A Shocking Lakers Sale. Plus, the 20 Best and Worst Youth Sports for Parents With Cousin Sal.

The Bill Simmons podcast brought to you by the Ringer podcast network.

I had a rewatchables for you.

On Monday, we did the Italian job, me and Van Lathen and Chris Ryan, super fun pod.

And in fact, we're doing two rewatchables this week.

So we have another one coming on Thursday.

It's a one for us, but I also think it's in the running for best romcom of all time.

It is about last night with Rob Lowe and to me more.

I came up 40 years ago.

It's a really important movie and a fun one to talk about.

It's on Netflix right now.

So if you want to watch it before we do it, go check it out.

But we're going to do it about last night, me and Chris Ryan and Mallorriban.

And that's going to be up Thursday night.

So to this week and then on Monday, the re-speed.

Yeah, the re-speed is happening.

We did speed.

It was one of the first ones we ever did.

And now we are doing speed again.

So that is what the schedule is for rewatchables.

On this podcast, the top I want to talk about this crazy Laker sale.

I'm just going to solo that part of everything I'm hearing and all my thoughts.

It's going to just dump them on you.

And then cousin Salis is coming on because this is something I want to do this whole summer.

And it's finally time.

The youth sport parent rankings from 20 to one.

These are my rankings only.

What I think the worst to best youth sports all the way through high school are for parents.

And it's probably not going to be liked by everyone who listens to this pun.

But that's the thing.

It's an honest conversation and these are all my thoughts.

And I can't wait to go through them with Sal.

So that's what we have in the docket today.

We're going to take a break, bring a pearl jam.

And then my thoughts on the Lakers.

For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters.

Tremphaya offers self injection or intravenous infusion from the start.

Tremphaya is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every

four weeks followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks.

If your doctor decides that you can self inject Tremphaya proper training is required.

Tremphaya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely

active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis.

Serious allergic reactions increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them

and liver problems may occur.

Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis.

Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms or need a vaccine.

Explore what's possible.

Ask your doctor about Tremphaya today.

Visit L1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit Tremphayaradio.com.

This episode is brought to you by ServiceNow.

Look, I already have my dream job.

I run the ringer.

Argue with Chris Ryan, AKCR, but even dream jobs have not so dreamy parts.

You know, the work that slows you down never seems to go away.

That's where ServiceNow's AI specialist come in.

They're like digital teammates who actually do the job start to finish.

No handoffs, no homework.

That means more time for the work that actually matters, which for me is talking about whether

the 86-L

or the

!

All right, we're recording this part of the podcast around lunchtime, Pacific time.

I am in California where the Lakers just got sold again for the second time in less than

two years in the single-mode shocking franchise sale in the history of the National Basketball

Association, which is almost eight decades old at this point.

Nobody saw this coming.

There was no inclination, no inkling.

There were no whispers.

I never heard one thing about this.

The Lakers and the Dodgers who were both owned by Walter were being for the last year.

More together into basically one super franchise where there was a lot of talk about redundancy

and people who had the same jobs and it was going to be a zero-sum game that the two

organizations were going to mesh in all of these different ways.

There was real fear in the NBA that with the bus family who would own the Lakers forever

that were basically a mom and pop operation presiding over one of the three biggest franchises

in the league that we went from the mom and pop side to now, these cutthroat analytics,

tons of money, search for every edge and the Lakers becoming the same kind of franchise

that the Dodgers became who just won the last two-world series and spent crazy amounts

of money and have found every single possible edge you can find a majorly based spot to

the point that we're about to have a long lockout next year because of basically what's

happened with the Dodgers and a couple other things.

The thought was that this guy was going to preside over but there was a couple whispers

just about what was going on with this guy.

It became a topic this summer in Los Angeles and I'm thinking in the Rich Guy circles too

because there was a report that he had had either a mile, there are a legitimate stroke in 2024.

He was being investigated by the Department of Justice and there was some possible insurance

fraud. There were always whispers about how did he come up with as much money as he came up with

to buy what I think is 78% of the Lakers. He'd already had it own to piece and he had to show out.

Close to $5 billion to buy the rest of it and there was always talk that he got middle

least of money for that. Did the league know that ahead of time? Where did he get it?

This is a bigger question about what's happening in professional sports leagues now, how people

are paying for these giant, giant, giant franchises. The craziest thing about this story is what

Ramona Shelburn reported that Bob Eiger and Josh Kirschner, Josh Kirschner is the one who bought

the team. He has thrived. They have investments everywhere and he is, I think in the younger class of

of really, really, really rich people. He's one of the richest and he has Bob Eiger and his team

who just left Disney and Eiger and Kirschner and buying the Lakers together. That really means

that Kirschner's paying for almost all of it. Eiger is going to run the Lakers, have thoughts on that

in a second, that they called Mark Walther over the weekend, supposedly on Sunday and asked if he'd

be interested in selling him, basically just tried to start Godfather offering him and end up being

for $12.5 billion. The sparks were not involved. Bloomberg, before I started recording this,

reported that he had been in talks with investors to raise money to pay down the loans. He was being

investigated for, and there's a bunch of conspiracy theories that come out of this. But I'll go in

order of the things that I thought were interesting with this. One was that Eiger and Kirschner were

considered to be the favorites for the biggest team. The biggest team, the number it always seemed to

be, the league was hoping to get some .5 billion. That was the number that they had said,

that's the number they sold the owners on. The owners voted to allow the expansion

talks to happen, but they didn't vote on expansion. I think the big sale for Adam Silver was,

if we do expansion, I will be able to get $15 billion from the two teams, which then because

they don't have to share with the players, every one of the 30 NBA owners would get a piece of that.

So everybody gets a check for $500 million if that becomes the number.

What they didn't expect was Vegas became even livelier than that. You had the Celtics said in the

precedent, Chism bought the Celtics for just over $6 billion, but it was actually more than that

because he had the Bial partners, the final number, and they're being around, I don't know, maybe

$7374 billion somewhere around there. The Celtics are worth less than Vegas, apparently,

because a bunch of people wanted Vegas. Then this turns into what I always talk about on the,

whenever we talk about rich people buying sports teams, it becomes the eBay auction where two

people want the item and they just kind of get crazy. Well, people wanted Vegas for a bunch of

different reasons. I don't really personally understand a lot of them. I don't really

understand why Vegas even has to have an NBA team or why they would have moved another team there.

People want a Vegas. And at some point, I got a question and we're like, well, if we're going to pay,

I've heard the number is over eight and a half and it's between eight and a half and nine now.

It's what they think they can get for Vegas. Those guys are like, we're going to pay that much.

Let's make one more run at the Lakers. So they get 78% of the Lakers. I think that's the number.

It's 77, 78 somewhere in there because the bus family and a couple of other investors still in

small pieces. For 9.5 billion, basically, that's what they're showing out or the, and maybe they have

to buy out more people. Maybe the bus family is like, you know what? We want to be dragged into this,

too. So how are they going to pay for this? Private equity, when you have a sale like this,

can only cover up to 20%. So 9.5 billion, they can get private equity for, I don't know, almost two.

That means they have to cover 58% of this, which is 7 billion somehow. Iger, who made a ton of money

at Disney, and he's probably worth, you know, he's probably worth over a billion dollars. He's not,

doesn't have that kind of cash. But Kushner does. And Kushner is at Drive Capital, which has had big

investments all over the place. They were in on SpaceX. And there's something bigger going on

with some of the money that people are throwing around right now that want to talk about it a second.

But Kushner is going to be the money guy for this. Kushner, Josh Kushner, brother of Jared,

who is in the news a lot. Now you have Trump ties. Talk about that in a second.

The Kushner, Iger combo. This is an incredible coup for Iger. And if you remember,

when he was still at Disney and he was trying to figure out whether he wanted to leave or not,

he thought he was getting the chargers in the mid 2000s. And there were always stories about

that he misplaced it that he was a little too, let me tell you guys how this could work. And

was a little too full of himself in the NFL owner meetings. And the owners are basically like,

who the fuck is this guy? And steered the chargers away from him and he didn't get it. And he

thought he was going to be the figurehead of the the second L.A. team didn't happen.

Ends up. He has a great first exit from Disney. Hands it off to his hand pick successor, Bob

Chaypick. Can't really figure out what to do. COVID happens. And he starts undermining Chaypick.

This has been covered ad nausea all over the place, including on Matt Bell and his excellent

podcast, the town. And as some Disney stuff's not going great, all of a sudden he's lurking again.

There's some undermining that has been, I'm sure somebody's going to write an awesome book about

this. And he ends up undermining his own successor and coming back to Disney, triumphantly, we think.

Because it didn't turn out to be that triumphant. Iger 2.0 Disney did not go great. And

I don't think it was a little like Jordan on the Wizards to be honest. And then last year,

the stuff that happened with Kimmel and Kimmel show and Kimmel almost getting fired. I think

it was, I'll just tell you like for in California, it was really bad for Iger. It was the first time

it's like your your wife is running the school journalism at USC and near somebody who's famously

stood up for free speech. All this stuff. Now you're running for the hills on this. And I don't

think that was great. He kind of had this pretty flat re-exit out of Disney. I would say unceremonious

as a fair word. He made a lot of money. And he just was, you know, obviously one on one last

act, but what was it going to be? Which was going to be the Vegas team. Now he's getting the Lakers.

Now he's going to, I assume he's going to be the one running the Lakers. What an incredible next

act for him, right? This is all the teams you can own. NBA NFL baseball, you name it.

This is the highest profile team you can own if you want to lean into the profile. You're sick

courtside. You're charged everything. You're determining where it would sit. You're now the power

broker, the same way Joe Laker, who wasn't as rich as a lot of the people that were coming to his

warriors games during the heyday of the steff era, was still the guy in this room that had all

these, you know, they had a Oracle, they had a Facebook name, anybody. It was still like, well,

you're coming into my house and sitting in my seats. It's a, it's a real thing for a

Monego standpoint. And now it's going to be Bob Eiger, who has suddenly revived his career yet

again. Incredible careers. Been kind of out a bunch of times that's happening. Okay. What does this

mean for the Dodgers Lakers and their organizational alliance? Nobody knows. Walter spent the last year

integrating the two organizations and trying to turn them into one bigger organization. Well,

Eiger and Christian aren't going to go for that. So, is magic still going to be involved? Magic

thought he was going to be involved with the Lakers and Dodgers together. Is he involved anymore?

Are they going to want him or are they going to need him? Who knows? What does this mean for the

future of the Dodgers? If Walter is basically flipping the Lakers and grabbing the cash, does that

mean the Dodgers could be potentially in danger as well? We'll see. What does this mean for Walter's

future as a businessman? And somebody who everybody thought had the deepest pockets possible, but it's

now flipping franchises because either he thinks he's in trouble or needs the money, not great.

