DRAFT DAY | Fantasy Football, Domino's Pizza & Childhood Hustles | The MJ38 Show #93 | Steve Johnson

On this Episode of the Podcast:

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Steve is Matthew's Step-dad and has been hosting our Fantasy Football Drafts for nearly the past decade.

Matthew, Justin & Steve talk about Fantasy Football, Domino’s Pizza & Childhood Entrepreneurship 

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Transcript

0:11

Welcome in, ladies and gentlemen. Episode 93 MJ 38 show. Matthew and Justin and Steve here for you. Non. Santonio, this time we're out of there. We're in Pflugerville. Pflugerville, Texas. Draft day 2025. League record 12 years deep. We are at Mr. Johnson's house. The big Johnson, the small Johnson. Little Johnson 1420. Not a little Johnson. He was a little Johnson I think one year. Big papa. Yeah. There we go. Big Papa John's in Liverpool. Good to see you, Steve. How you doing, bro? Thank you, thank you. Glad you guys could come. Looking forward to a fantastic day. Always love to go. Yeah we do. I feel like fantasy football is picked up crazy in the last like ten years for sure. Last 5 or 5 of them a lot, but then last ten even more so comparatively. It's like we look forward to this every year. We've been doing this for 12 years. This is our 12th year. Fantastic. Absolutely. And getting everybody together, you know, lots of folks come in from faraway places. Yeah. The folks you don't get to see all the time. So. Yeah, it's good fellowship. Yes, absolutely. How long have you been doing fantasy? What was your first fantasy football draft? Oh, goodness. Early, probably late 90s. Well, before we get into too far. Cheers, gentlemen. To to to number two, 93. Cheers, guys. That's it. Now, do you want to pull just a little bit closer to make sure we can hear you? I don't want to lose you. Sure? Yeah. You move the, the arm itself or like, a swing. The the thing is. Yeah. And it moves, like 83, 60 degrees as well. I got you articulating. I can hear you a lot better. That's like first fantasy draft ever. Late 90s, late 90s. There's no, like, ESPN articles to read or like how you can hear information like the Lord is. There was ESPN was around. I did not exist. But yeah, there it was a lot of paper. Everything was printed, downloaded, highlighted. Oh, my lord, so many pages. I, we, I was in a league with, my old college roommate and started out good. The first season that, we were playing with these guys, and they're like, all right, it's going to be 200 bucks a team. We're like, sweet 200 bucks. No problem. The late 90s, we were young men of means. We were young men of means. We, had decent job. Steve, we're a 50 bucks now. And I'm like, oh, right. That's good. That's about to go to 60. That's about it. I'm nervous about that today. Yeah. Yeah. So, it was that for the first time, two and 25 bucks a trade. Oh yes. You can get you can get you paid $25 a day rate if you don't know what's going on. So be careful. It's a much harder sell. No, we made it to the Super Bowl and lost. But the loser ended up getting. I think it was like 1200 bucks. Yeah. You get second place. Yeah. Dude. The next year, let me tell you the back story. The guys we're playing with, they work for a hedge fund. Oh, they were with those nutty dudes in the 90s that were, you know, the Wolf of Wall Street of basically. Yeah. I mean, all the way down to the bags underneath the clothing. Yes. The whole the whole deal. These guys were they they were making so much money the next season, they're like a thousand buy in and 100 bucks a trade. We're like more around. We'll take our 101% out. You crazy? 200. It's pretty Steve. It's crazy. How many people were there? It was a 12 team. Oh, man. Dang, that's a lot.$2,500. Oh, no. Yeah, right. 12 times two. Well, it was 12 teams, so 1200 plus 25. That's right. That's all the trades. Yeah. And those guys, there were dudes doing three, four trades a week. Oh, you know, just not we, we I think did two all season. We were playing poor man's ball dude. Now you made you made it work. You drafted a good team, I guess. Well decent enough. It's, unfortunately, I never learned to play because I still play the same way. No trades. No, no, but I'm the same way, I think. Yeah. I used to dabble a lot in the trade. Oh, great game. You can send five trade requests and I had five trade requests. Always out. Oh I would just like get rid of the weakest one. And then I would submit another one and just, just in case Tuesday morning my phone beeps and I just know it's Matthew with another trade with my lord. You're not thinking about this the whole time, is it something. Oh no, I I'm, I'm, I'm in Steve's camp trying to fix this, but please can I, I do you think. No. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm in Steve's camp, and so far as I'm not really I'm not a big trader. I like drafting my guys. I like you just like trying to run with it. And then because I guess subconsciously there's a thought that, like, if I receive a trade request, I'm like, why don't you want this person, this person must suck. Like, yes, if he was good, you would. You would want him. Exactly, exactly. You know, but it's got to help you. Yeah. There's like, I want to win. You want to win is a win win. Okay. You guys got to think like a GM. Have you seen Moneyball? Of course. There's a scene where he goes in his horse, Bradley. He's got the bowl full of, like, Dave. Like packaged snacks, I think is what it is. It's nuts. Sent us. It's like Zen. But the harder stuff, it's just prison. Yeah. Prisons in. Okay. Got it. And so he's like, calls Jonah Hill into the office. He's like, we're we're getting rid of, the there's a guy on first base. The coach keeps playing, and he's like, we're getting rid of him, I don't care. We're going to we're going to trade him right now. So he starts like trying to trade and he grabs like a handful. That's nuts. And puts him in his mouth and he starts calling all the games. It's like it's like 20 packets. It's just like a sending of calling the GM's. And he's like, come on, let me get this guy from you. And he's like, well, what's wrong? I don't know, are you going to give me? And