This is the down labor part, sure, we've still got Sparkasse. I'm very excited because Greg Codi, again, for a second week in a row, has a back in my day and I feel like he has been sufficiently shamed. Chris Coady can speak to this. Greg Coati never admit when he is wrong. He doesn't come back around a couple of days later or weeks later and say he was wrong. But occasionally an effort is put in. Now, this will dissipate over time and five weeks from now, he won't be doing it again.

But for the moment, Chris, do you believe your father has been properly, publicly shamed about not working hard enough on his back in my days and is now giving a good and proper effort?

He has stepped up the effort he's been giving by texting me more and bothering me for ideas for back in my days. So, yes, I have noticed an uptick in the texts he's putting more of an effort into and he's trying. The old man is trying.

Why do I why do I have a reputation for never admitting I'm wrong? I think you're dead wrong about that. I just you know, I admit when I'm wrong, sometimes it takes me months or a couple of years, but I do admit it.

So thank you for doing so because we're going to get to that back in my day in a second here. But I did want it was important to me sort of philosophically and spiritually to be on and to have a platform during this particular week, because I believe during all this time that we have spent together or not together, locked in our homes during the weirdest crisis of our lifetimes as a generation and across generations, with just unspeakable sadness being seen spilling into our streets and America forever being on edge and a racial war being instigated in a way that had all summer and most recently in a symbolic place where freedom and democracy reside, was overrun by thugs.

Freedom was attacked for a year. It is the least free year any of us have felt in America, whether you're a black person who was, you know, protesting because George Floyd had a police officer on his neck for eight and a half minutes. This was a just an unspeakably awful year, the worst year of all of our lives as a country. I don't think there's any dispute in any of what I'm saying. So no matter what your politics are, no matter what, your race is just a brutal year in all of our lives.

And it was important to me as somebody who was with this crew at ESPN to be free there, to be free to talk about what was happening in the White House.

It was important to me and I tried with using sports figures and adhering to company policy. But as I see these particular days and I want the people listening to this to sort of absorb the idea that Trump has taken a whole bunch of money to pardon people right and left. And most interesting to me is he going to pardon that Maxwell woman who was with Epstein. He's just going to throw a flood. This dude who has been basically a criminal grifter right now, he's just selling the office, selling out our country, doing these just unspeakably shame, immune grace allergic things.

It was important for me this week to be here because it's checkout time and you can fumigate the White House now. Just fumigate it because we've had just a opportunists, shameless leader, embarrassing this country for so very long with what seems now to be a criminal grift that is going to be prosecuted no matter how many pardons he throws out. And while this country's problems date back far, far beyond this orange racist turd, he instigated the worst in what America none of us thought it would ever be.

No matter what side of this you're on the last year is not anything any of us could have imagined being America. It really doesn't matter what your politics are on this one. Like, I know a lot of people are going to call me, you know, leftists or progressive or whatever. But if you've been listening to this show for twenty years, you know good and well that the thing that is only interested me in this subject matter has been race for 20 years.

And I've been co-opted as a political tool. And in some ways, you know, like in the middle of the fight because of everything that was happening in terms of this summer corporate policy. And then we're, you know, we're evicted or we left or we agreed to evict and leave. And here we are now on pirate radio in the middle of it. And I believe and I really do believe this, that our most discerning listeners see all of that, that they that they saw what happened there.

And now we are free. We are totally free to do this show. And I know some of you are annoyed with how we've been. Doing it and you've got your complaint and they are myriad about everything, I will just tell you that we are all doing this right now together. Right, because I told you already that we jumped ship together and there weren't a whole lot of questions asked. These guys have seen that. What I don't know how to talk about this, but these guys have seen what the suffering of the last 18 months has been for me and what was always and always has been a dream job, a dream job like you got to know, we love coming in here no matter what's going on in our lives.

And, you know, Stewart has been gritting out some stuff around here, no matter what's going on in our lives. We love being here. We love this thing. We love our little dysfunctional family that gets to entertain you. We love Yelinek, Greg Cody and yelling at each other. And we love like this is a group of people who love each other. These people have just entrusted me with all of their futures and not not blindly, but but in a way is super uncommon.

