Oral History of the Dan Le Batard Show: Episode 7

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz – Oral History of Episode 7

Release Date: December 13, 2024

Introduction

In Episode 7 of the "Oral History of the Dan Le Batard Show," Dan Le Batard, Stugotz, and other key team members delve deep into the transformative period of the show’s evolution. This episode captures candid reflections on professional decisions, personal struggles, and the camaraderie that shaped the beloved South Florida-based sports and pop-culture podcast.

Transition to ESPN and Time Slot Changes

The episode begins with an exploration of the show’s pivotal move from local afternoons to a prime midday slot on ESPN Radio. Stugotz highlights the professional implications:

[02:37] Stugotz: "The decision to go to middays really changed everything for us in a variety of ways."

Dan recounts his reservations about the transition, fearing it might dilute the show’s unique charm:

[02:58] Dan Le Batard: "I was probably unhappier than I'd ever been while we were doing this... fearing that we were ruining what made the show special."

Mike Ryan elaborates on the strategic advantages of the new time slot, emphasizing increased reach and cultural impact:

[03:00] Mike Ryan: "Being on in the middays... our show got so big because we were in so many markets."

Challenges and Internal Conflict

As the show gained national prominence, personal and professional tensions surfaced. Dan struggled with the rapid growth and the changes it brought to his personal life, leading to underlying resentment:

[07:36] Dan Le Batard: "Resentment was an undercurrent in just about everything we were doing..."

Stugotz and Mike discuss their efforts to support Dan, balancing career advancements with maintaining personal relationships. Chris Cody shares his journey from an eager intern to a full-time team member, reflecting on Dan's initial skepticism towards a career in radio:

[05:13] Chris Cody: "I was actively telling him this is a very bad path for you."

Turning Point: Moving to a New Studio

A critical moment arrives when the team relocates to a more intimate studio setting, restoring Dan’s sense of connection and creativity. Stugotz credits this move with resolving major conflicts and revitalizing the show:

[52:26] Dan Le Batard: "It just felt like something we were doing together... it was something we were doing in a way that felt good."

Mike Ryan reflects on his role in facilitating this transition, emphasizing the newfound trust and mutual support:

[57:48] Stugotz: "I truly think I got most of Dan's trust because I overcame some hard stuff."

Overcoming Resentment and Building Trust

The relocation to the new studio marks the beginning of a golden era for the show. The team overcomes previous tensions, fostering a stronger bond and enhanced creative output. Stugotz acknowledges his personal growth and the positive impact of the move:

[24:46] Stugotz: "We had to go through a hell of a ride... but we survived it."

Dan expresses gratitude towards his team for navigating through the turbulent times, reinforcing the importance of their collaboration:

[69:30] Dan Le Batard: "Everything after that will work out. Everything after that has worked out."

Creative Renaissance and Final Reflections

With resolved conflicts and a harmonious working environment, the show experiences unprecedented creativity and popularity. Mike Ryan and Stugotz highlight how their collective efforts allowed the show to flourish, incorporating innovative segments and expanding their digital presence.

[56:15] Mike Ryan: "It was a great building block for this team... the most creative period for our show."

Dan reflects on the lessons learned during this challenging phase, emphasizing the value of maintaining authenticity and protecting the show’s unique voice amidst commercial pressures:

[37:20] Dan Le Batard: "The intimacy... needs to be treated preciously."

Conclusion

Episode 7 of "Oral History of the Dan Le Batard Show" offers an unvarnished look into the complexities of transitioning a beloved local show to a national platform. Through honest dialogue and mutual support, the team navigated professional challenges and personal struggles, ultimately fostering a resilient and dynamic environment. This episode serves as a testament to the enduring spirit and collaborative prowess that continue to drive the success of "The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz."

Notable Quotes

• Dan Le Batard [02:37]: "I was probably unhappier than I'd ever been while we were doing this... fearing that we were ruining what made the show special."

• Stugotz [24:46]: "We had to go through a hell of a ride... but we survived it."

• Stugotz [52:26]: "It just felt like something we were doing together... it was something we were doing in a way that felt good."

• Dan Le Batard [37:20]: "The intimacy... needs to be treated preciously."

• Mike Ryan [56:15]: "It was a great building block for this team... the most creative period for our show."

This comprehensive summary encapsulates the essence of Episode 7, providing listeners and non-listeners alike with an insightful overview of the show's evolution, internal dynamics, and enduring commitment to creativity and authenticity.

Transcript

[Dan Le Batard]

You're listening to DraftKings Network.

[Stugotz]

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[Dan Le Batard]

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[Stugotz]

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[Dan Le Batard]

From streaming to shopping. It's on Prime.

[Chris Cody]

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[Mike Ryan]

This episode is brought to you by Lifelock.

[Stugotz]

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[Greg Cody]

More time online, and more personal info.

[Mike Ryan]

In places that could expose you to identity theft.

[Stugotz]

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[Dan Le Batard]

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[Stugotz]

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[Greg Cody]

Visit LifeLock.com podcast terms apply.

[Dan Le Batard]

Turn Levitate the Wiping Experience Sitting or standing Stoogarts.

[Mike Ryan]

I honestly, until after the segment ended and we went to commercial break, had no idea that Jonathan Coachman was black. 20 mediocre years.

[Dan Le Batard]

So what?

[Billy Corben]

Your kid has ringworm? Dandy Bear Elder Inside the Gus Machado.

[Mike Ryan]

Red Zone this is the oral history.

[John Skipper]

Of the Tan Lerd show with Stuarts.

[Dan Le Batard]

I know Mike has referred to some of the stuff that came before this as spicy, but I view as this time ahead our most tumultuous time together because we were growing more than we had ever grown and I was probably unhappier than I'd ever been while we were doing this during the period ahead because I am not good with change and I had a lot of change happening in my personal life and the professional life had a change that Stugatz and Mike were advocating for that I was resistant against. And the resentment was an undercurrent in just about everything we were doing because I was fearing that we were ruining what made the show special by grabbing it more and more things that we wanted, that we needed, that the show benefited from, but was making my daily life a little more unhappy and uncertain than I wanted it to be given given that all our dreams were coming true.

[Stugotz]

We'll get into all those particulars in this episode that'll cover probably the second most important decision because the decision to leave ESPN when that time came was probably the biggest for our lives, but professionally, second biggest decision the show ever made and it wasn't going to ESPN in the first place because we had carved out a nice little lane There in afternoons, no one was really paying attention to us.

[Mike Ryan]

We had already made that decision.

[Stugotz]

Yes, the decision to go to middays really changed everything for us in a variety of ways. I guess professionally, there were a lot of benefits too. Our reach was about to increase dramatically. Our visibility, our cultural impact, the money that we made, all this was a bit of a game changer for us. But what Dan was consistently warning against as you and I pushed for this move to replace Colin Coward, and we'll get into all those spicy details here in this episode, was we go to this great prize piece of real estate in radio and all of a sudden, overnight, a lot of suits that left us alone, that probably left the office early, before we even turned on our microphones in the afternoon, all of a sudden had to justify their jobs and their responsibilities and pay attention to a show that didn't really care much for the ESPN brand.

[Mike Ryan]

And just so the audience knows, the change in times was big for us because when you're doing a national show, being on in the middays, being on from 10 to 1, that's the spot where you're going to get the best chance to be cleared in major markets. Because major market stations care the least about the middays and they very much about afternoon drive and morning drive. And so for us, going from 3 to 7, 4 to 7, and then 10 to 1, that was a big, big move and a big, big reason as to why our show got so big. Because we were audit so many markets.

[Dan Le Batard]

It makes you instantaneously in the conversation for the biggest, most powerful sports radio thing there is in America.

[Stugotz]

So let's get into how that opportunity presented itself initially. But we have to address that around this time. It's kind of an ambiguous timeline. Chris Cody was an intern and then made full time, I think briefly by Lincoln Financial, which was about to sell to enter. Com. Chris Cody goes from Nepo baby intern to Nepo baby employee and joins our team formally. Because I remember Chris in the Clevelander as we were building stuff out, being a big part of that process.

[Dan Le Batard]

After I had advised him that there was no career for him in radio because I thought sports radio was the shittiest business in the world. And I wouldn't admit advise him to choose it as a career path, even if he was unhappy as a baseball coach, high school baseball, some of the small jobs he was doing, I was actively telling him this is a very.

[Mike Ryan]

Bad path for you way to sell it.

[Chris Cody]

I was a listener of this show for many, many years, big fan of it, and then Kind of just meandering through life, not knowing what I wanted to do. My dad had mentioned that him and Dan had had conversations where they could have a spot for me to just sit in a corner and kind of intern. I ended up talking with Hawk and Mike Ryan at high lie Daniel Highlight because we would do these poker tournaments that Hawk let me in for free because, like, they had some comps. So, like, as Greg Cody's son, I would just get to play in these poker tournaments for free. So I went there once to meet Hawk and it was just basically them saying, yeah, we could use an intern. They can't make any promises for money, but you can come and learn. So I just sat in a corner for probably six months. Billy we were logging the show on a composition notebook. Like this was 2010. So like we could have been using Google Docs and having something that would save. But instead we were logging the show on a. That you'd have in elementary school. Those black composition. Billy had stacks of these things just turning the page every day, handwriting them. Hard to find stuff, you know, hard to go back. I remember answering phone calls. I remember we would do like 40th caller because of you. Donna Tlum's jersey number. So now I have to go.

[Dan Le Batard]

Hello.

[Chris Cody]

Caller one, you're not the winner. Caller two, you're not the winner. So it was just months and months of sitting in a corner trying to be eager with ideas. I was just trying to keep up. That was a scary time. I was just trying to take it all in. Thinking back on that time is pretty crazy. Had interned for over a year at this point, coming in a couple times a week. I was almost at a point where I was not sure if I could do it any longer. I was like, I, I'm not getting paid. I need to focus on something that's going to pay me. I remember Billy kind of giving me. I've heard rumblings that we could be going to ESPN soon. So just kind of hang tight. Like, Billy gave me a good things could be coming here. So kind of hang tight. And you know, within a month of that conversation with Billy, we sign with espn. They make me full time. There were plenty of interns, you know, Josh Appel many interns with this show that could have been me if they just had the right Tim. I got really lucky that the LeBron stuff and all the rants, it was all happening right here, right as I was just sitting in a corner. And as we went to espn, another spot opened up. Just made the most sense for Me to be that guy. And I just remember going from the corner, sitting in the corner at 790 to oh, we're going to be at the Clevelander and I'm going to have a spot next to Billy in this back row where it was just like, okay, this is changing from, you're just in a corner screening calls, logging a show on an old composition book that doesn't make sense to you are going to have a mic in front of you and you might actually talk on the show. Man, was I terrified to talk for like the first two, two years of my existence on this show.

[Stugotz]

Tell me more about that. Because you, one of your best friends in the world is Greg Cody and his son wants to do this. It's one thing to say, yeah, we'll give him an internship, see if he wants to try it out. But by then you grew a bit more of a callous to the radio industry. Having gone through the primetime media days, your tone with Chris Cody was a loving one. Like, I don't think you want this in your life because it's a very difficult industry. And I'm curious to know how those conversations went, not just with Chris, but perhaps with his father.

[Mike Ryan]

Those are the things you say to someone you care about. That was you. You were caring for Chris Cody. You did not want to lead Chris Cody down a bad path.

[Dan Le Batard]

It's not just caring about him though. It's the same kind of conversation I have with people when they say they want to be writers. I'm like, the industry isn't great for there to be a 20 and 30 year future where you feel like you're climbing towards something. You're going to have a lot of obstacles that get in your way and a lot of people who aren't very good at solving them. And all I was seeing was the rear view mirror of I'm coming out of the golden age of this. This is as this is going to get. Our situation is not a real situation like our situation you might be able to work in for a while, but I don't think it will promise you better things if you have success here.

[Chris Cody]

I remember Dan many times telling me that this was not the career this industry was heading in the wrong direction and there was not going to be good money in this business. And even when we got to espn, I remember having these conversations with him still at the Clevelander parking garage of see the salary we're giving you. This is not a salary that is going to sustain you for your entire life. Life. Luckily, all the Things happen Now we're at DraftKings. We're all doing much better. But I didn't take Dan's advice because I didn't have many options. I would say, you know, if people were, you know, fighting over my talents, you know, I may have left. But I'm not going to lie, there wasn't a lot going on for me at that time. So I just stuck it out with the show. And like I said before, I was just having so much fun and I was happy going to work every day that even though ESPN wasn't paying, you know, a great salary, I was still very happy, feeling very content. My appetite was being satiated, I would say every day I was like excited. What were we going to create? What fun things were we going to do? So I was able to look past there not being a lot of future in this career just because we were having so much fun creating stuff.

[Mike Ryan]

He didn't take your advice.

[Stugotz]

I was, I was happy to have Chris aboard though. Very quietly. And I'd say quietly because as we've highlighted before this era, the shipping container is just about finding its voice. But the full on ensemble that maybe the audience now knows wasn't fully developed. These characters individually and collectively were fully developed. But we were a very young team and it was very different than what you had before when you had Mark Hockman's cul de sac in charge.

[Mike Ryan]

Mike, I'm, I'm interested because you have a very good pulse of the back room and what that room needs. Did you feel like you needed someone like Chris Cody at that time for show?

[Stugotz]

Chris was a good vibes guy too.

[Mike Ryan]

Yes.

[Stugotz]

He was great for morale. He had a good energy in there. He was fun, light hearted. Billy was stressed with all these additional responsibilities. Roy is very cerebral. So to have that youthful energy there was good. And we also got even more, more popular by being so much younger in that back room. You guys were the young hip show, if you can imagine that way back then.

[Mike Ryan]

Yeah.

[Stugotz]

And I think it was in small part due to the young people around you. You were playing literally in your studios to a younger audience. So you really sharpen that skill. So the show starts humming. We feel good about the show that we're doing in the afternoons for ESPN Radio. We have contacts like Amanda telling us what a great job that we're doing. Trog Keller's telling us what a great job that we're doing. Colin Cowherd has a contract that is expiring and he is making it pretty well known that he Is negotiating with Fox. This is around the time that FS1 launches and they want to make a big splash with their talent signings. So it seems as though Colin cowherd is going to leave the mothership and we are the likely replacement there. Conversations, I imagine, start happening with trace, and I'm curious, was it your feeling that we were. I feel like we were the obvious backup to. They were clearly trying to extend with Colin Cowherd, but they weren't going to pay him. That had. Had Colin Coward decided to leave, we would be the show that replaced him. I want to know what those conversations were like with Trace, your agents, espn, and did you even talk to Colin about it?

[Dan Le Batard]

We were cheaper than Colin. We were there. We were a pretty obvious choice to do that kind of show in that market, given that we had developed on their airwaves and developed relationships with some of the people there that I have been negligent in crediting. While we've talked about just general bozo executive that you find in the radio industry, Amanda and Liam and Trog, these were genuine real people and real radio people. They did understand what made good radio. And their friends and their kids were talking to them about this show that had a little more conversation around it than the average show because it was a little bit different. So we had the full support of the important people we needed to have the full support from. And I was talking to Colin Cowherd during all of this, and I was advising him strongly to not leave espn.

[Mike Ryan]

Well, that's interesting because Colin, one time when I was up in Bristol, he cornered me. He was eating a bowl of soup while walking down the hallway.

[Dan Le Batard]

Not a bowl of cup. Right. It wouldn't. He wouldn't have been walking around the hallways with a bowl.

[Mike Ryan]

I feel like it was a French onion bowl, like between a cup and a big bowl of soup. It was somewhere in between that. It felt like a bowl to me.

[Dan Le Batard]

You have like a. No.

[Mike Ryan]

Colin's weird. I mean, I love him, but he's weird.

[Dan Le Batard]

Okay, but you have the bowl like a French onion bowl, like something you'd find in a pottery class.

[Mike Ryan]

Yes. With a plate underneath of it. Yes.

[Dan Le Batard]

I don't. I think he was probably. It was a cup of soup, was it not?

[Mike Ryan]

Anyways, you got it with hands for the pottery.

[Dan Le Batard]

He corners you and he starts telling stories and does a monologue for you because that's how he talks to everybody.

[Mike Ryan]

Well, he's asking me about, um, the football program, as if I have any information about the, um, football program that.

[Dan Le Batard]

Colin would want conversational icebreaker so that he can tell you what he's thinking about what he's gonna do with his career.

