The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - John Madden's impact & legacy with Bryan Curtis

Episode Date: December 29, 2021

The Ringer's Bryan Curtis and Robert Mays take some time to reflect on the impact of John Madden's career, from his larger-than-life personality in the broadcast booth to on the field and via our gaming consoles, hear how Madden's life impacted so many who love the game of football.Athletic subscription deal happening now @ theathletic.com/footballshow Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To me, this is where it all starts. You see, you know, seven-man sled. It's the greatest game in the world. Dick Stockton with John Madden. Hi, everybody. I'm Vince Kelly, along with John Madden. Pat Summerall all here with John Madden. Oh, it's his road.

They pick up the blitz. Tom and Freeman to the 49, 25-yard line. Boy, he zipped that thing in there. I'll tell you, when you talk about touch-past, he didn't put any touch on that. He put all the mustard on the brunt. Antonio Freeman is used to catch a nose. There is the big turkey.

Yeah, and that turkey is so big and so many legs that that's a two-man job. Look at the size of this turkey. Now, there is a turkey. We got some legs on there. I mean, here's a leg, here's a leg. Then we got three here. We got three here. Okay, now we have the award.

And what we do is every Thanksgiving to the outstanding player. We give the turkey leg award. I want to talk to John Mann, Pat Summer. You got up. You got it? Hey, yo, what's up top, fellas? You're up on top when you make catches like that. Hey, y'all know I put on the show for y'all two old heads, man.

The front seven, the line and the linebackers of the 49ers just whipped this ram offense. Oh, here comes some airplay. Holy moly. You see that? They just flew right up. Holy moly. What the heck was that? Do they know what they're doing?

Well, I hope so. Well, they're never close to us. They were close to each other. But they just went right by our eyes. They were an eye level, I think. Where are they now? Is that a replay of them? No.

Huh? No. Holy moly. They're turning around. There they go. I hope they don't come back. I've had enough for that. That's as close as I've been to an airplane in 18 years.

I'm going to say you don't fly, do you? Bill Belichick is the defensive coordinator of the Giants. This guy is a very good coat. And they're talking about him as a possible head. Coach in National Football League this year, he's only 38 years old. Very intense. The core of it was football. But when you can play it for a while and then go on with your life's work, and it's still football, you're the luckiest guy in the world. This is the Athletic Football Show. Welcome to The Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays.

bonus kind of special edition of the show today. Obviously, John Madden passing away on Tuesday night is a huge bit of news in the football world. Anybody who loves the sport, who's been around the sport, his influence on it, the way we think about it, the way that we talk about it, just his presence in how we understand modern football is undeniable. And I felt like we should dedicate some time to that. And when the news came down, when I heard about it, there's really only one person I one who talked about this with because of his experience writing about John Madden,

thinking about John Madden, and just how much work he's done in that area. And that is my former coworker, my friend, the ringer's Brian Curtis. Brian, thank you very much for taking that time to do this, my man. I really appreciate it. Unhealthy obsession with John Madden, you might say, Robert, it's fantastic to talk to you. So you were born about, I think, 10 years earlier than me, right? 77? Sure.

Let's go with that. About that time. about 8, 10 years earlier than me. The first thing I want to ask you, can you remember football without John Madden? No, I can't. I can't at all. He was the soundtrack from the earliest stage. I remember watching a football game on television, absolutely.

Would you say that he is not only the most influential football media member of our lifetime, but maybe the most influential sports media member of our lifetime? I think so. You know, I always resist doing rankings with the now. because like how do you compare John Madden to Tim McCarver and some guy doing another sport and Dan Deirdorf on Monday Night Football and all that stuff. But he's absolutely the best and most influential football guy, media guy of our lifetime. And I'm pretty comfortable saying best sports announcer of my lifetime period. I just think, you know, it's funny. We use the term explainer a lot today, right?

That's become kind of a common journalistic term. John Madden was an explainer in human form. he was doing this very tricky thing, which was he was taking a very, very complex sport to make it understandable to normal people like me who are not out there grinding tape, which by the way was not even available to do in 1987, even if I had wanted to do it. And so, you know, in a sense like, okay, he inspired the guys who came after him. He competed with the guys on the other networks. I think John Madden did much more than that. He also, in a way, predicted what people, like you do, right? Like he was the guy who said, I'm going to watch a game of football and explain it to people in a fun, funny, clear way that you like the game even more and makes you a little smarter. I feel like almost by accident we've all kind of copped a John Madden approach to this,

just because of how ubiquitous his influence was on the way that we talk about the sport. Unconsciously, subconsciously, I feel like there's been so many John Madden parrots out there and people who have just kind of said, this is how I'm going to do this, almost without even thinking about it, because the same is true for me. I don't know the world without John Madden. I was six years old when Fox got the NFC.

