The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - Hour 2: Mike Schur Is Back!
Episode Date: September 7, 2023Mike Schur makes his triumphant return to the program to discuss the strike, Major League Baseball, and much more. Then, it's time for our Climate Change Stat of the Day, UM taking down UM, and the Ro...tten Tomatoes Scandal. Plus, Ricky Williams joins us to wrap up today's show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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You're listening to Giraffe King's Network.
This is the Don Levertor Show with the Stugat Spatcast.
I'm loathed to admit this, but I have missed this man.
I have missed the stat of the day.
He's been very busy fighting for the right things,
fighting in Hollywood.
He is a freedom fighter.
I mean, let's go already.
Let's go on.
What's taken so long?
Yeah, we need our content.
What is taking so long?
What you're not allowed to talk about the strike still, right?
Or what can you say publicly? Anything? Well, I're not allowed to talk about the strike still, right? Or what can you say publicly?
Anything?
Well, I mean, I can talk about it generally.
I can't talk about the actual negotiations,
such as they are, but what's taking so long
is that the companies that we're trying to negotiate with
are a little bit in disarray, I would say.
They're having a hard time getting on the same page.
You saw yesterday that Warner Brothers Discovery
and I was going to lose between $305 million
because of the strikes.
And the total amount of money we're asking
from that company specifically is about $40 million.
So when you're throwing away $500 million
to save $40 million, there's a disconnect somewhere.
And we are trying to, I mean, I think they are trying
to figure out how to proceed, but it's beyond
the point of being rational. I think it's now a question of whether these eight or so
companies that are fierce competitors with each other can actually get on the same page
and be rational in terms of how they make a deal with us.
I don't know. It's a little bit like ask them,
go ask them, go ask Disney what they're doing,
go ask Warner Brothers, ask Apple,
and Amazon and Netflix,
and because at this point,
they're the ones who have to sort of figure out
what the path forward is, I'd say.
What happens first?
You guys agree to a deal,
or the Blazers finally come back and say,
Tyler, hero is fine.
That's a good question.
I mean, Wednesday and be a trade deadline.
Everywhere.
Yeah, we'll make a deal first.
We'll make a deal.
We'll make a deal before Damien Lillard puts on a heat uniform.
What can you tell us is the most fascinating thing because you really are in the trenches
and the thicket on this thing.
What do you, and you've got a good governor for things that are interesting.
So I imagine this is perpetually stimulating as well as stressful.
Yeah, it is.
I mean, stressful is, you know, it's stressful to have people out of work, not only us,
but all the people who work on all of the shows and movies in town.
That's a very stressful thing.
And, you know, it's been 130 days or so now.
Like it's not, we are deep into this.
The last strike in 07 lasted 100 days.
There's only been I think one or two others
that lasted longer than this one has already lasted.
So we feel that.
We feel that stress.
We knew we were going to feel that's not a surprise.
But this is the first time that we have
had in this negotiation between the unions and the companies a bunch of new faces, right?
Netflix, Amazon, and Apple were not around in 2007 when we did this the last time.
And it's hard not to tie some of the difficulties that we've
had negotiating with them to that simple fact that they're these are they didn't exist.
Like they're new, they've never been through this before, they have a different business
model that upended Hollywood and you know, I'm not blaming them necessarily, but I think
it's not a coincidence that in a period of time when whole entirely new companies showed up and sort of doing things in a new way
Then when you get down to the nitty gritty of how people get paid to make this stuff
They're you know, they have a different view of it. So I think that's the biggest
Kind of puzzle that we're trying to solve here
Unfortunately, you're not allowed to talk about it. So that's
Unfortunately, you're not allowed to talk about it. So that's things.
So by the way, I wore this shirt for us to God's and he's not here.
No.
Can everyone see this?
Grateful dead?
Grateful dead red socks shirt.
Wow.
That might be the whitest shirt ever.
Yeah.
My friend, my friend Matt, who is indeed white,
who got this for me at a dead and company show.
It's a mad Damon.
And I've never Hi, guys.
The one, one, one, one, one.
I've never seen the Grateful Dead or Dead and Company,
but I thought it would make Stu Gatz happy.
And Shocker, he's not here.