he's like, I'll give you this guy. He's great. He's like, oh, I don't like that guy. I'm like, no, you love him. Come on, you love him. And then they end up just doing business to do business, you know, keeping a good relationship. And then they kind of know that what they're pitching each other. Is it that that's a, If I just send you my worst players, you're going to be like, well, I'm never going to trade with this guy. But if I send out some good offers every once in a while, you're going to be like, well, I got to pay attention. You know, he might it might actually be something nice. So me and Derek have that relationship or we'll send each other good offers, but then we'll, we'll get on the phone and be like, do you really want to? Why are you giving him away? What do you know that I don't know? He's like nothing. He's a great player. You're going to love him. I'm like, I don't know about it. It's like he's got a bum knee, his knees. But we've made trades where it was like mutual, mutually beneficial before just to like, do good business and to like change up the roster a little bit. Like me and Derek definitely know that we're not trying to take advantage of each other, but I have spent years trying to take advantage of y'all. So I understand that hesitancy. Well, yeah, that because this is something there. There's something there with that. I'm not I'm not gonna try to trade like that. All right? I just don't I guess I maybe made like 2 or 3 trades in my entire, like fantasy career. Really. You know what I'm saying? I want my first blockbuster trade. I traded for Matt Forte, and I gave up something good to get him. Like, I traded for someone really great and then traded that guy for Matt Forte, and then I won that league. And so since then I've been like, one good trade can put you into the championship for sure, taking two tier two players and getting a tier one player and then having a roster full of tier one players is super worth it. But some people would just say no, no all the time. I one of them. It's never going to be to my advantage. Yeah. True, true. Yeah, dude. Well, I'd have to do so much research just to figure it out as the problem. Who is Chase Brown I don't even know. Yeah. Right. Well the I mean the problem is I got to look at. All right. Your trade me this running back. I don't know that their offensive tackle just sprained his knee and he's going to be out. So yeah. Yeah I think it's intricate. Yeah. Offensive coordinators the offensive line special teams. It gets so deep. Yes I just fallen like I fell in love with Garrett Wilson last year. I really wanted him. He wasn't even having a good year. But I was just like trying to make the trade to get him the whole year, you know, because I just wanted him on my roster. And then it didn't matter because I got 10th place. So it's not, you know, sometimes it's a whole. Yeah, it's it's, it could be such a different swing of how you enjoy Sunday to Sunday if your team is just consistent or if your team is just on the fringes. Oh, Jesus. Poop sandwich. I got poop. You have. This happens every other year. Yes, man. I'm so, so even back in the 90s, we're drafting back then papers all on papers. What's the has there? Have you seen like a I guess from your perspective what's like the the biggest or has the how's the fantasy football game changed like from today compared to like 2003 2001. The ability back then if you wanted any type of hosting, none of it was free. Someone had to manually do everything. So a lot of it, it's just the software's gotten better. Oh, yeah. Yeah, totally. Oh, yes. I mean, talk to you. Want to talk to some real geeks? Talk to the old road rotisserie baseball guys back in, like, the 70s and 80s. That's a roto world. Is. Oh, that stuff gets knee deep in. What is this road? Rotisserie baseball. Rotisserie chicken. Yeah. Industry baseball. But basically it was it was, fantasy baseball before there was a t a term for it, a term for it. Yeah. But those dudes had to keep their sets, just like, you know, they're watching balls and strikes and all this stuff, like keeping stats on games and all this. Well, reading box scores every day. This is nuts. You know? So thank God it's gotten better and better. And you, you don't have to, you know, a lot of it's automated these days, so. Yeah. And just, finding players, finding the data. Of course. Yeah. They've got a synopsis for every player when you click their name. I mean, I back in the day, the best resource was Sports Illustrated magazine. That's great. But I didn't have anything else. Right? Yeah. Yes, I read I wait for that to drop. I had a subscription to Sports Illustrated. It dropped. I got it Thursday. I read it at work Friday morning. That was. That was the deal. That's crazy. Oh, yes, I'm into that, as I say. Could do, because I think, his mic might be in his face as far as the shot, it's better for the audio, but the shot is a little facially constructed. Or how about that? I think it looks better. Still a little more. Can you see? Yeah, yeah, yeah, but that's reminds me of the obviously the scene in Breaking Bad where what's, what's her name brings Hank like the fantasy football thing or whatever. Like reading material. He's in a bad mood. He's like, it's going to be useless anyway. It's six months. What is this which was released? It's always in, like, the hospital or the wheelchair is like it. Did I read about it? I would have liked being a GM for football, where you had to gather the scores and, like, score everybody out every week. That would be kind of fun. Great. Because I like accounting. So back then you had to actually, I guess maybe not in the 90s, but yeah, in the 90s, somebody had to find out, like how many catches that they have for how many yards or how many touchdowns and give them their points. Yeah. If you it's funny when you look back historically and you find out that, yeah, some things weren't stats, they just never kept that stat, never thought to account for it, like in basketball and stuff. What was it? The, they never they never, tracked blocks or something like that or. Yeah. It's just I'm just it's like what? And now it's like that. Those are one of the