OK, super uncommon for everybody to be like, yep, we go, let's go. Where are we going? Where are we going? And you guys see that somehow you feel it. And and I'm telling you, it makes us feel stronger because Stuart has been gritting through some stuff here. We're fool around with the camera stuff and drinking on air. But the freedom that I really wanted and still got is felt this for me, because I know this about my partner like this has been one of the coolest things over the last 18 months.

Like we forgot the things that we say is and everything else. He's, you know, every one of them. He's he's a hustler. OK, but Stuart's rode with me on this like God knows what was on my back. And Stu got hurt for me. And Stuart didn't ask any questions either. He jumped the same way that Mike and Chris and Roy and Billy and everyone around here jumped, you know, and Amien jumped like they just jumped with me.

I mean, I sit here with you every day, so it was hard not to feel what it is that you were feeling. We were all feeling it. And we say that respectfully because we truly did love our time at ESPN. But a three hour show became a two hour show. And, you know, there were certain things that Dan just wanted to talk about and what we love and Dan's right. I'm going through some stuff right now.

And many for many listeners, the greatest compliment that me and Dan get in this show gets is you pulled me through a bad time. And just seeing these guys, seeing your faces, being with the guys today is helping me through a difficult time in my life. So I understand where you're coming from and it's why it means so much to us. But I felt it from Dan and and because I was feeling it myself for the first time, which was odd because I could have write quarterbacks for the rest of my life, at least I thought.

And so I'm happy for you. I'm happy that that we've arrived where we arrived also. I had no other choice.

So, I mean, there was that it was important for me symbolically for us to be able to talk to you directly during this weird time to have it be super intimate. And while I know that many of you have complained and I'm going to do Mike, when are we going to do that redit talk? Because many of the complaints are from Reddit. And I've said many different times how much I value this community because I do. And I know that you guys often hate me and and you get bothered by me and I get it.

But I am hugely, hugely grateful for sort of the sprawling environment of passion, of discerning passion that comes with its criticisms and comes with its polarizations. But the fan clubs and the people who support the show, we started with a song, the listeners that are motivated by what we're doing to sing, to create the listeners who love doing, you know, a podcast where they just talk to people in our world and, you know, flatter us all.

McGill any of us, because we all just think where these goofy characters that are a family and we don't totally understand why you love us this way. Right. Because it hasn't that's not something you find a lot in any kind of entertainment. Never mind sports radio, the fact that you guys seem to understand what we're doing, why we're doing it, and you buie us. And you're tired, though, that this show has been, you know, all over the place with this new freedom.

And we're overwhelmed, all of us, both in positive emotional ways. And we're just doing too much like it's not a joke when I tell you that the sales department right now, it's not a joke when we tell you that people are doing this, you know, on their severances, hoping, you know, hoping that in a month I can get them and we can get to this place where we don't have to worry about that stuff and that our sales department kicks ass.

And we have now got because I really don't think this this part's important. I want to share this with the audience because there's so much mudhole here that sometimes people don't actually see what's going on. But I want to explain this part to our audience because it's deep inside. It's important, but it's getting missed by all of the sports media reporters in this country who like to do the gossip stuff and certainly help diminish us over the last year at ESPN because the stuff was being printed that wasn't coming from us and.

And I think the sports media reporters are missing something important here. We got out clean with our feeds so we can talk to you directly now with no non compete.

It was a hell of a scoop by a lot of reporters.

We told everybody this and nobody picked up on. Nobody picked up on what it means. Those who got we didn't know the importance of. Well, what it means is this and this is the part that they're all missing, that I'm like, I wonder when they're going to notice what just happened here.

There's a guy who sits with us every Tuesday. Could have had this story. Well, this it. No, that's right. Well, Cody, I'm going to make fun of you about this, because this is the story you missed, OK? And Greg Cody couldn't be bothered and for good reason. He's a man who was on his fortieth anniversary. But he says for a bigger story for for a name. I don't know what that story would have been.

