Grant and Danny

Armen Keteyian On College Football, Is CFB Better Or Worse Now?, Burning Questions For The Coms

8.30.24 Hour 4

1:00- Armen Keteyian, the author of The Price, joins G&D to discuss his new book on college football.

23:45- Do you think college football is better, or worse than 5 years ago?

33:00- We get to our burning questions for the Commanders entering 2024.

Broadcast on:: 30 Aug 2024
Audio Format:: other

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Be sure to tell them GND sent you so that you can score a discount. kmloyers.com on the bed QL guest hotline right now. Bet smarter to beat the books. Download the bed QL app visit bed ql.com a six time best selling author who's got a brand new book out. Armin Catean's book, the price, what it takes to win in college football's era of chaos has been one of the biggest talks in college football industrially over the last few days. And he's kind enough to give us some time now here in DC on Grant and Danny. Armin, thanks so much for a few minutes. We really appreciate it. How long have you been working on this project and why did you decide to write this book? Well, it kind of dates back a couple of years. I had just finished this book called a gambler secrets from a life at risk with Billy Walters, the legendary sports gambler. And that book was represented by a literary agent by the name of David Big Leano. And after I had finished the gambler book, David calls me, he goes, I have a project I want you to take a look at. And as it turned out, John Talty, my co-author, had been collaborating with Paul Feynbaum, potentially on the price. And Paul eventually just decided workload and otherwise that he was going to drop out of the project. And so David asked me, he was representing the same book, the price. He asked me if I would take a look at the proposal. And you know, frankly, Grant, I didn't know John. I knew of John. I read the proposal and it kind of reminded me, did not even kind of, it reminded me of the system of book that Jeff Benedict and I had done back in 2013, which was a deep dive into the state of Big Time College football at that point in time. And what we were experiencing now, obviously, was NIL, and the portal and you know, realignment on the horizon again. It was like, that made the system look like child's plays. So it began really in the summer of 2022. And John had already kind of ramped up some of the SEC reporting. And I was able to bring relationships and contacts I had at other schools, Michigan, and the NCAA, eventually Arizona and other places. And it turned out to be a really good collaboration because of John's institutional knowledge of the SEC. We both had had relationships and long-term reporting on Nick Saban and others in the SEC. So, but it was like hopping on a speeding freight train, to be honest, because everything, as you well know, was changing. Sometimes, certainly, weekly, sometimes daily, sometimes hourly, sometimes by the minute. And because of the embeds, the rare access, the behind-the-scenes things that we were getting, we felt really confident that we were going to be able to describe a landscape that you know, as we say in the subtitle of the book, that was just complete chaos. And so, I think we got fortunate. You know, thank God there was a deadline because otherwise, we'd still be, you know, I'm reading stuff now about, you know, the house settlement and how there's real questions as to whether that's going to be accepted in certain places. And so, I think in the end, you know, a lot of things fell our way. And certainly Nick's decision to retire was a huge thing. And then, Jed Fish, who's a big character in our book, is now gone from Arizona to Washington. So, there was a lot of chaos. But in the end, I think we've delivered something that, at least from the early reviews and what we're seeing is, you know, has really been very well accepted. Oh, it's an incredible story and the story telling from one of the greats to do it over the last couple of decades, Armand Catayan, with us on Grant and Danny Author, TV, film producer, six New York Times bestsellers. And this is a masterpiece in this genre, right, where we're still learning. I mean, you talk about how many changes there were while you were preparing the book. I mean, as we're talking in this conversation right now, there are going to be things changed and tweaked and done in college football and in college sports. But I guess, let's start there. How would you describe the chaos kind of in a nutshell of the last couple of years and where would you even begin to explain to someone who just woke up from there a couple of your coma going? What happened to college football? What happened here? Well, I would start with the title of the book because the price has multiple meanings. It's not just the financial windfall, that price, the money that is poured into the sport, the billions of dollars now associated with granted rights and certainly the upcoming 12 team college football playoff. But what John and I discovered that there was a tremendous emotional, physical and psychological toll being taken on the people who make their livelihood and love the game of college football, they're exhausted by what they're dealing with right now because no day is ever the same. There's always some cross-current or headwind or surprise around the corner. So I think that's one thing. And I think the other thing that we have as the heartbeat of the book is that there's just a tremendous amount of greed and self-interest right now. And if you look at the chapter that we