1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - High School Sports Traditions - July 6th, 11:25am

Episode Date: July 6, 2026

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Back to one-on-one with DP. Sponsored by the Downtown Lincoln Foundation on 93-7 the ticket. Okay, Harrison, I'm going to, so we pulled some of the WWE music, but I don't want it to sound like a 70s disco. This feels incredibly like the band Sheik, who use, or bit of honey. They use orchestral and structural. instruments in to create their dance beats and this feels like this is a song that's going to be performed on American band's dance like those two what's uh what's worse this or uh what was the

band that they brought for over and over and over again for every Super Bowl oh oh yeah no we're not doing that up with people up with people thank you no we're not doing that okay that was with people vibes we're not no no no no this was Barry White had an orchestra. And you think of Barry White as this, this, um, funky, soulful singer, but he had an orchestra behind him. In his early years, he had an orchestra behind him.

As a matter of fact, that's why they called him the maestro. Great trivia for you. Nicknamed for Barry White was the maestro. Um, because he, he would sit in front of this orchestra and they would have, violins and cellos playing behind him. But there were, there, there, there are certainly different bands that had different vibes. So, Sheik, um, Bit of Honey, those are the ones that jump out in my head that were in that

vibe that, that rejoined. What's your genre? To be fair, I was, uh, I was in there with Austin and Jake Sorensen and I was like, Does this sound like a deep D.P. And I don't know if it was that one. Oh, dear. Oh, dear, Lord. I got like some.

Oh, that means you have, you guys don't know me. Then if you thought this was, oh, good heavens, man. Oh, oh. I remember my, my mom was big in the disco. I was like, maybe that's a good beat. No, no. No, Harrison, no. No.

Which, uh, which direction you go. Oh, no. You could have. Now, if you said you want to go, you could have gone funk. funk yeah right then you could you could have just found the soundtracks from parliament funkadelic or the commodores any of the commodores earthwinded fire like if you wanted to go that route but i'm also in the same time i was listening to rolling stones and the who oh okay and acdc and yeah i oh i forget you wrote uh i can't remember which rock i was it was a huge concert listen i've i've anything

Here's the thing I had to listen to being bused In my home So before busing I was in a black In a black neighborhood And going to black school So I was consuming

So soul train I was consuming what was Then I got bused Picked Sent across town To a predominantly In all white school Where think

American bandstand So I had to learn to assimilate and then I would go back home. I then became like I'm bringing some of that back home and I'm taking some of home with me when I go to school. So I'm explaining to them, hey, Barry Manilow is not cool. I understand that it's good, but it's not cool. And there's a difference in explaining. And then having to show people what cool was and then teaching people how to dance. and, you know, that sort of thing, right?

Because you weren't, you know, dancing wasn't really a thing. And then disco came up and everybody, I went, well, disco's not my thing either. Like I dance. I don't disco dance. I don't John Travolta dance. I don't need a line dance to teach me.

I don't need somebody to tell me steps. The beat will tell me how to move. Right. And it didn't matter whether that was rock and roll. Right. I could dance to Bruce Springsteen. I understood rhythm. On a quick side tangent, what was disco and roller skating so attached together for?

Culturally kids. I mean, roller skating has had evolved. It goes back to the 50s. If you think Dennis de Menace and leave the beaver, they, roller skating was a part of Americana. Okay, so it's just already. That was a Midwest thing. Then people were like, well, wait a minute, we can, if you can dance with skates on, and then they had different, yeah, skate boots.

You had chic boots. Yeah, because what I think of. If disco, I always think of roller skating attachment. There were clubs. You could go to. As a matter of fact, we would go Friday night, the all skate. We had a roller rink that, you know, Friday and Saturday night, packed. Packed. I mean, as a matter of fact, from Barry Thompson.

Barry was a roller skating. He's the national champion. Riller blading? No, skating. He was the roller skating national champions. As a matter of fact, he won the national championship at Pershing Auditorium in Lincoln, Nebraska. Barry Thompson some 50 years ago won a national,

won a national title or a wrestling championship at Pershing Auditor. Seriously, I found the article. Pretty amazing stuff, right? He's got the wildest resume. Barry has the resume of all resumes.

It's pretty interesting to think. Wasn't he a wrestler too? Wrestler, uh, track and field. Quarterback. Quarterback. Yeah.

Roller skating champion. And could have played point guard and could have pitched. Would have been a, a left-handed ace, like through darts. Like he just, you. And he was a South ball? Yeah. Yeah, he was Michael Vick, pre-Michael Vick. He was Michael Vick.

He was Michael Vick. He got to get him back on. Sprinter speed, rocket arm. You know, had he been six foot one instead of five, ten, five, eleven, you know, all, all bets were off. But he was recruited by everybody. But he was a roller skating champion. National champion, the best under 18 skater male boy skater in the country.

And one that had to travel here to Persian Auditorium back in the day to win the national title. But he would also go like he was the king of like he could go, he could cross over and swerve and do all that skate on one skate. That's hard to do one. He did. Right. And then you had it and it was a family thing. I would imagine a ton of folks at Pershing, like they would have all skates. I'm sure there were roller skating rinks in Lincoln.

Oh, yeah. Right. We had one in Harnington. Right. And that was a meeting place. Like I always think, you're familiar with Buddy Holly? Yeah. So the Buddy Holly story, and they open it while with, even in a little bit Texas where they're all at this skating rink.

