Speaker 1: The vine.
Speaker 2: All right, my buddy Nick Wright is about to stop
Speaker 2: on buy, so we chop it up for an hour.
Speaker 2: You know, we're going to talk about a lot. That's
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Speaker 2: All right, we like to bring on nick right as
Speaker 2: often as we can. And after some speculation if I
Speaker 2: had given up the sauce, I'm here to announce that.
Speaker 1: Oh there we go. Thank goodness, I was out here
Speaker 1: drinking alone. You. Your excuse last time was essentially all paraphrase.
Speaker 1: You got so hammered the previous two days with your
Speaker 1: lovely wife that you needed to detox for a man.
Speaker 2: Well, you and I have discussed this.
Speaker 1: We are with beautiful creatives. It's every pod. This comes
Speaker 1: up every pod. The listeners of your pod know more
Speaker 1: about your wife and my wife then close family friends do.
Speaker 1: But yeah, sometimes I let me finish your sentence. Sometimes,
Speaker 1: in order to get on their intellectual or creative level,
Speaker 1: or really to remove some social awkwardness, we need to
Speaker 1: have a couple of cocktails in order for them to
Speaker 1: not be embarrassed when they're out in public with us.
Speaker 1: That obviously happens. So yeah, I'm with that. But I
Speaker 1: interrupted you. So cheers. Good to see to see you,
Speaker 1: And I know there's a rant. There's something you want
Speaker 1: to start with. You wouldn't even tell me. You were like,
Speaker 1: I have a rant, so go ahead, let me hear it.
Speaker 2: So you know, if you I think we both think
Speaker 2: of ourselves as people that are, you know, more progressive
Speaker 2: than not. But there are two sides to every coin
Speaker 2: and every argument. But I tend to try to tell
Speaker 2: my kids be curious, adapt travel, don't be rigid. It's
Speaker 2: just no fun to be around. But not everything new
Speaker 2: is right, and not everything right is new. So I
Speaker 2: have some things as an older guy with gray hair
Speaker 2: that I'm a little old school, and I'm gonna throw
Speaker 2: this out. Everybody's got something where they like romanticize the past.
Speaker 1: Or they just they they can be a little bit outdated.
Speaker 1: But it's okay.
Speaker 2: We all like Like, I have a friend who just
Speaker 2: loves like seventies rock and roll. He just can't let
Speaker 2: it go.
Speaker 1: I like some of it too.
Speaker 2: It's okay, right, sure, So here's mine. Yeah, my wife
Speaker 2: likes being a wife. I like being a husband, and
Speaker 2: I always feel that it's sort of my job to
Speaker 2: just figure shit out. I don't like guys. I don't
Speaker 2: think it's masculine to complain about your kids, about your job,
Speaker 2: about the economy, about your school, about your boss. I
Speaker 2: don't think it's masculine my job. When my wife brings
Speaker 2: me problems, figure them out for her. You open doors.
Speaker 2: She likes the masculinity it sometimes and sometimes she'll.
Speaker 1: Laugh at it.
Speaker 2: You're a guy. I like being a guy. And when
Speaker 2: I watch sometimes the media because that's the business I'm in,
Speaker 2: and politicians just constant grievance and constant complaining.
Speaker 1: I can't do it.
Speaker 2: I don't think. I don't like it.
Speaker 1: Figure it out.
Speaker 2: If you don't like the economy, do a side hustle,
Speaker 2: make corners. If you don't like your boss, get another job.
Speaker 2: If you don't like a cultural change, then ignore it.
Speaker 2: You don't have to complain about everything.
Speaker 1: So there has been a rapid So there have been
Speaker 1: two very rapid I think cultural shifts just in the
Speaker 1: last ten years. And one, I think, you know, cuts
Speaker 1: against my side of the aisle, and one cuts for
Speaker 1: my side of the aisle. So I will tell them
Speaker 1: both because one leans into what you're talking about. The
Speaker 1: one that cuts against my side of the aisle is
Speaker 1: when I was growing up, if people were talking censorship,
Speaker 1: it was the conservatives. It was you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: it was we have to put you know, this parental
Speaker 1: advisory on this record and these video games and this music.
Speaker 1: And now in the last ten years. Yes, there has
Speaker 1: been a level of where people that I want to
Speaker 1: agree with and I tend to agree with the stifling
Speaker 1: of certain speech or this makes me unsafe has become
Speaker 1: very in vogue in some circles. And by the way,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's meaningless. I think it can be overused.
