Jake & Ben: Full Show | Jake’s response to the Texas Tech fans that went after him | How does Geo…

Jake & Ben: Full Show | Jake’s response to the Texas Tech fans that went after him | How does Geo…

And now it’s 10:00 a.m. Let’s just get down to it and it’s time for your sports picks. Strap yourselves in, folks. From two guys who have covered the teams you’re passionate about for years, we are professionals. This is Jake Scott and Ben Anderson on 975 the KSL Sports Zone. Jacob 975 the KSL Sports Zone. Oh man, miss that voice. What’s up bozos? How are you? What did I miss? Oh, you know what you missed? You know what? It didn’t actually get that much run, but it got a bunch of run online. It got a bunch of run online and then you I’m sure you didn’t realize. So, what was that Monday night? Monday. I don’t even know. So, again, to recap if you missed it because I only touched on it very slightly, your conversation, and I say yours specifically because I went back and listened to the clip and I don’t hear my voice at all. It’s basically you calling everybody a Texas Tech a bozo and Steve plating you. Yep. Uhhuh. Yeah. Steve got wrapped up in it. Apologies to him. And of course when you go back and look at the podcast, it has your face and my face on it. And it does the clip does not as the guy clipped it and and you know recorded it off his phone. Doesn’t say who’s talking or anything. So nobody knows if that’s me talking or you talking or Steve Bartle who has nothing to do with the conversation really other than he was in on the interview calling everybody a Texas Techo and some local here or should I call him a yokal uh clipped it. He’s a BYU Texas Tech fan which apparently there’s a camaraderie there. That’s a thing. He tweets it out and all of Lebec, Texas circles the wagons to come after the show about how how would anyone in Utah know anything? We don’t know anything about college football. Tagging the coach. Yeah. They were like, Joey Maguire, I hope you play this before the game. It’s like, yeah, you pathetic losers. I hope you play it before the game. Yeah. Hey, Dad. These guys online are being mean to us. Yeah. Joey Magguire, play that before the game. Jake and Ben’s radio show before your game, seven weeks from when we had that conversation. Oh, but then that was Monday. Tuesday morning, we opened the show with the color analyst from the That’s what Christian told me. So anyways, but he said he you didn’t mention it to him. No, and it got buried quickly. No, we did move on quickly because And again, it wasn’t pandering like I didn’t schedule him because that was going on. I had him scheduled already and then all that stuff came out. Nor did I necessarily feel like talking about it. A as an independent solo show host at the moment and B it was a lot of you and it wasn’t really your controversy. No. Uh can I tell you my my favorite tweet that I got during this this storm? Because it on it generated 70 retweets and 60 replies and now in retweets you can quote tweet it. So there’s replies in the in the retweets. I love the it was like 40 bookmarks. So that’s like 40 people that are coming back to it. Circle back and rub it in my face. Uh but how about this one? Mo Jaguire. Okay, you can see what they you can do. He says he tweets. This is what I woke up to by the way in San Diego. Good morning and a hearty f you to Ben and Jake. Clarification, the tweet was not censored. Jens answered it for the correct. Uh that was it. That’s all he did. That’s all he tweeted. Yeah. I had people coming into my other tweets like my mailbag for the jazz being like, “Hope there’s no bozos on.” [Music] So yeah. Oh. Oh, it’s so funny. I did feel like it was fair game because I got you in some hot water with some Utah State fans not too long ago and I felt, well, Jake got me back. That’s fine. Totally fair. You know what? I’ve been buried under even the five Utah State fans that got after me were way meaner and more creative than the Texas Tech fans. Like, you know, they have an education. Our our local teams are way meaner and more creative when they’re mad at me. But it was it was quite funny because they were so upset about the word bozo. Yeah. They really did not like that word. They’re like, “What am I supposed to say when you use such inflammatory language?” Which here’s They don’t know what inflammatory means. Correct. Yeah. They don’t know what bozo means. Uh here’s here’s the the the irony of it that that was was so rich to me because they were so upset about Bozo. And we try and reset our bits and it is a bit. The word bozo is totally a bit on the show. But here’s why is because you and I both like a good insult. Yes. But insults get a little hurtful and you can’t say all of them on the air and some of them really are over the line. And the reason that I love bozo is because it’s a takeoff of clown, which is a really funny insult. You know, you you’re a clown. You’re an unserious person. You’re the one putting out a fire with a seltzer bottle and spray yourself in the face. Yes. You know, that’s it. It’s it’s a funny insult. And then on top of that, bozo is just a random clown character. And I feel like my grandpa insulting somebody in the 50s. And we said, “Nobody can be that mad at being called a bozo.” That was the whole generation. People can be mad when you call them uh yeah, any number of insults of insults. And people get upset and I don’t blame them. But bozo’s silly. It’s G-rated. It’s lighthearted. Nobody could possibly be that mad at being called a bozo. And you know what? I’m here to tell you apparently I was wrong. You were wrong. All of Texas Tech was mad about it. Well, and you didn’t even call Texas Tech fans bozos. You didn’t call their administration. You didn’t even call Joey Maguire a bozo. You didn’t call their current players bozos. You just said, “Why is this team always conducting the Texas Tech special, which is a seven and five season? Why are they always doing that? Why is it always eight and four when you have Patrick Mahomes? Why can you never quite why can you have the number one offense in the Big 12 like you did last year and not do anything of any import with it? What’s the deal?” The whole That’s the whole point. There’s got to be some bozos somewhere somewhere. Somewhere in the operation, there’s got to be some bozo behavior happening. When we were seven and five, don’t be with us when we’re nine and three. Is that right? I was thinking about I don’t They never won a Big 12 uh title under Mike Leech. No, our analysts that jumped on with us said it was the 1950s was the last time they won a conference title. The 50s. And they’re mad at you. They’re mad at you because they’re mad at me. They didn’t know who they were mad at, so they just sprayed it everywhere. I never read Mike Leech’s book. What was it? Swing Your Sword. Yeah. But I did interview him about it multiple times. Guess what his opinion was about the the people running Texas Tech. His words were a lot meaner than Bozo, I’ll tell you that. So, I don’t know. Anyway, I I did I did find it hilarious. And uh shout out to the good folks at uh at Texas Tech. Um the Red Raiders have won co-ch championships in 1976 and 1994. They have not won an outright title, seems like since 1955. Uh Chris, by the way, just uh just snap talked this at me. He says, “Welcome back, Jake. I was laughing at the rage that inspired so soft.” And then a little emoji of a toilet paper thing. I got a uh I got a text. My buddy uh Chris lives in uh Colorado Springs. And he’s got a very important job, so you know, he’s not online all that much. I I’m in the middle of Legoland, Ben, sweating, waiting in line uh for the cars thing. And I get a text from him and he goes, “I just logged on to Twitter for the first time in six months and what did you do to make the Texas Tech fans so mad?” Fun to rile up another state. I just said I called them bozos. That’s it. And you didn’t call them bozos. I called the administration. There are people within that building that must be bozos that have prevented them from ever reaching the type of success that Baylor and TCU, probably even Houston, certainly Texas, Texas A&M have reached. Got to be something there. Something there. For some reason, Texas Tech cannot get over the hump. There was a lot of crying though. A lot of a lot of emotion. A lot of tears. A lot of tears. Yeah. Solved the drought down there. I was well hydrated on my trip to uh San Diego. I mean, Red Raider, I just picture you Monday sitting on the beach in your tie-dye shirt and your bucket hat and your What are your glasses? What What’s your brand? Uh, I I don’t even What is it? It’s not Kenneth Cole. It’s another one. Tom Ford. No. Is that No, these are my uh these are my Maui Gyms. Yeah, your Maui Gyms. Having a a a true out loud chuckle. And where is his glasses? He can’t see without his glasses. Yeah, I saw your tweet, too, Christian. It wasn’t funny about uh about Texas Tech. Just soaking it up on the beach. Oh, taking a train to Oldtown. Yeah. Passed the whole trip. We had like a 45minute train ride. Anyways, so yeah, I did that was you’re right. That did happen on Monday. That was a Monday Tuesday event and uh we moved on. Very soft. But you know what? Joey Magguire’s going to play it for the team before uh she’s probably playing it today. Probably playing it right now. Oh, she’s probably got a picture of us up on the on the uh tackling dummies. Probably sees us at practice every day, which I’m happy to motivate. That’s fine. Whatever you got to do. Whatever you got to do to get there. I just am picturing though the coach standing in front of uh the team saying, “Guys, bad news. We’re going to play gonna play a play a clip right now. This is going to hurt some of you.” Here’s some bozo in Utah calling us bozos. And not even us. the administration bozos. Show them who the real bozos are. Guarantee Joey Maguire thinks that there are bozos running the show. I think every head coach thinks that about the administration. Exactly. Yep. Play it for the team. Oh, I love this job so much. Pretty funny. So much. But I would like to congratulate Utah, BYU, and Utah State fans. All of uh whom have been mad at me at one point or another over my career. You’re way more creative and way meaner than uh than the RA Red Raider fans out there. So yeah, like you know like Utah and Cook fans and have caused tears before. I just it was laughter from the Red Raider faithful. Yep. But speaking of like the generation, did you uh the generation of this whole convo is Texas Tech has raised a bunch of money and they’re they’re slinging it around like drunken sailors. Yeah. Uh, did you hear Bos this morning with DJ and PK? He was good. He talked about the quarterback race, but uh, spent time describing fundraising at BYU. I had an anxiety just listening