The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Post-Title Media Lunacy, Plus: Dan Patrick

Episode Date: July 22, 2021

Russillo shares his thoughts on the sports media frenzy of overreactions and hyperbole following a championship (0:40), before talking with sports media legend Dan Patrick about his time at ESPN, covering Michael Jordan, partying with Dennis Rodman, confronting A-Rod, debating David Stern, all-time worst interviews, leaving ESPN to build something new, and much more (14:10). Finally Ryen answers some listener-submitted Life Advice questions (1:13:30). Host: Ryen Russillo Guest: Dan Patrick Producers: Kyle Crichton and Steve Ceruti  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

and he got so close to me and i i was like oh you gotta be kidding me this guy's gonna deck me in front of his teammates in his locker room and then i got dibble is gonna come in and you know pound a like i'm in my mind it's it only lasts a couple seconds but i'm thinking like what are the headlines gonna be for some reason I'm going what's the headline here TV talking hairdo gets decked in Rangers locker room that is part of an hour-long conversation with the great Dan Patrick including almost get into it with A-Rod but hear that story and about his legendary career for an hour coming up today's open after an NBA championship this week in the Milwaukee Bucks. Again,

shout out to the Bucks. It is about us in the moment. And I brought this up a few times, so I want to hammer this point home, that we are all bad in the moment. Those of us that do this for a living, myself included, we struggle. We struggle with how we want to get our message across, and then we kind of want to outdo each other. All right, so let's first examine the industry. Because saying I don't know doesn't work. It's not great. It's not a way to really stand out. I will admit, when I kind of look around the landscape of the industry that I'm in, and have been for a long time, I'm kind of surprised I've done this well.

Honestly, my approach, there's a ceiling up. As a non-former player, coach, or executive, or any of that kind of stuff, I didn't even write. And I always feel like writers kind of get the benefit of the doubt with opportunities. And there's still a little bit of that lingering in the industry, but the writer gets more of a chance on some television stuff and opportunities, opinion-based stuff than some of the guys that actually are trained electronically first, and maybe are better organizing their thoughts, not in the word version but on air so when you say i don't know or if the suns are up to oh and you have two hours to tape with bill simmons and you say yeah we'll see what happens you know bucks probably come back

get him like you got to find a way to fill the time that you were given the opportunity that you were afforded to be doing this for a living. You have to find things to talk about. And I think anyone that's listened to me over the years knows that rarely will I be completely dismissive of a team. And sometimes when I am, I'm right. Sometimes when I am, I'm wrong about that too, because now I've done this long enough that I go like, look, I'm surprised all the time. If you had me with this platform in my 20s, I would be writing a lot of dudes off. I'd be like, hi, he sucks. That team sucks.

They're terrible. Whatever. Or this guy's the best. I'd be convinced. With less experience and less lessons, I would be more convinced I was right about stuff all the time. And as I become more educated on it, I'm less certain about stuff all the time.

All right? I remember working in Boston. I had a three-year run, afternoon show at a station that nobody was really listening to our signal was terrible there were layoffs constantly i ended up being layoff it's like really one of the old times i've ever lost a job and i went over to another affiliate it had nothing to do with place i was working at i was getting a run they put me on for about a month and the red sox in may i believe maybe late april so we're talking about a month and the Red Sox in May, I believe, maybe late April.

So we're talking like a month into the season. They blew a lead with the bullpen. And the guy that I was co-hosting with was just ranting and raving about how stupid the manager was and how this guy sucks in this bullpen. We were talking about the order in which the bullpen was used and he was going crazy about it for the entire show. And I just kept saying like, yeah, whatever, dude. It's April, it's May. It's not that big of a deal.

Like some of the best teams in baseball are going to have probably 20, 25 nights. That's probably the low number that they'd want back from their bullpen. It's just the way it goes. And this bullpen is not even going to look like this bullpen at the end of the season. It's going to be three or four different arms anyway.

So I'm not going to freak out about it. I don't know that team's seasons are derailed by a blown lead in April and May. And we went to commercial break and the guy looking at me said, and he didn't look at me, which is even weirder. He looked straight ahead and said, I don't know how you do the job this way, man. I'm like, wait, are you talking to me? He's like, yeah, I just, I don't know how you do the job this way. How do you do the job this way? Because we get to talk socks every day. He goes, get on the air and say shit. That's what I was taught. I go, well, I don't believe that. I don't feel that. So I can't really do it. And he just said, I don't know how you'll ever. And we even had other discussions because we were friends. He just

said, I don't know how you'll ever succeed. Who has your mindset that's actually been really, really successful in this business? So that's an education on the industry. I mean, it happens to, I remember my friend, I think I've shared this with you guys a couple of times. He goes, have you ever looked at the Yahoo Finance summaries after a day of trading? I was like, no, I don't. He goes, pay attention to it for a couple of days in a row. And he was right. The Dow was up 80 points.

It's like tech drives trading today. You're like, it's up 80 points. It's not that big of a deal. Drops 100 the next day. Fears of China. Slow market. You're like, all right. Gold goes up. Gold soars on Fed decision.

Like, wait. And then what if it goes down tomorrow? So like everything you just said, all of your summaries of the previous days didn't really mean anything. And that's something that's always a part of me and a part of this industry that I always struggle with. My all-time favorite one ever. In the moment, Joe Flacco wins the Super Bowl, played four of the best playoff games we've ever seen from a quarterback. Merrill Hodge, SportsCenter Monday.

Top five quarterbacks in the NFL going into the next season. Joe Flacco, number one. And I was like, that's wrong. But you'd feel like an idiot saying, hey, that's wrong. He's good, but he's not that good. Because that whole time before, I didn't really believe in joe flacco and i still don't even know if i'm right or wrong about it because he put together an epic run and so with yannis scoring 50 in game seven and by the way i'm not comparing him to joe flacco yannis is uh i don't even need

to finish the thought there i think you guys get where i'm going with it but after 50 in one of the defining finals games in the history of this league, because that's what it was, and being down 2-0 and coming back and fighting. And I think the best part about Giannis, too, was carrying every single possession. You basically have to say today it's his league. You have to say when we start going in and our obsession with the top five, top ten list, which I'm a big part of as well because I just always like thinking about it. She's like, wait, who really is? And it's not just, he's the best in the league. We have to

say he's the best player in the world. And those are the rules. Cause you couldn't be like, you know what? Durant's probably still a little bit better. And I'll admit like, I kind of feel that, but it seems so stupid to say, because in the moment you're caught up with the momentum of everybody else going like, nah, he's the best in the world. It's his league. It's his league. I mean, guys that I really like were saying it. Like everybody else. And think about like the Giannis timeline of things. We're not even 12 months.

We're like nine months removed, maybe 10 months. Yeah, because they lost in the second round. I have to go back and look at the exact dates here again. But we're less than 12 months from going, I don't know about this Milwaukee team. Now, granted, they had a Drew Holiday. I'm still just four weeks removed from looking at Milwaukee's offense. And they won this series with defense and then what Giannis did, by the way. But looking at their offense going, I don't

know, they could still win the NBA title. And I'd still have some concerns about them getting a little clogged up on offense. Or maybe they've solved all these things. And for now, we'll see this being part one of part two and three for a really good Bucs team. Or we'll see a healthy Nets team beat everybody. And then we'll think, wait, should we have all said that Giannis was clearly the best in the world when we just saw what Durant did, if that were to happen? But health will play a big part of whatever the Nets story is. But you get the point.

In the moment, you almost feel obligated to kind of just be like, I think I have to say all these things. I didn't want to go on last night with Simmons and be like, yeah, sit and give. Yeah, this is really good, but here are my five guys ahead of him. Because then you also feel like you're being a dick about the moment, and I definitely don't want to do that kind of stuff. So I went back and looked at some of the stuff that was said

over the last few weeks, and this happens every playoff season because the guys we doubt have a big game, and you're like, okay, now do we have to reevaluate who this guy is or the guy that we love? Whatever. I mean, you understand the point. Somebody who we love has a bad game. Is he actually not real?

And somebody who we don't like has a great game. Like, hey, do we need to update this guy's legacy and think about it a little bit differently? All right, a former NBA player is now an analyst because I remember seeing this. When the Suns were up 2-0, he said this is a dynasty in the making. Do you actually know how hard it is to achieve a true dynasty?

I don't even know if three titles in a row means you're a dynasty. Really, the way I grew up and thought about dynasties, I'm talking about more than a three-year run. Three titles in four years, a three-peat, is it a dynasty? Fine, a three-peat's a dynasty. But let's get to, I don't know, number two before we even start throwing that word around. And that's why I always joke

after a team wins a championship, I'll ask on Twitter, hey, I have to ask, is this team a dynasty? If the Suns had won, I don't think they're a dynasty because I'm not sure that we go into next year feeling like they're coming out of the West. That's if they had won a title.

And now it's completely different because they didn't. And I think their window's probably a little bit closer to closed than it is wide open because the other teams in the West are going to get better. We're going to be talking about Chris Paul at 37. And some of the limitations that we thought about some of their other guys, meaning Aiton and Bridges, we saw them show up again in the NBA finals. You're like, wait, I thought Aiton was this guy. Well, maybe he isn't.

Maybe some of those doubts are now confirmed again with the way the series played out. Gail Bridges, I really like this guy a lot. Do you remember him in a lot of moments in the finals? Probably not. So the same guy that said the Suns are a dynasty, I remember after Russell Westbrook had a triple-double run where he breaks the Big O's record, and then he had Westbrook ahead of Chris Paul on the all-time point guard rankings, which is absurd, and then had Chris Paul knocking on the door to get past Isaiah to be number two to Magic within a couple weeks.

