Nico’s Gone, Iconic Bad Trades, Baseball’s Comeback, Lane Kiffin, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and the Power of Boredom With Chuck Klosterman

Summary

The Bill Simmons Podcast

Episode: Nico’s Gone, Iconic Bad Trades, Baseball’s Comeback, Lane Kiffin, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and the Power of Boredom
Date: November 11, 2025
Guests: Bill Simmons (host), Chuck Klosterman

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Overview

On this episode, Bill Simmons is joined by writer and cultural critic Chuck Klosterman for a wide-ranging conversation that moves from the fallout of the Dallas Mavericks’ firing of GM Nico Harrison (and the disastrous Luka trade), to the culture of iconic bad trades in sports history, baseball's revival, the changing power dynamics and economics of college football coaching, the evolution (and dilution) of Halls of Fame, and reflections on creativity, boredom, and American culture.

The episode is packed with insightful sports analysis, pop culture sidebars, and philosophical detours—always delivered in the signature, thoughtful, and occasionally irreverent tone typical of Simmons and Klosterman.

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Key Segments & Discussion Points

1. Mavericks Fire GM Nico Harrison: The Luka Doncic Trade Fallout

(00:00–23:25)

The News

• Hours before recording, Dallas announced the firing of GM Nico Harrison—a move triggered by fan outrage and team performance following the infamous Luka Doncic trade for Anthony Davis.

Analysis and Debate

• Klosterman takes a controversial stance, trying to “zag” on public consensus by partially defending Harrison’s logic, even if admitting the trade failed.
• Defensive justification: Harrison wanted to overhaul the team after being outclassed in the Finals; considered Davis the best two-way player available.
• Simmons pushes back: The fanbase’s connection to Luka was grossly underestimated ("The fan base cared more about just having Luka in their life for 15 years than actually winning the title" – Simmons, 17:25).
• Both agree: Trades are judged differently in retrospect, often by championship outcomes.
• Memorable quote:
  • "I really respect your Nico Harrison zag. I didn't think it was possible. And you're zagging in a way that it's new territory. It's like watching somebody climb some mountain that's never been climbed." (Bill Simmons, 10:25)

Bad Trade Logic

• Klosterman: GMs often get too fixated on “not getting fired” rather than bold moves (13:58).
• Simmons: “If you’re going to shop Luka, you shop Luka. ...It’s like selling something to your neighbor over putting it on eBay.” (14:29)

Fan Connections and Consequences

• Both discuss how star trades ignore emotional attachment and what a player means to a fanbase, using Seaver, Mookie Betts, and other legends as analogies.

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2. The Pantheon of Iconic Bad Trades

(23:25–33:32)

• Revisiting infamous trades: Herschel Walker to Minnesota (“the most meaningful trade in modern NFL history” – Klosterman, 25:27), the sale of Dr. J, John Elway’s forced move, Tom Seaver ("He is the Mets. How can you trade the face of your franchise for what you got back?" – Simmons, 16:52), Deshaun Watson ("worst NFL trade of all time"), the Pierce-Garnett Nets deal, and others.
• Discussion of how every notorious trade typically had some rationale or “yeah, but…”—except the Luka deal, which was widely panned immediately.
• Klosterman: “The Luka trade didn't have a yeah, but coming out of the gate…”
• Simmons: “If the Lakers win a title, for sure [this will be remembered as one of the worst ever].” (30:09)

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3. Baseball’s Comeback: The Power of the Pitch Clock & Modern Parity

(43:23–51:09)

Is Baseball "Saved"?

• Simmons: "The pitch clock saved the sport. True or false?" (43:26)
• Klosterman agrees it's the biggest factor, but not the only one.
• Anecdotes about how September/October 2025 brought more baseball buzz than in decades.

The Dodgers as a Modern Dynasty

• Dodgers have become baseball’s bar to clear, which Simmons and Klosterman agree adds needed narrative and focus to the sport.
• Simmons: "I like domination. I like having the bar for all the other teams to try to beat."
• Contrast with NFL: Ideal state is “parity with a dynasty,” as seen in the NFL with the Chiefs and in baseball now with the Dodgers.

Playoff vs Regular Season Culture

• Klosterman predicts baseball will take on the role the NCAA Basketball Tournament had—much more cultural attention during postseason.

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4. The Sports Draft, Losing Cultures, and Talent Development

(51:09–56:09)

• Simmons: Frustrated with the NBA lottery rewarding bad teams, wants limits so teams can’t consistently “tank” for top picks.
• The “Process” with the Sixers: Both note it worked as designed but bred a losing culture detrimental to Embiid and Simmons.
• Tatum/Brown as counter-examples: Stepping into winning environments had a profound effect.
• General agreement that situation and culture matter more than ever in development (“You just learn bad lessons when you’re in a bad situation.” – Simmons, 54:41).

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5. College Football's Shifting Landscape: NIL, Coaching, and New Power Structures

(68:37–85:45)

Diminished Romance of Traditional Coaching

• Klosterman: No longer about charismatic recruiting—now entirely about raising money, managing the transfer portal, and talent evaluation.
  • "The talent evaluation has become the main skill, not the charisma in the living room."
• Simmons: We're not going to see lifelong legends like Bear Bryant or Joe Paterno again.
• The rise of Lane Kiffin’s appeal and the new realities of major program “prestige.”

Professionalization & What’s Lost

• Concerns about all major programs (esp. SEC, Big Ten) eventually breaking away into their own semi-pro league.
• Both lament the eventual loss of regionality, diversity of play styles, and the instability of coaching positions.

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6. The State of American Culture: Daydreaming, Boredom, and Creativity

(86:25–92:23)

• Simmons: Worries that modern distractions have “systematically eliminated daydreaming,” which used to fuel creativity.
  • "Sometimes the best ideas I ever had...came out of my brain just going, because I was at a stoplight and I wasn't on my phone." (86:25)
• Klosterman: “The greatest detriment to American culture...is the systematic elimination of daydreaming. People used to daydream all the time.” (87:57)
• They both advocate for intentionally cultivating boredom and unstructured time to promote creativity.

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7. Halls of Fame: Inflation and Dilution

(112:26–119:07)

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

• Klosterman: The bar for entry keeps dropping—Foreigner, Bad Company, Pat Benatar now in, but “shouldn't Hall of Famers be canonical acts, or have invented something, or dominated their era?"
• Simmons: Basketball Hall of Fame has the same problem—quantity over exclusivity.
  • “To me, a Hall of Fame is more meaningful if there are years when no one gets in.” (115:22)

The Ongoing Bonds & Clemens Baseball Debate

• Briefly, both are on record being pro-induction, and agree the voting process itself now overshadows the honor.

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8. The Death of the Band, Musical Creativity, and the Power of the Album

(101:40–112:26)

• Klosterman addresses the dwindling cultural weight of rock bands: The form is (nearly) exhausted, everything is retro; the dominance of the “band” era fades.
• Nathan Hubbard’s theory: All chord and beat combos in rock have been done—what remains is mostly derivative.
• Both reminisce about the finite music options of youth and how the digital era democratized and expanded access, changing listening habits and culture.

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9. Reflections on Writing, Creativity, and Sustained Excellence

(93:55–100:19)

• Simmons discusses his own move away from writing, missing the creative process but not willing to return unless he can do it at a level that satisfies him.
  • “You have to do it every day...I don’t have the ability to do that anymore.”
• Klosterman reflects on his upcoming books and the difficulties of writing at a high level.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On sports trades:
  • "You're buying almost past performance and giving up future performance with this age piece of it. That was stupid." (Bill Simmons, 07:52)
• On fandom:
  • "It's a lack of connectivity to the fan base and to what they actually care about." (Simmons, 16:52)
• On creativity:
  • "The greatest detriment to American culture right now...is the systematic elimination of daydreaming." (Klosterman, 87:57)
• On the Hall of Fame:
  • "Now the Rock Hall, kind of like the Basketball Hall of Fame, has become a situation where NOT getting in is more meaningful than getting in." (Klosterman, 116:41)

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Additional Cultural Notes

• Rocky Balboa’s Obituary: They discuss what would lead for Rocky's obituary if he were real—his win over Apollo, ending the Cold War, or something else (34:43–38:38).
• Creativity Analogies: Comparison of writing a book to making a Prince record—“You write the songs, you play the songs, you produce the songs”—total creative solitude (Klosterman, 100:19).
• TV Recommendations:
  • The Chair Company and Pluribus get high praise from Chuck for unpredictability and style (119:53–121:53).
  • Simmons suggests a binge-worthy Garfield assassination miniseries (121:59–123:05).

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 00:00–23:25: Mavericks fire Nico Harrison & Luka trade deep dive
• 23:25–33:32: Iconic sports trade history & comparisons
• 43:23–51:09: Baseball’s pitch clock and comeback, dynasties, and parity
• 51:09–56:09: Drafts, development, and “the process” in modern sports
• 68:37–85:45: College football’s changing jobs, NIL, Lane Kiffin, and the decline of college coaching legends
• 86:25–92:23: The value of boredom, daydreaming, and creativity
• 101:40–112:26: The death of the “band,” music nostalgia
• 112:26–119:07: Halls of Fame—dilution, meaning, and the Foreigner problem
• 119:53–123:07: Chuck’s TV picks and highbrow true crime entertainment

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Conclusion

This episode is a sprawling, thoughtful, and often contrarian conversation that touches on the heart, folly, and unpredictability of sports and culture, threaded with both personal and collective nostalgia. Klosterman’s ability to empathetically argue for the reviled, and Simmons' tireless fandom, make for revealing moments on how we attach meaning to teams, moments, and even the act of being bored.

Transcript

[Bill Simmons]

The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network where you can find a new episode of the Rewatchables that went up Monday night. We did Snake Eyes, which is a really, really, really fun 1998 movie. Yet another awesome 1998 movie directed by Brian De Palma starring Nic Cage. As Sean Fennesee said on the podcast, it was a safety off performance by Nic Cage. He is just going for it the entire time. Really fun movie. So you can check that out wherever you get your rewatchables Podcasts Hey, I wanted to bring something back for 2026 for this podcast. Obviously I did this when I wrote I did this for the first couple years of when we had this podcast on the Ringer and now I'm going to try to get it going again, maybe on Tuesdays, but I wanted to bring the mailbag back. I wanted to lean on the listeners for some fun questions and you can email us questions podcast33mail.com bspodcast33mail.com Send them in. I'm gonna have somebody go through them, send me the best possibles and then I'll go through and try to make it a running thing either on Tuesdays or Thursdays, maybe near the holidays, but also really thinking for 2026, especially when this podcast ends up on Netflix probably I think in mid January. So I want to have some sort of extra gimmick. I miss doing the mailbags. It's just pure laziness. Why we haven't been doing them. I haven't had time to really go through all the emails, but I'm going to get some help and I'm going to bring it back. So the mailbag is coming back. It's not a big announcement, but it's an announcement. It's not as big of an announcement as the Mavericks firing Nico Harrison less than 10 months after he made the Luka Doncic trade. We're going to talk about that and a whole bunch of other things with BS Podcast hall of Famer Chuck Klosterman, who hasn't been on in a while. We have a lot of topics. I have some sense of where this might go, but then as always with Chuck, he you just never know. And it's next. We're gonna take a break, then bring in Pearl Jail. This episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast is presented by State Farm. Having insurance isn't the same as having State Farm. It's like needing the protection of an offensive guard on the football field, but getting an elementary school crossing guard. Sure, they're both guards, but you can only trust one to keep your quarterback safe when the game is on the line. So don't settle for just any insurance when you can have State Farm like a good neighborhood. State Farm is there. All right, the BS pod. Hall of Famer Chuck Klosterman is here. We are going to talk about a bunch of stuff. One thing we did not have on the docket was Dallas Mavericks GM Nico Harrison got fired about two hours before we started taping here at 10 o' clock Pacific time. And we never talked about this trade and all this stuff on the pod. So he's getting fired not even 10 months after he made this trade, which when the trade happened, everybody automatically was like, wow, this is one of the worst trades of all time. This is inexplicable. Why didn't he shop it? Why would he trade Luka? Why did he underestimate the fan base? And then somehow it worked out even worse than it seemed like in the moment, Davis has played nine games out of, like a possible 44. And the Mavs are terrible, the fans are enraged, and they finally had to dump this guy before we even got to Thanksgiving. Can you remember another sports situation like this since we've been alive?

[Chuck Klosterman]

Well, I don't know. I'd have to think about that. It's interesting the GM is under so much, you know, the fire, like. Like his. The awareness of the GM, of the Mavericks is higher than the vast majority of their roster, which is.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Chuck Klosterman]

I mean, I'll tell you what, though, okay, Obviously the trade didn't work. I'm not going to sit here and be like, ah, well, I'm the opposite, actually. It was. But I do think he was treated somewhat unfairly and it was to some degree his fault for not explaining this better. Because there is a way to explain this trade that does not seem as insane as it does now.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, all right, what's that way then?

[Chuck Klosterman]

Well, okay, so they go to the finals in 2024, and Luka plays great. He's like. He's like 28, 9 and 8, I think during that playoff run. But they barely beat okc, and then they kind of got run by the Celtics and clearly couldn't compete with them. So if you're him, and the idea is the real goal is to win a championship. Not to be good, not to be competitive, not to be interesting, not to make money, to win a championship. I can understand the thinking being like, we need to go in a completely defensive direction, which you said. And Anthony Davis is, you know, I mean, obviously, Luka, on a scale of 1 to 10, he's a 10 on offense, maybe a 5 or 6 on defense when he's healthy. Anthony Davis is like 7, 8 on offense and 8, 9, 10 on defense. So I think that he looked at this and like, we gotta just completely reconstruct this team. Because it didn't. We did. We did the best that we could with what we had with our best player playing awesome, and we could not do it. So we've got to sort of recreate this. They say, like, why didn't they throw Austin Reaves in there? I think at the time he was like, that's not. He's part of the system. That's not going to work. It's like either all shooting or all defense. As it turned out, it was a mistake. This did not work. And, you know, and everybody who said it was going to be terrible proved right. But, you know, okay, so no one talks about him letting Jalen Brunson leave that much because everyone seemed to think you're supposed to let Brunson leave at the time. Now, if they hadn't done that, the team is completely different. There's a lot of things, I feel like that. That could have made this a completely different situation, but he kind of made that mistake that a lot of GMs do, which is when you make a trade, you're almost supposed to behave like, I'm not going to say anything. I'm just going to let everything play out and I'll be proven right. He should have been more on the offensive and said, this is doing this because we're not going to win a championship. The way we're with the trajectory we're on, we got to change things. And I think that would have seemed more reasonable. It's. It allowed people to kind of think all these crazy things that he was trying to actually just move the team to Vegas and all this stuff. I. I mean, yes, obviously, I'm not trying to say it was a good trade. Now, it didn't work, but it wasn't as insane as people responded at the time.