did on the destruction of the Pac-12 in a matter 108 year old conference, the conference of champions, the Rose Bowl and all those other great athletes associated with it starting with Kareem Abdul-Jibar and Tiger Woods and Bill Walton on down. And you look at what happened at that conference, it was really driven by greed because some presidents who really didn't know what they were doing or talking about believed that they're individual schools, the Pac-10 as a whole, but the individual schools, the Pac-12 as a whole, the grant of rights fee should have been $50 million a year. Now that's Big Ten in SEC territory and is one high-ranking SPN executive told me, he goes, "If you're talking about volleyball and swimming, well, maybe there is a comparison, but when you're talking about football, there is no comparison." And so, but when USC decided to go to the Big Ten, that was the tumbling block, that was the domino that really started everything there. And sooner or later, UCLA goes and obviously now with Oregon and Washington in the Big Ten, which really makes no sense other than the fact that Fox was willing to put up in the case of certainly Oregon and Washington, $30 million per school in grant of rights money to get them to agree to make the change. So I think that in self-interest, everybody right now, because there is no clear picture, is most concerned about their own institution or their own conference. And that's not good for the greater good of the game. I say that understanding that last night we watched Colorado hold on to beat North Dakota State and there's a lot of great games on the field. The sport has never been, I think, more exciting and more popular off the field. It's never been more unsettled and turbulent. And that's going to shake out, but it's not going to shake out, I think, for a couple of years. It could be five years down the line before we finally figure out what a solid-looking picture is for the future of college football. Armin Catayan on Grant and Danny here on the fan in DC. Armin, I'm curious, I think everyone lumps kind of all the changes in college football together, like the landscape over the last few years. And I was all for NIL. I thought and still think players should be able to make money off their names just like I was able to in college if I was doing something, not as a college athlete. Having said that, is that tied to everything that's going on with conference realignment and programs restructuring. We know that coaches are bowing out left and right because they don't want to deal with the recruiting of their own players. I have a good buddy who coaches college baseball. And, you know, his program was able to stay afloat because if they got some good players, everything was fine. But now he gets a good player and they have a great year. He loses them immediately in free agency. Are those things tied together or is it two different conversations when it comes to the unrecognizable conferences and NIL and the tooth pace not being able to go back in the tube? Well, I think it starts with the control, I would say, the influence, I would say, of the media companies. When you start with ESPN and Fox and CBS and NBC, they're really dictating realignment. And so when you have that, when you have no control over your future is Bobby Robbins, the president of the University of Arizona, soon to be walking away because he's having a hard time dealing with his faculty senate and some of the stuff out there. And that's a great loss for Arizona. But his point was, you know, when you're at the mercy of the media companies and they're dictating your future, what conferences are going to look like, that's not a good thing. So then you have that as one, you know, pillar of the problem. And then you add in, I think the second thing would be the portal because the portal is so chaotic and it's essentially free agency in college football and college basketball and college sports in general. And then you throw in the NIL issue and how opaque things are there. There's very little transparency right now in that market. And when someone says a half a million dollars here, you don't know if that number is right, wrong, or indifferent at this point in time. So you have, you're getting battered right and left and center by not just a minor force, but these are 10.0, you know, earthquakes that are hitting you time and time again. And then you just add in the uncertainty of where the solutions are coming from. They're not going to come from Congress. I can tell you that at least not in the near term. And you have a new president who's trying Charlie Baker in a very pragmatic way to bring and wrangle all these, you know, wild horses in one direction and everybody's out for themselves. And so there really isn't any, there's no center now. There's no, there's no base to what's going on. And just to kind of shift it, just if you want to look and it's in your backyard, Grant, if you want to look at a chapter or a couple chapters in this book that summarize where the state of a program is and how that program fits into the bigger picture, just look at Marilyn and Mike Loxley. And those chapters are called Macy's, Macy's One and Macy's. And Mike Loxley, and this is his description, he finds his program in the middle. Macy's is in the middle. He's got Saxoth Avenue above him. And he's got a target below him, a discount retailer. And so the Saxoth avenues of the world are the Michigan's and the Ohio State's and the Alabama's, we can name them all at the top of her head. Down below are programs like, let's say UNC