And I was like, wait, what? We had another former NBA executive say that after the Bucs are down 2-0 that they weren't going to win another game in the finals and are one of the worst finals teams ever. Ever. That was down, just being down 2-0. The Suns are good in those first two games, but were they so good? Had they done stuff for so many years that you had to be that dismissive of a Bucs team? I guess so. Stephen A. said that Booker's next Kobe. We really got into this Booker mode. Remember, we started talking about this. We're like, hey, he keeps doing this. Then it's going to be started going into next year. Like, hey, is Booker actually closer to top five than he is even top 10? He's not even top 10. He's really good. He's a two guard that shoots a lot. It doesn't pass much. So I guess we were like, Hey, that's Kobe. That's

disrespectful to Kobe. And I think Booker's awesome, but Kobe James Harden, who did say about Giannis, he's just a seven footer who dunks with no skill. And even the most non Harden guy, which I think I have been plenty of times would say, yeah, there's probably a little truth in there from Harden, but it has to feel really good, especially if you're a Bucs fan or if you don't like Harden. We were like, oh yeah, good call. Aiton is the next David Robinson. Former NBA player said that. My own co-host Bill Simmons said it. Do you realize, and I don't think David Robinson's in the Akeem tier, but do you realize that David Robinson was a center who you could give the ball to and get a bucket when you needed to, right? As physically gifted and as soft as the touches of

DeAndre Ayton, he's not David Robinson. But when the Suns were going through their run and my co-host, like we even joked about it last night, he's like, hey, the reason why the Suns are doing this, if you really think about it, they have three top 20 guys. And now you're like, okay, that's not true. That's not true. And look, even me with Chris Paul, who I never necessarily had as the top 10. Let me make sure I'm covering myself here. But it felt like when you did your top 10 list of players, like who are the skilled, who are the best players in the world? It didn't feel like Chris Paul was on that list, but it felt like if you talked about an importance to winning a game, he was on that list. As an asset, he certainly wasn't because he's 36 and he gets hurt all the time. But if you needed somebody to win one game, how many guys are you actually taking ahead of Chris Paul? And I

think I may have had him like fifth, sixth, seventh. And now I don't feel like he's 30th. But now I feel stupid about saying that, even though I'll admit deep down, I probably still believe it a little bit. And let's look back at just the last, I don't know, by the time this pod comes out, 24 hours, Giannis wins a title and it becomes, well, the Bucs prove there's another way to do this. And I saw a lot of this homegrown build around your star. Do you think the other teams that drafted a star that doesn't have a ton of support aren't trying to build around that guy? Do you think they watch the Bucs with a title and say, hey, you know what? You want to start getting some better pieces around our star? Hey, yeah, this Bucs model, let's do that. You know where the Bucs lucked out?

The Bucs lucked out in that Giannis was a complete unknown. He gained like 50 to 60 pounds, grew to seven feet tall, and also isn't so Americanized that he's probably still in that early stage of his career of just kind of being happy to be here. Right. Like, don't you feel that with him now? It's genuine. As I mentioned before, to have your best player care that much, his intensity to be at that level, every single possession is a great foundation for a team because everybody else feeds off of that. But I'm guilty of not even a year ago going, you know, Giannis kind of feels like he's the best player in the world. And then I go, why would I say that? Because it's actually Kawhi.

Look at the way he finishes some of these possessions when the Clippers were up 3-1 in the Nuggets. And then by the time the entire playoffs are over again, LeBron wins a title. I'm like, why do we ever do this to LeBron? Why do we ever put him behind anybody else? And now we've just done it all over again, where I'll admit if Durant's foot is behind the line, no one today is suggesting any idea that Durant is inferior to Giannis so I saw a lot of that stuff like hey just build around your star build an

arena do all these different things you're like all right well you know what else worked piling up on free agents for the Miami Heat because you know you know, last year with the Lakers winning a title, do you think anybody would say, you know what the best way to do to build your team? Let an agency influence all of your major decisions like the Lakers did. That's the right way to do it. Having talk radio and local markets be like,

you know what we need? We need just to align ourselves with an agency to make sure that they're making all of our decisions for us so we get better players in here. So I'm not solving the problem because I'm not offering up any solution whatsoever, but it is as predictable as anything in any medium where anyone is talking for a living and having that kind of an opinion is that this 48-hour window might be the time to listen to us the least. This is a lot of fun, man. I'm really excited to have Dan Patrick on,

somebody who obviously generationally here watched, listened to, and then four years after bartending, I think we had an overlap of a few months where I was actually working at the Worldwide Leader. So the reason, Dan, I kind of was thinking about you more again recently was your interviewing skill. I want to get to a bunch of different stuff here, but the Scottie Pippen interview and then everybody raving, hey, Dan's the best, Dan's the best. I'm like, look, Dan's the best in sports as far as I can argue interviewing. interviewing, but it's not that it's the best questions. It's that you're the best I've ever heard or seen at interrupting people and steering the conversation. So I'm going to

interrupt you a ton today just to prove my worth and your ability. But that's always the thing that jumped out at me. I was like, you will cut someone off as soon as you're not getting what you want. And almost no one can do that the way you do. You have the balls to do it. I think you have the stature to do it. I think you got to look for that moment where, and I'm always looking or listening for when somebody gives a long answer or they're breathing. And then when can I get in there where it's not abrupt? Because there are a lot of people who will just continue to talk over you. And I don't want to be disrespectful, but I also, I got to pay, I got to be respectful of the audience that they have time and they have time limits.

I got to get to what I want to get to. And therefore, let me go straight line sometimes. But I'm trying to bring the guests back to what the topic is. And a lot of times when they start to stray, and then you just want to hit the reset button with what the topic is. And a lot of times when they start to stray, and then you just want to hit the reset button with them. I remember the first time I did Outside the Lines, they were like, just so you know, if you start to meander a bit, Bob Lee's going to, he gives you a warning. He goes, hmm, he gives you a warning.

And then he goes, and I was on satellite doing something for Boston. And I was five seconds into my answer and I heard Bob Lee go, and I'm like, no, I'm, you know, and it's in your head and I'm young, I'm getting started. And it was, it was, but see, here's why I've always thought it worked for you. And this is, this is a compliment is that when I would talk about you with other people, and then after you had been gone and, you know, younger people would ask me about stuff. I would go, Dan could do it because, you know, at one point,

I think it's fair to say you were the biggest deal in sports broadcasting. And did you feel like in a way that even if you had on a famous basketball player or whatever, fill in the blank athlete, that there was a level that you were at where you, a lot of times were a bigger star than the athlete who was the guest? I don't think I ever felt that way, at least consciously. Maybe subconsciously I did, but it just came down to,

I want to ask a question and get an answer. When people say, who are your best interviews? I say the person who's honest. That's all. You want your audience to feel like they're listening to something they shouldn't be listening to. And Scottie Pippen was probably too honest for people. And that didn't mean that he was wrong in what he feels. It was just, it sounded so raw that you're like, wait a minute, he just called

Phil Jackson a racist. I just wanted to give him the opportunity to understand what he said, because everybody was focusing on, oh, did you hear what Scottie said about Kevin Durant? I go, did you hear what Scottie said about Phil Jackson? Like, I don't care if he, you know, criticizes Kevin Durant. He called his coach a racist. And therefore, when you give them the opportunity, he started to go, and then my job is just to get out of the way and then steer him just a little bit. Almost like the bumpers on a bowling alley. That's all I was trying to do.

Just keep him in the alley. Do you think Pippen hated the last dance more than Karl Malone then? I think Scotty hated it more because he expected maybe a little more from Mike. Karl Malone then? I think Scottie hated it more because he expected maybe a little more from Mike. Carl Malone probably didn't think Mike was going to do him any favors. I think Scottie thought, okay, I'm his Robin. He needed me. I almost got to the NBA finals without him. I think he thought maybe he was going to build up Scottie,

not chop him off at the knees. When you were going through that run in the 90s, I know your last year was 2006. What do you think your best work was? Gosh, I don't know. I have a hard time with it ryan that i i was so self-critical for such a long time that i never enjoyed it and even when overbent and i were doing sports center and and we were at the top of our game and i i just kept thinking let me look at what i'm doing wrong and not what i'm doing right and i I really missed an opportunity to just sit back and enjoy it. I think I truly enjoyed interviewing Jordan after those championship games.

And I wanted to be there to just, I wanted to witness history. And I enjoyed it so much as a fan. And there are guys who love to be competitive when you interview them. There's certain guys that make you work for an answer. They like the back and forth. And I love that. That's as close as I would ever get to competing with Jordan is, I'm there sitting next to him, live on TV on SportsCenter. And I get to go at him a little bit and he can come back and there's no net.

And I love that. And I thought that that was something I've probably given far too much credit, but it was something I took great pride in making sure that I was giving you something different with Michael Jordan. I always felt like, and again, we don't know each other that well, but watching then and then getting to know you a little bit that there was something different about him with you. I felt like he liked you. Did you feel that? I think he respected me. And it was mutual that I obviously respected him. I respected his time. I didn't know him, but he would always say, I'm not going to come on after every win.

I'll come on after every championship. And I just love that attitude that, hey, game three, I'm not coming in. But when we win the championship, when we win the championship, I'm coming in. And that last time in Utah, and I've told the story when Mike comes in, he's got his Jersey out. He's soaked in champagne, Cuban cigar. He's got the basketball with him. Tim Hallam, the PR director with the bowls comes in and grabs Michael's shoes. Tim would always get Michael's shoes that he wore in the title game. He came in and got those. Michael came in, sat down. Phil Jackson came in and was waiting to come on right after Michael. And when we got done with the interview, I thought that's the last time I was going to see Michael. I thought that was it. He had just won, beat Utah. This is it.

And when he got up and we went to commercial break and I said, man, it's a shame you're retiring. And he goes, why? I said, well, you know, I'd love to play against you. He goes, get the fuck up. And I go, I'm in my suit. Phil Jackson's right there with me. We're coming back from commercial break. I'm bringing in Phil. Get the fuck up. I stood up. He goes, how the fuck would you guard me? And I put my, I came like a forearm to the back. He goes, I'd fucking torch you. And then he walked out.

And I, like I had to kind of regroup. I had probably 45 seconds to go, okay, I got Phil Jackson. And I sit down and Phil goes, you see what I dealt with? And then I, welcome back to SportsCenter, Chicago Bulls have won. Phil Jackson I sit down and Phil goes you see what I dealt with and then I welcome back to SportsCenter Chicago Bulls have won Phil Jackson joins us now and I just love that with Jordan he was never he could never ever say I'm not competitive right now I just want a champion what'd you say I said I'd like to guard you get You know, like that was Mike. He had that look where I could have been Reggie Miller. I could have been Kobe, and he would have given them the same look.