[Bill Simmons]

Right. Well, he. He did leak out the defense stuff, and he was saying the defense wins championship thing. He probably didn't say. He probably didn't come hard enough on it.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Nothing else you could have said. Right. There's like, no. Like, that had to be the reason. But he wasn't very definitive in his defense of this decision, you know?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Cause he's. He's like, too cool for school. I mean, there are so Many things wrong with the trade. And we talked about all of them when it happened, basically, that they didn't shop it. This was the only suitor, that it was the only suitor. Because if word leaked out that they might trade Luca, the fan base would have revolted. So he's trying to sneak it by the fan base, basically, can I get this deal done without this leaking? Because if. If it leaks out, I won't be able to do the deal because the fan base will revolt. Which probably should have been a red flag for him in retrospect. Like, yeah, you're doing a trade that the fan base is going to revolt. That might not be a great idea. But the bigger thing for me, he didn't get enough in the trade, which everybody said at the time, whether you like Reeves or not, he has to be in it because at least he's an asset. But he was banking on Davis, who, as we've seen, and he's, you know, he's had some bad luck. Like, he got poked in the eye right now he has to wear goggles. He's had some wear and tear over the years, but he's banking on this guy who's a big guy heading into, like, the. The. He's. He's already in his early 30s, heading toward his mid-30s. When we see the history of the league, these 6 foot 11 and up guys, as they hit 32, 33, 34, they can get really gamey in a whole bunch of different ways, right? Vs. Luka was in his mid-20s with a whole bunch of scenarios where he could have actually gone up a level. And that was the part I didn't understand. You're buying almost past performance and giving up future performance with this age piece of it. That was stupid, along with all the other stuff.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Everybody who said the trade was idiotic was right. Okay. Time has proven it was a bad move. But I think this is tricky because the way trades are considered while they're happening is very different than the way they're considered retrospectively. And this is what I mean by that. Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chuck Klosterman]

So when the Thunder traded James Harden, okay, who won that trade?

[Bill Simmons]

The Rockets.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Okay. But at the time the trade was made, the idea for both teams was we're doing this to win a title. That is our motive for making this move, and it didn't happen. Now, ultimately, the Thunder, down the road, do it. So if we look at this of all being dominoes that line up and kind of moving in these kind of capricious, arbitrary ways, but kind of ending in the present, the Rockets didn't win that trade. The Rockets did not win a championship by, you know, by getting hard.

[Bill Simmons]

Damn close.

[Chuck Klosterman]

It seems like that they won the trade because obviously he had this amazing career, and what was given in return did not really, you know, amount too much. But if the goal was to win a title, the goal failed. So if the initial idea about the trade is to win a championship, that needs to be the same criteria you use when considering it. In retrospect.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, that's fair. Well, so Kyrie blew out his ACL right after the trade, and AD got hurt.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Yes. So if you're Nico, that was a good acquisition he made that everyone thought was crazy.

[Bill Simmons]

True.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Many people question the idea of him getting Kyrie, and that proved to be a smart move.

[Bill Simmons]

I really respect your Nico Harrison zag. I didn't think it was possible. And you're zagging in a way that it's new territory. It's like watching somebody climb some mountain that's never been climbed.

[Chuck Klosterman]

What I'm just saying is that it was. That though the trade was a mistake, and time has proven that it was, I do think to some degree, he was treated unfairly. And I think that the idea of the fan base turning on the guy being the motive for firing him. Well, if for whatever reason they start the season six and two or whatever, everything is different, the fan base will then all of a sudden decide, oh, this was brilliant. He got us Cooper Flagg with this backdoor, insane Nostradamus thing. It is strange to take the side of someone who just got fired for obviously making a horrible decision, but that's what I'm doing. Like, I sort of do see the reason behind it, and I just think the pile on against this guy was kind of cheap.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, so anything about him as a.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Person, I don't like. What is he like as a guy? Not that that should matter in terms of how we gauge this decision, but.

[Bill Simmons]

He, like, very well respected in the NBA community. I mean, I had a whole shoe background, and when they hired him, I think people thought he was like, his shoe background.

[Chuck Klosterman]

His big thing is that he blew it with Steph Curry.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, but, I mean, every. Everybody's got one of those, probably. I. I think he was respected as a relationships guy. Like, he had relationships with agents, players, people on other teams, and he was somebody that could rejuvenate them. I think, like, when I look back now that it's almost 10 months later, and you look back, this was really. We don't think Luka can Be the face of our team trade and what's the best we can do? And almost like we might be getting one over on the Lakers if we get this trade for him now. Because they don't realize what they're buying. But the part they missed, which I said at the time, was like, you're lighting a fire under somebody who. The one thing that you could kind of ding him on was, well, he's not in great shape yet. He's a little bit of a diva, like, all things. That by trading him, you're just lighting this massive fire under him to be like, oh, I'm gonna fucking show you. So it was like the greatest thing that ever could have happened to him, which people said, including me at the time. And that was the part he didn't factor into the trade. Like, what is the potential of what I'm giving up? What happens if this guy goes up a level? Which is what. What's happening?

[Chuck Klosterman]

I would say two things to that. One here again, in retrospect, you are right. So I can't say, like, that was, you know, a crazy thing to think, but I think it is difficult to make a move or not make a move based on the intangible abstraction of whether or not this guy will care more if this happens. If this guy will take this in some personal way and he'll lose a bunch of weight and care more. I mean, yeah, but that's part of sports.

[Bill Simmons]

So you have to. You have to factor in human nature and motivation.

[Chuck Klosterman]

That's a good. That's a point in your favor. That, like, that's the kind of thing he's supposed to think about. The other thing is, I do think he probably became fixated on Anthony Davis, that he thought this is the only rim protector who can feasibly score 33 points as well. Like, I can get the most on both ends of the floor from this guy if he's healthy. And I'm going to gamble on that because I think a lot of these guys, it's like, you know, and you, I'm sure, will agree with this. There are so many GMs in all sports whose only goal is putting themselves in a position where they can't do anything that will get them immediately terminated. That if they can always sort of create this.

[Bill Simmons]

By the way, Chuck, that's life. That's like the content industry right now. That's like a bunch of media executives at Nail. A company. They just don't want to have. They'd rather not have a win or a loss. They Would just rather kind of cruise along and not actually take a risk on anything.

[Chuck Klosterman]

And is that good or bad?

[Bill Simmons]

That's bad.

[Chuck Klosterman]

That's bad. And I would say that the idea of a guy thinking maybe we can win the title in two years if all of these gambles come together, I mean, that makes. That gets a guy fired. And it did. But it's like a.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, but the real problem is he didn't make the best possible trade. So if he's going to shop Luka, you shop Luka. And maybe Utah comes out of nowhere and says, we'll give you LORI Marketing and 10 first round picks. Like, you just don't know until it's like. It's like selling something to your neighbor over putting it in on ebay or something. Like, you're just basically guessing that's what the price is. You don't know.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Like, here, here's a comparison to me in this situation. Yes, they should, like, should have Reeves in this deal or whatever. They could have gotten marketing, all these different guys, you know, teams. This happens, I guess more at the college level in football, but they kind of run the shotgun all the time, right? And then they get down inside the 10 and they're still in the shotgun and you're like, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? And it drives you crazy. Texas Tech used to do this all the time. It would drive me insane. Well, here's the deal, though. If you say our philosophy is this, how is this? We play in this way. We go shotgun all the time. We go fast all the time. We never eat clock. It's not what we do. You can't say like, oh, but when we're inside the five, we flip this. You got to stay.

[Bill Simmons]

Now we're a power running team.

[Chuck Klosterman]

So if he looks at this and he's like, okay, we throw in Austin Reeves. Maybe what Austin Reeves offers, which is, you know, he's averaging 30 points a game this year. He's a great offensive player, but maybe he was like, this is not the kind of guy that we want for what we're doing going forward. We need a different kind of.

[Bill Simmons]

He's still an asset that like, it's still somebody. You can flip a more stuff. That's the issue with that.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Yeah. And that's in this. So you could have flown. Flipped him for something else, you know? Yes. Here again, it's like I'm like somebody here being like, oh, actually it was a great idea to go into Vietnam. It made a lot of sense for. It's like it didn't work out. Okay? I'm fucking. It didn't happen. Right. So. So I'm not saying that, like, actually, what you think you saw is an illusion. It made the trade. It was a bad trade. It failed. I'm just saying the reasoning behind it was not as insane as people behaved to. Particularly in that first 48 to 72 hours after the trade happened. Well, people just sort of lost their mind. And I feel like that. Like, this idea of winning trades, like, you don't know until these things play out, you know, I mean, we got to talk about it because this is what the job is, talking about this shit. But it's not a good way to do it because the criteria changes from, are we going to win the championship by making this move? To, in retrospect, who got more value out of this move that both won us nothing.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, but there's another piece to this, which is the sports fandom connection. It's same thing that the Red Sox had with Mookie Betts. And this happens over the years. Like, we even. I remember when I was a kid, the Mets traded Tom Seaver to the Reds, and I didn't care about the Mets, but as a little kid, I was like, holy shit, they traded Tom Seaver. Like, he is the Mets. How can you trade the face of your franchise for what you got back? Which was basically like, Doug Flynn. And I forget who else was in that trade, but I think that's the piece that I think people can over and over again underestimate how much fans give a shit, how much fans get attached to somebody that's somebody who maybe doesn't make that much money. They bought their kid a Luka doncic jersey for $200, and then the guy gets traded two months later. Little things like that, they just missed. It's a lack of connectivity. It's a lack of connectivity to the fan base and to what they actually care about, which is like, I think the fan base actually cared more about just having Luka in their life for 15 years than actually winning the title. If you gave everybody the choice, and they're like, all right, 5% chance you win the title, but you Keep Luka for 20 years or 90% chance you win the title. With Davis once, I think all the Mavs fans would be like, we'd rather have Luka and the puncher's chance, and that's it.

[Chuck Klosterman]

That I think that probably is true. You know, one thing about the Portland Trailblazers is that for many, many years, they never really Put themselves in a position where they could realistically win a title. But the fan base, like the team, because they're always competitive, you know, and I do think that, I mean, that's, you know, when I was. Okay. So I have a ton of friends who are huge, like Minnesota Viking fans. Right. Because from. And we sometimes sort of had this discussion. Would they prefer what the Minnesota. The Vikings have been over time, which is the most successful franchise not to win a Super Bowl? I would say when you say, oh.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, decade to decade, no question. They're always kind of relevant and in the mix and just can't actually get over the hump.

[Chuck Klosterman]

And then it was like, would you rather have that or all these other possibilities of teams who won a championship but for the most part have been down. And I think for the most part that they prefer the way things have worked out. They prefer having a good team all the time. Over time, it almost feels as though they've had championships in a weird way.

[Bill Simmons]

Which you're talking about, like, consistent relevancy.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

Versus, like that one, like the Florida Marlins 2001 title or whatever. Or 2002, whatever year that was when they kind of bought the title and then gutted the team.

[Chuck Klosterman]

I mean, the year they went 151 and got beat in the NFC championship by Atlanta, that was obviously a heartbreaking, you know, you would say like a gut punch loss or whatever. And yeah. There's a memory of that season that is positive in their minds. Like they remember how awesome that was or whatever. So even though it didn't end with a championship.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chuck Klosterman]

As though they feel the franchise. That's good. And maybe it's the exact same thing here. Like, maybe particularly in a place where basketball is, you know, by far a secondary concern, where it's, you know, we're, you know, the high school football matters more in Dallas than the NBA.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chuck Klosterman]

And it made me be like, well, it's just nice to have a competitive franchise. It's nice to always have a good team or whatever. It's nice to have something fun to look forward to. And that would be. That obviously is what they should have done. Like here again, looking back, that obviously would have been a better move. I did not expect the response to be what it was, but it would be strange to hire a GM and. And if he came in and he was like, well, my number one priority is sort of making sure the fan base is enthusiastic and happy. Doesn't matter how we finish. I want the fans to feel good about this. Well, that's actually A very reasonable kind of strategy. I don't think you would hire a guy who says that. Right. If his number one thing isn't, we're going to win a title. That's what a GM is supposed to say. My job is singular. I am here to put together a roster that wins us a championship.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, do you think if you were the Mavericks GM and you called me and I was your one phone call to, yo, I gotta throw this by you. Let me ask you about this. And beyond how dumb the actual trade is, there had to be somebody in his life who would've been like, dude, they're gonna hate you if you do this trade. You have to go to the games. Everyone knows what you look like. You're going to have to sit in the arena and everybody's going to hate that you traded their favorite player. And if this doesn't work out and it's not quite as good as you think, or Davis gets hurt, or Luka goes to the Lakers and he's awesome. There's like, seven different scenarios I can present to you where you become the most hated person in Dallas since 1963. Basically, that's how you would be perceived. You won't be able to go anywhere. It won't be fun for you to go to dinner. It won't be fun for you to play the games. It won't be fun for you to go into a convenience store and buy gum. Name any scenario with you in Dallas, and it's going to suck. So you sure you want to do this? You have to be really convicted in the trade and be like, nope, you don't understand. If we get Davis, people don't understand how awesome he is, and I'll take the heat if he's not okay. And I just don't think it was. That it was even remotely a slam dunk to risk all that other shit.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Did you happen to watch this Martin Scorsese documentary that was just on?

[Bill Simmons]

I still haven't. I'm. I'm. I'm doomed.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Well, the same situation could be said about him making the Last Temptation of Christ. He had this idea that this is what I want to do, and I think this is what I got to do. I'm sure there were people in his life saying, like, don't do this. Yeah, like, it's going to change your perception. Among the people who currently like you the most, like Christian, you know, it's like he's sort of tied into a world with sort of very traditional views. In his audience are people who have sort of, you know, artistic, reactionary, whatever the case, however you want to look at it, you know, but he was like, I got to do it. And if you want to be great, you got to do those things. You can be by listening to advice. But to be great, you have to ignore it and take gamble, you know?

[Bill Simmons]

So in this case, when you're trading.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Think I'd come on here and support Nico Harrison today.