biggest stats. Yeah. Like after like back the. How was there a world without this? What is that like the movie with Will Ferrell. Was it topic. Oh yeah. Tropic Thunder. No. The topic or it's basketball movie. Right. Yeah. Semi-Pro somebody that you know they all you professional is they were the Minnesota tropics. That's why you like that. Yeah they do the alley oop. He's like what is that. Foul. Technical foul. Oh yeah I don't know if I came from Texas but that. Yeah. So that's how this relationship is formed. But also he's one of my best friends, one of the coolest people that I look up to. I remember being a kid. And I don't think you and mom let me watch Semi-Pro at first. Or like, you guys watched it and I didn't watch it, and you were telling me how funny it was, and I was like, why didn't I watch that movie that jumped around that time? Yeah, we're probably like the age. We were about like 15, 16, I think, or maybe a little younger, a little better. Yeah, probably 13 maybe. Yeah. The other show you were telling me was so funny was the, What's the guy from Righteous Gemstones? Oh, eastbound or down? Yes. Y'all were watching that show and just telling me how funny it was. Oh, but I still never seen it. But that's a good one either for those good HBO. Yeah, definitely the first 2 or 3 seasons of that or just dirty funny. Just crazy. Just if you like, like Super Troopers and like all those type of movies, it's that it's, Danny McBride. He was like, yeah, yeah, super funny dude. Okay, okay. Danny McBride on a side notes, my favorite top five Theo Von Podcast episodes when he's a guest. It's so funny, really. They just go back and forth the whole time. Like there's no lull in how great that podcast is. But in that show, he plays, a baseball player. Basically, if you remember, it was before your time at if you ever heard of John Rocker, he was a, he was a closer for the Braves. Okay. Phenomenal. But just kind of a meat head. One of the Braves biggest, enemies is, the Mets. So he did a Sports Illustrated article, and they're like, you know, what do you hate about, you know what? Don't you like blah, blah, blah. And he's like, well, if you're going to if you're going to go to a Mets game, you got to ride the train next to a bunch of people with tattoos and, you know, pregnant and, you know, single mothers and all. There's just all this terrible stuff. It was like, whoa, dude, you can't say any of that. This is the 90s. And you can't say, you definitely can't say no. But he basically got canceled out of baseball. It ruined his career. He he went from, basically being one of the best, closers ever to gone in about a year here, and, well, it just ruined it. So it's like a long cycle. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. Just everyone, everyone hating him. Yep, yep. Getting death threats. I'm sure he or whatever, he never really came back. Okay. Yeah. Crazy crazy. But basically that show is, it's it's very based on him. Yeah. I'm a big knucklehead. That was a baseball player that kind of ruined his shot. And just because he can't keep his mouth shut. Yeah, and keeping your mouth shut is a weird thing. I don't want to do it, but I play ball. You have found that the most of the time, right? You got to play ball. There is the back and forth of it. Yeah. When too much is too much. When it's too much, too much. Right. And if you're making good money, it might be very far down the road, you know, because. Right. You can't compromise once you have a mortgage too. It's like, well, I got a pin, Mills, you know what I'm saying? What am I supposed to do? I found that in my workplace. And then also, just getting punched in the mouth, playing basketball. Like, another thing that would help me with that is just, like, not saying anything. You know, if I did just, like, kept to myself, that wouldn't have happened, right? So then I've been asking myself, I'm like, should I say everything? I think it's probably not what you do. You bite your tongue a lot in the workplace. Not as often as I should know. Luckily, I work at, at a small, small company that, everyone's pretty tight, so I have a little leeway. I think it's a I have, but, no, I mean, absolutely. You got to bite your tongue. You know, not everything is work appropriate. That shirt is off of your throat. Yeah. Some hills. That's a thing. Yeah, yeah. I mean, your opinions that you have at home are great, but. Yeah. Yeah, they're just things I do at home that I certainly cannot do at work or think about, you know, all those things. So. Yeah. Sure. Absolutely. But something's not worth dying on. And some battles not worth pursuing to the fullest to go to war. Over. Yes. Wars are costly. Yeah. Even if you win, they're still costly. Yeah, right. Dang, I, I try to do that. So, yeah, there's a separation between, I guess, like your home self and your work self, but my mind wants to, like, bridge that gap and try to just be like me all the time. And it seems like we can all be on the same page of like, this is our this is what we want. This is what we're working towards. This is our mission statement. This is our standard, but it just doesn't work like that. Well, I mean, most people don't want to live their lives to a mission statement standard. I mean, company standards should be higher than your standard person. In general, you would think a company would, take care of their customers, their employees, all of that stuff, which not that you do that as, as an individual person, but you may not care as much about what's outside of your house, where if you're an if you're part of the community in that, company, you have to, the community who buys your product. Exactly. So you need the community. Yeah. Yeah. So I least the perception. Exactly. You grew up in a business minded household. Your dad owned a lot of Papa John's franchises. Domino's pizza. Domino's. Sorry. Yeah. No. Papa Johnson right? Right here. But Domino's definitely, like, how many? So, funny story. My dad, got we lived in Savannah, Georgia. My dad got moved to Marietta, Georgia, with his company, and about three months later got laid off. Oh, wow. Oh, she's got four boys, a wife, and a mortgage. And it's like, oh, boy, what