[Mike Ryan]

Oh, and he told me me and he told me he was thinking about headed to Fox. And I said to him, that'd be a good career move for you. Now, I said it to him because I wanted to take over his slot because I wanted all the listeners, I wanted all the money and I wanted everything that ESPN had to offer. So I said, colin, good idea, Fox. Go there. Go now.

[Bomani Jones]

I'm John Skipper. I was once president of espn. When Colin Coward left ESPN for Fox, it left a hole in our radio schedule and there was some discussion about what to put in there. Was there resistance? It was always resistance internally at ESPN to Dan. Right when we originally installed him in Miami, there were a number of people who didn't think we should have studio facilities in Miami. And I did have to tell Trod Keller, the very capable head of ESPN Radio at one point that we were going to lease the studio and I expected him to do it quickly. So wherever the resistance was, I didn't have to deal with it because there all were people who worked with me. And the influencer I had was I got to say what went after Colin Coward's show and we ended up putting Dan's show there.

[Stugotz]

The motivations to move to middays were pretty obvious. But for those that don't know, Dan had a very different relationship with time. Dan was a single man. Didn't have kids.

[Mike Ryan]

Yeah.

[Stugotz]

And had just moved into a studio that was blocks away from his home. So when we were in the afternoons, I'd be doing all my pre production. I'd get there close to noon. Our show would end at 7:00. I got a ton of post production to do. And then I leave the island and I crawl across the 8:36 and I'm getting home sometimes around 9:45. So family life is difficult to maintain at this point. A young husband. I want to start thinking about having a family. How do I spend time? Am I just not going to be a part of this child's early life with this window? And also you make stuff for people to hear it. We were starting to be a really big digital property. Certainly for espn. We were. But the time that people were getting to our podcast was when games were tipping off. Our podcast was becoming antiquated the second that we release it. I felt like if we started up and had our podcast hit to market around 1:00, 2:00 in the afternoon, it would live longer. We could still be a part of people's drive time traditions. And that's how we. We sold it to our South Florida audience because that was also something that we were worried about. I could really maximize my digital audience. So for me, life balance, money, career opportunity, the fact that you have this Cadillac of a real estate space in radio, I thought we could do a lot with it. But life balance was a huge part of it. Not just for that moment, but seeing where I wanted to take my life beyond that.

[Mike Ryan]

I'm glad you brought that up because life balance is. Is very critical. It's very important. Dan didn't have to care about it the way you and I had to care about it because we were married, we had kids, and I remember we were commuting and we were commuting. When you do the type of show that we do, I remember having this discussion with Dan early on when we started. If we just throw ourselves into it, completely into it, our entire lives, just throw it into it, we'll have a good show because so few shows do that. But when you do do it that way, it comes at the sacri of some of the people that you love. And in my case, it was my wife and my kids. Like, I just missed a lot of stuff because we were doing the show later into the afternoon and then sometimes it would carry into the evening because we had events afterwards. And so I remember thinking to myself, this is a great change because I'll be able to see my kids more and I'll be able to see my wife more.

[Stugotz]

So we start flying up to Bristol having conversations with these people and you were right to highlight that they actually had radio bona fides. Amanda Gifford came up through Colin Coward show. Liam was the executive producer of Mike and Mike for a long time. Chad Keller was a radio lifer. So inside of the ESP be an audio division, we were starting to see people that we could f with really, like, they got us, they got what we did. And it was a little bit different than maybe some previous managers that we had had when we weren't a part of an actual part of clearance over there. It becomes clear that Colin's leaving. I was actually in Bristol the day that it was reported Colin was leaving to Fox. I was sitting in Colin's studio and I got to see his entire process at the time. We just gripped it and ripped it. Dan got in in front of that microphone.

[Mike Ryan]

Thank you.

[John Skipper]

Look at me.

[Mike Ryan]

Why'd you wait so long to hit.

[Dan Le Batard]

You with the Look At Me Louie, because you were in his studio.

[Stugotz]

You were in his studio. I was working.

[Dan Le Batard]

We gotta change the Look At Me Louie to just general name dropping. The Look At Me Louie has taken on too much of an amorphous technology.

[Mike Ryan]

He didn't drop a name, he dropped a location.

[Dan Le Batard]

I know, but he wasn't saying that to Look At Me Louie, though. He was just. It's just a factual detail on where he was physically.

[Stugotz]

Well, there was a couple of interesting things that happened on that day because I believe Colin got into a controversy about Dominican baseball players that day.

[Mike Ryan]

Right.

[Stugotz]

I believe Jen Lotta was supposed to be a part of Colin Colin show, who is now with College Game Day. And she was just kind of sitting in an office as all this stuff was breaking. And it looked like Jen, who Colin specifically asked for, was now not going to be a part of Colin's show. So it was an interesting time to be there.

[Greg Cody]

I am Charlie Hume and I used to produce the TV simulcast of a LeBatard show for Fusion and ESPN. It was a sort of layered thing. In fact, it was kind of funny how the whole thing came to be in that we had always seen the Fusion version of the show as an incubator of sorts for a simulcast version of this that could end up on ESPN channel. We just didn't know when and where and what the timing of that would be. And if I recall this correctly, we had an afternoon time slot for the original iteration of the show, the radio show, and of course, the simulcast of the TV show on Fusion. It was only airing on Fusion. And then I think Colin Cowherd had signed a deal to go to Fox or rumored to sign a deal going to Fox. And we thought we had this long Runway that we were going to kind of develop. The version of the show is going to move into the tower time slot, or maybe we didn't know whether that was going to be a possibility. But then Colin, I think, said something controversial on the air about, like, a baseball player or something, and ESPN Radio execs decided to pull the plug then and there. And so just in the matter of a week or maybe even shorter, we were thrust into this new time slot in the morning, and it did not coincide with Fusion's television lineup. And so that's when we were simulcasted. I think it was a combination of ESPN U and ESPN News, and that was somehow a wider distribution than wherever Fusion was at that point in time.

[Chris Cody]

I remember Dan being apprehensive about it, and I remember Stu got and Mike thinking It was best for the show. It was best for personal lives. So because, you know, we were doing three to seven.

[John Skipper]

That's.

[Chris Cody]

It's hard to have a life when you're working three to seven. So I think Mike and Stu were very interested in, you know, having more work, life balance and being able to get out of work not at 7pm every day. That was a wild time because I was just still so young with the show that I didn't have a voice in any of this. So I was just kind of like, with popcorn. Just like, where are we going to be middays? Like, oh, we're going to be the new Colin Cowherd. Like, I was at this time so raw and still so excited to be there that I was just like, I can't believe I'm going to get free Disney passes. Like, I was just like a pig and shit. I was just, like, so happy to be here that they were stressing, though. Do we do middays? Do we do this? And I was just like, guys, I'm good. You guys decide. I'll be here. I'll do overnights if we need to. Like, this is just the best time of my life.

[Stugotz]

But also what I realized is they're used to a totally different workflow from the host that is hosting this time slot. Colin. When I sat in with them, Colin would run through his entire show twice before it actually started.

[Mike Ryan]

What?

[Stugotz]

And he would just bounce off of guys, whereas we would just turn on microphones and go. It was a little bit different because by then the zig had been established, so we know how to zag. And that's another part of this challenge that we got. But the talks to get to midday, we were pushing you pretty hard. We wanted this. What ultimately made you align with us and say, all right, let's go for it?

[Dan Le Batard]

I had everything that I wanted professionally. I had arrived at whatever it was. Was Bey the destination on the expectation for my dreams? Because I had the voice that I wanted in South Florida, and being a voice in South Florida is all that I wanted. And drive time in South Florida was better than 10 to 1 in South Florida because I had the audience driving home, and that's what I wanted. The Palmetto i95 people stuck in traffic on their way to something. I will tell you, though, that the determining factor for me on this was simply Mike saying he wanted to be home to raise a daughter who was not yet born, that he wanted to have a life where he had an afternoon or a lawn that he can enjoy during sunshine. Time on a weekday with his daughter, which was not possible the way that we were doing it. So that was sort of the tiebreaker on the differences between me and Stugott.

[Mike Ryan]

Yeah. Cause I wanted it for vastly different reasons. I wanted that time too and I wanted it for you. But I also wanted all the stuff that came with being in that time slot on ESPN Radio and being on TV on espn. People need to understand that Dan had what he wanted when he was doing the local show at 790 the Ticket. He didn't want to go to ESPN. He didn't want to do a national show. He was happy just doing 3 to 6 or 3 to 7 on 790 the ticket as people were headed to a Heat game. So to get him to go to ESPN was tough in the first place. Getting him to change time slots was very, very tricky because he doesn't like change and it's not something he wanted.

[Dan Le Batard]

But also one of the things that Mike is pointing out that is material here at 4:00 the whole sports day is played out in front of us. So I don't have to respect everything that much. It's all been chewed up and everyone has already talked about everything. Now at 10 o'clock I've got people telling me an assortment of executives who now feel comfortable telling me how we should lead off the show, what the skeleton of a show should be. What's your game plan on how it is you're handling this voice of ESPN stuff at 10am versus just do whatever you want because you're fooling around and you're not caring about what sports topics of the day need to be chewed up.

[Stugotz]

A lot of things professionally are happening at this same time. We're not thrilled with how Fusion's going. In the last episode we got into how that disrupted our workflow. We're still out on that set when this decision gets made. Lincoln Financial, who I'm an employee of at this time, is about to sell to Intercom. I see this Disney thing happen because as part of us maybe moving to middays, all my boys get to be full time. Our team gets to be paid by Disney and man locally especially the radio market is a change in and we wanted that long term stability. What ends up happening is we become Intercom in employees because that's a company that Linkett Financial sells to, which is now Odyssey. We become Intercom employees for five business days before we become. And we can't have a lapse in our coverage. So we had to go through hell of A Ride. We had to go through the entire onboarding process. There was no way. I'm like, this is so annoying. We had to do all the HR training, all of that, and then five days later we become Disney employees. So we're about to change from the Fusion thing's not working out. Those guys tried hard and I think we established in the last episode it wasn't so much them as it was was us. We had a different vision for that stuff. You start talking to Eric, Ride Home to take over the production of the.

[Dan Le Batard]

Simulcast, begging him, really begging him, give me something. I will give you no responsibilities. You don't have to do anything. Just give me something. Put it on television in some way. And so he got us a single employee, Lorenzo.

[Stugotz]

Well, Charlie is still with us at the, at the well, but we already.

[Dan Le Batard]

Had him from Fusion though. We already had. We were bringing him with us. I really wanted it to be a bare bones, no suffering thing from Ride Home. And I was just asking him for a favor.

[Greg Cody]

That's when people really started to kind of take notice of the visual version of the show and all the weird and fun stuff we were doing there. So that happens. And then at that point, Fusion, whether or not they were deciding to re up after that initial year long contract, is realizing that everyone's watching the version of the show simulcast on ESPN and no one's watching the version of the show airing later that day on tape delay on their network. So it's pretty clear at that point that they were not going to re up and we were gonna have to figure out a different way to produce this version of the show. Dan was really pushing to continue doing creative stuff with that wherever ended up. And Eric basically said, look, I already have the fiber lines here that we use every single day to produce highly questionable out of that studio above the Clevelander, running that all the way from Miami to dc. Why don't we just use the same nano control room to do the radio show?

[Stugotz]

Earlier in the day, Charlie wasn't around with us for very long because with that move to Ride Home and espn, you, Charlie, ever the climber, took this opportunity to move to the studio that the show was getting produced out of, which was Washington D.C. and which you get Charlie around those executives in D.C. around ride home, you know that his career is going to go a certain way.

[Greg Cody]

I remember sitting in that bar of the Clevelander underneath our studio and Eric calling me and saying, what do you think about moving to D.C. and doing the show from here? There was definitely a sadness leaving Miami and just the whole crew and the whole team there. And, you know, the sort of camaraderie we had in the shipping container. I still have, like, pictures and videos that last day of the big group hug we had in the shipping container. As very comedically throughout every segment, every break of the show, I took more of those Velcro show set pieces off the set until the end of the day. The entire thing was stripped off and only the Dan Lerd show logo remained up there as like a show of closure for the show. From the Clevelander, then moved to D.C. and, you know, selfishly turned out to be a great life move is that's where I met my wife. We got married in D.C. and, you know, now we have two kids and all's well that ends well. So it was definitely an interesting time moving, you know, from Fusion to the Ride Home version of the show in dc. But I think one that worked out in terms of continuing Dan's creative vision for the show through a guy and Eric that he really kind of trusted and respected. And then there was a real boom time for that show on the aftermath of that and did some fun stuff at the super bowl and a number of other places. So that's kind of how it all happened.

[Stugotz]

So Lorenzo comes aboard, and even though the support system that we had was way slimmer, when we moved to ESPNU and we went under Ride Home's umbrella, your comfort level really increased because you knew that he was at lease across it and could give recommendations. And it gave you a peace of mind that you just simply didn't have with the Fusion team.

[Dan Le Batard]

Well, also, it did better. What I was trying to get done, which is have the TV product be that was just observing the radio product, whereas making fun of it. What we were doing with Fusion was also on remote. All of this stuff is done more difficultly if it's on remote. So Fusion was in Doral. These folks were in Washington who were producing our show. But I really did just want them to be observers. One of my favorite versions of our show, I wish we had more camera equipment, was what we were streaming on the Internet with just those tiny little cameras before any of the TV production people got here. Because I've told you that I think some of the important stuff that is in the ingredients of what it is that we do is the intimacy. And when you start reaching into the environment with production elements that are inauthentic or televised, you sort of distort and dilute the intimacy. And one of the reasons I was so unhappy is because I feel like our product was suffering from the way that we were doing it when I knew that the content product was the most important thing to value.

[Mike Ryan]

How did you change your approach to content? When we move from afternoons to 10 to 1, because you mentioned it earlier, where you're more, more reacting to games but you're also, you have the ability, and you were great at this to kind of create talking points for the rest of the day on espn, which I loved. I remember within our first few weeks there I said something insane on the radio and everyone was talking about it later on Sports center and I felt great. And so I mean, how did you approach that? Because I remember talking to you about it saying we had to change our game just a little bit.

[Stugotz]

If I may, let's put pause on that because we didn't just go straight to middays. We had one bit of training with a prize piece of radio real estate that gave us all, all the kind of data that would put a little suspicion into us because Mike and Mike go on vacation. They ask us to replace Mike and Mike and we're working with a totally different team. This is a production that is based out of Bristol. We're in our Fusion studios. And for me it was a nightmare filling in for Mike and Mike. And there was one big technical mishap that happened on this show. We at this time were so reliant on off mic communication. I would constantly be in Dan's headphones because of the physical disconnect to the mix. Main production studio that was in another room. So we were heavy in each other's headphones. They set the mics because it made it easier to produce for them in Bristol to on all the time. So I was catching word from our diehard audience on social media. Hey, we can hear what you're saying. And that was never communicated to me. And while we didn't say anything that got us in trouble, I wanted people to be alert over at ESPN that hey, you're messing with our livelihoods here when you can't communicate with that. And at the time, I'm an Entercom employee, I'm about to be an ESPN employee. This is my one last opportunity to say something and not really have repercussions to me professionally. Probably took it too far. But this was the biggest argument that I had with Amanda Gifford over at ESPN where I really turned it on Extra again, me being angry, me not having the life experience, me not taking HR with espn. I'm raising my voice to my superior here because you cannot mess with my guys future like that. And it needs to be stressed. But I do know that it was part calculated in that I only had one of these cards and I'm not going to burn it up when I'm an ESPN employee. Let me do this when I have the safety of intercom. But what do you remember about your experience there and all the additional attention that came with taking over from Mike and Mike for just a day?

[Dan Le Batard]

The increased attention that you welcome when you're 10 to 1 and arguably the biggest sports radio show in America by virtue of just being in that time slot. Everything that I feared happening 10 to 1 was foretold in what it is that the amount of attention we had breathing hot air on our neck when we take over the Cadillac of everything that was born at ESPN radio, which is that is the problem property. 6 to 10am Mike and Mike is the holy ground. And we're nothing like them. We're an oddball show. We are an odd couple show, but it's a different odd couple. And we're an acquired taste over time. So just having the number of people who wouldn't get our show listening to our show as if they should is not a pleasantness that I wanted to welcome. And the hour is just so ridiculous that I remember being really tired by the end of that month because of what we had done that morning.

