The Press Box - How to Be a Sports Radio Host With Ryen Russillo

Episode Date: October 8, 2021

Bryan is joined by The Ringer’s Ryen Russillo to discuss his career as a sports radio host dating back to his time at 1510 The Zone in Boston (1:53), his transition from local to national radio (42:54), and the differences between hosting a radio show and hosting a podcast (52:06).  Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Ryen Russillo Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Listen up all you New York fans. Veteran New York sports talk host, John Dostrompsky gives his unique take on all the big stories in the Big Apple and beyond, including guest conversations, gambling picks, and reactions from you, the listener. Check out New York, New York with John Dostromsky on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis and producer Erica Servantes of The Ringer here. Welcome to the Friday edition of the press box. So I've been brainstorming ideas for our rebooted Friday. pod. And one idea I had was a how-to series of shows. It's pretty simple. We get a cool media person to come on

and tell us how they do their job. We can do how to be a music critic or how to be a war correspondent. And knowing me, you know, the job doesn't have to have gravitas. I'd love to know how to be a TV meteorologist. But for the first edition of how-to, let's focus on a media job I'm really interested in. sports radio host. And we've got the perfect person to explain it. The ringer's very own, Ryan Rosillo. Now, before he graduated to the ringer, Ryan did national sports radio for ESPN

and local shows in Boston before that. And when I listened to his pod on this network, I think he's great on sports. I think he's incredibly funny. But I'm always amazed at his pure vocal talent, especially the way Ryan can talk by himself without a co-host for long periods of time

and absolutely hold your attention. Do you know how hard that is? Do you know how incredibly dull a one host podcast can be when it's not done by a professional? And speaking of which, I should probably cut this intro off right here. Here's How to Be a Sports Radio host

with Ryan Rosillo. All right, Ryan, what first got you interested in sports radio? I didn't really want to be on the air, I'll admit, in the beginning of all of this. When I was younger, younger, I thought, okay, you know, maybe being in sports would be cool. I've always told the story about when I play pickup hoops in my backyard, you know, just by myself and shoot around, I would call the game in my head.

And I would keep track of stats in these imaginary Sixers teams and I'd be on the team. And I would do all this different stuff. And I'd like talk about different storylines in my head. So it's kind of crazy now thinking back on it. It's like, wow, you really were interested. But back, you know, I'd gone to Vermont. I graduated. I wasn't a good student until all my friends are gone.

And I'd taken some semesters off, work in construction because I was. broke all the time. And when I got to, to the, you know, the finish line of college, I knew what I didn't want to do. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I knew what I didn't want to do. And so, you know, I'm bartending. I'm watching an obsessive amount of red socks. I'm reading everything. You know, the Sunday Globe, the Sunday Boston Globe is the Bible for guys like me. You know, you just couldn't wait to get your hands on and read everybody's notes section, you know, because that was the only information we had back then. The internet was still just of new as far as like getting info and you know peter gamus diamond notes like you just couldn't wait

to read that and i'd read both the harold and globe religiously and you know a couple of my friends as i'm bartending were like look you really like sports like guys like it but you really like it you know maybe you should just try to find a job in sports i was like the only thing i'd really want to do though is is working in front office like i'd want to be in a decision making part of it i wouldn't want to work for the PR or i wouldn't want to work in sales i wouldn't want to do those things like i'd want to work on the sports side of things so i remember i would go to barns and or Borders, which I used to love because there was one close to my apartment at Burlington. And I'd buy those like sporting news scattering report books on baseball teams.

I don't know if you remember those. I don't even know if they make them anymore. I do. And I would sit there with a highlighter and go to like each, I'd watch Sunday night baseball with Morgan and Miller. And then I'd watch the game. And then I'd highlight like who was it bad or whatever pitcher was going. And I was keeping my own notes.

I mean, it was really weird. And so I would watch the draft and like write stuff down in a weird. in a weird way. So, you know, there's a longer version of the story, but I ended up working for a minor league baseball team that was the AA Red Sox in Trent, New Jersey. It was the last year they were with the Red Sox affiliation because then they switched all around geographically

to what actually made sense. They were the Yankees in 03. And when I interviewed, I just said, you know, I want to work for a team. And they were like, well, in minor league baseball, the Red Sox run the team part of this. You know, you're not going to do anything. So you can do sales.

I go, I don't want to do sales. If I want to do sales, I'd get a better sales job. job and not the Trent and Thunder because at this point I'm 26 with a degree. So it's kind of like, what have you been doing, man? I'm like, well, bartending and, you know, breaking up college fights. And so the guy was like, look, you know, it shows that you did some some internship with a TV station in Burlington. I was like, yeah, a couple years ago, I did a sports internship with the CAX, you know, there's a Channel 3 affiliate. They're like, do you want to call the games? I was like, what? Like, why would you do that? Like, I couldn't believe it.

And they were like, well, you know, we've got a main guy. He's the main guy, but we'll let you call the middle innings. You know, you'll get some experience. You'll get some on air stuff. It'll look good on your resume, but you can sell for us when you're not doing that. So, you know, a little give and take. And I just was like, why would you do that? Why would you put me on the air? I've never done it before. And they go, well, no one listens and you have a deep voice. So he'll be fine. So I remember telling my father, he's like, there's no way that's true. He's like, Ryan, are you lying to me? There's no way. And I go, I don't understand it either. So I was like, well, look, I guess I'll just take this. But my whole plan was, all right, whatever, I'll call a few innings, but I'll make

contacts. Every scout, every assistant general manager, every Red Sox front office guy, everyone that comes through Trenton, I'm going to find time and bug them and make contacts. And at that point, I was like, I'll work for a baseball team. But, you know, there were two things happening. The Ivy League guys are starting to take over all the analytics stuff. And I wasn't necessarily some brilliant analytics kid. And then everybody was trying to get these jobs back then, man. I mean, and then I was trying to get a sponsor from a team to get scout school. And I still remember, like, Ben Charrington, who ended up becoming the GM after Theo for the Red Sox, he was really nice to me. He came through Trenton. We met a couple times. And I kept telling him, like, I really don't want to be on the air.

I really, like, I don't see the point. Like, ooh, this guy's good. This guy sucks. Like, I don't want to do that for this in my life. Because, you know, you're pretty good at it. And I was terrible. And it was just him being nice and being like, you're not going to get it on here. You're not going to get a front office job with the Red Sox, dude. Like, you're not going to get a front office job. And then he was nice enough that we did have a meeting at Fenway Park when I moved to Boston the following year in 2003. I moved to Boston. I was pursuing everything I could pursue. I bugged Charington again. And he was nice enough. He's like, hey, come meet. For whatever reason, I memorized all 40 of their draft picks as if that was going to come up in conversation.

It's the dumbest. It's one of the dumbest. I've done a lot of dumb prep work. That's one of the all-timers. and we met at the third baseline in Fenway during the day and handed my resume and my cover letter and he was just like, yeah, he was just being nice. And I said, you know, it must be an amazing. We looked out at like out in the park and he goes, it's an awesome office if you can ever make it here. Yeah, you're right. Like if you can ever make it at this point, it's incredible. So then I was on the year for 20 years. So there you go. And what was the moment you decided you liked being. on the air? I still wanted the first few years.

