The Ryen Russillo Podcast - College Recruiting Stories With Rob Gronkowski, Austin Ekeler, Julian Edelman, Ryan Fitzpatrick, T.J. Houshmandzadeh, and Mark Schlereth

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

Russillo talks with Rob Gronkowski (0:26), Austin Ekeler (5:13), Julian Edelman (12:34), Ryan Fitzpatrick (18:25), T.J. Houshmandzadeh (21:59), and Mark Schlereth (27:15) about their best college recruiting stories. Then, Ryen is joined by Ceruti and Kyle to answer some listener-submitted Life Advice questions (31:13). The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please check out theringer.com/RG to find out more or listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Host: Ryen Russillo Guests: Rob Gronkowski, Austin Ekeler, Julian Edelman, Ryan Fitzpatrick, T.J. Houshmandzadeh, and Mark Schlereth Producers: Steve Ceruti, Kyle Crichton, and Mike Wargon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is our fifth installment of the best recruiting stories, a standalone podcast that we do here on the Ryan Russula podcast, different athletes. We ask them all the same question. Give us your best recruiting story. Six athletes sharing that with you. Enjoy. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. Winter is here, so be prepared and get almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. What do I mean by almost anything? Well, you can't get a ski

slope, but dish soap, definitely doable. Sunshine, that's no. A bottle of wine, yeah. And a snow day, again, no. But blueberry muffins with the delicious crumb topping? Total yes. Get almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol and select markets. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. Bukowski makes a twisting one-handed catch with his right hand inside the pylon. Touchdown, Patriots.

Oh, superhuman! Bob Sochi and Scott Zolak on 95 The Sports Hub, Patriots Radio Network and we're joined by the superhuman Rob Gronkowski. Okay, let's do this. You're a high school kid. You're making a name for yourself. A bunch of schools come calling. I know you ended up at Arizona, but what's your best recruiting story? Oh, all right. So we're talking about high school. I would say my best recruiting story, it's not really a recruiting story, but I switched high schools my senior year. The college recruiting stories, I mean, I'm not even going to say on air. I mean, I just went up

to those official visits and I just went absolutely ham. No, no, time out. That's what I want. Time out. That's actually what I want. My Clemson visit, I went absolutely ham at. I lost my phone. I remember going back to wherever

we were going back to the sleep and the guy that was hosting me, I mean, I don't think I've seen him since. But, I mean, bless them for even hosting me that weekend. I mean, they probably thought I was the biggest idiot of all times, which was true. At that time, I sure was. And we were going ham. I was on a stage jumping up and down, dancing, partying, doing all that good stuff at Clemson. And then we get back, and I actually commit to the University of Arizona.

And here's the kicker. You know, I love Clemson a lot. It was a great school. Wait, the whole weekend you were there, were you like, I'm definitely not going here either? No, I was like, this school is sweet. I was like, if I wasn't going to go to Arizona, because I wanted to check out two other schools. My mindset was Arizona, but I was like, wow, if Arizona for some reason just falls off the map within the next three weeks or whatever, the next few months, I'm going to go to Clemson. This school is great.

Loved every part of it. Loved the coach that was recruiting me, which is the head coach of Florida. Now, Billy Napier, or how do you say his last nap napier? I never, I never say his name correctly. Yeah. Yeah. All right. There we go.

He was a great guy, great recruiter, but I get home then. And then when I commit to the university of Arizona, I get a, I get a voicemail, you know, in my messages. So I must have gave out my number a couple times that night. I don't remember. I was having too good of a time. I was drinking all the water that they got down there in Clemson. It's great water. And I listened to it, and it's some girl that goes to the, you know,

University of Clemson, you know. some girl that goes to the University of Clemson. And it's like, hey, Rob, I saw you committed to the University of Arizona. I'm going to tell you this right now. You absolutely fucked your decision up. We were all waiting for you down here in Clemson. Well, you have a good life. We're going to miss you so much. But let me tell you once again you

fucked up bye bye and i was like oh shit i was like what a voicemail i was with i was showing it to all my friends i'm like look at look at this voicemail listen to it and uh we thought it was the greatest thing at that time that's for sure i was in high school i was like 19 years i was 18 years old it was it was the coolest voicemail i ever got in my life and i was like oh i wonder who that was i wonder who i gave my number to whoops uh it might be the best answer we've ever had on this segment what about arizona then why arizona i just love the university of arizona my uh actually I got recruited there because my dad's in business. He sells fitness equipment. He's been in business for 33 years now, fitness equipment, retail and commercial.

And so his other good friend that he met at a convention, at a fitness convention, he does the same exact thing as my dad in Arizona and Colorado. So he became friends with him. And then he became friends with the family through work as my dad in Arizona and Colorado. So he became friends with him. And then he became friends with the family, you know, through, through work with my dad. And then when we were getting recruited, he kept telling my dad, Hey, I'm an Arizona alumni. I'm I'm in with them. He donated the whole weight room to the Arizona program as well. Back then. He's like, he's like, I'll get you in touch with coach Stoops and they're going to, they're going to recruit you. So then that's how it all started. So then we took a visit out there.

My brother took a visit out there and I tagged along. And when I went out there, man, I just fell in love with the campus. I fell in love with the coaches. I just fell in love with everything about the University of Arizona. And just from there, I knew I was going to go there from the beginning. Hand off to Eckler. Eckler hits the hole and he's through. To the 40, to the 50

to the 40, it's a foot race 30, 20, 10 Austin Eckler touchdown Chargers Matt Smith on ALT 98.7 Los Angeles and a huge run from our next guest, Austin Eckler. You grew up as a farmhand. Can you explain first what that means? Yeah, man. So I grew up on a ranch. I call it a ranch. It was 80 acres. We had horses,

chickens, some cows at one point. And basically, it was me to take care of them because it was my mom's ex-husband now. That was his lifestyle. And so that's why we lived that lifestyle. So he wanted a place. He wanted all these things. But he also built fence for a living. That was his company. He had a fence built. So he was never home. And so guess who's taking care of it? It was me, my mom, and my little brother. That's who was home. And so it was me taking care of all these animals that I had nothing to do with.