Charlotte with Biff Pogie, who's trying to build the program. But he's pulling players out of Maryland who want to start right away at a little bit of a lower division one school. And he's losing players to the bigger programs who he's developed over two years. And they go into the portal because Maryland can't afford a $20 million NIL budget or even a $10 million NIL budget. And at the same time as we say in the book, Coach Loxley's getting hit by his own players, Talia Tonga Violoa, right before a bowl game last year came to him, as other players did, but Talia being the big star of the team, really influenced by his father to say, I need $50,000, or I'm not going to play in this bowl game. Now, that's a, you can define that as extortion if you'd like, which is kind of what it is. And Mike had to find that money. Is that where the Mike Gundy comment came from a couple of weeks ago, Marvin, where he said, like it's over now? Yeah, that you've got players coming in. And that's why Nick resigned. I mean, Nick's alluded to it, but clearly he had lost the one thing Nick wanted in his program. And more than anything else was control. He wanted to be able to control the process and control the development of his players and control what happens on the field. And after they lost it, Michigan in the Rose Bowl, in the semi-finals, Nick goes down to Florida to his beachfront estate down there, comes back to Tuscaloosa. He's got a line outside his door. And that line is not from players who are wanting to talk to their coach about, okay, Coach, what do I need to do in the off-season to develop? How do I get on the field? How do I get better? No, it was one after another saying, Coach, if I don't get more money from NIL, I'm going in the portal. And I've been, I've known Nick and been around Nick's dating back to his days with the Miami Dolphins. And I have a very good relationship with Miss Terry, his wife, and we were texting and talking during the season. And I can tell you, there was a great deal of frustration over these new rules. And, you know, they just rubbed Nick the wrong way. And he didn't need the money anymore, but he didn't need the agony at this point in time. So when you look at where we are right now, you have Nick Saban out of the game, and you have Jim Harbaugh out of the game for very, very different reasons as we explained in the book. And Harbaugh's a big, Michigan's a big part of the book. There's three chapters on that. In his Jim's battle with the NCAA and the vendetta. Those are my words that the NCAA Committee on Infractions had against Jim. But when those two singular figures are not in the game for different reasons, but they're both gone. That tells you a lot about what the state of college football is. Armand Catan with us here on Grant and Danny. Armand, I'm a long time ago, it was a former college athlete myself. And, you know, I had very little sympathy for a lot of college coaches that you kind of alluded to. The everything was set up for their convenience. I used to argue like if I wanted to transfer regardless of the reason sick family member or just different fit, I just sit out of here. There are all sorts of things that were just sort of set up for them. They could graze shirts. Scholarships weren't guaranteed. There was all this stuff where they could take advantage of players for their own, you know, the benefit of their programs. Well, the pendulum has swung so far in the opposite direction, where we were just hoping, hey, can I get paid 20 bucks to take a picture next to somebody at a local sporting goods store? It's now gone. As you said, the guy's walking in with their hands out. So, I guess ultimately, my question is here, to me, the start of this or the blame should fall with the governing body that fought any kind of change. There were no rules or regs kind of set in place, and they basically started a wildfire and have no idea how to contain it. You're absolutely 100% right. And in the book talks about the history of the NCAAs, the lay and denial of athletes' rights, and really going back to the days of Walter Byers in the 1950s, where he took over the NCA as the executive director at that time and had a 36-year run where he ran that organization like a third world despot. And created, out of whole cloth, the words "student athlete" and amateurism as for no other reason than to protect the association against workers' compensation claims. So, these were not employees at the university. They were just playing for God in the good of our country, basically. And that original lie, as it's been called, perpetrated and went on and on and on as commercialization of college sports just exploded. And whether it was March Madness, and then it was the SEC on CBS, and then it was the Big Ten Network, and then it was the SEC Network, and on and on and on, well, it takes you up to Ed O'Bannon and Sonny Vicaro, and there's a chapter called Oppenheimer, which I really like, and it gives you the history here where you look at the court cases, in one court case after another, the NCA was losing these court cases, or they were settling them, and then lawyers were making a ton of money, and no one else was making anything. And what happened was, is that the O'Bannon case finally cracked the wall and opened the floodgates, and then that led to the Alston case, which led to the House case, which led to the Supreme Court ruling, the 9-0 ruling, the unanimous ruling, that really was the beginning of NIL. And so, if you want to point a finger in the direction, the leadership of the NCAA from the President's on down is