Couple bonus things out of this. And again, I'm taping this. It's lunchtime. So things might have

changed. We're going to find out more information. What happens to the OAS parks? WMBA,

hottest that's ever been and in some ways, coldest that's ever been with some of the stupid

dialogue about the league, but hottest from players, valuations for the franchises,

the new media deal. OAS parks not in the sale. So does that mean Mark Walther is going to hand

that over to magic? It's magic and to buy it from him. They're trying to tank and get the

number one pick because people think if they get it, you do walk ends is going to come out after

her USC season. So what happens to the sparks, which I would say is one of the four best teams

telling in the WBA, that's one. Two, you saw Jeff Schwartz, who's one of the most successful agents

of this century, came out right after with a statement saying, quote, incredible, the Lakers

sell for 12 billion. Now it's 12.5. Yet teams won't spend on older vets because the current CBA

rules, thank you, Union. So all this is going to do is exacerbate all of this post CBA remorse

that basically everybody has except for the owners because it turned out awesome for them. All it

did was supercharged franchise values. It cut down their costs. They can't, they kind of

protected themselves from themselves. And meanwhile, you have Anthony Simon's making six million

a year in the sixers when he's a $50 million per. So that's going to start to bubble up too.

Why do we have a second apron, but franchise valuations are going to high. That's going to be a

dialogue. Then the third thing, I was surprised how many threads I was on today that somebody mentioned

this to me. Bob Eiger, big Chris Paul guy, big Chris Paul guy. When I was at ESPN, the two guys

that he loved were Chris Paul and Chancy Billups. I don't think Chancy is going to be involved with

this Lakers sell. That's one of my big predictions. You can pencil pencil him out. Chris Paul, who just

retired, trying to figure out what to do next. I just feel like he's going to be involved in this

and a lot of people do could this lead to Chris Paul running a team before LeBron James.

We're going to see what does this mean for Rob Pelinca? Are they going to push him out? You think

Bob Eiger wants to do with Rob Polinca? Could you see him put his own people there, including Chris

Paul? Keep an eye on Chris Paul. Okay. Conspiracy Bill, we're going to bring him in for this.

Best Mark Walters conspiracy theories I've heard. I can't vouch for any of these. I'm just telling

you what's going around. Health wasn't great. I had to get out. I think that's a fair one considering

we know he had medical issues about to get completely fucked in the insurance fraud case. Somebody

texted me. Maybe had a ton of Middle East money in the deal. I think that's true.

In the Middle East investors wanted the money back as a conspiracy. I don't know if I believe

that, but I like it. That sounds like a movie. The other part of that conspiracy could be

he had more Middle East money in the deal than Adam Silver realized and Adam Silver wasn't happy

about it. This is why we bring in conspiracy Bill. He's laying out the landscape for you.

And then the biggest conspiracy going around right now that Mark Walters sold to this

Kushner Aggregrew because Kushner's brother has major trump ties and Trump controls the DOJ

in the Kushner connection that will get them to call the FBI dogs off. That is even too hot for

conspiracy Bill. Who knows? It might be pieces of all of those things. It might just be this guy's

might be as simple as I'm really worried about my net worth. I just need to flip this asset and make

money and I got a Godfather offer from these guys that really wanted a team. Last piece is the

most interesting. You've heard variations of everything I just talked about. If you're looking

at the NBA teams that just got sold in the last 12 years, 2014 Steve Balmer Quippers, two billion

didn't own their own arena. 2015 Hawks, 850 million seemed high at the time. The Atlanta Hawks,

really? The nets, 2019, 2.35 million that included the arena and the Liberty,

also kind of same time, but the size didn't care. He's got a ton of money.

Now we're getting into the bargain area during, like right before, during and after COVID,

the jazz 1.66 million with the arena 80% stake. So basically valued at two. Ryan Smith

just figured it out. Got the hockey team. Now he's got a whole arsenal there. Timberwolves.

1.5 billion paid in tranches almost like when you bought a lawnmower from Subbiday and you

want to pay them once a month for the next three months or something. 1.5 billion total

for the Timberwolves, including the arena. Glenn Taylor to the bitter end just making the worst

deals possible. Really, one of the worst basketball owners of all time. He couldn't even sell his

team properly because less than two years later, the horn itself for $3 billion.

What's different between the hornets and the Timberwolves? Two small markets like a

the suns in 23, 4 billion. Notice how we're going up. We were in the ones. Now I'm at four with

the suns. That included the arena to Ishbia Mavericks, 2024, 3.5 billion for the majority. That

includes the arena. Cuban kept the stake. Celtics. 6.1. Then when you figure in all the buy-out

people that they had, it's closer to the low sevens, Lakers last year, 10 billion value.

The actual amount of money wasn't that. Then 26, 12. Did I ever think we would have a $12 billion

NBA team? In basically the 2020s or 2030s? No. Especially the only one I would have said was the

next because of MSG and the Rangers. You could have told me you put all those assets together.

Good don't have gotten eight figures. I think he could have. Now he's looking at this going

holy shit that we're talking in this price range now. Bigger question, why are these franchise

valuations skyrocketing like they are? Because we just saw Liverpool, which the Fenway Sports Group is

unraveling a sale for. They just announced like Bayzos isn't it. There's some reasons. I asked

to round on this and I think this is a pretty good list of reasons for this. There's more money

huge ass purchases like this than ever before. That happened for a bunch of reasons. AI,

super charges stock market, Trump administration relaxed a bunch of the rich guy rules.

People have more money and easier ways to spend it basically. There's more private equity out

there than ever before. People are just getting better and better at the private equity thing.

This has been a 40 year run here of where you had only a couple players a while ago. Now pretty

much everybody's trying to do this and put together pieces of stuff and things that make sense together.

Like you look at what Ari Emmanuel and those guys are doing, the stuff that they invest in. It's a lot

about live event experience. Things that tie together was some sort of fan venue and how

all that stuff intersects with media rights seems to be the thing that they care about. They just

announced this huge thing where they bought a bunch of stuff involved in Broadway. That's like

their angle. A lot of these people that are coming into this space seem to have certain angles.

One of those angles with the money that's out there is like, guess what? Never goes down. Ever.

Professional sports teams. Guess what? Nobody is ever read and ever buying one of the signature best

trophy professional sports teams. Look at this stuff that's sold recently. The commanders who used

to be the Washington Redskins. Now they're the commanders. NFL in Washington, you're buying from Daniel

Snyder. They went over six million. The Lakers, the Celtics, Liverpool. I think this keeps happening.

At some point, there's probably a bubble for it. Maybe it'll be after Trump's term is over. Maybe

it'll happen sooner. Maybe there'll be some Black Swan event we don't know about. But

everyone is buying in at the highest, highest, highest possible version of this bubble because

they have money to spend, you know, like SpaceX. A lot of people made a shitload of money from that,

including Josh Kusher. And they want to park that money. They want to put it somewhere. What better

place to park it than a sports team, especially an iconic sports team where you have fixed costs.

You get the ego from it. People are asking your life. Would you invest in this? Like this?

Oh, and I bought the Lakers. You bought the Lakers? Oh my God, I didn't realize you were the Lakers,

owner. At some point, this is a bubble. And I don't know when it is. But these prices are so high

that I'm thinking about like, what's next? The Chicago Bulls. Is there a number now that

Ryan's North would think, all right, I got a, what am I doing? I got to get out of this. I could

get 10 billion for the Bulls. I should do this. Chicago Bears, I think is another one. I think the

New York Jets, Dolan's conglomerate. And then I wouldn't worry about the Warriors. Just from the

standpoint of we took the Steph Curry run as far as we could possibly go, we built the arena,

we make the most revenue of any team in the league. Maybe it's time to sell high.

Could this be what happens? Here's, here's where we should all be scared as fans.

People are moving into these leagues with the signature teams that are doing it

solely because of the financial piece and not for any other reason. Bob Agger is a next fan who

has clipper season tickets. He's not a Laker fan. I don't know what team cushion routes for it,

but that's whatever it is. That's not why they bought it. They bought it because

it's one of the best things you can buy in sports, the Los Angeles Lakers. We're seeing this over

and over again now with the wealthiest of the wealthy buying sports teams as assets and thinking

about them like assets. So now you have a commissioner, Adam Silver, who I've been somewhat critical of

the last, I don't know, two years or so because I feel like the league is so revenue driven and

so franchise price driven that they're kind of not seeing the forest through the trees anymore.

And you can see with the WNBA. All the ways they've handled this WNBA asset, which the league owns

a piece of, I just disagree with a lot of it. I didn't like that they overexpanded. They've added

three expansion teams. For reasons they were men on queer. They did this media deal where it's on

seven different channels and it's a pain in the ass to figure out who's who. They don't have a

real commissioner in place that can solve some of the issues that seem to be repeatedly popping up

with this league. Like, you know what the league needed? I'm sorry to go on a WNBA tangent, but

the league more than anything else needed somebody an adult to say stop with all the discourse.

All this stuff that has nothing to do with the basketball players we have in the product we're

putting on the floor. Let's talk about our stars. Let's talk about our team our best teams and

all the positives that have happened over the last few years with this league and said all the

dumb shit and anybody who's trying to dine on the dumb shit for clicks, for attention, for social

video, whatever don't have good intentions. And those people should not be spearheading and

pushing the dialogue about our league. Well, nobody did that. And it's just going to continue to

happen. And meanwhile you have a game like last night where the fever looked awesome. And, you know,

afterwards it's the same old shit. It's Stephanie White having to defend herself in a press conference.

Everybody in the WNBA has to defend themselves. Why? The league's the best it's ever been. The scoring

is up. And I look at the NBA and I wonder like with the second apron and the players in the

and these the revenue stuff and all the stuff they have to care about with the new media deal.

I still, maybe it's a pipe dream at this point. You still want to think that the people run in

the best teams actually care about those teams. Like regardless, the chism who bought the

Celtics. So I really like and I will never understand why they traded Jalen Brown.

But at least I know it wasn't a financial decision, right? The money thing wasn't different.

There was something else going on there with Jalen and Jason and them feeling like they had maybe

Brown made a trade. Who knows what happened? But he at least has my trust that I do think he cares

about the team that he grew up watching and caring about that he's not going to want to do wrong

by that franchise and by the fan base. You start letting these big money people in here that

only care about the investment and only care about what they're getting over the players,

what the economics of the league are. Everything is seen through the prism of finance. And this is just

listen, in the 1950s and 60s, if you go back and read about the history of the league, you know,

teams that own NBA teams that own bowling alleys, right?

Teams that their entire business rose or felt with how they did with like the Boston Celtics,

like Walter Brown or on the Celtics and the Bruins. And in the 70s and 80s, the NBA started

teams would get flipped over and over again. The Celtics had six seven owners in the 70s and 80s.

And at one point, John White Brown, who won the Celtics and Irv Levin, who won Buffalo,

just flipped teams. They just changed owners. Like, it was just crazy backroom shit that would

never happen now. And I think the Mavericks, when they were an expansion team in 1981,

it was like 12 million. And there's been levels of when the numbers went up. And the numbers were

realistic until about three, four years ago. And now they're not, they're not realistic. I don't

think the Lakers are worth $12 billion when they don't even own their own stadium. Somebody thought

they were worth it because they paid it. And they're going to figure out how to turn that into an

asset and an advantage. But that's a crazy price. And I guess this is just where we're going to be

with with pro sports with these bigger things. Like you, you just, these teams are getting a bot.

