Well, happy Mark cast Friday here live episode today Black Friday. I thought
I had eliminated going before, you know, the New York Jets game and
trying to all the competition today, you know, get people getting up,
get their shopping, and forgot we're actually going up against the feasts of football
here, the XFLS thing. So we'll see, hopefully, hopefully we could
do whatever. But this was fun today. I felt like we needed to
do something. I had been talking with Max about this listener Max producer.
Max been knee deep in CFL content for about a month, and Max,
you know, I'm trying to get away from like, okay, is it
four and eight and four? Okay, now it's five and five. Okay,
now it's eight, trying to get through all that making videos every week.
But now we need to stop down at Max, how are you doing.
I'm doing great. It feels kind of weird following spring football right now,
because this kind of feels like a whole lot of enoughing, really,
but at least now, for the first time in months, really we have
something more substantial than hearsay. That's nice. Yeah, it's been it's been
tough, and I know and and God bless Brandon and everyone trying to kind
of do these videos. Like I said, we you know, doing the
Great Cup Show had a great success for that. I appreciate, you know,
sixty six thousand people checking that out, which was pretty cool, the
biggest thing that we've seen, so you know, obviously on our channel.
So excited for that. But Max said, there's enough now with the government.
You know we have I got the photos, all this kind of stuff,
Mike Mitchell's recent reporting. There's enough to talk about. We need to
stop down. I asked the professor Andrew Murray, who being busy with family
obligations, ask Greg Parks, and I said, Max, it's important to
that. We'll get Max. Now, we'll run down all this questions everything
else today. Philip checking in Max. First off, you know, what
is the welfare check right now? Because I know there's been a lot of
animosity online and a lot of like now we've parlayed the xfl usfl stuff and
okay, well who's gonna win with the numbers and kind of all that stuff.
We're sitting here, it's Black Friday, November twenty fourth. How are
you feeling. I'm just looking around, like you know, remember last year
when the USFL was all putting their commercials on TV and during NFL games.
I mean, I haven't been watching whole of NFL football. I don't think
that's been happening lately. I sure haven't seen many people posting about it if
it has been happening, or anyone really And the XFL is like, we'll
just re air stuff we already did on YouTube all off season. Even now
it's just more of the same stuff. It really feels like they're just biting
their time hoping them gets improved in time to launch a merge twenty twenty four
season. And I'm a little concerned what's going to happen. If they can't
do it then, are they going to have separate seasons or twenty twenty four?
Are they just going to cancel it all entirely and start over in twenty
twenty five as a merged league. That's kind of my fear is, you
know, we went through this last year. We had the Vegas Vipers and
the Cashman Field. You feel the dreams at all? And we have a
question here from random we'll talk about the Vegas Vipers. Do you have any
questions anything? Post them and I'll tag them here and we'll get to him
in the second. You know, we went through all that last year really
delayed. It doesn't feel like either of these leagues have a lot of juice
right now. I do think the USFLA is doing more. Hey, watch
our guys play on Thursday night. Watch our guys play on Sunday. Kind
of watch that suff XFL. Like you said, we're doing this feast of
Friday. But it doesn't feel like, you know, this is a league
with players reporting in the month and a half. No, it certainly does
not feel like this is going to be playing football in February. And honestly,
I'm not even sure the USFL was going to be playing football in April
at this point separately either. It just kind of all feels like a bit
of a mirage in terms of the back and forth, where it felt like
at the beginning the reports were actuel reaching out to the USFL kind of being
absorbed that way. Now at least reports I had heard and flying in even
this latest Thursday night to Canada and they're at the reporter suite getting the messages
like hey, now we're feeling here and it's going to be more XFLI like,
what if we stumble where it's kind because it feels like every week kind
of they need to kind of bounces one way or another. The main stumbling
has just been that they can't get it done. Really, they can't get
this sorted out, even though it's taken months upon months, and also that
it took them this long to start on this process in the first place.
They should have figured out that they wanted to do this if this was something
entering their mind in like March of this year instead of July. Man,
Instead we wait so long and now the regulators are going to delay it through
probub. I mean, we're hoping for the mid December, but I'm I
don't know if this makes it through by the end of the year. I
mean, I just I just don't see it, honestly. Well, and
there's always the kind of the at the end of the year shutdown stuff too,
where everyone kind of yeah, it's taken off. I remember following with
all of the uh the when we were going through COVID and all of the
small business loans and unemployment and all that stuff, and I remember tracking a
lot of like government processes of Okay, when is this stuff getting to get
approved, Like, okay, now we're taking the next four weeks off,
we'll be back right. Wait, wait a minute here, what's going on?
So? Yeah, we had John Lewis here, who was on a
couple of weeks ago, I think the last kind of proper episode talking about
the big government meet up. That's kind of what we have in the most
you know, most juice here to kind of get into today. And then
we have some questions Mike reporting that let me get the photo up, and
then what do you make of kind of the reports coming out of you do
I need the rock we're meeting in DC? Who do we have here in
this photo? Max? Kind of because Mike did the big breakdown, I
mean Mark had the article, but might kind of put in this workout.
Yeah, I was snooping around trying to figure out who the guy in the
middle was and I so I did an AI photo recognition search. Came back
like eighty seven percent score Burt magnus I was like, oh, well,
I'll ask and see if people who are actually reporting on this can find out
it's him. In turn, enough, they did find out it was him
in the middle there, so everyone else seriously, we have Dwayne and Danny
on the ends, then we have Jerry and Russ of Brandon next to each
of them, and then we got Shanks and Mark Dally, who was like
one of the heads of Redbird. He's like one of the partners, I
think, and they were in DC. And it seems to be the biggest
sticking point right now is at least from what I can understand, the XFL
wanting eight teams total, whether that's four and four, I've heard five and
three, which with you is again there's kind of this like measuring the stick
measuring contest here going on, which I don't like, right, I don't
like celebrating victories of any kind of like, wow, the more USFL team
survives whatever. But it seems to be that the I guess right, the
government concerned that with the losing of jobs, layoffs, kind of all that
stuff, they want more ten tel teas. Am I understanding this correctly?
Yeah? Personally, in my opinion, I think all the hearsay at this
point about like which league has more teams is really all about how many home
sides, so they want to have enough and everything else has nothing to do
with which league is preferred and Honestly, the people who are saying, oh,
we think it's gonna be more teams from this league or the other league
are probably just a lot of them. I better coaches and players who are
just talking trash, honestly. But I'm definitely concerned about the layoffs two as
well, and I think they need to come up with some sort of compromise.
And I've got a couple of ideas. Listen out. Uh yeah,
I mean, because that's that's the thing, right is, and it's never
been people always think like, Okay, this merger is going to come together.
You know, we're going to have this sixteen and Mike mitchelline that we
talk a lot in the group chat and this Megapower League and eight and eight
and all that stuff. Clearly, this merger is a coming together of we,
you know, we can't compete against this. We need to consolidate a
little bit. Whether are some ideas, I know you have your I know
you have your Google doc here going through. What are some of the things
that you're concerned about it that you want to talk through. Well, the
regulators are obviously are we're about layoffs, but the league is like, hey,
we're not going to be able to run this if we have twelve to
fourteen teams because we have too many players, too much overhead, whatever.
And also on top of that, they're trying to move to the USFL model
of cutting off all the full time pay for all these assistants that aren't coordinators,
which is only three of them. So on the on the bigger problem
on the layoffs end for the large organization, if you can find a way
to say, hey, let's meet in the middle of the number of teams,
but then all the teams or all of them but one or two maybe
have home sites, and so that way you can say, hey, we
have we've retained all this staff for selling tickets. We might move them around
to markets, or at least we retain the numbers of staff. We might
have to fire and rehire or whatever, But that way you'd be selling tickets
and markets, you'll have ticketing staff, stadium staff, vendors. All that
you're still paying those people. That part of the economy is still set.
And on top of that, you're you're still you're not taking away eight teams,
you're taking away six teams. So still a little bit of a compromise
there for the player's sake, and the coach is sick, and the executives
of teams I guess, which there aren't really that many. I don't even
think the USFL has much scouting infrastructure at all for teams. And then in
terms of how to make each coaching staff more efficient in terms of because they
currently they don't want everybody full time, if they could find a set up
like how the Renegades and some of the how the Guardians did it, where
they gave multiple different people like co offensive and defensive coordinator roles, and then
also an assistant head coach role and a special teams head coach role. All
those guys also coach their own position group, and then you have like six
position groups covered six assistants center full time between your co offensive and defensive coordinators,
special teams co assistant head coach, and then you have a core that
can you can maintain a culture every year in your assistance group, and then
you can rotate some of the other guys in and out, like a running
back coach or whatever. In that way, it'll be easier to build a
team every year. But does this seem like these conversations of this magnitude in
terms of kind of this. It feels very late to be having here in
November. Do you anticipate that they thought they would have an easier time getting
this pushed through? I know when we remember when the original reports came out
and it said that we're all, yeah, three, like they're not going
to have any problems with this, like this is some small potatoes. But
it does seem like they're getting really caught in the weeds here. Yeah.
It kind of feels like they just assumed, because the alternative was that they
would go bankrupt, that the government would just give them the thumbs up.
But they have to realize that the government has to look out for the long
term effects of something like this sticking around while still taking away layoffs instead of
as a warning as to say, hey, this just doesn't work if you
try to mess with this and we're not. We're not going to allow you
to just take away jobs and keep going. They like they have to.
