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00:00Welcome. Thanks for coming back.
00:03This is the second episode of Better Things with Joe Bianca.
00:06In this show, we talk to handicappers and sharp bettors
00:09about what makes them tick, learn more about them as people.
00:12In the first episode, we talked to David Aragona.
00:14This time, we're going to talk to Randy Moss.
00:16Hope you enjoy the show.
00:20All right, so we're thrilled to bring on
00:22for the second episode of Better Things with me, Joe Bianca,
00:24the excellent TV analyst for NBC Sports.
00:26He's an NFL guy. He was just covering the Olympics.
00:29Randy Moss, thank you so much for coming on.
00:31Hey, Joe. Glad to be here.
00:33I was told an adult beverage was mandatory.
00:35That's right.
00:36So cheers.
00:37Cheers to you.
00:38Randy told us off the air that he has very specific instructions
00:42for his margarita.
00:43How do you take it?
00:45They're so specific, Joe, that for a Christmas gift one time,
00:48a friend of mine bought me business cards
00:50with margarita recipes on them to hand to bartenders.
00:53I've never gone that far, but it was a nice gesture.
00:57Nice quality reposado tequila, nice bit of Grand Marnier,
01:01agave nectar, fresh squeezed lime juice.
01:05Nothing too extravagant.
01:06You fancy, huh?
01:07Yeah, very good, though.
01:09Love it.
01:10I love a person who knows what he wants.
01:13So let's talk first off about the Olympics.
01:15You just got back from covering the Olympics.
01:17You did a great job.
01:18I was pointing out to my girlfriend when I saw you on TV.
01:21I was like, that's the guy who hosts the Writers' Room.
01:24So that was cool.
01:27You did a great job, obviously.
01:28But how was it?
01:29How was the experience, especially being in China?
01:31I feel like it was much different this year with all the COVID protocols.
01:34How was it?
01:35I was carefully disguised in my winter garb with my COVID mask on,
01:38which was mandatory by the IOC and the Chinese authorities.
01:43It was an interesting experience.
01:45We were basically COVID sports prisoners there.
01:50We were severely restricted on where we could and couldn't go.
01:54So we basically, for a month, just shuttled back and forth from the hotel
01:58to the venue office and the area there where we actually did interviews
02:05and such.
02:06And that's it.
02:07We just went back and forth there.
02:08So it wasn't as good of an experience as it was, say,
02:12when I went to Russia for the Winter Olympics back in Sochi or London
02:18for the Summer Olympics in 2012.
02:20But I'm glad I went.
02:21I mean, where else am I going to get to hang with John White and Eileen Gu
02:27and people like that, right?
02:30Yeah, for sure.
02:32But one of the things I noticed about the Olympic coverage,
02:35there was a shocking amount, from the opening ceremonies at least,
02:38of kind of the talk about the repressive Chinese government
02:42and the whole thing going on with Russia and Ukraine.
02:44Did you feel any of that?
02:45Did you feel any kind of cloud or murkiness over this event?
02:49You know, I didn't from where I was,
02:52other than the fact that it was completely different with basically no fans.
02:57There were just a very few select Chinese fans,
03:02and they had a cheerleader there.
03:04And they weren't allowed to cheer, though.
03:07They could only applaud because cheering might spread COVID, right?
03:11We had to have COVID tests every morning at the hotel.
03:13It was crazy the amount of precautions people were taking.
03:16So from that standpoint, yes.
03:18But as far as any of the repressive nature of the Chinese government
03:24or anything like that, once we got into the competition,
03:27and from where I was in the mountains, we didn't get too much of that.
03:33Gotcha.
03:34So let's talk horse racing.
03:35This is obviously your bread and butter.
03:36There's a lot of stuff that you do.
03:37You're a Renaissance man in sports.
03:40I want to ask you about a lot of that different stuff.
03:42Let's talk about horse racing,
03:43and I kind of want to know how you got on this path to begin with.
03:47I read that you used to sneak out to the track when you were a kid in Hot Springs.
03:51Are there some horses or there was some score that you made
03:54that kind of really set you on this path?
03:56You know, Joe, being raised in Hot Springs,
04:00you really don't have much of a choice but to be a horse racing fan.
04:03I mean, one of my earliest memories is being in the car in the back seat
04:07with my parents, before seat belts, by the way.
04:11We would stop and wait for the horses to cross Central Avenue,
04:15just like they still do at Saratoga.
04:17They used to do that at Oaklawn Park.
04:19There were barns on both sides of the main drag,
04:22and you had a crossing guard who would stop the traffic,
04:25and the horses would walk back and forth.
04:28I was just fascinated by that, you know, beautiful animals.
04:31My parents were horse racing fans.
04:33I grew up in a neighborhood filled with horse trainers.
04:37My next-door neighbor and dear friend was a fellow named Bob Holthus,
04:41who was the all-time leading trainer at Oaklawn Park
04:44before I think Steve Asmussen just broke his record.
04:47We took vacations with the Holthus family.
04:49I had another trainer, Jim Garude, lived on the other side of me.
04:52Trainer Dave Vance lived down the street.
04:54Another trainer, Bob Irwin, was in the Michigan Racing Hall of Fame,
04:57lived in our neighborhood.
04:59I hung out with their kids, you know.
05:01So I was a horse racing fan from a very, very young age.