to it. I mean, it sounds, no offense to Robbie, it sounds awful. It sounds like I would want any other job on the planet. Asking for money is horrible. Just begging people for money. And I just assumed Robbie was playing golf and getting set up and, you know, kind of living the good life. No, he’s after it. They are scram. I mean, this the whole name of the game has become fundraising. Now, the problem with with Texas Tech is okay, what do you do with your resources? Yeah, because I saw USC have more resources than everybody during Utah’s run in the Pack 12. They got huge recruits and huge transfers over and over and over again. Speaking of clown show, yeah, just clown show. What’d you do with the resources? I mean, there’s Texas A&M. You’ve tal You’ve talked about it a lot. Jimbo Fischer’s last team there cost dozens of millions of dollars and didn’t do anything. Cost him his job. And here’s where maybe I’ll defend Texas Tech for a second. Maybe I’ll steal man argument and bring up my a bozo take I had when Kevin Young was hired and BYU was going to go down this road of we’re going to be an NBA grooming factory. I thought sure you are. Yeah, sure you are. No, it’s not going to happen. I thought I was like, “Oh, it’s going to take BYU years to even win a game in the Big 12.” Totally wrong. Yeah. Have taken massive resources and obviously deployed them quite well or at least did last year. So absolutely wrong. There’s a program that took a total new direction under the current rules and have figured out a way to really put it to good use. So could Joey Magcguire and Texas Tech do that? I suppose so. the history would say I doubt it, but the history at BYU basketball would have said something and now they’re doing something else. So, we’ll we’ll see how that uh how that goes. But, I mean, college sports is everybody I mean it is a it is a resource battle in a way different way. And I actually feel bad for fans because man, they just get shaken down at every dang turn. Yep. Absolutely. I mean, Robbie was describing how they have their current donors and they send their current donors out into the community to find other people that have money to donate. I mean, it sounded like, oh my gosh, this is this is Keeping Up with the Joneses is a crazy operation and I’m just It bummed me out to be honest. Yeah, I’m with you. You know, you can look, professional sports have their numerous flaws. I see it. You see it. There’s more behind the scenes and yeah, you’re paying out the nose for food and drink and you know, all of that’s tickets, jerseys, whatever. No one’s knocking on your door asking for money to sign Lowry Market into a contract extension. Do you want to be good? If you want your jazz team to be good, I need you to put money in my hand right now. Crazy. What? It’s crazy. It’s crazy. And it’s You know what? It’s It’s broken. I don’t know how I don’t think they can fix it honestly unless they collectively bargain but I don’t think that’s happening and or the Supreme Court is somehow reverses itself. Yeah. You know there’s I’m I’m specifically referring to putting the NIL back in the bottle. I don’t think you can do that. And again, some teams, athletic departments don’t mind going out and asking people to put money in their hands so their team can be better than the other team in whatever which direction geographically they’re playing against or consider their rival. Texas doesn’t want that. Texas doesn’t want to collectively bargain. Nope. Why? They get billions of dollars. Not billions, but you know, Texas Tech right now shouldn’t want to collectively bargain with anybody. They’ve got a billionaire donor who wants to give them all the money so they can be the best team. Why would they want to say, “Well, you know what? I feel bad for New Mexico State. I just want to be on equal footing with them.” They don’t want that. So, no, they’re not going to collectively bargain in that sense either. They’re not going to come together. It would take the players sitting out and the players aren’t organized to do it, and there’s too many of them. So, who do you collectively bargain against? The conferences are technically the ones that collect the money. Yeah. Not the NCAA anymore. They certainly don’t have any control specifically over football. Who are you right? I mean these are in large part not all obviously but uh public universities. So are there governments? Are they state governments? Yeah. That’s that’s impossible. Yeah. And never going to happen. So not to mention maybe not even in the athletes best interest. Although having a little guarantee that you could have some stability I’m sure would be nice because they’ve sacrificed ultimate stability for none at all. But, you know, I don’t see how you can prevent now boosters, donors, the zillionaire at Texas Tech from coming in and paying whoever he wants, right? They can’t set up a rule against it, right? And why would that guy want collective bargaining, right? Yeah. And you could say, “Oh, they’ll sign a non-compete with the university or that they have to adhere to all the university stuff if they’re going to take a salary.” Well, you can easily throw that out the window with a little negotiation. I’m the star quarterback. What are you talking about? Yeah. So, no, it’s it’s not in a good spot. No question about it. So, maybe Texas Tech figures it out and has a zillion dollars and all of a sudden they’re a juggernaut. I doubt it. I doubt it. Yeah. They’re the ones who chiseled Mike Leech over a couple of bucks on his way out the door. Yeah. Rough. They just landed one of the highest rated recruits for uh 2026 or 27, but I did see that. I think they’ve got three or four top 20 transfers in the country. They’re on the team specifically on the offensive and defensive line. Yeah, they’re they went out and spent money that matters. It was funny watching them defend the time Patrick Mahomes was there too. They were like, but the defense was terrible and it was like exactly find a way to lose. It is funny you mentioned USC. Lincoln Riley and Oh, yeah. Stinking. Where did he start? Oh, yeah. Right. Right. Like, yeah. Doesn’t matter how much money you give USC or Lincoln Riley. He’s going to be stinking Riley. He’s going to stink it up. He’s He’s a bozo, apparently. I wonder what maybe a bozo born of bozos. Uh I wonder what USC is going to go in the Big 10 this year. I think they were picked like eighth or something crazy. Yeah, four and five. Something like that. Five and four. How were they putting up with that out there? They weren’t doing their good in the Pack 12 either. No, but I mean Fingernails was good for like 10 minutes and then they extend at least is exciting. But you remember their their uh schedule that year though. I mean, yeah. I just I think that era for old stinking was a little more smoke and mirrors. I mean, Utah fans probably agree, right? They beat that team three times at least. Yeah. Yeah. Beat him here, beat him there, give them the conference championship once because they beat Oregon with the other one, right? Yeah. So, beat that team three times. Yeah. Probably thought, “Oh, they weren’t as good as advertised.” Yeah. Heisman my eye. I mean, didn’t Bryson Barnes beat him? Yeah. The pig farmer with a with a scramble if I remember. Yeah. Set up the the field goal. Well, honestly, that’s the problem with the air raid. I mean, if we really want to bring this full circle, you just can’t have a good defense. It’s not possible. And why at USC would you want to hire a coach that’s not going to have a good defense? Makes no sense. And maybe you could make that argument at Texas Tech now, too. I don’t know. How are they deploying those resources? Yeah, but if I can get a monster defense, I’m sign I’m doing that. But again, they had the number one. This is the argument that I didn’t really get into at all, but yeah, you had the number one offense in the Big 12 last year. Did Texas Tech. If we’re going to continue to beat this drum, you can’t have the best offense and the best defense. doesn’t happen. You know, well, unless you’re the 1999 Virginia Takahokes, but that’s a different story. It’s not going to happen. You know, what are you going to sacrifice? What are you willing to give up? How much are you willing to give up of your identity to fix something? Yeah, Utah could give up their defense if they wanted to play a lot faster and score a lot more points. I don’t know if it makes them better. So, you’ve got to figure out what that perfect balance is. And that’s that’s the really difficult job. And do I think Texas Tech is going to do it in year one after getting all these transfers? Probably not. Probably not. Good morning and a hearty f you to Jake and Ben. Uh, I should ask Maddie how the Oh, it was some guy who clipped it. It wasn’t even like our podcast or anything. Yeah, it was just some dude who clipped it. Oh, that’s lame. Yeah, you can go see how many plays we got, how many clicks we got. See if we got any more. See if our traffic has been up from specifically in Levik. We can geographically check some of that. So, the guy that that clipped it and and riled up the Texas Tech fans is a BYU fan and a Texas Tech fan. Yeah. I don’t know where he resides, but that’s what was in his uh Twitter bio. Okay. All right. Shout out to that guy. Shout out to that dude for You could at least like contribute to our podcast numbers or something. Post the link next to the podcast. What are you doing? Yeah. Follow us on Twitter. If you’re going to make some salacious thing out of uh us using a word that I use maybe 200 times a show, text JB to 57500. Yeah, that’s the that’s the best thing you could do. Sponsor the show. Sponsor the show. All right, top three stories of the day at kslports.com. Coming up next, Jacob Ben 975, the KSL Sports Zone. It’s time to break down the biggest stories of the day. This is the top three stories of the day on kslsports.com 975 the KSL sports zone Jacob 975 the KSL sports zone uh shout out to Tyler on the snap talk who sends in uh talking about USC and resources. Ben says USC lost a ton when Lorie Laughlin got busted and that full house money was huge. True. Yeah. The uh the entrance scandal. Did you ever watch the uh doc on that? I didn’t. It’s good. Yeah, I believe it. It’s it’s uh amazing the damage that like two or three people can do. If that makes any sense. Lori in a way was kind of a victim. Okay. I mean not a victim, but like found somebody selling to her access. She got caught up in it, I’m sure. And she was not the only one doing it. She didn’t create the scheme. Right. Exactly. But she was an easy face to paint. And I kind of get it when you do love your kids and you want the best for them and all that stuff. Now, obviously, she took it way too far. But anyh who, yeah. Uh, shout out to