Colin Cowherd (42:37)
And that's what a coach is for. And I can hear a lot of Philly fans, hey, it's kind of funny. Coaches aren't stand up comedians. Whenever I hear that, well, it's kind of funny. I don't want my quarterback to be funny. I don't want my head coach to be funny. It's okay if a wide receiver, you know, occasionally has a sense of humor and is funny. I don't want my coach to be that or my GM to be that. That Dave Chappelle is paid to Be funny. And he is. You know that. That's funny. I don't want my coach to be. So here's my hottest take on this. This is my hot take. That if Philadelphia loses in the first round or the second round, Bill Belichick can get out of his contract in July. This July. That's my hot take. And Belichick already got his kid at Carolina to be the D.C. why did Carolina allow Belichick to have that? Because Belichick knows there's two jobs that are fascinating, Philly and Buffalo. If Sean McDermott gets bounced early, that job will be looking for a coach. If Nick Sirianni gets bounced early, you think it's a hot take. Kevin Durant went from his rival to the Golden State Warriors. I, I thought the chances of that happened were zero. Stuff happens now. Z Zach her, the former Eagle, is downplaying the Washington story and incident. Nick and I had a great relationship when I was there. We still have a great relationship. And I think it's definitely been blown away out of proportion. We spoke, we're good. There's no ill feelings on my part. And then I don't think there's any ill feelings on his part. It's just something in the heat of the moment probably got blown out of proportion. It may be misunderstanding, but at the end of the day, him and I are fine. Everyone knows how I feel about that place in that building, but at the same time, I love being here. All right, I'm just saying. Jeffrey Lurie, Howie Roseman ownership general manager they've moved off. Chip Kelly had a winning record. Doug Peterson won a Super Bowl. Andy Reid was a legend. They've moved off really good coaches. So, you know anybody that's watching this show that runs a business? I have a small business. If you run a business, you know, you're constantly, perpetually tweaking and it's kind of the fun of business. And so when I see problems. Remember the NFL had a catch problem a few years ago. Like the catch rule was confusing. What's a catch? What's not a catch? And Roger Goodell came on this show and I said, and I said, respectfully, sir, I can't tell what's a catch. And he acknowledged it's a problem and they fixed it. I mean, it was like a decade long issue. Is that a catch? DEZ Bryant, packers, that's a catch. No, it's not. It like changed outcomes. And so Major League Baseball had a 10 year, 15 year issue. Ratings going down in attendance. Rob Manfred made the Purists angry pitch clock. It worked. Ratings are up, the game's faster. I watch more baseball. The NBA ratings have been in decline and now they're bragging about. Look at our ratings on Christmas. Listen, Steph and LeBron get ratings. And the NFL games were in the afternoon, not the night, so they went unopposed. But when I look at tweaking, what does the NBA have that is really, really good? They got three or four things playing to their advantage. Number one, for the first time, I can remember the three most iconic northeast basketball franchises. Knicks, Sixers, Celtics, all excellent. That's something that's like having, you know, the Red Sox, Yankees and Braves being great in the eastern time zone. It matters. Those are iconic franchises. So the Sixers have stars, they're good. The Knicks are fun to watch and the Celtics are great. And remember, 80% of this country's population is like Denver East. It matters. Those are big media markets. So that's it's got its going for it. The other thing it's got going for it. Steph and LeBron are still remarkable players, highly productive. The other thing it's got going for it is these international players are unbelievable. Now they don't want to be faces of the league, but the skill level in this league has never been Greater. Wemby is 7 foot 4. He's crossing guys up on the dribble and hitting threes. It's in. St. Jokic is the best passer on the Nuggets. He's a seven footer. So the skill level, the assets are fantastic. The players don't get in trouble. I hate the load management crap, but they don't get in trouble. You know, NBA guys, they like to, you know, they like to score points, they like to hang out, they do their social media. They're not getting in trouble. Some of them are different personalities, like KD, but KD's still great. LeBron's still really good. Steph's good. The Sixers, the Knicks and the Celtics are excellent. And the skill level is through the roof. I just think it has to. I think there's a couple of things here. A couple of things long term may not be fixable. I don't like AAU basketball. I think the international European system is much better. The players come out with more skill. They come out more focused and mature and they play fewer games. AU basketball is a money grab. It's gross. Players come out, they've been coddled. They played too many games. They don't care about competition. I think AAU basketball, Steve Kerr talked about this. It's not good. Our system needs to be tweaked. I'm not sure if you can. But the things you can tweak too many three pointers, make it a deeper shot, have the three pointer go into the bench. I like three pointers. It needs to be part of the game, not 90 a night. The other thing that we have to be honest about is David Stern, the late commissioner, the late great David Stern used to tell people this privately all the time. And Adam Silver would tell you privately, when you compete against football, college or pro, you're not going to get big ratings. The NBA has always lived off its playoffs. You weren't watching unless you lived in Chicago. You weren't watching Toronto play the Bulls in the regular season either. You weren't. The iconic moments are against the Cavs in the playoffs and the Knicks in the playoffs and the Utah Jazz and Charles Barkley and the Sonics. That's the iconic moment. So regular season ratings, when you're going up against the beast known as the NFL and the increasing popularity of the 12 team college football Playoff, you're not going to get ratings then. I mean, teams don't even have their defensive rotations and their rosters set in December and early January. It's always been a trading deadline on league. Nobody's beaten the NFL. In fact, here's a this is true. Netflix even realizes that they lose a big chunk of their viewers during football season. So they don't debut their best stuff in the football season. Ask yourself, when do you watch Netflix the most? When football season ends from about February 15th until Labor Day. That's when people are watching their Netflix. So even the streaming services understand what football does. It craters everything else not called NFL football. That's just the reality. That's why the NBA had good Christmas ratings. A LeBron, Steph B. Philly, New York, Boston are iconic mark markets on the Northeast. The quality was good, the games were close and the NFL didn't play at night. Chiefs, Ravens played in the day. That helps. But I think some of the problems like baseball are very solvable very quickly. The three point shot. I also, I'm a big believer in this. I would bring back the hand check. I want physicality. I like physicality. I think physicality is at the core of hockey. I think physicality is at the core of football, college and pro. And I think the NBA, it's too easy, it's too finesse. I love intense playoff basketball. Butt to the basket, guys. Get physical. The more physical players are, the more intense they get. And there's kind of a passive, a passive finesse nature to three point shots. You're way out here. I shoot, I go down the other end of the floor. I want bodies colliding, I want physicality around the basket. That's why you get that in the playoffs. Sometimes you come down the floor, you need a basket, you don't need a three, you need a basket because the scores go down. Every basket circumstantially is more important. So it's going to be fine. And I think, I think there's things it's got going for it. Stefan LeBron, still great. Sixers, Knicks, Celtics, outstanding. The skill level from Europe over is unbelievable. We got a domestic issue. We don't have a skill issue. Our domestic product, our domestic AU is just not good enough. All right, Blazing five, top of the hour. You know, generally Blazing five, you said something a couple weeks ago and it's stung. I left the show, I was injured and you said, you know, you pick a lot of the big games, a lot of the TV games, and I thought about that going home and I there used to be a time in my life that I would bet the corner TV game, I would bet the ugly game, and I've gotten away from it. Boy, do I love a stinker in Blazing five.