[Bill Simmons]

But I guess you're supporting the concept of it. You're not supporting.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Or at least like, to me, I can imagine a scenario where things work out differently, and this is remembered as a brilliant decision, but that's not going to be what it is.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Chuck Klosterman]

That's not how it's going to be. So I'm not saying.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, that's what he'll tell people 10 years from now. Be like, look, Davis got hurt, Kyrie got hurt. I don't think I was wrong. He can move into that mode pretty fast. I don't think I was wrong. I think the team we put together actually would have been really good. And we never saw it, and we'll never know. I had. I was thinking about, like, growing up and then through our childhoods when we cared about sports and we had no Internet. Way more time to just think about dumb historical shit. There were always these trades that kind of levitated above all the other trades, or the Babe Ruth thing was more of a sale.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

But it's a short live. I was trying to think of the worst trades of my lifetime. And Herschel Walker always gets mentioned first. Right. That Minnesota gave all this stuff to Dallas. And it was really the wrinkle of the trade where if they just waived all these players, they got all these extra picks.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Yeah, well, that was. It was really a trick in the. In the.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, it was like they didn't. Wait.

[Chuck Klosterman]

The Vikings did not believe that they would actually cut all those guys.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Like, he was like, they're not going to cut everybody. And it was like, yeah, we're cutting them all and we get the pick. And that was. I mean, that. That really was on him, you know.

[Bill Simmons]

But fundamentally, when that trade happened, people were like, holy shit, the Vikings got Herschel Walker. They gave up a lot, but Herschel Walker is awesome. Like, you know, in the moment, it was not crazy.

[Chuck Klosterman]

I mean, I might be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure I'm not. In the first game he played, or maybe it was the second game. I think it was the first game they put him in to return the kickoff.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Chuck Klosterman]

And his shoe came off and he still had this huge return. Like, I don't know. I don't think he scored, but it was a big return with one shoe on. And I remember all the Vikings people being like, this is it. This is. We did it. This is the. This is it. Like, this is the thing that we did.

[Bill Simmons]

So it's a defensible bad trade.

[Chuck Klosterman]

And not. Well, it's defensible.

[Bill Simmons]

Not.

[Chuck Klosterman]

If you look back on it. If you look back on it, it would probably. Was certainly the most meaningful trade in modern NFL history.

[Bill Simmons]

No question. Yes.

[Chuck Klosterman]

There's no question about it.

[Bill Simmons]

But when it happened, you can see it when. I mean, the worst trade in the history of the NBA somehow isn't the Luca trade. I think that's the most indefensible trade, the worst trade ever. It wasn't even the Nets fault. But the ABA NBA merger happens. They have to pay this big premium to join the NBA, and they basically don't have money. So their choice is like, we can join the NBA, but we're gonna have to sell Dr. J. And they sell him to the 76ers for $3 million to basically. Cause they had to. Because that was the way to keep the franchise alive. Cause NBA teams didn't make money back then. But fundamentally, just selling Dr. J as you're entering the NBA when he's in the prime of his career, there's no worse trade than that, I guess, trading Jabbar.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Okay, so that was like, for Brian Winter, I think, Junior Bridgeman, Junior Bridgman, Dave Myers, and also Kareem was kind of forcing it, but.

[Bill Simmons]

But defensible because he was going to be a free agent in a year, and they knew they. They weren't going to get compensation for him, so they kind of had to do it. So another one like this. So the Broncos trade for John O. Way, who is like the best quarterback prospect of the 80s, doesn't want to play for Indianapolis, rightly. So, like, it's pretty smart that he didn't want to go there. And he's like. Basically puts his foot down. I don't want to go there. So they trade him for a quarterback named Mark Herman. Chris Hinton, who was one of the best left tackles in the league and a 1984 first, and that's it. And they get John Elway for two decades, basically. And I think that's actually a worse trade than Herschel Walker. But the. The catch is he didn't want to go there, and he wasn't going to go there. And he was going to go play baseball and they. They were kind of hamstrung. Right. So there's a reason for that.

[Chuck Klosterman]

And not only did he not want to go there, but if that trade was discussed two years after it happens, everyone was like, elway's not going to make it.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Chuck Klosterman]

I mean, like, that was like he was. He seemed at the time like a super athletic guy. Remember, there's like footage of him like he lined up behind the guard instead of the center one time, and it was like there was all this, you know, he was kind of getting pushed into playing and it didn't seem like it was going to work. And then.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Then all of a sudden it took a terrible relationship.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Now, obviously, as it turns out, you know, would have been. He won two Super Bowls and he's a Hall of Famer and all.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. All of a sudden he was in the AFC title game. Seabird of the Reds we mentioned, which had a lot of the same DNA. The Luca trade, where it's like you're just trading somebody that your entire fan base loved. And in Seaver's case, won titles with. Right. Won the 69 title with. Made the 73 World Series with most beloved Met ever. They traded him. The desean Watson trade was really bad. And I think we knew it was bad when it happened. Then they guaranteed his contract. They gave up all these picks. That really was the worst NFL trade of all time. Not Herschel Walker, I would say, for.

[Chuck Klosterman]

What you gave up. If you put the. If you add the money into it.

[Bill Simmons]

Because then you had the money and the off the field stuff, which had already happened.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

And a fan base going, wait a second, we don't want to root for this guy. You traded all this stuff for him and you get. So that's actually the worst NFL trade. Then the Pierce Garnett trade to the Nets, which I think was way more defensible. When it seemed like Prokoroff was just going to spend basically money like the Dodgers are spending now. And you know, they gave up three firsts, they gave up a pick swap in 2017, but it just seemed like they're going to have the highest payroll in the league every year. So who cares about the picks? They got rid of Gerald Wallace's. It was semi defensible in the moment. Then a year later, Prokorov's like, I don't want to spend money anymore. Now you don't have those picks. And then the only other one is the. The most famous NBA one for years was that Parrish McHale trade. It was Joe Barry Carroll. The number 13 pick was Ricky Brown for Parish and McHale Parish was, you know, wasn't really Robert Parish at that point. He. He was the equivalent of, I don't know, like a better DeAndre Ayton right now. Mikhail was the third pick. Carol was the best college player, was semi defensible. This Luca one is the first one that even as it happened, was hard.

[Chuck Klosterman]

To defend along in that same situation. I think getting Dennis Johnson for Rick Roby probably.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, that was an. But there was like, there was some cocaine son stuff at the time and DJ was one of the names. So I think they got him on a discount. The point is, you go through all these trades in history and there's always one yeah, but. And this Luca trade didn't have a yeah, but coming out of the gate, everybody was like, why did they do this? You know, it was like the immediate mass reaction and then it just somehow got worse. So I really think it has a chance to be remembered. I don't know if it's the worst trade ever, but it'll be mentioned forever. This will be when 50 years from now, if we still have professional sports in a country and a society, and they're like, what were the worst trades ever? This would be mentioned if it will.

[Chuck Klosterman]

If the Lakers win a title, for sure. If they don't win a title. I don't know. I don't know if that. I don't know what will happen.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't. I like your little twist on that.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Like, you know, say there was no. When I say this was.

[Bill Simmons]

There was.

[Chuck Klosterman]

They were. Harrison was kind of treated unfairly. I'm not saying that it was like it was treated unfairly because people didn't realize it was actually a good deal. I feel that people over amplified the degree to which it was imbalanced. I mean, here again, it's a weird statement to make when all of those people have been proven right. It is strange for me to make this argument now. I realize that, but I. What I'm saying is, at the time, I feel like he or someone else in the media could have made a very justifiable case for why the chances of them winning a title increased with this move.

[Bill Simmons]

And here's the. Here's the problem with the increase thing because I went to all those finals games, they lost the first two in Boston. Game three, it felt like they were probably going to win. And Luka fouled out with five minutes left, which if you're going to hang Luka, don't get kicked. Don't foul out of the fucking game. But then the offense went to Kyrie, and I was in the stands going, oh, my God. Like, this is. This is like a Shakespeare moment where Kyrie, this guy that all the Celtics fans hated because he kind of, you know, kind of didn't want to stay on the team, promised he was going to be there, didn't. Now this guy's going to cook us in a Game three. We're going to lose game four. We might blow the series. I never felt like that series was safe until the second half of Game 5. The point is, they were pretty close to winning the finals that year, so you can't really use the, oh, well, we can't win the title with Luka.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Wait a second, wait a second.

[Bill Simmons]

They were in the. They were in the vicinity, played as.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Well as he could. They got beat 4 to 1 in the finals and really should have lost to OKC in the semifinals of the West.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, that. Yeah, the OKC series was a 50.

[Chuck Klosterman]

They really should have lost.

[Bill Simmons]

We had the perfect team to play.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Him, though, in the finals when he fouled out, Wasn't that the one where he was sitting on the floor yelling at the bench and then, like Windhurst talked about after the game. Well, immature knows what he's talking about. He was in a position basically saying, like, this isn't going to work if this guy is this way. And was there any indication that this guy was going to be different than that way unless he changed locations, you.

[Bill Simmons]

Know, or I guess would be hilarious if, as we're talking about this, Nico came out of your back room and just patted you on the back and said, thank you.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Thank you for being my 1 defender. I know exactly what's going to happen, because this always happens when I go, like, it must be weird being you and having this audience of so many people that, of course, you encapsulate some of the stupidest people on Earth. I mean, and you get real smart people, too. Like, sometimes don't be like, oh, this person listening to our podcast. I'm like, that person listens to the podcast. But there's a much larger chunk of. Just, like, you have a higher tolerance for that than I do. Or maybe you just got used to it. I mean, this is something I gotta bring up to you. I promise some guys to bring this up to you. So I was at this humanities symposium in North Dakota a couple of weeks ago, and the theme was about the culture of the 1980s. And, you know, I'm the Speaker at this thing, and I'm doing all my bullshit, you know, slow cancellation of the future. I'm talking about the past and all these things. Here's what people want to talk to me about. This is the main thing that they want to ask me about after this symposium. First of all, does Bill Simmons actually believe Rocky 3 is the best movie of the 80s?

[Bill Simmons]

That was a question to you?

[Chuck Klosterman]

Yes. Did you say that? Did you make that statement? I was like, that seems like something he might say, but I was best.

[Bill Simmons]

Movie of the 80s or the best.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Rocky movie of the 80s, they claim you insisted was Rocky 3. Now, you could have. I said, like, maybe he was being so dark.

[Bill Simmons]

No, I didn't say that.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

I might have said most entertaining movie of the 80s. Yeah. I don't. I don't know if I would have made that case.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Do you believe it's the best of the Rocky films I did?

[Bill Simmons]

Well, I think it's the most rewatchable.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Okay. Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I think Rocky one's probably the quote, unquote, best one. But I think Rocky III is the most entertaining start to finish.

[Chuck Klosterman]

So then the conversation morphed into this, and it seemed like the kind of thing you might have real input on. If Rocky Balboa was a real person and then he died in his obituary, what part of his career or what part of his personality is the lead? Like, what is considered the most important or memorable aspect of his career? If he were a real person and.

[Bill Simmons]

Then passed away, that he ended Apollo Creed's undefeated heavyweight championship streak came out of nowhere. Improbable rags to riches story captured the heart of the nation.

[Chuck Klosterman]

More so than beating the Russian in Russia and convincing the crowd in an exhibition to say usa. USA in the Soviet Union.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, you think that would be the.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Lead, that he ended the Cold War? This was the crux of it. That's the first thing people brought up. And then they were like, but it was an exhibition. Like, and I can't remember, would it have been televised in the United States? Is there footage in the movie?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, they show it. They show his kids watching.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Okay, how did that happen?

[Bill Simmons]

Because he says, where do. My kid is staying up late? So, yeah, he says Soviet Union allowed.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Like, who covered it?

[Bill Simmons]

You know, listen, there's a lot of holes in Rocky iv. He didn't get paid for it. Um, it's unclear who profited from the pay per view, even though probably, I would say tens of millions probably watched. Where'd the money go? Did their split? There was no promoter. Um, it was an exhibition. There's a lot of questions. They've never really been answered.

[Chuck Klosterman]

What if we. If we use just the scripts, the fights we see.

[Bill Simmons]

So you're saying, like, we. We take this as Rocky. His whole career was a real career. You're saying him beating Drago in an exhibition, but maybe turning the Cold War is mentioned above. Him being a rags to riches story who beat Apollo Creed, ended his streak.

[Chuck Klosterman]

That was sort of the central aspect of the debate over this. Other people, I think, brought up the idea, would it be seen as a very sad story because of the end of his life, the way we look at Sonny Liston or something, that even though in the movies it is portrayed as positive.

[Bill Simmons]

No, because think of Mike Tyson. Like, if Mike Tyson dies, okay, what's the first sentence? What's the blink snapshot of his career? It would be like Mike Tyson, the most feared heavyweight of the 1980s, who won his first whatever and was the youngest heavyweight champion of all time. And then his career ended in disgrace, comma. His career ended in disgrace after he went to prison and bit Evander Holyfield and lost all his money and holding whole bunch of other things.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Although it sort of seems like now his story is kind of a redemptive story, right?

[Bill Simmons]

The fact that he's still alive is.

[Chuck Klosterman]

I think, redemptive, you know, or. Or he's kind of become something very, very different. Because we were just talking. It's just interesting to me always to talk about fictional things as if they were real and how. What the response would be. You know, it's like, you know, if they discussed if Rocky died now as a person, would there be a discussion about the racial overtones of his rivalry with Creed now, which would not have been, you know, would that have. Would that be brought up, like in the New York Times? Like, that the guy who, like. Who won a Nobel Prize for, like, you know, discovering or being part of the discovery of, like, the DNA. And like, in the headline, it kind of mentions that later in life he said, like, some racist or sexist things or whatever. It was very. It's like. I'm sure he didn't expect that was going to be part of his obituary with. So I wonder if that would happen now with if Rocky the real person die. If that somehow would be.

[Bill Simmons]

I would say the Clubber Lang part would probably have the stronger racial overtones because Creed was like a beloved. He kind of trained. He was like Ali. He transcended all that stuff. I would say Creed was definitely more Rocky. III tapped into that a lot harder. I think even though Creed was on Rocky's side.

[Chuck Klosterman]

The strangest thing about Clubber Lang is, is I remember at one point he's giving an interview in the movie and his thing is, you know, I live alone, I train alone. Yeah, but he's a boxer, so he never spars. How can a boxer train alone like a boxer more than anyone needs someone to train with him. Is he just hitting the heavy bag?

