2-1-24 After Hours with Amy Lawrence PODCAST: Hour 3

The Sultan of Sizzle. The Titan of Toastiness. The Kingpin of Kindling.

These are the admired ones. Those who've created the prime place to gather. They don't just have a backyard. They have the backyard because they know a Solo Stove Fire Pit is more than just the ultimate smokeless fire pit. It's a place where friendships are forged, football is revered, and food is enjoyed. Solo Stove. The perfect flame for the big game.

A Peanut Butter M&M's Production. In a world where Super Bowl winners get the world's admiration and a fancy ring, but the runners-up get nothing, one retired cop returns. That's one retired quarterback. Read the script.

Oh, sorry. One retired quarterback returns to claim what's his. Um, that's claim a ring with diamonds made from M&M's peanut butter, but you're on a roll.

The Ring of Comfort. Coming soon to a Super Bowl new you. Halfway through our show and I'm glad to have you with us. We're counting down toward the weekend because that's how we do.

We do life by going weekend to weekend. Especially now. It's not that I am... Disenchanted is a good word. Not that I'm disenchanted with working this show after hours. I do enjoy being part of this growing culture that we build here on After Hours. It's a lot of fun to hang out with you all every night and there are benefits.

There are many reasons. It would take me more than two hands to list the number of reasons why I've stayed on overnights despite having the opportunity to change time slots multiple times over the last decade. I like it here.

I'm not saying I'll be here forever, but I do like it here. The challenge, of course, is being on opposite schedules as the rest of the family now. And that's why the weekends are even more optimal. This will be the first weekend with no football. The first weekend with no work since September.

I don't mean no work as in not coming to work on Sunday night because I will be here. But it's different during football season where you start at 1 o'clock or whether it's 10 a.m. West Coast time. But 1 o'clock or 3 o'clock the last couple weeks.

New Jersey time for the playoffs. Saturdays too. We've even had Fridays. It's been a lot. The late December all the way through January, these six weeks have been a lot of football.

It's good for business, but I'm okay having at least one or two days off a week. That would also be awesome. Thank you. Two games on that Monday. Oh, that's right. Remember? It went from the final two weekends of the NFL regular season right into the college football playoff. So then we had the double header on New Year's Day in the semifinals. We had the championship the following Monday. Again, right after wild card. Well, right after the regular season. Then we had wild card weekend with two games on Monday after bills and Steelers were pushed because of the snow. Right. There's been not a single day off until last Saturday when we finally had a day off in January. And now look, here we are and we're into February for most of the United States. So, right.

It's after hours with Amy Lawrence, CBS Sports Radio 855-212-4227. Or on Twitter, ALawRadio and then our Facebook page, too. We've connected with a bunch of leap year babies, so that's neat. Considering that February does feature a leap year, it's a unique way to mark a birthday. And I was sure there were way more than 185,000 leap year babies in the United States. But according to a caller earlier in the show from Oregon, I think, his name was Franklin. He told us that there's a secret society. And every year that there actually is a February 29th, a leap day, well then they get together.

Bars and restaurants all over the country. We need to invade one of those parties. That would be super fun. If I was a leap baby, I would be all over that. You're so close!

I am close. But I can't- Actually, if you take a copy of your birth certificate and it says 7, you can easily take a really fine print sharpie and turn that into a 9. And at quick glance, nobody would have any idea that your 7 turned into a 9. I could do that, but I feel like I don't want to- Invade their secret society? No, I want to invade their secret society, but I don't want to do it, like, elusively. I want them to accept me. I don't want to, like- Oh.

Almost accept you because you were so close? Yeah, kind of, but I feel like they're not going to. You gotta be a leap baby or not.

No, you can't. They've suffered so much in their lifetimes that now they're not going to accept members who don't actually belong. That'd be like saying you're in the billionaire's club when you aren't even worth $100,000. Right. Jay is, I'm sure, worth more than $100,000.

Minus a couple zeros. Okay, so before we get to Micah Parsons, I realize that this may sound as though I'm contradicting myself, but I'm not. I'm merely passing along the information. I'm not telling you what to do with your social media, how to do with your social media.