Tyler. That’s right. Lori got busted and that that full house money was gone. All right. Top three stories of the day. Kslports.com brought to you by Jbrooks Jewelers. Cherish your love. Jbrooks Jewelers. explore their expertly crafted engagement rings made from the finest materials. J Brooks Jewelers. All right, Christian, where do you want to start? Number one, guys, this breakup is getting pretty pretty messy. This is Utah State, Boise State, and who’s the third? Colorado State. Colorado State. Colorado State suing the Mountain West Conference now for withholding money that they feel they are owed even though the Mountain West Conference feels they’re owed money from the Pack 12 for these exit fees for these teams. And what part of it comes down to or another part of this lawsuit in addition to the money that’s they feel is owed to them from Boise State going to the college football playoffs. They’re a part of the lawsuit too. They are part of the lawsuit. Uh but some of the money that’s been made by the conference that has not been dispersed to these schools even though they are leaving, they’re suing. And they’re also mad that it feels like they are arranging for Grand Canyon to join the conference earlier than expected which could end up taking basically a piece of the pie that’s going to be divvied up between these schools and change some travel schedules. It’ll cost more money. It is arranged. They they are joining this year. They’re joining this year. Yeah. So they are I think I saw I might have saw the word fraud. Yeah. They they said the word fraud in the lawsuit and they feel like the wool’s been pulled over their eyes because now they have to adjust what they had already finalized. Um I saw a writer in from Boyisey who covers the Broncos uh use a hashtag gangster Gloria which I got to admit uh made me laugh. This is just a me it it’s a messy divorce if you want if you want to think of it in in those terms. I my wife and I were tired, but we watched uh rewatched an episode of Modern Family from a long time ago, and there was some joke about a guy making a joke about his uh the separated wife that she was uh spending all of his money in Europe or something like that before, you know, whatever. Uh Gloria is just going to shut off, you know, she’s bitter. She’s just going to shut off the site because the money comes through her. So, she’s saying, “Okay, I might be in the right. I might be in the wrong, but I’m hanging on to this and you’re going to have to sue me. I am going to make it so difficult for you to get your hands on this dough. And to add insult to injury, I’m going to give some of this money to someone else that’s going to be a part of this conference in the future. And now when you know judges and all that get involved, I’m sure that the red tape will eventually be sifted through and the money will go to these schools. But Gloria is not going to make it easy. She’s going to she’s going to make them you’re going to have to bend over backwards for this. I’m going to make this as hard for you as possible because you betrayed me. I think that’s what it is. I think it’s pettiness. And by the way, it’s not just from Gloria. It’s from the schools. It’s from the the conference as well. It’s just we’re going to go through every word in every contract and figure out where we feel like you might have violated that and we’re just going to bring it up and we’re just going to bring it up and look at every receipt. And I don’t blame her. I And again, Gloria Navarez, the commissioner of the Mountain West Conference, is kind of the the face of this topic. But she took the job thinking that it was one thing. It became something else immediately thereafter. And she’s out there protecting her interests. She’s trying to protect the schools that stay behind. She’s trying to to uh do what Bullsby did with the Big 12, and that’s scramble and figure out a way for your conference to proceed. Y and they stabilized things by retaining UNLV and trying to attract other universities around and they’re not going to make it easy for these schools that are leaving because they don’t care. She doesn’t care. Why? She doesn’t represent their interests anymore, right? And so I don’t I don’t blame what I don’t blame the Mountain West for what they’re doing. Now it’s a little They could be nicer about it, but there’s no reason to. But there is no reason to, right? And truthfully, no bridge can be too burned in all honesty in this situation because if any of these schools needed to go back to the Mountain West Conference to stay alive, they would go back. Even regardless of how this is happening, as ugly as this, they’d welcome them back. We’ve seen it. We’ve seen it with Boisey. Right. Exactly. Right. So, I think what we’re seeing is make it as hard as possible. Make it as ugly as possible knowing that like the fallout from it is not going to actually be that bad. You might as well just try and save as much money as possible. Well, and she’s got the same problem that Oregon State and Washington State had is that whatever conference uh that they put together, it’s going to be worth way less than it was before. So, so this big war chest of money actually matters because they’re never going to see a windfall like that again. So, it it changes the math on it big time. And it it is it’s like a messy it’s like a messy divorce. And the Mountain West isn’t going to give an inch. Uh and I can’t say that I blame them. I do think in this case they’re going to lose. I mean, you can’t just withhold agreed to payments. Agreed. But just acquiescing, which I think is probably what happened a little bit too much in the Pack 12, is a death sentence. So, you might as well fight for it. And not to mention that that Gloria Nvarez played nice with Oregon State and Washington State. She played nice with them with that scheduling agreement. Even though people like I don’t know if Scotty was saying this, somebody on the station was saying, “You’re you’re letting the the uh rooster in the hen house. Wolf. Wolf. Wolf in the hen house. Fox in the hen house. Fox in the hen house. Don’t let the rooster in there. You’re no more chicken. That’s a That’s a more chicken. No, you’re you’re letting the wolf Yeah. into the hen into the hen’s house. Fox into the hen house. Yeah. Dog, the predator raccoon, you’re letting the predator into the area. Letting the hen into the hen house. And that is exactly what happened. So she was rewarded with losing her conference basically. So I don’t, you know, Yeah. She’s not going to be happy about it. Keep the rooster out of the fox, Dan. I always say that. I’ve always said that. And you know UNLV wants that money. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you know, they’re like, “Hey, we’re the big fish now. We want that dough.” All right, what’s next, Christian? Uh, number two was a wild first day of NFL preseason yesterday. There were injuries all over. Ashton Ginty had three carries for negative one yards. So, is he a bust? Obviously, yes. Yeah. Obviously, huge bust. Um, I I feel bad because if you saw the picture of his finger, it was pretty hideous. Anthony Richardson, but the absolutely unchecked edge rusher just steamrolling him is everything that you expect from the Colts. Everything funny about preseason football, everything funny about Anthony Richardson which is like can’t stay on the field. You either got to recognize the blitz or your team has to defend you or you have to get out of that or you have to dump the ball off to the running back. Like is in the a lot of things could have everything could have been better than that. But yeah, the absolute wide open lane to drill you and break your finger felt familiar if you’ve watched the Colts or you’ve experienced the Anthony Richardson uh saga really even since Florida. So, it I I I was watching it live and I laughed and I felt bad about it, but I I truly laughed at how poorly it was executed. He’s he’s a great example of why evaluating players in any sport is really difficult. And while we’re talking about the Raiders, they have a a big history of this where Anthony Richard, and you said this when Utah was playing Florida, by the way, you know, you look at him, he’s the size of a linebacker. Yep. He runs like the wind, huge arm, and he’s got a big arm. And you look at that and you go, man, can you imagine what uh you know what that could be? And then you ignore other things like he didn’t really play the position very well, right? Even in that game where they beat Utah and he was really really good, it was at the end and it was super simple stuff and Utah kind of imploded in a in a way. Yes, of course. but not to relitigate that particular game. But he goes 10th to the Colts. Am I remembering that right? He went higher than that. I think he was like fifth. Was it that high? Fifth Colts. Yeah, it was he was a top 10 because their evaluator looked at him and goes, “Wow, look at this guy. I get my hands on him. Are you kidding? Wow. We could really do something worthwhile.” And it’s little decisions like that that you just brought up that are really the key to to being successful in an NFL level because everything is so fast. Yeah. And you have to know the reason Tom Brady was so good is because he knew what was going to happen before the snap even came and then he got the ball out. He threw it. He knew where to go. He knew what to do. All the things. It’s not because he was some magician athlete. It was because he knew the game. He read the game. He He had done it a million times and he became unstoppable. Anthony Richardson does not have that and we’ll see if he can stay on the field long enough to develop it to learn it to learn it because he might not. Um, tonight’s games, Detroit at Atlanta, Cleveland, the Shador Sanders show at Carolina. That game is onet. I think he’s Well, he’s definitely playing, right? He is expected to start. Gabriel and Tiny Hands Picket are both injured, so you should see Shadore and uh Tyler Huntley, who got signed because of those injuries, right? Uh, and then Washington at New England tonight. So, three games and then a whole slate of games on Saturday and then two more games coming up on Sunday. So, football is on. It is. You can watch it. Preseason is so hard to watch. Yeah, it’s not. It’s It obviously it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean anything, but you don’t even know who the players are. But you know what? I just like the sound. I like the audio. I like this visual of it. I had it on last night while I was doing everything else in my night and I was loving it. It’s just like nice to have something on TV. And maybe that’s just as stupid as I am. It’s just like it’s just nice to have something else on TV. Love Island ended three weeks ago. Now I’ve had nothing to watch consistently. So