Welcome to it, Broncos Country Tonight Post Rockies edition. Benjamin all right here
with you. I hope you're enjoying your evening. Five six sixty nine zero
is the text line you guys want to get involved in the conversation. Congratulations
to South Carolina game Cocks women's basketball team, who beat Caitlyn Clark in Iowa
to complete a perfect season. When the women's in CUAA Championship eighty seven to
seventy five. Clearly South Carolina the best team in the nation all season,
and their depth was just too much for Iowa. The loss ends a record
breaking career for Kaitlyn Clark. Leads is the old time score of both men's
and women's NCAA basketball score thirty to lead Iowa on Sunday, but obviously not
enough. Chipped in eight boards five assists as well. The reason I'm talking
about that is, you know, afterwards, I jumped online and, as
you usual, well, saw the cesspool that is Twitter or X or whatever
you call it. I'm calling it Twitter. I'm not calling it X.
I don't you know. Sorry, Elan, You'll just have to deal.
I got on there and I saw the cesspool that was people bickering back and
forth, and it leads me to wonder, is framing everything through the lens
of who is the goat? Ruining sports culture? Is framing everything through the
lens of who is the greatest of all time? Ruining sports culture? Because
as I looked online, I had one giant group of people saying, well,
Kayler Clark never won a championship, she can't be the greatest of all
time, which is stupid. I mean, you could be the best player
and not be on a good enough team, not be able to carry four
cowboys to a championship, or in this case tell women, with all due
respect to Iowa's basketball team, like, I hate the way that we frame
everything through that conversation. Now is Dan Marino nodded the discussion for greatest quarterback
of all time because he didn't win a Super Bowl? Because Dan Marino was
absolutely, by the tools, one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time,
by the numbers, one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. So I
hate the way that we do that and the toxic culture that emanates from that.
Last year, it was impossible to believe that both LSU was a great
basketball team and Caitlyn Clark was a great player, and the same thing played
itself out again this year was South Carolina. How is it implausible for people
to figure out that South Carolina is a phenomenal basketball team and Caitlin Clark he
is a phenomenal player. Why can't you hold both opinions? Why can't I
not be worried about arbitrarily defining nebulous terms like the greatest of all time?
Why do I have to quantify it? Why can't I appreciate greatness in front
of me? And as usual, the Internet, of course couldn't handle it.
And so what we get is a tox success pool of people bickering back
and forth along arbitrarily divided lines, sometimes Rachel, and it just baffles me.
I look at this thing, and I'm like, you can appreciate greatness
on both sides, you know, city here and covering the broncos. I
can appreciate the greatness of Pat Mahomes, just like I could appreciate the greatness
of Tom Brady, just like I could appreciate the greatness of Peyton Manning.
And does it matter who you're going to title the greatest of all time?
Is it bad? Do we need to really qualify that. Is having that
definition intrinsic to appreciating the greatness? Does it provide more enjoyment? Does it
make it better? Even if you settle that question, is is anything solved
by settling that question, Because in settling that question, you really have only
settled it for yourself. You're not settling it for anyone else. Sports talk,
and a large portion of sports talk, has become junk Who's on the
mount? Rushmore of this who's the greatest at that? It's lazy sports talks.
It's lazy talk and jealous lazy debate. It's not even debate. It's
arbitrarily contrived content. To my knowledge of been guilty of it. I don't
want to adopt a wholier than that attitude. I'm sure I've done plenty of
lazy things in my life, but I just I don't understand how everything has
got to be something that's divisive. Why couldn't we all celebrate that women's basketball
was front and center for half a minute. You know, we were actually
tuning in to watch women's basketball. We all were. It's okay, you
could admit it. You could tell on yourself. I know you're listening right
now. No, I would never. Yeah, you would, you did?
We all did. It doesn't mean I'm suddenly like buying WNBA jerseys,
but I enjoyed watching women's basketball for a change. Okay, we all did.
