The Only Nine Things We Care About On June 17th, 2019

We'll be there. Hopefully we get some interviews from there for a show later this week, but for now, it's just the three of us. That's it. Speaking of only drinks black coffee. I have never drank a full glass of coffee in my life. Really, wait a minute, although I've never seen you, like even discussed coffee on any level, so I'm not I guess I shouldn't be surprised. No, why, what's the reason. It's like dirt water? It tastes nasty

to me, doesn't appeal to you. The more it's kind of like why, And the more you drink it, the more like you can taste the differences between and the more you like. I had to switch over to black coffee because I felt like my manhood was was being challenged by my wife, Emmica, who only drank black coffee.

I made to switch. Your wife, who once told you to come on this show and declare that you wear the pants in the relationship, I mean, she's she still stands by that there's a bee line of of themology there. I think she's a badass. I'll take that. Well, No, I don't. I don't disagree with that. Um we uh. I saw Chris over the weekend. He hosted uh kind of a pre Father's Day dad fest. Um, it's a Dad's Summit invented by Connie Fox Colleen Wolf. But you held it this year at your house. It was a

good time. Yeah, she and her friend Kristen. And to me, the Dad's Summit is a testament to how cool the daughters are. That they fly their dad's out here, or the day fly out here. However they get out here. They have this amazing like three day fast just celebrating their dads. It seems like a really cool idea. It's like, you know, Greg and I have young children and you hope that when your children are the age of Kristen and Colleen, that they would want to be around. Yes,

over that course for a full weekend. I think that's testament to the whole gang there. I was sad not to mak it right. Yes, the fathers are fun to hang out with your kids, you don't want to be around you still mark on, I think so. I know that it sounds like I've I've advertised a level of chaos on the home front just because they were so

small for so long. Yesterday I was telling someone was the first Father's Day where we got to the night it was like this entire day passed and it was a plus from wire to wire and the kids are at the age where they can kind of they made like little posters and stuff. You know, I got that, you know it's I I like, I got a Father's Day get where I went to a bookstore and bought a book for myself as a Father's Day gift. The

best way to do it. So you're saying, like the first five or six years that you have children, it's just a too chaotic to it. It's cute, but there's no but children aren't oriented to celebrate really anything but themselves for longer than about ten or fifteen minutes when they're small and I don't need to be all day. That that that was good. We ended up somehow and Echo Park wasn't really a plan. Uh and uh paddled some Swan boats. I mean, you don't get much more

dad than I've It was Actually it was great. It was not Instagram photo. It was not a plan. Um, and it ended up being beautiful. We all had a great I'm wondering why you were wearing a life preserver. Yeah, like for if it's so close upshot, it looks like I'm almost badass enough to be on a real boat. But no, it was just like a paddle boat. And that'll get you tired. I mean I felt like after an hour of paddle boating around and I'm kind of carrying them you're doing all the paddling was too, but

I think I was. You know, I got news for you. You're forty years old. Now anything will get you tired. Yeah, that's right, so this show hopefully won't. We've already uh chatted a lot, so maybe that's gonna ruin um my my overarch an idea here let's be honest. It's June. It's June. See how much the NFL do we need to talk about after having three big shows last week. I say, for this show, we keep it tight, we keep it right, and we have nine things that we

care about, three each. We each care about three things. We keep it to three minutes each, and it's just like a power packed episode and everyone goes on their way. I like that a lot. Interesting to see, interested to see how this this has never happened before, that we actually kept it tightened right. But I think you know there's something in podcast. I mean, this side of the table highly doubts that any show clocks in it less than fifty seven minutes or any show start time. Yeah,

well check on that. Yeah we uh yeah, we gotta mix it. You know, there's something to be said for leaving wanting more. So here we are. It's the nine things that matter that we care about on June seventeenth. If it's not listed among these nine things we don't care about, it does not matter. Are if a two day or whatever has happened in your life, we don't care.

Let's start the clock. Erica tam Posse Right now, I'm gonna start with kind of the big news of the day, you know, that's traditionally what we do new news off the top, which is the Nikos Sarrio drama between the Texans and the Patriots. Over the weekend, we learned that the Texans withdrew their attempt to interview Nick Cassario, the Patriots executive, after the Patriots filed tampering charges against them.