[Mike Ryan]

Wait, you're blaming that show for the entire month that, that we're young then that morning.

[Stugotz]

I never get used to 3:30am Are.

[Dan Le Batard]

You not forgetting how tired we were that day? Like, are you not forgetting, like how crazy it was to do that show with that amount of pressure on it because that show mattered to them. It felt like everybody who wrote our checks and was responsible for assigning our value was listening to that show.

[Stugotz]

I remember I sternly spoke to the producers that were producing from afar in Bristol. I'm like, we can' be on the air and you not relay to us that our microphones are always hot. I can't be finding out about this two hours into this show.

[Mike Ryan]

Yeah.

[Stugotz]

And I got a complaint from Amanda saying, hey, the producers didn't appreciate you criticizing them in front of everybody. I'm like, I have no direct comms. This is the only way that I'm alerted to that they can actually hear me.

[Mike Ryan]

We've been to Bristol like once. We have no idea the setup that's up there.

[Stugotz]

And I'm like, what is this culture over there? We could have lost everything. And you're talking to me about Hurt feelings from dudes in a production truck when we need to be the priority. And that was the real battle that I was having with managers over at espn. Like, if we move, it's going to be a different management style from you too, because we're more of a renegade outfit. And that's why I seized on that opportunity. So I remember I had an interesting conversation with Dan during this time because I had saved up for about two years for a trip to Hawaii, right? And this was another one of those things, which is we had a target start date in mind, and then the target start date just randomly moved up a week. And so if you see footage from the very first show that we do in the middays, I'm in a Hawaiian shirt, I have a lei, and I have, like, sunblock on my nose because I literally go straight from the airport to the studio. I remember Dan kind of holding it against me, like, why didn't you cancel this trip? Because Dan and his brother were in the studio and putting up new art, really making the show look livelier and sprucing things.

[Mike Ryan]

Fair question by Dan.

[Stugotz]

And he was like, why didn't you? I'm like, well, Dan, I presently make $36,000 a year. I save for this. It's not really one of those things like, oh, I'll get to Hawaii the next day. So there was a bit of a disconnect there, but we survived it. But this general era, Dan is less confidence in the stuff that we're making. He's got additional attention because at this point, it's inverted. I was, by the end of our run at espn, the guy going into all the rooms. If someone had an issue with Dan, unless it was a top line issue, they'd go to me. Not when we first started in middays, because they didn't know me from Adam, right? I don't have these relationships and I don't have the trust built up with Dan yet where he's sending me on his behalf. So, Dan, you're hearing all of this. You're talking to more suits than you ever wanted to in this era. You're not feeling good about the show. You have a breakup. The on air relationship with Sue Gotts is a little icy. You're not physically engaged with the shipping container over there. You're doing this on this new set that looks cool. We pop. We're on espn. You now, we have good channel placement. Our dreams are coming true. You're not entirely happy with your relationship with work. The content that you're making and the bosses that are riding you, what is your life like?

[Dan Le Batard]

I've got a lot of different stuff happening. I'm not totally aware at the time, but what is happening in my personal life is I believe that a relationship that represented the last stop on love for me and not dying alone. I believe that that relationship had fallen apart, My dog had died. And then I felt like we had also ruined the show. And I was resenting some of the decisions we made in ruining the good feeling around the show. The fact that the show was birthed not in the moments that we were talking that we would seize on, but during the commercial breaks. The interactions in the areas where I would watch Stu Gotz and observe him interacting with, like, an animal. And it would just be a fountain of material. And so whatever was doing a show easily, just observing the environment and the circus and commenting on it now became a harder and harder lift for me in everything that we were doing. It's not just comms between Bristol and Mike's in my ear all the time. It's that the shipping container is physically far away from me. I cannot see. I cannot do any of the. Roy, why are you making that face? Chris Cody, why are you making that face? I can't, like, connect.

[Mike Ryan]

The intimacy of the show was stripped.

[Dan Le Batard]

The stuff that I thought made the content special was getting diluted. And furthermore, was doing so in something that would be definitionally selling out. Mike saying, it pops, it looks great. And I'm thinking of it as only an audio product. Like, I'm only thinking of it as. These are all people who behave as if they don't know they're being watched when I'm the one watching them and then trying to unspool whatever it is that the relationship show becomes. Because you want to be a relationship show, the way that you connect with the audience, whatever the show is, whatever. Pardon the interruption, whatever relationship you have with the show. Our most valuable customers are, at least in part because we respect that this is a relationship show. And then it gives us a relationship with the customer.

[Mike Ryan]

He always was protective of us selling out, or at least people viewing it as we were selling out. And I would tell Dan that I think, like, we're Miami show. A lot of these people, they've grown up with us, they're going to be proud of us. We're landing in the most coveted piece of real estate in sports radio, period. End of discussion.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah, but. But not end of discussion. When they start asking for changes to the show. Upon landing, when I've promised that audience hey, don't worry.

[Mike Ryan]

This isn't change.

[Dan Le Batard]

This isn't going to change. Don't worry. No change is coming.

[Stugotz]

You had to fight for Ron McGill even more because when we moved, time slots are like, hey, you played douche or no douche. You can't do douche or no douche here in this time slot. A lot of things from how we did the show. And you asked a very good question about the newsy aspects of the show. How did that change process, but quickly. I just want to talk to you real quick as if Dan's not here. This was a time in the show where you knew that if you did something that sidetracked the show, got us off of a good vibe, you'd feel it. You could cut the tension with a knife. During break, Stan was clearly not happy. Part of us pushing for this growth allowed for Dan to blame somebody else for that added pressure. And we felt that, and we knew that that was a cause to doing business. For our decision to push so hard. We knew that occasionally during a break when Dan is frustrated. Why'd you guys make me do this? It was something that we heard occasional. It would cut like a knife. But we knew that that was going to be coming our way with it.

[Dan Le Batard]

I said it out loud, huh?

[Stugotz]

Often, often, often.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yes.

[Mike Ryan]

Yes. But it came with the territory. We were asking you to do something that you really didn't want to do. Me and Mike desperately wanted to do it. We were asking you to do something on our behalves. Really? You said the decision came down to Mike being able to spend time with his daughter. We were almost forcing you to do something against your will. And yes, we felt it every single day.

[Dan Le Batard]

I didn't really. I didn't realize, though, that it was so overt that the resentment was spoken. I thought in my mind that I would be just generally more passive about the resentment. I didn't realize that it was also.

[Stugotz]

Said out loud, often articulated. I don't think Sugatz and I have ever directly communicated as much as we did during that area because we genuinely loved you, and I think both of us knew that there was more going on there. It was clear to us that a lot of things were happening in your life. This was a time of change, and your relationship with work was changing, and you were always a vibes guy. If what you were doing wasn't feeling good to you, and understandably so, because at this point, you're doing it for 10 years, why is the thing that I've always felt good for 10 years all of a sudden, not feeling good, even though when this is the time that I should be enjoying the rewards. Right. So we were racking our brains over how do we fix this and also sometimes vent to one another, because we knew that we had a lot of displaced rage. No question. We probably individually and collectively occasionally dropped the ball and had reasons for you to come down on us professionally. But what was happening was a series of things that we didn't have. Rollover that would often just manifest with you saying, can't believe you guys made me do this.

[Mike Ryan]

Yes. People need to understand that Dan did this show for a long, long time before we went to 10 to 1 at ESPN with really no one but the audience paying attention. I was his boss at 790. The ticket. When we first started, when we went to afternoons, what did they tell us? Just do the show, cater to Miami. Don't change a thing. And we had two big stories at the beginning.

[Stugotz]

Richie and Richie Incognito and LeBron coming.

[Mike Ryan]

Down to the Heat. But Dan, Mike and I had many, many, many conversations late into the evening when we moved to 10 to 1 because we were worried about you. We had conviction in our decision. We knew it was right for your career. We knew it was right for the career of this radio show, that good things would happen if we moved to 10 to 1. But we also knew you were unhappy. And because you were unhappy, Mike and I spent countless hours trying to figure out, how do we make Dan happy?

[Stugotz]

And we were out of answers. Like nothing was really working. And naturally, and I understand, like, this isn't truly fair. I'm just doing this for the audience. Dan's already lived through this because. Because we've tried to pick up the pieces after that and figure out what happened there. And we've since addressed it. But during this time, naturally, Dan stressed I'm a huge ball of stress.

[Mike Ryan]

And a stress Dan is really bad for the show.

[Stugotz]

Hugely bad for the show. We're all trying to find answers. And it's. Sometimes it's just vibes. But me, early manager, unconventional climb. I'm taking this out on my shipping container. I am passing on my stress to others. I'm growing frustrated. There's all sorts of communication issues. This is a very young production team outside of Allison that I'm just struggling to connect with them, get them to be professionals in this moment. Seeds of resentment that I end up reaping a little bit later on when we probably creatively turn the corner. This is when I am probably at my worst with my Anger. This is when my communication isn't good. This is when I'm most surly. I'm just genuinely frustrated. And it's not until I find the solution, which we'll get into now that it kind of turns that corner.

[Mike Ryan]

Mike, were you worried because I was. Because we had built my character and people had become familiar with me and with the shipping container that I wasn't going to be able to be the person that we created once we got to 10 to 1 because I was worried about it.

[Stugotz]

Well, I want to talk about.

[Mike Ryan]

I remember being scared to say some stuff.

[Stugotz]

I remember you actually being strong our very first afternoon episode for ESPN Radio. You were a star that day. Dan was nervous and we were thanking you for weeks on end about how good you were at the beginning. You were probably at the peak of your powers in terms of hosting and being able to roll with these punches. You were kind of a guiding light in being able to tune out that noise and keep doing it. You a punching bag when you needed to be. And we probably don't navigate it without your general approach to it here. Your on air character is interesting, but it's so tied into Dan's approach.

[Mike Ryan]

Yes.

[Stugotz]

That it really all settles in on Dan. And part of being the 10am ESPN radio show is we set the table. And we've never set the table before. And setting the table is important to our executives over there. What about your actual approach and process did people try to meddle with?

[Dan Le Batard]

I think one of the disconnects that we have as we talk about this is a come to realize that because I'm older than you guys and because I had already had a career when we were arriving at this, my viewpoint was different from yours on time slot and other stuff, at least in part because I'm like, do you guys realize how rare it is to have no one bleep with you? Like, I'd already had a career of 10 years through newspaper, television and radio. Let's not screw this up by having so many people pay attention that they're gonna come and foul it up by saying, hey, that's Dug character. Can we change his name? Can we get rid of your zoo guy? Can we make another thousand changes to what you're doing so you'll be more ESPN when I really don't want to be more espn. So I've just got interference. It's noise, it's static. It's a whole bunch of things that weren't there before that. When I'm saying out loud, which I thought were Inner thoughts. Why did you guys make me do this? It's because the unhappiness is an infection. It becomes something that's contained. The thing that I want most is the freedom to make it the way that I want. Everything after that will work out. Everything after that has worked out. But in that moment, you guys felt the quality of the show was shaking, at least in part because you're afraid to be yourself. Stugotts, do you know how enraging that is to me?

[Mike Ryan]

Yes.

[Dan Le Batard]

After everything we'd climb over for anyone to want to change your name and want you to be anyone other than the character we decide it's okay for.

[Stugotz]

Doesn't Skipper, when we move time slots, recommend that Bomani kind of replace.

[Mike Ryan]

Recommend? He said it right to my face.

[Stugotz]

Yeah.

[Billy Corben]

Oh, that's right.

[Stugotz]

We took a meeting with Skipper just as this all happens.

[Mike Ryan]

Remember that great piece of art he had on the wall?

[Stugotz]

So many great Drogba jerseys in his. And it was cool. Being in the office of the president wasn't so great when he. When Skipper was like, hey, and who are you?

[Bomani Jones]

Consequently, there came a moment. We were either talking about moving Dan's show from the local radio to ESPN national, or we were talking about moving to a different day. Part. I was in the process of trying to bring in a new generation of talent. I wanted that generation of talent to be diverse. And there was a moment when I suggested to Dan that it might make a very good radio show for him and Bomani to do the show together. And Dan said, I have a unique chemistry with two Gotts. I want to continue that. I didn't know John very well at all. That's John Wiener did not know him very well. And Dan sent him up to Bristol to meet with me. We met in my office. I liked him a great deal when I met him. He's a charming fellow. And also at that meeting, ultimately, I realized that I wanted to get Dan, keep Dan motivated. He had a right to choose his own co host. So I agreed. And I did tell him, I'll agree, but you have to change your name because I don't think we want to do the Dan Lobatard show with testicles. And maybe since you're moving on to the national ESPN platform, you should think about, let's just get rid of that nickname. There was no budging on that either from either either Stu Gotz or Senior Louvertard. So I capitulated. Sometimes you have to capitulate to your most talented folks who have ideas about things they want to do often because it's right and often because it's the practical thing to do for the greater good. And I don't think I'm going to characterize which one of those two it was.

[Mike Ryan]

It's the day I knew just how big LeBatard was. Not physically, just in general, because we're, like, waiting for Skipper. And Skipper peeks his head out, and Leopard's like, hey. And they embrace and a big hug. And I'm like, this guy doesn't treat everyone, anyone like that. And then we get into his office and we sit down with him. And to your earlier question, Mike, Skipper flat out told me and Dan to my face that he would prefer Bomani Jones doing the radio show with Dan. And Dan said, no. He said, no, not at all.

[Dan Le Batard]

I remember that conversation. Sort of the arctic cold that blew through me on how much things can change around power if you're not careful. I was buying my girlfriend a. I was in an alley coming out of some place that sold jewelry.

[Mike Ryan]

I was gonna say weird place to get a gift.

[Dan Le Batard]

And I'm getting a call. It's a weird place to get a call.

[Stugotz]

It was an eight ball.

[Dan Le Batard]

It's a weird place to get a call.

[Stugotz]

We were at the Clevelander. It was convenient.

[Mike Ryan]

All we had was an alley.

[Dan Le Batard]

All you have is alleys all around you. But it's not a relationship that I had with him at the time that it would be normal for him to get a call. And it was a very quick call. It was an efficient call. And it was a call after every avenue had been exhausted with my agent on this front. This is the most powerful man in sports calling you to ask you if the last deal point can be. And in all this other stuff that we're giving you a show with your dad, your brother does the art, television, everything else. Can we replace your co host with Bomani Jones? And the answer was no, because I knew what our show was, and he didn't know what our show was. And that's a person who's not used to getting no when that phone call, call gets made by that person to a prospective employee, that's not a no. That usually happens. But it was like the last bit of negotiation was that personal call to replace Stuart.

[Stugotz]

I'm sure, Stugott, it hurt your ego to hear that. But on the opposite side of the coin, uncommon to have a host that says, no su gots, no show.

[Mike Ryan]

I knew well before that that that's what Dan would do. I know. Like, Mike, we know. We've been around him long enough at this point. Like, Dan's loyal, like you, you know, you took great solace every single day in knowing just how loyal Daniel was, that he wasn't going to do anything that would harm you, harm your career, harm your family. He was going to stand by you.

[Stugotz]

And he was going through a really difficult time at work understanding that. Look, I had plenty of bad days when we were on in the afternoon, plenty of stressful days. And it was really compounded by the time I got home and it's 10 o'clock and I don't have anything to take my mind off of. I had stressful days. And let me tell you, a stressful day hits different when you don't have to go through drive time traffic and you have the rest of your afternoon and evening to kind of get over. So it was tough. I was appreciative that Dan made the move. I wasn't so appreciative that we were kind of being blamed for making this move. But it's a process and we have to figure something out because there is not going to be a show anymore if we don't get this show better, if we don't get Dan in a proper head space to create. We're out on this main stage and Dan keeps making the observations because we're doing local hours before we go live for ESPN Radio. And he says things like, why does local feel so much better than national?

[Mike Ryan]

It's what we're used to.

[Stugotz]

I'm like, is it the local stories? What is it? And this was an issue that was facing us for close to a year. We were out on that main set in middays for a good chunk of time, but it felt like forever. And ultimately, thank God she listened to me. I go to Amanda, I'm like, Dan keeps saying, local hour feels better. And we keep trying to find the reasons why, but I think ultimately it might just be the room because he's not disconnected from the shipping container. It's a totally different workflow for him.