Speaker 1: And now, if you were to tell me someone is
Speaker 1: trying to stifle speech, I tend to have a different
Speaker 1: look of who they are politically than once upon a time. Right,
Speaker 1: So that's a shift. Here's another one, man, oh man,
Speaker 1: the folks who love to point out and claim everyone
Speaker 1: is triggered and they hate victims. God, you're seeing to
Speaker 1: be the most easily triggerable victim mentality folks these days,
Speaker 1: like every like no, no, no. The reason I have
Speaker 1: a mediocre job is because of DEI rather than the
Speaker 1: fact that I barely graduated my associates degree and I've
Speaker 1: kind of been a mediocre employee everywhere. The fact that, oh,
Speaker 1: my youth expect me to walk down the street, And
Speaker 1: what am I supposed to tell my children if they
Speaker 1: see someone dressed in a way that I don't think
Speaker 1: associates with the gender they were born. I don't know
Speaker 1: be a fucking parent. Have a conversation, is what you do?
Speaker 1: You've been for years, right, use that as an opportunity
Speaker 1: to have a conversation with your child. And so there
Speaker 1: has been a real switch as far as the there
Speaker 1: is it. Once upon a time, I think we had
Speaker 1: a certain right or wrong stereotype of what it meant
Speaker 1: to be liberal and what it meant to be conservative. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and a lot of those things have been turned on
Speaker 1: their head. Yes, because right now, if you were to
Speaker 1: say to me someone is trying to get a book band,
Speaker 1: that's almost come full circle. Like I used to think
Speaker 1: that would be conservatives. Then there was a period of
Speaker 1: time where it's like, well, not a book band, but
Speaker 1: I do think that there's they want to ban certain
Speaker 1: words used on you know what I mean, on certain schools.
Speaker 1: And now it's come back to, oh, a book band,
Speaker 1: Oh there must be a gay parent in it, and
Speaker 1: you don't want to have that awkward conversation with your
Speaker 1: kids at the dinner table. So and there is a
Speaker 1: there's a lot of woe is me from folks that
Speaker 1: consider themselves alphas, folks that are like, I am the
Speaker 1: manliest man there is, and yet all of this shit
Speaker 1: has gone wrong and you expect me to fix it.
Speaker 1: You think it's my fault. And what you were saying
Speaker 1: about your relationship with your wife. I think it's very
Speaker 1: interesting because this is kind of a cliche, you know,
Speaker 1: fight between spouses, but where very often, again to use
Speaker 1: kind of gender norms, a woman comes to her husband
Speaker 1: says this happened to me or this is a problem,
Speaker 1: and the husband's immediate reaction is, well, here's how we
Speaker 1: can fix it, and the wife gets pissed, like, I
Speaker 1: don't want you to fix it. I want you to
Speaker 1: like sit with me in this you know problem. But
Speaker 1: you and I are, and I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people are in a way, and I think this tends
Speaker 1: to be more men than women, where it's like, no,
Speaker 1: let's just rather than like kind of empathize about the issue,
Speaker 1: try to solve the issue, and I think that can
Speaker 1: be frustrating for certain people. I do think it is
Speaker 1: very useful and helpful in relationships. If whatever your guys,
Speaker 1: whatever you perceived you wanted your role to be as
Speaker 1: the husband. Yeah, if that's the role your wife before
Speaker 1: you guys were married, perceived she wanted her husband to have,
Speaker 1: Like it is important to me that I am the provider. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's an you can say that's toxic. It's ego, whatever
Speaker 1: it is, it is it is. And my wife's very
Speaker 1: successful and owns her own business. And you want to know,
Speaker 1: one reason I'm not going to retire anytime soon. I
Speaker 1: would be more likely to retire if she did. But
Speaker 1: the idea that there's gonna be a day where I'm like, honey,
Speaker 1: I need some money. I can't do it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just couldn't do it. And maybe that's bad, Maybe I
Speaker 1: shouldn't be admitting that, but that's how I am. But
Speaker 1: also that's who she wants. She doesn't want you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. She wants someone motivated in those types
Speaker 1: of ways, which is why it works. Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, Anna has said to me before, and she's funny.
Speaker 2: This morning, she's in an area of the country that's
Speaker 2: very cold, and I said, where are you. She goes,
Speaker 2: I'm at TJ Max looking for a winter jacket. And
Speaker 2: that's why I love her, Like she would never go
Speaker 2: to expensive store. She's like, I'm at TJ Max. They
Speaker 2: didn't have it, so I'm going to uh, you know,
Speaker 2: Target or wherever. And I'm like, right, I love you.
Speaker 1: Some good but then somewhere yeah.
