Speaker 1: This is Wins and Losses with Clay Trevis, play talks
Speaker 1: with the most entertaining people in sports, entertainment and business.
Speaker 1: Now here's Clay Trevis. Welcome in Wins and Losses podcast.
Speaker 1: I am Clay Travis. Appreciate you guys listening to us
Speaker 1: and joining the series of Wins and Losses. If this
Speaker 1: is your first and we're about to talk with Kirk
Speaker 1: curb Street, I think you guys will really enjoy going
Speaker 1: back and checking out a lot of our other guests,
Speaker 1: whether it's Shant Terry who founded seven Sports and Rivals,
Speaker 1: Paul Findbaum, Mike Leach, Dan Wetzel, Yahoo Sports national columnists.
Speaker 1: We have been all over the place, Jason Whitlock talking
Speaker 1: to a lot of different people in the world of sports, media,
Speaker 1: politics and business. And today we bring in Kirk hurb Street,
Speaker 1: a fellow Nashville and at least for the past several years,
Speaker 1: but he has been I would say, the face of
Speaker 1: college football all for basically the last twenty years. And Kirk,
Speaker 1: I appreciate you you coming on with us, and I
Speaker 1: want to start back when you were growing up in
Speaker 1: Ohio and I know your dad is a college football coach.
Speaker 1: If I could have gone back in time when you're
Speaker 1: eighteen years old and about to go off to Ohio
Speaker 1: State and say, one day you will be the face
Speaker 1: of college football. Would you have thought that meant that
Speaker 1: you would win two or three Heisman Trophies or would
Speaker 1: you have thought that it might be media related? Man,
Speaker 1: First of all, it's it's great to be with you.
Speaker 1: Always enjoy our team, the chance to talk to you. Um,
Speaker 1: if you would have said that for me, you got
Speaker 1: to go back now. That would have been in the
Speaker 1: in the mid the late eighties. You know, there was
Speaker 1: no such thing as the Internet, there's no such things
Speaker 1: as social media. So you have to kind of go
Speaker 1: way back and and and appreciate where we were in
Speaker 1: that in that time. So if you would have said
Speaker 1: that to me, I would have definitely thought because it
Speaker 1: back then it was Keith Jackson and it was just
Speaker 1: everybody else. You know, there was there was just if
Speaker 1: there was a game on Saturday, you know, you kind
Speaker 1: of watched that game and there might be a few
Speaker 1: other games on, but you really they really weren't kind,
Speaker 1: they didn't really resonate, And so I would have definitely said,
Speaker 1: if I'm the face of the sport I would have
Speaker 1: had there have won the Heisman or national championships and
Speaker 1: and let Keith Jackson call my games, you know, to
Speaker 1: be able to be on the cover of s I
Speaker 1: you know kind of thing. But man, it's incredible how
Speaker 1: much you know, and I know you can really appreciate
Speaker 1: this being in the media. It's just incredible how much
Speaker 1: things have changed from you know, when you when you
Speaker 1: just had a handful of college football games and teams
Speaker 1: like Notre Dame or Tennessee or Home State, those big
Speaker 1: brand names had such a distinct of advantage because they
Speaker 1: all their games typically maybe we're on TV even if
Speaker 1: they were regionally televised, whereas now, I mean, geeze, like
Speaker 1: everybody's on TV every weekend. There's probably four of your
Speaker 1: fifty games. Uh that that at your fingertips. So it's
Speaker 1: just a different world that we all live in today.
Speaker 1: All right, let's go back to you as a kid
Speaker 1: growing up. Uh, And we'd like to start, like for
Speaker 1: people out there who are listening for the first time
Speaker 1: or if you just come in, the concept is wins
Speaker 1: and losses and kind of going through how you end
Speaker 1: up where you are. And obviously you are in and
Speaker 1: have been in a prominent position in college football for
Speaker 1: a long time. But growing up, were you a guy
Speaker 1: who played every sport imaginable? Was football your first to love?
Speaker 1: How would you kind of assess your coming of age
Speaker 1: when you were playing sports growing up? I was. I
Speaker 1: was a seasonal depending on the season was my sport.
Speaker 1: So if you asked me what was my favorite sport
Speaker 1: in the spring and the summer, I would have said baseball,
Speaker 1: we had it out, is my favorite sport. And then
Speaker 1: is the the leaves changed and the football's came out.
Speaker 1: I was not only playing football like on a team
Speaker 1: I started in fifth grade, but I was I was
Speaker 1: big into backyard football, you know. I mean we would
Speaker 1: and I was always organized, and I get the lawnmiller
Speaker 1: out and I cut the lines, you know, in the
Speaker 1: in the to make the field, and I mean there
Speaker 1: was a lot of work that we went into our
Speaker 1: backyard football games that I played in. And my parents
Speaker 1: divorced when I was about eight or nine. So I
Speaker 1: was trying to explain this to my boys because they've
Speaker 1: they've had a lot of more stability in their life
Speaker 1: other than we moved from Ohio to Nashville. But I
Speaker 1: was trying to explain to them, Guys, you have to imagine,
Speaker 1: you know, you went to basically to school. You went
Speaker 1: to an elementary school and to a to a high school.
Speaker 1: I said, I probably moved from the time I was
Speaker 1: in second grade until ninth grade. I'll probably moved five times,
Speaker 1: five or six times. I moved around a lot. Um
Speaker 1: but one thing, and I was a shot, very very
Speaker 1: shy kid. Um painfully shy, Like my face would get
Speaker 1: really red and he was embarrassing, and people would kind
Speaker 1: of laugh and laugh at me because my face would
Speaker 1: get so red. And the one constant that I had
Speaker 1: the kind of let me because I was imagine being
Speaker 1: a quiet kid and and moving a lot. That's a
Speaker 1: hard thing on a kid. And the one thing that
Speaker 1: that kind of gave me a chance was was gem
Speaker 1: and recess because I could at least hold my own
Speaker 1: in those areas whenever we had, you know, a chance
Speaker 1: to be outside to play. And so for me, I
Speaker 1: had no idea what I was doing, um as I
Speaker 1: was moving around and being kind of the shy new kid.
Speaker 1: But thankfully playing sports kind of opened up doors for
Speaker 1: for me at least meet friends. In fact, it's funny
Speaker 1: when I go back and see people in high school,
Speaker 1: especially teachers. They cannot believe that my job is speaking
Speaker 1: of millions of people on Saturdays now, because because I
Speaker 1: wouldn't get up, I wouldn't get up in front of
Speaker 1: class and give a speech. I would just take a zero.
Speaker 1: Like I'm literally would just not do it. I was
Speaker 1: terrified to get up in front of the class to
Speaker 1: give a give a speech. And now it's ironic that
Speaker 1: I'm obviously doing what I've been doing for the last years.
Speaker 1: How did you overcome that? Because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people out there, you know, they had the I think
Speaker 1: Seinfeld had their routine where he said, like, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: they're the biggest fears in life. Number one is public speaking.
Speaker 1: Number two is death. And he's like, so, if you
Speaker 1: had to choose, you know, like doing the eulogy for
Speaker 1: a lot of people is worse than being the guy
Speaker 1: in the casket, right like in terms of fear, which
Speaker 1: is funny to think about, but I'm sure there are
Speaker 1: a ton of people listening to us right now who
Speaker 1: have that fear. You know, standing up in front of
Speaker 1: people and talking is just such an overwhelming experience. I
Speaker 1: was having this conversation with my oldest son. He's eleven,
Speaker 1: and he was terrified to do the school spelling be
Speaker 1: because he didn't want to stand up in front of
Speaker 1: everybody and have to spell right. And I feel like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of kids out there, certainly who have
Speaker 1: been in that position before. So you talked to millions
Speaker 1: of people now. I think the biggest audiences that have
Speaker 1: ever watched college football games have watched the games that
Speaker 1: you call. How do you go from complete fear stage
Speaker 1: fright too, being so comfortable on the stage like you
Speaker 1: are now. I have no idea other than I'm doing
Speaker 1: something I love, I tell you. I think being the
Speaker 1: quarterback at Ohio State, especially my senior year where I
Speaker 1: was voted captain, and when you're the captain in school
Speaker 1: like that, you're you're kind of a mouthpiece, not just
Speaker 1: for yourself, but a lot of times for the team.
Speaker 1: So you know, these a lot of these sec big
Speaker 1: ten media luncheons, you know, when I was a senior,
Speaker 1: I went to that and that was really the beginning
Speaker 1: of me maybe getting comfortable in my own skin because
Speaker 1: you're sitting there and there's fifty microphones in front of
Speaker 1: your face and ten or fifteen different cameras around you,
Speaker 1: and that became a kind of a weekly occurrence for me,
Speaker 1: um where you would just kind of wold court with
Speaker 1: the media and it was all impromptu, just kind of
Speaker 1: winging it um, you know, with the media. After you know,
Speaker 1: certain practices during the week, they would open it up
Speaker 1: to the media, and a lot of times I was
Speaker 1: kind of the guy that would go out and talk
Speaker 1: to him. And I think just by doing that, it
Speaker 1: got me to get really comfortable um in in speaking.
Speaker 1: And what I found was I got more and more
Speaker 1: comfortable with my job speaking on air where there was
Speaker 1: a local radio, initially in Columbus and eventually at ESPN.
Speaker 1: But if you asked me to speak in front of
Speaker 1: forty people, I would be really uncomfortable. So I found
Speaker 1: that was even in my probably I could speak and
Speaker 1: sending millions of people on TV and be hey, but
Speaker 1: if I got in front of thirty people or forty
Speaker 1: people and I had to stand up in a room
Speaker 1: and speak, I would go back to being a kid
Speaker 1: and having that fear. And I the only thing I
Speaker 1: can think of that allowed me to overcome it, as
Speaker 1: we're just speaking right now, is repetition. You know, just
Speaker 1: the more I did it, the more I got comfortable
Speaker 1: with it, and I get asked to do those quite
Speaker 1: a bit, and I kind of have a rule with
Speaker 1: my agent said, you know, especially with family at home,
Speaker 1: as much as I travel in the fall, and it's
Speaker 1: just something I have to do, I'd rather pass on
Speaker 1: all of those kind of requests because it's not worth
Speaker 1: the turmoil to this day that I go through um
Speaker 1: to give to travel somewhere to give a speech. I'd
Speaker 1: rather just be at home and hanging out with my kids,
Speaker 1: my wife than deal with it. So I don't if
Speaker 1: I've quite overcome it. I'm more at ease with it
Speaker 1: than I have been in the past because I do
Speaker 1: it so much. But I don't know. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I'm that guy that's like, oh it's easy, no problem,
Speaker 1: just stand up there, you know, you just talk. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not you seem to hear that guy. You You
Speaker 1: seem like you could get up in front of anybody
Speaker 1: and and give a speech. I'm just not that guy,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm eating to this day. I do it,
Speaker 1: but I manage it. I don't thrive or like really
Speaker 1: enjoy it. You know what's funny is I think I
Speaker 1: had that fear and and have for a long time. Um,
Speaker 1: but I just got so used to it. And it's
Speaker 1: interesting because it is such a fear. Um. I noticed
Speaker 1: it in high school, like I was the student body president.
Speaker 1: I would have to get up and talk in front
Speaker 1: of the students, and I feel like that was where
Speaker 1: it kind of I got used to it. And I
Speaker 1: really don't think about it at all now in any way,
Speaker 1: And I don't know, I think that that is interesting,
Speaker 1: the repetition of whether you have to do it enough
Speaker 1: times where you stopped towards you You know, you don't
Speaker 1: really think about it or worry about it very much.
Speaker 1: But it is interesting because I do think that there's
Speaker 1: this idea when people here see you talking. I think
Speaker 1: it was interesting that you brought it up in front
Speaker 1: of millions of people that you must have always been
Speaker 1: comfortable doing it, and oftentimes comfort comes with repetition, even
Speaker 1: if it's not natural, right, And I do think that's
Speaker 1: that's very true. So let's go back. You said you
Speaker 1: were good. You're traveling around going to a bunch of
Speaker 1: different elementary schools. When did you realize you said you had,
Speaker 1: you know, some kind of athletic ability and that would
Speaker 1: help in recess and and such things to help interact
Speaker 1: with the kids. When did you start thinking, Hey, maybe
Speaker 1: one day I could go play a college in college
Speaker 1: football or college baseball. Maybe at the time, when did
Speaker 1: you start thinking it might be possible. Uh, there's a
Speaker 1: specific game. UM my school that I went to, Centerville
Speaker 1: High School in the in the Dayton area that and
Speaker 1: it's it's actually it's it's not known for year in
Speaker 1: and year out developing Division one players, but they've had,
Speaker 1: um ironically some guys that have played not only in college,
Speaker 1: but have made it and gone on to the NFL.
Speaker 1: And so when I was playing, it's one of the
Speaker 1: schools you typically don't play till a year senior. You know,
Speaker 1: some cases you'll play as a junior just because there's
Speaker 1: so many guys out and it's had such such a
Speaker 1: good tradition. So going into my junior year, we were
Speaker 1: playing at the time a team that was ranked in
Speaker 1: how USA today comes out with their ranks, and they
Speaker 1: were ranked number one in the country, school called Cincinnati
Speaker 1: Princeton that just had a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: great athletes and an incredible program, and we're playing on
Speaker 1: the road at their school. And if Las Vegas said
Speaker 1: as wine, in that game, we were probably an underdog
Speaker 1: by three or four touchdowns. I mean, they were supposed
Speaker 1: to They had about ten Division one kids and they
Speaker 1: were really loaded, and we're supposed to get worked. And
Speaker 1: it was my first start of my career, my first
Speaker 1: and as a junior, and we somehow ended up getting
Speaker 1: into the fourth quarter with them, about three minutes to go,
Speaker 1: they were up by a touchdown. We score to make
Speaker 1: a twenty one to twenty and our coach came out
Speaker 1: and asked us, you know, collectively in the huddle, you
Speaker 1: guys want to go for one or go for two,
Speaker 1: and we all yelling at him, you know, we want
Speaker 1: to go for two. And we went for two, and
Speaker 1: we ended up making it, and I ended up scoring
Speaker 1: that that extra point or that the two pointer. And
Speaker 1: back then it was it was a very different world
Speaker 1: and how you could relate or relate communicate with recruits.
Speaker 1: At that point, had never received a letter in my life.
Speaker 1: And the monday after that game we beat that school,
Speaker 1: was a head coach at the highest state had sent
Speaker 1: a telegram uh to me saying that he had heard
Speaker 1: about my game, and I was excited about it, and
Speaker 1: you know, he highest state as a school and he
Speaker 1: really consider and here I grew up a passionate college
Speaker 1: football fan. And as he said, my dad coached in
Speaker 1: Ohio State with Woody and with both Shimba Quitter and
Speaker 1: then actually went with both to Miami and Ohio to
Speaker 1: help start create the cradle of coaches. So college football
Speaker 1: was just in my d n A. And so from
Speaker 1: my first letter to ever come to me was from
Speaker 1: Ohio State and from the head coach himself. Uh, it
Speaker 1: definitely was like an eye opener for me that I
Speaker 1: didn't I was just trying to win a starting job,
Speaker 1: and next thing I know, after one start, there's a
Speaker 1: head coach Ohio State reaching out to me. So I
Speaker 1: think right after that game, I realized, wow, you know,
Speaker 1: because I had to be I was six three and
Speaker 1: about a hundred and probably eighty five pounds as a junior,
Speaker 1: so I had a guess the size, and it was
Speaker 1: just a matter of really just fine tuning my skill
Speaker 1: set and just trying to, uh to get better and better.
Speaker 1: But that was probably looking back at it now, that
Speaker 1: was probably the moment realized, Wow, this might actually happen
Speaker 1: for me. What were your stats like in that game
Speaker 1: that you guys won. Do you remember a running quarterback? Yeah?
Speaker 1: In fact, we are like a lot of teams in
Speaker 1: that era. We ran the vier And then going into
Speaker 1: that year, my head coach, who is kind of an
Speaker 1: old school kind of like a drill instructor from the Marines,
Speaker 1: just an old and tough guy, he traveled out to
Speaker 1: Colorado Springs, which is an entire staff and they wanted
Speaker 1: to learn about the option and the triple option out
Speaker 1: of the wishbone, and so they spent a week out
Speaker 1: there with the Air Force Academy and figured out all inside. Now,
Speaker 1: we truly ranched option from the wishbone formation, so we
Speaker 1: had just switched to uh that ball offense in so, yeah,
Speaker 1: we were much more of a of a run oriented
Speaker 1: I probably that year. I would guess as a year
Speaker 1: went on, we ended up throwing more. But I would
Speaker 1: guess I ave reached probably fifteen twenty passes a game.
Speaker 1: I would I would I just guessing off the top
Speaker 1: of my head. And in that particular game, I think
Speaker 1: we definitely ran the ball more than we threw. I
Speaker 1: probably ended up throwing for I don't guess hundred fifty
Speaker 1: hundred seventy yards in that game, but I think I
Speaker 1: probably ran through maybe eighty or ninety in that game.
Speaker 1: I would guess that, Uh, I was I was kind
Speaker 1: of your typical today's game. I would have fit in
Speaker 1: perfectly because I was your typical kind of dual guy.
Speaker 1: But I got it. I think I got on the
Speaker 1: map more as a runner, uh than I than I
Speaker 1: did as a passer, especially early my my high school career.
Speaker 1: What did it feel like to score that two point
Speaker 1: conversion you're starting your first I mean, is that still
Speaker 1: one of the greatest FeAs in our life? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I can remember like it was yesterday, and I
Speaker 1: try to talk to my boys about that all the time.
