Hi everybody, it’s that time again. Yes, it is. It’s Fred and the Fantastics on BLEAV and on PodClips around the world. Fred and the Fantastics would include Art Sorce and Laura Snoke. You can email us at [email protected], [email protected]. We’re taping this at 1 o’clock afternoon on Friday, July 18th, and Art, during the break, you mentioned the British Open. Tell us your comments about the British Open, and a story that we have not heard.

Yes, there’s an Australian professional who, at one time, was the number one ranked amateur. His last name is Peake. He got himself running with the wrong crowd, a motorcycle gang, and he wound up doing nine years in a federal prison in Australia. A lot of his buddies like Cam Smith and Ian Baker-Finch, some others, and Greg Norman, they kind of lost touch with him. While he was in prison, he came out of prison, he was kind of at that point where he needed to come together. His old high school and amateur coach came to his rescue and got him a place to live. They got him a place to work at a golf course. He started practicing. And he actually won the New Zealand Open, one of the four tournaments I was privileged to win in my golf career. From there, he’s moved on. And in the last two and a half years, his career has come to the point where he qualified as one of the 156 players at this year’s British Open. I think he shot nine over par, didn’t make the cut. But the point I’m making is anybody out there that finds themselves in a position where they may have an addiction, or they find themselves in a bad point. If you find the right people and the right help, you can transition your life and make a difference. I just want people to know that it’s a great story. It shows a lot about hope and the fact that sports can provide a way to get back into life.

Laura, what do you think about the British Open and the story that Art Sorce just gave us?

Oh, that’s just a great story, you know? There’s two things I really love about sports. One is, I love the sportsmanship of sports. I mean, I love it when, after the game is over, all the players hug each other. It’s so heartwarming. And the other thing I love about sports is that it appears to be one of the few things in our world today, at least when they’re on the field or on the court, where it’s purely meritorious and people aren’t getting special favors. They’re on the field or on the court because they’re the best. And that’s just a really heartwarming story. I don’t think there’s anybody on this program or listening that hasn’t been touched by addiction. And whether it’s in your family or your friends, or somebody you know at work. And it’s just great to know that it can be overcome.

Fred in the Fantastics. Art. Who’s going to win the British Open?

Well, right now, it looks to me like it’s going to be Scotty Scheffler. He’s got the lead 10 under par, a lot of great players are in the mix, but he looked absolutely bulletproof today. He’s 10 under par. On a golf course that, you know, I mean, even in my prime, I think it would be real hard to shoot even par on it. He’s that good, and he’s due. And there are a lot of great golfers there, I mean, they’re the best 150 golfers in the world. But he just seems to have the whole package for it.

Laura, are you a golfer?

You know, I tried to learn how to golf. I used to be a pretty good tennis player, and I tried to learn how to golf. And I figured I’d learn how to golf in Hawaii because I can never get upset when I’m in Hawaii. And I was trying to master the swing, and I just couldn’t get it, and the teacher said to me, you know, there’s a guy over there, watch his swing. And it turned out that that guy over there was my husband. So I think I pretty much that kind of soured me on golf, but I wish I knew how to play golf because it just seems so much like so much fun.

My wife, my wife, got her only hole-in-one at Hawaii Kai Golf Course on Oahu, and she loves the game. And we go out and have some great times together. And she’s the one that told me, don’t take it so seriously, you’re 127 years old. What do you expect?

Art, let me ask you something before we go to a break. PGA versus LIV. Ratings are not up. In many cases, ratings are down as far as TV is concerned. Of course, it’s split in half, but your comments.

Well, you know, I think it’s killing the game in both instances. I think one thing it has done is it’s opened up the game to younger players. On the PGA Tour, because you took 46 players and took them to the LIV, which opened up spots for college guys and other guys. So from that sense, it’s great. It raised the amount of money that the superstars get to have. But unless they can come together, it really is only, it’s kind of sad that they only play four events a year with the best players in the game. And you know, I don’t want to get political about it. I know Saudi Arabia is involved with the LIV, I understand the PGA Tour. You know, they came up to an agreement two years ago and, and now Greg Norman’s been fired, and now the Commissioner of Golf is changing. Everybody that was involved in this so-called agreement that kept the Senate and the House from looking at their books. That’s basically what that was about. Now it’s it just seems to have fallen off into a different thing. But for the game of golf, I hope they get it together because I think the fans of golf need to see the best players play against each other. And that’s, that’s my feeling on it.

I agree. Let’s take a quick break right here on Fred and the Fantastics.

We are back on Fred and the Fantastics with Laura, and Art, and Fred. You can email us at [email protected], [email protected]. The WNBA, well, the bad news is that the All-Star game on Saturday night,

No Caitlin, right?

