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Aug. 31, 2024 - Doug Collins Podcast
48:31
A Minnesota Perspective on Tim Walz
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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.
Hey everybody, welcome back.
It's Friday's Finest and today we have an absolutely outstanding special.
Yes, Michelle Tafoya is here.
She's going to be with us on Friday's Finest.
We're going to talk politics for a while.
Then we'll bring in James and we'll have Friday's Finest because guess what?
It is week one, not week zero.
Yes, Georgia Tech plays on week zero and they did, you know, beat the I'm just determined that Tallahassee is now just an excuse factory.
But they beat Georgia Tech last week, took out Florida State in Dublin.
The last two times that Florida State has played a school from Georgia, the score has been like 83 to 20 or something.
It's just unreal.
As they go.
And this coming from a team that actually said to the ACC, we're suing to leave you because we're better than you.
I think Georgia Tech delivered a message there.
But it's week one.
Georgia Clemson this weekend.
Games all over the place getting started.
So there's some good stuff.
We'll get to some of that later, just from a fun perspective.
Of where, you know, folks are in their head space.
And Michelle brings great insight into just coaches and not just players, but where they're at in these early games.
But also we've got politics.
I mean, Vice President of Canada Waltz is somebody that we've got to talk about more because he is seemingly more and more being leaned on by the Harris team.
Because Vice President Harris can't seem to speak in coherent sentences outside of a teleprompter.
A lot going on, but this is week.
This is the time we live for.
Two more weeks.
We got hunting season.
Can it get any better?
No, it can't.
Friday's Finest coming up right after the break.
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All right, we're back.
And we're here please to have the great Michelle Tafoya with us.
Michelle, thanks for being a part today.
I'm sorry I'm not showing my face.
I do that out of respect to you and your audience because I had shoulder replacement surgery a few days ago and I am no, I am not fit to be seen.
Let's put it that way.
Michelle, if you look at my social media, they would say I probably wouldn't be fit to be seen either.
I disagree, Douglas.
Today, so we're all good.
Hey, Michelle, it's been a few months.
We talked last time and lots have changed and I'm glad to get you on.
Let's hit some political because this is really an interesting time right now.
First off, did it surprise you?
Like it did, I think, I'm gonna say a lot of us, that Tim Walls made the cut to be the vice presidential running mate for Harris.
I was expecting a bigger name, a more nationally recognized name, but now I think the reason they didn't go with Josh Shapiro, I mean, I think we know the reasons they didn't go with Josh Shapiro.
I think Mark Kelly from Arizona may have been a little too bland, but here comes this cheerleader in Tim Walls and people know so little about him that they think we can just paint him to look like however we want him to look.
But listen to Minnesotans.
Listen to those of us who have lived under his reign, if you will.
And I've been here in Minnesota, Doug, as you well know, for 30 years.
I've seen Republican governors.
I've seen Jesse the Body Ventura as an independent governor.
I've known governors personally.
And then there's this guy.
And again, This is one of those cases where some people just use this aw shucks attitude and veneer to let people know he's harmless, he wouldn't hurt a fly, he's only got your best interests at heart, but then you see what they do?
And he actually lost votes between his first election and second one.
Unfortunately, the Republican side, we did not have a good candidate, so we couldn't get the walls out of there.
But this guy, you need to know more about what this guy is behind that, oh, gee, look at me, I'm just a coach who didn't go to Yale.
Yeah, they all shook.
Okay, I was in New York, we were doing some tape filming, and I know you've been talking about it as well, but the night of the convention, when he gets up there and hits J.D. Vance for not being from Yale, and the previous three or four speakers had all graduated from Yale.
I mean, and the media said nothing about it.
I mean, it's like they really, they get a pass on everything.
Everything.
That moment stood out to me.
It shocked me.
It was like, what is he doing?
First of all, why would you ever Criticize someone for accomplishing the American dream, for coming out of the life that J.D. Vance had when he was a kid, which was pretty horrific, to working his way out and going to Yale.
What the hell is wrong with that?
And as you said, so many of those people on stage had gone to Yale.
It was embarrassing.
And no, of course, they didn't call him out on it because their whole focus, the media's entire Agenda was JOY. Let's get out of this with joy, joy, joy, and not shine a light on anything that might counter that message.
I thought his comment about that was actually reverse snobbery, if you will.
Oh, he went to Yale.
What in the hell?
We're now chipping away at meritocracy and the American dream.
Yep.
Well, and I say this, Michelle, not to be Funny, but it smacked at me, because coming from the South, coming from North Georgia, coming from the South, I've dealt with this my entire public life outside of Georgia, okay?
