's first of all, college scholarships available. You get to be in awesome shape. you don't necessarily have to be super coordinated or a great athlete. You just kind of have to be strong and have discipline. Right. So if you're like one of those, like you have a strong body, but you're, you know, if you're playing basketball, you're a mess, but rowing, maybe, you know, um, the, the downside, you have to get up crazy early. I think this might be the earliest other than figure skating. The kids who rode and caught, we had a rowing team in Holy Cross. none of us understood it. It's like, why are you doing this to yourself?

1:08:26Bill Simmons:This is the worst thing ever. I can't go out on Saturday night because I have a meet on Sunday and the meet's at seven in the morning. Four hours. It really ruins your life. It is kind of a fun parent sport though. If your kid gets good, you get to go to these, you can see it in like Oxford Blues or some of these movies that they made with the crew. You get to go to your spot, kind of hang out. Like Head of the Charles is a big thing in Boston. But the morning schedule just sounds like a fucking nightmare.

1:08:55Cousin Sal:Well, I think you put it too high. You're going to hear from the Winklevoss twins here. Good luck. I'll hear from both of them.

1:09:01Bill Simmons:Number 13, track and field, which is, I think, the hardest one to figure out on the whole list. Because you had the scholarship potential. You have all the meets where there's 75 things going on. You don't even know. It's a bigger stadium. You don't even know where to go and what you're looking at. um and it yeah really depends on the event like i think if your kid's a pole vaulter pretty cool right you can you can kind of get near the pole vault pit um the running stuff's a little harder but um but it's the same thing we talked about earlier with the meets and just

1:09:36Cousin Sal:not knowing when the times were for things my buddy you know i'm the parlay kid coaches now uh girls track after decades of coaching real sports like football baseball and wrestling but is like, it's easy to coach. But I will say, it's like from a parent's perspective, there's a lot of warming up. You'll see these kids warm up in whatever event it is. There will be like 80 % of warmups before they get to the actual race. And then you can't like even delineate, which is which. So that's a negative, I would say.

1:10:04Bill Simmons:Right, if you have like a 9 a.m. race, you're there an hour and a half early because you got to do a whole warmup thing. Track and field's fun because there's a lot of different aspects and places to push your kid. And it is a good college scholarship sport, potentially. So there's some benefit there. We're getting, now we're in the top 12. I have hockey 12. So basically all the same physical fears that you would have with football. You know, hockey has so much concussions and people getting hurt. And I honestly, it's just bodies colliding. The ice rink times are truly horrific unless you're living in like a cold place.

1:10:47Bill Simmons:If you're in a cold place, maybe better. If you're in Canada, obviously. If you're in Minnesota, if you're in, I don't know, Wisconsin. There's a reason all of the best players are all coming from the same few states. Parent culture is insane. Yeah. I don't know if this is a craziest parent sport, but it's got to be top three, right? This is the one, like, this is the most likely, if you're on the Twitter for you or Instagram, to see, like, parents fighting. probably like just people just punching each other for no reason at a hockey thing

1:11:22Cousin Sal:and going through the glass yeah there's some crazy crazy clips on there about parents fighting

1:11:28Bill Simmons:you it's the rinks are bended hockey for two years and he was too late because this is another problem with hockey you have to start skating by the time you're like four to actually be good at he started probably but he would have been good at hockey um and it was fun to go there but the rinks are freezing. They're not big rinks either. You're wearing winter coats. Is it, Dak? What, out here? The rinks are freezing? The rinks are freezing. Hockey rinks are freezing. It is really fun to watch hockey.

1:12:00Cousin Sal:They're colder than a Kings game?

1:12:03Bill Simmons:They're smaller rinks. They're not like... The games themselves are super fun.

1:12:12Bill Simmons:That's why... I have it ahead of football. I'm sorry. I have it below football. I have football ahead of football because what you mentioned about Friday Night Football, I think is the differentiator. But for the most part, I think these things are pretty even.

1:12:29Cousin Sal:Equipment's pricey, right? Depending on what you want to do with this kind of thing. This is among the most expensive.

1:12:35Bill Simmons:Yeah, sticks, privates. It's a commitment. this is if your kid plays hockey probably not on probably not doing two other sports right right this is year round you're doing this all the time if you get good at it you're you're away every weekend um there is some major can't not skate for four months yeah you have to kind of keep it going whereas football is like three months it's more contained you do have like the long preseason in football so that would be the other one but i have football 11 i have hockey 12 oh 11 i have Football 11. Yeah. Wow. So many pluses and minuses, Sal. Ugh.

1:13:20Cousin Sal:This is sad for me.

1:13:22Bill Simmons:I love football, but I think football with flag football could move up the ranks as we do the movement to more of a hybrid model. But I would say parent culture, pretty bad. Is there a position for every kind of kid with a body type? 100%. If you're like the big giant kid, you can be our left guard. Or, you know, if you're slow, but you're a good athlete, hey, you could be the center or you could be the defensive end. But the physical toll of football is, it's a hard one.