So I don't understand NFC football games without John Madden calling, you know, two Brett Favre games a year or whatever they were. He was just in my living room in the same way that my dad or my grandpa or whoever would have been on those Sundays. My grandparents used to come over with like a tray of Italian. meat, you know, just like Capricol and just like soap or sara with cheeses and we would just sit there and make sandwiches and we'd watch football games. And John Madden was a part of that.

And I can't think of anyone else who kind of has that place carved out in that slice of Americana in the same way that John Madden does. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. There's a couple things that are working for that. So he's doing the 49ers and the Giants and the Washington football team and the Cowboys and Brett Farve and the Packers. Like he wasn't doing the bill every week. I think that nothing against the 90s bills, but I think he had the best teams in a time when the NFC was absolutely dominating football. We're both, I guess, semi-old men at least, we can remember a time when there were four television networks, three networks and then four networks. And they were really driving the train of what we never call content. So if you were a big

deal on one of those networks on Sunday afternoon, you were huge, right? You were huge. You were huge a way that Tony Romo and Chris Collins were, no matter how good they are now, can never be because the media world is so, so different. So it's like John Madden wasn't just doing the biggest game of the week. He was doing one of the biggest things in American culture. Some is even bigger than football is now if that's possible to comprehend. And yeah, he did. You're right. He didn't seem like an announcer. He seemed like your friend or a family member that you were just hanging with every Sunday afternoon. Which is crazy because that's what we try to tap into now in this world, Right. That's how you want people to think about you as you talk about football, try to contextualize it.

And the fact that he did it so seamlessly, I wanted to ask you this, do you think that the ease with John Madden kind of settled into his role as an announcer and how great he was at it and how seamless it all felt? Do you think it's warped our understanding of how difficult that job is to do? Yes. Yeah, he made it look really easy, right? There's so many smart guys that come along who are ex-coaches or ex-players. And they, oh, oh, I don't know how to make a point in 15 seconds or less. Like, I just don't understand the grammar of television. I'm smart about football, but I can't work within the space. And John Madden partly because Pat Summerall was his play-by-play guy for so long. And Pat was like, I'm getting out of the way, Rice, Montana, touchdown, take it away, John.

You got all the time you need. But, you know, John was, he just understood television in this very, very interesting way. And it was funny. I was thinking about all the conversations I've had with people who worked with him, who were the young guys on his crew in the 80s and 90s, who now, by the way, basically run sports television. Eric Shanks on that documentary, I was just shocked. I was like, oh, my God.

Look at Eric Shanks. It's like a young PA. Yeah, he was a graphics guy, right? And Rich DeScience, who produces the Fox game of the week now was a young guy on that crew. You know, Frindigadellie, Sunday Night Football worked with Madden, you know, at NBC. I just think it's funny. And they will all tell you, like John Madden taught me a lot about football. But he also taught me a lot about television and how to use the medium and the way to connect with people, right?

Like the way, to me, all the stuff about the booms and the jokes and, oh, we go, look at this over here. Look at this over here. That was, again, that's what people do on Twitter now. That's a way of connecting with the audience, right? We're going to learn some football, but it's not going to be hard, threatening or weird. It's going to be really, really fun. I'm going to be a great hang for the next three hours. I was reading your piece in the New York Times.

I think it was 2008 that you wrote it earlier today. and just this idea that Madden kind of demanded certain production elements of the broadcast, where he'd say, I want you to zoom out, I want to see what's happening now. We take that for granted. Because part of the reason, and I want to talk about this a little bit, just where football announcing is in this moment, part of the reason I've appreciated the Greg Olson games this year, and I'm sure he has some hand in this, is that they instantly click to the All-22 Replace, and for them to be explained, and for him to give you context on them.

And the fact that John Madden wanted to do that so quietly has influenced the way that football broadcasting is and the way that I want football broadcasting to be because that it allows you to just have context and have like a baseline understanding of what just happened on a play that you didn't get when you saw it on TV. And isn't that the entire point of having a color commentator in that booth? Absolutely, right? To match the words in the picture. Now that that's the key, right?

