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Episode 34: Team needs? Skoden!

Noor, especially (but what else is new?), offers up airtight statements about the needs of our favorite teams going into free agency and the draft. That is, after Andrew makes him relive the horror (from Noor’s perspective) that was Superb Owl LVIII. As per uzh, Andrew makes everything about the Seahawks, but Noor salvages the day by bringing the knowledge on the topics of the day.

Don’t miss our 10th anniversary episode, recording on 4/4/24 and available as soon as Andrew sobers up afterwards!

Episode 34 (M4A, 117.3MB, 1:59:03)

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Episode 33: Week 1 [over]reactions!

It is well-documented that week 1 is a liar. Do not trust week 1. Yet, here we are, after the first weekend of the NFL season with both doubts and hopes, attempting to make sense of it all. Join us as we attempt to navigate the feels.

Episode 33 (M4A, 86.7MB, 1:21:47)

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Episode 32: Draft hype edition!

We’re less than 2 weeks out from the 2023 NFL Draft, so of course Andrew would choose to talk about…Dougal Robertson?! He tries to make a connection to the Seahawks’ fortunes over the last 12 months, but like so many of John Schneider’s picks over the years it’s a stretch. Thankfully, Noor brings actual analysis to bear on the myriad possibilities of draft season. No one does the off-season like the NFL and for whatever reason it’s when we do our best work, too. Join us for one craig-commute’s worth of football chatter.

Episode 32 (M4A, 87MB, 1:26:35)

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Episode 31: Wherein we talk for an hour and a half about quarterbacks…

NFL quarterback is the most demanding position in all of sport, right? So, it makes sense for us to talk for an hour and a half about who’s rising, who’s falling, who’ll end up where, right? Don’t answer that…

Episode 31 (M4A, 66MB, 1:29:44)

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Episode 30: Looking ahead (mostly)

Always wanting to give the people what they want, this episode is 2 of Craig’s commutes long. You’re welcome. Noor graciously starts us off by asking Andrew to recap his overachieving Seahawks before we spend most of the episode looking ahead, to the coming weekend, to the rest of the playoffs, and briefly to next year’s draft. We even give a preview of our next episode! (Assuming it doesn’t take us another 9 months to record…)

Episode 30 (M4A, 77MB, 1:46:46)

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Episode 29: And here you thought you were done with us…

Noor went out for a pack of cigarettes and…wait, that’s a different story. In this timeline, somehow we forgot to podcast for 2 years. Who does this? Us, apparently.

Well, you can’t get rid of us that easily. We’re back and better than ever! If, by better than ever, you mean the same conversational NFL chit chat you’ve come to love over our 8 years in existence, except this time with some USFL thrown in for good measure!

It’s NFL draft season, so of course we break that down after discussing the bevy of high-profile trades that have happened this offseason.

You won’t want to miss it, Craig. Everyone else? Hard to say.

Episode 29 (M4A, 61MB, 1:19:23)

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Episode 28: NFL Draft Recap

Everyone remembers their first time and hopefully so it will be for our guest, Bicky Bhullar, someone who, considering he is friend and family to Andrew and Noor, shouldn’t have taken 5 years to get on the ’cast. Our apologies, Bicky, but we made up for lost time by spending 2 hours talking through an exhaustive if a little meandering recap of the recent NFL Draft. You’d think we’d have spent time on the radically different format, how GMs were making picks from their basements, but no, we actually pretty much stick to football for the whole episode. I think that’s a first for us. We should have this Bicky guy on more often.

Episode 28 (M4A, 89MB, 2:03:54)

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Episode 27: 5th Anniversary Episode!

As Noor so aptly put it, “time flies when you’re putting out an episode and a half a year.” It was exactly 5 years ago that we published our first episode. In that time, we’ve made a lot of predictions and if we were more organized we’d have gone through some of them and compared them to what actually ended up happening. But we’re not, so instead we talk about this pretty unprecedented free agency with a QB carousel like we’ve never seen, including going into a fair bit of depth about the ramifications for Noor’s Niners and Andrew’s Seahawks, before pivoting to the draft that is soon to be upon us. Not ones to stay completely focused, we end up debating what constitutes a draft bust before wrapping up with a quick discussion of how the NFL league year might play out amid the ongoing global pandemic. All that and we kept it under an hour and a half. Maybe we are getting better at this?

Episode 27 (M4A, 66MB, 1:27:36)

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Episode 26: Name, image & likeness, an interview with sports antitrust economist Andy Schwarz

Sport occupies a central space in the American psyche. We tell ourselves all manner of myth about our heroes who wage symbolic combat on our behalf. One of these is that our sports are only pure if the combatants are “amateurs,” but how does that make sense in a world where a member of the marching band can be paid to play a music gig without risking her music scholarship, but the point guard on the basketball team can’t be compensated for signing an autograph without being barred from her sport?

On Andy Schwarz’s first day at his first job out of grad school, he was handed 10 depositions and told to make sense of Al Davis’ ill-fated 1995 lawsuit against the NFL. The Raiders lost the suit and Schwarz’s career was launched. In the 24 years since, he’s worked on some of the highest-profile sports antitrust cases of our times.

For the last half decade, Andy has worked tirelessly to right the imbalance of power that exists between the business of college sports and the athletes who the NCAA currently prevents from profiting from their oftentimes fleeting fame on the gridiron, court, and pitch.

A major milestone in this work was realized on September 30 of this year when California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law SB-206, legislation unanimously passed by the California State Assembly that prevents colleges and universities in the state from restricting a college athlete’s ability to be compensated for the use of their name, image, and likeness.

Andy helps us make sense of it all through the course of a wide-ranging interview that includes going into some depth on his latest venture, The Historical Basketball League, an attempt again to give college athletes a fair shot at fair compensation.

If you’ve ever wondered what the difference is between a “league” and a “cartel” then this is the podcast for you!

Episode 26 (M4A, 71MB, 1:37:03)

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Episode 25: What is this, the NBA?!

So many trades! Noor and Andrew talk through recent trades, including putting on our GM hats and making idle speculation about other possible trades ahead of the deadline next week. Andrew, once again, butchers a player’s name and gets a division wrong, but it’s endearing, right? No, no it’s not. But both listeners will tolerate it. We hope. Oh, and we might have another project in the works….

Episode 25 (M4A, 52MB, 1:08:27)

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