Clay speaks with FS1 College Football Analyst Joel Klatt

these weekly episodes. We need more reviews. Helps the rating helps bump us up in the podcast rankings. I'm told also, I want to be entertained by reading these things. Special bonus if you can make fun of Joel Clatt while talking about how awesome I am in that review, will continue to share those going forward. Uh and we are joined today by at Joel Clatt, one of the most

awful people on the Internet. He is the lead college football analyst for uh Fox Sports, and he has the the unfortunate unfortunate, I would say, notoriety for being among my biggest hitters in all the world, Joel, thanks for joining us. I'm just a truth teller. So you know, when you're a massive hypocrite, I just call it out right on that space, all right. So speaking of being a massive hypocrite, um, you, of course are one of

the greatest hypocrites in all of the land. But what we do, what we do on the Wins and Losses podcast is, uh, we try to get from how you got so and I just introduced you as the lead voice for Fox College Football. You travel around the best game Fox has in the Big Twelve, the Pack twelve, and the Big Ten every week and get to call college football games. But you're a relatively young guy. How old are you like, as we speak today in twenty nineteen, thirty seven years old, So you're a young guy to

have the job that you have. So let's go back in time. Let's go back in time. Will will eventually work our way back up to the nineteen college football season that's about to start. But when did the question I would like to ask people who become pretty good athletes, and people may not even realize that you were a pretty good athlete, is when did you realize for the

first time, Hey, I'm pretty good at playing sports. Um, I mean I always love sports, and I would say as a kid, I was always I would say, you know, one of the you know, top two or three players on whatever team I was on, kind of regardless of sport. Now, my dad was a high school of football coach. I was the youngest of four. I was the accident actually play, so I was way behind my brothers and sisters. So my whole childhood was basically just a big tag along

to their sporting events. And you know, my brother was a really good player, um in football, basketball, and baseball, and I would be the ball boy on the sideline for my dad's teams, and so I was always around it. I always loved competing, whether it was whookeleball in the backyard or actually playing on team sports on my own. But I would say that I I think I knew from a pretty young age that I was always one of the better players on whatever team I was on.

But I didn't really know that that I was good enough to play past high school until I would say I was a junior in high school. Um, that might be late, but but for whatever reason, I just always thought that that was for other people, you know, that was for like the greatest players. And then all of a sudden, specifically baseball, I started playing really well. I started hitting a lot of home runs as a junior in high school and started getting attention from not only colleges,

but from also Major league teams. And that was the first kind of whiff I got of, like, oh man, I'm gonna be able to play past high school. Where did you grow up? Denver, Colorado? Just outside it's actually a town called our Vada, and our Vada is actually directly between Boulder and Denver, so I grew up very close to the University of Colorado. I grew up a huge Denver Bronco fan, and um right during the John Elway era. You know, I was born in n and

he got there. So my formative years were watching the Broncos, you know, go to the Super Bowl and lose it three times. And I was a couple of Super Bowls. So uh, certainly sports shaped my entire life growing up, and in particular I was able to as a kid watch the University of Colorado win a national championship, so you know, for me, you know, that was kind of life. Be sure to catch live editions about kicked the coverage with Clay Travis week days at six am Eastern three

am Pacific. We're talking to Joel Clapp, Fox College Football lead analysts, does a lot of different things for Fox. Uh. And so you you said your dad was a high school coach. What did you coach? He was a football coach. So he he was at that school, Pomona High School in our Vauta, Colorado, for over thirty years from the day it opened, and he was the head coach for a while. He was a defensive coordinator for a while.

But um, yeah he was. He was always there and that was always kind of my favorite thing to do as a kid was go to the high school football games and be a ball boy on the sideline. Did you play high school football for your dad? I did, Um, but he it wasn't you know that that brings up I'm sure that everyone listening will have a very specific picture in their mind of what that means. Right. Oh,

of course this guy was a coach's son. And I always pushed back on that a little bit because my experience was actually very different than what I think people predict it would have been. For instance, my dad, um was kind of a gruff guy a disciplinarian. He was a marine um. He he fought in Vietnam. He was the first lieutenant in an artillery division in the Vietnam War. And so you know, he ran our football team accordingly.

You know, we had to have our uniforms washed and pressed, and our helmet shined and our shoes shine just in order to get on the bus. Um. And we were, you know, we were a very much a disciplined football team. Well, he told me, you know, when I was a junior that well, first of all, he would took on the

varsity until I was a junior. And then once I was a junior, he said, you're not playing quarterback for me if there's an older kid that can that is willing, you know, to play quarterback or or can play quarterback. And so I didn't even get to play the position at quarterback until I was a senior for my dad. Which if anyone knows anything about recruiting in in high school football and college football knows that that's like, that's like two years too late. So I wasn't recruited basically

at all, certainly by the big schools around. Uh. But you know, I was just a late addition to some Division two recruiting classes and got to take trips to place like South Dakota State, North Dakota State, Northern Colorado. But in large part because I only played, I only started ten games as a quarterback for my high school football team in my career. That's And what kind of office did you guys run? Did you wing it around at all? Or was it more of a kind of

a tradition. No, it was not even traditional clay. It was old school. It was like do you know the old robust two tight ends, three backs in the backfield. We would run the option, we would run the ball. Of the time they had won. My dad had a tremendous amount of success. They won I think something like twelve straight league titles. You want a state championship in the eighties. Who was constantly up there in the state playoffs and and they believed in this very simple system.

And so there I was not very fast, six two good arms, UM slow kid trying to run the option, and I could go up for my dad's team. And at the end of the year, this is this is the only time that I feel like he budged, only because he was my father. Um, we weren't a great team. We were about a five hundred football team. And at the end of the year, he finally, for the first time in the history of the school, put a quarterback

in shot gun for the last two games. And I actually sat in the shot gun and we threw the ball around a little bit my last two games of high school. But other than that, I was doing the robust like you know, reverse out thinking to the full back, run the option down the line, and I was not

very good at it. So do you think that if you had been in a pro style offense in in you know, or it's certainly a spread, but there probably weren't a lot of spread offensive attacks, then if you had had that opportunity to kind of wing the football around, do you think you would have gone to play college football? I don't know. Um, yeah, that people have asked me

that before, but I I really don't know. My path was so unique, lay and there was there were so many things that had to happen for me to have the journey that I did. It was it was you know, I'm so thankful that it happened the way that it did, because as we'll get into and in a moment I'm sure, as we're talking about kind of my path, I wasn't ready for that opportunity out of high school, you know, as part of the reason why I failed in my

endeavor right after high school. Um, and so I'm I am eternally grateful that I didn't have the opportunity to play football right out of out of high school, and that I had an opportunity to go and be a professional and different sport, to grow up and learn an immense amount of lessons in order to put those into practice once I came back and actually went to college. So, UM, I don't I have no idea I might have had an opportunity to play, you know, but definitely not at

the University of Colorado. All right, so let's go to what happens instead. You're gret your your You said, in a junior year of high school, you start to hit some home runs, you start to have some good success in high school baseball. What position are you playing and when did you start thinking, oh, man, I might get drafted. You said it was that junior year. What then happens

that you move into your senior year? Okay, so I was a short stop and you know that was right in the kind of the a Ron era where the shortstop was no longer just the small middle infielder that hit for average, but you could be a power player and play shortstop. So I would play shortstop. My brother was playing college baseball at the time, and um, I started hitting a lot of home runs. Now, granted, this is in Colorado with thin air, and this is you know,

with the aluminum bat, and the pitching wasn't great. But when I was hitting, you know, a home run every you know, six or seven at bats in high school. And so that's when I started to realize, like, my future is going to be in baseball? How many home runs did you hit in a season? Then in high

school baseball? So so like, for instance, the summer before my senior year, I think we played games forty eight or fifty games, and I hit twenty six home runs and I had about I think hundred RBI right in there, and so so you know, I was I was hitting the ball really well, I was decent defensively, and I and then once I got into the spring of my senior year, that has kind of kept up. I think we played only eighteen or nineteen games and I hit

ten home runs. So I started getting some looks, and I started getting a lot of looks from junior colleges. I started getting some looks from professional scouts and I and I thought I was going to have an opportunity to play, certainly in college, but maybe, you know, I'd get lucky and get drafted. In the meantime played. My brother actually graduated from college and signed a free agent

deal with the San Diego Padres. And so he went to the San Diego Padres and was with their rookie ball team when I was the summer before my senior year and he was with the Padres. Well, because of that, they're scouts started to realize about me. Started you know, hey, this kid that Jason, my brother, was playing very well for their rookie ball team. And they were like, oh, he's he's got a younger brother who's basically a clone

of him. And I was a little bit more powerful than Jason at the time, you know, he was a little smaller than I was. And so they're scouts specifically started really watching me a lot. And and because of that, because I was fortunate to have my brother in a professional organization, they knew about me. You know that started to garner a lot of interest. So the Rockies, who are the local team, and the Padres were very interested. I believe the Giants were the other team that were

very interested. I worked out at Coors Fields for the Rockies before the draft and after my senior year. In that June draft, I was drafted in the eleventh round and it was higher than I could have possibly imagined. I was over the moon. I couldn't believe that I was taking that high. Um, it was, you know, kind of a dream come true. And then I had to decide whether I was going to go play junior college baseball or signed with Padres and playing the minor leagues.

