What happens when America indiscriminately sends people to the notorious El Salvadorian prison, CECOT, with no oversight? We get stories like Jerce Reyes’, a soccer player from Venezuela who was falsely deported for reasons unknown, besides having a Real Madrid tattoo.
This week on Offsides, Pablo and Jen discuss the harsh truth regarding how Trump’s immigration policies only hurt America in the end. They also discuss the University of Michigan football coach controversy, the powerhouse that is Katie Ledecky, and much more. You don’t want to miss this one!
To listen to Pablo’s full conversation with Jerce Reyes and Paola Ramos, click here.
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.
Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin. If it’s Monday, it must be Pablo Torre. Pablo, welcome!
Pablo Torre
Jen, I’m gonna try to not update Donald Trump’s Truth Social feed enough for me to make an actual concerted effort to stay present in this conversation with you right now.
Jen Rubin
Oh, my goodness, for those of you who may not be aware, he said yet another vile, disgust thing, in this case, in connection with the tragic, awful, murder of Rob Reiner and his wife, but it just goes to show there is no end to the evil, to the lack of empathy, to the narcissism. It just goes on.
Pablo Torre
It doesn’t matter. And by the way, we talk about that in sports all of the time, and we will today, I’m sure. The only thing that’s consistent is it’s entirely about his own self-obsession, even when it’s a terrible move politically that his own party now is gonna have to, on some level, disavow, which is just… It’s just consistent in that way, anyway.
Jen Rubin
And speaking of narcissism and ruining moments, he is now planning on essentially taking over the public golf courses of DC. God knows what he’s gonna do with them. Talk to us a little bit, first of all, about the history of public golf in DC, which has kind of a storied, civil rights connection. What is Trump up to?
Pablo Torre
It’s the thing he… I mean, look… filtered through the lens of himself, this is also consistent, right? Like, he is spending his time on things that he personally likes to do, and therefore feels better about himself in the course of doing. And I say course, pun intended, but this is the sport he knows about. It’s golf. It’s the thing he plays, it’s the thing he has invested in, it’s the thing that he has lusted after, by the way. And that brings us to the metaphor that’s also the concrete example.
All of this is about a club that he exclusively can take credit for, and therefore join, and feel great about himself. All of this, the big picture macro, right? The live golf story, Saudi Arabia, and the breakaway tour versus the PGA and his desire to broker that piece, which we’ve talked about before, that is all in the service of maybe Donald Trump can get to be a member of Augusta National. Maybe he can be in these most—truly the most exclusive clubs, you could argue, in all of sports in the world. And so, when it comes to what a public course is versus a private course, a public course is meant to be accessible to the public. I mean, the very basic thought is, golf is so… a caricature of itself when it comes to the… We’re talking about some—there are some public courses that could not be more opposite from the private ones, because the private ones, sometimes the initiation fee is, like, half a million dollars. I mean, at the higher ends. I mean, it gets a lot bigger than that.
So, unlimited, greed when it comes to the private side of the sport. The public one, when it comes to what you were just referencing there, it is meant to be more democratized. And, I don’t know, if you’re Trump. the fact that you’re making room in your head for this, this thing that no one is asking for, that is only making your sport less accessible and more of a cartoon character, it all kind of adds up. It all sounds about right as well.
Jen Rubin
You’re exactly right. What is he obsessed with? A ballroom? A golf course? He thinks he’s, what, president of, like, another country club? Which he really does consider this to be. And particularly in DC, when it wasn’t so long ago that private clubs excluded African Americans, excluded Jews, that public golf courses were a way to if not make up for that exclusion, at least give some entree into the sport for people who were kept out of the club. And this is what obsesses this guy, just like FIFA becomes all about him. Peace Prize, or the Olympics will become all about him. So, yes, well, enough about Donald Trump.
Let’s talk NFL football. Well, it happened. You and I had talked many times. Either the Chiefs were gonna get excluded, or they were gonna get in somehow and make a run for the Super Bowl. But they are out, and Patrick Mahomes seems to be, injured in a quite serious way. Talk to us a little bit about the Chiefs’ season. What do you think happened, and where do they go from here?
Pablo Torre
I was one of the last holdouts on this. I have faith in… and this is where, I must confess to being brutally and entirely incorrect about this, as is now obvious, I subscribe to the great man theory of football. Patrick Mahomes is so transcendent that he papers over all of the other problems around your roster, and so this has been a bit of a parable in terms of what you need from the rest of your team.