I would only advise caution when it comes to social media. And along those lines, when I was in Alabama- Alabama. When I was in Augusta last week, speaking to a room full of college athletes and also young college administrators, females mostly. As I was speaking to them and delivering my keynote address, I don't think I ever shared a picture from that.

Oh well, you know what I look like. So I was there and I was speaking to them and I was talking about the theme of identity. So that was really my umbrella for my keynote address. As a side note, I had way more material than I needed. But some other friends of mine who are far more accomplished public speakers have told me that that's generally how it goes. That you stand up to speak and because of the various ways that you may ad-lib or you may tell stories or get off on tangents. Which I didn't do but I did tell some stories.

You almost always have more written down in your notes than you ever have a chance to get to. So I feel like maybe I'm not as quite a big a failure in that respect. But anyway, one of my major thrusts of this keynote address was caution about social media. And how it is in direct conflict with your identity and who you know that you are. And who other people that know you know that you are. Okay, so we're not talking about people who don't know you. But that's primarily what social media is. It's a bunch of people who don't know you who are weighing in on your life, your decisions, your thoughts, your opinions.

Sometimes what you look like which really shouldn't matter at all. And yet that's what social media is. It's the opposite of social. It's usually anti-social because it keeps us from having interpersonal communication face to face.

Instead it separates us by keeping us digital and keeping us keyboard to keyboard instead of face to face. And it's also not media because truth is irrelevant on social media. So I was talking about the way that social media is a direct attack on your identity as a young woman specifically.

And definitely as an athlete. The more you're in the public eye, the more that social media runs contradictory to what you know and what you believe about yourself. And it becomes a challenge.

This is why I'm always really cautious with my nieces. It becomes a challenge to remain confident if you spend too much time on social media. I'm telling you, there is a crisis in our country when it comes to young people and social media because it's toxic.

It's toxic. And if you're young and you don't understand that most of what's on social media is complete garbage and not true, well then you take it to heart and it starts to impact who you are. And it becomes a poor substitute for validation and for confidence and for value and identity and truth because you're too busy stuck in this fake world of social media where anything goes.

And again, most of it's not even authentic. So I was talking to them about this and also Jay gave them a warning that I would give to every public figure and athlete. When you post, ask yourself the question, am I okay with the whole world seeing this?

Once you put it out there, it never goes away. I don't care how quickly you post it and then delete it. If you are a public figure, someone will screenshot it. Someone will take a picture. Someone will reply or respond or make sure because that's what people do.

If they think it's going to be even the slightest bit controversial, they'll take a screenshot immediately. It never goes away. A compromising picture or some type of music lyrics that can be taken out of context, they never go away. Just beware, anything you put on social, put on the internet, it's there permanently. Unless the government wipes it for you, which isn't likely to happen.

They might use it to hold it against you. Anyway, so all of that as a run up to what I heard on the news on my way into work. The CEOs of the major social media platforms in the world, well, the United States specifically, were on Capitol Hill as part of a congressional committee hearing. And one of them was Mark Zuckerberg.

And he, of course, is Facebook and Instagram. And he was accused by a senator, I heard her voice, so I heard this. He was accused by a senator, and she was pretty snarky about it, of trying to make Facebook the number one sex trafficking outlet in the world. And he tried to cut her off. He tried to respond, not cut her off, he tried to respond, he tried to inject.

And that's not true, Madam Senator, that's not true. And she just got more and more incensed over what she believes and what they believe is happening on these various sites. Now, these, and I'd have to go and make sure I knew exactly which platforms. But the big lawsuits that have been filed against some of the social media sites, including Facebook and Instagram, are that they specifically target children. Children who don't have the experience, the knowledge, the wisdom, or really the age and understanding, to be able to separate what's real and what's fake. Or who don't have the wisdom to not communicate with people that are strangers on the internet. And that they market children, some of these sites, on purpose to suck them in, so that they are then addicted to social media, number one.

But also, number two, they become enamored of products that are harmful to them. And so, this is the latest thing. Zuckerberg apologized to the parents of victims of online trafficking or exploitation in this Senate hearing. He said that children who are harmed by social media deserve an apology.

