Pardon My Take - Coach Jim Calhoun, Grit Week 2021 & Mt Rushmore Of Songs To Listen To While Driving

Episode Date: August 16, 2021

Grit Week 2021 is here. We’re about to hit the road through the rust belt but first want to talk some preseason football and our lacrosse team being the best ever (00:03:13 - 00:19:15). Who’s back of the week (00:19:15 - 00:32:46). Coach Jim Calhoun joins the show to talk about Grit, his coaching style, old school Big East basketball, Calhoun vs the media and lots more (00:32:46 - 01:37:06). Mt Rushmore of songs to listen to while driving and Monday Reading Billy’s Mintz ExperimentYou can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/PardonMyTake

Hey, pardon my take listeners, you can find every episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. On today's part of my take, Grit Week 2021 is finally here. We're hitting the road. We have an incredible interview with Jim Calhoun to start the week off. We actually went up to Connecticut to interview him on Thursday. We're going to be on the road, we're going to be traveling around old school style in

the grittiest parts of the country, kind of a throwback to our first Grit Week, second Grit Week as well. We also have pre-season football, Who's Back of the Week, a Monday reading from Billy, and the Mount Rushmore of Road Trip Songs. Is that correct? Yes, Road Trip Songs, and we're doing it all sponsored by Coors Light, Coors Light sponsoring all of Grit Week. Coors Light is the best beer that has ever been created.

That's a fact. What you also don't know is Coors Light is the official beer of slowing down summer. Summer always feels like the shortest season, only a few weeks left, but we need to make the most of it. We all just need to chill as the beer that's made to chill, we want to save her every second of summer, rediscover and enjoy what makes summer awesome. You crack open that Coors Light, you soak in the moment, you feel, you feel alive in the moment during summer, Coors Light also is literally made to chill.

It's cold-loggered, cold-filtered, cold-package. It is literally made to chill. It's as crisp and refreshing as the Colorado Rockies. Perfect for a moment to unwind this summer, a little Colorado Kool-Aid. So crack open a Coors Light, enjoy those last few days of summer. We know football is coming up, but soak in the summer. Coors Light is the best beer ever. It's the official beer of slowing down summer because it's the beer that's made to chill.

We want you to savor every second of summer, get Coors Light in the new look delivered straight to your door with Drizzy or Instacart by going to CoorsLight.com slash take, celebrate responsibly, Coors Brewing Company, Golden Colorado. If you want to support us, if you want to support Grit Week, crack open an ice-cold Coors Light because they are supporting Grit Week and they are sponsoring all of Grit Week. Okay, let's go. The street there is violence, and there's lots of work to be done.

But I know I said we got to work it. No place to hang out the washing, and you can blame it all on the sun. But let them know we're gonna rock on to electric revenue, and then we'll take it higher. We're gonna rock on to electric revenue, and then we'll take it higher. We're gonna rock on to electric revenue, and then we'll take it higher. Welcome to part of my tape presented by Coors Light, it's the official beer of summer. It's also the official beer of grit week 2021, today is Monday August 16th and welcome to grit week.

Did we do the special grit week music? Yeah we did. The special electric avenue? Yeah. Who's that? Is that power man 5000? A little PM 5K? Who knows?

Who cares? It's fucking grit week. And guess what? Football is back. Football is all the way back. It's sponsored by Coors Light because I don't know if you've seen these new cans. They're incredible. We finally made it in life where our faces are on beer cans.

On a can. My face has been inside beer for a long time, now it's finally on it. It's beautiful and it's grit week and it's a real face shift. It is my real face shift. How about that? Getting out of the avi life. You look good. You look skinny.

I do. Yeah. They had the same photographer take this picture as the one that came out disco. I look skinny too. I don't know why. They really gave us jaw lines. Grit week is here. We're in the studio right now.

We're hopping on the bus as the minute we finish taping the show. We have Jim Calhoun, which some people are saying is a top 10 interview. That's pretty much just me and Liam, but I think you would agree too. He was awesome. Incredible. Incredible interview. I talked to him for three hours. It's rare that we have those interviews where it's like, I don't want to leave.

I just want to hang out with you. He was definitely one of those guys. So we have that. We're going to be on the road. We're going to be out. We're going to DC. We're going to Pittsburgh. We're going to Cleveland.

We're going to Buffalo. We'll see. If you see the van, if you see the RV on the way, give us a honk. It's a silver bullet. It is literally a silver bullet. It's wrapped in Coors Light. We look awesome on it. But yes, preseason football is here.

Are we overreacting? Oh yeah. Yeah. For sure. But I think you only have to react in the preseason. Everything's overreaction. I do have my list of rookie rankings. Well, if Justin Fields is in number one, then I don't know what you're doing.

Okay. Well, no, he's one A. He's tied for one A. Number one is the guy that thought that he actually became Aaron Donald while wearing an Aaron Donald jersey. Yes. With the woman who threw a full drink at him with his back turned and then he decided to take on the entire row in front of him. That guy had the off white Aaron Donald jersey, probably the only person that owns that ugly

ass. That's the one that has like the 17 different fonts on it. Yes. So he showed up wearing the Aaron Donald jersey and he became Aaron Donald. He was like, oh, you're going to triple team me. That's fine. I'll take you guys all on. The ultimate agent of chaos who just lobs a diet coke over the top, hits the guy and

then he just goes fucking berserk. Crazy. That guy. And yeah, he kind of did get his ass kicked. He did. But in a hilarious way. They were punching his butt. It was body shots.

They were literally kicking his ass. Some men pay good money to go to Thailand and have that same procedure done on them. Yes. So the Chargers played the Rams. These jerseys make no sense. I saw a picture afterwards of like Northwestern players. I think it was actually coach Fitz tweeted out like Northwestern NFL players and I couldn't figure out who was on the Chargers and who was on the Rams because they're wearing the

same jerseys. Yeah, it was ridiculous. But yeah, as far as the actual rookie rankings go, I think it's a tie between Tray Lantz, Justin Fields, Mack Jones and Kellan Mond. Well if we're going just based on yardage and having to throw a touchdown pass, then Justin Fields is number one and I'm not going to overreact. And he did run for a touchdown as well. So I'm not going to overreact.

I'm going to just, I'm going to be cool with it. Nice dab sneeze there, Billy. But it was fun. It made me feel alive. I have one problem with the preseason though. I think that the preseason should, should mimic the regular season and that we should have a full Sunday of football with a red zone to get us ready because like the random start times and like, oh, it's Sunday.

It's Sunday. That's normal. One is a game, but there was a Thursday night game. There was a Friday night game. There was a game on Saturday at one. There was a game at four. Give me, let me actually practice what it feels like to get up on a Sunday and get my body ready and watch every team play.

It's preseason for us fans as well. It's a, but it just like comes at all times. I do need to get in rhythm. I need to get in rhythm. They need to have all the games on, at least in like an easy way for me to watch. I'm sick of having to look up every single time like, how do I watch this game? What illegal site can I stream this game off? It's a, it's tough.

It's tough for us on fans, but you know what? This is why we, this is our version of two days in the off season. This is how we get ready during training camp. Tim Tebow got a target. That was it. Well, that wasn't it. He also had a devastating crack back. Yeah.

Tim Tebow, you know what? For all the people who had a great time making fun of Tim Tebow, because yeah, maybe he missed his block and maybe he hit his own teammate harder than he blocked the real guy, but he did his job. He set the edge. That's a plus play as Danny Woodhead said. So I don't know. I'd like to see Trevor Lawrence maybe, maybe target Tim a couple of times.

He did once. Yeah. So that counts. Tavon Austin caught the pass. Stole it. Yes. Yes. Stole it from him.

He should, Tim Tebow should get a half a reception for that. There was a lot of overreacting myself included, but there's a lot of talk too that like maybe this is the best quarterback class of all time. That was also thrown out there. It's a big time to league. The future is bright for the NFL right now. Good hands. They're in good hands.

There's a girl in Jordan Love too who looked okay even though he had to have an MRI afterwards, which came back clean, but why get an MRI? Yeah. There's nothing to be worried about. Interesting. He's just getting an MRI. Interesting. The only other note I had from preseason football is the taunting rule fucking sucks.

It's going to be brutal and we're going to all, it's going to be similar. What was the rule that they implemented a few years ago that we basically complained out of the league? It was the, um, with the pass interference reviewable penalty was one, right? No. That one we unfortunately had to deal with for a full year. There was something that they did. There was, uh, targeting on the offense, like lowering the crown of your head.

Yeah. You're going to call that on every single run. There was some rule that I remember having, having to deal with it in the preseason in the first few weeks. Then we just complained it away. We need to do that with the taunting rule. It is the dumbest rule ever. It's the, the Colts game was when running back, um, I can't remember who it was.

May, maybe he ran for a nice first down, got up, flexed 15 yard penalty. And if you saw the way that the ref through the flag on that, I actually have a problem with the ref. If you're going to expect these guys to not taunt after a play as an official, you have to hold yourself to the same standard. The ref did one of those things where he threw the flag as high as he could in the air. Yes. Could have landed on anybody.

It was very dangerous. Like playing lawn darts with the thing. And if you're a ref and you're calling a taunting penalty, you need to not taunt while you're calling that penalty. Correct. If you taunt, you should get a penalty. Yes. And you should have to go to the sidelines.

The players should get flags. Yeah. The players should get a flag. Every player should have one flag. You know, no, give it to the coaches. Yeah. No, but they won't, they, they can't, you think that like Belichick will be able to tell the difference between the red and the yellow flag.

Like he's just grabbing anything out of his, that's true. He's not, he's just grabbing anything out of his sock in disgust. All right. Then it should be, um, the coach's son, perfect. The coaches. So Steve Belichick should have the flag, just run around with a flag, be able to flag the official. The coach should have the flag.

It was great though. Like preseason football, um, you can't tell anything, but you also, like I said last week, you can just look at it however you want. Like I, I watched the whole Bears game and I watched Justin Fields be electric and everyone's like, well, dude, it's against the second team defense. I don't give a fuck. And then I watched Trey Lance and I was like, well, he kind of sucks. Everyone's overreacting.

He's had an 80 yard pass. Yeah. But that was the best. Yeah. That's just, that's just how you watch preseason. I'm digesting the preseason by only watching the highlights that the, uh, that the NFL main account tweets out. If I'm not specifically watching that game, I will only know what you did in that game

by your most spectacular highlight. So if we're going off that, I would say Trey Lance, number one, Justin Fields, number two, Trevor Lawrence had that one pass. Yeah. 35 yard pass. The entire stands stood up and their mouths were wide open like they had never seen a quarterback before. Yup.

It is Jacksonville. It's been a couple of years since Blake was in town, but they were, they flipped out. So I'm going to put that number three and then, uh, Sam Elger had a really good name. Right, Billy? Billy is amazing. Amazing debut. Amazing debut. And his hair looks awesome.

It's, he's got like the spiky kind of punky quarterback look going. I'm just going to put this one in the tickler. I think I'm going to zig while everybody's eggs. I think Mac Jones might be the rookie of the year because he looked good too. He looked good. He wasn't spectacular. No, but Bella Chuck doesn't need him to be spectacular. Just manage the game.

If Mac Jones goes, oh fuck, I'm going to have to do math. If Mac Jones goes, probably he's not going to start, right? Maybe he will. I don't know. Probably not. Cam Newton, I noticed that his pass didn't look like he had completely forgotten how to throw football. Yeah.

So he's maybe a little bit better than he was last year, but let's just say Mac Jones gets in after this, like week four. If he gets in week four, then how many games, 13 games? Yeah. If he goes nine and four. See, I think he gets rookie of the year, but I think if Trevor Lawrence throws more than 20 touchdown passes, he gets rookie of the year. You know what I mean?

Because it always, especially because the Jaguars, he's not expected to win. He just has to worry about stats. Yeah. If Drew Lock is kind of in a rookie season again, I noticed that we're just treating every year. Jordan Lovett in another rookie season. Every year it's like Drew Lock. You know, he's a young kid.

Yes. You still learn how to play this game. He did throw that one bomb, which looked good. No, he looked pretty good for a rookie for sure. Yes. For a rookie, he looked good. Yeah, I'm still going to go with Matt Jones as my rookie there. I got something.

Yeah. The Ravens have won 18 straight preseason games. I saw that. Yes. It's pretty crazy. It's nuts. Harbaugh is not taking his foot off the gas, but James Winston looked good. James Winston looked good.

He did. Start James Winston. I saw some bad news, though. There was one article that said that Taysum Hill is the, he's the assumed starter for the year. That's bullshit. It is bullshit. Hashtag start James.

It's bullshit. How can you start Taysum Hill because then you can't use them for the gadget place. Right. Like you need to start James just so that you can bring it. Even start James. Do it like, like start James and then take him out after the first series and have Taysum Hill. Just let James start though.

James. James is kind of a gimmick quarterback. He is like a gadget himself. Yeah. He's a walking gadget. They're both changes of paces from each other. Right. So just, yeah.

So that's what I'm saying. Like go old school, like college football, let them, let them split it up by quarters or drives. They have them both on the field at the same time. That works too. I mean, they did that last year with Drew Brees and Taysum. Yeah. Yeah.

You can absolutely do that. All right. Anything else? I mean, it's fun to see football. It does feel a little weird when you invest like a few hours, you're like, okay, and that didn't matter. Yeah. Like, like, even, even little things where they're, you know, downing the ball with,

with way too much time left, you know, not even trying to win games, like weird shit like that. You're like, oh yeah, this game doesn't matter. It is kind of a throwback. If you're having to watch the game on like normal channels, by normal channels, I mean, not the red zone. Yeah. So if they're airing like a game on NFL network and then a game on CBS, having to time the

return from commercial break thing, where you get back to the game right before the snap happens, I'm really good at that. I haven't gotten to flex that muscle in a long time because I'm a red zone guy for the most part. And when we're in the office, we've got all the TVs set up, but it's good to just like smash that last channel button. I don't get enough practice with that. Seriously though, dude.

At least the third week of preseason should be all Sunday games with a Sunday night game and let us practice. It was very cool to see Ryan Fitzpatrick in a Washington football team. Yeah. I didn't know how he was going to look. He's worn almost every other uniform in the NFL. He looks awesome in the burgundy. He looks good in anything.

