u/mpschettig

I was just thinking about Bill's concept of people who have the belt and the belt I was thinking about was most famous athlete. I'm only talking about America so don't talk about how Messi and Ronaldo are way more famous than these people. The rules are an athlete has to be active to count, no retired athletes. Let's run through the history of this:

I feel like LeBron has been the most famous athlete in the United States since 2010. Basically from The Decision until today.

Before him I *think* it was Kobe but I'm not 100% certain.

It was definitely Shaq in the early 2000s

Obviously it was Jordan in the 90s

The late 80s belonged to Mike Tyson

The early 80s I'm struggling with. Was it Joe Montana? Magic? Bird? Sugar Ray Leonard? Carl Lewis? Rickey Henderson? I need someone older than me to answer.

1967 through the entire 1970s the most famous athlete was Muhammad Ali. He was probably more famous than the President back then

Before Ali I'd say it was Mickey Mantle and before him it was Joe Dimaggio

Joe Louis might have had a run in the late 30s before Dimaggio's hit streak launched him to another stratosphere

This takes us all the way back to Babe Ruth who was the most famous athlete in American history, if you disagree you're just wrong.

So I think it comes down to two questions

*Was Tom Brady ever more famous than LeBron James?*

*Was Joe Montana the most famous athlete in the early 1980s?*

My gut feeling is no but I wanna see how other people feel, especially anyone who might have been alive in the 80s

I also think Mahomes is a lock to be the most famous athlete in the country once LeBron retires and he might be the first football player ever to have that title.

Some sports the GOAT debate isn't fun because it's basically settled. (Oh you think Tom Brady is the best QB ever? How interesting.)

Some sports the GOAT debate isn't fun because it's toxic and repetitive. (Let me tell you the truth behind Jordan vs LeBron for the 700th time since 2016)

What sport is just the most fun to sit with your boys and name some dudes and argue over who was the best?

My vote would be for boxing. It's a completely unanswerable question because of the different weight classes and because accomplishments are so based on era. Winning 6 NBA Titles is seen by *most* basketball fans as winning 6 titles regardless of when it happened. But boxing is 1 on 1 so Larry Holmes being Heavyweight Champion for 7 years isn't immediately better than Muhammad Ali being Heavyweight Champion for 6 years and they aren't both immediately outdone by Wladimir Klitschko.

It's also the sport where you can most realistically argue for older athletes over newer athletes. Deep down we all know most of the sports icons of 1980 wouldn't be world class in 2026 but Sugar Ray Leonard probably would still be the Welterweight Champion if you time traveled him to today.

My runner up vote would be baseball bc its also an unanswerable question but Shohei might be ruining it forever. Now we gotta argue best hitter or best pitcher. If we argue best player it's kinda obvious.

Seems like no matter what a commissioner does they're basically appointed for life. There seems to be no concept of "this person is bad at their job." I refuse to believe that *every* commissioner from recent history was doing a good job and couldn't have been replaced by a better option. Feels like once they're appointed the owners would rather deal with mediocre leadership than the media attention that would come from firing the commissioner.

I'll preface this with the disclaimer that I'm only talking about America. I'm fully aware that there's boxers who are massive stars in other countries.

It just feels weird to be that there's no big star in America in boxing *or* the UFC right now. Canelo Alvarez is kinda the last one and while he's huge (especially with the Mexican community) he's never crossed over the way Floyd, Pacquiao, McGregor, or Rousey did imo.

For years we heard that MMA was replacing boxing, at least in this country. Instead both sports have kind of ended up in the same spot. Niche audiences that are big enough for boxers to make a ton of money, or for Dana White to make a ton of money exploiting his fighters, but not big enough for mainstream appeal.

