Don’t be alarmed if you heard a loud noise yesterday — it was the sound of thousands of March Madness brackets shattering. Last night, UConn made a remarkable comeback against Duke, the number one seed in the NCAA Tournament. [Down by 2 with] only 0.4 seconds left in the game, freshman Braylon Mullins made an incredible 3-point shot, scoring the winning basket for UConn.
On this episode of Offsides, Pablo and Jen talk everything March Madness. The two also discuss the two foils of the golf world: Tiger Woods and Gary Woodland.
Pablo Torre is an American sportswriter, podcaster, and television host. He contributes to various programs at ESPN, including Pardon The Interruption and Around The Horn. Keep up with Pablo on his Substack and podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out .
The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes.
Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, editor-in-Chief of The Contrarian. If it’s Monday, it must be Pablo Torre. Pablo, welcome!
Pablo Torre
Jen, thanks for having me back. Despite everything I’ve said, thanks for having me back.
Jen Rubin
There you go. Well, we, have a celebrity in our midst, because Pablo, ladies and gentlemen, is a three-time Emmy nominee. Tell us about that, and tell us, what your reaction was when you heard the news.
Pablo Torre
Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, it’s surreal. I mean, the two categories we’re in, and it’s two categories, three nominations, which is kind of what’s wild to me about it, were two of the four nominees in the sports journalism category, which I didn’t think was even possible, but we’ve been talking all year about independent journalism and the impact that we’ve been trying to make on the show. And, it’s really encouraging to see, like, you know, the establishment, the television world, recognize that what we’re doing on our YouTube channel is also something that’s on par with the big-budget Network Properties, and so the other category is, Best Edited Hosted Series, which also puts us in a category with Amazon and ESPN and, you know, Warner Bros., Discovery, and Fox. I mean, it’s kind of wild that our little thing gets to be in that same room and gets to you know, aspire to the highest levels of the industry, so it’s been a joy for our team, really, it has been.
Jen Rubin
Well, a couple things. First of all, you’re competing against yourself in one of these categories.
Pablo Torre
That’s right.
Jen Rubin
And the other is, as you said, I think in a public statement, you… took a bit of a risk here. You could have just done an ordinary kind of sports show. You’re well known enough, but you decided to do something different that really paid off. Talk a little bit about, kind of, that basic decision you made about what kind of show you wanted to do, what kind of work you wanted to do.
Pablo Torre
Yeah, look, journalism is expensive and requires more than one person, you know? If you’re gonna build a newsroom, a key to that premise is that it’s not just you alone, just sort of, like, talking. And so, for me, there’s an alternate path in which it is a show that’s very cheap to make, and is perhaps popular in its own way, and it’s a chat show. And I love that format, it’s very fun, but for me, the desert that I have noticed emerging in, of course, news in general, but sports especially, is around reporting.
And so, for us to say, we want to go all in on hiring a team that’s going to really fetishize reporting, which is to say, inefficiency at times, which is to say, no guarantee that this is the most bang for your buck on the most… primal content level. It was… it was a bet that media, at its best. Still deserves and can still support rigor. And in that way, you know, doing it independently was scary, but this is the sort of thing, when we have these meetings at our show, where we feel vindicated to take a risk like that.
Jen Rubin
And you hope that because independent media has shown that 90% of this is a will to do the work, that some of the legacy media outlets will look around and say, okay, they’re beating our pants here, maybe we need to devote some more resources, maybe we don’t need the lowest common denominator, but take some risks, do some in-depth work here. Because I think they’ve gotten kind of lazy, quite frankly, and used to just shoveling out, you know, the lowest common denominator.