I didn't want anything to do with these things. And so that's what it was for me when I got home. It was watering, it was feeding them. It was taking care of all these animals, like I said, that I didn't care about. And so for me, I hated it. I hated it so much. But it taught me a lot about

responsibility and hard work. And there's no excuses. There's no excuse not to get it done because that's the only responsibility that I have. But it was a big responsibility. And it was face consequences if you do have any excuses too. So that's what really shaped my mindset. And even the fencing company, during the summers, I'd be football camps and be building fence. Like that's what we were doing. We're just grinding, just grinding. And so that's kind of like you said, you know, like the no days off, like that's how my life

has been forever, man. I've just been grinding forever. And so now that's how my story has played itself out because I've just been grinding through opportunities, taking that mindset that I had, just working through sports, working through school, working through work. And really that's been what I've known and that's what I've done. Okay. So the no TV thing, did you, did you not have a TV set or did you just, we had TV, but I just wasn't really interested in anything like that. Like if I was going to do anything like that, go like play video games in my room by myself.

That was what I would do. I would usually do this isolated in my room. Our closest neighbor was a mile away. We were 20 miles away from our school, so there was no one coming over. I'm not going over to anyone's house. After practice, I got to get home because it takes us 25 minutes to get home. It was really a solitary life of grinding. Now is the high school so small, that's why you're not getting any looks like what's your,

what was going on through the recruiting process? Yeah, man. So my high school, it wasn't crazy. I mean, it's all perspective and you know, whatever you think it's small or not. We had 500 students, um, but it was a little farm, farm town in Colorado with the one stoplight, which, you know, was one of those towns where you drive through like, who would live here? Like that was Eaton, Colorado, baby. Like, you know, I love Eaton, Colorado because they had so much support in that town of the local teams, athletics. So shout out to Eaton for always having my back. But, yeah, it was a school where we were a good sports school. And, you know, my senior year, my junior year had a good year. My senior year had

43 touchdowns, ran for 2,300 yards. I was averaging 240 yards of rushing a game, a few passing yards in there as well. So I was absolutely destroying everybody, which if you're at a small school, what do you got to do to stand out? You got to do that. You got to stand out like, Oh my God, this guy is going crazy. Um, and that, yeah, that's kind of the high school, uh, portion. And then, you know, what happened to my senior year? Well, what happened? Um, so yeah, so going into the recruiting process, um, you know, I'm, I have a teammate that he was our tight end. I pretty much was the offense, but he was just 6'4". He's still one of my friends today. He's the long snapper for the Raiders, actually.

He had all these schools coming in, these D1s, TCU, CSU, Boulder, all these D1s coming to talk to him. And no one would talk to me. Like no one would talk to me. I'm the guy out there scoring five touchdowns a game, running for a first down every time I touch the ball. No one is talking to me. And so finally he gets through all those and all the smaller schools start coming in.

And, you know, I have a couple of small schools that talk to me and they come and sit down with me and they're like, hey man, you know, we want you to come to our team. You know, we're thinking about putting you at like corner, bringing you on as an athlete to see where you fit in. And I was like, that's BS, man. Like I'm not, I'm not going to your school. I didn't tell him that, but in my mind, I'm like, I'm not going, I want to play running back. Like I want someone to come and offer me to play running back. And so Western

Colorado university, the only university that came to me and was like, hey, man, our senior running back just graduated. We want you to come play running back. Boom. You got me. That was the only offer that I had. And it was the only offer that I had to actually play my position that I wanted to play. And so the day I graduated, I was ready to get out of my situation. I'm like, finally, freedom. So literally the day I graduated, my truck was packed up. Like I told you, I hated taking care of all that stuff. I'm like, finally freedom. So literally the day I graduated, my truck was packed up. Like I told you, I hated taking care of all that stuff. I was like, give me away. And so truck was packed up through my hat in the air. I'm going up to Gunnison, Colorado. I'm going to start, you know, grinding with the boys up there in the summer. And that's where I had a rude awakening of what Western football was going to be like when I got there, because I think we

had four seniors on the team. I didn't really realize that. So what does that tell you? That means a lot of guys quit or dropped out or got kicked off. And so I got up there and I immediately was standing out because I was immediately one of the strongest guys. And my passion and me caring for the game was so much greater than a lot of the guys there

that I was a little shocked by how much I cared and how much people didn't care. And I think it's because I came from a perspective like this is a journey. This is a way out for me. This is a way for me to better my life and give myself a better opportunity to go forward. And so that's how I approached the game. It wasn't just I'm here to play football and learn. Like, no, this is for me to start something better for my life so I can get on my own feet and do something that I want to do. And so I brought that mindset my freshman year up there. And like I said, I was one of the strongest guys,

worked the hardest, stayed there the entire summer. I was the only freshman that was up there that early. Got myself a job in the summer so I could pay for my rent and stuff like that, and just continued to keep that mindset through my entire college career. I was just grinding. And then by the end of my college career, we had 25 seniors. So I was definitely contagious when I got up there. And people could feel my energy throughout the entire season, all those four years there. And I was really contagious pulling people along with me because they felt like, oh yeah, we can buy into that because they wanted the same thing. They just didn't realize they wanted it. They wanted something better for themselves. And so being

around me helped them because I'm vocal about it. I'm vocal about how much I care, how much this matters, how much it's more than just football. It's more, it's a legacy, right? And so me doing that, bringing that personality, bringing that energy, right, is what got me my NFL opportunity. And it keeps going. Edelman has it. Did he make the catch? He did! You've got to be kidding me! At the 40! An amazing catch we all remember from Super Bowl 51. Bob Sochi and Scott Zolak again on the call

as we welcome in Julian Edelman. Okay, take us back to Woodside, California. You're trying to figure out the next step in your football career. What's your best recruiting story? I honestly didn't get recruited. I was pissed because we had a running back by the name of Tyrese Jacks. This guy, he was like Adrian Peterson if Adrian Peterson was probably like 15, 20 pounds less.

