Green Light with Chris Long - Kenny Mayne! NFL Schedules! Dave Dameshek! Best & Worst 2021 NFL Games. Kenny's Best Stories From 27 Years At ESPN. Tim Tebow Signing.

Episode Date: May 14, 2021

(01:10) - Welcome, Layup Line and Tim Tebow Signing. (20:48) - Kenny Mayne on 27 Years at ESPN, Coining Catchphrases, Narrating Highlights and Celebrity Softball Mishaps. (1:36:26) - Chris and Macon Recap the 2021 NFL Schedule Winners and Losers. (2:08:00) - Dave Dameshek on the 2021 NFL Best and Worst Games, Revenge Matchups, Rookie QB Battles and Broken Arrow. Green Light Spotify Music: https://open.spotify.com/user/951jyryv2nu6l4iqz9p81him9?si=17c560d10ff04a9b Spotify Layup Line: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1olmCMKGMEyWwOKaT1Aah3?si=675d445ddb824c42 Green Light with Chris Long: Subscribe and enjoy weekly content including podcasts, documentaries, live chats, celebrity interviews and more including hot news items, trending discussions from the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, NCAA are just a small part of what we will be sharing with you. http://bit.ly/chalknetwork Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My daughter, when she first learned to drive, Riley, she was really bad, you know, bad driver out of the gate, right? Yeah. And we get to a four-way, and it's stop signs all around. It was her turn, and she just slowly coasted and didn't know what to do. Just looked around like, what should I do left? And she said out loud, there's a lot of activity taking place currently. She said those words. And we made it through safe, and then I gave her 20 bucks, and I used that.

I had a deal where if you gave me a cool line, 20 bucks. all the kids have earned 20 bucks What's up y'all Bend Oregon Hello I call it QB Town USA Might be the only locale That's a sentence

Bend Oregon Oh I think there's a There's a verb out there Yeah Stan Humphreys Drew Bletso Wow For a little desert

High Desert town in Oregon Call it the high desert Drew bled so much He needed a transfusion No but really did. He got a thigh bruise so bad. Didn't know he had a thigh bruise. All the blood drained all at once like into one spot and he passed out in the shower and somebody found him there with the water running and they had to like do all this crazy shit to save his life. Yikes. Yeah, football can be scary.

And you're not wanting to wear those little pads, huh? No, I used to just go raw dog with no pads, man, because look good, feel good, play good and they really do slow you down. I got a thigh bruise so bad one time they had to drain it like if you get a thigh bruise like the blood will like coagulate if you don't like and actually one of my thoughts is a little harder than the other so you can remember where it was but they stick a needle in there and try to draw it out anyways we played the chiefs circa 2010 beat barry richison for a sack feeling good we hit up the uh the nelly party there in st louis my brother's in town we're dancing having a good time it's a black tie affair must be the money must and it was i go to the bathroom take a leak i'm doing the drunk guy lean

and I fell on the ground. Wow. The blood drained all at once, which, but the blood drained all at once into my thigh, and I ceased being able to walk. So I got carried out of the party.

Thigh bruises, nothing to mess with. Did you get fine for not wearing thigh pads? Yeah, sometimes you would, but the cost of being fast is is when I'm willing to pay. A little opportunity cost there. Opportunity costs.

That's what that means, huh? layup line step and razor by peter tosh okay peter tosh you know bob marley and the whalers i have heard of bob marley well he was one of the the the o g whalers he was one of the most important whalers he was the guy who could actually play like incredible guitar like self-taught the whole nine yards interesting thing about peter tosh is he's six foot five all of it six foot five six foot six and like new kung fu and shit like crazy train kicks like out the wazoo and also wrote a unicycle.

Very interesting guy. Died an untimely death, home invasion in Jamaica in the 80s, but used to open up for the Rolling Stones. Listen, this is, I'm not being a hipster, Bob Marley. I'd love to smoke with Bob Marley, God rest his soul, but Peter Tosh is right there for me. And also that may be wonder, and Cowboy Reed, you can kind of, not that I'm saying you do drugs,

but making is disqualified from this discussion. Do you ever wonder if you could smoke with Bob Marley because he was smoking in like the 70s and 80s and like now we're getting the best of the best. I know they had some like good homegrown stuff, but now this stuff is like it's all indoor. Like Bob Marley's the minus 330 favorite like with your run of the mill stoner nowadays. But you got to wonder like how strong our stuff is relative to the stuff Bob was smoking. And I think they were smoking like hash and stuff. So that's a totally different ballgame.

but well it's no different from the folks drinking the moonshine back in the day because that's the only thing that was available to now we're looking at pink pink lemonade vodka yeah but here's the difference and there's something to that but the moonshine back in the day was stronger like you right that well i'm saying the wheat is stronger now okay so technological advances technological advances more like more indoor you get you don't what the indoor smell like outdoor and so you know with moonshine the trick I was told and I should you know like and I've had my fair share but like you want to put it in a spoon and light it on fire and if the flame's unbroken on the top of the spoon you're good to go but if there's a break in the flame that moonshine is probably make you go blind or something wow

yeah now I don't know if that's true or not don't sue the show if you light yourself on fire or drink moonshine something bad happens to you but that's what I heard We're not going to spend a lot of time BS today. We're going to get right into it. You know? Yeah, you mentioned the Whalers. That made me think of Hartford Whalers. And Kenny Maine might have rested his head near Hartford, Connecticut.

Kenny Maine will be joining us. Somebody who is no longer at ESPN. But if he's happy, I'm happy. If he's good, I'm good. I love Kenny Maine. More Kenny Maine, not less Kenny Maine. And less telling Kenny Maine what the, to do. I'm not saying they've been telling him what to do, but now Kenny Maine is just

uncut Kenny Maine. So I'm looking forward to talking to him. He's a great dude and, you know, a legend. Pretty cool job. I said this is John last night on the phone when we were prepping for this pot a little bit. You remember you were on the call, but I never told you to be fair last night. Oh, thank you for being fair. Yeah, I'm being fair as fuck. That's what I do. Yeah. Thanks for being on the call. I know there was a fucking call. Well, the problem is the calls happen all night. intermittently and I know with you you're like how many calls do we have what time I didn't know exactly that's just not how it works in this in this business so I talked to him and we're laying out the show and I'm saying to myself how cool is my job really that I grew up you know Kenny May

narrating my childhood sports fandom and now like I count him as a friend and somebody who's going to come on our show like the week he gets like unbelievable how cool our job is so can't wait to have Kenny on and then we're also going to have Dave Damasek join us because of course if you hadn't heard, schedule's out. Oh, whoopty-do. You don't like the schedule. Well, the reveal. You'd rather know like

September 1st. Yeah, I'm a I'm a roll out the ball kind of guy, you know? Show me, tell me where to show up. Now that would be interesting. Say you don't know who you play. That's a reveal. Until September 1. Yeah. Like teams, including. NFL handles the charters. That would be incredible.

You're headed to Kansas City. Fuck. Less or more tolerable for you to listen to Tim Tebow talk than schedule talk. Oh, I'll take the schedule. Oh, good, good, good. Seven days a week. So what's your Tebow take?

My Tebow take is that he won't make the team. Isn't that right? He's not going to make the team. I don't know that he makes the team, but in a perfect world, I don't know if he makes the team, but Urban Meyer has taken this action. So at this point, I think his ego is tied to this. Like, right?

Like, you're going out on a limb. You saw the reaction. Well, now I get to rig the game. Like, I could foolheartedly take up a roster spot with this guy so that I could say, well, it wasn't for nothing. He was one of the best 53 guys after, you know, six months of evaluation. odds for Tim Tebow to make the 53 man roster in week one plus 100 yes minus 130 no the fact that it's that tight to me says it all like Vegas knows what I know which is that like common sense urban Meyer who's already like literally his first impression was hiring that strength coach like so hiring that strength coach you're behind the eight ball all this does to me is tells me like you don't have a lot of awareness like that's all I'm saying like I know how state and the same thing like so you know I'd heard that he was calling guys to ask like how can I like you know

what's the pro game going to be like for me and what should I do less of and more of and I heard that and I was thinking to myself like oh that's good news like you know maybe he's having like a moment of self-awareness but the first few months and I'm not saying he's not a great football coach and I'm not saying he's not going to have success I'm just saying that like if I'm a player in that locker room like the first thing I hear is you hired that strength coach then you have to fire and you know the the contrition really isn't there there's not like a my bad guys nor was it there with the ohio state situation right with tibo i'm not equating the two things but what i'm saying is that like maybe not the best foot to get out on like if you're trying to because this is what

coaches do they sell everybody on the fact that there's accountability and everybody has an equal shot and like all this stuff so on and so forth the thing with urban mire is if you're going to get out in front of your team. It's going to be hard enough to like you got to address the strength coach thing, which I'm sure he already has in some capacity, maybe in a Zoom meeting or something. But like the Tebow thing is not something you address. It's more something that like the players see and they're like, oh, so like all it takes is being neighbors and you being, you know, Urban's college quarterback to unquestionably have a shot at making this team. Now granted, it's not a quarterback. If it was a quarterback, if it was a quarterback,

I think we'd all be even more upset for like the Kaepernick reason and that sort of thing and also the fact that he's just not cut out to be an NFL quarterback at this point. The last game he played was 2015. Tight end and Darius Butler

who does a very good job. Shout out to Darius Butler, a long time Colt, nine-year vet, really smart player. He's on Pat McAfee's show. He said, you know, I'm zagging a little bit here. Tight end, it's a position

that you can kind of mold people into being it's a place you can hide certain athletes it's also a place that you know somebody unorthodox can make a living because what is tight end anymore you don't have to block he cited you know these basketball players who have played before he mentioned you know uh tony gonzalez and and you know i play with a guy named fendianne bonn who was a basketball player playing tight end one of the first ones that i saw like jimmy graham okay i hear that you know but those are traits that accentuate the ability

to get the ball. Like, you know, they accentuate your ability to be a tight end in today's NFL. I don't know what traits Tebow's going to have other than being a sticky blocker maybe, which I have no idea. Ninko got on TV the other day and was like, listen, if you just handed me some pads

five years out of football, I'm kicking Tim Tebow's ass. I got to feel the same way as a defense event. I feel the same way as a real estate agent. You probably do with the real estate agent. But here's the deal. Just because a guy works hard because he's attentive,

because he's strong, athletic, even at 33, which supposedly workouts are great, doesn't mean that he's going to be a blocker. Now I see the way that they're going to use him as probably being a move guy. You know, he can do some sort of like fullback stuff. He can catch the ball out of backfield. He can do special teams.

But more than anything, what this is is, is I think Urban sees this as a culture enforcing guy. But my problem with that is dudes don't take kindly to advice from guys who have been out of league five, six years, and just decided one day in the middle of summer, hey, I've been playing baseball coach. I'd like to play football for you. Like walked over to Urban's porch is how it probably went.

Because they're neighbors. Because they're neighbors quite literally. And so, as I would say, downtown Abbey, literally. literally they're literally neighbors they're literally failure to launch on my part this bloke is literally a neighbor and he's going to take up a fucking a bloody roster spot it's literally his neighbor I'm in a bad space I just my thing is here's how I think it probably went cheerio a coach I want to play some ball this year and he was like son could you coach some ball could you put a polo on I won't make you stay late or anything

nah dad I want to play ball you know and I think that's probably how it went and I think if this doesn't work out you know it's really bad and if it doesn't work out I think you can still see him in a polo I think the world of Tim Tebow I think he's a genuine guy

so like when people are upset about this I don't think Tebow pretends to be anything he's not I think Tim Tebow wholeheartedly is Tim Tebow and so I respect him for that and I think he's a good guy and I think he was a tremendous football player in college and I think in the pros like I respect his contribution to the game

game. So I'm not shitting on Tim Tebow, but what I am saying is I get guys that are sitting there and saying, you just get to jump the line? Because there's a line, dude. And guys worked their whole lives to get these opportunities. And, you know, like, it is unprecedented for a guy to come back in a league six years out in your 30s. And you weren't even like a force at opposition in the NFL, let alone like. So this isn't Tim Tebow bashing. I think he's a great guy. And I think in a perfect world, if he were a year out of football, and this is 2015, you'd be able to say, hey, come enforce the culture. Let's change you over to tight end and people wouldn't blink as much. But the problem is, guys aren't going to buy that. You know what I'm saying? Like guys aren't going to. Another thing is there's the whole like you're the coach's guy thing. Okay. I'm not saying Tebow is this. I'm not saying Tebow is going to be this. But if I'm in the locker room with Tebow and I, And I know you're Urban's guy and it's kind of conspicuous while you're here. Maybe I'm thinking you're the locker room enforcing, like the culture enforcement guy. And there's two types of culture enforcement guys. They're the guys that you bring in that are good culture enforcers that you think are like veteran leaders or people that can kind of set a tone and are good for a position group. The Chris Longs.

Please. I'm just going to fucking. But I was approached to be the second kind of guy at one point in my career, which is the guy that goes upstairs. Like literally proposition by one of my, I'm not going to say if it was a coach or GM, I had many in St. Louis. I had one in Philly and one in New England. One of my coaches, I'm not going to say who, or GMs said to me, you can be just like this guy for me. To be a narc. And I was like, what do you mean by this guy?

And he was like, oh, no, just tell me how things are going downstairs and you know, like blah, blah, blah, blah. And I like flatly was like, nah. right nah like i'm guy one not guy two of the culture enforcement uh phenotype task force is that phenotype was that the right word sure i'm i'm out of my depth on phenotype so more power to you like a fucking scratching a lottery ticket but yeah i just i like there are two types of guys so if i'm in the locker room and you want the culture and force and you want young guys to listen there's going to be that guarded, that barrier where God's going to be like, am I telling you something that's going to get upstairs? Not to mention you skip the line. Do I think it could work out? Yeah, I think he has

north of an average chance of a camp body making the team because he's smart. He probably works his ass off. That's true. He's a good dude. And Urban likes him. And the jerseys will sell. Shod Khan, baby. Maybe a little kickback to the old urban. And here's another thing. You know, We talked about Jacksonville taking up the whole 15 minutes to draft Trevor Lawrence, okay, that sort of thing. You know, this is a team that wants to put bodies in that pool. By the way, the Raiders are having a club. Saw that.

Nightclub in the end zone, which I think is a bad idea. Jacksonville puts their drunk people in a pool way up there. Don't put your drunk people down by the enclosure. Somebody hangs over the enclosure and a Kyle Long scoops you up. like this is not it's the fucking it's it's it's different in there so dude's full ace of spades next thing you know he's he's in the enclosure and can't help you so i'm not a big fan of that but jacksonville's trying to sell tickets i've never seen a ticket sales move like this if it is never the jerseys might be a real thing and we talked about this mina comms made a good point on the pod

recently it was like the NFL is trying to move some of their inventory right so guys got to buy back jerseys right that's a new thing that adds up last year they were short on jersey sales so i'm not being all like conspiracy theorists but it all is part of the the puzzle it can't just be football because if it's just football and you want to convince me that, find me a 23-year-old Tim Tebow, who's a move tied-in. Tony, Pol-Jan. Pol-Jan, Virginia. Shout-out, but different kind of player.

He's a move guy. Different packaging than Tebow, but for sure, like, that's true. Like, there are tons of guys who can block and do the dirty work, and I don't know if the, I don't know if the leadership that you envision is going to be able to be applied. There's going to be a lot of trust. People are going to be leery of urban on levels. He's got a rep.

And I'm sure like if he heard this, he'd be like, hey, asshole. Well, I'm not, you got the rep, dude. Like I'm, I got no problem with Urban. I've met him, he was nice, and I think he's a great football coach, but you have a rep. And so, like, when you start out with the strength coach thing and then you do the Tebow thing, you're trying to get players to buy in. Don't think that Tim Tebow is going to help you do that. Because guys are very cynical and skeptical.

And this is neither here nor there. This is separate, but in plenty of teams likely missed in the first round. But Travis E.TN in the first round when you have James Robinson, who is excellent. I mean, talk about a move that's not going to be popular in a locker room. It's this young kid who just did a whole lot of everything for you, and you're bringing E.N, and you can't have enough pieces. But luckily, though, this is a real thing, popular college football player. Pro football players are college football fans.

They might rock with ETN even more unfairly, especially, guys who just don't get it. You know, like a James Robinson, there's going to be people like, that's fucked up. But it will be at least a mixed bag. But I totally see your point. I mean, like, you're trying to win over a locker room. You have to be very careful about how you do it the first year. And there's going to be fixtures, like you said. And I don't know what James is like in the locker room. Maybe he's loved and maybe it will blow up in his face. But there's just there's been a lot of outrage this week. And listen, the internet is always fucking outrage on behalf of football players. Dudes on Twitter dictate the outrage meter on something. Very rarely does the outrage

match like the player outrage. This is one where you see a lot of former players like, are you serious, dude? And it's nothing against him. I liked him a lot. I really do. And everybody that ever play with him tells me he's a genuine article and I respect that about him. But he has opted into a really tough situation. Well, Kenny Maine is going to join us in a moment. And, And cap casualty at ESPN, basically the way he put it as only he could. I'm excited for him to make his own decisions now and make his own content. And I decided to have him on the pod for a few. Showtime.

Yo! Welcome to the big show. I told somebody I'm a fucking walking, talking NFT, bitches. What's what I'm doing. Working on my brand. How do we capture that and monetize it? It's so stupid. I just said the example,

hey, Aaron Rogers is going to spin a football and then I'll videotape it and blockchain it and then you'll be the only guy with it. That's, so I have it right? Yeah. That's it, right?

Okay, that's it. And then I have that, and people come to my house and like a magic A ball, we look at it now and then. Like, what the fuck is it? What is it? Dude, NFTs?