Branding personalities helps helps to build those kinds of audiences, giving you something
to root for. That's one of the things that for all the negatives about
fantasy football and gambling, it's that's what they've done. They've given you individuals
to root for them. We do, and once here's an individual to tune
in for, we do tune in. But why does it always have to
be about why do we have to put a title? Uh, she's the
goat, he's the goat? Well, okay, maybe why do you think
that? Or why not? Okay? Now is anything solved by you having
that opinion? Tell me what more enjoyment you got out of that game by
knowing that Caitlyn Clark was or was not the greatest of all time? What
did it enhance for you? Nothing? So we spent pointless hours with a
ramped up rhetoric debating something that did not matter. It did not add an
ounce of joy to your life. You didn't you weren't happy debating. You
were frustrated that the other person didn't see your point of view. You aren't
happier now because you didn't change any minds. No whate ever changes anyone's mind.
When's the last time somebody changed somebody's mind? On the internet, we
pour countless hours into quibbling over the most trivial nonsense. Appreciate greatness, all
of it. Appreciate greatness that's on your team while it's there because it's fleeting.
Appreciate greatness in your opponents because it makes it that much more worthwhile when
you win, when you defeat that, when you find a game plan and
execute and it works, you don't have to You don't have to down and
play the accomplishments of anybody in order to enjoy sport. There are already enough
things to bicker over. This world already has enough things in it that are
divisive. Sports and athletics are supposed to be the thing that unites us,
the true meritocracy, a level playing field for all, And somehow we've decided
to take that down. The first take called pizza whatever it's called road,
the ruiner of all things sports talk. When they started getting the political guys
putting the formats on these morning shows. God made it unbearable to listen to.
I just get this stuff too. Do you hear what Skip Burst stephen
A here? And with all due respect to them, is they figured out
how to maximize an audience. And if that's your goal, congratulations. If
your goal is only to continue to draw in the maximum sized audience, then
that's what your content is going to be geared toward. And it's gonna be
clickbaity content. It's gonna be fake debates, it's gonna be goat arguments and
Mount rushmoores. It's gonna be bad magazine, radio or TV. I hate
that stuff. I just got. I hate that stuff. I just don't
have the time for it. And that's not my goal anyway. I mean,
you work at entertainment, and you're measured by whatever you're measured by,
and in this case, for us, it's ratings, and so I have
an appreciation for growing an audience, but this is not my goal. My
goal every night is to sit here and entertain and inform And I probably have
those two in verse order, because I want to be informative. I want
to pass along to you guys. The stuff that I have, information I
have that you may not, and vice versa via the text line, information
you have that I may not. I'm down to lord something because at the
end of the day, we're all just dudes and chicks. Wanted to talk
ball, right, wanted to have a good time, wanted to forget the
stresses of work, the anger that we've built up at the world around us
over the course of a day, and release that into something hopefully fun.
Hopefully that's what we do here at the end of the day. I hope
that everybody listening to this has come away with something new. Every day that
I walk in and get in front of this microphone, I hope that I
come away knowing something I didn't before I got here. And we have great
people that, you know, that help us out with all this, Grant
and Coover and you know, Nick, and I feel like, you know,
I feel like a lot of people treat this like, well, I
gotta put this rundown together and I gotta I gotta program this show. And
you know that's not I've never been about that. I've never done that this
way. And there are you know, there are people that look at me
horrified when I you know, people that work in this industry a long time.
When I try to explain what it is that we do here, we
do here is try to enjoy it, inform and enjoy. That's why I
think I get so irritable when people say that I hate Sean Payton. I
don't hate John Payton. I don't. I've been more critical of him than
I've been of I think any coach since I've been doing this particular thing in
Denver, and that's because Sean Payton's the first coach that we've had here that
wasn't a first time head coach advanced Joseph You had Vic Fangio, you hd
Nate Hackett. Sean he coached in the league for fifteen years. So yeah,
my criticism towards him is gonna be a little harsher. I'm not gonna
have as much leeway early on because he's not learning things. He already knows
them. He's been in the league at decade and a half. He's been
the top guy he knows. But I don't hate Sean Payton, and I
want Lebroncos to succeed. I want this to be fun. I want sports
to be fun. How many little girls watching what should have been a crowning
moment in women's sports were forever turned off by sports because you had adults bickering,
putting each other down over something they didn't need to put each other down
about. Who cares? Is Kaylen Clark the greatest of all time? I
don't know, certainly the most prolific scorer. Do we need to wait into
the minutia of it is having or applying that arbitrary title which isn't awarded by
anybody but us individually, adding to anyone's experience. You could say it.