I think I was better at the basketball stuff where I started realizing, like, I actually think I have a knack for the basketball stuff more than I do baseball and certainly not football. So I didn't, I started going to Portsmouth, Virginia and in Orlando and I would go to the draft camps and I would try to do the same exact thing while I was on the air. So I would go and be like, all right, I'm going to get in front office because I really didn't want to be on the air. I just, I just didn't. But, you know, three, I went from bartending in 2000.

2001 to hosting a solo radio show at ESPN in 2006. So our timelines are always different. You can have a plan and then it seems like it's taken a lot longer. But the cool thing about all of this stuff is that every now and then you get surprised. Now all the timelines like totally caught up. So when I was in Boston doing, you know, talk shows, it was basically, hey, I guess I'll do this until I can get a front office job because this isn't so bad, right? I mean, I wasn't making any money financially. It was pretty tough because the Trenton job was a disaster.

Every week I showed up to work, I was going more in the red. And, you know, Todd McShay, who's a dear friend. I had met him in Boston. I always read all the Scouts Inc stuff that he was doing for sporting news. That's before Scouts Inc. got bought by ESPN. So this is, you know, 0,3,04. And I remember in Boston, you know, we were a sporting news affiliate. it and now people are starting to say I was good.

So it was kind of weird. They were like, hey, this guy's pretty good. You heard this minor league. It was funny too because I was so bad at the minor league play-by-play that I went to Boston. Do you hear this awesome play-by-play guy? He's pretty good at, you know, he's pretty good at this talk show thing. And I thought I'd be good at it. You know, I cared.

That was the thing. It was like I really cared. So I watched everything. And I got, you know, it took probably too many years to figure out how to make your points and it'd be good on the air. but wherever it was, like the right people were telling me, hey, you're pretty good. Like, you're kind of figuring this out a little bit quicker than everybody else. And so Sporting News wanted to keep me at the Boston affiliate, even though no one could ever hear us.

And I'll never, this is one of the early lessons of getting fucked over by this industry. I had a couple other offers. And there was another station that was going to go to all sports. And sporting news was like, what's the number? And my agent was like, look, he's got to get to. I mean, I wasn't making any money, man. Not, I mean, bad. My car got repoed once.

in the parking lot while I was on the air. Again, that's my fault. But I mean, that's the kind of situation was that. And it was, it was $100,000 a year. So at 29 years old, 100, 115, 125 through your contract, so 340. And I'm thinking, oh, my God, like, this is amazing. You know, and if you know anything about on air and the contract stuff, that's still very much in the low end for a major market. But at that point, it was now like, oh, my God, not only can I pay my bills, I can save money. I can be an adult. These things are great. So I sign off on everything. I don't even really interview with the other two places. And four weeks go by, there's no raise every two weeks. And I'm like, what the hell's going on? And I'll never forget the guy from the sporting news.

I call. I go, what's going on in the contract, man? I'm getting real weird feeling here. And he actually waved a bunch of papers over the phone and said, no, it's all here. We're just, you know, crossing the T's dot in the eyes. I swear this is the contract I'm waving. Not the globe. This is the contract. I'm waving. Can't you hear the waving? And they laid me off the next week and never paid me any of the contract. And what I didn't realize is like, you know, the way things kind of work is you'd end up getting that deal. And if they lay you off, they lay you off, but you get the money. So that was that suck. But the whole point I tell you all this is that McShay was like, look, I can at least guarantee someone at ESPN will listen to you. I can't

guarantee anything beyond that. And I never realized that ESPN was such a, you don't know until you're in it, but they were a mess with their scheduling for radio. I mean, they were so unorganized that as long as I kept saying yes after my tryout. And so the point of all of this, you know, rambling is that I kept getting opportunities that I was like, wait, now I'm at ESPN and I still want to be in a front office. Maybe we'll just ride this ESPN thing out for a little bit and see how this goes. And it lasted 15 years. Take me, take me back to Boston for a second. It's 1510. The Zone is the name of the station in Boston. And you and I know in sports radio, there's only like four names you can have.

you're like the score, the zone, the ticket. It's a pretty limited palette there. That's it. There was a law pass. You're right. And you're the second station in town. So you're challenging the number one station in town. So how does the station, how do you as a host challenge the guys who are number one in the market?

You don't. We were getting destroyed. I mean, it was an absolute monster. I mean, a fucking monster. They were, I think at that point, the number one station. in the country, as far as their market share of a major city, I believe they were smoking everybody. But it was a perfect, perfect storm of events. There was no real challenger. And we weren't a challenger. And when they started that station, it was before I was even in town. They paid big money

to Sean McDonough, Eddie Anelman. They tried a morning show. I think they paid four times as much for the Celtics rights. And I mean, they went for it right out of the gate. They wanted people showing up the sales meetings with that Celtics logo on the business cards. And so the problem was no one could hear it. Like they'd always talk about fixing the signal, fixing the signal, the signal, the signal just sucked. It wasn't that good. The offices, the studios are amazing. They really went first class. And by the time I showed up on the scene for a tryout, a lot of the high price guys didn't want to show up anymore. I think they were going to lose money on the Celtics deal. And they, this is how stupid I was. And I've told the story a few times, but they were like, we're going to pay you, um,

thousand bucks a paycheck and i was like okay 52 grand like i can i can live off of that and then i'm like now paycheck's come every two weeks so i made 26 26 grand the first couple years but that was the point is they were like this is a body he has no other options and so the reason like you could tell we were already taking on water and there was no bailing so it was how do we keep the signal on then they had another unfortunate round of layoffs everybody was gone so but when i showed up up, man. Whatever the challenge was to EEI, I think there might have been a curiosity blip very early on, but the signal, just you couldn't do it. I mean, you were at a knife, you know, a gunfight with a knife. It just, there was nothing that could happen. So I, every day was about me, you know, getting my thousands

of hours in. Like, I learned how to become a host and a non-host. I got to learn all the beats and the clock that you have to have instinctively or hey this segment sucks you know let's pivot to something else those are instincts that you have to have but also can be developed and I was developing those instincts at the time but I never was coming in going hey we're going to be i in the ratings book this quay because it was we were getting so smoked it wasn't even part of it i think there was a little rah-rah stuff about that but that was before i had walked through the doors what were you good at what were you bad at in those earlier years on the air it bad at interviewing was trying to show off to whoever we had.

Wasn't about the question, wasn't about getting an answer. It was about having the person know that I know and being smart, which I could probably still do every now and then. Bad at that, but it was fixable. It wasn't like I didn't know how to ask good questions. I was wrapped up in my own shit. I think I always thought I was great at breaking down games. And when I would listen to somebody go,

hey, the turning point was this or this was that or whatever. I just was really good at being able to watch something and then memorize kind of what happened with notes and go, you know, I think it was this or like, you know, I used to just be like, hey, when they gave them that pitch on 2-2 or, you know, hey, it was a 1-2 count and he evens the count on that ball. It's like, then he knows he has to come back inside with the fastball. And that's where, like, I just thought I was really good at that stuff, especially for somebody that didn't play in any games anybody ever cared about.

So as a non-athlet that still grew up playing sports, I still think that there was something there that you would take from where you. you go like, yeah, that's probably what he's kind of looking at there, you know, in baseball or basketball, all the different stuff. I always felt really strong about recap and that stuff. And then I think later on when I was at ESPN, I think my instincts were good on topic, segments and that kind of stuff or something might happen. And I go, hey, do we have seven or eight minutes here?

