Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Scott Carefoot: Toronto Mike'd #938

Episode Date: October 25, 2021

Mike chats with Scott Carefoot about his RaptorsBlog and his foray into sports media with stops at The Toronto Sun, theScore, Bell Media, The Hockey News, and Rogers Radio.

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in Mississauga and Oakville Ridley funeral home pillars of the community since 1921 and Mike Majeski of Remax Specialists Majeski Group, who's ripping up the GTA real estate scene. Learn more at realestatelove.ca. I'm Mike from torontomike.com, and joining me this week is my special guest, Scott Carefoot. Welcome, Scott. Thanks for having me. Nice to meet you.

It was pissing rain, as you said a moment ago. So here we are in the basement. But I guess that's one of the perks of being fully vaccinated. Yeah, let's pull back the curtain a little bit. I literally just cracked my head off the ceiling 60 seconds ago. But I think I recovered quite nicely. Oh, yeah. Well, I did offer you a moment to collect yourself. I thought I heard, like, a skull fracture in that,

but you're telling me you think you're intact. You're just, you think you're okay. I've suffered so many head injuries, I don't even feel it anymore. All right, I'm going to get the mic a bit closer to you, actually, but we can move this. Okay, great. Yeah, yeah, get, like, five centimeters in front of that thing,

and you're going to sound fantastic. But yeah, so I try to do these in the backyard, weather permitting, but I looked at the forecast for today and I said, nope. Like it just looks like it wants to piss rain all day, but we have it better than they have it on the West Coast. So shout out to the West Coast.

I don't know if you've been following, but they have some kind of like weather system coming in, like some kind of cyclone with tremendous rainfall. They're ready to get in their raft, and it's pretty ugly out West. I wouldn't say I'm a weather aficionado, so I hadn't heard about that. You got to stay up to date on these things, my friend.

So shout out to Brother Bill, who's getting a little wet today in White Rock here. But I'll tell you this, Scott. So I saw your tweet yesterday. And in my humble opinion, having done this for like almost 10 years now, there's two types of listeners to this program. You got your subscribers, and your subscribers listen to pretty much every episode, to be honest. Like they might skip the odd one because of time constraints, but they pretty much listen to everything. Everything gets downloaded and they check it out.

Then you have the cherry picker. And the cherry picker will kind of, like, come in for, like, let me hear Rod Black's exit interview. Let me hear Leo Rowden's talking about why he's not on Sportsnet or whatever. And they might take a pass, like, when Ivor Hamilton and the aforementioned brother Bill come on to talk about why was a song played on CFNY or not, they might skip that one, which is a tremendous mistake,

I'll just say. That's a great episode, and how dare you. But I don't serve that second type of cherry-picking audience. Otherwise, I just have Ron McLean on every week. I'm out here to serve the FOTMs, and I'm delighted to have you on, even if you don't consider yourself particularly famous. Well, there are people out there who know me and I've worked with a lot of the people who have been on your show.

I don't know how many of them listen. I'm kind of amused that someone would be like, oh my God, that guy, I forgot about that guy, whatever happened to him. And that's the whole point of the show right and there's actually you got a scott carefoot that name in my opinion has a bit of trouble with seo and stuff because uh like when i was just checking out some stuff about scott carefoot uh there's a guy out west who's like a a slow pitch guy yep i actually get uh i actually get some of the uh uh email money transfers for that softball league that are meant for him i've never i've never cashed the spn and i used to i

used to play slow pitch so i know this is the nationals and they all get together somewhere in canada uh for their big championship or whatever the slow pitch teams and he's i guess a big wig with that and he's showing up on a lot of like canadian sports podcasts and stuff so you got a couple of sc Scott Carefoots at least battling it out. Yeah. It shows you how, how, you know, much my star has faded that I'm now competing with this slow pitch guy at West. Well, let's shout out one FOTM who adores you. In fact, uh, he sent me a note and said, uh, you got to have Scott Carefoot on. And basically I had so much respect for this individual. I said,

okay. Like I did, I said, I said, okay, like on face right away, let me get Scott Carefoot on. And the gentleman

I'm speaking about is FOTM, Brian Gerstein. So I just want to say hello to Brian. And hello to Brian as well. Thank you so much for helping set this up.

And Brian has had a good week here on Toronto Mike because Leo Roudens literally recorded a happy first birthday to Brian's dog Maisie oh happy birthday Maisie I don't even know if Maisie speaks English like not that the you know I'm sure we could get this translated Google probably can do that

translate into dog speak but uh shout out to Brian all right so Scott again this is a very casual convo we're gonna try to touch on a bunch of things. I think you have some interesting inside perspective on a lot of how the sausage is made in this Canadian media landscape. But where do we begin? Do we begin with you in the Toronto Sun Sports Newsroom while you were attending Ryerson? I actually have a few good stories from when I was at Ryerson and a couple of them are very much journalism related. But if you'll indulge me, I have one pretty good story from each of my four years at Ryerson

that I think will be worth your while. So, oh, I will indulge you. But right off the bat, I need to know, how do you feel about the fact that we're calling this school Ryerson? We really probably should, they're going to rename this school. So at some point we'll have to adapt, but what do you feel about erasing the name Ryerson from the school's name?

I have no connection to that name, you know, like, and frankly, my journalism degree from Ryerson hasn't done a lot for me. And frankly, the only strong lesson I took from Ryerson was never misspell somebody's name in an article. That's basically it. And that's four years and many tens of thousands of dollars. So you did not have a good experience? Well, I wouldn't say it wasn't a good experience. I had some good times there, but it's not through the classroom.

So it's never helped you get a gig? Well, sure. I mean, obviously, having a degree is important, but I don't know that specifically having a journalism degree helped me at all. Because, for example, and this is probably my own fault, but, you know, I don't know that specifically having a journalism degree helped me at all. Because, you know, for example, and this is probably my own fault, like right out of school, I applied for every newspaper across Canada and didn't get a bite. But that's that's probably on me. OK, so let's hear these Toronto Suns. Let's hear these Ryerson stories.

And I'm looking forward to the the announcement of the new name so I could edit all my documentation with a search and replace and just reference it by the new name. But tell me about going to Ryerson there. So I was offered a partial scholarship to Carlton for their journalism program. And then, you know, no scholarship at all to Ryerson. And it was an easy pick for Ryerson because I wanted to be in Toronto,

you know, like I'm not, I'm not as Toronto as Toronto Mike, but I do love Toronto. You're Toronto Scott. Well, I'm mostly Burlington Scott, unfortunately now, but i do love toronto you're toronto scott well i'm mostly burlington scott unfortunately now but uh well shout out to the spoons yeah so um my first year ryerson i'm having a blast um you know i went to mm robinson high school in burlington shout out

to mm robinson rams um so i i invited my boys to town to you know show them around town we went to the zoo bar had a blast because they don't have a bar like that in Burlington. Oh. So after that, I said, Hey guys, there's this pizza place on young and drug called the big slice. We got, we got to meet up there.

It's best slice in town. Sure. So, so my cab shows up first with my, my buddy Jeff and my special lady friend at the time. So I get out of the cab and I go around the corner and there's a 20 young gentlemen standing in front of the big slice. And, you know, being a rube from Burlington, I'm like, oh, I'll just walk through these guys.

Turns out that was a poor choice because as I'm right in the middle of them, one of them yells out, let's swarm them. So these guys yank me to the ground and just start putting the boots to me. Is this 90s? Where are we here? Yeah.

I'm trying to get a little gauging. Okay, this was prime, like, roll him for his docs time. Yeah, yeah. I remember this very well. So the good news is that, you know, if you ever, you know, start getting the crap kicked out of you by 20 people at once, it turns out only five or six of them can actually kick you at the same time. The rest of them don't actually have access to kicking you. So at the time, I was in prime shape. I was about 5'11", 185, all muscle.

Because I went to university to like, you know. To work out. Well, no, to score. Let's face it. So somehow, so I think probably the big slice was like, what, three stores away from the corner? You know, I went to U of T at this time and I had a lot of big slices for sure. This was key. So somehow I managed to bowl my way to the corner because the cab was right around the corner right and the only punch i threw was i saw a guy i the guy was reaching in my my pocket for my

wallet so i hit that guy and at this point i yell out jeff now jeff gets out of the car he's 6 4 2 15 hey there you go and he's a fighter like he's not afraid of anyone. And he proved that by just running up and yanking me out of the group. So as I scurry back to the cab, he's now backing up, bam, bam, bam, bam, fighting these guys off. And, uh, as he gets in the cab, the one guy drops, kicks him. And then Jeff just hauls off and knocks the guy's nose halfway across his face. And, uh, you know, if you don't believe me, it's, uh, I just, I discovered this morning that, uh, that the eye opener, which is of course, Ryerson's official newspaper has archived all their, their newspapers online. So if you, uh, if you look far enough, I was on page three of the

eye opener and, uh, and needless to say, um, that incident, I milked it a little bit with, uh, having deadlines on my uh assignments and sure and uh i had one classmate who thought i was went a little far with that but uh well scott i gotta remind the younger listeners out there the the millennials like this time period uh okay so we're similar vintage and we're both hanging around the same neck of the woods here in downtown toronto or technically i guess it's up well you know it's dad's downtown actually where we are talking about here, like near Yonge and Dundas there. The fact is, there was a very real threat. Like, I remember on weekends, I'd take the TTC to go to like HMV and Sam the Record Man and stuff in the arcade, the video in arcade and all that stuff. And it was a very real threat

that, hey, you know, you might get rolled. Like, literally, this was the terminology you could get rolled for your your walkman or your docs like this was a very real threat that we just we accept it as a part of the deal when you head downtown right like i don't know if that's true today like my 17 year old daughter she'll she'll go with her girlfriend or whatever we'll go downtown do the same thing i was doing and i never hear about this uh we might get rolled worry it doesn't seem to be the same anymore i don't know what that's about yeah second year uh i was floor president of the uh the ninth And I never hear about this, we might get rolled worry. It doesn't seem to be the same anymore. I don't know what that's about. Yeah, second year, I was floor president of the ninth floor at Pittman Hall Residence on Ryerson. And the first thing I did is I gathered the freshmen in a room

and I told them what happened to me. And I said, never go out there without a friend. A six foot four friend. And if you can't find anyone, come get me. And if I ever find out you've gone out there at night by yourself, I'll kick the crap out of you myself. Right, and so you're 5'11", which explains why you smashed your head a moment ago. Yes, exactly.

Because if you're 5'9", you'll hit your head in this particular part of the house, which is unfortunate, but hey. And how are you feeling right now? Feeling woozy? I need to check in on you. Any effects of a concussion? I don't even feel anymore. I've had so many head injuries.

It's just like, it's like stubbing my toe. And I told you before, I said, I pointed out the blood marks. He absolutely did. There's Damien Cox's blood. Like, that's a real thing. Cox hit his head

so damn hard down here. And that's when I put up the sticker and I really do warn people, but you surprise me by getting up to take that jacket off. They call me Captain Oblivious

for a reason. But Damien Cox, you mentioned, is he the only guy who blocked you on Twitter? Was that the claim? Well, the only prominent person when, when I work at the score with the,

with the guys that we called a blog jail, we used to just troll, you know, Damien Cox, Steve Simmons, all those guys, nonstop, of course,

you know, just, just for kicks because, and also we thought they sucked. So, uh, and Damien Cox finally blocked me and been curiously enough. Uh,

many years later, I, I, uh, when I was working at Rogers, I passed Damien Cox in the hallway. Okay. And I've got a really big head.