1:13:57Cousin Sal:I'm just looking at all these sports you're going to put ahead of football. It makes me sad. How about this for a positive? For the most part, a no-cut sport. Everybody makes it. Yeah. doesn't mean they play, but they're involved, right?

1:14:13Bill Simmons:In practices and everything else. When do you think tackle football should actually start for kids? Because I've heard every sort of analysis of this, because you could argue it should be like fourth, fifth grade because you learn how to tackle, you learn basically the technique and your body learns how to, it gets conditioned to the collisions. Whereas if you do it a little when you're older, it doesn't. but then you have 10 year olds just ramming into each other.

1:14:44Cousin Sal:I think you could bump it up to ninth, 10th grade. This great Tony Romo is going to be hired by the ringer soon. Said to me, I think it could be. I think ninth or 10th grade is fine. I don't know because I do think like, you know, they talk about CT and all this stuff. Most of it happens in these practices. It really does. I remember getting my bell rung a bunch of times between 10th and 12th grade. And then if you're in college, but you know, whatever it's, it's only in the pros actually where you're not going helmet to helmet in practice at least. So you definitely want to keep a, um, what do they call them in wrestling?

1:15:18Cousin Sal:Bumps. Yeah. You want to keep that bump to hold down under a thousand.

1:15:23Bill Simmons:You could tell me 10th grade is, is the cutoff. If we had a sports star, the sports star would probably say you can't play football till you're 16. Right. Tackle football. All right. Number 10, skiing slash snowboarding.

1:15:39Bill Simmons:now super expensive i'm not sure about the team dynamic um and you basically have to live near a mountain or close to something something basically something where you can do it or you can't do it so i'm just assuming that's for all of those people but it does seem pretty great i have uh one of my cousins has a daughter who's a big snowboarder and they have to they're in new england they have to you know drive two three hours sometimes to go to these things but they they do love it um injury potential yeah you could wipe out every once in a while the big thing with skiing and snowboarding this is something you can literally do your entire life right right um and there's like tournaments and you know there's could could they keep adding olympic sports like who knows um there's some college stuff with their team dynamics a little weird but i think for the most part this is pretty solid harrison's friends with a kid who is

1:16:34Cousin Sal:excels at skiing, snowboarding, surfing, and okay at other sports. But that's it. And so now he's got Instagram clips of himself, like, riding the pipeline and everything. And to answer your question, like, earlier, like, which one do you wish you would have done? God, it would be great to just be a world-class skier. Right, just have been doing it since you were five. Yeah, for sure. I mean, if boxing's not on the list, that's probably my pick.

1:17:01Bill Simmons:Weekends and vacations constantly. Yeah, so skiing, snowboarding, I guess surfing would be in this too. These are all like the individual where you need some sort of either a wave or a mountain. You need to put all those together. Volcano, something, yeah. Number nine, I was surprised I ranked this high, water polo. College scholarship potential galore. Kind of your kids, everybody who's doing it is in awesome shape. kind of underrated as a sport to watch in person. It's weird that it has no traction at all TV, although with ESPN, the way they've been adding weird sports to ESPN one and two, maybe water polo will have a moment.

1:17:43Bill Simmons:The biggest, I think, parent demerit is there's a lot going on that you just don't know when you're watching. Like there's stuff going underwater. There's people punching each other. Sometimes it's hard to see if somebody scored and there's no juice at all you know, with water polo. Water polo almost needs like better PR.

1:18:03Cousin Sal:Well, and it's weird because it's a lively gym, right? Yeah. The parents are going nuts after everything, even if it's just a passing ball around the perimeter. But yeah, you're right. It needs a better PR team because it's fun. The Olympics is one of my favorites to watch.

1:18:19Bill Simmons:Yeah, at Ben's school, sometimes like picking them up, they would have a game and the parents are going fucking crazy and it's packed. You know, his school had a good water polo team. I can't believe this house thing. This is amazing. Joe House water polo. By the way, anybody who can produce video footage of Joe House playing water polo at any point in his life, there's a bounty for you. Okay. Number eight. Did he eat while he played? Maybe that was a problem. I think that's why he had to quit because he kept taking pizza up to the pool. It doesn't taste as good.

1:18:51Cousin Sal:Chlorinated. Yeah.

1:18:52Bill Simmons:All right. Number eight. Baseball slash softball. Oh, okay.

1:19:02Bill Simmons:Destroys your weekends. This is a weekend destroyer. I would say a pretty unarguably bad parent culture. Because it's really one of the only sports where every parent has an opinion on everything that's going on at all times. No doubt. Also, inappropriate comments with the kids. How does he not bunt there? You know, it's like, that kid's eight. like shut the fuck up the mercy rule stuff and the blowouts like going to a tournament and just being like we're going to lose every game by 15 runs is awful and I think the highest level of parents talking out of their asses if you're good there's a whole bunch of privates gets expensive it can carry over to adult softball right?

