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Dan Le Batard
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I don't embarrass easily. Well, you're about to be more embarrassed. Oh no. A little bit more. Oh no. Because that's Tony. That's not Cassidy. That is Tony Cassidy. Does not look like her. This is the oral history of the 10 Ler show with Stu guts coming out of LeBron James time with the Miami Heat. We're starting to become a regularly featured part of ESPN's audio talent. When they put out packets for people to market their show and take on sponsors. We're doing calls. There's nothing like being included in a sales packet. You're doing affiliate calls. We're starting to feel the warm embrace of the worldwide leader. We're navigating it just fine. Yeah. Does our show talk about pop culture and things that aren't sports? Occasionally doing societal takes that weren't exactly sticking to sports? Yeah, but we can navigate all those fines. So ESPN has decided as part of this Dan Lerd business that they're in. He's already front facing on espn. He's a Latin presence. Let's see if we can simulcast his show on a Latin network called Fusion. Now that wasn't the on ramp to our show being televised. We had a really shitty webcam in a corner of a really small plain. Was it Taupe Studio in the Clevelander. But we appreciated trying to figure out how to play with the visual medium some. Dan, when ESPN presented this whole Clevelander scenario, this is where you're going to be doing Your radio show. This is where you're going to be doing. Highly questionable. The conversations were. It was a certainty the Lerd radio show with Stugotts was going to be televised. What do you remember about those conversations? It was not a certainty that the radio show was going to be televised. I was going over to the Clevelander as an audio product. And when we do this, I really do have, like, snapshots from my life coming before me to remind me of the places that we've been. The dinner that I had with Skipper, the conversation that got us televised, was him saying to me, what do you think about being on television on a network called Fusion? Me not knowing what Fusion was, and me responding to his question by shrugging my shoulders. I did not say yes. I did not say no. I just shrugged my shoulders. And he took that as permission to sign up whatever deal they had trying to get more Latin with an entity that was broadcasting Latin. Because whatever Fusion was, was doing a lot of Spanish language programming, a lot of distinctly Miami programming. And that was something that him and John Walsh, the guy who invented SportsCenter, put together. I was again a passenger. It's a good way to put it, whatever Fusion was, because it never. What was it never quite figured it out what it was going to be. Did it become Viceland afterwards? I think it might have become Vice. Crack research team. Ethan and Mike have doing such a great job producing this. Can you find out what became a Fusion? Because I'm pretty sure Vice assumed that network Fusion had giant offices. Fusion felt like a giant television network. Fusion was broadcasting our show from about 45 minutes away from where we were, which is not the way to do television. Like, they were in a totally different locale. And comms were really hard with a place that wasn't connected to what we were doing. So Fusion did cease operations in 2021. I think it was a joint venture. ESPN had a stake in it. Disney owned a piece of it. It might have been a joint venture between them and Univision. And this was outreach to English speaking Latinos. That was the audience. Spanish may be your second language, you were born here, but this has a Latin tinge to it. And we were really the only thing in ESPN's content folder that would fit that. Because Dan, even though he didn't have a Latin last name, was very. Latin was known to be that. And we were known to be Miami. So we graduate from webcams to taking a meeting with Fusion. And this is very exciting for you, I imagine. Stu Gotz, this means the show is growing. No shrug of the shoulders for me. Like, someone was putting me on tv, was putting this radio show on tv, and I was like, okay, that works for me. Like, I got into this for one thing, and it was radio. It was not television. It wasn't anything else. I love doing live radio. But if someone wants to film me and put me on television, and I can tell my parents, hey, look, your son, he's on tv. What channel? Fusion. Where is it? I have no idea. I don't know what they do, but I'm on television. And so for me, it just represent. Represented growth for our show. I will tell you that I spent the entire time in Fusion wondering when ESPN would air the show on television. I did. I did. I was disappointed. I was upset. Well, Fusion felt like the minor leagues a little bit. I. I think our time, if you look back at it single, Fusion, in many respects, I felt, was more of a sophisticated television operation in terms of when it came to our show than what happened at espn. Because by the time we joined ESPN on their network, we started out on ESPNU and then News. Yes, we had already been broke, broken by television, because we went to Fusion with the idea that this is a great new sandbox for us. We can create a visual supplement. And we got really excited by bringing your brother into the fold. We had a sonic profile that was done with Big Voice and then later on, Bobby, because once we became espn, we couldn't use a Big Voice David Lee, because he was doing Westwood One stuff. So I came up with the idea. Let's use your dad. That's a familiar voice. That's Latin. So we felt very Latin. Our rejoins felt Latin just because of the names attached to it and the imaging. Now we can have a very vibrant Miami look. And you were really excited to bring your brother aboard. So much so that your brother was in on a lot of these meetings that we had in the early goings with Fusion. One of my favorite days at espn, one of my favorite memories of my brother was surprising ESPN executive because me and my brother went in the day before without telling anybody and just wallpapered the walls with all of his art when they thought it was going to look the way that all the other shows looked. And we just didn't tell anybody. And we're like, we'll ask for forgiveness and not permission. I also remember my brother, again, me being more of a passenger than a leader. Sean showing up at one of these meetings and just eviscerating every Fusion executive for not doing their Jobs correctly. And my brother didn't work for them. Didn't have any jurisdiction over anything that was happening. Didn't have to deal with the ramifications. No. But he also didn't have all the background information. Just really enjoyed being a firecracker that day. Yes. You were at that meeting. You remember that meeting? Yes. My brother made a mess of that meeting. Firecracker. Yeah. I think I have regret over our experience with Fusion because we had such a high standard and we walked in, even though Dan had a television show, it was a ride home show. He had full trust in that executive producer. We felt ownership over a radio show. We had immense pride in it. And we didn't know how naive we were in that space. And when we felt people weren't adhering to the standard that we had in our brains. And at that point, I was fully indoctrinated. Had a pretty good feel for what our show was and what it aspired to be. When people fell short of that standard, different time, certainly a different mic, but it was impossible for them to meet that standard. ESPN could meet it. They could not. At that, I learned that it's an impossible standard to hold people to, especially television, because they're just following the action along. We really got sucked up in the idea of we can make a show within the show. And we didn't know how overly complicated and grandiose our vision for this would be. We had no real comprehension of what budget they had to it. We had access to Wade Beckett, who was running Fusion at the time, and these people, Miguel Tamayo was also there. And these were people that were genuinely trying their very best to help us with our vision. And it was really hard to articulate our vision was at that point, it was very much, don't you get what we do? We do just watch the show, but we don't have this super inclusive show. Part of its appeal over 20 years. And we heard this when we started over at espn. We heard this our entire climb. We're not really inclusive. We have this exclusive club. And I'm like, but that's a secret sauce. The longer you listen, the more jokes you unlock. But I look back at some of those meetings, certainly that one where Lebo was being a firecracker. I look back to how I was reacting to people that were honest to goodness, doing their best and just were incapable of an absurd vision that I had for the show. And I look back on some of that stuff with regret. I don't know how much of my timeline is muddled Here. But some of what I recall in here represents kind of my unhappiest time. When you guys talk about the excitement of new stuff that we're doing, I'm seeing our thing get contaminated. I'm seeing the rhythms, and I felt it, by the way, by the chemistry being ruined on what we were doing. And off to the side. I also think that my dog and my relationship is dying. And so I remember that my discomfort with everything. When you talk about regret, I remember in that closet one time having a conversation with you and Mike, and Mike's response, even though we were always, like, butting heads face to face, what felt like peers and people who had worked together for a long time. Mike sort of shrinking and saying, I'm afraid of you. I'm afraid of disappointing you. And my heart sinks just thinking about that time and all the blind spots I had about the combined discomforts of. It felt like things in my personal life were falling apart. And it felt like the thing that I cared about most professionally, which is protecting that standard, protecting how we sounded, was getting diluted because of the amount of change we were hitting our entire thing