Hour 1: Tony's Massive Announcement
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Mike Ryan's stomach is genuinely upset, and that's just getting started. Greg Cody's rage is genuinely upset, and that seems to just be getting started. Emotions here are...

They are antsy. They are troubled. Billy, I see the smirk on your face. Vibes are good today. Billy, I feel like you're secretly rooting for the Panthers to lose. No, why? I'm a Panthers fan. Yes, I know. I'm from South Florida. Yes, publicly. Go Icecats. You like FIU's Panthers? Paws up. That's right. Tony has a bone to pick with FIU. We can get to that later. We're at a standoff of me and FIU. What happened? Careful. Don't mess things up for me. Dan. Dan. Dan Levitard.

Me, if you can think of this as an old western, right? FIU standing outside in the middle of that long hallway. Tumbleweed. Tumbleweed. Is it a classroom? Is it a classroom hallway? It's not a classroom. It's like the dirt road where the... Oh, in the middle of town. Since it's Miami, the tumbleweed is just a Flanagan's tumbleweed onion thing going by. It's just a big bale of...

Coke. So I kick open the door, right? I step out of the saloon. Wait, are you inside or outside? I'm inside, but I'm kicking the door of the saloon. Generally, we kick into a room. No, he's kicking out because he knows there's a standoff. We rarely kick out of saloon doors. But usually it's the sheriff entering the saloon. No, I know, but it's rarely you get that.

Remember when saloon doors were a fixture in homes, usually into the kitchen? Greg, you remember that? Yes, I do. I miss those days. I like those. A simpler time. Yeah. It gave just enough privacy. Let me ask you, did any of you guys have in your grandparents' home when you were young, instead of a door, just like this?

beads that came down from the top of the doorway that would just, it would create distance between the two rooms. Was that a Hispanic thing or was that, what was that? Was that unique to anybody's childhood? I don't think so. I think the Brady's had that. That's associated with shag carpeting. Yeah. So it's a 70s thing? Yeah, it's a 70s thing. It's a hippie thing? Or Whoopi Goldberg and Ghost. Yes.

When I bought my house, I had to take one of those down. Sad day. Didn't want to get rid of it. Had to. I associate it with Hispanic, though. It's not Hispanic. Well, that's because they're in Miami. Yeah, Jim Martz had beads in his house. Kick open this loon door. Pshh!

I walk out there. I'm in my Western garb. I'm kind of doing this walk right here. FIU. The entire FIU is just right in front of me. We got the picture. You've painted it. We're at a standoff right now. Is it a building you're up against or like the president? It's the president. It's all the workers. It's everybody. He's a nice man.

The IT department mostly. But I'm standing there, both hands next to my holsters. We got it. You're facing off. Hold on. He's painting a picture. He's painting a picture here. More clearly painted. I'm a big girl fan. Go slowly. Speaking of beads, incidentally, and I want to get back to this, Joe Mazzulla prays with rosary beads that are made out of the actual parquet floor in Boston. Speaking of beads, that guy in New Orleans probably had some around his neck. Greg Cody? Not Greg. He had some all over the place. Anyways, so I'm looking at the IT department. They send me an email. What?

They sent me an email saying, we're deleting your account. Yeah, gotta be careful. June 25th, your email account with us will no longer be valid. We will be deleting it. You haven't used it? I have been using it like a mother. So why? Why are they doing it? I don't know. I don't know. But that's the issue. That's the standoff. How is it that I'm using your domain's EDU like, hey,

I'm a proud graduate of the school. I'm emailing people, I'm doing business, I'm shaking hands, kissing babies, doing all this stuff with F-I-U-E-D-U as my domain address and now you wanna take it away from me? I've got Papa John's there, I've got Panera there, I've probably got Domino's there, I've got McDonald's app, I've got Uber, I've got all my different apps.

into that one thing. - Who do you have to call to get this? - You can't, I told him, this happened to me. - This happened to Billy. - I actually got locked out and every account that I signed up for, I have like apps, like I have this gas app, this UpSide app that I've used where I go and I scan it and you get 10 cents off, right? But you don't really get 10 cents off.