Speaker 2: But she also said, a couple of weeks ago, we
Speaker 2: did something that was reasonably extravagant for us, and she said,
Speaker 2: you know, you you talk about retirement. There are some things,
Speaker 2: there are advantages. Do you not retiring?
Speaker 1: You make exactly right, exactly right, I said to the
Speaker 1: I said, and again, now we're just talking about our life,
Speaker 1: in our relationships. That's fine. The audience. There's not all
Speaker 1: going on sports. We can get to it later, I
Speaker 1: said to my wife, not that long ago, because I'm
Speaker 1: I turned forty this year, and that's a weird thing.
Speaker 1: Forty is like a weird a thing psychologically. Like when
Speaker 1: I turned thirty five, my buddy called me and was like, hey,
Speaker 1: there is one big change thirty five. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: what's that. He's like, you're not professionally graded on a curve.
Speaker 1: Ever again, I'm like, what do you mean. He's like,
Speaker 1: when you're thirty three, you get to be really good
Speaker 1: for a young guy, You get to be an up
Speaker 1: and comer, you get to be graded on potential. He's like,
Speaker 1: when you're nobody looks at the thirty seven year old
Speaker 1: and he's like, well, he's going to turn into the
Speaker 1: it's like you are now, you're just an adult, like
Speaker 1: from thirty five on, you're not graded on a curve anymore.
Speaker 1: And at forty at least for me psychologically, I need
Speaker 1: to I don't know, I need to really have a
Speaker 1: plan laid out of what I think I want to do.
Speaker 1: So I said to my wife. I was like, I
Speaker 1: was like, I think I want to do this ten
Speaker 1: more years and she's like, what do you mean. I
Speaker 1: was like, ten more years. Our youngest is in college.
Speaker 1: If I'm not just a total schmuck, I'll have the
Speaker 1: money set aside. And then I was like, then I
Speaker 1: don't know, like maybe I travel and play poker, maybe
Speaker 1: I go to law school. And she was like, you're
Speaker 1: not quitting. And I'm like, but you hate how much
Speaker 1: I work. She was like, yeah, I think you work
Speaker 1: too much, but you need to keep working. She's like,
Speaker 1: you could work a little less. I'm like, we'll be
Speaker 1: I was like, I've done the math, like I think
Speaker 1: you know, we could have X amount of dollars whatever
Speaker 1: it is. And what she was saying is a she
Speaker 1: doesn't think I would actually quit. What she's also saying
Speaker 1: is yeah, but to live our lifestyle if there's no
Speaker 1: more money coming in, Like there's a level of like
Speaker 1: how long are we gonna live? Like maybe push fifty
Speaker 1: to fifty five or sixty? Uh yeah. So because I thought,
Speaker 1: I was like ten more years, I'll do it ten
Speaker 1: more years. But she says, no, how about this one?
Speaker 2: So this When I was in high school, I can
Speaker 2: remember my mom saying, oh you are she was British.
Speaker 2: Oh you're such a scat of brain. I can remember
Speaker 2: having girlfriends in my twenties and thirties. You are such
Speaker 2: a scattered brain. I really like you. But you forget
Speaker 2: your keys, you lose your wallet, you can't keep a
Speaker 2: bear of sunglasses. So I remember telling Anne when I
Speaker 2: met her, I said, here's what's going to happen in
Speaker 2: my career because the way my mind works, and I'm
Speaker 2: thinking about rants all day, and I lose myself sometime
Speaker 2: I talk to myself, I lose myself, lose train of thought.
Speaker 2: I said, I've been doing it since I started at
Speaker 2: twenty three years old. But once your hair is gray
Speaker 2: and the first number of your ages six, then it's
Speaker 2: viewed as always lost as fastball, and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: I lost this fastball at fourteen. This is my brain.
Speaker 2: I lose my train of thought regularly. That's not my
Speaker 2: age all. No, when I've gone, you know, I've lost
Speaker 2: some marbles, So I said, so whereas thirty five maybe
Speaker 2: some line of demarcation. Six is when your bosses start going.
Speaker 2: You know, that wasn't just a mistake, right, getting that's
Speaker 2: a different thing. So that's a different thing, which is
Speaker 2: now you.
Speaker 1: So the this is again that I'm not quite forty
Speaker 1: and you're not. You're not sixty. I'm six.
Speaker 2: I'm sixty.
