The Fifth Hour: RIP, Big Sexy

you can check that out. And if you want every game as being played tomorrow on the NFL Week seventeen schedule and Monday night that ram Falcon game, make sure to partake and enjoy the fun on Benny Vspenny on YouTube. So please do that and that content will continue throughout the NFL season every week, the playoffs, all the way through the Super Bowl in northern California. So this podcast is going to be a little bit different than most of the podcasts that we do. It just is. There's

reason for that. You'll find out here in a minute. I wanted to say that I'm very happy that I have the podcast. I'm glad that you have a little bit of a break from the radio show, but I still have a chance to talk to you and share some information. And there's something that I felt was very important that I needed to talk to you as a member of the militias we like to call our little group. So we'll get to that in a minute. I've got the foam cowboy hat double mint gum as well, but

we'll start with this. It has been said by wise men, people much wiser than I am, that sport is a delivery system for stories. That it's a vehicle right that we watch the games. It's really about the stories, not about the stats. It's not about that. I've always believed doing talk radio. It's the same thing. It's just with more bad lighting and fewer expense accounts and less bells and whistles and razzle dazzle and all that. Every once

in a while, every now and again, that happened. Very often, there's someone that will wander into your life from the middle of the night and will stay just long enough to leave a dent in your memory to stand out from the crowd. And then that person will disappear back into the darkness. You wonder where where did they go?

Where did they come from? I don't know. So this week, as I was winding down from a full year of doing the show and trying to recharge my batteries and all that, one of those dents in my memory unfortunately became permanent. So before we get to all that, let's take the hot Tub time Machine back. I think this was twelve years ago. I'm really bad with dates, really bad with dates. It could have been fifteen years ago. It could have been eight years ago, but it's definitely

not eight years ago. It's more than that. I think it was twelve thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, something like that. Anyway, the jets are on full blast on the hot Tub Time Machine, full blast. The water smells faintly of chlorine. There's just a little chlorine there, and there's some other stuff I don't know what that is. We'll get that clean up in a minute. And on a random day, long long ago, I received a message from a listener claiming to be in the state of Colorado. Overnight Radio.

When you do the Overnight show, it's like fishing in the ocean at three in the morning. You never really know who you're going to reel in. We have a diverse audience on the Overnight Show. We have people that are professors at university, have people that are executives at major companies, construction companies, people that work as farmers and make donuts, and people that are police officers fighting crime and criminals that are creating crime. There's a little bit

of this, a little bit of that. A lot of you guys work in factories, whether it's the boys in El Paso or the factories in Ohio and Tennessee and Wisconsin and all the other places in the middle part of the country where you guys work in factories are up all night. So anyway, this person contacts me, he says, hey, you know fan of the show, blah blah blah. Competitive eater. Okay, good,

I like competitive eating, Major League eater. Now, if you listen to the Ben Maler Show for more than like five minutes, and I'm going to assume the position you're listening to this podcast, which is a spin off of the radio show, that you are of the one percent of those that get the show, because you actually, unlike radio, where you can stumble on to a radio show, you're really not stumbling on to the fifth hour parties. You have to go out of your way to find the parties.

And then we do very well, and I'm grateful for that, but still it's a lot harder to find a podcast than it is the radio show. So anyway, if you've heard the Overnight Show, you know that I have a deep, borderline spiritual appreciation for the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest. I've never been to the event on the fourth of July. I have enjoyed it from afar. Joey Chestnut is right there on the Mount Rushmore. Competitive eating is a little bit of this, a little bit of that. It's performance art,

it's physics, it's human endurance wrapped in nitrates. It's all that stuff. And so this listener says, Hey, I would like to come to the studio and do a demonstration. I said, okay. It was in Colorado was gonna come. I guess he was coming to LA to do some events, and I couldn't say yes fast enough. Now, the man's nickname, we're gonna call him by his nickname, Big Sexy. How great a nickname is that, Big Sexy. That's a great name.