You pay the full amount, but then they credit you the $0.10 per gallon, right? So if your car is a 16-gallon tank, that's $1.60 you get back. It lives in this app until you cash out. What happened to old Billy Gill? He signed up for it with his college email, and then he got locked out of his email. So now I have...

damn near $107 that I can't get out of that account because every time I try to log into the app and say, hey, send it to me like in a Walmart gift card, an Amazon gift, because those are the options, or send it to my banking, whatever. It's like, okay, we're going to send a confirmation to your email. And I said, I don't have that email. Can I switch my email? No, you cannot.

So I'm stuck. I'm at like $107.28 that are just sitting in that app. And I'm telling Tony, you better start unloading those emails right now. You need to start switching when you can because they're not playing around. When they switch email servers, it's gone. Can't we rattle their cages at all? Well, we rattle the cage, but that's on Saturdays. Sometimes Tuesdays now because of the situation that they're in. I know a good law firm if you guys need one. I may need one because it might be Collide U.V.,

FIU. Here's my question that I want to know. And I'm a proud Panther. Sometimes, you know, I'll call some games for them. I try to do my part. You're wearing right now. You're wearing how much Panthers gear are you wearing? You can see just a hoodie. So anyways, I'm a proud Panther. I try to raise awareness, but I also like to say what's just and what's unjust at times. You know what I mean? I'm not trying to rattle the cages. You're trying to paint me out to do. I don't want to stand on my leg was falling asleep. The point is this. Okay.

Tony, myself, I don't know who else would consider themselves a proud alum. - I had one of those email addresses. - Of the great Florida International University. When I would send out emails, I would send it out with pride, with Panther pride, if you will, at my [email protected]. I don't wanna tell you in case it reactivated, I don't want a bunch of people knowing my emails. But I would send it out with pride, the @fiu.edu, much like, much like, much like,

Many Harvard grads send things out with their @harvard.edu. - Oh, jeez. - And I don't see much of a difference between the two, if I'm gonna be perfectly honest with you. Whether you got an email from an @harvard.edu, an @fiu.edu, not much of a difference. But I bet you dollars to donuts that Pablo Torre still uses his @harvard.edu and he's a million years old. - Dork. - And he's still using it. How's that possible?

Why can't I spread my Panther pride year after year, decade after decade? Is it 10 years? Is that what's happening? 10 years? 5 years? It's exactly 10 years since I graduated. Dude, checkmate them. Go sign up for a class today. Go sign up for a class today and then they can't take it away from you and then drop it tomorrow. You got to checkmate them. Go sign up for a summer class. Exactly right. This is how you win in a shootout. You go out there and they're expecting a gun. And what do you have? A computer where you register for ENC 1102.

I passed that one already, though. I bet they didn't do this to T.Y. Hilton. T.Y. Hilton's a whole other story. What the hell is his son doing going to Wisconsin? Okay? There's nothing going on in Wisconsin. Respectfully, to the great people of Wisconsin. Respect the legacy. Mm-hmm. Yes, Dan? Edger and James' son...

is at Cincinnati. You go where it is that the scholarships are, where the availabilities are. I don't know if FIU was offering T.Y. Hilton's. No, they were. Yeah, they were in the final six, I believe. Maybe he found out about the email situation. Wisconsin's offering you, I think. Do you see a scenario in which Wisconsin offers him a scholarship and FIU's like, you know what, he's just not there yet for us. Maybe Wisconsin offered him a lifetime email and that's what happened. Yeah.

You can have him. We don't see him as a Sun Belt player for Conference USA. How do you turn down FIU's football legacy? That's what I'm asking. That big program. Out of the cage. It's been a big program for a long time. Frank Gore also has a son that's in Wisconsin. What's going on there? Great.