with. Well, thank you for establishing what will be the overall narrative of this. While our show is growing, while we're seeing the fruits of our labor really develop right in front of our eyes in tangible ways, like, we're on television. Tune in. This is really exciting. It's not feeling as good to make it, in part because you have those other things that we're gonna get into in this episode. But also, it was really difficult for us to reconcile what our vision was in our head and what the perceived shortcomings were to us and the audience that was none the wiser. The audience was super supportive and excited to see this thing on television. And we really were aspiring to something that really changed the show. As part of this fusion thing, we moved from our little supply closet in the Clevelander. This was a big move. This is a big part of the reason why Dan was uncomfortable. I mean, he doesn't like change. And you're taking away the intimacy of doing radio in a small room with a couple of people. You have your friends on the other side of the glass, and now we're letting the world kind of peek in on what we look like, how we do this thing, how the sausage is made. I was thinking, like, I didn't like the first day I saw Mike and the Mad Dog. I just wanted to hear them on my radio. I saw them. It was jarring. It almost ruined the show for Me, you say it's me not liking change, and that's part of it. But I have always thought that one of the key ingredients to what it is that we do is that it's a show that behaves as if it doesn't know it's being watched, because when it was in its formative years, it wasn't being watched. And so making that change was something that was voyeuristic to the audience, but made it feel less intimate to me because of how much I value the specifics of what I'm about to say. When we exist only in your head, it's different than any anything else because then your imagination is supporting a whole bunch of things that you don't see. And so I thought it was diluting what it is that we were doing. And furthermore, you know how afraid I am of feeling or seeming like I'm selling out. So that combination of, wait a minute, we are getting more stuff and money and it is getting diluted, that feels a bit like sellout. Stu, just to lob it up for you. To be clear with the audience, we had moved out of this small studio which was very connected. The production room was very connected to the on air studio. It wasn't even soundproof glass. If you sneeze, the other microphones would pick it up. And we move Dan and Stu to a main set where they tape highly questionable. I'm off on the side to my own board. We're disconnected from the shipping container. And we've brought in Charlie Hume because we had these really ambitious ideas, show within a show. Charlie, can you get fully indoctrinated in the culture of our show? You're going to have to play catch up here and you're going to have to be the producer contact for us. Two guys like Mike Ganges who came over from the CERN show, who was producing, God bless him, he tried his hardest. I imagine we frustrated the hell out of him. We did. Allison was trying to. Was a huge part in trying to get that communication down. But you had stuff going sideways in your personal life a little bit. And all this stuff, our show, your personal life, nothing was feeling as good. And that's when I learned if Dan isn't right, we're all just hanging on for dear life. What do you remember real quick before we get into the machinations of how that complicated the making of stuff, we mentioned Charlie, what were your initial hopes for that role? How did you land on Charlie? Charlie represents the first time that we would ever go through an interview process trying to hire somebody from the outside to be in our inner circle. Because we've learned since with Meadowlark is that we've had one employee here, the producer of South Beach Sessions, who spent basically four months working here, wide on the periphery, saying nothing. Because our group can be closed and distrustful to the welcoming of others. And Charlie's one of the first ones to make his way in because we did a rigorous interview process. And he was. Was clearly the best of the people that we interviewed to be a bridge between what we thought we were and what we would become as a video product, because we needed somebody to handle that for us. I was working as a segment producer for Olbermann ESPN late night show, living in New York City. And I had connected with Eric Rideholm, who ended up producing a version of this radio show TV simulcast the year after we launched from dc. And also, obviously, he produced Highly Questionable with Dan and his father. Eric and I had connected on Observation Day. I'd just taken the train down from New York City to see their whole setup, and we really kind of hit it off. And he said, I'll keep you in mind and let you know if there are any kind of cool creative opportunities that come up. And I remember him reaching out about this one and eventually connecting me to Dan and to Mike. There was that first sort of week of doing research for the show of trying to kind of understand what I'd be getting myself into where I did not get the show from the outset. I remember walking to the subway one day from my apartment in Brooklyn to take the train in to work on old Alberman and just being so confused as to what was going on. What are all these inside jokes? Why are they so mean to Stu Gotts? I felt like that was maybe the last time I ever felt bad, truly, for Stu Gotz. But on that day was just trying to wrap my brain around what was happening on the show. But then after a week of doing that, felt like I completely got it. I love the humor. It was weird. It was different from anything that I'd ever seen or heard. The sports media space or just the media space in general to that point, and was just really smitten with the idea of going and being a part of it and trying to add to the creativity and be part of that team. So then in taking conversations with Dan and Mike and getting the lay of the land, really felt like, okay, I'm about to pack up my life in New York City and move to Miami and just see how this thing goes. And that Was sort of that later on, when we left Fusion, Ride Home would take that over with a single employee in Washington, Lorenzo. But who replaced Charlie. But we've always been a small outfit that way. We had a legitimate production at Fusion. It was an assortment of about 10 people that now do what these Meadowlark video people do. Which it wasn't a small group of people that was trying to figure out everything that ailed us. But they were running up against someone in me who at the time. I recall this as my unhappiest time doing the show. And you can understand why they wanted to move you guys out to the main set. I look back on videos from that era, the Fusion era. Yeah, our show looks. It looked great. Great. I was so concerned, though, Mike. It felt bigger. It was not a radio studio. And I knew. I could feel it. I could feel it coming off of. Danny had other stuff going on in his life. But Dan was not comfortable in that studio. I don't know if you were ever comfortable in that studio. You were comfortable doing Highly questionable in that studio. The radio show. You were Mike and I could feel never. Mike looked terrified. He was on Mike Ryan Island. It was like this little island. We weren't looking at him behind the glass anymore. I was thrown off, and I never get thrown up. I think I was thrown off by your discomfort. I had to be there for Dan's company. We needed you in the room. You were physically disconnected from the shipping container. It's something that we found later on that. Yeah. You could look at faces in the monitor. This is actually where the shipping container moniker was invented because we had one overhead camera fixed looking into that studio of producers. And they all looked scared. Yes. In part because they were. Because Dan wasn't in the right headspace. And it made the making of things very stressful. And also, we couldn't be nearly as effective doing our jobs because there was this extra layer of communication. We had to go through comms boxes, keep our voices low because we didn't want to get picked up and disrupt what was going on mainstream. It threw the show off a little bit. I remember calling you. I never yell at you. I don't yell. And I was yelling like, hey, can we jump? Just get a piece of glass so Dan can see the guys through a piece of glass because it'll be more comfortable because he was making me uncomfortable. And that's really hard to do, man. I remember this is going to be surprising to you. I think I remember asking myself, is TV worth it? Because we had the guy who could paint pictures with words. We had one of the great storytellers hosting our radio show. I was wondering, like, if people now are seeing this because they don't need pictures. He paints them very, very well. They don't need to see us visually. And I was wondering, is this all worth it? The thing I always tell people about that time was that it was insanely hectic because I felt like, personally, I was wearing seven or eight different hats. There was, like, producing the actual television layer. There was developing new graphics. There was literal set design every single day. There was participating in, you know, production of audio bits. There was coordinating shoots that we were doing outside the show that turned into sort of digital exclusives on Fusion. I mean, all those things were definitely hard and time consuming. And there were a lot of fake it till you make it moments where you just didn't really know how to do this job for the first time, but you were the only person that was there to figure it out and do it. And so I kind of appreciated that. I think it led to a lot of really valuable learning moments that I've applied later in my career. Even though there were definitely moments of frustration of, why don't we have the budget to do this? And we have this really cool idea, but we have to pare it down, you know, to the 10 or 15% version because we