Is it Matt Damon, though?
No, what are you talking about?
You should know Stu Gatz isn't on the Stu,
Dan Levittar Show as Stu Gatz.
Make sure.
Yeah.
That's my bad. Bad for not figuring that out. Matthew Modine. Are make sure that's right. It's my bad. I've had
for not for figuring that out. Matthew Modine. Are you surprised? Yes, it's Matthew Modine.
Good job. Are you surprised when you hear the thing floated out there, the theory floated
out there that Apple is going to buy Disney? Am I surprised at that? Yes. I mean, I'm not the rumors of,
there have been so many rumors about consolidation
in the last couple of years.
And these companies are just scrambling
to get bigger and bigger and bigger
and buy more, buy more compete, compete, compete.
Like, that's what's funny to me is that,
let's, let's say there's any truth at all
to that rumor, right?
Apple might buy Disney.
Apple and Disney are two different companies
that we are negotiating with at the same time
who are purporting to be on the same side.
So they're linking arms and teaming up
and negotiating with unions
and at the same time secretly planning
to eat each other for lunch.
Like that's what I mean when I say that I don't think
it's a coincidence that these new companies have showed up
from a different business entirely
from computers or retail sales or just streaming in general.
And they're like, they hate each other.
These companies hate each other.
They're in direct competition,
and they want to destroy each other,
but for the purposes of collective bargaining,
they link arms and they act like their friends.
So it's just a very difficult situation.
And unfortunately, the results of that difficulty are that a bunch of people are out of work for
a very long time. So I just hope that, I don't know, I hope that they're in a room somewhere
putting their heads together, calling a temporary tourist, promising not to eat each other
for lunch, and then moving on. My two questions, question one, assuming labor peace happens here soon. Do you feel like this
is going to be a long lasting one, or are you guys going to go through this again at the end of
the collective bargaining agreement? And the second question was a matlablunk.
Well, to answer your first question, I would say that the way that this has gone traditionally
in this town is that every nine or 12 years,
there's some kind of little flare-up of a problem.
A structural problem needs to be fixed.
It's not just arguing over dollars and cents,
but actually like, you know,
really getting in there and changing
something structural about the system.
That generally speaking has led to a decade of labor piece. you know really getting in there and changing something structural about the system that generally
speaking has led to a decade of labor piece i'm not saying that's going to happen now
but i think if we can fix the problem then there's a decent chance that we will have a decade or so
of relative peace to answer your second question yes it was also matlabong it was mathumodine and
matlabong who gave me this.
Did you have any kind of reaction to Bill Mar, who has become an angry, bitter, old person
shouting at young people? Basically, it seemed to me going against the writers who keep
his show on the air, or at least sounding like he didn't think this was as easy as it's being made out to be,
which is this is a lot of greedy, greedy people who are trying to cement mix or labor.
Yeah. Bill Mar, who I don't know, and I'll say this diplomatically, has a penchant for speaking
very confidently about things he does not understand in the slightest.
So it doesn't surprise me when he says things like that
because that's his move.
His move is he rolls out of bed,
he slumps into his studio, a topic it's thrown out
and he speaks with extreme confidence.
Like overwhelming, just rich, white dude confidence
about what's going on in that particular arena
of the world and Bill Mars never wants in his life gone like, yeah, I really know a lot
about that. Let me read up on it. Like these never, he's never said that. He's never said,
like, hey, can you do me favor and help educate me about this particular subject he just talks straight forwardly about about the the truth of the matter as he sees it
regardless of how it informed he is so
yeah i did not surprise me at all
least got a lot of segments in his pocket i mean his show that he has to fill so
maybe sometimes you just runs out of
you know topics to talk about and
decides to just say what's on his mind without having the time to fully google it. Like, you know, if it were like the Marlins or something that he's
not paying that much attention to. Yeah, he should just do crossword puzzles. Yeah, actually,
I think we'd all be better off if he just did crossword puzzles.
Matt LaBlanc was actually an answer for 13 across. Let's do the start of the day, please.
Damn it. Start of the day, start of the day,
And this is start of the day.
Start of the day, start of the day,
And this is start of the day.
Start of the day, start of the day,
And this is start of the day.
