Speaker 1: Start things off on a Tuesday afternoon with one of
Speaker 1: my favorite guests now a podcaster, Kyle Bonna Gera.
Speaker 2: Kyle, Happy Tuesday, sir. How are you.
Speaker 3: I'm doing great, Spence are you?
Speaker 2: I'm well? So let's start with your new project.
Speaker 1: And I recall hearing about this, but now as a
Speaker 1: result of you know, I read the entire piece that
Speaker 1: you and Adam did this morning. When I saw you
Speaker 1: were going to be on I pulled this up. So
Speaker 1: Paul Wolfe's mother, of course, Paul was the head coach
Speaker 1: of Washington State for a number of years. Dolores wolf
Speaker 1: disappeared in July of nineteen seventy nine, and it is
Speaker 1: quite a fascinating story that I'm not sure how many
Speaker 1: people are fully aware of. So let's go back to
Speaker 1: the origin story kind of when you heard about this,
Speaker 1: and then why you and Adam decided to do this
Speaker 1: entire project.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, thanks for willing to chat about it. We're
Speaker 3: really excited about the project. So I think the most
Speaker 3: obvious place to start, just for your listeners is that
Speaker 3: Paul wolf is now the head coach at cal Pauly,
Speaker 3: who Utah will will host its first home game this year.
Speaker 3: So a little bit of a Utah youth connection. It
Speaker 3: fro from the jump here. So in twenty twenty, Adam
Speaker 3: and I were kind of, you know, going through the
Speaker 3: COVID motions, right, were trying to report about college football
Speaker 3: during during that weird season, and he received a tip
Speaker 3: that he saw this interesting story about Paul Wolfe and
Speaker 3: it's it's something about his mother. And so he's like, hey,
Speaker 3: this is kind of interesting. We should we should look
Speaker 3: into this. And so the short version is that when
Speaker 3: Paul Wolfe was was twelve years old, He's the youngest
Speaker 3: of four children. One night, his mother disappeared, never was
Speaker 3: seen or heard from again. Almost immediately, his father was
Speaker 3: telling both him and his other brother who was still
Speaker 3: living at the house, that she was she was gone,
Speaker 3: and she was never coming back. It emerged very quickly
Speaker 3: that he was the primary suspect in her disappearance. But
Speaker 3: three number of factors, you know, they weren't able to
Speaker 3: ever prosecute him. He's never you know, never never went
Speaker 3: before a jury to face an HR. But you know,
Speaker 3: it really impacted the trajectory of his life. Of course, right,
Speaker 3: he moves out of his house and his dad he
Speaker 3: effectively lost both parents when this happens, is raised by
Speaker 3: his aunt and uncle, a really fascinating uncle who's had
Speaker 3: a crazy military career that we get into as well.
Speaker 3: And then forty one years later, in the summer of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty, a cold case detective in the Bay area
Speaker 3: and near where I live, you know, it's kind of
Speaker 3: tipped off about another case and went down this went
Speaker 3: down this rabbit hole and eventually determined that Paul will
Speaker 3: Smother had been found just six weeks after she went missing,
Speaker 3: but no one was able to identify her. She had
Speaker 3: been in cemetery one county over for four decades, and
Speaker 3: they were able to do DNA testing through Paul to
Speaker 3: make the determination that this, this woman who had only
Speaker 3: been identified an unmarked grave as Jane does sixteen, was
Speaker 3: in fact his mother. It's a crazy story. We wrote
Speaker 3: about it in twenty twenty twenty one for ESPN where
Speaker 3: we kind of outlined the whole process and there was
Speaker 3: a lot of just wild stuff that happened. There's just
Speaker 3: too much to get into, but like it was the
Speaker 3: most incredible story that Adam and I heard had ever
Speaker 3: worked on, and so we published the story. It was
Speaker 3: very much through the lens of Paul and this coach.
Speaker 3: It is in the ESPN story, but there was so
Speaker 3: much more to it that we couldn't get into in
Speaker 3: our story. It was a story that we both felt
Speaker 3: deeply deserved to be told more broadly to a wider
Speaker 3: audience interesting trips of like not not sports fans specifically,
Speaker 3: and so ESPN, with it with its blessing, allowed us
Speaker 3: to pursue the project kind of on the side of
Speaker 3: the podcast, and so over the past year or so,
Speaker 3: a little bit more than a year, we've been kind
Speaker 3: of working on it in our free time, and the
Speaker 3: first episode of the podcast was released yesterday. It's called
Speaker 3: The Unforgotten. It's season three of a pre existing podcast,
Speaker 3: and the season is called Finding Dolores Wolf.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a gripping story.
Speaker 1: I mean, the written portion that I read starts out
Speaker 1: with Paul as a young man, and the way you
Speaker 1: framed it was great because it was just one of
Speaker 1: those things that the gripshoot to the point where you
Speaker 1: want to want to read the entire thing. In March
Speaker 1: of eighty five, Paul, who was eighteen, had been summoned
Speaker 1: to a meeting to confront the suspect in his mother's murder,
Speaker 1: and then you revealed that the suspect is his father.
