Tuesday, September 24, Hour 1

Streaming live. I mean, iHeartRadio app. This is Eye on the Ball with Steve Braverera and Jaken Salez on Fox Sports fourteen fifty.

Hey, good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to Eye on the Ball here on Fox fourteen fifty. I bet you didn't think that we'd be on today. I didn't. Thank you Ryan for showing up. Thank you Dave Silver being my co host. I haven't seen you in a while. Good to be here, Good to be on the air. Good to be on the air for fifteen minutes. Thanks everybody for being here, for being patient, sticking with us here. Thank you again.

Ryan.

We're not gonna have our three fifteen guests. We had Dennis Dodds scheduled. He had to chase down some things going on with the with the Big twelve, not Big twelve, PAC twelve twelve PAC twelve and probably Mountain West Schools has got him kind of busy. So we'll do that for another day. I was looking forward to seeing that. What was the last time we had you on. It's been made a couple of months, a couple of months. Things that kind of shake you shaking down a little

Yep, you're talking in realignment, realignment, right, Yeah, I mean, as a proud SDSU alum, it's kind of interesting to see my ice techs move.

Into the PAC twelve.

But I wish it would have happened a couple of years ago when it should have happened. It should have happened rightly perfect. But yeah, I mean, I know that you guys are cover the cover college football, especially this time of year. You're used to covering college football games and not so much the off the field short news.

It's been crazy. It gives us something to talk about, though, to write about. Well that's for the dentist odds of the world and the Wilders and all that stuff. Crazy stuff. But I think it's obvious. It's obvious who should be in and who should be not in. And we already heard from the East Coast teams right right, They're not going to pull a Stamford or cow and go to the to the East Coast, which makes no sense.

It doesn't and we saw that last week already. Both both teams are on the East coast, Stanford won.

Cal did not. But they you know, this is going to be the way of the world for these schools, right, and what price money? Right, because you want to save, not save money, but you're gonna try to get as much money as you can. Yeah, and that's why they're there. Yeah, of course, And that's why Arizona did what it did and every other school. Yeah. Crazy times. I mean, you've been here a long time in mid eighties. I got here a little later than that. Never in my sorry mind,

Yeah, well, you'd have some good interesting road trips for sure. Yeah, teams, I mean it's gonna be it's gonna be crazy for basketball, and we'll see some of the other sports. But as far as media goes, you know, you were, you know, in the heart of all those you know, great moments for the Pac twelve and the Pac ten and now now what.

The Big twelve. No, if that was the case, I'm glad. I'm glad I'm out of it. But for that reason, I wish I were in it. Because it's going to be crazy on the road places that we really didn't get to or I hadn't been to a couple of them. And you were really in a rhythm too.

I mean, you knew you were going to basically the same two places for a weekend, or that those teams are coming in for the weekend. So there was that, and I think it's going to be different from what I'm hearing in the twelve. It's going to be just bouncing around a little bit more, and games aren't going to be on your typical Thursday Saturday as we.

Were used to. Right right, So you were you were in the TV business for twenty some thirty thirty some thirty some you old man, you and you don't look it good for you. And then you were in the development correct from twelve. So that's see, that's longer than I thought. How would you have benefited from this transfer or this change. Well, I'm talking about development. Obviously, it's going to be interesting. I know that.

You know, I've kind of kept in touch with some of my friends in the development area on campus, and it's going to be different going to especially in athletics. All of a sudden, you're sending your development people into the Kansas City or to you know, Oklahoma, or to Florida, places that they've never been.

The U of A. We know, the U of A knows where the alumni are. I was just going to go there.

There's no surprises, and so as you can imagine, most of the Arizona grads are in the West, so it's gonna be hard to maybe just get people. You're gonna get some of the people who are going to be excited. Hey, I live in you know, wherever I go in Oklahoma City, I never get to see the Wildcats. Now we'll see them maybe a couple times a year.

Right right. One of the fallacies, and I said this a few times before that Arizona travels, well, yeah, they don't travel well. They have alums in those areas like the places you're top of San Francisco, Seattle, La. A issue, some of those places where in the Midwest they party have very little.

No, it's going to be interesting to see how that comes together. There were there's some alumni clubs in some of these cities that you know that's going to maybe generate some people, but not many, not like San Francisco or Los Angeles.

Of the things. One of the things I think that the fans are realizing or seeing with their eyes. And it's only been one time. One weekend. They went to Kansas State, right, and it was a rabid fan base, a lot of people, and that was day one of football, right, they saw probably the BYU game with Kansas State there, they're thinking a lot of people. And now they're gonna go to Utah. Guess what, They're gonna see a lot of people. And that's just gonna be the way of

But you look around the Big Twelve and almost every one of those stadiums is near capacity all the time, doesn't matter who they're playing. It could be the first or second game of the season where it's a non conference nobody and they're still drawing sure huge crowds.