Greg Cody, Wisconsin's got a good program. That's your power. I mean, who's our quarterback? 9-4 every year. Well, now with the expanded playoff, you're going to get in. Pity invites. You guys, wait a minute. You're going to say that Wisconsin doesn't have a good football? Wisconsin sucks. I mean, I look at the only... Is Gary Alvarez still there? Have they had corn something? Or is that Nebraska? What is Wisconsin? They're the Iowa of Wisconsin. He's exactly right about that.

Wisconsin's the Iowa of Wisconsin? Yeah, it's just one of these mid-west, boring mid-west teams. You know, run the ball a thousand times with Jonathan Taylor. One more time so I can get it. Jonathan. They're the Iowa of Wisconsin. Wisconsin is the Iowa of Wisconsin. He's right.

He's right. Greg Cody's podcast, The Greg Cody Show featuring Greg Cody. He has been trying to the entire show. He says that he has something on his podcast that's going to enrage Mike Ryan and delight me. So what is it that you're doing on The Greg Cody Show featuring Greg Cody? Well, you have to listen to it to believe it because this shocked me. But Paul Maurice...

through one of his PR people gets in touch with me a few days ago and asked me to address the team to give the team a little pep talk preparatory to the biggest game seven in the history of the biggest game sevens. And so I did. And so my address to the Cats is heard live and exclusively. It's not live. Well, that's true. It isn't. But it is in a special hard knocks hockey room.

Greg's Lobo's Hard Knocks. You know how Hard Knocks has a bunch of different variations? We got an off-season Hard Knocks. Right. I do wish I could... I'm going to listen to that because I do wish I could enjoy this a little bit more than I could. Thank you. It is pretty crazy. I wasn't...

I was nine years old during that Rangers run against the Canucks. And I felt the enormity of that as it was, but I was only nine years old. This would generally, and I hope that they win so we can look back and say, wow, what a, what a cool time. I don't think I'd look back on it. Wow. What a cool time. I don't think I'd be able to separate myself from the pain of,

if they actually make history and blow this. But this is the biggest hockey game of our lifetime. I'm stunned that you're going in expecting them to lose. I don't know if you're trying to manage your expectations in the thoughts that you're going to dilute the disappointment, which you're not. No, me preparing myself for loss is not going to make it hurt less.

I don't think. And I do, like, people know how much I care, and I'd like to thank everybody that didn't text me over the weekend. You're welcome. Because they knew, like, what kind of state I was in. Dude, all the blood left my face, and I don't think it's come back yet. I am a zombie.

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Official sleep and wellness partner of the NFL. See store for details. Don Levitard. World Raw 3. Stugatz. We're going to get that off the ground. World Raw 3, colon. Our group chat has a pretty good feeling about this one. This is the Don Levitard Show with the Stugatz.

It is a terrifying thing, and I love terror with your sports. I love caring so much that it is unreasonable. Caring so much that you have a hard time getting it out of your head. Chris Cody, how was your weekend? Swear to you that Friday night, what happened Friday night, I imagine that people who care about that team locally had a shitty weekend because of what happened Friday night.

Almost nothing else is going to fix that it felt shitty to you all weekend. Do I have this wrong, Chris? It's been a terrible weekend, Dan. I've been trying. My wife has just been like, what's wrong with you? And she knows what's wrong with me. My wife is dreading the game because she knows how I am during these games. I'm not selling the ticket, Billy. What's your price? Is it $10,000? I'll do $10,000 for both. F*** it.

$10,000 for both tickets. $7,500. $9,500, man. Come on. How can you say no to $9,500? I got to be there. I'm already regretting saying that. You can buy tickets Upper Deck. I'm telling you, get in. I want to be with my people. I got my people around me. I've been here for three years. No, the Upper Deck people are more fun. No. Yeah.

You're expecting to be down 3-1 and chasing scared all game? You said you wouldn't be nervous if the Panthers were down going into the third. One goal. Will you at least give me that? We can't be down by more than one. If we're down by more than one. They were down 4-2 last time at home, and I thought they were going to win the game. And they made it 4-3, five minutes inside of the third period, and then they just spent the rest of the period pelting down.