But Damien Cox might have the second biggest skull I've ever seen in my life. That explains it. You know? I think the only one I've seen bigger was Keto Ortiz of the UFC. That guy's head's a literal cinder block. But that's not even the second year story. The second year story was... But shout out to the old cox block yes ah yes cock blocks i forgot about that yeah see that that's my glory i was blogging and i say that time you're about 2003 2004 there

was this like glory period of independent blogs which we really i don't i guess it was killed by social media but i try to everyone you know how like Portlandia, they're trying to like live off the spirit of the 90s, they're in Portland or whatever. Like I still sometimes try to like channel that 2004 blog energy, but please let's get that second story. So I was floor president

and I lived with four other people, shout out to Dave, Kathy, Evelyn and Anita. And we're going on, you know, 24 years later, we still keep in touch. And in fact, Dave Vink designed the, the artwork for my podcast. So, and I think he did an amazing job. If you, if you like what you see. And what's the name of your podcast? Let's. It's called the bad sports podcast with Scott Carefoot. And it's a sports.

It's not about slow pitch, is it? No, it's a sports history podcast where, where every episode we talk about something in sports history that somebody thought was really awful. And the first episode was about the Wayne Gretzky trade and the second one was about collusion in baseball. And I have a guest on every week that has an enthusiasm or, you know...

A passion. Yeah, so, and I'll be honest, part of why I'm here is I'm auditioning to get some more guests because that's the biggest struggle. You should get Cox on the show. Because Damien is, I will tell the FOTMs that damien cox who's been on several times is scheduled i should check out my calendar but he's coming up in the next couple of weeks anyways oh he's the he's november 8th so he's going to be here in the flesh maybe add some more blood to my

ceiling here uh but he's here in the flesh on the morning of November 8th. So write that down. But so tell me, so this podcast, is it sort of like revisionist history with Malcolm Gladwell where you look at a trade like the Gretzky trade

and you see it from the other side as time continues? Tell me exactly what it's about. Well, basically what I try to do is like every, you know, you thought you knew everything about the Gretzky trade. Well, here's some stuff

you didn't know. You know, so I spend about, I would say, 10 to 12 hours researching and writing the script about the gretzky trade well here's some stuff you didn't know you know so i spend about um i would say 10 to 12 hours researching and writing the script for that show um and that's that's the that's the biggest part of it you know and then obviously i book the guest and we and we record the show uh it's it's remote i use uh you know i i use a sort of version of zoom called uh sort of an offshoot of zoom called squad cast but but it's like Zoom, but specifically for podcasts. Okay, cool.

And it's great, you know, and then of course there's the post-production. And if you listen to the podcast, you'll notice that at this point in time, the production is a little amateurish and that's because I've only made two podcasts ever. So like, for example, my fade-ins suck hard.

You know, I was listening to your fade-in and I'm like, oh, I hope I get to that one day. Oh, mine's live. Mine is, it's just practice. It's literally, you do it 937 times and you figure it out.

Well, hopefully it won't take that long. I doubt my podcast will last that long. Well, not if you're doing 12 hours an episode, you'll burn out.

Well, no, the episode itself is like, you know. No, I mean, even in research. Oh,

yeah. I'm impressed because I like to do my homework, but I've never spent 12 hours on an episode. Well, this particular type of podcast requires that. Sure. some, that's some, I'm impressed cause I like to do my homework, but I've never spent 12 hours on an episode. Well, this particular type of podcast requires that. So, uh, so second year on the floor president at Ryerson and, uh, we've got a great group of

people. We decided we're going to throw a big party first week. Uh, it just so happened that the, the day we decided to throw the party was the same day of Ryerson's official, uh, freshman party. So, um, you know, we, we, you we we you know put up you know flyers or whatever and word got around and um to say that it became pretty popular that night is an understatement uh the room was our suite was packed people were lined up down the hallway and it was so hot in the suite that you couldn't see people below the knees because there was sweat steam covering there. And so it was insane. And I was the DJ and I'm,

you know, I, at this point I, you know, it's still hot. I had my shirt off and it turned out that my, my soon wife, when she saw that photo,

she said, I want a piece of that. So anyways, here's the supervision never returns. Yeah. So, so here's the real story though. Um,

I got hauled into, you know, the office and they basically threatened to throw me out of school because they thought I intentionally scheduled that on the same night, and I basically blew away their official party. Love it. But nothing happened there.

So that's second year. Now- Okay, but hold on. Okay, so time-wise, because I remember when I was at U of T, and it's funny, this exact year I was at, so I go to, when's my first year at U of T? 93. So what is it? Yeah, September 93, I was at U of T, and it's funny, this exact year I was at, so I go to, when's my first year at U of T? 93.

So what is it? Yeah, September 93, I started at U of T. And at that time, Ryerson was not a university. It was a polytechnical institute. Yeah, polytechnical, yeah. So when you're going there, it's not yet university. It's still polytechnic. No, it was the Ryerson Polytechnic University.

Right. We used to call it Rye High, which is terrible looking back looking back like who are we to judge like what are we some some snobby university students making fun of a polytechnical institution don't get me wrong a lot of them are high in fact um my first year i lived literally across the hall from the biggest pot dealer in the whole building um he was the only guy with like cable and a big screen TV. Was that Doug Ford by any chance? No, but so, so what used to happen is that, you know, every Sunday I'd go over there and we would just get high out of our minds and watch football. It was great. But then one time I sort of like, I remember, you know, sort of taking too much and you know, I'm just, I'm sitting there paralyzed

for about an hour, staring at the wastebasket across the room. Like if I have to throw up, am I going to be able to make it over there? So, so after that, it was the last, last I, and that guy got thrown out at the end of the, you know, first semester. Is the big slice still there? I should know this, but it's been a while. I don't think so.

I don't think it is. You know, that was so huge. Like meeting up at the big slice. Oh yeah. Yeah. And at U of T, there was another one on Spadina called, I want to call it Papa Chio's or something to that effect, which was also because, yeah, because unlike Ryerson,

U of T would kind of go all the way to Spadina. And on the other side, if you will, the west side, and it was called, I think it was called Papa Chio's. And that was also like, it was a huge thing. Like the pizza joints around your university are everything. Nowadays, I feel like there's far more options. But back in the day, it felt like you had to the two options. You're either going to grab pizza or a burger and fries.

Yeah, I think you're more likely to get sort of like shawarma and Mexican food and that kind of stuff, which is also great. Of course, of course. So yeah, but back in the day, it's like, what are you going to do? Pizza or burgers? Like that was pretty much the choice. Oh, for sure. Now, Rye High, I hear you now, you know, Rye High, high, of course, getting high on cannabis. Why not?

But Rye High, of course, is for Rye High School, us making fun of it for not being a university. But it is a university now, and soon it will have a shiny new name. I look forward to the announcement. Maybe they should name it Wayne Gretzky University or something like that. I nominate Pinball Clemens University. But he's, okay, yeah, good idea. But he's like an Oakville guy. I feel like he's a...

Oh, fair enough. But I don't know. You're a Burlington guy and we're calling you Toronto Scott. So it's all good. So I love your stories and sprinkle me with any, I'm loving this memory lane. But at some point, you know, you're talking about getting high as a monkey there. And at some point, your uncle's chemical're talking about getting high as a monkey there. And at some point, your uncle's chemical factory is going to enter your life story.

And this is really, this chapter, and if I'm out of order, let me know. But this chapter is key to you being here right now because the Raptor blog is when Brian Gerstein falls in love with Scott Kerfock. Yeah, so basically what had happened is I graduated in 1999. I completed a four-year program in five years. Dean falls in love with Scott Carafaglia. Yeah. So, um, basically what had happened is, uh, graduated in,

uh, 1999. I completed a four year program in five years. Um, and, uh, you know, I,

I applied for every newspaper across Canada. Um, Oh, I feel like we're skipping the, no, let's do that. Yeah. So I've had a lot of the sun guys on.

Yeah. And the funny thing is the sun people outside of like Ryan Walstat, maybe who's about our age, everyone was there then. Like the Sun guys have been there for decades. If you look down the lineup, what can you tell us about interning in the Toronto Sun sports newsroom? So needless to say, I mean,

that was a plum kick, you know? So I was, I've been writing sports for the eye opener. And then I was a sports editor for the Ryersonian. So, you know, it was a pretty sweet gig.

So, you know, I, I get there and needless to say the vets, like, you know, didn't even glance my way and that was fine with that. So it's a six week gig. The first two weeks, um, were exclusively, exclusively calling up, uh, local golf courses for like a, you know, golf registry they put in the paper. Okay. You know, really exciting stuff.

Um, so when I started to get to do real journalism, the first thing I can remember is they had me stake out Ben Johnson in a courthouse. I don't know what he was there for, but they said, you know, stay in the lobby. And if he comes down, ambush him and ask him a question. So I tried to do that and I got a no comment. And that was it.

So I did your job well i brought it back and i've you know what was in court for it i feel speedy maybe i feel like maybe he had a ferrari or something and he wasn't a great but they didn't give me a hard time they said oh don't worry because that happens but when when things started to get interesting is they actually gave me a beat and that beat was the toronto rock beat okay it's like yeah big time lacrosse uh franchise for sure. Awesome. Now what's interesting is that at that particular time

was just when they started to take off in popularity. You know, because if they were popular already, I wouldn't have got that beat. Right. So my first game, I'm up there. I'm in the press box for the first time. What a thrill. I look to my left.

Who do I see? Mary Ormsby. Wow. Holy crap. FOTM Mary Ormsby exactly so proper title you know so i'm in heaven so i've never watched lacrosse game before so i don't know what to expect right so i'm watching it i'm like oh this is fun fast pace whatever and then a fight breaks out now i see i didn't know that there was fighting in lacrosse right now you know if you've ever seen it uh you know so obviously we all know what a hockey fight looks like yes You know, they're on their skates slugging away. Well, a lacrosse fight is just like that.

Instead of being on skates on ice, they're standing flat footed on turf just wailing on each other. It's incredible. And these guys are not making big money. They got second jobs. And I'm like, this is amazing. And then I got to go in the locker room and talk to the guys. Now, here's the funny part. Yeah.

So when it came time to deliver my story, I assume there was email back then, but there was certainly no internet connection up in the press box. So what I had to do was call the newsroom and dictate my article over the phone. Early days, man, because I was at U of T when I first got on the internet. And I remember that like 95 period, it's like, yeah, some, some, yeah, university libraries had internet, but most people were not online. It was, you sure wouldn't,

you wouldn't have easy access to that in the mid nineties. That's for sure. No, no question. And that was actually, you know, when I said I graduated my four-year program in five years, it's because I took a year off to learn how to make websites. Okay. But so is that just simply what I, because I did something very similar here. We have a lot of parallels here. But I, in the late 90s, I taught myself basically through trial and error,

like just hand coding HTML and doing cause and effect. Same thing, yeah, for sure. Okay, look at us, look at us. Well, because I mean, it was obvious to me that the internet was the future in journalism and they were not teaching us anything about that.

Right. Right. They probably only started teaching that very recently, actually. But, uh, okay. So I love,

I love the, what I'm hearing here is that you basically got your hands dirty. And, uh, the only way I know how to learn this stuff is to, to, yeah, get a sandbox and start,

uh, start playing. Absolutely. So, uh, so I had the Toronto rock gig and, um, the assistant editor at the time

told me that... Well, give me some names here. I want you to see... I want to jog your memory here. Who do you remember in the Toronto Sun Sports Department there in the mid-90s? Oof.

Honestly, I remember Scott Morrison. There you go. There's an FOTM. Good guy. You know, I didn't talk to any of the other guys. So like I...

What about Steve Simmons? Any interactions? I never saw him. Never saw him. No, I FOTM. Good guy. You know, I didn't talk to any of the other guys. So like I. What about Steve Simmons? Any interactions? I never saw him. Never saw him. No, I never saw any of those guys. The only time that any of them interacted with me, there was a deli down the street, you know, from the sun called Zolpies. Okay. I don't know if it's still there.

