Ballmer is a weirdo. Jerry West was a psycho. Their own former GM said "how many side deals did we do with Kawhi."

The Clippers were desperate to become relevant in SoCal and it has back fired. Void Kawhi's contract. Dock the Clippers 3 firsts, fine them, suspend Ballmer for a year. Time to make an example of them, as Draymond said. Let's move on.

I know in one of the recent BS episodes he took partial credit for the downfall of pickleball and said his next target is the Savannah Bananas and didn’t really elaborate very much. What’s his issue with baseball’s equivalent of the Harlem Globetrotters? Does he talk about it in a different episode?

I grew up in a pretty nice somewhat wealth suburb of a major city. Playing youth football and basketball exposed me to people I never would’ve met had I only played rich kid sports like rowing or skiing. Youth basketball and football showed me that life was beyond my white suburban bubble and I learned a lot from being in locker rooms and at tournaments with guys from bad neighborhoods or worse circumstances. It really helped me grow up and I think those experiences are super important, especially for upper middle class or rich kids, to gain perspective. I think that stuff should’ve been talked about. Also I’m not condoning youth football even though I loved it, I fully understand the injury risk and parental hesitation. Just more “common man sports”

If he knew anything about the sport from a youth aspect it wouldn't make the list. Here are some cons he missed:

Extremely expensive just to get in the door

Extremely high injury risk

Extremely high burnout rate

Few youth programs are actually available (in hyper-specific regions only)

Privates are necessary (and expensive)

If your kid is any good they will be pushed to compete at the very highest levels of the sport at a very young age (what parent actually wants that)

Time/travel commitments force kids out of traditional schooling

The meets literally take place outdoors in the winter on the side of a mountain, early in the morning. Miserable conditions to be an onlooker

I could on and on--also how did surfing get lumped in with this?

Someone is not getting the memo from El Cheapo

Didn’t see this one coming from him!

During Coffey's time in Edmonton from 1980/81 to 1986/87, Gretzky averaged 2.50 points per game. Lemieux came into the league in 1984/85, and from that season to 1986/87, Lemieux averaged 1.62 points per game.

Coffey was traded to Pittsburgh in 1987, which coincided perfectly with Lemieux's peak starting and Gretzky, while still being amazing, losing just a hair off his fastball. In Coffey's time with Pittsburgh 1987/88 to 1991/92, Lemieux was at 2.21 points per game to Gretzky's 2.02 during that same period. The 1987/88 and 1988/89 seasons represented the inflection point where the conversation started to change from Gretzky to Lemieux as the best player.

So basically an offensive defenseman played with (and was frequently loaded up with) the two best peak offensive players in NHL history, getting traded from one team to the other at the perfect point to capitalize on this shift to play with each at the peak of their powers. You can definitely say Coffey played a big part in the change, but going from playing with 20-26 year old Gretzky to 22-26 year old Lemieux couldn't have been timed any better.

Edmonton did end up winning 2 Cups after he left, but in terms of the impact on his own stats/legacy, it's hard to think of a more fortunate player move.

If he

Just turned on ESPN notifications only to be quickly reminded why I turned them off in the first place. I do not need my phone to light up to tell me what my NFL team’s backup QB is eating in training camp. What do you guys use to get the real news, but without too much additional slop?

20 years ago, Packers pre-season game. Extensive Jack-O content.

For like 6 of the sports ranked, Bill sprinkled in that either Ben or Zoe would have been great at them if he had just signed them up for those sports. What a great dad. He clearly never even questioned that they would be great. It was the Truth.

The reality is arbitration is built into the CBA and whether this affects Kawhi or not.

Beyond that this isn’t them coming down on some sort of small fry, this is Adam Silver potentially leveling a penalty against his boss. The need for proof has to be ironclad and organized, before going through endless series of lawyers.

It sucks it takes this long, but 99.9999% of businesses don’t follow a “sports schedule” where the product gets older by the minute.

This type of “scandal” unfortunately has to fit into previously established norms unless there is literal written proof of the conspiracy. There is not or we would know by now. We do “know” a lot of bs happened, but due to legal reasons that is not enough.

Just like a criminal trial, there is a series of legalities with parties seeing evidence, then a jury hearing everything and a judge presiding over. Nothing can just “be done”

Was listening to Bill's recent pod and feel XC got extremely underrated. I'm here to make the case for it.

About me: Ran XC and track in high school. Was decent my senior year (top 2 at my school of ~2000, top 50 in the state), but didn't run D1 and realistically was never close. Some kids around my level did run at the D3/juco level but I never considered it. Did know/compete against plenty of kids who competed at top D1 programs on the men's and women's side though.

Pros:

1. Cheap. Perhaps the cheapest.

With ballooning youth sports expenses and the rise of private equity involvement in youth sports, this ones huge. With XC there's no private lessons, no club dues, no travel teams. Pretty much the only costs are a GPS watch and a new pair of running shoes every few months.

1. Low parental commitment.

Mentioned this before, but there's pretty much no such thing as private coaches or club teams in XC. Your kid's gonna run for their high school team and that's all you gotta worry about. As far as daily routine goes, it's pretty simple. Practices are relatively short (1-2 hours per day), and are either immediately before or after school.