1:19:51Bill Simmons:if you're good let's say you played at a high level softball, baseball in high school maybe even college. You now become a ringer in office softball for like 20 years. You could also play in adult leagues when you're older. So you can kind of keep going. Um, but I think this is around the right level. Number eight, would you agree with this?

1:20:10Cousin Sal:Yeah. I mean, there's just so many pros and cons. It's what, what type of, uh, where you want to land on it. But I will say the parent thing is so important because you're going to have to eat with these people. And I'm lucky enough to be part of a group that we all like each other. So it's good because you're going to have a 12 o 'clock game and then a four o 'clock game. And then so from two to three, you're going to have to eat and watch games with these people at the local sports bar. So that's important. But parents in general, baseball parents, it's funny, you talk to coaches like, yeah, I only got into coaching so I could be away from the parents.

1:20:43Cousin Sal:There's a reason they're behind the cage, right? Animals. And I think it's gotten worse. And this is probably true for every sport, but I feel like with baseball, every 10 coach of a 10 U team could start the season saying, Hey, you know what? No kid from wherever you're from has ever made it to, to become a pro. So that's why we're just going to go out there and have fun. We're not going to worry about being serious. But nowadays you can't say that because there's NIL money and everybody thinks like, this is where coaching and teaching is different. Like it used to be in the same sphere, but no one thinks their kid is going to grow up to be an astrophysicist.

1:21:21Cousin Sal:Yeah. But everyone thinks their kid can make a hundred grand playing a sport somehow if they, if they play their cards right. And, uh, and that's why it's gotten worse.

1:21:30Bill Simmons:It's a great point.

1:21:31Cousin Sal:You know what else it is?

1:21:32Bill Simmons:It's the worst sport for this. Oh, Bobby's up. And all of a sudden you got mom or dad, you know, right behind, right behind, uh, the, the, the big cage in front of home plate or behind home plate. the fence the warm little thing yeah so right in there or or the kid's pitching and now the kid's pitching and there's his mom like with the with the phone like this and uh it has it has the most phone damage potential um the softball i think would have been higher on the list before they had to put all this protective like having these crazy helmets and stuff and even like the third baseman and the mass and not as much fun as it was 20 years ago.

1:22:17Cousin Sal:Yeah.

1:22:18Bill Simmons:Our buddy Gus coached some, some college softball when he was at Rollins. Did he really? Wow. Back in the old day before they had all this stuff on. But yeah, I think eights baseball softball. Fun part is everyone can play. You can hide even the worst kids for a couple of innings and put them in a couple of positions. Everybody can be part of the team. There's some fun.

1:22:39Cousin Sal:I don't know what you're going to end on here. This is interesting to me that there's seven better than baseball, football, and all these. Okay.

1:22:46Bill Simmons:Number seven, tennis. Okay. There's wins everywhere, especially you get to do it your whole life. You get to do it with your kid. You can just go and be like, hey, let's go hit some balls and go do it. You can play it anywhere. I think as long as it's not winter in some of the East Coast or the Midwest, you can, it's a 12 month, in California, it's a 12 month a year sport. you don't necessarily have to belong to a tennis club you can play in public parks the rackets are expensive you got to keep changing those incredibly fun to watch as a parent scholarship potential and pro potential and nil potential and the downsides would be the privates which you're going to have to do if the kid's going to be good and then a little lonely it was it was why with with our daughter like i i kept wondering whether we should get her involved in tennis when she was like eight nine because she would have been good at it but just you just kind of buy yourself a lot right you're not really part of a team and it's a lot of like pressure on yourself at all times and some kids can handle it some can't but for the most part you get to be outdoors you can play it anywhere you can play it until you're 75.

1:23:59Cousin Sal:right and the pressure on the the parents thing is what we talked about. You can't blame anyone else if they're losing. Right. So no, in essence, doubles match. Maybe you can blame the partner. Always blame the partner.

1:24:11Bill Simmons:And by the way, doubles is another great one. You play mixed doubles. You play same sex doubles. Like you have all the, all these, that's with that. So, um, I think tennis is a, is a really good one. Right. That's one of the, that's the first one that I would really strongly recommend.

1:24:26Cousin Sal:Do you think, are you going to lump tennis with pickleball? Like you did now? Like you do football with flag football? No, just in that. We don't acknowledge pickleball or Padel. Tennis isn't going away, but pickleball is very, very big.

1:24:39Bill Simmons:So you think there's going to be like high school pickleball someday? I think so. I might move. That might be it for me. I don't know. Move somewhere else. Move to Italy. Italy will have it too. No, they don't move from there. Yeah, pickleball! Hey! Number six, field hockey. I don't know shit about this. All right. Yeah. Yeah. This is why it's number six. Under the radar, it's really females only. Incredible scholarship potential and super fun to watch. Okay. Some states are bigger than others, but man, if you're good at field hockey, the world is your oyster with some of this stuff. You get to run around.

1:25:23Bill Simmons:It's very similar to soccer. Saki. Saki and soccer. Get these big sticks. You have to be a little aggro. When I was at the Olympics, I actually went to a couple of field hockey games and it was like incredibly fun. Really high level and always kind of slips under the radar.

