Speaker 1: It's time for the Happy Half Hour with your friends
Speaker 1: Kristen Balboni, Will Brian and Darren Gann. Welcome to Happy
Speaker 1: Half Hour. It is Will in Darren here for the
Speaker 1: second week of the off season. Darren, you had quite
Speaker 1: a weekend doing what nothing? Yeah? How about that? It
Speaker 1: was I I am pro blizzard. I really am. A
Speaker 1: too many years into Boy Scouts has made me a
Speaker 1: true nerd about preparation. So I made three or four
Speaker 1: trips to the Harris Teeter like last Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,
Speaker 1: and by the time Saturday rolled around before the first
Speaker 1: flake fell, I was like, I'm ready. I am totally
Speaker 1: prepared for this blizzard. Bring it. You know, probably spent
Speaker 1: two hundred bucks on grocery. His wife's looking at me, like,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? What are we gonna do with
Speaker 1: all this food? We're gonna eat it, That's what we're
Speaker 1: gonna do. We're gonna cook it, we're gonna eat it,
Speaker 1: We're gonna take naps, and we're just not gonna do
Speaker 1: anything else. And it was glorious. What was what was
Speaker 1: your Sunday morning meal with the snow coming down? With
Speaker 1: the snow coming down, well, it was kind of a
Speaker 1: brunch situation by that time. But I did make French
Speaker 1: toast with some leftover egg nog and uh it's some
Speaker 1: deconstructed stuck ease pecon logs that were provided to me
Speaker 1: by a friend of the show, Will Brian. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it was good. It was good times. We big big
Speaker 1: carb weekend, Big Carb weekend, A lot of French toast,
Speaker 1: a lot of jump I, a lot of starch, a
Speaker 1: lot of mashed potatoes, roast chicken. It was just, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a good time. I am pro blizzard. We should
Speaker 1: have more of them. When we may have another one,
Speaker 1: we'll see. It might be a little too warm because
Speaker 1: it's coming from the other other coast to the east coast.
Speaker 1: You know, that's all right, A little a small blizzard
Speaker 1: is the right amount out. If we ever got twelve
Speaker 1: inches of snow in this town again, it would just
Speaker 1: be chaos for a week and a half and nobody
Speaker 1: really needs that. But like a three day blizzard, that's
Speaker 1: the appropriate amount of blizzard in Charlotte, North Carolina. And
Speaker 1: there were football games on for us to watch. What
Speaker 1: do you think about some of those that forty Niners
Speaker 1: Cowboys finish. Um, that was quite a finish. I'm here
Speaker 1: for the chaos and thank god for the Cowboys for
Speaker 1: providing on a routine basis they are. It's good to
Speaker 1: be dependable, and it's good for people to know what
Speaker 1: to expect from you. And we know that the Cowboys
Speaker 1: can fail in ridiculous and unusual ways in the postseason.
Speaker 1: That's what they do. Um. You know you like the
Speaker 1: theory of the play called the Execution was just a
Speaker 1: hot mess, as we've come to expect with Alice. But um,
Speaker 1: for the most part, a lot of those games were
Speaker 1: a little underwhelming and it did you believe me thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, we needed an extra team of this? Did
Speaker 1: we really need the Steelers and the Eagles in the
Speaker 1: playoffs based on what we saw out of them over
Speaker 1: the weekend? Um, But it's it is novel seeing some
Speaker 1: of the stuff, like, you know, just Josh Allen going
Speaker 1: crazy and doing turned back the Clock. I made a
Speaker 1: lot of friends in Buffalo during that game by saying
Speaker 1: all this Josh Allen stuff would be cool and new
Speaker 1: and unique, except I saw it all in Charlotte ten
Speaker 1: years ago when Cam Newton did it the first time,
Speaker 1: and so people in Buffalo were really fond of hearing
Speaker 1: that they made a lot of new friends. They have,
Speaker 1: they have an interesting vocabulary. They still like the Panthers
Speaker 1: though they you know, we gave them some things that
Speaker 1: we gave them all their cool stuff like Brandon Bean
Speaker 1: and Sean McDermott so and so many players. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're a lot of fun. Um. Seeing the Bills,
Speaker 1: I mean, the idea of Bill's Chiefs, it's like, holy smokes,
Speaker 1: that's not a championship game, that's not a super Bowl.