Did you, I imagine back then, I mean, we're talking 20 plus years ago now. You're on the road. I mean, I kind of know the way it can be. I kind of have these, I think a lot of us that were younger would have these dreams. People would be like, man, you work at ESPN. What about the Christmas party? I'd be like, whatever these weird things that are happening here, I don't think I get invited to any of them or they don't exist. So I don't really know.

But were you close enough that you'd be in these towns where socially you'd be hanging out with? Because I don't know if it's that, if you'd be the top guys or if you would be with you know a producer going oh cool luke longley's here again so you know what were those days like i never wanted to socialize i i would hang out with usually just the espn people the team because we would be recording stuff and then you would just go hey going back the hotel, you want to go get something to eat like Dr. Jack Ramsey. But it wasn't where I went. Charlie Moynihan, a great producer at ESPN. I didn't go, Hey, where is everybody? Or if you knew where everybody was, the only time I ever did it was in Chicago and Dennis Rodman was hosting a birthday party. I don't even know if it was Dennis's birthday,

but he was celebrating a birthday party and it was second floor of a bar. It was called the crow bar. And there were women who were dancing in cages. And I'm like, it was one of those where you go, uh, what is going on here? And then I go up second floor and there are a few,

uh, players that are there, a few former players. Rodman is there with a Chicago police shirt on and he's got his arm around a guy and his arm around a girl. And there were probably 20 to 25 kamikazes on the bar. Whenever you went up to talk to Dennis, you had to do a shot. And so I ended up staying there for too long. And he kept calling me Sags. He thought I was Craig Sager. So like he didn't go,

hey, Sags, Sags, you got to do a shot. And after a while, I just went by Craig Sager. I just went, all right, he's never going to get it right. And the next morning, I show up for shoot around, and I am hungover. And I see Steve Kerr and Judd Bushler, and they go, tried to keep up with Rodman, huh? And I go, oh, my God. I said, is he here?

Oh, yeah, yeah, he's bouncing. Rodman was unbelievable and then that night I think he had like 18 rebounds played like nothing it was just you know I paid the price because I was hanging out if you want to call it with uh with Dennis Rodman but he still thinks he was probably drinking with Craig Sager he's telling people that story to this day I remember back before I was even in the business and I was just driving around. I was bartending. I would listen to Tony and then I would listen to you. And I remember the guys on the show were like, well, what's it like when you go out, Dan? You're like, actually, it's not that exciting. You're like a guy will come up to me and be like, hey, do you think Jason Caffey can be a starting center in this league? so one of the times I did run into Dan, we had some mutual friends and we were in, we were in Vegas.

And I, I was like, Hey, do you, do you think Jason Caffey has, do you think he could be a five man? You know? And,

and you laughed. And then I told you that I knew some of the same people and, and Dan was great. He was, uh, he was immediately, you could just size about me. Like I always knew I was more of a Dan guy than a Keith guy.

And I'm not knocking Keith whatsoever. But the reason I bring up the Dan and Keith thing is that I don't know if you knew this, but the book that came out, the book, the big show, it came out in 1997. You wrote it with Keith. It was a really cool, I don't know who your editors were, what the book proposal was, but it was an incredibly cool format to lay out some of your backstory, but then also how the industry works then also advice. And it was actually very inspiring to me. And I didn't really even know if I was going to get into broadcasting again. It was kind of absurd, whatever happened with me. By the way, do you know how much that book is worth right now? What it's going for a hardcover on Amazon? $3.

$900. That's why I've been getting people sending me the book in the mail to have me autograph it. I guess it's out of something. You can't get it right now. It was $900 today on Amazon, but I would, I would recommend, look, you can get the paperback like that. So anybody listening to this, I would recommend it. But it was, it was a great book in that you told us about yourselves. You told us about ESPN, but you also did a great job of explaining, hey, if you're going to talk for a living, if you're going to do this, organize your thoughts. Read more.

Write even more. If you're young enough and you're still in school, English courses. Because anybody that wants to do this, you need to figure out what you want to say and how to organize it. And that was incredible advice and actually stuff I never hear anymore. So again, I don't know. I love that book. It was a very, very underrated book. Although I guess it anymore. So again, I don't know. I love that book. It was a very, very underrated book. Although I guess it isn't now because it's worth 900 bucks.

Well, we thought that there, once you got to a certain level, once you got to ESPN, there was nobody there who was going to go over your tapes. I sought out John Walsh, the head of ESPN Sports Center. I wanted him to look at what I was doing and tell me if I was getting any better. I didn't get to ESPN and go, okay, that's it. I've reached the level. I wanted to know how could I be great. And if it was writing, if it was questions, if it was who I was going to interview, energy on sports, like all of those things. And I thought there's so many people who want to get in this business and they don't, they really don't know how to, they don't know anything about it.

And if we could give you just Cliff Notes version of here's some things to work on. And then that led to me opening up this broadcast school in Orlando at Full Sail University, where you get your degree in sportscasting. And we have 400 students enrolled now. And what we do is we just tell, we give you unvarnished truth. Here are the answers. Not everybody's going to be on the air. Not everybody's going to be in sports. But if you want to do this, here is the roadmap there. And I go back to that book and Keith and I had talked about it a lot of writing because people thought you're the highlight guys.

But we probably broke more stories at that time than anybody in the business because we took great pride in it. We're both reporters at CNN and we didn't want to have a shtick, but like we were labeled that. I mean, there's worse things in the world, but we wanted to make sure that we wrote everything, that we were good at what we did.

And, you know, we did highlights. We had fun. I mean, really highlights started with how many times can you get excited about the Cleveland Indians or Milwaukee Brewers? So we would add, you know, little catchphrases. That was it. I mean, it was really to entertain ourselves. It wasn't like, hey, I want somebody to walk around going, you're in fuego. It was for us, the camera people, the director, the producer, person running prompter. That's all we cared about. Because I figured if you were laughing, you were entertained, then people who were watching were. So that's sort of how all of that started. But I do caution students when somebody goes, hey, got a great

catchphrase. I go, okay, what is it? And then they'll tell me and I go, okay. I said, can you write? What do you mean? I said, well, having a catchphrase is nice, but can you write a show? is nice, but can you write a show? Can you do a lead-in in 15 seconds? Catchphrase is nothing. The other stuff, you can apply the rest of your career. And they look at you like, wait a minute, I thought I had to have catchphrases here. I go, nope, not the case. See, for those that don't understand, and there's plenty of people listening to this podcast that do understand it, it was incredibly cool because it was new. I don't think it could ever be repeated because the industry is so different now. It wasn't just, hey, Kilbourne's going to come on and say something funny. come down to Manhattan beach and visit you. And so Kilbourne pulls in and I answer the door at the top of the staircase and I come out just shorts, no shirt on. And Kilbourne goes, um, I just, are you going to have a shirt on at any point? Or just, he's like, I just need to know

how tonight's going to go. I was like, if you want me to put a shirt on, I'll put a shirt on for you, Craig. And he was like, okay, yeah, I would prefer that. And I was like, okay, no problem. But I remember trying to get Scott to do it. We were doing the radio show together. We would pitch him, like, you need a catchphrase, man. And he didn't need a catchphrase, but that was our big thing. But like, we need you.

And Scott would just be like, I'm not a catchphrase guy. I'm a highlight guy. Like, I'm not. I have a question in here somewhere but when you became the personalities you became stars because of of all of it i think espn at times a lot of times the argument would be like well you're only a star because we made you a star you know it's our platform we picked you to be on it and there's some truth in that argument but do you think they started to kind of resent the star power that so many of the anchors had?

Because then it seemed like that was the last thing they wanted. This is probably after you had left. No, it was while I was there. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah, they didn't. The famous quote from somebody in management is, we don't want you guys to turn into another Berman. And I thought, why not?

Look at what Chris... I mean, Chris is the reason why there's an ESPN, Chris and Bob and Tom Meese. What Chris did when he did it, didn't know who was watching. And to continue to do that, I said, a guy who's dedicated to ESPN, who loves ESPN, like, why wouldn't you want that? We were told, we were dressed down one time and it was really bad because management, I think, thought we were full of ourselves. And we might have been,

in fairness to them. I thought I was going to get fired. So you can imagine that I think I had just won a sports Emmy. First cable host that ever won a sports Emmy. I'm feeling pretty good. What year was this?

It was in the mid-90s. Okay. And, you know, there was talk that maybe we would host Saturday Night Live, Keith and myself. Like, we're getting, we're on the cover of TV Guide, you know, 10 best shows or shows to watch. Like, we're thinking, they got to guide you know 10 best shows or shows to watch like we're thinking they they gotta love us right they didn't they were worried that we were going to be out of control and i think that led really to the the uh breaking point tipping point with keith was like

i'm not enjoying this i want to i want to go But yeah, there was a time when they were worried that we were going to have an ego that was going to be out of hand. And it wouldn't have happened with me. It might have with Keith, but Keith, I tell people, he was the best teammate you could ever ask for. We never talked politics.

I mean, we got on and we did a show and he was an incredible teammate help you with anything uh funny serious great writer uh brilliant and but you know there was probably part of him that was like hey he said to me one day gp greatly underpaid i said yeah i know sports center made 400400 million last year. What the fuck? And I go, I know, but they're not going to give us any of that money. Just not. And everything was precedent setting. I wanted to have an extra TV in my office because I was doing more blind highlights than anybody. I'd get on 11 o'clock. We wouldn't see the games or all the games.

And I said, maybe I could watch these games. And I asked for a small TV, real, real, real small TV. And they said, no, it's precedent setting. And I go, and they said, well, if you get it, then we have to give it to Linda Cohn. We have to give it to her. I went out and stole Jason Jackson's TV off his desk and put it in my office.