Because if you're the smartest guy about football, but the pictures aren't showing you what you need to explain it to the audience, it doesn't work. When Madden becomes CBS's number one guy in 1981, he was very, very explicit. He goes, football on television sucks. It absolutely sucks. We're showing lots of pretty replays that don't explain anything about the game. So, you know, what he would do, he had this young producer named Terry O'Neill at the time, and they were really, really good collaborators. I'd say, okay, a running back just broke a 50-yard, you know, 50-yard run for a touchdown. When you do the replay, don't show me the running back running in the time. And space. That doesn't do anything for me. Don't show this close up.

Show me how the tight end unlocked that play so that I can go to the viewer and go, look at this, look at Brent Jones making that block right there. That gets Roger Craig into the end zone. And that was again, revolutionary at the time. Because again, just to repeat, you could not watch film if you were a normal person at that time. There was no Twitter. There was no NFL game pass where you could watch all the games. We were completely at the mercy of this guy. We were all reading newspapers to learn about football. And he would suddenly say, wait, I can do way better than this, right? I can have the same pictures, the same extent, but you'll actually learn something in the process. I want to go back to kind of that beginning,

like, 1975 time, 1979 time. How did people talk about him as a coach back then? Like, when he was transitioning into it, I know you were young, but just as you've done your research and kind of learned about that transition and that moment, what was the discourse about John Madigan? when he first got that job. Well, think about NFL films, right? And the scenes you see of Matt on the sidelines. He's very emotional. He was very over the top, right?

And he was the one who always said, you know, he won 103 games in 10 years, including a Super Bowl at the Raiders. So he's a hell of a coach. But the job almost killed him. He had ulcers. He was just, you know, his health was fragile. He just felt like he was killing himself doing that job. So I think people thought of him as a brilliant coach who was also just kind of emotionally

all over the place. I think Madden thought of him. himself is exactly the same way. He was not the cuddly bear he later was on television. And what was the landscape like? You know, football kind of, you said that it wasn't very good, the analysis that was on TV. Who was doing games at the time? What was kind of the tone of color commentating for the NFL when John Madden comes on the scene? So the number one team on CBS was Pat Summerall, who later became John's play-by-play partner, and this guy named Tom Brookshire, who was a very good announcer, but he and Pat were drinking buddies.

And the thing they were doing was they were having a good time on Sunday afternoon. And they were really having a good time on Sunday afternoon. And I just think, Robert, the whole sort of idea of football broadcasting was people don't know anything about this. And if we get technical, people will be turned off. They won't understand what they're watching. And as I've written about sports media over there, you hear this from TV people all the time. Like, they want television to be on the level of like an 80s sitcom. They want, that's what they want the game because the thing they're most scared of is that a viewer will hear something be like, I don't understand this and I want to change the channel right now.

You know, Howard CoSell, who was the guy on Monday Night Football when Matt starts to 1979. He had this line in one of his books where he said, I didn't create Monday Night Football within some insipid drivel about the 4-3 defense. The whole idea being, if I were to actually tell you what defense they were playing, you would get bored and change the channel and watch something else on CBS or NBC. So what Matt is doing is very daring for that time, right? He's saying, no, no, no, there's drama here, but there's drama in scheme. There's drama in plays. Like, I can teach you about the, you know, cover two defense, the zone defense, more basically than that. But I can make that exciting, right?

Like, I can make that what you want to watch as much as, hey, Nate Newton's over there, sweating on the bench and there's steam coming off that guy's head. Like, I can combine those two things. And to me, that's his genius, right? Like he was the best guy at explaining football on television, and he was also the funniest guy on television. That's the thing. And rarely do you get that in the same package?

See how heat does come out at top of your head? Look at it. Just coming off at Nate's head there. That's where it escapes. If you have heat in your body and you want to let it out, you take your hat off. Yeah. What you could do is you can have a barbecue on that head. Nate's got a lot of room to let it out.