So they saw that at Kansas State.

Know what Utah is like, and you know they're going to some interesting locations. If they don't, they're not quite sure what to expect.

I'm sure sure if they show well this weekend, it'll help for two weeks, but they just have to be much better. Did you go to the game? Did not go to the game, but did you see the game? I saw the game. What were your biggest concerns of the game.

My biggest concern was was the defense. I know the offense has gotten a lot of pushback just because things just didn't go too well there, but just we were having Arizona was having such a hard time stopping them, which is the same thing that happened in the first game of the year.

I was a little bit surprised.

I don't know where the where the I'm not a defensive coach and I can't really break it down.

But as far as just like I expected more, yeah, I guess I did two on both sides. But the thing that concerned me to this for two days now three days, is the they looked indifferent after they got down and the interception happened, when when you know they had a chance to tie it. I think it was they just played like they were just there. There was no sense of urgency. They were like, when's the bus leave, when's the plane leave, Let's get the hell out of dodge.

I was in a situation watching the game too, at a restaurant here in town, and it was great the first you know, oh, sure, you get into the game and everybody's excited and all that, and then literally like within ten minutes, it was quiet, right, and there was nothing to cheer about, and people were, you know, just kind of walking away from the screens and going home.

And I know I was going to say that did they stay? They probably didn't. Didn't. Yeah, I mean I was out of there by the fourth quarter. Was there a lot of people there to watch the game specifically? For sure? Yeah? And by halftime you're thinking Wow, Yeah, what happened here? Yeah, by definitely the fourth quarter, you're thinking just paid my bill and get the hell out of it. Yeah.

I still think though, I think because we went through last year, I think there's still some hope.

I mean we've only seen three games.

Yeah, and you know there's you know, I don't know what were last year and after three.

Games, yeah, it was like two and one or whatever. It was two and two for sure after miss Mississippi State.

Yeah, so there's there's certainly time to get things going, and the anticipation is still there I think, and no one's giving up at this point.

When you when you covered, uh, you watch some of the media right now. You really don't have to, but you follow some of it, right Uh. You know, you have the raw rock guys in the media, you have the guys who are pragmatic you and I think that's partly pretty much it. Uh in your in your profession when you were in the media, did you you you you said it straightforward, it was you just said what happened? Were there are times when you said this needs to get fixed?

You were you were a critical eye, Yeah, you know, and I you pay down the road, down the middle.

I really did, and that was just my style.

I know that there are other people doing sports that would have they'd kind of do their normal thing and then they kind of go to the side and now here's my commentary. Here's really how I yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a guy in Dallas named Dale Hanson. Yeah, he got amazing at that stuff. He would you know, he'd give your Cowboys highlights and this and that, and then the last couple of minutes of his sportscast would be his commentary, which is kind of like a newspaper.

You have kind of true sections of a newspaper. Let me ask you. Would that work here?

I don't think anybody's ever really done it. I can't, but it would work here. I don't know, because you know, the town small, small town. But it works in Dallas because you have those fans who want to hear rip Jerry Jones apart, you know, rip Dak Prescott. Yeah, you know here, it's a friendly environment. It's in college.

It's pretty friendly pretty much everywhere except for maybe La or Yeah. I mean I was.

I was pretty well scripted. I pretty much knew what I was going to say. But every once in a while, you just kind of, you know, go off script and maybe even like one or two sentence might be considered critical.

I wasn't really planning to say did you Did you ever hear about it? Not really, not really.

I mean, one time, I'll tell you one little anecdote, and these are two friends of mine became pretty good friends.

Was the lacrosse coach.

Here's a guy named Mickey Miles Felton and they were a club sports still are And then they the ice Cats that was also a club sports. And I went on the air and I said something about the ice Cats were the most successful club sports team at the u of A. You got a call as soon as I got off set. I mean, I hadn't even got back to the desk and there's Mickey Colin. What do I mean, Wait a second, we're really successful? To I, so are you guys drawing like four thousand, five thousand

Really. Oh wow, I wanted to hear those. That was a football or basketball. It was basketball, of course it was because not called yeah but loot. You know, but you did a show for a time or two. I didn't, you know, I never did. No, we did the football shows back in the day. But I want to hear that story. Was it was it a critical one or is it a you got something wrong? Dave?

Or on the radio we would talk about that. Well, No, it wasn't bad. It wasn't bad. It was it was it was unusual and that he really did call, you know, he was upset about something we had done.

