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LeBron James took a 93% pay cut, from $52.6 million to the $3.87 million veteran minimum, to sign with the Sixers, and the helicopter flying him between New York and Philadelphia is branded for the league sponsor who used to co-own the team he's now on. Pablo Torre pulled the flight records, the tail number history and the Fanatics paperwork, and I go through what he found: the corporate aviation perk traces back to LeBron's 2024 Fanatics card deal, the chopper's tail number switched to match him a week before he signed, and Topps broke the Sixers news before any NBA reporter did. I'm not calling it salary cap circumvention and neither is Torre, but the timeline is the timeline. The back half covers ESPN's hand in the Protect College Sports Act, Dominique Foxworth's labor argument against it, and the Brian Flores coaching report his lawyers say is full of racial stereotypes. 1:00 Pablo Torre's LeBron and Fanatics dive goes viral before the show even starts 3:05 Michael Rubin's own MIT Sloan comments on Fanatics and the Sixers 9:17 LeBron's 93% pay cut to go play for the Sixers 11:55 The flight log, a dozen New York to Philly round trips in a week 13:02 Fanatics' corporate aviation perk goes back to LeBron's 2024 card deal 16:11 The chopper's tail number swap, and the scoop that beat every NBA insider 27:40 What would actually make this salary cap circumvention, per Torre 30:02 ESPN's hand in the Protect College Sports Act, per Awful Announcing 40:21 College players have been getting paid for years, NIL just made it visible 42:00 Marshall Faulk's blunt read on the money game at Southern 52:18 Dominique Foxworth on why the Protect College Sports Act dodges labor rights 1:02:01 The unspoken tension between Joe Buck and Troy Aikman 1:07:10 The Brian Flores coaching report and its racial framing 1:18:10 Maryland's club tennis team and the racist imagery in its tournament email   For all pod and video content hit up -> WWW.THEESAMD.COM   TIP JAR: https://theesamd.link/TipJar   Subscribe: Sports/Media/Culture YT -> Thee Sam D YT Tech YT -> Shill Free Tech YT   Never Forget: #phillywillALWAYSletYOUdown #blackvoicesmatter

The referees are the week four story in the NFL, and Warren Sharp's penalty numbers are why. Sharp counts 17 touchdowns nullified by penalty through Week 4, against five in 2025 and four in 2024, and red-zone offensive penalties are at a record 0.61 per team per game since 2000. The rest of the show runs through the week's games, from the Eagles losing to the Rams after leading 20-10 in the fourth quarter to CeeDee Lamb's 17 catches for 189 yards on 21 targets. I also argue that Super Bowl rings don't measure quarterback skill, using Dan Marino with none and Troy Aikman with three. 1:00 The referees are the week four story 6:43 Bijan Robinson makes the case for a first-round pick 9:19 Josh Allen was not Josh Allen against the Patriots 10:25 The Bears win by running the ball 13:35 The Giants are playing for next year 16:18 The Eagles led 20-10 in the fourth and lost to the Rams 25:57 The Ravens defense can't get home 32:34 Cam Ward has not shown maturity, and the Titans have not built around him 38:16 CeeDee Lamb's 21 targets, and the Texans never adjusted 47:24 The Chiefs at 4-0 look like a machine again 55:37 Super Bowl rings don't measure a quarterback 1:00:10 Five teams are 0-4, and the top prospects have few good landing spots 1:02:21 Texas Tech 29, Colorado 7, and the Jackson State question 1:16:32 The ManningCast lost the pandemic audience 1:24:22 Jalen Brunson's discount didn't help Karl-Anthony Towns   For all pod and video content hit up -> WWW.THEESAMD.COM TIP JAR: https://theesamd.link/TipJar   Subscribe: Sports/Media/Culture YT -> Thee Sam D YT Tech YT -> Shill Free Tech YT   Never Forget: #phillywillALWAYSletYOUdown #blackvoicesmatter