Yeah. You could put him in any uniform. He'd look like normal. All right. Other big news coming from the weekend are lacrosse team. The water dogs are number one seed. And that's talking lacrosse. Job done.

Yeah. I mean, we, they sucked. It was terrible. We negged them into being good. We told them to shoot more. They now lead the league in shooting. I didn't even watch because I knew they were going to win. That's how that's how good hands they're in now.

I don't even watch. I well also because football is back. So it's like even preseason real sports are better than lacrosse. But I still knew that they were going to win. Real sports are happening. Right. So you don't need to watch. We can follow along online and figure out what's going to happen.

But it is us against the world like nobody believed in the water dogs. No one did. The mainstream media, all these talking heads that have podcasts out there just hated the water dogs. And you know what? The boys persevered. Yeah. So back.

They fought through the hate. You know what? A hungry dog is a dangerous dog. That's true. Don't feed your dogs in the morning. Feed them all at night. Don't feed them semifinals. Buy to the semifinals.

Yeah. Win the semis. Yeah. Two wins away from winning the whole thing. So problem again though. And I don't listen. Everyone should watch lacrosse because we do own the team. But I'm pretty sure the playoffs are on the NFL Sunday.

No. So the semifinals are on Labor Day weekend. Oh. Okay. So we'll win. All right. The champions. So actually.

Noon week two NFL Sunday. If the water dogs want to be the best dogs possible, they would lose in the semifinals. So we don't have to watch them in the finals. I'm just saying it right now. I wouldn't be. I wouldn't. That would be. I could spin that as, hey, that was a growth season.

You can't win it. You can't win the whole show in your second year. Worst case scenario is. It sounds like you don't want them to win. No, no, no, no, no. I don't. I just said I do not. I don't want to have to be burdened with them on an NFL Sunday.

Worst case scenario is they win the semifinals. They make it to the finals and then they embarrass us on an NFL Sunday and then throw us all the way off when we're having to like get focused and think about what we're going to bet on for the afternoon games. We can't be dealing with the mental anguish of our water dogs shitting the bed. I'm no time expert, but doesn't football not start to one football, and what times again? The championship games that new needs.

So can they get the game in in 45 minutes and get half time running clock? If they could get the game in 45 minutes, I mean, I mean, I'm into that game. If just hurry it up. If they get to the championship, can Jake and I go? Yeah, sure. Yeah, whatever. I don't care. It's an NFL Sunday.

That would be the dumbest decision in your life. You can go, but you'll be fired just for making a terrible choice. Yeah. He's our obligate. Well, I know, but we'd be back by when you have Billy. He'll be back. You'll be right on time. You can go.

You can go. I will just judge you as a human being. I'll put it this way. We'll have it on. Oh, I was going to say it TV, but we're not. We'll have it on a laptop if they get to the finals. I don't think that anybody should watch the finals unless Jake is announcing them. Oh, I personally hardball with them.

I might. I might. I still wouldn't watch it because it's NFL Sunday. I'll watch it. We'll put it on one of the televisions. If you can either me or Siciliano. Oh, God. LaCrosse or Sicily.

Rock in a hard place. Yeah. Jesus Christ. Devil's choice. I'll make it tough. Death. Is death an option? If you want.

Okay. I did notice that our friend Randy Scott at ESPN had some bad words to say about us. Yeah. Said that ownership of suspect Randy. Listen, we're on good terms with you, Randy. We like you, Randy, but we will turn on you so fucking fast. We'll put you in that Siciliano bucket. Yeah.

You're going to get an opinion about you, which you don't want, which is an opinion about you. Right now is my opinion of Randy Scott is he's a nice guy. Yeah. I like. I like. Good guy. But I don't love you.

If I have to think about you, Randy Scott, like for more than a minute, it's going to get bad. It's going to turn bad on you fast. Yeah. We're not suspect. Suspect of being great owners. It's us against. You know what?

It really is. It's not even the team against. It's me and you against the world. Yes. At this point. Absolutely. Hank is too. Hank's an owner.

You've got our own Twitter account fucking being part of the lamestream media hating on us. Are you not? They're fake news. Are you not an owner? Hank, are you an old word? I still have to sign the thing. You haven't signed the paperwork.

All right. Sign the papers. Me and Big Cat. We signed in blood. Yes. Blood in, blood out. Order forever. All right.

Let's do who's back of the week and then we'll get to Jim Calhoun. By the way. Yeah. Let's do who's back of the week. Then we'll get to Jim Calhoun. I was going to say something, but we'll save it for after the Jim Calhoun interview. Who's back of the week is brought to you by the Cash App. Cash App is back.

You can buy and sell stocks, Bitcoin, all of it with the Cash App. It is the best app in the world. Also links directly to your bank account. And if you want to need to send money to friends, family, whoever, the Cash App is the way to go. It is about to be fantasy football season. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that you can play for money, but if you can and you want to use the Cash App, it's super easy to send money to people and you can link up

to people. It's very, very easy. So invest through the Cash App, buy and sell Bitcoin through the Cash App. Download the Cash App and enter a referral code BARSTULE. You receive $10 and they will now send $10 to ASPCA when you download Cash App from the App Store, Google Play Store today. Here's a little fun thing I just thought of. For your fantasy league, you should send the money to whoever's running the league.

They should use all that money and buy Bitcoin. And then it's just another, it's like who knows at the end of the season. I kind of like that. Our doge. Yeah. We're not pumping that anymore. Doge is up. It's back.

It's back. Dude, Doge is up like 20% right now. Mark Cuban did the tweet. Fuck yes. Mark Cuban's been gassing the shit out of Doge. That was a really smart thing I just threw out there that I hope that I'm allowed to say. Okay.

Who's back of the week? Henry. I had. How's your Whiffleball game? We lost in Sweden 16. God damn it. Good run though. But you've won it before.

We've won it before. So it's an extremely hard tournament to win. What was the youngest person you played against? Probably like 18. Really? I thought you played against some like 13 year olds. No, it's gotten more competitive. Okay.

There are, there's probably like, I don't know, it's a 64 team tournament. So there's probably like 10 teams of like young people, some teams with all girls. But no, we, I also was gone for most of the day. I came back for the playoffs. Are there any brawls? One one playoff game. There actually was a brawl. There was an old guy.

Hell yes. Absolute asshole. It's a charity tournament. Everyone's like, he's playing with the two songs like, dude, what are you doing? We've had problems with them in the past. That guy has. He lost in championship though. Do you know what though?

I respect that guy because he's got issues that he has unattended for many, many years and he just takes them out in a charity whiffleball tournament every year. That guy and his family, they're the O'Doil family. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. But they, but you know what I mean? Like he probably should have seen a therapist a while ago.

He has decided not to go to better help if you want to. No, just watch Ted Lasso. Yeah. But you'll watch Ted Lasso or follow our friend BW Carlin. It's okay to not be okay. Or you could just go to a charity whiffleball game and fight with everyone and throw gas. Yeah. Just throw out your gas.

It's an immediate. It's either one. You don't have to say it's okay to not be okay because I think there's a better way around that. It's just saying positive vibes only. Yeah. Positive vibes only. So if you say positive vibes only, then you don't even have to worry about not being

okay. Yep. Shout out to the Connor brothers back to back champs. They're my neighbors growing up. Dynasty. I'm not going to say that I influenced them because I, you know, I played with their cousins growing up and they were too young to even play and they just watched us. I'm not going to say I inspired their passion for the game and I'm the reason they won back

to back championships. But I kind of am. Dynasty. I like that. They've won too. There's been a couple back to back champs. I don't think anyone's won three. Okay.

See you next year. Interesting. You're like Jimi Hendrix to John Mayer. If it weren't for you, there would be no them. Pretty much. It's beautiful. But speaking of brawls, fights in the stands. We talked about it before, but the video is great.

The lady, it's one of those things where you see the video and then the other video comes out of the lady just taking the coke and throwing it and just like they literally just a match throwing it into a gasoline thing and just turns into a brawl. The guy put up a good fight. He had the upper ground and he was, I don't know what you would call his punches. Well, he did a full back. It was like, it was like a windmill. He punched four people with one punch.

He did a full like, how can you slap backhand across the entire row? I also, and listen, there's going to be fights in NFL stadiums, but it felt a little wrong. Like that stadium's new. It's like going to a new house and ruining. You know what I mean? Wait a couple of years. Let it, let it, let it like work itself in. You know what I mean?

When you see a fight in like the Oakland Coliseum, you're like, okay, this makes sense or in Philadelphia, but like this one, but it's like, who's, who's, it's a new house. Take your shoes off. Yeah, but whose house is it? Yeah, that's true. You're trying to figure that out. Yeah. So I actually think that fighting in public should be allowed as long as you all agreed.

No face shots. You could just, you should be allowed to just body everybody up all day long. It's called the we, we all have to go to work on Monday rule. Exactly. Yeah. Kidney shots. That's fine. Wedgies.

Break a couple of ribs. Go for it. Kick some shins. Maybe one knee to the balls. That's okay. In the late stages of the fight. Yep. But yeah, that's pretty much it.

All right. Cool. Good. Who's back? Awesome. Who's back? Who's back? My who's back the week is the Taliban.

Yeah. Taliban's back big time. They're evacuating Afghanistan. The Taliban is in the process of taking back over the country. Hank's shaking his head like, no, no. No, no, no. It's true. Is this hard factor?

It's true. No, I mean, are you saying the Taliban's not back? Did they ever leave? No. No, they did. Good point. Good point, Hank. So probably this is actually a scholar here.

This is way too smart of a subject for us to really understand. The best way to describe it would be through a series of the office gifts. So if you were to describe the Afghan war. We were Michael when the fire came. Michael, yeah, Michael, well, initially, yeah, we're Michael when the fire came at first. And then we were Kevin spilling the chili. And then we were Dwight and Michael raising the roof after we won.

And then Michael, snip, snap, snip, snap. And then Michael showing off his tiny little television, the R. Kelly television. And that's Obama's drone strike program, being like, I got this. And then at the end, it's how long did you think about this this weekend? No, I thought about it on the way into into the office. Got it. And then at the end, it's the senile old CEO getting pushed out. And that's Joe Biden.

The Taliban is now hosting the meeting. Got it. Boom. That's all you need to know about Afghanistan. Okay. So, yeah, the Taliban is back. PFT is celebrating. Also, my other who's back is just baseball.

Major League Baseball. Yeah. Can I do it? Who's back? Oh, yeah. I thought you were going to go to Taliban. No, I was going to go baseball because the Thursday night game. We taped early.

We were up in Connecticut after our Jim Calhoun interview. That game was fucking awesome. The Field of Dreams game. I it's rare that baseball does something that everyone is like, holy shit, this was incredible. They did it. That was fucking sick. And the uniforms are awesome.

And Tom Verducci was living out his like greatest fantasies by dressed dressing up as an old timey reporter. By the way, home runs into the cornfield. He had that outfit ready to go. He didn't have to go out and buy that. Yeah, no, he's got he's got a closet. He was waiting for the day for that. Yeah. And then obviously, Tim Anderson hitting the walkoff was incredible

with the fireworks and everything. I know that job baseball. Good job, baseball. You know that and the taunting and the taunting. Yeah. You know that Rob Manfred is going to be like, we're going to mandate corn, be planted in every outfield. He's going to ruin it somehow.

He's going to overdo the Field of Dreams. It was a great game, though. It was so awesome to watch. It was it was cool. It was awesome. Tony LaRusso looking at the corn and being like, I could make just give me a bonfire and some metal. I'll make it still out here in center field.

Yeah, he's Tony LaRusso. God, he's he's going to win manager of the year. He is like, that's going to be so funny when that happens. And everyone's going to what do we do now? There's something about baseball where actually like the drunkest team that fights the most is usually the team that wins. I don't know what it is about the sport, but I love it. All right, Jake, you're who's back of the week.

Who's back of the week? Unfortunately, his father time, because Roger Federer has opted out of the U.S. Open. He's getting knee surgery. He's out for many months. So saying this is what a shame. So Joe Kovic is healthy, though. I believe he's playing in the U.S. Open coming in up in a few weeks.

Interesting. So this is bad. You don't hold his is Federer right now. Forty forty a forty year old doesn't really get knee surgery and then be like, OK, I'm ready to come back. It's not like an Adrian. No, I'm sure it's a little cleanup. You think so? Yeah, it's clean up. OK, he'll be back.

He said he's out for many months. Oh, what a many months. And Joe Kovic is going to keep on trucking. You can't celebrate this. Oh, I absolutely can't. It's sports, baby. My guy is going to win it all. Is Joe Kovic allowed in the United States?

Yeah, I wouldn't be sure. Are we going to the U.S. Open? No, yeah, totally. I'll be there. It's unfortunately when they're playing. Yeah, there's a lacrosse game on, so I can't make it. Yeah. Yeah, that's unfortunate. Shame about it. Actually, it's for the sport for the sport.

Yeah, I agree. It does. It is a legend. Yeah, a legend was what you took the words out of my mouth. I can think of all the times that I watched Federer play that one time when Joe Kovic beat him in Wimbledon, that was pretty much the only time. And I have nothing but fond memories. So hopefully he's good in retirement.

Is he the only... Or he comes back. Or he comes back, sorry. Is he the only Swiss person that you can name? I don't think that there's another. I think it's... Stand for Brinca, another... What about Caroline Wozniacki? Is she?

Is she? Is she a Swiss? No, she's Swiss. No, I don't think so. The Swiss Miss Lady, Macklewine. She's Danish. Danish, that's the same thing. Shit, come on.

They're both red and white flags. Yeah, that's pretty much it. Come on. Just north Switzerland. So hopefully Fed comes back. If the Danes had come up with a fucking cool knife before the Swiss, we would be talking about them today. Yeah, or if the Swiss had learned how to clap

in an aesthetically pleasing way. Yes, so yeah, same thing. All right, Billy, your who's back of the week. My who's back of the week is bulking season. Summer is winding down. Our friend, Rone, commented that since it was time... What? We talked about this, I think, on Friday's show.

But that's okay. What was it follow up to? Follow up. Oh, okay, this is a follow up. Yeah, it's like an on-pour to the song. I think that we should all just start bulking. Okay. That's not hard for me.

