Speaker 1: The volume.
Speaker 2: All right, a really talented guy. I really hope you
Speaker 2: listen to the next hour with Danny Parkins's Chicago radio
Speaker 2: host and the most talented sports talk radio host I
Speaker 2: think out there right now. And at his age, which
Speaker 2: is younger than I would hope for. I was hoping
Speaker 2: he was old and beat up. But he's young and
Speaker 2: great and he'll come on our show today to talk
Speaker 2: to the Bears, the draft, radio, his book, all that stuff.
Speaker 2: Before we get to Danny, I want you to grab
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Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: I first heard of Danny Parkins from Nick Wright, who
Speaker 2: had said, Hey, I work with this guy. And you know,
Speaker 2: Nick had introduced me to two or three people, A
Speaker 2: couple of them were just obnoxious and annoying, and then
Speaker 2: he introduced me to Danny and told me to listen
Speaker 2: to his show, and so I fashioned myself as some
Speaker 2: sort of talent scout. Obviously not, but since I started
Speaker 2: the volume, I really enjoy it, and so I said,
Speaker 2: oh shit, this guy's really good. And then I go
Speaker 2: to Chicago regularly and listened, and I thought, Wow, this
Speaker 2: guy's about the best young guy I've heard in the country,
Speaker 2: because I, you know, I've been listening to sports talk
Speaker 2: radio forever and he's come out with a new book
Speaker 2: which feels like an intellectual exercise, which I think is
Speaker 2: really important in our business, because sports radio can be,
Speaker 2: on our best days, somewhat mindless. It's called pipeline to
Speaker 2: the pros. He's Danny, you're a really good writer. How
Speaker 2: d three small college? Nobody's rose to rule the NBA.
Speaker 2: And I'll get to that in a second, but it
Speaker 2: it does look a little bit. And when I wrote
Speaker 2: a book, it was sort of like, you know, I
Speaker 2: just wanted to prove to everybody I wasn't a radio
Speaker 2: idiot completely. But I want to start with something else.
Speaker 2: I think because I listened now to sports radio, and
Speaker 2: you and I contend New York, Detroit, Boston, Chicago, Philly
Speaker 2: is better sports talk radio than Los Angeles. That's not
Speaker 2: a personal attime on anybody. I do think they're really
Speaker 2: talented people in LA. But when the weather's good and
Speaker 2: there's lots of options, people bail on teams very quickly
Speaker 2: when they're not good. But the hud Levels and the
Speaker 2: Buffalos and the New York Chicago, Detroit, you stay indoors
Speaker 2: and you watch your crappy teams, and you've got strong opinions,
Speaker 2: and you know that fosters sort of sometimes resentment and
Speaker 2: ankst with your teams.
Speaker 1: In LA.
Speaker 2: If I turn to sports talk radio, there's a fifty
Speaker 2: to fifty shot. It's guy talk, which doesn't really interest me.
Speaker 2: So that's my kind of theory on it. Kansas City
Speaker 2: is another really good sports talk radio market where you
Speaker 2: came from. Do you buy into my theory.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent? I've got some friends, including Nick Wright,
Speaker 1: and by the way, thank you for not characterizing me
Speaker 1: as obnoxious, even though maybe don't know each other well enough,
Speaker 1: because some definitely would. Nick worked in Houston, our buddy
Speaker 1: Mike Meltzer worked in Houston, and it's not a great
Speaker 1: sports radio market, but you would think that it would
Speaker 1: be because there's so much traffic and they love football,
Speaker 1: and football dominates sports radio. But there's two shares that
Speaker 1: they're getting because there's just other things for people to do.
Speaker 1: Warm Weather Miami, they are great shows that have come
Speaker 1: out of there, great talents that have come out of there.
Speaker 1: They don't get any numbers. I would put Cleveland on
Speaker 1: the list great sports radio markets. They pull huge numbers
Speaker 1: in Cleveland, love the teams. Minneapolis pulls huge numbers on kfans.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think there's a ton there and it'd
Speaker 1: be really nice to live in a place where you
Speaker 1: could go outside. But today it's snowed in Chicago. In April.
Speaker 1: So we're supposed to talk about baseball in the radio.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't know, it feels like football weather today.
Speaker 2: Well, you know when so I did sports radio for
Speaker 2: a while and then I wanted to create mostly out
Speaker 2: of survival. When I was at ESPN, I said, guys,
Speaker 2: I've got to create a simulcast. AM radio is not
Speaker 2: a dynamic next ten year horizon. And so ESPN did
Speaker 2: not think I was talented enough to be on ESPN two. Apparently,
Speaker 2: so I said, all right, all jettis in this place.
Speaker 2: I do appreciate it, and things have gone well. But
Speaker 2: when I went to television, I always did a show
Speaker 2: with a lot of football. But I think I have
Speaker 2: moved in the direction of more football. Part of that
Speaker 2: is when you can see a TV number every day,
Speaker 2: you see what's working and you see what's not, and
Speaker 2: football almost almost works. Secondarily, though big beat small scale
Speaker 2: beats up boutique, the NFL makes everything now look small.
Speaker 2: I think it's well run. I think sports gambling helps.
Speaker 2: I think it's better on television. I think other leagues
Speaker 2: have made mistakes. One and done is hurt college basketball mends. Anyway,
Speaker 2: what percentage of your show mind about seventy percent NFL.
Speaker 2: I don't want to be in the NFL network, I
Speaker 2: pushed back. I've talked to a lot of college basketball
Speaker 2: in the last two three weeks. What percentage of yours
Speaker 2: is NFL.
Speaker 1: Obviously it depends on the time, right, I mean, we
Speaker 1: were Cubs Opening Day, We're doing a ton of Cubs.
Speaker 1: Were the home of the Cubs. But even leading into that,
Speaker 1: the Bears have been the dominant storyline with the last
Speaker 1: two years having the number one overall pick. They're the
Speaker 1: biggest story in the NFL for the offseason, so obviously
Speaker 1: they're the biggest story here. So even with a two
Speaker 1: team town, there's only three cities that have two baseball teams,
Speaker 1: Baseball on the radio was still incredibly powerful. You know,
Speaker 1: the Cubs are the biggest client to my radio station,
Speaker 1: six seventy four by far. We're still and I wish
Speaker 1: the number was higher. My co host is a bigger
Speaker 1: baseball guy. It's over fifty percent for football, even in
Speaker 1: opening day week with two teams in town, because it's
Speaker 1: all about Caleb Williams and the ninth pick and are
Speaker 1: the Bears on the come and all of that, and
Speaker 1: the other thing at least in this market. That I
Speaker 1: would say is football's the great unifier. When I was
Speaker 1: growing up kid in the nineties in Chicago, the Bulls
Speaker 1: were king. The Blackhawks weren't even on TV, but there
Speaker 1: were people that were Blackhawks fans and not Bulls fans
Speaker 1: even at that period of time, and certainly when they
Speaker 1: had their dynastic run with three titles, the Hawks kind
Speaker 1: of overtook the Bulls as being the toughest ticket in
Speaker 1: town and that sort of thing. Cubs and White Sox split,
Speaker 1: Blackhawks and Bulls split. Everybody cares about the Bears. Everybody
Speaker 1: has an opinion on the Bears. And for the national
Speaker 1: side of it, yes, sports, gambling, yeah, fantasy, But I
Speaker 1: think like the simplest way to explain it is that
Speaker 1: it's every game matters. It's one of seventeen and no
Speaker 1: other league has that. If I miss Bulls Hawks, and
Speaker 1: I don't talk about it on the show the next day,
Speaker 1: we don't get a single text call or tweet being like, hey,
Speaker 1: you missed this really important thing. Because if a really
Speaker 1: important thing happens, I see about it on social media,
Speaker 1: it cuts through. We talk about it. But if you
Speaker 1: came on the Monday after a Bears Packers game, or
Speaker 1: a Bears Lions game, or a Bear's Jaguars game, or
Speaker 1: a Bears Bucks game, whomever. Even if they were five
Speaker 1: and ten and you didn't do four hours on the
Speaker 1: Bears game, the ramifications who played well, who didn't, who's
Speaker 1: going to get fired, who's going to get extended? All
Speaker 1: those things, people would think you were insane. So it's
Speaker 1: the great unifier. And the thing that it has is
Speaker 1: that every game matters, and the rhythm of it, I
Speaker 1: think is great. You play a game on Sunday, you
Speaker 1: react on Monday. The coach and the quarterbacks speak on Monday,
Speaker 1: and quarterback speaks on Wednesday. You start looking ahead to
Speaker 1: the next game. Then there's a Thursday night game. Teams
Speaker 1: in your division matter. It's just for local sports, radio,
Speaker 1: national TV. There's just such a great rhythm of football.
