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Aug. 16, 2023 - Doug Collins Podcast
43:24
Divorcing The Real World From Politics
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Do you want to listen to a podcast?
By who?
Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins.
How is it?
The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
I could not believe my ears.
In this house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule.
It has been said today, where is bravery?
I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
Why?
Because we won an election.
I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority and it ain't gonna be that fun.
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Well, you know, one of the things I always like to do, and you and I have a great time because we can talk about basically anything as we go here.
I do have an interesting question for you.
This is coming out as we talk.
Before we get into some politics, we'll get into football.
I mean, it's that time of the year.
I mean, come on.
The old...
Did you watch or do you happen to see the quarterbacks?
Yes, I did.
I was curious about that.
From a journalist, you've been behind the scenes like that for a while.
What did you think about that?
I thought some of the access was really good.
I thought being able to shoot these guys in their homes was a really, really...
Who's going to say no to Peyton Manning, the executive producer, right?
He can ask and he'll get.
So I think that's what they all did.
I thought the person who made the biggest impact through that whole thing was Patrick Mahomes' wife, Brittany.
Yeah.
You come away from the whole thing knowing her probably better than almost anyone.
Not all of her, but enough about her and enough about their relationship and all the rest.
So I thought it was good.
I thought it was really well done.
I mean, I... Look, there's only so much you can do with behind the scenes and audio and, you know, we hear so much from these guys these days.
But I thought some of the most impactful scenes were like Kirk Cousins and his wife driving home after that playoff loss and talking about how in shock they were.
And then they pull up to the garage and his wife says, oh, it's garbage night.
It is.
We're back home now.
Everything's back to normal now.
I got to put the garbage out.
And he goes and sings his son to sleep.
I thought that was a really poignant part of it.
So I thought that it really had its moments.
I think it's worth watching.
I definitely think it is.
You know, interestingly enough, and I sort of talked about this with a few folks, and some of the things that what you just said came through with this, I gained a better appreciation for Mahomes, for Patrick, Kirk Cousins, you learn, again, even more in his family and him, that scene that you just talked about with him.
There's another scene in that where he's getting the award at the Super Bowl last year, and he chokes up, realizing that he may not ever play in the Super Bowl.
That was a powerful scene in that.
I'm not sure if he had it to do over again.
I'm not sure if, you know...
It would be interesting to see how the dynamic comes up.
But the Atlanta scenes and everything.
Marcus Mariota.
Marcus Mariota.
I'm wondering if he would have gone back and actually done it.
I don't know, but it was a really...
What I did think is the contrast was really interesting.
Yes.
So you've got the Super Bowl winning quarterback.
You've got a guy who came really close, had the greatest comeback in NFL history.
And then you had Marcus Mariota, who really struggled.
And the fact that he left the team.
Yeah.
I had forgotten all about that, Doug.
Oh, yeah.
He left the team.
And you're obviously closer to that team than I am.
I'm much closer to the Minnesota Vikings.
But that part was really interesting.
And I thought the way it comes full circle at the end is really interesting, too, that he's now signed and he's going to be competing again.
Three very different personalities and three very different levels of success.
I found that kind of just a really interesting contrast.
So not everyone has success, obviously.
And when people complain about their quarterbacks, as Minnesota Vikings fans often complain about Kirk Cousins, I hope they watch that and saw what a beating was.
This guy takes every week and what he does to put himself out there.
Same with Mahomes.
I thought one of the neatest scenes with Mahomes was after the Super Bowl when he hugs his dad and his dad says, you're like nothing else.
There's some really interesting way his dad described him.
I thought that was a really interesting scene.
Yeah, it was.
And I'll have to say also, though, from all these scenes, I mean, you see the wives, you see everything else, and it was real life.
I will say that Brittany Mahomes, it was interesting how she came off.
I've had a lot of people, because she has a very...
Outgoing personality is probably a good way to put it.
And then with everything out of it, you sort of sense why in the videos, especially in the box and everything else.
It's different, the relationship.
But you know what I loved about it the most?
And I hadn't really thought about this until we started talking about it.
It's real life.
It's what you and I talk about on the podcast all the time.