Because what was AP, like 220? AP was probably like 15, 20 pounds less, because what was AP like 220? AP was like 215, 220. This guy was like 205. He was a track guy. He was like had crazy strength. I think he had 2000 yards our senior year. And I had some decent stats too, but like people would come in to recruit the high school.

No one even looked at me because they were trying to get Tyrese or Dom or these other guys. And I got so pissed because even the junior colleges came in. What was it? San Francisco City College. They came in. Coach Rush didn't even look at me. Didn't even look at me.

And I didn't get recruited, and i decided to go to csm the the rival school of san francisco city but i i it in california it's crazy there's a lot of talent that goes unseen because it's such a big state and there's only really two major universities for football like you go to texas they got like seven big D1 programs. You go to Florida, you got the big Florida schools. You go to California, you got Cal and Stanford and Davis. So there's a lot of talent that goes unseen in California, especially I think Northern California as well. So I don't have anything crazy. I do have, I got so pissed because I wanted to go to Berkeley.

And after my, Jeff Tedford was the coach. Remember Tedford? Yeah. And so I remember I used to go work out with this Gutierrez. He was on our team when I got drafted to the Patriots. And I'd go work out at Berkeley. And I wanted to go to Berkeley because Aaron Rodgers went there. He went to Butte. He was a JUCO guy.

Went to Butte and then went to Cal. And he was balling out. And Cal didn't even, like, look at me. And I balled out after my first year at JUCO. And I got so mad about that because it was close to home. I had a lot of friends there. I wanted to go to Berkeley. So the first time I saw Tedford, I was training in their training room

or in their weight room. And he came up and he's like, we're happy to have you. I just became a patriot. I go, you would have had two Rose Bowls if you were to have recruited me. And I walked away. I walked away. So still mad. Could have been a bear-clean.

Bear. Bear-clean. Old Tefra. I think you got 30 years later. So even after San Mateo, and you ended up, like, you had to go to Kent State. So there still wasn't... Well, a lot of schools,

I was a qualifier, so I had good grades, and I took the SAT, and so I could leave after one year. I was getting heavily recruited after my first year. Everyone wanted me to change positions, or they wanted me to stay another year. They're like, we don't have a scholarship for you. I was like, fuck that. I want to play quarterback. And was like this school, they got football. And, uh, I went out to a spring practice and it was snowing.

And it was like, my goal was to play division one. I want to be a D one quarterback. Like that was my thing. When we were in high school, you'd be like, if something was cool, you'd be like, that's so D one. Oh man. That was a, that's such a D1 throw. D1 was my thing. I wanted to go D1. I want to play quarterback. I watched that practice.

I was like, I could start right away here if I come. And I remember my coach, Coach Martin, he locks me in at the end of the visit and he goes, you know, we're going to allow you to compete, you know, for, for the job, you know,

our, our, our starting quarterbacks hurt. We didn't have a particularly great year last year. And I, I looked him dead in his eyes and I go, if I come here, I'm going to be your starting quarterback.

And like, he looked at me and he laughed and I was like, I'm dead to be your starting quarterback. And like, he looked at me and he laughed. And I was like, I'm dead serious. And then I left that room. I was like, I felt like he was kind of like, he didn't believe me. I was like, I called my dad. I was like, I'm going to sign here. We're going to go here.

I have an opportunity to play. And, you know, it turned out great. I mean, we didn't win as many games as we should have i turned the ball over too much but collected some stats yeah you sure did i mean i was going through it again this morning i mean you ran all over the place that last year while playing quarterback like 14 1500 yards uh i love that story and i'm gonna start using d1 let's bring that back let's just i know let's get it going again. So D1. Hey, that view right there, that shit's D1.

This spot by you was D1. He wants to throw. Sets up at his end zone. Looking deep. Looking downfield. Terrell Owens is open. Makes the catch. At the 45, he's going to go all the way.

Terrell Owens celebrating. 20, 15, 10, 5. Touchdown. Touchdown. 98 yards. Ryan all the way. Terrell Owens celebrating. 20, 15, 10, 5. Touchdown, touchdown. 98 yards. Ryan Fitzpatrick to Terrell Owens. John Murphy on the call for 97 Rock Buffalo Bills Radio Network as we welcome in Ryan Fitzpatrick. Okay, let's go back. Take us back a bunch of years.

You're coming out of Gilbert, Arizona. What was the recruiting process and you eventually ending up at Harvard? Yeah, it wasn't much of a process. I took three visits. I visited Eastern Washington. I visited Princeton. I visited Harvard. I visited Princeton. I visited Harvard. Eastern Washington, Big Sky, won AA back then, was my one scholarship offer. And the quarterback coach or coordinator at the time was Tim Rosenbaugh. And I grew up a Cardinals fan. So I was juiced to be talking to Tim Rosenbach. But that just, that wasn't going to be it.

I went on the visit just because it was a scholarship offer and I wanted to check out, you know, what it was like. That was before Michael Roos donated the red turf. But I went out to Princeton and they had a coach on their staff, Verbit, Steve Verbit. I think he still might be on their staff, uh, verb it, Steve verb it, verb it. Um, I think he still might be on their staff. Uh, and his son was also a quarterback and I think we're the same year and he pulled my dad aside during one of the dinners and said, look, um, I think it's great that you're here on the visit, but if your son comes here, he'll never play. And so my dad didn't tell me that until after the visit was over and it was nice. And I go out to Harvard, decide, look, this is the place for me. Just even, you know, the campus was great.

You can't really make a bad decision between Princeton and Harvard, I don't think. But I love the guys a lot more. They just seem to be a better fit for me. And then my dad told me after I made the decision, hey, by the way, this is what their coach said. So for the next four years, you make sure, you know, that whole deal. But I thought that was funny. That always stuck with me when I was playing against Princeton. But the other funny thing is I'm from Arizona. So going out to the East Coast, I mean, that was quite the move for me. I never really been out that way much.