I guess they need to maintain their enforcement muscle. Really, it seems to
me, and we've talked about this a lot with the you know, the
XFL the sixty million and kind of all of that stuff in the USFL,
Like at some point, we're gonna need to be okay, taken the sustained
loss for a couple of years here on this. And the problem to me
is we're trying to figure out how can we penny pinch and Okay, let's
let's go consolidate, get you offensive and we don't need this many And it's
like the CFL model, Like, Okay, Chris Jones gonna be the GM
and the head coach and he's calling the defensive plays and we're doing this like
it feels to me at some point you're gonna need to jump in. And
I don't know, We've lived through this with the UFL, USFL, with
the HUB model, now with the XFL. He just doesn't feel like either
of these entities is willing. And I get it. I mean, I
don't you know, I have one hundreds of million dollars dollars to lose either.
It seems like this isn't It seems like we're just trendy water here.
We're trying to shed access weight versus trying to get a life jacket on here.
Yeah, and also it really feels like they're not even committing to trying
to get people in the door. It just kind of feels like, let's
just put football out there and we'll see what happens. And I mean,
we wrote I wrote up the whole fans Bill of Rights thing, and they
did not care at all about that, even though that was one of your
most popular videos. And people, just like the people in the leagues,
just don't care about actually trying to get fans. They just care about how
if they can get some minimal profits off the back end by reducing costs to
the smallest possible amount. Are you concerned? And I was here when we
had John Lewis's episode on and when we had Greg Parks on it. I
guess it was like a month ago now that the public perception of all this
not only kind of in the in the the casual market. Right, Okay,
we're hearing about all this stuff. But if I'm a fan of either
of these leagues, here we have Chris her Aviation Junction talking, you know,
taking away the dragons, like I'll tell you my friends here in Seattle,
like we're at you know, they're just waiting to get their money refunded
at this point, they have no you know, I said, I don't
doesn't feel like Seattle is going to be involved in this, but they said
it doesn't matter, like we're out you know this, it's been too many
hurky jerky and we've been part of this since twenty eighteen. I mean,
that's what I think some of these power ups don't get is, you know,
I understand the people working for the league and the team reps and horrendous
and this is jobs lost and I don't want to see all this, But
like some of these fans that this is six seven years going on to this,
it's just a huge askt now of like, well, let's sit tight
here or ain't through all this? And you know, was it the Renegade's
selling the sweets and the BattleHawks selling sweets like okay, but what's this going
to look like here? Is it going to be a February kickoff? Is
it going to be March April? It seems like they're still too much in
the air even as far as that goes. Yeah, I mean, I
mean obviously, I mean I think the West Coast teams are out the door.
I mean, I just think there's no way right but an April kickoff,
February kickoff, March kickoff, whatever month kickoff. I mean, God
forbid a July kickoff, right Like, there's no way. I don't.
I just don't think anybody. I think everyone who isn't the most die hard
desperate to have spring football survive fan just cannot possibly remain attached to this right
now because there's just no security in this team. If you get invested in
your team is gonna go away in six months. The league might go away
in a year you like, and there's no reason to believe it won't because
the people who are running it are making it seem like it might go away
this year. So like, what's it's really hard to see the point if
you're if you don't believe in the vision, and even if you do believe
in the vision, can you trust these people? I don't know if you
can anymore. I'm just gonna be honest, Well you can't, you know.
And the sentiments came in. I mean again, I've said this before.
You know a lot of these people that have been involved in all of
this, it feels like, I don't know, it feels like this is
a baby that's been passed on. It's been passed on, it's been passed
on, and it's gone through so many hands and so many families and foster
care, and it was in the court system and it was got adopted by
the government and then it got adopted out, and so like, it feels
like it's gone through so many different iterations at this point, it's really hard
for me to hold on to we have here from PIP talking. If they
plan to run Separate in twenty twenty four, it would be disaster attendance wise.
It basically a lame duck season. That's kind of I feel like we're
the weird sticky point right now where all of this came out and then we
had the actual US reporting all of that back. But in terms of it
feels like it's a lose lose situation right now, where either we roll forward,
Hey, don't you pay no attention to the pressure lease in September we're
working on in this state. But then how possibly do you get invested in
that? Or like you said that we do we delay, do we do
everybody? What do you make of that? If we just continue this doesn't
happen, we go forward in twenty twenty for our business as usual. I
mean, it's like danged if you do dinged if you don't right like you.
If you run the season twenty twenty four, everyone knows this is completely
meaningless. And if you do not run the season and you just go to
twenty twenty five, then people are going to forget you even exist. Like
all the TV on j are gonna be like, oh, spring football is
gone, they went bankrupt again. I'm not even gonna They're not gonna it's
not even gonna be on the radar that emerge league in twenty twenty five is
coming, because these people are doing such a bad job of raising awareness about
their football leagues that I just don't see how people would realize that it's coming
back. Well, and I thought it was interesting too, because we've talked
a lot on here about you know, coaching and staff and competition. Right
with the CFL, we're trying to get all this talent whatever. It was
funny to me. We were up in Hamilton for the Great Cup and Dave
Naylor was on our stream, but we had it was that morning that he
had just tweeted out because someone was asking about coaching competition and they're like,
he goes, well, you know, there's so much uncertainty right now with
the spring leagues in America. I'm like, you know, perception changes really
quick, and here just six nine months ago, I'm talking with CFL agents
and yeah, you know, we're telling people go play in the USFL,
go play in the XFL. And then here you go, like, we
know the way they made Blue Bombers are going to be here in twenty twenty
eight. We know, you know, we think we know the Edmonton Elks
are going to be They might be under private ownership, but you know,
there's just a lot of I guess again shifting watershare from what was just even
six months ago, in terms of how these leagues are viewed. I just
think, yeah, if it just kind of feels like they don't care.
Really, they're gonna do whatever. The ownership is going to do whatever they
want, and if the league fails, whatever, it's a rounding error to
them whatever. You know, they don't want to put in the real commitment
to make this work, because if they did, they would put in even
the same level of commitment that they put into some of their other properties,
Like they put all this care and effort into making sure they can get people
out to a soccer game. But then when you buy an entire football league,
and you just do not reach out to the fans until like two months
before the season, and then the second time around you don't really reach out
to them at all because you don't even know if you're going to have a
season. I mean, how are people supposed to take you? Seriously?
I just don't understand. I want to talk here, we have some notes,
we'll have some questions. We get to as well. Yeah, it
fell, and I get that. That's why we're not telling anyone. I
totally get that, right, better off be silent business usually, But it's
hard. I mean I tweeted out right after everything came out and the USFL
was talking about their you know, their fire free agency. I'm like,
man, this is really hard to kind of separate these two things. Like,
Okay, we know this is going on in the background, but you
know, it's like your parents are squabbling. It's like, well, dads
still got to take me to practice, but I know that when I get
home it's going to be awkward, Like you know, there's just a lot
of whatever with that. But you know, we've seen the trademarks. We've
seen the NFL are they was it the National Football League trademark. We've seen
the UFL trademark now hearing it could be the XFL or the USFL brand name,
which has always made more sense to me just because of the time the
money put into that. In terms of it being the XFL, I think
the USFL, I would ride with that. I would ride it with the
USFL absorbing the XFL. Moving on, where do you make it currently?
How you feel on that? All I'm going to say is that the XFL
is a larger online footprint and has a younger audience and also managed to draw
slightly more with way less exposure, and also, quite frankly, I don't
think the USFL brand really connects to anyone who's under the age of fifty.
And I just don't really get why you would have all these massive six hundred
and seven hundred thousand follower accounts and then pick the one that has like one
hundred and thirty five thousand followers. I don't know. To me and I
have this hanging. I always have this from our good friend the rash mcgonni
got that at Great Cup and the Great Couple of the way, Uh,
you know, twice failed now you're going in is a thrice fail. I
think there's baggage on that as well. That's why I kind of go back
and forth. I think I don't care which one it is. I think
we need to maintain one and before it, I think, yeah, and
in the USFEL, I mean, the XFL might be a thrice failed league.
In the USFL might be a twice failed league. At this point,
both they both leags are failing pretty hard right now. I mean, there's
no there's no way about it. So I think you have to pick the
one that has a larger connection to most of society. And I don't think
that's the one that died forty years ago and they're trying to revive and that
people under the age of fifty just don't care about. But that's just me.
But whatever, they'll they'll pick one because the alternative is to bring a
whole new name about that doesn't make any sense and try to make that connect
with people. Whenever you've already put so much effort into building these other brands
that just just does not make any sense to do any of it. Let
me and let me know. In the comments we had here, you know,
Foosball usfls are saying, I guess I'm the one saying I would just
keep with the US developed Fox to put a ton of money into that.
I think it's clean. I understand what Max is saying, the residents residents
of all of that, But you know, I don't want to be too
Homer Reagan to be like it's got to be the UXFL or bust like I
don't know. I guess it depends kind of how the actual you know,
league management is going to end up being. But I'm looking here at the
comments, uh pat here saying I would stay with the USFL with the ownership
of the Xcel franchise USFL and XL wants to see it appears that's kind of
where I'm at. You know, bringing the battle Hawks bring up, like
you said, marketed is an acquisition the USFL bringing in you call it the
merger or whatever. But to me, yeah, branding and acquiring all these
new trademarks is going to be a lot interesting and regard I just to me,
it always baffled me that they would go down that course of like,
well, we we sued Steve Earhart and all of this, and we got
all these trademarks and Ryan Woods bought all this in and now we're gonna dump
it. I think it probably costs the XFL more to buy the league than
it did for them to go through all those lawsuits and those trademarks. So
you tell me, honestly and whatever, they'll pick one. It doesn't really
matter. We can find we can decide which one you want, but at
the end of the day, it's not up to us. I will say
this, there's only one USFL representative in that picture in DC. There's everyone
else is basically associated with the XFL or ESPN, which is directly tied to
the XFL. John, don't feel like you're too old, I said fifty
plus. Don't don't. I'm not. I'm not pushing too hard on it.