And I'm so tired of people not living in the real world.
I'm so tired of people ideologically.
Oh, this is sunshine and rainbow.
Could you think of three better ways to say this is the NFL? You covered it for many years.
You have the almost, you have the super, and then you have the, God, I hope to make it another year.
Yeah.
I mean, it is.
And these are real human beings.
And you get that from their families and their wives.
That's why I thought the Marcus Mariota contrast was so important and actually really interesting and something to think about.
That here's this guy, you know, he leaves his hometown, goes to college.
He's sort of like, whoa, and meets his future wife and You can see how important his wife and child are to him, how his personality is just so different.
I think everyone looks at these guys as automatons.
They look at them as little machines.
They're not.
They're not.
And they get hurt.
They've got these massive people knocking them down and crushing them time and again.
And so, yeah, I hope that people took that away.
And I'm with you.
I'm I'm really tired of people living through all of us, living, you know, not our own just lives, seeing the world.
Well, we had one.
I told you about this when we were talking the other day.
We do a show, and I've just taken one just recently on I've Learned That.
And one of the things that, you know, I just thought about this as you were talking, and it said that on the I've Learned That on this page that I had, and it said, I've learned that two people can look at the exact same thing and view it totally differently.
Yeah.
And that's okay.
I know.
I mean, how many times have you and I both got into conversation and somebody, you start saying, well, I feel this way and they look at you like you have three heads.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We've got to get out of this.
I mean, this is not the way life is.
No, it's not.
I just had a great guest on my show just before I came on with you, and it's going to drop later today.
And he wrote a book called A Heretic's Manifesto, Essays on the Unsayable.
His name is Brendan O'Neill.
I don't mind plugging him because the book is so flipping good.
He's over from the UK. And he's got a great perspective, not only on Europe, but on the United States.
He clearly follows it all.
It's not tough to do.
But he also compares things that are going on today to strange moments in history.
You know, when we used to burn women at the stake because we thought they were witches who controlled the weather.
And, you know, shoot, we had a bad crop.
Who's to blame?
Let's burn the witch.
A lot of things.
Yeah.
His opening chapter is entitled Her Penis.
And it's a whole look at this gender ideology that's become somewhat of a religion in this country and how you're not really supposed to...
Speak out against it and say, no, women don't have penises.
Sorry.
If you have a penis, you're not a woman.
And how language is being manipulated to manipulate thought.
And it's really, I think it's kind of a scary time, Doug.
And I think, though, that people like you and this author give me some hope that, and quite frankly, Neo, the rapper, who I'm sure you saw in the last 24 hours.
Yeah.
Yeah, that whole story.
The fact that he had the chutzpah, the guts to come back and say, you know what?
I don't apologize for my opinion.
You've got yours.
I'm entitled to mine.
And that's what we need more of.
Yeah, I've got freedom of speech.
So do you.
You can say whatever you want, and I'm entitled to disagree with it.
I mean, you can look at something, and the issue is, you can, and I think, Michelle, you may, I don't know if you agree with me or not on this, but I mean, you can call yourself a house, a car, a door, a horse, a whatever, but don't expect me to call you that.
I mean, I mean, it's okay.
And Neo said that basically.
Neo's a good Atlanta guy, too, as well.
And I've gotten to know him through music.
It was pretty cool.
But to say that took a lot for him.
Because why is it in a society where we have to now applaud the courage to speak a truth about somebody who believes?
Why has that become rare?
Yeah.
I know.
And I've called it a coalition of courage.
And I welcomed him to it yesterday.
And I welcome you and I welcome anyone who wants to join in this nebulous coalition of courage.
But yeah, we are applauding people for speaking the truth and for giving their opinions.
But I think we are in this place.
We got here.
It's crazy to think that we're here, but the more we applaud, maybe the more people will join us in saying, sorry, don't agree.
I'm not going to be called a menstruating person.
I'm not going to be called a birthing person.
Did you see the bit from Harry's Razors?
There's a company called Harry's Razors that my son uses that I'm going to suggest he stop using because they were so proud of themselves for giving time off for not just the birthing person, but the non-birthing person.