[Bill Simmons]

I think he was probably being probably exaggerating a little bit. Let's take a break and then we got to talk about baseball. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel this NBA season on FanDuel, it's all about the boost. Game days mean your chance to boost your bet. Make every play pay off. That's right, all customers get a 50% profit boost on NBA parlay and SGP bets. So I'm going to Denver Clippers on Wednesday night. The Clippers are not doing well this season. They really match up nicely with Denver and I feel like this could be a kitchen sink game for them. So I'd probably do Clippers underdog Moneyline with the over with Harden to do well with Dick Batum to hit like a three or two, something like that. Lock in your bets, boost your odds. Make every night count with FanDuel official sports betting partner of the NBA. Head to FanDuel.com BS to get started. Must be 21 + President select states or 18 + in President in D.C. kentucky or Wyoming. Opt in Required rewards are non withdrawable. Restrictions apply including bonus and token expiration, legal requirements and max wager amount. See [e-mail], gAM problem code 100 Gambler. Visit rg-help.com call 1-888-789777 or visit ccpg.org chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. Every football season, the same thing happens. The game somehow makes everybody really hungry. Quarterback scrambles. Clearly a sign for breakfast burritos. Yeah, turnover. Suddenly dessert at 2pm doesn't sound so crazy. Wing formations? Well, those can only mean Buffalo wings. As if they're ever not in play. Even the goal posts start looking suspiciously like French fries. It's almost like football, sending the message to eat more food. Yeah, the good news? Uber Eats makes those cravings easy to satisfy with game day deals all season long. From wings and pizza to chips, drinks and even last minute grocery runs. Don't sleep on those. You'll find savings on all your favorites delivered straight to your Door order now on Uber Eats. Can I say one more thing about Anthony Davis before we move on? Just because it's timely and I'd like to just get on the record on the pod. What's interesting is they trade Luka for him, and he's the centerpiece of the trade, and he's important for Nico, and he's clearly, when he's healthy, one of the best 15 players in the league, but now has had even more wear and tear. He makes a ton of money. They've changed a lot of the trading rules, so a lot of the teams you could think he could get traded to, they can't even do the trade because they can't take his Giant salary back. I went through it today. I could only find a couple teams that would even make sense on top of the fact that, you know, he's not. They're not going to send him to a place where he's going to be unhappy, because they don't do that in the NBA if you have a disgruntled superstar, not worth it. So it's really like, I was thinking, oh, you know what would be really fun is, is Davis for Lamelo, okay? Just like the Mavs get this young point guard, they play the flag, Charlotte gets a big man, and then it's. Then you. You start unpacking. It's like, well, that trade can't happen because they have to. They can only take one player back for Davis. Charlotte would have to send three to make the salaries work. Davis would be unhappy in Charlotte. They'd have to trade him. Charlotte's not going to do that. They want to tank, so that blows up, really. The only teams are the Knicks and the warriors, and then it comes down to desperation. The only team that would actually be desperate enough because they're near the end of the line is the warriors, which leads me to Butler, who makes the exact same amount of money as Davis. So you could trade them straight up. I think if I understand the rules.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Is this going to happen or just you're speculating? It's like Davis is getting traded. Are they planning.

[Bill Simmons]

I was getting a bunch of texts today from different people going, well, now the Mavs are going to blow it up. They'll trade AD and we do this with the NBA. But they've changed the rules so dramatically, and these guys make so much money. It's like, well, actually cross off eight of the ten teams you thought AD Would go for. Here are the actual teams, and it's basically the Knicks and Golden State. If you're the Knicks. I don't know if you trade Towns for him, this town spreads the floor for you. Davis, all the wear and tear, who knows? But I think Golden State would be the one team near the end of the line that could talk themselves into it because they're kind of, they're not, they're not on the level of OKC in Denver. And, you know, they could give Butler and some first round picks. Butler goes to the Mavs. Playing with Flag. They have the centers. Like, it's just something in my head that I thought would make sense.

[Chuck Klosterman]

If you have, if you have Kyrie Flag and Davis, don't you at least want to see what happens when I.

[Bill Simmons]

Think that's how this plays out?

[Chuck Klosterman]

Yeah, I mean, I, I would want to see what happens first. I mean that.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm just kidding. I'm just telling people this is if the blow it up scenarios. There's not a lot of blow it up options. So. All right, let's talk baseball.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

The pitch clock saved the sport. True or false?

[Chuck Klosterman]

Singularly, or did they contribute to it? I would.

[Bill Simmons]

So you're saying it was the biggest factor or you would say singularly, it's the biggest factor?

[Chuck Klosterman]

I think. But I wouldn't say it's the only factor. Yeah, agree.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Also, I, I so the sport is saved now where we've made the decision baseball is saved. We've had like seven podcast conversations where we talked about baseball being dead. Are we now? The position that it's saved the viewership.

[Bill Simmons]

Of that World Series was bonkers.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Crazy. But this is what I think.

[Bill Simmons]

And anecdotally, September and October, there was more baseball talk going on than at any time in my life since the early 2000s.

[Chuck Klosterman]

I'll tell you what, it's the most I enjoyed watching baseball since the 1991 series between the Twins and the Braves. That was.

[Bill Simmons]

Think about that.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Yeah, that's a lot.

[Bill Simmons]

Or like, oh, 3,04 was the last time I felt like baseball kind of took over the country with the narrative. It's like, oh three, everybody, the Bartman game and the Yankees, Red Sox. Like, we just haven't had anything like this 20 years.

[Chuck Klosterman]

What is, what is likely going to happen is a lot of the people who watch this World Series and have suddenly changed their opinion about baseball, are they going to start watching it again next April? And they'll be like, this is not what I remember. Because playoff baseball now seems more different than the regular season now than any other sport. It used to be that in like the NBA and In hockey. Now it's in baseball. What I think could happen, my kind of new theory on this is that baseball, Major League Baseball, is going to overtake the role the NCAA basketball tournament had about 15 years ago, which is that people don't really follow the regular season, but then they become obsessed with the tournament.

[Bill Simmons]

So you get their pools, they watch, they do the weekends, they go to.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Sports bars, and they convince themselves during the NCAA tournaments that they actually still know about college basketball. Like, there's enough ways that you can cheat with the Internet to actually seem as though you know what's going on in college basketball without watching it. And then you get into the tournament, you're like, oh, this guy and that guy and all the. Then you can also kind of fall back into all, like, the classic pageantry stuff. I think that's going to happen maybe with baseball that people will not care that much during, you know, outside of regionally, during the regular season, but they'll be like, okay, baseball playoffs, this is great, because, I mean, that was really. They got, you know, it's going to be hard for another World Series to match this, you know, like.

[Bill Simmons]

But the playoffs before the rounds, before were great, too. Like, it really. So I think I've been thinking about it a lot because something clearly shifted. And I do think the pitch clock helped. But I also think, like, having the Dodgers, what they did, right, they spent all this money and they ended up. They make the bets, trade. They finally get Ohtani into a playoff situation. They get Yamamoto, who's incredible. They get Freddie Freeman from the Braves, and they have Will Smith, homegrown catcher, right? They have that. That's their five. But they also have enough money to spend on these different expensive starters. Like, they, they, they just have enough money to spend. They're basically making this giant blockbuster movie, and they have enough money to spend on, like, oh, this is a small part for the attorney general. We'll get Laura Linney. Like, they just doesn't matter. But they're, they're. They've won two in a row. They won in 2020. And they're like a legitimate dynasty now, which I think people like. I really do. And I'm not the first person to say this, and I've talked about this on pods before. I think I've talked about this with basketball forever, with how desperate they are to have more parity and make it have teams not dominate. I personally like domination. I like having the bar for all the other teams to try to beat. This is what we grew up with. This was Celtics, lakers in the 80s, this was Cowboys Steelers in the 70s and this was the Bulls in the 90s. And I just personally like it more. I like having the bar you have to climb to beat. This is what college basketball used to be like. This is what we've had in college football the last 20 years. And I think baseball has figured out the best because nobody's going to beat the Dodgers because they've actually figured out how to spend, how to grab this far east connection where they're always getting the best. Now who's the next guy from Japan? They're probably getting him. And now this is the team to beat. On top of, you have Judge in New York. You have Soto with the Mets. You have Bryce Harper and Schwarber with the Phillies. You have Roman Anthony now with the Red Sox. All the big markets have a guy and I'm all for it.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Man.

[Bill Simmons]

I really feel like we're headed to a good place.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Okay, first of all, you said so they're dynasty now. Now weren't you kind of skeptical of people who called the Kansas City Chiefs dynasty?

[Bill Simmons]

Well, they've won three and three in six years or five.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Well if you said 2020, that would be three in.

[Bill Simmons]

I guess the difference with them and the Chiefs is the Chiefs was always, you know, built like the Patriots. We have these little five year windows in the NFL and then the cap gets you okay with whatever the Dodgers have now. They're always going to be the favorites to win the World Series for the rest of the decade no matter what happens with the team they have.

[Chuck Klosterman]

I mean I think what people love the most and to some degree the NFL is the only league that can really create this scenario is parody with a dynasty where that there's a, everyone else has a chance and there is it one team that's sort of one level above that's kind of, that's the ideal situation. I mean like, you know, say like, you know when like so like we always talk about the Lakers and the Celtics in the 80s there was dual for dynasties but there wasn't a ton of parody. I mean you went down to the Bucks and the, you know there's, there was a level with like, you know, the Rockets.

[Bill Simmons]

For a couple years in.

[Chuck Klosterman]

The NFL right now. I mean that is the, the Pete Roselle idea of creating parody has worked to such a full extent. I mean they're the worst teams in the NFL are still some guys that are like it's really rare to think of that. This is, this team can't compete you know, it's like, so that's kind of maybe, you know, the idea of baseball having this situation. I, I, it doesn't seem like they have created parity across the league.

[Bill Simmons]

No, they had, you need the dregs, which is, I wrote a column about this once. To have great teams, you need bad teams. And this is why I hate the NBA lottery so much. Because you're constantly rewarding the bad teams for being bad, but you're putting the most talented players in bad situations and then wondering why they've been disappointing. You know, you're putting guys who have a chance to be awesome, but they're playing on a 18 win team. And very rarely can you flip that around. Like even LeBron, when LeBron went to the Cavs, that team was awful for years, you know, and it was like. But that was why I was so interested in what would happen with Cooper, Flag and the Mavs, because with Kyrie and A.D. they actually had a chance to be good right away, which is basically what happened to Larry Bird and Magic. Those guys went to teams where they're good right away. Jordan had the opposite. He went to like a mess of a team. It took five years to get there. But I think I still like it because I still like when you have, football has it with the quarterbacks, right? It's Mahomes and Allen. Those teams are always going to be good. Hopefully Drake may now with the Patriots, are always going to be good. The way the Eagles have built their team, they're going to be good for at least the rest of the decade. So maybe you have three or four kind of bars that the rest of the league has to get through. Baseball might have seven.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Are you one of these people who would be like, let's abolish the draft and let just, the guys can go to college, sign where they want to sign and we enforce a hard gap. And so if somebody like, you know, Chet Holmgram's coming out or whatever, he can take X amount of dollars for teams that are in the cellar or he can take a little less money if he wants to sign with a more established team. Do you want the draft to exist?

[Bill Simmons]

Do you want, I want the draft to exist. What I don't, what I don't want is for teams to be able to be in the lottery for three, four, five straight years with top five picks. That's what the NBA has to change.

[Chuck Klosterman]

How about the old way? How about the old way worsted?

[Bill Simmons]

I just think like if you win the lottery, you shouldn't be able to get a top three pick the next year. I would just put that rule in right now. I would. You don't. Shouldn't be rewarded for being bad over and over and over again.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Yeah, I know. I just kind of.

[Bill Simmons]

If you have a top three pick, maybe you can't pick higher than four the next year. You know, like little. Little wrinkles so that teams get penalized at least a little bit for being awful. Like, I think what the Nets did, they're the most disgusting of all the teams. Right. They had five first round picks last year. They blew all of them. And they don't care at all. They're not even the second most important team in New York. The Liberty, I think, are more important. I think that people own the Liberty, and the Nets probably care more about the Liberty, and they're just like a way station for incompetence at this point. Kind of hoping that they'll stumble in this draft that's coming up. There's these three legitimate franchise guys in it, and they're just kind of keeping their fingers crossed to get one of those three guys, and that's their entire strategy. I think that sucks. I'm done with that.

[Chuck Klosterman]

I mean, we talked about this years ago. The whole idea of, like, you know, the process as it was used to.

[Bill Simmons]

Be described, which would turn out to be a disaster.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Well. Well, except that it actually worked exactly as it was how it was supposed to work. It's.

[Bill Simmons]

They never made it past round two. They won two playoff series.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Yeah. But the players didn't pan out. But they did the thing that it was intended to do. They had Ben Simmons, they had Embiid. Both those guys were seen as.

[Bill Simmons]

They got the false pick.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Yeah, there you go. And like, it just so. So the. It did actually do the thing it was supposed to do, which is negligibly increase your luck of getting into somebody great. Like, it's. Like it does. It's not. It's a. It's a strange strategy. It's just like, it's. It's. Well, maybe not strange. It's just slightly increasing the possibility that you will find the guy who changes everything. And they did that. They actually got that.

[Bill Simmons]

But here's. Here's the thing with the Sixers, though, and this is what we learned retroactively and why I don't think teams will ever do that again. They built a losing culture, but they put these young stars in the losing culture and told them it didn't matter if they won or lost. And I think it had real Ramifications for those guys. I think for Simmons and for Embiid, those guys have had really bizarre careers, you know, and I think even some of the stuff they value has been. Simmons was like, thought he was a super duper star. The team wasn't winning anything. And I still don't know what happened to him when he basically bailed on the team. And then Embiid, I just think, has had a really strange career where it really seems like he values the individual stuff over the team stuff. And we've seen him, like, even little stuff like, I'll play Jokic, but only if it's in Philly versus playing in Denver. Like, you can't be like that and be the face of a team and the best guy on a team. And I think you just learn bad lessons when you're in a bad situation, you know?

[Chuck Klosterman]

Yeah, I guess that's true. I mean, and you're saying that if he gets drafted somewhere else, you think maybe he's a different person. That's always.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Well, think about, like, Tatum had one of the best. Tatum and Brown had two of the best situations you ever could have walked into, where they go into a team that's also had just signed Al Horford that had. Isaiah Thomas lucked out with him, and the team was pretty good and was like, in the Eastern Conference finals. And those guys are rookies getting a taste of it, going against guys. They're. They're in winning situations with good crowds. And I would say that had a great effect on them, you know, a really positive effect. It's also unusual. That's not usually how it goes. But if you're just saying, like, I'm going to put one guy in this Philly situation and one guy in this Boston situation, which guy will learn better habits and have a better career. You had bet on the Boston situation?

[Chuck Klosterman]

Oh, totally. I mean, you know, you know, you in the NFL, you see this with young quarterbacks all the time.

[Bill Simmons]

I mean, Sam Darnold, that's the best example of all of them because he's actually talented.