a pretty good place to start. Well, last before you, Herman, is about the players themselves. Again, I argued that NIL was about, hey, earning some extra scratch, or I could sign an autograph for $5, $10, $100, more high-profile college athletes should and deserve more. I get that. But we're now to the point where there's no collective bargaining, there's no one really watching out for these players' interests. You can be promised a lot, and it should an 18, 19-year-old that's trying to decide whether they're going to go play to the highest bidder. There's a whole chapter on him, and what happened in Florida, in that lawsuit now. And so, do you anticipate a CBA? I mean, I guess my big question here is, who's looking out for these players in this kind of Wild West? That's a really good question, and I don't think you know, you have a kind of a player's association with Ramaji Hoggi and people like that. But I think that all has to be settled out. And right now, Charlie Baker's trying to get a framework on NIL. He's trying to get transparency on these contracts. They're fighting in Congress for some sort of antitrust exemption, whether that happens. It's not going to happen, certainly, this year or even early into next year with the presidential race and everything. But you're right. There has to be some formula, some framework in place where the universities or the conferences decide that, okay, this is how we're going to share the money. That $2.8 billion settlement, yes, there's supposedly now $20 million per school in revenue sharing. But how is that really going to work? And how do you control it so it doesn't, it's not ripe for criminality? Because right now, some of these kids are signing these NIL deals without counsel or without advisors. And they're signing away their life rights in perpetuity, meaning that this agent or this entity now controls your life rights, even if you become an NFL star. And that's a recipe for disaster. So hopefully, cooler heads are going to prevail. Hopefully, self-interest will be put to the side so the greater good becomes the primary focus of these discussions. But if history is any sort of lesson here, you've got to have a lot of hope that something like that's going to happen because I think self-interest here right now is really overriding everything. Armin, fantastic. Still working my way through it, but it has been an incredible read. I think the research is so obvious. And there's nothing else like it right now at a critical time in college, football, and college sports. And as we kick off this season, I think it's a must read for all of our listeners. Thank you for the time. Really, really appreciate it. Thank you, man. I appreciate it. Anything else though, real quick that you would say about where people can get it or what you'd want to say that we didn't ask? Because on Amazon, it's in Barnes & Noble. Books a million. It's everywhere right now. I mean, and certainly Amazon is the place easily to get it because I know that a lot of my friends have been telling me that they just picked up the book. And John and I are really proud. I mean, you said, I think we hit something. It's one of the best books I've ever done. And that is saying something, consider Tiger Woods and the system and law recruits and a few other things. But I'm really proud of it. And I think if you're a college football fan, and you're trying to understand this brave new world, this book goes a long way to help you do that. It's eye opening. Very cool. Thank you, Armin. We appreciate it. Thank you. Armin Catayan, awesome. Loved him, by the way, on real sports with Brian Gumbel back in the day. Next, is college football better or worse than it was five years ago? We'll discuss that. We want to hear from you guys on that as well on the MGM National Harbor listener lines 800-636-1067 is how you can join us on Grant and Danny. The seasons may be changing, but the deals and the sharpest rides are unbeatable as ever. Hey, what's going on? It's your girl, Tasha McKia. And I need you to join the sharpest rides for their fall into savings event, where they're offering incredible prices on their massive inventory. That's right, everything is on sale now. Shot from sleek sedans to rugged SUVs and sporty convertibles. The sharpest rides has the perfect ride to match your fall adventures. Plus, with their exclusive financing options, getting behind the wheel of your dream car has never been easier. Log on and shop online at the sharpestrides.com right from the palm of your hands. 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Investment minimums apply Fidelity brokerage services LLC member NYSE SIPC. Hey NFL fans, you can start the season with a big return on Fandal, America's number one sports book. So when you get a hunch in the middle of the game, you can check out the latest stats, view live play-by-play, and so much more on the same page where you place your bets. You'll get started with $200 in bonus bets guaranteed when you place your first $5 bet. That's Fandal.com/sportsfan. Never waste a hunch, and make every moment more with Fandal, an official sports book partner of the NFL. Must be 21 plus and present in Colorado, first online real moneyweights are only $10 first deposit required. Bonus issued is now withdrawable bonus bets that expire seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply, see terms at sportsbook.fandal.com, gambling problem, call 1-800-522-4700. