Happy Half Hour Episode 60: Half A Beat Longer

you know, I told kristin the other day. My wife's a pediatrician, and and she says, as an industry, you know, everybody says, oh, what a beautiful baby. Well, they ain't all beautiful babies necessarily, but my wife walked by and saw the pictures and she said, empirically speaking, that's a good looking baby. This boy child favors his mother, which is why we're able to speak about him in such

glowing terms right now with his physical appearance. I was I was wondering aloud the other day if when he grew up, anyone would make any sort of jokes about space on the on the door, in the water. But I guess that generation just doesn't know anything about Titanic, do they now, Jack? Oh that what a depressing film. Jeez. I saw that movie on that afternoon when the time changed, when the days got shorter. So I can't come out of the theater and people have just drowned, and it's

dark and it's raining. Oh my gosh, terrible. So speaking of and so the living we're in being the day at that point has a great man exactly, speaking of uplifting things. How about Buffalo. Hey, I've got a crush on Buffalo a little bit. Not their team, but there's something about this city. And I guess maybe Cleveland could say the same thing some some other. I grew up in an Atlantic Coast Conference dominated state, so a SEC basketball was great. Loved it on fire Ford as a kid.

But in Buffalo football is important to them. So we get in a little late. We have I want bore you with all the details, but Jim's okie and I we have to drive a rental car from Pittsburgh to Buffalo. So we go through Erie, we go through Meadsville, we go through Upton, Thorndyke, all these other towns that I make in maybe possibly, and we get to Buffalo. About seven o'clock. We end up going to a little sports

bar across the street. The Patriots game is on versus the Colts, and every time Indianapolis got a first down, the whole bar erupted. So so the Buffalo fans hate New England and root for misery to befall them. Best chicken caesar salad I've ever had. It looked like a basketball sized mound of meticulously prepared and the presentation was beautiful, ice cold, domestic light beer. Jake's in rare form. People

recognize him, cheers kind of thing. What do you think I mean, I wouldn't want to live there, but I just love how football means so much to him. Yeah, And I tell you what, it is a town with a certain industrial charm about it. And they're, you know, bringing back the waterfront district, downtown and really doing a lot to make that city look a lot more like

a city. But there's some cool old architecture. We were fortunate to have a tour guide are one of our guys in the video department, Cayle Tutor the Tutor or Kyle tut The Tutor spent three years up in Buffalo, so he knows, knows his way around, took some local spots um and I got a little defensive at the Southerners. I eat me constantly complaining about how cold it was. And I told him, I said, I really enjoy your

fair city. I there's I appreciate you taking me around and showing me all the sites, and you know, introducing me to some stuff I wouldn't not have known otherwise. And when I come back to Buffalo with you someday, there's only one more thing I really feel like I haven't seen yet. And he said, what's that? And that's said the sun the Pierce the Pierced Arrow Museum is there, unbelievable because Buffalo is at the head of the Niagara River.

They harnessed electricity. They were little ahead of their time with h in the hydro electric thing, so things were invented in Buffalo. Electric blankets and some cool things came out of there. Earl. It's also the home of Rick James, the hometown of Rick James. Did not know that. Neither did I, who dated Linda Blair for a while. By the way, there are many things I've learned already in

this podcast. There's nothing I can add to this at all outside of I lived in New York for two years, not in Buffalo, and it just feels like things don't need to be that hard on a day to day basis for six seven months a year, you know, like having lived in North and South Carolina, when you can wake up and you can get in your car and you can just drive and park and then that's all you have to do to get to work, other than scraping and shoveling in deep fusting and worrying that things

are dead or not dead. Like it just doesn't need to be that hard on a Tuesday, No, it really doesn't. I remember my my first wife was from Albany, New York, and the first time I went up there met her parents, there was about a foot of snow in the ground. And being the chivalrous young suitor I was, I said, I'll shovel the driveway off. It seemed like a charming thing to do. I had never done it before. I was no stranger manual labor growing up on a farm. So I said, I'll go out here, I'll shove the

drive way. Don't worry about it. I got this Mr Elliott, and he uh, he sat there and laughed, and he said, all right, and have fun. I went out there about an hour later, and it was about halfway through that driveway, and I said, I'm never living up your day in my life. I don't need this in my life. So, speaking of interesting things that happened in Buffalo, you guys were had a firsthand account of the pregame kicker fiasco.