I don't get them. Didn't I just describe it? Isn't that what it is? I don't get them. could have described you could have said anything we had Adam Lefko on and he was oh I got this NFT and I was like at the end of the show I did not understand it I mean I sort of buy into the crypto money

thing I get that the crypto money thing is pretend money but if enough people pretend it's good then it's good like real money's stupid too you if you have a $20 bill you need another guy to believe that has value if he says bullshit I need fucking crypto or an NFT, you can't get the hamburger. Well,

I mean, one's legal tender, I guess, but. No, here's my stance. Like, people say buy gold, because it'll be safer if shit hits the fan and people are running around with AKs, like, they're going to come take your gold. Like, it's not going to be... It's 7-11 with a big block of gold. Hey, can I get a fucking slurpy? It's all mythical and stupid and I hope you've been rolling.

No, we have been rolling. Actually, can you turn your camera on? Is that possible? Of course. That would help this show. Nice. Yeah, look at the background. That's a happy.

That's real life. That's not an NFT. You met, Hey, you met Macon earlier on the phone. Macon. I spilled rice. I had a... It caromed.

I had a Gordon Hayward situation. and I was imagining a Kauai situation. I threw a box of rice at a trash can and it just blew up. Isn't it funny when you throw some garbage into a garbage can, how fucking great you feel about it? Like I'm trying to quit drinking Coca-Cola because it's just the sugar and all. And so like at work, you know, with my meal, I might drink like that much of it.

Like look at me. I didn't drink. And I throw it like 40 feet to a garbage can. And if it hits, I'm like a hero right then and there. No, I did a left hand. toss into a trash can this morning. I felt really good about it. Look at what I just tweeted.

Can you do that? Can you look at my, you'll get a kick out of this. I'll go to Twitter. It's going to be hard to find me though. You should read at the top. It's hard to find me because Mark, what I do sometimes is Mark Ingram was complaining

at United about losing a bag and I changed my header, my picture, the whole thing and my name to United Airlines. And then I quote tweet him with like, You're Rich, buy clothes. I did just flet your Cox one time. So I'm going to get banned, I think. Wait a minute.

I follow you, but is this a new thing? Like it says I'm not following you. Yeah, because legitimately it's hard to... What happens to like well hydrated or hockey fan or... Hydrated king. Biggest baseball fan, all that shit. Yeah. Now it's United Airlines.

United Airlines, boom. I got it. My dad used to work for United Airlines. Wow. Yeah, it's... I didn't mean to... I love it. I'm worried that now I'm going to get banned.

All right. So anyways, how long you got? All the time in the world. Fucking man, dude. All right. So without further ado, I mean, we talk glowingly about this guy. And as I said, like, and I'm not blowing smoke up my friend's ass because I would never. But, you know, Kenny is somebody that both of us, making and myself grew up, like the best years of us being sports fans narrated by Kenny and a few like fathers of highlights, forefathers, if you will. So this week's been crazy to, you know, see him moving on from ESPN. Cap casualty, as he said.

I've been a cap casualty. I thought that was a good description. I thought it was a beautiful, beautiful description. Yeah, because they did make an offer. And I then said no. And I sort of thought we'd get into a car deal like usual. But they weren't, you know, they didn't open the door to start car dealing. And I wasn't going to offer a car deal if they weren't listening to my, you know what

Like I was going to come back with, all right, I'll do that money, but we're going to reduce the days by a ton. Like it's going to be five days a month or something. And if I want to go sell cocoa puffs on the side, I'm doing it. I'm not checking with you. Because under the current, you know, most regular employees, if you will, you know, aside from like ex-athletes who have kind of spent, no knock on them. But, you know, they kind of get to cut better deals, right? Yeah. We are beholden to this giant contract with lots of one-sided stuff in favor of the company.

that's fine. The company pays you and you get benefits and pension, you know, all that I get it. But I didn't want to have to go, hey, is it okay if I do a Coco Puffs commercial? I wanted to just go do it. And I don't think they were going to agree to that anyway. So what did it matter in the end? And I'm fine with it. I'm not going to say one bad word about the place. I have a lot of friends there. They do great work. You know, they're going to continue to do great work. They're not going to even miss me. Like, they'll get on and off the air just fine. I just felt like they set an over under, so to speak, on my value. and I said, I'm going to go play the over. Like, not even, there's just what it is.

Yeah. You're worth X amount to us for a year. And I decided, well, then I'd have to give you those 130 days or 50, whatever it was. And I'm going to do stuff like this or something, sell NFTs. Well, that begs the question. What kind of car are you, Kenny? Well, my favorite car, I might go full-scale late-life car. It's not even mid-life.

Am I mid or late? No, you could be mid, though. think about it. I think about this all the time. I think we're going to be living a lot longer. All right, fine. I'm midlife then. So my first car I ever had was a Fiat. I never had a car through college. I rode my bike around Las Vegas, right? And my dad and my grandma bought me a car kind of as my graduation gift. And it didn't work very well. And I didn't have any money. I was working two jobs and getting my one last credit I needed to graduate. And I would drive like gas station to gas station to fill up the radiator right was bad and the guy even told me said fiat stands for fix it again

tony so but i love those little cars those little m or m gs or those are cool to me so i would want to be one of those so it'd be like i don't know if they were fiat's in the italian job the movie with mark walberg i don't major in mark walberg movies i'm minor i don't like watching mark walberg movies but there's one with a bunch of fiats i think racing through the streets venice the place with the river i think it was called fiat time i think i think it was called fiat time I think that's the title. I'm not sure. No,

Macon's uncomfortable because I'm looking at him and he doesn't watch movies like that. I don't watch. Yeah, I don't watch movies. What's your top three favorite movies ever? Can I guess?

Mine or yours? I know you're... Mine? You. Okay. Fargo. That's right. Gosh, you just referenced a number of them.

That's all I got. Blues Brothers? Yeah, Blues Brothers, obviously. That's two. Well, the funniest thing about Blues Brothers was was when you gave your toast at your lovely wedding, he was making a blues brother's joke in the toast and actually had to plant me as a laffer.

I thanked the members of the Illinois law enforcement community for joining us at my wedding. I laughed right there. Thank you. Thank you. And you would have been the only one at my wedding. Well, I laughed. Well, I had to plant one as discussed. Yeah, but I have no problem with planting one.

I mean, you want it to go, well, at my wedding, we went to the Bahamas, Gretchen. I. You met, you met you met Gretchen, I think. Yeah. My sister went up to give a speech and used my former wife's name in the street. And

first of all, Raj, my dear friend is from L.A. Sports Center and does stuff out there. We're good guys, good boys. And everybody was repeating the story afterward like, oh my God, that was

terrible. And Raj, like, who the fuck is that? And I, And I looked at Greg, I said, Gretchen, hang in there. And then a little later in her speech, she then said our names correctly. And I was like, we're back. She was so great about it. She was like, it happened.

You know, you're used to saying two names together for a long time and it just happened. Yeah, I mean, I just had to give a toast to my brother's wedding. And it's nerve-wracking. I don't care how well you know the people and how much you love them. You're liable to mess the thing up. So how did I do, speaking of messing up? Okay, this was something I, because, making. I wanted to tell my three favorite movies.

Oh, yeah, hit me with it. Hit me with it. Chinatown. Yes. Yes. Apocalypse now. Ooh, trippy. And something called The Killing. It was by Stanley Kubrick after he passed away. They wrote a story, you know, talking about all is great.

And I just looked a couple of them up and it's like, I was blown away. It's the greatest craziest story. It's black and white. They rip off a racetrack. It's shown, what's that called, non-sequential, non-linear linear. I'm looking at it right now. $320,000 budget, but this was presumably a long time ago.

Yeah, 1950 something. That's a massive budget nowadays. I bought a Chinatown poster in college after studying the film. Really? In a class, yeah. Jack Nicholson. I kneeled, I knelt

next to Jack Nicholson at the Ollie Holmes fight. What? Yeah, because this, okay, so You weren't here because in the summer we talked about this, okay? Great former athlete, you know, spend some time in Vegas. And when he wasn't on the field, he was ushering at MCM? We, to comply with NCAA rules, we could not get paid, but it was okay to volunteer to be an usher, right?

And maybe get tips. But we got to do a lot. It was mostly Caesars, actually, the old outdoor joint. They'd throw up a stadium in the back parking lot, you know, it's been reconfigured since, sometimes indoors. And it was amazing. I mean, we were Leonard Benitez, Leonard Hearns, Holmes Cooney, you know, all the time.

I was this long time ago. It was late 70s, early 80s, right? And just to be at all, you know, to see Ali in person. I mean, I was, he's like right there at that tree. And I'm like in the mob going down. We had to escort his entire entourage. I was just to be in charge of this. I thought she was like a princess or something from Saudi Arabia.

and I'm like, you know, making sure I don't lose her. I was so scared. Like, don't blow your assignment. I lost her. The crowd was so, have you ever been a crazy crowd like that? We're in or out of a concert. You're just losing them. I'm like grabbing her back and it got her to her seat.

And then I look over and Jack Nicholson's like right there. He's like, I'm going to kneel next to Jack Nicholson and watch this fight. And what was he like? Because, you know, if you, you don't have to talk to somebody, but like you can just kind of tell what somebody's like from being around. And what was Jack like? He was, you know, he wanted just to be left alone. I think he was nice enough.

He answered my question, but I could tell, like, no question number two. What was question number one? Do you remember? No, I think I praised him for something he had just done or just appreciate what he does. And Mr. Nicholson, I do one of those, yeah. I mean, you know, it's tough meeting famous people. Even for, like, pro athletes or somebody like Kenny Maine who's like your text message to Kenny Maine.

Well, Kenny's a friend. But, like, you know, okay, it's tough. like you just don't want to piss anybody off. I feel like people get like the more somebody's out invisible in public, like you don't want to annoy them. Like, you know, everybody's got buttons. You know how the more famous people get. You're only thinking about it from one, you know, frame of mind, but you're the thousands

person that's asked that question. This week in a little bit of a different kind of situation, you know, you are famous anyways, but this week you're one of the most talked about people. And we're sitting here like, should we call Kenny to have him on? And a little look behind the screen. We got in a little argument because you're like, call Kenny May. You're friends with him called Kenny Maine. Whoa.

No, well. I said, hey, Kenny'd be great to have. And I said, the fucking body is warm, dude. Like, he just got let go. He's been somewhere, you know, his cap casualty, but he's been somewhere like 30 years. I was like, I don't want to text him yet. And lo and behold, Kenny text me because I just texted him,

like, you know, hang in there or whatever, some variation of that. And you hit me back like 24 later. And you were like, yo, let's pod. And I was like, okay, Macon was right. Fuck him. I would have done it. Yeah, early on. Like, like, I mean, you're a friend.

So like, I know you have this thing. Why wouldn't I offer myself to, not to, you know, you could have said no. We already have somebody else today. Like, that's fine too. But I figured you might want to. And I figured I was going to start maybe doing some interviews. Not, it's kind of weird to me. Nobody was calling me last week.

But this week, and you might have. I did call you last summer. No, true enough. Hey, but no, but like, but seriously, everybody's reaching out to you. Besides like soliciting you to have you on, like, everybody really. loves you and wants to text you and like it's not like a it's an awkward situation because some people want sympathy some people don't want sympathy and sympathy can almost defend them because like yeah you know if i texted you like man hang in there and that sort of thing i feel like and i'm

sure you got a lot of those and they're i'd say i got 30% hang in there you know and i got 50% maybe the rest maybe 70%. And this is simple math I know and i'm just trying to get from 30 to 100. but I was going to throw in another part and then have some other. How many weeks in a year? How many weeks in a year? I'd say the vast majority, the vast majority were like, dude, go get it. You know, you got a bunch of options. Most people said that.

Okay. A handful, you know, they're just worried about me. They're like, you know, like, are you guys going to be okay and everything good? And I think they did me a favor. I didn't know that the opportunity existed that I've found existed. Yeah, I mean, for me, when I'm texting you, and I said something along the lines of a lot of gas left in tank to go with the athlete analogy. Yeah, that was a good. Okay, good, because I was like, I text him a lot of gas lifting tank.

I don't know. Like, you know, you never know how somebody, you know, reacts to a major life change. And so it is a major life change. And I guess that begs the question then, you know, like, what do you want to do with that gas? Well, I want to be better at golf. I've played golf twice and I'm playing it on Monday. today I sucked on the front now we all we're all horrible like you know horrible and second nine I had a par and two birdies in a row I've never done that my life and then a triple or something so I'm like

one over after four or five and then I get an eight okay I get a seven now we're talking I think you should mark the actual score that you got I don't believe in the deal that hey I got a nine but we're going to mark a seven because that's three over Who does that? A lot of people. A lot of dudes doing that. Don't do that, dudes. If you're listening, ladies.

Like I say, if you were playing pickup basketball, you have to make the lay in, right? We'll give it to you. You missed it, but it's cool. We're going to count that as a two. Like, no, like, play. I don't like that at all. I got no problem with the breakfast ball out of the gate.

Like, Mulligan on hole number one, you know, you're not warm and you dork it. I give me another shot. Let's start now. You know, that's fine. That's the limit of my cheating allowed. I mean, you're going to get better at golf. I mean, there's no way you're not.

To answer your question, though, besides the professional golf tour, I mean, that is, I want to win the U.S. Open with a rental bag. How awesome, just, I don't know if I can get there. I got to shave like 30 strokes. Well, you have a lot of tough. Here's the good news. From where they hit from. You're only, it's half time for you, because we're going to live to like 110 or 120.

Yeah, I'm feeling good then. So you got a lot of time left to play. golf. I'm just excited because we were talking about this like you just said it when you were talking about the negotiations and I'm not implying anything and at no point in this in this interview am I going to try to get you to say something about ESPN but like anytime you would work for somebody you don't have free reign and I I find it really an exciting prospect honestly to see Kenny Maine with a lot of gas lifting the tank we keep calling it Kenny uncut and I keep being uncomfortable saying that. Kenny on something, like, I'm pretty excited about you having, you know, free reign.

No, we had it. It was a really weird moment. I mean, the way Monday happened, I thought, like I was saying earlier, you know, it would, it would be prolonged a little bit. It wouldn't be just like over. Like, all right, let's keep talking. Let's check back in a week. And, you know, and they were just ready to wrap it up once I said no to their offer. And that's their total right to do. And I'm not even, I'm not even offended like they think less of me, nothing like that. And like I said, they got great people,

they're going to do great shows, and everybody go and do their thing, right? And I was really bothered. I said this on a levittorid show. Like, I was so bothered when I saw some people kind of attacking some colleagues who just resigned or whatever,

you know, like, oh, they had money for him, but not, you know, like, no,

like, he's in a certain thing, doing a certain thing, and there's a pool of money for the NBA, and there's a pool of money for college football or whatever it is, right? So that bugged me.

And I was going to say, say something and it's just like sometimes people say dumb things you just don't ignore it and it goes away better than you know acknowledging it right that's the key to life and Twitter um I uh like I'm gonna stop quote tweeting idiots I'm gonna try and you know it's like the chances are it's very apparent to you because it's in your mentions and you're seeing it like discussed in and around you but I didn't see those tweets because I'm not living in your world so if you amplify it then it becomes more reality that for me I wonder because you are one of the OGs and you're leaving,

who's a young anchor that you're like that person? He or her has an incredible future. I like a couple people I work right now, Ashley Brewer and Nebeel. I think Malika Andrews is great. I mean, I don't want to like stop. Yeah, because then if you stop, that's why I was going to say one.

No, I could list a whole bunch. You know, Marty Smith. I mean, he's working nine days a week, right? He's a great guy. And I'm going to stop after Marty Smith, but it's no disrespect to the other 20 I could have mentioned. Yes. You know, had I continued.

Well, my bottom line is they're going to do good shows and good features and good sports centers and life's going to go on and I'm just going to go do something else. And to answer the earlier question, I don't know what it's going to be, but I think it's going to be ultimately a collection of little of this for these guys. Go make a commercial for those guys. By the way, Michael Jordan, if you're listening, that commercial is funny and you need to answer me. Let's go. I mean, he's definitely listening.

I don't know if he is. We can't be sure. We can't be sure. But see, I meant listening to the pitch. So that was the first thing I tried. I made up a commercial that he'd be really good in. He doesn't have to do much more than sit in a chair.

I mean, we're not asking a lot out of him. Not a lot of acting. Just be you. Be the coolest guy in the room. That's how I described it. So you can't share that concept, though. That's under wraps. It's just a message to Michael Jordan.

And we will definitely deliver it because he quite possibly, at least north of zero percent is a friend of the program. Hey, what if he phoned in right now? Come on. Well, he's got Makin's cell phone. Okay, I got another one. Yeah. I want to put Jamal Crawford in it.

Have you met Jamal? He seems like the coolest dude ever. He's the best person ever. Yeah. Like, that's pretty much the whole. The first time I met Jamal, it was Lenny Wilkins charity event. He always helped the Odessa Brown Clinic in Seattle for decades, right? The first thing he did, stayed with it.

And I was speaking, you know, a couple more, like five years in a row. I think I'd either be the MC or have a part in it, raising crazy money, right? All these rich people. And I was up there interviewing a woman. And I can't remember the precise details, but her son or daughter had been in the hospital. And, you know, it was like a serious moment, right? You know, we were talking about the issue for the kid. And people are talking and clanking glasses and cackle laughing in the back.

And nobody's, and I'm talking louder to try to grab. get control of the room. And I've done that before where I just kind of shout him down. And I, now I'm kind of like mocking the people who are loud because they're disrupting what's, and I look and Jamal's over there and he has a stern face, you know, he just looks so mad. And I was like, did I say, no, but he was mad for me, right? Yeah. He said, I almost walked up there and just grabbed the mic from you and, you know, helped you out. Instead, I brought Lenny Wilkins up out of order to restore order in the room and everything moved along. But that was my first meeting. Then we just become good friends. He's

as good as they come. And I'm so mad he never got a chance this year. I do not understand how one team didn't have a 10-day deal. Yeah, I mean, he's so universally respected by his peers and you're not the first person to tell me this guy's like a legendary human being. So I, okay, you stopped at Marty Smith.