There was statements that made it clear it was kind of done at the ownership level between Robert Kraft and Cal McNair and uh, the Texans are standing down and Cassario is remaining a Patriot. I was really surprised by this outcome. Where are us? Absolutely? To me, it seemed like the what's the same The water is already over the damn or whatever I thought it was. You know, the horse was out of the barn. This was this was done. I thought that, you know, the kid has

already fallen off the swan boat. There you go everything about this situation. Asians screamed, the Texans are getting their man, and the Patriots will just let this guy go where he wants to go. And the Patriots dug in their heels and said, this guy is valuable to us. We're not letting him go. It's almost like a year after the Josh McDaniels anti drama that this occurred. It's like they seem to have corner, have cornered the market on keeping their own if they don't like where they're going,

but I I do. It's interesting cause Bob Quinn got out of the building, John Robinson got out of the building. They're both gms. And I stick to this thing that I think they are going to try to find a way to make Nick Cassario their transition man post Belichick, and that that insane with Josh McDaniels. I may be wrong. That's just why I think they're digging in so hard on these two individuals. I I thought it was fascinating

that he went to ownership level. You got the sense that otherwise maybe that wouldn't have happened, That McNair was standing down, that Robert Kraft might have been particularly upset because this guy Jack Easterby had left as well. I don't really know, but maybe now this gives the Patriots time to give Cassio whatever he wants in terms of

money and a title, and that's one option. The other is that he really does want to leave, which felt like that's what everyone was reporting, and so that's kind of the second part of the story that I want

to hear report. And if he does really want to leave, maybe they still do work out a trade or something with a little less you know, tampering heat or maybe I don't know, the Texas go GM free for a year because they're already halfway there at this point, and you have that job is just about done for the right and you gotta lock up Clowney, but they have they have other people in the building they could trust to do some things. But then you then you bring

in Nicossario next offseason minus tampering charge nonsense. His contracts reportedly ends at the end of this season rather season, and so then they could bring him in. I don't know. The whole thing is, Uh, there's a lot of very stage to me that I think is a mystery. And to me one of the biggest mysteries is how much

is Jonathan Craft really running the show? And to me, what Mark said about having your transition phase, like it doesn't have to end with Brady and Belichick, maybe Josh McDaniels and Neck Scessario is a good replacement for those two. And we're Dan here like the level of the well, yeah, that is it tried to speak for Dan Wes. You you have one more thing that that you care about that we care about this week. Well, I got to thinking, and this may be a better question for Mark because

we're the same age. And this really I think, like most questions, Yeah, what percentage of your adult life, let's say, success, achievements, self image, family, friends, would have been possible had the Internet not been made available to the masses at the exact moment you entered the adult world. Okay, and so

that's just wait, so that's on your mind. Yes, I think for me, it's like, would not be possible had the Internet not Let's say I'm ten years older, so at age instead of age twenty one, the Internet takes off. I'm thirty one years old in the internet. Is it too late for me to become a sportswriter? Is it too late that any of this ever happened? Like even

keeping it just at um on two things quickly. One, this career that we're in right now would never have happened without that because I just hit the Internet at the right time to start spamming newspaper editors when there were newspapers back in the day with a billion emails, and it led to over many years, you know, other

jobs and getting this job through internet stuff. Secondly, I essentially met my wife in person, but then we communicated for months over back in the day my space, and had that not occurred, I don't think we'd be married today.

So thank you the internet did matter. That's a good call because yeah, I'm ok and I met long distance, and there was the emailing was was big of that, but also Skype way back in the day, you know, putting the old headphones on and having a freeway to call for hours at a time when I could not have afforded, like long distance calls a large percentage west we are I often think about that like our age, we're we're on that cusp where we experience life without

the internet and then life with the internet, and obviously our kids are never gonna experience that. And that's why I think we can kind of like dip in and out of social media a little more than younger people can, because it's like they don't even have a choice. They just happen. Well, we are too, But there there's like I think there's a it's an easier to sort of turn it off and on because it's just not always

been part of our lives. West and I were born in log cabin, so there's many areas you're five years older, which actually does change the Internet equation, because the Internet was up in like cranken by the time I got to college. I'm also same here, though not a college graduate. Um, I don't know if I would have left the post office without the Internet. I doubt I would have moved to Tybee. I definitely would not have moved to California.