And when I was on my recruiting trip in February, I believe, the Charles River was frozen. People were walking on the river, and I didn't know that rivers could freeze. It was like, wait, the river is frozen. Like, and I still decided to go there even though it was really cold. Now you roommate, you were roommates with Zuckerberg, right? No, no, it's not roommates with Zach. Uh, I think he was a year younger than I was. Um that whole thing, Facebook started. It started when we were there, which was kind of cool. Did you ever hang out

with either the Winklevice then or no? Never? No. Didn't hang out with the Winklevice twins. Alright, my research is obviously, I need to tighten it up on the research department here. Oh my gosh, geez. Palmer drops to throw.

Has time. Middle of the field. TJ at the goal line. And for the eighth consecutive game and a new career mark, the 10th touchdown of the year for TJ Husmanzada. Thanks to Brad Johansson on 1530 Homer and the Cincinnati Bengals radio network as we welcome in a long time Cincinnati Bengals receiver TJ Hushman Zada okay let's do your best

recruiting story I know you were at Cerritos Community College and ended up at Oregon State so whatever you want to do I actually have two of them now, actually, I thought about it. My first recruiting trip, I go from LAX to Rutgers. Sean O'Hara, he was at Rutgers, if I'm not mistaken, at that time. And that was the first time I had ever been on an airplane. And that was the first time I had ever been on an airplane. I had never been on an airplane before in my life. So here I am going from L.A. to Jersey. Man, we hit so much turbulence. I started sweating. I was like taking my shirt off. I got nervous. I'm like, we're really about to die on this plane. Like, I didn't know what that was. I'm like, why are we in the air and it's shaking and we dropping? And you just start sweating. And I took my shirt off and one of my teammates was with me. And I was like, wow, my first time on a plane and I'm going to die. I'll never forget that. But then the other one, I was Cerrito College. I'm supposed to go to Oregon State. I believe this was a Thursday.

I'm heading to Oregon State on a Saturday. I go watch a basketball game. Long Beach City played Cerritos College. Long Beach City had a guy by the name of Shea Cotton. We had a guy by the name of Tony Harvey. Both of them end up, I don't, did Shea Cotton ever make it to the league?

did he play like? Tony Harvey I think he played a little bit so anyway we're just sitting I think it was halftime of the game and I'm with a couple of my friends from Cerritos College and we see some guys from Long Beach and one of the dudes says something to us

and a fight breaks out and when a fight breaks out I And when a fight breaks out, I get punched. And the guy that punched me, I was pissed off about that. And so everything had died down. The police was there and they were like, okay, just go your separate ways. But I was mad at the guy that punched me. And I'm like, I'm going to get you back. So as we're talking to the police, they kind of let us go. And now they're talking to that group of guys. I just walked up to them and punched them right in front of the police. So then they slammed me. They slammed me on the ground. And I was like, kind of like wrestling with the police. They pepper sprayed me.

Oh my God, the worst feeling in the world. Cause your face feels like it's on fire. They handcuffed me and I go to the County jail and I'm supposed to be going to Oregon state. So I'm sitting there like, Oh, I guess there's my scholarship. They're taking it. Cause it's technically now it's Friday morning.

And then I got out that Monday and I ended up going to Oregon state the following weekend. But I thought at that time, like, Oh, I'm taking a scholarship, but it all worked out. It was Erickson, right?

Yeah, it was Coach Erickson. Yeah. Do you think another coach? I mean, it was minor. It wasn't like, you know, I've never been. First of all, it is minor. I mean, the number of guys on a football team that are going to get in a fight at some point in their lives. And the police officer literally told me, he was like, all you had to do was stop when we told you to stop it. You wouldn't be going to jail.

After I calmed down, we had like a hell of a great conversation. Like I have a bad temper, but once I calmed down, I'm good. And he literally was like, all you had to do was stop when we told you to stop and you refused to stop. So we had, I was like, oh my God. when we told you to stop and you refused to stop. So we had, I was like, oh my God. But yeah, I mean, it all worked out. It was a lesson learned for sure. Hadn't been back in there since.

So you sat in jail for three nights thinking your scholarship was gone. Yeah. And the sad part about being in jail, like I called my friend. I'm like, hey, call him on a three'm like hey call him on a three-way call him on a three-way so it's like six of us on the phone and like an hour and a half and they're ready to go and i'm like bro why y'all ready to go like we ain't got nothing to do i'm bored they're like hey i want to go and uh my my girlfriend at the time who's now my wife um she put up bail

money to get me out so i was like oh she really loved me uh that's good that's good it all did work out um yeah i don't i don't think you can blame shea cotton for that one though so that's that's no no no we just because shea cotton at the time he was like everybody want to go see him is my point that dude like look him up for people to hear this like shea cotton was six seven, as a 19-year-old. He probably was that as a 16-year-old. He was a man-child. But at the time, we were pretty good, too. Cerritos was pretty good in basketball.

So it was a good game. I don't even know who won. I can't even remember. I just remember the BS that I did. Well, it all worked out. The 13-year domination of the NFC apparently has come to an end. And the man, the sentimental favorite, the fans who didn't care about who won this game

cared that John Elway got a Super Bowl ring. Dick Enberg and Phil Sims on NBC. First of three Super Bowls for Mark Schlereth. This is not the same recruiting story as all these other guys down south. So you're fresh out of Alaska, a high school kid. Felt like limited options at the time. Tell us your best recruiting story. Yeah, for me, you know, going to the University of Idaho, I went to Hawaii and I took a recruiting trip to Hawaii. And I'm a little kid from Alaska and they bring you on the recruiting trip during the Pro Bowl at that time, which was always over