Dan Le Batard. What? I don't even know what the story would have been. Teams with who would have been a bigger and better story than the one that John Skipper is now the CEO of this company. You're asking me directly. I'm asking you directly. Yes. What would the story have been? Hey, we are you know, whatever we're what part of asking you a question when we're doing a radio show? Did you not understand? Well, it was a big story.

You forming a company, a content company. And it was is a big story. But for me and I may be wrong, I think I speak for most listeners right now. For me, the bigger story is what's next? What's the next step? Where does this pirate ship dock?

OK, you mentioned but you've mentioned that. But this is why you and others are missing what the big story is here. And I you know, I hope they keep missing it because I'm in no hurry for anyone to notice it. But I do want the audience to notice what it is that's happened here because it's pretty cool and because you've supported this thing. There's something pretty cool happening and the pretty cool is this. OK, if you guys have noticed what has happened with Bill Simmons and Joe Rogan and Barstool and the new podcast fight that is going on throughout the globe where people are fighting for this new kind of content, what you will notice, I think, is that Joe Rogan is the top of his empire and Bill Simmons is the top of his empire.

And in barstool, it's Portnoy, a guy who is very good at seeing value in things, a guy who takes very large swings in business, a pioneer across 10 years of making more money for ESPN than anyone ever has. The most powerful man in sports has seen value here in a way that will make him split time with another entity that is a multibillion dollar sports rights company. So where do you see Portnoy and Rogan and Simmons? You now see that man working as CEO to build us and beyond Greg to build us and beyond where just a hood ornament on this thing big as we think we are.

Big as you think you are. We are just the beginning. We are this is the startup. This is what we are showing people, the underbelly and the inner workings of. We are presently starting up right in front of you. This what we're doing, pirate radio with our feeds. A guy, a CEO of our company, has seen the value of us owning our own stuff and being able to sell it to somebody. That's a part of the story.

But the bigger part of the story is that this is about to be a legitimate company. That we right now we're talking directly to the audience on a pirate ship that is the startup that is gathering the occasional barnacle here in real time of here's a WINNINGHAM, here's an email. Hassin and Greg Cody wants to sit it out. Greg Cody doesn't want to report on that part of it. It isn't true.

It isn't true. How about after the show you and I sit down for a long interview.

Oh, no, no, no, no. I'm done with that. I am not available. No, no, I'm not available to you anymore. OK, so you're saying that that I missed the story, but now you don't want to give it?

I'm not going. Oh, I hope nobody writes it. I hope I hope it goes months and months with nobody writing it.

But but the reason those feeds are important, I'm not certain if we explain that is because it allows us to keep to distribute the show the way we always have, but also allows us to keep all the reviews and the subscriptions that we had. And so that's why the feeds were were you don't have to start at zero. I, I honestly think us now other places have kept their feeds. Other high profile personalities have had to start from zero. This is all reportedly, by the way.

Yeah, well, we kept our feeds and that's massive because already you have an audience there where you don't have to build that up, which is part of building out a company. And I don't disagree with Greg's contention that the big story, the massive stories where you guys end up landing. But that's not to say every other story that's associated with the climb isn't a big story. That would get you plenty of clicks. I'm looking at Sports Business Journal right now.

The most popular story is the announcement of the company name Skipper in Leotards Company Venture. That's a. Number one trending story on Sports Business Journal right now that that dropped today, so there's a lot of opportunities for clicks along the way for you, Greg, if you if you want to be on that beat.

No, I don't. That's it, though. That's what I'm saying. That was my last straw. If you've been watching everything that's been happening around here, that's the last straw, because I'm no longer in the business of just having you get your greatest clicks based on either betraying us or writing about us. We're going to have to give these stories to other reporters. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry when the story start breaking because they're going to be announcement here over the next six weeks, eight weeks, 10 weeks, they're going to be announcements about what it is that we're doing. People want to know what we're doing right now because nobody's done this to us. Nobody's just sitting out here floating at sea waiting for a CEO to come rescue them.

