1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - Barry Thompson (Fairfax Football Academy): April 7th, 10am

Episode Date: April 7, 2022

GOAT talk and championshipsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It's time to go one-on-one with D.P. Coming at you live from the Coppull Chevrolet GMC Studios, here is your host, Derek Pearson, presented by Beatrice Bakery on 937 The Ticket and the Ticketfm.com. It's always good to be good. It's better to be great. It is best to be best. work and purpose. Have some function, some positivity to what you put into the space that you occupy.

That's it. What occupies the vacuum? The phrasing would be, if you put good into the vacuum, it occupies the vacuum. If you put bad into the vacuum, it occupies the vacuum. If you do nothing, the vacuum will determine what occupies the vacuum. put good into the vacuum. It is the only thing you control. Do that.

Simple. I'd like the fact that we engage. I'd like to even better that we engage positively. That's what we're going to do. Honda Lincoln Hotline. Sorry, having text line, 402, 46685 on a Thursday, which means that we will inject something really, really good, often best. Good and getting better into the vacuum.

That's what we're going to do. The autumn wind is a pirate. Blustering in from sea with a rollicking song he sweeps along, swaggering boisterously. His face is weather-beaten. He wears a hooded sash with a silver hat about his head and a bristling black mustache. He growls as he storms the country, a villain big and bold.

And the trees all shake and quiver and quake as he robs them of their gold. The autumn win is a raider, pillaging just for fun. He'll knock you round and upside down and laugh when he's conquered and won. Yes. Yes. Let's bring him in. Let's bring them in. The coach.

Yeah. The coach. Amen. Look what you got on today. I got my new ticket here. Ah. Yeah, that's the ticket. That is the ticket, baby.

Looking good. Looking good, man. Yeah. Looking good. We like that. We like that. Yeah. Yeah.

That's a good look, man. That's a good look. Barry Thompson. See you rocking the W there? Yeah. you know, can't be there, but, you know, I'm there in a heart and theory. You know, spirit I'm there. Barry Thompson joins us.

And again, we want to thank the folks from Beatrice's Bakery for making this hour of sports radio happen. BT, I got to spend some time with folks. I got to spend some time with Barry this past weekend. And it's always good and glorious when you get to plug into some positive and some good and some thoughtfulness and some smart thinking about things that affect us on day, and especially in the sports world. Barry, we were having the discussion that, and I thought it was specific to baseball,

that when you have the conversation about the greatest of all time, that baseball is unique in that it doesn't exclude en masse people who have not won World Series championships. Like it's unique to that You will not talk ill will of Ted Williams Because he didn't win a World Series In baseball you will not Of all the things you can talk about Barry Bonds

About winning a World Series Is the thing that seems to pop up more than anything else So through baseball Is baseball in that space? Because football is not the case Basketball, that's not the case If you talk basketball, the goat, You're talking about

Immediately you dive into the number of championships that are players want, right? Yeah. Quarterback play, right? Same thing applies. Quarterback play. Right. Yeah, I think it's kind of a recent phenomenon because when I was growing up,

you know, talk about basketball is, you know, people would talk very highly of Vosca Robinson and Elgin Baylor and Jerry West, and those were guys that didn't necessarily have championship rings at the time that they were being elevated among the greats. but more recently, I think actually started, my opinion, starts with Dr. Jay. You know, everybody was expecting Dr. Jay because he was so good to win a championship. And we all got, our fans got caught up in that pursuit of that.

And then right after that, you have bird and you have magic. And they start that. That's a different conversation, I think, that they started. So I think you can talk about that large gap. You have the Celtics and basketball that, consistent level of excellence you have a gap we start talking about them just individual players and now we're to the part where we talk only about the guys that that can put together multiple rings but on the baseball and golf note here's my thought about that the reason that you can do

that in baseball i think more readily is that baseball is a lot like golf and that it is an individual sport but you're relying on the team to kind of get you over the hump to win the championship. But analogy would be, let's say golf was a team sport, and I was the greatest driver in the world. I could get the ball, no matter what the length of the hole was, within four feet of the hole, but I relied on a teammate to make the putt.

You would say I was probably one of the greatest golfers of all time, even though I might not win championships because the guy putting for me, you know, was out putted, for example. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. And that's how baseball strikes me. Because of the individual matchups, you can, you have a little romance with the sport, you know, following these people,

and they can get to this exaltic status with numbers and so forth, even though they haven't won championships. Whereas other sports, touchdowns, points scored, you know, they, whatever, you know what I mean? Well, we fall into that with football. And if we said, okay, who's the goat and, you know, quarterback? Yeah. Immediately, championships become a part of the discussion. Exactly right.

Right? We can all sit back and say that, my goodness gracious, Damarino was as sexy a quarterback as ever lived. Right? But he never got those chips. And it's not to say that he wasn't great, exceptional elite. He just never won titles. Right.

