Nico’s Gone, Iconic Bad Trades, Baseball’s Comeback, Lane Kiffin, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and the Power of Boredom With Chuck Klosterman

16:26Chuck Klosterman:So if he looks at this and he's like, okay, we throw in Austin Reeves. Maybe what Austin Reeves offers, which is, you know, he's averaging 30 points a game this year. He's a great offensive player, but maybe he was like, this is not the kind of guy that we want for what we're doing going forward. We need a different kind of...

16:42Bill Simmons:But he's still an asset. It's still somebody you can flip for more stuff. That's the issue with that.

16:47Chuck Klosterman:So you could have flipped him for something else. Yes. Here again, And it's like, I'm like somebody here being like, oh, actually, it was a great idea to go into Vietnam. It made a lot of sense for it. It didn't work out. Okay, I'm fucking, it didn't happen. Right. So, so I'm not saying that, like, actually, what you think you saw is an illusion. It made the trade. It was a bad trade. It failed. I'm just saying the reasoning behind it was not as insane as people behaved, particularly in that first 48 to 72 hours after the trade happened. Well, people just sort of lost their mind. And I feel like that, like this idea of winning trades, like you don't know until these things play out, you know?

17:29Chuck Klosterman:I mean, we got to talk about it because this is what the job is talking about this shit, but it's not a good way to do it because the criteria changes from, are we going to win the championship by making this move to, in retrospect, who got more value out of this move that both want us nothing.

17:47Bill Simmons:Yeah, but there's another piece to this, which is the sports fandom connection. It's the same thing that the Red Sox had with Mookie Betts. And this happens over the years. Like we even, I remember when I was a kid, the Mets traded Tom Seaver to the Reds. And I didn't care about the Mets. But as a little kid, I was like, holy shit, they traded Tom Seaver. Like he is the Mets. how can you trade the face of your franchise for what you got back, which was basically like Doug Flynn. And I forget who else was in that trade. But, but I think that's the, that's the piece that I think people can over and over again, underestimate how much fans give a shit, how much fans get attached to somebody that somebody who maybe doesn't make that much money.

18:28Bill Simmons:They bought their kid a Luka Doncic Jersey for$200. And then the kid, the guy gets traded two months later, like little things like that. they just missed. It's a lack of connectivity. It's a lack of connectivity to the fan base and what they actually care about, which is like, I think the fan base actually cared more about just having Luka in their life for 15 years than actually winning the title. They even gave everybody the choice and they're like, all right, 5 % chance you win the title, but you keep Luka for 20 years or 90 % chance you win the title with Davis once. I think all the Mavs fans would be like, We'd rather have Luka and the puncher's chance.

19:05Bill Simmons:And that's it.

19:06Chuck Klosterman:I think that probably is true. You know, one thing about the Portland Trailblazers is that for many, many years, they never really put themselves in a position where they could realistically win a title. But the fan base liked the team because they were always competitive, you know? And I do think that, I mean, that's, you know, when I was, okay, so I have a ton of friends who are huge, like Minnesota Viking fans, right? Because of where I'm from. And we sometimes sort of had this discussion. Would they prefer what the Vikings have been over time, which is the most successful franchise not to win a Super Bowl, I would say.

19:47Chuck Klosterman:When you say - Oh yeah, decade to decade, no question.

19:49Bill Simmons:They're always kind of relevant and in the mix and just can't actually get over the hump.

19:53Chuck Klosterman:And then it was like, would you rather have that or all these other possibilities of teams who won a championship, but for the most part have been down. And I think for the most part that they prefer the way things have worked out. They prefer having a good team all the time, over time. It almost feels as though they've had championships in a weird way.

20:13Bill Simmons:You're talking about like consistent relevancy versus like that one, like the Florida Marlins 2001 title or whatever, or 2002, whatever year that was when they kind of bought the title and then gutted the team.

20:26Chuck Klosterman:I mean, the year they went 15-1 and got beat in the NFC Championship by Atlanta, that was obviously a heartbreaking, you know, you would say like a gut punch loss or whatever. And yet there's a memory of that season that is positive in their minds. Like they remember how awesome that was or whatever. So even though it didn't end with a championship, as though they feel the franchise is good. And maybe it's the exact same thing here. Like maybe particularly in a place where basketball is, you know, by far a secondary concern. where it's, you know, where, you know, the high school football matters more in Dallas than the NBA.

21:02Chuck Klosterman:And it made me be like, well, it's just nice to have a competitive franchise. It's nice to always have a good team or whatever. It's nice to have something fun to look forward to. And that would be that obviously is what they should have done. Like here again, looking back, that obviously would have been a better move. I did not expect the response to be what it was, but it would be strange to hire a GM. and if he came in, he was like, well, my number one priority is sort of making sure the fan base is enthusiastic and happy. It doesn't matter how we finish. I want the fans to feel good about this.

21:36Chuck Klosterman:Well, that's actually a very reasonable kind of strategy. I don't think you would hire a guy who says that, right? If his number one thing isn't, we're going to win a title, that's what a GM is supposed to say. My job is singular. I am here to put together a roster that wins us a championship.

21:53Bill Simmons:Well, do you think, you know like if you were the mavericks gm and you called me and i was like your one phone call yo i gotta throw this by you let me ask you about this and beyond like how dumb the actual trade is there had to be somebody in his life who would have been like dude they're gonna hate you if you do this trade like you you have to go to the games everyone knows what you look like you have to sit in the arena and everybody's gonna hate that you traded their favorite player and if this doesn't work out and it's not quite as good as you think or Davis gets hurt or Luca goes to the Lakers and he's awesome there's like seven different scenarios I can present to you where you become the most hated person in Dallas since 1963 basically that's how you would be perceived you won't be able to go anywhere it won't be fun for you to go to dinner it won't be fun for you to go to the games it won't be fun for you to go to a convenience store and buy gum name any scenario with you in Dallas and it's going to suck so you sure you want to do this you have to be really convicted in the trade and be like nope you don't understand if we get Davis people don't understand how awesome he is and I'll take the heat if he's not and I just don't think it was even remotely a slam dunk to risk all that other shit

23:10Chuck Klosterman:did you happen to watch this Martin Scorsese documentary that was just on? I still haven't, I'm due the same situation can be said about him making the last temptation of Christ he had this idea that this is what i want to do and i think this is what i got to do i'm sure there were people in his life saying like don't do this yeah like it's going to change your perception among the people who currently like you the most like like like christian you know it's like he he's he's sort of tied into a world with sort of very traditional views in his audience or people who have sort of you know artistic reactionaries or whatever the case however you want to look at it you know but he was like i gotta do it and if you want to be great you got to do those things you can be good by listening to advice but to be great you have to ignore it and take gamble you know so in this case when you're training i didn't think i'd come on here and support nico harrison today but i guess you're supporting the concept of it you're not supporting or at least like to me uh i can imagine a scenario where things work out differently and this is remembered as a brilliant decision, but that's not going to be what it is, right?

24:20Chuck Klosterman:That's not how it's going to be. So I'm not saying - Well, that's what he'll tell people 10 years from now.

24:23Bill Simmons:Be like, look, Davis got hurt. Kyrie got hurt. I don't think I was wrong. He can move into that mode pretty fast. I don't think I was wrong. I think the team we put together actually would have been really good and we never saw it and we'll never know. I was thinking about like growing up and then through our childhoods when we cared about sports and we had no internet, way more time to just think about dumb historical shit. There were always these trades that kind of levitated above all the other trades. Or the Babe Ruth thing was more of a sale. Yes. But it's a short... I was trying to think of the worst trades of my lifetime.

25:04Bill Simmons:And Hershel Walker always gets mentioned first, right? That Minnesota gave all this stuff to Dallas. And it was really the wrinkle of the trade where if they just waved all these players, they got all these extra picks.

25:13Chuck Klosterman:Yeah, well, it was really a trick in the... Yeah, it was... Like, Mike Winn of the Vikings did not believe that they would actually cut all those guys. Yeah. Like, he was like, they're not going to cut everybody. And it was like, yeah, we're cutting them all. And we get the pick. And that was, I mean, that really was on him.

25:31Bill Simmons:Yeah. But fundamentally, when that trade happened, people were like, holy shit, the Vikings got Hershel Walker. They gave up a lot, but Hershel Walker's awesome. Like, you know, in the moment, it was not crazy.

25:43Chuck Klosterman:I mean, I might be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure I'm not. In the first game he played, or maybe it was the second game, I think it was the first game, they put him in to return the kickoff. Right. And his shoe came off. And he still had this huge return. Like, I don't know, I don't think he scored, but it was a big return with one shoe on. And I remember all the Viking people being like, this is it. This is it. We did it. This is it. Like, this is the thing that we did. So it's a defensible bad trade. And now, well, it's defensible. Not if you look back on it. If you look back on it, it probably was certainly the most meaningful trade in modern NFL history.

26:20Chuck Klosterman:No question. Yes, there's no question about it.

26:22Bill Simmons:But when it happened, you can see it. When, I mean, the worst trade in the history of the NBA somehow is in the Luka trade. I think that's the most indefensible trade. The worst trade ever, it wasn't even the Nets' fault. But the ABA-NBA merger happens. they have to pay this big premium to join the NBA and they, and they basically don't have money. So their choice is like, we can join the NBA, but we're going to have to sell Dr. J and they sell him to the 76ers for$3 million to basically, cause they had to, because that was the way to keep the franchise alive because NBA teams didn't make money back then.

26:57Bill Simmons:But fundamentally just selling Dr. J as you're entering the NBA, when he's in the prime of his career, there's no worse trade than that.

27:06Chuck Klosterman:I guess trading Jabbar. Okay. So that was like for Brian Winter, I think Junior Bridgman. Junior Bridgman, Dave Myers. And also Kareem was kind of forcing it. But defensible because he was going to be a free agent in a year

27:19Bill Simmons:and they knew they weren't going to get compensation for him. So they kind of had to do it. So another one like this. So the Broncos trade for John Elway, who is like the best quarterback prospect of the 80s, doesn't want to play for Indianapolis, rightly so. Like it's pretty smart that he didn't want to go there. And he's like basically puts his foot down. I don't want to go there. So they trade him for a quarterback named Mark Herman, Chris Hinton, who was one of the best left tackles in the league. And in 1984 first, and that's it. And they get John Elway for two decades, basically. And I think that's actually a worse trade than Herschel Walker.

27:54Bill Simmons:But the catch is he didn't want to go there. And he wasn't going to go there. And he was going to go play baseball. And they were kind of hamstrung, right? So there's a reason for that.

28:02Chuck Klosterman:And not only did he not want to go there, But if that trade was discussed two years after it happens, everyone was like, Elway's not going to make it. Right. I mean, like that was like he was he seemed at the time like a super athletic guy. Remember, there's footage of him. He lined up behind the guard instead of the center one time. And it was like there was all these, you know, he was kind of getting pushed into playing and it didn't seem like it was going to work. And then.

28:27Bill Simmons:Yeah. And then also a terrible relationship.

28:29Chuck Klosterman:Now, obviously, as it turns out, you know, it would have been he won two Super Bowls and he's a Hall of Famer and all of the...

28:38Bill Simmons:Yeah, all of a sudden he was in the AFC title game. Siever to the Reds we mentioned, which had a lot of the same DNA, the Luka trade, where it's like you're just trading somebody that your entire fan base loved. And in Siever's case, won titles with, right? Won the 69 title with, made the 73 World Series with, most beloved Met ever, they traded him. The Deshaun Watson trade was really bad. and I think we knew it was bad when it happened. Then they guaranteed his contract. They gave up all these picks. That really was the worst NFL trade of all time, not Hershel Walker.

29:08Chuck Klosterman:I would say for what you gave up, if you add the money into it. You add the money in the off the field stuff,

29:15Bill Simmons:which had already happened.

29:16Chuck Klosterman:Yes.

29:17Bill Simmons:And a fan base going, wait a second, we don't even want to root for this guy. You traded all this stuff for him and you guarantee it. So that's actually the worst NFL trade. Then the Pierce Garnett trade to the Nets, which I think was way more defensible when it seemed like Prokhorov was just going to spend basically money like the Dodgers are spending now. And, you know, they gave up three firsts. They gave up a pick swap in 2017, but it just seemed like they're going to have the highest payroll in the league every year. So who cares about the picks? They got rid of Gerald Wallace's. It was semi-defensible in the moment.

