Speaker 1: The following takes place between six pm and seven pm.
Speaker 2: You want answers. I think I'm entitled. You what answer
Speaker 2: the truth? You can't handle the truth?
Speaker 3: Truth?
Speaker 4: Truth.
Speaker 5: Hi, Hello, and welcome in Sports Talk on a Friday night,
Speaker 5: seven hundred wl W.
Speaker 6: My name is Austin Elmore.
Speaker 5: Happy, honored to be with you, filling in for one
Speaker 5: Lance McAllister on a beautiful Friday night in the Tri
Speaker 5: state area. Gonna be a perfect night for high school football.
Speaker 5: Big one at the pit tonight between Mohler and Elder,
Speaker 5: and we'll keep you updated with anything we can find
Speaker 5: out about high school sports. We're gonna talk Reds, We're
Speaker 5: gonna talk Bengals. Shocker, I know. On Sports Talk an
Speaker 5: hour from right now. Joe Daneman from Fox nineteen. He
Speaker 5: was in Los Angeles covering the Reds trip to the
Speaker 5: wild Card round to take on the Dodgers. We'll get
Speaker 5: his perspective from somebody who was there and someone who
Speaker 5: was in the clubhouse after their season came to an
Speaker 5: end and a sense of accomplishment is what he got.
Speaker 5: I want to talk to him about that. We'll do
Speaker 5: that at seven o'clock. We'll also talk to Joe about
Speaker 5: the Bengals, who get set to host the three to
Speaker 5: one Detroit Lions at pay Corps Stadium on Sunday afternoon,
Speaker 5: a four to twenty five pm kickoff. You'll hear it
Speaker 5: right here on the Home of the Best Bengals coverage.
Speaker 5: The Bearcats are in action tomorrow nip at noon against
Speaker 5: number fourteen ranth iow number fourteenth ranked Iowa State. The
Speaker 5: Bearcats actually favorites in this game due to a bunch
Speaker 5: of injuries for Iowa State. And earlier this week on
Speaker 5: my other show, since He three point sixty that I
Speaker 5: co host with Tony Pike, Tony talked to UC quarterback
Speaker 5: Brendan So and the interview was fantastic. It was really
Speaker 5: really good. So I'm going to bring back a good
Speaker 5: chunk of that to play for you in the second
Speaker 5: hour as well. And then I want to do what
Speaker 5: Lance normally does on Friday nights, which is get to
Speaker 5: an off the beaten path topic, because one week from
Speaker 5: right now, I will be in Green Bay, Wisconsin. I'm
Speaker 5: going up to lambeau Field to watch the Bengals play
Speaker 5: the Packers. Lambeau Field is towards the top, if not
Speaker 5: the very top of my sports bucket list, and so
Speaker 5: I want to get into that topic with you sports
Speaker 5: bucket list? What is on your list? What have you
Speaker 5: crossed off, what are you about to cross off? What
Speaker 5: have you added recently? Because I'm fired up to go
Speaker 5: to lambeau Field, and if you've been to lambeau Field,
Speaker 5: I would love any recommendations you might have for my
Speaker 5: trip coming up next week. That is in our number three,
Speaker 5: but in hour number one we start with the Reds.
Speaker 5: I think it's fair to say that the twenty twenty
Speaker 5: five Red season was a failure. I think it's fair
Speaker 5: to say that. I think it's also fair to say
Speaker 5: that it was a success.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 5: I have a hard time saying that because I don't
Speaker 5: believe it was a success, but I can see the
Speaker 5: path one would take to get to that conclusion. I
Speaker 5: also think it's fair to say, more than anything, that
Speaker 5: it was a failure, a failure because a couple of
Speaker 5: years ago, when this young corps of players was brought
Speaker 5: to the big leagues, they got a bunch of experience,
Speaker 5: they were in a tight playoff race. They were in
Speaker 5: a race for the most part in twenty twenty four
Speaker 5: before things fell apart in the second half. They have
Speaker 5: more than enough big league experience. And then they went
Speaker 5: out and signed a manager and Terry Francona, who has
Speaker 5: plenty of pelts on the wall and plenty of experience,
Speaker 5: and a guy who came out of retirement and is
Speaker 5: being paid a lot of money to do so to
Speaker 5: get this team to the next level. And instead they
Speaker 5: had a terrible offensive season. They won just eighty three games,
Speaker 5: and quite frankly, I thought they were embarrassed against the Dodgers,
Speaker 5: because that could have been a series that you, at
Speaker 5: the bare minimum, pushed the Dodgers to three games, But
Speaker 5: because Hunter Green didn't show up and apparently was tipping
Speaker 5: his pitches, and because of some questionable decisions by that manager,
Speaker 5: the season, to me, has a bad taste in my mouth.
Speaker 5: It left a bad taste in my mouth because I
Speaker 5: firmly believe that the standard should be to compete for championships,
Speaker 5: and this team really wasn't close, and you could tell
Speaker 5: by the way that Los Angeles performed against them. And
Speaker 5: I understand that those two teams are not even remotely
Speaker 5: close to one another when it comes to talent and
Speaker 5: payroll and everything in between. I understand, but I would
Speaker 5: like to see a Reds team that's more competitive than
Speaker 5: the one we saw against the Dodgers. And there is
Speaker 5: no excuse for the awful season that Matt McClean had,
Speaker 5: No excuse for the regression there, there's no excuse for
Speaker 5: another awful defensive season from Elie de la Cruz. To me,
Speaker 5: there's no excuse for the power outage that De la
Speaker 5: Cruz experienced, only to try to get it back and
Speaker 5: bring back that leg kick to his swing at the
Speaker 5: very end of the year. There's no excuse for continuing
Speaker 5: to ask guys to play injured. There's no excuse for
Speaker 5: significant games that were played by Connor Joe and Garrett
Speaker 5: Hampson and Christian Incarnassi owned strand there's no excuse for
Speaker 5: him taking another step back in his development. This season
Speaker 5: could have and should have went a lot better for
Speaker 5: the Reds than it did. And I'm bothered by the
Speaker 5: idea that I heard callers on this show earlier this
Speaker 5: week that seem to be happy with the idea that, hey,
Speaker 5: we made the playoffs. That's cool. It's a successful season
Speaker 5: in the eyes of many, because hey, we made the playoffs.
Speaker 5: Shouldn't the bar be higher than that? Shouldn't the standard
Speaker 5: be bigger than that, Shouldn't it be more than just, Hey,
Speaker 5: we made the playoffs. It's been thirty one years, almost
Speaker 5: thirty one years since they've advanced in the postseason. That's
Speaker 5: the longest drought in North American professional sports for a
Speaker 5: team not to advance in the postseason. The Chicago Cubs
Speaker 5: have won the World Series in the last ten years.
Speaker 5: Cleveland Browns have won a playoff game in the last
Speaker 5: five years. The Reds haven't advanced in the postseason. And
Speaker 5: we're often told about the rich history of this franchise
Speaker 5: and the great players, and the great moments and the
Speaker 5: great teams, and yet the Reds don't live up to that.
Speaker 5: And while I am happy that they made the postseason,
Speaker 5: I'm also not naive to think that they earned their
Speaker 5: way in Eighty three wins in most years is not
Speaker 5: going to get you in Over their last sixty five games,
Speaker 5: Cincinnati was thirty three and thirty two. In that same stretch,
Speaker 5: the Mets were playing to a ninety six lost pace,
Speaker 5: and the Reds were still nearly beaten out by the
Speaker 5: Arizona Diamondbacks who sold at the trade deadline, and the
Speaker 5: San Francisco Giants who sold at the trade deadline, and
Speaker 5: when it came down to it, the Reds couldn't beat
Speaker 5: the Pittsburgh Pirates in a series, and if not for
Speaker 5: an Oel v Marte spectacular catch, likely or possibly could
Speaker 5: have been swept by Pittsburgh with the season on the line.
Speaker 5: So forgive me for not feeling like this season is
Speaker 5: a success or like I'm happy with the fact that
Speaker 5: they just made the playoffs. Now let's go from there. No,
Speaker 5: this is year three of this young core, and they
Speaker 5: have two playoff games in which they gave up eighteen
Speaker 5: runs in sixteen innings. And oh, by the way, Andrew Abbott, Nicklodolo,
Speaker 5: Chase Burns an Emilio Pagan combined to throw twenty seven
Speaker 5: pitches in those eighteen innings or sixteen innings. Everybody else
Speaker 5: gave up eighteen runs, including the guy who's supposed to
Speaker 5: be your ace in Hunter Green. The idea that you
Speaker 5: should just be happy that they got there, I don't.
Speaker 5: That doesn't sit right with me, And I don't think
Speaker 5: that's a ship that should sit right with you either.
Speaker 5: And I think now this off season is the time
Speaker 5: to really turn up the heat because you know what
Speaker 5: I've already heard this offseason. I heard it several times today,
Speaker 5: is Oh, that's good enough for the Reds. That's good
Speaker 5: enough for them, That's just good enough. Just make the
Speaker 5: playoffs and get a bunch of butts in the seats,
Speaker 5: and uh, we'll be good from now on. You know,
Speaker 5: that's good enough for the Castellini family. Just enough, just
Speaker 5: be competitive. If you're the Reds, is that what you
Speaker 5: want people saying about you? That you're good with a
Speaker 5: playoff appearance in an early exit, that you're happy with
Speaker 5: eighty three wins. Shouldn't the Reds want to change that
Speaker 5: narrative too? I'm sure the players do, I'm sure the
Speaker 5: manager does. Shouldn't the rest of the organization want to
Speaker 5: feel that way too? Reaction five one three, seven, nine,
Speaker 5: seven thousand. Phone lines are open. Is this Red season
Speaker 5: really a success? We'll take a break. This is sports
Speaker 5: Talk on seven hundred WLW. Sports Talk seven hundred wl W,
Speaker 5: Austin Elmore with you talking Red's here in the first
Speaker 5: half hour and maybe the whole hour, we'll see five one, three, seven,
Speaker 5: four nine, seven thousand is the phone number. Let's go
Speaker 5: to Miamisburg and talk to Barry. Hello, Barry, what's up?
Speaker 8: Hey?
Speaker 9: How's it gone?
Speaker 10: Star?
Speaker 6: I'm good man? What's on your mind?
Speaker 10: I'm quietly optimistic, and I'll explain why. Okay, how many
Speaker 10: miserable one run games did we lose this year?
Speaker 6: Quite a bit, very a lot.
Speaker 11: All right, Let's say.
Speaker 10: We have marginal improvement in a couple of different areas,
Speaker 10: not big improvement, marginal improvement, which is realistic.
Speaker 7: Okay, Sure we turn ten.
Speaker 10: Of those miserable one to one losses one run ball
Speaker 10: games into a one run win. Maybe it's two to one.
Speaker 10: I don't know, maybe it's one nothing in our favor.
Speaker 10: It doesn't matter. If you move ten of those miserable
Speaker 10: losses into the win column, we become ninety win team
Speaker 10: and respectable in other ways. Also, you know, it's doable
Speaker 10: with what we have. The baseball gods just have.
Speaker 11: To smile on us.
Speaker 6: Well, how is it doable with what they have?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 5: Where do you feel like that improvement is going to
Speaker 5: come from?
Speaker 10: I'm hoping we don't have extended bad luck with batting.
Speaker 10: And let's say that something that's just beyond your control.
Speaker 10: You know, as a batter, you're not having a good
Speaker 10: day hopefully we don't have as long extended periods of that,
Speaker 10: and hopefully, you know, a couple other things fallow our
Speaker 10: way that our fifty to fifty and didn't fall our way.
Speaker 5: So you're basically your strategy is hope they get luckier.
Speaker 10: Marginal improvement, so that you know, instead of walking off
Speaker 10: the field with our heads in the dust, we win
Speaker 10: a few of those borderline games.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, I hear you, Barry, and I think that's
Speaker 5: I certainly think it's within the realm of possibility, and
Speaker 5: thank you for the phone call. I mean, I think
Speaker 5: it's in within the realm of possibility. I went into
Speaker 5: this year thinking Matt McClain and him coming back to
Speaker 5: the lineup would have a huge impact and that would
Speaker 5: marginally improve them in every category. He had the worst
Speaker 5: offensive season, one of the worst in Red's history. Keep
Speaker 5: Bryan Hayes was good for a couple of weeks, really
Speaker 5: good defender, nothing offensively. Where is it going to improve
Speaker 5: in the margin? That's what I want to know. What
Speaker 5: about Jason and Williamstown what's up Jason?
Speaker 12: Hey?
Speaker 13: How are you doing?
Speaker 6: Good man?
Speaker 13: What's on a so real quick to the previous call
Speaker 13: it real fast that's fine and dandy, but the problem
Speaker 13: is they still have to win a playoff game, and
Speaker 13: the last time I checked, we lost without what like
Speaker 13: five and like whatever, So even that one run still
Speaker 13: doesn't mean anything. Anyways, back to what I was gonna say,
Speaker 13: I'm forty now. I was born eighty five. I kind
Speaker 13: of remember the Nasty Boys nineteen ninety remember, you know,
Speaker 13: the ninety five season, kind oft before the players strike
Speaker 13: all that stuff went down. That team was good. But
Speaker 13: ever since then, really since I was about ten years old,
Speaker 13: I've not been excited about any Red team, even the
Speaker 13: Dusty Baker twelve twenty thirteen, you know that time for
Speaker 13: ins in twenty ten twenty. I just didn't see it
Speaker 13: back then. I mean, yeah, they were great players.
Speaker 6: We had with Bato and all.
Speaker 13: Them back then, but the problem was I just didn't
Speaker 13: see them being a World Series team.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 13: The thing is I Castelini family super nice. I'm torn
Speaker 13: saying this because I had some issues medically and they
Speaker 13: went above and beyond for my family. The Castelini family did.
Speaker 13: They were super nice people, but when it comes to baseball,
Speaker 13: they do need to sell the team that I'm sorry.
Speaker 13: I'm done with every year. I feel like we are
Speaker 13: having this conversation on this radio station every single year.
Speaker 13: You can say the same thing about the Bengals too,
Speaker 13: But I mean, it's just so bad, it's so old.
Speaker 13: It's so like I'm gonna be dead and we're still
Speaker 13: gonna be probably about like a hundred the year there's
Speaker 13: gonna be some DJ or you know, some radio hosts
Speaker 13: fifty years from now.