The QB market has no middle class, and that is the tell that it is broken. Every starter in the league is either on a rookie deal, on journeyman money, or getting 40 million and up, with nobody sitting at the 32 million average where a normal market would put most of its players. Sam walks the value-added-per-dropback numbers through week 3 and finds Deshaun Watson, holder of arguably the worst contract in NFL history, sitting dead on the median while Justin Herbert and Baker Mayfield sit below it at 50 million plus. The episode opens somewhere else entirely: two Sacramento Kings reporters caught on a hot mic rating Ben Simmons and Zach LaVine, weeks after the Dianna Russini story put every female reporter's access under the same microscope. 00:01:00 Hot mic at Kings media day, and why this is not just a Dianna Russini problem 00:08:44 South Carolina suspends the player it paid 2 million dollars to win games 00:18:04 The Clippers took a torn Achilles back just to end the Kawhi era 00:18:43 LeBron is lying about the Knicks, and he has been lying about them for 15 years 00:29:20 Jaylen Brown is right about Colin Cowherd and wrong about sourcing 00:36:16 If you want everyone to name names, say what happened in Boston with Tatum 00:39:38 MetLife has taken enough ACLs that the NFLPA should be filing a petition 00:43:49 A top-10 pick traded for a fifth, and what that says about Kevin O'Connell 00:44:55 You need a really good quarterback, not an elite one, to win a championship 00:46:15 The QB market has no middle class, and here is the chart that proves it 00:52:26 Three Super Bowls in the entire worth-every-penny tier 00:56:25 Drake Maye was never good, he had the easiest schedule in the league 00:58:39 The extension is automatic now, which means nobody has to earn anything 01:03:01 Week 3 roundup, good games between teams that are not threats 01:04:53 Deshaun Watson is hooping, so Shedeur is not getting the rock 01:15:39 The Raiders are 3-0 and that last Chiefs game might have seeding implications 01:18:40 Aaron Donald came back off the couch to get double teamed anyway   For all pod and video content hit up -> WWW.THEESAMD.COM TIP JAR: https://theesamd.link/TipJar   Subscribe: Sports/Media/Culture YT -> Thee Sam D YT Tech YT -> Shill Free Tech YT   Never Forget: #phillywillALWAYSletYOUdown #blackvoicesmatter

Tennessee is dropping $280 million on a hotel and entertainment district next to Neyland Stadium while the coalition pushing the Protect College Sports Act, Ted Cruz, Nick Saban, Pat McAfee and now Deion Sanders, tells you college athletes are bankrupting the sport. Big Ten revenue is near $1.5 billion. Miami and Nike agreed to a 10 year deal worth more than $200 million. Ohio State's roster budget runs $54 million. Nobody is broke. The anti-NIL push is about restricting how much of that money reaches predominantly black rosters, and it keeps getting sold to the public through a rotating cast of black faces: Jay-Z during the anthem protests, an HBCU player, and now Deion Sanders fronting an unpaid ad. Colin Kaepernick's memoir tour lays out that pattern, including Robert Kraft confirming he blocked Macklemore over his Palestine comments. Also in this one: why Ben Johnson's Bears look like themselves in week one instead of a quarter of the way into the season. 01:00 - Ben Johnson commits to the run game from week one 06:55 - Kaepernick's memoir: the NFL used Jay-Z as its black face 22:03 - College sports is a cesspool, starting with Ted Cruz on GameDay 24:00 - Breaking down what the Protect College Sports Act actually caps 28:56 - Tennessee's $280 million stadium hotel kills the broke argument 33:46 - Miami's Nike deal and the Big Ten and SEC's billion dollar years 37:52 - Why student athletes were never really students [chat] 46:17 - Marshall Falk says the quiet part: Southern had no shot against Houston 55:03 - Howard's Kedrick Green becomes the bill's HBCU black face 01:04:53 - The real roster budgets, from Ohio State's $54 million to Boston College's $8 million 01:08:17 - Deion Sanders signs on as the bill's second black face 01:17:00 - Colleges love NIL because it still isn't their money 01:26:41 - NAACP's Derrick Johnson rebuts Ted Cruz on SportsCenter 01:31:19 - Kaepernick: Robert Kraft's Macklemore ban is open collusion 01:34:26 - Leagues cry about betting threats to players while FanDuel tracks bets live on Amazon Prime   For all pod and video content hit up -> WWW.THEESAMD.COM TIP JAR: https://theesamd.link/TipJar   Subscribe: Sports/Media/Culture YT -> Thee Sam D YT Tech YT -> Shill Free Tech YT   Never Forget: #phillywillALWAYSletYOUdown #blackvoicesmatter