You're you're not, You're not that old. Uh yeah, How did
we get out of some of these stadium leases? Well, you know you
got you got loomin Field and all of that. I don't know. I
think are these one year offs at this point? Can we duck at the
point. I'm sure some of them are two or three year leases. They'll
pay the whatever it takes to get out, and I mean the alternative is
they lose even more money staying there. So well, you're gonna end up
having to give refunds anyway for a lot of this stuff. I mean in
terms of like Seattle, like we're all paid up. I mean it's not
a lot, but I mean it's what three eighty five times four. I
mean we're in for you know, forty whatever that is for the Underbucks or
whatever. So, uh, you know they're gonna have to do that at
that point. You had to know that on here. With that, with
losing an NBC presence, not having an NBC presence here, what do you
in terms of kind of the merged League movie. It's just hard to say.
All I know is there's nobody from NBC in that picture, And partially
that's probably because they sub Fox only sub licenses games to NBC. It's not
like NBC is directually involved in the league in any way. But the ESPN
is technically not directly involved in the ownership of the XFL either, and they're
right there in the middle of the photo, uh with Burke maintenance. Yeah,
I'm a little concerned that NBC is not gonna stick around for this new
iteration because they can see that the interest in the overall field is kind of
doting out and they can see that these leads are not being well run at
all. Elaborate on that not being well run. Well, they can see
that their audience numbers, right, I mean, they were expecting huge numbers
in twenty twenty three for you the USFL, and it just was not there.
So you know, it's just kind of hard to say what or what
sort of other stuff would you would you really hope for? Right, It's
kind of why would you stick around in terms of the I guess the time
to strike on this. Have we missed this window in terms of the competing
last year? And I just checked where we're currently out drying the feast of
football on the XFL channel. So that's exciting just as a personal picture.
Not that it's a low bar, but I'll take that as a win here,
Black Priday. You know, we had said we would beat the Sharks.
Evan won the crack at the other night. In this stance, he's
a little victorious in life. But uh, you know, because like I
said, now there's so much uncertainty with this. We're dragging this out.
We're going through the same things last year. I mean, it has this
window already passed if that makes sense. Well, for twenty twenty four.
I just mean in general right now, I mean for the short term,
like you know, I'm talking within the next ten years here. I mean
we had was it John Lewis on a I you know, I don't see
this happen here? Was it? Paul res When did they? Like this
is kind of the last chance of this for the next decade plus. Maybe
it just kind of I feel like if you if someone else who was smarter
came in and started over and tried to build up from the ground up and
didn't try to feel as big, and it said started at the roots,
they would be able to do a lot better. But they don't. They
all want to they all want to go big, but then not commit to
going big, and it just kind of feels like get rich quick scheme and
it's like, no, those never work. This is not cryptocurrency, y'all.
And that didn't work either in the long run. Well if and that
was that's always been and I've been pretty public about, you know, vocal
about my usfl of you know, this is more football, please watch.
And I called it, you know, back when it was the Brian Woods
and it was more Caveman football versus the XFL, which was like, this
is a matrix and we're going to be cross connecting and all these platforms and
you know, scaling up and the multi layer and all this stuff. I
don't know, did you feel and that were you that much more inspired from
the XFL's product last year? To me, it felt, you know,
there was lip service, and I know the broadcast had a different flare to
it, but fundamentally, how did you feel that looking back at those The
main thing I appreciated about the XFL more than the USFL would be they did
a bit better of a job earlier and connecting compared to when the USFL started.
And also they didn't let themselves get weighed down by having literally zero fans
at games, which was something that I think that perception hurt the USFL so
much that even though they brought themselves out to more markets, that it was
too late. The first impression had already been made, and people just didn't
want to watch the USFL more because they thought no one's going to be there.
There's no energy. If you're a casual fan who doesn't even really care
that much about the football game, you just want to be entertained. The
crowd is part of the entertainment. Whether people who are actual football fans like
Emory Hunt want to say that people don't care about the crowd, people absolutely
do care about the crowd. That's why they watch college football. College people
don't watch college football for the football unless it's the very best teams, like
you will watch out of Arkansas, Florida because because of the environment, because
it's exciting, right Fageantry, Whereas that USFL brand's been so tarnished by these
anti stadiums. That's another reason I don't think you want to keep that USFL
name because people are going to be watching see the name of like, oh,
that's the game with literally zero fans in the building. What's the point
of me watching that? That's like watching like some people on YouTube. What's
the point? It's hard. It's hard to me, and I don't know.
I kind of go back and forth with those of it to me and
I know it's been badgered to death, this kind of hub thing. But
I do agree with you, at least in terms of the long term effects
of it. I think it's something where if you need to argue it repeatedly,
it's obviously it's a thing and so that to me is challenging. And
we have John Lewis here, you had so many casual fans ever say they
went back because of those empty state of audus. You know, it's like
if you're in an argument with someone that, yah, it's fine, it's
fine, Like, don't worry. At some point, at some point it's
going to be you know, it's something that needs to be taken account.
You know, the minimal more than the XMFL had in some and I want
to get we had a question here about the Vegas Mipers Stadium. But I
do agree with you. I think long term effects of that it's hard.
I think USFL fans champion, hubs champion. You know, the the no
he's saying, the no fans is fine because of that business model made sense
to me. Merely outlasting your competition does not make a successful business model.
It means that you were able to survive longer, right with it, with
the funds that you had. You're not You're not proving growth on that.
Last thing longer is not going to make people want to watch. Last thing
longer is just going to be a slow death. Do you want it faster?
Do you want it slow? I don't really want either. I want
these people to actually understand how to connect with the fans. That's what I
want. Well, and then you know, I've had conversations and talking like
because people think like I've all butt hurt because Seattle called reads like I really
don't care. I mean it was cool, and when we went to the
games and all of that, I don't. I go the one BC Lions
game a year. I covered the CFL line. But to me, this
promise that like, well, no, we're going to take a step back
and then in two three years, like you're going to figure it, We'll
get to that point. You haven't proven that yet, So to me,
it's it's it's problem. I've seen something down the road, but I don't
have anything right now to prove that that's something that's going to actually pan out
in the future. And as they've ramped up their commitment to more markets and
more fans again, the broader national interest has already turned away. It's already
declining, and that perception has not changed, and it did not increase.
Over the course of the seasons. People realized that there were more there was
more interest around the league in the places they played it declined because people already
gave up, and that's going to be a really hard mounted to climb.
And I think that same problem is going to hit the XFL now, because
if they cancel their season in twenty twenty four, their toast. And if
they don't cancel their season, outside of maybe Saint Louis probably still despite it
all, and DC will probably still show up. But I mean, there
might not be more than five thousand fans in any other XFL market. Maybe
you'll get ten thousand in San Antonio, you know, And I mean,
sure people will see that at least somebody cares, right, but they're going
to see that nobody else really does. And how long are people going to
be willing to watch that? Whenever? It just kind of feels like it
doesn't matter unless you really care about the sport. We had a question here
from Pat. I think that the low I think at this point it might
be better to like twenty playout. I think it would be better to see
that possibly delete the teams from there. Usually the opinion of guys who were
move on to the NFL, et cetera. Yah, Yeah, I don't
know. I've gone back and forth because I had said originally, and I'll
hide this because we can't see your beautiful face if we if if this merger
doesn't happen, at least in my perception, I see much more happening with
the USFL right now. Am I reading that wrong because you've said that you've
been unimpressed with that? Because to me, the USFL is right like we're
doing Birmingham events, like we're ready to flip the switch and go if we
need to. I mean, I think they'll have a season. I'll put
it out. I think you will have a season if this merger doesn't happen.
Do I think people will really care? Nah, I don't think they're
doing anything to actually make people care, so sure there will be a USFL
twenty twenty four season. Do I think the audience numbers are going down despite
them trying to ramp up exposure even more on TV? Yes? I do.
Do I think that their online following is going to really increase? No,
I don't really think it's going to improve, So it'll just be a
lost season from the USFL. Honestly, if you were, if it was
up to me, I would, If I would, I would hope the
merger goes through, they cancel twenty twenty four, and then they put their
foot down on twenty twenty four and they actually commit to connecting the local markets
like these should have done all along, and then at least people will know
that they're coming in twenty twenty five, and on top of that, they'll
feel like this time the league actually cares, because currently I don't think either
fan base, if they were really honest with themselves, feels like these leaks
really care. I I've thought about this, and I've talked with Dorothy,
and not that anyone cares what I think. And you're certainly with the CFL
and everything. I mean, I think they tolerated let me come up.
But I do wish at some point anybody would have a conversation with anybody in
terms of the fan bases with these leagues of like uh not not coming in
with that. We know exactly what we need to do, and like many
of the mistakes that have been made over the last two three years I think
could have been course corrected by some conversations and like, well, we've seen
this work before, we haven't seen this work before, this is what you
need to do. It just baffles me. There we're at this point now,
and it feels like it's kind of the same. Uh. It's like
it's like you're the soldier kind of a ballet of your wid Like I've been
through this, Like I've already kind of seen all of this stuff and could
have saved a lot of these casualties along the way. Yeah, if you
literally like looked into the history of spring football at all, they would just
obviously realize that it would The way they were doing this is just not going
to work. And now you at a point where if you have a season,
people are not gonna be able to connect that to whatever the new league
is, even if you maintain the name, because you're gonna be bringing leagues
with totally different teams together, totally different markets. Some markets are going away,
and also people don't really have any idea it's happening. And if you
don't have the season, then the only way you're gonna be able to get
people to know you is if you actually get out there in the markets and
you say, hey, we're coming, we're coming, we have all this
together. There's a reason we cancel this because we're going to come back better
and stronger and offer you something serious this time, instead of just halfway committing
there, I would rather almost throw away the twenty twenty four history connection and
just pretend we're starting a brand new league with the same name, just to
maintain a brand and push and push and push and say this time, we're
for real, we mean this, We're serious, we care about you now.