I've decided... I know, it's football season. I've decided to lose weight. But I'll probably be going back on that week three. But it's a good time. Thanks for your sixth pack. We're going to be on a caloric... If we want to just redo the whole segment.

Are you going to get a sixth pack? Grit Week next year? Can I call it? Yeah. Okay. All right, I actually have come up with... When I said it, I really meant it. I've come up with my own Big Ben 7 diet

that I think that we can stick to. Oh wait, the food's here. You just know it's perfect. Okay, so we're going to be operating a caloric surplus. It's going to be after Grit Week down the start. Yeah, all right, we're coming out right now. Our order of like 500 chicken wings just showed up. We're going to be operating a caloric surplus.

So we have to do powerlifting workouts. Okay, we're going to put it on good mass. All right, so what I'll be doing is I'm going to be doing... Just I'll eat a salad for lunch every day. And then on Sunday, that's my cheat day. I'll eat whatever I want. Okay. And then don't ask me what I eat on Saturdays.

That's my diet. That works. That works. All right, Billy, good. Who's back? Can you go get the food? Yeah. All right, awesome.

After... Yeah, we're going to bulk. That's perfect. We're going to bulk. All right, let's get to our interview. We have Jim Calhoun. Great, great interview. Sat down with him in his office for a while.

We are brought to you by our friends at Chevy. Chevy Silverado is the greatest Silverado ever created. It is the best truck. Hands down. It is strong, advanced, dependable, hardworking. Silverado is dependable like the people who drive them. The design is big, bold, and commanding. And this truck turns heads.

A partner with grit and determination. Anything is possible. And Silverado is a partner in that. Whether it be tailgating, hauling, towing, off-roading, moving day. How about a tailgate when you're showing up on a nice, crisp fall day and you take the, you know, you load up the Chevy Silverado, and everyone hangs out

around the back of the truck? That is what I'm talking about. Chevy Silverado, the greatest truck ever created, the strongest, most advanced Silverado ever. If you're thinking about buying a truck, you have to buy a Chevy Silverado. And say promo code, take. And they'll give you $100 off your Chevy Silverado.

We're also brought to you by our friends at Cross Country Mortgage. Cross Country Mortgage are a people-first group of people. Rates are unbelievably low right now. Don't pay the bank the money that you need. Mortgage should not be a scary word, Jake. Stop throwing away your rent. Talk to someone at Cross Country Mortgage

and they can help game plan for you so that you can someday own a home. And if you were looking to refinance, if you own a home right now, Cross Country Mortgage also is the place to be. I just got the joke about Jake. That's mean. But funny, I fixed it for the championship video.

Say it. Mortgage. Say it how you said it the first time. Mortgage. Okay. Rates are at all time low. They may never get this low again. Call today for a fast free rate quote.

Our partners will save you a lot of money. Call today and our friends at Cross Country Mortgage will give you a free home valuation that is free to you just for calling. Just like the All-Star athlete, Cross Country Mortgage pushes themselves through the entire lending process. If they get blocks,

they figure out ways around to get the ball over the line. So don't miss the window as rates are expected to creep up. Reach out to them and see what they can do for you. And when you connect with Cross Country Mortgage, tell them Barstool sent you. Go to crosscountrymortgage.com slash Barstool to learn more

about your future home buying experience or refinance your current mortgage. Cross Country Mortgage LLC, NMLS 3029, all loaned subject to underwriting approval at www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org. Okay, here he is. Jim Calhoun. Okay, we now welcome on a very, very special guest.

It is a basketball hallfamer, three-time national champion. I know you're gonna want me to list the Big East championships too. By year, please. Yeah, so 10 Big East regular season, seven Big East tournaments, because I think we'll get to it, but I think that actually might mean more

than the national championship. Deep down, it is coach Jim Calhoun. Thank you for joining us. We really appreciate it. This is the start of Grit Week. We figured you'd be the perfect guy to start off Grit Week because you embody grit and hard coaching and hard work. So we asked this to every guest we have on Grit Week,

what does grit mean to you and what does it look like on the basketball court? He probably likes to just get your fucking ass up to court, you know, and with a smile maybe at times too. My point being is simply is that life's something you need to attack, you know? And I've always felt this that if you don't do it, okay, someone else will and beat you.

And so I've always been, it probably is kind of a life story and you don't want to hear the whole life story, but losing your dad at 15, getting a full scholarship to UMass, but in turn having to come home and work for two years as a stone cutter, that's going to give you some grit.

It's going to give you some grit. And that means you get up in the morning and have to do the things that are pissed off at the world, go into Charlestown, maybe get in the fight, do the things that guys do at that day and age and all the fighting was pretty good. I was actually not bad because I was a PAL boxer when I was a kid.

Point being though, with four sisters home, a five-year-old brother who now is by the way a cardiologist at Mass General, point being is that I had responsibility early and kind of the only way you get going, my high school coach was great and a lot of the tendencies I have as a coach, he was there for me the whole time after I played for him.

After I came home, he says, you're going to get the hell out of this town before you get some girl pregnant and you're here for life. It's a great message. And he didn't really have the smooth, my dad was incredible. He had a Merchant Marine Academy graduate, engineer, incredible guy, losing him was a big facet.

I had a great mother. My dad was like Cary Grant, the actor, kind of tall, silent guy. He was the light heavyweight champ by the way of the Merchant Marines, which got into the boxing and it would be a superintendent for the gas company and the whole area.

When he died, it took a big part of me and my mother was, you guys won't know this, you kind of know it, maybe, Goldie Horn, the blonde, cute, all that kind of stuff. And he is, my dad had lost his wife and childbirth of my older sister. So it's a family that, but we stayed together and through those years, stone cutting,

find out who I was, find out who I was not. And then my high school coach pushed my ass to get to college, we're back and things were all pretty good for me. But all that time, trying to find out who I was, how do I get there? And people said, where? I don't know.

Just be better today than you were yesterday. And they have a saying that I did years, I had a book about it too, you know, win every day. And I know you might have heard those things, but I was saying that years ago without knowing what it meant. And I didn't really say it per se, but maybe I'd start reading again out of high school. Maybe I'd start running again.

Maybe through picking up 100 pound markers, that's without an hour, markers up. And every day I'd go from 183 pounds to about 200 by the time I got to college and look a little different. And my point being, it was all grit, it was all hard work. And I didn't have automatic answers. It wasn't like you'd go to college,

you take discourse, discourse, bang, degree, here you go. It wasn't like that at all. I was trying to find who I was, what I wasn't. I know one thing, I didn't want to go to a shed at 5 a.m., stopped cutting stone and picking up markers and doing those things. And I wanted to get out of there. I remember an old Italian guy who was a tool maker,

makes those beautiful things you see on the tombstones, said to me, don't bang your hands up, you'll fill them in your 50. He was right about that. But more importantly, he said, you want to get out of here. Just one of those guys who had philosophy, silk program with the broken English, okay? Italian accent, you want to get out of here.

And I get out there. I get back to college to help with my high school principal and my coach and, but I can tell you all, it was a fight. When people saw me, I guess fighting, if they, I didn't ask them to, I don't want them to, they kind of went back and say, this guy's had a little kind of different life than your average kid, goes to college, scholarship,

et cetera, et cetera. And so that's kind of what my grade is. My grade is finding a way when it doesn't appear to be one. Finding a way when nobody else thinks you can. Was that motivation? I'd be a son of a bitch lying to you right now if I told you that, okay, you think I can't?

I may die doing it, but I can. I think you've got all of America ready to run through brick wall right now. Well, we all, but we all faced that. I faced cancer. You know, I faced cancer a couple of different times. I faced some other things in my life. And I just think simply that the idea, you know,

I don't want to be ever judged sometime where they say, like, get your fucking ass up the court. I want to be judged on, you need me? Hey, Ben, good. And whoever it may be when you need me, call me. I'm here for you. I don't need Kimber when he's, Kimber doesn't need me, excuse me,

when he signed a $138 million contract. I called him right after they traded him from Boston. That's kind of who I, he didn't, going back to New York, I'll get out, I'll go to practice, et cetera. But he don't need me right this time. I just thought after that he could trade it is a good time to call him. Yeah.

Wasn't a change. He's still gonna make a lot of money and still be the great Kimber he is or any of my other guys. I want to be there when they need me. Just like my high school coach and others, my sisters, did everything for me to help me get back to college. And I think that sometimes I don't want to be understood

to some degree. I just want to be accepted for what I've done and all the people in my life. Yeah. I love it. You mentioned win every day. I see you've got a bottle of sanitizer over there that says win the day.

I've heard you say win the day probably hundreds of times. What, how do you know if you're, if you're beating the day? Are you, are you winning against the day or what are you winning? No, you always fight yourself. We screw up our lives more than anything else. I guarantee you that. True?

Yeah. Yeah. It's really true. So you are in control of what you do. Your destiny is what you're gonna do. Now, what are you doing today to get better? You know, well, obviously you're here talking to somebody, doing your job, I guess it may be.

But how do you enhance your life when you don't have the time? Or when you guys win, big deals. I haven't had a carb yet today. It's like 1030. So I think as of right now, I'm winning the day. I only hit my snooze twice this morning. That's pretty good.

You guys are making great progress. I want to tell you right now. I feel it. I feel it in the room. We've got a 20-year-old. I'm motivated right now. No, but it could mean anything when you don't have anything.

And you say, you know, when I ask these particular questions, let me listen to this other guy, see how he does it. Let me try to, and I don't mean like, I, you know, I've stolen from the very best. I watched, I watched what Dean did and the game was very simple. Well, him, he was obviously very innovative. Dean Smith, who they came very close to.

I watch people, because I really want to learn from other people and then adapt it to who I am. And I think the biggest fool is saying, well, I did it all myself, bullshit. The reason I have a house in Hilton Head and a house down in Point Judith, played at the Don Ross golf course and all the other things is my kids.

If I'm not available for them, then I'd be trade. What I said to them the first day, if I recruit you now, I'm recruiting for a lifetime, I'll be here when the ball doesn't bounce anymore. I want you to understand that. And I just think that winning the day takes all kinds of different things. And I think that's very, very important

to everything in your life. And, you know, do we all have moments of despair? Well, no question. Do we all have moments of questions that people are very kind in talking about some of the things that I have to fight back from, especially when the SB and the ESPN stuff did all that story.

And that's cool. But we have moments of in a car at some place saying, what the fuck? You know, what the, here I am, 79 years old, driving to St. Joe's to coach a game. And then I realize that these kids that they need me, well, I don't think they desperately need me, but I do know this much.

I had good people at a point in my life when I used some direction. If a lot of my players, they have some of the circumstances without having maybe having a male or other type of leadership in the house. I have one of my kids, quite frankly, family lives in quite a distance from here, you know, any place to go.

And I think that's really important. I think, and when I get satisfaction, he said, you know, what's a win? Now I might be a win with that phone call. Hoping these guys, you know, someone's talking about the here because we're in our women's program and trying to get the kids more help.

I said, no, understand, these dudes are gonna be different. He's not gonna be Sally. Simsbury. He's gonna be a kid from the heart in the city who was trying to, in many ways, at times get over. You don't understand that.

And because that's the way to get by it. I had it one time, went from like the kid in the block whose family had one of the first TVs. I know it makes me ancient, because I am. But my point being, to a guy then who didn't have much money, to when my dad had died,

it wasn't like all the stuff, the pensions and where, I mean, all that, my mother, having a very difficult time. We had some really, really, really difficult financial times where things didn't go well at all. My mother was still a saint. And my point to all this simply is that, you can be there for somebody.

That's a big deal, by the way. One person, you can be there for them. I'll tell you one thing you don't realize, about 2013 they had a testimony to a program and what it did. And all the guys, high school teams I coached, kids from Northeast University where I coached, and a whole bunch of my former players.

When they started telling stories, my throat got dry, my eyes filled up. Because they told me things I didn't know, things I might have said to them, that helped change things. Things I might have kicked their ass, said, don't you bring your fucking ass back into this gym until you understand it's you that's fucking you up.

Do you understand me? It's you that's screwing this whole deal up. I'm here for you, and I'll be here for you now. But as soon as that ball stops dribbling, ain't gonna be nobody there for you. It's a whole new game, man. And I just think, so it might be love, it might be a different kind of expression of love,

but you gotta be there for them. So great. I think that's love. I think that is a very pure definition of love, actually. It's like, hey, I'll tell you the truth when you need to hear the truth, and if you've fallen hard times, I'm always gonna be here.

I think that's as close to love as anything that you can get. I agree 100%, and it's easy to come in and say, hey, you're wonderful, you're great, you're the big cat, whatever it may be, but man, you gotta understand. You're fucking up, you're screwing this whole deal up for no reason, for no goddamn reason except your own. You have so, and then, I'll tell you a number of years ago, it's kind of a correlation,

and I get on the kids during the game, but it's all instantaneous. Understand, right after that, next play, next play, next play. And I found out you could open people's ears. So you come over the sidelines, you can tell them heart. You just went for a steal, the guy went and dunked. First thing I say is, you know what?

You're one of the greatest players ever coached. Your ears are out here someplace. And so you lazy son of a bitch. But your ears listen. Then you say you lazy son of a bitch. But you understand the point I'm making? I found out that when people hear kind of what they wanna hear, and then the message comes afterwards,

if you start off with this, this, and that, it doesn't. And I wanna tell them they are special. And you're all special in your own particular way. But you screw up too. You know, and I'm not, you know what? I'm the one guy, when I say I'm gonna coach you, I take it seriously. I take this shit really seriously.

This is called shit sandwich, where you give him something nice, the ugly truth, and then something nice on the other end. Dessert-y-end. Yes, yes. So I wanna talk about Big East basketball. I know you're, like I said at the start, I think deep down you might be just as proud

if not more proud of the Big East titles than the NCAA titles. Because that stretch of Big East basketball, when you had so many legends, hall of famers, hall of fame coaches, hall of fame players playing in the league. So you built UConn. You know, you came to a program that was not a lot,

and you made it a lot. What was it like in that era of coaching against hall of famers, and building a program, and watching other guys build programs like all around the league? Like in terms of toughness, and what it was like to coach against those guys? Yeah, the first meeting I went to,

we were very successful, not the East, I went to, and say, tournament five out of six years. I had really good teams, I mean, we beat a great St. Joe's team, 29 and one, and you know, we had success, okay? We beat Fresno State with Rod Higgins, and then lost to Utah. So, you know, we had really good players,

and got really good. So I go to UConn, the first coaches meeting, was actually in Puerto Rico. Still remember it like yesterday. The walk in the room is rolling. There's Louis, hey Irish, hey Irish. That was his name for you. Never come to jail, never coach, call me Irish.