No Caitlin, and I guarantee you that’s going to take away, what, half the ratings or more, what do you think, what percentage are going to be?

They’re saying, like, you know, preemptively, 35 to 40 percent of the audience may not tune in.

Laura. What do you think, without Caitlin, anybody going to watch the WNBA All-Star game?

Yeah, I think there’s some people who are going to watch it, but I think there are a lot of people who won’t watch it because they want to see her, and it’s too bad she just came back from an injury and then got injured again. So, maybe she came back too soon, I don’t know, but,

Did you see the injury?

I didn’t.

Yeah.

Okay, it’s in the groin and the ref did not call foul on the play. It was like, unbelievable. And again, there’s envy, there’s jealousy, and whatever the case might be. But a lot of the opponents are really going after her, and she’s bringing them more money, she’s bringing them more exposure, so, you know,

That’s the part that really bothers me, Fred. She’s put money in all their pockets, she’s taking the game that. You know, we’ve always joked about it on Sports Overnight America or The Fantastics on BLEAV. But, you know, for many, many years, they had trouble drawing any kind of fans. Now, you know, in college, at Iowa, she had the best ratings. She beat the men in terms of championship game ratings.

Yeah.

She goes to the WNBA, she projects that to a new level. Even though she probably wasn’t, you know, one of the top 10 players last year. But this year she’s playing great. But it seems to me like these girls are going out of their way to hit her. And do really, kind of, you know, not classy things to her, is what I’m saying.

All right, Laura, Fred, and Art are all NFL fans on TV. Last year, or maybe the last two years, the NFL put two games streaming and one game on regular linear television. This year, all three games will be streaming. Art, you were a former player. You talked all the time about the fact that the Players Union has not gotten the players who played a long time ago enough money to help themselves health-wise and whatever-wise. And now the NFL has forgotten the fans. A lot of people can’t afford so many streaming services. At least one game on Christmas would have been a nice present again. And they’ve taken that away. Art, take it away.

I think it’s going to cause a big problem before it’s all over this whole linear vis-a-vis streaming situation. In 2029, the goose that laid the golden egg ends, and we’re going to see a real sea change. You’re going to see AppleTV, you’re going to see your Netflix, and these are huge multi-megacorporations, Paramount+. You can’t watch a CBS telecast in my area. I have to watch it on 1970 TV, no high def, but I could buy Paramount+ and get the local telecast here. Same thing’s happening on Fox. And I understand the reason for wanting to bring all these new programs in, these new networks are going to control it. But Fred, like you say, at a certain point in time, the average blue-collar worker who loves football, loves sports. At what point does he get priced out of the game? I mean, I just took my cable bill from Verizon $275 for everything, you know, and not counting the cell phone. It was like $580. We trimmed that down to less than $200. And I’m only missing a couple of things. Things that I really don’t, you know, do I need an ESPN Ocho? I don’t think I do, okay. But my point is, you know, at a certain point in time, over-the-air television was what made the NFL. And I think they’re going to need to return to that in some semblance in the future.

Laura. Let’s talk about Roger Goodell and his $75 million. Do you think he can relate at all to the average person out there, or does he give a lick?

I don’t think he can, but, you know, the other thing is, well, first of all, I was really upset the other day when the Dodgers-Giants game was on Roku. I mean, Roku isn’t even an app. It’s a whole new, you know, you have to have a Roku box.

Sounds like a salad dressing,

And I don’t even understand why they don’t have it. If they want to do it that way, why don’t they have a pay-per-view option where you can just buy that game? But because they want you to, you know, to plug into their whole program for the whole season. And then it’s impossible to cancel once you get in.

Think about the NFL Ticket, Laura, where you can do a la carte. You’re a Raiders fan, you know, Mark is a Pittsburgh Steelers fan. They don’t live in that market. If you could just get the ticket for your team, I would think that would bring an incredible amount of income in. And, I don’t get it.

Well, here’s the other thing that was, to me, was really interesting because I was watching Wimbledon. And I have ESPN+, which I love the fact that I could watch whatever match I wanted, but I also recorded it on ESPN on, off DirecTV. And I don’t think these streaming services have really figured out how to broadcast sports, they’re still glitchy. The broadcast on ESPN was so much better than the one on ESPN+,

And you can’t go run a replay on streaming.

Right?

That’s another thing that drives me nuts.

Well, you can sometimes, I mean, it depends on the service, but it’s not as good. It’s still glitchy; they haven’t figured out how to get the speed of the ball, so it’s smooth. I mean, it was noticeable the difference between DirecTV and streaming.

By the way. Wimbledon was awesome, by the way, it really was. I enjoyed it.

