Transcript
Colin Cowherd (0:00)
The 2025 NCAA March Madness Men's Tournament is back and this time it is bringing all the feels. The biggest event in college sports is here with games happening all day long and you don't want to miss a second of the heart pumping action. Catch all the clutch shots, big time plays, upsets, Cinderellas, Blue Bloods and more. Tune in to the NCAA Men's Division 1 Basketball Championship March 18 through April 7 on TBS, CBS, TNT, TruTV and.
Doug Gottlieb (0:28)
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American Express Representative (0:31)
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Doug Gottlieb (2:38)
Now let's get this party started. You're listening to Fox Sports Radio. What up? Welcome in. This is the Herd. Wherever you may be and however you may be making this part of your day, thanks so much. I'm Doug Gottlieb in for Colin Cowherd. And on the first day of the NCAA tournament, I want to talk sports with you from Poway to Escondido, from Tijuana to Sherman Oaks for the next couple of hours. If you know, you know. By the way, the Blue Jays are putting on the Cardinals as Creighton is up 47, 27 with a minute 48 to go. Wow. Wow. Omaha. That's where Creighton is, by the way. You guys know what Creighton is in Omaha? Crayton's in Omaha. Anyway, my dad coached a Creighton long, long, long, long, long time ago. We got a lot to get to this hour. We'll keep you updated on all the scores. Purdue and High Point, they're in a tight one as Purdue was up 18 to 14. 11 minutes to go. Anyway, we'll keep updated on scores. You'll look at your brackets. If you pricked Louisville, you're probably in not in great shape. So that tournament is going on. You know, there are certain things where once you get to. I think once you get to 40, you are who you are right now. There are a lot of people in my life are like, man, you're different now than you were a year ago before you got this college head coaching job. Yeah, maybe. I'm definitely busier. My life in Green Bay is way easier. You know, it was two hours to get here, 22 to the 405 today. It's four minutes to work in Green Bay. So I got more time to be more productive. But I, I just kind of think like, okay, so who am I? I'm not great with time. I think everybody knows that. Okay, I am a really good communicator. Probably over communicate, especially via text. I. I generally am a pretty thoughtful person. It doesn't. I don't. Doesn't take extra things to do the extra things. You know, I'm. I completely disagree and always have with Colin. I wear my hat backwards. Always have, probably always will. That's who I am. Right. Well, I like comfortable sweats, comfortable T shirts. I don't overdress, I don't underdress. I just dress. I know what I like to eat. I mean, really, I like to eat just about anything. I don't eat pasta because I stay for the most part, because I stay away from the carbs and I don't eat Indian food. Because I just don't like it. Right? Stop trying to convince me that. No, no, no, no. This chutney is. I don't like curry. That's just Steph Curry. Like Seth Curry impressed by. But like, no one has a Seth Curry fan. Actual curry. No, not so much. Once you're 40, like you kind of are who you are and you surround yourself with people who they don't have to like every part about you, but they accept you for who you are. Aaron Rodgers is 40, is he not? Okay, so he still has not decided or publicly announced if he's playing next year. And with that, not only has he not decided or announced if he's playing next year, but the thought is that the one team he can still go start and it's a playoff caliber team that just added an absolute stud at wide receiver is the Pittsburgh Steelers. There's an expression that I think most of us know and we use and it probably gets overused, which is that tracks. That tracks. And that tracks generally means like, yeah, I got it. That's kind of par for the course, right? That's going to happen. I get it. Yep, that's him. That's who he is. He's 40. We got it. Right? Can we all come to the, the, the conclusion there? Aaron Rodgers is going to make a decision about playing football next year over this weekend. I, again, I don't think it will hijack the NCAA tournament and I don't necessarily think he's going to do it because it hijacks the NCAA tournament. I just think he's going to do it and it will partially hijack the NCAA tournament because that tracks. Am I making sense? A surprise to absolutely, positively no one. Cam Hayward is kind of the spokesperson for the, the, the current Steelers. Right. He actually has his own podcast. I thought he put it best when he said this the other day. I ain't doing that Darkness retreat. I don't mean any of that crap. Like either you want to be a Pittsburgh Steeler or you don't. That's, that's simple. That's the pitch. If you want me to recruit. That's the recruiting pitch, you know, Pittsburgh Steelers. If you want to