He'll talk us through that. What do you see what happened? Well, I mean I had just finished talking or was the late stages of talking to Jim's Oki on the pregame show on the Panthers Radio network, and there was a bunch of hubbub down on the field and people moving in areas they don't normally move, And you get off the phone with Zok and you start to figure out what's going on talking to our people down on the field, and poor Zing Gonzalas hurts himself during pregame warm ups.

And here's a funny thing about NFL rosters. There's only fifty three players on them. They don't keep two kickers. And in the peculiar instance, the Carolina Panthers are in their punter, who's their third punter of the year by the way is an Australian gentleman named Lachland Edwards, and

Australian punters are great at many things. They can put a funny spin on the ball that will make it backspin on, you know, hard to catch, harder to see coming down, but they've never kicked from a placement in their life. In five years of NFL career, Lachland Edwards has only kicked off five times, and not with any particular distinction, and he's never kicked a field goal or extra point and all this time, so they are literally

standing around like what do we do now? And Rule tells us that Scott Fitterer runs into the locker room and says, hey, guess what Coach Zane just heard himself. And then they start looking for volunteers, and as the story is told, Chase Blackburn's running around asking guys you ever kicked before, And there were a handful of volunteers at that point. Now, Brandon Zilstra, who ended up kicking, had served as an emergency kicker much in the same

way in high school. But Brandon Zilstra is just kind of guy who volunteer for anything, and he's like, yeah, I'll give a shot. But you had Frankie Luvu out there trying kickoffs in pregame, You had Reggie Bonafine trying kickoffs in pregame. P J Walker goes down and attempts what would have in an old school extra point, really short kick, and all I could think of after p J kick that kick was bless his heart, Bear get him back over there and make sure he didn't get

hurt in case they need him at quarterback today. So it, uh, everything got scrambled all at once, and there were a bunch of people looking around like, oh God, what do we do now? Darren called it a hub of It was more than that. It was a brujajas a rigamarole. It was mucky muck. I mean, it was a bunch

of mess down there. Yeah. Zoki described it on the air the pregame show as it looked like a punt passing kick competition was going on down there for those of you old enough to remember the old PP and K days. But I mean Zilstra steps into the breach and really did a good job with it as as well as could be expected. Considers himself, as he said many times, an athlete, not just a receiver or special teams demon and for a hot minute, this is the

psychosis of Carolina at their season. I looked at Jake and and Jim and said, guys, guys, this could work. We're gonna go for it on all four downs. We're gonna make some, We're gonna go for two. We're gonna not gonna kick any field goals because we can't, but it's gonna result in more points. And we're gonna squib the kickoff down there, and Buffalo is gonna mess it up and we're gonna recover it. Survey says not quite. No One one for five on fourth down. UM. I

looked it up. So a couple of stats. Since I've sat in this year, I haven't been doing the will stat of the week for the last couple of weeks. But I'm just gonna go ahead and do it right now. Go on with your bad selicks of the week. It was the first time that an NFL wide receiver ever kicked off three times in the game in NFL history. Brandon zill story. He averaged forty eight point seven yards per kickoff, which wasn't bad. Their average drive start on

the first two was like the twenty six and a half. Yeah, now Buffalo, Buffalo gotta return. They figured out the third one and made it pay a little bit, got on the other side of the forty, which is good. But you know, really, I mean, his average draft start after two kickoffs was like a yard and a half past a touchback. You can work with that, that'll be okay.

And and this other one that I I looked up recently, and this one was surprising to me because you would have think, out of all the course of the history of Panthers football, Yeah, this was just the sixth time in franchise history they hadn't attempted an extra point or field goal. The last time it happened was two thousand four. That's a long time that they haven't ever attempted a

field goal or an extra point in the game. The other thing is that is a long time well, and that's a great stat What is the name they call the score the people that look at score up score, Ye, that have never been How could a halftime score never been seventeen to eight before? You know, that's incredible. It was strange and unusual. And we're into the hard analytical mind. Who really cares about these types of things Twitter, because

because up the Happy Half. I mean, it's incredible, Like I put that out there and that was one of my most engaged tweets all day. Everyone loves to score a GMMI tweet. I guess it's a thing. The strange and unusual can always find purchase on the internet. It's a thing. I love that that that expression has risen to promise. It's a thing. This is a kind of thing. Guys. We got a situation on our hands here, so looking forward now, quite briefly, we have Tom Brady Tampa Bay

coming in. It's the last home game of the season. What are you guys looking to see? Um? I am looking to see if Tom Brady is gonna be throwing it to Jocquez Green. Uh. They are having a hard time finding people to catch footballs for him right now or for him to hand it to Leonard for Nette's hurt.