I wouldn't be working for Greg Well. I wouldn't have Yeah, I wouldn't have had that job. I I got into fantasy sports writing on the Internet at a time when it was basically just starting. Like there's only a handful of those jobs even existed in the world at that time. Will there there was no such job five years before.

There be no podcasts, I mean, and there maybe there'd be some format to listen to stuff, but we'd still be having to drive around in your station wagon, you know, like like extra long to listen to a full podcast before swinging back around into your house and using fascinating. I feel like we might have to revisit that question. But now we're onto the third thing that that we

say matters. This is a this is another news item, and you know it happened over It happens essentially the day after our last show last week, where we found out that Pat Bowl and longtime Broncos owner, died at age seventy five. And I think, to the younger fan, you really have very little concept of Pat Bowling because he struggled with Alzheimer's and he really was not the

public facing owner of the Broncos for so long. But I go, I, I do remember, you know those memories you have in your first football fan and as a Browns fan when they were locked in those three a f C title games against the Broncos over the course of four years. The third, the third one that happened in eighty nine was a blowout and largely in memorable,

but the first two were obviously classics. The drive in the fumble and what the contrast that I remember that made me heighten, that heightened my anxiety as a very new Browns fan, was that Cleveland's owner, art and model pre everyone hating him, was a rather beloved figure because he had tried so long to get a championship in Cleveland, and he was during these two games and most Browns games, a hot, nervous wreck, like you could just feel his

nervous energy from the shot. They'd show up in his sweet he slumped over in his chair and just waiting for something bad to happen, and then they cut over to Pat Boland and there'd be like a cool wind sweeping through his hair. He'd be in a big fur coat in sunglasses, and I was like, they have essentially like a Don draper Ish figure at the age John Draper would have been at that time running the show. And we have this guy who is a massive, hyper

antsy guy running in Cleveland Brown's team. Very concerning, but if you look at his career, and I think he did he actually there's an anecdote that he dropped that fur code because a lot of Broncos fans thought it was a little too sheehy and not really representative of their country living out in the West. And so he was someone that by the end of his tenure, was incredibly close to many of his employees. Look at this seven Super Bowls, three hundred wins in thirty years, twenty

one winning seasons. They are a team that had posted a league high a hundred regular season wins in his tenure, in the second best winning percentage in the NFL, which was the first up until a year ago. He was a pretty remarkable and we talked about bad owners on this show all the time. He was the reverse for owners in in just about every sport. They are people of accomplishment and achievement who never got the credit or

the public uh sort of image that they want. They want to be out there, they want to be acknowledged. But the best owners realize it's a public trust, like owning a newspaper, that it's for the region. It's for the city and that region of the Denver Broncos. You're talking Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, this whole Western United States roots for this team and identify with them. Because beat Pat Bowland gave the team to the region. He didn't try to keep the team for himself in his own glory,

I guess well said. And he cared so much that when Josh McDaniels went down in a house of fire in Denver, it was because of this sort of unoriginal videotaping scandal Part two where Boland basically shifted gears entirely and brought an entirely different coaches from then on out. Because of that experience. Well, the one the one thing that comes to mind with Pat Bowl and he knew even we're just gonna have that's our fault. We need to be thinking about the third speaker. We don't have

a warning. I think that makes it exciting. It keeps all on edge, and like we can talk about a bron goes to succession plan another time, a lot of family drama. There no family drama in the Tom Brady What is all this? Oh well, it's lingering into Gregg getting killed twice here. No, I love that. I mean that is Pap Bolan's shining moment. It was good to hear. I wanna bring up something that hasn't been talked about at all on this show, which is Tom Brady's contract situation.

And I usually think that, like contracts for quarterbacks are kind of an over talked about, uh topic on this show or just on any show, but this one it it strikes me that it's interesting because he's going into the final year of his contract. Nothing's been done, nothing's been talked about, There's nothing happening in the public eye, which I think is great. That's kind of how they do things. But I would expect the contract that sometime

this offseason. And it really is interesting because we've never seen anything like him playing this well into this long. How are they going to do that and when is it going to happen. I kind of expected to happen before this season starts, because it doesn't make sense to me to have Tom Brady playing out a final year of his contract. That would be weird. But what kind of contract do you give Tom Brady right now? Are they gonna like make up some of this guaranteed money?