Speaker 1: And I can't imagine what that's like when you're eighteen
Speaker 1: years old and you're asked to sit across your father
Speaker 1: to try to dig for information to find out whether
Speaker 1: or not he's the one that actually is responsible for
Speaker 1: the mother's disappearance. I mean it is written through the
Speaker 1: lens of Paul and excited to listen to the pod,
Speaker 1: But how would you say all of this kind of
Speaker 1: shaped him? And you know, through the lens of what
Speaker 1: he became, which is a high level player in college
Speaker 1: and then of course a coach.
Speaker 3: You know, I think it's it's foundational and who he
Speaker 3: became as a person. Right. You can't live through something
Speaker 3: as traumatic as that and not having any impact to you,
Speaker 3: like to your core, right, And I think it started
Speaker 3: and I talked a lot about this with Paul over
Speaker 3: the years. You know, he moved in with his uncle
Speaker 3: and aunt who I mentioned earlier, this guy who was
Speaker 3: a Vietnam that a really interesting guy who we have
Speaker 3: a whole episode devoted to, Like his military career is
Speaker 3: just crazy. That's episode four US, so look forward to that.
Speaker 3: But he was like, he was a guy who was
Speaker 3: very involved in the community as a coach, like coach
Speaker 3: little league baseball, you know, youth softball, was involved in
Speaker 3: slow pitch softball recreationally, like just like coached all his
Speaker 3: kids in all their sports. Was you know, he he
Speaker 3: estimated that he you know, coached maybe five thousand kids
Speaker 3: over the course of his life in this community. And
Speaker 3: being raised by someone like that after you know, after
Speaker 3: the separation of his immediate family, the guy kind of
Speaker 3: stepped in as his protector at a time when he
Speaker 3: really needed it. Right, those are foundational years for anyone, right,
Speaker 3: but for someone who's twelve and goes through what he
Speaker 3: went through, now this is the mentor figure.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: He treated Paul like a son who was a better
Speaker 3: father than his actual father had ever been. And so
Speaker 3: I think he gravitated towards coaching and being around the
Speaker 3: team and having that camaraderie. And then I think what
Speaker 3: kind of stands out to me after talking with Paul
Speaker 3: about it, is like, look, he's very he feels like
Speaker 3: he can really relate to a lot of what these
Speaker 3: kids are going through and have the perspective of like
Speaker 3: football is very important right, that's why they're all there.
Speaker 3: It's it's a big part of everyone's life who's involved
Speaker 3: in these high level teams. But there's other stuff going
Speaker 3: on in everyone's life, and it's it's tough at times, right,
Speaker 3: And so he's very sympathetic to family struggles and outside
Speaker 3: of like, you know, whatever somebody's dealing with, and being
Speaker 3: kind of accepting of them and being able to kind
Speaker 3: of relate to them in those ways. And so I
Speaker 3: think all of those elements that he went through, like
Speaker 3: he like, formed him and allowed him to kind of
Speaker 3: have those deeply personal relationships with all of his players
Speaker 3: and coaches.
Speaker 1: So one of the well, several interesting portions of this.
Speaker 1: But the connection about his mother's body having been found
Speaker 1: was made by a lady named Stacy Sherman who was
Speaker 1: looking for additional victims of the Golden State Killer, a
Speaker 1: man named Joseph James DeAngelo, who was arrested in twenty
Speaker 1: eighteen on eight counts of murder.
Speaker 2: Were there, ever, any other.
Speaker 1: Suspects outside of Carl Paul's father or did this appear
Speaker 1: to be Okay, this is just one person and we
Speaker 1: just don't have enough evidence to pin him down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was very clear to anyone who was around then,
Speaker 3: And we did extensive interviews with the investigator at the time,
Speaker 3: the district training at the time, lots of family members,
Speaker 3: like many many hours like kind of looking into that possibility,
Speaker 3: and like everyone knew, the community knew, the family knew,
Speaker 3: the police knew, the district attorney knew, everyone knew who
Speaker 3: did it. But at that time it was just, you know,
Speaker 3: getting a murder conviction without a body was almost impossible
Speaker 3: at that point in time, Like there was physical evidence
Speaker 3: tied to it. There was blood on a blanket, there
Speaker 3: was like her missing earing was found in the trunk.
Speaker 3: There was like enough there. But the DA and we
Speaker 3: discussed this with him fairly recently, Like it was a
Speaker 3: lot of circumstantial stuff. They made the decision at a
Speaker 3: certain point to like, well, let's keep looking for the
Speaker 3: body and hopefully we find it. And then once we
Speaker 3: have the body, it's a slam dunk, but without it,
Speaker 3: we think he'll probably walk. And so what actually happens
Speaker 3: is the six years go by with no arrest, and
Speaker 3: so finally the family is fed up and so they
Speaker 3: push They pushed the envelope a little bit and take
Speaker 3: the case to the Attorney General in the state of California,
Speaker 3: who looks at the evidence is like, yeah, there's enough
Speaker 3: to year to pursue a murder charge. We'll go ahead
Speaker 3: and handle it if the local BA doesn't want to,
Speaker 3: And so at that point Yolo County, which is north
Speaker 3: of California, outside of Sacramento, it says, okay, they didn't
Speaker 3: want to be bigfooted by the Attorney General's office and
Speaker 3: kind of relents and says, okay, we'll prosecute the case.