I remember one of my first jobs I used to call.
I worked in sales and we had sales all over the country.
And I would call places and say, oh, you talk funny or can you say something for me?
And it was as if we like you, but you're a little slower than we are.
And what got me about that comment, I mean, look on the stage, you had the Yale Harvard Glee Club, basically.
Exactly.
I mean, that was there.
But another thing on it from a perspective that it just Shock you that you had Oprah Winfrey and also basically Michelle Obama the night before basically say you can't trust rich people and here are two of the more wealthy people in this country.
This was kind of that same hypocrisy and it is amazing to me How these two women could get up there in their designer suits.
We've all had them priced, we know.
Multiple thousands of dollars spent on wardrobe for that night by these two women.
We know about their wealth.
We know about Oprah's place on Maui.
We know about all their homes.
We know about all their Netflix deals, their books.
And yet they're going to tell us, you know, what Michelle Obama said, my parents said, be mindful of people who take more than their fair share.
Good God.
And again, does the mainstream media hold them to account or shine a light on this?
No.
No.
In fact, it was Jon Stewart actually who did the best job of shining a light.
I don't know if people have been able to see that clip.
You might want to look it up because he absolutely railroaded them for these kinds of Just ridiculous, hypocritical statements.
Yeah, Stewart has done some of that.
I got to know him a little bit in Congress when he was doing the 9-11 stuff, and he and I were on the same side because it was just crazy what we were doing and what was going on with that fund.
But he's been calling out a little bit, but Bill Maher has been the one really Basically, looking back and saying, you know, look, this, you know, and again, from their own side, so to speak, saying, look, this is hypocritical.
This is why people don't like you.
Right.
Now, Bill Maher will say that, but he will also say, just hold your nose and vote for Kamala.
I mean, he is hell-bent.
If you saw him on with Quentin Tarantino from my old stomping grounds in Manhattan Beach, California, Quentin Tarantino was on his podcast the other day, and all they could talk about was, I don't give a damn about what Kamala says.
I'm going to vote for her, so just keep her mouth shut as long as you can.
I mean, there are people, and I know many of them personally, many of them, It is so easy for them to, yes, criticize on the one hand, as Marr does, the hypocrisy, but say, but even with all of that, I'm still gonna vote for Kamala.
I mean, it's because they They are petrified of Donald Trump.
And there you go.
That's the only reason I can think of.
I can too.
And look, you know, unfortunately, Michelle, and I say this with love for both sides, we've got to fight to take our beliefs and hopefully mold our candidate, you know, help We formulate candidates who feel very similar to what we do.
And it sort of happens on both sides.
We just sort of get in this DNR mentality.
And you know who gets left out in that?
It's the country.
Right.
Because we don't talk about some issues that should be talked about.
But let's get back to Walls for a second.
Like you said, you've been there 30 years.
You've seen this in and out.
We've got a lot of mutual friends up in your part of the world, but it amazes me that they're not digging into his record.
It gets the sort of what I call drive-by treatment.
And so help the audience today understand What went on during the Floyd riots, what went on during the pandemic, his gender issue, transgender issue.
Help us understand who the Tim Walsh is that I knew in Congress, by the way.
He was in the gym.
And also, here's a funny, I never knew he wasn't a command sergeant major.
That's what he used in the gym every day.
I mean, whenever something came up, well, I'm an old command sergeant major.
And so I didn't realize it until after the fact on this other stuff.
You know, so if people don't know, he's misrepresented his rank in the National Guard.
I thank him for his service.
But if you are proud of your service and you did well in your service, don't embellish it.
That's called stolen valor.
And that was the first thing that people started calling out about Tim Walz.
But I think there's so much more And lots of people are trying to expose this.
It's just that most of the mainstream media won't play along.
So this is why I think independent citizenship journalism is just going to continue to gain momentum and gain attention.
Tim Walz, you say that name to me, and here is what I think about.
I think about my family sitting at home locked in under curfew during the George Floyd riots because no one would come keep the streets safe.
And I don't even live that close to where the fires were burning, but they had this huge curfew.
As long as they could control us, they felt like they were safe.
It was astonishing to me that we were sitting here watching these fires burning, watching these criminals loot and just break into these stores and steal and The governor didn't say a word.
So there was this huge void.
And one of our local news anchors, Julie Nelson, who's on the NBC affiliate, at one point said, and I think it just kind of came out of her mouth.
She didn't even plan on it.
She said, where's the governor?
Because we had not heard from the governor.