now it just football’s on all the time. Are you trailer guy? Like if there’s a movie that you’re really anticipating, you know when the trailer comes out and you can’t wait to watch it. No, as I’m a movie guy, you know that, but I I don’t like know when the trailers are coming out cuz I never I don’t like trailers cuz I don’t want to see it. I’ll see the movie. I don’t need to see I admire that. I do consume too many trailers. Yeah. I don’t I don’t really watch trailers. Like uh it’s it’s our conversation about college football camp. We’re just so excited about the movie coming out. We can’t get enough of the trailer. Like, I can’t imagine paying money to go see a 23-23 tie in an NFL preseason game. And you know what? I I would have burned that stadium to the ground. I did feel good about that because if you watch the game late and maybe it was even the uh the Ravens game last night, there were clips in the fourth quarter where they were like at the field level and like showing the quarterback looking over the line and like in the background you could tell half the crowd had left and I was like good for those people. You got home like yeah go home. You you don’t need to stay for a three-hour preseason game. I was glad even they got sick of it. I had that same feeling. Uh all right, what’s next? Here’s Utah wide receiver Tobias Merryweather. We’ve heard his name a lot in recent weeks. This uh these are his thoughts on learning Jason Beck’s offense. Yeah, he runs a I would say weird setup offense. The way they just do stuff is just not what’s the normal offense for especially in college. But I think it works great especially for new guys and we’re able to just come in quick get down and run it. Um new Art Monk has dropped. That’s going to be the next great receiver at Utah, Tobias Merryweather. You know what’s funny is following and correct me if I’m wrong because I was following this uh from afar and in between dodging threats and uh insults from Texas Tech fans. I saw some of Bartle’s reporting for example and some other things coming out of camp and it seems like they’re really tempering the receiver thing for once. I’ve heard like things like great strides and so maybe I’m just viewing it from a different angle. You have the clip of Wit talking about receivers and very quickly pivoting to the tight end position. And to your point, yes. Now, Whit has even said like we’ll feel better after Saturday, he did say like they feel a lot better about the receivers today or right now versus where they were even a week or two ago. But that’s not Speaking of Tyler Huntley, I there’s a clip that Hance played over and over again where he uh he goes through all these receivers and he’s like, “I’ve got this guy and this guy and this guy and it’s like I’ve got guys and it’s like you just listed a bunch of guys that I don’t I don’t think so.” Anyway, I’ve been getting a different vibe on the receiver thing. I I’m uh and again, correct me if I’m wrong. Are they hanging uh Merryweather as the next Art Monk? No, I think he is the name that has emerged. Okay. But no, I don’t think there is this thought of I don’t think we’re going to get the think piece of like is this the next thousand yard pass? You know what they were saying about like Rayon Singleton? Yeah, of course. You know, all all that stuff and and no offense to Rayon, he’s just the first name that jumps into my mind, but he turned up. He was okay. No, I mean the how many times have we seen it’s at least two where it’s been like midway through camp where exactly at this point and you’re just like trying to see if this one transfer is going to become eligible and he was good at his last stop kind of where he played five games and was kicked off the team and you’re just like waiting for him to break through. It’s like because it’s been pretty desperate. It’s been pretty uh desolate for a while and we will see if if there’s I’m just curious what type of production there will be. I’m not expecting big production. I’m just honestly curious how they’re going to be used for once. It just feels like they’re underelling it. Just probably not a bad thing. Well, yeah, especially when you don’t have the next art monk. Yeah, which they have never had. Or a Mark Ripen that can throw him the ball. Yeah, I’d say they’ve made big strides. Uh Tobias Merryweather is really doing some good things. Uh Tan Lines is or not Tan Lines, but Zipper Zip is doing some good things. I do like hearing Whit snap. He’s trying to remember Zipper’s name and he snaps a couple of times like what? Yeah, he hasn’t touched the ball all camp. What is his name? Honestly, I don’t I don’t blame especially football coaches if they need a second to have a name. They have any names. There are so many names that they have to keep like it’s incredible. So anyway, I’m giving way to pass on that one. But it does see even that clip like it felt like kind of underelling it a little bit. I’m with you. Which is fine. We’re totally fine. Totally fine. The offense is not designed to have 900y receivers. And you heard Merryweather say that. It might be designed to have nine 100yard receivers, but not one 900y receiver. You’re not going to see that. Nope. All right, stay tuned. We’ll have more coming up next. It is the Jake and Ben show. 975 KSL Sports Zone. Who’s got it better than us? Your home for the best sports coverage in Utah. You’re listening to Jake Scott and Ben Anderson on 975D KSL Sports Zone. Ben, it’s a free ticket Friday. I love it that we’re doubling up on the tickets these days. Awesome. Uh, caller 12 right now, 801575 zone. You’re going to win two lawn tickets to go see Panta, the heaviest tour of the summer with Aean Amarth. Did I say that right, Ben? Yeah. Utah First Credit Union Amphitheater. August uh 20th. So, caller number 12 right now, 801575 zone. I have a feeling the amphitheater is going to be loud on August 20th. Yeah. Very like you can’t have a tour called the heaviest tour of the summer and have it like a James Taylor concert. You know what I mean? It’s not really his thing. That’s not it. Uh 801 575 zone. Caller number 12 right now. Also, you can nominate the youth sports volunteer you know for the Hercules hero of the week. Submit your nomination at kslports.com/contest and listen every Thursday. The JJ and Alex for the winner. Help us celebrate the efforts of those volunteers making an impact with the Hercules Hero of the Week sponsored by Hercules First Federal Credit Union and Beehive Meals. Uh Christian told me you got uh steamrolled by Scotty and uh what you got Wednesday? I did. We did Best Scots, which I just did horrible. I ended up with like three comic book characters in a row at the And I can’t remember what I hor I did an awful job. And it was one of those ones that all day I went home and I was like, “Ah, that’s Scott. Oh, that’s Scott.” Yeah. I just did a really bad job. And then what was our other best Aggies? Best Aggies. Scott’s Scotty G. That is uh smoked you. He did. He just killed me in both. I had a bad You know what? And I I have to give you some more respect. It’s a little harder to host the show and do the draft. All I have to do is sit back and wait, right? I can prepare for it. You’re executing a clock and making sure we get in and out of the segment and setting up the draft, etc., etc. There’s a little more to it. So, you have to deal with one other thing. I’m still surprised that Scotty G picked Ridley Scott of all people. Number one. Number one. I feel like he could have saved that a little bit. Probably. Yeah. But I mean, Scotty Pip in it, too. There’s a lot of value there. That was a good pick. Then how’d he snake F Scott Fitzgerald from you? I know. I did. That’s your wheelhouse. I also gave him the number one pick in both he got in the third round. So yeah, I don’t even know who like three out of your five Scots are. Exactly. Right. Who’s Scott Pilgrim? He’s a he’s a comic book character they made a movie about like the aunt or something. No, he uh he’s Scott Pilgrim has to fight off his this girl he likes ex-boyfriends. It’s actually really funny. It’s a very fun concept. had Michael Sarah. The movie is really good actually. It’s quite what’s it called? Scott Pilgrim versus the world. But yeah, if you haven’t seen it, it doesn’t matter. And it’s not one of the great Scots of all time. It’s why I got it fifth and it was a bad pick. Then you should have picked Scott Gerard. That would have been better than that. I could have taken Jake Scott, my co-host. Yes, you could have. Yeah. Thanks, Ben. I know. I blew it. I I had a truly terrible draft. I It was one of those drafts where my second pick in I could feel it getting away from me and I couldn’t ever get it back. I couldn’t ever quite slow it down, calm my nerves, and get the next pick, right? I just it it got worse and worse and worse. And you see how, you know, people make bad decisions and they start stacking them because they panic. It’s exactly what happened. I panicked and it just got worse. Scotty G is good at that kind of thing, too. And I would hope that if it’s been your name your whole life, you have some insight on who the famous Scots are in your life, right? You you have noted accidentally the famous Benz. There’s only one. And it’s Ben Franklin. But yeah, you just kind of notice a little bit here and there like, “Oh, that’s that’s my name.” King Benjamin. I don’t know. Maybe. Isn’t that where the name is uh basically from? Benji the car, right? What about the dog? Benji the dog. Oh, it’s Herby the Love Bug, not Benji. Yeah. What are you talking about? There’s only one famous Ben. Ben Affleck. Okay. Ben Affleck. It’s a good one. Benjamin Button. Yeah. Ageless. Ageless. Exactly. Oh, all right. Well, anyway, I just noticed that you got whooped up on a little bit. I did. I got absolutely smoked. Shout out to Scotty G. Uh, all right. Stay tuned. We’ll have more coming up next. Jake and Ben show 975 DSL Sports Zone. What’s up? Whether it’s the Jazz, Utes, Cougars, or Aggies, these guys have got you covered, fellas. You’re locked on to Jake Scott and Ben Anderson on 975 KSL Sports Zone. Jacob Ben 975 the KSL Sports Zone. Jake Scott Ben Anderson. Uh, your favorite player is coming back to the Jazz. George. Gorgeous George. I never liked the minivan. That was never my thing. Can you explain? I don’t know where the minivan came from. It’s kind of an insult to him. Like if Donovan Mitchell were a sports car, George Niang must be a minivan. Yeah. If somebody else was a Ferrari, George was a a minivan. Yeah, that’s messed up. Cuz he’s just kind of big and slow, right? And he leaned into it, which good for him. Yeah, he did. Uh you know, whatever you got to do. The Jazz are bringing him back. Obviously, um the fans liked him when he was here. He played his way onto a roster here. And