Speaker 1: This is Wins and Losses with Clay Travis. Play talks
Speaker 1: with the most entertaining people in sports, entertainment and business.
Speaker 1: Now here's Clay Travis. Welcome in. I'm Clay Travis. This
Speaker 1: is the Wins and Losses Podcast. I hope all of
Speaker 1: you are enjoying our conversations as we continue to roll.
Speaker 1: This is a weekly show. This is the first one
Speaker 1: you've ever heard to. You're about to listen to Paul
Speaker 1: Findbaum of the SEC Network of ESPN, Jock's Radio Network,
Speaker 1: all different sorts of different places he has been over
Speaker 1: the years as a friend of mine. I think you
Speaker 1: guys are gonna enjoy this conversation and if you enjoy
Speaker 1: this one, you'll probably like Jason Whitlock, Shannon Terry, SEC
Speaker 1: Commissioner Greg Sanky, as well as Washington State head football
Speaker 1: coach Mike Leach. The goal with the podcast is to
Speaker 1: examine some of the wins and losses that we all
Speaker 1: have in our career as we moved throughout the process
Speaker 1: of our lives. And without further ado, let me go
Speaker 1: ahead and bring in Paul find Bomb. You can find
Speaker 1: him on Twitter at find bomb. You can listen to
Speaker 1: him every single day from two to six Eastern on
Speaker 1: the radio. You can watch the simulcast of that radio
Speaker 1: show on the SEC network. And recently, down at the
Speaker 1: beaches of Destined, there was a Cosmopolitan, which was a
Speaker 1: drink named after Paul find Bomb at the five year
Speaker 1: anniversary party of the launch of the SEC network. And
Speaker 1: I want to start there, and we'll probably cycle back
Speaker 1: around to a lot of different questions, but I wanted
Speaker 1: to jump off right there. First of all, Paul, thanks
Speaker 1: for coming on. Secondly, if I had told you five
Speaker 1: or ten years ago that there would be a cocktail
Speaker 1: named after you at an SEC and ESPN event, your
Speaker 1: response would have been what, I can't well, I probably
Speaker 1: could say it, but I try not to curse too loudly,
Speaker 1: but I would say you you were out of your
Speaker 1: effing mind. Yes, um, you know, when I saw your tweet,
Speaker 1: I had not gone down to the cock party yet.
Speaker 1: I was up in my room, and by the way,
Speaker 1: I didn't have it. Although I would have liked to,
Speaker 1: I didn't have it. By the way, I found it
Speaker 1: to be pretty good. I felt that I obligated to
Speaker 1: try it. You know me pretty well, Clay. So you're
Speaker 1: you're You're not going to raise your eyebrows A sum might,
Speaker 1: but I'm I'm still kind of amazed what's going on today?
Speaker 1: So yeah, I would not have believed it because you
Speaker 1: had to understand the times, and you had to understand
Speaker 1: the toxic nature between me and many people in college
Speaker 1: athletics for from top down to the bottom. Uh. So
Speaker 1: let's kind of circle back around because one of the
Speaker 1: good things we get to do on wins and losses
Speaker 1: is I'm sure you get asked this question all the
Speaker 1: time because you're on college campuses on a regular basis,
Speaker 1: and kids, undoubtedly boys and girls have come up to you,
Speaker 1: kids in school and they'll say, I love your job.
Speaker 1: How did you get that job? I get it a lot.
Speaker 1: Anybody in the world of sports, I think gets it
Speaker 1: a lot. So I want to go back all the
Speaker 1: way to Paul find Bomb. You are growing up in Memphis,
Speaker 1: ten see right, Uh, you are a young kid. What
Speaker 1: is your upbringing like in Memphis? And as we circle through,
Speaker 1: the goal is to give people an indication of not
Speaker 1: that you necessarily can follow the same path, but how
Speaker 1: to be tough, how to stick to your guns, so
Speaker 1: to speak, and how you end up doing a job
Speaker 1: like yours or mine or any other of the number
Speaker 1: of people that we're going to talk to on this podcast.
Speaker 1: But you're growing up in Memphis. What was your youth
Speaker 1: like in Memphis? It was pretty normal, Uh, at least
Speaker 1: for a while. I was the youngest of two two
Speaker 1: New Yorkers, including my sister was from New York. I
Speaker 1: was born in Memphis by about three or four months,
Speaker 1: so you can figure out where I was conceived. And it, Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just a listen looking back, you know, literally baseball, basketball,
Speaker 1: Uh when we we just were we were not we
Speaker 1: were kind of lower the middle class. Uh maybe slowly
Speaker 1: moving up in the world with the times, and you know,
Speaker 1: I there's just there was just nothing really extraordinary about it.
Speaker 1: I mean I was a happy kid. I was interested
Speaker 1: in a lot of things, sports being number one, and
Speaker 1: then I gravitated a little bit toward politics. My parents
Speaker 1: were fairly uh involved in that as well. And and
Speaker 1: and that was really the pretty much the base you know,
Speaker 1: from you know, five to ten, the thirteen up until
Speaker 1: fifteen when it all changed, all right, And I'll get
Speaker 1: to what happened when you were fifteen years old. But
Speaker 1: as a kid growing up, you are Jewish. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's a great surprise. Did you have
Speaker 1: did you have a sense of feeling a little bit
Speaker 1: like an outsider in Memphis? Or and I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't really genuinely have an answer for this. I'm curious
Speaker 1: what you what you'll tell us. Sometimes, you know, the
Speaker 1: Jewish community and even a city where Memphis doesn't have
Speaker 1: a huge Jewish population, but it can feel so welcoming that,
Speaker 1: you know, you you don't even realize how different you
Speaker 1: might be than everybody else who's going to Christian church
Speaker 1: and whatnot Memphis, which is a very religious and UH
Speaker 1: and and Christianity based city. Did you feel different? Did
Speaker 1: you feel a little bit like an outsider? Or were
Speaker 1: you even cognizant of the distance between you and maybe
Speaker 1: other people? Not at first, because our our neighborhood, we
Speaker 1: lived about three or four blocks from a synagogue. In
Speaker 1: our neighborhood was primarily UH refugees from from Brooklyn and
Speaker 1: UH the majority were Jewish. So I mean I grew
Speaker 1: up in that world. Um as I got a little
Speaker 1: bit older, I began to sense the difference. Uh. I
Speaker 1: was very proud of what I was, but you know,
Speaker 1: I had friends who uh were always taking an insult
Speaker 1: the wrong way. I didn't. That was a little more
Speaker 1: open minded. So it was I can't say, Clay that
Speaker 1: it held me back at all. Um. I was always
Speaker 1: fairly open minded to other people, and and that changed
Speaker 1: a little bit later when I went to a Catholic
Speaker 1: high school. Yeah, so how did your family? How did
Speaker 1: your mom and dad end up in Memphis? Because you
Speaker 1: said they're from New York. I mean that's a pretty
Speaker 1: big departure. What was it that brought them to Memphis? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was it was really related to my my my
Speaker 1: mother's brother. Uh. He was in the service and was
Speaker 1: relocated or based somewhere in jack I think it was
Speaker 1: near Jackson, Tennessee. Don't remember exactly why. Uh So my
Speaker 1: my my grandmother, who was widowed at an early age,
Speaker 1: and my mom, who was still in high school, moved
Speaker 1: to Jackson. And then my my my uncle married a
Speaker 1: lady from Memphis, so they moved to Memphis, and my
Speaker 1: father followed my uh my uncle uh in uh in business,
Speaker 1: so he moved there as well. All right, so, uh,
Speaker 1: you grow up and uh in Memphis at the time
Speaker 1: you're a young kid, do you remember Uh. For instance,
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King being assassinated in nineteen sixty eight. Do
Speaker 1: you have any any what do you remember about then? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I was twelve years old and uh eleven
Speaker 1: or twelve, I'm trying to remember. Uh may have been eleven.
Speaker 1: And it was a big deal. I mean I was
Speaker 1: very much into the news at the time, Clay, unlike
Speaker 1: maybe your normal kid at the at that age who
Speaker 1: was watching more sports. Uh, this is a big story
Speaker 1: I'm about to break. But this is pre ESPN and uh,
Speaker 1: so I remember the night very well, um, and I
Speaker 1: was very emotional and moved by it. I had my
Speaker 1: parents had bought me a record. Now I'm I'm talking
Speaker 1: about a vinyl record a year or two earlier of
Speaker 1: famous speeches, one being John F. Jfk Uh, the second
Speaker 1: being Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech and
Speaker 1: I memorized that speech. This is before he died, and uh,
Speaker 1: he was an important person to me. Um, and I'll
Speaker 1: never forget. Three days after he was assassinated, there was
Speaker 1: going to be a march in Memphis, and my best
Speaker 1: friend and I wanted to go, uh and and show
Speaker 1: our respects. I mean we were eleven years old, and
Speaker 1: my parents of course forbid us from going. But I mean,
Speaker 1: I was that was an eleven year old activists at
Speaker 1: the time. It was. It was a seminal moment in
Speaker 1: my youth, his assassination. How did that impact overall in
Speaker 1: Memphis in your mind, because I mean it's hard. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess people who maybe live in Dallas and were
Speaker 1: around when JFK was shot, there is a certain level
Speaker 1: of I want to say, almost malaise that almost descends
Speaker 1: over a city when it's connected to something like that.
Speaker 1: And I think about the school book depository in Dallas,
Speaker 1: and it's obviously been fifty years since that happened in Memphis,
Speaker 1: But as a kid, did you kind of have that
Speaker 1: feeling at eleven, twelve, fourteen years old that's something bad
Speaker 1: had happened in the city and it kind of hangs
Speaker 1: over the city, no doubt. No, the city was Memphis
Speaker 1: was unlike a lot of cities. Uh. It was a
Speaker 1: big metropolitan area, a little bit like Nashville maybe, where
Speaker 1: you didn't have all this. I lived in Birmingham later,
Speaker 1: which had I think thirty seven different municipalities in one
Speaker 1: county for obvious reasons, Memphis wasn't like that. So I mean,
Speaker 1: you you, you were you. You engaged UH people of
Speaker 1: different races all the time, but the city was torn apart,
Speaker 1: and it was really not to jump too far ahead,
Speaker 1: but it was really a sporting event that happened five
Speaker 1: years later that saved the city. And that was when
Speaker 1: Memphis State UH went to the n C Double A
Speaker 1: Championship game to play a u C l A. It
Speaker 1: was a night Bill Walton went out of twenty two
Speaker 1: from the field, and that one event brought the city together.
Speaker 1: And I think without that singular event, that that run
Speaker 1: to the final four, Memphis would have been destroyed by
Speaker 1: the way. It didn't come out of it that well anyway,
Speaker 1: because Memphis for a long time was the dominant city.
Speaker 1: And UH, about thirty years later they blinked and the
Speaker 1: next thing you know, Nashville had blown them away. All right,
Speaker 1: So let's let's go into you said you went to
Speaker 1: a to a Catholic high school. I think you said,
Speaker 1: how good of a student were you? Were you committed
Speaker 1: to school work? I mean, how would you characterize yourself
Speaker 1: from an academic perspective? I was interested it in what
Speaker 1: I cared about, Uh, so when it when it came
Speaker 1: to history or you know, literature, things like that, I
Speaker 1: was all over it. I was not much on math
Speaker 1: and science. So I mean I was a good student,
Speaker 1: I wasn't a great student. Um I I've had it
Speaker 1: kind of in my mind. Maybe by the time I
Speaker 1: got to high school. Uh my, my interests were changing.
Speaker 1: This is now in the early seventies, Watergate had happened.
Speaker 1: I began gravitating towards in my mind newspapers and journalism
Speaker 1: and politics. These were things that fascinated me. So I
Speaker 1: was still somewhat unclear what I wanted to do. I
Speaker 1: probably at the time, if you said what what would
Speaker 1: you like to be involved with, it would have been
Speaker 1: politics of some sort. I read your most recent book,
Speaker 1: which I believe my conference is better than your conference.
Speaker 1: You can tell me if I'm I'm messing up the
Speaker 1: title there. It's a fantastic book. I would tell people
Speaker 1: to go check it out. Um. And you mentioned about
Speaker 1: what happened at the age of fifth teen and how
Speaker 1: much it impacted your life. What happened to you when
Speaker 1: you were fifteen, Well, I had uh my my dad
Speaker 1: had had a heart attack about three or four years
Speaker 1: earlier and had not been well. I mean, he had recovered,
Speaker 1: but you could tell he was still fragile. And Uh,
Speaker 1: on a you know, at the age of forty nine,
Speaker 1: on on the early morning hours of March five, v one, Uh,
Speaker 1: he suffered a massive heart attack and and died, you know,
Speaker 1: with my with my mom and myself and my older
Speaker 1: sister around him. We weren't a hundred percent sure, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you knew even a fifteen you knew what
Speaker 1: was going on. And it was that moment, Clay that
Speaker 1: you know, this idyllic life where you know, two my
Speaker 1: two parents and car pools and camp and and singing
Speaker 1: songs going off to a family vacation in the car
Speaker 1: all came to a a shattering halt. Uh, life turned
Speaker 1: upside down. And what was interesting is that it didn't
Speaker 1: It may not have hit me until a little bit later,
Speaker 1: because uh, you're fifteen, you're on your way to being sixteen.
Speaker 1: Your your life is changing as well. So uh from that,
Speaker 1: I mean there's a line of demarcation in that line
Speaker 1: in the in the Jewish world, when you when you
Speaker 1: are bar mitzvahed at thirteen, you're supposed to become a
Speaker 1: man Uh. It took me two years later. But but
Speaker 1: you know, in trying to deal with that, I mean,
Speaker 1: I didn't understand why my mother was uh, you know,
Speaker 1: completely turned upside down. I didn't know a lot of
Speaker 1: other things. But what I what I found out pretty
Speaker 1: quickly was people, uh, without really being intentional, it could
Speaker 1: be fairly cruel by by by really their inaction all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you know, a week for a week,
Speaker 1: everyone comes to your house, uh, and everyone's sorry. And
Speaker 1: then the next Monday comes around and nobody, nobody cares,
Speaker 1: nobody remembers uh. And and you're part of a family
Speaker 1: who you know, we we were doing okay, and suddenly
Speaker 1: we really didn't have very much at all. And you know,
Speaker 1: I was, you know, it was even now, and I
Speaker 1: struggled to completely put it into perspective because, uh, it
Speaker 1: was one of those shattering moments, those lines in your
Speaker 1: life that you'll you know, maybe I'm still not over it,
Speaker 1: because I still have a hard time talking about it.
Speaker 1: So that happens when you're fifteen years old. You then
Speaker 1: go on to high school and you said you had
Speaker 1: a sister. How old was she at the time? She
Speaker 1: was nearly five years older. Than me. So she was
Speaker 1: a little more Uh. I mean she was already in school,
Speaker 1: in college, so she she may may have been a
Speaker 1: slightly better prepared. Now, now I will say Clay, that
Speaker 1: you know, you turned sixteen, you started driving. I I
Speaker 1: got my mother quickly pulled me out of the Catholic
Speaker 1: high school and I went to public school. And but
Speaker 1: for a while, it's not you know, you get through
Speaker 1: it because you start meeting people, you start having friends,
Speaker 1: you start going out, you start and and I all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, your life becomes a bit of a blur. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it hit me a little bit later, uh, really
Speaker 1: a lot later, what really happened? What? What? How my
Speaker 1: life had changed, not not in so much my life,
Speaker 1: but my mother's life. I guess it is maybe the
Speaker 1: more accurate way of putting it well. And also what
Speaker 1: it does is at an age like that, you go
Speaker 1: from maybe not being that cognizant of finances, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're fortunate enough to have two parents and things
Speaker 1: are going fairly well, to suddenly you snap your fingers
Speaker 1: and your dad, who I'm assuming was the primary breadwinner
Speaker 1: in your family, is not there. And that probably breeds
Speaker 1: a little bit of financial insecurity, not only at that
Speaker 1: point in your life, but to a certain extent, has
Speaker 1: to impact you for years ahead. Now every everything. I mean,
Speaker 1: I yeah, from that moment on, I never owned a
Speaker 1: stitch of clothes that wasn't bought at a at a
Speaker 1: going out a business sale. I mean I just uh,
Speaker 1: you just got used to it. Uh. And by the way,
Speaker 1: you didn't really care because you didn't know any better.