And I believe now in retrospect, well, I even thought it then, he was too afraid.
To say this should be under control.
He was afraid of being called a racist.
He was afraid of being called a white supremacist.
He was afraid of being called anything that quote-unquote law and order would have painted him as.
And in that environment, if you remember, and most people do, how heated The dialogue was in this country at that time.
It was hot, man.
So if you said, look, we've got to keep these riots at bay.
We've got to arrest people who deserve to be arrested.
You were called names.
You were somehow on the side of white supremacy.
And I think Tim Walz just didn't want to do that.
And so what did he do?
He let the city burn.
One quick story.
I remember sitting at home, a neighbor of mine came across the street knocking on my door.
Do you have a fire extinguisher?
And I said, oh, I don't.
She said, my friend's business is on fire downtown, or actually uptown is what we call it in this area.
And she needs as many fire extinguishers as she can get.
And I'm like, are you kidding me?
This is how she has to get help?
Is by calling her neighbors in the suburbs to go send fire hydrants?
Or fire extinguishers, rather.
It was extraordinary.
But it was not mostly peaceful protest, folks.
And we were at the center of it.
And that was the first moment that it was like a slap on my face.
This governor doesn't care and he's not paying attention.
Yep.
And you see it, you know, just manifest.
One of the things I will say this, he voted in Congress very clearly with Pelosi in the left.
I mean, that was, it was, you know, in his eyes, but he didn't come across as a, as part of the squad.
He never, I mean, like I said, I knew him in Congress.
He was always sort of the, like I said, the get along, just sort of shuck and jive kind of guy, you know, nothing outstanding by any means.
But why, The left-hand turn.
Why all of a sudden when he became governor, and I guess maybe after the Floyd riots, maybe it's when it happened, this hard left turn toward- Oh, I'm not sure it wasn't there before.
I'm thinking it was there and it was just waiting in, laying in wait, if you will.
Let's remember, he may not be part of the squad, but this guy is cheering on the squad every step of the way.
If you haven't seen the video, you might want to look this one up where Tim Wall says, you know, when I'm having a bad day or when I'm on that fifth mile of my five mile jog and I'm exhausted, to cheer me up, to give me some pep, I think, Ilhan Omar is in Congress and that's just a mood booster.
What?
She is the most anti-American member of Congress and he celebrates her.
So you could say he's not part of the squad because he doesn't look like them and because he's male and whatever you want to say.
He loves that squad.
He is a guy who thinks Chinese communism is the way to go because they share everything.
No one's treated different, except if you're a Muslim Uyghur, then you might wind up dead, but he doesn't pay attention to them.
He is a full-on lefty, and he is a wolf in sheep's clothing, and he's managed to keep that sheep's clothing on, but I think it's slowly being pulled back.
Um, Michelle, you've looked at it in Minnesota, you know, and I'll just say this.
I don't think Minnesota was in play before the pick or even after the pick.
I think Minnesota would have been, you know, it may have been closer, but I don't think Trulu was in play.
And if you disagree with that, I'd love to hear.
But, you know, it didn't bring anything to the table.
What's concerned me, and this goes back not only to your sports journalism, but your journalism days and everything else.
We've had five weeks of nothing but media coverage of Harris remaking the same person that they thought shouldn't be on the ticket in May when they were promoting Newsom and Whitmer and everybody else, and now basically have turned over.
And in all fairness, the polls have reflected that.
I've got friends who are pollsters who, you know, some that you see on news, most of the real polls are the ones that never get reported, okay?
And because they're doing it for clients, they're doing it for reasons and talking to people across the country who are doing the real polls, this race has tightened up.
And it's almost as if this Trump derangement syndrome is they found their mark.
So now that they could give $500 million in less than a month was there because these liberals had lost faith in Joe Biden.
And it just shows it.
Are you hopeful?
That maybe now, and maybe the debate will do it, probably won't.
I think she's looking for a stunt in the debate to call Trump out and to try and say, I won.
But I mean, where are we at with the time with the media working overtime to actually get this message out?
Because voting starts, literally, there'll be presidential votes cast less than two weeks from you and me talking right now.
I know.
And as you and I are sitting here talking, Kamala and Tim Walz are getting ready for their two-on-one interview with Dana Bash of CNN tonight.
So the first interview that she will give as a presidential candidate will not be alone.
This is the person who is supposed to be the leader of the free world.
And she cannot give an interview by herself.
This is frightening.
And especially if you know Tim Walz and how unserious he is and how he simply relies on that veneer of, oh, ain't I a nice old football coach?