Start of the day, start of the day,
And this is start of the day.
First of all Roy, thank you for turning on original sounds.
I can hear the music.
You got it.
You are Major League leader. In strikeouts this year as a hitter is
you. Any Osuarez, one of Mike Ryan's favorite players, you. Any Osuarez, he has
struck out 182 times in 139 games. Tony Gwyn struck out 188 times in the
1990s. Ten years? Well,
full season.
To be fair,
one of those was strike short.
So it was like nine and a half.
I see what you're doing there.
The point.
It would have been like,
it would have been at least 189 times
if they hadn't,
this season had been struck.
There's another crazy
stat that I'm going to tone,
I'm going to real Tony when Robert
Hall these days.
My friend Justin pointed that out to me.
He, this is an article on MLB.com.
He faced 18 Hall of Fame pitchers in his career, a total of 541 played appearances, which
is basically a full season of hitting against just Hall of Famers.
And in those 541 played appearances, he hit 331.
That was incredible. Bieber. Was the friend just just along?
Oh, you blew it.
She said Bieber and I laughed.
He's talking too much on too many net work, too many, too many progress.
That was the fault.
It was the row, right?
Oh, yeah.
Can you tell me whether you think your Tony Gwynn's stat,
true, better than yesterday's Tony Gwynn Stad,
which is that Pete Rose could come out of retirement right now at 82,
go 750 for his next 750 and still have a lower batting average than Tony Gwynn.
That's pretty good.
You know, I hear my favorite one.
Yes.
Mike get ready to say the word nice.
Tony Gwen came to the plate 69 times for the runner's
on second and third.
Nice.
And two outs and never struck out once.
Not one time.
That's actually nice that he ever strike out in that scenario.
It's incredible.
He faced Greg Maddox 107 times and hit 415 against him.
He was ridiculous.
Good seeing you again. Good to have you back. We're going to wear you out next week,
sir. Oh, sounds good. Bye, everyone. Don LeBotard. Earlier in the show, the question was asked,
what would you do? Got to do with one invisible day.
Two guts. One day where he could be invisible. We decided that during banking hours, he would
choose a week day. He would rob all the banks in the universe from eight to five. And then at night, he would alter sporting event results by being an
invisible man in games he had been on. This is the Dan Lebatars show with his two gods. We're all gonna die. We're all gonna die.
The oceans are all burning.
And we're all wondering why.
We're all gonna let's turn on the news and find out
that we're gonna die.
Die.
We're all gonna die.
I have in front of me a horrifying climate fact of the day. There's about a 50% chance that
this will be the hottest year ever recorded, but scientists now say that there's a far greater
chance of that record being set in 2024. Over the next five years, there is a 98% chance
that one of those years, the next five years, will be the hottest
ever, 98% chance. It's 107 degrees in Dallas today. And as one professor told NBC, Miami,
quote, I don't know a single city that is truly prepared for the worst case scenario
that some climate scientists fear.
We're going to die. We're all gonna die.
But I'm not sure that that climate fact is worse than are there presently two category
five hurricanes in both the Atlantic and the Pacific?
There's actually three.
There's one in Coral Gables.
Not yet Mike.
Not yet.
You can't do that after beating Miami of Ohio. Although they talked a lot of crap.
The Miami of Ohio coach afterwards said they'd been physically manhandled that their players were beaten up that they were sore.
The University of Miami and Coral Gables has gotten physically stronger. They've got stronger, more muscular players. I am at least one win away from being able to talk shit.
So I'm not going to do that here.
Have you guys seen the trailer for this new CW show called the Swarm?
No.
Wait, why would you?
Isn't it the CW thing that exists kind of?
And if you name a show that's on the CW,
Chainsaw's you name a show that happened 10 years ago.
Riverdale.
The ACC footballs on the CW now.
ACC network has, well, the ACC has. footballs on the CW now. A.C.E. network has, well, the A.C.C.
has game showing up on the CW, which is interesting.
But there's a show called The Swarm.
And the entire idea behind it is that someone has weaponized
the oceans against us.
Absolutely.
It's not just with tides, but orcas are coming for your boats.
It's almost like it's ripped from the headlines.
Now it has a CW budget, but I saw a trailer for it,
and I was like, I can get in on this concept overall.