Why did we stop at the soda can machine outside Van Pelt's office or whatever was. What about the other inanimate objects at the, you know, in the ESPN campus that you're going to miss? I mean, it's just the soda machine. You're talking about my goodbye. Yeah. My farewell tweet. Your farewell tweet. I just thought that was a funny line. Like, I will miss the people. Yeah. And I will miss the assortment of vending machine selections or whatever I said. Just a good way to go. You know what I mean? To miss, there's one security guard. Yeah. And we always talk politics. Like I'd always, you know, you have to flash your pass at the

electronic gate. When he had that station, he wasn't always there. It was always at least a minute and just like, man, what is going on? You know, we lament what's going on in the country. We're on the same team. Good dude. I'll miss him. I'll miss a bunch of people.

Like, it almost sounds cliche, you know, when people are always the old, I'll miss the, but it's just true. Like, there's a lot of good people that I've crossed past with. A bunch of them aren't there anymore too. And, you know, we mess around. We had fun doing shows. It was like you'd come into the newsroom. We're doing quizzes.

We're doing, you know, just being idiots, commenting on games that are happening. And when we're in the screening room previously before the pandemic, it was even wilder. There's like 80 people doing all their thing. And we were kind of in the corner doing our thing. Van Pelt always, that's why I said the Van Pell joined. His team kind of had this glass office. You could walk by and see them in there. Yeah.

And they chose that was going to be their meeting station. But no. And also the late night shows. until you've done it, you don't, it's hard to describe. I don't know if you ever saw the Fixes episode from the old show we did, the thing called Main Street. Well, yeah, I had some Main Street questions.

What was the theme of the fix at one? Because I might not have the title. So it was the first one we did. And so I had Aubrey Plaza, Allison Becker, John Glazer, Ben Schwartz, Malaney was in one, I think. I'm leaving out names, Chris Smith, Lenny Jacobson, Ben Stiller was in one, Jimmy Kimmel was in, you know, we had like

a bunch of talented people. And it was like a fake version of my life, right? It was like me at SportsCenter slash my outside life, you know, ridiculous situations, right? The very first one we did was called fixes, fixes, for those who don't know, the last show of the night, whether it's the midnight or the 1 a.m. or whatever it is, when it's over, you don't just leave. You've got to go backwards and go, oh, you said, you know, Krivo Krasov wrong in the hockey highlight. You need to get it right. Now we've gotten so good at it. We usually fix those kind of problems during the commercial. Right. Just say Krizo, Krasov.

Chryso Krasov, and then boom, they were able to digitally slide it. In the old days, they're using like two inch tape, like you couldn't do it that fast. You had to like stay late and fix the three problems or the 20 problems. So we did a mock story about fixes, about us staying late. And I kept screwing up Raffin-Adahl's name. That was the joke. And Van Pelt's my sidekick. He was very funny on this.

And he's getting more and more aggravated with me. Like, just God, almighty, you know, if he can't do your job, let somebody, you know. And the funniest line was, he says, my counselor Vikram says the reason I have problem you know he's just like barely getting out this technically 4 a.m. we're saying or whatever it was Allison Becker played the producer so that was a fun episode I remember the one because you couldn't get it right yeah I was gonna say like you know you're like one of the OGs we've referenced that the forefathers a few guys can I interrupt yeah whenever I do a G league highlight sometimes makes like the top plays

or whatever I like to say the OG league the OG league I like that I'm looking at it Kenny and I'm saying like the guys that you used to kind of that era the golden age for us which you don't have to agree with or disagree with but guys whether was Stewart passing away or Steiner's in L.A. right doing Dodgers stuff. You know, Oberman's doing his own thing. Bob Lee, the general left a couple years ago, yeah. So you're kind of seeing new faces the sets changing. You know the music's changing.

I don't know if you remember Bill and Ted. This is like the metaphor. Maria Taylor. I left her out. I should have mentioned Maria Taylor. Maria Taylor. She's awesome too. Pulligard. She is awesome.

And again, that's not with any disrespect to any of a name. It just stops at Maria Taylor and everybody else the next 20 deserve to be as good as Maria Taylor guys

if you didn't get mentioned. We're trying. We could do an NFT, Maria Taylor, NFT, just. You know who deserves, Malika Andrews deserves

an NFT for staying in the bubble for like two months and just crushing it. And also she's like 19 years older. I mean, she's ridiculous. She's so young. I don't know how old she is,

but she's young. She's great. And she, she, for those who don't know, went down to the bubble for the NBA and stayed there, whatever, or 70 days or whatever. And she's so good. Like, you know, just the back and forth, some people knew when I was new, I wasn't that good. I, you know, it took me a while to kind of get comfortable and all. She just jumped right in and that was a very difficult assignment too, right? Like, yeah, COVID and the whole deal, but yeah, there's a bunch of good people.

But like the people that you came up with, they all kind of like, whether they left to do something else or Stewart passed away and like, you know, it's undoubtedly, sometimes you're looking around and you're probably like, man, this is changing, whether it's the set or the music or the people you share the workplace with and you get along with everybody. So I'm not saying the people that there's some like deficit, but that nostalgia changes. You know, the nostalgia's further in the rear view. Was there a moment where you're like, I feel weird. Like, you know, it's just a little weird like being the, because you were kind of last the Mohicans there. Well, Steve Levy and Linda Cohn actually came before me. So there's a couple that actually

preceded me that are still there. Steve's doing great. And, you know, Monday Net, football. And I think with hockey coming, that's going to re-energize things for a bunch of people. You know, the core hockey lovers that are going to get new opportunities. But yeah, but I, yes, I think more that would hit me at 247 after the, you know, 19-eating game on the West Coast. And I'm driving home, listen to Sarah Kenzie or a podcast, Gaslit Nation. Free shout-up. Okay. Like, what am I doing? And now Gretchen's asleep. I want to watch an episode of Narcos. that's 412.

She's waking up at six for the kids, let the dogs out. I sleep till 1140. That's every day for the late sports center. If you do the late late late. Now, if you do the 11 to 12, you get home at 1240 or whatever, and that's not so bad.

That's, you know, I stay up to a minute all the time. But, yeah, it just. As do I see you a lot after midnight. Yeah, that's, you get tired. You get, I think, I mean,

I still think young, I believe. Some of my bones are a little, like I separated both my shoulders in addition to left femur broken, left ankle broken, right ankle fracture dislocation. So I've had a few that I think they're all coming back to me a little bit,

a little sore or, you know, and you just don't recover the same. You know, you're like, it's one o'clock I haven't even eaten yet. Or, you know, and now I've got to be to work at 530 or six or whatever it is.

And yeah, the wear and tear as I got older, got harder. In the old days, hell, we'd work that show and go play softball at 9 a.m. you know, like you're younger, you know. Yeah.

But that's not the reason. I think it's just more, um, I still love doing sports centers. I'll have fun tomorrow night. Um, Friday night. But there's more other different opportunity that I think will,

I'll be able to avail myself of and also do stuff that's a little more experimental. Like sports center is fun as hell, but there's that part. You got to say the numbers right and the name's right. And yeah. Right. We've been tripping all over each other here, but it's been a cogent conversation mostly, right?

Yeah. But if this were a. Sports Center, there'd be things we'd have to fix to make it cleaner later. Sometimes they let go. If you just kind of stutter and catch up and correct yourself, you know, that's not a fix. That doesn't count. No, I think it'd be fun to see you doing like more unstructured stuff. I mean, you know, I think there's such a cool side of every person that reads highlights because you get to know that person, if you love sports, especially back in the day, as Macon pointed out earlier, that that was all we had. Like, there was no Twitter to like see a highlight. So, you know, like for us, it was like what happened during the game?

Let's watch. The same way I would describe like having an intense relationship through the TV watching Chris Berman, you know, Sunday night with Tom Jackson. Like there's nostalgia there for me. Like I'm waiting to see the Rams get a highlight and we barely did. But like it's the same thing. And I just, I don't know. It's, it's, I think people are going to enjoy seeing the layers of you, which they've

seen already wider world of sports, Main Street, all that stuff. but like the long form stuff will be cool. I think it'll like open up a lot. And the short form stuff. No, I've, you know, I got, I've forgotten more idea. I got to start writing stuff down because I'm going to, you know, forget what the hell I haven't thought of. But there's a whole bunch of opportunity just to do experimental, you know, hey, for two days, I'm going to do this thing.

I just thought up and let's see what we got out. Do we have five, nine minute episodes or four minute episodes or who wants to run that? Who wants to stick their name on that? And the other, I think out of the gate when you asked earlier, I'd say if I answered that honestly, The first thing I would try to do to make income is to try to make some commercials. Whether I'm in them or I make them from other people, I did a lot of that for ESPN through our creative work side and the ad side. And I'm already out to a couple of people, Michael Jordan, if you're listening.

But besides him, you know, there's a couple other things borderline in play. So how many of those commercials that we loved did you like have a bigger role than we thought watching a lot of? You're talking about the sports center commercials? Sports centers. Yeah, I'm talking about the kind where they give you money. Yeah, they didn't give you any money there. No, they used to have a sign a deal that said you get $1.

It was just for their protection. Yeah. You know, because what if some guy, hey, you used me five times and, you know. But no, there's two different. One is those were really promotions, you know, at the Watch Sports Center. I was really, I'm hopeful for more than the $1 kind where you get either a famous athlete or an actor or me. My dogs are available.

And Ollie Pop, looking at you, they tweeted at me. I got to get back to them. It's a non-sugar pop, and I'm ready to make the commercial. I already have the idea. You know what? You'll love this. My 5-year-old, to get him to stop watching cartoons. You know what I started turning on recently?

And you have a hand in this way back in the day, but X games type stuff, like racing, BMX. Yeah, you were doing more. But like, he loves it. And I don't have to show him cartoons anymore. Now he wants me to take him to the skate park. We went to the skate park two weekends ago and just watch skaters. Our boy, Jeff. Amen.

is putting skate parks, skate parks in places like, you know, like you put community center base, like a good outlet for good. I think he just put one back in Wolf Point, eastern Montana. Yeah. When we go to Montana this summer and see Jeff hopefully, Whalen met Jeff for the first time last summer, of course, heartbeat of Pearl Jam. Everybody loves Eddie.

We love Eddie. But Jeff's the man. Yeah, he was smart in a lot of the business stuff and the art with his brother. Yeah. And, no, he's good dude. He sent a nice note. and I got a hold of Tim Beerman who's there, you know, just kind of run stuff.

And I don't know, is his guy title. It's a big title, whatever it is. And, hey, dude, let's do another hit on radio because I've hosted Pearl Jam Radio a couple times. And that must have been pretty cool. Oh, dude, it's first you're like, this is cool by itself that I'm hosting Pearl Gem Radio. That's kind of weird.

And they let you pick whatever you want, man. You tell us what 10 songs you want to play. And that's hard, too. So do that. Then take me through the pressure-packed nature of a band, which I would imagine they have some songs that like more than others that they did. Like, what are your favorites and what do you lead with? Well, my favorite Pearl Jam song ever is called Untitled.

And we played it at our wedding. It's that one about got a car, got some gas, and trying to meet up with your soulmate, right? And Gretchen, like, sang it to me in my ear on our first dance. almost been me correct. That's awesome. There's too many. I like so much.

It's funny, I like their, I would call softer side, you know, as opposed to when they just, like Love Boat Captain has everything, has great lyrics, and they also rock,

you know, it's like, but they don't, you don't have to just play Pearl Jam. I played, I think last time I played two Stevie Wonder songs. What else did I play? But it is like,

like, and a musician watching you pick music is nerve-wrack. for you know because they're very artistically elevated and their taste is very refined they don't the guys don't seem to care i'm dealing more with their PR side and their radio side so you know i think they might listen later hey that was a good show good but my last one was so fun my first guest was sarah kensior who i already mentioned she does the show called gaslit nation she's like been the resistance leader and uh so smart and andrew cheloup is her partner on that and i i played for her and dedicated to her

the song Patriot, which was really written by Little Stevie, right? And Little Stephen and I think Jackson Brown sang it. And I bought her tickets to the show in St. Louis as a thank you for everything she's done. Wanted to send her and her husband.

Then the pandemic happened. So Gretchen and I were going to go to Quebec City to watch one of their opening shows on a big tour that was going to happen. They all got canceled. I think ticket money is just on hold. When they play again, we'll go to some shows, but they're a good show. They're a really, really good show. You know where we should go? I'll meet you there, Ohana. It's a, it's a festival.

Google it. It's going to be, it was supposed to be. I know about it. Yeah. What is it? September? They just posted. And last summer, it was like the light at the end of the tunnel when you, when you wondered in the very beginning. Oh, maybe we'll get this under control and then the, you know, I'll be, I'll see all at Ohana like in 2021. Is that like September? Yeah. I think it's September, but my morning jacket's there. Shout out to those guys. Pearl Jam, a whole bunch of great, great artists. And it's out west. So maybe

see you there, Kenny. Always, always good. You know who I saw just once. Yeah. It wasn't even solo. He was playing. It was the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Had a big show in Madison Square Garden years ago. Name any guy ever, he or she played. Like, ridiculous. Paul, Simon and Garfunkel

played. Oh, wow. Stevie played. John Legend played. On and on and on. Like, the list was ridiculous. Bruce Springsteen played. And man, he sings every song like it's the last song that we'll ever be sung. He puts out. He is a great catalog. You know who I really missed?

And I was just playing him this morning when Tom Petty passed away. And I always liked Tom Petty, but I didn't really have a lot. You know what I mean? And dude, when I went through his catalog and his live anthology and like, the guy was ridiculous. He had the, so this is a better Tom Petty story. Well, obviously his passing is sad. when he was the halftime guy at the Super Bowl, and we had two stories going,

like my little silly comedy story, and they also wanted me to interview him, like a legit Tom Petty interview, right? Right. So the fake story was born in truth, actually. I had done some stuff with the Sopranos, a handful of Sopranos guys, and Polly Walnuts, Tony Serico, the actor,

he calls me up like Monday of Super Bowl week. I'm out in Arizona. He says, a kid, I need like four tickets, okay? I'm like, yeah, I mean, I can try. You know how hard Super Bowl tickets are, right? Yeah. So let me make a few calls, man. I can't make any, I know you're going to do it for me, kid.

Get back to me. And that's it. I need four tickets, right? So I tell my producer, like, what if we just make our story this week about the reality? You can look it up. I think you just put a main event, Super Bowl. I think that was a title, simple title. So we just made a whole joke of me begging people for tickets all week.

I'm walking around. I asked Belichick for tickets. He's up there at the podium. I need four, just four to Bill. Wes Welker was in the piece. I can't. You're going to do it for me. Exactly.

Guess what? I did it for him. The PR director for Mark Dalton for Arizona gets me four tickets. I'm going to pay, you know, whatever the price was. And I call back. back, hey, I landed the tickets. And then now he's like, I need a hotel room. Everything. Look, wait. I said, dude, we're staying at the days in, you know, like nine miles out of town. Like, we're not even in a fancy hotel. So it felt all things good. He became, you know,

like we were very friendly. But the, the, the fact that he made the call in the way he did, it was pretty funny. We just went with it. So this, it gets him better. Another man who passed away. He was in Green Mile. Come on. What's his name? Great voice. Michael Clark Duncan. Yes. I'm sorry. totally spaced on his name i see him at an event i said hey huge fan he knew who i was we shake hands i know it's crazy we don't have any money for would you voice we got a really ridiculous would you do the voice at scripts right here take five minutes he gets he tells us to get in his car he's in a limousine so i got the camera producer me him a couple other people and he and we drive around town

while he does the voiceover that's incredible where's the voiceover used he's unbelievable, right? He's an all-timer. Yeah. And I'm so sad. I mean, he's such a great guy. And as we left, he says, Kenny Mann, you owe me.

Last time I saw him, right? So then we get Tom Petty and his, what did he say? He had a good line. I can't remember what it was. You have to look back the story. Anyway, so we get Tom Petty to do this thing. He didn't really want to.

He just wanted to do the regular interview, but he was nice enough to do it, right? Run the story. Dave Craig on a horse at the end, a little person, Crombino was in it. The car blows up. We found a guy who knew how to do a blow up a car in the desert.

So we literally went and bought a car for $300, drove it to the desert, got the munitions guy to pretend to blow it up. Dave Craig shows up at the end, former famous quarterback from Tiny Milton College, which no longer exists. And at the end, I was like,

Dave Craig, is that you? And I asked about the tickets. Oh, I had like 20, but I gave him away, like, you know, games a joke. Like,

that was the premise. Oh, my God. there's a lot of stuff going on there. And what's the budget on those things, dude? It wasn't very much. I mean, you can blow up a car for cheap, unfortunately. Yeah, the camera was already with us.

The car was a few hundred bucks. The, and I'm trying to say this respectfully, I believe little person is the correct way to say that. Yep. His website said midget actor. That's what he goes by. Good guy, Mark Trombino.

Yeah. If you need a guy to be in a car that gets blown up. I ought to work with him before. And it was wild. It was a crazy show. shoot. It happened over like 96 hours. It's just madness, right? Yeah. And the clip of the Sopranos, all of it.

And then that story ran and it was received, you know, it was bizarre. It's very, you know, a little too avant-garde for some of the hardcore sports fans. But, um, so then they didn't run Tom Petty. So I'm doing

live shot leading to my story. You know, the four-hour countdown show, right? And it keeps time goes by. Oh, God, so this just happened. We're interviewing so and so. Oh, you know, it shows change. right and my story keeps getting floated now it's 1215 the show's off at one or you know whatever the time was right at 45 and guys guys you can do the petty thing like we got the petty thing right and it's really good three-minute interview and he was very sincere and just such a warm guy right he never ran it oh and he got bumped and afterward I'm arguing with people like guys you realize who

tom pet like and somebody even tried to uh whatever it's tom petty whatever ever he's the super bowl halftime act, A, B, he gave us our time and now we're going to not even run it. C, name, name the greatest rock bands or rock figures in America. America, yeah. I mean, who are they? There's only a few. Springsteen, Pearl Jam, um, Teddy. Talking heads technically, I guess, if you want to count that they're like, they're great, but, you know, yeah, that's. I think about them musically as being some of the greatest, like, kind of off the wall. Yeah, you'd have to go back to some 60s and 70s bands. I'm talking about right now today, you know, then today. There's your three. I mean, Eddie Vedder. Yeah. Well, Eddie and Pearl Jam total. That's one. Chris Cornell.