I don't I don't even know. But it's just something as we're heading into this dead time that I thought was kind of a topic to just throw out there. Wouldn't it be odd or bizarre or strange if all of a sudden, after all these years, tom Brady said, I want my money. I want what I owed, I want what I'm do, I want over time, for all

of the years I took less money. This is a guy who has made it clear he takes less money because a his wife makes seventy five million dollars a year or used to anyway, and be he knows, and he knows it helps the team win. He knows that they can build a better team and have their championship window is more wide open than other teams. But because they're all century, quarterback takes less money, and you could argue kindness to team and also of what my wife

makes as zero factors. If you wanted to, you could say other players could care less about where that's coming from. That's extremely self. Let's do that. It's that we talked about their succession plan. They have no succession plan at quarterback based on some drama that's happened in the past couple of season. I don't know. I hear that the Jared Stidham buzz is starting. Well, let's see how that works.

About that, it's more of thet It's like the guaranteed money and kind of the are they gonna put their money where their mouth is? Is Tom Brady gonna put his money where the mouth is too, And like make this a contract where it's guaranteed for the next couple of seasons, and like, hey, we are actually all on board with this guy playing until he's forty four, forty five. It's not a one year thing, like it's just never been done. And as a Patriots fan, I'm definitely curious

to see where what happens. Have you ever wondered how many young quarterbacks look at this example and say, it's a tremendous competitive advantage to marry a supermodel. Why don't

I do the same thing too? I mean, there's only so many gisells, right, I mean, there's only so many out there, But there should be like a line forming of quarterbacks saying, hey, look, Tom Brady showed us it's a huge competitive Maybe Mary, like an heiress like Serena would have was would have been a good catch, just like any any woman making any an incredible Yes, Sierra, that's either. I don't think it's like too far afield

from the way some quarterbacks think they're. They're not like you know that, they're not like marrying total dark horses that work at like right aid the whole. I mean, it's just like scary when that voice comes in and if anyone recognizes where that's coming from, let me now, Wes, Well, this is gonna be the fifth thing that we care about on June seventeenth, and there's only nine. So we are living in in terms of sports, we are living

in the analytics revolution. This is what the century is brought with moneyball, and it's all rooted in Bill James

in the nineteen seventies and eighties. You go back and father Pete Palm or some other guys who were into analytics, and it was sort of outsiders bemoaning what the insiders were doing with sports, that it's sort of this caricature of the old timey scout with the chaw in his cheek saying, I can tell where this guy is gonna be good, just by the way he's walking off the plane or the bus, and all these outsiders said, well, that doesn't ring true to me. I'm skeptical. That's what

we've been dealing with the last twenty years. My prediction is the next big sports revolution is going to be the counterbalance to analytics. It's gonna be a response that basketball is not as great of a sport as it could be because everybody's standing around taking three pointers. Baseball right now is sit on your ass baseball. It is boring. It's more like softball. And the next wave of sports revolution is going to be Let's get the sport to be as beautiful as possible, to be as rewarding and

as entertaining as possible. Can the sport reach its apoge Bob Knight used to tellers players, you're not playing against the competition, You're playing against the perfect form of basketball. And I think it's gonna be led by former players who are really intelligent, and it's gonna be led by former analytics guys who were into the movement and take a step back and say, what are we doing to our sport? I know it's smart, but is it beautiful? Well?

I think analytics, you know, good analytics, front office minded, you know, folks have always wanted to integrate, you know, the actual scouting or whether it's the input from players and coaches with the numbers. It can't be such such a I don't know what the word is for. Just uh. You know that you're just married to take and that's all you're thinking about it. Uh. And I think that has happened. But I think that's something to give you mine, especially with the n b A of like, is it

making the sport? Baseball has a bigger problem than basketball. Right now in terms of what the analytics are doing to it, because ultimately, if you're winning, no one cares about whether it's pretty or ugly on a team by team basis. But you know what I mean, But everyone's asleep at the wheel. There's nobody in charge of making sure the sport is its best form, its most rewarding form. Everybody's in charge. The conditioners are because they're hands strung