Speaker 1: You have moments and opportunities that that will live with
Speaker 1: you for the rest of your lives, and you don't
Speaker 1: realize that at the time. But especially that moment. We were,
Speaker 1: as I said earlier, we were such a big underdogs
Speaker 1: for our school where we went. I mean, when we
Speaker 1: went to play somewhere, you know, we would bring you know,
Speaker 1: four or five six or five four or five six
Speaker 1: thousand fans on the road, like this is old school
Speaker 1: and high school football is passionate. I mean, they're our
Speaker 1: home games will be ten or twelve thousand people. You know,
Speaker 1: you go on the road and your fans are traveling
Speaker 1: about where you go, and big student body goes on
Speaker 1: the road. I mean, it just meant a lot to
Speaker 1: our community. And so to win a game like that
Speaker 1: and just to have euphoria in our homestead all the
Speaker 1: way stands because we're on the road. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: just it's the first time you realize, holy cow, look
Speaker 1: look at the hysteria. Look look what's going on here,
Speaker 1: and look how happy everybody is, and you realize that
Speaker 1: it's the first time in your life the magnitude of
Speaker 1: what you're doing is not just middle school football or
Speaker 1: you know, peewee football like it's very and it states
Speaker 1: like Ohio and Texas and in Florida and Georgia, I
Speaker 1: mean high school football for for these people, it's it's
Speaker 1: a way of life. And I just happened to be
Speaker 1: at a school and and that that particular night playing
Speaker 1: against the school where it was sold out stadium, standing
Speaker 1: room only, and to make your first start, Yeah, you don't,
Speaker 1: you don't forget something like that. Was your dad there? Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, my family would come to all my games
Speaker 1: and um, just yeah, he was I can't imagine, you
Speaker 1: know what what he was experiencing them. I thought it
Speaker 1: was really cool about trying to and I now experienced
Speaker 1: it myself having my own cares, so he kind of
Speaker 1: felt like he had his run and now it's kind
Speaker 1: of my turn. And he would always try his best
Speaker 1: to kind of stay back, and he was not. He
Speaker 1: was the opposite of one of those that it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, out front trying to show everybody who he is,
Speaker 1: and he was the opposite. He would stay in the
Speaker 1: corner and just try to be quiet and be by himself.
Speaker 1: And even after the game when I come out of
Speaker 1: the locker room, he you know, he he'd be out
Speaker 1: there with with my mom and the rest of my family.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't like it was him and then everybody else.
Speaker 1: He was just kind of one of the group, which
Speaker 1: I always really appreciated. I'm curious on this and we're
Speaker 1: gonna get I want to go back to your recruitment
Speaker 1: and go into Ohio State and stuff too. But you
Speaker 1: mentioned your dad and you've got I think four boys,
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken, and they've all been involved in
Speaker 1: athletics a variety of different ages and different sports. Um,
Speaker 1: I I had as I'm curious what kind of parent
Speaker 1: you are watching their athletic events. I want to tell
Speaker 1: you a story. Uh this past season, like my eight
Speaker 1: year old is playing basketball and I'm not coaching. I
Speaker 1: coaches a little league team. I'm one of the assistant coaches. Uh.
Speaker 1: So I get used to kind of talking to the
Speaker 1: team and everything else, and so I'm talking to him
Speaker 1: during the game, right like, hey, you got a man up,
Speaker 1: you know, because it's eight year old basketball. Like they
Speaker 1: don't get back on defense, like they'll drive you crazy, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I'm not coaching the whole team. I'm just trying to,
Speaker 1: you know, get get my kid because he plays better
Speaker 1: when he When I'm like, hey, you know, get back
Speaker 1: on defense or whatever. My wife turns. My wife turns
Speaker 1: to me, and she says, you can't do this. I said,
Speaker 1: what do you mean I can't do that? She says, you're,
Speaker 1: you know, a somewhat public figure because you're in the
Speaker 1: world of sports, and people in this gym are going
Speaker 1: to know who you are, and they're gonna be like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's Clay Travis coaching his his kids, And I don't
Speaker 1: really think about that at all when I'm watching my
Speaker 1: kids play. And I'm sure you're the same way, Like
Speaker 1: I'm just a dad, right, I'm just a dad, just
Speaker 1: like or just like everybody else who's in there. But
Speaker 1: in my mind, then she's talking to me, and now
Speaker 1: I'm trying to consciously thinking, oh, you know, like people
Speaker 1: might also be paying attention to how I'm watching my kids.
Speaker 1: You have to have thought about that and dealt with
Speaker 1: it way more than I have. How do you go
Speaker 1: and watch your kids play sports and just be a dad?
Speaker 1: Great question, um. I started off probably around the ages
Speaker 1: of your boys when my my my identical twins who
Speaker 1: my oldest nineteen now, they just left home about a
Speaker 1: month ago to go to Clemson, and when they played
Speaker 1: baseball because I am I'm a big baseball guy baseball,
Speaker 1: and I tried to coach uh them when they were
Speaker 1: at seven, eight nine range, and I quickly found that
Speaker 1: I have serious issues, like I have a know, I
Speaker 1: know exactly what I'll tell you another story. I have
Speaker 1: a I have a competitive problem, like I can't I
Speaker 1: can't just be like to not just my kids, but
Speaker 1: kids in general. No, that was good. Good. Try can't
Speaker 1: do it. I can't do it. So I I quickly
Speaker 1: after a couple of embarrassing moments, you know, and when
Speaker 1: I just my competitive spirit just got the best of me,
Speaker 1: I quickly said, Okay, having a good relationship with my
Speaker 1: boys is way more important. And like winning the league
Speaker 1: at eight U baseball, so I I decided to kind
Speaker 1: of go into the stands and just clap and just
Speaker 1: not talk um at all. That that was there was
Speaker 1: a turning point there, and it was just a summer
Speaker 1: baseball team. So yeah, I've never had to worry about
Speaker 1: who's watching me now in the stands, I get excited
Speaker 1: and elbow my wife or if there's someone sitting next
Speaker 1: to me. I use my hands a lot, so I'll
Speaker 1: push somebody or or elbow somebody, you know, in a
Speaker 1: in a fun way, not like um. But yeah, that
Speaker 1: that's all I do now. I And and uh, watching
Speaker 1: parents today, it't it crazy? Especially sports? I mean you
Speaker 1: must have you must have some great stories of of
Speaker 1: folks that you've seen. Oh look, I mean this is
Speaker 1: this is me. I was coaching third base recently. All right,
Speaker 1: and uh, we're gonna throw to third, and it's runners
Speaker 1: on first and second, one out. We're playing a team,
Speaker 1: a good team in the league, right, the team that
Speaker 1: was going to go on and win. So this groundball
Speaker 1: kind of gets misplayed a little bit, gets picked up,
Speaker 1: thrown to third. Our guy beats it easy right, like
Speaker 1: it's should be basis loaded, one out, umpire. Umpire calls
Speaker 1: him out. I got a perfect view on it, like
Speaker 1: it's an awful call. And I'm like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: like so how much how much do you argue? Because
Speaker 1: the year before we lost a game because a runner
Speaker 1: was called out for running outside the base paths because
Speaker 1: he was trying to avoid running over a shortstop fielding
Speaker 1: a ball, right, and the the head coach, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: exactly right. Yeah. So last year we were like we
Speaker 1: should have said something because it was the wrong call
Speaker 1: and it cost our kids game. But we didn't want
Speaker 1: to be the dads who were like, you know, overreacting.
Speaker 1: But we're like, hey, if the rule gets blown, like
Speaker 1: you should, you know, like it's it's so I said
Speaker 1: to the umpire, said, hey you missed that one, and
Speaker 1: he and and so as I'm jogging off the field.
Speaker 1: I I stopped to him and I say, hey, like
Speaker 1: you just I mean that wasn't really very close. I
Speaker 1: mean he was all the way on the bag, like
Speaker 1: about to stand up, and you called him out and
Speaker 1: the umpire said I don't care. And I was like,
Speaker 1: all the things you could say to me, I don't
Speaker 1: care is the worst thing you could say, like your
Speaker 1: only job, Like, hey, I'm sorry. I saw Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: exactly what I said. And then I kept going and
Speaker 1: eventually like somebody had to come out into like I
Speaker 1: kept but I was like when he said I don't care,
Speaker 1: that was like it set me off. I was like,
Speaker 1: of all the things you could say to somebody when
Speaker 1: you miss a call, hey, I saw it differently, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm my bad. You know, we'll try to make it
Speaker 1: up to you later, like you know you could like
Speaker 1: there's some sort of it was a private conversation, but
Speaker 1: I don't care. I don't care. I was like, well,
Speaker 1: you're getting paid. This is not for free, right, Like
Speaker 1: you're being paid the best you The least you could
Speaker 1: do is at least try to get the call right.
Speaker 1: And if you miss one and you get called on it,
Speaker 1: then at least have the gumption to say, you know what,
Speaker 1: I missed that one. That's my bad. Oh oh, well,
Speaker 1: that's that's funny. Like so I jogged over. Another parent
Speaker 1: came over and he was like, you just gotta leave
Speaker 1: him alone. I know. He blew it, like you just
Speaker 1: gotta stop talking. And it was like, yeah, it was
Speaker 1: like you know, probably a seventeen or eighteen year old kid.
Speaker 1: He's like, you're just lucky he wasn't looking at his
Speaker 1: phone when the play happened. Uh was what the was
Speaker 1: what the other parents said. And by the way, this
Speaker 1: is wins and losses. I'm Clay Travis. We're talking with
Speaker 1: Kirk curb Street. Um, so that that's the balancing act, right,
Speaker 1: is UH trying to figure out? And you just mentioned it.
Speaker 1: While you mentioned it, You've got sons at Clemson, you
Speaker 1: went to Ohio State. You talk about every college football
Speaker 1: program under the sun. You have relationships probably bly with
Speaker 1: coaches and training staff and everybody else on every program,
Speaker 1: major program, certainly in the country. How in the world
Speaker 1: do you avoid, uh, making people think that you are
Speaker 1: incredibly biased one way or there. This is something we
Speaker 1: talked about before privately, but it's the number one thing
Speaker 1: in a social media ages, you're doing game day, you're
Speaker 1: calling a game, you give an opinion, and people immediately decide, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's because you're in favor of X team and you're
Speaker 1: against YE team. You're pro the SEC, you're pro the
Speaker 1: Big Ten. You love Ohio State, but you moved out
Speaker 1: of Columbus and trying to make up for it, you
Speaker 1: hate him, Like how do you balance all that out?
Speaker 1: And and do you even read the mentions after a
Speaker 1: game or after like do you even try to? I'm
Speaker 1: just there's so much noise. I'm curious what you do. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's all sir um. First, I think in you and
Speaker 1: I've spoken in the past, We've known each other for
Speaker 1: a long time now, but you kind of know how
Speaker 1: I am. I mean, I take so much pride in
Speaker 1: my preparation and so much pride and in the game itself.
Speaker 1: Like I've watched games go through five highlights of the
Speaker 1: Tennessee Florida game, Like I watch, you know, from the
Speaker 1: opening kickoff to the last play of the game, and
Speaker 1: I do that. I have done that every Saturday for
Speaker 1: the last twenty five years. So I don't I don't
Speaker 1: whether you like what I say, or you don't like
Speaker 1: what I say. That that that I have no problem with.
Speaker 1: But the people that think I am an agenda, like
Speaker 1: what how can I possibly have an agenda? When you know,
Speaker 1: if you think about it, I watch as much as
Speaker 1: I can, and I talked to as many people as
Speaker 1: I can, the coaches and the players who are involved,
Speaker 1: and then I give you an opinion. In some weeks,
Speaker 1: it might be for your team, and that's when you
Speaker 1: get man, you're amazing, You're so good at what you
Speaker 1: and then the next week it's against your team, and
Speaker 1: now it's you're such a homer, or you're you're a hater,
Speaker 1: you're a trader. It's like when aren't people going to
Speaker 1: figure year out? Like I don't have time to keep
Speaker 1: score of like who I'm supposed to be for who
Speaker 1: I'm against? I just say what I think, you know,
Speaker 1: Like the last two years, Ohio State always seems to
Speaker 1: be in the crosshairs of the playoff. In the last
Speaker 1: two years, I have adam rely said after the conference
Speaker 1: championship games, because it's a big zoo from the time
Speaker 1: the SEC uh SEC championship game, the Big Ten championship game,
Speaker 1: and then that game ends and then the debate in
Speaker 1: the frenzy literally begins that night on Sports Center for
Speaker 1: US until the next day when we announced who the
Speaker 1: four teams are. And if anybody's really watched me, they've
Speaker 1: seen in one in one year. In fourteen, Ohio State
Speaker 1: was sitting at six and t FU and Baylor were
Speaker 1: ahead of them, and they went out with a third
Speaker 1: string quarterback, Cardil Jones and Wisconsin fifty nine and nothing
Speaker 1: or whatever it was. And I went on TV after
Speaker 1: that and I said, is based on the way they've
Speaker 1: been playing all year, the fact that they proved with
Speaker 1: a third string quarterback. If anything, they're not taking any
Speaker 1: steps back. I think they put an exclamation on their
Speaker 1: end of their season, and I think Ohio States a
Speaker 1: better team that they should be in the top four.
Speaker 1: Of course, I was in Ohio State at home or
Speaker 1: a bah. They went on to win the national championship,
Speaker 1: beat Alabama, beat Oregon. Well, the last two years, I've
Speaker 1: been very very adamant about Ohio State not deserving to be.
Speaker 1: In fact, two years ago I walked off the set
Speaker 1: because I said, if they put Alabama and Georgia in,
Speaker 1: I'll be It's the right thing to do. But there's
Speaker 1: no way they're gonna be too worried about being politically correct.
Speaker 1: There's no way this committee is going to do the
Speaker 1: right thing. They're gonna worry about Jim Delaney and all
Speaker 1: the other politics. They're gonna put the Ohio state in
Speaker 1: even though Alabama should be in there, and sure enough, boom,
Speaker 1: Alabama shows up. I walk off the set as in,
Speaker 1: I was so proud of the committee. I was so like,
Speaker 1: I can't believe we live in an era where the
Speaker 1: committee doesn't worry about politics. Like the A people would
Speaker 1: have definitely slated well they lost, they won move Ohio
Speaker 1: State up. Like here were people using their collective minds
Speaker 1: and reasoning to put the four best teams in and
Speaker 1: sure enough, Alabama deserve that opportunity, and they got put in.
Speaker 1: I walk off the set. People thought I was walking
Speaker 1: off the set boycotting that Alabama. I'm like, do you
Speaker 1: not listen? Like, well, how do you miss that? Like
Speaker 1: I was? I was dumbfounding excited. So anyway, this is
Speaker 1: just a couple examples of every week for me. So
Speaker 1: what I've learned a long time ago is just gather
Speaker 1: as much information as I can from very reliable people
Speaker 1: who are involved in the games and playing and coaching,
Speaker 1: watch as much football as anybody in the country, and
Speaker 1: then just give my opinion and and and not really
Speaker 1: worry about it. Lets let's let's let things just fall
Speaker 1: where they where they may, and and just go about
Speaker 1: my business and probably just like you. I mean, when
Speaker 1: you're in our world, that's that's really all you can do.
Speaker 1: But I don't really get caught out. I could say
Speaker 1: one sentence and I'm a big tan Ohio State homer,
Speaker 1: and the same sentence, I'm an Ohio State hater and
Speaker 1: ann sec hole. So you can't win with those people.
Speaker 1: So I try not to worry a lot about offending
Speaker 1: kind of that lunatic fringe or what what they might
Speaker 1: be upset about, because if they're not upset with me,
Speaker 1: they're upset with you, or they're upset with someone else,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Or that always upset. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the passion is what makes college football, I think,
Speaker 1: the best sport that exists in our country right like
Speaker 1: in terms of sure enjoyment and everything else. But that
Speaker 1: also the passion can flip and turn into what makes
Speaker 1: it the scariest and the wildest. Uh. And we'll get
Speaker 1: to like versions of that maybe in a little bit.
Speaker 1: But I want to circle back now. So you're you
Speaker 1: get that first amazing letter from Ohio State. Um, and
Speaker 1: you said your dad obviously was a coach. Do you
Speaker 1: remember being around what he hayes and like getting to
Speaker 1: meet some of those guys back in the down Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember sitting on what he has his lap as
Speaker 1: a as a kid and looking up to him at
Speaker 1: that age it's like probably, uh, you're either middle or
Speaker 1: youngest son looking up there. You know. For me, it
Speaker 1: was like in the mid seventies and Archie Griffin was
Speaker 1: on the team, and I put Archie Griffin's helmet on
Speaker 1: in the locker room, went home one of the years
Speaker 1: he won the Heisman and sat on what he hayes
Speaker 1: his lap after the game with his white shirt with
Speaker 1: his cut off sleeves and his glasses and his hat on,
Speaker 1: and I'm literally looking up at zeus, you know, like
Speaker 1: me at that age, like I'm like like like are
Speaker 1: you kidding me? Like this isn't real, you know, And
Speaker 1: to have a chance to come around, you know, my
Speaker 1: dad would take me from time to time. He didn't
Speaker 1: abuse that, but he would take me from time to
Speaker 1: time and ended up actually going to Woody's funeral when
Speaker 1: I was in tenth grade. And you know, I was
Speaker 1: around bow quite a bit. Boschen Beckler, who my dad
Speaker 1: and he coached together and became really good friends and
Speaker 1: and stayed in touch, and then he recruited me pretty heavily,
Speaker 1: and and UM just just stuff that UM for me was,
Speaker 1: you know, looking back at it, UM just obviously helped
Speaker 1: develop the person that I became. Because if you would
Speaker 1: have asked me as a senior in high school when
Speaker 1: sports were you know, I was really starting to kind
Speaker 1: of grow and who knew what I was. I was
Speaker 1: trying to shoot for the stars. You would have said,
Speaker 1: what's your perfect scenario in your life? What would you
Speaker 1: want to do? At that time? I would have said,
Speaker 1: play football Ohio State and play short stuff for the
Speaker 1: Cincinnati Reds. Like I grew up with a big red
Speaker 1: machine and Red's Baseball and listening to Marty Brennaman and
Speaker 1: and so I was not I'm going to the NFL
Speaker 1: guy at all. I was I'm going to MLB was
Speaker 1: my thing. But I want a desperately I wanted to
Speaker 1: play college football um and and after that again in
Speaker 1: seventeen or eighteen. My my dream would have been to
Speaker 1: go on to play baseball. So Ohio State recruits you
Speaker 1: and ultimately you end up going there. Did you was
Speaker 1: there any possibility of you going elsewhere? Or in your
Speaker 1: mind did you ever even conceive that you might go
Speaker 1: elsewhere even if you're talking to other schools. Was it
Speaker 1: always if Ohio State offers me a scholarship, I'm going
Speaker 1: there in your mind? Or did you even did you consider?