Like, is this a conversation or is this just something that happened? You know, like Seattle loses to the Rams a Thursday night football. Okay, that's what happened. That's the result. But what's the topic? And let's get through what the topics are. All right, the Rams real contenders. I don't know.

I think everybody's done that. Hey, is the door closed for Seattle? Again, none of this stuff is like groundbreaking. But figuring out how to weave a result into a discussion is a very important part of doing talk radio every single day. Because, you know, you're doing 15, 20 hours a week. You better figure out the right way to do it as far as because you can't just keep coming in and be like, hey, this thing happened. I know it's not super interesting. I know most of the market isn't like, you know, playing the hits is a very.

simple thing to say, but I would like to play the hits, but find a way to attack the hits in different ways than other hosts did. This is just a matter of having ideas where other people don't have ideas or have ideas that aren't as good. Yeah, I like my ideas. I always have felt, you know, when I walked into ESPN every morning, I knew I was ready to go, you know, and I'm proud of that. I'm proud that every day I showed up because that's a hard job. It's, you know, it's not digging ditches, but as far as anchoring, when you have a million people around you, support staff, I've anchored,

not to the level that the highest level anchors have. I've done play by play. I've had a right, but not necessarily for a deadline. And again, I wasn't ever on a beat. And, you know, I always say this,

I have a ton of respect for the people that are on the beat all the time. But if you're out there in an island, three to four hours a day doing talk shows, like, you better be into it. You know, and it's always kind of weird every now and then I, you know, everybody has different paths and all this stuff,

but I'd have certain points in my career where I'd be working with somebody. I'd just be like, does this person even like sports anymore? Like how the hell do you end up here? Or, you know, like I always liked the way I worked again, I'm biased because it was me, but we'd sit and pre-show. We'd kick around some ideas.

But for the most part, I kind of knew what I was already going to do because I'm the one that has to sell it in those, you know, seven to eight minute segments, 12 of those a show. So if I'm not into it, why am I doing it? So if somebody presented an idea, I may say, hey, I kind of like that, but it's not for me. And I'm not doing that today. And then some people can be turned off by it, but I'd be like, no,

like this is the way I need to do this. And I'll never forget one time I came in, we were doing six-hour radio shows when I first started. I had the Saturday shift at ESPN. So 06, 0708, I had this, I was Mr. Saturday. I had the Saturday shift. I think I didn't work maybe five weekends in three years or something. And I remember a guy sat down. I was like, I got nothing.

You got nothing. We got six hours to go here, man. You have nothing to say? There's not one. thing that happened in the last however many of the days it's been on since you've been on the year there's not one thing that happened that you want to talk about and i just felt like when doing local you know doing that is a rod going to end up on the red socks for six straight months okay or you know now in boston it's it's brady brady brady and you know i know what it's i know

what it's like at the local level man to do the same topic every single day so when i get to the level. I'm like, this is not, I'll never complain about doing the same topic, even though the deflate gate and bonds got a little boring in my tenure. Taking calls was was and is in some places a big element of sports radio. What was your approach to callers? At the zone, no one called us. You can get right through. Phones are open. I know. I think we even had one guy that was like, oh my gosh, he's like, I'm surprised I wasn't on hold longer. And we're all in the studio looking at each other going, eh. We had, I think the highest number of calls we had is when we get so mad at the bullpen

with the Red Sox, we did a segment on if you had to fight one member of the Red Sox, who would you have your best chance with? And it was actually like a real segment. And people called in and we brought it back a couple times during the show. I hate calls. I grew up listening to the fan, even though I rooted for Boston teams because I actually liked Mike and the Mad Dog better than any of the EEI shows. And I, you know, for whatever people think of, of, in dog, Francesa now, like, that was it, man.

That was it. And I love the way, I love their banner. I love, I know this seems impossible because people have just been dumping on Francesa for a long time. And he's brought on himself. But, like, that was a big deal back then. Those guys were just on it. I mean, they were just on it. And, you know, calls were part of the entertainment.

You know, it was a tool to go ahead and use. I think it's important in local radio. Local, I get it. But again, I haven't done local. I don't know that I'll ever do local five days a week again. I doubt I would ever end up doing it. But nationally, I think it's a huge waste of time. It just is.

You know, we've had different philosophies on it. I just never look. As a consumer, when I'm in the car and I listen to somebody else's show, because I still listen pretty religiously to a lot of radio shows. You know, I just like it. Even after ESPN, like, I didn't have any hard feelings about it. I still listen to the lineup and go, oh, you know, I like this guy.

I don't like this segment or what. whatever. I mean, just like everybody else. But whenever there's a call, I just go, okay, how'd you feel? Like in my head, I'll be like, there's almost never a time where I go, man, that was a great point. And what an addition to the show. The philosophy, as I've heard program director say it is, we have people that really want to hear our hosts talk to each other about sports. So why would we stop that and put somebody else on the air who our listeners do not want to hear talk about sports? Solo, you know, you're right. Like, look, I'm on your side with this.

I think solo, because solos, like, however hard radio is, multiply it by 100 when you're solo, because those moments when you're not feeling great and it's just you and you get nowhere to go, I can see how a call can be a mechanism a little bit. But I don't know, I feel like the radio lineup for ESPN, specifically at least the last couple of years has been, it's a national lineup that seems to have a lot of local influences

and the way it does some of their things. And that surprises me a little. I think there's some hosts where it's like, okay, that's fine. But to have it be a major part of your show on a national level, I would just be like, do you realize how many people are listening to this call? That's always a selfish call.

The call is always about what that caller's interest is. And it's usually something as sophomoric is like, hey, do you think my cowboys can win? Because I think they can. It's like, well, no shit you think your cowboys can win. Like, all right, great. Glad you're here. We got 400 affiliates.

it's man. And so I'm surprised that it's that it's used as much nationally because when we were there, Mike and Mike never took a call. Colin rarely took one, but every now and then he might on something, but it was rare. Scott and I never did it. So I don't know why that happened. I'm against it. Nationally, I think it's for the most part of waste of time, but solo, I guess I would say I would allow it because I think there's just times, and it's not like I put in my thousand hour solo. I was always erratic and I probably didn't get to a point of getting as good as I would have liked to.

But I've never understood it. Like when there's a couple people, you're just like, what are we doing here? This sounds like local radio. It's also just a funny point in history because I figure the person calling a sports radio show is the person who doesn't have a Twitter account to express themselves, doesn't have Instagram, isn't on a rival's message board. so that they're the last person who is picking up the phone

to call the sports radio show. Well, the other thing too is that, I mean, here's, and I can admit this because I think I did it once. I think I called into an EEI show when I was home over the summer and I waited.