For sure. Well, then I got to do the thing you're doing with Sports Center because we're talking about Seattle here. And I got to name them all. Shannon Hoon. I'm thinking, you know, like, golly, there's not a lot. But Tom Petty, the B reason that you listed, well, like Kirk Cobain, sorry, Seattle. B, the B reason, Lane Staley, sorry, okay, I'm done. After Lane Staley, no other grunge frontmen get mentioned. Maria Taylor. So, you know, that might be better than your wedding joke. And he made Kenny laugh twice so far, which I'm keeping score.

So the B part is the part that would be the biggest mind fuck to me, because it's the whole, like, when you interview somebody, I'm taking your time. Yeah. You know, and I want to be above all, like, respectful of that. and I bet were you wondering like, it was never going to get back to him because the last thing he's doing to watch and TV, but it was just,

it was a sad state of affairs. You know, it's funny about the respect thing. I was probably respectful to a fault sometimes. Like when we would shoot our, our so-called main events, the little silly football stories, Marshawn Lynch at Applebee's.

You can Google that one. We love that one. We love that one. You know, I'd go into the locker room, Patriots locker room, and we'd get Brady for two minutes. Brady was the funniest part, because they'd kind of try to play it like it didn't happen.

Like, you know, when they clear the locker room, 12, 45 guys, everybody out and all the media leaves, right? And then they'd kind of wish we'd, can't go, or, you know, like, and then we'd go back in and get Brady for two minutes, right? One time he gave us, like, a half hour. We did this Bieber Brady thing about their hair style, and he was great. He, like, played with the curling iron and, like, you know,

it was kind of out of character. Brady did. Yeah. A vacation with Bieber. Did you know that? Say that again? A vacation with Bieber. I'm friends with the guy who did his dog.

documentary. I don't vacation with Bieber, but he was on vacation where I was on vacation. You might have. Two, three weeks ago. I worked out right next to him in the gym. He seemed super nice. I worked with him when he was about 14 or 15 or whatever. Nice kid? Very funny. Yeah, he got it and it's funny. He was like a little nervous ESPNs here. You know, I mean, that was kind of weird. Oh, the other night, in fact, speaking of the old Main Street people, Aubrey Plaza got married. Oh, congratulations thorough. And I didn't know about it. So I think Gretchen showed me or somebody showed me on Instagram, whatever. and at the end of our sports center I was like I'm just going to last 20 second

how much time do we got 20 okay cool I'm going to do a little call out to Aubrey and we're on ESPN 2 by the way too you know nothing wrong with it but it's not being like on ESPN regular right and I texted her hey we're going to give a shout out call your grandma and we did it and then she was all bummed that she wasn't near a TV

and I got somebody to send her the clip so she had it it was just so funny she and her husband truly were touched and thought that was cool that on ESPN 2 at 143 in the morgue or whatever it was well you like y'all wield a lot of power man you really do because everybody i'll tell you one way a guy brought this up to me a long time ago just think if there's a 23-year-old you know pa out of whatever college yeah and they're watching the you know seahawks saints right they themselves wield a lot of power that they can make a player look good or look bad or just

show this or just show that and there's not enough time they have super supervising uh people in the screening room but you know some stuff gets through right like so-and-so rough night and they could make it look like he had a horrible game and how that could impact somebody is weird you know well that's the problem with the same with the stack guys you know like bobby wagner doesn't need to to have any assists added on to his exactly but you know like there was always like in in the meeting rooms on mondays you know guys would argue with sack and then the more prominent player would get the half sack he'd get the full sack and that type of thing and a lot of it starts upstairs with the set with the stack guy I was going to say uh the marchion thing

you mentioned it. You had a really special relationship with him, it feels like. And I know Marshawn and love him. I've always loved Marciaun and love playing against him. He's like of all the jerseys that I got, again, talking about trading jerseys, we just recently were, you don't like that so much. Soft. It's got, well, it's gone too far.

It happens too often. It's not as special because if they're doing it every third game, you know, what are we doing? I didn't do it every third game. What I did my last couple years was I got as many as I could my last two years, my last year. Yeah, I like that. You know, like, Marcia, Marcia, I played him on Christmas in Philly

and it was low-scoring, cold game and talk about tackling him. I'm like, I can't escape having to tackle this guy. I had to tackle him in St. Louis. Now, here he is, and it's cold, and I don't want to tackle him. And literally, like, with a play left on the clock, like after Derek Barnett ran in a fumble for a touchdown,

we're walking through the end zone and I'm like Jersey dude. And he knew exactly what I was talking about and we handled it. And that was the kind of thing. Like the respect I have from Arshaun, I wouldn't do that for other people. But you obviously had a great relationship with the guy. And I wondered, I think you did something with him in Buffalo,

but then you had that famous Applebee's thing. If you had any idea how special that relationship would grow to be in his time in Seattle, because the Applebee's thing was right in the front end of it. Yeah. I mean, I just knew who he was. from college football, you know, he was a draft choice and all. And the whole story behind that, Willis McGahey was leaving Buffalo to Baltimore, right?

And he kind of trashed Buffalo on the way out. Like, you know, Buffalo is so boring. They got an Applebee's and the Dave and Busters and don't even get me started on the women. Yeah. I think that was his quote, right? Yeah. So Tom McCollum, my good friend and old producer, he did most of the writing on this one. And it's just me and Marshawn on a chair.

And we read through that. And, you know, let me quote the. Raven once more. That was a little inside right team type knowledge. That was from Tom. And so we had go to Applebee's and Dave and Busters and just screwed around. Like that's all it was. That was the whole bit. And Marshawn's Marchon, and that's always

a winning element, right? So I didn't really see him again until years later when he got to Seattle. And we did another story, maybe two. He was in another one briefly, I believe. But we really hit it up more not for me doing a story, just we got each other. Like, every time

I'd see him, he was just warm and friendly. And so against, you know, this ridiculous notion that he was this bad guy because he had tattoos or something. He didn't like to talk to the media and who cares if he does or doesn't. But, you know, I consider him a friend. Like, you know, we don't talk much. Once in a while, I'll hear from him or I'll text him. He called my nephew on his five-year-old birthday. That was a big hit back in Seattle.

He's a sweetheart. And in fact, I asked him, he hasn't replied yet. My last show for SportsCenter, I asked, would you come on, even just a minute, just give me a minute to Marsha. on my goodbye show. Sue Bird say yes. I think Jamal's going to be yes. I'm kind of making it Seattle, you know, centric. That's incredible.

It would be kind of cool. Just good old people that I love. And, you know, he does so many good things for, you know, he doesn't wave his arm around. Look at me. I'm doing this. Doesn't do it for that. He does it because it's right. And he, you know, he's a charitable guy.

He's a funny guy. He's got a lot, as you said, a lot left in the tank as well. He's a little bit younger. By the way, you came to play Seattle. and I was called upon to raise the 12th man flag in Seattle. And they have this tradition for those who don't know. Before the game, they pick somebody famous or borderline famous,

usually with a Seattle connection, and they raised the flag, and the place goes crazy. It's wild, right? And I had this idea up my sleeve, what if right after I raise it, I wing a football from that platform onto the field? Just like, da-da, you're right?

And I was going to do it, but I looked down and they do it so tight up against the game, the Rams were already in received formation. And like, that would be a real dick. Yeah, dude. I don't think anybody in that stadium would have cared. No, but I just out of respect for football. For the Rams.

Like, yeah, that's just wrong to do. So I didn't do it. Exactly. A lot of people. And I wanted to know if I could do it. I think I could because that platform is really high. You just got to throw the ball like 50 in the air and it's going to do the rest on its own. You need to go back.

And the Gronk just caught the highest football drop of all time. That was crazy in Arizona. Add that to his list. of accomplishments. Great recruiting tool for Arizona down there. You know what we did the other night that was so fun. So many of my ideas got rejected through the times, even though it sounds like I'm listing off all these crazy, but I always felt like, yeah, they don't even listen to me. I want to do all these things. But as I list off what we did do, you know, it could be argued they did listen sometimes. But I had more ideas. But the other night, Evan, the producer, was trying to get, remember we had the no

hitter last week. And the producers in my ear like shot sheets coming, you know, the notes on the game. but there's no time to bring it out. She's going to run it out. Right. And that's all he says. And it was Ashley that had to do the hi, hello. And I'm like, and here's our teleprompter person bringing me. And there was a really cool moment, right?

Like, talk about taking you behind. Like I didn't have the paperwork to execute the highlight. She had it, thank you, go back to your job. And then we did the highlight. Like it was fun. Making had a great question about this type of mechanical stuff. Well, yeah. I'm curious about the DNA of a highlight because I bet you consider your

something of a comedy writer, especially when you have a long runway, but how often are you seeing a highlight for the first time when you're live, and do you have a reservoir of things you know you can say? Because for me, your catchphrases

are brilliant, but the genius is there's a golf shot and we have to term it a golf shot. It can't just be a shot. It's a golf shot. And you say that ball bounces near some humans and down a hill. It's just say what you see and get from point A to point B.

That would have happened. That would have I'd say 95% of the time we've never seen it until the moment we talk about it. Wow. That's crazy. In the old days, we used to look at them more. I don't know why that's changed. That's a great question. If there's a complicated highlight and there's sound in it and it's

tricky and there's a rule or something, they'll often, hey, we want you to glance at this during the commercial so you don't get behind. Right. 95% of time I've never, and I'd say 80% of time, I have no damn idea who won or lost the game unless I'm you know looking at my stat pack coming out because a lot of the games on the east coast are ending close to 11 the west coast games are in progress there's just physically you know no way to do it but it's um you know hopefully you are reliant on

your help right so the kid who watched the highlight gives you a piece of paper or maybe three pages if it's a big game and longer game and if it's a one pager you know I could close my eyes into it step curry three boo yeah you know like you just do he's going I like I like a new one I wrote last week, in fact. Specifically for him, it just worked so well. Would it work for Jamal too. As he crosses over, then he gets a hit. I say roll one, light one.

Hey, that's not bad, right? I feel good about that one. Hey, funny as shit in the world, dude, actually, that my dad texted me. By the way, he said to say hello. Hello. And all his kind regards of keep plugging away, not the sorry you died. A lot of gas in the tank. A lot of gas in the tank.

I was sitting on the sofa late the other night, and Kenny on his final show, well, he doesn't know you're going to keep going. If you got him, roll them. I had to play it back to be sure what I heard. At that point, I didn't know he was leaving.

Tell him it was roll one light one. I think, I mean, the arsenal you spoke of, like in the best world, you get some shot sheets early before you actually start the show, like 10 minutes before,

and you look at it, hey, is that one guy's name? You know, I'm yelling to research, or I'm yelling to the guy and, you know,

John Totten knows all the name. he's one of the supervising producers controlling whatever they're called and if you don't know the name I mean I have mastered the way to not know a name and not make it wrong like there is a there are ways to get around it

right my daughter when she first learned to drive Riley she was really bad you know bad driver out of the gate right yeah and we get to a four way and it's stop signs all around it was her turn and she just slowly coasted and didn't know what to do just looked around like What should I do love for it?

And she said out loud, there's a lot of activity taking place currently. She said those words. And we made it through safe. And then I gave her 20 bucks and I used that. I had a deal where if you gave me a cool line, 20 bucks. All the kids have earned 20 bucks. That's, Matt Doyle got screwed for NBA. Just think of a guy banging off people, makes a tough bucket.

You just go medicinal. Right? That says it all, right? So, oh, Brin has. a really good one. That's Gretchen's youngest, my stepdaughter. It was people all up in my life. She said, my sister's all up in my life.

She was mad about something, right? So I use that when guys are like, knock, somebody's all up in the guy's life. So to answer your question, though, as far as dropping that stuff in, I get bored slightly with the so-called catcher. Because a lot of it is not a catcher. It's just you are literally the human one.

It wasn't anything I thought of until that second, right? Yeah, that was from the... The ball goes toward human beings. That was from the famous, was it the meltdown. We don't know that by Vandeville. And you said, oh, okay. I might have done that. That's a long time ago.

Yeah, we were watching some old funny moments. I can't remember what I said on that. But the so-called catcher, yeah, like for a Hispanic player on home runs, I used to say home run. Yeah. Because I was sitting at dinner next to one of our ESPenta Portades people. I say, hey, how do you say home run in Spanish? I've been saying quadrangular. And that's correct.

if you want to, but he said, here's how you say it. Run. That's incredible. So I stole that. And then the other one I like, I just go, La Pelota, noista here. You know, the ball is not here. And I just, I also like the minimization kind where you just say,

he hit it over some fencing that had been set up before the game. That's the best. He's tall. That's the best. You know, that type of. He's pretty old. I remember Rafe LaFrance. He played Kansas.

Kansas. Rifle of France. Yeah. Am right? Yeah. He came on a tour with his team. They were in town to play Yukon or something. And he told me, he wasn't mad, but he kind of like,

is that like even a compliment? I mean, what are you saying there? And I was like, it's just funny. You're tall and you made a basket. Like that, you know, he's tough. I like somebody got up with Khalifa high on a high, you know, way up high. A lot of doobie talk from you. It's for the kids.

Okay. Or just say too for the culture. I mean, I think others have used that one. Have you ever felt bad for a team as you were reading highlights or like, you know, like, have you ever legitimately been like, golly, make it stop? This game is really rough. You mean like we're beating up on their poor play? What do you mean? Yeah, their play is so poor.

It's just like, man, this team sucks, man. It was hard to watch and narrate this. I think I say they've emotionally checked out at this point. And the one I like is when there's like a technical error and you just say, you know, we're still gunning for. for the technical achievement Emmy despite what just occurred. I love it. Because I love mistakes.

Yeah. Little mistakes are really funny because you can reference it nine more, you know, it's just, hey, remember back in the A block when whole place fucking melted down?

That was weird. Wasn't it? We're going forward, people. So, yeah. What's the closest you've ever been

to cussing on the air? No. Oh, it's many times. If we could do a swearing sports center, how good would that be? I mean, sign me up.

Yeah. I only know that. That would be funny. I'm not real good at the highlights, but I can cuss if you need help. I'm not saying like, you know, we're astronauts here or something, but there is a gift to taking a piece of paper and seeing something for the first time and staying on time is the biggest thing, right? You don't want to be too far ahead of it or get behind it. If you get behind it, you just, you know, find your way back in.

But it's like a little, it's like a little fight. It's like, stay with it, you know. And then sometimes you don't know, did they cut it fat, you know, too much, too much on the outside of it. play or did they cut it too tight. If you give me a tightly cut hockey highlight, I'm screwed, I'm dead. That's when I just say, you know what,

these players are team guys and they don't even want to have their names mentioned. And is there a producer in your ear saying, hey, let's go. You're behind. Well, producer by producer, they're all different, but one guy,

there are two stories on it, John Totten's great. He's like, just knows every name, knows every, you know, he's got it all up here. So sometimes I'll say,

you know so-and-so does such and such Homer 3-0 and he'll get in my ear quickly and go you know he was just traded last year and I'll go you know I think he just came over last year didn't he? I'll say it like I know it but I'm really it's the joke is really for him and the guys in the control room because they know I never knew it so it's a joke to them but on TV it sounds like I knew it right? The thing is like I always feel weird

when we make a mistake here I don't care if the audience doesn't know that I just blatantly fucked up but I don't want our producers to think that I'm up here acting like I'm smart so like you know that's you know you want to I mean, you want to be right when you can. And then if somebody corrects you, you correct it on the next show or something. But in our case, we fix it during the commercial break. If I F up a guy's name or he had 21 points and it was actually 12, I read it backwards, you know, whatever the case, right?

They'll just say, just say 12, 12. Say it again, 12. And then they take that 12 and shove it where it belongs. I think we went over that. But so we got another guy, Derek Kamagan, a great producer. He's a good friend. He was golfing today. He's horrible at golf.

But he actually bought his. rental set from the course after play. He's never owned a set. And he loved how they felt. He said, how much for this? And the guy, they, we told him, too, do, don't go over 200. You can go by USET. The guy said 150, bought on the spot. No haggling. No, the guy was very, very kind people at that course. So this is about two, this is, this is before the pandemic started, I think, right? You know, March period or late, whatever month comes before March. So I think it was March. And you know, Joe La Nardi. Yeah, Joe Laudy. Yeah.

So he does all the, this team's going to make the tournament and this team's just on the outside that last four in, you know, he has all these, all these predictions, right? So somebody's playing, whoever the fuck's playing. And I'm supposed to say, Joel Lannardi says they're going to be blah, blah, blah, right?

And they end up winning and some other team loses and that changed Joe Lannardi's thing. And I didn't know that. Nobody had told me, and he's trying to tell me in my ear to not say it the way I was gonna, here's what you got to say, but he didn't hit the button. He's talking to the other guy

who knows who, but it wasn't me. So I read what I read it. And Jillineardi says, blah, blah, blah. And in the control room, Derek's going, say they're number two. Say their number two. Say it. Say it. And I'm not hearing that.

So there's like seven seconds of dead air. We're in the A block. And I read what I read and I'm done. I'm thinking John's going or whoever. And all this dead air is happening. And Derek's screaming at me in the control room. And I just went, and that's our show. So that's become like our inside joke.