Speaker 1: I mean, you talked about meeting Woody and like obviously
Speaker 1: the iconic nature of your connection to Ohio State. What
Speaker 1: kind of recruiting situation did you find yourself in? Well,
Speaker 1: I was I was heavily recruited and being recruited by
Speaker 1: almost every school in the country, and I, in the
Speaker 1: back of my mind knew that I was always going
Speaker 1: to go to Ohio State, but I wanted to be
Speaker 1: involved with the recruiting. Ironically, Earl Bruce my senior year,
Speaker 1: was fired in November of my senior year. He got fired,
Speaker 1: and uh, I had to kind of tread water until
Speaker 1: they named a coach because it took him about three
Speaker 1: or four weeks until they finally announced that John Cooper
Speaker 1: was going to be their head coach, and I was,
Speaker 1: you know USC and Penn State and did you take
Speaker 1: did you take other official visits? Yeah, yeah, I looked
Speaker 1: at Michigan and Penn State. I wanted to go out
Speaker 1: to USC, but by the time I decided, I had
Speaker 1: already kind of led them on long enough. I knew
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to go out there, um, and so
Speaker 1: I had to just be honest with him and tell
Speaker 1: them that I was had already made it might have
Speaker 1: made up my mind. And then the second that they
Speaker 1: named Johnny Coople, I didn't know John Coople from a
Speaker 1: hole in the wall. I didn't know who he was.
Speaker 1: But we had been talking. My dad had been talking
Speaker 1: to some of the folks at Ohio State that were
Speaker 1: still there after Roll Bruce had gotten fired, and he
Speaker 1: basically told him, when you announced the coach, you know,
Speaker 1: I think Clerk wants to announce, literally as soon as
Speaker 1: his press conference is over, that he's he's going to
Speaker 1: go to Ohio State. And so once they announced it, um,
Speaker 1: I went ahead and said I was gonna go to
Speaker 1: High State. But yeah, I I enjoyed being recruited, but
Speaker 1: I didn't enjoy lying. After a while, I just kind
Speaker 1: of got old, and you start to become friends, like
Speaker 1: friends with the guy that's recruiting you, Like Kevin Steele
Speaker 1: was relentless um. In fact, when I was if you
Speaker 1: go back and look at Tennessee football, if you go
Speaker 1: back to the mid eighties, um, there were some great
Speaker 1: players that were coming out of Southwest Ohio and even
Speaker 1: Chuck Webb who was up in the Toledo area down
Speaker 1: and I would give Kevin Steele all the credit, um
Speaker 1: for his style of recruiting. Relentless friendly. I mean, you
Speaker 1: felt like he was your best friend, you know. And
Speaker 1: so I didn't know a whole lot about Tennessee football
Speaker 1: back when I was growing up, And yet I really
Speaker 1: wanted to go to Tennessee because I wanted to hang
Speaker 1: out with Kevin Steel, like he made such a favorable
Speaker 1: impression on me. And to this day, he and our
Speaker 1: friend now and you know, I followed his career and
Speaker 1: he's obviously doing a great job at Auburn, But um,
Speaker 1: he did such a great job recruiting me that that
Speaker 1: I I very easily could have gone. And if I've
Speaker 1: been funny, if I had the campus should have been
Speaker 1: hard to say no after you get on campus and
Speaker 1: look at their history and tradition, But he was. He
Speaker 1: was recruiting me. I just remember that, um, just because
Speaker 1: of all the other kids that he was able to
Speaker 1: sway out of Ohio and go down to play for Tennessee.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine what it would be like? So you're
Speaker 1: a pretty high level recruit in the nineteen eighties, I
Speaker 1: believe it was. Can you can you imagine what it
Speaker 1: would be like to be a high level recruit now?
Speaker 1: Because you I'd imagine then, like you had coaches who
Speaker 1: come to your school and certainly they could call your home,
Speaker 1: but it's not like you have a cell phone like
Speaker 1: I was. We were driving around, I played golf course
Speaker 1: with Kirby Smart and we were in the card together
Speaker 1: for six hours, and uh, he was just talking about
Speaker 1: the sheer amount because I mean the amount of time
Speaker 1: and contact and it's all text right, Like the amount
Speaker 1: of time that they spend having to interact with these kids,
Speaker 1: Like I just can't imagine year after year you're texting
Speaker 1: with fifteen, sixteen, seventeen year olds. I can't imagine the coach.
Speaker 1: But I also can't imagine being a fifteen, sixteen or
Speaker 1: seventeen year old with you know, multimillion dollar head coaches
Speaker 1: texting you all the time. Can you even imagine what
Speaker 1: that would be like? Now? I can't because back then
Speaker 1: it was just you would you would give him your
Speaker 1: home address, yep, when you've filled out your questionnaire, and
Speaker 1: you would get inundated with so much. Now it got
Speaker 1: to the point where you didn't even open up open
Speaker 1: up the mail. Would it would just it would just
Speaker 1: be piled in your corner of your bedroom and probably
Speaker 1: just hundreds and hundreds of pieces and you just not
Speaker 1: that you're bragging that no, yeah, I open them. It
Speaker 1: just it was the same kind of rhetoric. It was
Speaker 1: the same kind of speel. Yeah, as a fifteen, sixteen,
Speaker 1: seventeen eight year old kid, you just kind of get
Speaker 1: tired of and I would think getting text you know,
Speaker 1: players they probably ghost coaches all the time just kind
Speaker 1: of look at it like, oh, yeah, what's up? You know,
Speaker 1: then they just kind of move. Unless it's a coach
Speaker 1: or a school that you maybe have interest in, then
Speaker 1: maybe it's a different deal. But yeah, it's one thing
Speaker 1: to get it from Kirby, it's another thing to get
Speaker 1: it from you know, the hundreds of other teams and
Speaker 1: coaches that you're not necessarily interested in that they're just
Speaker 1: wearing wearing your phone out that would get that would
Speaker 1: get tiring for sure. And and not to mention, they
Speaker 1: try to work other angles, whether it's a sister or
Speaker 1: a mom or whoever it is. So um, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's that's a different game and something obviously our generation
Speaker 1: didn't have to worry about. So you arrive at Ohio State,
Speaker 1: you're a bally hoo'd recruit. John Cooper's the new head coach.
Speaker 1: How much of a culture shock. It's still in the
Speaker 1: state of Ohio. But and even though you went to
Speaker 1: a high school where people cared a great deal, Ohio
Speaker 1: State ball big time college football. Even if you go
Speaker 1: to a big time high school is a huge step.
Speaker 1: What did it feel like for you as a true
Speaker 1: freshman at Ohio State. Well, first, my dad when he
Speaker 1: dropped me off, he said, you're gonna go in and
Speaker 1: everybody's gonna be, you know, highly recruited kid, And it's like,
Speaker 1: I want you to remember this, Uh, kids in your
Speaker 1: class four or five years later, we're gonna look at
Speaker 1: this class and if half of them playing, you'll have
Speaker 1: a very good class. And I was like, what they're
Speaker 1: all gonna play? You're not let me. These guys are
Speaker 1: all everybody's all state. Oh this all that? You know?
Speaker 1: You go to a school like Tennessee, Ohio State. You
Speaker 1: look at every recruiting class, you read every kid's resume,
Speaker 1: and you're just blown away, like you can't imagine winning
Speaker 1: a true freshman Like right now, we just you and
Speaker 1: I were together and we went through Alabama's recruiting class,
Speaker 1: George's or Tennessee's or Ohio State, anybody right now that
Speaker 1: the kids who are rising freshman, we would look at
Speaker 1: their resumes and if we put a star next to who,
Speaker 1: we say it's gonna make it. I bet you added
Speaker 1: twenty five of them. We probably twenty of them, at
Speaker 1: least maybe twenty two of them. If we're trying to
Speaker 1: predict that they're gonna be, they're gonna make it, not
Speaker 1: even become a superstar, just be a major contributor, a starter.
Speaker 1: You would you would be able to find twenty out
Speaker 1: of twenty five easy and sure enough you go back
Speaker 1: and look at recruiting classes. When my dad said that,
Speaker 1: I know he's crazy he's right. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: whether a guy gets an injury, guy gets homesick, guy
Speaker 1: gets the girl pregnant, back home, guy gets this, guy
Speaker 1: gets back. You start to look at everybody's recruiting class,
Speaker 1: and sure enough you get those that hit you know,
Speaker 1: you're you're having a pretty good class. So he left
Speaker 1: me with that, and I remember walking in and thinking
Speaker 1: I had a really you know, you're talking about highs
Speaker 1: and lows of your lives. I had a really hard
Speaker 1: time just getting over that I belonged in there, like
Speaker 1: you know that the here's a locker room and a
Speaker 1: place that I had always revered and always looked at
Speaker 1: when I went in there as if this was a
Speaker 1: different place, Like this is like going to almost a
Speaker 1: different planet when I was a kid, And now to
Speaker 1: go in there and you're like, now, it's almost like
Speaker 1: you know, the green lantern, you know, It's like now,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I get I get the outfit.
Speaker 1: I'm one of the guys, and I'm I'm wearing this?
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? I'm not supposed to have this on.
Speaker 1: I don't don't need this, I can't wear this. So
Speaker 1: I you know, for years I had a really hard
Speaker 1: time adjusting, not just to the game and to the
Speaker 1: speed of the game, but just to feeling comfortable and
Speaker 1: feeling as if I was warranted and being in that
Speaker 1: word it was. It was something I had had a
Speaker 1: hard time overcoming initially. Do you think if you had
Speaker 1: been in a different era that would have been a
Speaker 1: transferse situation? You stuck it out, and I bet when
Speaker 1: we get you were really happy. But particularly with quarterbacks,
Speaker 1: it's like you get there that first year and it
Speaker 1: doesn't click, like they're already looking to go elsewhere. Uh
Speaker 1: would that have been you? You think if you had
Speaker 1: grown up in this different era of of college football? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought that up. And I got to
Speaker 1: the point as a red shirt sophomore. They went to
Speaker 1: Notre Dame. They brought a kid named Ken Graham and
Speaker 1: who was a backup on a Notre Dame national championship team.
Speaker 1: Tony Rice was the starter, and he had transferred in.
Speaker 1: He had a big arm, big huge guy, a big arm,
Speaker 1: and I have been working like crazy to kind of
Speaker 1: be in a position that I was in, and here
Speaker 1: comes a guy who's transfers in and eventually they were
Speaker 1: looking at him to become a starter. And so I
Speaker 1: was starting to kind of realize, you know that this
Speaker 1: is tough, and and I'm chasing this. I've been chasing
Speaker 1: this for three years, and going into my fourth years
Speaker 1: has sort of been going into my red shirt. I
Speaker 1: guess my red shirt getting the beginning of my red
Speaker 1: shirt junior year, and I was just kind of getting discouraged.
Speaker 1: And I remember talking to my dad because I put
Speaker 1: baseball in the back burner and I was as good
Speaker 1: as the baseball, if not better, and I always wished
Speaker 1: I had played that. And I told my dad, you know, Dad,
Speaker 1: I think I just can't take this anymore. I'm not
Speaker 1: sing eyed I with the coaches, with the offense of
Speaker 1: staff and philosophy, and and I really wish I had
Speaker 1: played baseball. So basically looking for an easy way out.
Speaker 1: And I was like, I said, I'm just gonna go
Speaker 1: play baseball. And my dad was like, no, no, You're
Speaker 1: you're not doing that. You're gonna you're gonna you're gonna
Speaker 1: go through spring ball. You're gonna compete, and you're gonna
Speaker 1: see where things are and we'll kind of see, you know,
Speaker 1: where you are after that, and when you want to
Speaker 1: talk to the coaches about something you know that you
Speaker 1: might want to do. After that, then then you can
Speaker 1: do that. But you're you're not You're not giving up.
Speaker 1: And so I was from a generation when when your
Speaker 1: dad told you that, you listened, and even though I
Speaker 1: didn't agree with it, I equally strapped up my helmet
Speaker 1: and went out and did what I could. And so
Speaker 1: what I found was I outperformed this individual as far
Speaker 1: as the way they keep stats and seven on seven
Speaker 1: when they would keep stats and say okay, Kirky or
Speaker 1: whatever percentage and can't you or whatever percentage? And the
Speaker 1: same in team. And so going into my junior year,
Speaker 1: it was kind of a split thing, but they aired
Speaker 1: on the side, if I think more his potential because
Speaker 1: it is his big arm and it fit the offense
Speaker 1: that they were running. And so we would kind of
Speaker 1: split some some reps and then he would take the
Speaker 1: upper hand and then we'd split some reps and eventually
Speaker 1: he about the middle of the year on he would
Speaker 1: take he would start to take the most of the reps.
Speaker 1: And so while I was discouraged and frustrated, I was
Speaker 1: going into my my last year and after all I've
Speaker 1: been through and I, you know, we don't have enough
Speaker 1: time to kind of talk about everything I've been through.
Speaker 1: I finally sole kind of the light at the end
Speaker 1: of the tunnel, kink I am graduated and it was
Speaker 1: basically my job. And that spring going into my senior year,
Speaker 1: the head coach, John Cooper did something differently and you
Speaker 1: voted for captains in the spring going into uh into
Speaker 1: the summer. They've never done that before, and me and
Speaker 1: a guy named Steve Tovar were voted captains. There were
Speaker 1: just two captains, and I was voted unanimously, and the
Speaker 1: fact that I was voted by my teammates, it was
Speaker 1: like a huge boost for me, and it allowed propelled
Speaker 1: me into the summer and into my senior year with
Speaker 1: a lot of confidence despite what I've been through. And
Speaker 1: looking back at it, I guess I get very passionate
Speaker 1: and emotional when I see kids who, to their credit
Speaker 1: or only years old, when they hit some adversity and
Speaker 1: they decided to get into the transfer portal. And I
Speaker 1: look at it now at hindsight, and I think that
Speaker 1: not only did that, that attitude of sticking it out
Speaker 1: helped me to eventually graduate from the home state to
Speaker 1: be part of the Ohio State football family and to
Speaker 1: be appreciated. It was really a turning point and kind
Speaker 1: of a fork in the road in my life as
Speaker 1: an individual. And I wouldn't be sitting here talking to
Speaker 1: you right now. I wouldn't be doing what eventually I
Speaker 1: got into. If I would have said, Man, this is terrible,
Speaker 1: I'm out of here. I'm gonna go play baseball, or
Speaker 1: I'm out of here. I'm gonna like today's kid, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go transfer, doing another school. I'm gonna have a
Speaker 1: transfer portal. I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing today.
Speaker 1: And so when I hear kids face, you know, and
Speaker 1: every individual cases, you know, it's different. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: all kids who transfer are making a mistake, but I
Speaker 1: think the kids that see competition and they get the
Speaker 1: short end of the stick maybe and they think this
Speaker 1: isn't fair. Um, I feel like taking the easy way
Speaker 1: out isn't necessarily always the right answer, And especially if
Speaker 1: you're a traditional powerhouse program with big, strong alumni. There's
Speaker 1: something about Jalen Hurts that if you talk to Alabama alumni,
Speaker 1: the fact that he stuck it out and the fact
Speaker 1: that he got an opportunity in the SEC Championship game
Speaker 1: to perform and do well, and he graduates from Alabama
Speaker 1: and he moves on. Now he's at Oklahoma. But if
Speaker 1: you if Jalen Hurts goes on to try to play
Speaker 1: in the NFL, let's say it works out for a
Speaker 1: year or two. Let's say it doesn't work out at all,
Speaker 1: and now he's looking to try to figure out what
Speaker 1: he wants to do with his life. Jalen Hurts is
Speaker 1: going to have an army of people they're gonna want
Speaker 1: to try to help him succeed in life. And a
Speaker 1: lot of those people are gonna be Alabama alumni because
Speaker 1: they're going to see what he went through and how
Speaker 1: he kept fighting and how he put the team ahead
Speaker 1: of himself. And there's something about that quality that people
Speaker 1: are drawn to that. And so I think when I
Speaker 1: see kids just immediately enter enter the transfer portal, I
Speaker 1: think they're looking at a five year window of their
Speaker 1: life and they're not looking at a forty five year
Speaker 1: window of their life, and how that decision can impact
Speaker 1: them in so many ways beyond just playing football. And
Speaker 1: hopefully there's coaches or family members in their lives to
Speaker 1: help them see that, but I'm afraid of many cases, um,
Speaker 1: that's not the case, and they just try to find
Speaker 1: that theory of the grass as greener on the other
Speaker 1: the other side of the fence, and I think that's
Speaker 1: where they're They're trying to find that quick fix, and
Speaker 1: to me that isn't always the right answer based on
Speaker 1: my experience anyway. Be sure to catch live editions about
Speaker 1: Kicked the coverage with Clay Travis week days at six
Speaker 1: am Eastern, three am Pacific. We're talking to kirkharb Street.