And this was legit. Like the guy who made the smoked meat sandwiches, he was smoking a cigarette the whole time. the guy who made the smoked meat sandwiches, but he was smoking a cigarette the whole time. And you've probably, like if you've been to a legit deli, you know, it's like the stack of smoked meat, the size of your fist,

with the mustard and then like the soggy rye bread. Right. Yeah, like what's the Montreal institutions? I'm trying to remember, but the one that Celine bought, what deli is that? Not Shopsy's, is it? No, no, no, no. It'll come to me in a second here, but the, uh, the one that Celine bought the, uh, what deli is that? Not shopsies, is it? No,

no, no, no. It's the, it'll come to me in a second here, but absolutely. It's great stuff. So I would bring Zolpies. I brought Zolpies back to the newsroom once and all the guys,

all the guys started giving me a dirty look. And it was the first time they'd ever looked my way. So finally I said, you know, is there a problem? He said, he said, we're all trying to be in a diet here.

You're, you're, you're fucking it up. So sure enough, the next day, most of them had brought in the same sandwich that I already had. Right. And what about, did you come across like Lance Hornby by any chance?

No, I mean. Schwartz is the name I'm trying to come up with. Keep in mind, I didn't know who any of these guys were back then. Right. So they might've been there, but I wouldn't have known any better. But I've got a good Scott Morrison story coming up. Let's go. Yeah.

So basically, finally, they gave me a real feature story um and the story was uh you know there was some fear that canadian hockey teams were fleeing to the states and that we needed to do something to incentivize them to stay in canada. So the question they wanted me to ask, um, retired hockey legends was, do you think the government should subsidize Canadian teams staying in Canada with tax dollars? So,

uh, Scott Morrison, you know, and again, I hadn't seen him or talked to me, comes out of his office and he said a few words and he lays down a yellow sticky note. And on that yellow sticky note

were the names and phone numbers of everyone. Just like, you know, and, you know, I was like, okay, that's quite a flex. I don't think they called it a flex back then. Right, he basically opened up his Rolodex for you. Oh yeah, no kidding. So, you know, mostly the people that talked to me were retired guys like George Armstrong,

red Kelly, guys like that. You know, and they, they went one way or the other, it was split pretty 50, 50. So my own little bit of reporting is I found out that Mike Bossy was doing a,

making an appearance at the hockey hall of fame who, you know, legendarily one of the most gentlemanly players in the history of the game, won multiple lady being trophies. Also one of the most gentlemanly players in the history of the game. Won multiple Lady Bing trophies. Also one of the most amazing goal scorers of all time. Highly underrated. Yes. So, you know, he's there with, you know, kids.

You know, play fair, whatever. And here's jackass Scott ambushing him like, Mike, do you think they should, you know, tax fund? And he's like, I'm not really here for that. Yeah, I could just answer the question. So finally, just to go away, he said away so no i don't think they should so much love to mike bossy who is battling uh i think it's lung cancer but uh yeah he's uh rather sick so i'm sorry to hear that yeah no terrible when i was uh my first love was the edmonton oilers so uh when i was you know six or

seven years old he was my nemesis but uh but let's say you know one of the best scores of all time i had his poster in my bedroom where it was like a Canadian Tire thing with Mike Bossy on. Basically, what I still remember to this day, if I ever play a game of Beer League hockey or something, after you make your shot on net, go to the front of the net for the rebound.

All these tips from Mike Bossy. And he was, if you just look at pound for pound, pure goal scorers. We'll put the great one aside for a moment here. And now you, if you look at, just look at like pound for pound, peer goal scorers, you know, we'll put the great one aside for a moment here. And now you've got Ovechkin on his tail or whatever, but Bossy, best peer goal scorer ever. I agree. Frankly, I agree.

So that was, you know, that was my time at the Sun. And then of course, you know, there was a series of kind of dead-end marketing jobs or whatever. And then the dot-com bust happened in about 2000. Right. And, you know, desperate times, you know, I was living in a house with my, with my wife. I think maybe we weren't married yet, but so, you know, my uncle runs a, ran a chemical factory in

Bolton and I took a job there and not glamorous, but, you know, I wasn't too good for that then. And I'm not too good for it now. You know, whatever pays the bills. Yeah, I know, for sure. And you're at this chemical factory, and this is when you have an epiphany of sorts that will change your life? I wouldn't call it an epiphany. What I said to myself, is this all there is? Is this going to be my life?

There's a song about that. Is this all there is? So, you know, I've always loved to write. Since the age of 13, I've loved to write and I was a big sports fan and I was getting really into the Raptors and it's like, hmm, one plus one plus one, right? This sounds like the

perfect storm because the Raptors don't show up till 95. You're at the cutting edge. Similar to myself, you're cutting edge of this new fandangled medium called the internet and you're able to publish to the web at a time when like a lot of the new people you worked with at the Toronto sun sports were still probably, they might've,

they might've been working on a typewriter for all I know in the mid nineties still, but this is a perfect storm for you to do something digital and cover this, this new franchise. Now there were a couple of other inspirations for this because before I started, I want to know like, is there an audience for this?, there were a couple of other inspirations for this because before I started, I want to know, like, is there an audience for this?

So there's the most popular basketball message board on the internet. It's called Real GM. And they've got a general board for talking about general NBA stuff. They have team-specific boards for every team. Sure. By far, the most popular board on that site

was the Toronto Raptors. Wow. And I would go on there and they would just complain and bitch and moan about the crappy coverage of the Raptors. Like that's just a flashing sign, right? Yeah. There's a hole that needs to be filled here. Yeah. The other inspiration was Doug Smith.

Hey, shout out to almost FOTM Doug Smith. Because I just didn't think he was very good. You know, I was like, you know, so I heard that before. I said, I know I can do better than this. You know, Hebsey, I sit, so Hebsey and I do a show every week and he's not a Doug Smith fan himself. I've heard a few things here and there. But what is it you didn't like about Doug Smith's coverage of the Toronto Raptors?

It's just oatmeal. You know, there's no flavor. There's no insight. I mean, I don't think he breaks stories. It's just oatmeal. You know, there's, there's, there's no flavor. There's no insight. I mean, I don't think he breaks stories. He's frequently wrong. This past NBA trade, that trade deadline,

he got, do you know who Adrian Wojnarowski is? Yes, of course. So he got duped by a fake Adrian Wojnarowski Twitter account. Right. That didn't have the blue check mark in it. And he's been in this business for how long?

And he still gets tripped by people like that. It's, it's embarrassing. So anyways, he, that didn't have the blue check mark in it. And he's been in this business for how long and he still gets tripped by people like that? It's embarrassing. So anyways, that and the Real GM and my own desire to like climb out of this hole. Yeah, you're working at a chemical factory. And even though there is no shame in that game, you aspired for something, you know, in the journalist front.

And that year off that I took from Ryerson, I'd learned how to make webpages. Right. So I did that. And the interesting thing is, it started out, I brought my wife in because I thought it would be a fun thing

we could do together. So it started out as raptorblog.com with Scott and her name. And a great URL too, raptorblog.com. But she lost interest in a couple of months, which I don't blame her. So at that point, it rebranded raptorblog.com with Scott Carefoot.

And that's a branding choice. Now, of course there was some backlash like who the hell is scott carefoot but my point was oh you're gonna find out so really the the point of the blog was to be like the opposite of doug smith frankly you know i i i would say that my attempted writing style at the time was a combination of Bill Simmons and Hunter S. Thompson, you know, which is, I know a strange combo, but like I was, you know, very profane, you know, I ruthlessly attacked media. I ruthlessly attacked the Raptors when they sucked. Um, but I also started to, you know, bring in like advanced stats.

Look at you, you know, cause that wasn't something that would, that anybody was doing in the NBA in 2002. Right. And you know, the advanced stats that I learned, shout out by the way to John Hollinger. I don't know how many people know who he is. He was sort of on the forefront of advanced stats in basketball. He used to have a book he published every year called the basketball prospectus

that at the time taught me everything i knew about uh analytics and basketball and i would later use those analytics to win multiple fantasy leagues so uh so that that was pretty fun so anyways um so i start off and you know i'm slowly gathering steam or whatever so here's where the the the promotion part comes in i would uh go to various raptors message boards and under fake names and I was careful about it because you can't have every post like, hey, check out Raptor blog. So like maybe every 10th post I would do it and I never got found out.

Now the truth is, is this the first time you revealed this in public or is this something you've shared before? I'm pretty sure it's the first time. I need to play my breaking news sound effect here. No, just kidding. But that's funny because I've actually, I've never done that, but for sure I found people doing that. I used to have a lot of comments on torontomic.com

because that goes back to, well, the site's 1999, but the blog is 2002. And I would, you know, a lot of people weren't, and you were savvy, but a lot of people weren't that savvy. And of course I'm seeing the IP address

of every comment that comes in, right? So a lot of times it was very easy for me to see somebody was posting multiple times under different names and then i would kind of come in and police that but most people don't give a shit about what's being posted and aren't policing anything but that's that's funny that you did that so the real breaking point was um the toronto star and this is so cute looking back in their newspaper they said hey do you know any cool websites we should check out send us you know email us or whatever i'm like oh this is too easy so once again under a fake name i i emailed them like hey there's this cool new uh basketball site called rafterblog.com

it's it's got really great writing and blah blah and then for some reason i added and i hear soon they're gonna add a message board which I had no plans of actually doing. So sure enough, the letter got published, which was great. Yeah. But then there was a moment of panic. Oh crap, now I need to put up a message board. So I quickly got one up within two weeks

and yeah, it started to blow up after that. And then what I did at that point is once it blew up, I rejoined Real GM, this time under my real name. Okay. And it got me a lot of respect from some people anyways, because, you know, mind you,

I'm not, I'm not like, but as it started to get bigger and bigger, I continue to post there under my real name. And, you know, I would take shots from people and I would give it right back. You know, so I think I got some credit, but you know, like get out of here you don't belong here so a lot of that stuff too but um yeah so i would say the you know the next step

with regards to rafter blog is uh i um amazingly managed to go from the chemical factory to a job at cibc okay yeah that's quite the industry shift. Well, the simple fact is, is that the guy who was interviewing me was also a Ryerson journalism graduate. Once again, reminding us, it's who you know. Please, absolutely. It's always who you know.

It's not what you know. So you left your uncle's chemical factory and the Raptor blog, I suppose, is your side hustle? This is your passion side project? Absolutely. I don't know if it had yet occurred to me that i could parlay this into a sports media career i mean maybe i'd start to think about it well actually i'll tell you when i knew it could happen so i might see ibc in an editorial role and i actually was really good at it i got promoted like three times but one day i'm checking my gmail and there is an email from the producer of CBC News at 6.

Okay. And they're like, hey, I guess there was some story. I forget what it was. And they're like, hey, how'd you like to come on our show? I'm thinking, is this a joke? Right. Then I looked at the email. I was like, oh, it's not a joke.

Do you remember what year this was, approximately? Oh, geez. Like, are we talking like 2005? Maybe 2004. Okay, only because you said Gmail, and I'm pretty sure 04 is when we get our Gmail account. Yeah, so it would have been 04 or 05. April 1st, I believe.

I thought it was a joke at first. So I'm off work at 5 o'clock. The show starts at 6. Now, I'm working at Atrium on Bay, and of course, the CBC studios are down on Front Street. So I'm pretty sure I walked down because I wanted time to sort of clear my head. Yeah.

This is the big leagues, man. You got to have some anxiety there. So I'm on TV with Diana Swain. It's F-O-T-M, Diana Swain. Yeah. These titles are important. Lovely person. Yeah.

