The Big Suey: 7 vs. 70 (feat. Mike Florio)
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Welcome to the Big Sui, presented by DraftKings. Why are you listening to this show? The podcast that seems very similar to the other Dan Levitard podcast. I'm sorry, I'm not going to apologize for that. In fact, the only difference seems to be this imaging. I have been tempted in restaurants just walking past tables to grab somebody's fries if they're just there. That hasn't happened to you guys? I've done it. And now, here's the marching band to nowhere, Fat Face and the Habitual Liars.

And now, the Looks Like Game with Tim Kirchhen. Does Joe Madden look like your grandma's new boyfriend? Does Kyle Schwarber look like the kid in your fourth grade class who can burp the alphabet? Does Bartolo Colon look like Andre the Giant when he was in third grade?

Does Bryce Harper look like the guy who married Hunter Pence's wife while Hunter Pence was lost at sea? Does Mel Kiper look like the fatherly protective eagle?

Does Adnan Burke look like the agent who, after 007 has been felled, removes his mask, extends a hand, and says graciously, welcome to Tangier, Mr. Bod? Does Paul Skeens look like the up-and-coming country singer who just had to publicly apologize after old tweets resurfaced? Yeah.

Or does he look like the small town cop who looks the other way when local college kids buy beer from the corner store as long as they bring him his favorite candy bar, a Snickers, a Mountain Dew, and a copy of that day's paper when they leave? Does Adam Schefter...

look like the scientist in a white lab coat on a gasoline commercial? Or... Or... Or... Does he look more like the squeamish veterinarian from a Wild West movie who audibly gulps when a weapon is placed in his hand? Or...

Does Adam Silver look like a decorative caviar spoon? Does he look like a small town's water tower?

Does he look like he administers truth syrup? Look at him. Does he look like a library reference desk clerk who moonlights as the lead singer of a Devo cover band? Does he look like the mentally unbalanced Russian nuclear scientist with no spoken lines in a Sylvester Stallone movie? No.

He looks like a lone french fry in a bag of onion rings. Oh, it's so bad. I can't believe you do that to this guy. Does he look like a tire pressure gauge? Does he look like a nurse at an old folks home? A dissipating smoke from a blown out birthday candle. A teed up golf ball. Yeah.

Does Adam Silver look like a generic proctologist on a community college pamphlet for Crohn's disease? Does Adam Silver look like Dracula's vampire accountant named Calcula? No.

Does he look like an unusually long middle toe? Does he look like Bob Barker's microphone? Does he look like a xylophone mallet? Does Adam Silver look like Scott Van Pelt 15 seconds after opening the Ark of the Covenant? Oh, my God.

Greg, who are you railing against particularly when you yell about Bill Zito's omission as executive of the year? Do you know who you're railing against? Do you know who the voting committee is on this? I do not. Okay, because the executive of the year, it's known as the Jim Gregory General Manager of the Year Award. It's 42 member panel, 32 GMs, five NHL executives, and five print or broadcast media members. And Roy. And Roy.

Journalist Roy. So that's the group, though. It's 42. So who are you railing against? The GMs are the ones who are telling you that that's the vote. They're the majority of the voters. Okay, there's something fishy here. If I'm speaking to those 42 voters right now, I am saying...

Why not the two-time champion who has swung this deal and that deal and this deal and that deal and the Kachuk trade, one of the greatest in the history of the league? What exactly are you looking for in that trophy that Bill Zito hasn't earned? I want them to explain their decision-making. That's all. I'm backing up my dad here. If you put all the GMs in a room and you just say—

I know it's a yearly award. The last two years, team you would like to be, team that seems to be put together the best. I mean, isn't it obvious? Like, this is crazy. It's not like they're a Cinderella. Like, this team, everyone acknowledges, like, is just the depth. Every position. They're not weak anywhere. So the Stars GM has wanted three years.

Three years in a row where they've lost in the conference finals every season. All right, so this is what I wanted to ask you guys within the context of this because I saw that last week and I didn't want to just skip right past it, that Masai Ujiri was out with the Raptors and this was a person who I knew to be good at his job. He won a championship in Toronto. He made the right moves that allowed him to get the right players in.