Edmonton, and I'm sitting there thinking to myself, okay, they're going to do what they've been doing all season. I'm really stunned that you guys have lost faith when the sample size is more than 90 games on you have the best third period team and the last three games have erased 90 games for you guys. Skinners do for a bad game.

He's had great games. He's due. That's the way the hockey gods work. I have a question for you, Greg. When Coach Maurice invited you in, what day did you give the speech? Was it yesterday? I want to say it was yesterday. Oh, wow. So Sergey Bobrovsky was not there. No, he was not there. Wow. So that's a big question mark in this game. You made a big bounce back game for him. Yeah, they gave bad quotes to him.

I think in the speech, though, you say to him, hey, Bob, how's it going? Yeah, I assumed he was there. You expected him to be there as a team player. Big room, though. A couple of guys on the team look a little bit like Bob from a distance. Imagine, just to put things into perspective.

Sergei Bobrovsky getting the game off is as though you're in the middle of a seven-game series and you give the goalie the day off before the biggest game of the season. The practice off. Yeah, the practice. But he was the first one on the ice. Roy is there at Bill Seidel's Nissan. He is there. I want to laugh, but where they came from was so bad. I want to defend it. I'm like, no. But it does look a lot like a dealership. It's not even an issue.

But it's so nice. It's like the nicest facility in the NHL. I don't understand what you guys are doing. The new car dealerships all over South Florida are beautiful. Especially Williamson Cadillac. They're just sort of antiseptic glass wall new buildings and they look like all the other

buildings. That's the only point I'm making. I'm not doing anything else there, but Roy is there near the action. And he reports exclusively that Bob was the first one on the ice. They are no longer hiding their goalie. Their goalie is no longer a fugitive. Uh,

being hidden from fandom and the authorities and, and he is out on the ice and, uh, whatever it is that Mike thinks Bob is doing with scrambled egg for brains because it's game seven and Edmonton is scary that he is now out in public in front of people. They are no longer hiding the goalie. I trust Paul Maurice to know how to manage this situation with Bobrovsky better than I do. It just all kind of feels like,

It seems like a lot. It's such a strange position. No one knows what's going to work. And I...

The one thing that I felt like pretty certain about it was like, wow, for the first time in the postseason, I think they have a goalie advantage. And Stuart Skinner, who's been pulled at points this. Yeah, I think at one point he had the worst save percentage for a goalie that had been that far in postseason history. And for whatever reason, games four through seven, he's been lights out. And Bob, who hasn't had many games in the Stanley Cup.

His Stanley Cup stats are really bad, and that's with having two dynamite remember-for-all-time games. Yeah, I feel like them giving Bob a day of rest...

like a little bit of a desperation to me. All of the line tweaking that Paul's been doing the past week, it just feels a little bit desperate. Maybe it should. Maybe desperation is required. But when all of a sudden you're giving Bob a day off, it just felt a little... I like desperate. How about we just make it all maximum desperate? Everyone's maximum desperate. We've got maximum...

There was one person that was reaching out to me a lot.

And thankfully, I think they finally got the message yesterday and they left me alone. It was David Samson, who genuinely does this. He wants to see how I'm doing. I think he kind of offered me a ticket to Game 7. What? Take it. I said no. Why? Because no matter what happens tonight...

And I like David. This is not a shot at David. I just want to experience it next to my wife. She's been there with me for like this ride. Let's say for one game in New York that I went to with Chris. I just want to be, no matter what, if this is going to be the extreme highs or the extreme lows, I want to be with my wife. So I turned down what I think was an offer for a ticket. I wasn't exactly sure because I didn't even want to consider it all that much. No, it was. It was an offer for a ticket. And he called me worried that you were in an incredibly dark place. And if I had checked on you...

No, I think because you knew not to text me, which I appreciate. Really, I do. This is...