Probably going on ir Chris Godwin eight towards a c L. They're not in a spot that you would think a playoff contender would ordinarily be in, and then they're kind of disgracing themselves frankly by bringing Antonio Brown back into the building after he false suspended three games for falsifying a vaccine card. But you know, it's football and everybody wants to win and business is good, so he's back and Bruce Arians basically doesn't care because the job is

to win and they're gonna let him back in. So um, we'll see how that goes with a b after three weeks off. But it's still Tom Brady. And as unusual as it was seeing him get shut out the other night, you just immediately think, oh God, what's coming next? Because he is not a man who cares for being embarrassed. Doing the depth chart for Tampa Bay on started on Monday, and will and and Darren just putting the numbers in.

You don't see numbers like this very often. And I'm not talking about his stats, but he's forty four years old in his twenty second year. He just don't write those numbers of forty four and twenty two next to a quarterback very often, if at all. And the other thing I think is interesting, and I asked coach rule we asked him about on Panther Talk this week, is that Chris Collinsworth is just all what's the correct word A titter? Is that the right word a Twitter Twitter.

I hate cliche, so I don't want to say he was beside himself. He was very, very over the top on how the Saints have the formula. Look at what they're doing. They're dropping backers and say and moving safeties up, but mainly dropping backers into the underneath shallow middle and taking away all the in brakes, all the slants, all those checkdowns that Brady has victimized people with over time. Now that works, I guess it did work. That works if you've got corners that can stay in phase with

their receivers. They're dinged up at receiver. But so I asked coach rule on Panther Talk, Coach, when you watch a game, do you watch the TV copy or do you assign someone to do it? And if so, with the sound up or down? What would your guess bs to his response, I imagine he's got somebody listening to the game. Yeah, I think he's listening to it. Correct.

He he likes to do it with the sound turned up, and then he has someone do it because and it makes sense but in the intelligence counterintelligence, so he knows as all coaches do that. Say Buck and Eateman come into town. They get an audience with coaches. Coaches like to talk. They like to say, Troy Tony, here's what we're here's what we think, here's what we're gonna do. Here's so some intel can be gained. And so I'm sure that Matt Rule is aware of what collins Worth said.

Whether it can work, we shall see. Yeah. I mean, and you talked about the corners. I mean that the personnel has to be there. You've got to be able to to do what you need to do on the front. I mean in Tampa Bay right now, is not able to really run the ball like there, I looked that up. They're averaging less than a hundred yards rushing a game,

and four nets now hurt. So for for them, you know, being able to drop those linebackers if the front can do their responsibility and the corners can stay in man coverage. Yeah yeah, But the Bucks are almost like a fantasy

camp situation. I mean, when one old guy goes down, they bringing another one of main lay who you know, a couple of years ago was the most dangerous two way back in the NFL A couple of years ago, okay, five years ago, and he's still hanging around he was on a practice squad earlier this year, and now all

of a sudden he's back. And you know, because we've seen Tom Brady do this so many times, you sort of fully expect him to have a hundred yard game at some point along the way with Tom Brady throwing it to him and and carrying the ball, you know, twelve times for fifty yards or something like that, but you just kind of expected it. Is why don't running backs last life? They do used to, with the exception of Adrian Peterson who was the back a few years ago.