We all know the answers now, So at the end of the day,
what are we doing? Let's find a better way to do this? And
for my part, I'm going to find a better way to do this too.
I'm going to make sure that each and every time I'm up here on
this microphone, I'm not presenting something lazily that's not the thing. We won't
have a bad segment here or there. I might have an idea that turns
out not to be a good one, but I want to make sure that
I'm giving you the maximum amount of effort that you're giving in listening to the
show. You're depositing your time with me. I don't want to fill it
up with bickering over nonsense. I don't want to waste your time quibbling over
who's the greatest of all time? It doesn't matter. Did you enjoy yourself,
did you have fun? Did you bond with the loved one while you
were watching sports? A son and a daughter. Did you get the opportunity
to create a cherished memory that at the end of the day you're going to
hold deer and reflect on. Those are the things that matter. Because I
can tell you there isn't a moment in my life and maybe I'm really talking
to me here because I think we've all seen my social media. There isn't
a moment in my life where I reflect on something and I say, you
know what, I'm really glad I had that argument on Twitter. I'm really
glad I showed that bozo I educated them. They didn't in any way change
their minds, but I got a couple of good digs in. There hasn't
been one time in the entirety of my forty three plus years on this planet
where I've sat there and said, I'm sure glad I spent that extra time
on Twitter creating the mount rushmar of quarterbacks. I can't reflect on anything I've
ever done in programming a segment. I can't find one memorable segment where we've
had a top four of anything or a goat conversation, except for that time
we talked about goat yoga and Giovanni Carmazzi. That one was pretty funny.
So my point is this sports is supposed to be fun. Sports talk,
I feel like, is supposed to be fun. It's supposed to give you
a safe space to lement certain things. But in the end, it's supposed
to be fun. We're not doing any goat conversations here. We're not doing
any out rushmoors here. Listen to Broncos Country Tonight, Koa, go back
to It, Broncos Country Tonight, Benjamin all right here with you Post Rockies
Edition five, six six nine zeros of text line. I got a couple
of good texts coming in there. Appreciate you guys putting up with my extended
rant in the last segment. I just want this stuff to be fun.
I want it to be I wanted to inform, but I want it to
be fun. And I'm tired of the vitriol. I'm tired of the negativity.
I'm tired of it all. So we're gonna do our best to keep
it fun. Then, speaking of fun, we need to talk about what
John Calipari did. Speaking of basketball, John Calipari left Kentucky and he's going
to take over as the new head basketball coach at the University of Arkansas,
and a lot of people are confused by that. Calipari had been at Kentucky
for fifteen seasons. He had won quite a few championships in the SEC.
Done very well there. I mean, if you're in Kentucky, you're expected
to. But it hadn't hadn't been great lately, been bounced by Saint Pete
in Oakland the last two years, and that is not yetting it done at
Kentucky. He did win a championship back in twenty eleven, twenty twelve.
He's been to quite a few elite eights, two final fours in addition to
that national championship. I'm pretty sure I'd have to go back and look.