05:06I used to tell my father, he would go to the track and say,
05:08whatever you do, do not mark your program.
05:12I wanted him to come back with a fresh program
05:15because I would then take his racing form and handicap the races myself
05:19and try to guess who won, and I didn't want the program to be marked.
05:23But that was how I, you know, when you're raised in Hot Springs,
05:26it's really something special, the horse races in general
05:31and the races at Oaklawn Park.
05:33That sort of started me on a meandering path
05:38that basically led to where I am right now.
05:42Totally.
05:43And that's actually one of the questions I wanted to ask you
05:45because I've never been to Hot Springs.
05:46One of the things I noticed about Oaklawn is they always have a great crowd.
05:49Even on a weekday, thousands and thousands of people filling the grandstand.
05:53The only place that I've been to that I could compare that to is Saratoga.
05:56Now, obviously, Hot Springs is a much bigger place than Saratoga,
05:59which is kind of a small town.
06:01How steeped in horse racing is Hot Springs?
06:04Hot Springs, the way I've described it to people that haven't been there,
06:08Joe, and I don't want to denigrate the town by saying this,
06:12but it's basically a poor Saratoga.
06:17Right?
06:20The racetrack is on the main drag, basically,
06:24just like Saratoga is in the middle of Saratoga Springs.
06:28Both towns revolved around wide-open gambling in their early years
06:34and also revolved around thermal bath waters, right?
06:39The Saratoga Springs was known for, you know,
06:42as a respite for where people would come and take therapeutic mineral baths,
06:46and Hot Springs was exactly the same way.
06:50The locals in Hot Springs refer to Hot Springs as the spa,
06:55just as Saratoga does.
06:58So there were a lot of similarities between Hot Springs and Oaklawn Park,
07:02and, you know, Hot Springs horse racing dates back to the early 1900s,
07:06so it's been around there for a long time.
07:09Not quite as long as Saratoga, but for a long time.
07:13And it's incredibly popular.
07:16You talk about the crowds that it draws.
07:18There's no professional sports in Arkansas,
07:22and so this is something that the people of Arkansas
07:25and the people of the surrounding region really get involved with.
07:30The media in Arkansas covers Oaklawn Park as if it is a major sport
07:37that another newspaper in a major market would cover,
07:42and that's how I got started in the newspaper business.
07:45I actually handicapped for the major newspaper in Little Rock
07:50under somebody else's name starting when I was 13 years old.
07:55So I've been involved in the sport for a long time.
08:02You're like a ghost handicapper as a kid.
08:05That's pretty awesome.
08:07So let's talk a little handicapping.
08:10First of all, what's your handle like?
08:12You don't have to give me numbers, but just in general,
08:14how much are you betting on a weekly basis, on a daily basis?
08:18And then when you do decide to bet, what kind of strategies do you have?
08:22Are you a horizontal player?
08:24Are you a vertical player?
08:25What's typical day betting like for Randy Moss?
08:28You know, I don't bet as much as people think that I do
08:33or unusually as my wife thinks that I should.
08:37I'm one of these people that their wives actually tries to get them to bet more
08:40instead of betting.
08:43And the reason for that, Joe, is that it is basically my background
08:48and how I came up in horse racing as a newspaper handicapper,
08:54which is how I cut my teeth.
08:56In Arkansas, newspapers in Texas, the Dallas Morning News,
09:00and the Fourth Star Telegram, I was known first and foremost as a handicapper.
09:05And I poured so much energy into handicapping the horse.
09:09I was really good at it.
09:13That was my reputation as a handicapper.
09:17And I spent so much time in all the different elements of handicapping
09:23that trainers would actually call me and ask me what I thought about their horses
09:28and what I thought about the competition and things like that.
09:32So back then, at the tracks where I was at,
09:36which would primarily be Oaklawn Park, Louisiana Downs in the summer,
09:41I had a huge advantage because parimutuel wagering is me against you.
09:47And I knew that I knew more about the horses on that circuit
09:51and the trainers on that circuit and everything about it
09:55than anybody else did. I had a major advantage.
09:58Then I shifted from the newspaper business to the television business,
10:02where one week I would be in Saratoga, the next week I might be in Delmar,
10:06the next week I might be at Arlington Park, you name it.
10:10And suddenly I went from being at an advantage to being at a disadvantage.
10:15Now I'm playing against the people who, like me, are parked at that racetrack
10:20and know way more about the ins and outs of that particular race meeting than I do.
10:26And I don't like to be at a disadvantage in anything.
10:29So I scaled back. I never was a huge better at all,
10:34although I hit some pretty big pick sixes with a partner in my day.
10:38But now I bet maybe a few times a week,
10:46mostly a combination of win bets and then trifecta
10:53and strategic exact accommodations and things like that.
10:59Gotcha. Do you do sports betting at all?
11:01No, I don't sports bet at all.
11:04Most of that is because the sport that I know the most about,
11:08other than horse racing, would be football.
11:11And I worked for 13 years for NFL Network.
11:15And, of course, sports betting, when you're an employee of NFL Network,
11:19was strictly taboo.
11:21So I never really got too involved in sports betting.
11:24But it's certainly something that I've thought about beginning to explore,
11:29especially now that it's more accessible than it ever has been before.
11:34Yeah, I mean, it's really catching on.
11:36I, for the longest time, did not like betting sports
11:39because I'm a little bit of a purist when it comes to sports.