Was Chris Henry the Titans back, So you had to thank for a minute, right, two thousand yards season Chris Johnson, John Chris Johnson, Yeah, well, no one do. You had to think I had Chris Johnson, that's right, Derrick and then um, you know, Shady McCoy. Levy on Bell looked for a while like and let us Murray um Bell looked for a while like he you just could not tackle him. I mean, the decision making it the point of attack incredible, incredibly slippery. But it's it's not for long,

like the NFL stands for. So we're gonna transition real quick. We had some big news last week. Mick, I don't know if you heard about it. The Panthers are going to Germany. We're gonna take all this, We're gonna pick it up. We're gonna go to Germany. There are probably some fans of our team that would be in favor

of that. That's what they've seen this year, so real. Briefly, the league announced last week that they're essentially assigning NFL teams to different marketing areas around the world Mexico, Germany, Spain, France, England, and the Panthers are one of four teams that are going to be able to market to ends in Germany allowed to uh sell merchandise, uh target things online. So essentially, in the United States we can't put digital ads or

target things to fans in other states. We can't go to Georgia and say, hey, by this Panther ticket or you know, sign up for this contest. So what they're doing is allowing us to go to Germany to to build a market there um and to try to you know, have new fans in that area. So we have been given a charter. We Germans are literal people, some people say that are humorless I do not subscribe to that theory. Haven't been over there a time or two. Literal, but

they are literal people. And what I mean by that is, if this show plays in Germany, someone will say Hans would say too, just so fun Warner. This this is supposed this. They called us a happy half hour. We have two people are not happy they had half hour. It is thirty seven minutes. Well, that's why I want to I wanna click here. I gotta make this exactly thirty minutes. So I spoke to the chapter president of the German Rowing Riot, Tobias Dorf. You did not, I did,

and we're about to listen to him right now. So we're here with Tobias from Germany. How about this? I think this is our first international guest here on the Happy Half Hour to Bias, welcome in, Thanks a lot, Thanks a lot. High So what exactly you were with the German chapter of the Panthers Roaring Riot. Tell us about your your role with that? Yes, so I'm the chapter leader of the German Rights or the German Rights, the official chapter here in Germany of the Rowing Riot.

And yeah, so I have the leading part. I'm yeah. How long has there been a chapter in Germany. It's about two too and half, yeah, I think. So how did you initially become involved with it? So it started with a Facebook group, So we we have a Facebook group of all Panthers Fantasy in Germany. And then we thought about to do our own seeing a little club,

a little fan club. So and Zach, the ring leader of the Rolling Riot, see that and he said, hey, guys, if you want, you can join the Rowing Riot and to become an official chapter of the Rowing Riot. And so we were very excited and decided to go to the wrong rights for sure. So what is better to be at the official fan club of the Panthers? So excellent, excellent. Yeah, we're we're quite familiar with with Zach and in the rowing right here in Charlotte. So they do incredible work.

You're you're in Cologne in Germany. Are there other members of the Riot there with you? Or is everyone really spread out? Yeah, it's spread it, but we have a big community here in Cologne and nearby Cologne, so we have another community in Berlin it's it's it's a little bit bigger, and in Munich in Hamburg. So in the big cities we were there, but I think the most the most of them are nearby Cologne and this area here. How did you, in guess others in the group around you,

how did you guys become Carolina Panthers fans. I think it's most of them become Panthers fans with a two thousand fifteen season. So football is not so big here in Germany right now, so it's become bigger and bigger every year. But two thousand and fifteen with the incredible Panthers here with the fifteen and one record, so most of the Panthers games were shown in German television, and because you cannot see so many games here in Germany like you do in in in the States. Um, yeah,

you see the Panthers. You see Ken Newton and his his style this year, and yeah, I think most most of the of the Carolina Panthers fans become real Panthers fans in two thousand and fifteen. Sure, there are many or some people who are Panthers fans since tense nineties, so since the beginning, but I think most of them starts with this incredible season. I know when we traveled to London the first time, the there's ever played a game internationally. Just just being there, you could see so

many different jerseys of different individual players. Have you found in Germany that many of the fans of the NFL are more fans of individual players or or teams themselves. I think it's the team. So German fans are very, very loyal. So it doesn't matter if your team is successful or it. It's not. When you fell in love with a team, you stay there. It doesn't matter which player there is and some so all the Panthers fans bleeding bleeding blue and black bloods, so I think we

will be Panthers fans forever. It doesn't matter which player they play or not. That's awesome. Take me through a game day for you. Obviously there's a is it six hours? Is at the time difference? Yeah? Yeah? What is that like? What is that like for you? And do you all have any pregame traditions or where do you go to