And then I was like, wait, this is like, I'm waiting forever. Like, who are you if you have an hour to wait to make your point about a backup quarterback? Like, if that's your decision for that day that you had an hour to wait on hold to make a point about a backup quarterback. What are your other days like? And how many points are you making in just general life

observations that I'm buying? So, you know, come to any conclusion you want on that theory that I threw out there. But that's that's that's another part of it too. Where are you or were you on having athletes as guests on the air? Is it just an interview or a co-host? Not an interview. you know, you would get semi aroused in the early 2000s when you get a phone or somebody after a baseball game. You're like, oh, we got Zach Duke on. He struck out six. Like, holy shit. That's because that was the show that I was doing. I was doing game night. We'd be on from seven,

seven at night to one a.m. It was a six hour deal. So, you know, you'd bullshit and be like, oh, the cards keep leaving guys on base. You know, let's go live to Shay. And that was very normal. Like, I'm laughing just thinking about it now. Because like, if anybody, He said, like, hey, let's make sure we get to Clayton Kyrusha's something strikeout. We'd be like, why? You know, I remember, too, like a certain time, we were like, hey, let's get to Sosa's whatever home run, because that's just the way we'd always done it. Let's get to a six.

I think it was a 600 home run. We're like, let's go live to it. And we're like, why are we doing this anymore? Like, no one likes him. Nobody likes him. And we're doing this. The manager just looks at this is like, we're doing it because we do it. That's what we do it.

And it was also the same way where, like, you get done Sunday. Be like, oh, Ray Buchanan's going to come on. He had a pick. Atlanta beat Tampa today, 27, 21. You're like, all right, Ray, you know, what, and what you realized is every interview was the same interview. Every interview was the same interview. The guy's sweaty.

He's in the locker room. He's after the game. A stringer hands him a phone. He's getting 50 bucks because he got the guy on the phone. And I actually, you know, I look at the industry now and, like, of all the changes we complain about stuff. Like, this was a great pivot because the early years of how we would have athletes on. And those, we never got anything out of it, but we just did it.

We just did it all the time because that's the way you did the job. And now, if it's like a talk show moment, you know, podcasting's kind of ruined the radio interview because now we've realized that once it's five, seven minutes, you get somebody warmed up and they're on a Zoom now and they're this invested in the interview, you're likely going to get something better. But if this guy's playing golf and he's a starting pitcher or, you know, it's the quarterback or whatever, the hit rate on him was way too low. So we started turning more and more guys down because we weren't getting enough out of it.

And the other thing I think we looked at when we were still doing radio is you could see like segment to segment the interaction with the audience. And a lot of the athletes were becoming tuneouts unless it was a huge name. But you felt like, hey, we've got this athlete or the bears are in a big game or let's make sure we get this. Just for very few guys that would kill it in seven or eight minutes where you felt like that was the best use of that segment. Because I would look at every show as 12 segments. And you're probably going to have three or four that you regret it, but you get tomorrow. You know what I mean? Like there's no way you're going 12 for 12 every single day.

It just doesn't work that way. But I always felt like we were giving segments away if it was kind of a C or B level athlete. And we're like, okay, we're doing a 7, 8 minute phoneer. Scott asked two questions. I asked two questions. Scott asks one. I ask one. Like how many times are we getting something out of that that's really useful or a sound bite

that another program is going to use that's really going to resonate? The return on it just wasn't enough. we were better off just doing something stupid between the two of us. We could tell it in the numbers. You had the boxer Tyson Fury who's got a big fight Saturday night on your pod last month. You're listening. He's giving you these very, very short answers. Just rapid fire. I can listen to it and feel you just going down the list of questions and you're at the end. Are you thinking because there's a there's a train wrecky quality to it. Are you thinking this is going to be good because we're going to put this on social and people are going to listen to this and it's going to be awkward and funny?

Are you thinking this is bad? No, I'm thinking it's bad because I'm mad. I was mad. I'd spent, it was a later taping too on top of everything else. So that meant I had the earlier taping, and then I didn't have enough time to really do anything. So I was like, you know what, I'm just going to make the most of this interview.

I'm going to prep this interview as well as I've prepped anything in a really long time. I watched both Wilder fights again. I watched a full interview where he was out at the beach in England. And it was an incredible interview. He was incredibly revealing. I went ahead and read it. other stuff. I put a ton of time into that where I had mapped out by round and by punch. I wanted to get really into the fight. I wanted to make that interview about the previous fights.

And he just starts right in. He's like, fuck him. He's a piece of shit. And I was like, okay. And at that point, when he started that way, I was like, all right, this is going to be awesome. Here you go. But then I'm asking all of these questions about the fight. And he, he'd like, he had cut me off at the legs. There was all the other stuff I had, 20, 30 minutes is when I'm mapping out my head for all these different fight questions. And by the way, questions I've seen him answer with great detail before. And I'd have a different angle or I'd like, hey, you know, because I'll write down on my notes and then I put it together like a puzzle. I put a lot of time into that one. And I'll admit there's other times I don't do that with it. So once I realize I'm like, I'm fucked. I don't like the interview is going to be

over. I have nothing else to ask him because he just, he doesn't want to do any of the other stuff that I had planned out for this whole deal. And I just, it wasn't like, hey, I'm going to do this and we're going to be confrontational and now I'm going to get the social media win. I was legitimately like, just be like, hey, I'm good being done then. Like, we could just be done. Because I'll just, I'll put these seven minutes on or five minutes and we'll laugh about how weird it was. And then that'll be it. Like, I'll go outside. I got shit to do. And that's how I felt. And I liked it. He was like, all right, you know what? And the thing is, I don't, it didn't really, I wasn't mad after the fact. Like, people were like, where you, I was like, no, I was just mad that I knew, okay, now

I put all this time into it. Now my plans. destroyed. And it just doesn't happen that often. And like, look, your guys wanted you to come on my podcast to promote the fight. I haven't been begging you to come on for a year. You know, that's the other part of it, too. Like, your people set this up. And I've since seen him do other interviews, and he was awesome. So I don't, I'd like to think I could pull it off, but I just knew at that point. I was like, I don't think there's anything I can do about this. So I'm just going to say, hey, goodbye. And then he gave me some good stuff at the end. So there you go. Yeah. And I I think, you know, 99 out of 100 athletes when you give them the out to be like, okay,

we're done. We'd be like, thanks, man. You know, click. I didn't want to be here anyway. So, so I'm out. Yeah. Exactly. So I was mad in the moment about how it was going, but I wasn't going to like after

that go, oh, fuck him forever. I want nothing to do. I, you know, I also get the fighters are different than us too. So, but it worked out. It worked out for everybody. I actually think I got too much credit after the fact because people were like, oh, that was brilliant. And I was like, I wasn't brilliance.

It was just I'm done. I'd like to take more credit for it. But anyway, another great standby of sports radio is athletes selling a product that is not a fight like in Tyson Fury's case, but like I'm selling vitamin water or Cheerios or whatever. How did you handle that where you're going to get an interview for like seven minutes and then you're going to put 30 seconds of advertising into your radio show? Said yes to them all back in the day. You know, I mean, said yes to them all. You know, here at Super Bowl, although I did radio row local. And then, you know, back when ESPN was really putting a lot into the radio thing, you know, we would have our own stage.

Like, it was cool. We were away from everybody else. I mean, Van Pelt, the first Super Bowl we did together, we were on South Beach. We were like, had a stage on the beach. And that's where we did the show for five straight days. And then by the end of it with Cannell and I, we had one foldable table with. zero signage in San Francisco. And I was like,

I feel like things are going in the wrong direction. I don't want to jump to any conclusions here. I don't want to jump to any conclusions, but I feel like there wasn't a ton of effort put into this deal. But yeah, it would be like, Hey, Tim Tebow's here with avocado.