And in the old days, you would be worried that you had some drunk owner, you know, or some,

or a bad guy or somebody who leveraged himself and then didn't have enough money to run the team,

or somebody, this was the fourth most important thing they did and they didn't care. Or they got

left the team and they don't care about it. We had that with the Celtics with Paul Gaston,

Don Gaston son. But now we're moving into this whole weather era where these things are just giant

hedge fund plays. And is it going to be good for the league? Is it going to be good for professional

sports? My instinct is no. But I'm a glass half empty optimistic person. I think this is

watching somebody flip the Lakers over a year and a half like he's flipping a mansion in Belair

or something is fucking bonkers. This is the crown jewel of the league. The Lakers and the

next are the two most important teams in the league. I'm a Celtic fan. Even I would admit that.

Celtics have the tradition, the titles, the fan base, all that stuff. But if you're just talking

about the two most important teams in the league from cities, ratings, money they make, it's the

Lakers and it's the next. And one of them just got flipped like a house. So what's it going to mean?

I guess we will find out. We're going to take a break. Come back, talk about

use sport power ranking for parents. Yeah, we're going from the Lakers to use sports right after this.

This episode is brought to you by chat GPT. Imagine you're running a professional sports team.

Nice. That would be a dream, man. Imagine the player contract report is due today.

Not so nice. You've got performance notes from the coaching staff. You got a salary spreadsheet

from your analyst. Three rounds of back and forth emails with the agent and all of it is scattered.

Absolutely everywhere. Well, that's where chat GPT work comes in. It's a new way to use chat GPT

for bigger multi-step projects. Give chat GPT work access to your apps and files and can create

real work documents, for instance spreadsheets, slides, structured reports. You can bring all those to

your next meeting when you don't need answers. You need help just getting the work across the

finish line. Guess what? Chat GPT work can move your projects forward while you stay in control.

Put chat GPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects get started. Just go to chat GPT.com

by selecting work mode available on plus and pro plants.

My friend, Cousin, Sal is here. We are killing a ton of time until football stays in world. We're

in football prep mode. You've been on the ringer-wise guys we're calling it now, which is our

Earl Gambley show, which is on Twitch and YouTube and Spotify. Breaking down divisions.

But you just came back from Cooperstown. Yes. Let's do it. Let's just do the football.

Cooperstown is fine. Let's just do the football. We're ready. You're ready. I'm ready.

I made it up. We're recording the football on August 27th of Thursday and we're doing a two-parter

and I couldn't be more excited because we're now 15 days away from that. But this was the perfect

time. It's my daughter's last college socrates in coming up. You just went to Cooperstown. Your

son's team finished six out of 102 teams. You just lived this whole week long. You think you're

in a sports movie. One of the questions that I get the most because people know from the podcast

from other stuff that I've been a soccer dad for a long time, when you meet these people who have

younger kids and are like, give me some advice. What do you think my kids should play?

What sport would you recommend? I'm finally like, fuck it. We're just going to do this. But before

we do that, one of your sons played football. Your son that did wrestling. Then you're

younger son is in a whole bunch of stuff, but probably likes baseball the most. So what's your

favorite out of all of those? I could speak to football wrestling, baseball, basketball, and rugby,

actually. Now, as the five that I've competed in or my kids have, I have to pick a favorite right

off the bat. No, you don't. Save it. Save it. We'll save it for the rest. All right. All right.

We are going to, people are going to hate this. We're going to go from, from 20 to one.

Word sport for your kid to play from a parent experience. We are not talking about the kids.

This is just, this is all selfish. This is just for the parents only, parent only rankings

from 20 to one. And we're just going to try to give you some wisdom. I have some, some guidelines

here. I have seven questions. The first one is, how does the sport actually append your life?

Which is an underrated part of being a youth sports parent. Does it regularly affect the time

you wake up? Do you have to spend a lot of time driving to far tournaments? Are your weekends

just destroyed? Is there food diet stuff that has to tread? Like you wrestled in high school,

like, you know, there's, there's too much stretch where you're not allowed to basically eat

anything. How upset will your kid be at you if you miss one of the events and how upset will you be?

And then if your weekends are going to be ruined for years or you least having fun or somewhat fun.

So from a parent standpoint, I think that's number one. Baseball you've been in a lot of,

it's a lot of driving. Yeah. Well, first of all, we should clarify a little because like,

what are the, what time period, right? Because little league baseball when they're six is delightful.

I mean, what's better than staring at them in the cute uniform? So he, he, he didn't hit the ball

and he immediately ran the third base. How cute. But if Ethan does that when he's 12,

you're looking to fight his father, right? So, you know, I, uh, I guess we'll put it at,

what, what range are we putting it in? Post six years of run? Yeah. We're, we're assuming that

your kid is going to at least be competent enough to play from, let's say age six all the way

through around high school age, if it goes well. Okay. Okay. Mm hmm. Second, second question.

You just were in the middle of this. What's the parent culture around the sport? What type of other

parents are you consistently hanging out with? How much do you actually have to hang out with them?

Are there outs? Can you wander off? Can you like in baseball? You can be like, I'm going to go

watch something this from left field, but you're really trying to get away from agro dad.

Mm hmm. How crazy are the parents on a scale of one to 10? Just day to day regularly,

a practice is how competitive are they with the other kids and parents on the team for

scholarship stuff, whatever. Um, and just can you move in and out of this?

So wrestling, you go and you're in the stands, you never know, you're, you're watching

everybody else and then your kids up and everybody's kind of pulling for everybody else and wrestling,

right? Absolutely. Yep. I would say wrestling, you're stuck in a smelly gymnasium for a tournament,

I would say like a meat on a Tuesday or Thursday is a little more manageable. You know when your kid

is wrestling, you can invite relatives out for a tournament. Wayans could be at 730 in the morning.

Yeah. The tournament starts at nine and he or she could wrestle at 10 and then two,

depending on the way class. So that part of it is miserable, I would say.

And not to spoil my rankings because these are my rankings. You don't even know what we're doing,

but the unpredictability of event times is so much more important and crucial to this than

people seem to realize where it's like, my son has a track and field meet today. Well, when is

what is it going to be? I have no idea. It could be 930, it could be two. There could be a race here.

We might have seven hours to kill. Now I'm eating a hot dog from the concession stand or chips.

Or stuff out of a vending machine. Oh, do we have time to drive 10 minutes to go to like Jack in

the box? The more uncertainty you have around the schedule, the less fun it is. So you have that.

The next question is how expensive is the sport to become good at? So that includes

special travel teams, club teams, special expensive equipment. You know, like I think like LaCrosse,

hockey, some of these ones where you, or even baseball gloves like, oh, my kid grew. I have to get

more stuff. Oh, it's another year. Oh, the LaCrosse stick is too short for him now. I got to get that

again. Oh, I got to get another, you know, helmet for whatever. I got to get new gloves. The whole

thing of that. It's hard to explain the reaction you have when you buy an expensive bat for your kid

for Christmas. And then he's using the best hitter on the team's bat by the MLK tournament.

Right. And you're like, I just, this is our big Christmas gift to you. It's too small.

And then private training and private coaches because there's some of these where,

you know, called privates, but like in baseball, if you want your kids to actually play in college,

you're going to start doing privates. If your kids are figure skater, like that's a whole that

now you have to hire a coach, like that's going nuts versus like some of these other sports,

you know, basketball, you could have, you could definitely have privates. You could also just

be a really good athlete who could just lay sound some sneakers and go out there and play for

a club team. Yeah. I think this is for me because my kid's a tweener, right? He's not terrible,

but he's not going to play pro or anything close and all this friends are in that category.

So what do you do with the private lessons? You don't want them to embarrass himself, but I feel

like this isn't the the e-bike cell phone category. Like they never need it until a couple of

their friends take it and then you're screwed. So you really have to rally the parents to resist as

much as you can. I would say for soccer, it is important. Yeah, that's that's when we go through,

I'll talk about the different ones, but for some of them, like, just like technique sports with

technique, if you're a baseball pitcher, at some point, you're going to have some sort of private

coach that helps you with your throwing motion, all that stuff. All right. So that's expensive is

another category. So that's three. So we have does the sport append your life? What's the parent

culture? How expensive it is? The fourth one is physical mental health risk for your kid.

I would argue this is the most important. We're talking about concussion potential.

We're talking about dieting and all the crazy shit you have to do to compete in certain sports.

Injury of potential is your body going to be the same when you're 30 years old because you played

this sport. Also, are you solo? Is all the pressure on you? Are you part of a team?

I would argue it's better to be part of a team and have that dynamic and learn how to compete with

other people. And the solo thing can can get weird, but also like it's easier to succeed in.

Does the sport get you in better shape? There's certain sports where like, if you play soccer,

you're just in good shape. You can play baseball and potentially not being great shape.

But physical mental health risk. So you're a wrestler. You have all the dieting stuff, all the

crazy. You're running up and down the stairs. It's 110 degrees. You have the pressure of these matches

of letting the team down. I would say that's like a 9 out of 10 pressure toll on your body sport.

Yeah, I think it's like you're sending your kid to the off to the service,

like to the arms forces. Without doing that, without getting in a fight with your wife about

doing it. But you would do it again. It's the best in the worst. I put it at the top and the very

bottom because it's like the mental torture it takes, the physical torture it takes. Later in life,

if you have to lose weight, whatever, you got that. You are rooting for your team,

but it is an individual sport. I would say from a parents perspective, if you like to blame people,

you're not going to be able to do it. I know we all love to blame people. We're all in the

Twitter universe, right? We like to blame or whatever politics. It's, oh, it's got to be someone

else's fault. Once in a while, a referee will call a takedown out of bounds. It didn't happen.

But for the most part, it's your kid effing up or your kid doing great. So the highs are as high

as they could be in the lows or as low as they could be. Yeah, anything when it's just you

cross-country like this, track of fields like this, like, oh, it's just you. Yeah, you,

the urine charger, your destiny. There's no other people to blame. You can't say, oh, the coach's

kid was playing the wrong position or he, my kid should have been there and he instead,

they played him at that. Like, you have no excuses. You're just looking at in the mirror.

Right. And then, you know, there's some, you're talking about the more physical sports,

there's a real toll that happens. Like, my son in the high school played as a freshman in sophomore

played football in lacrosse. And he's still, he didn't want to play in him. His body is still

banged up. Like, he has hip stuff already. He had like two minor concussions and

and then looking back, you're like, man, should we have let him play football at all? And you have

the parent guilt. Parent guilt is almost its own category in this. Yeah.

I would say for that, they're just real quick. Like, you know, football as far as like a

spectator sport, and this is all subjective. You could like soccer better, but Friday night

under lights, nothing better. That's what the TV should TV shows about it. Movies about it. But

same time, you talk about like skipping a game. Like, the one of the parents kind of has to be

there just in case that all got awful thing that we read about happens, you know, the head

injury or whatever, which is the ambulance is taking kids off the field. It's not as much a concern

with, you know, golf or, you know, the field hockey, but it is football for sure.