[Mike Ryan]

We did the local hour in the radio studio.

[Stugotz]

In the radio studio. And then we'd go out to the main set because it looked better and that set was wired and we wanted to look polished.

[Dan Le Batard]

We went from what is a cramped, sort of looks like a janitor's closet and was the place where people got used to watching the radio show on television, to the highly questionable set, which was a produced for television set that was very obviously something that had big lights on it and wasn't the same kind of intimate that the radio studio was.

[Mike Ryan]

And it forced us to be more disconnected than Dan wanted to be, which was super interesting because connection for Dan is like the most important thing. It was also the topics. Mike. Dan has never woken up one day in his life and said, hey, I want to talk to the people in Kenosha. He wants to talk to the people down here. So what we were discussing during the local hour, he was just more comfortable with because it's something that we had been doing for a while.

[Stugotz]

I want to once again highlight. It wasn't the subject matter, it was the room. It ended up being the room. And our aversion to returning to that room because it seems obvious, just do it from there. Well, this is a very big time move for our show. And at least on that main set, we looked the part. And to the listener, they didn't really know that the show in our mind was dipping because we didn't feel good creating it. Why would we move into this broom closet as we're ascending? Why would we go into this cramped space? They spent all this money. We have such a cool, futuristic looking set. Why would we go into a broom closet as we get bigger? That doesn't make sense. But ultimately we got past that and that had to be what changed things.

[Mike Ryan]

We got bigger, the room got smaller.

[Stugotz]

We did. So I talked to Amanda Gifford and I'm like, look, I can't get representative sample here without us being off of television for a while.

[Mike Ryan]

Yeah.

[Stugotz]

Because I didn't know if it was a studio thing or if it was a TV thing. I just knew that I didn't have the sufficient data to make the call. So let me just get two weeks in that studio, man, I'm begging you. No tv, no nothing. I need to get Dan in a place where he feels good leaving that.

[Mike Ryan]

Studio, back to the roots where we.

[Stugotz]

Have good shows, because if we string together a couple of good shows, we can turn this thing around. And it was in that two week span. And God bless Amanda for allowing it. And our partners in Ride Home allowed it. ESPNU had to find some other programming to fill in those two weeks, but it worked almost immediately. It did, and it felt good and it got Dan in the right headspace. This was around the time that we had the relationship counselor kind of shine a line on because we weren't going to say that.

[Mike Ryan]

I got to be honest, I was pissed because I enjoyed the big room and the big lights and I wanted the big lights and that. Like, I'm like, why can't Dan be comfortable out here, but he couldn't be. And if Dan's not right, the show's not right.

[Stugotz]

And it made us happier because we got our guy being happy again. What was it about that transformation that it finally clicked and we could finally turn that ugly corner?

[Dan Le Batard]

It just felt like something we were doing together for each other, with each other in that room in a way it did not feel. As I looked at you and you had a giant screen behind you that looked like a jumbo.

[Mike Ryan]

He had an island.

[Dan Le Batard]

But I couldn't see your eyes the way that I can see your eyes now. In the studio that we're presently in, I have a bunch of square footage that probably would sell if I rented it out for about $10,000 a month in South Florida.

[Mike Ryan]

It's like a first down.

[Dan Le Batard]

It's a lot of room behind me, and it doesn't even make sense that I'm not in the middle of the room or in the back of the room. But if you saw when Colin Cowherd went to Fox, how cartoon ridiculous he made his studio. I wanted that to stand as a throne above all of sports.

[Stugotz]

Speaking literally from on high. You remember when he first started having guests there, he'd like. We'd have Chris Mullen in the studio, and Chris Mullen neck would be. He would be looking straight up at Colin as Colin gave takes from on high. We knew that we had a different aesthetic. I love the way that the show looked on the main set. That little island actually look cool. We could play with that big screen. We had Brian Windhorse on. We could have a goofy photo of Brian Windhorse.

[Mike Ryan]

You just couldn't get Dan comfortable out there. No, that's it.

[Stugotz]

Because the shipping container was a bigger part of the show, and Dan would do the show off of their faces. And it's a lot different when you're doing it on the main set and you're playing to just a camera guy who's watching. You do work here in security.

[Dan Le Batard]

But there's another point here, and I know I've told you guys this story. It's something I learned after this, not before it. I didn't have the information. I don't think I've told it on the oral history. Mike Scherr, who has had a lot of experience around entertaining creative communities that enjoy making things together, told me long after all of this in the changing of studios from what we were at in the janitor's closet at the Clevelander to hear the story of Conan O'Brien when he was having his most fun, magically hungry time, coming up in the business, arriving at all his dreams, and now changing studios as part of a larger production that represents Conan O'Brien. You have arrived, arrived at success the way that Hollywood defines it. And as he walks into a giant amphitheater where they're now gonna do his show, he looks and he's like, oh, no. Oh, no, what have I done? No. This pristine, beautiful thing that I have needs to be precious. Cause it's small. Cause it's intimate. Cause I'm in the heads of the people I'm talking about. Do you know the honor it is for people to listen to what you have to say? Treat it as a precious, small thing. Don't unspool it in front of everyone for profit with lights in a way that makes the entertainer self conscious, makes them know how great they are so they can have all of the ego that comes with how great they are. No, keep it. A small band that's followed on the road by all the people who love it most. And don't betray what those people want from that show with an amphitheater. Like, I know you guys here. When I talk about the radio people who helped us, Trog and Liam and Amanda, they know what a radio thing sounds. And it's a specific thing. It's different than a television thing. It's not like a movie thing. It is more intimate as a radio thing. And I just wanted it to be treated preciously.

[Mike Ryan]

I wanted a coliseum.

[Stugotz]

I mean, we ceased being a radio show that was trying to be on TV to a radio show that TV was going to have to work around. And that decision really helped turn the corner for us. We start feeling good about what we're doing. And it really serves as a launch pad for what I would say would be commonly referred to as the golden era for this show. It saw the most growth. It saw the most creativity. This is when our show was really funny, especially sticking out compared to the rest of the network.

[Mike Ryan]

Mike. We were a show that did not belong at espn.

[Stugotz]

We were able to parody ESPN while being on espn. We were able to be anti establishment while working for the worldwide leader in sports in a coveted time slot. We got to be this renegade outfit that was still, if you get down to brass tacks, the establishment, you're doing 10 to 1 on ESPN radio. You're not this little scrappy underdog. But we always maintain that we were open, always kind of anarchists. We were punk rockers even though we had one of the biggest gigs in the nation. And this really for me and Dan too, interpersonally and for you and I, because we look back on that time as very challenging and we kind of survived.

[Mike Ryan]

It made us closer.

[Stugotz]

It did. But also with Dan, me being able to get Dan back on track with that decision in collaboration with people at ESPN that allowed for it. It changed my relationship with Dan, which was still contentious. There was still some resentment because I was one of these people that was pushing for a decision that ultimately led to a lot of unhappiness for him. Being able to fix that problem and get Dan feeling good with his relationship, with the content that he was making, with his work, with his workspace. Putting a smile on Dan's face, letting Dan see the smile on others face. This is where I became Dan's guy. This is where I truly think I got most of Dan's trust because I overcame some hard stuff. I still struggled as a manager, but I was going into the breach and fighting people on his behalf to get this done. I got buy in from espn. I really sucked my neck out there for him. It wasn't never said in this moment, but I really do think that this was a tipping point for you and I in which you became a big Mike guy. Because I was able to find the solution here.

[Mike Ryan]

Good use of brass taxes. Dan, do you feel the same way?

[Dan Le Batard]

They're brass tax, not brass tax.

[Mike Ryan]

I think he put the S on.

[Stugotz]

No, I said brass tax.

[Dan Le Batard]

The taxes. I don't know why you've made them something FICO would be involved in their brass tax. The thing that Mike articulates there is not something that I was aware of and is not something that conscious for me. He has mentioned a few different times that that is where he got trust from me. I don't remember a flip switching on that. I remember that switch flipping. Yes, thank you. I remember that happening over time, but I don't have a landmark for Mike felt it.

[Mike Ryan]

So I mean, that's.

[Dan Le Batard]

But he might be.

[Mike Ryan]

You give off a lot of stuff that you don't know you're giving off.

[Dan Le Batard]

But he also might be conflating my happiness with trust when it was just that I was happier because he had made the correct decision to make the show what it used to be or feel like what it used to be.

[Stugotz]

To me, I think getting you to be happy again and have fun and laugh with your friends, you were yearning for that at this point, for an extended period of time. It was about a year and a half. Where you're unhappy felt longer.

[Mike Ryan]

It was important to Me as well. You guys having a good relationship? Because when Hawk was there, you had a great relationship with Hawk. And that made my job easier. My job. This was the most difficult stage for me because I'm worried about whether the two of you are going to get along and whether or not you will trust Mike the way you trusted Hawk. Because when you trust your executive producer, it makes all of our jobs easier. But because I was so worried about so many things, your relationship, what was going on outside of the studio, worried about my own life. I was worried about the executives at espn. It made it a very tricky time for us to the show. And so I was thrilled once I realized that you two had landed in a spot where Dan clearly trusted and respected you. And you clearly took that and took it to the next level because you needed that from Dan.

[Dan Le Batard]

But you guys never seem to have known, right, because you guys have articulated over the course of doing this a general fear about the future that doesn't know what I know, which is the show wasn't ever in any danger of actually ending. Your jobs weren't in any actual danger of ending. The only. Only time that that was present is when I thought that you and Hawk were going to do a show together. That's the only time in our history that I've thought that the show is ending.

[Mike Ryan]

But I think at this stage, you and I had a different relationship than the one that you had with Mike. And so I felt pretty comfortable with job security. And listen, you had sat in front of Skipper and said no to Bomani.

[Stugotz]

Even as Skippers like saying, you're not Bomani.

[Mike Ryan]

I felt pretty good about it. I needed you, and Mike needed it. I needed you to get into a good place with Mike. That's all I need. So Mike was more worried about that stuff than I was at that point.

[Stugotz]

It felt like a big achievement when it happened. But certainly with the benefit of hindsight, I know that that's where I became Dan's guy. Now, in that year and a half that we were struggling, I write a lot of bad checks and seeds of resentment will get fortified because of how I handled that stress. I wasn't good at this point. I hadn't turned to therapy. I didn't know how to carry myself. I felt like if I felt frustrated and if I was being let down, I only had so many off ramps before I would just get angry. And I found out the pitfalls of being angry. And at this point, I started clashing a little bit with Allison, and I'm not really Clashing with a container so much as being frustrated with them, telling them what to do, and they're not doing it, and I'm holding them accountable.

[Mike Ryan]

But you're the one feeling it the most, though. Whatever's coming off of Dan. So just so the audience understands this, Dan is not giving it to Roy or Billy or Chris or even Allison. You're getting all of it.

[Stugotz]

Yeah. They're also in a different room.

[Mike Ryan]

Right.

[Stugotz]

So, like, I'll feel it. I'm sitting in that, and I'm just not great at being able to deal with that. And even though our show is about to turn a corner, creatively grow and really do some important good stuff that changes the game, I, unbeknownst to me, open the door for more resentment that, quite honestly, I'm still dealing with and trying to dig myself out of to this day. But I don't want to set up the next episode on such a bummer because. Because when I think about what's ahead of the show on the timeline, 2016, 2017, those were such great years for our show. It felt like we were doing some really cool big things. It felt like we were the rock stars, the bad boys of podcasting. Podcasting all of a sudden becomes a legitimate industry. And it felt like all the moves, all the bets that we put on ourselves, carrying over the RSS feed, moving to Middays. Now that we're feeling better about the work that we're doing, these bets are starting to pay off, and it kind. Kind of feel like Top Dog a little bit. So it led to a really good time, Dan.

[Mike Ryan]

Plus, you couldn't walk through a fucking airport in America and not see my face. Oh, what a time it was.

[Dan Le Batard]

I gotta tell you, though, Mike, in revisiting some of this stuff, it's interesting to hear you say that you felt like that is when you gained trust, when during this time, the visual image that stands out to me as the most obvious time. And I still see this image, and I see it with some regret that I had to change my behavior. Never mind studio, nevermind, content, anything else is. I wonder, as you were dealing with anger issues that were unresolved and not dealt with in therapy and as we clashed before this, if this visual image is staying with me because we were clashing at anger and I wasn't seeing the vulnerability in that studio. One day, while you and Stugac were trying to help me and we were standing up, up in a real small corner of the room, Mike said to my face, I'm terrified of you. And hearing that and seeing it was not something. I'd never heard it, but I'd never seen it either. Right. I don't know what the anger was covering, but it didn't feel like I was causing fear in him. And so when he says, I'm terrified of you, I'm right there. I'm like, okay, something needs to change with how I'm doing this, because it's not okay for this to be how this is landing with this person that I'm doing this for. And with.

[Stugotz]

I was an angry kid. Plenty of reasons for me to be angry. Growing up early in the industry, I saw creative sparks fly. Tension usually breed good segments afterwards. I grew up in a very angry household. Not to get too much into that stuff, but I had never had to be checked on how I carried myself. We highlighted a scenario at 790 where I got in a yelling match with Todd Castle, and I survived it. I ended up winning that political battle there. So I see a lot of bad behavior fortifying here. And shortly before I tell Dan, straight up, I'm scared of you, is because now I have to talk this thing out. Because by that point, Dan straight up told me, you yell at me one more time, this is how you lose your job.

[Mike Ryan]

Yes.

[Stugotz]

It's not going to be because of whether or not you get along with Allison, whether or not we're good, whether or not ESPN is happy with us.

[Mike Ryan]

Just respect me, Respect me.

[Stugotz]

Stop yelling at me. Like, just because you saw Hawk do it a couple of times. We're not there yet. And you are angry, kid. Like, you need to fix this.

[Mike Ryan]

But Dan, I will tell you what Mike is explaining right now and what he was going through at that time. It was real. Like those conversations me and Mike were talking about. This is going to sound funny. Was me talking Mike off the ledge until like 11:00 at night. He was terrified of a lot of stress. He just didn't want to screw up the show. Because your reactions to some on air screw ups aren't always the best. And that's fine. We understand it. You're a perfectionist. It's what makes the show the show. Mike was legitimately terrified to the point where. To the point where he's leaning on me.

[Dan Le Batard]

But you would understand where anger would misidentify as the mask for terrified. Right. If what I'm getting off of someone is anger, conflict, and not afraid at all to be in my face and instigating it on occasion, I'm not telling him to not yell back at Me, I'm telling him, hey, let's not start at yelling with you yelling at me.

[Mike Ryan]

Right. I think you embraced it. Not the yelling, just embrace someone willingness to tell you what he has to tell you.

[Dan Le Batard]

But I didn't identify it as terror. You would understand.

[Mike Ryan]

Oh, no, it was terror.

[Dan Le Batard]

But do you understand how. Of course it wouldn't land as this person's afraid of me. Quite the opposite.

[Stugotz]

There was a time there where I just didn't have many moves other than anger because I was clearly frustrated. Look, we told you. Ultimately, what ended up being our salvation was moving into that other studio. It was quite literally the answer to all our problems. How did we deduce that? By being super frustrated and angry and blaming other things that weren't the actual issue and trying to work through that. Totally being frustrated with this is not the issue. This is getting blamed for it. How do I fix this? Yeah, it's a miserable place to be at for a year and a half, but it would have been a hell of a lot more miserable if I was still hourly and getting home at 10 o'clock in the. In the evening. I arrived to the place where so many people in my industry wanted to be and I wasn't super happy with it. And I felt like I was crumbling under the pressure. Thank God we turned that corner. I was made better for it, not just as a manager, but as a person. I just didn't know it then. It was real challenging, but Dan fixed it to a large part. I don't really talk about my anger issue as it's something that I conquered. Dan occasionally says that you got over it. And I talk about it like it's recovery from an addiction and you're never fully recovered. It's constant because there are constantly times. Not constantly. I've gotten better. I've been generally more patient, but there are times where I feel it bubble up and I have to really try to avoid from ever getting my life back into a place I was so ready to be off the cuff, angry at that stage.

[Mike Ryan]

What helped you get through it? The years we're talking about right now, was it the show becoming more comfortable and growing or.

[Stugotz]

I didn't really get. Hmm. Talking about, like, the anger stuff, like specifically going away.