Listen, I know playbooks.
I know this and that.
You guys, I don't know how to tell you any other way except that A, he's a phony.
B, he's a liar.
And C, he's a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Period.
The end.
The fact that she's taken him with her, I think says a lot of things that, you know, if she starts to stumble, he can be there for her.
Also that it gives her less time to open her mouth.
If you take a 20 minute interview with one person, you get 20 minutes.
If you take an interview with 20 minute interview with two people, you get 10 minutes each on average.
So now we get less of her and we will know less of her and that that is acceptable to anyone.
Is laughable to me.
So while you asked me if I'm hopeful, hope ain't a strategy, right?
So that is why I know some people think I've just been coming out on X and just posting my brains out.
Yeah, I have.
Because I want people to know what I know about Tim Walz and that you don't want him anywhere near this White House, his ties to China, his stolen valor, his lying about his DUI. And you could say, oh, these are little...
Or that's in the past, but what you won't let go in the past is anything about the opposition, anything about Trump.
It is so hypocritical, it's ridiculous.
So the hypocrisy aside, and we could say, oh, what he did wrong was so much bigger and more important than what this person did wrong.
My God.
Values, people.
Values and what you want representing you, not only here at home, but in the foreign policy stage.
Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky, everyone.
Whom do you want sitting across from that person?
I don't want it to be Kamala Harris.
While hope is not a strategy, I do I hope and pray that we use every single moment that we have until voting begins to expose the hypocrisy of these two.
Yeah, I don't disagree with you at all, Michelle.
And I think one of the things I've been really preaching and I've been on the stump, I've been out traveling and speaking in a lot of places, and I will be all the month of September and into October, is I'm concerned.
And I told a group this weekend, there was about 800, 900 people at a little fish fry down here in Georgia.
It's been going on for years.
And I told them, I said, I don't want to see you happy.
Right now.
I thought we'd be happy the day after election.
I want you hungry.
I want you out there believing we're behind.
I want you out there getting every vote you can.
And I want you to quit worrying about what the Democrats are doing and worry more about what you're doing or not doing.
And I think that's the concern I have is that we've got, we still have people who are out there believing, oh, this is easy because, you know, Harris is not the brightest in the world and Waltz is worse.
Everybody will just vote for Trump.
No, they don't.
There are people out there who are not going to vote for Donald Trump.
That is absolutely correct.
And, you know, given that you're in Georgia and you know the state of play so well down there, I have a question for you, and that is about your governor, Kemp, and the rapprochement, if you will, the sort of kiss and make up between him and And the Trump campaign and how valuable that is in the Peach State.
It helps solve what I'll call the sensitive voters who are sort of repelled more by Trump's brashness and Twitter, mean tweets, whatever you want to call it.
I think it helps there.
But it's also nothing new.
The press have continued to give legs to this and make the Kemp feud relevant.
Call it a feud, however you want to call it.
Make it relevant by bringing it up.
And when the president brought it up three weeks ago, four weeks ago, now on that Saturday, it just made it You know, made it relevant again.
Yeah.
And I'm glad to see that they've got it behind.
I'm glad to see he's, you know, as we tape, he's actually doing a fundraiser in Atlanta.
But he's always said he was going to vote for the ticket.
He was going to be there.
Now he's actually using Trump's name.
And look, it does help if he would spend his money on get out the vote.
That would be the key.
Brian Kemp does not have necessarily this massive uprising of volunteers.
What he does have, and especially in his second campaign, was a large trough of money to do what you need to do, and that is pay volunteers, not paid volunteers, but paid workers, do the grassroots, do those things from very much of a money perspective.
And if that gets kicked in, that helps augment what's already being done down here.
But look, Georgia's gonna be close, and if Georgians sit at home, Because they think, oh, Donald Trump's going to win this going away.
Then we're going to wake up in the week before the election and it be down and not a way to catch up.
That's why I'm saying we've got to keep working down here.
And everywhere.
I don't hang up the phone with friends and family without saying, okay, do you have a voting plan?
Do you know when you're going to vote?
Do you know where you're going to vote?
It's amazing.
We have kind of two Americas going right now, Doug, and a very slim group of independents who are winnable.
But I've had conversations with friends who can't believe, can't believe, That I could ever back the Republican Party.
And I, in turn, can't believe that they would vote for this ticket that's representing the Democrat Party.
And I said to one of them, it's very sad.
We have two Americas right now.
And the person said back to me, we have two Americas because of Trump.
You know, it's all about Trump.
And I said, well, hang on just a minute here.