Yeah. And having been in this stand a couple of times when that happens, it's the single worst feeling.

Like, somebody got hurt, somebody's down, they stopped the game. Like, it's, and he was like, oh,

Friday night football is so much fun. And then it's like, holy shit, what are we doing?

That kids 15 is getting carded up. Three more categories. Is there actual realistic college scholarship

potential? Could this weirdly all pay off all the time we're spending doing whatever,

privates, anything? Could you, could this be a shortcut to not having to pay for college,

which can be like half a million dollars and five, six years? And then which sports are the

sneaky best bets to get a scholarship? I factored that in the ranking too. Oh, I thought you said

which can you bet on, which is also, no, we could also which sports could be better. But like

water polo is the sport you and I would have been like, yeah, Ben's getting a water polo or,

yeah, Harrison's a big water polo guy down and you're like, what? Right. Water polo. And then you

watch like, my son's school had all of these kids just going from the water polo team tall,

these, you know, pretty prestigious colleges because it's not a sport that everybody has. So if

you're lucky enough to live in an area that has something like that, you know, it was a water polo

college athlete. Who's that? You'll never guess this. I don't think you know the answer to this.

Joe House. Really? Joe House was a big high school water polo and basketball, but then in college,

they'd water polo for a couple years until I think we'll shave him and made fun of him to get

him to stop. Yeah. Oh, that's funny. Joe House. He stopped. He probably didn't want to just be

treading water in a pool in the Patriot League. All right. Two more categories. Parent,

entertainment value. So this is a positive category. How much fun is it to attend the games? Are

the schedules consistent? Are you outdoors or indoors? How easy? This is a big one for you. How

easy if for you to sneak away and do a work call or some sort of other call during the event? Do

you have flexibility or you have to be locked in scared the entire time? Are there breaks that

are in the bed on the undercard and UFC and Saudi Arabia at 2 p.m. and I have to get away and watch

that match. And, you know, we'll see what little Nathan does afterwards. Well, then can you watch,

can you watch stuff during the events? Yeah. I mean, and we would do Sunday pods where Zoe had a

soccer tournament. And I would have Sunday ticket on my phone while she's playing games,

trying to keep track of everything and taking notes and soccer is a little easier, but there's

some other sports that would not be as easy. And you're guilty either way. You feel guilty.

Right? You're missing a kid a little bit or you're missing the Sunday slate and I have to how

am I going to go on Sunday night and make it like I watched everything. But the only other piece

for parent entertainment value is the actual sport relatively easy to understand. Is it fun for

the parent? Do you feel like you could have some sort of opinion slash respectable thoughts about

what you're watching or you just like what go in there going. I don't know what the fuck's going

on where this goes wrong is baseball where everybody thinks they're the biggest expert in the

world. So that this is pros and cons. The easier the sport is to understand the more people are

weighing in with some of the worst takes of all time. You're in the middle of this with baseball.

It was the single worst thing about being a baseball parent. Yeah, there's people aggressively

like screaming, Bawk, Bawk, every pit, you know, it's like, no, it's not a Bawk. You stepped off,

cut it out. There's that part of it. And then there's your wife or husband who doesn't know the

game after, you know, nine years of this is just like, so wait, they have to tag him at first,

but don't they have to tag him on a ground ball for now? No, no, no, but I will say this like

there was something comforting when my son Archie, my oldest decided to play rugby,

sophomore year. And aside from like worried that he'll get need in the face with the ball, you know,

well, I can say where those little scooby kind of protective helmets, but not they're

nothing really on the face. There was something nice about not knowing the rules and just like

kind of watching along. And you know, I didn't get loud about anything because I didn't know the

rules. So, you know, when they're throwing it in and one kid standing on the other shoulders and

there's a throw and like, it was fine to me. So I don't know, it's a, it could go either way.

I had this with lacrosse. I lacrosse is a sport I'd never followed in any capacity. Never watched,

never cared about. And then my son got pulled onto the lacrosse team and all the sudden was playing

when he was a ninth grader. And I didn't know what was going on. And I, I, I became like, it was

almost like I was a foreigner sitting on the sidelines being like, so you, so that guy can't go past

midfield. And these people can run off and they're back on and wait, why didn't that goal count?

That was just confused for two months. I couldn't understand anything and the goals were fast. These

fows, then it would be like, there would be like this delayed power play where if you had the ball

and there, and then the guy's running off, but you still have it. And it's like, well, is he off for

30 seconds or two minutes? And I don't know. It was a lot. As long as it eventually makes sense.

It eventually makes sense. But it's not like VAR for all this whole summer. We went to.

All right. Last question, bonus question. This is a really important one. When you talk to grown-ups,

your age are a little younger, but adults about the sport that they devoted their youth to.

What do they say in retrospect? Are they happy? They did it.

Did, would they run it back? Would they do it over again? This is the number one gymnastics is

the number one for this. I'm still waiting to meet the first person who did gymnastics all the way

through high school or college. And was like, that was great. I would definitely 100% do that again.

The person does not exist. Even people like who won Olympic gold medals like, yeah, I don't know.

I don't know if I would run that one back. And football was another one where I think if you talk

to people who played football in high school and in college, afterwards, yeah, football was great.

Would I do it again? No. So it's an interesting one. Whereas other ones like soccer,

unless you had some terrible injury or something for the most part, or volleyball, nobody's like,

oh, yeah, I would never play volleyball again. Yeah. I mean, first of all, when you ask them

the question, you're hoping they haven't sustained enough injuries, whether they're not able to

verbalize anything. So they're taping the answer. But I do have a personal story with this.

We'll bring up Tony Romo here. It's not exactly play out what you said, but I want him my kid.

I wanted Archi to play football starting in seventh grade, like tackle football. And like,

we know the Romos and we went out with them, started a name drop, whatever. And I asked,

I was like, I'll get Tony to convince Melissa and his wife will agree and that'll be nice.

She's like, Tony Archi could play tackle in seventh grade, right? Right? And he's like,

yeah, he could wait till 10th. And I was like, what? You just ruined it for me. You just took three

years of my life, even though you might have had it three to his. But that's not the answer I want

to hear. So yeah, you will get, you will get negative, honest feedback for whatever reason from

these athletes. Yeah, I wish, I wish we had held Ben out until 10th grade because he was ninth grade.

He was starting playing, you know, against 18 year olds. I let back at that. I'm like, this is

fucking crazy. But he was doing well and it seemed like a good idea. Now I really regret that.

So the questions are, do they acknowledge now is bad for their bodies? Were they more or less likely

to have a positive or negative experience with a coach, depending on the sport?

You can have some sports where if you have the wrong coach, you never want to play that sport again.

You can have other sports where it's like, oh man, that guy changed the course of my life or that lady.

If I hadn't met that person, I'd probably wouldn't be doing this for a living.

Another good question is, which sport do you actually wish you would play it? And then

the big one, can you keep playing the sport after high school or college?

Which I think gets lost in this whole thing where it's like, if you play football, you're done

playing football either in high school or college, you never play it again, right? There's other

sports. Like if you get in a golf when you're six, now you're playing golf for 80 years. I get

invited to Babydoll's Country Club. I get to get to play 18 with them somewhere. It never

ends. Tennis is another one. Like if I'm good at tennis and I have the mechanics of a serve and

I can play serve in volleyball. I'm playing until I'm 75. And that's it. It's just those two, right?

I pick a ball. I guess if you want to count it now, I don't know how. There's some beach fun.

That'll happen. Yeah, pick about it. Not make our list for top 20. But beach volleyball is another

one you could probably play until your 20s or 30s. My daughter's talking about this now because she's

she's really competitive and she's like, I'm not playing this is my last soccer year I'm done.

What am I going to do after? And and I think she's going to start playing tennis and I really

try to get good at it because she's like, I can play tennis. I can play doubles. You can play singles.

Like my wife plays five days a week and you know, she's close to our age. So, um, so those are

the big ones. So the seven are I'm going to call it life grenade. How much does this blow up your

life when your kid plays the sport? Parent culture around it. Finance is how expensive it is.

Physical mental health risks. College scholarship potential. Parent entertainment value for us

personally. Do we have a good time watching it? And then post playing career regrets for the people

we know. Those are the seven caucuses. Um, the other thing I would add maybe wouldn't maybe this

isn't a separate question because it's all encompassing. But what percentage of the games you're

rooting against your kids team for whatever reason? Oh, to have the weekend and early because you have

to get back because you have to do something else because they're going to get killed by the next

team anyway. Well, it's a baseball number one for that where it's like, oh man, two more and it's

a mercy rule. We can get out of here. It is number one. It's definitely number one.

One thing I didn't have on here just so people know is flag football, which I think 10 years from

now, I think flag football will basically be football for everyone under 16. And flag football is

great. I had so much fun when my, uh, when my son played for his school, the willows that went

to eighth grade title, which was like one of my great sports moments as a parent. Um, but super

fun and not you don't have to worry about like a major injury for the most part. You might have

like, once the kids get better, you might have the collision over the middle where somebody's going

for an interception and maybe they hit heads. You see some kids wearing caps, but for the most part

really safe. And I think that's going to keep taking off. And I think you would put football number one

for entertainment value and everything else and camaraderie and parents and be able to get away.

And all those things you talked about, if not for the injury risk and that flag football

could be just as exciting on a Friday night. If you have a competitive game, my kids

been in it for like six years now. So it's great. Um, we're going to take a break and we're going to

come back and we're going to unleash the top 20.

The perfect lunch combo that first bite of your favorite sub followed by ice cold Pepsi.

Add a couple of friends and now that's next level. Suddenly the laughs get louder,

the stories keep flowing and the food tastes better because Pepsi brings out more flavor,

more fun and more of the moment. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a Pepsi Zero sugar today.

All right. Top 20 best youth sports for parents from 20 to one, 20 being the worst.

Very important. These are not sales rankings. These are my rankings. Yeah.

Salas, my conciliaries slash sounding board. I'm happy to move stuff around.

Coming in last at number 20.

Figure skating. I think it's the perfect storm. I think it checks every negative box.

Incredibly expensive.

Herific ice rink times, right? You're getting up. Oh, I gotta get up.

Julie's got a figure skating of it for 15 tomorrow morning. It's the only time we get the ice rink.

Lonely. You're relying on coaches that could be terrible or great and the upside is,

I don't know, they don't have really a figure skating scholarships, right?

So the upside is my kid might be able to go pro and make money in the odds of that.

Your competing against literally everybody else in the planet.

And you have to buy skates every year. And you can't really do it. Then when you're old,

they're except for if you're doing like a Christmas stroll escape. This is my number number one

worst. And I don't think it's arguable. What do you think? Pretty good. I would say the only good

thing is you don't have, you know, you're not freezing outside the rain. The weather doesn't affect

it because it's indoors. That's the only good thing. You're right about the morning time. But the

rings are cold though. The rings are kind of cold. Yeah. Yeah. And this could always be some

lunatic who hit your knee with a lead pipe and who the hell knows it goes on and off for

unsolved for decades. Yeah. Yeah. I would put that to, by the way, this is going to be

get ready for this because you're going to get more backlash from your list no matter what.