[Dan Le Batard]

No, I've never done that before to anyone. I've never done what I did to Mike ever, to anyone before saying just flatly, we have a zero tolerance policy right now with you yelling at me. This is not going to happen anymore. If it happens again. It's the only instance in which you're going to be fired. That's not a conversation I've ever had or thought of having with anybody.

[Mike Ryan]

Mike, let me try this again because. Because in an odd way, I viewed all of this as a positive because so many radio shows don't have relationships. They come in, they do the show, they leave, they don't care about each other, they don't talk to each other, they come back the next day, they do it all over again. And so this conflict to me represented, these are people who really care about each other and really care about the product and care about the job that we're doing, which I am telling people right now, is very uncommon in our industry. What I'm wondering is, you went through this phase where you were super angry, but I also remember shortly thereafter you becoming happier and happier. And I'm wondering how you got to that spot. Was it because he was happy?

[Stugotz]

Because he was happy.

[Mike Ryan]

That's it.

[Stugotz]

Because he was happier. But then something happens around like 2018, where I'm confronted by all the mistakes of this era. 2015, 2016, I'm confronted by everything. I wasn't fully aware of what Dan was to me as like the center of all my stress and my relationship with work not being super healthy. I ended up being that for a lot of people because I was the go between. And Dan wouldn't chastise them or criticize them or hold them accountable. And I was always that person for other people, not just in the radio studio, but for TV people, for ESPN managers. I was always a very convenient fall guy, not without blame. In many respects. I was that person that was just cost of doing business. I don't think people really understood the level of stress that I was under. My unique position, how it was so tied to Daniel, healthy relationship with work. And ultimately, I'm not going to change a damn thing. I wish I knew about the anger sooner, and I certainly wish that the way that I found out about how much I had hurt people during this time was presented at me in a different way, and we'll get to that in a future episode. But I did what I had to do to get us across that line. I know Dan has said time and time again in the last episode, in this episode, the show was never going to be over. Dan had the relationship with Skipper that if he said, I can't do this anymore, he had a successful show with Dan Le Batard is highly questionable. And then highly questionable, he was going to be fine. He would have found his way.

[Mike Ryan]

You and I live with this all the time.

[Stugotz]

I wasn't. I wasn't going to be. And I knew I had to get this show over the line by almost any means necessary. And we did. We figured it out.

[Mike Ryan]

But it made you better. I feel like it made you better.

[Stugotz]

It did. It made me better. Certainly in the long run. I am better today because of finding that solution. I am better today because Dan, whether he knows it or not, found a lot of trust in me. I look back on that time, that battle, that decision to move back into that womb, because we invite Mike Schur into it a little bit later on and he says, you guys are just in a baby's womb right now. I look back on being able to get this show right as my biggest achievement because I genuinely don't know if there's a show today. If we didn't figure that out. It was such a crucial move and it was so high stakes. It wasn't like the afternoons we had people managing us at this point and a whole economy revolved around us figuring that issue out. And we did. And then Dan, I mentioned that this is when you were at your strongest. I think once Dan got back into that studio, this is where, for my money, Dan and Stugotts are the premier pairing in sports audio. There are people that you seek out their opinions. They're giving you funny day in, day out, consistently. The timing is great. Other characters are finding the roles. The show is ultra creative. We're doing parody songs, we're doing bits, we're doing trailers, we're doing visual stuff. We're starting to have clips break out on social media. This is where the show really breaks out and it doesn't do any of that stuff if there's no show. And we had to get the show.

[Mike Ryan]

Continuing and I was so happy, go Lucky. And I just wanted to be at ESPN and stay at ESPN that I was just praying every night, two of you please get along so we can move forward and stay right here.

[Dan Le Batard]

You understand? The reason for the conflict is super interesting now that Mike presents it that way. Right. Because this executive producer job, I would say in some ways is unlike any other executive producer jobs. Even though I have seen like Skip Bayless or a handful of people, they've got who their guy is and that guy walks next to their side for 10, 15 years handling everything that needs to be handled.

[Mike Ryan]

Your guy changed.

[Dan Le Batard]

My guy not only changed, but then it became the job of the executive producer. And they don't put this on when they're looking at resumes or Looking at jobs advisories they don't put on the job description. The number one job is you protect Dan's comfort. That's the job. And you're gonna have 50 people from 50 angles needing 50 different things above you, beneath you, at your side. And the job is protect the comfort. My comfort was being inundated from every angle. The only line of defense that I had was the one guy and he was getting overrun in circumstance. So now we have to fight ESPN on. He becomes the layer to keep all that away from me. There's not a job like that. It's just we have not had an experience with the industry and these people who work here have not had a normal job. They don't know how to produce a show. They know how to produce this show. It's totally different from producing other shows.

[Mike Ryan]

People ask me all the time, what is the job. The job is Dan. That's my response.

[Dan Le Batard]

Every.

[Mike Ryan]

Every single.

[Dan Le Batard]

You produce. You produce me, us, but you produce.

[Mike Ryan]

You produce.

[Dan Le Batard]

Billy produces you. The group was producing.

[Mike Ryan]

The job is you, Mike.

[Dan Le Batard]

What? Mike was producing me and you Stugat were producing me. As a radio veteran, the two of you had your hands full producing somebody who was under it. For all the reasons we've enumerated here.

[Mike Ryan]

That time was the closest time for me and Mike. No question, because we felt like we were doing that, we were protecting you and we felt like we were producing you. But I still like every single night I would go home or day afternoon wondering if you're happy because we are talking about nonsense that you don't want to talk about. I'm ranking quarterbacks.

[Stugotz]

It's a little bit sports here, there. But when Dan says keep them away from me, keep that away from me. You're probably listening to this right now and saying, well, it seems like all the issues that you're having are just in a personal and your literal work environment. What kind of noises Mike need to keep away from you? In the next episode, Donald Trump gets elected in Colin Kaepernick becomes the topic door for a solid year. It got noisy and it gets real noisy and suits start creeping over and that's when we start being told, stick to sports.

[Mike Ryan]

I was fine with that.

[Dan Le Batard]

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[Stugotz]

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[Dan Le Batard]

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[Dan Le Batard]

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[Stugotz]

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[Mike Ryan]

My doggies Dopey and Izzy.

[Stugotz]

As I mentioned earlier, you know them and I said, you know what, I'm running low. Let me check something. Boom.

[Dan Le Batard]

Right there.

[Mike Ryan]

There.

[Stugotz]

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[Stugotz]

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[Stugotz]

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[Mike Ryan]

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[Stugotz]

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[Mike Ryan]

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[Dan Le Batard]

Wait, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.

[Mike Ryan]

Brados, this handsome dude.

[Dan Le Batard]

What kind of observation is that?

[Mike Ryan]

My observation. I saw him on Sports Center. He had a black. He had a black checkered shirt. He had a black tie on. He had the suit rocking. He was sitting next to Jonathan Coachman, which helps. And Max Br is the best looking guy. I'm just saying. Coach is a good looking guy. Listen, this is my wife. I'm telling you right now. This is what my wife said, okay? That guy Max Brados is hot. That's what she said to me. Then she asked me if Jonathan Coachman. She said, this not a bad looking dude. Jonathan Coachman. That's what she said. Does he spend all his time outside of the time that he's doing Sports center at a tanning salon?

[Dan Le Batard]

It's.

[Mike Ryan]

My wife said, telling you. Good looking dude, though.

[Dan Le Batard]

Brados or Coachman.

[Mike Ryan]

Brados is an extremely good looking dude.

[Dan Le Batard]

The tanning salon.

[Stugotz]

What?

[Mike Ryan]

I'm just telling you what my wife said.

[Dan Le Batard]

All right, let's keep. I. I mean, that's what you said. Do you know that? But let's just keep it moving. I don't. This is a disaster. Let's keep it moving.

[Mike Ryan]

I'm just telling you what you said. I didn't know how to respond to it. I was uncomfortable as well. I blame Abby Stugott.

[Dan Le Batard]

You should probably apologize here. We should apologize for what happened last segment. It went off the rails on us. What do you want to say?

[Mike Ryan]

I will apologize. You don't need to apologize for anything. I need to apologize. They are My weekend observations. I said what I said. I had no idea. And I apologize to Jonathan Coachman who has tweeted at us and he's upset and has every right to be upset. I honestly, and anyone who knows me will. Will understand this and believe this. I honestly, until after the segment ended and we went to commercial break, had no idea that Jonathan Coachman was black.

[Stugotz]

And now Poppy reads a passage from fifty Shades of Gray. Page.

[Papi]

Sitting beside me, he gently pull my sweatpants down, up and down like a horse drawers. My subconscious remarks bitterly in my head. I tell her where to go. Christian squirts baby oil into his hand and then rubs my behind with careful tenderness. From makeup remover to soothing balm for spank. Who would have thought it was such a version? Versatile liquid.

[Dan Le Batard]

Time now for our celebrity prognosticator. Unfortunately, Colin Cowherd has beat us the last two weeks. He knocked out Alan Thicke. That was very disappointing. The father of Growing Pains. He knocked out Pat Sajak. The host of Wheel of Fortune was 3 and 2 last week. Cowherd went 4 and 1. So we bring in a big gun here, Super Dave Osborne. Bob Einstein is going to get things fixed around here. Bob, how you been? We haven't talked to you in a while.

[John Skipper]

Danny, congratulations on going national.

[Dan Le Batard]

Thank you. Bob. You say that so sincerely. Are you. You're listening to the show.

[John Skipper]

I'm serious. And I just want to say how honored I am to follow Thick and say Jack.

[Dan Le Batard]

That's pretty good.

[John Skipper]

You must have been very. You must have been very disappointed when you called Merv and found out he was dead.

[Dan Le Batard]

Man, that's a 98 mile an hour factor. Dave, don't mess around.

[Mike Ryan]

Dave, are you. Bob, I should call you. Are you still mad at me?

[John Skipper]

We're gonna start with the joke of the day. Are you ready?

[Mike Ryan]

Okay, let's go ahead.

[John Skipper]

All right. 10 year old's walking down the hallway of his house here, screaming in his parents bedroom. Opens the door, there's his mother dressed in a cheerleading outfit, nothing on underneath. His father's wearing a rubber glove and swim fins and they are going at it. He says, daddy, what's going on? Don't worry, sweetheart, just having some fun. Go to bed and I'll tuck you in in 20 minutes. 20 minutes later, Father's walking. The hell are you doing? So it's not so funny when it's your mother, is it?

[Mike Ryan]

This is quite a way to get reacquainted with super date.

[Dan Le Batard]

You didn't know? Look, you have shocked. You have shocked. Bomani Jones. Bomani Jones would look less strange right now and horrified if his eyebrows shocked Monty Jones.

[John Skipper]

How could I shock him?

[Mike Ryan]

What happened to the day is we used just to get hurdled through stuff like, you know, you did like the stuff.

[John Skipper]

Oh, that's real good. Hurdle through stuff.

[Dan Le Batard]

Alan Thicke is here. Alan Thicke coming to bring some comedy to the proceedings, some fun and some extra cheese. Did you bring some extra cheese with you father?

[John Skipper]

I'm not sitting here in my shorts, but I have a beautiful thong that you might be interested in right under my Speedo here. I'm in the lap of luxury.

[Dan Le Batard]

I'm trying to figure out how to use you. And I wanted to use you as our hockey expert, but the last time we had you on this was your hockey expertise. I want to talk to us Hurdle with him.

[Mike Ryan]

Yeah.

[Dan Le Batard]

Is he the best player in hockey? Hockey correspondent.

[John Skipper]

Who the hell is that?

[Mike Ryan]

So, like, we can't do that.

[Dan Le Batard]

We want to figure out a way to use you on the show. So you could be a weekly. It could be a weekly appearance. What do I do?

[John Skipper]

What I can do is I can go back to my area of sports expertise, which is the UC Santa Barbara women's water polo team, and I can report on them regularly. They have beautiful uniforms and, you know, it just.

[Mike Ryan]

Well, that seems like an awful idea.

[John Skipper]

That's synchronized swimming with an attitude. And I can keep you up to date with their activity. You've got Sochi coming up, you know, I'll be all over that and including. I will never be stumped again by a Thomas Hurdle reference.

[Dan Le Batard]

So now you know who he is now?

[John Skipper]

Oh, yeah, yeah. We went around. He scored, what, four goals? Has he scored any since?

[Mike Ryan]

What if I told you that the pursuit of perfection isn't always a good thing? That 0 for 14 on your gambling pics isn't just possible, but will likely have real life consequences. That my picks are for entertainment purposes only. That I gave you a sly wink and air quotes when I said that thing about my picks being for entertainment purposes only. That I've run into some pretty rough people you don't want to owe money to. That I've just taken out a third mortgage. That my daughters are going to have to make new friends in public school. That I know way too much about. The University of Hawaii's football team because I'm always up late chasing. That my wife is probably leaving me and taking the kids. That if someone you never met before starts asking you questions about where I've been, tell them you haven't seen me in a while and immediately text me so I can get on the next flight to El Salvador that I know it's been a rough couple of weeks, but I've got a great feeling about the Titans plus six and a half. On Sunday, ESPN filmed presents a 30 for 30 about one man's fight to keep both his kneecaps.

[Dan Le Batard]

Just an awkward, indelicate question here that we've been talking about all day and I understand it's probably not appropriate, but I am curious and I bet we've been doing it with all our guests here. When going to the bathroom, Bud Grant and finishing with his bathroom experience, the wiping experience. Sitting or standing?

[John Skipper]

I repeat that I didn't get repeat that.

[Mike Ryan]

You want me to try it? But when? After you have dinner tonight and you celebrate the. You celebrate the garage sale when you go to the bathroom afterwards, not one but two. Bud, will you sit or stand when you wipe?

[John Skipper]

Well, that depends on the consistency what I'm doing.

[Dan Le Batard]

Thank you.

[Mike Ryan]

It's a fresh take. It's brought to you by Subway. The Subway Simple 6 menu. Six 6 inch subs, six meals, $6 every day. Subway Eat fresh.

[Stugotz]

He brags about having never been late to work, but then he leaves the show early for a fantasy draft. He does advertisements for testosterone boosters that he declares have improved his sex life and then complains about his languishing sex life on the air. He says parenting is all luck, but then requests to leave the show early for a family dinner so he can set a good example for his children. He tells everyone how great he is at fantasy sports, only to reveal years later that he hired a guy named Inferno to draft all his teams. He is the most inconsistent man in the world.

[Mike Ryan]

I don't always have takes, but when I do, they're all over the place. Stay inconsistent, my friends.

[Stugotz]

But you're making me think about Zagacky now. And I do love me some Joe Zagacky.

[Billy Corben]

The 50. The 45. The 40. 35, 30. Touchdown Miami's Aquarium. Also brought to you by Publix.

[Dan Le Batard]

And so everything on the broadcast is sponsored, like every every every play.

[Billy Corben]

It's our brands more USA Kickoff.

[Mike Ryan]

Every play.

[Dan Le Batard]

So it's everything?

[Mike Ryan]

Yeah.

[Dan Le Batard]

Is it everything?

[Mike Ryan]

Yeah.

[Billy Corben]

The live nation chains are out for the measurement.

[Dan Le Batard]

Forgive me because I have not heard the radio broadcast broadcasts of very many University of Miami football games. Is their live broadcast polluted by sponsorship on everything? Are you guys exaggerating that?

[Stugotz]

I mean, it's a parody of sorts. It's definitely a bit of an exaggeration, but yeah. Touchdown.

[Billy Corben]

That's a Miami Sequarium.

[Stugotz]

Touchdown is ruining every great call.

[Dan Le Batard]

Texter writes in that Mike Ryan's parody of Zaggy is 100% dead on. Hilarious. Do you want to expand it out a little bit? Do you have any more?

[Stugotz]

You mean you want me to take.

[Billy Corben]

It to the 25? Like, 25. 2015. Touchdown. Miami Sequarium. Lolita.

[Dan Le Batard]

Come see Flipper Kane, Parkinson, 9.99 coupons. Like, you gotta keep going. Like, you gotta.

[Billy Corben]

Kids free on Sundays. Bunny Palooza right now.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah, you gotta. You got to keep going. Come see our sad whale exhibit.

[Billy Corben]

Come see Lolita swim in a bathtub.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yes. That's how you do it. Like, just think of. Think of more whales.

[Billy Corben]

Your kids will awkwardly ask you, why does her friend look like that? And you'll have to tell them it's because she's in a bathtub.