No, he's done that in the past.

Yeah, and it was it was kind of sad in a way, not maybe not sad, but just unusual to even have that happen, you know, not too many coaches would would pick up the phone and try to find my number.

Okay, No, I have something to talk about it. So was it a it was a factual air?

It was it was more about a player who had transferred, okay, And we were we were commenting on that, and we'd found out who it was and gone on the air with that. And it didn't come out of like the official u of a release, right.

There were sticklers about that but he called in your in your world, in my world. We didn't need that. No, we didn't need that. We knew it.

We went with it exactly and confirm it. We're going with it. And they are much more controlling now than they were. Sure this is you know, probably in the early two thousands or late nineties, where you really had to you know, you kind of would go with it and we would say, wait a second. You know this is our job, right, you know we're reporters, right, And so yeah, he kind of came down hard on us there and that was like the only time, but it wasn't any and he probably forgot about it.

Sure it was party not incorrect, right, it was, it was true. Yeah. So yeah, No, he did that to me a couple of times. And everyone knows my relationship with him. Uh. He had said in an interview press covers. I think I had it on tape and he came up to me and I wrote about it and it didn't come out like he wanted it to, I guess, and I said, lout you said it, and I brought out the tape. Is well, you know, Steve, that's not what I meant. Luke, that's what you said it was.

It was good because I have you really had a good relationship with him, and I did too, just because we've been here so long, so that maybe kind of caught me off guard that he went so far instill.

Actually pick up the phone and you know in that voice, you know right away, Yeah, on a weekend morning like that, Well, I know who you are. You don't need to tell me. Remember I was, I was home, Like what he's calling my house? Right? Right right? You probably call even back then in the little box. Yeah, yeah, if it wasn't him, it was Bobby. Bobby not happy with happy or one of his kids would call that kind of thing. Those

I mean, there were you know, so many, so many great players just from that program alone, let alone everybody else. But every time I go into McHale, it's like like ghosts, you know, they're.

Like, oh my gosh, I was standing here.

I remember interviewing Sean Elliott right here, or Chase Budinger when he's in the Olympics. I'm watching him and I'm going, man, we were just talking to him. It seemed like yesterday.

Damn Chase. I try to ask him every week, can you come to the show. He doesn't respond to get him on the show.

Yeah, because he doesn't answer.

It doesn't answer my request. And him and I were pretty good, pretty close because Jordan Hill was on there. Why di whis But you know, sometimes when you bake the Olympics, she don't have time.

That was a good We had a great moment with him.

With Chase.

Yeah, it was in the Pac twelve tournament here maybe Pack ten when they were at Staples and he was going to become the all time leading scorer in high school.

Oh yeah for California before he came here. So that game was in.

La Costa can you know whatever high school he went to down there, and so we had the day before the Pac twelve started, we drove down there and a whole story on him breaking the record and hanging out with the fans. I mean, he seriously. They put up a table at center court after the game for him to sign autographs.

Oh yeah, it was. He was that type of a star for that. Yeah, and it was good at the time. And you remember it was at the near the end of Loot's time. He he would say that the Chases

I mean, we always knew he liked volleyball. He was pretty good. And you know, you don't see too much beach volleyball coverage or highlights, but there is one of the top of the world right right.

Well, when he came in, he was the number one high school player in the country. Yep. Back whenever that two thousand and five, whatever it was, and then he just chose to do basketball. Were you at the Red Blue game? His his red blue game? Yeah, I don't you know what. They came out from under the tunnel. He came into the beach, beach towel, and then the volleyball kind of like, you know, I'm also good at this guy. Hey, we gotta go. It was a quick

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Extreamly Live. I mean, iHeartRadio Act. This is I on the Ball with Steve Rivera and Jay Gotzalez on Fox Sports fourteen fifty.

Hey, welcome back to I and the Ball here on Fox Sports fourteen fifty. I'm Steve Rivera. There is no Jacob Dallis now He's gonna come back at some other times over desert. They at the Casino Del Sol Casino here on some Thursday. Coming soon in today with me is Dave Silver, former TV Guy, TV Guy, TV guy. You need more secrets? You want to tell me? No more secrets? Come on, tell me some secrets. Fans, No it was.

I led a pretty boring, boring life here for most of my time.

Well, that's kind of the funny thing. I thought. The TV world has changed, newspapers have definitely changed that. I haven't been a part of it in fifteen years. But when you first started, how much time did you have to do a segment? It ranged between three to five minutes. Five minutes is an eternity nowadays, I know, I mean it was.

There were days I would have to fight for time and literally like you know, beg like.