am I going to do? He always wanted to be an entrepreneur, and he went around looking for jobs, doing all sorts of things. And he worked, you know, he picked up work, just, get by. But, after a few months, he came up with a plan. He'd sat us down as a family and said, I've got two options. I was 12 years old. I because I could either buy this machine and open up my own company that fixes windshields on cars. Good, good gigs, safelite repairs, safe everyplace. Basically, to be safe, like it was going to be a mobile guy back. So he would start in the 80s. He would have done it. Yep. The other option, he had found a tiny little ad in the newspaper, said, own your own business. And he went in and it was a Domino's Pizza. And he saw the people. He was in his 40s, and he saw the people behind the counter flipping pizzas, those off. And he's like, I'm never going to do that. He's not a cook. He's never done anything like that. But he came. They he talked with the guys and figured stuff out and came home and said, here's my two options. Now, at 12 years old, what do you think my choice was? Pizza fix windshields or all the pizza? I want free pizza for life. He's an option. So, he started working as a family vote. Family vote? Oh, that's the next question. Family votes. Yeah, I think he knew the answer, I think, yeah. Do you think he wanted to do the pizza versus the windshield? More like what? Like that. Well, as an established company, that has a backing behind in advertising where he would have to start up basic at scratch. You know, there's a little more safety, security, and it's, a guaranteed job. You know, he's working for you. What do you start? You have to, you know, go and become a manager and all that stuff. So learn the ropes. So it was a guaranteed paycheck while he was doing that? Yeah. Where the other one would be. All right, let's see how we did this week. Did we? Did we fix a bunch of windshields or not? Yeah, yeah, I hope I hope the construction crews, crews came through. Yeah, right. Go through Nixon. We go. You go through neighborhoods and you just hang up a couple. You bring up a couple, then you send. You send the boys out there. The next couple days, there's a syndicate right there. So, he worked there for a couple of years and right before, right after or at the end of eighth grade, we went up to new Jersey and built our own dominoes up there. And at one point, we had up to four. That's crazy. That's really cool. It's like a franchise or like he franchised. Yeah, he had four of them. And that, like, how much you had to pay them a certain percentage, right. Or what? Yeah. That's the way it works is, there's several different fees you pay. A royal, it's called a royalty fee. So you pay a percentage of your, of your revenue. Then there's also stuff like co-op where they do, you know, their national advertising, but then they'll also do regional advertising. So when you deal with a company like that, they do ads across the country. But then during football season in Texas, they'll do a Texas special promotion that are only on the channels in Texas. Yeah, not in new Jersey, not in California. So you pay into regional co-op and things like that. For advertising. Because it helps everybody. Yeah, that makes sense. But yeah, it's a good gig. This is new Jersey, circa 1980s. We moved there in 86. Okay. Yeah. Did you run into the mob? Hamas? No. New Jersey is pretty chill. We actually lived, the area I lived in was called Middletown. It's very similar to, like, Pflugerville. Okay? It's just the suburbs area. There's no major city anywhere near it. In fact, Austin is closer to me than New York was. New York was like an hour away. Wow. Have you seen The Sopranos? Of course. Yeah. That was that would make me feel like somebody would come around. Hey, you know, be a nice place to be a terrible thing if you had a fire. Yeah, yeah, that's all that stuff is all mainly in northern Jersey. Once you get to central Jersey, it's, New Jersey's actually known as the Garden State, right? The Jersey tomatoes, they're famous Jersey, actually. They're used they used to send out an email, of like all the things new Jersey and what it was like they had more thoroughbreds in Kentucky. They grow like three quarters of the world's, cranberries. The cranberries in a place where you think of. And it's on The Sopranos, right? Yeah, yeah. You do think of The Sopranos, right? So, yeah, it's very interesting state. There's a lot of different areas to it, but you can get across it in an hour and a half. So it's completely different than Texas. As I say Texas is a different man. Yeah I mean you can go to east or west at an hour and a half. You can go north to south in about two to 2.5 hours. That's it. So bang you go right through it. Yeah. But new Jersey life. Yes. You go on up to New York a lot. Knicks, nets. Not that often. We would go up, you can take the train, which was really nice. Right from Middletown, where we were. So it took about, about 45 minutes to an hour. But we go out there for concerts. Not as much for sports. Wasn't into the New York team, especially back then. Yeah, we're really good. Yeah. Dolphins fan. Oh. So, yeah. You're a Dolphins fan. How'd you how'd you wind up there? So, we lived in, southern Georgia, and my brother James, my oldest brother, James, became a Dolphins fan. This was in the 70s, late 70s. So the Dolphins had come off, you know, they won back to back years. They had their undefeated season in the early 70s. But they were good, for most of the 70s and you didn't want to be a dirty Falcons fan in the 70s. The dirty birds, they were not good. They were not a good team. So, that was close enough down there. We just went Dolphins. Yeah. Nice. But. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It was fun being a Dolphins fan in Jersey because the Jets were a big rival, so that was nice. You know rib, rib the guys is as good as they get. Did you go to any games? Absolutely. We would go. My brother James and I were actually at the, Dan Marino famous fake spice game, against the Jets play. Can I run that back for me? Yeah. What is the scope? Go on. Oh, yeah. Rather clip. It is. What is it? October? Probably 92, 93, something like that. At the Meadowlands in New Jersey. It's freezing cold. Dolphins are, are down. I think it's by three, on like the Jets. Like seven times running out. Looks like they're just going to kick a field goal and go in overtime. Yeah. Clayton goes out. Marino just goes, oh, how about that. And touchdown throws a thud I jump up in the air. My brother James grabs me down. It's like don't you f and say a word. Because during the game every time the Dolphins did anything good, you'd see a fan jump up and cheer. And then ten Jets fans would just beat it. Oh crap. Yeah, this was back. This was just dirty. This was dirty too. So we got out of a couple kicks, a couple punches, I had my jacket over my jersey, were like, let's get out, we gonna win. Let's go. That's a crazy I don't need to rub it in no one's face. I'm out on the block tomorrow. I'll rub it in your face. Yeah, yeah. This is hostile territory. That's crazy. Yeah, that was nuts. That's awesome, but what a game. Good time. That's a hell of a game to go to. Yeah, yeah, I got lucky. Got lucky. That was. That was the only crazy game I got to go to. But even multiple. Oh, yeah, we, I would go up and see the, Jets. Dolphins. The Yankees games were fun. We'd go up there every once in a while. I got to see, like Ken Griffey Junior when he was still in Seattle. Play against the Yankees. That was close. So, yeah, some good times. But not too, too much. Lots of my friends weren't big sports fans, so. Yeah, really, at the time, they were more into heavy metal. Okay, okay, that's pretty big culture. Yeah, I wasn't really big into football. Like growing up. I was watching a basketball for sure. And then fantasy slowly, slowly, just 12 years ago, I guess it was just slowly. Now I know about the rookies. Like I care about preseason football. Right. Who's getting snaps? I was getting looks was wasn't targets, was getting to play time. I went back, oh now, yeah. Right. Yeah. I can't really watch basketball. I flipped, I flipped, so I, I don't watch it. I used to be all about Kobe Lakers. Celtics right. It's going down. Young Durant. Is he going to win a ring. Who knows. Never. And that was done. And now I don't again I don't know any of the rookies in basketball I can't stand Kevin Durant honestly. No he's there. All right. Why would you. Yeah exactly I like with how so how so he's a douche. What's wrong respectfully I mean, the whole letter. K.D., we love you, but your douche Twitter thing was ridiculous. What do you mean? Wasn't he the one that set up, like, fake Twitter account? Yeah, yeah, yeah, he got to, like, troll his trolls. You go to the comments, his comment, you would comment on the comments on his post. He has a different account to tell the trolls. Yeah, yeah, he got busted doing that. How did he get busted? I tried the IP address. He's not smart enough. Yeah. So you couldn't figure it out? He. Someone got his phone. I don't remember how it leaked. I think he tweeted a burner comment from his main account. Something like that. Yeah. I was like, he was in a back and forth with someone and he accidentally posted as himself. And it was like in the same, like I read a comments. Yeah. Something like same line of conversation. Switch back, didn't switch back, just forgot. Forgot. He was not. It's also definitely ads. When did that happen? I know you heard about this. That's, that was like seven, eight years ago. Yeah. Ago. Oh. You did. It was before he went to the nets. How about I love you, your douche, now, I think. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That's young for it. Yeah. And then he, Have you seen the clip with him? He hangs out with this guy. I show speed, you know, I he shows me this, streamer. This streamer. Yeah, him and I said that are the two biggest streamers pretty much in the world. And then I show speed is, like, a big sports fan and a big. Kevin Durant is the favorite basketball player. He's like, telling him, like, I have all your shoes, I have all this. And Kevin is like a jerk to him the whole time. And he's like kind of let down. But it just plays a chill. And there's a point where he's like, how many followers do you have? And then show speed is like 40 million. And then Kevin, it's like, oh shit. And he has like 28 million or something. So he gets like kind of humbled because he's just a jerk to him the whole time. And he's like legitimately a big fan. But he doesn't sign stuff for people very often. He just talk shit all the time. Yeah, like someone's a big fan, like, you know, what do you want? Be nice to him. Yeah. Hang out with him. Be cool with you. He's just, like, real. Nah, man, I'll mess with you when I cool like that. I don't know you, man, don't meet your heroes. Yeah, that's one of the examples, for sure. And that's fine. I mean, there's plenty of. You need some villains in the NBA, I guess. So, I mean, there's enough players that never. Yeah, there's definitely enough players that never play that I hate. But like who? I mean, the half of the 70 Sixers. Half of the Wizards. I mean, do these people ever play basketball? Not very often in practice. Yeah, I mean Ben Simmons. What does he play five games in ten years. There we go. Yeah. Now that's my lord. That that is one of the things that blows my mind in basketball. How those guys get paid for that potential for years and years. Yeah. Years and they never comes. Yeah. And you're like, yeah, that was $700 million. We just paid that character crazy. Whatever it is. I mean, a couple hundred for sure. For sure. Billions and never play or I'm tired. I'm not going to play in the playoffs or whatever. Just crazy. And yeah, they get paid a lot. Generally a lot of money, though. We were having this conversation the other day, How is it going to work with guaranteed salaries and mental health, guaranteed salaries and mental health? What happens when some. Okay, we've seen like Coco Gauff, she's not played in some tournaments. She took time off for mental health and players. That's now a medical issue, is there? Not now. Coco Gauff, she's a famous tennis player, tennis guy. She's like the number one player in the world for a little bit. But. Coco. Coco? Yeah. Took