[Chuck Klosterman]

You know, what is. You know, it's very often, as it turns out, it's like, you know, the cliche now is that nobody knows anything in the NFL about drafting quarterbacks. Everyone is, you know, which. All guesswork. We can't predict anything. And it certainly seems that way. And yet when a lot of these guys get into a good situation, they end up becoming pretty close to what the original description was.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Chuck Klosterman]

You know, like, whatever the original idea was, there's it's kind of. I can't remember what year it was, but the year, like, he came out, Lamar Jackson came out and Josh Allen came out and Rosen was in that draft and Baker Mayfield, like, we did a podcast and we talked about this, and it's very interesting how we were in some ways amazingly correct and in some ways amazingly idiotic. Most notably me claiming Baker Mayfield should be moved to slot receiver. That was what I said in that podcast.

[Bill Simmons]

You said that?

[Chuck Klosterman]

Well, because everyone.

[Bill Simmons]

That's incredible. Everybody was saying about amazing slot receiver.

[Chuck Klosterman]

They were talking about Lamar Jackson and it was sort of like, he's such a great athlete, but he'll probably never be a quarterback. Maybe, you know, move him to receiver or something. I was like, I don't think that should be the case at all. He's the best of these guys, in my view. Yeah, yeah. It's like maybe Baker Mayfield, maybe, maybe like he could be like, you know, like an Engelman type figure, like coming out of Kent State. Well, we like, you know, we like Lamar Jackson. We like Josh Allen. Like, you had seen him like in a Target or something and talked to him and you were like, he's a good guy or whatever. And like, you sort of had a good understanding of him and. And that worked out. And. But like Rosen, I remember the guy from ucla, I think I was like, that. He actually might be the best. You know, obviously that was wrong.

[Bill Simmons]

He's out of the league in two years.

[Chuck Klosterman]

What if he goes somewhere different? Who knows? What if he goes to, you know, what if I beat him, went to Baltimore? It'd be hard to imagine what happens. But, you know, we've.

[Bill Simmons]

I feel like we've talked about this a bunch of times, but it is hilarious that in 2025, we've come no closer to figuring out what's going to make a good quarterback. We have to. We have decades of data and tape and analysis. I think people are getting better at it. Like, Even somebody like McShay who. Who is with us at the ringer, I think he's done a really good job the last few years. He's been pretty on it. There's some stuff that I would look at that is almost like non football stuff when I would look at these guys. Because I remember thinking a lot about this stuff with Drake May, and it's stupid stuff that's probably, you know, on brand for me. But like the fact that he was a little brother, the fact that he stayed at North Carolina for an extra year when he just could have transferred when you know, it seemed like the team was going to suck. There was like. There was like, good guy, good teammate, leader kind of traits that were there. But it. It also helps that he's fucking really talented. Right? And that's the thing you didn't really know until you saw him in the NFL.

[Chuck Klosterman]

The thing you said before probably is the biggest factor, which is this. It's situational. It really is the situation you're in. When Jared Goff was coming out, do you remember what the criticism of him was?

[Bill Simmons]

Small, wasn't it? Yeah. Small hands and kind of dumb, right?

[Chuck Klosterman]

Well, he went to Cal. I mean, it's like, I thought he.

[Bill Simmons]

Made, like, dumb decisions or there was. Some people weren't sure about his decision making.

[Chuck Klosterman]

I just remember it was that he had. He had small hands and they were sort of like, you know, and there was like, when it rains history, you know, it's like, well, okay, sure, sure. You know, it's like, maybe. But, you know, he was actually not terrible with the Rams, Got him to a Super bowl, and has had a very good career.

[Bill Simmons]

You know what's funny? So I was watching randomly watching the NBC pregame show the other day, which I don't usually watch, but I want to see the highlights because I was on a plane and I didn't catch everything. And they had Jason Garrett interviewed. I think it was Jason Garrett interviewed Sam Darnold. I think that's what it was. Was that what it was? Maybe it was two weeks ago, I can't remember, but it was Jason Garrett reading Sam Darnold, his scouting report of Sam Darnold and going through the stuff that he had. And Sam Darnold was like, yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah, you nailed me there. And a lot of it was stuff like, he's so competitive, he can be his own worst enemy and things like that. And they were just talking about it, and of course, they did it in that pregame style where the thing just. They zoomed through it really fast with a bunch of edits and footage. And I was like, I could have watched this for 20 minutes of somebody going through their scouting report, of somebody who's, like, clearly made it as a pro and been like, all right, so what did I get right? I was like, this is like the best segment ever. And it was like a minute.

[Chuck Klosterman]

It is interesting. Like, there was one. I remember it was kind of going around online. It was like the scouting report on Kobe Bryant coming out of high school, right? And it was, like, eerily accurate. Like, it was amazing. Like, the things they said about him that were good, of course, were plentiful, but even the negative things were all right. It was like, I mean, it didn't say this, but it was like close to be like, you know, could face legal issues in Colorado. Like, it's like it was so specific about what his life ended up being. So my guy, dead on, you know. Yeah. But also one thing, one thing. A lot of scouting stuff though is like very aphoristic though thing too. So like if you're, if you, if it's, if you're saying like, oh, this guy, he's like, you know, so competitive, he might be his own worst enemy, well, that's okay. So that's technically a criticism, right? So is the idea that he should become slightly less competitive or slightly less of his own, more status. It's like giving a job interview and saying, what's your weakness? It's like, oh, I care too much. It's like, well, thanks for nothing. You know what I'm saying?

[Bill Simmons]

One thing I've learned at least with the NBA, and I think this probably goes for football, for quarterback too, is like if I ran an NBA team, I would never take the guy with a high pick that I'm really betting on, like potentially even betting my job where I didn't get the feedback that this guy was like an incredibly hard worker. I just think that to me that would be a non negotiable even. Like I've started to do some work on the 26 NBA draft because it's really like potentially a generational draft with these, with these guys, it's really nuts. And I'm fascinated by this Kansas kid who really might be the best two guard prospect.

[Chuck Klosterman]

They compare. That's the comparison I've seen.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, he's the first one we've had at two guard who can be credibly mentioned. With Vince, like what Vince was like coming out of high school and at North Carolina and, and Kobe, what some of the stuff people were saying about him coming out of high school and then Jordan at unc, like there's some stuff with him, but one of the things that people have been saying is like this kid really gives a shit. Like he really works. This is the Cooper Flag thing. Cooper Flag is like, I'm gonna, I have a weakness. I'm going to work on this until I fix the weakness. And I do think for the NBA you need to be that way. I don't, I don't think you can really succeed at the highest level unless you're wired that way.

[Chuck Klosterman]

I mean, you could be right. I mean, for me, I feel saying someone is a really hard worker or a workaholic in a scouting report is less meaningful than the detriment of questionable work ethic. I feel like people will rarely say questionable work ethic unless they have a pretty clear reason for arguing that. But people will say great work ethic because it's just something you say. Like it's just talking about guys level of competition, you know, their need to win, all that stuff. That's true certainly sometimes. And sometimes it is just something people say. But when they say something on the negative side, that usually means, you know, something motivated them to do that. Like people are not really motivated to say positive things except to occasionally seem the most enthusiastic. That's another thing I've noticed about how like the ranking of prospects has changed. That there is now almost a competitive world within that sort of, you know, paradigm where like somebody's like, well, to be remembered about this, I have to be the most excited about Ace Bailey or I have to be the unlike, whatever. You know, it's like you got to have some like real strong, strong, strong, strong take. And that does skew these things because that's how you get into this problem of like these guys seem like busts immediately and they should have never been in the position to, to be viewed as potentially generational.

[Bill Simmons]

I just, well, we also, I, it, this sounds really basic and dumb, but I swear we don't think about it enough. How much a kid can change from the age of like 18 to 23. Like I say with my own kids, like you just, you change, you get older, all of a sudden you have confidence. It's like what, what happened there? And to try to project when somebody's think about these basketball kids, these kids are 18 and 19 and try to project even just what they're going to be like as human beings at age 23 is kind of a crazy process. But we do it anyway.

[Chuck Klosterman]

I mean, okay, the United States is dominated by people from about nine to 12 universities. Almost everybody in the elite world comes from about these nine or 12 places. Which is essentially saying things are dictated by people who were incredibly oppressive 16 year olds, like they were incredibly impressive when they were 16 and then they were able to get into Harvard and they were able to get into Yale and Princeton and these places. And then somehow that education is the validation for the position that they start their life and where they end up. But what we're really talking about is this. Look, they're not a Formed, person, person. Not only is a huge difference between 18 and 23, think of the difference in you between 20 and 30.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, my God.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Like, it's, it's almost the person I was at 30 had no relationship to the person I was at 20 and probably wouldn't have even liked that person. Like, you know, it's like, so to view somehow the early part of my life as a way to understand the middle of my life. I mean, in sports there's no other way, right? We got to get the kids coming out of college and guys peak early and all that stuff. But yes, totally true. That's exactly right.

[Bill Simmons]

Do you think if baseball has another strike, I was thinking about, we always say in real life, history repeats itself, right? It's like, oh, here we go, we did this already. And baseball having a lockout or a strike or however this is probably going to play out, which I think is going to happen, right? As they've captured the zeitgeist for the first time in a real way in 20 years, just feels like the most baseball thing ever for that to happen.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Yeah, a little bit. A little bit.

[Bill Simmons]

This is what we've. This has been our entire life, right? Every time it felt like baseball was going great, there would be something stupid happening.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Well, I mean, you know, they just, there's. It's. Can you sustain a league in the United States without a salary cap? I don't know. I guess they're doing it and it certainly seemed to work great in the playoffs. But I will, you know, here, it's. There's so much chance, Bill. I mean, it's like, okay, so if for whatever reason the World Series went five games this year, we're not talking about it. I don't care that much. I don't know. And I'm not every person, but it's like, you know, if that happens, and then you're like, oh, you know, the World Series ratings were kind of down again and now there might be a strike. We'd be like, ah, it figures baseball's dead. But now, because there was this transcendent seven game series, you know, that game that went to like the 18th or whatever. You know, I'm watching this thing and I'm like, they're going to have to start having position players pitch. But like, Ohtani can just go in like, you know, all these, all these things were so interesting. And plus, you know, it's like, you know, it's like Ohtani, like, he gets kind of shelled and like he thanks the umpire, like tips his hat to the ump umpire while he's leaving the field. And, like, you know, and like, Yamamoto is like, I'll pitch four games in a row if I have to. It's like, there were some things in that. I was like, boy, you just don't see this from American athletes anymore.

[Bill Simmons]

The Yamamoto thing was the most unbelievable thing.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Sort of like, you know, I think the conventional wisdom is, you know, among the people I knew, it's like they were kind of rooting for Toronto or whatever, but, like, the. The Dodgers did to some degree. Those two guys particularly just kind of win me over. Like, you know.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I agree. One more break, and then we gotta talk college football. All right. I texted you for pot ideas. You texted me back. One thing you were excited about were all the insanely great coaching job openings in college football and why those jobs actually aren't that great.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Well, it's not.

[Bill Simmons]

What did you mean, they're not.

[Chuck Klosterman]

It's not that the jobs aren't that great. They're just not as great as they used to be. Like, you know, you look at Florida and, you know, LSU and Penn State and, you know, Auburn and all these sort of these. These great jobs. But what is weird now is something has been completely removed from college football coaching, which is charismatic recruiting. Like, you know, that used to be the big thing, that a guy could go into someone's kitchen, talk to the kid and his dad and his mom, and it's like he was different. Like, you know, in. I don't know if you've read. You read Barry Switzer's autobiography, Bootlegger Boy.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, from, like, the 90s. Yes.

[Chuck Klosterman]

One of the things he talks about in that book, which I just will always remember, is that whenever he was recruiting a kid, he had this thing he did. He would first walk through the back alley behind their house to see what kind of beer was in the garbage. Like, what kind of. Like, what bottles were in there or, you know, and that way, when he went into the house, if the dad said, like, you want a beer? He'd be like, only if you drink, Old Milwaukee always. He'd always only want exactly what the guy drank. Now, that's in ways manipulative, but that really is someone, like, I understand how to relate to people, like, on their level, you know. Now, that's not how it is. Now, in the same situation, he comes in, drinks Old Milwaukee, convinces the dad he's a great guy, gets the kid jacked about going to Oklahoma. And then the kid says, like, well, what's the offer, though, because Georgia Tech offered 340,000.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chuck Klosterman]

That's all it is now. So now it is completely switched away from being the kind of personality that can convince a kid to go to your program to talent evaluation. Like, can you see a guy who's a backup for Ole Miss at tight end, who then you can grab in the portal by just writing a bigger check, like, it really is a professional?

[Bill Simmons]

Well, that was. That was what North Carolina was when Lombardi was saying how they wanted to be the 33rd NFL team. And it's like, they're basically. We're not a college program. We're like a professional portal program, which I think is what they've created just in general with the sport. Right.

[Chuck Klosterman]

I mean, to some extent, sure. I mean, it's definitely, like, it's. It is way different now. I mean, the SEC is not as dominant as it used to be, and there's a lot of people being like, oh, see, now that everybody can play players, they don't have the advantage anymore. But I don't think that's what it is. It's just that the SEC used to have so much depth at every position, and now that's just impossible. Now. To be, like, a great special teams player for Georgia means that, like, you can start maybe an outside linebacker for Indiana, and then there's, you know, it's like, you can make these moves. And I. It has, like, so to have, like, the Penn State job now or the Florida job, like, these marquee jobs. That is, like, you get there. That's the whole deal. I don't know how much of an advantage you have. Like.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Chuck Klosterman]

I don't think that whoever takes the Penn State job is going to have an advantage over Indiana. Like, I just. I don't think that will be the case unless that they can just, you know, do something very simple, which is raise more money. Like, just have more money to give these guys. And that really changed. Like, so that also means that while these jobs aren't as good as they used to be, a lot of random jobs could be great. Like, if you get. If you get a job at, like, Liberty. And Liberty says, like, we're going to do what it takes to get these guys. You might as well be in Florida. You see this with BYU's basketball program. BYU, like, took a kid from Duke, just. They just gave him a bigger number. So I am very interested.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, they went further than that. They moved the kid from Brockton, our own AJ DeBancea from Massachusetts, and they moved him in there before he was even done with high school, moved him to a place in Utah.

[Chuck Klosterman]

What is kind of interesting about these college jobs is obviously the guy everyone wants is Lane Kiffin, but.

[Bill Simmons]

Which is hilarious.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Well, why is it hilarious?

[Bill Simmons]

Because it's been just been a roller coaster ride for Lane over the years. Right. At one point it seemed like his career was over. Now he's the guy who's in the.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Most demand, the last super likable coach that still exists, right? Yeah. And at the college football at least. But, like, I don't know if Florida and LSU will wait for him because they're going to go to the playoffs. They're probably going to win a playoff game. Like, so I don't know if LSU and Florida or like Penn State, even if they would be in the running for that, are willing to wait that long. So I do think it's possible that he could end up at Auburn if he leaves. But also, I hope he doesn't leave because he has really rehabilitated his reputation as, like, a guy who now, like, loves living in Oxford, Mississippi. It would kind of change everything back if he leaves. Like, if, especially if he left, like, in the middle of the year or the day after they lost, it would be like, it'll be like, oh, God damn it, like, again. But, you know, do you think we're.