Yeah. I mean, you could cook like some burgers on it. there. That's the thing that just I come back to because again, it's so, we take it for granted so much how he explained the game, but the fact that he could do it and just be genuinely funny. And I think that brings me back to just this idea of that job is fucking hard. I just don't think people comprehend how difficult it is to be really, really good at that job. And I watch what Tony Romo did in his first season and just what Greg Olson is now. And just how easily they've stepped into that role and how seamless they make it feel. And I watch what Tony Romo did in his first season and just what Greg Olson is now. And just how

seamless they make it feel. And I just don't think people comprehend what it takes to be good at that. And the fact that John Madden is just this inspiration and I think kind of this unconscious shaper of the ways that even those two guys talk about it or the personalities they bring to that job, I don't think that the discourse around modern NFL announcing or the style of modern NFL announcing even starts to look the way that it does without John Madden. I agree. And here's a way to understand the degree of difficult. if Patrick Mahomes put up 42 points, boom, man, this is great, right? This is fun.

Let's draw pictures on the screen. Let's have a good time. But what happens when you have a Super Bowl like we had earlier this year? Like this game is over and we've got two hours to go where we need to hold the audience's attention. And I think that's where Madden was just so different than anybody on TV his time or now because he had this instinct where he would say, I got this, right? The football may not be worth talking about very much.

but I'm going to entertain you. And I can do this, right? Like, you know, no offense to Tony Romo, but Tony Romo is not going to entertain America for two hours if it's not about football. I'd say the same thing about Greg Olson and Chris Collins with everybody. That's just not their skill, right?

John Madden was, you know, comparable, I think, a lot of ways like Johnny comes to me like that. He was just one of the genuinely funny people. So, okay, so 1987, the Giants are blown out the Broncos. We're going to go over the sideline, and I'm going to start circling the buckets that they're about to pour on Bill Parcell. As we see the buckets, now,

there's a third bucket this week. I think what happened, there's always been, yeah, there's always been like a mother and father. Like this is a father bucket. This is a mother bucket. And since the last game, they had a baby bucket. So this is a baby bucket. So they got three now.

There's always been two. One's going to go to Parcells. One's going to go to another assistant, and one will go to a player later in the game. That's the bucket. I mean, the bucket, you know, that's how big it is. third year in the league and then you ask questions like is it married yeah bucket's married you're watching that going he's just riffing right like he he he's he's completely now detached from the game

because the game's over but he's still entertaining and he's he's holding you in the palm of his hand and again there's a really really tiny list of guys who could do that on television or anywhere else what was the history of him and pat because i remember watching this documentary is that it felt like that wasn't necessarily the pairing from the start they didn't land on that quickly. They didn't necessarily have the best chemistry right away. What do you know of just about them working together and kind of how that came to be? So it's a really interesting story. Now at 1981, CBS, they're going to make him the number one analyst, but they weren't sure who they wanted to pair them with. They had Pat Summerall and they had Vin Scully, speaking of absolutely

sacred objects in the world of broadcasting, kindly Vin Scully. So they had this kind of very funny dynamic where they basically gave each one half a season with John Mann. And let's said, let's see which one of you guys pairs the best with John men. Well, Vince Scully's a great announcer, but it's a great story in the New York Times about this a couple of years ago by Robert Winthrop. Vince Colley was just a talker. He does games by himself. He does baseball games by himself.

Exactly. And, and, you know, he wasn't, he wasn't going to get mad in the room mad and need. Well, well, so they give it to Pat Summerall. Ben Scully was pissed. I mean, absolutely pissed and winds up leaving CBS for NBC shortly thereafter. He didn't like be demoted. You know, he didn't want to be the number two guy. He wanted to be with John Matt.

But I think in terms of Pat, it's really interesting because you're right. They were not probably the best of friends on screen or off, you know, but they both realized that they worked really well together. And Pat at this point, right, he was already the number one guy. So his career gets an extra 20 years because he's with the greatest announcer of all time, right? He's setting this guy up. He knew absolutely what it is. And I tell you this, I just remember this.