I watch almost every UFC PPV (or whatever they call them now that they're on Paramount+) and I couldn't begin to guess who the biggest star in the company is now. McGregor came back and immediately blew out his knee. After him who is it? Gaethje? Feels like foreign talent taking over the sport has really hurt their star building. I also think Dana kinda intentionally doesn't try to build stars anymore because star fighters are harder to fuck over in negotiations. Ngannou is the best example of that.

And then with boxing, once 36 year old Canelo is done idk who carries the flame. We don't really know if he's still good or not since he lost to Bud Crawford last year and hasn't fought since (we'll find out on Halloween). That's his longest layoff since 2020 which I'm assuming was COVID driven. Even if he proves he's still got it, it feels like the Canelo era is wrapping up. After him who is next? Tank Davis? Ryan Garcia?

I'm 27 so I was a kid when MMA really started to blow up. There was a glut of famous combat sports stars for years there between the last generation of boxers to get famous before the sport started to wane in popularity and the arrival of the first UFC superstars. Floyd, Pac, Oscar De La Hoya, Canelo, Liddell, Lesnar, GSP, Rousey, McGregor. All these people were able to headline a PPV and sell a million copies in the late 2000s and through the 2010s.

I feel like the line we were always sold of "the UFC is replacing boxing" hasn't really come to pass. Instead both sports have waned in mainstream importance with the greater death of the monoculture. When I was a kid SportsCenter would give lots of valuable coverage to the upcoming Pacquiao or GSP fight. Now that any sort of unifying threads that connect all sports fans have been destroyed new prizefighters haven't been able to find the same success. I don't know if there's a single fighter in either sport who you could get a casual sports fan interested in by saying "The *blank* fight is on this weekend wanna come over and watch?"

I'm sure this won't be forever. Eventually some young, charismatic fighter will knock a bunch of people out and get a ton of IG followers and become a sensation again. And combat sports is set up in a way where stars beget stars by giving fighters the rub when they get a shot against the new hot shot. So someday we'll get a combat sports superstar in America again. It just feels like a weird sports landscape without one currently to me.

I was just looking at EPA/play numbers going back to 2002. If you look at a huge sample size (QBs with a minimum of 3000 plays) it looks pretty much exactly how you'd expect it to look. The top 7 in order (regular season only) are Manning, Mahomes, Brady, Rodgers, Allen, Brees, and Lamar. I think most football fans would rate those 7 guys as the 7 elite QBs from the last 25ish years.

It starts to get interesting at number 8 with Tony Romo. He's just above Rivers and Burrow. Then Dak is 11th just above Big Ben, Matt Ryan, and Jalen Hurts. I think all those guys (except maybe Hurts) have much better reputations than Romo or Dak do. Some people might look at that as an issue with the stat. I look at it as "holy fuck the Cowboys are the only team not to make a conference championship game with a top 14 QB and they're done it *twice*"

Every single other QB in the top 14 made it farther than either of the Cowboys QBs. If you continue down the list the next 4 you add are Herbert, Wilson, Luck, and Goff. 3 of those 4 guys have made at least a conference championship game and even as a guy who doesn't really believe in Herbert, he's only 6 seasons in. The Cowboys have had either Romo or Dak for 20 seasons now!

I think football fans shit on Romo and Dak a lot because we all hate the Cowboys and its fun to shit on their QB. I would like to say we should go the other way. Tony Romo and Dak Prescott were both really good which makes it even more humiliating to Jerry Jones and the Cowboys franchise that they have not managed to make the NFC Championship Game since 1995. They are a historical outlier for futility in the 21st Century. The only team that has managed to have a steady QB situation and still fuck it up.

Sidenote: We need a phrase for a take that you don't know if it's hot or not.

Anyway Bill's dad tried to talk about the Bruins on the recent podcast and Bill almost immediately shut it down and said that there's nothing to talk about with hockey yet (the NHL season starts the same time as the NBA btw). It also feels like Dr. Bill watches the Red Sox even when they suck while Bill only follows when they're having a good season. And apparently Dr. Bill watches all the UConn women's games too. Just feels like he's more invested in this even in his 70s than Bill is.