Isn't there a show on Amazon called Swarm?
This one's the thus one.
That's the difference.
Totally different.
Absolutely.
Speaking of movies and entertainment,
there was a scandal that has rocked the Rotten Tomatoes world. Evidently
in Hollywood, I did not know this, although it makes sense. A PR firm for about five years
now has been paying critics for positive reviews. I rely, I would say, pretty heavily on
Rotten Tomatoes. I don't just do trailers. I don't think I rely on anything more heavily
when choosing a movie. if I'm just scanning
then rotten tomatoes.
And now I've come to find out that this is totally contaminated corrupt.
This is a surprising scandal to me, although I probably shouldn't be.
Same note too, by the way.
I too rely on rotten tomatoes a lot for very opposite reasons, because I'm looking for
movies that are poorly rated on rotten tomatoes for the podcast, Cphal. By the way, Harlem Nights episode dropped today.
Foul.
Thank you, Roy. But then, like, here's the thing, there's layers to this, right?
There's the most obvious layer of why Rotten Tomatoes is broken, which is in order for something
to be caught while by this fresh, you only need a three out of five stars or a 60% approval
by each critic.
So meaning you can have a movie that is a hundred percent certified fresh, but all the critics
started was like, here's okay, three out of five versus a movie where many of the critics
started was excellent.
Some of them didn't really like it.
And that might get to 88%.
So that's the, just the obvious flaw.
But when you dig a little deeper, and what they're talking about there is movies would
come out and would get like that early score wouldn't be so great.
And so PR companies would go and literally compensate reviewers without like explicitly
saying, hey hey write something nice
They say hey our movie isn't really getting a lot of great reviews
And we just think it needs to be exposed to more critics
So we'd love it if you could review also hey, we'll even pay you for your time
And the idea here is that wink wink if you play nice
You will be on our list of people we always turn to whenever we need reviews for our movies
And so they had all these movies that were inflated.
One of which, or what I gathered was it would happen at movies that were in film festivals
that hadn't been picked up for distribution yet.
So you pay critics to review it nice at the festival.
It has a great Ron tomato score distrib distributors, any up the cash,
the movie gets made.
I have nothing on this other than I'm horrified that we've all been lied to.
I go to it all the time too.
And I assume that something was up usually when I've heard DC movie gets positive reviews.
Yeah.
The flash was when the flash got me the flash was like a flash.
The flash and also an an quantum media Quantumania, where they released the reviews
to a certain select amount of people
who they knew were gonna give positive reviews,
held it and then from there the popularity took over.
I read the other day that the Flash lost more money
than anything ever done
in the hundred year history of Warner Brothers.
And think about what's surrounded that film, all the controversy. And I almost kind of
appreciate that someone felt so passionate about art, that they were willing to navigate
all of Esra Miller's BS. And what was eventually a huge law slater for Warner Brothers to be like,
we have to release this movie. We have to. I will put my name to this. People have to see Michael Keaton
in the cape and cowl one more time. The baby's flying out of the window. We have to see it.
Controversial take. I finally saw it on each on max. It wasn't so bad. It was a decent
nostalgia. It was, it was, it was, it wasn't the worst offering by DC. It's the bar.
The bar is so. Hold on. It's better than any Marvel movie over the last year
other than Guardian. I agreed just because it's not all purple. Although the CGI is just
it's bad. But here's the thing. People don't ask for much. Just a little bit in nostalgia
and a little bit of heart. Hort. The Rotten Tomatoes thing does like speak to a kind of I
don't use Rotten Tomatoes as Bible
when I'm trying to decide what movie to watch.
If it's on the board or I'm not gonna be like,
well, Rotten Tomatoes says fresh,
so it's definitely gonna be good.
And I'm gonna love it.
But people do consider it
when they're trying to pick a movie to watch or whatever.
And it always seemed like something
that was semi-crowd source that wasn't
like something that a snobby critic
for a major newspaper outlet was writing that you'd be like,
oh, what is that guy talking about?
Like, this movie was fun to watch, right?
Like, it was always like, felt like it spoke to most moviegoers at their level,
which is like, you want to watch movies, usually just to like have fun, have a laugh,
like, see something good.