I You’re going to have to help me though understand the point of bringing him back. And I realize what it’s two second round picks. I think that’s really the biggest point is what the two second round picks. They just recouped some of those picks that they had given up in Colin Ston and they gave up three to move up to get Walt Clayton. I just think it’s Yeah, it’s just asset management. You’re okay paying $8 million. It’s a fan favorite. So there’s no real basketball point to it. I don’t think so. And you can trade him again at the deadline. I think at $8 million, you know, in all honesty, like what he does is more valuable than KJ Martin. Sure. Conceptually, KJ Martin could be a better player, much better athlete, might have some defensive chops if he could ever learn to shoot. You think that’s a really good player? He’s never learned to shoot. And I don’t know if KJ Martin’s going to be on the roster. George Niang just like is fine. You put him on the roster, he doesn’t need to develop. There’s no growth left in George’s game really. You know, he is who he is. He’s pretty safe bet. The funny thing is he doesn’t know anybody here other than Justin Xanic. It’s not like he’s coming back to, you know, reunite with Joe Engles or something. He’s never played with any of these guys. Never played with Walker. Walker’s longest tenure player on the team now. Doesn’t know Lowry. Um, could it be a little goodwill with the fans? Do you think it has anything to do with it? It’s certainly not a negative in that regard. You know, if you were to take on a bad contract of somebody people hate, Miles Bridges or something like that, you know, a quote unquote bad guy in the NBA that is just going to anger the fans that he’s in Utah, George isn’t that at all. People like George, right? I don’t know how many tickets he sells, but Zero, but people like to root for him and they he was popular when he was here considering his role. And you know what? He is a good locker room guy and he’s a good media guy. He is willing to talk. He’s funny. He will step up there and you know be a voice for the team through good and bad. Though he’s not been on a lot of bad teams in his career. He’s generally been on pretty good teams minus he’s got like the highest winning percentage in the league or something like that in the west five years or whatever. Jazz on the best record to the 76ers who I think had their good couple of years and then went to Cleveland that was very good before you know Atlanta and Boston though he never played but yeah he’s he’s been on winning teams. Are you going to grill him about his weight? The first thing first thing to cut him down to size. First question, no pun intended, from uh Ben Anderson. George, is a log jam. You gonna How you gonna squeeze in there? That would be funny if you worded it exactly the same. Exactly the same. Go back and find the question. Is he going to come in and help Cody put on weight? That would be great. Um I honestly he might, you know, who he could mentor the best truthfully is Bryce because those two guys are probably pretty similar. Okay. When George isn’t playing defense, Bryce is a little more athletic, don’t you think? Yeah, he is. But is he athletic to the point that it makes a difference? You can play him at different positions. George’s problem is you can’t play him for long stretches because he doesn’t really have a defensive position. Never has. I I don’t think if Bryce could learn to play defense, he will be certainly a better player than than George. Well, I just think his his body type is more useful than George’s. He’s more of a true back if we want to tiptoe around it. George is a front court player. You can hide Bryce Sensiba somewhere. You know what I mean? On positions one through four, you can hide him somewhere. I don’t think you can get away. That was always the problem with George. You couldn’t get away from That’s why he was not very useful in the playoffs, right? Is because you couldn’t hide him anywhere, right? He would get exposed wherever it was. and he’d hit a timely three and do some nice things that help keep him on the floor, but it’s the reason he was never going to be a 25 minute a night guy. Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. I think Sensah can be a 25 minute a night guy. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, he can. Absolutely. He can if he does some of these things better like plays a little bit more defense or develops his game a little bit as a backcourt player. And if he doesn’t, he’s George Yang. But you know what? George has had a great career and that’s still valuable and that shows the value of having a shooter on the floor. great career cons going I think he may have been a second round draft pick I can’t remember now but considering what he was yeah I mean if you were to go back to well the Jazz signed him off the couch right they did he was w he was waved by the Pacers or let go here I’ll look at the if you want to look at somebody who was signed off the couch and played their way onto a roster and has stayed in the league for a long time absolutely great career but I don’t know if he’s ever been a real great player has he been really impact actful. No, he’s a role player, but he has played the second most games of any second round pick from his draft. Uh, Visa Zubots has obviously played the most. He was the number 32 overall pick, though. And George Nyang was number 50. And in fact, yeah, but Zubots is a way better player than Yeah, Zubots is a legitimately really good player. George Niang. Yeah, but Zubots was never cut. But like Malcolm Brogden was the second player in that draft or the the other good second round pick in that draft. one rookie of the year, right? Yep. And he’s only played 463 games. That’s a hundred fewer than George has. He’s made a lot more money, but George is No, it’s made real life for himself. Yeah. It’s a He’s a success story for sure. So, you’re you’re guessing probably on the team until the trade deadline. Yeah. And a guy who will get moved to a contender who needs shooting at $8 million a year. It makes It would be stupid to let him stick around unless you really are just valuing salary cap space. But you didn’t have to take him. If you’d wanted the salary cap space, just don’t take him. you’re at the salary floor. You don’t have to add money to your team. You could have maintained more flexibility. Basically, all you did is just add a couple of second round picks. And if you ask what the value is of second round picks, well, get George Yang for him or or you can get off of George Yang for him or you can move up a couple of spots in the in the first round. What was the reaction in the Jazzosphere? As you could tell, indifferent. Indifferent. From what I saw, the biggest worry was taking away minutes from the young players because there are so many around that same position. Okay. All right. I I think we can stop having the take minutes discussion. I think we can put that on hold for a while. I’m totally with you. It’s not like you’re trying to develop one or two guys. There’s 10 guys that are going to be out there on the floor. You shouldn’t be playing all of them every night. You shouldn’t be playing them 30 minutes every night. Cody played too many minutes last year. He just played way too many minutes. He played too many minutes last year. He didn’t do it that all those minutes didn’t do him any favors. and removing competition from the roster. Any coach will tell you that doesn’t do development any favors either. So, if you can get George Salty Vet to come in and look down on these guys and say, “You got to beat George out,” then there’s some value there. That was the whole issue with handing over the players to the young guys last year is you create entitlement and all these things that don’t necessarily create healthy habits uh to really productive basketball players. And you know what, George is a guy who has had to work to get everything he has. He’s had to overcome things, usually physically, but you know, he’s had to work to get every single thing he’s ever gotten. Just giving Keonte George the job didn’t work. Correct. The best thing that happened to Kee George was Isaiah Collier beating him out for the starting spot because now you send him into the off seasonason hopefully with a little little juice to go do what it takes to take that back. And that’s what the entire season should be next year. The entire season should be right. Are you going to beat out the other young guy at your identical position? Cody, can you beat out Ace? Keonte, can you beat out Isaiah? Or Walt, can you beat out Kee? Or who’s gonna beat out Bryce? Yeah. Flip and Taylor Hendris. You guys are fighting for money. See who’s going to win it. Yeah, right. That’s what the season should be about in my opinion. Not about gifting minutes or just giving minutes to the young guy. That’s all I’m saying. Can we put that argument to bed? George Niang or not George Niang? Yeah, George is just a Yeah, you know, Kyle Anderson’s the same thing. Yeah, if you can trade him, trade him. Oh, slow-mo. Yeah, almost forgot about him. Yeah. So, there’s three veterans. I think they’ll buy out. Kevin Love. It seems like it’s progressing in that direction, but you know, Ysef Nerkage, Kyle Anderson, George Nang, obviously Lowry. Lowry is a different conversation, but you know, those are kind of the three second unit, third unit bench guys that uh Why have they not bought out Kevin Love yet? I think it depends on another team actually wanting him because, you know, you can go to the other you you I’m sure they’ve told Kevin Love, “Yeah, man. Go find it. You find a team that wants to sign you. You’re going to sign the $3.6 million and then we’ll just chop that off of what we owe you in the buy. We owe you $5 million in salary this year. We don’t want you to lose money. We’re not asking you to take a a discount.” And he says, “Well, I’m not going to give away money. It’s last year of my career. Second to last year of my career. Why would I just give away money to leave and maybe it don’t get signed? So, it’s better to have a contract and not play. Yeah, but I would buy into that more if he were making $50 million. But he could still lose money. He could still stand to lose money. There’s no re there’s no reason right now for him to lose money. Well, I’m just saying just buy him out whole for the whole price. Just for the whole Yeah. Why are you Because the Jazz can save money. Why Why not save 3.6 million if you could, you know, just to move I mean it I guess that’s what I’m getting at. Why not spend the extra 50 cents and move off him now? Because you just don’t have to. Now, that’s the thing. It’s just like it’s not hurting you now. You’re not paying him money right now. So, you’re pulling a Gloria