Speaker 1: But the day it really uh, I think hit me
Speaker 1: the hardest, Clay, Uh was the day I went to
Speaker 1: school at Tennessee. Uh I. Uh. Memphis is still a
Speaker 1: pretty good distance from Tennessee, but I went up there.
Speaker 1: Uh I did not have a car, um, So how
Speaker 1: did you get there? So for people who don't know
Speaker 1: who are listening to us, who may be in different
Speaker 1: parts of the country, Memphis and Knoxville are in the
Speaker 1: same state. But you can drive quicker from Nashville to Canada.
Speaker 1: This is not an exaggeration. You can Nashville to Canada
Speaker 1: faster than you can go Memphis to Knoxville. So the
Speaker 1: way the state of Tennessee is set up, there's a
Speaker 1: huge geographical expanse between Memphis and Knoxville. Or I should say,
Speaker 1: Memphis all the way to the end of the state,
Speaker 1: not just to to Knoxville, because somebody will get on
Speaker 1: Twitter and correct me. But it's a huge, long, expansive state.
Speaker 1: So it's a different culture. So how do you get there?
Speaker 1: I mean I went there on a greyhound bus. So
Speaker 1: you're going to way to college and you waved to
Speaker 1: mom and get on a greyhound bus and the next
Speaker 1: stop you're off in Knoxville. Yeah, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I get there and I had a trunk and that's
Speaker 1: about it. And yeah, so I moved into my dorm.
Speaker 1: But what was so what was so shattering to me?
Speaker 1: I walked around. You get there on a Saturday or whatever,
Speaker 1: two or three days before class starts, and everywhere I
Speaker 1: went there were families and moms and dads and kids
Speaker 1: and grandparents, and I was alone. And that's that's when
Speaker 1: the reality hit me that, uh, things were really different
Speaker 1: in my life. I mean I knew from financially they were,
Speaker 1: and I knew emotionally my mother was a wreck um.
Speaker 1: But I was, you know, sixteen then seventeen, and I'm busy,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm you know, just doing all the things
Speaker 1: at sixteen year olds do that are crazy? Um, But
Speaker 1: that day, I mean, those were like two of the
Speaker 1: longest day of my life when when when the boomerang,
Speaker 1: the aftershock started to enter into my consciousness and there
Speaker 1: was nobody to call, nobody to talk to. Um, and
Speaker 1: it was it was really a very lonely depressed I mean,
Speaker 1: it should be the greatest day of your your life,
Speaker 1: you're going off to college, and instead it may have
Speaker 1: been the most impressing of mine. Do you remember it
Speaker 1: being physically painful watching all the dads and the moms
Speaker 1: kind of hugging their kids goodbye, and you're there with
Speaker 1: a you know, just I guess sitting in your dorm
Speaker 1: room watching all this happen, right, or walking around I mean, finally,
Speaker 1: I think I just went to the library and hung
Speaker 1: out with you know, everyone else who didn't have a
Speaker 1: family from all over the world. And yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, listen, you're you're in Knoxville, Tennessee, clay and
Speaker 1: and suddenly things do start to change. But it but
Speaker 1: it was that was the reality that was the reality
Speaker 1: check though that Uh and again, you're right, what you
Speaker 1: said is maybe the most accurate finances. You couldn't have
Speaker 1: a conversation without finances because uh, you know, my dad
Speaker 1: left a little bit of money, but not much. My
Speaker 1: mother went back to work, she became she was a
Speaker 1: clerical receptionist at I R. S. She had worked there
Speaker 1: during the war. So, um, you know I didn't. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think not having a car was probably the most
Speaker 1: startling difference between me and almost everyone else, because you
Speaker 1: didn't need one that badly at Knoxville. But you also,
Speaker 1: I mean all of a sudden, people Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: you knew people were looking at this guy and going,
Speaker 1: he's wearing like old clothes that are out of style.
Speaker 1: I didn't have the the eyot on my polo shirt.
Speaker 1: I didn't have the button downs and the khaki's, uh
Speaker 1: the deck shoes. Um, and and I didn't have a car.
Speaker 1: So you feel a little bit out of sorts in Knoxville. Um,
Speaker 1: how did you do start? First of all, how did
Speaker 1: you pay? How did you pay for school? At at
Speaker 1: UT Well, I was able to go on mostly scholarship money. Um,
Speaker 1: there was and uh, you know, people can knock the government,
Speaker 1: but it helped. I mean there was a little bit academic,
Speaker 1: a little bit um you know, financial aid. There was,
Speaker 1: there were there we was there was it was a
Speaker 1: combination of things and and uh, you know we had
Speaker 1: we had a little bit of money. Uh so my mother,
Speaker 1: you know, would maybe give me a hundred dollar bill
Speaker 1: when I left or something, and uh but no, there
Speaker 1: wasn't a lot of money though, So I mean I
Speaker 1: got by um Uh, I think the first thing I did,
Speaker 1: uh was gained thirty pounds because I had one of
Speaker 1: those meal cards. Uh So I mean, you know I
Speaker 1: had breakfast, uh that I had lunch and uh then
Speaker 1: you know if I was you know, a lazy move
Speaker 1: with my buddies and maybe go back for a second lunch.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I mean it was like, I mean,
Speaker 1: the expanding man was me because I never stopped eating
Speaker 1: my first uh my first quarter at Uto. So you
Speaker 1: said you got interested in journalism a little bit during Watergate.
Speaker 1: You obviously we're talking about the impact of cultural affairs.
Speaker 1: When you were growing up in Memphis, when did you
Speaker 1: start to think maybe I'll major in that. Were you
Speaker 1: a journalism major at the get from the get go
Speaker 1: at Tennessee? What did you major in and how did
Speaker 1: you move into the air to the new newspaper I
Speaker 1: was my major. I think I had a double major
Speaker 1: political science or maybe a minor in history. I did
Speaker 1: not think about journalism. I was more thinking governmental work.
Speaker 1: If you had said at the time, what were you
Speaker 1: gonna end up being? Uh, you know, was law? Possibility?
Speaker 1: Was teaching a possibility? Was governmental work? I mean, these
Speaker 1: were all things that were rolling around. I mean, again
Speaker 1: the time frame, this is around the time Nixon resigned. Uh,
Speaker 1: I mean politics was was. I mean, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: it's comparable to today, but I mean it was front
Speaker 1: and center. No matter where you went, there was something
Speaker 1: going on. So I U I was thinking along those terms,
Speaker 1: and you know, probably around my third year at Tennessee, UM,
Speaker 1: I began drifting like what in the world in my
Speaker 1: going to do? Uh? And I saw an ad one
Speaker 1: day in the ut Daily Beacon that's the student newspaper
Speaker 1: for a reporter, and I said, you know what, I'll
Speaker 1: just go down there. Didn't tell any of my friends
Speaker 1: or what I was doing. And they asked one of
Speaker 1: the pre requisite questions was can you type? And I
Speaker 1: really couldn't type very well. So they sent me to
Speaker 1: cover that. They gave me an assignment. Um, I'll try
Speaker 1: to make this quick because I can tell you the
Speaker 1: story for three hours, but it was it was fairly simple.
Speaker 1: There was there was like a shuttle service between campus
Speaker 1: and the airport and they had discontinued it. And Clay,
Speaker 1: I will tell you, after about six hours of phone calls,
Speaker 1: I had I had uncovered some major scandal payoffs, black mail,
Speaker 1: um And when I went to the editor, I mean,
Speaker 1: they were like, are you out of your I mean,
Speaker 1: this is unbelievable. So I wrote it up. Of course
Speaker 1: I wrote it in longhand because I couldn't type. And
Speaker 1: then finally I started taking at a at a typewriter
Speaker 1: and and they hired me as a reporter and based
Speaker 1: on my my reporting skills. And then after about a
Speaker 1: two or three months of that, I realized, you know what,
Speaker 1: covering covering the student government is not going to really
Speaker 1: be the ticket. So I gravitated towards sports. 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 Paul fine Bam. You can follow him
Speaker 1: on Twitter at fine Bam. This is the Winds and
Speaker 1: Losses Podcast. I am Clay Travis. Thanks for hanging with us.
Speaker 1: So when did you pivot then? Would you remember the
Speaker 1: first article you wrote about sports for the University of
Speaker 1: Tennessee student newspaper. Yeah, I believe that it was a
Speaker 1: it was a basketball article. Uh. I think Uh, Ernie
Speaker 1: Grunfeld and Bernard King had had Uh We're doing an
Speaker 1: interview that day to try they were trying out for
Speaker 1: the Olympic team or something. So I interviewed them and
Speaker 1: I caught the bog and as you know, Clay, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's funny. I ran interviewed Grant Williams the other day
Speaker 1: and we were talking about, you know, what's the greatest
Speaker 1: period of basketball Tennessee history, and and there's always a
Speaker 1: debate this year. This year was really good. But but
Speaker 1: the Bernie and Arnie show is still being talked about
Speaker 1: forty three years later. So that that's what I had.
Speaker 1: I had another year of that. Uh, football was I
Speaker 1: think Bill Battle was still there, so he was in
Speaker 1: his last season, so that these were the introductory moments
Speaker 1: to sports. I knew something was up when one of
Speaker 1: the first big stories I covered was somebody had sent
Speaker 1: a moving van to to build Battle's house in West Knoxville.
Speaker 1: And I think Bill Battle may have been the first
Speaker 1: coach to ever be on the hot seat. So at
Speaker 1: this point in time, are these opinion pieces? Are they
Speaker 1: pretty much straight news? Uh? And they started as straight news,
Speaker 1: and Uh, I gravitated to opinion pieces, and I think
Speaker 1: after I think after a couple of months, I ended
Speaker 1: up being the sports editor, which was a great job.
Speaker 1: I mean, Clay, you're you're in college. You you have
Speaker 1: your own little desk. Uh. I mean it's it's it's
Speaker 1: journalism's version of animal House where you go down there
Speaker 1: every day. You have a group of friends, you go
Speaker 1: out and drink beer together. You get to go that.
Speaker 1: You get to go as a student two football games
Speaker 1: for free, sitting in the press box. And you also
Speaker 1: get to fly on a plane. I chartered plane two
Speaker 1: road games and do the same thing in basketball. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was, you know, I'd finally overcome the beginning of
Speaker 1: my career at UT and had certainly uh touched on Nirvana.
Speaker 1: Had you flown on an airplane before you said he
Speaker 1: took Greyhound up to uh. Had you gone back to
Speaker 1: the East Coast where your family was from at that time? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I've probably been by the time I went
Speaker 1: to college, I've been on maybe three or four planes,
Speaker 1: I mean not many, not many though, and never so
Speaker 1: getting on an airplane to go cover a sporting event
Speaker 1: was I was like, uh, an incredible achievement, right, oh man,
Speaker 1: I mean I'm there forget one of one of the
Speaker 1: years I was up there. We we flew think the
Speaker 1: first road game was intended. Tennessee didn't play a lot
Speaker 1: of road games in um so. I think we went
Speaker 1: to uh Birmingham for the Alabama game. And I mean
Speaker 1: you talk about an experience having my own hotel room
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, sitting in the press box at
Speaker 1: Legion Field and then going wherever else we went that year. Uh,
Speaker 1: it was it was. I mean I I started to think,
Speaker 1: you know what, this is pretty cool. I ran into
Speaker 1: somebody once and I asked him about being a sportswriter.
Speaker 1: He said, you may not make a million dollars. This
Speaker 1: is before Rick Riley and all that, but but you'll
Speaker 1: you'll live like a you'll feel like a millionaire. Uh
Speaker 1: and live like a millionaire and be around me and
Speaker 1: and it really was intoxicating. Uh And I was, I
Speaker 1: was all in and and suddenly I had to figure out, well,
Speaker 1: what am I gonna do with my career because I didn't.
Speaker 1: I started taking a couple of journalism classes, but there
Speaker 1: was no way I was ever going to be around
Speaker 1: long enough to get a degree in journalism. So do
Speaker 1: you remember the first time that you wrote something and
Speaker 1: it provoked a reaction either positive or negative? Somebody came
Speaker 1: up to you who you didn't know, or you heard
Speaker 1: people talking about your opinion. When you were at the
Speaker 1: University of Tennessee. Writing in that experience sometimes people do.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the lightbulb moment of Oh, I've
Speaker 1: impacted the conversation in some way. Oh yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I had been critical of the ten the Tennessee football
Speaker 1: team my last year there was terrible. Um uh, you know,
Speaker 1: Johnny Majors was his first year, and I remember being
Speaker 1: at a practice on them. They they used to practice
Speaker 1: on Monday night. Idiom and I'm struggling to remember the
Speaker 1: guy's name. And he was a quarterback. It was a
Speaker 1: backup named Joe somebody like Joe. I can't remember Joe
Speaker 1: Huff maybe was his name. Um, and he saw me
Speaker 1: and literally came, I mean he started charging toward me.
Speaker 1: And Johnny Majors was was about five ft away and
Speaker 1: kind of caught it and and through a and threw
Speaker 1: a block on this guy to to stop him from
Speaker 1: literally he would have killed me. I mean, there's no question. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he later threatened to kill me. Uh and he
Speaker 1: said if you ever and I really uh, I thought
Speaker 1: I was gonna die. But so you know what it
Speaker 1: really uh it had the reverse effect, did emboldened me.
Speaker 1: Um and I but but there were plenty of There
Speaker 1: were plenty of moments when I walked around that campus
Speaker 1: and then probably some of the more controversial stuff I
Speaker 1: did involved basketball. Um. It was also the year after
Speaker 1: Bernie and Ernie and uh I Ray Meares was the coach.
Speaker 1: But but he had uh, he had he had gone
Speaker 1: on leave. He had had some psychological problems and they
Speaker 1: had an interim coach. And I wrote the Tennessee lost
Speaker 1: a Georgia on a Saturday at home when Georgia at
Speaker 1: the time was the worst team in the league. By
Speaker 1: the way, not much as really yeah, and I was
Speaker 1: gonna say uh and uh, and I wrote, I wrote
Speaker 1: a column in the form of an obituary. It was
Speaker 1: like just like you know, it said like balls nineteen
Speaker 1: o nine and it was we put black borders around it.
Speaker 1: The Tennessee balls Uh died Saturday night. It was seventy
Speaker 1: eight years old. Everything right out of an O bit
Speaker 1: and my last line I'll never forget, I said, you know,
Speaker 1: and and and the and the school has requested uh
Speaker 1: and in Louis Flowers all contributions to go to the
Speaker 1: Lewton's cough Drop Company for future research on choking. And
Speaker 1: I uh got a call that afternoon the basketball coach
Speaker 1: wanted to see me, and I went over there and
Speaker 1: he slammed the door and he grabbed me by the
Speaker 1: collar and threw me up against the wall and started
Speaker 1: just he went crazy. I mean, these are the kind
Speaker 1: of things Clay that today, I mean, you you're your
Speaker 1: your site would be on fire for a week, for
Speaker 1: two weeks on um. But it was just, you know,
Speaker 1: so it was just it was it was not that
Speaker 1: unusual for me to have a running like that. And
Speaker 1: the school they decided to ban me from future travel
Speaker 1: as the sports editor of the school paper, which probably
Speaker 1: hadn't happened before, right, I mean that had to be
Speaker 1: kind of uh So did you take a perverse form
Speaker 1: of pride in that? Well? Fortunately, Uh, an enterprising reporter
Speaker 1: to Marvin West, who was a legendary reporter to the
Speaker 1: Knoxville News Sentinel. Uh, he picked up on it and
Speaker 1: did a big story on it, and it created a
Speaker 1: lot of national news. So the school rescinded the ban. Um.