I haven't even heard it. Yeah. Then any other podcast you've ever done. I'm fine. I'm going to

take it. This is just my rankings only. And if it's an opinion, opinions are like assholes.

Everybody has one. Everyone's going to have a hundred. That's a problem. Yeah.

Figure skating. Also, when it kind of goes up and levels, now I got to buy outfits.

Yes. I have to buy the fancy little figure skating dresses. I've got to pay coaches. Like,

if you're doing this, you better know from age four. Your kid is an absolute prodigy. I don't,

I don't see it. And the weight thing is a problem too, right? Like keeping the weight down.

Yeah. There's a whole bunch of, yeah. There's a whole bunch of eating stuff that could happen too.

All right. I guess the benefit is if you're, if you're pairs,

very tight relationship with your pairs partner. So you're not alone. That's true. You find

to find a partner. Also, when you think about scariest moment as a parent, like, let's say your

kid's getting good at figure skating and is in sub tournament, but then does the trip. Oh,

here comes the triple axel and then falls. There will be more devastating other than like if

your kids are kicker and football in college. And your kid misses the kick and there's 75,000

people there and your kid just blew everybody the game penalty kicks maybe. Baseball that you're

just your kids never playing football is probably the biggest matter. Yeah. I think so.

Interest pick six or something like that, but yeah, it does individualize it as much as anything

figure skating. Last. Second, last gymnastics easily could have been number 20.

An actual body ruiner. There's, there's a really good book that somebody wrote like 30 years

ago. I think it's called Little Girls in Pretty Boxes about like, especially gymnastics. Like,

like, has real, real effects on its stunts growth. Like knee back stuff. One of my wife's best

friends did gymnastics and is like an advocate now for please don't ever don't have your kids do

this. Yeah, it's just that there's you have back stuff. You have spine stuff. You have leg stuff.

You can have foot stuff. You're constantly like, oh, I'm a little sore, but we have a me tomorrow.

I got to play like, I'm out on gymnastics. A lot of people like it's well, everyone loves it in

the summer for the summer Olympics isn't it the most watched? I mean, it's like it's the best of

the best. It's a one thing the whole family will get together and watch. I feel like, yeah.

But those are like the best 50 ever. Like, what about all the other ones who, who went through

a coach? See, this is where people are getting a mad. Well, they should do a copy of you.

There's some own vials of the world. I'm like, hey, this isn't for everybody. In fact,

it's just for the like seven of us and that's it. I try. I think dance is more interesting for

because we had some little girls like we had Zoe did gymnastics for, I don't know, like the first

year and they were like, you got to get her coming five days a week. She could be amazing. We were

like, it's always going to be like five nine, but she's not, she's going to be a gymnast.

But I think there's, there's, I would push toward dance would be my parent advice. Not saying

I'm right or wrong, but if you want your little girl to be limber and do stuff, like, like go

the dance route because you're going to get great balance from it and everything else.

I have my buddy Tony, I wasn't sure if you're going to include dance. Not our mutual friend,

Tony, but I did, he did say insert dance in there and he's like, from a parents perspective,

it's awful because you're seeing them do the same five minute routine over and over and over.

Yeah, it was not dance that not make the cut. Right. Number 18, swimming.

Yeah. So, punch just stuff going on here. The all day meets we talked about with wrestling,

especially if your kids doing multiple things. You might, the first one might be at 730 and then

the next one is at two and then the last one's at five. Our buddy Gus had a kid who was a swimmer

and that it was the meets. It really, it's an all dayer with the added bonus. You can barely tell

which kid is yours if you're in like the bigger things. It's like, is that seeing lean five or lean

four and then you're going and there's a lot of chlorine exposure. Yeah. And the benefits are

you get in six shape. Yep. And there's scholarship potential, but I don't know. I'm just

what are your body image issues for sure? Right. I mean, six great on. You're in a,

you're in a one p.d. Oh, yeah. That's it. Oh, yeah. Boy, girl. So it is tough. Yeah. That chlorine

killed me. My kid trained for junior guards out here to be a lifeguard and it wasn't

swim meets, but it was a lot of intensive and the coaches can be crazy too. That's an underrated

like, like, you know, iron chef type coaches in the background,

seeming they're. We just love Zackla, whose dad was a famous high school coach in Grennidge for swimming

and he's going to be furious. That's swimming came to 18. Look, there's no, there's no losers.

These are just the rankings. I include diving and swimming. This is all anything with a pool.

Also pool times hard. You know, sometimes that's another one where you might have to get up early

to go swimming. So anyway, swimming is 18. Wrestling 17. For a lot of the stuff we mentioned. And

I say there's no in that you loved wrestling, but when you think, when your kid wins a match and

pin somebody about as exciting as it's going to get for a parent and then I would say every other

piece of it's terrible. A lot of it's terrible. Yeah. The discipline's great for later in life. Like

I said, the body thing, like if you're 112 pounds trying to get down to 106, now you're talking

about like, you know, 8% of your body weight and it's stunting growth and those 112 pounders are

it'd be tougher than to get to 135 140 in their later years. The times, like I said, all over the

place scattered. Don't know when to invite people to watch your kid for a tournament. Yeah. I mean,

I'm in my car for four hours watching EPL on my phone because the time between the weigh-ins 7am

and his first match is 11. And I don't even know if that's going to be, you know, that's another

thing. If you're school or whatever, there's a whole other story. We didn't have buses. So we had

to each drive our kid for the weigh-ins now and a half away. Yeah. You got the weigh-ins too.

It's rough. One other benefit other than when your kid wins. I mean, and then when your kid loses

it's devastating. But you can use this later in life. Like you're like a sneaky, I would trust you

in a dark alley as my sidekick if we had to fight people. Like you do have moves and I don't know,

you learn something that you're cagey. Yeah. There's no Fujitsu team in high school.

Right. So this is it. If you want to be able to handle yourself in a fight, like a lot of these

fights end up on the ground. So, but no, I don't. I don't use it for offense bill. You know that.

I'm defensive. You're like Mr. Miyagi. Miyagi all the way. Yeah. You know, you're not supposed to punch

somebody unless you're challenged. All right. So number 17. I'm sorry. Number 16 and 15. I put

together cycling and cross country. Cross country is interesting. No, a couple cross country parents.

The kids by themselves just doing stuff. They're on a team and it's fun, but it's really just them.

But the real problem is when you actually have like a meat, there's nowhere to go.

You basically have to pick a spot. It's like, oh, my son runs 10k. It's like, oh, he's going to run

all right. I'm going to pick this. We'll go meet him at the halfway there in the trail. And then you

wait, you wait, and then he runs by and I'm like, go go sound. All right. Come on, buddy. He's not

listening because they're like locked in the cross country. Right. So fun, but also not fun at all.

At least you get to be outdoors. The benefit is you get to do this after you, you know, your whole

life. If you run, you run your whole life. So that's learning. Yeah. Learning good stuff. I asked for

some input here. I'm from my friend Megan, who is a long distance Olympic hopeful actually for

2028. So she says the meats are typically further away at some random park or in the middle of the

woods or sometimes on a golf course. But again, it's a 20 minute race. So you can realistically be

back home by noon. And then she said, this is what really got me. She said, you would love being

a cross country dad, though, because the night before you get to have pasta parties. So you can

eat all the carbs, which is right up your alley. She's right. Yes, it is up my house.

Oh, that sounds amazing. Yeah. So it's a cross country too. Should I put it higher? I guess we'll

say, well, I don't know. We'll see. I'll see what we put everything else. Next one's rowing. Number 14.

This is so douchey. This is so East Coast prep douche. You didn't need to put this in, but

God, listen, it's, it's first of all college scholarships available. You get to be an awesome

shape. You don't necessarily have to be super coordinated or a great athlete. You just kind of have

to be strong and have discipline, right? So if you're like one of those, like you have a strong

body, but you're, you know, if you're playing basketball, you're a mess, but rowing maybe, you know,

the downside, you have to get up crazy early. I think this might be the earliest other than

figure skating. There's a really good two road and caught. We had a rowing team in Holy Cross.

We none of us understood it. It's like, why are you doing this to yourself? This is the worst

thing ever. I can't go out on Saturday night because I have a meet on Sunday in the meets at seven in

the morning. It really ruins your life. It is kind of a fun parent sport, though. If your kid gets

good, you get to go to these, you know, you can see it in like Oxford blues or some of these movies

that they made with the crew. You get to go to your spot, kind of hang out, like head of the

Charles is a big thing in Boston. But the morning schedule just sounds like a fucking nightmare.

I think you put it too high. You're going to hear from the Winklevoss twins here. Good look.

I'm out for both of them. Number 13 track and field, which is the, I think the hardest one to

figure out on the whole list because you had the scholarship potential. You have all the meets where

there's 75 things going on. You don't even know, despite it's a bigger stadium, you don't even know

what we're to go and what you're looking at. And it really depends on the event. Like, I think if

your kid's a polevolter, pretty cool. Right? You can kind of get near the pole,

pit, the running steps a little harder, but it's the same thing we talked about earlier with the

meets and just not knowing when the times were for things. My buddy, you know, in the park,

like kid coaches now, girls track after decades of coaching, real sports, like football, baseball,

and wrestling. But it's like, it's easy to coach. But I will say, it's like from a parent's

perspective, there's a lot of warming up. You'll see these kids warm up and whatever event it is,

they will be like 80% of warmups before they get to the actual race. And then you can't like even the

lineage, which is, which is which. So that's a negative, I would say. Right. If you have like a 9 AM

race, you're there an hour and a half early because you got your whole warm up thing.

Track and field's fun because there's a lot of different aspects and places to push your kid.

And it is a good college scholarship sport, potentially. So there's some benefit there. We're

getting now in the top 12. I have hockey 12. So basically all the same physical fears that you

would have with football. You know, hockey has so much concussions and people getting hurt. And

I honestly, just body's colliding. The ice rink times are truly horrific unless you're living

in like a cold place. If you're in a cold place, maybe better. If you're in Canada, obviously,

if you're in Minnesota, if you're in, I don't know, Wisconsin, there's a reason all the best

squares are all coming from the same few states. Parent culture is insane. Yeah. I don't know if this

is a craziest parents sport, but it's got to be top three. Right. This is the one like this is the

most likely if you're on the Twitter for you or Instagram to see like parents fighting.

Probably like just people just punching each other for no reason at a hockey thing.

Going through the glass. Yeah, there's some crazy crazy clips on there about parents fighting.

It's the rinks are ben did hockey for two years and he was too late because this is another

problem with hockey. You have to start skating by the time you're like four. To actually be good at,

he started probably, but he would have been good at hockey. And it was fun to go there,

but the rinks are freezing. Like they're just like, and they're not big rinks either. So you're

wearing like winter coats and you know, is it deck? What out here? The rinks are freezing.

The rinks are freezing. Yeah. Hockey rinks are freezing. It is really fun. They're cold.