11:42I like the drama.
11:43I like just watching a great Sunday night game,
11:46and it's two teams with a lot to play for.
11:48And I feel like it kind of ruins it sometimes.
11:50If you have a heavy financial interest, you can't really enjoy it as much.
11:53But now FanDuel's in New York.
11:56Playoffs were around, and I obviously opened up an account.
11:58Now the challenge is not to bet horses and sports together on the same day
12:02because that'll get you in trouble.
12:04Yeah.
12:05Don't you think?
12:06That's a good answer.
12:08Yeah.
12:10So I wanted to ask, actually, about your NFL experience.
12:13I feel like people who are in horse racing sometimes get pigeonholed
12:17because it's such a niche sport, and it's an insular sport in that way, too.
12:25How were you able to make that jump to more broad-appeal sports like the NFL?
12:31Joe, I've been incredibly lucky my whole life.
12:34I've lived a charm life, knock on wood.
12:37And I know there's the old saying that you make your own luck,
12:41and I do work hard, and I have worked hard.
12:43But there's a lot of people in this world that have worked hard
12:47that have never really gotten the breaks that maybe some other people have.
12:52And throughout my life, I've managed to meet the right people at the right time.
13:00The way I got into the TV business to begin with,
13:05I had done local television in Arkansas on the 5 o'clock news, 6 o'clock news,
13:1010 o'clock news just because horse racing at Oklahoma Park was such a big deal.
13:16But that was really the extent of my TV experience.
13:21And then one day, I was at the Kentucky Derby for newspaper,
13:26and I was asked to appear on what they call the Breakfast at Churchill Nouns.
13:32ESPN used to have that on a regular basis on Kentucky Derby Week.
13:35And I was asked to come on to Handicap the Kentucky Derby,
13:38and I was waiting in the wings for my appearance on the set.
13:42And I happened to strike up a conversation with an older gentleman
13:46who told me that he was the former producer of all the CBS horse racing shows
13:53that I grew up watching with Jack Whitaker and Charles E. Canney
13:57and Heywood Hale Brun and Frank Wright, Secretariat's Kentucky Derby and Triple Crown.
14:02I grew up watching all those horse races,
14:04and I was literally enthralled by this guy and hanging on his every word.
14:10Little did I know that it was a fellow named Bill Creasy
14:13who was in charge of hiring all of the talent pretty much at ESPN.
14:18He was the godfather of ESPN.
14:21And the very next week, Bob Neumeier, the late Bob Neumeier,
14:27an old friend of mine, was scheduled to work the preakness for ESPN
14:33and couldn't because he had a conflict as the TV play-by-play voice of the Boston Bruins
14:40who advanced in the Stanley Cup playoffs to everyone's surprise.
14:44So they needed someone at the last minute to fill in for Bob Neumeier,
14:47and Bill Creasy said, I know who you're going to hire.
14:50I just met this young man.
14:52You're going to hire Randy Moss to come fill in on that weekend.
14:56And that was the weekend where the guy ran out on the racetrack
14:59and took a swing at Artax in the middle of the Maryland Breeders' Cup Sprint,
15:03and I was in the analyst chair for all that.
15:06And on Monday, Creasy told ESPN, you're going to offer this guy a full-time job.
15:11And that's how I got started at ESPN.
15:15When Bill Creasy left ESPN, he went to NFL Network
15:20and became the senior consultant at NFL Network.
15:25And Bill called me and said, have you ever thought about doing football?
15:29We're a little too jock heavy.
15:31We need someone who's got a little more of a journalism background.
15:36And so he had me fly out to NFL Network and do an interview with the people out there.
15:41That was 2008, before the 2008 season, and that's how I got to work for them.
15:46And it was a great experience.
15:49Was there ever any concern that you would overshadow the other Randy Moss?
15:53You know, that was a liability, honestly, having the name Randy Moss.
15:58No, absolutely not.
15:59Yeah, because I was always, you know, the players would call me OG, the OG Randy Moss,
16:04the original Randy Moss.
16:07And I got a chance to meet him one time,
16:10and I've corresponded with him on Twitter and stuff like that.
16:14He's a good guy, I think.
16:16But, yeah, it was always a little bit of a pain in the ass
16:19to have to deal with the whole name thing.
16:22Well, from now on, I'm calling you the OG Randy Moss.
16:25So that's your title on any show I'm involved in.
16:28So were you nervous?
16:30Because you hadn't done any real TV up until that point, at least not national TV, right?
16:35How nervous were you that first time when they just snuck you out there?
16:38Are you talking about for ESPN, for the Preakness Horse Racing?
16:40I had done earlier that same year.
16:46If you remember way back in the day, Fox, the first Fox horse racing telecasts,
16:56were largely from Santa Anita.
16:59But, you know, Ron Ellis was on it,
17:01and Joe Buck was actually the host of some of those horse racing shows.
17:08And they had one of those shows at Santa Anita,
17:11but they also had a show the same day at Oaklawn Park.
17:15And they were looking for some people, since their main talent was at Santa Anita,
17:20to sort of be at the satellite site at Oaklawn Park.
17:24It was a full telecast of the Oaklawn Handicap from Hot Springs,
17:28but they asked me to do that.
17:29Barry Tompkins was the host.