And again, it got very heated on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. Though he did push back when a senator accused him of actually trying to make Facebook a place where sex trafficking is rampant or is allowed. A lot of this comes from children and young people who are victims of online bullying. And who, again, are lured into chat rooms or conversations with predators, with people who are not who they say they are. And children don't know how to differentiate.

Children don't know how to recognize the warning signs or the red flags. So, here are the platforms that were involved. Facebook and Insta, which is Zuckerberg. Snap, is that now Snapchat? So, Snap is Snapchat.

I'm not sure. I don't know Snap unless, of course, it's Snapchat. X, which is Elon Musk. And then TikTok. And the hearing was looking at child sexual exploitation online.

And it also featured videos from kids that spoke about their experiences. The committee chair, whose name is Dick Durbin. He went after these CEOs and even told Zuckerberg he, quote, had blood on his hands from a product that's killing people. So, it's been a goal, I would say, of some lawmakers for years to figure out how to traffic and police the internet. But it's almost impossible. It's like trying to rope a whale. It's just, it's almost impossible.

Or a dinosaur trying to rope a T-Rex. I mean, you're throwing such small, insignificant potential solutions at a monster. How do you, I mean, the internet has no time and space. It's just, it's, yeah. Never finished. Right.

It's infinite now. Exactly. Snap is Snapchat, by the way. Snap Incorporated. Okay.

Thank you. So, the pushback from these social media CEOs was to point to their child safety procedures. And I know a lot of these platforms are trying to improve some of the checks and balances when it comes to kids.

And they've pledged now that they'll work with lawmakers and parents and nonprofits. But I don't know how you safeguard children. You may remember, for those of you who are my age or older, I guess even a little bit younger, there was this push going back to TVs years ago where they would put V-chips on TV so that parents, it was an older technology, but so that parents could A, monitor and B, block their children from seeing particular programs. And now there are ways that you can have parental controls and what your kids do on their phones or on the computers. Except, again, it's available everywhere with smartphones, a touch of a button. And you can you can be as a kid in a chat room or online or on social media. And how once your kid learns how to download an app onto his phone, a lot of my friends who have kids who are either young teens or teenagers, they get social media accounts simply so they can monitor what their kids are doing. But there's always DMs. There's always kind of private chats. It's scary.

It's really scary. I'm so thankful that my nieces couldn't care less about social media. They're on Instagram. That's why my sister in law is on it so she can watch. I know that my husband, he has an Instagram account, which cracks me up, just so that he can follow along with what his sons are posting and what they're doing. And he's on there almost every day looking just to kind of be sure that there's nothing that pops up or nothing that grabs his attention. Wouldn't that be great if his sons were listening? One of his sons listens to the show, but I'm sure he knows. I'm sure he and his dad have had this conversation.

So there are potentially going to be rules and laws in place. But if nothing else, Jay, here's the part that blew me away. They kept calling it an addiction to social media, a social media addiction, which have you ever tried to put your phone down for, say, a week? Now, texting and phone calls, that's one thing. You and I text obviously every day. It's for work. But have you ever tried not going on social media for, say, an entire week? It's not easy. It's not, because you get kind of in that rat race, and you and I use it for work.

Right. As you know, I'm not someone who tweets personally really at all. No, you don't post at all. I use your Facebook page more than you do. Well, our work page, but I use your Facebook account more than you do. But I still am on it, constantly just for checking news, constant updates. And it is toxic, the number of ads. I actually thought that I was looking at a post, a legit post, earlier this week, and it was an ad. And I, whoa, like you get on it, and all of a sudden other windows pop up and everything happens. I got a Mendeley Bay ad the other day, just from talking. Just from talking about it.

Why else would I get that, right? Yeah, the phones are, they have all these fine print lines where if you don't read it all, they're allowed to sell your information. They're allowed to use it to market to other companies. Yeah, it's, as I've heard one ex-military say, your phone is essentially just a tracking device.

They can keep track of everything that you're saying, everything that you're doing, whoever has your permissions, you actually have to shut them off. And so it's a little scary out there. But yeah, there may soon in the future be warnings about social media addiction.