Speaker 1: That's game. I think everybody's fired up to see, just
Speaker 1: to see which one of those quarterbacks might actually blink.
Speaker 1: And the answer might be neither one of them. So
Speaker 1: let's just see. I'm I'm here for it. Um. A
Speaker 1: lot of old people in the winter want to see
Speaker 1: chaos and defense and blah blah blah. If the divisional.
Speaker 1: If the a f C divisional game ends in a
Speaker 1: fifty two forty nine results, I'm totally fine with that.
Speaker 1: So the both of us are very online, as the
Speaker 1: kids say, unfortunately, but having been very online over the weekend,
Speaker 1: do you think that there's just a bit too much overreaction?
Speaker 1: For sure? I guess you know, some of these teams
Speaker 1: that get in maybe aren't traditional playoff teams. But to
Speaker 1: say that all of these playoff teams now should get
Speaker 1: rid of their quarterback, fire their coach, fired this guy.
Speaker 1: You know, it doesn't that seem like a bit much? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, we have gone a little crazy with it,
Speaker 1: and I mean, but that's the way it's become online
Speaker 1: and and I think that was one of the benefits.
Speaker 1: We were still online, but not as much over the weekend,
Speaker 1: and being able to step away from it sometimes offers
Speaker 1: a little perspective. But it's not. Every game in the
Speaker 1: NFL has to be a referendum on forever. And I'm
Speaker 1: like you, you can't. You know, why on Earth would
Speaker 1: they be talking about And listen, I know there's a
Speaker 1: lot of layers to what's going on in Dallas. They're
Speaker 1: afraid they might lose coordinators and dan Quinn kellmore whatever,
Speaker 1: and it's Dallas and it's Jerry Jones and nobody really
Speaker 1: knows what to expect. But when a team has this
Speaker 1: season Dallas had this year, while on Earth, would you
Speaker 1: be talking about firing a head coach? It's just amazing
Speaker 1: and ridiculous to me, um, And you would think that
Speaker 1: if Mike McCarthy got fired, he'd have another job immediately,
Speaker 1: kind of like Forest in Miami. He's probably gonna get
Speaker 1: hired this cycle. It's just a matter of where. Um.
Speaker 1: But with so many jobs open, I think people have
Speaker 1: lost sight of the fact, Yeah, these are playoff teams.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are eight jobs open right now around
Speaker 1: the NFL. So getting in the job market is not
Speaker 1: a place you want to be anyway, I mean. And
Speaker 1: that's a justification for a lot of teams to stand pad, honestly,
Speaker 1: and not just the ones um that fell out of
Speaker 1: the playoffs. So it's hard, and it's hard when people
Speaker 1: talk about building things or being consistent or doing something
Speaker 1: for the long haul, because everybody wants their answers right now.
Speaker 1: And the idea that you would fire coach in Dallas
Speaker 1: over what happened is ridiculous and embarrassing as it was,
Speaker 1: it's pretty shortsighted to me. And I do think also,
Speaker 1: and I don't know that I'm not making a judgment
Speaker 1: on good or bad, and it's probably bad, but that
Speaker 1: this is kind of the way things are now in
Speaker 1: this league. That is it really is. It's about entertainment
Speaker 1: and it's about the news cycle and the next news cycle,
Speaker 1: and you know, all of the ways that you're engaging
Speaker 1: with people, and people are obsessed six or five days
Speaker 1: a year and being boring and kind of never changed.