Speaker 2: I feel lucky a lot of times. What I like
Speaker 2: mostly is what the country likes.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I have a growing interest in soccer over the last decade.
Speaker 2: My mom was British. I went to England as a kid,
Speaker 2: got a little soccer set. The World Cup was going
Speaker 2: on at that time. Johann Kroif England I remember Netherlands
Speaker 2: was great, England was great, and then in the Northwest
Speaker 2: soccer was around me, the Sounders, the Timbers. University of
Speaker 2: Portland had a great program. So I've always been more
Speaker 2: I a soccer fan than the average person. I try
Speaker 2: to invest in the MLS twice, but I'm not Tony
Speaker 2: Robbins or Magic Johnson.
Speaker 1: At Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I love NFL. I really really like college football.
Speaker 2: I really really like the NBA March mad March Madness
Speaker 2: is fun. And I do like an occasional fight, now
Speaker 2: more UFC than boxing, but an occasional fight a Saturday night,
Speaker 2: I'm going to tune in and buy the UFC card.
Speaker 2: So are you aligned with the audience or do you
Speaker 2: have to sometimes go I don't care about this, I'll
Speaker 2: talk about it.
Speaker 1: That is the baseball part of it. It's not that
Speaker 1: I don't care about baseball. I grew up, you know.
Speaker 1: I'm twelve years old in Chicago in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 1: Jordan is completing the third, the second three p and
Speaker 1: Sammy Sosa is hitting sixty six home runs and saving baseball.
Speaker 1: I love the Cubs. I grew up a Cubs fan.
Speaker 1: I'm invested in it. But I can't say that I
Speaker 1: care about a bullpen to decision in a game in May. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and one of one's sixty two and the minutia of it,
Speaker 1: I just I can't yea and so that. But that
Speaker 1: is a necessity in Philly sportstock Radio, Chicago sportstock Radio,
Speaker 1: New York sports talk radio, we do do some of that.
Speaker 1: And that is the part that I mean, if that's
Speaker 1: the part that feels like work. Okay, I'm not on
Speaker 1: the side of a road. I'm not welding. I'm not
Speaker 1: you know, I still love my job every day. But
Speaker 1: there definitely is an element of, man, this is a
Speaker 1: little bit of an effort. Boog Shambi's terrific play by
Speaker 1: play guys, a buddy of mine's the voice of the
Speaker 1: Cubs locally, does a lot of stuff nationally, calls the
Speaker 1: World Series nationally for ESPN Radio. Him and I were
Speaker 1: talking about it one time and he had a great
Speaker 1: point about it, said, you know, if they were creating
Speaker 1: baseball today, they wouldn't say one hundred and sixty two
Speaker 1: games like it makes no sense. But they'll never They'll
Speaker 1: never go back because and people always because the numbers
Speaker 1: and the that's because of money. Like we're recording this,
Speaker 1: the Cubs are getting ready to play a game. It's
Speaker 1: thirty eight degrees and it was snowing today.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I had this argument years ago. I said,
Speaker 2: if I think I did a segment or two on it.
Speaker 2: I said, if sports started today, baseball wouldn't make it.
Speaker 2: You say, okay, one hundred and sixty two games, slow pace,
Speaker 2: no real clock, although they have it now, multiple pitching changes,
Speaker 2: any little weather delay, they'll cancel it. Sometimes. Other times
Speaker 2: you'll sit in a stadium for three hours. You'd be like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that doesn't work. It's not very riveting. On TV. You
Speaker 2: would have UFC, NFL, NBA, college sports. You'd probably always
Speaker 2: have golf because it's an event and it's infrequent. The Olympics,
Speaker 2: it's an event. It's infrequent. But I do think I
Speaker 2: will say this. I think Fox, the company I work for,
Speaker 2: I think they have the right baseball. They have postseason baseball,
Speaker 2: and that's what I care about. I can I can
Speaker 2: flip a switch a little bit on baseball and really
Speaker 2: deeply care if the Yankees or the Braves or you know,
Speaker 2: the Cubs World Series.
Speaker 1: I didn't miss a pitch of course. I mean it
Speaker 1: was one of the greatest sporting things in my life
Speaker 1: that I've ever watched. And people are crying, and people
Speaker 1: are listening to the game on the radio in a
Speaker 1: cemetery next to the headstone of their father, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. There is a connective tissue of baseball.
Speaker 1: There's a romanticism to baseball. There's a comfort of baseball
Speaker 1: that I do like and appreciate, and the history and
Speaker 1: how much it matters locally. And people say baseball is dying.
Speaker 1: I do think the new rules have really helped it. Yes,
Speaker 1: but also it's a twelve billion dollar industry. It's not dying.
Speaker 1: It's just football makes its billions with one hundred dollar bills.
Speaker 1: Baseball makes its billions with singles and fives. Right, It's regional.
Speaker 1: It's a local thing. Your local TV deal matters. How
Speaker 1: much money you spend on tickets locally really matters. The NFL.
Speaker 1: All that matters. These NFL stadiums are television studios. They
Speaker 1: make their money from Fox, CBS, NBC, ESPN, Amazon, That's
Speaker 1: how the NFL makes its money. Baseball, the Cubs make
Speaker 1: their money from Wrigley Field tickets sold at Wrigley Field
Speaker 1: and the Marquee Sports Network, and that's why it's very different.
Speaker 1: The White Sox play eight miles south. Their economic situation
Speaker 1: is very different. They're in a huge market, but not
Speaker 1: as many people go and not as many people watch
Speaker 1: on TV same sport. So it's just a It's a
Speaker 1: sport of haves and have nots. A lot of it's archaic.
Speaker 1: I am drawn still to a ton of it, but
Speaker 1: that's more based on tradition and where I was born
Speaker 1: than like the current product.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I also think there are you know, I
Speaker 2: think sports is in a really good space for a
Speaker 2: lot of reasons. I think college basketball's got some challenges
Speaker 2: because of One and Done, but the ignite league that
Speaker 2: went or the unite team that left probably helps a little.
Speaker 2: Nil probably helps men's college basketball a little. I do
Speaker 2: think the NBA, and I'm a huge fan, So I'm
Speaker 2: going to Nick's Bulls Friday night in Chicago. So I
Speaker 2: love Yeah, I love the NBA.
Speaker 1: There are always at Bulls games in Chicago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm buying a Bulls Blackhawks concert season ticket. My
Speaker 2: wife and I are this weekend, so we go to
Speaker 2: Chicago a lot, and it's an easy flight. And she
Speaker 2: loves Chicago and she loves going out. She really likes
Speaker 2: going to NBA games. She really likes fights and NBA
Speaker 2: games and concerts.
Speaker 1: It's a great wife. She likes fights.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Mean I order UFC cards. We got a group getting
Speaker 1: together for UFC three hundred and a couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: but not at my house. Well, I was like, you
Speaker 1: want to do that, okay, fine, but either when I'm
Speaker 1: out of town or you go to your buddys. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So my wife is flying into Vegas to go to
Speaker 2: the UFC three hundred with me. And what's interesting is
Speaker 2: my wife doesn't love sports, but she likes events and
Speaker 2: she likes, hey, let's go get a cocktail, let's go
Speaker 2: out to dinner, let's dress up. It's fun. And she'll
Speaker 2: ask a million questions, but she kind of has a
Speaker 2: sense of it and she likes the event of it.
Speaker 2: And the NBA games are an event. Uf season event.
Speaker 2: She couldn't get my wife to a baseball game or
Speaker 2: a football game in the snow. There's not a chance
Speaker 2: in hell, you know. So she's not a sports fan,
Speaker 2: but she's aware of it, and she asked the right
Speaker 2: questions if she asked a question, it's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's a thoughtful question, and hopefully I'm a sportscaster and
Speaker 2: have most of the answers. But I would say this,
Speaker 2: I do, and I think sports in a great spot.