Pablo Torre
Yeah, and by the way, people are starving for this kind of work. I mean. So that’s the other selfish incentive here, is that when everyone abdicated the race that I’m describing, the race to do in-depth journalism in a long-form way, especially, what that created was a pent-up demand. And it’s interesting, and I think you feel this in politics all the time, where, like, the stuff that still fuels the internet is news. News and information is still the stuff that fuels the internet, and smart analysis of that stuff. close behind, and so the question then becomes, what if you were also, in our world of sports, what if we were not merely reacting to headlines, but also making them? And that, from a journalistic perspective, is something that I dare say has caught the attention of places with far bigger budgets, and longer.
Jen Rubin
It absolutely has. And, the proof is in the pudding, folks. It’s the size of the audience, and it’s the critical recognition that you’ve gotten. So, let’s talk about a game yesterday. that, and let’s be honest, there is a contingent of Duke basketball haters out there. They will probably mark their calendar for March 29th and have celebrations for years to come, because they had a 19-point lead in the men’s Elite Eight against UConn, and… lost it. Come undone!
Pablo Torre
It’s never come undone like that, so a number one seed up by 15 points at halftime, historically, up until last night, was 134-0. They had never lost, and so Duke, you’re right, I mean… what happened at the end of that game was both a coaching error, because there was a turnover right around half court that was unnecessary because the clock was all but done. I mean, the game was all but over. And so if they merely held on to the ball, I think they would have had a better shot at avoiding one of the great choke jobs in college basketball history, but that’s what this was. And so you had this UConn kid, this freshman take one of the, I would say, the purest sounding threes from… 45 feet away, and in the process, of course, it brought a country together, Jen. It really is—Duke choking is something that is a rare antidote to the fragmentation and division that has befallen.
But in that, America gathered around its televisions and said, maybe we can believe in a better world once again.
Jen Rubin
Now, Duke, people are calling to get a new head coach. Do you think that’s gonna happen? You think there’s… they’re gonna go that far, or do you think this is gonna be a lesson learned and they move on?
Pablo Torre
I don’t think they’re gonna fire Jon Scheyer. I’m old enough to remember Jon Scheyer being a player, and so that’s the sort of era that we’re in. I’m, like, watching this guy take over for Coach K. Look, I don’t think he’s gonna get fired, but it reminds me of one of the great truisms in sports, and perhaps in life, which is that you don’t want to follow the guy. Coach K, all-time great, maybe one of the Mount Rushmore-level coaches, in sports. You don’t want to follow the guy. You want to be the guy who follows the guy who follows the guy. You want to replace Jon Scheyer, you don’t want to be Jon Scheyer. You don’t want to have to fill that void.
And when you have a loss like this—I mean, look, Duke has a history of such losses, but last year, again, we’re talking about you know, the last weekends of the tournament, and they blew a lead to get knocked out back then, in the Final Four. And so, to miss your Final Four on that kind of a shot, that was a self-inflicted wound, I think he has more time, but it is… I would take the under, let’s put it that way, if you’re gonna set the line at, like, how many more.
Jen Rubin
Yeah, limited, limited time. And you have to give credit to UConn. First of all, they didn’t give up when they were 19 points back. And secondly, as bad as this coaching and decision-making was. But he stole the ball, and he made an incredible 3-point shot. So, credit where credit is due.
You know, had they missed it, everyone would have just said, oh, good try, and gone on.
Pablo Torre
No, there are cojones, psychological fortitude in the resilience of that team. And by the way, Connecticut, you know, we’re living in this era that’s post-Cinderella’s, you know, we’re talking about all of these teams, a more efficient market because of talent distribution and all that. Connecticut seems to be as close to a— again, dynasties are really hard to come by, but if you look at the last decade of Connecticut basketball, I mean, it’s really impressive what they’ve built.
And those players in particular, it’s as we often remember the cliches that sounded old and boring, but are now renewed in an era of general desperation, not giving up. Like, this is one of those case studies that coaches will play for their players for eternity! Remember what UConn did to Duke on March 29th, when players are gonna dog it at the end of the game.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. Now we’re down to our Final Four. Who do you like?