Really, really shook by this. I told you on Friday, that was no bullshit. That was a legit part of Mike right there. I want this title more than I've ever wanted any pro sports title because the actual connection. There's not a lot of connection points this market has to it. I went to a job fair when I was in high school. The Panthers were the only organization that hit me back. I met with every single team. I was a sales... I ruined my eyesight putting the white pages into Excel. I was there. I saw so many of my friends lose their jobs.

I didn't even get a hockey season when I was over there interning. And all of that was built from the 1996 Cup run that made me a fan seemingly for life until Michael Yormark kind of beat it out of me in ways that David Sampson kind of beat out baseball fandom. And I got it back. I finally got it back. I finally had a team that I could identify with. I love Matthew Kachuk. Like, he's part of my own family. These runs, there's nothing like a deep Cup run. And to be...

the butt of every joke forevermore because the teams that you hold up as examples of chokers, they're not of an era that anyone has a connection to. But Mike, you win tonight.

You will remember all of that for ever. This will be the most magical night of your sports life. Yep. If you win it because of how vulnerable you are, you're in front of the audience, which is growing in Legion in front of us today, because everybody wants to taste these tears. The idea that this could go from Celtics being up three Oh, uh,

Panthers being up 3-0 to Celtics celebrating the title and us asking which would be funnier, which blown lead would be funnier. And now only one group is left after that parade with a million people in the fights that have been with, in both sports, hockey and basketball, Miami and Boston for five years in basketball, for two years in hockey, the idea that everyone can turn around and laugh at you and know that you're exposed on vulnerability, you can laugh

at everybody at the end of tonight in a game seven that you have at home that if you win or lose it, you're going to remember it forever, but it'll be the most fulfilling thing you've ever felt if you win. I think I'd feel relief forever.

first and foremost from it. And you've always maintained it, and I've always bucked against it. Look, I would have preferred this thing be over in four. But what you remember from these championships, you remember that Thunder series? The Heat lost the first game, and then they won in five. And what we remember in terms of

pit in our stomach sphere it's always that LeBron image that's the lasting image from that title you remember the details about game six and Ray Allen you don't remember the details about game seven maybe you know that Wade and LeBron did some I know Bosch didn't do shit LeBron's a big elbow jumper by

By the way, big elbow jumper. The LeBron elbow jumper. I know Bosh didn't do stuff. Battier recalibrated his three-point shooting. I remember the details. You remember that Game 6 and Game 7 because of the fear that you had in Game 6. You remember the other final, the one that was a house money final for the Miami Heat, more because you didn't really fear the Oklahoma City Thunder. That stuff does...

form and fortify these championships to the point that it means more if you fear and the panthers have had a relatively charmed postseason if you have the fear that everything is over then yeah that that that gets made and all of that crashed on top of me friday friday night chris cody was at the hockey bar i had all my friends i was so amped and i was so primed and i told you

I thought I could guarantee that the Panthers would have a good effort. They didn't play well. Their effort wasn't there. And now all these ghosts I'm seeing there, and I was haunted, dude. I was haunted. I was pale. People kept trying to console me. Chris, you try to console me. I wasn't moving. Yeah. I was despondent, too. I mean, I didn't want to talk to anybody. Yeah. You know, it's funny that you mention that because I got a text –

Sometime on Saturday. And I thought everybody just left the bar in the same way that I did, which was I called my Uber. I put my head down. I even said an Uber like the pickup was at another person's house. I was just like a zombie. And then I caught wind of how difficult this was for you and how hard you took this loss. This is video from moments after the Florida Panthers lost game six. Here is Chris Cody. You could almost see the tears in his eyes at 11. Yeah.

At 11 nightclub. Come on. Just really. What's happening here? They have a huge wall graphic that says, welcome to Dan Labattard show. Look at Chris Cody. He is so sad. Look at that. He is a broken man. Jesus, Greg. Oh. That's your son, Greg. Look, when Izzy Gutierrez offers you a free entry, what are you going to do? What are you going to say? No? Look at Chris Cody. Not broken at all at the end of Friday's game. Look at the...

