What, what do you wanna see from Sharon Horgan next, do you think?

I would love her to make a horror film set in Ireland that features women from midlife onwards because I feel like if, you know, something horrifying to happen to me, I'd be like, "For God's sake, you mean I have to deal with this now?"

Uh, what did you think when you heard that Riley Green shall be the, the Bud Light Grey Cup Halftime Show next month?

Um, I don't know.

It's Calgary, so they want a country music star, but I can think of a dozen or so Canadian musicians that would've been more interesting, but then I understand he's having a moment, and he comes from Alabama-

It seems to have shifted, and that coupled with the-

Now you're...

So this is- that's a completely different discussion, Sam.

The overall- Sort of wisdom and logic behind diversifying your set of trade partners.

And so with somebody other than Trump, you might have Canada making a slow drift towards that as opposed to a rupture.

But again, Trump is what we have.

Trump is what we got to deal with.

Or will they be culturally washed?

What does that example of Ali, what does that teach the modern athlete, do you think? Like what are kind of modern contemporary athletes, what do they get from Ali's

lesson, if anything? I don't know.

On the one hand, no athlete in history has had as many books, as many movies, as many documentaries, as many TV series made about them as Muhammad Ali.

Mike Tyson runs a distant second, and third place is several last behind Mike Tyson.

But Muhammad Ali still is the king.

And every time you look up, there's a new Ali movie coming out, a new Ali documentary coming out, a new Ali book coming out.

But at the same time, what he did, who he was, what he stood for, for better and for worse, are also... widely misunderstood.

2016, Colin Kaepernick sits out the national anthem to protest,

It's jarring

... you know, the guy that was always good to you is painting you as a villain or, you know, somebody so low.

But it wasn't true, and I got witnesses now.

And every single other person that saw that is gonna see it a little bit differently, but the big things they agree on 'cause they know they saw it 'cause that's what happened.

And so, um, like I said inside, like, a lot of times the only way to be fair to someone is to tell the truth, even if the truth, like, doesn't flatter them because, like, have to massage the truth, alter the truth to spare somebody's ego, that's the thing that's not fair.

It does.

And so there's stuff in the book that's really, really, really, really heavy, you know? But even in the heavy chapters, there are laugh lines.

There's stuff, like, there is a chapter about my, my mom's, my dad's mom.

Morgan, is this just local municipalities cowering to this big, huge behemoth?

Yeah, what you're identifying there, Sam, is the fact that FIFA and the International Olympic Committee, one thing they understand is that sports fans don't like them.

Sports fans tolerate FIFA.

They tolerate the IOC because they love the sport.

But they also know that no matter how odious and aggressive FIFA's behavior is or IOC's behavior is, no matter how many people they turn off with that behavior- That people still love these athletes, love the sport more than they hate FIFA, more than they hate the IOC.

And in the end, once the games start, people get wrapped up in the action, they get wrapped up in national pride, they get wrapped up in these stories, these athletes, these teams they fall in love with, and they tolerate FIFA because FIFA facilitates this thing even at a steep cost.

And so every World Cup, every Olympics has these subplots on the way in, every single one.

Does it change the narrative of with all the problems with FIFA? Does it take some of the edge and some of the criticism off of all the problems that the World Cup represents? What is happening to soccer in this country?

Why?

I would argue – you're telling me what I've argued.

I would argue that the idea that sports internationally is first and foremost a unifying thought already represents a profound rethinking.

Think about the fact that we live here in Canada.

And one of the people – one of our national heroes is Paul Henderson because he scored the winning goal in the Summit Series in 1972.

Now, ask yourself – Do we portray the Summit Series as this opportunity for Canadians and Soviets to forget our differences and play hockey? No, we don't, right? This was like a proxy conflict between these two hockey games, but a proxy between a conflict between democracy and totalitarianism.

And we, as Canadians, take the victory in the Summit Series as evidence that democracy is better than totalitarianism.

And isn't that sometimes the unifying power of sport? That's just sport.

But what do you make, Morgan? Are we backsliding from anything, or was there nothing to ever backslide from?

Yeah, it's more of a regression to the mean.

Look, five and a half years ago I wrote a column for the Toronto Star.

It was about the media industry but also applied to other industries, and the, the question I asked In this column was all of this fervor and enthusiasm and motivation around diversity and racial equality in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.

The question I asked was, was this all January at the gym? 'Cause you go to the gym January 1st, that place is full because everyone is motivated to get in shape.

It takes about six weeks to separate the people who are motivated from the people who are in the habit of staying fit, and by the 1st of March, all the people who were motivated have fallen back into their old habits.

They used to be at the gym, now they're back on the couch eating donuts, yelling at some hockey player for being out of shape while they themselves are getting increasingly out of shape because that's their habit.

Why don't we see these things as exactly that, quote, "merit-based initiatives"?

That's what I'm getting at.

That is a different question, yes.

So what I'm saying is top level, the why is right there.

Now, the royal we in the media, like, our inability to wrap our minds around the fact that this white guy from Canada might be so interested in money that he would take these crazy risks and bind up his life with all of these shady, dangerous people, we can't wrap, royal we cannot wrap our minds around that.

But the other guy that's connected to these stories is Malik Cunningham, the kid from Falstaff, who they were employing as a cut-rate hit man.

And everyone understands why, and no one questions, "Well, why would this kid from Falstaff wanna go shoot people on behalf of Ryan Wedding?" We don't question why.

Oh, he's poor Black kid from Falstaff.

Absolutely.

Morgan, how was your U.S. college football experience?

It was really eye opening.

One, it's hard for people to conceptualize just how good like a power five level school is.

And I promise you the third stringer on a power five team will give anyone the blues in real life at any position.

And so that sort of gets impressed upon you immediately.

And also it's different now because the whole landscape is so much more corporate now.

But when I was there, this was in the mid nineties, it was sort of a transitional period, especially at Northwestern from sort of the mom and pop underdog program that they were to the fully corporate program that they are right now.

Any that stand out for you as being either particularly great or particularly not