This weekend, anti-ICE protests proliferated across the country. Despite obvious public disapproval, the Trump administration shows no sign of backing down, declaring that “hundreds” of additional ICE agents will be deployed to Minneapolis. With such a fraught political climate, why would anyone want to come to the U.S. this summer for the FIFA World Cup? Especially players and fans from South America? In today’s episode of Offsides, Jen and Pablo Torre remind us that sports is never apolitical.
On a more light-hearted note, the two analyze the teams battling it out for the 2026 College Football National Championships next week. Torre and Jen also talk the importance of quarterback scouting in the NFL and Pablo’s latest reporting of the Steve Ballmer-Kawhi Leonard investigation.
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, Editor-in-Chief of the Contrarian. If it’s Monday, it must be Pablo Torre. Welcome, Pablo!
Pablo Torre
Jen, always good to see you.
Jen Rubin
Last week was quite a month, huh?
Pablo Torre
Yesterday was quite a month, yeah.
Jen Rubin
Yeah, exactly. Well, let’s start with football. Let’s start with college football. Those games, almost without exception, were phenomenally competitive, fun. What does that tell you about the quality in the NCAA right now?
Pablo Torre
I mean, look, there’s a reason why college football is the second most popular television show in America after the NFL, which we will also talk, about. So, to me, it indicates that, as much as there is this entire mess, both legislatively, politically, and certainly in terms of how to regulate college football, because it’s chaos. It is still very much chaos. The transfer portal is chaos. Frankly, the premise of how to kind of half-measure pay these players? Also, total chaos that’s winding its way through the court system. The games themselves remind you why this is a product with billions of dollars waiting for people to mine. And the story, by the way, of Miami playing Indiana, which is a matchup that is not particularly… Miami, relatively, I suppose, is pedigreed, but Indiana is one of the worst programs in the history of the sport. For 100 years, they were like a laughingstock doormat, and the kind of, like, fun of Indiana and Kurt Zignetti, who’s the head coach, and their team, is that in this chaos, in the transfer portal, they basically built a team out of all of these guys who are all cast-offs, but on a relative basis, coming from programs that are not hotbeds of NFL prospects.
And they’re old, they have a whole roster of, like, older players who come from smaller schools, and so funny enough, the team that has loved this era more than anybody else is Indiana football, and they seem poised to be the closest thing we have to astride this sport in all of its chaos.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. And a coach who came to a program that was really nowhere, that no one had real expectations, who has just been phenomenal.
Pablo Torre
Yeah. Oh, look, they beat Oregon, right? So Oregon, a power for a long time out on the West Coast, funded by Nike. That’s, like, their big booster still. It’s a team of a thousand uniforms. Everyone talked about uniforms, and just, like, the gear, and that’s been just the opposite of what Indiana was sort of known for, which is, like, not cool, not interesting, nothing like that. But the road that they took to get here, Indiana, they beat Oregon, they beat Alabama, they beat Ohio State earlier in the year, they take down the Goliaths on the way to establishing that they are a Goliath, too.
And, by the way, Miami, just as a brief side note here. their story, you know, almost not in the field, because there was this whole debate about will they make it, now hosting, essentially, hosting the national championship game in Miami, in South Florida, which is a rare thing, because of the quirk of just scheduling. It was always gonna be there, now Miami basically gets to be the home team. There’s a bit of a case study in how different the sport is going to be going forward in this particular matchup.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. Now, let’s put Miami and Indiana aside for just a moment. Which of the players, the quarterbacks in the other teams impressed you the most, and did the most to elevate their stature, their draftability, their future props in the portal? Which are the few that really kind of caught your attention?
Pablo Torre
Yeah, it’s a really good question. I mean, look, Notre Dame has this kid, Jeremiah Love, and they weren’t even in the field, but he’s still gonna be the number one overall pick, it seems like, in the NFL draft. So, it’s just an important reminder, by the way, that, like. A lot of the stuff that happens on the field, you know, there’s still the prospects who exist regardless of whatever happens in the TV shows. But Ruben Bain at Miami, again, will be on the big show. This kid, Caleb Downs out of Ohio State, who’s a safety, is excellent, and despite it all, like, at Alabama, Ty Simpson, the quarterback. is still someone who is supposed to be, again, like a top 10 pick. So it’s interesting
And Oregon, also, their quarterback, Dante Moore, is one of the top quarterbacks that are, being projected in the draft. So, look, I would say what’s interesting. And, by the way, tip of the cap to Fernando Mendoza, who’s the Indiana quarterback, who was a Heisman winner. The idea that he would be a guy, and now he’s predicted to be a top, you know, 20 pick, probably, which reflects the fact that he was not being predicted as anything like this, and now he is like the face of college football.
