The Kevin Sheehan Show - Bobby Beathard

Episode Date: February 2, 2023

Kevin and Thom remembered Bobby Beathard...the greatest GM in the history of not only the Washington Redskins but any DC pro sports franchise. The boys also talked Brady's retirement and had their QB Mount Rushmore lists. They "celebrated" the one-year anniversary of the Washington Football "re-brand" and Thom had an update on his fan-cruise story.  Go to https://www.chime.com/kevindc to sign up for a Chime Credit Builder Visa Credit Card today! Thanks to Chime for supporting the show.  Get 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code KEVINDC at Manscaped.com and shoot your arrow with MANSCAPED™ this Valentine’s Day. To get ready, Roman Ready, for better sex this Valentine’s Day. Go to ro.co/athletic today to get 20% off your entire first order. Place before February 8th for guaranteed shipping in time. Find the perfect piece of jewelry for life’s special moments and save up to 50% now at bluenile.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You don't want it. You don't need it. But you're going to get it anyway. The Kevin Cheehan Show. Here's Kevin. I'm here. Tommy is here with me. We're going to talk about Bobby Bethard on the show.

We're going to talk about Tom Brady on the show today. We're going to talk about this being 2-223, which of course a year ago today, we had that scintillating unveiling of the new name. all of the branding surrounding it. So we'll revisit that a year later and tell you what we think. And Tommy has a follow-up column on the cruise mystery, the cruise with the team that got canceled. So we will get to that as well. No Wizards to talk about on the show today because they didn't play a game last night.

And I think that will please some of you. But trust me, I was looking forward to watching the Wizards last night at Detroit. But the game got postponed. Tommy, you know why the game got postponed? Because of travel problems from Detroit? Well, travel problems involving the Detroit Pistons, but do you know where the travel problems emanated from? No. Dallas. Memphis? Oh, Dallas. Oh, God. They've had a nice storm. And they, like, two out of every four planes the last couple of days and flights have been

canceled. And of course, it reminds both of us of our week together in ice-covered Dallas back in 2010. Yeah, 2010. I think it was 2010. Whatever year that was. I think it was 2011. 2010, we were in South Florida. That's right. We were because that's the Super Bowl that I got back for, that I came back for the Blizzard for the Saints. Yeah, the Saints, some Colts Super Bowl. It's in the Colts. Yeah. 2011 was Steelers Packers in Dallas.

We arrived on a Sunday afternoon. The weather was lovely. The motel we were staying in was not adequate. But when we woke up the next morning, there was a half of inch of ice covering everything, and it was 18 degrees outside. And I don't think the temperature... And it never...

It didn't get above freezing the whole. week. I don't think it got above 25 the whole week. It was unbelievable. We were literally prisoners. We were prisoners except for we did make it to Radio Row every day to do our show. Yes, thanks to you. Well, thanks to you. Well, thanks. Well, I did drive and I would, you know, well, I chauffered you around everywhere. Tommy actually, by Tuesday of that week, we'd just get into the backseat when I pulled the car up in front. And I would. I would, you know, well, I chauffeured you around everywhere. Tommy, Tommy, actually, by Tuesday of that week, we'd just get into the backseat when I pulled the car up in of the motel, as I chauffeered him to and fro. But my God, I mean, I'll never forget that week from the horrific conditions and the place that we were staying in to the weather and the fact

they could not and did not have the capability of clearing the ice in that metroplex of Dallas, Fort Worth. And it was a nightmare. And the last thing that we wanted to do was be in that hotel or a motel room. I remember, our door opened basically to the street. Yes, it did. And here's what I remember. The cops used to drive by like five or six times a night. Well, on that ice. Yeah. Well, no, they would drive by and go into the motel office to see if everything was okay, five or six times a night. I think considering the weather and the driving conditions, we were pretty safe that week. But yeah, it was

a nightmare. But anyway, that's why the Pistons Wizards game was postponed last night. And I was actually, I had that dialed in. I'm like, what do we got going on tonight? We got some, any good basketball? Well, yeah, Wizards going for seven

in a row. And then it got postponed. And then I did watch, I did watch Xavier in Providence last night. Providence is kind of a favorite of the She and household because Jared Bynum, who played at Georgetown Prep on one of Georgetown Prep's best teams. My son Ryan was on that team. They finished number two in the city. Jared was an all-met and then went to St. Joe's but transferred to Providence and was a star last year on the

Providence team that was highly ranked and a tournament team and is a star this year on their team. And I'm telling you, they had a chance at Xavier last night. Both teams are ranked, I think, 16th and 15th, something like that. And Jared had a shot from the corner to win it on a three at the buzzer, and it was halfway down and came out. But he's playing great. He looks great. As long as he's healthy, they're in good shape.

By the way, he's one of my favorite coaches, too, Ed Cooley, one of my favorite coaches in the country to watch. But no Wizards game last night. So there you go. That's the basketball portion of the show, unless you have anything to add. No, I have nothing to add to the basketball portion. I just might want to say it was a tremendous night

of karaoke last night at Kennedy Next door. Tell me about it. Tell me about it. Tremendous night. We were there for about four or five hours, pounded down the red stripes. At one point, I tell you what, they know me so well at one point that the karaoke guy

recruited me to come up to sing when no one else would sing. What did you sing? He called my name out, cry like a baby by the box time. That's my real go-to. Yeah, the box tops are one of your favorites. Now, and so they're able to find that and crank it up for you and get you started? Yes.

Okay. Yes. So we had a great time last night. And it was like 70 degrees without any kind of wind. It was an unbelievable evening. I mean, it's outdoors. Yeah. The karaoke.

It's outdoors. It was just great. You know, I played. So I'm glad we're going to. We were a little bit late and getting started today because I needed some recovery time. I haven't needed some recovery time in a long time, but I needed some last night. Like I said, I could crawl home from the bar. I didn't have to do that, but it was close.

I did play without your permission, although I don't think you would have had a problem with it. I think it was one of the podcasts from last week. The video of you doing karaoke, I put it at the end of the show. and there were several comments on it on your karaoke, some positive, some saying, please give me fair warning the next time you end the show with Tommy singing. I thought you did pretty well. Now, how many red stripes do you need before you get up there? Are you ready to go without the red stripe influence?

Yeah, I am. I don't need that to go because I'm naturally a ham and I like to sing. And I don't, here's the key part. I don't give a shit what other people think about me. Okay. Well, sometimes you do, sometimes you do. Well, all the people I care about, people I care about, I care what they think of me. You know, strangers, perfect strangers, especially the crew down here, no.

I'm not particularly interested. So I don't need that. But, you know, by the time I got recruited to do another hit, I was about six into Red Strikes. Yeah. And do you call anybody up to sing along with you? I mean, do you do a Michael Scott, you know, who's looking for some help, and then finally Jim relents and goes up and sings the, God, what did they sing? Kenny Rogers and I think. Islands in the stream.

Exactly. Good call. Yeah. Yeah. But you just go solo. You know, Kevin. I'm a solo act. You know that.