Episode 338 01:00 — Kawhi skates with a $700K bill while Uncle Dennis eats a five-year ban 02:34 — The Five Guys theory of cap circumvention: all the toppings free, none of it paid back 04:40 — The league didn't put the blame on Kawhi, so why did the media? 05:10 — The Lakers said no to Uncle Dennis, and that's the only reason Kawhi is a Clipper 06:58 — Ballmer's devil wasn't Kawhi and it wasn't Uncle Dennis, it was greed 09:00 — The penalty sheet: $30 million, a year, six months, five picks 11:43 — Peel back the layers and every one of these penalties is performative 15:12 — Pablo Torre did the work the four-letter network wouldn't do 18:00 — Uncle Dennis asked, the Clippers said yes, and only the asker gets banned 21:30 — Shams' reporting, four companies, and why Kawhi has plausible deniability 31:48 — The worst day in Clippers history was the inside-out warm-ups, not Sterling 35:55 — Kaepernick didn't blow off that workout, he refused to sign away his right to sue 39:41 — Stephen A. heard Howard Bryant explain the waiver on his own show in 2019 50:33 — Sports media is wrestling and Stephen A. is playing the heel 55:33 — Black capitalism doesn't trickle down any better than Reaganomics did 1:01:56 — Four jobs to be number two while McAfee does one show. For all pod and video content hit up -> WWW.THEESAMD.COM   TIP JAR: https://theesamd.link/TipJar   Subscribe: Sports/Media/Culture YT -> Thee Sam D YT Tech YT -> Shill Free Tech YT   Never Forget: #phillywillALWAYSletYOUdown #blackvoicesmatter

Episode 337 02:17 — Dan Orlovsky's "Browns fans should boycott games" is an empty-calories take 05:37 — Bill Barnwell's "5-for-12" line, and the real question nobody's asking about Shedeur 07:46 — Sam's actual grade on Shedeur: a bootleg Drew Brees ceiling, not a franchise arm 14:19 — Chat check-in: fandom as mental illness, and why Browns fans show up no matter what 22:54 — Why Todd Monken's hand is forced — starting Watson is calculation, not belief 27:35 — Mapping the Browns schedule to the exact week the keys go to Shedeur 40:00 — Inside the Watson contract: the $86.2M dead-cap record and the 2029 vesting cliff 50:14 — Pivot: "the second Nasty Man" — Jed York's trailer-park arrest 56:00 — The Kyle Shanahan comparison: why the owner's story broke in 48 hours and the coach's took two weeks 1:01:18 — Jon Gruden is back in the booth...active lawsuit against the league and all 1:06:10 — Why Sam won't give the Enes Kanter grift any oxygen 1:08:09 — Dae'Quan Wright's return to LSU reopens the "college football was never amateur" argument TIP JAR: https://theesamd.link/TipJar   Subscribe: Sports/Media/Culture YT -> Thee Sam D YT Tech YT -> Shill Free Tech YT   Never Forget: #phillywillALWAYSletYOUdown #blackvoicesmatter

00:00 — Stephen A. Smith vs. The NABJ Why Stephen A. Smith’s feud with the National Association of Black Journalists matters and what could happen when he responds. 07:00 — Stephen A. Smith’s Conservative Media Pivot A look at Smith’s growing presence in political commentary and the financial incentives behind his increasingly conservative positioning. 11:19 — Has the NABJ Lost Its Relevance? The conversation examines the organization’s declining influence and whether its confrontation with Smith was an attempt to reclaim its place in the media landscape. 18:54 — Pat McAfee Took Stephen A.’s Spot How McAfee transformed ESPN’s personality-driven sports media landscape and seemingly displaced Stephen A. as the network’s biggest star. 33:21 — The Pat McAfee Grift Gets Bigger McAfee’s music, political access, ESPN platform, and massive compensation become part of a larger argument about what actually drives success in modern sports media. 37:46 — Why Marquette King Never Got McAfee’s Shot Marquette King’s similar attempt to combine football and music raises questions about race, access, institutional support, and who gets the opportunity to build a sports-media empire. 43:56 — Dan Orlovsky, CAA and Media Bias Orlovsky’s unlikely rise as an NFL analyst leads to questions about his quarterback rankings and the potential influence of his representation by CAA. 59:13 — The NFL’s Quarterback Obsession The episode closes by challenging the NFL’s fixation on quarterbacks, examining the constant movement at the position and questioning whether QB play is really as important as the league claims. For all pod and video content hit up -> WWW.THEESAMD.COM   TIP JAR: https://theesamd.link/TipJar   Subscribe: Sports/Media/Culture YT -> Thee Sam D YT Tech YT -> Shill Free Tech YT   Never Forget: #phillywillALWAYSletYOUdown #blackvoicesmatter