17:31Kate and Bradar and myself sat on the set with Barry Tompkins,
17:35and we're the two analysts.
17:37So that was how I cut my teeth on it.
17:39And then the Preakness came a little bit later.
17:43I was a little nervous.
17:45Yeah, I won't lie.
17:48But, I mean, the way I've always looked at it, Joe,
17:53most of the times, even as many times as I've done it,
17:56most shows, when I start, when the show begins,
18:00I've got butterflies and I'm a little bit nervous.
18:02And I think I tell people that that's probably a good thing,
18:05because if the time ever comes when you're not just, you know,
18:11a little bit amped up and a little bit hyped up,
18:14you're maybe a little too relaxed,
18:16and that's when some bad things might happen.
18:21Yeah, I mean, you hear athletes say that, too.
18:23When they stop getting butterflies before the game,
18:25that's when they know it's time to hang it up.
18:28But I think it's one of those things, obviously,
18:31I've done a couple of small TV appearances, nothing like you,
18:33but it's just one of those things where I think you can kind of settle in
18:36and be like, well, I'm on this for a reason, you know.
18:39And I think that you had, like you said,
18:41you would cut your teeth doing smaller stuff.
18:43You were a respected handicapper.
18:44So I think that kind of takes over a little bit.
18:46I wanted to talk about the handicapping bit a little bit more,
18:49because you were the creator of the revolutionary Moss pace figures in the DRF,
18:55which I thought were great and very, very helpful.
18:58No disrespect to Timeform, which they have now,
19:01but I found the Moss pace figures a little bit more accurate,
19:04at least in my handicapping.
19:05Was that something you had always done on your own,
19:08and then it just became part of DRF?
19:10Or is that something that DRF tasked you with coming up with?
19:13It was something that I had always done on my own.
19:16I hadn't perfected them in the way that I did when DRF asked for pace figures.
19:25Initially, they were supposed to be the buyer pace figures.
19:30And so Andy Beier and I, who had had a partnership on the –
19:34I'd been associated with Andy in the Beier speed figures
19:39since basically I met him at my first Kentucky Derby in 1980.
19:44And so Andy and I spent months going over the speed figures
19:49and going over different ways to do them and the theories behind them
19:53and the mathematics behind them and the best way to do it.
19:57And it got to be so complicated and so time-consuming that Andy just basically said,
20:03I'm out.
20:05You do it.
20:06If you want to keep doing it, then you do it,
20:09and I'll tell Daily Racing Forum that I'm out.
20:12And DRF wanted to continue them, and they wanted to call them –
20:16it was their idea.
20:17They wanted to call them the Moss pace figures, so whatever.
20:20I said, okay.
20:22And that's how they got started.
20:25But, I mean, I've still got the spreadsheets that are like 25,000, 30,000 rows
20:32and an incredible amount of mathematics went into the pace figures,
20:37and maybe someday I'll be able to resurrect them somewhere in another forum.
20:40There were some perfections that I wanted to make in them
20:43that would have made them even better,
20:45but DRF had moved on to creating an improving formulator and things like that.
20:53Understandably, they had some other more pressing details that they wanted to get to,
20:57but maybe someday.
20:59Yeah, I mean, listen.
21:00You just want to send them to me.
21:02I'll pay you.
21:03I'll pay you $10 a card, something like that.
21:05You can call them the Joe Pace figures if you want.
21:08But no, because you worked with Andy Beyer, working on the Beyer figures for a while, right?
21:12Is that true?
21:13Still do.
21:14Yeah, I met him in 1980.
21:16I was doing –
21:18When I was a kid, actually, still in high school, I had sort of developed my own speed figures system.
21:27I started, like I told you, handicapping when I was 13 years old for the newspaper,
21:31and I was kind of making my own rudimentary speed figures, not nearly as good as Andy's figures,
21:39and then when Picking Winners came out, I incorporated that into my own handicapping,
21:45and people in Arkansas that bought the picks in the newspaper, as you can imagine,
21:56I mean, they thought I was some kind of savant because nobody else had speed figures.
22:01I mean, this was the 1970s, right?
22:04And Picking Winners had just come out, and you're at a racetrack in rural Arkansas,
22:09and not nearly as sophisticated of a gambler would attend Oaklawn Park as would New York or Southern California during those years.
22:19And so here I was doing speed figures and handicapping with speed figures,
22:23and there'd be horses 10, 15 to 1 in the program that the speed figures would be all over,
22:28and when you're the only one doing speed figures at a track, it's like the dream that people have right now,
22:37and that's what I was experiencing.
22:39So when I met Andy in 1980, there were a few differences in my figures and his,
22:45and he asked me to completely switch over all of my speed figures to his,
22:53and so back then what would happen is that Andy and Mark Hopkins and me, I think Jay Privman was part of this earlier group,
23:04we would do speed figures for our particular racetracks.
23:08This is before the computer era, and we would fax them back and forth to each other for gambling purposes,
23:13and that's how we would gamble on shippers and things like that would be using the figures that we had gotten off fax from each other.
23:21Then that morphed into a deal with Bloodstock Research for the figures,
23:25then the Racing Times, which was an early competitor to the racing form,
23:30and then when the Racing Times went under, they switched over to DRF, and I've been making figs with Andy ever since.
23:39Well, and you talked about how hard it was, how labor-intensive it was to create the pace figures.