It's a solid nickname. So that alone got my attention and got this gentleman through the velvet rope, the intense security that we have at Fox Sports Radio. Now, this guy had competed on Coney Island, right, Darren Brooklyn. He's the guy to jog your memory if you're a fan

of competitive eating like I am. He wore these ridiculous oversized foam hats, the foam cowboy hat you might remember from the old highlight clips of competitive eating, the kind that makes you look like a lego character who wandered onto the wrong set. You know, it's just really cool, though, that's pretty neat. I know who you are because you're well, you're a big guy, but you got the heat on that see the hat, that's the key. So I immediately

remembered him. I'm like, oh man, this guy stood shoulder to shoulder with gladiators of gluttony, a murderer's row of human garbage disposals, and he was right in the middle of it. And the event he was at was when, if you remember, Kobyashi crashed, decided to crash the event anyway to get him in studio, big sexy scheduling, it was a circus. At that time, I was doing the weekend overnight show. I was not doing the weekday show. So this was definitely over ten years and more than

that now, more than that now. So when you do the overnight weekend radio show at the time, it doesn't work for most people's schedules. It just doesn't. Logistics are a yeah, human being who needed to be awake at an hour normally reserved only for raccoons, only for the raccoon. Eventually, a little back and forth we locked in a date. And I have done a lot of monologues that a lot of radio shows in my life. I'm very fortunate I've survived him A bit of zombie these days in radio.

I started at the age of nineteen. Some people going to the military. I went into radio. I think they treat you better in the military. Most nights blurred together, kind of like when you're driving late. You had had a lot of sleep, the freeway lights at two in the morning. You know you know what I'm talking about. I know you're nodding your head. So this one didn't. This night was different than most other nights. It was special.

Big Sexy arrived, but he didn't just arrive, because when you're named Big Sexy, you don't just arrive in style with the razzle, dazzle, with a posse, like a professional boxer. Although this was not hype men, it was medical men, an ambulance. Big Sexy arrived with not one, but two EMTs. Now this was not a bit, this was controlled demolition, just in case someone choked on a wiener, which I did not anticipate I would be using on this podcast. But yet here we are. So yeah, they were eating

hot dogs. Now, on one side he had Big Sexy, professional eater, friend of the Ben Mather Show, built like a large fire hydrant, just a big man lifting weights, the whole thing in my head. On the other hand, we had on the other side, we had my boardop at the time, Jeff Deray was his name. I don't know what ever happened to Jeffy. We lost contact. Jeff was my engineer for a while, Emerson College, Boston, guy nice Man, whose only crime was agreeing to participate in

a cheesy overnight radio bit. Now observing was my producer, Miss Pink Headphones herself, the great Miranda, who's gone on to a lovely life. She's a big executive at the company. She's got kids living the dream. So my job, I didn't enter the contest. I did play by play. I did it like my hair was on fire. If I had hair, I was Dick Stockton, Al Michaels, Brent Musburger, you're listening live, Kevin Harlan, and the late great Brian

Wheeler yelling Boom Shaka Laca from the heavens Now. Jeff my boardop made it through about half a hot dog, about half a hot dog. He then waved the white flag. He tossed in the sponge, the bun one, the bon one. So we both then sat back and watched this brief eating contest as Big Sexy flexed. He did a pirouette on the catwalk. He walked around like a peak cock with his feathers in the air. Everywhere, one hot dog, one sausage at a time, hot dog and bun no flourish,

no showboating during the contest, just dominance, pure dominance. Now in my memory, you, memories are funny things. Memories can be very hazy. In my memory, my boardop Jeff de Ray ate half a hot dog and this gentleman, Big Sexy about seventy seven hot dogs or something like that. Give her a take. You know, it was like watching Tom Brady throw a football, Michael Jordan rise over a defender with the Chicago Bulls to knock down a jumper, or right now, show Hal Tani hitting a baseball that

violates these zoning laws in many parts of town. So you stop breathing. You stared, You were hypnotized and mesmerized by what you were seeing. And here's the part that always stuck with me. Big Sexy loved radio. He loved our show, which obviously made me feel good good for my ego. But he loved the show so much, and he wanted to be part of this bit so much he actually slept in his car that night in the parking lot at the radio station. He slept in his car.