And that was a really difficult decision for me, to be quite honest with you, because, um, I knew that an education was going to be important. My dad was a teacher, my mom was a kindergarten teacher. They always stressed the importance of an education in and I I say to everybody, the decision that I made to sign with the San Diego Padres out of high school was the best worst decision that I ever made in my life. What kind of signing bonus do you get? Back then,

as an eleventh round pick. So I signed for basically the equivalent of about a hundred thousand dollars, which seems like like you might as well have been ten million. Do you write a hundred thousand dollars to an eighteen year old? Is it? Yeah? So you get my dad, I mean, my dad never made at that point. This is nineteen, this is two thousand. It had been a teacher's whole life. I think he was making I mean he was at the end, and I think he was

making like fifty thousand dollars a year, you know. So when they said now, part of that it wasn't all in cash. It was the equivalent of about a hundred grand, and part of that was designated towards my college education. I think it was I want to say it was forty grand or thirty five thousand of the hundred was designated just for college reimbursement. So you get that offer, like, and how long does it take you to decide I'm gonna take the you know, like I'm gonna go try

my luck at major League baseball. The way I remember it, it took me a couple of days. You know. My brother was stressing to me. He had been released in the meantime, um and and so he was done with the Padres, and he was stressing to me to go to college. He was like, listen, my oor league baseball is not what it's cracked up to be. You know. You know, I know that it's more beneficial to go in as a high school draft pick rather than a college player, just because of the age. But you was

stressing to me not to go. My dad was probably stressing to me at the time not to to sign, and I just I couldn't resist way. I mean, as you can imagine, right, I mean, you dream your whole life of being a professional athlete, and then all of a sudden someone says, here's the opportunity, here's you know, a hundred thousand dollars to do it. Um and So, against the advice of my family, I actually decided to sign and signed with the Padres and went down and

played in the rookie Ball in Peoria, Arizona. Uh that summer. So you said you're gonna go to junior college, Why not like a bigger college. What was the decision for junior college for you? Yeah? For me, it was really easy, and it's it all had to do with retaining your draft status and your own rights, because if you signed with a four year school and went there, then it's just like football, you had to be there for three years before you can go back into the draft versus

you know. That's why a lot of great players actually go to junior college route because they'll get drafted out of high school. They say, you know what, I can improve that by a by a few rounds. They don't get the bonus that they want. They go to junior college, then they can be drafted the very next year. So that was the reason that I decided that junior college is going to be my route, is because I wanted to retain my ability to be drafted the very next year.

All right, so you immediately go to rookie ball. I mean, so you're eighteen years old. You know, you spent your whole life in Colorado, you signed this deal, uh, and you go on and go to rookie ball. What was that like? Um? It was the most interesting thing I can possibly imagine at the time. You know, here I am from a suburban town in Denver, Colorado, and all of a sudden, I walk into a locker room and there was probably forty five guys, and only thirteen to

fifteen of them spoke English as a native language. You know, there were a lot of Dominican players in the Padre organization at the time. There were some guys from Panama, there was I mean, there were some guys from Mexico. There was Venezuela. There was a good continent gent from Venezuela. And and dude, like, I can't even tell you what a shock to the system that is, you know, to all of a sudden be thrown into that. Um, I got a great story, and I think, I think you'll

love this. So this is just like some comedic relief my very first days down there. First of all, listen, I was a little nervous for whatever reason. In our high school, we didn't take showers. It just wasn't a thing, right, Like we would go home to shower after baseball games or even after football games and football practice. You just kept your your pads and your locker and you just change and you went home and shower. And so we didn't do like the big like you know what I

would call the gang showers. And so that was one of the things that I like I knew it was coming, and and candidly, I was you're a little nervous about it, right, I means like the first it's like a moment of truth. And in a young man's why the first time he's gonna stroll into a gang shower And one of the first times that I ever did it. And and and this is in the spring training complex and Peoria or

Arizona with the padres. I I walk in and I'm like all right, like you know, like chest up, shoulders back, you know, I'm telling myself all this stuff, like hanging the towel on the outside, walk in like you own the joint, like this is it. Here we go. So birthday suit rocking, got my shower shoes on, I'm ready

to go. So I walk into the shower. And if you've ever been in one of those types of showers, it's loud, right because they're there are a bunch of other guys in there, and if they're talking or shouting or laughing or whatever, and all just kind of like reverberates because it's just like a big like cement block room, and so it's loud, it's echoing, the showers are going, there's like steam coming up you know, so it's it's like this weird scene where you can't really see what's

going on, but there's a lot going on because you can hear it. And so I just started showering as quickly as I can. And and at one point, you know, I'm like washing off, and I'm and I'm rinsing off. At this point, I'm rinsing off, and so the water is kind of going over my eyes, so my eyes are closed at the time, and I just here this loud laughter coming from across the shower, and I swear it sounded like the Cookie Monster, right, and and one of the Dominicans was just laughing as loud as he

possibly could. And so I quickly kind of like rubbed my eyes and opened my eyes, and I'm kind of like squinting through the steam that's still in the shower. And he's standing there with his hands on his hips, turned to his neighbor, the shower neighbor, and his neighbor is also rinting off, and he's just with his both hands on his hips, not holding anything, king on the guy next to him and laughing hysterically, a big Cookie Monster laugh. So at this time, like the guy can't

feel it. I can't remember his name, but the guy can't feel it because he's in a warm shower. So finally he does the same thing I do, like rinses, you know, he kind of rubs his eyes and opens his eyes and realized that he's getting the golden shower. Neighbor and Clay all hell break loose in the shower. They start growing blows in the shower. I mean everything is swinging around and they're slippery there slipping. Like I said, things are really swinging around and there swing. Oh bro.

So I immediately just like walked out and grabbed my tael and went back to my locker. And I can remember sitting at my locker and I was staring back into my locker and I was like, oh my god, that was the craziest thing I've ever witnessed in my life. So wait, the guys. That's always one of the great dilemmas. I think, do you break up a naked shower fight? Like the guys, like, do you step in there and try to like get between them and break the fight up?

How did the fight in do you remember? And to go to the ground and in short order, so everyone just stands there until it goes to the ground and then it's over. It's like a hockey fight. Yeah. Uh. And so that was your introduction to uh, to minor league baseball, to rookie ball. Yeah. So so there you go. Here I am. I'm eight teen years old, and that's my new world. I lived in a hotel that summer and experienced massive failure for the first time in my

life by politically. I think I hit like to twenty that year. I can't remember the specific number because I'm tryed to It's like PTSD. I've tried to block it out of my memory. Um let the team in doubles that year, but man, it was. It was. It was a tough year. But that was my first introduction into minor league baseball. Okay, so you think though as a young kid. The one thing you have as a young kid is you think, okay, I'm just gonna get a

lot better. So you finished rookie baseball. Did you ever get pete on in the shower? By the way, anybody ever do that to you? No? I did not get pete on, but rest assured like my hand was on a swivel. Yeah, not never stayed shut for long for from that time on and my entire career. Dang showers in the gang shower. Alright, So uh so you go back like and eventually you start, I mean, you get assigned to a team. Right, how many years did you

play minor league baseball? And was there a moment where you were like, I just I'm never gonna be good enough at this. Because that's a tough moment for anybody to have that dream. Because when you get drafted your eighteen, you're in the eleventh round, A hundred billion percent you think, oh, I'm gonna play major league baseball, right, I mean, there's just no doubt. I'm sure in your mind, yes, because

it's a small number. Yeah, there's that great story. There's a great story, by the way, about how when you're young, like you just don't really understand probability. And they were talking about the guys who stormed the beaches of Normandy on D Day and they were like, I want you guys to look to your left and to your right, you know, like one of these guys is gonna end

up dead when they storm the beaches. And every guy like looks to his left or right and he's like, oh, those poor bat you know, that poor bastard, Like you never think it's gonna be you that something bad happens. I think you're gonna beat the odds, right, And when you're young, that's what you always think. So then you're in minor league baseball, you're eleventh round pick uh, and you start to have doubts win and how long do you stay? Like what cities do you play in? Okay?