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Whether you love true crime or comedy, celebrity interviews or news, you call the shots on what's in your podcast queue. And guess what? Now you can call them on your auto insurance too, with the name of your price tool from Progressive. It works just the way it sounds. You tell Progressive how much you want to pay for car insurance, and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget. Get your quote today at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law. Thanks to Armin Catayan for joining us. Welcome back, Grant and Danny on the fan. Virginia Tech Football's at Vanderbilt tomorrow. Maryland's got Yukon in town. We are ready for week one. Last night was a blast. I was watching games all evening long. Colorado and North Dakota State got the majority of my attention. We bring up college ball with the titanium interview though, as it kicks off through the lens of the book he wrote and the chaos that is ensuing. This was all very obvious. I think anybody who didn't just care about pay the players. That's the only thing that matters. Okay. What about everything else that's going to change when you do that? So I think it is good that NIL exists. I think the unregulated version that we have is a disaster and it's bearing out that way. Pretty easy to see at this point. I don't know where we go from here. I don't think two super conferences is a good thing. I don't think the SEC and the Big Ten essentially becoming, you know, the under the NFL version of the National Football League is good and then everyone else plays college football. I don't know. I know that when I'm watching games, I enjoy it. Otherwise, I find a lot of it off putting in the turn off. And I don't think the sport is better than it was five years ago. I don't know how anyone could think. So there's a balance sheet, right? There are certain positives and I'll say this. There are more good players. There's more good teams. There's more fun. There's more chances for teams that weren't good to get good, right? I mean, you would think the opportunity, especially with the transfer portal for him of movement, something I have long advocated for to a degree for players. Remember, it used to be punitive if you wanted to transfer. Like, I think of one of my teammates, for example, who came from California. If something had happened to a family member of his or his circumstances had changed or whatever, if he wanted to transfer to a school back closer to home, he had to sit out for a year. That's absurd. It always was. It was to deter that sort of thing, right? Where coaches could just take your scholarship away just because they felt like it. They had all the power. So I've always advocated for more player rights and things like that. But now the pendulum is swung to such a degree and nobody can touch anything. Because all this happened is the NCA lost as as Catan was pointing out. At every possible court case, they just got swatted away and smacked. They weren't ready for it. So they finally said, fine, good luck. And now you've got just sort of great one more thing. You basically got these legal slush funds. And there's a negative connotation of that. And there should be. It's basically just this big old pile of money. And it used to, it was supposed to be, I'm Grant. I want to endorse my local Ford dealership and I play water polo at George Mason. Here's 20 bucks for that. I'll do a meet and greet. Now it's, I need a million dollars out of this fund. If you'd like me to play defensive tackle for you, it was never intended to be this and there are no rules in place for that. Well, that's the problem. I mean, a bit of big part of me goes "You got what you wanted?" Honestly, I remember I was doing a Q&A. I spoke at an event and I was doing a Q&A and it was a bunch of listeners. Not everybody was familiar with the show, but it was at a dinner that I did somewhere in Maryland. It's probably been seven, eight years ago now. And they were asking one question after another about the commanders. It was still the Redskins or this thing, that team. And then we got to, should that college athletes be paid? And I remember my answer being I absolutely think that college athletes should be able to benefit off of their name. I still feel that way. I think you should be able to make money when your jersey is sold and you should be able to go to the local pancake house and do an event there. I think that that's all true. But my point was it's going to change everything irreparably and no one wants to think about all the other ramifications and figure it all out. They just want, it's a good versus evil thing. Like the students are these victims and they're good and the schools and the coaches are evil. And it was never really that binary to me. There was more nuance to that. And if you suggested that having a scholarship and being at the school and getting an education was in any way any type of exchange for you playing a sport, you were the bad guy. Like it was just an awful take and you don't know what you're talking about. And I do think a lot of people feel like Chris and Hyatt's Village just tweeted us this at Grand H. Paulson at Funnydani who said, this is the sound of the world's smallest violin playing a song for all of those poor souls in the NCAA for football, having to deal with the unsettled and turbulent times Armand Cataine's talking about. Let's go back to the days of unpaid player exploitation. And I think that's all it is for people. The players are paid. So nothing else matters, right? No, like my work here is done. Sorry to say that that that is not the whole ball game here. At the sport in every single way has gotten worse other than that guys are