23:44Obviously, you're dealing with multiple fractions instead of just one final time.
23:47What were the differences in the formulation?
23:51How does that pace figure formulation compare to the buyer work?
23:57Well, one thing you had to do, in my opinion, to get accurate pace figures is to be able to solve the conundrum of sprint figures and route figures.
24:10You wanted to make them interchangeable so that when a horse ran six furlongs in the middle of a mile in a 16th race and now dropped down to a sprint distance,
24:22you wanted to be able to have a pace figure that would translate from route to sprint or vice versa.
24:30In order to do that, Daily Racing Forum gave me access, Equibase also, to pretty much all the data in their system.
24:41I could download reams and reams of data and actually do real-life, real-world testing.
24:53I would say, okay, give me all of the horses at this racetrack that went from six furlongs to a mile in a 16th.
25:02It would give me all of their races and all of their fractional times.
25:05I could put them into an Excel spreadsheet, and I could calculate that all for myself.
25:11It was little things like that that you had to do for the pace figures that you didn't necessarily have to do for the buyer speed figures.
25:21I think that's what makes pace figures successful, is being able to test them with tens, hundreds of thousands of races to be able to get them just exactly the way you want them.
25:37They're so valuable, too, because I think without them, you see the horses in the forum, you see the ones.
25:43You see five horses with a bunch of ones, you probably know there's going to be a speed duel.
25:47A lot of times, it's a lot more murky than that, where you have horses that are up near the lead, not necessarily on the lead, coming from different tracks, different distances, like you say.
25:57That's why I think it's been so valuable.
25:59That's been a new revolution, the pace figure revolution.
26:03We've got the thorograph sheets.
26:04I don't know if you use the thorograph or the ragazine sheets.
26:07I think trackists has also helped a lot in terms of figuring out fractions and how well horses have run relative to other horses in the same race.
26:15Is there another revolutionary thing on the horizon?
26:19Where do you think handicapping and creating figures is going from here on out?
26:24I think the next real revolution on the horizon is going to be if the industry can ever perfect the mechanism behind the GPS stuff, what they've tried to do.
26:40What they've tried to do is another revolution.
26:42What they've tried to do.
26:44I want to emphasize the word tried.
26:46It's a noble attempt, but so far, it hasn't been able to pan out technologically, so that you can get all sorts of different little data points of information.
26:59I recently spoke to a gentleman named Dr. David Lambert, who's been involved with picking out horses using biometrics for years and years and years.
27:13Really a fascinating guy from the UK.
27:16He's at the forefront of technology that can enable you to study a horse's breathing and study a horse's heart rate during the running of a race and be able to tell at what point during a race, pace-wise, distance-wise, the horse begins to actually show signs of stress.
27:44Little things like this are something that I think horse players are going to have access to in the next wave of handicapping, whenever something like that will be absolutely perfected.
27:58Gotcha. That's something they're already doing in human sports, I think, too.
28:01They have them wearing the trackers.
28:03I think there's so much of that data that's going on in human sports that I think it's only a matter of time to come to horse racing.
28:08Like you said, we can't get the timing, the actual timing of the race right.
28:13Nothing else really matters.
28:17We've been on the writer's room a couple of times.
28:20You know our ideal. We like to talk about the broad scope issues of racing.
28:23Who's the bad guys right now?
28:27Who's the target of the racing public?
28:31Now that seems to be Bob Baffert.
28:33We've talked about Baffert plenty on the show.
28:35I don't want to get into it too much.
28:36I just wanted to get some reaction from you about the Franklin County judge earlier this week denying the stay of his 90-day suspension and the whole argument that he's going to be irreparably damaged that his lawyers were trying to make.
28:50What's your reaction to that?
28:52It surprised me a little bit.
28:54I expected Judge Wingate to grant the stay simply because that's what was a general rule of thumb with trainers in similar situations in the past.
29:04It had been almost automatic that judges would grant the stay.
29:08It'll be interesting to see what happens with that whole case going forward.
29:13Certainly, Baffert and his attorneys look like they're behind the eight ball right now in trying to get a stay of not only the suspension but of Churchill Downs' decision to unilaterally bar him for two years and keep his horses from getting derby points.
29:31As the news just broke today, as I know you know, a couple of the top Baffert horses, including Messier, have been transferred to Tim Yakteen, Baffert's former assistant.
29:42It's good news for racing fans, as Bob pointed out.
29:46It looks like we'll be able to see Messier not only in races like the Santa Anita Derby but theoretically, if he does well, in the Kentucky Derby.
29:56The whole thing is just really unfortunate.
29:58It's so unfortunate on so many different levels.
30:03It's really given horse racing a black eye in the general public, even if racing didn't really necessarily deserve to have a black eye for this particular situation.
30:15Just because when people, when newspaper people who don't know horse racing put headlines, you know, Derby winner doped, and then people that don't know racing read that and just assume that this was some kind of hugely nefarious thing.
30:35Medina Spirit won the Derby with all these illegal medications coursing through his veins, and he never would have won it otherwise, and things like that.
30:44It really does the sport, I think, a disservice.
30:47I totally agree.
30:49My only pushback, slightly, would be that I feel like this is kind of karmic balancing, because I think there were so many ugly things that were going on in racing for so long, away from the headlines, that should have been reported on and should have been scrutinized by the media.