Anything that goes bad, you just, and that's our show. We're done. Kenny, before you roll, I want to, I want to ask you about run freely because I would have plugged it off the top. But it's a fairly, it's a serious thing that you're very passionate about. And I didn't want to ask you right off the top. And, you know, but I love what you're doing with it. tell people about kind of the background around it and what you're doing now with run freely run freely the background is i played at unl v second string 1980 and 1980 and i just like that spot you know

back up chart the game yeah i wanted to play more i wish i had to do over i would have done some things differently but uh larry gentry started my junior sam king led the nation passing yards my senior year randle cunningham was four string behind me and allan reynolds what we knew we knew he was better than us. It was quite a, but he was a freshman. He had all the physical skills, but Sam, you know, like I said, led the nation in passing, right, in passing yard. So, and I was trying to fight Sam for that. So we've all stayed good friends, just texted both of them, and Alan Reynolds. I texted all of them. So that has nothing to do with my veterans thing. So my junior year, we're at Oregon, and we, Oregon was good at year. I think they're eight and three.

and we're getting beat, you know, a bad game, rainy, we sucked. We should have been closer in the game, but we weren't. So I'm in there, and the very last play of the game, we're down 33 to 9. Are you just a kneel? No, hell no, you wing the ball up to the field. Let's get 16 point, you know, why not? Go for two even. So I call 95.

That was our double-go route, tight-end, you know, all three going, right? Outside, inside. And I slip, and I throw a shitty pass. It slips. It's horrible throw. I probably three ball 40 yards. Like it didn't go anywhere. And a guy sticks his helmet on my ankle to end the game.

Another guy stood me up. So I'm like up against the wall almost, right? So I had what was called a fracture dislocation. That means you tore all the ligaments and broke the outside bone. But I came back and played the next year. You know, when you're young, you're stupid. And, you know, I just, they didn't think I was going to even have any chance at playing. They're going to honor my scholarship, they said.

And I show up for camp. Like, no, I'm, and they made me do some tests. All right, good luck. Go do it. So that's a long time. go that's 1981 and in about 2010-ish I was still doing a lot of those football stories traveling around the world and around the country and and man I was in bad way like I was it was bad like I remember a New Orleans Saints game it ankles like this big it was just

ridiculous icing it all the time plane ride sucked getting off the plane I'd like push into my ankle to make it open you know like the talus was locked up a couple years later I found a guy that gave me a brace and I did some better therapy I kind of brought it back to life I actually went to three doctors. One was going to fuse it. One was going to replace it. And the other one was going to cut it off. And those guys, the amputation guys said, dude, you're too young. Go get better therapy. Find a brace. So a number of years later, I started hearing from my sister in Gig Harbor, which is down by Tacoma. You got to see this guy, Ryan, man. He's got this crazy. And I said, I already got a brace. And I'm, you know, but I'm not using it very much. And I'm still limping

around a lot. And I go see Ryan. He says, I can help you. I can get you moving pain free. And I get the brace. I go on the treadmill around like 15 miles an hour on day one. I'm not making this up with the brace that totally takes the ankle out of the equation. It's just a long for the ride. It doesn't matter if the ankle sucks because this device is going to take care of you. So I call Gretchen. I'm like crying on the phone.

Like I can't even talk. I'm so overwhelmed by the emotion of I just got this unbelievable gift, right? We decided like in in that moment, let's do something good with this. And we started this foundation. It's called run freely. R-U-N-F-R-E-E-E-L-Y, run-freely.org. Run-freely.org. And the opening event we did to try to, you know, get the name out and get raise some money,

our cast of helpers was Jamal Crawford, Gary Payton, Steve Largent, Jerry Rice, and Lenny Wilkins. All those guys said yes to me, right? I told my whole story, and they absolutely were in. And I'm thinking we're going to get 20,000 people, right? Who wouldn't go to see those guys, right? And the idea of my event was, you get to do, we're going to have a drawing or something and you get to come down on the floor. We kind of just volunteered. We just wave people down because of state law about raffles, seriously.

So we wave people down to do it. And somebody got to guard Jamal and try to score against Gary, throw passes to Jerry and Steve, right? And it was just really cool with about 250 people. Like it was, it didn't go the way I wanted, right? However, just having them do that and the notice and I did interviews and TV and put it on the website. and we just slowly, you know, kept building up. I threw in Gretchen I bought the first two. Jamal bought one.

Van Pelt bought one. Steve Kerr almost bought one. His donation, I think, did it. Somebody from Ohio sent 20 grand out of nowhere. And you know it is with your water boys. Like, nickel and dime get you there eventually. And sometimes it's cool to get a big check. But we've been able to one by one award or not saying the right word.

I don't mean it that way. Like we're doing it. It's more like they earned it, right? That's a better way to put it. So we hear these cases and they send me a letter like here's my situation. I send him to Ryan. He decides is the brace going to help or not? And it's been amazing.

Like 100% success. Not one person has it not worked for. Incredible. I mean, it's incredible. And I think the equity in the kind of, I mean, you've been through it. You've seen what it's like to like consider amputating your foot at 50 something years old. Yeah. For real.

I was, I mean, I went down. We did a story one time about at the time Warren Moon was the all-time fumbles leader. Brett Farve, I think, is the all-time now, right? I think he's- And he continues to fumble. Yeah. That was sly, and I liked it. So I said to Warren, are you willing to do a story, you know, we're going to clown about your fumbles? He's, I don't care.

He was out of the league at that point, right? So the joke was going to be, he was going to go see James Anders of Birmingham, Alabama and get the butter removed from his hands because he was, as a small child, he was, born with butter patties like he got a denny's and we took a friend of mine Aaron Owens took his five-year-old child and pretended that was young Warren Moon's hands right and then he goes to see James Andrews and while I was there shooting not with Warren but we one of his sisters was a black doctor and he put his hands in so it all you know made sense ish except for the part about probably nobody's been born with butter on their hands but aside from that just go with

you yeah don't just keep going so it's like that's a prento story um and I said to James Anders, I told my little background about my ankle, and I sweet talked to his assistants into free x-rays, and he's just like, lordy, lordy. Can't do anything for you. But they did tell me, don't get your ankle replaced. Because when I went to the ankle replacement people, they're like, I said, can I, you know, when could I start, like,

could I play flag football? Could I, you know, start running? No, no, no, we don't want you running. I said, well, why am I getting the operation? Why would I replace my ankle to not run? run, I can already not run. Right. Well, you get away with the pain.

Well, I might as well fuse it then. You know, like, so I did no surgery, got better therapy, Nino Pribic, free shout out. Amazing chiropractor, Kirkland, Washington. Got my, you know, he just got it back to life, basically. Yeah. And he manipulates it and cracks it and does all the stuff. And then I got this amazing exosem device and just played golf today.

I don't feel any pain, nothing. But if I had played with shoes, you know, just like golf shoes, I'd be, I'd be limping for three days. incredible it is and the reviews are all great too like just Kenny so you can find it on my um like i tweeted and and attached it if you follow me check that out but it's run freely or run r youn freely run freely dot org we thought that was a cool name because you're not very free you know in the condition like i said the best story i mean there's been a million best good stories but one of them particularly that stood out uh heather from new mexico she served in the air

for us and she'd been in a wheelchair a lot on one of those little walker scooter things, whatever those are called. And she goes to Seattle and goes to Gig Harbor and she gets it. And she told me when she got back home, she donated her wheelchair, you know, somebody who needed it, like a facility that needed it. Give away her walker. Like she's walking. She's running.

And you can run. And some people don't want to run. They just want to walk better and safer. And then maybe they'll take that dare and try to run again. I run sprints and we got a pretty long driveway. like 40s 40, 50, whatever it is. Not very fast. But just to go and say that I can run 10 or 12 sprints and do, you know, that's kind of cool.

You just don't reverse things like that. So it's incredible that you've had those results. Oh, yeah. You just don't. Kenny Maine, from the bottom of our hearts, you know, a lot of gas left in the tank. But the last chapter, man, that was a good one. And a big part of our lives and so many listeners, I'm sure, as well. So with the utmost respect and gratitude that we say thank you for being on this pod, Kenny.

to have you back soon. But I know you're going to be busy. That was almost too much. You could have just said, thanks for joining us. Oh, no, no. That's for the listeners, not for you. I really don't give that much of a No, that sounded sincere. I appreciate you. I always have. You know, we met each other. Weren't you like 14 or something? You were young and your dad and I were playing softball, which he actually wanted me to cue you up again. Dad's, he's like, to get him tell the softball story from when he ran through the fence at Safeco Field during the Celebrity.

It was 2001. He ran right. Alvin Davis, former Mariner Grates, up to bad. I'm in center, left center, whatever I was. And he crushes.

I mean, it might have gone over the real fence. I don't know what I was doing. I think I'm going to pull that thing back. And I just full speed. I'm not even looking at the fence. Just crashed into the wall. Your dad comes over.

Are you okay? You know, he's worried about me. And I just looked at how I said, I am not well. That was that one about. Then. At the very end of the game, I caught a fly, but I caught it like super awkwardly.

And because of my ankle situation, you know, kind of put your knees in jeopardy sometime. And I tweaked my knee, one of those where you think you've torn. Turned out it was everybody's torn their meniscus somewhere and don't know about it. Oh, yeah. I'll tell you, let's just go into extra time here. Yeah, let's do it. Seemed like we were done. There was a very sincere goodbye, but we're back.

Well, I got to take it back. And now I'm going to, my next one, my next sign-off is going to be a lot. lot more like hey see you soon yeah just blow off the next one plus i'm at nine percent battery isn't it funny how cell phones can get down to one percent battery and last for like 40 more minutes it's a lie it's a fucking lie it's like running around on empty which i do a lot in my in on my truck like and you're lying i've been driving for 20 miles what oh i was uh where were we we're oh i'm going to tell you the softball story but i'm going to interrupt that with a new thought that just came up there's a lot of activity currently taking place

So I was living in Seattle. They wanted me to come back and do more shows back here. I was getting married to Gretchen. Yeah. Cool. I'll do more shows back here. I'm marrying some girl. And how are we going to see each other if I don't live back there?

So it kind of worked out. But I'd have my daughters in Seattle. So I'd fly back and forth, back and forth. We'd miss each other. I'd come back. We'd greet each other. And while I was here, they would give me a rental car. And then I'd turn it in.

I'd go to Seattle and I'd get a new one over and over and over, right? So one time we're going to go golfing and I lost my keys. I had them on the roof of the car and forgot that I left him there with the car on. I don't know why I put them there, but I did. And they stayed on there long enough to fall off and then get run over by three cars. So my keys are just obliterated in the middle of this road down here. I have no keys. The keys are, but the car is running, right?

So I, but I want to play golf. So I go to the golf course. I call the car rental lady and tell her with the crisis. And we decided I would play five hours of golf and just leave the car running in the golfing parking lot. That should just slow died like your cell phone. And it just stayed and then I took the car up and got either a new car or new key. Something happened.

You said you took the car up like he's doing it with a hand motion. Like he just like, hey, here it is. No, it's that. It's that way. It's north. Okay. It's north. It's up.

Three for three. Hold on. Hold on because we got the Wade Boggs. Now we're at Yankee Stadium. This is the final game to be, the final all-star game and the final C-E. in the old Yankee Stadium. And I can throw, but just a very average hitter all my life. Just never, just didn't hit well.

Just sorry, didn't have it. So we're down a run, two out. Wade Boggs is coming to the play. We got, I think we had two on. We're going to win this thing. They walk Wade Boggs to get to me. I would too. And I got my bat on.

I mean, I had a decent long ball to right field, but it was never getting out. easy out games over and he was like seriously pissed at me after like in the locker room you lost the fucking game for us man no yeah and i couldn't tell was he later led in that he was probably joking but i think in the moment he wasn't i think that's incredible to be yelled at by like a legend i mean i got yelled at by a legend my whole childhood but wade boggs is not my dad wade boggs no he's sweetheart otherwise but yeah he had a moment he just wanted to win the game You know, we're out there to play.

I think that was worth the travail of everything that happened to get. I really wanted that story. Hey, listen, it's all worth it, dude. I mean, you can come on here and tell stories any time, Kenny. Kenny. Hey, you were all right at your last gig. You'll be better at the next one. So have a good day, and I'll see you next time on the pod.

That's what I'm talking about. Nice talking to you. All right, brother. Be well. We're going to talk about the schedule in a second with our boy, Dave, Damashik, it's safe to say that the most anticipated game of the year is the Pats hosting the Buccaneers. The champs.

It's safe to say they'll be better and we'll ask him what he thinks in a few, Dave Damashik. For my money, this is the rare like everybody has it right. This is the biggest personality piece that the NFL could possibly sell. Like the human drama element matches up with the on-field excellence element. It's like a perfect storm. And I'm excited for it. What's say you? Yeah, it's been written that Tom Brady Sr.

is, quote, salivating over the Bucks Pats week four matchup. You guys just drooling. I mean, he is. It's foaming at the mouth. He cannot contain. It's like you've seen a cheeseburger. You know your mouth starts the water When you see a cheeseburger

Probably not you so much Because that would be An intensely macho thing to admit But You know I had a burger like thing the other day Yeah Meat too Yeah

Not a meat substitute Uh huh Not for me Burger's not for you Yeah I don't think so No Okay we'll revisit that on another show That's not the schedule show

But that deserves like a 20 minute sidebar I mean like a Riverside Okay. Jack Browns. I love Jack Browns. Shout out to Jack Browns. I love a potato bun and like an old school Little League style burger. Like a char, you know, Riverside.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't want the gas grill burger. I want the charcoal burger. This is a big fat charcoal burger with pickles. Double, double cheese burger. No, I don't want my cheese. I want my pickles.

Cheddar on that. You're just not cheese? No cheese? No, I'll do cheese from time of time. but I also want to be able to taste the pickles and the ketchup and, you know. And drum roll please. Mustard.

Mustard. Bang. Let's go. Yeah, this guy introduced me to mustard circa 2010. Love mustard. Haven't looked back. Like literally. No, I like it, but never put it on anything. There was a phase.

I'm going to start putting it on again, though, now that we've talked about it. This is a big fat double hamburger with mustard ketchup, pickles, and it's ready for the viewer. Sink your teeth into it, Tom Brady's dad,

because I think it's going to be everything that people are building it up to be. I think the most interesting thing about this is that for years, okay, Tom Brady and Bill Belichick practiced in effectively a hangar, okay? Think about the way they say, like the conspiracies you used to hear like the NFL's played in a hanger,

which I cannot believe. adults actually engaged in that. I do think certain teams get calls. These guys have been practicing in Foxborough under the cover of darkness for years. I mean, that's notoriously a black box. And, you know, we just don't pay attention

to the chess match between offensive coordinators and defensive coordinators in practice and quarterbacks and defensive coordinators in practice. The most fun I ever had was watching like quarterbacks talk shit to D.C.'s and vice first in camp. And there's no shortage of that kind of mental warfare in New England. And like I didn't pay attention what they were doing up there.

Practice it and practice out. I'm worried about what I'm doing. But I know Bill and Tom have fantasized, I don't know if dreadfully or, you know, excitedly about the day that they could actually like see how it would play out. This game, you know, like is going to be illuminating. You know, what's his game plan against his 20 year quarterback and what's Tom thinking about what Bill's going to do? And Bill on the defensive, no pun intended, because Brady's won the Super Bowl.

This would be far different if the Bucks had petered out in round one. Brady's coming in as the champ. No doubt about it. And the biggest chef's kiss of the entire thing is the record thing. Kudos to the schedule makers for this. Brady closing into their record, if he averages about the same amount of yards, he's going to break that record. Career passing record, yep.

Against the Patriots. And I see why people think they play in a hangar, but I'm here to tell you they don't. Also, here's another one. It's not just that. Brady's going to finally beat the 32nd team in the NFL for him. He's beaten all but one. What took you so long, buddy?

Maybe. Now, is it a foregone conclusion that he gets a warm welcome in Foxborough? He's got to. If you're a Patriots fan and you boo Tom Brady, like you're literally booing yourself. because that's the only reason you're a Patriots fan unless you're over 50 years old. Like, I just don't believe it.

I know that there are diehards, but come on, it's okay to say that you got more excited when y'all got good. And I think the vast majority of them supported him this past year. So that would be a weird move. Yeah, no, like, I don't think that's happening.

And I think they know that. Like Tom Brady is being a Patriots fan. Like somebody's going to be like, no, actually it's whatever quarterback played at the old stadium in the 90s. That's fair. If that's like your nostalgic memory, but there's an entire generation of people who watch the Patriots, even in Foxborough and surrounding boroughs and the entire New England area just because of Tom Brady.

I'm just telling you, dude, that's got to be a warm welcome. It'll make your hair stand on then, I bet, and it would have been a tragedy if it happened last year with no fans in the stands. Teddy's returned to Minnesota, which is obviously much different. but you know I wish it was colder that's my only critique of this game I wish I could see Bill in his baggy hoodie with you know smoke steam coming out of his mouth and shit the buck's schedule it's very interesting we're going to talk more about schedules in a bit but since we're here Dallas LA Atlanta New England Miami all off the top for them so it's not just tough games it's storylines you got Dallas first off which is going to be a monster rating game, but you've got old friends in, you know, the Patriots and Miami. You've got a Super Bowl rematch, 283 with Atlanta. After that, Bucks Eagles, the Bucks don't care about the Eagles, but Tom Brady cares a great deal about the Eagles.

He will forever. I mean, he has to, and I'm not saying there's a shot against him. That stuck in his crawl. I know it did. And not like Nick Foll is there anymore, but he, He sure wants to beat the Eagles. He lost them in 2015. I think Malcolm Jenkins had a pick six.

It was an ugly game. It was raining, not letting him off the hook, but Tom didn't play his best game. So, like, I know he wants to beat the Eagles. And last year for the Bucks, work in progress, this year, all systems go right away. That's why our friend Bruce Ariens seemed, you know, pretty locked in and seem like, you know,

when he's talked about that camp, it's got to be really physical because you're going to hit the ground running. Good news for them. Buy in the middle. Finish with Carolina. New York, the Jets, and Carolina. The name is the fourth easiest schedule,

but they can't fall asleep the first, you know, month and a half of the season because the Saints are going to be figuring their shit out. Last year, okay? The Bucks were figuring it out, and the Saints started hot, don't fall into that thing this year. You know what I mean?