Anyhow. And so, and then in rolling, walking around, and everything else, and Bettino, who I don't like, he doesn't like me, and that's cool. Tell you one thing, a man can coach. All the other bullshit aside, you know, if you play for him, if you play for him, you got a chance to win.

I mean it honestly, you know, once again, you don't have to love everybody. J.J. Colesmo, who was our social leader at the time, one of the greatest guys, he was a bachelor, you know, a guy in front of mine from Nike, went to his apartment, they were all going to eat someplace, and he saw on the desk a mail, there were two Nike checks for the past four months.

He said, he just went to his house, and it was a bad note to run his life, he does now. But he means all the guys, Jimmy, Bayhime, and anyways, oh I only got a birdie. I'm sorry for, Bayhime, come on man. Whatever the case may be. You know, I mean, but it was a great era. You know, boy do I miss it.

Yeah. Boy do we all miss it. You know, Jimmy and all of us who aren't, it's not going anymore, it's great being in the ACC. It's not great. It's much better fighting your own neighborhood. The guys you know, the guys you have to recruit against. What caused the biggest problems amongst coaches? Recruiting, and then after that, recruiting,

and after that, recruiting. Some is said during a recruiting meeting that's misinterpreted, the story that people had about Coach and Pittsburgh, who said that Louis had cancer, he was getting out of coaching, talking to a group. I have no idea, and quite frankly, just like the tide had washed over.

But that's where, if you think some of these things develop, that's where they develop. We're gonna get back to Jim Calhoun in a second, but before we do, this interview is being brought to you by our great friends over at Roman. Got a brand new product that you guys might be interested in. The world is opening back up, so new thrills are on the horizon.

So if you've been in a relationship for years, or if you're just getting started, or if you're excited to get back out there and meet new people, when the moment comes, you want to be ready. If you go to getroman.com slash barstool, you can talk to a U.S. licensed healthcare professional. You can get a free online evaluation

for erectile dysfunction, all from the comfort and privacy of your home. Roman ready means that you're gonna have confidence, the confidence that you know that you can rise to the occasion in the moment. We're looking at the summer of love, and Roman wants to make sure that you can participate in your own way.

That's meaning that as a single person or as a couple, you can go to Roman and get some help, take care of your ED without leaving your home, complete an online visit today, talk to a U.S. licensed healthcare professional, let them take care of it. Getting started is simple. You go to getroman.com slash barstool.

If you're prescribed, you get 50% off your first month of ED treatment, 50% off, 5.0, getroman.com slash barstool. Make sure that you're ready to have confidence and control this summer. Be Roman ready. Now, more Jim Calhoun. Well, who is the one guy who someone else in the Big East

got that you thought you were gonna get, and he turns out to be a great player, and you're like, damn it. Not quite as great, but it was Billy Curley. Billy Curley run the play in the NBA. As a college player, Billy Curley was one of the best guys. So the story is that his dad wanted to stay around Boston, which he did eventually,

and he was asked to fill in over in BC. I can't think of the fourth team. Anyway, so he eliminated everybody, and then went to a visit at BC for four or five hours. Hey, he didn't want home. We didn't get that phone call. And he's gonna call us tomorrow about five. He gets to be five, gets to be six, gets to be seven.

No call. And then word gets out. He just committed to BC. And I guess, I mean, everything was set up, even the great delay, because his father's a great guy, and I love Billy Curley. He's a terrific player. One of those guys that would win college games for you.

You know, played something in the NBA, but he was a terrific player, hard work and son of a gun. And I really thought we had him. We also had a guy you might saw in the Olympics. Kevin Durant committed to us on a visit. And Kevin Durant was not a bad player. He was okay. Yeah, decent.

I'd say. Well, he went on this trip. Didn't do anything in the tournament, so you might have dodged a bullet on that one. And he had, he went on a trip. Nike ran into a trip, I believe it was to France. And they'd put together freshmen and seniors. And they sent like 12 kids over.

Well, I called the people. I said, look, we're recruiting a kid named Durant. His name wasn't quite that big yet. And can you move him with Rudy Gay? Not that I was thinking about those things, but obviously only 24-7. And they get back, and when they got off the plane, they shook hands, there were gonna be roommates.

And then science went away. And then science went away, and then he went to town. I noticed you didn't say Ryan Gomes. Ryan Gomes is a terrific kid. I've actually talked with Ryan because I said, you and I have been married in heaven. Oh, hell. Yeah, yeah.

And well, it's because you had to understand what the horde was. There was 16, 17 daily newspapers, not like three or four now and all the different social media, et cetera. And they'd come in and I'd have guys, I'd look at them, I'm over doing something. I'd be looking at my desk and finding things.

You know, a lot of them are, well, Joe was now going on and was a pain in the ass in the playing industry, he was. And he wrote a time, one time, in a column, as Calvin drove away in his Lexus, which is true. I was going out to recruiting in all these poor kids at camp. Well, their parents were paying 200 bucks.

They ain't got poor at number one. Number two, it just was a stupid thing to put like at my camp, I went away to recruit one day. He saw me go away and left the poor kids there. We had counselors. Yeah, that's right. My point being is that,

but that kind of was the atmosphere. If he, now that he's winning, let's make, he's got to be perfect and pure. And I got to, by the way, I need to get some words to put down. Yeah. Did he expect you to like get into the back of a cab? No, no, I wasn't just saying that.

I was saying I was leaving the kids kind of afterwards in the Lexus, he put clearly. But he also thought like maybe I should stay at the camp all day. I know, but had to go recruit. I mean, that's our whole life, but so. You got to keep the machine going. Yeah.

It is, you know, any of these guys tell you it's 24-7. I think we all try to make it more than that. I think we try to make it, you know, 26-9 if we can. Because you can't find enough time in recruiting. And today, it's a little different. I'm not sure it takes as much time. It takes more awareness of every piece that's moving. I have no idea.

When I see what, 1500, 1600 kids transferring. Yeah, I know it's a different game. Well, it's a different game, but I don't think it's a good game. And I don't mean to say the game. When kids compete, the kids compete. I still love it. When my kids play out here, they want to win too, you know?

And so you still have some of the same things. The problem is, are we in fact making, and once again, I know some, we took, I think, in 26 years, three transfers total at UConn. Not that, I feel, building a program. The guy who's got it right is Jay Wright. He discovered it through injuries, playing small, four out,

because Jay's one of my favorite people of all time. He's a great guy, great coach. I don't like to stunt on a bench because he's too good looking with a nice suit and a mania, all that bullshit. But I keep telling you, not Judge Clooney. Just understand that, okay? So, the biggie is obviously like,

you've got a bunch of coaches in there, all coming up at around the same time. You refer to each other sometimes as being friends, but are you really friends with like a Bayhime or John Thompson? John Thompson, God rest his soul. John Thompson, I'm very close to you. When I was tried out for the Celtics, I was a free agent, and I tried out for the Celtics,

and I'm gonna stay over at Camp Milbrook down in Nashville, Massachusetts. Redwood had his, quote, glamor camp down there. Redwood didn't pay for anything. So therefore, you worked, bought Brandon, played for the Celtics, ran it, and you came down and you scrimmaged. And then, so we scrimmaged,

and I'm gonna go and take a shower, and I walked into the door. It was covered. It was John. Yeah. You know, all six, 11, 300 pounds of them. Yeah. And from that time, we became pretty good friends.

And when we had a problem with Alonzo and the Dove Interfelt, where they were called, supposedly names, I don't know what all happened. We didn't put them on the phone late that night. That's how it was done back in the day, too. Yeah. But friends. Friends are a funny word, you know?

I only have a couple of really real friends. I mean, I have a lot of acquaintances. People are like, I hope they're like me. But friends are a hard thing because you're doing something hard. It's not quite like boxing in the sense of why you're in the ring, you're trying to kill a guy. Okay?

But it's like boxing, why you're coaching. I mean, it's competitive. And it's not not being a good person. You still can be a good person. Just said, you know, I'm gonna try to run my damn program. I don't give a shit what you guys, I'm gonna run my program. Are you gonna bump heads?

Oh, without question. I mean, it is so set up. You know, we first came to Yukon. We did something different. Everybody was, every, the best kids in the East we couldn't get, even out of Connecticut. Also, the great Charles Smith and some of these guys all went out to BC, Villanova, other places.

So I said, we still get them though. And you started thinking, where'd they come from? They came from Louisiana, Seattle, Washington, Dazelle, South Carolina, Ray. You start going where the players came from. We'll find another way. We talked before, I'll find a way to get players to become the, at that time, find a way

the Southeast Conference of Football and the Big East Basketball, the two hardest things I've ever seen at that time. You have six out of nine of us are in the Hall of Fame that coached. And that's crazy. And I mean, like you said, legendary guys. I always respected Roli.

He wasn't my favorite guy, but that doesn't, I'm sure I wasn't his. But my point being is that, boy, could he coach with a clock. The moment the clock came, he became problems. And I don't mean he could really coach. And everybody in that league could do something. You know what I'm saying? There was nobody that lasted long

if you couldn't do something. You couldn't get players. If you couldn't coach them up, once you get them, if you couldn't motivate them, you said, keep it going. Keep it going. It's much more difficult than building. Yeah, so was there ever a time when you were approached by an NBA team

that wanted you to come and did you ever actually give it like serious consideration? Maybe, maybe I can coach in the league. Well, Richard Hamilton was the first draft choice. And I remember going down with the people from Washington and West, I'm told in people, and they said, would you like to coach? And the West was living out in the farm

just an incredible guy and a great player. And the more I thought about it, and for once I was rational, my ego said, yeah, I can coach these guys, but it's not my personality. My personality is not gonna take me to get your fucking ass up the court. That's not gonna happen.

I'm a man coach, you are. And secondly, coach, I make a few times as much of you and I'm four times more valuable. Point being, my best thing is to take my own life experiences and attach them to a college kid who might need me. Not that I couldn't help, guys. If I went to the NBA, I did think about a couple of things about your job in the NBA is to help to make them great,

help to get the minutes, help them get along. You got enough things there, a long career. Those things are right there. You're at your job and you gotta realize that. In college, it's getting them something they don't even know what they want, a degree. Getting them things, maturity, a kick in the ass. Things that happened, some of the things

that I aspired and did because of my own life circumstances. I had plenty to build up. I tell my kids all the time that I want you guys to understand. There's nothing racial, there's nothing regional about poverty up in poor. They turn the lights up in my house when I was a kid. Not my dad died and stuff. So like, just poverty shit, I don't wanna hear it.

We gotta find a way to get around it. You're gonna beat the man. You're gonna be somebody in position to get the man. Get yourself to that position. Then you'll have a fair voice. That's an important thing. I had a great guy who eventually became the chancellor of UMass Boston, Keith Motley

from Pittsburgh, one of the great people I've ever had in my life. Keith was a good player for me. He was six, seven, two, 40. He eventually got a black belt in karate. Not a guy to screw with. And he just simply encapsulated what you're supposed to be. He eventually worked at Northeastern,

eventually got his PhD and we used to talk about this all the time, about all the different situations that can happen to you, like all of us. And I just think a lot of it's from your own life experiences from where you're from. We were kidding one time. We had a gene down in Disney outside of Northeastern. And the kids were in the store.

And you know what's in the store at Disney, right? All the cameras. So we get out, let's get going guys. All of a sudden the people come out. It's scary. Someone here put some things. And I'm saying, you son of a bitch. The kid, get over there.

And Keith said, you stupid bastard. How'd you get caught? He's a guy with a PhD. His idea was you, the kid didn't recognize the room we was in. Cameras and all that stuff. Why'd you allow that? I was pissed he had committed theft.

Keith was excited that he'd been stupid in a social situation. We both meant the same thing, but from a little different background. And I think that's really important. I, you know, once again, if you ever knew what I learned from Keith Motley, from Kimmel Walker about dignity,

Reggie Lewis about joy, some of the guys I've had, a macroographer about me not being so smart. I mean, he's the smartest guy I ever met. He really is. I always say that Bill Clinton, Obama, and Mech. And my point is, your kids teach you so much. If you're willing to learn from them,

you don't always say, oh, boy, that's brilliant. God damn, he's got a better approach than I do. He could put life in boxes. If you, if you do strength training, okay, don't talk to him about basketball or school. If he's in the library, leave him alone. He's at academics on the court. And those are the things that I think people can teach you.

Your life experiences, the great fortune of people you are to meet, incredibly important. Okay, so you mentioned a bunch of legends that you coached. Two-part question. One, best pure basketball player you ever coached. And two, the guy that you thought you did your best job with in terms of growth,

where they came in as one guy and they graduated and either went to the NBA or on with life is something totally different. Yeah, I really don't have quote, a greatest. The greatest scorer might even need a Reggie Lewis or Ray Allen. Yeah. Ray Allen, few had no idea what a great afternoon was.

The most funky play I had, that there's no way he should have been as great as he was. And he's one of my favorite people of all time, Richard Hamilton. Oh, okay. Could run forever. Yeah. People forget.

Two-time All-Star MVP of the Final Four. You know, he just will wear you out. We used to have the small guys that would run like a five, 20 miles something. Richard Brown, like in some ridiculous, like, you know, 450 or something, could run and not get tired. Yeah.

But I would say the guys could just score the ball. Yeah. All-around player, it's hard, because he had a lot of injuries. Karan Butler's right there. There wasn't much Karan Butler couldn't do. And by the way, when he left Yukon, I went to see Wisconsin, went into the,

as he called it, the hood. Yeah, we had him on the show. He told the story, yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. And he said, and everybody was looking around, and I'm like, what are you looking to meet for? Yeah.