now paid. But even that part is the Wild Wild West. It's it's not fair from one school to another one player on a team to another. When you've got guys going to coaches and I need 50,000 to play in this game or, you know, I'm having to re recruit the very players that I'm coaching and I can't yell at anybody. I can't coach anybody because they'll just go to the other school that's promising them will be nice and more playing time. You're not making better people. You're not making better men. You're probably not making better students. What are we doing here? So there's a reason at the NFL level that Josh Harris can't go to Jaden Daniels. Hey, I'll give you a million dollars for if you do a charity appearance, right? Because that's payment on top of the salary cap. It's collectively bargained. Does that make you see what I'm saying? Like these distinctions. There are no rules like that at the NCAA level. My point isn't necessarily a player getting a player getting paid or not paid is good or bad. My point is there's no CBA. There's no, there's no rules for any of this stuff. So what you're going to have are parasites. You're going to have duplicitous folks. You're going to have, again, also you're going to you do you do and it's in the coaches that want to deal with it. Again, I have very little sympathy for coaches because the entire thing was set up for them forever. And so yeah, it's harder. It's harder now. Enjoy your $10 million a year or whatever else. You got an advocate. That's hard. But to me, the fact that as we've said many times, it is the absolute Wild West and it's chaos. That's not fun. Like I understand it may benefit a player who's taking advantage of the ultimate free market. You get your million bucks to go to Auburn. And if you can get more to go Oklahoma next year, take it by all means. Do what you want. It's your choice. It's your decision. You can vote. You can work. You get your money. That's fine. But am I enjoying the sport more? Absolutely not. I want to squeeze in Andrei Manasseh who's been waiting. Andrei, we got less than a minute, but I wanted to get you in on this. Hey, what's going on guys? I mean, I think it's a loaded question. I mean, it's cause football, you know, worse or better. I mean, compared to 30 years ago when the big 10 and the Pac 10 were married to have to go to the Rose Bowl. And you know, the number one team can never play the number two team. Yeah, I mean, I think it's better. But yes, obviously compared to like five years ago, where you know, you know, it's coming. We're coming up the heels of the Olympics and everybody was arguing about how the worst sports Olympics are the ones who have judges and stuff like that. And what is cause for both, particularly when you look at the polls and all the stuff, the whole season starts off with a poll. A bunch of judges telling you who's the number one team was the number two team. I think ultimately it's it's worse. But I think like the old adages is things have to get worse before they can get better. And I don't know how much further the shoe has to drop. But I like to believe somewhere in the back of my mind that things are actually on their way to getting better. What it is. I don't know. I think, you know, cost football, there's like a hundred teams. And I think ultimately that's the problem. You have a hundred teams, too many teams and most leagues, you know, 20, eight teams. And I always believe that's probably going to end up looking like European sock or you end up with different tiers. And people can be regular relegated promoted. That's smart, by the way, it's a good call. That's a great idea. Because he's right. What they should do is level one, two, three, four, whatever. He's right. Also that we've come a long way in terms of playoffs in terms of actually getting a national champion through football play instead of just voters a couple of days after the season ended. So it is better. The conference restructuring, but that's worth dissipating. That's all worse. Terrible. I think the current state compared to five years ago is better for the players and worse for everybody else. I don't know a single other group that it's worse for now. I'm not saying that I'm not happy for the players in some way. It's better for them. That's good. But the amount that it has gotten worse for almost every other person involved, including the fans who year to year 40 new players are coming and going from your program. It happened way faster than I think a lot of people probably anticipated. Let's look at some commanders burning questions going into the season next on Grant and Danny. [inaudible] Grant and Danny on the fan. The Nats play tonight. 615 pregame 645 start time at Nationals Park. They're taking on the Chicago Cubs this evening. We'll get you a preview of the game coming up in just a few minutes. It is time to get you some burning questions on the commanders going into week one. This will be our final show of the week. We're off on Monday for Labor Day and then it's NFL season and our first scheduled week of commanders build up as they play the box next Sunday. So with that in mind, Danny, burning questions that still need answered for Washington. Johnny Newton, the health. We didn't see him in the preseason. We're told it's day to day or maybe other day to other day or a couple of days. Last week he was supposed to be full go. Now that's been pushed to next week, as you said, we're off on Monday. So we'll see how the week progresses, but what's it going to be? We have not seen much of the second run pick. I'll see your injured rookie