And then it's like a king's game or a duck because it's they're smaller rinks. They're not like,

okay, you know, the games themselves are super fun. Yeah.

So that's why I, I have it ahead of football. I mean, I'm sorry, I have it below football.

I have football ahead of football because I, what you mentioned about Friday night football,

I think is the differentiator, but for the most part, I think these things are pretty even.

Equipment's pricey, right? Depending on what you want to do with the hockey kind of thing.

This is among the most expensive. Yes, sticks, um, privates. It's a commitment.

This is if you're kid place hockey, probably not on, probably not doing two other sports,

right? Right. This is year round. You're doing this all the time. If you get good at it,

you're you're away every weekend. There is some major. Not skate for four months. Yeah.

You have to kind of keep it going. Whereas football is like three months. It's more contained.

You do have like the long preseason in football. So that would be the other one. But I have football 11.

I have hockey 12. All right. 11. I football 11. Yeah. Wow. So many pluses of minuses.

This is sad for me. I love football, but I think football with flag football could move up the ranks.

As we do the movement to more of a hybrid model, but I would say parent culture.

Pretty bad. Yeah. Is there a position for every kind of kid with a body type 100%

if you're like the big giant kid, you can be our left guard or you know, if you're

slow, but you're a good athlete, hey, you could be the center or you could be the defensive end.

Um, but the physical toll of football is it's a hard one. I'm just looking at all these sports

you're going to put ahead of football. It makes me sad. I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll about

this for a positive for the most part. A no cut sport. Everybody makes it. Yeah.

Doesn't mean they play, but they're involved, right? The practices and everything else.

When do you think tackle football should actually start for kids? Because the I've heard

every sort of analysis of this because you could argue it should be like fourth,

fifth grade because you learn how to tackle you lose you learn like, uh, you know, basically the

technique, um, and your body learns how to it gets conditioned to the collisions, whereas if you

do it a little when you're older, it doesn't. But then you have 10 year olds just ramming into

each other. I think you could bump it up to ninth, tenth grade. It's the great Tony Romo. It's

going to be hired by the ringer soon, uh, said to me, I think it could be. I think night,

their 10th grade is fine. I don't know because I do think like, you know, they they talk about

CT and all this stuff. Most of it happens in these practices. It really does. I remember get my bell

wrong a bunch of times between 10th and 12th grade. And then if you're in college, but you know,

whatever. It's it's only in the pros actually where you're not going home to home, but in

practice at least. So you definitely want to keep a, um, what do they call them and wrestling

bumps? Yeah. We want to keep that bump to hold down under a thousand. I was saying you could

tell me 10th grade is the cut off. If we had a sports R, the sports R, I would probably say you

can't play football to your 16. Right. Tackle football. All right. Number 10, skiing slash snowboarding.

Now super expensive. I'm not sure about the team dynamic. Um, and you basically have to live near

a mountain or close to something, something, something where you can do it or you can't do it.

So I'm just assuming that's for all of those people. But it does seem pretty great. I have, uh,

one of my cousins has a daughter who's a big snowboarder and they have to, they're in a wingle and

they have to, you know, drive two, three hours sometimes to go to these things, but they, they do

love it. Um, injury potential. Yeah, you could wipe out every once in a while. The big thing with

skiing and snowboarding, this is something you can literally do your entire life. Right. Right.

And there's like tournaments and, you know, there's could, could they could they keep adding

Olympic sports like who knows? There's some college stuff with their team dynamics a little weird,

but I think for the most part, this is pretty solid. Harrison's friends with a kid who is

excels at skiing snowboarding, surfing and okay at other sports, but that's it. And so now he's

got Instagram clips of himself like, you know, riding a pipeline and everything and just,

know, and I was and to answer your question like earlier, like, which one do you wish you would have done?

God, it would be great to just be a world class skier. Right. Just been doing it since you were five.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, the boxing is not on the list. That's, that's probably my pick weekends

and vacations constantly. Yeah. So skiing, snowboarding, I guess surfing would be in this too. These

are all like the individual where you need some sort of either a wave or a mountain you need to

put all those together. Okay. No, something. Yeah.

Number nine, I was surprised to rank this side. Water polo.

College scholarship potential galore.

Kind of your kids, everybody who's doing it is an awesome shape. Kind of underrated as a sport

to watch in person. It's weird that it has no traction at all TV, although with ESPN, the way they've

been adding weird sports to ESPN one and two, maybe water polo have a moment. The biggest,

I think parent-demarit is there's a lot going on that you just don't know when you're watching.

Like, there's stuff going underwater. There's people punching each other.

Yeah. It's sometimes it's hard to see if somebody's scored.

And there's no juice at all, you know, with water polo. Water polo almost needs like better PR.

Well, and it's weird because it's a, it's a, wow, it's a lively gym, right?

Yeah. They go to the parents are going nuts after everything. Even if it's just a passing ball

around the perimeter, but yeah, you're right. It needs a better PR team because it's fun and

the Olympics is one of my favorites to watch. Yeah, at Ben's school sometimes like picking him up,

they would have a game and the parents are going fucking crazy and it's packed. You know,

they, his school had a good water polo team, but I can't believe this house thing. This is amazing.

Joe House water polo. By the way, anybody who can produce video footage of Joe House playing

water polo at any point in his life, there's a bounty for you. Okay. Number eight.

Did he eat while he played? Maybe that was a problem. I think that's why he had to quit because he kept

taking pizza up to the pool. He didn't taste as good chlorinated. Yeah. All right. Number eight.

Baseball slash softball. Okay.

Destroyers your weekends. This is a weekend destroyer. I would say a pretty unarguably bad

parent culture because it's really one of the only sports where every parent has an opinion on

everything that's going on at all times. And also inappropriate comments with the kids.

How does he not bump there? You know, it's like that kids ate like shut the fuck up.

The mercy rule stuff and the blowouts like going to a tournament and just being like,

we're going to lose every game by 15 runs is awful. And I think the highest level of parents

talking to other asses. If you're good, there's a whole bunch of privates gets expensive.

It can carry over to adult softball. Right? If you're good at, let's say you played at a high level

softball baseball in high school, maybe in the college, you now become a ringer in office softball

for like 20 years. You could also play in adult leagues when you're older. So you can kind of

keep going. But I think this is around the right level. Number eight. Would you agree with this?

Yeah, I mean, there's just so many pros and cons. It's what type of where you want to land on it.

But I will say the parent thing is so important because you're going to have to eat with these people.

And I'm lucky enough to be part of a group that we all like each other. So it's good because

you're going to have a 12 o'clock game and then a four o'clock game. And then so from two to three,

you're going to have to eat and watch games with these people at the local sports bar. So that's

important. But parents in general, baseball parents, it's funny. You talk to coaches. They're like,

yeah, I only got into coaching so I could be away from the parents. There's a reason they're

behind the cage, right? Animals. And I think it's gotten worse. And this is probably true for

every sport. But I feel like with baseball, every 10 coach of a 10-year team could start the season

saying, hey, you know what? No kid from wherever you're from has ever made it to become a pro.

So that's why we're just going to go out there and have fun. We're not going to worry about being

serious. But nowadays you can't say that because there's NIL money and everybody thinks like,

this is what coaching and teaching is different. Like it used to be in the same spirit, but no one

thinks their kid is going to grow up to be an astrophysicist. But everyone thinks their kid can

make a hundred grand playing a sport somehow if they if they play their cards right. And

uh, and that's why it's gotten worse. It's a great point. You know what else is it's the worst

sport for this? Oh, Bobby's up. And all of a sudden you got mom or dad be, you know, right behind

right behind the the big cage in front of home plate or behind the fence. Yeah, check

little change. So this or the kids pitching and now the kids pitching in there. This is mom like

with the with the phone like this. And uh, it has the most phone damage potential. Um, the softball

I think would have been higher on the list before they had to put all this protective like having

these crazy helmets and stuff and even like the third basement and the mass and not as much fun as

it was 20 years ago. Yeah. Our buddy Gus coached some some college softball when he was at Rawlins.

Did he really? Yeah. Wow. Back in the old day before they had all this stuff on. But yeah, I think

baseball's up off. Fun part is everyone can play. You can hide even the worst kids for a couple

of innings and put them in a couple of positions. Everybody can be part of the team.

There's some fun. I don't know what you're going to end on here. This is interesting to me that

there's seven. Yeah. Uh, better than baseball football and all these. Okay. Number seven tennis.

Okay. There's wins everywhere, especially uh, you get to do it your whole life. You get to do it

with your kid. You can just go and be like, Hey, let's go hit some balls and go do it.

You can play it anywhere. I think as long as it's not winter and some of the East Coast or

the Midwest, you can put it's a 12 month in California. It's a 12 month year sport. You don't

necessarily have to belong to a tennis club. You can play in public parks. The rackets are expensive.

You got to keep changing those. Incredibly fun to watch as a parent. Scar ship potential and

pro potential and N I L potential. And the downsides would be the privates, which you're going to have

to do if the kids going to be good and then a little lonely. It was, it was why with, with our

daughter, like I kept wondering whether we should get her involved in tennis when she was like eight

nine because she would have been good at it. But just kind of by yourself a lot, right? And

you're not really part of the team. And it's a lot of like pressure on yourself at all times.

And some kids can handle it. Some can't. But for the most part, you get to be outdoors,

play it anywhere. You can play it until you're 75. Right. And the pressure on the parents thing is

the what we talked about. You can't blame anyone else if they're losing, right? No, that's it's

double. In the doubles match, we can blame the partners, blame the partner. And by the way,

doubles is another great one. You play mixed doubles. You play same sex doubles. Like you have all

these outs with that. So I think tennis is a really good one. That's one of the, that's the first

one that I would really strongly recommend. Do you think are you going to lump tennis with pickleball

like you did? No, like you do football with flag football. No, just in that we don't acknowledge

that. No tennises are a puddle. Tennis isn't going away, but pickle balls. Very, very big.

So you think there's going to be like high school pickle balls some day? I think so. I might move.

I that might be it for me. I don't know. We've somewhere else with Italy. Italy will have it too.

Now they don't move for there. Come on. Yeah.

Number six, field hockey. I don't know shit about this. All right. Yeah. Yeah. This is why

it's number six. Under the radar, it's really females only. Incredible scholarship potential

and super fun to watch. And okay. Some states are bigger than others, but man, if you're good at

field hockey, the world is your oyster with some of this stuff. You get to run around. It's very

similar to soccer. Soccer. Soccer. Soccer. Soccer. Get these big sticks. We have to be a little

aggro. When I was at the Olympics, I actually went to a couple of field hockey games that it was like

incredibly fun, really high level. And always kind of slips under the radar.

Some of those on top of soccer lacrosse and soccer mixed, but you can't lift your stick, right?

Basically, and I guess polo. You bent over a little bit and you got to like,

go ahead, stand up, demonstrate. Yeah. So field hockey is six. Now we're in the top five.

Basketball five. Basketball, you can play your whole life. Basketball, if it's a tournament,

it passes the parent test of I can sneak out. Oh, his next game's not until an hour from now.