Speaker 5: Well what about next season, guys? Yeah, Jason, thank you,
Speaker 5: thank you for the phone call. I appreciate it it
Speaker 5: and I certainly empathize with that. I understand a lot
Speaker 5: of people feel that way. I believe the Castelin needs
Speaker 5: to be good people. I believe that they want to win.
Speaker 5: I really do. And I just don't know if the
Speaker 5: plan right now is viable and the people in charge
Speaker 5: of executing the plan right now are capable. But I
Speaker 5: do think there's some things to build on now. It
Speaker 5: falls into the organization's hands to actually build on that.
Speaker 5: Let's talk about that, because if they're not going to
Speaker 5: play the same game as the Dodgers financially, there are
Speaker 5: other aspects of the organization that they have to get
Speaker 5: buttoned up. Let's talk about that. Will continue your phone
Speaker 5: calls next Sports Talk seven hundred WLW moment from the
Speaker 5: NL Wild Cards series that is seared.
Speaker 6: Into my memory.
Speaker 5: It was right after Hunter Green got shelled and gave
Speaker 5: up five earned runs to the Dodgers, and Terry Francona
Speaker 5: goes out to the mound and calls on the bullpen,
Speaker 5: calls in Connor Phillips out of the bullpen to pitch,
Speaker 5: and as they're going to a break, they're showing on
Speaker 5: television a Dodger's coach standing in front of the dugout
Speaker 5: with Taoscar Hernandez, who was due up, and he's on
Speaker 5: an iPad and he's showing him something on the iPad,
Speaker 5: and Hernandez looks up from the iPad, looks at the coach,
Speaker 5: smiles at him, sticks his tongue out, and proceeds to
Speaker 5: walk towards home plate. He launched one to write center
Speaker 5: for a home run right after that. Come to find
Speaker 5: out a day later, Hunter Green and others were tipping
Speaker 5: their pitches. And I couldn't help but wonder, how is
Speaker 5: this possible? How is it possible that Hunter Green in
Speaker 5: the playoffs is tipping his pitches? How are the other
Speaker 5: players tipping their pitches, And it made me wonder, why
Speaker 5: isn't there self scouting, Why isn't there something within the
Speaker 5: Reds organization to prevent this, especially going into the playoffs.
Speaker 5: And also it made me wonder, why don't the Reds
Speaker 5: ever seem to take advantage of pitchers tipping their pitches.
Speaker 5: You know, Mike Napoli is on the Red staff and
Speaker 5: one of the big reasons he's here is because of
Speaker 5: his ability to pick up on those tells. Well, rarely
Speaker 5: has the Reds offensive explosion happened to where we find
Speaker 5: out a team was tipping their pitches. And maybe we're
Speaker 5: not going to find out about every single time that
Speaker 5: it's happening. But it made me think, if you're the
Speaker 5: Reds and if you choose not to spend as much
Speaker 5: money as you could to be competitive, and you choose
Speaker 5: to get guys off the bargain bend and the scrap heap,
Speaker 5: like Austin Hayes for example, if that's the way you
Speaker 5: choose to do business, and it is my belief that
Speaker 5: that is the way the Reds choose to do business.
Speaker 5: They could spend more, they could be more aggressive, but
Speaker 5: they choose not to. I'm not saying they can spend
Speaker 5: at the level of the Dodgers or the Mets and
Speaker 5: teams like, that's not what I'm saying, but I'm saying
Speaker 5: they could do more, but they choose not to. If
Speaker 5: you're going to live a life like that, if that's
Speaker 5: the way you're going to approach your team, wouldn't you
Speaker 5: think that you got to have the other stuff buttoned
Speaker 5: up your self?
Speaker 6: Scouting has to be nails.
Speaker 5: Your minor league system, your minor league development, your hitting philosophy,
Speaker 5: your video system, your iPads, your data, your tracking, everything
Speaker 5: else needs to be buttoned up. I would think, isn't
Speaker 5: that part of it? Wouldn't you think so? I would
Speaker 5: think so. And that's the thing, like, if you're going
Speaker 5: to sorry, someone just came into my studio trying to vacuum.
Speaker 5: I don't need it vacuumed. I just lost my trade
Speaker 5: of thought there. But if you're not going to spend
Speaker 5: as much money as everyone else, you've got to have
Speaker 5: all the other little things buttoned up. Let's look at
Speaker 5: the Milwaukee Brewers for example. You know, the Brewers have
Speaker 5: a lower payroll than the Reds. They won ninety seven games,
Speaker 5: set a franchise record won the division over the Reds
Speaker 5: by fourteen games. They scored ninety more Reds than ninety
Speaker 5: more runs than Cincinnati. They gave up eighty or fifty
Speaker 5: fewer runs than the Reds. Milwaukee did Milwaukee. How many
Speaker 5: guys can you actually name on Milwaukee? Most people can't
Speaker 5: name that many. But their operation is so buttoned up
Speaker 5: in the way that they acquire players, in the way
Speaker 5: that they developed players, in their advanced scouting, and their
Speaker 5: self outing all of it. Hell, you want another stat.
Speaker 5: You know how bad the Reds offense was this year? Well,
Speaker 5: the Reds offense had a seven point two percent barrel percentage.
Speaker 5: That's how many times you're hitting the ball on the barrel.
Speaker 5: Seven point two percent. That was twenty eighth in Major
Speaker 5: League Baseball. You know who was twenty ninth the Milwaukee
Speaker 5: Brewers at six point six percent, and yet they still
Speaker 5: scored ninety more runs than the Reds and won fourteen
Speaker 5: more games. That tells me that all the other parts
Speaker 5: of their operation are buttoned up. So if you choose
Speaker 5: to play ball that way, which is not spending to
Speaker 5: the maximum, not getting the biggest talent, not getting the
Speaker 5: biggest free agent, not doing all those other things. You've
Speaker 5: got to be able to button up the rest of
Speaker 5: your organization so that you can be more competitive. The
Speaker 5: Reds also stopped running the basis stealing bases this year.
Speaker 5: That was their identity last year and they basically stopped
Speaker 5: doing it this year. Is that a Terry francona thing?
Speaker 5: And if so, why are you going away from one
Speaker 5: of your strengths. That didn't make sense to me? And
Speaker 5: I hope that going into this offseason the Reds say, Okay,
Speaker 5: this is how we're choosing to do our business. This
Speaker 5: is how we're trying to build. This is our plan.
Speaker 5: Where can we clean it up a little bit so
Speaker 5: that we have an advantage so that we can be
Speaker 5: more like Milwaukee. The red should be doing everything in
Speaker 5: their power to be like the Milwaukee Brewers. Five one, three, seven, four, nine,
Speaker 5: seven thousand. Let's go out to people's and talk to Tony.
Speaker 5: What's up, Tony?
Speaker 4: Hey?
Speaker 6: I was going good?
Speaker 14: So I feel like there were successes.
Speaker 15: There were failures obviously.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 16: I think our biggest thing is going to be consistent.
Speaker 16: Staying consistent. Every player I feel like on the team
Speaker 16: at some point that the season showed, you know, their
Speaker 16: ability to be a star.
Speaker 7: Everybody, everybody had a highlight.
Speaker 16: And it's gonna be Perry's job this off season two
Speaker 16: work on that and get the get our players to
Speaker 16: be more consistent and be able to go out there
Speaker 16: on a nightly basis like the first caller. You know,
Speaker 16: we lost so many games by one point. You know,
Speaker 16: look look at what we only had, what was it one,
Speaker 16: one or two series that we actually got slept. You know,
Speaker 16: like how early into the season did every other team
Speaker 16: had been slept. So obviously we were doing some things right.
Speaker 16: You know, we did some stuff wrong. But you know
Speaker 16: it's it's gonna be his job to capitalize on go
Speaker 16: to go to the office this off season and say
Speaker 16: it's what I need. You know, hopefully the office is
Speaker 16: able to uh find him some missing pieces and and
Speaker 16: and get him some things that he needs.
Speaker 7: I have faith in Terry.
Speaker 16: I think he's got to see under his belt with
Speaker 16: the organization. Now he's done these players for a year,
Speaker 16: so you know, hopefully next year we can come back
Speaker 16: and he can't work with these players and get them to.
Speaker 6: Yeah you're good, Tony, and thank you for the phone call.
Speaker 6: And I hope that's the case.
Speaker 5: I hope that he can go to the front office
Speaker 5: and say, Okay, this is what we need, this is
Speaker 5: my vision. There were times this year I thought I
Speaker 5: was gonna love Terry Francona, and there were times where
Speaker 5: I felt like he had no feel for the game whatsoever.
Speaker 5: You know, with Francona specifically, he is what has made
Speaker 5: him great over the years is balancing the data and
Speaker 5: the analytics and his gut. He's also never managed a
Speaker 5: team with less talent than this team. In my opinion,
Speaker 5: there was a lot of Hall of famers, should be
Speaker 5: Hall of Famers, might someday be Hall of Famers on
Speaker 5: his teams in Boston and in Cleveland, just to name
Speaker 5: a few, Kurt Shilling, Pedro Martinez, David or t Manny Ramirez,
Speaker 5: Jason Veritek, Corey Klueber, Shane Bieber, Trevor Bauer, Jose Ramirez, Kipness,
Speaker 5: Jason Kidness was fantastic for a little while. Like there's
Speaker 5: been a lot more talent on those other teams, and
Speaker 5: so when he makes mistakes or when he goes off
Speaker 5: the gut or maybe it doesn't quite exactly work, it
Speaker 5: gets magnified. I was not blown away by Terry Francona
Speaker 5: this year, and I hope that they have a little
Speaker 5: bit more of an understanding of the players that they
Speaker 5: have or the players that they want to have, and
Speaker 5: how they can improve in the offseason.
Speaker 6: Let's go to Ryan, Ryan, what's up.
Speaker 17: Well, he made my point a few of my points
Speaker 17: that I was going to make.
Speaker 2: We got to spend more money.
Speaker 17: We need a backup for everybody we got that is
Speaker 17: going to replace everybody when someone goes down. We've got
Speaker 17: to have somebody that can step up until those shoes.
Speaker 17: I think they did go out and spend the money.
Speaker 7: And they got Terry.
Speaker 17: And now hopefully they're going to build a team around him.
Speaker 17: And I think as Reds fans, we need to come
Speaker 17: together and force the Castelinis and the ownership to either
Speaker 17: put their money where they just you know, it's like
Speaker 17: what happened with Joe Burrow to get the highest draft pick,
Speaker 17: the most wanted quarterback in the league, but you.
Speaker 7: Don't protect him.
Speaker 17: So we get Tito, you know, one of the greatest
Speaker 17: of all time, and we're not going to give him
Speaker 17: the club that he needs.
Speaker 7: To win championships.
Speaker 17: And so I think Tito was frustrated the season with
Speaker 17: the quality of the play of the team, which but
Speaker 17: at the same time he was able to get this
Speaker 17: team to gel at the right time. And another thing
Speaker 17: is they need to take it back to where they
Speaker 17: did at the end of the season.
Speaker 18: Eight dollars tickets, three dollars beers, get thirty thousand people
Speaker 18: in that stadium, build new Reds fans, create hy When
Speaker 18: I was at all the Cups games, all the Mets games,
Speaker 18: all the Pirates games, that's the energy we need in this.
Speaker 7: Town, all the time for the Reds.
Speaker 18: I was hoping for a World Series threade this year
Speaker 18: because I thought.
Speaker 7: Hey, never know, but that was our World Series. We
Speaker 7: just played the champions out there. They're the big dogs.
Speaker 18: They got the best of the best of the best,
Speaker 18: the highest paid players, the most hampered players.
Speaker 7: They got it all.
Speaker 18: So we did great. You know, I thought we were
Speaker 18: gonna we just we can't like the last color said consistency.
Speaker 5: When what is your definition of great? Do you think
Speaker 5: they were great? The Reds were great and out in
Speaker 5: LA that's what you thought.
Speaker 7: Listen, Hunter Green got choice.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you hadn't performed great and that Martinez was not great.
Speaker 5: Matt McClain defensively was not great.
Speaker 8: No, Matt McClain blew.
Speaker 11: He should have He shouldn't have been.
Speaker 18: In LA he should have been sent down.
Speaker 5: And that's that's your that's your boy, Tito, that's your boy.
Speaker 5: Nick Krawl, Ryan, thank you for the phone call. That's
Speaker 5: what I'm saying. Like, there are positive it takes from
Speaker 5: this season, Don't get me wrong, there absolutely are. But
Speaker 5: at the same time, it's like I was supposed to
Speaker 5: count on on Matt McClain to be the guy this
Speaker 5: year that's really gonna help this offense, hump.
Speaker 6: He was terrible.
Speaker 5: So now going into the offseason, he's a huge question mark.
Speaker 5: Who's gonna play second base. You can't look me in
Speaker 5: the eye right now with a straight face and say,
Speaker 5: Matt McLean is the opening day second basement next year.
Speaker 5: You can't do that. He's got to go and earn
Speaker 5: that this year, at least in my opinion. Let's go
Speaker 5: to Springboro and talk to Aaron.
Speaker 12: What's up, Aaron, say Austin, I'm gonna take the other
Speaker 12: side of a couple of these arguments. Okay, the first
Speaker 12: off and McClean that this was a comeback season from
Speaker 12: a terrible shoulder injury, okay, and that's a very, very
Speaker 12: tough injury to come back. So I think next year
Speaker 12: will be the telling factor whether or not he reverts
Speaker 12: back to his rookie season or if you know, it's
Speaker 12: more of the same for this year. So I'm gonna
Speaker 12: give him some grace. But you got to move him
Speaker 12: over to short stoff. You got to get Ellie out
Speaker 12: in left field or possibly even right, moving Barka, you know,
Speaker 12: over to the other side. I don't think he was
Speaker 12: touched Freedol. He's too good at a center fielder. But
Speaker 12: get Ellie the hell out of short stop, no doubt
Speaker 12: about it. You can put Stewart at second base. But
Speaker 12: the bottom line is the castelines are on the clock
Speaker 12: right now. They're good people, good community leaders, all that.
Speaker 12: But you know, when they bought the Red they said
Speaker 12: they would bring a championship baseball to Cincinnati.
Speaker 2: Clearly they haven't delivered.