29:47Bill Simmons:Then a year later, Prokhorov's like, I don't want to spend money anymore. Now you don't have those picks. And then the only other one is the most famous NBA one for years was that Parrish McHale trade. It was Joe Barry Carroll. The number 13th pick was Ricky Brown for Parrish and McHale. Parrish was, you know, wasn't really Robert Parrish at that point. He was the equivalent of, I don't know, like a better DeAndre Ayton right now. McHale was the third pick. Carroll was the best college player. Was semi-defensible. This Luka one is the first one that, even as it happened, was hard to defend.

30:18Chuck Klosterman:Along in that same situation, I think getting Dennis Johnson for Rick Roby, probably.

30:23Bill Simmons:Oh, that was amazing. But there was some cocaine son stuff at the time. And DJ was one of the names. So I think they got him on a discount. The point is, you go through all these trades in history, and there's always one yeah, but. And this Luka trade didn't have a yeah, but coming out of the gate. Everybody was like, why did they do this? It was like the immediate mass reaction. And then it just somehow got worse. So I really think it has a chance to be remembered. I don't know if it's the worst trade ever, but it'll be mentioned forever. this will be when 50 years from now, if we still have professional sports in a country and a society, and they're like, what were the worst trades ever?

31:02Bill Simmons:This would be mentioned.

31:03Chuck Klosterman:It will if the Lakers won a title, for sure. If they don't win a title, I don't know. I don't know what will happen. I like your little twist on that. Like you say, there was no... When I say this was... Harrison was kind of treated unfairly. i'm not saying that it was like it was treated unfairly because people didn't realize it was actually a good deal i feel that people over amplified the degree to which it was imbalanced i mean and here again it's a weird statement to make when all those people have been proven right it is strange for me to make this argument now i realize that but i what i'm saying is at the time i feel like he or someone else in the media could have made a very justifiable case for why the chances of them winning a title increased with this move.

31:53Bill Simmons:And here's the, here's the problem with the increase thing. Cause I went to all those finals games. They lost the first two in Boston game three. It felt like they were probably going to win. And Luca fouled out with five minutes left, which if you're going to hang Luca, don't get kicked. Don't get, don't foul out of the fucking game. But then the offense went to Kyrie and I was in the stands going, Oh my God, like this is, this is like a Shakespeare moment where Kyrie, this guy that all the Celtics fans hated because he kind of, you know, kind of didn't want to stay on the team, promised he was going to be there, didn't.

32:26Bill Simmons:Now this guy's going to cook us in a game three. We're going to lose game four. We might blow the series. I never felt like that series was safe until the second half of game five. The point is they were pretty close to winning the finals that year. So you can't really use the, oh, well, we can't win the title with Luka. Wait a second, wait a second.

32:43Chuck Klosterman:They were in the vicinity. He could have played as well as he could. They got beat 4-1 in the finals and really should have lost to OKC in the semifinals of the West.

32:52Bill Simmons:Well, yeah, the OKC series was a 50-50.

32:54Chuck Klosterman:They really should have lost.

32:55Bill Simmons:But we had the perfect team to play him, though, in the finals.

32:58Chuck Klosterman:And also, wasn't game three when he followed out? Wasn't that the one where he was sitting on the floor yelling at the bench and then, like, Windhurst talked about the game? How immature he was. Windhurst knows what he's talking about. He was in a position basically saying, like, this isn't going to work if this guy is this way. And was there any indication that this guy was going to be different than that way unless he changed? locations, you know, or I guess it'd be hilarious if, as we're talking about this,

33:20Bill Simmons:Nico came out of your back room and just patted you on the back and said, thank you. Thank you for being my one defender.

33:27Chuck Klosterman:I know exactly what's going to happen. Cause it's always happens when I go like weird being you and having this audience of so many people that of course you encapsulate some of the stupidest people on earth. but i mean and you get real smart people too like sometimes don't be like oh this person listened to our podcast i'm like that person listens to the podcast but there's a huge much larger chunk of just like i i it would you have a higher tolerance for that than i do like or maybe maybe you just got used to it i mean here's actually this is something i got to bring up to you i promise some guys to bring this up to you so i was at this humanity symposium in North Dakota a couple of weeks ago.

34:10Chuck Klosterman:And the theme was about the culture of the 1980s. And I'm the speaker at this thing and I'm doing all my bullshit, slow cancellation of the future. I'm talking about the past and all these things. Here's what people want to talk to me about. This is the main thing they want to ask me about after this symposium. First of all, does Bill Simmons actually believe Rocky III is the best movie of the 80s? That was a question to you? Yes. Did you say that? Did you make that statement? I was like, that seems like something he might say, but I was -

34:42Bill Simmons:The best movie of the 80s or the best Rocky movie?

34:44Chuck Klosterman:The best movie of the 80s, they claim, you insisted, was Rocky III. Now, you could have, I said like, maybe he was being served on. No, I didn't say that. Okay. I might have said most entertaining movie of the 80s. Most of the record, you are, yeah.

34:56Bill Simmons:Because I was like - Yeah, I don't know if I would have made that case. Do you believe it's the best of the Rocky films? I did. Well, I think it's the most rewatchable.

35:03Chuck Klosterman:Okay, okay.

35:04Bill Simmons:Yeah. I think Rocky one's probably the, the quote unquote best one, but I think Rocky three is the most entertaining start to finish. Okay.

35:13Chuck Klosterman:Well, so then the conversation morphed into this and it seemed like the kind of thing you might have real input on. If Rocky Balboa was a real person and then he died in his obituary, what part of his career or what part of his personality is the lead. Like what is considered the most important or memorable aspect of his career if he were a real person and then passed away?

35:39Bill Simmons:That he ended Apollo Creed's undefeated heavyweight championship streak came out of nowhere. Improbable rags to riches story captured the heart of the nation.

35:53Chuck Klosterman:More so than beating the Russian in Russia and convincing the crowd in an exhibition to say USA, USA in the Soviet Union. Oh, you think that would be the lead that he ended the Cold War? This was the crux of it. That's the first thing people brought up. And then they were like, but it was an exhibition. Like, and I can't remember, would it have been televised in the United States? Is there footage in the movie? Yeah, they show his kids watching.

36:19Bill Simmons:Okay, so how did that happen?

36:20Chuck Klosterman:Because he says, would it my kid is staying up late? so yeah he says so the Soviet need allowed like who who covered it you know listen

36:29Bill Simmons:there's a lot of holes in Rocky IV he didn't get paid for it um it's unclear who profited from the pay-per-view even though probably I would say tens of millions probably watched where'd the money go did their split there was no promoter um it was an exhibition there's a lot of questions okay they've never really been answered

36:48Chuck Klosterman:what if we if we use just the scripts the fights we see

36:53Bill Simmons:so you're saying like Like we take this as Rocky, his whole career was a real career. You're saying him beating Drago in an exhibition, but maybe turning the Cold War is mentioned above him being a rags to riches story who beat Apollo Creed, ended the streak.

37:07Chuck Klosterman:That was sort of the central aspect of the debate over this. Other people, I think, brought up the idea, would it be seen as a very sad story because of the end of his life? The way we look at Sonny Liston or something. That even though in the movies, it is portrayed as positive.

37:23Bill Simmons:No, because think of Mike Tyson. Like if Mike Tyson dies, what's the first like sentence, what's the blink snapshot of his career? It would be like Mike Tyson, the most feared heavyweight of the 1980s, who won his first whatever and was the youngest heavyweight champion of all time. And then his career ended in disgrace.

37:45Chuck Klosterman:You have to mention he was in prison.

37:46Bill Simmons:comma his career ended in disgrace after he went to prison and bid evander holyfield and lost all his money and a whole bunch of other things although it sort of seems like now his story is kind of a redemptive story right and the fact that he's still alive is i think redemptive

38:02Chuck Klosterman:um you know or or he's kind of become something very very different because we were just talking it's just interesting to me always to talk about fictional things as if they were real and how what the response would be you know it's like a um you know if they discussed if rocky died now as a person would there be a discussion about the racial overtones of his rivalry with create now which would not have been taught you know with that would that be brought up like in the new york times like that the guy who like who won a nobel prize for like you know discovering or being part of the discovery of like the dna and like in the headline it kind of mentions that later in life.

38:42Chuck Klosterman:He said like some racist or sexist things or whatever. It was very, it's like, I'm sure he didn't expect that was going to be part of his obituary. So I wonder if that would happen now with, if, if, if Rocky, the real person die, if that somehow would be.

38:54Bill Simmons:I would say the Clubber Lang part would probably have like the stronger racial overtones than, cause Creed was like a beloved, you know, he kind of trained, he was like Ali, he transcended all that stuff. I would say Creed was definitely more, more that Rocky III tapped into that a lot harder, I think, even though Creed was on Rocky's side.

39:14Chuck Klosterman:The strangest thing about Clubber Lang is I remember at one point he's giving an interview in the movie and his thing is, you know, I live alone. I train alone. Yeah. But he's a boxer. So we never spars. How can a boxer train alone? Like a boxer more than anyone needs someone to train with him.

39:31Bill Simmons:Is he just hitting a heavy bag? I think he was probably being probably exaggerating a little bit. Let's take a break. and then we got to talk about baseball. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. This NBA season on FanDuel, it's all about the boost. Game days mean your chance to boost your bet, make every play pay off. That's right. All customers get a 50 % profit boost on NBA Parlay and SGP bets. So I'm going to Denver Clippers on Wednesday night. The Clippers are not doing well this season. They really match up nicely with Denver. And I feel like this could be a kitchen sink game for them.

40:11Bill Simmons:So I'd probably do Clippers, underdog, money line with the over, with Harden to do well, with Nick Batum to hit like a three or two, something like that. Lock in your bets, boost your odds. Make every night count with FanDuel, official sports betting partner of the NBA. Head to fanduel.com slash BS to get started. Must be 21 plus presidents like states are 18 plus in prison in DC, Kentucky or Wyoming. opt-in required. Rewards are non-withdrawable. Restrictions apply, including bonus and token expiration, leg requirements, and max wager amount. See terms at sportsbook.fando.com. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLE or visit rg-help.com.

40:48Bill Simmons:Call 1-888-789-777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. Every football season, the same thing happens. The game somehow makes everybody really hungry. Quarterback scrambles, clearly a sign for breakfast burritos. Yeah. Turnover suddenly deserted at 2 p.m. doesn't sound so crazy. Wing formations, well, those can only mean buffalo wings, as if they're ever not in play. Even the goalposts start looking suspiciously like french fries. It's almost like football is sending the message to eat more food. Yeah. The good news, Uber Eats makes those cravings easy to satisfy with game day deals all season long.

41:29Bill Simmons:From wings and pizza to chips, drinks, and even last minute grocery runs. Don't sleep on those. You'll find savings on all your favorites delivered straight to your door. Order now on Uber Eats. Can I say one more thing about Anthony Davis before we move on? Just because it's timely and I'd like to just get on the record on the pod. What's interesting is they trade Luka for him and he's the centerpiece of the trade and he's important for Nico. And he's clearly when he's helping one of the best 15 players in the league, but now has had even more wear and tear. He makes a ton of money. they've changed a lot of the trading rules so a lot of the teams you could think he could get traded to they can't even do the trade because they can't take his giant salary back I went through it today I can only find a couple teams that would even make sense on top of the fact that you know they're not going to send him to a place where he's going to be unhappy because they don't do that in the NBA if you have a disgruntled superstar not worth it so it's really like I was thinking you know what would be really fun is Davis for LaMelo Just like the Mavs get this young point guard.

42:33Bill Simmons:They play the flag. Charlotte gets a big man. And then you start unpacking. It's like, well, that trade can't happen because they can only take one player back for Davis. Charlotte would have to send three to make the salaries work. Davis would be unhappy in Charlotte. They'd have to trade him. Charlotte's not going to do that. They want to tank. So that blows up. Really, the only teams are the Knicks and the Warriors. And then it comes down to desperation. The only team that would actually be desperate enough because they're near the end of the line is the Warriors, which leads me to Butler who makes the exact same amount of money as Davis.

43:07Bill Simmons:So you can trade them straight up, I think, if I understand the rules.

43:10Chuck Klosterman:Is this going to happen

43:12Bill Simmons:or is this you're speculating? It's like, I mean, Davis is getting traded.

43:16Chuck Klosterman:Are they planning?