No, you should give it to the reporter who's making such a big deal about the company name, because that guy deserves it. That person deserves it because that's not huge news. But to them, it is very big news. Loyalty, they deserve it. Gregg does not he's not interested in the small stuff. He only wants the big news of where we're landing. I mean.

Well, I know that, by the way, where we're live, I don't know that right now. I mean, I know what I'm saying. When you do know, am I going to be the last to know or how is that going to work? Well, I just don't give anything to Andrew Marsia. That guy is serious. I'm going to start reporting on Martians life so he could see how it feels like that to explain to your parents why you're no longer going to be at ESPN before you have the chance to explain it to your parents, why you're no longer going to be at ESPN.

I'm going to start reporting on. Hold on.

That guy knows more about my life than I could. Hold on a second. I want to do this. I do want to go down the path of scorching the earth on Martian. Dude, how about this story? Marchmont this one's a pretty interesting story that we've got here, not the name of the company, but there's a story right under your nose is the sports media guy who writes about the media and seems to get almost all his information from not us.

Wherever it is, it's coming. Just it's not us.

There's two guys in the sports media industry that definitely get their news from, not us.

Why don't you do some of your own reporting, Marshawn?

Trying to get some reporting, try to get some details from us, Marshawn. See how that one goes for you.

It's Marshawn. Whatever.

I love a good old fashioned fight with a newspaper media guy. It reminds me of the days of like Rudy Maskey. Remember? Kimmel told us pretty much. No, that's right. Kimmel Jimmy Kimmel has had some success, told us that part of the reason that, you know, it was he's running into the cathedral and he's doing comedy jazz hands. And all of the executives are worried about upsetting USA Today's Rudy Maskey because he might write in USA Today ten bad inches about you.

I don't want to pick any fights with any media people considering how the most recent story got aggregated one place write something that seems to be fairly obvious given messaging, and then it blows up on every other blog because one person wrote about it because not everyone's listening to our podcast, although if you look at the rankings, you'd be hard to believe that darn well, no.

This is the thing about the rankings, though, and this is the great underbelly that we were able to work in for a while, even at ESPN, under the noses where we were doing stuff just digitally that wasn't being heard by anybody unless we did something that a sports media reporter heard on the digital portion and then made a headline out of it. But that's where we it wasn't just under ESPN's nose. We were doing it. We were doing it under all these sports reporters know all of them, like we were telling all sorts of secrets in the shadows that if they'd been paying attention and actually reporting and getting the news from somebody other than not us, like fed to them the way that we tried to feed Cody the other day when the story was breaking.

But Cody is not Marshawn. Why? Because he can't be bothered. And he gave the story to Barry Jackson. Barry Jackson beat this guy, this guy, what's his name, the business journal guy. He's stealing all of your clicks gouty. I think it's a John Olerud or something like that. What is what is John Olerud reporting?

John Olerud of the sports man. John Howard has hit hard times after, you know, a great decade and a half long baseball career as a wonderful left handed hitter. He is now right, wearing a helmet, still wearing a helmet.

I'm not sure on the pronunciation, but orand OK, what's being reported?

Let's just read this. I want to see the heartbreak on Cody's face. This is what it feels like to get beaten on a story on here you are looking for clicks and now John or and who you were a story on last week because he was on the on the scent and you declined it and you gave it to Barry Jackson. How many clicks did he get for that story that you didn't do, Cody?

I don't know. I never checked.

Check it out. I believe I believe they did check. I think the I you got there. Oh, because you got the clicks.

That's right. You wait a minute. What do you mean you didn't check? Didn't you tell us that when Barry Jackson gets the clicks. The story you gave him, you get the clicks, Chris, what's the truth here? I feel but I feel like your dad's lying to us, Chris. Chris was lying here. Chris, what's the real story? Please, please give me the real story.