1:25:43Cousin Sal:Some schools don't have it. Lacrosse and soccer, lacrosse and soccer mixed, but you can't lift your stick, right? Basically. And I guess polo.

1:25:51Bill Simmons:You're bent over a little bit and you got to like...

1:25:54Cousin Sal:Go ahead. Stand up. Demonstrate. Yeah.

1:25:57Bill Simmons:So I'm field hockey six. Now we're in the top five. Basketball five. Basketball, you can play your whole life. Basketball, if it's a tournament, it passes the parent test of I can sneak out. Oh, his next game's not until an hour from now. You're there all day, but it's actually fun to watch basketball. There's different types of players. Your kid can be a three-point shooter, be an athlete, shot blocker, like pick whatever. Good team culture. The AAU, if your kid's really good, that gets a little weird. The club teams start really early. The club teams start at like third, fourth grade and that gets a little expensive.

1:26:40Bill Simmons:But for the most part, the only expenses are a basketball and sneakers. Sure. And that's it.

1:26:46Cousin Sal:Very exciting. You know when your kid's playing for the most part, right? The game, the one thing we didn't mention, some of these baseball games can go four hours, right? If they're in a tournament and they have to go extra innings and stuff. Basketball, I know, can go over time, but for the most part, it's going to be short and it's going to be by the standards of the clock.

1:27:03Bill Simmons:I have that for our final three. It's a huge piece to know the actual schedule and have a sense for beginning, middle, and end of an event versus baseball where you could tell me, like, Harrison had a four-hour game. We went into the 12th inning. We had to call the game because it was dark. and then they lost.

1:27:27Cousin Sal:What's interesting, though, about basketball is if you look at videos of parents fighting, by a mile, basketball has more, right? Like basketball brawls. Wait, is there just more basketball and that's why we have more videos? Maybe there's that. Oh, baseball has a lot of parents misbehaving, but maybe it's not parents. Maybe it's just like rival schools in the crowd that I'm seeing, but yeah.

1:27:49Bill Simmons:Basketball from a parent's standpoint, you get to play with your kids basically from age seven on. You can play horse with them. You can play 21. You can have shooting contests with them. Then when you get older, you can actually like really play them. You can, they can go down to the park, play with their friends, play five on five, play pickup. There's some injury stuff with basketball, mostly knees and lower half of the body. The club teams, you can, so if you're good at basketball in high school, you can be on a club team, but then you also get to play for your high school. And I would say that's one of the most high profile high school sports to play.

1:28:27Bill Simmons:Right. So that's a win. So I think it's so competitive. To me, it's top five.

1:28:32Cousin Sal:There's five starting spots, though. That's the problem. Right. So that's it. And you need to be relatively tall. Right. That's another piece. What's the acceptable age your kid could beat you one on one in basketball? Oh, man. Game to 11.

1:28:50Bill Simmons:Win by two. 14, 15 probably is when it gets. Yeah, I think that's good.

1:28:55Cousin Sal:Yeah.

1:28:55Bill Simmons:Still feel like you can bully. All right, so 11 and a half wasn't good for me. I gotcha. Coming in at number four, golf. One downside and one downside only. Insanely expensive. Yeah. I mean, probably the most expensive of all these sports. There's literally no other downside. If you play golf and you teach your kid how to play golf, If you are now doing this with them all the time and this becomes your thing, your kid will eventually be good at it. By the way, a lot of college scholarship potential. Who knows what other kind of potential, but then they're doing it for the rest of their lives. And it's something that's helpful.

1:29:38Bill Simmons:You know, it's why I always think about that. I should start playing. I always get invited to play, but I'm always I'm one of those. I either have to play a lot or I don't want to play at all. And there's so many fun social aspects that come from golf. There's work stuff. And, um, it's the only downside is the expense that you have to be outdoors to play all these different courses. You get to go when you're older, you get to go on college trips with your buddies or whatever. It's like, it's wins everywhere except for the expenses.

1:30:05Cousin Sal:Yep. And it's bucket list type, uh, destinations, right? I want to play Pebble beach. I want to play this when I'm older and all that stuff. I'll say this, we came back from Cooperstown and I think my kid, we had a good time and I'll get into that story. But when you see the teams that make the finals, I think it was an eye-opener. And he's like, oh, I got a couple of years left in me of baseball. And that's it. Right. He played 18 holes the last three days, three of the last four days of golf. He's like now switching to golf a little bit because he and his buddies love it. That's great.

1:30:38Bill Simmons:It's also the perfect age to start playing. You got to be like 11, 12, 13. Yeah. Then you can kind of figure out a semblance of a swing. and golf balls are expensive. Not crazy expensive, but that's a price. Clubs, if you have a kid, you start playing them when they're six. You have to buy clubs basically every year and a half, two years. So it's insanely expensive compared to some of these other ones, but no other downside, no injury stuff at all, except for maybe a back, right? Back, maybe hips. It's about it. Lightning strikes every other time. I mean, our agent, James Babydoll Dixon, who's now 64, smokes two packs a day and can still play seven days a week.