[Dan Le Batard]

That's not a natural habitat. It's a terrible habitat for a giant animal.

[Billy Corben]

Come see sharks, possibly drugs, swimming in green water.

[Stugotz]

Spend.

[Billy Corben]

Spend $5 on a wax figure that you'll regret as soon as you get home.

[Dan Le Batard]

What were you talking about with Mike Ryan off air there about magic at bats. Magic at bats. What were you talking about?

[Mike Ryan]

Yeah, go to me in the dumb stuff. That is. That is very smart. What I was saying, what Mike and Mike Ryan and I were discussing is I think one of the problems with baseball, Dan, no one's really talking about it, is everyone sitting here trying to fix something that I think is probably. Probably unfixable, but everyone's trying to fix it. The real problem with baseball is when you go to a basketball game, you go to a Cavs game, you're going to see LeBron James for 90% of the game, and he's going to give you 27, 8 and 8. And you're probably going to see a dunk or a pass that you've never seen before, and you'll leave happy. When you go to a baseball game and an Anaheim angel game, you're going to see Mike Trout. Every third inning, he has a better chance of going over four than he does going 4 for 4 with a home run and four RBIs. And you're going to see Howie Kendrick just as much as you're going to see Mike Trout. I go to a Cavs game, I'm not going to see John Lucas III. I'm only going to see LeBron James. John Lucas III is a backup guard. I know you're having Mike jacket right now on the Cleveland Cavaliers. I'm not Going to see him. I'm going to see LeBron. So what I'm trying to figure out, Mike and I are trying to figure out is I want to go in an angel game, and I want to see Mike trying to.

[Dan Le Batard]

What are the Magic at bats? How are you doing the Magic at bat?

[Mike Ryan]

Like, each manager has, like, four or five Magic at bats in his back pocket. All right, so let's say it's like second. Let's. Mike Trout gets out in the first inning, but in the second inning, it's second and third, and there's one out. He has the option in that spot of putting Mike Trout back in the game. You see Mike Trout, two innings a row. Genius.

[Stugotz]

That's his idea. And his idea allows for a certain amount of theatrics. Like, you could, like, throw like a. Like something. Like a smoke bomb or something. Magic at bad time. Like you throw out the smoke bomb on the field. Yeah, yeah, okay.

[Dan Le Batard]

A smoke bomb.

[Mike Ryan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Stugotz]

Just like a little firework, like a little cherry bomb.

[Dan Le Batard]

Magic time for a Magic at bat. Oh, Mike.

[Billy Corben]

So smoke is on the field. Mike.

[Dan Le Batard]

So has thrown the smoke bomb. Time for a Magic at bat.

[Stugotz]

It's a lot cooler, aesthetically, than like, a red challenge flag.

[Mike Ryan]

And they're trying to appeal to a younger audience. Imagine how much a younger audience would love the smoke bomb. And then there's Mike Trout coming out, emerging from the smoke. Commissioner, if I may. If I may, let me present you with a radical.

[Dan Le Batard]

Oh, no.

[Mike Ryan]

If I may. Okay, all right. I like to call it Commissioner. I like to call it the Magic at bat. Okay, now just hear me out for a second, okay? Each manager at any time during the game, for the love of God, can go with. Because, Commissioner, I'm not going to see a pitcher hit. I'm not going to see a shortstop hit. I'm going to see Stanton hit. So four to five Magic at bats for each manager where he can put Stanton whenever he wants. And there's. And there's smoke. And the kids love magic.

[Dan Le Batard]

You're wasting this man's time.

[Mike Ryan]

What do you think? I'm with your friend? You're wasting my time?

[Dan Le Batard]

Yes.

[Mike Ryan]

I think that's a crazy idea. You would agree. More time the stars are on the field, the better for baseball.

[Dan Le Batard]

You're going to continue to argue this. You're really going to continue to argue.

[Mike Ryan]

Let me give you a really serious answer about a suggestion like that. We are very open to the idea of making changes to the game. We see pace of game as one example of It. We see instant replay from last year as another example of it. When you make those changes, I think it's always important to ask yourself the question as to whether you are interfering with the history and the traditions of the game. And I think the suggestion that you just floated would fall squarely in the category of would interfere with the history and traditions of the game. So that's a maybe.

[Dan Le Batard]

No. No. I mean, yeah, let's get that. I think that's a no, actually a defiant and angry no.

[Mike Ryan]

But, Commissioner, did you hear about the smoke?

[Dan Le Batard]

Did you hear that part about the smoke?

[Mike Ryan]

Well, Bob, I want to know before we get to the pics here. I called you a while back and I asked for your help in booking Jerry Seinfeld on the show, and Jerry hasn't been on the show yet. So what's going on?

[Dan Le Batard]

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I told him how annoying he was for doing that and how inappropriate was. He said you were a little annoyed by that. I told him you should be annoyed by that. What were your real feelings about that request?

[John Skipper]

No, I wasn't annoyed at all. I just threw the window through the. Through the. Through the phone, through the window is all. I wasn't annoyed.

[Mike Ryan]

It is.

[Dan Le Batard]

It's annoying.

[John Skipper]

A big request at all.

[Dan Le Batard]

Totally reasonable request. Let's go ahead and do this.

[John Skipper]

Totally reasonable. Bob? Yeah? Could you. Are you doing anything?

[Dan Le Batard]

No.

[John Skipper]

Could you do me a favor and call Jerry Seinfeld and ask if he could do our radio show now?

[Mike Ryan]

You said you were gonna call.

[John Skipper]

I'll be right back.

[Mike Ryan]

You said you were gonna call. You're lying to me, though.

[John Skipper]

What?

[Mike Ryan]

You were lying to me. Weren't.

[Dan Le Batard]

Of course, because you're annoying.

[John Skipper]

Of course I was.

[Dan Le Batard]

You're.

[John Skipper]

I like. I mean, I like you. I love your show, but I was totally lying. I'm not gonna call anyone.

[Dan Le Batard]

I don't blame you at all. Time now for.

[John Skipper]

Look, I wouldn't have even called Thick or say Jack.

[Mike Ryan]

When I got it there.

[Dan Le Batard]

It took me a little while to get it.

[John Skipper]

You don't.

[Mike Ryan]

You know, I got some Lewinsky on.

[Dan Le Batard]

Mine because I went right home touching my baby in it.

[John Skipper]

She said, no, we're not.

[Dan Le Batard]

I said, yes, we are. You're not getting into this bed. You're not getting into this bed with this jacket.

[John Skipper]

Yes, we do.

[Dan Le Batard]

All right.

[Mike Ryan]

There you go. That is.

[Dan Le Batard]

That is a startling story, but okay. You wanted to be wearing the hall of Fame jacket while making love. I don't know how many people have done that, but congratulations on. You got A hall of famer Here, baby.

[Stugotz]

And now Papi reads some text messages from The Wells Report. October 17, 2014.

[Papi]

McNally, Tom. Socks. I'm going to make the next ball a balloon. Jaszremski talked to him last night. He actually brought you up and said you must have a lot of stress trying to get them done. I told him it was. He was right though. I checked some of the balls this morning. The ref us.

[Stugotz]

Oh, really?

[Papi]

A few of them were at almost 16. They didn't recheck them after they put air in them. McNally, Tom, go on. 16 is nothing. Wait till next Sunday. Jastremski. OMG.

[Mike Ryan]

Spass.

[Dan Le Batard]

Church of Gronk top 10 practices because man Campbell, we decided he was a pastor. He is wearing, of course, a flowing robe and a muscle tee. He's got a flaming spear of some sort that he shaves with. So for Lent in the Church of Gronk, you cycle off creatine. 40 days of no creatine. That's just for Lent. It's hard, but it's a sacrifice you make in the name of your Lord.

[John Skipper]

That's great.

[Dan Le Batard]

Holy week, of course, is observed Spring break in the Church of Gronk. The pilgrimage always to Daytona Beach Communion. The body of Gronk is beef jerky. The blood of Gronk is either a whey protein shrimp or you have the option of actual human blood. The entourage theme song is the procession music for the Church of Gronk ceremonies. The altar boys are referred to as altar bros. Baptisms in a hot tub behind Dan Campbell's pulpit. Alligator optional or not. The confessional booth has been replaced, of course, by a squat rack. The rosary beads at the Church of Gronk are just mismatched human teeth strung together on some fishing line. Turned down for what by Lil John? First song in the hymnal of the Church of Gronk. And of course. Oh, there it is.

[Mike Ryan]

I didn't know we had music on the company there.

[Dan Le Batard]

Okay.

[Stugotz]

My three year old loves that song, by the way.

[Dan Le Batard]

Let me hear that again. I didn't realize we had not that.

[Mike Ryan]

Version of it though, right? Unless.

[Stugotz]

Unless there's a spongebob versus version of this one too.

[Dan Le Batard]

It's beautiful.

[Mike Ryan]

It is beautiful.

[Dan Le Batard]

I mean, it's spiritual. It's emotional.

[Stugotz]

Turn down.

[Billy Corben]

For one.

[Stugotz]

For one.

[Dan Le Batard]

And of course, during funerals held at the Church of Grand, caskets are loaded with 45 pound plates so the pallbearers can get a proper pump. And also the body is just spiked into the casket, like here into the ground. Your final puncture situation. You are done. You've got more hymnals?

[Mike Ryan]

I've just been.

[Dan Le Batard]

It's just been whispered into my ear. We've got three more hymnals if you want to go to them.

[Mike Ryan]

Yes, please.

[Dan Le Batard]

Kidding me.

[Mike Ryan]

Please.

[Billy Corben]

Sorry for party Rocky.

[Dan Le Batard]

I didn't understand that.

[Mike Ryan]

I didn't either.

[Stugotz]

Sorry for party rocking.

[Dan Le Batard]

Okay. Sorry for party rocking.

[Mike Ryan]

I'm sorry.

[Papi]

Time to set out. Who is the better man? Let's have a manly man off.

[John Skipper]

Yeah.

[Dan Le Batard]

Oh, look who's there.

[Stugotz]

It's been a while.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah. Where you been, Dan?

[Stugotz]

How you doing?

[Dan Le Batard]

Good manly man, Stu.

[Stugotz]

How you doing there, Ombre?

[Mike Ryan]

Doing well.

[Stugotz]

Been a minute. I had a great weekend. My wife and I, we actually welcomed a little one. Yeah. She gave birth to a Dodge Ram.

[John Skipper]

Really?

[Dan Le Batard]

That's interesting. So that is. Wow, you had something in your pants there. All right.

[Stugotz]

A hemi. Yeah. Which of the following is the most effective tool for settling a dispute? Is it A, rock, B, paper, C, scissors, or D, a punch to the head?

[Dan Le Batard]

Well, Golic would say a punch to the head. I'm. I'm a pacifist. I'm. I'm non violent, so I'm gonna go paper, stupid.

[Mike Ryan]

I'm gonna go with a rock.

[John Skipper]

Wow.

[Stugotz]

I feel like I laid that one open there for you fellas. All you had to do was slam it down. Hit him.

[Dan Le Batard]

Neither of you. Arguments to the head, of course.

[Papi]

Okay.

[Stugotz]

I mean, and besides, scissors be paper, so I don't really know what you're doing.

[Dan Le Batard]

Well, I was trying to. I was purpose.

[Stugotz]

You try to find me something that can beat my punch to your head.

[Dan Le Batard]

All right.

[Mike Ryan]

Paper beat rock.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yes.

[Stugotz]

All right, fellas, Y'all ready?

[Dan Le Batard]

Yes.

[Stugotz]

All right. Time to start chopping some wood.

[Billy Corben]

Playtime is over.

[Stugotz]

I don't go home, you don't go home. You can go ahead and die for your man off. I'ma live for. You want to answer the question as soon as I ask. Hang on. Music.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah.

[Mike Ryan]

Restart your music.

[Dan Le Batard]

Get that saloon music.

[Stugotz]

All right, all right.

[Billy Corben]

Here's a question for the guy.

[Stugotz]

Very important. Very. Ma'am.

[Mike Ryan]

Okay.

[Stugotz]

What color are Matthew McConaughey's eyes? Is it A, green?

[Dan Le Batard]

Delightful hazel.

[Stugotz]

B.

[Dan Le Batard]

Don't fall out of character.

[Stugotz]

Delightful hazel, blue or D, a delightful hazel?

[John Skipper]

Huh?

[Stugotz]

You gotta go for the win. He's going delightful Hazel.

[Mike Ryan]

So he's going D. Can I hear A, B and C? Quickly, please.

[Dan Le Batard]

A is green. For the love of God, blue is.

[Stugotz]

A beautiful smoke gray.

[Mike Ryan]

I'm gonna go blue.

[Stugotz]

All right, all right. Hit him.

[Papi]

Hit him, Stewie.

[Stugotz]

You're my boy.

[Mike Ryan]

You're my boy.

[Stugotz]

Stu. 2.

[Billy Corben]

He's got beautiful blue papers. I'm upset Heavenly wasn't an option for that bongo playing Adonis. How to lose a guy in 10 days. What kind of ridiculous premise for a movie is that?

[Stugotz]

Why in the hell would Kate Hudson.

[Billy Corben]

Want to lose Matthew McConaughey, let alone in 10 days?

[Stugotz]

And his role as Dallas in Magic Mike, that is a game changer, folks.

[Billy Corben]

All right, all right, all right. Congrats, Stu.

[Dan Le Batard]

Hello?

[John Skipper]

Hey, this is Coach K. Hello, Coach.

[Dan Le Batard]

K. This is LeBatard. How are you, sir?

[John Skipper]

Good. This is Shazzi Lebatard.

[Dan Le Batard]

Thank you for doing this. Well, wait a minute, wait a minute. You can make fun of me about going in with Levitard, only my last name, but you just went Coach K on me instead of Mike. Come on now. Well, let me call you back and.

[John Skipper]

We'Ll start this over.

[Dan Le Batard]

You just went at me with this is Coach K. I could come back with Levitard. In terms of obnoxiousness, I think. Calling yourself Coach K. All right, never mind. Let's start again. Fake. Fake Midnight Rider. You're on the ticket. Fake Midnight Rider.

[John Skipper]

Yeah. Can you hear me?

[Dan Le Batard]

Yes. Fake Midnight Rider. Yes.

[John Skipper]

Thank you so much for having me on your program. You know, a lot of people don't know that I died, too, yesterday.

[Dan Le Batard]

Really?

[Mike Ryan]

Huh?

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah. Yeah. I didn't. I didn't. Yeah, I didn't. I hadn't considered that. Yeah. Where'd you. Where'd you go?

[John Skipper]

All the publicity, you know, went to Dusty Rose. Nobody was giving me any of that publicity.

[Dan Le Batard]

Right, right.

[Mike Ryan]

That seems unfair.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah, it does seem unfair. I'm sorry that we forgot about you. Where. Where. Where are you now?

[John Skipper]

Well, yesterday I was in heaven with the American Dream. That the road. We came up together. Coincidentally, I had a match with Gorilla Monsoon, but Gordon solely declared it a loser leave town match. So somehow I wound up in Purgatory.

[Mike Ryan]

Wow.

[Dan Le Batard]

Oh, no. That was yesterday.

[Mike Ryan]

Wow.

[John Skipper]

Terrible. That happened yesterday. So today I am in purgatory, trying to work my way back to heaven with Gorilla Monsoon, the junkyard dog, Big John Stud.

[Dan Le Batard]

Wait a minute. Big John Stud was in heaven yesterday? Why did he get demoted to Purgatory?

[John Skipper]

No, I'm trying to get back to heaven. Pay attention.

[Dan Le Batard]

I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

[John Skipper]

I know.

[Dan Le Batard]

I know.

[Mike Ryan]

Who.

[Dan Le Batard]

What? Who is in purgatory with you? What are you doing in Purgatory?

[John Skipper]

I'm just waiting. Trying to get back. I don't know. I haven't seen anybody I recognize. I'm waiting for high rates. I'm waiting for Ted. Dib.

[Dan Le Batard]

Right.

[John Skipper]

I hear they coming, but they're not here yet.

[Mike Ryan]

Right.

[Dan Le Batard]

Okay.

[Mike Ryan]

You have any idea what you need to do to get back?

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah, that's problematic, that all, being stuck in purgatory.