Speaker 1: But I mean I knew then, Hey, this is what
Speaker 1: I want to do. I mean, I'll never forget Woody Page. Uh.
Speaker 1: The legendary columnists and now TV pundit told uh. I
Speaker 1: was told by I think it was Bud Ford, who
Speaker 1: was a sports information was that sports information director at
Speaker 1: Tennessee for like two generations. I mean he was there
Speaker 1: forty or fifty years. He told me that he said
Speaker 1: what we always thought what he Page was the worst
Speaker 1: person we've ever dealt with, he said, But you have
Speaker 1: put him to shame. And the relationship between the the
Speaker 1: school paper, in the in the s I d. S Office,
Speaker 1: I think had been set back fifteen years. Um. But so,
Speaker 1: needless to say, by the time I graduated, the the
Speaker 1: athletic department was not throwing me going going uh a
Speaker 1: congratulatory graduation dinner. I mean there were some But well,
Speaker 1: what it did, though, Clay, was it toughened me up.
Speaker 1: It taught me a lot. And you talked about a
Speaker 1: laboratory education in dealing with conflict. I had it. And
Speaker 1: you know, I learned how to show up at a
Speaker 1: place when you could certainly write the book on this
Speaker 1: times over, but when no one would talk to you,
Speaker 1: when you were looked down on, and it it gave
Speaker 1: me a pretty good, uh primer on on what was
Speaker 1: to come. You know what. It's a great lesson because, um,
Speaker 1: I wrote Dixie Land Delight without access to any press boxes.
Speaker 1: And Bud bud Ford is a good guy. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's got a lot of boss positive traits. But I
Speaker 1: remember I wrote a column making fun you'll appreciate this
Speaker 1: probably as well. Mississippi State, I think it was Alabama.
Speaker 1: Alabama's season tickets they misspelled Mississippi on them. Right. Remember
Speaker 1: this was probably like a decade. I've been twelve or
Speaker 1: thirteen years ago. I don't remember the exact year, but
Speaker 1: they misspelled Mississippi on the on the tickets, and I
Speaker 1: wrote a column making fun of it. And uh, and
Speaker 1: I you know, because I mean, let's be honest, I mean,
Speaker 1: the state of Alabama misspelling Mississippi on their season tickets
Speaker 1: and nobody noticing in the whole athletic department everything else.
Speaker 1: I mean, one, it's a big swing and a miss,
Speaker 1: but it's also funny, right, Like it's it was a
Speaker 1: humor column. It wasn't like I was, you know, writing
Speaker 1: a really serious piece. And uh, Bud emailed me and
Speaker 1: he said, if you want to make a living in sports,
Speaker 1: you can't make fun of people like this. Uh and
Speaker 1: uh and he was like, and it makes you know,
Speaker 1: everybody question whether we should have any relationship with you
Speaker 1: at all. And you know, I mean, the truth the
Speaker 1: matter was. I mean, I've had a lot of those
Speaker 1: kind of comments that have been made to me over
Speaker 1: the years. But I think the reason why people listen,
Speaker 1: or the reason why they read, is because you really
Speaker 1: try not to pull punches. And I'm gonna get to
Speaker 1: that in a little bit. You certainly have had your
Speaker 1: fair share of incidents over the years too. But I
Speaker 1: want to go, so you graduate from Tennessee. You've set
Speaker 1: back the relationship between the student newspaper and the athletics
Speaker 1: program by fifteen years. How do you go about getting
Speaker 1: your first job and how do you decide what you're
Speaker 1: going to do? Well, Listen, I can tell you I
Speaker 1: didn't have a lot of offers. Um I ended up
Speaker 1: with UH. Some people tried to help me. There was
Speaker 1: an old sports writer in Nashville that I've got to know,
Speaker 1: a guy named Edgar Allen. He was at the Nashville Banner,
Speaker 1: and he introduced me to a few people. UH. And
Speaker 1: another guy named Tom Siler, who was legendary and Knoxville,
Speaker 1: tried to help me a little bit, even though I
Speaker 1: mean there were people that liked what I was I
Speaker 1: was doing, even though it was not necessarily uh acceptable.
Speaker 1: So I ended up getting uh an offer from the Bristol, Tennessee,
Speaker 1: Virginia whatever it is, Harold Courier and the Shreveport Times
Speaker 1: and or Journal whatever the name of the newspaper was
Speaker 1: at the time. So I had two offers. Um I
Speaker 1: really did I was. I debated it. I was. I was.
Speaker 1: I was very seriously involved with a young lady from Kingsport,
Speaker 1: Tennessee at the time. And while that seemed like the
Speaker 1: logical decision, Clay, I don't know what prompted me not
Speaker 1: to take it. UM. I knew by take by going
Speaker 1: west to Shreveport, I was probably going to but but
Speaker 1: I think it was just time. I couldn't see going
Speaker 1: through the college experience, um, and then living in East
Speaker 1: Tennessee and very likely, I mean almost positively marrying someone
Speaker 1: from East Tennessee. UM. So I took the job in Shreport,
Speaker 1: didn't know us al and uh I saw Knoxville, Tennessee
Speaker 1: in my rearview mirror. Do you remember what they paid
Speaker 1: you to start in Shreport? Yes? I do. They paid
Speaker 1: me one and thirty five dollars a week, one thirty
Speaker 1: five a week. And so you get down to Streeport.
Speaker 1: If you bought a car by this point, uh, for
Speaker 1: for graduation, wonderful late mom bought me a powder blue
Speaker 1: Ford Maverick and and I I listened. I was emotionally
Speaker 1: thrilled that she had done it. But as soon as
Speaker 1: I got in the car, I'm like going, oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: this car may not get me to Sport. How many
Speaker 1: years old? How many years old was the college? It was? Was?
Speaker 1: I don't it was definitely it was used. And knowing
Speaker 1: my mother, I let her rest in peace. I mean
Speaker 1: she got a bargain. Um, and it's it's it's bit
Speaker 1: fire out of the back. Somebody wants not jumping. Someone
Speaker 1: once ran into me in Birmingham when I had the car.
Speaker 1: I didn't get a scratch, and I think they totaled
Speaker 1: the car. I mean it was a literal take. Oh
Speaker 1: it was. But you know what, I didn't care. I
Speaker 1: got to I got to Shreveport, uh and uh graduated college.
Speaker 1: I was. I mean it was I was just glad
Speaker 1: to get out of there. Um, I really was. It
Speaker 1: was time to start something new. So what do you
Speaker 1: cover in everything? Uh? That was the great part about
Speaker 1: the job. It was one of these places that you
Speaker 1: go and you do everything. It was. It was an
Speaker 1: afternoon paper when I started, and you get there at
Speaker 1: four in the morning. You know, you do the deskwork,
Speaker 1: you do whatever there is to do. I covered uh
Speaker 1: in my am I pretty much my first and only
Speaker 1: year there, I covered. I started covering some Cowboys games
Speaker 1: and exhibition games. I covered. Uh. They sent me to
Speaker 1: New Orleans for the uh Muhammad Ali's last championship win,
Speaker 1: which was unbelievable. Uh. While you're there grabbing grab an
Speaker 1: l A shoe game, grab a Saints game. I mean
Speaker 1: it was it was like right out of some old
Speaker 1: newspaper movie. So, I mean, I I primarily covered l
Speaker 1: A shoe but I but I covered some pro football
Speaker 1: as well, and uh yeah, I had a blast. I
Speaker 1: mean I didn't know what I was doing, but I
Speaker 1: was learning on the job and it was a great
Speaker 1: experience for me. So how many articles are you writing?
Speaker 1: How many articles a week would you be doing at that?
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm literally churning stuff out. I mean there
Speaker 1: was this. I mean, by the I didn't know anyone.
Speaker 1: Uh this will become as a big surprise. But not
Speaker 1: long after my move there the the girl in in
Speaker 1: Kingsport dumped me. Um, she dumped me for like the
Speaker 1: the the guy who the adviser to the the annual.
Speaker 1: I hope she's happy. So she called you. She called
Speaker 1: you on the phone. Let me tell you this story.
Speaker 1: This is one of my favorite stories that I never tell. Um.
Speaker 1: She came to see me once. Um, maybe maybe twice,
Speaker 1: I can't remember, but I mean the first time was great.
Speaker 1: She spent a week or two and uh but I
Speaker 1: think she took a look. She took a look at
Speaker 1: this apartment of mine and my lifestyle, and so there's
Speaker 1: no way. Uh so she came back again. I could
Speaker 1: tell things. We're you just kind of knew. So I
Speaker 1: get I get a letter. I mean this. This is
Speaker 1: just think about this. You get a letter, I mean
Speaker 1: you hear about the Dear John letter. I got a
Speaker 1: letter from her saying, you know, she really hated to
Speaker 1: write this, you know, put it in writing. Um, but
Speaker 1: she was moving on. She had teun someone new and
Speaker 1: that we were done. Well you're laughing now, but I
Speaker 1: bet when you got it you were like, oh, my
Speaker 1: life is over because I remember it. I remember to
Speaker 1: this day. It was in October morning, during football season.
Speaker 1: I'm still making a hundred and may I may be
Speaker 1: up to one forty a week now, I'm not sure. Um.
Speaker 1: I was distraught. Uh, we put the newspaper out. She
Speaker 1: sent it to the newspaper for whatever reason. I don't
Speaker 1: know why. I mean just I mean, let's let's make
Speaker 1: this as informal as possible. And UM I went I
Speaker 1: went home to call her because I was so I mean,
Speaker 1: I didn't I mean yeah, I wasn't smart enough to
Speaker 1: see this one coming, even though I did so I
Speaker 1: got I got home to my duplex apartment and by
Speaker 1: the way, I kid you not, I uh, the upstairs was.
Speaker 1: This was right as the fall of the Ayatola had
Speaker 1: fallen in Iran, and my My next door neighbor was
Speaker 1: an Iranian exchange student and he uh. So I got home.
Speaker 1: I Uh. The first thing I did was get a
Speaker 1: glass of water from the from the from the sink.
Speaker 1: This was before model water. My water spiga didn't work. Um.
Speaker 1: I grabbed the phone to call my girlfriend in East
Speaker 1: Tennessee and my phone was didn't work. It had been disconnected.
Speaker 1: My water had been disconnected, and you know, and finally
Speaker 1: I turned on the TV. Uh, and it had been
Speaker 1: my power had been turned off. You had power, the
Speaker 1: water or the phone bill. Everything in my life ended
Speaker 1: that day. It was all shut off. And I finally, Uh,
Speaker 1: I went back to work and called my mother and
Speaker 1: told her I needed some money pretty desperately. Um. And
Speaker 1: so I got everything turned back on fairly quickly. UM.
Speaker 1: But that was it. The lady uh at the time
Speaker 1: she married the guy, and I sent her note wishing
Speaker 1: her and I not seen her or heard from her since. UM.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it was It was quite a It was
Speaker 1: quite a start to my my professional life in Shreveport.
Speaker 1: That was a really Uh. It's kind of hard to
Speaker 1: hit more rock bottom than that. So you're in Streport,
Speaker 1: You're there for a year, Uh, you've let your your power,
Speaker 1: your your electricity, your phone, your water, everything's dying. You're
Speaker 1: making a hundred and thirty five or forty dollars a week.
Speaker 1: What happens? How do you get Because for people out
Speaker 1: there who may not be familiar, the idea was from
Speaker 1: a writing perspective. You want to continue to climb sort
Speaker 1: of the newspaper food chain. Right, you're a young guy,
Speaker 1: You're on the up and up, like you don't have
Speaker 1: any real connection to Shreveport. How do you move from
Speaker 1: Shreeport to the next level, so to speak of your career? Well,
Speaker 1: the great thing is, uh, there were so many opportunities,
Speaker 1: and I broke a couple of big, big investigative stories.
Speaker 1: I I ran into Howard co cell Clay at a
Speaker 1: at a Monday night game in Dallas and ended up
Speaker 1: doing uh this was pre Quay Travis, but you were
Speaker 1: have I hung around him for about a half hour
Speaker 1: forty minutes and then did a did an opus off
Speaker 1: based on that. Uh that won me some award, So
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's a classic case. I started getting
Speaker 1: noticed and I started looking for a job because I
Speaker 1: knew that I could not spend too much more time
Speaker 1: in Shreveport, and I finally UH had some A lot
Speaker 1: of my friends from college had had gravitated Birmingham and
Speaker 1: there was an opening. And finally, after about a year,
Speaker 1: I got I got a job in Birmingham, which UH
Speaker 1: was pretty I'm telling you what it was pretty. I
Speaker 1: felt like I was back home when I when I
Speaker 1: pulled the Ford Maverick into Birmingham, Alabama. So you get
Speaker 1: to Birmingham, and at that point in time, you're twenty
Speaker 1: three four years old, I'm assuming and your thought is
Speaker 1: I'm only going to be in Birmingham for how long?
Speaker 1: If I had told you're gonna be in a Birmingham
Speaker 1: for three years, would you have been disappointed? Or would
Speaker 1: you have already wanted to move on to another place? Clay,
Speaker 1: I would have been mortified. Who have been there three years?
Speaker 1: I had a goal that if I wasn't at the
Speaker 1: New York Times by thirty, my life was a complete failure.
Speaker 1: And I at this point UH started. I had met
Speaker 1: a lot of people. UH was making contacts UM and
Speaker 1: not long after I got to Birmingham. I mean, I
Speaker 1: had sent out so many resumes that I mean it
Speaker 1: had to hit eventually, and it wasn't long after I
Speaker 1: was in Birmingham. I got an offer from a tabloid
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia, and uh, I thought, my my, but I'll
Speaker 1: shorten the story. I got up there, and uh, I
Speaker 1: asked the I asked the cab driver. I said, the
Speaker 1: name of the newspaper was the Philadelphia Journal. I mean,
Speaker 1: back then every town had three or four newspapers, especially
Speaker 1: the big cities. And he's, oh, that's a great newspaper.
Speaker 1: I said, really, what do you like about that? You know,
Speaker 1: they showed the show Women's Boobs on the front stage,
Speaker 1: and like, you know, I'm going anyway. I at this.
Speaker 1: I mean, they offered to triple my salary and I
Speaker 1: turned it down. I mean, I think that was the
Speaker 1: moment when I started thinking, Uh, I began being pragmatic
Speaker 1: about my career. People thought I was insane, but I
Speaker 1: knew in the bottom of deep down the paper folded
Speaker 1: in six months. So I made a good decision there.
Speaker 1: But I still did not want to stay stay too
Speaker 1: long in Birmingham, and and uh I didn't waste a
Speaker 1: lot of time. I got off to a pretty fast
Speaker 1: start there and got involved about about a year and
Speaker 1: a half. About a year in on an investigative story
Speaker 1: about a high school player in Huntsville that was bought
Speaker 1: by Alabama. Did I say that that was allegedly bought
Speaker 1: by Yeah, yeah, that would be unbelievable. With Alabama, it
Speaker 1: became a massive story. Uh that Uh that turned around
Speaker 1: to win me every award. I mean, but I had
Speaker 1: a partner on the story. I don't want to like
Speaker 1: it was all mine. But that was more than more
Speaker 1: than anything just to keep me out of trouble. It
Speaker 1: was the more the elder statesman of the newspaper. And uh,
Speaker 1: I mean I Clay, I mean at this age, Uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, I was, I was, I was. I was
Speaker 1: a hurricane walking into any any any office building, any
Speaker 1: any d a's office, any anybody's office. And uh the
Speaker 1: story won all the Alabama Awards, won all the regional awards, Sigama,
Speaker 1: Sigma Delta Kai Awards, and it won all the national
Speaker 1: ap AP Sports Editor Awards. And when you win those
Speaker 1: awards back in the day, you you are going to
Speaker 1: get a good job. So. Uh it not only did
Speaker 1: it create a lot of attention, it also got a
Speaker 1: sued um so and this is important. The principal at
Speaker 1: the high school. Uh, tried to bow out before we
Speaker 1: wrote the next story. He got a job in Texas
Speaker 1: and then our story came out, so they would they
Speaker 1: were threw the offer, and he did what anybody would
Speaker 1: do to try to say face. He sued us, Well,
Speaker 1: not a big deal because nobody really thought he had
Speaker 1: a case except I had a lawsuit against me. So
Speaker 1: I win these all. I win these AP awards. I
Speaker 1: get a call from on a Friday night from the
Speaker 1: Philadelphia Inquirer. Uh, there were the Economy is Bad and
Speaker 1: the and the sports editor guy named Jay Cercys from Tennessee. Um.