She was Miss Chilliwack. I won't name the year, but she was Miss Chilliwack. Well, I'm not surprised. She's stunning. She looks even better in person than she does on TV. Now, I don't remember how the first episode went. I know for a fact,

I was on there four times. I know for a fact that my best appearance was the second one. And if you go on YouTube and put in Scott Carefoot, the second episode will come up. Now, it looks like it was shot through a potato, but it's pretty good. I've got a pretty sweet line about the Vince Carter trade where I, you know, where I compare Rob Babcock to Courtney Love in some convoluted way. And believe me, I thought of that joke on the way down.

No, that's my jam. Listen, you're, you're my kind of guy. I love it when you get, what was it? Was it? I had to educate Chris Zelkovich who was confused. I remember him. Yeah, of course. And he's an FOTM as well. But yeah, anyone who read The Star would remember he was covering sports media. And no one seems to do that anymore, by the way, which is why I'm here doing this. Yeah, I was going to say, that's your gig now. Well, someone had to do it. So where was I going with that real quick?

There was a reference, look in California, feeling Minnesota or something was referenced in some sports context and Zeljkovic had no idea what anyone was talking about. Isn't that Soundgarden? Yeah, that's Soundgarden. So I'm like, you know,

that's a lyric from, is it Outshined? I'm trying to remember which, but something from Bad Motor Finger. Probably. Yeah, I think it's Outshined. I think it was Outshined.

Great song, by the way. Yeah, and it's a great line from a great song and for guys our age who are into what we're into, that's like one of our core, Bad Motor a core album for nirvana soundgarden allison chains don't double pilots you know we're the same age that was my you're gonna have to come back and kick out the jams then because i need to hear some some grunge uh yeah some some some dirt

jams from allison chains yeah i mean i i mean i i used to be a decent singer i don't know if i've ruined my voice by now but uh so i so after the first appearance, um, I go, I go back to work the next day. Um, and it turns out a lot of people watch CBC news at six because the looks I got when I went in there, it's like I was an alien because nobody knew about my side hustle. So people were like, Scott, what the hell was that? Like, what's this blog? Okay. We need to stop for a moment because I lived this life too, where I had a corporate job and I had a Toronto Mike side side hustle and i was so uber careful that the twos never collided like this was the key to me looking back it today no one's hiding their side hustle right it's completely shifted but i didn't my corporate b2b software i was a digital

marketing manager for b2b software companies. And I never brought the Toronto Mike universe. Like I never mentioned it existed. I never talked about it. It's just, I kept the world as separate as I could. Once in a while, somebody would, as Toronto Mike got bigger, people would recognize me or discover it. And I was like, oh shit. But nowadays, you're encouraged to have, you having a side hustle is in your favor now. But we all felt like if you had a full-time job, you, I don't know, what were we afraid of? You weren't allowed to have a side hustle is in your favor now. But we all felt like if you had a full-time job, you, I don't know,

what were we afraid of? You weren't allowed to have a side hustle. Is that the fear we had back in the, you know, early two thousands and late? Well, I can tell you what the backlash for me was. My manager tried to get me fired. Because you had a Raptor blog?

Uh, he accused me of blogging at work. Oh yeah. Well, your, your blogs entries, did you blog at work? Cause there's timest stamps on those you

know well no i didn't time stamp mine because it was it was entirely it was entirely hand-coded so oh i see okay you didn't introduce blogging software so so raptors games happen at night right so you know my routine is i get home i'd quickly crank out a pre-game uh you know a preview which would always include like a a youtube song you know, that I was feeling at the moment. Right. And then when the game's over, I would immediately write a post-game thing. Now, here's where on my lunch hour, I would do a linked up.

Now, this was during lunch. Okay. So, you know, having said that, yes, I'm using company resources. So, maybe he had a point. Sure. But I should point out that this guy was a wann wannabe david

copperfield frustrated magician does that mean he wore eyeliner no but like if you went to his home page there was like you know this big picture of his face where like half his face was obscured with shadows like and i actually think this guy was just being a hater because because he was stuck doing he was jealous that you were on cb News. He was stuck doing children's parties. And here I am. So yeah, so he was furious. So I talked to his boss. And his boss said, are you blogging at work?

I said, nope. He said, well, look, even if you are, you're great at your job. So just keep doing what you're doing and don't worry about it. Okay, that's good news. So this is where Bell comes in. Not George Bell, you mean? but the bci bell canada yeah so uh i had a friend working at bell um for i don't know if you remember simpatico.ca no so how's that listen do you know who you're talking to right now scott carefoot so how do i not remember simpatico msn yeah so um so she was

the uh let me think the lifestyle content editor for Simpatico MSN. Right. They had an opening for sports content manager. So she calls me up and she said, I think you'd be perfect for this. Right. I said, are you kidding me? I'd love to do this. So I go, I go for a first interview, went great.

Uh, second interview was with the, uh, the director and, um, it was going pretty well. And then she asked me, uh, what do you think about us launching a, an action sports portal? And I said, okay, well, it's portal. That word was everywhere back then.

Everything was a portal. I said, okay, well, well tell me more, you know? And, and,

and she said, well, you know, my son and his friends are all into snowboarding and skateboarding and all this kind of stuff. So it seems like something that the young people are really into. So I thought maybe, you know,

we could create a place where people could upload videos and stuff like that. And I said, I don't believe in, I don't know if you can see where this is going. I'm like, I don't believe in lying. Everybody said, oh, that's a great idea. And then I go and it fails,

which it would. So I said, well, here's the problem. I think that already exists and it's called YouTube. You know, she didn't love that answer. Nevertheless, they offered me the problem. I think that already exists and it's called YouTube. Right. You know, she didn't love that answer. Nevertheless, uh, they offered me the job. Now here's where it gets funny. Yeah. Uh, the salary I was offered was $14,000 less than when I was making at CIBC. Okay. So I, I literally couldn't afford to take that. Right. You know, cause I'm, I'm supporting a family, I'm paying a mortgage. Right. So I kind of felt like, well, clearly I'm not going to get this job.

So as a kind of an FU, I replied, I responded with $22,000 more than that. You know, and she said, well, clearly this isn't going to work out. Right. But so what ended up happening is my friend from the beginning calls me up and said, Scott, what the hell are you doing? I said, look, they, not only do they, you know, this is definitely below market value for the position, and it's freaking Bell.

Like, come on. So she said, look, what are you making at CIBC? And I told her, and she said, let me work this out. Sure enough, I got the job at that salary. Good for you, buddy. Now, that seems like a happy ending, right? Right. Here's the problem.

The manager who I was negotiating with hated me for getting that money she like from day one the most passive aggressive manager i think anybody has ever had never raised her voice never but just like just little things like every content manager got a blackberry but i didn't and like when it was somebody's birthday they'd always bring a cake around saying happy birthday, not mine. And it went way deeper than that, right?

You're like Milton. Yeah. So, you know, so basically about a month in the product manager went to the Olympic department of the bell. So, so each sports lifestyle entertainment there,

there it's two people, the content manager who, you know, obviously in handles the content, which is what I did. And the product manager who was more on the business side of things worked with sales to make sure that they did they deliver on campaigns the impressions video views etc right so the product manager leaves so for a while i was expected to do both

jobs which is fine they didn't hire a new product manager for over a year. And I believe that was on purpose. That's called setting me up to fail. Right. But guess what? Constructive dismissal. Guess what? I think lawyers would make. Guess what?

I didn't fail. So at the time, Sympathica, you know, you've got a bunch of links. Oh, something that, you know, Mike knows this, but, you know, for people who don't remember, the majority of Sympathica's traffic came from people logging out of hotmail in canada that's like almost all their traffic right and which means they were basically relying on microsoft for their traffic because the site itself wasn't good right so so yeah i look at these the the sports channel you've got a bunch of you know canadian press links crappy stats and that's it so it's like why would anybody stay here like yeah they come when they click on a link and it's like okay and you know the stats suck so

they're gone right so the first thing is okay let's bring in some original content so uh we brought in a ufc writer who sucked so i'm not going to mention their name but here's where i'm going to give a shout out okay who uh who actually liked when you announced that i was coming on and that's mr jeff mackie and jeff's an excellent hockey writer and a super nice guy and he did a great job uh doing a hockey column for us but uh here's a funny story he's the nicest guy i know at one point he had to threaten to sue me because bell was taking so long to pay him and i don't blame jeff for that you know like i was like oh this is uncomfortable finally, you know, took this letter into accounting. I'm like, look, this guy's a nice guy.

He's not asking for a lot of money. Could you just pay the guy? And, you know, I didn't hear from him again. And we're friends on Twitter now. So it's not. So Jeff, I want you to say, I don't blame you. I didn't blame you then. I don't blame you now.

Wait, he threatened to sue you because Bell wasn't paying him? Well, as far as he knew, as far as he knew, it was my fault. It's a lawsuit. It's fine. I wasn't paying him? Well, as far as he knew, as far as he knew, it was my fault. Is that how lawsuits kind of work? It's fine. I didn't blame him. So then I gave myself a column, you know, because that's the kind of egotistical guy I am, you know, on the main page called the five hole. Okay.

So, and because I'm such a creative, you know, idiot, I spelled five, the number five IVE. Sure. Which is technically five I've. Now the, the director of the, the, the portal, the, you know, the portal, you know, when she saw the column, she comes out and she asked me, Scott, what's a five hole? I said, well, it's the space between a goalie's leg that, you know, you try to shoot the puck to score. She goes, it sounds kind of dirty. I looked on the right, I said, yeah, I know. And then she just walked away. Okay. Amazing i want to you know find out the the real deal on why

uh what happens with raptor blog and why you eventually leave it but here this is a good moment here i want to just give you some gifts because you're here you're spilling the real talk we're finding out about the the untold story of scott carefoot i'm enjoying myself what do you what do i give you today? Do you enjoy Italian food? Absolutely. Would you enjoy a delicious, uh, meat lasagna from Palma Pasta?

Are you kidding me? I'd be in heaven. Well, listen, I got one in the freezer for you. You're going home with a large meat lasagna from Palma Pasta. Much love to Palma Pasta, by the way,

they have locations in Mississauga and Oakville. I know you're a Burlington guy, but that's right between where we sit and where you're from. And I urge everybody to enjoy a palm of pasta. So there you go, buddy. Awesome. So just,

just for the record, I actually stopped. I, I put Raptor blog on hold while I was, while I was at Bell. How do you put a, how do you do that? Like,

like once you put it on hold, don't you simply like how can you keep put that at home well bell wasn't gonna let me keep doing that it's just that simple so you know i made an announcement like you know that we're putting on this and hold blah blah blah you know and people were bummed out but it is what it is like this is a paying job in sports media how could i not take it so um what ended up happening well so for so what i should point out is that in spite of the fact i was doing two jobs, so I brought in some original content. Do you remember Oscar Pistorius?

Of course. Yeah, he's in jail now, I believe. Yeah, so I wrote a column about him where, you know, a lot of people are like, rah, rah. And I'm like, no, that's cheating because blades don't get tired. You know, like I watched his races where he would like, you know, at the end sprint past everybody you know and i and i was like okay so let's say i'm competing in shot put do i get to replace my arm with a catapult

so um there was a valid argument that he had a an unfair advantage with his blades so it's the first time i've ever probably first and only time i've ever had somebody um dedicate uh four minutes of a video just ripping into me and somebody sent to me like, Scott, you got to see this. So I found that amusing. But so here's what I did. So the big thing I did to improve the site was, so I mentioned the stats suck, right? So I'm like, look, if we want to make this section stickier, we need good stats. So I talked to the good people at Stats Inc, best in the business. you know, we worked out some figures.