1:31:25Cousin Sal:Yeah, but he always has his elbows hanging off his arm or something, right? Right. Whatever he has, brusitis or something. Yeah, true.

1:31:32Bill Simmons:He does have like a rotator cuff. I guess that would be another issue. Good one for phone calls. If you're following your kid. Like if your kid's in an internment, you just get to walk the course with him. You're outside. You can pop away for a phone call, go behind a tree, um, places to go for the bathroom all over the place. Golf's huge win and not for everybody because it's really expensive coming in third. So this is an interesting one. I have lacrosse at three. I think if it was men's lacrosse only, I would have it in the 10 to 12 range with football and hockey because of, of all the physical toll and the concussions.

1:32:08Bill Simmons:This is like the most underrated concussion sport of all the sports. girls lacrosse might be number one if we were just doing a boys versus girls thing no contact really at all same as soccer less people playing it there's an easier path for college scholarships now it's on ESPN where they have women's lacrosse on ESPN and it's weird because with girls you're just not allowed to touch each other all the way through high school. You're not allowed to collide anything. And I remember we took Zoe once because I thought Zoe would be good at lacrosse and she would have been. But you go and it's just, people are just running around.

1:32:50Bill Simmons:It's like, oh, now this person has a ball and nobody can do anything. And they're just kind of trying to whack at the stick. So it's a little odd. There's also like some places just don't have it. Like California has a really weak lacrosse scene. Yeah, definitely. Whereas like if you're in the East Coast where you grew up, It's fucking everywhere. If you're in D.C., Philly, Jersey, New York. But I think girls lacrosse is, I would highly recommend that. Really, the only expense is the stick.

1:33:18Cousin Sal:That's the flag football version of football, girls lacrosse. I would say flag football for boys.

1:33:23Bill Simmons:And some girls play football too, but girls lacrosse would be the other one.

1:33:27Cousin Sal:Right. I don't know anybody whose daughter played lacrosse is like, that sucked.

1:33:33Bill Simmons:Right. Don't do it.

1:33:35Cousin Sal:Yeah. Okay.

1:33:36Bill Simmons:And then the final two, I'll do an alphabetical order, soccer and volleyball I have together. And incredibly fun to watch. Everyone can understand time controlled games. Lots of scholarships available because the teams are long. So you have that possibility of the NIL possibility. soccer's outdoors, volleyball's indoors volleyball less injury potential you'll get some shoulder stuff maybe somebody will have like I don't know, plantar fasciitis soccer is like if you're a high end woman soccer player it's 40 to 50 % chance you're hurting your knee or some other stuff I think I would give volleyball the slight edge it's super fun I remember when I covered high school sports for the Boston Herald in the mid-90s.

1:34:30Bill Simmons:Volleyball is my favorite one of all the sports. You can follow it. You know, it resets, you know, every set. You always know what's going on. You can't be like a know-it-all with volleyball and be like, oh, I can't believe this Saturday. Like, nobody knows what's going on. You're just there cheering. And you can play it after as an adult or you can play beach volleyball. So I think volleyball is one and soccer is two.

1:34:54Cousin Sal:Beach volleyball, by the way, for a parent, might be the best experience, actually. to just hang out by the beach and watch your kid. I know it's like a niche thing, but it's out here, out West. Volleyball is a prestigious, if you have a position on the high school team, that's a prestigious way to go. Yeah, obviously. All the Olympians are from out here. So yeah, it's good. And so you wouldn't put soccer. Interesting.

1:35:20Bill Simmons:Now, I think volleyball, because of, if you include the beach volleyball.

1:35:25Cousin Sal:Underrated concussion thing for soccer, right? So that's, it's not underrated.

1:35:31Bill Simmons:I think at this point, people know, like, you know, especially when you're talking about collisions with goalies and strikers or two people going for a head and they bang heads. Like it's, you know, it's been my biggest fear ever since like probably age 11. Once people start going airborne, you're just scared about it. The other underrated one is you can just get kicked by the ball. Like somebody couldn't be clearing out the ball and kick it and you don't realize and it just hits the back of your head. Like I've seen a few of those. It's definitely concussions. That's, that's another thing. Volleyball versus soccer.

1:36:03Bill Simmons:I think volleyball, I guess you can get a concussion if you just got, took a spike in the head. Yeah. But other than that, no. Um, and then volleyball, all different types of body types too. Cause you can have the setters are smaller. The other ones are, you know, the, the people at the net are taller. Yeah. Everybody's tall.

1:36:22Cousin Sal:The set, there's small people in volleyball. Yeah.

1:36:25Bill Simmons:Small. Yeah. The setters are smaller, right? Yeah.

1:36:28Cousin Sal:I don't know. I don't know. But they can take the setters out. The soccer, the hell was I going to say? Yeah, it's interesting with the soccer, because I think if you go, we're mostly talking here 13 to 18 or whatever, but it's the first sport they all play, right? Soccer. From 4 to 10. 4 to 10, it's number one, no matter what. It's got to be. I hate to say that as a baseball junk, But it just is because your kid gets to play. Your kid's involved running around. Kid's not making sandcastles in left field, you know? So I think there's something to that as a positive.