Speaker 1: He calls me, says, uh, we we we saw you
Speaker 1: won all these awards. We've read your stuff. We think
Speaker 1: you're great. What what's what are the odds of you
Speaker 1: getting up here on a Monday and let's you know,
Speaker 1: get you in here. Uh, We're about to hit a
Speaker 1: hiring freeze. I'd like to get you under the gun.
Speaker 1: I said, you got it, Clay, Do you have any
Speaker 1: Do you have any I do what it's like at
Speaker 1: this age to pretty much. I mean he offered me
Speaker 1: the job to have an offer from the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Speaker 1: After going through what I've been through in my career.
Speaker 1: I can't I can't imagine how excited you are. I mean,
Speaker 1: you get the call on Friday and they want you
Speaker 1: there by Monday to start. Basically, it was uh, it was.
Speaker 1: I mean, I went out with my buddies. It was
Speaker 1: the greatest night of my career. And I think, you
Speaker 1: know what's about to happen, don't you. Um. On Sunday,
Speaker 1: I'm packed and ready to go, and I've got this
Speaker 1: relationship and this poor girl is all distraught because I'm
Speaker 1: about to head to Philadelphia. Get a call. It's Jay Sarcey.
Speaker 1: He said, hey, Paul, Jay, I said, yeah, yeah, he said,
Speaker 1: we've got to change the plans. Um he had discovered
Speaker 1: the lawsuit. Now, by the way, should I have told
Speaker 1: him that the lawsuit? Yeah? Maybe I should have, but
Speaker 1: I didn't, he said, And you know I tried to.
Speaker 1: You don't want to stop somebody from hiring you, right,
Speaker 1: That's what you always say. It's always better to beg
Speaker 1: for forgiveness. Then, so yeah, I'm not surprised you didn't say.
Speaker 1: And oh, by the way, I'm getting sued. So I hang,
Speaker 1: I hang up the phone, and my life was over
Speaker 1: that It was literally over. Uh, and I don't know
Speaker 1: at that moment if I ever got another legitimate newspaper off.
Speaker 1: And because it took about an year and a half
Speaker 1: to adjudicate this this lawsuit, we went to trial, we
Speaker 1: won the case. It ended up being a significant, uh
Speaker 1: a significant victory for the newspaper business. I mean we
Speaker 1: had we had the money we spent on lawyers was
Speaker 1: was in calculable. We had the top label lawyer in
Speaker 1: New York, the top label lawyer. And when we won
Speaker 1: on enemy and enemy territory. But the day afterwards, my career,
Speaker 1: I mean I was damaged. Good. So I've been through
Speaker 1: a lawsuit. Uh did you get on the way to
Speaker 1: stand at the at the trial? Absolutely yeah, and cross
Speaker 1: examined and everything. Oh yeah, And you know it was
Speaker 1: you know, we won the case, and it was I
Speaker 1: mean it was a big deal to win back then.
Speaker 1: I mean every newspaper in the country back then was
Speaker 1: was was following it. I mean it was in all
Speaker 1: the papers. Uh. And but but I was as good
Speaker 1: as dead. And a couple of months later, the newspaper
Speaker 1: made me a columnist, figuring that they had spent enough
Speaker 1: money on my reporting. Um, but you know what, it's
Speaker 1: it's like the old uh cliche. Uh. You know, the
Speaker 1: allegations are on the front page, and when they when
Speaker 1: they clear your name, it's on the it's on the food,
Speaker 1: it's on the it's it's inside the one edge section.
Speaker 1: I mean, I get realized nobody reached newspapers anymore. But
Speaker 1: this is the way it used to be said. And
Speaker 1: by the time we were cleared, uh, my career had
Speaker 1: cooled off and things were changing too. At the same
Speaker 1: time contemporating as to this Bear Bryant was was the
Speaker 1: result was retiring and and everything else was was wasn't
Speaker 1: was in was in constant motion. But yeah, my newspaper career,
Speaker 1: we've had such great hopes and dreams of being at
Speaker 1: the Times or who knows where else. Was over. I
Speaker 1: want to go back to a couple of things here. One,
Speaker 1: when you write a story about Alabama allegedly paying a
Speaker 1: player and it goes out in the newspaper, you have
Speaker 1: to get a lot of negative blowback because those stories
Speaker 1: still provoke a ton and I think there are a
Speaker 1: lot of listeners out there that probably would and even understand,
Speaker 1: particularly if they're not in the South and they're listening
Speaker 1: to this right now. How persona non grata you are
Speaker 1: to write a story like that in the local newspaper. Uh,
Speaker 1: pretty bad. I mean it was dangerous and uh you
Speaker 1: know we I mean as as the story was coming
Speaker 1: off the press, there were a bunch of Alabama attorneys,
Speaker 1: uh literally outside by the by the loading dock, ready
Speaker 1: for the you know, get the newspaper. Again, this is
Speaker 1: in the eighties. There's no internet. I mean you literally
Speaker 1: had to read the newspaper. And it was it was
Speaker 1: by the way. Uh, Paul Bryant was still alive and
Speaker 1: was the athletic director at Alabama, and so it was.
Speaker 1: It was a very The player involved went to Alabama.
Speaker 1: He suited us too, but we were told that Brian
Speaker 1: told him to drop the lawsuit because he didn't want
Speaker 1: the university to post uh and and it but what
Speaker 1: it did the I mean at the time, I started
Speaker 1: looking at other things as well. Uh, I mean know
Speaker 1: it was it was a fairly difficult time for me. Um,
Speaker 1: I could go to a I could go to an
Speaker 1: Alabama and back then they used to the media would
Speaker 1: go to the dorm at Alabama and Auburn and other
Speaker 1: schools Clay and you'd have lunch. I would. I would
Speaker 1: walk in there and not forget the administration. There wasn't
Speaker 1: another sportswriter that would speak to me. Uh. It's not
Speaker 1: like the rest of the media back back the newspaper
Speaker 1: up on this. I mean I was. I was as
Speaker 1: much of an outcast in the media as I was
Speaker 1: in the public. Well. I think that's what people a
Speaker 1: lot of don't understand is there is a great deal
Speaker 1: of power in these local universities, right and uh, and
Speaker 1: if you stand up to them at all, they'll ostracize you.
Speaker 1: And it's not just being ostracized by the university. It's
Speaker 1: that other media members will feel like, oh, I don't
Speaker 1: even really want to be in that club, right, Like
Speaker 1: I don't want to be in the Fine Bomb club
Speaker 1: right now, or I don't want to be in the
Speaker 1: Travis club or whatever it is. If you have been
Speaker 1: particularly critical in a negative way, it's like the university
Speaker 1: is a kingdom and you have just spurned the kingdom,
Speaker 1: right Yeah, And so, I mean, I will tell you though,
Speaker 1: it was such a such a great learning experience though,
Speaker 1: because I mean you you you begin to walk in
Speaker 1: rooms like a secret service man. You're you're looking at
Speaker 1: every corner you're you're watching. You learn a lot of
Speaker 1: interpersonal communications, how to deal with various people. And it
Speaker 1: was it was. It was a great experience because I
Speaker 1: also learned how fickle that the media can be. Clay.
Speaker 1: This sounds predictable today after all the things you've said
Speaker 1: about the media, uh in your platforms, But uh, they are.
Speaker 1: They were a pack in a call back then and
Speaker 1: in many ways they still are. But uh, it was
Speaker 1: it was alone in the existence. But I got a
Speaker 1: lot tougher and it helped prepare me for really anything
Speaker 1: that that was to come. What was it like covering
Speaker 1: Bear Bryant. It was fascinating because even at the end
Speaker 1: of his career, he was he was just such a big,
Speaker 1: larger than life figure. We hadn't think at the at
Speaker 1: the newspaper. Uh Bryant read the morning newspaper. It was
Speaker 1: his paper in Tuscaloosa, so he cared what was said
Speaker 1: in there. And we had every Monday during the football season,
Speaker 1: we had a Q and A with him. So I
Speaker 1: would call Bear Bryant every Monday or whatever designated time,
Speaker 1: and you know, talk to him for ten minutes and
Speaker 1: and do you have any idea what's that like to
Speaker 1: go out to go out to lunch with your buddies.
Speaker 1: You're sitting there, uh and you just say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I talked to coach Bryant today. I mean, all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, it was the whole restaurant would stand up.
Speaker 1: I didn't know him very well. I mean he clearly
Speaker 1: knew me by this point because of some of the
Speaker 1: investigative work. Um, but he was cordial, he was he
Speaker 1: was friendly. I mean he was kind of hard to hear,
Speaker 1: uh to understand his words at times. But but covering
Speaker 1: him for two years was was was a remarkable experience,
Speaker 1: especially at the end. Were you a part of the
Speaker 1: skywriters as well? Um, you know the guys who would
Speaker 1: get on airplanes and fly around and go instead of
Speaker 1: like the SEC media days which they have now. In July,
Speaker 1: I just had it in Atlanta, going to have it
Speaker 1: in Birmingham, you know where all the coaches come by
Speaker 1: and talk about their their new teams. I understand you
Speaker 1: guys used to hop on planes and go around to
Speaker 1: all the different campuses and file articles from there. Did
Speaker 1: you ever partake in that? No, A friend of mine
Speaker 1: is working on a documentary on that. I would love
Speaker 1: to see that. The stories that I've heard are phenomenal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I came my boss was on that was on the skywriters.
Speaker 1: Uh so, Uh, I knew about it. And and and
Speaker 1: even even though this is a podcast where there's there
Speaker 1: there there are, there's still no sense that there's no censering.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't begin to talk publicly about the stories I've
Speaker 1: heard called believable. Yeah, no, there Uh, there's still living
Speaker 1: relatives out there, and I just don't think it's fair
Speaker 1: to anyone to uh. And it involves way too many people. Oh,
Speaker 1: I mean coaches like the coach would just walk out
Speaker 1: with a whiskey bottle and say, all right, what questions
Speaker 1: you got, let's get drunk, right. I mean basically, it
Speaker 1: was a crazy party. It would make a great it
Speaker 1: would make a great thirty thirty. I and I, through
Speaker 1: my friend, I've tried to get ESPN. I'm interested in it.
Speaker 1: It's so far I'm not even sure they want they
Speaker 1: want to touch this one. Oh. I would love to
Speaker 1: see that, just based on the stories that I've heard
Speaker 1: from some of the older guys who have covered over
Speaker 1: the years. And I was wondering if you were part
Speaker 1: of that. Now you mentioned the Bear Bryant the day
Speaker 1: that he died. For people who are a lot younger
Speaker 1: that will be listening to this podcast and have heard
Speaker 1: a lot of Nick Saban and Bear Bryant comparisons, what
Speaker 1: was the state of Alabama like the day Bear Bear
Speaker 1: Bryant died. Well, as I answered this question, I want
Speaker 1: to remind you that, Uh, I was in Memphis the
Speaker 1: day Dr King was assassinated. As a young person, I
Speaker 1: was also in downtown Memphis today Elvis Presley died. So
Speaker 1: I want to use that as a preamble to this
Speaker 1: It's it's it was on the same level. Um. I.
Speaker 1: I was a Legion Field interviewing a group of Alabama
Speaker 1: players who had just played at Alabama. They were trying
Speaker 1: out for a USFL team. This is the league that
Speaker 1: Donald Trump was part of. Um. We were sitting there
Speaker 1: inside Legion Field and on this great January day, they
Speaker 1: and somebody came running out and said that that something happened,
Speaker 1: something happened with coach Bryant. Uh, think about this. I
Speaker 1: left the interview. I didn't say hey, guys, you know,
Speaker 1: I ran outside the stadium to a phone booth. Let
Speaker 1: me think about it. A phone booth, dialed the number
Speaker 1: of the newspaper. I said, what's the deal. He said,
Speaker 1: we think, uh, we think he's dead. Get back here immediately.
Speaker 1: I drove back about three three miles and began writing
Speaker 1: the story. Uh, and I mean it was it was
Speaker 1: that shocking, And yeah, that was shocking enough. I went
Speaker 1: to Tuscaloosen that night for a couple of days and
Speaker 1: and the listen, you've seen, you've seen and heard a
Speaker 1: million stories about the funeral procession. Um the show you
Speaker 1: had different. The newspaper business was. My job was to
Speaker 1: cover the service in Tuscaloosa at the church and the
Speaker 1: burial in at Elmwood Cemetery in in in Birmingham. Not easily,
Speaker 1: not not easy to do, Clay, considering there is a
Speaker 1: procession and I was not part of the procession. So
Speaker 1: I did what any enterprising young reporter did. I broke
Speaker 1: into the procession and rode back with police escort to
Speaker 1: Birmingham and saw everything you've seen now on all the
Speaker 1: documentaries and literally spoke to myself and an old cassette
Speaker 1: tape recorder describing the scene so I would have a
Speaker 1: history of it for the article that I would write
Speaker 1: later that that afternoon or evening describing his his his
Speaker 1: his burial. It was unlike anything I've ever seen. I mean,
Speaker 1: I I found myself as a cynical young reporter, uh
Speaker 1: literally washing away tears rolling down my very chubby cheeks
Speaker 1: at the time, because you know, the scenes were were
Speaker 1: epic of you know, little kids holding signs will miss
Speaker 1: you Bear. I mean, I remember writing this line in
Speaker 1: the article, and because it was true, I said, even
Speaker 1: the dogs looked sad. Deadline writing is an incredibly difficult
Speaker 1: thing to do. It's made even more so when it's
Speaker 1: a legitimately serious story. Right we're not talking about who
Speaker 1: wanted to Fall game? Is that some of the most
Speaker 1: proud of your writing you are. If somebody comes to
Speaker 1: you now and says, show me, Paul findbaumb the writer,
Speaker 1: what clips would you give them? Would it be included
Speaker 1: among them? Yeah? They were certainly this this day would
Speaker 1: be one of them. And and you know then the
Speaker 1: nighties of his last game in Memphis, Uh was a
Speaker 1: uh end of the game. It was like a four
Speaker 1: and a half hour game. Um. And yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I always thought that was the toughest thing I've ever
Speaker 1: done in my career. Was to right on a a
Speaker 1: late deadline, and because I I didn't realize how difficult
Speaker 1: it would be if I wrote in today's Erara with
Speaker 1: having to tweet throughout the entire game as well. But
Speaker 1: it was, it was. It's a rush that I think
Speaker 1: is similar to a rock star on stage or an actor.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's not a very sexy profession, but
Speaker 1: you did get quite an adrenaline rush when you've finally
Speaker 1: hit the send button and it was over. And nowadays
Speaker 1: it's never over, as you well know, But then it was,
Speaker 1: I mean, there wasn't much you could do once you
Speaker 1: I mean, once you sent the article in uh, you
Speaker 1: could take you can take a breathing. How did you
Speaker 1: and I don't know the answer to this, how did
Speaker 1: you even send articles in UM? Well, when I was
Speaker 1: in college, early on college, it was you literally called
Speaker 1: them in UM and read the whole read the whole story,
Speaker 1: or yeah, yeah, you kind of you just kind of
Speaker 1: made it up as you went alonger I mean, not
Speaker 1: made it up, but you just verbalized it, which is
Speaker 1: a good way of doing it. By the way, by
Speaker 1: the time I got to Shreveport, they had these things
Speaker 1: called Texas Instrument had. It was. It was a very
Speaker 1: archaic machine that worked about half the time. Then we
Speaker 1: went to what was called a tele bubble or tell
Speaker 1: a ram, which you had a little, very small screen
Speaker 1: and you would put the phone in a coupler and
Speaker 1: it took about five minutes to send in like a
Speaker 1: facts and and then we finally got their computers. But
Speaker 1: it was it was quite an ordeal, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean I saw it all. We're talking to Paul fine Bomb.