I mean, Dad, you can admit it, but apparently, since it was his scoop like that clicks, even though they were Barry Jacksons, the Herald knows where those clips really went. I think you called it quiet clicks that.

Yes, that's correct. But you know who I got even more clips from was my wife for honoring our fortieth anniversary and not saying, hey, eBay, baby, honey, I have to go to work.

I'll see you in a day and a half. You know, have fun on your fortieth anniversary. I'll catch you tomorrow. I don't think it's called the click.

Give me the story, Mike, please read the story for me, please, skipper.

And libertarian's adventure taking shape as Meadowlark Media. That's that's apparently the name. Look at that after a globetrotter. Look, I don't think you should say that Eminem.

I also don't think you should say that.

Is that all we have there is that.

But the rest of it requires a subscription. OK, very good. That's all you need to hear. I'll read you what I did. That's enough. Actually, I like that is the only part I like. That is some giant news. Some sentence is giant news. It's a real cliffhanger. It makes me want to subscribe to it because the content company formed by John Skipper and Dan Levitan is starting to take shape.

Do you think the sports media reporters will click on the subscription and read John Orin story? Oh, it's a free account.

I might do this. The duo will call the company Meadowlark Media after one of the few species of birds that can sing while it flies.

Is that the reason it's that strange?

The firm will hire journalists and other sports media types to tell stories. It will ampersand, dot, dot, dot, last check.

Two hundred and seventy five thousand clicks on that story.

Greg, Cody, Cody, how many clicks did you get that night?

Cody, I need to find out how Strogatz got that information, because there's supposed to be internal numbers that that readers can't get a little contact that the Herald still got.

It's just scooped you, Cody, Cody, you're losing it on your beat. You're getting your ass kicked.

Got luckily, I don't have another fortieth anniversary for about thirty nine and a half years. Let's go ahead and do a back in my day. Greg, are you ready to go? The old timer went out here. What are you pointing at. I totally made that number up.

Oh yes. Yeah I know.

And now it is time to take a trip down memory lane. Here's your guy, Greg Cody with Back in My Day. Comic books about me in my home office is a pristine set of nineteen sixty seven new standard encyclopedias from the time of Lyndon Baines Johnson.

In my game room is a vertically stacked collection of hundreds of vinyl records, the oldest a hand-me-down from my brother, the 1960 LP, 50 million Elvis fans can't be thrown in a closet or shoeboxes full of baseball cards spanning the 1960s. Yes, I'm a hoarder. I hoard. It isn't so much that I collect. I simply keep. But there is no randomness to this half hobby and habit of the heart. There is a method to the madness and maybe you can even relate.

See, the faster and farther your youth runs away from you never to return, the more and more you want or need to hold on to proof of it. Something tangible there to last stronger than fading memory encyclopedias.

More than a half century old albums unheard for decades. Cards of the time of Mantle and Mays in a treasure box. My dad made me a purple Duncan Imperial Yo Yo. I last used when I was in junior high school and the grand prize of my captured youth, my comic books, hundreds, all hermetically entombed in thick text of plastic.

I looked at them the other day for the first time in many, many years. I was 11 years old.

Again, I'd ride my bike with the banana seat to the local Rexall drugstore, a couple of quarters dancing in my pocket. I entered the place and beeline to the magical spin room at the front left of the store, twirling them slowly as the titles called me.

Marvel's The Amazing Spider-Man, DC Sgt. Rock, Gold Keys, Boris Karloff, Tales of Mystery.

Thank you.

Ancient Egyptians whose hieroglyphics are thought to be the first sequential art forerunner of the comics. Most comic books were 12 cents back when I devoured them like food. I'd usually buy one a week or try. If I bought two, I'd feel guilty from those pages grew my love of reading, my tendency to doodle and draw my imagination, all of it. What replaces that for kids today? What takes the place of the dying comic book video games? Anime.

Nowadays, kids love watching movies about comic book heroes without ever caring to know how those heroes were born. The time of World War Two was the golden age of comic books, but they boomed in the sixties. My time when top sellers would see one million or more sold of a single issue. Comics surged again in the early nineties, briefly fueled by X-Men. But it's been a steady and sad decline since. Top comics today are lucky to move twenty thousand copies of the latest issue.