Speaker 3: So the fire is eventually arrested and there's you know,
Speaker 3: weeks of you know, evidentiary hearings in front of a
Speaker 3: judge to determine if the case could go to trial.
Speaker 3: And what the judge ruled is that because they took
Speaker 3: six years to charge him with order, they violated his
Speaker 3: right to a speedy trial, and therefore the case could
Speaker 3: not proceed. So it wasn't anything about the evidence, it
Speaker 3: wasn't anything about he wasn't proved innocent. It was really
Speaker 3: just a technicality that let him walk and that's why
Speaker 3: he never never faced justice.
Speaker 1: One portion also alludes to the fact that Carl Paul's
Speaker 1: father tried to come back into his life later on,
Speaker 1: when Paul was a college football player and a coach.
Speaker 1: Did that connection ever manifest anything lasting? Was Paul ever
Speaker 1: open to trying to have a relationship with his father
Speaker 1: when he tried to come back into his life.
Speaker 3: No, So like the last time they ever they ever
Speaker 3: met or they ever spoken person was in nineteen I believe,
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty eight. And so Paul is a player at
Speaker 3: Washington State and it might be in the year's rock,
Speaker 3: but that the story is the same. Like did they
Speaker 3: had played Ucla? Ucla was the number one team in
Speaker 3: the country at the time. Washington State was a middle
Speaker 3: of the road team. Went to the rose Bult and
Speaker 3: beat UCLA up at the number one team in the country.
Speaker 3: Big deal, right obviously for Paul, for the team, all
Speaker 3: of that, And outside the locker room after the game,
Speaker 3: his dad was there. He had come to the game.
Speaker 3: He wanted to see him, and so Paul, you know,
Speaker 3: gave him a couple of minutes. Since the day it's
Speaker 3: probably not a good idea for you to be here.
Speaker 3: A lot of his you know, friends and family were
Speaker 3: there and he was persented Mangrad around the family. It
Speaker 3: was like, basically, you need to leave and He's like, well,
Speaker 3: I want to have more to do with you in
Speaker 3: your life, and Paul's like, look and tell you, tell
Speaker 3: me more about what happened to my mother. We're not
Speaker 3: going to have a relationship. And that was the last
Speaker 3: time they ever saw each other in person. There was
Speaker 3: one more phone call to following the spring between Paul
Speaker 3: and his father about hey, like kind of one last
Speaker 3: chance to try to solvage the relationship from his father's perspective,
Speaker 3: but you know, they never talked again after that, so
Speaker 3: it was it was less several decades of the man's
Speaker 3: life and Paul had no contact with him.
Speaker 1: You referenced the uncle who does manifest himself throughout the
Speaker 1: written portion of what I've read here as a very
Speaker 1: very interesting, interesting guy. Slick was his nickname, and you know,
Speaker 1: he and others were pretty hell bent on making sure
Speaker 1: that Carl did not enjoy his existence at all, even
Speaker 1: while he was a free man. Can you elaborate on
Speaker 1: some of the things that they did to him to
Speaker 1: just try Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3: And this is some of my favorite part of the
Speaker 3: of the story. And we have got a couple of
Speaker 3: episodes devoted to this stuff. So episode three will be
Speaker 3: basically all the all the stuff they did to this
Speaker 3: man crazy and drive him out of town. And the
Speaker 3: fourth episode is basically a you know, we profile Slick
Speaker 3: and he's just incredible. We spent some time with him
Speaker 3: at his apartment. He's telling us wild stories. But so anyways,
Speaker 3: they're basically the family that there had a large Portuguese
Speaker 3: family who all lived in the community. Carl had no
Speaker 3: family in the area, so he was surrounded by her
Speaker 3: family in this small town outside Sacramento. And after she
Speaker 3: went miss me, they I mean, they made his life
Speaker 3: a living hell. I mean, they would cut off his power.
Speaker 3: They would write like murder on his garage on his
Speaker 3: garage door, and animal blood. They would grow dead animal
Speaker 3: carcasses on his on his law of his property. They
Speaker 3: would chase him out of grocery stores, they would stalk
Speaker 3: him around town. At one point there was a jar
Speaker 3: of urn that they threw through his living room window
Speaker 3: into his into his house. I mean, they really they
Speaker 3: really pushed the envelope, stopping short of physical violence. Certainly
Speaker 3: a lot of it would have, you know, been illegal
Speaker 3: in its own right or what they were doing just
Speaker 3: intimidating this man. But again, like everyone knew he was
Speaker 3: responsible for her disappearance and likely her murder at that time.