So that first year, I was just in rookie ball in Phoenix. So um, I was just in the Arizona League. And that entire summer, regardless of when, what what went on because of this thought in my head of like I'm so young, I'm gonna get so much better. I led the team in doubles. You know, I'm just gonna get stronger. I'm gonna lift hard this offseason, like I. I was all in and I came back to the to the next spring training and I was really strong and I was really looking forward to a big year.

Um I I had lifted with an Olympic power lifter in the off season, got my legs much stronger. I came back with a lot more power, and you know, my VPS showed it. I was I was excited for that second year, and that second year, I thought that I was going to go to the Eugene team. Eugene, Oregon. What the Padres were doing that second years they were moving the rookie ball team from Arizona to Idaho Falls, and then they were moving the two short season teams.

So it's gonna be Ido Falls and Eugene. Eugene would be kind of the higher A of the two short season teams, and I thought, Okay, I'm gonna progress to the Eugene team. I had a pretty good spring training and and they kept us in extended spring, which I was expecting. And extended spring was going to be the two teams that you know, we're going to be the short season single A teams. UM at the time, now I'm nineteen years old. And in that extended spring it

started to go south. I started really struggling, UM, And because my identity was totally wrapped up and being a good player, I didn't know how to deal with that. And also for the first time, you know, this is a year and a half into having kind of my independence, and I also didn't know how to deal with that. So and I've been very open about this like I started really struggling with alcoholism at a at a young age, and that started directly impacting my ability to play well

and and my overall psyche. And you didn't have did you haven't? You didn't have a drinking issue, you thought until you got into minor league baseball. Like I'm sure you probably drank a little bit in high school, but that's where you suddenly had the freedom and the ability to control your schedule in some way. That's right, that's right. And all of a sudden, and in particular in the offseason leading into that, you know, like it became more a part of what we were doing and what I

was doing. And I wouldn't say I had a problem before then, and then all of a sudden, then you start to throw in a lack of belief in yourself, um, a little bit of loss of identity, and then it became a huge issue. And I didn't have the the wherewithal, you know, as a man, to deal with that. And and so that extended spring us started going wrong and I got sent to Idaho Falls instead of Eugene, and it went on even more of a downward spiral. I

had a terrible season. Um, I can just I'll tell you a quick story and I don't tell I mean, it's a funny story, but it's it's actually, in hindsight, incredibly sad that the only time I ever went for before at Idaho Falls with the Padres was because I had stayed up all night drinking rum and smoking Nicaraguan cigars with a couple of the guys on the team. And we did it just outside of the clubhouse and we just stayed there, and you know, you get done with the game late, so we did it until the

sun came up. And I thought for sure I wouldn't be in the lineup the next day, Clay, And sure enough, I walked into the clubhouse at you know, two o'clock the next afternoon, and I was in the lineup at third base. I had moved to third base, and and I was so sick, like you can imagine, right you drink rum and smoked Nicaraguan cigars all night. I was so sick. And I didn't say VP because I thought if I swung the bat hard enough, I would just throw up. You were that hungover? Is that why he

puts you? No? No, no, no, he I mean he didn't have any idea. And again, this is not like college or high school or anything, Like your manager doesn't care about you. That's another thing about the professional game. Like he's just putting the line up. He doesn't come say hello, he doesn't check on you, none of those things, right, Like you're just expected to be ready to play. And so that night comes around and I'm still as sick as you can possibly be, and I went up to

the plate and play. God is my witness. In the back of my head. I looked at my bat before I stepped into the box, and I thought to myself, if you swing and miss, you're gonna throw up on the plate in front of everybody. That's how I mean. You've been there, right, Yeah, I've seen her against before and slept in a gutter like and again this is not This is funny, but it's also incredibly sad um. And so I took a couple of pitches until I had two strikes, hoping that you would just walk me.

And then finally I'm like, I'm I've got to at least truck, I said, I'm I'm swinging. I can't just go down looking. And so I took the shortest, quickest swing I've ever taken in my entire career. Damn, it's just a single right up the middle, and it's one of those balls that you know it clears the picture because I hit it pretty well and I know it's gonna be a single. I swear I basically walked the first like it was the slowest job the first day.

I know it's not a double. I get the first base for the ending ends, next step back, similar type of thing. I know I've got a swing bam line drive. Now it's to the left fielder. Kind of walked the first this whole time, I'm still sick as a dog. And finally my third at bat, I hit the ball over the second baseman's head and it's going to the right center gap, and I realized I might have to

try to lay out a double. And I'm like, and I'm telling you, I took a big, deep breath coming out of the box, and I was like, do not breathe until you slide in the second. And I held that breath the entire time. Slide in the second, and I'm like, don't don't you, don't you, don't you? And I just I stood up, dusted myself off, and You're like, Okay,

I'm not gonna throw up on second base. But anyways, I ended up getting another hit that last at that That was the only time I went for for four and it was because I was so scared to swing and miss because I was gonna throw up. That's a night I went. I went back to my room that night, and I realized, like, this isn't for me. Um, something needs to change. And and the something that needed to change wasn't because I wasn't gonna make it to the big Leaves. It was because my life was spiraling out

of control. And I was only nineteen years old. And so you're nineteen at that point, when do you actually throw in the towel on the minor league baseball career? Okay, so um um, I start talking to my parents about, Hey, you know, I don't know if this is for me. I think I want to go to school. So so I actually applied at the University of Colorado just to get into school in that off season, and and my

dad encouraged me. He was like, give one more spring training a try, you know, and if it doesn't go well, then you can come back and go to school. Keep in mind, play None of this conversation had to do with football. It was literally just like, you know, try it out. You know that I worked on my life a little bit during that time. Colorado had had in

that off season. Um I came home and that's when they won the Big twelve beat Texas and went and play in Oregon and the Fiesta Bowls, so they were, you know, ranked in the top ten in the country. I would go to the games. I was having so much fun. I was like, man, it would be an amazing just to be a student, you know, and all my friends from high school, we're just students and having

a great time in college. And I missed that, and and so I thought to myself, Okay, I'm gonna go to Colorado, but I'm gonna give this one more try. And I'm gonna give one more spring training and try. And I went down there and it didn't work out. You know, my head was just not in it at that point. I was pretty checked out, and so I made the decision after that spring training. So I was there for two full seasons and then a little into the next spring training before I decided to quit in May.

So after spring training and extended spring training, I decided to quit, and I drove home and decided to go back to school. Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our shows at Fox Sports Radio dot com and within the I Heart Radio app. Search f s R to listen live. So you go back to school, We're talking to Joel clad Clay Travis is the Winds and Losses podcast. Encourage you too. If you're enjoying this conversation, check out many

of the other conversations we've had as well. One a week. You can subscribe at the Winds and Losses tab in iTunes. So you are, um, you are going back to college, thinking, okay, I'll go back to college. Does Colorado have any idea about you at all? Like, how do you go about deciding, Hey, you know what, maybe I'll try and see if I

can play college football. And for people out there who may not be aware, you had exhausted your eligibility to play college baseball, but you're still eligible to play college football if you so desire, And there's quite a few guys who have done this over the years. You're talented baseball, you sign it doesn't work out that well for you, and you decide, you know what, I'll go back to college and I'll play college football. How do you so

you're admitted to Colorado as a regular student. I'm assuming uh yes, And and then your school is paid for by the by the major league team under your contract. Yeah, but it's it's a reimbursement deal. So I would have to pay per school and then hand in my receipts and ramburst up to like four grand a semester or something. I can't remember the exact thing, but that's kind of how it was working. And so in the meantime, I decided like, hey, you know, like why don't why don't

I try to like walk on? You know, this is this is gonna be a fun deal. And so I went and I met with the coach who recruited from the area where my dad was a head coach. So he had been there. I had been to their football camp, you know, just as a a high school kid, just to be you know, out there and throw the football around. So I met, I went and met with him. His name was Shawn Watson, and he said, you know, he said,

well this is great. You know if you're if you're coming, then you're gonna be preferred walk on and it shocked me his kind of like excitement about me coming and it didn't really register, and I was like, you know, okay. So I started working out with the team in that summer, and um, I started throwing in seven on seven and

then things like that. And there were some guys, there were some older guys that were really good players at the time, you know, all big twelve type players, and they would come up to me and they were like, hey, you know, like where are you from, you know where you were, you were you recruited this and that, and I would tell them my story and they were all kind of shocked. They were like, what, like, you haven't played football in three years? And I'm like no, you know.