Try to find a spin rack in a drugstore or convenience store. It's like trying to find The Invisible Man.

The last comic book I ever bought. My first purchase of one in decades was in January nineteen ninety three. I was a grown married man by then. Christopher was five and our youngest still a baby. My youth was long gone by then, but somehow that last comic I ever bought brought it home. It was the famous infamous DC Comics number seventy five well known to collectors. It was titled The Death of Superman. Here say a metaphor for a million kids grown up and old.

I'm Greg Cody. And that's all right. All right.

Just let's stop for just a second here, because I have to share with the audience what just happened here, because the only left, the only laughter that you heard from me throughout that which I hope Boyd, Greg Cody some as he slogged through that back in my day, I hope that my laughter gave him some support. But I was not laughing because of a word that he was saying, because there was not a funny word uttered anywhere in what it is that he just did.

What I was laughing at, Greg, is the alternate look of horror. Then rage on your son's face. Then what came in was a sweeping boredom. And then all of a sudden what appears in the chat from your son is they can't all be winners.

I Chris, I would simply laugh, but your dad needed any form of laughter. Well, here's the thing.

The Bulletin wasn't supposed to be funny.

If you're in the front of thinking that all back in my days are nothing but funny, then you haven't been paying attention.

I make no apology for that. Back in my day, it was very personal. I liked it. And sometimes that's enough. I'm with you, Greg.

I've never seen an Academy Award go to a. Comedy, you know what I mean? They want the best. Thank you. I appreciate that, Chris. Just take me through your range of emotions, because honest to God, the thing that was stuck out, you saw this, right? You saw the look on his face. Oh, of course I did a look of shame.

I mean, I tried to you know, me, I'm the teammate around here. I like to throw in a few little laughs, a fake laugh, even if I have to, just to you know, I couldn't find a spot there for it.

I was just like I was just bored. He was going for boring, though.

He says every once in a while you got to throw a boring one in there. Yes.

Billy actually found out that three comedies have won Best Picture, but it was in nineteen thirty four. Nineteen thirty eight in nineteen forty four.

So uh uh which was in Greg's prime. Yeah. Has a I was going to ask Caddyshack didn't win best best movie.

So now how's this for comedy. Greg Man Campbell is now a head coach again. I heard about that. All right, Mike, you got can we empty the man? Campbell, are you just learning this is still got stuck out is just learning that man Campbell is back in the game. What a glorious time. We've been celebrating former dolphins around here. Matt Moore, Jarvis Landry, Ryan Tannehill, Chad Haney. How about this one, Greg Cody?

Where does this fit in that you're the Dolphins historian, though not as great a dolphin historian as Andy Cohen. Where does this rank in terms of great dolphin era eras? The Man Campbell era where he came in with a giant chin, he gave us some good coach. We celebrated his toughness and then he was gone and left that in. Echoing laughter about eight games later.

Yeah, it was a glorious few months, wasn't it? I'm glad to see Dan Dan the man back. I didn't even know he was still in football, quite frankly. But the chant is back and it's a glorious thing. There it is.

Ladies and gentlemen, your football writer who, when you want laughs, gives you the MacAvoy, the dark and the serious. You're football writer did not know that the new head coach man Kamble.

Right. Did not know he was in the league anymore, aren't you? Oh, no clue. Aren't you the football expert? Aren't you the expert of the Dan Leadbitter Woods to Godspeed as well? How do you feel about the fact that this guy is now kicking your ass on this beat? We'll get to that man Kemba Library in a second. My is looking it up because we have our library too. That's something the sports reporters should probably be thinking about too.

Poor Matthew Stafford. Cody, defend yourself.

Defend myself what for not knowing that man Campbell was still in the league. You know, it's funny because for about twenty years you've been referring to me as as the Herald football writer and and I covered the Miami Dolphins full time in 1989 and 1990.

