The Beat of Sports

This week the Russell Westbrook was involved in an incident after a fan touched him during a time out of a game. Fans reacted negatively to Westbrook appearing to chastise the kid after the incident but as Marc explains Westbrook did nothing wrong. All it takes for one of these moments to go wrong and then everything within the sports world changes.

Shelby Mast the Bracketologist for USA Today joins the show to talk about who he thinks is in or out when it comes to the NCAA Tournament. He runs through who is on the outside of the bubble. He and Marc talk about what the chances are that the Knights make the tournament and if the win against South Florida helped give them a cushion to be inside the bubble.

Josh Robbins from The Athletic joins the show to talk about the bizarre 3-game stretch for the Orlando Magic after the all star break. He and Marc discuss how the team has suddenly begun struggling at the free throw stripe. Then Josh talks about how the game against the Warriors is the most important game for the Magic in 7 years.

Marc takes a look back the the Johnny Manziel draft and all the hype surrounding his football talent and wonders if you can compare it to Kyler Murray. He explains that they have a similar skillset and all it takes is one team to fall in love with his ability and then he could be a top draft pick.

This past weekend at the Academy Awards, the filmmakers behind Free Solo walked away with the Oscar but are now worried the movie about free climbing without a rope are worried about novices trying to attempt this feat. Peter Vigneron from Outside Magazine joins the show to talk about the the doc and all the technical challenges the makers had to deal with during shooting.

The Green Bay Packers in the NFL have an interesting setup in that they allow fans to buy shares into the franchise but the fans have no say in personnel decisions but what if a team would let them have a voice in decisions, that is what Chattanooga FC has decided to do.

The master of basketball knowledge Brendan Suhr joins the show to talk about the potential of the NBA doing away with the one and done rule, He and Marc run through some of the reasons the league should be careful before making this decision. They also try to figure out who deserves more blame in the Anthony Davis situation, AD or the Lakers front office. Brendan also talks about why Marc should be worried about the New York media being too abrasive for Kevin Durant.

With 20 games left and if the Magic miss the playoffs by one game you can't blame it all on the Knicks loss, there have been some games the team should have won. The 4th quarter collapse is bad and as Marc points out it shows that the Magic have been more inconsistent than consistent this season.

An interesting story being floated throughout college football Twitter is talk of a potential scheduling merger between the Big 12 and Pac 12. Marc explains that this could kick the tires on talks of the 2 conferences merging into a 22 team league. But he explains that this might not be feasible considering how the landscape of television packages look.

Tyler George of the 2018 US Olympic curling team joins the show to talk about how he got into the sport of curling. He and Marc discuss the growth of the sport in this country and the rise of former athletes getting into the sport. George also talks about what it was like trash talking against the Canadian team during the Olympic Games.