Yeah, I know. The duets are not for you. You know, if truth be. told you don't even like doing a duet on this podcast. By the way, you mentioned the podcast getting started late today. The reason for that is I had to go to the eye doctor this morning. I have not been to the eye doctor. I found out when I arrived in 10 years. Now, I have updated my prescription, but I think I just did it at the eyeglass place where I got a quick exam and they updated the prescription. But I did find out today, nothing serious, nothing like cataract or anything like that,

but my prescription for distance is way off. So I have to get new lenses. And I've noticed that recently, that my, with my glasses on, I'm near-sighted. And so when I've noticed that the glasses aren't necessarily working as well as they used to. And the reason would be, be that I have not had the prescription updated in a long time. But the reason we're getting it started late today is because I figured that an eye doctor appointment is, you know, half an hour in and out. It was an hour and 45 minutes. And my eyes are dilated right now. They do all kinds of things. And I'm like, good God. At one point after they dilated my eyes, I was waiting. You know, she said, and she was lovely, the doctor. And she said, I'll be back in a few.

minutes and it was like 20 minutes later and I hadn't heard from anybody so I walked out and found her and I said we got to move this thing along here and she said I'll be in in a second um and uh well let me ask you a question yes this is a tommy test okay how do your eye doctor visits different from my eye doctor visit oh they're much different yeah they're much different well because of what you've had to have injected into your eyes. I mean, yeah. Okay. I mean, it's, every time you tell that story, we cringe.

It's, in fact, I think, I'm going to read a review here in a second, but, which deals with kind of the audio quality of the podcast. And I think actually the content sometimes is more of a turnoff than the actual quality of the audio. And the biggest turnoff in the history of this podcast is you telling the stories about how you have to go in periodically to get those shots into your eyes. And you describe it in such detail that everybody is fast forwarding or just turning it to something else. First of all, I am one of those people. I don't like it.

I never got LASIC. I've never worn contacts. I tried contacts years ago. I don't like people touching my eyes. I don't care about anything else, but I don't like touching my eyes. You know, that is a problem with people. Like, when you see so many people still wearing glasses, when they are, you know, certainly eligible for either LASIC or for contacts,

more times than not, it's because they're people that just, they can't get the contacts in. They don't like touching their eyes, and they don't want anybody else touching their eyes. So your stories of shots into the eyes are bad. Okay. I know that, but as far as, you know, cataracts would be a good development for you, because if you had cataracts, then you could get the surgery,

then you could get the laser surgery. It would be covered by your insurance, and you wouldn't need your classes anymore. I don't want the LASIC surgery. I don't want that surgery. It's not LASIC. It's not that. This is different. Laser.

This is much more reliable, much easier. So, I mean, whenever they tell you, you got cataracts, baby, that's when your vision's going to come back. Can we just go backwards for one second to your Tommy test? Because I just, this is the issue with you, and I love you dearly. But if I had given you a Kevin test on something, you would have had no answer for whatever I asked. Because you just don't listen and you don't care. I listen to everything you say, and I remember everything. you say. So just

remember that. I'm going to give you a Kevin test one of these days to see if you remember something that was significant to me. Because after you, everybody else comes first in your world. Kevin's the Betsy, I hope I don't fail. Oh,

see, that's the thing. You wouldn't give a shit that you failed and looked so self-absorbed in the process. You know why? Because you are. I want to read this review. I want to read this review, though, that we got from, we got this review, Tommy, from E. Severide 1. Eric Severide, NBC reporter back in like the 70s? Am I right about that or not?

No, I mean, you're right about there being a reporter. You've just got your network and time spam mixed up. Eric Severide was a reporter for CBS News. CBS. And he goes back to, he goes back to the Morrow Boys, the reporters like Cromtite and Eric Severite, who worked for Edward R. Murrow, covering World War II. Wow. That's who Eric Severite is. But then why do I remember him from the 70s? Why do I remember him from the 70s if he was back in World War II?

He used to do commentary. He used to do commentary. Who would do some kind of commentary at the end of – Remember, they used to do that from time of the time? Right. I think that was his – he would do commentary at the end of the end. of CBS news sometimes. I'm going to tell you the first,

because the network, the news was always on in my house. You know, my parents watched the evening local news and then watched the national news. You know, at 6.30, we're at 7 o'clock, you know, depending on, you know, I think actually probably when I was a kid in the 70s, most of the local newscasts probably were half-hour newscasts, and they weren't our newscasts. back then. And so the national news would start at 630. And my family watched a lot of NBC,

which was Huntley and Brinkley, right? David Brinkley? And was it Chet Huntley? Yes. Right. So that's what I remembered is there was a lot of, there was a lot of Channel 4 and NBC, a lot of Channel 4 locally and a lot of NBC national news. is what I remember. What did you watch? Do you remember what you watched or your family watched? You know, as far as network news, we were a CBS family. But I remember, you know, I grew up in New York, and even when we moved to the Poconos, we got this station. I think they were the first ones. Channel 5 in New York, Metro Media Station, started a 10 o'clock news broadcast. And it was like

an hour. And I used to watch that religiously as a kid. You know, I mean, it was an hour's worth of New York and national news on Channel 5 at 10 o'clock. So that's really the most vivid memory of me watching news growing up. I mean, I remember, I remember at one point in the broadcast, they would do the roll call of soldiers who had been killed in Vietnam. In Vietnam, right. Yeah. I remember that vividly. So I was a local news.

I've always been more of a local news guy, and particularly now more than ever, because, you know, it's not talking heads, talking with talking heads. It's people actually doing stories. Right. You may think they're lame stories. You may not be interested in it, but at least their stories. Well, the irony is most of those stories are the ones that are most impactful to your life. in the area that you're living in. So I'm just looking up the anchors of the 70s.

So Kronkite, obviously, was CBS. And I do remember Kronkite. I do. But I remember Huntley-Brinckley earlier than anything else. And then John Chancellor took over for that. My name. Yes. John Chancellor, who was around forever.

And by the way, Tommy, You know, Ken Burns is, you know, baseball series, which is so well done. They've been running a lot of it on the MLB network. And when I'm flipping around, sometimes I'll just get stuck on it. And I'll just, I'll end up watching, you know, a half of an episode or more than that. Because they're so well done. John Chancellor narrates a lot of it. In fact, I'd like to see the list of Ken Burns baseball narrators,

because there's so many of them. But John Chancellor, I'm pretty sure that's John Chancellor. I guess somebody could say, no, no, no, that's the guy that sounds like John Chancellor, but it's not John Chancellor. But I'm pretty sure it is. And at that time in the 60s, or more of the 70s, I guess, to the 60s, you know, ABC was kind of like the upstart network then. They were always third.

Until Max Robinson? Until Max Robinson? I do remember Max Robinson being the first black anchor. Yes, I remember that, but I remember Harry Reasoner. Uh-huh. I know what's a Harry Reasoner? Yes, I think that's... Hold on.

I had that page up a second ago. I remember Frank Reynolds. Frank Reynolds used to do ABC. Let me see if it's Harry Reasoner. But, yeah, ABC was always third until Rune Arlitz pretty much. took over the news broadcast in addition to the Henry Reisner, Howard K. Smith. No, I've got Harry Reasoner from 70 to 75 with Howard K. Smith.

And then Frank Reynolds was with him before. And then Max Robinson came in in the latter portion of the 70s before Peter Jennings took over because obviously Max Robinson, you know, died of AIDS complications. I don't know. He was a young man, wasn't he, Tommy? And wasn't he from here? I don't know. I don't know if he was or not.

Am I right that he was the first black news anchor? On the national broadcast, I believe so. Yeah, I think he was. You know who's been doing the anchoring recently? I've noticed on the CBS Evening News, James Brown. Really? Well, I know Noro Donald does it as the number one, right? achieve the number one? Right. Yeah. Yeah, but I think James Brown has filled in and he's been doing it

recently. I watched the broadcast the other night. Interesting. What did J.B. doing it. He's very good at it. Well, he's always been good at everything. Max Robinson. So Max Robinson was, hold on, just had this a second ago. He died in 1988 in D.C. he was born in Richmond, okay, grew up in Richmond, Virginia. I knew he was somewhat close to here because he went from Channel 9 locally. He was on Channel 9 locally. Right? I'm pretty sure he worked with like Gordon Peterson and Maureen Bunyan.