just don't have the resources. But I do think that the end product we put out there was pretty wild and different and unique at the time. And as the show kind of continued to grow, that sort of stamp we put on things, people took notice of what we were doing in a way that really wasn't being done anywhere else in sports radio or sports TVs. That part of it, while being hard, was really, really cool. I felt in ways that are conscious now but were subconscious there a resentment about the choices we had made. Because I was looking around saying, we've ruined it. And I was looking around saying, we've ruined it, while not being able to see the eyes of the people in the shipping container with whom I had always. The show. I'm always doing the show in the eyes of the people that we're doing it with. And now I had you next to me. But doing television because now you're aware you're being watched. Yes. And I know the lack of subtlety in how it is you're behaving because you know you're being watched. We have our discomforts because, you know, I'm not right. And if I'm uncomfortable. The chemistry is going to get affected. And Mike's on an island scared of me for a variety of different reasons. Because I am now regretting or feeling some regret that. That the Faberge egg has been cracked because we needed to go and get all of these things that we needed to get to become a bigger show. And I'm cracking. Oh, Lord, am I cracking. You and I are having so many heart to hearts because we can't quite put our finger on it. We know that it's not just this. We know this is a huge layer of what's going on here. The physical disconnect. I understand we're discombobulated, but we were still finding a way to make pretty good content. If you look at some of the stuff there, the Golden State warriors victory parade, we were finally playing in visual medium and it was helping us in ways, but we couldn't get over where it was hurting us, which was, to the listener, pretty imperceptible. The communication breakdowns. We could navigate that on the air and still put out a pretty good product. That's a me problem, though. That's not a we problem. That's a me problem. I know, but your problems are, as a show, they're our problems. Yeah. There was a trickle down effect. This was the most stressful time in my life. Mike and I spent a lot of time just figuring out how to get you comfortable and get you right. That's part of the job. That's part of doing a radio show together. I mean, we all try to set each other up and put each other in great positions. But at that time, because of so much change in your life at that time and everything going on in your life at that time, Mike and I would stay up and we would have conversations. How do we get Dan to be comfortable? How do we make Dan happy? It was a really fragile time in that it's no way to create content in that everyone there was. I think that there needs to be a healthy amount of people being afraid to make a mistake. We had an unhealthy version of that because everybody knew this was at a time it was so fragile that if we weren't perfect, I mean perfect on the day, it would really discombobulate. Dan. Yeah. And we wouldn't be able to dig ourselves. Can we tackle, though, a little bit of where the fear came from? Because when I recall this moment of Mike shrinking, we were in such a tight space and notifying me, because I had not seen it or known it, that he was afraid of me. It's not because I was yelling at anybody. It was a fear of disappointing me because we weren't meeting the standard. Right. And you guys were trying to guess what the standard was. Well, we knew what the standard was. We just wanted to reach it every day. You pushed us. Your standard is why the show is where the show is today, because you aspire to that kind of standard. It seemed unreasonable at the time for Mike and I to be able to meet that standard for you every single day. But we spent many hours trying to figure out how we were going to do it. What are you afraid of, is what I'm asking you. Doing bad shows? Yeah. You were. You weren't happy. You would quite literally say you regret doing this. You had a pretty open disdain for video. While you had a lot of things that were making you professionally and personally unhappy going on at the time, very few of them. Those things, whereas tangible, is the direct change of ripping you out of the radio studio onto that TV studio and the calculations that you're doing on your selling out and all those other things. So I think, and we later found this out through literal therapy on the air that we did once we figured out what the solution was later on down the line, not to get too far ahead of ourselves, was it was the physical manifestation of everything that was bothering you at the time. Right. And a Dan Ler that isn't confident in what he is that he is doing. A Dan Lerd that isn't proud of the work that he is doing. Proud wasn't fun to be around. We all kind of wore that, and it would all have a residual effect. And I was the least capable of handling it because not only did I feel like I was letting you down, I was physically disconnected. And so one of the things that would go wrong is, hey, there's a latency here in getting this thing printed out for Dan, and I can't be in the same room with a shipping container. So I'm not picking up on what obstacles. If the printer's down, I'm not picking it up on that. I'm just picking up on you wondering, where is this thing? So it made my job a lot harder. And I took that stress out on. On so many people, and I have so much regret. All my relationships, family, work, all of them got way worse during this time because I was in over my head. I did not have the management training and I didn't have the mentor to learn from this. We were all kind of figuring out together. Sue Gots. I know you felt for me at the time. I felt for you at the time. It felt like we were all just biding our time before this thing was about to blow up in our face. This show felt flimsy. It felt like at any moment, Dan was just going to pick up and say, we're either just going back to only audio or I'm going to quit it altogether. It was a very challenging. The other thing that was at play, Dan, I don't know if you. If you remember this, but Mike and I really. You. You called me local thing, little thing, Miami. Let's just keep it here. It's good, it's comfortable. It already feels like a national show. Mike and I really sold you on going to ESPN and how good it would be for our show and our reach. And so there was a part of me and Mike that didn't want to let you down in terms of us really driving that decision for you. Because, Mike, I think you remember this. Dan did want to stay local, like wanted to stay in Miami. Wasn't really thrilled with being in 300 markets across America. You and I were enthralled by that. He was uncomfortable. And I know I was. This is what I was taking home with me was like, oh, my God. I pushed Dan to go do something and it's making him unhappy, and that makes me unhappy. I felt that a little bit more with a move to midday, but for the time being, we had a pretty difficult time adjusting here. And God, it was so bad. It was so bad. I would be getting home so late, dealing with the worst kind of traffic, getting and just out of answers, really struggling to figure out what it was. Do you think something's happening with Dan that we aren't in charge of? Cause I feel like really shitty about all of this. And we had a meeting. I remember that meeting that you've referenced a couple of times. I finally worked up the courage. I was so intimidated by not just you, Dan, because you were plenty intimidating and you wore your emotions on the sleeve. But I didn't see this. Mike, the first time I'm getting any intimidation that you are scared is when you're voicing it to me. Because our sparks were just arguments that we'd had for a long time. My blind spots are being revealed as we do more and more of this, and this was one of them. I did not know. I knew Stugatz was. Cause we did the therapy and we were having our clashes that were on air and uncomfortable. I did not know your level of fear until you told it to me. So it crescendoed. I finally felt comfortable enough to even reveal that I was working in fear of letting everybody down. You talked to me a lot about it. I did, but with Dan, I didn't want to trigger Dan. Sure. The power dynamic and or relationship was such that I try to keep that away from him. I was stressed. I think Dan might have picked up on that. I was stressed. Who knows? He would certainly pick up on me yelling and having an outburst. I remember there was one time that we had, like, a sales partner, and we were just dropping the ball, like, left and right in the shipping container, and I yelled. And I remember that went over like a lead balloon. But I was out of answers. I'd always been brought up within this show. Yelling was kind of accepted. There was good creative friction that was born out of that. Dan and Hawk would have shouting matches during commercial breaks at our waxy days that I was like, whoa, this is pretty intense. And then they put their headphones on and magic on air. Magic. If we want to be really cliche here and make a comparison to a sports team, that's kind of how those environments go. Like the highest performing environments. Often there are moments of conflict, people going head to head, and that's sort of producing the best work. I think there are a lot of examples of that in art. There are examples in that in sports, examples of that in life. I think that there were definitely times where we, of course, you know, maybe wish things would have gone a little bit more smoothly, But I do think that that was a problem product of the constraints we were under as a show. You know, whether it was time or resources or budget or whatever else, all of us were trying to kind of pull in the same direction, which was, let's do something creative, let's do something unique, let's do something different. And I think that even if there was stress related to how are we going to get that done, I think at the end