And, you know, I'm trying to remain civil and I'm trying to back things up with actual argument.
And I said, One person can't be responsible for everybody else's reactions to that one person.
And we had the Biden-Harris administration come in telling us they were going to unify this country.
And they've had three and a half years to do it, and they've flat out failed because they continue To call people names who are unpersuaded by them.
So there's been no effort to unify.
It takes two to tango.
And for those who say to me, you know, oh my gosh, how can you possibly vote for a man who was responsible for January 6th?
That's always going to be that crutch that gets used January 6th, whereas I could point out a bunch of, you know, well, you guys had the Russian collusion hoax and you guys had this and that, but I'm sick of playing that game.
So what I will say is this.
I have had a child who needed life-saving surgery when she was four months old.
She was on the table.
If you had presented me with two surgeons, one who was an asshole, excuse my language, but had a phenomenal record of saving the lives of children in this condition, and the other who was super nice, had great bedside manner, but kind of had a 50-50 record, I'm going with the a-hole to save my daughter's life.
Yep, I agree.
I agree completely.
And folks, let me just say this, and we're getting ready to transition here, but I mean, this is why I wanted Michelle on it.
I wanted to pull the curtain back on walls, talk about this in real terms.
We got about 60-something days left here, but we got voting starting within two weeks.
I mean, North Carolina starts voting.
You got Pennsylvania and some of the others right behind it, not too far behind.
In Georgia, the first week of October.
So we don't have 60-something days, folks.
Get that out of your head.
It's today.
You know, today is the day to start.
Labor Day is Monday.
That's the traditional start of politics.
But remember, this campaign has been going on almost, and this is an amazing stat, this campaign has been going on almost two years.
And I mean, and I know you burn out.
I know people are tired of it.
And I know if you're in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, you know, Arizona, North Carolina, all these others, you're getting bombarded, bombarded, bombarded with TV ads.
You know, look, you know, I get it.
But our country's too important not to take this seriously.
And if you've got to get out, no matter how you vote, get out there and vote.
And as I say to all my speeches, if it's legal, do it.
If it's legal, do it.
Quit griping about the other side.
If it's legal in your state, do it.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
And if you think you're burnt out now, imagine what this country would be like if we extended the contract of this current administration and let them continue to run our economy in the ground, to give away student loan money, to let people in by the millions across our southern border.
Take a look.
If you haven't today, Google this term, Aurora, Colorado, and look at what's happening in that small suburb of Colorado with illegal immigrants and gang members, and ask yourself how How ready are you for all of that?
This is a country built on certain values and certain principles, and they are being obliterated in a blender right now by this administration.
I can't even bear to think what would happen if we gave them four more years.
Yeah, I agree with you completely.
And the scary part of this is, remember, as the top of the ticket goes, many times the down ballot goes.
And if we let them keep control of the Senate for some reason, and also have a chance at winning the House, that's just even worse.
And we'll see it as it goes.
Yeah, look at what Tim Walz has done when he's had everything in the Democrat corner.
He's passed some of the most outrageous, extreme, And I'm pro-choice, folks.
You're talking to a pro-choice woman here.
I'm not misstating that.
But he has passed some of the most extreme abortion and gender-affirming care measures in the country.
It's gross.
Yep, it is.
And it's what you see.
All right, Michelle, let's move off for Friday here.
We're going to move off for the...
The political, which we'll continue on.
James is with us.
James likes to chime in on our Friday's Finest.
And he is also part of, for those of you out there, we're letting you know that there is a, for all the fantasy football leagues, there is a fantasy league out there.
We'll keep you updated to this.
All three of us and many more are going to be involved in.
And we'll hope for today, unfortunately, with the passing of a coach up at New York Giants, Chan Gailey was going to be with us.
By the way, Chan said to tell you, Michelle, that he was really upset about missing this, but we're going to get you both.
Oh, I'm glad he's there representing for Coach D, the offensive line coach up with the Baltimore Ravens.
Way too soon for him to leave us, and he was a beloved coach.
Yeah, it is.
So, you know, that's where he's at today.
I have to ask this question because we talk politics and we talk football and we talk nuts and bolts, but what was it like?
I mean, because you were able to report and be with, you know, teams as they go through what is this sort of transition time now out of what is really an interesting, you know, preseason now for pros, college, everything else.
What was it like getting ready to cover a season as it starts?
You can feel a different energy.
It's very, very different.
There's kind of some nerves because things are unknown.
Teams that are trying to solidify their rosters, you see a lot of energy out of those practice fields.
Not that you don't anyway, but it's a different...