Patrick Mahomes, individually, has had, I think, the worst season of his career, and he’s had… incredible string of just being there at the very end, these magician-like performances where he wins close games because of the force of his own talent. And not only has he torn his ACL, which has ended his season, but even before that happened, they were gonna lose to the Chargers, it looked like. And so, from a Mahomes perspective, that was his problem, but then it’s, okay, well, who was he relying on? He was relying on Travis Kelsey, the greatest pass-catching tight end in NFL history, who also had as bad a season as you’ve ever seen from him. The defense, of course, has been disappointing.
You go down the line, this is something that he needed help in order to make his contention this season a reality. And so, it’s a harsh reminder of the gravitational field around sports. that you need, especially in football, the magic of Mahomes was he defied the odds by being so individually great, and so he was so great that it made it seem like there was something ineffable around what the rest of this team was doing, and instead, there is mortality. And so, it goes to this larger theory, Jen, of this season, which is that there are no great teams, that is still absolutely true, and even the greatest team, the favorite, the one that was still one of the betting odds-on favorites until they got eliminated officially, which is what happened. It’s a reminder that the NFL is also just a really hard game. Yeah.
Jen Rubin
Do they do the unimaginable? Do they start turning the page? Do they start making way for a new generation of Mahomes, a different tight end to rely on? How do they do that? It’s so hard when you still have these iconic figures who maybe are at the end of their career, but they’re still there.
Pablo Torre
Yeah, and you gotta follow the money on this. So, they have so much money committed to these stars and to this roster, because it’s supposed to be a contender, that unwinding that is its own just financial problem. It’s an albatross. And so you look ahead to next season, they are over-committed financially, and you’re right, they’re in that spot where the future is clearly beckoning, but the present is uncomfortable to disentangle yourself from.
So Mahomes will recover, and he will be fine. Medicine is so miraculous these days that a torn ACL is not a career-ender or anything like that. Mahomes is still your future, but Kelsey is your past. you have these big-name players, Chris Jones on defense, who is the star of that unit, and it’s like, do you cut ties with him? How do you figure that out? And so being caught between the past and the future, when your past is so recent, and so glorious, and your future is uncertain, and requires you to cut ties, I don’t envy the Chiefs. For the first time, you can say that. The NFL does not envy the hand that the Chiefs have to play.
Jen Rubin
It will be very interesting to see what they do, if they make some trades for some, earlier draft picks, if they do any kind of trades, but as you say, it’s time for some self-reflection. Meanwhile, you had some really excellent games this weekend. The, Broncos, secured themselves a playoff spot. They may not be the favorite, but there’s something about them. They seem to find a way to win. It’s almost a little bit like Patrick Mahomes. When they need to score, they do. How do you rank their chances, as opposed to New England, the other favorite, or maybe some of the teams that have not had great seasons, but You know, are gonna be up there, you know. You can’t discount the Eagles, who have not had the stellar season, but still are a powerhouse.
Pablo Torre
Yeah, look, the Broncos are shocking to me. Bo Nix is their quarterback. Bo Nix had the greatest season of his career, his young career, on Sunday. They’re a two-loss team, and it’s stunning. Now, for me, because I’m still trying to think in terms of the long game, the Bills played the Patriots to, a rea… I mean, that was a thriller, and the Bills won. They came back, and they beat the Patriots, and somewhere in the AFC, at least, the top three teams, in some order, are… The Bills, the Broncos, and the Patriots. And I think that’s my order for now. I think the Bills and Josh Allen… Josh Allen’s the most—now that Mahomes is officially injured and out of the postseason picture, Josh Allen remains the most talented individual.
The Bills are just an overall better team, even if they’re a 4-loss team. To the Broncos’ 2 losses. The Eagles are still looming in the NFC, but the Rams, your Los Angeles Rams, Jen, they just clinched their postseason berth. Yeah, it’s just so wide open. I mean, look, to unite the two conversations around the NFL, In the NFL, the hardest thing to do is to rest control of randomness. The ball in the NFL, as I like to say, is oblong. It is meant to bounce unpredictably.
And right now, we’re having the most unpredictable season that I can remember, free of these dynastic powers, and the favorites are not acting like favorites, both the Chiefs and the Eagles, as referenced before. And so. what is gonna happen here? If you told me that this was gonna be the standings as of, you know, September 1st, and you said that to me, looking ahead to December 15th, I would have said, this is a season in which I should pretend, Yeah, that I should not even begin to pretend like anyone should take my advice to make financial decisions. Don’t gamble on the NFL, is kind of the theory that I’m consciously reminded of, because God knows who saw this coming.