31:03It didn't get reported on because racing wasn't a big deal, whereas this wasn't a big deal on its own, but it's kind of like a makeup call where it actually got forced racing to get its stuff together.
31:15Yeah, and you know what goes along hand in glove?
31:18Yeah, I totally agree with that.
31:21And what goes along with that, though, Joe, is horse racing doesn't get the media coverage at all now that it used to, because there essentially are no more horse racing riders left at newspapers around the country.
31:39I mean, when I first started, every major newspaper in America had a designated horse racing rider, and some of them in the major horse racing markets, most of them, had more than one.
31:51When I went to the Kentucky Derby in 1980, my very first Kentucky Derby, every sports newspaper legend that you could think of was in the press box because that's what they did.
32:03They covered the Kentucky Derby.
32:05I mean, Red Smith was there.
32:06I mean, for crying out loud, the people that were just my idols growing up, reading them in the newspaper every day, were there.
32:14And now all that's gone.
32:16I think maybe the Louisville Career Journal still has a racing rider, but maybe they don't.
32:23I don't know.
32:25You don't see them.
32:27You don't see them anywhere.
32:29And so the sport doesn't get the scrutiny, the journalistic scrutiny that it should get, that it used to get in the past.
32:41And to a certain extent, I think that scrutiny at times would help keep racing on the straight and narrow.
32:48And now I think there are a lot of people that run racetracks in the country that aren't really worried about that.
32:54They think, well, if something happens, we'll never find out about it.
32:58Yeah, I totally agree.
32:59Unless it's something catastrophic, like a drug deque in the Derby, you don't see that kind of reporting.
33:04On the flip side, though, there was obviously those big blaring headlines from 2019.
33:09Every time a horse broke down at Santa Anita, that was a national controversy.
33:13It was a little bit of a smaller story last week or a couple of weeks ago, a little tiny story we talked about in the writer's room.
33:19It was in a Pasadena Star News about the CHRB report from 2021 and about how breakdowns and deaths were basically cut in half from where they were in 2018 and 2019.
33:30And, you know, as horrible as a couple of years as it's been for racing, so many bad headlines, so many things you have to try to explain to people who aren't into racing and you're embarrassed to do so.
33:41I think it helped get people's heads out of their asses a little bit to the point where they think and they know now that the most important thing, not just to us, but to the public is the safety of the horse.
33:52And I don't think that that was the case necessarily for a long time in racing.
33:56What's your feeling on that?
33:58Do you think we finally turned a corner and people are actually looking out for the horses, number one now?
34:03I think that depends on where you're at.
34:07It depends on what track you're at, what level of racetrack you're at.
34:11I think that's still a problem at minor league racetracks.
34:17And in the minor league racetracks, certainly don't get the scrutiny that a Santa Anita would get.
34:23But for the most part, at major racetracks, I think there's been a sea change in the way the industry has viewed the safety of the racehorse.
34:34When they look at Santa Anita and see what happened out there and how Santa Anita was very nearly shut down, maybe even permanently by the state of California.
34:44It was a pretty hairy situation out there for a while.
34:48And you hate to say that good has come out of horses dying.
34:57But maybe those horses that unfortunately passed away during that period of time at Santa Anita have saved the lives of far more racehorses in the ensuing years, just because of the attention that was drawn to that.
35:15And what Santa Anita and the stronic people have done out there to try to mitigate that and to try to make sure it doesn't happen again.
35:24They deserve a lot of credit for all of the protocols that they've put in.
35:28And the horsemen deserve a lot of credit out there for going along with the protocols and understanding how important it is.
35:34Yep. And Del Mar too has a great safety record and they do a lot of good stuff.
35:39Yeah, it's just it's one of those things where you're never going to get the credit like you got the blame, but you got to do it anyway.
35:45You know, because it's the it's the right thing to do for the sport.
35:48So let's talk a little bit about Derby season.
35:50You're going to be reporting from the not from, but on the Louisiana Derby card this Saturday.
35:55It's not as quite as good of a race as the Risen Star, but I have no idea when this is going to air.
36:00So let's not talk specifically about that race.
36:02Let's talk more about generally about the Derby season.
36:05You mentioned Messier, I think that was kind of the variable heading into the latter stages of this Derby trail, whether or not Baffert's horses were going to be able to run in the Derby, whether or not they're going to be transferred.
36:15It looks like now they're starting that process now that Baffert's last reprieve has been denied by that judge.
36:21What's your impression on the three year olds?
36:23Do you think there's any superstars out there?
36:25Do you think it's a subpar crop?
36:27What do you think?
36:29I think it's a decent crop.
36:31I don't think I think we're a little too early before the major Derby preps as we're as we're taping.
36:37This is before leaving the Louisiana Derby to really make a definitive judgment about how good the crop looks to be by the time we get to the Kentucky Derby.
36:48But there are some pretty solid horses out there, I think.
36:52I mean, Forbidden Kingdom looked awfully good winning the San Felipe.
36:56You know, you have to be at least a little bit skeptical about his ability to carry a speed a mile and a quarter, much less a mile and an eighth for the Santa Anita Derby.
37:08And then Messier, of course, beat Forbidden Kingdom at a seven furlong sprint distance.
37:13Maybe it was six and a half. I don't remember.
37:15But it was a sprint distance in California and beat him pretty convincingly.
