Hey everybody, it’s that time again, Fred and the Fantastics on BLEAV and PodClips around the world, anything and everything in the wonderful and wacky world of sports. Tonight, today, we’re going to talk to Art Sorce, as the Fantastic on Fred and the Fantastics. You can email us at sportsfred@aol.com. Art, I’ve indicated, you’ve indicated you’re 127 years of age, so you got more to gripe about than I do, but this whole world’s going nuts.

Oh, it is!

And let me give let me give you an example, folks, of what I mean by going nuts. It’s now 10 minutes after one o’clock Pacific time on Friday. At six o’clock tonight at the Rose Bowl. UCLA faces Iowa. Okay, where I live, about 30 miles from the Rose Bowl. I’d have to leave within 45 minutes, two o’clock, to get there in time. Does anybody understand LA traffic? So that’s one point. Second point is, it’s at 6 pm Pacific time, and at 8 pm at Pauley Pavilion, which is closer to my house, UCLA basketball plays against New Mexico. Now, does that make any blank sense at all? You’re playing the football team at six and the basketball team at eight.

Should we call it Carmageddon 2?

Hang on, hang on. You want to get worse? All right, New Mexico, as indicated, plays UCLA at eight o’clock, and their football team plays San Diego State at 5:30 who in the blank, blank making these decisions?

And Fred, here’s the other part of that. You’ve got the CIF playoffs starting tonight in California, all the high school football teams, the best of the best, and, and now you have all these major sports. They used to leave Friday night for the kids. All right, yeah, now, because of Big Time TV, you know, the Pac-12. I mean, excuse me, the Big Ten plus Eight. You know, all these conferences, super conferences. Yeah, there, it’s all about the money, all about the greenbacks. And I’m surprised that the Clippers or the Lakers aren’t playing to go with it. And then you really have, you know, or maybe, maybe even Hollywood, not Hollywood Park, but you know, one of the race tracks is open. I mean, it’s ridiculous. I mean, I don’t, I don’t get it. I don’t understand it. I know there’s a, you know, a fight for that sports dollar. But speaking of sports dollars, Fred, the athletic directors in college football are facing a real, huge dilemma right now. They can’t afford to fire coaches that they hired because it cost them too much money. 95 million for Lincoln Riley, 37 million for Billy Napier. You know, they want to fire Brian Kelly at LSU after he gets hammered by, by Alabama this weekend. That’s, you know, they got to look at 65 million there. At a certain point in time. You know, they’ve got to rein in college football, the NIL, you know, whether it’s that, whether it’s the transfer portal, we have to bring it back. I know the horses are out of the barn, but my God, it is just so ridiculous. The amount of money that these, these coaches are getting to coach college football.

Okay, okay, you, you kicked for USC, would you fire Lincoln Riley?

I give him, I would go to him and say, Look, you got one year to turn this thing around. We got a great budget here. We got a $50 million Bloom football facility that we’re building for you that was already been in plan, okay, we realized we don’t want to come up with 95 million. But can you, can you just, you know, remember when we had Pete Arbogast on this summer?

Sure.

And Pete was talking to us about the fact that he’s not even allowed to go watch practice? So how clandestine is this guy? How close to the vest is he playing things? You’re at the University of Southern California. I mean, Robinson and McKay, when I was there, they would bring people in. We’d see Sam Bam Cunningham. We’d see, you know, Rod Dedaux. We’d see all the old greats, Freddie Lynn. They’d all come out to practice, the old Tom Seaver, everybody that was involved with SC would be out there the alumni. You know, it was this how you met some of the great people of all time, Fred, and now, you know, they, they cover it like it’s. Well, let me tell you something at four and five playing the way they’ve played on the road. I don’t care who knows what plays you’re calling. You’re not fooling anybody. So get real. Get transparent. Become a part of Southern California. You know, welcome the crowd into you and, and just get these kids. They call it a culture problem. Fred, what’s a culture problem between me and you? I think UCLA has it in their basketball program too. It’s a culture problem, problem because Mick Cronin doesn’t know how to deal with young kids. I’m wondering if Lincoln Riley doesn’t know how to deal with young kids.

Bruins last year, 16 and 17 is the college basketball season now underway. We’re going to take a quick break right here on Fred and the Fantastics.

We’re back on Fred and the Fantastics. Art Sorce and yours truly, Fred, you can email us at sportsfred@aol.com, already again. Let’s keep it in Southern California for a moment. Catholic High School, Rancho Santa Margarita, apparently, allegedly, eight kids, football players were sexually and otherwise attacked by other football players on the high school football team. Artie, you played high school football. Talk about it.

You know, I think there was a similar situation that happened in modern day at the end of Bruce Rollinson era there, yeah, you know, I there’s just no room for that to me. I mean, yeah, there’s, you know, we used to snap towels at everybody in the butt and stuff like that. But there was none of that other stuff like that, you know. And, and I realized it was a different era. But you know, we the whole idea of sports, the greatest part of team sports is the camaraderie, the coming together. I mean, 50 years later, when I go back to my 50th reunion at USC, or my 52nd reunion at Newport Harbor High School, and I see the guys that are still here, hey, it brings tears to my eyes because I see them. I see their wives who I knew when they were you know their girlfriends in high school and, and luckily, some of us are here and some aren’t here. Lot of them aren’t. But, you know, I just don’t understand how a coach, and I coached, I know. I coached with Cedric Carbon at Laguna High School. I coached with the Johnsons at Mission Viejo High School. Coached a little bit of Newport Harbor under Mike Giddings. You know, one thing I always talk to my guys about, and a lot of the coaches did, was that we have to have respect for each other, and the reason we have these rules is so that we can all live by the same group of rules. Now, times are different. You treat different kids different ways now, but I just don’t think there’s any room for that kind of stuff in, in, in high school athletics, college athletics, any athletics your teammates or your teammates, they should be your friends, and you should cover for them. And if I happen to be one of the captains of that team, and I saw that kind of crap going on there, there’d be guys getting their, their bell rung.