Speaker 12: It's one of your other callers was talking about, you know,
Speaker 12: the fan support was there this year. I went to
Speaker 12: more games, watch more games than I have in many,
Speaker 12: many years. And they're an exciting team, but they're also
Speaker 12: very frustrating team. You know that they did two point
Speaker 12: one million and in attendance, and guy only knows what
Speaker 12: they did in merch sales, alcohol, food, all that good stuff.
Speaker 12: So the Castolines can spend some money and still be
Speaker 12: very profit. Well, we all know they're not could go
Speaker 12: out and get Schwber, but there are some big bats
Speaker 12: out there that they could get. I think you put
Speaker 12: one more big bat in that lineup, and you give
Speaker 12: La some protection, and you give Steers some protection. I think,
Speaker 12: you know, if they're pitching can hold together, I think
Speaker 12: they're they're very close to make a deep run in
Speaker 12: the playoffs. They're not that far away from the Dodgers.
Speaker 12: They're really not. You look at the you know, the
Speaker 12: seven games or eight games they played against them, they
Speaker 12: were all pretty tight.
Speaker 4: They were all pretty darn close.
Speaker 12: Obviously, Hunter Green, you know, scrapped the bed the other night.
Speaker 12: But you know they didn't. They didn't lay down even
Speaker 12: in Game two. You know, my son was out there
Speaker 12: in Los Angeles in that game. He's a he's Dodgers fan.
Speaker 12: He's out there playing for college baseball. But bottom line is,
Speaker 12: you said it was exciting they brought in Sasaki and
Speaker 12: you know red side the bases loaded in the ninth
Speaker 12: you know, freedom was a tying run at the.
Speaker 5: Plate, and again they couldn't get that big hit by
Speaker 5: Mike Count. In eight games against the Dodgers this year,
Speaker 5: the Dodgers outscored the Reds forty eight to twenty four. Well,
Speaker 5: but I do see what you're saying, and I appreciate
Speaker 5: the optimistic side of it.
Speaker 6: Aaron, thank you for the phone call.
Speaker 5: And I think the Eli to the outfield conversation, I
Speaker 5: think that's a conversation that needs to be had. He
Speaker 5: had his worst season defensively, and I think you know,
Speaker 5: there was a lot going on. He lost his sister,
Speaker 5: he was trying to play one hundred and sixty two games.
Speaker 5: There were some other off the field stuff going on
Speaker 5: for him. He was dealing with a quad injury. He
Speaker 5: had tweaked this swing. I felt like there was just
Speaker 5: a lot on the plate of Elie de la Cruz
Speaker 5: this year, and I'm gonna trust that he's going to
Speaker 5: get better next year, but again I can't bank on that.
Speaker 5: And defensively it was really bad. And my whole thing
Speaker 5: with moving Ellie to the outfield, which I was finally
Speaker 5: on board with this year after how poorly he played
Speaker 5: at shortstop, My whole thing was, well, you get Matt
Speaker 5: McClain to play shortstop. Well, now, I don't know if
Speaker 5: that's the case. I don't know if he can play shortstop.
Speaker 5: I don't know if he's going to be a part
Speaker 5: of this lineup. And yes, McClain is coming back from
Speaker 5: a devastating shoulder injury, and historically it takes time for.
Speaker 6: Those people to return to form.
Speaker 5: However, if it's about winning right now, and specifically winning
Speaker 5: before the end of this decade, when Ellie de la
Speaker 5: Cruz's contract is up, you don't have a bunch of
Speaker 5: time to wait, you don't and so there needs to be,
Speaker 5: in my mind, urgency now. Our caller said that the
Speaker 5: cash Delini's are on the clock. I don't think that
Speaker 5: they are. I mean, it's their clock. They can set
Speaker 5: it to whatever they want. But I do think there
Speaker 5: is got to be some urgency this year because number one,
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty seven, I don't think we're gonna play
Speaker 5: baseball because of the lockout. Number two, I don't think
Speaker 5: Terry Francone is gonna manage much longer. So there has
Speaker 5: to be urgency now about getting it in and trying
Speaker 5: to find a way to win. In my opinion, there
Speaker 5: is and there are plenty of good things to take
Speaker 5: from this season. But I just don't know if I
Speaker 5: fully believe in the plan and then the people making
Speaker 5: the plan and executing the plan to execute said plan.
Speaker 5: I want to talk to Joe Dana and when we
Speaker 5: come back after the news, because Joe, even though he's
Speaker 5: out at the high school game right now, I think
Speaker 5: has decided to give us some time. And he was
Speaker 5: out there in Los Angeles and he talked about there
Speaker 5: being a sense of accomplishment in the Reds clubhouse after
Speaker 5: they lost to the to the Dodgers, and that kind
Speaker 5: of rubbed me the wrong way. I'm looking for some
Speaker 5: perspective on that from Joe Daneman when we return. Easier
Speaker 5: said than done, all right here on the Home of
Speaker 5: the Reds, seven hundred WLW.
Speaker 1: The following takes place between seven pm and eight pm.
Speaker 5: Hi, Hello, Welcome in our number two sports talk on
Speaker 5: a Friday night, seven hundred WLW. My name is Austin
Speaker 5: Elmore in for Lance McAllister. Tonight, we've talked Reds and
Speaker 5: Bengals in hour number one. I want to continue that
Speaker 5: split conversation with a man who covers both for Fox nineteen.
Speaker 6: His name is Joey d.
Speaker 5: Joe Danoman surely somewhere near a high school football field
Speaker 5: right now, but shows to take time to spend with us.
Speaker 5: And Joe was in Los Angeles covering the Reds and
Speaker 5: the Dodgers in the National League Wildcard round. Joe, what
Speaker 5: was that experience like for you?
Speaker 19: Well, I'm sure we're going to talk about one of
Speaker 19: the tweets I put out there after the game, the
Speaker 19: sense of accomplishment one.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and listen, it's on my paper.
Speaker 19: Yeah, I know it is. And it's a great debate point.
Speaker 19: It's a great talking point because you never know what
Speaker 19: you're going to walk into when you walk into a
Speaker 19: locker room or a clubhouse after the season ends. I
Speaker 19: think people would be surprised sometimes how emotionless it can be,
Speaker 19: especially for guys who woul played such.
Speaker 2: A long season.
Speaker 19: So I wasn't sure how what it was going to
Speaker 19: be like when I walked in young team, first playoff experience,
Speaker 19: had some chances to do some damage late in both games,
Speaker 19: couldn't come up with the big hit when they needed.
Speaker 19: When we walked in, it was a lot of handshakes.
Speaker 19: It was a lot of hugs, and you could just
Speaker 19: feel the tone in the room. And I asked multiple
Speaker 19: guys this. I wanted to make sure I wasn't misreading
Speaker 19: the room. I said to Spencer Year and A TJ. Friedel,
Speaker 19: I said, correct me if I'm wrong, if I'm misreading
Speaker 19: the room. But it feels like a sense of accomplishment
Speaker 19: in this room. And they both agreed with it. And
Speaker 19: we can debate whether that's the correct reaction the Reds
Speaker 19: should have had. Should fans be disappointed, should the team
Speaker 19: be disappointed? I think that's different for every fan how
Speaker 19: they digest the season. But let me say this for
Speaker 19: the team, they were all row one hundred percent disappointed
Speaker 19: in the way they played. They're disappointed that it came
Speaker 19: to an end after two games. They thought they would
Speaker 19: have tooken that to a third game and taken the
Speaker 19: Dodgers to the break. But the idea of a sense
Speaker 19: of accomplishment, to me, I think personally, is the correct
Speaker 19: tone for this team to have when it's such a
Speaker 19: young group and they set a goal before the season
Speaker 19: of getting to the playoffs. They backed in. Let's be
Speaker 19: honest about it, that the Mets had to have a
Speaker 19: collapse again, and that happened, but the red did get there.
Speaker 19: They accomplished what we said before the season they should accomplish,
Speaker 19: and that's getting to the playoffs. That's why, to me,
Speaker 19: it felt like the right reaction for the Reds to
Speaker 19: feel like they accomplished something. Whether the season was a
Speaker 19: success or not, I think that's a different debate, but
Speaker 19: that's absolutely how it felt in there, and I confirmed
Speaker 19: that with multiple players that that was the correct feeling.
Speaker 5: Do you think the organization itself feels a sense of
Speaker 5: accomplishment after this season.
Speaker 19: That's tough to say, because that's different the sense of
Speaker 19: accomplishment for the players. The young players who did this
Speaker 19: for the first time understand that this could be step
Speaker 19: one and a multi step process that a young group
Speaker 19: has to go through to ultimately get to where they
Speaker 19: want to go. That should be looked at as a
Speaker 19: sense of accomplishment. The organization's a different conversation because the
Speaker 19: organization understands what they have, understands what they need to
Speaker 19: build around, and did they do enough to build around
Speaker 19: this team? That's the question.
Speaker 15: Now.
Speaker 19: If we looked at what they were at the All
Speaker 19: Star break and what they added to get better. I
Speaker 19: think we would all argue they did a pretty good
Speaker 19: job they being the front office of getting guys who
Speaker 19: can supplement and help this team make a push in
Speaker 19: the second half, that if there was an opportunity they
Speaker 19: could take advantage and do it. And the guys like
Speaker 19: Miguel and Douhrer and Zach Lettel, those guys did help.
Speaker 19: Kee Brian Hayes would argue for a month's help before
Speaker 19: he just stopped hitting the ball altogether. But organizationally, no,
Speaker 19: they have to look at it different. The organization. While
Speaker 19: it's so hard to try to compare this team to
Speaker 19: a Dodgers team or to a Yankee team, or pick
Speaker 19: your high dollar organization, Uh, it feels like you're comparing
Speaker 19: apples to oranges just because of what they can spend
Speaker 19: and what they can build. But but if we have
Speaker 19: conversations with Reds players and red Off Reds Off front
Speaker 19: office members in spring training pointing to what the Arizona
Speaker 19: Diamondbacks did a couple of seasons ago, then it can
Speaker 19: be done and they know it can be done, and
Speaker 19: so organizationally, I wouldn't say this was an accomplishment, uh,
Speaker 19: because just getting to the playoffs for any organization should
Speaker 19: not be the standard should not be enough. But that
Speaker 19: also comes with the understanding of what I saw watching
Speaker 19: the Dodgers play that that was different. I mean that
Speaker 19: what they have talked about them is just different from
Speaker 19: the Reds and and and so maybe maybe it's a
Speaker 19: hard thing for us to hold the organization to a
Speaker 19: higher standard. But if if you're going to be a
Speaker 19: professional organization and an ownership group in a professional organization,
Speaker 19: you have to have a higher standard than just getting
Speaker 19: to the playoffs.
Speaker 5: What did we learn about Terry Francona this season and
Speaker 5: how can that shape what we can expect from the
Speaker 5: Reds moving forward.
Speaker 19: You know what's interesting is they played one hundred and
Speaker 19: sixty two games and two playoff games, so one hundred
Speaker 19: and sixty four games, and it never felt like they
Speaker 19: ever landed on an offensive identity or maybe even just
Speaker 19: an identity for the team. It kind of felt like
Speaker 19: it changed given on the matchup. And maybe that's what
Speaker 19: he had to do with a team that did have faws. Right,
Speaker 19: is the idea that in some games you have to
Speaker 19: lean on pitching and defense, and then in some games
Speaker 19: you have to put an extra stick in a lineup
Speaker 19: and just try to outscore another team depending on the matchup.
Speaker 19: But understanding how Terry Francona manages a game, it doesn't
Speaker 19: feel like that's what he wants it to be. I
Speaker 19: feel like he wants to have an identity, whether that's
Speaker 19: different from what he managed twenty years ago to looking
Speaker 19: at how you manage now. Certainly you can make that argument,
Speaker 19: but the idea that it's just felt unsettled all the
Speaker 19: way to the final game. I mean, you think about
Speaker 19: these teams, especially the Dodgers, and the Dodgers might not
Speaker 19: be a great barometer for this conversation Austin, because they
Speaker 19: have what they have said at the top of the lineup.
Speaker 19: It's pretty simple, right, it's a square.
Speaker 2: Peg in a square hole.
Speaker 19: It's show Hey, it's Mooki, it's Freddy, it's the ostre,
Speaker 19: and we're not moving these guys. But it felt like
Speaker 19: for the Reds even up to the final day, like
Speaker 19: who's hitting third, who's hitting clean up? And if you
Speaker 19: make the playoffs and still have that kind of turnover
Speaker 19: where it's such important positions inside your lineup, it's interesting
Speaker 19: and so I wonder if that will change next year,
Speaker 19: that the fact that they didn't run at all this
Speaker 19: year was so different from what they were and that
Speaker 19: seemed to be the identity of this team and that
Speaker 19: went away this year. So I don't know, even after
Speaker 19: having a full year of Jerry Francona, the idea that
Speaker 19: the lineup was just unsettled all year long, to me
Speaker 19: was surprising, And I wonder if that'll change in year
Speaker 19: two or if that's just the way it's going to
Speaker 19: be with a team that's just never going to have every.
Speaker 5: Whole filling Talking to Joe Daneman, Fox nineteen final Reds
Speaker 5: question for you, the biggest question for this organization going
Speaker 5: into the offseason is what.
Speaker 19: How are they going to remake this bullpen?
Speaker 2: Because the bullpen was a big.
Speaker 19: Part of what they did in the second half of
Speaker 19: the year. I would say it became a strength if
Speaker 19: you look at what they were early in the season
Speaker 19: to where they were at the end, where they had
Speaker 19: so many guys they could go to guys we didn't expect.
Speaker 19: They could go to the guys like a Connor Phillips,
Speaker 19: and then you had Chase Burns in the bullpen even
Speaker 19: you know, Big Sugar gave them, gave them some innings
Speaker 19: out of the bullpen. I'm just naming guys, but a
Speaker 19: lot of these guys are going to leave, you know,
Speaker 19: the the Emelio Pegans, that Tony Santion. It turned out
Speaker 19: to be a strength, but that's where so much turnover
Speaker 19: might happen for this team. And I always said, if
Speaker 19: you look at the Reds and this, they've got of
Speaker 19: young pitchers and yet on young position players. When they
Speaker 19: start investing in a bullpen, you'll know they feel they're ready.
Speaker 19: And they started investing a little bit in the bullpen
Speaker 19: this year and it helped them get to the playoffs.