But you know, maybe they don't. But I think they might not
care, so I have way to go. I think it's it puts it
in a challenging situation we have. I put it up already, but Dynamite
gamings and no season twenty twenty before we'd kill any interest, no trust that
league can even play, I will say, and John here that said this
well about that. I do not talk to nearly as many players as I
know, like Mike does, and I know Evan has connections and Pat and
kind of everybody else in our circle. But I had a couple of players
reach out here over the last week because I think, just like probably CFL
stuff and where our stuff's getting shared more and like, hey, what's you
know, Hey, what do you think about all this stuff? And you
know, they have no idea what's going on, Like they're totally left out
in the dark. And to me, that's a challenging place as well,
if you're a coach or a player and you're at this point, if you're
a you know, social media people for the XFL or the USFL, if
you're selling tickets, like it just puts everybody in this hard situation. And
and to me, it's it's hard now to whether it's this year or next
year. Okay, well, now we're serious about this, Like, I
know, we kind of strung you out for a little bit, but now
you know the alcoholic father. Now I'm ready to come to your game's ability.
Like now I'm going to be here. Yeah. And if they if
they, if they communicate with I can't imagine how the union feels right now.
Well I want to get to that. Yeah. So wait wait,
I mean, because that's the other question about that, right is the the
UFLPA. Why didn't they post like Evans shared, they posted some like timeline
of everything coming up that they need to figure out their steps. Well,
I mean, how does that even interact with all this? I mean,
there's no way to really know. I know what they probably I mean,
i'd imagine they hope they could get more communication, more clarity, and they
need to know the timing because people got to know whether they're moving out to
Arlington or Detroit or Memphis or whatever. But honestly, if they do end
up playing the season, they do communicate with all these guys and they sort
it out and then oh yeah, they play it. They get similar,
maybe slightly worse numbers than last year, and then people have no idea the
new league is coming. Now. Maybe maybe what they do, maybe the
only way you could you could make a twenty twenty four season work is if
you use is say hey, literally the entire time you say hey, twenty
twenty five, new league coming, new new combination of teams. Maybe then
it's worth it, because then it's just a three hour infomercial for next season,
and maybe then it's worth it. But otherwise, I don't think the
impact on the new league is going to be held much by having a twenty
twenty four season. I mean, we've had the CFL cancel seasons and still
come back, and obviously it's different for them because they've had committed fan bases.
But I think as long as you work to connect to the local markets,
people will come out because once they see that commitment. What you get
in, what you put in, you get out right. But I will
say the CFL canceled COVID year this year now three years later, I think
was the first both from a quality of play standpoint and from a you know,
fan buy an attendant standpoint. We just had a great cup rating,
so I think it took three years to bounce back from that. So I
agree with you, but I wouldn't so quickly say hey, let's just take
time off or whatever. We it took a long time to rebuild that both
intern of Yep, it takes a long time to build it either way.
Yeah, for this, I mean it might take a decade. Are they
going to be that committed? Who knows? We have a comment here,
Shadan as an actual equipment manager. We've been left in the dark, and
I think it's going to be hard to even feel stafts for the team if
no twenty twenty four season. Yeah, I mean I can't in my condolences
as well that like, I just can't imagine. Uh we you know,
we see XFL people and I've seen LinkedIn profiles change and people getting different jobs.
It's huge to you know, I'm blessed here in this world where you
know, I work from home and I'm able to kind of do all of
this stuff. You know, I could not imagine if this was my sole
revenue, if I was trying to work for one of these leagues, how
to kind of navigate all of this. I think it's I think you're asking
a lot of those people as well. I can't imagine trying to navigate getting
ready for a twenty twenty four season if you only get two weeks notice because
the merger doesn't get approved until late January. I mean there, it's going
to be a nightmare for you if you do have a season at this point
as well. It's just which which nightmare do you want to have? Make
sure you get live a couple questions. We're good to make sure you get
your questions comments in here. We'll go to the bottom of the hour,
and then I know the Jets are coming on here and we can go watch
the is it Tim Boyle? Now we're really living through all this stuff.
But you can watch the Jets and the Dolphins. I'm gonna watch two lane
utsa role wave. I need them to play se me you next week and
as meanings to beat them, so we had a question here talking about the
Vegas Vipers thing. I saw this, I don't. I don't know the
week I have a hard time we live through this with some of the job
hirings with LinkedIn as well, it's really hard to store us that Wikipedia and
LinkedIn articles for things. I don't feel the Vipers are playing in the Vegas
Ballpark. I think they would have done that before. I don't see the
Vipers sticking around in any iteration along with the Dragons. I don't even think
they're playing in twenty twenty four. I think they'll If they do, they'll
put them in Arlington and then today I don't think that they're gone. They're
gone. It's hard, so, you know, to go through the different
current macamations. You know, I had heard, Okay, we're gonna have
the eight teams and you know, do the Arlington and then play whatever here.
But if we need to do more teams and we're like, then we
need to hub up. I guess what's the recent I don't want to get
too deep down in the different number of variations, but if we expand from
eight, it feels very difficult to replicate the XTFL twenty twenty three model of
Arlington and then flying out right. It feels like we're gonna need to hub
people if we got more than that. Dallas is a pretty Arlington's a pretty
big city. I don't feel like you'd have any issue. Fine. I
mean, I've said, you've seen my DMS before about all the quality football
facilities in North Texas. If you're gonna put a hub anywhere for ten twelve
football teams, you're gonna pick North Texas because they will have the facilities for
however many teams you need. They will have the hotels for how many teams
you need. They'll have the size of airport needed to get you anywhere you
need in the country. The real question is is it going to be too
difficult to plan and like do the logistics for all all that having them all
from that one place. I tend to feel like the answer is no.
I feel like you could still do it with ten teams and maybe eight of
them are teams still based in real markets and the other two or just the
permanent road teams or whatever. But it definitely will get more complicated and you
will have the nightmare trying to figure out how are we moving the UFLPA Union
stuff from that one district of the country to the Texas district whatever. There
will be problems, obviously, but there will be problems no matter what.
So I think you have to have that reduced cost of being in the hub
in one hub and flying out or doing I mean, I guess you could
do multiple hubs, but then you don't get some of the benefits you get
from having the same consistent quality of facilities and care and travel. Biggest what
would you say the biggest hurdle is right now? I mean obviously government approval,
but in terms of figuring out logistically here and getting the teams ready to
go, getting the team's marketed, getting I mean, what would be if
the government if we wake up on Monday and it's like, Okay, this
is all approved and we're doing whatever. What's the next biggest hurdle step movie
for? Are we assuming a season is happening with the Merge League in twenty
twenty four, Yeah, I think you have it. I think you can't.
I don't think either way. I don't think you can play separately or
if you have to play together. So I think it's approved in the seasons
happening twenty twenty four. First off, when when in twenty twenty four?
Right? Second off, whose season tickets are you canceling? Who's are you
keeping? You need to inform those season ticket holders that, hey, your
season is going to be not whatever you thought it was. You might have
more or less home games than you would expect, probably more because they're probably
gonna have a couple teams with no real market, and those teams will just
if in my opinion, it would be more sustainable just to have a couple
extra teams that are always playing away because they're flying. Everyone's flying anyway,
so you might as well have a couple extra teams just to increase your game
inventory if nothing else. And then so you're gonna have you're gonna have that
problem figuring out who's staying, who's going who, Who were keeping in our
customer base, who's who we're kicking out. You're gonna have the problem of
vendor contracts. Who are you cutting off? Who are you keeping. You're
gonna have the problem of who are we keeping full time on coaching staffs.
Who we're gonna have to tell that, hey, we have to let you
go if you don't want to be full if you want to be full time,
because that's just not gonna happen. You're gonna have the issue of roster
size. It's heck, obviously, I mean, the football is from the
business perspective, is the least important thing. But at the same time,
you do have to decide how are you gonna play this football game in this
merged league. At the end of the day, you're gonna have to pick
one rule set, and I will say, seeing Rus Brandon there makes me
think it will probably be the XFL's rule set, but maybe not. Who
knows. Uh, Well, I hate this this publicly. I hate the
USFL kickoff. I mean, I really, I'm I'm I'm biased towards the
x rules set. But I think I have good reason to be biased towards
the XFL rules says. I'll say, in terms of, you know,
keeping more teams and potentially doing that, right, why don't we hub?
Why don't we Okay, let's move the breakers, Let's hug them with the
you know, uh, the Orlando team, right, let's move the vipers
down, Like, can you keep more teams? But is it we're needing
to shed these costs? We know we're more concerned if we're the xml USL,
we're more concerned with keeping costs down than we are in terms of keeping
teams alive. Yeah, I mean there they all they care about is can
they find a way to be even less expensive than they already are and find
a way to actually make money, because otherwise they wouldn't be merging right now,
because it's not like it's not like one league is clearly out doing the
other in terms of any sort of financial advantage outside of the ones that the
USFL invents on paper by doing Ahaha, you know, totally, the money
we're making by selling ads on this USFL game is just so much more than
the amount of money that we'd be selling for Fox any other content. Totally
right. To me, it always felt like we're selling these ads, but
we're not counting the costs of the league. That to me is always how
I've read more of that as we're moving the books where that like the mark
Cast is profitable because all the equipment is owned and operated by best made videos,
like the mark Cast in and of itself is not a profitable like I
think there's to me that feels a very little bit. But also there's the
same for their income. The income would be coming in at least partially to
Fox anyway. In fact, a significant their primary source of income would be
coming to Fox regardless, just maybe a bit less. So it's all sorts
of shotting bookkeeping that's making it allow them to say that they're making a profit.