This was someone who's talented at his job. But the thing that I wanted to present to the audience, because these things expire fast, right? That genius is now gone. There was a time Ujiri could have had just about any architecture plan he wanted, right?

because he was such a hot executive. He won in Toronto. How the hell did they win a basketball championship in Toronto? All of that goodwill is gone because the Raptors haven't been relevant recently. And the thing that I wanted to ask you guys about what we're asking these GMs to be in the modern age when they keep up with evolution. I saw over the weekend that Andre Drummond...

opted in with the Sixers for five million dollars. It is a small contract. Very few people care about it. Today's big on free agency and the free agency thing is kind of dead in basketball. Julius Randle and everyone else is signing with their own teams. The LeBron thing is interesting. We'll get to it in a second. But Andre Drummond, what I wanted to say about him is

At one time in my life when that man was 20 years old, I, and I'm assuming Stan Van Gundy said, I'd like that as the centerpiece for how I play basketball for the rest of my life. I'd like a 20-year-old that size who's going to offensive rebound better than anyone and dunk a lot. And the whole game changed as soon as he got into the league.

And so what you're asking these GMs to do is not merely win and be competitive, but it's also stay ahead of the entirety of the curve because Ujiri won it one way and then its super teams came back and won it again. And now we're back to, eh, it's not really a super team as what it has to be. It now looks a little bit more like what Ujiri built in Toronto. And so when I ask you the assessments right now of Ujiri,

That guy won a championship in Toronto. You can credit Kawhi Leonard if you want, but we all discovered Pascal Siakam at the same time during those playoffs. Ujiri's reputation was solid as the young executive who knows what he's doing. And now he's fired, and I assume he'll get another job. I assume he's still respected. But what did he buy himself with that championship if a few years later winning a championship in Toronto gets you fired? I don't get that move at all.

And I implore the audience to go check out that 2019 Raptors roster because at the time it felt like, this is a funky little outlier that took advantage of some Golden State injuries. That team would still be in the conversation right now. They were friggin' loaded. And they were at the very start of this new way of roster construction in the NBA. He did it in Denver. He did it in Toronto. Toronto was feisty. They seemed to be...

I would certainly continue handing over the keys to Masai Ujiri and say, we trust you in this NBA. You've done it once before. I don't really get the move. There has to be more to it.

Does there? Because I believe the lifespan on these things. So far, we've got fishy over here. We've got fishy on Bill Zito. What's the accusation exactly when you call something fishy? You've done no reporting on this. You didn't even know who you were railing against, and yet you called it fishy. It seems like the easiest of conspiracy theories. It seems not very journalistic of you. It's a small voting panel. I thought it was 16 or 18. It turns out to be 42.

uh... what's fishy is that it's very apparent that bills you know should have won the award

at one point over the last two seasons now it's it should be a quantifiable award i'm not saying it has to go to the gm of the stanley cup champion every year but that's a pretty good start understand what i'm saying if you're making an accusation of fishy i need to know what it is that you're saying because you're saying that something is suspect it's corrupt that there's a reason it's a bad decision no but but fishy's different than that it's a

Fishy's a purposely bad decision. Well, I don't understand the logic. Okay, I get why he did it last year. He had a really deep team. He makes it to the conference finals. This year, it ended in embarrassment. He ends up firing the head coach. This is an award that is handed out during the NHL draft. It actually looks like Dallas has to...

rework their roster a little bit. So I'm very confused as to why there has to be more to it than just on-ice success. I don't get it. Forgive me for spending this much of the show today without addressing the most serious of things that needed to be addressed, which is the Greg Cody and his son Chris.

are trying to create a lane no one in sports media has ever dared to tackle before on the Greg Cody Show featuring Greg Cody. I believe they are alone in this lane. There are no other occupants historically in grandpa against granddaughter in the Greg Cody Show Family Olympics. Seven versus 70. I have been told...

We have swimming video of Greg Cody laboriously swimming across a very shallow and small pool at a very slow rate of speed. Less swimming than surviving. Wearing goggles. Wearing goggles. And now at the end, seemingly just walking. I'm sorry. Do they not wear goggles in the Olympics? Like, I don't understand that criticism. Thank you.

We're not putting in the sound here because we don't want to give away who's winning. This is the finish to a big race. Who had the better time, the 7-year-old or the 7-year-old? I have been in that pool. That pool, that's the shallow end. At the end, Greg is simply walking. He is no longer swimming. Oh, the start of it, he, like, runs four steps before he starts swimming. Not really. I pushed off like the Olympians do.