Speaker 1: Oh six, you just turned sixty? Yeah, just turnt oh
Speaker 1: I missed? Oh okay, I'm bad at birthdays. Well, a
Speaker 1: happy birthday. That's a big one. I thought I thought
Speaker 1: you were just about turn sixty. But the other things
Speaker 1: is is, you know, I show up at work with
Speaker 1: a broken arm, and people are good with what I
Speaker 1: told him, But in the back of their head, they're like,
Speaker 1: I wonder if Nick was doing something he shouldn't have
Speaker 1: been doing. You're sixty, you show up at work with
Speaker 1: a broken arm. They're like, oh no, he fell in
Speaker 1: that house. They're like, oh no, Like is he okay?
Speaker 1: Like that? You're right that there there are right now,
Speaker 1: Collin Cowherd or like I'll use a good example, a
Speaker 1: guy who I know we both have massive like either
Speaker 1: personal or professional affection or love for that. It's so
Speaker 1: baked into how people think of him. No one thinks
Speaker 1: it's because he's old. Mad Dog can do every any
Speaker 1: can make any mistake because he's made them forever. Mad
Speaker 1: mad Dog has gotten names wrong in these things forever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so because of that, if he does it, no one's like, oh,
Speaker 1: he's getting a little older. It's like this is who
Speaker 1: he's always been. So you almost need built in that
Speaker 1: people know who you are in order you can't be
Speaker 1: the guy who was super sharp on everything. And then
Speaker 1: you know, as you get older, start forgetting things start
Speaker 1: whatever it is. That's a that's a different story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's but I've always known it's coming. I've
Speaker 2: always known it's I just can't come to work with
Speaker 2: a cast on my arm or all that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it's a problem. It's almost problem for me.
Speaker 2: There have been a handful of of friends I've had
Speaker 2: in this business. You're certainly at the top of the
Speaker 2: list of people who are mathey compartmentalized well, and they
Speaker 2: all have the ability to gamble well or be lawyers.
Speaker 2: They'd be good lawyers and good gamblers. You're one of
Speaker 2: those people.
Speaker 1: That's so funny. What did I say I was going
Speaker 1: to do if I quit this? I said, maybe go
Speaker 1: play poker and maybe go be a lawyer. Exactly right, Yes,
Speaker 1: And so that's that's how your brain works. One of
Speaker 1: the things I think one of my bigger criticisms of
Speaker 1: the media sometimes the sports media all stand. The sports
Speaker 1: media is just the naivete of the sports media. The
Speaker 1: escort business in America is largely run by professional athletes.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just you go to a hotel on
Speaker 2: the road, it's it's escorts. It doesn't matter if it's
Speaker 2: La Houston, Atlanta, it's baseball, hockey, bet like every like.
Speaker 1: It's it's you could not small street. Pro athletes are
Speaker 1: probably the two biggest at the centers and those and it's.
Speaker 2: Say what you want. It's legal in every city in
Speaker 2: the country. Maybe not Salt Lake, but but but everywhere
Speaker 2: else it's happening, right, and.
Speaker 1: It's consenting adults. I'm not going to judge that this
Speaker 1: is not I don't feel like anyone's being Everyone knows
Speaker 1: what they're signing up for sure.
Speaker 2: The second thing is everybody is gambling everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.
Speaker 2: Everybody's got bookies, everybody's gambling. And finally, actually when a
Speaker 2: DraftKings comes in, there's clarity. You can bet on everything
Speaker 2: except the NFL and don't be in our facility. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you can bet at anything else that's actually helping the business.
Speaker 2: Now it's like, just don't be here and don't bet football,
Speaker 2: go bet anything, so that creates clarity. Baseball, no illegal
Speaker 2: bookies and don't bet baseball. So I don't look at
Speaker 2: it as a negative. I look at complete clarity on
Speaker 2: what you can bet on everything and what you can't
Speaker 2: our sport. So this is around about way of getting
Speaker 2: into Otani.
Speaker 1: Is I think.
Speaker 2: And celebrities Billy Joel lost ninety million, Robert de Niro
Speaker 2: eighty eight, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Tim Duncan, John Elway, smart people,
Speaker 2: great degrees, great schools, have lost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Speaker 2: There is more now than ever. It's an industry to
Speaker 2: target rich, young celebrities who are clueless about business. So
Speaker 2: I look at Otani and I think, yeah, I'm not
Speaker 2: shocked as interpreter with nothing but downtime and money use
Speaker 2: an illegal bookmaker in southern California. But I also think
Speaker 2: it's possible that o'tani is not looking at his bank account.