to to have game day? I think it's it's quite different than in the States because the games were shown lately in the television, so this year it was very comfortable for us here in Germany because it was six pm or seven pm when we begin to to um, to see the games. And so normally, I think you

have a normal game day. So you start your Sunday with breakfast and something like this, you do familiar familiar stuff and um, nearly four to five in the afternoon, Um, you come together and yeah, you drink some beer, you eat some chicken wings. So nearly the same that you do in in the States, and that we go to watch parties or watch by ourselves. So it's it's it's not as big as the big tailgating that you have

in in in the States. Um, so I think we are groups too, about ten to twenty people that comes together to to watch the game. And um, yeah, cheerful the Panthers are there? Are there any special chance or or German phrases that you guys have. Jerry Vitchin is very popular in Germany, Okay, And you know the chant post or cheers when you when you when you cheer

with your with the drinks. And in German there's there's a cheer that you say chin chin so when you're so it's not only post so we say chinchin every time when when Jeremy chin do a tackle or I have a seck or something like that. That's awesome. I think we may need to bring that here now. I like that a lot. We need to do that. Chinchin, I like it. Are there speaking of Jeremy Chin, are there other players on this current team that are that

are fan favorites over there? You ask the number one fan boy of DJMA, So I love DA most of all in Germany now, I think DJ is very popular for sure. Cam Newton is very popular as well, so the German fan base get incredible. So it was so insane when when Kem came back. Yeah, and Brian Burns is very very popular over here. I think Brown, so we we like the defense player a lot, so I seem C is a superstar. We don't have to talk about it, so every everyone likes and and loves him seed.

But I think the who are very popular as Jerry Mitchin, it's uh so we liked ethel Obada last year a lot, so we were we were very very um so it was we was said because he left us, so he was very popular in Germany because of the of the distance to to to England. So this was very nice. Yeah, but Jerry Mitchin, Brian Burns, d J. Moore, for sure for me especially and Cam Newton do you follow Are you a big soccer fan as well the Buddhist Yeah,

most of the Germans do. I don't because I'm so big in love with with the NFL football, so I'm not very interested in soccer anymore. Okay, most of the time. I take everything what I can get, what I can read, what I can watch about football, and yeah, a little bit soccer for sure. Every German love soccer, sure, sure, So obviously this past week there is the NFL announcement of the expansion of NFL kind of marketing over to two different countries around the world. Um, and the Panthers

coming to Germany. What what do you think is some of the most important aspects of uh expanding fandom? Um among among Germans. For for the Carolina Panthers. That's hard because we don't know exactly what it means to us. So it's it's it's very difficult in Germany to get really really good fans stuff. So so much I hope or we hope that this will be much better in the future, especially for the Panthers. So in Germany, will you you you you get much of the radars of Patriots.

So the so it's it's it's like a cliche, you know, and uh, the Panthers is a little different. Uh. And we hope that we can get all the stuff from the Panthers in the future. And I think the biggest thing is to see the Panthers even Germany. So we hope so much that the Panthers will come to Germany and we will give you the warmest welcome that we ever had done to anybody. So I think this would be a very very big party if you come here to Germany. If we if we were to come, which

city should we be playing a game in? What would be your favorite? Yeah, the spew cities in the in the in the closer decision, so it's Munich, It's Frankfort, and it's Distledorf. So for the community, Distledorff would be nice because it's it's in the middle of the biggest our community. Um. For me, I think Frankfort will be the best, the best place to be. But Munich is the most famous city. So in the States you have

Bayern Munich the soccer club. This stadium is awesome, but I don't know if the stadium has the right um, the right size for football field because the seats are very near to the to the soccer field, and I don't know if it's big enough, but that's not my decision. Yeah alright, so so do so door. If it is, I should put that in a note to someone and make sure we get there. So this would off is the place to be for the for the game. But I think the biggest city for for for party, for

for everything would be here in Clone. So okay, excellent, Well if we if we come over, we're certainly coming to Clone. That that's for sure. I will be there. Yeah, I will be there. Well, thank you for taking some time today to talk to us. We really appreciate you coming on. Welcome. So it's it's such a big honor for me to be here. Thank you very much. Thank you, and hopefully hopefully all of our German articles on on Panthers dot com are are good. I I do my

best to try to make them correct. Yeah, it's very good. So I I like it. I like it a lot. So we appreciate it that that you do this this German account. So it's it's such a big thing for us. Excellent, excellent, thanks to Bias. Appreciate you having you welcome? Thank you very much. So what did you guys think? I like the comment chin Chin is what they say every time Jeremy Chin makes a tackle, because that's the cheers in