37:18And so the way Messier ran in his last start certainly would have to lead you to believe that he's probably the leader right now of the three-year-old division heading into the Santa Anita Derby.
37:32But I mean, I'm a big fan of Smile Happy.
37:35I'm a big fan of Zandon, Chad Brownsource.
37:39They were second and third behind Epicenter and The Risen Star, and they both had their excuses and both ran very well in defeat.
37:45Certainly would make you believe that they were sitting on another huge effort.
37:50And I guess they'll meet in the bluegrass probably in their scheduled start.
37:54So that should be a race to really look forward to.
37:57And Epicenter looked good in The Risen Star, but my primary concern about Epicenter is if Forbidden Kingdom makes it to the Kentucky Derby.
38:10Epicenter, we don't know yet if he's necessarily a need-the-lead type horse.
38:16If he races back, I think in that race called the Gunrunner, I think he set a fairly close second early in the race before he went up and engaged the leader and went on with it.
38:25But certainly a horse like Forbidden Kingdom, if Epicenter continues to show a front-running style, would certainly maybe compromise the way he would like to run.
38:38I mean, that's my impression, too.
38:40I don't have a specific horse that I like, but most of these preps have been one on the lead.
38:46You think of, like you said, Forbidden Kingdom, Epicenter, even Classic Causeway in the last two Tampa preps.
38:53Messier was a front-running horse as well in the Bob Lewis.
38:56That, to me, might set it up for somebody like you said, Smile Happy, but maybe even Secret Oath.
39:02And so that's what I wanted to ask you about.
39:04Secret Oath is running in the Arkansas Derby.
39:05Your home race next Saturday, so I'm sure you've got some opinions on it.
39:10What do you think her prospects are, not just for that race, but if they decide to go to the Derby?
39:15Is anybody out there surprised that Wayne Lucas decided to run the Philly in the Arkansas Derby?
39:22The moment I heard he was considering it, I was like, she's going to run.
39:26Let me give you a blast from the past and tell you a story.
39:31I'm considerably older than you are.
39:32Probably one of my biggest feathers in my handicapping hat as a newspaper handicapper years ago in Arkansas was the 1984 Arkansas Derby.
39:51Let me set it up.
39:53The week before the Arkansas Derby was the fantasy stakes for three-year-old Phillies.
39:57And it was a showdown between a Las Barrera trained Philly named My Darling One, who was a very flashy chestnut, had white all the way up to her shoulders on her legs.
40:08She almost looked like a paint horse out there.
40:11Very talented.
40:13And Althea, trained by Wayne Lucas.
40:16And Althea was expected to go to the lead.
40:18She was ridden by Pat Valenzuela.
40:20And when she left the starting gate, she stumbled and went to her nose and she was in last place.
40:26When they turned on to the backstretch, about midway down the backstretch, Althea makes this huge run up along the rail to get back up into contention and gets shut off.
40:38And Valenzuela has to check and Althea gets knocked back to last place again.
40:43It was only like a six-horse field.
40:45Then she circled the field on the second turn, hooked up with My Darling One at the top of the stretch.
40:52They opened up about 12 lengths on the field.
40:53They went a mile and a sixteenth and 141 and change.
40:57And got what would be the equivalent of a buyer speed figure of about 108 or 109 today.
41:05And this was after Althea stumbled at the start and got shut off on the backside.
41:10Wayne decided to bring her back seven days later and run her in the Arkansas Derby.
41:16And I thought she was running against Gate Dancer, who went on to win the Preakness.
41:20She was running against At The Threshold, who went on to finish second in the Kentucky Derby.
41:26I thought she was an absolute cinch.
41:30I mean, Wayne was aggressive enough to run her back on one week's rest after that effort in the Fantasy.
41:37And she blew to the lead and opened up and drew off and won by seven in the Arkansas Derby.
41:44So Wayne certainly has a lot of experience.
41:47That, then winning colors, coming back to win the Kentucky Derby in 1988, Philly against the Boys.
41:53It surprised nobody that Wayne was this aggressive with Secret Oath.
41:57I loved Secret Oath's last few races.
42:01The first race she ran at Oaklawn Park, I remember calling Jerry Bailey, my buddy, on the phone and saying,
42:06You've got to watch this. You won't believe this. Wayne's got a five-star prospect here.
42:13And she's looked just as good in every race since.
42:16I don't have a high opinion right now of the three-year-old Colts that are at Oaklawn, that are based at Oaklawn.
42:26I don't know who's going to come in for the race right now.
42:29I don't think any big names are, really.
42:32So I think she's going to be the favorite, and I think she deserves to be the favorite.
42:36I think she'll probably win.
42:38Yeah, and the owners are saying that they don't want to run in the Derby right now.
42:42I'm like, just give it time. She wins by 10 lengths in the Arkansas Derby.
42:46She's running in the Kentucky Derby.
42:48There's absolutely no way they're going to stick with the plan to race her in the Oaks.
42:52But yeah, you're right. That's the kind of stuff we love.
42:55Especially in an era where horses run three, four, five times a year, and then they're whisked off to stud.
43:01One thing you know about Wayne, he's going to run his horses, and he's not afraid to put them in spots that you wouldn't necessarily think.
43:08So that's what's great about him. One of many things.
43:11So this was a lot of fun with you, the OG, Randy Moss.
43:14But I just wanted our audience to get to know you just a little bit better.