by the owners. Well it's fun, and the owners are told by their analytics guys, this is what's important. I mean, I think in the NFL we haven't really even seen I think we're just starting. And even though a lot of teams don't advertise it in and are very into analytics and using data as much as they can, I still think it's pretty early in the process for football. Absolutely. The trick is like we can see certain teams jumping out of the others analytics wise over the course of

the last decade to five years to now. But like that movement is it's it does work? Does one team start that? It's good question? This one is I want to throw this out to the group versus winding on for three and a half minutes. But I love what I One thing that I do get excited about football and I don't want to like manufacture stuff that I'm not actually into is the concept of like the berserker

team that we spend all off season talking about. We expect a B C and D to go to the playoffs or even like these two teams to like fulfill their potential and reach the like the Browns for instance, even the Jets. They're gonna make the playoffs for the first time in a long time. Who is the berserker team that no one even sees at all that is going to f everyone's expectations and plans up with a nine or ten win season that gets him into a wild card. And for me, I'll throw one out there

and we don't need to. I don't need to linger on for me, when looking up and down the list the Bills, I would say the Bills are a team that in the in the a f C East could do some damage and sneak into the playoffs because they're well coached and the well run a year before or two years before people expect. I love that pick into me. So,

I mean everything depends on the quarterback, right right? Is he the guy who so many people decided before he even took a snap would be a bust because he's not accurate enough, he doesn't read the field well enough, his instincts aren't that great. Or is he the guy who looked like the best athlete on the field and a lot of the games he played good. Question, there's only so many options because even a team like I don't know if the forty Niners even qualifies as like

as such an underdog. I thought you give them too much credit. On this podcast. The Forts were always talking about how they're gonna be good in their coach. I think they have, they have, they have, they don't win football games. The Cardinals would certainly be an option. The Lions. I think the NFC North is too good for them to do it. You know what I hate to say, Well, the Bengals came to mind a little bit, the Bengals. The Bengals are one that I've kind of given already.

This other part of me is a little afraid that the Giants are gonna be better than than people think. The Bucks and the Giants are two that popped into my mind that like, if things go right for the Giants, I don't think that's the worst for the Giants, they win six games, I think they could win nine or ten if things If things went really well for the Giants, why not name a less talented roster than the Giants.

They do a couple of younger players. I think if things go totally right for most NFL teams, I think they could win more than six. I mean, the Dolphins probably have less talent than the Giants. I can't think of another Raiders. No, I think the Raiders had more talent than the Giants. Giants is the skill position players.

I always picked the buckspace. I just picked like five different The main defense is part of the game, right, and that's why I think defense is That's why I think the Bucks have a lot of upside, not just arians with Winston, but just because their defense has been so bad year after year that if the coaching is just better and they get to twentieth on defense a little bit of luck, they could scrape out ten wins. Yeah, I guess. I mean we're talking about a coach he

decided he had enough. M that's suddenly you're anti Bruce Areas. You're that the king now that he's with Davis Winston, your anti famously said I don't need to sleep on a cot when he was into football, he said that now he's already done. I guess like the the completest part of me, that the part of me that has done seven hundred, eight hundred of these shows, I don't know how many of we maybe or whatever, feels like, uh, we should get Josh mccccount's retirement into this program just

out of respect for Josh mccount. So I'm gonna throw away the other couple of ones and throw Josh McCown officially retiring in as the seventh thing we actually care about, because this is a man who is I think misunderstood, especially by people who have just paid attention to the last few years, and they think of him as like this, you know, backup who's really good at helping out the guys underneath them, and he's a great guy and all

of that, and that's all true. But Josh McCown to me, was the ultimate like five tool like baseball player that really couldn't put it all together. That was almost over hyped at some level. And it's not that he was taken high in the draft. He was a third round pick and he bounced around. But this guy man had a cannon. This guy could run, This guy could make any throw on the field, and he was fun the best dunkers in the NFL. Fun as hell taking the lead candidate, but fun as hell to watch as a

young player. But just kind of maybe like a Josh Allen maybe didn't put it all together, like mentally or whatever it was for a while in his career. But just for the kids out there who don't remember what he was like on the Cardinals where he hadn't okay a couple of seasons, he had a big time moment knocking the Vikings out of the playoffs. He had another season where I think he was about seven and seven