And it was a big thing. And they would broadcast from the skating rink because it just played music. That's what it was. but the kids like the parents would be there overseeing and then the kids would go and skate and you know it was a big thing and then it became like a dating thing like that's where you would go to meet people and then that you know you had an all skate then you had the girls skate with the girls uh how would they call that oh when the girls would ask the guy we never did that i think that's a southern thing right uh Sadie Hawkins yeah isn't that a southern

Sadie Hawkins. We had full Sadie Hawkins nights and dances. Like we literally, my high school had Sadie Hawkins. We had two Sadie Hawkins events a year where the girls would ask the guy. We'd have that for like homecoming. And the girl would ask for a jersey. For homecoming? Well, the girl would ask like, can I wear your jersey?

No. Maybe that's the closest thing. Oh, good heavens. What, you only, that jersey thing was a whole big deal. Let me, let me tell you. You have to let someone down. Let me tell me. Well, if you're the start, like Barry, very married, the girl that wore his jersey on game dates.

Very Thompson married, like Cindy Thompson. He just stays winning, batting 100. Yeah, yeah, no. Homecoming Queen. She went to New York to bottle. Like she was like that whole thing. But giving out the jersey. So whatever one you were wearing in the game, you wore the other one during the school day.

Mm-hmm. And but if you were a junior or senior who had played the previous year, you could let somebody else. Like you had more to choose from, right? You had more to choose from. And you could let, like our school never, our coach would tell you never let anybody wear your jersey for that year. For that year.

Now you could buy others, but never let. So the home blue and the road white, nobody wears those in that year. You can wear them afterwards, right? And we had like pap rallies and the like where you would, but we would wear, but never let anybody wear a jersey, pro. Really?

That was a, like, but the girls, so when I was a senior, my junior jerseys was really popular. And, but it was also like, be careful. Right? Because if you had a girlfriend, she got, she, she wore the jersey. But there were girls that would ask, right? And you would just like, we called the, we called those footballers who would get the jersey in September.

But then as soon as football season ended, you weren't dating anymore. Right? You was like, oh, ours didn't have nearly as much attached to it. You got burned, man. You got burned. That girl wore your jersey. All football season long. And then basketball season, nothing.

Baseball season, nothing. Baseball season, you didn't do that. You didn't give away your jersey. We only did it for football. You didn't do it for basketball either, right? Basketball, we would wear our shooting shirt to school with a t-shirt under that they gave us. But yeah, it was, it was, did you all do the class ring thing? No, I'm not judging people who did.

Okay. But I did not. So your classroom, when you got your class ring, I never did. It was, it was a big deal at my school, very traditional. Did you have to pay for it, though? Yes. Oh, you bought the ring. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. Just like your letterman's jacket. Yeah. Which, oh, that was, now that's when you got in the deep water with girls trying to get your letterman's jacket. So you never had that one either. That was one that wasn't. That's too nice.

Oh, you're like they would want to wear the letterman's jacket. Like, I would. I'm going to wear this for four years because after high school, I can't wear this without looking like a dummy. But you didn't know that. Oh, at the time. I was well aware. You didn't know. There was no social media coolness point.

There was. In my era, it was happening. Right. But we saw, we only saw Letterman's jackets as the cool guy in the movie. True. That's all we knew about it. It was, and we were told by the elders that get your Letterman's jacket. And I, but the beauty of it was I got mine as a sophomore.

most people didn't get there until they were junior because they sophomores didn't play varsity but I got mine as a sophomore so it was like okay cool vet and it made it three years and then of course you get the pens and all the other state championship regional championship district championship patches they go along with it but also then trying to get your jacket back was a whole thing right giving your jacket away man you got a whole girlfriend girlfriend girlfriend at a time make cheer later Made all the sense in the world.

Tell you got all the jackets. Made all the sense. Let me tell you. Made all the sense of the world, brother. It just did. But the ring was, so I was the class of 80. I know.

It makes my head spin to say that out loud now. In the year of our Lord, 2026. But 1980, that was a senior in 1980. And you would get the ring. Once you got it and put it on, that the most important person in your life

turned it for the year, whatever the number of your year was. So turning it for the 80th time was like a ceremony. It was a big deal. You would have, now some people would have friends who would turn the ring, right?

But you didn't want, all dudes turning your ring. You just didn't. You just didn't. But you also had to be careful about who was turning your ring because it was always become a thing, especially if you were somebody, right? It was a big deal. And then the 80th, I can tell you where I was when I had my ring turn for the 80th time. Because there's a full kiss makeout thing that happens with the 80th.

Oh, to turn the 80th ring, to be the one that turns it the number, the number, Oh, bro. Now, ideally it was your girlfriend. I did. Girlfriend or boyfriend. Ideally. But there were some chaos that happened in those turning of the rings. There was some real chaos.

Man, I don't mind. Sometimes I, I enjoy the vanillaness of my background. You just sounds stressful. Ask your parents if they ever, well, if they were old enough, right? You did the ring turns. I don't know. ring turned, like being turned for the 80th time. Okay, so the girl that turned my ring for the 80th time is now,

I want to say she's the journalism dean at Northwestern University. Yeah. She was, uh, she was the top writer at the LA Times and at NPR. And now she's the, I want to say she's a professor, journalism professor. at Northwestern University. She's doing all right then. Northwestern's a good school. She was always going to do well.

It's also who I went to my prom with. Yeah. Yeah. She's the journalism professor at Northwestern University. Well done for her. I'm chuckling as we've gone through some of these texts here. Oh, well, we will read these texts. We will get to all of these, man.

Let's take a break. We'll get back and read all the text. And then we'll get to the GPS that is Nebraska football 2026. Because I want to know what we're setting the GPS for. Because once we set the GPS, in order to adjust, it yells at you and tells you this is not what we said we were doing. So we will set the GPS for 2026. More one-on-one when we come back.