And the fact that it can be manipulated by the powers in play that are making millions of dollars
off these films, like, it sucks. It's like one less thing to trust about the internet and where we get making millions of dollars off these films, like it sucks.
It's like one less thing to trust about the internet
and where we get a lot of our information.
But it's so easily gained.
That was a thing.
It's like it's not sophisticated at all.
So that makes it prime for manipulation
and for influencing all that.
But the reality is, I know like we rail on the snobby critics, but at least
back in the day, you actually have to see why someone did like, but like, you know, Jeff
Reliance, Siskil and Ebert, like they actually have to tell you why they thought the movie
stuff. And there are great examples. Like Siskil and Ebert both gave two thumbs down to,
uh, Ace Ventura, right?
But they had to tell you why they didn't like it.
And they would always have like later episodes
where they would go back on ones they got wrong and explain.
Here, people aren't even reading the reviews.
They're just looking at the score.
And as I put it out, even without the manipulation,
the idea that if everyone said three out of five,
and it was all right, that can be a 98%.
I think it's something that an audience sees and they're like, ah, like we all take it
with a grain of salt though. And now it's like, okay, now we have to take this with a giant
pillar of salt because none of this actually matters or means any pepper up in the word
of mouth.
What are you on the pole, juju? Whatever happened to word of mouth? Yes or no? Go ahead
and Google by the way, young people. I don't know if Lucy and Jessica know the work
or the physical nature of what represents
the movie critic to me, Gene Shallet.
Ah, thank you.
Thank you, no, thank you.
I want to.
Oh!
Good.
Dan, Syskilling Ebert is always in the crosswords, okay?
Yeah.
You have to physically look at what Jean Shalott looks like.
Good Lucy's face.
He actually looks like a Shalott.
Don Lebertard.
I feel like we need to normalize saying the scientific terms for organs on the air.
Like someone, yes.
You know what?
If someone takes a foul ball to the penis, we should just say he took a foul ball to the air. Like someone, yes. You know what, if someone takes a foul ball to the penis,
we should just say he took a foul ball to the penis.
See?
He's two guts.
That free kick hit him right in the cock, a doodle do.
DCC down, Lebatar Show with his two guts.
Hey.
Another football season of great enthusiasm is upon us.
So I go to the former football player that I believe as the most profound amount of
indifference about the upcoming NFL season.
Ricky Williams is somebody that I don't believe will be watching on Sunday.
Do I have this wrong?
Do I am I incorrect when I say that Ricky has to be told by others that the football season
is beginning and might not get immediately to a television?
That's not fair.
I'm not saying it.
In most years, that might be somewhat accurate, but it's not fair.
Actually, I will be watching football this Sunday.
I'll be in Tim Piers, Zona, hosting a high-end house at the High Lounge. So I'll be smoking football this Sunday. I'll be in Tempe, Arizona, hosting a high-end house at the high lounge.
So I'll be smoking and watching football.
Wait, and maybe this was the issue.
Maybe if I was allowed to smoke, then I'd be watching for football.
But I am allowed to smoke, and I'm bringing people together to come watch Sunday ticket.
So I will be watching football this Sunday.
First I'll be in Tempe on Sunday, so just shoot me the address.
But second, Ricky, I do want to know, had you been able to smoke during your career?
There was no marijuana restrictions or rules or even laws in the land.
Do you think your football career would have lasted longer?
Would you have been happier?
Do you think it was always just meant to be for you to be the way you are?
Yeah, I think the answer to that question is yes, yes, and yes. So maybe one of them is me.
I don't know if I would have played longer.
I might have gone to the point of what am I doing a little bit sooner,
but I definitely would have enjoyed playing a lot more.
Because one Canada is helps us enjoy things in general,
but to the amount of stress I had to deal with with the drug test and being afraid of
people find out.
And, ah, I think that just drained a lot of energy I could have been using to be a better
football player.
Can you explain to us the amount of stress that you were under in general, not just there,
but what do you regard as the greatest forms of stress in being a star football player?
Injuries.
It's not even close.
Injuries.
Well, you know, the coaches say you're either hurt
or you're injured, you're either hurt or you're injured,
you got to figure that out.
