Holmberg's Morning Sickness - The Sports Thing Podcast

Episode 11 – October 16, 2025
Holmberg, Hellestrae & Nash

Overview

In this lively, digressive episode, John Holmberg hosts former Dallas Cowboy Dale Hellestrae and radio veteran Dave Nash for a fast-paced, wide-ranging talk about team culture in sports, player accountability, "players only" meetings, media narratives, and the changing mentality and values in sports from their playing days to today. The trio peppers the sports analysis with humor, storytelling, old-school vs. new-school gripes, philosophical tangents, and even conspiracy theories—culminating in a full-throated roast of the media’s coverage of the WNBA and broader commentary on culture, morality, and sports entertainment.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Sports Culture and "Players Only" Meetings

• Team Culture & Accountability: The hosts swap stories about their own high school and college sports experiences, focusing on team meetings and leadership dynamics.
  • Nash reflects on a mediocre baseball season despite a talented roster:
    "Winning is a habit, losing is a habit. It's hard to break that habit." (03:26–03:32)
  • Hellestrae admits that serious "players only" meetings typically only occur on losing or troubled teams, not successful ones:
    "I think we might have had one [players only meeting in Dallas]. That's when things were starting to go off the rails." (15:25–15:44)
• Tua Tagovailoa & Leadership: The group debates whether Miami quarterback Tua Tagovailoa was right to publicly air locker room grievances.
  • Holmberg argues that it's sometimes necessary to go public if private attempts fail:
    "He has to say, 'I've talked to you personally and John Holmberg hasn’t showed up to the last two meetings... so guess what? I'm going to try a different tactic.'" (16:39–16:58)
  • The hosts lament the "fragility" of modern athletes:
    "It starts in high school... You get mad at your coach, you can transfer." (30:00–30:06)

Timestamps:

• Nash's high school tales: 02:26–05:24
• Team leadership failures: 06:53–08:14
• Tua, Dolphins, and speaking out: 13:03–14:41, 16:39–18:18, 24:02–25:00

2. The Changing Athlete Mentality

• Old School vs. New School:
  • Hellestrae and Nash recall a time when criticism from coaches or teammates was either expected or quickly brushed off. Today, they argue, some athletes are too coddled.
    • Hellestrae: "Now, you're professional, you get a lot of money and somebody yells at you or criticize[s] you and you're like, yeah, that's not right." (33:17–33:50)
    • Holmberg: "Between the ears, [players] are completely different." (34:01)
• Parental Shifts: Anecdotes about local parenting illuminate the change in how kids (and future athletes) are raised—less tough love, more protection.

Memorable Story:

• Hellestrae's childhood bike crash and his father's tough-love reaction:
  "...bloodied from the asphalt. Get your butt on the bike and let’s get home. I don’t want anyone to see you." (32:34–33:00)

3. Media Control and Manufactured Narratives

• Media's Sports Agenda:

  • The episode repeatedly targets how the media inflates or manufactures stories—most notably, the comparison of the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces to the NFL Patriots dynasty.
  • Nash: "If you ever had a podcast that just strictly was honest and said that girl can't play, she's terrible on defense... you'd get fired for being sexist. And that’s where that league wants equality but doesn’t want the critique." (54:18–54:51)
  • Holmberg confesses watching the entire segment just to see how far ESPN would push the comparison, mocking the exercise as a "slow-motion car crash." (48:06–48:22)

• “Hot Take” Culture:

  • They reveal that major sports media, like ESPN, actively assign panelists to play contrarian or provocative roles, even against their own beliefs:
    • Holmberg recounts an ESPN producer saying:
      "Who's gonna take the race angle? And no one in the room wanted it, but they demanded someone." (48:30–49:25)

4. Sports Fixing, Conspiracies & Vegas

• Are the Big Games Fixed?
  • Nash brings up infamous moments (NFL’s “tuck rule,” Tim Donaghy NBA scandal) and makes the case that games can, and have been, manipulated to suit ratings or betting interests.
    • Nash: "I believe it's already happening in the NFL... when a game has an enormous amount of money unevenly on one side..." (61:31–61:50)
  • Holmberg proposes TV and gambling interests are all that's really stopping sports from being fixed outright:
    "The only thing keeping sports from being fixed, ironically, is gamblers, because they will kill people..." (60:30–60:46)

5. The NFL, Values & Morals, and Modern Entertainment

• Morality and Culture Wars:

  • Discussions spiral into the decline of cultural values, the “satanic” pursuit of profit by the NFL (and American culture), and the provocations embedded in halftime shows.
    • Nash: "They don't care about America. They don't care about people. They care about money. They are satanic. They don't care." (72:14–72:22)

• Halftime Show Tangent: Bad Bunny’s upcoming Super Bowl performance sets Nash off about cultural decay, referencing past androgynous or “satanic” acts (David Bowie, Rolling Stones, Katy Perry).