Speaker 1: And I don't know that it's boring, but you kind
Speaker 1: of get what I'm getting at that there's just this
Speaker 1: sense that this league is getting to a point where
Speaker 1: it is more of it is equivalent to our entertainment
Speaker 1: life cycle, which is very short and it and you
Speaker 1: just keep moving and you keep changing because that's what
Speaker 1: it requires. Right, what's the next story? What you know,
Speaker 1: the idea of somebody being consistently good. I mean the Patriots.
Speaker 1: The Patriots aren't a particularly compelling team in terms of
Speaker 1: the content that comes out of there because their personality
Speaker 1: as a franchise, it's kind of dull. My god, who's
Speaker 1: been better at football than them over the last twenty
Speaker 1: five years? Nobody? Um, and do we want that? Would
Speaker 1: you rather be exciting? I just finished, you know, last night.
Speaker 1: I'm a cord cutter, so I don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of access to local professional basketball. Watch the ESPN broadcast
Speaker 1: to the Hornets last night, and my god, they're not
Speaker 1: gonna win an NBA championship and really pretty shabby on defense,
Speaker 1: but they're fun to watch. You're entertaining. Now again, they're
Speaker 1: not winning a title all, not playing the defense the
Speaker 1: way they do, but it's still fun. And and so
Speaker 1: I think a lot of it comes down to what
Speaker 1: you want. Do you want to be constantly entertained and
Speaker 1: stimulated or do you want constant boring, drudgery consistent success.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think it's buying right, and I
Speaker 1: don't think it's gotta be one or the other. But
Speaker 1: it's like we swing wildly between these two things. Either
Speaker 1: you're Bill Belichick and you have to beat all the
Speaker 1: fun out of the world in order to succeed, or hey,
Speaker 1: sports ball, let's have fun, right, And it has to
Speaker 1: be somewhere in between and making sweeping sort of things
Speaker 1: that it's got to be one or the other. That's
Speaker 1: just not realistic because you're gonna it's gonna swing back
Speaker 1: and forth because these are still people operating this machine.
Speaker 1: So you know, human frailty is going to be part
Speaker 1: of the equation always. So, Darren, you wrote an incredible
Speaker 1: piece this week with some voices that Panther fans love
Speaker 1: to hear from Tell us about Sam Mills and all
Speaker 1: of the people that had things to say about him. Obviously,
Speaker 1: for those of you that haven't been looking at our
Speaker 1: stuff going to Panthers dot com, he was. He is
Speaker 1: a finalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. UM.
Speaker 1: There is round of voting that happened this week. UM
Speaker 1: and and Darren wrote an incredible piece about I appreciate
Speaker 1: that and and it was cool. It was one of
Speaker 1: those stories that, UM, the actual writing didn't take as
Speaker 1: long as you might think when you see all that
Speaker 1: stuff together, because it's such a lived experience. I mean,
Speaker 1: when you've absorbed twenty five years of what Sam Mills
Speaker 1: means to people, it's kind of easy to get people
Speaker 1: talking about it. And Steve Smith was amazing. And if
Speaker 1: you haven't read that story on Panthers dot Com, I
Speaker 1: had encouraged you to do so for no other reason
Speaker 1: than to see what Steve Smith said about what Sam
Speaker 1: meant to him when he was a rookie coming in
Speaker 1: being latched onto and the stuff Sam taught him about
Speaker 1: not just football, but about being a dad. And I
Speaker 1: think it was a side of Steve that a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't necessarily expect to always see, but it
Speaker 1: was it was neat. And we'll find out Sam is
Speaker 1: a finalist for the Hall of Fame. The announcement will
Speaker 1: be made February tenth at the NFL Honor Show, prior
Speaker 1: to the Super Bowl. UM, and we don't know. We
Speaker 1: don't know right now, up down, good, bad, what the
Speaker 1: news is gonna be, but we're hopeful. I mean, this
Speaker 1: was Sam's last year of eligibility. And and again it
Speaker 1: was so easy, whether it was Luke Keikley or Thomas
Speaker 1: Davis or Dan Morgan or Steve Smith, to get guys
Speaker 1: going about Sam because it's a topic that everybody into
Speaker 1: Carolina's understands the history of I was talking to some
Speaker 1: folks down in Raleigh yesterday because Sam is being inducted
Speaker 1: to the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame that's coming
Speaker 1: up in April, and we know he's in that one,
Speaker 1: UM and that's gonna be a great thing. And I
Speaker 1: was talking to some of the folks down there about him,
Speaker 1: and he said to me, the guy was talking to
Speaker 1: you said, everybody understands his story. This one touches everybody.