Pablo Torre
Michigan is having a very easy road compared to Arizona, in the other side of the bracket. So, personally, so it’s Illinois. And it is UConn on one side, and it is Michigan and Arizona. I like UConn, and I like Michigan, and I like UConn to win the whole thing. And it’s in part because of what we just described, and it’s in part because I believe Michigan just won its game by, like, a 30-point blowout. And I like, I like a team that feels, yeah, like it’s settled into something, as opposed to one that’s fighting for its life. Unless, of course, it’s the UConn Huskies winning games like that, in which case, good luck. Good luck against them.
Jen Rubin
Well, in some ways. Illinois hasn’t gotten, enough credit as kind of a Cinderella team. They won the 9th seed on a relative basis. And I think it’s perhaps because they’re a Big Ten school, they’re a big school, so people don’t think of this as, oh, a quirky little St. John’s, or a scruffy little University of Dayton, but in some respects, they really have played well over, the expectations. So, kudos to them. On the women’s side, who do you like there? And, could we have a situation where UConn, wins everywhere?
Pablo Torre
Well, here’s the thing. So, right now, if you’re sparing a thought, spare a thought for Duke as well, on the women’s side, because they also choked away a giant lead in their game to get eliminated right before the Final Four. But yeah, look, UConn, South Carolina, I said it to you at the very beginning, there’s a predictability to those programs, and so yeah, UConn just steamrolling Notre Dame makes me think that I would not want to pick against UConn either. But yeah, as always, I think Don Staley and South Carolina are right there, and so I think it’s a coin flip between those two teams.
Jen Rubin
There was a lovely story about Peyton Manning recently, that he was considering whether to come back, or go into the draft, and he went and talked to Pat Summitt who is the legendary women’s coach. And she, of course, had a tragic, tragic, untimely demise, early onset dementia. But he talked about how she spent time with him, even 2 hours of her time. talked him through the process, and we forget, when we have the John Shires and all the win-loss, the role these people can make in… other individuals’ lives, and it just touched me so greatly, because we think of Pat Summitt as the greatest woman’s coach, maybe the greatest college coach, but she was also a phenomenal person, and it was really a nice reminder that We’re doing something beyond just basketball when we’re coaching young people, and that really was quite touching, didn’t you think?
Pablo Torre
For those not familiar, the Tennessee, the Lady Vols, their basketball program, an all-timer, of an institution, and Pat Summitt, one of the, again, the short list of greatest coaches ever. So the idea that Peyton Manning, like, the big-time quarterback, would go to the women’s basketball coach at Tennessee, that’s not so strange, which is lovely, right? That she is the foremost coaching institution at a big SEC school. It’s Pat Summitt, first and foremost.
Then the second thing is, yeah, look. The whole premise of college sports in the way that it has been protected, perhaps unfairly, from all sorts of change, always relied on something that was too rarely accurate. Which is that your head coach is genuinely a leader of young people. And when you think about Pat Summit, in contrast to the mercenary. coach who just goes and follows the paycheck and is merely trying to climb the ladder over and over and over again. Like, capitalistically, of course, I get it. Like, that’s not surprising that that, again, let’s just call it the Lane Kiffin syndrome, that that… that type exists, but the best version of it is when you have a person who is legitimately an inspirational figure that makes the people around her better. And I don’t think anybody can think cynically in that regard about Pat Summit.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. Let’s move over to golf and talk about, the wonderful and the miserable. We had Gary Woodland, who most people know had brain surgery, a while back. What people didn’t know is that he had massive issues after that, essentially PTSD. And, he concealed this, he tried to cope with this, there’s a whole variety of things he has to overcome when he goes out on the golf course. And he has been forthcoming about that now, and he won the Houston Open. So, here is a guy who has battled demons was the only way to put it, and yet survived.