Yeah, the whole tournament was great, and the Men’s Final was great, the Women’s Final was a little bit of a blowout. But the Men’s Final was great.

Six-love, six-love. Yikes.

Can’t get any worse than that.

Let me just mention something about the streaming thing. I’m a tech idiot. But beyond that, in our house, and we don’t have a big house, 1,800 square feet. I cannot get all the time AT&T streaming in the bedroom, we can get it in the living room, so this means I have to watch everything, right now, we’ve got four DirecTV televisions. Okay, so I can go to any television to watch anything I want to watch. But now, with this streaming, if I want to watch it in the bedroom, it’s 50-50 that I can get it on a particular day.

It’s like the old days with the aerial.

Yeah.

I told you the story. We didn’t have to get it in Los Angeles to get to San Diego and San Bernadino.

50 years of technological progress and we still can’t get the game we want to watch.

No, it’s un-blank-believable. Hey, very quickly, I want to talk about this again. We talk about it on Sports Overnight America. But Bruce Pearl, my hero, former assistant coach at Iowa, got caught lying to the NCAA versus Illinois and put on probation, and then gets a head job eventually at Tennessee, gets caught again for lying, and at Auburn, the last more than a little bit more than a decade now, got caught twice for lying. Now he’s going to run, maybe for senator, as Tommy Tuberville, the former Auburn football coach, is now going to run for governor. So there’s going to be an opening. And Bruce Pearl, to me, would be a perfect senatorial candidate, particularly in the state of Alabama, but basically anywhere nowadays. Laura, do you have any comments about Bruce, the lying, blank-blank crook Pearl?

Sort of par for the course in Alabama? Yeah, it’s just a shame, really, that there doesn’t seem to be any moral code anymore. It’s all about who can get what they need, and who has the most money, and who’s giving everybody the most favors. So it’s just that they’re not living by the moral code we grew up with, that’s for sure.

Can I ask you guys a question? I mean, to me, being a governor is a real job. You have to run a state,

Right.

Being a senator, you’re basically going to give a speech now and then, go raise some money, you don’t have to do anything. There was a show on TV with John Goodman a few years back where there were about four senators who all lived together. It was so funny to watch because they were all basically full of crap on both sides of the aisle. It got to the point where I’m like, what do these senators actually do? Not much, they filibuster a lot, I guess.

So a senator is one thing, a governor is another. Yeah, I mean, Tommy Tuberville proved to be a great senator, hasn’t he, Laura?

If you like Donald Trump, he’s going to be a governor. That’s all they seem to do this season, this session, is just rubber stamp everything Donald Trump wants without even reading their bills. Now, what they’re doing is they vote for the bill, but then they’re introducing other legislation to get rid of the things they just voted for.

It’s like addendums that never even get voted on. Yeah, I hear you there.

Art. Do you think Jeffrey Epstein was a sports fan?

Depends on the sport you’re talking about.

Yeah, exactly what kind of sport are we talking about, indoor or outdoor?

Art, 30 seconds right here on Fred and the Fantastics.

Well, I got to tell you, we’re seeing the world change right in front of our eyes here. It’s summer of 2025, and New York’s going to have a Communist going to be their mayor, or you’re going to get Cuomo, there you go, either one. Beautiful stuff. You just don’t know what’s going on next. You got to keep your head on a swivel because you never know what’s happening. I mean, I would have never thought, as an older man in this society growing up where I grew up, that the world would be where it is right now. I mean, we have a lot of conflicts going on everywhere, and I think we need cooler heads to prevail. And I think we need to get back to the old adage of it’s a world that needs to come together and give away. Forget all the wars and the killing and the fighting. We need to get away from that.

Laura, I know you’ve got some strong thoughts.

Well, just to kind of play off of what Art said, all of which I agree with. Where are those statesmen? Where are our heroes? I mean, it seems like everybody is just a bunch of mediocrity and I’m just waiting for people, whatever their political persuasion is, to have some kind of moral code and ethical code, and have some statesmanship and have some patriotism for the country, and not for these slogans and propaganda that’s being spread, all, I mean, I don’t know,

You know, Fred? We always talk about this, but again, greed has permeated itself into every aspect of American society and I think it’s ruining. First of all, if you have to spend a billion dollars to become a senator or a half a, $55 million to become a congressperson, that’s ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. That money can be used to help people, can be used in so many different ways to make people’s lives better. I just think you need to get the money out of politics, which will never happen.

I’ll tell you this. JFK, with an impossible situation in 2025, writing Profiles in Courage – it’d be a very short book. All right, for Art, for Laura, for Mario. Thank you guys and gals for listening to Fred and the Fantastics, more later. Don’t forget us, Fred and the Fantastics. Bye everybody.