And I wanted to say, so you mean the mother and the father?
Father, right.
I mean, these are words we've been using for millennia.
Yeah.
And now suddenly, what the hell are you talking about?
And why are you so proud of this?
Birthing...
That's a woman.
Yeah.
That's part of what the essence of being a woman is you're...
Hopefully, most cases are capable of giving birth.
And breastfeeding, not chest feeding, breastfeeding, okay?
Okay, I'm having a real problem.
Okay, and look, we're getting into stuff today.
Look, I have a real problem with that, and I've seen it on the internet, and it's just like, okay, I just, you know, I'm just, it's just like, you're kidding me.
No, no, quit, quit, stop it, stop it.
You know, this is just mad.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think that, like you said, Twitter, a lot of the time you just want to throw your computer into an ocean when you read Twitter.
You've got to make sure you've had your morning coffee before you dive in.
And then you have to realize that a very small percentage of America is actually, or the world, is on Twitter.
Very small percentage.
And I can understand now why my kids maybe gravitate more toward Instagram because you're just looking at pictures and fun stuff.
And yeah, some of it's insightful and all the rest.
But Twitter is a weird place.
I'm grateful for it because I do believe in amplifying free speech.
I do.
I do.
I'm a purist when it comes to that.
And it's really our responsibility, each individual, to decide, how am I going to respond to that statement?
Am I going to let it boil my blood?
Am I going to respond in a really smart way or am I going to just pass right by it or delete it and laugh at it and say, wow.
I think one of the things that I've learned that, Doug, here we go.
I've learned that.
There you go.
It's a good idea when someone tweets at you and calls you a name or very confidently declares you an idiot.
Go look at how many followers they have.
Yeah.
Chances are it's fewer than 100.
And I always want to get snarky and say, I'm sure your 100 followers agree with you.
Yeah.
But then I just go, why would I waste my time?
There you go.
I don't know this human.
I have a great outlet.
My son, who for a living, works in the political realm.
He works in, he grew up in it.
It's like, you know, a kid doing anything else.
You know, butchers became a butcher.
My son grew up in politics.
But he does, but he's a digital native.
He understands computers and all the social media.
So he works on, that's what he does, is digital campaigns and digital ads and all this cross country for a big company who does Senate campaigns, presidential campaigns, and he works on all those.
And He works for me.
He and I go back and forth because we talk all the time.
And so the other night, we had posted out something on Twitter, and this person replied.
And I rarely look at comments, but occasionally I do.
And this one was just saying something like that.
Well, this is so glad you're not here, whatever.
And so my go-to was I texted it to my son.
I said, should we have some fun with this?
And he sends back, laugh out loud, no.
Yeah.
And it's just that perspective.
But again, I tell you the difference.
Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, they have become almost like the networks in such a way.
Twitter, we have always used if we wanted to grab attention.
And this is where it's important.
If you want to grab the attention of the scribes, the journalists, the others, you use Twitter.
You do something on Twitter because they all, in DC in particular, I mean, it's Twitter everything.
For the journalists.
Instagram is, like you said, is a little bit different.
It's more of those influencers.
Facebook is, again, a whole different generation as well.
TikTok, again, the problem with China is a problem there.
I don't do TikTok.
Yeah, I don't either anymore.
But you see it.
So it's also where you use it.
But I'll go back to one.
And by the way, if you've never, folks on the podcast, if you've never caught Michelle on Outnumbered, you got to.
She kills it when she goes on Outnumbered.
Thank you.
You're so nice.
Does a great job.
And, you know, we go on outnumbered as well.
Of course, I'm in a different position because I'm, you know, one of four on there instead of that part.
But it's fun.
And Harris and Emily and Kaylee and all of them are just great.
Yes.
But the thing that we did, talking about this, you know, I don't have to, we did a story the last time I was on there about a week ago.
The story was about this guy in Japan who paid $14,000 for a collie, border collie suit that he gets into because he wanted to be a dog.
I saw it, Doug!
I saw it!
$14,000.
I mean, he could pay me $14,000 and I'd whistle and tell him to go fetch and he wouldn't even have to get in a suit.
Yeah, you don't have to get in a suit.