I have a question for you, Greg, and I haven't listened yet. It's early. I haven't listened. I'm usually like a Tuesday consumer of the Greg Cody show. Well, Billy, in fairness to you, we're teasing this episode, which comes out next week. Ah, okay, good. The current episode is something whole different. We have a hitchhiker and a bacon expert on this week. Wait, your daughter's picking up hitchhikers? No, no, no. It's just me and my dad talking to a hitchhiker who's hitchhiked over 250,000 miles.

thousand miles in his life. 68-year-old man. You're trying to bring back the hitchhiker, which you pointed out among many other problematic things with the hitchhiker is the murder rate climbed with hitchhiking, and then hitchhiking fell out of favor, you explained to us last week. Now you're just...

Continuing the thread on the tapestry that is the Greg Cody Show featuring Greg Cody by bringing on a noted hitchhiker and also a bacon expert because you left here with a truly breathtaking amount of bacon last week. It's more bacon than I've ever seen a single human being go or leave a place with. Yeah, I can't eat it fast enough.

No, you said you'd eat it all. I'm like, you will never eat all of that bacon. It's not possible. You will die before you eat all of that bacon. Not necessarily, but we have a bacon salesman from Minnesota, a mail carrier from Queens, New York, and a 68-year-old world globe-trotting hitchhiker.

on the current episode of The Greg Cody Show podcast. But then next week is the big one. Yeah. But today's is very much an experimental podcast. We're going to see how it does. We get to know three of our biggest show fans who all have interesting stories to tell. I was going to ask why the mail carrier? The bacon we kind of set up, the hitchhiker, the mail carrier just seems a little...

out of the it's interesting i mean everyone here gets mail deals with mail we ask him we get into the nuts and bolts of you know the ugly parts the the pretty parts of being a mail carrier what should people never sail to say to a mail carrier is the carrier versus dog real or imagined uh do you judge people by the mail you're delivering to them you know stuff like which point he's like i don't snoop in their mail that's what you gotta say though if you're a mail carrier that's what you gotta say

Come on now. It won't surprise you guys at all, right, that I've probably gone more than 10 years without getting a piece of mail in my hands. That's not true. Really? It's impossible. No, it's not. In terms of that gets through my wife and it stops before... I haven't gone to a mailbox. I haven't seen a piece of mail in more than 10 years. I'm not even joking. And yet you buy explosives. It is odd. Yeah.

It is odd. I mean, maybe it's just been a setup, Greg. You know what I mean? Like, I haven't seen mail in 10 years, but I have all these explosives. Just make sure you don't put these explosives in there. I've never been at the post office, but I like to go to the bank. This guy. It's odd. Yeah, something's up here. Keep an eye on him, FBI. Fishy, maybe. Fishy. So we buried the lead. We also have my dad climbing a rock here. No, I'm not. Really? I'm going to get there. Hold on a second. I'm getting there. I guess. I'm getting there the slow route. This is the big payoff. I'm not in a big.

hurry to get to your head rock climbing. Now, we've teased it properly. I also have him running with an egg in his spoon. Look at my height advantage there. I'm going to dominate, or will I? Just great executive producing all around. We'll get to that. Pace ourselves. We've got a whole Olympics in front of us, and the Greg Cody Show featuring Greg Cody requires promotion. Now, Greg, I don't want to...

I don't want to cast doubt or question onto your 7 versus 7D Olympics. You guys, I will say, love the Olympics. You guys are constantly having competitions against each other. Every summer. It seems like it's a thing you guys do a lot. She's going to win when it's 8 against 80. Well, here's my question. I hope you didn't get any spoilers there. Here's the question, though, because a lot of grandpappies, they let the granddaughters win.

Is this something that we as the listeners should be concerned about? You may be throwing it to build up Lil Graceland's confidence, like you let her win some of these competitions to keep things competitive. If only that's how it went. I want some integrity in these 7 versus 70. I think it's a very fair question that Billy asks, and I can honestly say no. I'm going to crush her if I can. All right. That's what I want to hear. I'm going to be honest.