Speaker 1: I'm Clay Travis. This is the Winds and Losses Pot podcast.
Speaker 1: How did your senior year at Ohio State go? It
Speaker 1: went well? I I think I had an injury in
Speaker 1: the second week against Bowling Green. Listening to this, we
Speaker 1: play Bowling Green, who was actually wanted. You know, there's
Speaker 1: always one team in the MAC you just don't want
Speaker 1: to play well Bowling Bowling Green was that team. They
Speaker 1: were outstanding that year and we ended up losing my
Speaker 1: number one receiver by a guy by the name of
Speaker 1: Joey Galloway on a kickoff return towards a c l
Speaker 1: out for the year, another guy by the name of
Speaker 1: Robert Smith cracked three ribs in that game, and we
Speaker 1: lost him for for a few weeks. Um. So, a
Speaker 1: guy named Eddie George started to get more and more
Speaker 1: carries my backfield that year with Eddie, Eddie George, Robert Smith,
Speaker 1: I had Choe Galloway at wide receiver, a kid named
Speaker 1: Brian stade Line who played. By the way. What's remarkable
Speaker 1: is four of those guys that you just mentioned, including you,
Speaker 1: all have ended up making livings in some way talking
Speaker 1: about college football in the NFL. Right, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: Do you think about the statistics on that. That's a
Speaker 1: pretty remarkable number of people to all be on the
Speaker 1: same offensive side of the ball. Yeah, that's a great point.
Speaker 1: And all great guys. I mean, Joey and I were
Speaker 1: best friends in college and continue to be really good friends.
Speaker 1: Eddie a really good friend and so happy for what
Speaker 1: he's accomplished obviously here in Nashville, and such a solid dude. Um. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we ended up. We ended up. The best
Speaker 1: way to describe this is we week three, we play
Speaker 1: at Syracuse on the road. Was this is when they
Speaker 1: had Marvin Graves and they were like fifth or six
Speaker 1: in the country and we were supposed to get killed
Speaker 1: and we ended up beating him and Eddie had like
Speaker 1: three touchdowns in that game. And the very next week
Speaker 1: we're playing a terrible Wisconsin team and we come back
Speaker 1: down again. That's why I'm so big on emotions in
Speaker 1: college football, for you up, are you down? Where are you?
Speaker 1: And we were down against Wisconsin thirty local kick lost
Speaker 1: to a team we should have won. That kind of
Speaker 1: sentence into a little bit of a kind of a
Speaker 1: turned down, kind of a two weeks spin out where
Speaker 1: we just didn't play our best football but ended up
Speaker 1: doing well. We came down to the Michigan game, to
Speaker 1: the Rose Bowl and we ended up tying them, and
Speaker 1: that was when ties, Yeah, just brutal, and they went
Speaker 1: they had been a roll records, so they went ahead
Speaker 1: over us UM and that was back then there was
Speaker 1: no bcs like you really went to the Rose Bowl
Speaker 1: or it was like you know one year we went
Speaker 1: Rose Bowl or Liberty Bowl. It was like Rose Bowl
Speaker 1: or Citrus Bowl. So that's why John Cooper who got
Speaker 1: so much heat, is he could not win that game.
Speaker 1: And in many cases, um, you know, the Rose Bowl
Speaker 1: was on the line. And if you want a couple
Speaker 1: of them. I think people would have been pretty happy
Speaker 1: with his era, But losing to Michigan, it's like it's
Speaker 1: like Tennessee losing Alabama every year. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: eventually it's going to catch up to and that's that's
Speaker 1: what out doing. So you finish your career at Ohio
Speaker 1: State and you do you have any hope at all?
Speaker 1: You talked about baseball and how you thought you were
Speaker 1: pretty good. Do you think at that point, hey, I
Speaker 1: have some kind of career beyond Ohio State athletically. What
Speaker 1: decisions are you making as your college football career comes
Speaker 1: to a close. And he's a great questions that things
Speaker 1: I haven't thought about in years. UM. I was a
Speaker 1: business major at Ohio State and marketing major, and one
Speaker 1: of the things that Ohio State did back then is
Speaker 1: they had a guy that was assigned to help players
Speaker 1: that if they wanted to kind of get into um,
Speaker 1: you know, their field, he would try to connect you
Speaker 1: with people who were um either either either different alumnie
Speaker 1: will try to help you kind of get started with
Speaker 1: your career, or just different companies that would reach out
Speaker 1: to the athletic department say hey, if you have somebody
Speaker 1: that's uh, you know, in the pharmaceutical sales. We're looking
Speaker 1: to maybe high are a couple of guys that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. So I was interviewing. Graduated in the spring,
Speaker 1: but I was interviewing throughout early spring, trying to either
Speaker 1: get into medical sales and pharmaceutical sales. So I was
Speaker 1: going and I was putting on a suit and tie
Speaker 1: as a marketing major. I was going to interviews based
Speaker 1: on this guy's leadership and and just the way he
Speaker 1: was mentoring me. And I was getting a lot of opportunities.
Speaker 1: There was a company called Worthington Industries that's that's up
Speaker 1: in Columbus, and um I was getting second and third interviews.
Speaker 1: So I was balancing that and also thinking, hey, maybe
Speaker 1: I'll maybe I'll try to do the NFL thing. And
Speaker 1: what I found was with the NFL, it was hey,
Speaker 1: we want to bring you in as a free agent
Speaker 1: and I and I for me, I just again, different era,
Speaker 1: different time. A lot of guys back in my ear
Speaker 1: if they didn't get drafted, they would need to go
Speaker 1: free agency. They would go World League, or they would
Speaker 1: go Arena League. And I did not want to be
Speaker 1: a guy that could not cut the cord and just
Speaker 1: bounce around. You know, what are you doing? Well, I'm
Speaker 1: playing an arena football, you know, and arena to Like
Speaker 1: some of these guys, they just cannot let go of
Speaker 1: their athletic career. I did not want. I had such
Speaker 1: a phobia against that that I felt like, if I
Speaker 1: was going to be drafted, I feel chase it the
Speaker 1: best I could. And if I didn't get drafted, I'm done.
Speaker 1: I'm moving on. I'm going to find a job and
Speaker 1: kind of get started with my life. And so when
Speaker 1: I did not get drafted my senior year, as I said,
Speaker 1: I had some free agent opportunities could have done the arena.
Speaker 1: Did you did you have a party for the draft
Speaker 1: or anything, or were you anticipating that like that would
Speaker 1: have been a surprise if you yeah, yeah, yeah, No,
Speaker 1: no party, even if I would have been a first
Speaker 1: round or I don't know, if I wouldn't have a
Speaker 1: big party. I I think that's like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: sometimes I feel so bad for those guys they throw
Speaker 1: the big party and then they don't get drafted on
Speaker 1: the first night, you know, and then it can go
Speaker 1: over into the next night. I don't think I would
Speaker 1: recommend having the big party. I don't know, it's just me,
Speaker 1: but I know we didn't have any party. It was
Speaker 1: just again a different time. Guys, a lot of guys
Speaker 1: didn't really have parties. Joey Galloway was playing basketball when
Speaker 1: he got drafted seventh or eightes overall. Um, it was
Speaker 1: just a just kind of a different time. But no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no draft party for me, nothing like that. Didn't get drafted.
Speaker 1: Like I said, a few teams call after and see
Speaker 1: if I had the interest in coming to the free agent.
Speaker 1: No interest at all. I had just my mind made up.
Speaker 1: I was moving on, and I had been through a
Speaker 1: lot in those five years and I was ready to
Speaker 1: just kind of put that behind me move on. And
Speaker 1: like I said, I thought I was going to get
Speaker 1: into the business world. And it took a while I
Speaker 1: was doing that. I reached out to two local of
Speaker 1: radio stations that that did talk shows, and I grew
Speaker 1: up a big sports talk radio fan. Like if you
Speaker 1: got into my car as a teenager, um, you know
Speaker 1: a lot of times people were listening to music and
Speaker 1: going to party and if you got into my car,
Speaker 1: I was heading to the parties. It's just I was
Speaker 1: listening to Reds Baseball with Marty and Joe, or I
Speaker 1: was listening to seven WW listening to Andy Ferman and
Speaker 1: Chris Collinsworth talking sports like that's that's what I did.
Speaker 1: There was no satellite radio, there's nothing like that. I
Speaker 1: listened to the local radio that happened to be WW
Speaker 1: and Cincinnati, which was a big station, and that's what
Speaker 1: I did. That was like my hobby. I really enjoyed
Speaker 1: listening to talk radio and thought that that would be
Speaker 1: a really cool job if I got older and had
Speaker 1: that opportunity. So with that in mind, as I'm doing
Speaker 1: these interviews for these these pharmaceutical sales and medical sales, um,
Speaker 1: I just threw a couple of floaters out to these
Speaker 1: local AM stations to see if there might be any
Speaker 1: opportunities for them to have. You know, last year study
Speaker 1: that talked about the upcoming football team, and nothing really
Speaker 1: happened for a few months, and then late spring early summer,
Speaker 1: one of them responded and said, it's ironic you're reaching
Speaker 1: out or changing our format basically from elevator music to
Speaker 1: an all sports format. You know that that was just
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the time when all sports radio
Speaker 1: is starting to kind of become a thing, and they
Speaker 1: were going to start an afternoon drive talk show with
Speaker 1: the guy that they called the Voice of the buck Eyes,
Speaker 1: the guy who did the play by play, and he
Speaker 1: needed a partner, and they were gonna pay me if
Speaker 1: I would do it. They were gonna pay me twelve
Speaker 1: thousand dollars with no benefits and you know, not nothing,
Speaker 1: just twelve thousand dollars. This would have been what year,
Speaker 1: like roughly, um, this would have been nineteen spring of
Speaker 1: nineties nineties. So for people they're listening, it wasn't. Twelve
Speaker 1: thousand dollars was not what I was getting at it is.
Speaker 1: Twelve thou dollars was not a lot of money in either.
Speaker 1: No no, no, no, no, no no. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: So I got to the last interview was one of
Speaker 1: these pharmaceutical sales John's. I thought I was gonna take it.
Speaker 1: Took a year, a sample of the whole nine yards
Speaker 1: past it. I mean, they're ready to hire me, and
Speaker 1: they say, is this this radio saying if you're gonna
Speaker 1: take it, you can't you can't become a sales rep
Speaker 1: for us. And you're traveling around, you know, different cities,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna be on the road a lot. We
Speaker 1: can't we can't guarantee you'll be home to be a
Speaker 1: show in afternoon drive radio show. There's no way you
Speaker 1: can do both. So you you got to kind of
Speaker 1: make up your mind. With a pharmaceutical sales job. This
Speaker 1: is like oay, you know, it's like much more stability.
Speaker 1: And so everybody that I talked to at that time
Speaker 1: to get advice, they look to me like, are you
Speaker 1: out of your mind? Like that or that? Basically everybody
Speaker 1: telling me to take the pharmaceutical job, like, you know,
Speaker 1: you what an opportunity, how lucky for you to play
Speaker 1: at Ohio State open up these kind of doors for you.
Speaker 1: You're nuts not to take advantage of that. And in
Speaker 1: the back of my mind, I just kept looking at
Speaker 1: that radio show, having no idea what it potentially could
Speaker 1: lead to. I didn't even think about that. I was
Speaker 1: just thinking, how cool would it be to talk in
Speaker 1: the radio for a job, because I've been listening to
Speaker 1: these guys and we went against a lot of people
Speaker 1: and what they were recommending. And after all those interviewers,
Speaker 1: I turned down all those those business opportunities and I
Speaker 1: took this this local radio, making twelve thousan dollars. Now,
Speaker 1: I was coming off living off of a scholarship check,
Speaker 1: so twelve thousand dollars was actually a raise from what
Speaker 1: I was living off of it. You know, there was
Speaker 1: no cost of living, no pel grant. Like, I didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of money as a student. So now
Speaker 1: you know, I made and I had roommates, so we
Speaker 1: shared rent, we shared own alternationing, electric power and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. So I I was like, you know, I
Speaker 1: was making a little bit of money, but I was
Speaker 1: loving what I was doing. And that started. He actually
Speaker 1: started that the summer of nineties three was my first
Speaker 1: actual welcome to the show was so think about how
Speaker 1: how many years ago was that? Now that was a
Speaker 1: long time ago. I ended up doing radio for fifteen years.
Speaker 1: So so yeah, twelve thousand dollars. What time of day
Speaker 1: were you on? I was on from five thirty to seven.
Speaker 1: It was the initial job that you had. And the
Speaker 1: first time you sit down in front of a radio
Speaker 1: mike and start talking at five thirty, that's the first
Speaker 1: time you would have done an hour and a half
Speaker 1: of radio or what kind of experience did you have
Speaker 1: in radio? Zero zero experience. I was working with, like
Speaker 1: I said, with the play by play man, who, by
Speaker 1: the way, now is the play by play man or
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles Angels. He does the Games Angels and
Speaker 1: has for all that fifteen years. Um. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: just sat there and he and I just kind of
Speaker 1: like you and are doing right now. I just kinda
Speaker 1: hung out and talked, and eventually people started to realize
Speaker 1: it was and elevator music on that station. People were
Speaker 1: talking sports, and we didn't do a lot of they
Speaker 1: were were not a whole lot of marketing going on
Speaker 1: back then, so it was just word of mouth. Eventually
Speaker 1: people figured it out and we start to take calls,
Speaker 1: and you know, it was an hour and a half
Speaker 1: and it was a blink of an eye. But he
Speaker 1: would take it. He would take it out a break,
Speaker 1: he would go in to break, he would throw out
Speaker 1: the traffic, he would you know, all those kind of things.
Speaker 1: All I had to do was hit my button on
Speaker 1: and you know, kind of be his sidekick. That that
Speaker 1: was my gig, Like I didn't have to worry about anything.
Speaker 1: And then the show started to become successful, and then
Speaker 1: it went from five thirty seven. They went from four
Speaker 1: to seven you know, after about I don't know, eight months,
Speaker 1: not eight or nine months. So now we're on for
Speaker 1: three hours, and then they bumped me up by a
Speaker 1: little bit of you know, a little bit more money. Um.
Speaker 1: But again, man, I was just doing something I loved.
Speaker 1: And that's when I learned a very valuable lesson, and
Speaker 1: I tried to speak my my son's about this is fine.
Speaker 1: Something you're passionate about and try to go out and
Speaker 1: make a living doing it. And you know, I don't care.
Speaker 1: What it is saying is if you can find a
Speaker 1: job that involves your passion, then you get to go.
Speaker 1: You get to be probably the only maybe five percent
Speaker 1: of Americans to go to bed on Sunday night and
Speaker 1: actually look forward to the next week. They look forward
Speaker 1: to going to work on Monday. There are a whole
Speaker 1: lot of people to do that. And if you find
Speaker 1: something you love, you're not worried about how much money
Speaker 1: am I making, but you're worried about just doing something
Speaker 1: you love. Eventually you're gonna get better, and you're gonna
Speaker 1: get better, You're gonna hopefully get more opportunities, and eventually
Speaker 1: that money will come. But if you're chasing money, I
Speaker 1: guess it's doable, but you're not going to be very
Speaker 1: happy doing it. And I've learned that just by accident
Speaker 1: really more than anything, just by another fork in the
Speaker 1: road there whether I would have gone pharmaceutical sales or
Speaker 1: talk radio, and I decided to do something I thought
Speaker 1: sound of fun and something I wanted to do, which
Speaker 1: which was talk radio. Fox Sports Radio has the best
Speaker 1: sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our
Speaker 1: shows at Fox Sports Radio dot com and within the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app search f s R to listen live.
Speaker 1: So when we're talking to Kirk herb Street, I'm Clay Travis.
Speaker 1: This is the Winds and Losses podcast. At what point
Speaker 1: does radio lead to an opportunity in television? Well? This,
Speaker 1: this is this is the craziest story of all. So
Speaker 1: Jay Crawford, who used to be at ESPN and he's
Speaker 1: a kind of a local keyp guy now in Cleveland.