So, as always, my reminder is, in the NFL draft there is hundreds of millions of dollars, basically, being invested in finding the next great player. That’s how important the quarterback is to the fortunes of these billion-dollar teams. And so, everything is sort of arranged around finding those guys. And so I mentioned a couple of them, but It is a roulette wheel. It’s a roulette wheel in which you will find that you will be surprised by people taking on, you know, the second and third day of that event.
Jen Rubin
Let’s talk about Mendoza for a moment. Just his calm. His accuracy, his mobility. He really does seem, and you never know until they get there, to be NFL-quality football. What do you think his prospects are, not only in the draft and who knows what order, but for success in the NFL?
Pablo Torre
There’s a fun exercise that people refer to sometimes in scouting, where it’s like, when it’s like, it’s basically like the bus test, meaning the guy gets off the bus, what does he look like? And Fernando Mendoza, with all due respect, doesn’t ace the bus test. He is an excellent athlete, but the thing that’s distinguished himself is composure.
So when we talk about, like, why can this be a thing that billion-dollar assets turn on, the fortune of those assets turn on, the quarterback, and they’re so bad at it, it’s because the intangibles tend to be the thing that you can’t really quantify. And everybody who listens to this kid, and has met him, and has talked to him, talks about his maturity, talks about the way that he conducts himself. Almost as if he’s already in the NFL, and is an adult, and is, like, not some college kid.
And the pre-professionalism in that regard is gonna be an interesting experiment. I think it’s gonna be really good, but I think it’s gonna be a smart pick because of the stuff you can’t quite measure. The fact that he’s also now officially, by the way, Jen, he now gets to say he’s a winner. Like, that’s the stamp on it now, where it’s like, you can reverse engineer the scouting report based off of that.
Jen Rubin
So, dare I ask, who do you like in the championship game?
Pablo Torre
I like Miami. And I say that because I mean, look, look, any championship game, for those who have not been to a Super Bowl or these events, there are a lot of sponsors, all the business people who have been profiting off of college football show up, right? It’s not, like, as if it’s gonna be just fans. But the fact that there is this sort of cosmic energy to Miami’s run, and the fact that they have looked great. in this whole, in these last two months, basically. Well, now, especially in the last couple games they’ve played in the playoffs, They’re the… they were seeded 10th. I like them to upset Indiana. I like the roulette wheel spinning and landing on a win that the home field, crowd can actually celebrate.
Jen Rubin
Well, I think the ratings are going to be through the roof. Not exactly the kind of TV ratings that consumers and advertisers usually get excited. Miami, although it’s a big city, and Indiana. Yeah, no New York, no Los Angeles, but, you know, this is gonna be something else.
Pablo Torre
No SEC. The macroeconomic sort of, like, revelation of this postseason, as well as the sports revelation has been the SEC has not adjusted to the new era of chaos and paying players in the transfer portal as well as you would have imagined, and it’ll be a fascinating, data collection exercise, whether that matters, in terms of the interest in this championship.
Jen Rubin
Exactly. Then we switched to the infill. And with the exception of the last game, on Sunday evening, these were some of the most exciting, the most extraordinary games, and I gotta say, Philadelphia, who a lot of people had picked to go all the way is out in one of the most exciting games I’ve seen in recent years. What was your overall take on the wildcard weekend? Which is not over, by the way, because we’ll have one more game on Monday.
Pablo Torre
No, but it’s the upside of this mediocrity slash parody that we’ve been talking about all year, which is that everybody’s kind of on the same level. And so, all but the Patriots-Chargers game was decided between a score or less. You know, like, that’s the margin. And so it’s been a phenomenal start to the wildcard weekend. The NFL always seems to figure out a way to deliver, even when the story has been, no one’s that impressive. But then you realize, if no one’s that impressive, then everybody’s competitive with each other. Look, what happened to the Eagles, because of the Niners, was so impressive.