So it's been a while.

Are you not our football expert? You've consulted an imaginary bird across two decades for picks a meadow. What do I do? I do a big game.

Oh, my. I have a joke about that. But go ahead.

Let's hear your joke. You got beaten on the clicks. What's the joke? What? I just I just hope the new Meadowlark Company doesn't turn into a lemon, you know? I hope it. I hope it succeeds.

You have a good one. No, that's all I got.

I liked it. Thank you. You have the man Campbell file ready, Mike? Yeah, well, we're clearing it out, so there's a lot of clips. Oh, are there a lot of clips? This will be fun. Let's end let's end this hour with just a barrage of man Campbell to celebrate his arrival in Detroit. Yes, poor Stafford is the correct.

How you get this job.

I understand you're saying poor Matt Stafford, not poor Eric Bana. Wait a minute.

This is how he got this job. This this. He gives good coach impressed him in the press conference.

If all 11 guys are on the same page and you have the wrong call, you can still succeed if you have the right animals.

And we do the right animals don't like their animals. What else you got?

The sleeping giant is awake. He can't take a nap. There are no naps. OK, we got to keep him up and alive. There it is.

That's how did he get that job? A team that hasn't won a playoff game or has won one playoff game since like the 1950s. How did they get this guy in the ranks?

Jarvis is a football player and sometimes that gets lost or they're all football players. He's a football player.

And how do you ever lose his job? This is the way that I want it. And I'm going to talk the talk and walk the walk and you follow me. There's always the line. This is OK to do and this is dirty. But we're going to walk that line. I want us pulling the trigger. I don't want us playing conservative. I want us playing on our toes.

And we're going forward and we're going through you in the eyes of those guys. You look at Cam, we can ensue and Ryan and Pouncy, I mean, you just go round and round. You could see it in their eyes.

They were ready to go, oh, he's running out of gas there. He speaks. My language is pounding the podium. You could see it in their eyes. They were ready to go.

You find out who loves the game because that's what you're playing for. Three games to go. Who really loves the game and not going to jump sooner.

Exactly.

You remember how he would stand at the podium because he was he had such a presence on his hands like a superhero.

He would have his hands on his hips. He would lean on it a little bit, but he would have an open stance, a wide open stance to fit the frame because he was just so gigantic. Man Yeah. The podium would stand at him.

Exactly right. Mike brought up Eric, the enemy. No one's going to hire that guy.

Tony Dungy tweeted out four of the coordinators in conference championship weekend are black, four of them. And then we're doing the thing where someone stands next to Sean McVay, even when Sean McVay isn't over a good team and they get the job and Dan Campbell gets the job. Well, he stood next to Sean Payton, Arthur Smith, Arthur Smart there.

Smith, I don't understand it.

Well, isn't that why Deshaun Watson wants out? Isn't it? Why? Like, I think it probably if you do want to talk about the cultural unrest in this country through the prism of sports, I have not read Deshaun Watson quotes on this. All I've seen so far is sourcing on this. But Deshaun Watson, I think I have this right, Mike worked on is one of the most amazing athletes I have ever covered and impossibly sweet and gentle man, one of the best athletes ever to come out of FSU, impossibly small to have been good in that league.

And he did a lot of charitable stuff where he would buy homes for single moms after in the most gruesome way possible, learning that his single mom, a police officer, was murdered in his home. And I'm pretty sure that work done bought a home like that for Deshaun Watson that worked on passed down sort of the lineage of athletic greatness and kindness to Deshaun Watson, who just went through this particular summer as the star of that football team and didn't complain reportedly about DeAndre Hopkins being let go, but did want to have his fingerprints where some of the power resides in the organization, as he's seen not through just this summer, but through basketball.

The fact that he has his body has an enormous value, its salary capped. He has enormous power at his age. He wants the franchise to not treat him the way football treats all of its disposable players he wants in the room where the big decisions are making. He wants if he's got to work out there breaking his body and you're going to trade away good pieces. He wants to work with some people with whom he is aligned. Give me some of that power.