Speaker 1: You can follow him on Twitter at fine Bomb. This
Speaker 1: is the Wins and Losses Podcast. I'm Clay Travis. Was
Speaker 1: your mom proud of your career? She was. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you one story about her. I mean she I didn't.
Speaker 1: I mean she never let on too much to me.
Speaker 1: I later found out that she showed everybody on the
Speaker 1: street my articles. But in uh it was nineteen three, Uh,
Speaker 1: I won the the Herbie Kirby Award. Clay, you know,
Speaker 1: you probably don't know who Herbie Kirby was, but Herbie
Speaker 1: Kirby was a Birmingham Post gerald writer who was really
Speaker 1: kind of way down on the totem pole. And you're
Speaker 1: probably asking why am I telling the story? But like
Speaker 1: the sports editor was in the hospital. The next guy
Speaker 1: was out sick. He ended up having to cover like
Speaker 1: one of the most amazing important games in Alabama history,
Speaker 1: Alabama Notre Dame seventy three one verses two in the
Speaker 1: Sugar Bowl. And he's as he as he was sending
Speaker 1: in his heart article speaking of pressure, he had a
Speaker 1: heart attack and died, Oh my god, in the press boxing,
Speaker 1: in the press box at the at the Tulane Stadium.
Speaker 1: And so they named this award after him. And I
Speaker 1: tell you that because I was reminded of it, that
Speaker 1: there is a lot of pressure and and this this
Speaker 1: poor guy, um, he was like the bowling editor. He
Speaker 1: was not the normal guy, but he ended up having
Speaker 1: to be the guy and it's it can be dangerous.
Speaker 1: So he filed his article and died in the press
Speaker 1: box like that was literally the final thing that he
Speaker 1: ever did. I mean, I think he got it in.
Speaker 1: And I mean, and I know this, nobody was joking
Speaker 1: about it, but I knew the guy that was on
Speaker 1: the desk at the time, and I said, I said,
Speaker 1: you realize you might have killed this guy? I mean
Speaker 1: because because I mean, they needed the story. It was
Speaker 1: an epic game. I mean, just uh, I mean, Tom
Speaker 1: Clemens from Notre Dame hit a long third down in
Speaker 1: his own end zone, and it's it's a game that
Speaker 1: Alabama's hands. By the way, this is a game. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventy three Alabama was still awarded the UPI
Speaker 1: National Championship even though they lost to Notre Dame, and
Speaker 1: they still claim it, by the way, along with eight
Speaker 1: and four season, I think where they got a national
Speaker 1: title out of it. So ten years later, I'm on
Speaker 1: the phone with my mom. I had just gotten back
Speaker 1: from this Sportswriter's convention and I had won the Herbie
Speaker 1: Kirby Award Top Sports Story of the Year. And I
Speaker 1: called my mom. Remember she's from Brooklyn, and I said,
Speaker 1: I mean, I am so excited. I mean, I'm I've
Speaker 1: you know, this career, the idea that not that many years,
Speaker 1: you know, for four years after sreport, I'm winning the
Speaker 1: top award and uh, she said, well that's great. I said, well,
Speaker 1: she said, what was it for again? This is right
Speaker 1: before I had won the national awards. I said, I
Speaker 1: said sports story of the Year in Alabama, and I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm screaming at her. Uh And she said sports story
Speaker 1: of the Year in Alabama, So I didn't know people
Speaker 1: in Alabama could read. I'm like, oh my good, are
Speaker 1: you talking about being deflated? But that's my mom was
Speaker 1: Vince Lombardi, uh, Nick Saban, Bill Belichick all wrapped into one.
Speaker 1: I mean, she she knew how to keep me honest
Speaker 1: and hey, I said, okay, I'll call you. Uh this
Speaker 1: was this was the year before I take it back.
Speaker 1: I said, okay, I hung up the phone, so I'll
Speaker 1: call you next So next year I called her. I said,
Speaker 1: by the way, I won, I won first place in
Speaker 1: the country. She said, Now I'm impressed. And so, I
Speaker 1: mean she was a motivator. Um, but yeah, she was
Speaker 1: really proud. I mean she didn't Uh she saw a
Speaker 1: little bit of the radio uh career, but not much.
Speaker 1: I don't know what she would I think today, if
Speaker 1: she was still alive, she would be sitting next to
Speaker 1: me like Lebertard's father, and the show would be immensely
Speaker 1: more popular. I mean, because she she she literally could
Speaker 1: have had her own sitcom. She just came too early.
Speaker 1: Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in
Speaker 1: the nation. Catch all of our shows at Fox sports
Speaker 1: radio dot com and within the I Heart Radio app.
Speaker 1: Search f s R to listen live. We're talking to
Speaker 1: Paul fine Bomb at five Bomb on Twitter as the
Speaker 1: Wins and Losses podcast. I'm Clay Travis. Now. Uh, you
Speaker 1: mentioned radio. So you have all this success in the
Speaker 1: writing business, but you feel like you are just stuck
Speaker 1: in Birmingham. The lawsuit happens, your goal of getting to
Speaker 1: the New York Times by the age of thirty is disappearing.
Speaker 1: Uh when do you start going on the radio? Do
Speaker 1: you remember the first time you went on? Yeah? I started.
Speaker 1: Uh My first show was in the early eighties. Ey
Speaker 1: Gold uh, the legendary announcer for Alabama, he used to
Speaker 1: go He used to go Daytona every Tuesday to do
Speaker 1: a NASCAR show. So he asked me if I could
Speaker 1: fill in for him on Tuesday. I did that in
Speaker 1: the show became popular. Um, and it just so happened
Speaker 1: that was the year after Bryant. Uh So it led
Speaker 1: into the Or two years after that, it led into
Speaker 1: the Coaches Show for Ray Perkins, who was the Alabama successor.
Speaker 1: And it just so it happened that in perkins second
Speaker 1: year at Alabama, they had the first losing season in
Speaker 1: twenty five years. And uh, people wanted him out, and
Speaker 1: he got pretty sick of all the negativity leading into
Speaker 1: him on his number one Birmingham affiliate. So he got
Speaker 1: me fired. So got you fired. So let me ask
Speaker 1: you this for radio, because I get this question a lot.
Speaker 1: I got into radio, started with writing, went into radio,
Speaker 1: then went into TV. How did you find doing radio
Speaker 1: compared to writing? Because you get that question a lot,
Speaker 1: and there's not a lot of people who do all three.
Speaker 1: And I'll get to television later, But how did you
Speaker 1: find radio? Did you find it easier, more challenging, difficult? What?
Speaker 1: How did you find their different disciplines and what works
Speaker 1: in one may not necessarily work in the there. I
Speaker 1: struggled early on because I would come in, I would
Speaker 1: try to write things out. I remember you, I saw
Speaker 1: me one day, so what are you doing? He should
Speaker 1: just talk and and and it took a long time,
Speaker 1: but but I liked it. I like to give and
Speaker 1: take in clay, Uh, I was so confrontational back then
Speaker 1: with everyone. I mean I would yell at the callers,
Speaker 1: I would yell at the guests. Um. It took me
Speaker 1: a long time to to slow down my my radio game.
Speaker 1: But I did love it though, and and and and
Speaker 1: so I lost. Yeah, I lost the job, and the
Speaker 1: next day the Auburn station hired me. You know, but
Speaker 1: the radio career took I wasn't doing a talk show
Speaker 1: for a long time. I was doing I was on
Speaker 1: with some morning guys UH doing doing FM commentary, and ultimately,
Speaker 1: in the late eighties, UH, I started doing a Saturday
Speaker 1: show UH with one of the legendary voices in town.
Speaker 1: And and that moved into a nighttime show, which still
Speaker 1: took a long time too. I was still on a
Speaker 1: fairly off off the off brand station, so it took
Speaker 1: three or four years. But I got what I What
Speaker 1: I got was a lot of experience, and I began
Speaker 1: meeting a lot of people and and but but I
Speaker 1: found myself at a crossroads in the nineties because you know,
Speaker 1: the newspaper wanted to send me to cover some event
Speaker 1: and I couldn't leave the radio show. So I I
Speaker 1: I made the decision. Uh. And by the way it looks,
Speaker 1: some people say, man, you were smart to get out it.
Speaker 1: It wasn't tough to figure out the newspaper business was
Speaker 1: was heading towards the abyss um. I I stayed with
Speaker 1: it for a while, but radio became my main concentration.
Speaker 1: So when did you start to think I might be
Speaker 1: good at radio? Was there a moment where you went
Speaker 1: back and you had a show, you finished it, you
Speaker 1: walk out of the studio and you're like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I think that was pretty good? Or do you think
Speaker 1: it was just a gradual thing where you, you know,
Speaker 1: kept getting a little bit better, a little bit better.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure if you went back and listened
Speaker 1: to some of those shows you did in the early eighties,
Speaker 1: you'd be like, God, those were awful shows. Maybe you
Speaker 1: listen to him and think, my god, they're incredible. But
Speaker 1: at what point did you start thinking, hey, I got
Speaker 1: some talent here. It probably took a long time, um,
Speaker 1: because I I cannot listen to myself. I know that
Speaker 1: sounds like a lot of artists, but uh, I mean, slowly,
Speaker 1: but surely, I just got I became more comfortable with it,
Speaker 1: um and I started having fun with it, which I which,
Speaker 1: which took a while. So, I mean, I wasn't sure
Speaker 1: where I was going, but I was. I spent I
Speaker 1: spent about ten twelve years on a news talk station
Speaker 1: in Birmingham. We followed Rush Limbough every day, and I
Speaker 1: probably had more fun talking about politics than I did
Speaker 1: about sports. So it was a little bit of everything.
Speaker 1: So I began. I did get to meet a lot
Speaker 1: of people outside of the sports world. Um so, I bet.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, I mean the answer to your question
Speaker 1: is it took a long time before I felt comfortable.
Speaker 1: And since we were in a sports show per se,
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I didn't. Uh I was. I was still
Speaker 1: somewhat lost because I mean, you know, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: the stations back then you would talk about everything. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't just talk about sports. So you go to jocks.
Speaker 1: Is that the point for who who aren't who aren't
Speaker 1: familiar with Alabama Radio Jocks is five in Birmingham. It's got,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know, a hundred thousand watt station.
Speaker 1: It just kind of broadcasted out everywhere. When did you
Speaker 1: go to Jocks? What was the first year there? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I I had talked to them every time my contract
Speaker 1: could come up. We had talked, and it just it
Speaker 1: was it was hard to make it work. And then finally,
Speaker 1: um I I began to realize that it was time
Speaker 1: to make a change. I was at this news talk station,
Speaker 1: as I said, and ratings were great, then they were terrible.
Speaker 1: They were all over the map. But we were competing
Speaker 1: with the sports station. So the sports station came to me. Uh,
Speaker 1: Ryan Haney, Uh, someone you know well called me and
Speaker 1: said listen, we want to talk. And I had this
Speaker 1: weird cause in the contract that I could start talking
Speaker 1: ninety days out or whatever it was. So they we
Speaker 1: had lunch at just just absolutely dreadful Chinese restaurants, and
Speaker 1: they told me that they were about to make make
Speaker 1: a move to f M. Now think about this, Clay.
Speaker 1: This was nineteen excuse me, two thousand and six. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not that long ago. That's how long AM radio
Speaker 1: had been really really popular in in Birmingham. And you know, look,
Speaker 1: Birmingham is basically the capital of college sports in America.
Speaker 1: You go look at the ratings. People are obsessed with
Speaker 1: college sports, all right. So this is two thousand six.
Speaker 1: This was November December two thousand and six. Uh. They
Speaker 1: they were they were about to make a change. They
Speaker 1: had a legendary guy doing the afternoon show. He happened
Speaker 1: to be a friend of mine. It was it was
Speaker 1: really awkward. Um, you're always facing that situation. I said
Speaker 1: to what's gonna happen with him. They said, we're gonna
Speaker 1: put him on the the second channel. Yeah, I said
Speaker 1: this was gonna I think, by the way, that's the
Speaker 1: station that my morning show is on. I think we're
Speaker 1: on the Jock's Am in the morning. I'll kick the coverage,
Speaker 1: I think. So anyway, I uh, I still wasn't sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, all yeah, I had a team together. We
Speaker 1: had just moved in. We were we were working for
Speaker 1: Clear Channel. They had put us into just incredible studio
Speaker 1: that overlooked downtown Birmingham from a mountain. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was all the people. Uh So I kind of I
Speaker 1: was really not sure what I wanted to do. And
Speaker 1: so one day, um, this guy came in and they
Speaker 1: called him in around right right right before Christmas, and
Speaker 1: they said, we're gonna move you to the Beach Channel
Speaker 1: whatever was called. He blew up. He yelled that heiney,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll spare the language and quip and he
Speaker 1: went to the newspaper and said, I'm not I'm I'm
Speaker 1: not a j V guy. I'm a And so then
Speaker 1: I knew I had to go. I mean that at
Speaker 1: that point, uh, it was it was going to be
Speaker 1: uh so I started gravitating towards it. I still couldn't
Speaker 1: sign a deal yet. Um and Clear Channel, Uh, Clear
Speaker 1: Channel was trying to too high to sign these guys
Speaker 1: named Rick and Bubba, and I knew they weren't going
Speaker 1: there because I was friends with them too. And all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, about a week later, they lost Rick
Speaker 1: and Bubba. So suddenly they had money to try to
Speaker 1: retain me. So they came to me and so I
Speaker 1: but I I had already decided I was leaving. And
Speaker 1: by the and the the offer was terrible, uh Clay,
Speaker 1: I mean the the GM was who was a close
Speaker 1: friend of mine. Now he was longer there, but uh,
Speaker 1: it was a terrible offer. And I had I had
Speaker 1: Pat Smith with me. I don't know if you remember
Speaker 1: the past. Patt had started the network. And I said, listen, Pat,
Speaker 1: that's the guy running this network. I mean they gave
Speaker 1: they gave me a blanket number. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: what is They said to the guy to look at me,
Speaker 1: So listen, I don't care if you give him the
Speaker 1: entire salary. This is what we're offering you. And uh,
Speaker 1: I asked, we had like four guys, four other guys
Speaker 1: that I worked with, and I sent each one of
Speaker 1: them an email. I said, I want to keep this private.
Speaker 1: I want you all to tell me what you want
Speaker 1: to do. Go or stay. All four voted to stay
Speaker 1: at the station we were at. I decided to leave,
Speaker 1: and they were furious with me. But I knew even
Speaker 1: though I was making, by the way, not less money,
Speaker 1: significantly less money, I knew it was the right decision. Now,
Speaker 1: what I failed to tell you was it two weeks
Speaker 1: before they went to FM and one other thing, the
Speaker 1: Nick Saban arrived and I knew, I knew. I knew
Speaker 1: I had to be on sports station and Clay, I
Speaker 1: don't need to tell you that. I think within uh,
Speaker 1: within it. Within a year, the station's men demos headquadrupled.
Speaker 1: And so I want to go to this this moment
Speaker 1: here because the podcast is called Wins and Losses, and
Speaker 1: I feel like so many people chase the money, right,
Speaker 1: they make the decision wherever the most money is. I'm
Speaker 1: going to go there here. You are not a young guy, right,
Speaker 1: You've been in your career for a long time at
Speaker 1: this point, and you chose because you thought the opportunity
Speaker 1: was offered better. Jocks down in Birmingham and Nick Saban
Speaker 1: is arriving. And by the way, before we get to that,
Speaker 1: do you accept credit for rich Rod not taking the
Speaker 1: Alabama job? Because people forget that the expectation was rich
Speaker 1: Rod was going to take the job. But that your
Speaker 1: callers and what you had said on the air upset.