Because I don't believe in coddling someone and saying, oh, here's a consolation ribbon, a participation ribbon. No, if she can't climb a rock wall faster than Pop. It's not a rock wall. It's at a play place. She doesn't deserve to win. All right, but let's, and forgive me, I'm sure I'll be hearing from my math friends that it can't be eight against 80 if it's seven against 70. I was going to let you slide on that. But let's play this aforementioned rock.

climbing, please, where you guys can see both the dramatic tension of Greg trying to indeed kick his granddad's ass. Kick her ass, Greg. He gets off to a good start. Watch what happens. Wow, no shoes. They make you wear these socks. No, those are professional rock climbing socks. Look,

Oh, she's pulling ahead despite the hot start. Yes, Grandpa's getting left behind. I also saw a video of how tired Grandpa is, but we've got to cut this video first. We've got to cut it. He's climbing the wrong direction. Oh, he's finished. We didn't want you guys to see who won, so we're cutting to the end. He watches her go down. Now watch Greg here. Oh! Yes.

And we all got very scared. That would have been a 70-year-old falling on his head. Oh, my God. For the audio audience, my dad sees my daughter do the classic push off the wall and fall down nicely. And you see him, like a child, look at her like, ooh, she's doing that. Oh, that's tight right there. That's tight in the groin. That's tight in the groin. Everybody look down. Everybody look down.

Look out, everybody. That's unpleasant. We don't want that. Good for him. Nope. Let's not do this. Looks like you got a massive hammer there. Let's not do this. I'm glad you guys cut out the ending of that race. I had no idea how it ended. There's also a time on the wall so you could see exactly. Greg was unbelievably winded. At the end of that, I saw a wheezing Greg Cody.

Going back to the point that I was making earlier, though. Hell yeah, Greg. If I told you guys Andre Drummond as a 20-year-old

Would you like to lock up all the things that he is for the next 15 years of basketball? You also famously took Dwight Howard to start your franchise over LeBron. Speaking of LeBron, yes, because I didn't pass that one. And he wanted Odin over KD. Yes. What? I didn't see it coming. Very few people did. Hibbert over Duncan. Joe Cronin should have probably seen it with Aiton. Hibbert over Duncan. I forgot about that.

Jesus Christ. That was just one series. Duncan Robinson over Kevin Durant. Oh, no, that was Pat Riley. Sorry. When you look back at the career of Andre Drummond, he ends up being just another guy who made a lot of money and will be one of the best offensive rebounders ever. And the whole sport changed around him very rapidly. And at the end of his career, he's signing a one-year $5 million deal, which makes him a

below league average talent that he's opting into a contract on. Are you guys going to be disappointed that there isn't going to be much in the transaction realm today? But the one transaction that is or was interesting is LeBron opting back in at that age for $53 million and then immediately declaring through his agent that the Lakers are on notice, they should be building for the future, but LeBron wants to win now.

when LeBron just opted into that contract and has a no trade clause, which is a weird public pressure to put on the Lakers when you're beginning right now to have all the power at the end of your career. Only you and Bradley Beal have a no trade clause. It was such a weird thing to see LeBron opt in.

in and then immediately have Rich Paul put pressure on the Lakers when he's got the no trade clause. The Lakers don't have any power here. Exactly. It gives him more power to get to wherever he ultimately wants to go, whether that's Cleveland or somewhere else. Teams that don't have salary cap

flexibility right now now are in the game for lebron james but there are going to be very few teams that end up trading for one year of 50 million dollars of lebron right like that's not bobby mark says there is no trade market for lebron on that front which is a bit surprising would you trade tyler hero for him i would i can't believe that there's no trade market i would i would do that deal i would do that heartbeats what one year of lebron james for tyler hero yes where do i sign

Is there no trade market because no one's even going to bother asking? Because they know LeBron's going to have to decide to come here. Dictate where he wants to be. You think Orlando's going to bother calling to be like, oh, does LeBron want to come to the manager? That's a complicated contract to bring on for a contender. It's not the easiest trade in the world to make. They can figure it out. It's basketball. They always figure it out. Those numbers seem to mean nothing. The salary cap seems so easy to skirt in the NBA because they always find the way. If they want it to happen, it always happens somehow.

Jeremy, you know something about me, right? You know when I'm grilling outside and it's summertime, you know how I supplement my summertime? Of course I do. I make a Miller Time. Of course. That beautiful white can. Oh, when it's so hot outside, I just put it right to my forehead, right there. And I just roll it sometimes right on the forehead, cool my body down, and then I crack it open and...

instant relief and then that first sip brother does that first hit that is a top five sequence of events that you can possibly go through i'm just serenity now when i just imagine that first sip of miller life just thinking about it's making me dude the sun is out it's nice you have your friends showing up you got your family there you just had your first sip of miller light and you know what you're happy

You're blissful. You're fulfilled. I've been stocking my cooler with Miller Lite for years and for good reason. It's brewed for taste. Only 96 calories and 3.2 grams of carbs. This year, Miller Lite turns 50.