The answer's no. We're going to go search committee. We're going to ignore you on everything after Bill O'Brien botched it right and left and now he's saying, nope, I'm going to go the basketball route because after this particular summer, you're not going to deny a black man his rightful power in sports and that that search group, that search company they hired did not hire the they recommended a certain guy.

The Texans went with someone else. They didn't even listen to the search company that they hired. Deshaun Watson deserves that because he is in an organization that has been completely mismanaged. And he. Wants to make sure it will no longer be mismanaged by having some sort of voice within that organization. I'm not certain he would ask for that anywhere else. But here he has to and he deserves it because that organization is a joke.

A lot of this is falling on Roger Goodell. Jason Reed at The Undefeated actually did a really interesting story. The NFL has never been blacker. There are minorities in positions that they hadn't been in before. Look at the coordinators. Roger Goodell has implemented the seven point mobility plan. He's working hard with the Fritz Pollard alliance image. Troy Vincent have put in a lot of work, but ultimately the owners are just not hiring the minority candidates. A big victory this offseason so far as the first Muslim head coach ever being hired by the New York Jets.

It just comes down to the owners are hiring who they are comfortable with. And all this hard work that's being done by the commissioner's office is all for not at least when it comes to head coaches.

But I want everyone to understand in the context of the times as you listen to us specifically in this free week on radio, as the White House needs to get fumigated this week. And I don't care what your politics are, I really don't. It doesn't matter. We don't have to fight about whatever who's lying or why. Facts aren't facts. There is no disputing that. Basically, what you saw horrifying happened in that building incited by a madman at the end of his tenure and his rope lost.

Even his most ardent supporters are still a few of the fringes that still want the power in the future. But at that moment, his approval rating was lost with everybody, America understanding that Nixon still had twenty five percent backing when it was clear he was already guilty of being a criminal. The country has turned on this president and he is being fumigated out of office and might end up in jail. Don't know how he's going to don't know what awful things he's going to do with these pardons over the next 24 hours as his very last act of just totally disrespecting that office and this country and democracy in self-interest.

But he has lost the country, even though there are these fringes fighting for him because they'll always be fringes. The idea that in the middle of this times you got that sports would come to us with the issue when it's not really what I ever wanted to be talking about there. You know, I got tired of Rooney Rule talk ten years ago, but what just happened in the streets in this country wasn't about needing sports to talk about race. Race pored over every border in this country to lead to a fistfight that made this election the scariest of our lifetimes, where we're all worried that what would if that's what it looks like toward the end when he loses, what would the next four years have looked like when he just kept doubling down on the crime and the grift and the shame and for four more years of embarrassing us, of leading us poorly, you know, unequivocally and objectively during a pandemic where we're still a sick country and we're afflicted by two viruses.

And what you see going at the Capitol is a bunch of idiots who have reasons to wear masks, multiple to reason and choose neither, and are now getting arrested for crimes because you want to be in disguise and don't want to get caught when you're attacking freedom. And because there's a pandemic, two reasons to disguise their faces. And as they attack freedom, choose neither with bloated arrogance, leading oafs against our country in an insurgency and an insurrection in in twenty, twenty one in this country that so many on this show as exiles.

We're just I mean, I hope all of you were horrified, but the idea that democracy and freedom can be attacked in this country is something that this show, no matter how cynical you think I am, no matter how much I've talked about race, too much for your liking over the last 20 years. That was appalling and scary in ways that have no precedent for me. My parents, communist, you know, the communist fear that they experienced, the borrowed pain I have because they ran through the streets, chased with chains, because I never knew what that looked like.

That was here in the middle of our country. And it was horrifying to me beyond words. I know many of you were horrified and certainly it took that for the leadership in this country to finally get the Republicans finally started leading on this front. But I got to I got to think, Mike, that you, as a fellow exile has also viewed that through the prism of some of where it is that I've seen some of that stuff. I mean, I'm with you.

Enemy should be a head coach somewhere.