And poor Jason Jackson, he comes in the next day and goes, hey, where's my TV monitor? I acted like, oh my God, what happened? But they were just so worried that you were going to want it and then Stewart and Rich Eisen's going to want it. It got Stuart and Rich Eisen's going to want it. And, you know, it got to the point where they didn't want personalities

because they thought the four letters were so important. And then after the fact, they're like, holy shit, we could use some personalities here. Yeah, there was definitely that. There was definitely a, you know, the thing that I would deal with firsthand and then, you know, so many friends of mine that worked there was, you know, you either i would deal with firsthand and then you know so many friends of mine that worked there was you either were in the star queue or the non-star queue you know and then when your contract came up and it was like yeah we don't really think you're a star you know which

basically is like you're going to take a huge pay cut or you're out of here um you'd be like okay how do i get to be in the other group and And you're like, yeah, you're just not in that other group, which I do think was a bit of a reaction to kind of them. This is all before I was there, obviously, but it was, I had heard stories. It was just like, they, like you said, they didn't want another Berman. They didn't want people feeling like they were bigger than the place. And in a way, I don't know. I don't know if it's that, I don't know if it's ESPN. I don't know if it's the industry, you know, because I think no matter where you work, especially for any of us that did it, it was weird because it's like, yeah, we have a nine to five essentially different hours, but then everybody sees us at work. So there's no hiding. So the complaints are the same as any other industry, which is maybe unfair to ESPN. But at the same time, I guess, look, I haven't worked at other networks or anything like that to really understand if it is something that was specific to Bristol, Connecticut, or if it's just what the industry is. I think it's probably exclusive to

ESPN in a lot of ways because there's so many people. When I went to NBC, well, there's only a couple of talent that they have to deal with, work with. It could be Al Michaels, could be Bob Costas. The inventory wasn't as deep with espn they're worried that this guy on headline news wants to be doing catchphrases and thinks he should be making this and that it would be it would just careen out of control and instead of understanding hey if we take care of certain people it took me over 10 years to get an office at ESPN. But if you're a coordinating producer, you can walk in off the street, you get an office that day. And my point was, I don't need an office, but I've been here 10 years. If you're

handing out offices, it'd be nice if I got one of those offices. So they came to me one time, management did, and they said, come in. I had to go in an office. And they go, we're going to give Chris Berman and Bob Lee offices. And I said, okay. They said, are you okay with that? I go, yes, you should be naming buildings after them, which I did fight for.

I thought that they should have a Berman building, a Bob Lee building, have the newsroom named after Tom. Like I didn't care. I just wanted to have fun. It's the other shit that got in the way where I just went, this isn't fun. And for 15 years, it was a wonderful job. The last three years weren't.

It just, there were more politics and I outgrew them. They outgrew me something. But, you know, after all of it, I was the last one. You know, when everybody leaves and then they say, turn out the lights. So, Oberman had left. Tirico had left. Fowler had left. Berman, Bob Lee, Oberman, John Saunders,

like they all stopped doing SportsCenter. And I looked around one day and I go, what am I doing? I thought I was too old to be doing SportsCenter. And that was part of the reason why I was ready for a change. But there were so many great people behind the scenes there that you couldn't have them, you couldn't have a successful show without them because they cared so much. It could be prompter operator, could be Howie Schwab doing stats,

it could be a producer, director. They truly, truly cared every single night. And I just think management was ill-equipped at the time to understand the explosion of ESPN. Because I didn't want to go to a network. I thought, man, I got it made here. I was making far less than somebody at a network, but I was having fun at what I was doing. And I think they, they use that against me, but it's okay. I mean, I, I didn't have an agent the first couple of contracts. I was like, give me what you think I deserve. That was it. Like I, I, that's the only place I wanted to work.

Yeah. And I didn't want to turn it because I know you've done a lot of this in the past. And I think everybody that leaves feels, you know, their story is, you know, very specific when I'm like, Hey, I've heard about a bunch of people that leave that were all on air and maybe it's just kind of what it is, but I think at your level, it should be looked at a little differently. Here's, here's what I did want to ask you. Cause I was, I was wandering the hallways there. So I got to February, 2006. So we had a little bit of an overlap. It wasn't like we were, I wasn't filling in on the show. Let's put it that way. I was lucky to get a Saturday night shift. And when you left, what actually happened? Because I've heard a bunch of different stories.

I've heard about private jets. I've heard about people like rushing back to meet you and then you not being there. It got very dramatic. I never knew what was true. But I think there's always that point of walking away that none of us can really understand until you actually sit in the chair and you go, yeah, I'm not here. Wait, that I wanted a private jet? No, no, no, no.

I'd heard a story about there was a meeting and then people got on a private jet to come back to meet with you in Connecticut and you had already decided that you were leaving, which again, I don't think was true. But I'm just saying that's just the way it worked in the hallways. No, no, it was really simplistic. I, I had a meeting with my wife in the morning. I was going to go up and sign a five-year contract extension. And then she said, you know, the kids are going to be all grown and out of the house by the time you're done with this contract. And I thought, no, you know, come on. I'll be around. And I drove up and it was a 55 minute drive. And I got there and I just remember talking to management and I was given a take it or leave

it. And I thought, you know, after 18 years, take it or leave it. This isn't the place for me. And I had talked to somebody about getting out and doing my own show if I ever left, but I just needed bargaining power. But I'm not somebody who goes, I got this offer over here. Do you want to match it? It's if I make my mind up that that's where I'm going, then I'm going. And I just, my wife's words resonated with me and I said, I'm going to leave it. And I walked outside and I called my wife and I said, I'm coming home. She said, okay. So we'll sell the house if we have to. And I went home and I, there was, there was nothing. I couldn't get management on the phone. Let me put it that way. The higher, higher ups, because I just, I wanted them to know this is what's going on. And I couldn't get George

Bodenheimer on the phone. And then I leave. And then George Bodenheimer calls me to thank me for all the great work that I put in. And I thought, you know what, maybe they didn't want me to stay. And maybe it's best that I didn't stay. But there was no meeting or there was no great ask. I wasn't demanding anything. wasn't demanding anything. I love the status quo. I love the people there. And then I just realized, you know what? Let me go out. Let me get sand kicked in my face. You don't have those four letters. It's a whole different world. As you probably found out when you get out there like, oh, you used to work at ESPN. And you get that feeling, but I'm glad I did it. I'm thrilled that they gave me a chance in the first place, but no, there was nothing dramatic. There was no crazy, hey, we're coming back on private planes to meet with you.

It was already, it was done. Yeah, I love the story though. I didn't think it was true. It was just, we kept hearing about it all the time. I wanted to do the show from home once every Friday because I wanted to be around my kids. They were nine through 15 and I had three daughters and I, that was it. And I said to one of my bosses, you can't tell the difference between me in Bristol and me at home. In fact, my home studio sounded better.

And, uh, I was told we need you in for morale. And so every time I'd come in, you know, I would, you know, guys would joke about, yeah, all right, morale, here we go. And I'm like, this, this is, this is terrible. But, but that's what they were selling. Because if I went went home then everybody else who did radio was going to want it. It was all precedent setting. And then when I saw when Van Pese got to move to D.C. and I went, you've got to be kidding

me. Van Pelt gets to go to Washington D.C. to do a show? Different times though because now it's slightly more flexible. I've got to admit though, at 30 when I first started there and was there in an afternoon and saw you walking around, I was pumped. There's your around.

They weren't wrong. It was because of you I had to come in. Here's something that's a bigger thing about anybody that's pursuing this kind of stuff and getting to the level that you got to, and you've already hinted on this a few times, is that I think there's two groups of people. When I'd be at ESPN and I would see, I'm not going to name any names, male, female, who was just like, look, this is the job. I come in. I do the job. I'm good at it. I make my money. Then if they want to resign me when I'm up for three years, I'm happy to sign. And I don't care. I'm not keeping fucking score anymore. I'm not looking at everybody else's assignments. I'm not hearing rumors from agents. And then there's the other group where everything is about keeping score. Everything is like, wait, that's what's going on there. And now that's definitely exhausting. You can't do it all the time. But I always wonder if I know I'm in the second category because I'm competitive, but if I were wired like the first group, if I'd ever even make it to this point.

And I wonder if that's something that you've thought about because it sounds like at times you were kind of both. I wasn't competitive. Oberman made more than me. I didn't care. Couldn't care. I didn't know what Berman made, and I didn't care. Bob Lee didn't care at all. I just loved that I got to do the 11 o'clock show, and I got to do certain events. And that was it.

I didn't ask for anything, anything special. I finally got an office after 10 years. So it wasn't like I was pounding on a desk saying, what about me? After everybody had left. But no, not at all. I truly loved going to work every day and that opportunity to do SportsCenter. And I even said this to Oberman when Keith was leaving. I said, you'll never have this again. Ever.

And at the time, I think he was just, all right, I'm done with this. I don't want to do this anymore. And there was some acrimony there with management. And then it took a while, but he realized,

you just never, we had an opportunity. We had something for a little over five years. I never have that again. Something different, but never anything close to that. Because that's every single night. We're doing five nights, live TV.

And, you know, it's a small group. But, man, it was awesome. I remember hearing Fowler talk about something once. And he may have even told it to me because we travel a lot on game day. And depending on the weekend would be, you know, zero times you'd hang out with him a little bit. But when he kind of shifted over to calling more games, he had said, I want to be part of history. I want my voice to resonate historically with these big events. And I thought like, wow, I'm doing this.

I'm not even thinking about this kind of stuff. Now, granted, I'm not a play-by-play guy, so I wasn't going to be involved in that kind of stuff. Now, granted, I'm not a play-by-'m doing now because I didn't have anything. And I had guys who I'd worked with at ESPN and I asked them to take a leap of faith. We had 12 radio affiliates. I didn't have any TV partner. I had nothing. And we were doing the show in my attic.