of the day, we did ultimately get that done in our own way. Even if there was a better, grander vision for it, what ultimately made it to air, you know, it had to be unique, and it had to be different, because the response we got from the audience was sort of a cosine of that, of, hey, this is. We love this, we appreciate this. And I think, you know, that sort of ethos, while, you know, stressful at times, for sure, was part of what made the show great. So I couldn't detach. This is not an excuse for me losing my cool or yelling at folks, this is an explanation with my unconventional climb, the stress that I was kind of under, and I had to do a whole lot of work on myself because of the residual effects from this era. In that moment, I was dealing with anxiety. I didn't know it, but it was really the years that followed, the resentments that formed from my treatment of others during this time, my lack of control when it came to my own emotions that to this day, I'm still trying to dig myself out of. But speaking for me, and where I was a little bit more fearful of Dan is this whole thing was flimsy. Well. And you had no control, because he controlled the future. He controlled everything. I remember the three of us, one of the few times, one of the first times, I felt like, okay, I'm accepted. I'm part of this team. It's us now. I got over the Hawk shit. This is one of the many come to Jesus meetings that we had on. How do we write this? Keep in mind we're knocking it out of the fucking park when it comes to content. I'm telling people at espn, and they're like, what are you talking about? I'm like, dan's just not right. It's not feeling good. And we couldn't disassociate how it felt to us making this stuff from it actually being pretty good. It has to feel good. Well, for us to have a good relationship with our work during this time, nothing was feeling good. Dan never cared about anyone else's standard except his own. That was it. So it didn't matter. Like, that didn't make him feel good. It made me and you feel good. Great. The executives up in Bristol, they love the show. They love the content that we're churning out. But I knew he didn't love it. No, I remember I was like, we. I. In my mind, it was like sort of like us three putting our hands in there and like, all right, cool. We're all going to lock in. We're all going to take ownership of where we're dropping the ball, right? And I looked at Dan, and Dan was like, fuck you talking about? I'm good. You get in line. I was like, oh, fuck, I'm the one dropping the ball. I got you. No, Dan was kind of dropping the ball here, too, as we later found. There was, like, interpersonal stuff that was muddying all this stuff, making it all complicated. But I was like, oh, fuck, I totally screwed that up. I thought Dan and I were, like, finally coming together in this moment and not necessarily equals Cause that was not gonna happen at that point. I'm like, ah, I'm finally getting over this Hawk shit. I feel like I'm climbing my way up and I got too comfortable. And I said, like, we're all gonna lock in. And I alluded to the fact that Dan wasn't exactly as sharp as I got. Sent right back down to the bottom of Mark Hockman Hill. I felt like there. I like, fuck. And I looked at you and you knew, man, my knees were knocking that day. I fucked it up. You guys thought it was in a flimsier place than I did, though. Because while regret and resentment might have been in my heart, quitting wasn't. It was not. It didn't feel that way at the time. But I'm just. But I'm just telling you, I would drive home, call Abby, and I'd be like, he's going to quit tomorrow. I felt like. Yeah, I felt like you. You were not even a thought. Not. No. We had contracts. They had built us a studio. We were locked in on the respons, the obligations of what the job was. Yeah, but you're this wild card who takes sabbaticals. You could go away at any point. I mean, you're that guy. Well, that's. That's important context, because you did. You were in the middle of a sabbatical that I think is still going on with the Miami Herald. I'm not exactly sure. That was in 2004. Was that sabbatical courtesy of the NFL draft. But you. You had shown. You had shown. Yeah, it was the Jake Long draft, which was. It wasn't exactly. It can't be the number one overall pick. He went to the offensive lineman. That's right. I went. I didn't go to the right draft location. It was terrible. But msg, not rad. But I'm telling you, you guys have it wrong. I know what is and isn't flimsy in terms of quitting. I was not in any way close to quitting. I was unhappy. But I think you can probably piece together from things like thinking that we were gonna be Disney employees one day and finding out the day before that we're not. To the billboards, to realizing that if Dan decides he's not gonna do this anymore, ESPN Radio will be like, we'll get Bob Valdano. Yeah. Bobby V. So while that's good to know that we were fearing that the specter of that felt very real to you, it probably wasn't. But su. We were governed by that type of fear that you had all these other avenues. All we fucking had was this show. All we had was you. And if you decide to up and leave, we're fucked. ESPN's not gonna keep us. So, yeah, we felt like we were fighting for our lives over never an option. Though. You guys do understand that the fear that you're talking about ends up being whatever accidental fuel it has to be in order. And this is not a rationalization for bad behavior. Because I look back at what it is that you guys are saying and I'm mortified by it. But the accidental result of it is that you guys cared deeply in a way that made me trust you all the more with whatever it was, was our growth after that. And I'm telling you now, and I'm saying it specifically, never an iota of thought about the idea of us not doing it together or us not doing it. Like I was not thinking of quitting. Wish I knew it then I would have saved me and Mike a lot of phone calls. I made a lot of sleepless nights. Dan, your standard, don't take it the wrong way, because your standard is what makes the show great. Your standard is what has made me become very good at this and might become great at this. It's what makes the show. People might say, hey, you know, I'm trying to please Dan on a daily basis. You're the boss. Your standard. Because most people in radio don't have this standard. They are fine, three hours a day, I'll take a thousand phone calls and I'll see what the ratings show up as your standard. No, not a ton of phone calls. All of you guys, be better. Meet my standard. Be as good as I am at my job. That helped us, Dan. It's too unforgiving, though. It's something that can be looser than that. I run into it when Rachel Nichols comes through or Dan Patrick or Skip Bayless, and they're like, hey, Dan, you're winning. You do understand that you're winning, right? And I'm like, why doesn't it feel like winning? And I guess I'm my own worst enemy there. But this does lead us to fighting through this. This was a really most challenging part of my tenure up until I was writing a lot of bad checks at this time. I cashed those check a little later on on in the timeline. But this does lead us to a golden era because we find a solution for this. We bring on an on air counselor. And it's at this point that Stu Gotts and I start workshopping like he's breaking up with his girlfriend. There's a lot going on here and I think like some of that is playing itself out. But knowing the mistakes that I made before, where I got knocked down to the bottom of Mark Hockman mountain, I couldn't challenge you professionally. I sure as fuck wasn't going to tell you. I think you're taking out your breakup on us. And we brought on an on air counselor because it was legitimate. Your on air relationship, two gods had deteriorated, but we made it into content. And this on air therapist says, I think you got something else going on in your life. Maybe there was a breakup or something like that and you needed to hear it from somebody else. And from that moment on, it wasn't immediately better, but we were on an upward trend. All thanks to a solution that we really racked our brains over trying to find. And it was really tied to the place that we were making our magic, the studio. So in the next episode, we're going to do a real deep dive on how difficult it was for us to make our art in that main TV set and the big decision that ended up, quite frankly, saving the show. Hey DraftKings fans, are you ready to elevate your game day snacking experience this college football season? We're feeling the Cheesiest with Cheez It. That's right, delicious Cheez Its crackers not only satisfy your snack cravings for game day excitement, but they are also amplifying your football watching experience with the new daily fantasy sports game. Best of all, since Cheez Its is made with 100% real cheese, the game is 100% free to play with a chance of winning real cash. Be sure to carefully select your favorite cheesy flavor to snack on. White Cheddar Extra Toasty. Or maybe you're an OG fan while you select your weekly players for college football's cheesiest challenge all season long. So snack and play like a champ with Cheez It. Agent eligibility restrictions apply. Void word prohibited. See draftkings.com cheez it for full details. This holiday at T Mobile, I'm joined by a special co anchor. What up everybody? It's your boy, Big Snoop Dog Snoop. If people are looking for great deals this season, where should they go? Head to T mobile.com and get four iPhone 16s with Apple Intelligence on us plus four lines for 25 bucks. That's quite a deal Snoop. Not to mention AT T Mobile you can save on every plan versus the other big guys. Respect. Now drop that joke. See how you can save on wireless and streaming versus the other big guys. @t mobile.com/apple intelligence available now. All a season is here, guys. And are you gonna get a lot of shopping done this weekend? Black Friday's coming up that you need to score some deals. How about you pick up some touchdowns? They're on sale all week at DraftKings Sportsbook. DraftKing has door buster profit boost and bet one get one promotions on all types of touchdown bets. Grab some TDs with DraftKings Sportsbook. They're on sale from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday. Download the DraftKings sportsbook app and use Code Dan to opt in. That's Code Dan dan only at DraftKings sportsbook. The crown is yours. Gambling problem. Call 1-800- gambler in New York. Call 877-8-Hopeny or text hopeny 467-369 in Connecticut. Help is available for problem gambling. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org Police play responsibly on behalf of Boothill Casino and resort in Kansas, 21 and over. Age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction. Boyd in Ontario, one bonus bet per customer base on amount of initial touchdown bet and expires 168 hours after issuance. One single use boost per customer. That only applies to winnings. See sportsbook.draftkings do additional terms and responsible gaming resources. Whoa. Stugotts. I can't believe it. It's official. He did it for all the world to see. He confirmed it. It's a fact. It's not subjective. He cannot argue it. Lance Stevenson blows Hoosier State. Hoosier State. I ask you once again, Hoosier Daddy. That's a pretty good chance it's Paul George. Ouch. Indiana out. Deanna, you have cities named French Lick and South Bend. We have strip clubs that offer the French Lick and the South Bend. Give it to me again. Give it to me again. Indiana, I'm so very sorry, but David is as close as you're gonna get to meeting the West. That guy blocked me on Twitter. Did he really? Yeah, he did. Rashard Lewis is the black Mike Miller. Go Ed Malloy. Game Sevens and Paul George's Internet girlfriend have something in common. Neither of them actually exist. They're fantasy. And one of them's a dude. Allegedly. Allegedly. I should probably, probably say that Indiana has a famous shrimp dish. We'll just give you crabs. Don't sleep on Levoy. Allen Barkley actually said that. Why? He said Evan Turner would make them unstoppable. Give Me a gun. Give it to me again. Stugatz. Props to Paul George, though. He looked real, real sharp after game six. Do you think that was Armand? Oh, no, I'm sorry. That was a paternity suit. Indiana's football owner gets arrested with $29,000 in a briefcase and drugs in a laundry bag. You call that a scandal? We call that a Monday. He also blocked me on Twitter. Ursa blocked you on Twitter, too? What's the matter with you, man? I don't know. Indiana's official. Ah, the NFL News. Out of here with that. Get that out of here. Indiana's official fish is the largemouth bass. And now your signature pacer is a large mouth. Give it to me again. Get your football updates out of here. Give it to me again. I had a great Uber. Fact. More than 100 species of trees are native to Indiana, and Michael Beasley finna smoke all of them. Paul George's house was burglarized. Found missing $16,000. An all star ring, a flex watch, a pair of Air Jordan for Toro and Roy Hibbert. They have Paul George. Paul and George. That's the name of two Beatles. Guess who's got two Ringos? So awesome. I'm exhausted. You got another? Ones are numb. Should I grab Greg, Cody? No, no, no. Go get somebody a little bit younger to help me out here. He. Grandma. Get in here. Get in here. Eat, Grandma. My knees, they're pretty bad, but they're better than Andrew by. Kill him, Grandma. Kill him. Kill him, Grandma. I love Wade. He's a nice boy. I'm going to knit him a sweater. Well, that's too nice, Grandma. That's not the way you do this. LeBron James is the coolest person since Buddy Rich. Buddy Rich. Come on, Grandma. Grandma, you started so well with buying him. Let's go. I'll put a brick to your face, Stevenson. Yeah, that's how you do it, Grandma. You sick. Em. Now just throw in like a random and funny pop culture reference real quick to break it up. Turn down for what, Stugotts? I feel bad about dragging this nice little old lady into our sewage. This was mean. It was not nice to Gods. Grandma, are you mad at us? I ain't got no worries, Dan. You good? You need Grandma to stick around a little bit more. No. Get out of here, old lady. I got my second win. Let's go. Give it to me again. Give it to me again. Give it to me again. Miami's first white guy off the bench puts the ball in the net. Indiana's first white guy off the bench puts his hair in the net. Stugatz. What do you call a beautiful person in Indiana? What? A visitor. You blow in our ear. Will snort blow off your rear? As of today, Odin has as many finals appearances as Durant. Beasley has more finals appearances than Rose. Justin Hamilton is about to go to the finals as many times as Barkley. Yes. Our coolest kravitz kravitz is Lenny. Your coolest kravitz is Bob. What? I thought that was visually funny. Bob Kravitz. I like Bob Kravitz, but it's visually funny. Momos. Give it to me again. Give it to me again. Go Limits. Who is wearing Larry Bird's skin? He looks like a grandmother. He's one of the greatest players ever. You have South Bend. We have South Beach. You have Larry Bird. We have Larry O'Brien. You have Rudy. We have Booty. Odin and Paul George had public Internet pee pee scandals. And suffice it to say, in every way Indiana Miami's is bigger than yours. I cannot breathe. Stuart, you got one more. You have Hoosiers. We have Hooters. I woke up like this. Give it to me again. Give it to me again. That was so awkward. Give it to me again. Channeling that be. Go ahead, Lance. Put your hand in his face. And then America will watch him put your in his place. You have merely one scola. Miami only has a million leases. The Indianapolis 500 isn't a race. Indianapolis 500 is your basketball team's record since the All Star break. So give me that toot toot. Let me give you that. Beep beep. Running her hands through my fr. What did I just do there? What was that? Did you break him off? A little preview of that remix. That was so bad. You have the Colts and Andrew Luck. And we have a quarterback whose wife ends up with a machine gun in the back of her car. Give it to me one more time. Give it to me one more time. I'm running out of mater. Running out of breath, running out of oxygen. Running out of heart capacity. Four straight finals, Dan. You give them one more. Hey everybody, let's gather around. Let's count with LeBron. Let's all add up how many finals games the Pacers are going to play this year. Not one, not two, not three, not four. Congratulations, Pacers. You worked all season for it. You can have game seven on your floor. Indy has race cars. I have the race card playing continually on this show. Always getting ripped for it. Parking lot. Oh my Gosh, I'm exhausted. He. Grandma, get in here and hit him with the dismount, will you? What do you have to say to Paul George to Echo throughout the off season? Slap my fatty. That's one small step for man, one giant leap for yourself. Five seconds left in the game. You believe in miracles? What's the coaching mistake Scott Brooks made in the finals last year that haunts him the most? I think you. I think I criticize myself a lot on some of. Some play calls that I could have maybe done differently or a timeout, one or two possessions earlier. It's one of those things. Do you want red wine or white wine? Is the guy that doesn't really know what he wants. He always picks opposite one you're willing to offer him. I want the wine that doesn't have Kendrick Perkins in the game so many minutes. Well, a lot. That's. That seems to be the common denominator of most people. But when you're around Kendrick, you know that he's all about winning. And his winning percentage speaks for itself. He doesn't score a lot of points, nor do we want him to, and quite frankly, he's not capable of scoring a lot of points. But he scores his points by getting us screened. Kevin, Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook open for our pick and rolls or a pin down game that you can't, you don't, you can't put a number on that. But I would say, you know, he, he helps Kevin score, you know, 20 points of it or 20% of his points. He's a, he's a low post defender. He's a, he's a, he's a defensive anchor and he wins games. His winning percentage is frightening. The last five or six years, for most series, he's fine. Against Miami, that style of play that it's less fine. Okay, well, you know what, guys? I think I'm gonna go with Scott Brooks over you. I don't know. Just call me crazy. I'll go with Scott's knowledge of his team over Dan Levitard and stuff. The way he did. It didn't work. I don't know. Hey, you got some good points. You do got some good points, but I, I have to agree with Stan on that one. Scott Brooks is an idiot. Ran Rondo is an idiot. Junior Smith is an idiot. I, I don't know. You know, because I don't know what their plan was. I don't know if he's ahead or behind. You know, I mean, I, I agree with Stu Gods every game he plays and doesn't get hurts. A good day, but great day. What I was going to ask you because you have two kids, I was going to ask you some of the things that you've made sure to be as a father because you did not have one. Oh, no, I don't have no kid. I got zero kids. Oh, I'm sorry. My fault, my fault. I thought I just said. Because I just said that he had two kids and I had. I was reading that wrong. Okay, so that's a terrible question I just asked you and horribly embarrassing. John Wall with us on ESPN Radio was confirming both at this point. No, that's right. That's. I, I read that wrong. He's the son of Francis and John. Those are not his sons. I read that wrong. So that's my bad. Maybe I could move on here to make this slightly less awkward for all parties involved. I know Jo is flipping in his grave to often. This crap train's breaks are broken and there is no stopping here. Take my soul and just go ahead and wipe up all the shame, shame, shame. Dolphins poop the pants. J poked his pants. One stash pooped his pants. Jim Bakes pooped his pants. Sam pooped his pants. Went to B. Cameron pooped his pants. Spooked his pants. Jimbo's pooped his pants. Fill that poacher's pants. Hey, Dan. Stu again. Speaking of Dungy. I mean, this guy