[John Skipper]

Stuart, that's an excellent question. When I hang up, I'm gonna try to find out.

[Dan Le Batard]

All right, well, do you have anything else you got here or you want to go ahead and hang up and find out?

[John Skipper]

Thank you for having. Where am I going to go find out? I report back if I know anything.

[Dan Le Batard]

Thank you. Good talking to you. Fake midnight rider.

[Mike Ryan]

We can summarize it all in three words.

[Dan Le Batard]

Make that four words.

[Stugotz]

We are the Lobos.

[Mike Ryan]

Thank you.

[Billy Corben]

We are the Lobos. We are the Lobos. We are the Lobos. We are the Lobos.

[Stugotz]

Steve Martin was a prop comic.

[Mike Ryan]

He was?

[Stugotz]

Yeah, yeah. He came out with an arrow through his head, and people found that funny.

[Mike Ryan]

Steve Martin also.

[Stugotz]

That's what he just said.

[Billy Corben]

Oh.

[Mike Ryan]

He said that the origins of this term come from the military den. The literal sense of the term that is a day spent in field maneuvers is now little used. The first reference we have for that meaning is from 17, 1947. In Scheme A quick men of war these period periodical.

[Papi]

Just.

[Dan Le Batard]

Let me just stop you.

[Stugotz]

It was fun to be out there. I think everyone enjoyed it.

[Dan Le Batard]

There's something different about how the football is coming off.

[Mike Ryan]

Andy's hand wasn't perfect today.

[Billy Corben]

You know, there's gonna be things that.

[Stugotz]

We need to correct, but, you know, I think this is a great building block for this team. You know, good team, win. It was a good week of practice. A lot of guys make plays.

[Billy Corben]

You know, it's wins and losses.

[Dan Le Batard]

It's not about stats. It's a long season. The same way we won two games and not get too high. We're not going to lose one game and not get too low.

[Stugotz]

We got the pieces in places.

[Mike Ryan]

You know, I'm just.

[Stugotz]

I'm the engineer, and I have to do better. We lost as a team, and so, you know, we have to deal with.

[Mike Ryan]

That as a team.

[Stugotz]

This win was big. We gotta put our tissues away and.

[Mike Ryan]

Go out there and just get ready to practice and play what we can do.

[Stugotz]

We can go back, practice hard, take more reps after practice. That's how you get better.

[Mike Ryan]

We just want to have great pride.

[Dan Le Batard]

And be a finishing team in all opportunities we get. Did he really have a hamstring, or.

[Stugotz]

Should he have been listed on the.

[Dan Le Batard]

Injury report as having a bruised ego?

[Stugotz]

It's an emotional game. Every game is. Some more than others.

[Dan Le Batard]

This one certainly was great out there for football.

[John Skipper]

We've got a dozen eggs, a quart of milk, a loaf of bread, a can of frozen orange juice, six small white onions, a green pepper, garlic powder, a package of American cheese, pickles, kosher, that is. Bananas, corn flakes, maple syrup, toothpaste, paper towels, toilet paper, six bars of soap, hot dogs, quarter pound of chopped meat, steak, lamb chops, package of spaghetti, three apples, bologna, cottage cheese, a pound of butter, two ears of corn, beer, ketchup, peanut butter, soy sauce, and a half a pound of coffee.

[Dan Le Batard]

Vin Scully does not strike me as someone who is not punctual. But my phone just rang. My personal phone just rang, and somebody. Did Vin Scully just call on my personal phone? Is that what just happened?

[Mike Ryan]

That had nothing to do with Vin Scully.

[Stugotz]

Nothing had ever. Everything to do is in scope.

[Billy Corben]

Hold on.

[Dan Le Batard]

What just happened here? This is what. My phone rang, and there was a Los Angeles number I didn't recognize.

[Mike Ryan]

Yeah.

[Dan Le Batard]

And you picked it up and you started talking to the person. Who was the person?

[Mike Ryan]

The person didn't give. Didn't give their name. They just said, pick up the phone already. Very cranky.

[Stugotz]

They were.

[Dan Le Batard]

So it was not Vin Scully. It was somebody else calling on behalf of Vince Gully. They called my personal number for some reason. Okay, very good. Regardless, all right. We are happy that Vince Gully is going to be on with us. And it's kind of perfect that the world's most perfect professional broadcaster would be greeted by this cluster BLEEP around here where we don't know what we're doing and. And everything goes wrong. Finn, thank you. It's an honor to talk to you. Congratulations on all of your good work. And the crowd will be delighted just to merely hear your voice right now. So thank you for being on with us.

[John Skipper]

Oh, well, thank you very much for allowing me the chance to visit with you and your viewers and listeners.

[Dan Le Batard]

Do you have a most embarrassing moment?

[John Skipper]

Oh, yeah, sure. I guess they're. Over the years. You would have to be. And basically the most. And I think you'll get the picture. Immediately back about my third year. Yeah. About 1952, the Dodgers were playing Cincinnati, and Cincinnati had an outfielder named Lloyd Merryman. I'll never forget it. And Lloyd hit a ball foul, and my mind told me to say, hot shot, hit, foul. No, no, no. And it never came out that way. And everybody in the booth fell down, and I was absolutely mortified. And the reason I remember, Lloyd Merriman I started filling. He's a former Marine Air Corps pilot. Saw combat in Korea, you know, I did. On and on. That really. It had to be, considering how young I was. Yeah, that. That was about it, Vin.

[Dan Le Batard]

You say that so slowly now, so carefully, like you're walking around.

[John Skipper]

I don't ever try it. No, that's. That's when I stopped. They're no longer, you know, shots hit, foul outside of third. No, thank you.

[Stugotz]

And now Bobby reads some text messages from The Wells Report. October 21, 2014.

[Papi]

Magnally make sure you blow up the balls to look like a rugby ball so Tom can get used to it before Sunday. Oh, Jastremski. Omg.

[Billy Corben]

And there's a Miami Seaquarium kickoff. Don't buy a ticket.

[Dan Le Batard]

Turn around.

[Billy Corben]

Do not support animal cruelty. It's a first in 10. A Miami sequarium first in 10. The center dolphin tank has a large steel pipe that makes me wonder how many people have hit their head on it. It's a fumble. They should close this abomination immediately. It's old, small, dirty, very boring. Touchdown, Miami Sea player. You'll wonder how this place stays open. Where else can you ask, is that sea lion dead? The vending machine ain't my dollar. At the Miami Seaquarium. And how can you keep a whale in a pool for 45 years? The whale looks bored.

[Mike Ryan]

I don't know what else to tell you. I've said a million times, LeBatard is my favorite show. I think he's the most creative, different sort of individual that we have. He's the smartest guy.

[Dan Le Batard]

It's.

[Mike Ryan]

It's not for everybody.

[Dan Le Batard]

Not everyone is going to be into it. Yeah, but the people who are going to be into it are going to love. I like the way Delight. Now, he and I have disagreed more than a few times. You know, loudly on the air with one another. And I'm sure that will continue. But, yeah, it's. I do love his take. And Stu Gotts.

[Mike Ryan]

Well, Stugotts is just along for the ride.

[Dan Le Batard]

I mean, what are you going to do, Stugotts?

[Mike Ryan]

Anyone could be sitting where he is.

[Dan Le Batard]

That's exactly right. And it would be fun. Differentiate himself by wearing a tuxedo. I mean, seriously.

[Mike Ryan]

Well, starting on Tuesday at this time, two guys will be ranting and raving permanently about topics like this.

[Stugotz]

I know we know him very well.

[Mike Ryan]

Dan Lebatard.

[Stugotz]

Stu got moving 10 to 1 right.

[Mike Ryan]

Here on ESPN radio.

[John Skipper]

ESPNU.

[Dan Le Batard]

Dan, Stu, congrats.

[Mike Ryan]

How are you?

[John Skipper]

Good. Thank you for having us on, guys. But we won't be talking about this stuff. We'll be talking about who in sports is likely to throw out their back sneezing violently.

[Dan Le Batard]

Like, even the most exciting part about.

[Mike Ryan]

What you said is that show, ladies and gentlemen. That's the best part about it.

[John Skipper]

Yeah, we're excited about that. Like, ESPN has been great to us. Like, we've gotten so much support and it's.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah, they promised us that we can.

[John Skipper]

Do the same show that we always do. So it'll be goofy and, you know, we'll talk to Lemmy from Motorhead, but you guys probably should get back to this Deflategate talk like ourselves.

[Dan Le Batard]

That's nice. Thank you.

[John Skipper]

But I think people probably want instant reveal. You're talking to us about a time.

[Mike Ryan]

Change of the lineup, which is great.

[John Skipper]

We appreciate it. We are excited for it. This is big breaking news.

[Mike Ryan]

If we were waiting, like nine months for.

[John Skipper]

I feel like you should be talking.

[Mike Ryan]

About following us every single day here on ESPN Radio. And on ESPN, you starting at 10:00 Eastern Time. I'm not sure why it's called the.

[Stugotz]

Dan Lert show because clearly the star is Stu Gotz.

[Mike Ryan]

Without a doubt, Stu Gotz.

[Dan Le Batard]

He's the man with a contribution from.

[Mike Ryan]

Dan Lebitzard every single morning. But it's the Stu got it should.

[Dan Le Batard]

Be Stugotts featuring Dan Len, a superstar.

[Stugotz]

You know, you can tell that he's.

[Mike Ryan]

The guy who's going to become.

[Dan Le Batard]

Right.

[Stugotz]

It's called the Dan LeBatard show with Stu.

[Dan Le Batard]

Listen, Dan is kind of that star now, but Stugotts is that ascending star. And soon it will be Lebatar that's latching on to the coattails of Stugotts Tuxedo as he rises to stardom.

[Stugotz]

To the tails.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah, he's going to be wearing exactly right. The actual T tails.

[Mike Ryan]

Yes.

[Dan Le Batard]

And. And Levitate will be holding on to that list. We'll just be the next great star that goes by one name that's exact.

[Mike Ryan]

Exactly right.

[Dan Le Batard]

How's life in the real world, Spence? You still dreaming about laying people out?

[Stugotz]

Let me tell you something, Dan.

[Dan Le Batard]

Right now, my dreams are all about deals and dollars. What is the end game here, though, Spence, as an agent, broadcaster, coach.

[Stugotz]

Yeah.

[Papi]

You're such a star, why not own a damn team?

[Dan Le Batard]

Why yet Jason Leisure with us now, even understanding that it's a game of runs, They've had some unusual losses. Losses with big leads late, sure, but they've had some unusual wins, too. I mean, you didn't expect them to go and beat the Clippers and the Bulls on the road, and they didn't, certainly didn't expect them to be Cleveland two times in Miami and beat Portland a couple weeks ago. Agreed. But they've got more bad losses than good wins. I don't know.

[Stugotz]

It seems like it's about.

[Dan Le Batard]

About even probably at this point. Is it? I don't think so. I mean, they've got. It depends how you define a bad loss.

[Stugotz]

I don't know, man.

[Dan Le Batard]

The two.

[Mike Ryan]

Man, everyone's so depressed down here.

[Dan Le Batard]

Okay, Is everything all right?

[John Skipper]

You know where I'm sitting right now?

[Dan Le Batard]

I have pulled over into the parking lot of a KFC in Indianapolis. Okay, so you're sad about your life right now. What's happening right now is you're sad about your life and you're disagreeable. And I just said something that I believe to be so. And because your mood is sour and it's kind of cold and the team is snake bitten and probably won't make the playoffs and isn't terribly into. You're lashing out. That's what's happening.

[John Skipper]

Are we done here, man? Are we done? I'm done.

[Dan Le Batard]

All right. See you later.

[John Skipper]

The Mrs. World pageant in Russia. And my wife was helping. I was hosting. She was going to crown the winner. There was a language barrier there. And we announced the right winner, but the assistant went and grabbed the crown, put it on the wrong winner. And you never said this was like the Bolshevik Revolution. The place went nuts. It got very ugly for a minute, but I was impeccable. My contribution was perfect.

[Dan Le Batard]

Right.

[John Skipper]

And by the way, they had to retape the whole ending of the show. This is after the confetti comes out and the girls are crying and people are celebrating and they said, oops, wait a minute now. They had to redo the entire 10 minutes of the show. It was not a live broadcast.

[Dan Le Batard]

Okay, but help me out here. Who did you put the crown on? Was it like a hometown loss or a hometown miss?

[John Skipper]

Mrs. Russia actually won. And everybody knew it because that's the way they do things in Russia.

[Dan Le Batard]

But, but, but who'd we put the crown on?

[John Skipper]

Yeah, well, first of all, it wasn't even. Well, they put the crown on, you know, Mrs. Uzbekistan or somebody wasn't even part of the Soviet Union anyway, you know, a total foreigner. And then it wasn't even fair because it was a Mrs. World competition and Mrs. Russia was like 19 and Mrs. Uzbekistan was, you know, Bea Arthur. So it was just all so obvious it was rigged. When they snatched that tiara and Put it on the wrong woman. There were.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah, wait a minute.

[John Skipper]

Like a Siberian tiger was let out of the case.

[Dan Le Batard]

Rashad Perriman, the UCF receiver, to me he looks like the second best receiver now. You know, after Amari Cooper. He. I would take him second. It's probably too high. But among receivers I've seen, he looks like the second best receiver I've seen in college football this year. Brett Pearman's son. Am I wrong?

[Billy Corben]

Well, you haven't seen a heck a.

[Stugotz]

Lot of receivers in Dan.

[Papi]

How Many?

[Mike Ryan]

How many LML?

[Dan Le Batard]

How many do you have ahead of him? 15?

[Stugotz]

17? He retweeted people thanking him for saving the podcast when he had absolutely nothing.

[Dan Le Batard]

To do with saving the podcast.

[Stugotz]

He starts sentences with yeah, no. He calls Nikola Vucevich the Russian even though he is Swiss. He says parenting doesn't matter and then.

[Dan Le Batard]

Encourages his Twitter followers to purchase his mother's book on parenting.

[Stugotz]

He is the most inconsistent man in the world.

[Mike Ryan]

I don't always have takes, but when I do, they're all over the place. Stay inconsistent, my friends.

[Papi]

Imagine if you played in the west. Imagine if winning one title in Cleveland actually counted as winning two anywhere else. Imagine if you were coachable. Imagine if J.R. smith wasn't. Junior Smith. Imagine Miami in December. Imagine people actually pointing out that you lost four finals games by an average margin of 12 and a half points a game. Instead of praising you for coming up short. Imagine if you weren't insecure about your hairline. Imagine Miami in January. Imagine closing out these against a team that didn't relied on Sheldon Mack, Mike and Kent Basemore. Imagine if we didn't actually land on the moon. Imagine if this country wasn't full of dumb people who bought into the fairy tales we fed them to make money.

[Mike Ryan]

Listen, the bottom line with Matt Harvey, if the mess has any guts, any guts at all, they would take the one thing away from Matt Harvey that he wants most. And that's the pitch in this postseason. They had any sort of guts. They wouldn't pitch him. They'd go with Bartolo Cologne.

[John Skipper]

They wouldn't pitch him at all.

[Mike Ryan]

The postseason and they trade him the off season. They had any guts. And Colin, let me tell you something, okay? Matt Harvey being late, Are you kidding me? Matt Harvey's the one guy. He should have been there an hour early, grading the rest of the team with gifts. I'll hang up and listen.

[Dan Le Batard]

Oh my God.

[Mike Ryan]

I'll hang up and listen.

[Dan Le Batard]

How can someone who has a national show be so clueless? Don't give him what he wants the most. Yes. So here's the Mets if they feel. Let's see. Matt Harvey, Bartolo Colon. If the Mets as an organization say we have a better chance to pitch, win with Matt Harvey. Let's not pitch him. Let's pop punish Matt Harvey where we can still trade him in the off season if we want, but let's punish the entire team by not pitching the guy that gives us the best chance to win.

[John Skipper]

Oh, yeah.

[Dan Le Batard]

That's the way to go. Stugots. Perfect.

[Stugotz]

And now Boppy reads some text messages from The Wells Report. October 23, 2014.

[Papi]

Jastremski, Can't Wait to give you your needle this week. Happy face.

[Stugotz]

Go on.

[Papi]

Magnally, Tom. Oh, make sure the pump is attached to the needle. Watermelon's coming. Jastremski so angry. Magnally. The only thing deflating Sunday is his passing rating.