You know what this reminds me of? And I wasn't alive then, and I've never smoked. But going back to the 70s and even before that, where tobacco companies would market their products, their cigarettes or other products, in a way that made them appealing to kids. And then fast forward, isn't that what vaping has done in e-cigarettes, right? And now they're under fire from lawmakers.

You look at any stadium from the 70s or maybe early 80s or any footage of any old game, just Shea Stadium, for example, here in New York. Marlboro ads all across the outfield. Yeah, right, the Marlboro Man, it was made to look sexy and appealing. But then it became so evident that the marketing itself is what was getting people involved. And again, with young people, there may not be as discerning, they may not be as wise about what could be harmful to them. The e-cigarettes, the bubblegum flavors, that kind of stuff to make it seem like it's candy and not actually harmful.

Chewing tobacco, gum that's wrapped around chewing tobacco, look, all these different kinds of things. And now social media is the latest deal where you can actually have an addiction to it. I try to go at least twice a year, a full week, without looking at it.

So post-wedding until Christmas Day, eight days, wasn't on social media at all. And it was really good for me. It just reminds you that you don't need it. No, you really don't.

You don't need it. And every day when I turn it off in the morning, I think, ah, okay. Isn't it refreshing to not know when something's going on and then to learn about it like the people used to? I don't know. Oh wow, that happened? Oh, I didn't hear about that. Now it's just, there's nothing you haven't heard about because you hear about everything every second after it happens. Except here's the other part that, as you say that, did you know, and this keeps happening, but an entire digital news site shut down on Wednesday.

It's called The Messenger. It was poorly run, but it was a $50 million venture that just went belly up. Hired 300 different journalists of all walks of life. They found out the site was going dark on social media. The news was broken by another media outlet, I think New York Times, but don't quote me on that. So the employees of The Messenger found out on social media.

It's horrible. I mean, we had a, not, obviously not the same, but we found out in big news recently on social media. Yeah, we found out our boss was leaving on social media. We didn't get an email. We didn't get a text from the boss.

Nope, we found out on Twitter. Exactly right. Yeah.

All right then. So yeah, social media under fire for a lot of things, but specifically the harmful practices, the bullying, the potential sex trafficking. I just, I know that we use it on a very regular basis and I'm on it three to four hours a day because of work responsibilities, easily. There used to be a third member of our team who would help us with social media, but now it's just me and Jay, and so we have to manage it all. Between that and YouTube and our podcast, I mean, we spend a ton of time on social media, and yet we recognize it's harmful.

So I tried it, like I said, I tried to speak some truth, some wisdom into these young women that I was speaking to last week and I hope that it resonated with them. All right, I swear, we're going to get to Micah Parsons, but I mean, social media is a very real part of the sports industry too. They always stay on Twitter.

It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports. The Sultan of Sizzle, the Titan of Toastiness, the Kingpin of Kindling. These are the admired ones, those who've created the prime place together. They don't just have a backyard, they have the backyard because they know a Solo Stove Fire Pit is more than just the ultimate smokeless fire pit. It's a place where friendships are forged, football is revered, and food is enjoyed. Solo Stove, the perfect flame for the big game.

A Peanut Butter M&M's Production. In a world where Super Bowl winners get the world's admiration and a fancy ring, but the runners-up get nothing, one retired cop returns. That's one retired quarterback. Read the script.

Oh, sorry. One retired quarterback returns to claim what's his. Um, that's claim a ring with diamonds made from M&M's peanut butter, but you're on a roll.

The Ring of Comfort, coming soon to a Super Bowl new you. Your fever is high and the pressure to log in at work is too. But when you finally decide to take care of you, there's Instacart. Just because that one perfect coworker of yours is attending all meetings, camera on while she's sneezing, coughing, and aching doesn't mean you have to do the same. Take it from us, trying to stay on top of things will only get you further behind. Instead, get everything from tissues and teas to cough suppressants and comforting soups delivered through Instacart in as fast as 30 minutes.