Speaker 2: I do think it's easier to be a harsh parent
Speaker 2: and get soft. It's much harder to be a soft
Speaker 2: parent and then pretend to get tough and your kids
Speaker 2: roll your eyes at you. The NBA has always been
Speaker 2: a player's league. I do think they've crossed a line.
Speaker 2: The load management to be is outrageous. Base hockey doesn't
Speaker 2: do it, and they have eighty two games, and those
Speaker 2: guys are kicking the shit out of each other and
Speaker 2: have no teeth and it's hockey. By the way, if
Speaker 2: you've ever gone into a hockey locker room in between periods, drafter,
Speaker 2: the smell.
Speaker 1: Is, Oh, it's disgusting.
Speaker 2: It is mildew meets perspiration meets death. Those guys work
Speaker 2: harder than any pro athlete.
Speaker 1: Colin I lived when I graduated college in two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine. Moved in to an absolute shithole of an
Speaker 1: apartment by Wrigley Field, about a block and a half away,
Speaker 1: with four buddies that I've been friends with since third grade.
Speaker 1: And so already we're it's five twenty two year olds,
Speaker 1: twenty three year olds in an apartment that we could
Speaker 1: afford a block and a half from Rigley Field. It's disgusting.
Speaker 1: Now add in that two of the five were big
Speaker 1: time hockey players, like state champions in our high school,
Speaker 1: played college club hockey, and so they would play in
Speaker 1: men's leagues and they would come back with their uniform
Speaker 1: and their pads and their hockey sweaters or whatever, and
Speaker 1: like dumping in the on the back deck. You could
Speaker 1: smell it in the front room and the house. It
Speaker 1: is so disgusting. But yeah, Hockey Live by the Way
Speaker 1: is great. It's a great time because if you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: i've ice skated before, i've skied, I consider myself mildly coordinated.
Speaker 1: And then you go out there and you see these
Speaker 1: guys are two hundred pounds and they're shooting the puck
Speaker 1: one hundred miles an hour and they're hitting each other
Speaker 1: on blade. So it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: In my take is they play, they play hard, they drink,
Speaker 2: they sex. I mean, hockey guys are legendary for they
Speaker 2: play hard, they fight, they sex, they drink, rinse and repeat.
Speaker 1: Complete degenerous yes, and we love them.
Speaker 2: The best of the best of Europe represented in Canada
Speaker 2: and the United States. The NBA guys often on a
Speaker 2: Saturday night. Yeah, I'm gonna take a night off. I
Speaker 2: think it's egregious. I think it's hurting the league. I
Speaker 2: think it's a cautionary tale what you're seeing with lower
Speaker 2: quality in men's basketball and massive ratings. You're giving us,
Speaker 2: You're giving us effort. And I'm an NBA guy, so
Speaker 2: I'm not here. There's a lot of people out there
Speaker 2: that are dishonest. They're they're not they're not fair actors.
Speaker 2: I think it's a real Mark Cuban sold his team.
Speaker 2: I think Mark Cuban sees it.
Speaker 1: So when we watched the NBA playoffs last year, it
Speaker 1: was like, holy shit, this is a different sport. Because
Speaker 1: I watch I don't know seventy of the eighty two
Speaker 1: Bulls games live. I'm a big Bulls fan. We're the
Speaker 1: home of the Bulls. Good NBA City. We talk about them,
Speaker 1: and they're bad. They're the ninth seed this year, they're
Speaker 1: the ninth seed last year. But I watch a ton
Speaker 1: of NBA. I stay up late and watch West Coast
Speaker 1: NBA on Tuesday night to watch whatever the game is.
Speaker 1: I wrote a damn book about the NBA. I love
Speaker 1: the league, but they very clearly flip a switch come
Speaker 1: postseason in time, and it's kind of insulting. Yes, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that they're not a thousand times better
Speaker 1: and more skilled than at any point in the history
Speaker 1: of basketball, and that it's still a better caliber of
Speaker 1: basketball than college basketball. But when you know, even if
Speaker 1: I can't really tell, and I could see Steph Curry
Speaker 1: drop fifty on a given night and you can see,
Speaker 1: you go to an NBA game in person, you'll see
Speaker 1: something amazing, which is another reason why it kicks the
Speaker 1: shit out of baseball. Because you go to random baseball game,
Speaker 1: it's three nothing, You see nothing that's impressive. What the
Speaker 1: hell did I do other than have some beers in
Speaker 1: the sun. But you go to any NBA game, you're
Speaker 1: gonna see something amazing because because honestly, even if the
Speaker 1: top three or four guys sit out and you're disappointed
Speaker 1: because that's the guy who's jersey you wear, there's more
Speaker 1: than three hundred good basketball players in the world. You
Speaker 1: know what I mean. So like the eighth, ninth, or
Speaker 1: tenth guy on a team that never gets any run
Speaker 1: can come in and drop twenty five or drop thirty,
Speaker 1: or can do a windmill dunk or whatever. But I
Speaker 1: think when we see the switch being flipped in the playoffs,
Speaker 1: it's insulting to our sensitibilities.
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Speaker 2: This is a paid advertisement. We'll get to his book
Speaker 2: in a second. This is Danny Parkins, co host of
Speaker 2: Parkins and Spiegel Show in Chicago. It's a very, very
Speaker 2: good show, and Danny, to me is probably the most
Speaker 2: talented young sports talk radio host in the country. He's
Speaker 2: got kids, he's not that young, but he knows my
Speaker 2: admiration for it. And I felt that about Nick Wright
Speaker 2: before I had heard Danny. And the book is pipeline
Speaker 2: to the pros, which we'll get to. I'm not putting
Speaker 2: it off because it's really well written. And no, I'm
Speaker 2: not talking to you. I'm talking about my audience is
Speaker 2: probably saying, get the goddamn book, Cowherd, nobody cares about you.
Speaker 1: No, No, I worked that little extra plug in to
Speaker 1: give you my NBA bona fides. And by the way,
Speaker 1: can I because we do not do a ton of
Speaker 1: Jordan v Lebron goat stuff, it obviously comes up. But
Speaker 1: it's like a little bit like taboo to do it locally.
Speaker 1: It's like it's a little hacky. It's like Pete Rose,
Speaker 1: should he be in the Hall of Fame. But I
Speaker 1: get why it drives a lot of conversation nationally. Can
Speaker 1: I tell you the thing that doesn't get mentioned enough
Speaker 1: nationally because it's germane to this conversation we're having. Okay,
Speaker 1: congratulations to Lebron for longevity, for spending a million dollars
Speaker 1: a year on your body and a wild night out
Speaker 1: being splitting a two thousand dollars bottle of red wine.
Speaker 1: Jordan was doing it.
Speaker 3: With thirty six holes of golf, ten miller lights, a
Speaker 3: run at the blackjack table, gambling debt, and like sweating
Speaker 3: out tequila and he was dropping forty and he was
Speaker 3: playing every damn night.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so can we grate on a curve of degeneracy
Speaker 1: for the era? Please? Like that? That's the thing that
Speaker 1: no one talks like. Yes, the skill is better, the
Speaker 1: competition is better Lebron. You know, as an underdog he
Speaker 1: loses in the finals, he wins. Whatever. I understand. Lebron
Speaker 1: is amazing. I'm not trying to take away from him.
Speaker 1: But I'd like to see the guy play thirty six
Speaker 1: holes of golf and then go drop forty five with
Speaker 1: the next I'd like to see it. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that he could do it.
Speaker 2: No, we all meet guys. I had a friend one time.
Speaker 2: He would go to South Carolina in the summer and
Speaker 2: he would He didn't have a ton of money, so
Speaker 2: I do like a three day vacation. He would golf
Speaker 2: thirty six holes three days in a row, get bombed
Speaker 2: each night, and I'm talking ninety four degrees in the heat,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, bro, I'm nine holes on Friday out
Speaker 2: two Miller lights. I'm out. Some guys and Jordan was
Speaker 2: one of them have this relentless genetic thing. And I've
Speaker 2: gone to college with guys they could drink all night long,
Speaker 2: no hangover. And Jordan, to me, is one of those
Speaker 2: athletes that is once in a lifetime that did not
Speaker 2: treat his body with a great deal of love and admiration.