43:19You're obviously a very smart guy. You know a lot about sports.
43:22What is Randy Moss's typical off day like?
43:26What do you like to do outside of the track and sports?
43:28Well, I like to play basketball. I like to work out.
43:35I like to make my margaritas at night and have a little nightcap.
43:42But you know, to do this job right, it's time consuming. It really is.
43:51And I spend most of my days that I'm not on TV or preparing to be on TV on site here like I am at a hotel in Stanford, Connecticut, where NBC Sports is based.
44:03I'll spend it preparing.
44:05And I'll make trip notes on every stakes race run at every major track in America, which is pretty time consuming in and of itself.
44:14And just try to gather as much information as I can about the horses that I may or may not be talking about in the coming weeks.
44:24So that, as my wife will tell you, that takes a lot of my time.
44:29Sounds boring, doesn't it?
44:31I was going to say that's a very boring answer, but it's probably why you are where you are now.
44:36That kind of dedication. So I respect it. I respect the honesty.
44:39Randy, man, thank you so much for coming on. Always appreciate talking to you.
44:43And we always love when you come on the writer's room to obviously have an open invite there anytime you want to come on.
44:48I appreciate you making time, especially this week from the hotel.
44:52Any time for you, Joe. Take care, buddy.
44:57Thank you so much to Randy Moss for coming on the show. Great conversation.
45:02He's just a great guy. Knows so much about so many different things.
45:05It's always good to talk to him, but I appreciate him coming on in the early days of this new show.
45:09And in honor of Randy Moss, we're going to do a little NFL future bets here.
45:14The NFL draft is coming up in about a month. That's the end of April.
45:18You can bet on who's going to be number one overall, number two overall.
45:22You can bet over-unders on position groups in the first round.
45:26That, to me, is a little bit interesting.
45:28So I'm going to give you guys a couple of flyers to maybe take if you're going to bet the NFL draft.
45:32Because what kind of degenerate does not want to bet on a bunch of guys walking up to the stage and putting on hats?
45:37If that doesn't get your blood flowing, I don't know what does.
45:40So we're going to go, first of all, we're going to go number one.
45:43For the number one pick, we're going to go Ike Makwanu, nicknamed Icky.
45:47Plus 850 to go number one overall to the Jacksonville Jaguars.
45:51A lot of people think that Aiden Hutchinson is going to be the pick here.
45:54I think the Jaguars are going to keep trying to build around Trevor Lawrence.
45:58They signed a bunch of wide receivers. They did re-sign their left tackle.
46:01They signed a new guard. I still think the offensive lineman is going to be the pick here.
46:04And Icky Makwanu, I think, is the most versatile of the guys they can pick.
46:09He's plus 850. Aiden Hutchinson is a huge favorite to go number one overall right now.
46:13So I'll take Icky Makwanu plus 850 to go number one.
46:16And then we're going to go number two. Slight bit of a hedge here.
46:20If Hutch goes number one to the Jaguars, I like Malik Willis plus 400 to go number two to the Detroit Lions.
46:26Lions have Jared Goff under the cap this year.
46:29He's probably going to be the starter this year, but they can get out of that contract after this season.
46:32So I'm going to take Malik Willis plus 400 and think that the Lions are going to go try to get their quarterback of the future in this draft.
46:40Aiden Hutchinson is also plus 400 in that spot.
46:43So if he doesn't go number one, that could be good value, but I'll stick with Malik Willis in that spot.
46:47And there's a couple over-unders. This is all a crapshoot.
46:50Things can break a whole bunch of different ways.
46:52I got three over-unders for you in the first round.
46:55We're going to go running backs under .5.
46:57This has been a trend in the NFL where the running back has become a less premium position over time.
47:02Last year, as far as I know, there was only one running back taken in the first round.
47:06I could be wrong about that, but I think it was just Nachi Harris going to the Steelers.
47:09And I think a lot of people just saw him as a special kind of prospect.
47:13I don't think there's that guy this year.
47:15And I think that combined with the fact that the running back position has become more interchangeable in today's NFL.
47:20So I'm going to go under .5 running backs in the first round.
47:23So that's got to be zero.
47:24I'm going to go wide receivers under .5 as well.
47:27I think this is a little bit of a murkier position because I think there's probably six or seven guys.
47:33A couple guys who are on the cusp that could be late first round, early second round picks.
47:37Probably going to depend on the way the board breaks.
47:40But I just don't think there's enough surefire number one wide receivers in this draft to say there's definitely going to be six plus guys taken.
47:47So we'll go under .5 for wide receivers taken in the first round.
47:50And we're going to go offensive players over .16.
47:54You get these odds at draft kings, plenty of other places.
47:57Over .16.5 for offensive players in the first round.
48:00There's 32 total picks in the first round.
48:02So you need 17.
48:04You need a slim majority of offensive players.
48:06I just think in the NFL, the trend is towards offense and less defense.
48:11You try to build defense on the cheaper side, maybe through free agency.
48:15You want to draft offense so you can have that core wide receivers and quarterbacks and tight ends and offensive linemen.
48:20So we'll go over .16.5 for offensive players taken in the first round of the NFL draft, which is coming up in a month.
48:31Once again, thank you so much to Randy Moss for coming on the show.
48:34We hope you enjoyed it.
48:36And we'll see you next time on Better Things.