as a starter. I mean, this guy had tools. This guy was like loaded and was a lot of fun to watch, just in terms of his skill set, not in terms of like being a mentor or whatever. He seems like a throwback, and I mean that's just gets overdone. He's a throwback in the way that Johnny Unitis can be drafted by the Steelers, cut be actually playing sand

football and then turned into a Hall of Famer. Josh McCown at like age thirty three, went to the UFL, and then he was coaching high school football, not like in his spare time. That was his job coaching high

school football. And then he had a whole another career after that, right he somehow he was a smart guy that somehow, you know, it was just a great guy to have around and then realize, how can I use this skill set that maybe I like burned through early in my career because he had nine starts, but he had how many different one to three? Four? He had eight nine different teams during his career over eight. Let's

stop calling like EJ. Manual a journeyman when you've got Josh McCown on like half a dozen teams plus three Josh McCown is kind of the definition of a journey And sometimes it was pretty ugly. That Buck season that he was the starter was one of the worst. Like that was. It was just like he was just taking a bullet for them basically and just like wasting out a season. But I just I don't think we're done

with him. I think the same way that Tony Romo went to television, it's not it's not going to be to that immediate notice of people. But I think he talked about and is going away piece. Coaching is a passion of his. He is around the league. People are like, this is someone we wanted our coaching app. I think he's going to be a super fast riser and it helps because he looks like someone shout out of Madman within a fantastic haircut. He is. He looks the part.

He's a great leader, and he's a mentor. Yeah he know, he absolutely is, and but just happy trails. That's what I want out of a backup quarterback. I don't want like the guy who's gonna come in and not make any mistakes and not kill you. I want someone that comes in the game and makes it more fun to watch and just as like a little crazy. He he is kind of a chrisch fan. Bryan Fitzpatrick, it's over. I would um nominate Mark to go and then I'll wrap it up because mine it's not really about sports.

It's sure mine is, uh veers pretty heavily away from sports too, but why not do two in a row. Um. The thing that I am honestly very excited about is the movie coming up soon. Once upon a Time in Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino's ninth film, I do think honestly, it's gonna be a very different kind of film from his previous ones. And we know that it's about nine nine. We know that it's about um, Hollywood, it's about it's mixed in

with Sharon Tates killing and all that stuff. And they've made a billion movies about that topic and most of them have been done horribly wrong, and they're and they're basically just a regurgitation of what we already know. When you put Quentin Tarantino's worldview on it, and he has the okay from the Tate family after they read the script and saw what he did. I think that's a big part of this. I would give you two things

if you're interested in this topic to look. Last week, I saw a movie, The Wrecking Crew, that starred Sharon Tate, and it also had a dangerously overly tan Dean Martin, who have made me show that movie stars of that age they're just simply old, like Brad Pitt still looks essentially younger than most people that are thirty five. That's not how it worked back in that time. But that was her last movie, and go watch her in that and tell me what you think of her after seeing it.

It is so it is she she's not the greatest actress on the planet, but there's something about her spirit that's pretty crazy. There is a book called The Family by Ed Sanders. If you've read Helter Skelter, that book is a crazy departure from what Vincent Bugliosi wrote in Helter Skelter, which was not rushed but written quickly after the case and as the case was going on. This was a poet and a songwriter who was hanging out with a lot of people in the story while he

was writing it. And there are some crazy things involved in there. And people should remember that Sharon Tate's father, who was a colonel in the in the Army. I believe he spent years researching this case undercover, going into the hippie community trying to find out what happened is There are a lot of divergent tales back then. This movie won't go, I think, too deep into that world. It's going to talk about the DiCaprio and Pitt Hollywood relationship in the end of Hollywood, at the end of

a Hollywood era interesting. I spent a lot of the early offseason reading about old Hollywood, and it is fascinating to read the stories. Um, the characters involved. That was a different time in America. Is has there been a movie that's come out in years that is more up mark? I mean, this is a movie made for you, and it does look like a lot of fun. I like it when the secondary characters, like I can't Timothy Oliphant has a big role. I loved him at the Oliphant

like Luke Perry is in this movie. Kurt Russell's in this movie, al Pacino's in this movie. He just like wish cast his his lineup of actors, and it's typically people that someone hasn't seen in a film. For Jackie Brown is an example of that. Like that, that's what I love. And I think he's going to go all out. He says it's last movie. I don't buy it. Let's go to the last I mean, we don't even need about Let's go down. And there was only nine things in the world that we care about this week and