Speaker 2: And just when I saw the MJ story and he
Speaker 2: before the Eastern Conference games with the Celtics, He's getting
Speaker 2: in eighteen holes in the sun, I'm like, that's my day.
Speaker 2: I'm having dinner at five I'm out.
Speaker 1: Guy had pregame steaks, he smoked regularly. He mixed booze
Speaker 1: all the time, beer and liquor, like it is insane.
Speaker 1: And these guys they're like, oh, we've invested in a
Speaker 1: wine company, Like think we have an in house Somalia
Speaker 1: for the Miami heat. Awesome, awesome. I respect the professionalism,
Speaker 1: but then you also take off when oh man, they
Speaker 1: have a two day stayover in South Beach, So guys
Speaker 1: are gonna take off. No, no, no. Jordan would close
Speaker 1: down the club in South Beach and then go drop forty.
Speaker 2: I always felt this about Johnny bench best catcher ever,
Speaker 2: not just because I think he's the best catcher ever,
Speaker 2: Astro turf gear.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely.
Speaker 2: By the way, back then, a lot of day games
Speaker 2: he would. Now Bill Plummer was the backup, so he
Speaker 2: didn't do both games of a doubleheader, but he would
Speaker 2: do Friday night in Cincinnati, Saturday, National TV Sunday. Steve
Speaker 2: Garvey told me it was so hot in Kansas City
Speaker 2: and Riverfront. Now he was a National leaguer, right Dodgers,
Speaker 2: he said, Pittsburgh, Philly and Riverfront. You'd have to put
Speaker 2: lettuce in your shoes to keep it cool. He goes
Speaker 2: one time in Philadelphia, his cleat stuck to the turf
Speaker 2: and Johnny Bench had that gear on and would go
Speaker 2: three for four with two jacks. Game goes twelve innings
Speaker 2: and he is catching the fourth threads pitcher. People have
Speaker 2: no idea baseball players in the seventies to about eighty
Speaker 2: five it was one hundred and forty degree field in
Speaker 2: the Midwest.
Speaker 1: Oh, I mean, and I listen, I mean different eras too.
Speaker 1: I mean guys would have like bags of cocaine fall
Speaker 1: out of their pocket on the base paths. You know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like just like what they would do.
Speaker 1: Like if you go and bry the way it's why.
Speaker 1: Also if you go back and you watch a game
Speaker 1: from the nineties, like, oh it was better, Eh, what's
Speaker 1: likely They weren't more skilled, they were slow over and
Speaker 1: three to fifty percent of the guys were hungover. So
Speaker 1: now it really wasn't better. But there is an element
Speaker 1: of nostalgia to it and an amount of respect.
Speaker 2: So I don't spend any time on social media. Some
Speaker 2: of that is simply because I have a staff at
Speaker 2: the volume. I'm very fortunate and a pretty hearty staff
Speaker 2: at FS one. I you know, my kids are not
Speaker 2: on it. My son never is on it, my daughter
Speaker 2: infrequently but used to be. Not anymore. But I wow, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's pretty toxic. So, you know, I think about
Speaker 2: this because one of the things about our business, and
Speaker 2: I don't get many people on that. I got to
Speaker 2: talk about the business, which is why I'm doing it now.
Speaker 2: Because you're you love radio. I love radio, and I
Speaker 2: do think occasionally fans like to just hear how you
Speaker 2: and I think and talk about this crap. And you know,
Speaker 2: I'm thinking. One of the criticisms I've gotten through the
Speaker 2: years and even back to doing local is uh, well, Colin,
Speaker 2: you said this like six weeks ago, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: there's new information. And I always say, you know, if
Speaker 2: a pilot came to you and said, folks, we got
Speaker 2: a lightning storm that's moved in, and he said, but
Speaker 2: I'm gonna fly right into it, there's there's no reason
Speaker 2: to deviate. I've got two hours ago there wasn't and
Speaker 2: I'm gonna fly into it. You'd be like, oh shit,
Speaker 2: I'm going to cancel my flight. So I didn't like
Speaker 2: Ryan Poles initially Vlus Jones. I watched them at USC
Speaker 2: could not track the ball. I mean that, I literally
Speaker 2: text you GMS and I'm like, he doesn't know what
Speaker 2: he's doing. That that he can't play, he's a point
Speaker 2: that he can't play. So but I watched USC maybe
Speaker 2: more than Ryan Poles. And then there was the Chase Claypool,
Speaker 2: which I defended because of the body type, but Chase
Speaker 2: ended up going sideways and not being very mature. And
Speaker 2: so my takeaway is I don't trust the ownership Ryan Poles,
Speaker 2: Matt Eberflus and then probably knowing he butchered Velis Jones
Speaker 2: and knowing that there are certain things about offense like
Speaker 2: line play, I think he's drafted it pretty well that
Speaker 2: he knows. He went and got DJ Moore, he went
Speaker 2: and got Keenan Allen and moved Mooney and I thought, oh,
Speaker 2: and then he brings in Gerald Everett and he's swift,
Speaker 2: who's a good he can catch the ball to the backfield,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, oh, now a new information. I think
Speaker 2: Ryan Poles knows what he's doing. I think his last
Speaker 2: six move, I love the Monte sweat move. It got heat.
Speaker 2: But I'm like, folks, there's nobody in the second round
Speaker 2: as good as Montes.
Speaker 1: Sweat right, no guarantee you to get him in a
Speaker 1: free agency, that's.
Speaker 2: Right, But what is the takeaway? Because the Bears eber
Speaker 2: Flus has been criticized, the ownership has But where is
Speaker 2: everybody sitting on your GM, which in football is such
Speaker 2: a substantial position because the rosters are so big and
Speaker 2: there's so many moves to make.
Speaker 1: I don't know how you could have any grade on
Speaker 1: him other than an A. It doesn't mean that he's perfect.
Speaker 1: And you've listed a few of the big misses like
Speaker 1: Dayles Jones is the first offensive player that he ever selected,
Speaker 1: But it was in the third round. Teams miss on
Speaker 1: third round picks all the time. Chase Claypool, it was
Speaker 1: a panic move. It was I'm trading away Rokwan Smith.
Speaker 1: I'm trading away Robert Quinn. I'm carrying the most dead
Speaker 1: cap space of any team in the league. But I
Speaker 1: am trying to be fair to Justin Fields, who is
Speaker 1: an eleven out of ten as a person, and I'd
Speaker 1: like to figure out if I have something here. I've
Speaker 1: got to give him something. And he overtraded for the
Speaker 1: traits of Chase Claypool, and I think he undervalued the
Speaker 1: personal stuff because then when he learned the mistake from
Speaker 1: that and he trades for Montes Sweat, there were a
Speaker 1: lot of people saying, trade for Chase Young off, that
Speaker 1: defense line, more talented, better pedigree player, all of that stuff.
Speaker 1: But he loafs, he takes plays off. But in Montes Sweat,
Speaker 1: whatever he's got, he's given it to you. And so
Speaker 1: I think he that is a director because it's the
Speaker 1: exact same trade. It's a second round pick for an
Speaker 1: established player that you're hoping to pay. They paid Montes Sweat,
Speaker 1: they obviously didn't pay Claypool. So I think also with
Speaker 1: anything learning, proving that you learn from your mistakes and
Speaker 1: that you don't double down, that's a sign of intelligence
Speaker 1: to me. So to me, like it's like, yeah, did
Speaker 1: it start a little choppy, no question. But he also
Speaker 1: inherited one of the oldest teams in the league with
Speaker 1: a ton of bad contracts, a quarterback that someone else drafted,
Speaker 1: no first round pick in his first year, so his
Speaker 1: first draft picks are second round picks, both of whom,
Speaker 1: by the way, pretty good. Kyler Gordon and Jakwan Brisker,
Speaker 1: two guys who are starters in one of the best
Speaker 1: young secondaries in football. Then when he gets a first
Speaker 1: round pick, a lot of us are saying, Jalen Carter,
Speaker 1: Jalen Carter, Jalen Carter, you need a three technique for
Speaker 1: this defense. He moves down from nine to ten, picks
Speaker 1: up an extra fourth round pick, drafts Darnell right right
Speaker 1: tackle to support the quarterback. He makes all rookie team,
Speaker 1: looks like he's going to be a starter at right
Speaker 1: tackle for ten years. And then the biggest thing by far,
Speaker 1: and the sweat one was big, and the Keenan Allen
Speaker 1: was big. Is he trades the number one overall pick
Speaker 1: and picks the right team to trade to gets DJ
Speaker 1: Moore gets the second round pick, that is Tyreek Stevenson,
Speaker 1: another starter at cornerback who was really damn good last year.