Just give me the $14,000.
I'll put some food on the floor for you in a bowl of water.
No, it's weird.
And he's only one guy.
So we've got to say, okay, maybe he's got some issues.
And he admitted.
I don't tell my friends at work.
I don't talk to my family about this because they think I was weird.
Yeah.
You think?
You know, it is strange.
But I think because that story gets amplified and maybe he's getting the desired attention that he wants, we think the world has gone mad.
No, this one guy has gone a little mad.
Or maybe he's just trolling all of us and it's worth every cent to him.
I don't know.
But I just...
I think we've got to try to keep things in context.
It's very tough right now to keep things in context, but we've got to try.
Hey, wasn't Andy Warhol said that everybody gets their 15 minutes of fame?
Wasn't that the saying?
I'm wanting to change that now and say everybody's looking for their 30 seconds of fame.
It's gotten shorter.
There's no question it's shorter.
We don't have the attention span.
It's so interesting.
So my daughter is about to turn 15 in November.
And she knows how to use, kind of like your son, she's a digital native.
So I've said, hey, I'll pay you a little bit of money if you'll help me edit my show up and put stuff on social media.
So whereas I'm normally editing like a 30 or a 45 second soundbite that I think is really pithy and interesting, she goes, mom, that's so long.
Honey, it's 30 seconds.
It's the length of a TV commercial.
Here's what I would do.
And she's editing things that are all under 20 seconds.
Yep.
So, all right, I'll buy that.
I'll start posting those, honey.
You edit them up, I'll post them.
So I'm going to be really interested to see how those catch on.
But that is their world.
Their attention span is short, man.
It's a little disappointing.
I mean, it is the Nemo kind of world.
I mean, it is really, you know, the goldfish, you know.
Oh, a little Dory who can't remember anything?
Yeah, Dory, huh?
Okay.
Oh, we're back.
Oh, hi, Michelle.
You're back.
You know, yeah, it's the way it works.
And we're seeing this, and this is where it gets concerning for me.
And I know you've done some great podcasts, talking to great guests in the thought processes here of people.
But what is concerning, again, You know, as we look at it, and I love, you know, as we started the podcast, I'll talk about, you know, the show and how it's real life.
I've made a comment before, and I'd love to get your thoughts on that.
I believe the reason politics right now, and I use that in the broadest sense, in D.C., wherever you want to, the reason politics is broken is because we have divorced real world from politics.
We've divorced...
The reality of life from the governance of life.
And I do this from experience.
I do this from a simple fact.
Let me explain.
Why do you have members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, I'm being very bipartisan here, who say, I will never do X. Okay?
They'll never negotiate that.
Now, again, and I made this very clear, life issues, things like that for me personally, those are non-negotiable.
Those are things that I just, you know, we're not going to negotiate on.
And it may not be yours, but it's mine.
That's mine to go.
But not everything is the hill to die on.
But these same people in Congress will then go to buy a car, buy a house, do a business deal from their previous life, and realize that there's give and take.
I believe that is the, until we get back to a marriage, if you would, of reality and politics, we're in deep trouble.
Well, it's interesting.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Laura Bush many years ago.
And I remember one thing she told me was that earlier in politics, everyone lived in D.C. You went out to dinner together.
You had cocktail parties.
Everyone interacted.
And now everyone's just flying home and commuting to D.C. or having Zoom meetings.
And so that those personal relationships were Aren't really happening in the same way that they used to.
That was one explanation she had for how we've gotten so, you know, there's no reaching out.
There's no real contact between these people that are supposed to be representing all of us and on our behalf getting things done.
So I don't know how much of a factor that is, Doug, but I don't discount what she said.
I certainly don't.
It's huge.
I'm going to step off and I appreciate you bringing that up because I've said for years, here's two problems that happen.
Number one, and I'm just curious, and this is both for edification and also for learning.
You know who really started that?
That issue that you just brought up?
Who brought that up to begin with?
Newt Gingrich.
Yes.
The Republican Revolution of the 90s, one of the things, in addition to the quote, remember, you always remember the contract with America and the 10 points and everything.
But one of the issues was, is he said, we're going to get you in and out of here.