There's five decades of cookouts, laughs, and ice-cold moments that never miss. It's the original light beer, and it's still my go-to. Miller Lite. Great taste. 96 calories. Go to MillerLite.com slash Dan to find delivery options near you, or you can pick up some Miller Lite pretty much anywhere they sell beer. Cheers to 50 years of Miller time. Celebrate responsibly. Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces.

This show is sponsored by Game Time, the official ticketing partner of The Dan Levitard Show with Stu Gatz. And folks, let's be real. Buying tickets for concerts or games is usually a pain. You hop online early, you wait in some never-ending virtual queue, which I truly can't stand. And by the time you get through it, prices are sky high or tickets are sold out.

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Howdy, folks. It's Mike Ryan. NASCAR is back in Chicago, and it's not just at a track. No, no, no. They're racing through the actual streets of downtown. I've been there for this race. It is a great race. Beautiful skyscrapers, lakefront, Grand Park, July 5th and 6th.

Feels like America. It's a NASCAR Cup Series and the Xfinity Series, which was a great race last year, tearing it up in the Windy City. We're talking 40 drivers, Chase Elliott, Denny Hamlin, my favorite, Kyle Larson, flying through the street course like you've never seen it before. It's part race, part music festival, all adrenaline. Chicago turns into one massive summer block party with horsepower. Want in? Head to NASCARChicago.com right now and grab those tickets.

Watch the Xfinity Series July 5th at 4.30 p.m. Eastern on The CW, then the Cup Series July 6th at 2 p.m. Eastern on TNT Sports and streaming on Max. This isn't just a race, it's a whole vibe.

Don Levitard. Imagine if someone told you you couldn't have a Corvette. Stugatz. I'm a grown-ass man who's not filthy rich. I can't afford a Lamborghini. Well, I probably can, but that's beside the point. Hey! This is the Don Levitard Show with the Stugatz.

I wanted to bring in Mike Florio here because a story from last week, I want to continue to put it in front of you. And Florio is also is not just someone who's great at the football information. He's also got a legal background that allows him to parse through some issues that the rest of the media is very good at avoiding. So, Mike, thank you for joining us. I wanted you just to help walk me through this.

what the Pablo Torre finds out story was in reality and why it didn't reverberate the way that I thought it should reverberate, why that story didn't have the legs that I thought it had. And thank you for joining us, by the way. Hey, Dan, thanks for having me. Great to talk to you again. This all started back really early.

A few years ago, when Demora Smith, the former NFLPA executive director, was on one of our shows, either PFT Live or PFT PM,

And he said that a collusion grievance was coming on the issue of fully guaranteed contracts for certain quarterbacks. And within weeks after that, they filed it. This was October-ish of 2022. The case proceeded from there, and I did my best to monitor it. While these things are going on, everyone is subject to a confidentiality order, and they don't talk much about it.

But we knew what was happening generally. We knew when the hearing happened. We knew the ruling was coming. And then when the ruling came January 15 of this past year, January 14 to be more specific, no one said anything. The ruling came.

And that was it. Who won? Who lost? Nobody would talk about it. And I was like, what the hell is going on here? Like, why would this ruling not come out? Well, it's confidential. No, the ruling's not confidential. The process is the ruling isn't. You can talk about it. Why is nobody talking about it? So I started banging that drum back in late January, early February. And, you know, the NFL always has a bright, shiny object that can distract us and things can easily be ignored and overlooked and forgotten.