Speaker 1: I mean, no matter if the team's good, the team's bad,
Speaker 1: whatever it's like Sam is this permanent part of the Carolinas.
Speaker 1: And you know, because they were talking about it from
Speaker 1: the standpoint of Sam Mills from New Jersey. But he's
Speaker 1: going to North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame. But who's
Speaker 1: created more mythology in North Carolina sports than Sam Mills.
Speaker 1: It's really really short list, because keep Pounding is just
Speaker 1: one of those messages that resonates, and that was one
Speaker 1: of that was one of the other neat parts of
Speaker 1: that story is you put something like that online and
Speaker 1: you get a dozen versions of I still wear the
Speaker 1: keep Pounding bracelet every day. We started wearing it when
Speaker 1: my mom was in the hospital with breast cancer. You know,
Speaker 1: those kind of things. And when you hear what that
Speaker 1: means to the people who you know, have just been
Speaker 1: surrounded by it over the years, I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: part of our culture, uh here with this football team
Speaker 1: in the Carolinas and beyond. And you know, we'll see
Speaker 1: we've got our fingers crossed for Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1: But any any time I get a chance to talk
Speaker 1: about Sam, to write about Sam, to talk to people
Speaker 1: about Sam, that's a good day. You have some familiarity
Speaker 1: with just what the Hall of Fame is are there
Speaker 1: people that are currently in it? Because obviously it's difficult
Speaker 1: to to split hairs. I mean, there's just such incredible
Speaker 1: people that have been part of this game, and not
Speaker 1: everyone can get in every year. But are there people
Speaker 1: that are in the Hall of Fame now that are
Speaker 1: more than just stats? You know, that that had that
Speaker 1: kind of like, you know, like who what would be
Speaker 1: an example? I mean, Joe Nameth is a guy who
Speaker 1: statistically is not a Hall of Fame quarterback, and his statistics, frankly,
Speaker 1: are kind of comical related to a lot of guys
Speaker 1: were talking about in terms of the all time great quarterbacks.
Speaker 1: But he's Joe Willie Nameth for god sakes. I mean
Speaker 1: the guarantee the Jet Super Bowl, I mean, that's the
Speaker 1: game is bigger than that. I'm close friends with Kent
Speaker 1: Summers out in Arizona, who presents for the guys who
Speaker 1: came through there. And when he was talking about Kurt
Speaker 1: Warner a couple of years ago, you know, Kent and
Speaker 1: I were talking about Kurt and I said, Kurt Warner
Speaker 1: or somebody said, Warners one of the greatest stories in
Speaker 1: the history of football. And it's like Kurt Warner is
Speaker 1: one of the greatest stories in the history of stories.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's just a former grocery bagger turned MVP quarterback.
Speaker 1: That doesn't happen in real life. They should make a
Speaker 1: movie about that. Oh wait they did, um So, I mean,
Speaker 1: I I do think as a Hall of Fame, it's
Speaker 1: important to include not just the guys who have the
Speaker 1: most sacks, the most rushing yards, the most touchdown passes,
Speaker 1: but also great players who transcend just being great at football.