Dungey, really speaking of Dungey. And I'm serious about this and hopefully, you know, you'll talk to Stu Dots and Mike Ryan and the rest of your crew and you'll be aligned on this. I mean, it's ridiculous that this guy is going to book the cell, will come on your show in five seconds and spend 30 minutes with you. But I know Stu said yesterday that he reached out to him to get him on to talk about his comments regarding Michael San and other things. So I beg you, I implore you to never have Dunji on the show again. He uses you to sell books and then when you want him or need him to come on to discuss something that he said, he's not there for you. You're there for him, but he's never there for you. Dungey. Really? Never again, Dan. Never again ever. I'll see if I can book them later today. How about weekly? But a weekly show, the price is right. It's 42. Oh, yeah. Oh, Saturday Night Live is a whippersnapper all of a sudden. I'm learning it's closer to one of the More recent shows. It's up there with Empire. Sesame street is 43. Yeah, I saw that. Sesame Street. The Price is Right. Price is Right. We already said the price is right. Yeah, yeah. You're so good. He wanted Derek Jeter to go away even before the season began, but would never bench him. He gets mad when people give Dan credit for breaking the Cliff Kingsbury news, yet he takes the credit in his fantasy football league for work done by his ringer named Inferno. He wants the radio station to give away more Heat tickets to listeners, yet he has two different sets of Heat season tickets that he has never given away and keeps exclusively for profit. He is the most inconsistent man in the world. I don't always have ticks, but when I do, they're all over the place. Stay inconsistent, my friends. Follow the herd. Nearly 300 head of cattle into heart of Miami. Admissions free. Don't miss the horse shows, arts and crafts, all the plants and flowers. You can buy a farmer's market, dog skill show, live bands, great food and more. Like their cowboy hat made of bacon. Kids will love petting the cows, cougars, donkeys, mules, ducks, birds, rattlesnakes. And everyone's favorite, alligator wrestling for the kids. And the huge fun zone. Take us through a day in the life of gods. Well, the first thing I do is talk to dance, join a ranch, take some corn, reach some liners. Alligator wrestling for the kids. Be a gas bag sandwich in the bathroom, pretend I read, promote HB race talk, run to the parking lot, swallow H's mispronuncification, Call sick day for fantasy new cliche monster Rick Berry, Dania high chest. Oh, bleep. Man, I can't bleep and do it. Chicken out. Mike Ryan's desk fight empty hammer, predict top 10p bad information build straw man. Eat some chicken pond. Take the easy stance. What happened there? Did I have a stroke here for the jets and not the Dolphins? Hit with the golf ball now I'm dead. Down by two.198 inbound to Love on the left side with one dribble. Goes up for the shot. It's blocked by Marion. The ball comes into the arms of Dalibert. The horn sounds and the ball game is over. The Timberwolves are screaming for a foul. There was none called. Rubio off to love. Oh, that's a foul. That is unbelievable. The referees are booed as they go off the floor. Brutal. David Guthrie is right there. He didn't have the guts to call it. Also, go Admiral. I teased earlier that maybe some infighting here. At ESPN Radio, amongst the two drive time shows on the east coast, your show and the LeBatard Show. Okay, now, Stu Gotz, Dan's co host. Right, right, right. I love Stu Gotz, as Dan likes to describe him as a lovable primate. That's what he describes. Okay, I have not heard this, so I'm not really sure where we're going. Stugotts is the everyman. He's the guy that the fans love because he's the voice of the fan in some ways, shape or form. And he kind of like Hulk Hogan. You know how Hulk Hogan used to. When. When he used to wrestle, he used to cup his ear. Right, right, right, right, right. You know, he loves to do that. So he had apparently a. An issue of sorts. Okay. With. With you guys in the Celebrity Game. Oh, let me hear it. They made this announcement. It feels like to me that every two days, these guys are making an announcement. A big announcement. Big announcement coming out of Mike and Mike. And it's all over the network, and it's everywhere, and it drives me crazy. And their big announcement was they're playing in the celebrity All Star Game at All Star Weekend, which is great. What's not great about it is I'm not playing in that game. I'm never going to play in that game. And it drives me crazy. So they take it one step further today. Okay? I mean, it's every day with Greeny. One day the guy is the host of a new game show on abc. The next day, he's moderating conversations with Bill Clinton and Kobe Bryant and taking pictures and putting them all over Twitter himself with Bill Clinton and Kobe Bryant. Another time it's, hey, we're gonna have Jerry Seinfeld on another time. It's this guest. It's that guest. At this guest, we have not. We have Chris Cluey. That's what we have. And then today, to make matters worse for me, I mean, what they're putting all over ESPN2 and ESPN and ESPN, right? Everywhere is this montage of Mike. And Mike practicing with Tim Legler at the gym up in Bristol getting ready for the Celebrity All Star Game. I mean, we're making too big of a deal about it. They're gonna be playing basketball with Justin Bieber. Enough. And then Dan followed up and asked him, well, why are you really so upset? And he's like, well, I'm jealous. I want to be greedy. Obviously, it's born out of jealousy. He's unbelievably jealous of us. And you know that. You know What? I feel sorry for him. You feel sorry for. I feel sorry for him that his jealousy has affected him so much. Yeah, he's gone off the deep end. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We were invited and you weren't. Right. I'm sorry. Well, the thing is, Dan asked him, do you want to? Because. And then Dan just kind of realized, well, no, I don't want to. Because if we get invited, that means I have to play. I don't want to do that either. Right. I guess. I guess what sugar has to remember is the key word in there is celebrity. All right. I just wanted to say something to get played back on their show. We're creating a beef here. Yes. Yeah, we are. It's good. Every once in a while, have a little infighting. The Sharks or the Jets. And now Papi reads a passage from Fifty Shades of Grey, page 343. I groan and run my fingernails across his neck, and he gasps a strangled moan. You're going to unman me, Anna. You take me. I sink down unto him, reveling in the fullness of my possession, reveling in his reaction. Washington, he's unraveled beneath me. I feel like a goddess. Anna, touch me. Please. I lean forward and steady myself with my hands on his chest. Come on, baby. I need this. Give it to me. And I explode, my body a slave to his, and wrap myself around him, clinging to him like a vine as he crawls out my name and climaxes with me, then collapses, his full weight pressing me into future hall of Famer Chipper Jones. In the minors, didn't you fight Jim Tome and Manny Ramirez? No, no, no. Well, we got in a brawl. We got in a brawl with the Charlotte Knights there in AAA in Richmond. My parents were at the game. They were sitting about two rows behind home plate, and Klasco had had whirly birded and, you know, King Kong, the home run. Yes. Pimped it. He pimped it. Klesco was always pimping them. So by the eighth inning, we' four or five runs. They bring their closer in, bottom of the eighth inning. To get some work in, right? Yeah, to get some work in. The first pitch went behind Klesco. The second, you know, we cleared then, but nothing happened. The second pitch, Klesko lets the back go all the way into center field, right over the pitcher's head. And we had us a donnybrook. So we get in the middle and, you know, I'm 6 foot 3, 185 pounds, you know, and for some reason, Jim Thome locks me up. Oh, no. And literally plants my into the netting behind home plate. I look up and my mom and dad are sitting right there. And my mother has this look of terror in her face. This big corn fed Midwesterner is going to break her son in half. And so that's how Jim, tell me. And I became good friends after. So wait, Jimmy, you've got your face pressed against the netting and all you can see is the horror on your mother's face. Oh, yeah. I wasn't worried about what Jim told me was doing. I was thinking, mom, I got this. Don't worry about it. It's going to be okay. Pekovich is very good. Yeah, he's good. Pekovich, the guy who looks like Superman's nemesis in Minnesota, the Russian, he's very good. I'm going to tell you. I'll just remember a game from three years ago, maybe four years ago, but it was one of Pekovich's early years in the league and he was back in Dwight under the rim, one on one. And I was getting on Dwight thinking it was a lack of effort. And Dwight came back at me and said, coach, you don't understand. That's the stre strongest man in the world. Okay, all right, I stand corrected. LeBron's not going to play tonight. Bosh isn't going to play tonight. They have bailed Dwyane Wade out all season because he's been injured and the one seed is still in front of him. You know what I'd like Dwyane Wade to do tonight in Washington? Go win a basketball game for LeBron. How about that? Win a game for LeBron. He's won plenty for you. Go win a game for LeBron James. And put some pressure on the Indiana Pacers on Wednesday night. Is that when their next game is? He kind of won game seven with those terrible mid range jumpers that we didn't want him to take. And I just laughed at the notion that, you know, Wade missed some free throws and all that stuff because I'm the world's most inconsistent man. But go with a basketball game for LeBron, a second kind of one. Game seven I he did make. He had 22 points and probably no free throws and all on stinky mid range jumpers. But I do believe LeBron had 37 in that one. Whatever fake Pavarotti. You're on ESP, ESPN radio. His choice was ebony masked, his