Speaker 1: Gets the first round pick this year, which is going
Speaker 1: to be you know, Caleb Williams, a once in a
Speaker 1: generation quarterback prospect. He has their second round pick next
Speaker 1: year from Carolina and oh yeah, by the way, Dj Moore.
Speaker 1: So it's one of the great I mean, people will
Speaker 1: reference the Herschel Walker trade. It is truly one of
Speaker 1: the great trades in my I NFL history. If Caleb
Speaker 1: Williams is everything that you and I in the vast
Speaker 1: majority of people think that he will be, They've got
Speaker 1: a very good cap situation. They've got very good players
Speaker 1: in their athletic prime. Jalen Johnson, Tremaine Edmunds, Montes Sweat,
Speaker 1: Cole Comet, Dj Moore. These guys are all twenty five,
Speaker 1: twenty six, twenty seven years old, under contract, good players
Speaker 1: on rookie deals. Brisker, Gordon Tyreek, Stevenson, Darnell Right, Tevin Jenkins,
Speaker 1: who I hadn't mentioned. And now you're going to inject
Speaker 1: the ninth overall pick whoever he ends up taking, And
Speaker 1: there's a ton of great options, and Caleb Williams in
Speaker 1: a good quarterback on a rookie deal. The Bears should
Speaker 1: be set up under Ryan Poles for a really long
Speaker 1: runway of success here.
Speaker 2: I can't be the only person that has noticed Matt Eberflus,
Speaker 2: the coach, has changed his look. What's up with that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he credits his wife and daughters. And it's
Speaker 1: very weird because when Matt Eberflues talked before the beard
Speaker 1: and the little product in the hair, he sounded really dumb.
Speaker 1: And now He's saying the same things with like designer
Speaker 1: hoodies and a beard and a little scruff and a
Speaker 1: little product. And I'm like, a Flues has some swag.
Speaker 1: There's like, like, my my coach is like, I'm eflusiastic.
Speaker 1: I'm like, that's a really corny dad joke, but I
Speaker 1: I perspect it. Uh. He's like for some real he's
Speaker 1: like sitting courtside next to handsome Matt Lefloor and I'm like, Oh,
Speaker 1: which is the more handsome NFL head coach? Is it
Speaker 1: Matt Floor? Is is it Matt Eberflues? Like he's carrying
Speaker 1: himself with a little swag. My problem with Eberflus, Yeah,
Speaker 1: A couple of assistant coaches, including his defensive coordinator who
Speaker 1: he brought over, Alan Williams, left in disgrace. I don't
Speaker 1: like hiring a defensive coach. I'm biased to offensive coaches
Speaker 1: because it's just sustained success. I think it's the best
Speaker 1: way to foster an environment for a quarterback. My thing
Speaker 1: was when you hit the lottery of getting the number
Speaker 1: one overall pick for Caleb Williams. Are you really telling
Speaker 1: me that the best possible person to develop him is
Speaker 1: Matt Eberflus and Shane Waldron or would Jim Harbaugh have
Speaker 1: been better? Or would Ben Johnson have been better? Would
Speaker 1: Ben Johnson have taken this job instead of going back
Speaker 1: to Detroit? Because I think this job would be really
Speaker 1: damn attractive if it was open and they got a
Speaker 1: pretty good offensive coaching staff, because it's an attractive job
Speaker 1: and you get to coach Caleb Williams, but you obviously
Speaker 1: were limiting your talent tool if you're only hiring for coordinator.
Speaker 1: So that was my issue with how Poles handled the coach.
Speaker 1: But he swears by him. He swears by the culture,
Speaker 1: he swears by the effort, and the team did play
Speaker 1: hard and the defense did get better. Yes, did finish
Speaker 1: the season relatively strong, and they should be a top
Speaker 1: ten maybe top five defense next season. So there are
Speaker 1: reasons to keep him. And he's swaggy now, So that's two.
Speaker 2: Yeah. My wife always says that she always my wife
Speaker 2: has this ability. It's so I don't have it. That
Speaker 2: she had great funny lines and she can hold them
Speaker 2: for twelve years and then she'll drop it at the
Speaker 2: perfect time, and I'm like, where did you hear that?
Speaker 1: She goes?
Speaker 2: Oh, I heard that in eighth grade, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: I couldn't hold up for fifteen minutes. If I went
Speaker 2: to out to dinner with you, I would find a
Speaker 2: way to get it into the conversation, just to impress you. Sure,
Speaker 2: and so one of the things, you know, like one
Speaker 2: of her things. She said to me one time and
Speaker 2: I made a mistake, and she said, honey, you're either
Speaker 2: right or you're learning. She said, unless you keep making
Speaker 2: the same mistake, then you're wrong. She goes, you don't
Speaker 2: make the same mistake much, so you're right or you're learning.
Speaker 2: I'm like, God, I gotta steal that. The other one
Speaker 2: she said to me when we started dating about three
Speaker 2: years in, I was not a very good dad or something.
Speaker 2: I made a mistake and she goes, be a great
Speaker 2: example or a horrible warning. Kids learn from both. I'm like,
Speaker 2: we're going to do a book now this come on,
Speaker 2: You're just you're holding shit now over me. It's like
Speaker 2: Joel Ostein meets Tony Robbins. Where's this stuff coming from?
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's a philosopher who loves the UFC. Where did
Speaker 1: you find this unicorn?
Speaker 2: So she is big? Speaking of eber Flus, she is
Speaker 2: always She is big on current. Her big line is
Speaker 2: with everything, your career, your look, just stay current. She said.
Speaker 2: You know, musical acts they look backwards. And I've always
Speaker 2: had a thing where I always say I'm a windshield guy,
Speaker 2: not a rearview mirror guy. Most of that, I didn't
Speaker 2: have a traditional upbringing. But I think the point with
Speaker 2: Eberflus and I think we've talked about this in our careers.
Speaker 2: You and I may have grown up baseball fans. We
Speaker 2: shifted to NFL fans and sports talk gambling topics because
Speaker 2: that's where the that's where the audience went. It is
Speaker 2: how comfortable I am comfortable with sports gambling. The distorted
Speaker 2: or the disturbance rates one percent. It's six percent for alcohol.
Speaker 1: You know that.
Speaker 2: The people that go sideways DraftKings told me very early
Speaker 2: it's four dollars per bet. That's literally what the average
Speaker 2: bed is. So it's hard to break your family. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but there are some do gooders, some you know, you know,
Speaker 2: there's the kind of precious sports media out there often
Speaker 2: that said gambling is the end of society. You're a
Speaker 2: guy that is, I believe a poker player. You're very
Speaker 2: mathy like Nick wright, you'd be a lawyer if you
Speaker 2: didn't do this, or a financial guy right like you
Speaker 2: guys are both very mathy. Of course I would never
Speaker 2: give my money to Nick because of the black and
Speaker 2: tans or whatever he smokes. He gets a sidon miles. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he gets sideways very quickly.
Speaker 1: You see, he's been quitting smoking for twenty years while
Speaker 1: wearing a nicotine patch and buying cigarettes individually. Yeah, individually
Speaker 1: stopping We're stopping off for a Lucy again. Just buy
Speaker 1: a pack. It will save us time. You're bumming individual
Speaker 1: cigarettes from different people at the casino. You could just
Speaker 1: buy a pack. You can afford it. You're on DV.
Speaker 2: Are you ever uncomfortable talking sports betting?