And those guys gave up their jobs at ESPN and they joined me. And I didn't know what I had, but I knew what we could be. But I had to go door to door. I mean, I had radio stations weren't going to take the show. Hey, we went against you when you were at ESPN or we were forced to take you at ESPN. Like, you're just hearing all this stuff. And I'm like, okay, that's fine. And so we started out with 12 stations. And I truly believe if I don't get on KLAC in Los Angeles,

then I don't know if we're anywhere near the success that we are. But they took a chance on me and I said, look, I'll never fail. I promise you I won't fail. And that helped save me. But, you know, I would never... We were going bankrupt. And I told Paulie, my producer, and I'd always meet him at the bar, Seven Seas Bar. And he always knew there was going to be a serious conversation. I said, dude, we're in trouble. He goes, all right, what do you want to do? I said, I got to find another partner. And we had this hard to hard talk because I couldn't let these guys down. They had left their, they had families or their starting families and they left their jobs at ESPN. Nobody leaves unless, you know, you're crazy. Hello. And I walked out to the parking lot after a couple of beers and I called, cold called DirecTV. And I called Chris Long. I didn't know Chris Long. I was just told that he, you know, it was the guy to talk to at DirecTV. I said, Hey, do you know who I am? Yeah. Would you be

interested in buying my show? He goes, well, what is it? And I explained it to him. And I said, you know, and then we can do cameras and the whole thing. And he goes, what's it going to cost me? And I said, I don't like this guy sounds interested. I gave him the price tag. He goes, all right, who do I talk to? And I told him who he had to talk to, to purchase the show. And he eventually bought the show. And I don't know why I called DirecTV. I just thought they carry sports, but they don't have any name attached to it. And Chris Long, I mean, that dude, when he said he was going to do something, he did something. And forever indebted to him. Brought in the cameras, set up the infrastructure to be able to do a simulcast. Gave me a man cave, golf simulator, basketball hoop, pinball.

I mean, a bar. I was very, very, very fortunate. But to do that and build this to where it is today, we did that on our own, not with four letters like ESPN. Knowing that you were kind of the standard for an anchor, I always felt like you liked radio more before I got to know you or listened. The purest form. It's the purest form of what we do because I write a column every hour. Now, a columnist doesn't take phone calls. You can't tweet him or email him. This is live and it's the sound that you're creating. It's not necessarily the visual because we don't play to the camera. I want this to be a radio show that's on TV,

but I want to respect that radio audience. And when they hear my voice or what I'm asking somebody, the answer that I get from somebody, whatever it might be, the stories that we tell, the power is within your own head. We're so spoon-fed now of everything on TV, we have to explain everything you see. And we shouldn't, but we do. Whereas radio, you do have to explain it. And to give that visual to somebody listening is so powerful. And it was so powerful growing up. I listened to Al Michaels do the Reds games growing up on radio. And I just remember how strong that was because I felt like I saw the ballpark. I saw the game. I saw Pete Rose. I saw like all of those things.

It never lost on me. When we do something, always think of the radio audience. And I, you know, I love music and I was a DJ when I first started out, but I knew I wanted to do sports and, you know, the TV part of it is great, but the radio element you never forget about. Never. I remember the Stern interview that you had, Commissioner David Stern, after the Steve Dash. Palabra. Right. Palabra.

And he was yelling at you in the way he would yell at someone where he was like, I'm coming on, Dan, because you're an opinion former. You shape opinions. And you went back at it with him in honestly, one of the most respectful ways. And when I think about that interview, and then, you know, I still am a consumer. I don't really have hard feelings about it. You know what I mean? Like there's guys I like guys I don't like, I like your show, not watch your show or whatever. But I don't know that there exists that element of pushback that much anymore. I don't think, and it might've been your reporting and journalism background as the foundation to the way you would conduct a show, which is lacking. And again, it's not even a criticism.

It's just a shift in the dynamic of who has the jobs. I feel like the better I know you, the tougher I am on you that I will challenge you a little bit more, but I had a great relationship with David Stern. He didn't want me to leave, um, and, and fought for me to stay at ESPN. And,

and we would, you know, I go to New York, I'd go to his office, uh, spent time with him. Um, and, but he was protecting his league. I'd go to his office, spend time with him. But he was protecting his

league. I was protecting me, my show. And so I respected what he was saying. And that you're going to suspend those. Oh, okay. You know, when he started with those things. Now, I knew I was in trouble. But this is

live. And this is where everybody in the building, if they weren't listening, they're listening because this is something you just don't hear. And that's what you want. I don't want to create, but I didn't want it to dissipate. I had to meet him. I met him at the Mount and I wasn't going to back down, but I had to be respectful, but I had to do it in a way that was a little bit more bobbing and weaving and not Mike Tyson. He was Tyson and I was Holyfield. And if the only thing that he bit off was part of my ear, then I was okay. I came out alive. That's what it was. You kept saying, Mr. Commissioner, Mr. Commissioner.

And it was an incredibly respectful, combative thing. And I really think it's the kind of thing. I hope you guys share it with the school because there's just not many people that can do that. Do it now. So I'm giving you some credit on a history lesson here. He sounded like he was the radio caller. So it could have been, uh, you know, uh, David in New York calling David, what's on your mind? You, uh, Bob, Bob, you're on the pole ever. Oh, okay. You know, and then you go, okay,

let me talk you down here. Let me talk you down here a little bit. Come on down, come on down, come on. Okay. Now. All right. And then you go. But, you know, I got invited to his funeral. I had great memories, great memories with him because he was fair. If he didn't like something, he would tell you. But he was fair to, you know, as somebody in this business who doesn't always get the truth sometimes from bosses, he was honest with me. And that's all I could ask for. I may not like it,

but I certainly liked it more than you not being honest with me. Give me the all-time worst interview. Because I always know mine. Canseco was just such a dick the whole time. And I was like, all right, this is stupid. Give me the one that you'll never forget. You know, you mentioned Canseco. He called up one day to the show and he said,

hey, I want to tell you everything that's going on in baseball. And that's how it started. Canseco called the show and he said, I've been blackballed and I'm tired of it. And I'm going to name names. I'm writing this book. And I said, but this is career suicide. I don't care. I'm going to write this book and people are going to know.

And I mean, that's really where it started with him that he wrote the book. And that was the bombshell that changed Major League Baseball. Tanya Harding was really bad. baseball. Tanya Harding was really bad. But I didn't know what I should have been expecting, but she was doing a promotional

boxing match in Indianapolis, I think, at a minor league hockey arena. And in between periods, she was going to be boxing somebody with those oversized boxing gloves, I think. And I said, well, we should have her on. I never had her on, never talked to her about the Tanya Harding stuff. And we started talking and then she

talked about her religion and brought that up. And I said, well, how does your religion basically come to grips with what you did, your involvement with Nancy Kerrigan? She goes, are we really going to get into this? And I go, yeah. I mean, it's live. And then she's, next thing I know, hold on, Paul wants to talk to you. I don't know who Paul is. Well, Paul's her manager.

Paul gets on the phone. Hey, this is Paul. What's going on? I go, I'm doing an. Hey, this is Paul. What's going on? I go, I'm doing an interview with Tanya Harding. What are you doing? Hey, we're going down this road. And I go, I've never spoken to her about what happened with Nancy Kerrigan and her role in this.

And she brought up her religion. I'm just curious what her religion thinks about her being involved in something like this. That was awkward. The other one was Whitey Herzog. I don't know how the hell this happened, but Whitey Herzog wrote the foreword on a book that dealt with drug issues with the Cardinals, baseball. And I thought, okay, wow, Whitey wrote the foreword.

We should have him on. So had him on. I started asking him questions about the drug use, and he eventually hangs up on me. I don't have time for this. Click. I went, I was given a list of questions that had specific questions about drug use with players.

I'm going, you've got to be kidding me. I'm going down the list like, okay, I've got to hit him. going, you've got to be kidding me. I'm going down the list like, okay, I got to hit him. Wait, he's going to talk about this. He didn't want to talk about anything. I went, all right. So Whitey hung up on me. Him and Tanya probably at the top of the list.

Yeah, Tanya, that one is not very surprising, honestly, unfortunately. Stephen Jackson hung up on me, but we're cool now. But I don't think he knew that when he met me now that he had hung up on me because he was asking for a trade right after he'd signed a three-year extension. And I said, hey, do you think that asking out is the best look considering you just did the extension?

You asked for the extension, they gave it to you, and then you were like, now I want out of here. And he was like, man, we're in the tunnel. I can't hear you. Peyton Manning didn't talk to me for four years, maybe. Why? He had signed a contract and I asked him, I said, did you think about maybe leaving a little more on the table so the Colts could re-sign Edger and James and I think Reggie Wayne? And he did not like that at all.

Didn't talk to me for four years. Alex Rodriguez, that was not a radio interview that led to him not talking to me. That was, uh, he had just won the MVP, I think.

And, and we said, we can tape this. So he called in and I started talking to you right away. Yeah. Like I don't do, Hey, how are you?

Like I'm right away. Let's go. Let's let's. When you call up, Hey, uh, so what'd you think of Jeter's contract? And Jeter just signed his new contract.

He goes, there's not one thing he does better than me. And we started talking, talking, talking. And then he goes, are we recording? I go, yes. And we continued the interview, but it came out. It exploded in New York. And then I think it was GQ or Esquire did a follow-up where he said the same things to Scott Rapp. Well, I don't know Alex is upset with me. We had a good relationship prior to that. And I remember we were going to Dallas to do something with the Mavericks. And I said, you know, see if A-Rod wants to join us for an interview.

PR guy with the Rangers goes, sure. You know, Alex, he loves you. He'll do it. He calls back, goes, Alex got a problem. I said, okay. And I said, well, I'm going to drive over and meet him face to face, go in the locker room. I brought Rob Dibble with me and I go in and it's just like Animal House, Otis, my man, where everything stops. So I got Palmaro, Pudge Rodriguez, Canseco, and I got A-Rod over here by his locker. And he is talking to, I think, somebody named Mike Lamb. You would have thought Mike Lamb was deep throat at Watergate, that he was listening to every word and it was so intent

and he was waiting, making me wait. So these, I got these guys on the back of a couch, like they're leaning over and they know something's going down and it's probably me going down. And I turned to Dibble and I said, look, if he hits me and he goes, I got your back.

Because I truly thought that Alex was going to hit me. Mike Lamb walks away. I think it's Mike Lamb. And then I said to A-Rod, I said, so what's up? He goes, you tell me. I said, do you have a problem with me? And then he told me about the Jeter stuff. And that had been a few years. And I said, but you said all of those things. And then you said it to the magazine writer. I told you we were taping. I didn't do anything to deceive you. And he got so close to me. And I was like, oh, you got to be kidding me. This guy's going to deck me in front of his teammates

in his locker room. And then I got Dibble is going to come in and, you know, pound A. Like, in my mind, it only lasts a couple seconds. But I'm thinking, like, what are the headlines going to be?

