Podbit · The Bill Simmons Podcast
Jets fans — historically the most miserable in football — have gone full Super Bowl believers after landing Aaron Rodgers. Bill Simmons pumps the brakes: Rodgers was bad last year, the offensive line is terrible, the schedule is brutal, and the Hard Knocks curse is real.
Where this was said
At 24:40 · chapter starts 4:30
With the anger still fresh, Bill dissects a USWNT disaster that he insists was entirely predictable. The team opened the World Cup beating Vietnam by only 3-0 in a bracket where goal differential mattered enormously — a massive red flag. He traces a pattern of institutional denial around Alex Morgan: she scored just 2 goals in 17 World Cup appearances outside the Thailand blowout [1] — Bill Simmons "Take away the 13-0 Thailand thrashing and Alex Morgan scored 2 goals in 17 World Cup games. Yet she played 95 minutes in the Sweden match. …" 07:10 , yet she started every minute of every game. Megan Rapinoe, at 37, came on for the final 25 minutes and missed the decisive penalty. Carli Lloyd, serving as a Fox studio analyst, had been calling these problems all summer and was dismissed as unpatriotic [2] — Bill Simmons "Carly Lloyd was like the one person in the horror movie who knows the house is haunted and everybody's like, shut up. You're not patriotic.…" 06:01 — Bill says history has fully vindicated her. He also points to the team's identity confusion: they had real speed in Trinity Rodman, Sophia Smith, and teenage prodigy Alyssa Thompson but inexplicably chose not to use it. The broader lesson, he argues, applies to sports and life: loyalty to past performance — not current form — is a losing strategy. He closes by comparing the team's generational in-between moment to the 2004 USA Olympic basketball squad.
The US women's team lost to Sweden on penalties, scoreless in their last two games. Bill Simmons argues the warning signs were everywhere — aging stars, wrong lineup choices, a coach who won't be seen again — and only Carli Lloyd was brave enough to say it out loud.
Excluding the 13-0 Thailand game, Alex Morgan scored only 2 goals in her last 17 World Cup matches, yet remained the starting striker.
Take away the 13-0 Thailand thrashing and Alex Morgan scored 2 goals in 17 World Cup games. Yet she played 95 minutes in the Sweden match. Bill Simmons draws a direct line from that refusal to confront declining performance to the team's shocking early exit.
Rapinoe, at 37, came on in the last 25 minutes of the Sweden game and missed the deciding penalty kick.
Jaylen Brown's $304 million extension is simultaneously the only logical move and a potential franchise-killer. The Celtics are title favorites with their Brown-Tatum core intact, but if Brown decides Boston isn't where he wants to be, the salary makes a fair trade nearly impossible.
Jaylen Brown signed a $304 million supermax extension with the Celtics, making him one of the highest-paid players in NBA history.
Thomas's wife deferred her CrossFit career — she's in the global top 1% of athletes — to put him through law school debt-free. He wants her to chase the dream now; she wants the emergency fund and house down payment first. On a $200K lawyer income with no debt, the opportunity cost is just a few months of slower saving.
Underground calisthenics battles are exactly like UFC meets a rap battle — 150 people crowded around a circle, fighters walking out with masks and chains, nicknames like 'Extra Money' vs 'Calisthenics the Prince,' and people throwing money and betting. The battle set: 100 burpees, 50 muscle-ups, 75 dips, 75 squats with a 65-pound dumbbell. This is the next big spectator sport.
Rico Verhoeven controlled the undisputed heavyweight boxing champion for approximately 10 rounds — and had his appeal upheld when officials admitted the fight was stopped after the bell. The result was never overturned. Rogan calls it either incompetence or corruption, and argues the money behind Usyk made an upset politically inconvenient.
Rogan lays out a blunt case: boxing's 3-judge system is structurally broken, and the judges know who the promoter wants to win. Glory's 5-judge format is the right model. Corruption doesn't have to be conscious — just knowing Usyk is the cash cow is enough to tilt the scales.
With the Usyk-Wilder fight stalling and Fury-Joshua coming too late, the real fight the world wants is the rematch. Rico is a free agent. Usyk vacated his belts. The story is unfinished and both Rogan and Rico know it. His Excellency Turki Alasheikh already called for it ringside — the question is money.
Rico texted Jason Statham during the Canelo-Crawford fight. Statham showed Rico's highlight videos to promoters. Two days later, Rico was on a call about fighting Anthony Joshua. When Joshua pulled out, Rico pitched Usyk himself — Undisputed vs. Undisputed. Usyk said yes in two weeks. The whole thing started with one text.
Every heavyweight who faced Usyk tried to move to the right — straight into his power hand. Rico and Peter Fury identified the obvious solution: move left, away from the left hand, and smother him with size. It sounds simple. Nobody had done it. That one adjustment was the foundation of 10 dominant rounds.
MMA fans boo when fights go to the ground. They love stand-up. Kickboxing is pure stand-up. Yet it barely exists in America while boxing and MMA are enormous. Rogan's diagnosis: no promotion machine. If the UFC got behind kickboxing the way they've built MMA, it would explode. The talent is there — the storytelling machine is not.
A nation of 17 million people gave the world Ramon Deckers, Peter Aerts, Badr Hari, Melvin Manhoef, Rob Kamen, Ernesto Hoost, and Rico Verhoeven. Rico's theory: the country is so small that every gym shares knowledge freely. In the US, you need a flight. In Holland, you drive 40 minutes and spar the national champion.
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