Don't stay in up here.
We're going to put you back in the district.
And that was sort of this, you know, don't become, you know, Potomac fever.
And that's exactly what happened.
Yeah.
It was meant to, quote, keep people grounded.
The reality was you spent more time on planes and you didn't know the ones that you were actually having to negotiate with.
The second is sort of what we're doing right here, but the social media aspect.
Yeah.
That is the biggest aspect.
Not only do they now know each other, we can now take pot shots at each other without ever speaking to each other, in politics even.
But you've now got...
I remember a time in my office, we got one of my constituents...
Called up my office irate.
And this gentleman I've known for a long time.
And why hasn't Congressman Collins signed on to this bill?
He's just, you know, I knew he was a rhino.
I mean, just on and on and on.
Well, my staffer came to me and they build it up because we know him.
I mean, it was a good thing.
And so we found out it was from another office and they was wanting to know why we hadn't signed on to this bill.
Come to sign out, the guy had not even dropped the bill yet.
It was an interview that he saw on some remote podcast or interview that's saying, I'm going to do this.
And they were holding me accountable in an office that had no idea what he was talking about.
See, it's so, well, look, it's so easy to lie and or to misinform.
And I don't want to get into this whole, you know, we have to be careful about disinformation because I'd rather have more information than less, frankly.
I'm all about free speech and 100%.
But what we do need to do is hold people accountable, not for their opinions, but for their facts.
I don't see anyone having been held accountable for publishing again and again and again all this stuff about Russia that end up not being true.
And I think we find ways to get around this.
I'll use this as an example, Doug.
When the Hunter Biden laptop came out and those 50-51 national security experts signed on to the letter, it doesn't take a rocket scientist.
You can identify the line in the letter where they get themselves off the hook.
And that line is, this has all the earmarks of Russian disinformation.
It doesn't say emphatically, this is Russian disinformation, period.
It says, this has all the earmarks.
That's what gets them out of having any responsibility.
And it's that one line, and it's very well crafted so that they don't have to answer to anyone.
Oh, I just said it had the earmarks.
I didn't say it was Russian disinformation.
I just said it had all the earmarks.
So...
You know, this is how devious things are.
It's really awful.
But I want to take it a step further.
Someone who actually lived that, having to deal with impeachment, I mean, I lived that inside and out.
And what's really crazy for me now is the whole Hunter Biden episode, but also now the indictments that have been handed down in D.C. right now, the last one's from Jack Smith on this issue, but especially the Hunter Biden stuff and the whistleblowers.
We knew this in 2019. You can go back, and I'll encourage anybody, go look up Doug Collins' impeachment.
Go look up our thing.
We were talking about the Joe Biden interview where he said, hey, I priored the prosecutor and said, if they don't get it, they don't get the money, and I'll be darned if they didn't.
I mean, we talked about all these issues, and Democrats didn't want to talk about it, said it wasn't applicable.
It's all coming back now, and I mean, it's just this idea...
That is concerning to me that if I don't like your perspective, then we will hold you accountable for that.
And we're seeing this right now.
I made a comment the other day, I don't care what you think about the lawsuit, the indictments in DC about Trump and what he does with his attorneys.
The question now comes in my mind is, What if a defendant, a criminal defense attorney in a case makes the argument it's a murder case and there's an old, you know, the straw man idea.
You're trying to find, it could be somebody else.
And then legally and from a perspective and ethically, you're not supposed to say, hey, Michelle did it and have no basis for that.
But now I have a question.
It happens a lot.
You don't actually see it.
But the question now is, if the defendant gets found guilty, can they come back and say, this is legal and effective counsel?
Because, quote, you gave advice that was technically not there.
And again, these are the kind of things that happens in media.
We're seeing the censoring.
What was it, Michelle?
Did you see that the...
Stuff that came off on the Hunter Biden and other things never made it to the Sunday shows on ABC, NBC, CBS, and I didn't make it.
Yes.
See, there are errors of commission and errors of omission.
And by omitting that story from news, it's like acting like it's not even there.
And that is so journalistically irresponsible to me.
The fact that journalism is not unbiased, is not fact-based, is so driven by agenda now is really disheartening to me.