Speaker 1: What's the story there for how rich Rod didn't leave
Speaker 1: West Virginia As our mutual friend Lance Taylor takes some
Speaker 1: of the credit. Um, what happened was I think we
Speaker 1: had more to do with it. Um. A bunch of
Speaker 1: callers car started calling in our show when it when
Speaker 1: I mean rich Rod was going to Alabama, I mean
Speaker 1: he had, he had agreed to the deal, and the
Speaker 1: Birmingham News broke the story, and and and the night
Speaker 1: before as it was being speculated, a couple of people
Speaker 1: started calling in. I think, Uh, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: at the time you couldn't stream our show. I mean,
Speaker 1: it wasn't that long ago. Uh, and started just trashing
Speaker 1: Rita Rodriguez. Yeah, I mean, with with everything imaginable, what
Speaker 1: she looks like, trailer park, you got you know, you
Speaker 1: name it. And there's no question I heard from pretty
Speaker 1: pretty reliable and I've got to know Rich and I've
Speaker 1: never asked him what I will. The word was his
Speaker 1: wife heard about it and said, we're not going there. Um.
Speaker 1: When the story broke that he had turned the job down,
Speaker 1: he broke about two two thirty in the afternoon on
Speaker 1: our show, I had a stream of callers called up
Speaker 1: and blamed me for costing him, uh costing Alabama. Rich Rodriguez,
Speaker 1: a talk show host in Mobile, literally came out and said,
Speaker 1: it is Paul Finebaum's fault. He has destroyed this program.
Speaker 1: Now that's what That's where all that came from. And
Speaker 1: at the time I was a little bit upset about it.
Speaker 1: And now I mean, I listen, I think for the
Speaker 1: university owes me a statute. So that's the story on
Speaker 1: rich Ron. So. Uh So this is kind of fascinating
Speaker 1: in and of itself. Um So you go to ninety
Speaker 1: four five jocks in Birmingham right as Nick Saban is
Speaker 1: arriving at Alabama two weeks later, Did you know Nick
Speaker 1: Saban at all? Yes, that's what's so interesting. A good
Speaker 1: friend of mine, uh had been who has met as
Speaker 1: a graduate assistant at Alabama, later became Saban's administrator of
Speaker 1: assistant at L s U and he kept telling me
Speaker 1: about Saban and there was a controversy of no consequence that, Uh,
Speaker 1: everyone in Alabama hated Saban because he got into a
Speaker 1: t to tay with Alabama coach at the time, Dennis
Speaker 1: Friend showny. My friend told me about it. I think
Speaker 1: Saban even talked to me off the air and then
Speaker 1: came on our show on the year I took up
Speaker 1: and Clay, you've done this before. You know what, you
Speaker 1: know how important it is you take up for someone
Speaker 1: when everyone else is after him. And I took up
Speaker 1: for Saban. He never forgot it. And the day that
Speaker 1: he was introduced to Alabama, he agreed to do one
Speaker 1: exclusive interview and it was with us on on My
Speaker 1: on My show that afternoon, and that that bonded us
Speaker 1: and we we became fairly close after that was Saban.
Speaker 1: Saban is one of these people. Uh. And we could
Speaker 1: do a whole another podcast on him another date where
Speaker 1: if he if he trust you, you're good. He doesn't.
Speaker 1: He doesn't really care, he doesn't want it. He doesn't
Speaker 1: trust more than a handful of people at one time. Uh.
Speaker 1: He's like Noah's ark In. In the first year that
Speaker 1: he was in Birmingham. In Tuscaloosa, he chose two newspapers,
Speaker 1: two newspaper radio guys that were going to be his friends.
Speaker 1: Who was myself and Cecil heard the rest of them
Speaker 1: he had no use for. Is it still the same way? No,
Speaker 1: because I mean, listen, Saban, Uh, you know, by by
Speaker 1: leaving there, I don't see him as much. Um and
Speaker 1: I have certainly had critical comments about him over the years,
Speaker 1: and I know he hasn't liked them. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: think I think there's mutual respect. But the fact that um,
Speaker 1: I've left town and and don't see him very much,
Speaker 1: I think probably has you know, it puts a little
Speaker 1: more distance between people. So for people who out there,
Speaker 1: because it's it's amazing how quickly you can go from
Speaker 1: a program that is in the absolute depths of despair.
Speaker 1: Because I think people forget about Alabama now because they're
Speaker 1: so good. But Mike Schula had lost six straight years
Speaker 1: to Auburn. Right when Nick Saban took over, there was
Speaker 1: the question of will Alabama ever be anywhere near what
Speaker 1: they were with Bear Bryant. Right, there was that desperate hope.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can contextualize the program status better than
Speaker 1: I can, but I feel like people have short memories.
Speaker 1: I mean, they were worse than Tennessee has been at
Speaker 1: the dregs of Tennessee's ability, right, Like, that's kind of
Speaker 1: where the Alabama program listen when, uh, when Saban originally
Speaker 1: came out in late December in Miami in this famous
Speaker 1: moment when someone said, are are you going to be
Speaker 1: the Alabama coach? And and Saban said, if you're asking
Speaker 1: me to say I'm not going to be the Alabama coach,
Speaker 1: I'm saying i Am not going to be the Alabama coach.
Speaker 1: That moment was one of the darkest days in Alabama
Speaker 1: history because at that at that point, remember Rich Rodriguez
Speaker 1: had already said no, Spurrier had been offered the job
Speaker 1: and said no, and now Saban has said I'm not
Speaker 1: going there. I mean, there was no one left. I
Speaker 1: think Bobby Petrino was the next coach on the list,
Speaker 1: and it just seemed like always lost. And then three
Speaker 1: weeks later, uh, Saban was there and and and it
Speaker 1: all seemed right with the world. But yeah, no, I mean,
Speaker 1: the Alabama program was a was a total dumpster fire.
Speaker 1: If Nick Saban never comes to Alabama, your career year
Speaker 1: is where right now? I'm in Birmingham right now, maybe employed,
Speaker 1: maybe not, because uh, he did you know? It was
Speaker 1: the confluence of going to that station at that moment
Speaker 1: in time, and without him there, I'm not sure I
Speaker 1: would Without saving I listen, I think I probably would
Speaker 1: have still gone to Jocks, And I'd say it's likely
Speaker 1: I would still be at Jocks, but it would be
Speaker 1: a different story than it is today for people out
Speaker 1: there listening on on this podcast who maybe aren't familiar
Speaker 1: with radio. You're being humble, but how big were the
Speaker 1: ratings for you guys at Jocks? Me, Joses, And let
Speaker 1: me give pre credit to Ryan Haney too, one of
Speaker 1: the best program directors for a radio station that I've
Speaker 1: ever heard of. And I'll give you a story. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you know this story. The first time
Speaker 1: that Lance Taylor had had me on who was doing
Speaker 1: the mid days before your show was when Mike Shulo
Speaker 1: stepped down and I wrote a column at CBS Sports
Speaker 1: at the time with the best potential replacements for uh
Speaker 1: for Mike Sula, and one of it was like ten
Speaker 1: kind of a joking suggestions, right. One of my ten
Speaker 1: was the reanimated corpse of Bear Brown. Remember that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right? And he like the phone lines just I
Speaker 1: mean exploded. If you ask a Lance about this right now,
Speaker 1: Me coming on in Birmingham and suggesting the reanimating corps
Speaker 1: of Bear Bryant as the replacement for Mike Sula just
Speaker 1: set tongues wagging like crazy. And I remember I met
Speaker 1: Ryan Haney shortly and Lance was like, Lance loved it.
Speaker 1: So I've been going on jocks for you know, weekly
Speaker 1: with Lance for over a decade now, um, but Lance
Speaker 1: loved it. But he was like, man, you should have
Speaker 1: heard the calls. And I feel like, and you'll know this,
Speaker 1: in our business, there are two different kinds of managers.
Speaker 1: There is the manager who the minute they get a complaint,
Speaker 1: he curls up in the fetal position and it's like,
Speaker 1: calls you in and just read you the Riot Act
Speaker 1: and he's like, nobody's gonna listen if you say X,
Speaker 1: Y or Z. Right. Ryan Haney is the exact opposite,
Speaker 1: and he's as aggressive as anybody I've ever heard. He said, man,
Speaker 1: if we're not getting a ton of compliments, I mean
Speaker 1: a ton of complaints every day, it means we're doing
Speaker 1: radio the wrong way right. And you can speak to
Speaker 1: this better than I can. But he gave you a
Speaker 1: runway and let you run wild with that show. No, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And and you know what's interesting. Uh, when I went
Speaker 1: to Jocks Clay, even though I just turned fifty, I think, um,
Speaker 1: I've been in Birmingham forty almost thirty years. A lot
Speaker 1: of people didn't know me because, uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: newspaper business had already collapsed. Uh, young young people were
Speaker 1: not listening to me following Rush Limbaugh on a news
Speaker 1: talk So I was introduced to well and and he
Speaker 1: he uh you know, he took a gamble because he
Speaker 1: didn't have that he didn't have to have me. Um.
Speaker 1: And I took a gamble by taking significantly less money
Speaker 1: that it would work out. And and I mean the
Speaker 1: place was a dump. Okay. I walked in there with
Speaker 1: my team, and I mean they were like, how did
Speaker 1: you and how did you? Uh? A guy came I
Speaker 1: think it was trying to remember it was a New
Speaker 1: Yorker writer. Uh. He described the building we were in
Speaker 1: as a as a as a Russian prison camp or something.
Speaker 1: I mean it was by the way, that's where a
Speaker 1: lot of radio stations are, right. I mean, there's not
Speaker 1: you said you had a great view in the in
Speaker 1: the you know, the studio that you left. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of people who do radio out of basically Russian bunkers,
Speaker 1: but it was it was you were one of the
Speaker 1: few people that that understand my next statement, it was
Speaker 1: the single best decision in my entire career to go
Speaker 1: to jocks for less money, uh, for less, for inferior
Speaker 1: working conditions, uh, the wrath of my my closest friends
Speaker 1: and team, But it was the right call because without
Speaker 1: that I could have never uh gotten to where I
Speaker 1: am now. And and sometimes you just have to you know,
Speaker 1: you have to take a chance and potentially be willing
Speaker 1: to go backwards in order to go forwards, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like anything else. So the show takes off, becomes
Speaker 1: wildly popular. Uh, Nick saban Is is driving you know,
Speaker 1: the Alabama Dynasty to different levels. Um. And a guy
Speaker 1: named Harvey Updke calls your show and talks about the
Speaker 1: fact that he had toys in the yoaks at Tumors,
Speaker 1: which is I think, I mean, more than anything else,
Speaker 1: put your local radio show into the stratosphere. Well, you
Speaker 1: mentioned the ratings and and and for for a guy
Speaker 1: that used to be at the news talk, I mean
Speaker 1: you kind of dreaded the four days a year when
Speaker 1: you got the ratings. I mean, now it was just
Speaker 1: it was it was It was ridiculous. It was like
Speaker 1: going to Vegas and just saying and having the pit
Speaker 1: boss nod saying that you're letting you know you're about
Speaker 1: to win a million dollars UM. So the ratings started
Speaker 1: going crazy, the show started getting attention. And one thing
Speaker 1: before that, I want to say, after Alabama won the
Speaker 1: national championship, while on the way back from from Pasadena
Speaker 1: and in early two thousand and ten, Pat Smith called
Speaker 1: me and said, I just got a crazy call from
Speaker 1: Sirius XM and they want to put our show in
Speaker 1: the afternoons on their college sports channel, which we went on. UH,
Speaker 1: and I thought they were insane. So a couple of
Speaker 1: months later, it's now January of two thousand and eleven,
Speaker 1: and Cam Newton had just led Auburn to a national championship. UH,
Speaker 1: in part because of the most creative lawyer ing in
Speaker 1: the history of the medium, our very close and dear
Speaker 1: and late friend Mike's live UH and UH. The last
Speaker 1: thirty minutes of the show, I'm like all hosts at
Speaker 1: the last year, just kind of get me out of here.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's January, and a guy named Alfam Daville
Speaker 1: calls up and starts rambling about something of no consequence
Speaker 1: that happened thirty years later. Then finally at the end
Speaker 1: he admits to poisoning the tumors trees and we hang
Speaker 1: up play and I didn't give it much thought. Two
Speaker 1: weeks later, I got a call from a friend who
Speaker 1: was uh uh the staff person for Richard Shelby, the
Speaker 1: Alabama senior senator on the Homeland Security UH Subcommittee, and
Speaker 1: he said, uh, this, this deal is being investigated for
Speaker 1: a as a terrorist threat. And the next day they
Speaker 1: arrested Harvey ub Duck and and from there it's just
Speaker 1: an absolute craziness. Now, I want to go into here
Speaker 1: from a perspective of a show. What I admired listening
Speaker 1: to your show, and I'd go back and forth from
Speaker 1: Birmingham quite a bit, is the high low dichotomy. And
Speaker 1: I'm curious how much of this was conscious on your part.
Speaker 1: People who are listening to this podcast are probably going
Speaker 1: to think Paul fis Paul five Bomb is a pretty
Speaker 1: smart guy. And certainly if you conduct interviews on your show,
Speaker 1: they are very high level interviews, and you've conducted interviews
Speaker 1: with like you said, you're interested in politics like culture.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can talk to pretty much anybody right
Speaker 1: on your on your radio program. But you would mix
Speaker 1: that with some of the most outrageous and outlandish callers
Speaker 1: that you have ever heard, and so it was a
Speaker 1: carnival of excess, both high end and low end. Was
Speaker 1: that a natural decision or did it happen organically? How
Speaker 1: did you go about creating the dynamic that exists and
Speaker 1: still exists in your show. I think it just happened. Listen.
Speaker 1: I love the highbrower interview. Um, and I've had I've
Speaker 1: had Mike Slive's wife once tried to talk me. She said,
Speaker 1: you probably you're wasting your time doing what you're doing.
Speaker 1: You need to know go to work for NPR. Yes,
Speaker 1: And I said to her, I said, listen, Liz uh,
Speaker 1: I really would rather not starve. I enjoy you and
Speaker 1: and and I think there's I think it's I think
Speaker 1: this could be said about you as well, not to
Speaker 1: psychoanalyze you for a podcast that on the subject, But
Speaker 1: I love those highbrower interviews, but when when it when
Speaker 1: it comes down to pure entertainment, my curiosity level goes
Speaker 1: to the lowest common denominators and I want the drama.
Speaker 1: And and I don't think I did it consciously, It's
Speaker 1: just started to happen. Um, and the when I'm talking
Speaker 1: to one of these type of callers, uh, that you
Speaker 1: have talked to and uh you you and and uh
Speaker 1: and Chris Vernon used to just destroy on our show.
Speaker 1: We would have a lot of fun. Just I would
Speaker 1: take calls, you know from Alabama fans who are furious
Speaker 1: with me. I just there's not another thing in the
Speaker 1: world that matters to me other than pushing that person
Speaker 1: lower um and getting the most insane call out of it.
Speaker 1: Because it's entertainment and it's listen, Howard Stern. What makes
Speaker 1: thirty two million dollars a year appealing to that level?
Speaker 1: And I don't I don't think I could do it
Speaker 1: every day, But I think the mix of it. Someone
Speaker 1: once wrote or described the show as a three ring
Speaker 1: circus that you have the middle ring and then you
Speaker 1: have the two extremes. And they're really smart people know
Speaker 1: what's going on at all times on all three rings,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people only lock into that singular
Speaker 1: ring that that appeals to their level. No, I think
Speaker 1: that's all said. And that's what I always say about
Speaker 1: high low drama. The people who like and this is
Speaker 1: where I think Stern was brilliant. The people who like
Speaker 1: high end intellectual discourse on radio interviews are often the
Speaker 1: same people who like, uh the Jared Springer elements too.