I remember calling Pat when I wrote that piece about John Madden in 2008. Pat at this point was off TV, not entirely by his own choosing. And he told me this. He said he watched Madden being Sunday night football at the time with Al Michaels, and he talked to Madden on the screen or almost talked to Madden on the screen because it felt so natural, like, that they would just be having this repartee during a football game. always remember that. That's what happens when I listen to the press box or when I listen to the rewatchables. My fiance gives me shit all the time. I'll be listening to you guys in the kitchen

and you'll say something and I'll respond in real time. They can't hear you. They cannot hear you. And I think that's the best compliment you can give someone is to make them feel like they have that sort of connection with you. I wanted to ask you about the Fox situation in 1994. You wrote a fantastic oral history of it a couple years ago just about how it came. to be and what a coup it was in the moment. I was wondering just if you could kind of contextualize what it was like for Fox to get John Madden in that moment, what you would compare it to kind of in the modern day. It's a good question. I mean, we're sitting here with Amazon taking over Thursday night football next year and all these rumors that Al Michaels is going to go over there and call that

broadcast for Amazon giving them instant credibility. So I guess that's, you know, sort of like it, but you know, Fox was in a different position, right? Like a lot of people are like, what is Fox? Oh, you mean, that's the thing that's like on Channel 62 that I can barely get with the bunny ears. It was 32 in my house. It was Fox 32. Yeah, it was 33 in Dallas, Fort Worth. And then it moved up to Channel 4 when it got flipped. So Fox gets the NFL rights from CBS.

And all of a sudden, they're like, well, we need to be a real network now. We've never produced a football game, an NFL game anyway. And so they're going out and shopping around. And John Madden, because CBS has lost the rights, is all of a sudden a free agent. And he's the greatest free agent in the history of sports. broadcast. NBC offered him the number one job on their game week. ABC offered him the number one job on Monday night football. And Fox offered him the number one job. And he finally signs this deal for Fox for four years, $32 million, which doesn't sound like a lot of money now. But here's my favorite

fact. I know I've bored you with this before. In 1994, John Madden made more money from Fox to call football games than any NFL player made to play in them. I think Troy Aitman made like 6.7. million, right? John Matt was making more than all the NFL players at here, which is absolutely incredible. And again, but what they were buying for $8 million was like, oh, if we put this guy in the booth, we're like, oh, you're a real network, you're a real sports division. We trust that you're not going to have Bart Simpson calling the games or Al Bundy calling the games in that period. And that was huge for that. I brought them into its credibility. It's so funny, just the timing of it, because that really is when my consciousness as a football

fan starts to begin is right around that. I think I went to my first Bears game in 1994, and John Madden's fascination with Brett Farv, I'll just never forget. And just the way he would talk about Brett Farr. And I almost think that it kind of shaped my affinity for Brett Farv. As a Bears fan, we have a very strange relationship with the Packers quarterbacks just because they've taken you prisoner for the last 30 years, but it's impossible not to appreciate them. And I think at the same time, the way that John Madden talked about, Brett Farrve, also made me appreciate him even more. And again, that's just kind of those little subtle ways that he'd kind of seep into your football brain in a way that we don't appreciate now. And I think that's something when I was thinking

about it yesterday after he died. And I was like, what am I going to say about John Madden? Do I really, what place does John Madden have in my life? And then you actually sit back and think about it. It's like, holy shit. I mean, just so many ways you'd never think about. And that's before even getting to the video game. Hi, everyone. Welcome to John Madden football. Generations of people will know John Madden because of that game and didn't even know he was announcer. The same way, the people my age probably don't even know he was a coach.

Absolutely. By the way, do we think John Madden said Brett Farv is just having fun out there like a million times on television? Two million times on television? The same way John Madden was just having fun out there, Brian. I'd say the one for me as a Cowboys fan. He basically just camped out. in Dallas in the 90s. It was fantastic.

That was actually living in Dallas. John Madden seemed to be living in Dallas after a point of time. But he would always talk about Nate Newt, Cowboys Guard from the 90s Super Bowl team. He was fascinated with Nate Newt. I have never been able to get it straight in my mind how good Nate Newton actually was. He was good versus how just obsessed John Madden was with Nate Newton's body and Nate Newton's

physique and Nate Newton's skills and Nate in the steam coming off Nate Newton's head. I know Nate Newton was good, but again, it goes to your point. Like, John Madden was in my brain so much. I'm just repeating what this guy saying, or is this guy legitimately one of the best offensive linemen in the NFL? Before we get out of here, I just wanted to talk. You have such a unique position in this and that you've spent time with John Madden. You've talked to John Madden.