Speaker 1: He and I started a show, one of those George
Speaker 1: Michael Sports Machine Sunday night shows. Now everybody seems to
Speaker 1: have them on, even here in Nashville, and there's three
Speaker 1: of them on on a Sunday night local news. There's
Speaker 1: like a thirty minute all sports show. So he and
Speaker 1: their company decides those radio station and this TV station
Speaker 1: were owned by the same family. They decide to start
Speaker 1: a thirty minu it Sunday night sports show, and they
Speaker 1: want me to co host with him. So now you've
Speaker 1: never done any television at any point in my life
Speaker 1: other than being interviewed, right, never anything, And now I'm
Speaker 1: writing scripts and and watching him teach me how to
Speaker 1: write scripts for like Lead INDs. You know where you're
Speaker 1: on Cameron reading telepront reading teleprompter. You know, people at
Speaker 1: home don't realize reading teleprompter when you've never read teleprompter
Speaker 1: and not sounding like you're reading. Oh, it's an amazingly
Speaker 1: difficult skill to have. It is, especially when you're twenty
Speaker 1: three and you have zero TV experience. And I'll tell
Speaker 1: you to this day, one of the greatest things I
Speaker 1: ever did was taking that show. So, you know, being
Speaker 1: in Columbus, we would do Reds or Indians or Browns
Speaker 1: or Bengals. I mean, Ohio State. There's just a lot
Speaker 1: going on in that market to be able to talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, a ton of golf, and so I'm doing
Speaker 1: Lead in you know, when it's a single shot on
Speaker 1: you and you're reading maybe three sentences into the highlight
Speaker 1: or whatever it was. So I did that. I would
Speaker 1: do my radio show during the week. I was part
Speaker 1: of the Ohio State Radio broadcast. I was the sideline
Speaker 1: reporter from from down on the field. And then I
Speaker 1: would Sunday night, I would do the the Sunday Night
Speaker 1: show for thirty minutes and I would be reading teleprompter
Speaker 1: and doing my best with highlights and talking about a
Speaker 1: fish out of water for you know, probably for six
Speaker 1: months just trying to figure out what most people probably
Speaker 1: do in college. I was doing live on the air
Speaker 1: and create experience for me and allowed me to really grow.
Speaker 1: And every time I would be on the even thought
Speaker 1: about working at ESPN. I'd be on the sideline and
Speaker 1: there was a guy by the name of Jack or Root.
Speaker 1: Were you to be on the side, remember him. He
Speaker 1: was with a lot of times he was with Keith
Speaker 1: uh and sometimes with Brent Musburger. But he would see
Speaker 1: me with his big, huge radio pack on and you know,
Speaker 1: saying weight about twenty five pounds, and he'd look at
Speaker 1: me with his his dark rounded sunglasses and he'd be like,
Speaker 1: what he's like, I see you all the time? He's like,
Speaker 1: why aren't you doing TV? I was like, I'm doing
Speaker 1: this is great, man. I'm by now I'm up. I'm
Speaker 1: up to like twenty eight or thirties thousand in my
Speaker 1: mind because I'm doing that TV stuff and I'm loving life.
Speaker 1: I'm you know, I'm hanging out with my buddies and
Speaker 1: not really traveling other than one Ohio State footballs on
Speaker 1: the road. I like, I had a great gig, you know.
Speaker 1: And and he's like, you gotta put a tape together,
Speaker 1: you know, And you got you gotta, you need to
Speaker 1: get on TV. Every time I'd see him, you would
Speaker 1: say that. So so the three season and ninety four season,
Speaker 1: I'm doing this well the ninety By the time the nineties, that's,
Speaker 1: by the way, Eddie George, when he was like at
Speaker 1: the highest peak of his he went on to in
Speaker 1: the highs of he's just starting to really cop up.
Speaker 1: And so I come up with, I have no tape.
Speaker 1: What am I gonna send ESPN? I don't have any
Speaker 1: TV other than Sunday Night Show. So I come up
Speaker 1: with an idea. And no, I didn't have an agent,
Speaker 1: Nobody told me to do this. I come up with
Speaker 1: an idea that. I go to Ohio Stadium in February
Speaker 1: stadium twenty degrees out, it's empty. I get a local
Speaker 1: TV guy, camera guy to come with me, and I
Speaker 1: do a fake sideline report. I think. I was like thanks, Keith,
Speaker 1: and I did like a you know, like a I
Speaker 1: don't know, I make something up, you know, for thirty
Speaker 1: or forty five seconds. I do two of those. I
Speaker 1: asked Eddie George, who's a huge name at the time
Speaker 1: in college football, and Joey Galloway, who was just about
Speaker 1: to be drafted, and their buddies of mine. I asked them, Hey,
Speaker 1: could you guys come over the newsroom and take something
Speaker 1: with me. I'm not gonna put it on air. I
Speaker 1: just want to put it on my tape. And they're like, sure,
Speaker 1: we have no problem. So I call I have them
Speaker 1: come over. We spent about ten minutes. I I fake
Speaker 1: like I called the show buck t Corner, your host perfect.
Speaker 1: I interviewed these guys, ask him about whatever for about
Speaker 1: ten minutes. So I put that on. I put the
Speaker 1: fake sideline reports from the empty Ohio stadium on. I
Speaker 1: would love to see that tape today, and I sent
Speaker 1: that to ABC Sports and I've seen it to ESPN,
Speaker 1: and that's how angually ESPN responded back to me, and uh,
Speaker 1: that's how eventually I ended up getting hired there. So
Speaker 1: what did they hire you to do the first? Like,
Speaker 1: did they ever ask you about that? That would be
Speaker 1: an amazing video To find it has to be somewhere, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I don't know where it would be. But
Speaker 1: I I didn't hear anything. Again, this is this is
Speaker 1: pre internet, pretty email, pretty everything. I didn't hear. I
Speaker 1: I sent that, like, but you said that like a
Speaker 1: VHS tape and like a Manila envelope to somebody's addressed
Speaker 1: that you had Jack dud. I literally don't even know
Speaker 1: if anybody saw that. I didn't get a thank you note.
Speaker 1: I didn't get a hey, we'll be in touch. I
Speaker 1: didn't get anything. So I just assumes somebody looked at it,
Speaker 1: throw it in the trash, moved on with their day,
Speaker 1: like I had no idea. And like two or three
Speaker 1: months later, ESPN calls and says, we would love to
Speaker 1: fly you in for an interview and audition and and
Speaker 1: we're going to send you some some stuff on the
Speaker 1: Georgia Alabama game from the previous football season from the season.
Speaker 1: So they send me all this literature and information on
Speaker 1: the game that was already played, and they want me
Speaker 1: to kind of show up ready to go to be
Speaker 1: able to we're gonna do some studio work with you,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna do some play by play color work
Speaker 1: with you. I've never done play by playing color in
Speaker 1: my life. So I am up until I'm not exaggerating,
Speaker 1: I'm up till three or four in the morning putting
Speaker 1: together aboard because the when I did Ohio State Radio
Speaker 1: and the play by play guy had this board that
Speaker 1: he would do. So ever reason I knew anybody did
Speaker 1: a board was he did it. So I'm up with
Speaker 1: all this literature they sent me, and I you know,
Speaker 1: I'm going over Andre Hastings and Eric Sire and all
Speaker 1: these different guys, and I'm like looking through their media
Speaker 1: guy to see any his cousin played, And you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, it took me forever, and I'm going through
Speaker 1: every player, every starter, and I made this board. I've
Speaker 1: never worked as hard to this day on a board
Speaker 1: as I did that board. Um to go into that audition,
Speaker 1: So I fly the next day after doing all this
Speaker 1: work on this board, we sit down and speak for
Speaker 1: a little bit, maybe for an hour, and they just
Speaker 1: trying to get to know me a little bit. And
Speaker 1: then they say, okay, let's go downstairs. And they brought
Speaker 1: Jack Edwards, who used to be a sports bank on
Speaker 1: How do you remember him? He came in. I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't really know anything about him or
Speaker 1: know who he was. I'd seen him on Sports Center.
Speaker 1: But we do like a segment. Um, they give me
Speaker 1: an idea of what we might talk about, they show me,
Speaker 1: give me a little bit of time to kind of
Speaker 1: go over it, and so we do like a little
Speaker 1: segment on TV. And they just watched me talk um,
Speaker 1: you know, see if I can speak and look at
Speaker 1: the camera. And we do that for fifteen or twenty minutes,
Speaker 1: and they say, okay, I remember we asked you to
Speaker 1: look at the George Alabama game. We want you to
Speaker 1: give any notes or anything. So I'm like so excited.
Speaker 1: It's down into my bag, pulled his board out. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've got hey. Jack Edwards looks at that and he's like, wow,
Speaker 1: it's like you put a little time, just like you
Speaker 1: put a little time into that, Like yeah, of course, yeah,
Speaker 1: I put it down and right on the sports center
Speaker 1: uh desk, and they put a game on in the
Speaker 1: monitor that's inside the desk, and Jack's acting like to
Speaker 1: play by play guy, and I'm being the color guy.
Speaker 1: And we probably all that work talking six hours easy
Speaker 1: on that you probably did three plays. And then they're like, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, thanks guys. Oh man, that's it. I said,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do the whole game, did like three t
Speaker 1: three plays, and then that was it. Put me in
Speaker 1: a car some met the airport said thanks. And that
Speaker 1: was in April March or April of April, May, June, July,
Speaker 1: early August. I'm on a fishing trip in the Upper
Speaker 1: Peninsula with my dad and my uncle and my grandpa,
Speaker 1: and my roommate called and said, some guy named Mo
Speaker 1: Davenport from ESPN called you. He needs you to call
Speaker 1: him as soon as possible. Season starts in like four weeks.
Speaker 1: I honestly, again, i'd forgotten about it. I thought I
Speaker 1: just failed. They called me and offered me a thirteen
Speaker 1: week sideline reporting on a new station called ESPN two.
Speaker 1: I was going to be in eideline reporter. They're gonna
Speaker 1: pay me seven fifty dollars per game and right away
Speaker 1: I get my calculator out of my Yeah, weeks adding
Speaker 1: all that up to see kind of where we are,
Speaker 1: and sure enough it ended up I ended up taking
Speaker 1: that and kind of the rest is uh, the rest
Speaker 1: is history. But that all was working with Dwayne Stats
Speaker 1: and Todd Christiansen most weeks being the sideline reporter and
Speaker 1: that was crazy. Dude, How I'm nervous? Yeah, how nervous
Speaker 1: were you for that trip to ESPN? Because I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people listening right now who want
Speaker 1: that opportunity, right, they want to get a chance whatever
Speaker 1: field you're in. And like you talked about all the
Speaker 1: hours you prepared for like you were way over prepared
Speaker 1: for what you did, right, and you don't get any feedback,
Speaker 1: but when you were walking into that room for that interview,
Speaker 1: and I think there's a lot of people who can
Speaker 1: experience that and have at some point in their careers,
Speaker 1: Like what did that feel like for you? Completely go
Speaker 1: back to what we talked about earlier about how shy
Speaker 1: I am as a person. Um I was. I was
Speaker 1: out of my comfort zone, but at the same time
Speaker 1: could not believe ESPN um had called me. So I
Speaker 1: was like, I'm going to see this through. I'm going
Speaker 1: to overcome I'm going to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, basically,
Speaker 1: is what I decided to do. And um walked in
Speaker 1: there and and ESPN. If you've never been there, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's like a kind of an even back then,
Speaker 1: it's like a big campus, you know, like I always
Speaker 1: envisioned it being in New York City and with a
Speaker 1: huge buildings and you know that kind of thing. That
Speaker 1: was my perception of ESPN before I went there. And
Speaker 1: then I went there and it was it was like
Speaker 1: in a suburb, you know, and it just happened to
Speaker 1: be uh year years ago it was just a local
Speaker 1: New England sports network. It was you know, not not
Speaker 1: ever envisioned and growing and what it became. And so
Speaker 1: the founding fathers they weren't really worried about growth. And
Speaker 1: so by the time I came along in the mid nineties,
Speaker 1: they've been around for I don't know, you tell me
Speaker 1: twenty years, maybe fifteen seventeen years maybe by then, and
Speaker 1: so you could see that their growth was going out,
Speaker 1: you know, sideways, not up, and they were buying up
Speaker 1: McDonald's maybe across the street or they were buying this,
Speaker 1: or they're buying that because they were outgrowing um. And
Speaker 1: so when you walk in there and you're you're going
Speaker 1: in for an audition or an interview, man, it's it's daunting.
Speaker 1: It's it's a pretty intimidating experience, at least for me,
Speaker 1: especially for the lack of experience that I had at
Speaker 1: that point in my career. And they couldn't they couldn't
Speaker 1: have been any more gracious, but it's still pretty pretty
Speaker 1: scary thing to go through. You do the sidelines, uh
Speaker 1: in I guess the fall of for ESPN two, how
Speaker 1: long do you do sidelines? So I I did that
Speaker 1: the entire year, and when we got to November, I
Speaker 1: kept reaching back to Moe Davenport, who was kind of
Speaker 1: the boss back then, and I kept saying, Hey, you know,
Speaker 1: if there's ever a game where somebody calls in sick,
Speaker 1: or there's ever a game where you have more games
Speaker 1: and you have announcers and you need somebody, um, I
Speaker 1: would love to do some color. It's I can ever
Speaker 1: do that for you love to have a chance to
Speaker 1: took all game? And He's like, I hear, yeah, I hear,
Speaker 1: you just be paid just be patient. Just be patient
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Oh. Um, the whole season went through.
Speaker 1: We get near the end of the season and he
Speaker 1: calls me and he says, I think I've got an
Speaker 1: opportunity for you. Um it's Minnesota. This by the way,
Speaker 1: this isn't like Main versus New Hampshire, Right, I mean again,
Speaker 1: you can go back to my age and where I
Speaker 1: was at this point in my career, I was doing
Speaker 1: sideline reporting and most of the the games. My first game
Speaker 1: was Hawaii in Texas with Ricky Williams as a true
Speaker 1: freshman at Hawaii. Um, we're doing so. I mean, you
Speaker 1: got paid fifty dollars, but your airfare costs more than
Speaker 1: that at least, right, I mean to get out to Hawaii, Well,
Speaker 1: luckily ESPN covered for Yeah. Yeah, That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: But like, I mean, that's that's pretty that's a pretty
Speaker 1: awesome game to get to go to. Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: And I'm in Hawaii and so I'm seeing the country.
Speaker 1: I'm seeing the world outside of the Big Ten. And
Speaker 1: I was in the Mountain West, a bunch with like
Speaker 1: teams like Sunny Lubick in Colorado State and and b
Speaker 1: y U and then we went into the Big Ten
Speaker 1: and and so we bounced around. I had a really
Speaker 1: good experience with it. But like I said, halfway through
Speaker 1: where I reached out if there's any games. So he
Speaker 1: calls me and says, I got a game for you. Minnesota, Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: That's what they crafted all Bunyan acts, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's always a sold out game, and it's gonna be
Speaker 1: at the Metrodome. It's gonna be a Minneapolis You're gonna
Speaker 1: be calling the game. And I'm like, oh, that's awesome,
Speaker 1: you know. And obviously I knew Wisconsin and Minnesota from
Speaker 1: being in the Big Ten, but I didn't really respect
Speaker 1: or understand that rivalry until that week. Um Man, the
Speaker 1: play by play guy's name is escaped in me. He
Speaker 1: did hockey for a long time, he did baseball. I'll
Speaker 1: think of it. Um just a quality broadcaster, really good guy,
Speaker 1: but a but a guy that had been around and
Speaker 1: and and done a lot of different games. At this
Speaker 1: point in his career, was really known as a hockey guy,
Speaker 1: MLB guy. Um So, but he did some college football
Speaker 1: that year, and so I'm teamed up with him and
Speaker 1: he's he's like, have you ever done this? And I
Speaker 1: said no, and he's like, oh you're Evila. He was
Speaker 1: just great. He's like, you're gonna have a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: You're gonna do a great job. And we worked together
Speaker 1: for that week and I called that game and it
Speaker 1: was actually a great game, and Wisconsin ended up winning
Speaker 1: the game and ran across the field and you know,
Speaker 1: grabbed the acts and it's like, you know, they're cutting
Speaker 1: down the goal post or you know, faking like they're
Speaker 1: cutting down the goal post. But it was just a
Speaker 1: really cool experience. And this sounds crazy, but of all
Speaker 1: the things I've ever done, nothing has felt more natural
Speaker 1: to me than that been. Like calling a game, like
Speaker 1: doing the audition did not feel natural to me, um
Speaker 1: doing you know, all these things that I've ever done,
Speaker 1: even locally doing radio and doing that Sunday night show
Speaker 1: that I did, reading prompter didn't feel naturally to me.
Speaker 1: Calling the Wisconsin Minnesota game felt as natural to me
Speaker 1: as anything I've ever done. And so that's when I
Speaker 1: was like, this, this is where I've got to get.
Speaker 1: This is what I want to do. When I called
Speaker 1: that game, and that was the end of the ninety
Speaker 1: five season, and then as the season ended, a month
Speaker 1: or two later, they called me back and said, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: we got another opportunity for you, and we're going to
Speaker 1: have you do the entire arena football season for this
Speaker 1: spring and and work with Todd Christiansen, who's going to
Speaker 1: do the play by play, and you're going to be
Speaker 1: the color gap man, and you guys gonna call fifteen
Speaker 1: weeks throughout the spring and into the summer, and it's
Speaker 1: gonna be on ESPN. And I was like, in, I'm in.
Speaker 1: I want the reps that I want to do that.
Speaker 1: I don't know a thing about arena football, but I'm
Speaker 1: in and I had So that was what I did
Speaker 1: in the spring of nine and did. The color guy
Speaker 1: by the name of Kurt Warner was the star of
Speaker 1: the league that year. He was the m VT before
Speaker 1: he went to the Rams, and he played for a
Speaker 1: team called the Iowa Barnstormers. So we'd be in like
Speaker 1: Cedar Rapids, calling games, you know, just all over the place.
Speaker 1: And I actually had a really cool time time calling
Speaker 1: the games and getting those those valuable reps doing color work.
Speaker 1: And then halfway through that season, I get a call
Speaker 1: that says Craig James has left game day he's going
Speaker 1: to CBS. To CBS got to the NFL from Fox,
Speaker 1: so he's going to be part of their new studio show.
