The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 1: The Matthew Kugler Dance Video (feat. John Amaechi)
Mon, 14 Apr 2025
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Chapter 1: Who is John Amaechi and why is he featured in this episode?
Our friend John Amici has braved our borders and customs restrictions to be here helping us with the all-important meetings. Got to have meetings. Welcome, John. It's nice to see you. Thank you. Good to be here. How hard and how much fear was there involved with trying to get over here to hold me in your bosom?
I tell you, the interesting part was a colleague of mine, an academic at another university, recently found themselves stopped, held for 36 hours, and then gently ushered back to France. So since that point... It has made me breathe deeply about coming into the country. And again, it's not anything about the people of the country. It's just about the process of going through the border.
And it's notable to me, I suppose, that I travel to the Middle East for work and places that others might imagine to be more hostile from a governmental point of view. And I feel less stressed than I felt coming in. I've got global entry, right? So I've been double checked. The home office has checked me to make sure I'm not a bad person. And so is the US government.
And they were all really very pleasant. And so it turns out to be a bit of a nothing. But the idea that that stress exists in America is really strange for me.
I want to just show you something we've been playing with today, which is Donald Trump saying he is 6'3", 224 pounds and the pathology of lying because I'm just putting him next to an assortment of world class athletes who have a similar weight and size. And there seems to be a discrepancy between how he looks and how they look. the pathology of lying here as somebody who is a psychologist.
What do you make of doing things like this where you're just perfectly okay saying 6'3", 224 pounds when that lie does not meet the eye test?
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Chapter 2: What is the significance of the Donald Trump size comparison and the psychology behind lying?
So I'd say two things. One, Hold on, hold on. So this is what I'd say about that. Sorry, I'm just, I'm totally distracted by- That was Matt Coogler. The juxtaposition.
Indeed it was.
And believe it or not, the shorts match the shirt.
What were you, I've never seen you speechless or not ready to be talking like a professional broadcaster at every moment.
It's just that that particular, that shirt, and also the pose, it's like he's part of Trump's entourage. He's dancing. Well, that was,
at daytona he's dancing oh so essentially then the same thing uh mike why don't you get your uh gear uh gear head so that you could tell us all about the trip you're about to make to talladega oh my god that's going to be incredible well while john amici gathers his thoughts real quick it was bristol baby kyle lorison bounces back from a terrible race at darlington which made the same mistake twice and did not finish he just totally lapsed the field he was he was the best car
by a wide stretch, wins that race at Bristol. Kyle Larson's second win of the Cup Series team. But yeah, hey, DraftKings is helping me out. I actually go to Talladega because I wanted to stay in the infield because it's NASCAR's biggest party on the circuit. And I waited a little too long to do that. Apparently, you got to get that request in for a long time.
But thankfully, my partners at DraftKings heard that this was something that I was interested in, worked something out with NASCAR. So I'm going to go there in a camper with three of my friends to Talladega Super Speedway for the most bonkers race weekend. the NASCAR Cup Series has to offer. It is a trip that I've really wanted to take for quite some time.
It is a dream and it's all being made possible because of DraftKings. Camper? You're doing a camper? We got a camper. We got premium RV passes. It's incredible. There's concerts. It's the biggest party on the circuit. So I'm looking very much forward to this.
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Chapter 3: What is the experience and culture around NASCAR and Talladega?
John, you were saying before we interrupted you.
No, no. So just to be clear, this is the thing where they just go around in a circle, right? Yes. And so it's like tailgating at... Cars going around in a circle.
I mean, sometimes it's an oval shape. Sometimes it's maybe more of a triangle. They do have road courses as well. So, you know, it's not always left turns, but predominantly left turns.
Are you there? So is this one of those things where you're there for the part? Because I've met people who go to football and they're there for the party, not for the actual football. Is this one of those things? I'm there for both. I really do love left turns.
And do you mean soccer?