in Hawaii. And you're watching, they bring you to the pro bowl practice and I'm watching all these professional football players. Um, and you're like Earl Campbell at 240 pounds and just, I mean, all thighs and like, you're, you're looking at it and I'm like the time, you know, I'm just kid from Alaska going, Holy Moses. Like I, this is crazy. Right? And I always had this dream to play in the NFL. And at that point, I'm looking at like, there's no way I'm going to make it to the NFL. And then I'm going through the weight room. And you know, University of Hawaii is all Samoan kids, right? And I'm like, holy, like, they're just these big old, I'm like, I don't think I can play here. And then I got the scholarship offer to Hawaii or to Idaho. And I took my recruiting trip to Idaho. And, um, you know, I looked around there and I thought, well, at least I can probably,

at least I'll start or I'll play here, but I don't know about any place else. So, um, there was two things for me that when I sat down and made the decision, it was, am I going to play or might have to wait around for three years to play? Cause I want to play. And the other thing was, and this is God's honest truth. I grew up in Alaska. I was like, I cannot wake up to sunshine 24 hours, you know, seven days a week, three 65. Like I can't, I if I have to be in sunshine all the time, I'm going to go bonkers. So it was like, at least Idaho has changed the season and it snows

and it does stuff like i'm used to in alaska so that's why that's literally why i chose the university of idaho how big were you as a senior um i was six three two 15 to 20 right because the picture of you that constantly gets brought up maybe twice a year. Uh, so Rudy likes to call it your red Dawn photo. Yeah. You're all ripped up. Just good looking kid. Nice little Brown.

Yeah. I don't know what you're doing with the bangs or whatever. Certainly not criticizing in my certain position. Uh, but I, so two 15, were you, were you playing everything in Alaska? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was, uh, I was Alaska? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was a high school, obviously, football player. My football coaches wouldn't let me play basketball, which I wanted to play. I wrestled instead because they said it was just way better.

And then, you know, for your football career, which it was, it's the toughest sport I've ever been involved in, bar none. I'm glad I did it. I hated it involved in bar none um i'm glad i did it i hated it at the time but i'm glad i did it so 215 to idaho and then see i love that because that's like you're the only kid that you could ever think of that would go to hawaii and be like nope yeah all right no this is there's no way i want to go here yeah i was like there's not waking up this like i went I went, I went like, you can see,

I just came back from Hawaii. I got not one stitch of tan on me. I had the hundred, I had the same sunscreen that my grandkids were wearing. I was like, no, I have no interest in winning a tanning contest. I don't even want to be in the sun.

You want details? Bye. I drive a Ferrari. 355 Cabriolet. What's up? I have a ridiculous house in the South Fork. I have every toy you could possibly imagine. And best of all, kids, I am liquid.

So, now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. The email address, lifeadvicerr at gmail.com. We got Kyle. We got Steve. Okay. All right. Let's do a Vegas one.

Move to Vegas. 5'8", 155, 75-pound dumbbells, 27 pull-up max. Dude, don't talk about anything else. 27 pull-ups is like, is that even 1%? It's probably less than 1%. Pickup comp, Bruce Brown. Please don't. Okay.

So I got to edit this on the fly. I graduated college on the East Coast, immediately moved across the country to start my job. Ooh, very good job. I love my job, make good money. I'm overall very pleased with the professional aspect of my life. I already know where this is going. However, like many others who write into life advice, I'm dealing with the standard struggles that come with living alone in a new city, especially at my young age. This includes not meeting new people outside of work, spending extended periods of time by myself and missing my friends and family back East. The real dilemma is that because I moved to Las Vegas in many ways, this is a blessing and curse. The blessing, given that it's Vegas, everyone wants

to visit me. Considering how lonely it feels at times, it's very comforting knowing I can expect a rather steady stream of visitors coming to crash at my place in sin city between my hometown friends and college buddies i already have three groups on the calendar before april that's a lot of dudes and a lot of visits especially at that young age like you love right after college being like i'll visit where are you yeah trinidad yeah yeah and what's your couch any blankets yeah i don't need that i once slept on an xbox that wasn't great as a pillow with a sheet over it but yeah when you're young it doesn't really matter sleeping arrangements i think back to a couple visits that i made while i was still in vermont with no money and then would visit guys that had places in multiple cities

like i kind of i don't even know if i've done it yet but i'd like to apologize to the guy from the guys from hereford right hereford and newberry Street. Now looking back, I'm like, what a horrible guest. Just to assume like, hey, I'm going to crash here for four days and go out every single night. I know that you guys have jobs and normal stuff, and so maybe we'll hang out on Friday, but I'm going to go to every Red Sox game and just be out, leave a key under the mat. No problem. And they just let you do it, but they must have motherfucked me the whole time i mean i think the real apology goes to slopes and rand for their manhattan apartment when i came into the city for my trent and thunder interview and i didn't even have any money to stay anywhere

i think one of the guys didn't even like me anyway but um i lost their keys that was like the end of it not awesome the relationship has never been the same. It's been, I don't know, 21 years. So anyway, I get that. I get that. I love going to visit back then. And now I look back and I'm like, man, what a horrible guest. So apologies to everybody that I visited while I was still living in Vermont with no money.

And I came to visit you. You're nicer places and cooler cities. So the curse is when I do get visitors, they're coming to engage in all the typical Vegas activities you'd expect, drinking, gambling, clubbing, et cetera. For the visitors, this is a sort of vacation where they'll budge out a couple hundred bucks to blow in Vegas for the weekend, probably more than a couple hundred. As the host of the trip, I'll feel tempted pressure to join my guests in all these activities. But with the volume of guests, I'm expecting this to get pretty costly pretty fast. As I mentioned earlier, my job is fairly well paying for somebody in their early twenties. Yeah, it's a good job, but I can't imagine you're like

maxing out every single savings account you'd want. I'm trying to save diligently and set myself up for the future and I won't be able to do that if I'm blowing hundreds of dollars every weekend on blackjack and strippers because my buddies are in town. How do I balance maintaining a close relationship with my friends back east and welcoming them into town without breaking the bank every time they come to visit? All right, some theories but i've talked a lot here so why don't you guys go first sounds like you need to hit up the ringer.com slash rg bro um no i when when my buddies would come they were always like i'm not a club guy strictly i'm not i'm not i'm not never have been even when i was the 8.5 version of myself or 8.0, whichever we