And Michael Hawley and I were doing an episode of PFT Live right around Memorial Day, and I remembered that this is still out there. And I became determined, entering the slow time with no bright, shiny objects to distract me, I got to get this thing out there. So I was determined to do it. And Pablo and I were talking about other things, his Belichick coverage, because

I, like him, believe that it's something that is a bigger deal than many would say who were trying to shout it all down. So we got to know each other that way. We developed a friendly competition. Let's see who gets it first. He got it. And it was amazing because at the end of the day, the NFL was caught with its hand in the collusion cookie jar. The arbitrator gave them a pass. I think the arbitrator got it wrong.

but they were caught red-handed telling teams to collude when it comes to the issue of guaranteed money in contracts, specifically quarterback contracts. And I think it's a big deal, but the NFL doesn't want people to talk about it. The union buried the thing for reasons that still aren't obvious because the union should be using it as a hammer. So that's it in a nutshell. The NFL rarely gets caught doing anything it shouldn't be doing. It got caught colluding

and no one wants to talk about it even now six days later i can't get people to talk about it mainly because people fear reprisals why is it that you and pablo think it's a big deal and other people don't seem to well i mean you always have a bias that your reporting is important when it's the result of the work that you put in i understand that but i think the fact that the

this group of multi-billion dollar businesses that are supposed to be operating independently. They have limited antitrust exemptions that allow them to come together from time to time. Beyond that, they're not allowed to come together. And it's been suspected for years when they get together four times a year, every three months or so, and March is the big annual meeting, it's been suspected that they do collude. They do compare notes. They just usually are cleaner about it. This time they got sloppy.

This time there was a paper trail. This time there was circumstantial evidence of both a direction to collude and actual collusion. And it made it fascinating because we finally were able to show this is exactly what's going on. And Dan, like in so many other situations, the cover-up is worse than the crime.

the failure of the NFLPA, this is the most fascinating aspect of it to me because this thing should have become a cudgel in multiple different ways and forms and fashions to try to give the union some leverage against the league. They put the thing in a vault and locked it and won't talk about it. And both sides, they wouldn't let anybody read it. They didn't distribute the thing. It was like it never even happened. So

What becomes far more compelling, I think, for Pablo and for me is the idea that once this thing hit, both sides have worked so hard to keep it a secret.

Do you have any hypotheticals there that we can get to on why it is that the union wouldn't want any of this seen? But before I get to that question, is there anything behind you in what seems like a really lovely kitchen that has any meaning to you? Is there any glass back there or anything behind you that would be something that you're attached to?

No, it's just what's behind me. And this is actually, and I'm not trying to flex, I'm just answering your question.

This is the wine cellar in the house that we bought that we keep no wine in. But the guy we bought the house from owned two businesses, a pool company and a winery. So he's got a really nice pool and a really nice wine cellar. And I just happen to have a router on the wall next to me. So it gives me uninterrupted full service. The guys from Pardon My Take like to say I'm in an Olive Garden restaurant. But

What's behind me is what my wife has deemed suitable to be behind me when I do these. Mike, are those granite or marble countertops? Because they're absolutely splendid. They are marble. They are marble. That's a good choice by you. I want to ask you this question. From a legal standpoint, had the independent arbiter ruled in favor of the players union and against the NFL, what would have been the ramification?

Well, that's a great question because we don't know how the damages would have been calculated because

the damages for what started as three quarterbacks, Russell Wilson, Kyler Murray and Lamar Jackson eventually expanded to include 594 other players who didn't get fully guaranteed contracts. The argument is after the Deshaun Watson fully guaranteed contract, the league decided we have to stop this. We have to get the teams to not do this. So they turned off the faucet. So every player who didn't get a fully guaranteed contract was in this group. But

But you'd have to almost figure out player by player how much money they lost by not having a fully guaranteed contract. Because what happens with these contracts, once you get through the first year or two, the team has the ability to tear it up and move on whenever it wants. How many guys had their contracts torn up? How many guys didn't? So I think it would have been a very complicated process for determining damages. But when you have that many players, it easily could have become a very, very large number.

And you mentioned independent arbitrator. That's an important point here because it really isn't independent like a court. The arbitrator is selected by both the union and the league, and either side can pull the plug on the assignment at the end of the current term whenever they want. And I think there's a political analysis that any arbitrator in that kind of a setting has to do when, as in this case,

He was expected, the argument was that the owners were claiming they don't collude, but the circumstantial evidence proved otherwise. You're basically finding that multiple NFL owners aren't telling the truth when they say we didn't collude because the circumstantial evidence proved otherwise. And I think that made it hard

from a political standpoint, for the arbitrator to come to that conclusion, because I just think he got it wrong. I think not only was there an attempt by the league to collude, the owners did collude, and that's why the league ultimately won. The arbitrator wasn't willing to go that far and say they did collude. What a fart noise for you and Pablo, though, for you guys to be here being like, ah, the arbiter got it wrong. You get the 61-page report, the arbiter's sitting there proving all the

things that you want proven and then at the end he rules. I mean, it's just, it's really, you're like reading it and you're like, oh, this is damning, this is damning, this is damning. Oh, the arbiter got the whole thing wrong. Like that, what is that? I mean, he twists himself into knots to dismiss the best evidence of collusion in action.