Hey, we've got a big day.

We've got, you know, more than just the UFA basketball game, which is going to take up most of our coverage anyway, or football. So if there was a busy day, the people understood, and most of the time they understood I wasn't going to waste it, right, So but yeah, I mean some nights I'd give it the time back. I'd say, listen, it's really slow, let's do this in two and a half minutes.

Yeah, And well two and a half and that's kind of standard now or not even less than that.

Yeah, I mean, I watch local news all over the place, and that's basically what's happened. In fact, you know, as you know here in Tucson's some newscast doesn't have don't have you don't even have sports anymore, do they They don't.

Yeah, well which station they have, all of them, they all have it, but it's very brief. They only have one person, that's true, one person. How do you do that? You know, seven days a week? I don't know. But you have news anchors doing sports? Yeah, you know.

Well, you know my buddy Pat Paris, She's done a lot of sports in his careers, right right, so comfortable watching him.

Mooney did the same thing in Channel four thirteen. Alamita does everything, so you know, and sure other people do it there with the new kids coming in. So no, the world in your world, the former world, this is crazy. It changed.

I mean it was changing kind of even as I was wrapping things up. So you had to kind of just kind of look at your day and try to figure out how you're gonna squeeze it all in or again ask for more time. We also, you know, we're lucky we're able to do some Friday night things that we extended the newscast maybe fifteen minutes, so.

We could do high school high school spies and they had to sell that, right obviously if you're paying for timing, and that time that was.

And that was always interesting, Like we would try to do preseason specials for both football and basketball. We try to do something before the tournaments if they were going to a bowl game or for the you know, the NCAA's and those.

Were hard, I mean there were half hour shows. They're much different than doing but the thing is you were able to tell your stories. I mean, that was your opportunity to tell your stories, right, right, And that's what we're all here for.

And it's much like the newspaper will they'll have an expanded section, you know for pre season or the bowl games and stuff.

Before we move on, we're going to have mister Todd Walsh on in the second hour, a whole friend of yours, probably friend of mine, I know Todd.

Todd was there back in the Loudelsen early years as a manager and of course has had a great career really all over Phoenix covering all the professional sports up there and continues to do really well.

So it'll be fun to talk to them. Yeah, yeah, we're gonna go delve into that. He was He did a nice piece on al McCoy. I think yesterday or today, did you see that on Twitter? I did not, but I did.

I saw something else on Twitter that was really good that the Sun's put out.

Okay, that was really good. So we'll talk to him about that. He's with Uh, he's with MLB right now. On you know, we we posted that he was with ballets, but that's old, old news on the on the fire. So yeah, we'll talk to him. I want to get Luke's ninetieth birthday was a couple of days ago, and we'll talk to him about some some stories. He's got some great stories obviously for the camp and then hit for the book that I did. He was he was a fun chapter because he really loved him, because Lute

You're doing sports talk in Tucson and it's t one of the stations.

I think for a while I remember him doing it where Trident is now. I don't know what it was before there was a big a out front. Was the rest that was called? Okay, okay, that's what it was. Yeah, yeah, okay. I mean I'm trying to find some information. I have to get to what else? So he'll be a year We have breaking news from Ryan and uh move on.

Yeah, I mean there's a lot going on with uh what we touched on with college football and stuff. But like the Diamondbacks are kind of wrapping up the regular season here in the next couple a couple of days and kind of stumbled a little bit. We can talk to Todd about that too, since he's all over the d Backs. But they've kind of I don't know, it's been five hundred dish for the last like ten games, I think, so they need to kind of finish up a little bit stronger to get to the playoffs.

Right it's a crazy are your braves out? No, they're they're fighting for that last the last spot, but with the Diamondbacks. So right now it's the Diamondbacks, the Mets, and the Braves that are fighting for last two spots because to who's San Diego's in.

San Diego three game lead on the d Backs, actually the Mets, because the d Backs lost last night and New York jumped ahead of them, right, So it's gonna be a crazy week.

Yeah, it's a good fun It's a fun time here because we got like hockey's even starting pre season, so basketball is just around the corner. With with training camps, I'm assuming they're going to be opening here relatively soon, right, don't they usually go in late September early October?

Yeah? For basketball? Yeah, yeah, that's a camp's going to start here producing. I realized not too long because I saw Francisco Romero do a podcast with Joseph Blair. Joseph Blair had been looking for a job. I guess he landed one, you know where he's at. No, he did, so he did. He was with the Wizards for a while, for a little long while, a minute actually, and then now he's back to his hometown in Houston. He's going to be the coach of the the G League and

Good for him, the Vipers, I think that. Yeah, it was it like real grand exactly exactly. It's cool that he's that he's found a spot a right, let me let me ask you, and I want you to be honest. I want you to be honest, not that you have been dinilized.