It's not reality, it's a fiction. It's the same way that it
was a four percent increase in viewership from season what was in two the USFL
where we took the entire and the average of the entire viewership of season one
and based it on the season two kickoff, which was down. Yeah,
you know, and the XFL does it too. I mean, I see
their digital numbers they posted kind of all this stuff. But at least that
is it's puffs, it's of hot air, right, but at least it's
real, tangible hot air instead of complete fiction. It's it's the difference between
making something out of nothing and then turning nothing into a lie. So it's
just two different kinds of manipulation. Really. If so, we we represent
the hard you know, the hardcore and the hardcore in here. We got
all these people watching Black Friday kind of all this different stuff. Casual audience
how are they going to react to this? How are they? You know,
there there's a non zero number of Seattle s Dragon fans that do not
know any of this is going on at all. Right, the Vegas viper
stands, I mean, yeah, they're gonna kind of know. Like,
how is the public gonna gonna respond to? Yeah, four, six,
eight teams are going the way here like famos than those that That might be
a good thumbnail for that episode that we know the famous like we're it's cut
the universe in half. If they kept like if they kept five of the
XFL markets and then three of the USFL markets plus two permanent road teams.
However you want to arrange those permanent road teams, uh, I think you
would keep enough of the primary stadium audience to be fine. And I don't
think the TV audience is all that connected to the stadium audience. I think
the TV audience just wants to watch football on a Saturday that has some intrigue.
And as long as you prove that you're still around and you market hard,
they'll you'll keep them. But what I'm worried about is I don't think
that's gonna happen. I think They're gonna do a terrible job of promoting this
new league, and people are gonna they're not even gonna realize that football is
coming on on Saturday, and they're not gonna watch it because they gonna have
no idea it's there. I saw comment earlier. They were talking, I
guess Fox is running the USFL ads during during NFL games or whatever. I
to me, you know, and we joke about the real football and all
that stuff in the Super Bowl that that is one percent of the marketing that
needs to be done on this I mean running the ten second of TV ad
bumper. Like I said back in twenty twenty, you know, I was
sponsoring boosts at event shows for we were doing you know, we do weddings
and corporate events and kind of stuff. Like we had XFL staff members that
are running you know, they were any any sort of thing that you could
be at promoting with either a booth or a table. They were outside the
games. They were doing that. Like it's so much more I think than
just flipping the switch and running an AD, and that to me has never
resonated. I know certain fan bases, I know the Brahmas did a good
job, right locally, right, I know, Orlando and Corey, they
did a good job locally. You obviously Seattle like there was certain teams that
rose above it, but overall as a league, it felt like none of
that, none of those lessons were taken from twenty twenty, where Vince was
a wrestling promoter and got that on the ground needed to be done. It
never felt like they always aview it more as a TV product. Some of
the markets did a really good job with the people who were hired, but
all of them were hired late. So all the people on the ground who
were there when they were there, did what they could. I really don't
doubt that. My beef is with the people running the leagues up top,
way up top, who just don't have the vision to realize you can't just
show up a couple months before no matter what you do, and expect people
to care. I mean, in the twenty twenty XFLC, I mean we
had we had events like in like the summer before the season saying like hey
you we this is coming. We have they rolled out bob' stoops and they're
like, this is coming Football twenty twenty, national television. This is serious
and all over lux in town. He's going on tours, he's on press
radio tours, he's at super Bowl Radio, he's everywhere. The people are
everywhere. They're there early the they're often they were, they're responsive, they're
making content, they're appeering on podcasts, read they're appearing on podcasts, they're
promoting what they're building from the ground up. That's not happening, and it's
not because the people don't want to do those things who are at the at
the floor. The people on the floor aren't being given those opportunities because the
people up top are only caring about how can we make this as cheap as
possible. Well, even like they would they would do the Facebook announcements like
Okay, here's going to be the new head coach or here's going to be
whatever. Like I remember watching and like I was very casual at that point,
like I don't even know who this guy is, but it seems to
be a big deal. You know, let me go Google now and figure
out. And I mean they did these for all the markets. I remember
they were doing those Facebook lives and everything. You know, it's to me
like, uh, you know, we did our CFL show and I was
like telling Dorothy about this because obviously it was exciting. You know, it's
a ton of work to go into even that, right, we need the
thing and we're posting and we're telling every one they were sharing they would do
the thing, Like I said, if we just went to show that up
and flipped on the switch and went live the morning of the Gray Cup,
Like you don't get and that's like you said, they've never gotten that you
can't just show up and put the game on and say here you go,
like a channel channel surf your life. What the twenty twenty league had Winston
Moss and Heather Brooks carrots getting announced at the same time in the parking lot
of the stadium with the with the like police cars driving by. But the
media came out because they put in the commitment to say hey, we're coming,
and they were like, hey, this is interesting and there's clear amount
of commitment behind this, whereas now it's just like, uh, you know,
we'll do a we'll do a zoom call, you know, we'll do
a press release. You know, maybe the coach will show up like a
couple of months before the season, but like we're only post about it like
three days before the event's actually happening. Maybe we'll have a season ticket holder
event, but we're only going to give you twelve hours of public notice for
anyone who doesn't already have a season ticket to want to come and visit.
It's just like, what's the point, Like, what's the point of hiding
all of this. You're not helping anybody, You're only It's like the rake
meme where the guy steps on a rake and it hits him in the face.
That's kind of what happened to the USFL, and then the XFL is
the one where they like they're riding the rake and it flips in mid air
and then they step on say land and hits them in the face. It's
the same outcome, just different ways, and it's just so disturbing that none
of them get it yet, especially on the XFL side, when you have
an owner who has done all these things I'm talking about overseas and built something
there with some of the soccer teams they own, and they just don't understand
that a lot of those principles apply whenever you're not working with major league sports
fans in the US, because they aren't just going to come. You have
to build it. I remember, this feels like a fever dream ago,
applying to Arlington with Danny and Russ and all that. Then they had the
Arlington Hub and I remember, you know, it was funny because everyone wanted
to talk to Danny and the Rock and then they left and it was like
me and one local person talking to Rush branded and I'm like, this is
sweet. Like I thought, I was super excited right now. And I
know, like Pat got to talk with the rest. I think it was
in the showcase here a few months ago. But talking back then, and
uh, you know, what are you gonna do? We've see in the
USL. Yeah, the quote, you know we're going to be at first
one in, last one out, We're gonna do all this stuff. And
it never And I don't know if that was lip service or if they thought
that this was an honest effort going in, but uh, it never.
I never saw that the dream that was promised. They think they can get
away with marketing the XFL like marketing Black at them. Oh you know,
we'll just go on a tour a little bit before the move the show comes
out. You know, we'll have the Rock roll up. Everyone will go
crazy for him and then you know he'll hold some babies. But you know,
it just doesn't work like that. This isn't this isn't big ticket stuff.
This is the grassroots. This is the This is the people on the
ground who are just love football or people who just want to watch football on
Saturday and chill, and you have to give them some motivation. You have
to give them something to get attached to. They're not going to get attached
to just a name or a brand. That's just not going to happen.
It's it's all so regrettable. So before we before we move on anything else,
I just want to do you want to talk about the hilarity over people
continually trying to predict everything that's going to happen and just continually not knowing anything
at all and looking very silly. Sure, okay, can we talk like
what is going on when we're having people who are not involved in reporting on
the x like we'll talk about these people first not reporting on the XFL at
all for like at all, or the USFL at all or that Howard guy
Howard Howard, Yeah, but he Howard. Yes. But also there was
like Dennis Dodd, who reports on college football, was involved like, there's
so many people trying to get in on this, and I just don't understand
why would you want to get in on this when you have you seen how
much disinterest there is in this right now? Why are you trying to get
involved in our land? Get away to me when it speaks to more And
I uh, back when we spoke had conversations with Mark about this, like
when when we I'm a proponent of any of our media and if whoever want,
you know, Brandon wants support stuff and Stefan wants like I'm I'm a
proponent of any of the people that put in the time and effort to do
this. And what kills me is when it's anyone that's got at ESPN and
their handle or this is some reporter that whatever, like oh oh, when
they talked about us, like now, let's Mike Mitchell's been reporting this for
six months, We've done this for whatever it was when all the teams were
going to come out and Mike had been talking in the cities and oh my
god, someone else like it's okay to to you know, perpetuate all that.
So I don't like that just because it's more of that. And I
just don't like that it's because of someone that's not previously in our circle talking
about it that somehow makes it more connected or locked in than anything else.
That's my problem with that. It's almost like they just want to cover like
the whole this league is going to go away things so that they can be
the guy that broke the story about the death of spring football again, and
then they get they get clicks for that, like the what the Sports Illustrated
writer who wrote about the death of the AAF a couple of years ago,
he got huge publicity for that. That's kind of what it feels like.
And then on top of that, the people who are involved in the weeds
in the XFL and the USFL, who are they getting these reports from?
That? Are like hey, And even the people like Neil, Like Neil
Stratton, I'm like, oh, he's getting the number of teams. I
know it's going to happen in like two weeks and we might get an announced.
So I'm like, did you who were you? Are you getting that
from your player personnel friends, because there's no way that you that this is
that you actually talk to someone in ownership who told you the regulators are going
to have it ready for us in two weeks. Like it was kind of
like the Howard thing. It was kind of like he was hearing in retrospect,
like we had heard like Neil had put out whatever, and then it
had turned into something else and turned into something else, and then it was
like a week later. Howard's like, hey, did you hear it was
gonna be something that's like, buddy, like that was a month ago,
like you gotta you got Like that to me was always funny about I'm like,
they're here and I will say even this and this was funny. Uh,
we'll wrap this out here pretty soon if we want to know. You
got give we got a good viewership right now. It's fun it was.