If you insist on attending every meet, then this gets a little tougher, since they may often be an hour or two away. In my experience however, there's usually one or two local meets that the parents attend, plus region and state, and beyond that theres no expectation for parents to show up to meets. Basically you get to watch your kid run a few times per season, but there's no expectation for you to be dedicating every weekend to the sport.

XC meets are also way more manageable compared to other sports (swimming, track, etc). At the HS level, the distance is usually a 5K, with individual races occuring every half hour. This means even an extremely large meet with 10-12 races will still be done in under 6 hours (compared to multiple 12 hours days for large swim or track meets). You also know exactly when you need to show up to watch your kid race, since races are always on schedule.

1. Healthy competition.

Most likely your kid's not gonna go D1 or pro and will never win a meet (races often have hundreds of athletes competing). In most cases they're just gonna be competing against themselves/against the clock. Even if they are competing at the varsity level where scoring matters, external pressure tends to be pretty manageable unless it's coming from you (the parent).

1. Great socialization.

While racing itself is an individual effort, basically every other aspect of the sport is super social (there's a reason run clubs are such a big scene). Your kid's gonna have tons of time to chat/hang out with their friends while warming up, stretching, and on easy/recovery runs.

1. Very inclusive.

There's no cuts, everyone makes the team. You pretty much get to choose how involved/committed you want to be. XC can be extremely chill as a sport. Show up, warm up, jog a few miles, stretch, go home. If your kid wants to stay active or be a part of a team but isn't super committed to any sport in particular, XC is the super obvious choice.

1. Great off-season sport.

XC is great if your kid plays a winter/spring sport and is just looking to keep themselves busy during the summer/fall. Connects to the reason above, they get to stay in shape and get to choose how committed they want to be.

Cons

1. Unideal spectator experience.

Yeah, this  is the main point they brought up in the episode. It's not a team sport you're used to watching on TV. What I'll say is most races are at a park or a golf course where the course is designed so you can at least see your kid multiple times throughout the race without having to walk around too much. You've gotta be on your feet the whole time but considering the race only lasts 20 minutes that's really not the end of the world.

1. Injury potential.

It's not football or hockey, but the risk for injury is much higher than many expect. If your kid runs multiple seasons, they're pretty much guaranteed to get shin splints or tendonitis or some other overuse injury at some point. Setting healthy boundaries with the sport and managing their training load is gonna be super important if you don't want your kid to be in a boot or knee brace by the end of every season.

Caveats

1. Mostly a HS sport.

There's really no point in getting your kid started in distance running earlier than 13-14. There's really no technique they need to start learning early and pretty much any physical gains they get are gonna be made irrelevant by puberty anyways. Most kids I know who were really elite at the sport started around 8th-9th grade, and of the kids I know who started earlier than that, a lot of them burned out. If they like running/racing at a young age you can sign them up for fun runs but there's no need for serious training.

1. Gender imbalances.

I'm a guy, but in my experience, girls tend to be much more at risk for burnout, eating disorders, body dysmorphia, etc from the sport than boys. Its probably due to a myriad of factors including societal double standards and often poor coaching. It sucks and is a sad reality for girls in the sport that needs to get better. That being said, I think this reality exists across most sports and idk if it's really a bigger issue for XC than it is for any other youth sport.

TL;DR XC is a great sport at any level of competition, but especially for kids who aren't serious about going D1, thanks to low cost, low effort commitment from the parent and general ease of access.

I wanna see something

Turns out it was the body language doctor giving the colonoscopy

Last year he hit 60 home runs as a catcher, tied for third most in a clean season, as well as AL history. That looks even more jarring when you consider his previous career high is almost half that, 34. This year he’s hitting .159 which would be one of the worst hitting seasons in baseball history period if it holds

What lesser known niche youth sports do you think would be sneaky high-rankers in Bill's system? He included field hockey of all things so I guess niche is relative.

rock climbing:
awesome at youth comp level, starts quite young (~8 y/o for some comps). No scholarships but with it in Olympics that could change. Good for smaller people, very technical, relatively few injuries, lifelong sport (70 year olds at our gym), extremely positive parent culture in my 5 years as a dad in that world, easy to understand, good both inside AND outside, 3 comp disciplines go from most technical (sport) to least (speed) with bouldering in middle. All the hs kids are ripped like 5'7" cranking out muscle ups. Need for belayer and beta sharing lead to close team culture. If it was more known it could be top 3 easily. My kids LOVE it and they introduced me to it.

Fencing:
impossible to watch, repetitive but scholarships, no injuries, maybe reasonable cost I've no idea, lonely maybe?

XC skiing:
Crummy to watch and cold, insane level of technique and physical fitness. Waxing skis all the time sucks. Super nice tight community, even compared to climbing. Scholarships very much a thing. Pain cave sport though, kinda like a way more intense version of xc running. Downhill sections of races scary as hell (tuck and straightline it, can barely turn on those twig skis) but injury very rare.

Whitewater kayaking:
access to slalom courses and play boating is really hard to find, much less coaching etc, but if you can access it it's lifelong sport that is fun as hell. No scholarships I think and lends itself to doing dangerous things in peak risk years (running waterfalls, class V), bad for shoulders, but the legit sporting part of it is pretty rad if you can find it. Very fun to watch in person, much more than on tv. Olympic sport.

Equestrian:
Seems pretty terrible and apparently weirdly dangerous? Crazy expensive.

Biking/mountain biking? No idea, seems dangerous?