But I think that's why you're seeing more of these things popping up, like Barry Weiss's The Free Press.
She gives voice to all kinds of opinions.
Other outlets that are saying, you know, look over here because really all I want to talk about is the truth, you know.
What this whole...
Joe Biden, the big guy, all of this reminds me of lately, is the COVID origin thing.
Yes.
So there's a lab in Wuhan that's doing this, you know, advanced research on these...
What am I trying to say?
They're researching this...
What's the term, Doug?
The...
Dang!
Are you talking about the...
Where they're trying to take...
Species, you know, direct...
Taking...
Yeah.
Yeah.
We're losing listeners like this right now.
Someone's yelling at us right now saying, this is what it is!
Yeah.
They're taking a germ or whatever and making it more effective.
Across species is what it is.
Something like that.
There's a term for this, dammit.
I can't believe I can't think of it.
Anyway.
And this is in Wuhan.
And some doctors in the lab and people in Wuhan get sick.
Yeah.
Oh, but it's not.
It didn't originate.
No, no, no.
It didn't originate there.
It's from it's not from there.
That's like, you know, so when you see Joe Biden brag about I told this guy, if you don't fire your prosecutor, you don't get the billion dollars.
Well, damn it.
Son of a bitch.
They fired it.
And to suggest that that is nowhere related to Burisma and his son being on the board of directors of Burisma?
That's similar to saying, yeah, this COVID-19 didn't come from a lab in China.
I mean, it's just insane to me.
Well, it is.
And it's, look, and, you know, again, it's just so sad that, again, even us talking about, this is what's so sad, is so many times of us talking about the COVID or vaccines or anything else, now, oh, well, let's put a warning on this, you know, the That's disinformation.
So are you kidding me?
Give me a break.
Because, you know, I want somebody in government, and I know Brad Winstrup, who's heading up the COVID committee.
He's a good friend of mine in D.C., who's looking at this and saying, look, there's a real issue, stuff that we already knew.
But it's also going to the fact of, you know, and again, I am just putting facts out here.
The Pfizer, Moderna, and others, out of their own record-keeping, Have shown that there were issues going on in the preliminary testing that we're now maybe seeing in some that are going on.
And in fairness to doctors and others, doctors are saying, you know, well, some of it could be the virus itself and some could be the vaccine.
But when you see that coming out, people are not stupid.
They will sit there and look at this, and especially if they've had issues and others.
And I've got a lot of friends and others who...
They have issues that have developed in the last few years, whether it was from the virus itself that was made in a lab, or whether it was the vaccine.
It's just reality, and ignoring it doesn't make it better.
Answer real questions.
It's crazy to me that people want to choose sides on this issue of, like, they say, trust the science, and then science shows...
That men are men and women are women.
That science shows that myocarditis is a result of some of these vaccines.
So it's selective science.
Now we're not trusting all science.
We're just trusting the science that we like.
This is so transparent to me.
It's so obvious.
And people who want to deny it, to me, you look small and you look silly.
It does.
It does.
Hey, we've got a few minutes left here.
I want to switch gears because we could go on about this.
It goes back to the basic of it.
Folks, think for yourself.
Learn for yourself.
Read a lot.
Read things you don't agree with.
Here's my big problem.
I've seen this with young people that I've employed and others.
I will tell them something.
They will hear something and they'll just agree with it or disagree with it but can't tell me why.
I think we need to go back to the old third grade.
Remember this when you were learning about it?
Show me your work.
Yeah.
Show me your work.
I know!
I know!
And don't just tell me you have an answer.
Show me your work.
Right, right.
I really push my kids on that.
But anyway, parents push their kids.
My wife's a teacher, so I do that all the time.
God bless her.
Yes, she's retiring now.
Switch gears because I love your professional opinion about this because the world of college football and really in some ways pro football has just imploded.
In the last six months, even the last six weeks, if you look at it, from that.
Are we really now developing what we've sort of always sort of winked and nodded at?
Is now big-time college football, Division I-A, the Big Ten, the SEC, to the extent 12 and ACC, are we really now at semi-pro?
And really not even semi-pro.