Jen Rubin
In a season in which sports betting has kind of dominated, this might be an area for people to sit out. And, you know, as soon as I say. the AFC looks like the more dominant, you know, conference, and one of those three teams will win. Something bizarre will happen, and you’ll have, you know, an NFC team.
Pablo Torre
One quick thing about the NFC, one of the best teams in that division is the Seahawks. And the Seahawks just narrowly beat the Indianapolis Colts out of the AFC, and the Colts started a guy who was 44 years old. who wasn’t playing football last week. Phillip Rivers is a literal grandfather who is coaching high school football, and it’s so dire in the NFL right now that the Colts, who are a playoff team, presumably.
Daniel Jones got hurt, their quarterback, they’re searching around for a solution, and they said, as opposed to trying to roll the dice, spin the roulette wheel with a young quarterback, let’s go with the old guy who used to play for us, who is 44, the oldest active player now in the NFL, and they almost beat… the contending Seattle Seahawks. That series of facts is insane. Like, Philip Revers is borderline, as someone put it to me, borderline uninsurable. And they just experimented in live fire, as it were, with it, and it almost worked. So anything seems possible this NFL season, including, perhaps most shockingly, the story of Philip Rivers returning.
Jen Rubin
And I was just about to comment that the Rams have had a remarkable season with a quarterback who, in normal you would say was kind of old, but, you know, Rivers blows that away. So you have a bizarre, return. You have been following a fascinating story about a goalie who was deported. Tell us who he is and what you’ve learned about him.
Pablo Torre
Yeah, his name Jerce Reyes and he is somebody who disappeared. First. He disappeared from his home country, in Venezuela. He was protesting Nicolas Maduro, and they imprisoned him, and he eventually, therefore, decided to leave the country to hopefully make a better life for himself and his family. And so he went to the United States. And he entered the legal asylum application process, downloaded the app, the CBP app, and was doing it the right way as an asylum seeker from an autocratic nation in Venezuela that Donald Trump, of course, is no fan of, as we have been hearing lately, over and over again, Venezuela and Maduro. And what happened was the United States government disappeared. He was sent to CECOT in El Salvador.
This was, of course, the story that lots of people were talking about. Earlier this year. Bukele, the world’s coolest dictator, as he described himself, was participating in this partnership program with Donald Trump. And Jarse Reyes disappeared into a terrorist gulag. And at that point. His family hadn’t heard from him. He is a youth soccer coach in Venezuela. The entire team was praying for him. There’s video of that that we played in our first episode about this. He is also somebody who was a professional goalie in Venezuela, like a star player in that country. And so the reason we reinvestigated this was because, A, we wanted to find him. And B, because we had been told that because of this prisoner swap that had happened between El Salvador and Venezuela.
Jerce actually got to go home. He was part of this, larger deal brokered by Trump, and we got to actually interview him. We found him, interviewed him, and he described what it was like to be Tortured in a terrorist prison camp, despite being an innocent man whose only identifying reason for being apprehended and sent to a terrorist prison camp was he had a tattoo. That they claimed was a gang tattoo, but was, of course, a tattoo that paid homage to Real Madrid, his favorite team. And so, we were talking, Jen, about Donald Trump getting the Peace Prize from FIFA. And simultaneous to that, right? And simultaneous, by the way, to Pete Hegsteth answering, or seemingly evading questions about whether it’s a war crime to, you know, double-tap a boat of people. right near Venezuela. That story of soccer coming to celebrate this administration was the story of the soccer player that they effectively had tortured in El Salvador, who talked to us on the show and could not have been more generous with his time and also more harrowing in his description.
Jen Rubin
Is he bitter? Is he relieved? What’s his emotional state after being put through this horrendous ordeal?
Pablo Torre
Yeah, he is certainly scarred, I mean, to hear in vivid detail what it’s like to be at CCOT, and he is one of the faces… we found one of the videos that this administration, had included him in, of course, head down, shaved head, like, marching in chains, right? In one of those bad action movie sequences. He was in there. He’s one of the characters. It’s sort of like, who are these people that they were parading as props? He was one of them. And he described I mean, it’s just hard to think of another word besides torture. It’s hard to think of a more, indefensible approach to solving the border crisis than that.