You're there all day, but it's actually fun to watch basketball. There's different types of

squares. Your kid can be a three point shooter, being an athlete, shop walker, like pick whatever,

good team culture. The AAU, if your kid's really good, that gets a little weird. The club team

start really early. The club team start at like third, fourth grade and that gets a little expensive.

But for the most part, the only expenses are a basketball and sneakers. Sure. And that's

very exciting. You know, when your kids playing for the most part, right? The game, one thing

we didn't mention, so many baseball games can go four hours, right? If they're in a tournament,

and they have to go extra innings and stuff. Basketball, I know, can go over time, but for the most

part, it's going to be shortened, it's going to be by the standards of the clock. So I have that

for our final three. It's a huge piece to know the actual schedule and have a sense for

beginning, middle and end of an event versus baseball where you could tell me like,

Harrison had a four hour game. We went into the 12th inning. We had to call the game because

it was dark. And then they lost. Right. Well, it's interesting though about basketball is,

if you look at videos of parents fighting by a mile, basketball has more, right? Like basketball

bros. Is there just more basketball? That's why we have more. Yes. Maybe there's that. Oh,

there's baseball has a lot of parents like a misbehaving, but maybe it's not parents. Maybe it's

just like rival schools in the crowd that I'm seeing. But basketball from a parent standpoint,

you get to play with your kids basically from age seven on the play horse with them. You play

21. You get shooting contest with them. Then when you get older, you can actually like really play

them. You can they can go down the park, play with their friends, play five on five, play pickup,

there's some injury stuff with basketball mostly knees and lower half of the body.

The club teams, you can, so if you're good at basketball in high school, you can be on a club

team. But then you also get to play for your high school. And I would say that's one of the most

high profile high school sports to play. Right. So that's a win. So I think it's so competitive.

There's five starting spots though. That's that's the problem. Right. So that's it. You can

and you need to be relatively tall, right? That's another piece. What's the acceptable age your

kid could beat you one in one one on one in basketball? Oh, man. Game to 11. One by two.

14 15 probably is one of the kids. Yeah, I think that's good. Yeah. Stuff like you can bully.

All right. It's only 11 and a half wasn't good for me. I got you.

Yeah. Coming in at number four golf.

Yeah. One downside and one downside only insanely expensive. Yeah. I mean, probably the most

expensive of all these sports. There's literally no other downside. If you play golf and you teach your

kid how to play golf, you were now doing this with them all the time. And this becomes your thing.

Your kid will eventually be good at it. By the way, a lot of college scholarship potential.

Who knows what other kind of potential, but then they're doing it for the rest of their lives.

And it's something that's helpful. You know, it's why I always think about that. I should start

playing it. I always get invited to play, but I'm always I'm one of those I either have to play

a lot or I don't want to play it all. And there's so many fun social aspects that come from golf.

There's work stuff and it's the only downside is the expensive you to be outdoors to play all

these different courses. Get to go when you're older, you get to go on college trips with your buddies

or whatever. It's like it's wins everywhere except for the expenses.

Yep. And it's bucket list type destinations, right? I want to play Pebble Beach. I want to play

this when I'm older and all that stuff. I'll say this. We came back from Cooper's town. And I

think my kid, we had a good time and I'll get into that store. But when you see the teams that

make the finals, I think it was an eye opener. And he's like, Oh, I got a couple of years left

to me in baseball. And that's it. Right. He played 18 holes the last three days, three of the last

four days of golf. He's like now switching to golf a little bit because he and his buddies like

love it. That's great. It's also the perfect age to start playing. You got to be like 11, 12, 13.

Then you can kind of figure out assemblances of a swing. And golf balls are expensive.

Not crazy expensive, but that's a price. Clubs, if you have a kid, you start playing them when

they're sick, you have to buy clubs basically every year and a half, two years. So there's, it's

insanely expensive compared to some of these other ones. But no, they're downside. No injury

stuff at all, except for maybe a back, right? Back, maybe hips. It's about air, lightning strikes,

the half of every other time. I mean, our agent James Babydall Dixon, who's now 64.

Smokes two packs a day and can still play seven days a week. Yeah. But he always has his elbows hanging

off his arm or something, right? Versailles, whatever he has, a Versailles or something. Yeah, true.

He does have like a rotator cuff. I guess that would be another issue. Good one for phone calls.

If you're following your kid, like if you're kids in internment, you just get to walk the course

with them. You're outside. You can pop away for a phone call, go behind a tree, places to go for

the bathroom all over the place. Goffs, huge win and not for everybody because it's really expensive.

Coming in third, so this is an interesting one. I've lacrosse at three. I think if it was men's lacrosse

only, I would have in the 10 to 12 range with football and hockey because of all the physical toll

and the concussions. This is like the most underrated concussion sport of all the sports.

Girls lacrosse might be number one if we were just doing a boys versus girls thing.

No contact really at all. Same as soccer, less people playing it. There's an easier path for

college scholarships. Now it's on ESPN where they have women's lacrosse on ESPN.

It's weird because with girls, you're just not allowed to touch each other

all the way through high school. You're not allowed to collide anything. I remember we took Zoe

once because I thought Zoe would be good at lacrosse and she would have been. But

you go and it's just no, people are just running around. It's like, now this person is a ball and

nobody can do anything and they're just trying to whack at the stick. So it's a little odd.

There's also some places just don't have it. California has a really weak lacrosse scene.

Yeah, definitely. Whereas beer in the east coast where you grew up, it's fucking everywhere.

If you're in DC, Philly, Jersey, New York. But I think girls lacrosse is, I would highly recommend

that. Really the only expenses of football. That's a flag football version of football.

Yeah, I would say flag football for boys and some girls play football too, but girls lacrosse would be

the other one. I don't know anybody whose daughter played the cross is like that sucked.

Right. Don't do it. Yeah. Okay. And then the final two, I'll do an alphabetical order,

soccer and volleyball I have together. And incredibly fun to watch.

Everyone can understand time controlled games. Lots of scholarships available because the

teams are long. So you have that possibility. You have the NIO possibility.

Soccer's outdoors, volleyball's indoors, volleyball less injury potential.

You'll get some shoulder stuff. Maybe somebody will have like a planter for Shadest. Soccer is like,

if you're a high-end woman soccer player, it's 40 to 50% chance you're hurting your knee or

some other stuff. I think I would give volleyball the sled edge. It's super fun to watch. I remember when

I covered high school sports for the Boston Harrel, the Mid 90s. volleyball is my favorite one of all

the sports. You can follow it. You know, it's it resets, you know, every set. You always know what's

going on. You can't be like a know-it-all with volleyball. I'm like, oh, I can't believe the

Saturday. Like nobody, nobody knows what's going on. You're just their cheering. And you can play

it after as an adult or you can play beach volleyball. So I think volleyball's one in soccer's too.

Beach volleyball, by the way, for a parent might be the best experience actually.

Yeah. Yeah. By the beach and watch your kid. I know it's like a niche thing, but niche thing,

but it's out out. Yeah, out here, out west. Volleyball is a prestigious, if you have a position

on the high school team, that's a prestigious way to go. Yeah, obviously,

and all the Olympians are from out here. So yeah, it's good. And so you wouldn't put soccer

interesting. Now, I think volleyball, because of if you include the beach volleyball,

an underrated concussion thing for soccer, right? So that's, it's not underrated. I think at this

point, people know, like, you know, especially when you're talking about collisions with goalies and

strikers or two people going for a head and they bang heads, like it's, you know, it's been my

biggest fear ever since like probably age 11. Once people start going airborne, you're just

scared about it. The other underrated one is you can just get kicked by the ball. Like,

somebody couldn't be clearing out the ball and kick it, you don't realize it and it just hits

the back of your head. Like I've seen a few of those. It's definitely concussions. That's another

thing volleyball versus soccer. I think volleyball, I guess you can get concussion if you just got

took a spike in the head. Yeah. But other than that, no. And then volleyball, all different types of

body types too, because you can have the setters are smaller. The other ones are, you know, the

people at the net are taller. Yeah, everybody's tall. The small people are volleyball. Yeah.

Small, yeah, the setters are small, right? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. But they could take

the setters out. The soccer, the hell was I going to say? Yeah, it's interesting with the soccer

with the because I think if you go, we're mostly talking here at 13 to 18 or whatever, but

if you go, it's the first sport they all play, right? Soccer from four to 10, four to 10,

it's number one, no matter what. It's gotta be. I hate to say that as a baseball junk, but it

just is because your kid gets to play, your kids involved running around, kids not making sand

castles and left field, you know, so I think there's something to that as a positive. You just,

you're in great shape from soccer. The tournaments, even though it's along whatever and you go to these,

and I've been to a bunch of them, you're at these locations where there's 30 fields, you got to

figure out where the field is. But for the most part, pretty easy to navigate. And you're going to

have two games a day. They're usually not staggered where it's like one game at nine and the other

ones at six. They're usually within like four or five hours of each other. So you have time to

kind of relax, veg out. Also fun to just watch other soccer games that are happening, which I think

volleyball is the same thing. If it's in one of those places with a lot of games, you can kind of

jump around and watch. But I think that concussion piece is outweighs the fact that you're outdoors

with soccer. But I think these are the best. You might be right. The one day where you have to drive

past 50 soccer fields to get to your tournament. Two hours away. You have to drive past 50 baseball

diamonds. Like, oh, we could have played this team in Norwalk for 20 minutes away. But by the way,

that should be your number one concern for someone who doesn't wear a seatbelt. It should be how close

the venue is. No, I'm wearing a seat on that. Everybody's shame me. One of the reasons that I forgot

about. I remember it like 20 years ago and I just completely forgot. I thought you came to your

senses. You know, you have to wear one of the reasons I wanted to talk about with wilds is because I

know I'd be publicly shamed for not being a sea bug guy. And I needed to I needed to really have

the shame. Not to do it. I heard from so many people, well, most of the time I'm just driving around

LA going 25 miles an hour. I get it. And I know you're confident in how good a driver you are.

I'm an amazing driver. Everyone else has become everyone else has become a terrible dry. Everyone

else looking at their phone. Doesn't that scare you that they're okay. I'm not wearing a seatbelt

and everyone's staring at their phone while they're trying to pass me. That's true. Yeah,

I'm going to start wearing. I needed I had my whole process. I needed to say that to wilds. I

know that people get mad. All right. We took 55 years. All right. I'm going to count,

count down backwards. 21. 20 figure skating. Sorry to all the skaters out there. 19 gymnastics,

swimming, wrestling, cycling cross country together, rowing, track and field hockey, football,

skiing, snowboarding, surfing, all at number 10, water polo, baseball, softball, tennis, field hockey,

basketball is fifth, golf, fourth, lacrosse, third, soccer, second, volleyball. First, what's going

to be the most controversial? Again, this is for parents. Yeah, I think like you're going to

hear from like figure skit. All the ones you put 2019, 18, they're going to get mad at you.