  • Hellestrae: "I did not have on my bingo card Dave Nash bringing family values [and] Christianity first thing in..." (74:09–74:20)

6. Listener Mail & Show Meta-Humor

• Show's Growing Pains:
  • Holmberg riffs on slow-releasing the show, joking about bad search placement and Dave Nash’s “love/hate” dynamic with fans—highlighted by a blind listener’s email:
    "He makes me wish I was deaf, too." (43:13–43:14)
  • The team plays up self-deprecating humor about having few listeners, promising that the unique chemistry is its own reward. (44:00–46:09)

Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Team Leadership:
  “The only problem I had with what Tua did was...there’s something wrong with that team anyway that you would need a players only meeting. That doesn’t happen on good teams.” — John Holmberg (13:31)
• On Generational Softness:
  “You are too tough for a jab to bother this pristine Adonis body.” — John Holmberg to Dale Hellestrae on refusing a vaccine for money (65:57)
• On ESPN Hot Takes:
  “At ESPN for a little while, it got to the point where the producers are like, alright, who's gonna take the angle that makes people mad?” — John Holmberg (48:30)
• Media Critique on WNBA Coverage:
  “It was a slow motion car crash of what are they willing to say next to try and sell me this nonsense that anything remotely close to the WNBA can be comped to the amazing achievements of a team I hated.” — John Holmberg (48:06)
• On Old-School Mentality:
  “If I went home in 1978 and told my dad, coach was mean to me today...‘What’d you do?’” — Dale Hellestrae (30:19)
• Listener Letter:
  “He makes me wish I was deaf too.” — Sean Rockefeller, blind listener (43:13)
• On Conspiracies & Sports Fixing:
  “Conspiracies are undefeated.” — Dave Nash (61:11)
• On American Values in Sports:
  “They care only about money. They are satanic.” — Dave Nash (72:14)
• Self-Awareness:
  “This was the satanic Holmberg’s podcast.” — Dave Nash closing the show (76:48)
• Closing Meta:
  “That’s the sports thing, with me, the devil, Dale the devil’s right hand, and Dave Nash, the only moral man left in all the world.” — John Holmberg (77:22)

Important Topics (in order & by Timestamp)

| Segment / Topic | Start | End | |---------------------------------------------------|-----------|-----------| | Anecdotes on team leadership, players only mtgs. | 02:26 | 07:20 | | Tua Tagovailoa, Dolphins' leadership issues | 13:03 | 17:19 | | Media coverage, WNBA vs Patriots Dynasty | 47:17 | 55:06 | | Fixing sports & conspiracy theories | 60:15 | 65:12 | | Morality, “selling your soul”, “satanic” sports | 51:34 | 55:06; 72:08–74:44 | | Listener hate/love mail and show chemistry | 42:21 | 46:09 | | Parenting, old-school vs new athlete mentality | 30:00 | 34:01 | | Field/turf issues in NFL | 37:20 | 40:05 | | Cardinals, Kyler Murray, overpaying QBs | 66:31 | 69:58 | | Halftime shows & cultural decline | 71:41 | 74:44 |

Tone & Style

• Sarcastic, irreverent, conversational, and unapologetically “old school.”
• Frequent comedic self-deprecation, callbacks, and playful antagonism between hosts.
• Unfiltered—no sacred cows, frequent tangents, and no hesitation about mixing sports with societal commentary.

Summary for the New Listener

This episode of "The Sports Thing" is a rapid-fire banquet of sports talk, nostalgia, critique, and culture war commentary—anchored by three personalities who are amused, exasperated, and even occasionally philosophical about the evolution of sports and society. Whether dissecting leadership pitfalls in teams, roasting today's fragile athlete mentality, eviscerating media narratives, or bantering over conspiracy theories and halftime shows, Holmberg, Hellestrae, and Nash keep things unvarnished, un-PC, and unpredictably honest. If you want a podcast that's as likely to tackle "players only" meetings as to joke about Satanism in the NFL, this episode offers a wild play-by-play.