Yeah, he did. Yeah, he was on Channel 9 locally. You know, here it is. In 1969, Robinson, 1969, Robinson joined WTOP TV, now WUSA. Robinson was teamed with Gordon Peterson becoming the first African-American anchor on a local television news program. And the newscast took off. He was so well liked by viewers that when the Hanafi Muslims took hostages, which I remember, because Marion Barry was. part of that whole thing.

At the B'nai B'A Brith building in Washington, they would only speak to Max Robinson. So that Hanafi Muslim thing was like 1977, something like that, I'm guessing. So he was the one that they communicated with. Anyway, let me get back to reading this review from E. Severide 1, which got this part of the conversation started.

Quote, first of all, he gives us five stars, five stars, calls it an awesome podcast. If you haven't rated or reviewed the podcast and you have time to do it, it would be much appreciated, especially on Apple. He writes, The show is so entertaining and informative. Pulls no punches, leaves no stone unturned regarding DC sports. Cooley and Leverro are gems, and Kevin has the goods to swim in as big a pool as he chooses. Only gripe is the audio quality of these regular guests. literally like Neil Armstrong talking to Kronkite from the moon.

But hey, the content and entertainment make it worth the listen. Seek it out five stars. Thank you, E. Severide, one. And now, by the way, it's confirmed that whether he's an actual E. Severide or not, if that's just his handle, he certainly remembers Eric Severide because he references Kronkite in the Alarmstrong. So this is just a bit of, I'll net it out real quickly.

The quality of the audio matters a lot to me. It does. And I have taken so much of your critiques from everybody. Because when we initially started, we were in studio together. That was never matched in terms of the overall audio quality. But the pandemic changed that and coolly moving to Wyoming and Tommy moving to Frederick. And I wasn't going to have Tommy truck it in from Frederick every day. It was ridiculous.

And we tried every single format. You know, Zoom was something we used for a while. And we got more complaints about the inconsistency of that than we did with anything else. And we also had a lot of connectivity issues, especially with Cooley more so than anybody being out in Wyoming. And it just turned out that the phone, once we got to the right locations, like Tommy's a phone location, whether he's in Florida now like he is or at home has always been good. Let me just say this. Keep the critiques coming.

I want the audio quality to be great. I listen to it a lot. There are days when we go back and we change the levels a little bit and we work with it to make sure that it's the best that it can sound. But I did come to the conclusion about a year and a half ago that the phone was easier to do for everybody involved. and that the audio quality, for the most part, really was more than good enough, and more importantly, it was consistent. And so that's why we've stuck with it.

But I think Tommy usually sounds great. Cooley, there are days where I've got a lot of editing to do after the show. But I think Tommy usually sounds pretty good. But thank you, though, for the critique, and I do listen to that. Do you have any comments on that or not? Now, you've always been much more interested and obsessed with audio, even back to our days on radio, when we would do interviews on the air, and I'd be fine with one of them, and you weren't happy with it. We'd still air it, but you're always much more meticulous about it than I was.

Absolutely. You know what? I'm not as meticulous as some of the people that we worked with about it at all, but remember when we were doing interviews that we would bring back, you know, like when we would record interviews for the show the next day, especially when we did them off-site. We didn't have what I would call the highest quality of engineering at old 980. I'm not going to get into names, but there were plenty of days when we were out there, and it's like, we can't hear each other and we're six feet apart. What's going on here? Be careful, everybody. Be careful.

I'm picking on one of your friends. That's right. I know. Anyway, you know what? It turns out, you know, whatever. Union shops or union shops, and I'll leave it at that. All right. I do want to talk about Bobby Beatherd.

Bobby Beatherd passed away yesterday at the age of 86 years old. Bobby Beatherd just, you know, the statement for me is, He is the greatest general manager slash team executive and leader that this city has ever had. We've never had a general manager like Bobby Beatherd. The football team, the commanders, the Redskins who he worked for, they've never had a general manager anywhere near Bobby Beatherd's quality. I think Charlie Casserly was a good GM when he was here. And he learned, you know, at the feet of Bobby Beatherd and George Allen, before that. But I'll let you talk about it and then we can add some stories here and there. But

the one thing about Bobby Betherd, and I loved him dearly because he, first of all, was always available. He was the kindest person. He was a great interview. Tommy, between you and me and then probably each of us in solo formats or with others. I think I probably had Bobby Betherd. on the show probably at least 10 times somewhere in that neighborhood over the years. He would always be at least available

for one of the pregame shows every year that I did. I think the last time we had Bobby on was when he was put into the ring of fame, which also I think was the year that he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2018. And you could tell, by the way,

Bobby was, you know, he had Alzheimer's and passed away due to complications of Alzheimer's, according to his son Casey, who was, His son Casey's a country musician and lives in Nashville, and that's where Bobby's lived for many, many years now. And every single time when I would ask him to come on the show, he would always say yes.

But you didn't text Bobby or you didn't email him. You called him. And you'd end up having a conversation with Bobby for a while. And he would always talk about his kids and his grandsons, those that were playing football and his whole family. He was always talking about his family. And I did want to mention this one thing. There were many times he didn't say this on the air,

but he told me many times, I'm so upset with what's happened in Washington. You know, he's not the only one from the glory days to express that to people in the market that know what it was. But he was always very upset about how the franchise had deteriorated because he knew how much it meant to the city, you know, when he was here. and for many years after. And he knew what the fan base once was.

And he knew from afar the reason why it was deteriorating. Trust me, he knew. He was not a fan of Dan Snyder. But back to him as the general manager, greatest general manager in the history of this town, the architect of, you know, really technically two Super Bowls here, but really the groundwork and the basis for all three of them. them. He hired Joe Gibbs. And you remember this, and I barely remember this, but I did notice it

when I looked at the 50-year anniversary of Super Bowl 7. Bobby Bethard was the chief architect, along with Don Shula, of the great dolphins teams in the 70s, including the perfect 17 and O dolphins in 1972. And when I went back and did something on that game a few weeks ago, the NBC broadcast with Gowdy and Al D. Regatus, at the end of it, when they're counting it down, you see a young Bobby Bethard on the sideline, you know, celebrating with all of the dolphins. But a real smart person, a risk taker, super kind always to everybody. And, you know, he lived one hell of a life. But he will be missed, but he'll never be forgotten in this town, that's for sure. No, for all you commanders fans that are hanging on, and for you disenfranchised Redskins fans,

that flicker that you still have whenever you go on YouTube maybe and watch a video of recently like Rigo, Rigo, going for that great Super Bowl run or Doug Williams, you know, with that offensive line in front of them in that Super Bowl, whenever you say, oh, man, that's how it was. Okay, you owe Bobby Beather's for that. Bobby Beatherd has, his legacy is he left this fan base with that flicker that still keeps whatever flame is alive in them. It's whatever, it may be, it may be a pilot-like, but that's from him.