43:17Bill Simmons:I was getting a bunch of texts today from different people going, well, now the Mavs are going to blow it up. They'll trade AD. And we do this with the NBA, but they've changed the rules so dramatically and these guys make so much money. It's like, well, actually cross off eight of the 10 teams you thought AD would go for. Here are the actual teams. And it's basically the Knicks and Golden State. If you're the Knicks, I don't know if you trade Towns for him. This town spreads the floor for you. Davis, all the wear and tear, who knows? But I think Golden State would be the one team near the end of the line that could talk themselves into it.

43:47Bill Simmons:Because they're not on the level of OKC in Denver. And they could give Butler and some first round picks. Butler goes to the Mavs, playing with Flagg. They have the centers. It's just something in my head that I thought would make sense.

44:02Chuck Klosterman:If you have Kyrie, Flagg, and Davis, don't you at least want to see what happens? I think that's how this plays out.

44:08Bill Simmons:Yeah.

44:08Chuck Klosterman:I mean, I would want to see what happens first.

44:10Bill Simmons:I mean, that... I'm just telling people, this is the blow-it-up scenarios. There's not a lot of blow-it-up options.

44:16Chuck Klosterman:All right, let's talk baseball. Okay.

44:20Bill Simmons:The pitch clock saved the sport. True or false?

44:28Chuck Klosterman:singularly or did they contribute to it? So you're saying it was the biggest factor or you would say singularly? It's the biggest factor, I think. But I wouldn't say it's the only factor.

44:40Bill Simmons:Agreed.

44:41Chuck Klosterman:Okay. Also, so the sport is saved now. We've made the decision baseball is saved. We've had like seven podcast conversations where we talked about baseball being dead. Are we now in the position that it's saved?

44:53Bill Simmons:the viewership of that World Series was bonkers.

44:56Chuck Klosterman:But this is what I think. And anecdotally, September and October,

45:00Bill Simmons:there was more baseball talk going on than at any time in my life since the early 2000s.

45:05Chuck Klosterman:I'll tell you what, it's the most I enjoyed watching baseball since the 1991 series between the Twins and the Braves.

45:11Bill Simmons:Think about that.

45:12Chuck Klosterman:Yeah, that's a lot.

45:13Bill Simmons:Or like 03-04 was the last time I felt like baseball kind of took over the country with the narrative. It's like, oh, three, everybody, the Bartman game and the Yankees, Red Sox. Like, we just haven't had anything like this in 20 years.

45:25Chuck Klosterman:What is likely going to happen is a lot of the people who watch this World Series and have suddenly changed their opinion about baseball, are they going to start watching it again next April? And they'll be like, this is not what I remember. Because playoff baseball now seems more different than the regular season now than any other sport. It used to be that way in like the NBA and in hockey. Now it's in baseball. What I think could happen, my kind of new theory on this, is that baseball, Major League Baseball, is going to overtake the role the NCAA basketball tournament had about 15 years ago.

46:02Chuck Klosterman:Which is that people don't really follow the regular season, but then they become obsessed with the tournament.

46:08Bill Simmons:So they get their pools, they watch, they do the weekends, they go to sports bars.

46:12Chuck Klosterman:And they convince themselves during the NCAA tournaments that they actually still know about college basketball. Like there's enough ways that you can cheat with the Internet to actually seem as though you know what's going on in college basketball without watching it. And then you get into the tournament and you're like, oh, this guy and that guy and all of that. And then you can also kind of fall back into all like the classic pageantry stuff. I think that's going to happen maybe with baseball that people will not care that much during outside of regionally during the regular season. but they'll be like, okay, baseball playoffs.

46:43Chuck Klosterman:This is great. Because I mean, that was really, they got, you know, it's going to be hard for another world series to match this, you know?

46:51Bill Simmons:But the playoffs before the rounds before were great too. Like it really, so I think I've been thinking about it a lot because something clearly shifted. And I do think the pitch clock helped, but I also think like having the Dodgers, what they did, right? They spent all this money and they ended up, they make the bets trade. They finally get Otani into a playoff situation. They get Yamamoto, who's incredible. They get Freddie Freeman from the Braves and they have Will Smith, homegrown catcher. That's their five. But they also have enough money to spend on these different expensive starters. They just have enough money to spend.

47:33Bill Simmons:They're basically making this giant blockbuster movie and they have enough money to spend general. We'll get Laura Linney. Like they just doesn't matter. Um, but they're, they're, they've won two in a row. They won in 2020 and they're like a legitimate dynasty now, which I think people like, I really do. And I'm not the first person to say this. And I've talked about this on pods before. I think I've, I've talked about this with basketball forever with how desperate there to have more parity and make it have teams not dominate. I personally like domination. I like having the bar for all the other teams to try to beat.

48:16Bill Simmons:This is what we grew up with. This was Celtics Lakers in the eighties. This was Cowboys Steelers in the seventies. And this was the bulls in the nineties. And I just personally like it more. I like having like the bar you have to climb to beat. This is what college basketball used to be like. This is what we've had in college football the last 20 years. And I think baseball has figured out the best because nobody's going to beat the Dodgers because they've actually figured out how to spend, how to grab this Far East connection where they're always getting the best. Now, who's the next guy from Japan?

48:47Bill Simmons:They're probably getting them. And now this is the team to beat on top of like you have Judge in New York. You have Soto with the Mets. You have Bryce Harper and Schwarber with the Phillies. You have Roman Anthony now with the Red Sox. All the big markets have a guy. And I'm all for it, man. I really feel like we're headed to a good place.

49:06Chuck Klosterman:Okay. First of all, you said, so they're a dynasty now.

49:09Bill Simmons:Now, weren't you kind of skeptical of people who called the Kansas City Chiefs a dynasty? Well, they've won three in six years or five. Well, if you said 2020, that would be three in... I guess the difference with them and the Chiefs is the Chiefs was always, you know, built like the Patriots, where we have these little five-year windows in the NFL and then the cap gets you. With whatever the Dodgers have now, they're always going to be the favorites to win the World Series for the rest of the decade, no matter what happens with the team they have.

49:38Chuck Klosterman:I mean, I think what people love the most, and to some degree, the NFL is the only league that can really create this scenario, is parity with a dynasty. Where that there's a ton of parity in the league and there is one team that's sort of one level above that's kind of that's the ideal situation i mean like you know um say like you know when like so like we always talk about the lakers and the celtics in the 80s there was dole for dynasties but there wasn't a ton of parody i mean you went down to the bucks and the you know there's there was a level with like you know the rockets but it was a pretty big drop off for a couple years in the nfl right now i mean that is the the p rosell idea of creating parody has worked to such a full extent.

50:23Chuck Klosterman:I mean, the worst teams in the NFL are still some guys that are... It's really rare to think of that this team can't compete. So that's kind of maybe... The idea of baseball having this situation, it doesn't seem like they have created parity across the league.

50:47Bill Simmons:No, you need the dregs, which is, I wrote a column about this once. To have great teams, you need bad teams. And this is why I hate the NBA lottery so much because you're constantly rewarding the bad teams for being bad, but you're putting the most talented players in bad situations and then wondering why they've been disappointing. You know, you're putting guys who have a chance to be awesome, but they're playing on a 18-win team. And very rarely can you flip that around. Like even LeBron, when LeBron went to the Cavs. That team was awful for years, you know? And I was like, but that was why I was so interested in what would happen with Cooper Flagg and the Mavs because with Kyrie and AD, they actually had a chance to be good right away, which is basically what happened to Larry Bird and Magic.

51:33Bill Simmons:Those guys went to teams where they were good right away. Jordan had the opposite. He went to like a mess of a team. It took five years to get there. But I think I still like it because I still like when you have, football has it with the quarterbacks, right? It's Mahomes and Allen. those teams are always going to be good. Hopefully Drake may now at the Patriots are always going to be good. The way the Eagles have built their team, they're going to be good for at least the rest of the decade. So maybe you have three or four kind of bars that the rest of the league has to get through. Baseball might have seven.

52:04Chuck Klosterman:Are you one of these people who would be like, let's abolish the draft and let just the guys come out of college, sign where they want to sign and we enforce a hard cap. And so if somebody like, you know, if Chet Holmgren's coming out or whatever, he can take X amount of dollars for teams that are in the cellar, or he can take a little less money if he wants to sign with a more established team. Do you want the draft to exist? Do you want? I want the draft to exist. What I don't,

52:29Bill Simmons:what I don't want is for teams to be able to be in the lottery for three, four or five straight years with top five picks. That's what the NBA has to change.

52:39Chuck Klosterman:What do you mean?

52:41Bill Simmons:I just think like if you win the lottery, you shouldn't be able to get a top three pick the next year. I would just put that rule in right now. You shouldn't be rewarded for being bad over and over and over again.

52:53Chuck Klosterman:Yeah, I know.

52:54Bill Simmons:I just kind of... If you have a top three pick, maybe you can't pick higher than four the next year. You know, like little wrinkles so that teams get penalized at least a little bit for being awful. Like, I think what the Nets did, they're the most disgusting of all the teams, right? They had five first round picks last year. They blew all of them. And they don't care at all. They're not even the second most important team in New York. The Liberty, I think, are more important. I think that people who own the Liberty and the Nets probably care more about the Liberty. And they're just like a way station for incompetence at this point, kind of hoping that they'll stumble in this draft that's coming up.

53:33Bill Simmons:There's these three legitimate franchise guys in it. And they're just kind of keeping their fingers crossed to get one of those three guys. And that's their entire strategy. I think that sucks. I'm done with that.

53:43Chuck Klosterman:I mean, we talked about this years ago, the whole idea of like, you know, the process as it was used to be described,

53:49Bill Simmons:which would turn out to be a disaster.

53:51Chuck Klosterman:Well, I'll accept that it actually worked exactly as it was, how it was supposed to work. It's just, they never made it pass around to, they won two playoff series. Yeah. But the players didn't pan out, but they did the thing that it was intended to do. They had Ben Simmons. They had Embiid. Both of those guys were seen as Jeff. They got the Fultz pick.

54:12Bill Simmons:Yeah.

54:12Chuck Klosterman:Fultz, here you go. And like, it just, so, so the, it did actually do the thing it was supposed to do, which is negligibly increase your luck of getting into somebody great. Like, it's like, it doesn't, it's not, it's a, it's a strange strategy. It's just like, it's, it's maybe not strange. It's just slightly increasing the possibility that you will find the guy who changes everything. And they did that. They actually got that. Yeah.

54:38Bill Simmons:But here's, here's the thing with the Sixers though. And this is what we learned retroactively and why I don't think teams will ever do that again. They build a losing culture, but they put these young stars in the losing culture and told them it didn't matter if they won or lost. And I think it had real ramifications for those guys. I think for Simmons and for Embiid, those guys have had really bizarre careers, you know? And I think even some of the stuff they value has been Simmons was like, thought he was a super duper star. The team wasn't winning anything. And I still don't know what happened to him when he basically bailed on the team.

55:13Bill Simmons:And then Embiid, I just think has had a really strange career where it really seems like he values the individual stuff over the team stuff. And we've seen him like even little stuff like I'll play Jokic, but only if it's in Philly versus playing in Denver. Like you can't be like that and be the face of a team and the best guy on a team. And I think you just learn bad lessons when you're in a bad situation, you know?

55:36Chuck Klosterman:Yeah, I guess that's true. I mean, and you're saying that if he gets drafted somewhere else, you think maybe he's a different person. That's how it was. Yeah.

55:43Bill Simmons:Well, think about like Tatum had one of the best. Tatum and Brown had two of the best situations you ever could have walked into where they go into a team that's also had just signed Al Horford that had Isaiah Thomas like that with him. And the team was pretty good and was like in the Easter conference finals. And those guys are rookies getting a taste of it, going against guys. They're in winning situations with good crowds. And I would say that had a great effect on them, you know, a really positive effect. It's also unusual. That's not usually how it goes. But if you're just saying like, I'm going to put one guy in this Philly situation and one guy in this Boston situation, which guy will learn better habits and have a better career?

56:24Bill Simmons:You would bet on the Boston situation.

56:25Chuck Klosterman:Oh, totally. I mean, you know, you know, you in the NFL, you see this with young quarterbacks all the time.

56:32Bill Simmons:I mean, Sam Darnold, that's the best example of all of them because he's actually talented.