I mean, are we there?
They're getting paid now, right?
So, which I don't really have a problem with these kids getting more than scholarships.
Although, you know, back in the good old days, Doug, it used to be that a college education was worth more than, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars because you were going to go off and make a life for yourself.
But I can't really say I blame the students for jumping at the money.
But this is, it's bad.
And look, I covered college sports from the very beginning.
I know this world.
And you know it too.
You're right.
It was always a wink and a nudge.
The presidents of universities would say, these are student athletes first.
And we cannot have a playoff in football because that would take them away from their academics.
Really?
Yeah.
What do you call the NCAA basketball tournament?
What do you call that?
But you say we can't have that in football because we're taking them away from their academics?
Well, now look where we are.
Look where we are.
And we have all these beloved old conferences with the great rivalries and the wonderful traditions.
Poof.
Yep.
Gone.
And these massive conferences, which are basically like, you know, you've got the AFC and the NFC now.
I think that's what it's going to come down to.
I really do think it's going to come down to like an AFC with four divisions and an NFC. But these will be, you know, the American College Football Conference and the National College Football Conference.
And they'll each have their geographical divisions.
And then we'll get to a Super Bowl, a college Super Bowl, which will be called the National Championship, I guess.
But it is.
It's this...
Is about money.
It always has been.
It always will be.
And you know what else is interesting?
I did some research on this.
You hear that colleges and universities, they put so much into their football teams because those are the moneymakers.
Do you know how much...
I'm going to use easy numbers here, Doug.
If you make $5 million from your college football team, you're probably going to invest 5.5 back into your college football team.
So it's not going to academics and professors.
It's paying your coach $10 million a year.
It's keeping the facilities up to University of Oregon Nike standards.
It's all of those things now because now we're competing.
And also now we've got this other influx of cash.
Boosters can say, I've got a car dealership.
Kid, you're going to be the face of my car dealership.
You're going to get $500,000 for playing at Alabama, and this is great.
So now all of those things that were sort of sorted out, we're in the Wild West again in college sports, and I don't know what it's going to take to sort it out.
Well, when you see Spencer Rattler, who's a good kid, and I'm like you, I don't mind him getting, but when you see Spencer Rattler, two days before camp starts in South Carolina, and he goes and picks up a Mercedes G-Wagon, that's his Instagram.
It's like...
Okay, great.
But what's your life?
You know, what are you doing?
You know, and my hope is they'll invest it.
My hope is, because some of them have never gotten paid anyway, because they're not going to the NFL. But I was sitting on a plane, Michelle, with a D1, major conference, major player.
If I named it, you'd know the school immediately.
And we were talking, coming back on a flight one night.
And this was after you had USC, UCLA joining the conference.
We were just talking conferences in general.
And it was not a part.
And I asked, I said, and now it's actually come up.
And the reason I thought about this the other day was you're now having student athletes in Oregon and some of the South, you know, these other schools now saying, look, I play baseball.
I play tennis.
This travel schedule is going to be horrendous, you know, for my mom and dad seeing me.
Or schooling and everything else, because these are athletes who won't go pro.
They're there to get an education and go on.
But this person told me, they said, look, there's only, on most college campuses, there's only two, if they're big especially, there's only one, maybe two programs in the athletic department that make money, period.
They don't.
The rest of them just don't make money.
Correct.
And so if they don't have the football analogy in some of these schools, a lot of the others just don't, you know, they do it because they have to, so to speak, and that's about it.
And so we're not, and the brutal statement came was, not meaning to, but basically saying, so we don't really care.
You know, and so my question would be, is shouldn't they have done this for football?
But there's probably not a way to do it.
Say, look, we'll realign the football, but still keep a Pac-12 for all of the volleyball, golf, and tennis, and everything else.
Well, Doug, I think that that may still be an option.
There's going to be a shakeout here.
This can't be exactly what it is right now without a lot of problems.
So I think there will be a shakeout, and I think that what they may decide is college football, Division I college football, will have its own structure.
But, you know, let's keep the conferences for the other sports.
Like you said, it does not make sense for the Stanford tennis team to travel to Tuscaloosa to play matches.