Navarez. You’re saying I don’t I don’t have to give you anything. I don’t have to pay you out anything. Right. When I have to pay you, I’ll pay you. And until then, I’m not going to. That’s why I don’t pay my mortgage until it’s three weeks overdue. You know, I don’t owe you the money. You got to have somebody show up at my house. Yeah. Right. Send me a letter. Have it come in one of those weird colored envelopes when they want me to know that something’s wrong. You sent me a white envelope. It’s not getting opened. No, that’s going right through the garbage. I’m firing that thing open. It’s getting open. So, we have not reached pink envelope territory yet with Kevin Love. Okay. So, I’m just wondering. No, like it’s and look, if I’m the Lakers or the Clippers or all these other teams that should be considering signing Kevin Love, and I’m talking about just like I have a 15th roster spot open. The Knicks, I think, have to I don’t think the Knicks even have enough players on the roster to open the season. If I’m the Knicks, I’m looking at like everywhere in the landscape. Who’s going to randomly get bought out? What happens? Maybe somebody good actually becomes available that we might be able to use, somebody we like more than Kevin Love. With all due respect to Kevin Love, he’s just he doesn’t play anymore. He’s not really that guy. And if on October 1st or 2nd, whenever one camp opens, if that guy has never been made available, you say, “All right, Kevin, we’ve got 3.6 million for you. Got to fill out the roster. You’re as good as anybody that’s available.” and the Jazz say great. Okay. All right. That that’s just what I imagine. That’s the that’s the theory. Okay. So, and it could happen sooner as teams just get a little, you know, an Will he have to show up to camp? Yeah. If he’s still on the Jazz roster. I would love to meet Kevin Love. My first my first NBA interview was actually Kevin Love. So, was it really? Uhuh. It was an intern for lock and he said was somebody wasn’t there. He or Kevin had had a big game. He said, “Go stick a microphone in front of Kevin Love’s face.” He said, “Don’t say anything.” And I didn’t. I should have. I uh I don’t following the rules too well. I don’t remember mine. But uh yeah, cuz I remember getting hired by lock and getting the schedule when I was working and I was very excited because it was the Timberwolves and I was like, “This is funny.” I was like, “Their head coach is Kevin McCale. He’s a Hall of Famer.” Oh boy. and not realizing like amongst Texas Tech bozos. I know he has no ties to Texas Tech. He’s maybe the biggest bozo in sports of the last 25 years. Oh, I don’t think so. He’s up there. I mean, yeah. Truly incompetent. Like a a a truly incompetent Yeah. front office person and coach and color analyst and teammate by all reports. I know. But that biggest bozo the last 25 years. We’re we’re talking a lot of bozos. There are he would be in the conversation. Yeah. He’s like in the Joe Dumar’s and didn’t even like win a title. Joe Dumar’s at least put a Pistons team together to win a title, but can’t, you know, put one foot in front of the other. And I don’t I don’t know if male can either. Remember when uh the Rockets thought he could coach Dwight Howard and James Harden? That lasted for about 10 minutes. ruined the I mean he just carried the torch of the terrible Timberwolves for a long time. Well, because he broke the rules to sign Joe Smith if you were Joe Smith under the table. Yeah. And like Joe Smith was fine but yeah, not that great. You break the rules for Joe Smith. He was the number one pick. He had been not that year. No, didn’t pay him going into the lockout because paying Anthony Bennett under the table. He was the number one pick. It’s like what? I don’t think that was Kevin. No, it wasn’t. But yeah, that’s the point. Like the reason Joe Smith was on a different team, right? Because he wasn’t the number one pick by the Timberwolves. He’s the number one pick by Milwaukee. I can’t remember where Joe Smith was the number one overall pick. I’m going to look that up now. You keep going. But yeah, they were paying a guy that they didn’t need to pay that way. I don’t think I think it was the number one pick by Minnesota. Golden State. Golden State. That’s right. So yeah, your second stop fallen angel paying a guy under the table because you’re an idiot. Good call. So, let’s see what his most productive year in Minnesota was. 13.7 points per game his first year there. It’s not great. Eight boards, pay him under the table. His second year in Golden State, he averaged 18 points and eight and a half rebounds. I think he ended up with injuries and then derailed his career or whatever it was. But yeah, again, don’t pay that guy. He’s a a turpin. Yeah. But I was excited to talk to Kevin McCale. And a I never talked to Kevin McCale. I only put a microphone in front of the face of Kevin Love. And did you ask him why he was fat? I didn’t. No, I should have said there’s a log jam. It was specifically the word log jam that I think George Nang got caught up on. He did not like that term. Okay. But I don’t know, Ben. Well, Kevin, I guess I just got to make every shot and play perfect defense. Kevin was pretty heavy at that point. It wouldn’t surprise me if that were Yeah, very your line of questioning. Last I saw George, he was he looked like early Kevin. Early career Kevin Love. Oh, not so spelt. When was the last time you saw him? Last time he was here, I was at the game with Cleveland and I think he’s kind of joking about he’s like, “Yeah, I’m just only playing 12 minutes a game. It’s fine. They don’t need me to be in super shape.” You know what to disagree with you. Uh previous point you made, I don’t think you want that guy anywhere near uh uh Bryce Sensiba. Okay. Because you think he’s gonna I think Bryce needs to stay in shape. Stop by Banberry Donuts. Like any NBA player, I think he needs to stay in Sprinkle in tip-top shape. Yeah. No, I don’t want him stopping at the donut store. Who was it that notoriously loved fast food and still could Oh, it was AK. Yeah. Couldn’t put on weight at all. Couldn’t put on weight at all and would just inhale fast food and it didn’t work for him. I was in Park City randomly. Um, I don’t know if it was Sundance or what I was up there for. And I was just off Main Street by the the bus depot, you know, where the Uhhuh. And I don’t know why AK was there. He was in he used to drive this very recognizable black Cadillac when Cadillac kind of had redesigned all their cars. And he had this kind of looked like the Batmobile and he had his window down, but it was AK. And he drove right in front of us as we were like stopped. It was so it was very and I think he actually had a vanity plate that said AK-47, which is probably how I recognized him. and his window was down. He’s just like cruising in Park City and we were right next to his car and it was like, “AK, that’s awesome.” Uh, and he had McDonald’s rappers all over the floor of his car. Notorious. The entire car was filled with Yeah. Big Macs or fish. Michael Scott. Yeah, exactly. No. Anyone who saw him pull into the building, which I did know numerous times. This dude cannot put on a pound. Nope. Yeah. I wonder if he’s still thin. Yeah, we saw him. He came for the 50th anniversary. He looked great. You know, he he might have been a low-key smoker. Oh, well, Eastern, you know, Russian Eastern son. Yeah, his son. Like I I was stalking him when he was back in town and uh pictured with his his son Fedor. Fedor Kolinko. I thought was a great name. Feed D O R. And his son is just like, “Yeah, European book in one hand, cigarette in the other, John Lennon glasses.” I’m I’m surprised AK wasn’t uh jamming Euro trans music. Shout out AK. I know you weren’t an AK guy, but fond memory of seeing the McDonald’s. You know, the funny thing, my interactions with AK were all really good. Everyone liked absolutely everyone liked him. All really good. And he was a fan favorite. My entire point is the fan favorite part has clouded people’s memory on just how good he was. Yeah. And the the contract didn’t help. He was fine, but he was also like kind of the flaw of that team. The fact that he couldn’t live up to that contract was the reason that team couldn’t get over the hump, right? He did win them a playoff series against the Rockets, though, with a prayer of a three falling out of bounds. He did, which is funny because that’s not what he was known for. No, he was three point or he was he was defense guy and he was not winning playoff series because of his defense. So, no, I’m not I’m not an AK hater. I just have to point out that he wasn’t. You just try to keep everyone on track. Try and set the record straight on AK. Wasn’t awesome. He was fine. Yeah. Uh all right. Stay tuned. We’ll have more coming up next. We can talk some uh BYU quarterback race as that continues to be a story. Yep. Uh it’s the Jacob Ben Show 975, the KSL Sports Zone. The sports you love, the teams you can’t live without. You have sense of urgency. This is Jake Scott and Ben Anderson on 975 the KSL Sports Zone. Jake and Ben 975 the KSL Sports Zone. It is a free ticket Friday. Let’s give away some more tickets. Ben, caller number 12 right now. 801575 zone. We’re hooking you up pair of tickets to go see Pantara, the heaviest tour of the summer with Aean Amrath. Amarth Marth uh at Utah First Credit Union AM Theater on August 20th 801575 zone caller number 12. Also want to remind you about win ticket Wednesday. Your chance to win big every week on the KSL Sports Zone coming up next week. Win tickets to go see Chris Stapleton August 15th and 16th at the Utah First Credit Union Amphitheater. Don’t miss Chris Stapleton’s All-American Road Show coming to Utah for two very special nights. Get tickets now. livenation.com or listen to the KSL Sports Zone all day on Wednesday for your chance to win. Aan Amarth, the band per Wikipedia takes its name from the Cinderin name of Mount Doom, a volcano in JRR Tolken’s Middle Earth. This is right up your alley. That is right up my alley. So, yeah. All right. Well, that’s cool. Swedish. I like them better now. Swedish death metal. It’s going to be loud. Opening. Are you going for Panta? I bet Panta absolutely rules to see live. Oh, I’m sure there’s a lot of energy. Yeah. Uh on the stable thing, I like it when these big uh acts play a couple of nights for sure. You know, if there’s ticket demand or whatever, give access. Why not? Wasn’t it Gar Brooks who played like five shows in two nights or something like that because ticket sales were the demand was so high? I went and saw Hoser last weekend while you were gone at the amphitheater and it was his second night. And you know, it was great his second night. There’s something about like I’ve been here for a day. I did this last