And so, if you didn’t see that game, I mean, the Niners lost their star tight end, George Kittle from an injury, and the Niners, all year, have had injuries, whether it’s Nick Bosa, whether it’s Fred Warner, Brandon Aiyuk, just, like, stars. Actual stars, not being able to compete for them. And despite it all, they have been thriving. And so, they upset a team with the pedigree in the Eagles. Of course, they were, I think, the logical pick heading into the season alongside the Kansas City Chiefs, both of which, of course, now officially looking very dumb, which is to say, I got this way wrong preseason. But the Niners, Coaching. You know? Like, what happened when you eliminate star players over and over again? You isolate the variable of what your coaches are doing. And so, Kyle Shanahan has put on another clinic this year.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely, and talk about, like, the greatest Cinderella story of all time, which was Purdy, who was the last guy at the last, you know, pick, and now has a competitive team that is very, very much in the mix for going to the Super Bowl, I think. Obviously. the Patriots showed their medal, and those of us who are a little tired of the Patriots have to tip our hat and say, okay, they really are good. Are they, in your mind, still the standout, or have you seen maybe Buffalo, maybe one of the other teams, and of course, we haven’t seen all the teams, we’re gonna see that on the upcoming week, that kind of piques your interest, in terms of a potential, underdog?
Pablo Torre
Yeah, with all due respect to Texan Steelers happening later tonight, I mean, I’m looking at Josh Allen, I’m thinking to myself, that’s still the best player in this whole field. And so, with that in mind, I think Buffalo, just on that basis is right behind New England to me. New England, I’ve been just so impressed by for months now. Right. And so them holding the Chargers to 3 points, and Drake May looking very comfortable in the second half especially, makes me very optimistic about the Patriots’ chances. I like the Bills right after them, even though the Bills just survived the Jaguars, and I say Yeah. survived because the Jaguars were one of the hottest teams in football within inches of upsetting Buffalo. But I think it’s Patriots, it’s Bills, in the AFC in terms of the top two teams, and then, yeah, the Niners and the Rams to me. With all due respect to Caleb Williams and the Bears, who just upset the Packers, and a massive win, by the way, incredible to watch the Bears beat the Packers in the playoffs for the first time in decades. I think they hadn’t beat the Packers since 1941 in the postseason. So they were wearing, like, cheese grater foam hats, which I love, and they’re shredding cheese post-game.
Despite all of that, I think that the Rams are a cut above, and above them still, somehow the Niners, so yeah, I think it’s looking like that.
Jen Rubin
Right, absolutely. Well. We’d be remiss if we didn’t go to the best investigative reporter in sports these days and ask what’s new in the investigations of the various issues you’ve been following.
Pablo Torre
Yeah, we just did an episode on Friday, which I hope people can check out. It’s on our YouTube channel, as well as in our podcast feed. It’s the seventh part of our investigation into Steve Ballmer and Aspiration and the Clippers. Yes. So, in brief. What happened was that the NBA hired a white shoe law firm that’s very, very decorated, Jen, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen, and Katz, to investigate the story, which is to say, like, follow the footsteps and expand it, ideally, of my investigation.
And, what I can report, and what we tell the story of in this episode at the very top, is that Wachtell brought me in, for an interview, and they requested documents, and so the episode that I bring you, because the meeting beyond that was off the record, the episode I bring you is the documents I decided to give them. And so, I respect the rules of, like, when I walk in the door of their offices, we’re not going to talk about this in public, but in terms of what I resolved to give them as a matter of substantiating the claims and the reporting I have done, as well as give them directions to look into in a good faith effort, that is what you can hear and see the story of in this episode, because the spoiler alert here is that the story of Aspiration, this now-bankrupt climate change startup that Steve Ballmer used, according to our reporting, to pay Kawhi Leonard beyond the salary cap, the cardinal sin of the NBA and its rulebook, the story of that actually begins years before 2021. Which is when that deal was signed, and we fall further down into a rabbit hole that explains why the story Steve Ballmer, the richest owner in sports, has been telling people does not hold up to scrutiny, and in fact, kind of falls apart in hilarious ways. So that’s three months in the making that we just dropped on Friday.