I'll borrow a phrase from the Dems.
It's a different vibe.
It's a different feel.
There's this This sense of possibility, but also this sense of, am I going to make the cut?
Am I going to make the roster?
And then once they've got those 53-man rosters set, then it becomes really, really interesting.
You're looking at the depth chart, who's going to back up whom?
And the schedule.
You look at that schedule and you pick out which games you think are winnable just on paper and which ones really excite you.
So the beginning of the season is always a lot of fun.
And of course, on Sunday Night Football, we always have that Thursday night opener, which they'll have again this year, which is like a mini Super Bowl.
It's a ton of fun.
Michelle, do you miss getting ready for it for Sunday nights?
I'll tell you, the only part I miss getting ready for is buying the clothes.
And I know that sounds superficial, but I was able to buy some killer jackets and stuff, and I get the emails now from all the clothing companies, and I go, aw, that would have been so fun.
But let me tell you, it's a grind, a real grind.
And it never got easier because we just kept pushing ourselves harder.
So I don't miss that.
The first couple of seasons, I felt like, what do I do with myself?
But now I'm getting used to it and I like it.
Yeah, I can say that.
Speaking of that, as we talk about this, you talked about the, you know, getting it and, you know, who's going to make it, who's not going to make it.
Have we changed in the preseason mindset now?
There's a lot of teams just not playing their quote starters at all.
Right, right.
And you have the holdouts on the contracts, and you see specialty players, wide receivers, and running backs in particular, and even defensive backs, who signed in the last week or so, and then it's become almost a pattern that by the third or fourth week, there's a hamstring tweak, there's a pull, because they didn't have They didn't have that conditioning up until they weren't in football shape.
Either that, or you could also blame it on maybe they stay fresher because they didn't have that wear and tear.
It's hard to find the causation of all of those things.
And it's easy to suggest that, well, they weren't up to speed, they didn't have enough conditioning, and so the early injuries are coming.
I'm not convinced that we know that that's exactly the reason why, but I think where we've seen one of the biggest changes is some of these marquee players will just sit out, not go to camp, because they know they don't have to.
Someone's going to want me, someone's going to pick me up, and I can skip all of training camp, the preseason, and maybe I can even skip the first three or four games and then come in and play and save the team.
I think we've seen, it's not like it's expanding rapidly, but we've seen more of that happening in the NFL. Jonathan Taylor last year.
Exactly.
Stuff like that.
And if you can do it, why wouldn't you?
Like you said, Doug, if it's legal, do it.
What was the offensive lineman or defensive lineman for Kansas City last year?
Chris Jones.
Chris Jones.
He's in the stands.
Yeah, I know.
I know.
That was funny.
That went his way, too, because that game ended pretty crazy because Darius Toney has no hands, and it ended perfectly for Chris Jones because he got to be like, no, you've got to pay me now.
That's what you're going to hopefully want to do.
Jamar Chase is going to do the same thing.
I'm just glad the Vikings played Justin Jefferson.
I'm just glad they paid him already so we didn't have to deal with this.
Michelle, and again, I'm sort of old school and I think, you know, you're going back and I've heard you mention Bud Grant.
I've heard you mention the older coaches.
Can you imagine some of the older coaches being told this is what preseason looks like now?
Why do you think Nick Saban stepped away?
The NIL stuff is absolutely brutal.
The head coach of the Minnesota Gophers, PJ Fleck, lives a couple houses away from us.
So I often see him and his wife walking their dog and we'll chat.
And I said to him, how is this NIL treating you?
And he just shook his head and he said, I barely get to coach now.
So, you know, I don't think it's a lot of fun.
And you're seeing, it's kind of like when free agency really hit the NFL and you had to have separate people manage your salary cap and manage the free agents.
I think we're looking at that in college football as well.
So it's...
Look, I think real coaches, coaches that love to coach players and see them learn and grow, and you can say, oh, that's so Pollyanna, but trust me, those coaches might lean toward being assistants from now on, although there's a lot of money and a lot of glam that comes along with being the head coach, but there's a lot of headaches now, too.
Do you think, and again, I think you may have seen my cup for those on the line.
You can see I got one of my Georgia cups here.
Are you a fan of Georgia, Doug?
Nobody had any idea on this.
I didn't know that.
I honestly didn't know.
You know that.
You know that.
I know James is picking himself up right now.
But do you see coaches like Kirby Smart, who have that mix of the Saban old school, but have sort of grasped the new school?
Lane Kiffin, if I dare mention Lane Kiffin, is a similar kind of setup.
You see these coaches that are coming along now, and I agree with you.