And it doesn't mean, but he's being held in regard against three or four guys who got chips. Remember, when we came up, Johnny Nitis was the goat and there was nothing you could say about it. Yeah, he was Brady. He was Brady. Right? Like, we, like, if you grew up in our era,

this is what this was, right? That's right. So through all of that, and you can go through all these folks and players, right? but when you talk about the greatest of all time, baseball tends to do the thing differently. Basketball, look, we know who has the most rings. And people will argue down that, well, he was basic

and he was doing it against lesser players. No, he did it against Will, he did against West, he did against him, he did against him, dude. Right? So Russell, in the conversation matters. William Felton Russell. Right, and that Wilk Chamberlain, for what he did and in his dominance, that stuff matters.

The championships matter. But baseball, you can have the Ted Williams conversation. You can have the Barry Bond's conversation. You can have the Mitrault conversation. And the goat talk becomes problematic because they do not have a real series, but it's not the end of the conversation. Yeah, I think because, like when you talk about football and basketball, you talk about that quarterback position,

Part of it is leadership. And not to say that Marino wasn't a good leader, but in our minds, that's the ultimate point of leadership when you can lead a bunch of men to a championship. To me, Marino, if you think about when Charles Barkley first retired, and he'd gone through a couple series with, like he got, he was kind of battling with Michael. Yeah, Phoenix, right?

He was in that Marino category. Like, you know, hey, he's a good player, a great player, didn't win a championship. but you see Charles as a basketball player is kind of faded and Marino is kind of faded too. You know, you kind of remember him. Charles is not so much. You don't remember him as being that close, you know, more of the TV thing. It is interesting how we do this with our sports stars.

So say football, like you can go, the greatest running back all time, you know, and Barry Sanders will get mentioned, right? But he didn't win any championships and did horribly in the playoffs. but he'll get mentioned in that breath. You talk about great defensive ends, great linebackers. You know, linebackers, buckets will get, you know, somebody will mention buckets if they're old enough, right? Yep.

But winning championships. So Bill Bergey was another guy, older guy, right? Great linebacker for Philly for years. It's just interesting how that conversation, to me, kind of moves around. Currently, in my opinion, in those two sports, it's based solely on rings, and it obfuscates a lot of people. like, you know, there's been some great defensive backs, you know, Revis, like for the Jets.

I was watching some tape on him the other day and something he did with his feet to keep himself vertical. And you can't teach that stuff. It was literally crazy. And people would watch and say, hey, that's one of the best defensive backs of all the time. Didn't win any championships. But it just kind of, football kind of goes.

It's off in a dark corner with junkies. There was a conversation on social media. Yeah, there was a conversation. on social media with a Husker, Rob Zataka was talking about, well, wrestling is different, right? That it's different because it's one of the few sports where if you have a bad day in football,

you can still win the game. You could have, individually have a bad game in baseball. You can go 0 for 5 and still win the game. Wrestling is one of the, it's the only sport, which one of the few sports, where if you have a bad day, Everybody know you had a bad day. Like this was the thing.

And so when you talk about the greatest of all time in wrestling, right? Right. Right. The names that come up were the people who had that kind of constant great day-to-day success and then exceptional championship performance success as well, right? And let me have something about that wrestling. I know from personal experience. In other sports, you can have a bad day recover and do something at the right time.

And it turns into a very good. day. The recent championship game was a good case and point. A lot of people were putting down McCormick and saying they only scored 10 points a game. But at the crucial part of that game, McCormick had an impact on that

outcome, in my view. Wrestling, if it's a bad day, it starts off bad, it rarely recovers. And it starts off that. Rarely does it. You can have reverses in that, but if it's a bad day, it rarely gets better at the end. You know,

Really. So, yes, wrestling is a really, really unique sport having done in high school for a year in college. It is glad. It's just you and somebody else. And, you know, you either get it done or you don't get it done. And there are very few sports like that. Yeah, I mean, we thought about it. And people talk about the individual, right, the individual performances of said people in game sports.

and I just thought that baseball handles it differently. Like it's opening their baseball and the beauty of it is everybody has an opportunity. Everybody has, you know, you'll have 500 plus a badge where you can adjust, right? And longevity matters in basketball. Football, you know, if you get 300 carries in a season, you're not going to do that for many seasons. No, you're not. Like it's set up that way, right? for that. If you're a defensive player

and you've got to make, you know, you got to make those 200 tackles, 150 tackles, that's a lot. It is. Like, that's a lot. So it wears and tear. But so let's go through if I asked you the greatest football player to ever live. Hmm.

What would you say? I'll go old school. Jim Thorpe. Okay. Right? No, I'm not. Right? Right. No, but I just, the fact that I can see your face. Right?

Like I can see your face. I was watching your face and say, what is it? You know, like you bumped you. Well, but see, if you said Thorpe, I would understand why you said Thorpe because an entire league concept was built on Thor. Right? The whole process of being able to put together teams with great players in great spaces to that region.