And I practice law. You never get people on the witness stand admitting that they ordered the code red. You've got to thread the needle with circumstantial evidence and then argue to a jury that what the person said on the witness stand isn't true. And there was so much in there. If this would have gone in front of a jury, I'm confident the NFL would have lost. It's one of the reasons why

Big companies don't want to have to answer to juries. There's something about the collective wisdom of a jury of average people that can sniff through bull crap and come to compelling conclusions. That's what this needed, not an arbitrator, but a jury that would have quickly found

that the NFL was indeed colluding. This is what I'm going to do with Florio. Now I'm going to give you a second here to gather your thoughts on this. You have read the report now at least two times, 61 page report. I ask you to think what you think the most interesting or damning or offensive details are in there. If there are three, if there are two, if there are four or five and,

and produce for me a top five list or a top three list in descending order or in ascending order of what is the most interesting fact in that report. Are you ready to do this? I can do that. I can do that. I can give you three. All right, let's go. Yes, let's start with number three, the bronze medalist. Well, the bronze medalist is footnote 25, which explains away J.C. Tretter's

pejorative criticisms of Russell Wilson because Tretter was the NFLPA president at the time.

He had some choice things to say about Russell Wilson when he didn't hold the rope in this game of tug of war to try to make the Deshaun Watson fully guaranteed contract spread to others. Because if it had spread to others, maybe the new status quo would have been everybody gets fully guaranteed contracts. So Tretter didn't like that. He said some mean things about Wilson. And the thinking is one of the big reasons this thing got buried was to protect Tretter.

and his aspirations to become the NFLPA executive director at some point. Your timing was bad on that, Chris Cody, but I don't blame you. We're going to coach Mike Florio up a little more on this game. It's not your fault. It's okay. What did I do? Oh, no, no, it's okay. We just sort of need number three, and you need to give us like a tight sentence, and then he hits the fanfare, and then you explain it. You couldn't have known. You're a novice to the game. That's okay. I blame Chris Cody, but it's all right. Number three. Okay.

So number three, footnote 25, which shows that J.C. Treader had reason to keep this thing quiet. That's how you do it. Ta-da! There it is. You can be taught. All right, number two. Second chances. Number two. Number two, former Walmart CEO Greg Penner giving a crap about his competition. Bang!

Do you want more details? Yes, that's where you elaborate. Yes, you'll get on the last one. You're really going to nail this. I feel like we're going to dismount perfectly. So so the discovery process that preceded the hearing in this case found internal communications, emails, texts, etc. Where Greg Penner, the former Walmart CEO who was running the Broncos post August of 2022 and was there when they were doing the Russell Wilson contract with

He was informing his other owners, the other partners in the ownership of the Broncos about the Wilson deal and making comments along the lines of other owners will like this. And the first thing I thought was this guy was the CEO of Walmart. Do you think there are any emails within Walmart when he was the CEO that had comments like Target will really like this?

And it is absolute proof that these businesses that are supposed to be in competition are in coordination, which is another way of saying in collusion. You should never care whether your business decisions will help

a competitor. If anything, you want your business decisions to hurt a competitor. You want the thing that you do that is right for you to be wrong for your competitor and your competitor to be forced to pick a bad lane. So that to me was so damning because in any other business, you are never going to think how this might help one of your competitors.

Number one, according to Mike Florio, Pablo Torre Fond finds out is the name of the podcast. This reporting was very strong. This episode, as most with Pablo are, was very strong. Number one, Mike Florio. Well, and it would come from the table read that Pablo and I did of the text message exchange between Charter's owner, Dean Spanos, and Cardinal's owner, Michael Bidwell. ♪

In that exchange, Spanos congratulated Bidwell on managing to hold the rope.