No, no, I meant your football, sorry. Your football, not the real football.
You were saying about Trump and the pathology of lying before you got distracted by dancing in shirt.
That's still amazing. It's still going to haunt me in my dreams. So the thing that happens with human beings is that the way we think we look is influenced by a lot of different factors. You and I, we all know people who, when they look at themselves, even in the peak of their prime, they see someone ugly and fat and awful. This is a test. This is a test of uncommon difficulty.
Is that how you dance? Stay on point. It is to Pitbull. We were trying to figure out what the song was. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because he's a Macarena. I think that's Don't Stop the Party. Anyway, so people look at themselves and they have no idea what they actually look like. And then there are some people who are surrounded by others who reinforce their... Terrible idea.
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Chapter 4: How do elite athletes manage mental health and what pressures do they face?
Michael Jordan in The Last Dance is not an example of what had to be for him. He made choices that meant that certain key people never appeared in that documentary and refused to have a word to say about it. He made choices. And those choices had consequences both for him and his sense of being wrongly done by and his sense of having to whatever else, carry all the weight or whatever else.
Not every elite athlete has to live in a world of misery and mental ill health. But they are going to be wired slightly differently than what you might expect your next door neighbor.
I thought that Robert Smith, I've told this story before, the great running back who retired early, I thought he was uniquely qualified to retire early because he had a doctorate, had a million different interests, and was walking away from football while he could still walk, while the knees worked.
And very soon after losing the discipline of you have to be here at this time, he was throwing up into a bucket by his bed drinking too much in the morning because the lack of discipline structure being – something that he had been his entire life by the time he got to 30, he couldn't deal with what was happening.
Dan, having a hobby outside of your work or even an education isn't what saves you. It certainly isn't what saved me. It's the idea that at no point did I think I was a basketball player. Did I think that's my title and that's my role? It was what I was doing. It wasn't who I was. When your occupation is your definition, that is inherently always problematic. And that's the difference.
The difference is that when people call me a basketball player now, I'm insulted. I don't lament it. Even when people tell me they can beat me at basketball, I'm amused rather than insulted. This is the nature of this, right? It's the nature of this. Be amused when I pull the chair, buddy.
You can go now. I'm pulling your chair. You didn't like the chair. You said it was too small. You tried to post him up and he would just move. Good seeing you. Thank you. Thank you for all your help and all of your care.
Investigation did bear out that that was indeed fireball. Fireball. Also, Tony, it looks like Meech literally ran away from the grind. Hey listeners, it's Mike Ryan, and if you've listened to this show for 20 years, you know one action movie franchise that I believe stands head and shoulders above the rest. That's right.
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Chapter 5: What are the challenges faced by athletes transitioning out of professional sports?
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Can we please talk about what just happened at Tennessee? Because this is the natural Tennessee football. This is the natural ascension of what's going to happen with the chaos of paying for players. Nico, I'm going to leave you now. What's his name? Yama Layaba. OK, so it's not I'm going to leave you. OK, because he's leaving Tennessee. Now, we talked to Leonard Hamilton about this.
He had players boycott on him. Where else has this happened where somebody thinks they're worth four million dollars, but the school doesn't feel like they're worth four million dollars. And now the portal has largely dried up and he's going to have trouble getting whatever money he wants. He thinks he has earned from another school.
11 of his 19 touchdown passes last season were against UTEP, Vanderbilt, and Chattanooga. So he only had eight touchdown passes in the big games that Tennessee was playing. What do you guys make of the details of the business of this?
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Chapter 6: What is the controversy surrounding Tennessee football and the NIL player holdout?
Can we try to answer it, though? Because Heupel's making a big show of, like, this is happening throughout sports now. It just happened to champion Michael Malone. We are giving money and power to people not old enough to be trusted with it.
And what ends up happening if they don't care about either your program or your system is something like this, where Josh Heupel can now be like, I showed him and I'm like, well, he's not that good. Like that wasn't an actual test. for you.