Speaker 2: Billy Joel was DeNiro banks, charity schools get duped.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I talked about this because I am Matthey
Speaker 1: and lawyerly, I'm not good organizationally, and I have weird
Speaker 1: I have weird like anxiety triggers, like I don't like
Speaker 1: I don't I have right now if it looked at
Speaker 1: my phone and I'll tell you the exact number. I
Speaker 1: have two hundred and fifty four unopened text messages, So
Speaker 1: like that's not unresponded to. That is I haven't even
Speaker 1: opened them and read them. And it's not because I'm
Speaker 1: in group chats. I've got so I So I say
Speaker 1: that because so I have weird things about like even
Speaker 1: if I know I have money, I have I struggle
Speaker 1: like opening the bank app, like I don't like to
Speaker 1: look at it. I don't know weird thing in my brain. Okay,
Speaker 1: say that if someone was stealing from me, I could
Speaker 1: go months and not know it. There's three there's three
Speaker 1: people who basically have access you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: And there are people I trust. There are people that
Speaker 1: I you know, either handle my investments, my taxes, or
Speaker 1: make sure my agent's paid. All of that. Those three people,
Speaker 1: if they and by the way, even when I they
Speaker 1: do check, like what do they do they send me
Speaker 1: a bank statement? Those are easily forged, Like if I
Speaker 1: did to do a people do not every month do
Speaker 1: a real self audit if they are paying people to
Speaker 1: handle their money. Having money stolen from you is just truly,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, mostly bad luck. It means the person
Speaker 1: you trusted was dishonest or had a problem, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: And I'll take it a step further. This is what
Speaker 1: I discussed this so I do. Who would be the
Speaker 1: single easiest person in the world for me to steal from?
Speaker 1: The answer is my son because he trusts me implicitly.
Speaker 1: He relies on me for things that he doesn't know about,
Speaker 1: like hey, how do I file my taxes? What do
Speaker 1: I do? I have all of his information and he
Speaker 1: would never ever think that I would be taking advantage
Speaker 1: of because I have always worked for him, helping him
Speaker 1: out all of it. Well, who in the world do
Speaker 1: you trust more than the person who speaks for you
Speaker 1: and translates for you in a foreign country. You come
Speaker 1: to America, don't even speak the language. Right, every interaction
Speaker 1: you have this guy is attached to. Of course you're
Speaker 1: going you have to trust him implicitly with everything. So
Speaker 1: if he's gonna steal from you, you're not gonna see
Speaker 1: it coming because then all of it, Like if you
Speaker 1: have to worry what this guy steal from me, then
Speaker 1: you also have to worry is he lying to my employer?
Speaker 1: Is he lying to my agent? Like every single interaction
Speaker 1: you have that he's involved in. So I I think
Speaker 1: it is totally plausible that Otani could have a few
Speaker 1: million missing and not know it. I think it's totally
Speaker 1: plausible that this guy would have full access to it.
Speaker 1: The part of the Otani story that I want more
Speaker 1: investigation on is multi layered. One is this bookie that
Speaker 1: gave a guy a multimillion dollar credit limit. I want
Speaker 1: to know more about that because I've gambled and I
Speaker 1: know how credit works, and I don't have Otani money,
Speaker 1: but I do have Otani's translator money. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And it's hard to get
Speaker 1: a credit. It's hard to get a credit line. With
Speaker 1: any bookie in America higher than fifty thousand dollars, we're
Speaker 1: talking about a million plus. So I'm interested in that
Speaker 1: was that guy trading? Did the bookie think Otani was
Speaker 1: making the best even if he wasn't. The other thing
Speaker 1: that I want to know about is this because the
Speaker 1: part of the story that I don't understand is there
Speaker 1: seems to be a thirty six hour period between when
Speaker 1: the angels and authorities believed, oh, the interpreter has been
Speaker 1: doing something wrong and when they and from that there
Speaker 1: was a thirty six hour period where from that moment
Speaker 1: nobody he was like, Hey, we need someone else that
Speaker 1: speaks Japanese to update Otani.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: There seems to be a day and a half where
Speaker 1: they were like, interpreter, you're in trouble. Now, go tell
Speaker 1: Otani you're in trouble. And it's like, wait a minute, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen to me. That does that mean Baseball
Speaker 1: or the Angels or somebody was like just hoping, please
Speaker 1: let this go away, please? You know. I don't know,
Speaker 1: so they're a part of it, part of the story
Speaker 1: that doesn't I'm like, hmmm, I need more information there,
Speaker 1: but I do not. I don't think it is. I
Speaker 1: think it is more likely than not that Otani didn't
Speaker 1: do anything here right then he was a victim. I
Speaker 1: think the most likely outcome that Otani had money stolen
Speaker 1: from him by someone he trusts. Yeah, or go ahead, sorry,
Speaker 1: And I.