landed on. Um, even then I was like, this is not for me. I don't like it. I don't know where to stand. I don't know where to put my feet, whatever. So, but when I had a bunch of guys coming out, when I first came out of college, out of college, I basically moved right here and they were always like, Oh, we want to go to these places. And I was like, this is great. I'm not, I'm not sponsoring a club thing. I don't think you can do that in Vegasgas i just don't and like i think that's that's like part of the big three right so i don't have a great answer actually because that was easy for me to just put my foot down and there'd be a couple groans but hey listen if you guys want to go to the club or something like you know holler at me afterwards i'll be up but um i don't think you can do that vegas this is

kind of understood and the gambling thing is like i don't think you can do that in Vegas. This is kind of understood. And the gambling thing is like, I don't know. You can kind of gamble anywhere, right? If you're in like a city. If you're in the county, right? On your phone. Yeah. But it makes sense. Like what this guy's talking about.

And before it's true, you jump in. It's just, it makes sense that this is a little above and beyond the normal, hey, a lot of guys are visiting. Because you're visiting in Vegas, which we just, there's going to be all these expenses that you can't theoretically like keep up with, especially on these weekends. This is the one weekend of the year for these guys. And this is down the street for you. So the math is just not going to work out. So anyway, Steve. No, that's what I said. So can you, are all these different friend groups or are they the same friend group? Because if it's the same friend group, got to be like guys we got to get on the same page like once a year we're going to

have a weird long weekend but like we can't keep coming every couple of months where then i have that's totally reasonable and if they want to do that that's fine groups right i think he said three friend groups he said it's three separate groups before april we're not even a month five dude but separate groups might be groups of of trips right not necessarily guys from a different group do they know each other like my buddies some of my buddies from college also know my buddies from high school like can we get everybody just on the same page to maybe pick a long weekend every year that's like hey this is the ball out weekend because other than that like i think you can go out you maybe don't hit the strip club you can hit the tables and just like not you had a

hundred dollar budget or something and you're maybe a debbie downer but your guys have to understand you and also like it they're not a $100 budget or something and you're maybe a Debbie Downer, but your guys have to understand you. And also like, they're not necessarily coming on weekends, right? It's not always like Saturdays because Vegas is kind of the weekend. So is there a way you could like drop them off at the tables, come pick them up and then be like, all right, now it's dinner time.

And you could just pick one thing. You're not going to do that. I know you're not going to. Mom's going to pick us up from the casino later. Well, no, you do three hours and then it's like you got dinner. That way you bought yourself, who knows what you would have spent those three hours. I'm just saying, if you have to do this every other weekend, you got to find a way to, you know, you got to like LeBron it. You got to sort of like

pick your spots and rest out there. I love that you brought it back to LeBron. This is tough. This is a little bit more challenging. Like I had a theory where I just was like, I don't even care what I'm saving in my twenties. Now, looking back, I wish I just maxed out that 401k without a corporate job and just done it on my own the entire time. Because that way you'd be like, wow, this is going to be awesome. But it just wasn't feasible that I was going to be able to do that anyway. So I didn't even worry about any of that stuff. So I could go with that advice, but it doesn't sound very responsible.

And it sounds like you're actually a pretty responsible person when you're already thinking about that stuff and setting yourself up for the future, where wouldn't even be like oh no i can only do three vegas weekends this year i can't do seven because that throws off all of my budgeting so credit to you for even being of the mindset this young to be also this won't be forever right that's the other thing this won't last forever this is like guys aren't going to keep doing this like i had one or two repeat la guys like but and i probably had like seven or eight trips and i only like one or two of the guys were like i'm coming back for like guys want to take their vacations somewhere else next time maybe yeah could you could you like host your own like call it the invitational or

something where it's like hey man once once a year once a year i've got a thing everybody's free to come by we're gonna get weird it's gonna be awesome i might be a little bit packed in the living room but you know that's the that's the scene and that's that's the bit that's the weird time. And you just put that out to all of your friends. Say, hey, weekend 2024, we're going to do it in June. Here's the weekend. Let me know if you're in. Otherwise, that's kind of my bandwidth for the year. Because I don't think that's unreasonable for you to say that to your friends. Now, if they want to come and stay with you outside of that time and get weird on their own, I think they can. But the expectation is that you have one weird, expensive weekend in you a year as the host, and you can dictate when

that is and when people can come. I can't believe you guys. I can't believe that I'm the one that's this much older than you, and you guys sound like you're so removed from the reality of this. These guys are so young. They don't give a shit about any of that stuff. They're just going to be psyched to go to Vegas. Now you might be right that down the road, they won't want to come as much, but some people come here every single year and they keep doing it. I don't know who this guy knows though. Yeah.

Right. And, and as far as like the, the local guy invitational, then you're crossing streams with high school and college buddies from all these different groups. Yeah. And that never works out.

We've already covered that in the bachelor party stuff. It's always kind of hard. I mean, Kyle can speak to that. We almost had a gang war with Kyle's crew, and they were celebrating his life. So I don't know that you can start. Here's what I would do. I would do something different.