I presented it to the director, convinced her to sign on. Sure enough, uh, page views increased by 90% after that. And this is in spite of me doing two jobs. Right. So, uh, do you think that I got any credit for that? Nope. In my, uh, in my annual review with, with the manager that hated me, uh, she spent the first half hour ripping me for doing a bad

job at both jobs, you know, because I'm supposed to be two people. And then believe it or not, she spent the second half complaining about how I handled the salary negotiations. And this is at, are we at still at Bell Media here? Yeah. This is a year after I got the job. She spent half of my employee review, 30 minutes complaint. So that's proof that she had a grudge. So at that point, I'm like, okay, this is not going to go. And sure enough, eventually she put me on what they call a performance improvement plan.

They call it different things at different companies. Basically, they're trying to fire you. So every Monday, I would go meet with her in a room and she would just tell me what a terrible person I am and how I'm a disgrace to Bell and et cetera, et cetera. Right. So here's where I started. But again, I'm not doing Raptor Block at this point. So at this point I start putting out feelings like, get me out of here, man. This sucks. And another sort of a, you know, a friend, you know, said,

so Scott, I knew a guy at the score. Right. Would you be, I said, the score for years was my dream job. Okay. It was always where I wanted to be. I was like, are you kidding me? For sure. So the guy that he knew was the director of mobile at the time. And he connected me with one of my two favorite bosses of all time, Jonathan Savage. And so he was running the digital side then. And he brought me in for an interview and turned out he was a fan of Raptor Blog.

So that certainly helped. That does not hurt. So we're talking and going on and on. And, um, he had seen me that, that I had been on TV. So,

uh, as it's clearly a test, he says, Scott, do you have any interest in being on TV? And I thought about it. I said, I don't know.

I don't know, Jonathan. I don't think my tits are big enough. You said that? Oh yeah. Well, it's the score. Okay.

He liked the answer. He laughed. And then he said, so what we're doing is we're looking for a guy to start up and run a network of independent blogs where you recruit like independent bloggers and to be part of a blog network under the score umbrella. And then what we would do is we would sell ads on those blogs for them. And the revenue that we bring in, we'd split 50-50 between the blogs and the score. And I said, he said, do you think you could do that?

I said, are you kidding me? I'd be great at that. And he said, well, are you sure? Because we've got somebody in here that can already do it. And I said, not like me. You won't find anybody in Canada better than me at this, which is a bold statement, but I believed it. Sure. So a week later, I get a call from Jonathan, you know, and I take it out. I

said, hang on, let me take it out the parking lot. He said, you know what? You're right. You are the guy for the job you're hired. So, you know, obviously I'm doing a little jig in the parking lot. So here's the, here's the fun part. The next Monday, you know, the performance improvement plan shit on Scott meeting. We sit down and she's got that smug look on her face. I said, um, before we start, I just like to show you a little note. And I handed across, you know, I'm resigning as all the color drained from her face

because she wanted to fire me. She wanted that so badly. She goes, so are you going to tell me where you're going? I said, nope. And then they escorted me out. And that's it. You get security takes you out and you're done there. Hey, I want to hear all about the score.

That line you dropped there about your tits not being big enough, that could have backfired on you. You got lucky because that could go either way. Well, but it's the score though. So this person, obviously, that humor was par for the course.

It's the score. I wouldn't say that anywhere else. So somebody, one of my colleagues said that they knew I was leaving because it was the only time that't say that anywhere else you know so um so somebody you know one of my colleagues uh said that they knew i was leaving because it was the only time that they've seen my my desk clean by the way as i when you mentioned uh tv i took a good look at you and you do remind me of a bit about of uh jason agnew oh have you ever heard that before no a little bit i see a bit of an agnew if agnew needs a body double for those ads he's always doing.

I'll have to look him up. Look up Jason Agnew. The wrestling fans know Agnew. Now here, you rocked and rolled there after I gave you the lasagna, but I also wanted to give you some fresh beer from Great Lakes Brewery. Nice. So you got some fresh beer. And before you proceed, I'm going to give you a Toronto Mike sticker.

There you go. Oh, nice. Courtesy of Stick sticker you.com everybody should go to sticker you.com and get your decals and your stickers and your badges and all that great stuff they're wonderful wonderful people uh and i'm not even done yet uh there's a there's some more gifts man i think i'm gonna be a guest on my own show later this week because it's swag is off the hook It's become quite amazing. But I have $75 for you, courtesy of ChefDrop. So I urge everyone,

including you, of course, Scott, to go to chefdrop.ca. Check out all the fantastic meal kits you can get from these wonderful restaurants and these amazing chefs. You might have heard Michael Angeloni on Toronto Mic recently. He was a great guest.

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Go to chefdrop.ca and use the promo code FOTMBOGO. And Scott, there's a wireless speaker for you, buddy. Oh, nice. I see that. So now you're in an exclusive club with Ann Roszkowski and Leo Roudens and Peter Sherman. That is so you can listen to the Yes, We Are Open podcast, which is hosted by FOTM Al Grego. Al travels the country interviewing small Canadian businesses, and then he tells the story of their origin, their struggles, their future outlook. And if you're a small business owner

or entrepreneur like me, you'll find the podcast both helpful and motivational. Yes, We Are Open is available wherever you get your podcast, but you can motivational. Yes, We Are Open is available wherever you get your podcast, but you can go to yesweareopenpodcast.com and subscribe. And I urge you to do that, but enjoy. Those are Moneris-branded Bluetooth speakers. I actually don't tell Moneris, but I cracked one open yesterday and hooked it up to my laptop. And it sounds great, man like a tiny but powerful

you're gonna dig it buddy i believe i will all right where were you there so here we now start the score and uh so the first thing i did was start a rafter blog again you know so obviously people were happy about that and uh jonathan um hired me under the title business development manager which is a little bit creative but technically i was developing business um, what they call this, you got to cash checks at some point. Well, it's, you know, it's called the score.com sports federation. Um, and basically what I did is I started going out to, you know, independent sports bloggers who like, sure they were probably running ads on them, but you know, it's what Google ad sense or whatever. They're not making any real money off it. Sure. So I would approach approach you know canadian sports blogs and say hey right i'm with the score and a lot of them knew who i was which uh which

gave me credibility you know i'm not just some business guy like oh it's scott well i know this guy so most of them said yes so we we launched with uh with 12 blogs and i couldn't tell you the exact date it launched um and here's a funny story about what happened right after we launched. Um, is Eric Smith a friend of the show? He's an FOTM two times over. Yeah, absolutely. He was not a fan of this blog network. Why didn't he like, why didn't a Rogers employee, uh, of course, Eric's been with sports net for like 20, maybe almost 30 years now, but why didn't he like this network? I feel like it was a little personal, you know, and, and, you know, this is on raptors.com and this is like a, this is a multi-sports blog network.

He went out of his way on, on, you know, say like, you know, this, this is unprofessional. These, these guys, you know, they're not, they're not trained and blah, blah, blah. And I read this, I'm like, what is your problem, dude? So I, so I emailed him like, you know, what? So I emailed him like, what's the beef here? And we went back and forth and it didn't really go anywhere. And another Eric Smith story. Do you remember there was a show called The Grill Room on Sun TV? Yeah.

Gareth Wheeler, maybe? Yeah, yeah. I do remember this, yeah. So pretty early on, I was invited to be on the show. So this was my next TV you know, TV gig. Pretty small operation. I'm pretty sure the person who did my makeup also was behind the camera. Well, who did you make up for this appearance here?

No, I can't remember. So I was on there with three other people, and I thought it went pretty well. Now, again, this is hearsay. So, like, I don't know this for a fact, but I was told by somebody on the show that Eric Smith was supposed to be on the show with me. And when he found out I was on the show,

he was like, no way. He didn't want to give credence to your operation because he didn't feel it was... Legitimate. Legitimate reporting. Now, I have to plead ignorance. I should bring Brian Gerstein online too here and ask him, I know he was reading at the time, but like, were you posting, like, were you, were you corroborating facts and posting legit from legitimate sources? Or was it a lot of

rumors? Like, give me a taste. Like, was there anything that would give Eric a caution to kind of promote your blog as a, as a proper source for Raptors information? Well, I can't speak for the other blogs that were on the network, but like I wasn't trying to break stories. It was straight, it was straight opinion and analysis. That's all it was. And let me point out, I had a journalism degree. So just because I didn't work for the star or whatever. And by the way, if you work for either Rogers or Bell

and you're covering one of those teams, you're not a journalist either. So get the hell out of here with that. You know, them spitting words, because I've heard this, except then you say that and then you'll hear from somebody like a shy Davidi or something

who will say that he pulls no punches. But you're saying you self-censor because you're aware of your boss's, there's an alliance between the organization you're covering and the person who cuts your checks. Well, let me give a very recent example. Obviously, you know, we've all been paying attention to the scandal in Rogers Senior Management, right?

Of course, yeah. It's like succession over there. So my dad was watching this on CTV, you know, and they're covering it extensively. And this, you know, this is a Bell media. Right,

because it's a Bell property. Yeah. And I said, hey dad, I bet you if you go over to City TV, they won't, they won't be talking about it. Now,

I don't know what other news stations Rogers owns. I know they own City, but. They own City. That's the, that is it, I think,

for Rogers' City TV. And just to be clear, Bell wouldn't, if there's something going on at Bell, CTV wouldn't be covering it either. Now you can say that. You know, do we know this for a fact though?

Only because I haven't actually looked into this because I didn't know. But I would be shocked if City TV was not covering this story. You know, I'll be honest, I didn't check. I just,

I've seen multiple examples of that. And hey. Yeah, go ahead. I mean, look, I could use. It is a slippery slope.

I know, I do know what you're saying. There's a spirit to what you're saying because we all remember Mike Wilner being suspended with pay because of comments he made about Cito Gaston. And I've had Wilner here to talk about it. They don't explicitly say,

you're being suspended because you spoke poorly of Cito Gaston. They don't say that. They just simply suspend you for a couple of weeks and then bring you back. But it's like a shot across the bow. If you want you want you know it's sort of like a message that uh be careful tread lightly because rogers owns the blue jays and rogers they don't own you but they they uh they you you work for them and i feel like that kind of messaging does make it so that if you

work for tsn like r Rick Westhead, for example, you're more likely, I think, to write the story about concussions in the NHL or about the Chicago Blackhawks sexual assault story, probably than the Sportsnet person. Of course. So yes, that sort of looms. And sometimes, in my opinion, sometimes it's the optics that matter more than the reality. and sometimes, in my opinion, sometimes it's the optics that matter more than the reality. And so, yes, you're an independent and you can cover it straight up. And when I'm out the score,

I'm technically still an independent because we didn't have rights to anything. So we could say whatever we want. This is before Rogers bought it, right? Yeah, of course. And we'll get to that. So I'm running the score.com sports federation and I'm also writing Raptor blog.

It was sort of an unspoken agreement with Jonathan Savage that I would launch that up again. And that was part of the sports federation and i'm also writing raptor blog it was sort of a an unspoken agreement with with uh jonathan savage that i would launch that up again and that was part of the sports federation so the uh the the blog network eventually grew to 28 sites and at one so and uh the way we would measure traffic is that the the sports federation was pulled under the score.com in total traffic measurement so so i you know there's various metrics out there to do it but you know and the was pulled under the score.com in total traffic measurement. So there's various metrics out there to do it. But the point is that when you're trying to sell ads, you're like, this is how many people we had.

We get to our sites, right? Right. So at one point, the Blog Federation was accounting for 40% of the traffic of all the scores traffic, which is, I think, pretty impressive. Now, in terms of why the Federation died, the guy who was selling both the score and the Federation, he left to go to Yahoo, and he was doing a great job.