and have a non-fully guaranteed contract for quarterback Kyler Murray. Along the way, Bidwell said, we fought hard to not have a fully guaranteed deal. There were comments made about the ridiculous deal that Cleveland did with Deshaun Watson. And Spanos, with the comment that should have Justin Herbert, the Chargers quarterback, up in arms, this helps us with

with our quarterback and Herbert would be now again nobody's talking about this nobody's saying anything about it but Herbert would be the prime guy to stand up and say hey this collusion affected me because my owner was trying to work with the owner of another team to make sure he wouldn't have to give me a fully guaranteed contract that to me there were two smoking guns one from the league's perspective where they're reduced to writing their communications about their desire to tell the owners to pull back on guaranteed contracts

From the owner's perspective, the Spanos-Bidwell exchange, it just shows, it shows, even though the arbitrator got it wrong, it shows that they were coordinating and necessarily colluding. Florio, I just hate that you and Pablo can't get this thing off the ground because you have to keep saying some form of, even though the arbitrator got it wrong. Yeah.

I know. And he did. But that's the thing. Nobody I don't understand why. Now, I must have done 15 radio and podcast appearances last week that I ordinarily wouldn't have done. So some folks get it. But the people who are in position to advance the ball and think about it, there is an army of reporters who devote their professional time to covering the NFL.

And when a story like this comes along, there are ways to advance it. You get comments from players, you get comments from agents, you get different angles. You talk to an expert if need be to tell you what this all means. How many stories do we see where there are quotes from a professor from NYU or this guy or that guy talking about what this all means? There has been no effort by anyone

to push this thing forward. So the hope is, by the League and the Union, that it dies on the vine. And I know I've been doing everything I can to keep it alive, and I'm glad you're still talking about it because a weekend in the summer can be a hard reset. And I'm appreciative that you didn't treat it like that and you're still on it. PFT Live airs weekdays on Peacock, NBC Sports Now channel, and NBC Sports Radio. Before we let you go,

Name them. Who needs to chase this story down? Name them. Who needs to be the one putting the work in to chase down the last parts of this story? Go ask Herbert, hey, how much money did this cost you? Ask Herbert's agent, are you aware that they colluded in a way that affected your guaranteed money?

Well, anyone and everyone who covers the NFL on a national basis, all of the insiders who specialize in telling us what's going to be announced five minutes before it does, but never finds out anything they don't want us to know, they should all be on it. They won't be. Anybody who covers the various teams that's

that are implicated in this. Anybody that covers the Cardinals, the Ravens, the Broncos, the Browns, and the Chargers should be trying to push this forward with comments that would either give extra color and flavor to what was going on or push this thing forward. And no one, no one,

Well said. Let's stop beating around the bush, though. Is Mike McDaniel on the hot seat? Yeah.

Well, he should be. It all comes down to what Stephen Ross is going to do. And he's 85. I remember when Leon Hess, when he was 80, fired Pete Carroll and said, basically, you know, I don't have much time left. I'm trying to win. I don't know what Ross is going to do. But when I went through a list last week of who I think should be on the hot seat, I would say McDaniels getting there. It's year four. We're hearing about culture change every year. When you start having an annual conversation about culture change,

That gets you closer and closer to coaching change. And when they fired Brian Flores, who was the Bill Belichick hard-ass, they overcorrected. We see that all the time. You fire a coach, you get the exact opposite. And I think they went too far the other way. The guy's too nice. He's too much of a player coach. And that's starting to come back to bite them. And I could see them trying to go the other way. Maybe they'll overcorrect again. Stop interrupting the man. We wasted his time. No, we didn't. That's sprinklers and Liev Schreiber right there. Get me back to football.

football. First 15 minutes we wasted his time. That's what I'm saying. We wasted his time for 15 minutes because we threw it into the wheelhouse of hot seat and all of a sudden Florio's galloping like it's playoff time. He put together an entire list. What's the rest of that list look like? Real quick. Say it slowly. Do it in the cadence of a sprinkler at the start of HBO's Hard Knocks.

Yeah. I got Mike McDaniel. I got Brian Dayball. Oh, yeah. Shane Steichen. A little slower. Hot seat. Brian Callahan. Nice. Hot seat. Romantic voice, please. Dave Canales. Hot seat. I'm close. Louis in the lights. Mike Tomlin. Not Tomlin. Not Tomlin. Oh, wait. Whoa. Hey. What? What? What? What?

Everybody wants Tomlin to be on the hot seat except Art Rooney. They're never going to fire Mike Tomlin. Ever. McDermott, McDermott. See you later, Florio. Good seeing you. Thanks, guys.

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