It was so funny to me. We were at the we were after our
live show. We were back at the BC Lions Dad and Naylor was there.
We hadn't got to talk a lot with Naylor during the week as he
was doing hits with Farhad and all the TSN stuff. And we're sitting there
having a beer and he's like, hey, do you want to know what
I heard about the merger? And I'm like tell me, like I'm ready
to hear with him and it was the same kind of thing, like it
was whatever they had come out through and no dist I mean, I know,
Dave's talking to right people and all like know this respect, but I'm
like, yeah, he said, well I heard like the you know,
the the exfl is reaching out to the usfl over you know. I was
like, Okay, it just was interesting. But there's all these people hearing
it. It's like you're playing telephone and you're hearing it person three or four.
They're all talking to the same player personnel, coach people and the players
and whatever. I'm just like, none of those people have any idea what's
going on. And then on top of that, they're getting like all these
numbers, all these dates, and I'm like, why are we doing this
because there's no way you actually know that it is a sleep Anyway, I
have another hour before this game kicks off, so I have nowhere to be.
So we'll see what people want to do here, people want to hang
out for a minute, and then we'll get we'll get going here. I
just and I love Gregory. Gregory is a longtime listener comment on this.
While you guys really say about the merger, the executives at Fox from the
obligated to call you up and tell you what's going on. This will happen
when it happens. Gregory told, like, you are absolutely entitled to your
opinion. The funny thing is I never, like, all I do is
come on here and share my opinion and ask other people's opinions. I never
tell, but I get a lot of like, well, you, like
you are wrong with this or you And this isn't just a shot just at
Gregory. I get it's like, that's fine you if you're like that's awesome,
if you're cool with it, if you're ready to go on. I
just know I get a lot of d ms from, like I said,
from players, from staff, from other fans. So it's not and you
were not alone in this thinking to that thing, and that everyone has the
varied opinions here and everyone's able to kind of have different ways they feel about
this. So I respect Gregory if he's cool, you know, yeah,
go for it. Okay, Okay, here's my thing, right, This
is not the NFL, this is not Major League Baseball, this is not
the SEC, this is not the Big Ten, this is not even the
CFL. There is no established fan base. Every every single league at the
start, the fans are gonna be entitled to demand whatever they want to make
the league work, because otherwise they just won't show up. Like do you
think if the NFL didn't appeal to the fans they had that they that the
people who were willing to show up early, that they would still be here
right now. No, those teams died out. That's why the NFL and
the NBA and all these teams had teams going in and out within five to
ten years in the first two decades of their existence because they didn't understand how
to build up fans or because of some other economic reason. Like we should
be entitled, We absolutely should be entitled as fans to demand that these leagues
do better because otherwise they won't last. And I don't care that I shouldn't
take for that, that I shouldn't take for granted that Spring football is here.
I should demand these leagues do whatever it takes to last and be successful,
because otherwise I know that what's going to happen in these players is they're
just gonna get hurt, and the fans are gonna get hurt, and we're
gonna have to start all over all over again with some other ownership group who
doesn't get it either, most likely. So yeah, we're all going to
be demanding, and you know what we should be. I appreciate that because
I don't know it's I agree with you that it's it's this. It's a
different it's a different world, it's a different landscape. And it's never resonated
with me that they you know, I think that they get it in the
collective of like, okay, we're I don't think they get how niche a
lot of this stuff is. And now I think surprise alert when I think
when they turned on, like their social media is back a couple of years
ago, and like, oh my god, what are these cms? What
are these comments or one of these whatever? I mean, I think that
there's a lot of I don't know. To me, I never got it
like you you do, Black Adam, you know DC, like you know
that fan base like this is very a very similar mindset of that in terms
of like you have a super group of hardcore fans wanting to make this work
and going to be upset when certain things happened, and this time around the
problem is that they, the hardcore fans, are not enough to keep this
around, Whereas you could probably keep DC around on their hardcore fans alone and
at least have something, whereas this it's just not gonna be enough to have
hardcore fans because it's too early. You need to get the casuals in the
door. You need to get people to become hardcore, and you need to
get the people who aren't in the door at all to become casuals. Keep
building and building. It's and they just don't care. They think that this
is American sports and we can just pretend like we've been around for fifty years
and we aren't established league. And you know, you know this league got
over one and a half million views in twenty twenty three years ago when before
pandemic, and so we can just roll out the rock and everything will be
fine. You know, come on, let's be real. Oh, I
absolutely it was. You know, XFL was whatever, XFL plus the rock
equals this. Well, you know this exponential growth on that I just I
showed this year. I just like this comment that I call the roomor real
guys haven't had reports for a few weeks, yeah, because they were like
even Neil and his newsletters, Like I think news is coming at some point,
like I'm like, yeah, he really is, Like I'm getting off
this train right now, and he's like actually officially partnered with the league.
I know, but I think he was even it was crazy because it can
change. And that's what kills me too, is like get we get a
lot of this online of like reporting and something, and then when something else
happens, like well that that was incorrect, like it could have been correct
along the way, and then that changed. Like that also happens. Right.
It's the same thing with like players going to get signed with whoever,
and then you get signed with someone else like Deshaun Watson was probably talking to
was in a Lancer or whatever, and then the Browns came in, Like
that can all be accurate with it, you know, with the final outcome
not being what was initially reported, although I think in this case it's more
what people believed was going to happen than ever what was actually going to happen,
because I don't think anybody who was talking to these roommel guys actually knew
what was going to happen. They just made they made something up off of
one thing they heard once because there's just no way you legitimately know what's going
on with the regulators, because if you are someone actually talking to the regulators,
you know that if you leak out any information of the public, it's
only going to make the process take longer. Yeah. No, I know.
So in terms of moving forward here and I have to have this be
too much but people are viewing here not to have this be too much of
a complaint session. But moving forward, these leagues come together. Are you
concerned about the economy of these fan bases or do you think that this is
a little world we live in and that they'll be able to move past this
and it doesn't matter. I think there will be fights online. I think
there will be fights. I mean, I don't think they'll be I think
the number of people who actually are involved in the war are not the people
going to the stadiums. Yeah, I think it'll mostly be online. There
might be a tailgate parking lot fight here. Yeah, you know Bill's style,
you know, I'm sure there'll be a few, but I don't think
there'll be anything spilling over in that respect. I think there will be like
a very small percentage of people who are xfl or I even if they keep
the name or USFL or die, even if they keep that name, who
are just gonna be anti merger completely and drop off. I think that number
is not even more than four digits, so and I think everyone else is
gonna everyone else who isn't Somebody who lost a team will stick around and watch,
and people who wanted to go to games will go to games. And
the main pre problem will be the casuals who don't actually have attachments to any
league other than oh, this is the league that has fans in the door,
and this is the one that doesn't. Outside of that, they they're
they're they're gonna be like, uh, I don't even know what this is?
Should I watch this? I had no idea who these teams are.
Because now you've brought in teams from another league, it's just gonna be weird.
And they'll be like, oh, what happened to the Houston Roughnecks because
we want to have the Gamblers now or whatever you're it's it's gonna be confusing
and weird, and it's gonna be hard to maintain those casuals. And that's
what I'm most worried about. Uh yeah, I to me, the dream
scenario of the eighteen conference against each other is tremendously exciting, you know,
with it with the Birmingham Stallions, and that I'm serious about all that because
I took a dream though, right well, I know, I know,
And so what's your realistically, how are you feeling right now about where we're
gonna land out? Okay, I'm gonna sort us into two categories. I'm
gonna sort us where I want to end up and where we're going to end
up. Where I want to end up. They market, whether they have
two seasons or not, They market the Merge League coming. They say,
Hey, this is a this is a build up to something bigger. This
is the start of something huge, a start of something special. And build
and push and market and get attached to whoever sticking around, and do your
best to console whoever you're leaving and try to to make them say, hey,
at least we're still gonna have football on TV if you would like to
enjoy that, And we will do whatever we can to see about coming back
sometime in the future. We won't entirely go away. We might have some
tryouts in your market so you can see some of our players or whatever.
What I think is actually going to happen, regardless of when this merger gets
approved, seasons happening or not. In twenty twenty four, what I expect
is going to happen is they're going to absolutely fall on their flat in their
face marketing these leagues. I marketing this merge league and leagues are in the
leagues. If they're separate for twenty twenty four, they're gonna keep failing.
They'll retain some level of audience, but they're not gonna have any real attachment
outside of who was already there. Some people will drop off because they're gonna
realize that it's a lame duck season, and then in twenty twenty five they're
gonna be like, I don't even this doesn't feel feels completely foreign to me.
They're they're we're gonna have some level of audience twenty twenty five. You
know some people watch, you know'll be maybe you know, it might be
a little bit better than it wasn't twenty twenty four, just because you're merging
some demographics together. If you can pull some teams together and have fans like
Memphis or Birmingham or Detroit, and it's just going to be more of the
same struggles unless they've they've a switch flips in their brain. It says,
hey, we need to actually truly attach ourselves these local fans. Otherwise it'll
be a slow, slow burn until they run out of gas and they just
give up. It's hard. And again I don't want to be too negative.
And here, you know, we've done this a really long time.
I think this is technically episode one seventy today of this. So it's been
going I will say, you know, save for the CFL here the last
couple of weeks really kind of giving life to this channel. Uh it's hard.
It's hard, like and we'll see and whatever ends up going with this.