hairline. But then the powers that be changed the design. He donned transparency, avoiding fines. The Phantom of the hardwood freakin played out of his mind Please stick a fork in it the rice is through James scored more points than Joachim's IQ LeBron shall need the heat to earth Repeat the Phantom of the hardwood AKA Listen up Stephen A. Smith, the mvp Bravo, bravo. We have missed him so ah I've just thrown flowers on the stage. He's so good you pick up fouls when you try to drive right through him. Always thinking, always thinking why can't I score without running through batty? I can't score too, nah nah he's on the floor and the ref is pointing that away Sucks for you nah, nah A chant for life, a chant for life Greeting those analytics till his big brain gets his fill act so nice, act so nice get some heated, heated, heated daily can't score too, nah, nah he's got him saying who's your daddy, Betty? A Can't score too, nah, nah that's a charge Foul's on you. He'll wind up on the bench and saying, how the hell did this happen? Oh, baddie, that's a charge, it's not a flop. Last thing you'll remember is somebody contacting. Then you'll hear it after that's a charge, that's not a flop, a charge, a charge that's not a flop, a charge. Drop the he is a Knicks fan, but is the first to claim Section 118 as a Miami Heat season ticket holder. He once left a Miami Hurricanes game early to eat PF Chang's, then blasted fans on the radio the next Monday for leaving the game early. The game he watched this past weekend was the greatest game of all time. Until next weekend, he steals his takes from Mike and Mike, unless Colin Cowherd comes on and gives a better one, he is the most inconsistent man in the world. I don't always have takes, but when I do, they're all over the place. Stay inconsistent, my friends. Jesse Ventura with us now on ESPN Radio. He's sleeps in the nude. What would Jesse Ventura say is the most radical conspiracy that you believe is absolutely true? Well, I wouldn't necessarily call any of them radical, you know, because people that study conspiracy theories, they did a study in England and found that they're the majority of them are more intelligent because they ask questions and that they don't accept the status quo. I think the most important one is the murder of John F. Kennedy because that was a coup d'etat that took place in our country and it changed the world. Would be a different place today if Kennedy had lived. I firmly believe that. And it also begs the question that if you can kill the President and get away with it, what can't you do? When you were in government, what did you find most dismaying or hopeless? Well, the one thing I wrote about that I felt the public should know when I was governor was that you have the CIA embedded in all state governments. I can't believe Minnesota as an exception. And what I mean by that is I stated that in that book. I won't name who it is because I could go to jail for that. But the person wears a double hat. They work at an upper echelon government position, but they're also contract agents for the CIA and only the governor and the chief of staff know of them. Now the thing that's disturbing about that is that the CIA's mission statement says they're not to be operational in inside the country. So why are they? I have no way to answer that question, obviously. Right. Neither do I. Yes. Jesse Ventura with us here on ESPN Radio. Hmm. Should people trust our government, Jesse? Well, I certainly don't because they lie to me so often and then they cover it up with this blanket called national security. Anything they don't want you to know about, they say it's national security and you can't learn about it. You know, I got in all sorts of trouble when I questioned. Well, I've been vindicated because in the chapter, the new chapter in the book, the 911 report has 28 redacted pages that we're not allowed to see that George Bush redacted them. Well, Congressman Cook and Senator Graham were on the Intelligence Committee. I've spoken to both. They've read it. They said there's nothing there dealing with national security. What it deals with is that the hijackers were financed by upper levels of Saudi Arabia. Now that changes 911 completely, doesn't it? Well, wait a minute. You've been vindicated on what there because there was more to 911 than what we're being told. And what more was there? What more? They were being financed by the Saudi Arabian upper level House Assad. Who's the buddies with George Bush. Wait a minute, Jesse, you can't, you can't just lob that out there. I'm not lobbing it out there. It's what's in the 911 report that they won't let us see. There's 28 redacted pages. There's a bill in Congress to make it public. It's been over 10. Why can't we know what's in those 28 pages. Okay, but you don't know that. What? You don't know what's in the 28 redacted pages. I know because I'm taking the word of Congressman Cook and Senator Bob Graham, who both have read it. I talked to them on my show off the Grid. They've both told me all it deals with is a financial. That these guys were under the financial care of the Saudi government. Hello? Yeah, Buddy. I want to talk to you about this LeBron situation. LeBron? Yeah. What happened to LeBron? LeBron, he left us, buddy. He up and left. I know, I know. He's gone now. You know, he came, he came down here to Miami as a loser four years ago and now he goes back as a two time champion. I think he used us, buddy. He comes here, he takes all the resources, and now he's gone to Cleveland, buddy. That's right. He said bum. You don't believe anything you read or anything that he says. You know, he just. He's funny. The guy is funny as a three dollar bill. Yeah. First he loves Miami, then he loves Cleveland. He loves everything, this guy. That's right, that's right. I just hope that he stays in a Ohio there in Cleveland. He never comes back to South Beach. That's right there. We don't need him down here. We don't need him. It's right, buddy. We don't need LeBron. They can keep him old and broken down. LeBron. We gonna make a winner without him. That's right, buddy. I got my money on the Heat this year. They're saying that they're going to finish six in the Eastern Conference. I'm saying they're going to go to the finals this year. We don't need LeBron. That's right. We got L. That's the man of the hour. We still have Wade. Don't forget about Wade. Now we got Butch and we got. We got Little Thing and we got. We got R and we got Mickey Harrison and we got Macro and we got Danny Green and we got. Who else we got? We got a bunch of new guys that don't even know the name. But he said there's a lot of potential right there. I don't need to know their name, buddy, because it's addition by subtraction, you know what I'm saying? That's right. That's right. I heard that LeBron is coming back to play here on Christmas Day, which I'm going to send a message to all the hit fans. Here. You know when they say number 23 from the Cleveland Cavaliers, LeBron James. You know where I was going to tell the people defense in Miami just not to say anything. Not to applaud the guy or not to boo the guy. Just ignore the guy. Terrible silence in the arena. And now Poppy reads a passage from 50 Shades of Gray. Page 69. Nice. I grab the bag and dart into the bathroom, away from the unnerving proximity of naked Christian. Michelangelo's David has nothing on him. In the bathroom it is hot and steamy. I strip off my clothes and quickly clamber into the shower, anxious to be under the cleansing stream of water. It cascades over me and I hold up my face into the welcoming torrent. I want Christian Grey. I want him badly. Simple fact. For the first time in my life, I want to go to bed with the man. I want to feel his hands and his mouth on me. Let's go States he tries to leave the show early for Passover yet plays golf on Yom Kippur. He will bash you and your policies on the air and then have you booked so he can agree with your every word. He'll be glad to see Mello leave the Knicks but so angry if Mello actually left the Knicks. He demands unmitigated toughness from pro Athens, yet called the police when he found a frog in his garage. He is the most inconsistent man in the world. I don't always have takes but when I do, they're all over the place. Stay inconsistent my friends. Now what you going to do with it with it now what you going to do with it with it now what you going to do with it now what you going to do I put this sat in your face now what you going to do with it now what you going to do with it now what you going to do with it? Got a smart few data that I love to collect got this one for you data that I love to collect load up load up load up you better have my stats where my Internet connects load up you got a regression to the meme that is stat that I check I ain't a fan I'm a whiz that I respect little boy if you want to shoot mid range I'll be creed ticking effective field goal percentage coefficient call Terrell Mori be ingrows baller at the scene mean median mo get algorithms to encode ha ha sorry if you didn't know ha then I read Zach low med tricks with a hater steel troll Adam Habashro I love habashro I love how I'm strong. I love how I strong. I put that stat in your face. Now what you going to do with it? With it. Now what you going to do with it? With it? Now what you going to do with it? Got the smart few data that I love to collect. Got the smart few data that I love to collect. Load up, load up, load up. The Coastal Carolina Chanticleer. Coastal Carolina, dangerous team out of the Big South. 