Germany that I love that guy. I mean, we need to send a plane ticket to him, bring him over here, let him get a big face full of panther football. Let's have him on the show, Tobias doorf We we need to take the show on the road and just go do it in Cologne. You know he's from Cologne. I mean, have you guys been to Cologne. Well, we'll go to Cologne unlike Buffalo. So we we mentioned Tom Brady this weekend, but there's some potential final things happening

in the stadium. The Goat Tom Brady could be playing his final game here. Cam Newton, the Goat could be playing his final game here. What we do know is that the goadiest of goats, the greatest of all greats mc mixon, we'll be calling his final game in the

press box here at Bank America Stadium on Sunday. When you think about that, I mean, really, you've got the greatest quarterback of all time, six rings, You've got the gray just run past threat quarterback of all time in Cam Newton, more touchdowns rushing than any quarterback in league history, most games with a touchdown rushing and passing than any quarterback in NFL history, ahead of a guy named Steve Young.

So of course it only makes sense that that game should be called by this guy right here, who's really kind of a sex symbol in his own right. I mean, when you talk about the very handsome men Tom Brady and Cam Newton, you know who better to describe it to? Mick Mixon. As I've gotten older, I've become an easy crier. I don't know why this is, but things affect me in ways that they used to. Not songs, movie scenes,

and I like to run the upper deck stairs. It's one of my hobbies to try to keep old age away. And on Monday, before Panther Talk, I went and did the upper deck and really, for the first time, it hit me as I looked down on the field from section five whatever thirty, I thought, damn it, man, I've spent a lot of time in this building and in the press box down below me, and uh yeah, it's

gonna be I mean, I'm looking forward to it. I'm excited about retirement, but I hadn't really considered what it'll be like to walk out of this booth for the last time until until Monday afternoon, So I don't know. It's been a joy, been an honor, and I hope, I hope people either way, my colleagues and I call the games. I don't think there's any doubt about that. And you know the reception you've gotten over the years.

I mean, the thing about that I think is it creates a connection here is you are what people in the Carolinas expect to hear coming through the radio. You're one of us. You you have roots in this state, You've grown up here, You've honed your craft throughout North and South Carolina, never strayed too far from home. And that's what people here. It's authentic when it comes through the radio. You're what we sound like. Okay, my god. Well, I appreciate that Darren and Darren wrote a nice piece

back in the summer. Uh And and I I hear people mentioned people mentioned that to me that they read that. And I appreciate that and respect both of you guys more than you can know. I've always believed that radio is magical. I believe that it is a an incredible theater where all your dreams can come true. Listeners are all site challenge. They can't see, so they depend on us to describe not only what we can see, but also what we can smell, and what we can sense

and what we can feel. And I've always believed that when it's done well, and I'm not saying that we do it well, but I'm saying that when we when it is done well, it can do things that TV

cannot do. It can create a meeting place where people hopefully feel comfortable with the group of people that they're listening to, and they if they feel like these people have the gift of humility, that they care for each other, that they love the game, that they're well prepared, that they might say something off script, that they might disagree with one another, that they might we know that you tune in to hear the game, but that we might tell a story or give each other a hard time,

or maybe drop a pop culture reference in a time or two when it is appropriate. If we can keep you just a half a beat longer, if we could keep you after you've gotten back from the church house and maybe you're in your driveway and you want to hear the last part of a driver. You want to hear us come back from the first quarter to the second.

If we can keep you around the water cooler, the radio just a half of a bit longer to spend time with us after you've heard what you tuned into here, then that, that, to me, is is what it's all about. And I really hope that my success or, whoever that man or woman is, will view the gig the same way. It's not about it's not about you, it's not about today. Marks might one thout, I mean, that's just offensively stupid.

But if you can just be the conduit through which the deeds of these athletes and coaches travel, then kind of carry on the tradition a little bit. Maybe, then definitely we'll celebrate that from the seat of a John Deer tractor at Stony Creek Church Road. And on that note, Merry Christmas everyone. M