This is how it usually ends for great players who stay with the same team for their whole careers. Duncan's Spurs being competetive to the very end is the exception not the rule. Dirk never played in the second round again after winning the 2011 title. The Celtics were a first or second round out in each of Larry Bird's last 4 seasons. The Jazz went out in the first round in the last 3 seasons of the Stockton/Malone era. Kobe's Lakers were winning like 20 games.

I get Steph is still good but this is how it goes. When you have a player like Steph Curry you build your team to peak when he's in his prime and you probably give up assets to do so. He acts like the Warriors are okay with being mediocre but they traded for an All-NBA player who had been the best player on two Finals teams less than a year and a half ago and he blew out his knee.

The run is over, its been over, they took one last crack at it with Jimmy and it blew up. Just let Steph play out his twilight on a 7 seed like so many all time greats before him. I don't see how this is a sad enough story to lead a pod with. They won 4 titles already lol.

Just finished the pod yesterday. So much of that podcast was so clearly an autistic guy who was looking for excuses to share his most recent hyperfixations with his friend. They just happened to record and release it. Listening to him shoehorn in an explanation of the history of General Tso's chicken reminded me of all the times I found a way to make a conversation about Napoleon, the history of the cheeseburger, or the Simpsons. I just read a bunch of wikipedia articles about the History of Argentina and you best believe if I was on Bill's podcast tomorrow I'd get that in. Keep ripping it Chuck, you're living the dream.

But can we agree that if any major sporting organization was going to be corrupt enough to rig their events that it would be FIFA? Like they have to be the betting favorite in that discussion

Yes I'm still annoyed that England's only goal in regulation hit a fucking wire and they "missed" it with 4,000 cameras looking at the field

American casuals say this every 4 years followed by "imagine *insert NBA or NFL player* playing soccer." It's always stupid but my biggest issue is this. It lets US Soccer off the hook for their dogshit youth development program.

Around 7 million American kids aged 6-17 play organized soccer. 60ish% of them are boys. So that's around 4 million American boys who play soccer. That makes soccer the 3rd most popular youth sport in this country after basketball and baseball (yes, ahead of football). That's also more than the entire youth population of the country that just punked us yesterday and more than the entire *population* of Croatia, a country that has made the Final and Semifinal of the last two World Cups.

The reason the USMNT sucks isn't because they don't have the talent pool to draw on. It's because US Soccer's development system is terrible. Elite soccer can easily cost a family $15,000/year per child in this country. Even lower levels cost over $1,000/year. Youth soccer is a $5 billion a year industry in the United States. This pay to play model has two big negative impacts.

1. The most obvious one, talent who can't afford $15,000/year just gets filtered out of the system. They don't get access to top of the line coaching or competition so they don't develop. We artifically restrict our own player pool.

2. Since travel clubs rely on reputation to be able to charge these exorbanent fees they prioritize winning over everything. When you're coaching 11 year olds you can win a lot of tournaments by putting the biggest and strongest kids on the pitch but look at the best players in the world. They aren't necessarily the biggest or strongest, they're the most skilled. The US has built a system that doesn't value skill in one of the most skill heavy sports on the planet.

This issue permeates our entire youth sports ecosystem. When people say that our best athletes don't play soccer they always mention football, basketball, and baseball. Well the USA have one the WBC once in six tournaments. The basketball team is still #1 but the gap has closed. We haven't had an MVP this decade and the 2024 Olympics was a damn close call with Team USA being carried by two old vets and not new talent. If the pay to play youth sports model doesn't change its only a matter of time before France or Serbia or some other nation takes gold in men's basketball.

Obviously we don't have international competition in football but you know why the talent level of the NFL has stayed high while Americans falter in the NBA and MLB? Because high school football is cheap. It costs a few hundred dollars. Unfortunately this toxic industry is getting its hooks into the QB development pipeline but hasn't effected the other positions yet.