The guy who replaced him didn't give a crap and just didn't sell it at all. So by not selling it at all, the revenue dried up. Of course. And I gotta say, there was a leaf site on there uh called maple leaf's hot stove who was making a thousand dollars a week in revenue i mean so like and that just dried up i felt terrible about it i'd say like sorry guys do you remember the guys who were behind that no i don't know their names i mean i'm not a leafs fan and i i wouldn't say it's a

fantastic site but um there are there are a couple are a couple of blogs that came out of that that I knew were great and that the guys behind them were going to go on to great things. And they were both Jace sites. And because you're my age, do you remember Drunk Jace fans? Of course. That's Andrew Stoughton. Yes, yes.

And there's more about him later. I mean, the other one was a site called Ghostrunner on First. And that was Drew Fair Service. Okay. Now, if you're a Jays fan, you probably hear both Stoughton and Drew, you know, on various radio appearances all the time. Yeah, absolutely. Because they're really smart. They're really funny.

And Andrew did go to the Athletic for a while. Yeah. I think he might be freelancing now. Well, no, he's definitely not. Funny thing is, the day the news came, he was not at the Athletic, was the same day

Blake Murphy came over for his Toronto Mike debut. So this came up on that episode of Toronto Mike. But I don't know if we ever got a reason, to be honest.

I'm not sure we're owed a reason, but Athletic did part ways with Andrew, and now he's got his own independent thing going. Anyways, the point I want to make is that I believe the Stoughton and Drew are not just the best Jays writers around.

I think they're the best baseball writers around. I can't stress enough. If you're a Jays fan, follow them on Twitter. There are fantastic Twitter followers and their, their newsletters there and their podcasts are top notch. And Andrew was close to being an FOTM. And one day now that we're in the land of zooms,

et cetera, we'll make it happen. We had a geographical barrier. This is pre COVID and it didn't quite happen due to geography, but I'm sure we'll get this done. I mean, both those guys bring the complete package. They're great writers.

They're funny. They don't take themselves too seriously. They know all the analytics, you know, they interact with, with people like they they're the complete package. Like I said, you know, I don't think there's anybody in baseball that does it better than they do. And, you know, they interact with, with people like they, they're the complete package. Like I said, you know, I don't think there's anybody in baseball that does it better than they do. And, you know, I know it sounds like I'm kissing ass because I used to work with them,

but they're just really good at what they do. No, no. And I'm sure they'll be glad to hear that for sure. So this, what, how, how does it end for you at the score? So the sports federation falls apart. Um, and, uh, Jonathan Savage calls me into his office and he says, so Scott, what do you think about becoming a product manager for the website? I said, well, Jonathan, I don't really have any experience in that. And I actually kind of like what I'm doing. Well, here's the thing. If you don't take this offer, we're going to have to let you go. I'm like, sounds great. That's called incentive right there. So, but it turned out to be like a really good thing for me. So, so I interviewed for the job, I got it. And,

uh, it turned out, I really loved that, that being a product manager. And what, you know, what I've discovered is that product managers are like a very nebulous title because everywhere I've gone, it means something different.

Sort of like the title I find producer. Like, you know, it means something different everywhere, but yeah, you're right. Cause I was a product manager at both the score and the hockey news, which were,

which were coming up on next. And when I explained the differences, you'll, you'd right. Because I'm the product manager of both the score and the hockey news, which we're, which we're coming up on next. And when I explain the differences, you'll, you'd hardly believe it's the same job. So, so product manager at the score, I was product manager for the website and there was another product manager for the app. Now, if I was smart, I would have been the product manager for the app, but that's neither here nor there. Right. They were ahead of the curve on that one. So, uh, basically what I did was I was in charge for, you know, kind of making sure the site gets maintained for making gradual improvements, you know, and then occasionally doing sort of bigger projects. For example, when we launched our blog section, and I don't mean like this is different from like the, these are the people that work for the score. So Drunk J's fans was on there.

There was a general podcast called Getting getting blanked uh the footy blog with christian jack and james sharman oh absolutely yeah we all know that one top notch talent on that blog oh i should mention by the way that also at the score at this time was the basketball jones right now they would have been massive successes no matter what so the score gets no credit for this but uh i got to work with those guys. And I even got to write for their blog. And it was really cool. And one of my blogs, the Dan Lebitard show, led off with my blog.

And it was a comparison of LeBron and Kobe in clutch moments, which is just, it's pretty much clickbait. But I actually broke it down analytically. It's like, here's their shooting percentages with a minute left. Here is the 30 seconds left. And sure enough, like it strongly favored LeBron over Kobe, which went against the common wisdom.

Well, of course, LeBron's a Miami, LeBretard's a Miami guy. I found out that he led off his show talking about that article. It's just a shame he didn't mention my name and he got the website address wrong. That is a shame. But you know, still, Dan Labatard, it's pretty cool. Right, got to attribute that properly though, but that is very cool for you. Very, very cool. So, you know,

anyways, product manager. So aside from the maintenance stuff, I sometimes got to work on, you know, cool projects like putting the blog network together. Sorry, the blog section together. And what that involved was making wireframes. Now, you know what blueprints are in terms of architecture, right? So imagine that before a website. So like the ad goes here, the lead article goes here. So you're drawing boxes and whatever.

I freaking loved that. I had no idea I was going to love it so much because you're creating boxes and whatever i freaking loved that sure i had no idea i was going to love it so much because you're you're creating something from nothing right and uh that was the only time i actually got to uh interact with benji levy um so so i you know i had to bring him bring in the wireframe to get his approval and i don't think he had any changes he's like yeah they look good so they put the blog network together. It was, it was going great. But you know, meanwhile, I'm a product manager. The other, the other thing I did was I put together a, a sort of microsite called, for the Olympics called Going for Glory. Now, as you know, the score can't use Olympics

in their name. Right. So what was cool about this project? It was the first time I worked on what they call a responsive website, where basically, whether you look at it on a computer or a tablet or a phone, it's going to look great in all of them. So that was my first time doing that. So that was super cool. Now, like every website's responsive. So the CSS essentially says if the width of the screen

is this many pixels, here's your CSS. If it's this many pixels, here's your CSS. If it's this many pixels, here's your CSS. So basically, yeah, it just looks at your resolution and then serves you up the appropriate design, if you will, from the CSS. Yeah, I couldn't say if it's as simple as that, but that's basically the deal. Yeah, that's it.

So the other thing I did with that was I geo-targeted the audience so that if you were coming from Canada, you would be served a certain set of headlines. If you were coming coming from Canada, you would be served a certain set of headlines. If you were coming from the States, you'd be served a different set of headlines. And then if you're from anywhere else, you get like this general headlines, you know?

So that was cool, you know? It's a cool project to work on. And then, you know, the big project came up was to redesign the whole website. And unfortunately, you know, the Rogers bought the company and, uh, it wiped out my whole department before I got to finish that. So that's, that's the boring stuff. But now, now, now we get to the juicy stuff at the score. Okay. Let's hear it. So let's start with Tim McAuliffe. Yes. So, uh, I was a huge fan of his

coming in, like just mad respect. And, um, so pretty soon after I started, uh, you know, I'm, I'm in my little office and I see Tim McAuliffe walk by. So I'm like, well, I got to talk to this guy. I said, I didn't want a fan boy or anything. So I come out and I said, uh, Tim, uh, my name's Scott. I just started here. Um, just want you to know, I, you know, I just a big fan of yours. He's like, Oh, nice to meet you. And I said, so, so Tim, I understand you guys are starting on HD. He's like, what are you like? I hate it. They put way too much makeup on me. So, so that was my first Tim encounter.

Uh, the second one is, uh, I'm coming up with the elevator on the other than one day. And I said, Hey Tim, how's it going? He's like,

not good. He's like, I'm working on a dark river store for the show. And there's a quote that I can't find. And it's, it's really pissing me off. I said, well,

give me some, give me some details. And he gives me the details. I said, we'll tell you what, Tim, uh, as soon as I get back to my desk and turn my computer off, I bet you, I said, well, give me some details. And he gives me the details. I said, well, tell you what, Tim, as soon as I get back to my desk and turn my computer off,

I bet you I can have you that quote within five minutes. He's like, oh, I don't believe it. You know, I said, Tim, I've got an eighth degree black button in Google. You're gonna have to trust me on this. So I get back to my desk. Within two minutes, I had the link to him with a quote

and I just get a one-word response. Amazing. Now, when you get a response like that from Tim McAuliffe, you can't help but read it in his voice. So that was kind of cool. The Maltese falcon himself was nice to you. Yes. Now, this is the sweetest.

Of all the stories I'm going to tell, this one is the sweetest of all. Okay. So Tim and Sid were leaving for Rogers. You know, I knew it was coming, you know, sooner or later. So before we left, Tim drops by my desk. He's like, so Scott, you know, I said, yeah, I'm bummed out, you know, but I knew it was coming.

He's like, come here. And he puts his arms out and he gave me a hug. There you go. How sweet. What a sweet guy. This is the dirt we're getting on Tim McAuliffe. He's a sweetheart. I've had email exchanges. Does that count?

Yeah. He was always very civil and nice to me. Yeah, it's actually the opposite of dirt. Now with cabbie, it gets a little more interesting. All right, and cabbie is back in town, I hear. Yeah. So again, sort of three separate stories. Not really stories. Just sort of like light tidbits about them.

So my very first encounter with Cabby, so like I'm in, you know, the blogger's office or whatever, and Cabby's passing by to see Jonathan Savage because, well, you know, let me back up a bit. Here's what you need to know about Cabby. You know, his on-air persona, like, hey, cheer, you funny, whatever. Again, loved Cabby on the street. Absolutely loved it. You know, his rapport with Kobe, whatever. Again, loved Cabby on the street. Absolutely loved it. You know, his rapport with Kobe, legendary. Very much not like that off the air. Oh.

And I'm not saying he was an asshole. I've never met him, so I'm interested in hearing that. Well, I mean, who knows? If he's on the air or whatever, like who knows whether he'll give you the persona or the real Cabby, I don't know. Well, this is not uncommon, right? Bob Cat talking, you know,

Bob McCowan would have talked about this at some point with a rogers i think with uh christina uh rutherford i believe but that you know he wears a mask so when he's on when his public persona comes in he puts on his curmudgeon bobcat mask and it's very different apparently from the the private uh off-air mccowan yeah so what i can say about cabbie uh in real life, extremely career-driven, like extremely self-promoting. And I don't mean that as an insult.

My understanding is that Cabby started as an intern at the SCORE. And he rose purely through drive. So kudos for that. By no means. So he's on his way to Jonathan Savizoff, which probably to complain about he's not prominently displayed enough on the homepage.

As he walks by my group, he turns, goes, what's up nerds. Which is funny. Well, I wasn't mad at him. It's funny.

I'm like, well, I am a nerd. What am I supposed to say? He's accurately described me. So that was the first cabbie moment. All right. The second,

the second one was pretty cool. I, I sort of passed by him and like not a hallway, but it was sort of an open where he was like, Hey Scott, I want, let me talk to you. I'm like, what's up cab what's up cabby's like hey i just read one of your articles on the site you're really good you really know your stuff and i'm like oh thanks man you

know again compliments like that coming from a guy like him all right now here's the funny story so we used to have these uh all hands on deck meetings with the levies uh the office at the time was uh in the third and fourth floor of the Holiday Inn on King and, is it Blue Jays Way or Wayne Gretzky Way? It was Wayne Gretzky Way, right? Okay, here's how it works. Once you're south of King, you are Blue Jays Way. Right.

It's Peter Street north of King. Yes, okay. So basically, we would gather around the stairwell. You know, the Levy's would be up there with a bunch of other people, and I would usually be down below. And I think this happened. This happened definitely happened at least once.