Do you want him? I'd be like, fuck, yeah, I want Tim Tebow and avocados. And Tebow came over in a vest. And the thing is, at that point, we knew Tebow.

We're like, dude, we can't get you without plugging avocado. And he walks over. he's like olive oil and some sea salt on a thing of avocado. And he's like eating these like, and you know, and the thing is you always say like, I got you. All right.

I know you're here with stickers. I know you're here with whatever. Like, I got you. I'll hook it up. And you can always tell the guys that you just are worthless because they'll answer. You're like, well, you know, I really like the defensive front. I think they get some pressure here. But you know who's got pressure on him?

That is Buffalo Wow wings because they have a wing giveaway. And you're just like, hey, dude, I'm going to get to it. I don't know. Like I wouldn't, if somebody said now, hey, we've got somebody on behalf of something, it's a hard, it's the hardest of nose. I mean, unless it were LeBron James and I'm getting 30 minutes and he wants to mention something about Nike, then I'd be like, okay, fine. But, you know, we used to say yes to all that dumb shit. You know, if you get Carl Pickens here with Hertz, you'd be like, oh, yeah. Are you serious?

Carl Pickens? Another thing that happens in my lifetime with sports radio is the merger between sports radio and guy talk. So we're going to do the Red Sox, we're going to do the Patriots, and then we're going to do kind of like guy stuff. Eventually now when I listen a lot of times like, hey, we're recapping the wire every Tuesday. I'm like, whoa, this is a ringer podcast now that's on radio.

When did this start? When did you observe it starting? It probably started before I got involved. You know, I think that there was a morning show deal where it was explained to me, like, people told me I was too abrasive for morning radio. Like, you're just two nuts and bolts. You know, you're going to have a little more fun. That's why, you know, Mike and Mike deserve a ton of credit because there was a great balance

of just lightness. You know, it wasn't, they gave you the news, but it was incredibly light. You drive it in. You're stuck in traffic. You're already pre-miserable about the day. You know, you needed to be a little light. So I think the morning show stuff probably influenced some of the guy or the guy part of it became some of the morning stuff.

But one thing that I always learned, especially with Scott and I, because I still was just, even though I've been doing radio a while and I've done it every day in Boston for a few years and then random fill-ins and then a ton of filling stuff at ESPN, you know, doing it every single day with Scott, I remember after a couple years, I said, you know, when we just tell bullshit stories about you going to get a burrito or me, you know, having some vacation thing or, you know, a story or something from college or how we got started. Whenever we do that stuff, you know, the audience is making a huge commitment in you. You know, we're part of their daily routine.

They feel like they know us, but they want to know us even more. So I don't know that it's all just the guy stuff because I get what you're asking, maybe more of the sophomoric stuff, but whatever was a carryover of a balance of, hey, we're doing the hard sports, we're doing all the stuff. We're 90% sports. But if we can give a little bit more on us and show more of our personalities, if our personalities were lucky enough that people would like, you know,

because some of the guy stuff I always thought was funny because half the guys are dorks. But half. Half, you know, being nice. Come on. Sports radio? Come on. 95%.

You know, I'm like, I'm going to listen to you talking about how cool. You know, like, whatever. I noticed the audience, we would get better reaction to that kind of stuff. So that's just something that I've always tried to do. I don't, again,

I'm not saying like the guy stuff, but if you're talking about the crossing over and talking about different things, if you're somebody already likes and is investing that much time, I think you owe it to them a little bit more to expand the content and let them in more and more because they're making that commitment to you as a listener.

So I don't know if that answered it perfectly. No, I think so. And I think it does go from sophomore to I'm going to reveal myself, something's happening in my life, something's happening with my family. I'm going to put some of that into the radio show into the podcast. Yeah, like I did a rant on going bald. And it's probably one of the five things I get asked about the most.

And I just went off. And I was just mad at the shampoo industry. I was mad about these places that were talking up all their products. And I just was like I've had it. And I did this segment. And, you know, that's the kind of stuff. I mean, look at this. Like, I've been doing this now a really long time.

I think I think I'm pretty good at it. My Pam Beasley sucks thing from the office is, like, as I feel like I was pretty early on that. And I was just, you know, I'd rewatched again. I'd binge it. I'd move somewhere else. I didn't have a lot going on at that time. So I was just watching episode after episode.

And I was like, man, when you binge the office, you start to realize some of Pam's flaws a little bit more. And I could do the best NBA free agency segment. I could kill every draft pick talking about guys. I could pick every playoff series right. But when you do something like that, that's the kind of stuff people remember a little bit more. So it's always part of whatever the calculus is of doing some of those things. But it's important because you can't never do it.

Bald thing really speaks to me. I got to tell you. You're doing all right. It's a good angle for you. See, now it looks okay. But I always tell people, then you go for a swim and you come out and you look at yourself and you look like the head of the British Labor Party. in the 50s. It's just.

What a reference. Yeah, it's just not, it's not, you know. What do you like about, like, who's your ultimate talk show host? Who's your favorite? So the weird part is, is I grew up listening to people in Dallas. This is in the late 90s. Most of them are still there. And because of the miracle of streaming, I just still listen to them.

Like, I never moved on. And it's weird. I'm still listening to my local talk shows. So the Cowboys game ends. I want post game. Boom, I'm going right there for that. And in the morning, though I'm two hours behind here in LA, I'm listening to them and scrolling back so I didn't miss any funny bits in the morning.

Do you think, see, but that's not only what you grew up with, but you're a Cowboys fan. You want to hear what they're saying about the Cowboys. I mean, that makes a ton of sense. When I look at like podcasting, I go, the interviewing part of this is destroyed radio, the advertising alone. We kept looking at traditional ratings numbers going down. And I always felt like, you know, I think you guys are focusing on the wrong thing. And I get called an excuse maker all the time.

But the digital numbers are keep growing. And we keep doing like, look, we're saying, hey, the ESPN radio, at ESPNRadio. Or now streaming on or check us out at Pod Center. And we kept telling the audience to listen to us in new ways. And yet we were still being judged on some of the traditional numbers, like guys doing Bibles, you know, filling out their book. And you would just be like, I don't know this is happening the same way. I think with the push of podcasts, and this is the question I'm asking you,

do you think with the pushing a podcast hurting terrestrial radio, that there'll be some shift back to terrestrial radio where you go, you know, it was kind of cool hearing reactions live in the moment? because that's something podcasting can't do. Yes, yes, because there is something about the magic of radio, not to sound too weird about it, but there is something about talking, somebody talking into a microphone and you hearing it when it comes out of their mouth.

Or the reaction, like I remember, you know, just certain news happens. It doesn't happen all the time. But like you'll like this, the first interview I had when I was at the zone. The interview, by the way, is 5 a.m. They made me come in at 5 a.m. Like as if I was going to say, no, you know, 9.

works for me. So I come in at 5 a.m. and it's like I think it was a snowstorm too. And I get there. And the guy goes, first question, what is sports stock radio? And I go, you know, I think it's great. Like if you're out and about like you keep up to latest news, transactions and rumors. I was like, it's just a great, you know, source of of keeping updated and everything. And he was like, wrong. It's entertainment. And he's right. He's right. But I was selfishly answering it like in the way I was like, I'm not entertained by any of these guys. I just wanted to know what the hell's going on. Like Peter Gamens is on.