You know, I mean, on the cold, that you're rooting for this franchise. The warmth is looking back at the past. And that's what Bobby Bessor gave you. Yeah, I mean, there's no doubt. You know, it's funny because when Bruce Allen came back, when he came into the organization in 2010, and there was a flicker of hope that we had somebody

that understood the organization that was back in the organization, because his father, George Allen, is also very much responsible for people of a certain age in terms of, you know, what you just described. When you're holding on for dear life wondering whether or not you're ever going to have the same level of passion, it's people also like George Allen that got that started because that's really where the winning, the significant winning started. But they didn't win the Super Bowl. But I always felt like having Bruce Allen back in the organization that we would finally get somebody back into the organization.

that really understood and knew the organization and felt great about the history of the organization and understood what it should be. And remember how excited I was when they just went to the gold pants, even though those weren't the championship uniforms, it was, you know, a nod to what really started this, you know, in in 71 with Allen. But in terms of the true glory years, four Super Bowl trips, three Lombardi trophies from, essentially 1982 to 1991. Bobby Beatherd and Joe Gibbs are responsible for all of it. But without Bobby Beatherd, there'd be no Joe Gibbs because nobody was about to hire Joe Gibbs in 1981. Nobody was.

No, he had to convince Cook to hire him. Cook had never heard Jack Kent Cook had never heard of Joe Gibbs. He had to sell him on it. And then when Gibbs went 0 and 5 at the start, he had to convince him to keep him on. Right. Yeah. I had Cassarly.

I had Charlie on the show this morning on the radio show. You can listen to that at the Team 980.com. He was great. You could tell that Charlie, I mean, you know how usually Charlie is great and has so many stories to tell. There were a couple that he was keeping to himself today, including, by the way, that Bobby Bethards will take to his grave the reason he left the organization. And it isn't necessarily what some of us think or what has been discussed over the years that ultimately Joe Gibbs wanted more control and wanted more say-so, and that's why Bobby Bethard left.

Charlie Casterly completely dismissed that. And I said, you know, he wasn't going to tell us the reason. So I don't know. There's a story there somewhere, Tommy? You don't know it, do you? No, I don't. I don't know it. Didn't you always think it was because,

ultimately it's not that he and Joe grew apart, but that Joe wanted more say-so? And Bobby said, Joe had plenty of say-so. That was his comment. When I said, wasn't that it? He said, Joe had plenty of say-so. If that's the reason people think Bobby left, that's not the reason. And he'll take that to his grave, and you'll never hear the reason for me. I thought that was interesting, because I don't think I've ever heard Charlie kind of say something in that way. And, you know, I'm not saying that he was implying that there's this incredible story as to why Bobby Bethard left. But he certainly turned it into at least a minor mystery. Yeah.

So there were a couple things. Number one, and Charlie mentioned this, and Charlie's mentioned this to me in the past, and others have too. And Bobby talked about this all the time. Bobby was incredibly inclusive in the process of putting a roster together. He wanted everybody's opinion. He wanted everybody to feel empowered. Bobby Bethard was one of the first to not worry about the school size or the schedule they played and didn't rely solely on measurables.

Bobby Bethard didn't need advanced analytics to find a really good player, you know, from a, you know, from a place like Texas A&I, like Darrell Green. He didn't need that. he was well he trouble with the curve Tommy you know the movie with

Amy Adams and when what does Clintieswood I know what is his character name in that movie I forget what it is he's a scout for the Braves and he goes down

and they're like why are you going down there he's like because you have to hear it you have to hear you know the pitch and the ball hitting the bat. That was Bobby, Bobby Beatherd was all about, you know, seeing it. He was, you know, Casserly told me, you know, we hit the road much more often. We never hit the road as much to watch players in person. He's like, how are you going to make a decision on a player if you haven't seen him? And then he would talk, Casserly said in the early days when he was a scout

and Bobby Betherd came on, they'd talk about certain grading services. And Bobby Betherd just laughed at him and said they don't know any more than anybody else knows. We'll go make those decisions. But, you know, every championship teams are usually a result of a really good draft or two. And the 1981 draft for Washington was the draft for Bobby Bethard and for this franchise, really, that set them up for a decade. Yes. Mark May, first round. Russ Grimm.

They did a third rounder. The second rounder went to Baltimore for Joe Washington. Fifth rounder, Dexter Manley. Eighth rounder, Charlie Brown. Ninth rounder, Darrell Grant. 12th rounder. It was a 12-round draft back then, Clint Didier. Larry Kuban was taken in the sixth round from Penn State.

He was a good special teamer for a while. That was the draft. That was the draft that really created. the team that would win it the next year, would win it in 87. Ultimately, you know, some of those players, you know, in 91. Now, the players there are not 91 other than Grimm, but the idea of the hogs drafting May and Grimm in your first two picks in that particular draft. And let's not forget, they didn't have a lot of first round picks. Bobby liked to trade down in his predecessor. George Allen just liked to trade it. He, Bobby would, you know, Bobby would.

trade down for more picks, George Allen would just trade the picks for players. You know, his first year of drafting in 1978, his first pick in the draft was in the sixth round because all of the picks were gone. Alan had traded all of them. His very first pick was in the sixth round. And in 1979, their first pick was in the fourth round. And that player, by the way, was Don Warren, followed by Rich Malott. And then in the 11th round, Monty Coleman in the 79 draft. But Art Monk was the team's first, first round pick made, and that came in 1980. It was the first time they had had a first round pick since 1968.

The team went 12 drafts without a first round pick, Allen trading all of them away, and Bobby Bethard's first, first round pick was a Hall of Famer in Art Monk. who remember Tommy was a running back at times at Syracuse coming out, and he saw him as a wide receiver. The second draft, the 81 draft, which I just mentioned, a Hall of Famer in the third round in Russ Grimm. And then in 1983, the last of his first round picks, Monk, May, and Daryl Green,

Green ended up in the Hall of Fame as well. And he's told me the story about that. I was always fascinated about that draft because that was the draft that Dan Marino was falling throughout the first round. And he was picked by Miami the pick before Darrell Green. And Beatherd said, never had any interest. He said, now we had Dan Marino. He said, we had Marino and Elway in that draft, you know, 1-2.

Elway won Marino too. He goes, I was very high on Dan Marino, but we had Joe Thaisman coming off the 82 season. And remember the 83 season was Joe's MVP season. And he said, I knew who I wanted. And I was just hoping he would fall. And he did. And Washington took Daryl Green, which was a surprise. Although Charlie told me this morning that the Raiders who picked 20, there were 28 teams in the league.

Washington and Miami were the two Super Bowl participants. Washington had won the Super Bowl. You know, I went through it yesterday, Super Bowl 17. So Washington had the last pick. Miami had the next last pick. And then it went by record. and the Raiders had the 26th pick. Charlie told me this morning something that Bobby never told me.

He said they got wind that the Raiders were going to take Daryl Green, and they were really upset. They thought that they were the only ones that knew about Daryl Green. And by the way, there was a lot of pushback organizationally, Charlie told me, on Bobby because of Daryl Green's size. They said he's just too small, Bobby. Come on. And Bobby held firm on that one.

He said, nope, this is the guy we want and we're going to draft and nobody else is going to draft him. And then they got win that the Raiders were going to draft him. But the Raiders drafted Don Mosbar from USC instead, offensive linemen from USC, who happened to have been when they drafted him and the Raiders didn't know this according to Charlie. He was in the hospital. And so Charlie's convinced that if the Raiders had known Mosbar had been in the hospital, they would have taken Daryl Green. And so I said, who would you have taken?