Speaker 2: Do think the Dodgers in Major League Baseball are praying
Speaker 2: he didn't know anything, and if it comes in gray,
Speaker 2: that will be he didn't know anything.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I also I don't know if
Speaker 1: this would be against Baseball's rules or not. But if
Speaker 1: the end is that Otani knew his best friend was
Speaker 1: gambling and he covered it for him because the money
Speaker 1: is all fake to him anyway, I wouldn't judge him
Speaker 1: for that at all. Maybe that's against the rules right
Speaker 1: right now, that's now I would judge him if it's like,
Speaker 1: but now I'm going to tell everyone you stole from
Speaker 1: me and you got to go to prison. That then
Speaker 1: I'd be like, Okay, that's a problem. But so we'll
Speaker 1: see what it comes out. I don't think. But my
Speaker 1: gut reaction is not Otani was bet. It just wasn't.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make sense, Yeah, it doesn't logically, I don't
Speaker 1: think that's how that works. And I and here's the
Speaker 1: other thing. If he was betting, he's not wiring the
Speaker 1: money from his account, right, Like there's a he would
Speaker 1: have been more subtle about it if he were better. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I and I think.
Speaker 2: Like whenever I whenever I hear the kind of the
Speaker 2: do gooders in the media lament gambling, I'm always like
Speaker 2: I said this to John Middlikoff. If you want to
Speaker 2: be a journalist, then be a journalist. And journalists have
Speaker 2: to report both sides. The average bet by DraftKings and
Speaker 2: FanDuel is four dollars. Hard to break your family on that.
Speaker 2: And the disturbance distortion rate is one percent, meaning one
Speaker 2: percent of gamblers get in trouble. I have to read
Speaker 2: a one eight hundred number after every spot. The distortion
Speaker 2: disturbance rate with alcohol is six percent. And they tell
Speaker 2: you know when to say when, so are we closing
Speaker 2: all the bars?
Speaker 1: Stadiums?
Speaker 2: Ply you with alcohol it hurts your brain, your liver,
Speaker 2: your family, your bank account. So I think a lot
Speaker 2: of people are using this OTAWNI moment to waive caution
Speaker 2: flags of this gambling thing is terrible. No, like anything else,
Speaker 2: anything that is fun, it can be abused, used, and
Speaker 2: I think we are going through a period in sports.
Speaker 2: Rick Neuheisel gotten in trouble years ago at the University
Speaker 2: of Washington for betting a March Madness pool. It got
Speaker 2: him fired. Gambling has always been something that is mistakes
Speaker 2: or made aid. There's a lot of money, it's fun,
Speaker 2: it's young people, they have cash. I don't think O
Speaker 2: Taani is a signal that gambling is I never thought
Speaker 2: it was a virtue, but that it's it is this
Speaker 2: problem in America. We've been doing it forever.
Speaker 1: So so couple things. So I I agree and disagree
Speaker 1: with you on this. So I I think that we
Speaker 1: can have an honest conversation about Listen, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of things that are going to cause some very
Speaker 1: significant harm to a percentage of people that do it
Speaker 1: that we just say we don't I don't want to
Speaker 1: say we don't care. But it's that's the cost of
Speaker 1: living in a free society essentially, you know what I
Speaker 1: mean that we're just now. I I do think that
Speaker 1: the that there there's two things that I think should
Speaker 1: be at least looked at. One is the ease with
Speaker 1: which because you mentioned alcohol, that I think a fair
Speaker 1: distinction is I can't hear an alcohol add and grab
Speaker 1: my phone and a shot comes up, right like the
Speaker 1: fact that the ease with the z constrictionless part of it. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think has it has some unintended consequences that when
Speaker 1: it's like, hey, gambling's legal is Supreme Court chains laws.
Speaker 1: Gambling is legal, but in order to do it you
Speaker 1: got to get in your car go to a casino
Speaker 1: stand for like, you know what I mean. So there
Speaker 1: are so I do think that there could be some
Speaker 1: push and pull there. To me, the bigger gambling story
Speaker 1: this week was not Otani. It was the kid in
Speaker 1: the NBA Porter, Michael Porter Junior's brother, who the circumstantial
Speaker 1: evidence makes it seem like he was banging on his
Speaker 1: own personal points and rebounds unders to the tune of
Speaker 1: ten twenty thirty grand. So that now, people, if I
Speaker 1: asked me, people ask me all the time, do you
Speaker 1: think games are fixed?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Absolutely not. I'm like now, college games some definitely. And
Speaker 1: do I think that we will have a referee based
Speaker 1: officiating or a betting scandal in one of the major
Speaker 1: sports in the next few years? Yeah, I do, just
Speaker 1: because college kids don't have any money. Refs don't make
Speaker 1: a ton of money, and you can make fifty grand
Speaker 1: one hundred grand. So I think that could happen. But that,
Speaker 1: by the way, happened forever. Okay, there have been gotten
Speaker 1: college that's legal, illegal gambling that can happen. The thing
Speaker 1: that so, But for a pro athlete, anyone that has
Speaker 1: the ability to throw an NBA game makes so much money.