Speaker 3: So the police in town basically looked the other way
Speaker 3: and let them kind of have their way with this guy,
Speaker 3: because you know, they felt, you know, like the police
Speaker 3: in the small town felt like this guy should face justice,
Speaker 3: and if this is all they're going to be able
Speaker 3: to do, then they were kind of happy to look
Speaker 3: look the other way. And then this guy slicked the
Speaker 3: uncle of Doris's Doris's brother, who they had a really
Speaker 3: tight relationship. Then we get into that in the pod.
Speaker 3: He was someone who, before the Vietnam War had really
Speaker 3: broken out into a full scale war, was in the
Speaker 3: one hundred and first Airborne Division of the Army and
Speaker 3: had been parachuting in under the cover of darkness, you know,
Speaker 3: assassinating enemy years before the war had broken out. He
Speaker 3: was killing people with his bare hands. This is I
Speaker 3: guess maybe a little violent disclaimer here, Like there was
Speaker 3: like a lot of stuff that was really graphic that
Speaker 3: he described with us, and we get into that on
Speaker 3: the pod. So here's the guy who was responsible for
Speaker 3: a lot of death on his own as a member
Speaker 3: of the as a member of the military, and he
Speaker 3: did that. He did all this like in like he
Speaker 3: was conditioned to believe it's in service of the country.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: You can understand this is the fifties, right, That's that's
Speaker 3: like what he was assigned to do, right, And so
Speaker 3: he executed the cast that he was told to do,
Speaker 3: but still took a real toll on him. And what
Speaker 3: he told us is that or he told his son,
Speaker 3: is that he would have to get work himself into
Speaker 3: a frenzy to be able to do these, like these
Speaker 3: acts for the military. He would have to. He told
Speaker 3: him that he had to pretend like these people were
Speaker 3: harming his sister, and then he would get he would
Speaker 3: get into a state of mind where he's able to
Speaker 3: kind of act in the way that they asked him to.
Speaker 3: And then he gets back to the United States after
Speaker 3: going through all of this, and then his sister really
Speaker 3: is taking from his life. He knows who's responsible for
Speaker 3: doing it, and showed had to you know, had to
Speaker 3: show some restraint. And it was tough because he he
Speaker 3: told us, and this is all laid out in the interview,
Speaker 3: is like he thought about, you know, exacting revenge on
Speaker 3: him and told a few graphic stories about plans they
Speaker 3: had to to torture Carl wolf and get some answers
Speaker 3: out of him. He decided ultimately not to go through
Speaker 3: that because he made the choice to raise Paul Wolfe
Speaker 3: and his brother. It was a real kind of inflection
Speaker 3: point in all of their lives. But it was like morally,
Speaker 3: he always he felt like he was kind of sealed.
Speaker 3: He religious guy, and kind of what's done is done.
Speaker 3: What's one more? It won't affect me, you know, ultimately, right,
Speaker 3: It is kind of where his mindset was so really
Speaker 3: fascinating characters, a lot of really good storytellers throughout the family.
Speaker 3: And I think that's the podcast medium was really the
Speaker 3: perfect way to text you, hut this story.
Speaker 1: Last thing on this, Kyle, then we'll do a couple
Speaker 1: of other things for us that you lose. As if
Speaker 1: losing your mother allegedly at the hands of your father
Speaker 1: as a young man wasn't enough of a tragedy to
Speaker 1: handle throughout one's life. Paul Wolfe was handed another very,
Speaker 1: very tough blow as his wife, Tammy, in nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: seven was diagnosed with a brain tumor and was given
Speaker 1: three to five years to live, and she later on
Speaker 1: passed in March of two thousand and two. I always
Speaker 1: find if I always find it interesting when you hear
Speaker 1: stories behind people that you only know of as like
Speaker 1: a coach or a player or someone with some sort
Speaker 1: of notoriety. I mean, I don't know that I really
Speaker 1: have a question, but this is just another piece of
Speaker 1: the Paul Wolf puzzle that I think deserves to be
Speaker 1: talked about.
Speaker 3: You know, you know, he's really like I think, because
Speaker 3: he had such a high profile stint at Washington State
Speaker 3: that did not go well, right, They had the record,
Speaker 3: His record there was not good. It was historically bad
Speaker 3: in fact, but I think like he was so hardened
Speaker 3: by these scenes that he had gone through his life
Speaker 3: that just the fact that he was able to become
Speaker 3: a head coach of Easter Washington. It was the head
Speaker 3: coach at his alma mater, where he tried to clean
Speaker 3: up a mess. I mean, he certainly had the program
Speaker 3: in much better shape to hand off to Mike Leach
Speaker 3: than when he inherited it from Bildoba. It was just
Speaker 3: kind of in shambles when he got there. They didn't
Speaker 3: really have a chance. But I think a lot of
Speaker 3: people just formulated their opinion based on those years and
Speaker 3: the win loss right, and you didn't hear about what
Speaker 3: this guy had had gone through getting to that point, right,
Speaker 3: And so I gained a ton of respect for Paul
Speaker 3: over the last several years getting to know him and
Speaker 3: learning about him and his family. They have, everything they
Speaker 3: went through and how they banded together. The story is
Speaker 3: really it's a true crime story. It's a sort of
Speaker 3: search for a missing woman. But you know, I've been
Speaker 3: telling people, it's a story about a family and like
Speaker 3: this family bond that was unbreakable in many ways, just
Speaker 3: the ties that they have the last is over several decades,
Speaker 3: all unified behind like this single cause is really impressive.