What was that like? Just kind of getting to be around him. And obviously, he was such a force of personality on television, but people are different in person. When you actually got to pick his brain a little bit and sit and spend, some time with him. What do you remember about that? It's such an interesting question because whenever I talk to these guys, I have this fascinating experience of here's a person I've heard on television, Madden's case for decades,

and now I'm talking to them. How different is TV guy going to be from real life guy? With Madden, it was interesting. He was very much the same guy. I mean, first of all, just hearing that voice over the phone or anything. God. Oh, wow. You know, like I don't get starstruck very easily, but he's definitely in that in the group that would leave me kind of like, uh, uh, uh, you know, in terms of how he was different. He could be very, I would say, like, forceful when, when something was said about him, they didn't agree with, you know, he was very, I think John Madden was very, very conscious of what people thought about.

I mean, I remember when I was writing that oral history, I had something his agent, very frank at at the time had told me. And, you know, John just did not think that was true or did not want that to be out there, whatever it was. And he just, again, very, very, very polite and everything. but very, very forceful about the way people talked about him. And, you know, it was interesting because, like, John Madden, you know, had created this around himself, created on TV, he created with Ace Hardware commercials, Tough Act, and Acting.

Hey, you get a tough case of athletes, put. The itching, the cracking, the burning. You want a medicine and acts tough. Boom. Tough acting and Actin. And I think, you know, with a lot of these guys, they're kind of not victims is maybe the right word, but they're kind of products of what people say. say about him. And John Madden was so big that he essentially created all the dialogue around

John Madden, right? It was self-generated. He was so big. And so I just remember him being very polite, very fun to talk to, but also very, very conscious of what people were saying and, you know, and wanting his side to be out there, the record to reflect what he thought had happened. Just kind of putting a bow on this. I think it's just such a reminder of the break, the little breaks you need to really create a lasting legacy in the sports media world. And just the idea that John Madden just kind of fell in with Pat Summerall and they were so perfect together. Like just the interplay between them and how Pat gave him that space and just the way that

their voices sounded together, all that kind of stuff and just all the sliding doors moments that have to happen. It's just such a stark reminder of that. And it's also just a stark reminder of what it means when you really get that big and what you can be when you have that sort of influence over the time. that John Madden did. And there's a reason that there's been this sort of outpouring over the last 24 hours or so. And it will continue because it's deserving.

Like when you talk about the football world, when you talk about the people who are responsible for why the NFL is the biggest thing in American media in so many ways, why it is this just monolith. I think that John Madden probably has as much to do with that as really anybody who has ever lived. I agree. And I've been speaking of sliding doors moments, like I've been thinking about that over the last 24 hours. Like, what if John Madden says, you know what? I'm going to come back and coach to Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I'm going to be Bill Parcells. I'm going to have a cup of coffee on television. But my career is as a football coach. And I'm going to do that. Because by the way, people start trying to hire John Madden for the first decade he was on the air until he finally told him, I'm really not doing this. I'm never coming back. They wanted him. Smart move. By the way. way. Yeah, I mean, they wanted him to coach their team. Like, that was, that was the thing. What if he hadn't done that? What if we had a replacement level announcer on the CBS game of the week, as we have over the year sometimes? And what would the NFL have been like? You know, it's, you wouldn't say the NFL would have been not a colossus, not the most popular sport in America. We know that would have been through no matter what. But I have to think that he enhanced it. And,

and I have, and on a more basic level, I have to think he just made us love it a little bit, more, right? He made, he forged an emotional connection. You and I both know it's hard sometimes to have an emotional connection with pro football for a thousand reasons, right? He put a friendly face on it. He made it inviting. He made it understandable to mere mortals so that I could watch a pro football game and be like, I have half an idea of what's going on right now. And I have to think, at least on the margins, that really, really, really was valuable for the NFL. It's amazing that all these years later, I really do feel like the people who are trying to do this well are trying to still tap into why John Madden was great. They're still chasing that. It has not been improved

upon whatever John Madden brought to this. And I think that that is just all you need to know about what his legacy is, about how great he was, about how singular of a talent and force and presence he was in the football world. And I would prefer to talk about it with no one else but you, my friend. I really appreciate you taking the time out to do this. I know you guys. I know you a lot going on. Fantastic to talk to you, Robert, and to see your smiling face. We will talk to you again soon. Talk to you later, bud.

Guys, thank you very much for listening. We will be back tomorrow with Lindsay, our normal Thursday show, but definitely wanted to get you guys this as soon as we could. Please come back and check that out. Please rate and review the podcast on your podcast platform of choice to be a great end of year gift to me. I would sincerely appreciate it. Please subscribe to the athletic.

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