And that's stressful, especially for me,
because I always want to be on the field,
and I don't ever want to let anyone down.
So even when my arm was dangling off,
you know, or my ankle was broken,
I went back in the game until I realized, okay,
something is not right.
So in the game, it's kind of stressful,
but during the week of practice,
when you're trying to figure out how much can I practice, when you're in a lot of pain,
and then always thinking, how is this going to feel on Sunday? How am I going to do?
Just the cumulative effect of being hurt for a long period of time in the NFL, I think, is by far
the most stressful thing. Explain to me the stress of the drug test. Well, I guess for someone who's not smoking anymore, it's probably not that stressful.
It's probably not that stressful. But you know, for me, it was a gamble.
It got to the point where I realized, football, I can't play football if I'm not
consuming something. And so, you know, I would experiment. So the experimental
times are the most stressful. Whereas trying to see how many hits can I take
and still pass a drug test tomorrow.
Three is the answer, at least as far as I got
in my examination.
So the stress was when I spoke
and I wasn't sure if my urine was clean enough
and then if I failed, it would be the end of my fame
in my career.
So that, that was kind of stressful.
The other part of
the stress is when you're in the NFL drug programmer at least back then and I love to travel. Every time
I travel I have to give the NFL my my address, how long I'm going to be there, what time I'm going to
be there. And if they call me at any time I have four hours to pee in a cup where it's a film
drug test, that was kind of stressful too. Can you take us through the number of times you were being tested once you end up in the program
and how silly all that seems now in retrospect when you're only watching football on Sunday as
a paid appearance on behalf of your marijuana brand? I know. It's kind of cool. So when I first got
into the drug program for the first two years of the drug program and I was in there
From 2002 to 2011, so I spent about eight years in the drug program and when I first started off
It was it was nine times a month which is almost every other day almost
But you know at the end of the day it came down to the to the drug tester the first guy was a rule follower
You know and when they follow the rules you got to pull your pants down to your knees and you got to be there
in a certain time. It's just stressful. Second guy, Jen, he was cool as hell. He just
would come in the house, hang out with the kids and say, just give me a cup.
Oh my God. Did you ever give him the wrong, not your urine? Did I?
Great. I said, Chris today.
Would you mind peeing in a cup for me?
And it's you just put it in the bathroom.
I go in the bathroom, turn the water on and get the cup
and bring it out.
I don't get out a couple times.
Most of the time, you know, I most of the time I either knew how
to follow the rules enough or I knew how to clean my year.
Most of the time that the NFL's
junk program wasn't enough because, you know, out of the 500 or however many tests I took,
I did fail, I think, for. I love that I did the drug test of saying, Ricky, I got some good news
and I got some bad news. The bad news is you failed your drug test. The good news is you're pregnant.
Yeah, that's the thing. And we've got you as the wrong gender.
Pregnant. Yeah, that's the thing. They were even going, got you as the wrong gender.
I had some PTSD from FedEx Trumps,
you know, because NFL drug program,
if you fail a test every time,
seven days later, you get a FedEx in the mail.
You know, and I think the worst one was in the end of 2005.
So I was suspended, suspended for 2004, came back 2005,
served a four game suspension,
was when I was with Nick Sabin, was co-defeated with the office.
And then I tore it up, you know?
USC was playing Texas for the National Championship game.
Oh, so excited to go to the game.
That morning I get a FedEx at my friend's house.
Damn NFL, man.
How'd they do?
I get a FedEx at my friend's house,
telling me that I fell to test I'm going to be suspended
for a year.
So it was kind of hard to enjoy the Texas National Championship game, but I still was able
to win through.
Did you ever fail a test for not getting there within four hours?
No.
So you were able, no matter where you were, you were able to get to where you needed to
be in order to do the test.
What are some of the creative ways that you tried to clean your urine?
It's not that creative.
The first way that worked the best was there's a drink,
and it was called like extra, extra, extra clean.
Yeah.
And it was tricky in the beginning,
it was tricky in the beginning because the,
I didn't want the dolphins to know that I was in the drug program.
Because once everyone knew, and then it was easy, I just would do the test of the facility.
But before I wanted people to know, the guy that test you would come to my house in the
morning before practice.