I'm pretty sure there were two seasons they didn't make the tournament. One of
those was when postseason was canceledu to COVID and then I think after they won
the championship, was it to twenty twelve. I think the next season I
think they were in the NIT But other than that, Kentucky was always always
there Memphis before that. So Arkansas is getting a good coach, but Kentucky
I think had been ready to move on. The Calipari success had not really
been the same since before. Covid says before the nil, some coaches on
the football side they figured out, hey, look I'm not cut out for
this. I'm getting out the game. We saw what happening, Nick Saban
and I all changed the way you recruit, and some coaches were not prepared
for that. We're not cut out for it. I still think John Caliparry
is a heck of recruiter, but it had not been the same. And
you know, to be honest with you, the last three years, well
four seasons really they went nine and sixteen and twenty twenty one, and then
the last three seasons they'd made the tournament combined thirty nine and fifteen on the
regular season, but got bounced in the round of sixty four, the out
of thirty two and the rout of sixty four again by teams like Saint Pete
Oakland. So Kentucky was ready to move on. I was talking to people
with our fans of that, you know that are affiliated with the Kentucky program
as this thing was kind of breaking yesterday, and yeah, I was kind
of the same. It's kind of one of those things like Arkansas is getting
a good recruiter, question is whether or not even coach, and that it
was kind of a win win for both parties. Traditionally speaking, going from
Kentucky to Arkansas would be a step down. In fact, back in nineteen
eighty five it went the opposite way when Kentucky hired Eddie Sutton, and Sutton
had to quote, I would have crawled all the way to Lexington. Kentucky
has a high bar. It's gotten to the point where it's like it's like
the you used to be in football in Miami, or the bar had gotten
so high that if you don't win at a certain level, they're going to
they're gonna get to the point where they want to move on. Col's recruiting
class has always had style and flair. You got to witness John Wall at
the Davis Devin Booker four trips to the Final four, only one national title
though, put a lot of players in the NFL or NBA, But Kentucky
really has fallen out of favor with him since twenty eighteen. They took that
loaded thirty eight no team to the national semi finals and then got upset by
Wisconsin and it just wasn't the same after that. They've won one NCAA tournament
game since twenty nineteen, and there's a higher bar set at Kentucky and Calipari.
I think was a little frustrated that there wasn't a larger nil commitment,
and now he's getting that five year deal at Arkansas worth eight million, seven
and a half to eight million dollars a season in salary and another seven and
a half million to eight in NIL commitment for him. I think that's I
think that that is what is he looking for. I think that he wanted
that sort of commitment. Obviously the biggest booster at Arkansas in this case,
John Tyson. Tyson foods familiar with with Calipari. They're they're they're sort of
friends. So after Eric Musselman bolted for USC, Arkansas comes up with probably
the best get that they can get, and Kentucky, who wanted to fire
cow but didn't want to pay the thirty three million dollars that it would take
to buy him out of his contract. Gets to move on for free.
They don't have to pay the money. And it's kind of interesting because this
contract didn't have a buyout like cal could have left on his own at any
point. The university had to buy him out if they wanted to fire him,
and so this sort of creates a situation that's the best of all worlds.
The biggest question is how many of his top recruits are going to jump
out of the deals with Kentucky they have and head to Arkansas. Will he
be better at utilizing the portal? These days in college basketball, the two
biggest things are NIL deals in NBA development period, point blank ended discussion.
Being a blue blood doesn't really matter my anymore. Teams are built via the
nil and transfer portal. Anyone can buy a player, not just shoe companies
or old established under the table recruiting operations. Kentucky still remains a major brand
without Calipari. It'll be interesting to see who fills those shoes, whether it's
Dan Hurley or Chris Beard or whomever. This is a rare situation where you
get a win win, I think where everybody wins five six, six nine
zeros text line, get in some football here. One of the players that
I had touted that the Broncos should look at, Texas defensive tackle Tovandre Sweat.
On Sunday, News broke that Texas defensive tackle Devondre Sweat was arrested for
d w I k x A. N News reported he was arrested in Austin,
booked at Travis County Jail at two twelve pm. By the way,
driving well intoxicated, Class B misdemeanor. Bond set at three grand. Sweat's
a big nose tackle, was a big twelve D Player of the Year Outland
Trophy. Not a big sack guy, but at the nose able to,
you know, to kind of push the pile and be something. I think
that the Broncos have hoped that that Mike Purcell and you know and others would
fill You put him with DJ Jones and Zach Allen Allison. You got a
pretty good front three eating up those blocks. And for advance Joseph defense that
it's essential bravan Joseph defense. You've got to have big space eaters up front.