And and the last time I did it ran the option and and it was like this this eye opening thing of like oh my gosh, like I'm decent at this. I didn't play. I had no idea I ran the option. We were in the shotgun two games in my high school where I had no idea that I would have the ability to even be on the depth chart at Colorado. It wasn't until I was there and practicing in that summer that I thought to myself, Oh, this is you know,

this is gonna be interesting, this is gonna be really fun. Um. And then as I got into that season and I got into college and started being a student, I loved it. Like everything I hated about being a minor league baseball player was the exact opposite about being in college and playing for the University of Colorado. Like it was amazing.

You know. Instead of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner every night and top ramen and cup of noodles, we were getting like full training table, Like they gave us a steak. Like one of my first nights. I was like, oh my gosh, this is this is incredible, guys. The salad dressing is real. Like this is insane, you know, Like it was that type of euphoria. I loved it, Clay.

And then as the season started to get under way, I you know, I didn't realize I was a decent player, but I was a decent player, and and I gravitated towards the schematics of the game. We ran a pro style offense. It's something that was kind of right up my alley, and so all of a sudden, by the time the second or third game rolled around, I was on the travel squad as a true freshman walk on, and I'll always be grateful to to Gary Barnett, who was the head coach at the time, because he really

didn't care how you got there. He only cared if you played well, and so there was no politics involved. There was other true freshman quarterbacks that were recruited. They would probably I don't know what they had promised or if they had promised anything to these guys, and it didn't matter. Like I made the travel squad, and then by the end of the year, I was the third string quarterback and the two guys ahead of me were

both seniors. And so during the middle of that true freshman year, um, I started to realize like, I'm I'm gonna have a chance to play and so to go from I'm quitting baseball for because I'm ruining my life and I need my degree to you know, less than a year later this epiphany of I'm gonna have a great chance to be the starting quarterback at Colorado. It was like the the most drastic switch. And I think it's something that gets lost when people just hear my story.

They just think, oh, equip baseball to go back and play football, but that really wasn't the case. So my life was changed in a massive way in the positive direction. Um, you know when I made that decision to quit baseball and go back to Colorado, and it started setting me up for the rest of of what has happened since. So I want to hit on this because I think people probably find it fascinating. You were talking about how much better you were treated as a Colorado football player

than as a minor league baseball player. How much better did you guys travel? You said you got on the travel squad. How much better was travel for college football compared to travel for minor league baseball. It's not even close. It's not even close. I'll just give you a couple of quick stories. Okay. So first of all, Um, when I was in Idaho Falls, we had this bus and

it was straight out of Bull Durham. It was like a nineteen sixties manual transmission bus with a round and silver back and I'm talking like trade manual like and you guys would have some long ass rides, right, Yeah, six seven, eight, twelve to twelve hours to medicine hat Canada.

So just to give you a quick story. We're driving from Casper, Wyoming back to I to Hope Falls, and Casper, Wyoming, you've got to drive right over the Titan Mountains over these really kind of scary mountain passes to get back

die to Hope Falls. And the bus driver would always on our getaway day he would get one hotel room that we would you know, retain for the day so he could sleep all day so he could drive us back all night because we didn't play day games, so we play at seven pm and then at you know, ten, ten thirty, eleven o'clock we would get in the bus in order to go back home and it was gonna be like a five or six hour ride, so he would always sleep all day in order to drive us

all night. Well, this night in Casper, Wyoming, I tapped my buddy on the shoulder and I'm like, hey, isn't that our bus driver? And sure enough, our bus driver is. They're having a Michaelo Ultra and like the second oh, like just having a bere like and a dog like, hey, joining the game of baseball because that's time everybody. And I'm like, what in the world. Well, later that night, we're driving over the titons and we're, you know, winding

back forth. We couldn't be going more than fifteen on some of these switchbacks up these mountains with this big manual transmission bus. And he pulls over and you can hear kind of the gravel of the shoulder and he pulls over. I'm like, great, this bus just broke down. And no, no, our bus driver decided he was tired from his mic Ultra and his and his Dodger dog

and the third inning at the cass Barakis game. And he pulled a pillow down from from above him and took a nap for two hours from the side of the road, just laying on the ground. No, no, no, in his seat. So he's in the driver's lays the pillow against the window and just like leans against the window. Guys were yelling like you in Spanish. We had a Korean guy named Young jing Jung. He's yelling in Korean.

We're yelling in English like come on, let's go. Dude, just slept zonked out for two hours and we sat there motionless in this manual transmission nine you know, bull Durham bus. Then you fast forward and now I'm going to Colorado, And the first road trip that we took was out to play U. C. L A At the Rose Bowl in September. That was the very first trip that we took. Well, we drive, you know, four of the most beautiful buses you can possibly take, from Boulder

down to the airport in Denver. We go right onto the tarmac. There's no security. We rock. We walk right up onto the plane while all our seats are assigned. We get there are seat in our seats, there's two foot long sub sandwiches, there's gator read, there's cookies. We fly. We land in l A. There is a motor kaide for us to go to our hotel so we can beat traffic. So there's six you know, motorcycle cops traveling around.

We get to the hotel. We just had two foot long sandwiches in the in the plane, but now we've got a full face spread that includes lasagna and prime rib and ice cream snicker bars for dessert. Like it doesn't even compare. I thought I had made it man when I got to that that first road trip. I remember calling my dad and I was like that, you'll never believe it. They serve gravy for the Prime Rib,

you know, like that had blown my mind. I had had Mannaise sandwiches before for a spread in minor league baseball, and and here we are having prime rib for dinner. What, by the way, did you remember getting taunted in minor league baseball? Like, do you ever remember a time when you're like, I don't want to kill some guy? I

always always think about low level minor league. There's always hecklers, and there had to be sometimes where you're like, because the stadiums aren't that big, where you're standing there in the on deck circle or whatever, and you really legitimately just want to turn around and murder somebody in the stands.

Do you remember that feeling, Clay, You're gonna need two hours to get through all of it, because I've got story for days about minor league baseball, from the from the golden shower to the nap of the bus driver to the beer batter. Let me just tell you about the beer batter. Excuse me? So, I, um, well, first of all, we were playing in Ogden, Utah, and then Ogden, Utah. The opposing like you know, field operations team, they're like

whole deal. They would choose an opposing player to be the beer batter, and if the beer batter struck out, it was ten cent beers for that happening. And you're wondering, like, wait, didn't you say Utah. That's right, Ogden, Utah the most progressive city in Utah. And and they actually did sell beer, very different than Provo, which is the most conservative place in Utah. So they did serve beer at the Ogden

Osprey game. Okay, they were Ogden Osprey Nice Park, and it was always pretty full because like they did a nice job. And so there's probably, shoot, I don't know, three thousand people um at this game and they choose me as the beer batter. So I'm designated as the beer batter, and you know it right, like it comes up on the scoreboard and like people are like clapping for you. You know, you walk up there as a road player and they're like, all right, but you can

do it. You can do it ten sents. You know, people are yellow like I'll share with you, I'll buy things like that. And before you go up. It's kind of funny, you know when you think like I'm gonna show these guys, I'm gonna hit a jack or something like that. Well, my first a bat like take strike one, foul ball off, good swing. Then I connect on on just like bam, and I hit it really good, and it's kind of pulled, this line drive right over the

third baseman's head and it's curling. It's curling, it's curling, and it's like, is it fair? Is it foul? It's foul, but man like like I ripped it. So I'm like, I'm thinking to myself, Okay, I put two good swings on it. I'm good to go. I'm not going to strike out. I go back into the into the batter's box, and this dude throws me a slider on the outside and I swing and miss and the place erupts right, so like boom, strike three, Yeah, way to go. You know,

like place erupts ten cent beers. Everybody hits the concourse. So now there's like from three thousand people in the stands. Now there'scause everybody hits the concourse. So now my second at bad, I go up there and now there's a little bit more buzz. You know, not only are they a little lubricated, but now they're like, oh, you know, here's our guy. Come on, do it again. You can do it. Dug me a show with you, and I'm a little missed. You know, I'm a little piste off

about it. And I'm like, no, you know, now, now I'm gonna hit a jack. I found a couple more balls off, sure enough, swinging miss strike three. The place goes bizonkers. I'm just like God, like, damn it, what in the world. I'm like walking back to the dugout and there was this one guy and he was standing right by the on deck circles. I'm walking back to the dugout and he was like before he runs up the stairs, and I was so piste off. Little did I know that there's a rule for the beer batter.