1:37:07Bill Simmons:You just, you're in great shape from soccer. The tournaments, even though it's a long whatever, and you go to these, and I've been to a bunch of them. You're at these locations where there's 30 fields. You got to figure out where the field is. But for the most part, pretty easy to navigate. You're going to have two games a day. They're usually not staggered. where it's like one game's at nine and the other one's at six. They're usually within like four or five hours of each other. So you have time to kind of relax, veg out. Also fun to just watch other soccer games that are happening, which I think volleyball is the same thing.

1:37:39Bill Simmons:If it's in one of those places with a lot of games, you can kind of jump around and watch. But I think the concussion piece outweighs the fact that you're outdoors with soccer. But I think these are the best two.

1:37:53Cousin Sal:You might be right. The one where you have to drive past 50 soccer fields to get to your tournament two hours away. You have to drive past 50 baseball diamonds. Like, oh, we could have played this team. Norwalk, they're 20 minutes away. By the way, that should be your number one concern for someone who doesn't wear a seatbelt. It should be how close the venue is. No, I'm wearing a seatbelt now.

1:38:14Bill Simmons:Everybody's shaming.

1:38:15Cousin Sal:One of the reasons— This is something I forgot about. I remember it like 20 years ago, and I just completely forgot. I thought you came to your senses. I know. You have to wear it.

1:38:25Bill Simmons:One of the reasons I wanted to talk about it with Wilds is because I know I'd be publicly shamed for not being a seatbelt guy. And I needed to really have the shame and had to do it. I heard from so many people. Well, most of the time, I'm just driving around LA going 25 miles an hour. I get it.

1:38:43Cousin Sal:And I know you're confident in how good a driver you are. I'm an amazing driver. Everyone else has become a terrible driver. Everyone else is looking at their phone. Doesn't that scare you? That they're, okay, I'm not wearing a seatbelt and everyone's staring at their phone while they're trying to pass me.

1:38:56Bill Simmons:That's true. Yeah, I'm going to start worrying. I needed, I had my whole process. I needed to say that to wows. I knew people get mad. All right. It only took 55 years. All right. I'm going to count down backwards, 20 to one. 20, figure skating. Sorry to all the skaters out there. 19, gymnastics, swimming, wrestling, cycling, cross country together, rowing, track and field, hockey, football, Skiing, snowboarding, surfing, all at number 10. Water polo, baseball, softball, tennis, field hockey, basketball is fifth. Golf, fourth. Lacrosse, third. Soccer, second. Volleyball, first. What's going to be the most controversial?

1:39:39Bill Simmons:Again, this is for parents.

1:39:41Cousin Sal:Yeah, I think you're going to hear from figure skating. All the ones you put 20, 19, 18, they're going to get mad at you. I personally would have moved football up a little bit just because I feel like the juice behind the Friday night stuff is just, it takes it to a different level. And this is going to sound ridiculous coming from me because I accuse everyone of being an NBA hole, but I think basketball is one or two.

1:40:07Bill Simmons:Really?

1:40:08Cousin Sal:Yeah, I do.

1:40:09Bill Simmons:I do. If you could start over right now with Harrison and only have him play one sport from age five, Which sport would you pick?

1:40:20Cousin Sal:I think it would be golf. If a solo sport, it would be golf at this point because he's already upset with himself that he's behind his friend who's excellent, hits the green off of every tee on a par three. I would have done lacrosse for Zoe. You would have done lacrosse?

1:40:36Bill Simmons:Yeah. Yeah. But the soccer was great. Yeah. But lacrosse, I think lacrosse was... for girls, like you're removing some of the injury risks that make soccer a little, a little iffy. Anyway, I hope that helped. Listen, again, that was good. Just my opinion only. It doesn't mean I'm right. You can disagree. I don't, these aren't authoritative rankings. People could disagree with these. People can absolutely disagree with these. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Whether you're racing to build the biggest sandcastle, seeing who can throw the fastest pitch or competing in a championship match.

1:41:17Bill Simmons:It's always better when there's a prize on the line, like a Michelob Ultra, smooth, refreshing, and so satisfying after all that hard work. Superior's worth playing for. Michelob Ultra, Superior Light Beer. Enter for a chance to win Superior Soccer, Basketball, and Golf Prizes at Michelob Ultra.com slash Superior Access. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026, Anheuser-Busch, Michelob Ultra Light Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

1:41:44Cousin Sal:Before we go, do a parent corner. for us well yeah let me tell you a little bit about cooper sound we just got back i thought it was the greatest i mean i really i can't say enough about it it's like the culmination of like eight years of little league yeah and then you get to cooperstown it's beautifully manicured fields the amount of like americana thrown at you is like perfect they have the opening ceremonies where the teams march out and they had like a kid who an actual little leaguer was participating and they hadn't seen his father was deployed overseas and then the father shows up so very emotional They have that knocked out.