Speaker 1: Being able to win forty grand, which is about the
Speaker 1: most you can bet on an NBA game, doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1: The only people who could really throw a football game
Speaker 1: or quarterbacks. Yeah, you know, so it doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1: But now all of a sudden, it's like, oh, I
Speaker 1: can bet real money on in individual player props props. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now we are talking about an area where there is
Speaker 1: this John Tay Porter. I don't know that he did
Speaker 1: it or he didn't, but the Johntay Porter story will
Speaker 1: not be the first one world not be the only one.
Speaker 1: And you see it in other sports. You've seen it
Speaker 1: for you like you see it in tennis. Tennis, it's
Speaker 1: a big problem, you know what I mean, Certain guys
Speaker 1: who don't make a ton of money and can make
Speaker 1: ten fifteen percent of their annual salary by doing something
Speaker 1: that really does feel victimless, because if you are the
Speaker 1: eighth man on an NBA team and you're like, man,
Speaker 1: I just got to check in and then say my
Speaker 1: hamstring hurts. I don't even know that it's going to
Speaker 1: hurt the team, and I can make twenty grand. People
Speaker 1: are gonna do that, Flatley. People are gonna do that.
Speaker 1: And the only now, the reason I bring it up
Speaker 1: in this context is those player props. When I had
Speaker 1: to bet with a bookie, Nope, you couldn't say to
Speaker 1: a bookie, hey, man, I'd like to take Dante DiVincenzo
Speaker 1: under nine and a half points, and I'd be like, oh,
Speaker 1: fuck yourself, pal, you know something, I'm not taking a bet,
Speaker 1: And so those markets didn't exist. But now the player
Speaker 1: props are big market, so I do think we'll see
Speaker 1: more of it. It doesn't mean you have to have
Speaker 1: a prohibition on it, but we have to be honest
Speaker 1: about the likelihood of it, and the incentive structure is
Speaker 1: changing versus fixing games, which pro athletes are not going
Speaker 1: to do because you can't there's no not real money in.
Speaker 2: It right now. I do think I've said this before
Speaker 2: Henry Hill, Boston College or Boston University. I think college athletics,
Speaker 2: especially pre nil, I think a lot of players felt
Speaker 2: like they were being used. They hate a coach, they
Speaker 2: want twelve thousand bucks. They got a girlfriend, they want
Speaker 2: a new car. There is no Just like college basketball,
Speaker 2: cheating was way worse than John Wooden's era than it
Speaker 2: is ten years ago. There's a magnifying glass. I think
Speaker 2: college basketball, there's three hundred and sixty teams. It used
Speaker 2: to be in the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties, twelve
Speaker 2: games a week were televised. It was so much easier
Speaker 2: than you didn't have the comput I mean, good God,
Speaker 2: to think about something that's not analogous, but you know,
Speaker 2: it was at the beginning of Ted Bundy's killing spree
Speaker 2: where states could link up and go. I mean it
Speaker 2: used to be neighboring states had no idea. I had
Speaker 2: no idea, just go from place to place. I had
Speaker 2: no idea who he was. And now literally you can
Speaker 2: find DNA and go find a guy that did something
Speaker 2: forty eight years ago. The advancements on finding bad guys, well,
Speaker 2: there were no advancements in the forties fifty sixty seventies, eighties, nineties,
Speaker 2: five thousand bucks to a kid in college was generational.
Speaker 1: It fell well. And so that's that's the part of
Speaker 1: it for the college athletes that I think people just
Speaker 1: don't remember how broke they were in kylege oh I Colin,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I've told you this story on
Speaker 1: the air or not. It's not I mean, it's twenty
Speaker 1: years ago now, but it's not something I'm proud of.