It's just silly.
And talk about taking kids away from their academics.
You know, you and I know what it's like to travel.
This is not easy.
Oh, yeah.
So, you know, I think that there will be some sort of shakeout here, as we like to call it, and every industry goes through one.
You know, things build, build, build, build, build, and then it's just unsustainable, so you've got to kind of shake it out, and the best stuff stays put, and other things find their way.
I think that that has to happen in college sports, because I think you're absolutely right about that, and I think everyone knows it.
And I think it's just, you know...
I like country music.
I like rock and roll.
I like all kinds of music.
I like purity.
And this has lost all its purity.
So if we're going to acknowledge that that's where we are, then yeah, let's elevate the college football and let's separate the rest out.
But I don't know.
That's above my pay grade.
I'm not an athletic director or a president.
But keep in mind, all of them care about it.
Is making money.
Exactly.
Don't fool yourselves.
Don't fool yourselves.
Yeah.
Oh, it's about that.
And you see it in the stadiums.
It's sort of funny.
On one of my Friday's finest episodes, James, my producer and I, which we do, we go over all kinds of just fun facts and everything.
We talked about Tony Bennett passing away the other day.
And MTV, Younger Kids, they did a poll 15 years ago, whatever it was, about most admired...
Singers and entertainers.
And Tony Bennett was up on the top of the list.
And they really were baffled by this.
And they went to these young people, you know, teenagers, early 20s, and they said, why do you like Tony Bennett?
And they said, well, one, he was singing with Madonna and Lady Gaga and all these others.
He said, but he doesn't change to be like us.
He still wears his tux.
He still sings.
He is who he is.
I thought to myself, for a generation that is so hooked on what's the next hottest thing, what they really looked for was stability.
They looked at somebody who was happy in their own skin.
And I think that's why country music continues to just surge.
I really do.
It's not for everybody.
I get that.
But I have become more...
I think it's found its way to a little bit of pop crossover.
And I think that it's the lyrics.
Yeah.
A lot of it is the music, but it's the lyrics that take you to a simple place, a simple concept, and they're not degrading women all the time.
I tell you, you and your husband and family, we need to get Lisa and myself.
We'll meet you in Nashville.
I do a lot of work with songwriters in Nashville, the ones who actually craft a group.
We'll do a joint podcast there.
There's a great line.
Lee Thomas Miller wrote a song with Chris Stapleton About whiskey and you is what it's called.
And it's a great song.
And one of the lines in it says, I drink because I'm lonesome and I'm lonesome because I drink.
I mean, really?
I mean, oh my God.
You know, does it get any better, you know, than that kind of stuff?
Hey, real quickly before you go.
Yeah.
Before you go, gotta have it.
We'll look at...
Pro football, is it Mahomes and Chiefs to lose this year, or do you see something else?
Is this going to be Hertz's year?
It could very well be Hertz's year.
I'll tell you this right now.
And the Georgia defense in Philadelphia.
Listen, I'm going to say this to you.
You think you want to predict now?
You don't know a damn thing.
I could...
You don't.
And I learned this in decades of covering the NFL. You go into a season and you think you know, and what you find out at the end of the season is you didn't know a damn thing.
So, you know, you kind of, some things evolve and you see something developing.
I have seen comebacks.
I have seen letdowns.
I have seen injuries completely change a season.
So it's fun to predict.
It's really fun.
And that's one of the things I love about sports.
It's fun to predict and talk about.
You don't know a damn thing.
As much as you think you know, you don't know.
And Michelle, you have just described the entire Washington Press Corps.
That you did it in one simple verse.
Oh, what's going to happen?
Oh, they're going to shut down.
No, they're not going to shut down.
We're going to do this.
We're going to do that.
Give me a freaking break.
It's no different.
It's no different.
This is why you listen to our podcast.
It's why you listen to Michelle Tafoya.
Michelle is amazing.
I've just had a blessing to get to know her and her podcast.
And great to have you on, Michelle, as always.
Got to have you back on mine.
We're going to schedule that.
Look forward to it.
Look forward to it.
Well, you have a great day.
Folks, that's the Doug Collins podcast for now.
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