Speaker 19: So while everybody's gonna say you got to get the
Speaker 19: outfield back, you got to get that right handed back,
Speaker 19: that might be Noelvie Marte that might be taking care
Speaker 19: of already within the organization. To me, the big question
Speaker 19: of the offseason is they're going to lose some pictures
Speaker 19: from their bullpen from attrition. Guys are going to sign
Speaker 19: other places.
Speaker 2: How are they going to rebuild that.
Speaker 19: And what kind of urgency are they going to have
Speaker 19: to make sure it's a strength for next season, because
Speaker 19: we saw how important it is for them.
Speaker 5: Let's flip over to the Bengals. A big game coming
Speaker 5: up at pay Corpse Stadium against the Detroit Lions. What
Speaker 5: is a after the last two weeks. What is a
Speaker 5: realistic expectation for the Bengals on Sunday afternoon?
Speaker 19: That it has to look better? And I know that
Speaker 19: might be a cop out, because when you play in
Speaker 19: the NFL, it's the any given Sunday you should be
Speaker 19: out there thinking you're going to win. But let's be
Speaker 19: realistic that the Lions are one of the best and
Speaker 19: most dangerous offenses in the NFL, and the Bengals have
Speaker 19: looked like they've looked the last two weeks. I think
Speaker 19: for the coaches to keep this locker room and for
Speaker 19: the players to still believe for the final eleven weeks,
Speaker 19: after this game, there has.
Speaker 2: To be belief that it can be better.
Speaker 19: It just has to look and feel better than it's
Speaker 19: felt in Minnesota then it felt in Denver. I don't
Speaker 19: know what that means or what that looks like. I
Speaker 19: think we'll know when we see it, but it just
Speaker 19: has to look better than it has the last two weeks.
Speaker 19: It can't be a blowout, it can't be scoring less
Speaker 19: than ten points. This team has to play better football
Speaker 19: for Zach Taylor, for the coaching staff and for the
Speaker 19: players all to look at each other and say, Okay,
Speaker 19: we believe we can still be competitive for the rest
Speaker 19: of the season. If this thing is another blowout, you're
Speaker 19: going to start wondering about a locker room that's going
Speaker 19: to become fractured and coaches that might start losing players.
Speaker 19: So it just has to look better on Sunday. Whatever
Speaker 19: that is, I think we'll know at once we see it.
Speaker 5: Zach Taylor said this week that he has unwavering faith
Speaker 5: in Jake Browning. What was your responsor what was your
Speaker 5: reaction to that, and what do you make of the
Speaker 5: movement that the Bengals should look elsewhere for another quarterback
Speaker 5: not named Jake Browning.
Speaker 19: I give Jake Browning a two or three week window
Speaker 19: here to prove needs to be the quarterback for the
Speaker 19: rest of the season. And I don't know what the
Speaker 19: other options might be, whether it's everybody's talking about Russell Wilson.
Speaker 19: They're not going to take on the payroll of Kirk Cousins,
Speaker 19: but there are other quarterbacks out there that they could
Speaker 19: go get. But the question is once you get them
Speaker 19: to Cincinnati, how long does it take them to get
Speaker 19: them comfortable in the playbooks so they can go out.
Speaker 2: And help you win football games.
Speaker 19: I don't know what that answer is. The shame of
Speaker 19: the season is is the AFC feels open, the AFC
Speaker 19: North feels vulnerable, and the Bengals are in a position
Speaker 19: where right now it does and feel like they can
Speaker 19: take advantage.
Speaker 14: But to answer your.
Speaker 19: Question, he's got the Lions game, he's got the Packers game,
Speaker 19: and I think maybe the short week with the Steelers
Speaker 19: they had no option but to play him. So I
Speaker 19: think he's got a three week window to do exactly
Speaker 19: what I said last question, and that's just feel better.
Speaker 19: It has to feel better than Jake Browning because you
Speaker 19: think back to twenty twenty three, and we all do
Speaker 19: this auction, right, we go back to twenty twenty three
Speaker 19: and we say, oh, Jake was four and three and
Speaker 19: they were competitive, And you think about anybody in life
Speaker 19: you have this baseline test. Think about like athletes with
Speaker 19: the concussion baseline test they take and then you use
Speaker 19: that to evaluate if something's wrong. So if we use
Speaker 19: twenty twenty three as the baseline, I don't think the
Speaker 19: roster is that much different two years later. I don't
Speaker 19: think they're that much worse on the roster two years later.
Speaker 19: So at some point the fingers kind of do go
Speaker 19: back to Jake Browning and say, what's up, man, Why
Speaker 19: aren't you playing like you did two years ago. So
Speaker 19: I think the spotlight and the cross hairs are on
Speaker 19: Jake Browning a little bit more or than people might think.
Speaker 19: He's got this window here of a few weeks to
Speaker 19: prove he should be the guy for the rest of
Speaker 19: the season. And let's be honest, Look, the Lions are
Speaker 19: an unbelievable offense. Maybe I would argue the best offense
Speaker 19: in the NFL. If you can score on their defense,
Speaker 19: the Bengals should score some points against the Lions. If
Speaker 19: they're not able to move the ball, score touchdowns and
Speaker 19: score points against the Lions, those crosshairs get even bigger
Speaker 19: on Jake Browning. I think he's got a three week
Speaker 19: window to prove he should be the guy for the
Speaker 19: rest of the year.
Speaker 5: Talking to Joe Danavan Fox nineteen, Joe, it's a Friday night.
Speaker 5: I know you guys are all over the high school
Speaker 5: football coverage. My sources tell me you're at the pit
Speaker 5: right now, getting set for Elder and Moler. What do
Speaker 5: you expect tonight? What's the atmosphere going to be like tonight?
Speaker 5: I hear a band back there.
Speaker 19: Yeah, you can hear right now. The band is finishing
Speaker 19: up last minute preparation. So it sounds great. It sounds
Speaker 19: like high school football. It was really cool Austin. When
Speaker 19: they were bringing the band out, the announcer said, the
Speaker 19: best place in the country to watch high school football
Speaker 19: is right here at the pit.
Speaker 7: It's one of those.
Speaker 19: Goosebump kind of things.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 19: You got Moeller who's only got one loss. You've got Elder,
Speaker 19: who's undefeated after six weeks for the first time at
Speaker 19: almost twenty five years. This is a Cincinnati as a
Speaker 19: yet evan y two brand name teams playing in Cincinnati's
Speaker 19: best high school venue. And the greatest part, Austin, you
Speaker 19: can watch this game live on TV on Fox nineteen
Speaker 19: ninety Wow nineteen point three digital station. You can watch
Speaker 19: it live tonight on Fox nineteen Pretty cool.
Speaker 5: That is incredible. Joe, thank you so much. Thanks for
Speaker 5: making some time for me. Man really appreciate it. Have
Speaker 5: a great weekend.
Speaker 19: Talk to you Tuesday. Cincondadi Cincondadi's ESPN fifteen thirty on
Speaker 19: Cincy three fifty Austin.
Speaker 5: Yes, Joe, Yes, yes, yes, Joe joins us every Tuesday
Speaker 5: on our show down the Hall, and he made some
Speaker 5: time for me. And that is a sold out game
Speaker 5: at the pit by the way, ten thousand standing tall
Speaker 5: on a purple Friday. We'll keep you updated as it
Speaker 5: goes along. Let's get into a little bit of Bengals conversation.
Speaker 5: Let's do that next right here, seven hundred WLW just
Speaker 5: about halfway through, coming up half an hour from right now.
Speaker 5: We're gonna go off the beaten path with your sports
Speaker 5: bucket list? What's on it? What have you crossed off?
Speaker 5: What have you added to it? This, of course, because
Speaker 5: I'm going to lambeau Field next week to watch the
Speaker 5: Bengals play the Green Bay Packers. I booked this trip
Speaker 5: a long time ago, and I keep reminding myself it's
Speaker 5: because I love football more than I love the Bengals.
Speaker 5: That's what I keep reminding myself, because I don't think
Speaker 5: it's gonna go well. Most people don't think it's gonna
Speaker 5: go well for the Bengals on Sunday against the three
Speaker 5: and one Detroit Lions. And we'll get into a little
Speaker 5: bit after the news, because really it is as simple
Speaker 5: as what Joe Daneman said, play better. That's at least
Speaker 5: what most of us are looking for. And earlier this week,
Speaker 5: Zach Taylor met with the media as he normally does,
Speaker 5: and a lot of people don't realize Zach and Dan Campbell,
Speaker 5: the head coach of the Lions, kind of came up
Speaker 5: in the NFL together in Miami, and he was asked
Speaker 5: if he ever reflects on those days with Dan and
Speaker 5: Miami and his relationship with Dan Campbell. I thought it
Speaker 5: was interesting his response. Take a listen to Bengals head
Speaker 5: coach Zach Taylor.
Speaker 20: Got a lot of respect for him. He's done an
Speaker 20: unbelievable job. I do reflect back on in twenty twenty
Speaker 20: one when we went up there his first year. I
Speaker 20: don't think they'd won a game yet. I could be wrong.
Speaker 20: Maybe they'd won one. I don't think they'd want any
Speaker 20: knowing what they were building. You could tell they played
Speaker 20: with a lot of undrafted free agents on defense, and
Speaker 20: you could just tell they had the identity of their
Speaker 20: coaching staff, their head coach, the way that they played,
Speaker 20: and they might have had all the talent in the
Speaker 20: world then, and we got the best of them that day,
Speaker 20: but you could see something that was building in the future.
Speaker 20: Whether people believed it at the time or not, it
Speaker 20: was very clear. And so now you're here in twenty
Speaker 20: twenty five and they've had the success they've had over
Speaker 20: the years, they have the success they've had this year,
Speaker 20: win in three in a row. It's a really good
Speaker 20: football team. I love personally playing playing these types of games.
Speaker 20: These are my favorite games to play. This is why
Speaker 20: we do it again. Our backs against the wall a
Speaker 20: little bit going in this game off of two losses.
Speaker 20: That's perfect. You know, I'd like to see Howardbery responds.
Speaker 20: Who lives in fear, who thrives in the university. It's
Speaker 20: it's a great opportunity for a coach to really assess
Speaker 20: what guys are made of, myself included. And so again
Speaker 20: it's a tremendous opportunity that we are. We are not
Speaker 20: running from, we are running directly into.
Speaker 5: What do you think the identity of the Bengals is
Speaker 5: if it matches the identity of their head coach. If
Speaker 5: it is like the Detroit Lions and they are made
Speaker 5: in the image of their head coach, what then is
Speaker 5: the Bengals identity. I think the Bengals identity is more
Speaker 5: Joe Burrow, which is calm, cool, collected, confident, and I
Speaker 5: think Zach has some of those traits as well. But
Speaker 5: I think right now the Bengals are searching for their
Speaker 5: identity without Joe Burrow, and it's going to be difficult
Speaker 5: to find it. Let's talk a little bit more about
Speaker 5: Sunday's game after the news right here on the Home
Speaker 5: of the Best, Bengals covered seven hundred WLW. Matt Ponatowski
Speaker 5: led the Mohler Crusaders on a thirteen play drive resulting
Speaker 5: in a touchdown to Cooper McCutcheon, and the Crusaders have
Speaker 5: a seven to nothing lead at Elder to start the night.
Speaker 5: We'll keep you updated as it goes. Let's keep talking football.
Speaker 5: Let's talk Bengals as I've got as we've gone through
Speaker 5: the week trying to figure out this team. Right now,
Speaker 5: I've realized there's really not that much to say. They
Speaker 5: have to play better, and until they play better, you
Speaker 5: really have no idea what the future of the team is.
Speaker 5: If they play that poorly, you can't really evaluate and
Speaker 5: look towards the future. You just start talking about blaming
Speaker 5: coaches and firing people, and you start wondering about should
Speaker 5: Burrow come back, will Burrow come back? Should they go
Speaker 5: get another quarterback. I think you look to Friday's game
Speaker 5: or to Monday's game, and you think, yeah, Jake Browning
Speaker 5: could have played better, should have played better. If he does,
Speaker 5: maybe it's more competitive. But I also look at it
Speaker 5: and say, the defense continues to struggle. The run game
Speaker 5: was okay, but was not existent because they were losing
Speaker 5: the entire time. I counted Denver as having two negative
Speaker 5: plays the entire night. The Bengals had one tackle for
Speaker 5: loss and then they forced the interception in the red
Speaker 5: zone on a terrible decision by bow Knicks. This team
Speaker 5: is just stuck in the mud, and they've been embarrassed
Speaker 5: two weeks in a row. They've gotten their face bashed
Speaker 5: in two weeks in a row. And to the final
Speaker 5: point that Zach Taylor made in that clip before the break,
Speaker 5: which is that you find out a lot about people
Speaker 5: in moments like this, He's exactly right.
Speaker 6: Who are they? How are they going to respond?
Speaker 5: Because right now you come into Week five against one
Speaker 5: of the best offenses in the National Football League, and
Speaker 5: it's supposed to be a stripe the Jungle game, a
Speaker 5: game that gets the fans excited. This was supposed to
Speaker 5: be a four to twenty five national TV window with
Speaker 5: Kevin Burkhart and Tom Brady on the call, but instead
Speaker 5: only a fraction of the country is going to see
Speaker 5: this game on television because the Bengals are so bad
Speaker 5: and it's supposed to be a stripe the Jungle, but
Speaker 5: because Detroit is so good and Bengals fans are understandably
Speaker 5: fed up with the way this team has played through
Speaker 5: the first two weeks. There's going to be twenty thousand
Speaker 5: Detroit Tiger fans or Detroit Lions fans there and Honolulu
Speaker 5: Blue is going to ruin the Stripe the Jungle.
Speaker 6: That's my expectation for Sunday.
Speaker 5: It's hard to do stuff like that when the team
Speaker 5: does not the performance on the field doesn't match the
Speaker 5: performance off the field with the stuff you're trying to
Speaker 5: do as an organization in your marketing and that sort
Speaker 5: of stuff. At the end of the day, it is
Speaker 5: really as simple as they have to play better, and
Speaker 5: this week specifically, you have got to show signs of life,
Speaker 5: because even if you look at the film and you
Speaker 5: look at what Zach Taylor was trying to do. There
Speaker 5: were plays where receivers were open, Jake Browning played poorly,
Speaker 5: he missed them. There were plays where the concept the
Speaker 5: call was right against the coverage, but the offensive line
Speaker 5: didn't give Browning any time. There was times where penalties
Speaker 5: derailed thirty yard completions and chunk plays.