1:42:17Cousin Sal:And the kids bunk together, and you don't see them except for 20 minutes before and after every game. And then you have a few hours to hit the museum, which is fantastic. And you can hate it because of who's in and who's not. But there's plenty of Pete Rose. There's plenty of Barry Bond stuff, giant exhibits, just no plaque. So I promise it's enjoyable. But for my parent corner story, so Harrison's team goes up there, and he only wants to hit a home run. That's his whole summer goal because the fences at Cooperstown are 200, and he's used to like 225, 230. So they like having home run derbies, he and his friends, on the local fields and everything.

1:42:55Cousin Sal:And so we get to playing, and we have five pool games, and we're blowing teams out. In three days, we have five pool games, and we mercy rule four of the five teams. But as we're beating these teams, he's not hitting home runs, and his buddies are all hitting home runs. Now he's like one of four kids who haven't hit a home run. and he's coming back after we greet the kids after they come out after like a 15-2 win. He's like choking back tears because the other boys are posing with their home runs and the fathers chased the home run balls and so that everybody could pose. And I was like, hey, get it together.

1:43:28Cousin Sal:Like he's getting singles. He's pitching well. He's making plays in the field. I'm like, come on, what are you doing? So - Hey, you're a winning player. Your war is good. Yeah, exactly. But the only negatives are hitting the home run becomes a priority. And also these collectible pins. So they trade these pins with other teams. Everybody has a pin represented for their teams, and they trade with everybody else's teams in the barracks. And the Jalen Brunson pin, he's one of the few. He has no negotiating skills, so no New York aggression in the kids. So he ironically can't get a hold of this Jalen Brunson pin.

1:44:02Cousin Sal:So no Jalen Brunson pin hasn't hit a home run. So fast forward, we win all five pool games. We're ranked sixth out of 102 teams. I'm like, oh, man, we could really make a run here. We win the round of 32 game by 10 runs. Round of 16, we're up 5-1 in the last inning. We made four errors over three days. We make five errors in the last inning, and they tie it up. And Harrison's one of the worst ones. He boots like a hard-hit ball to third just to start the rally. And everyone's devastated. Like, I want to go freaking hide behind the Pee Wee Reese exhibit and never come out. So it's the bottom of the inning.

1:44:38Cousin Sal:There's two out, and a kid gets a single. and they pinch run Harrison. He's one of the faster kids on the team. I'm like, okay, this could be, he could inadvertently score the winning run. This could be nice. Whatever, we'll put a smile on his face, maybe after this whole thing. First pitch comes in, he takes off. And I see he doesn't have like a great jump. And I'm just watching him like, oh shit, this could be close. He gets the second. He beats the throw by six feet. He doesn't overslide the base. The ump calls him out. And I am losing my shit. this is the des call the des catch all over again and i'm like what the what what are you kid i'm like what are you looking at up what are you doing i'm like i'm mad at my coach because he's not arguing and harrison's got his arms in the air and everyone's like oh my god what happened and i'm like screaming things i don't even know what i was like in a different dimension i didn't even know what i was left your body yeah yeah and that was it and then like after like the good 20 mississippi worth of screaming, one of the father's elbows me is like, I think they're calling batter's interference.

1:45:41Cousin Sal:And I look at the batter because I hadn't watched. I was just watching. Little Dean is in the catcher's lap. So somehow he like over swung and ended up in the, and that's why the throw didn't get there. I'm like, oh no.

1:45:54Bill Simmons:And meanwhile, you've said 17 horrible things.

1:45:58Cousin Sal:I showed my hand like I should be, they should just put me in a white jacket and zip me up. Like that's ridiculous. You're the baseball parents we were talking about earlier. It's you. It's me the whole time. And then we lose by like eight runs and extra innings and that was that.

1:46:12Bill Simmons:Some poor second base sub from Utica who's making$10 a game.

1:46:17Cousin Sal:She's getting berated by Cousin Sal. Nothing. He's like an army vet who's doing it for free. Oh, God. So that's it. So he didn't get the steal.

1:46:26Bill Simmons:You guys lost and Harrison didn't get his home run or the Jalen Brunson pin.

1:46:30Cousin Sal:No home run, no Jalen Brunson pin. And that's it. So otherwise fantastic experience. Wow. Did he come close to a home run? No, not really. I mean, it's so funny because you end up playing different kind of baseball. It's not like, hey, move the runner over and do this. Everyone's just jacking it for the fence. But he got like five singles and whatever, but it wasn't good enough.

1:46:51Bill Simmons:Sounds like Major League Baseball. That's right. Alright. Well, I'm sorry I didn't get a home run. Thanks for doing the U Sport rankings with me. This is fun. I got to hear the of feedback. I really, I can't wait. I'm ready for it. Look, man, sometimes you got to go out on a limb with content and not everybody's going to like it. We're going to be back together August 27th, Thursday. We're going to be doing, are we going to do NFC first or AFC first?