It was too late for a hotel, too expensive. Maybe he just didn't want to waste the money. I don't know. But for that night he was homeless because he wanted to be on the radio show and do an eating contest. That is dedication, all right, that's dedication. That doesn't show up on stat sheets. Now, over the years, he would check in life updates, you know, maybe complaint about the Rockies. There's so much to complain about the Broncos at that time. Misery.

They've only gotten good now, like the last couple of years, they've been a competitive team. But for years the Broncos after Peyton Manning left, they sucked the Nuggets. Who of course that's the hope. They won the championship. I don't think you ever talked about the avalanche. Maybe he did, I don't know, not on our show. We don't really

talk much hockey, you know, the usual. So he was a member of Big Sexuy, the Mallard militia in the purest sense, someone who listened when most of the world was asleep, most of the world not there and you know, kind of drooling new a pillow, doing whatever you're doing. And this week during the holiday, I don't want to say malaise is that's not the right word. Just the holiday reset and I got a Facebook message randomly out of the blue, and I don't normally check these things.

I'm bad about it, I admit. And this message was from Big Sexy's mom, a woman named Shelley, and it wasn't good. It wasn't And I've gotten a few of these messages over the years, and they hit you like a old splash of reality, and it's like you look at them, you're like, well, maybe this is somebody doing some kind of ghoulish humor or something like that. Maybe it's not real, you know, maybe it's it's just somebody

doing a sick joke or something like that. And now Brian Beard, Brian Beard, better known to the Malain Militia's Big Sexy. His government named Brian Beard, his mom named him. That passed away December twenty first heart attack. It's forty years old. That's it. Forty. You can do the math. I don't need to do the math. It doesn't add up, doesn't make sense, the math ain't mathing. It just that

shouldn't happen. Told there were no warning signs. He was smiling, watching some comedy shows with his dear old mom there, enjoying life. And then that's all. Now, I was able to talk to his mother, who reached out. I do thank Shelley a lot for letting me know. And she had said that he was a big fan of the show and had fond memories of hanging out with us at the radio station. Things like that. So very kind, loving woman. We had a brief conversation on the phone.

I learned some new things about Brian, or as we know him, Big Sexy. Things. I didn't know Big Sexy as a little boy was a ball boy for the Denver Nuggets as a kid. His mom worked at the arena. She knew some people, and she was able to, you know, talk to somebody, and she knew who to talk to. I don't know how all that stuff works, but her son was able to be a ball boy. How great is that? And but wait, there's more. He'd befriended Rocky

the mascot. Now on I side, not hit the pause, but on the side note if you've never watched Rocky pass out while being lowered from the rafters as a cheerleader. Sugar took us and kept smiling like nothing happened. That video is Internet immortality from Rocky. Looked like Rocky had kicked the bucket as he was coming down from the rafters in the Mile High City and the cheerleaders are all dancing. It was wild back to the store here. So Brian, who again knew him as Big Sexy, he

ended up actually working locally in Denver's Sports radio. He got to live his dream. He loved radio, and unfortunately he learned the dark side of radio, the reality financially that you're better off working the fry machine at McDonald's or making egg mcmuffins at McDonald's if you want to make any money. And despite it all from what I heard from from Brian's mom, and I kept his love

of sports and all that. And recently, and this is the part that still makes me smile, a few days after all this I learned of this information is that Brian Big Sexy became a Nuggets cheerleader. Let me say that part again slowly for those of you who are doing the Honeydeo list or not paying close attention because you're distracted by some video game or driving. So I'm

gonna repeat that part. Big Sexy, large and in charge, our friend member of the Malain Militia, was dancing on the court during timeouts while mister MVP Nikola Jokicic drank Gatorade. Now that is a life well lift. That's what I say. Should have been much longer. But man, he was doing well. He was doing well. He was a founding member of his Mom told me the inside skinny on this, Brian Big Sexy, a founding member of the Nuggets. Average Joe's dancers.