[Mike Ryan]

How long has Aoda been old? He was old in the Godfather, and that came out. Out in 1972. Well, you know, James Codd and Marlon.

[Dan Le Batard]

Brando were about the same age in the Godfather.

[Stugotz]

And now Papi reads a passage from Fifty Shades of Gray, page 186.

[Papi]

He flexes his hips so his pushes against me. Yes, right there. He runs his teeth along my shin. This is back. Then slides into me again. So slow, so sweet, so tender. His body pressing down on me, his elbows and his hands on either side of my face. Oh, Anna. He breathes and he lets go my name. A benediction on his lips. He finds his release. His head rests on my belly, his arm wrapped around me. I just want to enjoy the quiet, serene afterglow of making love with Christian Gray. Because that's what we have done. Gentle, sweet, love making.

[Dan Le Batard]

Here's Kanye West. Last night we've been playing all Beck in protest. Today, nothing but Beck. Today Kanye west did something funny. I thought it was funny. Jay Z. It was funny to see his reaction.

[Mike Ryan]

It was funny. Kanye's kind of annoying by now. The Grammys are kind of annoying by now. It's like in reruns. Same thing. I mean, every. I gotta tune in and Taylor Swift is front row dancing like crazy. Kanye west with his antics. He had Jay Z and Beyonce presiding over the whole proceedings like they're the president and the first lady of America. It's enough. And you got Pharrell, who comes in. He sings one song. He just changes it up every time he sings it. Tired of the Grammys? Stale Taylor Swift. Enough. See her dance front row. Please take the camera off of her.

[Dan Le Batard]

Anyway, what's your problem with Pharrell? I don't even know where to start.

[Mike Ryan]

He's got this one song. Happy.

[Bomani Jones]

Okay, not.

[Dan Le Batard]

He doesn't have one song.

[Mike Ryan]

It's one song. One trick pony, one hit wonder.

[Dan Le Batard]

He is not a one God. He's. He's maybe the biggest hit maker of. Of this generation or certainly of this time period.

[Mike Ryan]

He's got more songs than Singham already because I keep hearing the same one.

[Papi]

Take a good look, Cleveland. Take a good look because this is.

[Dan Le Batard]

What the world championship looks like, buddy.

[Mike Ryan]

Hell, Johnny idiot face over there is.

[Dan Le Batard]

Ever going to bring you a title. Lebron James, sure as hell.

[Papi]

And bringing a title back to Cleveland. This is the only championship you should be celebrating.

[Dan Le Batard]

So suck it up because I'm leaving this piece of crap town and I'm taking this title with me. Mary.

[Mike Ryan]

I mean, listen, I. I usually I fall more on the side of hey, best team always wins. But after years of doing the show. But then even I could see it's fairly obvious, like the Marlins weren't better than the Yankees. The year that the Marlins won the world series, the best team rarely wins. Except for the NBA. The best team rarely.

[Billy Corben]

You shut your mouth. They weren't told that to Josh Bucket cares about baseball.

[Dan Le Batard]

Wait a minute.

[Billy Corben]

Who. Shut up.

[Dan Le Batard]

Who's that? Is that Joe?

[Billy Corben]

There was some Joe told that to Josh Bucket.

[Dan Le Batard]

There was some Joe Zagacki in there. What's he doing here?

[Billy Corben]

The Florida Marlins were better. And you can see Marlins at the beautiful Miami Sinclair.

[Mike Ryan]

Mike is actually growing a Josh Beckett goatee. The more he yells. It's actually amazing.

[Billy Corben]

D train. Lenny Harris. Mikey Mordecai.

[Dan Le Batard]

Lenny Harris role.

[Mike Ryan]

All important, we have a sponsored home run.

[Billy Corben]

It was a guy named Banks. He was huge. Hollingsworth in the gap.

[Dan Le Batard]

We got to like six names before it was guy named Banks.

[Billy Corben]

Chad Fox. What a pickup.

[Dan Le Batard]

That was a good man.

[Billy Corben]

Chad Boogie urbina. He lit a man on fire.

[Dan Le Batard]

He went to jail.

[Billy Corben]

He's still in jail. He lit a man on fire. Allegedly. There was a chainsaw involved. World series hero. He traded for Adrian Gonzalez.

[Dan Le Batard]

It's all true. Everything Mike just said was not cartoonish and fictional. It was factual.

[Billy Corben]

You held onto your butt every time Braden Looper went out there. And it worked. One time. It was huge.

[Dan Le Batard]

Against the Yankees.

[Billy Corben]

Against the Yankees.

[Mike Ryan]

I want this Sagaki call.

[Billy Corben]

We all said goodbye to Roger Clemens and he played eight more years.

[Mike Ryan]

Are we sure we want to use this on the local hour?

[Dan Le Batard]

I feel like the Joe Zagaki character is not someone anyone knows the Sing Song broadcaster. In fact, you're laughing at it, Papa. I'm pretty sure you have no idea.

[Mike Ryan]

The character he's doing, no idea who he's impersonating. But it feels right. Right? It only works here, though. I think I could be wrong, but I think it only works.

[Dan Le Batard]

Our best stuff is on the local hour. Much too much. To our dismay, we keep putting out the crap in the national hour.

[Mike Ryan]

Shut the hell up.

[Dan Le Batard]

Shut up.

[Mike Ryan]

Keep your mouth shut. Your son got nailed. Keep your freaking mouth shut.

[Dan Le Batard]

Frame gate my. Keep your. Shut up. Stay low. Shut the hell up. Frame gate.

[Stugotz]

You mean.

[Dan Le Batard]

Are you kidding me?

[Billy Corben]

Come on.

[Mike Ryan]

A guy cheated, folks. Let's be honest.

[Dan Le Batard]

Fragile.

[Mike Ryan]

Listen to Tom Brady's old man now, who. You know, he's lived in the bubble, you know, and has lived under the scenario where his kids been a phenomenal player all this time, and now he's trying to make excuse. Now he's trying to disparage the guy who spent 246 pages right about it.

[Dan Le Batard]

Shut up. Put that guy on. See if he's got the guts to talk to.

[Mike Ryan]

Somebody's gonna ask him a tough question.

[Dan Le Batard]

Go ahead.

[Mike Ryan]

Better yet, put his son on. Let's see what he has to say. Put your shot on.

[Dan Le Batard]

Don't hide.

[Mike Ryan]

USA Today. Come. Come on, Talk shows.

[Dan Le Batard]

Hey, come right now. Come on, right now.

[Stugotz]

Say that to me.

[Dan Le Batard]

Say that to anybody. Say it to somebody.

[Billy Corben]

Shut up.

[Papi]

Keep your mouth shut. Your song got nailed. Keep your freaking mouth shut.

[Dan Le Batard]

Fram.

[Papi]

Gate my.

[Dan Le Batard]

Keep your. Shut up.

[Papi]

Stay low. Shut the hell up.

[Dan Le Batard]

Frank.

[Papi]

Are you kidding me? Hey, come on. The guy cheated. I mean, let's be honest. I got to listen to Tom. This old man now, who has lived in the bubble and has lived under the scenario where his kid has been a phenomenal player all this time, and now he's trying to disparage the guy who has spent 246 pages writing a marriage.

[Billy Corben]

Shut up.

[Papi]

Put that guy on. See if he has the guts to talk to someone who is going to assert tough questions. Go ahead. Better yet, put his son on. Let's see what he has to say. Put his. Don't hide. USA Today. Come on, talk shows. Come on now. Come on right now. Say that to me. Say that to anybody. Say to somebody.

[Dan Le Batard]

Hall of Famer Alonzo. Morning. Thank you for being on with us. We've had an investigation for a while here. Dikembe, he denied it very strongly, very ferociously. But there is this story of Dikembe, back in the glory days of walking into a night club, who Wants to sex Matumbo. Who wants to sex Matombo.

[Mike Ryan]

You've heard it. You've heard it.

[Dan Le Batard]

Is the story true? We need to know if the story is true. That's a confirmation. How did y'all hear about this man? I'm just saying, the first time you hear that.

[Mike Ryan]

What do you think when you hear.

[Dan Le Batard]

The man say, who wants those sex? But whatever. No comment, man. No comment. That is so insincere. You can't.

[Billy Corben]

No comment like that.

[Stugotz]

True.

[Dan Le Batard]

We cracked the case.

[Mike Ryan]

We broke.

[John Skipper]

Yeah, there's some truth to that.

[Dan Le Batard]

There's some truth to that.

[Mike Ryan]

Yeah.

[Dan Le Batard]

A journalism victory.

[Mike Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Cody]

While we're on it, you got any.

[Mike Ryan]

Idea who Ben was talking about?

[Dan Le Batard]

That was a pickup line.

[Mike Ryan]

And it worked.

[John Skipper]

It worked.

[Stugotz]

And now Papi reads a passage from 50 Shades of Grey, page 487.

[Papi]

These clamps are vicious. He prods the nipple clamps. We will use these. They are adjustable. Christian, my sexual mentor. My mouth is already open from panting. I open wider, and he slides a large, cool metal object between my. Shaped like an oversized baby pacifier. He has a small groove or carvings. I'm going to put this. His fingers trail between my buttocks, spreading oil instantly. The plug starts to vibrate down there. It feels alien, full, forbidden, but oh, so good. As my body explodes, I'm nothing but sensation everywhere.

[John Skipper]

I think that Gronkowski is not human. I really mean that. I think they feed him out of their hand. When he gets off the field, you couldn't haze him. There's nothing you could do to him because there's smoke comes out of when he plays. And when he goes across the middle, you cannot watch him. And can you imagine, in the cold, trying to come in and undercut him? I've never seen a human being like that go off the field. And he, like, snorts to his teammates. There's no English or anything spoken.

[Dan Le Batard]

He did. He is made of circuits.

[Stugotz]

You're absolutely.

[John Skipper]

He really is. He's always. There's fire coming out of his helmet. What do you think he says in the huddle besides slobbering and breathing, sneezing and stuff? Do you think he knows his own name when they say, gronk, we're going to you, or do they just tase him a little bit? Watch Gronkowski. Watch Gronkowski. I'm not talking about in the game. I'm talking about in public. You've got to put a leash on him. You cannot let him roam around.

[Dan Le Batard]

What are you guys laughing about back there? Allison again, is getting flustered by Norm McDonald. Is Allison flirting with Norm McDonald? What are you guys laughing about?

[Stugotz]

On the phone for, like, two minutes? I'm pretty sure she said, no, you go on hold first. No, you go on hold first.

[Dan Le Batard]

Really?

[Stugotz]

That's what happened. She was so flustered and she forgot to put him on hold.

[Mike Ryan]

Oh, God. Well, I mean, just hung up on him.

[Stugotz]

Is he ready to talk.

[Mike Ryan]

Is he ready to talk to us, though?

[Dan Le Batard]

Yes. Yeah, she. Norm makes her. Mike makes her nervous. And.

[Stugotz]

And Norm, she read his book and, like, developed, like, this thing.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah, she did read his book. In two days.

[John Skipper]

I freeze books, baby.

[Dan Le Batard]

I freeze books, baby. I mean, you. You. You're saying that bookies run scared from you? Like, you. That's what you're. That's what you're alleging?

[John Skipper]

Yeah, I'm saying I walk in any book and Vegas, I don't. I don't deal with bookies because that's against the law, but I walk into any book in Vegas and I freeze that room. And.

[Dan Le Batard]

We didn't even get to last week. I mean, once or twice you've gone bankrupt from gambling. Because I feel like books have been built on Norm McDonald's wagers.

[John Skipper]

Oh, not books. No. I have a winning record against books, one of the few people. But unfortunately, the book is a long away from the elevator, and.

[Dan Le Batard]

So. So the crab table grabs here. What grabs you? What is it that grabs you from. On the way?

[John Skipper]

You're asking me which. Which. Which has the strongest magnetic field?

[Dan Le Batard]

Yes.

[Mike Ryan]

Yes.

[John Skipper]

That would be the. That would be the crap.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. What is the greatest beating. What is the most memorable beating that Norm MacDonald has taken at a craps table?

[John Skipper]

Well, I'll tell you. Well, the problem is, crafts is a little arcane for a lot of listeners. So let me tell you about blackjack, which I think everyone understands. At one time, I had a massive bet down. It was my last bet. I just said, I'll just bet all this. And then I got two aces. And then I was like, can I go? I don't know if I have enough money to. I don't know if I have money, but can I get some credit, like from the casino to bid on this other ace? And they're like, no. And I'm like, does anyone else want to buy an ace? But everyone else there was betting was betting small.

[Dan Le Batard]

You were at a five dollar table, betting hundreds of thousands of dollars. You're at the swingers table. The guy. Some. Some guy's got an eye patch on.

[John Skipper]

Yeah. No, I don't like that. I don't like the. What the hell? Hell. I'm watching the draft.

[Mike Ryan]

What? Nor what?

[John Skipper]

I was just watching the draft. So anyways, my two aces. I go hit me. You know, I have two. You know what I mean? So I have to hit. You know, the book says you always hit a 2. So I have ace, an ace and an ace. It's a two, so I did it.

[Dan Le Batard]

Oh, no, because you couldn't split it. Here come the face.

[John Skipper]

Well, here, 22.

[Mike Ryan]

Oh, so.

[John Skipper]

So it's. Obviously, I would have had two 21s. Instead I have one 22. So then I just walk away. And I'll tell you how you know you're. You've lost and it's all over when you walk away. You walk away from the table and you just hear the guy go, better luck next time.

[Mike Ryan]

That is an amazing.

[Dan Le Batard]

I mean, it's terrible, but it's an amazing story. That should have been the name of your book, Norm. It should. No, not better luck next time. No, it should have been, I had two 21s. Instead it was 122.

[John Skipper]

Oh, man. Well, we'll get. We'll get to. We'll get to plenty of bad, deep stories as I. As I could continue my.

[Dan Le Batard]

Did you run rough shot.

[Mike Ryan]

Oh, my God.

[John Skipper]

Yeah. I'll tell you about the. I'll tell you about the one run grand slam I had to endure, but that's for another day.

[Dan Le Batard]

Okay, I can't wait for that. Now you've got. Now you're teasing us.

[Billy Corben]

27, 24 squib kick. Just fall down on it or whatever. No, they're gonna try the lateral. Pass it to the other side of the field. This never works. Caught by Kornelder. Pitches it back to Jaquan Johnson at the Miami 30. Delaying the inevitable. Looking for a block. Pitches it backwards. As many laterals now as B has pass interference. Penalties on that last drive. Walton now pitches it back to Johnson. Guess we're gonna keep going with this. Toss it back. Here comes another pitch. Kornelder has it. Throws it back to the plumbers. 911 goal line. Dallas Crawford looking for a block. Gets one. Definitely not a block in the back. He throws it across to the 30 to corn elder. Big legal block. He's got it to the 40. Cornelder Crossing El palacio delos. Who goes midfield? Cornelder speeding now to the 40. Speeding ticket. Vic Howard dot com. Halter now dashing down the Dandy Bear sideline. So what, your kid has ringworm?

[Mike Ryan]

Dandy Bear.

[Billy Corben]

Helder inside the Gus Machado.

[Dan Le Batard]

Red zone.

[Billy Corben]

Cornelder. He's at the 10. He's at the 5. Lindy Herrick. Scotty. Mike. Miami Seaquarium. Touchdown. There are presently no flags on the field and certainly no one will have a problem with how this game ended. Oh, wait, we don't speak English, so everyone hates us.

[Stugotz]

Howdy, folks. It's Mike. And guess what? It's Miller time. The holiday season brings around lots of joy and also lots of family. Lots of family gatherings at your home. You're inviting people in there. You want to make sure they're happy. Why don't you make their time at your place? A Miller Time. Pass around that beautiful white can of triple hops brewed Miller Lite and watch the smiles adorn those faces. Make Miller Lite the official drink, the official beverage of your your holiday get together. You know why? Because it is a perfect beer for the holiday season. You'll take a sip, you'll look around and you'll think immediately, yeah, I made the right call. It's got tastes that you can depend on. No games, no gimmicks. Just great beer. For people who like beer, making memories at year end gatherings tastes like Miller time. Go to millerlite.com dan to find delivery options near you. Or you can pick up some Miller Lite pretty much anywhere they sell beer. Celebrate responsibly. Miller Brewing Co. Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces. Fewer calories and carbs than premium regular beer.