1:47:18Cousin Sal:Whatever you want, man. We usually do, we do awards too, and then do we do a thing?

1:47:22Bill Simmons:We're going to save the awards futures to the, because we're doing it a week early this year so we can save stuff for the Sunday before. We usually do the conference that had the Super Bowl champs. So I guess we do. Which one was that? I wasn't paying attention. Sadly, it was the NFC. But I've appreciated you doing the divisions with Raheem and Dabundo and House and not really tipping your hand this year, which is something I'm doing as well.

1:47:49Cousin Sal:I'm just setting the table for them. They're doing a great job. Listen to that. We did the AFC East preview. We did the AFC North on Monday, and we'll be doing the South on Friday.

1:47:57Bill Simmons:Yeah, last year I felt like I did all these pods in August, laying out all my opinions for the year. And then when we did our AFC-NFC, everyone kind of knew who listens to the pod. Like, oh yeah, he's talked about Denver four times. He loves Denver. So I'm really trying to keep everything under wraps this year because I have some hard opinions on a couple things. But I mean... I do too. Did you write down the lines?

1:48:24Cousin Sal:I mean, not... Because people are such... I mean, even our Ringer Wise guys really want to talk week one lines. I'm like, guys, I can't do it. I cannot do it.

1:48:33Bill Simmons:We're four weeks away now. Should we mail each other lines and then have like a point and a half leeway with the line or something? Maybe we should. I told you, I already saw the Seattle-New England line, unfortunately, so I know what that is. Yeah. Patriots getting 10, right? Yeah. Well, it's weird that it's the exact same line as the Super Bowl, which I was not expecting. because usually there's a bump for the home team. But yeah, we might have to, maybe this weekend we have to mail each other. The Hall of Fame game, seven plus million people watched.

1:49:04Cousin Sal:I know. And it was the most bet on game more than any baseball or WNBA, if you can believe that. I lost. I had a teaser and I lost. You had a teaser and you lost? It was 32 points. I bet the under on the teaser. Of course, you have to bet the under. What are they going to show? And there was like 32 points in the second quarter.

1:49:23Bill Simmons:I've been watching enough WNBA to have actual opinions on when we get to the playoffs really? I've actually been getting into it the league's the best entertainment wise it's ever been is that league going to make it to the playoffs? they might have a walkout before the playoffs the fever beat the shit out of New York last night and I texted Ruko and he actually said it on the air because Ruko was doing the thing. I was like, this is like watching Nash's sons. Like Indiana's like, they're just balls to the wall. Like every time they get a rebound, even off makes, they're just going and they have these two great guards and they're like really good.

1:50:07Bill Simmons:I think you can make a real case they can win the title. It's them, Minnesota or Vegas, I think are the three. I don't think anybody else, but House's Mystics are getting a little frisky.

1:50:18Cousin Sal:Yeah. I have money on the Lynx. I seem to bet them every night when they're favored by 12 on a money line parlay. The move with them.

1:50:25Bill Simmons:Yeah. If you like the links at home, just do the over with the links. But they're playing really well, though. I think it's going to be a fun playoffs that will, of course, be screwed up schedule wise as they try to go against football for some reason. And then I'll end up watching all this and then missing the key game in the finals because I'm watching fucking Cincinnati against Dallas. Basketball is your number five. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. By the way, speaking of Dallas, some Cowboys buzz. I think there's going to be some smart people who are going to pick them to win the NFC.

1:50:59Cousin Sal:Yeah, some dumb people too, probably. But yeah, Knockstar, they're training with the Rams and then at the end they're doing wind sprints and they're like, come on, let's do them with us. And the Rams are like, nah, we're good. We're better than you. We don't need to do this. I kind of like the vibe a little bit.

1:51:14Bill Simmons:They have some blue chippers. Team's pretty good. that'd be amazing i mean where's the super bowl it's in la this year right yeah it's here i wonder if the lakers will sell it we're doing a podcast from there we're gonna have to do the last one from there you know we talked about i think we might actually do our super bowl podcast from from sofi does that make sense i think they offered it to us yeah yeah we got to do that good times that'll be it all right sal great to see you thanks for doing this with me i'll let you know what the feedback is or if i get threatened by any uh gymnastics parents or anything.

1:51:46Bill Simmons:Uh, pleasure as always. Good job. Can't wait. Good job by you, buddy. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to cousin Sal. Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo as well. Um, don't forget rewatchables Italian jobs up about last night coming Thursday night. And then, uh, the re speed on Monday. So, uh, this podcast will come back on Sunday. Stay tuned for that and, uh, enjoy the rest of the week. I'm going to see them on the wayside. I don't want to say I don't have a few years with them. On the wayside. I'm a person I never want to say. Must be 21 plus in president in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus in president in D.C., Kentucky, or Wyoming.

1:52:42Bill Simmons:and get a problem, call 1-800-GAMBL or 1-800-MY-RESET. Call 888-79-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelpline ma.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24-7 support in Massachusetts or call 877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York for Louisiana. Call 877-770-7867.