I know you don't want the discomfort of your starting quarterback leaving, but if you think you can get a better one for that money, that's what the game is now. The game is doing the measurements on value as the coach. The game's not puffing out your chest and no one's bigger than the team. Yeah, given...
what they had invested in this player and what his ceiling is. Remember, he's still very young in his development. They're not happy about this. So I don't think it's like I'm making an example about a guy that didn't yet live up to expectations. I kind of think that he did. He's progressing fine. We all thought he would be a little bit better. But he's 20, yeah.
We thought that that offense would look closer to what it looked like at the start of the season by the end of it, and that wasn't necessarily the case.
And also, yeah, worth mentioning, a lot of drops. His adjusted completion percentage is like 72%, something like that. The drop rate was higher than a lot of other top teams. But yes, certainly not his best games against Georgia, certainly Ohio State, and the teams that you would have liked to see him play well against. Yeah.
Are there upgrades potentially available around the nation? I don't know. When you talk about availability, it is just going to be funny when they no doubt get in the weeds and talk to people that perhaps won't even enter the portal, right? And they're going to play a pretty dirty game in trying to upgrade at that position too. But I understand why Josh Heupel said this.
Mario Cristobal's direct quote was, I don't care if it's the best player in the nation, you can't have this going on. Now he might have figured that out from our experience with Tyler Van Dyke a couple of years ago, where this popped up during a spring window and Tyler Van Dyke wasn't really in the portal, but was invoking some of these things like he may look to go elsewhere.
Miami did indeed bring him back. Look, there's a lot of people that flirt with this, that leverage their NIL collectives that you never hear about entering the portal. I would say the vast majority of people that have NIL deals leverage situations that they're technically not allowed to because they're not in the portal yet. It's the threat of going into the portal.
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Chapter 7: How do coaches and programs handle player demands and the transfer portal?
Always Milums. Never what you said. I thought it was Milam's. Yeah, you're wrong. Dan? Tomato, tomato. What do you think? He doesn't go there. Milam's. Thank you, Dan.
The way that I recently got grabbed, and I don't know what money you ended up with, but this is sort of the way that gambling empires are built with your money. I went and got lotto tickets, I would say, for the first time in like 35 years and immediately won $600.
What?
I couldn't believe it.
I mean, I feel like I'm single-handedly paying for the education system in Florida. I assume that's where the lottery winnings go, but I really have no idea.
Bullshit! I don't know where your money went, but I had to go someplace. They don't even pay you. After $500, you have to go to like a specific place.
Like Tallahassee. It says it on the back. It's like if you win more than $500, you have to mail this to Tallahassee. I'm like, what?
I spent as much in gas to go to the place I had to to collect my winnings just because I wanted to collect the winnings. But it was a pain in the ass with traffic to get over there. And then the next time I played, I didn't get but a couple of numbers and all the money went away. Did you end up quitting ahead?
No, we went back and we were like, well, this was found money. Let's just keep going. Why not? So we got $47 worth of scratch-offs back at the store, came home, scratched them all off. No winners.
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Chapter 8: What are the implications of NIL and player movement on college football programs?
Pour a glass of wine, do your scratch-offs.
No, no, no. I'd like to sample the audience. Let's put that on a poll. No, I will, but know what, Roy?
No, no, no. I'm doing it right there, because if I win, I'm turning in at the Publix right there so I can get my money.
If it's less... There are two strategies. There are the people that just scratch it right there. I'm with Jess, though. If I'm going to do it, it's going to be a whole thing. We're going to bring it home.
Three questions then for the poll. Number three, are you addicted to scratch-offs? Number two, on scratch-offs, do you use a key or a coin? Do you have another applicant here?
A BCS National Championship pin from the 2014 game.
And then the third one, do you do the scratching off in the store or do you do it at home at Levitard Show?
The other option is a fingernail.
That's insane. Boy, that's crazy.
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