Speaker 1: We have an opening on college game Day. They literally
Speaker 1: told me, you're not going to get the job, but
Speaker 1: at this stage of your career, be really good for
Speaker 1: you to just go through the experience. We're gonna fly
Speaker 1: Corso and fouler in. Be good for you to just
Speaker 1: go through that experience and just kind of see what
Speaker 1: it's like. So I said, okay, great, flew in in
Speaker 1: the middle of the week because those those arena games
Speaker 1: around the weekend, flew in sat down. There's lead Corso
Speaker 1: sitting right next to me. I'm like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: like and he could He's just like he is not hey, hey,
Speaker 1: how you doing, just talking to and uh, how you're
Speaker 1: gonna kill him? A great jock. You're gonna have fun.
Speaker 1: Here we go, get ready and then music starts that
Speaker 1: that that that and Fowlers, you know, welcomes us and
Speaker 1: we do it. We do a segment. We do like
Speaker 1: a dummy segment, and I think there were maybe five
Speaker 1: or six guys that came in. I have no idea
Speaker 1: who the other guys were. I think Mike Adamlee might
Speaker 1: have been one of the other guys, but I'm not
Speaker 1: sure who the other guys were. And we got done,
Speaker 1: and a couple of weeks, maybe two or three weeks
Speaker 1: go by, I go back to an arena football games
Speaker 1: and my agent called me and said, um, he's like,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna believe this, but they're going to hire
Speaker 1: you to do a college game day. I was like,
Speaker 1: I was in the Detroit airport actually on my way
Speaker 1: up to Iowa on a connection and stopped at a
Speaker 1: pay phone. How about that, Yeah, that's amazing. Yes, And
Speaker 1: called him on my sprint card, Um the eight and
Speaker 1: then you wait for the ding and then you dial
Speaker 1: the number. And called him and he told me, yeah,
Speaker 1: going to do the you canna do? You've assigning to
Speaker 1: a three year deal. And that was That was the
Speaker 1: summer of nineties six and that's that was it. I
Speaker 1: was doing it ever since. So you're how old in
Speaker 1: this at twenty six years old? Now, game day to
Speaker 1: be fair for people who were listening to us right
Speaker 1: now in nine is a shadow of what it would become.
Speaker 1: Right I I did did go on. I mean it
Speaker 1: was it was just kind of starting to become the
Speaker 1: iconic show that it would become. But I mean at
Speaker 1: the age of twenty six, like you just said, your
Speaker 1: sons are, you know, nineteen years old now at Clemson,
Speaker 1: like your four years or three years out of college.
Speaker 1: I mean, that had to be kind of unbelievable. But
Speaker 1: also you probably didn't even realize how big it was
Speaker 1: going to be, or did you at that point in time.
Speaker 1: Man again, at six, you're thinking of tomorrow. You're not
Speaker 1: thinking about the show. I just knew that I was
Speaker 1: on machine, always watched and even at that time, while
Speaker 1: it didn't have the audience, um that we have now
Speaker 1: when we show up around the set, I think most
Speaker 1: people who liked college football tuned into being that show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, yeah. I mean there was that show,
Speaker 1: and there was a show on CNN with Chuck Uh there.
Speaker 1: You had a few options if you're a college football fan.
Speaker 1: But that that show was kind of unique because the
Speaker 1: correct James and Corso and it was just starting to
Speaker 1: travel on the road. Um that kind of gave it
Speaker 1: a you know, kind of a unique feel to it.
Speaker 1: But man, I again, you're just flying by the senior
Speaker 1: You could see in my career how things just kind
Speaker 1: of went like all of a sudden just cruise and
Speaker 1: then bing bing bing bing bing, like it just everything
Speaker 1: just kind of happened at once, and um so I
Speaker 1: wasn't really thinking where this might go or how long
Speaker 1: am I going to do this, or I was just
Speaker 1: thinking honestly going back to you know, going through being
Speaker 1: honest with yourself. My biggest thing was I'm not going
Speaker 1: to hide the fact that I'm an anomaly in this
Speaker 1: business on a national level level. I'm not a Heisman
Speaker 1: Trophy winner, i was not a household name on a
Speaker 1: national level. People in the Big ten region probably have
Speaker 1: heard of me. People in the SEC A, SEC Big twelve,
Speaker 1: PAC twelve have literally no idea who I am. So
Speaker 1: instead of being embarrassed about that or hiding from that,
Speaker 1: I decided to go back to what I did with
Speaker 1: that board, which was I'm going to be the hardest
Speaker 1: working analysts. So they may not know who I am,
Speaker 1: but they're going to realize, man, that guy seems pretty prepared.
Speaker 1: That guy seems that nobody's talking about Like that was
Speaker 1: my goal from the beginning, was to try to be
Speaker 1: that guy that people would just because I knew I
Speaker 1: as a viewer myself. I respected guys like that, so
Speaker 1: I thought, I don't really know, I'm not talented enough
Speaker 1: to be a stick guy. I don't really don't even
Speaker 1: know what that means. So I'm going to be myself
Speaker 1: and I'm going to be uh, the most prepared guy
Speaker 1: on the set. Like those are my goals, and that's
Speaker 1: what I've decided to do. And I think over the
Speaker 1: course of a couple of years, and you know, I
Speaker 1: started to find that people were willing to accept what
Speaker 1: I had to say because of the way I was
Speaker 1: working at it. And I think that that kind of
Speaker 1: allowed me to create a brand and for myself that
Speaker 1: if even to this day, here we are twenty five
Speaker 1: years later. You know, people don't know me like they
Speaker 1: know Desmond. They know Desmond from winning a Heisman and
Speaker 1: doing a Heisman pose. You know, they know David Pollock
Speaker 1: for being whatever he was, three time All American or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, like the most guys on TV, they they
Speaker 1: are known, uh first and foremost for for the kind
Speaker 1: of player they were. And for me, I think I
Speaker 1: am known more for for better or worse, for the
Speaker 1: analysts that I am on TV. And it's taken five
Speaker 1: years to to build that up, and like I said,
Speaker 1: I think it all goes back to me. Instead of
Speaker 1: being bashful or ashamed of people not knowing who I am,
Speaker 1: I decided to kind of hit that head on as
Speaker 1: opposed to running from it and trying to avoid it.
Speaker 1: What was the first game you did with game Day?
Speaker 1: First game Day? We did it on the road in
Speaker 1: ninety six was Michigan at Colorado at fulsome field in Boulder, Colorado.
Speaker 1: You and I were talking from it. Came on the
Speaker 1: air about how beautiful this time of the year it
Speaker 1: is to go out to the Rockies. He got a
Speaker 1: chance to do that, and you think about a game
Speaker 1: in September out in Boulder. Um, they're really at the
Speaker 1: foothills there, the Rockies. I I just was like, wow,
Speaker 1: this is incredible. How nervous. How nervous were you before
Speaker 1: that first show? Um? I was nervous, but I wasn't
Speaker 1: terrified like I wasn't Um I was. I was in
Speaker 1: an okay place because the guys that I worked with.
Speaker 1: I think the thing that brought me, um some hesitation
Speaker 1: or some nerves was how would Fowler be towards me?
Speaker 1: You know, he was such an established leader of that
Speaker 1: show of corso was just so as soon as you
Speaker 1: meet him, he's just like if you and I were
Speaker 1: together right now, we can and had said, hey, coaches,
Speaker 1: is Clay you don't like? He just has that personality.
Speaker 1: He just makes you feel welcome. It's just him. Chris
Speaker 1: is the guy you gotta He makes you feel welcome,
Speaker 1: but you gotta kind of earn your stripes with him.
Speaker 1: And so if I had any trepidation at all, it
Speaker 1: was this Chris respect me, you know, does he think
Speaker 1: I'm okay to be on the show? Like? And I
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure he felt comfortable with me. I
Speaker 1: didn't really have fear of being on air or nerves
Speaker 1: of being on air. I just was I just wanted
Speaker 1: them to know they could count on me as being
Speaker 1: a good teammate and holding up my end of of
Speaker 1: the job or my responsibility you know, on the set.
Speaker 1: And you know, and I think Chris and I over
Speaker 1: the years of really built a pretty strong bond, you know,
Speaker 1: in that regard. But yeah, early years, especially that first year,
Speaker 1: that was my main thing was I don't know if
Speaker 1: you know Chris or watch him or been around it,
Speaker 1: but he is true professional you know, and he's he's
Speaker 1: his own worst critic for himself and for the show,
Speaker 1: and is not afraid to talk about that in meetings,
Speaker 1: and you know, and that's what makes him great, you
Speaker 1: know what he does. And so more so than the
Speaker 1: producers and the bosses, Chris was the guy that I
Speaker 1: was always trying to make sure kind of get his blessing,
Speaker 1: I guess more than anything. So when you are doing
Speaker 1: Game Day and you've been doing it for twenty five
Speaker 1: years now, I guess or whatever the math is on that,
Speaker 1: which is wild to think about. And there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people listening to us right now who are like,
Speaker 1: I can't believe, you know, like ninety six doesn't seem
Speaker 1: very long ago to me. You know, I can think
Speaker 1: about the players and the games that happened back then,
Speaker 1: but you think about how many games there have been
Speaker 1: over the years, and how much you have done. How
Speaker 1: did you so. One of the things that I talked
Speaker 1: about with with younger people is writing, radio and TV
Speaker 1: are all different disciplines and what works really well and
Speaker 1: one of them might not work in the next might
Speaker 1: not work in the other. You have to learn how
Speaker 1: to be good at all of them. You said you
Speaker 1: did local radio, you were good at it, It's totally
Speaker 1: different dynamic. How did you get good at television? Like?
Speaker 1: Who did you learn from? What did you do to
Speaker 1: become comfortable? Would you go back and watch old game days?
Speaker 1: Would you go back and watch games that you called?
Speaker 1: How did you sort of refine and get better at
Speaker 1: your craft? Um? I think the big thing that I
Speaker 1: did was I had my my eyes open and my
Speaker 1: ears open, and I was paying attention to other people,
Speaker 1: most notably Leek Horso, who they was the only other
Speaker 1: analyst on the set at the time. And what I
Speaker 1: quickly learned was I was going to be myself. When
Speaker 1: I first started on the job, a few producers pulled
Speaker 1: me aside and said, you're going about this wrong. You
Speaker 1: need to argue more with Corso. You're being too nice
Speaker 1: to him. That's not going to work. And because they
Speaker 1: were used to correct, James and Corso kind of going
Speaker 1: really going at it. That became their stick was those
Speaker 1: two arguing with each other. And Craig had a big personality,
Speaker 1: think kind of just kind of southern guy from Texas
Speaker 1: and just like, man, oh man, you're crazy, you know,
Speaker 1: just just and I here, I am grew up with
Speaker 1: my dad as a coach, all those other coaches that
Speaker 1: I was more I would. I always treated coaches with respect.
Speaker 1: I could never go like, of course, so you're crazy,
Speaker 1: Like I just couldn't do that. And so, especially how
Speaker 1: nice he was being to me off air, I could
Speaker 1: not stick it up. I had to be myself, and
Speaker 1: so the show changed drastically when I came on because
Speaker 1: I was not I'd argue with them, but it was
Speaker 1: in a kind of respectful tone. And so what I
Speaker 1: did I answer your question was I realized I could
Speaker 1: never be Lee Corso. But I realized was I thought
Speaker 1: they hired me to be a football analysts covered to
Speaker 1: three technique, inverted safety, four verticals. And what I learned
Speaker 1: was Lee Corso always says in our meetings, we're in
Speaker 1: the entertainment business. We are. And what I realized was
Speaker 1: if you watch game there, you watch Shack and Charles, Like,
Speaker 1: the reason those two shows work is because they're not
Speaker 1: beating you over the head with let me show you
Speaker 1: how much football I know. Like, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: we'll talk some football and we'll break some film down,
Speaker 1: but we're more kind of laughing self deprecating, teasing each other.
Speaker 1: Rinaldi's gonna make you cry. We're gonna come back and
Speaker 1: we're gonna kind of cry or laugh some more at
Speaker 1: each other. We're gonna get you some real XCEL football talk.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a mixed bag. And what I
Speaker 1: guess I learned how I personally fit into that was
Speaker 1: I'm not here to just beat people over the head
Speaker 1: with XO talk. See when I first got into it,
Speaker 1: I thought I was here for exo talk, And when
Speaker 1: I quickly learned was there's way more more to studio
Speaker 1: television than just exo talk. And I think being aware
Speaker 1: of her and just then being an observer and being
Speaker 1: a listener and being willing to change and being willing
Speaker 1: to tweak and being willing to kind of stay kind
Speaker 1: of just me, not trying to be somebody else. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna be me. Um. I think you just kind
Speaker 1: of grow and develop and kind of put your foot
Speaker 1: in the water over here a little bit, you see
Speaker 1: if that kind of feels all right, and maybe go
Speaker 1: over here a little bit, and you just try to.
Speaker 1: Most importantly, you just try, and you you do studio work.
Speaker 1: I mean, you understand when you can when you can
Speaker 1: be yourself. I think when things typically work the best.
Speaker 1: Like I hate when our producers right or try to
Speaker 1: script something that's going to be funny, because it's never funny. Like,
Speaker 1: the things that end up being most memorable and funny
Speaker 1: are the things that are impromptu, are things that are unpredictable.
Speaker 1: Like if you went to dinner, we wouldn't script out
Speaker 1: our dinner conversation. Like we could just go to dinner
Speaker 1: and we hang out and you'd probably end up saying
Speaker 1: something that kind of had us all laughing or we
Speaker 1: kind of respond to it someone else to be laughing,
Speaker 1: And it's just very natural spontaneous conversation to me. If
Speaker 1: you can do that, then I think you can have
Speaker 1: really good TV. It just happens that we're talking college
Speaker 1: football and coaches and opinions and and things of that nature.
Speaker 1: And um, I just think that there has to be
Speaker 1: a willingness to listen and grow and not kind of
Speaker 1: put yourself into a box. And That's what I've done
Speaker 1: and I still do. I still feel like I'm changing
Speaker 1: and growing and adapting, um along the way. How how
Speaker 1: have you avoid that? At six? You're basically a contemporary
Speaker 1: of the players at your age. Now you're a contemporary
Speaker 1: of the coaches. How has your worldview changed as you've
Speaker 1: gone from you've got four kids, You've got kids who
Speaker 1: are going to be freshmen in college. Now I can
Speaker 1: see this on my own life with you know, you
Speaker 1: start to see things through the parents eyes as opposed
Speaker 1: to the kid's eyes. You certainly have had to follow
Speaker 1: that trajectory in a public way on game day. Have
Speaker 1: you felt it? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, we
Speaker 1: used to kind of kid Courso because he was the
Speaker 1: guy that saw things through coaches eyes and that generation,
Speaker 1: and we were the younger guys, and we've kind of
Speaker 1: kind of kind of elbow him and giggle at him.
Speaker 1: And I think what I have found is having kids
Speaker 1: Number one helps you know, to keep you kind of
Speaker 1: plugged into to the world and and that kind of
Speaker 1: that next generation. I think that's number one for me.
Speaker 1: Number two is I think that, um, you don't always
Speaker 1: have to agree with what you're seeing. Um, like we
Speaker 1: were talking about the transfer portal. I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: sound like a guy from a different generation like these
Speaker 1: kids today are crazy. I'm just trying to tell you
Speaker 1: what what that experience did for me by staying. And
Speaker 1: I think people who jump to the transfer portal have
Speaker 1: to you know, as I said, it's an individual case
Speaker 1: by case study, but I do think that, um, I
Speaker 1: have some experience there, and I I refuse to be
Speaker 1: like trawl Line and the Sam guy like this is
Speaker 1: the way it is, it's the way it should be,
Speaker 1: this way it always be like I'm just not that guy. UM.
Speaker 1: I try to really stay plugged in, you know, strategically,
Speaker 1: but also I think as you're saying, just the you know,
Speaker 1: the way the world has changed. I stay plugged in
Speaker 1: with Lincoln Riley. You know. I used to talk with
Speaker 1: Pete Carroll all the time, and I love to have
Speaker 1: heart to hearts with these coaches when there's no camera on,
Speaker 1: there's no mike, it's just me and them just talking,
Speaker 1: and I like to find out like this is going on.
Speaker 1: Since the mid nineties, I've done this, so I do
Speaker 1: it every year. Just talk to them about life, just
Speaker 1: talk to them about their challenges with they're facing in
Speaker 1: their locker room. And I try to be the guy
Speaker 1: that's plugged into ten, not the guy that was plugged
Speaker 1: in the that's trying to figure out, so what's is
Speaker 1: it's still going on in ten you know, I think
Speaker 1: people that that do what we do, whether it's coaches
Speaker 1: or broadcasters or whoever it is, it's around for you know,
Speaker 1: a you know, a couple of decades or longer, you're
Speaker 1: you're making a big mistake if you think. And you
Speaker 1: can listen to broadcaster as it tell guys that they
Speaker 1: talked about when they played and you know they played
Speaker 1: like twenty five years ago, like what is you what
Speaker 1: is your experience as you're you're playing days? What does
Speaker 1: that have to do with this third and six? For
Speaker 1: Aaron Rodgers? Like nothing? You know. So so I try
Speaker 1: to be a guy that talks about today as much
Speaker 1: as I can, not only through my own life experiences,
Speaker 1: but through a lot of work with the players from today,
Speaker 1: talking to them about, you know what, what their challenges
Speaker 1: are that they face, and then also, like I said,
Speaker 1: the coaches. And I think I've just found by doing that,
Speaker 1: being inquisitive, having open dialogue with guys about not just
Speaker 1: football but about life, I've just found that helps me
Speaker 1: kind of stay plugged into um just being relevant, you know,
Speaker 1: to to today, whether it was or or or if
Speaker 1: we're talking, like I just feel like that's part of
Speaker 1: my responsibility is to continue to kind of grow and
Speaker 1: and change and band from one way or another with
Speaker 1: some of the social demands and challenges that everybody faces,
Speaker 1: whether it's players or coaches. Fox Sports Radio has the
Speaker 1: best sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of
Speaker 1: our shows at Fox Sports Radio dot com and within
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio apps. Search f s R to
Speaker 1: listen live. Talking to Kirk urb Straight, I'm Clay Travis.