Speaker 1: No? Uh, I blame my parents. My parents were market people,
Speaker 1: finance people, and I'm like, that's gambling now. The difference,
Speaker 1: of course is Nvidia is not going to zero tomorrow,
Speaker 1: and if I bet the over in the Bears game
Speaker 1: and it's under that, Beck goes to zero. So obviously
Speaker 1: there are differences, but it's all just a market. It's
Speaker 1: a market of expectations, and I find it actually really
Speaker 1: informative even for people who don't gamble, because they don't
Speaker 1: just come up with these things randomly sharp better set
Speaker 1: the lines. And there are formulas and Excel spreadsheets that predict, oh,
Speaker 1: this guy is gonna have is expected to have this
Speaker 1: number of yards That might be relevant for if you
Speaker 1: play fantasy football or just who do you like? You know,
Speaker 1: there are practical implications to it that I do think
Speaker 1: are relevant even if you aren't putting four dollars, forty
Speaker 1: dollars or four thousand dollars on the game. And also,
Speaker 1: I mean, and this is back to the shop talk,
Speaker 1: it is supporting the industry. You know it For a while,
Speaker 1: it was beer, for a while, it was car dealerships.
Speaker 1: Now it is legalized gambling. And throughout history, prohibition doesn't work.
Speaker 1: It didn't work with alcohol, it doesn't work with weed,
Speaker 1: it doesn't work with gambling. I'm not saying that nothing
Speaker 1: should be illegal, but there's something too. No speed limit
Speaker 1: on the autobah, you know, like, just in general, people
Speaker 1: are going to do what they are going to do,
Speaker 1: and it may as well be regulated and taxed and
Speaker 1: try to funnel that money into something productive. Are there
Speaker 1: going to be consequences of it along the way, for sure,
Speaker 1: But that's why taxes on cigarettes are expensive. That's why
Speaker 1: if you walk into a dispensary here in Illinois and
Speaker 1: you want to buy a pre roll joint, it costs
Speaker 1: way more than it would if I got it from
Speaker 1: a dude in the you know, my next door neighbor.
Speaker 1: But I know what it's going to be, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's the type of thing like it's taxed, it's regulated,
Speaker 1: you know where the money goes. So no, I have
Speaker 1: no qualms about it. I've been vetting on sports since
Speaker 1: I was fifteen years old. I love it, and I'm
Speaker 1: thrilled that all of my vices are now legal. It's great.
Speaker 1: Everything's coming up me.
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Speaker 2: So the book is Pipeline to the pros. Woes gives
Speaker 2: it a great recommendation. If you love basketball, you'll devour
Speaker 2: Pipeline to the Pros. So I'm a couple of chapters in.
Speaker 2: You're a very, very clever writer, which doesn't surprise me
Speaker 2: at all. So let's start with this. Tell the audience
Speaker 2: why you decided to write this book and the connectivity
Speaker 2: from your family from.
Speaker 1: You, right. So me and my buddy Ben Kaplin, who's
Speaker 1: the co author on the book. So Ben played D
Speaker 1: three basketball and I went to Syracuse and he was
Speaker 1: the starting point guard on our high school team, and
Speaker 1: I was the guy who's doing the play by play
Speaker 1: on the radio. We've been best friends since third grade.
Speaker 1: Nick is my best friend since college. Ben is my
Speaker 1: best friend since third grade. They were both groomsmen in
Speaker 1: my wedding. So he came to me and he said,
Speaker 1: I got this idea. There's a story here. And we've
Speaker 1: been going to NBA games our entire life, and I
Speaker 1: didn't know anything about it, about all of these D
Speaker 1: three guys who had broken into the NBA former Division
Speaker 1: three players who made its way to being coaches or executives.
Speaker 1: And when he pitched me the idea, twelve of the
Speaker 1: thirty teams in the NBA, either their head coach or
Speaker 1: their top basketball decision maker had played D three basketball,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, that's insane, And I was drawn to
Speaker 1: the disproportionate nature of that number. You think cleanest path
Speaker 1: at that job would be you play at Duke or
Speaker 1: you play in the NBA, whatever the case may be, right,
Speaker 1: And so that just instantly fascinated me. And the network
Speaker 1: side of it, like networking. You go to Harvard Medical School,
Speaker 1: there's a network of the alums. You go to Syracuse
Speaker 1: for broadcasting, there's a network of the alums. These guys
Speaker 1: all know each other and they're all helping each other,
Speaker 1: and they're hiring their friends. And a few people got
Speaker 1: in and broke down the door and then they were like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know a guy, and they started hiring these people.
Speaker 1: And it has as the league has changed and it's
Speaker 1: gotten more smart and more analytical, these smart guys from
Speaker 1: these liberal arts colleges have taken it over. And I
Speaker 1: was just instantly drawn to like the management and the
Speaker 1: networking and how some of the lessons in the book
Speaker 1: I think are applicable to Hey, are you considering a
Speaker 1: liberal arts education? Like it's a basketball book, But there's
Speaker 1: a lot of things that are really practically applicable to
Speaker 1: any walk of life, I would say. And then, just
Speaker 1: like one more personal anecdote, I didn't I almost didn't
Speaker 1: take the project on because at the time, my dad
Speaker 1: was dealing with dementia and my brother had been diagnosed
Speaker 1: with terminal brain cancer. And so you have those two things,
Speaker 1: you have a young son, and you have a pregnant
Speaker 1: wife with your second along the way, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I am spent. I cannot take on anything else. But
Speaker 1: we you and I think are maybe cut from the
Speaker 1: same cloth. Like I need more than one thing for
Speaker 1: my creative outlet. I need to be intellectually stimulated. And
Speaker 1: it's not that I'm not for my four hour a
Speaker 1: day radio show, but I've got my ten thousand hours
Speaker 1: in it. I know how to do this, And so
Speaker 1: I was like, you know, I would really regret it
Speaker 1: if I don't partner up with one of my best friends.
Speaker 1: And then his father ended up getting diagnosed with a
Speaker 1: rare form of cancer and passing away. So from concept
Speaker 1: to publishing. We both lost our dads and I lost
Speaker 1: my brother, and so that's who the book is dedicated to.
Speaker 1: I'm donating a portion of each book sold to brain
Speaker 1: cancer research and non or my brother. But like it
Speaker 1: was a his passion project became our passion project. And
Speaker 1: he doesn't have a media profile, and it's obviously a
Speaker 1: niche subject matter. D three guys make it to the NBA.
Speaker 1: So the book would have never been made if we
Speaker 1: didn't partner up together with my media profile and all that.
Speaker 1: So like it. We worked really hard on it for
Speaker 1: a couple of years, and uh, we're really proud of
Speaker 1: the final project.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can tell you put the time into it.
Speaker 2: It's not only an intellectual project. It's so deep, it's
Speaker 2: so smart, it's so thoughtful. And I think you know,
Speaker 2: you and Nick are very similar. So you Nick likes
Speaker 2: to prod. He really likes to poke people in the ribs.
Speaker 2: I don't think you're quite that from what I've heard
Speaker 2: on your show. But you you you get exhausted. You
Speaker 2: don't suffer fools gladly. You get exhausted very quick with nonsense. Yes,
Speaker 2: when when when you you a project like this and
Speaker 2: you go through all this drama, and I mean, what
Speaker 2: was Nick's first react, because I know Nick read it.
Speaker 2: I know Nick so proud of you. What was his
Speaker 2: first reaction to it? Because Nick is so competitive and
Speaker 2: he loves you dearly. He probably thought, I've got to
Speaker 2: write a book.
Speaker 1: That's funny. I wish you know, he got on National
Speaker 1: TV and I was like, I gotta get on National TV.
Speaker 1: You have to drive really nice cars. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: that's funny. He he was surprised, really so, he he
Speaker 1: he was surprised in the not in that I couldn't
Speaker 1: do it, but that I or that I didn't have
Speaker 1: the bandwidth for it, but just like the nature of
Speaker 1: the project. He's like, you're doing what. He's like, you
Speaker 1: and I talk once or twice. We've never talked about this.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, man, I don't know. I got a
Speaker 1: few other interests, like a few other things, like I
Speaker 1: keep surprising you. So I think that he's like, I figured,
Speaker 1: if you're writing a book, you're writing a book on gambling,
Speaker 1: you're writing a book on on media. You know, you're
Speaker 1: writing a book on something like that. So I think,
Speaker 1: like the research nature of it and the depth of
Speaker 1: the project. But again, like I have to credit my
Speaker 1: friend for bringing me the story, and so this is
Speaker 1: a thing of opportunity. But yeah, him and I are
Speaker 1: always coming up with Nick and I are always coming
Speaker 1: up with like we should do this, We're going to
Speaker 1: do this together. And we've done a lot of those things,
Speaker 1: like you know what I mean, We've we've helped each
Speaker 1: other throughout our career. We always have big ideas. Sometimes
Speaker 1: our conversations end up like, oh, we're doing it again.