Saints are going to have James Winston, not Tom Brady. I know that, but would you take James Winston or the Drew Breeze you saw last year? I don't know. Drew Breeze I saw last year. By how much? by how much are you taking Drew Breeze last year over James Winston this year

with two years under his belt learning from Sean Payton and a fresh start? By a healthy margin, Chris. I might disagree with you. I'm not saying it's going to work out, but I just think we sat there and complained about Breeze all last year.

We then don't also get to be like, oh, he's gone now. Michael Thomas decided not to play last year too. Right. That didn't help. Right. Right. I just, yeah, we'll see.

I think the ball looked like it looked coming off his arm. And most of us agreed on that. It just feels like we're talking out of both sides of her mouth. Drew Brees, get the fuck out of the league was like everybody in the internet last year. Okay, now this year. Drew Brees is gone, Saints are going to suck. What?

All I'm saying is they're going to have some figuring out to do. The Bucks can't fall into a spot where they have that Super Bowl hangover early because that'll be a hole that you don't want to have. And when it comes to the patch, you got a lot of storylines as well. And one of them being, for me, it's a little hidden, you know, besides playing B-Flow, the Jets, you know, Tom, Chargers, Carolina, Herbert last year, you owned him. They were awful.

This year, Donald, okay? You want to see Bill, like, literally beat up his players lose to Sam Darnold the year after he leaves the Jets. If Darnold looks different in Carolina than he did in New York, you'll know it was more about the Jets than Bill, and Bill doesn't want that. As a player, you know, somebody asked me what I look at, I used to look at first and foremost who we start the year with

and each position's different. I'm going to look at can I get off to a good start as a rusher? If you've got tough games early like guys that get the ball out quick or team you're probably not going to have a lead against, you're like, damn, if I'm looking up after a month and I have one sack, which always was like the case. I was a slow starter sometimes. You feel like the weight of the world on your shoulder.

So if you're a rusher, you look at that stuff, you look at the tackles all year. Like who are the tackles you play? You also look at the athleticism with the quarterbacks you're playing because getting there is one thing in today's NFL, you know, being a pass rusher is as much about being a tackler

as it is winning rushes. So like a great rusher in the 80s, it's different now. You know, you've got to get there and finish. And so you look at that sort of thing. Obviously, you look at your byweek. You look at hot weather, cold weather games. You know, I saw Damien Woody said on Twitter that we didn't really look so much at weather.

Well, he played in New York. It's going to be cold up there anyways. And had you talked to the D.Bs in your locker room, the first thing they're looking at is, oh my God, Green Bay in December, I'm going to have to wear no sleeves. Like, that's what certain positions are thinking.

I'm always like, I don't want to overheat early. We opened in Tampa against the bucks when I was with the Eagles. And they were firing that cannon off. I mean, you're talking about swamp ass. Like you had swamp ass walking into the stadium in your suit and you're not in football shape yet. Those are always the roughest. So you look at a whole plethora of things.

Five weeks are six through 14. When would you want yours? I want mine right in the middle. I really do. And a lot of times though, a little bit on the earlier side is nice. A coach would tell you we might want ours like, I don't know what a coach would say.

But I would want mine a little bit skewed to the earlier side because the time you feel the worst in the NFL, at least me personally, I play my best ball late in the season because coaches are starting to back off on you physically. So like where I really need the break, the break is really not from Sunday. The break is from your coaches. And it depends on where you play. Like we talked about New England earlier. Their by week is, I think, December 12th or 16th.

That is brutal for those cats. Not only do they not get a break until late, but a by week in New England is not a break. Okay, and it's gonna be cold. You're gonna be tackling, you're gonna be down there in a three technique. I remember I had such a bad by week practice there and I think that was probably half the reason why my play kind of dwindled on first,

the second down was when I tell you I went out there, sore as hell, I think I had like a couple little injuries or whatnot and thought, okay, bye week like, you gotta know I'm 250 and you're kicking me down to a three like for an inside run period like and I don't have tort all. This isn't gonna look great. I had a bad practice. And I don't think I ever recovered in standing there

as far as like, do I trust this guy to get down in the three technique in crunch time? That's a tough by week. But yeah, I would say earlier rather than late. Would you rather start on the road or at home? I'd rather start at home personally. And look at these by weeks here. Falcons, Saints, Jets, Niners, Week 6.

With the new extra game totally fucks those teams, right? But the teams that are gonna have a hard time, are some of these teams like the Colts who if you look at it they don't get a buy week to week 14 the dolphins the pads the Eagles that's tough you have players that are limping you know over the finish line if you're a healthy player it's one thing but if you're a coach and you're trying to like get your team healthy for the postseason you could look at that one of two ways we could use it earlier or this is just the right time I think it just depends on the situation you're in I talked about the Colts okay you talk about teams that got screwed a little

bit they're probably one of them i'm not building excuses in for carson by any means it's just a got here you know you have a new quarterback whether it's carson or somebody else especially somebody like him who's got like a little bit of media baggage and like is this going to work out and it's a big trade for ballard they start tough the beginning of that schedule is really tough so that's tough when you when you're looking at breaking a new quarterback if he starts poorly it's such a mental position and he hasn't been in the best place mentally. I don't think that could be tough for him and them.

They have a late by as I mentioned. That got to be a tough division pretty quickly, didn't it? Yeah, you talk about the start. I got two of those clubs trending downward though. Seattle Seahawks, Tennessee Titans. The Titans, I would agree with you. And I've been on that bandwagon for a couple years now. I'm not saying they're going to be bad.

I'm just saying that like if you're betting on, you know, what would it be a regression to the mean? I think you're kind of looking at that team and saying, okay, Arthur Smith's gone. Okay, so you had Tannahill in Miami, you had Tannahill with Arthur Smith and Derek Henry. What does this look like? Probably not better.

And Derek Henry, with every passing year, I mean, more power to him. But at the beginning of last year, I was like, is he ever going to run out of gas? Like, they're not spelling him. Correct. Like, they're playing this cat like, you know, he's going to last until he's 27.

and let's get everything out of him, right? But what he has going for him is early in his career. He split a lot more than he would have somewhere else because of DeMarco Murray. So I look at that and I agree with you. I think Dallas got screwed, bad schedule, not screwed, because Dallas could never get undeservedly screwed. Dallas just deserves to get screwed.

Three prime time away games, which, you know, like you count one of them. It's the beginning of the season. So, you know, it's all the same a little bit. two consecutive Thursdays including New Orleans on the road after Thanksgiving Hold up Yeah

Wouldn't you Isn't that okay Is that any different than one Thursday? It's just weird It throws off your schedule So like it doesn't matter Because it's a week removed from a Thanksgiving game Like so your body is going to be fine

And then like you get a long break On the back end of that But at the same time If you're a coach and you're building out your schedule I think the less like variance the better Okay And so you look at that, it's also not an easy game coming off of Thanksgiving. You know, like Thanksgiving game, you might get the weekend off.

I don't know. You probably won't because you have a game coming up next week. But that's a tough task to go down in New Orleans. And they played them a few times down there recently and been very physical games. So, guys, I just don't know. I don't know. You keep talking about these saints. I mean, we'll get to that.

It's early. I just think the saints have a high floor. I really do. Dallas also late stretch at Chiefs, Vegas, at Saints, at Washington, at Giants. And yeah, Washington Giants, no disrespect, not a big deal, but they're division games. And not to mention where they start, you know, the Bucks. Right. You want to protect your quarterback who just got his leg snapped in half last year.

Let's start with the team that's going to blitz the fuck out of them and also has the rushers to win one-on-ones. And then at Chargers. And at Chargers. That's weeks one and two. you want to break in your quarterback who's trying to get his legs back under him literally that's a tough start for them nineers five east coast one pms you would think that'd be tough but i had my guys back there do a little digging they've been crushing it on the east coast and Detroit philly chicago cincet jacksonville all very winnable games one pm starts for them

Kyle shanahan I think was perfect at one o'clock last year and the one game that they lost on East Coast last year was the Saints game. And if you remember, they showed up. It was a shootout. They lost. East Coast, a relative term. Yeah, I mean, listen, it's just the time zone thing. You know, the time zone thing matters.

No doubt about it. No doubt about it. But to travel to your point is just as important. You know, there's a big difference between, you know, Cincinnati and New England, you know. So I totally get it's good news, bad news for them. You look at some of these teams and they're not that far. not that good.

But on paper, you don't want five, one o'clock starts. You just don't. Rams, first five, last five, really tough. Tennessee, who you mentioned, is going to take a step back. You get Pittsburgh and the Niners in a span of five days. You talk about Thursday night football. We dug in on this a little bit. Last year, I remember I said they weren't so great on Thursday night.

They got their asses kicked by the Colts, who they absolutely bludgeoned on a Sunday. So these guys look back. one in three in their last four years on Thursday night with a minus 32 point differential. So not a great team on Thursday night and you got two really tough weeks there. Chicago, they're the only team to alternate home away, home away, home away,

all the way through 16 games. That's interesting. Very interesting. I don't know why that happened, I'd be curious, but I know as a player that sucks. Sucks a fat one. Hey, as a stat guy for a radio crew, I'm with you. Yeah, it sucks.

When you saw those like three in a row at home, maybe one was a buy, ah, the height of luxury. I'll take the three road trips. I'll just change my mindset and we'll grin and bear it, but the flip side of that coin is worth it, you know, that month at home, you know, talking about teams. And by the way, Dalton has to go, in my opinion, three and two in the opening five or it's going to get, if it's going to get, yeah, I do believe they're going to try to roll Dalton out.

Okay. And if Justin Fields is that good, they'll know in camp. But if they stick to Pace's plan, which I think is a self-handicap thing, you know, Mike Golick was on here, said he thinks they're going to get fired regardless, even if they take their time with Fields. I think they think that they're going to have a little more time, the further they kick the can down the road. And it's also the right thing to do, developing quarterbacks.

But if he's that good, he's going to start. Let's say Dalton rolls out. First five games, you've got to go three and two, or it's going to get ugly. there's no soft spot for fields to land. Remember last year we tried to predict when Herbert was going to start. Green Bay, Tampa Bay, and it took a doctor to nudge Justin Herbert out on the field

with the Tyrod Taylor, rip shot. Green Bay, Tampa Bay, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore is a stretch for Chicago following that five-game period. That's ugly. The bi-week is right before Baltimore, so that'd be nine games. they could be looking at three and six.

And then the buys, so maybe the buys is when you bring in Justin Fields. Well, the back half ain't much prettier. I got the Detroit Lions in there, all right? Okay, but do you have any consecutive

two, three week periods where you're not playing top 15 defenses? I got the Giants, got the Vikes twice. Okay, but are you doing this consecutively? Are you cherry picking? No,

I'm cherry picking. Yeah, it's going to be tough. I'm just saying that buy in week 10 might be nice if they have a cruddy record, which they likely will. They probably will, and that probably is the most,

likely place, but if you're thinking like them and you want to win, there's no good place. You know, there's no good place to have your cake and eat it to, to warm him up and be in contention and to throw Justin Fields in there. That New York Giants football team that's not so fun to root for at the moment, kind of nice to see that Chicago bear schedule with the draft capital. Oh, yeah. That trader Dave and the guys possess. Good for trader Dave.

Yeah. Good for trader Dave. Next year, you can trade up. in a panic and draft Sam Howell. Yeah, awesome. So, you know, sometimes it's good to just see what's out there in the next couple years for you. There's an itinerary for you.

Now, who got it good? He talked about stretches of being at home and that sort of thing. Miami, November 1st through December 27th, they got one road trip. It's to the Jets. But they got kind of fucked with the London thing. We talked about London earlier. The good news is you play somebody in state

before traveling across the pond so you're lower in the travel quotient there but it's Tampa Bay and the bad news is you're the only team not to have a buy after London what did Brian Flores and the dolphins do to the schedule makers

to get that situation I know we're in the who got a good thing but I just had to add that on the end but you're right home Panthers home giant buy home jets those are weeks 12 through 15 yeah dude that's nice and another thing is late in the season those teams gain an advantage to me.

Every player gets excited about coming down to Miami to play. Number one, it's a two-day trip. Good luck keeping your guys kind of just in the hotel. Number two, it's hot as balls, okay? And people are sucking win. And that's when the Giants were bad. You talk about the Patriots and Week 17 playing the Dolphins this year, pretty much the only years in the Brady or post-Bradie era,

where we knew ahead of the year that week 17 or week 18 or whenever they play is going to go a long way and deciding that division possibly playoff spots for years, including the year I was in New England, it was hey, how do we wrap this season up,

clinch home field, or how do those guys just tune up for the playoffs? Even after Fitsy beat them two years ago, last year you didn't think the dolphins were as good as they were going to be. This is the year that dolphins aren't sneaking up on anybody,

and neither is that game. So I look forward to that one. Who got it good? Here's the team who got a good who shouldn't have got it good. I got to be careful now. Kyle's on the team. You guys are too good, okay? Kansas City does not need from week eight on seven games

and one road trip over that stretch. You don't need that. And to finish, yeah, three or four on the road, but two layups for them. So like the rich get richer, right? In the meat of the schedule, you get a seven-game span where you just sit around and eat barbecue most weeks. And the one roadie in there, you're going to visit Howie Jr.

Yeah, Las Vegas. That's interesting. It's good for the long family. That's right. That is a great stretch for the long family. Predictable housing, you know, guest house. We go to Kyle's guest house. We visit him.

And then the one week they're gone, we visit, you know, young Howie. Hey, we should do some sort of thing where we go there. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, well, 20 minutes ago, I felt like you weren't wanting to go anywhere. I've changed my mind. Okay, good. Seattle, prime time home games. They don't lose those.

They got a few of them. But tough road early. And I think they will stumble coming out of the gate. And I think you're on to something there. I mean, they could step back, keeping it in the flavor station. here. Cowboy Reed his Broncos, right? Your Broncos too?

No, his Bronco. Week one, we got a thing. Oh, you got a thing? Yeah. Broncos, Giants, high stakes, we'll figure it out. Yeah, it's just going to be figured out on the field. Two classic franchises, battling it out, very relevant franchises. I'm going to stop fucking around now and tell you that the Broncos, I'm going to take the over on the win total

and it has nothing to do with Aaron Rogers. I think they're going to have an opportunity to start kind of fast or relatively fast. I think they could be one of these fools gold type teams and I'm not saying that as an insult because we know they're not a contender without like a new quarterback and I'm not you know like I'm rooting for Teddy but you're in for Drew or only Teddy Teddy. Okay. I'm rooting for Drew too as a guy. I think I probably like him as a guy and I think maybe you know in another system but like I just I've seen what I've seen what I need to see and if you're a defensive football team

you start the guy who's not turning the ball over. Are you rooting for Brett Rippin? Yeah, sure. I'm into nepotism or perceived nepotism. Okay. And Brett, it's a joke. My dad's Howie Long. I think they're going to start fast.

And I think if you look at Denver, you say, oh shit, dude. Post by, which is late, you get all division games. Kansas City and Vegas, I think, twice a piece. Or Kansas City and the Chargers twice a piece. So you get the two toughest teams twice a piece. and then a couple winnable games in the middle. Some people might say, that's rough.

Coaches in the NFL want to keep teams that aren't necessarily ready engaged. They want to be able to say like everything's in front of us. That's something that coaches say a lot. Everything we want to do is in front of us, some variation of that statement. And when you're in a locker room and your coach is trying to pedal you hope, it helps when you're not mathematically eliminated late in the year. So I'm just saying if they start strong, or even 500, they could say to themselves,

when we get back from this biweek, we're going to be able to beat anybody we want in division, you know, short of the Raiders, right? Because it is the charges and the chiefs, I believe. You're going to see them combined four times. You can make up so much ground in that period. Unlikely, but Denver, you could have an interesting year. Oh, and one.

Here's my take on the, you got a take. I've got a list. I don't have a take. Well, yeah, yeah. So why don't you start with a take? Well, I'll start. My take is that Sunday night football got the best games out of Sunday and Monday for sure. And I'm really interested in Rams Bears because they've been ugly games in the past couple years, low scoring. But now you've got two new quarterbacks.

Get a couple potential stinkers. I like the fact they leave week 18 undecided with Sunday night football. Monday night football, I see a couple of lopsided games. No offense. Giants, Chiefs. None taken. Packers, lions. Ravens Raiders might be a little lopsided, but it'll be entertaining

and they'll be kicking off that stadium, so I get it. Thursday night football, failure to launch, bro. Like, they're going to have a hard time getting that bird off the ground this year. For a football brand that is hard to sell to people, it seems. I, by the way, love Thursday night football.

Big fan. Giants, Washington. Well, which is going to be fine. What about week one? That's what I'm saying? out of the gates is fine. Bangor. But you got to admit that's a market thing

as much as anything. Thursday night football, week one of that, week two of the football season, Giants Washington, that's a market thing. Okay, like I have reason to believe those teams are going to be better,

but it's still not great. Now, this is where it gets ugly. Carolina Houston is incredible that you're, like, it's incredible to me that that's, going to be like a game. At Houston too where you have a nice memory but again indoor football is not pleasant.

Carolina Houston and then to recover from that game you got Jacksonville Cincinnati so and you have the ugliest uniform game of the year which is Denver Cleveland. Jags Bengals at least we have Trevor Lawrence Joe Burrow but still yeah I'm with you. Tough to sell Thursday night football the first month of the season it really picks up. And then, you know, week 18 is going to be its own thing, too. It's going to be a new thing. I know you're adding teams and that, you know, will probably eliminate at some turns competitive football,

but they stack the divisional games week 18. And I say that because sometimes people rest people and that sort of thing and we're afraid of that. But, you know, week 18, Patriots, dolphins, Washington, New York, Dallas, Philly, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, San Francisco Rams, Seattle, Arizona. The NFC West, Cowboy Reed, pointed this out, is going to be decided week 18 chances are and I love that

and it was only a year or two ago with a goal line stop in Seattle like that's how amazing this division is right now and they'll decide at that final week I think here's the spoiler game if you're looking at one spoiler game week 18 calling it right now New Orleans Atlanta

New Orleans is we think they're going to be good I don't think they win the division but they're going to be good you're not sure they're good but at the very least they'll probably be in range of contending for the playoffs and let's say they go to Atlanta let me tell you something about NFL teams and spoiling that shit sounds good but a lot of times you just want to play your ass off and get on the plane and get to the beach if you're a team that's eliminated Atlanta would legitimately blow themselves up to blow up the saints like that's their mindset

well yeah look no further than last year remember giant Eagles? Yeah. Everybody remembers Giants Eagles. That was a big deal. And not only did the Eagles screw up the Giants, the Eagles then trade back, get draft capital, and then trade back up to snipe Devante Smith. From the Giants.