Speaker 1: This is Wins and Losses Podcast. You are a voice
Speaker 1: for a massive audience when you call a game. You've
Speaker 1: got a big audience on game day, but the audience
Speaker 1: for calling a college football national championship game or playoff
Speaker 1: game is seismically larger than that. We're in a world
Speaker 1: where audiences are diminishing almost everywhere but sports, right, Um,
Speaker 1: how do you talk to everyone? It's it's it's a
Speaker 1: broad question, but I'm curious how much you think about it,
Speaker 1: Because you're talking to the eighty year old grandma when
Speaker 1: you call a game, and you're talking to the six
Speaker 1: year old who maybe watching his first national title game,
Speaker 1: and they all are hearing your voice. It's very unique.
Speaker 1: You know, back in the day when we grew up,
Speaker 1: everybody would watch, for instance, The Cosby Show, and every
Speaker 1: sitcom had to appeal to everybody. Right, you are still
Speaker 1: in the business of appealing to everybody in an age
Speaker 1: when everybody wants their voice to be heard and every sentence,
Speaker 1: you know, gets dissected. I'm curious how much that has
Speaker 1: changed as you've called games, and whether you even really
Speaker 1: think about it and how you go about talking to
Speaker 1: an audience that big man, great question. Um, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about, right, because you remember like it
Speaker 1: used to be like you would sit down and everybody
Speaker 1: would watch the same television show together, and Grandma would
Speaker 1: like the Cosby Show the same way that six year
Speaker 1: old would watch The Cosby Show, and they had all
Speaker 1: those kids to play the different role the grandparents are
Speaker 1: on there. Nowadays everything is a niche, right, Like your
Speaker 1: boys are nineteen. They may love something that you've never
Speaker 1: heard of. In fact, they probably do, and you may
Speaker 1: love something that they've never heard of. Yet you're both
Speaker 1: gonna sit down and watch the college football National Championship Game. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think about it a lot. Um. I I feel
Speaker 1: that ESPN has put me You talked earlier when you
Speaker 1: introduced me is kind of the face of the sport,
Speaker 1: voice of the sport. And I don't sit, you know,
Speaker 1: walk around and like to announce that or like to
Speaker 1: think that or anything like that. But the reality is
Speaker 1: because of the role that ESPN has put me in.
Speaker 1: I mean, they put me into the Saturday night window
Speaker 1: back in two thousand and six, and I started calling
Speaker 1: games on on ABC and started to do their their
Speaker 1: biggest bowl games. Um, I've called more Rose Bowls as
Speaker 1: an analyst than anybody and called more of these championships
Speaker 1: than anybody. And so you know, I as much as
Speaker 1: I looked at and I'm never gonna ever compare myself
Speaker 1: to a guy like al Michaels or Keith Jackson. But
Speaker 1: for generation of fans, like they're going to hear my
Speaker 1: voice on a lot of these bigger games, and that's
Speaker 1: something that I'm proud of. That's something that I definitely
Speaker 1: think about. That's something that when fans come up to
Speaker 1: me and want to talk, uh, I'm keenly aware of
Speaker 1: giving them a good moment. Like I don't want to
Speaker 1: ever be a guy I probably to a fault when
Speaker 1: it comes to college football fans and will stay disorderly
Speaker 1: I want to give everybody I come in contact with
Speaker 1: um a good memory, because I feel like I feel
Speaker 1: like that's part of my role, you know, as to
Speaker 1: be like the ambassador of college football. I try. I
Speaker 1: try to be the voice of reason of it anyway,
Speaker 1: you know. And um I, when I call a game,
Speaker 1: I could very easily call the game so just coaches
Speaker 1: and players could understand the game. But I intentionally called
Speaker 1: the game so that eight year old grandma you're talking about,
Speaker 1: or that six or seven or eight year old it's
Speaker 1: watching it. I try to paint a picture and try
Speaker 1: to describe the action. Because Mike Terrico, when I first
Speaker 1: started to do games with Mike on Thursday nights, I
Speaker 1: never really called a game in my life. He said,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do the job of telling what is happening.
Speaker 1: If you can just focus on this for me, tell
Speaker 1: me how or tell me why it's happening. That's that's
Speaker 1: the only lane I want you to stay in. And
Speaker 1: that was back in I think it was the first
Speaker 1: year did he and I in Courso were calling games,
Speaker 1: and I'll never forget him telling me that. To this day,
Speaker 1: I try to give you the how or the why
Speaker 1: when I'm calling the game, and I try to do
Speaker 1: it in a way that play you or your wife
Speaker 1: or your kids or whoever can can understand it. And
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of my role. That's my job, and
Speaker 1: you don't want to dump it down. So it's like elementary.
Speaker 1: But you also, you know, I've got a chance to
Speaker 1: draw things. They try to help people the way I
Speaker 1: describe something. You'll very rarely hear me say a football
Speaker 1: term without supporting it with what I mean by saying
Speaker 1: that football term. So yeah, I think about what you're
Speaker 1: asking all the time, and I think that it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's something that I definitely take very seriously. And
Speaker 1: and again I want to again point out it's not
Speaker 1: as if I'm putting myself into that stratosphere of of
Speaker 1: college football announcers. I just feel that ESPN because of
Speaker 1: the role that they put me in, you know, game
Speaker 1: day for it's year on game day calling the games.
Speaker 1: You know, before with Brent on that big window on
Speaker 1: Saturday night and now with Fouler and that same window,
Speaker 1: doing all these postseason games. You know, we do the
Speaker 1: the bigger playoff, the playoff game, we do, uh, the
Speaker 1: national championship, and you do that year after year after
Speaker 1: year after year. You know, you're like you say, you're voicing.
Speaker 1: Your face becomes synonymous with with the bigger games, and
Speaker 1: so I think it has as much to do with
Speaker 1: the roles that ESPN has put me in as much
Speaker 1: as anything. It's definitely something that I've seen. UM proud
Speaker 1: to be in the position that I'm in, and it's
Speaker 1: something that I definitely think about and UH and take
Speaker 1: great sense applied of trying to be that person for
Speaker 1: for fans. Be sure to catch live editions of out
Speaker 1: Kicked the Coverage with Clay Travis week days at six
Speaker 1: am Eastern, three am Pacific. The last couple of questions
Speaker 1: for you here and again, I'm Clay Travis. This is
Speaker 1: Wins and Losses with Kirk herb Street. One of the
Speaker 1: challenges you talk about the good things at college football,
Speaker 1: it's the passion you moved from Columbus down to Nashville. UH.
Speaker 1: One part of that is because in Columbus, obviously everything
Speaker 1: is Ohio State. You and your family have incredible connections
Speaker 1: to Ohio State. You you fought it out, became a
Speaker 1: Buckeye starting quarterback. I mean, all the different aspects of
Speaker 1: your career associated with Ohio State. Why did you feel
Speaker 1: the need to move to Nashville And how are you
Speaker 1: treated now? Because I'm curious. You're a twenty six year
Speaker 1: old kid and people may know you vaguely, but obviously
Speaker 1: as game day has exploded, your sort of public persona
Speaker 1: has exploded exploded to how much of a regular life
Speaker 1: are you able to have? Uh? Yeah, it's it's when
Speaker 1: you go back to the era when we moved. It
Speaker 1: was just when um, you know, I don't even know
Speaker 1: if Twitter just really started back then, but it was
Speaker 1: just starting to become a little bit louder, you know
Speaker 1: that the feedback was becoming a little bit louder, and
Speaker 1: people's opinions and people could reach almost touch you with
Speaker 1: with how they felt about you. It was a little
Speaker 1: bit more transparent, a little bit more in your face.
Speaker 1: And I have nothing but great things to say about
Speaker 1: Ohio State and their fans. You know, I think that
Speaker 1: like all fans, you know, Tennessee has them, Alabama l
Speaker 1: s u Any Rabbit Sand bas has and everybody. The
Speaker 1: fans of of these schools are embarrassed of that radical
Speaker 1: three or four percent. There's just unreasonable and crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and when when you have them and you're living with
Speaker 1: a young family. You know, nineties seven percent of higher
Speaker 1: state fans, I think her obviously great people and great
Speaker 1: fans of passionate fans. Those three percentersn't have to kind
Speaker 1: of make you take a step back and and wonder.
Speaker 1: I mean, you watched the news today and it didn't
Speaker 1: take a whole lot since fit people over the head.
Speaker 1: And so the fact that it was I was so
Speaker 1: visible right in the middle of of a suburb in Columbus,
Speaker 1: people pretty obviously would know when I'm home and when
Speaker 1: I'm away. Um, we thought, my wife and I both
Speaker 1: thought about possibility of even though we both love Columbus,
Speaker 1: is possibly one day move being away and trying to
Speaker 1: get a little bit more trivacy or just peace of mind.
Speaker 1: And we decided on Nashville, which ended up being a
Speaker 1: you know, a great move in a great city. You
Speaker 1: know very well. We didn't know a whole lot about
Speaker 1: it until we moved here, and we actually thought of
Speaker 1: moving to Austin because of my travels, That's one of
Speaker 1: the towns that had really had stood out to me.
Speaker 1: And after we went down and back to Columbus. We
Speaker 1: stopped in Nashville and looked around and and just couldn't
Speaker 1: believe in we kind of a school there that that
Speaker 1: that we ended up sending our boys too. But when
Speaker 1: I walked through the school, I remember vividly now the
Speaker 1: sixth grade, which is the oldest class, down the last
Speaker 1: wing in this hallway, this hallway, and reading there their
Speaker 1: mission statements to each of the individuals had written that
Speaker 1: particular year in sixth grade and read one, two, three,
Speaker 1: the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, and I kind of
Speaker 1: turned over the guy that was taking us on our
Speaker 1: tour and I was like that their parents, you know,
Speaker 1: right right these forum and They're like, no, that they
Speaker 1: wrote him. And I'm like, wow, it's just blown away
Speaker 1: by or the things that they were saying. And so
Speaker 1: I kind of walked out of that well meeting me
Speaker 1: heap a hold my life. I said, Man, I don't
Speaker 1: know about you, but I want my kids to go
Speaker 1: to this school. I don't even know where we're gonna live,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to go to this school. And so
Speaker 1: that that walking through that school really changed our decision
Speaker 1: to be instead of thinking about it, like let's do it,
Speaker 1: and we sent our kids to that school and we
Speaker 1: ended up moving down and thinks we've been down here
Speaker 1: now eight years, which is incredible to think. Um, My,
Speaker 1: my order boys were in fourth grade, we moved here
Speaker 1: and now they're freshman in college and so um, things
Speaker 1: have been great. It's it's definitely a different way of
Speaker 1: living compared to where we're from, as far as the
Speaker 1: schools and not. You know, people listening, we won't understand this,
Speaker 1: but we're not used to play the way they divide
Speaker 1: things up by if hear in Williamson County you know,
Speaker 1: da da da dada. In Davidson County you need to
Speaker 1: go to that. And we were like, we just were
Speaker 1: used to whatever suburb you lived in. You know, that's
Speaker 1: where you kind of went to elementary school, middle school,
Speaker 1: high school. So we've had to adjust a little bit
Speaker 1: to learning all that and there's so many different choices.
Speaker 1: It's you know, down here to go to school. But overall,
Speaker 1: you know from living down here, people are incredibly cool
Speaker 1: and gracious. And again I don't want to make it
Speaker 1: sound like people in Ohio and Columbus are not. Um,
Speaker 1: it's just when you play football Ohio State and you
Speaker 1: go on TV and you have to be fair and objective.
Speaker 1: I think the maturity of people really appreciate that because
Speaker 1: they know when they listen to you, they're always going
Speaker 1: to get how you really feel. Um And again, I
Speaker 1: think it's just for that that that radical group that's
Speaker 1: that's out there, that for us was just enough to
Speaker 1: to maybe maybe it's a good time with a young
Speaker 1: family to to uh set up camp somewhere else for
Speaker 1: the time being. And and we've enjoyed. It's a great town.
Speaker 1: And we didn't realize, man we moved here, Nashville would
Speaker 1: grow and become this quote unquote it's city, because literally
Speaker 1: a year or two after we moved here, that show
Speaker 1: Nashville came out, and the growth of this city has
Speaker 1: just exploded. And it's almost like living in a different
Speaker 1: city in just the eight years we've been here. I
Speaker 1: can't imagine what it's like for you and for others
Speaker 1: that have been here for a long time but still
Speaker 1: just very fond of it and just appreciated our time here.
Speaker 1: For sure. This is I think maybe the most difficult
Speaker 1: thing you do in general. You know all of these
Speaker 1: coaches very well, especially over the years. You get to
Speaker 1: know them and you talked about how you'll talk about
Speaker 1: things other than football. You know a lot of the
Speaker 1: players very well. When there are difficult stories surrounding the
Speaker 1: coaches or the players, how do you deal with the
Speaker 1: private person that you know and their public persona which
Speaker 1: may be very much different. And the reason why I
Speaker 1: asked it is as as I have moved into the
Speaker 1: arena where I make the living that I do. I
Speaker 1: like to judge people based on face to face interactions,
Speaker 1: and a lot of time you get the opportunity to
Speaker 1: do that, and that's very good. But the public is
Speaker 1: judging people on their public perception, and sometimes there can
Speaker 1: be a mountain range of difference between what someone is
Speaker 1: like in your experience and what their public persona is. Like,
Speaker 1: how do you handle stories like those where you're required
Speaker 1: to talk about somebody that you know, may know well personally,
Speaker 1: but publicly that situation is difficult, right, especially in these
Speaker 1: fraught times where it's almost like if you defend somebody
Speaker 1: who's in a tough spot, then suddenly you're stained by them, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's tough, And you're right. You get to know these
Speaker 1: guys on a personal level, and then you know whether
Speaker 1: they get caught up in something or you know, they're
Speaker 1: they're being judged on wins and losses or whatever it
Speaker 1: might be. And now you've got to go on TV
Speaker 1: and say they don't deserve to have their job anymore
Speaker 1: or something like that, and you're gonna have you know,
Speaker 1: that's going to be an incredibly influential perspective to take.
Speaker 1: And it's more difficult when you know that person than
Speaker 1: it is if you don't. Yeah, I guess that my
Speaker 1: of coping with this because at espn UM you probably
Speaker 1: have noticed in the last three or four years you
Speaker 1: watch almost any analysts on TV that they're really encouraging
Speaker 1: analysts to have really strong opinions. Yes they're calling it
Speaker 1: cutting true and and they want you to be out
Speaker 1: there and you know, kind of take a stance, and uh,
Speaker 1: they're rewarding for rewarding people who are willing to go
Speaker 1: out there and not be afraid to say things. You know.
Speaker 1: And I guess in my case, from doing this for
Speaker 1: so long and going back to my role as I
Speaker 1: like I said, I try to be in my mind,
Speaker 1: there's so much a violatility on this side and there's
Speaker 1: so much volatility over there on that side. Did I
Speaker 1: try to be a guy that's trying to which is
Speaker 1: hard to do in today's society, whether sports or politics.
Speaker 1: I try my best to be strong with my thoughts,
Speaker 1: but also to try to be UM. If the person
Speaker 1: I'm talking about, we're sitting on the desk, That's the
Speaker 1: way I always think about it. They may not like
Speaker 1: what I have to say, but they're not going to
Speaker 1: feel disrespected. And the way I said does that make sense?
Speaker 1: You know? So if Urban Myers and the Crosshairs, whoever
Speaker 1: it is, you know, Jim Trustle who they may not
Speaker 1: agree or like what I have to say. You know,
Speaker 1: Urban Meyer was caught up in that stuff UM last
Speaker 1: summer and I go on it seems like every week
Speaker 1: we go on the air and talk about it, and
Speaker 1: I again, I would. I would, in my mind envision
Speaker 1: Urban sitting on our desk, and I would talk as
Speaker 1: if he were sitting there, and he might look at
Speaker 1: me and not not like what I was saying, but
Speaker 1: he would he would. It's when emotions kind of settled
Speaker 1: for him. He would look back at it and at
Speaker 1: least understand what I was saying and not feel that
Speaker 1: he was being attacked or it was personal. I think
Speaker 1: sometimes in our business because people are trying to steal
Speaker 1: the moment or they're trying to capitalize on an opportunity
Speaker 1: for them personally. You know, they love to kind of
Speaker 1: like just go crazy, you know, and you see that
Speaker 1: every like if you and I turn on our TVs
Speaker 1: right now, someone's going crazy on something, you know, like
Speaker 1: that's that's what everybody does. And I always feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll go crazy if it's a kid that's
Speaker 1: like being more about himself than the team, or a
Speaker 1: guy that's that's that's show voting and disrespecting somebody like,
Speaker 1: that'll get me worked up pretty quickly. But when guys
Speaker 1: gets guys get in some trouble, I try to be,
Speaker 1: like I said, a guy that's going to be strong,
Speaker 1: but at the same time fair uh as much as
Speaker 1: you can and and not dance on their grave or
Speaker 1: try to try to take advantage of of the you know,
Speaker 1: a counch of sarkas of over the top kind of
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Did a lot of guys do who
Speaker 1: do you think the coaches that you've worked with and
Speaker 1: that have coached over the years would be great on
Speaker 1: the game day desk if they were willing to do
Speaker 1: it because there's a lot of guys like Urban is
Speaker 1: gonna be on the Fox College Show right, Like, so far,
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem to me like Urban has leaned into
Speaker 1: the idea that he's a TV guy. Right. You talked
Speaker 1: about the difference between a coach and a TV guy.