It might've happened twice. Cabby would make sure he was the last person to show up. And what he would do is he would come from where the Levy's office and executive bathroom was. He'd show up about five minutes late with a toothbrush hanging out of his mouth. And I feel like the message is, yeah,

I just used to leave the executive bathroom to brush, brush my teeth. What up? And I was like, wow. Like I didn't know whether to be, I think that's funny too. I don't know what you like better.

I didn't know whether to be impressed or confused. So, so, so that's cabbie. Like, you know, cabbie smart guy to build his personal brand because these cable companies at the end of the day,

you know, you got to work on your brand so that you have some leverage, right? Because otherwise you're just another number for the bean counters in the cable company, right? So I have one quick anecdote to talk about Rene Paquette, who is like by far the biggest star to come out of the score ever okay interesting because i'm not even sure i know that name so tell me who this is so

renee paquette um she was uh she she shared a wrestling show with um god i can't remember i can't remember the guy's name he's a turkish guy um anyways so she she was a big wrestling fan really funny and let's be honest, just absolutely gorgeous. Just the complete package. And what ended up happening is she got hired by the WWE. Okay.

Okay, this explains everything. This is a complete black hole for me. I stopped watching in 1988 or so. Well, you remember Mean Gene... Mean Gene Okerlund, absolutely. She ended up doing his job. I don't like her already. Mean Gene was the best no

but i think you know he was good so she has 1.1 million followers on twitter okay um so anyways my only interaction with her and you know she was great um i can't remember if she called me over if i if i went over to her and she was just trying to figure out twitter he's like hey what's up and she's like so this guy he's asking he's asking me for pictures of my feet. And she was confused. She's like, what's that about? I said, okay, you need to block him immediately. That's a fetish.

Yeah, I said, that's a kink thing. It's disgusting. He's a creep and you should block him. She's like, ugh. And I said, look, Renee. To be clear, though, the interest in feet is not disgusting. The asking for the pictures of the feet is what is inappropriate and disgusting. Yeah, and I gave her, I think, an important piece of advice.

I said, look, I know you're trying to build your audience, but you have no idea the number of creeps that are going to come out of the woodwork. As soon as you get a creep vibe, block them immediately. I don't care if it means you block a million people. Never stop blocking them because otherwise they'll make your life miserable. Right. Yeah. Those pictures of the feet.

And I would love to get some real talk with a woman in this sports media industry and ask them about a foot pick requests or. Oh man. Well, you know, there's actually an entire Wikipedia designed for feet pictures. Oh, I believe it.

Hey, before you continue, my friend, I just want to thank a couple of great partners of the program. Uh, Brad Jones, Brad Jones is an amazing FOTM. And he's at Ridley Funeral Home.

In this neck of the woods, they're pillars of the community. This is the neighborhood New Toronto. He's at Lakeshore and 14th Street. And I just want to give some love. If you have any questions of this sensitive nature, Ridley Funeral Home will help you. You can go to RidleyFuneralHome.com to reach out. Again, Brad, great FOTM, great supporter of The Real Talk. And speaking of great supporters of The Real Talk, let's talk about Mike Majeski.

If anyone is looking to buy and or sell in the next six months, Majeski is your man. Go to realestatelove.ca. Majeski is your man. Go to realestatelove.ca. I also urge you to subscribe to Mike Majeski's Instagram account because he's got these zany, like really cool videos he puts out of listings and stuff.

That's Majeski Group Homes on Instagram. This man is serving the GTA. Okay, so Rogers buys the score and we all knew it was coming i i immediately backed up all my files to like google drive like you know it's so sure enough you know um the entire product team got wiped out because you know you know what do they call redundancies or whatever right so um so from there um i applied for a job at the hockeyockey News. Okay. And to give you some context, I subscribed to the Hockey News when I was a kid,

back when it was newsprint. So even though I'm not- Is this like Bob McKenzie days? Well, that would have been back then, I'm sure. But Bob McKenzie wasn't there. No, no, I meant back then. Yeah, I'm sure it was. But that was the Hockey Bible back then.

And to a certain extent, it still is. I don't know that anybody could, you know, you know, tops the hockey news for that department. So, uh, I applied for the job. And the funny thing is, is that the, uh, the job was product manager for the hockey news and style at home, which seems like a kind of a weird mix, right? Right. So I got, I got the job and almost immediately after I got the job, they just cut Style at Home. The whole thing was like a ruse to get me hired. So they cut Style at Home and hired somebody else to fill that position.

Okay. But they wanted you. This is good news for you. Now, the funny thing is that I still had to attend at least one, if not two, meetings with the Style at Home editorial team. But just tell, what the hell is Style at Home? I have no idea what that is. It's a home decor magazine okay okay okay it's an aspirational home decor it's like what you want your house to look like if you had more money basically you know and you know obviously furniture companies and paint companies you know

pay them and that's that's their whole racket right so um i show up to uh to meet with the editors and the looks on their faces like i think they knew they were getting a guy but they're like he's not even gay you know so it's just like how's this guy you know and and the funny thing was is that um one of the people there went to ryerson with me in journal and she was horrified she's like this meathead? But luckily they didn't have to put up with me for long. No, good. The hockey news is where you belong.

So the funny thing, so this was my other favorite manager, a guy named Ray Oster. And he said to me really early on, he said, look, Scott, here's what I want from you for the first six months. I want you to win them over. Meaning the editorial team,

because you told me horror stories about the previous product managers who just were disasters, you know? So, you know, right away it's like, oh, here's the, here's the next schmuck in town. So yeah, it took me, it took me time to win them over. And, uh, and here's the thing, the hockeynews.com at the time was an antiquated mess, you know, and the biggest problem, aside from the fact that it looked like crap, the biggest problem

was in the back end. So Mike, are you familiar with CMS? Of course, content management system. Right, so I think their CMS was built in-house

and it was so bad that if you tried to post an article, it would take an hour to go live. That sounds insane to me, but yeah. And if you're called the hockey news, that doesn't really work.

That's insane, yeah. So basically, they weren't updating it. They weren't posting. They were just like, screw this. We're just going to post to the magazine. So I'm like, okay, how do I fix this? And immediately it's like, okay, the first thing I do is fix the CMS.

And the answer was obvious, WordPress. The most popular. So the answer was obvious WordPress, you know, the most popular, you know, so, so that, that, that part was easy, but then it's like, okay, now what? So, so, so now we get back to the wireframe stage. It's like, how do we want to make this look? So, you know, the, the, the main picture on the homepage, way too small. Let's blow it up. You know, let's put this here. Let's rearrange the, um, the, the navigation.

Like their most popular articles were rumors articles and they didn't have a link on the navigation for rumors. It's like, duh, you know, these are your most popular articles. Right, you've got some low hanging fruit there to enjoy. Yeah, exactly. So then we get to the key part, which was we're going to turn the site into a blog,

essentially, you know, still with stats or whatever. So, you know, you know, I've got to sell, I've got to sell the team on. So, uh, that, that would be editor in chief, Jason K, uh, managing editor, uh, Everett Fraser and, uh, web editor, Rory Boylan, who pretty quickly figured out that like, okay, this guy might actually be legit. Cause poor Rory working with that piece of crap website, like just what a horrible experience that must've been. So I sold them on the whole plan. So now the fun part was negotiating with the project manager, who's the person who actually talks to the developers. So I said, okay, here's the deal. We need this site live by October 1st, beginning of the season. She's like, can't do it. You can have November 1st. I said, October 1st. She comes back October 15th, October 1st, kept going. Eventually she goes October 2nd. At this point, she's just being stubborn. Sure enough, I got October 1st.

We launched in October 1st. Fantastic. Amazing. It looks great. Everybody loves it. Same day, Phil Kessel signs an eight year, $64 million contract with the Leafs. Like, what a dream story. Now we've got a website that works. Right. You can publish instantly. Right. Amazing.

Hours go by, no Kessel story. So I'm a little confused. I go downstairs. I'm like, hey, guys, I assume you know what happened to Kessel's story. They said, yeah. I said, well, you know, why haven't you read it haven't you, well, it hasn't been assigned to us yet. Now I'm not trying to throw anybody under the bus here,

but you know, so I, and I've got no, I've got no control over them. I can't make them write that article. Right. So I returned to my desk with smoke coming out of my ears.

And you know, my boss knew that this was a big day. So he comes by, he goes, Hey Scott, how's it going? He's like, not good.

He's like, what's up? I said, well, I created this whole site so they could post news immediately and they're not doing it. There's this huge story. And Ray's like, all right, I'm going to, I'm going to call the VP. I'll take care of this. I'm like, Oh no. So he did. He called the VP and the VP called the publisher. Now the publisher's office was right outside the hockey news. So she, she, the hockey news. So she, the hockey news were her boys.

You know, she had a great deal of affection for them and she was very protective of them. So here's this new vice president they brought in from the States just ripping her new orifices over this. So I used to meet with her every two, the publisher every two weeks

to talk business. I'm like, I don't think this next meeting is going to go so great. And I pass her by in the business. I'm like, I don't think this next meeting is going to go so great. And, uh, I, I, I passed her by in the hallway. I'm like, hello, so-and-so. And she just ghosted me. So, um, at this point I actually had a different, uh, manager. Uh, and I went to her, I said, uh, and so I don't want to say her name. I said, uh, I need your help with something. And she goes, so what's that? I said, I need you to come to this next meeting with the publisher. She says, why? I said, because she's going to

yell at me like you wouldn't believe. She said, oh, come on, Scott, you're exaggerating. No, you're not. I said, I need you to come to witness this. So she did. And sure enough, the publisher yelled at me for a good 15 minutes straight. And this is right outside, so all the Hawkins people can hear it. So, and I kept my calm because I was ready for it. She would yell at me like, I don't agree with you there. I said, I think you're looking at this wrong.

And that just made her angrier and angrier, right? I never lost my cool. I never broke a sweat. So we get out of there and I'm going to the elevator with my manager. She's like, you don't have to go to those meetings anymore. I'll handle it. And that's a good boss. She's like, you don't have to put up with that. Yeah. I failed to understand. Okay. So this person who had an issue with you was, didn't understand why when a huge leaf story breaks, there needs to be some content on the

website regarding it. Like there was some, like you were obviously in the right there, right? Like this is not up for debate, but this person, or is this person upset that it was escalated over their head because you should have gone to them first? Is that the concern? Well, I did. Right.

Okay. Okay. I feel like, you know, we're not talking about 1995 anymore when you could be forgiven for not understanding these digital concepts because now you're clearly, I mean, if Kessel's signing, what's that mid-2000s i can't even uh remember now but uh now we're in an age where uh you know you're simply drag kick you're dragging a old uh dead

tree publication kicking and screaming into the digital era which of course is where they uh they belong but you're clearly in the right that the Kessel story needs coverage online. Well, they figured it out. And then what started to happen that was really cool, and this is not traditionally something a product manager does, but what I did was I would, we would meet every Monday,

the editor-in-chief, the managing editor and the web editor in the editor-in-chief's office, and I would bring them spreadsheets of the best performing stories and page views from top to bottom with the headlines next to them. Because the whole point is like, these are the type of stories that work.

These are the ones that don't. Write more about Phil Kessel and Dion Phaneuf and everything will be fine. Well, I mean, even one as granular is, you know, if they would use the word funny in a headline, I would say, try hilarious next time. And then if hilarious worked better, really granular stuff. I think the Toronto Star figured it out, at least when I talked to Kevin McGrann there, that basically, oh, we just have to write about

the big four on the Maple Leafs. Just keep writing about Marner and Matthews and now, I guess, Tavares. But okay, let me ask you though uh before we wrap up here because i want to hit a couple more points one is i want to know what happens to the raptor blog i feel like i'm on the edge of my seat here uh what what's the ending story for the raptor blog you know i left that out when i uh when i left the score they actually gave me the option to uh to take it with me but it had been 10 years and i was so fed up and like let's face it if they were willing to hand it off to me, it clearly wasn't,

didn't have to be that big of an audience anyways. But, but this is okay. Okay. You're talking to a guy who, you know, I've been working on Toronto, Mike.com for forever now.