time off, for mental health. Didn't play in, like, Wimbledon. And some of the big tournaments, people are like, oh my God, freak it out. Mental health is is is, physical health as well. Yeah. Can you retire because of mental health and have your guaranteed salary? The money is enough that these guys sign their their rookie contract and they get 25, 30, 50 million guaranteed. Yes. That's you only need 2 million to live for the rest of your life. You need one. You got 50 of those guys. Why would you ever play again? Risk any of the injury? Risking injury, risking all these things. Especially in football. I think we're going to see someone retire for mental health and get a guaranteed salary, which will be really, really weird. Yo, that's going to be a line that we're going to cross as far as it can be, like cultural thing going on here, like the mental push. You can't stop who it is. Who's to say you can't exactly. Who's this like mental health. It's important. We all agree. It's okay. I don't agree with that. Right. Go to hell. I mean, and we've stopped. We've seen guys walk away from big things. I mean, Kaepernick and and, you know, he got kind of blackballed, but he also pushed himself out. But some of these other guys that, kind of just step away, they're like, oh, crap. But they could have stepped away a year ago and just said, yeah, you know. And it's also good. It's a great example of should I keep a mouth shut? I'm just kidding. Yeah. So out. But, yeah. You're right. Well, one thing is, culturally, we definitely would have to support. Like, you'd have to have to. You'd have to. But here's the other thing. What are you going to say? The people who are the people who can turn down the have tools in society? Are the billionaires. Like they're going to find a way to try to have like, this guy's got to play. So I don't know, maybe they'll do maybe they'll like kill someone in the family. Michael Jordan, maybe the killer cousin or something. You know what I'm saying? Their uncle just goes missing or some shit. Well, you know, you're going to play boy. Okay, okay, okay. Yeah, that that could. That's one route I would think they would, might do like, arbitration or mediation to, like, try to diagnose them with their own doctor to see. Does this guy really have an anxiety disorder or is he kind of lying to us? I think it would have to get in order for to someone like a player to come out and have that like reasoning. I'm, I'm retiring for mental health. I think they would have if they were like, logistically inclined to execute properly, they would probably have all their ducks in a row and have like the doctors and have like the psychiatrist. It's like signing off on some things that are saying these things. They had their therapy sessions. Oh yeah. Like this guy's going to have to be lined up for sure. And it's like, okay, well, what are you going to say? Who's in the same thing? And he's got $50 million. And I'm not even saying that necessarily players are going to do it, you know, Nefariously it'd be like, I'm getting over on the guys, but think about it this way. A player hurts his back, hurts his knee, and it never heals. It doesn't. That ruined you emotionally? I'm not the same guy. I'm not the same guy. I could played but not the same guy. Yeah that's weird. It's a weird one. Yeah. We paid that guy. That guy's the guy that signed the contract. You show up. I'm not I'm not that guy. So I used to be. Yeah. So just an interesting thought. Yeah. Dude, I think it's the just, like, the way, like the, the trend that that it points towards as far as, like the idea of where we're going as like regarding mental health and people's perception of reality and like having compassion for that and giving people space to be themselves or to whatever, it's like there's, there's you got to have that going on here, man. Yeah. Two things that come to mind. One, if I were going to try to do this, I would, what was it called when Metta World Peace with the Pacers? There's a name for that event that happened. The malice in the Palace outhouse. Yes. So in our test run. Our test, you get into a fight. I changed my name. You know I can't go in Indiana. I'm literally not the same guy anymore. You get into it with the crowd. I think you have some kind of like. And plus, the world saw it. So if you were going to retire and try to keep your money, it'd be nice to have a big event that you could point to and be like at the mouse in the Palace. Mess me up for life, right? I can't do it anymore. So yeah, I would fight the crowd if I were going to try to get over on the owners and then the other thought is, but then that's, kind of, detrimental to the league. They can kick you out, not pay you. Yeah. Okay. I need someone to provoke the fight so I can say I was defending myself. Loopholes. They said the beer can, Adam. Right? They did, but he went into the crowd. The crowd came onto the court, I don't know, he was in row five. He was in his home. He's got an and two. And there's a white dude all the other Lakers. It's just I always thought he was on the like Pacers pace I don't think he was on the Pacers. They were playing in Indiana. But he was on the Knicks. Or I forget who it was they were playing. One of his homies just jumps in the crowd with him and he was like, I'd had enough. I'd had enough. Like on the documentary, he's like, I was just. I was in the moment, let's do some haymakers. Let's do it. I'm sick of these Indiana folk. This Indiana folk, yo. It's crazy. Yeah, there's a there's a whole 30 for 30 on it. Oh, yeah, that's a good one. He's good. Yeah, it's good, it's great. The 30 victories are almost all good. Yeah, I'd be willing to watch all of them. And then why are the thought of just a billionaires or a sketchy group, man? You know, I don't know what happens behind the closed doors, but, like, they did pay off for the CTE lawsuits. Sure, they did pay those off. And so for a while, I mean, you could have made a lot of money saying you had CTE from the NFL. Really? Yeah. Well, they did a class action and they paid like a a pool into a pool. And then that pays out the, the individual players. Yeah. Oh better Castle. That's where I learned