Speaker 3: And then for Paul to progress through all of that
Speaker 3: and be very successful, like the winds went there at
Speaker 3: Washington State, but he progressed through. He was on, you know,
Speaker 3: hard about stuff with the Niners when they went to
Speaker 3: the Super Bowl. He bounced around in college, and now
Speaker 3: he's back in the headshat Poly you're trying to resurrect
Speaker 3: that program as a head coach once again. So I'm
Speaker 3: glad he's got another opportunity to try to make the
Speaker 3: best of a of a cool situation down there at Cutler.
Speaker 2: It's the best way for people to find the pod. Kyle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it just called The Unforgotten Season three, Finding
Speaker 3: the Worst Wolf. It's anywhere, you know, It's on all
Speaker 3: podcast platforms, so anyone who's who's into the podcast scene
Speaker 3: should have no trouble finding it. I've tweeted a little
Speaker 3: bit about it, kind of broke out of my Twitter
Speaker 3: hibernation to promote it a bit. So they just want
Speaker 3: to find me on Twitter. You can easily navigate. But yeah,
Speaker 3: The Unforgotten Finding the Worst Wolf. Any googling, any searching,
Speaker 3: should be pretty easy to find.
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 1: All right, let's move over to the Coach's bull that
Speaker 1: was released yesterday. My question is how much stock should
Speaker 1: anybody put into this? How serious of an endeavor is
Speaker 1: this for any college football coach?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Deeply, like deeply unseerious, Like if if you're like if
Speaker 3: there's twenty five teams ranked, or I forget, how many
Speaker 3: actually voting members there are, Like how many actual coaches
Speaker 3: is voted? Like the percentage is very low. It's a
Speaker 3: lot of sids like staffers, assistance, those sorts putting it together,
Speaker 3: and a lot of them are just looking at way
Speaker 3: too early lists and using that as a starting point,
Speaker 3: making a couple of adjustments just so it's not the same, right,
Speaker 3: this is like these people do not take this seriously.
Speaker 3: That being said, I love this stuff, like I love
Speaker 3: the scene where it starts. I think it's just like
Speaker 3: part of the part of the tradition of college football
Speaker 3: are a right, let's let's see where it moves and
Speaker 3: but looks like at the end of the year, and
Speaker 3: it's like nowhere near right, It's always going to be
Speaker 3: a lot different, I think in like in this era too,
Speaker 3: it's so much harder to predict it. Collegeable has always
Speaker 3: been hard to kind of project what, you know, the
Speaker 3: top twenty five, But now with all the transfer stuff,
Speaker 3: no one knows anything. No one's ever known anything. But
Speaker 3: now it's it's really thrown you know, your blindfolded throwing
Speaker 3: darts here. But you know, it's a good it's a
Speaker 3: good talking piece and sets expectations and storylines. It's always
Speaker 3: kind of evolved from where those rankings are at the
Speaker 3: end of the year a few.
Speaker 1: Years ago because the conversation that you and I are
Speaker 1: having on air now often you know, kind of transpire
Speaker 1: where talking heads wonder whether or not any coach actually
Speaker 1: takes this endeavor seriously, or if they even fill out
Speaker 1: their polls. So I texted an in state coach a
Speaker 1: few years ago, and I told him it would be
Speaker 1: off the record, so I've never brought his name on air,
Speaker 1: And I said, have you ever done this before?
Speaker 2: And if so, how serious do you take it? He said,
Speaker 2: I haven't done it once.
Speaker 1: You have you had any conversations with coaches about that dynamic,
Speaker 1: whether or not they even do the thing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I have. And so I talked with David
Speaker 3: sew Wan. He was at Stanford. I was around them
Speaker 3: quite a bit in his early years. He actually did
Speaker 3: fill it out for one year and he's like, I
Speaker 3: felt like, you know, if it's called the coach's poll,
Speaker 3: like he's felt like in an obligation to do it himself.
Speaker 3: But then he did it for one year and realized
Speaker 3: like what an exercise and futility it was, and so
Speaker 3: he stopped, Like he stopped participating in Stanford, stopped participating
Speaker 3: after his one season, and he's like, look, it's called
Speaker 3: the coach's pull. It should be the coaches. But now
Speaker 3: that I've done it, I realized it's I don't have
Speaker 3: time for this to do it, like spend the time
Speaker 3: to really do it correctly, so we're just not going
Speaker 3: to participate. It's the only one I've ever talked to
Speaker 3: who admitted to actually doing it themselves. Like no one
Speaker 3: else I've ever talked to has been upfront and said, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, you know, I do it each week up
Speaker 3: and down. I think some of the coaches probably have
Speaker 3: like who do you want to be number one? Who's
Speaker 3: your top five? And they have their staffer whoever is
Speaker 3: still out the rest there's like some I think that
Speaker 3: involvement is like somewhat common, but let's certainly not all
Speaker 3: the way through.