If anyone needs anything, they can just redirect their questions to that one perfect coworker of yours. Radio. You are listening to the After Hours podcast. Jordan Love takes and drops to a knee and that will do it. The youngest team in the NFL, the little team that could, came into Big D and take out the Cowboys. Frustrated, as you just said, is the great word for my play. The way that we came out here and we started this game and then just shocked, honestly. You know, they made more plays than we did. So, I mean, a big play production was, we were minus three at halftime and, you know, we just, you know, we didn't make enough, you know, we didn't get the stops and, you know, didn't, you know, didn't get it to a two-score game quick enough. There was plenty of blame to go around for the Dallas Cowboys as they were smothered and then crushed by the Green Bay Packers.

This was still one of the most stunning games of the playoffs. And if you remember it, Green Bay opted to receive the opening kick. That was their strategy to go right at the Dallas defense. They were heavy Aaron Jones at the beginning.

They were playing a ball control game. Jones had two TDs before the Cowboys could ever escape. Dak had an interception early and Jordan Love, he was locked in. There was a 93-yard drive in the first half in which he was six for six and he hit Romeo Dobbs and he hit Dontavion Wicks and there was a pick-six, Bardeno Savage, right, that made it 27-nothing. And that wasn't the end for the Cowboys, but it was the beginning of the morbid march at an early exit from the playoffs.

It's after hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. It was the first loss in 17 games at home. It was the most points allowed by the Cowboys in their playoff history.

It was a bloodbath. And we had not heard from Micah Parsons, their Defensive Player of the Year candidate. We had not heard from him until finally he emerged from his morning.

I don't know if he's still wearing black. Cry later. Yeah. I mean, you may remember what he said about the Niners going back to the regular season. Was it week five? Laugh now, cry later. Laugh now, cry later. But that's actually what he and the Cowboys were doing after falling at home in such an embarrassing fashion. So Micah finally drops a new episode of his podcast called The Edge with Micah Parsons and he fesses up that it was just brutal. At the end of the day, we were just outperformed, out skiing.

They had an answer for everything. People saying, well, why don't you go to linebacker? Guess what? The packages are in for me to go to linebacker. I can only play what it's called. I'm not putting out personnel. I've even told multiple players, coaches that I'm very fine playing linebacker in playoffs if that's what y'all want me to do. I just want to win. I do see a Super Bowl in my future.

I want to be a Super Bowl champion. I challenge anyone to actually go look at the game film and say that Micah played his heart out. To go out like that at home was completely embarrassing and unacceptable. It took me a while to even be able to show my face in the public. It took me a while to even be able to show my face in public. I actually hurt for him. That's tough. But depending upon where he makes his home and where he was in the wake of that game, I can imagine wanting to be a hermit and just stay indoors or maybe jet off somewhere to another country where nobody knows my name and nobody knows my face.

I want to get the heck out of Dodge or maybe a darkness retreat, which is always an option. Aaron Rodgers can probably hook you up. Micah Parsons, he's just owning it. I'm at complete peace. And I say that because I don't think I could have done anything more to try to win that game. Sometimes the watching film with the other guys in the room, saying what I'm seeing, being vocal out there on the field.

I was completely at peace because I know I don't have no regrets about how I performed or what I put into the game. He does play with wild abandon. There have been some responses to Micah's podcast and his comments about the game that he was pointing the fingers elsewhere. Jay, I don't feel that way. I mean, he's saying it was embarrassing and I couldn't show my face in public. He was saying that he offered to do other things, but that wasn't the call.

But I don't think that's blame. It's just, hey, this is how it goes. I can be ready, but if they're not going to use me, I'm not the coach. I'm just the guy who's out there.

I do what they tell me to do. Now, he did defend Dak Prescott, which I appreciate. And coupled with the comments from Jerry Jones at the Senior Bowl, there's pretty stark contrast. I don't know, maybe it's just me, Jay, but I feel like the way that Jerry talked about Dak Prescott and the way that Micah talked about Dak Prescott, completely different.

Okay, so here's Jerry Jones, who's at the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama. When asked about Dak Prescott in the wild card game. I think that we, as a team, laid an egg. And that's not specifically I want to say it and respond that way.