But you know, this, this two hour, two and a half
hour weekly Friday show, you know, we kind of kind of got to
wait out and see if you know, nothing comes next week. Like,
it's hard, it's it's hard to maintain interest in this when, like you
said, it feels like this is a side project for a lot of the
people involved. They're you know, they're working on whatever. And like I
think at this point, like we kind of got it, you know,
like I'm doing the CFL, we got work on other stuff. I think
it's hard to have, uh, to feel ownership of this or pride in
this in terms of the leagues when it doesn't feel like even the people involved
in that have that have a similar way in that. Yeah, I think
this is the last shot for this group of people to make spring football work.
And if they don't put their foot down and try to build something serious
and try to market locally and try to build a serious attachment, I think
we're starting over with a new ownership sometime next decade and hopefully they figure it
out. Uh. Yeah, let's see here. I like this Gothan has
Let's hear some predictions, and when we hear something about the merger, I've
heard, I've heard next week, I've heard mid December, I've or what
ever. I mean to me, it's kind of it's a waiting game at
this point. That's why I want to do at least stop down today and
do this. See we talked off the top where I've tried to avoid this
week to week of like, okay, what's what's the rumor combination this week?
But it's been long enough that I think it's fine to get people on
here today and no one else says anything, Yo, do it? Do
it Black Friday, But do you think we're gonna be here another I'm not
a government expert, but you know what, I really don't understand how it
could still be happening longer than the end of January. I really, I
mean, I'm not saying I can say for sure it will still still be
waiting or not, because I don't know how the government works, right,
I'm not a political science expert or whatever, but I really don't understand what
could possibly take them so long that it would take them past January. Like,
at the end of the day, you need to come to some sort
of agreement otherwise it just isn't gonna happen, like you can only stall for
so long. Well, to me, it feels like and I'm like stupid
metaphors, but it's like you got two kids that don't want to clean their
room and they're like, well, we don't want to do like they don't
the XFL and the USL like they don't want to have X number of teams,
right, and it's a government concerned with it. Like you know,
I how how hard do you dig your heels in here? How hard do
you are are you fighting with this? Because because It's like they are fighting
to shed dead wade at this point. Right they're the XFL and the Isabel
are not there. It'd be different if they were the ones fighting for more
teams or fighting for but it feels like it's very much the opposite. Yeah,
so I feel like predicting how many teams? That's funny, Philip uh,
predicting how many teams? Predicting when I think all that is is it
just feels pointless. At this point, I feel like I just want it
to be over, you know whatever, make Here's just just I want them
to make me believe again. I want to be like how I was in
Fall twenty eighteen February twenty nineteen, where I was seeing Sam and them make
content about the rules, and I was seeing all over Luck doing interviews and
I really believe in something and I held on to that believe too long for
this iteration, and now I've completely lost it. And they need to get
us back because I don't know how any of anybody who is contemplating this seriously
and not just based on optimism can have hope right now, make us give
us a reason. I like here, Pat has the comment, Pat will
let me retire from the channel when we hit a thousand episodes, so they
had anywhere episodes to go. I will tell you it's so funny. And
whatever happens this year in terms of a pushback or lay whatever, I remember
when Paul and I started, and then it was like three weeks after he
started, you know, they pushed it back, and then they pushed it
back again. I remember sitting there and thinking, like, man, it's
like seventy episodes we got to get through before the act or whatever was never
was before we got to kick off, and uh, it's it's nuts.
Yeah, I agree with you. I've never felt the same as I did
that that first season, and uh, you know, I we went to
d C and I wept. I wept at the kickoff. And I don't
know if it was the bottomless mimosas at brunched beforehand that led to that,
But I've never you know, sitting here watching the games, watching the Battle
of Texas, all that kind of stuff. It never never felt the same
as it did. And and not a lot that's been done my current regime
is helped in still any of those feelings of joy. Yeah, I mean,
I love the players, you know, I love the coaches, most
of them. Some of them I don't like. But uh, the coaches,
I mean of the players, there's no player. I really think there's
some coaches that I don't like. That's not my business. Uh, speaking
of players I don't like. Didn't that Ben Holmes just get signed in ELF?
Wasn't that it isn't going to like Van there or something? Yeah,
he's he's, he's. You gotta speak German, buddy, Germany, Bud.
Yeah, trying to get ready to Yeah, Adam whatever adds over it?
Yeah, in German. And uh also, well they're in like a
bunch of different countries, but like it's mainly Germany, right, I don't
think I don't like that much. I should have invested in ELF back.
I should never have done any of you might have better luck with the AFL
at this point, although even like I don't know what broadcast deal they have,
and they're all of their organizations seems so sketchy. I just can't even
try to get attached to the new AFL right now, Tim, Yeah,
Tim's invested that. Let's let's get here at the top of the hour.
We'll get out here ten more minutes or so. Anything else, any other
talking points. We want to make sure is anyone else have any comments?
And then we had the Vipers one or the question about that? Uh oh
yeah, pat One, are you okay with Drew Pult getting into an NFL
contract? He can enjoy sitting on those practice reps while he does absolutely nothing
else other than show the playbook to whoever else is in the quarterback room because
he can't contribute on the fields. So have fun reading a playbook in Cincinnati.
I'm sure the pay is quite good. I'll tell you. The Bengals
say, what the season for that? Oh yeah, forget I think Kevin
got another duy. I think I saw as well. I was Sexty and
Paul about that Maryland. Yeah, that was interesting. Leagues will play separate
If we have to wait until late January, it's it's I mean, this
is sticking point at this point. I mean, what would be the XFL
training camp would be what January? Like they'd have to delay the XFL season
by at least two weeks, right, Like they'd have to start in like
late February or March one and then, which in my opinion, might be
better anyway, because then you can get that one season that won the first
weekend where you have that huge audience because there's always a bit more in week
one and later on, and you get that audience, and then you come
back in like week six after March madness, and you have an entire half
of the season left to build your audience back up towards the playoffs, instead
of what happened this time where we were like week three, week four.
Your audience gets knee cated for like the meat of the season, and then
you have to come back. We had it here. We have a question
from Gotamber I like, we're here. We'll do this first. I like,
how, Chris, why are they running this feast of football on YouTube
right now? It's had but I have no interest right now. It feels
in limbo. I am glad, like I said, glad that we at
least beat the viewership today on this. I know that that's not a lot
a low bar, but I'm glad that MAXI and Ize been in here talking.
It's like when we I just sorry, but just proud of the CFL
staff. But we can go in with a ring light and the cell phone
and draw sixty thousand viewers, Like maybe let's embrace some of these people that
are building an audience here. I think that they, you know, something
could be said for that. I saw Bill mcconnor, what's his name,
the content guy, Bill retweeting the feast of football and stuff like maybe let's
get on board the seventies, Max and I sitting here on a Friday morning.
I mean, let's be the reason they're doing stuff like this is because
they don't have anything else they can do. I mean, they don't have
anybody at that content house in Arlington, right, I mean, do they
even still have the content house in Arlington? Read? Who knows? They
barely did anything with it. They shot like a couple one minute videos and
that's it. I don't know how much money do you think it costs to
rent out that house. I don't even want to know. I don't I
don't want to know. We have a comment here as Zach long time listeners.
Zach haven't talked to Zach for a while with the lack of you know,
hey to be negative, but in this rate's gonna seem my idea they
need to cancel twenty twenty four. I come back in twenty twenty five as
the Big League or goes separately, this whole thing will probably die. He
says, this is his usual, is not okay? Max? Right?
Sorry, Zach, I you know, and Zach because Zach's a die hard
Saint Louis Balahawk's fan from the beginning. Yeah. I mean, like I
said, danged if you do, danged if you don't. Right, But
if they completely change the way they operate and they actually try to make a
real attachment during this lame duck season and at least say, hey, we
this lame duck is not going to nothing. It's going to something bigger,
and you really make people believe that, and you make that through your commitment,
not through advertising, through real on the ground work, people's opinions will
change. The problem is that they don't want to do that. And so
that's just why I think, I don't know how you can believe in it.
We had, yeah, we had a question here got them. Do
you guys think it'll be a fifty to fifty splitter or not. I've heard
every such combination of all the the whatever. I think we can I think
they concretely, I think we know that they merged League with ideally like eight
and the government does not want that. So whether it's four and four or
five and three, I think that that is at least where I am understanding
right now. Yeah, And I mean it doesn't really matter in terms of
the business side, which lead you pull teams from X other than stadium contracts,
stadiums and where the other than that, it doesn't really matter. So
I don't know, man, In my opinion, you hang on to as
many stadium markets as you can, especially east of the Pacific time zone,
because I think it'll just be easier to cut to put everybody consolidate in that
one region than trying to have two island teams out on an island, or
even one out on an island way out there, even though they're not actually
living there. It just feels like it'd be harder for them to connect everywhere
else with that one market in Seattle, which is unfortunate because they completely wasted
that place. They completely did those people wrong. Oh, Seattle is horrendous
in terms of scheduling and time, and even bigger than that, like like
the league did Seattle wrong, just beyond the football itself, beyond the scheduling
belong to, beyond the league. They did the people Seattle wrong. They
completely threw that fan base away. Expand on that because, like think about
it, like DC and Saint Louis had earlier events, Seattle came around later.