Amazing. It's incredible, actually. And then that's one year after the Giants screw around and beat Washington in an overtime game. And don't get Chase Young. To lose Chase Young. Yeah, I know. Yeah, no, your team.

But I'm talking about you think the Giants and the Eagles hate each other? I know it's not as like sexy or storied and I think part of it is because like that's SEC country and you think about college football. The Falcons and the Saints legitimately hate each other. Hate each other and week 18 I bet you Atlanta is going to have a chance to spoil New Orleans party or maybe Atlanta and New Orleans the role is reverse. That's right. A lot to go over. That's my marquee matchup. Those two teams are going to be very relevant this year obviously the bucks but I think the pads as well. But we got to talk about all of your favorite teams.

So we'll hit as many as we can with Dave Damasek. Dave, your backgrounds are great. This is actually a podcast. We're doing audio here. I don't care. He doesn't give a shit. I want to please you. I'm not a terribly entertaining person.

I hope to distract you with. You know what's amazing? It's like when we started the pandemic, everybody was like Zoom backgrounds was just all the rage. I was like every Zoom, the first couple, you know, when you drink with your buddies the first couple weekends you had like, hey, let's all do beers over Zoom. How lame is this? But the backgrounds made it fun. Dave's still doing the backgrounds. It is literally, the pandemic is over. He has siphoned through seven to eight Pittsburgh theme backgrounds in the

last five minutes. And I love him. Like only Dave cut. And here comes another Pittsburgh Steelers. There's big bed. Look at seven. He's ready to go. He wants a hug from you. So, okay, that's the first question. Can you be nice to him? Can you be nice? As you can tell so far, this is the skisers. schedule reveal podcast. And what I was going to ask. Okay, good. What I was going to ask Dave was, and I was going to save it for later since, but since the backgrounds have me in the mood, what are we thinking about the Steelers this year off

the top? I know I'll be called a Homer either way. Never mind the fact that I have, that there was a stretch there. It ended two years ago. But six straight seasons, I predicted the Pittsburgh Steelers final. record on the nose six straight seasons could a homer do that no home or would say 16 and oh every year I on the nose and that and that included a couple eight and eights along the way too so um obviously I'm not that rosy-eyed about things every year

this year I don't know I mean the AFC is loaded and that's before at the time of this recording Aaron Rogers officially lands in Denver which he certainly is going to right let's side bet that okay good I want to get to that and second. But you ask the question, eight and a half, this is, this is the, the Steelers with Mike Tomlin and Ben Rathesberger have never had a losing record in a decade and a half. Now all of a sudden that with an extra game, they're not going to win as many as nine games. Come on, everybody. Over eight and a half is one of the better bets out there among all the totals out there for the 32 teams. The only other one that I like as much or maybe a little bit better is,

is the New Orleans Saints. Only the total on that one is nine right now. They're only going to win. People think that they're going to drop off. Drew Brees couldn't push the ball 18 yards down the field. James Winston's a first overall draft pick. It hasn't gone gangbusters necessarily, but has he been really any worse or that much worse than Baker Mayfield, upon whom so many hopes and dreams now hinge for the people of Cleveland? That's not Homerism. I would objectively say that Baker's been better than James. I mean, I think that's legitimately debatable. I think it's more debatable than most people would say knee-jerk as you think about it.

I mean, James has the top-end production with the top-end, like, what-the-fuck are you doing, plays. And Baker had some of those, too. And Baker's been built around pretty nicely, but so was James. And anyways, sidebar there. But I would agree with you on the Saints. I feel like the Saints, if you look at it, you can't hold Sean Payton against Drew Breeze all these years,

and then last year told me Breeze is washed, and then tell me that they're going to be worse this year. Because if you're holding Sean Peyton against Drew Breeze, isn't Sean Peyton going to help James Winston? And James Winston can push the ball down the field. You might not get that top end production, but you're not going to get that top end. What the fuck are you doing down in New Orleans?

And I think that with the Taysom package, which is a totally respectable package. to have in the Arsenal, just like I think they'll do eventually in New England with Cam. I think they're gonna be a good football team. And I also think you're Steelers, you're right. It's so funny to me because the reason that number so low

is recency bias, and it's also this strength the schedule thing, which you and I both know, strength of schedule is an inexact science. Teams change from year to year. Vegas is telling you that they believe Pittsburgh is going to change. So why are we basing it on the fact on the fact that they have a tough road based on last year, when you're telling me they're going to win five less games

with one more game to play. I mean, so I don't get it. I think they certainly have a tough stretch late in the year with Titans, Chiefs, Browns, Ravens, and you get Vikings and Ravens before that. Imagine being a defender on that team. But you also don't hit the road for a third time until basically November,

and it reminds me of the Eagles stretch last year where they didn't get on a plane for two months. So I think Pittsburgh, you're right, as far as over-unders, safe bet. Yeah, I mean, listen, I, you know, some people work in oils, some work in clays. I work in reckless speculation. So I'm not opposed to talking about what's going to happen six months from now. But what in the hell is everybody doing?

Is there anything, is there anything more nonsensical than in May, these people standing at boards, wasting our time? We only have so many precious moments on the Big Blue Marble. fellas and we devote some of it to watching other people stand at a board and going then in week seven I like this matchup like give them a win there like that has no value we're talking about cornacki because that's the first person that comes they pulled him right off of MSNBC like I wasn't going to have like PTSD from that week in November like I don't go talking you're talking about the horses and like you're still the guy talking about the impending doom factor of what was going on in

November dude I don't care if you you lose the tie you're still the guy you're still the guy from MSNBC. Let me ask you this though, Dave. Villanueva. Okay, this is what I'm interesting because you got Baltimore rematches because you heard the juju thing, the shot at juju,

which like, listen, the TikTok stuff, you can call me some old man yelling at a cloud, but if I was his teammate, I'd probably be like, hey, chill out a little bit. Would you really?

Interesting. Yeah, I probably would. I'd probably be like, hey, maybe don't make it harder for us to win, you know, like especially when we're struggling at this juncture

in the season. How are you talking about? You put a dog mask on. Yeah, but that's winner go home. It's winner go home. And dog mask isn't a shot at the other team. When you TikTok on their logo, that's a big difference between after the game doing an interview and a dog mask. Imagine being mad about a dog mask the next week. And yeah. I don't know. Okay. I'm not mad about a dog mask. Devil's advocate. I know what you're going to say. Imagine being mad about a guy doing a video on your logo. It's a logo. No. I, listen, let me tell you something. you and your pals who play pro football or played it got way too chummy for this fan's taste. And I suspect that millions of other fans agree with me. This jersey swap crap, I'm glad the league ended it. Call me a curmudgeon. I want, you guys need more WWE.

This idea that a free agency has created that it's like, I'm just moving offices. I'm transferring from the Atlanta office to the Chicago office or whatever. not something we fans care about. I want to know that you hate the other teams. I don't want, if you're on the Eagles, I don't want you to be like, after the back, like, hey, give me your jersey, New York giant. I'll give you mine. That's the worst. Go do that in the bowels of the state. There's one issue with the WWE part, I think. You're a soft bitch. I agree with Dave. You really are. So we're on different sides of the coin here, but talking the same thing on two different issues, which is we're both old men yelling at clouds. I get Villanueva's disdain for, you know,

like dancing on opponents logos when you can't find a way to play competent football the second half of the season as a team. My question is, do you think there's like a bitterness there? Because I know, you know, like when it comes to picking a new team, you go where you can make money, you go where there's a winning team, but he goes to Baltimore. And you know, you had everything with the anthem. You had everything with the TikTok shot. And just the sheer fact, you know, the sheer fact that you leave and travel down to Baltimore in the same division. That's pretty rare for a long-time fixture on a team. Maurice Jones Drew told me, and I think this is right when he, because he, you know, he shares an agent with Levy and Bell. And I didn't like when he would say

to Levy and Bell and tell me, like, I tell them all the time, he should go sign with the Ravens. He should go sign so he can play the Steelers twice. And when I, when Jacksonville didn't want me anymore. I told my agent, put me and get me to Indianapolis so I can play the Jags twice a year. I think there is probably something to that. Villanueva was not only not, you know, they didn't make a big push to resign him. He also became in the median otherwise the guy, he was the fall guy for what happened with the Steelers down the stretch, kind of more than anybody else, including Rostersburg, was like, yeah, Villanueva was getting trucked every game. They couldn't run the ball.

They couldn't protect Rathersberger. And he became the guy most responsible for that. So yeah, I'm sure he is jazzed up to go over to Baltimore and get into. Hey, no doubt about it. When you play your former team, I remember playing the Rams. And I just wanted to get one bucket. Like, you come out of the game with a goose egg in that category. And it's just like a huge missed opportunity.

So when they came up to play New England, I was battling Greg Robinson. They had me rushing on the right. And I'm like left-handed over there. So I'm like, not only am I. I'm gonna get locked down by Greg Robinson, but it's against my former team. And I'm working, I'm working, I'm win some rushes. It came to the fourth quarter,

I beat him on the cleanest spin. And at that point, it's like the biggest relief in your life. Like just Jared golf on the ground. Okay, now I can smile after the game. Now I can feel really good about it. And also, it's not because you're mad at your former team a lot of times, like I wouldn't blame the Rams for cutting me, but it's like showing your old teammates are like,

oh, he's still got it. You know, like the respect factor. And like just being able to walk by the coaches the hallway and be like, yeah, I play for the Patriots now and I just sacked you. And then two years later in Philly. So yeah, you feel good about that. That's what's great, of course. So Juju should dance on all the logos. What's better than Tio running to the star and doing that? Yeah, but the problem is you like it, when you did it against the Bengals, I'm just saying this. It's not the, it's not the like most popular take because I know now on the internet you're

supposed to let players do whatever they want to do, especially if it's off the field and like all that shit. And you know me, be your own guy. But there's not. consequences being your own guy. And when somebody tries to take your head off, it's probably because you dance on the logo. Like everybody's like, okay, you're going 100%. How could you go any faster? That's true, but not quite 100% true. There's always an extra gear for fuck you. I want to talk about the biggest games that you're outside of your favorite squad in the Steelers. We alluded to one particular game, the Bucks and the Patriots. I don't know if you've heard they play. Is that your number one on the on the schedule i guess it's fine because it's fun to why and what's fun about

it is watching our and everybody has a patriots fan or five in their lives so it's fun to watch them twist and tie themselves into knots it's like we talked about before who deserves credit for what and it really is the drawn butter versus lobster thing for 20 years the debate was who's the lobster and who's the drawn butter between bellichick and brady and now we know the answer to that. The real star is the drawn butter down there in the Tampa St. Pete area. Wait, the drawn butter, I don't know this saying. The butter is the star.

The butter's the star, not the lobster. Because you wouldn't want to eat lobster without the butter. Is that how this works? Who would eat lobster, were it not for drawn butter? And yet we've all been duped into believing that we have to pay, you know, 90 bucks to sit down and eat a lobster in a fancy. restaurant when in fact they could just leave you a nice loaf of bread and dip that in the drawn butter and you'd be almost as happy. Well, then I think they're both different kinds of drawn butter.

But yeah, to your point, it is everybody's trying to figure out. And that's the interesting thing. Lindsay Jones had a good point about this who writes for the athletic. Like when Peyton went down to play indie after he left and he faced all with Andrew Luck, it was much less contentious. It's funny because I've talked to a lot of people who, who know what they're talking about are tied into Brady and Belichick and the Patriots. And, you know, Mike Tanenbaum insists that Bill Belichick doesn't care about Brady winning that Super Bowl down in Tampa. And then I've had other people like Ross Tucker, who knows both guys a little bit at least. He's like, oh, Belichick definitely cares.

He cares about NFL history and his place in it. You think it's meaningless to him that Tom Brady leaves and goes and does it without him. of course it is. It's fascinating to me then how that informed what Belichick has done in this last four months now, bringing Cam back and the devotion to all that money to the two tight ends. And I mean, it feels to me like Nelson Agilor way over spending to get it. What exactly is his agenda here to show the world that he can do it with the exact opposite of Tom Brady? Or do you think he wants to go to Mac Jones as quickly as possible to try and replicate, since everybody thinks Brady since Mac Jones are like,

he's like Tom Brady, as though you would know about a 20 year old guy like yes, he can divine at the line of scrimmage exactly what the defense is about to do because that's all Brady does, right? It's like steps to the line of scrimmage. He's like, oh, that's the guy I'm going to throw it too here ultimately, right? I mean, isn't that?

Yeah, no, I think he hasn't drafted well, they haven't drafted well positionally. Now quarterback, obviously, you haven't had to draft well. I mean, you remember like Ryan Mallett and they made Matt Castle look really good for a year. So, you know, I think we could agree that you're going to look pretty good in New England, but I don't know how Mac Jones is going to play. And I also don't know how early

he's going to want to go to him because if I look at these games, you got B-Flow off the bat. You got the Jets who, you know, Bill hates for some reason, like so much. I mean, we know the reasons. But still, to this day, Tom, you know, three out of the four early games, you got those three storylines. And then you got Sean Payton, who's one of his peers, a rare peer, you know, if you think about offensive geniuses and defensive geniuses. So the first month of the season, when, you know, you might be throwing a kid into the fire, you got to be pretty convinced that he's the guy to roll him out there. And bringing Cam back to me was more of a package move. I remember when it first came out, everybody was like, oh, God, why would you bring him

back. Why would you pay him? I think he really respects Cam. I think after last year they had a real bond. I think they were in like similar places trying to reprove themselves. I think one's more likely than the other. But I do believe Cam has bought into the fact that this is the best place for him. There's possibility of a chance he'll be a package guy. I just don't know the timing of when that stuff works out. So I don't think you're going to, if you see Mack Jones early, he feels really good about them is all I'm saying. Do you think, well, do you think though, I guess the obvious math on it is, is that Cam and his agent sniffed around and there were no takers? Because why would he go back to New England? People very quickly like, oh, well, they'll draft somebody and things broke right

so that they could get Mac Jones. I kind of feel like, I'm curious if Cam Newton is just to the NFL, like we're so saturated with good options at QB that there isn't a place for Cam Newton in 2020. I don't think there was a place from this year and it's going to be tough in 2021 unless he proves that last year was health related and it was like some acute thing and that he's not falling off a cliff physically. And you know, like I think Cam's good for the game and I'm hoping he rebounds this year, but it's going to be tough. I mean, he's going to have to be markedly better than he was last year. I think he's a borderline Hall of Famer. I've had to back off insisting he's a Hall of Famer, but I think if he has one good season, if he has one really

high-end season here and he has a chance to do it, I think he will go to the Hall of Fame. I think about it in like in terms of games that I like, I look at it which divisions I'm vibe into, and there's so many good divisions or so many compelling divisions right now, if there's one division's games and you can't watch any games that don't include a team in a division, I don't know if I would choose the NFC West or the AFC North or the AFC East this year with the Jets and Dolphins and these Patriots coming back and the bills. I would choose one of those three divisions probably. I go AFC East. I honestly would. I'm a big fan of watching those teams play.

I think New England's going to be exciting. You talk about all the opt-outs who will be back. You talk about all the free agency infusion. You reference Nelson Aguilar, which is it's just everything about the Pats now is even more must-see TV than they were with Brady to me because it's uncharted territory. A lot of people were saying this. I don't see like huge marquee matchups left and right. I don't know about all that. But what I do know is I'm into the drama.

I'm into because of the influx of trades, free agency, social media. like we're not going the way of the NBA. It'll never go there. But I do think there's a lot of cool storylines and a lot of them revolve around these young quarterbacks and people changing teams. You get Cam going back to Carolina, you get golf making return to L.A.

And in fact, the rare QB for QB swap that ends in a rematch a year later. So not to mention, I just want to see Michael Brockers sharing the field with Jared Goff, so to speak, because of the shot. he took a golf and then three days later got traded.

Oh, it's the best. Oh, it's hysterical. I love that. I love the young quarterbacks playing each other. You get the Lawrence Wilson Bowl, and then Lawrence is going to play a number of quarterbacks they played in college, you know, two at least. And then you're going to get Darnold as well.

And you get Burrow back week four, which I don't think happens. You get, I think it's Lawrence and Burrough as well. So, you know, the NFL's next generation, this is a big year for those guys, right? because we're looking at that crop leaving. So what the fuck do we have now? Not that this is set in stone after this year, but we want to see these matchups. We're going to lean in and we're going to be interested.

And, you know, things like the Sam Darnel revenge tour, dude. You know, like... How about that? I mean, how about that head-to-head is just the best. We get that right out of the gate week one. And I like that level of head-to-head, like a personal rivalry against the team.

What I don't like in week one, more curmudgeon stuff for me. we've been out in the desert without football for six months. We don't need juicy head-to-head games that are going to impact playoff seating in week one. Just give us a cracker. You know, we don't need the filet mignon in week one. Give us those kind of Sam Darnold playing the Jets kind of matchups. That's intriguing enough for me.

But, yeah, man, you know, people get down about quarterback league and all of that. You know, three or five years ago was like, man, what's going to happen? because Peyton's moving on and Brady's getting up there and Breeze and everybody else. And now we have Mahomes who's been anointed, now the greatest to ever do it. And now people can't see their way to accepting the idea that he might not go to the Super Bowl every year, which is why there is very little evidence that a team goes to three straight Super Bowl. So bet anybody in the AFC. You're right.