Look at the smile on his face. Look at how pleased he is with everything happening. He's trying to describe how Connor McDavid is moving across the blue line. He is being misunderstood right now. Yeah, he is not in a good place right there. He just turned the vice of Miami nightlife. He looks so sad that the Panthers lost. You can barely make out his eyes. They're so red and watery.

Where are you as you have to get out of here? You've asked to be let go because this has been a couple of years of crazy deadline work for you. Last year was unprecedented. Two eight seeds, get to the final in both sports and beat one seeds. Yeah.

They do things that you weren't expecting, and you were exhausted by the end of last playoffs. These have been easier because the Heat have not been having dueling games, but you seem just as exhausted. I'm a little mentally exhausted more than physically. I'm ready for it to be over. But what you all said, the—

The joy of winning tonight is pretty obvious. What's brutal about the opposite is that if the Panthers lose tonight, there's no way to rationalize it. There's no way to see a silver lining. It's going to be nothing but eternal dejection. It's an epic loss. You're not even allowed to say, well, two finals in a row is pretty good. There's going to be none of that if they lose this game.

There should be. There should be. Oh, I'm going to say it. There should be. Perspective. No, no. Perspective is going to be trampled tonight if they lose. And that's sad. And, you know, I'll probably spend a couple of paragraphs saying just that, but nobody cares. If you lose tonight, there is no perspective.

There is no immediate. There's no immediate perspective. There's not going to be any anyone who cares about the Panthers who's going to be able to watch the coverage or get up off of their knees for a week. Like perspective will come, but it will come later because this has been a great season. The fact that they're one of two teams playing one game for everything. I will not minimize that. But yeah.

It is a big difference between the joy that is on Chris Cody's face when he's on 11 and total despair because everyone's laughing at him. On 11 what?

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Don Libetard. Our Panther group chat, we're confident against the Lightning. This is a different team. You're a Panther group chat, though. No, I think. No, but dude, you're so wrong on that. We've been terrified of this team forever. And I think there's a different energy where the Panthers, they want the Lightning. Stugatz. I want t-shirts made for this Panther run. What could be this Panther run? Our Panther group chat, we're not afraid of the Lightning.

That's a tagline for World Raw 3. This is the Dan Levitar Show with the Stugats. I am told that Tony has a massive announcement. I don't totally trust some of his adjectives. I think, Billy, you can endorse with me the idea that Tony tends to inflate some adjectives. What could simply be an announcement sometimes become a massive announcement because Tony is the one making it. Do you know what the announcement is? I don't.

This has not come up, and I cannot discredit it or endorse whatever this is. But do you think that generally the way that I frame that is accurate, that if Tony says he's got a massive announcement, it's probably a few degrees short of massive because he tends to be a bit of an overseller? Yes, I believe...

I think that Tony thinks it's a massive announcement. I don't necessarily think that the rest of the population of Earth would think it's a massive announcement, but I don't know what it is. It could very well be. But based on track record, I would say it's probably not. We will find out together. Before we do so, however, I want to talk about the travails of Ryan Garcia.

I don't know that many of us are following super lightweight division. I'm not a huge fan of the smallest guys because I want bigger punching power, but I was very surprised to see him knock down Devin Haney three times. And

Haney trained for the right fight properly, and Garcia seems to be a bit out of control in a number of different ways, where he has had police call to his hotel room multiple times. God knows what he is doing in the celebration of this title. People didn't expect him to win that fight in any way because he's such a partier, and he's also now made his way through all of the right-wing media and was gambling the other night for hundreds of thousands of dollars with Jimmy Butler. Who else was there?