And Saban all but said, he got out after, what was it, right after the playoff game last year?
Yeah.
And some of his players were talking about money, and it was like, no, we're not going to do this.
And him and Ms. Terry said, I don't have to do this.
Is that still the right mix?
Are we still seeing, maybe from your perspective, journalists, we're seeing there's still going to be another evolution of that head coach at Fleck and others you're talking about?
I think we haven't even hit the most troublesome of waters yet when it comes to this NIL and all the stuff that goes along with it.
Maybe in the Wall Street Journal you saw this week, but I had heard about this earlier, the Oklahoma State football team have these barcodes, QR codes on their helmets.
And if you see a play that you like and you go, damn, that kid's good, you pause your DVR or whatever, you go take a picture of that QR code, you can just give the kid 20, 50, a thousand bucks, whatever you want to do.
It's nuts.
And as my husband, the financial planner, likes to say, capitalism is great until it eats its own and gets in its own way and becomes unmanageable.
And we're starting to see a little bit of that.
You know, I'm sad to see it on the college football level.
I really am.
Yeah, it's going to be interesting.
They just put a poor system in place.
They didn't prepare for it.
They just said, okay, kids can get paid now.
Now, I think they should get paid personally.
I do.
I don't think many people disagree with you on that.
I don't, but go ahead, please.
Well, no, I'm just saying it's insane that they were like, okay, you guys can get paid now and had nothing in place to take care of this.
Nothing.
You're 18. You're making poor decisions.
If we all took our 18-year-old selves, we know we made poor decisions.
If somebody handed me that much money and said, I can do what I want, I would just take it.
I wouldn't think about it.
You don't make smart financial decisions.
And a lot of these kids grew up maybe like I did where it wasn't.
Our parents weren't super rich or had all this stuff.
So you take whatever you can.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But you have nothing in place to help these kids?
Like, you know, when the NBA, they have, like, when you get into the league, they teach you how to speak and they teach you how to handle your money now.
That doesn't exist in college football at all.
Well, and by the way, those rookie seminars in the NFL and NBA, I'm not sure how well they actually work in practice.
You can say all you want to a 21-year-old He's a multi-millionaire, but he's going to do what he wants.
But yeah, again, I could go back to we don't have financial literacy in schools anymore.
Go ahead.
Michelle, I sent this out last night, Michelle.
You're talking about NIL. There's a rookie quarterback at Dylan Riola at Nebraska.
His NIL deal is $998K. I mean, come on.
He's a rookie.
I mean, he's a freshman.
He was at Buford High School down here, just about 30 miles south of me.
Did not play all that well last year, and now he's up there.
And that's within the top 15. Dylan Gabriel out at Oregon, who's been at several schools, they're 1.2.
Jackson Dart, 1.3.
Evan Stewart, a wide out, 1.3.
And it goes up Carson Beck, 1.4 if possible.
But it goes all the way up to Shadur Sanders, who's at 4.5 million.
And he just signed with Nike again.
And he just signed with Nike.
Well, that just shows you how much money there is.
There is a lot of money for it.
I'm sorry.
Then people go, oh, we should be giving money to this and to that.
Well, instead of yelling at quote-unquote rich people, why don't you yell at people who pay college football players through some amounts of money?
But they won't.
Look, I am as capitalist as they come, but when you do it without any kind of forward thinking, forward vision, any kind of Safety nets.
These kids need to understand what they're getting into and how to save.
I think one of the nice things I'm seeing about my own kids right now is, from the very beginning, they'd be five years old, they'd get five dollars in the mail for their birthdays, and we'd say, okay, you can spend one of that, you have to save two of it, and you have to give away two.
We've done that for their whole lives.
So now, Cut to son graduates high school, gets this boatload of money sent to him, you know, but he's afraid to spend any of it.
And I'm happy about that because he knows it's finite and he knows that there are going to be other needs that come along.
Yeah, it is.
A couple of quick questions to sort of finish out here.
One, and this one just came to me as we were talking about this.
Does this show absolutely the need to get the quote NCAA out of college football?
Because they completely just wet the bed on this one.
They did.
I'm just not sure who then What do you put in place to make sure that there is, will there ever be a level playing field again?
And if not, are we okay with that?
Are we okay with that?
And if we're okay with that, then let the chips fall where they may.
But if this is going to ruin College football, which many people could see a path toward ruination.
We might want to think.
I wouldn't say necessarily the NCAA is the right answer because they've had years to figure this out and they just haven't.
But I'm not sure what it is.
Yeah.