Speaker 1: So the main takeaway here locally is that Jake Rreetz
Speaker 1: laugh departs for Tulane, yet BYU still cracks that top
Speaker 1: twenty five.
Speaker 2: They come into number twenty three.
Speaker 1: We still don't know who's going to start under center McKay, Hillstead,
Speaker 1: traycon Borget and Bear.
Speaker 2: Bachmeyer the three battling.
Speaker 1: So my two part question is your thoughts on BYU
Speaker 1: actually cracking the top twenty five and if Jake stays,
Speaker 1: where do you think they land.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the good. So I think like the fact
Speaker 3: that they're in the top twenty five. I think it's
Speaker 3: probably a lot of this is so based on where
Speaker 3: you did, what you did last year, independent of like
Speaker 3: what your what your roster looks, right like, right so,
Speaker 3: I think because when they went eleven games last year,
Speaker 3: you were you're always gonna get a shot to start
Speaker 3: in the top twenty five, regardless of what happened with Retslaw.
Speaker 3: Obviously that's they ended up in twenty three eight with him,
Speaker 3: you know, probably top fifteen, I would imagine, and some
Speaker 3: some people punished for for not having a returning quarterback
Speaker 3: of course, you know, is it fair? Yeah, Like I
Speaker 3: look at it. I haven't actually pulled up right now.
Speaker 3: I kind of thought Texas Tech would be a little higher.
Speaker 3: Like I'm actually surprised that you are. And I didn't
Speaker 3: see where the Big twelve preseason predictions were, Like with
Speaker 3: all the money that Texas Tech invested in its program,
Speaker 3: I kind of thought that would be a little higher,
Speaker 3: not that I'm looking at now, but again, like it's
Speaker 3: just there's no rhyme or reason to why, especially when
Speaker 3: you get when you get out of the top ten,
Speaker 3: in particular fare them people are I think they try
Speaker 3: to do it well at the top, and then the
Speaker 3: lower you get in the process, it's like you can't
Speaker 3: really differentiate between these teams. So anyway anywhere from like
Speaker 3: I don't know, fourteen to twenty five, all those teams
Speaker 3: you could probably just throw into a hat and pick
Speaker 3: out randomly and then probably ended up looking pretty similarly.
Speaker 1: And just because we're the home of the Utes and
Speaker 1: there a mile away, I'll ask you about Utah technically
Speaker 1: coming in at thirty with others receiving votes, and whether
Speaker 1: or not you think the a people next week will
Speaker 1: kind of reflect a similar area for the Utes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they'll get votes. And I think the defense was
Speaker 3: so good last year right in the quarterback playoffy and
Speaker 3: you guys and your listeners no more than I do.
Speaker 3: But like you bring in, the defense was not an issue.
Speaker 3: It won't be an issue again this year. You bring
Speaker 3: a quarterback who had worked with his offensive coordinator, had success.
Speaker 3: It's a proven formula to resurrect teams, right to have
Speaker 3: that sort of camaraderie. And now that you have a
Speaker 3: player who's proved proven he can run an offense and
Speaker 3: run into this exact offense, you know in theory it
Speaker 3: solves the problem, right, and so you have this elite defense.
Speaker 3: Even if you were like somewhat competent offense, if you taught,
Speaker 3: like the team would have had a lot more wins
Speaker 3: last year. And so that simple, very rudimentary combination like
Speaker 3: makes me optimistic that they can be a lot more
Speaker 3: successful this year. And I think kind of showing up
Speaker 3: at thirty or whatever is kind of reflects this same
Speaker 3: sort of logic.
Speaker 1: According to both this Coach's poll and then pretty much
Speaker 1: everything else, including Bill Conley's rankings for you guys over
Speaker 1: at ESPN, it does feel like Arizona State is the
Speaker 1: prohibitive favorite and there's a bit of a gap between
Speaker 1: them and everybody else. To your point, we look at
Speaker 1: what you did a year ago, and we know what
Speaker 1: ASU did a year ago. Seventy nine percent of their
Speaker 1: production is returning, including Sam Levitt. Does it feel like
Speaker 1: they are the deserved favorite in the Big twelve this year?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think so. I mean, like loudn Scattaboo is tough,
Speaker 3: right because he, I mean, he was so much of
Speaker 3: what they did as a rusher, you know, as a
Speaker 3: pass catcher. But and it kind of goes back to
Speaker 3: what you were saying about Retzlaf, like you have a
Speaker 3: if you have a good team and your starting quarterback
Speaker 3: is coming back, you're getting That's just like people are
Speaker 3: just gonna think expectations are going to be high. And
Speaker 3: that's the case with Ascu. Elevit's coming back. He had
Speaker 3: a good year. I think the expectation is it'll be better.
Speaker 3: He'll be better this year and even relied on more
Speaker 3: without Scottaboo around to carry the ball their back and
Speaker 3: burnning back. His name is escaping me off hand, was
Speaker 3: pretty was a pretty good player last year. Kind of relief,
Speaker 3: so that he's something they feel I can kind of
Speaker 3: step in and have a really productive year as well.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I think like it's earned right after after
Speaker 3: the year they had and the good showing in the playoffs.