249 overall, 12 and 6 in conference. Cliff Ellis, very good and experienced coaches. Coaches, some big schools as well. He is tournament ready. Warren Gillis is their leading score. Very underrated player. They have Gillis, they have Wiggins. They have a very good defensive team, A very deep bench. Again, 249 overall. I like this team. I like their experience. I like the experience at the most in important position on the court. And that's the head coach. And that's why I think they're going to be a tough out. So now Cassidy Hubbard is scampering in here. And Stugotts, what do you have to say to her? Well, I mean, I apologize. I think the flattering thing for Cassidy is even though she wasn't there and even though it wasn't her, I was thinking of Cassidy. I mean, that should be flattering. Well, you want to apologize? She's right here. Thank you. Thank you. You want to apologize to her face? I apologize, Cassidy. I really do. I should be apologizing to Tony as well. Hopefully we'll get. Do you like Tony or is she nice at least? Tony's very. She's from Miami. She went out of her way the last time she was here to find. Last time I was here, sweetheart. I really like her though. Right? She went out of her way to find me because she's from Miami. She likes our show. She wanted to meet me. That was like a month ago. And you and I did first take, I don't know, what, six months ago. I left a good impression on you, though. Then you left a great impression on me. I am really embarrassed right now. I don't embarrass easily. Well, you're about to be more embarrassed a little bit more. Oh, no, because that's Tony. That is Tony. Cassidy does not look like her. It's the same girl. You said we have brown hair. Now, did you introduce that? Tony? Are you telling me. I hate all of you, Tony. I hate all of you. You even offered advice to me two weeks ago. If you need help with anything. Tony, stop it right now. Don't get Mad at her. Tony, stop it right now. Tony, I love you. I apologize. I feel terrible. This is such a bad trick that you played on me. Levitard. How dare you do this to me. Ryan's idea. How can you not know that? This is. Tony. We had a little. Little scuffle on ca. We was back to back. So wait a minute, what was that? What was happening there? You just, you sized up, you went back to back and both of you had your fists up. Who were you fighting against? Couple football players. Couple 300 pounders. We started our ground. So you're back to back with some football players. How'd that go? It wasn't better than we thought it would. Hold on. What did they do to make you get into a fight that you didn't think was going to go very well in the first place? It was just so many. It was so many, you know, and it's like, it was. It was about like, like a 20 on 5, but you know, there like 2, they. 300 pounds, you know, 6, 5. 300. So it's really like 30 on 5. Hold on. What was her name? Like this had to start over. Her. What was her name? You said what was her name? Yeah. What was her name? What was her name? Yeah. Oh, man, I just know she ran track. I told you. I just know she ran track. That's all. It's always the one that runs track. You hear this thing about President Obama? I mean, you hear what he did today, the President of the United States? He called Tim Howard and Clint Dempsey and congratulated them on a great World Cup. That's where we've arrived at here with soccer, with President Obama. We're congratulating guys for losing, for being losers. Essentially, they're losers. They were 1, 2 and 1. Hey, it's President Obama. Congratulations on being a loser. Really? That's what he's doing. Did he call Peyton Manning last year after they lost the Super Bowl? Did he call any of the New York jets after they got off to multiple one and two starts? He called guys and congratulated them on a great World Cup. And here was the Great World Cup. 1, 2, 2 and 1. You know who the loser is here? Our president. The Valparaiso Crusaders. Ah, the Crusaders from the Horizon Conference. Valpo. Bryce. Drew. Homer Drew. The Drews are everywhere. Alec Peters, their leading scorer. Very good team, veteran team. But sometimes these team from the smaller conferences like the Horizon League, they tend to have their players stick around until they're juniors or seniors. So you have a veteran like Laden team here Peters their leading scorer and rebound their 16 points, seven rebounds per game. They have Fernandez and Carter as well. Valpo's motor only runs when Alec Peter turns the key as Valpo was 261 when Peter scores at least 10 points and 2 and 4 when he does it. Sinking buckets will be tough as the Crusaders have the 8th best defense from the field in the nation. This is a team I'm really keeping an eye on and that's why the Valley Crusaders will be a real tough out in the tournament. Long ago. What was that? What? That sound. I just got a text. Really? What do your texts sound like? I just use the normal text tones. That's awful. That's no way to live. I get my tones from stugottstones.com stugottstones.com yeah stugottstones.com your sister just had her baby. Gri. There's a deadly story storm approaching unparalleled. That girl you met last night, that's dugoutstones.com. you know, once I approve the ball, like I said, that's the ball that I expect out there on the field. And then it's game time. I choose the balls that I want to use for the game. Oh, you know, they know how I like it. And that's, you know, exactly the way they are. Little TMI for your psi. I think that's a great thing for all quarterbacks to have the balls in play that they want to use. Especially guys like David Woodley, Brad Johnson and Jake the Snake. The quarterbacks always, you know, will throw the balls. I forgot Mark Bulger. When I felt them, they were perfect. I mean, they. I wouldn't want anyone touching those. I would zip those things up and lock them away until I got out on the field and had the opportunity to play with them. Don't zip too fast. Some days, one ball may feel good, the next day it may not. You should probably get that checked out. I don't think anybody knew there was an issue with the balls. Sometimes they just flare up when I pick those balls out at that point, you know, to me, they're perfect. Yeah, they are. I don't sit there and, you know, try to squeeze it. You might go blind. I grab it. I feel the lace, I feel the leather. What kind of thing you working with, pal? You know, you go through that process of breaking the balls in and getting comfortable with them. Beginning to think you're doing this on purpose. Everybody has a preference. Some guys like them round and okay. Some guys like them thin. I'm following you. Some guys like them tacky. Go on. Some guys like them brand new. Some guys like old balls. I mean, they're all different. Yeah, like Anna Nicole Smith. Wait, what? So is this true? We've heard an urban legend and you can confirm it for us now. You know what I'm going to ask him, right? Is it true that the Kim Mutombo used to walk in. In his heyday, in the glory days of his life, used to walk into a nightclub? You know what? I'm going to ask, too. Used to walk into a place and say, don't believe on that crack. I know where you're going with that. Go there. Keep going. Keep going. Let me tell you. Let me give you something. Let me give you something. That way you know where I'm going. No, no, no, no, no. I know where you going. I always say, who came out with that crap? I thought I asked everybody who came out with that crap. Hey, Levitard. Driving around a lot this weekend, thinking. Getting increasingly angry at LeBron James. And I'm telling you right now, I'm just. I'm telling you now before it happens, okay? Telling you now. If they get. But if he wins a championship in Cleveland and he's up on the podium afterwards with the Larry O'Brien Trophy and the finals MVP trophy, because who the hell else is going to win another team if he gets up on that podium and says, this championship means more than any of the other championships I've ever won? I'm telling you now, I'm going to figure out a way to punch him in the face. I'm gonna light Rich Paul's suit on fire. I'm just warning you, the first one's always the sweetest. The first one is always the sweetest. And you know what? Miami got to see it. Cleveland did it. Punching him in the face, lighting Paul's suit on fire. Get out of here, Dan. I got these. I'll take it from here. Give it to me. Give it to me again. Give it to me again. You can go back home, but the trophy stay here. 24.1-first half from way Cleveland hasn't seen something cash fire like that since they dumpy toxic leg Feliz and Ono way toward you. A new one, buddy. Hey, LeBron, how many free throws did you miss last night? Not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, not seven. LeBron raises arm after the hitch Classy video tribute. I raise a finger. There is no I in hit, but there are multiple elves in Cleveland. Kevin Love. I haven't seen that many bricks in Miami since Scarface. Give it to me again. I'm not finished. Give it to me again. One more time. Give it to me again. LeBron fell one short of weights point total. He's also one shy of weight string total. And he is three shy of weights testicle total. Dan Gilbert was more red faced than your city's face's baseball logo. They didn't have an answer for Hassan Wise rebounding juggernaut Kevin Love only had five rebounds last night. Multiply that by four and you got the number of Brown starting quarterbacks since 1999. Hey, hey. Halle Berry, Arsenio hall, the Browns and LeBron James all have in common. They all had to leave Cleveland to achieve success. Give it to me again. Give it to me again. Okay, okay. I'm going to list all the great things about Cleveland now. That was it. Howdy folks. It's Mike making this podcast. Time. Miller Time. That's right. Miller Lite makes all the great times even better. Why? Dependability for one great taste. Less filling. You know exactly what you get. Everybody's gonna be happy because they're gonna be drinking on a beer that tastes like beer. Can you imagine it? A taste that you know that you can depend on. No games, no gimmicks. Just great beer for people who like beer. And that is immense. Come this holiday season, say you're hosting or you're going over to a holiday party. What do you bring with you? A 12 pack of the Miller Lights. Beautiful color, wonderful white cans. This incredible flavor that you know only Miller Lite can deliver you. And at just 96 calories and 3.2 grams of carbs per 12 ounces, miller time is always a good time. Making memories at your year end gatherings. Tastes like Miller time. 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