Just a bunch of regular dudes, beer bellies, regular looking dudes, dancing like nobody was watching. Except everyone was watching. There were eighteen thousand people in the arena and they were watching you dance around. In fact, Brian, he did this for a while. He performed at the NBA All Star Game in Indianapolis. Hello, made surprise appearances. Mom told me, with Rocky there was a famous backward half court shot playoff hijinks. It sounds like just pure joy. That's how

much fun. You grow up a kid in Denver. You like all the Denver teams. You get to be a ball boy for the Nuggets, You become a dancer. You're doing bits with Rocky, the iconic mascot. That's pretty cool. That's all cool stuff. And Brian loved all the Colorado teams. From what I understand obviously the Rockies. I think he liked more, which is not good because they sucked. But he collected hats like trophies and size eight. That's my size. I don't know what his size was. I don't know

he had a big head too, he probably had. I bet you had a size hat like me. We're hat guys. The point is we're hat guys. Hat guy, wrecking hat guy kinship united by fitted caps and stubborn optimism, if you will, And there is I want to stop right there, because there is a fraternity big sexy, big guy. When you're a big guy, there's a bit of a brotherhood. You learn early how the world looks at you a little different. There's that sideways look when you're a big dude.

The whisper some mean things and make some jokes at your expense. Women especially can be very cold blooded assassins with the big dudes. Yeah. So, from what I can tell, though, Brian by all accounts, handled all of the pitfalls of that with humor. Seemed like a very warm guy when I met him. He was great, a big personality that filled the room before his body ever did. And it was I think it was doctor Seuss. I don't know.

I think all quotes are doctor Seuss, who once said, sometimes you will never know the value of a single moment until it becomes memory. And that sat with me this week as I was thinking and driving around running errands for different things we've got going on with the holidays and all that, and Brian was one of those moments for me. He wasn't and from what his mom said, it was a big thing for him too, and that's really cool and all that. It was a It's a

story that I'll I'll tell forever. Someday I might write a book. I've been talking to some people about that. I had something in the works last year, didn't didn't pan out. Maybe we'll do that again, and I'll definitely have to include the story of meeting Brian and the eating contest and one of those zanier things that we've done. And it is proof that you never know who's listening. You know, it's really the magic. Radio's theater of the mind.

And you go out, you got the bullhorn, the mega megaphone, you're just yapping away. And I point out that radio at night just matters a little more so a little differ at night than it is. During the day. People are working, they've got stuff going on during the d At night, most people, even if you're working, it just means more you by yourself. It's not a lot going on.

And as I tell this story and I reminisce about the life and times of our friend Big Sexy, I did want to mention that his family has set up a GoFundMe page to help with the burial funeral expenses. Brian wasn't rich, he wasn't his guy was hustling, he was working multiple jobs. And none of us, none of us plan on checking out at that age, at age forty. So if you've got a few bucks, I hate doing this kind of stuff. But if you got a few bucks and you want to do a good mitzvah, and

you don't have to don't tell anyone about it. You know my rant about that, you just do it, and you want to help send Big Sexy out the right way, give him a nice, a nice goodbye. The link will be and should be there right now the podcast description, and my hope that somewhere right now across the Pearly Gates, Big Sexy is. It's been in a few I know it's probably got family there and all that, but he's catching

up with the other mal and Millish legends. He's probably hanging out with Parker the snow Dog right now, Parker the mascot, the official mascot, but one of the characters with the Denver Broncos hanging out side by side there and the Great Beyond and the Boston Hater, probably telling stories about how he's so happy the Bruins and the Celtics aren't going to win the championship this year. That

Genie and Medford off to the side. There are friend Jeanie having some drinks, Jimmy Ray from Tampa Bay, Rachel and Montabello, the Great Masshole, Mickey Rick in Boston we lost years ago, John Slash Captain, Jack Namo, big fan of the show, Matt the Warrior Raider A's fan, and Tom Brady roast fan, and so many more. So rest in peace to Brian Beard for us Big Sexy, and I say Big Sexy forever. We will miss getting those updates.