Two quick questions here.
It follows up on that.
I think one is that you're going to have the four main conferences, and I think it'll narrow down possibly to really three, but you have four.
Big 12, Big 10, SEC, ACC. ACC, depending on what they do.
And you've got, of course, SEC. But yeah, it's gotten out of hand now.
I've listened to Rick Neuhausel talk about this a lot, and even now he's saying, look, there's just no reason.
They can do every other sport, but this one is just, I mean, because it's become so, it's a conglomerate.
Right.
Yeah, it is.
No, is it he who has talked about, let's just lift college football up on its own A different plane here.
Not that they're better or worse, just on a different plane.
And let's not necessarily have the same conferences there as you have in tennis and swimming and lacrosse.
Let the old conferences stay in place because flying kids from USC all across the country to play a field hockey game seems really stupid to me and really counterproductive.
So it seems to me like Maybe basketball, maybe football are the two that you say.
We've got exceptions here, but the rest, let them play in their conferences.
Yeah.
As a California girl, as a USC, you just hit on this, you know, coming out from your part of the world.
What do you think, and this one is one for me that I have such mixed emotions about, I have feelings about, but the USC, UCLA, now in the Big Ten, but Lincoln-Riley.
I mean, I'm gonna hold my thoughts, but is this, I mean, there's almost to me the best hype train outside of Harris and Walls is the Lincoln-Riley hype train.
You think it's better than the Deion Sanders hype train?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's not a hype train.
That's headed straight off the tracks.
That's one's heading off the tracks.
Yeah, it's gone.
Okay, that one's gone.
Yeah.
I would agree.
And what I can say is I hope that Lincoln Riley goes further than Harris Waltz.
Exactly.
If I had to pick.
Yeah.
Hey, if you gave me a USC Big Ten Championship or a Harris Waltz, hey baby, I'm a Trojan all the way.
Amen.
If I ask you one quick question.
You ask me as many as you want.
So you know that Dion's like shutting out a reporter right now?
Yeah.
Great question.
Yeah.
Okay.
Have you ever been in that situation?
Like, that somebody just shut you out completely?
No.
No, it's wrong.
I don't get it.
What's happening?
Remind me the reason.
What prompted this?
Because honestly, you guys, I haven't...
It was a local paper, right?
And I think he just spoke ill of...
Or he just didn't think Deion's team was going to do well.
Something very simple.
Yeah.
Am I wrong about that?
I think that was it.
Not that harmful?
Yeah, and he basically, he's allowed to come to the press conference, but Dion won't talk to him.
It's the craziest thing.
The power trip that Dion's on right now.
And I love Dion Sanders.
That's why it's so weird to me.
I've seen it in the White House press briefing room, so I suppose we could see it about anywhere that reporters will get shut out.
It's a shame, especially if it's a local reporter.
You owe those local reporters answers, no matter what they may think of you.
Believe me, I've seen tussles between head coaches and reporters Plenty of times.
And if the head coach is sitting there and he's choosing between two, and he's going to choose probably the friendlier reporter.
Of course.
It's pretty disgusting.
I don't know how you get around that.
I just don't know.
Honestly, this kind of dialogue we are having and not having in America, whether it's with Dion and a reporter or between the two major parties or whatever, it's breaking my heart, man.
It's breaking my heart.
We are the land of free speech and free expression, and we see it coming under the hammer in other places like Brazil and even the UK, and we cannot be next.
We cannot tolerate that.
No.
Can't think of a better way right there to sum it up, Michelle.
You've hit it perfectly.
Folks, Michelle Tafoya's podcast, she's on here with us on Salem and everywhere else you can find her.
She is a true gem of America.
She's been with us forever and I'm glad to call her friend of this podcast.
Me too, dog.
And just getting into that, I'm going to have some fun with football season.
We'll see her on more.
We're going to have her on with Chan because Chan was upset he couldn't be on here.
By the way, as I said before, we're in a football league called Chan Gailey's Favorite Podcast, so here we go.
Approval still pending on that, guys.
It is how it is right now.
I think it's fine.
I raise my hand for it.
I love it.
I'm going to let my son pick my players for me.
There we go.
Beautiful.
Well, everybody, that's it for today.
Thanks for being here on Friday's Finest.
It's going to be great.
We'll let you know how it all goes.
But look, America's worth fighting for.
Get out there.
Do not take anything for granted.
Conservatives, do not take this for granted.
You can't.
And because the liberals do not.
They go out and earn and fight and bring votes every round of the table.
You got to do the same thing.
We'll be back again next week.
God bless you.
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