Speaker 1: And the Internet certainly has has brought this home to
Speaker 1: bear very much so where really high caliber, high end
Speaker 1: intellectual entertainment does well, but so does the exact opposite.
Speaker 1: And uh, and you mentioned I want to get to
Speaker 1: to this certainly, you mentioned Mike Slide just threw a
Speaker 1: quote from his wife there. When did Slive start listening
Speaker 1: to the show? When did you start interacting with Mike Slive?
Speaker 1: What was your relationship? And for people out there who
Speaker 1: don't know, Mike's live was the SEC commissioner who basically
Speaker 1: took the SEC into a national brand. Um and obviously
Speaker 1: the SEC is based out of Birmingham. Uh So you
Speaker 1: guys were not very far apart from a geographic perspective
Speaker 1: as this show is going. I met him for the
Speaker 1: first time. I chased him down in the U A
Speaker 1: B basketball game, uh, yelling at him why why the
Speaker 1: league had not taken U A B into Conference USA?
Speaker 1: And he the next time I think I saw him
Speaker 1: a correction, That's not true, because he was he was
Speaker 1: he was at he was at a U A B
Speaker 1: game as a Conference us A commissioner. I was. I
Speaker 1: was chasing him down, asking him why uh, something about
Speaker 1: Alabama's probation Clay I stand corrected. He was the chairman
Speaker 1: of the Appeals Committee. And he brushed me off, like
Speaker 1: like I was a bum on the street. Um, and
Speaker 1: this would have been at something uh and and then
Speaker 1: I think I was critical of him about something else
Speaker 1: involving a Conference USA, and and uh and and you
Speaker 1: a B but when you know? And then then there
Speaker 1: was a break, and then he came back his first
Speaker 1: press conferences commissioner. He said every every school would be
Speaker 1: off probation in five years. And I spent the entire
Speaker 1: afternoon cascadading him, saying that this guy is so clueless,
Speaker 1: doesn't know what he's talking about. He heard about it,
Speaker 1: and instead of saying, you know what, I'll never talk
Speaker 1: to that guy again, he decided to come down and
Speaker 1: do the show. Um. About a month or two later,
Speaker 1: we found ourselves in a press box and Sayettville, Arkansas,
Speaker 1: and he asked me. I'd gone with one of the
Speaker 1: team doctors and he said, uh, are you are you
Speaker 1: going right back? Or what? I said? Well, there was
Speaker 1: something long we we had to go somewhere, he said
Speaker 1: to me, Um, he said, well, why don't you fly
Speaker 1: back with Liz and I. So I flew back with
Speaker 1: Liz and we spent the entire she was learning Hebrew
Speaker 1: at the time, or it is, or I can't remember
Speaker 1: what she was, and we spent the entire time talking
Speaker 1: about Judaism. We had lunch about a week or two later.
Speaker 1: I brought him a book and you know the rest. Uh.
Speaker 1: We we started this book club, which he was. He
Speaker 1: loved talking about that and we would just have these
Speaker 1: intellectual lunches every four the six weeks. And I was
Speaker 1: with him the day I had lunch with him the
Speaker 1: day he was going over to Atlanta to meet with
Speaker 1: John Skipper to UH agree on launching the SEC network.
Speaker 1: I was with him many other momentous moments uh and
Speaker 1: we had and these lunches were fantastic until we started
Speaker 1: talking about my own career at one of these at
Speaker 1: the lunches, and then most of the fun was over
Speaker 1: because it was much more fun talking about books and
Speaker 1: than whether or not I would go to work for ESPN.
Speaker 1: I know, I just jumped about eight eight blocks ahead there.
Speaker 1: But he's he was sixteen years older than me. He
Speaker 1: was the older brother I never had UM. And by
Speaker 1: the time he died a little over a year ago,
Speaker 1: I mean, he was clearly one of the closest friends
Speaker 1: UH in my life, and the being asked and delivering
Speaker 1: the eulogy at his general remains the singular UH honor
Speaker 1: of my career and the thing I'm most proud of.
Speaker 1: He is he was an incredible guy and UH, I
Speaker 1: will say this, the high low humor was not lost
Speaker 1: on him because I remember I did a big profile
Speaker 1: piece on him and UH, and before we started the
Speaker 1: profile piece, he wanted to talk about me taking calls
Speaker 1: from your callers and say how much he loved it, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, how much he absolutely loved me going after
Speaker 1: the callers and UH and arguing with them and you know,
Speaker 1: kind of getting in the mud, so to speak. And
Speaker 1: he was like, oh, it's you know, fantastic stuff. And um,
Speaker 1: and I think and I don't think I'm doing any
Speaker 1: exaggeration here. He was so instrumental in the way that
Speaker 1: the SEC network exists in sounds now because the conservative
Speaker 1: and we're talking about Ryan Haney and the risks that
Speaker 1: programmers can take. The conservative gesture would have been to
Speaker 1: do a little bit like what the Big ten network
Speaker 1: has done, right, anything remotely controversial, let's run away from it.
Speaker 1: You're on that network for four hours every day, and
Speaker 1: I don't know what you know, what the numbers would be,
Speaker 1: but every single day a lot of coaches and administrations
Speaker 1: and schools come in for for for getting censured by callers, right,
Speaker 1: and sometimes negative things that are being said, maybe even
Speaker 1: frequently negative things that are being said. Yet it's also
Speaker 1: a as a result, a somewhat accurate reflection of a
Speaker 1: fan base or fan basis on a day to day basis,
Speaker 1: which we had not seen and frankly still haven't seen
Speaker 1: from the Big ten network. So this was a pretty
Speaker 1: radical jump for him to want to put you on
Speaker 1: the SEC network. No, and and and listen, Uh, I
Speaker 1: don't want to go too many steps back, but but
Speaker 1: the road here was pretty fascinating. Uh, Clay because um
Speaker 1: I you've probably heard the story before. But towards the
Speaker 1: end of the towards the middle of two thousand and twelve,
Speaker 1: I was I was not unhappy with with Jocks per se.
Speaker 1: I love jocks. It was the it was the it
Speaker 1: was a parent company that I was distraught with him.
Speaker 1: I had joined the club. Yeah, well, uh, Clay and
Speaker 1: I were pretty much introduced, having many conversations about so anyway,
Speaker 1: I had had legal issues with them. You had you
Speaker 1: had legal issues with them, and so I began looking
Speaker 1: around for a someplace to go. I mean, I just
Speaker 1: did not want to stay there any longer. The company
Speaker 1: was the parent company was in bankruptcy, was just too
Speaker 1: So one of these lunches with Mike Slive, Uh, we
Speaker 1: had now been on serious X them for two years.
Speaker 1: They wanted to hire me, I said, Mike, I said, listen,
Speaker 1: I'm talking to various people. Had I had a really
Speaker 1: good lawyer in town that represented me, that represents a
Speaker 1: lot of our mutual friends. But I felt like I
Speaker 1: needed an entertainment agent. So he recommended somebody and he said,
Speaker 1: let me let me set it up. I said, I'm sure. Um,
Speaker 1: So he set up this meeting with I would say
Speaker 1: at the time Clay, he was the number one guy
Speaker 1: in the business. Uh in New York. Took six weeks
Speaker 1: to set the meeting up. Not only was he there,
Speaker 1: but the head of the company was there. I thought
Speaker 1: my career was had been made um that this was it.
Speaker 1: I mean, you get a meeting with a guy like that.
Speaker 1: The guys like this don't take meetings with with SMOs
Speaker 1: like me. I walk in, Uh, he said, in a
Speaker 1: very brusque New York fashion. I'm over. We're over on
Speaker 1: the floor, We're looking Central Park. He goes, what can
Speaker 1: I do for you? I'm like, going, whoa this is?
Speaker 1: This isn't going very well. I said, Uh, don't worry this.
Speaker 1: This is not a long conversations, so you don't worry
Speaker 1: about wearing at a tape on this one. I said,
Speaker 1: I've been in contact with Sirius XM. And before I
Speaker 1: could even finish, he said, they're not going to hire you.
Speaker 1: I go, okay, I said, well, I'm um. By the way,
Speaker 1: I've been on serious X time out for two years.
Speaker 1: He said, I said, well, he said, listen, I'm oh,
Speaker 1: all those guys. Uh, you know, someone shows one of
Speaker 1: my closest friends. They're not gonna hire you. You're a
Speaker 1: regional guy. I go, well, I mean, Clay, I didn't
Speaker 1: for a guy who talks for a living. I didn't
Speaker 1: know what to say. We're now at maybe the two
Speaker 1: and a half minute market this meeting, so I'm I said, well, listen,
Speaker 1: uh anything else. I'm like what I said, Well, I
Speaker 1: had given some thought to maybe working for ESPN at something.
Speaker 1: He said, ESPN is not gonna hire you. I go, well, um,
Speaker 1: he said you. He said, do you know who something
Speaker 1: my clients are, and then he listed a bunch of
Speaker 1: a list people that we're all at the very upper
Speaker 1: echelon of the business. I go, well, I'm struggling to
Speaker 1: even say anything at this point. So the president of
Speaker 1: the company is no longer the president. He he looks
Speaker 1: at me, he looks at the other guy, says, well,
Speaker 1: maybe we could uh, I mean, feeling sorry for me,
Speaker 1: he said, we get Paul some uh you know we
Speaker 1: own uh and say it we own. I am g college, Um,
Speaker 1: maybe we could get Paul some sideline work. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm like, I mean, I'm you know about
Speaker 1: being I mean, humiliation doesn't describe it. Okay. I said,
Speaker 1: well that's okay, um, so he said anything else. We're
Speaker 1: now maybe eight minutes in okay, okay. I have another
Speaker 1: meeting in about two hours before I go to La Guardia.
Speaker 1: I said, well, listen, um, if you get a chance,
Speaker 1: maybe you could call the guy's serious xm uh. He said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll give him a call. And he said, you know,
Speaker 1: as a as a favor to the family. That was
Speaker 1: a take that for whatever you want. But I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm doing this as a favorite of Slive. I walk
Speaker 1: out of there. I head over to Central Park because
Speaker 1: my next meeting was at the Ritz Carlton On I
Speaker 1: think Central Park South. I mean, I'm talking to myself.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm like a bum in Central Park. I
Speaker 1: call my wife. She said, howd to go? I said,
Speaker 1: it was a disaster, and she she said, well maybe
Speaker 1: I guess, um, I guess, I said. I said to her,
Speaker 1: I said, I guess we'll just spend the rest of
Speaker 1: our lives in Birmingham. And she said, well, there's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with that, you know. She's I called Pat Smith
Speaker 1: and he's in shock. And I mean I literally walked
Speaker 1: around for an hour and finally meet this guy at
Speaker 1: the Rich Carlton and you're gonna You're gonna figure out
Speaker 1: the story here in a minute. He was a blogger
Speaker 1: and he had asked if he could do talk to
Speaker 1: me if I was ever up there, and I told
Speaker 1: him I'd be in New York. So I meet this
Speaker 1: guy named Reid's Wideman for some coffee. I'm not listening
Speaker 1: to a word he says. He's a he's a sports
Speaker 1: blogger for the New Yorker magazine and he I heard
Speaker 1: him say David Remnick, who's the editor of the magazine,
Speaker 1: that had wanted to do a college football profile they
Speaker 1: had not done one in many years, and that they
Speaker 1: talked about something between five and six thousand words on me.
Speaker 1: Am I going, what uh So? Anyway, I leave, I go,
Speaker 1: I go, I catch a Capital Guardia. A week later,
Speaker 1: the same guy just sat with in the office who
Speaker 1: blew me off, called me and said serious wanted to
Speaker 1: hire me and he'd be more than happy to send
Speaker 1: me an engagement agreement. I went back to Slide, I said, Mike,
Speaker 1: I'm done with this guy. I ended up talking to
Speaker 1: Joe Tessa Tour, who I had gotten to know through
Speaker 1: roll Tide War Eagle He and Bruce Felman had been
Speaker 1: the producers of them, and he said, I got a
Speaker 1: guy for you need to meet Nick Con. I said,
Speaker 1: I didn't know who Nick was. UM, so Nick offered
Speaker 1: to fly to see me. UM, think about this. One
Speaker 1: of my closest friends I got named Gene Hallman. Do
Speaker 1: you know Gene. Gene used to be an agent. I
Speaker 1: told you, Jean said, I really know who this guy is.
Speaker 1: Let so Jene calls Nick con who, for those who
Speaker 1: don't know, is now the biggest agent in the business,
Speaker 1: and in full disclosure, also refer that's me in addition
Speaker 1: to a lot of a lot of other people in
Speaker 1: the universe of sports. Me. But Nick is an awesome guy.
Speaker 1: But yes, I can tell you Gene calls and interviews
Speaker 1: Nick con form and make sure he's okay. That's how,
Speaker 1: that's how, that's how down on agents. I was so
Speaker 1: anyway to speed this story up because I realized we're
Speaker 1: gonna go into like the tenth hour here in a minute. UM.
Speaker 1: I go through the college football season the first week
Speaker 1: of December, the Monday after the championship game, the epic
Speaker 1: game between Alabama and Georgia. Hello, Aaron Murray. UM, the
Speaker 1: article comes out in the New Yorker. Uh the I'm
Speaker 1: in New York the next day. I'm happened to be
Speaker 1: there for the Sports Business Journal conference. I get a
Speaker 1: call from a literary agent who comes up with this
Speaker 1: idea to do a book. Nick con sends the article
Speaker 1: to John Skipper, the former president of the ESPN. I
Speaker 1: don't know one of your closest friends. He had called
Speaker 1: Skipper in September and said, listen, I got a guy
Speaker 1: named Paul fin Boum. I think you ought to look
Speaker 1: at He goes, never heard of him. The article that
Speaker 1: that's wild in and of itself to me that Skipper
Speaker 1: hadn't heard of you at that point. But that's what
Speaker 1: the New Yorker can do. Write profile piece, he tells.
Speaker 1: The Skipper reads the article, so we gotta hire this
Speaker 1: guy for the SEC network. A couple of weeks later,
Speaker 1: I'm running I run into uh, Mike's Mike's Live. I
Speaker 1: run into Mike's Live on the field of the National
Speaker 1: Championship game between Alabama and Notre Dame. He said, you're
Speaker 1: not gonna believe this story. I go, what's that? He said?
Speaker 1: I had breakfast with Skipper today and he goes Mike,
Speaker 1: I've got a guy I want to make I want
Speaker 1: to hire to be the first guy at the SEC network.
Speaker 1: Make him to face. But I'm not sure you're going
Speaker 1: to go along with it. But we have we have
Speaker 1: to have this guy. And Michaels well, who is it?
Speaker 1: Of course my card, he knows the story, he says,
Speaker 1: it's Paul fin Boum. He said, what's your relationship? He said,
Speaker 1: other than the fact he's one of my two or
Speaker 1: three closest friends, he said, we don't know each other
Speaker 1: very well. Skipper breaks out laughing. They make the stason
Speaker 1: to hire me, obviously, I just I sped through a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot a lot of ground there on
Speaker 1: that long, drawing out story. But I think you know,
Speaker 1: you realize now how I got to ESPN. So you're
Speaker 1: at ESPN. You've got the show two to six, the
Speaker 1: SEC Network of launches. It has been wildly successful, blown
Speaker 1: through all of the pre revenue expectations. The show has
Speaker 1: gone really, really well. You are now in many ways.
Speaker 1: We started off this conversation talking about the fact that
Speaker 1: they now have a drink named after you. At the
Speaker 1: five year anniversary party for ESPN and the SEC How
Speaker 1: has the show changed as a result of being on
Speaker 1: the SEC network. It's different in certain ways. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: it's a television show versus a radio show, which, um,
Speaker 1: a lot of the old line people don't like it.