For some reason, I'm going, what's the headline here? TV talking hairdo gets decked in Rangers locker room. A-Rod on DL after Rob Dibble breaks his, his nasty boy breaks his jaw. Like I'm, but I can see the Rangers over here, these cowards over here, and they're looking and they're waiting. And I went, I'll be damned.

If this is how it ends, let it, let's go. And I, I was mad at A-Rod. Like he was, he was threatening me, I thought. And I'm like, you know, I had some choice words back. And I basically, it was like, Hey, fuck you, man. Like you said these things. I didn't feel this way. And I, I, I almost reached back to see if I could feel dibble. Cause I thought, God, if he left, I'm in, I'm in trouble. Like Rob, you there, Rob, you there. And, and then we walked out and we're not, we don't have a good relationship now. I've, I've seen him and I'm like, hey, hey, Alex, how are you? And that's it. But yeah, it was, that one was almost go time.

That's too bad because A-Rod's really cool and everybody likes him now. Yeah. Not that I was rooting for Ben Affleck with J-Lo, but maybe a little bit. Maybe just a little bit. Can you fight? Was this an ego confrontation? What was the plan? Or was it that Dibble was with you?

Because Dibble would have gone crazy had he had given the opportunity. Anybody that knows Dibble. No, the point was, and I was always taught this. When I first started out at CNN, and I'm covering the Mets and the Yankees, if you say something, show up in the locker room. That's all. That's all that was. When I heard that he had a problem with me, I went to him in the locker room. That was it. And it had nothing like, I'm going to challenge you. It was like, I thought we could talk about this. Whatever it was, I didn't know.

And I just thought, okay, let's talk. And when I could tell that it was not going to be talk per se, then I realized that I could be in trouble here. But I didn't go in there to be, hey, I'm going to stand up to Alex Rodriguez. It wasn't that. I was trying to be fair. I was trying to be respectful. And if he had a problem, and if I was unprofessional, then I would have apologized to him. I always appreciated the personality because it's a combination of humble and ego. I know you in this, it just sounds like there's almost no ego, but there has to be a little ego in there to get out. I'm competitive. Right.

I'm competitive. I'm competitive. But have you allowed yourself, as you said at the beginning, because I know this firsthand, I'll think back to experiences ago. Hey, you should have enjoyed the time with scott more you know we had six years but the place didn't like me it was just me grabbing grabbing at anything i could just trying to prove to everybody every single day i'm not as bad as you guys think i am i'm actually good at this and so in the moment i couldn't enjoy enjoy it as much even though i knew i was sitting there with a guy who becomes my best friend and one of the all-time great so in the moment, I couldn't enjoy it as much, even though I knew I was sitting there with a guy who becomes my best friend and one of the all-time great guys in the business.

It's like, you guys just bullshitted for six years. So back to what you had said, in the moment, I wish maybe I'd enjoyed it more. Do you finally feel like everything you've done, Dan, and you realize how successful, how many people are like, you're the guy? Do you give yourself those moments and maybe just driving down the road in the car by yourself where you've done, Dan, and you realize how successful, how many people are like, you're the guy. Like, do you give yourself those moments and maybe just driving down the road in the car by yourself where you're like, you know what? I actually did. I did set out and do everything I wanted to do. No, no. It's, it's one of my, my big regrets. What made me is, you know, what dismantles you? Like I, I was always. I never stopped. I always wanted to be great, better. How do I get better? And it's not that I looked in the business and go, I'm better than Bob Costas or Joe Buck or Chris Martin. It didn't matter any of that.

It was in my mind... Do you think you're better than those guys? I'm just... Absolutely. Even this interview, there are things where I could have been better, should have, or shouldn't have said something. But that's how I am. That's how I'm wired. wired. But no, that's why I don't retire. Because it gives me too much time to think about what I used to do or what I did or didn't do. I want to do it every single day. And I love that every single day because you get that opportunity to have another show instead of, hey, this is the last time I'm going to do this. I don't know what that feeling... I'm not a retiring kind of guy, but I appreciate having the ability to show longevity. And I do teach my students that have a long shelf life. You can be great, be a big deal for a year, two years. But then what happens when the novelty wears off?

And you don't need a catchphrase. The best in the business don't have catchphrases. They don't. Bob Costas never did. Tirico doesn't. Al Michaels had, do you believe in miracles? That wasn't a catchphrase, but that might be the first catchphrase

that went globally. But I just tell my students, have a shelf life. Be able to do it in a professional way. Have a sense of humor. Be humble. Because you're going to get your ass handed to you a couple of times. And I did. But you know what? I grew up in a family of six. So I was used to getting my ass handed to me and, and it, and it prepared me, but, uh, and enjoy it, you know, enjoy it as much as you possibly can because it ends one day and then you go, Hey, let me open up this scrapbook. I don't give a damn about that scrapbook. No, nothing. Uh, and, and we've been very fortunate. We've been nominated for sports Emmys the last four years. We haven't won. I don't want it. I want them to get it. I want the guys I work with.

Just that feeling one time to say, we're the fucking best. Whatever that silly award means, you have your one moment and they deserve that one moment. I've had that moment, but these guys who didn't grow up being broadcasters, I mean, that's what you want. There's nothing better than sharing in success. The individual,

the singular, not fun. Team, awesome. Absolutely. Yeah, Emmys are stupid until you win one. So, for anybody that doesn't have it, it's like, oh, whatever. And then it's like, wait, I'm nominated? But Ryan, it's not like you can go yep i was

the best guy that entire year it's i i had somebody who professionally is really good at putting together a tape and they made me look a whole lot better than what i am and my guy was better than your guy and that's the way i view it but it i have fun with it just getting nominated I would I'd feel worse if I didn't get nominated as opposed to when we don't win the sports Emmy yeah just recognize what we do on a daily basis and I'm thrilled with that but it'd be nice if we won one of those silly sports Emmy I just want to leave you with this thanks for writing that book thanks to you and key without it I don't know that I would have been inspired or understood if you're going to talk for a living the idea of organizing your thoughts is actually a pretty good rule i mean sounds pretty simple but it's amazing

how people don't get that um i want to thank you for the you know the couple calls over the years where one time when i told dan some of my aspirations he's like you want to be a fucking nba analyst he's like no you can't you don't get to be the analyst. You didn't play. And I was like, yeah. And you're like, well, that's stupid. Don't do that. Don't waste your time on that. And then just go ahead. It was hard to get through to you. But look, what has made you successful was also getting in the way of you being successful. That you had great drive and you thought you were better than what you were. And you had great energy and you weren't going to be told no.

These are all the things that helped you just get there in the first place. I just wanted you to have lower expectations. Be more patient. That's probably the best description. Be a little more patient at what you are achieving and not wanting it as quickly as you did. And that's observing from a mile away. But I thought that you...

I never questioned your desire. But sometimes it felt like you wanted it quicker than what was going to happen there yeah and i also because i started later that was the other thing yeah i felt like i had to catch up but well i was 35 when i got dspn and felt like i was playing catch up there you know when i got there but you know that it's this drive is there and then drive, you can't turn the dial down on your drive. It's just that's your drive. That's who you are.

But it can be to your detriment. And it's hurt me before where I'm like, I should be doing this or I should get that. And it doesn't work that way. It just doesn't. It feels like being patient is a great trait to have and it's something that's in very short supply on my end yeah no i'm right there with you but this was something i should have done a long time ago so i hope everybody enjoyed it as much as i did and i can't thank you enough for the time man so thanks a lot dan i appreciate you reaching out and uh uh you know

if i can give you career advice uh yeah don't don't hesitate to have me say what the fuck are you thinking i don't think i listened to any of it i just was thrilled that you called me well no i even said to paulie my producer i said aiden and he didn't listen to a word i said i know that i. I know that. In my mind. I listened and I'll never forget any of it, but I just was like, no, I'm not listening. I know, I know, I know. I'm here if there's any more, you know, if you need help.

Call Bill Simmons. You know, he'll give you better advice. I appreciate that. Thanks. Thank you, Ron. You want details? Bye. I drive a Ferrari. 355 Cabriolet. What's up?

I have a ridiculous house in the South Fork. I have every toy you could possibly imagine. And best of all, kids, I am liquid. So, now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. LifeAdvice. LifeAdvice.com Okay possible. Let me tell you what's required. Life advice, rr at gmail.com. Okay, we got a couple for you here.

This first one's very different. So, that's why we decided to go with it, Kyle. Good choice on this one. Six feet, 210, athletic but not fit. Not sure what that means. I guess that means he's an athlete. But, doesn't sound like he's a t-shirt at the pool guy, but it sounds like a guy who didn't want to guard you in pickup,

but he's not going to handle a lot. All right, so we got that out of the way. 28 years old. Up to this point, I've lived a very conservative life. Graduated college with heavy focus on schoolwork and no focus on the college life. Got a good job, paid off debt, did the whole retirement thing, did the adult things by the book. But about a year ago, I realized I hate my job and that I'm not living all caps. I hear you, man. So through some intense encouragement, I decided to save money and pack it up and move to Arizona without having any plans. While here on one of my previous visits, I met a girl in a dating app. She's cute, funny, intelligent, matches a lot of what I met a girl in a dating app she's cute funny intelligent matches a lot of what I'm looking for in a future partner after a bit of talking I realized she

lives in the nearby border town but it get a little complicated when I realized she's on the other side of the border she lives in Mexico she said she comes into the U.S. a lot with her tourist visa so I figured I could see her when she comes to Arizona next time but with COVID going on she, she can't come here at the moment, so I'll have to wait and see. We ended up talking for two months as I go back to the Midwest to figure out moving plans, but things continue to go well. So fast forward to now, I've been in Arizona for a couple of weeks and me being really tired of texting and waiting so much, as well as wanting to take more risks in my life, I decided to drive into Mexico to go on a date. First time ever doing such a thing. And I didn't tell anyone. Nobody in my life would approve of this. But the date turned out amazing. Everything was great. She was better than advertised.