If the beer batter takes the sombrero three strikeouts in the game as the beer batter, they give away a free beer to whoever wants it. Now it's like the sixth inning and I'm on deck and the places already on their feet like clapping in unison while I'm on freaking a day mortified. Way, I'm freaking mortified, and so I'm doing everything I can not to strike out, everything I can not to strike did you absolutely? I even before I went up, I asked my buddy, David Georgia's

who was my roommate, gorgeous Georgians. And I was like, hey, dude, do you think I should fund? And he looked at me and he was like, bro, you cannot bund. He was like man, and he was like they they will burn the plate down if you fund. So I'm like, thinks a lot, you know, like here, and so I go up there play, I struck out for a third time, took the sombrero as the beer batter and the place erupted and started throwing their empty beer of plastic beer

mugs on to the field. As I walked back to the home uh into the dugout, I was so mad. I was so mad, meles to say, anytime like we went and played a road game in college football, nothing was as bad as taking the sombrero as the beer battery bogged in Utah. So I didn't care what people said to me in football. And I'm oh, man, least I didn't take the sombrero. Brought that stadium to its knees and they were throwing their empty beer mugs out onto the field. Was it the same picture who got

you all three times? No? It wasn't. It was a reliever by the time they I mean, I'm surprised they didn't. If it was, they would have run out and put him on his shoulders. But I mean he would have been the hero. Did you like when you come back into the dugout and like, I mean, it's mind like I would just find it impossible not to be laughing, Like how are your teammates reacting? Like they all loved? That was part of the thing that pissed me off

the most. As I came in and I wasn't super fond of my manager, and this jerk said to me, he was like, well, at least somebody's happy, And I was like, hey, like, screw you. You know again, this is not like high school coach player relationship. There was no pats on the back. It was basically just like happy, okay, you know, don't screw yourself. Oh my god. So the the that that is pretty awesome, Like the beers, I mean, that is amazing. Do you think they're still allowed to

do that. I don't know. I'm sure that they do. Minor league baseball games are amazing. Um. I would highly suggest that for anybody out there that has a minor league team close. Things like that gone all the time. It's it's good. I mean, that doesn't sound like good family fun, but trust me, it's good family fun. But needless to stay that season, being the beer batter and taking the sombrero, uh, led to my belief that I

was not a professional baseball player any longer. Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our shows at Fox Sports Radio dot com and within the I Heart Radio app search f s R to listen live. Alright, so back to that's amazing story. By the way, we're talking to Joel clad I'm Clay Travis. This is Wins and Losses. Back to Colorado. You come back. You're the two seniors you said are graduating. You come back as a sophomore. Do you start? When

do you start your first game for Colorado? Yeah? That was and I was still a walk on at the time. You know, Gary Barnett said, hey, you know, I've got older guys that have earned a scholarship, and I know you're gonna be our starter, but you're still gonna be a walk on. So I started that season as a sophomore um as a walk on in fact, my very first game. It just goes to show you that I I started out really good and then maybe never quite equal to my first game, but my very first game

as a starter, Um, we played Colorado State. They were ranked, they were favored. It was that mile high, you know, seventy six thousand people. It was a great environment. We ended up winning the game like forty two thirty five or something like that. I threw for over four hundred yards and my very first start, and I was actually

named the National Player of the week. So on Monday morning, after the game, um, we're in our team meeting and that's when coach announced it to the team that like, hey, Joel won the or you know, yesterday he was named the national Player of the week. And you know, the team kind of does the whole you know, and they're giving me, you know, no guys and whatever. And right after that meeting, I actually had to walk to the bursar's office and hand them my personal check for my tuition. Wow.

I always I always loved that. Now I was gonna get reimbursed. I don't want to make it sound like, oh I was paying for my own school. I was gonna get reimbursed. But at the same time, like it was, it was just one of those things that you would never think would happen, and so that happened. So anyways, I started that year, and then I ended up starting for three seasons and had the time of my life. I absolutely loved it. What does it feel like to

run out onto the field? As like you talked about how you didn't really ever anticipate that when you quit baseball you would be a starting quarterback for Colorado. You're playing at Mile High. You grew up as a Denver Bronco fan, you grew up watching the University of Colorado not far away in Boulder. What's feel like to run out in front of seventy thousand people as the starting quarterback for the first time? Oh? Man, it was like, how nervous were you? What did it feel like? Oh?

I can't even explain how nervous I was. You know, I can't. You know, you can't feel your feet, you can't really feel your hands. Um, I can remember, you know. I walked up to the center for my first snap and when I looked up, the JumboTron was right above me, and it was just my face and I was in my heart kind of sunk. I was like, Oh my gosh,

I'm like, am I really doing this? Um? But as time went on, you know it, it changed and Clay, you know, one of the interesting parts was I started to be one of those guys that was like ultra prepared. So I would watch a ton of film, take a ton of notes, and I was most comfortable on the field during the game. And so all week I would be nervous, and I would be, you know, kind of like wanting to prepare more and wondering, LA, what's going

on there. I would have to talk to the media all day and it was candidly kind of a high anxiety time for me during the weeks of preparation. But then what I always found so fascinating is that the one time that I would relax all week was when I got to run out and get into the huddle for the first snap. It was like all the pressure and preparation were gone and you just got to go play finally. And it was that way for the rest

of my career. After that first game of those nerves, every time I would walk out there, it would just be like a big sigh of relief, and it was always one of those feelings that I'll never forget, and it was one of the best feelings that I've ever had. What does it feel like? Because most people are never going to know the feeling to win in a huge rivalry game as a starting quarterback in college football and come back to the campus after the game, Like, is

there inner any better? Is there any better feeling in life than having just won a huge college football game and you walk into like a party and I mean you literally are the biggest man on campus, Like, like, there's I can't imagine there's a better feeling than being the star quarterback on a team that just won a game. But we're just the quarterback, period. You don't have to be a star, just the guy who's on the team. Like you're the starting quarterback and you win. What does

that feel like? Too? Is I mean, like I can't even imagine. I can certainly imagine, but it had to be I mean had to be like like feeling like you were your mythical feet figure almost right, Yeah, I mean it's it's definitely surreal and you start to and that's why I try to give these kids the benefit of the doubt when they kind of when they active full of themselves, or when they misstep on social media's because their their frame of reference of reality is so skewed.

Because exactly of what you said, UM, I'm not going to get into every story because you know I'm happily married. UM, but I will say um that after the my first year starting as a sophomore, I was actually not dating

my now wife. We ended up dating in college, but we were not together at the time, and so we were I was living in this house and it was me and one other of my teammates that actually went to a neighboring high school of mine, and then it was three guys that he went to high school with that I knew from childhood that didn't play so Clay, you talked about guys who hit the jackpot. They got to live with the starting quarterback, and they were just

like normal college dudes. And so we were in this five bedroom house like on the Hill and Boulder, which is like a new notorious kind of part the spot, and not only would they come to the games, but they would all like this is so stupid. We went to a ball game my true freshman year, and so we had like our jerseys given to us if you go to a ball game. So I had the white jersey that that I wore as a true freshman with the Alamobile patch. My roommate used to steal it out

of my closet and wear it to the game. And he would his name was his name was Brett Banks, and then he called himself Brett the Jet, and he had this blue but he had this blue blazer that with the gold buttons, like an old school blue blazer with the gold buttons, that he called the Porsche. And so he and he would introduce himself to like all the co eds as Brett the Jet, and did they want to take a ride in the Porsche? I mean,

it's just the worst, right, It's just the worst. And so anyways, Brett would recruit a party always, and when we would show back up after games, our house would be like shoulder to shoulder packed, like I could barely get down My room was downstairs, and I could barely get downstairs to my room to like dump my bag off because we would have been in the hotel the night before. So it was it was certainly a weird

and wild time. One of the kids that we lived with it was his parents owned the house, and so he was technically the landlord, and he had his parents put a hot tub in in the living room, and so we used to come We used to come home and Brett would be in my jersey in the hot time, surrounded by a bunch of girls. I mean, because I mean a massive amount of people. Yes, they would just be I mean there was probably hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands people at this five bedroom house. It was it

was wild, but that was always the case. That is absolutely amazing. Now I've heard you tell the story for but certainly other people haven't. So you end up dating your now wife and you're playing Texas. This is one of the great stories, and like you're all hyped up. You go out to the coin flip at the middle of the field. You're about to play Texas. And is it a big twelve title game or like a huge game? No, this one, it was a pretty big game. Um, but