Had Daryl Green not been there? And he said, my memory is that we would have taken Henry Ellard, who eventually ended up playing for the organization. Ellard went in the second round in the fourth pick to the L.A. Rams. But I thought that was an interesting story. And I just, I remember that draft and remember asking Bobby about that quarterback draft many, many times. and he said, you know, all those quarterbacks and Marino falling, it didn't phase us. He said, I knew and felt that Marino was going to be great. I did. But we had Joe Thysman,

and he still had several years left, and he was a Super Bowl champion winning quarterback. We weren't going to take a quarterback back then, even though I think today, people would think differently, you know, about drafting a quarterback in that spot. Marino fell all the way, obviously, to Miami, and the last two picks of that first round, Hall of Fame or Hall of Famer. and Marino and Daryl Green. The other thing I wanted to say was the 87 team that won the Super Bowl was a Joe Gibbs, Bobby Bethard, really, creation because that was the strike shortened season with replacement players.

And Washington was more prepared to go out and find replacement players who were good enough to win games while the, veterans were striking, and that's exactly what Washington did that year. They won enough games. They got into the Super Bowl. They won a Super Bowl. You know, that was everybody always, Washington's, two of Washington's three Super Bowls were during strike-shorten seasons. Some people think that that's a knock or a criticism. I don't. I think it's the opposite. Absolutely. It's just the opposite. I mean, it's, it's more.

more difficult to succeed under those circumstances with the uncertainty involved. Absolutely. That shows how that's a testament to the strength of the organization. That's what that is. I mean. And the giants, remember the giants were defending Super Bowl champions. They went 0 and 3 in the replacement player game. Right.

The Redskins went 3 and 0. The Redskins came in. The Redskins during that stretch, it was more than 3-0, wasn't it? I remember the Cardinals' first game with Ed Rupert and Anthony Allen. I remember that combination. I remember the Cowboys game that they won, which, you know, basically a movie was made out of. I thought it was four games.

I'm looking this up. You might be right. The Cardinals, they won 28-21, then they beat the Giants 38 to 12, and then, yeah, this would have been the last one. You're right. it was three games. Monday night, October 19. They beat a Cowboys team that had their players back. That had a number of players across the picket line and play.

Danny White, Tony Dorset, I think Randy White, they had a number of their key players back. Two Tall Jones and Washington beat them 13 to 7 with Tony Robinson at quarterback that night, the ex-Tennessee player. Yeah. Yeah, I'm looking at the box score right now. so interesting.

13 to 7. And it was all replacements. And Danny White, Tony Dorset, Mike Renfro, on offense, defense.

They had two-tall Jones, Randy White, back there. Cowboys still had many of their players out, but a lot of their, a lot of their veterans crossed the picket line and came back.

Yes. That was incredible. And then, you know, Bobby, I remember, worked for NBC. see for a little bit. He was okay on television, but he wanted to get back into football,

and he took the Chargers. He was the architect behind the Chargers' 94 AFC championship with Stan Humphreys, a quarterback that he had drafted in Washington as the starting quarterback with Bobby Ross as the coach. And, and yeah. And, you know, I think most people know this story. If you don't, you know, Dan Snyder, when he hired Spurrier, I think it was Spurrier. because that would have been the, yeah, it was the year after Marty. Dan Snyder reached out, offered Bobby Beatherd the job. And Beatherd, you know, there are a lot of stories as to why he didn't take it. Ultimately, he was smart not to take it to, you know, to stare clear of Dan Snyder.

But I do remember being excited there for a moment, you know, that Bobby Betherd was going to be back. There's so many different stories about that, that Dan Snyder really didn't want Bobby Betherd. more of a courtesy offer because, you know, a lot of people said you have to have a general manager. But Dan really wanted, you know, he wanted the Serato Snyder brain trust to continue without, you know, without any real expertise. He wanted to call the shots, absolutely. Exactly. You know, look, Bobby Beatherd was a genius. And it shows you in all sports.

the difficulty of projecting talent. You know, baseball ultimately. I mean, because Bobby Betherd was as good as there was, okay, in football, and he picked Ryan Leif. I was going to just mention that, yep. Yeah, which really shows you what an inexact science it is. It's more of an art than a science of evaluating talent, no matter how many variables and tests you run these players through.

You don't know how they're going to perform in the moment. You're trying to project how they're going to perform. Baseball, you usually have to do it four or five years in the future. It's really hard. Really hard. Yeah. I was going to mention Ryan Leif because I remember one of my last interviews with Bobby. We spent a lot of time on that 19.

1998 draft with San Diego holding the number two pick in that draft. And I said, you know, first of all, who did you have rated higher? And he said, oh, we had Peyton Manning rated higher. And I said, so what happened with Ryan Leaf? And he said, there were concerns. But he was a quarterback and he was incredibly gifted. And he said, you know, there were, you know, a few personality concerns. And it was the biggest mistake that he made. And he admitted that. And I remember specifically asking him, when did you know that you had made a mistake? And he said the first day he was in the locker room with the other players, the first day.

He said it was a disheartening that mistake. He said it was a disaster. You know, when Bobby was inducted into the Hall of Fame, and I found this quote earlier, Ryan Leif, who is really, by all accounts, you know, I think he went to jail for a while. he had all kinds of issues, has really turned his life around. I believe that's true. I think that's true. Because I think HBO Sports, the Bryant Gumble show, did a thing on him like two years ago.

Or somebody did. But I found this quote from Ryan Leif when Bobby got inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2018. He wrote, quote, congratulations, Mr. Bethard. You gave me my dream. And in return, I almost cost you the Hall of Fame. So glad it didn't. well deserved. That's really

I don't remember that quote at the time. I don't remember that quote, but I found that quote this morning. That's incredibly mature and self-deprecating of Ryan Leif to admit what a disaster it was to pick him at number two

overall. But yeah, I mean, Bethard, you know, legend and just you know, you had dealings with him. You talked to him a lot too for stories and different things. And he just was such a great guy and had incredible memories of stories and different things from when he was here. And he loved Washington, loved his time in Washington. And he had a lot of great stories I remember, too, about Jack Kent Cook. You know,

Mr. Cook and some of the stories. He used to have to sit there. When Cook would come to practice, Bobby would have to sit in the chair next to him and listen to Jack hold court. You know, Gibbs could get up and coach, but Bethard had to sit there with Cook and listen to him. Do you know, that just reminded me of one thing. So, as you know, I mean, broadcasting for me was kind of a second life professionally,

but the first job I had was working for Steve Buchance as a producer at Channel 5. I was only in the business for like a year and a half, two years, and then I moved on to other things before coming back to broadcasting, you know, years later. But I had the responsibility at training camp to do, you know, to go out and get a lot of sound from various, you know, people and players and, you know, up in Carlisle. And I remember Bobby Beatherd was there and we were going to do a story on Bobby Beatherd. and I had, you know, I don't know, six or seven questions. And after like the second or third question, Bobby said,

was that answer okay? I think you're kind of looking for something else. And I said, and I can't remember the actual specifics. I said, yeah, we were going to do a story about this. And we're going to, he said, okay, let me, let me go back. I've got the perfect, I've got the perfect quote that'll work perfectly in your story. It was incredible. Like, I mean, like he, he kind, I mean, he was that.

helpful. And we would have figured out this story without it, but he said, asked me about that, and then he gave this answer. And I just looked at him and I said, that's exactly what we were looking for. Perfect. And it wasn't that he was making it up. He just wanted to be helpful. Anyway, rest in peace, Bobby Beather. You'll never, ever, ever be forgotten in this town. Here's the way he operated. And I love when people are like this. Okay. He was fearless. Now it's like he wasn't afraid of you. He wasn't afraid of the guy down the street what he would think. He wasn't afraid if what he would say would somehow.