Well, it was the reason. I was the only one that looked like me. And Karan Butler was so special as a kid, his hands, he could grip the ball and dunk anything. He could pass it. I mean, he had an 11-year career, and now he's doing great with Miami, was on ESPN, but one of the special guys I've had all the time.

As I said, you know, I went to school, like a lot of people, started some graduate work, a lot of different stuff, read a lot of books, the best lessons that I ever had, and they don't know a lot of them, other plays we had. So, you know, clearly Karan could do more things than he had the player had. I think that the guy who made the most big plays

for us is Kimberlaka. Yeah. Only because Two Final Four is national championship, and by the way, he did it by never disrupting, only encouraging. Yeah, so I have a question about that, 2011 team. Yeah. All-time team, all-time run.

What, so for people who don't remember, Yukon starts the season 17 and two, they're ranked, they go to the Maui, they win the Maui, they're playing great, end of January two, the Big East Tournament, lose seven of 11, start the Big East Tournament, win five in a row, five straight days, then go to the March Madness, win six in a row.

So they finish the season losing seven of 11, then finish the post-season winning 11 straight. What did you say to the guys before the Big East Tournament? Because it was, it felt, I remember being like, oh, well Yukon, forget them, they're fading at the wrong time here, and then everything reversed. Yeah, we were ready in person,

the emergency was quickly in Hawaii, Maui Tournament, and I tell it, this is one of the best Kimber stories of maybe indicative of who he is. We're playing in Maui, we beat a really good Wichita team. We beat then Michigan State, and then we killed Kentucky. Ray average, I'm just giving you, Kimber average is 30, something like that.

So it gets over with, we get on the bus, and it's how it's held, like it is right now, and we're waiting half an hour in VP. National people were all there in Maui, that was quote the tournament, and he gets on the bus. Swear to God, he's got the big trophy in VP. The entire bus, not solicited by anybody,

stood up and started clapping. No, he might hear, hey, no, the entire bus, no one said a word, get up and start clapping. The reason that is so profound, because you know athletes, and all of us are athletes, I would have scored more if I got the ball. Yeah, he started him, he got all the minutes, whatever it may be, there was not an ounce of that on that bus.

And that's someone said to me, how much does the kids respect Kimber? That is indicative, because if you're around athletes, we all think we can do better than you, we have to. But that momentary hourly, daily, at that particular time, saying like he did this for us, is amazing. That kind of correlates, eventually we go through the season, we have injuries, and then at 17-2,

they thought they had won the world. And we then lose a three-pointer to Notre Dame. I can go right through it, because we weren't that far away from being really good. My job then, wasn't magical, was to stay on their ass. I mean, different maybe than other times. But understand, you have it there, you gotta put this freaking thing together,

and stop worrying about records. Lose a couple, like watching my Red Sox recently, holy shit, why 20 last night? You know why 20 runs last night? But anyways, just give me like four, and save the other 14. But point being, is we just stayed together. The hardest thing to do in losing is staying together.

Well, which would you rather have happened? Would you rather lose like the Red Sox did last night, and give up 20 runs? Or would you- What's up? Let's score 20, let's go 20. So would you rather suffer like a bad loss, or would you rather have a really close loss,

like a six-over-time game in a tournament? I knew we were there. I didn't know we were going to champion, but I'd be stupid to tell you that, because we had all freshmen, you know. But we did have three pros in the back court. Jeremy Lamb, who could score on anybody, even by the end of that time.

Shabazz Napier, and Kimber Walker. Alex Uriaki, who didn't play in the league, but probably should have great, you know, averaged like 11, 12 rebounds a game. We had a shot blocker. Guy led the country in the rebounding when he transferred to Vegas, Roscoe Smith. We had talent.

Giffey, who played in the Olympics for the German team. We're pretty good, and we were young. We had a, unfortunately, we had to get punched in the face a few times, and then respond. And we kind of always respond. Doesn't mean you can get on this shit. You're going to blow theirs, whatever it may be. But we stayed together, and you say that sounds easy.

It's not easy. Yeah, I mean, it was an incredible run, 11 in a row. And now I do, I'm not going to make you apologize for the national championship game, but that was maybe the worst basketball game ever played. You say that. So people, people, just a refresher, Yukon Butler, Yukon won the national title.

They shot 9% from three. Butler, I think, shot 18% from the field. That was tough to watch. We, that wasn't, I wasn't joking. No, okay, okay. That was, yeah. Calm, I've got it someplace. Cause it's the only thing keeping me psychologically.

My arm, not sound, but semi-sound. And remember, we blocked 12 shots. All right, so good point. We bought it, we bought it 19 shots. These is taken by the analysts. It was the most bothered shots we had all season. So we got into this shit and said, I don't care what you guys saying.

We should score in this team. We only put up 54, although we put up 30, something like a half. I said, we're not going to let them score, oh, by the way, you'll notice, we don't take many trees in the second half. Take it to the rim, they can't stop us. And eventually we wore them down.

Was it a bad game? When you win the game, it's never bad. Well, I'm speaking from a place too that I, pretty much any big game, you know, national title championship game, I like to bet the over. So 53-41, you really feel stupid. Well, let me tell you something.

You know what the great thing about what we did at Yukon? We won a lot of different ways. You know, we could pressure, okay, back in the team when Latina makes a shot and all those great things, final eight run and stuff. At one particular point with America, Charlie Villanueva, Hilton Armstrong, Josh Boone, I'll keep on going, Rudy Gay, et cetera.

We led the country in shop blocking, nine straight years. We led the country in steals at a particular point. Before that, we won in a lot of different ways because the coach was halfway smart, not real smart, but halfway smart, because he adapted to his talent, fit my system. The system is what you have. You try to get the plays you want,

they've got to be tough with us and they've got to be able to run with us. But we won a lot of different ways to get... Some teams who want to play the margin so close all the time, they lose in the tournament, you know why? Because they can't play another way. We could have pressed, but Butler wasn't a team to press. But I knew their size, lack thereof,

we can beat them inside. And my point being, we're a pretty good team because we beat a pretty good Kentucky team in the 70s. No, you're a great team. They just did that championship game, it sticks out, yeah. It wasn't good, but once again, we got into a slug fest.

And you know what, the guy who was coaching the team, I don't know if you know, he ended up with the Celtics, had a good career there, and now he's going to be a genius and he's a great guy, he'll have a great deal. But he made sure it stayed ugly. And so simply, what are you doing in a mud fight? Got your head or you throw mud back?

We found different kind of mud to throw at them and we warded them to death. My point being... I love that. Yeah, I'm going to steal that from you. But you're right, because the coaching, like we talk about it in all sports, that the best coaches, they don't have a plan.

They don't have a system. Their system changes year to year, game to game, depending on the players they have. We beat Gonzaga, I think it was 99, to go to the national championship. And they were entirely different kind of team then. And you keep on going. Good coaches, okay?

I mean, Dean is different, because you can tell Dean's up there for me as far as the kind of coach he was and the kind of person he was. But they had their system. But they get pretty much from sick Perkins to worthy. They got a lot of the same kind of players could do it. That wasn't an ideal. We had all guys we pressed all the time.

We had all the great bigs. We have all those big guys who were first on draft choices. And Mech was number two in the draft. And my point being to this, so we had to adapt to our personnel, but keeping some things never changed. We always ran, not in that game. But if that's all we could do,

we would have lost that championship. And I think that's incredibly important. It's really important to understand. You know, you get into that. It isn't like, oh, shit, we're in that. No, how do we get out of that and beat them? And that's the most significant thing is being pissed. God, this game sucks.

It's awful. I don't want to, what are you gonna quit? Go home, take my ball. I know, ain't gonna happen. So what are you just, I had a fear going in that we couldn't pace the game. We want to pace in space. That's us.

We've been at here at St. Joseph's. We have this 90 game. Not surprising, because that's how we play. My influence in basketball initially was Red Allback. Why did we wear black sneakers? So on the fast break, they could see the flash of the sneaker. The only one in basketball at the wearer at the time, they got them from Converse.

And my point being, I mean, all that integrated stuff, I look, I work pretty hard at perfect myself. I was never an external genius. I'm not captain video. That's not what I do. I find out what you can do. And then I try to beat you with what we can do or adjusting the game that I hated

in the sense of stylistically. But you know, when we put the trophy up, said National Champ. And if I had been pissed about the game that it played, Brad would have hosted it because I'd be fighting, I'd be fighting reality. You can't fight reality. Jim Calhoun is brought to you by our great,

great friends over at Zip Recruiter. If you've ever had to look for a job, you know it's absolutely no picnic. You can start stress eating. Your eyes can burn from staring at job listings for too long. It takes the patience of a saint to fill out every job application.

And when it comes back to hearing back about jobs, it's nothing but cricket sometimes. You can feel like a lone wolf. You can get lost in the shuffle. The general experience for looking up for a job is pretty sucky. That's why Zip Recruiter figured out a way to make it unsucky.

You sign up at ZipRecruiter.com slash easy. ZipRecruiter.com slash easy. You create your free profile, then you get matched to great jobs, plus you get a lot more. Zip Recruiter will proactively pitch your profile to employers whose jobs match your experience. Unlike other job sites,

if an actual person from the company really likes what they see, they personally invite you to apply to their job. And candidates who apply on Zip Recruiter are nearly three times as likely to get hired. You can apply with just one click. Just one click is all it takes. It's so much easier with Zip Recruiter.

It's the number one rated job site in the US. Sign up for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash easy. Experience the better way to find a job? Go to ZipRecruiter.com slash easy. Right now to sign up absolutely free and put Zip Recruiter to work for you. So what would you say is maybe not, maybe it's not the same team

that produced the best results, but what would you say looking back over your career is the best year of coaching that you did, the one that you're most proud of? That team to some degree, because I was always, you know, grabbing a freshman. So you can try to go home if you want some, but you need to stay here and become a man,

whatever the case may be. I think the magical team might have been, oh, four is a fine way when people say to how talented. If we had lost to the national championship, I would have been pissed because number two in the draft for MECRO before, Ben Gordon, still could have played forever. Charlie Villanueva, Josh Boone, Hilton Armstrong,

Marcus Williams, six first round draft twos. It's not all at once, but okay, we don't have that. That's not like, that may be Kentucky and other teams. That's not us. And that was the best team. I should say best talent. The best team, no question, 99. You remember Rip?

You'll always remember Khaled Alameen. Always. Khaled Alameen is one of the great characters where I played basketball. Yes. When I told him, he's telling all the reports about Ramadan, and then I see him putting, you know, subs. What the hell, man!

Oh, hot dogs before games. Ricky Moore, who's a terrific little defensive player. Jake Voskow, who did play 10 years in the league, but two really legitimate Kevin Freeman, one of the toughest guys I've ever had, made that into a 34 in two team. By the time we got to that Sunday, after being on Ohio State and getting ready for Duke,

didn't show up for a reason, and they were really good. Everybody thought they were the best. At one point, we were 24 and 0. People forgot that. You all should notice that, and I do bet only on Hauses, but I've been told the greatest differential before a championship game was nine to 10 points us. Yeah, nine and a half points.

You guys were nine and a half points under Hauses. And we were 30, three, and two. Yeah. And the only other team that had been number one that year. And we were so, we knew and felt each other, like a pulse in a heart. We knew. So you knew if Rip wasn't doing that.

I'm just saying, we brought this kid, Albert Moran in the championship game, had 14. We had answers, and everybody on the team, he more importantly, accepted those answers and understood what we were trying to do. That was this pretty special team. Yeah. All right, so one of my favorite things

is Jim Calhoun versus the media. Okay. I alluded to it earlier with the Ryan Gomes. It's one of my favorite clips. There's two that are my favorite, but I fucked up if you want to write it, write it five times. And I did.

Yeah, yeah. I took that lousy play at Caron Valley. One of the sons of a bitch I was, how stupid can I be? And you fucking asked me about that, man? I mean, just say you're stupid. Okay, we both go out and have a beer, okay? Yeah, well, so that's my,

the thing that I love about you versus the media is that you had sometimes an adversarial relationship, but I always thought that, like you always were there to answer the questions. If you call me, even, even, I was fighting with Jeff Jacobs here at the half of Caron. Okay, Jeff, what the fuck you want? Here you go.

Right. I'll answer the question. Just don't ask me stupid questions. Don't ask me if I'm going to give money back. And I keep saying that, no, that thin dime. We make $5 million at this university more than anybody else. Yeah, I know. I mean, yeah, that's my favorite.

From that, I make a lot more than that. And then the other part lying in that one that's the best is, can you do me a favor? Why don't you shut up? Yeah. And the last one was, and my grandkids tell me this, hey, Papa, get some facts. Come back and see me, get some facts,

and come back and see me. Or if you'd like to meet me outside, I'd be happy to do that. You're gonna send my grandson, 17 now, Sam has his own podcast, and he's like crazy. He would be in heaven here if he's with you guys. Well, by my point of view. Yeah, I mean, you're,

so like every time that I make a mistake, I just, I just post the clip. I just say, I fucked up clip. It's the best thing ever. And I think that like, you don't see that anymore in sports and coaching. Well, let me tell you how I feel a little bit. Why I like Belichick is because I knew Belichick

a little bit, but more importantly, Belichick was in Cleveland, and it's a big quarterback controversy. And he said he never ran it, the media did, and eventually cost him his job. And he said, never let those son of a bitches ever get the edge on me, on the Cincinnati. I mean, that's kind of what it is.

My thing was simply, I'm here for you. I'll answer any question, but don't insult my intelligence. Don't be a political reporter. Come in and ask me if I'm going to give money back. You know, what the, come on, man, you can't. I mean, and by the way, if you're here in the background, the other reporters are saying, shut up.

You know, once again, what's a good day? We'll probably start the little fight and then you go from there. But for somebody, I'll tell you this, it's very honest, like I fucked up kind of thing. It's not really that, but that's how I'm built. And I can still love you and hug you.

When David Solman, one of the guys who used to bust my ass all the time, when he died in an olive oil accident, going home, it was like a loss of my life. I mean, he's a terrific guy. Phil Charlottes, who's now our SID, I mean, he's the guys who reporters who just end up being coming good friends.