Speaker 6: That sort of stuff. You've got to clean it up.
Speaker 5: How are you going to react to a team that's
Speaker 5: going to come into your building and try to take
Speaker 5: it over? And are you ready to really quit on
Speaker 5: the year if you're the Bengals. You know, the thing
Speaker 5: about Zach Taylor is that over his years as the
Speaker 5: Bengals head coach, I never felt like they quit on him.
Speaker 5: In twenty twenty, when Burrow went down, I felt like
Speaker 5: it was the exact opposite. Instead of quitting, they dug
Speaker 5: their heels in and they found a way to win
Speaker 5: some difficult games, most notably on a Monday night against
Speaker 5: the Pittsburgh Steelers. They dug their heels in and twenty three,
Speaker 5: when Burrow went down, they did not quit. Even when
Speaker 5: Browning played poorly in that first game, they dug their
Speaker 5: heels in They didn't quit for Zack.
Speaker 6: Minnesota.
Speaker 5: With all the turnovers in Denver, with the penalties, it
Speaker 5: felt like the Bengals maybe quit a little bit, and
Speaker 5: you've got to nip that in the butt. And I
Speaker 5: wonder who's the guy to step up in the locker room.
Speaker 6: Burrow's hurt.
Speaker 5: Can't be him. Ted Carris is playing atrociously. Can't be him.
Speaker 5: Same with Orlando Brown, Junior Von Bell's gone, Mike Hilton's gone,
Speaker 5: Sam Hubbard's gone. Trey Hendrickson is he one of those
Speaker 5: guys in the locker room? He had really showed up
Speaker 5: much either. Who's gonna step up?
Speaker 6: So far?
Speaker 5: It seems like it's Jamar Chase. That's interesting, you know,
Speaker 5: Zach and that clip with Dan talked about how the
Speaker 5: Lions at the time in the twenty twenty one season
Speaker 5: hadn't won a game, but yet you could tell that
Speaker 5: they were building something. You could say the same thing
Speaker 5: about Zach's Bengals in twenty twenty. They weren't that good,
Speaker 5: but you could tell they were building something. There was
Speaker 5: a clear direction for the organization.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 5: Nobody expected them to just rebound and go to the
Speaker 5: Super Bowl the way that they did, but now I'm
Speaker 5: wondering what direction really is the organization going here and
Speaker 5: can anything be salvaged this year? And so I don't
Speaker 5: know that anybody expects them to win this game on Sunday.
Speaker 5: It might be a lot to ask, but can you
Speaker 5: at least show signs of life that make me feel
Speaker 5: like this season isn't already in the tank?
Speaker 6: Can you do that?
Speaker 5: Because you know, coming up, you've got the Pittsburgh Steelers,
Speaker 5: who I think have gotten pretty lucky so far this season.
Speaker 5: You've got the Pittsburgh Steelers on a Thursday night at home.
Speaker 5: The expectation should be to win that game. Baltimore is
Speaker 5: without Lamar Jackson this week and they're already one in three.
Speaker 5: Their season could be over before it even starts. Cleveland
Speaker 5: is formidable in a tough matchup to a lot of
Speaker 5: people across the league. But by the time Week eighteen
Speaker 5: rolls around, when they come back here, should or Sanders
Speaker 5: is going to be starting and they're going to.
Speaker 6: Be playing for the number one pick.
Speaker 5: The division is certainly still in play, you would think, right,
Speaker 5: And that's with or without Borrow. Just because of the
Speaker 5: state of affairs in the AFC North and across the
Speaker 5: AFC outside of Buffalo. I don't think anybody's really gonna
Speaker 5: pull away, are they? I wouldn't think so. So this
Speaker 5: is a game where it's like, Okay, are there signs
Speaker 5: of life here at all? We're checking a pulse. Are
Speaker 5: the Bengals alive? Are they willing to fight? It really
Speaker 5: is that simple. I don't even care about the stats.
Speaker 5: I don't care if they win or lose. It is
Speaker 5: has this team given up? And can this be indicative
Speaker 5: of the direction of the organization. The result that happens
Speaker 5: on Sunday against the Detroit Lions, that's all that matters.
Speaker 5: There's another result that we're gonna be looking forward to
Speaker 5: coming up tomorrow. It's gonna be the UC Bearcats hosting
Speaker 5: number fourteen Iowa State. Tony Pike caught up with Brendan Soresby,
Speaker 5: the Bearcat quarterback, earlier this week. We're gonna play some
Speaker 5: of that conversation for you when we get back. This
Speaker 5: is Sports Talk on a Friday night. Seven hundred Wlwaircats,
Speaker 5: fresh off of a win at Kansas host number fourteen
Speaker 5: Iowa State, and the Bearcats are actually favored in this
Speaker 5: game number one because of the way that they played
Speaker 5: against Kansas last weekend. And number two, because Iowa State's
Speaker 5: defense is banged up, there is a long list of
Speaker 5: guys that are hurt for the Cyclones not going to
Speaker 5: be able to go. So the Bearcats have an opportunity
Speaker 5: to take advantage of they hope tomorrow at Nippert Stadium,
Speaker 5: I co host a show down the Hall weekdays from
Speaker 5: twelve to three. It's called Sincy three to sixty and
Speaker 5: I do that with UC Hall of Famer, the legend
Speaker 5: Tony Pike.
Speaker 21: Well.
Speaker 5: Earlier this week, the current u SE quarterback Brendan Soresby
Speaker 5: was on the show and Tony interviewed him and I
Speaker 5: wanted to play some of that conversation. It starts with
Speaker 5: Brendan talking about what these last few days have been
Speaker 5: like after the win over Kansas, highest rated quarterback as
Speaker 5: it relates to QBR in the country, authoring one of
Speaker 5: the best offenses in the country, off a win against
Speaker 5: a very good Kansas team in a hostile environment, and
Speaker 5: now we're turning to Nippert Stadium against the fourteenth ranked
Speaker 5: Iowa State Cyclones. Brendan Soresby is joining us right now. Brendan,
Speaker 5: what's going on.
Speaker 7: Man, what's going on? Thanks for having me absolutely?
Speaker 2: How you doing, man?
Speaker 22: How's the week going? You come off a big win
Speaker 22: against Kansas, you know better than anyone. You get to
Speaker 22: enjoy it for a few minutes and then you're onto
Speaker 22: Iowa State. What's the last couple of days been?
Speaker 7: Like a lot of recovery. Body was a little banged up.
Speaker 9: Right after the game. You know, traveling after a win
Speaker 9: is definitely a lot better. So that was a fun experience.
Speaker 9: And then you know, once we got back, just making
Speaker 9: sure we got our bodies right ready to go for
Speaker 9: our Tuesday practice. So the preparation has been good, everybody focused,
Speaker 9: everybody blocked in and ready to.
Speaker 7: Go on Saturday.
Speaker 22: How big of a weight does it lift off the shoulders,
Speaker 22: because you guys have been very competitive and there have
Speaker 22: been times where it's just come up a player too
Speaker 22: short to get the ball back laid against Kansas to
Speaker 22: play as efficiently as you guys did offensively, you didn't
Speaker 22: have Joe Royer in the second half defensively, no Dante
Speaker 22: Corleone in the game to get that ball back, go
Speaker 22: down and finish that off. How much momentum does that
Speaker 22: now build for a team.
Speaker 9: Well, I know, just like you know the fans have
Speaker 9: gone through it with the one score ball game is
Speaker 9: not going our way.
Speaker 7: I trust me.
Speaker 9: You know as a player that whenever you're on the
Speaker 9: losing side of those, you start to lose confidence. And
Speaker 9: we were finally on the right side of one of
Speaker 9: those and came out victorious. So, you know, being able
Speaker 9: to carry that momentum going for it would be huge
Speaker 9: for us, knowing that we can do it, knowing that
Speaker 9: we can win those close games and go close it out,
Speaker 9: you know, and just playing playing a complimentary football on
Speaker 9: all three phases. You know, that was a really good
Speaker 9: offensive team over there in Kansas, and you know, we
Speaker 9: knew that they were gonna be able to score points
Speaker 9: just you know they do.
Speaker 7: On they do on everybody.
Speaker 9: So you know, our defense bailed us out whenever they
Speaker 9: needed to, and you know, we were able to put
Speaker 9: some drives together and put points on the board and
Speaker 9: at the end of the day, we won. So we
Speaker 9: got to find a way to carry this into this
Speaker 9: week right here and find a way to go be
Speaker 9: a competitive team. And I Aloway stayed really good coach
Speaker 9: team and you know, obviously top fifteen team in the country.
Speaker 22: I thought about two thousand and nine, a game that
Speaker 22: I played against Pittsburgh. We're down, we get the ball late,
Speaker 22: and before taking the field, nothing was ever really said,
Speaker 22: but you could just tell and looking in the guy's eyes,
Speaker 22: there was a confidence that you were going to go
Speaker 22: down and win the game. You guys got the ball
Speaker 22: back down thirty four to thirty with a minute forty
Speaker 22: five left, you go on a ten play drive. Take
Speaker 22: me to the sideline before the drive started, Was there
Speaker 22: anything that needed to be said or did you guys
Speaker 22: kind of know what was ahead of end what needed
Speaker 22: to be done.
Speaker 9: You know, everybody understood what needed to be done.
Speaker 7: Obviously.
Speaker 9: You know we're dapping each other up saying, you know,
Speaker 9: we we got this, we know what we're going to do.
Speaker 7: We know we're going to go put it in the
Speaker 7: end zone. And you know that was that. I don't
Speaker 7: think I don't.
Speaker 9: Ever think there was too much, you know, disbelief from
Speaker 9: anybody on that sideline. I think everybody understood that we
Speaker 9: were going to do whatever it took to put it
Speaker 9: in the end zone. And everybody knows how hard it
Speaker 9: is to go do that, especially when the defense knows
Speaker 9: you have to score a touchdown, and we still had
Speaker 9: some adverse situations that drive you know, obviously the illegal
Speaker 9: touching and you know, just just a couple other things
Speaker 9: that went against us.
Speaker 7: But you know, we found a way to persevere and
Speaker 7: go punch it in the end zone.
Speaker 9: And I think that's just a testament to this group
Speaker 9: of the eyes that we have, and you know, everybody's got.
Speaker 7: A common belief in a common goal that we want
Speaker 7: to go.
Speaker 9: We want to go win some ball games this year,
Speaker 9: and we knew what it was going to take and
Speaker 9: we did it.
Speaker 22: I want to get to your your offensive line in
Speaker 22: just a moment. But talk about the receiving corps. I
Speaker 22: know Joe Royer didn't play in the second half, but
Speaker 22: he had a huge third and long grab for twenty
Speaker 22: yards that kept the drive alive. We've seen Jeff Codwell,
Speaker 22: Noah Jennings with the one handed catch, Gavin Grover almost
Speaker 22: getting to the end zone getting stopped a few inches short,
Speaker 22: Caleb Goodie, Cyrus Allen with the career day. How fun
Speaker 22: is it now that you've got these guys in the system,
Speaker 22: you can see their confidence growing. How fun is it
Speaker 22: to be able to spread the ball around to your
Speaker 22: receiving corps.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's a blast.
Speaker 9: You know, it makes my life easy, It makes my
Speaker 9: job you know, fun for sure, to just be able
Speaker 9: to go out there and say, hey, you know, let
Speaker 9: these guys will make plays and you know they make
Speaker 9: me look a lot.
Speaker 7: Better than I am.
Speaker 9: So just finding a way to get these guys the ball,
Speaker 9: and like you said, grow over stepping up whenever Joe
Speaker 9: went down. After Joe made an amazing catch on third down,
Speaker 9: you know, we'll be able to get Joe back this week.
Speaker 9: And I believe he's the best tid end of the country.
Speaker 9: So that's huge for us. So you know, just the
Speaker 9: ability of guys to step up whenever we need them
Speaker 9: to and just make plays is huge for us. And
Speaker 9: having confidence and you know, eight guys to go out
Speaker 9: there and catch a pass for you is huge for sure.
Speaker 7: So we're really excited.
Speaker 9: About this group of guys that we have, you know,
Speaker 9: out wide for us and you know, at tight end especially.
Speaker 9: So we've been saying it for a long time, but
Speaker 9: people think I always give the quarterback answer. I was
Speaker 9: telling the media on Tuesday that you know, I believe
Speaker 9: in all of our guys, but I truly do. And
Speaker 9: you know, I'm willing to throw it to whoever because
Speaker 9: at the end of the day, I know they're gonna
Speaker 9: make a play for me.
Speaker 22: I look at your guys backfield, and whether it's Tyler
Speaker 22: Walker or Evan Pryor, I just can't imagine a defense
Speaker 22: having to negotiate who's getting the ball, because, make no
Speaker 22: mistake about it, Walker doesn't want to run around you.
Speaker 6: He wants to run through you.
Speaker 22: That's demoralizing for a corner or a secondary player coming
Speaker 22: up to make a tackle and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 22: Evan Pryor's got the ability to bounce one or to
Speaker 22: make you miss and then take one the distance You've
Speaker 22: got the ability to run. How much does it put
Speaker 22: on a defense though, when you've got that that power
Speaker 22: and the speed that can hit in the backfield on
Speaker 22: any given day, Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 9: It puts a ton of stress on you and especially
Speaker 9: you know, like you said, I am able to move
Speaker 9: a little bit, which makes it harder on the defense
Speaker 9: back to account for me. And then it gives our guys,
Speaker 9: you know, one less body to have to worry about. Hopefully,
Speaker 9: if I can take somebody away in the run game
Speaker 9: and you know, our guys do a really good job
Speaker 9: in one on one situations and making people miss, running
Speaker 9: through people, whatever that may be.
Speaker 7: So just I think, I think, especially.
Speaker 9: In our back quote right now, we have a ton
Speaker 9: of different different threats and stuff that we present. Like
Speaker 9: you just said, Leads a little bit more power back,
Speaker 9: but he can shake you.
Speaker 7: Evans more of a home run hitter.
Speaker 9: And then I don't even know what you want to
Speaker 9: call me, but I can run a little bit.
Speaker 7: So that definitely helps now.
Speaker 9: And then just a pass game obviously being explosive right
Speaker 9: now is helping the run.