be part of it, so be it. If you don't, no, no skin on my back. That's perfect, right? Is there, Is it that much? It's not like, do you know the culture of Pittsburgh? No, you don't. But Aaron Rodgers has been a professional football player for almost as much time as he has not been a professional football player. Am I making sense? Right. Like, he came out of Cal, so he was what, 21, 22 years old, right. So it's about even basically his entire adult life. This is what he's done. So it's not really, there's not really a lot of suspense. Is there a newness to playing for a new organization? Sure. Do I, do I, I, I think, I don't know. And Mike Tomlin hasn't said. My guess is, hey, dude, if you're going to come play for us, you're not going to do McAfee's pot. We know McAfee is a Pittsburgh guy. Okay? You can appear on it, but you're not doing the weekly thing. Like we want to win football games and the rest will take care of itself. And look, there's a good part of me that feels empathetic towards Aaron Rodgers and the report that came out yesterday, which is that apparently TV isn't interested in him. TV isn't interested in him, and I think they're not interested in him for reasons that I understand completely. Like when I call basketball games, I know it's about the basketball game. It's not a radio show. I've obviously had to learn the cadence and not to over talk and that takes time and that, the pace of things and getting in and getting out. And look, there's occasionally like, we'll have, we, we had fun moments when I would do games. But the issue that corporate America has is they want safe. They want safe. When I was at cbs, the now president of cbs, Dave Burson, who's a friend and I think good leader was there and he said, hey, our, our only issue with you is we don't know what you're going to say next. And I said, dave, isn't that like a good thing? Like, like you want to know, like, what is he gonna say next? He's like, yeah, it's like the, at the profile of games and studio stuff, you're going to be calling like, Barclay can get away with that. You can't. You can. And again, you look and Matt Ryan is in studio for CBS, right? And I think Matt Ryan's really good. J.J. watt is in studio for CBS. Tom Brady is calling game for, for Fox. Like Tom Brady. He's not, he hasn't figured it out yet. He will at some point. He'll be the real Tom Brady on air because I'm sure the real Tom Brady, he wouldn't have that many friends. And I mean, Edelman is an awesome dude, right? Once he gets away from being corporate Tom Brady, like he'll be really, really good. But the point is that the reason they like Tom Brady is not just all of the rings. It's that Tom Brady's safe. And I'm empathetic towards Aaron Rodgers because he has all these different thoughts, he wonders about things and he's been open about it and there's been a docu series about him writing a book written about it and every. And he's on McAfee and he expounds on it. My guess is if he's going to call a game, he'd actually just call a game. But tv, like man, I don't take that risk. So I'm empathetic towards. Here's a super bright guy, a multi time mvp, a first ballot hall of Famer, a guy who checks, has checked every box. There is not a box that Aaron Rodgers doesn't check as a player. Intelligence, athleticism, accuracy, arm strength, like clutch in key moments, toughness, all of those things he checks. And yet there's like one good team in the NFL that wants him and TV doesn't want him. So I'm empathetic towards it. But dude, pooper, get off the pot. Right? Right. I mean, you got Cam Hayward sitting there going like, if the Pittsburgh Steelers just had a quarterback, they haven't had a quarterback since Ben Roethlisberger's before his last two years, right? Remember when Antonio Brown like no showed at practice, right? That was the last time that Ben Roethlisberger was a relatively decent quarterback. After that it was like they haven't had an elite level quarterback. If you just put an elite, a high quality quarterback on the team last year, they might go to the Super Bowl. And came Hayward's like, hey dude, I'm not doing any of that stuff. Do you want to play for us or not? So the idea that Aaron Rodgers will hijack the. Will hijack the NCAA tournament is if I had to give a percentage, 95%. Right? There's like a 95% likelihood that Aaron Rodgers will make some sort of tweet or announcement or Schefter will put it out there or Glazer will put it out there probably in the next two days. It feels like 95% possibility because that's who he is. And once you're 40 years old, like it's kind of who you are, right? Lean into who you are, hire people or be around people who can either fill those voids or accept what you don't do. Because this whole idea of I'm gonna remake myself? Come on, man, all those guys remake themselves. Go to Turkey, get a hair transplant, buy a Porsche, change jobs. They're still the same guy at their core.