All right. USA Today, this week, rated the MVP candidates right now in the National Football League. They’ve got Lamar Jackson number one, they’ve got Jared Goff number two, they’ve got Josh Allen, Number four. Who do they have at number three? At number three, they’ve got Patrick Mahomes, alright? So in your opinion, right now,

Patrick Mahomes shouldn’t even be in the top five.

The regular season now, so we don’t have to worry about the playoffs. Who is Art Sorce’s number one choice right now for the MVP?

Jared Goff. I really believe that Fred and you know, I love Lamar Jackson, but Lamar Jackson is going to go down, luckily, if he’s lucky to win one Super Bowl as the Aaron Rodgers of his generation, he’s going to be probably a three or four time MVP, but I can’t think of a big game he’s ever won. So, so I can’t give it to him and he really blew the game last night too. He played great. Both quarterbacks played great. Patrick Mahomes has got eight, eight touchdowns and 12 interceptions. There’s nothing special there. They just keep I don’t know how Andy Reid does it. How do you go out and pick up a Hopkins? You know, nobody else wanted Hopkins. The guy’s not chopped liver. The guy can play football. We know that. He just seems to fill guys in, and that program just keeps on rolling. And I love his, his new commercial, by the way. I think that’s absolutely lovely, too. Who knew he’d be a commercial star? But I mean, the other guy that I think we didn’t talk about is the quarterback of Atlanta who might wind up having the best record in the NFC – Kirk Cousins, having a great year. And then you have, you know, Jaden Daniels from, from Washington. I don’t think a rookie will win MVP. But the other one is Josh, Josh Allen, who’s, who’s cut his interceptions way down, down to two interceptions this year, and those are all on tip balls, which, I think there should be a, some sort of a column, you know, that says, you know, he threw an interception right to the guy, or it was tipped and up in the air. And, you know, that’s, that’s an interception. But is it an interception? So I think that’s wide open. I’ll tell you what is amazing to me is, you know, if you look at the NFL, we’re going to get McCaffrey back this week, which I’m really excited about, because God only knows how many treatments he’s had on his Achilles over in Germany. And you know, if you look at the 49ers over the last five years, they’ve been at that three and four, four and four threshold a bunch of seasons, and then they kind of run off five or six, seven in a row to get themselves safe. So it’ll be interesting to see how they play at Tampa Bay this year or this weekend.

Let me, let me say. Let me say this. Tampa Bay without either of its top two wide receivers. Now, again, on Monday night of this week, they were able to score, but I don’t think they’re going to be able to score that often against the 40 under defense without either of their top receivers. You’re coming

With Evans out and Godwin out. I agree with you 100% but I will tell you this Baker Mayfield is proving that he is a good, top-echelon quarterback, maybe not top five or top 10, but he’s in that, that upper echelon of quarterbacks, the guy, the guy’s just tougher than nails, Fred. I might watch him in the pocket, fighting away from guys and, you know, I mean, he’s just, he’s just a winner. That’s all I can tell you. Now I understand how Lincoln Riley won all those games in college, because this kid has it.

Art, in 30 seconds on Fred and the Fantastic your comments about the life of the world sports and whatever.

Well, I gotta tell you, Fred, the world of, the world got dealt a pretty much of a, a high, high, tight slider on Tuesday night. And you know, it’s going to be very interesting to see what happens over the next four years. I know in the world of sports, we need to have a reckoning. I think the world of sports has to realize that you can’t keep giving guys these multi, multi-billion dollar contracts and expect everything to be okay. They’re pricing themselves out of existence. Fred, they gotta, they gotta rein it in. College football is a perfect example of it. You know, at a certain point in time, the average fan who can’t afford to take his young son or his daughter and his family to a ball game, you know, that’s when you really slay the goose with the golden egg. And I mean, what, what human being from our era wouldn’t want to play baseball for three to $5 million a year, really, if they said, Artie, here’s a million dollars, you get to go kick for the Rams. I said, Give it to me. I’m all in because my contract was $33,000 Fred, and if I made First Team All Pro, they gave me an extra $500.

Is that right?

That’s true.

500 extra?

Yeah, 500 extra to be the best of the league.

Oh, the whole world is nuts. So we know that, folks, that’s why you’re listening to Fred and the Fantastics, because Art indicates, and he’s 127, years of age, the world’s going nuts. You know, I know and think that the world is going crazy. And no, nobody should be fined for wearing a MAGA cap. The NFL has gone nuts. Baseball has gone nuts.

Let me ask you a question, Fred, if Taylor Swift is wearing a hat in the in the press box, and Kelce makes some catches, and that hat just happens to be representing something, are they going to fine her too?

Okay, quickly. Then I gotta bring that up. Jason Kelce breaks the guy’s iPhone. Your comments?

Well, you know, I guess it happened to Coach Franklin as well, after the game. It was up at State College right after the big game they had between Ohio State and one of the kids got Kelce’s face. And, you know, I like both Kelce brothers. I think they’re, they’re kind of zany, and then they bring something to sports, like McAfee does a little bit, same thing. But, you know, I don’t know. I, you know, Bill Murray tosses people’s phones off the roof and does all kinds of goofy stuff like that too. So I don’t know what’s normal behavior anymore. This is part of the problem that we were just discussing. What is considered normal human behavior nowadays? I don’t know.

Alright, for Artie, for Mario, I am Fred. Thank you for listening to Fred and the Fantastics. More later. Bye, everybody. Bye.