Jen Rubin
So, it was quite a risk for them to bring you in, in some respects. It’s also a sign of how badly they need you, because you’ve done so much for the legwork. Did you get the sense that they are on the up and up, that they are serious people, that they really want to get to the bottom of this?
Pablo Torre
I will say that they reached out to me to express that we are serious people who want to get to the bottom of this. And so, that, on that level, I genuinely appreciated. My degree of cynicism around this process, though, is beyond the individual investigators. It’s really, and I want to, in good faith. you know, just take them at the presentation face value that they presented, because they have the documents, we’ll see what they do with them. But my real cynicism is around the fundamental process of Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner. investigating not only one of his bosses, but, like, the richest boss that he has. And so, as you know, when a company Is dealing with an internal matter. You know, we’re talking about collective bargaining violations and the salary cap, we’re not talking about breaking the law.
So, the question that I had, and continue to have, for Wachtell, and for the NBA, which, of course, is employing them, is who is gonna… who’s gonna really speak to you guys? Because they don’t have subpoena power, they don’t have the ability to just demand documents if these are not NBA employees, and this is a story that I reported from outside of the NBA, through this company. So, when they replace their footsteps, they’re gonna have to do what I did in 7 months in some sort of timeframe. Now, granted, with the force and might of a truly top-shelf law firm and its staff and budget and billable hours economy, which I don’t personally, have the advantage of. But, I think that if they’re really trying to get to the bottom of this, it’s going to be extraordinarily uncomfortable for the NBA to have to deal with. If they’re gonna prioritize the truth over their conflicts of interest.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. And unlike the current situation, when you’re a private company, that the report comes, and is not disclosable to the public. everyone is going to want to see that report. So, it’s going to be hard. The thing that I always worry about in these internal investigations is the lawyers do their job. and then it gets buried, sunk, modified, you know, by the employer. I don’t think the NBA and the Clippers are going to be able to do that, because the human cry to see what it was that Wachtell Is gonna make it incredibly difficult for these people to say, attorney-clamp privilege, we’re not sending over the original document. I don’t think that’s gonna fly in this case.
Pablo Torre
Yeah, it’s a very savvy observation. Like, what will the report look like? And is there any way that they can bury that report? Or, you know, again, it’s hard not to think of, like, redactions these days.
I’m curious, like, how blunt are you going to be about what you found? And if the only pressure that they have that governs their freedom to tell us nothing is public outcry, as you put it, this happens to be a story with… like, vast and surprisingly, intense public interest. So there is that concern, but short of that. Because it’s an internal investigation, they can kind of do whatever they want. And so that’s exactly right, that’s the tension in terms of what the public ends up getting to discover about this.
Jen Rubin
We have to talk about what is going on on the streets of America. The tragic, inexcusable, horrifying killing of Renee Good, a young mother sitting in her car, shot in the face, then denied medical care after the shooting. And the response that we saw this weekend, I was out on the streets covering it, others were out as well. of… dignified, righteous anger that the American people are finding. And as we know from the Wall Street Journal, of all places, this isn’t an isolated event. These people are out of control and on the streets of America. How, in that environment, does… America host the Olympics, the World Cup. Are people going to want to come? Are the teams going to want to come? How do these two realities collide when you usually have these concerns about a authoritarian country like China? But in China, they do a better job of cleaning it up and hiding their Really, atrocities. What do you think is gonna happen as these international sports events come to the United States?
Pablo Torre
I think it’s an open question as to whether they happen. And I say that just because the rate at which things are proceeding suggests a level of chaos that nobody should want to wander into. And I think that we’re day-to-day on pretty much anything happening as scheduled with this administration. Yes. And I don’t think they have, like, contingencies, or really a strategy for how to make this happen without international incident.
And so let’s now presume that the sheer desire to host these events for money, PR reasons, motivate this administration to get it together, to have these events happen in the United States. The concern that I have bigger picture is around what ICE is revealing to us, which is that they are occupying American cities like they are Third World military forces, and this government simultaneously, in the case of Renee Good in Minneapolis, which of course was, you know, a locus of sports protest back in 2020, What they are also claiming, ICE and Kristi Noem and J.D. Vance and everybody else, is that The guy who shot this mother in the face multiple times, when his life was not actually in danger. He’s the actual victim. Like, that’s the degree of argument that they’re making, is not merely that you can’t understand how hard it is in the line of fire. They are telling us, actually, he’s the victim, and she’s a domestic terrorist.