However, on the way back, I got a lot of questions at the border. Yeah, I'm sure you did. Perhaps the story of this new guy from the Midwest going into Mexico for four hours on a Tuesday night to visit a friend he met online didn't sit well. They searched me with every tool and process they had and questioned me a lot as I'm never able to tell a good lie. By the end of it, the whole border patrol knew about my

love story. The last officer told me, quote, you're a brave guy, but he also gave me the look of you're a crazy guy. I left without any issues, but I'll be honest, through the whole process, I was scared shitless, all caps. the drive there, the time spent there, the whole crossing there and back. I woke up today thinking, what the hell did I just do? This is not me. There are much easier ways to go on a date. So my question is, should I keep doing this? She's great. I really like her, but I'm so nervous all the time. Should I probably take it easy

on the risk-taking and not just jump to the final boss right away? Wow. Kyle, would you do something like that? I could see that. I could see that. No, and I don't fuck around with Border Patrol at all. Yeah, it's a good one to go by. You do not want to mess around with the Border Patrol, especially that border. I got to tell you, I love where this guy's at. He's 28. I shouldn't say this and generalize, but for me, that was an age where it was a bit of a wake-up call for a bunch of different things. And a lot of times, the age, I remember certain birthdays I didn't like, and it had nothing to

do with the number. It had everything to do with me. I didn't get phased by 40. I didn't get phased by 30. I got phased by 27. And it had nothing to do with the number. It had everything to do with where I was in life. So considering you're 28 and it sounds like you had your shit together far more than I did at the time, you feel like you've missed out on a lot of stuff. So then you're kind of pushing it, right? You know what? I'm going to do a little opposite stuff here. So I like that part of it. What I don't love is what we got like 300 and something million, 330, 340 million people in the States. Let's rule out two thirds of them based on age. We're now at a hundred, cut it in half again, 50 million people. And you found somebody in a dating app in Mexico who's real.

So that part's great. I'm assuming you had to have FaceTimed or something to make sure, you know, confirmation here is you weren't going to run over there and, you know, disappear for however long. Clearly, the border patrol thing freaked you out. It's going to happen to you every single time. A guy driving down to cross the border for a couple hours and come back into Arizona, like, there's no way.

That raises every single red flag. You're like, I just like the sunsets down here better, man. And I'll admit, maybe this is the first chapter of your love story maybe this is this amazing origin deal that you guys tell at each you know your rehearsal dinner on Friday and everybody's laughing you're like hey this totally worked out this is amazing so I have an open mind at least to that possibility but what feels a little dicey about is if I were your friend I'd be saying okay what's her deal like what's her deal deal? Is it all because of you? Are you the best? Are you guys just matched up that great? Okay, fine. But you know, when I made

a joke about sending away for a Russian bride, uh, VHS, when I was 22 and 23, my parents were so pissed at me, even for ordering the free VHS videotape about these Russian bride cruises, which again, I wasn't going to do, but I just would mess with my parents and say like, Hey, I got the VHS. And they were just like, Hey, they're just going to come here and divorce you and take all your money. By the way, I didn't have any money. I don't even think I had a couch. So I would be a little concerned with, you know, are you her ticket to her own, or is it all just about you? And if the border part of it is that much of a hang-up, I just wouldn't be rushing into anything. Maybe you guys totally hit it off.

Maybe you guys found each other and your soulmates in this whole deal, and that's awesome. And maybe there's something about her disposition that, I don't know, I would put it this way because I don't want to generalize, but anyone that I know that has spent time with women south of the border, they've said something pretty consistent. Like there's just an ease to it. There's a lower level of expectations in the nicest way possible. Like there's just a way that women from all these different countries down there, they just appreciate. I'll hear like, oh, I was appreciated more than, you know, and that could be your own hang up in your own background about what you went through in the States. Again, that feels like a bit of a generalization, but I've heard it. So maybe that's what you're running into here. Again, that feels like a bit of a generalization, but I've heard it. So maybe that's what you're running into here.

But I would kind of give the States Dating app another shot if I were you before you want to keep putting yourself through this. Because you're going to get stopped at the border every single time. There's just no way. I mean, even if the guys believe you and you're running into the same Border Patrol agents, they're going to think something's up. leave you and you're running into the same Border Patrol agents, they're going to think something's up. Because when I used to go to Canada by myself for an Expos game, people every now and then would be like, wait a minute,

what did you do? I'm like, no, I just went to an Expos game. And most of the time, the Border Patrol guys can figure you out immediately, especially up there, because it wasn't as much a threat. I don't think they were that worried about it. But when you're by yourself crossing the border and you're a younger dude and you're not even staying for an extended amount of time, it's going to be a problem every time, I would imagine. Yeah, they're going to think you're a mule, right? Yeah, that's pretty much what it is.

I'll just really quickly, I think you have two options because I'm very anti long distance relationships, especially international ones. So you either have to end this now or you're going to have to probably marry this girl sooner or later because then she could be a citizen. But there's really no in between. Like you're not going to do a long distance relationship in Mexico for multiple years. Any marriage, this is my opinion, but any marriage that the motivation behind it was anything other than, hey, I really love this person. I want to start a family and a life with them. Like this is my person.

Any other reason, like why are you even doing it then? If that's not the motivation for marrying somebody and it's all these other reasons that motivated you to go ahead and do something like that, I think you're... Look, not every plan is perfect here and not every plan has to be the same, but I think you're kind of setting yourself up there a little bit. But look, it may sound like our guy here who emailed in hasn't had the greatest run of dating in his 20s. He found somebody he clicked with. Maybe she loves the idea of who he is and all this stuff. But this is a pretty simple one. If you had a best friend that explained this to you and they were sort of apprehensive about it, would you ever in a million years say, no, keep pursuing this?

Definitely keep pursuing this. This sounds like a great idea. You them no it's crazy and it's different for you because you have apparently enough feelings for her to cross the border to go see her but i don't know man i'm not a huge fan of this one kyle i mean it stopped for me at border patrol it's that simple and i've never even dealt with like the lower border patrol literally only the upper like canada u.s border patrol and no dude they'll rip your fucking car apart every panel and then like see you later especially if he's young they just hate you because you're young any any anybody like uh border patrol at least up upstate even state troopers it's like oh yeah you're not from here

and you're young fuck you. That's just what you're going to be greeted with every time. I'll ask you this though, real quick. That sounded like there was some heat behind that take, Kyle. Some experience. It was. Have you been stopped at the border, Kyle? No, not even at the border.

My school was so close to the border and we'd be kicking it around at the Native American reservation and whatever. It's just there between the state troopers and the border, you know, we'd be kicking it around at the native American reservation and whatever. And it's just there like between the state troopers and the border patrol, like, yeah, we've been stopped and they ripped the fucking panels out of my car and there was nothing to be found.

And like, it seemed like they enjoyed it. So I'm just never messing with border patrol. You wait, you had your car stripped. Yeah. Like the door panels. Yeah.

I mean, you can pop it back in, but I mean, that sucks. Are you acting suspicious? No. I mean, you could pop it back in, but I mean, that sucks. Are you acting suspicious? No. I mean, I'm in the... Yes.

I mean, I'm in the car with like three kids that aren't white and we're like driving around and it's like, oh, these guys are from upstate New York. So it was like, you know, whatever. And they'd stop us for, you know, they knew the kids were going home,

like the state troopers and just like all that up there. It was just, they can tell you're not a townie and then you kind of pay for it. So no, thanks. Find a new girl. Is there any scenario where because this guy's feeling adventurous, the emailer, I mean, maybe could he move to Mexico for for a period of time? See if he likes it down south of the border.

Like, I don't know. I'm just I'm just saying you are crazy, man. I'm just saying he said he wanted to try some new border. I'm just asking. That's the worst advice. You are crazy, man. I'm just saying. He said he wanted to try some new experiences. I don't know. Get Arizona under your belt first. Hey, go to Cabo for four nights. Just asking. Just go to Cabo.

You don't have to move there. Get a resort. Vacation with her for a little bit. And figure some of this stuff out. But if she starts pressing you on the marriage thing, you know. Which it sounds like she's not, right? It sounds like she's not. She's just like, this is where I live. You seem cool. They went on one date in Mexico. So no, we're not quite there.

This train is off the tracks. Okay, let's get to another email here. Love the show. Sorry about Chris Paul. Appreciate your thoughts. I have a friend who had a rough time during COVID and frankly before which is a pretty amazing sentence if you think about it it's like yeah COVID wasn't so great

for him but it wasn't because of COVID because things weren't going great before that as well it's got to the point where I almost can't stand being around him let me see he says he keeps seeing them Can't stand being around him. Let me see. He says he keeps seeing them.

I don't know. This is a little weird now. Because he uses a name here that I'm not going to use. It's a made up name, but I don't know if he's trying to be funny here or not. All right. We'll just roll with it here. Although there's some stuff in here that's just making me second guess what the hell this is. All right, we'll just roll with it here. Although there's some stuff in here that's just making me second guess what the hell this is. All right, so he's a friend of rough time during COVID.

It's gotten to the point where I almost can't stand being around him. Let's call him, we'll just call him Dwayne for the purposes of this email. Without giving the backstory, Dwayne does not spend much time with women. So let's put it that way. He's had a dry spell here. And it's because of that way. He's had a dry spell here. And it's because of that. It's because of the dry spell. Nothing else. I think it's been like four years

since he's been with a woman. It's reached the point where he just shits on himself about it all the time. Unfortunately, Dwayne also started to say some shit about women that makes him sound like an asshole. He finds little things to complain about

that aren't worthy of complaining about we were out and this girl started talking to us but ignored him although they were sitting side by side she ends up saying something like sorry I feel like we haven't talked he goes on why would we talk I don't know you oh this guy's like an incredible charmer

this is just bad game Dwayne in my eyes obviously being defensive about the fact that he hasn't had a nice run here in almost half a decade. The problem is twofold. One, Dwayne is not traditionally good looking,

not to mention a little on the heavy side. Two, Dwayne has had these delusions of grandeur about who he should be going home with. Sometimes I want to grab him and just be like,

dude, you're an ugly guy. Of course, that girl didn't want to go home with you. You need to aim lower. That's definitely, I mean, look, that's not even about dating. But guys are very capable of doing that. It starts going so badly for a guy that then he just starts dumping out everything around him. And it's deflecting that the blame is really about you.