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's it's you know, television, television, Clay
Speaker 1: you do it. Uh, it's not quite the same as
Speaker 1: as a freewheeling radio show. You end up doing certain
Speaker 1: things to to check check boxes because it is a
Speaker 1: conference affiliation. Uh, it's not quite as cutthroat as it
Speaker 1: was back in Birmingham. I mean, you are cognizant of
Speaker 1: of the relationships, although I don't you. I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't walk in every day going or are you gonna
Speaker 1: make somebody mad? Because you you you know, Uh, it's
Speaker 1: impossible not to make somebody mad if you give an
Speaker 1: opinion on anything, and you and you wrote a lot
Speaker 1: about things that happened a year ago which are no
Speaker 1: longer terribly important that m I uh, you know, I've
Speaker 1: made a few people mad here, um, and but you
Speaker 1: just you work through it. And unfortunately now we're in
Speaker 1: a really good place. The company is in a good place,
Speaker 1: and and all of that seems like another lifetime ago.
Speaker 1: But uh, it's been Uh, I've been at the company
Speaker 1: six years, about starting my seventh. The network is celebrating
Speaker 1: its fifth and I mean, you go through a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of trials and tribulations in any kind
Speaker 1: of relationship like us, but it's still, at the end
Speaker 1: of the conversation, a really great place to work. Be
Speaker 1: sure to catch live editions about Kick the Coverage with
Speaker 1: Clay Travis week days at six am Eastern, three am Pacific.
Speaker 1: We're talking Paul Fine Bomb, Wins and Losses is the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Clay Travis. Last question for you, how would you
Speaker 1: distinguish for people out there who are listening to us
Speaker 1: right now and they're interested in writing, they're interested in radio,
Speaker 1: they're interested in TV. I tell them all that the
Speaker 1: disciplines are completely different. What works in one may not
Speaker 1: work in the other may not work at all across
Speaker 1: the board. What have you learned about writing, radio, and
Speaker 1: TV having done them all well, that you think is
Speaker 1: useful for people out there listening right now who may
Speaker 1: want to one day following your footsteps and potentially be
Speaker 1: doing all three well as a radio reporter, excuse me,
Speaker 1: as a newsaper reporter. I think you have to have
Speaker 1: a level of of relentlessness because nowadays there's there's so
Speaker 1: many doors being slammed in your face. In radio, I
Speaker 1: think you have to find a way to nuance that
Speaker 1: a little bit. Uh. You don't want to come off
Speaker 1: to crass. You want to you want to give people
Speaker 1: a chance to talk. But but you always in radio
Speaker 1: have to be aware that there's there's somebody sitting in
Speaker 1: their home, they're driving in their car, they're they're listening
Speaker 1: to it on their phone on a train. You have
Speaker 1: it's say, it's an audience of one, and you have
Speaker 1: to keep them entertained. You cannot put people to sleep.
Speaker 1: And television is a little bit different television. The hardest
Speaker 1: thing I've had to learn about television is the visual
Speaker 1: is the most important thing. A lot of times I'll
Speaker 1: rush to a breaking story and if the if the
Speaker 1: network isn't ready with the graphics, you're talking to yourself. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a great story Clay about Ronald Reagan. Uh,
Speaker 1: CBS had done like a fourteen minute hit job on
Speaker 1: him during Iran Contra, and his PR guy called the
Speaker 1: the correspondent Leslie Stall afterwards and said, well, by the way,
Speaker 1: thanks so much. That was great. She said, what are
Speaker 1: you talking about? We just like killed your boss, she said.
Speaker 1: She said, nobody listened. He said, nobody listened to a word.
Speaker 1: You guys said. The graphics were great. You have great
Speaker 1: Mount Rushmore at Normandy. I mean, it was just beautiful.
Speaker 1: And that's the hardest thing I've had to learn is
Speaker 1: that if you're watching on television, um, you have to
Speaker 1: you the words are not quite as important. In fact,
Speaker 1: most people probably watch our show, or watch ESPN or
Speaker 1: most shows with the sound low. Uh. And and that
Speaker 1: that that's something that I may never quite grasp but
Speaker 1: but it is. And by the way, I've thought about
Speaker 1: this at some point later in my life to uh,
Speaker 1: to teach. I talked to various schools, and it's something
Speaker 1: that I am really interested in. But the thing that
Speaker 1: that baffles me the most with young people, and I say,
Speaker 1: is a lack of curiosity. I know you have it.
Speaker 1: It's driven your career through law, into journalism and the
Speaker 1: radio and now obvious very successfully into television. And I've
Speaker 1: tried to apply it as well. But too many people
Speaker 1: just are are satisfied with whatever they're told. Uh. They
Speaker 1: don't follow up, And I know I'm sounding like my
Speaker 1: grandfather or yours, but it continues to to literally baffle
Speaker 1: me about younger people. Uh. And maybe it's the times,
Speaker 1: maybe it's all the toys that we have, but you
Speaker 1: can never be satisfied with an answer. I don't think
Speaker 1: even in a two hour podcast. Has I know I
Speaker 1: said last question, but has there ever been a time
Speaker 1: where you have finished a program and thought to yourself,
Speaker 1: either one, I'm gonna get fired or two I need
Speaker 1: to apologize for something that I said on radio. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I have apologized before, because I think what what always
Speaker 1: upsets me the most is when I when I key
Speaker 1: off on a call or without really thinking it through
Speaker 1: and I've done an interview. I mean, rarely am I
Speaker 1: going to want to apologize to some uh suit I interview? Um.
Speaker 1: I have occasionally uh with a gun at my head,
Speaker 1: but uh most of the time, Uh, I have not. Uh.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean there are a lot of days
Speaker 1: you walk out. I mean, and I take it very personally.
Speaker 1: I mean, I I don't go go back go home
Speaker 1: and listen to the show or watch it. But I
Speaker 1: know when I've I've done a poor job. And I
Speaker 1: know when I've been ill prepared for something, and that
Speaker 1: probably upsets me more than anything else, Clay, to interview
Speaker 1: someone and to miss something. Uh. To me, the job
Speaker 1: of the host is, as you know better than anyone,
Speaker 1: is to try to make the person you're talking to
Speaker 1: as interesting as possible and to use whatever resources you have.
Speaker 1: And I think too often, uh we don't do that.
Speaker 1: But that that that that really drives me crazy. Uh
Speaker 1: to have a to have somebody that's really interesting or talented, uh,
Speaker 1: and not get that across, because too often people just
Speaker 1: don't want to say anything. I mean, how many interviews
Speaker 1: if you had with a d S or coaches or
Speaker 1: and they give you and that's why and and and
Speaker 1: I know they're not telling the truth. And and and that
Speaker 1: probably of all the things that that that drive me
Speaker 1: uh over the edge more than anything. It's it's being
Speaker 1: lied to, it's being deceived, Uh, it's being misled, it's
Speaker 1: being it's being told what I can say and what
Speaker 1: I can't say, what guests I can have on the show,
Speaker 1: and what guests I can I think you're I know
Speaker 1: we're leading into a sequel, but but but that that
Speaker 1: I think it's just it goes back to the very
Speaker 1: beginning of of how I was brought up with New
Speaker 1: Yorkers and how I pursued my career. That I just,
Speaker 1: I just I'm not sure. I don't I don't have
Speaker 1: to have the last word, but but I don't like
Speaker 1: being I don't like people dictating what we can do
Speaker 1: and can't do here. I think I think you are.
Speaker 1: My obligation every day is to the audience. You said
Speaker 1: when we started that your goal was to be at
Speaker 1: the New York Times by thirty. Do you feel like
Speaker 1: it's some way you met that goal with that New
Speaker 1: Yorker five thousand word profile that they did, because I mean,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people who have written at
Speaker 1: the New York Times over the years, I don't think
Speaker 1: there are very many of them that have had a
Speaker 1: five thousand a word profile in The New Yorker. For
Speaker 1: that was you almost like a capstone on your career,
Speaker 1: even though you've got a lot of years left still
Speaker 1: to work. But that also feels like a fulfillment of
Speaker 1: that initial desire you had when you entered newspapers. It Uh,
Speaker 1: it was as much a game changer as anything that
Speaker 1: could possibly happen, because it led to ESPN. It led
Speaker 1: to a book. Uh, it led to a level of
Speaker 1: of awareness. When when when? When? When I got I
Speaker 1: got back that night and told my wife. She said, well,
Speaker 1: who's going to read that? I said, oh, I've really
Speaker 1: really about ten people in America. If they read it,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be very happy. Yes, And I think
Speaker 1: most of them did. I remember you tweeted the day
Speaker 1: it came out. You were one of the few people
Speaker 1: of my friends and colleagues who understood it. I mean,
Speaker 1: you knew exactly well. I was a New Yorker subscriber
Speaker 1: for a long time. I still am. I read those articles.
Speaker 1: I mean when they did a review of my newest book,
Speaker 1: I was like, wow, this is I mean, they did
Speaker 1: a couple of thousand words, mixing it in with a
Speaker 1: couple of other books. But I remember thinking, it's hard
Speaker 1: for me to feel like I've made it anymore. But
Speaker 1: when I read that piece for you, it's you said it, well,
Speaker 1: it's not only about how many people read it, it's
Speaker 1: about whether the right people read it right. And I
Speaker 1: think similarly on this podcast, a lot of people were
Speaker 1: starting off early. The amount of people I'm hearing who
Speaker 1: are listening that are quote unquote the right people. Um,
Speaker 1: you start with the right people, and then eventually everybody
Speaker 1: else knows about something too. And that's what I thought
Speaker 1: when I read the piece. No, it Uh, it was,
Speaker 1: it was. It was a stunning revelation to me to
Speaker 1: to to see and hear the reaction of certain people. Um,
Speaker 1: and you know, I don't know, Uh, you never know
Speaker 1: what's next. And I'm listening. I thought, my career has
Speaker 1: been over a couple of times, so I don't everyone says, well,
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do? How long are you gonna
Speaker 1: do it? I mean, these are these are questions I
Speaker 1: don't know the answer to. Uh. There are a couple
Speaker 1: of things I'm interested in doing, and I rarely say
Speaker 1: something that I'm about to say. Uh, I am working
Speaker 1: on something that's really interesting that it may become, it
Speaker 1: may be a big deal, it may disappear, it may
Speaker 1: vaporize in the night. Um. But I'm like you and
Speaker 1: and and and other people that we know. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's always something that I'm I'm I'm working on next.
Speaker 1: I'm not overly satisfied with the status quo. UM, I
Speaker 1: probably should uh enjoy what I'm doing. But I read
Speaker 1: an interview with Stern and Jerry seinfeld once who, by
Speaker 1: the way, Jerry Seinfeldt turned down a hundred and ten
Speaker 1: billion dollars to do another year of Seinfeld and I
Speaker 1: and Stern said, I mean, of all people, Howard Stern
Speaker 1: said this to him, you don't seem like you're you're
Speaker 1: enjoying this for him, But you don't. You never seemed
Speaker 1: like you were enjoying doing Seinfeld and and and And
Speaker 1: Jerry said something that I will forever remember. He said,
Speaker 1: my job isn't too, isn't It's not for me to
Speaker 1: enjoy the acting. It's not for me to enjoy presenting.
Speaker 1: My job is to present something to an audience that
Speaker 1: enjoys it. And I feel the same way. Um, It's
Speaker 1: it's not about me, It's about entertaining. However, many people
Speaker 1: are watching or listening on a given moment, and I
Speaker 1: think that's what what too many people lose sight of.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll have fun doing something else one day. Um.
Speaker 1: And and Clay, I enjoy this. I mean you you
Speaker 1: enjoy it, But it's it's not a picnic. Um. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't trade it for anything. But but the job and
Speaker 1: the goal is for other people and to enjoy it.
Speaker 1: I mean when someone calls up and says, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm I'm disabled and and this is what I
Speaker 1: look forward to every day, that is satisfying to me. Uh,
Speaker 1: not to have a you know, somebody you know slap
Speaker 1: me on the back and and say, you know whatever
Speaker 1: I mean I want to me. It's it's about it's
Speaker 1: about affecting people in in various ways. My wife told
Speaker 1: me this story. I once she had a patient, she's
Speaker 1: a physician. A lady came into her office and said,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna leave this, but your your your husband
Speaker 1: has really changed my life, she said. And my wife's
Speaker 1: fairly cynical. How in the world did my husband change
Speaker 1: your life? Well, she said, my mom died. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I'm the youngest of like, I have three older brothers,
Speaker 1: and I had nothing in common with my dad nothing uh.
Speaker 1: And I would go over to see him and we
Speaker 1: literally could not carry on a conversation. After my my
Speaker 1: my mom died. And one day he was in there,
Speaker 1: he was in the d he was in the kitchen
Speaker 1: listening to your husband's show. So I started listening to
Speaker 1: your husband's show. And she admitted as difficult as it was, Um,
Speaker 1: And when I would go back to see him every Sunday,
Speaker 1: we would talk about the callers, we would talk about
Speaker 1: the guests, and we would talk about the show, and
Speaker 1: suddenly we had a relationship. And that was That's more
Speaker 1: important to me, Clay, than than you know, winning the
Speaker 1: Herbie Kirby Award or or or you know, being a
Speaker 1: greeter at the SPS. I mean to me, that's really,
Speaker 1: in some ways what this is all about. It's a
Speaker 1: great final question. I've asked final questions a bunch of
Speaker 1: different ones, but I do want to mention your wife
Speaker 1: does she listen to the show, because I'll tell you this,
Speaker 1: my wife is terrified to listen to my show because
Speaker 1: she just is afraid every time I opened my mouth
Speaker 1: that I'm going to say something. Uh. You know that
Speaker 1: ends up costing him my job because I talked the
Speaker 1: same way on the show, which could be good as
Speaker 1: I do with her, I mean, there's not much of
Speaker 1: a filter. I'm curious what your wife would say if
Speaker 1: I asked her about her opinion of you. You know,
Speaker 1: I would prefer her not to listen UM, because I
Speaker 1: mean she will pick out Like your wife, the one
Speaker 1: thing you don't want to hear about one you know,
Speaker 1: the one phone or feud between Jim from Tuscaloosa and
Speaker 1: I man and so I mean, I I have finally
Speaker 1: learned though. When she does say something, I just thank
Speaker 1: her and keep my mouth shut because there's no upside
Speaker 1: and telling someone this is gonna sound familiar with a
Speaker 1: Vanderbilt medical degree, Um what what what's life all about?
Speaker 1: She's far smarter and far better well rounded than I am.
Speaker 1: So I just I just don't. I just don't discuss
Speaker 1: the show with her. If if I don't have to. Um,
Speaker 1: she said, she pays me a compliment, which is rare.
Speaker 1: I say thank you. If she says that's this dumbest
Speaker 1: interview or dumbest guest I've ever had, you've ever had,
Speaker 1: I say thank you. Let's move on. Well, that's good
Speaker 1: advice for life in general, certainly, marital Uh. Paul fine
Speaker 1: Bomb go follow him on Twitter at fine Bomb. His
Speaker 1: show airs two to six pm Eastern every single day
Speaker 1: on the SEC Network. You can hear it certainly on
Speaker 1: many of the stations as well across the Count three.
Speaker 1: Has been outstanding. I appreciate the time, Clay. It has
Speaker 1: been my pleasure thank you, and Uh, I don't remember
Speaker 1: when when two hours have flown by faster than this. Hopefully,
Speaker 1: hopefully our listeners agree, but I agree with you, it's
Speaker 1: been a really fun conversation. I hope people enjoyed it, uh,
Speaker 1: and I hope they learned a lot. But to me,
Speaker 1: it's gone by really fast. I hope they agree as well.
Speaker 1: You bet, Clay can't can't wait to see you soon.
Speaker 1: Thanks you, thank you so much. That's Paul find Balm.
Speaker 1: This has been the Wins and Losses podcast. I am
Speaker 1: Clay Travis. Go subscribe. If you enjoyed this one, you'll
Speaker 1: probably enjoy the other conversations as well. Thanks for listening, guys.
Speaker 1: Be sure to catch live editions about Kicked the Coverage
Speaker 1: with Clay Travis weekdays at six am Eastern three am Pacific.