Dan Blazerian, there was like a bunch. Ninja was there, the streamer, Neymar. There was a bunch of other people. He was also stripped of that title because they found banned substances in his urine not once but twice in two separate and different independent tests. So he has to give $1.1 million and I think growing to Devin Haney, the belt is back. He went from, oh, I'm doing this crazy thing, beating him outright, beating Devin Haney, like,

handily and then going back now where it was just like oh no he was on something and he's kind of still kind of out there weird

The poker that was being played, what's the backstory on Jimmy Butler waving around hundreds of thousands of dollars and Neymar winning a bunch of money as well? Yeah, they both won over $100,000 at this thing, allegedly. And the video of Jimmy Butler waving around money was fans came up to him and Jimmy was just giving some of that jackpot away to fans. Jimmy, do we have the video of Jimmy being visibly annoyed by Ryan Garcia? Yeah.

All right. I'm being told we do? We do? All right. This is Jimmy Butler...

this whole Ryan Garcia experience. I saw you fast. I saw you fast. Give me that!

That seems a bit of a bluff. The offsuit is eight cents. A bit. Are those pants just falling off? Great observation of Ryan Garcia-Sanza with his pants falling off.

I don't know what it would look like if somebody who was celebrating a title had some sort of problems with partying, but it would look a lot like Ryan Garcia's public incidences over the last few weeks. Twice a Beverly Hills hotel was called to because he was destroying property. One of the times there was a wellness check. We could just—we're part of the problem. We could just—

ignore this. But we have ignored him. That's how you become a revenue generator in that sport is be a conversation piece and now you don't actually have to achieve really anything through legal because that was a big win that he had but he was very clearly on banned substances. This was a guy that was maybe on his way out of the sport had he not won that and now he's out of the way of the sport. Although boxing tends to... He's also banned for a year because of the substances. Yeah, but it's just...

It's the maybe too unfairly put on the family. But since the Kardashians came around, it's not really about merit. Usually in previous incarnations of human history, people like this would just be cast aside, be punchlines, joke, left turned around. But he's a social media sensation. So he's just going to keep.

being around. - I don't know when it is that we sort of became more and more immune exactly to the cheating because I'm old enough to remember how it is that we chased all those baseball players through parking lots with the steroid scandal.

But somewhere along the greatness of Lance Armstrong and Barry Bonds, where they were defeating everyone else who was cheating by also cheating, but being better than when everyone started cheating, somewhere along the line here, we have developed

more of an immunity to the guy who cheats and gets stripped of all his titles, but now can parlay it into something because he's got a name and fame and it almost doesn't matter that there is so much crap around his name. He is now a name and in these divided times, if people line up behind you,

And you're making the podcast circuit of I believe in right-wing ideals. And now I'm going to go on all of the media to celebrate the fact that I'm a champion in sports. Once it gets stripped, they don't circle back around and re-talk about it. You already had your moment. You mentioned the right-wing thing.

And I'm not going to call him a liar. I'm sure he has his convictions. But all that stuff, it's just part of the playbook right now. You just continue doubling down on the infamy and you get rewarded for it. And attention used to...

Generally, yeah, you have those people that come through, the pop culture zeitgeist that are infamous, but they tend to just fizzle away. And he's not going to fizzle away because no one fizzles away now. They all have ways to get straight to revenue streams from the people that just...

are fascinated with these people. And it's how you have someone that was a victim of something that their parents did, but go to jail for plotting their murder and then become this huge sensation on social media. We just are drawn to this. It's sad. Sure, but those famous people that are famous for being famous have the revenue stream where they can be famous, right? Like when you're a boxer-

and now you're famous because you were a boxer. When you go out and you're not a boxer anymore, you're just that guy who's kind of like a weirdo and kind of doing things that are kind of weird. Like, you lose that ability to go out to the masses. What's his platform? He tried. I don't know if we have that video either. He tried at the comedy store to do a set of...