[Bill Simmons]

Ever going to see, like, what we grew up with, with Bear Bryant and Paterno and these coaches that are just at the same place forever, unless they break the rules and they have to get shoved out, that's gone.

[Chuck Klosterman]

I mean, well, I mean, the sport's different now. I mean, they, they've made college football a professional sport. It's not the same. And those examples particularly, like, it's going to be hard to see someone in that position at an elite program that way, because you can never be down. Like, you can't have, you know, someone could coach that long, like, you know, like Missouri or Utah or some of these places. You know, if you're just good every year, occasionally make the playoffs. But if the expectation, like at LSU, I mean, what was Kelly's record at LSU? 34 and 14 or something like that. It wasn't that he was terrible. He had a Heisman Trophy winner. Every year they came in with the potential to possibly go to the national championship or at least make the playoffs. I mean, if that is the annual expectation, you can have one down year, two down years, you means you're in trouble, third year you get fired, you know, so the idea of their, like, Even like a Saban like coach that will never. I don't think that will happen again. Lane Kiffin, if you were to make a commitment to Ole Miss, could have that kind of career. He could be there the rest of his life because the expectation is slightly lower than the other SEC schools and he would have been. And he will have success both now and in the future. So, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Do you care about buyout stuff and shit like that? When they're like, Brian Kelly, they're negotiating spyout. He wants the full. Like, it's funny that this is just like a category of sports reporting.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Do you see what they're doing now with the Brian Kelly situation? Now they're lsu. At least that's what I saw yesterday. LSU is claiming we haven't officially fired him yet. So therefore we can now fire him now for cause. Oh, and which would case, I guess, changes the buyout situation. I mean, he's obviously hard lying it. He's like, it's like $54 million and he's like, pay me, you know, like, I'll sit around and do nothing for two years, you know, and they don't want to do that. I think that they assumed that he would be the kind of guy who'd be like, I'm going to talk to Penn State right now. But he's not doing that.

[Bill Simmons]

So. Right. So what's your. Give us your grade for the state of college football right now. Are you happy with it? This is your favorite sport? Just everything, the whole experience. Is it. Are you pro? Is this good? Is this what's happened this decade been.

[Chuck Klosterman]

A good thing on the field? I would say it's still an A or A minus almost every week. I mean, in terms of the health of the system, C minus, getting worse. I mean, in the short term, it is fun. That Vandy is good. Like, it's neat to see that. You know, it's like.

[Bill Simmons]

Like in Indiana.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Yeah, exactly. You know, like. Like these. These games are great. I mean, there was like a. This last Saturday, there was a whole bunch of like kind of surprisingly sort of thrill. It didn't look like the world's greatest slate when I looked at espn, but like, there were a ton of good games. Like, you know, the Indiana game was.

[Bill Simmons]

Incredible and that was like one of the best sporting events of the year.

[Chuck Klosterman]

It was, I mean, probably the catch of the year. And then, yeah, the Iowa Oregon game was real interesting because I was like. Was like just at their utmost. Iowa, like, this last drive, they got to go 93 yards and they can't throw the ball, but of course they complete a deep one. All of these things happen. They made it kind of a really fun day. So I still, I mean, in terms of being a consumer, I would watch that over anything, but I know what's going to happen. Like, I mean, in the short term, professionalizing a college sport does kind of spike its popularity because it, you know, pro sports appeal to the casual fan more than college sports do. But that erodes over time, particularly if the kind of professionalized college version just becomes like kind of a less good version of the NFL. And that is what's going to, I mean, my fear was going to happen in five years is that all these teams are going to play the same and like the idea of someone like.

[Bill Simmons]

You know, shotgun running the throw the ball that time, you know, an option.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Team playing an air raid team or something is just going to be over. It's all going to kind of be like, you know, in the same way that for the most part the NFL is that, you know, that the teams are different, but they're much more similar than different by like, you know, by factor of 10. And in college there's still real diversity and there's regional quality to it and the conferences play differently. And I think that's all going to be gone. And of course that's going to be disappointing. But I mean, it just, I don't know, maybe. I'm sure I'll still watch it. I'm sure I'll never.

[Bill Simmons]

Have you heard about, have you heard about this five year eligibility rule that's getting batted around? What is this that people think might happen? Basically, instead of a red shirt thing and whatever happens with that, it's just like when you go to college, you have five years to play sports.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Who wants. You could play.

[Bill Simmons]

You could start off five years, you can play. You go to Duke and play basketball for five straight years.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Is this because the extra people thought the extra year for the COVID stuff was good for the kids or what would.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I think. And especially like, like in the D3 level, you play four years, you go to grad school, you could just play for one more year after that. I think people like that.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Well, I mean, I think I've said this before, but I very much believe this. So I think that we are now less than five years from the SEC and the Big Ten, at least for football, breaking off from the ncaa and they're going to start their own thing. And when that happens, I don't think the players will need to go to those schools. I think the quarterback for Alabama can represent Alabama. He can certainly go to school if.

[Bill Simmons]

He wants, but not actually go to class. If he does that, there will be.

[Chuck Klosterman]

No obligation that he be an enrolled student. So, I mean, I think that's almost certainly going to happen and everybody will know. Here's what's going to happen. Everyone like me is going to bemoan this, but there's also going to be a lot of people being like, this is progress. Why should he have to pretend to go to school? He deserves to make money because he's making the university so much money. And it's going to be seen as kind of naive and reactionary to not support this. That's going to happen. And then a lot be like, that's crazy. How can it be that I'm watching the University of, you know, South Carolina and only 40% of the roster is enrolled in school and people will be like, you're. You don't get it.

[Bill Simmons]

That's got to be quarterback. Works full time as a bartender at the local sports bar.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Nobody do that. You'll just live on campus. You don't have a great life.

[Bill Simmons]

You know, who's been your. Who's your team of the year so far in college football? Because you float around. You're like a nomad. You'll just root for anybody who's been your team. Who captured your fancy?

[Chuck Klosterman]

Don't root for anybody. I mean.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, who captured your fancy?

[Chuck Klosterman]

Well, you know, I really like Notre Dame's team this year, but I kind of like them every year. I like their run game. I am very interested in Ole Miss now with Saban gone.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, it feels like you're becoming a kiffin guy. That's the feeling.

[Chuck Klosterman]

I'm getting it absolutely amazing. And especially now with Saban gone. That's kind of who I'm rooting for in the South. There's a. In the Big Ten. I mean, the coach from Indiana is truly a jerk, but it makes for an interesting situation. And I'm not going to root for Ohio State. So it's like, you know, I unc.

[Bill Simmons]

Any. Any rooting interest in unc.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Absolutely. I really wanted that to work. Like I was really. You watched that first coming on. It's getting better drive of that game. I was like. But I mean, I just, I. I think that this is what I think has happened. You know that. So what is sort of like the. One of the vortex central ideas of, like, the coaching personality. The coaching personality is that I love to coach and it doesn't matter who I'm coaching. I would coach a Pee Wee football team, and I would care as much as I would coach in the high school team, and I'd care about a high school team as much as I would care about a college team, and I would care about that as much as the NFL. Coaching is teaching. I'm an educator. That's what matters to me. All I care about is, like, what I'm doing in the moment. And I think Bill Check got to North Carolina and he's like, I guess I used to be that way. This doesn't seem the way I remember it. I can't tell these kids what to do, and they don't seem to know anything. I got to teach them everything.

[Bill Simmons]

All that might transfer if they're unhappy.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Because when he took the job, say, with the Browns, I think Belichick was still the kind of person who would have been like, I like coaching the Browns. I would just assume, you know, coach Maslin High School.

[Bill Simmons]

It's a Belichick impersonation.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Well, I just felt that.

[Bill Simmons]

I didn't realize I was on the docket.

[Chuck Klosterman]

I'm not Chris Ryan. I can't do this shit. Okay? So I'm just. I just kind of felt it. But, like, so I can't do them. I can't. Like, my British accent is terrible. But I think that when Belichick was with the Browns, at that point in his life, whatever age he would have been, that would have been, what, how many years ago now? 30 years ago. I think it would have been the kind of person who, no matter where you would have put him, if you'd have put him in a powder puff football league, it would have been, I care about this more than anything else. But he's an older man now. He's went through a lot. He's had the experience of being, you know, the most talked about person in all of sports for moments like him, you know, and now he's in this situation where it's like, well, can I win the SEC or whatever. It's like, I think that it's hard for him to get motivated to be himself. And I don't think. I think he's. I think in a way it's probably a bummer to realize that it would be like, if, you know, okay, so I start writing because I just love writing, right? I'm a writer before I ever get anything published. I used to just sit in my bedroom and write stuff. And then now it works out. I'm a journalist, write a bunch of books. In my mind, I'm still like, the person in high school who just writes because he loves to write. But now, if all of a sudden I couldn't sell books, my mentality would say, go out in your office and write. You just love writing. But maybe it wouldn't seem the same to me. Maybe the idea of writing for nothing except myself all of a sudden wouldn't seem the way it used to be when I actually became someone who could do it or whatever. Like, you have to just love it to be good at it. But once you get rewarded for that, maybe it changes. I mean, I worry about this. Like, I worry if I actually have the same drive that I had 30 years ago or 40 years ago. I don't know. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

So you think Belichick, being on, like, a 4 and 5 UNC team, just wakes up one morning and he's like, I don't know.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Well, I don't know if.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't know if I'm enjoying this anymore. And I've done everything I could do in coaching, and maybe this is it.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Here's what I think is more like it. I think there was a time when he would have woke up in the morning, and he'd have been, we're four and five. What can I do to make us better now? Maybe he wakes up and he's like, I want some toast. You know, is the coffee ready? Like, he's not. It's not that he. He doesn't. He's not like, he's consciously being like, I don't care. It's just that it's not consuming him. Like, you know, when you're consumed by something, whether it's a job or a person or whatever, you know, they're. Everybody's had this in their life where they're just like, you know, maybe a time in your life when the first thing you thought of when you woke up was this person you were dating, and when you went to bed, you were thinking about this person, and I was just like, it's like, it wasn't.

[Bill Simmons]

It was just a. I'm like that with coffee. Okay. Yeah. When I fall asleep, I'm like, I can't wait to have coffee tomorrow morning. And then when I wake up, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna get to make coffee.

[Chuck Klosterman]

And that would be a total great mentality if you were trying to become a major coffee entrepreneur.

[Bill Simmons]

Right? Like, you would be like, who do.

[Chuck Klosterman]

I need to be? That's the person I need to be. I need to be someone who Thinks about coffee when I wake up.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chuck Klosterman]

I mean, that's because, you know, if you want to be good at something, it can't be that you think about it a lot. You need to think about it all the time, even when you don't want to. And that is the key. And that's a hard thing to sustain when you're someone who's lived and had that many experiences. He said he's had so many experiences in football. I'm sure sometimes this seems like this isn't the same. Like, this is, you know, it's just not fun to do this in the way it used to be fun.

[Bill Simmons]

I cut out a piece, we did the rewatchables, me and Van and Sean last week. We cut out a piece we ran last week on this podcast about filmmaking and creativity. And I was. We were arguing about it and we're obviously all good friends about. I was saying, like, I worry sometimes that there's too many distractions, that it's going to ultimately hurt creativity. Because I think of the way I grew up where a lot of times I read a book or wrote something just because I didn't have anything else to do. And I would be like, I got two hours here, maybe I'll try to write a column. But now if you put, I don't know, 18 year old, 19 year old me in the situation now, I'd be like, I'll go on Instagram and go check that out, or I'll go on Twitter, or I'll go on some message board, or I'll go on the Celtics Reddit to see what they're saying. And now I've just killed two hours. But I didn't do anything that actually I have something to show for it. And I do worry about that with this, with the under 25 generation. That sound like the old guy. But I think sometimes the best ideas I ever had, the best things I ever wrote, just in general came out of my brain, was just going. Because I was at a stoplight, I wasn't on my phone. I was just kind of staring at a tree and all of a sudden thinking about blank and got an idea. And I'm like, oh, that would actually be a good idea. And now I wonder if people have that in the same way because they're always moving on to something that captures their attention when they're bored. Does that make sense?

[Chuck Klosterman]

I would say the greatest detriment to American culture right now, I mean, in terms of what we're talking about, arts, entertainment and stuff like that. Is the systematic elimination of daydreaming. The people used to daydream all the time.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay, that used to be.

[Chuck Klosterman]

You had to, like, it wasn't. It wasn't like, you know, if you were. You had to go to the bank and you had to wait in line and there was nothing to do while you were waiting, so you just had to think about things and that, you know, I. This is going to make me sound weird or weirder than I am, but like, I forced myself to do this. Like, I have chunks of the day where I just lay there and don't do anything just so I can't. Just so I can just.

[Bill Simmons]

To use your brain.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Well, to just let my brain just sort of go. Just like, let's like let it. Let it, you know, think about anything without something providing stimulation back. I mean, that's, that's also like, you know, this thing you're talking about. People have talked about this since the big. Since the beginning of the advent of the printing press, that basically it's like, people will be less creative now because they can just read the Bible or whatever. And then it was like, oh, well, radio and then television, all these things. It was like, these things are going to stop us. But here is kind of what's different. Reading is like a. Like a. Like a troop, like a responsive thing. You read something and you got to kind of imagine in your mind it's an active experience. Okay. But then all these other things we move through are passive. And we have really accelerated that part of it that, like, where people are like sort of looking on their phones or whatever the case. I mean, phones are always the easy thing to use. That's what everyone uses. And there is a passivity to it because you don't have to imagine what you're consuming. It's a visual image or you don't even have to read what you're reading about because they find ways to sort of repackage it and tell it to you faster in sort of a simpler format. So. Or you.

[Bill Simmons]

Or you listen to it over reading it. You listen to an audiobook, whatever.

[Chuck Klosterman]

And I, I just, I think that the idea of sort of just sort of kind of spacing out and just kind of letting your mind go, I think that's really. But. But just totally gone. Like, my, My kids can't handle it. My kids cannot handle boredom. You know, I often think, you know, it's like. Like we've really become like a. Like a real secular society. But I think one of the benefits to when it was a more sort of religious society. Was it forced people to be bored? Like, you know, I would go to mass, sit there, and you would just have to sit there for an hour or whatever, you know. And I think that was really good. It's like really good to force people to be bored, you know. And we remove that from, you know.