56:36Chuck Klosterman:You know, what is, you know, it's very often, as it turns out, it's like, you know, the cliche now is that nobody knows anything in the NFL about drafting quarterbacks. Everyone is, you know, which all guesswork, we can't predict anything. And it certainly seems that way. And yet, when a lot of these guys get into a good situation, they end up becoming pretty close to what the original description was. Right. You know, whatever the original idea was, there's, it's kind of, I can't remember what year it was, but the year, like, he came out, Lamar Jackson came out, and Josh Allen came out, and Rosen was in that draft, and Baker Mayfield.

57:17Chuck Klosterman:Like, we did a podcast, and we talked about this, and it's very interesting how we were, in some ways, amazingly correct, and in some ways, amazingly idiotic, most notably me claiming Baker Mayfield should be moved to slot receiver. That was what I said in that podcast. You said that? Well, because everybody was saying about Lamar Jackson. He would have been an amazing slot receiver. They were talking about Lamar Jackson, and it was sort of like, he's such a great athlete, but he'll probably never be a quarterback. Maybe move him to a receiver or something. I was like, I don't think that should be the case at all.

57:47Chuck Klosterman:He's the best of these guys in my view. It's like maybe Baker Mayfield, maybe. Maybe he could be like an Engelman-type figure coming out of Kent State. We liked Lamar Jackson. We liked Josh Allen. You had seen him in a Target or something and talked to him, and you were like, he's a good guy or whatever. And like, you sort of had a good understanding of him and that worked out. But like Rosen, I remember the guy from UCLA. I think I was like, he actually might be the best, you know, obviously that was wrong.

58:18Bill Simmons:He was out of the league in two years.

58:20Chuck Klosterman:What if he goes somewhere different? Who knows? What if he goes to, you know, if he didn't went to Baltimore, it'd be hard to imagine what happens, but you know.

58:29Bill Simmons:I feel like we've talked about this a bunch of times, but it is hilarious that in 2025, we've come no closer to figuring out what's going to make a good quarterback. We have decades of data and tape and analysis. I think people are getting better at it. Even somebody like McShay, who is with us at The Ringer, I think he's done a really good job the last few years. He's been pretty on it. There's some stuff that I would look at that is almost like non-football stuff when I would look at these guys. I remember thinking a lot about this stuff with Drake May. and it's stupid stuff that's probably on brand for me but like the fact that he was a little brother, the fact that he stayed at North Carolina for an extra year when he just could have transferred when it seemed like the team was going to suck.

59:14Bill Simmons:There was like good guy, good teammate leader kind of traits that were there but it also helps that he's fucking really talented, right? And that's the thing you didn't really know until you saw him in the NFL.

59:28Chuck Klosterman:The thing you said before probably is the biggest factor, which is this. It's situational. It really is the situation you're in. When Jared Goff was coming out, do you remember what the criticism of him was?

59:40Bill Simmons:Small hands. Wasn't it? Yeah, small hands and kind of dumb, right?

59:43Chuck Klosterman:Well, he went to Cal.

59:45Bill Simmons:I mean, it's like I thought he made like dumb decisions or there was some people weren't sure about his decision making.

59:52Chuck Klosterman:I just remember it was that he had small hands. and they were sort of like, you know, and there was like, when it rains, the history, you know, it's like, well, okay, sure, sure. You know, it's like maybe, but you know, he was actually not terrible with the Rams, got into a Super Bowl and has had a very good career.

1:00:11Bill Simmons:You know what's funny? So I was watching, randomly watching the NBC pregame show the other day, which I don't usually watch, but I wanted to see the highlights because I was on a plane and I didn't catch everything. And they had Jason Garrett interviewed, I think it was Jason Garrett interviewed Sam Darnold. I think that's what it was. Was that what it was? Maybe it was two weeks ago. I can't remember. But it was Jason Garrett reading Sam Darnold, his scouting report of Sam Darnold. And going through the stuff that he had and Sam Darnold was like, yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah, you nailed me there.

1:00:47Bill Simmons:And a lot of it was stuff like he's so competitive, he can be his own worst enemy and things like that. And they were just talking about it. And of course, they did it in that pregame style where the thing just, they zoomed through it really fast with a bunch of edits and footage. And I was like, I could have watched this for 20 minutes of somebody going through their scouting report of somebody who's like clearly made it as a pro and been like, all right, so what did I get right? I was like, this is like the best segment ever. And it was like a minute.

1:01:12Chuck Klosterman:It is interesting. Like there was one, I remember it was kind of going around online. It was like the scouting report on Kobe Bryant coming out of high school. Right. And it was like eerily accurate. Like it was amazing. Like the things they said about him that were good, of course, were plentiful. But even the negative things were all right. It was like, I mean, it didn't say this, but it was like close to be like, you know, could face legal issues in Colorado. Like it was so specific about what his life ended up being. So some of them are dead on, you know? But also a lot of scouting stuff though is like very aphoristic though thing too.

1:01:49Chuck Klosterman:So like if you're saying like, oh, this guy, he's like, you know, so competitive, he might be his own worst enemy. Well, that's okay. So that's technically a criticism, right? So is the idea that he should become slightly less competitive or caliber? Less of his own, more steadily. I mean, it's not, it's a pretty, it's like giving a job interview and saying, what's your weakness? It's like, oh, I care too much. It's like, well, thanks for nothing. You know what I'm saying?

1:02:15Bill Simmons:One thing I've learned, at least with the NBA, and I think this probably goes for football for a quarterback too, is like, if I ran an NBA team, I would never take the guy like with a high pick that I'm really betting on, like potentially even betting my job where I didn't get the feedback that this guy was like an incredibly hard worker. I just think that to me, that would be a non-negotiable. Even like I've started to do some work on the 26 NBA draft because it's really like potentially a generational draft with these guys. It's really nuts. And I'm fascinated by this Kansas kid who really might be the best two guard prospect.

1:02:53Chuck Klosterman:They compare him to Jordan. That's the comparison I've seen.

1:02:56Bill Simmons:Yeah, like he's the first one we've had at Tugard who can be credibly mentioned with like Vince, like what Vince was like coming out of high school and at North Carolina and Kobe, what some of the stuff people were saying about him coming out of high school and then Jordan at UNC. Like there's some stuff with him. But one of the things that people have been saying is like, this kid really gives a shit. Like he really works. This is the Cooper flag thing. Cooper flag is like, I'm going to, I have a weakness. I'm going to work on this until I fix the weakness. And I do think for the NBA, you need to be that way.

1:03:31Bill Simmons:I don't think you can really succeed at the highest level unless you're wired that way.

1:03:35Chuck Klosterman:You could be right. I mean, for me, I feel saying someone is a really hard worker or a workaholic in a scouting report is less meaningful than the detriment of questionable work ethic. I feel like people will rarely say questionable work ethic unless they have a pretty clear reason for argument. But people will say great work ethic because it's just something you say. Like it's just talking about guys, level of competition, their need to win, all that stuff. That's true, certainly sometimes. And sometimes it is just something people say. But when they say something on the negative side, that usually means something motivated them to do that.

1:04:20Chuck Klosterman:Like people are not really motivated to say positive things, except to occasionally seem the most enthusiastic. That's another thing I've noticed about how like the, the, the, the ranking of prospects has changed that there is now almost a competitive world within that sort of, you know, paradigm where like, somebody is like, well, to be remembered about this, I have to be the most excited about Ace Bailey, or I have to be the right right my guy whatever you know it's like you gotta have some like real strong strong strong strong take and that does skew these things because that's how you get into this problem of like these guys seem like busts immediately and they should have never been in the position to to be viewed as potentially generational I just well we also

1:05:10Bill Simmons:I I it this sounds really basic and dumb but I swear we don't think about it enough how much a kid can change from the age of like 18 to 23. Like I say with my own kids, like you just, you change, you get older, all of a sudden you have confidence. It's like, what happened there? And to try to project when somebody is, think about these basketball kids. These kids are 18 and 19 and try to project even just what they're going to be like as human beings at age 23 is kind of a crazy process, but we do it anyway.

1:05:41Chuck Klosterman:I mean, okay, the United States is dominated by people from about nine to 12 universities. Almost everybody in the elite world comes from about these nine or 12 places, which is essentially saying things are dictated by people who are incredibly impressive 16-year-olds. Like they were incredibly impressive when they were 16 and then they were able to get into Harvard and they were able to get into Yale and Princeton and these places. And then somehow that education is the validation for the position that they start their life and where they end up. But what we're really talking about is they're not a formed person.

1:06:22Chuck Klosterman:Not only is there a huge difference between 18 and 23, think of the difference in you between 20 and 30. Oh my God. Like it's almost, the person I was at 30 had no relationship to the person I was at 20 and probably wouldn't have even liked that person. Like, you know, it's like, so to view somehow the early part of my life as a way to understand the middle of my life. I mean, in sports, there's no other way, right? We got to get the kids coming out of college and guys peak early and all that stuff. But yes, totally true. That's exactly right. Yeah.

1:07:01Bill Simmons:Do you think if baseball has another strike, I was thinking about, we always say in real life, history repeats itself. Right. It's like, oh, here we go. We did this already. And baseball having a lockout or a strike or however this is probably going to play out, which I think is going to happen right as they've captured the zeitgeist for the first time in a real way in 20 years, just feels like the most baseball thing ever for that to happen.

1:07:28Chuck Klosterman:Yeah.

1:07:28Bill Simmons:A little bit, a little bit. This is what we've, this has been our entire life, right? Every time it felt like baseball was going great, there would be something stupid happening. Well, I mean, you know, they just, there's, it's, can you sustain a league in the United States without a salary cap?

1:07:45Chuck Klosterman:I don't know. I guess they're doing it. And it certainly seemed to work great in the playoffs, but I will, you know, here, it's, there's so much chance, Bill. I mean, it's like, okay, so if for whatever reason, the world series went five games this year, we're not talking about it. I don't care that much. I don't know. And I'm not every person, but it's like, you know, if that happens and then you're like, oh, you know, the world series ratings were kind of down again. And now there might be a strike. We'd be like, ah, it figures. Baseball's dead. like we used to say but now because there was this transcendent seven game series you know that game that went to like the 18th or whatever you know i'm watching this thing and i'm like they're gonna have to start having position players pitch but like otani can just go in like you know all these all these things were so interesting um and plus you know it's like i you know it's like a tani like he gets kind of shelled and like he thanks the umpire like like tips his hat to the umpire while he's leaving the field.

1:08:49Chuck Klosterman:And like, you know, and, and like Yamamoto was like, I'll pitch four games in a row if I have to. It's like, there were some things in that. I was like, boy, you just don't see this from American athletes anymore. The Yamamoto thing was the most unbelievable thing in a while. People were sort of like, you know, it was, I think the conventional wisdoms, you know, among the people I knew, it's like they were kind of rooting for Toronto or whatever, but like the Dodgers did to some degree, those two guys particularly just kind of win me over. Like, you know.

1:09:14Bill Simmons:Yeah, I agree. one more break and then we got to talk college football. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Countless hours in the gym, a thousand shots before tip-off, day after day on the same court with the State Farm stanchion right there. That's right. The best players put in the work and State Farm is the same way with insurance experts who put in the work as well. Whether you get a digital quote or reach out to a local agent, State Farm is there to get to know you and help you select the right coverage that fits your life and your budget. Putting in the work is what separates the good players from the great, and that's why you want State Farm on your team.

1:09:55Bill Simmons:So get the coverage that's right for you. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Coverage options are selected by the customer, availability and eligibility vary by state. This episode is brought to you by HubSpot. You know why elite point guards make everyone better? It isn't just the no-look times. it's because they know everything. Who's hot? Who's tired? What the defense is doing? Which teammate needs a basket? Most businesses don't have that. Sales run one play. Marketing runs another. Nobody told service. The game plan has now changed. HubSpot gives you that point guard vision. One platform, full customer context.

1:10:34Bill Simmons:And that context is everything you need to win. Visit HubSpot.com to learn more. All right. I texted you for pod ideas. You texted me back. One thing you were excited about were all the insanely great coaching job openings in college football and why those jobs actually aren't that great.

1:10:54Chuck Klosterman:Well, it's not.

1:10:54Bill Simmons:What did you mean?

1:10:55Chuck Klosterman:They're not, it's not that the jobs aren't that great. They're just not as great as they used to be. Like, you know, you look at Florida and, you know, LSU and Penn State and, you know, Auburn and all these sort of these great jobs. But what is weird now is something has been completely removed from college football coaching, which is charismatic recruiting. like you know that used to be the big thing that a guy could go into someone's kitchen talk to the kid and his dad and his mom and it's like he was different like you know uh in i don't know if you read you read barry switzer's autobiography bootlegger boy oh from like the 90s one of the things he talks about in that book which i just will always remember is that whenever he was recruiting a kid he had this thing he did he would first walk through the back alley behind their house to see what kind of beer was in the garbage.