So he'd get there like six in the morning.
So in order for me to take the extra, extra, extra clean, I had to get up at five in the
morning, take the drinking and then wait 15 minutes, drink two more glasses of water, and
then my urine was bleeding for five hours.
And so the major test that I felt, my second failed test is we had just lost to the eagles
on Monday night and I was probably out a little bit too late and I woke up at five.
I took the drink and as I was waiting to take the second drink I fell asleep and then I woke
up with the drug tester out my door.
And if I was smart I would have, he was cool.
I would have just said, you know, can we do this later? I was giving myself
time for the drink to work. But for some reason, I just said, I just rolled the dice and said,
okay, I'll pee in the cup. All right. Here's the other part of the story. So I peed in the cup,
failed the drug test, right? And when you pee in the cup, you pee in a bottle and a B bottle.
Right? And they say that they, they, they, they peed in the b bottle. So if you fail the a bottle, they can test
the b bottle to see if it's valid. So again, I fell asleep, I
didn't finish the process, I failed the test. And so I peeled
the test, when I appealed the test, they tested the b bottle.
Okay, the a bottle failed the test, the b bottle did not fail the
test. So I was this close to passing the
test. So I appealed it. I appealed it and the NFL came back and said, we don't want to
suspend you. If you just stay in the drug program for eight more months and stay clean, we'll
let you free you. But we're not going to count this as a suspension. So they kind of left
it open. And I said, no, I said, I want to be out of this right now. And so they kept
dragging it on. And that's when I failed the final drug test that led to the retirement.
I read a story that made me think of you this week.
I don't know if you know this or not.
Troy Ackman revealed that he almost unretired in 2003 to play for the dolphins
that they've won state and nor have turned.
Oh, you're learning this for the first time.
You did not know this.
I had no idea.
Wow.
I guess he didn't talk to Ricky. Do you realize how different that might have played out learning this for the first time you did not know this. I had no idea. Wow.
I guess he didn't talk to Ricky.
Do you realize how different that might have played out if it wasn't J. Fiedler and
AJ Feeley as the quarterbacks?
Oh, man.
That would have been great.
I might still be playing football.
Mike Grine, you're not convinced that a concussed Troy Ackman could have been better
than J. Fiedler.
I mean, if you look at the stats, Troy Ackman slightly overrated, but I mean, I understand
I'm comparing Jay Feedler and it's not like he's from this other time and it's a bygone
era, but Troy Ackman was a little overrated just because of all the success he had on
the field. No. Regardless. Yes. He only had 120 touchdown season. But again, Jay Feedler
and A.J.eeley helped Ricky retire.
I mean, when you put it that way, you're just saying the names. He was carrying the ball
400 times the season. It was what the yes or no, what the dolphins did to you was cruel and inhumane.
Only because they were willing to pay. That's what makes it cruel and ugly. Are you emotionally tied to Texas, Alabama this weekend?
Texas remains the program that you care about the most, right?
If something is going to stir some embers of passion for football in you, it's Texas,
correct?
I feel like I'm supposed to say yes.
No, if I have it wrong, do I have it wrong?
I mean, I feel like that's the answer.
I feel like I'm supposed to say yes,
but I don't feel like yes, like rushing to the surface.
I'd like Texas, and I think, yeah,
when they play and I'm watching the game,
but I think I try to avoid being a fan for this reason.
They break my heart every single year.
It's hard.
It's hard. It's hard.
It hurts too much.
A notorious leader.
It hurts too much.
A man with a very high pain throat threshold
is here to tell you that Texas football hurts too much.
Well, it's been 15 years, 14 years or something.
It's like, that's a lot.
You know, see, I'm an optimist.
And so I was thinking about the beginning of the football season, every year, since
top-warner, I was convinced that we were going undefeated.
In that first loss, that first loss, it didn't matter.
And first loss is always heartbreaking.
Always.
And then I think, okay, we're going to lose one game.
So every loss is heartbreaking because I think we're going to be undefeated. Good seeing you. So it's even worse when I'm not playing. I just like other people,
I'm not coaching and playing and I just have to watch. That's hard for me.
As I was saying, good seeing you again, but always good seeing you. Yeah, you too.