And you could start here, and I'm not trying to be magnanimous or anything, but you can start here and you can go all the way down the line. That was a bad day for us. It definitely was a bad day for us, as he points out. Now, Dak, because they were behind most of the game, yes, he threw the two first half interceptions and one was a pick six, brutal. He ended up throwing 60 passes, 41 of 60. He was over 400 yards. They tacked on a couple of scores late. Three touchdowns, two picks, four sacks. He was under fire a bunch, meaning they were all up in his grill.

C.D. Lamb and he were just out of sync, right? Remember, they really couldn't come up with a whole lot. So a lot of these stats are padded because most of the damage, and I'm using my air quotations, damage they did came much later in the game when the Packers were all but crowned. Meanwhile, I don't, okay, he did throw two picks, and there were 14 points off turnover, so that's part of it. But they lost by 16, and the defense has to bear some responsibility. They ran the ball like it was going out of style against the Cowboys. And so the Cowboys' defense is just as much to blame. Dan Quinn, I'm not surprised he didn't get a head coaching job, although I guess there's still a chance in Washington.

But after that performance, being the last thing that possible employers see, the defense was embarrassed. All right, so then Dak Prescott, as much as he is to blame, it's interesting because I feel like there's a lot more that you can say that has nothing to do with the quarterback. Dak has done nothing to change my mind or any promise for the future. I think I said in the deal that we'd go as far as Dak takes us in the playoffs.

Remember that? Right. Go as far as Dak takes us. Right.

How do you feel he played? And that's how far we'll win. Oh, God.

That part I don't love. Of course, that's Jerry Jones. We'll go as far as he takes us in the playoffs. What about the defense, though? All right, Dak doesn't play defense. With two players on it, up for Defensive Player of the Year, right?

Yeah. Well, and Dak is an Offensive Player of the Year candidate. All right, here's Micah. Micah will always defend his quarterback. Could've, would've, should've been an MVP, but he's not. To put that narrative, you know, people want to drive whatever narrative that fits best for them. And that's what I'm realizing about this game of football. And that's what kind of drives a way that happens because people don't appreciate how good someone has been.

They want to attack them for where they're at or what they have done and things like that. So I think Dak came a long way. Obviously, one of his better years since I've been with the Cowboys. So, that narrative of we wanted a different quarterback or we want a different guy, I think he's been a great leader. That's good.

I'm glad. Dak is still the quarterback. Mike McCarthy's still the coach. A lot of Cowboys fans, I'm sure, disgruntled because the playoff results aren't there. But at the same time, this was a record year for them in a lot of ways. Both Mike and Dak, it could get better. As long as they stay healthy, it can definitely get better. If something should happen to Dak. Sounds very ominous.

Alright, coming up. I told you so. I told you the merger between Liv and PGA was a total sham. It was all a PR stunt. It was all the PGA tour trying to pull the wool over our eyes.

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Thanks to our nationwide logistics network. Yep, Graybar does that. Crap! Thank you. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence.

You are listening to the After Hours Podcast. I would say that my reaction was surprised. Just like I'm sure a lot of the players were taken back by it, what had happened. And so quickly and without any input or any kind of information about it. And it was just thrown out there. And I was very surprised that the process was what it was.

This is After Hours with Amy Lawrence. That goes back to November. Remember, Tiger resurfaced at his Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas. And that was when he was playing again. And there were lots of questions about his health. But it was also the first time we had heard from him since the announcement of the Live PGA Tour and then the European Tour, which is a DPA. I can't remember the name of it now.

It's something something world tour. Anyway, the three of them were supposed to be merging. And it was the first we'd heard from Tiger. And so even though it was November, he was responding to the bombshell news that had happened back in May.

As we were talking about social media. Yeah, a lot of golfers found out about it via social, not directly. They were kept in the dark, including one very angry and betrayed, Rory McIlroy. We started to hear from them now as they get back to some of the more major tournaments where your top golfers are playing. And they are confirming what I have believed all along. I don't like to say I told you so, but in this case, PGA Tour, I told you so.

It's after hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. Did you see the big news? Keeping in mind now we're into February and there have been no details of this merger that were ever disclosed.