I would also fade you, though, because you've guessed six straight Steelers, you know, records. So I was thinking, as you were saying it, like, do I want to roll with him this year? Or am I going to go under because he's been so good? But you're right. Like teams also don't go to the Super Bowl three times in a row. It was funny. Recently, when you talk about the Niners, I saw a big what-if with Jimmy G in the overthrow. But like, you know, if they win that game, what do we think about Mahomes at this point?

Then he's lost to, you know, the Niners. And then I'm not, listen, you know, I don't like going too far down that road because I don't want to take anything away from Patrick Mahomes. it just illustrates the inches between being a champion, a perennial champion, or just no rings at all. And talking about the Niners, it just hit me with the Jets. How do you feel if you're Robert Sala? Because there's a lot of pressure. I feel like more pressures on him than is on Sam Darnel because, you know, people want to make it the Darnel revenge game. Your first order that you sign off on when you get into town as a defensive head coach is, yeah, let's ship this guy out of here.

So you have to play well defensively when that's literally you versus the guy that you thought wasn't good enough in that New York market. So that's juicy, man. And another thing, okay, we're talking about quarterbacks right now and matchups. Carson Wentz, your guy, your guy. You guys love him.

Carson Wentz is going to get Bill and Tom. Okay, now they lost in Philly, Windy game. I think it was like 17 to 9, 2019. It was right before Carson went on that like mini-herom heroic run where he was torching people randomly in December. But he also didn't get those guys in the Super Bowl. And I think like the Nick Foles thing, I never got my opportunity.

That's one fair complaint from him, which obviously, you know, it's just bad luck that I'm sure eats at him. And he's like, I would love a shot at these guys. And he's going to get them separately. And he's going to get him in indie. So we'll see how that goes.

Another thing is you get new stadiums. Okay? Finally, people in new stadiums. I am obsessed with the Death Star. I cannot wait to see that thing open. I've got it penciled in. I'm going to go out there for that Eagles game. No question.

You want to go with me? Chalk trip. Why don't you guys? Here's another trip. Why don't you come on out week 11? It's the Chargers hosting the Pittsburgh Steelers. Ooh, we should come out there. Sunday Night Affair.

Oh, pencil me in. Those are my two games. Because that's my side team. The Chargers, no offense. You know, I can wear Chargers gear. when I come visit you, right? You're not going to... No, that's fine with me.

You can... Jean-Claude Van Damashek's bunk bed. You can negotiate, top or bottom. However you want to do it. Oh, that's great. Well, Macon's not making the trip. He doesn't really leave the house a lot,

let alone the county. The new stadium thing has me psyched, dude. And one of the things that you have to look at was so-fi is John made a great point, Wizard of Oz here. You got five primetime games in L.A. No doubt about it. That's because of the beautiful new stadium, the market, that type of thing. But it's also a bunch of rehearsals for the big one. You got to do big stuff in that stadium to get ready for the Super Bowl.

And I think like it's going to be a crazy Super Bowl. There's been such a weight and what better place to like kick it off than in one of the grand spanking new stadiums. By the way, I'm a test star guy. I've been in there. I went in there. It is it is an awesome place. that new L.A. stadium. And, you know, a year after Brady and company win the first ever Super Bowl played by a team playing in its home stadium, how about L.A. V.L.A. How about a little social distortion and the battle for Los Angeles commences? Well, that's a terrific segue into the missus. I think it could happen. Because the miss is, to me, and you've been on record here on this show, of saying that the charges are going to win the West, which I don't think is incredibly far-fetched, for the reasons you mentioned,

number one being Justin Herbert, which we didn't even talk about, but like, yeah, the fatigue of the Chiefs and that sort of thing. Like my brother's on the Chiefs, I think they're the favorites

for good reason. But if they have one challenger, it's them, right? It's not the Raiders. It's them. The Raiders will challenge them and score with them,

as you saw last year, but they're not going to challenge them for the division. The team you got to worry about is the Chargers or your Aaron Rogers led. Again, what if that happens?

That is a looming possibility. And by the way, from a gambling point of view. Look at week one. The Giants are only plus one against the Broncos. If you think that the Broncos are going to get Rogers, go bet that right now. That's a good bet to make.

The worst misses for me, Thanksgiving sucks. It's all indoor. That's exactly what I just said. I said that on extra points to South. It sucks. Earlier this week. What a sad thing? That's the worst thing about it is that that's what it is.

You know, if I'm going to go stand outside and deep fry the bird with a beer in hand with, with, you know, Uncle Mike and Uncle Scott, then the Detroit Lions and their opponent can go stand outside for three hours and play a football game. And their fans, if they want to go to it, they can go and do it. And we'll sit at home and we'll look at our TV and we'll laugh as Michael Brockers gives a death stare to Jared Gough after his third interception of the half. It'll be great. because what the lions do is, yeah, it stinks like, oh, a football, all right, this is great.

Like, oh, yeah, right, it's the lions are one of the teams playing. So that sucks. Who wants to watch them? But Thanksgiving is a holiday about giving thanks and appreciating things. And the lions exist. You watch them and you think, Jesus Christ, we could have to watch this every week. Thank goodness. I thought it was bad.

I thought it was bad losing to the Browns. Thank you for the reminders. It's like scared straight. It's like scared straight when they take you to jail, which is a questionable tactic bringing kids to jail. But like you're one day, you know, in jail, seeing the lions on Thanksgiving. You're like, damn, we got it pretty good.

I should give thanks. The one good thing about Thanksgiving this year, the one good thing is James Winston is playing Thanksgiving. He could literally eat a W. I don't know if they're going back to the turkey legs, but if they are, which I think ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic, Maybe they're not, but you could imagine if they were. He would eat the fuck out of a drumstick after a W.

That's a great call. That's a, yeah, I like that. Yeah, I'm fine with the Cowboys. People like them. Okay, we'll keep them. But we don't need in, all tradition gives away to what's going to make more money and what's going to get more eyeballs on it. Why do the lions have this hold on pro football at this point that we have to watch them every,

and it's fine for the reasons that. I just said, but what undoes it for me is that it's indoors. Wouldn't it be great? That's the best time of the year. Everybody agrees, right? Everybody likes autumn when it's cool and you can see the player's breadth and it's chilly and the steel blue skies. My idea is a simple one.

If they can play hockey games in Ann Arbor Stadium, they can play a Thanksgiving football game there too. Put them there in East Lansing, rotate it back and forth between those. Now Damashek's in. as con what i'm going to watch i don't want seven hours of indoor football it's depressing it hurts your head you know last year we had to watch houston and detroit play i was like what are we doing here and then like you i just think you need to you're going to be inside drinking all day you're going to have the iidas you're going to have all that and chances are where you live it's cold so we could use some vitamin d

we could use even if it's just a little sunshine through the tv screen i think you can still get vitamin d through the TV screen. It's like science. So I think like Christmas is great. You get Browns Packers outside, India, Arizona outside. Love that, especially Browns Packers,

too like charter kind of franchises. Right. The only critique I'd give of your Thanksgiving proposal is I want it on natural grass. So if you can find me a stadium, because Ann Arbor's now gone to that bullshit fake grass. That fake thing, yeah. Yeah, and I think East Lansing has grass,

but it looks terrible. If you found a stadium, where would it be, make? If you were going to rotate Thanksgiving, give me like your favorite couple. If the NFL wants to get my eyes away from Love Actually on Thanksgiving Day night,

then you need to give me a chance at snow. And so that would be Lambeau Field. Okay, I'll give you one more miss. Okay, we're talking about theme misses. Here are the games they missed on. We talked about Carson earlier. No Philly Indy. whether whatever you think about Carson Wentz

how do you not have that on the schedule like how dude that is high drama and we said no battle of L.A that one's a mistake we're saving that for the Super Bowl I guess no Green Bay Dallas no Mike McCarthy and Aaron Rogers that would have been

not only a good football game possibly it would be entertaining or Jordan Love or Jordan Love Prescott or maybe If Dax's not ready yet at that point, you go love, and can you even tell me who the backup quarterback is? That's a good question at this point. I'm not sure who.

Kind of something we should know based on the fact that Dax's leg was like snapped in half a few months ago. Oh, wait, yeah, who was the guy? Oh, JMU. Danucci. Danucci. Yeah, Jamu. Shout out the Cowboy Reed and Taylor back there. It was Andy Dalton.

That's who it is. Got a couple of Dukes back there. So I think those are the misses. and I think the London games could be better. I know that London is kind of thought to be a bit of a punishment, like in NFL circles. Like, okay, I know that fans are like, what do you mean? Yeah, hop on this plane for six days and don't sleep.

Be on a different time zone. You get there, a lot of coaches are like, I was reading a book that said we should fly out the night before. You know, that's the way you trick your body. And I'm sure there's some sports science shit that did that. But all your sports science books don't like, they're not experimenting with with pro football teams. Like it's one of the toughest trips. It's mandatory.

It's mandatory required manufactured fun kind of stuff. Like, hey, on Tuesday, the whole team went out to the famous grounds where, you know, like that, where they photo ops and everything like that. That would suck. And that's why as much as they would like to put a team in London, how you practically make that work until they bring the conference. Concord back. Why don't the way they get rid of the cause I think the concord did its bit as a fair bit of exploding Yeah, I think that's well let's fix that already listen if I was a fucking player and they tried to put me on a Concord I'm retiring Like I'm retiring on the spot also a London story when we played there the first time I don't remember the game I think we played the Patriots I think we lost by a lot

It's hard for me to conjure up the score 44 to seven and we scored the first seven points of the game Chris Givens on a beautiful bomb from San Bradford. And I was like, we're going to beat the Patriots. No, we weren't. But leading up, a Broken Arrow background, I love it, Broken Arrow trailer. He's just switched to the Christian Slater. And a very young-looking John Travolta lately,

it's just completely- You're arched nemesis. The nemesis of the long family. Christian Slater kicking my dad out of a train was traumatic because it's not only unrealistic, but I saw my dad die on the silver screen. I'm talking about You have to work in that it's unrealistic. That's disrespectful to Slater.

You don't know what he can do. Right, but that's the reason he doesn't like the movie is because it's unrealistic. My dad trying to steal a warhead with the guy from Greece. Howie's face, the instant before Slater boots him off the train car is, I mean, I don't want to go. I'm not trying to ingress. Well, he knows what's coming. But is that Oscar word? It is Oscar worthy.

I don't know if I'm a judge, but I was impressed. No, I think his death scene in 3,000 miles to Graceland with Kevin Costner, who was in London at all of our practices, dude. He was at all of our practices. I guess maybe he's a Rams fan and he happened to be in London. This is not a bullshit story. How would I make this up? I just, how could he be a Rams fan?

Well, they were good a while, as Dave pointed out. And at that juncture, the, the pewter and the, the, the, the pewter and gold rams not so good he liked the yellow and blue ones but he was like fuck it i'm in london let me go hang out with jeff fisher and the squad so kevin costner was all of our practices and then we got our ass kicked by the uh the patriots the eagles that was a fun trip i saw castles and shit doug peterson gave us a lot of time off uh and i enjoyed it the london trip can be cool i'm not dumping on london i love the city and fans in london might take this the wrong way shout out to our fans in the uk yeah awesome to spend free time there it's just not

free time if you're a player there on a schedule for six days yeah dude and so it's fun once you get to the game it's fun the grass is shitty wembley's amazing and soccer pitch they're like a really slick so that's one of the big things is like they went the ball to skip right well we not so much big guys so we have to put the seven studs in and that sort of thing but more than anything i can remember the first time we went out there and everybody on that virgin america plane which was super sweet was sleeping we took off in the evening from St. Louis. I ate six milligrams of Lunesta. I literally chewed the pills and washed them down with water so they would hit quicker.

And I was wide awake the entire flight. Only guy awake on the whole plane. What's Lunesta? It's a sleeping pill. Don't try it. It sucks. Ruin your life. I got to correct the record here.

Patriots won that game 45 to 7. Okay. Chris Long, one tackle. It was terrible. They were getting that fucking ball out. bro like like I was like I never want to play Tom Brady again dude Sebastian Volmer just punching me in the face like totally illegal no flags I was like I

don't ever want to play the Patriots again did you give any thought to tackling Stephen Ridley who went for 127 on the ground they ran away from me okay I'll put it that way all right games to look forward to we hit the misses we hit we have run out of time with our friend Dave Tammerty all right I get it you got to come me off. No, we got a three o'clock. What we have to do, that's what I'm telling you, quickly. One, what we need to do is mimic college football and the great regional rivalries. What they need to turn that 17th game into is head to head, whether it's within the state or otherwise, with cross-conference teams. The Eagles v. Steelers, the Cowboys v. Texans,

the Bucks v. Dolphins, and so on. These would be great matchups, chargers and rams, and so on. These are games that we need to make happen. It's a great idea. I mean, the Keystone game, right? Is that what they call it when? Oh, I've named them all because I'm a loser. If you had Vegas and the Niners play, then you have the silver and gold,

the AU versus AG bowl. I've given them by their element. I know. I went to school. I was two years in chemistry, so I know that shit, periodic table, like the back of my hand. Shout out to Miss.

I thought you guys only took like geology for four years. No, not at UVA. This was not like some of these other schools. North Carolina. It's not like UNC. The other one that I've stumbled, or I was reminded of recently of my banner idea that I want to do for all of sports. The number one seed gets to choose who they play. That wouldn't that in any playoff, you want to jazz up the first round of any playoffs? Like, oh, the chiefs are the number one seed? Well, Andy Reid, here he is stepping. If they can turn a schedule release of games that we already know into a three-hour television event,

imagine watching like, well, as is customary at the conclusion of the NFL season, the number one seeds will step to the podium and select their opponents. Imagine the heat. First of all, you know, whoever, no one believes in us. Yeah, well, the team we're playing definitely. Doesn't believe in you. the playing us or the ball or if you or or if you got balls and you're brady and like there's only one good team in the nfc in 2021 and rogers and it's like oh who's who who was close to us in the

standings the rams matthew savage rams that's who we want that i mean well the the nails move of picking your closest rival to play like it it doesn't matter for us to win the super bowl if we aren't vanquishing uh our arch rival along the way dude i'm so well with you actually on this idea and I've never thought about this before. I mean, and think about it, some two seeds might be missing a couple of key guys and you can be like you. You know, like eating, mey, mighty mo. Do there need to be eight teams aside if we're selected? Why not? Super Wild Car weekend was so fucking competitive. That's exactly right. It should be exactly like it's not fair. The bill's almost lost to the Ravens and that's because Lamar Jackson and the other guy

sat down from COVID. So they had a phony depressed wind total. And all of a sudden, you're like, well, we don't want the Lamar Jackson Ravens. We want the one when you have the backup QB in there. When you're running Trace McSorley, why do we have to play Lamar Jackson? We're good. Why is this our... We want to play the Ravens with Lamar in the bathroom. Yes. Yeah, we want to play the Browns with Baker Mayfield. They suck. You know? You had to get that last part. And then they'd be mad. But then they'd be mad. Then the Browns would be mad about it, you see. I don't care. I like your idea. Dave, are you prepared to tell us the Pittsburgh Steelers final record in

2021? No, I have to hold on to that. Listen, I'm not going to... It's content. He's got no free content. How do I know in May? I will know on the eve of the season. And then I'll tell you what I can tell you in the short term. Don't

listen to the doom and gloomers out there. There's a high standard. There are only two teams that are whose fan bases are happy right now. The bucket years because they won the Super Bowl and the Browns because they have very low expectations. The Steelers and their fans have high expectations. So everybody's doom and gloom that was embarrassing. I'm the first one to say it.

You think I wasn't humiliated that night in Hinesfield? Rathesborough, I was seated next to him spiritually with a single tear coming down my cheek. But what's done is done. Like a hologram. You don't think they're coming. You don't think the Steelers are. But Mike Tomlin and Matt Rothert-Ber never have losing seasons. Now they're not going to win nine games and a 17 game season.

Only because you should fade yourself. Well, no, he just said it, though. It is going to be nine games. Nine and eight. No, he's taking the over. But what I'm telling you is that you should probably rethink it and fade yourself and like pick them winning six games. And then that way they're probably going to win 12 this year.

You do for a total disaster. That's my stance on the afterlife. All you people who are who are piously abiding by some sense of fealty to a higher power and I can't do that because I have to be a good person so someone signs off on me at the at the golden gates like yeah if that's what your expectation is when you know when the when the lights go out here on planet earth and then they turn back on and you're like oh heaven great cool I thought this was going to happen versus me who just expect who just anticipates blackness for eternity yeah no no no no I'm moving wrong I'll be like who's heaven I'm living forever who's going to be a

Under promise over deliver. Here's your heaven. Broken Arrow on Loop. No, my heaven is going to be when we get to remake. Every other movie gets remade. I want Howie reprising his role. Yeah. But then me and the Slater role, making his Travolta, you, I don't know.

We'll figure out. No, we'll do all kids. Kids of John Travolta play John Travolta. Kids of Howie Long play Howie Long. Kids of Christian Slater play Christian Slater. later. Okay. You play

one of the guys in the white jumpsuits is moving to nuke. I've never seen the film. There's a nuke. Dave Damashek, everybody. The Steelers are going to be good. That's what he said. I didn't say good.

I said they're not going to be bad. Okay. Well, that's, they're not going to be average. You know, it's not going to be in between. Dave Damashek, appreciate you. Where can people find you?

Minus three. we chop up all Northeast related matters there, whether it's the NFC East or AFC East or NFC or AFC North, the East Division in the puck. Very exciting times there and also extra points, like I say, with Cousin Sal

twice a week. Check them out, won't you? Cousin Sal, we like Cousin Sal. Maybe one day we'll get Cousin Sal and Dave on here. Oh, you got to get Cousin Sal. You guys will get along famously. Yeah, this would be a good suit. What do they call them crossover? Dave, catch you next time, brother.

Thank you.