He would check in every once in a while and give us updates on what was going on in his life. So rest in peace there to Brian. All right, there's no really good transition. So you know, what the hell, We'll just pause and we'll turn the page. I did want to mention this. Several of you emailed me a version of this story from different sources and wanted me to rant about it. I will do that here, and I will do this as quickly as I can. So the NBA, if you didn't see this, is exploring some

new changes to try to curb tanking. Now. They have done stuff over the years that have absolutely failed to deter teams from deliberately losing games to improve their draft

lottery odds. So the league had presented a bunch of other rule changes during a Board of Governor's meetings, which included doing what baseball does, you limit how often you can draft in the top for of the NBA draft, And they were trying to get input from team owners and general managers, which I always thought is funny because these are the people that are doing it. The owners

of the general managers. You're asking them for input the owners like as a board of governors and the owners, but you're asking them for help to fix a problem that they're involved in actively. So this is a good jumping off point. Let us discuss the question, what are

the odds that these NBA efforts work? So again, I mean, this whole story is bizarro to me, Like they're, well, we got to change this tanking and all this and deliberately losing games which has been going on for many, many years now in the league, putting all these options out there and all that. So let me break this down for those of you, I don't know, having a cocktail or whatever. So the NBA has a whole bunch

of proposals, these shining new proposals to fix tanking. They have another meeting, another think tank, another promise that this tweet to the lottery or that safeguard is finally going to save the league from itself. And I will give you the malarodds right now. Three z's, zippo, zero and zilch. And here's why we've seen this movie before, and the ending never changes. The league keeps trying to treat a

cultural systemic disease with policy band aids. You cannot rewrite the rule book in crayon inc. I mean you can write it in grant inc Or a gold leaf. I don't care. It doesn't matter. The behavior does not change, It will not change. Now listen, I'm not a pilot. I did recently stay at a holiday and express and here's what I know. When the plane you're flying is losing altitude, getting into an argument about the seat cushions

is not going to fix it. You feel me on that the end is in a nosedive of selective effort. They know they have a problem, They know they have a problem, except they keep acting surprised by the gravity. It's like you combine tanking with load management and you've got double mint gum logic. It's the double whammy, is what it is. It's the double whammy, double your pleasure, double your fun, except the pleasure belongs to front offices, and the fun is watching fans slowly drift away like balloons.

I know from boots on the ground doing the Overnight show, just how bad it is, like the level of interest. People lose their mind when I do an NBA monologue because they just don't care about the regular season. Because these are people that did care about the regular season and year after year of serving up this slop covered in maggots, and they don't want to watch anymore, right, I mean, these fans drifting with it's like balloons being let go to a kid's birthday party. It's roster malpractice

meets calendar fraud. On one side, Yeah, you got teams losing on purpose to win tomorrow. Okay. The other is sitting perfectly healthy star players today because they might get hurt out of an abundance of caution to protect them for tomorrow. Now, it's different excuses. It's the same result, worst basketball tonight, and the league keeps pretending these are separate issues. Spoiler alert, spoiler alert, they're not. They are not at all all right, So just don't even go there, Like,

why are you bothering to go there? It's the same deal. You're just you're in denial. They're not. Tanking and load management are brothers from different mothers. It's same DNA, same excuses, same smug tone. Well, you just don't understand the science when they explain it to you, like you're a toddler with a juice box and you want to slap some of these people across the head. This stuff did not sneak into the league overnight. It was imported. It was

I know, the whole family tree. I've done the family tree test. I've looked at that the forefather of modern load management. I know who it is, Greg Popovich, David Stern, the commissioner. To try to stop it, Popovich sent a bunch of people back. I think there was Orlando to Miami or Miami to Orlando. I remember it was from Orlando to San Antonio. Southwest Airlines. A couple of Spurs stars went on a Southwest Airlines flight back to San Antonio and David Stern. It was a TNT game. David

Stern lost his mind. So you can't do that. That's bad for our product. Gotta play him, so you find the Spurs much money. And then a bunch of bleeding heart writers. Oh, I defend the Spurs. You know, trust the science and all that stuff. But Papovich, the proud papa of that and the forefather of the modern tank. The tanking has been going on for a while, but the guy credited with taking it to the next level, Sam Hinky, that little weasel. Trust the process from the

seventy six ers. Those guys carefully cultivated, watered, fertilized these things. They are an invasive species. And once an invasive species takes hold, it doesn't care about your little rules. It adapts it spreads, it eats the ecosystem alive, and that's what's happening. That's the part the NBA doesn't want to admit. They don't. You can't nudge your way out of this.