There are people in this business that operate in fear all the time. And this guy was so confident in his abilities and not cocky, but confident in his abilities that he just didn't think that expressing himself, truthfully, for the most part, would hurt him in the end because he was Bobby Bessert. Right. Yeah, I don't think there would have been, at any point, him making a statement and then a need for the team to retract it and put out a second statement. Yeah. He wouldn't have allowed it.

But, you know, he also had that West Coast surfer personality. You know, that's where he grew up. And he had very much, you know, the blonde, you know, always. tan, Southern California was really home to him. I mean, think about how many players, I haven't done this. I should have done this before. But it seemed like there were always players he was taking from San Diego State in particular. Like, you know, from that conference out there, like he just believed in West Coast players for some reason.

But he was, he had an eye for talent, that's for sure. All right. Let's talk some Tom Brady. Let's talk some 2-2-22 a year later, and your column will get to all that right after these words from a few of our sponsors. You asked for it, guys, they listened. My Bookie has designed a unique deposit bonus that lets you cash in and cash out quickly. This is a unique deposit bonus for sports betters who want to focus on what to bet and not worry about sweating the payout. So here's how it works.

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of the national anthem to the color of gatorade dumped on the winning coach. I can't tell you, Tommy can't tell you who will win the Super Bowl, but I can tell you that the best place to wager is at my bookie. That's my bookie.orgie. Bet anything, anytime, anywhere with my bookie. All right, I promised yesterday that I would wait for you to talk about Tom Brady in more detail. First of all, do you believe him that he's retiring for good? Yeah, I do.

I do. I mean, I just think that, I just think even he must recognize. how embarrassing would be to come back yet one more time and how it would hurt his credibility. I just think it would. Now, it didn't bother Ray Leonard to do it, but boxing is different. You know, so, no, I think this is it.

I think it's it, too. I do, too. I think that this is it. And I don't, you know, let's face it, he should have done it after the Super Bowl, with Tampa. That would have been the time to have done it. I'm shocked that he didn't do it then. The funny thing is, and I said this yesterday,

I believe I said this yesterday, is that last year when they had a good season and he had a really good, you know, they beat Philadelphia in the playoffs and they came back and he was brilliant in that comeback against the Rams and then Stafford hits cup on that bomb, you know, and the Rams move on and the Bucks go, home. I thought this year, I don't know why Tampa was such a mess. I don't think it was because of him.

You know, if you want to say that you saw a lot more ground balls and you saw him start to decline, I can agree with some of that for sure. But I still, at the end of the season, and I said this a few weeks ago, I still think he's a top 10 to top 14, 15 quarterback in the NFL, you know? And if he had made the decision to go somewhere like San Francisco, I think that they probably would have won the Super Bowl or they certainly would have been a major Super Bowl contender. They were this year, you know, with what they had. With him, you know, they might, you know, they might end up winning it all. And so I had a feeling when the season ended that he was actually going to come back and end up in San Francisco or Miami. So it was a little bit surprising because I thought

there were opportunities there for him next year to win another one. You know, in San Francisco would have been the number one spot and him going back to the Bay Area. But obviously, he's got young kids. He just went through obviously a divorce. And so it's fine. So I agree with you. I think this is final two.

But it's funny that you bring up Ray Leonard or Ali or any of the fighters that kept coming back, you know, kind of over and over again. I mean, McEnroe, one of my all-time favorite athletes, kind of retired and then came back a couple of times because they just couldn't stay away. And Brady's always struck me as the guy that can't stay away from, it's not the limelight. It's the relationships. It's the locker room. It's the competition. I don't know what else he has in his life.

Now, he's going to go into the broadcast booth. He'll be the number one Fox team next year, and he's going to make a hell of a lot of money doing it. but I do wonder if a really good team lost their quarterback in the preseason if he'd think about it, you know, when we get to August. And there will be plenty of discussion, you know, when we get there if he hasn't come back, which I don't think he will, about him still potentially being, you know, a possibility. So I said yesterday, Tommy, he's the greatest winner in the history of football, in my opinion. He's the all-time goat when it comes to being a winner at the position. But I also said that I don't know if he's the greatest quarterback.

Now, he's on my Mount Rushmore of the four greatest quarterbacks of all time. But it's so much more about the winning, weighted on winning, than it is about kind of the eye test. Like Dan Marino for me is one of the greatest quarterbacks I have personally ever watched. he went to one Super Bowl and didn't win it. It doesn't change my opinion of Dan Marino. If you watch Dan Marino, you know how great he was and how different he was. He threw for 5,000 yards when nobody other than Dan Fouts was throwing for 4,000. He was way ahead of his time.

And he had everything. He had the arm. He had the accuracy. He had the release. He had the footwork he had at all, except that he wasn't a mobile quarterback. He was competitive, and he was just on teams that were just average around him, completely average around him. In Brady's case, I don't, Brady's not the talent that Marino was. Brady isn't the talent that Elway was.

Brady's not the talent that Rogers is. But I still consider him to be the goat because of the winning. but I feel like if I had an upcoming season with a good football team that needed a quarterback in his prime, Brady would not be my first choice. That's the way I would describe what I think about Brady. Yeah, there's different discussions, like in baseball, you know, would you rather have, I don't know, let's say Greg Maddox or Sandy Kofax. where Maddox or Clemens Yeah well Maddox and Clemens I don't count Clemens because he was a cheater

But you're talking about somebody Supremely Talented versus what Maddox did He did it with his mind half you know a lot of it was No I'm talking about Talking about watching When you watch Kofax in his prime Most people would say there's never been a better picture in history Okay

Okay Okay but the accomplishments don't add up to the greatest of all time. So, I mean, the best quarterback you ever saw is different from who you think the best quarterback is of all time because, I mean, you can't just be a comet, you know? I mean, you have to be a planet. You have to have sustained life.

You have to have a career, I think. Longgetivity counts, especially in football. In football, there, people underestimate about Kirk Cousins. It's how he's out there every game. playing for, you know, he never misses the start. And like our friend Doc Walker likes to say, the most important ability is availability. So I think it counts to be out there and have a long career.

Brady is the greatest quarterback of all time. He's on my Mount Rushmore. Okay. And it's because of what he's accomplished. I mean, if I talked about, if I talked about the best quarterbacks I'd ever seen, I got to talk about the guy who's playing in the Super Bowl. Pat Mahom.

I know. I know. You know? I got to talk about Joe Namich. Okay? People will look at Namath and say, well, he had so many more interceptions than completions than touchdowns. But he threw for over 4,000 yards in 1968, and nobody did that until 1979 again,

okay, when Dan Fouts did it. So, I mean, Namit is that one of the best quarterbacks I've ever seen, but I certainly wouldn't put him as one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time on that short list. And Mahomes, I would put, I mean, I think Mahomes, I think Mahomes, you know, if we're going to do the Mount Rushmore, I'll give you my Mount Rushmore. And Mahomes, if they had a fifth place, Mahomes would be there. And he'll be fourth place probably real soon. All right, well, first of all, the longevity comment is so true. I mean, the man played until he was 45 years old at a high level every single year.