Speaker 7: Game as well. So if we can keep that going.
Speaker 14: I think we're going to be a really tough offense
Speaker 14: to stop.
Speaker 9: It's just up to us to continue to execute and
Speaker 9: make sure that we're we're on our.
Speaker 7: P's and q's.
Speaker 22: The first SAT giving up of the season happened against Kansas.
Speaker 22: I thought it was just the right play call at
Speaker 22: the right time for Kansas. They brought a pressure when
Speaker 22: you guys were running. A little play action makes it
Speaker 22: a little bit tougher to block. But the offensive line
Speaker 22: up front. You look at your running numbers, you look
Speaker 22: at the passing game numbers, you look at your ability
Speaker 22: to stay clean at times in the pocket. How important
Speaker 22: is that group up front, Ben.
Speaker 9: I mean, they've been they've been a huge help for
Speaker 9: us this year, especially you know in the past game
Speaker 9: in the Run game. You know, they've been doing a
Speaker 9: really good job of blogging for the Run, and then
Speaker 9: they've been doing an excellent job of of walking and
Speaker 9: protecting for the Past. That one sack is is very
Speaker 9: unfortunate because, like you know, on a little boot leg
Speaker 9: like that, the old line really doesn't have anything to
Speaker 9: do with it, So that was unfortunate.
Speaker 7: I was I was trying to do everything.
Speaker 9: I could to throw it away on you know, avoid
Speaker 9: that sack, especially.
Speaker 7: For the big guy's sake.
Speaker 9: But you know, they're playing really well up front and
Speaker 9: couldn't be.
Speaker 7: Happier for that group.
Speaker 9: I love that group of guys, and you know, I
Speaker 9: hope they continue to love me and protect me throughout
Speaker 9: the rest of the season. I'm gonna try to take
Speaker 9: care of them as much as possible because they're putting
Speaker 9: their bodies in the line.
Speaker 7: Every player.
Speaker 22: Well, as long as you keep getting to these steak dinners,
Speaker 22: I think they're gonna they're gonna take care of you. You
Speaker 22: said earlier in the week that after wins, you're taking
Speaker 22: the offensive lineman to Jeff Rubies.
Speaker 6: Is that right?
Speaker 7: I take them there. I try to take them there
Speaker 7: after every win.
Speaker 9: You know, obviously Jeff Rubis is a very top spot
Speaker 9: in Cincinnati, so it's kind of tough to get reservations,
Speaker 9: but they usually look us up.
Speaker 22: So are you we talking just the starting five linemen
Speaker 22: or any lineman that plays in the game. How how
Speaker 22: do you decide who gets.
Speaker 4: To go us?
Speaker 7: It's any lineman that plays in the game.
Speaker 9: So after after the Northwestern State we had to make
Speaker 9: some adjustments.
Speaker 7: We had boys I don't know, I don't know about this.
Speaker 9: One, but no, it was, uh, it's usually any lineman
Speaker 9: that plays in the game, and you know, we try
Speaker 9: to make sure that they're taken care of because they're
Speaker 9: doing a heck of a job up for sure.
Speaker 22: They're pushing for those those heavy linemen sets. Then they
Speaker 22: want to they want to get six to seven linemen
Speaker 22: in the game.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, No, they're they're trying. They're trying to coach.
Speaker 9: Carbo keeps trying to throw other guys in there.
Speaker 7: I'm like, hey, we don't, we don't need to keep
Speaker 7: going this thing.
Speaker 5: That is Tony Pike with Brendan Soresby. Just a really
Speaker 5: impressive dude, really really good conversation. You can find the
Speaker 5: whole thing on the iHeartRadio app with Tony and Brendan.
Speaker 5: And obviously a huge game. If he keeps playing the
Speaker 5: way he's playing, the Bearcats definitely have a chance to
Speaker 5: knock off Iowa State tomorrow. Coming up in the final hour,
Speaker 5: we go Off the Beaten Path your sports bucket list
Speaker 5: five one, three, seven, four, nine thousand. That's after the
Speaker 5: News on seven hundred WLW.
Speaker 1: The following takes place between eight pm and nine pm.
Speaker 5: I Hello, and welcome in to the final hour of
Speaker 5: Sports Talk seven hundred WLW.
Speaker 6: My name's Austin Elmore.
Speaker 5: Happy to be with you on this lovely Friday night
Speaker 5: in Cincinnati, the tri State and the world. And Lance
Speaker 5: typically does an off the Beaten Path topic on Fridays,
Speaker 5: and you know, I wanted to join in on that.
Speaker 5: I wanted to, in the spirit of that, do an
Speaker 5: off the Beaten path topic, and I figured, you know what,
Speaker 5: next week, I am going to something off of my
Speaker 5: sports bucket list that I am unbelievably excited about. And
Speaker 5: I want to know about your experiences, your sports bucket list.
Speaker 5: What have you crossed off your list? What have you
Speaker 5: added to your list? What have you you know? What
Speaker 5: do you have planned to cross off your list? I,
Speaker 5: of course I am talking about next week when the Bengals
Speaker 5: play the Green Bay Packers. I'm going up to lambeau Field.
Speaker 5: I'm so excited about this. This is like the mecca
Speaker 5: of football. One of the oldest stadiums, one of the
Speaker 5: most historic stadiums in this small and sleepy town in
Speaker 5: Wisconsin that is literally all Green Bay Packer football. It
Speaker 5: is woven into the culture there, and so I'm doing
Speaker 5: the whole experience.
Speaker 6: I'm going up a few days early.
Speaker 5: I'm going to tour the stadium, I'm gonna check out
Speaker 5: the Packers Hall of Fame, and then I'm just gonna explore.
Speaker 5: I've been making a list of different restaurants that I
Speaker 5: want to try, people I want to try to get
Speaker 5: in touch with when I'm there, the whole nine yards,
Speaker 5: just to experience this little town that loves football so much,
Speaker 5: in this historic stadium, which is just a bowl all
Speaker 5: the way around, and I can't wait to check it out.
Speaker 5: So if you've been I would love any recommendations you
Speaker 5: have for me, or if you have recently crossed something
Speaker 5: off your sports bucket list or are about to, or
Speaker 5: just want to tell me what's at the top.
Speaker 6: Of your list. I'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 5: Five one, three, seven, four, nine, seven thousand is the
Speaker 5: phone number. Now I don't know that this is at
Speaker 5: the top of my list, it definitely is towards the
Speaker 5: top for me. My number one is still Augusta National
Speaker 5: Golf Club. I want to go to the Masters. I
Speaker 5: want to experience the grounds at Augusta. I have been
Speaker 5: able to cross off one off my sports bucket list,
Speaker 5: and that is Ohio State Michigan. The game the top
Speaker 5: rivalry in my opinion, in all of sports, and I'm
Speaker 5: an Ohio State fan. So I wanted to go to
Speaker 5: the game at Michigan. I wanted to experience the big
Speaker 5: house and the fans and the whole nine yards, and
Speaker 5: so I got to do that at in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 5: right before you know they shut it down with COVID
Speaker 5: and then really right because actually the last time Ohio
Speaker 5: State beat Michigan, I was there and I was blown
Speaker 5: away by how cool that place was. And I don't
Speaker 5: have many nice things to say about the folks in
Speaker 5: ann Arbor. I mean, there is a true hatred there
Speaker 5: for that university. But the stadium was pretty dankole and
Speaker 5: I think about that all the time, that moment walking
Speaker 5: into it, and then just the feeling that you get
Speaker 5: when you're in an.
Speaker 6: Environment like that.
Speaker 5: My producer, Drew wester Heidi he and I were talking
Speaker 5: about this on the break. Drew, what what's at the
Speaker 5: top of your sports bucket list?
Speaker 23: Well, Augusta National for one, Now, that is the that
Speaker 23: is the top. That is the peak. But how attainable
Speaker 23: that is? So the top attainable one I have is
Speaker 23: Fenway Park. Oh, that's a great one in Boston.
Speaker 7: It is.
Speaker 23: I think it's for my money, it's the coolest ballpark
Speaker 23: in the country. The history around it, just how it's
Speaker 23: you know, changed so much, but also kept like the
Speaker 23: original design of it. Seeing the Green Monster in person,
Speaker 23: that whole like area around the ballpark is really cool.
Speaker 23: So that that is at the top of my attainable
Speaker 23: sports bucket list. That's cool. Have you ever been to
Speaker 23: Wrigley Field. I've been to Wrigley Field. I've not seen
Speaker 23: a baseball game at Wrigley Field. I've been to a
Speaker 23: concert at Wrigley Field, but I'm I'm hoping to scratch
Speaker 23: that one off. Next season. The Reds have a road
Speaker 23: series in Chicago towards the I think believe it's in August,
Speaker 23: so we're gonna try and get that one crossed off.
Speaker 23: I know, if you'd have told twelve year old Drew, hey,
Speaker 23: when you go to the first the first time you
Speaker 23: ever go to Wrigley Field, it's gonna be for a concert,
Speaker 23: not a baseball game, twelve year old me may have
Speaker 23: like broke down crime.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's so.
Speaker 5: But what's cool about Wrigley and I would assume is
Speaker 5: the same about Fenway Park, is it feels like you're
Speaker 5: walking back in time. Yes, it's like a time machine
Speaker 5: because so much of it is the exact same and
Speaker 5: the ivy and it hasn't changed.
Speaker 6: Really.
Speaker 5: I went once before they renovated it and once after
Speaker 5: they renovated it to Wrigley and it's still like the
Speaker 5: same feeling. It really is like walking into a time machine.
Speaker 6: It's amazing.
Speaker 5: Let's go to the phones five one, three, seven, four, nine,
Speaker 5: seven thousand. Let's go to Glenn in Cincinnati. What's up, Glenn, Hey,
Speaker 5: not much. How you doing tonight? I'm wonderful man. What's
Speaker 5: on your mind?
Speaker 11: Great?
Speaker 24: Not much, Hey, you've been been very blessed. Been to
Speaker 24: Augusta National for uh oh practic and the regular rounds.
Speaker 24: That's a side that you've got to take and if
Speaker 24: you if you ever get the opportunity. But great story.
Speaker 24: You were just talking about Lambeau. We had an opportunity
Speaker 24: to go up there a few weeks ago for the
Speaker 24: Thursday night game against the Washington Commanders.
Speaker 6: Although I still call him the redskin kid.
Speaker 24: Yeah, and great story. But first of all, you got
Speaker 24: to take in the sights. I'm glad you're gonna get
Speaker 24: into the museum. But so we were in the in
Speaker 24: the seats on the lower area and there was a
Speaker 24: medical emergency enough to make fun of that, and a
Speaker 24: gentleman was having a really bad time.
Speaker 6: We had to carry him up to the to the tunnel.
Speaker 24: The EMTs came and was working on him and he
Speaker 24: was in kind of bad shape. But ten minutes later
Speaker 24: is his buddy who was with him comes back down.
Speaker 16: He's set in his seats.
Speaker 24: And I looked over and I said, hey man.
Speaker 11: I said, how's your friend?
Speaker 5: What's going on?
Speaker 6: He goes, well, he.
Speaker 7: Seems to be doing all care.
Speaker 24: Now they're take him to the hospital, he said, But
Speaker 24: I drove two and a half hours to come watch
Speaker 24: the game. So I'm gonna get them that after the
Speaker 24: after the game's arm and gonna pick them up.
Speaker 5: That's awesome. I came all this way to watch a
Speaker 5: game at Lambeau. I canna go to the hospital with
Speaker 5: my friend. He got the doctors there, he's fine.
Speaker 25: That's exactly what he said. And we just looked each
Speaker 25: other and laughed, you know.
Speaker 24: And and I'm a Bengals fans, but obviously my customer
Speaker 24: gave me the tickets and couldn't turn down the opportunity.
Speaker 6: But that's awesome. But glad to hear you're going. You're
Speaker 6: gonna love it.
Speaker 19: Great fans.
Speaker 24: They don't care if you're opposing team. They treat you
Speaker 24: with respect. There was three women, older women setting in
Speaker 24: front of us, and they would come out to the
Speaker 24: formation and these women were calling the plays and the
Speaker 24: formations those anybody.
Speaker 5: Else they know they're football man, Yeah, they sure do.
Speaker 5: But glad to hear your going. Hope you have a
Speaker 5: good time, Glenn, Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean the Packers and like their season tickets is
Speaker 5: like legendary. I don't know if you know the story,
Speaker 5: but you know, people when their babies are born immediately
Speaker 5: put them on the Packers' season ticket waiting list. Has
Speaker 5: actually saw a tweet this morning from Darren Revel, the
Speaker 5: sports business reporter used to be with ESPN. He's now
Speaker 5: with collect Media, and he said he started an experiment
Speaker 5: nineteen years ago, in two thousand and six, he put
Speaker 5: his name on the Packers season ticket waiting list just
Speaker 5: to see how much his name moves.
Speaker 6: Over the years.
Speaker 5: So in two thousand and six when he put his
Speaker 5: name on the list, he was seventy three thousand, two
Speaker 5: hundred and fifty seventh, seventy three thousand, two hundred and
Speaker 5: fifty seventh. Nineteen years later he got his updated report.
Speaker 5: He gets one every year, but here nineteen years later,
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty five, he is at forty eight thousand,
Speaker 5: six hundred and sixty ninth. So he's moved up twenty
Speaker 5: five thousand spots in twenty years and is still forty
Speaker 5: eight thousand spots away for Packers to season tickets. That's unbelievable.
Speaker 5: Let's go to Doug in Cincinnati. What's up, Doug?
Speaker 19: In twenty years and it's still forty eight.
Speaker 6: Oh, Doug's gonna catch up in just a second. He's
Speaker 6: listening to me. Hey, Doug, what's up?
Speaker 7: Well?
Speaker 3: I was calling about sports, and I would like people
Speaker 3: to think that our sports are us running marathons, running or.
Speaker 7: Haddling.
Speaker 4: Sports are us.
Speaker 5: I like that, Doug, Thank you very much. Let's go
Speaker 5: to Jeff in Virginia. Jeff beat that.
Speaker 26: Jeff and Kenwood Rightwood. I went went over to Indian
Speaker 26: Hill to catch our stud quarterback and it's forty two
Speaker 26: to nothing at halftime. So I'm right down the street
Speaker 26: from you, getting ready to get some ice cream.
Speaker 6: Right here, you Gov, But.