Everybody shut up. I stay in my hot truck with a sub in front of me listening to Peter Gamens for 20 minutes because I think I can't possibly go the rest of the week and not know what he said. But as podcasts have taken such a huge chunk out of radio and we'll continue to, because the podcast numbers aren't going down anytime soon, I don't know if we sound like two old guys that are romanticizing radio or if people are forgetting what made live audio so important in the first place. Yeah, and I will say, and I saw you at the Super Bowl in Miami, that like when I look around,

sports radio looks a lot healthier than I probably would have predicted 15 years ago, when, or let's say 10 years ago when podcasting, when Bill's pod starts, and it looks like, okay, you know, print got chewed up by the internet, TV, network TV got chewed up, and now radio is going to get chewed up. Sports radio is going to get chewed up by podcasting, but I look around and, you know, again, it's, we could say it's diminished in some respect and it's smaller, but, you know, in all these cities, there are still big money-making radio shows that are just going along, much more so than newspapers. I think that's probably the lesson because it was the same lesson with the newspapers.

You just had to look at it differently. Like when I worked with Will Kane, I asked him, because he's a really interesting, really smart guy. And I was like, what did you do when you first got started? He actually, another Texas guy, he bought up, like, local newspapers would buy, like, whatever that town's newspaper was, he would buy it because he found out that, like, it didn't matter what you thought of print. In that town, that newspaper circulation was extremely important.

And then ad revenues were terrific. So, like, that's what he was kind of doing early on. So whenever I look at the growth of podcasting and trying to produce the future on all this stuff, which, you know, it's really hard to do because you'd be like, wait, people are just going going to plug their phone in and that's all they're going to do. Like, they're just going to do that. Like, everybody's going to listen to audio through their phone and their car. Like, that's what they're going to do.

And that's exactly what they've done. But it doesn't mean that there aren't there aren't places where, you know, the billing's not going to be the same for ESPN's morning show as it was at Pete, Mike and Mike. But whether it's national or whether it's local, they're still always going to be an audience that's going to want to flip that on and immediately and not have to want to wait, which is that probably where the green room and some of the other stuff comes in too. Because I imagine that's part of the process, you know, tactically of trying to counter where there's still that need, that immediacy need that radio still provide. Was doing a daily national sports radio show harder than doing a daily local show? That's a really good question because I don't know that. I mean, it depends on how you look at it. I mean, you could say, hey, the local thing's easy.

You watch the Red Sox, go to bed and, you know, talk about the Red Sox. Make sure you read both papers and you should be good to go. So you're not going to be outside of your comfort zone. So I guess local is easier. I just like doing national 10 times because maybe my enjoyment was so much more. It was easier for me to do national even though it's not easier. Because the problem with the national guy is, and I remember, like, I always try to tell people, like I was the guy that would listen to Buck and McCarver and think they hated the Red Sox

and the Yankees Red Sox broadcast. Okay? Just like everybody on the New York side thing thinks that, you know, they hated their team. You know, every fan base that thinks that they're so special that the announcers go in being like, hey, let's shit on Purdue today. Yeah, let's definitely do that. Like, it doesn't really happen. And I think my perspective is good because I was that guy. And then I worked at, you know, the number one place for sports for as long as I did and saw how it really worked. Like all the people, I remember being in a wedding, it almost came to blows because they were talking about how Herb Street hated Ohio State.

He overcompensates as an Ohio State guy that he actually hates him. I'm like, look, I get to know Herb Street a little bit. He doesn't care about it as much as you think that he does or much as you do. And they're like, oh, you're wrong. I'm like, no, I travel with him for six fucking years. I don't know the guy, but you do. You watch him and I'm on the road with him and you know him better than I do. And I just, you know, just hear it over and over again. So the point, again, local national is that I always had to know a little about a lot of things where in local I had to know everything, but only about one thing. So the math is easier on the local side of things. You know, I hear local guys being like, oh, you got to prep all. I'm like, nah, you're going to watch the game. You're going to watch

already and then read the newspaper. I'm a little different. Like, I know I'm a prep freak. So doing the national side of it, the amount of shit that I would do, like excessive amount of stuff. I'd have depth charts ready all the time. I used to carry the baseball super register with me, so I knew every baseball transaction, which again, didn't need to carry it around, didn't come in handy that many times, but I was always afraid to not have it. I used to have it in the studio with me like the first couple years, which is like, why do you have the baseball America super register with you? And I'd be like, well, just in case we needed to know, Louis Gonzalez is a rule five guy or not. You know, do you think that's going to happen? Do you think that's going to come up? And so, you know,

that was my own little learning curve of understanding how to economize the amount of work you were putting into it. But I, you know, whether it's, hey, a little college football, can you, can you spend seven or eight minutes with the head coach of Tennessee? You know, can you know the rotation for the Padres? Can you also, you know, I mean, just all these different things. But the thing that you think, like, I used to be intimidated about it, honestly from the outside being like, how could you know all these things? And then you're in it and you just go, oh, not that many guys like are this, but for me to do the job. I never wanted to do the job. I'm going to be right and I'm going to be wrong about a million things. But I never wanted to be wrong other than opinions. I never

wanted to be wrong because of just completely omitting a fact, which is still impossible to have a clean slate on this. But that was always really, really important to me, excessively important to me. And even though there was more work to do on the national part of it, I just liked it so much more because there was always a mix of things. So I still think locals easier, but it was easier for me to do national because I would have gotten really bored after 10 years of talking about the Red Sox every single day. You didn't want to be that guy who we find on ESPN TV who's saying somebody plays for a team. They don't play for him anymore, you know, quarterback and just totally mischaracterizes somebody. And then the clip gets put up.

You didn't want to be that guy on radio. No, and it's still, look, I'm still going to make a mistake. I'm still going to forget who's on a team. I'm not going to be clean all the way through. But, you know, predicting that a team's going to be in the Super Bowl against another team and they're both in the same conference. that's, if that happens, that happens. Sort of minimum competency, knowing the conferences. Yeah.

You know, when I listen to National, and I do flip on, I have serious in the car, so I'll listen to ESPN, I'll listen to Fox stuff. There's a lot to me of grinding through obligatory topics that are on the, you know, play the hits list. You know, I'll listen to, I'll turn on ESPN and some midday host is going, oh, you know, Cowboys Secondary, are they going to miss Xavier Woods this year? and I'm going, you don't care about this. You don't know anything about this.

You're reading a sheet. You don't care about this. So was it programmed nationally that you need to hit the erogenous zones of LeBron, Cowboys, Tom Brady, those big things? Or did you have more leeway? We definitely had more leeway. Way more leeway than the outside world seems to think. Like, no one ever came in and said, do this.

Don't do that. I don't think it ever happened. Now, I mean, did they make a push for NASCAR once? And I sat there in a hotel room in Bristol studying all Saturday night trying to like cram as much NASCAR info as I could because I was going to have to cover on a Sunday. Yeah, that was not a valuable use of time. I think one time they made us have a bass fisherman on from the tour because we had the rights and they were like, hey, you got to do this. And so, you know, again, but those are things you're supposed to do for the company. you get 15, 20 hours a week.