Drew Brees Pyramid Scheme Roger Craig reveal he has vascualr dementia Ahman Green has Parkinsons NFL will eventually go to 20 games CBS looks to cut Tony Romo from his super max contract Clay Travis grifts new website that marries sports and politics Kawhi Leonard is wrongfully being blamed fo things his uncle did   For all pod and video content hit up -> WWW.THEESAMD.COM   TIP JAR: https://theesamd.link/TipJar   Subscribe: Sports/Media/Culture YT -> Thee Sam D YT Tech YT -> Shill Free Tech YT   Never Forget: #phillywillALWAYSletYOUdown #blackvoicesmatter

Kyle Shanahan was in a car accident How ESPN is not hiding their collusion with the NFL Sports media is in shambles Are the days of former athletes as analysts over?   For all pod and video content hit up -> WWW.THEESAMD.COM   TIP JAR: https://theesamd.link/TipJar   Subscribe: Sports/Media/Culture YT -> Thee Sam D YT Tech YT -> Shill Free Tech YT   Never Forget: #phillywillALWAYSletYOUdown #blackvoicesmatter

Philly wins leBron sweepstakes Is LeBron still chasing the ghost of MJ? Best starting 5 LeBron has ever been on? Eastern conference roundup What's left for the losers in the LeBron chase?   For all pod and video content hit up -> WWW.THEESAMD.COM   TIP JAR: https://theesamd.link/TipJar   Subscribe: Sports/Media/Culture YT -> Thee Sam D YT Tech YT -> Shill Free Tech YT   Never Forget: #phillywillALWAYSletYOUdown #blackvoicesmatter

The mob ties of why Ryan Clark is no longer at ESPN LeBron James is taking his time because of business The NBA has failed at making another face of the league Caleb Williams chances of being a top 5 QB   For all pod and video content hit up -> WWW.THEESAMD.COM   TIP JAR: https://theesamd.link/TipJar   Subscribe: Sports/Media/Culture YT -> Thee Sam D YT Tech YT -> Shill Free Tech YT   Never Forget: #phillywillALWAYSletYOUdown #blackvoicesmatter

NBA Owners are playing games Wemby contract extension Even Austin Reaves has to take a short? Capitalist Hov Takes Shots At Colin Kaepernick   For all pod and video content hit up -> WWW.THEESAMD.COM   TIP JAR: https://theesamd.link/TipJar   Subscribe: Sports/Media/Culture YT -> Thee Sam D YT Tech YT -> Shill Free Tech YT   Never Forget: #phillywillALWAYSletYOUdown #blackvoicesmatter

LeBron James narrows field down to five teams Rich Paul has done more for new media than any other player The real reason why Ja Morant is in Portland Football players need to do more for Chris Johnson Kawhi Leonard "dumps" Uncle Dennis   For all pod and video content hit up -> WWW.THEESAMD.COM   TIP JAR: https://theesamd.link/TipJar   Subscribe: Sports/Media/Culture YT -> Thee Sam D YT Tech YT -> Shill Free Tech YT   Never Forget: #phillywillALWAYSletYOUdown #blackvoicesmatter

NBA Free Agency Rumors Don't Believe 85% of what you see and hear Micheal Strahan Interviews Chris Johnson...poorly Malik Beasley was big time scamming     For all pod and video content hit up -> WWW.THEESAMD.COM   Subscribe: Sports/Media/Culture YT -> Thee Sam D YT Tech YT -> Shill Free Tech YT   Never Forget: #phillywillALWAYSletYOUdown #blackvoicesmatter

Timberwolves gave up a lot to get LaMelo Ball Celtics still want to move Jaylen Brown Kawhi Leonard situation is dicey Copycat trends continue   For all pod and video content hit up -> WWW.THEESAMD.COM   Subscribe: Sports/Media/Culture YT -> Thee Sam D YT Tech YT -> Shill Free Tech YT   Never Forget: #phillywillALWAYSletYOUdown #blackvoicesmatter