night. I’m gonna be a little more relaxed, a little more comfortable at open up and I thought it was terrific. So, there’s going to be a decent vibe. Yeah, I’m with you. I wonder how uh how much the vibe changes from town to town. Honestly, I’m sure a lot if you’re willing to let it happen. If you just want to go in and do a show and say, “This is just the paycheck tonight. I’m just I’m not going to talk to the audience. I’m going to say hey, thanks for having us. That’s it. I’m just going to do our set and get off the get off the stage.” probably doesn’t have to be a whole lot different, but I’m sure if you want to nurture it, you could get a different feeling almost every night. I bet it depends on the type of music because I bet you a uh a fist show has the same vibe no matter where you are. But like a metal band, I would buy that that is more there are more people into that in certain parts of the country than others. Yeah. And so the vibe would be different. I um I saw what Michael Fronty on the Outer Banks last year and then my buddy saw him in Deer Valley later on that summer. He said the Outer Banks vibe was way better. Okay. Anyway, anywh who. Yeah. Uh Ben, there’s a quarterback race. Seems like uh it continued to be a big deal even though we have learned very little about it down at BYU. It seems like and and tell me if I’m wrong as I uh digest this that Hillstead is getting labeled as more capable playmaker at the moment and the bear the vibe around him has been how complex the BYU offense is and how the learning curve is so steep. Am I reading that about right following it from afar this week? I think you’re right. And I was listening to Hans and Scotty yesterday and I thought Hans just gave a good breakdown of just like if if you had to stop today, he thought Hillstead would be number one and he thought Barrett would be number two and that’s kind of where it would be. And I think it has to do with yeah prior experience, you know, understanding of the offense, how long you’ve been there. I think that certainly is helpful. But yes, I think you’re right. I think that’s probably about the read we’re getting. I mean, even hearing Robbie Bosow on with DJ and PK this morning, who’s uh admittedly he said he’s watched practice. He’s not necessarily with him every day, but he he mentioned moving the chains like 10 times in the interview, and I get that that is going to win the day, I would think, at least at the beginning of the year. I don’t know if that’s the right decision. Again, I I want my quarterback to sling it, but when you’re faced with a decision where you’re picking really among three uh quarterbacks and you don’t know what you’re going to get, I would bet they go with the guy who moves the chains. Yeah. I mean, which is the job in general, but kind of. I don’t know if BYU should be looking for Yeah. a specific skill set, you know, one guy like the guy who has the biggest arm specifically. Yeah. You need somebody who’s going to keep drives alive to allow your defense to shine. And it it it honestly gets back to the the Heaps v. Riley Nelson discussion all those years ago. I mean, it’s it’s the same type thing. And now Heaps didn’t turn out to be an all-American quarterback by any means, but Riley Nelson moved the chains. Yeah. It wasn’t pretty, but he came in and those ch he moved the chains and they won more. Jay Heaps turned the ball over and yeah, had way more potential throwing the ball, but it came with some big-time mistakes and lack of productivity as well. And eventually in that season, Riley Nelson won the day because he moved the chains and didn’t turn the ball over. So, I would guess that’s where they go in the in this uncertain world. Again, I don’t know if it’s the right decision and how quickly they’d move off it, but coming out of camp where you don’t really know anything else, you’re going to go with the safe pick. The hard part is, we’ve talked about this a little bit, is that, you know, you’re going to play two guys against Portland State at least, if not all three. You would think, you know, McKay’s going to start, probably plays the entire first half, rightfully so, and then the second half should be the backup, which I would think at this point is probably going to be bare. What if they bump and skid? Like, if they’re bad in the first half, what if they bump and skid? Uh we’ve seen BYU and Utah do that against um opening opponents that are what is it FCS? I mean was it even Cam Rising last year who two years ago didn’t look great against Weaver State or was three years ago and they ended up winning the Pack 12. But yeah, you we have seen that. You’re right. We have seen that where especially the offense comes out um and struggles. Well, regardless, you’re not going to lose to Portland State even if the offense No, and that’s not what I’m suggesting. Oh, no. I’m just I’m I’m going in telling A-Rod if I’m Colani, it doesn’t matter. Bear gets the entire first half or excuse me, uh uh McKay Hilstead gets the entire first half because yeah, he’s going to have some nerves. His first time really running the show. We got to figure it out. We got to let him work through some of those issues early on and this is the time to do it because, you know, you could actually lose a game to Stanford in the second week of the season if the offense is awful. You know, you could certainly lose to East Carolina if the uh if the offense is awful. So, he’s got to get a full half and then we want Bayer to have a full half, too. And you might still not have your, you know, internally your real decision made until after that game. Yeah. I mean, then you’re getting into divide the team territory, which again, going back to the Riley Nelson Jay Keeps era was was actually an issue. And not I mean, I don’t mean to get way out in front of everything, but it’s why these decisions and how you make them are so critical. And honestly, last year when they did pick Retszoff and they announced it a week early, I thought that that was a pretty good decision. Let everybody fall in line behind him and we saw what happened last year. Now, that’s not always possible, right? You know, and maybe this is the case where it’s not possible. You’d seen Rhett play a few games, but going back to that, you remember the uncertainty of who was going to play. We were in the territory of, well, they’ve got to play whoever’s going to help the run game, which was a crazy place to be. You know what? That might actually be the answer this year, right? Who’s going to set up LJ Martin? And the unsung hero in all of this. And by the way, I just I do think Jake Rzoff was really good last year. I I know with everything that’s happened this summer and you can kind of look back at his stats and pick him apart and the interceptions were high and there he was not a perfect quarterback. No, whatever. He won games. He was a really good quarterback. He, you know, he did move the chains, but also he had some huge clutch performances and made some big throws when he needed to and made the right decision way more often than not. So, I I don’t want to underell that, but the unsung hero of last year’s team, I think, for BYU was still how good the offensive line was, especially how bad it was two years ago when Katon Slovis couldn’t stay upright. And a lot of that’s changing this year. And even though they’ve named their tackles and feel like they’re figuring out what the interior offensive line’s going to look like, I don’t think it’s as settled. I don’t know if it’s going to be as good as it was last year. And that’s going to make everybody’s job harder. So, it’s it’s not just Hillstead or Bachmire. I think there’s more to that. What about the complex offense take? Because uh I saw people making this argument. I can’t remember who or I’d give credit, but um it took Katon Slovis never learned A-Rod’s offense like that. That never sunk in. It took Rhettzoff two years. Um, you know, you go back to kind of it took Zach Wilson a couple of years, you know, and maybe it takes some time just to understand what the coach is asking and how they do things at BYU, which certainly would lead you to think that Hillstead has the advantage. But if it’s that complex and the f if the freshman’s that good, don’t you have to kind of ditch what you’re doing to have the better player? Does that make any sense? Dumb down your offense to play the better player. Yeah. Change change what you’re doing as a coach if the other player is the better player. Can’t figure it out because it’s just too much to put on his shoulders, but he’s better. Yes. This is what I’m getting at. Yeah. Design your redesign your offense to fit him. It shouldn’t, you know, the offense is too complex for this player. Shouldn’t really come into argument in my opinion. I think that’s fair. Who’s who’s better? And you’ve got to figure out what’s going to do. what’s gonna fit to make that player succeed as opposed to that player adapting to you. And I’m way oversimplifying this and I apologize for doing it. I’m sure some coach somewhere is yelling at the at the the radio, but I I think it depends on what’s your goal this year. I’ve just seen that I’ve seen that narrative a bunch now that the offense is so complex and that it’s impossible for a guy who showed up two weeks ago to be able to process this enough to be the starter. I think that depends on what your goal is with this year. If your goal is to get Bear acclimated and just say, “Yeah, you got to learn the entire offense.” And by the way, he could do that as a backup. He doesn’t necessarily have to do it on the field, though being on the field is better than being off the field. If the entire goal is to set him up to have success where you’re competing for a title next year, then just play him and don’t dumb down the offense. If your goal this year is to say, “Hey, we got to get as much offense as we can.” So, we’re going to cater it to fit his skill set, even if it lowers the overall ceiling next year because he’s not learning all the complexities of it, but it allows you to, you know, bolster your defense and special teams, etc., but he’s going to be able to move the the chain still, then dumb it down and compete for a title this year. Well, I think they’ve they they’re going to try and win this year. I think that’s the goal. I don’t think this is a development year in any way, shape, or form. Yeah. That’s the unfortunate part about it is you’ve got a quarterback, no matter my offense. I wouldn’t dumb down my Well, let’s play A-Rod’s thoughts on uh on the freshman. But I would play McKay Hilstead. It wasn’t really about summer. It’s just what he was in high school and just how quickly he’s been able to learn. He’s very smart and very, very smart. He’s up to speed. He needs reps as far as like chemistry with his teammates, but in terms of knowing what to do, he’s been dialed every play. All right. If that’s true, then that’s probably a good sign. He’s I mean you look the part he’s 6’2 235. I mean so I wonder I I wonder but the the Hillstead thing is the safe pick. And I would guess that’s the direction that at least the first half of the first game. Oh it’s going to be a story the whole year like we talked about before. I mean you can say oh we put this to bed after game number one. It’s not going to bed ever because if Bach Meyer ends up getting the job, anytime he struggles, it’s going to be easy to say, “Oo, short leash. McKay Hilstead’s a safe bet back there.” Cuz I expect May Hillstead to look fine the first game. Oh, I I don’t know. He has what, nine games at Utah State is something. But they’re playing Portland State. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like I know. But see, that chemistry thing is true. And that does apply to Hillstead as well. less so because he’s been there longer obviously, but your first game, the first half against Portland State, turn turn around, give the ball to LJ Martin or throw it to Chase Roberts and you should look okay. Not to oversimplify it, but Portland State is not a it’s not a competitive game of any sort. The offensive line should maul those guys. You should have 10 minutes in the pocket if you want to. All right, I know you guys have been short on nominees this week, but do we do we have Bozo? Do we We’ve got a couple of options for Bozo the week. We have to decide next if we want to uh Yeah. give the award this week. Yeah. And we should. All right. Stay tuned. Jake and Ben 975 the KSL Sports Zone. [Music] Don’t be shy without [Music] Jacob 975. [Music] the KSL Sports Zone. Uh it’s Friday, so we’re doing Bozo of the week. Now, I don’t think you’ve really nominated anybody this week, right? But we do have a a couple of of candidates minus a couple of clowns at WNBA games, which I haven’t really wanted to delve into, but certainly are candidates, and they all are candidates. Um, a late addition last night was Malik Beasley who amid his gambling uh or apparent gambling on games issue uh has now been evicted from his high-rise apartment building in Detroit. This happened yesterday. Beasley’s landlord sued him twice this year uh for a total of $21,000. Again, we were talking about it’s crazy that Marke Morris didn’t have uh $250,000 to pay. Like the number or the amount of money that Malik Beasley is stiffing people on is shocking for a player who was in line to sign a threeyear $45 million extension or something like that this summer and uh and blew it because of the gambling investigation. Well, certainly sounds like a guy that might have a gambling problem. Yeah. I mean, you want an explanation of how he doesn’t have 21 grand to pay his rent. Well, that’s it. Yeah. He’s gambled all of his money away. Or he might be compromised to fix a game. Well, that’s how that happens. Yeah. You know, especially somebody who’s making millions of dollars as a salary. It’s one thing like the uh Arizona State scandal back in the what early 90s. Does that sound right? You’re talking about a guy the player that had nothing. Yeah. Zero, you know, was not making any money. So to put a little extra dough in his pocket, it wouldn’t be that out of or it would certainly be somewhat understandable of how that would happen. Well, Malik Beasley, what his uh I don’t know, probably lowest contract. I mean, he he’s making at least three to$4 million throughout his entire career, right? Yeah. I mean, how does that guy fall into the lull of fixing games? It’s because he has to have every penny. He’s in big to some, you know, and I hope that’s not the case, but this certainly would be evidence to that. He uh he got he did get a $650,000 loan from Hzan or Hazen Sports Management Group, which was his marketing agency that he has now paid back. He’s also been sued by a barber and a dentist. Yeah. And uh this is a company that provides bridge loans to professional athletes. Yeah. That’s behavior from somebody who’s chasing it. Yep. So Beasley was one was one uh uh candidate for Bozo of the week, a nominee. Now, do we want to uh nominate this guy? What’s his name? I got to go back and and look at it. What is uh Moy Jaguar? Moy Jaguar. Let’s see. Where did it go? As a representative for all of the Texas Tech fans coming after you guys. Yeah, the Texas Tech fans were grumpy specifically with me, but Ben got roped into it, too. Absolutely. As did uh as did Steve Bartle. But Moy Jaguire said uh sent this tweet to me one morning. Said, “Good morning, and a hearty f you to Ben and Jake.” So that I I feel like he woke up thinking about us. The first thing Papa said was like, “Ah, I’m going to be mad at these guys. Mad still still mad. still in my feelings about somebody calling Texas Tech administration bozos. It’s pretty bozo behavior. You have all night to sleep on it, get over it, and you wake up still grumpy, still mad. And then I do think we should nominate this guy. No, no, no. Well, we can nominate him, but I do think we should nominate this Kaden Lopez guy because I do think that there is a salvageable message here. Uh Kaden Lopez, 18, appeared in court yesterday. This is the kid who threw the adult novelty onto the threw a green adult novelty item onto the floor during a Phoenix Mercury game and hit uh didn’t even make it onto the floor, but hit Sophie Cunningham with it. Uh he’s uh he’s facing assault and disorderly conduct charges. Now, an alltime bad mug shot. The reason I say we should nominate this guy, and I know that the item he threw is what is grabbing headlines, but people throwing stuff on the courts and throwing stuff in general is complete bozo behavior. It’s the fan last year, Rice Eckles, who threw the water bottle that hit the BYU cheerleader coach. That’s right. I forgot about that. Yes. Horrible. Um, man, I know people who’ve gotten hit with pennies at uh at Jazz games. I remember the BYU fans when they started throwing things at the refs after a Gonzaga game. Why you can’t get a can of anything at any event ever. It’s got to be poured in a plastic cup because you can’t throw an empty plastic cup. Part of the reason Oh, well, I believe that like streakers or people that run onto the field should be severely beaten. I believe this guy should be making a made an example of too. Seriously, throwing stuff onto the field or the court, whatever. It’s dangerous. It is. It’s dangerous. I’m I’m glad he didn’t hurt anybody. And I’m not even joking about that. I’m not even joking. Yeah, I had forgotten all about that water bottle incident. That was terrible. Terrible. People who throw things down onto the field court, whatever. Absolutely should be booked on assault and disorderly conduct. I don’t care what this bozo threw. Kyle Philipowski la two years ago that got tripped by a Wake Forest fan when they stormed the crowd after beating Duke, right? Like it’s kind of a legit near injury and people said he flopped, but regardless like it could happen at some point. throwing a beer at Ron Artest like again there’s a line between the field of play and the fans and even though it’s an invisible line it’s a really important one. So, I don’t Yeah, I I know the headlines is the silliness of all of this and I don’t know what the the some crypto thing is taking credit for it or something stupid, but if they arrested this g this guy, I believe he did it and I believe he should be uh prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law cuz no, it shouldn’t be tolerated. Bad court appearance. Filthy gray hoodie, long hair over his face, real dirt bag. And as long as people aren’t yelling, you know, things we consider to be way over the line. I’m actually pretty tolerant with fans yelling at players because you’re not crossing that line. There’s still that separation between you’re in the audience and we’re in the game. But as soon as that line’s crossed, I I think tolerance should be zero. And again, look no further than the malice at the Palace. If Bo hadn’t have thrown the beer, would that have never happens? It never happens. It never happens. But that bozo throws a beer and now all of a sudden it’s on. So anybody throwing stuff, I don’t care what it is, you’re a candidate for the bozo of the week as far as I’m concerned. During the game, court documents say Lopez threw the item toward the seats in front of him, hitting a man and the man’s 9-year-old knife. Yeah. Video footage reportedly shows Lopez taking out the item from his sweater, throwing it before leaving the area. Court documents say witness saw what occurred, and tackled Lopez to the ground as police arrived. Yeah, that guy’s 18. He should have been beaten up. He should have a black eye in that photo. He’s so bloody in your mug shot. A Chappelle situation. Yeah, guy stormed the uh stage and all of his elbows were betting the wrong way when we saw him next. So, yeah, I don’t think that stuff should should be tolerated. That’s pure bozo behavior as far as I know. We can make him the bozo of the week. I think we should. Okay. So, Kaden Lopez, you are the bozo of the week and may you not go to sporting events anymore. And uh just to clarify, it’s the bang bang bang. Come on, man. And I’ve got it all on record. Astronomer, Marker Morris, Bozo of the week, and now Kaden Lopez. And now Kad. You stink, Kaden. You stink. We don’t like you. Literally, probably. Yeah, he looks like it. He does look like he may have an odor, but you know, I’m I’m saying his personality in general. His behavior stinks. I do not approve. All right. Uh, Ben, it was a fun week for me. I bet I You know, I don’t Everyone asked, “Why is Jake coming back on Friday? Just take the week off.” I don’t mind coming back for a Friday show. Uh, I don’t I’ve got it before. No, I’m here. Dip your toes and you’re ready for next week. Why not? I’m ready for Shidor’s debut tonight. I’m carving out time, kicking everyone out of the house and watching the whole game. Hans and Scotty G are coming up next. We’ll talk to you on Monday. Ben 975V KSL Sports Zone.

Jake & Ben Full Show from August 8, 2025

Hour 1

• Jake is back from San Diego. While he was gone, a group of Texas Tech fans had a problem with something Jake said about the program’s history. He answers back now. 

• Top 3 Stories of the Day: USU, Boise State & Colorado State are suing the Mountain West Conference. Also, recapping a wild first night of the NFL preseason & Utah Wide Reciever Tobias Merriweather talked about Jason Beck’s offense. 

Hour 2

• Jake gives his thoughts on the Georges Niang trade & how he fits with the rest of this Utah Jazz roster. 

• BYU Quarterback battle: Should they play it safe with McCae Hillstead or go with the raw prospect with more “upside”? 

• Nominating our Bozo of the Week.