Speaker 1: And and that's that's the gist of what I talked
Speaker 1: about when it was when we were discussing Sam. I
Speaker 1: hope it resonated with people, uh in that room and
Speaker 1: we'll see on February ten. Yeah, and it it felt
Speaker 1: at this time, you know, where you're kind of stepping
Speaker 1: away from the season, you know, kind of taking a
Speaker 1: breath like it felt really good too. This week kind
Speaker 1: of hear the stories of keep Pounding and into kind
Speaker 1: of reintroduce that to us and too people you know,
Speaker 1: kind of on the internet. It was a kind of
Speaker 1: a jolt in the arm, I think, yeah, And I'm
Speaker 1: glad it was able to do that because again, online
Speaker 1: culture can be awfully negative all of the time, and
Speaker 1: when it's always negative all the time, that wears you out.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, being able to do stuff like this,
Speaker 1: being able to do different kind of stories, refocusing on
Speaker 1: something everybody's behind. Yeah, that's good speaking of stories of
Speaker 1: of things that are fun and not always negative. Uh, Darren,
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna close today's podcast with moments of mascots.
Speaker 1: Mascot moments, and we were talking before the podcast. It's
Speaker 1: just some things just happened to, like come up on
Speaker 1: my feed that we're very surprising to you. So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna start with you and then we'll get into me.
Speaker 1: Do you have any good mascot stories? We know we
Speaker 1: wrote a neat story on Panthers dot com about it.
Speaker 1: What a year and a half ago November twenty of
Speaker 1: Christian McCaffrey joking a mascot out of issues during a
Speaker 1: kid versus mascot football game at halftime in one of
Speaker 1: his dad's games. And and I remember talking to Christian,
Speaker 1: and I remember talking to Toro the Bull, And even
Speaker 1: though mascots aren't supposed to talk, after he and I
Speaker 1: talked for twenty minutes, I was like, wait, are you
Speaker 1: supposed to be doing this. Um, but that was a
Speaker 1: fun story and it was you know, it's always kind
Speaker 1: of interesting seeing professional athletes relate to something from their
Speaker 1: childhood or something like that. But talking to Christian about
Speaker 1: that was a need one. UM. I don't have a
Speaker 1: lot of other experience with mascots. UM. My wife's daughter
Speaker 1: once worked in a smoothie shop that had a monkey
Speaker 1: mascot suit, and I did walk around with the head
Speaker 1: on one day in the shop and that was pretty cool. Um.
Speaker 1: But that's kind of the extent my My mascot stories
Speaker 1: aren't very good. So the impetus was this was that
Speaker 1: I got a Facebook memory from ten years ago today, UM,
Speaker 1: that I shared around the studio this morning of myself
Speaker 1: as Clyde the Cougar, the mascot for College of Charleston
Speaker 1: on Anderson Cooper three sixty for their election coverage. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's hit Paulse right there. Let's just hit Paulse for
Speaker 1: a second and run through the elements of this story.
Speaker 1: College of Charleston has a mascot. His name is Clyde.
Speaker 1: He is a cougar. Anderson Cooper is in Charleston, will
Speaker 1: is in the cougar suit. Okay, I'm called up pro seed.
Speaker 1: So this was for CNNs uh Republican primary election coverage.
Speaker 1: They were in Charleston. I was working for the College
Speaker 1: of Charleston. Students are still in winter break. So our
Speaker 1: marketing people got a call that they wanted the Cougar
Speaker 1: mascot on The Anderson Cooper Show. And there's nobody in
Speaker 1: the office. There's nobody there to do it. It's so
Speaker 1: it was like, well, you're in the Cougar deal. That
Speaker 1: was you know, other this is other duties as a
Speaker 1: signed But at the same time, I'm kind of like,
Speaker 1: this would be kind of cool, you know, growing up
Speaker 1: around sports, you know, as a kid, you're always like,
Speaker 1: how cool would it be to be the mascot? You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, So I I put it on. I
Speaker 1: went there. Uh was sitting in the green room with
Speaker 1: the head on next to Ari Fleischer, which was I
Speaker 1: think fun for him. This is like an ESPN commercial.