1:11:51Chuck Klosterman:Like what kind of, like what bottles were in there or, you know, and that way, when he went into the house, if the dad said like, do you want a beer? He'd be like, only if you drink old Milwaukee, he'd always, he'd always only want exactly what the guy drank. Now that's in some ways manipulative, but that really is someone like, I understand how to relate to people like on their level, you know, now that's not how it is. Now, in the same situation, he comes in, drinks old Milwaukee, convinces the dad he's a great guy, gets the kid jacked about going to Oklahoma. And then the kid says, like, well, what's the offer, though?

1:12:27Chuck Klosterman:Because Georgia Tech offered$340 ,000. Yeah. That's all it is now. So now it is completely switched away from being the kind of personality that can convince a kid to go to your program to talent evaluation. like can you see a guy who's a backup for old miss at tight end who then you can grab in the portal by just writing a bigger check like it really is a professional that was that was what north

1:12:56Bill Simmons:carolina was when lombardi was saying how they wanted to be the 33rd nfl team and it's like they're basically we're not a college program we're like a professional portal program yeah which i think is what they've created just in general with the sport right

1:13:10Chuck Klosterman:I mean, to some extent, sure. I mean, it's definitely like it's it is way different now. I mean, the SEC is not as dominant as it used to be. And there's a lot of people being like, oh, see, now that everybody can play players, they don't have the advantage anymore. But I don't think that's what it is. It's just that the SEC used to have so much depth at every position. And now that's just impossible. now to be like a great special teams player uh for georgia means that like you can start maybe an outside linebacker for indiana and then there's you know it's like you can make these moves and i it has like so to have like the penn state job now or the florida job like these marquee jobs that is like you get there that's the whole deal i don't know how much of an advantage you have like right i don't think that whoever takes the penn state job is going to have an advantage over Indiana.

1:14:01Chuck Klosterman:Like, I just, I don't think that will be the case unless that they can just, you know, do something very simple, which is raise more money, like just have more money to give these guys. And that really changed. Like, so that also means that while these jobs aren't as good as they used to be, a lot of random jobs could be great. Like if you get, if you get a job at like Liberty and Liberty says like, we're going to do what it takes to, you know, to get these guys, you might as well be in Florida. You see this with BYU's basketball program. BYU like took a kid from Duke. They just said we gave him a bigger number.

1:14:38Chuck Klosterman:So I am very interested.

1:14:40Bill Simmons:Well, they went further than that. They moved the kid from Brockton, our own AJ DeBansa from Massachusetts. And they moved him in there before he was even done with high school. Moved him to a place in Utah.

1:14:50Chuck Klosterman:What is kind of interesting about these college jobs is obviously the guy everyone wants is Lane Kiffin. But. Which is hilarious. Well, why is it hilarious?

1:14:59Bill Simmons:because he it's been just been a roller coaster ride for lane over the years right at one point it seemed like his career was over now he's the guy who's in the most demand the last super likable

1:15:09Chuck Klosterman:coach that still exists right yeah and uh at the you know in college football at least but like i don't know if florida and lsu will wait for him because they're going to go to the playoffs they're probably going to win a playoff game like so i don't know if lsu and florida or like penn state even if they would be in the running for that, are willing to wait that long. So I do think it's possible that he could end up at Auburn if he leaves. But also, I hope he doesn't leave because he has really rehabilitated his reputation as a guy who now loves living in Oxford, Mississippi. It would kind of change everything back if he leaves, especially if he left in the middle of the year or the day after they lost.

1:15:53Chuck Klosterman:It would be like, oh, goddammit, again.

1:15:55Bill Simmons:But, you know, do you think we're ever going to see like what we grew up with, with Bear Bryan and Paterno and these coaches that are just at the same place forever, unless they break the rules and they have to get shoved out? That's gone.

1:16:07Chuck Klosterman:I mean, well, I mean, the sport's different now. I mean, they've made college football a professional sport. It's just not the same. And those examples, particularly like it's going to be hard to see someone in that position at an elite program that way, because you can never be down. but you can't have you know you someone could coach that long at like you know like missouri or utah or one of these places you know that if you're just good every year occasionally make the playoffs but if the expectation like at lsu i mean what was kelly's record lsu 34 and 14 or something like that it wasn't that he was terrible he had a heisman trophy winner every year they came in with the potential to possibly go to the national championship or at least make the playoffs I mean, if that is the annual expectation, you can have one down year.

1:16:54Chuck Klosterman:Two down years, you mean you're in trouble. Third year, you get fired, you know? So the idea of their, even like a Saban-like coach, that will never, I don't think that will happen again. Lane Kiffin, if he were to make a commitment to Ole Miss, could have that kind of career. He could be there the rest of his life because the expectation is slightly lower than the other SEC schools. And he will have success both now and in the future. So, you know.

1:17:19Bill Simmons:do you care about buyout stuff and shit like that? When they're like, Brian Kelly, they're negotiating. It's buyout. He wants the full, like, it's funny that this is just like a category of sports reporting.

1:17:29Chuck Klosterman:Would you see what they're doing now on with the Brian Kelly situation? Now they're LSU. At least that's what I saw yesterday. LSU is claiming we haven't officially fired him yet. So therefore we can now fire him now for cause. Oh, in which case would I guess changes the buyout situation I mean he's obviously hard-lying it he's like it's like 54 million dollars and he's like pay me uh you know like I'll sit around and do nothing for two years you know um and they don't want to do that I think that they assumed that he would be the kind of guy who'd be like I'm going to talk to Penn State right now but

1:18:07Bill Simmons:he's not doing that so right so what's your give us your grade for the state of college football right now? Are you happy with it? This is your favorite sport. Just everything, the whole experience. Are you pro? Is this good? Is this what's happened this decade been a good thing?

1:18:23Chuck Klosterman:On the field, I would say it's still an A or A - almost every week. I mean, in terms of the health of the system, C - getting worse. I mean, in the short term, it is fun that Vandy is good. like it's it's neat to see that you know it's like like and indiana yeah exactly you know like like these these games are are great i mean there was like a this last saturday there was a whole bunch of like kind of surprisingly sort of thrill it didn't look like the world's greatest slate when i looked at espn but like there were a ton of good games like you know the indiana game was

1:18:59Bill Simmons:incredible and that was like one of the best sporting events of the year it was i mean probably

1:19:03Chuck Klosterman:the catch of the year and then the yeah the iowa oregon game was real interesting because i was like was like just at their utmost iowa like this last drive they got to go 93 yards and they can't throw the ball but of course they complete a deep one all these things happen they made it kind of a really fun day so i still i mean in terms of being a consumer i would watch that over anything but i know what's going to happen like i mean in the short term professionalizing a college sport does kind of spike its popularity because it, you know, pro sports appeal to the casual fan more than college sports do, but that erodes over time, particularly if the kind of professionalized college version just becomes like kind of a less good version of the NFL.

1:19:52Chuck Klosterman:And that is what's going to, I mean, my fear of what's going to happen in five years is that all of these teams are going going to play the same. And like the idea of someone like, you know, shotgun, running the option team playing an air raid team or something is just going to be over. It's all going to kind of be like, you know, in the same way that for the most part, the NFL is that, you know, that, that the teams are different, but they're much more similar than different by like, you know, by factor of 10 and in college, there's still real diversity and there's a regional quality to it. And the conferences play differently.

1:20:26Chuck Klosterman:And I think that's all going to be gone. And of course, that's going to be disappointing. But I mean, I just, I don't know. Maybe I'm sure I'll still watch it. I'm sure I'll never.

1:20:38Bill Simmons:Have you heard about this five-year eligibility rule that's getting batting around?

1:20:44Chuck Klosterman:What is this?

1:20:44Bill Simmons:That people think might happen? Basically, instead of a red shirt thing and whatever happens with that, It's just like when you go to college, you have five years to play sports.

1:20:56Chuck Klosterman:Who wants it?

1:20:56Bill Simmons:You can play, you can start all five years. You can play, you go to Duke and play basketball for five straight years.

1:21:02Chuck Klosterman:Is this because people thought the extra year for the COVID stuff was good for the kids or what would?

1:21:09Bill Simmons:Yeah, I think, and especially like in the D3 level, you play four years, you go to grad school, you could just play for one more year after that. I think people like that.

1:21:17Chuck Klosterman:Well, I mean, I think I've said this before, but I very much believe this. So I think that we are now less than five years from the SEC and the Big Ten, at least for football, breaking off from the NCAA. And they're going to start their own thing. And when that happens, I don't think the players will need to go to those schools. I think the quarterback for Alabama can represent Alabama. He can certainly go to school if he wants. But not actually go to class if he doesn't have to. There will be no obligation that he be an enrolled student. so i i mean i think that's almost certainly going to happen and everybody will know here's what's going to happen everybody everyone like me is going to be moan this but there's also going to be a lot of people being like this is progress why should he have to pretend to go to school he deserves to make money because he's making the university so much money and it's going to be seen as kind of naive and reactionary to not support this that's going to happen and then a lot of Be like, that's crazy.

1:22:17Chuck Klosterman:How can it be that I'm watching the University of, you know, South Carolina and only 40 % of the roster is enrolled in school and people will be like, you're, you don't get it. You don't get it.

1:22:30Bill Simmons:The quarterback works full time as a bartender at the local sports bar.

1:22:35Chuck Klosterman:You can do that. You'll just live on campus. You don't have a great life.

1:22:40Bill Simmons:Who's been your, who's your team of the year so far in college football? Cause you, you float around. You're like a nomad. You'll just root for anybody who's been your team. Who captured your fancy? I don't root for anybody.

1:22:51Chuck Klosterman:I mean, who captured your fancy? Well, you know, I really like Notre Dame's team this year, but I kind of like them every year. I like their run game. I am very interested in Ole Miss, now with Saban gone.

1:23:04Bill Simmons:Yeah, it feels like you're becoming a Kiffin guy. That's the feeling I'm getting.

1:23:07Chuck Klosterman:Absolutely am. And especially now with Saban gone, that's kind of who I'm rooting for. um uh in in the south uh there's a in the big 10 i mean the coach from indiana is truly a jerk but it it makes for an interesting situation and i'm not going to root for ohio state so it's like you know um i uh unc any any really interesting absolutely i really wanted that to work like i was really it i you know i watched that first coming on it's getting better drive of that game i was like yeah but uh i mean i just i i think that this is what i think has happened you know that so what is sort of like the one of the vortex central ideas of like the coaching personality the coaching personality is that i love to coach and it doesn't matter who i'm coaching I would coach a peewee football team and I would care as much as I would coach in the high school team.

1:24:14Chuck Klosterman:And I'd care about a high school team as much as I would care about a college team. And I would care about that as much as the NFL. Coaching is teaching. I'm an educator. That's what matters to me. All I care about is like what I'm doing in the moment. And I think Bill check out to North Carolina and he's like, oh, I guess I used to be that way. This doesn't seem the way I remember it. I can't tell these kids what to do and they don't seem to know anything. I got to teach him everything. like all that might transfer up there unhappy because when he took the job say with the browns yeah i think belichick was still the kind of person who would have been like i like coaching the browns i would just assume you know coach maslin high school it's a belichick impersonation i'm not chris ryan i can't do this shit okay so i'm just i just kind of felt it um but like so I can't do him.

1:25:04Chuck Klosterman:I can't. My British accent is terrible. But I think that when Bilicek was with the Browns, at that point in his life, whatever age he would have been, that would have been what? How many years ago now? 30 years ago. I think he would have been the kind of person who no matter where you would have put him, if you'd have put him in a powder puff football league, it would have been, I care about this more than anything else. But he's an older man now. He's went through a lot. he's had the experience of being you know the most talked about person in all the sports for moments like him you know and now he's in this situation where it's like well can i win the acc or whatever it's like i i think that it's hard for him to get motivated to be himself and i don't think i think he's i think in a way it's probably a bummer to realize that it would be like if you know okay so i start writing because i just love writing right i'm a writer before i ever get anything published i used to just sit in my bedroom and write stuff you know and then now it works out you're a journalist write a bunch of books in my mind i'm still like the person in high school who just writes because he loves to write but now if all of a sudden i couldn't sell books my mentality would say go out in your office and write you just love writing but maybe it wouldn't seem the same to me.