Speaker 1: We're spinning this thing forward seventeen permutations into the future,
Speaker 1: you know. And so when I told him about this,
Speaker 1: he I think he wanted to know if I was
Speaker 1: going to tell him about it again or if it
Speaker 1: was just an idea in the moment. And then damn
Speaker 1: near three years later we got we got a book
Speaker 1: out of it. Well, because that's the thing, like we're
Speaker 1: both doing full time jobs. He has three kids, I
Speaker 1: have two kids. We've got all this personal track, like
Speaker 1: we were really doing this, and we knew we weren't
Speaker 1: like competing. We don't have to be we don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about being first to market with a D
Speaker 1: three NBA. But no one else is on this corner
Speaker 1: give me so, Yeah, Danny.
Speaker 2: Give me a story. Let's do a little tease for
Speaker 2: the audience. Give me one of the unconventional paths that
Speaker 2: was very endearing and connected with you.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, I mean so. Jeffan Gundy wrote the forward
Speaker 1: of the book, and he was the perfect person to
Speaker 1: do it because he hired a bunch of former D
Speaker 1: three people, including his brother Stan van Gundy. But he
Speaker 1: was the transfer portal before there was the transfer portal.
Speaker 1: We are one hundred percent sure that Jeff Van Gundy
Speaker 1: is the first and only person to transfer from Yale
Speaker 1: to Menlo Junior College. He then transfers to Nazareth and
Speaker 1: then he finishes at Brockport. Goes to Yale thinking he
Speaker 1: playing the IVY League. They say, no, not good enough,
Speaker 1: We're not even going to let you try out for
Speaker 1: the team. Goes to Menlo, goes to Nazareth where his
Speaker 1: dad gets a job. They fire his dad out of loyalty.
Speaker 1: He ends up at Brockport, so four schools following his
Speaker 1: for the love of the game, and he is convinced
Speaker 1: that because short guy, white guy, nerdy guy comes out
Speaker 1: of Brockport ultimately that he will never get a shot
Speaker 1: but brilliant dude. Through connections, through camps, grinds, grinds, grinds,
Speaker 1: works his way up and eventually is on pat Riley's
Speaker 1: staff with the Knicks, and Riley leaves he'd been there
Speaker 1: through a couple of different coaches. He's there, He's there
Speaker 1: for four years. He is named the interim head coach
Speaker 1: of the Knicks. He is the head coach of the Knicks,
Speaker 1: and the New York Daily News runs a column that
Speaker 1: lists back to gambling the odds on who the next
Speaker 1: full time head coach of the Knicks is going to be.
Speaker 1: Larry Brown's the favorite, John Kliparis the next favorite. Lou
Speaker 1: Karnisseca at seventy one years old, is listed at five
Speaker 1: thousand to one. Red Holtzman, at seventy six years old,
Speaker 1: is listed as a one million to one to be
Speaker 1: the next head coach of the Knicks, and Jeff Van
Speaker 1: Gundy was given fifty million to one odds in the
Speaker 1: New York Daily News. Well, he is the current head
Speaker 1: coach of the Knicks to actually keep the job as
Speaker 1: head coach of the Knicks, and he gets it. He
Speaker 1: perseveres and between him and his brother, who he hired
Speaker 1: and Jeff van Gundy, Rich and uh Tom Thibodeau and
Speaker 1: Steve Clifford and Andy Greer and all these other guys
Speaker 1: that he brought into the league. It's over a thousand
Speaker 1: wins between Jeff and Stan van Gundy, a couple of
Speaker 1: d three guys. Their name is now synonymous with the NBA.
Speaker 1: So these guys who are the best to do it
Speaker 1: were doubted when they literally already had the job one
Speaker 1: more quick one. Greg Popovich maybe the best coach ever.
Speaker 1: He's a coach at Pomona. Just goes into the Hall
Speaker 1: of Fame. To April of ninety seven. He is just
Speaker 1: gotten a three year extension because he was the GM
Speaker 1: and the coach for a minute. In San Antonio. When
Speaker 1: the three year extension gets announced, the San Antonio newspaper
Speaker 1: does a survey of readers, what do you think of
Speaker 1: the Greg Popovich extension? Ninety two percent of respondents said
Speaker 1: that Greg Popovitch should be fired in nineteen ninety seven
Speaker 1: when he was about to become the dynastic Greg Popovich.
Speaker 1: So these guys, they were overlooked for forever and just
Speaker 1: through intelligence and being good teachers and good networkers and
Speaker 1: hard workers, they rose their way up. I could never
Speaker 1: play in the NBA, I could never play in Major
Speaker 1: in Wrigley Field or the NFL. But there's something too,
Speaker 1: like the work ethic and the intelligence and the networking
Speaker 1: that I was just drawn to the story. And I
Speaker 1: think we really covered it well.
Speaker 2: It's pipeline to the pros. This is a more personal question,
Speaker 2: and we can edit it out if you're not comfortable.
Speaker 2: But you had a very you're a smart guy, and
Speaker 2: your parents were successful, and you've had a very redeemable
Speaker 2: career and an ascending career that very few people have
Speaker 2: in our business. And then your brother and your and
Speaker 2: father's dying is painful. A brother dying is a whole
Speaker 2: different story. And this is so personal. How are you equipped?
Speaker 2: You not that you hadn't had struggle, but how are
Speaker 2: you equipped to deal with it? Have you been equipped?
Speaker 2: How difficult? I mean, that's I can't. I mean, I
Speaker 2: get emotional not knowing your brother. I don't know how
Speaker 2: I wouldn't be equipped.
Speaker 1: Okay, So that's that's that's a good question. Brad was
Speaker 1: diagnosed with glioblastoma June fifth of twenty twenty. My son,
Speaker 1: my first son, Owen, was born at thirty one week,
Speaker 1: so he was born nine weeks premature. January seventeenth of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. We all know what happened in March of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. I remember vividly saying to my wife in
Speaker 1: call it April, no, no, no, no, excuse me. It
Speaker 1: was like June first, I don't know that I can
Speaker 1: take anymore. It was just super stressed, money stress, pandemic stress,
Speaker 1: new baby stress, feeling over my dad's dementia diagnosis was
Speaker 1: it was, it was ugly Alzheimer's. It's a terrible, terrible,
Speaker 1: horrible disease. I was like, I honestly don't know that
Speaker 1: I can take any more. Three days later, my brother
Speaker 1: gets diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. You just learn that
Speaker 1: you can deal with more than you expect, and it
Speaker 1: hurts if you stay in bed, and it hurts if
Speaker 1: you get up, so you may as well get the
Speaker 1: fuck up. Like that's what I've learned. If I've learned anything,
Speaker 1: I have cried, I've been in therapy. I have definitely
Speaker 1: not handled everything perfectly throughout this process, but I have
Speaker 1: learned that it hurts either way, so you may as
Speaker 1: well keep going because your world can change with a
Speaker 1: phone call tomorrow. So I don't know if that answers
Speaker 1: your question, but I would not have said that I
Speaker 1: was equipped to handle it. And it still devastates me
Speaker 1: every day that my brother is in here, but somehow
Speaker 1: I'm still here and I'm doing what I'm doing well.
Speaker 2: I first of all, I appreciate you answering that it's
Speaker 2: probably too personal, but I also think I knew you'd
Speaker 2: go to a place because you're so capable that somebody
Speaker 2: who's listening to our podcast and dealing with a very
Speaker 2: similar situation in the family. And when I heard your story,
Speaker 2: it made me think about a friend I had years
Speaker 2: ago in Vegas that lost his wife. And so first
Speaker 2: of all, I thank you for sharing that, but it's
Speaker 2: you know, it goes back to a saying I it's
Speaker 2: kind of a cliche, but we've heard it before, as
Speaker 2: you just never know what people have gone through in
Speaker 2: a day. Just be nice to people. I know social
Speaker 2: media does not elevate the life experience. It deteriorates it.
Speaker 2: That's why I stay away.
Speaker 1: So that was a.