Speaker 3: I mean, they probably shouldn't be Texas. I think they
Speaker 3: probably felt they should be Texas.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 3: So the fact that it was a it was a
Speaker 3: coin flip game against a team with a ton of talent,
Speaker 3: you know, shows that ACU is for real. And I
Speaker 3: just think that, you know, the coaching turnaround there has
Speaker 3: been as impressive as any in college football, and you
Speaker 3: have so much of college football is the coaching staff, right,
Speaker 3: that's coaching Madison football more than any other sport, and
Speaker 3: so I think they're in a they're operating from place
Speaker 3: of strength there as well.
Speaker 1: As I always say, I will not ask you about
Speaker 1: the depth of real Salt Lake and whether or not
Speaker 1: their third left back is something you think can lift
Speaker 1: them into the playoffs. But Kyle sonce you and I spoke.
Speaker 1: Diego Luna had himself an ice little Gold Cup run.
Speaker 1: He's been back on the ground here for a little bit,
Speaker 1: and he he is by far their best most productive player.
Speaker 1: They did bring in a couple of summer editions, one
Speaker 1: DP a nine and then what their manager calls a
Speaker 1: nine and a half. But do you think Diego Luna
Speaker 1: has done enough to solidify a spot for next year's
Speaker 1: World Cup?
Speaker 3: You know, it's I wouldn't say like fully, it's not
Speaker 3: fully set in stone yet. I expect him to be
Speaker 3: on the team, and I'm almost ready to think that
Speaker 3: he has a chance to play like he hasn't. I
Speaker 3: don't think he's proven to be in that spot yet,
Speaker 3: but I think that that that's in play, and the
Speaker 3: fact that he's come so far so quickly that like,
Speaker 3: that's fascinating, right, It was just a few years ago
Speaker 3: that you know, I don't know how many, maybe four
Speaker 3: years ago now that San Jose like didn't even like
Speaker 3: he was an academy player and they dropped him from
Speaker 3: the academy, goes to the USL route, you know, lashes
Speaker 3: up with the RSL is really has really taken off.
Speaker 3: And the fact that he that we can even have
Speaker 3: this discussion about whether he's gonna be on the team,
Speaker 3: whether he's going to contribute, what his role should be.
Speaker 3: I mean, that sort of trajectory is so rare in
Speaker 3: American soccer, to jump so quickly through the USL, through
Speaker 3: an MLS team and to being contention for a roster
Speaker 3: spot when there's so many of the other guys that
Speaker 3: his position are playing at big clubs in Europe. Right,
Speaker 3: I think, you know, RSL fans should enjoy him as
Speaker 3: long as they can, because I think he's got a
Speaker 3: future that's going to take him places with much brighter spotlets.
Speaker 2: One more soccer question for you.
Speaker 1: I wonder and I've drawn the parallel on the show
Speaker 1: between Rest in Peace, Grant Wall, the Beckham Experiment, the
Speaker 1: David Beckham MLS partnership that has continued into his foray
Speaker 1: into ownership with the Miami Club, and Grant wrote a
Speaker 1: great book called The Beckham Experiment that I read that
Speaker 1: I thought was awesome. And then the parallel between David
Speaker 1: Beckham and what Lionel Messi has brought to the league
Speaker 1: now I always hesitate to do it because then you
Speaker 1: get soccer p I know that Messi is twenty times
Speaker 1: a player that Beckham was. I understand that, and maybe
Speaker 1: when you're that good, you don't necessarily have to be
Speaker 1: the type.
Speaker 2: Of statesman that Beckham was for MLS.
Speaker 1: I mean, Beckham came multiple times, and Kyle he stayed
Speaker 1: after matches for hours and signed autographs like he got it.
Speaker 2: He understood what the deal was.
Speaker 1: He understood that he wasn't the player that he was
Speaker 1: once upon a time with man U or the English
Speaker 1: national team, and so he was here more of like
Speaker 1: a rep for the game and a rep for the league.
Speaker 1: And he just could not have been better. And maybe
Speaker 1: it's just because Messi is Messi, he doesn't have to
Speaker 1: do those things. But doesn't show up to the All
Speaker 1: Star Game, they suspend him, which felt a little bit wild,
Speaker 1: But do you think MLS is getting the ROI whether
Speaker 1: and you can define that in any way, shape or
Speaker 1: form with this Messi experiment that they've undertaken over the
Speaker 1: past couple of years.
Speaker 3: So that's really interesting because it's been massive, undoubtedly, Like
Speaker 3: the exposure that the league has gotten as a result
Speaker 3: of having Messi in the league is significant, and now
Speaker 3: like how does it meet the other side of now
Speaker 3: it doesn't meet expectations, Like whatever Messi does, and it'll
Speaker 3: probably be for the rest of his life, Like he
Speaker 3: goes on vacation in his seventies, he'll still draw a crowd. Right,
Speaker 3: He's that type of just talent and just like personality.