about those. Yeah. Yeah. The class action. Absolutely. So yeah if you had CTE in the NFL, I think maybe you could have a case for that. Well that I mean and that's going to be another one going forward if that blows up. Goodbye NFL hello flag football. Sarcastic ball. Oh I mean if that ends up being we start seeing CTE in like to like 15 to 20% as opposed to whatever it is now a few three, 4 or 5 I can tell you. Yeah. Is that when I don't stats on it it's got to be it's low I know that. But you get to 15, 20%. Moms don't let their boys play football in grade school. No, football's not so you know, the ball's gone. And if you this a couple Joe Rogan says if you get hit in the face you're going to probably develop a little bit of CTE. You're kicking some at all damage. Yeah. And if you do your brain just floating, it's floating in it like a Jacuzzi. Yeah, yeah. And that's the thing. Holding it in there is like any shot to the head is like a one, two, 3% concussed. Like it's never good for your brain at all. So know we'll see if we get to keep playing the gladiator sport. That's what it is too, though. It's a it's a it's our common day. Gladiators, man. We love watching it. We love it. It's probably a waiver eventually. It's like love. It might get CTE because we love it. We love it. Oh, that basically already is. Yeah I mean those players now are playing knowing the risk. I'm sure it's in contract. Hey what are we going to do bro. They know you know I know we know. But but you want to get paid don't you know as it is what it is. And that goes right back to it. You'll do you'll do whatever you need for the money to survive. Nope. To teacher son, I would deal with a life. Well, we're running a little low on time. And, Steve, you have a very interesting mind. So I'm curious to know what's been going on in the temporal lobe lately. You got any shower thoughts? These conversations at work, some sort of late in your brain, in the mid hours of the night that you just spent trying to wrap your mind around, let me see some riddles written. Many riddles. You just frame this for me. Oh. It's okay. We can all float around. I'm trying to think. In the last week, any, any thoughts that I had that were just the the. What would you wear if you were a head coach? That crossed my mind a lot, because it was a fun one. You're sending a message with that. You're making a statement even if you don't want to be. I was every time I thought maybe we should make T-shirts that say, this is not a statement, that's a t shirt. I think that could go viral. Absolutely. No, we, I I've been away, had a couple vacations the last couple weeks, so, Hell yes. Dude, you got, let's go. Got to turn the salesperson down. That was fun. Nice, nice to have. So what do you mean, Steve the human? Oh, a sales person. Yeah. Jill. Jill and I went to one of these things. It's basically like a timeshare type of thing. And basically, they'll give you a free weekend. But you have to sit through their sales. Yeah. It's like eight hours or six. Oh, it's only two hours. Not too bad. What? So we go there, this little workshop, we're there for a couple of days and, go to meet the guy, and he's like, all right, I'm going to be cool with you guys. You know, I don't even normally do this. Typically, I work with these special clientele, like, right away. Selling you, by the way. Did you did you just call me dirt? What am I trying to think? So you just put me down? Yeah. Nobody. I work with the VIP clients. Well, today I'm here with you. Snubs. I'm at the, special. Like a show you I'm a VIP. I gotta take my wallet out. So. Yeah. So that was funny. But he's like, all right, we got to go quick. My son's got a baseball game this afternoon. I'm like, perfect. I'm not buying anything anyway, so it doesn't matter. So we go along and, go through his whole field, and he takes us out and brings us back. And they never tell you how much this stuff cost until the very end, because they know the numbers scare you, because you're basically buying a mortgage. Oh, the minimum buy in for this place is like $20,000. And this guy wanted to buy something that was like $40,000 where I had to put down like five grand. That day on the spur of the moment, I'm like, no, there is that business model is built on the psychology. Literally in the first minute he's like, I'm creating novelty. I don't do this normally. I'm like a person of authority. I have like, I'm like doing the thing. You're lucky you love you. I'm talking to you right now, guy. Yeah, I got an opportunity for you. So this is more like a jujitsu. Jujitsu? Get out of here, bro. Get behind me, Satan! Go get a real job. Yeah, you got it, dude. The reason the business exists is because people fold. Yeah, people. I mean, they they get pressured and they just go, oh, okay. And once you're in, you're locked in. You cannot get out of these things. It's crazy. That is rough. So I tell the guy no. And he actually got so pissed off he got up and left the table. No way. I got to practice to get to really. So they always whenever you go to these. This is the second time I've done one of these. Oh no. Whatever you do it after the first guy, the second guy comes up. Okay, here's the closer. So the second guy comes over and he goes, oh, you know the other guy. Sales guys now, Steve. He goes, hey, you know, how was it? I'm like, oh, he's great, you know, blah blah blah. I was all good. He goes, oh, you know, you're not not going to go with it. I'm like, well, you know, he's so nice and you're so nice. I'm so happy. Because the last time I did this, which was like 30 years ago, the first guy got so mad at me, he left. The second guy was about my size, and he came over and stood at me like this and said, well, why aren't you buying a present set up to him and said, boom, get out of my face. So that's a what I said. So I'm so happy I didn't have to say this to you guys this time. So that put the second guy off guard of, well, I can't push this guy over, right? He just told me, I'm not going to be able to. Oh, you're selling him? Yeah. So yeah, he's like, he tried to sell me one other thing and we got out of there. It was great. I got him the leg lock. You know sale, I know sale. Sorry if it's a good deal. I mean, that those things are fine if you work them all the time. And that's your plan to for vacation. But it's just not what we do. We just wanted the free weekend. Yeah, absolutely. That's what they all was on me. All was, oh, we're all here on my mind as a salesman. I'm weeding those people out of my energy expenditure. I'm like, they're not going to go for it. They're not going to go for it. This person looks like they or they're on the fence. And then this one looks a little gullible. So let me see if I can work with what I got. You know, you play the hand you dealt with for sure because I'm, I'm you know, you're not, you know, selling me. I'm sorry. Especially if the I'll just be okay. So I'll just I'll just smile and say no. I mean, I'm a buyer. I'm a consumer. I'm a purchaser, I'm a buyer. But it's hard to sell me. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Right. That's two different tactics. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's literally what I do for a living. So I. One time I got sold Cologne at a gas station. It happened. It happened. Okay. It's different with 20 bucks versus 40,000. That's if I'm a little more lenient now. Okay. Whatever, bro. I'll buy your chocolate bar. When I was fine, I was embarrassed. Afterwards, I told my dad and I was like, I didn't want to buy that day. I don't know why I bought this. I only had $20 cash. I was going to go to CC's pizza. They got me, dude, they got mad. He got $20 gas station Cologne. Yeah. Oh, baby stomped it. They got me with the novelty and the authority, and they were gassing me up. It was probably a cool bottle. They like my car. I was like, yeah, I should smell good. I have it in my car. Just pour this all through here. Yeah. This is it was the one time that I got, like, sold out of pocket. But yeah, now when someone's trying to sell me something, I definitely have, like, like a guard up that some people don't have that guard up. Are they finesse around it. And I can be fooled. Five years ago or maybe seven years ago, two kids come around saying, yeah, we're, collecting money for the new lacrosse team over at Hendrickson. I gave him 20 bucks. There's no lacrosse or what? What do you do? That's awesome. I respected them. That's fine. 20 bucks for the hustle, kid. You keep going. I try to buy some these puffs. Lacrosse sticks are expensive. They are crossbows. And lacrosse helmets and stuff. That's a good hustle. Do you have any hustles? When you were a kid. Oh my gosh. Oh. It. Sure, sure. I mean, I, when I was in middle school, I started my own candy selling business at school. Dude, we had a candy kid, a school, too. We had two of them, the chocolate one did gummies, I did Jolly Ranchers. Come on, the little mini Jolly Ranchers, you could go buy it, go to the grocery store. How? I would go to Kroger and buy a bag of Jolly Ranchers. It was $0.99. You get 33 in a bag, and I would sell them for a nickel. I'm sorry, a dime apiece or three for a quarter I was making. I was making three bucks a bag. I'm sorry. Four bucks a bag. So three bucks in profit. The way our school was set up, we we had what were we called? Pods. So there were 12 classrooms. I'd have four over here, four over here, four over here. And you basically just hung around with those four classes. You never really went to the other two pods. I got so big that I was a distributor. I would meet two a kid from each other, pod in the morning, sell him bags for two bucks a bag, just take my buck off the bag and then sell my own. I was making like 10 or 15 bucks a day and like that. Great. Yo yo yo. It's like 300 a month. Yeah. That's cool. So snowfall, man, I mean, yeah, you were set up. It was awesome. That's hilarious. Steve's the Jolly Rancher plug, bro. 100% earplug, man. I got this blue raspberry. I think that these blue Raspberry Pi three dog exclusive blue raspberry dog. Yo, I, I was a lawn lawn work kid. Oh, yeah? Yeah, lawns need someone to pull weeds, mow the grass, clean out a storage unit. I would do a lot of that for people in the church. My brothers, my brother Dave and my brother Brian and I, back around the same time frame in the summers. My mom would drop us off. She would bring us with the lawnmower over to another neighborhood, and we could knock out 6 or 7 lawns on a Saturday morning, be done by about noon. We were basically where 12, 14 and 16 years old boy is we could run with the lawnmower, just push it and just be out of there. I mean, 20 minutes, we're done with the lawn. Boom, boom, boom, ten bucks a lawn. We're split in 70 bucks between three of us on a Saturday. I was 12 this great Saturday. Add that to my Jolly Rancher money. Yeah, dude, you probably throw a damn, bro. That's nice. That's rural spirit. That's GameStop. Whole dude. GameStop on a CC strip of games as ice cream. Your chilling showbiz pizza, yes is basically the same as Chucky Cheese. Oh yeah. Charles my boy Charles. Yes, yes. Yo, Charles, it'd be cool to walk into your cheese with your own money. I like ten, 12 years old. Oh, yeah. It's like, got some bills here. Yeah. Sometimes you guys will have money. Like, she's like, yeah, I could go to get tacos. Like, I'll buy tacos. Like, I buy tacos like, no, I don't want to drive because I pretty soon that hurdle will be crossed as well. Right. All right. Well, now you're going get some groceries or something. You're driving for the family. Yeah. True young kids, man, that was. I say, we'll probably we'll pioneer in our time. We'll have a some of our other guests arriving here very soon for our 12 year league of record. Family League draft, fantasy football 2025 live from Pflugerville. Love you guys Steve, thanks for being on the podcast. Thank you for being on the road. It's a long awaited. This has been fun. We'll do it again. It's been it's been a minute. We, been talking about this for years. Yeah, yeah, this is one Steve should be a returning Steve one. Yeah, well, we're going to create a protect. Our partner Steve will do. So we'll do something. We got it. We'll get it done. Beautiful. Love you guys. Awesome Johnson. Love y'all. Have a great life. We'll see you soon. Good luck in your drafts. I.