It was a laugh act reaction because Chris D'Elia was there. Oh, well, the laugh act, you try to do a set, he had like one line, forgot his punchline, and then started like shadowboxing in the middle. Yes, that's what you do. It was shadowboxing. He has nothing else. It's like,

Why is the gearhead in front of you, Mike? Someone brought it in. Maybe it was Greg Cody's attorney. Is it to talk about John Force? Did you see that crash? Yes. Gnarly. John Force has been a part of my life on ESPN2 at like afternoon. Hey, this is some drag. He's an old man. He's 75 years old.

This is the accident that 75-year-old John Force is apparently okay from. You see a car fully engulfed in flames. It explodes a little bit. And then at 302 miles per hour, hits the median. The extreme force. He's okay. 302 miles per hour. These cars, what are these cars called? Because these are always... Are these funny cars? They're funny cars, Dano. It's funny.

Is that what they're called? I think they're funny cars or drag cars. 300 miles per hour and flames all over the place. The moment you start, there are flames because of the flames that shoot out of the back of the car to get you started. A 75-year-old surviving and apparently being okay. He went to the hospital. I think he might still be there. But when I saw this clip, I was like, really? The same John Force movie?

It's a great racing name, incidentally. John Force is a great name. He's synonymous with the sport. Is that his real name? Or did he go, like, is he actually John Schwartz? And he just made him... It's like a TV weatherman. I mean, is that a real name? Is John Force a real name? Or does he have a stage name? John Harold Force. Okay. He was born for this.

Zero to 300 in what, four seconds? Yeah, I mean, as you know, I'm a gearhead and I'm only getting more and more into motorsports. That one, the appeal of drag racing doesn't really do much for me.

That one you haven't gotten into? No, I haven't really. But there was an amazing, it was an amazing Motorsports Sunday. Every major motorsports circuit had something going on. I don't think you caught it, but did you catch the USA Today 301 from New Hampshire? No. You didn't catch it?

All right, so it wasn't a great race because they trotted out these all-weather tires, these rain tires, and there were so many cautions that it was just a really bad finish to a race that was looking promising because...

two top guys in that sport for my money, two best racers, Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson were going at it. They were aggressively racing at one another for three laps and it was boogity time. Like this was great stuff. Boogity time? Boogity time. Boogity, boogity. Like this was great racing. I was fired up watching it. What a

The adrenaline starts flowing. You know what it means. And the USA Network, NBC now has the rights to this part of the season. They had access to Kyle Larson's team radio. And check out this exchange because this is after Denny Hamlin tries to kind of bully him a little bit. Check out what Kyle Larson's spotter says to Kyle Larson and how Kyle Larson dismisses him.

Yeah, that's right. The tone the spotter took with Kyle Larson, who's the best driver on the planet. Kind of like a caddy, though, right? He knows how to push his driver's buttons. Maybe he knows what he's doing there. Yeah, let's play it one more time to hear Kyle Larson's voice on this. Yeah.

That's good. You need to have people around you who tell you the truth. Wait, there's a funny dismount here. Let's do this one more time. The well? Well...

Yeah, you got to eat it at that point. Once you've gotten Kyle Larson to that place and he tells you to shut the bleep up and he's your superior and he pays for everything, you got to just kind of eat it. I'm going to my first NASCAR race. I've never been to a race, but I'm going to Chicago, the street race that they have in Chicago, which is like part music festival, part racing. I'm really excited to take it in for the first time. What just fell off of the gear head? A gear. Yeah, a gear. Tony, what is your massive announcement? Can't beat Mike's announcement. He's going to the race. Going to the race. That's a massive announcement.

The, uh, there's a lot of things happening in the world, Dano, and nothing could be more massive when it's something about you. We do a lot of navel gazing here on this show, and I wanted to bring it to the masses because at the end of the year, December 31st, I'm going to be a dad.

Wow, wait a minute. That is a massive announcement. That is massive. Billy was prepared to be born, but now he has been... How do you like that one, dude? How do you like that one? Billy, can I shake your hand? It will be a girl for sure because nobody around here can make boys. That is a massive announcement. I was prepared to be disappointed, but unfortunately I can't be.

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