And so, the sports angle here—because you talked about this too, way back when—was Scotty Scheffler. Remember when Scotty Scheffler was trying to drive into that golf tournament, and there was a cop who stopped him, and the cop was sort of, like… kind of, like, lightly bounced off the car, because Scotty was trying to turn in? to the gates of the event. Scotty Scheffler, was not shot and killed, and no one suggested that he should have been put into prison because this cop had clumsily put himself in a position to get grazed by an automobile. I am not saying that it’s not extraordinarily dangerous what police officers, and these are, again, in the case of ICE, not police officers, but something else. These guys who get hired in ways that are not clearly to snuff. I’m not saying that’s not dangerous. I’m merely saying that we are being sold a story. that is beyond the pale in terms of evidence, in terms of morality. It is something that is… terrifying If you think that a lot of people from other countries coming into America at the same time, filling the streets, is anything but a recipe for disaster, if those guys are gonna be around.
Jen Rubin
I agree, I agree. And both because it is first, and it is proximate in time to these events, and because soccer is so heavily supported by South Americans, Central Americans. I think that is the one that is, obviously most at risk. And, remember, it’s being split. It’s being split with Canada and Mexico. So, ultimately, they do have a solution, which is they push those events into those countries. Now. Going up against Donald Trump is not going to be anybody’s idea of a picnic. And, by the way, when does he have to give back the Peace Prize? When he invades Denmark, or when he bombs Iran? Or he just gets to keep that…
Pablo Torre
It’s when he gets the, the Nobel from, from the actual rightful winner of it, because he’s been demanding that in exchange for control of Venezuela.
Jen Rubin
By the way, I found that hysterical. It’s like, you can give me your bowling trophy. It doesn’t mean I won the bowling tournament. It’s like, only Donald Trump thinks that way, you know? Really? Like, you didn’t win it, guys, you know? But, be that as it may, I think, the pressure on, not only FIFA, but the national teams, if you’re the Brazilian team, the Venezuelan team, the Chilean team, all of these teams. Are you gonna come to the United States with your players and your fans in this kind of atmosphere? I find it almost inconceivable.
Pablo Torre
Yeah I don’t understand how anyone would feel comfortable with this. But by the way, We are looking at a year full of sports and politics collisions by the design of this administration. We have the G7 rescheduling itself to make room for the MMA fight at the White House in June, which is Donald Trump’s big birthday party. We got the World Cup coming up, the Olympics in the distance, like, it’s… it’s… We’re only beginning the ways in which people who work in the world of sports are gonna have to figure out… how to deal with this administration, and I want to bring it back to just Minneapolis for a second, the Twin Cities, because the Timberwolves took a moment of silence for any good. Put around the Jumbotron, and someone, by the way, amid the silence at the very end, said… yelled, go home, ice, and the entire arena cheered. We have not seen sports be activated by this term in the way that it was in the first one. 2020 obviously being the high-water mark. And I am very interested as to how sports is gonna be forced, because Trump is daring them, forced to have to engage with the real world, as we often call it.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely, absolutely. That is going to be the story, and it speaks to how international sports has become, and how this administration has lost control of the streets of the United States, and that sports ultimately is a public event with public gatherings, not only in stadiums, but on the streets, in bars, in restaurants, and all the rest of it. It is going to be fascinating, and I hope, because they have so… frequently in the past rise to the occasion. People like Steve Kerr, people, around the sport who understand that sports is sports, but it also means something so much more. And maybe in some peculiar way, sports can help us reclaim some common ground and, our shared humanity. That would be… A great development for 2026.
Pablo Torre
At the very least, there’ll be a thing we pay attention to, which means that eyes and ears and oxygen are gonna be pointed towards a platform, and it’s up to sports to decide what do we want to do with this, given the thing that’s happening oftentimes right outside the door of any given arena.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely, absolutely. As always, Pablo, fascinating, and more than ever, sports politics. race, immigration, economics, law… you can’t really separate any of them anymore. It’s all tied up in a nut. That’s why it’s so much fun talking to you about all of them. Have a wonderful week, enjoy your Monday night game, and enjoy next weekend, and we will be back next Monday.
Pablo Torre
Take care. Thanks, Jen.