West has the final one. Well, I call this topic what they don't tell you about cancer. Um. I was incredibly open throughout the whole process, and I was told that I can't believe you revealed so much and to me, that was always weird. Why wouldn't I am on this podcast. It's public, of course, that's part of our lives. But I've been quiet since sort of the end of chemo. I haven't brought people along for the ride. And what they don't tell you about cancer is that you lose

your identity, that there's a vulnerability. Like for me, I was a staunchly, fiercely into, pendent person who didn't need anyone, didn't rely on anyone. Well, you you're so vulnerable you have to rely on people. You're on a feeding tube, you can't feed yourself, you can't really function. And Keisha and her mom took care of me. You guys came and see me. But along the way, you lose your identity. And I just want, like ask our listeners be patient

with me. I haven't been the same person after cancer as I was before cancer, and I'm still trying to figure out who I am, and I think I've sort of lost that centering that most people have, and I'm still trying to figure out, like what am I going to be from my next thirty forty years or whatever it is. So that's my quick word on what they don't tell you about cancer, you just lose who you are. I don't think you lost the element um that I

like about you, your self awareness. Though some people would just not even realize that that's all happened to them, you're the analytic side of you, but also other things are able to see that that transitions happened. Well, I think you think about that stuff more after you go through something like that. You you, I think necessity have to be a less selfish person, a less self centered person. You can't just sit around thinking about yourself all the time. Well,

you you're a different person. I mean everyone is always like a different person than they were a couple of years ago. But when you have something that life changing and transformative, I think what I'm getting from you is just that you feel like you're still Chris Wesseling. But how could you not be like a different person. And then just you know, putting that with what whoever the old Chris Wesseling was, and kind of making that all

marry and feeling that that's you. Well, have you ever noticed that Jerry McGuire's memo is basically sanity Like he writes his memo and it makes sense, but everyone's afraid to jump on board. Everybody's afraid to buy in. But we all have Jerry McGuire's memo in our lives and we never really let it out because we're afraid of the backlash. And to me, what I learned from cancer is I'm sort of just gonna throw out I'm gonna use Jerry McGuire's memo. I know these things are right,

and I don't really care what the back last year is. Lakisha, your renee Zellwigger absolutely see. I think I don't know if you would have I don't know if any of this that's happened to you, the the amazing chapter in the last couple of months, would have happened had you not gone through this change. I think there is certainly a large part of that that I've changed as much because of Lakisha and her positive, relentless positive outlook and

energy as I have from cancer. What when you when that makes you Tom Cruise and that means you're gonna beat Justin Bieber if you ever see him, I promise you you will. Do you think well when you say this and you're bringing this topic up for the listeners too, is it because like, why why do you want to

bring it up for the listeners now? I guess I think like there's a part of me that's still, um, really stubborn and really outspoken and really opinionated, and I talk over people in the room, and I know listeners get upset with me because of that. They probably get upset with all of us because of that. But I'm trying to shed more of that part of me, and it's hard, Like that's who I was for a lot of my life, you know. Yeah, I don't think you

need to change. Don't shed it all though, Yeah, totally who you are, and I don't think I don't think you could if you totally tried. But if if you're saying that you're you're a different person and you have different priorities, I think that's natural and hopefully we all that happens for all of us. I just hope that doesn't mean that, um, you know that you just start writing books and you're no longer on this podcast in a few years or something. Well, writing books, I mean,

they don't just write themselves. Like an Eli Manning retrospective is what we need from West. You've really really gone through transition six hundred and seventy Eli Manning novel. I've always seen more of a dabbler than I finisher, and it's hard to be a dabbler and write books. Look a look at this, it's just started. Wants to get on the road. I mean that was a hard turn, uh for Mark Sessler, Chris Wessel, Eric at Sampose. We did it. We'll see you Thursday, m