And I think what they did eventually respect me, because I'll answer any question. I'm not run away from you. And I'll tell you exactly how I feel. And it probably, as I said, if I knew your backgrounds, I kind of know why you are what you are in a lot of ways. And I mean that very honestly, people read things, listen sometimes, I want to know,

kind of know what you say, but what you've done, what you do, and why'd you become who you are. And I think that there's no question either. If you're an 18 year old kid, coming home from UMass, full scholarship, world on the plate, but have lost your dad, have no money, have no work in stone cutters,

and get up early every morning and pump gas. I mean, when I was playing football, we'd have a one o'clock game, I'd be up at five, pump gas for three hours, go up to play tight end. And my point being, I don't know, sympathy, which is something I had to do to help my family. And it was never one of those things that I wouldn't do it. I leave in school.

I mean, once again, I don't know. Some people say they don't know what a silver spoon is. Silver, God damn, you're lucky. You're lucky with platinum. But my point being, it creates a thing where I love doing things for people, whether it be autism speaks, I have a granddaughter, whether it be the Calvin Cardiology Center,

because I lost both my mom and dad through cardiac disease, whether it be helping people in charities. I'm not saying I'm a Mr. Good Guy, or I'm saying to you is, when you're in the position to have this, the microphone, make sure you use it. Others who can't have one can't be heard. Make sure you become a voice for those to be heard.

I wanna be judged by that on what my players think. And I become the father I didn't have to a lot of my players. My father would tell me stories about the Cape of Good Hope, about racial issues way back in the day, going around in the merchant ship, him as the ship's engineer, and just the different things. And a hero took me to football games,

started when I was eight years old, every Saturday. And I think the whole thing came down to him about why is he like he is? Well, he's half crazy, okay, fine. But he has things that have instilled in him about values and family and love. And I think that's really, really important. Being gritty, as we started off by saying,

is a natural, I think, production product of my life. I mean, because I didn't like things, I love things. You know, I used to have a friend who was a teacher coach, she used to save in high school, said, I've never seen a guy, my wife used to make meatloaf sandwiches and he's fallen in love with lunch. Passion is something I have a lot of. I think that one thing that I've learned

already through this interview is that, like grit is fundamentally an expression of something that you love. Exactly right. You'll never be able to truly demonstrate grit and something that you don't really care about. And that's, you can say, I've got grit, you can say, hey, coach, I'll do whatever you say,

I'll be the first one in, the last one out. But unless you truly love what you're doing, you will never actually show that grit. I'm 79 years old, sitting here, ready to coach a bunch of division three kids. I can tell you right now, I know this is gonna be shocking to you, it's not for the money.

Ball is life for you. One thing that one thing the Catholic, and I'm Catholic, one thing the Catholics do is we, we take a vow of poverty, I guess. Look at my paycheck, no, but I'm here because of the kids. Well, one thing I love is you retired from basketball to go coach more basketball. Yeah, yeah.

You took my wife. But I do think that when you're on the field and you say, and you couldn't be more accurate by the way, which is said, in August, little of August, it's easy to say how hard you're gonna work. You know, about the third day, third week, it gets me old hat. And we're just getting started.

You know, when I tell you you got a chance to be a great player, I actually fucking mean it. And I actually do take this shit really seriously. And if you tell me you wanna go out and play basketball after this, you know, it's kinda strange. I actually take that seriously, they're actually not bullshitting me. And that's why I'm gonna treat you.

And then when I got into practice, I said, are you gonna goddamn it run? You sure you wanna be a player now? And that's when the rubber, me say, you know, I actually really love it. You gotta care about it. And I don't get up in the morning to do anything that I don't really love.

You know, I mean, I love theater. I love watching people go into other worlds and fascinated by that. I love reading. I love things where you watch people pursue things. And I have great respect for those who did. I don't care if you're born Brady. I don't care if you're born like Brady.

Obviously you had a very good upbringing, great family, et cetera. Brady's got a little different tool than most of us have. Right? He don't wanna just be good. He really wants to be good. You know, and I think when you see that, so you don't have to have a hard,

scrabbled life to do that. You know, we get brought out in different ways. You know what brings us out mainly? Circumstance. What did I fall back on? That 18-year-old guy coming back from college, running around, punching people, do all the different things.

And then I turned that into what I can give to my players. How I got out of that. Took my players to my house. And I live on like right behind the Pondford School of Prep School. And we had about 50 acres. Trust me, there's nothing but beer and deer out there. So it's not exactly, I hid in ranch.

But it's all done over, et cetera, et cetera. And downstairs I had lined up as, I think 40 rings. Championship rings, national championship, whatever it may be. And trophies and keys to the city. And I could see them all looking around. And I said to them, you know, fellas, I started out like you.

Actually, I didn't. I started out like you, some of my guys who were better at circumstance financially. But I ended up here. So you're all looking around. I said, everything's obtainable. If you understand what it needs to take to get to where you want to be.

Where you want to be, no, where I want to be, where you are, it's all obtainable. I can tell you that. And I just want to tell you a couple of things. A few days, I felt like, really? I've got to put this much into that. And the passion I had for it, of course I do. Because I'm getting this incredible pleasure.

I mean, walk out of a gym after getting on a kid and said, just seeing that slight turn, it's progress. We're getting there. He took his first step. He actually understands. So I think all those things are incredibly important. And I can tell you, my wife used to say to me, like, I love going to bed with you.

I said, it's really kind. I appreciate that. Actually, I was confident. And she said, but you can't keep bringing those 14 guys into bed every night. And by that, she was mainly, I'd say, middle of the same mostly. Do you see what DJ didn't do today?

Yeah. What are you talking about? Yeah. What is this? And I find nothing wrong with that. I would find that my high school coach, Fred Herger, who died, Rolta Villanglo, was a great coach, kicked me in the ass, literally.

If I didn't follow my shot, he kicked me in the ass. Today, I guess I'd get him for abuse. I wouldn't. Because he got me to a full scholarship, got me to my life. But my point being is that he was there when I needed him. And that's what I really wanted to be all the time. I guess I was trying to kind of replace kids' fathers

of male figures in their lives with some who didn't have it, didn't have the kind of situation they'd need to have. Plenty of great fathers. I don't mean that. But understand, it's really, really important to have somebody there. Everybody needs somebody. And maybe I'm good in some ways,

because I understand what it's like to have, quote, privilege or white privilege. I also understand what it's like to have no money. And just if mom could Western Union, way back in the day, 20 bucks for the week. Yeah. All right, so I have one last question. You were always great at working the refs.

Who was your match in that? Who was the guy that when you went up against another team or another coach, you're like, all right, he's going to get every call. So I got to be on my A game today. Two things. Time. So J. Wright, one of his early games at Villanova,

he's had this XL, 15,000 people, like he used to be a holocaust. He gets thrown out. J. Wright, yeah, J. Wright. So I go in afterwards. I said, J, man, you don't have stripes yet. I said, when John does this with the towel, I used to turn to everybody.

We're fucked. Oh, Louis does. Uh-huh. Mickey, Mickey. Mickey Crowley might be yelling that. Oh, boy. Stripes. The respect.

Jim Burr was the toughest guy. And you know what made him tough? He was so goddamn good. Henri, cranky. I remember yelling at him, Jim, you screwed that fucking thing up, boom, boom, boom. You know, Jim looked at me and says, you don't think I know it?

You don't think I feel worse? I started to have respect for him. And then I started doing tape. I have no idea how he looked for human beings, but he could. He was the terrific official. A lot of great people that I met through officials. Some of those officials, I wouldn't do that for,

I don't care how much I love anything. I wouldn't have just both everybody, 57 people gonna hate you on every call. And sometimes 100%. My point being though is that, you know, they're part of the game. And the good ones, you know, the guys who show up, you talk about the game changing.

You know, I wasn't a guy with a water bottle and the hair. I don't think anybody would use the word self-mortar with me. Mm-hmm. I would agree. You know, I mean, I talked to Lut Olsen about this. He said, you and I are kind of two pieces apart, even you more, because you're in that area of like,

and I talked about the great coaches, Roy Williams and great coach, obviously. Mike and stuff, they don't mention us. Yeah. He said, haven't you won three times? It's true. But you know yourself. So after game at the Big East,

and I'm not being anything, but to be very honest, I had choices where to go. You can tell I love the Big East, just the greatest life ever. Okay. I'd take my family out to eat. A lot of the guys went to, whether me or I went in CBS and everybody went over there,

as there wasn't my deal. I mean, and that probably gets back to lost my father. My family's incredibly so close. My sister's my brother, family. I always tell the story about first final four. In the finals, we had 94 tickets for Calhouns there. To give you an idea. That's what my family means to me.

And I just simply think, like, traded that? Of course not. Yeah. Because I wouldn't trade the 17 championships. I got there my way. And that's why, whether I like Rick or not, he's a terrific coach. And I actually like John Calipari.

I do business differently than he does, but regardless. My point being is that, you know, I don't have really, I mean, for me to get a guy like Rick, who can really, really coach, I have no problem taking really, really coach. I think that's respect. And respect is probably what he'd want. And I'd want it from him.

And you don't have to like everybody. I do the same thing. I don't like self-promotion. I watch guys, they give it almost like a billboard at half time. It just coats a freaking game. Will you please? I don't want it about, we got to build championship thing.

You win games, I'll be championships. I like you just slipped in a would you please. Yeah. Those are my favorites. From that ones, yeah. Would you please? I'm looking around the room here. And you have maybe the most impressive collection

of pictures in any office that I've ever been in. You have a magic and bird here. That changed basketball. Changed basketball. You've got Kimba Walker in this picture over here, hitting the last second shot, saying I will forever be your son in the autograph. You've got the winningest coaches

in college basketball history, of which you are one of the top eight that's pictured in this frame. And then the biggest picture that you have in this office is your hole in one. Oh really? Right above your desk. Oh shit, I never really.

Is that your most proud accomplishment? Pretty good. Yeah, pretty good. Oh I know, I tried a lot more to do that than I tried to win games. I only coached something like, let's say I have nine hundred and something and thirteen, fourteen hundred,

thousands of those balls were hit to get that one to go in. Yeah. Yeah. Because you know what? And you use the word and I think that anybody, you can hate me, you'd like me to make it evidence. You can't say I'm not passionate.

I love to play golf. I love the passion of it. I like beating your ass. I love when you hand me the 20 afterwards. And I get pissed when you don't. I don't do the windmills, you know, the helicopter. But when I was younger, when I was younger, I became a better golfer when I stopped fighting me

because me was getting the way of me. I have a lot of things by the way, and golf is symbolic of that. You're gonna stay with what you're gonna do. But I love getting out. The guy once told me, what a waste of time. You guys knew how many deals I set on the golf course to do this for this company, I would speak,

do all the different things and great people, more importantly, I've met on the golf course and find out more about people when you play golf with them. And so I just think that that's great pleasure for me. That's like having solitude, only four of us, okay? And in turn intimacy with somebody at the same time. I just think that's a cool, cool thing. But yes, it was raining, it was great.

And once again, I just think accomplishments, here's my last thing about my life story. So I'm a big Hamilton fan. I'm at the O'Neill Theater and the Bushnell Boards because I choreographed like theater. I think it's amazing what people can do. And so Hamilton became big, and at the O'Neill, Lynn Manuel Miranda wrote what is out now in a movie

in the Heights, I saw it, great. Then we, he did Hamilton and I met him and sat down. First thing he said, I don't play. He went to Wesley and we're right up the street. So he was in school while we were going through our stuff. And in that, after Hamilton dies and his wife is up there and she said... Spoiler.

I haven't seen it. That's okay, that's okay. He's already died. No, wait, wait. He's already died. Like Hamilton said? Aaron Burr, spoiler. No, his wife, who did it?

Okay, says, who lives, who dies, who tells you the story? My son, who was president of Converse, president of Dawkins, a very young age, a very well, et cetera, and both my son, Jeff, he has his own company too. But my point was, who lives, who dies? I can't understand that. They had terminal cancer and they think,

I think Robert Davis saved it, so who lives? Who dies, but most importantly at the end, for all of us at Legacy, I guess it's called, who tells you the story? It's who tells you the story and how they tell you the story. And so because she then goes into a siliquary, all about starting the New York Times, starting this, Hamilton's things,

all the things he did in his life, but no one told his story about the real Hamilton. And I just think, I've taken that, who lives, who dies, because that helps you sometimes with grief, but who tells you the story? Like who's gonna tell your story? Think about it.

And what do you want them to tell? And I just truly think it's, that's why I never judge, in the old, a book by its cover, or a story about someone in a newspaper, or someone telling me that. I want to know, as I before, what you did. And what you did tells me, okay?

That's your story. Yeah, that's great. I do have one very, very last thing. I promise this last thing I want to talk about, but I realized we didn't get a chance to mention it. I was doing a little bit of reading about you before we sat down. And I didn't know the story,

but you were competing, or you were participating in a 50-mile charity bike race, at one point, this is- My big race. Your big race, yeah, this was like 15 years ago, something like that? Yeah, 12, 15 years ago. And you went over the handlebars of your bike.

35 miles an hour. 35 miles an hour. I read conflicting reports. Some say you broke five ribs. Some say you broke eight. It's kind of like Drew Brees situation, where how many ribs did you actually break? It came up with six at first.

It didn't have to be an eight, I think, but what I didn't, it was a shadow. So I couldn't see a small pothole, hit it, went over the top, smashed my helmet. Helmet saved me, but landed and broke the ribs. But the adrenaline, I think we were probably close to 50 miles,

we were probably close to 38, 39 miles out. So I went over, scrapes and all that kind of stuff. And so I said, I need a new helmet. And they're trying to get the, just scrape some marks. Not realizing, because the adrenaline and all the, you know, you're out there, I was out doing that, that I had banged my ribs up pretty good. So I get back on the bike, went the last 12, got there.

We still see it like it was today. Coach, you all right? Yeah, I finished, I finished. We're fine, we were raising this money for the Calhoun Cardiology Center, et cetera, standing against the car. And Ray was there, Scotty Burrell was there, Donnie Marshall was there.

And I all of a sudden just slipped down. I was riding with my doctor. My cardiologist was a great friend of mine, Peter Schulman, and I still remember, I said, I'm going home. He said, no, you're going to hospital. And so I guess I finished the race with eight broken ribs and a lot of scrap.