I personally would have moved football up a little bit just because I feel like the juice behind

the Friday night stuff is just, it takes it to a different level. And this is going to sound

ridiculous coming from me because I accuse everyone of being an NBA whole, but I think basketball

is one or two. Really? Yeah, I do. I do. If you could start over right now with Harrison

and only have him play one sport from age five,

which sport would you pick? I think it would be golf. If the solo sport would be golf at this point

because he's already upset with himself that he's behind his friend who's excellent,

hits the green alpha off every tee on a part three. I would have done lacrosse for Zoe.

They would know lacrosse. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm actually the soccer was great. Yeah. But

the lacrosse lacrosse, I think lacrosse was for girls like you removing some of the injured

arrests that makes soccer a little, a little iffy. Anyway, I hope that helped. Listen, again,

that was good. Just my opinion only. It doesn't mean I'm right. You can disagree. I don't,

these aren't authoritative rankings. Oh, we could people could disagree with this. Yeah,

people can absolutely disagree with these. The perfect lunch combo. That first bite of your favorite

sub followed by ice cold Pepsi. Add a couple of friends. And now that's next level. Suddenly,

the laughs get louder. The stories keep flowing and the food tastes better because Pepsi brings out

more flavor, more fun and more of the moment. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a Pepsi Zero sugar today.

All right. Before we go, do a parent corner for us. Well, yeah, let me tell you a little bit

about Cooper Sound. We just got back. I thought it was the greatest. I mean, I really, I can't say

enough about it. It was like the culmination of like eight years of little league. Yeah. And then

you get to Cooper Sound. It's beautifully manicured fields. The amount of like Americana thrown at you

is like perfect. They have the opening ceremonies with the teams march out. And they had like a kid

who an actual little league who was participating and they hadn't seen his father was deployed overseas.

And then the father shows up. So very emotional. They have that knock out. And the kids bunk together.

And you don't see them except for 20 minutes before and after every game. So and then you have a few

hours to hit the museum, which is fantastic. And you could hate it because of who's in and who's not.

But there's plenty of Pete Rose. There's plenty of Barry Bond stuff. Giant exhibits.

Just no plaque. So I'm sure promise it's enjoyable. But for my parent corner story. So

Harrison's team goes up there and he only wants to hit a home run. That's that's his whole

summer goal because the fence is a Cooper's town or 200. And he's used to like 225 to 30. So they

like having home run derbies. He and his friends on the local fields and everything. And so we get

to playing and we're blood. We have five pool games and we're blowing teams out. And three days,

we have five pool games and we mercy rule four of the five teams. But as we're beating these teams,

he's not hitting home runs and his buddies are all hitting home runs. Now it's like one of four

kids who haven't had a home run. And you know, he's coming back after we greet their kids after

they come out after like a 15 to two win. He's like choking back tears because the other boys

posing with their home runs and the father's chasing the home run balls and so that everybody could

pose and I'm like, hey, get it together. Like he's getting singles. He's pitching well. He's making

plays in the field. I'm like, come on. What are you doing? So you're wicking. You're war is good.

Exactly. But the only negatives are hitting the home run becomes a priority. And also these

collectible pins. So they trade these pins with the other teams. Everybody has a pin represented

for their teams and they trade with everybody else's teams and the barracks and the Jalen Brunson

pin. He's one of the few. He has no negotiating skills. So no New York aggression in the kids.

So he ironically can't get a hold of this Jalen Brunson pin. So no Jalen Brunson pin hasn't

hit a home run. So fast forward, we win all five pool games. We're ranked six out of 102 teams.

I'm like, oh man, we could really make a run here. We win the round of 32 game by 10 runs. Round

the 16. We're up five won in the last inning. We make four errors over three days. We make five

errors in the last inning and they tie it up. And Harrison's one of the worst one. He boots like a

hard hit ball to third just to start the rally. And everyone's devastated. Like I want to go freaking

hide behind the P. We resexhibit and never come out. So I don't. So it's the bottom of the inning.

There's two out and a kid gets a single and they pinch run Harrison. He's one of the faster

kids on the team. I'm like, okay, this could be he could inadvertently score the winning run. This

could be nice. Whatever. We'll put a smile on his face. Maybe after this whole thing.

First pitch comes in. He takes off and I see he doesn't have like a great jump. So and I'm just

watching him like, oh shit, this could be close. He gets a second. He beats the throw by six feet.

He doesn't overslide the base. The ump calls him out and I am losing my shit. This is the

Deskall. The Deskatch all over again. And I'm like, what the what what are you kid? I'm like,

what are you looking at up? What are you doing? I'm like, I'm mad at my coach because he's not

arguing and Harrison's got his arms in the air and everyone's like, oh my god, what happened?

And I'm like screaming things. I don't even know what I was like in a different dimension. I

didn't even know what I was screaming. Yeah. Yeah. And that was it. And then like after like good 20

Mississippi, a worth of screaming, one of the fathers elbows me is like, uh, I think they're calling

batters interference. And I look at the batter because I hadn't watched. I was just watching

them right now. The little Dean is in the catchers lap. So somehow he like overswong and ended up

in the and that's why the throw didn't get them like, oh no. In meanwhile, you've mean by you've

said, yeah, 17 horrible things. Oh, I showed my hand like like I should be they should just put

me in a white jacket and zip me up. Like that's ridiculous. Like so that was here. The baseball

parents were talking about earlier. It's you. It's me the whole time. And then we lose by like eight

runs and extra innings. And that was that some some poor second base up from Utica who's making $10

a game. Just getting berated by cousin. So nothing is like an army vet who's doing it for free.

God. So that's it. So he didn't get the sale. You guys lost in Harrison. Didn't get his home

run over the Jalen Brunson pin. No home run. No Jalen Brunson pin. And that's it. So otherwise fantastic

experience. Wow. Did he come close to home run? No, not really. I mean, it's so funny because you

end up playing different kind of baseball. It's not like a move the runner over and do this. Like

everyone's just jacking it for the fence. But he got like five singles and whatever, but it was a good

no. Sounds like major league baseball. No, that's right. All right. Well, I'm sorry. I didn't get

a home run. Thanks for thanks for doing the use sport rankings with me. This is fun. You can't

good. I can't I want to hear I got to hear the feedback. I really I can't wait. I'm I'm ready

for it. Look, man, sometimes you got to go out on a limb with content and not everybody's going

to like it. We're going to be back together August 27th Thursday. We're going to do and we're

going to do NFC first or aFC first, whatever you want. Man, we usually do we do awards too. And

then do we do a thing? We're going to save the awards futures to the because we're doing a week

early this year. So we can save stuff for the Sunday before. We usually do the conference that

had the Super Bowl champ. So I guess we do which one was that? I wasn't paying to. But I've

appreciated you doing the divisions with Rahim and DeBundo and and House and not really tipping

your hand this year, which is something I'm doing as well. Just sitting at the table for them.

They're doing a great job. Listen to that. We did the AFC East preview. We did the AFC North

on Monday and we'll be doing the South on Friday. Yeah. Last year I felt like I did all these pods in

August laying out all my opinions for the year. And then when we did our AFC NFC,

everyone kind of knew who listens to the pod. Like, oh yeah, he's talked about Denver four times.

He loves Denver. So I'm really trying to keep everything under wraps this year because I have some

hard opinions on a couple of things. But I mean, I do too. Honestly,

I down the lines. I mean, not because people are such that I mean, even our ringer wise guys,

like really want to talk week one lines. But guys, I can't do it. I should not do it. We're four

weeks away now. Should we mail each other lines and then have like a point and a half leeway

with the line or something? Maybe we should. I mean, I told you I already saw this. Yeah, I don't

know. In the line, unfortunately. So I know what that is. Yeah. Patriots getting 10, right? Yeah,

well, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10. Well, it's weird. That's the exact same line as the Super Bowl,

which I was not expecting because usually there's a bump for the home team. But yeah, we might have

to have maybe this weekend. We have to mail each other. The Hall of Fame games, seven plus

million people watched. I know. And it was the most bet on game more than like any baseball,

WNBA. If you could know, I believe that I lost. I had a teaser and I lost.

You were a teaser and you lost. There's 32 points. I bet the yonder on the teaser. Of course,

you have to bet the yonder. What are they going to show? And there was like 32 points in the

second quarter. I've been watching enough WNBA to have actual opinion on when we get to the playoffs.

Yeah. Really? Yeah. I've been watching. I've actually been getting into the leagues the best

entertainment wise. It's ever been. I'm not talking about the way I'm going to make it to the

playoffs. It might have a walk out before the playoffs. But like the fever beat the shit out of

New York last night. And I texted Ruko and he actually said it on the air because Ruko was doing

the thing. I was like, this is like watching Nash's sons. Like Indiana's like, they're just

balls to the wall. Like every time they get a rebound, even off makes, they're just going and

they have these two great guards. And they're like really good. I don't. I think you can make a

real case. They can win the title. It's them Minnesota or Vegas. I think are the three. I don't

think anybody else, but houses, mystics are getting a little frisky. Yeah. I'm running on the links.

I seem to bet them every night when they're favored by 12 on the money line. Parley.

The both with them. Yeah. If you like the links at home, just do the over with the links. But

they're playing really well though. I think it's going to be a fun playoffs that will of course

be screwed up schedule wise as they try to go against football for some reason. And then

I'll end up watching all this and then missing the key game in the finals because I'm watching

fucking Cincinnati against Dallas. Yeah. But I was able to always your number five on

the leaveable. By the way, speaking of speaking of Dallas. Yeah. Some some Cowboys buzz. Like

I think there's going to be some smart people who are going to pick them to win NFC.

Yeah. Some dumb people too, probably. But uh, yeah. The nox star. They're trading with the Rams.

And then at the end, they're doing wind sprints. And they're like, come on. Let's do them with us.

And the Rams like, nah, we're good. We're better than you. We don't need to do this. I kind of lie.

I like to vibe a little bit. They have some blue chippers.

Team's pretty good. That'd be amazing. I mean, where's the superlates in LA this year, right?

Yeah. That's here. One of the Lakers will sell a podcast from there. We're going to have to do

the last one from there. You know, we talked about, I think we might actually do our super bowl

podcast from from so far. Does that make sense? I think they offered it to us. Yeah. We got to do

that. Good times. I don't mean it. All right. So great to see you. Thanks for doing this with me. I'll

let you know what the feedback is. Or if I get threatened by any gymnast experience or anything.

Pleasure is always good job. You can't wait. Good job. Bye, you buddy.

All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to cousin Sal. Thanks to Gauhan Eduardo as well.

Don't forget rewatchables. The time jobs up about last night coming Thursday night. And then

the re-speed on Monday. So this podcast will come back on Sunday. Stay tuned for that. And enjoy

the rest of the week.

must be 21 plus and president select states for Kansas and affiliation with Kansas star casino

or 18 plus and president DC Kentucky or Wyoming. Game prom caught 100 gamble or 1 800 by reset.

Call 888 797777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat and comment. Or MD gambling help.org and

Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghubline ma.org or call 800 327 50 50 for 24 seven sport

Massachusetts or call 877 8 hope and why or text hope and why in New York for Louisiana call 877 777 0 7867.