this one was when I was a junior. So that Vince Young's first year, first year starting, So they're not gonna win the national titles this year. That that's gonna be the next year. This is two thousand and four, and they came to Boulder to play us in Boulder, and Mac Brown used to rotate captains, so he would have four new captains every week, whereas we were always the same for for our team. So we would always go out for the coin flips. And I never paid

much attention to the opposing offense at all. I didn't I didn't have had no idea who the other players were. I mean maybe the star quarterback or whatever, but I didn't really know or care. So I went out to the coin flip and Sarah and I were dating at the time and and and pretty serious um at the time. And she was from Highlands Ranch Call, Colorado, and went

to high school and Highlands Ranch, Colorado. And so we go out to the coin flip, and since the game is in Boulder, Mac made one of the kids from Colorado who was on Texas a captain. Well he had also gone to Highlands Ranch High School. And so we get out there for the coin flip, and this guy who was an offensive lineman named Casey stuttered, and I had no idea who he was, and so he says to me. The first thing he says is we're shaking hands even before the coin is flipped. And he was like, hey,

how's Sarah? And I thought that he may be like read an article or something of that talking about, you know, because it was publicized that I was, you know, I had this girlfriend or whatever. People can find that sort of stuff, and I thought he had found it and was like talking trash, and so I lost it on him, like midfield before the game, I was like, you, son of the I started laying into him. I was like you,

you know, like you're a piece of crap. This and that and the and the official who I always had good relationship with because the white hat and the quarterback always have to know each other and we're always talking with each other. He was like Joel, Joel, like calm, calm down, what are you doing. I'm like, there's so you know the my my teammates are like, what's happening right now? And he he looked shocked. I was like, why does this guy look like a deer in the

headlights right now? He's gonna talk crap? And then he's you know, he's all upset that that I'm going off on him. And so we go and get through with the coin flip and everything go through the game. We we get the there are a great team. Obviously we get the I'm super piste and later that night I'm sitting there with with my now wife Sarah and I and I remember this story and I was like, oh, yeah, how about this? And I would always like rant to her about the games, and I was like, oh, and

how about this. Some idiot on the other team named Casey Stuttered asked about you at the coin flip and I was like, I was so piste off I went, and she goes, oh, how is Kathy. I felt like such an idiot. They were high school friends. That is amazing. Have you ever seen that guy since? Yeah, I've seen him. His dad played for the Broncos at one point, so he's been back in Colorado since so when I still lived there, and I remember the first time I saw him.

I was like, hey, man, I need to apologize about that coin flip. And he starts howling, laughing, and he was like, yeah, I realized something was off when you got so piste and oh but just hit her reaction. I wish you could have seen her reaction because I'm gruff and mad and telling, you know. And then this kid in the offensive line name Casey Stuttered. She just interrupted me right away, house Casey like as soft and sweet as she possibly can. I was so pissed. Uh.

Speaking of which, so you continue there. I want to like, you took some amazing hits and I see them all the time because you know, we'll end up tagged on each other when we're going back and forth on Twitter and there's a there's a lot of gifts out there of you just getting lit up. What is the most common one that you get sent and what was the worst hit you ever took while you were playing quarterback

at Colorado? The worst one, um is actually one that's not a yet, But the one I get sent the most is the one from the Big twelve championship game at oh five Texas is undefeated on the way to the national championship game. That was my last game at the University of Colorado. My last play knocked me out, put me into hospital. I think his name is Drew Kelson, and that son of a be personally sends it to

me on Twitter. Drew Kelson actually from his account, always sends me the video and he and he just says like what up, bro, And I'm just like, you know, like get over it. So that one gets sent to me a lot that John Beason hit from Miami in which John Beeson collected a bounty from Nevin Shapiro in that, and that's why he goes He goes completely after you. Like it. You're trying to like you're totally out of the play, and he just goes after you to hit you,

which later makes sense because he's getting a bounty. Oh yeah, five yards behind a guy. It was like a fumble and it was a fumble return. I'm chasing after the guy. He's five yards ahead of me, and clearly I'm not gonna catch him and beaton. He basically supplexed to me on the like lifts me up over his shoulder and like slams me on the ground. Then he starts going crazy, jumping up and down. It's like h Richer. And later you're like, oh, that makes sense. You were one of

the bounties in the Nevin Shapiro case. That's right. The only thing that pisses me off is that Chris Ricks had a higher bounty than I did. Oh that's pretty funny. Uh. And so you finish your career all right, and did you think you had any chance at the NFL at all? By the time you're done. Um, yeah, you know, an outside shot at it. Um. Obviously, my concussion history did not help, so I was I was pulled from the Senior Bowl and I was pulled from the Combine, which

didn't help my my chances. But I went undrafted to Detroit, New Orleans, earned contracts in both of those places, went to training camp with Detroit. My heart was just never quite in it because of the head injury deal and the way that everything ended in Colorado. And so that kind of ended, and that was all right with me. Um. You know, I had a great time in those training camps, and I was probably the type of guy that could

have been a backup for a while. I don't think I would have ever been a starting quarterback by any means, but I could have been a backup, one of those guys that knows the playbook doesn't threaten the starter. It's been a backup for you know, any number of years. But it just wasn't. It wasn't in the carts for me, and that's fine, um, And and candidly it's it worked out for the better because once I got out of football and came back to Colorado, I was able to

kind of move forward in my career. And at first I thought that was going to be an investment banking. I was an economics major Clay and I got a job with a small read in Denver, and I would raise the equity sections of speculative real estate projects. And this is like in two thousands, six and seven, right before the market crashed. And so needless to say, we raised some money for some spec homes that totally folded, and that company totally folded. And so here i am,

like two years out of college and I'm jobless. I'm married,

I'm jobless. I no way, And and in the meantime, I had been asked by Fox Sports Rocky Mountain, the local regional sports network, to fill in on some high school football games because they knew I was in town and they had done the magazine show for the University of Colorado, and I had done the magazine show obviously several times, being the quarterback there, and so once they realized I was in town, they were like, hey, you know, we need to fill in for this high school football game.

And so I did that a couple of times, and they always encouraged me, like, hey, you should do that more So while I had this job in investment banking, I was also on the side doing these small broadcasting

gigs and didn't have a broadcasting background or anything. Well, in the meantime that started to kind of grow to the point that once I lost that job in the real estate company and that company folded, my wife and I decided like, hey, let's give broadcasting a shot and maybe you could make this an actual living And that was in two thousand and eight, and um, you know,

here here we are eleven years later. All right, so you decided to take and make an actual shot of it in two thousand eight, what do you do from there? Like you call these high school games. I'm assuming you do a pretty good job calling my school games, But then how do you advance that beyond doing an occasional

football game. So and this is maybe you know, we've told some funny stories and everything, and I'm hopefully people are entertained, but if they wanted to get anything from actual wins and losses perspective about you know, career management or or career arc one of the things that my wife really encouraged me to do was two things. Network really well and also make your intentions known to your bosses.

So the first guy that ever hired me for those high school football games, he used to ask me like, well, what do you want to do, And I was like, well, I'd love to do college football, you know, And I always tell him flat out that's what I wanted to do. That was the job I was trying to get. So when things came up that I didn't know about, but that he did, he actually put me up for those jobs.

And one of those jobs was that he sent a tape unbeknownst to me, down to Dallas to Fox Sports Southwest for me to be on their studio show for the Big twelve package of FS and Southwest games. And they called me and said, hey, Ken Miller. Ken Miller was his name, This executive in Denver, and Ken Miller sent us your tape. We want you to be on

our studio. And so the fact that that Sarah encouraged me to be honest about my intentions and to also you know, network well throughout my time with those executives paid off in a huge way because Ken on my behalf, got me another gig without me even knowing it. And he did that because he wanted to see you know me kind of grow and flourish and and FUS in

Rocky Mountain didn't have high school football game. So I go down there and I do the studio show, you know, Halftimes pre games for FS in Southwest and this is in now two thousand and nine. Well, I did the same thing with their executives. They would say like, well, what do you want to do, and I would say,