No big deal. That's great. That is great for sure. Coach, this has been awesome. We really appreciate your time. Just in just one last, just for the record, you don't regret passing on Ryan Gomes. Ryan Gomes is a great kid.

Thanks so much. Yeah. Oh, appreciate it. Jim Calhoun is brought to you by our great, great friends over at Zip Recruiter. If you've ever had to look for a job, you know it's absolutely no picnic. You can start stress eating.

Your eyes can burn from staring at job listings for too long. It takes the patience of a saint to fill out every job application. And when it comes back to hearing back about jobs, it's nothing but cricket sometimes. You can feel like a lone wolf. You can get lost in the shuffle.

The general experience for looking up for a job is pretty sucky. That's why Zip Recruiter figured out a way to make it unsucky. You sign up at ZipRecruiter.com slash easy. ZipRecruiter.com slash easy. You create your free profile, then you get matched to great jobs,

plus you get a lot more. Zip Recruiter will proactively pitch your profile to employers whose jobs match your experience. Unlike other job sites, if an actual person from the company really likes what they see, they personally invite you to apply to their job. And candidates who apply on Zip Recruiter

are nearly three times as likely to get hired. You can apply with just one click. Just one click is all it takes. It's so much easier with Zip Recruiter. It's the number one rated job site in the US. Sign up for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash easy. Experience the better way to find a job? Go to ZipRecruiter.com slash easy.

Right now to sign up absolutely free and put Zip Recruiter to work for you. All right, that was a great interview. He also gave us balls on the way out. He signed three basketballs. I got one that said I fucked up. I got one that said not a dime back. Yep.

What did yours say, Hank? They're not bad. Just a fucking cool ass guy. He's the man. Yeah. And it is so funny that, I mean, PFT mentioned it during the interview that he retired from coaching basketball

to coach some more basketball. That's great. In a little bit lower stakes. That's great. But you know what? I actually did learn from it. He connected a big dot for me about grit, that grit is love.

I like that. Yes. Thank you to Jim Calhoun. That was a lot of fun. All right, so we're gonna do the Mount Rushmore. It's brought to you by our friend at Coors Light. By the way, 8 p.m. Eastern Monday night. So tonight, the Disc Golf, the first ever,

pardon my take, Invitational Disc Golf Tournament is going to be live on YouTube. We will be in the chat commenting, talking to the people. So please make sure you get in there. Watch it with us as we premiere it. Like it, subscribe, do all the good stuff. Also, Tuesday night, we're gonna be in Cleveland. We need an AWL's house to watch hard knocks at.

Really, the only requirement is don't be a creep. No freaks. Actually, no, no, no, I take that back. Freaks are okay, but don't be a creep. Creep, no creeps. You can be a nerd, don't be a dork. Yeah. So maybe send Jake an email, what's the email?

Or should we, no, I was gonna give it to Billy. Holy shit. That was a huge mistake. So I believe it's PMTintern at barsoulsports.com. Billy, Billy, so we would be at someone's house. We would be the guy in Ohio who had the zoo where the lions like got released and shit. RIP.

This guy's not a creep, he just has 17 animals. I would find us a house that you guys might not like the house. We do not trust your judgment, okay. We would be fucking sitting with all types of animals in our lab watching all that. We would get brosolotious. We get diseases that only cattle get, but I'd be perfectly fine organizing it

and accomplishing the task. That part, you're right, you were right. You've been doing a great job and you are right that you could do it, but I would prefer Jake to do this task. It would just be a paintball facility. They got a TV in the waiting room. That would actually be sick.

So if you do have a paintball facility, maybe we'll consider it. Or like a low key zoo. Yeah, but send it to Jake and we'll pick 1-A-W-L, we'll come watch Hard Knocks with you on Tuesday night. Make sure you have HBO, proper. Not the fucking streaming shit. I would like to watch it live as it happens.

I'd like to watch it live, so proper. I wanna see proof of the subscription. All right, we're gonna do our Mount Rushmore. Mount Rushmore is brought to you by our friends at Coors Light, all of Grit Week is. So this is Henry, who is now winning every Mount Rushmore. Congrats to him. Hubba.

Hubba. Hubba. Hubba. Chubba. Chubba Hubbard. PFT, we should team up. Fucking everyone's just creating super teams here. Do me and you wanna team up and then.

Maybe not for this one, but for the next one. Let's fucking do it and dominate these fools. What if we went like 1v1v1 teams? It actually would be, we actually have like, we would have the perfect like age gap for each team. That's what I'm saying, yeah. Okay, so. Dan, you guys are consolidating?

We might, later on this week. We might during Grit Week, because everyone else is teaming up. Couldn't be me. You started the super team era. Listen, we're trying to ring Chase too. No, you guys did. If you can't beat him, join him.

All right, well, we'll decide later this week if we wanna team up. But either way, Hank is winning everything. Mount Rushmore of road trip songs. So songs you listen to on a road trip. Songs to listen to while driving. It doesn't have to be a road trip. We should actually do this.

Just while you're in a car. Again, maybe next year or whatever, but we could do full albums too. Because this, when I started thinking about it, I started thinking full albums. Because a full album speaks to you in a different way than an individual song skin. So Hank, but you're saying just songs in a car.

I texted what I said, songs to listen to while driving. I was thinking road trip. Mine will be road trips. I think that's fine. Whatever's the distinction. I can pull up the text. It literally says songs. That's fine.

No, I'm just gonna do road trip. Yeah, I mean, you interpreted however you chose to. I prepared. I can only say the words. I think it's fine either way. Yeah, I prepared. I prepared. It's fine.

Road trip, I mean, it's driving. Right, right. It's a longer driving session. It's a short road trip. Every time you get in a car, it's a road trip. We actually have to make a distinction. No, we don't. We should do road trip.

The distinction was made when I said songs to listen to while driving. Okay. I'm just gonna stick with my list. I've prepared. I'm fine. I'm good to go. I'm good to go.

I'm like beyond confused. I also think that this is gonna be very like difficult Mount Rushmore because it's music tastes subjective. So we'll throw some curve balls at people. All right, numbers. 17. 69. 18.

74. Seven. Seven. Fuck, man. Hank just keeps on winning. This guy is hot. So hot. Let's go.

Oh, you don't wanna go first? No, I'm gonna go one. Okay. Wait, no, you gotta go and you gotta just pick a direction. Yeah, I'm well aware. You know. Hey, you don't sound like you're happy right now and I'm happy.

I'm happy too then. No, so you should be happy. I'm happy. You know, I understand how it works. I'm just thinking. Okay, but I sense the little unhappiness and I'm happy right now. So by law, you have to be happy.

Right, you're right. I'm happy. Okay, so happy. One was billion Jake's second. Okay. Damn it. I don't think I've gone first at all this Mount Rushmore season.

All right, here we go. Hank. Atlantic City, the band. Great song. One of the best songs I've ever written. Yeah. Yep. Good song, good choice.

One of those times where the cover of the song is better than the original. Good choice. Life is a highway, rascal flag. Good choice. The cars. No, the cars. I think we're gonna be very literal

with some of these songs because I'll go truckin', Grateful Dead, off the Europe 72. Okay. I'm gonna go literal songs. I had, well, no, I had. I was hoping you were gonna pick a different Grateful Dead one. I knew Liam was gonna give you that one.

No, he didn't actually. Oh, whoa. Okay. That was me. Okay. I'm gonna go with My 1-1 still on the board. I think everyone's, I don't think anything's gonna get stolen.

Bohemian Rhapsody. Okay. Yeah, that's a good 1-1. Great, great driving song. Thought it would have been off the board by now. My second, I'm gonna go with Highway to Hell, ACDC. Okay.

All right. I will go with my second pick. I will go Reeling in the Year, Steely Dan. Great song to listen to. Not familiar. We're gonna have to listen to it. Really? You don't know it?

Oh. That's how it goes. I'm Reeling in the Years. All right. Oh yeah, I know that. So it's one of those songs that you like start thinking about your whole life while driving. I like to think about either the day,

the weather of the day, or your whole life when I'm driving. I agree. Those are the two options. I agree. So yeah, yeah, and it gets like, it's like a little, I also like my driving songs to make me drive faster.

Reeling in the Years is one of those songs. I think if you're listening to The Almond Brothers or Steely Dan, you should be ineligible to get a speeding ticket. Or Queens of Stone Age. Fast Car, Tracy Chapman. Okay, so you are going very literal. I like this.

That's a good pick. I just thought these would all be picked already. So you just thought car songs. Yeah, you're like car, yeah. No, that's a good pick. Pick as wheels on the bus. No, no, Fast Car, we listen to that, not on... No, it's a great song.

It's a great song. There's no... That's a life, that's a you run back your whole life and you hear that song. Remember where we live, huh? Slide, good. And then you're like, shit, I'm no one.

Not you. No, but you're in a car going fast. That's true. And then you're like, yeah, we're going somewhere. It's a good pick, good pick, good pick. I will go with The Gambler, Kenny Rogers. That's a great car song, yeah. And my life perspective,

one would be Landslide, Fleetwood Mac. Ah, okay. Good choice. A little depressing, but you know, you want to feel something when you're driving either really good, really bad, you want to just, or not bad, but like that song will make you think things

that you forgot about for a while. You gotta, there are two kinds of road trip songs, I think, ones that where you just turn off your brain and rock out, and the others, where you want to feel a feeling. That's a great feel of feeling song. I actually had a Fleetwood Mac song that was gonna be on my honorable mentions, not bad.

Me too. Oh, what is it? Dreams? No, the chain. Great beat, like a good driving beat. I listened to the whole album when I was driving home yesterday. That album inspired this.

Of all time. That album inspired this, Mount Rushmore. That album was inspired by cocaine. Mm-hmm. A lot of it. And whoa, heartbreak number one. Heartbreak one, cocaine two. That kind of go hand in hand.

Yeah. R.I.P. Billy Maze. Billy doesn't like my list, so I'm gonna load management. You have wheels on the bus? We're gonna do load management. Oh. In this game. I'm gonna sit out.

Whoa. He doesn't like my list. Well, then. Trouble and paradise. I'm gonna say your list at the end. Okay, go ahead. I have two songs on my list. Okay.

You're not a music guy. All right, this one's awesome to roll around when you got the boys in the car. Boys are back in town, then Lizzie. Okay. Good one, Billy. Good song. All right, I will go with Almond Brothers Blue Sky.

That is one of my favorite songs to listen to on a summer day. When the sky is blue, and it's a great driving song. All right. Just a feel good song. Okay, my last two. I'm gonna go. Nice for what? Okay.

Oh my god. That's such a fucking, you made a mockery of everything. I love that song. Yeah. Okay. I don't actually don't love that. I only love my mom and my bed. Oh my god.

Sorry. Okay. And then my last one, Blinded by the Light, Man for Man. Okay. Man for Man, they are actually the same band that sings Do a Diddy, that shitty song, but they also seem- That's a dodge play that you were talking about, too.

Yeah. But it's also not nice for what? You used the wrong lyrics for the song you said. I'm singing nice for what when I'm in the car, though? But you didn't. Yeah, but the lyrics that you said- You said- Right, I was just apologizing.

Okay. I was just using Drake, my muse, as another way to apologize. Got it. But yeah, Blinded by the Light, Man for Man, great sing-along song in the car. Great intro song for this podcast, Toss. That's right.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. All right, my last pick, I'm gonna go with, this is again, a very literal, we all do very literal things on this one, but Night Moves, Bob Seeger. Late at night, just fucking, when you're alone in the car, you and you're like the only one on the highway,

there's fucking nothing like that. Nothing like that. I remember when- Born to run, Bruce Springsteen. Billy, you crush this. You crush this. Can we hear Jake's? Wait, I still have a pick.

Do you think that he's gonna steal one of yours? No, he's not. Okay, go ahead, Jake, give us your two. I had all the small things, Blink 182. Okay, good song. And Home Phillip Phillips. Okay, which one is that? Can you sing for me for her?

No, not that one. No, that's Edward Sharp, Magnetic Zeroes. That's a good song, that's a good driving song too. How does yours go? So just know you're not alone. I'm gonna make this race my home. Is that like from an Apple commercial? Yeah.

It's a good song. I thought that was Luminers from camp? Yeah, it was a camp song. My last song, this is like a beginning of a road trip, you and your boys are gonna get like, first song you play on a road trip, Steady Mob and Lil Wayne. Oh, okay.

All right, that was a good Mount Rushmore. They're like, we all did a good job. We all put our best effort, except for PFT's Drake pick. I like that song a lot. I know you do. But you also- So much that you quoted the wrong lyrics.

No, I also spent a long time hating on Drake. Without a follow, without a mention. Yeah, but I've learned that I can evolve, and if I can change, then you can change, and everybody can change. I don't think you've ever played that song in a car. I've listened to that song in a car many times. Billy, I just drove back from Asbury Park.

Drag Throne. Two days ago, and I played Drake on the way back. All right, I don't believe you. All right, let's go Honorable Mentions, Road to Nowhere Talking Hands is on my list. I had Dragula. Okay. I had Rob Zombie on my list.

Hell yeah. That's a fucking six song. Yes. Send me on my way, Ross and Root. Okay, Divided Sky Fish is a great car song, because it's got like three songs in one. Boys of Summer, great driving song. A Thousand Miles of Vanessa Carlton.

Night Swimming. I had Ramblin Man on there too. Yeah, Ramblin Man. That was my Elman Brothers. Higher Love, Steve Winwood. That's a good one to turn up. You know what's a great one? What's you feeling good?

Is Radar Love, Golden Earring. Down by the River, Neil Young. Oh, okay, little Neil Young. Paradise by the Dashboard Light. If you want to get some meatloaf, if you want to start screaming lyrics in your car. Paradise by Coldplay. Yeah.

Time, Pink Floyd. Go with the flow, Queens of Stone Age. Again, you shouldn't be giving a ticket for that. Good for you, Olivia. Olivia Grass and High Tides. It's a good list, good list, guys. I think Billy won. I think Billy crushed it.

Yeah, Billy did crush it. He went the literal route that like you can't, you can't not see yourself in a car listening to Fast Car. Like it was smart. Did you have wheels on the bus? That's a bus song. Still like you're... That's when you get on the bus.