And then you have Tiger Woods. Fourth serious accident. Had refused a urinalysis exam, flipped over a vehicle, neither he nor the other driver were hurt, but frankly, both of them could have been killed. Talk to us about this contrast, and what has happened to Tiger Woods, the person, and what we can learn from Gary Woodland.
Pablo Torre
Yeah, so, look, Tiger Woods, I want to be sympathetic while also being a realist. There is no excuse for him to not have a driver at this point in his life. And I mean that as a guy who drives him around in a vehicle, like a guy, an Uber, maybe. Tiger Woods, three times now in the last decade, has had car accidents like this, and I am sympathetic because it is very clear that it stems from something like, not merely, a PTSD-style struggle with horrific injury, which has led to dependencies on pharmaceutical drugs. I mean, it’s interesting to go through the timeline of when he crashes his cars. And they follow major surgeries and attempted comebacks, and right now, we were just talking, last week about, is Tiger finally gonna be back to swing a club again? Will he be in the Masters this year, coming up?
All of this stuff kind of lines up with a guy who was trying perhaps naively, to reclaim something like his old self. And that is a whole bundle of psychology. But man, there’s a human cost to that irresponsibility. You know, like, anybody who’s… I don’t need to belabor the dangers of driving under the influence, but this is 3 times that Tiger has done this. So that’s the one end of the spectrum. You have a child star in Tiger Woods, a former child star who becomes a 50-year-old man and is not able still to really act with other people’s interests in mind, which is tragic, on every level.
But then Gary Woodland. You know, it’s, it’s this palate cleanser. It’s this palate cleanser of, like, oh my god, what if there are comebacks? And again, there are, perhaps. expiration dates on any good vibes in sports, right? We see for another shoe to drop, but, like. What he went through, his own surgeries. Battling his own mental demons, coming back to win. this is… this is the… it’s what we hope for for a guy in Tiger who is universes more accomplished than Gary Woodland, and yet Gary Woodland gets to have the purity of that experience, and we benefit from the fact that that’s still possible.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. And my first reaction when I heard about the Tiger news was sadness. There is apparently no one around him who cares enough to intervene, and who is able to. And you contrast that with Gary Woodland, who has family, friends, doctors, a caddy, who all look after him. Just simple things, like walking along a course and having someone come up from behind can be a traumatic event for him. So he literally has people with eyes on him. That seems so sad, that with all this fame and all this glory, there’s not a single person who can go and take away the keys from Tiger Woods.
Pablo Torre
You don’t even need to do the thing, which I’m tempted to do, of course, which is to point out who Tiger Woods is hanging out with these days. But he’s in the Trump orbit, the Trump network, and I don’t even need to go there to make the point that you just made, which is, at a certain point, if you have proven that you can’t decide to save yourself, you hope that someone else that likes you does. And we await that person to intervene.
Jen Rubin
Very sad, very sad. Let’s, finish up with tennis, which is kind of a feel-good part of sports these days. There are two tournaments back-to-back, one in Indian Wells, and the one just completed in Miami, which has been dubbed the Sunshine Double. This is great marketing, because there was no such thing as a Sunshine Double, and somebody came up with this idea and marketed it. And what happened this year is, the women’s champ, Sabalenka, and the men’s champ Sinner won the double, won both in Indian Wells and Miami.
And Sabalenka’s final match against Coco was very competitive, and kudos to Coco. She is competitive these days, she doesn’t give up. Her strokes, I think, are much more confident. But, you really have to look at Sinner. He was dominating. He has not lost a set. in two tournaments, which is really kind of unheard of. Now, granted, Alcaraz wiped out early, but that’s just to say that you can wipe out early. And he has continued to innovate. It bothers him that he has lost to Alcaraz, and he keeps going back to refresh his game and get better and better.
And the thing that is most remarkable to me is he is second only to Pete Sampras. In serving accuracy, the closest he can come to hitting the lines with a serve that is going 130 miles plus per hour. I think you really have to hand it to a guy who’s been accused of being robotic, boring, all the rest of it. He’s really decided, I’m gonna keep improving. And that’s what sports is kind of about. You can be the greatest, or nearly the greatest, and yet get better.