Now, granted, we've got some lonely guys listening to this being like, I wish I had this many friends. I should move to Vegas. Here's what I would do. And it also depends on how cool you are in your group. You'd have to be on the cooler end of things. So hopefully they're visiting not only because it's Vegas, but also because of you. You just go, hey, look, like write up a proposal, like it's a business plan. And again, I think you might be mature enough to pull this off at

a young age. You go, here's the deal. I want to see you guys the entire time you're here. All right. But because I live here, it's like the Will Kane thing. When he told me that he goes, you know, what's great about living in Manhattan. He says, I love it. He goes, but what sucks is everybody comes to the city. And when they come here and granted people are going to New York all the time, they want the full Manhattan night out. They want the full experience. And I have all these people that roll through and he's cause it just kills me. Cause I'm like, look, this is where I live. And I know it's a playground for you, but I can't do this every time somebody comes through, especially who's getting older. So you don't have to worry about the older part. You should write up a thing where you go, hey, I am more than fired up to see you

every single time, but there's three tiers. Let's call this guy, let's say his name is Steve. All right. So there's three tiers of Steve. If you want tier three, Steve, if you want tier three, that is you guys do what you got to do and I'll meet up. But when you're younger, you're all going to want to be around each other the entire time. It sucks when guys get a little bit older and they're like, oh, I'm not in the same hotel as you. And there's like the late night stuff that's going on. And then somebody is missing out or you're mad. Somebody else has gone or you're actually, it's just like, why are you doing something? You're not going to be with the rest of the group that happens later on in life so tier three might be like i'll see you when i see you but i don't think that's reasonable tier two costs 250 dollars

that means everybody in the group has to pitch in money towards a tier two steve experience for 250 for the entire weekend so it lessens the financial blow to you. And again, you, you can't be the loser of the group. We're like, I don't even fucking like you that much paying 250 bucks to hang out with them on top of everything else. All right. But that is a, I'll, I'll gamble a little, but I'm, I'm just going to hang back at the tables when you guys are firing. Okay. If you guys like tears of only fans, like what access do you get? Right. If you guys want to go to the strip club that's great but i'm not buying any bottles at clubs i'm not getting us a table okay but you're getting me i'm giving like from the minute you land to the minute you leave

you have tier two steve i'm there the whole ride but it only costs 250 bucks and then if you want a tier one steve, that's $500. That's everybody kicks in. Right. That's everybody kicks in. Again, you're still there for the maximum minutes allowable of that weekend, but now it is on you to have to gamble the entire time. You also have to pay for stuff. That's the deal. So I think you write this up in a very funny way, and then you put it out on the email to whatever friend group is coming in. And that way, they can understand what they can sign up for. Tier three is the cheapest. But if they don't pay, if they sign up for tier three Steve, they have to understand, hey, we didn't even pay for the extra Steve. So we can't expect him to go full tilt here

for his fifth Vegas weekend. But I would imagine after every one of your friend groups does this at least once, once will be enough for some of these guys that will never want to come back here until they get a little bit older. That's how it was for us when we went to New Orleans the first time. After the first visit, I was like, I'm good forever. And then, I don't know, eight years later, I was like, okay, you know what? This place is actually great. But at 22, it was not the smartest night out we've ever had. Okay. We spent a lot of time on that one. All right. Let's get to this one. At what age does competition matter? Stats 6'2", 185, bench press 225. Back in my D2 hooping days, focused on legs and curls for the girls. Finished two strength shoe workouts during my red shirt year at JUCO. Uh, I went from being athletic to having serious sneaky bunnies.

Oh, oh, strength shoe. Yeah, man. I ordered those and then didn't use them. One of the great regrets in my life. No, they had these like extra platforms. I mean, you couldn't look dumber. Wait, like the ones we talked about, the eBay one or the East Bay ones? Yeah, yeah.

With like the circle thing on the bottom? Yeah, those are weird. Okay. Yeah, I cannot believe when I ordered them that it wasn't what I spent my entire summer doing. But I just, I don't know. I must have been working on a different part of my game. Maybe it's just pin downs or something. Because I remember ordering them from East Bay and being like, finally, I'm going to start flushing on everybody.

And I got them when I was young enough. And then the weird thing is then I focused on legs so much later in my life that I can still hang on the rim a little. And it's like, wow, you must've been able to absolutely dunk. I'm like, for whatever reason, uh, I've sort of stayed at like this peak touching thing where the age has fought the decline, but it's just like this line that stays straight. It doesn't actually, there's no like crossing point of maximum or minimum. Anyway, cool story, Rusillo. Keep telling that one.

All right. Favorite player growing up was Charles Barkley. Same. I was an all-around athlete like Sir Charles. I could impact the game in several categories, scored rebounding assists. I'm the last person in school history to record a triple-double. Ball, don't lie. He sent us the link.

Congrats. All right. Grew up in a neighborhood of three generations of families where the oldest group of boys are seven years old. There were several kids sprinkled in between. I was the youngest, smallest kid on the block. And my competitive nature was ingrained from the start because I was always chasing the older kids who were bigger and better knowing. If you were bigger and better knowing, if you couldn't compete, your ass wasn't getting picked. I truly believe that early understanding of winning versus losing and competing at everything made me successful in my playing days and now in my life career. now that I'm older and have kids of my own

seven-year-old girl, five-year-old boy, I struggle with the balance of instilling the level of competition that I grew up with without destroying the confidence of the other kid who catches the L I want them to compete and understand the value of losing, uh, brings in making you a better competitor, but it's also a fucking train wreck. In any competitive situation, the kid that loses has a complete meltdown. My mentality is to say, you got your ass whipped, dust yourself off and do better next time. But it's difficult to get my point across when they're rolling around on the ground, bawling their eyes out like they just watched their dog get run over by the neighbor's idiot 16-year-old. Boy, that seemed very specific.

So my question is, at what age should competition matter and should i continue teaching the if you're not first your last mentality sorry no participation trophies in this family all right a parenting one for us which everybody loves when we do uh steve you want to go first is the the only official parent of the group uh yeah i mean so we haven't reached the sports phase yet at 15 months, but yeah, my, my, yeah, but it is, it gets a little competitive about like when kids start walking though.

And my daughter, Marla, she just started walking. She was like kind of a late bloomer, but she's also the youngest girl in her daycare class. So she just gets picked up all the time. So I don't mean it's like a laziness thing. Like she doesn't need to walk.