Speaker 26: Much like yourself, I'm going to Lambeau next Sunday. I've
Speaker 26: never been. I'm really blessed. My list is so short.
Speaker 26: I've been to World Series, SEC Championship games, Stanley Cup,
Speaker 26: Super Bowls. Yeah, when the Caps made that run in
Speaker 26: twenty nineteen, I got to go to one of those
Speaker 26: games between the Reds and the Nats. With the World Series.
Speaker 26: I've been really, really blessed. But next year I just
Speaker 26: found out last month I won the lottery for the
Speaker 26: British Open and I was looking at the calendar. I'm
Speaker 26: going to try to pull off the trifecta of Wimbledon
Speaker 26: F one race and the British Open if possible.
Speaker 6: That's like a sneaky good one would be Wimbledon.
Speaker 26: Yeah, any F one race is probably the top of
Speaker 26: my list right now, but none of none of the
Speaker 26: ones they're in the US. I want to go to
Speaker 26: one of the ones in Europe. But if I can
Speaker 26: squeeze that out in three weeks and maybe even jump
Speaker 26: over and catch the Tour de France for one day,
Speaker 26: that would be about as good as it gets, I think.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't know that.
Speaker 11: Well.
Speaker 26: And plus, while I'm the two days I'm at the
Speaker 26: British Open are the semifinals of the World Cup, and
Speaker 26: heaven forbid, England is in the semifinals.
Speaker 11: Of the World Cup.
Speaker 26: It'll it'll make the Ryder Cup last weekend look like
Speaker 26: a little baby's crib if England's in the in the
Speaker 26: Ryder Cup.
Speaker 6: Yes, yeah, that's that's awesome.
Speaker 26: Great topic. Yeah, great topic. Thanks for hosting Austin.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Jeff, thanks for calling in. I appreciate that and I.
Speaker 5: I'm sure we'll see each other in Green Bay. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean, I mean that that's hard to beat. I
Speaker 5: have one of our co workers got to golf at
Speaker 5: Royal Liverpool, which I mean, that's pretty tough to be.
Speaker 23: That's another on my list, yeah, is to play the
Speaker 23: old course Saint Andrews. Yes, which is which is attainable.
Speaker 23: That is That's what I was thinking, that that is attainable.
Speaker 23: So that in terms of you know, Doug was talking
Speaker 23: about like sports that we actually do. I have a
Speaker 23: long list of golf courses that I would love I
Speaker 23: would love to play.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 23: I was just thinking, I'm going to play Augusta the
Speaker 23: seventh at Pebble Beach and yeah, like Pebble Beach would
Speaker 23: be on that list.
Speaker 6: Probably.
Speaker 23: There's there's a ton of golf courses that I would
Speaker 23: love to play throughout the world.
Speaker 5: You know, our guy Bill Cunningham, Willie, he had an
Speaker 5: opportunity to play Augusta National and he turned it down
Speaker 5: to interview a political leader.
Speaker 23: Well, the next time I see Willie, I might just
Speaker 23: smack him up. That's what I told him. I said,
Speaker 23: I've lost all respect for you. I won't name the
Speaker 23: political leader that he interviewed. I don't want to call it.
Speaker 23: That's not that this isn't that type of show. But
Speaker 23: he had been waiting for years, and he the way
Speaker 23: he told the story to me at least, was the
Speaker 23: person that his contact at Augusta had called him and said,
Speaker 23: we can get you on. You fly down tomorrow morning
Speaker 23: at you know, seven am. We get there, you golf,
Speaker 23: you fly back, you're back home at eight, eight o'clock
Speaker 23: at night. It was a The whole thing was a
Speaker 23: thirteen hour ordeal. And he's had to say no, I mean,
Speaker 23: that's incredible. Can't believe.
Speaker 5: Let's go to Mount Orab and talk to Mike. Mike,
Speaker 5: what's on your sports bucket list?
Speaker 7: Hey, Austin, thanks taking my call.
Speaker 4: I was a friend of mine.
Speaker 12: He went to every single major league park.
Speaker 24: In the United States, and him and his son did
Speaker 24: And I'm telling you what, father and son to take
Speaker 24: trips like that.
Speaker 3: That's just awesome.
Speaker 7: That would be that would be great.
Speaker 6: That is really cool.
Speaker 5: I've I've met a lot of people because I go
Speaker 5: to a lot of baseball games. I went to to
Speaker 5: twenty five Reds games this year, and I saw him
Speaker 5: on the road a few times. And I went to
Speaker 5: the Bristol Debacle and all that, and there are so
Speaker 5: many people that they they set out to do that
Speaker 5: over the course of a single summer, and that just
Speaker 5: sounds like so much fun to me to go to
Speaker 5: all those balls.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, that would be great.
Speaker 6: Do you do you have a favorite ballpark, Mike.
Speaker 7: I'd like to see Fenway, be honest, Yeah, that would
Speaker 7: be That would be a good one. Yeah.
Speaker 6: I'm right there with you, Mike. Thank you for the
Speaker 6: phone call.
Speaker 7: All right, thanks luck guy.
Speaker 6: That's good stuff there.
Speaker 5: I mean the ballparks that I would most want to
Speaker 5: go to, not besides Fenway Park, Oracle Park in San
Speaker 5: Francisco looks really cool. That looks like one of those
Speaker 5: picturesque different level of ballparks. Yankee Stadium doesn't have the
Speaker 5: same allure that the old Yankee Stadium had to me
Speaker 5: the new one. And I know people that have been
Speaker 5: to that stadium and they say it's fine, it's nothing special.
Speaker 5: But yeah, talking sports bucket lists right here on Sports
Speaker 5: Talk seven hundred WLW. Got a little bit of time
Speaker 5: before the news, and it would behoove me not to
Speaker 5: be late again. I don't want to upset Jack Crumley.
Speaker 5: I'm Austin Omore. This is Sports Talk. We're off the
Speaker 5: beaten path on a Friday night talking about sports bucket lists.
Speaker 5: Because I'm going to lambeau Field next week. We'll continue
Speaker 5: the conversation half the news. We do have a minute
Speaker 5: or so here to talk to Dick in Dayton. Hello, Richard,
Speaker 5: what's up?
Speaker 27: Hello Austin, How are you, buddy?
Speaker 6: I'm wonderful man. What's going on? What are you up
Speaker 6: to tonight?
Speaker 8: Well?
Speaker 27: Nothing, I'm just watching TV. But was telling your screener.
Speaker 27: I think the bucket list I would want to do
Speaker 27: is I have much music and my friends. I would
Speaker 27: love to go to Nashville, Oh, perform down there, maybe
Speaker 27: as a group, you know, maybe go to the Kentucky
Speaker 27: Bluegrass Festival.
Speaker 5: Okay, but what about like like what about like the
Speaker 5: Grand Old Opry.
Speaker 6: That'd be kind of cool.
Speaker 27: Oh yeah yeah, woa yeah yeah. But another thing too,
Speaker 27: I was honored that I got to meet with Dave.
Speaker 27: I think that was one of the best things the
Speaker 27: iHeartRadio in Cincinnati to meet you guys there.
Speaker 5: You know, like, yeah, that was that was one of
Speaker 5: your bucket lists. You got to come down here and
Speaker 5: meet all of us and.
Speaker 6: Hang out for a couple of guys.
Speaker 27: Yeah, yeah, I haven't talked to Dave, but I thought
Speaker 27: that would be and then, uh, you know, in my
Speaker 27: musical career, I'm making a lot of friends. But I'd
Speaker 27: say that's a pretty good bucket list.
Speaker 6: That's a that's a great one.
Speaker 7: Dick.
Speaker 5: Thanks for the call, buddy. Okay, Yeah, you know, Dick
Speaker 5: is a huge fan of us and listens to us
Speaker 5: all the time, so it was a pleasure to meet
Speaker 5: him a couple of months back. We'll take a break,
Speaker 5: we'll continue. I just thought of two more for my
Speaker 5: bucket list. Michael is in Lynchburg. We'll talk to him
Speaker 5: as well. This is Sports Talk on a Friday night,
Speaker 5: seven hundred WLW.
Speaker 6: You're WLW high.
Speaker 5: I'm Austin Elmore with you for the next twenty minutes
Speaker 5: in for Lance McAllister coming up after the nine o'clock news.
Speaker 5: That'll be our friend Sterling. Sterling will take you up
Speaker 5: to midnight tonight here on the big one off the
Speaker 5: beaten Path. We're talking sports bucket lists in honor of
Speaker 5: my trip to lambeau Field next week to watch the
Speaker 5: Bengals and the Packers. And although I don't have high
Speaker 5: expectations for the Bengals. I do have high expectations for
Speaker 5: lambeau Field and crossing that off my bucket list. I
Speaker 5: was thinking of another one too, the Rose Bowl. The
Speaker 5: Rose Bowl would just be chef's kiss for me. Don't
Speaker 5: even care whose plan doesn't have to be my Ohio
Speaker 5: State Buckeyes that setting Pasadena, California, January first, to go
Speaker 5: to the Rose Parade, the whole experience. How awesome would
Speaker 5: that be? To go to the the big stealth bomber
Speaker 5: that flies over, that would be so sick. Let's go
Speaker 5: to Lynchburg. Let's talk to Michael, find out what's on
Speaker 5: his sports bucket list.
Speaker 25: What's up, Michael, Hey, Als, how you doing tonight?
Speaker 6: I'm wonderful man.
Speaker 25: So I have been to two of my bucket lists.
Speaker 25: I have been to Cubs and Reds game at Wrigley
Speaker 25: Field and we sat out on the bleachers. It was
Speaker 25: so much fun, got very fun.
Speaker 5: Those people in the bleachers are crazy at Wrigley Field.
Speaker 25: Yes, yes there. But I've also been to a Nordre
Speaker 25: Dame game twice at Norda me chills man. And my
Speaker 25: next one I want to do. I want to go
Speaker 25: to WrestleMania.
Speaker 5: Oh, okay, that's a I kind of forgot about that.
Speaker 5: I was in Phoenix one year when WrestleMania was at
Speaker 5: State Farm Stadium there in Glendale. I did not go
Speaker 5: to the event, but the setup for it was insane.
Speaker 5: I'd never seen anything like that. That's a good one.
Speaker 5: That may reminds me two of the Western the Waste
Speaker 5: Management open out there in Phoenix, which is a crazy
Speaker 5: golf turned especially that was it the sixteenth hole or
Speaker 5: whatever that is. That's awesome though, I mean Notre Dame,
Speaker 5: so like, who did they play?
Speaker 25: The first game I went to, they played in Massachusetts,
Speaker 25: and then the second one I went to, they played
Speaker 25: the Miami Hurricane.
Speaker 6: Okay, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 25: My brother, my brother is a Hurricane sand and I
Speaker 25: got thrubbing in a safe that Dame won that game.
Speaker 5: So a little bit of trash talk that that's off.
Speaker 5: That's a great one, Michael, thanks for calling man, Thank you.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Notre Dame legendary stadium. I mean I don't I don't
Speaker 5: have like any real connection to Notre Dame or like,
Speaker 5: but that is that. That's I think in the same
Speaker 5: vein as lambeau Field in the sense of like just
Speaker 5: a historic venue for what it means to college football
Speaker 5: and the history of college football. I feel that way
Speaker 5: a little bit about Ohio Stadium as well. If you've
Speaker 5: never been inside Ohio Stadium, you should go. Even if
Speaker 5: you hate Ohio State, and I know a lot of
Speaker 5: people here do, but just the enormity of Ohio Stadium
Speaker 5: and how big it feels when one hundred thousand are
Speaker 5: all cheering is hard to beat. And I'm sure Notre
Speaker 5: Dame is very similar. Drew, you said you had another
Speaker 5: one that you got to experience.
Speaker 23: Yes, the Lahina Civic Center in Maui for the Maui Invitational.
Speaker 6: That's a good one.
Speaker 5: College basketball enters the Fray the Maui Invitational, Yes, the
Speaker 5: first tournament of the year basically right.
Speaker 23: Pretty much, Yes, so you always know it's over Thanksgiving week.
Speaker 23: I've been lucky to lucky enough to go out there twice.
Speaker 23: I went in twenty nineteen oh when Dayton had that
Speaker 23: very very good team. They played Kansas in the final,
Speaker 23: who was also I believe they were the number three
Speaker 23: ranked team at the time. So you basically saw a
Speaker 23: final four game and what is essentially high school gym
Speaker 23: that's crazy. It is because there was no Final four
Speaker 23: that year. That's right, correct, that that was the COVID year.
Speaker 23: And that game was just it was so loud. The
Speaker 23: sound was just reverberating everywhere around you. You know you're
Speaker 23: sitting it literally is because like one side of the
Speaker 23: arena was Dayton fans and then the other side of
Speaker 23: the arena were Kansas fans. A high schools, yeah, like
Speaker 23: a true high school game, but it was two high
Speaker 23: level college basketball teams playing against each other. And then
Speaker 23: I also crossed off playing the Plantation Course in Conna Pauli,
Speaker 23: which is where the kapelou excuse me, which is where
Speaker 23: the PGA Tournament of Champions is always held in January.
Speaker 23: So I got to play that this past event that
Speaker 23: is in Maui. Yes, so I got to do that
Speaker 23: this past time.
Speaker 6: This do you have a home there all the time?
Speaker 6: Twice in six years.
Speaker 23: And my dad, who was a University of Dayton graduate,
Speaker 23: you know, he's he's sixty five years old. We went
Speaker 23: out in twenty nineteen and he told us he goes, well, guys,
Speaker 23: whenever Dayton's out here, I'm coming out here, told dead.
Speaker 6: So if you guys want to come. You let me know.
Speaker 23: That's a good move right there. So that's yes, that's
Speaker 23: the couple that I've gotten across.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Mauley is in and of itself a bucket list
Speaker 5: I'm sure for a lot of people. And yeah, college basketball.
Speaker 5: I've been to some First four games in Dayton, so
Speaker 5: I guess the NCAA Tournament you can cross that off.
Speaker 5: I know it's not the exact same environment, the exact
Speaker 5: same thing you're looking for. It did make me think, though,
Speaker 5: a Duke North Carolina game at Cameron Indoor in that
Speaker 5: stadium would be pretty cool because that's another really intimate,
Speaker 5: really small venue that is a huge part of college basketball.