Nobody wants to sit there and say, hey, I'm just unattractive and I have no options. That's not a very fun game to play. But, you know, look's that's the reality like those guys are gonna have to bring something else to the table um which is actually one of the things about being a guy that's way easier than being a woman um which is a whole nother set of fucking conversations i don't even feel like getting into right now but i think everybody agreed but like you like i remember graduating college and we were at a party and one guy that wasn't going to graduate was looking around at everybody graduating and we were talking because i ended up graduating behind because i take some time off and he and i were kind of talking about

it we were watching all the guys that get really fired up and we were watching our same idiot friends like hey this guy copied everybody's papers this guy cheated this guy took the easiest classes ever this guy's an idiot and he's going to graduate with a three, five. You know what I mean? Like you start going, well, I, I remember he said something to me. He's like, I almost am like less impressed with it now that I see up close all the guys graduating. And I was like, okay, that's fine. But it's also a really shitty thing to say because you're actually not going to graduate. So like these are the rules, get through it in eight semesters, figure it out and then be done with it

and get your piece of paper. However you get your piece of paper, get your piece of paper and then you can start dumping on the process. But to not even have achieved that and start dumping on everybody else that has, that's actually more about you than it is the process of getting it.

So I thought that that comparison works out there pretty well because I've hung out with enough guys that just don't do well enough and then they start talking about how every girl's a bitch and, oh, that girl's, you know, she's stuck up or she only wants somebody with money and all this different stuff. You're like, okay, but you've already going into it with such a horrible attitude that you're already, like we've talked about before, my dad would say, you lost the game on the ride over to the court.

These guys are losing the game before they even walk into a bar or restaurant. All right. So on top of this, Dwayne lives beyond his means. I'm moving in with my girlfriend, which means that Dwayne has to find his own place to live. Dwayne does not make enough money to live in the city that we live in comfortably. Nonetheless, Dwayne has decided to forego moving to cut the rent, so moving to a lesser part of the city. He has instead chosen to apply to a place worth $2,400 a month, which means his rent's going to go up $650,

even though he makes, I don't know, I guess the math on this, stressing the budget here a little bit. This dude complains about money and baby boomers taking our jobs all the fucking time, but then makes decisions like this. In summary, have you ever confronted a friend

about their shitty life choices? Is there a way to be like, dude, you're not getting with women because you're ugly and out of shape? You have delusions of grandeur and kind of hate women. Is there any way to get into finances without being an asshole? I know I come at you with a lot of anti-Dwayne stories, but I do love him like a brother. And that's probably why I can't quit him.

All right. I don't know that anybody goes to their friends it's like hey you're ugly and um you need to accept it like we said before that's that's not a fun thing to do guys generally are horrible at telling other guys the stuff that they're bad at we just kind of either say it behind your back or we say it to your face in a joking kind of way. And then everybody kind of knows it. If you've been friends long enough, then it's just an accepted part of it. But really my reaction

to this email is more about you. Yeah, you love him like a brother, but who cares if he wants to get an expensive fucking apartment that doesn't fit his budget? That's his fault. Why do you care? Who cares? At some point, you could probably talk to him about the female approach here and say look if you want to have a family and have like you need to change

your attitude and to change your attitude you might need to change your whole appearance with this a little bit like whatever you're doing isn't working you know this is no different than sports like if you have a guy defending you and all the stuff you're trying isn't working. This is no different than sports. If you have a guy defending you and all the stuff you're trying isn't working, you can't keep trying the same stuff. You can't start posting up seven footers when you're six feet. And the same thing applies in dating when you're looking at some women that you wish you'd have the chance to be with, but eventually after they've all told you no, you have to figure out that, hey, maybe I'm a double A guy. Maybe I'm a triple A guy. Maybe I just can't hit major league pitching.

And all of us look, I mean, you guys can sit here. It's like if I meet somebody that's younger than me or whatever, and then I'll hear like through a friend, she's like, you know what? You're old and your hair sucks, man. Do I get to tell her she's being a bitch? Do I get to say that she's wrong? No, I have to go. Yeah.

You know what? If I were a woman and I looked at me, I have to go, yeah, you know what? If I were a woman and I looked at me, I might be like, how old is this guy? What's up with his hair? How much does he work? Oh, you watch every game? Every weekend too? So I have to accept the things that maybe somebody else wouldn't like about me. And it's clear that he's not even at that point. So you could push him a little, but I wouldn't waste a ton of energy on this because he's either going to figure it out on his own or he's not going to figure it out. And it's not really your responsibility. You're not, you know, it's not your responsibility. And I think it's cool that you care enough that you are concerned. Like you said, you love him like a brother,

but if he was going to be, I mean, he's going to sit there and say to a stranger that he's sitting next to at a restaurant and she says, I feel like we haven't talked at all. And he says, why would we, we don't know each other. That's almost unfixable, but that's also coming from a place from his own frustration. As you mentioned over the last four or five years that he hasn't even hung out with anybody. So I wouldn't lose any sleep over this. You can try, but the reason guys don't really call each other out on this is that most of us, you know,

look, my experience is of the male perspective on this. I don't know if there's a ton of females that love being told that they're terrible at stuff either, but I think they're a little bit better of massaging it and kind of talking to each other. And it's really way worse when you're just wrong about it, because sometimes you can be what it sounds like you make a pretty compelling case for that this

guy needs to tighten it up. But I don't I don't I don't know that you should spend as much energy on this as you probably have already. Kyle? Yeah, I think the broad stroke would be you're a miserable prick, not like you're a miserable prick because you're ugly and fat you don't want to talk to women like it might just be easier to just be like dude you are being so fucking tough to hang out with right now and you don't have to do it in the heat of the moment but like i actually don't think i'd have a problem saying that like my buddy um when i first moved here was like didn't actually realize he was a raging alcoholic i just noticed he always wanted to drink what i wanted to drink and i was like this is amazing i don't have any friends he was my neighbor he always had like a bottle of vodka on drink. And I was like, this is amazing. I don't have any friends. He was my neighbor. He always had like a bottle of vodka

on the stoop. So I was like, you want to go get some beers? And it was great. And then I realized, oh, he's like an alcoholic people around who were telling me that. And then he stopped drinking. And I rocked with him for a while. Like I would always say, I still like catch up with it, but he became a miserable prick. And I told him like, dude, you got to stop complaining. Like you're ruining, like, I don't want to hang out with you like this. So I think it's actually like if you look deep down, you can just like the root of the problem is that he bothers you. It's not that he's has trouble with women and you don't have to be like Freud about it. I think you could just be like, dude, you're a miserable prick.

And it's that simple. And like, think about ways you can stop being a miserable prick. I think that's a good start, at least without like having to get into the weeds about what you think is wrong with him specifically. I would just say, I think you could just kind of slowly weed him out. And then if he asks you, hey, why don't we hang out anymore? Then you could be truthful to him.

You don't have to go straight to his face and say, hey, you're a dick, you're ugly, and you have no money. That's pretty aggressive. Which, by the way, you can be two of those three things, but you can't be all three of them. Like, I'm sorry. Like, you could be you could be ugly and with no money, but you could be a super nice guy. You're still going to get girls.

You pick two of those. But if you pick all three and you're all three, you have absolutely no chance at anything. And this is what this guy is. But I think if you slowly sort of stop inviting me to places and you ask me, hey, what's going on, dude? You just say, hey, take Kyle's advice. Just say, yeah, man, like you're just a bummer to hang out with. I'm sorry. No, that's a good way of doing it. I think that's because i don't even think about that anymore like you know you guys are still young in the you're doing so you still have weekends where

it's like hey what's the plan this weekend that rarely is ever happening for me it's either something big or it's it's nothing you know i don't go hey it's friday i'm gonna put together a plan here i mean it just doesn't me, unfortunately happened when I was a lot younger because I was working so much. So I'll admit like looking back, I kind of regret it where it's like, you know, maybe I should have always made a little bit more time to stay in the mix. Cause when you're never in the mix, then people stop inviting you, but that's not really the point of the email. So let's, let's get back to that. Uh, I think, I think you really said something smart there, Suri, because if you're going to be miserable, broke and hate women all the time and then bring nothing else to the table, yeah, maybe that's the best way to go

about it. Just be like, you don't have to say you're poor. You don't have to say, hey, you're all these things. As you said, Kyle, you don't have to start calling him out on all this stuff. But just to say, look, he's miserable because nothing's working out for him but you know nothing's working out for him because he's also miserable so if that doesn't change none of the other stuff is going to change and some people don't i mean some people just bitter just miserable you know look i've had long stretches where i wasn't always the happiest guy and you know what you notice is sometimes people don't like my some of my best friends you know you just be, is, is Priscilla going to be in a mood or is he going to be in a good mood or whatever? And most of it was always work related anyway. So, you know, it didn't, it didn't really

matter. And then once I was there with my friends and once I got older and felt a little bit more at ease with things, you'd just be like, Hey, I'm just psyched to be with my friends. Like I would look forward to it so much that I'm great. I'm great to be around now. Cause I'm just so happy to be with my friends. But this guy's not going to get there. And talking to women like that, you just got to kind of figure it out, man. You got to just be nicer,

be interested even when you're not interested, be conversational, and stop thinking that every girl in Milan on Instagram is actually an option because they aren't for almost every single one of us. Even some NFL guys get rejected by these women. So, you know, welcome to the club. Okay, that's

life advice. Thanks to Kyle Crichton and Steve Cerutti for their work on this podcast every episode. And next week we have a ton of draft stuff for you. And then Bill, KOC, and I are going to do draft coverage, but we're going to start it at the first pick. So if you don't like what you're seeing on TV, you can watch us do a live show, however we're going to start it at the first pick. If you don't like what you're seeing on TV, you can watch us do

a live show, however we're going to do it. Last year, we did a wrap-up after the first round. This year, we're just going to do it from pick one on and then probably do more recapping of the first round stuff while the second round is still going on. We're going to have you covered for all of it. I think we have a chance to have

a really good show for that. Make sure you check that out next Thursday. Thursday for the NBA Draft. Thanks. Thank you.