The final game of his career, he threw 66 passes. Okay, so, I mean, this wasn't George Blanda out there, you know, at 45 is a kicker and a third string quarterback. And I think Blanda probably played until he was 48 or 49, you would know. But I mean, the longevity part of it will never, ever be matched. The winning, I don't think, will ever be matched. As we talk about Mahomes, I could see Mahomes getting three, four, not seven. Look, it took Brady some luck to get seven. They won, you know, on venitary field goals, you know, in the Super Bowl over the Rams,

the Super Bowl over the Panthers. They got lucky at the end of the Seattle game when they threw Russell Wilson threw the pick. And at the same time, they could have won both of the giant Super Bowls that they lost. I mean, David Tyrese catch was, you know, pretty fortunate. So I think I remember who your Mount Rushmore of quarterbacks are, but give them to me.

Okay, I was going to say Brady. I'm going to say Montana, Unitas, and Sammy Ball. I'm just going to remember a guy who accomplished so much and won several NFL championships when the league was in its early stages. I'm not going to forget that guy.

But I've got to tell you, the Holmes could knock Unitas off. Real easy. Can I get you to give me a Mount Rushmore from like 1960 on, at least 60 so you can keep you but you knock ball off there? Are you going to put Mahomes in

there right now? If I told you you can't have ball? Yeah. You're going to put Mahomes in there right now. Yes, I did. Look, I've gone on record. We've talked about this before. He's the best. I've never seen anyone play a position like these plays before. Right.

So what does that mean? Is that bullshit? Well, you just, you did talk about some longevity and it can't be a comment. and right now he's a comet. Right. Yes, he is. But he's the best I've ever seen. So Brady, for me, he's on there.

Again, he's on there because of his winning, his longevity, his greatness at the position. Trust me, I'm not minimizing how Grady was playing the position. If he had won just three Super Bowls, and, you know, instead of seven, he'd still be in consideration. He was that great. But the other three for me are Elway Marino. And I mean, this is where it gets hard for me because I do think that Aaron Rogers, before watching Patrick Mahomes, I think Rogers and Elway watching them play the position are the two best that I've ever seen play the position.

That there's just something about the way they've played the position that is different than a lot of other people. You know, Marino, it's not that he's my number two, Elway's my number two. Elway was my number one forever. And I still think that Elway elevated a team around him to Super Bowl appearances that had no business going to Super Bowls. You know, time and time again.

And I'm glad that he finally did win him, even though he won those Super Bowls with a, you know, with a Mike Shanahan run game and Terrell Davis, et cetera. but I'm going to put Rogers on there as my number four, even though Montana is obviously really close. And I think Montana also in the winning category is right there kind of with Brady too. And Bradshaw, I would not put in the same category of Montana or Brady because I feel like the Steelers Super Bowls, their four Super Bowls in the 70s, Tommy, were defensive lead.

and I know the last two, they were great offensively with Swan and Stalworth and Harris, etc. But they just were so dominant defensively in a decade where, you know, defense did win championships. Yes. But I'll go. I agree with that. I'll go Brady-Elway-Marino. It's really close for me between Rogers and Montana. And Manning is there.

Manning's in the conversation as well. The problem I've always had with Peyton Manning is Peyton Manning. is Peyton Manning, and I know you could say this to a certain degree about Aaron Rogers, even though he won a lot of playoff games with incredible kind of drives at the end of playoff games. But man, Manning came up short a lot in the postseason, you know, as a one seed, you know, and as a favorite. And I know Rogers has too. But I'll throw Rogers in as my fourth.

Brady Elway Marino Rogers. And you've got Brady, Montana. Montana, Unitas, and Mahomes. Montana and Mahomes. Yeah. All right. I mean, I got to talk to talk. I'm going to, if I'm going to talk to talk and say he plays the position like no one I've ever seen before,

I got to walk the walk. And as hard as it is, I mean, if he's the best I've ever seen, he's got to be on Mount Rushmore. Yeah, but. Now, it's a good point. He's a comet. Right now. But he's close to being a planet. He's close to being a planet.

Yeah, but right now as a planet, he's more Mercury Venus, not Jupiter or Saturn at this point in terms of size. But he's headed in that direction. Well, in my solar system, all planets account. You've always lived in your own solar system. All right, when we come back, we'll finish up with a year ago on the brand and Tommy's update on his cruise story. We'll get to those things right after these words from a few of our sponsors. Let's not make folks wait. Let's not drag it out, Jason.

What is the new team name? Doug, what is it? We are the commanders. We are the commanders. The commanders. The Washington Commanders. Yeah, that was Craig Melvin from NBC with Doug Williams and Jason Wright

and John Allen on the Today Show set a year ago. 2-22, one year ago today. the unveiling of the new name and all of the associated branding, uniforms, et cetera, the crest, the crest that they got wrong. That was a year ago. We'll have some thoughts on that here in a moment. But Tommy, tell us about Shelley's backroom. Well, you know, the last time I talked about Shelley's on the last podcast,

I talked about the great cigar menu that they have in their continued quest, like us here on the Kevin Sheehan show podcast, to have a menu of excellence. and now I'm going to talk about the drink menu a little bit, and I just noticed this now. On the drink menu, I'm sure it's on all their menus, and maybe I just hadn't noticed it before. Shelly says they are D.C.'s civilized cigars having. And I like that. I think it's true. Yes, I think it is.

And any place that would have me, I guess, you can question the civilization, but they say that are D.C. cigar tavern. And that is the way they operate. It's basically an oasis in civilization of the city. Let me talk about some of the drinks. They've got tremendous single malt whiskey, single malt scotch, they've got Japanese whiskey, blended scotch whiskey, flavored rum. And actually they have a private locker of drinks for the discriminating. whiskey aficionado. Glenn Litt, McClellan, Johnny Walker, Blue,

Jameson, all high-quality stuff that you have to ask for in order to get. So this is, if you watch, if you watch people on TV in movies or on a TV show that are in a discriminating first-class place,

it would be like Shelly's. That's the kind of place it is. It's open to everybody. The doors are open to everybody. So I urge you to come and see for yourself. Shelly's back room, 1331 F Street, Northwest in the district. Before we get to 2222 a year later, tell me your update on your column in the cruise ship fiasco with the team. Well, I mean, right, I did a follow-up in part because this guy wanted to give his side

the story. The guy being what's his name again? Neybom. The guy Jeffrey Neyholm, the owner of First Class Cruises. You know, and I pointed out and I mentioned it in the column that he had an opportunity to make his case

before the initial column came out, but he said he didn't have time. And so he said, I apologize for that, but hopefully since I'm giving you the facts here, you can print that. So these facts, these are facts according to him.

So a lot of it is his side of the story in terms of his past business dealings, still all explanations more than actual proof and real questionable practices. But the real key thing here for the commanders is he said, quote, the commanders said that they were dropping out of the deal because of significant changes made by first-class cruises to the original offering. including the cruise line destination and dates. They all told me they are full of shit. I have proof of that.

That is a false story. So what does he say the reasons were? Well, but this is what he says. I'm going to decide very soon if I'm going to give you the real scoop. You know how these guys like this operate. Well, the real scoop is there was no response to this thing. That's the real scoop. is my guess. They just didn't have

enough of a response to make it economically viable to do it. That's probably right, but he says, I will decide soon and have every email backup everything I will tell you. Then he sent me an email follow-up, saying the

statement made by the commanders is not accurate and will be rephrased shortly by the commanders. Once it has been reworded to actually tell the reason why the fan cruise is not moving forward, I'll let you No. Well, there was no response from the commanders. There was no, there was no rewording of their answer. And I asked them for a response, and they said, we stand by our statement, a spokesperson said.