Speaker 1: Is just sitting there, just sitting there in the room
Speaker 1: talking to Ari Fleischer, and um, who was the guy
Speaker 1: that was Clinton's uh, the guy with the tall guy,
Speaker 1: the ball guy that worked for Clinton back mcgon uh No,
Speaker 1: not him, the other one kind of narrow eyes anyway. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you've got the head on. Got the head on
Speaker 1: sitting in the green room just and they're they're asking
Speaker 1: me questions thinking I'm a student, and I'm just going
Speaker 1: with it. So then it's like the end of their show, um,
Speaker 1: and they just say just go out there and kind
Speaker 1: of pump up the crowd. Anderson Cooper is gonna cue
Speaker 1: you in. And it was some weird story about like
Speaker 1: there was a high school that were the Cougars, but
Speaker 1: then a group of Facebook moms got offended because they
Speaker 1: thought they were making fun of them for being fifty
Speaker 1: plus and single or something, so they had to change
Speaker 1: their mascot name. And and Cooper is like making fun
Speaker 1: of how stupid that was. And by the way, they're
Speaker 1: here at College of Charleston and there the Cougars and
Speaker 1: here's the Cougar. And so I walk out and kind
Speaker 1: of like do my thing or whatever cougar I don't know,
Speaker 1: whatever that is. Yeah, and then they're rolling and going
Speaker 1: to the end of the show and I just lean
Speaker 1: over grab Anderson and start rubbing his hair, knowing how
Speaker 1: like perfectly quaffed his hair always is. And it's live TV,
Speaker 1: so all he can do is just kind of smile
Speaker 1: and try to pull away from me. As soon as
Speaker 1: they go off air. He's got this look of just
Speaker 1: utter anger that this happened on you know, like who
Speaker 1: messages with my hair? And I just walked off? You'd
Speaker 1: ever do? Who I was? Just head on? I just
Speaker 1: walked off the set, walked walked down the street. That's
Speaker 1: so fantastic stake. I never knew this story before I
Speaker 1: walked into this studio today, and it's already in my
Speaker 1: top ten all time Wheel stories and that's a pretty
Speaker 1: good list. Um, that's amazing. The idea of andre A,
Speaker 1: the idea of Anderson Cooper being salty about having his
Speaker 1: hair messed up, that's a great layer to this story.
Speaker 1: But you having the presence of mind and the presence
Speaker 1: of cougar head to leave the head on while you
Speaker 1: made your escape. And so then I'm walking down King
Speaker 1: Street with the yeah, and so people are like high
Speaker 1: fiving me, and you know, it's just it's a completely different,
Speaker 1: like metaphysical existence to be in the world but not
Speaker 1: really in the world, because nobody knows who you are,
Speaker 1: and you can just do whatever you want and you
Speaker 1: can take on a different life form as a cougar.
Speaker 1: It's just it's it was incredible. I hope everybody has
Speaker 1: an opportunity sometime in their life to put on a
Speaker 1: mask at head and do what we'll did, because listen,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at these pictures now. You didn't just have
Speaker 1: the head on, you had the arms too. It was
Speaker 1: the whole thing. This is a swollen cougar. Man, he's
Speaker 1: pretty pumped up. He's got muscles. Yeah, man, we'll as
Speaker 1: Clyde to Cougar. We gotta put that out on the
Speaker 1: Twitter later on today when we post this podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll do that. Absolutely. This is phenomenal. This has made
Speaker 1: my day so much better. This this, this is the
Speaker 1: definition of a happy half hour. Yeah it is. It
Speaker 1: surely is. So everyone, come back next week. We'll have
Speaker 1: have some more Panthers news for you, and maybe we'll
Speaker 1: have stories stories by