Speaker 1: I I lost. I lost one thousand dollars in a
Speaker 1: poker game in college. Not a college poker game, a
Speaker 1: in this in this city of South Syracuse, some Armenian
Speaker 1: fellas and some real a real guy's game. And I
Speaker 1: owed a thousand dollars. And I'd been playing in the
Speaker 1: game for like a year, and I had till Friday
Speaker 1: to pay the guy money. And I had like two
Speaker 1: hundred dollars to my name, and I owed him a
Speaker 1: thousand bucks. So I went to a different game with
Speaker 1: the two hundred bucks and I'm like, the only way
Speaker 1: I'm going to get this is to try to spin
Speaker 1: it up. I did not. I lost it. And I
Speaker 1: went to the guy who runs that game, and I'm like, hey,
Speaker 1: can I borrow one thousand dollars? And he's like, why
Speaker 1: are you asking for this? I'm like, because I owe
Speaker 1: it to that guy. You know, he he knew who
Speaker 1: it was. And he's like, so let me just make
Speaker 1: sure I have it right. You're more afraid of him
Speaker 1: than you are of me, And I'm like, well, I
Speaker 1: think he would maybe hurt me. I don't I know.
Speaker 1: I I don't think you would. But that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stiff you. I just need more time. And
Speaker 1: he's like, you're borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. It's
Speaker 1: a terrible idea. I will loan it to you and
Speaker 1: you will pay me back. And don't you know think
Speaker 1: that our friendship will prevent me from making sure I
Speaker 1: get it back. In that moment, Colin, if I were
Speaker 1: a college athlete and someone was like, hey, I can
Speaker 1: fix this for you, ten X, I was so scared
Speaker 1: and so like out of moves, didn't want to call
Speaker 1: my couldn't call my parents, didn't want you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, like the those moments. And so now you
Speaker 1: can say then that gambling caused it. I understand that
Speaker 1: whatever it is, it's just it is what it is.
Speaker 1: And so that and that was one thousand dollars. One
Speaker 1: thousand dollars but in that moment a thousand dollars. But
Speaker 1: I remember the day after that happened, I was walking
Speaker 1: by a Jimmy Johns and there was like a little
Speaker 1: like Discover card kioskin out in front, and it said
Speaker 1: sign up for the If you sign up for the
Speaker 1: credit card, you get a free sandwich. And I was like,
Speaker 1: you're goddamn right, I'm getting that free sandwich. And then
Speaker 1: and that's actually what saved me was I had never
Speaker 1: had a credit card, and then I realized, oh, you
Speaker 1: can get a cash advance on a credit card. So
Speaker 1: I signed up for a Discover card with a thousand
Speaker 1: dollars limit, like a three hundred dollars cash advance limit,
Speaker 1: signed up for a couple more, paid that guy back,
Speaker 1: and then you know, paid sixty two percent APR on
Speaker 1: those cash advances, you know what I mean? Until probably
Speaker 1: I was twenty three years old, but I really felt
Speaker 1: out of moves. Sure, and so there is a level
Speaker 1: of like, what does someone at nineteen twenty years old
Speaker 1: who feels like they're in a rough spot, what would
Speaker 1: they do to fix it? And if the answer is
Speaker 1: you can win, just don't win by twelve. That feels
Speaker 1: like the you know what I mean, the easiest fix
Speaker 1: there ever was. I'm not encouraging it, but I also
Speaker 1: am saying right now as someone who's been in those spots,
Speaker 1: I don't think I would be like, oh, that person
Speaker 1: is a bad person. I'd be like, no, they got put.
Speaker 1: They were in a rough spot and they felt squeezed.
Speaker 1: In defense, if you will, of legal gambling on things
Speaker 1: like that, it is way more likely to be discovered
Speaker 1: and found out now that gambling's legal versus when it
Speaker 1: was all through bookies, and you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: there wasn't a real rightulated market on it. That part's true.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, if you can hide to our previous
Speaker 2: discussion on serial colors being discovered, if you could hide
Speaker 2: something like that for forty years, you could hide a
Speaker 2: turnover and a miss jumper in a nineteen seventy seven
Speaker 2: basketball game that wasn't televised, of course, the easiest thing
Speaker 2: in the world.
Speaker 1: Well, and there was. I think it was City College
Speaker 1: New York. I think it was CCNY through I don't
Speaker 1: know it was the national championship game, but I know
Speaker 1: there was a movie about it from the fifties. They
Speaker 1: did in fifties called City Dumps. It was the best
Speaker 1: team in the country and you know, I mean they
Speaker 1: were accuse them of game.
Speaker 2: Fix the volume. Thanks for listening to part one of
Speaker 2: the conversations with Nick. Don't forget the check back for
Speaker 2: part two.