If soccer was the most popular sport in America obviously we'd be *better.* Maybe we could even overwhelm the world with numbers. But I doubt it. I don't think it matters how much raw athletic talent we pump into the system if they are being shaped by this broken ass system. I also don't think the current outcomes are acceptable given the current inputs. If the US soccer development system allowed the cream to rise to the top we'd be a top 10 team even with it being our 4th most popular sport.

Athleticism is not the dividing factor in soccer. It's skill. Being big, strong, or fast can be a force multiplier if you have the skill but the best player ever isn't any of those 3 things. The US is uniquely bad at developing skill in this sport (and honestly in all sports) because of our youth sports industry. Stop letting them off the hook for this. Maybe if American sports fans show our anger over the *actual* problems there will be some sort of change.

Or is it just bad luck?

And if you're *really* knowledgeable can you answer the same question about Italy and Germany lol

It doesn't really *feel* like the superpowers of soccer change very often because once teams are on top they tend to stay there a very long time but it does happen. From 1954-1994 Brazil, Argentina, (West) Germany, and Italy dominated the sport. They combined to win 10 out of 11 World Cups in that time frame.

During this time period no one would've considered France or Spain to be powers in any way. France had a pretty good team in the 80s that managed to win a Euro and make the WC semis twice but they didn't qualify for the WC in 1970, 74, 90, or 94 and their 1984 Euro win on home soil was the only time they *qualified* for that tournament between 1964 and 1988. Meanwhile Spain was consistently qualifying but going out in the early rounds of both the World Cup and Euro, although they did win the 1964 Euro on home soil.

Obviously this has massively changed. France is pretty inarguably the most consistently strong national team of the last ~30 years now. They've won two World Cups, made 2 other finals, won the 2000 Euro, and have made 3 other Euro semis. Spain had that insane team from 2008-2012 that won the World Cup and two Euros and they're good again, winning the 2024 Euro. These are two of the top three favorites to win this World Cup along with Argentina and both look set up for a long time with their talent pipelines.

Are there any other countries that have the ability to turn it around the way France and Spain have and put themselves into the upper echelon of international soccer? I'm not talking about a situation like Belgium's Golden Generation where they were contenders for a few tournaments while all these guys peaked at the same time. I'm talking about a sustained program where a country becomes one of the teams you just assume can win any tournament without even having to check the rosters.

He's a top 15 guy and All-NBA 2nd team and 6th in MVP voting but his team is *always* better when he doesn't play. This isn't one year of weird on/off numbers, this is the 4th year in a row the Celtics were better when Jaylen wasn't on the court. He also has had a negative on/off split in every playoffs except for 2025 (including 2024 when he was Finals MVP).

The explanation I used to always hear was "they stagger Tatum and Brown and Tatum is better than Brown so of course they're better when Brown isn't playing." But this year Tatum wasn't around and they were still better when Jaylen didn't play. Now Bill is saying its because they had an awesome bench but that doesn't make sense to me either. White and Queta and Hauser all had positive on/off numbers as members of the starting 5 and Pritchard was negative but still ahead of Jaylen. Jaylen Brown had *the worst* on/off numbers of any Celtic who played at least 30 games this season.

Then people say he has this crazy offensive load and the team needed him to carry offense. The Celtics were 9-2 when Jaylen didn't play this season. Over the past 4 seasons the Celtics are 191-80 when Jaylen Brown plays. Good for a .707 win percentage. When he *doesn't* play they are 47-8, that's an .855 win percentage. They go from being a 58 win team with Brown to a 70 win team when he's inactive.

I just cannot wrap my head around the concept of this guy being a star player who is super important and valuable while these numbers exist. This isn't PER or VORP or BPM or some other advanced stat that most of us don't know the formula behind. This is wins and losses and it isn't a small sample size. Is there *any* coherent explanation to justify why Jaylen Brown is still a great player when these numbers exist?