Speaker 1: You'd have to lean into the idea of I'm willing
Speaker 1: to be a TV guy like Lee Corso has great coach.
Speaker 1: But you said it best. He said, I'm an entertainer, right,
Speaker 1: Like we're in the entertainment business. I'm not in the
Speaker 1: coaching business anymore. Who would be willing in your experience
Speaker 1: to lean into it? Who could be great at at
Speaker 1: your business? That's a tough thing. I I have talked openly,
Speaker 1: I should say privately openly with with coach Saban about
Speaker 1: doing it, and I think he would be I think
Speaker 1: he would be a superstar. He's almost like, yeah, Hutton
Speaker 1: like he he speaks so softly when he's on the
Speaker 1: desk with us, you know, because he'll he'll come on
Speaker 1: a lot, whether it's when we do game day in Tuscaloosa,
Speaker 1: he'll come on with us in the morning or obviously
Speaker 1: is his team the rare moment they don't make the playoffs,
Speaker 1: he'll be are one of our guests analysts, you know
Speaker 1: that we'll have at the championship game and just you
Speaker 1: know what he's talking. He's talking so softly, yet you're
Speaker 1: like leaning into him because you don't want to miss
Speaker 1: anything that he's saying, because he just he's like Yoda.
Speaker 1: You know, He's got so much to say that you
Speaker 1: just want to like write everything down that he says.
Speaker 1: And I think he I think that the energy of
Speaker 1: that show w bring out aside to him, that would
Speaker 1: be a lot of fun um. Not that he's ever
Speaker 1: going to try to one day, you know, try to
Speaker 1: be a leak corso, but I think I think because
Speaker 1: of his knowledge, he would do it. Do you think
Speaker 1: he would do it? When I do? I do. I
Speaker 1: think he's still you know, I just got the hip done,
Speaker 1: and I think he's still feeling like especially after the
Speaker 1: way last year ended, I still think he thinks he's
Speaker 1: got so much left at him that I don't think
Speaker 1: he's he's thought about it, like, let's do it. But
Speaker 1: every time he gets done being a guest analyst with us,
Speaker 1: he always comes over to me, Hey, Hey, what what
Speaker 1: what how do you say, how do you think that win? Bo?
Speaker 1: How was my fan? Coach? You're doing great? I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, this is your thing. He's like, I
Speaker 1: had some fun that I had a good time, you know.
Speaker 1: So I when he I think when he's done, I
Speaker 1: think we could definitely talk him into joining us. I
Speaker 1: really do, because I say what he'll find is this
Speaker 1: keeps you involved enough for especially the game day. You're
Speaker 1: going out to the games and you know you're you're
Speaker 1: you're around the crowd, you're feeling that energy. Um, it's
Speaker 1: not obviously nothing close to wearing his white half zip
Speaker 1: and jogging out in the field with with the Crimson Tide.
Speaker 1: But when when he closes that chapter, and I don't
Speaker 1: I don't want to portray as if he's in a
Speaker 1: hurry to close that because I think he's feeling like
Speaker 1: he's got a lot, a lot to do, and I
Speaker 1: know he wants to advantage last year's lost to Clemson.
Speaker 1: But I think he's I would guess he's got another
Speaker 1: I don't know, four or five years in him would
Speaker 1: be my guests minimum. Um, But when he whatever that
Speaker 1: is that he's done, he would be the first guy
Speaker 1: who's currently coaching that I think could be really really good.
Speaker 1: Um at joining us on the set and being in TV.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be calling some point, I don't know. You
Speaker 1: may already have your schedule. I'm not sure if it's
Speaker 1: out at a Clemson game. Your sons will be freshman
Speaker 1: on the Clemson football team. This is something that you
Speaker 1: may have thought of at some point might arise. You know,
Speaker 1: as you were calling games over the years, have you
Speaker 1: thought about what that will feel like? Uh? You know,
Speaker 1: I guess if you think back, Greasy, you know, called
Speaker 1: games alongside of Keith Jackson that his son was involved in.
Speaker 1: I can't even imagine how hard that is to do.
Speaker 1: You talked about just watching them play. Have you thought
Speaker 1: about what that feeling will be like to look out
Speaker 1: onto the field as your own kids run out as
Speaker 1: a member of a college football team. I have not.
Speaker 1: I have not. I'll just say this, um my kids.
Speaker 1: The fact that they have an opportunity that they went
Speaker 1: to Clemson's football camp last summer and did well enough
Speaker 1: to kind of raise uh Dabo and some of the
Speaker 1: staffs eyebrows and to call me and say, you know,
Speaker 1: we we we we might want to talk to you
Speaker 1: about having these guys come on and has preferred walk ons,
Speaker 1: And I had no idea really what that meant until
Speaker 1: we visited with him and started to talk more about it.
Speaker 1: And I'll be honest with you, man, They're probably very
Speaker 1: few programs and coaches that I would feel comfortable with
Speaker 1: and sending my my own boys to go play in
Speaker 1: that role, whether or not a five star or four
Speaker 1: star or whatever, they're going as preferred walk ons, And
Speaker 1: it's it's I'm not picking favorites. I'm not picking sides.
Speaker 1: I'm just telling you what I see and I really
Speaker 1: believe from the bottom of my heart, the whether you're
Speaker 1: Trevor Lawrence or my twins or anybody in between, you're
Speaker 1: going to be treated based on are you going to class,
Speaker 1: are you trying hard, are you understand your assignments, are
Speaker 1: you showing up to meetings on time? Are you treating
Speaker 1: the trainer as well? Are you treating people with respect?
Speaker 1: Like so like football for me was with my twins.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it's it doesn't matter, of course it matters,
Speaker 1: but as a dad with with two freshmen that are
Speaker 1: he's going a red shirt this year and then spent
Speaker 1: another four years with Dabo and his guys, his staff
Speaker 1: pouring into them like that. That to me, is is incredible.
Speaker 1: And when when when they talk to me about wanting
Speaker 1: to do that, Like I said that, that's one of
Speaker 1: the few schools I would let him go. And I
Speaker 1: think the fact da Will lived himself at Alabama, I
Speaker 1: think probably has a lot to do with why he
Speaker 1: runs his program and why he treats the players all
Speaker 1: exactly the And it's one thing to say that, it's
Speaker 1: another thing to actually do it. And and you know,
Speaker 1: my kids have been there, like I said, about a
Speaker 1: month now, and the coaches have not been able to
Speaker 1: be there. They're on their on their summer vacations and
Speaker 1: with their families, and I think my boys will come
Speaker 1: home this weekend and then then they'll go back and
Speaker 1: they're actually taking summer classes all the freshmen do, and
Speaker 1: then they'll get going um like July one, and then
Speaker 1: they'll start being with their position coaches and all that.
Speaker 1: But up to this point, you know, they've never called,
Speaker 1: you know, we we extend and said anything, but everything
Speaker 1: has just been positive about the way the players have
Speaker 1: treated them. And I'm not surprised. I just bring that
Speaker 1: up because um, people have said, why are they a Clemson,
Speaker 1: why are they not at Ohio State? Or why did
Speaker 1: I at this place? I think it has more to
Speaker 1: do with just Clemson have to be a school that
Speaker 1: presented them with this opportunity, and then me knowing what
Speaker 1: I know about about that program, it was more of
Speaker 1: me just kind of being very appreciative and excited for
Speaker 1: them to have the opportunity as far as calling the games,
Speaker 1: and it won't even cross my mind, um that they're
Speaker 1: out there, you know, part of that team as red
Speaker 1: Shirts still dress for every home game. Ironically, Game Day
Speaker 1: is doing a kickoff to the A c C Network
Speaker 1: into the season, starting uh in Death Valley for Georgia
Speaker 1: Tech that Thursday night game that they opened the season with.
Speaker 1: I think it's on. I want to say that August one.
Speaker 1: Think it would be because Florida Miami if I'm not mistaken, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: doing that and then the twenty Nights will be there,
Speaker 1: so they'll be there and be great to see them, um,
Speaker 1: you know, being a part of that program. But as
Speaker 1: far as you know doing with c D if that
Speaker 1: ever comes to fruition and I have to worry about
Speaker 1: one of them the receiver, and one of them is
Speaker 1: a dB. You know, if they're ever out there and
Speaker 1: I'm calling the game, that will be a great problem
Speaker 1: for me to have to overcome if it ever comes
Speaker 1: to that. But for now, man, I'm just just so
Speaker 1: proud and excited that they are a part of of
Speaker 1: that program and look forward to seeing how much they
Speaker 1: grow and change and develops young men. Just being a
Speaker 1: part of that, been around Dabbo and that staff. What
Speaker 1: do it feel like to drop him off? For me?
Speaker 1: It's very hard. My wife still, I think, is managing it.
Speaker 1: I think the fact that we get them home this
Speaker 1: weekend for a couple of days. Uh, there's two more
Speaker 1: days that they have off in August. Well, there's like
Speaker 1: a weekend I want to say eighteens somewhere around there
Speaker 1: that they're allowed to come home. It hasn't quite hit
Speaker 1: me like it's for real, for real until maybe those
Speaker 1: two trips are over because she's going to get to
Speaker 1: go to all the home games go see him. Of course,
Speaker 1: I unless we unless we do a Clemson home game,
Speaker 1: I will not. Um. It's hard, man. We were a
Speaker 1: we're parents that live and breathe in the front row
Speaker 1: like we we're just hands on, you know, just plus
Speaker 1: to be in that position. And so you know, when
Speaker 1: you take two out of your fool or out at
Speaker 1: one time. The hard part is when you go upstairs
Speaker 1: and you go down the hallway where there's usually usually
Speaker 1: four of them and now there's just two, and you
Speaker 1: open up their door and like their bed is still
Speaker 1: perfectly made, like nothing's happened in their room, you know.
Speaker 1: So that part's kind of eerie to see both their
Speaker 1: rooms just completely clean, and which is never the case
Speaker 1: when they live here. And uh, you know, but it's
Speaker 1: part of life. And like I said, it's the fact
Speaker 1: that they're on this journey and where they are, uh,
Speaker 1: that that gives you peace of mind and kind of
Speaker 1: gets excited about what they're what they're part of, and
Speaker 1: what they're about to face, you know, for these next
Speaker 1: five years. But it's hard, man, It's hard to let
Speaker 1: go when you when you when you're heavily involved. As
Speaker 1: you know, some parents out there can can relate. It's
Speaker 1: it's weird too all of a sudden let two of
Speaker 1: them go and and uh, now they're not at the house.
Speaker 1: So now we're a family of four instead of a
Speaker 1: family of six. We got a rising jr. And a
Speaker 1: rising seventh grader still here at the house. Be sure
Speaker 1: to catch live editions about Kicked the coverage with Clay
Speaker 1: Travis week days at six am Eastern, three am Pacific.
Speaker 1: We're talking to Kirk Herbster he wins and the losses.
Speaker 1: I know I said last question a long time ago.
Speaker 1: I actually mean the last question here you have said, like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to put myself in the category with
Speaker 1: Keith Jackson of the world. But I think right now,
Speaker 1: if you probably did, it's a it's a cliche and
Speaker 1: a trend in sports to do the Mount Rushmore. I
Speaker 1: think you're close, if not already on there to being
Speaker 1: on the Mount Rushmore. For college football fans, you may
Speaker 1: not want to accept it, but for for for people
Speaker 1: that you know, if you right now, we're pick for
Speaker 1: people to put on the Mount Rushmore of college football.
Speaker 1: Certainly from the calling perspective, you mentioned how many Rose
Speaker 1: Bowls you've called. The College Football Playoff replacing the BCS.
Speaker 1: I know you called some of those BCS games, but
Speaker 1: now the College Football Playoff just makes it so much bigger.
Speaker 1: I feel like you're not an old guy now you've
Speaker 1: got a lot of years, especially if you look at
Speaker 1: the Brent Musburgers of the world and look at Billy Packer,
Speaker 1: even like how long you can call games because people
Speaker 1: get used to your voice and get used to you
Speaker 1: being there. How wild is that too? Here, as a
Speaker 1: kid who grew up a fan of college football, to
Speaker 1: think I am one of whether you want to admit
Speaker 1: it or not, you are the most iconic faces associated
Speaker 1: with college football, that blows me away. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's saying. I mean, if people would ever view me
Speaker 1: that way and that way, I mean, that's that's that's
Speaker 1: for me, That'd be a pretty good thing to be
Speaker 1: remembered by, because, like I said, I would just a
Speaker 1: kid growing up in Southwest Ohio and it's and around
Speaker 1: and love sports and just happened to love college football
Speaker 1: and and too lucky enough to be able to play
Speaker 1: it and not lucky enough to be able to cover
Speaker 1: it and talk about it. And you know, I I
Speaker 1: have always tried to make my job about the players
Speaker 1: and about the coaches and about the storyline. That's I
Speaker 1: think part of the reason I like the NFL. I
Speaker 1: love college football, and I I try to get out
Speaker 1: of the way of those stories. And I think people
Speaker 1: have asked me all the time, man, what do you
Speaker 1: get tired of it and get bored of it? I'm like,
Speaker 1: not at all, how can you? I mean, things turn
Speaker 1: over all the time. I mean there's players that come
Speaker 1: and go, and there's great players and great stories that
Speaker 1: come and go. They'll be you know, crank it up
Speaker 1: this year in a couple of weeks and we'll have
Speaker 1: new players start to surface and new stories and and
Speaker 1: so for me, I think that's the great thing about it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I can't even fathom that, Like, if people
Speaker 1: would ever think of me in that way like that,
Speaker 1: that would that would really blow me away, And it
Speaker 1: would be an incredible honor because the way I've always
Speaker 1: looked at at those guys and the guys that called
Speaker 1: the game is the most notably Keys, but there's been
Speaker 1: so many others, whether it's brand or I go back
Speaker 1: to like Bill Fleming and Chris Schenko. I mean, they're
Speaker 1: just amazing guys from but even Al Michaels when he
Speaker 1: was younger, Uh a great job with college football. So
Speaker 1: um yeah, it's that's uh something. One day, way down
Speaker 1: the road, I'll look back at and think about it
Speaker 1: right now. I just keep trying to prepare and uh
Speaker 1: and be ready to go for the next game. We'll
Speaker 1: be watching this fall as we have been for a
Speaker 1: long time. Kirk Herbstreet has been our guest. I appreciate
Speaker 1: the time. I know it's it's been a long conversation,
Speaker 1: but it feels like the snap of fingers to me. Dide,
Speaker 1: you have cornered the market on questions like take a
Speaker 1: clad for this or something like you really or good
Speaker 1: at asking questions. You know what I think is what
Speaker 1: would I want? I've I've never done it, you know.
Speaker 1: I used to when I was a practicing attorney. I
Speaker 1: would sit down and I would have to write out
Speaker 1: a list of questions, you know, to think about for
Speaker 1: a case, and I try to listen to the answers,
Speaker 1: but then ask the question that if I were out
Speaker 1: there listening, you know, you're talking about how you call
Speaker 1: the game so that you know you want to And
Speaker 1: I think that's the key. You don't want to appeal
Speaker 1: to the six year old and the eighty year old.
Speaker 1: I think, what would I want to hear somebody in
Speaker 1: your position to answer and try to get out of
Speaker 1: the way. Most of the time because what I find is, uh,
Speaker 1: usually you know, like there aren't that many forms. That's
Speaker 1: kind of the goal of this, right is to give
Speaker 1: people a chance to actually speak in something other than
Speaker 1: a ten second clip, right, which is great. People are
Speaker 1: great at at clips and everything else, but you don't
Speaker 1: really get to know them. And the thing I love
Speaker 1: about radio is and now this podcast form. I think
Speaker 1: the people who have finished this conversation are gonna be like, Man,
Speaker 1: I've watched Kurk Kirk Street on Game Day for twenty
Speaker 1: four years, but I feel like I really know a
Speaker 1: lot more about him now than I did before I
Speaker 1: started the conversation, before I started listening, And that's kind
Speaker 1: of the goal. H you got it now, And honestly,
Speaker 1: I remember talking when you when you wrote that article
Speaker 1: years ago. I remember walking out of there and thinking, man,
Speaker 1: he has he has good questions and you just did
Speaker 1: it again. So obviously that's your thing. This podcast is great,
Speaker 1: but that that could be a future TV show for
Speaker 1: you too, or you can sit down with a guest
Speaker 1: and and ask him questions. That would be it would
Speaker 1: be a huge success. Yeah, I think it'd be a
Speaker 1: lot of fun, but a key is having guests who
Speaker 1: come on and answer questions honestly like you just did.
Speaker 1: So thanks. So you can follow Kirk at Kirk herb
Speaker 1: Street on Twitter if you want to follow him give
Speaker 1: him feedback on this. It would be actually, I hope
Speaker 1: positive as opposed to going after him because he picked
Speaker 1: the team you don't you didn't want to win. Uh
Speaker 1: And like I said, we'll be watching you on on
Speaker 1: ESPN and ABC all fall along and for years to come. Awesome, man, great,
Speaker 1: great talking to you. Hope to see you soon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. That's Kirk curb Street. I'm Clay Travis. This
Speaker 1: has been Wins and Losses. If you enjoy it, give
Speaker 1: us a rating on the podcast and go listen to
Speaker 1: some of the other conversations. I think you guys will
Speaker 1: enjoy them. Hey, that