First off, Second off, they Seattle was less connected to those to
the league than Saint Louis was or d C was because of how bad the
the commanders are. In DC, It's almost like they didn't really have an
NFL team for a while. But whereas in Seattle you have all these different
professional sports and a lot of them are pretty good in the crack and arks
siding, and so they just let that fan base drift away by not committing
to them, whereas they committed a little earlier to those other places. And
it just it's just a shame. But it's not the people in the ground
fall, it's the league execs, right well, I think that they I
think they thought it was a really weird spot in twenty twenty where the Mariners
were still kind of on the rebuild, Like you said, the kracking weren't
there. I think it was really right, but then they thought back and
Mariners are hot, and I know it's it's different, you know, time
of year for that, but you know, in terms of what I'm spending
time and money on. And then the Crack. I mean when you're going
literally at the same time, back to back with the Crack and they're playing
sold out a mile down the road, that's really hard. And now you
have Geno Smith, he's good kind of now, and and you know you
have the soccer is hot, both leagues, both teams for soccer are really
hot in Seattle. So you just have a lot going for you in Seattle,
and you have this team that went away for three years and people just
kind of don't care as much anymore because you didn't make that commitment to show
why they should care. So it's it's just a shame. Yeah, Zach
has a question this where you try to explain why would the government have any
say because the government needs to process, they need to regulate all this,
so they need the XFL and the USFL can't come in and say we want
to cut half of our players, coaching staff, all those other things they
need to be that's uh, the government is stepping in and saying like,
well, we can't, we don't want to approve this by outsizing too much.
It's something to do with the size of the company and also think about
it, there aren't that many professional football leagues in the United States. There's
the USFL and XFL, and then there's the semi pro indoor leagues and whatever
other semi pro outdoor leagues you have. None of these are very serious really
for being honest in terms of actual financial pay. So they're like a they're
like a leader, and they're they're like a leader in their industry almost.
So when you're merging two people who take up a large market share of of
that very small industry, which really is just the NFL and other uh,
that that's a significant title shift in the economy of that industry. And so
that's why the the government is getting involved. Yeah, and you know,
it was just a number of VIA players and everything that it's it's it's a
shame to me and I there's no better way to handle it, but I
could. I can think of any worse ways that this all kind of planned
out right now, if that makes sense. I mean, it would be
worse if they The only way it could be worse is if they just decided
to kill one league and then they just What would happen instead is that they
just killed the XFL, or they killed the USFL and Fox just bought into
the other league and then they just continued on with eight teams that I mean,
theoretically they could do that without merging. So imagine if the CFL talks
had to happen and Fox wouldn't have been incentivised to go to the USFL a
year early, and then they do the HUD thing and then the XFL find
out. I mean, just imagine, like sliding doors here where we could
have been at this point. Yeah, I mean, there's so many what
ifs. What if the league's actually cared. I am taking those shots because
those shots are deserved, I know, and Max is Max is the diehard
of the diehard. I mean, it's interesting today because we haven't talked a
lot lately just because of all the CFL staff to be you know, and
they find being negative. I mean I think that they earned it. They
earned it. Why should I not be negative? Why should I not be
after everything that's happened. Why should I believe in you? I believe in
the people on the floor. I believe in the social media people. I
believe I believe in the people were getting paid part time, getting having to
work overtime, getting paid part time money. I believe in the coaches mostly.
I believe in the players entirely. I believe in the stadium staff.
I believe in Honestly, I believe in Bill McCulloch and those kinds of people
because they know what they're doing. They're just not being allowed to reach their
potential by the broader by the broader structure of the league. I don't believe
in Russ Brandon. I don't believe in Jerry Carnell. I don't believe in
the Rock. I don't believe in Danny Garcia. Right now, I don't
believe in I definitely don't believe in the USFL SID I thinks. I don't
believe in Eric Shanks. I don't believe in Joe Johnson. I don't believe
in this entire people who govern the structure. I don't believe in those people.
And why should I after everything that's happened, Why should anyone believe in
those people? Right now? It's hard, it's a big ask. And
that's what we said and again, and people I know say, we're basically
I think it was when Anthony Miller was on and people were saying, like,
oh, we're so negative and everything, but it's there was a lot
of big words used in a lot of grandiose and a lot of promises,
and it's hard. And I understand that this isn't where anyone wanted to be,
but it's the very nature of kind of what you've led people through here
the last two three years. And I thought it was a big ask going
in when the XMFL kicked off, and after all the delays and everything in
the CFL talks and pushing back, like I thought that was a big enough
already. And now here we are, Okay, this uncertainty of the last
three months, I think it's just almost been a nail in the coffin on
a lot of this. Just prove us wrong, Yeah, please prove me
wrong, prove all the doubters wrong. I want you to prove me wrong.
You have all the tools it takes to make this work. You are
titans of your industries, and you're just kind of going along like this doesn't
matter to you, and you're just wasting this money. And all the while
these players and fans are caught in the middle of it, and they just
if they really committed to this, I'm not even talking about putting in a
tons of money. I'm talking about just putting in the effort, because that
doesn't actually cost it really, I mean, how much money does it really
cost to do these tiny little events in these markets and get some freelancers out,
I mean, how much money does that really cost? Well, I
had said, I had said from the beginning that if you if you founut
the street team in each market, people have people apply, give them free
season tickets and give them merch and say you gotta do once a month and
the fan event and find the bar. And like, I don't think it's
I don't even think it's a it's a paying thing. I think you could
find people that would be happy to do it to help grow. I mean,
we have people, you know, doing shows and everything already. Like,
I don't think it's that big of an ass to get the people involved.
And yet they just don't. They just don't care. I really don't
see why I should believe they care. I just don't. They don't care.
They want to make their own little fantasy world where they barely do anything
and it all just works out and they can go work on their other stuff.
Philip has the last question. We'll put this to bed here, I
can spring football ever exist and be successful? Yes, undisputedly yes. There
is no way you can watch what happened in twenty twenty with all of the
investment that was put in and how immediately that paid off despite plenty of hiccups,
and not think that spring football can't work. The problem is that people
don't see the long term vision. Number one. Number two, something really
unfortunate happened with that league that no one could have predicted unless you were an
expert in foreign diseases in like December twenty nineteen, and even then, most
sports league, like the only sports league who was prepared for the pandemic was
like the Wimbledon tennis Championships because they had pandemic construments. That was it So
like if not for that, maybe we would still have the XFL right now
and it would be flourishing and flying. And that's not me saying, oh,
the twenty twenty is the best thing ever. They had plenty of mistakes,
but they actually committed. No one else since then has committed. All
it takes is commitment, patience and listening and understanding and continuing to try to
grow and willing to lose money for like five years, and you will have
a league that works. It won't be MLS yet, it won't be It
definitely won't be a major sports league, but you will have a committed customer
fan base and people will care and it will matter, and players will come
between that league and the NFL L and people will watch it because it's an
interesting to watch during the spring when there's no college football on, there's no
NFL on, and the only other option is baseball, hockey, MLS,
UH and basketball. But I agree, no commitment, no reward. You
only get it get out what you put in, and they have not put
in the work. Uh and the infamous words of the New radicals you only
get what you give. So I never, never, never forget that.
Uh, Max, this was good today. A little you know, we've
got a little negative, but that's okay. I appreciated that, maxim it's
earned earned negativity. And again this was enough today. We haven't done this
every week. I think that this had been week four of coming on and
the bitching and complaining about this, but it was a good spot today,
doing our Friday show, coming off the CFL and all that, So I
appreciate Max coming on, Like I said, kind of stand by, we'll
figure out episodes here. CFL season done, you know, depending on news
next week, but keep a fallout, you keep an eye out for that.
But we'll figure it out. But we obviously we're done with our money
recaps, now done with all that stuff, so uh, stay tuned.
I assume everyone's subscribed to this point, but give it. Give a thumbs
up to the video here. I think we're still up over the XFL Fast
Year or whatever at this point, but appreciate Max stepping up today. Like
I said, we needed the guests. You're going to go through all this.
I hope everyone else is good with their families and stuff anything else.
Max. Before we get out of here, I'm gonna you know how Andy's
the professor? Can I be the substitute teacher? You want to be in
the scessity? You you're you're you're producer, Max, you don't like produ
I'm producer. Well, when I'm off the show, I'm when I'm on
the show, I'm the substitute teacher. So I'm both I'm producer, I
have I have altered egos, so good. Yeah, and then secondarily some
part in the back of my head just wants to have hope again. I
I I really there's a part of in the back of my head that that
is an optimism that's like, hey, believe, believe, Make make all
of us have that belief again. Please please cry for help. Let's all.
We need to find a way to like get the fans to cry for
help. We need to make them believe in us. I don't know how
you make that happen. We've got to activate the fans. Also really proud
of how well the great coverage when your CFL coverage, and how well your
channel's growing. You're You're of the people who are like actually podcasts and not
larger brands beyond just being a podcast. Here the number one alternative football podcast
now on YouTube, which I think is impressive, and every single metrics toscarvers
all that. I'm it's impressive. I'm happy for you. Well, I
appreciate that. Like I said, I you know, we've waivered and I'm
here right like this has been long and doing that. We've done weekly recaps
since February and oh year round football. It's been a lot. The XFL
staff and I appreciate Andy and everyone coming on that, and then Pat carrying
through the USFL, and then Evan being involved in a lot of that,
and then him and Jason with the CFL. You know, I going up
to Great Cup was great, connecting, meeting all those people, like I'm
here a part of this world. Kind of whatever happens, right, But
I feel like I'm a hired gun at this point, and I think I
just wish that, like you said, get us excited in this, get
whatever. I think we have a very passionate audience about all this. I
appreciate everyone taking the time today on Black Friday to spend time and sharing their
comments and concerns as well. So I think there's a place we'll see what
that looks like. But you know the same with the CFL, like let's
embrace you know, cell phone and the ring light and outdrew every other piece
of coverage that they put out over the weekend. So I appreciate Max,
appreciate the listeners, appreciate the viewers. Today. We'll post this on the
podcast channel as well. See if you want to listen to it later.
Thanks has always been subscribe like and all that stuff. Go enjoy the Jets
now the Zombie Jets well, wave a wave, go too late against.
That's my game. All enjoy all that go crack and everything else, all right,