So she just hasn't walked, but she just started now and it's pretty cool so that is a little bit competitive but i do have a three-year-old niece who just started playing soccer and i'm like how does that work because she's like not super coordinated and then she's going to play a sport too like this doesn't how could you possibly be competitive in this um i will say the like the euro steve part of me that's going to come out here is a lot of those guys and girls, they don't do a lot of competition early. Because we've talked about this with basketball, right? Like the AAU culture and how these kids just play game after game after game.

They actually never learn any skills. They're used to just playing a million games every weekend. Whereas in Europe, it's like they practice a shit ton and play one game a week. So I kind of think the competition thing is a little overrated. Like, let them learn how to be good at certain things. Don't just have them play games all the time. That would be my two cents. And that's kind of how I'm going to I'm going to try to, you know, Euro Steve and raise my daughter that way or my kids that way. But I know, you know, not everyone wants to have the same parenting advice, but I think that's the way to go. Yeah, I heard this on a podcast and that's why I'm repeating it. I

don't remember where, but it was one of those big, big brain guys who said it. And it was just like, you know, they just like, they're not even competing until they're like, you know,

seven, eight, nine, 10, like they're just straight up doing skills, maybe some, maybe scrimmages, but it's not like,

they're not like, you know, what's, what's your record or anything? Like they're just straight up doing all these skills and they have like this whole pyramid. And then, and then they start competing once they've like got all these

skills instead of just having like you know a couple duds on the team running around it's like oh we lose all the time because we've got a you know a couple of kids on our team who just can't get a hold of this stuff so uh i guess that doesn't help because you're gonna have your kid on these teams and you're gonna want them to win but um yeah I'd work more on the skills if, if, if that's at all possible for you as a parent, you can get past some occasional losses. All right. We'll take a crack at this. Um, because I think everybody can relate to this, even if you don't have a bunch of kids at home, I really do. Um, you know, some people are going to get super protective about the parent thing from non-parents, but as the oldest of five, uh, and my father, and my father growing up an

athlete to a very minimum level, but a touch of college hoops there, sports was huge for me. It was huge. And I took on the level of competition just because it was sort of ingrained in me. Losses destroyed me at a young age bad games i was miserable um but it made me want to be better so i could spin it as the positive of you're going to be competing in life whether you like it or not it doesn't have to be used sports but at some point you're going to be competing with other people and are you driven enough to want to do better than them so i would think that's something you'd want to instill in your kids all the time. The other side of that is that you start having more kids. Your approach with the first kid is almost guaranteed to be different with a kid two, three, four, however many you go. I have a brother who doesn't have any of that in him and he he's like, fuck it with a lot of stuff. And he does

really well in his field. He thinks we're insane people. And sometimes I look at him and envy him that I was like, oh, okay, this shit, less stuff just doesn't bother you. And maybe that's the way to go about it. So I think anybody, parent or non-parent can understand that because at some point you were parented. So I'd rather, and it sounds like it's in your nature but it's also going to be kind of on the kid like everybody's kids are different you can have the same same dad and one kid is completely responsive and super impressionable and then maybe the next kid decides like i don't know i'm not wired like this i don't want anything to do with it. And it probably will work itself out. It also depends on kind of your wife.

Like my mom used to see my dad and I like fight to the death with badminton, like to the death. Or if he beat me in one-on-one hoops, I would like go upstairs, change shoes, reset, and be fucking pissed. But again, I'm a little kid, so it's not like I'm – yeah, I mean, he's 6'5", so it wasn't like I was actually going to beat him. But, you know, if he got an elbow with me, I'd like push him, yeah, I mean, he's six fives. It wasn't like I was actually going to beat him, but you know, if you get an elbow with me, I'd like push him. I remember I punched him once. I was like, Hey, I was like, watch those fucking elbow. You know, I was really, actually, I never swore.

I never swore to him until I was like in college or something. So you punched your dad. Yeah. Like in the ribs. So he was fine with, again, I was like young, young. And then I remember I came back from college and we were working on a construction site and we saw a hoop and we were at like lunch and I was like, yeah. And I like really gave it to him. And I think the rim was a little low too. And I like dunked on him and yelled at him. And he was like, all right, if you're going to be an asshole.

And I was like, I was like, so that's game then, right? That's game. You're walking away. He's like, well, if you're going to, yeah. he's like well if you're gonna yeah he's like if you're gonna be an asshole like i don't even want to play and you know we still had to like work on the site together for like the next four hours and i think we talked to each other for like the second half of the day after after our lunch hoops thing that ended i don't hang that banner though you still hang that yeah that was years of like i was starting to fill out a little bit and i was like i'm really gonna put it on this guy and there was no part of like hey it's my dad and he's older i mean he was 50. i think it was 50 51 when he played in that game and i just was like i'm gonna destroy you and uh yeah i mean

i could listen somebody would probably listen this right now and be like that's so up but i don't know i don't even feel bad about it now. So, uh, yeah. So congrats on having super competitive kids. Yeah. Uh, I, I'm in favor of it, but yeah, I think your kids are eventually going to decide kind of whether they're into

it or not. Like a kid who doesn't have it in them to be competitive about everything again, may end up being happier, but it, it's going to be their decision more than it's going to be yours yeah are we all on the same page with that i think so and even if you do go that route i think still constructive criticism is the way to go instead of just like you're either win or you don't it's like all right let's take a look at what happened here it's not just like you know don't just be mad about losses or

you know whatever and by the way when my father, when Magic Johnson hit that hook shot against the Celtics in 85, he did that hook shot on me like for, I think a straight, like a summer, every summer. And he used to put that elbow like right in my chest and then usually would work its way up to my neck or face. And he got me in the face. And I think that's when I punched him in the ribs because I was so sick of that Magic Johnson running hook shot. And he just had it down perfectly. And it was just, I mean, it's tough to contest a 6'5 guy doing a running hook shot when you're 11, 10 or 11.

A lot of open looks is what I'm saying, guys. All right. That'll do it for us. Thanks to Kyle. Thanks to Steve. Thanks to Oregon. Ryan Russo podcast ringer spotify

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