[Bill Simmons]

Where we have removed it. If you take a flight and the WI fi is down and you thought, like, I'm gonna go on the WI fi, I'll watch a show or I'll do. I'll go. But now you're just stuck on this flight for four hours, you didn't bring a book, and you're like, oh, shit. And guess what? Sometimes that could be okay, especially if you're a creative person.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Well, I mean, this. This is kind of a thing, right? Raw dogging flights. Obviously you. It's a weird strange they picked the term raw dogging for this, but. So there's this idea that you go on a flight, you don't watch tv, you don't listen to anything, and you don't read. And why would this happen, right? Why would. Why would people do this by choice.

[Bill Simmons]

And it's because they force themselves to do work? Yeah.

[Chuck Klosterman]

No, I think that there's something subconscious about us that craves this like that for some, you know, that. That people are confused. I flew four hours and I didn't read anything. I didn't watch anything, I didn't listen to anything. Why do I feel good? They don't even know why. It makes no sense. They expect to come off the flight and say, like, that sucked. The TV didn't work and I didn't bring a book and I just had to sit there. And yet that's not what's happening. They're proud that they did it and.

[Bill Simmons]

Feel good about it.

[Chuck Klosterman]

So I. I mean. I mean, this is.

[Bill Simmons]

It's an achievement to be born.

[Chuck Klosterman]

In this podcast. I've supported Nico Harrison. And all of this was like, people should do nothing. It's good for him. So I guess be bored. What's going to be third?

[Bill Simmons]

You know, I talked about this on Sunday on the pod. I took the train from Boston to Stanford with my daughter.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

And we both had an iPad on and we watched this Peacock show at the same time. And that's all we did for the entire thing. We watched this show and we talked about it. And I was thinking when I was a kid, going back and forth between Connecticut and Boston. Cause my parents were divorced and I'd be on the Amtrak And I'd bring, like, a book and a notepad, right? And I read the book for some of the time. Or I'd have a newspaper, and then I'd have this. And I'd write, like, parts of short stories or fake sports columns, like, just whatever to kill the time for three hours. Those were kind of the only options. But it also, like, made my brain work in these ways. Like, I remember in college, this is. I didn't have a computer till my senior year in college when I had. I wrote a sports column every week, and I would write it longhand. I would go to a Dunkin Donuts, and I would get a giant iced coffee, and I would write out ideas for the column. And then I would start writing it in fucking cursive. I would write out the entire thing, go back into the newspaper office, and then type in the column. And that seems like that happened in the 1890s. It seems like I was a cast member on. On what was The Yellowstone Spinoff? 1893, whatever. 1888. Yeah, like that. That seems like a million years ago. But that was how. Whatever my weird process was.

[Chuck Klosterman]

You know, you will often make jokes about, like, your fingers not working. Do you misrec.

[Bill Simmons]

I do.

[Chuck Klosterman]

I'm always surprised. Like, okay, so you put that basketball book out. It's like an 800 page book about a sport. I don't know how many weeks it was on the top of the bestseller list. You were in a position where you could have written whatever you wanted for the rest of your life. You could have said, I want to do a book of poetry. They would have paid $400,000 for that. So how did you not keep doing that? You could have written a book about anything you wanted, and then you just stopped. Now, I understand some people are listening to this and they're like, well, because he moved into podcasting, and that's actually much more relevant to what was happening in the world, and he'd rather dominate this space than that. But don't you. Do you ever regret that you didn't continue writing?

[Bill Simmons]

I don't regret it, but I really miss it. And the reason I haven't wanted to do it the last seven, eight years is because I just don't feel like I could do it at a level that I'd ever be happy doing it. I always say it's like golf. It's like these people that have to play golf a few times a week to be good at golf. And if they're just playing every once in a while, they're so unhappy because they know what they should be doing, but their body can't remember what to do. I feel like with the writing, you just have to do it every day. It's the only way I could be successful at it. It's the repetition of being in the habit of doing it day after day after day that I think, for me, some people aren't like that. For me, that was what it was. And all these different career choices you make, I don't have the ability to do that anymore. So I would have to give up something pretty major to be able to do it. With that said, I have been thinking about writing a book.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Oh, really? Okay. Well, yeah, this is a difficult question, but like you said, I totally understand you saying, I don't feel like I could do it at the level to which I would be comfortable with or which I would find acceptable. What specifically do you mean by that? Like, what do you think that you're writing now would lack that would stop you from being comfortable publishing it? Because, I mean, I'm always uncomfortable when I publish things.

[Bill Simmons]

So it's like, you know, I think it's more the process, because I remember the happiest I was ever with writing was when I was doing my basketball book, which was like a suicide mission, basically, trying to do the book the way I did it with doing all the other stuff I was doing. But I was in the habit of really writing for three and a half, four hours a day, like, every day. I didn't have another choice. And I remember, like, I got to the point where I felt like I could flick a switch and just write whatever I wanted for, like, three, four hours and be like, all right, I'm gonna go to this place and I'm gonna do it. And I know it's gonna be at the level I want it to be. And I never really got back to that spot. I had moments. I remember, like, the first year at Grantland. I felt like I got back there for, like, a year with the process. I remember I came back From Boston after LeBron killed the Celtics in that game, and I wrote a column on the plane that I think it was probably one of the best things I've written. And I wrote it on the plane. I had four hours to write it. I was frantically typing away. I had to send it when I landed, and I just knew I could do it because I had had enough reps. That's the stuff. It would be so hard for me to do it now. I don't know how to do It.

[Chuck Klosterman]

But look what you just said that you hadn't done it in a while. You did it one time in a four hour window.

[Bill Simmons]

No, no, I'm saying when I did that, that was because I was writing all the time.

[Chuck Klosterman]

So.

[Bill Simmons]

So what would you do now?

[Chuck Klosterman]

What would happen if you tried that now, do you think?

[Bill Simmons]

I'd probably. I'd stare at an empty. I've tried a couple times. I'd stared at the empty document for two hours, like kind of even remembering, you know, the, the process of putting your brain into your fingers.

[Chuck Klosterman]

What book are you considering writing? This is like I'm breaking news. I feel like I.

[Bill Simmons]

No, you're not, because I'll never do it. I had an idea. I had two different ideas for a book. I'm not gonna mention em. Okay, I'll tell you offline.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Oh, okay. Okay. I mean, I'm curious. I don't mind you not telling me here, but I'm a little surprised that you said that. I thought that was. You were like, I'm done with that world.

[Bill Simmons]

No, I had a book after the basketball book that I really wanted to write and I just got too busy and I didn't do it. But I had it all sketched out and I didn't do it. I'll tell you about it after.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

But I had it. I had literally. John Walsh still mentions it to me almost anytime I talk to him because he's the one, I think the one person I told about the book. So it's a sports book and he was excited. It wasn't really a sports book.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Okay, okay.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I'll tell you after. But I think the biggest issue, the mistake I made with the basketball book was it was just too long and too hard to do. It was like three years of my life and it should have been like two books. I should have spread it out.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Why? I disagree entirely. So you're. I just could have actually became the book you imagined. And it sold incredibly well.

[Bill Simmons]

I know, but I wish I had done part one and part two of it and then spent more time on it versus like doing. Just trying to rush to meet a deadline. I still have so many things I would change about it at this point.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Well, I mean, it's tough to do a book like that, particularly like when you're. You were talking about some players who were still active. Because there's no way you can write about things in the present tense without the book in all likelihood becoming dated. Even if you're right, even if everything you say about those guys is correct. Things just change. So that is hard. Like, it would be hard for you to write a book like that and not say to yourself, well, I would change this or I would change that. I mean, it's really interesting.

[Bill Simmons]

But there's a scary moment when you're doing a book like that, and I'm sure this has happened to you with at least one of the things you wrote where at some point you're completely lost in whatever you had in your head. The book should be. And you've done a lot of the work already, but you're now in an abyss. You can't get out of it. You can't see the finish line. But you've already done all this work, and there's nobody who can help you. It's like you're the only person. In a weird way, that's probably what I miss the most about writing is when you're the only person who can solve the problem. And it has to be you, or else the thing's not going to get solved. But at the same time, it's so scary. It's all you think about. You see, to do it correctly, it has to be like, yeah, the only thing you're thinking about, you're thinking about it when you're in the shower, when you're in the car, when you're making a tuna fish sandwich. Whatever it is, it's just like, fuck, I gotta figure this out.

[Chuck Klosterman]

That's what it is. I mean, like, when you do rewatchables now, it's almost like, to use a musical analogy, it's almost like you guys are kind of like making rumors, right? Like, you're right people. You're kind of throwing ideas off each other. You're using.

[Bill Simmons]

Which I love. It's really fun to do, Using your.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Relationships to kind of create stuff. There's a producer outside through all these things. Writing is like being Prince. You write the songs, you play the songs, you produce the songs.

[Bill Simmons]

It's just you, like Billy Corrigan making Siamese Dream. You're like, I'm just gonna redo all the guitar and drum and bass and everything.

[Chuck Klosterman]

If you were Smashing Pumpkins and Rewatchables, that'd be like. You would go back and, like, you would, like. You do voiceovers for, like, things, right? He says, like, different voice for Sean.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't like how he said this to get an actor. Yeah. So there's. There's stuff I do miss about it. Now that my kids are older, there might be more time, but I'd have to Give up something. I don't think I could do it at the level I'd want to do it. I admire the way that you've stuck with. You have two books that came out and how many. What's the span of time between the two books?

[Chuck Klosterman]

Well, next year I have a book in January and a book in the fall. And then weirdly, they're rereleasing. This is talking about weirdness. They're re releasing Fargo Rock City in the summer for the 25th anniversary.

[Bill Simmons]

Wow.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Strange, because I haven't looked at that book since I wrote it, you know, and I'm kind of. It's weird to think about it, but that's, you know.

[Bill Simmons]

Jesus. Yeah, but you'll. And you probably. You finished too. Now you're thinking about what the next one is.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm really interested. The book I'd want to read from you, or maybe it's just a piece, is what's. Are Bands Just Dead and why did bands have a shelf life in music and rock? What was. How did we have like when I was a kid and we had that whole Beatles era of rock bands, but then we had all this other, like the bands that became classic rock and then all these other bands like Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles. We just had bands and the unity of a band and people getting together and it's just how you made music. And why does that seem like it's not gone? But how did that just. How did that era just end?

[Chuck Klosterman]

Okay, it's like, you know, like Tame Impala right now, I could say is like a band or like the War on Drugs or a lot of these bands. It's like they, they. They're still like, you know, they're. They're coming up with new ideas and like people are really into geese right now isn't. You know, so it still happens, but it's no longer the center of the culture. And that's mainly what we're talking about, is that it's receded from that part of it has to do with, you know, the formal limitations of rock music. I mean, rock music, for whatever reason, sort of made this decision that a band is going to be one or two guitars, a bass player, a drummer, possibly someone on keyboards, possibly someone doing another instrument that will sort of, you know, change the texture. And then vocals and the songs are all going to be between three minutes to five minutes, unless you want to go further. You become prog rock or you can become extra short and you kind of become like a novelty, like Stormtroopers of death or whatever. So there's all these sort of formal limitations to a high degree. I think we used them all up. I mean, I know that seems insane to say, but there have been. There were so many bands from 1964 to, you know, 2004 or whatever. Let's just use that. Like, like the, the sheer number of music that was produced during that period sort of consumed a lot of the potential ideas you can create for a three or four minute song. And then there was the fact that this, all this music was also accessible initially physically, but then through the Internet, digitally. And therefore everything has become to some degree retro. Like everything that comes out now to some level is informed by music that existed in the past in a pretty direct way and not the music that had just come before it. And not just like the classic records that everybody sort of steals from. The idea that there is. It is almost impossible to imagine that the most interesting thing that happens in popular music would come from a band playing rock music at this point. It just doesn't, it just doesn't seem like that's still available. But, but you know, and the culture changed too. The interest in rock culture changed and disappeared. You know, that was a big part of it. You know, going to, going to a rock show had a lot before and after the band played. That was a meaningful time and that's kind of gone.

[Bill Simmons]

Nathan Hubbard has a theory that all of the chord combos and beat combos have basically been done in all of these different rock songs. That everything becomes derivative of something that already exists. Which is part of the issue now. Like, basically what you said about all these different combos have already happened with the four people in a band that.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Would be in a band. I think a lot of people said that happened in the 1980s, right? I mean, seriously, because it was like, you know, so much of what is considered rock music is still completely traceable back to 1955 to 1967. I mean, like, so yeah, there is so much of like what we view as like what is supposed to be in rock and what makes something heavy, you know, what makes something, you know, sort of, you know, psychedelic or whatever. Like that's all been established. So I think it's like it's not that it just happened now, it's just that these things occur and they're lagging indicators. Like really like rock music achieved full self awareness of itself in the early 90s. That was really the end of sort of the idea of formal invention in an ideological way for rock music. But nobody realized that for 15 more years, like we went through a long iteration of like all the New York bands like the Strokes and stuff and the White Stripes and all these things. Radiohead is in this. You know, it did not in any way feel like. It felt like it was a vibrant rock form. Like it felt like it was still something that was, you know, formally inventive and extremely interesting. And yet in a lot of ways, soon as the rock artists, particularly like the grunge era artists, became self aware about what they were doing and what it meant to be a rock star. And sort of what this sort of said about your fan base and all this stuff. I mean, all arch ends when it reaches self awareness. And that's what happened to that.

[Bill Simmons]

I think 02 to 06 or 07 was a really great time. And I felt that way as it was happening.

[Chuck Klosterman]

I think there are.

[Bill Simmons]

And that was the last really exciting time for music.

[Chuck Klosterman]

There are many people who I think very justifiably argue that a lot of the music that's being produced in rock, you know, right now and in metal.

[Bill Simmons]

It'S like it's back, it's excellent.

[Chuck Klosterman]

It's just that it has, it's, it's. It's sort of now like being like a connoisseur of these things. It's sort of like saying it's like being like, I know the most about jazz in 1985 or whatever. And people are like, well, what do you mean? Like, you know, it's like, you know, it's like, well, there's still jazz artists happening and these are still. They're doing it, it's it. So, you know, like, especially when you and I talk about these things, we always talk about them in a macro way way. Like everything we talk about is sort of in the widest possible lens, like what does it mean to the world in general? But of course, if we would really drill down to the specifics of this in the same way that like you do with the NBA, like, like when you low talk and stuff like that, the things you're talking about aren't really applicable to most people who follow basketball. Right. I mean, even when you talk about like, like, you know, getting like a, you know, league pass or whatever, I think for most people, the idea of getting league pass, even though it's not that expensive, is kind of insane since 90% of the time when I want to watch an NBA game, the guys aren't playing anyways. Like the, the number of times that I watch a basketball game, I want to see and both teams are operating in full strength. Happens so rarely. It's almost like.