You covered him, right, Oh yeah, So what were your impressions of the JB that we covered and how he is now? Yes, totally different, totally totally different. He was, Uh, he was a bit kind of a tough deed, tough summery, certain kind of smart assy. Yeah, yeah, and then he you know, he really grew up.

I think after he came back and started getting involved in the community, doing a lot of charity work camp and his mom was I'm sure a huge influence. Yeah, he was always Later he just became great to talk. Sure, I had moments again. Yeah, I played pickup games with Joseph Blair and Miles Simon and.

Stuff at the j c C. Oh.

Okay, it would they'd be back in town oh after that in their summer times. Yeah, and next thing, you know, I'm like, hey, wait, isn't that Miles Simon playing basketball? And there's Joseph and Corey Williams and some of those guys. Yeah, so they would passing the ball every once in a while. So your other team were playing against them.

Yeah. Now Corey has this summer league team, right, Yeah, that's gone on what ten years? Oh no, no, no, it's twenty something. I mean twenty something because I've been now fifteen about twenty something. We talked about it, and but it's totally changed too because he doesn't have the older kids. It's the younger kids. But back in the day, if you went to the older kids, older guys, kids

But those were if you ever had a chance to see those games, especially they were usually at the JCC in those early years, they were really intense.

Yeah, they got to make this announcement. Will be at the casino, so sometime soon hopefully maybe at the latest next week, but maybe at the earliest this Thursday. We're looking forward to it that they have a lot of things going on there. We're excited. We'll be in the sports bar during the three to five hour before the football game the Thursday night NFL game. I have some promos to read, but listen the most seasonal selection. They

We tried to go out there, I think maybe even the first or second weekended open we couldn't even get in.

He had to have a reservation, right, So.

I think it's a maybe not going to be that bad on a Thursday night, but for an NFL game, you'll get a crowd.

Yeah, no, no, it'll be fun. It'll be fun. So that's cool. So we're talking about the good old days. What would your best story be at the top of your head, maybe in the nineties outside of outside of the championship. Did you go to the Yeah? Yeah, did you go to the ninety four? And so you were you're the boss, I could, I could yeah, yeah sometimes you know you guys.

Say I would bring along some of my underlings. Yes, yes, no, I was there. So we were there for two thousand and I was there for all the So if they would finally go to another one, maybe I'll get to go as a fan, which would be fun.

Are you a fan? Are you fan?

Oh?

Yeah, are you? You didn't lose it? No, what do you mean lose it? I'm not a fan anymore. I think that's been well documented on the show because I do this for a living every day. Talk about you're still doing this. It's not doing this? Yeah, making believe you got out of it a long time ago, so you got refreshed with your But you know what I'm saying this is this is like eating the same hamburger for forty years. Yeah, and you're thinking, God, I wish you didn't have to do this.

Yeah.

Well, you know, funny, we talked talked a little bit about my fundraising experience, and you're out and about talking with people and they want to talk about this car bill, and it was good to have that in my back pocket. I could pull out, Hey, you know, I was there in ninety seven. It was there when they wanted.

Oh so was I. And then that's kind of get you in. Yeah, I mean that's I've had to kind of stay on top of things with that job. Sure, now that I don't have that job, I can kind of pick and chee. Yeah. No, and more power to you. Do you do you meet in your capacity of development and chasing that money? Did you meet with a lot of former people formers? Yeah? Surprisingly not. That wasn't true Wheelhouse. That was well it.

Was, But my goals and my job was to work for the foundation at the beginning. You have a foundation, so there I probably have more of a chance because in those positions you're raising money for anything. Yes, And I could run into an athlete if I wanted to, or if I could get hold of them.

And then later.

I worked for the College of Social Behavioral Sciences, which is its own college, and we have, you know, thousands of alums and they're from all over the place. But I'm trying to think I was I got to go to a number of cool locations. I mean things like Pebble Beach meaning alum, oh yeah, I'm a member. Let's go meet a Pebble Beach Congressional Country Club in DC.

But there was a lot of that kind of stuff. We got to go in a second. But I'm gonna pick your brain in terms of your doing your job, your old job, and the monies and the NIL. We haven't talked about that because it's a crazy you know, because you've seen it. Nil. It's one thing with athletes, then money for the university. There's all these pockets, all these pockets you've got to get into. But all these organizations that have that needed right, good luck to them.

Yeah.

Yeah, we'll talk a little about that. And thanks Ryan,