Pablo Torre
Yeah, look, Sinner, when you see what most distinguishes him, you reference the sort of, like, the automatic nature of him, but he is nowhere… More automatic than he is on hardcourt. And so, look, we’re gonna get to Clay, and of course, we look forward to Alcaraz sort of turning around his season there, but… I was just looking at the numbers on Yannick Sinner, I mean, so the dude has won 246 of his first 300 hardcourt matches. So that was his 300th. That he won, in the second leg of the sunshine double, as they call it. That’s 82%.
And so that is better than Novak Djokovic, that is better than Federer, and really, you’re in the company of… Connors, Lendl, and McEnroe now, right? That’s… that’s the… that’s the rarefied territory when it comes to that surface that he’s… That he’s with, and so what do you say? He’s, he’s peaking at a time when there is this other guy that we expect to be right there, especially on clay. And so, I’m excited! I mean, this whole seasonality of tennis, the weather is a funny bit of an appetizer, because it was not sunshine, but best believe that we’re gonna move on, and you’re gonna see the dust kicking up, you’re gonna see the clay.
We will get our warmth, we will get our hot sun pretty soon.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely, absolutely, and I think it’s a tribute to both these stars. It’s one thing to reach the top of the game, and this is what makes Djokovic such a miracle. It’s another to stay there, and to continue to have the drive, and to practice, and to work at it, and that’s that gutting out, that sheer dedication that, again. You have to admire in sports. So it’s been quite a week. W
e still have the NCAA Finals, both men’s and women’s to go, and we’re not too far from the Masters, which, seems unbelievable, but, because there’s some Yeah, there’s some blooming in DC. I know, it must be spring. And of course, we all love those gorgeous, gorgeous images from the Masters. As we go out, just tell us what it’s like to be at the Masters, to kind of be there. Is it awe-inspiring? Is it, like, otherworldly, unlike other golf tournaments? Even, you know, the U.S. Open or the British Open, which kind of moves around from venue to venue?
Pablo Torre
I’ve talked to so many people about what it’s like to be at Augusta, and it is… singular. among all the country clubs that mythologize themselves, Augusta lives up to it. And one big reason why, which is a lesson that we can all internalize, is that that whole policy of, like, you can’t bring your phone… onto the grounds of this hallowed course is so real. It’s like, it’s this throwback to a time when no one’s on their phones, and a gain, it’s all manicured, of course, but, like, they lean into not just the azaleas and the birdsong, but just the premise of, like, what if we built a retreat in sports, where you felt like you were inside of this time capsule.
And the fact that Augusta is that much fun to watch at home… remotely with Jim Nance, you know, his mellifluous tones narrating over all of this. Yeah, everything that I’ve ever been told even beyond the delight of having, you know, Condoleezza Rice working the event, because every member works the Masters as well, and it’s like this Illuminati cast of characters, you know? Even beyond that, it’s the fact that you’re forced to unplug and really focus on one thing, and that one thing in golf is kind of a palate Cleanser.
Jen Rubin
There are those places in the world where you pinch yourself, and you’re in front of the Taj Mahal, or you’re in Westminster Cathedral, or Notre Dame, or the Grand Canyon. And, those are those awe-inspiring moments, even if this one is very man-made and very artificial, it’s beautiful.
So, Pablo, congratulations again on all of your success. We will be rooting for you, to come away with some beautiful statues, and if you do win, you gotta bring them on. They look very heavy, very beautiful, actually.
Pablo Torre
Much like my New York Yankees, if I were to win, I will be as obnoxious as possible, so thank you for the kind word.
Jen Rubin
Very good. All right, well, have a great week, and we will see you next week. Bye-bye.
Pablo Torre
See you then.