1:26:24Chuck Klosterman:Maybe this idea of writing for nothing except myself, all of a sudden wouldn't seem the way it used to be when I actually became someone who could do it or whatever. Like, like you, you have, you have to just love it to be good at it. But once you get rewarded for that, maybe it changes. I mean, I worry about this. Like I, I, I worry if I actually have the same drive that I had 30 years ago or 40 years ago? I don't know.

1:26:57Bill Simmons:So you think Belichick being on like a four and five UNC team just wakes up one morning and he's like, I don't know. I don't know if I'm enjoying this anymore. And I've done everything I can do in coaching and maybe this is it.

1:27:11Chuck Klosterman:Here's what I think is more like it. I think there was a time when he would have woke up in the morning and he'd have been, we're four and five. What can I do to make us better? Now, maybe he wakes up and he's like, I want some toast. You know, is the coffee ready? Like, it's not that he doesn't, it's not like he's consciously being like, I don't care. It's just that it's not consuming him. Like, you know, when you're consumed by something, whether it's a job or a person or whatever, you know, everybody's had this in their life where there's like, you know, maybe a time in your life when the first thing you thought of when you woke up was this person you were dating.

1:27:49Chuck Klosterman:And when you went to bed at night, you were thinking about this person. And I was just like, it wasn't, it was just a - I'm like that with coffee. Okay. Yeah.

1:27:57Bill Simmons:When I fall asleep, I'm like, I can't wait to have coffee tomorrow morning. And then when I wake up, I'm like, oh, I'm going to get to make coffee.

1:28:02Chuck Klosterman:And that would be a totally great mentality if you were trying to become a major coffee entrepreneur. Like you would be like, That's who I need to be. That's the person I need to be. I need to be somebody who thinks about coffee when I wake up.

1:28:15Bill Simmons:Yeah.

1:28:15Chuck Klosterman:I mean, that's because, you know, if you want to be good at something, it can't be that you think about it a lot. You need to think about it all the time, even when you don't want to. And that is the key. And that's a hard thing to sustain when you're someone who's lived and had that many experiences. He said he's had so many experiences in football. I'm sure sometimes this seems like this isn't the same. Like this is, you know, it's just not fun to do this in the way it used to be fun.

1:28:42Bill Simmons:I cut out a piece. We did the rewatchables, me and Van and Sean last week. We cut out a piece we ran last week on this podcast about filmmaking and creativity. And I was, we were arguing about it and we're obviously all good friends about, I was saying like, I worry sometimes that there's too many distractions that it's going to ultimately hurt creativity because I think of the way I grew up where a lot of times I read a book or wrote something just because I didn't have anything else to do. And I would be like, I got two hours here. Maybe I'll try to write a column. But now if you put, I don't know, 18-year-old, 19-year-old me in this situation now, I'd be like, I'll go on Instagram and go check that out.

1:29:26Bill Simmons:Or I'll go on Twitter or I'll go on some message board or I'll go on the Celtics Reddit to see what they're saying. And now I've just killed two hours, but I didn't do anything that actually I have something to show for it. And I do worry about that with this, with the under 25 generation. I'd sound like the old guy, but I think sometimes the best ideas I ever had, the best things I ever wrote, just in general, came out of like, my brain was just going because I was at a stoplight. I wasn't on my phone. I was just kind of staring at a tree and all of a sudden thinking about blank and got an idea.

1:30:02Bill Simmons:And I'm like, oh, that would actually be a good idea. And now I wonder if people have that in the same way because they're always moving on to something that captures their attention when they're bored. Does that make sense?

1:30:14Chuck Klosterman:I would say the greatest detriment to American culture right now, I mean, in terms of what we're talking about, arts, entertainment, stuff like that, is the systematic elimination of daydreaming. The people used to daydream all the time. That used to be, you had to, like, it wasn't, it wasn't like, you know, if you were, uh, you had to go to the bank and you had to wait in line and there was nothing to do while you were waiting. So you just had to think about things and that, you know, I, this is going to make me sound weird or weirder than I am, but like, I, I forced myself to do this. Like I, I have chunks of the day where I just lay there and don't do anything just so I can't, just so I can just to use your brain.

1:31:02Chuck Klosterman:well to just let my brain just sort of go just like let's like let's let you know think about anything without something providing stimulation back i mean that's that's also like you know this thing you're talking about people have talked about this since the big you know since the beginning of the advent of the printing press that basically it's like people will be less creative now because they can just read the bible or whatever and then it was like oh well radio and then television and all these things. It was like, these things are going to stop us. But here is kind of what's different. Reading is like a, like a, like a troop, like a responsive thing.

1:31:43Chuck Klosterman:You read something and you got to kind of imagine it in your mind. It's an active experience. Okay. But then all these other things we move through are passive. And we have really accelerated that part of it. That like where people are like sort of looking on their phones or whatever. I mean, phones are always the easy thing to use, but that's what everyone uses. And there is a passivity to it because you don't have to imagine what you're consuming. It's a visual image or you don't even have to read what you're reading about because they find ways to sort of repackage it and tell it to you faster in sort of a simpler format.

1:32:21Bill Simmons:So or you listen to it over reading it. You listen to an audio book, whatever.

1:32:26Chuck Klosterman:And I just I think that the idea of sort of just sort of kind of spacing out and just kind of letting your mind go. I think that's really but just totally gone. Like my kids can't handle it. My kids cannot handle boredom. You know, I often think, you know, it's like like we've really become like a like a real secular society. But I think one of the benefits to when it was a more sort of religious society was it forced people to be bored. Like, you know, I would go to mass and sit there and you would just have to sit there for an hour or whatever, you know. And I think that was really good. It's really good to force people to be bored, you know, and we've removed that from.

1:33:13Bill Simmons:You know where we haven't removed it? If you take a flight and the Wi-Fi is down and you thought like, I'm going to go on the Wi-Fi, I'll watch a show or I'll do, I'll go. But now you're just stuck on this flight for four hours. You didn't bring a book and you're like, oh shit. And guess what? Sometimes that can be okay, especially if you're a creative person.

1:33:34Chuck Klosterman:Well, I mean, this is kind of a thing, right? Raw dogging flights. Obviously, it's a weird, strange they pick the term raw dogging for this. So there's this idea that you go on a flight, you don't watch TV, you don't listen to anything, and you don't read. And why would this happen, right? Why would people do this by choice? And it's because they force themselves to do work.

1:33:57Bill Simmons:Yeah.

1:33:58Chuck Klosterman:No, I think that there's something in subconscious about us that craves this. Oh. That people are confused. I flew four hours and I didn't read anything. I didn't watch anything. I didn't listen to anything. Why do I feel good? They don't even know why. It makes no sense. They expect to come off the flight and say like, that sucked. The TV didn't work and I didn't bring a book and I just had to sit there. And yet that's not what's happening. They're proud that they did it. And they feel good about it. So I mean, this is an achievement to be bored. So far on this podcast, I've supported Nico Harrison.

1:34:35Chuck Klosterman:And I was like, people should do nothing. It's good for him. So I guess what's going to be third? Yeah.

1:34:41Bill Simmons:This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. We're in the heart of the FIFA World Cup 26. Every play matters here. FIFA World Cup 26. For you, the stakes are just this high. Michelob Ultra, the official beer sponsor of the FIFA World Cup 26. It's giving you a chance to win$1 million worth of tickets and prizes. Michelob Ultra, from the pitch to the poor. Superior is worth playing for. Enter now at MichelobUltra.com slash SuperiorAccess slash FIFA World Cup 2-6. MichelobUltra FIFA World Cup 26 Superior Access. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. Residence 21+. Begins on December 1st, 2025.

1:35:23Bill Simmons:Ends on July 31st, 2026. Multiple entry periods. Visit www.micelobUltra.com slash SuperiorAccess slash FIFA World Cup 26 for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details. This episode is brought to you by PayPal. We've seen some legendary athletes don the number four jersey. Now, I can't name names, but you guys know who I'm talking about. In fact, if you look at my studio, there's a framed picture of one of my favorite number fours. He played hockey. Anyway, you know what else is game-changing for? PayPal paying for. No fees, no interest, no impact on your credit score, just the flexibility to pay the way that works for you.

1:36:05Bill Simmons:and it's available at millions of online stores. Pay in four with PayPal. Subject to approval, learn more at paypal.com slash payinfor. PayPal Inc.

1:36:19Bill Simmons:NMLS 910457. I talked about this on Sunday on the pod. I took the train from Boston to Stanford with my daughter.

1:36:27Chuck Klosterman:Okay.

1:36:28Bill Simmons:And we both had an iPad on and we watched this Peacock show at the same time and that's all we did for the entire thing. We watched the show and we talked about it. And I was thinking when I was a kid going back and forth between Connecticut and Boston, because my parents were divorced. And I'd be on the Amtrak and I'd bring like a book and a notepad, right? And I'd read the book for some of the time or I'd have a newspaper. And then I'd have this and I'd write like parts of short stories or fake sports columns, like just whatever to kill the time for three hours. Those were kind of the only options.

1:37:01Bill Simmons:But it also like made my brain work in these ways. I remember in college, I didn't have a computer until my senior year in college. I wrote a sports column every week and I'd write it longhand. I would go to a Dunkin' Donuts and I would get a giant iced coffee and I would write out ideas for the column and then I would start writing it in fucking cursive. I would write out the entire thing, go back into the newspaper office and then type in the column. And that seems like that happened in the 1890s. it seems like i was like a cast member on uh on what was the yellowstone spinoff 1893 whatever 1888 yeah like that that seems like a million years ago but that was how what whatever my

1:37:45Chuck Klosterman:weird process was you know you will often make jokes about like your fingers not working do you misread at all like i gotta say i'm always surprised like okay so you put that basketball book out. It's like an 800 page book about a sport. I don't know how many weeks it was on the top of the bestseller list. You were in a position where you could have written whatever you wanted for the rest of your life. You could have said, I want to do a book of poetry. It would have paid $400 ,000 for that. So how did you not keep doing that? Like you could have written a book about anything you wanted and then you just stop.

1:38:18Chuck Klosterman:Now I understand some people are listening to this and they're like, well, because he moved into podcasting and that's actually much more relevant to what was happening in the world. And he'd rather dominate this space than that. But don't you, do you ever regret

1:38:30Bill Simmons:that you didn't continue writing? I don't regret it, but I really miss it. And I don't, the reason I haven't wanted to do it the last seven, eight years is because I just don't feel like I could do it at a level that I'd ever be happy doing it. I always say it's like golf. It's like these people that have to play golf a few times a week to be good at golf. And if they're just playing every once in a while, They're so unhappy because they know what they should be doing, but their body can't remember what to do. I feel like with the writing, you just have to do it every day. It's the only way I could be successful at it.

1:39:07Bill Simmons:It's the repetition of being in the habit of doing it day after day after day. That I think for me, some people aren't like that. For me, that was what it was. And all these different career choices you make, I don't have the ability to do that anymore. So I would have to give up something pretty major to be able to do it. With that said, I have been thinking about writing a book.

1:39:29Chuck Klosterman:Oh, really? Okay. Well, this is a difficult question, but like you said, I totally understand you saying, I don't feel like I could do it at the level to which I would be comfortable with or which I would find acceptable. What specifically do you mean by that? Like, what do you think that your writing now would last that would stop you from being comfortable publishing it? Because it's, I mean, I'm always uncomfortable when I publish things.

1:39:52Bill Simmons:So it's like, you know, I think it's more of the process. Cause I remember the happiest I was ever with, with writing was when I was doing my basketball book, which was like a suicide mission, basically trying to do the book the way I did it with doing all the other stuff I was doing. But I was in the habit of really writing for three and a half, four hours a day. Like every day I didn't have another choice. And I remember like, I got to the point where I felt like I could flick a switch and just write whatever I wanted for like three, four hours and be like, all right, I'm going to go to this place.

1:40:23Bill Simmons:I'm going to do it. And I know it's going to be at the level I want it to be. And I never really got back to that spot. I had moments. I remember like the first year at Grantland, I felt like I got back there for like a year with the process. I remember I came back from Boston after LeBron killed the Celtics in that game. And I wrote a column on the plane that I think it was probably one of the best things I've written. And I wrote it on the plane. I had like four hours to write it. I was, you know, frantically typing away. I had to send it when I landed. And I just knew I could do it because I had had enough reps.

1:40:59Bill Simmons:That's the stuff I just, it would be so hard for me to do it now. I don't know how to do it.