Googling like crazy right now. Well, they should. Look, that's how you know you're in a good space is that you're expanding the conversation past the basic low, low-hanging fruit in common, lowest common denominator, that people don't understand the history of what was done through, through that academy and through that school via Jim Thorpe and simply the only Jim Thorpe ever existed.

There's not another Jim Thorpe in sports. There really is. Right? I mean, he's as an Olympian, as a high schooler, as a collegian, as a pro. There's one Jim Thorpe. Yeah. And I'll throw out another name that gets overlooked in this conversation. A lot of times, like William Felton, Russell gets missed in the basketball conversation, is going back away. But Otto Grant was as a quarterback, was a very, very consistent winner. Yep. And he's a guy that gets lost when you're talking about that consistency, the thing that we're starting to, you know, we admire about Brady, you know, that ability to do it over time is really a hallmark.

of a champion. I think it's why we exalt them. It's saying jump back and forth to baseball. You know, like Rod Carew, right? The baseball guy. We'll say, we'll go back to football. But he's a baseball guy and Tony Gwynne, a baseball guy. But they're admired because of their consistency over a long period of time.

I always think that's worth noting when somebody is able to do it again and again and again. So, Otto Graham would be another guy. Go ahead. Well, in that space. He stayed and he stayed where they were. and stayed where he was. Tony Wood could have bounced around, right? And we forget, like, we should be standing and applauding those players who stayed where they were.

Like, Cal Rift could have stayed where he was. Cal could have gone ring chasing. Right? He could have gone ring chasing. Darrell Green could have gone ring chasing. If that was a thing that he wanted to do, he decided to stay. There are some other folks from that organization that bounced around. The thing about the Raiders that people despise and have to respect was there a bit?

was their ability to renovate, reboot, recharge talented players into their own form so they could win championships for no other reason than to win. To win, that's it, that's it. Yes, that's another organization that kind of did it consistently over time. To me, it's that consistent. One time when I was young, I had a big discussion, and then we're getting off the rails a little bit, we'll come back to football, but a big discussion with a friend of mine. And I thought a champion was a champion. And he said, no, no, no, no, no.

A champion is somebody who can do it consistently over time. And I was, you know, I was ready to go to blows. No, you win, you're a champion. But as you look at this thing, it's not winning a championship isn't easy. But because it's not easy to watch somebody do it or an organization be consistent with it or a player be consistent with his performance over a long period of time, they may not be the goat, but man, they deserve to be in the conversation when you're talking about great things and great players. Excuse me.

Can you be the goat without championships? I don't think so, Derek. You know, the Ted Williams thing, now we're bouncing back for it, but the Ted Williams thing, right? He's the last guy that hit over 400. So are you going to say he's the greatest hitter of all times? is he, you know, because he's the last guy to hit over 400. I know we get excited in baseball and somebody approaches that and carries it for a while. When did it a couple times, right?

Brett got close. He carried a 390 or something like that. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. You look at some of the pitchers have had extremely ERAs. I don't know. You know, the Orioles, remember when they had the four pitchers at all 120 games?

You know, that's not a championship thing, but that's a hallmark that people can kind of look at. The answer's no, the answer's no. Yeah, I mean, that Orioles team, you remember, so you had Palmer, McNally, Quayar, you had Flanagan, you had Steve Stone, also as a fourth and fifth 20-game guy who threw in that space.

Yeah, that's standard. That's standard. it's quality, it's great, but it may not be the greatest of all time. Like, you can go to the Braves. It's not a big red machine during that same period of time. You know, it's not them. It's not bench and all those guys. Yeah, that line.

Those people have that accounts for them. Yeah, it's always going to stop in public. Yeah, I like that thought because, I mean, you think of the, the A's from that area. Think of the Yankees and that terrorist row that they had, the Dodgers, with that Garvey, Russell, Lopes, say, in field, with all the arms that they had. The penguin, Ron, say.

Right. You had the Braves with their Glavin, Maddox, Smoltz, Avery, starting rotation. That was an outstanding quartet, right? Right. So. Yeah.

I mean, so you think there's greatness, there's good, there's great, there's elite, and then there are the goats who are in their own space. And sometimes the problem with that is that level of excellence, just like we kind of alluded to, occurs in the shadow of a consistent winner.

So when the Braves were doing that, the Yankees were doing their thing. You know what I mean? So it was great to watch him. It was excellent. It was kind of like watching Nolan Ryan when he was with the Rangers. It was great to watch them pitch. But in the other half of that conference, there's the Yankees doing their thing actually winning championships.

So it's just not the same. I'll ask you this question, Barry. can you hang out for another segment? Absolutely. All right. We'll throw a break here. We'll come back. More of Barry Thompson on one-on-one on the ticket.

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