Like I said, if they're asking you like every once a year, hey, can you have this guy from the Bass Pro Tour on? Like, you do it. You just do it. So I'm not really answering your question, but I'm setting it up into what you were told to do. So like the Cowboys thing is always annoying because is a consumer more than even as the host. Like when they had the Ezekiel Elliott contract thing,

that was all of August. And I would listen to all these shows and be like, this is when somebody has to step in and say, hey, whatever the line of play the hits was, we've now smashed through it and we've gone into a ravine. Like, we don't need to keep doing this over and over again. But if you're trying to be too different, you can also be screwing up. Like Scott and I were definitely the guys that watched everything and we thought we were smarter than everybody else.

So, you know, we would go sometimes so deep in the weeds now looking back on any critique of that, which we had critiques, be like, hey, you know, you guys lose us sometimes in the audience. And we start saying something like, hey, A&M's got this guy at running back. But you know, it's crazy. Is they get a five-star and a four-star down the street. So like, this might be happening. and yeah, that's that kid on rivals, that's whatever. It's like, no, nobody fucking cares, dude. Nobody cares.

Nobody cares. Like, stop showing off that you know how many rivals four and five star guys they have coming in at running back as you're doing this A&M segment. So you've got to figure out ways to attack the LeBron thing. I would not be a LeBron MJ and do it seriously guy now at this point. Like, I don't know that I could be earnest in that discussion because it's such a go-to when like the off season of the NFL. It's like, oh, here we go again.

I see some TV segments where I go, you know, you guys are just doing the same thing. Like we have a blame pie joke because I was on first take a few times before I was asked to not come back on anymore. But they were like, hey, you know, blame pie. Blame, like we were trying to figure out a way to discuss this result in an NFL week. And a guy just looks at this and it's like totally serious.

It's like, you know, it's time to go blame. pie, you think. We go a little blame pie on this. So then we made a blame pie joke about any time we get stuck talking through a segment. So your point, you can tell when the guy isn't into it. And I can always, like, I can tell immediately, like whenever it's a host, I'm like, you don't really know what's going. Like, there's another crutcher or a guy will just name a ton of names, you know, they'll just start, it'll just start saying like, like, Phil Mickelson used to go on with Dan Patrick. Do you remember this? This is like 20 something years ago. Mickelson would go on with Dan. And here's Mickelson. He's his golfer. He's terrific. And he gambles all the time. And he would come on

to talk football. And like his first impression was, holy shit, look at all this football that Phil Mickelson knows about. And then I caught him like, they're going to bring him back. We'll bring him back. And they brought him back to the next week. And he literally just started reading a too deep. That's all he was doing. He's like, you get so-and-so at corner and the other corner. He brings in the safeties or this. And I wasn't even in the business yet. I'd be in the car. I'd be like, why do you guys think this is good? This isn't good. All he's doing is just listening. stuff. So I can tell, I can hear the tricks, much like you can, where you can go, are you just doing a Cowboys or LeBron segment because you feel like it's, it's ready? And I would

always argue, you can do those segments as much as you want, but push yourself a little bit. Like, give the audience some sense that you cared about doing this today by attacking it from a different way. And I think that's kind of the fun challenge of it. Okay, we know what this is. how do we figure out a new way to do it? And especially when you're doing the afternoons, I'd see everybody already take their shots at it. And in the morning, you get to play it straight. But by the time you get to me,

I might be the third or fourth show you listened to that day. I better figure out an angle that at least makes it sound like I put some time into it, which is something I always kind of pride ourselves on. What's the thing you can do in podcasting that you always wanted to do that you couldn't do in radio? Longer interviews. Longer interviews. Everything is about the clock when you're doing live radio. I know for for those that want to do it or or have done it and if you haven't done it that red clock is

everything you're everything you're thinking about whatever points you mapped out ahead of time going hey I'm kind of like a minute six in my head but I'm at minute eight in the segment so I've got to figure out how to make the point that I want to make and close this hard and then it's like oh okay I stole a minute here so now I got to give a minute back somewhere else then some Some guys are just terrible at the clock. Like, they just don't give a shit. And that's why they have two minute segments at the end of every hour. And it, like, can fuck up your ratings book and every other thing.

You know, so some people, I'd like to think I was always very conscious of it, but I wasn't, like, dramatic about it. I mean, I remember one time, you love this. We were, that's back when I think we used to have four updates an hour. So we're back to like the 0607.08 run. And we, you know, you'd break at 15, you know, you'd break a 10, back at 10 back 15 or whatever, but like 15, 30, 45 breaks, but you'd have to break a little bit earlier and come back a little bit later. So maybe you broke it, maybe you broke a 12, came back at 17.

Again, this is technical. It's not that important. But I snuck another question in on the guy. And I was always kind of like, if I thought I was getting close, I'm like, let me steal another minute with a question from a guy. And then, you know, I'll pay the minute back a little bit later. But that means the update guy is going to go maybe a little bit later. So his last update would have been at 1245 in a perfect situation. Maybe it's $2.25. Maybe it's 1246 if I went a minute later. I think I went two minutes later. And that meant his update was going to start at 1247 and he was going to get out of 1248.

And this guy decided that he was going to kick up his spurs a little bit at me because I was a new filling guy. And so I asked one more question. And he's across the glass and like a couple of other studios. And he puts his hands up like I've slapped his kid and slams his papers down. And I'm like, what? And I have no idea. Like I knew I stole another question or whatever,

but I'm only like a year or two in. And I'm thinking like, oh my God. What? Like, and you know, like, okay, all right. Thanks, Zach, dude. Congrats on the win, you know. And I go to break and I go to my producer behind the guy. I go, what's he, what's going on?

Like, he's mad that he has to leave for home two minutes later. Oh. And I was like, that was like, do a lot of guys do that? They're like, you know, it's 1 a.m. It's almost 1 a.m. The clock is everything in national radio Because you also have to be out at a like my first break ever They go, hey, by the way, 1255, 10

It's a hard network out and that means everything's gone. So like you can be in the middle of a sentence and then it's gone Because the network has to reset the clock. Everybody that's on the network feed has to get their ads in and then you start so you can be It's a soft out, soft out soft out and then it's a hard out on the last hour So I'm doing my first ever hard out at ESPN. And I looked down at my computer and I see 1255. And so I was in the middle of some baseball thing.

By the way, I memorized for that first show at ESPN. I memorized every world baseball classic roster. Whoa. All the Korean relievers and everything did not come up. Did not need to use an answer. And I'm talking all the foreign names. And so I was like, oh, that guy said 1255 and I look at the computer clock. I'm like, and then, okay, good.

We'll talk to you in an hour or whatever. And then the producer's like, what are you doing? What are you doing in my ear? And I was like, you know, talk back. I'm like hard out. They're like, it's dead air. It's dead air. You have another two minutes.

Wrong clock. Wrong clock. And I was like, and before we do that. And before we do that. And so then I do the hard out. So the first hard out I ever did. I did it two minutes early. I've never had to worry about any of this stuff podcasting.

Never, not never, ever, ever. The freedom to roam, to go in any direction you want to go in, to edit out something that you didn't like. I'd like to think I could still be as tuned up as I needed to be for live radio, but there is a calmness to it that is so different that they're really not even the same thing. I'd like to think radio made me good at podcasting, but I don't think if you're a good podcaster, you could go and just jump right into radio.