And then the other thing that he pointed out is A) he would not advise… I mean, this is… and this is the sad part for our country, he… In some ways, has no interest in… the theory of America as this refuge for people now trying to seek safety from political persecution. In that way, Donald Trump’s treatment worked. Right? He’s terrified of the United States. The World Cup, the premise of that happening, he’s reluctant to advise anybody to go and try their hand at trying to celebrate the game that he has professionally played and coaches, because of the way that the US government has behaved.
But what he is, is pretty, I would say, pretty unapologetic in terms of, I was arrested and disappeared for a tattoo. And if they think that they’re going to change my approach to how I love sports. to how I have this relationship with this game and my favorite team, they’re wrong. He’s getting, he told us, another Real Madrid tattoo as his own form of protest, as resistance to the idea that this government has the power to… change the thing that he loves the most, which, again, a through line in our conversations. How sports has been used as this instrument of autocracy. In the service, allegedly, of a president of a democracy.
Jen Rubin
And we don’t have a worst example of how you can take, first of all, something beloved in America, sports, an international sport, and not only mar that. But Mar, the entire reputation, the idea of America as a refuge, as a place where people want to come. And if you look at our sports world, whether it’s basketball, baseball, football. hockey. These are made of international stars, and Donald Trump is saying, we don’t want any of those people. It is the proverbial cutting off the nose, the arms, and the legs to spite one’s face. And it is perhaps for you and I, Pablo, who both come from heritages that have not always been respected, and who always thought of this country. as offering the great promise. It is so profoundly sad. And, this story, which you’ve covered beautifully, just kind of personifies that.
Pablo Torre
Oh yeah, it reminds me of how I felt when I heard about USAID being cut. It’s like, forget about whether you think this is, whatever, politically. What it is, is a self-destruction of America’s soft power. America has a reputation, had a reputation, of being the place you go When you are seeking safety and democracy. And that has been routinely and ritualistically obliterated. And what kind of country do you want to be? Do you want a country where a guy without a criminal record, who is innocent, like Jerce, who is freeing an autocrat that you say you’re at war with, or aspiring to be at war with.
Do you want people like that to think that you are effectively, as a country, interchangeable with other dictatorships. I mean, it’s from a pure… again, the language of Donald Trump, right? From a pure self-interest, from a branding point of view, it’s a… it’s a short game you’re playing. The long-run effects of this, we will all be paying for, not merely because it’s morally reprehensible, but also because we are going to lose individuals who have actively helped. To not just make our sports teams great, which is, of course, the story of sports, as you alluded to, it’s also going to, I would say. Make people… feel like sports itself, in this story, are a tool and not something civic and grander and more, important. It just feels like everything is becoming sucked into the mud, because of this guy. Because of our president.
Jen Rubin
Exactly, and of course, This is a relatively famous person who Has a high-profile career, and you think you multiply this times the thousands, the tens of thousands of ordinary people for whom this has happened. And you want to talk about self-destructing, Vladimir Putin could never have ruined the image of America more effectively than Donald Trump. But we never want to leave you all bereft out there. As hard a news day, as hard a weekend as this was, as… you know, sort of mind-boggling 2025, let’s talk about a woman who I think might be the greatest in her sport of all time, and that’s Katie Lendecky. Another world record. How do you compare her… first of all, do you think she’s the greatest swimmer of all times? And secondly. If you had to compare her to somebody else in another sport, would it be a… is she, like, at a Serena Williams level? Is she that dominant?
Pablo Torre
I think she is, by statistics as well as, now, acclimation, the greatest female Olympian who’s ever lived, and she proves that case in non-Olympic years, notably, right? We’re talking about just her… Continuing to dominate in such a way where the best example of her dominance is the fact that when you watch her sometimes, and we saw this during the Olympics, her opponents aren’t on screen. So, the fact that she is so much faster than everyone else, by leaps and bounds, it leaves them not even visible. And so, I think the gap between her and the second-best swimmer is bigger, of course, than the gap between Serena Williams and the second-best tennis player.
I think about this in terms of… not just an all-time perspective, but I think about how she is so transcendent that she makes her sport do something that I think is almost impossible to do, which is look hard and easy at the same time. Easy because, of course, she’s getting… she’s winning again, and you want to dismiss that, but it’s hard because if you think about what swimming is, it’s an endurance sport that also has the characteristics of a sprint. I think she’s as impressive as any athlete that’s ever lived. And the fact that we are living at a time when she’s doing this, and also simultaneously to bring it back, can’t join every private country club or golf club in America because she’s a woman. It’s sort of like, let’s… let’s not think we’re living in the future quite yet, right? She’s a futuristic figure at a time America’s still trying to figure out its approach to women and women’s sports, none of which are immaterial to her success.