Speaker 3: It's just that people just gravitate to him, and he's
Speaker 3: like a god for people in Argentina and really around
Speaker 3: the world. So I think he's been an overall it's
Speaker 3: been incredible for the league, but I also don't think
Speaker 3: the league has done enough to make to maximize him
Speaker 3: at the same time, if that makes sense. So like
Speaker 3: there's so it's kind of too pronged at least, like
Speaker 3: it's been huge, it's really it's certainly benefited like a
Speaker 3: lot of the people who bought Apple Plus subscriptions just
Speaker 3: to watch Messi. It's probably hard to calculate. I mean,
Speaker 3: there's a reason that that was part of the deal
Speaker 3: for him, right, he gets a cut of subscriptions to
Speaker 3: the league just for internationally, just because they're not buying
Speaker 3: the subscriptions to watch MLS. They're buying subscriptions to watch
Speaker 3: Lionel Messi play soccer wherever he's going to be.
Speaker 2: So I think.
Speaker 3: Ultimately what we'll find out is long term, like when
Speaker 3: he's gone, what does the league look like and how
Speaker 3: will his time in the league have have pushed it forward.
Speaker 3: It comes at an interest time with the Cup coming
Speaker 3: and that's also going to have an impact. But I
Speaker 3: thought there was like a really strong wave of Messi
Speaker 3: storylines and just like involvement when he came over. But
Speaker 3: I really feel like it's tapered off quite a bit
Speaker 3: this year. There's the Club World Cup where he participated,
Speaker 3: which I think was a nice boom to kind of
Speaker 3: have him. They advanced through the group, which was they
Speaker 3: were the only MLS club to do that. But then
Speaker 3: you know, you get to PSG and you see there's
Speaker 3: levels to this, So yeah, it's it's it's an interesting again,
Speaker 3: Like I just think after the fact, how many what
Speaker 3: will m l what will attendance look like in Miami
Speaker 3: when Messi is gone? Right, we'll find out because it's
Speaker 3: not there. There are not very many inter Miami fans.
Speaker 3: There are Messi fans who are going to support him wherever,
Speaker 3: and so we'll find out. It's hard to calibrate right now.
Speaker 1: Last thing, I'll set you loose. Less than a year
Speaker 1: away from the World Cup. What's the Kyle Bondeger A
Speaker 1: confidence level in our team? Whatever that means to you,
Speaker 1: I mean, get out of group whatever, something that could
Speaker 1: be somewhat exciting for.
Speaker 2: The World Cup.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think you have to get out
Speaker 3: of the group more. It's a massive failure, especially with
Speaker 3: an expanded World Cup, right, so you go from thirty
Speaker 3: two teams to forty eight teams. That inherently is going
Speaker 3: to dilute the competition. And so it should be easier
Speaker 3: to get out of the group because there's less good teams.
Speaker 3: And you got out of the group last time and
Speaker 3: a tough group in a sense, and you have known
Speaker 3: who's really aged out, right, so you should have that.
Speaker 3: You should have essentially the same team, but guys who
Speaker 3: are like further deep into their prime. You have a
Speaker 3: coach who is you know, on paper better, right, he's
Speaker 3: certainly a bigger name and has achieved more at a
Speaker 3: higher level of the sport, but that hasn't shown up,
Speaker 3: you know, in the last two years. Obviously Burhalter was
Speaker 3: with them during during Copa and that they crashed out early.
Speaker 2: The Gold Cup.
Speaker 3: You have a small complement of the full team in
Speaker 3: the tournament at all, which was so you can't really
Speaker 3: evaluate the team and how they've done. You're not going
Speaker 3: to have the qualification process. I feel like interested in
Speaker 3: the US national team is really down right now just
Speaker 3: because of all those factors. So yeah, I mean, if
Speaker 3: you don't advance, it's an abject disaster. And you probably
Speaker 3: because there's an extra I believe there's an extra round
Speaker 3: of the of the knockout phase two, so you probably
Speaker 3: need to win a win a knockout game as well
Speaker 3: to really define as a success. But I think if
Speaker 3: you had asked me about expectations about this team after
Speaker 3: the last World Cup, I would say, look, you got
Speaker 3: to make it to the quarterfinals. But now you know,
Speaker 3: there hasn't been a lot of positive developments for the
Speaker 3: team recently to have those sort of expectations.
Speaker 1: Kyle, thanks man for the time, excellent work on the
Speaker 1: story and the pod. We'll make sure to send it
Speaker 1: out on our socials. Have a great week and we'll
Speaker 1: chat soon, all right.
Speaker 2: Thanks.
Speaker 1: Ros A bone Gera ESPN covers college football and soccer.
Speaker 1: This new podcast that he has with Adam Rittenberg is
Speaker 1: about the disappearance of Paul Wolfe's mother, and I read
Speaker 1: the written description of the disappearance of Dolores wolf I
Speaker 1: have not listened to the pod yet, but the story
Speaker 1: is gripping and it is something that is definitely worth
Speaker 1: your time. At Bonnegera ESPN. That's his social channel. You
Speaker 1: can find the link to all of his work up there.
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