[Bill Simmons]

I got a text.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Eight people that's like, oh, I'm watching the warriors and the Nuggets, and everyone's playing.

[Bill Simmons]

Be an automatic text. Yeah, no, they need to tell you, like, hey, three days from now, the Nuggets will be playing all their guys. Get ready on Wednesday night.

[Chuck Klosterman]

I'm in a fantasy league with. I got 15 guys on the roster. 10 of them are technically on the injured list. Like, you know, to some degree. It's just.

[Bill Simmons]

It's been. It's been ruined. The. I was talking to my son. My son really likes the Smash and Post, and my son really is on the cutting edge of all the modern music. He knows everybody has all the hip hop, all the. Basically all that world. That's his music. But there are some older bands that he likes, and he really likes Smashing Pumpkins, mainly because I was probably playing them in the car. But I was thinking, so I'm in high school and there's a certain kind of music I like, but there's only, like, between 10 to 15 years of it to go back and get, like, when we're buying, like, CDs and compact discs, calling up CDs in 1985, like, oh, gotta get more music. I'll get the best of sticks, you know, and there just weren't a lot of. Weren't a lot of albums, right? And there's only like maybe 12 years total of all the music I like, or 13, whatever it is. And now I look at him in 2025, and there's 60 years of music for him to go through. Not to mention, he also likes jazz and different things. And I almost wonder if we even need new music the way we did. There's so much old music, like, you could kind of live on that it's almost like having leftovers in your fridge forever. You just go back in any decade and find awesome stuff, you know, I.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Would guess, I mean, every person is different, but in general, the idea of the time something is released matters much less. I get the sense from younger consumer to younger consumers, like, something being released now, something be released eight years ago, something being really released 38 years ago. They're all accessing it in the exact same way, right? There's no. Because there's no. There's no physical music culture as much now. It's not like. It's not like you're. You were saying you would have been into like, the Cure or whatever. It's like you would have hung out with, like, goth people, and there would have been this whole kind of world.

[Bill Simmons]

That'S not really, I like the Cure. I did not hang out with Goth.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Well, but I'm just using it as an example. I mean, you were into sticks, I guess you'd be hanging out with a lot of people, like, who loved AOR music or whatever. And you talk about Foreigner, and you'd talk about Boston, and, you know, that's like. You'd have this kind of, like, kind of world now. That's not really how it is. It's like, sort of all music is equally accessible. And, you know, what you were describing kind of sort of like, there wasn't that many albums. Like, I remember sort of the opposite experience where there was a limited amount of money. So it's like, you know, I for. I've said this a million times, but it's true. Like, for a very long time, I had four cassettes, and then I got a fifth cassette. This is like, eighth, ninth grade. And it was absolutely impossible for me as a kid who was completely into metal to be like, I'm gonna go back and buy the old Aerosmith records. Like, I couldn't have done that. There was no way or particular I want to buy some unpopular Alice Cooper records just to understand that didn't happen. Right.

[Bill Simmons]

That's good. By the way. I was in the same boat. I probably only had, like, 30 CDs, but it was a question of, like.

[Chuck Klosterman]

There was a norm.

[Bill Simmons]

There weren't that many choices.

[Chuck Klosterman]

It wasn't strange to be somebody with 30 CDs. It was strange to be somebody with hundreds.

[Bill Simmons]

Remember how important the greatest hits albums were? Yes, because you were like, oh, I get the most possible versions or most possible songs from this person. I kind of like. I remember the Bad Company greatest hits. Like, this is great.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, the people so glad they put on I Never had a Bad Company album.

[Chuck Klosterman]

I used to buy a lot of live albums because that was another one. Cops encapsulate the last three or four records you just mentioned, you know, like, Bad Company. Now it's good. So, like, you know, so Bad Company's going in the rock hall. Are you. Are you aware of this?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I saw that. I was surprised they weren't in there already.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Okay, so. Well, I guess I have another. This might be another strange take. Okay, so. Okay, so. So, I mean, I think I probably. I'm guessing like Bad Company more than most people who are listening to this podcast and all. I mean, I've owned some Bad Company Records. Okay, yeah. You know, like, you know, Pat Benatar, I think is in the Rock hall now, and Foreigner, pretty good four year run. Foreigner, Pat Benatar, you know, like. And you know, I definitely probably like Foreigner more than the average person in 2025. You know, Ozzy Osbourne got in as a solo artist and Stevie Nicks got in as a solo artist, you know, so all these are. So I'm not criticizing these bands, but I'll say this. So the Rock hall never actually described like, what bands are included or like what's the reason a band gets in. But I did feel like there was an unspoken understanding of what bands are not going to get in. And to me it seems like it's artists like that, like people who were commercially successful, relatively formalist, straightforward bands, bands that got a lot of attention in the world since people bought their records, people went to their shows. But it doesn't seem like that's like a Hall of Fame career to me. I mean, if you're going to have a Hall of Fame about rock music or pop music, however you want to see it, it seems like you should be able to say something about the artist more than it was like, oh, there was good records, a lot of people liked him. Like, it doesn't seem like Foreigner. I just don't understand what, what is the reason Foreigner is in the Rock and Roll hall of Fame? And here again, I say this as someone who likes Foreigner. Like, I like, I like those.

[Bill Simmons]

By the way, this, this happened in the Basketball hall of Fame. Same thing, the bar of who was a Hall of Famer. Because I think, and I think it's the same reason for the Rock and Roll hall of Fame. They want to induct like six, seven, eight people a year, right? And at some point they don't have the six, seven or eight anymore. So all of a sudden. And listen, Michael Cooper killed the Celtics in 1987 in Game 4. He was the best defender at that position of the 80s. I never thought he was a Hall of Famer, but now he's getting in. People like that are getting in versus like, like the concept of the hall of Fame is like Tim Duncan's a Hall of Famer. You know, the Allen Iverson is a Hall of Famer. Like the best 50, 60, 70 people in a sport are hall of Famers. Then we could argue about everybody else.

[Chuck Klosterman]

To me, a Hall of Fame is more meaningful if there are years when no one gets in.

[Bill Simmons]

Totally.

[Chuck Klosterman]

But like, it's just odd to me. And now with The Rock Hall. Anybody who gets in gets to vote. Right? So, like, you know, like. So like all the guys in Def Leppard are voting now. And like all the guys and all these in that. And that's definitely going to, you know, expand this to bands that would, in the past we would not have perceived as being sort of like kind of, you know, canonical groups. I mean, that's. I guess that's what I like. I. I kind of feel like if you're in the Rock hall, you should either be a canonical act or you should be an act who did something that mainstreamed or invented an idea that kind of went everywhere, you know, or that during the time you existed, you were kind of the most important act that was happening. And I. It doesn't seem like that's how it is now. Now, now the Rock hall, kind of like the Basketball hall of Fame has become a situation we're not getting in is more meaningful than getting it. Like, if you're. If you're a band who's not in the rock all, like Motley Crue or whatever, is not in the rock all. And they'd be like, why are we not in if Def Leppard is in? Or if, you know, if, like, what, what, what, what separates this? It's like, why the replacement?

[Bill Simmons]

So basically, if you've had success for seven, eight years, you're now in the Rock and Roll hall of Fame.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Well, but yes and no. I mean, I. Boston's not in the hall of Fame. If you're going to pick one of these faceless.

[Bill Simmons]

Boston's not in the hall of fame.

[Chuck Klosterman]

I'm 99% sure.

[Bill Simmons]

Wow.

[Chuck Klosterman]

And to me, like, they're so Bad.

[Bill Simmons]

Company got in before Boston. What? Bad company got in before Boston?

[Chuck Klosterman]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

It's kind of shocking.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Well, I mean, I think that there's some people who say Boston really has like one and a half records. But I mean, there's more hits.

[Bill Simmons]

I would say three that are great.

[Chuck Klosterman]

I mean, plus, the thing with Boston is that record was a bedroom album. It was produced by one guy, by himself, in his house. He did it himself. It is the best, best sounding home recorded record in the. Even now music that to me put that in a Hall of fame or a museum, you know, like, the achievement of. Of the creative process of making that first Boston record would justify its induction. I don't like, you know, it's like, obviously like, I like Ozzy Osbourne, I like Stevie Nicks, I love Black Sabbath, I love Fleetwood Mac. They get in, in Black Sabbath. And Fleetwood Mac, I don't really understand why they're being. Or why they were inducted as solo artists. Can you really look at their solo career and say, like, this is a. This. Like it's important that these records happened, you know?

[Bill Simmons]

Well, Stevie Nicks, I think. I mean, she did have a couple albums and a couple hits, but she's. The Fleetwood Mac piece of her career is. I think she already got in for the Fleetwood Mac.

[Chuck Klosterman]

He had a good solo career. Ozzy had a great solo career. Crazy Train, flying high again. There's a bunch of the songs that are great, but it just to put it in a hall of Fame now seems like it's just.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, I have the answer for this one. It's literally because they want to have the seven, eight new members every year so they can have the ceremony and the telecast. And they're never going to be like, hey, we've run out. Hopefully we'll have some more down the road. Like they're just going to put in.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Seven more ceremony like in the bar place now. So, yeah, have to induct Rush and we have to induct Kiss or whatever, because they'll fill the place. But I mean, Rush definitely should be in the Rock hall, but, you know, it's. I don't know. But that just. Bet you mentioning Bad Company made me think of that again now. So now I've. So now I'm pro Nico Harrison. Pro boredom. Anti Bad Company. I guess this is the aggregate of this conversation.

[Bill Simmons]

And pro. You think Bonds and Clements should be in the Baseball hall of Fame? Yes, I've been. I've been on the record for 20 years saying, I don't know what we're doing, but there's some veterans committee now where they might be able to get in. And I don't even think people care anymore because it's been so long.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Although in a sense, I mean, like, over time, it helped Pete Rose not to get in the hall of Fame. Like, it helped because it's like every year the hall of Fame induction happened, people talked about Pete Rose every single year. If he would have just got in. People have been like, oh, questionable decision with this gambling situation. And then it would have been he'd just be a guy in there there. So, like, sometimes not getting in is to your benefit.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, we never got to talk about the Chair Company and Pluribus 2 shows that you love. So if you want to do.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Can I just say you want to.

[Bill Simmons]

Do 60 seconds on that?

[Chuck Klosterman]

And then we'll say a brief thing about The Chair Company and Pluribus, which I like, I felt television has been real down for the last six or so months and these two shows are great and the reason they are is because they're kind of doing something that, that kind of had been lost for a while. The Chair Company is the rare example of a show outside of like the Nathan Fielder stuff where I literally have no idea what's going to happen in these episodes with even, you know, like it is really surprising to me when I watch a television show and I don't kind of see what like where they're going or what's going to happen or, or even if I don't know the twist, I see a twist on the horizon. This show is not like that, like I, I, I do not know scene to scene what's going to happen. And the thing about Pluribus and I've only seen two episodes of this, but they're great. What is interesting about this show is that it seems like it clearly must be about something and yet that is a debatable concept. Seems like it's about AI, but maybe not. I mean some people, I think who see it as like a statement against Wokeism. I think there's some people who think actually it's like a pro socialist message. Like, you know, like there's a whole like this show because Vince Gilligan does things in an apolitical way. People assume there must be a secret political meeting in there and they can just kind of eject anything. And he's done a brilliant job of making that possible. Plus he's one of the last guys who at least cares like what the TV show looks like on your screen. Like he's not just like, I'm gonna show like what would be an interesting way to show a woman driving as opposed to I'm just gonna have a shot of a car for two seconds. So we know she got from point A to point B. It's like he's trying, like he is, you know, he's trying ideas, you know.

[Bill Simmons]

Two good ones. They're both on my list. As is the Scorsese doc. As is.

[Chuck Klosterman]

You will really like that.

[Bill Simmons]

So this and I haven't seen the Netflix the Garfield assassination show yet, but I've heard they kind of stealth released it. The Game of Thrones guys are eps on it and Tom from Succession is in it. There's some really good actors in it and supposedly it's great. Garfield, it's a four episode drama. I think it's a little bit funny too about the Assassination of James Garfield.

[Chuck Klosterman]

I didn't even know this was happening.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, they did the weirdest thing. They didn't publicize it at all. And I think they want it to be word of mouth. But I already have a couple people in my life who were like, this is fucking incredible. And I wonder, could this lead to some sort of Ryan Murphy type situation, but on a high end caliber of like taking historical things and just like four episode whatever. Because I'm all in. If that's how we can learn about American history, I would be excited.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Like a real like tabloid version of Squeaky from Trying to Kill for. Right.

[Bill Simmons]

But this is like high end. Well done.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Yeah, that could be really good, you know.

[Bill Simmons]

Right, so we'll see if that goes. Chuck Klosterman, Plug, plug some pre orders for your books. Oh, yeah. Or please plug one book.

[Chuck Klosterman]

My football book is coming out in January. It's very difficult to sell books now. So I appreciate you having me on here and allowing me to say this and I will, I'll come back. I'll actually come to LA in January. We can talk about. You have the book?

[Bill Simmons]

I have the book.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Okay, good, good.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay, good cover. Haven't read it. It's on my holiday list. I will read it before we do the podcast.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Take your time.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I just went through the fricking gauntlet of NFL and NBA starting at the same time. Well, yeah, so I always try to.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Just survive October, you know, it's hard to find the time to do. It's like what Jim Croce says. It's like you don't understand the things you want to do until there's no time to do them, you know?

[Bill Simmons]

Jim Croce, one of my first favorite musical artists.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Jim Croce songs I was walking in the rain Walking the dog the other day listening to his music. It's like those songs at times are too emotional to be available to me in the day. Like I don't want to think about some of these things that like, you know, and like they're real memorable and everything's a visual picture. And like some of them, like, you know, Rapid Roy or whatever are just kind of fun. But there's a lot of songs that are like there. This resonates deeply with, you know, too much, too much emotion.

[Bill Simmons]

Chuck Klosterman, a pleasure as always. I'll see you in January.

[Chuck Klosterman]

You got it.

[Bill Simmons]

Thank you. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Chuck. Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo, as always. I'm going to be back on this feed on Thursday. And don't forget about the new rewatchables that went up Snake Eyes. Don't forget about the mailbag. Bspodcast33mail.com if you want to send a question for a future Mailbag segment, I will see you on Thursday. Thursday go patriots must be 21 plus on president select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 + on President D.C. kentucky or Wyoming. Get a problem called 100 Gambler. Visit rg-help.com, call 888-797-777 or visit ccpg.orgchattinconenetic or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland, Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-550 for 24. 7 support in Massachusetts or call 877-8-HOPE NY or text Hopeny in New York.