Yeah. All right. Okay, so reminder, 8 p.m. tonight. Disc Golf, Hammer It. Let's get everyone watching. Billy, would you like to do your Monday reading? I would like you to read your blog, The Mincey Experiment, because it was so good and so Billy.

And I would like us to follow along The Mincey Experiment on this show. Yeah, 100%. I'd like to co-op The Mincey Experiment, if we can. I'd like to get updates about Mincey. Maybe even have Mincey on the show. I don't know. He's a scale.

I don't know. He's a scale. You can have him on your own show. He's a scale. All right, so, okay. I recently moved into an apartment next to a vacancy that I share balcony. The way the two apartments are set up,

there was a serious potential for whoever to move in having a problem with my several exotic animals, late night workouts, and a dog that poops on the balcony. It's more of a fire escape. Basically, the smell is serious. What are you getting at, right? It's a fire escape type thing, that leads to an outdoor area,

but I'd have to share that with the neighbor. God, oh. Was balcony on the amenities when you got the apartment? No. So the other balcony, good question. It also sounds like that what Billy is, the ultimate perfect example for you would be to have somebody that you know

that moves in next door, because if not, that would be like a four-hour conversation for you to explain your whole life, your whole thing that you got going on to them. Wait, so the fire escape leads to something else? Yes. But you're not supposed to take it, but you take it? It leads to a little outdoor garden area.

But you take it often? Yeah, so I was supposed to share it with whoever moved in. The garden area? Yeah, so I like split it, but now I don't have to split it. What, with like a piece of tape? No, I actually, Hank had a cool fence from when he moved out.

Sick, okay, nice. But now I don't have to use it because Mincey's moving in and we're gonna share the garden. Love it. So the garden's only accessible through the fire escape? Yes. That feels weird. Yes. How far above the ground is this fire escape?

It's about 10 feet, but there's a stair way down. And there's nothing, there's no basement apartment or ground floor? No, that's like, it's like a little. A storefront? Yeah, it's more of like where the super chills. Okay. It's like a workshop.

Got it. I think I got the layout. Okay. So it would have really fucked you up. If someone else moved in, I didn't know. Yeah, it could have been like a lot of problems. Yeah, right. Dog poop, it's like noise.

Hedgehog, frogs. Legal. Normal New Jersey problems. Squat rack, yeah. We'll get to that, yeah. Not that I don't like strangers. I'm able to vibe with everyone, but sometimes strangers don't necessarily vibe with me.

I've been telling people I know who are looking at new places to move in. Rather than have someone I know live next to me than some random who would most likely not be chill. Through word of mouth and trial and error, I now have a new neighbor. The Louisiana legend, Ben Mintz. Yes.

Now, this is actually not a joke or a prank. The Fran and Mintz roommate thing was a prank by Tommy Smokes, I don't really understand it. I promise this is not. At first, I didn't believe Mintz was actually going to look at the apartment. That was until one morning in bed, I heard that sweet Southern draw outside my window.

Mintz was touring the place. It was actually really funny, I was like waking up and I just hear Mintz outside my window on the balcony. Love it. That was a pretty good impression. That was a pretty good impression. Not a balcony. Well, yeah.

Give me the impression again. Sup fellas? That's pretty good. Even though Mintz and I have over a 16-year age difference, we have many interests in common, such as grilling, fitness, and sports, which is more than enough for two dudes to chill. Yup.

Wait, wait. Listen again. Grilling, fitness, and sports. Okay, so that's it. That's pretty much everything. What I love about that is, yeah, if you have that Venn diagram overlapping, you're good, but also it's like fitness also includes grilling

and sports inside of it. Yes, yes. So it's like, it's the ultimate like super bro symbiotic relationship you've got. Tri-fecta. Yes. Holy Trinity. Anyway, after Mintz looked at his new place,

I showed him around mine, and he noticed how I had a squat rack and weights in my kitchen and asked if he would be cool if he worked out there with me. Now, trust me, my kitchen is not that very large. I live alone and there's just no point in putting a dining table in a space for one person.

Yup. A squat rack is much more efficient. Maybe Mintz will get a dining table in his apartment. We can have dinner in now that he's living there. This is perfect. So what you guys are doing is you're creating one super dorm room where like you don't have to have

all the normal stuff in your place because you also technically kind of live in Mintz's place. Right. There's a chance that Billy tries to tear down one of these walls. A non-load bearing wall. Unfortunately, there's a hallway between the apartments but the balconies connect and maybe like do some...

Maybe if you just start putting all your furniture in the hallway, people will get the picture that it's not theirs anymore. That's your long hallway? What you should do is the thing where you're like, okay, let's pool all our money together and Mintz will put the big TV in your place and then we can pool all your money together

and put the beer pong table in mine. Exactly. Now that... Wait, sorry. Now that Mintz wants to work out with me, there's a huge potential for me to put on serious masks because I'll have someone there to spot me. I wasn't gonna...

I mean, how terrible... That's my favorite part that you were not realizing your gains because you had no one to spot you in your squat rack in your kitchen. You knew your friend. Well, I was literally like lifting alone. Right, you're not gonna fucking push it. I was like pushing it in the morning

and it would be really, really terrible if I couldn't get the bar off of people there. It'd be a Ryan Rosillo, kill yourself with your Scott. Exactly. Honestly, you would be a legend if that's how you died. I know, but that would just be really bad.

Yeah. I don't want you to die, but if you had to pick a way to go, would it rather be like, I don't know, a car accident or would it be like you got crushed under the weight of your own max? Not alone with my dog in the apartment. Yeah, think about the dog.

Yeah, Whitey would eat you. You're not gonna eat you? Yeah, when he got hungry enough. We would know that you were dead right away. True. Because we'd just be like, we'd be so mad at you. After like the fifth or sixth hour that you didn't show up,

you'd be like, okay, something might be wrong. Yeah, we, listen. If you die that way, we don't want you to die, but if you ever die that way, we can't be held accountable for the anger that we feel for you being late until we figure out that you're dead. You see what I'm saying?

Like, you'll probably, you'll probably get fired in the time that you die in the time we realize you're dead. So don't have to pay out that insurance. Anyway, totally irrational fear, but so now I will have someone there to spot me and Mince will continue the insane transformation he's been on since his drinking days.

He's lost like 50 pounds. Yeah, but he's, you're gonna get to it. Yeah, yeah. Ben has dropped a ton of weight and he says he hit a plateau and would love for me to help him get to the next level. He asked me to actually be in charge of buying all the food for the both of us

and he will work out with me. What he doesn't realize is I have already devised a complete diet supplement and exercise plan that I've been trying to get Big Cat and PFT to fully commit to for years. Now I have the perfect opportunity to control all the variables and in turn, Ben Mince into a lab rat turned muscle hamster.

It's still crazy to me that like when you got hired or when you were in turn, when you were 18 years old, we just put our like nutrition in your hands and you, you know a lot now, you knew nothing. Remember, he would be like- He almost killed us. We'd be like, hey, is this Kato? And he'd be like, yeah, wait, hold on one sec.

And he'd just go Google. I think that Billy actually gave us kidney stones. That's the reason why we have it, because we didn't follow. Well, so you say that you have like a strict nutrition and dietary and workout plan that you've already put together that you've been trying to get us on.

I'm gonna throw a flag on that, Billy, because I don't think that you actually have a plan because you've never told us what our plan is. Yeah, you haven't been trying to get us on it. Your plan, your plan is just like if they ask me to work out, that'd be sweet and I'll work out with them. But you have never said like, okay,

here's your dietary restrictions. Well, basically it would be just low carb and I've been trying to get you guys to do that, but you keep saying- I already said, I'm trying to do low carb. Well, I salad for lunch every day. What I tell you guys to do is ketosis and then you accidentally don't do ketosis

and then you just end up on a low carb diet. Yeah. And also just- That's actually smart. That's like shooting for the moon and landing the stars. Exactly, so that's really the plan. Okay. I now control Ben Mintz's diet and exercise.

So basically, he is my pet. This is a 34 year old male. 38. 38? He's your pet and you're being serious. Yeah, I mean, basically, I'm gonna can like really whip this guy. All of your experiments,

you can now take out on Ben Mintz. Well, basically I control all the variables. Like literally he's not gonna be able to eat a meal. You should maybe chain him up. Yeah, what? Really, why don't you be like, let's get a deep freezer and we'll get like a big ass fridge for your apartment.

So that way you know that he doesn't have food in his. Yeah, you gotta make sure he has no food in his apartment. I'll actually check. No, but he's got a meat guy hookup. So we're just gonna be grilling all the time. Oh, so you guys are just fucking- It's gonna be bulking season, it's gonna be insane. And I got a grill.

Who's in charge of seizing the food? Ben or you? Probably Ben. Yeah, I'd say it's smart. I'd take a Louisiana guy over. I'm gonna pump this guy full of cretin, get him squatting heavy and see what happens. We're about to add muscle mass

onto that newly slimmed mince frame and it's going to be awesome. Lots of stuff in the works. Expect to see some before photos from Minci soon. The Minci sparing is about to begin. I love it. I'm so excited for this. It was a great blog.

Billy's become a very, very good blogger. But that one was, I read it on Friday and I texted you right away. I was like, we need to talk about this because you have a pet. And I'm excited to see the results. It's gonna be really awesome. It is a human being.

We should say that again. Ben Minci, yeah, he's a man with his own. He's signed up for all this. We should get him some consent form. So Billy, you have to be prepared for when Minci goes through his first couple of weeks and he puts on weight because I think you're mostly focused in terms of the traditional Billy workout methods.

Like how Jack can I make this person? So he's probably gonna put on five pounds of muscle and then he's gonna be like, Billy, let's go, I like hanging out with you. He'll get that. The plan is, is we're gonna get him on a specific supplement regimen that will be able to like break through

that first wall of soreness. And you know, when the muscles are really getting ramped up. What supplement is that? We're gonna go with dyspartic acid, arginine, creatine. Oh, like when Billy counts on his fingers, he cracks the knuckles. Yeah, we need these consent forms

because if you kill him, like we gotta be. Basically, he's gonna be high T-ben mint. This guy's gonna come in here. Pick Central's gonna be insane. That's gonna be awesome. This guy's gonna take any shit because his hormone levels are gonna be out of control. He's gonna probably, like trying to fuck you.

All natural, but it's gonna be fun. Okay. So I'm very pumped. What are your goals? Not for Ben, for you. Oh, for me, I wanna, I've gotten pretty skinny and I wanna like get back to like squatting around 400, which is reasonable.

Do you have that weight in your kitchen? Well, I was gonna, when I got past 315, 385 was gonna steal weights from here. Got it. Is that okay? Yeah, no, that's fine. So maybe you'll be able to start benching more than what, 285?

Well, I don't know if I'm gonna break 300. The boxing got in the way of that, but I think we'll get back there. Okay, but when I said like, what are your goals for you? I meant like as a trainer. How are you gonna know when you feel good about your experience goals? About your experiment.

Well, when, I don't know. When Ben Mintz is jacked and everyone's like, wow. Yeah. Okay, that's, I think that's actually a good goal. I'm actually aiming to get it really going by Christmas. And then I think me and Chef Donnie are gonna release like a cookbook exercise plan, like life plan book. Yes.

By Black Friday. Yes. That's the aim. But I'm testing on Ben Mintz now. Okay. I like that you are gonna become like some mix of like the P90X guy and Tony Robbins. I think this is your perfect self.

Try it. It's as close as we get to a Russian scientist or a mix. You know what you actually need to incorporate is check his piss. Yep. See what nutrients he's lacking, that sort of thing. Yeah, we gotta put it to a lab.

You gotta send his piss away. Yep. True. That's again, consent forms. We need to get him to sign his life. But he's not gonna be, we don't need to test him for doping. No, no, no. You're gonna doping.

I actually gotta make sure he's not doping and cheating. No, you gotta make sure he's not not doping. Cause you're gonna dope him. No, I'm not. But you do need to see like the nutrient levels, the mineral level. You gotta optimize his diet. You gotta make sure he's taking the steroids you give him.

I'm not gonna give him steroids. I promise. You're gonna mix it into his peanut butter like a dog. Maybe a little, you know. Some. Vaping into his ear. That's fine, it's fine. Do you have any recap or should we just go to the numbers?

Yeah. So basically here's a list of all of the empires that try to invade Afghanistan. Okay. The British Empire, the Greek Empire, the Arab Empire, the Turkish Empire, the Mongol Empire, the Mughal Empire. This is like going to play at VCU, right? Not the Roman Empire, surprisingly.

The British Empire, the Soviet Union. I wouldn't consider it was an invasion we did, but also the U.S. We kind of crashed at their house for 20 years. They're the ultimate trap game. They're a big time trap game. Yeah, they're the team that no one wants to play. They've got rivalry, like throughout the record books,

no matter who you are, when you play Afghanistan. Also in Washington State, two consenting adults can have a fist fight at sanctioned. Yeah, Kwame Brown taught us that. Yeah, yeah. Mutual combat state regarding what we talked about earlier. Yeah, that's all. All right, numbers, and then we're off on the road.

Did we? Reminder, 8 p.m. tomorrow. Eight. What? I was just gonna say, did we gentrify Afghanistan? 75. That would have been a good way to keep the Taliban from coming back.

Spilled like a Hooters. It's forbidden. 18. Paper source. 99. Yeah, maybe there's the paper source. Maybe like a nice brunch place that nobody can get into. What is that?

66. 60. All right, we're going to Grit Week right now. Everyone tune in tomorrow night, 8 p.m. Just go out on the road. Oh yeah, talking soccer. There it was. Squirrels can survive terminal velocity.

Love you guys. Yeah. I need a way I'll be coming for you at all gates Take my lead Take me on I'll be gone In the end of time

I'll be there to save My parts and hands But that's me, it's time for a new world Strolling, burning, and life is open Stay happy It's no better to be sleeping It's only the beginning Take me on

I'll be gone In the end of time 🎵 You hold things out to stay Everything I throw Times to paint my worldSomething Give all the things I've got to remember A sideway

I'll be coming for you anyway Take on me Take me on Take me on Take on me Take on me Take me on Take on me

Take on me Take on me Take me on Take on me