I started following the draft closely when I was in middle school. 2012 was the first I really cared about. I think 2026 is just going to be a very unremarkable draft. Not talent wise just no one will have the "remember when X did Y" memories.

There wasnt a "wow" prospect like AD or Zion or Wemby or Flagg. There was a clear top 4 and they went in the order we thought they should go in. Wasn't even much debate like there was the Paolo/Chet/Jabari year, seemed like everyone agreed Dybantsa should go 1. After that everyone made defensible decisions all the way down. Giannis was the only trade that involved a lottery pick and no one really cares about the lottery pick in that deal.

I think even the shitty drafts like 2024 and 2013 were more interesting than this bc a horrible draft class makes it feel like anything can happen. Like Anthony Bennett going 1st overall. (I remember thinking Stern was about to say Alex Len when he made the "A" sound lmfao)

Bill said something about teams being too smart now. I don't agree with that personally. Only a year ago the Pelicans traded an unprotected first to move up from 23 to 13. The Nets took 3 point guards and a point forward in the first round the same year. Maybe all the dumbass teams didn't have the opportunity to be dumbasses this year.

I found the winners and losers pod very boring because the only losers were the people who watched the draft instead of the World Cup lol. Just didn't deliver this year

Bill said the Knicks are gonna have a 3 year run here. Windhorst said the Celtics were in on Giannis because they know they can't beat the Knicks. I can't remember who but one of Bill's recent guests said that the Knicks are presumptive favorites in the East.

How many fucking years in a row do we have to do this before people gain any sort of muscle memory?

The Thunder were set to be a dynasty. The Celtics were going to have a run. The Nuggets were gonna win multiple titles. And here we are with the same people saying the same shit about another NBA champion.

The Knicks are gonna be in the mix again next year. They're good. They're also a 53-29 team that just played 102 games this season. The odds are they won't come out of the East again. That's not a knock on the Knicks, it's just an observable fact based on the recent history of the NBA.

The Celtics aren't scared of the Knicks. The Pistons, Pacers, Cavs, Heat, etc aren't scared of the Knicks. And they shouldn't be. The odds are the toll of a hundred game season will lead to someone getting hurt and they'll lose in the playoffs the way the last 16 teams to make the Finals did.

Stop treating every champion like they're the next dynasty. It's not diminishing what they just accomplished to talk about next season in a realistic way. The Knicks will probably be a 3 seed that loses in 7 in the semis and then they'll be good again in 2028 too.

Anyway way too early pick, Thunder over Pistons in the 2027 Finals (I'm assuming the Pistons add a 2nd creator this offseason that's why it's way too early)

Bobby B was wrong about this. It's canon that the Dothraki consider intrantry below contempt and will just order frontal charges over and over again until they win. That's the origin story of the Unsullied, that the Dothraki refused to flank them at the Battle of Qohor and just charged into them over and over, losing a battle to 3,000 infantry when the Khalasar had 20,000 riders.

​

​

Now I know that in movies and TV battle scenes they love the image of cavalry smashing into an infantry line but in reality horses really don't like to impale themselves on long, sharp, pointy sticks. Dig some trenches, fill them with pikemen, put archers behind them, you'll beat an army of light cavalry that only do frontal assaults. Realistically the Lannister and Baratheon forces could've done it alone without even really needing any of their knights.

​

​

TLDR: Lots of infantry with pointy sticks beats a cavalry charge every time. Ask Jan Žižka if you don't believe me.

It's her best album. It's one of the best albums by a famous pop star in years. It's better than anything any of her contemporaries have ever made. She has gotten exponentially better at every level of songwriting. The compositions are more complex and layered. The lyrics are more mature. The album tells a coherent story start to finish. No two songs sound the same. I see Grammys in her future

I was too young for 2002 when they made the QF but holy shit where was that the last couple years? They look like a real team