Speaker 5: So that's one that comes from I'm trying to think,
Speaker 5: like a an NBA Finals game. It obviously depends on
Speaker 5: the team and the player, whether that be like a
Speaker 5: Michael like a Lebron James.
Speaker 6: I guess that would be kind of cool.
Speaker 23: I have been to Cameron Indoor, yes, when I was
Speaker 23: very young. I was I think I was six or
Speaker 23: seven years old. Maybe Dayton played there. I believe it's
Speaker 23: two thousand and three. If you can't well, if you
Speaker 23: can't tell, Drew is a big Daton fan.
Speaker 6: That's true.
Speaker 23: I believe that was like the Reddick team, like JJ,
Speaker 23: like that team was really really good. We went to
Speaker 23: so we went to that game. We got to see
Speaker 23: a game there. Awesome place. Like you know, it's kind
Speaker 23: of the same principles as you have put at Ohio Stadium,
Speaker 23: but different because of how small it is. Sure like
Speaker 23: Cameron Indoor is a is a small gym, but it's
Speaker 23: you know, the history. You walk into it, you can
Speaker 23: you know, you just see, Yeah, you look out on
Speaker 23: the court and you just think about all the moments
Speaker 23: that have happened on that on that floor.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's a that's cool. That's a really good one.
Speaker 5: Let's go back to the phones five one, three, seven, nine,
Speaker 5: seven thousand sports bucket lists on this off the beaten
Speaker 5: path on a Friday night. Let's go to Franklin and
Speaker 5: talk to Wayne. Wayne, what's up?
Speaker 4: Hey, I got two that I got to cross off
Speaker 4: my list, all right, hit me one with the Kentucky Derby,
Speaker 4: Oh great one. Yeah, and the other one was the
Speaker 4: Indianapoli Spike hundred.
Speaker 6: Yes, that's another good one.
Speaker 5: Now, did you go to the infield at the NDY
Speaker 5: five hundred because I've heard that place and of itself
Speaker 5: is is it just a ridiculous experience?
Speaker 4: It's a zoom that's the only.
Speaker 7: Thing you can say.
Speaker 4: It's not for a children under eighteen.
Speaker 5: So what was like take me through the Kentucky Derby, Like,
Speaker 5: what was that?
Speaker 21: Like?
Speaker 6: What was your favorite part?
Speaker 21: Uh?
Speaker 4: Probably about an hour before it's post time, seeing all that,
Speaker 4: how people dress. You have a women in their hat,
Speaker 4: a drinking of the mint ju look, which I didn't try.
Speaker 4: I stuck with bourbon. It was just the whole abbiance
Speaker 4: of it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, kind of like the the experience of just like
Speaker 5: participating in this thing with everyone.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all right, well great show, buddy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Wayne, thank you, I appreciate. That's a good one.
Speaker 5: I had written down Kentucky Derby. I hadn't talked about
Speaker 5: it yet. I've never been to like a legit horse race.
Speaker 5: I've been to like some of the smaller ones, and
Speaker 5: admittedly I don't know very much about horse racing or
Speaker 5: gambling or anything when it comes to that sense. But yeah,
Speaker 5: Kentucky Derby, I mean the just the image of the building,
Speaker 5: I guess is the best way to say it. The
Speaker 5: I don't know if it's a clubhouse or this this
Speaker 5: what am I thinking of the stables? That's what I'm
Speaker 5: trying to say, the stables. Let's go to John and Cincinnati.
Speaker 5: What's up, John?
Speaker 7: I have an unusual one.
Speaker 21: My daughter made it to the American Ninja Warrior, and
Speaker 21: I'd like to see her real show.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 21: She beat out a lady that actually was on this show,
Speaker 21: which I think was cool. Yeah, and then when she
Speaker 21: was offered to go up there, she couldn't. She says
Speaker 21: she's going to try again. She couldn't because she had
Speaker 21: an important exam. Oh my god, damn, this exam couldn't
Speaker 21: can be repeated, Right, you didn't take you can say
Speaker 21: that day she would have been out.
Speaker 4: Wow, that's it's a poll bolter.
Speaker 21: So certain mountain climbers I think make make good and
Speaker 21: poll all kinds of Yeah, different sports people make it
Speaker 21: to the show.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's fascinating, John, thank you for the call. That's
Speaker 5: a really good one. I hadn't thought about that, like, uh,
Speaker 5: the I mean just the sheer strength, that's that. That
Speaker 5: sort of stuff takes. Which he talked about pole vaulting
Speaker 5: and kind of those other different Olympic style sports, which
Speaker 5: brings up the Olympics. How could you not want to
Speaker 5: go to the Olympics, Like specifically Olympic swimming. I think
Speaker 5: would be really cool. To watch track and field I'm
Speaker 5: enamored with. I love to watch track and field when
Speaker 5: that's in season. Some of the other like Olympic sports
Speaker 5: like speed.
Speaker 6: Skating, I think would be cool.
Speaker 5: I might just be nerding out on that one, but
Speaker 5: speed skating or a hockey Olympic hockey, just especially after
Speaker 5: what we saw with the four nations face off last year,
Speaker 5: that would be kind of cool. All right, now we're
Speaker 5: getting into it. Let's go to Brooksville, Kentucky and talk
Speaker 5: to Matt.
Speaker 15: What's up, Matt, Hey, how are you doing.
Speaker 6: I'm wonderful. What's on your mind?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 15: I have two off my bucket list and I've got
Speaker 15: one that I can just say I did.
Speaker 6: It, Okay, hit me.
Speaker 15: The two bucket lists was the Kentucky Derby. It was
Speaker 15: the year that affirmed one the triple crown and him
Speaker 15: and aladar Ran, Neck and net Man. They're all three races.
Speaker 6: That's cool, that's really cool.
Speaker 15: The other was Municipal Stadium in Cleveland. It wasn't for
Speaker 15: a sporting event. I got to see the rolling Stones
Speaker 15: council pair.
Speaker 6: That's awesome, that's really cool.
Speaker 15: Yeah, and then the one, the one a couple of
Speaker 15: the Municipal stadium, it's not there. The third one is
Speaker 15: just to say I did it. I've been there many times.
Speaker 15: I thought the place was pasted. Cincinnati Gardens.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, I got to go to sin Cincinnati
Speaker 5: Gardens once and I think it was for like a
Speaker 5: Cincinnati Jungle Cats game, like Arena football. But I thought
Speaker 5: it was a really cool place. It was kind of
Speaker 5: old obviously at that point, but yeah, that's a good.
Speaker 15: But I was there to see hockey games, saw to
Speaker 15: Xavier basketball games there, saw the Shrine circus there two
Speaker 15: or three times, and I just love the place.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 5: There's there's a lot of people in matt thank you
Speaker 5: for the phone call that I've heard over the years
Speaker 5: that have spoken glowingly at their memories of the Cincinnati Gardens,
Speaker 5: especially back when the Royals were there way back in
Speaker 5: the day in the NBA, which it kind of makes
Speaker 5: me think now he mentioned Xavier basketball. I have lived
Speaker 5: in this city and been in this business for nearly
Speaker 5: ten years now. I have not been to a crosstown
Speaker 5: shootout between Xavier and Cincinnati, and obviously that they're they're
Speaker 5: back and have been for a while now on campus
Speaker 5: for each that would be really cool. That would be
Speaker 5: cool to see, just because I get to experience it
Speaker 5: every day, the true dislike for one another between Xavior
Speaker 5: and Cincinnati. That would be cool to see. Let's go
Speaker 5: out to Batavia, Batavia and talk to Joe. What's up, Joe?
Speaker 7: Hey, how are we doing?
Speaker 6: I'm great man.
Speaker 8: Uh So I want to set this up. So me
Speaker 8: and my.
Speaker 11: Brother, well half brother whatever, grew up, whatever got tickets,
Speaker 11: got tickets to that. I think it was the Bengals
Speaker 11: and Cardinals maybe.
Speaker 10: But we went to the game.
Speaker 8: Where Jerome Simpson did the summersault.
Speaker 7: Yes, yes, I was there. Me and my brother were there.
Speaker 7: We were at the opposite end zone.
Speaker 11: All I saw were his feet in the air, I
Speaker 11: over the heads of everybody else.
Speaker 7: Where we were sitting.
Speaker 8: We had to look up at the jumbo tron and
Speaker 8: we saw him do the summersault and it was insane.
Speaker 8: Me and my brother we high five, We hugged like
Speaker 8: we we made up for all our past transgressions.
Speaker 6: That was That was Christmas Eve. If I'm not mistaken
Speaker 6: it was.
Speaker 7: It was, Yeah, it was.
Speaker 8: It was awesome.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a great, Thanks Joe, that's a great that's
Speaker 5: a sports moment there. I was at that game as well,
Speaker 5: and it was a Christmas Eve game. I want to
Speaker 5: say this was twenty eleven. I think it was Andy
Speaker 5: Dalton's rookie year that Jerome Simpson gets the ball in
Speaker 5: this crosser route, gets a block, is running to the
Speaker 5: end zone and just flips over a guy. If you're
Speaker 5: a Cincinnati sports fan, you've seen the clip a thousand times.
Speaker 6: I was lucky.
Speaker 5: We were six rows up in that corner of the
Speaker 5: end zone, so I saw it, like with the naked
Speaker 5: eye right in front of me, clear as day, and
Speaker 5: could not believe what I had just seen. I mean,
Speaker 5: that was That was one of those moments where you're like,
Speaker 5: what the heck is happening. Another one that comes to
Speaker 5: mind when you think of a moment was the two
Speaker 5: thousand and nine Bengals opener against the Denver Broncos. The
Speaker 5: Bengals had been awful on offense all day long, and
Speaker 5: Cedric Benson scores a touchdown with twelve seconds left. I
Speaker 5: want to say, or it might have been like thirty
Speaker 5: thirty five seconds left and Denver with I believe Kyle
Speaker 5: Orton as their quarterback throws one up. It's tipped by
Speaker 5: Leon Hall, caught by Brandon Stokely, taken to the house.
Speaker 5: Gus Johnson loses his marbles in the broadcast booth and
Speaker 5: Cincinnati loses the opener. I think the final score was
Speaker 5: twelve to seven. You want to talk about some heartbreak
Speaker 5: right there for a young man like me, Let's go
Speaker 5: to Pat in Dayton.
Speaker 6: We you got Pat.
Speaker 11: Hey, what's up man? I was just about fifteen years ago.
Speaker 11: I went to a sugar Shane Moseley ooh, and caught
Speaker 11: for guests boxing match in Vegas.
Speaker 6: Huh.
Speaker 11: And you want to talk about saying, where you're in
Speaker 11: a stadium and you've never seen a place like that
Speaker 11: in arena and the way the punch is hitt, I
Speaker 11: mean you can hear them from everywhere in that place.
Speaker 11: And the other thing, it's a smaller arena and you
Speaker 11: brush shoulders with I mean, my nephew was like twelve
Speaker 11: at the time and he got pictures with the vander Holyfield,
Speaker 11: Rashid Wallace. Oh my god, he had no clue who
Speaker 11: these people were, but I'm.
Speaker 7: Like, man, get a picture.
Speaker 11: I'm like a picture that's Vander Holyfield, Like look.
Speaker 3: At his ear.
Speaker 11: Oh, Christian Slater and you know all these celebrities that
Speaker 11: you're just walking by you. It was blew me away.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a great one. Thank you for the call, Pat,
Speaker 5: that's really good. I hadn't thought about a boxing match,
Speaker 5: but I've heard that in the past, like with NFL games,
Speaker 5: like you don't realize how violent it is unless you're
Speaker 5: on the sidelines and you can like hear them hitting
Speaker 5: each other. I never would have thought about that with boxing,
Speaker 5: but that's a great observation one that I did not
Speaker 5: think of. If somebody brought to the table at the time,
Speaker 5: fight would be really really cool. Yeah, yeah, that would
Speaker 5: be cool, especially in those those types of arenas. We
Speaker 5: got time for one more. Let's talk to John and Anderson. John,
Speaker 5: you're finishing it off tonight. What do you got for us?
Speaker 12: Thanks?
Speaker 2: Brother.
Speaker 14: I got two of them boats baseball related. The first
Speaker 14: one trip to Cooperstown to see Mark and get inducted.
Speaker 6: Oh, that was just awesome.
Speaker 12: Uh.
Speaker 14: And the next I got to see the Red Steet
Speaker 14: the Red Sox at Senway.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 5: I've heard a lot of good things about Cooperstown, and
Speaker 5: you got to be there for a red being inducted.
Speaker 5: That's even cooler than normal.
Speaker 14: Oh man, you're bumping elbows with all the greats just
Speaker 14: walking down the street. Can't put a price.
Speaker 5: On that because it's a really small town, right, It's
Speaker 5: just that it's basically just the Hall of Fame.
Speaker 14: Oh yeah, it's the smallest town. It's just little stores
Speaker 14: here and there, little rep Thank you, aunt. I mean
Speaker 14: you're walking in and Pete Rose is walking down the
Speaker 14: street next to you, Eric Davis down the hall.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it was awesome.
Speaker 6: That's cool John, Thank you. Man, I appreciate the.
Speaker 14: Call, no problem, thank you.
Speaker 6: That is that's good stuff.
Speaker 5: I was hoping that the topic would take off a
Speaker 5: little bit and we'd get to hear some sports bucket listen,
Speaker 5: and gladly we did, and there were some good ones
Speaker 5: in there, and definitely some ones that I hadn't thought of.
Speaker 5: So I appreciate everybody for being a part of the
Speaker 5: show that way. I'm out of time, though, which means
Speaker 5: I going to turn things over to Sterling. Sterling's going
Speaker 5: to take you up nine to midnight. If you liked
Speaker 5: what you heard tonight. You can hear me weekdays from
Speaker 5: noon to three on ESPN fifteen thirty. I co host
Speaker 5: Cincy three sixty over there with Tony Pike. I also
Speaker 5: have a podcast. It's a Bengals podcast. It's called Ball
Speaker 5: Don't Lie. It's available wherever you get your podcast. You
Speaker 5: can also follow me on all social media at audiel
Speaker 5: more au, T y E L M O R E my.
Speaker 5: Thanks to Sean McMahon and Drew Wester Heidi for producing
Speaker 5: this show tonight. Sterling is next right here on the
Speaker 5: home of the best Bengals coverage, News Radio seven hundred WLW,
Speaker 5: Cincinnati