I want to call college football games. And so when the opportunity came up, there was a pay per view game that Fox Sports was going to produce, but there was gonna be between Nebraska and Kansas State and this is in the Ron Prince area era with Josh Freeman at quarterback and then domin Kin Sue was a tackle for the Cornhuskers. And so they let me go and call that game. Well, as I started getting more experienced, they said they thought, well, you're probably you know, I

want to do these games. You're really good at these games. And that's what they told me, and we're gonna give you a package of games. So by two thousand and ten, I had a package of college football games on FS and Southwest. And that's when Clay Eric Shanks saw a game that I was that I was on and it was a Texas Tech versus Kansas State game, nondescript game, and there was a kickoff return by Tyler Lockett. If

you remember this, I believe it was Tyler Lockett. It was a Kansas State player, one of their good returners. And and I made the comment because I had always heard this in special teams meetings and just growing up, you know, being around football, is that one of the things that you have to have as a returner is that you've got to be decisive. Right. You can't, as they would say, you can't wonder where you're going, like you've got to pick a whole direction and go. You

gotta be decisive with where you're headed. And I said that on the air, and for whatever reason, you know, Eric Shanks, who's the president now and and CEO of Fox Sports, he heard that and he thought, boy, I've never heard that before. And he had been around sports television for a long time and he thought it was unique and he thought it was interesting, and that put me on his radar. And once I was on his radar, everything else started to fall into place, and I started

getting bigger packages within Fox. They moved me out to l a once FS one started, and and that was that natural progression, and that's kind of how it happened. But by no means that I set out in this you know business and and sat and I never sat in a in a college classroom and thought I want to be a broadcaster. It was literally born out of necessity. I didn't have a job. It was the only thing that I could earn a few dollars at at the time,

as I was unemployed. And then it's worked out from there. What were you making doing those high school games? I think I think they paid me a hundred and twenty five dollars or maybe it was two hundreds too, know, it wasn't two hundred, it was a hundred and twenty five dollars. And then even when you're doing I bet Fox Sports Southwest, you're not making very much money doing those either, right, No, So I would go down for the weekend and for all day Saturday. I think they

gave me. I think it was for the for a Saturday, and it was just a day rate, and it was just the you know, twelve Saturdays a year. In the meantime, Yeah, and in the meantime I had actually gotten a local radio show, and and that radio show was on like the worst station that you could possibly be on. No one listened to it, you know, the finances were all bad, and and so they agreed to have me a part

of their afternoon drive show. And we agreed on sixteen thousand dollars a year, and I was like, okay, you know, and you couple that was the big twelve Saturdays and maybe some games here and there, and you know, maybe I could make thirty grand this year. That's not all right, this is gonna be great. And so the problem was is that they wouldn't go after their vendors well enough, and they weren't making any money, so they never actually paid me that sixteen dollars or whatever we agrede to.

So I would get checks every two weeks, just personal checks for like two or the next week would be like three and fifty dollars, and I would bring him home and look at Sarah and she'd be like, is this it? And I'd be like, yeah, I mean, like this is it? And play So much credit for everything that I've been able to accomplish goes to my wife, because I asked her so many times babe, I can be a coach tomorrow in college football, and she would always say, no, you're really good at this. This is

gonna work out. And if it wasn't for her and her confidence in me during those times when I was making three every two weeks, there's no way I'd be in this business. I also think of one picking the right spouse is incredibly important. You gotta win there and no matter what you do. But I always like to ask a money question because I feel like, and I'm sure you see this now too, so many people expect immediate returns, and in order to be successful in most things,

you have to grind. For a long time, I've talked about how much I wrote before I made anything for what I was writing, and before that led into radio or TV. And I feel like there's so many people out there, a lot of young who are listening right now, that expect that instant gratification, and our industry doesn't really provide it. No, it doesn't. And and I completely agree with you, I think, and I'm gonna relate it to not only people in general, but more specifically ex athletes.

Um and I find this every time I talk with former teammates or guys that get done playing whether it's college or in the NFL, They've excelled at such a high level and for them, you know, toiling in the bottom of an industry right now would feel like going back to little league football. And and in their mind, they're like, I'm not gonna do that. I'm above that. And I think that we have way too much entitlement going on in in the professional landscape of our country.

You are not entitled to anything anything. You have to work diligently for next to nothing early in order to get to where you're going. Because this is the dirty secret that no one wants to tell those people. And and they tend to be young, and I don't want

to group them just as young people. But though that group of people that is entitled and refuses to do that toil Clay, no one tells them You're not worth anything yet, your work is not worth anything yet I wasn't good enough to make more money at that point. You know why, because advertisers or because people, you know, people weren't watching enough of it, so advertisers wouldn't pay an x amount of dollars. I couldn't command more money than the company was bringing in based on my show.

You know, that's just that's just a preposterous sentiment to think that you are worth something that you are not. You know, you you've got to be realistic about what your value is and how to build that value. That sounded doomsday. I'm not. I'm not trying to throw anybody under the bus. I'm just saying like, at times, you've got to understand that in order to get where you're going,

you gotta grind. You have to grind. I just you know, when I started out kick as a website, first of all, I wrote for years and years making virtually nothing, practicing law full time, grinding away on articles, whether people like them or not. I started a website thinking, hey, I'm going to be able to bring in a lot of other people who want to do what I do. It was amazing to me how few people would write even one article for free, or who would put in the

time to write. Nobody was virtually willing to put in time to write five or ten or a hundred like I did. Before. I worried about any kind of compensation, just worried about getting better. Um And I think that's the story certainly of the sports media industry is you gotta be able to put your head down and not really focus on what you're getting right now. And I'll give my wife credit the same kind of credit that

you gave your wife. Like she recognized the talent and said, keep doing this, you know, even while I'm practicing lawfull time. And so when I decided to take off and write a book about going around to all twelve SEC football

stadiums because I love college football, she encouraged it. I feel like there are a lot of people out there that will discourage their services who are talented in something because they're so worried about the right now as opposed to the what could be and believing in the future is a big part of any kind of success, I think, and I think that that's that's really kind of the story of this Wins and Losses podcast. Well, not only that, but but you can go back to the Gladwellian theory

of the ten thousand hours. Yeah, no, no one, No one is great at what they do just because they tell you they are. You know, you're you're great at what you do because you practiced it thousands and thousands of times. She always knew my wife and I always knew that that radio show that that paid me basically zero dollars was instrumental in helping me learn how to

develop arguments talk for three hours at a time. You know, I I used to stumble on my words quite a bit when I first started doing high school of football games, and I wasn't as clean on camera that radio show that nobody listened to that I made no money for every single day for three hours, That's what got me my jobs afterwards. I was so much better after that.

If I would have said, no way, I'm not gonna do that because you aren't paying me, I would never be where I'm at right now because I wouldn't have developed the skills necessary in order to be where I'm at right now. SOX Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our shows at Fox Sports Radio dot com and within the I Heart Radio apps search f s R to listen live. You also don't know another big lesson here, and we're

talking to Joel Klatt Wins and Lost his podcast. You can follow him on Twitter at Joel Klatt. Subscribe if you're enjoying these conversations. If you like this one, you'll probably like others as well. You also never know when somebody's watching because you're calling the game. That is, It's not like you were calling Michigan, Ohio State at the time, where there's ten million people watching it or whatever the

number is. You're calling a relatively anonymous Big twelve game and Eric Shanks, who's the president of Fox Sports, happens to be watching and he's got his antenna up trying to find young talent all the time because of the industry that we're in. Boom. He suddenly recognizes that you you're on his radar, and that leads to you have an opportunities which is where we met for the first time, which is in two thousand thirteen when they were doing all the auditions for FS one. I was one of

the panelists. You were one of the host and this is credit to you. I thought you were a professional TV guy by that point, as opposed to a former athlete, which I think is the best thing you can honestly tell someone who has a background in athletics is you're good enough at what you're doing that the background in

athletics almost doesn't even factor in well. And that was another thing that I feel like I would be remiss if I didn't at least touch on quickly in in this podcast, which was the fact that um, I did not pigeonhole myself into a corner. You know, I could have said, I'm just a football analyst. That's all I'm gonna do. Don't ask me to do other things, you know.

The Fox Sports Rockey Mountain people asked me to be an analyst for the Colorado Rockies on their pre and post game show because of my minor league baseball background, and I did that even though it was somewhat uncomfortable because I had never played major league baseball. They asked me then to be the host of that same baseball pre and post game show. I had never hosted anything a day in my life, but I did it, you know, because because I knew that being versatile was going to

pay off in the end. The only reason that FS one asked me to come out to l A and be a part of the launch of FS one was because I had that background as a host for fs N Rocky Mountain, which was then Roots Sports, hosting the Rockies pre and postgame shows, which Clay I had never done before before that season. So all of these doors opened up because I didn't pigeonhole myself. I networked well and I was willing to make three every two weeks doing a radio show. No one ever listened to those.