There eating up those blocks so those linebackers can shoot the gaps. And
I think Devandre Sweat would have potentially bet that guy. Sweat is a u,
a big dude, three hundred and sixty six pounds. But now it's
going to be uncombing on teams interested in him to ask some questions, like,
for starters, why was Sweat allegedly driving drunk at two in the afternoon
on a Sunday? How much alcohol does it take to get a three hundred
and sixty six pound man above the legal limit of point oh eight. Sweat
was a guy who already had to answer questions about his partying early in college,
told teams that that stuff was behind him. Apparently it's not. I
think a lot of teams are concerned. What am I bringing in here?
This is a guy who's already going to be a weight management guy. What
happens when I give this guy a bunch of money? What if you're the
general manager of the drafts and he drives drunk and he kills somebody? What
in your decision making matrix thinks it's a great idea to go have too much
to drink and go driving. Three weeks before the draft, and it's not
like you don't have an example there in state dak Prescott at a Duy he
went on to have no issues, but he had one right there prior to
the draft. You have one staring you in the face. As an NFL
prospect, your job is to keep your nose clean an ace a month's long
job interview. Devandre Sweat did not do that. Hearkens back to the days
when the Green Bay Packers signed Corn Robinson, who blew multiple chances in Minnesota,
finally by drunk driving and leading the cops on a high speed pursuit.
I don't know if everybody remembers that one or not. And look that one
up. Charged with DWI and feloty fleeing. It's back in August of two
thousand and six, I believe made the Pro Bowl after alcohol problems had derailed
his career. In Seattle, police clocked his blue BMW Siday doing one hundred
miles an hour to fifty five mile an hour zone, refused to stop,
and was finally arrested by police ten miles away from where the bright Vikings hold
their training camp. Was charge of fleeing police, two DWI and three other
misdemeanors. Field test measured his blood alcohol at point one point one. You
just have to make sure that you're not getting a guy who's going to present
those kinds of problems. Sweat was a guy who was already projected as a
Day two draft pick, and that may be something that pushes him down draft
boards, and rightfully so, if you're a general manager, your job is
on the line here. You taking a guy who was known to have partying
issues early in his collegiate career, looked like he finally put it together in
his final season. Got one job and that's to get prepared for the NFL
Draft. And he's out there drinking during the day on a Sunday. Bro
you're drunk driving at two in the afternoon on a Sunday. I think I'd
have some questions. And Sweat was somebody I wanted here in Denver. Felt
like Vance and Sean Payden could have, you know, kept him in line.
I feel like having that big body here at the knows as a space
heater would have been huge for this defense. Probably not to be now,
although to be fair, the Broncos do have most of their picks outside of
the top one fifty and I guess he could follow that way. Now.
I just don't understand. I don't understand having everything in front of you and
knowing like all I have to do is make it to this day and get
drafted. Teams will have questions, Teams will have a lot of questions for
him, and he still has some visits lined up. I don't I don't
know how that's gonna go. It was a quick note today, but the
Chargers being interested in Marquez Valdez. Scantling started his career four seasons in Green
Bay, past two in case C win his Super Bowls, Chiefs didn't want
to pay twelve million to keep him this year. With the Chargers cutting Mike
Williams and trading away Keenan Allen Valdez Scantling, it is one of the few
available options with some name recognition. The Jets seem to have abandoned the Aaron
Rodgers friends and former teammates plan may not have many other options. The Charger's
gonna be scary, man. This is not gonna be a pushover football team
at the Broncos, who just whizzed passed the last couple of years. The
Broncos cut wins over the Chargers with Drew Locke run on the show. Jim
Marvel is going to have that team ready to play and you know, getting
some speed in there, which they do need. It's been a problem for
that team for the last few years. I think could be beneficial. They're
gonna be a ground and pound team with Gus Edwards leading the way. But
you've got Herbert there and he can throw. Now that scantling would give him
somebody to build off of play action, get him the deep ball. Be
interesting to see what that number comes in at. He was Nebroncos Country tonight
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