1:41:03Chuck Klosterman:But look what you just said. You hadn't done it in a while. You did it one time in a four-hour window.

1:41:09Bill Simmons:No, no. I'm saying when I did that, that was because I was writing all the time. So what would happen if you tried that now? Do you think? I'd probably, I'd stare at an empty, I've tried a couple of times. I'd stare at the empty document for two hours, like kind of even remembering, you know, the process of putting your brain into your fingers.

1:41:30Chuck Klosterman:What book are you considering writing? This is like, I'm breaking news. I feel like I'm not going to do it.

1:41:34Bill Simmons:No, you're not because I'll never do it. No, I had an idea. I had two different ideas for a book. I'm not going to mention them.

1:41:40Chuck Klosterman:You won't even, okay.

1:41:41Bill Simmons:I'll tell you offline.

1:41:43Chuck Klosterman:Oh, okay. Okay. I mean, I'm curious. I don't mind you not telling me here, but I'm a little surprised that you said that. I thought that was, you were like, I'm done with that world.

1:41:51Bill Simmons:No, I had a book after the basketball book that I really wanted to write and I just got too busy and I didn't do it, but I had it all sketched out and I didn't do it. I'll tell you about it after.

1:42:01Chuck Klosterman:Okay.

1:42:02Bill Simmons:But I had it. I had literally, John Walsh still mentions it to me almost anytime I talked to him because he's the one, I think the one person I told about the book and he was excited. wasn't really a sports book. Okay.

1:42:15Chuck Klosterman:Okay.

1:42:16Bill Simmons:Yeah. I'll tell you after. But I think the biggest issue, the mistake I made with the basketball book was it was just too long and too hard to do. It was like three years of my life and it should have been like two books. I should have spread it out.

1:42:29Chuck Klosterman:Why? I disagree entirely. So you wrote it. It actually became the book you imagined and it sold incredibly well.

1:42:37Bill Simmons:I know, but I wish I had done part one in part two of it and then spent more time on it versus like doing, just trying to rush to meet a deadline. I still have so many things I would change about it at this point.

1:42:48Chuck Klosterman:Well, I mean, it's tough to do a book like that, particularly like when you're, you were talking about some players who were still active, because there's no way you can write about things in the present tense without the book in all likelihood becoming dated, even if you're right, even if everything you say about those guys is correct, things just change. So that is hard. Like it would be hard for you to read a book like that and not say to yourself, well, I would change this or I would change that. I mean, it's really interesting.

1:43:15Bill Simmons:But there's a scary moment when you're doing a book like that. And I'm sure this has happened to you with at least one of the things you wrote, where at some point you're completely lost in whatever you had in your head, the book should be. And you've done a lot of the work already, but you're now in an abyss. You can't get out of it. You can't see the finish line, but you've already done all this work and there's nobody who can help you. It's like, you're the only person in a weird way. That's probably what I've missed the most about writing is like when you're the only person who can solve the problem and it has to be you or else the thing's not going to get solved.

1:43:49Bill Simmons:Right. But at the same time, it's so scared. It's all you think about. It's like to do it correctly. It has to be like, yeah, the only thing you're thinking about when you're thinking about it, when you're in the shower, when you're in the car, when you're making a tuna fish sandwich, whatever it is, it's just It's like, fuck, I got to figure this out.

1:44:05Chuck Klosterman:That's what it is. I mean, like when you do rewatchables now, it's almost like, to use a musical analogy, it's almost like you guys are kind of like making rumors, right? Like you're people, you're kind of throwing ideas off each other. You're using -

1:44:16Bill Simmons:Which I love. It's really fun to do.

1:44:18Chuck Klosterman:You're using your relationships to kind of create stuff. There's a producer outside through all these things. Writing is like being Prince. You write the songs, you play the songs, you produce the songs. It's just you.

1:44:30Bill Simmons:Like that - Billy Corrigan making Siamese Dream. you're like I'm just gonna redo all the guitar and drum and bass and everything

1:44:36Chuck Klosterman:if you were smashing pumpkins and rewatchables that'd be like you would go back and like you would like you would do voiceovers for like things he says I don't like how he said this

1:44:47Bill Simmons:I'm gonna get an actor yeah so there's stuff I do miss about it now that my kids are older there might be more time but I'd have to give up something I don't think I could do it at the level I'd want to do it you know like that I admire the way that you've stuck with you know, you, like you have two books, two books that came out and how many, what's the span of time between the two books?

1:45:09Chuck Klosterman:Well, next year I have a book in January and a book in the fall. And then weirdly there are really, this is talking about weirdness. They're re-releasing Fargo Rock City in the summer for the 25th anniversary. Wow. And it's strange because I haven't looked at that book since I wrote it, you know, and I'm kind of, it's weird to think about it, but that's, you know. Jesus.

1:45:28Bill Simmons:Yeah. Yeah, but you'll, and you probably, you finished too. Now you're thinking about what the next one is.

1:45:34Chuck Klosterman:Yes.

1:45:37Bill Simmons:I'm really interested. The book I'd want to read from you, or maybe it's just a piece, is what's, are bands just dead? And why did bands have a shelf life in music and rock? What was, how did we have, like when I was a kid, And we had the, that whole Beatles era of rock bands. But then we had all of this other, like the bands that became classic rock and then all of these other bands like Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles. We just had bands and the unity of a band and people getting together and it's just how you made music. And why does that seem like it's not gone, but how did that just, how did that era just end?

1:46:22Chuck Klosterman:Okay, it's like, you know, like Tame Impala right now, I could say is like a band or like the War on Drugs or a lot of these bands. It's like they're still like, you know, they're coming up with new ideas and like people are really into geese right now. So what you're saying still happens, but it's no longer the center of the culture. And that's mainly what we're talking about is that it's receded from that. Part of it has to do with, you know, the formal limitations of rock music. I mean, rock music, for whatever reason, sort of made this decision that a band is going to be one or two guitars, a bass player, a drummer, possibly someone on keyboards, possibly someone doing another instrument that will sort of change the texture and then vocals.

1:47:08Chuck Klosterman:And the songs are all going to be between three minutes to five minutes, unless you want to go further and you become prog rock or you can become extra short and you kind of become like a novelty, like Stormtroopers of Death or whatever. So there's all these sort of formal limitations to a high degree. I think we used them all up. I mean, I know that seems insane to say, but there have been, there were so many bands from 1964 to, you know, 2004, whatever it was just used that like, like the sheer number of music that was produced during that period sort of consumed a lot of the potential ideas you can create for a three or four minute song and then there was the fact that this all this music was also accessible initially physically but then through the internet digitally and therefore everything has become to some degree retro like everything that comes out now to some level is informed by music that existed in the past in a pretty direct way right you know and not just and not the music that had just come before it and not just like the classic records that everybody sort of steals from the idea that that there is it's almost impossible to imagine that the most interesting thing that happens in popular music would come from a band playing rock music at this point it just doesn't it just doesn't seem like that's still available but you know and uh the culture changed to the interest in rock culture changed and disappeared you know that was a big part of it you know going to going to a rock show had a lot before and after the band played that was a meaningful time and

1:48:51Bill Simmons:that's kind of gone you know nathan hubbard has a theory that all of the chord combos and beat combos have basically been done in all these different rock rock songs that everything becomes derivative of something that already exists which is part of the issue now like Basically what you said about all these different combos have already happened with the four people in a band that would be in a band.

1:49:17Chuck Klosterman:I think a lot of people said that happened in the 1980s. Right. I mean, seriously, because it was like, you know, so much of what is considered rock music is still completely traceable back to 1955 to 1967. seven. I mean, like, so there is so much of like what we view as like what is supposed to be in rock and what makes something heavy, you know, what makes something, you know, sort of, you know, psychedelic or whatever, like that's all been established. So I think it's like, it's not that it just happened now. It's just that these things occur and they're lagging indicators, like really like rock music achieved full self-awareness of itself in the early 90s that was really the end of sort of the idea of formal invention in an ideological way for rock music but nobody realized that for 15 more years like we went through a long iteration of like all the new york bands like the strokes and stuff and the white stripes and all these things radiohead is in this you know that it did not in any way feel like it felt like it was a vibrant rock form like it felt like it was still something that was uh you know formally inventive and extremely interesting and yet in a lot of ways soon as the rock artist particularly like the grunge era artists became self-aware about what they were doing what meant to be a rock star and sort of what this sort of said about your fan base and all this stuff.

1:50:54Chuck Klosterman:I mean, all art ends when it reaches self-awareness. And that's what happened to that.

1:51:00Bill Simmons:I think 02 to 06 or 07 was a really great time. And I felt that way as it was happening.

1:51:07Chuck Klosterman:And that was the last really exciting time for music. There are many people who I think very justifiably argue that a lot of the music that's being produced in rock, you know, right now and in metal. it's like it's back it's excellent it's just that it has it's it's it's sort of now like being like a connoisseur of these things it's sort of like saying it's like being like i know the most about jazz in 1985 or whatever and people are like well what do you mean like you know it's like you know it's like well there's still jazz artists happening and these are still they're doing it's it so you know like especially when you and i talk about these things we always talk about them in a macro way like everything we talk about is sort of in the widest possible lens like what does it mean to the world in general but of course if we would really drill down to the specifics of this in the same way that like you do with the nba like like when you low talk and stuff like that the things you're talking about um uh aren't really applicable to most people who follow basketball right i mean even when you talk about like like you know uh getting like a you know league pass or whatever.

1:52:18Chuck Klosterman:I think for most people, the idea of getting league pass, even though it's not that expensive, it's kind of insane since 90 % of the time when I want to watch an NBA game, the guys aren't playing anyways. Like the number of times that I watch a basketball game, I want to see, and both teams are operating in full strength, happens so rarely. It's almost like I got to text eight people. That's like, oh, I'm watching the Warriors and the Nuggets and everyone's playing.

1:52:45Bill Simmons:It would be an automatic text, yeah. No, they need to tell you like, hey, three days from now, the Nuggets will be playing all their guys. Get ready on Wednesday night.

1:52:54Chuck Klosterman:I'm in a fantasy league with like 15 guys on the roster. 10 of them are technically on the injured list. Like, you know, to some degree. It's just... Yeah, it's been ruined.

1:53:06Bill Simmons:I was talking to my son. My son really likes the Smashing Pumpkins. My son is like really is on the cutting edge of all the modern music. Like he knows everybody has all the hip hop, all the, basically all that world. Like that's his music, but there are some older bands that he likes and he really likes smashing pumpkins mainly because I was probably playing them in the car. But I was thinking like when, so I'm in high school and there's a certain kind of music I like, but there's only like between 10 to 15 years of it to go back and get like when And we're buying like CDs and compact disc, calling up CDs in 1985.

1:53:45Bill Simmons:Like, oh, got to get more music. I'll get the best of sticks. You know, there just weren't a lot of albums, right? And there's only like maybe 12 years total of all the music I like or 13, whatever it is. And now I look at him in 2025 and there's 60 years of music for him to go through. not to mention like he also likes jazz and different things. And I almost wonder if we even need new music the way we did. There's so much old music, like you could kind of live on that. It's almost like having leftovers in your fridge forever. You just go back into any decade and find awesome stuff, you know?

1:54:24Chuck Klosterman:I would guess, I mean, every person is different, but in general, the idea of the time something is released matters much less, I get the sense, from younger consumers. consumers like something being released now something being released eight years ago something being really released 38 years ago they're all accessing it in the exact same way right there's no because there's no there's no physical music culture as much now it's not like it's not like you're you were sailing you would have been into like the cure or whatever it's like you would have hung out with like goth people and there would have been this whole kind of world that's not like the cure i did not hang out well but i'm just using that as an example i mean you were into sticks, I guess.

1:55:02Chuck Klosterman:You'd be hanging out with a lot of people who loved AOR music or whatever, and you'd talk about Foreigner, and you'd talk about Boston. You'd have this kind of world. Now, that's not really how it is. It's like all music is equally accessible. And what you were describing, there wasn't that many albums. I remember the opposite experience, where there was a limited amount of money. So it's like, you know, I've said this a million times, but it's true, like for a very long time, I had four cassettes and then I got a fifth cassette. This is like eighth, ninth grade. And it was absolutely impossible for me as a kid who was completely into metal to be like, I'm gonna go back and buy the old Aerosmith records.

1:55:50Chuck Klosterman:Like I couldn't have done that. There was no way or particular, I'm gonna buy some unpopular Alice Cooper records just to understand that didn't happen, right? That's good.