Okay. Do you think this is the last of your columns on this, or is there another one to come with more detail from Naham? I don't know. We'll have to see what he said. What if he gets back to you with kind of stuff that seems a little suspicious and isn't very exciting anyway? It's all a little suspicious, Kevin, that's the whole point. Yeah, I understand. I think that's... My next line in the column is, let's face it, credibility is hard to come by in this story is lifeboats on the Titanic. Yeah.

Did you ask him if response, consumer response, was the reason that they wanted to bail. He wouldn't tell me. He was going to give me the real scoop later, he said. I just can't imagine. This is not a team as Eric Will Missilebrook, as we've talked about him a few times in the last few weeks, you know, wants to think of the organization that he worked for for about an hour and a half as some global brand. No, it's not a global brand. It's not even a local brand. It's not even a local brand. local brand. You can't start branching out into pop culture, music, fashion, and food, and cruise, you know, in cruises when you have won one, when you've won one playoff game in 17 years.

You know, and by the way, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, zero playoff games they've won in 17 years. That's right. Their last playoff win came 17 years ago. That's hard to expand your brand and to start selling out cruise line, you know, trips for your fan base when your fan base is disgusted with you for the most part. The thing is, though, Tommy, in all seriousness, they've been able to pull off some of these events in the past, and I'm talking about pre the last couple of years, because they always knew when they went to certain places, you know, we always made fun. And I know that these were good intentioned events, and some of them were charitable events. But, you know, whether it was the Harvest Fest or the, you know, the draft day party, they knew that there was a certain segment of their

fan base that just didn't care about the losing. They didn't care about how much they fucked things up on a daily basis. And they were, you know, they were going to be there for them. So maybe they thought with this cruise thing that those same people that would pay $35 for a beer for a draft day party at an empty stadium would somehow, you know, you know, put together the funds to go on this cruise, on this cruise, with the former players that I'm sure were really excited to go on this thing, too. I mean, the gist of this, the gist of what I wrote, why I wrote this at the first place,

is to really, not that they need exposition, but I don't think that we should just take it for granted that this is the way they operate, to expose once more. how pathetic a business operation this team is, that this information was available to them at their fingertips, and yet they chose to do business with this guy. I am surprised, though, that the NFL, you know, that this guy apparently screwed over the Philadelphia Eagles, right?

He had the bad experience with the Eagles. That was in your first column, and wasn't there a situation with the Chiefs as well? No. Okay. Now with the Chiefs. Supposedly they have a cruise coming up with the Dolphins. Let's see if that happens or not.

Yeah, so if they screwed over the Eagles, I'm surprised the NFL didn't have, they don't have a list of vendors not to work with because of previous bad experiences. And maybe they do. Why would you think, yeah, why would you think that the commanders would be aware of that list? Right, of course. Okay. All right, let's just finish up talking about the brand a year later. I'll make this really short.

I understand the challenges that they had. And I compared it this morning on radio. Like, their chances to succeed in rebranding the franchise were like the chances that a number 15 seed was going to win the NCAA tournament. Like, they really were a 15 or a 16 seed in this thing. They just didn't have much of a chance. They were never, ever going to please the majority. And really, here's the bottom long. line. Nothing they do is going to work from a business standpoint as long as Dan Snyder still

owns the team. Now, we believe that that's going to change. And so they never really have a chance to do anything great from a business standpoint because of Snyder. They're just, most people don't want to do business with Dan Snyder. Now, from a rebranding standpoint, my personal view, I said this a year ago, I feel like an expansion team landed in the, in, in, place of the team that I loved and grew up with and had passion for, even though that passion was waning. Chris Cooley, who said, I'll have no reaction to this, had a visceral reaction when he saw the name and the uniforms and the new branding. And he said, that's not my team. John Riggins, who doesn't care about anything, you know, when it comes to, you know, branding and

the team and the whole thing had a very visceral reaction. to that's not the team I played for. So a lot of people that didn't even think they would have a reaction had one. And that was my reaction. That's not my team. I mean, I don't mind the W on the helmet. It's about the only thing that I don't mind. I just want Dan to go.

I want the new owners to come in. I want them to find people, competent people, people really understand what this customer base wants. maybe also what a future customer base will want. That's obviously important, and I understand that. I hope they get rid of all of this that they created a year ago. I think it's bad, but that's a subjective thing. I'm just telling you how I feel. I know it was hard to come up with, but all of this,

we're going to rely on the fans. The fans wanted something like Red Wolves or Red Hogs, or they didn't want commanders. And I hope it gets dumped when the new owner takes over. I hope it all gets dumped, and this was just a one-year thing. But that's how I feel. None of this feels like my team. Winning, you know, at some point, will create a new fan base and create new people getting excited about it. I don't know how I'll react to winning.

I really don't. But a year later, it doesn't look any better to me. It looks the same way that I felt a year ago, which is this. is a mess and it doesn't feel like anything that I rooted for for, you know, a half a century. It just doesn't. Look, what you said about the unveiling, about the rebranding is right. It was a no-win situation. They were putting, you could argue, lipstick on a pig, but they didn't even try to put

lipstick on it. They went to basically, they bought lipstick on the corner from a guy selling lipstick and said, here, this will work. Let's do this. It was the presentation that was almost as insulting as the rebranding itself. Yeah, they messed all that up. It was the lack of creativity. It was the lack of, I mean, you didn't feel like it was a big thing, like they were, like that they were trying to hide it almost, and maybe they were. But, I mean, it was, what it's legitimately able to criticize them for is the pathetic, low-level lack of execution, but what should have been a major event.

Agreed. And it didn't feel that way. I think they've done that with almost everything that they've done in these special events. The execution. You know, it's one thing to understand intellectually going in based on having an understanding of the history of this organization, the loss of the name, the owner still being present, that these are real mountain, very tall mountains to climb. These are incredible. projects, incredible challenges, and that it's, you know, I'd hate to have that job, you know, trying to rebrand this team. It was, it was not ever going to be easy. But the execution of it was poor. And the, you know, basically, what you do is we know this sucks, but we're going to

make you feel like this is the biggest thing you've ever seen. Yeah, I mean, just, just what we played coming into this segment, the today's show thing, it was just, it was truly embarrassing. I mean, there was no, it's like truly they were winging it the whole time. And remember the other part, and we didn't play this, is, you know, the Snyder's on stage with Thysman and other people and everybody's milling around and nobody knows what's going on. The whole thing was an embarrassing day. But regardless of the execution, which we both agree on, the ultimate result is for me, and I think for a lot of you, it just feels like it's something different. It feels like it's a different team.

It's not the team that we, you know, that we loved for so long. And we talk about the football and we suspend the reality when it's football season. And, you know, there are players out there that I like a lot. There are coaches out there that I respect a lot. but really the only thing that matters right now is that Dan sells the team. And then we can see what happens after that. And then at least there's a fighting chance to get people that have exited or people that are hanging on by a thread to come back. But they're not coming back with Dan still here.

That's why the whole conversation about Mary Joe White and all of these investigations and lawsuits, and it just to me is it's insignificant. It's not insignificant to those that were impacted. I'm not minimizing that. But it's insignificant or it should be insignificant to the league and to the Snyders because the bottom line is it doesn't matter what he did or didn't do. This market isn't viable with him in it. Period.

It just isn't. It'll never realize its potential, which is huge with him here owning the team. And by the way, even if it realized some of it, that would require big time winning, which can't happen with him being here. And not the accidental winning season either. Right. Not the comet of a season. Right. All right. You got anything else? I got nothing else for you, boss.

All right. We'll be back tomorrow.