Jen Rubin
You know, your comment about her opponents not being on screen, I finally found an analogy that I think works, and this is not meant to be, to diminish her, it’s meant to elevate her. She is the secretariat of, swimming. If you remember in the Belmont, where Secretariat was, like, almost lapping the field. That’s how dominant, and… I think we also have to appreciate how hard swimming is, how, you know, brutally difficult it is, and the training that it takes, whether you’re sick, whether you’re cold, whether you’re tired, and the… level of personal discipline that it takes to maintain that sport. And practice can be fun, but practice isn’t always fun, and to have that kind of temerity to push through year after year, which has nothing to prove to anybody. is pretty remarkable.
Now, I do want to actually leave on—we would be remiss if we didn’t mention the awful, bizarre story of, the Michigan football coach, Sharone Moore. How do you even grasp what has happened. He had a premier spot. First of all, it was the underlying scandal of having an inappropriate relationship, and then, apparently. Now, he gets the presumption of innocence, but he has since been charged with stalking, breaking, and entering. This is, like, a mind-blowing meltdown, that’s just a human tragedy, not only for him, but for the university, and let’s be honest, for African American coaches, who have struggled to become, recognized for their talents.
Pablo Torre
Everybody in this story looks pretty bad. And I say that because, we start very microscopically and personally. He’s a guy who we first met because he was crying on the field when asked about the opportunity he got and the tutelage he received from Jim Harbaugh, who was the outgoing coach at Michigan, which is a team and a program and a university that prides itself on the Michigan man, you know, one of these models of what it is to be, not just a man, but a great man, someone with principle and character and rigor, and integrity.
And so, that guy that we met in that way, it seems like, according to the reporting, and I defer to the reporting as it is still a live story and is ongoing, this whole time, seemingly, he was conducting himself in ways that are just so clearly stupid. And look, inappropriate relationships with subordinates is not new. What is differentiated, though, is the fact that this seems to be folding into now a larger, ongoing psychiatric concern for him, in which he… is alleged to have broken into a home and threatened to take his life with butter knives, and you get these salacious details in which a relationship gone wrong may not be the only relationship, allegedly, reportedly, that he was carrying on. He has a wife and a family. who is the person I think of in a story like this, like, how do you… what do you do if you’re her?
And meanwhile, you have a team in this era of… Of college sports, in which everything seems already chaotic? And now, the question is, so, who’s gonna stick around? Which players are gonna stick around? For the school to investigate itself. And, Jen, it’s sort of like a… a story of college sports in the sense that football is the richest and most influential thing when it comes to branding and when it comes to fundraising and all of that, but when there’s a catastrophe this embarrassing, it’s also the… it’s called the front porch. of a university, often. Football is the front porch, it’s the thing that everybody sees, and now the front porch is… is on fire. And everybody comes off looking either, negligent or worse. And it’s one of those stories that is not close to being over yet. And, it’s just a dark chapter in American college sports, and its modern history.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely, I love that expression, by the way, the front porch of the universities. That’s… It can be inviting, but as you say, if there’s a problem out there, everyone in the house is in trouble, because, you know, if they’re inside the house, it’s over. Pablo, it has been a wild and woolly year. Folks, we will have one more 2025 program next week before the new year. And we are going to take a look back on this wild world in sports.
You know, Pablo, if you’re like me, it’s hard to remember all the insanity that has happened. And, you know, as I’ve gone back to look month by month on the political side. you’re reminded this has been an insane year, and we’re gonna see if we can find some good things in it, some heroic figures. There have been! There’s some great, good news stories in here.
Pablo Torre
I my goal here is to find something for us to feel good about at the end of next week’s year-end spectacular, Jen. I think it’s in there, it’s buried, it’s my responsibility to… to find out, and I hope I… I hope I succeed for our sake.
Jen Rubin
Exactly, exactly. Pablo, it is always great talking to you, even if it’s about dreadful subjects. It feels good to get it out, air it out, make sense of it. So, hey! Free therapy, folks. That’s right. Maybe not for you, maybe for us, but… Still. Wonderful seeing you, Pablo, but look forward to seeing you next week. Take care.