Speaker 2: Pretty remarkable answer, and I do, Danny, I appreciate that,
Speaker 2: and I don't want to end on this because you're
Speaker 2: you're not a down or you're you're it's a really
Speaker 2: raw topic and I thought it was I wanted to hear.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have been equipped. I don't know how you
Speaker 2: would have handled it.
Speaker 1: And I guess I think you probably would have been,
Speaker 1: but you don't know until you're confronted with it. And
Speaker 1: I'm glad that you haven't been, and you don't want
Speaker 1: anybody to to deal with it, and and I you know,
Speaker 1: grief is hard, man, Grief is really hard, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. It is a downer, but it is relatable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a thing called anticipatory grief, which I
Speaker 1: didn't even know about. But it's like when you get
Speaker 1: a terminal diagnosis and then you're like grieving and you're
Speaker 1: like waiting for the actual person to die, and you think,
Speaker 1: like you have you you're dealing with anticipatory grief, Like
Speaker 1: you know eventually your dad's going to pass away, he
Speaker 1: has Alzheimer's. You know your brother's going to pass away,
Speaker 1: he's got terminal brain cancer. Uh, and then it happens
Speaker 1: and it's like, oh, it doesn't actually replace the real grief,
Speaker 1: so you just deal with it. And because you have
Speaker 1: literally no other choice. But I don't know. Man, buy
Speaker 1: a book, I'll donate a portion of it to brain
Speaker 1: cancer research.
Speaker 2: And yeah, it's such a thank you, it really is.
Speaker 2: So we're thank you you bet. I want to circle back.
Speaker 2: Is that Chicago to me is I kind of feel
Speaker 2: Chicago people. There is a divide. Sometimes it's financial, sometimes
Speaker 2: it's in reach, obviously, between syndicated, national and local. I
Speaker 2: think local sports radio is much better than national sports radio.
Speaker 2: And I think you're at the top of the heap.
Speaker 2: And I say that the best show I've ever heard.
Speaker 2: I think you're the best talent doing it in the country.
Speaker 2: I think Felger and Mas and Boston have the ability
Speaker 2: to be in a in a very tribal town, incredibly
Speaker 2: honest and hated and adored simultaneously. It's a really good listen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pull huge numbers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's a I used to as I was,
Speaker 2: you know, crafting this scrawny physique. I used to sit
Speaker 2: in my my downstairs in my weight room and just
Speaker 2: sit there and I would watch them for, you know,
Speaker 2: an hour. Chicago is to me, it's just everything I
Speaker 2: watch on TV. Local TV still matters. It looks like syndicated,
Speaker 2: it looked like national. It's I mean, Lester Holt, I
Speaker 2: think came from Chicago. My buddy Joe Donlin's an anchor
Speaker 2: in Chicago. I think he's as good as local anchor
Speaker 2: as you're going to get in the country Chicago sports radio.
Speaker 2: To me, I love listening to it because it's just
Speaker 2: the perfect mix of tribal, smart insane. Oh yeah, if
Speaker 2: you have recently taken a rare you're a liked figure
Speaker 2: the voice, You're tolerant, you're bright, but you are a
Speaker 2: little bit you kind of moved into a space. As
Speaker 2: far as I can tell, you were not really a
Speaker 2: Justin's Fields guy. And the city was you know, of
Speaker 2: course they're clinging to it working. How the Bears were
Speaker 2: clinging to it. They wanted to say, we'll get nine
Speaker 2: picks for Caleb Williams. Everybody wanted it to work. So
Speaker 2: what is it like now, probably for the first time
Speaker 2: in your career as being a villain for a few months.
Speaker 1: Okay, so this is fascinating. I'm gonna take off my
Speaker 1: headset for just one second because this will this will
Speaker 1: make sense. So because this is there is an exact
Speaker 1: moment when my likability plummeted, and wow, I just have
Speaker 1: to pull out a prop real quick. I didn't know
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about this hold on. So I I
Speaker 1: commissioned a Caleb Williams thirteen Bears Jersey the day they
Speaker 1: got the number one pick. So with a week left
Speaker 1: in the season, and so Justin Fields is still on
Speaker 1: the Bears. It's been He's likable, he's fun, he's exciting.
Speaker 1: He was voted the eighty sixth best player in the
Speaker 1: NFL coming off of the twenty twenty two season when
Speaker 1: they had the most dead cap space and no one
Speaker 1: else get on the team. People love Justin Fields, and
Speaker 1: the Bears did not try him well and it was
Speaker 1: not fair and they did not build around him. In
Speaker 1: the situation that Caleb was walking into is a thousand times,
Speaker 1: but life isn't fair. And I was like, listen, here's
Speaker 1: the thing. I like hangarsteak, but I've got a chance
Speaker 1: for eight five wago and it's cheaper for some reason,
Speaker 1: for some reason, the wago is cheaper than the hangerstake. Like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go for it every time. And so
Speaker 1: when I people were like I, because now everyone's pumped
Speaker 1: for Caleb. But I was just like, this is how
Speaker 1: it's going to end. And I told them how it
Speaker 1: was going to end before they were ready to hear
Speaker 1: how it was going to end. And if I would
Speaker 1: have just had the take, people would have really disagreed.
Speaker 1: But for some reason, the fact that I spent one
Speaker 1: hundred and forty dollars on a jersey and like became
Speaker 1: a prop comic for a minute and like showed like
Speaker 1: I showed you how positive I was that this was
Speaker 1: how it was going to end. Buddy? Were people mean
Speaker 1: to me on the internet? Like, man, But so weird
Speaker 1: about the whole thing is that I'm gonna be right.
Speaker 1: Like I bet mitchter Bisky at two hunderd to one
Speaker 1: to an MVP blew up in my face. I said
Speaker 1: there was a zero percent chance the White Sox we're
Speaker 1: gonna hire Tony LaRussa blew up in my face. Like
Speaker 1: I've been wrong plenty of times. We give twenty hours
Speaker 1: a week of opinions, You're gonna be wrong all the time.
Speaker 1: But man, did people hate this jersey? But now it's
Speaker 1: gonna be the number one selling jersey in the NFL
Speaker 1: for the next like five years. So I'm a I
Speaker 1: don't know if you knew this. I'm a fashion icon.
Speaker 1: I'm a trendsetter. I'm ahead of the curve. People are
Speaker 1: dressing like me now, and I frankly love it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: did I have it on my board that the thing
Speaker 1: that would make me most hated is the thing that
Speaker 1: I have been the most right about. No, that I
Speaker 1: did not expect that to be my how my career
Speaker 1: is gone. But now people are being pretty nicecause they're
Speaker 1: prety excited about Kaleb Boyams.
Speaker 2: Should be pipeline to the pros D three small college.
Speaker 2: Nobody's rose to rule in the NBA ben Kaplan Danny Parkins,
Speaker 2: forward by Jeff N. Gundy. I say this authentically and
Speaker 2: accurately and with one hundred percent belief. I think you're
Speaker 2: how old you now? Forty two, forty three, forty What?
Speaker 2: How old are you?
Speaker 1: I'm thirty eight.
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ. It's disgusting how good you are at thirty eight.
Speaker 2: It's really such a bummer. I was hoping you were
Speaker 2: fifty four and this was the years of training and
Speaker 2: you are really gifted.
Speaker 1: And oh, actually, hey, I'm thirty seven. I turned thirty eight,
Speaker 1: and I'll tell you're just a jerk.
Speaker 2: Now now you're just piling on it. Anyway, You're great
Speaker 2: at what you do. I love listening and congratulations on
Speaker 2: the book, your career, your ascension, and I love you man.
Speaker 2: I think I just think you're just everything wrapped in empathy, curiosity,
Speaker 2: Smart's funny and a little bit of a villain. That's okay,
Speaker 2: it's fun. Lebron didn't like it in Miami, but you
Speaker 2: know it is. It's part of the merry go round
Speaker 2: of our life.
Speaker 1: I can handle it and it's just sports at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, so like I can't. I can't
Speaker 1: get take it all too seriously. But no, listen, thank
Speaker 1: you for the kind words and the platform and supporting
Speaker 1: this and trying to hire me a couple of years ago.
Speaker 2: And I'm not done. I'm not done with that. So
Speaker 2: we'll make another run on that, buddy.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you, Colin.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, the Vine, thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 2: If you've enjoyed the podcast, take a moment, rate and review.