1:55:59Bill Simmons:By the way, I was in the same boat. I probably only had like 30 CDs. But it was a question of like, there weren't that many choices.

1:56:06Chuck Klosterman:It wasn't strange to be somebody with 30 CDs. It was strange to be somebody with hundreds.

1:56:11Bill Simmons:Well, remember how important the greatest hits albums were? Yes. Because you'd be like, oh, I get the most possible versions or most possible songs from this person I kind of like. I remember the Bad Company greatest hits. Like, this is great.

1:56:23Chuck Klosterman:Yeah, well, the people -

1:56:24Bill Simmons:So glad they put off. I never had a Bad Company album.

1:56:27Chuck Klosterman:I used to buy a lot of live albums because the live albums encapsulate the last three or four records. You just mentioned, you know, like Bad Company now. So like, you know, so Bad Company is going in the rock hall. Are you aware of this?

1:56:41Bill Simmons:Yeah, I saw that. I was surprised they weren't in there already.

1:56:44Chuck Klosterman:Okay. So, well, I guess I have another, this might be another strange take. Okay. So, okay. So, so I mean, I think I probably, I'm guessing like Bad Company more than most people who are listening to this podcast. I mean, I've owned some bad company records, okay?

1:56:59Bill Simmons:Yeah. You know, like, you know, Pat Benatar,

1:57:04Chuck Klosterman:I think is in the Rock Hall now. And Foreigner.

1:57:07Bill Simmons:Pretty good four-year run.

1:57:08Chuck Klosterman:Foreigner. Pat Benatar. And, you know, I definitely probably like Foreigner more than the average person in 2025. You know, Ozzy Osbourne got in as a solo artist. Stevie Nicks got in as a solo artist. You know, so all these are, so I'm not criticizing these bands, but I'll say this. So the Rock Hall never actually described like what bands are included or like what's the reason a band gets in. But I did feel like there was an unspoken understanding of what bands are not going to get in. And to me, it seems like it's artists like that. like people who were commercially successful relatively formalist straightforward bands bands that got a lot of attention in the world since people bought their records people went to their shows but it doesn't seem like that's like a hall of fame career to me i mean if you're going to have a hall of fame about rock music or pop music however you want to see it it seems like you should be able to say something about the artist more than it was like oh there was good records a lot of people liked him like it doesn't seem like foreigner i just don't understand like what what is the reason foreigner is in the rock and roll hall of fame and here again i say this as someone who likes foreigner like i like i like those by the way this this happened in the

1:58:36Bill Simmons:basketball hall of fame, same thing. The bar of who is a hall of famer, because I think, and I think it's the same reason for the rock and roll hall of fame. They want to induct like six, seven, eight people a year. Right. And at some point they don't have the six, seven or eight anymore. So all of a sudden, and listen, Michael Cooper killed the Celtics in 1987 in game four. He was the best defender at that position of the eighties. I never thought he was a hall of famer, but now he's getting in. People like that are getting in versus like the concept of the hall of fame is like Tim Duncan's a hall of famer.

1:59:09Bill Simmons:You know, the, the Allen Iverson is a hall of famer. Like the, like the best 50, 60, 70 people in a sport are hall of famers. And then we can argue about everybody else.

1:59:19Chuck Klosterman:To me, a hall of fame is more meaningful if there are years when no one gets in. Totally. You know, but like, it's just, it's very, it's just odd to me. And now with the rock hall anybody who gets in gets to vote right so like you know like so like all the guys in Def Leppard are voting now and like all the guys and all these and that and that's definitely going to uh you know expand this to bands that would in the past we would not have perceived as being sort of like kind of you know canonical groups I mean that's I guess that's what I like I kind of feel like if you're in the rock hall you should either be a canonical act or you should be an act who did something that mainstreamed or invented an idea that kind of went everywhere, you know, or that during the time you existed, you were kind of the most important act that was happening.

2:00:11Chuck Klosterman:And it doesn't seem like that's how it is now. Now, the Rock Hall, kind of like the Basketball Hall of Fame, has become a situation where not getting in is more meaningful than getting in. like if you're if you're a band who's not in the rock hall like motley crew or whatever is not in the rock hall and they'd be like why are we not in if def leppard is in or if you know if it like what what what what separates us it's because or like why the replacement so basically if you've

2:00:38Bill Simmons:had success for seven eight years you're now in the rock and roll hall of fame well but yes and no

2:00:45Chuck Klosterman:i mean i boston's not in the hall of fame if you're gonna pick one of these spaceless boston's not in the hall of fame i'm 99 sure they're not wow and to me like so bad company got in before

2:00:56Bill Simmons:boston what bad company got in before boston yes it's kind of shocking i mean i think that there's

2:01:03Chuck Klosterman:some people who say boston really has like one and a half records but i mean there's more hits yeah i'd say three so they're great i mean plus the thing with boston is that record was a bedroom album it was produced by one guy by himself in his house he did it himself it is the best sounding home recorded record in the even now music that to me put that in a hall of fame or a museum you know like the achievement of of the creative process of making that first boston record would justify its induction i don't like you know it's like obviously like i like ozzy osborne I like Stevie Nicks. I love Black Sabbath.

2:01:44Chuck Klosterman:I love Fleetwood Mac. They get in Black Sabbath and Fleetwood Mac. I don't really understand why they're being, or why they were inducted as solo artists. Can you really look at their solo career and say like, this is a, it's important that these records happened, you know?

2:02:02Bill Simmons:Well, Stevie Nicks, I think, I mean, she did have a couple albums and a couple hits, but she's, the Fleetwood Mac piece of her career is, she already got in for the Fleetwood Mac

2:02:12Chuck Klosterman:she had a good solo career Ozzy had a great solo career Crazy Train, Flying High Again there's a bunch of the songs that are great but to put it in a Hall of Fame now seems like it's just

2:02:23Bill Simmons:well I have the answer for this one it's literally because they want to have the seven, eight new members every year so they can have the ceremony and the telecast and they're never going to be like hey we've run out hopefully we'll have some more down the road They want to have a ceremony like in the Barclay Center.

2:02:43Chuck Klosterman:So we have to induct Rush, and we have to induct Kiss or whatever, because they'll fill the plays. But, I mean, Rush definitely should be in the Rock Hall. But, you know, it's – I don't know. But that's just – you mentioning Bad Company made me think of that. Again, now – so now I'm pro-Neko Harrison, pro-boredom, anti-Bad Company, I guess. This is the aggregate of this conversation.

2:03:04Bill Simmons:And pro – you think Bonds and Clemens should be in the baseball hall of fame? Yes. I've been on the record for 20 years saying, I don't know what we're doing. But there's some veterans committee now where they might be able to get in. And I don't even think people care anymore because it's been so long. Although in a sense, I mean, like over time, it helped Pete Rose not to get in the Hall of Fame.

2:03:26Chuck Klosterman:Like it helped because it's like every year the Hall of Fame induction happened, people talked about Pete Rose every single year. If he would have just got in, people have been like, oh, questionable decision with this gambling situation. And that would have been, he should be a guy in there. So like sometimes not getting in is to your benefit.

2:03:44Bill Simmons:Well, we never got to talk about The Chair Company and Pluribus, two shows that you love. So if you want to do 60 seconds on that, then we'll go.

2:03:52Chuck Klosterman:I want to say a brief thing about The Chair Company and Pluribus, which I felt television has been real down for the last six or so months. And these two shows are great. and the reason they are is because they're they're kind of doing something that kind of had been lost for a while the chair company is the rare example of a show outside of like the nathan fielder stuff where i literally have no idea what's going to happen in these episodes with even you know like it is really surprising to me when i watch a television show and i don't kind of see what like where they're going or what's going to happen or or even if i don't know the twist i see a twist on the horizon.

2:04:30Chuck Klosterman:This show is not like that. Like I, I, I do not know scene to scene what's going to happen. And the thing about Pluribus, and I've only seen two episodes of this, but they're great. Um, what is interesting about this show is that, um, And it seems like it clearly must be about something. And yet that is a debatable concept. Like it seems like it's about AI, but maybe not. I mean, some people I think who see it as like a statement against wokeism. I think there's some people who think actually it's like a pro-socialist message. Like, you know, like there's a whole like you this show, because Vince Gilligan does things in a political way.

2:05:17Chuck Klosterman:People assume there must be a secret political meeting in there and they can just kind of inject anything. And he's done a brilliant job of making that possible. Plus, he's one of the last guys who at least cares like what the TV show looks like on your screen. He's not just like, I'm going to show... What would be an interesting way to show a woman driving as opposed to, I'm just going to have a shot of a car for two seconds so we know she got from point A to point B? It's like, he's trying. He is trying ideas.

2:05:49Bill Simmons:Two good ones. They're both on my list, as is the Scorsese doc. You will really like that. So this... And I haven't seen the Netflix, the Garfield assassination show yet, but I've heard they bit, they kind of stealth released it. The Game of Thrones guys are EPs on it. And Tom from Succession is in it. There's some really good actors in it. And supposedly it's great.

2:06:15Chuck Klosterman:It's about playing Garfield?

2:06:17Bill Simmons:It's a four episode drama slash, I think it's a little bit funny too, about the assassination of James Garfield.

2:06:27Chuck Klosterman:I didn't even know this was happening.

2:06:29Bill Simmons:Yeah. They did the weirdest thing. They didn't publicize it at all. And I think they want it to be word of mouth. But I already have a couple of people in my life who were like, this is fucking incredible. And I wonder, could this lead to like some sort of Ryan Murphy type situation, but like on a high end caliber of like taking historical things and just like four episode, whatever, because I'm all in. If that's how we can learn about American history, I would be excited.

2:06:54Chuck Klosterman:Like a real like tabloid version of squeaky from trying to kill four.

2:07:00Bill Simmons:But this is like high end. Well done. Yeah. That could be real good. You know? Right. Yeah. So we'll see if that goes. Chuck Klosterman plug, plug some pre-orders for your books. Oh yeah.

2:07:10Chuck Klosterman:So my football book is coming out in January. It's very difficult to sell books now. So I appreciate you having me on here and allowing me to say this. And I will, I'll come back. I'll actually come to LA in January. We can talk about books. You have the book? I have the book. Okay, good, good.

2:07:30Bill Simmons:Good cover. Haven't read it. It's on my holiday list. I will read it before we do the podcast.

2:07:35Chuck Klosterman:Take your time.

2:07:36Bill Simmons:I just went through the freaking gauntlet of NFL and NBA starting at the same time.

2:07:41Chuck Klosterman:Well, yeah.

2:07:42Bill Simmons:So I was trying to just survive October.

2:07:44Chuck Klosterman:You know, it's hard to find the time to do... It's like what Jim Croce says. it's like you don't understand the things you want to do until there's no time to do them

2:07:56Bill Simmons:you know Jim Croce one of my first favorite musical artists by the way Jim Croce songs

2:08:01Chuck Klosterman:walking in the rain walking the dog the other day listening to this music it's like those songs at times are too emotional to be available to me in the day like I don't want to think about some of these things that like you know and like they're real memorable and everything's a visual picture and like some of them like you know rapid roy or whatever are just kind of fun but there's a lot of songs that are like, this resonates deeply with too much, too much emotion.

2:08:29Bill Simmons:Chuck Klosterman, a pleasure as always. I'll see you in January.

2:08:32Chuck Klosterman:You got it.

2:08:33Bill Simmons:Thank you. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Chuck. Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo. As always, I'm going to be back on this feed on Thursday. And don't forget about the new rewatchables that went up Snake Eyes. Don't forget about the mailbag. BSpodcast33 at gmail.com. If you want to send a question for a future mailbag segment, I will see you on Thursday. Go Patriots.

2:09:14Bill Simmons:Must be 21 plus and president select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER. Visit rg-help.com. Call 888-79-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24-7 support in Massachusetts or call 877-8HOPE-NY or text Hope NY in New York. This message is brought to you by Mariner. It takes the right team to help develop an athlete's talents. Managing your money works the same way. You've ever thought, am I getting the most out of my financial plan?

2:09:57Bill Simmons:You're ready for Mariner. With Mariner, you get an advisor backed by a full team of specialists. So everything's working together toward your goals. Take the next step in your financial journey with Mariner. Investment advisory services offered through Mariner LLC and SEC Registered Investment Advisor. For more information, visit mariner.com. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome.

2:10:20Chuck Klosterman:You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18+.