The deadline was New Year's Eve. We were supposed to have the unveiling of their grand plan, their scheme to combine these tours. And essentially for Live and PGA to combine forces. And while they would each keep their own individual stops along the tour, which by the way, I just told Jay this, I discovered the Live Tour kicks off its 24th season in Vegas over Super Bowl weekend.

We may need to go take it to Live Tour event. It's a major star power now. Anyway, there was never an announcement made.

We never heard word one that would actually give substance and form to this merger. And I've believed now for months that this was a total sham move by the PGA Tour just to get the money. Just to get the influx of the money from the PIF, which is the Saudi Arabian fund that they use to sponsor sporting events and other big investments around the world. That's where the money for Live comes from.

That's how they can pay hundreds of millions of dollars up front to guys like Jon Rahm, who defected a couple months ago and is still recruiting his team. Every day now it seems like you get more and more names. Live is actually expanding. So as much as Rory wanted us to believe that it was going under, going belly up, Phil Mickelson in that smug, arrogant way that he has told us there's no way.

It's not going under and it's only going to grow. Let it go, dude. Let it go. He feels so validated by the success of Live. He was the first like, it wasn't the first in effect, but the first guy to really stand in the line of fire. And he got battered. And that's partly his own fault. So let's not feel badly for poor Phil.

Anyway, as more and more guys defect, as Jon Rahm is the biggest name, right? The Live tour is getting stronger, not weaker. PGA got a bunch of money and the lawsuits went away. But to me, that was the only goal. They were going to hem and haw and stall. Maybe Live even believed there'd be a merger. But Jay Monahan and the PGA tour never intended. The PGA tour board, the executive board, they never intended to do an actual merger. They just wanted the money and the lawsuits to go away. And they got what they wanted.

And now the PGA tour has a new partnership, a real one, with strategic sports group that could offer up to $3 billion for the PGA tour. What do they need Live for? What do they need the PIF fund for?

Oh, I don't think they do. In fact, that's what Jordan Spieth is saying at Pebble Beach this week. I think the positive would be a unification, but I think that, like I mentioned before, I just think it's something that is almost not even worth talking about right this second, given how timely everything would be to try to get it figured out. But the idea is that we have a strategic partner that allows the PGA tour to go forward the way that it's operating right now without anything else, with the option of other investors, whether them or somebody else. That'll just be a decision with them obviously being, you know, the active talks. But I think the short answer is we don't have to.

Yeah, we don't have to merge anymore. And with this new infusion of cash, and it actually comes from billionaire sports team owners around the country, that's where this money comes from. It's like a special strategic sports group that is formed by a bunch of other franchise owners across the board in different sports. Now PGA tour members will have the option, it's going to be for profit, no longer nonprofit, and they'll have the option of becoming actual investors like stakeholders in the PGA tour. And so the money is coming in. Why do they need PIF?

Why do they need LIV? Doesn't sound like we're any closer to a merger, Jordan. We have members that feel strongly on both sides. And so until that would be able to be solved, and that would be number 10 on the list of 10 things, despite any government interference on what they've talked about being a lengthy process, you know, it would be a situation that should be, we should try to have, but I'm not sure, you know, if or how or when it would get done. Exactly, it's not getting done. The PGA took the cash and then stalled and hemmed and hawed and doesn't really intend to merge and is now looking for a different funding source.

It's a complete crap. Right. Meanwhile, Rory McIlroy, he's changed his tune. He just wants them all to get along and be friends and play together. To me, the faster that we can all get back together and start to play and start to have, you know, the strongest feels possible, I think is great for golf.

It's great for golf. Do you remember how often he told us that he couldn't wait for Liv to go belly up? Hit Liv.

I mean, I hate Liv. He couldn't wait for the whole tour to just implode. He took aim at Greg Norman.

Rory was the self-described Marvel defender of the PGA Tour. And now he wants the Liv guys to be allowed back to major events and to other events that take place on the circuit. It's because they all know what I'm telling you. There's no merger.

There's no merger. We're just going to pretend. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence, CBS Sports Radio. The Ring of Comfort, coming soon to a Super Bowl new you. We'll be right back. Thanks to our nationwide logistics network. Yep, Craybar does that.