who didn't play in the preseason and I'll raise you an injured rookie who didn't play in the preseason. Brandon Coleman, he was headed toward starting left tackle. I went out to camp a few days into the training camp and he was already getting left team, first team left tackle reps. He was the starter at left tackle the day I was out there and the consensus every person I talked to with the team and the media, whatever, was this guy's good. This guy looks the part. Dan Quinn said last week, if you remember, that he did not need to see Brandon Coleman play in a preseason game to feel good about starting him in the first game, but that he would like to. He didn't get to fast forward to now. He's practicing again, supposedly healthy. Do you really want to throw him out there in the first game of the season against the Todd Bowls, blitz happy bucks to protect Jaden Daniels blindside with so little experience this summer, or do you just let Cornelius Lucas handle those duties and get Coleman up to speed for a couple more weeks behind the scenes. I am really interested to see how they handle that. Here's a burning question. You mentioned Tampa Bay. That's week one. Third down eight yards to go. Tampa Bay football at their own 42 yard line. Baker Mayfield drops back to pass. Freeze time. Who's rushing the passer on this down? You think it's down. You think it's pain. You guess maybe Dorens Armstrong, but is Cleveland Farrell in there? Who gets the first crack at it? Is it Dante Fowler? Is it Jim and Davis? Is it a bear package that involves Johnny Newton somehow? They're going five down? I don't know. I don't know how this pass rush, especially on the outside is going to be. I got a good feel for pain for Allen. Those guys, if everything breaks right for him, could be eight sack guys. That's who they are, right? You're going to cause enough disruption. You're going to be a pain in the butt. They feed off each other. These are good solid football players. Not world but there's not Aaron Donald, but who is, right? That outside pass rush, I don't know what it's going to look like. Could be good. Could be non-existent. How quickly can Noah Brown get up to speed for Washington? How quickly can he learn this offense? How fast is he able to prove to them that they can trust him to know the entire playbook to run the correct route? It takes one play where you're not on the same page with your quarterback for a game changing snap. I thought you were going inside. I threw it that way. You went outside, pick six. That's an important position to know the playbook and how often you hear a quarterbacks receivers talking about getting on the same page. I loved yesterday music to my ears to find out that Jaden Daniels acting like a vet, acting like a leader stayed on the practice field working with Noah Brown on routes and going through the playbook. I'm sure they're going to do that every chance they get up until week one. But is it the first game against Tampa that he's starting with Terry MacLaurin and Alumnae is a giz perhaps that he supplants the army brown? Is it going to be a couple of weeks into the season before we start to see him really climb the depth chart? For all I know it's week six and he's still just kind of in the building and they're trying to get him up to speed. I'm really curious to see the burning question on this for me is how fast before Noah Brown can prove he needs to be on the field because he's better and bigger than the other guy saying that receiver position. Not unlike Moses for 40 years wandering the desert unsure of where to go and how to proceed. And all of a sudden the seas parting as an opportunity down the brown he of the 29 career catches over three years less than 10 catches per year on average which is fullback territory. Like that's not active fullback. That's Brad Kozlowski fullback type territory. He's got an opportunity. He has it. I know Noah Brown is here. That shouldn't preclude you from being on the football field an awful lot. There's a lot of confidence in you. They traded away John Dotson basically saying you got it. Number two go ahead be out there be an outside receiver blocked for us get down the football field. A chance for him to break out is still very much on the table. Do we see it? I personally am not confident but it's a burning question. They're pretty confident in him remains to be seen running back position. My question would be how do the roles get divvied up between Brian Robinson and Austin Echler both of whom seem like they are primed for a big season. Robinson the early down thumper Echler two minute four minute third down kind of pass catching back out of the backfield. But how often do we see B Rob catching passes? How often do we see Echler getting carries on early downs? I want to see how they decide to divvy up touches and usage between those two players I'd say that's another burning question for the commanders. Next on Grant and Danny Tom Brady's got a big question. He's got an answer for the NFL before he makes his broadcasting debut and we will announce the 10 people who got into our listener league that we will be drafting fantasy football Tuesday night. Crystal City you can come hang out with us. We'll give you all the details in a moment. The seasons may be changing but the deals and the sharpest rides are unbeatable as ever. Hey what's going on it's your girl Tasha McKia and I need you to join the sharpest rides for their fall into savings events where they're offering incredible prices on their massive inventory. 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