Those are the winds. You know. The wind is not when Fox says, hey, we want you to be our lead announcer with with Gus Johnson for Michigan Ohio State. That's great. You know, that's the gravy, and that's the frosting of and and the reward of all the hard work. The winds came far before that, when you were willing to do the work necessary in order to get better, in order to get more opportunities, in order to be seen more people, in order to have more opportunities than

even after that. In order to take advantage of those opportunities to get the jobs that we want, you also have to be willing to do things that make you uncomfortable and that you're not really prepared for. I'll give you an example. I had never done a highlight on television in my life. I had never even set at the desk before. And then in the first year of FS one, they set me down at the table and they said during a halftime show. Hey, you've got this highlight.

I didn't even know there was a television screen in the desk, Like, I had never even set at the desk before. We're on live television doing a highlight. We did the Fox College Football Kickoff Show. I had never been in a television studio before we started that first year on the Fox College Football Kickoff Show. That's a great point, you know, that's a that's a great point.

I had never read a teleprompter before I came out to l A. Yeah, you know, there's there's things like that are literally In fact, this last year, they asked me to do golf. Yeah, and you've done mentioned that. Yeah, I jumped at the opportunity. And the reason is is because I know that versatility is valuable, and the more things that I can do, the more valuable I am the Fox Sports and and I could have said no, no, I've made it. You know, I've got my lead college

football gig. But I was anxious and nervous about going and interviewing these golfers, you know. And and I had never asked people questions on TV before. I'm not a journalist. I'm not a reporter. And and here I am at the US Open, you know, sitting there in my suit with brooks Kepka and Tiger Woods and and the like

and Justin Rose asking them about their round. Certainly uncomfortable, but something that I was prepared for by all the times in the past when I had put myself in those uncomfortable situations and learned how to do it on the fly. Um, what's next? So college football season? Now we're getting close by the time a lot of people listen to this, I got you on because officially kicks off. How much do you still get excited for the start

of college football seven season? Even now at thirty seven and now that you've called a lot of games and been to a lot of places, how much does it still for you when you're in a stadium and kickoff is nearing? How exciting is that still for you? Like, I can't I can't even tell you how exciting it is. It's it's it's similar to a kid at Christmas Clay, And I know that's cliche, but it's absolutely true. I love it. I absolutely love it. I am you know. I hope that this is not because I'm getting a

little older, and I know I'm still somewhat young. But I don't want to be a cromudgeon. But I also I fear where we're at in the sport. You know, if we continue to just have Clemson and Alabama be the only two factors in the sport, I don't think that that's good for us long term. I don't want to hate on greatness, but I do think that we need some others, and more importantly, the start coaches like Lincoln Riley, maybe Ryan Day, Maybe it's Jim arbas Here,

I'm not sure, you know, maybe it's Kirby Smart. We need some of these guys to rise up and rival Dabbo and Um and Nick Saban, and I think that we need that this year. So I not only get excited just for the start because it's like Christmas, but I also get excited and anxious because I think that there are really important storylines for the help of the sport long term. Fox Sports Radio has the best sports

talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our shows at Fox sports Radio dot com and within the I Heart Radio app search f s R to listen live. Now it's pretty fascinating. Well, you're gonna be on with us weekly during college football season for people who listen to the out Kick the Coverage show. I'll close with this and we're talking to Joel Clad. You can follow him on Twitter at Joel Clad. This is the Wins and Losses podcast. How much do you hate me? Um?

Words can't describe how much hey, I have for you. And and as Dave Chappelle Apthlete says, if you have hate your heart, let it out. There you go. That is Joel Klatt letting his hate out for me. And by the way, I got an idea for you. And Dub is taping this right now. Dub is on the show, the radio show we need to have every week. I don't understand. Here's what I don't understand. I basically I mainly hate you for one subject. And I feel like you you know why, and you deep down you agree

with me. The Greg Ciano not being the head coach of Tennessee debate right right? What what you did was wrong? Now you can you cannot want him as the coach, just like I'm sure there are a lot of people that didn't want Brett Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court justice, but that doesn't justify the way that they tried to go about it. Um. I wish that Tennessee had been

I knew the analogy. I wish that Tennessee had been smart enough not to draw somebody in that This stinction that I would make, This is the distinction that I would make between Brett Kavanaugh and Greg Ciano. Unless you're a died in the wool hardcore Penn State conspiracy theorist. I think most people believe that what Jerry Sandusky did was a crime, right, That's why he was in prison.

The jury convicted, right, there's no doubt. I mean, there there's a tiny segment of like Penn State truthers that is like, oh, there's nothing to this, this is all made up, Like because I hear from him all the time on Twitter, right, And there's a tiny subset of the population nine nine percent whatever you want to say of people is aware that something awful went on at Penn State and Jerry Sandusky's no. The distinction I would make with Brett Kavanaugh is, we don't know that anything

ever improper happened in his life at all. In fact, all of the evidence would suggest that nothing happened at all. So the distinction that I would draw, Yeah, the distinction that I would draw is no that but we just

let me just finish the distinction. The distinction is we know something awful happened at Penn State, So not wanting somebody who was connected to it in any way, even if he didn't do anything wrong, and there's disputes about all these things and all of those associational values, not wanting somebody connected to something that we know happened that was awful is different than somebody's saying making an allegation in the Brett Kavanaugh case, which it appears like never

really happened if you really look at all the evidence, and certainly nobody would convict that there was a crime

that occurred. So there's a distinction there. Um. So that's that's like if Brett if Brett Kavanaugh, let me just say this, if Brett Kavanaugh had been a student manager on Penn State's football program, and somebody in court testimony had said, hey, he went he heard about something awful that happened, he witnessed something, and even if he was never charged with it, I think a lot of people would say, I don't know if I want that guy sitting on the Supreme Court doesn't mean that he doesn't

deserve to have a job, doesn't mean that he can deserve to have all sorts of things in his life. Clearly has not committed a crime or been charged with one, but just the connection itself is so bad you don't want to have it associated with the program. However, however, you made that connection way way too closely than just like, oh, he was somehow some way related in the outside way story to it. And that's the problem then, And because

here's here's the problem. The only link is actually an incredible and incredibly discredited witness that mentions it only in the civil suit, not in the actual uh not in the actual court case, but in the civil suit. And it's actually been discredited by two or three different eyewitnesses. So that's that was My problem is that you kind of the submarine de man's character, which now has affected his live blihood moving forward because you didn't want him

as the head coach. My whole position is fine, you don't want him as the head coach, that's fine, but you don't tie him to that in a roundabout way, even though there's direct evidence to the contrary. I would say this Tennessee Blew that because they should have. Look, if I am involved in the vetting of a candidate at all, if they had called me and they had said, how do we roll this out? I could have walked him through it. Right. I'm pretty good at pr I'm

pretty good at figuring things out. That Greg Siano was the target for a total distrust that existed and and I think has kind of dissipated now that Phil Fulmer is in charge between the management of the Tennessee Athletic Department and the university as a whole and its fan base that led to Butch Jones, that led to former being fired, Lane Kiff and Derek Dooley. It was an incompetent regime. And if the regime had been competent, people would have been more inclined to give them the innefit

of the doubt and the real story here. And you know, this is everything blew up on Tennessee's face because Dan Mullin got the Florida job, because suddenly Chip Kelly walked away from Florida, because you see l A made the play to get him. Right, Dan Mullin would be the coach at Tennessee right now. And I think they were totally anticipating that and suddenly they had to swivel to Siano and I just don't think they were prepared. Now, and all of that can be true, Here's here's the difference,

and I'll make another distinction. Every word of what you just said can be true. But that still doesn't give anybody grounds to submarine a man's character falsely. I think that Tennessee should have never hired Greg Ciano. I maintained I did nothing wrong. Joe Clatt hates me forever for doing it. Joel, I will talk to you again soon. This has been the Wins and Losses podcast, and you just took an el and big win. Big win for

me there, Uh, I appreciate Uh. That is Joel clad Go fall on Twitter and tell him how awful of a human being he is. At your like at Joel Clatt on Twitter. We'll be talking a lot during the college football season. I hope people enjoyed it. Thanks for the time, my man. We'll talk to you again soon. Absolutely, this has been Wins and Losses. Clay Travis. If you

enjoy this, go give us five stars. Rate us. Tell Joel Klatt he took the l that he's the beer batter, tag him on Twitter and also, by the way, uh, we do want you guys to rate this podcast five stars. I'll read some funny ones as we continue. If you enjoyed this, you'll probably enjoy some of the other ones as well. Appreciate y'all, thanks for hanging. This has been Wins and Losses. I'm Clay Travis, He's Joel Clatt, and this is the Wins and Losses Podcast.