If you own it and it's independent and it's your passion project, why not keep it going for shits and giggles? Because it wasn't my, it wasn't my passion. Like that team was horrible for the almost entire time I was there. Is this the Bargnani era? Where are we here? Absolutely.

Yeah, that was tough. And I got interviewed by a bunch, including the Toronto Star, and I blame Bargnani. I can't watch her write about this team anymore. So yeah, and then the hockey news gets bought by Quebecor, so you get booted out the door there.

And I understand you're wrapping up, but... No, if you got you got something spicy for sure, but I know you do end up at Rogers radio, which is interesting. Yeah. So, uh, the Rogers job, I mean, I'll be honest. I didn't, it's not that I didn't want to take it, but it's like, you know, radio, you know, it's like, uh, not really my thing. So, so, uh, you know, it's basically a web producer for Rogers radio and, uh, you know, the main property I'd be working with the CHFI. So, uh,, it's basically a web producer for Rogers Radio and, you know, the main property I'd be working with is CHFI. So I interviewed and I could tell right away that the people I was interviewing, like, the people were going to be not really big personalities.

So what I did for the first time in an interview is I dialed my personality back about 50%. And I got the job, you know, almost immediately. You toned it down. Yeah. But unfortunately, I let my real personality out when I got the job, you know, almost immediately. You toned it down. Yeah, but unfortunately, I let my real personality out when I got there and that went really badly. So it turns out they don't like the real you. They like the toned down you.

So I'll say a couple of fun things and then one really spicy thing. So CHFI meetings and 680 News meetings were very different. CHFI meetings were like pretty intense because I feel like them and Chum were like really competing, right? Yeah, for sure. Still are, yeah.

Now, 680 news meetings were a lot more laid back. Now, the lead guy there was Scott, I can't remember his last name. Metcalf. Yeah, Scott Metcalf. He just retired. His office chair was a bucket seat from a car. The coolest thing I've ever seen in my life.

Did he have an Obis form on it? I don't think so. Shout out to Ernie Wick. So, you know, there was a professional and personal downfall at Rogers. And, you know, maybe I'll get to have a follow-up appearance or talk about it. I was in a meet, you know, every Monday

we would meet from nine to 10 with CHFI. And at 9.30, you know, I have my computer open, as I always do. I get an email from a lawyer, a divorce lawyer. And the letter said that your wife has taken your kids and left the house. Ooh, there's a crazy little turn in the story here. Okay, right with you.

Right in the middle. So I said, uh, I've got a personal situation. So needless to say, there was a downward spiral from there. Like my job performance suffered. I quit because I was about to have a nervous breakdown, but they're probably going to fire me anyways. Oh, I feel for you, buddy. I can't imagine what that would be like,

but I am a divorce guy. So I do understand what that can, uh, feel like. Um, sorry that you had to go through that. That's a tough email to get. Yeah.

And, and unfortunately, like when I say downward spiral, like since then I've, I've, you know, cause I know you guys talk about mental illness in there. Like I,

I suffer from clinical anxiety, you know? Okay. And it shows you it's not dependent on a situation because, you know, theoretically I, I could be anxious coming on the show. Yeah. That's like environmental. But do you, but do you situation because, you know, theoretically I could be anxious coming on the show.

Yeah. That's like environmental. But do you, but do you know how, you know, I'm not anxious. Look how steady my hand is when I'm, when I'm anxious. That's like Dr. Johnny fever after his sixth drink. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I, my last day at Rogers, I, I had to sit in my car for 30 minutes cause my,

I couldn't get my hands to stop shaking. Oh. You know, and I listened to Greg Brady, like, you know, Rogers, toxic environment, you know, so I quit. And the last day, once again, my manager refused to talk to me because he wanted to fire my ass and he never got a chance to do so.

So that's it for Rogers. And since then I've been freelancing and just trying to get my health together, spending time with my family. I'm thinking working for yourself might be the solution here. You've had some rough luck in the working for these media companies.

It seems like a common story. And this podcast, once again, the Bad Sports Podcast with Scott Carefoot, I'm not sure I expect this to ever take off professionally. It's just a matter of, I need to be creative. Sure. It goes back to the chemical factory

when I started Raptor Blog. Like even in my worst moment, I need to create. And that goes back to the chemical factory when I started Rafterblog. Like even in my worst moment, I need to create. And that's the point of this podcast. Whether I want to make it weekly and obviously I want to get some big guests out there, but I'd love to make money off this, but most importantly,

I'm putting something out there. I'm proud of it and I want to keep doing it because who knows where I can go. Maybe I can be the Toronto Mike of sports history podcast. You can only hope and dream to be so big time. And I would also argue

it would be in your best interest to aim higher possibly. But this podcast, the Bad Sports Podcast, it's a great channel for your creativity and your skill set and you can work on that.

Meanwhile, it sounds like you're working on yourself. Like I think once you identify you have a mental illness, that's like a huge step towards a treatment. Yeah, for sure. I've, I've dabbled in various medications and not much of them have worked my, I've had the best luck with THC oil. Um, it's, it helps calm me down. It helps me sleep. It helps my appetite. And these are all prompt things that get affected by, by severe anxiety attacks. So, so I struggle, I struggle with it every day.

And so you're seeing somebody to work on this, like what is the right balance for you in terms of these medications, be it cannabis or whatnot? Well, right now it's just TH2. I'm not seeing a therapist because it's not something that can be talked out of. It's a imbalance. Is it a chemical imbalance? Possibly. It's a, it's a, it's a. It's a clinic, it's a, it's an imbalance. It's a, is it a chemical imbalance?

Possibly. You know, I need to, you know, it's, it's a result of trauma because, you know, there's, there's other things that happened during that period that I can never talk about. You know, you know, just, you know,

you know, horrible things that I wouldn't wish on anybody. You don't, you don't owe me that. No, you know, so, and let's just say a lot of my head injuries came from that period. And now I'm thinking back to what happened when we started this show. Yeah, exactly. So, but, you know, I don't want to call this, you know, so, um, and let's just say a lot of my head injuries came from that period. And now I'm thinking back to what happened when we started this show. Yeah, exactly. So, but, uh, you know, I don't want to call this, you know, a comeback,

but it's, it's more, I'm not dead yet. That's really what the point of this is. That's the name of Ben Mergey's new book. There you go. No, no, actually it's, I, I thought he was dead is actually the name of Ben Mergey, but similar theme. You're not dead yet. You're still a young guy. I mean, am I a young guy? That's a great question. I thought I was a young guy and maybe I'm not. But I feel young. You look great. You've got this channel again,

The Bad Sports Podcast, and you're doing some freelance work. And I hope things worked out on that family front. At least, you know, get things stable and, you know, I can't imagine getting an email like that. That's got to be, I mean, next to the death, I suppose,

of somebody you love. I can't imagine anything that's going to be more stressful than that on the planet. Yeah, it's pretty rough because I was already on shaky ground and I got to the point where I would try to go downstairs and I had to hold onto the railing like an old man.

When I get an was, it's, when I get an attack, it's crippling. Yeah. And you mentioned the Greg Brady episode and I'm glad you listened to that because, uh, although I would just to clarify something. So Greg is very honest about what he called the toxic work environment at Rogers radio, but he was, from what I gathered in that two hour conversation, he was being very specific about one program director. So I don't think he was actually lashing out

at the entire institution. He was being very specific that he had a program director at the Fan 590, and he was explaining the incidents he's had with that person that resulted in the great anxiety that he experienced in that job. But there is a pattern. Yeah, I don't know. That's why I have people like you on to talk,

because I have all these places you've stopped at, like be it, you know, Toronto Sun, Hockey News, The Score, Rogers Radio. I've never worked in that industry and I've never stepped, you know, had that experience at all. So that's why I have the Scott Carefoots of the world on to kind of tell me what it's like because i have no idea i can tell you one thing that bell and rogers have in common is that at least at the time i was there the senior executives who thought they understood digital knew nothing about it you know like for example rogers tried to get uh start podcasts for all their morning shows okay you know thinking that like oh they'll listen to you know the banter you know even though there's no music on it you know and they asked me

i was like that's a terrible idea nobody's gonna listen to those theyter even though there's no music on it. And they ask my parents, that's a terrible idea. Nobody's going to listen to those. They made us do it anyway, nobody listened to them. And this is the thing. And you'd see the metrics, right? You'd see the analytics. Like the CHFI morning show,

for a week, a few hundred people. Because nobody's listening to these people without the music. And they dilute, this isn't Howard Stern. This isn't 590. That's not how this works.

But they didn't get it. And your era there, is this Aaron Davis era? No, it would have been... Is it after that? Billy and... Oh, it's that far back. Okay, because Aaron was there a long time.

She was gone before me. Although her and Mike... She came back. Yeah, her and Mike Cooper would drop by the... Mike Cooper, man, what a voice. Yeah, he was filling in so they until very recently actually he was filling in with uh co-hosting with maureen

holloway on chfi and that was up until like about a month ago it's always fascinating when you when you meet on-air people you wonder if their voice is really going to sound like what they sound like on the air and mike cooper absolutely sounds like that yeah it's funny i i'm always interested in that as well. And the one person I want to have on the show, cause I want to hear him talk to me and hear how he sounds is Chris Shepard. Cause to me,

that's always been such an affected voice. Like he's putting on this voice. It's sort of like when you have, I've had Ed the sock on. So, you know, you can have Steve Kersner and Ed the sock and they sound similar, but different.

Like, so he's not hiding because it's obviously a character. He's not even pretending it's not a character. But Chris Shepard, I've always assumed that was a persona he put on in front of the mic, and I only know one way to find out. Got to get that man on the program. I haven't heard from him in forever.

We don't know where he is right now, in fact. I've been told Costa Rica. Oh, good for him then. So if anybody out there can tell me where the hell in the world Chris Shepard is, let's get him on Toronto Mike. Hey, Scott, careful, man. I'm glad you're doing better. It was very interesting to me to hear

some of these stories of how the sausage gets made from rye high to CHFI. And good luck with this podcast, the Bad Sports Podcast. I got to check it out I am I told a secret source of mine says there's a Ben Johnson episode coming that's the plan yeah I'm talking to my possible guest is your possible guest Ben Johnson no it's actually just a friend it's actually just

a friend of mine who's just really funny and entertaining well good luck with all that buddy and before you leave we got to take a photo, but make sure I get you your lasagna. Absolutely. Otherwise, I'm going to eat it. And, you know, I'm happy to do so. But that brings us to the end of our 938th show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike.

Scott, how do we follow you on Twitter? At Scott Carefoot. So at Scott Carefoot. No slow pitch information will be shared on that account. Scott, how do we follow you on Twitter? At Scott Carefoot. So at Scott Carefoot. No slow pitch information will be shared on that account. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Chef Drop is at GetChefDrop. Manaris is at Manaris.

McKay CEO Forums. They have a great podcast called the CEO Edge Podcast. You should subscribe and listen to these fireside chats with CEOs and other executives. Nancy McCade is a good job. You can follow them on Twitter, at McCadeCEOForums. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. Sticker U is at Sticker U.

Ridley Funeral Home are at Ridley FH. And Mike Majeski, I mentioned he's on Instagram. He's of Remax Specialists Majeski Group, and he's at Majeski. I mentioned he's on Instagram. He's of Remax Specialists Majeski Group and he's at Majeski Group Homes. See you all next week. This podcast has been produced by TMDS and accelerated by Roam Phone. Roam Phone brings you the most reliable virtual phone service to run your business

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