I don't think that it's a reciprocating type of deal there. One thing I'm always amazed about when I listen to your pod is your ability to talk by yourself for long periods of time, just go. You know, you do this at the top of the show all the time, you know, off a football weekend. That's so hard to do. I said this in the open before we came on. It is so, there's like three guys in the history of radio who have been able to talk for long periods of time. you're not like, please bring on something else.

You know, please bring a guest. It's like, you know, it's like Colin Coward and Rush Limbaugh, and I don't know if I can get to a third who could just talk to you. And it's not, where did you learn to do that? Well, there was some real critiques at ESPN that I was terrible at it. I mean, there was one guy in particular who like, I mean, it was pretty clear what happened. In the beginning, it was, it was pretty fucked because Scott and I join up. They didn't want me to be Scott's co-host.

The only person that wanted me to be Scott's co-host was Scott. They wanted to be Stephen A. They wanted to be maybe Herbstreet. But it was always like somebody who had a million other things going on. And I had nothing else going on. And so Scott was also going to miss a lot of time because he had SportsCenter. I mean, Scott was in the building an absurd amount of time during the early years of that show. And so they were like, okay, well, Ryan's, it was weird because it was kind of like I started doing some stuff with Torrico and people were like, hey, this guy might be pretty good.

You know, he's been doing stuff in the middle of the night. Like, I don't think there'll be another version of me at ESPN radio. I was the mail room equivalent. I had the worst shifts. I would go three weeks without one. I'd drive down on a Saturday afternoon. I'd be done at one. I'd drive back to Boston and there's never any parking at 3 or 4 a.m.

My car would get a fucking ticket every single time because there's never. But you understand? And then I would come down. I would stay for longer stretches. I'd pay for my own hotel in the beginning and all this stuff. And Scott would just listen to me on these long drives home after Sports Center. And he was like, I just think this guy's really good. But they knew I wasn't a name because, look, I just wasn't a name.

so nobody else was into it. But they said, hey, since Scott's going to miss shows, Ryan can handle it solo. But I couldn't handle it solo because I wasn't confident enough. And I also didn't think anyone in the building thought I was any good, which probably was accurate. So I let that fuck with me a little bit. And I was doing it so infrequently.

You can't go solo for like a week or two and then not go solo for two months. And then it's like, hey, be solo again. awesome. So you're lacking the confidence. You don't have the reps and it's so infrequent. So then I was being judged. I'd be like, hey, you know, he's a little dicey solo. And then that just lasted. It just, it was like Peyton Manning can't win the big game type of thing. Or again, I'm not Peyton Manning, but like, I'd be like, wait, so you guys don't think I can actually do this now, you know, 10 years later being, I'm fully, I don't think anybody's worried about my confidence level now at this point. And it was weird, like right up until the

very end, I remember getting pissed about it because I would listen to some of other people that they would have on solo and I'd be like, you think that guy's better than me solo at this point? Like, you're going to be kidding me. And there was one guy in particular that because in the beginning I was, I was not good enough. He just wouldn't let it go. And he just decided that was going to be his thing on me. And he actually was telling people like, yeah, you can't really have him be solo. So now when I think about, I think the monologues are really good on the podcast. Now, that's one monologue. It's not 12 segments, but you're not doing 12 solo segments when you're doing solo

radio. I've made a point since then. But, you know, look, there's a lot of stuff where, you know, it was pretty classic where if you don't believe in somebody, even if they're doing something well, it can't be that anybody was wrong. It can't be that the person was better. In the very beginning, when the podcast was doing great at ESPN, it was, oh, Scott came on, Charles Barkley came on.

It wasn't that, hey, no, Ryan's actually really good at this. and then it was, oh, Ryan's just a really good podcaster. Because they'd have so many people saying I wasn't good or didn't deserve the radio spot after all of those years that no one could be like, hey, maybe we're just wrong about this fucking guy. And like they were wrong. They were wrong. So I, you know, I'm glad you like them. I wish I could do them every single week and have them crush because even sometimes I get done with them. I'm like, ah, that could have been a little bit better.

it could have been a little bit better. But it's a really, I give the radio guys way more credit. Me doing a couple podcast monologues is nothing compared to what cowherd does. Nothing. And I can't answer the question as well as they can because they've had to do it. All right. Last question. If we stipulate you have a great job here, what do you miss about radio?

I loved the daily routine of the hallways at ESPN. It's just like the commercials. You know, the first time your contract's up and you have an offer for somewhere else, I remember thinking like, are you going to be wake, are you going to wake up and watch SportsCenter and you're not going to be in there anymore? How are you going to feel? And I was like, yeah, I'm not ready for that feeling.

And I resign, you know, and then another time around, the contract was up, got a couple offers somewhere else. You know, like, oh, maybe, maybe I could do this. And I was like, nope, I'm still not ready. I'm still not ready. Because I did truly love walking past the green room. You know, I started doing some more sports center stuff at the end. But I loved walking into the green room.

and bullshitting with the guys that played. And at that point, you'd become friends with them enough. They come on your radio show. You know, I'm not saying, like, anybody just walk in there and be best friends with these guys. But I missed the kind of unpredictability of being in the building for, you know, almost 15 years. And knowing, you know, like, I liked going to work. I liked going to work every day. And now with everything that everybody's gone through, and I've had it really easy compared

to other people throughout the pandemic. I don't have all the challenges, you know, the family and all that stuff that a lot of other people have. So I'm certainly not complaining. But I know that this career that I have now, as well as it's gone, I'm just, it's just not the same. Like I'm not going to be up at anyone's office. You know, I'm not going to go to the ringer office five days a week.

You know, I was going maybe one day a week. I liked going into work and feeling that energy and having that competitiveness, you know, like there was something there of when ESPN was. you know, for me growing up, like I worship the place as a consumer. I got to be there. And I, I missed that part of it because it just, you know, I don't know what the, I don't know if that'll ever happen again. I hear the old radio guy and you, every time you start a pod and you go, a jam packed, Rissolo should. Because the sports radio guy would never tell us if it's not a jam pack show. I used to love like going at it with cowherd because cowherd would be like, this might be our

best show. This is going to be, you know, so I think I might have even done it once or twice. I'd be like, today's show, not great, telling you right, just to make fun of you. Because no one's, you're right. No one's ever gone. I'm going to tell you, I got here late today and I'm fighting at home on my wife and things are mentally, I'm checked out a bit, but let's do this. Week four. Just going to coast for a couple of weeks and then week six, week seven, we'll be back. Thanks for doing this. Ryan Rosillo. coming on the press box. Thanks for having me.

All right. Thank you to Ryan Rosillo. I'm Brian Curtis. The producer of this podcast is Erica Servantes. Coming up on the press box, David Shoemaker and I are back Monday. I want to talk to him about the Urban Meyer story, which I'm convinced is a media story as much as a crappy coach story. We've also got to discuss the bad art friend story.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, buckle up. And then next Friday, we will do our second. How to Press Box, how to be a music critic, with the New Yorker's Kalefa Senna. Very excited for that interview. And finally this week, I might have gone over to the Fox movie lot here in L.A.

and seen Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch. You think we're going to devote a whole episode to a movie about a lightly disguised version of the New Yorker? Yes, we are. Plus, of course, more lukewarm takes about the media. Have a great weekend.