You can't softly encourage competitiveness and asking the people who are providing the illness to solve the illness doesn't make a lot of sense to me. You need consequences, You need embarrassment, You need shame, because shame. Back in the day, shame, shame where the shame belt. It used to be the guardrail that there was generation after generation where you lost games. You were embarrassing. People look down upon you, and you

were you were the ugly, redheaded step child, right. They picked on you, they told jokes, and you wanted to win. And there was a time when sitting meant something that it wasn't good. Now everything is fair. Well, we're smart, we have the smartest minds. We went to an IVY league and you didn't dumby dumb dunum dum dum. Strategic losing, strategic resting, strategic surrender. It's all cowardly. It's cowardice wrapped

in analytics. And you can say and do anything in sports, and you just claim it's the analytics and nobody ever is allowed to question it. Somewhere along the way this became cool. I'm not sure why now the league in the NBA keeps selling us the idea, idea that fans just they don't understand. They're low assuming they're low IQ they understand perfectly. They know. The fan knows when a lineup looks like a preseason scrimmage in March or April.

They know when stars are magically unavailable for load management reasons. Rest fans are not confused. They are insulted that they give their most important thing, their time, most valuable thing. There's also some money, which is nothing. And the problem is insulted fans. They don't riot. They might complain a little bit online, but they don't complain that much. They disengage, they stop watching, they stop caring as much. That's the real danger here, and that's why the NBA is trying

to fix this. The toothpaste is out of the tube. It's not tanking records, it's not draft odds. That's the problem. It's the a word apathy. This is the as bestis of basketball warning label. Handle with care, you don't feel the damage right away. You breathe it in for years, you're fine, and then one day you wake up and wonder why your building is collapsing. That's where the NBA is headed. If it keeps pretending that this is harmless and don't tell me more rules will fix it. We

tried lottery reform, We've tried flattened odds. We've tried incentives. Well they have not I and the teams just find new loopholes. The nerds go to Dorkville and they figure stuff out. They use new vocabulary, new ways to lose without losing. It's like whack a mole. You're blindfold they're planning whack them mole. Every time you smack one issue, another pops up, wearing a lab coat and calling itself innovation. We are innovators. If you want real change, make come

competition matter. Make competition fashionable again, where you're shamed for losing. Make effort non negotiable, and hard work celebrated. Not treating your job like you're working at the DMV doing the bare minimum. Okay, you have some government job where you don't have to work hard. Make it uncool to intentionally lose games make it uncomfortable to sit healthy stars, and I would advise offering full refunds, full refunds if star

players don't play, just do it. Give the option. Now, they'll never do that because that costs the money, you know, just embarrassed. Embarrassment would be big. Stop playing, scared, Stop coaching, scared, stop running a league. Scared because right now the NBA owners, the way they operate the league itself, they act like

they're afraid of their own shadow, and they're scared. Adam Silver that league, the product here that they produced, it's scared basketball, and scared basketball is how a global sport turns into background noise. And you gotta fix it, and I hope it happens. I love talking about the NBA. Back in the day. I used to talk about the regular season all the time this time of the year until the NFL playoffs get going, and these days hardly

mentioned the NBA. And I'll bring it up when the playoffs come around because I assume there'll be no tanking in the playoffs and there'll be nobody resting their star players in the playoffs. When that happens, I won't talk about that either. On that note, enjoy the football today, have a great Saturday. We thank you for supporting the podcast, myself and Danny G. Hope you had a great Christmas and New Year's coming up. And later skater Osta pasta my folation